I had a moment of great confusion about my life, today. While at Costco enjoying a Polish sausage and refillable fountain drink (for the low-low price of $1.50), I overheard an elderly couple discussing the poor state of America's youth and attributing it to the computer. The lady I overheard recalled how her granddaughter did not know how to write an exclamation point (!).

Naturally, my immediate reaction was, "Holy shit, when did I learn what an ampersand was?"

The ampersand, if you're not familiar, is that thing you get when you press Shift and 7 at the same time on a keyboard. This thing: &. While I can, more or less, trace back when I learned most things to general ages or periods of my schooling (kindergarten, middle school, high school, etc), I can't for the life of me figure out when or how I learned what the ampersand was. Could have been the 6th grade, could have been last year.

I don't even remember anyone telling me what it was called or meant, either. It feels as though I just sort of understood one day that "&" is shorthand for "and," which is strange because the ampersand isn't the sort of thing that you have an intuitive understanding of. [Brackets] too, and the distinction between them and (parenthesis). Also, these things: < > and { }.

Crap, what's the grave (`) for? Do I know what anything on this keyboard is for, anymore? 

I have the sudden urge to, the next time I go back to LA, sneak into the Faith Baptist elementary playground late at night and just play. I wanna hang from the monkey bars; go all the way around on the swings; mother-fuckin' slide. Who's with me?

*no strangers please*

*unless you have candy or a puppy in your van*

Q: What did the fisherman say when he got suspicious?

A: "Something's fishy." 

Hmmm...I've been feeling a lot more...emotional...lately. I've been angrier than usual, very anxious, and also somewhat lonely. Those are typically all the ingredients needed to get me in the mood to write something, but man, I can't think of anything to write. It's a razor's edge you walk when you want to write when you're emotional, but don't want to be all goth and emo. So to avoid that danger, I'm going to follow blogmaster chi's filler model and just go stream of consciousness on your asses.

Stream 1: It's official: Sarkman is going to graduate June 21st, 2008, at 8:00AM on RIMAC field at UCSD. I've spent three years at UCSD and looking back on my experiences and memories from my college years, I only have this to say: "I'M OUT OF HERE, BITCHES! KISS MY HAIRY ARMENIAN ASS CUZ I'M DONE WITH YOU WEAK-ASS BITCH-SHIT! FUCK Y'ALL, I'M A GHOST!"

Stream 2: What's the deal with girls that look really good when you see them from behind in class, but then when you see them as they get up to leave at the end of a lecture, they're uggos? Seriously, girls, stop teasing. You've got nice hair and a pretty sexy body, but put a bag over your heads sometimes, please. You think I come to class to learn? Well, granted I rarely come to class at all anymore, but when I do, I can assure you, I'm not there to learn. Please, for both our sakes: be hot.

Stream 3: To follow up on my previous stream, what's up with all the ugly Asian girls? I mean really, really ugly ones. Homely doesn't begin to describe them, but they try to make up for it by wearing skankish clothing. Girls, take a lesson from girls in class: Paper bag over your head. Maybe with a hole cut in it (that's a technique I learned from Ken). You're making me sad that you're my people with your ugliness. It's like all the trolls fled East Asia and immigrated into UCSD. C'mon. Please.

Stream 4: When Leo returns from Spain, I'm going to take a giant dump on his windshield. 

tl;dr - lolsorry i don't update!!!1~ 

Let's talk about a movie that's very near and dear to my heart: Seven Samurai. This Akira Kurosawa classic is about seven samurai hired by a poor village to protect them for a band of bandits. It stars the amazing Toshiro Mifune and is three hours of complete awesome. I don't usually like showing this movie to other people because they usually don't enjoy it, or get bored and walk away, or fall asleep, which bothers me because this movie actually means something to me. Still, let's dish.

I'd first heard about Seven Samurai from the place I get most of my information on what's good in film or music: my brother. He'd mentioned that the NuArt theatre in Santa Monica was playing various Kurosawa movies over the course of a few weeks as a sort of Kurosawa film festival, and that he'd wanted to go see some of them but unfortunately, had no one to go with.

I was a sophomore and had, at this time, no real knowledge of or interest in Japanese anything. I was going through a little anime phase but still wasn't terribly interested. He spoke very highly of Kurosawa and of Seven Samurai more specifically and really wanted to so in the end, I consented.

We ended up seeing Rashomon.

Rashomon is an amazing movie, too, don't get me wrong. One of Kurosawa's other classics, it's won awards and accolades up the wahzoo. It has an interesting story retold by interesting characters and is deserving of every kind word it receives. But as I watched it, all I could think about was the movie trailer they played for Seven Samurai before it.

The trailer had no fancy special effects. No cliffhanger splicing. No Don Lafontaine. In fact, at first, the movie seemed like it would be pretty uninteresting, if the trailer was any indication. Then it got to the end. I can still hear the powerful, heavy drums that accompany the still shots of Mifune sloshing and brawling in the rain and mud, beating like drums of war. And when they played clips from the battle, with bandits dropping from their horses into pools of muddy water and villagers spearing their would-be assailants and the thundering of horses contesting with the drums on the audio track, I knew I had to watch this movie. The grit and the dirtiness and the completely unbeautiful warfare of the scene were unlike anything I had seen up until then. How could I possibly concentrate on Rashoman when I had just tasted this?

We came back the next week for Seven Samurai. Immediately we knew that this was the Kurosawa movie to see. While we just walked into Rashoman, this movie had a line out the door. It was winter, and, not having proper winter clothing, I was cold as hell. It didn't matter, though, because I spent a week waiting to see this movie and no 60 degree temperatures (cold for LA, ok!) were going to ruin this movie for me.

We waited outside in the cold for half an hour, sort of eavesdropping on people in line behind us talk about the first time they saw this movie years and years ago. When we finally got into the theater, it was heaven. The warm, comforting theater was a sanctuary from the cold, and let me tell you: the movie did not disappoint. It was, without a doubt, the single best movie-going experience I have every had in my life.

There are too many amazing lines and scenes from the movie for me to take the time to praise and celebrate properly, but there was one more aspect of that original viewing that I've never been able to forget: the subtitling.

Being a foreign language film, Seven Samurai required subtitles (because dubbing sucks) and the cut we were seeing boasted a brand new translation which had apparently just recently been released. It wasn't a drastic change from the other translations. Some lines were only subtly tweaked or modified. It was nothing major, but every other time I've watched this movie (a lot) I've never been able to read what I consider to be some of the best lines of the movie the way I remember them from my first viewing. Because of this, I've never seen anything quite as good as Seven Samurai. Not even the same movie.

The only bad thing that I have to say about this movie is that Keiko Tsushima was not an attractive girl. No wonder she was able to pass for a boy, yeesh. 

So why do I love this movie? Because the very first time I saw it, I adored it and everything about it down to the peripheral aspects of the experience like the weather and the video store we parked by. Every time I watch this movie again, I'm transported, just a little, back to the first time I watched it. Back to that warm, little theater were I fought off the cold and stared with big, sparkling eyes at one of the finest films ever created. 

I copied this from the back of the DVD box for the movie 300. Definitely not a stunning likeness, but I hope nobody else thinks it looks like ass.

I'll write something one day, I promise.