I am driving back home after watching The Dark Knight. It was pretty good, not the greatest movie of all time, but pretty dang good. Like a 4/5 star rating on facebook.

Anyway, I went to see the movie with my mom, my aunt, and a guy, Tom, whom I work with. He's pretty cool. So I dropped Tom off and was heading back up home when mom is doing the usual radio station surf. As she's scanning, I hear these words: And he said one word to me and that was... then my mom changed the station. I beg her to change it back. Of course I knew that song. I'm sure she knew that song from that much as well.

Things come flooding back to an almost haunting level. There I am, senior year of high school, sitting at the computer in the library, trying to look up something meaningful to fill my senior quote box. At first, I had wanted to do Freebird, but that seemed a little cliche. Then I wanted to do a line from Incubus, but I figured somebody else would use it as well (and they did). So there I am trying to figure out what to put down when it hits me. You can't always get what you want. Yes. Of course. I look up the whole lyrics, and pen in as much as I could. This song has never been my favorite, nor is it one I listen to all that often, yet I find this connection with it like no other song.

Back in the car, my mom starts talking about how it was her favorite song from the time she was ten til she was thirteen (before she discovered the Eagles :P), and I just felt this great connection with her that I hadn't felt in a while, not since I got my Red Cross blood donor card and found out I have the same blood type as her. (O Positive- the most common- but still, pretty significant to me.) I just wish I could feel that kind of connection with somebody else.

Brent made me buy a book. You would have, too, with his powers of persuasion. I haven't read it yet, and a part of me doesn't want to read it. Not to prove him wrong, but to prove myself wrong. Things will happen in good time. I honestly still have faith in that, and if I could pat myself on the back four years ago for choosing that quote, I totally would. I don't know if I would've picked that quote this time around, and it makes me wonder. Did I get into MIT just because I was Hispanic? Sometimes I think so. They way they told me to my face (in more so many words) that there was no possible way I could afford to go there was the most betrayed I have ever felt. But now I feel like I've betrayed myself, my beliefs, who I am. Maybe it's just that I'm tired at 1 in the morning and need some sleep. I don't know. It just feels like this is a massive chess game and now I'm down to hardly any options. I need to think about this. Hard.

It's Been Awhile

It's become evident to me that I don't post as often as I used to. And that's how things go, they eb and they flow. But maybe it's just me- on the Nintendo Poll Channel, they asked whether blogging would gain or lose popularity in the upcoming year. I said it would lose popularity, but I was a minority.

School has been hectic this week. We're branching out into multiple projects. I work on one thing. Tom focuses on another. Alex does an awful good job working on both. He deserves Fridays off with the 8-5 days he puts in. Our report is now up to 45 pages, which sounds like a lot, but in a sense it isn't. This is a massive project for three people to work on. Normally they only let one person work with a professor on a project, and those peoples' papers tend to run 12-20 pages, so we're relatively on track, but I would honestly be surprised if we stayed below 60. There are 4 weeks left out of 11. It's nearing crunch time. Decide what we want to do and no lallygagging.

I am highly impressed that "Batman" is already in my cell phone directory. Most people I know have seen it already, and none of them have disliked it, which says a lot. I've been going to a lot of summer movies myself. A brief recap of the movies I remember (in no particular order, from May 'til now):

WALL-E. JUST. GO. SEE. IT.

Iron Man- good, but not my cup of tea.

Hulk- I thought it was good.

Speed Racer- I like flashy things.

The Happening- a letdown, but I've convinced myself that there's something deeper going on

Get Smart- Funny.

Kung Fu Panda- Surprise of the Summer. Funny, awesome.

Wanted- Action-packed. Lots of action. Didn't even know it was based on a graphic novel when it came out.

Indiana Jones- Why?

Meet Dave- yea, I saw it. Not as horrible as people make it sound, though.

Narnia 2- Never saw the first. Makes me want to.

I went to Brent's place on Friday to have an old-school Super Metroid side-by-side battle. Brent's got a way cooler path, using a lot more tricks, but I somehow managed to eek out a faster time by 1 minute. (1:20 (99%) to 1:19 (100%). It was a silly missile Brent missed- we didn't think too much about it. I could've easily done the same thing.) We then watched the current world record online. They can do it in 0:55. Seriously.

Went bowling with Zach on Saturday. That was interesting, I won a dollar playing this new colored-pins game they got at Fiesta Lane. I managed to leave up the two non-white pins during a throw, and that earned me a buck. I somehow beat Zach in 2 of three games, but he won overall with a higher series score. We met some interesting folk that we got paired up with. Never seen a happier, guy wearing a pink Shamu t-shirt. And he was sober. Zach and I had one beer each. But that was it. I miss going bowling with everybody like I did in high school. And if you went to that bowling party I arranged via facebook that first December after we graduated, it was cool. Like 30 people came. I miss some of my friends from high school, but I've made new friends, and remade friends with people from before, so it all works out.

Saw WALL-E with Pat and his friends Ben and Maxine. For all of us it was the second time. There was an annoying kid sitting next to me talking to his grandpa, all in Spanish. I found it interesting the things that kid picked up and what else he didn't. None of the other guys knew of the "twist" after the credits. Kinda changes things a bit, depending on how you look at it. But I was glad to see WALL-E again. It is just such a wonderful movie. It is able to get a message across with perhaps the least dialogue of any Disney movie. Not sure what to make of that.

Life is happening. I wish I could get out more, but even my facebook personality test says I'm no extrovert. It describes me almost to a tee. It's not that I'm agoraphobic, I just never have fun when there are a bazillion people around, especially if they're all drunk. Me playing with Brent, that's fun. Me and Zach bowling, that's fun, albeit with a couple of strangers. Watching a film with Pat and company, fun, despite some Spanish chatter. Going to a club, trying to hook up with somebody whose voice you can barely hear over the noise they're blaring that's supposedly music, not fun. There's no way I can get into the mood if everybody else is doing the exact same thing. I don't run that way. Like the old music video for Switchfoot's "Dare You to Move" (not the beach one) everybody is running in one direction, except for one guy. What he's running to, or away from, we never know. But I loved that video. It was simple, not flashy, and got to the point while playing an awesome song. I don't run the same pathways as everybody else. Never have. Hopefully never will.

I have no idea what I'm doing for grad school.

Identity Crisis

So I went with my cousin Tony to a Smash Bros tournament they had at the mall. He had signed us up, paid the entry fee and everything. The big prize is a 26" LCD TV. But I think my cousin wanted to play more because he wanted a decent challenge at Smash Bros. None of his other friends play it all that much, or well, and I'm decent at it but by no means awesome. He beats me 9 times out of 10, so it always feels a little lopsided. But lately we've been practicing a couple nights after he gets home from work. I had low expectations of myself in this tournament, just hoping to make it to the second round, and hoping Tony would go far. Maybe not the finals, but close.

I got paired up with a guy who used Snake. I was Luigi, my standard. He won the first match. I won the second. He won the third and final. Poo. I'm out. I actually got excited and into the battle at the end, and I could feel an adrenaline rush that I frankly hadn't felt in a long time. I had a slight chance of possibly winning, but alas, not so. Some little kid behind me was making commentary on EVERY LITTLE DETAIL. It was annoying. But he was just surprised that Snake wasn't totally whooping my butt, so I took it as a compliment. Naturally, I was bummed that I lost, and Tony was too because he paid 10 bucks for me to get in. But it got me thinking.

What the fuck am I doing? Here I am at a thing where the average age of the contestants was probably around 18. Ages went from some 10 year old kids to a lot of high schoolers up to one guy who brought his wife and son to the tourney, so I'm guessing 30ish. Plus there were some spectators, and the rules made it blatant to maintain a friendly demeanor so it was oriented towards everyone. We are grown adults playing video games, beating the crap out of 12 year olds on screen. Part of me found it quite upsetting.

Oh, and Tony made it to the 3rd or 4th round. Right before the top 16. His fight was near the end of the round after most everyone else had played, so I like to think of it as he made top 20. Brent's friend Sean was there too as a referee, making sure all goes well. With 100 people signed up, it was pretty chaotic.

But I think fate had it in for Tony from the start. He brought his Gamecube controller from home, but when it came time to fight, he couldn't jump! He could move up on the character select screen, but during the fight it wouldn't work. The ref saw this and was able to get Tony a temporary controller. He then bought a 3rd party controller from the store for the rest of the matches. It was crap. The rubbery part on the analog stick fell off and it hurt his thumb. He tried his old controller on a different Wii during some downtime, and that one wouldn't work either. And yet, when we got home, IT WORKED PERFECTLY FINE! Turns out some newer Wiis have a hardware issue with Gamecube controllers. I used my Wii remote, and most everybody else used a 3rd party Gamecube controller or Wii remote to play, so this might've been a lone incident. But yeah, Tony was upset. Not only did he have to buy a crappy controller, but there was nothing wrong with his in the first place, so he feels he couldn't give 100%. He said with all this bad karma that this may be the last tournament he go to.

But it's got me thinking. I mean, we are a part of a generation where video games are almost as natural as TV. I've had my NES since I was 3. I bought my Super NES with my allowance money. I won my Wii in a Guitar Hero tournament at school. It's been a part of my life. Do I have to outgrow video games? I admit, I have no interest to play adult type games like GTA4, Halo, etc. (though I did like beating up the hookers in GTA3 after they performed their "services," but that was back in high school). I don't know, sometimes, a lot of times, most of the time I feel like a kid stuck inside a large body. Like I never grew up. And in that sense it feels like I missed out on a lot of things. Getting my license at 16. Dates. Senior prom. I think I was just about the same kid when I graduated from high school as I was when I stared high school. It feels like there was some benchmark somewhere that says "You're an adult now" that I totally missed. And it really bums me out.

I still don't wear perfume (oh, I'm sorry, body spray) to impress women. I've never been on a real date with a girl before. I've never been on A date with a girl before. I still don't get what makes drinking alcohol so awesome. There are stuffed animals scattered around my room. I don't know what I'd do without my mother. I'm too goddamn afraid to step out into the world. So I hide. In my room, playing Guitar Hero, to forget that I should be out on Friday nights, playing poker with the guys from work or meeting people at a club or something. I just don't get it. I don't get me.

Double Take

Ok, so perhaps my initial reaction to Shinedown was a bit hasty. It really is a good album. Lots of good songs, just not a whole lot of "awesome" songs that you wouldn't mind playing over multiple times. "Devouor" and "Second Chance" are probably my favorite tracks. But they're all good.

Bought a couple of CDs at the UofA bookstore the other day. I mean, how can you turn down a 75% sale? Plus I was one of few people whoo actually did buy albums from the Replay store before they turned it into the salad shop. Brief summary of purchases:

1. The Best of Fuel. Looks like it's up to '05. They are still a band, 'cept now they have a new lead singer, from which I think is a good ensemble.

Top tracks: "Bad Day", "Hemorrhage", "Falls on Me"

Down points: End songs not as potent. And where is "A Million Miles"?

2. Dishwalla's self-titled album. Want to say '05.

Top tracks: "Collide"

Down points: The whole thing is a little medioccre. I should go relisten to it.

3. Switchfoot- Nothing is Sound. Again, I think '05 ish. Where was I in '05? Oh yeah, starting college and trying to be cool. Somehow CD buying was not on the top of my list.

Top tracks: "The blues", "The Shadow Proves the Sunshine", "Stars"

Down points- Apparently I can't copy it at all onto my comp. Copyright stuff they put on it. I haven't actually tried yet, though...

***

Had a pretty good 4th of July. Pretty chill, except when I had my butt handed to me by a friend of Brent's. He's good. Well, at least I still have Guitar Hero. Plus it was frikkin' awesome when Brent and I tied at Super Metroid, despite both of us dying once. Stupid fish. We both had a time of 1:29. Not a best for either of us, but still pretty darn good. I mean I wouldn't have even started these speed runs if it weren't for Brent, so it was pretty good.

As we headed back to his apartment, Brent started getting a little philosophical on me. I admit, I try not to think too much about stuff, but that's most certainly a bad thing. We started talking about stuff like freedom. I'm pretty sure I'm afraid to try stuff (Saying 'no' to my parents, letting the pieces go and see how they fall, etc.) because I'm more afraid of the potential consequences. An idea passes into my head, and a bazillion what if's fly in, too. That's just how I've always thought. I am a pessimist, after all.

I wrote this short story-ish thing in January of '07 called The Wolf and the Eagle. Brent is the eagle. Talking with him last night reminded me of it. I think it still holds. Um, it's on the links. Oh no, I've said too much. I haven't said enough. That's even where my profile quote comes from.

***

It's been two years today since my nana passed away. God, I still miss her. Went to church today, and in a cruel twist of fate, they started playing one of the hymns that annoyed her (they played it A LOT at our old church), so that was rather peculiar.

The A/C is broken at our house. The landlord is in San Diego for who knows how long. Oh yeah, living it up in Oro Valley.

We have our official midterm report due tomorrow for our research project. Gonna be a stressful day. Dave then wants to talk to us on an individual basis about our personal aspects of the project. Not sure what I'll say. The guys are cool. Dave is cool. This project is becoming ever cooler. I just wish I understood the programming a little more. Sure, I can make graphs on MATLAB, and that's useful and all, but I feel like I should be working more on the hardcore stuff.