I woke up at 6.45 am, in the hope to see lots of white all over the roads, making it impossible to reach Brussels and letting me work from home… no such luck. The south of Belgium gets snow, we get nada. They don’t get traffic jams either, except when it snows. Bastards.

Then I checked the news online, hoping the presence of Mr. Bush would cause chaos on the roads and in our capital city, and maybe some bombing or whatever, anything to mess up the traffic enough! But no, nothing,…

So here we are, at work. Taking a quick coffee break to tell you all about whatever. The most amazing thing is that I finally got a surround system, but for some reason I find it a bad idea to tell you all about this because the next thing you know, you arrive at home, the door broken down and the system missing. Oh well, already too late. It’s great though, I’m watching every single dvd I own again. It redefines movie watching in my opinion. Thanks for the great Valentine gift, sugah! :D

I got her some Japanese stuff, depleting my Visa on all kinds of Studio Ghibli stuff, Hello Kitty etc. She’s a big Totoro fan, so anything related to that is a winner ;)

I’m thinking of a redesign again, and finally putting some more pictures online. I dunno though whether it’s worth all the trouble. But with the new Wordpress updates, it’s gonna be hell upgrading this site since I messed around a bit too much in the main source code. So a complete makeover should go quicker and smoother. Tell me what you think and I’ll think about it ;)

I guess you will agree that censorship is stupid. If you don’t like violence or faul language, don’t watch violent movies or flicks containing strong language. Censoring them is like watching a porn movie with all the sex cut out. It’s pointless and you ruin the movie. It’s like listening to hard rock and cutting out the guitars. Or something. Well, I guess I don’t have to explain the 5 Dollar Shake public, since I guess you guys are mature enough in the head ;)

What brought me to writing this post, is the fact that I saw some silly censorship at work just 10 minutes ago. A preview of Dodgeball showed the wheelchair guy (I’m too lazy to google it up) go: “You’re as useful as a poopie flavoured lollypop.” Now I don’t remember him saying that, and it did sound silly and stupid. After a little bit of googling, it seemed I was right. The original text goes: “You’re as useful as a cock flavoured lollypop”. Oh my god, did he just say the word cock? The nerve! Cock! Oh my… Poopie, yes, that sounds much better. Less shocking. Less funny you mean. No I don’t need the word cock in a comedy to make my day, but poopie doesn’t really fit this character. His first word as a baby was probably “cock”. He’d fall on the floor laughing every time someone ordered a cock-tail… right? Anyway, you get my point.

I’m all for leaving original art intact. Don’t mess with it, don’t change it. Leave it and enjoy it as is. Or stay away. I know I’ll piss off many of you, but I feel the same about dubbing. You lose word plays, you miss out on some great jokes and you disrespect the actors who are not only skilled in expressions and movement but also in speech. I don’t care that you don’t understand the language, that’s what subtitles are for. Subtitles help you understand parts that you don’t. They will explain in short what the person is talking about. But you can do your best listening to the original voices and try to understand some of it. That is the way they expected you to watch the movie, because be honest, the Lord of the Rings in French or German? I mean… can you imagine? What about dubbing music then? Why not start with that? Eminem in Spanish must sound funky no? :D

My precious iBook is back! And wireless :D The local Apple retailer IT Pro did a good and quick job. I feel happy! :D

Anyway, I was planning on seeing House of the Flying Daggers, but it was sold out. I hope they’ll still play it somewhere after today, but I doubt it since it’s at the theatres for a while now. :(

Speaking of movies, have I seen some these past weeks. It all started with Ichi the Killer, quite good movie, some gore (well lots but it’s not that bad). Funny in other words. And at last I’ve seen the Ring, Japanese version. Now there’s a movie where really nothing happens. Still, you don’t leave your seat and the tension remains till the credits run.

Some more gore in Audition, which was kind of boring and not scary at all (although it was 5am and I was really tired/drunk), but the girl was so cute! :D Sick, psycho but cute and funny :D I’m not gonna try to spoil it for you.

Ah yes, the Grudge… no not with Buffy, but Ju-On The Grudge 2. Now there’s a scary movie. I’ll be checking the first one out as well, but I think I’ll go for the Japanese version.

Last and certainly least, The Isle, some weird Korean movie which bored me so much I couldn’t bare to watch it completely. Unless you have lots of patience and too much time, don’t see this one.

So I’ve seen my share of movies, and there’s more to come. My Amazon order just arrived, containing the Lord of the Rings trilogy, for only 60 euros (extended versions, 12 dvds). Also, Donnie Darko the Director’s Cut (loved that movie, still see bunny appearing in the dark ;)) and 1984, which I saw at school once. Remembered I loved it and it finally arrived on dvd! (it’s mono! Ha! Who needs an expensive surround system ;))

Now to get my lazy ass away from the laptop and in front of the tv…

Checking my referrals, you know, sites containing links to this site that are actually clicked on, I was surprised to see a link to 5 Dollar Shake on a German Wordpress forum. As far as I understand German, someone was trying a two-column Wordpress layout, who got a reply containing this site as an example. I don’t know if this person just happened to pass by and remembered us when seeing that question on the forum or whether he’s a regular reader (although I doubt they really exist here ;)).

Well, at least we’re doing something right… right? :D. Check the thread out right here.

Damn it. There’s no better way to express myself than by cursing I guess. But my iBook is at the store so that makes me sad and angry. Sad because I miss it, angry because this means I have to use my crappy Dell laptop from work to write this post. Yes yes, it’s supposed to be a very nice laptop (Dell Latitude D800) but it is and remains a Dell with Windows on it.

Anyway, yesterday I finally decided, after almost a year of doubting, to get wireless. I bought an Airport Express base station (yes those things are actually base stations, not just extremely cool “music over WiFi from iTunes to hifi” gadgets) and got an Airport Extreme card for my iBook. All went well except I made the same stupid mistake as I did 12 years ago when I installed my first modem, I didn’t push the crap in hard enough. It’s supposed to be very easy to install, but you just don’t have to be kind to it… you got to show it hell.

So I finally install it the way I should, and I see that the signal I’m receiving is terribly bad. I have to go sit on my Airport Express to get a perfect signal and going further than 3 meters kills the connection. After hours of googling, I figured it had to be the internal antenna that’s broken. So today I headed over to the local Apple retailer to take a look at it.

This is the first time in my life I take a computer to a shop. Really. I’ve been messing up and fixing pcs since I was 14 or something and every pc i owned after my first (oh my god what a piece of expensive junk) Compaq, was home built. When there’s something wrong with that, you take the piece to the shop, not the entire pc.

It’s scary though, giving your precious iBook to someone else. It feels like lending your appartment to a stranger or something, it just doesn’t feel right. That thing is personal, it’s yours,… I even have a hard time just letting someone alone with it. I didn’t know I felt that way about this kind of stuff until today. Damn. :D

But it is true that the thing is filled with your personal belongings and if you use it every single non-working hour of the day, well, it becomes part of you I guess. Anyway, it should be in good hands, seeing as a friend of kurisu works at that store, so I’m not worried… or should I? …

So I’ll be wireless soon enough and in the mean time, well… let’s catch up with other stuff shall we? Let’s do something crazy and instead of surf… watch a dvd! (Ain’t that exciting :D)