Jump to: Personalstuffs :: Child Rearing 101 :: Movie Summaries :: The Gaming Front :: Writing and Conclusion

Sorry about the complete lack of posts in the recent past. I could give an honest, heartfelt, sympathetic, sincere, redundantly-described apology for the occurrence but the truth of the matter is that I just needed a break from writing these things. Now, here's a biggish "digest entry" which I've ever-so-thoughtfully broken into things that we in the old country call segments.

From the Book of Trent
To say I've been in a funk the last few weeks would be putting it mildly. For whatever reason, I just haven't been able to muster a whole ton of energy for any of my normal extracurricular hobbies; namely, the site. And while I leave the reasoning for this action mysterious in the last sentence, it was really just to build an inter-paragraph suspense. The real reason is that for whatever reason I decided to revert to a slightly more "natural" style of living. And, no, that doesn't mean I went all Whitman on the world, but rather that I was trying something new in terms of the whole arena of sleep. As I've detailed oh so many times in the past, I have some problems with the whole thing. Seemingly right on schedule with last summer, the problems escalated to the point where I was lucky if I got two-three hours of sleep a night (and not for a lack of trying); that's with sleeping pills and the occasional alcoholic beverage. And keep in mind that I don't ever nap, so you'd think it'd get easier as the days went on (it doesn't, really). Since those tactics weren't doing a darn thing, I finally decided to pretty much just try to get sleep in a far more natural capacity. At first, I tried the age-old recommendation of a glass of warmed-up milk; of course, apparently this is just thing that set-off my incredibly mild milk allergy (I generally only have the stuff in the form of skim milk with cereal). Then I resorted to something my Mom always talked about, which was "Sleepytime Tea." Turns out that the stuff, if nothing else, is a really nice way to relax at night before heading to sleep. It hasn't really done a whole lot, but it gives me a nice alternative to water when caffeine is strictly out of the question.

The whole thing has yet to be resolved, and it's something I'll probably go see a doctor about at some point… But that point is not now nor in the near future. And, for the most part, it's really not a terrible situation. I'm able to stay awake in classes (with immense caffeine assistance and more-than-a-few simple diversions) and do most of my daily stuff without too many troubles. I would dare to say that I feel more social/energetic now than when I was getting some sleeping pill-induced sleep per night, but after getting a solid night of sleep catch-up the other night and feeling what it's like to be well-rested on Saturday, I can safely say that it's nothing more than a cruel mental illusion.

On the bright side, and yes this is a bit of an optimistic reach, in order to keep a decent level of energy I have been working out and playing basketball a whole lot. So I guess between that and keeping a pretty healthy diet, the extra motivation for getting in shape thing is a decent side-effect of the lack of sleep. Or something like that. It's a bit of a stretch, like I said.

A Tresson/Lessent (Trent Lesson) in Child-Rearing
Like I said: sometimes to stay awake, it's necessary to keep one amused in even the most minor of ways (especially during class). In my current English class, which takes even my patient, easily-amused nature to the breaking point, I have resorted to drawing pictures out of an asinine amount of single-player matches of tic-tac-toe. I also went so far as to transcribe Jack Nicholson's monologue from A Few Good Men in my notes. I've also memorized that monologue -- guess that information should have preceded the example.

Though, today during a psychology lecture on cognition in babies I took the time to daydream about a one- or two-year-old theory that I really have a desire to test out on future Trentspawn should such an abomination ever exist. It's a crying shame that babies require such a physical, mental, and economical investment, because I think it'd be really entertaining to really test the abilities of a newborn/toddler's extremely malleable intelligence. So, anyway, here's the recipe for entertaining children: convince them that eating insects will impart upon them arthropodal features. For instance, say your baby boy looks bound for a career in the NBA; you tell him that grasshoppers are the key to jumping, dunking, and rebounding ability. If your tiny little girl really likes butterflies, you tell her that she too can have the ever-so-elegant wings if she maintains a strict butterfly diet. And so on.

Eventually the social pressures that your offspring are bound to experience in regards to their odd consumption habits will make them come to you one day in a confused state. Perhaps the little tyke, upon reaching a state of advancement which comes with a sense of observation, will ask "Dad, why don't you have wings?" To which you, as the ever-responsible and always-honest guardian, reply "Because I didn't listen to my loving, sage-like parents when I was your age and maintain a well-balanced insectoid diet!"

There has never been an easier way to get the attention of The Man.

Movie Summaries
It's been a while since I've done something like this, so here are my ever-beloved one sentence movie reviews. Superman Returns was incredibly enjoyable on the whole, even if the last ten-fifteen minutes were a letdown. Amelie is a movie that is so chock-full of warm fuzzies and good feelings that I feel almost embarrassed pointing out how much I loved it. Cars is your typical, incredibly fantastic Pixar movie with a fantastic soundtrack. A Scanner Darkly is a very pretty, entertaining, and well-acted movie in every way even if I left the theater feeling pretty off (it's like a perfect halfway point between Fear and Loathing and Requiem for a Dream). Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest took the Matrix: Reloaded route of the second movie in a trilogy and felt unnecessarily long and, for the most part, bland (still enjoyable, but just lacking that extra something which the first movie had in spades). I don't know how I missed it, but The Last Boy Scout is classic Bruce Willis over-the-top action awesomeness. And, finally, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the greatest, if slightly unsettling, romantic/comedy/thing movie I've seen in a long time.

Well, okay, Eternal Sunshine wasn't the final entry. A movie that I feel deserves special mention is Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. I watched this movie hearing a fair bit of praise from some of those deviants over at Shacknews knowing nothing about it going in and it was one of the most enjoyable movies I've seen in a very long time. I've always been a fan of Robert Downey Jr., who was also a highlight of A Scanner Darkly, and seeing him in this movie made me remember why. It's like he's a completely neurotic, sardonic guy (you can see why I felt endeared to him in the movie) in an old-school noir crime story. Val Kilmer also was fantastic enough in the movie to make me forget movies like The Saint (and, okay, I actually liked him in Batman Forever -- goodbye, credibility, it was nice knowing you). In all honesty, though, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang reaches its high point within the first half-hour of the movie but it is still, overall, an absolutely brilliantly-written movie.

The Gaming Front
I don't really have a whole lot to say about this at the moment other than to say that I've recently become re-(re-re-re-re-re-re)-enthralled with the Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne multiplayer and have been partaking in 3v3 and 4v4 matches on Battle.net whenever I think I can muster the patience to deal with the occasional cretin. I'm also completely surprised by just how well-done the multiplayer portion of Rise of Legends is; I never touched the thing after trying the Rise of Nations multiplayer but, as I said, it's actually quite competent. There is a severe lack of players that are online playing the thing and the average level of skill is like a cake-walk compared to the big, burley lumberjacks that play Warcraft 3, but it's still a damn good time. Also, Battlefield 2 is still a lot of fun to play on select 64-player servers.

Writing
I don't really have a whole lot to say about the writing aspect of things right now. I worked a whole heck of a lot on the last chapter of Paradise so I'm taking a bit of a break from that just so that I don't get burnt out on the thing after it's come so far. If you haven't checked it out yet, though, I do recommend reading the latest chapter. It's monstrous in terms of its size (and the scope is pretty hefty too) and is, probably, my favorite chapter thus far.

As of this afternoon, though, I started work on a new short story since I'll probably need one for entrance into a creative writing class for the upcoming fall semester. After seeing Kiss Kiss Bang Bang I've been thrust head-first into some kind of unnatural obsession with writing a noir crime story. This desire is magnified by the large number of unread Jim Thompson novels that I ordered a couple months back which line my shelves. Sure, Thompson's stuff isn't exactly noir or anything, but it is 1940s-50s crime pulp fiction at its very awesomest so I figure that's a start. I do need to do some research into the noir genre as a whole, though, that's for sure. Closest I've probably come thus far is Max Payne.

And I figure that's about long enough to begin the Polycat-reconciliation process. Though I can't guarantee that the site won't still stagnate for a few more weeks before I get back into any real kind of writing pattern again. At least I can be rid of that hideous Fourth of July entry that greets me whenever I look at the front page, though.

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