#10-May the Fourth be With You

It took me a while to get this joke. Now that I understand it, I understand why this is Star Wars day.

Ah, Star Wars. How many countless hours of entertainment and cherished memories have you bestowed upon us all? Actually, the movies are around an hour and a half long each, so for three movies about five or six.

... What, you think I'm talking about I, II, and III? HELL no! I'm talking about IV, V, and VI. This is the ONLY trilogy I will recognize. Why? Because they're the better films. The original, unaltered, theatrical releases, not the remastered directors cuts they keep releasing every couple of years that have a couple extra seconds of computerized footage. These movies are great, plain and simple.

It would take me forever to describe everything about why these movies are awesome, but one thing in particular sticks out for everyone-- the villain, Darth Vader. He was evil, sure, but in the last two movies he slowly became a more and more sympathetic character, and slowly became more and more likable, despite the fact that he was evil. He wasn't evil for the sake of being evil, he was evil because he honestly believed that ruling the galaxy was the only way to bring peace to it. He didn't like working for the emperor, he just got stuck with a psychotic emperor for a master. And just when that psycho is about to kill Luke, he has what is the ultimate redemption scene in history and saves the day.

So when good ol' George decided to make Episodes I, II, and III, which would explain Vader's origins, I was psyched. Sure, I was about 11 or 12, but I was still a rabid little fangirl. (This was, of course, before I had ever watched an episode of Star Trek.)

So the first movie came out. I actually liked this movie, and I still like it today. Despite the unholy abominations known as Jar Jar Binks and the rest of the Gungan race, and despite the podraces being too damn long, it was actually a good movie. The rest of the casting, for the most part, was pretty well done, it was a good story, and the action sequences were very well done. One other problem: the kid they got to play Anakin. That kid is just annoying. His acting sucks, his character sucks, he just sucks. I was rather peeved. 

Well, okay, I thought. It's only the first movie, and the kid is fairly young, and child actors tend to be more annoying anyway. This was supposed to be a younger Vader, right? No way. I would not have believed it. But then again, that could be hidden brilliance-- no one ever saw his crossing to the Dark side coming. Maybe the second movie will be better.

BOY was I wrong. What was wrong? Hayden Christensen was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG. You expect me to believe this whiny, angsty, snot nosed, underacting, little bastard grows up to be one of the most badass villains in movie history? What kind of idiot do you take me for?

All the pointless love scenes aside (which I know pissed off a lot of people, but hey, Luke and Leia's mother has to make an appearance somewhere), he whines through every one of his lines, he's completely disobedient and gung-ho about everything when it's painfully obvious he would get his ass killed if he wasn't so important to the story, and when shit hits the fan and his mother dies, what does he do? Throw a huge fucking hissy tantrum. Dear GOD, I wanted to punch him. I understand cutting apart the sand people that killed his mother, that was totally justified. I even understand feeling bad about the whole thing later, that's just part of the grieving process and his psychotic rampage really needed some reflecting on. What I don't understand is him blaming Obi-Wan. Of all people to blame, he blames the one person who had abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with his mother's death. "Holding me back"? How about "knowing you're totally not able to handle yourself yet and you still need more training because you're a selfish, impulsive, immature, idiot"? Then when Obi-Wan gets himself captured (because he is also a dumbass and didn't think to LEAVE the planet before giving his report), what does he do? GET HIS OWN DUMB ASS CAPTURED. Granted, Padme was no fucking help in that department, being the one who dragged him to the dangerous situation in the first place, but who was calling the shots here? He knew for a fact that if she went there she would get into a possibly fatal scenario, and he let her go anyway? He can use the fucking force, why the hell is he letting her call the shots? Because she has more political power? Grow a fucking pair, Anakin! You could've totally steered that ship back to safety if you wanted to, you just didn't want to. I just wanted to knock BOTH their heads together! And they're supposed to be the main characters, the ones we root for! I was hoping she would die. I really was. And he TOTALLY deserved to get his hand cut off. Honestly, the only cool part of that movie was the end, with the Clone army coming in and kicking serious ass, Christopher Lee cutting off Anakin's hand, and then fighting Yoda in a lightsaber battle. FUCK that was awesome. Everything else was agonizingly annoying and painful.

I was not looking forward to the third movie. I went anyway because I like to finish a series that I've started. I'm also slightly masochistic. And this movie was just... just. It was just. I have no adjectives to describe this movie. I loved and hated it.

Again, Anakin was painfully horrid. But at least I was expecting it this time. It didn't hurt so bad because I knew exactly what was coming, so I was able to brace for it. It still didn't make it any better to know that by the end of the movie, he would be Vader. Everything else about the movie was good, for the most part-- it would have been nice to know where the fuck General Grievous came from or why he had such a dumb name or what the hell gave him lung cancer or how the hell he managed to kidnap Emperor Palpatine, but he still managed to be a cool ass villain. And everything else about the movie was great. It had suspense, action, and a total Greek tragedy-esque type of self-fulfilling prophecy there at the end. What I hated was, again, Hayden fucking Christensen. If you had gotten any other heartthrob in the world (his looks were the only reason he got the job, and he's honestly not even that good looking), it would have been a much better pair of movies. But that one whiny little punk ruined both those movies for me.

Thankfully I have the three much better movies with much better acting and much more enjoyable characters and much more exciting story lines and much less glaring plot holes.

Warm Regards,

Liz

#6- Sleep and why I suck at it.

I, like many people in their early twenties, have a hard time sleeping. Not just getting to sleep, but staying asleep is a chore for a myriad of reasons.

For starters, I have tinnitus, which is a constant ringing/buzzing/whooshing/humming in the ears usually associated with hearing loss, and have had tinnitus for as long as I can remember. I can hear just fine, but unfortunately the constant ringing interferes with sleep. It's impossible for me to sleep now without some kind of external white noise in the background, like a fan or something, because the ringing in my ears drives me bonkers. Also, I think I'm OCD, because the noise has to be constant. If there's any kind of tapping, clicking, or rustling noises, I have to find out what exactly is making that noise and find a way to stop it. Hunting around the room in the dark wastes an enormous amount of time I could be sleeping.

Noise problems aside, it's hard for me to turn my brain off. It literally will not shut off no matter what I try to do. I can try meditating, I can try focusing on my breathing, I can try counting sheep, to no avail. SOMETHING in my memory banks is always much more interesting than trying to sleep. Then the adrenaline starts pumping because I'm so pissed off at my brain, and we all know adrenaline keeps us awake, so that's another hour or so lost just because I can't turn my brain off.

It's at this point, when I can finally get my evil conscious mind quieted down, that my bladder decides to say, "Hey, I'm full, get up and empty me."

So then I get up, incredibly angry, and by the time I get back I'm right where I started.

Laying there, as the adrenaline starts to wear off, I sometimes look at the clock. This is always a mistake. It always starts a chain reaction in my brain: I look at the clock. Then I calculate how much time I've wasted trying to sleep. Then I calculate how much time I have left to get to sleep. Then the countdown begins. I constantly have to look at the clock every half-hour or so just to see how much time is left. Why? I don't know. It might be the OCD.

Now, some of these problems aren't psycho- or neurological. Sometimes they're external. Such as the two roosters that my neighbors have--those little bastards crow constantly, starting at midnight and going off every two to three hours. That's not when the aforementioned neighbors have their oompa-loompa-Mexican-polka music playing at some ungodly hour of the night.

Or when the cat gets locked out of the main house and comes into my room (out in the guest house) at one in the morning. My door doesn't properly latch every time you close it; you have to fiddle with the doorknob and lift it a bit before it clicks into place, so it's easy for the cat to get in and start meowing.

Or perhaps when my roommate talks/moans in her sleep. This is a recent development, and it greatly concerns me, because it sounds like she's having nightmares. She never remembers them the day after, but she does moan, and it does keep me up at night. The solution to that one is simple, all I have to do is reach across with my leg and lightly kick her mattress so she rolls over and stops moaning. Sixty percent of the time, it works every time.

There's also my mom's little Dachshund who is let out every morning around six-thirty and simply must bark at everything, just in case anyone forgot that we had a dog.


So, because of all of this, I in my sleep-deprived mind at two-thirty one morning decided to go into the spare room to sleep. I turned on a fan, snuggled into bed, and was asleep almost instantly. It was wonderful.


Until the bird started chirping.

Actually, I'm not sure if you could quite call it chirping. I have no idea what kind of bird it was, but the sound it made resembled the sound of two marbles clacking together loudly. (Mockingbird, maybe? Who knows what those critters will imitate.) Anyhow, that one little clacky-bird was almost the cause of a mental breakdown. That day, I remember, was awful.

So that night I took more sedatives than was recommended on the bottle and slept like a baby.

I wouldn't recommend doing that, though-- the next day I was incredibly groggy for my drive into San Diego, and it also really scared the piss out of my mother.

Warm Regards,

Liz.


P.S.-- To all four of you that watch/visit this blog, I've been figuring out how to fiddle around with how it looks. Thank you for putting up with the changes and expect more shenanigans in the future, but for right now I think I like how it looks. Much better than the black background with the neon green font-- what was I even thinking?...

#3- Amnesia: The Dark Descent. BEWARE THIS GAME.

Quite possibly the scariest game I've ever encountered, Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a first-person survival horror game on the PC from Frictional Games. You wake up as Daniel, an amnesiac, in a dark castle, where you find a note from your former self which pretty much boils down to:

"Hi, this is your former self, I drank something to make me forget everything so don't be too scared. You have to go to this room under the castle to kill this guy Alexander. Don't ask why, he's just evil.

By the way, there are monsters following you that alter reality and makes you go insane.

Ok, good luck dude!"


So there you have it. As you play the game, you find notes and journal entries and live through flashbacks from Daniel's past that eventually unravel the gruesome history of the castle which actually turns out to be a compelling and interesting story, without becoming too weird, which happens too often in horror games with zombie-like monsters.

Why is this game so scary? Well, it's not necessarily what does happen, it's what doesn't happen. It's the knowledge that there's something there, but you don't know where exactly it is or whether it knows where you are. It's a fact that people are generally more afraid of uncertainty and the unknown. You don't know what's behind that door you're about to open. You don't know what just walked by you, or if something did actually walk by you. You don't know why that candle's lit, since you did nothing to light it. You don't know if you're actually hearing those footsteps behind you. You don't know why there's blood all over the floor. You don't know who's arm you just stepped on.

You see where I'm going with this?

Also, the game's original lighting is such that you literally cannot see your hand in front of your face. (Lame people that don't like this fact can brighten it so it's practically daylight inside the castle, but that just takes the fun out of everything.) So you have to light candles and torches with tinderboxes that you find scattered around the castle. However, these tinderboxes are very rare, so don't waste them. You also find a lantern (if you're observant enough to see it), but the oil doesn't last very long, and extra oil is scarcer than tinderboxes. However, if you stay in the dark too long, Daniel starts to hallucinate. You hear him grinding his teeth, and the area around you starts wavering as you stagger around. How do you maintain your sanity? You stay in the light and solve puzzles. But the monsters are attracted to light, and the more puzzles you solve the more likely it is you'll be found. Plus the music in this game makes a creepy atmosphere, and the added bumps and footsteps all around you make you wonder if you really are alone at your computer.

What do you do if a monster finds you? Run and hide in the corner like the little bitch that you are. No seriously. That, actually, is what makes the game so scary (for me, anyway); you cannot defend yourself. Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and other horror games at least let you punch what's coming at you. Here, no way. You have to turn off your lamp and hide somewhere, anywhere, in the dark corner or in a wardrobe or something, and pray it didn't see you in the first place. The damn things can even smell you out, so you have to get away from it before you hide.

All in all, the game is unbelievably freaky, but it is a very good game. The way the game drags you in and puts you in Daniel's place is actually pretty awesome, making it one of the best horror experiences. I couldn't even get past the demo, that's how much it scared me, so now I provide moral support to my brother as he plays it.

Also, watching videos of people's reactions on YouTube is incredibly entertaining.

Warm Regards,

Liz.