Today was a pretty fun outing with Chip and Christine…though while we were at Fry’s I saw that they were playing each other on the computer on a game of chess. This wasn’t pivotal or anything, but I guess it helps me explain an observation I’ve been noticing amongst a large number of people. People don’t know how to play chess anymore nowadays…by this I’m meaning the chess that is life.

It’s easy and convenient to just go on and blah blah blah about how things didn’t work out because of this person, that organization, this policy and that situation. We don’t look at ourselves into the mirror. But Chris, WE didn’t do anything wrong…it’s all on them. Really? Is it? I really wish it was black and white like that, I could be really efficient in my life and how I do work and interact with people. It would’ve made my job easier on the Cole. Either people agreed with me or I threw them over the side. Great plan, huh? I might as well get my ESWS pin, because I’ll be the ONLY person on the ship that agrees with myself. Oh, and I’M subject to being thrown over the side myself because the other person doesn’t agree either.

We don’t have the chess game…and it doesn’t have to be conflicts either. Don’t be embedded into the chess game, otherwise you become some dark evil politician and frankly we already have way too many of those as well. By the way, they can’t play chess either. Most of those guys make their pieces move however they want it, you know…the whole distorted reality of things.

You want to sit in your corner and moan about how the world is doing you wrong, go right ahead. I learned, without having to always stick my neck on the chopping block, that you can’t Marcinko yourself in the Navy. Not saying he was a bad influence, but I would’ve been your rut E-1 if I followed him to the letter. I had to play the chess game and in the end, things just worked out for me. Out in the civilian world, it may not be necessarily harder, but the chessboard that I personally play on is much bigger. Well, I’m not really addressing anyone really so no point for me to go on. However, if for one moment your twitched reading this then you’d better be looking in the mirror. Because I find more people with these issues than not and that’s just a shame.

So Christine and I decided to check out “The Kingdom” today. Really good movie. Yesterday, I got to see some blogs of either side of the political spectrum moaning about some parts of the movie. Well for one, if both sides are moaning about equally, I guess it’ll be a fair movie. But then again, why are we politicizing anything? That’s the sad state of YouTube…Christine once showed me a sushi video on the site, part of it was for the video…the other part was because it became a heated exchange over Darfur. Some people just need to shut off their computers and go outside. Get a life, and I don’t mean Second Life, Home or Halo either.

Movie was good, it stuck pretty much with the movie though there was a geopolitical angle, which is to be understood with this storyline. Seemed good enough without leaning either way. The story and action were pretty good. The movie also reflects my chess game statement above, where our protagonists…the FBI team and accompanying Saudi security must find the right moves on the board, because odds were definitely not in their favor when it came to investigating the attack that they were responding to. But hello? This is life, life ISN’T fair…something that many people have no comprehension of.

Man, subliminal loathing here, lol!

Technically, the movie was pretty good. Though I will have to emphasize…when you’re in a vehicle (especially the lone vehicle) and you get attacked, especially with RPGs, get AWAY from the vehicle! Also, as will be seen on the movie…if you do see things that feel funny and/or look odd, alert the team. Do not let things horrifically unfold at the speed of light. By the time you open your mouth to scream, the damage is done. Good movie…the director will be doing Marcus Luttrell’s “The Lone Survivor” which is my favorite book of 2007 so far. I think he’ll do a good job…can’t wait!

I like how the ending wrapped up. It’s all about the whispers…yeah, you’ll have to watch the movie to understand. But it’s an important lesson in life. If you come across someone who has went through an emotional situation and is crying, you must whisper these comforting words to them. You’ll know what it is when you watch the movie. So whether the person’s crying because they graduated high school or college, found out they are pregnant, just got married or won the lottery (just a few of many examples where people can potentially cry) utter these words and watch as you change their world!

Got and listened to the new Maximum Tune 3 soundtrack. I know, some people are asking how I’m doing with the game. To this day, I am always impressed. I don’t care if my name is on a time list, if it is…that just means most everyone sucks for me to be beating them, lol. I could care, it’s a great release after working during the week. You know, work hard…play hard! I will not be on message boards, hanging to every person’s word so that I can have an unshaded car. I do not care if I’m that good on the game…besides, chances are if you drive good in the game you probably suck in real life…ESPECIALLY if you think the way you drive on the game is the same on the road.

First impressions…Yuzo Koshiro is the MAN! He did such a great job on the first two games, I have no clue if this newest installment is better. It’s just…different. It’ll suit whatever tastes you have. However, there seems to be a technical theme change. Whereas the first two were a trance/atmospheric type song, the newest are mostly techno/club (barely/distressed theme. Practically all the songs have been completely redone, you may sense some bare similarities here and there but they are for the most part fresh new songs. Only Blackbird’s song is the most recognizable, with R200 being a very distant second. All the other songs pretty much bare no true resemblance. All in all, a pretty good music score, though I’ll have to say there are a few songs that don’t have me in the driving spirit. I know, I did my own “Metro” around the metroplex and had to catch myself as my foot dug into the pedal a little further!

Well, another good weekend taken care of. Rounded out well with Chip and Christine’s strange photos taken at Fry’s. If I get to it, I might post it on my site which, yes…I know, you’ve ALL told me, needs to be updated!

Anyways, I got a video link from Chris…which was kind of a surprise. But it’s a pretty nice video so I decided to put it up here.

So…the past few weeks have generally been great and satisfying. The only real kind of weirdness to it all is work. I was going to get to it…but I guess I’ll just have to get to it some other time. Other than that, have been enjoying myself. Of course enjoying myself usually means I’m very beat up, tired, exhausted and dinged…but satisfied with the work and effort that I’ve put in. I know I haven’t been around as much, and that is definitely because I’m quite a bit more tired now…but oh well, more on that another time.

The weather has been really good for a Texas summer. Fall has officially begun, which normally means two more months of triple digit highs…but when’s the last time it went past 100 here? The end of this week is the start of the State Fair, and the “cooler” weather has me anticipating it even more. Can’t wait for overprice corn dogs and the like. Last week’s winner was fried coke…this year’s winner is the same creator. I mentioned it on a previous post, but won’t bother to look it up. I think the newest creation to try is fried cookie dough. Don’t know for sure, if you really want to know then you can bore yourself with my past entries!

Well, just to make myself feel better I’m going to say that my phone’s been going off as Melissa texts about delays on the flights in the airplane that she’s had. Two separate flights…so now I know someone’s grumbling while I’m not! But that is sad, the news about crummy airline service seems to be true. I wondered that as I had been a frequent air traveler in the Navy and 2005 and 2006 I’ve gone up to Virginia. No real problems. Only two, one was a screwed up delay going to Chicago. The other was the nightmare after September 11, 2001…being one of the lucky that needed to fly just after the airports finally open.

So the past week has been quite movie filled. A visit from Tony had me watching “The Guardian.” It’s a Coast Guard movie and was one of the few movies that did a fairly decent job of pulling off a more complex storyline. But I guess I’m supposed to say that it sucks. I mean, I had such high standards for the movie and it didn’t meet it. Hey, don’t look at me…blame Tony! Why? This is pretty much the description of the movie that he gave me, “It’s pretty much Hell Week without the weapons.” Eh? So yeah…with that sentence, the bar has been raised big time. Though I don’t really understand what he meant about the weapons…oh well. So did what I saw live up to the standards that I know as Hell Week? Nope, not even a fourth of the way close…so with that, this movie sucks! Blame Tony…

Next movie was a DVD he loaned me. The well-known “300″ where the trailers didn’t really grab my attention, but the hype around it was starting to get close to annoying as the release of Halo 3 (note…never said Halo games suck…but I’m not impressed if you’re missing work camping in front of Wal-Mart for one either, lack of priorities in life it seems to me). What was comforting to know was my friends and coworkers expressing their like for the movie, which is a good sign. Better than covering my MySpace login screen in red…because red is a stressful color…that’s why some teachers no longer use red pens in grading…ugh…

Pretty good. What do I need to say more about? I liked it. Though the cool fighting and fighting spirit that when Christine watched it she certified it as a “Christopher Movie”…which basically means you can see me (either as a character, theme, plot, etc.) in the movie. So there you go…I didn’t mind this movie getting the certification, lol.

Today we decided to see a movie that we saw as previews, but didn’t know when it was coming out. Tony had told me he’d seen it already…so it obviously was out. This movie was “Shoot Em Up”…and Christine once again pulled out the rubber stamp of certification…not even a minute after the movie started. Yes, all the main character did was eat a carrot…I’m not gonna explain, it’s an inside joke. But many of my friends know it involves eating, so is that a surprise? The movie was hilarious and the more the movie went on, the more the rubber stamp was flying. In one scene, a BMW has a license plate containing “Chris” on it…so that further seals it up. Stunts were good, though more funny. Watching it kind of makes you forget about Equilibrium…and I sure wasn’t laughing as much in Equilibrium either!

After that, it was quasi-stress relief time. It was also the next round of Christine’s handgun trials. I say “quasi” because a small fraction of the time I get to shoot. The rest of the ammo hoard is for Christine and I just end up spotting her shots for her. However, the trials are a success and she’s getting a much better idea of things to look for as far as criteria goes. She won’t be me…though I can say I am extremely satisfied with my first handgun, which even got some range time as well.

But I’m still a little sore…one of our “Uncles” (I quote that because you know how it works in Filipino families, though not unique to Filipinos, lol) was moving his family to a new house and of course I offered to help. Moving’s not fun, especially when someone factors in a yet-to-happen natural disaster and am moving heavy objects up little stairs. The details of the move will go above just about everyone’s head…but just like many of you have done, moving sucks and can be a bit of a pain…which is probably an understatement right there!

Birthday was great, though that is always a bit “marred” because it falls into the 9/11 time frame, with which my present from the Navy in 2001 was being ordered back down to Pascagoula when the airports open. That’s a sizeable rant right there and I’ll just leave it at that…those of you that know, you know why I feel that way.

Once I’ve got a better control of work, things will take off fine…well kind of. But I shouldn’t go further, that’s somewhat of a stay-tuned sort of thing. Another lengthy blog done…and for Sean’s birthday, more knowledge about Twinkies than anyone wants to know!

Okay…this is three in a row…scary. I’m gonna try to make a promise and make this the end of it, before someone starts wondering about me, lol.

To piggy back off of yesterday’s blog post…looks like Trojan believes the same thing and is reminding all of us of the glories of the real world. Or…something like that. Oh well, I guess you’re a monkey or something if you don’t buy Trojan!

And I get my paycheck today! NO! Who needs Trojans…I watched “300″ not too long ago, and I’ll post them with my later (and much more normal) blogs for movies in review…mainly because I think I’m gonna watch another movie this weekend.

Before you start questioning my social life, the title is simply the intro to my first topic. Do I need to give more evidence of the superficial convenience that we seek in the world? There will be the blah-blah-blah arguments, well my friends are online too. Think about that argument before you make it yours.

Upcoming…apparently, there’s gonna be a “response” on October 12. They’d better lay low, as October 12 is a day of significance for me. But if there is, at least I won’t be in a movie theater when it happens as the Hitman movie has been delayed till November (though in the article, it appears they had pushed it to October 19 before November). So there’s something Anthonie can do for his birthday time frame. Those that haven’t seen the newer trailer yet can see it on the Hitman website…it looks better than the first, but I don’t know yet if one of my favorite video games will be a decent movie. Fingers crossed.

Speaking of, I regret to inform that once again I will unable to make it to the Reunion in October in Virginia. As I’ve said, you think me being a civilian that my schedule would be easing up, yet I may as well still be stuck on the Cole, racking up a healthy amount of leave.

At least, that’s the prevailing, if not coincidential, wisdom for countries like Russia and China. Last night, I caught a glimpse of news on TV about Russia testing their “father of all bombs” and doing their typical show off on weaponry and gear. Being typical of their country it has to be bigger, hotter, this, than and whatever else.

I had a couple of friends e-mail me about this and I greeted it all this morning. So let me tell it to all the world. I’m not impressed. The bomb will look good on a comparison chart list, no doubt…but yeah, not impressed. No secret to it…those that know my way of doing things in warfare no I look for the other factors, and when you put it all together you just have a gigantic piece of crap that makes a big boom. Besides, they said they used a Tu-160 bomber…the largest in the world, to carry and drop it. What a bunch of wimps…that’s not impressive, watching the All-New Toyota Tundra do the exact same thing…now THAT’S impressive, lol. But no surprise…it’ll probably shake some wimps in Washington DC, but for me and most people that are still currently doing an outstanding military job…just another page in a Jane’s book.

I know this will piss off the Christopher Assassins, who surprisingly haven’t sent me any messages concerning this. They’ll probably read this and just fume…

Also, Russia is handling things in a not-so-eloquent way. As we know, birth is down and the populace is getting older and older. So one Russian region is having a Conception Day contest. Yes, kinda weird…but not as creepy as the procreation camps that I read about a few months ago.