Sometimes life leaves me at a loss for words.

Then I remember that I’m just a person in a world full of people, and everything makes sense.

I ran across a trailer for a film called Love the Hard Way and I wasn’t much interested at first. When watching the trailer though, I heard three songs which caught my attention, most notably the last one, a hip-hop track with a kickin’ beat and chorus. I decided to search for these songs, but all of them seem too obscure to obtain. The first song has no lyrics, so I quickly gave up the search for that particular track. A single line is distinguishable from the second song, but none of the words can be found as lyrics on the net. The last track had quite a few audible words, but after much scouring there was nothing to be found. I decided to check for soundtrack information, seeing as how the film is supposed to come out today, but there doesn’t seem to be any soundtrack info, and usually trailer music is not included in the soundtrack anyway. I decided to check the official site of the movie as a last resort, and there wasn’t a tracklisting but a score background and the mention of a few artists. I checked the discographies of the artists mentioned, until I found a song called Ra Ra by Coleon (”but can you back the ra ra” is one of the lines in the hip-hop track). At last, I had found the artist and the track name, but searching on free mp3 sites, his label website, or even Kazaa Lite proved fruitless. After re-watchnig the trailer so many times to snatch some garbled lyrics, I find myself quite interested in seeing the movie.

When I went back home to hang out with Darren and John, I met a guy named Leon, who had quite a different lifestyle than anyone I had ever met before. I won’t go into his story, since that would be quite inappropriate, but I must say that he was an extremely interesting person, someone who seemed wise from his (rather unique) experience. He told me about his drive, and that the track I Can by Nas was inspirational to him. I had never heard the track at the time, but since then was fortunate enough to catch the music video. Every time I hear the track now I think of Leon and what I could learn from him, and it has become inspirational to me as well.

On to St. Anger. Wow. I can’t figure out what Metallica are thinking. Every track on the album sounds like they’re trying to regain their status as metal heads after their extended sellout period (of which only one album I like). The songs sound empty and hollow (seems like Lars has lost half his drum set as he consistently bangs a skin every time the guitars bang out a chord) and repetitive (oh god, the repetitiveness). There are some decent vocal lines, but that’s about it. I saw the video for St. Anger, and the intro with the guards warning the band about the prison is laughably cheesy. Sadly, I believe Metallica has lost it.

There’s an AFI concert coming up which I’ll probably be catching with Trolley, Dina, Wheaties and Aaron. AFI is a group which I don’t know much about, since I’ve only recently discovered them. I heard some of their old stuff while driving in Wheaties’ car but it didn’t really catch. Hopefully, the concert will focus on their latest album, Sing the Sorrow.

I’m still sorting through my 3.67 gigs of songs, most notably the rest of the System of a Down albums and the Beth Gibbons side project.

I had the chance to watch Forrest Gump today, and re-experience was an amazing film it was again. I spent many hours as a kid (or, more appropriately, as a social hermit) watching it over and over again.

My grade nine history class allowed me the privilege of understanding the subtleties of certain scenes used as a time stamp, such as Governor Wallace protesting the desegregation of the public school system, or each war Lieutenant Dan’s ancestors died in.

It was odd to watch a film I haven’t seen in so long, yet to be able to quote most parts of it word for word, tone for tone, accent for accent. Everything seemed so foreign yet so familiar. Every scene brought an old emotion, unfelt since the last time I watched it so long ago.

It was interesting to understand new things about the movie, things which were beyond my comprehension in my youth. It became apparent that I learned much since then, and that I was experiencing the movie in a different way. As James Cole notes in 12 Monkeys while watching Vertigo, one may watch a film twice, but it may seem different when the changes are solely in oneself.

I only now understand Lt. Dan’s struggles with his fate and philosophy. I remember being very physically attracted to Robin Wright, and I guess I simply lost that attraction. I hadn’t fully appreciated the strength of Forest’s mother until seeing it again today. The list goes on.

It must be rare to have something which can be used as a meter or ruler in which one can measure ones progress. I hold self-improvement and intelligence as such important things in my life that I am constantly trying to use one to better the other, and consequently I may lose sight of how far I’ve gone.

Hopefully there is more to go.

I watched Shaolin Soccer with Aaron and it was pretty good. I laughed so hard at one point that I felt like throwing up. It’s a pretty good combination of action and humour, and doesn’t follow the same formula as other of Steven Chow’s movies (although that’s hardly a bad thing). I missed the love story though, which wasn’t as developed as I would have liked, something which isn’t characteristic of his comedies. Every Steven Chow movie I own has at least one relationship developing between him and some female deuteragonist, sometimes in more complicated triangles with other cute female co-stars. Aaron agreed that Chiu Mei looked good bald (or “blad”, as per the classically terrible subtitles), which was surprising considering the fact that he doesn’t generally like bald girls and I prefer girls with at least a few millimeters of hair.

I won’t go into the Italian Job, which I caught when John was over, and how bad a movie it was. Needless to say, he won’t be choosing the movie when we go out again. I should have learned from Teaching Miss fucking Tingle.

I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t had time to look for a job. Pat gave me a few pointers on my resume, so I’ll be redoing it and submitting it all over town. All the computer science geeks I know either have jobs from co-op, are jobless, or are working in clothing outlets. Jonathan’s attempt at getting me hired seems to have fallen through.

I finally finished transferring and categorizing all my old entries into my new Movable Type layout and it took more than 10 grueling hours. Reading back on some of the entries was quite enjoyable, to see how I’ve progressed since last summer. The current layout has only a single table (for the calendar) and the rest is done with div tags and CSS, which I had to learn. I’m fairly pleased with the layout though, as Trolley and Aaron helped me check cross-browser compatibility. I now know to never use verbose font sizes, only numerical ones if I ever want browsers to display a page in the same way.

John drove up over the weekend in order to attend my convocation. The ceremony wasn’t nearly as painful as I expected, although it did last over three hours, not including the painful picture taking afterwards. I shook hands with a very graceful chancellor on stage. Pat bought me an aluminum clipboard with dual paper compartments as a graduation gift, which is great.