Ramblings of a Constipated Mind

I just quickly made a production blog for Stuffed Fantasies. From now on, all news involving my movie will be posted here. It won't be up for long, but until the movie is released I don't see any harm in having it.

Good night.

Quick movie update.

Malcolm X is a really good movie. The Notebook is also pretty good, for a romance.

Charlie Kaufman won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Jamie Foxx got Best Actor for Ray. Those were the only two I desperately wanted to win, so I'm happy. The Academy wasn't as dumb this year as it has been in the past.

Scorsese got snubbed. Again. Poor guy. But Clint might have deserved it anyway.

But oh well, chances are he'll be nominated again next year, along with DiCaprio. Last I heard, they've got two more movies together lined up. You'd think they'd get bored of each other after a while.

As I have said many times in the past, my school sucks when it comes to scheduling out big assignments. Everything gets left until the last part of 12th grade, as I'm still in the process of discovering.

Today I had pictures taken for the year book - dressed in a tuxedo and everything. I had to borrow one from another classmate, and some parts didn't fit me well, so chances are the photos didn't turn out perfectly. That's just great. In the next 2 weeks I will have to have corrected many pieces of coursework so they can be sent off to England. I will also have had to have done a taped oral presentation for English and Spanish class to be sent off as well. In the next 2 days I have to have corrected a TOK essay to also be sent. I also have 5 weeks to complete a computers project that we started in October, but that nobody has worked on due to the huge amount of other assignments, and the fact that our teacher still hasn't given us back the first part we handed in. Not to mention that I need to finish filling out forms for my community service requirement.

I also have a movie to finish. Production has to be finished soon. Surely my two actresses can find a spare half an hour to spend shooting.

Sleep = non-existant. For the past week I have been feeling like I am going to collapse. I have huge dark circles under my eyes. I expect the hallucinations to begin any time now.

I have reached the conclusion that if I do manage to finish all this work and gradute, I will be too exhausted to care. My brain will be too dead to enjoy all of the ceremonies I have to go to - ceremonies that cost a combined total of $a-really-big-amount.

The IB is a killer. Even God got to rest for a day!

Quote of the Moment:
"Sex is the invention of a very clever venereal disease."
--David Cronenberg

I have officially completed my 4000-word Extended Essay. Complete with title page, 250-word abstract, table of contents, footnotes and bibliography. Oh yeah. All that's left now is to proofread it and print it off by Wednesday.

I don't have school tomorrow or Tuesday. I am going to spend that time:

1) hanging out with Souwa
2) editing Stuffed Fantasies
2) finishing a TOK presentation
3) proofreading my Extended Essay
4) possibly writing some CAS diaries

Hopefully I'll be able to do the latter three reeeeeally quickly.

*sits back and laughs at those classmates of his who are trying desperately to write all of 4000 words in two days*

Quote of Da Moment:

"Remember in elementary school you were told that in case of fire you have to line up quietly in a single file from smallest to tallest? What is the logic in that? What, do tall people burn slower?"
--Warren Hutcherson

It's rant time.

Today I had my final mock examination - my second math one. It was 7 questions long, but each question has multiple subquestions, and they can take a long time to do. But I felt pretty ready. I sat down, and they gave us 5 minutes to read through the questions before starting the exam, as is the proper IB way of doing things.

So I'm looking through it, and I realize, "Hey! Most of these questions are exactly like the ones I looked through this morning from past exams! This test doesn't look as hard as I thought it would be." So I'm feeling good. Then I turn on my calculator and get the following message:

YOUR BATTERIES ARE LOW. RECOMMEND CHANGE OF BATTERIES.

So I thought, "Oh well. I'm sure there's a enough power for me to make it through the exam. Especially if I turn it off and let it rest after every major calculation I do.

Then, 5 seconds later, the screen went blank.

What did I do? I did not cry, which is what many students would have done (I'm pretty sure at least half a dozen people have suddenly burst into tears during the exams). I did not start cursing the IB and Texas Instruments and my school. I did not start banging my calculator on my desk, thinking that would help. No. I just went ahead, and did everything I could do on the test where I didn't need a calculator. And every once in a while, I would turn it on, and manage to calculate an answer before the screen went blank again.

Yes, I know. I'm screwed.

I probably should have asked for some extra batteries, but I didn't. In all likelihood it would have been pointless. Because on the sheet that was sent home that explains all the official IB rules for doing exams, one of them mentions that students are not allowed to ask a teacher or another student for extra batteries or another calculator. In other words, we're supposed to be responsible enough to have it taken care of.

Here's what I don't understand. How can I be expected to bring extra batteries if before the exam I receive absolutely no indication that the battery is low? My calculator battery lasts for months and months. There was no reason to think that the battery wouldn't at least get me through my final mock. Did I ever get that message before today? No. When I received that message, did I have more than 5 seconds of power left? No. What are the odds that I wouldn't get that message on my first math exam, but that somehow by the second one the battery was low enough to display the message?

In all likelihood, I just failed that math exam. Which will bring my final CAL grade really far down. And since the school is stupid enough to count 2 weeks of exams as 40% of the final grade, my final grade at the end of the year is going to be low. I probably just dropped from being ranked 7th in the grade to being ranked 27th.

All because of a stupid calculator and its batteries.

Calculators are pointless instruments anyway. They're turning the human race into a race of morons! Seriously, some of the kids in my class (keep in mind these are kids taking math at IB level as well) can't do simple multiplication problems without using a calculator. Some of them probably can probably do less than that in their heads. We rely so much on our calculators that it's foolish to expect us to do well without one. We rely on technology, rather than our own abilities, to do the work for us. We are becoming a race of lazy, close-minded idiots.

I think I deserve extra credit for my effort. After all, I'll probably make a 30% on the exam. That's 30 freakin' percent without a calculator! Probably miles above what other people in my grade could do. I'm a mental math genius! I deserve a scholarship for my effort!

Okay, maybe that's going overboard, but my point still stands. Calculators are evil machines. They should be outlawed. And if not outlawed, then the law should at least make sure that there are plenty of extra batteries around in order to aid us in our mental decomposition.

It's time to make another addition to my list of Things to Do Before I Die.

Things to Do Before I Die:

1. Find out what it's like to wear a thong.
2. Bungee jumping.
3. Running of the bulls.
4. Write a book.
5. Make a movie.
6. Take over the world and make it illegal to use a calculator. We don't need any of that advanced stuff in everyday life anyway.

Quote of Da Moment:
"It is not the job of mathematicians... to do correct arithmetical operations. It is the job of bank accountants."
--Samuil Shchatunovski

"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems."
--Paul Erdos

Let's see what can be achieved with color correction, shall we?

I personally think the results are pretty good, especially considering I'm just a beginner experimenting.

Behold! I have the power to inject color into any object that I wish! I think maybe I'm going too far. If I modify the video too much it will look bad in motion.


Before.


After.

I've been in exams, so there hasn't been much to update about. Today I don't have any tests, though, so I get to stay at home. Yay! Tomorrow I take my last one, and then I get a long weekend. Five days of freedom. Or should I say: five-days-of-finishing-up-that-4000-word-essay-and-TOK-presentation. Fun fun fun. Hopefully I'll be able to get all of that out of the way by Sunday, and then I'll have Monday and Tuesday to just chill.

Also: Monday was Valentine's Day. Happy S.A.D everyone! For those of you that don't know, SAD stands for Singles Awareness Day. Couples call it Valentine's Day. Single people call it SAD. It's the day when those of us who have a girlfriend/boyfriend get to rub it in the faces of all those who don't. Woohoo! Yes, I know Valentine's Day was created by Hallmark to sell cards and chocolates. Yes, I know that we should love each other every day of the year and not just one. Yes, I know that the main purpose of Valentine's Day is just to make single people feel like crap. But I don't care. It's still fun.

Since we had exams, Souwa and I sorta celebrated it yesterday. She came over to my house, we ate some good Italian food, and we watched a movie. Here's the weird part. We weren't sure if we were going to watch one movie or two. We had rented The Notebook (that movie was probably just invented for the sole purpose of being seen on Valentine's), but she said she wanted to watch an action movie first. So what did we end up watching? Fight Club. Yup. Two hours of men beating each other up and having strange psychological revelations. How's that for romance? Souwa actually made it through the whole thing and said that she liked it. But by the time it was finished it was too late to watch The Notebook. D'oh! I guess we'll have to watch it another time.

Speaking of Fight Club, David Fincher needs to hurry up and put out a new movie. He's supposedly working on a movie based on the true story of a serial killer. Hopefully it won't be too much like Se7en (though now that I think about it, that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing).

In other news: the new trailer for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie can be viewed on Amazon here. I wish it was downloadable, so then I could watch more than 5-10 seconds at a time without my computer having to buffer it. But oh well. I wasn't sure this movie was going to be a good, faithful adaptation of the book, but now I think that it just might prove me wrong. It looks pretty funny and entertaining. We'll see what happens.

Dodgeball is overrated. And if Jamie Foxx does not win the Oscar for Ray (very good movie overall, though it doesn't deserve Best Picture) I will douse my television in gasoline and set it on fire. And then I'll send what's left of it to the Academy, as a way of letting them know that they screwed up even moreso than usual, and I might not tune in next year for the show because of it.

Of course, there's no way I'd miss it next year. But they don't have to know that.

Hm. Stuffed Fantasies is coming along well. I've got one more full scene to shoot, followed by some reshoots of a couple shots. I've begun editing what is filmed so far...once I've got the final product done in terms of structure I'll have to work on color correction and getting rid of motor noise in a few shots. It's not the most exciting work, but good color correction has the potential to make films look reeeeally high-quality and professional. Hopefully I'll be able to figure out how to do it.

Quote of Da Moment:
"With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels."
--Fight Club

My mock IB exams start Monday. Blegh.

I'm stressed. Been wearing myself out studying. For some really stupid reason, these exams count for 40% of our final grade at the end of the year. In other words: everyone's grades go from being fine to suddenly plummeting straight to hell because of 10 days of exams. Sucks, eh?

And the day after mocks, I have to hand in a completed copy of my Extended Essay! Yay! And after that, I've got a computer project that I'm going to probably have to pull many all-nighters of working in order to finish! I just can't wait!

Somebody shoot me now.

Not to mention the fact that I'm in the process of, like, making a movie. Which I filmed more of today. It's coming along smoothly. Right now I'm pretty certain I'll have to cut some stuff out to make it shorter, but that's okay. Some of the dialogue at the beginning isn't essential anyway. I wish I had more time to completely devote to making it, but I don't. Life isn't fair.

Also: In America is a really good movie and all of you should see it or I will be forced to smite you with all the terrible forces of my wrath. And that was a long sentence.

Quote of Da Moment:
"Stress is when you wake up screaming, and then realize that you haven't fallen asleep yet."
--Unknown