1968: A Space Odyssey

I was watching 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY around 1:30am (about 3 hrs ago, been typing this for 2 hrs b/c I got sidetracked and almost derailed this entire post into a morphing of heinous sorts), got about half an hour into it and the air conditioner kicked on and interrupted the dialoge (just had to happen during a scene that had some), and I'm antsy like a goody two shoes, so I figured I'd do something else.  But I couldn't help noticing during the breif beginning credits - after the overture-thingy and before the Dawn Of Man sequence - the lettering of the title layout.  It looked so textbook, as if it were a token of appreciation to all the college sophistos who Mr. Kubrick was counting on to see the film.  I mean, it looked like the kind of thing you'd see on posters that are no longer in production

I think I saw that kind of lettering in a classroom inside of a one horse town school named Chular, in California (basically a suburb of Salinas, except Salinas itself isn't exactly big enough to have suburbs; just like Fruitland, Missouri is a would-be suburb of Jackson, but Jackson isn't even half the size of Cape Girardeau and Cape doesn't even have what it takes to have its own suburb(s)), and since Chular was a 1horse-town, not even big enough to warrant its own school, IMO, I think the decorations were probably manufactured in the late 70s and acquired from yard sales by the teachers who probably were taking a very huge paycut to work in Chular.  I don't know what I was doing in the big kids class, I must have been on my way to the bathroom or trying to get back to class and ended up lost, idk...although I do remember my teacher made me apologize to a cop for saying something directed toward him regarding TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY (even though I was just a kid! -- with a very stubbornly exubrent lust for imagination and those things that it creates!!!!!??), but I don't know if that was when I saw the big kids' class or not.  Maybe I saw enough movies to get an idea of what college was like in 1970-ish.  But for some reason, maybe this missing piece of my memory regarding the font of the image above had something to do with it, but I started thinking about a book I read like, uh, 70?(yeah right) pages of, I can't remember what it was called.  It MIGHT have been titled THE MANHATTAN PROJECT, but anyway, it was about the creation of the first atomic bomb.  I was reading the book and looking back, something seems rather odd.  The people - all of 'em - in that book were SMART.  They were well versed in physics, biology, the whole 9 yards.  This military general or someone like that was discussing the logistics of creating an atomic bomb with a group of scientists, and he actually understood enough to have some non-dumbfoundingly stupid questions/insights on the matter.  I don't know if the town I live in is just meant for less brain-intensive matters, but I have got the impression from going to school with stupid people, living in a neighborhood filled with stupid people, and living in another neighborhood filled with people that I really don't know anything about other than things that don't suggest they are particularly smart...yeah; no need to figure out how to say "Girardeau", just say "Rich stupids!  Yeah; you!"  the tough part is figuring out if it's any different anywhere else.  Do smart people all go on to big cities?  Is St. Louis where all the smart people are?  Or do they even consider stepping foot in Missouri at all?

  I think the people have simply lost enthusiasm for public education.  I mean, it's hard to argue with that.  We have color TV for crying out loud, who needs to bother learning?!  Thankfully a lot of Asian and other cultures are still cracking so now we have not just color TV, but we've gone from there to LCD/Plasma, then LED and now we have the new 4K Ultra-HD TVs from Sony!  I wonder if the Japanese even have time to watch TV as hard as they work...

The font that is used to announce the "Dawn Of Man" sequence, after the mini-credit roll at the beginning is identical to the lettering that is used on both the title font on the cover and inside GHOSTBUSTERS and the entirety of the end-credits.  What's odd is that even though by 1984 Hollywood was spending more money than in previous decades on movies so they could incorporate different outrageous visuals, that textbook/classroom air of sophisticated elegance remained intact 16 years after 2001: ASO was unleashed to the public.  The only thing that really had changed between the late '60s and early '80s was that films were becoming faster paced and the music was less organic.  The good movies that come out nowadays are almost always utilizing just about everything they can to make their case.  David Fincher's movies are good examples of this; I think that may be a sign that the audience is losing its ability or willingness to notice the beauty of little details and needs something exotic to clinch the deal, OR it may mean that the fast faced mode of the 80's has simply progressed naturaly.  I guess it depends on one's outlook.  the TRANSFORMERS movies are definitely not a progression.  But I guess that's coming from a guy who firmly belives that BAD BOYS, MIAMI VICE and every other fake asassSS cop film/show is a headfull of wasted time.

FILMS I LOVE FROM THE 1970S

BEING THERE

CARRIE

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

THE EXORCIST

MEAN STREETS

TAXI DRIVER

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE

FILMS I LOVE FROM THE 1980S

THE FLY

GHOSTBUSTERS

THE GOLDEN CHILD

HEATHERS

HELLRAISER

THE LAST UNICORN

ORDINARY PEOPLE

FILMS I LOVE FROM THE 1990S

BATMAN RETURNS

BRINGING OUT THE DEAD

CANDYMAN

CLOCKERS

DOLORES CLAIBORNE

8MM

FRANKIE & JOHNNY

THE GREEN MILE

NOWHERE

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT

WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE?

FILMS I LOVE FROM THE DECADE WITH NO NAME (2000-2009)

THE DEPARTED

HARD CANDY

I HEART HUCKABEES

MYSTERIOUS SKIN

FILMS I LOVE FROM THIS DECADE:

SUPER

Seems increasingly bleak as time has gone on.  I might be missing something from each of the decades.  This decade only has one film on it, but it's only 3 years into it.  And I haven't seen all there is to see (yet?).

 Christopher Nolan's BATMAN trilogy was really good, but it spans two decades and I can't put THE DARK KNIGHT on that list as it's own movie b/c the film on its own is really not that entertaining; it's too depressing to be particularly enjoyable, IMO.  But it's worth seeing to appreciate the true meaning of the follow up and its predecesser.

GREAT ROMANCES OF 2002

At press time, I am listening to a teenage heartcrush nostalgia-esque playlist I created on Amazon Cloud from songs I've bought over the years.

1. Great Romances Of the 20th Century - Taking Back Sunday (Obviously the inspiration for the playlist title, I have it on CD, don't need it on MP3, so I haven't bought it, although I might when I get some $ just to even out the caf & decaf.  This is the song that came calling for me when I walked into Hot Topic one day, and I found out who Taking Back Sunday was, and what ultimately made me simpatico with emo) 
2. My First Trip To Mars - Atticus Fault (played heavily on Charter Digital Cable radio at the time)
3. Seein' Red - Unwritten Law (high video rotation on MTV2 that summer)
4. Complicated - Avril Lavigne (need I say more?  HAVE YOU BEEN UNDER A ROCK THE PAST DECADE OR WHAT?!!...actually, Avril's kinda faded out, but she was a pretty big deal 2002-2004, and kind of a media acquaintance from 2004-2008.  Unless you're like 10 years old [SHIELD YOUR EYES, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!], then you should know this song was all and more of the rage in 2002)
5. No Such Thing - John Mayor (this song was written about me.  I found out I was wrong when drawing outside the lines became the reason I don't do squat all day, and have found the idea of writing a screenplay & getting anywhere with it increasingly far fetched; I think it's been like a year since I wrote a single page of anything)
6. A Long December - Counting Crows (I balled my eyes out listening to this on Charter Digital Cable radio at the early-end of summer, thinking of my epic crush; the lyrics about California fit right in, since I was so sure I was going to be "17 forever" (I was actually 18, but whatever)
7. The Game Of Love - Santanna (ft. Michelle Branch) (this song made almost painful to listen to, so I would change the channel when it came on; as to "why?", no clue)
8. Fat Lip - Sum 41 (another MTV2 staple of the time)
9. Graduation Day - Head Automatica (after I moved out of my ma's - 2004 - I spent hours on end listening to RAGE 103.7, but then the variety ceased and the quality became more Godsmack/Staind/Breaking Benjamin and less Arcade Fire/Pearl Jam/emo/etc.)
10. One Big Holiday - My Morning Jacket (another pre-suck RAGE 103.7 staple)
11. The District Sleeps Alone Tonight (I figure this song sorta describes me, for I've never been in a real relationship of that sort, which is weird b/c I never thought someone could grow up without a wife and the possibility of kids...one day it occurred to me and I was like "What?  No...you must be mistaken...um..." and then it slowly occurred to me - I will die alone...)
12. Last Defense - Year Of The Rabbit (yet another pre-1-900-EVIL RAGE 103.7 oddity.  If you don't "get" the way I am after hearing this, don't bother.  In that sense, the title of the song kinda fits this playlist.)

The Stupids Made Me Do It

Wow.  I just a moment ago had three (3) Stephen King books in my shopping cart at Amazon.  I had to do a double take.  I keep bashing Stephen King as being literature for degenerates.  What's sad is I don't even know how to read anything beyond Stephen King.  I particularly get annoyed with how easily this world we live in - with movies, music, and beyond, all within reach in the comfort of our homes - can so easily be undone, all the progress we've made in the past 75 years.  People like Stephen King seem to think these are essential to life, and he keeps inserting cultural references to them, as if he wants people to just read his books and forget about them later; no sense in writing a classic ey?  Something that future generations don't need an encyclopedia to understand would be too ambitious I suppose...
  And I guess it's rather unfair of me to generalize like I have been for so long, but I've long had the feeling that 80% of society is a pile of moron.  At least some of that is probably because people talk without thinking and end up sounding like they were thinking, much like I do sometimes.  You tell someone you make $700 a month and then they ask you "Why don't you buy an airplane ticket to visit your sister?"  Seriously?  You tell someone you work at night from 8pm - 6am and then they spend all day trying to telephone you.  People will often deprive their own selves of sleep just to make an extra $3,000/mo as if their would-be income without sleep deprivation wouldn't be enough...I do wonder how much of that is spurred on by the people at the top though...my so-called friend in jr high & high school said he had to work like 8 hrs a day or else he'd get fired...and this was at Denny's...while he was still in school for 6 hrs a day.  How is someone supposed to get a decent adulthood, much less a childhood, when they spend 14+ hrs a day working their tail off?  That leaves just enough time to take a shower, brush teeth, give your loved one(s) a peck on the cheek and give ones self enough time to settle into bed before sleep.
  So anyway...I've never been in the work force, so I guess I can't say too much about it, but I do know sleep is important and that not being Super(hu)man should not disqualify someone from getting a top paying job.
  And this REALLY ticks me off; people make up their own rules in regards to medicine.  The pill bottle will state "TAKE 10-14 DAYS" and then the user will stop taking it b/c they feel better.  Why exactly?  Under what institute of knowlege do people get the idea that just because one suspects they are cured means medicine should cease to be administered?  Under that train of thought, germs don't exist do they?  You can't see them, you can't feel them; why worry about them?  Of course, that train of logic is probably quite prevelent actually; how many people vacuum their carpets and mop their floors?  How many people do a beyond halfway decent job at washing dishes?
  People will tell you it's none of your business if you confront them with this information, but that's bull.  Pandemics and epidemics are much more probable when you live in a world where antiobotics no longer work like they should because the germs that cause illness have grown immune to the medicine b/c people let the germs win by backing off on the medicine.
  Same thing with recycling.  No doubt the overspill from the landfills will be distributed evenly as opposed to being dumped on the lawns only of those households who don't recycle.  And what about the children of those households?  "Go find somewhere else to live if you don't like it".
 
anyway...I guess it all started way before all that, actually.  People - doctors, my mother, etc. - would always drag me off to some pointless activity because "I might like it".  "How do you know you don't like it?"  My mother almost made me go to the zoo.  I probably would not have hated it.  I would have hated being dragged over there, stuck in the car for 3+ hours while every good thing the world has to offer flashes before my eyes.  I always hate that about long trips.  You see a mall that you've never been to, or an eatery that looks intriguing and you never go back and like hellk the vehicle you're in gets stopped so that you can get "distracted".  As if going to the zoo is why we as humans are alive.  Maybe a lot of people feel that way, much like I feel about eating and shopping.  I like malls.  I like the combination of dim-lighting and neon colors, I like the pizazz and sparkle of it all.  True, I rarely have enough money to go to the mall and actually make use of it.  If I could save up $25 for three months, I'd have enough to spend at least a little bit through 3 different malls if I wanted to.  AND eat at some eatery someplace.  Obviously I wouldn't be able to buy a new pair of jeans or a CD, but maybe an ice cream cone or a decal for my window, since I don't and probably never will have a car.
As for the zoo, I know I won't like it b/c I know what a zoo is and I've never felt like "Oh, that looks (sounds) fun!".  My grandpa felt that way about fishing it seemed like.  How do I know I won't like fishing?  Hmm...uh...what IS there to like about fishing?  What about golf?  Uh...no.  Well, what about baseball?  Baseball is sped up golf.  No, it's not.  Whatever; No.  I don't like playing games - some wise guy from eons ago decided to make a map with a bunch of detours.  Nothing about point A or point B or any of the detours offers any means for emotional stimulation.  That's why I listen to music that's why I watch movies that's why I read books.  Emotional stimulation.  Where in the act of fishing/baseball/zoo-wandering does that happen?  I might laugh a little bit depending on who I'm with, I might enjoy their company, but I don't need to have a fishing pole to do that, at least baseball is a means of physical activity...
  I guess this put me at odds with civilization so when I became informed enough to know when stupidity was falling out of people's mouths, I took that as a bad sign.

Ulimately, all the "Real" art to be found in literature is beyond my reading level b/c I was a well-meaning yet un-tamable beast of a child, and couldn't be chained to a desk long enough to finish kindergarten w/o adjusting to my anti-psychotics which somehow mellowed out the un-tamableness and gave everyone enough time to talk to me and level with me before I could zone out and imagine I was somewhere else where no one was lecturing me...so I continued kindergarten in a classroom designed for kids with no future, since banning kids from school is against the law, unless they commit a criminal act that cannot be explained by an illness that the kid did not knowingly create themselves...
  And since I am extremely stubborn, it took another five years from then before I even had any desire to make use of my time in school.  By that time, everyone except me, my former-SED (Seriously Emotionally Disturbed) classmates and my then-current-LD classmates were leaps and bounds beyond what I was learning.  My normal peers were learning algebra, but I was just starting to get the hang of basic division and I never got pre-algebra, which is weird b/c my teacher tried to sum pre-algebra up by a demo-type-equation, which she wrote on the chalk board and explained.  And I was like "Oh!  That's easy"  Then came the non-demo equations, and I was stumped, like "what the..."  If I ever filled out the paper, I didn't get any higher than a F.  The following papers didn't show myself any improvement.
  So anyway.  My reading skills are as much as I am willing to learn and since I'm stubborn, lazy, and my eyes are starting to wig out on me (damn, I need eye glasses!!), I am probably never going to be able to read certain books.  I tried reading THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, the one that the Martin Scorsese movie is based on, and could not for the life of me decipher what the author was saying, apparently because he was writing in some metaphore drenched method.  My mother understood it, but she said she didn't like it for some reason I don't remember.  I couldn't even watch the movie b/c I didn't understand half of what was going on.  The conversation with Jesus and Judas was entirely comprehensible, but then there was some Roman Gladiator fighting scene and it looked like maybe someone escaped the ring or...I don't know.  It wasn't very clear at all.  Main thing I remember is some scraggly looking guy was walking very slowly forward with a grin on his face and I'm like "Who is this guy and what is he doing??
  Ian McEwan's ATONEMENT I also couldn't get more than 20 pages through because he spent almost a page describing in very obscure language this water fountain.  Don't ask me why.

Indie Rock For Teenage Heartcrush Nostalgia

The most intense year of my life was 2002.  The experience of my out-of-body-experience-ish crush on Megan Irvin (sp??; can't seem to find her Facebook profile or anything else to prove she actually exist(ed)...), being the next great screenwriter of the world, and having a liberatingly loose school schedule was enough to make it highly memorable to say the least.
That summer I got cable TV, and had access to MTV2 before the difference between it and MTV became much like the difference between the different HBO channels.  MTV2 was basically conceived to keep people who were heartbroken over the fact that MTV no longer played music videos 24/7 from going into the Viacom headquarters with a machine gun and taking hostages.  But over the years, it became clear to the Big Guyz that the concept of 24/7 music videos just didn't appeal to all that many people.  So, if it exists still, it's for little to no reason.  Idk, maybe it's gone back to its original glory, but as of early 2003, the shift was already apparent. 
  But anyway...
  2002 was a great time for dark romantics like me to have access to MTV2; music of all types - R&B/hip-hop, teen-beats, and of course rock, were all brimming/oozing with strong emotions, i.e.: melancholly.  It was most notably the era of emo rock as MTV saw it (emo had actually been around for over a decade by the time Taking Back Sunday dropped their landmark debut, but nobody knew that...).  The albums that spawned the various songs of my sr. high school year were varying degrees of disappointment, for the most part.  Craig David's "Walking Away" was a great melo-drama song, but the sample clips on the 'net of the other songs on the album didn't impress me.  Pink's "Just Like A Pill" and "Don't Let Me Get Me" were greats of the day, but "Get The Party Started" was possibly the most annoying song of 2001/2002.  Staind's breakout album BREAK THE CYCLE was OK, I wasn't as into the nu-metal sound as most people were.  Thursday had some great classics, but most of their music was just too noisy and chaotic to offer any noticeable insights unless I were to ignore the musical element and try to decipher the lyrics and their meaning.  The sample clips of The Strokes' IS THIS IT were also unimpressive, so I figured "Hard To Explain" and "Someday" were the only songs there to hear and I thus never bought the album.
I did thoroughly enjoy Avril Lavign's LET GO and although it took some getting used to, I did enjoy Taking Back Sunday's TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS and Dashboard Confessional's THE PLACES YOU HAVE COME TO FEAR THE MOST.  Saves The Day's STAY WHAT YOU ARE was also thoroughly enjoyed by me.  For some reason I didn't buy The Starting Line's SAY IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT until a few years later, but I did listen to it at Hot Topic, so I knew it was worth buying.  To this day, I still haven't bought Hoobastank's self titled CD, not sure why.  I LOVE the music video for "Running Away", almost bought the CD single so I could have it, but it's only playable on computer, which i have, but just barely (video playback through disc is very choppy).  I heard Pete Yorn's "Undercover" at my local entertainment superstore (Hastings), and was thus compelled to buy the SPIDER-MAN soundtrack, and thus was looking forward to the movie, even though most of the soundtrack was junk, but nontheless, I was sorely disappointed in the movie.  The villan and his backstory were not satisfactorily explained and the feelings that Spidy felt for Mary Jane were not explored well either.  You just get these little hints that Mr. Parker has a crush on her, and then you see him get the girl (almost), but there's no skill used in any of the crew's resources - camera angling, editing, music, etc.++++ - to let the viewer feel what Parker feels, except the assumption that the audience will imagine that feeling on its' own based on the "duh" factor.  And the action sequences were pedestrian.  I guess the film was trying to appeal to too many people by not getting too heavy into any particular aspect of the film.  On that front, it wildly succeeded, much like TITANIC did in 1997/1998.  As for being anyone's favorite movie, much like TITANIC, SPIDER-MAN failed; they're good movies to bring your friends along to or to see with your significant other, because most folks will stave off boredom via those films, but for anyone in said group to seriously be moved to any memorable extent by either film requires your cinematic taste buds to be non-existent.  That's why TITANIC grossed almost a billion USD in 1998, and Gregg Araki's nowhere (1997) didn't gross much more than a million USD in its day.
  Anyway...emo pretty much became a 4letter word by 2005, and by then pop-punk morphed into something almost unrecognizable called Fall Out Boy/Panic At The Disco, while bands like Cute Is What We Aim For and Paramore succeeded at social acceptance.  Then synth-pop made a comeback around 2008, and now the boybands & their solo projects are Back!(!!!!!!-insertAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH-!!!!!!).  Backstreet Boys aren't cool anymore though b/c their reaching middle age.  And who wants to listen to their parents' music anyway?

The evolving errs of Wes Craven

Note: I was going to title this "The Decline Of Western Craven"...that doesn't quite fit tho...

Anyway:
Sux.  A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is not perfect.  You know how I know this?  Because I saw FREDDY'S DEAD first, then I saw NEW NIGHTMARE and I really was far more impressed with NNM than w/ FD.  At some point later on I saw A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET.  Was VERY disappointed, not being well versed on the history and evolution of SFX (I was just a kid!).
  SCREAM (1996) was a good movie.  HALLOWEEN H20 was a good movie.  I liked H20 much better than pretty much all of the other HALLOWEEN entries.  The only one aside from H20 that I ever liked was HALLOWEEN II (1981), but I guess my opinion on that is kinda void since HALLOWEEN (1978) is considered such a well made film, but, IMO, it's just amateurish to the Nth degree.  Someone once said on an Amazon forum (not sure if they were talking to me as they didn't address who they were talking to), to paraphrase, that in order to like horror movies you have to find that little kid part of you that was once scared of what was underneath the bed.  Yeah.  I grew up.  Sorry.  Anyway; I liked HALLOWEEN II, and I can still watch it from time to time, but refuse to buy it b/c at some point in the 1990s, Uni Corp or whoever owned Halloween II at the time changed the cover-art to look like CUJO and HALLOWEEN were the stupidist films ever made (CUJO may have semi-good, or better, but I saw it when I was a 13 or 14, and around that time I thought CANDYMAN was boring, so I don't know if my experience with CUJO is the same experience I would have if I watched it now...but the mid-90's cover-art for CUJO IS the best attempt I have seen to make a classic horror film look like elite trash [although those Direct2Video films like JACK FROST and UNCLE SAM etc. were hard to beat; if I were them I'd put a brown paper bag over the tapes instead of trying to advertise those atrocious films to anyone; "here's your trash, if you want it..."  Apparently some people will watch almost anything]).
  Oh, yeah...as I was saying.  SCREAM, although primarily a hip-teenage parodic sarcasm fest with some genuine horror intermingled, was a breath of fresh air to horror movies, b/c it said to the world: "We're not stupid - give us something we haven't seen a million and a half times already".  The fact that the killer actually ran to its victims was especially useful in making the film relatable.  And the fact that the women were not flimsy ditzs was refreshing.  And HALLOWEEN H20 apparently got wind of that.  Nobody elese did.  The entire rest of the decade was spent copying off of SCREAM.  URBAN LEGEND was almost a direct copy-cat, and I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER was just stupid - another one of those films about how to be hip & demonstrating how teenagers know more about solving murder mysteries than the police do.  I did like the first sequel tho.  Ha!  I'm staring to see a trend here...honestly most of this post is spontaneouss, try not to read too much into it...
Anyway.  Here's where it all comes together.  2010.  A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET.  Why does the world need a new NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET?  For one thing, it'll be in color (ha).  For another, it'll stave off whiny kids who think blu ray is a magic tool to make everything glow and sparkle.  The MAIN thing tho is that the special effects will be on par with NEW NIGHTMARE's, and not the pre-historic decay of the 1984 version.
What did the filmmakers give us?  They gave us a shiny film with a boatload of character development backed by a screenwriter who doesn't know how to write in character development.  They gave us a more realistic Freddy Krueger, who didn't kill people in their dreams in wild and imaginative ways, but instead assumed that people believe in ghosts and thus would suspect it was F.K. if someone starting levitating in a diner and thus decided it woud be safer to make it look like the diner kid took a knife and killed himself.  Yep.  Way to take all the fun out of it, ey?  BORING, BORING, BORING.  I didn't finish the movie because no ending could justify it.
  I would go back and just watch the original, but the whole franchise is so cheesy.  The SFX combined with the snarky jokes Freddy keeps spewing out, not to mention the early-80's MTV set designs, with all the fake smoke etc...just stupid.  I'll never have you Fred Krueger.  But at least I have the poster for A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4: THE DREAM MASTER (1988), which isn't quite as cool as the slightly modified poster-art that was ued as the VHS cover-art shortly(ish) thereafter, but it's close enough...more or less...

my wishes

I added AMERICAN FOOTBALL by American Football to my Amazon wish list.  I have it on mp3, but I don't have a functioning CD burner.  It would function well to have it around just in case the inspired awe that came from listening to the CD whenever the last time I experienced awe over (seems like it's been a few+ years...) becomes less clear, enabling me to hear it like it's new, once again.  Having the cover-artwork housed in a commercial jewel case would be a nice bonus, but why didn't I keep it the last time I had it or the time before that?  I have no idea.

I feel more focused regarding what is and isn't important now that I know this world will be sucked into Hell under the AntiChrist's command.  I keep hoping it won't happen in my lifetime, but there's no use.  If it doesn't happen in my lifetime, it'll happen shortly after, supposing I live the average life span of 80 or whatever...I'm thinking more like 75, but anyway...idk...I can't imagine myself as an old man.  I guess I'll feel differently about it if it happens, I'll probably be "middle-aged" when the Antichrist rises.  I might be 50 or around there when the time comes to take the mark or die.  I don't know how much the antichrist will spend on torturing his enemies.  He may just kill me outright, or me may send his defyers to a torture room or something, idk...I just hope it all ends well for me.  I know a lot of people have gotten all riled up over the idea that God isn't all that.  I hope at least some of them see the flaw in their thinking before it's too late.  But if they don't then that's their doing.  People are not incapable of rational thought.  Stupidity is caused by laziness.  Fortunately I have an advantage in that regard since I have a naturally hyper-active mind.

My MEDIA COLLECTION at the core:

American Football - s/t
Chicago - Greatest Hits 1982-1989
Phil Collins - No Jacket Required
Genesis - s/t
Genesis - Invisible Touch
Genesis - Live At Wembley Stadium (DVD)
Hidden In Plain View - Resolution
Idlewild - The Remote Part
Oingo Boingo - Dark At The End Of The Tunnel
Oingo Boingo - Nothing To Fear
Oingo Boingo - Skeletons In The Closet: The Best Of
The Starting Line - Say It Like You Mean It
Toto - Toto IV
Virginwool - Open Heart Surgery


I actually have several others that I got real cheap and figured I would/will/could listen to, since if i don't spend my money the gov't just assumes I don't need it... and I'm kinda addicted to shopping...shopping for its own sake is probably more important to me than owning an upgraded TV...still have that "standard" definition 15".