Everybody Staze...

“I’d be interested to know your views on how to achieve and maintain happiness, whether the world (or people in general) are basically good or evil, and maybe your 10 favorite animes ;]”

Individuals, huh. Oddly enough that might be harder than worldwide, or even “does god exist,” etc. Because really, the religions of the world may or may not care about the existance of a supreme being, but they all attempt to bring happiness or oneness to the individual subscribers of said religion. So really, if I attempt to broach this subject, I will not only be approaching religious ramblings, but I will indeed be stepping on some feet. But hey… that’s why I wear big heavy boots… to step on feet.

I’ll first start out by saying that Happiness is completely subjective. If you don’t believe that, then I’d suggest you stop reading this and go read Ayn Rand or someone equally as annoying… perhaps Ann Coulter.

Okay… with that out of the way. Let’s get down to the tacks. To attain happiness, you must lower your expectations. lol… kidding… partially. Western civilization has poisoned the ability for someone to be happy. Bigger, better, faster. We all know how that goes… we want something, we think it will make us happy, and it usually does give us some happy feeling for a brief amount of time, but it fades and we must go consume again. That’s what we are even without western Civilization… consumers. Food, Water, etc. And ever since the harnessing of fire, some strange desire has appeared in humanity to consume more than (s)he needs. wants. Buddhists and Essenes alike would say we must eliminate the want from life to attain happiness… and there is a very good argument for that. What is a want, a desire? To look for something we do not have: almost always external to our being. A refirmation of the fact that we do not have whatever we are looking for. Be it a cool computer, or happiness itself. “I just wish I could be happy…” Doesn’t that in itself make things worse?

It is the same word game that you play when you say “Try to pick up something infront of you”… all of you that just picked it up fail. I said Try… not Do. Or “Look all you want, you’ll never find anything”. Starting to sound like Yoda? Makes sense… before Lucas f-ed it all up, Yoda was a good representation of some Eastern thought.

Back to what I was saying though… in the West we have some notion that anyone who doesn’t have a ______ (insert item here) must not be happy. “Thou shalt not covet thy…” That could be true… but many a Monk would disgree. They have the clothes on their back… and some might even prefer to have less. Hmmm… but then, they have the choice to give up their worldlies. Someone who lives in Africa with nothing does not have that choice. Hmmm… so is choice integral to happiness? Your guess is as good as mine. But I’d probably say it is. But then we get into what is choice? We all have choice whether we are wealthy or poor… it’s all a matter of magnitude.

So really, it all comes back to the first thing I said… subjective. Happiness comes from within. Be good to yourself, and let life come to you. Don’t force it… Bobby Mcferrin said it too… Don’t Worry, Be Happy. Simple Simple. Don’t dwell in worrying or doubt, or malice. Just live… let things work themselves out… when it comes down to it, it really does come out even in the end.

For now, that’s it.

BTW, have a great and safe New Year’s Eve… don’t do anything I wouldn’t do… er well… you figure that one out. And remember, the reason people have New Year’s Day off is to recover from NYE.

Yeah yeah, I know I haven’t written the complete review of the movie. I hope to do that tonight or tomorrow if I have the spare time. But I might not have time tomorrow if the eMacs come in. But right now, I have a request to all of you. I have been trying to write my manifesto for years. Covering all the topics I can think of, trying to rationalize my ideas and points of view, etc. Problem is, I get past a brief intro, and a couple of topics, and I lose my interest and it just gets put aside.

This brings me to you. I need people, in the comments, to give me topics to cover. I hope to try to cover one a day, or every couple days. Maybe a few paragraphs, or perhaps a page or two on really big topics.

Not sure if people will do this for me, but I hope so. Ideas for topics would be like, Mad Cow, Abortion, Political Money Contributions, the Death Penalty, etc.

Thanks everyone… I’ll be headed back to Eugene this evening. Hope everyone had a good Holiday (Christmas, Solstice, Festavis, Hanukkah, etc).

Return of the King. What can I say? Well, I’ll save some of the plot info for the extended entry… so if you HAVE NOT seen the movie DO NOT read the extended entry. I warned you.

All and All, amazing movie. While it was 42 minutes longer than the previous 2, (3:42 as opposed to 3 hours) it felt shorter than Two Towers. Two Towers dragged during Helm’s Deep, and while I loved it, it just made me want to wiggle out of my theater seat. Return of the King wasn’t like that. I never felt like I wanted to get up and stretch, or anything. Very well paced, and enough was always going on that I never thought “when is this movie going to end?” Part of that is no doubt the fact it’s the final movie of the three… but then, if I may make a general statement, Matrix 3… yeah, wanted to know when it was going to be over. But that’s because the Wachowski brothers screwed up that one good. George Lucas, eat your heart out. You very well may NOT be the worst thing to ever happen to a story… well, then again, maybe you are.

In hind sight, watch the LotR’s movies before reading the books. That at least will eliminate the possibility of doing what I did… picking out everything that did or didn’t happen in the book. From what I’ve heard from other canon critical people, the second viewing helps with this phenomenon… so I’m anxious to see it again. It’s just hard to justify spending that much money on something when you barely have enough money to buy food, or pay bills… ya know?

I dressed up of course, and our group of 20 got to the theater on opening day around 4, so we began the line. I showed up the first time around 8, and then came back at 9 after changing into my outfit. They let us into the theater at 10 (for a midnight showing). Garret, a friend of his named Brian, and myself all played Quake 3 for a while… I like that game when there are several people playing it. with just 3 people, I have a hard time not getting owned because I obviously am not as good as Garret. Though after I stopped, Romes proceeded to beat Garret 10-6 and Romes had never played Quake 3 before. That’s saying something… someone who has never played Quake 3 and considers themself a gamer.

Crowd was good, all and all very considerate. A few cheers at key points, but no yelling at the screen, or screaming, or anything like that. That was nice. Not much else to say about the movie… so on with the next topic(s). I also want to mention that I think the version we saw was a preview reel. There were no subtitles for the Elvish, and the beginning of the movie was kinda screwed up (turned green and yellow and the sound stuttered). In hind sight, well all should have complained about it and gotten passes to another showing of the movie. Oh well.

Work has been good. Not nearly as busy as I would have thought. We’ve calmly be going through the work to be done, and so far it’s been quite relaxing. No constantly nagging professors or students, so we can just do the stuff we need to do. The batch of eMacs haven’t arrived yet. But the Terminal Services server is set up, all the main servers (Auth, Data, and Video) have been upgraded to 10.3.2 (after I botched an install on the Auth server, and had to pound on it for 5 hours to get it back to pre-upgrade, then upgrade it again). All and all, a good time working so far.

Was up in Portland this weekend, and I’m back down in Eugene for the next few days (well, day) then back up to Portland tomorrow night. Just had to work. Kinda sucks, but I need the money, so I’m not going to pass up the chance to get that.

I can’t remember if I’ve talked about it at all, but the planning for the next con has gotten underway. I’m hoping to get some work done on a site soon. Zach said he’s going to take care of that, and threw in that he might be able to get Gabe and Tyco down for the next KumoriCon. That would indeed be sweet.

Right now I’m sitting here watching RC (Rivenchan) play Final Fantasy X-2. I’m really not sure what to think. Part of it really scares me, and upsets me. It has a very teeny bopper girly girl feel to it. Too cute or something. It reminds me of Charlies Angels. It’s freaky. I don’t know… I’m starting to wonder if Square did the right thing merging with Enix. If they release a new Dragon Warrior, then we’ll talk.

Well, I think I’m going to save the actual plot analysis for later… it’ll be attached to this post, but not right now. Once I’m done, it’ll appear.

Thanks everyone, hope to see as many of you as possible over break. That means you Val… hopefully sooner rather than later.

Well, here it is. Hopefully I can say something that is interesting. First of all, I’ll say that this is my favorate of the 3 movies. Though, I’ve only seen RotK once. I want to watch the extended editions of the first 2 again, then go watch the movie again.

Main complaints… they completely destroyed Eomer’s character. He is supposed to have much closer relationships with Eowyn, and all the others. He is traumatized by the death of Theodin’s death. While this isn’t a big thing, it does bother me. Arwen is completely different than what Tolkein wrote. She’s too big… she’s supposed to just be a small character… someone that keeps Aragorn from going off and having a relationship with Eowyn, or anyone else. She’s his love from his childhood. She’s Elrond’s daughter… and therefore part human, which is why she can choose mortality. She is a further infusion of elven blood into the line of kings (who are already partially elven, hence their long life). Oh yeah, biggest complaint… Narsil. ARGGGG. He was supposed to get it when they first went to Rivendale. Not in the Return of the King. Gar. I was very scared when I saw the movie, thinking that the person in the cloak was Arwen, and she was bringing the sword to him. That would have just been WRONG… Elrond was bad enough, but at least his speech was good.

Minor complaints: the men under the mountain. too ethereal. Too ghostlike. I thought, when I read the book, that they were just men who could not die. Haggered. Not ghosts. The CG was great when they just rolled over the Oleophant… but still, they were like the end all warriors… so it just seems kinda silly. The Palantir… it was supposed to be thrown from the Tower by Wormtong… they just found it in the water… that’s dumb. It was obviously in the Tower in the first 2 movies… how did it suddenly get in the water when the Tower was in perfect condition. Leading to another complaint… the lack of Christopher Lee in the movie. While his part was basically over by the end of the Two Towers… he still could have been put in.

Minor Minor Complaints: That WAS NOT the last ship to the west. Celeborn stayed behind for a while. The captain of the ship was supposed to have a beard. He is/was supposed to be the oldest elf in middle earth. I also was greatly worried when they showed the three of them standing there (Elrond, Galadriel, and Celeborn), thinking they were trying to say that they had all 3 rings. Gandalf clearly had the ring on when they finally showed his hand.

Compliments: Amazingly well done. Cinematography was excellent, acting, superb. I really can’t complain about the movie except those things that are just in contradiction to the book. And really, that’s the case with every book and movie… I could do the same with Interview with the Vampire, Hunt for Red October, Starship Troopers, etc. So really, read my comments with a grain of salt, and see the movie. If you’ve neither read the books, or seen the movies, see the movies first. That will at least keep you from doing what I did.

Good luck to you all in your movie going… I just can’t wait to see what the extended edition brings, and whether it addresses any of these issues I had.