Take it from me, I love you!

If you check out my About Me page on the links to the right, you would find that I not only enjoy watching good movies, I like rating them and making sure that I remember my favorites.

This blog entry has nothing to with any of what I just said.

It's sad that I haven't had the desire to watch as many B-/cheese fest horror movies as I used to. Part of it is because these movies think they are better than they actually are (Saw) or try too much to create a psychological component over what should be straight gore and unintentional comedy. You just don't see many Nightmare on Elm Street-types these days.

So, without further ado, the greatest series of all time:



Some people will tell you that there are actually 6 Leprechaun movies, and that the first one actually starred Jennifer Connelly, but don't be fooled. There are actually only 3 movies worthy of being ranked among the greats. You see, only a great series like this could manage such brilliant new places to set the series: from old Ireland, to Outer Space, to Compton, CA.

Here are some details about these classics.

Leprechaun : IN SPACE

(IMDB)It's the 21st century. A group of U.S. Marines battle in space to destroy a space monster, when they get in the way of the Leprechaun who is in space to marry a princess so he can become ruler of the planet Dominia. They think they have killed the Leprechaun - wrong. The Leprechaun goes on board their space station to find the princess they have taken from him, where he'll kill to get her back.

The marines manage to blow up the Leprechaun, but don't count on the lightning powers he soon develops along with his ability to turn the captain into a monster which also must be stopped, along with the now giant evil Leprechaun. Who will win this epic battle?

Leprechaun in the Hood - Evil is in the house.

Ice-T stars in this modern classic about hip-hop stars and the trials they must overcome.

(IMDB)Three young rap artists are looking for a break and some money to enter a contest. They meet up with a local pimp named Mack Daddy who agrees to "hook them up", but later declines. The angry rappers break into Mack's place and steal his jewelry, gold, and even the medallion off an ugly-looking statue. Shouldn't have done that! Because without the medallion, the statue transforms into the Leprechaun, who goes on a killing spree once again looking for his missing gold, once again!

Quotes:

Leprechaun: A friend with weed is a friend indeed, but a friend with gold is the best I'm told.

Leprechaun: I'll take it from you, homie, you'll see, cause you know the Leprechaun is the real O.G.

Leprechaun : Back 2 Tha Hood

(IMDB)When Emily Woodrow and her friends happen on a treasure chest full of gold coins, they fail to to heed the warnings of a wise old psychic who had foretold that they would encounter trouble with a very nasty and protective Leprechaun.

Quotes:

Leprechaun: What's up, ninjas?

Policeman: [after Leprechaun rips off his leg] Hey! You give that back!

Leprechaun: How tall am I? Uh, about 3 foot 6.
Girl: 3 foot 6?
Leprechaun: Yeah, but, but, I make up for it in other areas, if you know what I mean.

Don't get me wrong, I'd rather be in school, at least attempting to learn something, rather than working for the man, getting a steady diet of dead-end projects that never make sense, managed by either a know-nothing suit or a know-it-all lead with nothing but the most vile disgust for life.

Sometimes, though, graduate school seems like the most bizarre place on earth. Why bother taking a class when the professor would rather hang out at conferences and send his assistants to teach (more like recite) the material? Maybe it's just the teacher in me critiquing the teacher I see, but when you get through 3 sets of slides in 6 weeks, that is just plain rediculous. Nobody seems too worked up about it, though. The worst part is that I know we'll be doing 4 paper reviews, a presentation, and a final crammed into a couple of weeks near the end. It takes me too damn long to read and understand papers to pull that shit. Two columns? No, you seriously can't fit more text in writing in two columns. (Edit: Supposedly it does fit more *if* the text is code segments or proofs that consist of several short lines. I still think it's pretentious crap. And my next point is still valid.) And then you put in figures that stretch across the entire page. Does that go with the stuff on the left or the right? Nobody knows or cares.

Figure 1: This makes the paper MUCH easier to read.

Then, you have the professor who you know needs to retire, who repeats whole lectures (yes), forgets his own schedule, reads directly from the slides, and still can't say anything of value. He repeatedly references people and standards of the 'old days', you know, when people coded on paper, or if they were really lucky, punched cards. Of course, nobody cares, because they actually know how to code on modern projects that actually have the ability to accomplish something, not dividing integers using successive subtraction.

All in all, though, there is something good about having the flexibility to work on something that you want to do. And playing Sodoku during lecture. I don't do that, but the guy sitting next to me does.

What I supposed to do?

I noticed that a lot of people that I knew seemed to be into blogs. I hesitate to put myself into that category. On the other hand, I had an inclination to host my own blog, even write it myself in PHP and MySql, so I figure, let's do it.

30 minutes later I am writing this blog entry using Simple PHP Blog.

OK, so I took the easy way out. Anyways, lets get to actual interesting stuff (about me, of course). (Soon to come..)