I just got back from watching Ju-On and let me tell you right now, I won’t be sleeping this night or any other night anytime soon. This thing was scary scary. I haven’t felt like this when watching a movie since The Ring and that makes a lot of sense too. The Ring was the American remake of Ringu and the creators of Ringu made Ju-On. Two big thumbs up for this one. It’s really gonna hang with me. Anyway, check out the trailer. Even that thing by itself is pretty terrifying.

It’s videos like this that make me not want to get on a bike. Did I mention I’m taking my classes on Friday the 13th?

The Car Connection: “‘Why is the Bush administration giving a $100,000 tax deduction to the biggest gas guzzlers on the road, and letting the $1500 tax deduction for fuel-efficient hybrid cars phase out?’ said Brendan Bell, a global warming and energy expert with the Sierra Club’s Global Warming program. ‘The Bush administration is telling car-buyers that if they choose the vehicles that add the most to the country’s oil dependence, taxpayers will pick up the tab.'”

This was pretty interesting to watch.

Thank god it’s Friday. You know what that means? The Village baby. I’ve seen the reviews and they haven’t been that great, but screw them. It’s gonna be scary and I’m gonna love it. So my car was broken into again. This would be the second time and this time they broke the window. Nothing was taken, though, because there’s simply nothing of value in the damn car. Now I’m just stuck with a broken window on the passenger’s side. Guess what? It’s not getting fixed because that car deserves no more money being poured into it. It’s definitely making me want to get on a motorcycle a lot more, though. My classes for it start August 13th and are spread out over two weeks. That’s right. I start Friday the 13th. Bad sign? Let’s hope not. Hey look. It’s time to go home.

MacCentral: “Followers of American politics and others may be interested in some free content posted to the iTunes Music Store this week culled from speeches given at this week’s Democratic National Convention in Boston, Mass.”

A day late on this news, but I think it’s worth posting out. I absolutely love being able to hear Clinton’s speech from Monday again. It was strong and uplifting. Clinton set the bar so high and so quick that I felt no other speaker came even remotely close to provoking the energy he created. Anyway, go download your free speeches.

It’s a slow Thursday for some reason. Usually Wednesdays and Thursdays are pretty busy, but that doesn’t seem to be the case this week. Good for me I guess. Still, the weekend can’t come soon enough.

So it was my birthday last weekend. I hit the big 26. There was a decent amount of drinking and way too much food. Good stuff. My parent’s paid for my motorcycle classes and my brothers got me riding gloves to take the tests. I seriously can’t wait to get my license next month.

Getting older isn’t fun. What most people would call their quarter life crisis, I’m calling my mid-life crisis. Seriously, I need to start eating better and exercising more or I’ll be dead by 50. About a month ago, I started to cut back a lot on the fast food. There’s probably been about two or three times I’ve gone fast food since there. That’s a pretty big cut considering I was eating there nearly every day. The girlfriend’s been a big help with that. She’s turned me onto actually buying stuff from the market and cooking it myself. It’s turning out to be way cheaper to so I got that going for me. Look ma, I’m cookin!

As for the exercising, that’s a different story. We’ve tried to go on hikes and walks together, but I hate that. It’s so freaking boring. I’d much rather be playing a sport or something to that effect. So when I ask if we should go play tennis, we reverse roles and it’s her who usually doesn’t want to. Shit, I haven’t even been to the beach this summer yet. How can you live in So Cal and not go to the beach? Maybe this weekend. Bottom line, I need to get out of the home and get in the sun.

I think I’ve mentioned before how much I am not a fan of basketball. Too much individualism, less of a push on team play, too much showing off, and way too many crybaby players pretending to fall to draw fouls. It’s not a damn diving competition. Anyways, I bring it up because you can’t be in Los Angeles this week without hearing about the Lakers. Seems to be the big discussion at work the last couple of days. “Shaq’s gone. Thank god!” Thank god? Umm, from what I understand, we just lost the most dominant player in the NBA. They probably would have said the same thing about Kobe if he left us too. I guess I’m just tired of hearing about it at this point. Actually, I should be the last person complaining about basketball considering hockey may not even be around anymore. I’m really not sure why people don’t watch it.

Alright, enough bitching for now.

BBC News has some neat little animations that explain Cassini’s mission to Saturn.

It’s back to work today. At least I can look forward to the short work week. Everyone have a good 4th? Mine was ok. Little bit of booze, BBQ, and fireworks.

I did catch Spider-Man 2 again. Man, that movie is just as great the second time around. The video game also got surprisingly great reviews so I picked it up for Xbox. It’s awesome. More than awesome. They recreated the entire city of New York and you can go dive, swing, and crawl just about anywhere. It’s absolutely huge. A completely different game from the previous ones. I need to just get home and play right now.

Lindsay Lohan turned 18 last Friday. Happy birthday Lindsay. It’s ok for us to date now.

Grant, my friend from Arizona, is coming out to Cali from the 20th to 24th. That means I’m gonna have to reschedule my motorcycle classes and certification on the 23rd. The next earliest time to do it will be August 12th I think. I really wanted to get this thing done before summer started but oh well. Guess I’ll just have to wait until the fall now. Fun stuff.

Alright, back to work for now.

I had the very great pleasure to catch the 12:01am showing of Spider-Man 2 tonight. Let me tell you right now, this flick is going to stick around for a while. It wasn’t better or worse than the first movie. Much of the same really. We do get a lot more story and a lot more moral issues thrown into it. That’s all good, but what makes the movie so great is time this flick was released and how it relates to these times.

In these strange days, it’s hard to look around and ignore the blatant evils in this world. From wars that should have never been started, censored and manipulated media being fed to us, government corruption, our own country’s “leaders” (who were never to be trusted in the first place) making decisions solely based on self gain, and reality tv shows, I would say it’s extremely difficult to even imagine what people were like before these evils existed.

Spider-Man 2 counters this evil. It uplifts us and gives us hope that no matter how much bad there is, you can always make a difference. It shows that anyone could be a hero and that turning your back on certain issues or just ignoring them all together is doing what could be a just society a great injustice. It lets you close your eyes for just a little bit and imagine what could be accomplished if you decided to do something about the wrongs you see in the world.

Peter Parker struggles with this throughout most of the movie. Even though he has the power to do and be something really great, he only sees the negative effects of these actions in his personal life. He feels as long as he’s Spiderman, the people who will hurt the most are the people he’s closest too. These struggles we see in the movie are some of the absolute best scenes here and are only topped by when he eventually understands that answering the call of the city for Spiderman is what is best for him and the society around him. You, in fact, see how common citizens feed off of Spiderman’s will in order to gain their own inspiration. You simply can’t help but cheer for things like this.

Spider-Man 2 is an exciting, smart, beautiful, funny, and absolutely inspiring movie that can relate to anybody and I highly recommend you see what is clearly not just one of the best comic book flicks every, but also one of the best movies of the year. Maybe it will inspire you to do exactly what I think underlining meaning is… By letting your actions be seen and your voice be heard, you can be your own hero.

Note: I edited the original post slightly because of grammatical mistakes. What do you expect at 4 in the morning?