Again with the "I'm really sorry."

Alright guys, I promise, this time I am back for real. You will once again be granted access to my vast knowledge, wisdom, and lack of spelling ability.

Things that have happened in my absence:

1. I got a puppy.
His name is Rupert, and I love him. A lot.

2. I got a haircut.
I actually got several.

3. I started taking French.
Bonjour, je m' appelle Kate. Comment allez vous?

and most importantly,

4. I remembered how much I love Doctor Who. I seriously don't understand why I have not watched this show since my Freshman year of College. If you have never watched it, I strongly reccomend it. I know what you are thinking, and you are wrong. Go, watch it. Now.

Happy Friday Folks!

'Tis yet another lovely Friday. With that comes a dose of me. This week I will be bringing you music, movies, and music (a whole lot actually). Firstly is Meese. The band broke up sometime last year, but they had a single called "Next In Line" that I rediscovered on my iPod and I just dig it to death.
Movie? Hands down my pick of the week is Columbia Pictures' "Bad Teacher". I will see it today, and maybe tomorrow. That is all.
More music you say, eh? I give you Crossfade and Scattered Trees. Crossfade's newest album, "We All Bleed" is available for a full listen right now. It stays pretty true to the band's angsty, chemical craving induced music. Worth a listen if light metal/ hard rock is your thing. Scattered Trees is relatively new to me. They have an LP out called "Sympathy", so good. The title track and "Four Days Straight" are superb.

Hope the weekend's all you want it to be and more. Hasta semana.

I can't even pretend to talk about how sorry I am. Life got in the way and things just trailed off a little bit; good news is, now I'm back. For the newer followers that don't know me, here's a slight introduction to who I am.

Alex, hey there. 22, CA native in the LA region. Student. Teacher. Drinker. Lover. Artist in my own right. Love fully, don't trust easily. Reader. Believer. Sister. Daughter. Friend.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, a few things you can expect from me: new music from indie bands, movie info, and probably some sort of photography or an old painting I love. Because I've been gone for so long, it is only appropriate to include all of the above.
Musically I've gotten into experimental type music lately. The latest group I've fallen in love with has been KI: Theory. Currently they have a download of their newest mixtape song, HowVeryDare as well as the older album, Arms for Legs. It's amazing, trust me.
On the movie front, I actually have two. One is currently making festival rounds, the other is set to be released later this winter. Both take a very powerful stance to culturally specific ideals, yet an open mind will be able to appreciate both. Won't give away much what's going on in them because you can get the gist in the trailers. Enjoy.


In the way of photography and painting, I'll get back to you on later. Happy Friday!!!

I return (from the grave?)

Woah! Hey! I am not dead!

Believe it or not, I do, in fact, still exist. I do apologize for my long absence, I owe it mainly to college, and full time employment. But, seeing as I am finishing my last final today, my time is no significantly less occupied. Apart from those 40-some hours a week I spend being a proverbial breadwinner. They don't really pay me in bread.

In celebration of my return to internet life, I am now going to offer you some of my favorite undead movies, songs, et all.

1. Bela Lugosi's Dead - The Bauhaus



Please listen to all ten minutes. For me?

2. The Walking Dead

Both the comic series and the TV show are excellent.

3. Dracula, Dead and Loving It.



You know you like it.


Well, I am going to have to leave you with just three, I am off to work the graveyard shift.

Heh-heh, get it? Graveyard?

Well I thought it was funny.

Boo.

Speck

What's this? A post? I don't believe it. Yeah, sorry guys, it's just me again. I haven't got anything truly interesting to say, but that's okay. I'm pretty sure I'm talking to myself anyway. After all, I am just a little Farkas. So last week my friend gets me on AIM and tells me about this one-shot online literary journal that was accepting submissions. The cut off date was extended to April 3rd and she wanted me to submit since she had already been accepted. After two days of staring at my most recent story I finally got around to submitting three stories and a poem. Guess which one got accepted? The poem. If anyone of you has been paying attention to my random and rather awful rants you should know that I don't do poetry. Not well, at least. This poem was a fluke that I kind of liked so I sent it in. None of my short stories were accepted, it was just the poem. So this leaves me wondering, where did I go wrong as a fiction writer? What was wrong with my short stories that they weren't worthy of publication and yet my poem was? What sense does this make? The only things I can think of, in my infinite vanity, is that they either didn't fit the themes well enough, or they had too many short stories and not enough poems. I'm leaning towards the latter. Meh, whatever. The point of this solid block of text is that I'm being published in an online literary journal called Speck. So you should totally check it out.

That's it. Farkas out.

Doo it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cciUXpITsu0

Ryan Higa is an internet comedian who is trying to make a difference for Japan after the destruction caused by the 8.9 earth quake and following tsunami. Why don't we help him out? For ever 1,000,000 views this video gets he is going to donate $600 dollars on top of the money he's already donating from the event in the video. There's also a link to the Red Cross website where you can donate yourself if you feel inspired. You don't have to donate, but please watch the video.

Thanks guys!~

Stranger Than Fiction

This is a movie I’ve wanted to see for a while now. I have to admit, I’m not a big Will Ferrell fan, but I heard this movie was really good so I figured I could endure him for one performance. I’m so glad I did.

Stranger Than Fiction is about a very dull man named Harold Crick who starts hearing a woman’s voice narrating his life. And through this narration he learns that his life is quickly drawing to an end. We watch as a very confused Harold tries desperately to figure out what is going on while rather dissolved author Karen Eiffel tries to figure out how to off him.

Harold Crick is a fabulous character. He’s incredibly simple for someone with such a complex mind. He goes to work, he files papers, he goes home and he goes to bed day after day after day until the voice starts. He counts the strokes of his toothbrush and the steps to the bus and multiplies large numbers in his head in seconds. All in all, he’s a pretty dull person. And that’s part of his charm. He’s so socially awkward it’s adorable. It’s incredibly amusing to watch him try flirt with his love interest and say things like “I want you” over and over for lack of any better reason to be there. He’s cute when he finally loosens up. He’s extremely polite to everyone and can even be intentionally funny when he wants to be. Over all he’s one of my favorite fictional characters, which is really saying something considering he’s not in a fantasy movie.

Karen Eiffel on the other hand is a creatively blocked fiction writer whose social skills suffer from too much time spent at her typewriter. We watch her die several times as she tries to figure out the best way to kill of Harold Crick. While these parts aren’t particularly amusing, the way she goes about imagining them rather is. She goes around a hospital at one point asking if she could see the people who are dying. I feel bad for her assistant Penny who gets dragged along with her as she searches for inspiration.

While I enjoyed the story, there is one thing that I was constantly wondering about. What story was Karen Eiffel writing? I mean she didn’t know Harold could hear her narration, and I’m pretty sure her story wasn’t about a man hearing narration in his head. So in her story, why does he go through his change? What story is she writing? She also says at the end that she’s going to go back and fix it, but if what she wrote is essentially Harold’s life. So how does that work? I’m probably grossly over thinking the whole thing but it kind of bugged me.

But overall it was a good movie and I really enjoyed it. It had a lot of really touching parts and a very cute romance in there as well. Until next week. ~

Television: The Drug of the Nation

Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation. You remember when TV was the big drug? When you learned that watching TV was bad for you and would melt your brain or make your eyes go square? Yup those were the days. I remember growing up with less than twenty channels to choose from. See, I grew up without cable. That means I didn’t watch Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon or anything like that. The only times I got to see those shows were on vacation and at my cousin’s house.

I’ve never really been a big TV person. Yeah, there were shows we would watch every night, mostly CSI, CSI: NY, NCIS, and the like. Crime shows were big and really, there wasn’t much else to watch. Sometimes we would watch Survivor, but that really only lasted one or two seasons. It wasn’t like the 90s when there were tons of good shows running around. However, TV was still a huge part of my childhood and the childhoods of many.

Then the internet came. It started with a computer, some simple little games, mostly educational, and dial-up. You remember dial-up, don’t you? But we’re not talking about that. With the internet came less television, but not much. Living in a house with one computer sporting internet access turns had to be taken. This left me with plenty of time still with my TV, when my brother wasn’t playing whatever game system he had at the time. This also left me a plenty of time for outdoor activities and most importantly, reading.

The TV habit got worse when we traded dial-up for Comcast my ninth-grade year. It was for my sister’s cyber schooling originally but it made life so much easier. Not only did we have unlimited internet access, with wireless, I might add, we also had all those channels I missed out on as a kid. We were, naturally, still pretty far behind most modern families but that’s the way we’ve always been so I was okay with that. I could watch cartoons at any time during the day. I could watch MythBusters and Gilmore Girls and Scrubs as well. It brought out a whole new form of television addiction.

And then two things changed. I got a laptop, and we got Netflix. Television is now little more than a device on which I enjoy my video games, when they aren’t on an emulator. The addiction has moved from the physical TV to the computer screen. I can watch entire seasons on my lap top while lying in bed. And you know what? This is worse than the television age. While it is true that people began forgoing physical activity for television, as well as drifting away from personal communication with the family, the television age did not separate us from the people in our households. The computer, however, does. It is a solitary device used by one person at a time. A family does not gather around a computer to watch their favorite shows. The family goes into separate rooms and watches them on their own personal computer.

This is, however, still a television addiction. I spent all day watching Bones on Netflix. This is not healthy in anyway, but oh so entertaining. I did take a two hour break to watch a movie with my sister, but it was in the same place, in my bed. This is not healthy, people. Not healthy at all.

Harvest the Moon

You know how the Pokémon craze worked? How once you got into one game and they made another you had to play it even though it was pretty much the exact same game? You know that loyalty you felt for the game, playing it over and over even though it didn’t really change from game to game and the same things happened over and over again? Well, that’s how it is for me with Harvest Moon.

I have two people to blame for this addiction that I have developed. The first is my brother, who made me download a visual boy advanced emulator. Yes, it was originally to play Pokémon, but once it had served that purpose I had to move on to something else. The second person I have to blame is that Josiah kid who I never see anymore. T.T. He and that Jac kid who invades my house once a week were both real big on it and thus I became curious. So, naturally I down loaded Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town and thus it began. I’ve now added four other Harvest Moon games to my list of HMs I’ve played and all but one are pretty much exactly the same.

You play as a guy (usually) who has somehow come to own a farm outside of a small town. You run around talking to people, getting them to like you and whatnot and meeting pretty, young, single girls who you get to woo into marrying you. On top of that you have to manage your farm: planting crops, feeding animals and so on. All of the games are the same in this way. The people in the game, while retaining the same faces and names, sometimes change places.

So why is this game so addicting? It’s not like there’s a whole lot you can do. Every day, (which lasts generally five minutes if you spend the entire time outside) tends to be the same. You get up, throw your dog so that it will love you, go water your crops, feed your animals, throw them so they’ll love you too, brush your horse, collect whatever random stuff is growing that season for money, woo the girl of your choice, and then go to bed before you’ve used up all of your energy so that you won’t over sleep the next day. And you do this over and over again.

Well, for me it’s the wooing. I enjoy talking to the girls and seeing what they’ll say when they reached the next heart level and watching their heart events and getting them to fall in love with me. Same with the guys, in More Friends of Mineral Town, which is the girl version of Friends of Mineral town. It’s always a little different in each game, and each girl is very different. Thus far I’ve wooed all but two of the girls and was in the process of wooing another when I found a new version that offered a female character. But you’ll have to wait for a review of that one.

Mama Birth: ACOG Strikes Again

Mama Birth: ACOG Strikes Again

British Mind Control

Why is it that British television is so damn addictive? Think about it. How many crazy British television crazes are there here in the states? Okay, most of you can name two off the top of your head. Monty Python and Dr. Who, which are both great examples! My brother and I were quite into Monty Python’s Flying Circus for a while and I’ve got several friends who are addicted to Dr. Who. But it’s not limited to them.

I recently discovered, though YouTube’s talent for suggesting rather random videos based on those that you’ve watched. Seriously, I once got six or seven videos suggested to me from YouTube on planting hydrangeas. Why? I’ve got no clue. I can’t think of what I could have possibly watched that would in any way be related to hydrangeas and the proper way to plant them. Anyway, I was suggested the first part of an episode of a BBC television sitcom called My Hero. I’ve been watching it ever since.

My Hero is about a super hero, Thermoman, who is from the planet Ultran, and assigned to protect earth. He hasn’t been on earth very long and doesn’t quite understand everything about humans and their behaviors. However, when he saves a nurse named Janet from falling in the Grand Canyon he falls instantly in love with her and follows her to London just to see her… and complement her in odd ways. His alter ego is George Sunday, a health shop owner from Ireland. His shop isn’t very successful due to poor employment and perhaps the fact that he constantly has to run to the bathroom, where he changes into Thermoman. It has to be in a bathroom, too. He can’t change anywhere else.

So, what happens when a superhero from another planet starts living with a human nurse from London? Hijinx, duh! It’s actually really amusing watching the kind of trouble George and Janet get into as they try to keep George’s identity a secret, while dealing with her odd co-workers, his alien ways, and her overbearing mother along with Janet’s neighbor Tyler who was on something very special in the sixties. He thinks he’s been to pretty much all of the planets in the suns orbit, plus several others he’s probably made up. He also somehow instinctively knows that George is Thermoman. It’s very special.

My Hero has six or so seasons of seven episodes each. Not sure why that is. It’s rather cute most of the time, though some things don’t really make sense all of the time. But it can be super cute at times and really amusing so one can over look the inconsistencies. This still begs the question, however, why is it, exactly, that this has had me hooked for the past three days when I should be doing school work? Well, because it’s British. And that’s what they do. Thanks BBC. Really.

Villainy!

Good villains are highly underrated. This is my firm belief. Anyone can spot a good hero, it takes nearly no effort at all to form a good protagonist. It’s the antagonists that are hard; making a good villain takes some mad skills.

Villains are not something I really thought much about until I started writing. Even after I started at LP I didn’t pay much attention to them until my second year. You know how when you make a new friend and spend a lot of time with them some of their little quirks tend to rub off on you? Well this is one of those quirks that rubbed off on me. My friend Brelyn is a big fan of villains. She probably likes them more than most protagonists and after spending some time with her… I almost feel the same way… almost. It’s true; the villain can really make or break a story.

There are many different types of villains, you know. There are the sympathetic type; the ones with a good reason to be evil, the crazy type; those who are absolutely mad and loving it, the pure evil type; the ones who are evil because… well they’re just evil, and all sorts of others. A truly good villain can sort of balance out several types of evil in one person.

The best villains are the ones we love to hate. They’re smart, cunning, manipulative and will stop at nothing to get what they want. These are the kids who were bullied on the play ground that grow up to invent the freeze-ray. Personally, I like the subtle villains, the ones with high charisma and elegant manners, that don’t necessarily scream ‘I’m a villain!’ These are the villains who are simply board and wanted to screw with people for fun, the ones that simply say ‘Because I’m evil’ when asked ‘Why are you doing this?’ These are the ones I love most.

Our cinematic culture is putting villains in a new light nowadays. The second class character who was once little more than a plot device to show off an awesome main character is now becoming the protagonist himself. Take movies like Despicable Me or Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog. These movies have taken the character who would normally be the antagonist and, without making them good guys, have turned them into sympathetic protagonists. It’s funny how those bent on evil and destruction are now the ones we want to care about most. The so-called ‘misunderstood.’

So, the next time you’re watching a movie or reading a book, pay close attention to the villain of the story. He’s more just a black cloak and curly mustache.