I have a statue of a dragon playing a guitar on my desk, and you (most likely) do not.

Having finished my sixth semester, I feel it is my responsibility to update you on how my studies are going. Primarily to ensure that my "blog output" for this month does not come out to null, even if my attempts to keep up with other people I know who keep blogs (read: Kathleen) have been laughable.

I got to write a paper about John Woo for my Hong Kong Cinema class. I got to talk about The Matrix, Reservoir Dogs, Equilibrium, gun kata, Samuel L. Jackson, Cowboy Bebop, and assault weapons all in the same paper. I finished the class with a perfect A, but the instructor has a reputation as an easy grader.

I got to make a joke about Jack and his giant beanstalk when asked to analyze a fairy tale with Freudian psychoanalytic methodology in the Literary Theory class. I ended up with a B for this one.

All in all, a 3.5 GPA for the semester, which is the best I've managed in a long while.

Tentative schedule for Fall 2010 goes like this:

MONDAY/WEDNESDAY
9:30 - 10:45 English-372 Folk Literature
11:00 - 12:15 English-400 Intro to English Linguistics

TUESDAY/THURSDAY
2:00 - 3:15 English-233 Creative Writing (mostly taken for shits and giggles - the instructor is friendly to sci/fi and fantasy, so it should be fun)
3:30 - 4:45 English-452 Shakespeare

ONLINE (SO WHENEVER THE HELL I FEEL LIKE IT)
Commun-350 Human Communication and Technology

If I feel like it? I don't have to be awake until 1:30 in the afternoon for half the week. The other half, I can go home when most people are starting their lunch breaks. Be jealous.


But onto things of slightly more import.

Cody and I managed to score both Red Dead Redemption and Heavy Rain without even having to pull out our wallets. Or indeed, anything else we typically store in our pants.

I haven't had a chance to play either, but I've watched my roommates' initial forays into Red Dead Redemption, and I can tell you that there is no satisfaction quite like that to be gained from shooting a man off his horse with your revolver while maintaining control of your own horse while racing alongside a speeding train. I'll be speaking in Wild West-isms for a good week straight once I play this.


Saw Iron Man the second and was well-entertained. The first film is probably the stronger one, but so long as Robert Downey Jr is going around being smarmy, drunk, and shooting missiles from his wrists, I'm happy. Sam Rockwell was fun to watch as the hapless Justin Hammer and Don Cheadle is more or less an improvement over the apparently-a-douchebag Terrence Howard.

Also, I try to avoid using this blog as a venue to tell you which women "I would totally do", but jeez, Jon Favreau made the right decision to choreograph all of Scarlett Johansson's fight scenes as Black Widow in mostly slow motion.


I was really pumped for Star Wars: Allies, the midway point in the Fate of the Jedi book series. Grandmaster of the New Jedi Order Luke Skywalker and Sith Master Gavar Khai, are forced into teaming up to take down a malicious Force-using creature called Abeloth awaiting in the Maw, a cluster of black holes. What I had hoped for was 350 pages of just these two guys, Jedi and Sith, kicking ass and taking names across the galaxy, saying stuff like "I like your moves" and "I like your style". The cover even suggests that this is the case.



I did not get this. What I did get was their two kids, Jedi Knight Ben Skywalker and Sith Saber Vestara Khai making kissy-faces at each other and dance around the issue of whether or not they want to go to prom together. And then the battle with Abeloth takes, like, four pages.

I'm very glad that I work for a place that lets me borrow these books instead of paying money for them.


And I'm sure you want my thoughts on the House finale. It was pretty great. I just hope House and Cuddy manage to stay together this time around.

Allow me to leave you with this:

I think it would be really cool to write for The Onion

"For Dummies" Publisher Announces New "For Complete Fucking Morons" Book Line

HOBOKEN, NJ - At the East Coast Publishers trade show this past week, Wiley Publishing, the publishing group behind the popular "For Dummies" book line, rolled out the first books from their new "For Complete Fucking Morons" series.

The "For Dummies" line has become one of the best-selling series of "how-to" books on the market, but CEO Jeffrey Price says that there is a whole new audience out there to be tapped into. "The Dummies books have always been popular with the average dimwit, but as the past decade has proven, there is a constantly emerging population of idiots, dipshits and fucktards out there."

While the Dummies line has historically been successful, sales have been dropping off in recent years, says marketing researcher Naomi Blackwell. "Companies have always been able to rely on those who aren't the sharpest knife in the drawer for their sales, but studies have shown that even that population is slowly being eclipsed by a new demographic of goddamn nimrods. The kind of people that can't even screw in a light bulb without a frickin' book."

Many of the series writers are excited for the launch. "It's been a lot of fun writing the Morons series. We always had to treat our readers as if they had some semblance of intelligence, but now we get to dumb it down as much as want for these shit-for-brains dumbasses" says Roger Clemens, author of the upcoming "Childcare for Complete Fucking Morons."

The new line is set to be released over upcoming months with titles such as "Computers for Complete Fucking Morons", "Boiling Water for Complete Fucking Morons", and "Neurosurgery for Complete Fucking Morons". Many retailers have already begun decreasing their stock of the Dummies line in preparation for the new line's arrival.

"The Dummies books are always decent sellers, but more and more customers take the book off the shelf, attempt to read it with a really confused look on their face, and toss it on the floor on their way to the Twilight novels or Glen Beck books," remarks Borders bookseller Amy Carson.

"I mean, my God, what dumbfucks," she added.

The marketing campaign for the new series touts many improvements over the Dummies line, including new enlarged, easy-to-read prose using only words with no more than two syllables and a greater amount of references to contemporary reality TV shows. The diagrams and pictures will now be in vibrant color to keep readers' attentions, and the pages themselves will be laminated to protect against ripping and spilled energy drinks.

"We're confident that this new series will be a hit with all those total fucking asstards out there," says Jeffrey Price.