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Underwear Ninja comes with Space Suit
to blog or not to blog, which is the path a true underwear ninja must take? whichever path it be, it will surely be a rough-hewn one. argyle, possibly. |
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Tuesday, January 31, 2006
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4am: time for silly reflections
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how would you describe this feeling?
you found yourself a hill with a steep cliff and a sheer drop-off. you built a ramp out of tough particle board. you take your never-fail bike and take off down the hill, peddling as fast as you can, propelled by gravity and a swollen energy. you don't feel your legs; you're a train. you reach the ramp, following the curvature of a loyal upward slope with the finesse of a ninja, and watch the ground grow distant beneath you. think: ET. you race through the air. wheels spinning furiously, you keep peddling because you believe it will carry you to the ocean if you want.
nearing the apex of your ascent and you're flying, briefly, windy and free. now...stop the clock. freeze that frame. pause! time is standing still and you're suspended, looking ahead and below and above and all around. the moment is so brief, but you're stuck in that moment nontheless. what happens next?
if you can imagine that moment, frozen in it's place, then you might know what i've felt like for about a year now.
you see i only have a general direction and there are no definites. all the definites are far below. trees, dirt, insects, grass. too small to see, or calculate, which definite i will land in. all the energy exerted to bring me to this peak and now we're here. the anticipation.
is this exciting or scary? should i feel free or cautious? saintly or wicked? laugh? cry? both? should i lean left or right? am i in control? what's down there and will i be able to land there if i find it? what happens next? stuck in the air, waiting to land.
its hard to build a fort on a shifty, sandy dune.
it's not even worth trying. there must be solid foundation for growth to occur. so to that end, i wait to see which direction i gravitate towards. when will this "transition" part of life come into focus?
in other words, when will i have an identity? one of my own that i choose and like?
this is a hypothetical question. i'm just left in the middle of all emotions and motivations, waiting for the one that i like. maybe, if i'm lucky enough, i can get a winning lotto ticket and not have to worry about these things anymore >=)
(or at least a fortune cookie)
((or a least a toy from cracker jack)) |
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posted by underwear ninja
3:47 AM
 
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Damned straight it's tough. Sometimes goals demand a pretty big leap of faith, and you/ve described it very powerfully here: where to land? What to get a firm ground on? It's very intimidating. But freedom can scare the bejusus out of anybody. There are few things to grasp firmly when one chooses creativity over traditional, established tracks. The very nature of it suggests almost infinite choices instead of predictable outcomes. Yet one chooses creativity and soars-- perhaps longing to land but unable, as opposed to not leaping or soaring and instead getting stuck in a firm foundation without fulfillment. Got to keep the faith.
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Waiting to Exhale comes to mind. I wish we could be guaranteed of winning the lottery. It would make things simple.
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Yeah, that's kinda how it was on the big half pipe at VANS yesterday! After committing to going down, I reached the other side and went airborne. Then, in a moment of terror, I realize that I'm airborne without a plan to land and although pads help a little, they don't guarrentee smooth landings. The problem is, if you don't jump, you won't ever get airborne in the first place. Keep at it, You'll land somewhere... and if you don't like where it is, you can jump AGAIN (yes again). Furthmore, the more you jump, but better you get. It's hard, it's frustrating, it's scary.... but the trick is getting your mind to think it's FUN also. Perception is one of the HUGE keys to fulfillment and happiness.
Winning the lotto? Heck yeah, I'm all for it..... but I'd still skate down the half pipe. I have a feeling you'd still be airborne on your bike..... Cause that's the way, uh huh uh huh, I like it, uh huh uh huh.
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Fulfilling a dream. You are doing it. Sometimes the road to your dream may be a dirt path. Keep on trekkin', eventually you'll get somewhere. Maybe even end up on at a totally different destination that is better than what you were planning.
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Friday, January 27, 2006
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stupid toilet
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stupid toilet. stupid stupid toilet. and its stupid terrorist attack on me.
time to find a new bath mat =( |
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posted by underwear ninja
8:09 AM
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It wasn't brother S this time?
Plunge like crazy.
Sorry, potty problems are not pleasant. You can only watch in horror as the water keeps rising.
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welcome to the manly art of potty training.
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Do you know how to turn off the water supply to the toilet, before it runs over??
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Wednesday, January 25, 2006
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never'ever'winter nights 2
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| ok ok so i haven't updated in a while. things have gotten so grrrr the last few weeks that i just haven't felt up to it. so here's what's going on in my little whirled (double entendre). obsidian, the programmers behind "neverwinter nights 2" apparently doesn't have their act together. they keep piling on and piling on work to do for us but they don't include that on their relatively tight budget (which is around 200k). so heavy melody and obsidian have been duking it out trying to find out exactly what is going on that contract, and how much are they going to pay for it. there's about 12,000 lines of voiceover work, 6000 sound effects, and 60 minutes worth of music to write. that's a lot. and they're planning on releasing this in june??? i'm thinking more realistically august. and all i can do is sit there and listen to each side squabble over how much needs to be done vs how much will get done vs how much it will cost. it's a nightmare of pushing timetables back. especially since heavy melody started this whole negotiation thing back in november. i've been reading a book that is specifically about audio for video games and the timelines generally indicate that that's not a lot of time for the work to do, and not just that, but the money is not all there for the work to be done. anyway, obsidian was supposed to have delivered a contract last friday. but there haven't been agreements on what it was. they have made a promise that it is coming and everyone knows its coming. the guys at heavy melody even gave me a key to the place. i have a key to heavy melody! so yes i know they're going to bring me in, but the question is "when?". obsidian came up with a draft of the contract and heavy melody reviewed it and said "no way". i need to work on a blockbuster title to launch my career. there's nothing without it. so i'm caught. i really can't do anything right now except continue my internship and hope the contract comes sooner rather than later. it will only make things harder the further back they push us. so grrr for today and hopefully tomorrow will be easier. |
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posted by underwear ninja
8:10 PM
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Wednesday, January 18, 2006
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dis n dat
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the weather be mad whack. for about the past week we've had such drastic changes in weather that its not safe to go outside for a long time anymore. what i mean is that, for example, today the high is 60 and the low is 30. with 30 degrees difference in 1 day how can i tell what to wear? should i wear shorts and a long-sleeve shirt or should i wear a winter coat? its annoying. nor'easters...bah! at least its not humid.
next movie to get excited about comes out july 7th. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
the trailer isn't incredibly exciting, but its pirates so the movie itself should be pretty fun.
i've decided to put "investing" on my list of things to do. ever since i took a business class on the stock market in college i thought it would be a good idea. but now i'll look into it because this article reminded me that i had been meaning to do that. some kinda medium pay-off mutual fund, like 6 months. i'll decide by mid-february. i don't know much about the stock market, the only thing that i actually "learned" from the class, after thoughtfull regurgitation, is that it's a good idea hehe.
i think that's what education is mostly about. a constant bombardment of information. noone in their right mind can learn and absorb every single thing. but you throw as much knowledge at someone as possible and see how much will stick. who knows what someone will remember and what someone won't. i can remember that wayne newton is a decendent of pocahontas but i can't remember an entire semester of stock market class. at the time i was taking that class i was fairly knowledgeable about the stock market. and then i didn't use any of what i was taught so i guess my brain thought it wasn't worth remembering. so i decided to remember that its a good idea to get in the stock market. at least passively. but i don't remember why exactly. that's why i'll test the waters out with a little cash and see what happens. |
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posted by underwear ninja
7:17 AM
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steve likes to dabble in the market. check with him if you have questions.
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Saturday, January 14, 2006
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pitiful news
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that's the headline from cnn.com
...and once again they prove how "sensational" their news is. its disturbing.
yes, they can print that because, according to their sources, that did happen. but how gross a picture it paints for the general audience. and by general audience i mean people that choose not to think about the real motives and happening behind the news. you can be damn sure that there have been problems in information given to cops. i'm no psychic, but i'm sure that you anyone reading this can think of a time when they were told one thing and it ended up being another. and if i was the one behind the trigger, and i had to make a quick decision to save my life, and that thing, for all intents, is a gun, then you can be damn sure i'm gonna shoot to kill. that boy's going down and not me.
how bout this: same headline, different story. what if the one who died was the police officer? "Police were told boy's gun wasn't real". now THAT would be a tragedy.
the boy was suicidal, that's already established.
it's not the cop's fault the boy is dead. it is the boy's fault.
so cnn will tell it like that. they aren't lying. its the truth and nothing but the truth. but is it the "whole" truth? what i mean is that the headline like that would try to instill some sort of malcontent sentiment towards the police force down there. that, i think, is mean of them. so cnn is being mean in order to make news "pop out" at you. and if you're being mean for the purpose of getting attention then in my book you're a jerk.
i'm not giving cnn any more chances to redeem their reputation. so congratulations cnn.com, you are on my list of jerks. |
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posted by underwear ninja
11:50 PM
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That's Mark Nation, not CNN. He's an A-hole attorney to the highest degree. He'd argue that the sun wasn't going to rise tomorrow if he could make a headline out of it.
And I hate living in this area and listening to these stupid attornies on TV and Radio try to look out for my interess.
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You are SO Right. It's all in the way they spin the story. I agree that the cop had to assume the gun was real. The red mark, which is supposed to be the way to tell it's a fake, was painted black. So you know the kid had a death wish. I do feel sad for his parents.
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for he's a jolly-good fellow
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where is this "weather" we're sposed to be having? ooo the big bad winter will hit hard and you'll be soorrrryyy! well when?? here it is now, a month into winter and i actually sweated on the way to work.
RtheGreat asked if i've always been so philisophical. the answer is yes. i think this stems from late night patio parties and other moments with my dad. if you spend enough time around him, he will talk about all kinds of things about the human psyche and theories he has about this and that. the future, the past, the chinese, whatever. so maybe i just have a lot of practice. he probably has a lot to do with the late nights with my bro discussing everything from vocanoes to religion where he had an epiphany and realized, "you are me, i am god, and we are the world." my dad has an air, a presence of a thinker. ask him one day about his opinions of space. or violence in the media. or just something that one might be about to write a paper on and i'm pretty sure he'll be good for dithering about it. no short attention span there. heck he's the one that started me blogging because he wanted to get out there some of the goings-on in his noodle. i didn't know this blog was going to all be about dad, but now that it is i'll add him to my list of kool kats. for many reasons. but to keep consistancy with this blog i'll just focus on one reason: for helping his sons think more critically. werd!
this blog was not sponsored by dad
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posted by underwear ninja
8:38 PM
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Yay patio parties! Yay to articulate sons and brothers! Yay to critical thinking, and yay to warmhearted, generous guys who aren't ashamed to communicate across the generations and blog their own ideas honestly. I am grateful and very proud, and you taught me something I'll always remember: a hippopotamus has 24 teeth!
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OMG...you've found a picture that makes him look like a Howard Stern wannabe! Hurray for Halloween!
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Wednesday, January 11, 2006
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you are? then why am I even talking to you?
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Can anyone tell me what it means to be sorry? anybody? anybody?
As defined on TheFreeDictionary.com:
1. Feeling or expressing sympathy, pity, or regret
2. Worthless or inferior; paltry
3. Causing sorrow, grief, or misfortune; grievous
just look at that disgraceful first definition. such a pity that the term "i'm sorry" has gotten so much use, that it now means something different from what it is clearly saying. yes, that's right. its time for another ninja rant. this blog has everything to do with the universally accepted bastardization of the word "sorry".
"i'm sorry," when taken to mean what it ACTUALLY means, means "i am worthless and inferior". to put it another way "i am pathetic". what, i think, most people intend to say is "i apologize".
i came to think about why on earth someone would want to say that. that is, how did this phrase become so popular? i'm guessing it came from the days of yore; when serfs bowed to kings and so on. if a peasant did something to displease the king, the king would look for groveling. or at least a keen sense of submission. "i'm sorry" might have been the answer commonly given. as in "please forgive me! i'm sorry! in fact i'm so sorry, i shouldn't even be beaten because its not worth the trouble!" in which case the peasant would reaffirm how lowely he/she is and how obviously it was a mistake. a sorry person would never intentionally do something malicious. they are merely so stupid, puny, careless, and worthless that they are prone do to such things. therefore, you should take pity on such a bumbling savage of a human being. that first definition is, what i think, a miscommunication that has been used for so long and with such esteem that it now means something that it does not.
not only that, but it also admits blame. because even sometimes its used as an expression of sympathy. as in "i'm sorry that happened to you". what we mean to say is "how awful for you". well my point is, why should you be sorry for what happened to me? was it your fault? should i blame you? if you are sorry, then leave and let me confide in someone who is worthy!
now, "i apologize" does NOT admit fault. nor does it in any way imply one's shortcomings in the grand scheme of the human race. it simply means "i regret that that had happened. i wish it could have been different/better". and not only that but it shows you have much more class. after all, you ARE worthy as a person to cause mistakes. we're all human, we all make mistakes sooner or later and most people only grow stronger from them. so that makes us worthy to make mistakes in the first place. to have some pride in yourself and not to cringe/bow/stoop/fall. this my response to someone that i respect telling me "i'm sorry": "oh? i didn't think you were.... how disappointing".
so if there is anything i can impart on people i care about, it is to please have some dignity for yourselves. i don't know anybody close to me who is sorry; its embarrassing to be associated with sorry people. and nobody close to me should be sorry. but we can all be just as kind and meaningful to say "i apologize". |
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posted by underwear ninja
7:32 PM
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I apologize....I'm so sorry! :-)
I tend to say 'My Bad' which is childish, but I work around kids.
Some of the word verifications that you have to type look like space creature names. I have to type 'xltdor'. Strong galactic name.
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Well, does a dictionary dictate how humans should use words, or does it merely report how words are being used? I bring this point up because dictionaries update themselves every year with new words (podcast was Oxfords word of the year), new slang (aint IS in plenty of dictionaries now), and new definitions for established words. In fact, I recently read an article where the Oxford guys were talking about how they selected words for the dictionary.... it's a bunch of personal choice frankly. They admit that words ARE words....even if not defined in their tomes. I would argue then, that since word definitions are defined by the context in which they are used, "I'm sorry" (however it has evolved) is an acceptable substitute for "I apologize".... afterall, language is a human invention that is constantly evolving.
But since you've blogged so well, I'll think twice about being "Sorry" next time.
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Wow...you're getting pretty philosophical lately. Have you always been or am I just noticing since we all blog now?
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Monday, January 09, 2006
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bill and ted made the cut!
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posted by underwear ninja
8:38 AM
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Ugh...what a bloody gory mess.
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Saturday, January 07, 2006
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o that? it's my phylactery...
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i was looking at the trailer for "world of warcraft" (a nice trailer btw) and there is a section that you see a lich. he's the one that makes the grass die around him when he takes a footstep. i knew, from being savvy in the fantasy realm of entertainment, that he was a lich. but i was curious as to what makes a lich a lich. so i did a little research and found that a lich is, to put it simply, an undead wizard. to put it thoroughly, though, a lich is a wizard that has dark magic powerful enough to kill himself and come back as an undead wizard by attaching his soul to an object (a phylactery). what makes a lich so powerful is the eternity he has to hone his skills. also, his magic that keeps his young appearance gradually weakens over time. so its probably safe to assume that the more decayed a lich's state, the more time he's had to study and practice powerful evil magic; a la the more powerful he is. since a lich is immortal, the only way to truly kill one is by destroying his phylactery.
aaaaanyway...
i wouldn't bring up this trivial knowledge except that now i know that voldemort is a lich! sure rowling has changed the name, but there is no doubt that she had a lich in mind when she created voldemort. all of you potter fans are getting a small dose of fantasy creature knowledge whether you like it or not. HA!
i'll let you know when i figure out what harry's scar really is... |
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posted by underwear ninja
7:46 PM
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I don't know Ninja, sounds like you're really stretching here. True, V-mort was killed and returned to life by his own magic, but you can't ignore Harry's role in his downfall. Also, V-mort is not only getting more powerful, but more physically able as his return progresses. V-Mort isn't that old either.... hardly an eternal figure. I guess we could find out for sure if we can find dead grass footprints around hogsmead or something.
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a lich does not die unless you destroy its phylactery. it just waits til it can take over a body. that sounds like what v-m has done. the fact that he's not decayed yet doesn't necessarily mean he's not dead. he's a fresh-made lich and the magic that preserves his body is still very strong. perhaps harry's scar is the phylactery, or "horcrux". maybe the spell his parents put on harry would transform the avada cadavra curse into a horcrux spell? the only way to destroy voldemort completely is to find a way to remove harry's scar, as well as destroy the other horcrux/phylacteries?
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ok... now explain how Narnia is a 'Christian' movie.
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Monday, January 02, 2006
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should auld acquaintance be forgot?
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well happy new year to all
another year down, another to get through. here's what the 2005 year looked like for me:
-in orlando working at the marriott grande lakes and finishing up an internship at Sound O Rama.
-after the internship, working extra hours at work and trying to find other jobs (ie pirate's dinner adventure) to accumulate money fast.
-sending out resumes everywhere for internship prospects, going to washington d.c. and nyc for 2 interviews.
-pack up everything and move north to nyc to intern at heavy melody. what a difference from FL
-upgrade all studio equipment to a more pro-series set to build up online portfolio.
-working out a livable schedule between interning and working at the marriott marquis. the majority of time spent since i've been in nyc has been working on different projects at heavy melody, working overnight shifts at the marriott marquis, sleeping, and learning the software i have acquired; family visits, friends visiting, updating wardrobe, toughing the skin to nyc hustles.
what will 2006 be like? hopefully i can quit my marriott job soon and be full-time in sound design. at some point this year i'd like to be able to make enough contacts that i can make substantial credits and live on money from projects.
here's a word on new year's in times square.
i understand now that being in times square is probably going to be one of if not the best place to be on new year's. even if you do nothing but stand there, it is still quite exhilarating simply because there is so much energy in the air sensory overload. when that clock strikes midnight there is a feeling of celebration and utter elation that comes from hundreds of thousands suddenly being happy to be alive. the flash of lights. the roar of the crowd. the touching, energized music. i found myself without a choice: i had to feel majestically jovial and sentimental without ever moving a foot to dance, taking a sip of beer, or without being with anyone i'd ever known. i can only imagine what an experience it would be down on the street, not separated by 8 stories and thick glass.
fortunately, i have a camera small enough to take anywhere that takes video as well. here is a short video of how it looked from where i was. enjoy!
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posted by underwear ninja
8:29 PM
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You sure had a priviledged view being inside the Marquis.Too bad being outside would have been a real ordeal.Where does all the confetti come from? It looks like snow on the window. Thanks for the video.
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1 - Yowzers!!! What a happenin' party. Glad you were in "the place to be" for New Years Eve.
2 - I love your video, but don't you have a bandwidth limit on your website (download traffic)? I just bring it up cause it could be expensive if you go over.
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Did you set-up/tech any part of the New Year at the Marquis?
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Damned straight it's tough. Sometimes goals demand a pretty big leap of faith, and you/ve described it very powerfully here: where to land? What to get a firm ground on? It's very intimidating. But freedom can scare the bejusus out of anybody. There are few things to grasp firmly when one chooses creativity over traditional, established tracks. The very nature of it suggests almost infinite choices instead of predictable outcomes. Yet one chooses creativity and soars-- perhaps longing to land but unable, as opposed to not leaping or soaring and instead getting stuck in a firm foundation without fulfillment. Got to keep the faith.