About two years ago, a good friend of mine and former roommate from college (a very attractive girl) invited me to go see “Twilight: New Moon.” She’d read all the books and seen the first movie, and this was her second viewing of the second movie. I figured, “Whatever.” I should’ve figured, “SHOOT ME NOW!”

I’d heard how bad the first movie was, so I thought I was sufficiently prepared. Sparkling vampires? OK, stupid.. but OK. A stupid girl who spends probably half the movie screaming and crying obsessively about Edward the vampire leaving her? Unforgivable. Poor acting from both her and Edward? Even more unforgivable.

The only redeeming part of the movie was the character of Alice. The actress acted well for the crap dialog and script handed to her.

Now, now, before you hate (though I doubt anyone who enjoys the movies reads this), I have heard that the books are much better. Hell, books of pretty much any movie are better than the movie versions. But let’s look at the plot that persists even into the books.

The character of Bella is a poor role model for anyone in the world. She’s a whiny girl who can’t function without some guy to protect her. I know not the plot of the movies, but I’ve heard that when Bella and Edward have sex, she’s left with marks. So the story condones beating and violence of a woman just because he’s a bit stronger and can’t hold back?

Then she becomes pregnant with a freak baby that’s growing abnormally fast and is going to kill her from the inside. She insists on keeping it?

I hear that the appeal of the story of Twilight is that of love. Tell me if this is love. A 55-year-old guy starts hanging around with a girl, acting all cool and gets the girl to fall for him. Only problem is she’s 17. Now imagine the guy is 100+ years old and she’s still 17. That’s Twilight! It’s about pedophilia.

Edward is a vampire born in 1901 (Wikipedia) who retains the body of a 17-year-old. HE’S A PEDOPHILE. It’s not about love, but about an older man preying on a young girl.

The Twilight series should be on the banned books list.

Thanksgiving is coming soon, but Christmas is what I’m writing about today. Oh, and the picture is something I drew Dec. 25, 2004.

So, yes, Christmas. It’s wonderful, because my name is in it. It’s also wonderful because people have commercialized it over the years which means free stuff. That now that I’m an adult, I’m supposed to buy things for others, and frankly, I have no clue what I’ll do for people.

I think my gift to people should be this: I don’t buy you anything because the money you would’ve spent on me is basically negated. Neither one of us gets gifts! OK, I’m not that singy. Continue reading Christmas, it approaches; Thanksgiving, it’s going away →

My birthday occurs the first week of November each year. And every now and then, I’m gifted with a night of election results. Those are the worst gifts to give anyone, by the way.

This year, that’s not the case, as it’s not most years. This gives cause for joyous celebration. Last year, I can’t recall doing anything for the occasion. I think it’s because I was in a bit of a funk having only been back from Japan for about a month at that point. I told myself I would not sit at home this year… but look, it’s almost time and I still don’t have anything planned!

I do have some ideas stirring in my head, with hopefully at least one coming to fruition.

Since my return from Japan last year, mayn people have what I do in order to keep up and imrpove my Japanese language ability. Honestly, not as much as I should. Most of my practice these days is reading and writing, with very little aural practice.

One of the most frustrating things when I started to learn Japanese was the speed, or lack thereof, at which I could read hiragana and katakana. Back around 2007, it would take me a good 30 seconds to read ありがとうございます (arigatou gozaimasu, or thank you). Now I can read it at what is probably close to a normal speed. This made my Japanese class rather painful for me when I’d be called on. Having a sentence like こんにちは!私の名前は田中です。にじゅうななさいです was almost unbearable. (Hello! My name is Tanaka. I’m 27 years old.) Continue reading The Japanese regimen →

Most people who know me understand that I love technology. From computers to games, I’ve always had an interest in these things. It comes then as a surprise to all that my cell phone is six years old and can only do voice and text. (And it can only store a maximum of about 30 text messages.) Why did I stick with it for so long? It worked… if you ignore the fact it didn’t auto-update the time and date correctly from the day I got it, the volume buttons wouldn’t work when the lid was closed, vibrator in it broke about two or three years ago. But it made great voice calls. It was also the first phone where I could have custom ring tones. Continue reading RIP old cell phone →

I’d say most people don’t know or even remember this, but Rain-Man.org was started as a place for both Rainman and I to host programming projects we’d come up with. That never really came to fruition, and instead it became an outlet for me to write rants and random things I’d think of. It also became a place for us to do random testing of web scripts and the such.

As you may have noticed, posting by myself has become infrequent as of late. It’s not for lack of want, but I’m not sure what it is I should write that I think would be worth sharing. Sure, I could write and possibly complain about temp job, or tell you what I had for lunch (a small Greek-inspired salad), but I find that material to be rather dull.

I do want to write again, and I do hope to post more often, but I can’t promise any cohesiveness to it.