Top 25 favorite albums of the decade.

We had a thread like this in one of the forums I post in, and I decided I'm going to post my list on my blog here. It counts down from 25 to 1 like any good best of list should. 8-)  I won't go into detail to describe each of them though, considering there's, you know, 25 of them and all..... ;) Would love to have though, but seeing as how I just barely had the idea of maybe doing what JayGee's doing over on ArizUtaku with the top anime of the decade, it's probably too late for that......  Ah well, maybe I'll go more in depth with them if I can ever get that music thing running on this blog again......

25.  Bleed American - Jimmy Eat World (2001)
24. Age of Winters - The Sword (2006)
23. Runnin' Wild - Airbourne (2008)
22. Get Born - Jet (2003)
21. Elephant - The White Stripes (2003)
20. The Black Parade - My Chemical Romance - (2006)
19. Come What(ever) May - Stone Sour (2006)
18. Break the Cycle - Staind (2001)
17. American Idiot - Green Day (2004)
16. Vol. 3 (The Subliminal Verses) - Slipknot (2004)
15. Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace - Foo Fighters (2007)
14. Stiff Upper Lip - AC/DC (2000)
13. How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb - U2 (2004)
12. Heathen Chemistry - Oasis (2002)
11. The Sickness - Disturbed (2000)
10. Toxicity - System of a Down (2001)
9. Meteora - Linkin Park (2003)
8. Sonic Firestorm - Dragonforce (2004)
7. Absolution - Muse (2003)
6. Carnavas - Silversun Pickups (2006)
5. Into the Wild Soundtrack - Eddie Vedder (2007)  
4. Mer De Nomes - A Perfect Circle (2000)
3. Lost Dogs - Pearl Jam (2003)
2. Lateralus - Tool (2001)  
1. Kid A - Radiohead (2000)

To this be the end of For Your Listening Pleasure. ;_;

 Yes Takezo, unfortunately it is indeed true. ;_;

 

Some might have already noticed by now, and I for one just barely noticed today, that apparently there have been adds for My Space music in place of the IMEEM music player.  Basically what seems to have happened is that IMEEM no longer exists and is now suggesting on it's old HTML to give a try to My Space music.  In which case, unless I can figure out a different medium by which to post music up on here, this may very well end up being the end of my For Your Listening Pleasure feature.  Which, as the avid music lover that I am, saddens me quite a bit, as I really would love to post more about the music I love and give you all a taste of it. ;_;

I'll probably try to see if I can make something else of it though.  I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do in place of it, but I really would love to keep on doing it in some way, shape or form anyways.

A more lighthearted look inside BroEl's head. :)

I mostly got this idea from a friend of mine over on her blog and decided it sounded like not too bad an idea to give some thought too.  So let's see if I can actually make this work, heh heh. ^_^'

20 things I love in life (in no particular order):

1.  Anime/Manga
2.  Graphic Novels
3.  Well drawn art
4.  Playing in the band
5.  Hanging out with band people
6.  The band hall
7.  Good friends
8.  Family
9.  Knowing that I'm loved
10.  Rock music
11.  Music in general
12.  Growing my hair out, no matter what length
13.  Writing
14.  Movies
15.  Gaming/RPGing, especially when it's with good friends :)
16.  Eating good food
17.  Watching a good football or basketball game
18.  Sci-Fi/Fantasy type stuff
19.  Waisting time on the internet
20.  Cute animals! ^_^

Well, at least I tried anyways, heh heh. ^_^'

Death, doom, distruction and chaos!!! >:-3 Or things of the sort.....

Well it would appear that as of today, my time is no longer occupied by the dread of what we all know of as school.  Finals are done, classes ended last week, and for about three and a half weeks I've got nothing to do but go around causing all sorts of trouble!! >:-3 Or at least I'd like to think so anyways......

Other than the obvious holidays I don't really have much on tap for the break, which is pretty typical for most any times I have off of school.  Mostly just sleep, messing around on the computer, hanging out with friends when invited to do such, and lots of anime I need to watch.  Which is where I suppose I'll start off.  Amongst the truckload of anime and manga my friend dumped on my head just before leaving to join the military, a series i've been meaning to watch for some time now called Ergo Proxy is one of them.  I've actually had enough time this week to get through about 8 episodes of it so far, and I'm already quite impressed.  You'll probably hear more about my thoughts on it over on ArizUtaku sometime after I finish it, and probably even on Facebook with what I've decided is going to be my traditional note on the best of anime for the year.  I've also decided to start up on yet another series I've been wanting to watch for some time now via bit torrent download (for now of course, until I decide to purchase it legally) called Planets.  From what I've heard of it, it really sounds like something I'd just fall head over heals for.  Also on tap, if I have enough time that is, is probably going to be me working on finally seeing past episode one of Eve no Jikan, which should be easy enough considering it's only 6 episodes long at 15 minutes each.  Finishing the last 5 episodes of Monster is also something I've been meaning to do for a while now (yeah, my status on that series hasn't changed from the last time I mentioned it in this blog unfortunately.... ;_; ) but we'll see.  In some ways, considering it's licensed now, I've actually thought about just finishing it via DVDs or it's airtime on SyFy, but we'll see.

The holiday season is probably going to be one of the more humbling ones this year though.  Christmas and New Years is always my favorite holidays/general time of the year, just simply because it's a time which seems to have this really great feeling about it like no other.  It's just a really relaxing time of the year where there are all sorts of beautiful decorations and lights, peacful and relaxing music, and just all around good feelings.  There are those parts that I don't like about if of course, mostly because this time of year also tends to bring out the worst in people as much as it does bring out the best in them.  It's also very stressful to have to go through all the trouble getting all those pretty decorations and lights up, as well as budget out certain finances for the much less important gift giving aspects of it.  This year I think I might enjoy more than most years though simply based off the fact that I am going to pretty much have to focus on all those more positive aspects of it that make me love it so much.  I unfortunately never have enough money any year of Christmas to get into the more gift giving part of it, which is something I think is such a terrible travesty that I don't get that opportunity very much.  But even in the gift recieving department, not quite as important to me as to participate in giving them but still somewhat enjoyable in it's own right, will be very, very humble this year, seeing as how our family is pretty dry on the finances as well.  That and I've decided that this year I'm kind of not really seeming nearly as much into the season as I typically tend to be, which has left me not really having much of a desire to go and put up all of our pretty Christmas stuff.  Which pretty much means that if I don't do it, it at least will not get put up for a while, and even then we probably won't have any roof lights this year.  But as I've said, none of that really matters as much as it sometimes is made out to be believed to be.  I always enjoy the part of Christmas that I enjoy so much no matter what, and this year I'll have mostly that to just sit back and enjoy.

So that pretty much wraps most of what my break will be like.  Everything else in the life of BroEl is mostly pretty much similar to what I've posted about before, and grades are yet to come out, so I'll probably be around with another post when next semester starts up again to talk more about all of that.  But for now I am off to thrive in the grandness of doing absolutely nothing. 8-)

For Your Listening Pleasure/thoughts on the band and album: Lateralus by Tool

Considering I could go on all day about how incredible I think this band is as well as this album, I'm going to sort of combine a "For Your Listening Pleasure" post with those same thoughts on how incredible I think they are.

Pretty much if you ask anyone who's well enough versed in the realm of rock music to know who these guys are (and it's not that hard, considering they actually are a pretty fairly well known band in the first place) they'll tell you at the very basic level that they are by and far the weirdest band you'll ever hear of, but that they also make absolutely amazing music as well.  And at the very basic level, they'd be right.  But in fact it's because they're such a weird band that makes them such the mind-blowing geniuses that they are.  Tool has always been a band that has just poured all kinds of innovative, artistic creativity into pretty much everything they do, especially in their ability to create such an amazing prog-metal/art rock sound in a way as if they are actually composing their music out like an actual musical piece rather than just writing yet another typical verse-chorus-verse styled song.  And the result (at least from Aenema onward anyways) has always turned out to be nothing less than a pure masterpiece.

Lateralus is certainly no exception.  This essentially was the album that first introduced me to Tool, or at least a few of the songs that are on it were anyways.  And it was quite literally unlike anything I had ever heard before.  It is to my very honest opinion that, as almost equally incredible as both Aenema and they're most recent 10,000 Days are, that this album is without a doubt Tool at their very best.  And quite frankly, I also honestly believe it to be one of the best, if not the best album of all time.  Not only because of the sheer innovation in musical quality, but also because of it's innovation in all around artistic and intellectual quality as well.  Pretty much the main theme by which Tool lives and dies and is always trying to convey to their listeners is the idea of thinking for yourself, analyzing and questioning everything in life with an open mind and using that open mind to reach deep inside yourself and, in the words of lead singer Maynard-James Kennan at the end of each of their live concerts, "create something positive."  And never before have they accentuated that ideal the way they do with this album.

Probably the only thing I would criticize this album for would be the only track on here that comes anywhere near resembling anything of a throwaway track, and that would be one of the angrier sounding songs in the post Aenema era in Ticks and Leeches.  When Maynard's voice isn't sounding as heavenly and almost downright angelic as it does for being a heavy rock music singers' voice, it does tend to get quite aggressive sounding and at sometimes even degenerates into screamo mode, which he does for basically most of this song.  But that is more than made up for by having some of Danny Carry's finest drumming (who is, in my opinion, one of the best drummers of all time), as well as your same old amazing sounding musicianship from guitarist Adam Jones and bassist Justin Chancellor (who is also in my opinion one of the best bass guitarists of all time).  There are also a couple of sound effect tracks on this album in which Tool is actually very, very well known for (which reminds me, you have to wait like, 2 minutes before you get to hear the very final track on this album by the way), but is definitely an improvement from how overbearing they can get with it sometimes (which essentially is the only problem I'd say I had with Aenema...... ).

Also, I can't talk about this album without mentioning it's title track somewhere within the discussion.  It stands alone as probably my favorite song of all time.  Mostly because of what I mentioned before about how this album accentuates those very ideals I mentioned before; it is accentuated by and far moreso in this song than in any others.  And in such a very, very inspiring way as well.  This essentially was the song that blew me away in so many ways when I first heard it that if I hadn't acknowledged Tool as one of the most amazing bands of all time by then, I had after I heard that song.  It invigorates you in such a way that one can't help but go out and take Maynard's advice to use those thoughts and feelings to "create something positive" after having listened to it.

Unfortunately I'm not sure one can get the best experience possible out of this album by listening to my IMEEM playlist of it because of how some of these tracks connect together and how the player seems to cut off between tracks.  But if this intrigues anyone to any degree, I don't even have to mention the fact that I would without any doubt suggest going out and purchasing this album, and maybe even a few other Tool albums (post Aenema anyways) as well. 

You know how the old saying goes......

I found it really interesting today that we were discussing in our communications class something I was actually thinking about quite a bit earlier this morning.  It was about how when it comes do developing a relationship with people, that in a lot of cases some people need someone completely opposite of themselves in order to make a relationship work.

Basically I'm thinking about this in the sense of someone who's very much an introvert, kind of like myself actually.  If you find someone else who's just as introverted as you, you're not going to be able to communicate or connect very well because you're both not quite as willing to open up to each other as you probably should be.  Which I really think is a travesty, because I think that two introverted people can probably understand how each other feels more than anyone else can, because they're both very similar in a lot of ways that not a lot of other people in society really are.  But if two people are going to be able to connect on any sort of level then you kind of have to be able to communicate with each other somehow.  And if you get two introverts together that aren't so skilled at that sort of thing, it's just not going to happen. 

I would know honestly, being as introverted as I am.  The honest truth of things is that when it comes to communication, I will admit I do rely very heavily on the other person to carry on a conversation.  That's just kind of how I am.  But I have noticed in my experiences with trying to communicate with other introverted people, sometimes my conversations with them don't really go anywhere.  I can sort of communicate with them, sometimes in some pretty fairly good conversations actually.  But a lot of the time I find myself in a ton of those akward silence situations, probably moreso than not.  Heck, I won't even deny that happens with people who do have the better conversational skills to carry on a conversation sometimes.

It is kind of sad though.  Typically the kind of girl I've seemed to like the most in the past have been the more introverted ones, I think mostly because I feel like I can connect with them on a level I can't seem to otherwise because I can understand how they feel more.  And I feel I have more in common with them because they're just like me.  But at the same time I do wonder if that's the reason why I'm so pathetic when it comes to having the capability to get into a relationship with people, because that seems to be the only kind of girl I ever find myself to be interested in that way. 

Crazy random linkage.

Earlier today I relived this video a friend of mine showed me about a week ago.  It is seriously one of the oddest, most tripped out and all around random videos you will ever see.  I was personally rolling with laughter, but then again this kind of odd random humor is actually one of my main favorite forms of humor.  Others actually may find themselves kind of a bit frightened by this thing..... ^_^' But I just can't help but post it though.  It's just too darn special in it's own little way not to! XD

Kūchū Buranko (Trapeze) episode 1 review (ArizUtaku)

My thoughts on the first episode of Kūchū Buranko (translated into english as "Trapeze") are now posted up and can be found here for those who want to read them.

For Your Listening Pleasure: The best of Primus

New playlist this time around is basically off of Primus' best of album "They Can't All Be Zingers."  This is essentially the album that introduced me to Primus and I've been listening to them a ton ever since.  I must say I'm really, really impressed by this band.  Of course they're most famously known for Les Claypool's out of this world bass guitar skills, but just as much as that I'm also impressed by both the guitar player and especially the drummer.  Dang good stuff.

Apparently I'm a nice guy.......

I had kind of a reasuring experience in my math class today.  There's this one girl who typically sits next to me in that class who also on the other side of her typically has this other guy who sits next to her that she usually likes to talk to a lot.  She does talk to me sometimes, but she's a lot more..... friendly, so to speak with the other guy.

Well today that guy was sitting somewhere else in the room, so she was kind of left to sit next to just me.  So naturally she was talking to me a lot more than she usually does.  Mostly just along the lines of class related stuff, what we were learning/taking notes about, upcoming tests/assignments and whatnot.  And I guess I was kind of helpful to her as we were talking about the material.  I did however offer her my sheet that listed the next assignment that was due that we got at the beginning of the class though.  She showed up pretty late, and there was a pile of those sheets up on the front table anyways, so I was just going to take one from that.

But anyways, at one point in the middle of the class she told me that she thought I was a pretty nice guy, a heck of a lot nicer than that other guy at least, who she said she thought was a complete jerk.  I must say, that really made my day when she said that. 8-) Of course I persnally don't think she's really my type or anything like that, but it was still a pretty awesome moment for me nonetheless. 8-)

Fairy Tail episode 1 review (ArizUtaku)

My thoughts on the first episode of Fairy Tail  are now up and can be viewed here.  I'll also be posting my thoughts on the first episode of Kuuchuu Buuranko sometime this week as well, so be on the lookout for that.

Stormtroopers' 9/11 slash All Apologies part 2.......

First of all, I'd like to (once again..... >.> ) appologize for not posting much on here.  I've had plenty of great post ideas in the past, I just think that for most of them it was more of a spur of the moment happening in my life that I was either thinking about more deeply or really, really stressed out about it during the general time period in which it happened that quite frankly, I just didn't really feel like posting it like, days after it happened, since I wasn't able to post about it during that general time period.  Just know that I am doing my best here and rest assured there will be more interesting posts to come.

In any case, one of my facebook friends posted this up on his wall earlier today and I got a real good laugh at it.  I'm sure you will too.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

For Your Listening Pleasure - Backspacer by Pearl Jam

If you look over to your right you will notice that I've added an IMEEM playlist to the blog.  That is because I've decided to go ahead and try out an idea I got from Matt over on ArizUtaku.  Not entirely sure how often I'll update it with a new playlist, but I'd definitely love to try and give this a shot.

Playlist for this week will be the brand new Pearl Jam album, Backspacer.  PJ has been my all time favorite band for some time now, so naturally this is something to be very excited about for me.  I've only gotten the chance to hear just a few songs off of this album though, but from what I have heard it's not bad.  I guess I can also sort of say I'm putting it up as a tribute to the fact that they had a concert out in West Valley just last night that I regrettably didn't go see, even though I've been waiting forever for them to come through Utah sometime... ;_;

9 Review (ArizUtaku)

I was actually kind of wondering whether or not it'd be worth it to post links to my reviews over on ArizUtaku considering the link to the site is right over on the side bar, but then I figured I guess it'd be nice to let you all know which reviews are mine since, you know, it doesn't really say who it was that wrote them.... ^_^'

In any case, my review for 9 is now up over there for those who want to check it out.  Really wish I could have gotten around to it sooner considering I saw it more than a week ago but hey, that's how crazy life can get I suppose.  Anyways, here's a link for y'all: Cliky.

You Labeled Me, I'll Label You.

This is an issue I personally feel pretty fairly strong about.  And I'll tell you why; I've always been one who makes friends far more so with people as individuals rather than people in particular groups.  I've never really fit in with anyone's "cliques," "friends groups," or "social labels," or anything else you want to call it.  I just make friends with whoever pretty much, so long as I feel like they're good people.  Even though without a doubt, given my personal interests, the general kind of person that I am, and the majority of my friends, if one had to label me under anything in particular it would definitely be with the geeks, the fact of the matter is that even then there's still a whole lot about me and my personal interests that doesn't quite fit into the typical geek steriotype.  But that's just kind of how I am, I've always been one to avoid limiting myself to what a particular social label or whatever "defines" about me.  I've always been my own person.  Simply put, I've always liked whatever I wanted to like, I've always liked whoever I want to like, and not really cared about what everyone else thought about it, whether I was too geeky for them or too much of an "in" person for them.  Because that sort of thing has never mattered at all to me.

Problem is it hasn't really always been that way.  I've always been the "not fitting into any one particular social label" person that I am, yes.  But way back when I wasn't quite as confident about it as I am today.  Because of me going about things the way I do in that sense I've always been somewhat of a loner, not being able to "fit in" with anyone in particular.  And back then I used to think that there was something seriously wrong with me because of it, and unfortunately it's caused me much more social tragedy and drama than I ever would have liked to have.  But you know something?  Over the years that's become something I've been able to embrace about myself for who I am and have kind of garnered the attitude that if other people can't do the same, then forget them.  And that's really something I feel like more people out there should have the courage to do.  Because even if you may not have really all that many friends, fact of the matter is if you have ones that are the truest and deepest of friends, then that's all you really need.  And those true friends of yours are going to be the people who do indeed have that capacity to accept you for who you are, whether you fit their preferred social label or not.  Same thing applies to finding a significant other as well.

Pretty much the overall point I'm trying to get at here is that sometimes, I really think too many people out there limit themselves far too much to what other people label them as, that in all honesty, they miss out on all sorts of opportunities out there.  Opportunities for the kinds of wonderful people they could become friends/significant others with, for what certain personal interests/hobbies they could end up loving more than anything else in the world, and probably more than anything, their abilities to expand their horizons and become better, more knowledgeable people.  But I suppose there's just something about being able to "fit in" at least somewhere, anywhere, that people feel the obligation to do so.  And the sad thing is that because of that, they don't allow themselves to do all those things I mentioned, because they're afraid they won't "fit in"  with anyone.  Being a self proclaimed geek myself (if you haven't noticed already :P ), one of the things I have the deepest respects and admirations for in the sense of social labels are indeed those self proclaimed geeks who are proud to be so and show it.  It shows a great deal of self confidence and ability to not care what others think, considering how "uncool" or "out of the social norm" it is to be a geek.  But even then, considering that to be a geek is indeed a social label in and of itself, I say why limit yourself to just that?  Why not be proud to not only be a geek, but to be who you are in all other aspects of your persona as well?  I guess with that said one could say that I am proud to be a loner; one who doesn't fit in with the limits of social labels.  One who just goes out and is who he wants to be and doesn't care what everyone else has to say about it.

All Apologies....

BrothersElric is embarrassed about his lack of posting, can you tell?

Gal, I swear it's been next to impossible for me to get on nearly enough to do any bloging over the last little while or so..... Wednesday I got on just barely enough to finish my last post I had saved that I didn't finish from earlier that day, Thursday and Friday are typically my two role playing days with my friends so naturally I was preoccupied that day, just longer than usual is all, Saturday I had lawn mowing, figuring out what the crap was wrong with our lawn mower, then like, an hour or so on the computer before heading off for the marching band game, yesterday was one of those Sundays where I couldn't get on the computer, and today I'm just barely able to get this blog post in right before family home evening........ And the onslaught isn't over yet, as tomorrow I've got the Weber State Marching Band Review that I'm helping out at and everything...... Just absolutely crazy..... So with that said I have no idea when I'll ever get around to making a decent blog post over here..... I do have a ton of good things to post about though, so hopefully I'll be able to eventually FINALLY get around to posting them.  Hopefully..... I promise that I'll really, really try to make it happen though. 

Current happenings in the life of BroEl‏

I was actually going to make a post similar to this one over on ArizUtaku back when school started back up again, but I figured when I decided I was going to create this blog that I was going to save it for here, since I'll be doing much more of that sort of thing on this blog.

Well life is pretty much just your typical standard everyday happenings of events.  Mostly just dealing with school and homework and such, balancing that with my marching/symphonic band schedules.  I'm of course not working right now, partly due to the fact that I'm not really wanting to have to juggle school and work at the same time unless I absolutely have to, but the other part is just simply that I both a) don't get out to find work NEARLY as much as I'd like to and b) finding work comes pretty hard in the first place.  Plus that and this past summer has really been full of certain happenings that have been occupying my mind that we won't go into too much detail as to what they are...... So unfortunately, even though I was hoping to do that over the summer, I still find myself sadly unemployed.  But the search continues I suppose.

School has been really great so far though.  Aside from the symphonic/marchng bands, my other three accademic classes I'm taking this semester are Interpersonal & Small Group Communication, Math 1080 (Pre-Calculus), and a Library Science computer class that I have no clue what it's called, but I need to take to complete my computer litteracy general ed requirements.  I think so far my favorite class has to be the communication class.  We've been learning a whole lot about some really interesting things in the sense of the different forms of communication we all participate in, and I'm actually really liking the group aspect of it.  Mostly just because I sometimes find it much easier to do certain assignments and tests as a group, but also because it gives me a chance to interact with my fellow students more and thus have a chance to meet new people, which of course I'm always up for.  We just barely got put into our assigned groups for the rest of the semester today so I haven't really gotten that much of a chance to get to know people as well as I would like, but I can already tell from this group I was assigned to today that I'm really going to enjoy being in it.  Then there's math, which of course is math, pretty much.  Kind of a stressful class as you would immagine it would be, especially since it's the first class in a long while I've had to take every single school day.  But I think I'm handling it quite well.  The library science one is probably my least favorite though.  Kind of an easy class, and we'll be done with it by mid-October since it's what's called a "block class," but in all honesty I was kind of expecting this to be a class more centered around just simply searching through the school library's databases, and so far it's turned out to be a bit more than that.  Sometimes I swear I almost feel like she's actually trying to get us to write an actual research paper.......

And then of course there's band, which is always fun.  We're yet to have our first home game of the season so there really hasn't been much yet, but I'm quite looking forward to the season.  Band camp was really tough as it always is, but this year seemed especially so.  They're really doing a great job of working us a lot harder and I feel like we're accomplishing much more than we've seemed to typically do in the past.  We did already have our first (and only so far) on-field performance last saturday, and from what I hear it's probably one of, if not the, best ones we've ever done.  So tallent wise I'd say we're doing pretty well.  Size wise however has been quite the dissapointment.  We had these expectations and predictions that our band was supposed to be 100+ members this year, but instead we're more like 40-50 or so, which is about 10-12 or so smaller than we were last year even.  Still, it's been really fun, and hardly a disappointment at all for the actual people that are in it this year.  We already had a blast together back on saturday, and I'm looking forward to how much fun the rest of the season is going to be with these guys.  Especially with how good our football team is going to be this year.  They've already been incredibly impressive in two very close losses to FBS opponents, and judging from the fact that all our returning starters from last year's awesome team are back this year, we might even have a chance to go all the way.

My social life has been kind of so-so I guess.  Been hanging out with Peter, my best bud since the 4th grade, a whole lot lately.  It'd been a few years since I'd seen him as well before he invited me and a few other people we know to go see the midnight showing of Watchmen with me back in March, and also when he friended me on Facebook back in January, and since about then we've been hanging out a whole lot, which I really enjoy.  Add onto that the fact that I've both been reconnected with a good friend of mine from back during my freshman year of college and am making really good friends with some of his good friends and family, as well as the fact that just today I got to hang out with my cousin who I haven't seen in like, 4-5 years and her fiance, and of course not to mention all the friends I'm making in the band program, I'd say life is pretty good.  Definitely much better than it was when absolutely no one was around to hang out with a few years back....... (as much as I love all my good friends from the forums :) )

Anime and Manga has been kind of tough to come by lately though.  Mostly because of all that I've been busy with and all that has preoccupied my mind lately.  I've fallen quite a bit behind on my manga reading for one, so I'm definitely going to have to be doing some catch up pretty soon here.  I've got tons of anime sitting on my shelf that Matt has sent to me, and I hope to get around to watching them sometime, but so far all I've really had time for is the 74 episode masterpiece of a suspenseful thriller known as Monster (which is the series where the picture I'm using for this site comes from.  Quite fitting if I do say so myself. ;) ).  I was hoping to finish it before marching band camp started up, but unfortunately I only got to somewhere in the late 50s before then.  Since then I've only been able to work my way up to episode 68, which is where I stand now.  But it has just been one of the most awesome experiences I've ever had watching an anime before.  Not only does it continuously keep you on the edge of your seat dying to know what happens next (as much as a 74 episode series possibly can anyways) with all sorts of crazy plot twists all over the place, and not only is it very emotionally gripping as well, but the storyline is one of the most geniously constructed ones I've ever seen, albeit a bit draggy at times.  Hopefully I'll be able to finish it out sometime soon so I can go ahead and write up a full-on review of it over on ArizUtaku for you guys.

So, that's pretty much how my life stands for me at this point.  In the meantime, enjoy this stick figure's random killing of people.

And so it begins....

Well, after about a little more than a year posting with my good friend Matt over on our blog ArizUtaku (a link can be found on the sidebar) I have now officially decided to set out to do what I was hoping for when I first decided to start posting over there in the first place: create my own personal blog.

  Be Afraid!!  Be very afraid!!

Pretty much what you can expect to me do over here is basically just writing about stuff like life related things, random things that I find amusing, ect.  But probably more than anything the weight of what I'll be doing the most is writing about certain thoughts, feelings and opinions on certain things that I have.  Hence the name of the blog.  The "geeky loner" part comes from the fact that, as you will probably come to find for yourself (if you haven't already ^_^' ) that I am indeed a geek with all sorts of typical geeky interests.  What you'll also probably come to find about myself is just how sad and pathetic my life is, hence the loner part. :P I'll also be keeping you up to date with a lot of the things I'll be posting over on ArizUtaku, mostly just reviews and such, kind of like what Matt does with his fightbait and Manga Village reviews.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how this thing will turn out for me and how things will develop in the future.  Hopefully I can get some good followers and some good discussions going over here, and I hope you all will enjoy it thoroughly.