Am chatting with Matthew G, an old friend from Eastern who recently commented on my blog again. Who has a major vendetta against Seth for him being a jerk to his friends. It's kind of weird.

You know what I did on Friday afternoon? I spent fifteen minutes staring at a shrubbery. It was rather extraordinary, or maybe I'm on psychotropic drugs, but as I was looking at the shrubbery, it began to look to me like the side of a tree covered mountain. Each sprig on the shrubbery, instead of being just a sprig, was a little evergreen tree, and I could "see" birds' nests and pinecones. And very clear in my mind's eye were roads winding around the mountain which I half expected to see if I were just to part the little sprigs, and hikers appeared as pinpricks of color occasionally walking along the side of the road, overtaken by cars and buses. They would, if they had really existed, appear as flashes of light as they travelled along the sunny stretches of the road, and then go dark again as they drove under the shade. I saw birds circling over the pines, and, with my mind's eye dipping under the leafy canopy, saw mats of pine needles, underbrush and topsoil, and along the steep sections of the mountain, a grey rock face with loose sections, where occasionally a hiker would, with his shoe, dislodge some pebbles that would go pingpingping! all the way down.

But sometimes a shrubbery is just a shrubbery.

For the rest of the duration of the walk, I'd see other shrubbery, and it'd appear to me as a spreading oak hung with lanterns by which a hundred or so revellers would be eating barbecue and chatting (the children would be chasing each other) on a summer evening (it was about 3 pm after school, in reality), or I'd look at a tree and see a redwood on a knoll that could serve as a house, with round doors and windows carved into the bark, or I'd see a shrubbery that looked like a tree on a patch of hilly and cheerful farmland under which I could sit and read, or I'd see somebody's lawn and see plains shaking under the weight of a stampeding herd of bison. I lost all sense of scale- what was one inch, or six inches, could be the height of a human, or a buffalo, or a tree. It was like I was looking at a bansai world, with my mind inserting special effects.

My imagination riots against the IB.

My monitor burned out on the computer I normally use. I'm getting a new monitor (flat screen) and possibly a CD burner since they're really cheap right now at Best Buy and my parents are on a 'buying electronica' spree. In the meantime, I'm seeing if I can use my old monitor as a fish tank.

I have a.. boyfriend?

What the hell just happened? Sprouting from a random conversation. Oh, Alex, this is the guy I introduced you to. Who works for the Louisiana Renaissance festival.

SFX 87: I feel I ought to tell you that they got Bill the Pony in Rivendell in the movie.

Fiend Lich: ...

SFX 87: well you were wondering where they got him.

Fiend Lich: wow...how...crappy.

SFX 87: Well it's better than having him appear from nowhere.

Fiend Lich: *mutter*

SFX 87: *mutter*
SFX 87: I have also decided that Eomer is incredibly studly.

Fiend Lich: yep.

SFX 87: I want to have his children
SFX 87: but also Aragorn's.
SFX 87: and Legolas'

Fiend Lich: ...

SFX 87: and Faramir's.
SFX 87: So you see I'll be busy for a while.
SFX 87: I apologize in advance for even bringing up Faramir.

Fiend Lich: and theodrek's! and theodrek's!!
Fiend Lich: *ducks* :P

SFX 87: Speaking of which..

Fiend Lich: This doesn't sound like it'll bode well. :P
Fiend Lich: What?

SFX 87: Will you write me a Dating Recommendation?
SFX 87: ^__^

Fiend Lich: ...er...?

SFX 87: Just a little sheet on what a good date I'll make so I can pass it around to people.
SFX 87: I mean, obviously, I can't expect people to date me who don't even know me.

Fiend Lich: ...er...
Fiend Lich: That's not really how you should go around doing it.

SFX 87: So I bet they'll be reassured to know that other people find me to be a good bet.
SFX 87: ^__^
SFX 87: Hey, my friend has dating applications.

Fiend Lich: How crappy.
Fiend Lich: Really.

SFX 87: I've seen dating resumes too.

Fiend Lich: I've seen 12 year olds with four girlfriends.

Fiend Lich: That doesn't make it right.

SFX 87: *shrug* it's a better way than some.
SFX 87: I don't think anyone means it seriously, besides.

Fiend Lich: *rolls eyes*
Fiend Lich: Don't do sheets...
Fiend Lich: Just be yourself.

SFX 87: It is rather original, and a better method than pickup lines.

Fiend Lich: You'll find someone.

SFX 87: Eomer! :-D

Fiend Lich: Someone in your range.
Fiend Lich: Who isn't a major film star and such.

SFX 87: Well I could become a major star and balance it all out.

Fiend Lich: :P

Fiend Lich: Why not me! I'm willing! *raises hand meekishly*

SFX 87: awww..
SFX 87: *smooch* So cute.
SFX 87: ^__^

Fiend Lich: And I'm house broken!
Fiend Lich: ;.;

SFX 87: I promised not to do this online dating thing again though.

Fiend Lich: And I like to cuddle...!

SFX 87: @___@ So cute!!!!

Fiend Lich: *sniffles*

SFX 87: *whimpers*

Fiend Lich: *puppy eyes*
Fiend Lich: And I'll adore and worship you and everything!

SFX 87: @___@

Fiend Lich: *hugs your ankles* Pweese? ;.;
Fiend Lich: I...I...um...I will do breakfast in bed?
Fiend Lich: I give foot rubs...?

SFX 87: but not at the same time!
SFX 87: (breakfast in bed with foot rubs..)

Fiend Lich: Well, yes. ^_^

SFX 87: strange
SFX 87: and unhygenic

Fiend Lich: But I'll do them both seperately!
Fiend Lich: And...and...

SFX 87: @___@
SFX 87: So cute!!!!
SFX 87: *dies*

Fiend Lich: ...did I mention I like to cuddle and snuggle and generally be together? ;.;
Fiend Lich: and how what I'd really like to do is wrap myself and someone up in a blanket really tight and just cuddle and lay together?

SFX 87: except you live in Louisiana
SFX 87: unless you're travelling ectoplasm, this presents some problems.

Fiend Lich: -_-
Fiend Lich: Blah.
Fiend Lich: ...but...I like to cuddle...!! Please? ;.;

SFX 87: Uh.. (breaks out).. I'll think about it?
SFX 87: but nuthin' too serious

Fiend Lich: ;__;
Fiend Lich: okay!

SFX 87: Yay! Someone to smack around!

Fiend Lich: Just...foot rubs!
Fiend Lich: yes! you can smack me!

SFX 87: *smacks* Woohoo!

Fiend Lich: ^_^
Fiend Lich: I'll be your bitch? o.O
Fiend Lich: I don't care! ^_^;;

SFX 87: ey!
SFX 87: but no
SFX 87: Not the bitch thing. I don't like housepets.

Fiend Lich: *shrug*
Fiend Lich: Okay.

SFX 87: Random question. Would you like Ranch or House Vinagrette on your salad?

Fiend Lich: Ranch.
Fiend Lich: If available, Russian.
Fiend Lich: Or Catalina.

SFX 87: What's Russian? Vodka?

Fiend Lich: No! Salad dressing.

SFX 87: Vodka flavored salad dressing?

Fiend Lich: No alcohol.

SFX 87: okee. What's Catalina?

Fiend Lich: Salad dressing.
Fiend Lich: Red kind of. It's good, though.

SFX 87: I'll take your word for it. Never had it.

Fiend Lich: Okay.

And so forth. If you want more of the transcript, ask me. There's some stuff on.. asking for my picture, more ankle hugging, awkwardness on my side (maybe not for him), and 8 Bit Theater. I was quite grateful for this webcomic from waving me from stupid relationship awkwardness. Still don't know if I'm dating him or not. Mental Note: He seems to take jokes rather literally.

Have linked to Sharon's blog, Into The Darkness, which coincidentally is the name of a song in the Final Fantasy IV soundtrack I'm listening to right now.

I had a happy dream over Break involving Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom, and lots of hot chocolate.

They were clothed though. In really poofy winterwear.

Attended Shakespeare club, which I am trying to make a habit (typoed 'hobbit' by accident; God I'm a dork). Condensed Shakespeare is funny. Like condensed soup, but better for you.

Thanks for bringing, Nick. ^___^

Rain-snow mixes never pan out.

Deepa hath returned.

Sarah Gordon was over joyed that she does not sound Texan.

It really is disgraceful. I mean, here we are, the greatest of men of eons ago, imbued with dark power, immortal, scary as sin and given sophisticated hunting instincts. And, thanks to that retarded little gnome Gollum, we knew right where to look. ...

The Tenth Rider

Much LotR convo today.

I was talking to Lianna before school in the library and apparently her dad used to read it to her, but only got as far as Rivendell because she was creeped out by the Nazgul. She has not yet seen the new movie.

I was disappointed. Someone tore out the LotR and Harry Potter article from the library's issue of Teen People.

Andrew Durfor covered his ears in front of me, because he didn't want to hear about our (read: my) horrible stat survey project, but I was just going to talk about LotR. He thought that Andrew Serkis should win Best Supporting Actor for his role as Gollum, horses really shouldn't be running down a 78 degree angle incline, and Gandalf should cast some cool fireballs.

Rob thought it was strange that a city as big as Edoras had only 300 men at arms and that elves from Lothlorien could arrive at Helms' Deep within half a day.

Nick B was repulsed when I brought up LotR as a subject and hid in the boys' bathroom. See, really, LotR is the only interesting thing in my life as of now. Some people live for sports, or acting, or music, or poetry, or their art. I happen to live on fantasy crap. So sue me. There are worse obsessions.

Sara (freshman on my bus) thought Shadowfax was hella cool, squealed in the theater when the wargs attacked the horses, and revealed to me that all the riders who portrayed the Ringwraiths in Fellowship are women. Apparently Legolas T2T bookmarks, which I couldn't find in the RMHS library, are available at Wood's library, but I was too wussy to waltz into some random middle school (though it is my bus stop) and grab their bookmarks.

Here's a stupid Martz story for those of you who care to add to your collection (I know there is one somewhere.) Being virtually the only one in 6th period physics who blogs, I consider myself an important contributor.

Okay.. we were watching a video about the Hoover Dam, you know, about the dam construction, the dam workers, the dam canyon, and just the whole dam project. So Mr. Martz turns on the tv and there's this guy with a guitar and another guy doing a crazy dance. And so he's reminded of:

"Last night I was watching an infomercial, and you know it was a bad infomercial because it was on really late at night. And they were selling guitars, only the guy selling it wasn't famous or anything. He was really weird, and he was wearing all black, with black sunglasses, and one of those black hats Zorro wears. You know, with the flat tops and the flat brims."

The end.

So... back to the daily grind, and it is 2003

No more bubbly for me. Being drunk sucks.

I love the Rose Parade. It seems so much more genuinely pretty and less commercialized and just cooler in general than Macy's Thanksgiving or the Disney Christmas parades.

Have expanded on the older blog posts from December the 24th, as promised. (The "later" labels being what I added.)

Nick has something like this on his blog. I wonder if that's where he got it from. Oh, the strip is from Clan of the Cats, a Wiccan webcomic. No, I'm not normally given to perusing pagan fiction, but it's quite good.

See, yesterday I was told that I'd be going to a barbecue. I was wondering how Uncle Jim would manage a barbecue at the tail end of December. I thought maybe it was one of those joke 'summer in winter' theme party things or something. But no, it was just a hotpot.

Those Chinese things where you set a pot of boiling water on a portable heater on the top of the table, and everyone sits around and tosses raw stuff into it, like thin slices of beef, stuffed fishballs, squid, shrimp, tofu, tofu skin, leafy vegetables, carrots, taro root, and noodles. You can ladle it up again from the water when it's cooked with a little wire net (there are different nets and different chopsticks for the raw and cooked foods). And you put it in your bowl, which is filled with a sauce of some sort, though at some hotpots you can crack an egg into your bowl, so that when you put the hot food into your bowl and stir it into the yolk, it cooks the egg, and you have a sort of batter on your food.

I still like barbecues better. For one thing, hotpots make me feel rather discombobulated hanging out with a bunch of old Chinese people.

Had dinner with my sisters and brothers-in-law on Christmas Eve.

You know how people are all nostalgic for home cooking?

Well, I'm not.

But all the giving of useless gifts was heartwarming ("It warms the cockles of my heart!") and amusing. Let's see. My parents got (see, except for me, all the giving and receiving was done in pairs, based on the couple) ... a pair of glass winebottle stoppers and some perfume. Stella and Jonathan got... a belt that didn't fit Stella, a cookbook, and a pair of pink handblown glass Christmas ornaments. Maggie and Dong got... a belt for Maggie that she hasn't tried on yet, and some other random glass things (more bottle stoppers, I think? Maybe they were covers for something). I got a wooden jewelry box for jewelry I don't have, and Trivial Pursuit, which I have no one to play with.

None of this will actually be used.

Still. A nice thought.

Hitting the Uptown on Thursday for the 2:50 LotR. Have bought tickets from Fandango. (Fandango!) Yes, I'm a dork. Don't give me the 'I have no time' excuses which I am sick of hearing, as blameless as you all are. :( If you can go, say you can. If you can't, say nothing.

Later

It was quite good, despite me waiting in line in the cold. I hadn't realized I'd be waiting outside in line.. bah, I'm too used to multiplexes. I had a frappacino waiting outside. But no, I did not go to the bathroom during the movie. Anyways. Ahh.. Aragorn. There was a person with a laser pointer though, so at times Theoden would suddenly be sporting a bindi. (I'm not sure how to use that word in an actual sentence, but the point is, he looked hella stupid and it was distracting). The first part of T2T was a lot less boring the second time around, and the Arwen parts no longer seemed as intrusive, and yes, the plot flowed better. I could notice more things. This was an older crowd, and more decorous (with the exception of the anonymous laser wielder) but less given to spontaneous applause.. no Legolas fangirls here to applaud for his horse-riding tricks, or his snowboarding tricks, though there were two girls wearing elf-ears. Poor Legolas. I felt like such an idiot clapping alone. Being the Uptown, it's pretty much impossible to get the whole theater clapping, like at Regal.

Oh, the Very Secret Diaries are being updated again.

GO ME!

Friday

Saw LotR, spent with Jen making comments about how many times Aragorn washes his hair and oohing at his general hotness, but also wanting to smack a certain Lisa for talking constantly during the movie (even more than I am prone to do).

Then went to get Andrew a thong at Lakeforest with Alex, Jen and Anika. Agreed on Aragorn's general hotness. More later.

Saturday

Went Mall hopping with my mom at White Flint. Happiness abounds. More later.

Sunday

Went to New York with my family for a family friend's birthday. Much more later.

Later

I love car rides. There's something about being able to see far into the distance that you don't get normally sitting still, or even with a plane, because you're so high up. Although the ground next to you flashes by there'll be a clump of trees thousands of feet in the distance that just doesn't move, as if the world were flat and turning on an axis. The sound of cars alongside you isn't one you'll find anywhere else.. not on planes or on foot, or normal driving. It's a sound of speed and thunder, (which would be a good title for a bad book). But honestly, it's a unique experience, especially if you remember that cars and highways are a very new invention given the length of human history, and very exclusive too. Because they're so common in the US people don't treat them like a novelty, but the fact that we can take something so amazing for granted makes the feat even more impressive. Also, along a highway, if you're going faster than another car and pulling past it, you can imagine that you're staying still and the other car and the rest of the world are all sliding backwards under you. It's not like planes. You can feel yourself moving, and you can see the landscape changing. And on skyways and suspension bridges where you fly over rooftops and other cars and see the whole sprawl of a city or the length of a river snaking away under you, that's more flight than watching the same motionless grid of land beside an airplane wing from a porthole for hours on end.

And of course, New York is amazing at night. I was going to Queens, but because my dad/New Yorkers are crazy drivers, we'd be shooting at 70mph through tunnels and under causeways where the speed and thunder (tm) would echo along the walls, and there would be buildings and people right above you like you were zooming through the canals of some sugar-crazy Venice at night, and you'd flash by lights, some close, some in the distance over the dark and invisible water. You can imagine that the far city is just a large plate of pinpoints of light hovering in the middle of space. And looking at the far city over the sea I was wondering what it was, until I realized from the small outline of the Empire State Building and the Chrystler Building that I was staring at the south side of Manhattan.

It no longer looks like the south side of Manhattan.

...

We went to the Terrace on the Park in Queens (which looks like a crazy giant tripod- the Terrace, not Queens), but we were delayed because my dad was afraid of driving through a 'ghetto' neighborhood at night. There was food, champaigne, dancing that looked like it belonged to an Old Folks' Cruise.... me and my parents went to a friend's house to stay the night, in suburbia which looked so much like home. I could make a left, and I'd be in Maryland again. Some people find suburban conformity to be depressing, but to me it was a comfort, though tiny, tiny things are different. When we woke up in the morning, it was snowing, and it was cold.

So, I did end up seeing Treasure Planet with just Sharon because Silvia ran off to the post office by the Regal and never joined us in the theater. It was a great movie in terms of character development. The dialogue between Jim and Silver was outstanding, Captain whatsherface is the best female Disney character I've seen in.. well, ever.. and Jim's mom.. look! A Disney character has a mom! Among the best animated films I've seen for characters.

And very pretty. The backgrounds and camera angles were mindblowing, and the designs and concepts were super cool. Of course, me and Sharon are both airship freaks.. aaahh... it's like what the Final Fantasy movie should've been like. I thought the foregrounds looked like Saturday morning cartoons, which was unfortunate because it made the trailers look like crap and hence Treasure Planet is hemorraging money as liddle kiddies go to see 8 Mile.

It's very depressing.

Zifei, my friend and a student animator at Bingham Young University was trying to convince me how the foreground animation was actually a work of genius and totally, totally unlike a Saturday morning cartoon you blashemous heathen, but I remain unconvinced.

Okay, so Silver's hand was really cool.

I just think the shot below looks dumb, and foreground shots of just the characters are typical. I mean, the back (in this case, the railing of the ship and stuff) look great. I'll take Ziffie's word for it that a lot of work went into this and that Saturday morning cartoons could never reach this amount of detail, but, as a movie watcher, not a moviemaker, would you spend $9 on a movie based on trailers that look like this?

But.. Zifei calls the above the most impressive feat of animation of all time, and I can't say I can disagree with him, so, uh, do watch the movie. Oh, all the pictures above were stolen from Pathea.com, his website. Don't steal them. Well.. I mean.. more than I have already. Blah.