SoundClick Music

I mentioned a rap song in my last post: it's called "Verbally Busted Skills" and you can find it here on my SoundClick Music page: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=779372&content=music. There might also be a rap of "Take Me Out To the Ball Game," but don't get your hopes up.

September 5... Wow.

It's been nearly 3 months since I last wrote a blog entry. I've had lots of interesting experiences, and they respectively involve iambic tetrameter, rapping, ancestry, McDonald's, Thanksgiving (duh), Indonesia, college people, getting a new view on an old favorite band, video games, and lots of movies (I know that before I stopped blogging I had made it a habit to review every movie I saw, but right now I don't think I have the endurance [or the proper time window {my dad is oppressive on school nights}] to blog all that, and plus my memory on the last three months is incomplete, so only the most recent events will be the most blogged-about topics). ROSA
Don't you hate it when people say "parenthese?" That is a bit off the topic of this particular historical-type blog post, but I nonetheless consider it important, because it hella bugs me (apparently we only use that slang here in California). So, just for your information, in case you didn't know already, the real singular form of "parenthesis" is simply "parenthesis."
I was assigned to write an Anne Bradstreet-style (what a Puritan!) poem, thirty lines long or more, about a traumatic incident that happened in my life that gave me a profound insight on human nature or life or something of that sort. It was to be in rhyming couplets, in iambic tetrameter, a poetic rhythm with eight syllables per line and the accent on the even syllables. I present my poem to you here, in its original, unedited, as-turned-in version. Enjoy.

I Bizzust Mad Rhizzymes Like a Pizzuritan

Upon a day filled with good cheer,
For being that great time of year,
I started ‘cause I had forgot
The forecasts were less and less hot
That summer was now near its close
Thus gone were all the summer clothes,
And so mid-August drew quite near
I tried to hide away in fear
Of a new year of middle school
That loomed before me calm and cool
Forgot were essays of all manners
Forgotten were those silly planners,
All thoughts of grammar, and the ban
On all deod’rant in a can
My mind eliminated all
Of education great and small:
Circumference, diameter,
And iambic tetrameter
But now I rhyme like Puritans
The words are now all slurred in,
Because the new year has begun,
And though it may not be so fun,
I’ve learned a lot, and so have you,
Like algebra and science too
During the summer (this is why
To middle school returned was I),
I spoke no Spanish, nor read lit,
Nor at my table learned a bit,
So back I went, on a carpool
To Santa Rosa Middle School
To stuff my brain with odds and ends
And in high school begin again

Come on. You know that was cool. I may not have fully fulfilled the requirements of the assignment (i.e. traumatizing), but I immensely enjoyed writing it. The reason for the slight poetic license in word pronunciation is that Anne Bradstreet used similar devices and therefore it is hilarious. The reason I went for thirty-two lines was because it's a power of 2. And really, who can resist such a thing, especially when one finds it just an eensy bit above the minimum requirement.

So, on the topic of Syrup Suicide, no progress has been made whatsoever in the past 3 months... Jujube Jones, it turns out, was only joining as a joke, so we are now five (more efficient). I suppose I did record one short (1:31) song that I had written a while ago, but being the selfish egomaniac that I am, I credited it to Vanilla Bean Speck only.
My ancestry, for some reason, became exceptionally important to me, and I did nothing but go backward and backward in time for quite a while. There were two points where I did reach fifteenth-century England, but one was on step. I can trace my roots to Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Ireland, and England. It's awesome! I went back like 14 generations!

So recently my dad and I went to a McDonald's, and it was awful. You see, the price of our food seemed high, so my dad asked the guy doing the drive-thru about it, and he had no clue. So that guy called in a superior, and they talked about the situation. His superior then turned to us and told us that if we got large drinks instead of medium, it would be cheaper for us. Apparently, under the combo system, the combos are economic, but if the meal is incompatible, such as a large McNuggets and a medium drink, it is less economic than the large combo. We were like, "What the hell?" but we went for the cheaper option. Those nuggets made me puke later; It was obviously a curse.

I ate my Thanksgiving dinner in the remote ghost town of Saratoga, CA. It was delicious. That is not very substantial coverage of something that wasn't very substantial to begin with (unless you're talking about the increase in my weight), but I felt it had to be said so I could use the extreme hypobole of "remote ghost town" to describe a town that is really not such.

On November 16th and 17th, I fasted for thirty hours to raise money for starving people in Indonesia. It was with an organization called World Vision, and it was held in the First Presbyterian Church of Santa Rosa. If you're ever not busy around that time of year, come by and be heroic like me (Did I mention I was a selfish egomaniac?).

My sister Terri and my cousin Kris came to stay here over Thanksgiving Break. I played all sorts of games with them, went to see movies and stuff. It was great fun. Kris turned me on to the greatest Beatles album, which I think brings us to our next topic, doesn't it?

Abbey Road is totally the best Beatles album. I've listened to the entire thing probably ten times now. I got it on the 25th, and it's been in heavy rotation on my iPod since. Favorite songs include "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," "I Want You (She's So Heavy)," "Here Comes the Sun," "Polythene Pam," and "Her Majesty." But the entire album is amazing; it's like they're just continuously playing as opposed to separately recording each track. AWESOME.

My brother and I have spent a lot of time playing 1080 Avalanche for GameCube. That game is really amazing. The levels are incredibly well-designed, with multiple tiers and clever shortcuts. I bet no one reading this could beat the times of 48.61 s for Tenderfoot Pass and 50.83 for Frosty Shadows... Huh? Yeah, I didn't think so.

I saw lots of movies. So, how did you like that summary of the last 85 days? I'd say they were pretty good.

No-Nose

Syrup Suicide are releasing their first single tomorrow. It's called "No-Nose." Jujube Jones wrote the rhymes a while ago and I started really liking it, so I recorded it myself on my sister's computer at the expense of Jujube's rights. It costs a dollar. I don't know if I'll have time tonight to burn enough CD's to fit the demand.

Label 200!

As of the previous post, I have blogged about over 200 topics! This is cause for celebration! Break out the champagne!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

New Names

Three new rap names: Niko is Jujube Jones; Caleb is Delta Flya, and Ben is Jeevz. This three-day weekend I'll be going to Point Reyes with Delta Flya and possibly also go to my aunt's house in Saratoga to harvest grapes. The point (get it, Point?) is that I am going to the Sandcastle-Building competition on Sunday and that I'll have lots of time to write rhymes with Delta Flya this weekend. That's two Points.

Syrup Suicide

The rap group now is known as Syrup Suicide, featuring Raviavioli, Caleb Foote, Niko Lecoeuche, Sgt. Pepa, Ben Hughes and Vanilla Bean Speck (me). Niko and I have material written, but so far no one else has lyrics to go on. I hope to have at least a partial- if not a full-crew meeting in the future. As you saw, only half of the members have rap names, but that will change. I'm not sure how well Avi and Caleb will get along, but whatever.

NEW RAP GROUP

Well, I didn't quite make it to the street on Saturday (I was busy). But I've started a rap group with some friends and we're going to be awesome.

Angrier Video Game Nerd

I made a YouTube video with my friend Elliott. It was in the style of the Angry Video Game Nerd, except it had a soundtrack of RHCP and the language was cleaner. My YouTube page can be found here.

Wanna Get a Cool Drink and a Sandwich?

If you do, I would advise showing up at Wikiup and Carriage between, say, 10 and 3. This is probably in effect on all Saturdays because those are my days off! If you go and I'm not there, write me a nice angry piece of hate email.

Lemonade Stand

I am going to start my own lemonade stand. I've already got a great recipe (8 lemons, 10 sugar cubes, 473 mL water) and a table. Now all I need are the lemons and the spare time. Perhaps next summer. Anyone who wants to help, just say the words. Hey, I have an idea! I will combine this lemonade stand with Yogi Land, the entertainment store of two years ago, and a sandwich shop. The prices would be like: story for $1.25, lemonade for $0.50, and spaghetti sandwich for $2.25. Then the customers, who are either not carrying change or too lazy to shell it out, will be forced to either overpay or buy the whole deal for $4.00.

Solfest

I couldn't make it to Solfest yesterday, but today I paid Hopland a visit with my dad and Caleb. It was sweet. In case you aren't familiar with Solfest, it's an annual festival in Hopland that celebrates being "green." The hippie vibe was ever present, even more so than last year, but the merchandise was awesome. There was a guy teaching people how to carve wood using a magnifying glass and the sun. A fresh-squeezed strawbery lemonade place. Organic burritos. Insulated housing. Lots of Prii. Solar Panels. A button and bumper sticker shop. And just about more hemp than any other place in the world. There was even hempmilk. Any of that strike your fancy? If so, you should definitely come to the next Solfest. We'd love to have you.

I got lots of great stuff at Solfest: a "Coexist" bumper sticker, a button incribed with the message "Bullets don't kill people. Gaping wounds in vital organs kill people," a Solfest T-shirt, a magnification-engraved stick, and a Call2Recycle wrist strap and T-shirt. Since my dad forgot to bring the camera, I have no photos of the actual event, but check these out. You can't really see the T-shirt or button, but you gotta love that stick.

The Yogipie Rap

Here is the rap, as promised.

Posting some posts to the great tribune
Having zero readers makes me look like a loon
But I don’t care what bird I look like
I only care what you can cook like
Apparently we’re allowed to rip off Mulan these days
But does it really matter the rhymes I say?
Probably two people have ever read one post
Caleb Foote the 27th has probably read the most
I even got a T-shirt to promote my blog
Why do they avoid it like a flaming log?
Yogipie is certainly potent (like a nog)
If it had potential I would read a flaming log
Pay good money for Entertainment Weekly
But my insights on the media don’t plod along meekly
I may not have a great multitude of minions
But I’m not so frickin’ slow to get you my opinions
Well, sometimes the connection gets a little stuck
And I say “Internet Explorer really sucks!”
Then I might not be able to blog for days
But you can still read Yogipie anyways
‘Cause posts in the Archives might give you a laugh
For that feature I’d like to thank the Blogger staff
But there’s also a dichotomy as well as a chronology
For finding tags like camping, airbrushing, and genealogy
I’d like to know the readers I’ve got besides one
If you caught the Disney reference, good for you, you’re not dumb
Write wghoberg@comcast.net
If you read this rhyme, tell me; I’ll see what I get
As for the 27th, I was kidding the fool
Having an old name is actually pretty cool
Farewell, readers (probably only one)
I might rhyme more later, because this was fun

More Movie Reviews

This is late but it is as promised and it includes a bonus review.

Transformers: Transformers starts out in much the same way as Disturbia does: Hot girl is the object of desire, best friend is a weirdo, and of course, Shia LaBeouf in pretty much the same role as Sam, the perv teenage guy. Fun fun fun. Except there's also the part about the army being attacked by giant robots, a conspiracy about the Arctic mission of Sam's great-great-granddad, and a Camaro. The movie is way too long, and the excess of product placement and its ludicrously ginormous budget make me sick, but the talent and production values are all in place. ***

Speed: It was a great, high-octane (?) ride. I can't say action movies are my cup of tea, but this was a good movie. Wait a sec... I don't like tea. ***

The Matrix Reloaded: Where do I begin? This one had a great sex scene, about seventy awesome songs, at least 4 classic fight scenes, The Architect, lotsandlotsandlotsof Smiths, a pair of sunglasses for everyone, a traitorous kiss, and many doors. Everything a great movie needs and then some. Quite possibly the awesomest film ever made. Needless to say I really enjoyed it, would recommend it to anyone, and really want to get my hands on the 3rd installment. ****

Back-to-School Shopping

I did my back-to-school shopping yesterday. I got 12 pens, 60 pencils, 3 Pink Pearls, 1 sharpener, 1 Spanish dictionary, 5 100-page notebooks, 1 stack of yellow Post-Its (I didn't even know they still made those), 1 pack of flash cards, and Icebreakers Sours, which, by the way, make good fake lip piercings.

Movie Reviews

Wow, tough job: talking about every movie I've seen in the past month.



Weird Science: This movie was... really weird. It is about two teenagers who create their own sexpot using a computer. There are all sorts of cheesy special effects and the oddest things happen. However, there were some good laughs in there and it had a happy ending. ***



Stephen Bizer's Otto: A 15-minute sci-fi romp that sets up its own rules for existence, and it doesn't care what you think! It has a complex plot, but if you can follow along, you'll find it enjoyable. ***



Stephen Bizer's Illegal Aliens: Also a short film, and also lots of fun, but this one is animated, and black-and-white too. The drawings are noirish and humorous and the plot fits the style perfectly. ****

Pretty in Pink: Incredibly '80s, Pretty in Pink is a romance tale that is well told through a great script, a talented cast (especially the otherwise-nobody, the guy who plays Ducky), and solid directing and producing work. The story is a classic, but the '80s were really the worst decade ever (except the 1340s or maybe the 1350s), and the film's pop culture is really dated. ***

Men At Work: A comedy about garbage men. The premise is really funnier than the jokes, which I suppose is a good thing because that makes the jokes all the funnier. Definitely a good choice. ***

The Bourne Ultimatum: Probably my favorite action movie ever. The plot twists are great, Matt Damon is awesome and the action is phenomenal. Loose ends are tied up with a pretty bow. It's a climactic adrenaline rush end to a great action series. It's definitely not a problem that they reworked some of the ideas from the first one. My beef is with the directing that overemploys the "raw" camera style. Almost perfect, but not quite. ****

Fletch: Chevy Chase is great in this comedy about a Los Angeles investigator-reporter who digs just deep enough into a drug-trafficking problem to uncover a gusher of mystery, bigamy, and Utah. He has jokes and quips by the gross. The plot and the direction are enough to make you see it again, just for fun. ****

Transformers and Speed are coming tomorrow when I'm not so tired.

I'm Back from my Poconos trip

Yesterday I returned from Pennsylvania and the annual Hoberg family reunion. First I flew to Philadelphia, then drove to my aunt and uncle's house, where I spent two nights before driving to my great-uncle's lodge in the Poconos, where I stayed for a week with some of my extended family, whom I'm sure you would love to hear about, so I'll give you a quick rundown of the tree. ROSA Present at the Poconos were: Jan and Mark Gingold with identical twin daughters Sara and Beth and son Daniel (Beth brought her boyfriend Jeremy and Dan brought his girlfriend Janelle), Rick and Jeanne Hoberg with son Matthew and daughter Mellissa (Mellissa brought her friend Kim), Peter Hoberg with son William (me) and daughter Becca, Chris and Ron Bizer with sons Stephen and Tim and daughter Kate, my father's parents Shirley and George Hoberg, Shirley's brother, Bill Kieser, his daughter Valerie, and Don and Jane, whom I don't really know. ROSA Not present were: bunches of other Hobergs, Areharts, and Harrisons.

The lodge overlooks Silver Lake, of which a picture can be found in the upper right corner of this post. The lake is great for swimming and for catching fish. This year I landed three rather large fish, of which I am very proud, a pickerel and two bass. It has long been tradition for the entire family to converge on this site and cause havoc from sheer numbers. This year had a relatively small crowd compared to other years, but there was still lots of havoc. What was really awesome was that all week long there was a chance of thunderstorms, but it didn't so much as rain until the one night our cookout was planned.

There was a dilapidated pool table there, and I played just about everyone on it. I'm not very good at pool. I was introduced to a new game called Pictionary-Telephone, which is exceedingly fun. I visited two waterfall parks, which were both fun, and managed to skip a rock 4 times. I found out that the fish in Silver Lake are attracted to sunscreen the hard way (they chased me out of the water). And I joined The Woodbumz, my cousins' white-rap group. Their names? Ginga Snapz, Bredd Loaf, 20-Inch D, Ju-C Juice, and Vanilla Bean Speck (Matthew, Tim, Daniel, Stephen, and me). They featured me on the track "Damn, it Feels Good to Be a Woodbum," which I believe will be on their album of the same name. Stick around for rhymes to be published on this blog.

tired

Way too tired. Will blog lots tomorrow.

My T-shirt

I forgot about the T-shirt I got yesterday. It's awesome! It says Yogipie. It's purple and brown. I would love to have 5,000 of them to give out to random people. Methinks that would increase readership more than one-thousandfold. I think I should update more speedily.

-Yogipie the Readerless

Harmonica

I wish I knew how to play the harmonica. And yet even if I knew how, I don't think I would be very good at it; my lungs are phenomenally weak. I might learn how to play anyway, because the harmonica is such an awesome instrument. Lately I have been really into these songs:"Walk Like an Egyptian" by the Bangles, "She's not There" by Santana, and the Monk theme by Jeff Beal. This post was pretty random. I will be back later with more to talk about... hopefully.

Table of Harry Potter Statistics

I "learned" how to do this with HTML. Oh yeah, and my hardcover HP collection is complete now that Deathly Hallows has been added. Don't ask me why there's a mile of empty space there; just scroll through and examine my handiwork!

Book	# of Pages	# of Chapters	Average # of Pages per Chapter
Sorcerer's Stone	309	17	18
Chamber of Secrets	341	18	19
Prisoner of Azkaban	435	22	20
Goblet of Fire	734	37	20
Order of the Phoenix	870	38	23
Half-Blood Prince	652	30	22
Deathly Hallows	759 (including Epilogue)	36 (excluding Epilogue)	21 (excluding Epilogue)

SPOILER ALERT

I finished Deathly Hallows Sunday night; sorry I'm so late, but as time is no longer my goal I feel free as a... damn, I've got nothing (Don't you hate it when your similes elude you?). ROSA I thought it was an excellent read, certainly epic, and certainly exciting enough to keep slow readers up in the wee hours of the morning. The body count, however, was tragically, unnecessarily, and yet unsurprisingly high. I simply don't think J.K. needed to kill off so many friends to satisfy her readers. I created a neat circuit today, using an electronics kit. It made a whistling or beeping sound when the lights went on. I thought it would be cool to have several different circuits in several different rooms all set at different frequencies, and use the fuse box as a musical keyboard.... Tomorrow I am going to buy myself a customized airbrushed T-shirt bearing the name Yogipie; it's going to be awesome!

Copperfield's

I went on a trip to Copperfield's Books today. I finally pre-ordered Deathly Hallows, which was long overdue. I'm also going to the party. I got a spiffy bookmark of the 4 house logos. I bought hardcovers of Sorcerer's Stone and Prisoner of Azkaban. The only one I still need is #4. This is a little late, but I'm really excited that Monk and Psych have started their new seasons on USA. I love watching those shows every Friday night.

Life Sucks

I've given up on my goal of blogging about Deathly Hallows. After all, the book is released five hours earlier in England... plenty of time to finish it.

Various Topics

1. I started my own "library of favorites" for contemporary literary classics, and thus I have started to pursue new copies of all my favorites so I can keep them forever, but my mom thinks this is a silly practice and that I should, I dunno, hunt down battered old paperbacks at garage sales and read them once and then donate them to charity or something. ROSA Okay, so that might be an exaggeration of sorts, but that's her state of mind. My point of view is that in this ever changing, tragic world of ours, I really take solace in reliability and stability.

2. I've been rereading the Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud. Excellent fantasy series, and if you haven't read it you have to do so or you're a... how to put this nicely... SATANIC PIG-HATING COMMUNIST!

3. I treated myself to a shiny new hardcover copy of the original Chamber of Secrets for my library. No more of this silly Anti-Illustrationist movement.

4. I got seventy dollars and several euros richer yesterday; it's pretty happy.

5. Due to said new funding, more Harry Potter hardcover purchases may be on the way.

6. The movie adaptation (if you could call it an adaptation) of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is absolutely terrible. You have this overly and overtly opinionated and unheathily adverbial blogger's advice not to go see it, and his word that unless by chance of stupidity and ignorance, you haven't actually read any of the books, all parts of the movie will disappoint except - I almost regret saying this - the brilliant, spot-on portrayals of Luna Lovegood and Dolores Umbridge. ROSA I would almost see it again just to see Luna say her lines again, which, by the way, are almost all intact from the canon... Seriously, weird in exactly the way I imagined her to be in the book. Oh, and in the chance of said stupidity and ignorance, SIRIUS BLACK IS MURDERED BY BELLATRIX LESTRANGE AT THE END.

7. ROSA is a new good friend of mine, a novel sort of punctuation mark if you will, a running joke, but the kind that isn't funny. The first person to email me telling me what the mark does will win a great big sundae on me.

GREEN

With Live Earth having been (admittedly) a while ago, It's the least I can do (or is it?) to tell you that you can make a difference!!! Join the Alliance for Climate Protection. Small things add up, so try your best to uh, be green!

Back to the Blog

I haven't blogged in ages, and not since I went camping at Yosemite with the YMCA and my friend Caleb. I found lookalikes to a friend's mom, Shia LaBeouf, and my sister's friend. I saw a black bear rip open a log. I hiked Vernal Falls and Yosemite Falls. But none of that matters. My life will have neither meaning nor purpose until Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is released. My goal is to be among the first to blog about it, but I doubt that's going to happen, and for two good reasons. One, people have probably already blogged about it, and two, some people, like my sister, can read a book like that in something like four hours, a superpower I, sadly, do not have. I'm going to see Order of the Phoenix on the 14th, which sounds exciting if inaccurate and superficial (sorry, I had to vent). Wikipedia's list/ dictionary of Harry Potter spells is horribly full of holes; it does not even come close to sticking with the canon it specifies. On a completely different note, tracing someone's genealogy back thousands of years is not quite as easy as it sounds, even when that person comes from the house of Levi.

A Wrinkle in Time

I took a short (3-day) break from Harry Potter between #5 and #6 to read Madeleine L'Engle's classic A Wrinkle in Time. Very very good science fiction novel, nice and short compared to Harry Potter books. If you haven't read it, you're really missing out. I found the fantasy and science fiction elements of the story to be very inspiring for a short story I'm writing called "Angels and Men," loosely based on the music of Juno Reactor.

Classical Music

Classical music... what an odd entity! Considering very few classical songs actually have titles, it was obviously not meant for the information age, but who can blame the classic composers? It's not like any of them ever heard of a search engine. Classical classification remains only by division, from a composer to an opus to a suite to a song (brief spark of pop-culture familiarity) to a movement (what?) My favorite composer is... Hiromi Uehara, hands down. She is the piano virtuoso. Who is your favorite composer?

Decline in Harry Potter Books

I think I have found out why the fifth and sixth books of Harry Potter are my least favorite ones. The reason is not that the books have gotten darker and the tone more serious. It's not even that Mary Grandpre's illustrations have become less cartoony. It's because all the character roles in which the readers got so set over the first four books get changed and turned upside down. For example, in The Order of the Phoenix Ginny stops being all crazy about Harry and starts dating, and in The Half-Blood Prince, Harry is "hungry" for Ginny (creepy). Harry becomes a very angry young man, the government are complete morons, and Sirius gets himself killed. Neville becomes less dorky and Ron gets on the Quidditch team.... It all adds up to a seriously confusing Harry Potter world the likes of which we didn't see in the first four parts. And that is why my order of favoritism is 241356. w00t.

Word List

I have been interested in excellent words and phrases to use for quite some time now. I have compiled a running list of my favorite words. It is composed of not only English words, but also phrases and foreign-language words. But all of the contents have one thing in common: a special flow of sound. With the phrases especially, the cadence and rhythm is very important. This is exemplified in the phrases Supreme Mugwump, Richard Nixon, and Ottery St. Catchpole. Four of my words have the "qua" sequence because that is a cool pattern. I look forward to using these oddments on my readers (1 person) soon. This enthralling, alphabetically-sorted list can be found at the bottom of my blog.

REI Purchases

I got some great stuff at REI this morning, including: a mess kit, a fold-flat mug, light hiking boots, flip-flops, two lightweight heavy-duty T-shirts, and a large dark Toblerone bar. If there are better things in life, I've never heard of them. And the best part was my mom paid for all of it! My favorite things are... all of them! A very productive trip indeed.

Camping

From June 25th on, I will basically be solidly camping for the rest of the summer. More on that later. I am looking forward to the various trips, but I'm afraid I might be too busy to do much. I'm paying a visit to REI tomorrow morning to purchase some outdoor gear. I love toast. Toast will make a good camping snack.... The Spanish word for camping is "camping," with an accent on the a, which makes it the funniest Spanish word of all time, especially in context. For example, "Este verano mis amigos y yo vamos de camping." Hilarious. Blog you later, hopefully with something more substantial to talk about.

Disturbia

I finally went and saw Disturbia yesterday. It was alright. Personally, I found it pretty scary. It had me shaking in my seat. There were lots of creepy dead bodies hidden in the most unexpected places. They try pretty hard to make Shia LaBeouf's character, Cale, look like a "normal" testosterone-filled teenage boy. He plays XBox 360, half-stalks the hot blonde girl across the street, socks his Spanish teacher in the face, and would do anything for his iPod. However, even so, the film never feels dry or forced. After getting into house arrest for said Spanish-teacher-punching, Cale notices his other neighbor, Mr. Turner, the one that's neither hot nor blonde nor a girl, doing suspiciously-like-a-notorious-serial-killer-from-Texas things. So he joins forces with Ashley (his neighbor) and Ron, his best friend, to stake out Mr. Turner's house. They hit a lot of dead ends in which something that makes him look like he's a psycho serial killer turns out to be harmless. But in the end, Mr. Turner is a psycho serial killer. He has a lab for disembowelment and like I said, lots of unexpected places for him to hide the corpses. It all ends well, though, and by the end, Shia has dropped approximately infinity S-bombs. Not a movie for younger children.

No spoilers please!

How people already know things about the 7th Harry Potter book, I have no idea. Nor would I like to have any idea. I am one of those people who can't stand to have a bit of plot revealed beforehand. I seemingly cannot do anything on the Internet without having HP spoilers shoved in my face! Listen, if it's an official press release from J.K.R. herself, even if it's just a wild theory of yours, I don't want to hear so much as a morphograph about it!

Potter Plotter

It's time for a little plot discussion. At the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Severus Snape murders Professor Dumbledore, which is a huge bummer. My sister holds her belief that Snape is innocent for one reason or another. For one thing, there is a passage from the 6th book where Dumbledore is telling Snape to do something he does not want to do. She also thinks that he was trying to stop Malfoy from becoming an evil Dark murderer by killing Dumbledore. Is Snape serving his benign headmaster? Or is he trying to prevent his favorite student from heading down the path Snape himself once took? Either way, Malfoy already has been Dark-Marked, which means he's probably going to end up serving Lord Voldemort, unless he displays the same resilience seen from Snape and Karkaroff (doubtful, because we all know Draco's a pansy).

I think the only reason Snape ever came to Hogwarts was because he could hide from the Dark Lord he pusillanimously abandoned. Dumbledore trusted him and gave him a second chance. Snape bided his time, and when Lord Voldemort returned, Snape had to regain his trust by taking down a major good guy.

Here is an interesting lead on Draco Malfoy's identity: http://www.mugglenet.com/editorials/editorials/edit-hseeker01.shtml

Farewell, Muggles!

Quotes

I am really into quotes. I've compiled a list of three quotes. I'm sure you'd love to read them, so here they are:

Reality is always controlled by those who are the most insane.- Dogbert

Nothing is impossible. What you want is simply expensive.- Nikola Tesla (David Bowie) in The Prestige

I'm just trying not to catch on fire.- Bobby Flay

Very interesting indeed. All of these people can be located in my profile. I'm off to read more Harry Potter.

My first post

I just started blogging! Hooray! I can't think of anything else I'd rather do! Except for writing in a real, private journal. Gee, that would be fun. Why am I wasting my time here? I have some really good books I could be reading. I just thought of a really good topic for a blog post: things I could be doing right now if I wasn't so lazy. I am in the course of rereading the Harry Potter books that have yet been published. I am so far 3 1/2 books in. There are approximately 1900 long pages left to read, but I have to do it for three principal reasons. The first reason is that the fifth HP movie will be released this summer, and I don't want to be watching the movie when I read the book, if you catch my drift (you probably don't). The second reason is the scheduled release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, for which I want to catch up on the plot. My last reason is I have gotten very interested in the illustrations by Mary Grandpre, who is an awesome artist, and am studying her technique. Since I lost my "original" paperback copy of The Chamber of Secrets, I acquired a new paperback version with minimal, wimpy cover art and none of the fun little original chapter illustrations. It was a real disappointment, but of course I'm past that one now, and onto The Goblet of Fire, of which I have the original hardcover. As you probably already have figured out, I am a nerd. What else do I have to do, you ask? I could record my memories in my physical journal for preservation, though nobody could decode my handwriting. I could waste away watching TiVoed Food Network shows. I could take part in one of the many online supercommunities of which I am a part (e.g. YouTube, Weebl and Bob, iTunes, Email, Myspace, Wikipedia, the Black Lily, Amazon, Google Earth). I could do whatever I want. And yet, here I am, blogging about it, in a blog no one else will ever read unless I glued their eyes to the screen. Yippee.