Below are the 4 most recent journal entries recorded in Michael Florian's LiveJournal:

Tuesday, April 24th, 2007
3:42 pm	More @#$% that don't make sense Being a pudgy nerd, I watch more than my fair share of anime.  Okay, that's not entirely true.  I used to watch a lot.  Now I watch very little.   (In the interest of full disclosure:  I watch Naruto, Ghost in the Shell and a little Crayon Shin Chan now and again.) Upon much reflection, I've come to the conclusion that anime opening sequences really freak me out. They all appear to be pretty much the same.  Everybody's running.  The main characters, whether they're teenagers (usually) or anyone else, are always in a big hurry to get somewhere.  Maybe this is to convey a sense of urgent energy.  That the action is just over the horizon.  Or maybe they gotta use the bathroom.  I don't know.  The Japanese are hard to read sometimes. But what really doesn't make any sense is the opening music.  And I'm not talking about the tunes.  Those can be pretty catchy.  No, it's the words.  For the longest time, I didn't know what the hell they meant. Until the magic of DVDs where I had the option of subtitles.   Now I could read the english translations ... and I still don't know what the hell they mean! I know Japanese and English don't translate directly into each other, but they're just rambling at this point! Fighting dreamers?  A wise crow tears up a map?  What?  Huh?  You lost me back there.  Kinda hard not to....everybody's running and I'm still fat. If that's the kind of thing that sells well overseas, then the good ol' U S of A has a potential gold mine just waiting to be discovered! Let's go down to the street corner and get that guy with the sign and no teeth.  We can write down anything that comes out of his mouth and ... Presto!  We have the opening theme to the first  season of Love Love Combat High School Turbo! Yeah!  You see... The gov'nmet's been putting tinfoil in my brain! Sure.  Sure.  Anybody got some coffee? Oh yeah! I walked down to the 7-11, and this guy, this guy, I hate this guy. Fight!  Fight!  Fight! Have you seen the price of eggs? Cost twice as much as they used to! Burn!  Burn! What?  Okay... I need a drink. Shifty Joe will be performing his masterpiece with Megumi Hayashibara at the 2008 Tokyo International Anime Fair.   Somebody should put that to music.  They'd make a freaking mint. Current Mood: relieved Current Music: SRX Theme - JAM Project (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 12th, 2006
4:33 am	A Familiar Pain When I first moved into this new apartment, Dad suggested that I take everything off the bookcase. There were two cable outlets and the Comcast guy was coming soon. There was one outlet behind the TV and one behind the bookcase. He had been telling me and my ex-neighbor about splicing from one outlet giving less power to the other if both the TV and internet are run at once. He also suggested that I take my stuff down in large armfuls at a time so they stay in order when I'm putting them back. Taking his advice, I attempted to do just that. Gravity had other plans. My copy of Final Fantasy 9 shattered when it hit the floor. Disc 3 had a deep groove and pieces of the plastic spindle were everywhere. It took me awhile to clean all that up. As my finances are somewhat stretched, it will be a long time before I get that game back. Not to mention the cable guy let me know afterward that splicing doesn't have that kind of effect. So now the only working cable outlet is behind the bookcase. I told you that story to tell you this story. For the past couple of days, I have been in a little pain. Every time I walked, I was feeling a sharp jab in my foot. Finally, after taking it no more, I decided to re-examine the foot that was hurting. Now, I don't know if this happens to the rest of you, but when my dry feet walk on tile long enough, they develop cracks. This hurts like you wouldn't believe. Underneath one crack was a dark splotch. I feared that I had jabbed my foot and that was blood under the skin. Tonight, I decided to take a look anyway. It wasn't blood. You've probably connected the dots by now. Somehow, shards of the plastic spindle from the game case had slipped under the crack in my foot and I was walking on them for two days. I'll repeat this...as it bears repeating. I had chunks of Final Fantasy 9 in my foot for two days. My skill with a safety pin ensured this didn't end up as some kind of "Lion's Paw" scenario. Surreal. Current Mood: groggy Current Music: Superman March ~ Superman Movie Soundtrack (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, June 9th, 2006
1:59 am	My God, that was weird Well, I certainly had an interesting day. It started when I woke up to the thought that I had to shave in a hurry, since it was time to replace my CD Player. Frustration. Anger. These things fill the mind when I remember that I had only recently bought that CD Player. I suppose it's my fault for getting the cheap brand (they had an AC adapter plug) and that I keep it in my backpack with the CDs when I go to work. Thankfully, the people at Frys didn't notice my bloody face (or at least didn't say anything) as I scurried about the store hunting down what I wanted. Of course, everything was moved, nothing is labeled and it's all a part of some sinister plot to keep me there long enough to buy something else. It worked, of course. I got a CD. The Best of The Corrs. On a side note: The Corrs are awesome. They're this Irish Folk-Rock band (no, that is not a typo) who occasionally have hits that make it in the US. I have to admit that "Corrs" is a weird name. Then again, they are Irish. Maybe it's just an accented way of saying "Coors". Who knows? Of course, it appears that Frys sealed up a used CD, judging by the scuffing, but I don't care. I'll get another copy when I have money and send this one to someone who needs more rock in their lives. Do you hear me? I'm going to be that guy that used to be in all those after-school specials back in the 90's who appears out of nowhere to help people. No, I am not wearing tye-dye. No, I am not gay. Then I get home and go online (instead of watching the Daily Show, like I planned). There, I managed to stick my foot completely into my mouth talking to my friends. At this point, it's no longer novel but it's the only act I got. I waxed pathetic for a little bit and then had to rush off to work just as two friends I don't talk to often got on. Just as well. I'm becoming accustomed to the taste of foot. After my Zen-like trance ended and I magically appeared at work (I'm going to die on the freeway someday), I managed to remember to clock in this time. I forgot yesterday. It was the first time I forgot in awhile. Back then, I was forgetting all the time; much to the amusement of my supervisor who had to correct my time card. At this point, the highs and lows started to come in more quickly and I braced myself for my impending meltdown. I was given a batch of work filled with rules I had forgotten awhile back and I had to quickly refresh myself on them. That wasn't so bad. Then, I was given a form to sign. This may be bad. It appears the Union is getting pretty serious about striking and they wanted to know who was in. I am in. Damn the Man. (Wait, I am the Man.) While signing wasn't so bad, there was an aspect of it that has yet to play out fully. Are you ready for this? I FORGOT MY HOME PHONE NUMBER. The number I had written down was wrong on two digits. I haven't had to call my house in nearly a year since I learned my father's cell-phone number. And really! Who's here? Nobody, that's who. I actually had to ask my supervisor to look up my phone number from my employee records (though she had it on a notepad for quick reference in case she needed to notify our group of problems). Oh my god, the humiliation. What's worse, the folks at work are just as amused to finally have something to lord over me as the folks on AIM are. Not only was it brought up in the office meeting, but several comments at later points in the day (including one from the floor manager) have led me to believe this isn't going to die anytime soon. On a brighter note, I posted some of my quickly accumulating vacation time (I know how to game the system here - 15 hours of vacation per month worked) to get Friday off. Time to let off some steam, relax away some stress and try to forget that I am, in fact, Michael Florian. At home, I was hoping to catch some of those hard-to-find AIM friends. I did find one out of two, so that was okay. Then I ate a pizza in despair and watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. That definitely put a smile on my face. What I gleamed from The Colbert Report tonight: Video Games are good for children and Tom DeLay has no penis. And that's a summary of a strange and eventful day. With any luck, tomorrow will be back to the nice, boring existence I'm used to. Or the Grim Reaper will challenge me to checkers. Really, it's up in the air at this point. Current Mood: drained Current Music: Irresistible ~ The Corrs (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 12th, 2005
4:24 pm	The Sick World of Anthropomorphic Food Commercials Just when you thought nothing could be more disturbing than dancing fruit in your underwear... I can still see the commercial quite clearly. A little girl is having a birthday and has all her friends gathered around. Sitting to her immediate left is a large, walking, talking cookie who glances around and asks, "So, where's the cake?" Oh, they weren't having cake. Though they cut to a product shot and a voice-over, I can still hear his screams in the back of my mind. It always creeped me out on some level. And that's by no means unique. With alarming frequency, commercials have been produced showing uncaring children devouring food items with human qualities; showing all the deviousness we'd come to expect from Wile-E-Coyote. Take the latest foray into the obscene by the fine folks who make Pop Tarts: Our tragic figure, a Pop Tart bundled up warmly for the winter, licks a pole with a sign on it out in the frozen wastes. As he tries to pull free, a giggling child reveals himself. The Pop Tart has a moment to contemplate his fate and he is not thrilled. And what's the catch phrase? "Crazy Good!" Sends a chill down your spine, doesn't it? Not that the industry doesn't try to put a happy face on the whole practice. I think it was those little Ritz Bitz crackers that would ski down slopes of peanut butter, squealing like little children, before merging together and heading for the box. But, for every food item oblivious to its future, there's a hot dog racing through the night. Its heart's pounding, senses sharpened from weeks of pursuit, trying desperately to survive. And it's only a matter of time. No human can be trusted. They all have a happy face...until they're alone with you. Then out comes the ketchup. (Or mustard. But no mayo. Screw mayo.) But the worst has to be the food-on-food action. Some poor blob of jelly was listening to the headphones at a CD store when something was sneaking up around the aisle. A giant waffle waited until its moment, then leaped at the jelly. There's a struggle, some muffled cries, and the waffle is cradling its large gut, proclaiming: "Wa-full!" What the hell?! Some guy just got cannibalized in a crowded retail store with dozens of witnesses and there's no screams? No 911? Just "Wa-full!"? And it doesn't stop there. At the end of the commercial, another blob of jelly is on his way back from the mailbox with a wad of bills and personal letters when another waffle jumps out from the bushes at him. Me: YOU SICK FUCK! HE HAD A HOUSE AND A MORTGAGE! (judging from the neighborhood in the commercial, he might have had a wife and kids too) What kind of world are these commercials trying to portray? Back in the 1800's, could you expect to see some plantation owners working dozens of bacon and sausages in the fields before devouring them? Was there a food item Civil Rights Era? Did someone assassinate Martin Luther Burger King? I have to know! These commercials work very hard to make these food items seem real, yet have few (if any) qualms about this edging onto the realm of cannibalism. And the public's reaction to all this has been lukewarm to say the least. There are people out there who got up in arms when a sponge was shown holding hands with a starfish...yet food items devouring each other on television doesn't seem to bother them one bit. I guess it doesn't matter what they do to each other as long as they're not gay. On the other hand, there's a part of me that feels a kind of cathartic thrill watching these commercials. In the past, angry vegans showed their outrage that everyone didn't think the way they did by showing picture after picture of how animals are slaughtered before they become dinner. Wouldn't it be great for counter-protesters to show pictures of an anthropomorphic piece of tofu screaming "Help me! Help meeeeeee!" as it's being mashed between someone's molars? Anyway... I just want them to scale back the commercials. Just a little. I like food commercials. I like them just fine. But I don't need to be thumbing through Aristotle's books on Ethics before eating a granola bar and I certainly don't want to be up nights wondering where Fruit Loops go when they die. Current Mood: creative Current Music: This Time I Know It's For Real ~ Donna Summer (Comment on this)