Blather, rinse, repeat

hyenarave, you showed me the trailer for the new CG film based after Resident Evil 4 with Leon Kennedy and I fangirled and wondered when it was coming out.

Guess what? IT'S ALREADY OUT IN JAPAN. And according to the Wikipedia entry, it will be "coming to DVD and Blu-ray in North America on December 30, 2008."

O_O

Whoop whoop!

Could this possibly be for real? If so, it's a long time till even any news of a possible release date but still. Maybe?




ETA!

Bah! It is a chopped up version of a really decent fan video called The Dark Sage.

The first one is much cooler! It was done by one dude, one John Curran. Bravo. Now why would someone steal it and chop it up? >_

Played Resident Evil 4? Because THIS RULES.



Stolen from skitty_kitty.

In other news, today was a fantastic day. More later. ^_^

A little fanpoodling I had to do when I saw the scenes from Crisis Core. I can't believe how far the animation has come over the years, and even though nothing compares to the original FFVII, this stuff is beautiful. I do hope they remake FFVII one day; it won't take away from the original, because we will always have the original. Square Enix can keep milking this particular cow for all I care. I love it. :D The music is Vanessa Mae's "Storm."




For those who aren't familiar with any of this, basically what I was doing in the video was juxtaposing the old stuff with the new. The first game was just a bunch of badly translated polygons, but with faceted characters and a twisty, turny story that took me three games to finally understand backwards and forwards. It seems that if you didn't play VII first, before all the cool graphics came out, then chances are you aren't going to want to and probably won't get the beauty of it anyway.

The new graphics come from follow-up games and one huge movie. Those games and the movie had flashback sequences that beautifully animated parts we'd only seen in block graphics, finally giving it the visual emotion and depth we always knew was there. Why, I'd sit there playing the game and say, "I wish they'd render this scene so we could all see the expressions."

And Cloud Strife wasn't a huge jerk or a loser: he was a kid who spent his formative years being tormented and experimented on in a lab, and for his troubles got to watch his best friend get murdered and therefore was mentally destroyed, emotionally dead and completely insane through the duration of the game. ♥

And the Turks were hot. :D

Wow, I feel so vindicated!

Questions about the games/movies? Just ask. ^_^

And because I don't really take it too seriously... ( Go on, click. It's funny, I promise. )

That is Jo-chan laughing along with me in the background and admonishing Cloud to leave Aerith alone. ^_^

And more fun with names. ( Clicketywhee. )

Lulzies.

Well shoots, while I'm here.

Okay, this is at a totally different end of the topic spectrum but I realized I never told about the Hula seminar that was out here on the island last week. Lucky me, it was with Auntie Kau'i, one of my favorite people in like the entire world. I made her a lei of Long Island flowers, and she taught four Hulas. The first three were easy (for me,) and the last one was a really fast 'uli'uli number that was all crazy. I did manage to get it though. Auntie only had to beat down two girls (she dos actually hit students when we get things wrong) and fortunately neither of them were me. In fact it was great: when we turned to the back and I was in the back row, she would say, "Just watch Jules!" That made me feel awesome. ^_^

Afterwards my Mom and Dad and Jo-chan came out to where the seminar was, and we took Auntie, her Alaka'i Kanani, and Olivia out to dinner. It was awesome.

Pictures!
( Clicketywhee. )

All in all it was so lovely.

Also random: NOTE TO SELF! Never, ever, ever again take up Dad on offer to bring weedwhacker into garden. 2/3 of beautiful, old, beloved and patiently tended wisteria tree is gone. Remember: Weedwhacker sometimes = "chainsaw."

Sorry. I'm twelve.

Yesterday I was supposed to do a show in Northport, but there were reports of such severe weather that the lady who had sub-contracted me (a Hula sister of mine who has her own halau out west,) called me and said that she and one of her dancers would go instead. The storm didn't come till after I would have been home and that bummed me out. But today I went out to Northport to dance with a few ladies from her halau anyway, just to trade some Hulas. I learned three dances and taught one. The one I taught was ferociously difficult. My favorite one that I learned is a Hula Pele, and this one is done with lit torches! How fantastic! And it is chanted by one of my favorite, most beloved and incredible aunties ever, in the entire world.

We danced for about an hour straight, nonstop. It was really cool.

Now I've had a great dinner and am all showered for the evening. I might--might--be performing this weekend. It's all up in the air. I guess I have to be ready for anything.

I told an old Hula sister of mine, with whom I danced today, about what happened with my ex-job. She was amazed, horrified, outraged and all the other stuff you're supposed to typically be, and then as I was leaving she said, "I think this is such a blessing for you. You don't want to be in a job like that. you're better than that. So dance the summer away and search yourself for what you're really meant to do."

It totally flooded me with hope. I think that is exactly what I need.

In bird news, I've got my starling, Fazzi, and a beaten up little grackle named Reyes, and that's all I have so far this year. Reyes was a cat toy, so both his wings are fractured and his little head is all bruised and chewed on. He's also got something wrong with his trachea or his lungs (but I think it's his trachea.) I'm not sure what it is. I thought pneumonia or gapeworm, but he's on ABs and I wormed him, and nothing has worked. Hmm.

My friend Casse has been staying with me on and off the last few days and until she finds an apartment, but the problem is that I never know if she's going to be here or not. So I have to be ready at any moment to lock up the dogs, leave the computer, etc. It's hard for me to share my time and my space; I'm protective of it. But she's getting back on her feet so that's a great thing.

I don't know if I mentioned this or not, but I'm into two awesome things right now. I'm playing the Wii game Okami, which is beautiful (though frustrating; my WiiMote is crap and it's hard to work the Celestial Brush,) and I'm reading Sei Shonagon's The Pillow Book. For anyone who doesn' t know, that is the diary of a woman serving at court in Heian Japan a thousand years ago, almost exactly. What is amazing is that when you read her, a thousand years fall away, and she is just an extraordinary woman keeping a blog. She writes of her flirtations, flowers, the beautiful things she sees, her friends, gossip, the places she travels. She tells stories and writes poems, reviews performances she's watched, she waxes exultant over flowers, the moon, ponds, how much she loves the weather. She makes lists of things she loves and hates and misses. She complains, she bitches, she talks about stuff that pisses her off. She talks about people who are idiots and she makes fun of them. She talks about people she respects and how she admires them. She often remarks of herself that she is not attractive, but gets by on her wit and astonishingly quick and poetic mind. What is even more amazing to me, personally, than a thousand years falling away in a few pages, is how much I relate to her. It's uncanny.

She was serving a young empress called Teishi, who was 14 at the time Sei came to the court. Teishi is pretty and gentle and wise and young, where Sei is in her 30's, acerbic, wise and slightly bitter. Despite their different backgrounds and their age difference, she and Teishi and Sei become great friends. Teishi reminds me of my training sister and Sehing (meaning, she teaches me,) Raquel, who is fifteen.

Anyway, I'm just floored by Sei Shonagon everytime I open the book.

Oh, and I've been cooking a lot, too, trying different food combinations that I never thought of before. It's been pretty awesome. Actually, and tonight I have a bucket of frozen acai pulp. I don't know how good or nasty it's going to taste on its own, but I might thaw it out a bit and throw some chocolate chips in there. Mmmmm. ^_^

It's June. HURRAY.

Last night I watched We Own The Night. The first five minutes of the movie were like, "S'up, how about a little porn with your ice cream?" No, that's cool, I mean, you know. Joaquin. Then it was really good for a while and then the last half hour was so wildly implausible that I facepalmed through the entire ending. ( Cut for spoilers. ) But hey I mean, Joaquin. I'd pay to watch him drink a glass of water.

This afternoon I went out shopping with Mom to get birthday gifts for Boychild. His first birthday is next week. ^_^ We went to the Disney store (they're going with us next trip so Timmy wants him to be familiar with things he's going to see there, to build up the excitement,) and EVERYthing was on sale. I got him a ton of stuff. Also, it brought me back to buying things for SB and Jo-chan, how special they were and are, and the people they are growing up to be. It got me all nostalgic and emo.

It also made me realize that it's my turn next. I guess I should really get on that.

Oh, I also picked up this really awesome, soft long sleeved shirt with Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas on it. I'm so into soft, long-sleeved shirts these days. That and horizontal stripes, on, like, everything. I don't know why that is.

Then I got sheets for my new bed which I do not have yet. It's a twin, and it's teeny, and I'm way, way more excited about it than I should be.

Tonight is Tai Chi and tomorrow is Kung Fu. :)

Oh! Duh. Last night I also finished Resident Evil 4. I'ms o disappointed, I had no idea it was going to end when it did. The last boss fight was the easiest fight in the entire game. I think I would like to play it again, but the thought of re-doing the parts that frustrated me are making me go, "Uhh." Beating it also unlocked a bunch of other games I can play now, too. I was going to go out and get another game to play today, but then I found out that SuperSmash is coming out in about two weeks and I decided to save my money for that one.

Have to say though, RE4 was a really awesome game. I was so into it.

My brothers' and sister's mother died last week (I only found out last night,) and then this morning, my aunt died. I guess she was my aunt: she was my cousin's husband's mother. This was Boychild's other Grandma. Both were really sick for a long time so none of it was a surprise, and I wasn't personally close with my aunt, and I had never met my brothers' and sister's mother, so. But the things that came of both of these events were all kind of strange.

First of all, with Boychild and his Grandma. Well of course, as he is adopted, my cousins aren't allowed to leave him with a babysitter for the first six months. No exceptions, he has to go everywhere with at least one of them. So he has spent much of this month at his Grandma's death bed. He'll be a year old in a few weeks. His behavior is what has been so stunning. He would just lie in bed with her, petting her hair and putting her hands on his little round face. Oddly though, even before he met her (the first few days he was home, when she was in the hospital,) he was obsessive over a photograph of her. He would bypass all the other family pictures my cousins had hung up and keep putting his little hand on a picture of her.

This kid really reminds me of SB and of Jo-Chan, because they were both really deep kids like this, too.

Then, because my brothers' and sister's mother died, I called both of my brothers tonight. My eldest brother James, I have remained close with him. So talking to him, even right after the death of his mother, was just like usual. He sounded a little tired and worn out but that was it. My chilly, funny, snarky, philosophical brother. But talking to Gary was weird, as it always is on the rare occasion that I do talk to him. It's like there's so much catching up to do, it seems pointless to even catch up sometimes. You can never go into detail. It's weird to be like that with your own brother. Also it's a tad uncomfortable because I never know if he's going to start talking about the Bible again. That, I believe, had something to do with his estrangement fm most of the family. And it was his choice, actually. Still, it felt right to be talking to him.

In other news, my friend Kelly and I went for a massage today. Her aunt wants to be a masseuse and she wanted to practice so we were like "WE WILL HELP YOU PRACTICE!" ^_^ It was cool. Afterwards I came home and set up Havoc in his new cage that his auntie Kim bought for him. It looks a lot nicer than the wooden one I made for him, and it's a hell of a lot safer. He was eating bits and pieces off the wooden one. This cage is really secure and he can't eat it.

Oh, I had a really vivid scary dream last night. It started out that I was playing a video game of Stephen King's Gunslinger series. We were on a beach and my character was with Roland and we had to, obviously, get to the tower. On the beach were little structures that looked like castle ruins, only small, just barely enough to fit into. (That's straight out of one part of RE4.) Anyway, soon the video game became real and monsters were chasing us up the beach. They were the same monsters from the book, what King called "lobstrosities," lobster-like beasts that would eat you. At one point I was running across the beach and they were chasing me, and I fell, and glass and all kinds of quills were sticking to me. I wanted to stop and pull them out, but I knew I had to keep running. Then the lobstrosities turned into one giant T. rex, like the T Rexaur of Final Fantasy 8. I was running from it and it was super fast. Then Roland yelled to me that its vision was based on movement and I needed to stop running. I dodged into one of the little castle ruins and tried to keep still. I was holding my breath and its eye, which was bigger than I was, was peering in. It began to turn away. I had to take a breath and when I did, my hand moved. Its head whipped around and I thought it was going to bite me in half, but instead it kept staring. Then it started to walk away, but I could sense that it still knew I was around, even though it couldn't see me. It came around the front of the ruined stone structure and shoved its entire face into the front, putting its snout up against me. this went on for what seemed like about ten minutes in my dream while I was holding my breath, waiting for it to go away. And all I kept thinking of was the buzzing noise and vibrating that the Wii-mote does when you die violently in RE4.

O_O

And speaking of, I am still not finished with Resident Evil 4. It seems like I can't find enough time to play it, which is ridiculous, because there is plenty of time to be doing all sorts of things like practicing forms or writing or drawing, but instead, well. Anyway, that's where I am tonight and what I'm about to do. let the real world deal with itself for a while so that I can kill some more zombies.

So last night Kim came over with my Xmas gift. We had to go out to her car to retrieve it. It's a huge, steel cage for Lohi'au! Which is the most awesome thing ever, because he's actually been chewing his way through the one I constructed for him. So what's going to happen is that I'm going to put that one in the aviary (if it fits through the door!) so that I can put smaller birds in it when I have bigger birds in the actual aviary this summer. Hopefully that will work. Isn't that wonderful?

Then we watched Ratattouille (boring,) and talked the usual: work, politics, the afterlife, the world, things like that.

For the first time ever, my grapefruit tree is blooming. Not that I like grapefruits, because I don't. But orange and grapefruit blossoms are my favorite scent in the world. Nothing comes close.

( Check it out. )

I just wish you could smell it instead of just seeing it! When I was around nine I had a huge crush on my Dad's guitarist; he was sixteen. His Mom used to drive him to band practice. One time the guitarist and his Mom went to Florida and when they came back, they had bought me a bouquet of candy and orange blossom scented perfume. Perhaps the scent just reminds me of that. But even so, it's the best scent in the world. I was looking at my jasmine blossoms today (it's also blooming like crazy; that tree was an incredible investment,) and I caught a whiff of what I knew was citrus blossom. It took some searching, but I found it.

Also, lately I've been going through old clothes and getting rid of a lot of stuff, trying to reorganize. Not just with clothes, but with everything. I guess I do that every year, try to move stuff around, make some space, change things up.

Work has been all right with the exception of Fridays. They're all right now, but pretty soon Kelly won't be on anymore and then it's just going to be me and one other person. I don't want to get into it here. But it has made me a sad gamer.

GAMER! I've been playing Resident Evil 4 LIEK WHOA. I'm kind of addicted to it. It's weird, because the only other third person shooter I've played was Dirge of Cerberus. I never thought this would be my type of game, but I'm loving it. ( Cut for spoiler! ) But aside from that, good times.

My folks are in Disneyworld for the anniversary, isn't that nice for them?

You know, I feel guilty for not having updated this is frequently as I used to. I spend a lot of my time these days at BlogBelieve. I guess everyone there pretty much writes about the kind of day they had, and most of my stuff ends up over there as well. It's kind of dumb of me, because I'm sure those blogs will be gone by then and I'll wish I had held on to that blather, but it's kind of an addiction.

Well, I'm off to write a bit (a story for and about BlogBelieve! O_o ) and then work on a video I'm doing. If I'm lucky I will have a chance to play more RE4, too. ^_^ Good times!

Last night I found out from a Hula sister out west that my favorite Hawaiian band--Makaha Sons--is finally coming out to do a show in NY. I know those gentlemen very well, and I shot off an email to Uncle Moon in hopes that he will be home in time to get it, to let them know that we'll be there. I've got to grab some tickets today if I can. The only downside to this is that it's the same date as the Wong Fei Hung tourney, and I really, really wanted to go to that. Sifu wanted me to compete in it. I told him I didn't think I was ready. But I still really wanted to go. I haven't been to a tournament since last December, and I had a total blast that time.

Today is a fine and lovely thing. Went to Hula early this morning, roads wet and skies grey, listening to songs on my iPod connected to my tapedeck. Hula was a little slow today. After warmups we talked, well, about Hula and the halau, and eventually we did strength excersizes and ran the Wedding Song again. Why, I don't know, since the wedding was two weeks ago.

Then it was off to Kung Fu even though the school is closed. Lee was already there and we had decided the night before to run our sword form, just the two of us, and then go to lunch. It started to rain really hard, so I unlocked and we went inside on the mats and did broadsword for over an hour. I was sweating by the time we were done, and it was pretty chilly, actually. Afterwards, we went to the Chinese place that Sifu and the students always go to when we want to get something to eat after class. There we talked to the manager about hiring the place for a night this month to hold a benefit for our good friend who is in the hospital. The manager was SUPER sweet and helpful (he always appreciates that we're proponents of Kung Fu, which he knows because we usually come in wearing our shirts with the school's kanji on them,) and we got the date, price, and even our menu all figured out. The food there is the absolute BOMB and they gave us free ice cream afterwards, which was seriously some of the best ice cream I've ever had.

Came home and took the boydogs out for a romp in this crazy weather. Trisky took one look at the sogginess and went right back to bed, like, "Screw that."

Then I took a shower, and now I am happily and shamelessly already in my pajamas, getting ready to feed the dogs and then fire up PS2 and see if I can't retrace my steps in Dirge of Cerberus and find what I lost. I must have saved wrong at some point, because first I had all 3 G reports, and then one got stolen by the stupid, hateful gargoyles. Then I had two. Then I tried to play again, and they stole the G report again. I figured I'd be down to 2 again, but guess what? Now I am down to ONE. In order to get all three, I would have to go all the way back to the last section. And even though it's the only way to watch the OMG SUPER ULTRA MEGA SECRET EXTRA ENDING!! I might have to forego that. It's too much work. Maybe I'll just download said SUMSE ending. Video games are supposed to be fun, damnit.

Someday, someone has to figure out why people are so hungry an hour after stuffing themselves with Chinese food.