A funny thing happened to me on the way to the anal probing during my last alien abduction...

For about a week now, I've been going to bed early, and getting up early. For instance, last night I went to bed shortly after 7:00pm. I woke up around 4:00am, and finally got up around 5:00am. The previous night I went to bed at 11:00pm and got up at 5:30am. The night before, I went to bed at 8:00pm and got up at 4:00am. Something about all this just doesn't seem right.

It was bizarre, but cool, sort of. Planet of the Apes remains Tim Burton's worst film.

If the RIAA wants to hurt MP3 abuse, one industry they should go after is the video game industry.

Video Game companies have these futile copy-protection schemes that require the original CD to be in your CD-ROM drive, even though the entire game (cinematics included for no good reason) has been copied to your hard drive. The RIAA should make them leave out that kind of copy protection. It's not like it actually helps. Cracks are readily available and easy to find for anyone who wants to pirate the game. For those of us who have legitimate copies, it just means we now have to crack our legitimate install if we want to listen to CDs while playing our games. Of course, the alternative is to rip our CDs, encode them to MP3, and listen to our MP3 playlists in the background. Of course, rather than buying a CD, ripping it, and encoding MP3s, it would be easier just to download them off the net. In essence, copy protecting video games in such a way that requires the CD in the drive, ultimately promotes music piracy.

Now, for their next target, they should choose the organization that says it's good to release CDs that half the CD-listening populous cannot listen to on their preferred CD players or computers. I'm talking, of course, about the RIAA. People buy the CD, can't play it, return it, then go online and download the MP3s. Honestly, those copy protections don't work. The full album is on the net before it's released in stores, so what's the point? All you're doing is screwing over the laymen who want to rip their own legitimate CDs so they can listen to them while playing video games. Anyone with a higher purpose can easily find out how to get around copy protection.

To summarize my point, the RIAA is a bunch of self-fucking morons. If they want to find out why record sales are low, maybe they should stop doing stuff for a while, then see what happens. Honestly, there's people out there who think that if they buy a CD and try to play it on anything, they're going to get arrested. Well, it's not like there's any new major-label music worth buying, anyway. You pretty much have to muck through the independant industry if you want to find anything good.

The server hosting the forum died. This happened a while ago. It actually choked quite frequently, but then it finally died. I don't plan on putting up a new server any time soon, seeing as the forum very rarely saw any use (I only get, what, 100-200 people visiting this site a week). One day, however, the forums will be back, just not any time soon.

Maybe it had something to do with Anime USA, but this site's activity peaked this past November. The week after Anime USA saw the most activity. Odd, I thought it would have been the week before.

It's been out for a few weeks now, but I just went to see "The Butterfly Effect" yesterday. It stars Ashton Kutcher, who, before this movie, had most people convinced he was a one-trick pony (the dumb-guy role). He actually pulled off a very good role in this movie, playing a believable character. That's actually an aspect most people overlook when tallying acting ability: Is the character believable? Yes, there was an aspect about the character that isn't, but that aspect is what makes the movie, so it would be kind of hard to do without it.

The beginning of the movie was very creepy. In fact, if the whole movie had held the path of the beginning, it would have been the creepiest movie I'd ever seen. However, as the movie progresses, it pretty well decreepifies (new word, make a note) the beginning... to some small extent. The rest of the movie is a trip. I won't spoil it for you, but trust me, it messes with your head.

I think the morals of the story will be lost on most people. Yeah, there's several morals. For instance: You can't have it all. The ending was different than what you'd expect from a Hollywood production. I like how they handled the ending. Sometimes movies like this will have a good build-up and let you down on the ending to satisfy what Hollywood perceives as a good ending, but this movie follows through with how it has built up.

All in all, I think it was a very good movie. I recommend you see it. They have it listed as "Thriller" on Hollywood.com, but I'm guessing they just watched the first five mintues and labeled it as they saw fit. It was hardly what I would consider a "Thriller". Then again, I don't know what genre I would tack on to it. Maybe thriller is as good as any. It's one of those movies that makes you wonder why people bother classifying movies anymore.

I returned from Katsucon Sunday. I'm not going to write a full report on this Katsucon (I haven't even finished the one for Anime USA from last year, which I had to start over twice). I'm going to write a summary, though, right here.

Friday saw me at the Anime USA table a good portion of the afternoon. I got flyers printed, dropped them off at the table, then sat around. Between that and dinner, I don't remember anything. We ate dinner at this closet-sized Italian restaurant that, despite their size, managed to be incredibly slow. I guess that's just the way they like to do it. Friday night's dinner was pretty much the last I saw of my girlfriend. She avoided me the rest of the convention. "Why," you ask? I don't know yet.

At some point, I was wandering around with Jack (you remember Jack, the guy who makes me change his name in my reports). He had his video camera. Good thing, too, because I saw the girl I talked to on Cosplay.com about the Devil Belldandy costume. She was wearing the Devil Belldandy costume. It was red, like I suggested. I got a little misty eyed when I saw it. Saurabh took video of her. I'm very glad he took video and not a still picture, because apparently she's not very photogenic. Every picture I've seen of her so far has been bad. I don't mean it added 50 pounds or anything, but she looked way better than she does in those pictures. I've got video to prove it. I'm not hosting it, though.

Friday night was a blast. I met this guy named John, who had come to the convention alone, and didn't know anyone. I introduced him to a few of my social groups, and he got drunk. There was a lot of getting drunk that night. Two guys got a little too drunk. One was showing off his concealed weapon permit, since his gun was actually in his car, and the other wondered why the "race" of women hated him. We thought he might be suicidal, but he was too annoying to offer pity to.

Friday night also saw the Pirate dance, which was restricted to 80's music. Despite all my experience with DDR, I still can't dance, and I still have no rhythm. Also, having my shitty digital camera in my trench coat pocket didn't really help. All the pictures I took with that thing had angry motion blur. I'm not going to bother with it ever again. Such a waste. I'm sure this summary is out of order now. I know I met John after the dance. Oh well.

Tripp, Venus, John and I were hanging out together most of the night. Kat left early (shortly after midnight, I think). We went out to a diner to have breakfast (it was around 5:00am). Before that, I saw &rew under the escalator on the basement doing his DJ thing. It was cool to watch him spin, doing the real-time mixing.

That's all I remember about Friday.

Saturday, I woke up at 10:30am and made sure the Anime USA table was okay, then went back to bed. Unfortunately, this meant I missed all the Cosplay.com photo shoots. I was looking forward to those. I woke up aroung 4:00pm. I saw John briefly. Apparently, he never went to bed. He had been up the whole time. Later that night, when I got back to my room, he had left me a message about having to leave early due to a family emergency. I was really glad I bothered to take the time to figure out the voicemail feature.

Saturdays are never as good as Fridays. The convention was really crowded. It's harder to find people that way. I wandered around some, hung out at the Anime USA table some. I'm not sure much of what happened. Christian and either Keith or Bob (or both) went out to dinner, and I wish I had gone with them, because I missed dinner as a result. Everyone I saw had already eaten. I saw Matt, Justin, Siham, and some random other people outside the hotel when I was admiring a ramen pyramid, but when I got out there, only one of the random people was still there. I helped her avoid the cold by standing between the wind source and her. I figured, I was the one wearing the trench coat, it was only right.

I spent a good amount of time hanging out with Christian and company. I remember much sitting around. Later, Christian and I went to the MegaTokyo panel. That's always fun.

Later that night, some of us were hanging out in the lobby. I got talk to Kat's husband for the first time. I suggested a threesome between him, me, and Shawn. He was all for it. Then Kat wouldn't let me talk to him again. She let him talk to Venus, and he asked her to come home with Kat so they could have a threesome. I tell you, that's my kind of guy. Of course, he didn't know that Venus is really hot, but you can pretty much guess that from her name.

I stayed up very late again hanging out with Clint and some of his friends. We got kicked out of the lobby for cleaning, and went down to the basement where there were some couches. I went to bed around 6:00am, I think.

Sunday, got up at 10:30am. Showered, went to Anime USA table, hung out there for a while. Went upstairs, hung out with Clint and company some, then we were evacuated from the hotel. Firemen, ambulances, police were all there. After about 15 minutes out in the cold, I decided I didn't want to wait around for my impending doom, and went home. I found out later that it was all due to a bag of baking soda found in an elevator, and that they let everyone back in the hotel shortly after I left (probably about 5 minutes after I was gone). I wish I had stayed.

Throughout the con, I saw about five or six ambulances, of which two or three were Sunday afternoon. I hear a lot of people got sick. The dry air had done a number on me, and I'm still recovering from that. There was a lot more to the convention, but I either don't remember it or don't want to mention it. It was fun, but I spent a good amount of time worried about a few things. I hope everything turns out okay. Knowing my life, it won't. At least I made a new friend.

As panic sets in
And paranoia begins
Preparations incomplete
Still I rest in my seat
Must be calm, must be strong
Alone, but not for long
Time seems to run slow
Katsucon is tomorrow.