The Undisputed Truth

Yes. Finals are over. 90 Level II and Level III credits have been satisfied. No more group projects, mid-terms or final exams. After 20+ years, I’m finally completely done with school. I say this because anything postgrad I imagine would not be as bad, more complex, but certainly not subject to the rigors of undergraduate life. The gap is so wide that postgrad students usually teach undergrads.

What now? Well, I plan to do like the elderly at Retirement homes. My first impression of retirement homes was “Wow, why do they send their parents there? And What do they do? Just sit around and wait to die?”. Depressing, but in actuality thats what it is. So far I’ve planned to laze around and watch out the rest of  La Femme Nikita Seasons 2 and 3. In a way that can be classified as waiting to die as well, both literally and figuratively, as I still believe university life is one of its own that I am about to lose or lost already, and I’ve heard the saying that scientifically once you start living you start dying.

Oh well. Fact of the matter is, my exams are over. A massive weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. Call me crazy but I can see colours brighter and I literally just feel better. Its amazing what stress can do to you. The feeling of relief, exhaustion, accomplishment and happiness is indeed a great one.

Its been a long hard 2 weeks, and finally the Bleach folks have managed to make such a wait worthwhile. Episode 169 was funny, action-filled, suspenseful fanservice…but there a few things about it that are not quite right logically (in terms of the storyline, lets not delve into whether or not there actually are Shinigami in the real-world)..

Firstly, the most obvious : Chad, Rukia and Ishida are there. Now this is just impossible. Especially taking into the consideration the following point about Ishida’s bow which places the timeline of this story after Hueco Mundo or towards the end of the Arrancar arc. This then places them as being either beat up or too busy to be logically placed in the current Amagai Shuusuke arc.

The second peculiarity is Ishida’s bow. In fighting some hollow which surfaced over Karakura Town, Ishida, Chad and Inoue assisted Ichigo and Rukia in disposing of them. Interestingly, Ishida whips out his latest bow, the one he revealed in Hueco Mundo. 

If we were to refer to Episode #144 : Ishida, Chad, the Quickening of a New Power” we would see that this is the first episode where Ishida revealed his new, improved, and certainly more bad-ass bow weapon, Ginrei Kojaku (Silvery Mountaintop Sparrow). Prior to this, Ishida did not show any signs of having the ability to create a new bow or even officially regaining his Quincy powers after losing them as a result of using the Quincy “Final Form” and training with Ishida Ryūken in Episode #126 : Uryū vs. Ryūken! Clash of the parent-child Quincies. Even if he did, the episodes succeeding #126 and #144 were irreversible ; they could not have gone back to the living world, or took a break after having entered Hueco Mundo or beginning the fight with the Arrancar. I would like to see how this is explained.

 Is this “Jumping the Shark”?. Is the entire arc one of Aizen’s illusions? Are the people at Bleach running out of ideas? This is what happens when you try to dilute a series with so much bullshit. I’m interested to see how these inconsistencies are explained.

Is it that they totally ignored the threat of the Arrancar (who also conveniently stopped attacking) and also “vowed never to speak of it again” for the entire arc, even though the only possible timeline where the arc can be placed, with a large stretch of logic is between Episodes 127 and 135 where the Arrancar were an imminent threat? Coming to think of it even that is illogical because we saw a cool, nothing-is-going-on Hitsugaya in Episode 168, and between Episodes 127 and 135 where we are attempting to place the timeline of Episode 169, he was fighting Arrancar!

So in conclusion, Episode #169 of Bleach (New Development, the Dangerous Transfer Student Appears!”) and therefore this Amagai Shuusuke Arc, pending some fantastic logical bending and explanation, doesn’t make any sense at all. This could have well been fanfiction. It is however refreshing to see Ichigo and his dad fight in the morning, Keigo greet Ichigo, Tatsuki, Kon, Ichigo’s sisters, Rukia, Chad and Ishida. Now if only it all made sense.

*EDIT - a fellow fan is telling me that they “went forward in time” with Episode #169…still doesn’t make any sense..so they’re leapfrogging arcs now? Now she’s saying they can “do whatever they want to do” with regards to the timeline. Right…I can dance the macarena naked in the middle of the quadrangle at UWI, but it doesn’t have to make sense to other people…

I tagged and keyworded this like crazy because I really wish the regional manager of the Subway franchise or someone of similar authority from that organization would read this, and yes including the foul language.

Everyone should know about Subway by now, even if there isn’t one close to where you live. We’re all familiar with Jared Fogle’s amazing claims of how he lost like 300 pounds from just eating Subway sandwiches everyday. I’m sure I even saw the question (phrased differently) “Who is the guy who lost a lot of weight from being on a Subway diet?” as a question on Jeopardy for only 100 points.

Needless to say, Subway sandwiches are great : not too filling, tasty and best of all healthy. The price of it is another story, considering you can get a proper “meal” for about the same price of less, but that’s another story.

But, I believe quality at all restaurants is subject to the law of diminishing marginal utility, both in your own mind- “This doesn’t taste like it used to..” (when in fact it does) and on the part of the restaurant who just seem to lower their quality gradually, unintentionally or for the purposes of underhandedly saving costs. This brings to mind the folks at Coca Cola and Heineken. They’ve been around selling something that supposedly tastes the same for X amount of decades. I guess they deserve a lot more credit.

Sadly my Nokia (shitty) camera phone isn’t working and I didn’t feel like using my other phone to walk all the way out there to go take a pic of what made me write this..but someone is going around UWI, St. Augustine campus sticking up petition forms, calling themselves the “Campaign for Truth…For Real!” requesting that we sign our names to protest Subway’s (the branch at UWI) unfair practices, some of which being :

1. Employees closing the store 10-15 minutes earlier than its official closing hours (10 pm)
2. Their policy of not redeeming Subway Cards that don’t have the bill for each purchase attached (basically declaring $240 worth of purchases - average price of a sandwich is around $28TT - and the care to collect all those ridiculous stamps or management signatures worthless)
3. Not having a student special (they didn’t clarify, but I guess they mean something similar to KFC’s “study combo” which supposedly is a deal for students but its a ripoff anyway)
4. Having discourteous staff.

Notably some of the things they didn’t mention, which I always noticed about subway, my own qualms about them if you will, include :

• The ridiculously slow service. This further exacerbates the problem of the length of the lines (at any time of day mind you) because students just can’t get enough of that Chicken Teriyaki on Honey Oat with extra Pineapple..

• The STALE VEGETABLES they put in your sandwiches. They literally give you BROWN LETTUCE. Absolutely hilarious. “Good day sir would you like pickles,onions,tomatoes,blah blah blah”…you say “Yes all the veggies please”..and they proceed to put BROWN, VISIBLY SPOILT, DISGUSTING lettuce in your sandwich! estropeados lechuga!! l’embarras laitue!! Yet their slogan is EAT FRESH! Not for the life of me will I be able to get over this!! They also are frequently out of certain ingredients, sometimes 2 or 3 of them, yet when you ask them about the price they look at you as if you’re crazy. The price of a sandwich includes the veggies, but if THEY have problems with supply or whatever and don’t have pickles, green peppers, etc, which you are PAYING for…then why the fuck should you still pay the full price for it?

However, I’m in two minds about this. Its great to see UWI students attempting to mobilize and organize themselves for a cause…but as usual its petty and parochial. In recent memory of everyone, all we ever came out against as a pressure group of supposedly being the “premier university of the Caribbean” are : not getting into certain clubs at Port-of-Spain, administrative policies regarding residency and “security around campus” because people insist they should walk around Curepe/St. Augustine at odd hours of the night and think nothing should happen to them. The stance against the government construction of the aluminum smelters was something to be proud of, but that was still just a minority group within the student body.

I’ve dealt with the horrors of Subway by doing something amazing : NOT BUYING IT. There is something called power of the consumer, i.e to choose to buy or not buy from somewhere. Why are they bitching about this shit when they can just buy from Boomers, the other local “health sandwich”, bootleg Subway restaurant right which is right next to Subway??? How about KFC which is also right next to Subway?? Or the grill restaurants around the corner or over the highway?? Or Papa John’s or Pizza Hut who deliver to UWI in like 10 minutes??? Or the numerous Chinese restaurants all over the place?? What pussies they are making us out to be!

Yes, the whole policy of not redeeming Subway cards if you don’t have the bills attached is cheap, unfair bullshit, they’re slow, their lettuce is RIDICULOUS, and well they just suck basically but fine, hit them where it hurts and stop buying it! Everyday at lunch time I often see about 30 people in line for Subway, then I see people pass by, look inside, see the line, and happily become the 31st person, knowing fully well they have atleast a half hour wait to get a stupid chicken sandwich!

I’m almost beginning to think that for students to be slaves to something just because it tastes good or because its an international franchise, they deserve such treatment. I’m pretty sure everyone sees that the lettuce is 3 DAYS OLD but they continue buying it, based on the length of those lines everyday.

So shut up and take it, because apparently Trinis and UWI students are married to Subway and continue to accept horribly sub-standard service and products and are blind to other fast-food options and the power to boycott. They could probably pee in the sandwiches are call it mustard and there will still be a mad rush of a line there tomorrow morning.

So fuck that, i’m not signing a petition which basically is me identifying myself as saying : “I need Subway, I can’t help but put up with their bullshit because I can’t buy something else, please put an end to my misery and like, heed to my demands of being a dumbass, captive customer, I need….chick….en…teri….yaki…..now…must…sign…petition…”. Idiots.

As you may have already realized if you’re the average, check-your-wall-every-hour, Facebook
user, they’ve added a chat feature.

I can bet my head on a chopping block that worker productivity atleast across the States and Trinidad have dropped significantly since Facebook introduced this.

Did we really need that? Especially during exam season? No more cyber-stalking people and then sending your friends messages about it later, you can now do it live! I guess this means people’s MSN Messengers will be put down to collect some dust, people who use Hi5 and MySpace instead of Facebook have become even more stupid automatically, and university students and employees who use computers at work may find work and studying even more difficult than usual.

But, you have to give them credit for yet again adding something which we all sorta wanted but didn’t really request. First was Facebook Applications, now Chat. The people at Facebook are like little elves that live in your house who come in when you’re not looking and switch around little things throughout the rooms to make your life easier.

If only it existed earlier

I would have liked to spend the last 7 or so hours doing something more enjoyable than cursing, hitting my head on the wall, praying that time would turn back itself, wishing there was an “undo” button for life, and being brought close to tears, but the good folks at Microsoft were determined that I should complete such actions here last night into this morning.

“The Windows® XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) includes all previously released updates for the operating system. This update also includes a small number of new functionalities, which do not significantly change customers’ experience with the operating system. This white paper summarizes what is new in Windows XP SP3.”

“Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), the update scheduled to release next year, runs Microsoft Corp.’s Office suite 10% faster than XP SP2, a performance testing software developer reported Friday.”

I made the mistake of downloading this shit from DOWNLOAD.COM/CNET.COM, a site I consider reputable, as I’ve been experimenting with lots of software from that site since I got my first computer. The comment on the board there were also positive..when I scrolled down I saw some people saying negative things but I thought forget them, this is an official Service Pack from Microsoft, what could happen? They probably did something wrong. Had I googled about downloading it from before though I would have realized that its actually a serious problem with the SP3…

After rebooting to supposedly finish the installation of the SP3, my computer came to a BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH which read :

STOP: c0000139 {Entry Point Not Found}
The procedure entry point GdiGetBitmapBitsSize could not be located in the dynamic link library GDI32.dll.

The only option is for you to reboot, where it will come right back to that screen, effectively stopping the user from accessing Windows, putting the PC in an endless loop of inoperability. It doesn’t stop there, you cannot boot up in Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking nor Safe Mode with Command Prompt. If you manage to get a boot cd to work, you won’t be able to access your C: drive, at one point I got the message access denied. So basically you can’t boot up, you can’t uninstall the service pack, you can’t use XP system restore from a saved point, my HP non-destructive system recovery didn’t work and you can’t access your files. Now that is one hell of a service pack. The only viable option seems to be to reformat your hard drive. But, seeing that over 50,000 people downloaded the SP3 at download.com alone, there just has to be someone who had the same problem, and managed to solve it harmlessly.

After hooking up my other PC, I found great help over at Tip and Trick which saved me a ton of trouble and headaches :

The solution is to restore the GDI32.dll from the service pack into Windows system folder with the following steps:

• Boot from aWindows CD or BartPE.
• At Welcome to Setup screen, press “R” to start repair option and open up a Recovery Console’s command prompt window.
• Select the Windows installation to use:
  Normally is C:\Windows and just one option. If so, press “1″ and hit Enter.
• If prompted for administrator password, enter the password (normally blank) and hit Enter.
  (If unsuccessful because you can’t remember your admin password, use this program to reset it to blank. Also mentioned at the end of this guide.

• Make a backup of existing GDI32.dll in system folder with following command:

REN C:\Windows\System32\GDI32.dll C:\Windows\System32\GDI32.dll.orig

(One line command, Replace “C” of the drive letter of your Windows installation drive if necessary.)

• Copy backup GDI32.dll from c:\windows\servicepackfiles\i386\gdi32.dll to the system folder with the following command:

copy C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles\i386\GDI32.dll C:\Windows\System32\GDI32.dll

(One line command, Replace “C” with your own system drive letter if applicable.)

• Restart computer.

Problem here is you may not be able to access your C: drive because your access is denied for some reason so you may have to use this great program to clear out your admin password as mentioned before (usually is blank, but it may contain a password which you conveniently may not remember) and then repeat steps 1-7.

You will also need an original Windows XP cd from which you will boot from as stated in the guide. If you don’t have one, get a copy of a friend’s. The process doesn’t require any serial numbers so you won’t be into any kind of full blown piracy…but you might as well since this is what Microsoft does to legit customers! Another problem you may encounter is it may not detect the CD, especially if its a burnt copy. In that case keep trying, and it should detect it eventually, as it did with mine after about 15 tries. If that doesn’t work you’ll just have to source and use an original copy of Windows XP. Luckily I got mind working with a burnt copy. I had no choice as I lost my serial number and the original CD got shattered into pieces in a drawer.

Last but not least, I hope you have another internet connection on your phone or Wii or something in order to find guides such as these else you’re screwed on your own

Voila. It will work from there on once you had the prerequisites and you’ve followed that guide, don’t worry it worked for me and SP3 is now installed on my system, and its also operational, after much ado. When the PC boots up and you see the Windows logo and the message “Thank you for installing service pack 3″, it feels like you’ve completed training or passed a test.

But what got me the whole while is….WHY THE FUCK IS THIS FILE AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD??? Its there, stated as being from MICROSOFT and legit and everything…but it totally FUCKS up your system! The amount of hell this thing caused me warrants an apology from Gates himself! Some people have reformatted their systems just because of this! Do I hear the words “class action lawsuit”?? I’m totally sick of Microsoft. I can’t wait to have a totally clean new system with absolutely no Microsoft software..

BTW direct all thanks to the people at tipandtrick.net, that is their guide which I slightly edited and I’m just spreading the gospel of it. Glad to see that I actually helped some of you guys.

Yes there will be a live speech of the ever so colorful Rev. Jeremiah Wright at 9 AM ET. See at LIVE…(hehehe)..on MSNBC or see it soon posted up on :

MSNBC.com
This is his second speech in 2 days. One was addressing the NAACP which was..lol interesting, clips from it are making waves on cable news channels now…more about this later

These last few days have been really weird. I feel as if I’m approaching the end of my life. As melodramatic is it may sound, I can’t prove to myself otherwise. I frequently have flashbacks when I walk around campus, and seeing certain landmarks and areas bring back a rush of memories. I have 2 more weeks of exams and then I’ll be done with university life, i.e., freedom.

No more late night campus walks, skipping classes, nocturnal, sedentary, carefree life, clubbing in the middle of the week, waking up at 5pm, interacting with friends constantly, facebook 24/7, anti-9 to 5 schedule, shoplifting from the mini mart, making fun of freshers, attending all the lame campus parties, being solicited by almost every club who wants to have a “hip crowd” of UWI students, bullshitting in lectures which you know won’t matter ultimately, pulling all-nighters, seriously relying on energy drinks for energy,…etc.

What’s left then? Well, nothing.  All I can think of is a super drastic drop in sexual activity, and being limited to doing stuff I like to do on weekends. “Life” will be replaced by most likely a boring job, average pay for now, facing the fucked up traffic on the roads in Trinidad, complaining about food prices and trying to catch up on sleep.

The sick part of it all is that this is what I wanted all along, to be free from the cursed shackles of UWI, with its shitty lecturers and its system designed to make you fail, with its rude, zombie-faced point-of-service staff and its bureaucracy, with its hectic semesters that leave room only for the completion of midterm exams, projects and cramming for finals, to be free from the fear of being just another drop-out who couldn’t cope.

If only I could continue my “life”, yet still be free of this place. So then I really want to have my cake and eat it too. Closest compromise would be to work at UWI. I explore even this as an option, as my absorption into the matrix of the working life, facing traffic everyday, losing my self, scares me. Should I pursue a masters degree at UWI? Subject myself to more institutional abuse? All for the sake of “the life?” I don’t know. Its all sad and confusing. Is it growing up or is all the cynicism about life taking a toll on me? These next few months will be life changing I imagine, whether I want it to or not.

Well early Thursday morning I watched the first filler episode of Bleach, only to be hit with the following facts :

1) Its not just a set of filler episodes, its a fiiller ARC. Dumb observation you may think, but there were loose filler episodes in the past.

2) There are new cool, but toned-down beginning and ending themes which suggest the previous point as other new characters were shown

3) Amagai Shuusuke is…awkward. His zanpakutou is like a fricking knife or something and so far he isn’t really convincingly cool. One of the lower seats of the 3rd squad even said that “he lacks poise”.

4) Last not certainly not fucking least, THE NEXT EPISODE WILL BE ON MAY 7th.

Yes. Its the beginning of the already unwanted filler arc and they’re already taking another break. I’m this close to abandoning Bleach. Have they no respect for their fans? We’re not asking for shit like, naked pictures of Matsumoto, but just to see something worthwhile after waiting a week to see the show. Lately however its been shit, or nothing.  What a waste. I’m open to suggestions for something better to follow weekly..

And a ghetto fabulous, embarrassing-ass one at that too. Handkerchiefs have been used for centuries, said to have been invented by Richard II of England. When used as an accessory to a suit, a handkerchief is known as a pocket square. Wikipedia lists several ways in which a pocket square can be folded :

• The Presidential is folded at right angles to fit in the pocket.
• The TV Fold is folded diagonally with the point inside the pocket.
• The One-point Fold is folded diagonally with the point showing.
• The Two-point Fold is folded off-center so the two points don’t completely overlap.
• The Three-point Fold is first folded into a triangle, then the corners are folded up and across to make three points.
• The Four-point Fold is an off-center version of the Three-point Fold.
• The Cagney is basically a backwards version of the Four-point Fold.
• The Puff or the Cooper is simply shaped into a round puff.
• The Reverse Puff is like the Puff, except with the puff inside and the points out, like petals.
• The Astaire is a puff with a point on either side.
• The Straight Shell is pleated and then folded over to give the appearance of nested shells.
• The Diagonal Shell is pleated diagonally and then folded.

And here are some pictures of the pocket square in action :

Classy.

However, what the fuck is this?

That’s NO pocket square people. That is in fact, a TIE HANGING OUT OF MR. PETERS’ POCKET. And not just any tie, its identical to the one he’s wearing with his shirt! Yes, its not just an embarrassingly, ignorant, fashion disaster choice, he’s color-coordinating it! A grown man, a MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT in the Lower House of the Parliament of Trinidad and Tobago thinks its fucking proper to hang a tie out of his pocket! Either that or he foolishly thought that the people he saw with fabric hanging out of their pockets (pocket squares) were hanging ties out of their pockets too!

And it gets worse!

From this pic its seen that MP Peters is wearing an earring!! What the fuck???? Isn’t that like, disrespectful or something? What’s next platinum teeth?? I wear an earring too everyday but I’m sure if I were elected to Parliament I would have to stop wearing it then….or atleast not begin wearing one, uber-ignorantly thinking it constitutes proper attire.
How esteemed. From this pic we can also see the TIE HANGING OUT a little more.

Another pic from my TV on the Parliament channel which identifies this disgrace (Mr. Winston Peters, MP - Member for Mayaro)  that ridiculed the House of Representatives on that day.

What a joke. What clowns these people are. Would a US Senator or a UK MP come to a sitting looking anything remotely like that jackass???

Yep. No more relevant content will be seen on the anime “Bleach” for quite some time. They’re going to introduce some lame looking new 3rd squad captain called Amagai Shuusuke in Episode 168 on April 23rd as mentioned before.

But, it was inevitable. The Hueco Mundo arc was one of the best, and ended beautifully with Ichigo destroying Grimmjow, holding out his hand to Inoue and telling her to come with him.

The only thing which is sort of weird, a minor plot hole if you will, throughout the entire arc is….why didn’t Aizen, Gin or Tousen just come out in Las Noches and kill Ichigo? Anyone of them easily can, and Inoue is central to their plans so the idea of him just being a unworthy challenge not posing any serious threat to them is moot.

But anyway, when you’re badass enough to stifle people just by your presence, you can afford to do illogical shit.

The fillers I guess won’t be too bad. At least the production crew can go bananas over putting in all the shit that wasted our time for the past few months in entire episodes rather than just stealing 5 minutes of each episode that actually had some excitement. What worries me is the length of this “filler season”..we all know how painfully long the Bounto arc was : 44 episodes, and now with all the work of introd

ucing new captains and getting the audience back in touch with seemingly discarded characters like Kon, etc…will this last until the end of the year?..One of the final shots of episode 167 dims the hopes of many fans in getting the viewing of the fillers over with ASAP. Nel actually said “Me and my buddies won’t be around for a while because the higher-ups said so“

How long is this “while” going to be? Well, we can only wait and see, and hope Amagai Shuusuke, Matsumoto’s boobs and the countdown to the release of the subbed 3rd Bleach movie, “Diamond Dust Rebellion” keep us entertained in the meantime..

Click here for a complete list of Bleach anime episodes.