Little Debbie ain't nothin' but ho-ho's and tricks!

I do the same thing with my little Debbie. Whether it's the Ho-Ho's, the Zebra Cakes, the Swiss Cake Rolls, or the Oatmeal Cream Pies, I always eat the edges first and save the middle for the very last larger-than-normal bite. And I will go so far as to say that anyone who doesn't eat theirs like that is demeaning the pastry! Sure, you could argue that if you eat in moderate regular bites, you are preserving the taste and drawing it out. But listen, I've talked to little Debbie, and she ain't tryin' to hear that. Every bite of the dessert is supposed to build up in preparation for the last bite. It's sort of like a well-written play. The first bite gives you the exposition. It's just enough to let you know what's going on without giving too much away. The bites after that are all forwards, leading you up to the final bite, filled with cream, which is the climax of the experience. Finally, as you are licking your fingers, you come to your resolution and leave thinking about what you have just witnessed, wanting to change the world. And, a side note, what happened to the double decker oatmeal cream pies?!?!?! Someone owes dues...

Yeah, I play childish games. Whatchoo gonna do about it?

I went to Gamestop and reserved my copy of Animal Crossing for the Wii. Ok, let's go ahead and get it out of the way: animal crossing is a childish game. It is sort of like the Sims, except for like 6 year olds (not really, I exaggerate.) You go around, expanding the size of your house, meeting neighbors and running errands for them, collecting furniture sets, fishing, growing fruit trees, catching bugs, digging up fossils, and celebrating seasons and holidays as they come. The thing is, you are a goofy looking wide-eyed little guy (or girl) and your neighbors are all animals. Bears, wolves, porcupines, kangaroos and all other sorts of animals (there's even one that is a robot frog, if I remember correctly. And if anyone tells me I'm too old to be playing it, I'll tell them where they can put their opinion! It's a fun and addicting game even if it is stupid and pointless - that's the point of it. I have played the earlier games for the Gamecube and DS, and they were both fun and enjoyable. The new one for the Wii looks like it will have even more content and newer ideas to play around with. I was slightly upset with the DS one, because they took out the great holidays like Christmas, Halloween, and Thanksgiving, and made up stupid ones like "La-di-da Day" and so on and so forth. Hopefully in the Wii edition, they will put the real holidays back in. I haven't played my DS version for a week or two now, so when I finally to get back on, I will probably have a lot of weeds to pull, cockroaches in my house to kill, and angry neighbors who wonder why I haven't been around lately or attended their birthday parties.

Jet Li vs. Jackie Chan

Jet Li is one hundred times better than Jackie Chan will ever be. Now, just let that sink in for a minute. The thing that I always hear from people is, "Jackie Chan is way better than Jet Li, 'cause he does his own stunts!!!" Let's examine that statement. So, Jackie Chan doing his own stunts makes him better than Jet Li? How so? There are hundreds of stunt men out there, what about Jackie Chan is any different? The fact of the matter is that they are both competing martial arts super stars - and they key words are "martial" and "arts." Jet Li was the Wushu champion of the world for several years in China. He learned REAL martial arts and actually competed and was chosen better than anyone else at what he did. Jackie Chan grew up in an opera school, learning how to perform. He may know a little bit of martial arts, but most of what he learned was how to flip around and jump off things and do prat-falls. And this is very apparent when you watch him fight!!!! If you know anything about martial arts above a basic level, you will see that Jet Li's martial arts are beautiful, captivating, and meaningful. And that is why Jackie Chan is most peoples' favorite - most people don't know a thing about martial arts, they just want to see some funny guy jumping off of ladders and into windows. And I guess if that's all you want, then you can go get yourself a Jackie Chan movie and watch him jump around and act goofy. I suppose if that's all you look for in a "martial arts movie", then Jackie Chan will give that to you. But he'll be cheating you. Because a real martial arts movie will concentrate on the martial arts used, and the stunts can be done by stuntmen or wires, and it shouldn't matter. Jackie concentrates only on the stunts and humor, and his martial arts really leave something to be desired. He owes me serious dues.

In a Time of Myth and Legend

My favorite show growing up was (and still is) Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. It's the first television show that I have memories of seeing when I was young. Alot of people criticize the show for several reasons. The effects, by today's standards, are not terrific - and in fact they are pretty cheesy. But what people don't understand is that that is part of what makes the show what it is. At times it is very serious and dramatic, but can quickly turn humorous and just plain goofy. A lot of people also say that it is "campy" (the good guy always wins, there's always a moral, etc...) This is true, but in my opinion it makes the show that much more enduring. Kevin Sorbo depicts Hercules as a true hero, not a meathead like he is usually portrayed. The real humanity of Hercules is explored as he has to make all kinds of sacrifices for humankind, trying to teach them that the gods don't care about them and they shouldn't waste their time trying to please them, but instead, find the hero inside of each and every one of themselves. Hercules showed us that true strength doesn't come from the size of your arms, but the size of your heart. This is the only show or movie that I have ever cried while watching. "But wherever there is trouble, where ever an innocent would suffer... there would be Hercules."

LIGHTWEIGHT!!!!!

I have been working out for the past couple of weeks, in the morning. I work out over the summers at home, and that is the time when I am most able to gain considerable muscle mass because I have a personal trainer (a friend who graduated high school with me and is a bodybuilder) and I am able to eat the things I need to (i.e. lots and lots of meat) without worrying about a meal card budget or class schedule. But I am still trying to consistently work out so that I don't lose the work I did over the summer. If I can gain even more strength that's great, but it's not looking promising, because I am already feeling the effects of decreased protein and carbohydrates in my diet (and just decreased food intake in general) and it's also difficult because I have to work out early and don't have time to wake up an hour beforehand and eat a meal. The biggest factor, though, is the fact that I am working out with two other guys. One of these guys is a big guy and lifts about the same as I do (usually a little less, but occasionally a little more on some exercises), but the other is smaller and I am finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate fully on my own workout, and at the same time try to guide these other two guys through theirs. They're racking up dues real fast.

Everybody gets 1

So, I biked to my car and then drove over to the apartment of a new friend of mine named John Detty. He's a transfer student. I am a gamer for life and it turns out he too claims to be an avid player of video games, so we decided to have a get together one afternoon and play some games. I've only hung out with him in person a couple times, so it was sort of awkward and we were both ready to test each other out and see how we compared in skill. We only played to games - the first was Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I knew that he'd played Melee before for the gamecube, but I could smell that he wasn't going to be good enough to beat me (not that I'm above average, but I am competent) and he couldn't. So then we switched over to Halo 2 and he said something like, "and now it's time for my revenge." Ooooooo that was a mistake. Now it's true that I don't play alot of Halo 2, but a real gamer can pick up skills he's learned from other games and transfer them over (within the same genre of gaming). Now most of my first-person shooter experiences have been on pc and this one was xbox, but that's just a minor obstacle. So we began, and he was ahead of me for awhile. This is for two reasons - 1, he was used to the game whereas it was fairly foreign to me (hadn't played it in half a yea atleast) and 2, he knew where the two really really good weapons were (weapons like this are called "noob cannons" because they are extremely powerful yet very easy to use, so that any newbie can pick them up and have a chance against even decent players - in other words, they are cheap) and he got them immediately and started destroying me. It got to the point where the score was like 23 - 10 in his favor. At this point I had had enough, so I made my come back. Sometimes I used those weapons, and other times I just used crappy weapons and pure skill.

I went and saw Babylon A.D. with my family on Saturday. I really just went to see it for Vin Diesel, thought it ended up having a pretty good story, I thought. Vin Diesel is an actor that I have looked up to for some time now. I am studying to become an actor and have the all-too-common dream of heading out to L.A. and beginning the hunt for acting work once I leave college. I admire Vin Diesel because he, like me, is multi-racial (we are both half black, but my other half is white and I think his is Italian). His first piece of work was written, and directed by him and he also starred in it. It was about his early experiences as an actor, auditioning time after time after time in New York and never getting the role because he was either too white or too black. One of my acting professors told me that I need to "embrace my ethnicity" and somehow use that in my acting. I have no idea what this means, but Vin Diesel figured it out. He payed his dues.