Poetry + Hellboy 2 + Paintball + other random stuff

Yeah, so, yesterday, I went with a few of my friends to see Hellboy 2, which I’ll include details on later, but after the movie, we played paintball. It was awesome. It was… (paint)BALLIN’. >.> I’m thinking that I might buy a paintball gun for myself. Maybe. Paintball really doesn’t hurt as much as people make it out to be. But then again, sometimes, I just ignore pain. Really. I don’t know why that is… And in this case, I mean physical pain. lol. I think it might be because of certain people harrassing me from time to time, like Steve Weng in AS class and my brother trying to get me out of bed at around 2 in the afternoon… yeah. I don’t know. But paintball is awesome. I should play it more often. It’s so fun. =D

Oh, yeah. I also bought one of those 5-Hour Energy shot things. It looks awesome from the commercials. I haven’t tried it yet. I’m probably going to save it for the next time I pull an all-nighter at my friend’s house playing video games, but yeah. From looking at the nutrition facts, this stuff definitely isn’t healthy for you. lol. Really. There’s a caution label that reads: “You may experience a Niacin Flush (hot feeling, skin redness) that lasts a few minutes. This is caused by Niacin (Vitamin B3) increasing blood flow near the skin.” I don’t actually know if that’s all that bad, but still. Sounds queer. It also says, “Not for use by children under 12 years of age.” You know that’s wrong if this the product that label refers to is something that you’re supposed to ingest. lol. Also, the “nutrition” facts say that the drink gives 150% of your daily value of niacin, 2000% of your daily value of Vitamin B6, 100% of your daily value of Folic Acid, and 8333% of your daily value of Vitamin B12. No, none of those percentages that I just typed out were typos. Amazing, isn’t it? The nutrition facts also say that the drink includes taurine. If you don’t know what that is, you should be proud. =/ But, yeah. We’ll see how well this stuff works in the future. We’ll see how much $3 is really worth. =) …Maybe in combination with WoW powerleveling or honor-farming? lol. And this stuff is actually LEGAL, as opposed to buying Chinese people to powerlevel and farm for you. Well, maybe this 5-Hour Energy stuff won’t be legal for long. Who knows? lol.

Okay, since I don’t feel like writing about Hellboy 2 just yet… yeah…

So… Friday and Saturday, my family had a garage sale… Not exactly the most successful one, I must say, but yeah. We have… pretty useless wares. lol. But, my brother was selling some old music CDs of his, and I was just looking through them… I saw an album by Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill, so I decided to borrow it for a while so I could rip the songs onto my computer and put them on my Walkman. These songs are classics. Geez. Reminds me of the good ol’ days… when I didn’t have any friends… But, still. lol. >.> Good stuff. I also ripped Nirvana and Crazy Town CDs. I haven’t really listened to those songs just yet. I’m still stuck on Alanis Morissette. Good stuff. Good stuff.

Also from the garage sale, I saw that my brother was trying to sell a USB flash drive, and it being only 64 MB, it’s quite worthless. lol. But I can still use it for backing up and carrying with me my writing and stuff… The only problem is that my computer doesn’t support USB 2.0, so… yeah… the flash drive is still considerably worthless and useless to me… But I’ll keep it anyways. Anyways, my point in bringing this whole flash drive thing up is that… it’s… cool… I guess… because it has this semi-cover thing that rotates so that it protects the actual USB. I mean, I’ve seen cooler USB flash drives, but… this one brings back particular… memories… which are quite… recent, actually… I find that things like this and other memories make me roll my eyes and want to punch something. Hard.

I still have to read my older blog entries to feel better about things, but it’s kind of difficult because my brother doesn’t let me go on my blog at home and because he also configured things so that my internet stops working at certain times of the day. So far, it seems like it stops from 8 PM to 9 AM. It’s really gay. Oh, yeah. I finally took a few pictures of my brother’s motorcycle, but I still have to post them. It’s going to be harder for me to post pictures from now on because of the whole internet thing… I don’t want to explain the whole thing. It’s somewhat complicated.

I should probably start up on writing again, too. A two day break is long enough. But it’s easier to say than to do, sadly. =/

Alright. Well, here’s another poem. It’s one of the ones I wrote Thursday night. I consider this… one of the better ones… I guess… lol. I think it’s also significant how this is actually what happened to me–not only in the way of… between people… but in the way of how I actually caught a firefly and it did these things…

Firefly

I keep you from escaping,
but I finally let you go.
You hover in the air above me
just out of my short reach.
You flicker your light in joy
to celebrate independence,
to celebrate celebracy,
but you stay there hovering,
considering tame,
and then you fly away,
away from me.
…At least you considered.

One more thing to mention before I go on with Hellboy 2: the whole thing I wrote about in previous posts with the Frets on Fire music being available on my TheLinkUp account… yeah… It’s not going to be available once August arrives because the site’s shutting down. If you still want a copy of the music after the site shuts down, just send me an e-mail or something. My e-mail’s arnoldkao@comcast.net or arnoldkao@gmail.com. If you let me choose which one you send the message to, I choose my comcast account because my brother also blocked gmail on my computer. =/

Okay. Hellboy 2. It was… not as good as people seem to say it is. Yeah. My friend Tony told me about how it was amazing and probably a lot better than Hancock, which he hasn’t seen yet, but it’s arguable. I would agree that Hellboy 2 was a lot better directed than Hancock, but Hancock has a much better idea behind it. Its storyline is also a lot better too, although I admit it’s kind of cliche. The thing with Hellboy 2 is that the acting is pretty weak. It was tolerable for most of the movie, but for other parts, the acting was just terrible. Another thing I really disliked about the movie was the beginning, where everything was too Universal Studios-y. I don’t really know how to explain it… It was just too much like one of those shows you’d see in Universal Studios Florida where the sound is altered so that you get a sense of direction and so that you feel more enveloped into the setting of the movie, which I find really dumb. I hate how they put that in the movie. The first 10-20 minutes of the movie were just plain bad in the beginning in general, actually. There was no point to it. It was just a horrible attempt at building the characters. Also, the special effects were impressive for most of the movie, but there were definitely parts where it just sucked. The most prominent example to me of where it sucked is when Liz has the fire about her. In the first Hellboy, it was always really cool when she did that kind of stuff, although the acting when she did it was cheesy. In the second Hellboy, however, the fire looks really fake. I also noticed right off the bat that the movie people decided to change the color of Liz’s fire from a really cool blue in the first Hellboy to a realistic orange in the second. I appreciate their adherence to realism, but it just looks really crappy. I also think that Hellboy 2 has good directing, although not exemplary, but the plot and storyline is just dumb. Really. My friend Tony also hinted at how the Hellboy 2 is pretty emotional by criticizing Hancock for its failed attempts at being emotional. Yeah, Hellboy 2 was kind of emotional, but it’s not that great. I liked Hancock more because the idea behind it was actually good. Hellboy 2’s emotion is just weak to begin with, and it’s made even worse by rushed lines in the movie, which I would blame the actors and actresses for. I think the main idea that Hellboy 2 was trying to convey is that love is selfish. It’s admirable, but it wasn’t conveyed all that well. I also took note while watching the movie how Liz decides to want Hellboy to be revived knowing that he would eventually bring destruction upon the world and especially her. That was kind of emotional, but again, it could’ve been better. It also brought to my attention that this really hints at a third installment of Hellboy. In my opinion, there really shouldn’t have been a second to begin with… or even a first, for that matter. I thought that maybe this destruction that was brought up might have actually happened at the end of the movie, but it didn’t. So, yeah. Hellboy 3… fun. =/ Okay, so… On to the pros of Hellboy 2. It was pretty damn funny at parts. Actually, there was minor humor, or maybe just weak humor, throughout the movie, and then some… two hilarious scenes, one being when Hellboy gets owned by lockers and the other when Hellboy and Abe get really drunk. I really appreciate the humor because it sort of makes up for the weak plot. Also, the few fight scenes there are in the movie are pretty good. The best ones are with Prince Nuada, the pale elf guy that looks really demented. By the way, Nuala, Nuada’s sister is quite pretty. I wouldn’t say hot because… you know, she’s really pale… but, yeah. I don’t know. I think there’s something with Elves that really appeals to me. lol. Weird, right? Yeah. Anyways… >.> When Nuada fights or practices fighting, it’s pretty damn awesome. Those parts are extremely well choreographed and directed. They’re made even better by the fact that Nuada’s dirk is fuggin magical. I mean, wow. It’s fuggin epic, for lack of a better word. His dagger fuggin extends into a spear, and when the tip broke off in one scene, it GREW BACK. HOW FUCKING AWESOME IS THAT? DAMN! The special effects for the dirk are impressive. I realize that I’m just using the same words over and over again, but I blame my lack of a thesaurus, which I usually find on the internet because I hate flipping through extremely thick books. But I think I would judge the characters in this sequel to be just as well (or as badly) developed as in the first Hellboy movie. I liked the Myers guy in the first movie. I actually felt bad for him, but they replaced him in Hellboy 2, sadly. =/ They replaced him with some German guy, who’s an interesting and funny character, but I don’t know. I guess I was looking more for something… less light. I think I’ve covered everything… weak acting, fair directing, good special effects, funny, captivating action scenes, bad storyline… yeah. That’s my opinion of Hellboy 2. It didn’t look all that great to begin with. I saw that it received an 8.5/10 user rating on imdb.com, but I highly disagree with that. I’d give something more like a 6 or 6.5, which still isn’t all that bad, really. I guess I’m just trying to say that unless you have no other choice, try to avoid this movie. The action, funny scenes, and directing don’t compensate for the weak points.

Okay. That’s it for now. =)

Wait, nevermind. Here are the pictures of my brother’s motorcycle. =) I would’ve taken them in more natural light without flash, but it was nighttime, and without flash, everything just looks blurry for some reason. So, yeah. Sorry. =P I generally like pictures more when they don’t have flash. Flash is especially annoying in these pictures when the reflectors on the motorcycle do what they’re supposed to. =/

And then an old picture of me and a few of my friends. lol. embarassing. I said I’d post this picture a while ago… But, yeah. My friend (bottom middle) and I (bottom left) looks related in this photo. It’s pretty funny… and scary… lol. Sorry for the crappy quality… The original photo, which I scanned, is wallet-sized, so… yeah… =/

Okay. NOW I’m done. =)

~ by Arnold Kao on July 14, 2008.