May 16, 2007

Gas Prices and Commercials?

I saw a strange thing, it was a commericial for gasoline! My beef with that is that you don't usually see ad campaigns for things you actually need. I don't see how ads for gas are going to make people buy more gas, so it might just be a waste of money to have said adverts. How can they afford a useless--Ohh... that's how...

Well, yesterday was supposed to be the gas boycott day. I wonder if anything happened. Hmm... It's a sad thing because gas is one of those things that you don't have much choice... you sorta have to buy it.

Because things can be spread out, they are. Because they are, you need a car. Most things are far. Hardy har har.

In other countries lots of people ride bikes (in Southeast Asian Countries), or walk (European Cities), because the way their towns are set up. Especially here on the West Coast of America, things are really sprawled out. We have wide open spaces.

So next time I go by a gas station I'll look and see if the prices are down. Soon, I'll be getting a car, and then really paying the money.

For now, I'm riding the bus home, and someone on the bus noted that regular gas prices are now more than diesel, and that diesel used to be more expensive than gas. Maybe the next step for me is to get a diesel motorcycle. If they don't exist... well that's why there are customs.

May 12, 2007

The Dubbing Game

I've heard of people saying it is like a show that used to run called "Mystery Science Theater." Being that I've never seen the show, save for a few times I saw the last minute of it once, I can't say for sure if it is. Anyway, there's a game that my dad and I play where we watch TV with the volume all the way down and we talk for the characters.

There's a lot of times where it works out weird like my dad will talk for a character when the character's lips aren't moving, then my character's lips will move and I'll say:

"It's weird how I can I hear you and you're lips aren't moving."



"I'm honing my telepathy skills."



"Well, it's starting to scare me but look! I'm talking and my lips aren't moving either. This skill could come in handy."


What's funny is imagining how different our story is from what is actually going on in the TV show. In one show, which featured people from different jobs sitting at a desk talking about politics, the topic we dubbed over it seemed to be a mix of how long you have to work in order to be allowed to hold a fountain pen (each of the members of the show seemed to be holding a pen and yet none of them ever wrote) and the topic became the discussion of the question: "What is the topic?"

Funny things will happen where people on the screen will continue to talk longer than you expect. What I try to do is end what someone says with a question for the other to answer, but when the person keeps talking I might end up rambling what the question is for a few minutes.

The last time we did the dubbing game, we turned a press conference into a discussion about nothing, one time we made a speech at a library into a rap, and sitcoms are always fun because you are trying to make sense out of the whole thing.

We never tried dubbing an entire movie on DVD though, because that would be exhausting. We ended up trying that, and it worked out good. The criteria I had for the movie is that it couldn't be too dramatic, and for our purposes "Monsters, Inc" seemed like a good choice.

And it was. In our story, the one-eyed Monster, Mike, was on bad terms with Roz, the old paperwork lady, because he had entered a cake contest and won with a cake that was similar to a recipe of Roz's. The monsters were going into the doors to get cash donations, and clothing donations were completely unacceptable, which is why they freak out over a sock. The toddler was an Alien to the Monster's world who came in peace, disguised as the young form of their species to appear to be peaceful, but when the other monsters acted hostile toward her, it was fun making her say "I come in peace, but now my planet will annihilate you!" The scream-sucker that the Chameleon-like monster developed became a device that forced people to play a musical instrument. It was fun saying "You will now play the saxophone!"

"But I don't want to play the saxophone!"

"Don't make her play the saxophone!"



"Fine, put in Clarinet mode, muwahahahaha!"



This gives me an idea for a future blog post compiled of funny quotes that don't make sense out of context... that would be one of them.

May 11, 2007

Internet gets Annoying

I'm getting tired of the internet. It's gets kinda tiring when you've read an email (surprisingly only one copy) about boycotting gas on May 15, and you just want to do a blog search for the subject line of that email because you're interested in what blogs might say about it so that you can do a blog post little link-fest to a bunch of them and then you click on one of them with a new angle on the thing, read it and leave a comment, and then you click on another one and it ends up being pornographic because even though you set your Google preferences to include SafeSearch by default and for no good reason it doesn't carry over to Google BlogSearch.

So basically, I'm tired of all that coming up. It used to be fun to just peruse around, but because of the chance of that scenario happening, it's not worth it. From now on, I'm pretty much just sticking to all the stuff in my feedreader, email, and friends' sites. Really, that's what most people stick to isn't it? But what about school projects? My school subscribes to these services so I'd go to online databases.

So you know what that means? Any comments that link to something like a Blogger profile that I don't know, get deleted. I'm not even going to check anymore, because of the chance that it will be something gross, it's not worth it.

But don't worry, my bloggings will be in a better mood later... that is if I think it's worth it.

Seriously, right now, I could be getting my writings out in the form of scholarship essay contests, and there's a chance that I'll get well-needed money for school out of that. The chance of this right here helping me? Zero.

Well, the help from this blog comes in the form of catharsis. Also, I can just be like BLAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! randomly. I don't know if that would help in any essay contests.

Should I Start a New Blog?

Something I'm considering is just starting a new blog. Starting... "afresh." You see, any chance I get, I love changing an adjective into a noun by adding an "a", and also I've become a lot better at blogging. Really, this blog right here was my very first blog, (well sort of) and it went bye-bye when I got into the Halo 2 community scene... after saying something and interacting in a community and getting replies, I pretty much got all I had to say "out", there was no need for a blog, but I still blogged a little about Halo 2 (http://sdtektivh2.blogspot.com)

Maybe it is time for an old blog to be an old blog.

Maybe I should just redo this one?

I don't know if I'm going to stick with the name "SDtektiv." "SDtektiv" is just a name I use online. The idea of it was so that I could be under the protection of being anonymous--I could be more "real" since it isn't my real name. If you're randomly stumbling across this you're probably like, "what's the big deal?"

I've gotten to the point that a good few people know of "SDtektiv", and I have to reluctantly admit that I care a little about the reputation of "SDtektiv". I think that I would benefit from shedding this name and all the stuff I said under this name and starting "a-pristine." (Okay, so you can't add "a" to just any adjective.)

If I ever became a rapper, I'm not sure if I'd want to use the name "SDtektiv." If I did that, then my real self would be associated with it and I'd have to account for all the stuff I've said in my blog from years ago. That stuff comes back to haunt you. I mean, my opinions are going to change, and what I said before I wouldn't neccessarily agree with or the way I said it. Okay, maybe that wouldn't be too bad, but what if I run for President after that? I am not planning on it, but there's always the chance.

If I ran for President, I'd have to account for everything short of how I stole someone's fruit cup in the third grade. I don't remember if I did, and that's the point!

I want to switch to something else. And if I do, then the new blog can't just be a reinvention of this one, because the URL of this blog has "SDtektiv" in it. And you simply cannot change the URL of a blog. You can, but it's a bad choice. There are links to this URL that I have put out there, in emails to friends and in forums... this URL would have some value and so evil spammers would take over the old URL if I ever changed this URL. And since those links are out there, people would think it was my blog.

I've heard that WordPress is really good, but I did try it once before and was confused by it, and I do like Blogger.

Back to the name thing. Something I was considering was using my real name. But soon we'd run into problems. If I used my real name in my blog, I'd still be using my old email address, and I'd still want to comment on the same peoples' blogs and have those comments link to the new blog. If I commented under my real name, the other people wouldn't know that it was me, because in that sense my moniker "SDtektiv" is almost more real than my real name, as all the shared experiences occured under this name.

Also there is the fact that some people might be more open to me if I type under a different name because then it wouldn't be hard for them to see through the opinions they have of SDtektiv, since I wouldn't be typing as SDtektiv.

I think I'm overcomplicating things.