I can't move my arms

I lifted with Dustin Wednesday and Thursday and consequently, I can't comfortably move my arms.

I'm almost done with my first week of class of the semester. Here's a brief summary;

Intro to Film and TV production: My favorite class ever.
History of Mass Media: Could be worse, Dr. Baldwin seems like a lot of fun
EN 140: The jury is out on this one.
MC 155: I enjoy this class in the same way I enjoy bad movies. I love the fact that Bob hates it. It's very entertaining.

Speaking of bad movies, I've probably watched the Across the Universe trailer a dozen or so times. I really don't think it's going to be a good movie, but I already know I'm going to like it. I suppose there's a slim chance it will be good, but I'm not holding my breathe. Just from watching the trailer I can tell you that the girlfriend will probably die and her brother definitely will. Jude will end up alone either way and it will still be the 1960's. I hate the 1960's. It's a very smug decade. I just read that they're going to be releasing 2 soundtracks for the film though. A regular 16 track one and the super deluxe 31 track version. Guess which one I'll be buying.

I saw Superbad again tonight. I agree with Matthew, it's 2/3 of a good movie.

You'll be pleased to know that I'm not reading Order of the Phoenix now. You're probably tired of hearing my views on that particular English teenage wizard. That isn't to say I'm giving up on my complete reread, I'm just taking a break. I think I'll probably pick up the series again around fall break. I can't wait for fall. Several stores I've been to are already selling Halloween merch. It's not even September. It's more than 2 months till All Hallows Eve. Capitalism is awesome.

That's all for now. I need to go brush up on my complete world knowledge.

I thought YOU had class.

I've been going to the REC center this week instead of running for 2 reasons.
1. My MP3 player has stopped functioning in a satisfactory manner.
2. I haven't been getting up till 10, and it's just too f*ing hot to run that late in the morning
The nice thing about the REC center is that I can watch TV while I use their magical exercise machines and today I got to watch some classic first season Arrested Development, hence the title of this post.

Harry Potter talk commences:

I finished book 4 on Sunday, but since I had already posted once on Sunday I decided not to post my analysis that day because I didn't want to overload my audience (myself and perhaps the other Matts). So here are my thoughts on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire:

It's still a good book. Pretty much everything Barty Jr. does as Moody is justified as either part of Voldemort's scheme or just part of his personality manifesting itself, but I still think he's a better teacher than he has any right to be especially since he's spent the last decade or so in prison of some sort. I'm pretty sure it says he went to Azkaban as a teenager, so being generous he was 19, two years out of Hogwarts (unless he was home schooled, which is possible given his father). Maybe he majored in Secondary ed at Hogwarts, or maybe he was just a gifted educator. As well as being a great educator he is apparently an amazingly talented actor, convincing everyone for the better part of a year that he was Mad Eye would be no easy feat. Also, something Matthew brought up was the Barty's polyjuice supply, once he got to Hogwarts, it wouldn't have been that hard to keep making more polyjuice potion, but where did Barty get his first month's supply? Doesn't it take a month or two to make it? Wouldn't he need a shitload of it? I suppose Peter could have made it but was there enough time? The Quidditch World Cup is a couple of days before the first day of school, it's also the night that Barty breaks free from his dad. So they have like 2 days to set this whole plan in motion. It seems a bit dodgey to me. Also Hermione Granger keeps Rita Skeeter trapped in a jar for at least 2 days. She is a horrible human being. I love Hermione Granger.
Anyway the movie handles the last task and the graveyard scene better than the book does, but other than that the book is far superior to the film. Now that I'm done with book 4 I have finished all of the High School Era Harry Potter books. I read the first through fourth books for the first time during high school, and I'm pretty sure I haven't read them since. Also, now that I'm done with book four, I'm done with Harry Potter being a sympathetic character. I won't like Harry Potter the person again until I get to the 3rd to last chapter of book 7. He's such a dick.

I was toying with the idea of giving the series a rest until the end of the semester, picking it up again when the fifth movie comes out on DVD. I've read part of 5 and all of 6 and 7 within the last couple of months, so I don't know if I'd be able to keep interested in them. Also I suppose I'll need to, you know, do homework and stuff starting in a week or so, so I probably won't have as much time for reading as I do now.

I still need to talk to Anna and Layne about book 7.

End Harry Potter Talk

The Lookout is ok. It doesn't have any kind of twist ending, so don't believe what the DVD box says.

Magical Supertime happy face!

Stardust is awesome.
Rush Hour 3 is horrendous.

I saw both of those movies yesterday, but more importantly I saw a metric assload of movie previews. Since I don't really watch TV, I don't really see a lot of movie previews. Most of the previews I see online are for movies I already know about and am probably going to see anyway. All the previews before Rush Hour 3 were for movies that looked to be as crappy if not more crappy than the feature presentation, except for American Gangster, which looks awesome. Most of the previews before Stardust were uninteresting except the one for Across the Universe . Across the Universe is a musical set in US during the 60's. It's about an English gent who comes to the states and falls in love with some chick and it uses exclusively Beatle's songs as the soundtrack. WOOT! It kind of looks and feel like Moulin Rouge, which is a movie I quite enjoy. So I'll probably end up seeing it and buying the soundtrack.

I'm not quite done with book four, so you'll have to wait for my next post for my insights into Harry Potter's fourth year at Hogwarts, sorry.

I hope we play frisbee tonight. It's been too long since I've participated in a good game of disc.

I promise this post won't be about work, Harry Potter or sleeping.

90.9 plays pretty good music between the hours of 10 pm and 12 am on Friday Night. It's the kind of music I wish the college station would play, the other college station, the one run by college students, the one that plays emo, screamo, nu metal and various other crap except for the 4 minutes a day when they play good songs. Really four minutes is a generous estimate. I don't think they play that much good music a day. I hear maybe two songs a week that I like on RAGE 103.7. It's pretty f*ing ridiculous. From what I understand 103.7 subscribes to some sort of crappy College Rock version of Now: That's what I call music. They get CD's of the "popular" "alternative" "songs" they rip the CD on their computer and then make a crappy playlist.

I think I'm going to see Stardust tomorrow with Pete and Steve. Rush Hour 3 also opened this weekend. So did Skinwalkers, which is a werewolf movie and I am therefore contractually obligated to see it. I'm probably not going to see it though.

I just e-mailed The Friday Night Music people telling them how much they rock.

night

Number 200!!! I think...

Brief work update (I promise) Jay hired some young guy named Jason to do route one. I'm really tired of work.

Not so brief Harry Potter update.
I realized a few days ago that this reread will probably be the last time I pick up any of the Harry Potter books for a long, long time. Unless she writes more books, which I think she might. Anyway I finished book 2 on Sunday... I think. I can't remember. Yeah, it must have been Sunday. Book 2 is really funny. It might be her best book... it's not, but if I were trying to defend her writing to someone, I would probably present Chamber of Secrets as exhibit A. Her best book is probably book 3, which I finished last night. I love book 3 so much, and it was a lot better rereading it with David Thewlis as the Lupin in my head. The big revelation scene in the Shrieking Shack has too much yelling and it seems like the situation could have been diffused a lot sooner if Lupin and Sirius would've been less vague about who they were intending to kill.

Black: I'm totally going to kill someone in this room that's a wizard!
Harry: No I won't let you!
Lupin: Stand back Harry, Sirius is going to murder someone who is in the Shrieking Shack and has spent a lot of time at Hogwarts recently!
Ron: No don't!
Black: Yes, the time has finally come to end the life someone in that particular corner. (Sirius points vaguely to the corner of the room where Harry, Ron and Hermione were standing)
etc...

I kept wanting Ron to put the moves on Hermione in book three. Hermione shows a lot of vulnerability in book three, she really needed someone to be there for her. Ron totally could have hit that.


I didn't go running today or Monday. I'm going tomorrow, I promise. I just need to get some good music on my MP3 player. I've been listening to a Hell of a lot of Wilco lately. I really like Wilco, but I need something different for running purposes. Something that's distracting, yet compelling. I could just put a mix on there, but that usually doesn't work out because I usually just ending up skipping to the tracks I really want to hear, I feel with a whole album on there I'm more likely to listen to the whole thing.

Ok, I'm going to start reading book 4 now.
Night.

Hello, hello.

The first paragraph is about work

Well the first of the month is over at CMS, pretty much. It usually takes 2 days for the mail to go back to normal and yesterday was the second day. I must say it's been a pretty interesting week so far. It started with Adam getting fired for leaving mail in his van, again. Tuesday was Vicki's last day, and Meredith's last day for that matter, and we've been swimming in handsort ever since. They hired Darrell on Friday, he's doing Adam/my old route, Ricky was doing route 1, Scott's old route (Scott's now doing route 5) but today was his last day so Jay hired some lady named Diane to take over route 1. She won't show up tomorrow. They never do. Girls will not do my job, they are perfectly capable, but they just don't like that kind of work. So tomorrow we'll be short-handed, but I might get to do a route since Diane won't be there. So the worst part of the whole driver swap 2007 is the route 6 and 7 combo that's brining mail that used to arrive at 5:45 and 6:30 respectively, anywhere between 7:30 and 8, which means I'm not even running it till 7:40 at the earliest which means we're not getting done with pass 1 till 8:15 at the earliest. This blows. And it's really frustrating because we can't keep anyone long enough for them to get good at what they do, so we'll never get out early again.


The Second paragraph is probably going to be about Harry Potter, although I'm not really sure, I haven't written it yet.

I finished the first Harry Potter book this morning. It took me about 3.5 hours to read. It is a quick read. There is no mucking about in book 1. Second to last chapter they go through the trap door. The last chapter is the confrontation with Quirrell and the wrap up. It's all business. While rereading the book I was trying to figure out why I liked this book so immediately. I couldn't, but I did notice some things that struck me as odd.
1. In the first chapter Dumbledore call Prof McGonagall, "Professor McGonagall", were they not yet on a first name basis? I wonder if I was confused by the fact that she was called Professor the first time through considering I had no point of reference for her being a professor.
2. How long was baby Harry alone in his ruined house? Hagrid brought him to the Dursley's the night after Voldemorte died. What was the immediate aftermath of James and Lily Potter's death? Did Bathilda take Harry? What was going on?
3. Where did the hats go? No one wears their wizard hats anymore. All the students have hats in the first book. Of course it could be that they are wearing them all the time, Rowling just takes it is as a given when describing a characters appearance that the person is wearing a silly wizard hat.
4. Harry used to be kind of a likeable kid. What the hell happened.
I'm going to try to read the second book tomorrow. We'll see what happens.

The third paragraph is me talking about sleep.

I'm tired. I'm going to sleep.