Lately, I’ve begun to get more interested into the sci-fi genre. Born a hardcore fantasy fan, I enjoyed watching movies like Lord of the Rings and reading the Harry Potter series. I was interested in Star Wars, too, but never as much as the other series. However…These days, I find myself more interested in playing Halo than anything else on my Xbox. I’m enjoying ‘The Martian Chronicles’ by Ray Bradbury immensely (even though these days I haven’t been able to read it that much) but ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ hasn’t quite struck me home yet. Yes, I’m reading both, but I’m almost done with Bradbury’s. It’s actually quite a classic, I’ve heard, which would explain the price. I walked up to the cash register with a $5 and was told that the book was $15…I was bewildered. Luckily, I had extra money in my pockets and was able to dig out the remaining requirement of the 10 dollar bill.

The collections of stories within ‘The Martian Chronicles’ aren’t exactly all intertwined, but are similarly connected to one another; one event leads after the other and carries on the many time lapses that occur on Mars.

What is happening to me? Maybe this is just a phase…Perhaps I’ll get interested in fantasy again soon. Still, I have to admit…I’m a bit worried.

~James

Happy holidays! Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Kwanza, whatever you celebrate;  have a good one! Enjoy time with your family and eat some good food. Make sure to be grateful for everything you have and feel fortunate enough to celebrate with them!

I’m not going to get too much into holidays, since most of them are already over by now. But New Year’s is still left! I think there’s a movie that came out earlier in December about New Year’s Eve…Isn’t that the same type of thing as the “Valentine’s Day” film that came out way back in February? I dunno. Seems like it. Anyway, New Year’s should be fun; parties and enjoyment and simply looking forward to another year of life and building relationships with people you haven’t met yet.

Have a great holiday season, all of you!

I know this is short, but oh well. You shouldn’t waste your time reading this anyway–go have fun with your family and friends! Get off the computer and spend some quality time with those you love.

~James

I’ve been playing a lot of the video game series “Halo” lately…And I can’t stop. Between schoolwork, homework, and my social life (surprising, isn’t it?), the gap is filled with an hour or two a day of playing on my Xbox with a controller in my hand, eyes glued to the screen.

Now, some of you might say “Dude, that’s so unhealthy!” or “Go get some friends, loser!”. Well, I’m aware of the fact that paying that much time to your television screen is definitely not gonna have a positive impact on someone’s life. However, I rebuttal with this because my reason is, well, reasonable.

Over the past year or so, my Xbox LIVE membership has been absent from my Xbox profile. I got it back about a month ago around the twenty days part of November and have been enjoying the reclaim of my membership once again. I started by playing a few simple shooting games (for before I managed to get my membership back, I had just finished Batman: Arkham Asylum and Assassin’s Creed 2), such as Modern Warfare 3 or Call of Duty: Black Ops. Not finding much enjoyment in either one, I ventured for something different and found my old copy of Halo: Reach. I recalled then that back in the day I used to be fairly good at matchmaking games for this specific chronicle in the Halo series, and inserted it into my Xbox for a try.

The first two games, I was horrible. Getting blown up by my own grenades, falling off platforms and into the depths below. Feeling like a complete noob, I forced myself to become re-accustomed to the mechanics of Halo: Reach and how players acted. Soon enough, I was the second or third ranked player in every game, managing to keep not too far away from the first.

As I got better in the matchmaking section, I realized that I had played nearly none of the campaign at all the entire year I’ve had the game. Deciding to try it out, I played the first level and found that I was moderately good at it (thanks to my previous ‘training’ in the LIVE games) and enjoyed the structure of it, too.

Eventually, the campaign ended and I found myself intrigued by the Halo universe. After the end of Reach, I tried out the Halo 3 disc I’ve had for years–and barely played–for kicks. I began with the matchmaking, as I did before, and was shocked to see how different it was from Reach. The buttons were different, the graphics were so down-graded! Knowing that the games were three years apart in release date, I was still surprised to see how far Halo had come.

Once I got used to the matchmaking world (which is very lonely at the moment, all playlists usually only have around 500 players on them ), I began the first level of campaign. Although it was harder than Reach and not nearly as helpful as to where to go during the missions, I liked firing the Covenant’s heads off and enjoyed kicking grunts out of their Ghosts.

So, now with winter break gifted to me, I’ve been playing as much Halo as I can. I really like the story, and the graphics are so great, too. Although, I gotta say, the story in Reach is a lot better than the one in the third Halo. Plus, you feel a lot more connected to the characters that you work with; I don’t feel that emotion as much in Halo 3.

I’m planning on getting Halo 3: ODST after I finished the Halo 3 campaign, because from what I’ve heard, the campaign in that game is incredible, along with its sound-track. I would like to try getting the second and first Halo games too, but I’m not sure how that’d work since I don’t have the original Xbox.

Also, Halo 4 is coming out next summer! I can’t wait to see what it’ll be like, even though Bungie isn’t the one creating it…Apparently there’s supposed to be a new trilogy that would be part of the original Halo games? I dunno. The Halo universe is so confusing, I don’t think we need much more added on to Master Chief’s past. He seems more cool and frightening if we don’t know much about him.

So, yeah.

12-21-11 Update: Finished the Halo 3 Campaign. Boo-yah.

~James

Is it the big buff person with the spandex tights and a long cape trailing on their shoulders, or a young boy standing up to the neighborhood bully for the safety of a victim? A soldier trudging through a war-zone firing away at enemy lines, or a protestor charging through barriers of men with riot shields holding up a sign stating their opinion? Policemen firing at an armed man darting from a bank, or the same man who stole the money to hold up his family’s needs?

It seems the definition of the word will never be truly decided upon. Sure, there might be a huge book with a hard red cover made by some guy named Webster who spells it out for you, but I don’t think ‘heroism’ is a thing that can be defined by mere words or an explanation. For me, I can only comprehend or understand heroism if I see it.

You’ve heard about all the commotion on the ‘Occupy Wall St.’ thing, right? It’s been getting pretty serious as of late. Even countries around the world are benefiting their own towards it. I look at the people rioting and protesting against the major companies and see ‘heroism’. I look at them as the real ‘heroes’ of our world, the ones who can save something. They don’t need to be able to fly or shoot laser beams out of their eyes, but simply state what they think is right and believe in it; hope.

Although the freedom of speech isn’t distributed in every country around the world, EVERY human being has it. It might be kept silent, only resounding in the inner walls of somebody’s mind quietly while being denied their fair say, but it’s still there. Imagine if hundreds–then thousands, and millions–of these voices came together as one, sharing the same thing in common. Every little component of an enormous call to the world stating what they believe in.

Those are the heroes. At least, they are to my eyes. I want to do what they’re doing, rise up and defy what’s being oppressed upon us. My hope and faith goes out to them, wishing the best of luck and only for the best.

Do you have any heroes, anyone you idolize for a specific reason? It could be whoever you want, nobody should judge you. My advice from this post is…Be a hero. Stand up for justice, something right, the things you believe in. Don’t back down against someone just because you’ll get in trouble or get a detention. Never use violence, though. Be a peaceful hero; nobody likes the kind that slugs somebody without reason. Do it for someone else, not yourself and your own pride.

What is a hero?

Are you one?

~James

If you think about it, reality is pretty much a box. So, what’s outside of the box? I mean, this box is freaking huge; like one of the really big boxes you’d order from a packaging company like UPS, or something like that. Say that it’s bigger than your house, bigger than the White House, for that matter. Inside the box are millions of different little things, all microscopic size; and in some areas of the box, there’s nothing but blank space, room for more things to be discovered.

You stand in this box, surrounded by so many different things that you don’t even realize how diverse reality is. Even though you’re smaller than an ant on a mountain, your part in reality is the same as any other function of everything else; to exist. Live. Experience. Create.

Sometimes, people need to take their hand and push against the walls of the box–the walls of Reality–and break free. Outside of Reality, you can do anything. You can fly, you can breathe underwater, you can take a journey across  clouds, whatever the heck you wanna do is up to you, my good sir.

So, is there any way to break free from this cubical prison and become a part of this unknown universe yet to be exposed?

…I think so. I mean, it’s a theory, but still possible. Let me elaborate.

When you’re sleeping. Rather, when you happen to compose a dream of sorts. Whatever you dream of is your choice, whether it’s splendid or a horrifying nightmare. Now, weird things happen in that dream, right? It still might seem pretty realistic, but there’s always something that doesn’t seem quite right (or make sense) that happens. Yeah?

It seems that as we dream, we leave this world and our prospect of reality and enter our own. True, dreams are only figments of someone’s imagination, but imagination is the greatest tool on this planet. In your own dimension that you dream up, a tree could be called a ‘Foodle’ and a foodle called a ‘Tree’. You get what I’m saying? We rearrange things and even create our own stuff that separates your reality from the world’s reality.

Next time you dream, take advantage of the moment and make something fun. Even if it starts out being a zombie apocalypse, just remind yourself that it’s only your mind playing tricks on you, and that you can do the same to it. Reality is but a word, yet the meaning of it seems to have no end.

~James

Many things have changed throughout the past couple of years, from around the time period of 2007-2011. Here’s a list of things that have improved, or disproved, greatly over the past five years or so;

• Improvement: Better movie presentations. I’m not taking about the story or plot of the film itself, I’m talking about how it appeals to the viewer’s eye. Costumes, effects, graphics, all sorts of things have gradually gotten better.
• Not an improvement: Less and less intriguing stories are being written for the cinematic world. Not only that, but viewers in this generation are expecting movies with big bangs, explosions, hot girls and tons of language in ‘em. I tend to lean more toward movies that have action and are really intense with a very big twist near the end, but also the movies that display how life really is. Recommended movies for you to check out, if you enjoy that type of stuff, would include: ’500 Days of Summer’, ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’, ‘Super 8′, ’50/50′, ‘The Dark Knight’ (SO excited for the third installment in the series, though the title of it, ‘The Dark Knight Rises’, is a bit bland for my taste…), ‘The Sandlot’ (pure classic). A few movies I’d like to watch but haven’t gotten around to seeing them yet are ‘The King’s Speech’ and ‘Up in the Air’. 
• Not an improvement: Cartoons, and other shows suck nowadays. The cheesy lines, stupid punchlines, and ideas for a TV series are just so…Ugh. It disgusts me how low the bar for entertainment on television has fallen.
• Definitely not and improvement: Mainstream media music. You cannot even understand how much I HATE the music coming out nowadays. In the majority of songs for our world, there are no real instruments playing the music, just machines generating sounds!! That’s what pisses me off the most.
• Improvement: Technology. ‘By Gum’, as a British fellow would say, we have come a looooong way since 20, even 10 years ago. The iPhone, laptop, iPod, all those gadgets…What will there be in the next 10 years? A portable house that shrinks down into the size of a microchip? I sure hope not.
• Not an improvement: The world is in chaos. Pollution, extinction, war and unjust rest have filled our planet with the laws of money, cruelty, and power. It’s too bad that the next generation will have to deal with all of the crap the past ones have left us.
• Both an improvement and not an improvement: Video games. What ticks me off about this topic is that nearly every game is a first person shooter with zombies, blood, war and grenades being tossed into someone’s head…I don’t find it very fun. Although, I do enjoy Halo. Contrary to this, video games have become a lot more fun to play, and easier to have common interest with your friends or others on the online community.

So yeah, that’s a short list. I hope that when I’m old, those non-improvements turn around and become improvements. But these are just my opinions, if you’d like to leave your own, leave a comment below!

~James

In my opinion, baseball, usually referred to as one of the most boring sports, happens to be very intense during its last couple of innings. The moments when the two teams are tied up, and your home team (or the one you’re rooting for) has all the bases loaded and two outs with one strike left that makes you cringe and grip your knees in anticipation is something every sports fan would enjoy watching… All it has to do is knock that final ball out of the park and bring a victory.

Isn’t it humorously splendid how the ocean is 75% of our planet (unless you’re residing on Neptune or something of that sort), and us 6 billion humans are only capable of living on land? Maybe we’ll just sprout gills out of random one day and take over the ocean. I hope we don’t, because we’ll just pollute it and ruin it the same way we did with the continents themselves.

Science states that the Earth’s core is made up of a solid material surrounded by liquid magma, constantly keeping the center fiery hot like no other. Although this is widely believed by most officials throughout the world of science, this thought is stated as a simple theory; meaning that it’s a guess backed up by a whole lot of evidence. For all we know, the Earth’s inners could be Atlantis or a big giant upside down mountain.

70 years ago people would listen to the radio for news and entertainment instead of watching a TV, because that was more commonly known to do, and TVs were very expensive back then. Nowadays, most people can’t sit still and concentrate on audio without an image displayed for their eyes. Imagine how much farther we’ll drop another 70 years from now if that was the lapse we’ve already experienced.

Supposedly, nobody knows where Mozart was buried. Nicholas Flamel was a real person, and there is still controversy as to if he was really immortal or not, due to the fact that he has a grave (I think). What if Nicholas Flamel is actually Mozart, and Mozart is under the name of Nicholas Flamel? Isn’t that possible? I guess not, because of differences in time periods…Then again, if Nicholas Flamel (or Mozart, for that matter) could live forever, then that wouldn’t really matter, would it?

Contradictions can be very contradicting, can’t they?

This was a rambling of nonsense presented in the style of awesome.

~James

Eventually, Thomas is a square away from the one who stand upon. He reaches into his coat and withdraws a small, poorly wrapped package. Handing it to you, Thomas himself fades like the cement before him. 84th Street is gone. You stand in nothing, with nothing around you, and the world has turned into nothing. All there is left is you, and Thomas’s gift.

Do you open it? Of course not, who would? But you do anyway. Tearing open the fragile wrapping, your mind races a mile a minute, wondering what could be held in the mysterious box that now lays patiently in the palm of your hand. The box’s cardboard cover heaves itself over the side, and unveils a visualization of a completely different world; one where 84th Street resumes its existence. A world where nothing is anything, and anything is nothing. But, as you continue to look, there is still a Thomas in this image; lurking about, waiting for the right time to strike and make everything nothing once again.

It is then that you realize what the box truly is; the past. Thomas’s gift has granted you the chance to go back to a time when you can roam around 84th Street endlessly, do everything you always wished to do but never could have; that is, until he comes around the corner in his velvet suit once again and whisks it away from you.

Of course, you reach into the box, and find yourself collapsing through its inside. Instead of plummeting to your death from one universe to the next, your feet are planted on a certain sidewalk. The sidewalk of 84th Street.

~James

Homework is like a poison. It enters the bloodstream on a specific date, and takes time to spread through your body. But, this type of poison is special, because it tells you when it takes over your entire body. Now, here’s the catch; as soon as the stuff gets in your system, an antidote is provided. Its vial is sealed with a lock. Along with that comes the ‘homework’ or ‘work’ you were assigned. Upon completion of this work, the antidote unlocks itself, allowing one to chug it down before its too late.

A bit drastic, yeah! But, I mean, if you look at it in kind of that way, it’s true. See, if you don’t finish the work in the time given, and the moment comes when the poison takes over everything inside ya, you’re in trouble. It all makes sense…Or, if you decide it doesn’t, then I guess it doesn’t. Yeah? Yeah.

AAAAAAnywho, I’m pretty much just taking my time on finishing the work before my eyes. Procrastination, y’know how it is. Always looming over you, being all “It’s cool broooo, take yourrrr tiiiiiime. You’ve got a tooooon of tiiimee to finish thaaaat stufffff…Take a sip of this juice while you wait.”

I’ll unlock the vial before it’s too late, but for now, I’ll just lounge around.

Hey, do you like the new theme?! It’s called Beach. Very cool! WordPress has made a lot of new themes since last year, and a lot of them are really nice! I also like the sharks and stuff at the bottom of the page.

0mg guyzzz itz liek mai 2nd post in a l0ng tim3!!1! lolol

~James

This site looks like crap, ahahah! I can’t believe I’m posting, either. I guess after reading all these old ones I felt a bit inspired, I dunno.

Yeah, I look pretty pathetic for posting after that dramatic one down there, ahah!!

Am I back? No, don’t be expecting anything, whoever you are. Thought I’d just change its look a bit, modify it…Not really planning on doing anything. If you came across this site randomly, welcome! If you’re one of those oldies, well, hi!

WordPress…Can’t believe they didn’t take this thing off. WOW, I just realized, this blog-thing-site-whatever-you-wanna-call-it is nearly four years old. Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez.

So, yeah, um, bye, hello, and may we meet again?! I guess we’ll find out!

A one, a two, a three…

~James