Cody

Ok, so… I’ve got to go. uh… maybe I should explain myself a little bit. I’ve been having this weird series of dreams lately, and I’m not sure what they mean. In fact the worst part about them all is that they’re not dreams at all… You see night one I have one of those dreams that you’re not sure if you’re asleep or awake and it’s even so bad that you don’t even know when the line was crossed from the dream world to the real world. As the dream starts out I was sitting up in my bed (not something I do often being I sleep on the top bunk of a bunk bed and the ceiling fan is right above me) staring at my closet for what seemed hours when all of a sudden this black… almost cloud or liquid begins moving from one end of the closet to the other infecting everything it touched as it crept slowly and ominously into my room. Armed with nothing else I picked up my pillow and chucked it at the black cloud scattering hangers everywhere and cutting the vial creature like darkness in half. Separated from its source the cloud began to wither with a moan. What seemed to be a few minutes later I then went to the rest room, got in bed and laid down without thinking when my head landed with a thud on a barren surface. I looked around everywhere for my pillow clearly remembering the dream, but so sure that it was a dream that I didn’t bother looking in the closet… but when I did I found my pillow and hangars scattered about.

On night two the dream was rather unpronounced and in fact I don’t remember much about it until I was conscious… or… well halfway conscious anyways. What I do remember however is waking up in a cold sweat, and instead of just pushing my blankets to the side I very meticulously rolled them up into this perfect ball, carried them out of my room and placed them in the hall. Then came back in and went to sleep…. an odd situation since I never sleep without a blanket even if it is 105° F outside, and really can’t stand being without something to hold onto.  I woke up a while later cold and rather confused… after looking around for my blankets for a little while I remembered the events of the night before and not wanting to venture out into the hall this early yet I just grabbed one of my spare blankets from beside my bed and pulled it around me… I soon came to my senses and decided that others would think it odd if they woke up and saw my blankets in this perfect pile in the hallway so I got up and gathered them.

Night three I went to bed with several questions for myself and life.  I’ve never been one to live the “stable” life so much.  Never had a girlfriend for more than 3 months, never had a job for more than 5 months, and I jump around from task to task all day long at home.  I posed myself with this question after going out to eat with Scott, mommy, and Brittney.  The restaurant we were at was somewhere I knew several people worked during high school I was rather shocked to find them still there… obviously a fun and just good place in general to work… or was it just me?  You see it’s not like I’ve not had good jobs, I was talking with a bunch of my friends the other day who all work 40+ hours a week and live on their own.  They were all talking about how they were looking forward to some good promotions and stuff so that they would be making a little more than the $300 a week they currently are making.  In all honesty I was floored by what they were making… Jobs where I just kind of sort of reluctantly took the job because I have bills to pay and needed something to do for a little while I was making in upwards of $500 a week, and I left those jobs either out of boredom or because I wasn’t getting paid enough to be doing what I was doing… and here these people are happy to be making what I would of laughed at someone who said I’d be making that even at 16.  Kind of funny even when working at Lifetouch everybody was kind of talking about how they were all getting paid different amounts and nobody really knew why Zack asks me what I’m making and I not knowing what they were making just simply said $10.90/hr he looks at me kind of funny and says something like “Dude I’m not talking to you anymore.” not really knowing what was going on I asked the other guy who said that I was making about $1.50 more per hour than both of them.  It’s not like I have some great track record with businesses or anything, I’m a horrible employee and I’ll admit it… I pack up and leave whenever I darn well feel like it without much or any warning at all.  So that night I went over how school never really was my “thing” nor was working for “the man” and I definitely cannot stay stationary for very long.  I was thinking about this thing Scott had said about how when he was a kid him and some friends went on a bike ride across Missouri to Arkansas for a fishing trip, so I was thinking that I should totally just get on my bike and head out… no real destination, no money, and not a clue what I’m supposed to do, it just sounded fun.  I’m at that point right now where the money is gone…. like seriously GONE gone and I have to get a job or something to survive… but nothing seems right and I’ve kind of been feeling God tugging at my heart saying “go” so somewhat joking around I thinking “yeah, I should go, pack up all my jewelry stuff and just ride… somewhere, setting up shop at all the Starbucks I come across to make stuff and sales will come magically so I can afford to continue on” Anyways that night I had another dream, that I woke up to.  What I remember about the dream is that I was standing on an old dirt road that didn’t make sense, staring at a bridge that was destroyed that also did not make sense seeing as there was nothing but prairie land and only a small stream, with no road connecting the bridge.  The bridge was broken, tattered, and flaming, but managed to mend itself with the coblestones below that had fallen into the stream during its destruction… only thing is that the bridge was still burning with flames high enough to keep it’s occupants from their destination… at this point I woke up.  Knowing that I need to make a move soon I asked God to give me some sort of sign that I should be heading out.  What did I ask for?  Either a random sale of jewelry that couldn’t really be explained, or a mended bridge… sales meaning I’m heading out on my bike to… uh… well who knows but I’m going.  Bridge meaning that I need to stay and just work a job quit running based on feeling and just buckle down for a while.  Guess what I woke up to this morning, I’ll give you one guess.

So I opened up my email this morning, still half asleep as the spam messages pile in I see this one email that just says #4 in the subject line, but it wasn’t caught by my spam filter… slightly aggravated at the performance of the spam filter lately I go to mark it as spam so that I can go through all the legit emails when I realized that the email was from myself… I went ahead and opened it to find out that it was order number four on my site (I had done two test orders on the site to make sure everything was working good, then Brenna’s parents ordered her a bracelet).  So needless to say this was an unexpected and unexplainable order that I had been looking for.  Oh, and I had said that it would need to be within the next two weeks since I wasn’t going to head out before the Leadership Summit and God gets back to me within 24hrs

The Three Sided Coin

That’s what I wanted to title this one… the three sided coin.  Originally I was just going to get on here and review this wonderful movie Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing and Charm School with my own opinions of how this movie was so amazingly intricate story of the “what ifs” in life.  I planned on going on and on about how one mans what if so easily can become anothers new beginning… when I finally realized that the movie wasn’t about the what ifs of life at all.

After talking to my mom I learned that the movie was actually about relationships, or at least from her perspective.  Scott on the other hand knew that the movie was about second chances… yet we were all wrong, the movie is not about the what ifs in life, nor is it about the relationships in life and how they all intermingle to work out God’s plan, nor was the movie even about second chances… no… the movie is about you, and me so delicately complex and beautifully displaying our own life stories reflected in the lives of others on screen.

This is why I spend my time going out of my way to find every Indie film of note to watch.  Because every once in a while you find a Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing and Charm School that has you happily sighing in awe of the artistic viewpoint of the world around us.  Quite possibly my favorite Indie film of all time pushing past  Dear Frankie… which is also a great film but not as complex or intricate.  You only begin to see just how complex the movie is with the realization that Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School is actually the second part to the story… now the 2005 movie tells the story of both movies with flashbacks from a short movie made in 1990 of the same title.

Well worth your time to watch, and definitely worth going through whatever troubles to hunt this movie down!

I finally got my head cut off.  Generally do for summer anyways, but it’s been something ridiculous like 8 months since I’ve had a “haircut” now that’s not to say I haven’t had a few inches here and there trimmed off but uh… well take a look.

Oh and as a special bonus both pictures contain my newest creation, a necklace with an AMD Athlon XP 3200+ worked in as the centerpiece… I like to call it Nerd Bling.  You guys are the first to see it and if I can get a line on a large supply of old processors I plan on actually making a whole jewelry line of Nerd Bling and possibly nerdbling.com or something started to sell it Problem is the only ideas I have thus far are the CPU necklaces, RAM Bracelets, and possibly some necklaces/charm anklets with old keyboard keys spelling out peoples names and what not… just gotta get TONS of old keyboards for that part.

Then after I lost 6 inches of hair… kinda odd since it’s been so long with long hair, but showers are much faster, and it’s so much cooler

My mom has been seeing this guy for two weeks now… or so maybe three, but anyways she asks me how I like him.  Obviously having three kids it is just as important that we like him as it is that she does… or well that I like him as she does since Brittney isn’t going to like anyone who takes attention away from her, and Brook is never home so it doesn’t really matter.  To be honest I really do like the guy a lot.  He has a good job and makes great money, but remains very down to earth and isn’t one of those strict neat freaks that you see with most people with the same job positions.

Anyways… on to the point of the story.  You might remember that I had an article on here a while ago about wanting a ridding partner, then went on to explain more what I was really asking for with that.  Well I never did ride the Katy trail, would be fun and I’d love to do it sometime, but getting out on my own is majorly no fun, and trying to convince someone else that ridding bikes for 4 days on a 300 mile trip would be awesome is difficult to say the least.   Funny thing is Scott (My mom’s boyfriend that isn’t really her boyfriend because we’re definitely not in 6th grade anymore and there is no such thing as a good adult boyfriend… every time any of my friends referred to their parents boyfriend/girlfriend it was not in a pleasant tone.)  rides his bike all the time and was talking about this area by him where they are doing construction and the land is all torn up, how much fun it would be to go out there when it is raining and have fun getting a little muddy.

yeah… so there wasn’t really a point to this one… I was just sharing

Can we say ownzinated? Definitely was not expecting the movie to be as good as it was. You know I go to movies all the time where people are like “oh dude the CGI stuff is so amazing” so obviously I have to go see it because I’m one big nerd ya know? Then when I get to the movie I’m sitting there watching and all these “cool” CGI effects are going on and everything and this pestering voice in the back of my head keeps saying things like “particle system is lacking…” “oh, and they couldn’t program in world reflect?” “what is up with those vertex shaders?” “wow, horrible rag doll effects.” “uh… ever heard of anisotropic filtering?” “seen better in games…” So I end up really disappointed with most peoples idea of good CGI effects… which I wasn’t expecting much with Transformers anyways. I was going to relive some childhood years and do my quarterly hanging out with friends ya know? Get out of the basement for a little while… leave behind my gorgeous 22inch 2ms widescreen with 3000:1 dynamic contrast. Anyways, Transformers did an awesome job with the CGI I was very impressed (which is a pretty high complement coming from someone who stares at CGI all day long). The lighting and world reflect details are especially good and really show the attention to detail and time taken to make the movie. They blend the CGI in so well that there are only a few times during intense fight scenes that you would even question the CGI as real… but there is so much going on at the time that most people won’t even notice then.

I was pleasantly surprised with the story line of Transformers also. Could easily be put up there on the level of the Spiderman series as far as plot and script writing goes. Although the battle scenes are what makes the movie amazing there’s plenty of humor spread throughout to make the slower times pass with ease… also get your past some of the poor acting. Now don’t get me wrong I think Shia LaBeouf is a good guy, did rather well in holes too… unfortunately he’s not the greatest of actors. You kind of just get him in whatever he does. Which is fine I know it’s worked for a lot of “actors” before who have very unique personality’s like Shia. And in all fairness Mr. LaBeouf wasn’t too shabby for the movie, just a few things seemed forced, and since I can’t think of anyone else within our age range that could pull it off better we’ll leave it as is. Megan Fox’s role as Mikaela Banes could of been played by a hundred other girls who could of pulled the role off much better. The whole movie she’s trying to pull off this cute sweet and innocent girl who’s a total badass as well as the way the script is written mixes in a sex appeal to the equation. It’s really the cute, sweet, and innocent that throws the balance off though I think… Angelina Jolie pulls the whole car freak who’s drop dead gorgeous in gone in 60 seconds with no problem, much the same role as should of been played by Megan for Transformers… it just doesn’t come off that way in the movie. She comes off as ditzy and afraid of something. Somewhat I understand where her acting comes from since she’s supposed to be this whole popular girl thing and she does so very well… maybe it should be the writers that I complain about here instead since “the popular girl” would not be caught up in that situation. Mikaela reminds me a lot of my friend Liz who was one of the popular people but loved cars because her dad was always into them. Liz however would not be caught dead in the middle of a robot droid death match, and if by accident did end up in that situation definitely would not have stuck it out to the end like Mikaela did… which is probably why Megan’s role in the movie is so unbelievable since she has no real motive for staying around but does, which sounds great to the American who loves rogue vigilance, but just doesn’t happen in real life.

None the less, I still liked the movie a lot and would recommend everybody go see it!  They’re also working on a sequel… which I’m not quite sure if I’m stoked about or not.  I’ll go see it none-the-less but I hope they don’t botch the movie with sequels like has become the trend lately.