March for life 2013

 Hey everyone. I just did the March For Life with my Students for life group. For those of you who don't know, it's a big pro-life march every year on the anniversary of roe vs. wade. We march down the mall to the supreme court in peaceful protest. I was able to make it this year, and it will probably be the only year, because as an engineer, I have no time during the weekend for anything, and always seem to have Friday classes. We leave on Thursday, so of course I'm left out, because engineering classes you just can't miss. I have no classes on Friday this semester, and the only class I had to miss was my blow off of an econ class. So with the back story given, time for the actual trip.

Thursday
So I had some classes, but after those, I gathered my stuff and walked down to the parking log we were meeting at. After some aimless looking around, people started showing up. Once everyone was given their car assignments and packed up, we headed out, for part 1.

Here's how it went down, we had to drive from school to get to the bus rendezvous point. Once we get to that point, we get on the big charter but with the other students for life groups. We have 4 other schools with us, all headed to D.C. But the rendezvous point isn't close. It was a little over an hour away. It was an OK ride there. The car was quite the conversationalist. I didn't need to break out the entertainment at all.

We got to the point about 2 hours before the bus. Since there was an Applebee's close by, we decided to eat there. I split a 2 for $20 with one of the other group members. I haven't had real food since Christmas Break. Taco Bell has realer food than my dorm caf food. That steak, fries, broccoli, and mozzarella sticks tasted so good. Here's a reaction video.

After dinner, we got on the bus and shipped out. My friend and I prayed a rosary for a safe journey. After that, I pulled out my DSiXL and played this Legend of Zelda 4 Swords game that was free for the 25th anniversary of Legend of Zelda then played Feel The Magic XX/XY. It's a fun game. Once I tired of those, I read some of Michael Moore Is a Big Fat Stupid White Man. Good book. Until tomorrow.

Friday
Well it's past 12 midnight, so I can consider this part of Friday. We stopped at a truck stop, with the laundromat, the game room with some slot machines, showers, restaurants, and the like. It's 4:30, everything but the gift shop is closed in there. But who cares? The game room was a little boring since they didn't have pinball, my favorite arcade game. One priest that was with one of the other groups, young guy, got really into the game room and the name. It was called "Trucker's Ally," and every person he talked to he said, "welcome to trucker's ally, what goes on in trucker's ally stays in trucker's ally," an a playful way like someone would say about Vegas. Just having fun with the lethargic, tired college kids at 4:30 in the morning. Kind of funny. In the laundromat, there was a TV with cable and movie channels. I found it and decided to see what was on Adult Swim at 5 AM. Turns out it was King of the Hill, and an episode I haven't seen, but the bus was ready to go. I had to leave it. Oh well.

So we get into DC at about 9 AM. It was a long bus ride. When we got to DC, we went to our hotel and checked in and unloaded our stuff. It was also a time to get ready for the march that would be happening in a couple hours, and eat breakfast if we could find it. I did a little looking around and I found a Dunkin Doughnuts. I had 2 chocolate frosted doughnuts. After that I went back to my room to get myself bundled up for the march. Put on a pair of PJ pants under my jeans, got my nice warm hat, and put on my march for life shit. I was ready to head out, but I missed my group to head down to the mall.

At first I wondered around close to my hotel to see if I was close to the corner I had to be at. I wasn't. I asked the front desk people how to get there, and they told me how to get there and gave me a map. Had to be at least half a mile walk since I walked 15 or so blocks. Good thing the streets in DC, at least where I was at, are labeled with numbers going one way and letters going the other and where I had to be was at a number and a street right off a letter. I'm just walking down through DC going "17, 16, 15 I'm heading in the right direction number wise, and j, i, k and right direction letter wise." I walked by a group of Asian tourists, and a couple of them were looking at me and chuckling. I did look like something else with my puffy yellow winter coat and heavy Russian hat walking down the street with a map in my hands. Glad I probably made their trips.

I found my group and we got our signs. Once we all got together, we went over to the big rally site and saw the speakers. There were some good speakers, but one sticks out the most, Rick Santorum. That's right, Republican candidate during the Primary of the 2012 election, Rick Santorum. That was so cool to see him in person even if it was 200 feet away. Now I've seen both Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum. All I need to do now is see Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Rick Perry and I'll have seen all the big candidates from the 2012 Republican Primary. I did see Rand Paul at the gathering and his name is close to Ron Paul right?

After the rally, it was time for the real march. Our group worked really hard to stay together. We got separated a little at times, but we regrouped easily. Get this, there were estimated 650,000 people there. Over half a million people. This was the first time I've seen that many people in one place before that I can recall. It was amazing to see that many people in one place. Definitely put some perspective to things. We were able to make it to congress and most of us decided to duck out because we were getting hungry and I really needed to use the bathroom. Some of our guys went all the way to the supreme court but I was not one of them.

Our initial plan was to go to this Irish Pub for dinner, but then we decided for lunch, but then they were super crowded so we went to this great hole in the wall burger place. It was a little pricy, like most places in DC, but it was really good. Then again, I haven't had a real burger for months. But from what I remember, it was really good by normal standards.

After lunch, we went back to the hotel, and to get back, we took the metro, or to normal people, the subway. We don't have subways in my state, so none of us really know how to use it. We spent maybe 5 minutes figuring out what line to get on, then 15 minutes trying to figure out the fair cards. Good thing the attendant was able to explain it to us. Once we figured out how to get through the entry gate, we had to figure out which side of the station to get on. This one had the boarding zones on the outer sides and the trains coming down the middle. We got on the wrong side, so had to get to the other side. Was funny since one of our group members was a quarter of the way down the escalator and decided to run back up it to catch us. Riding the subway for me is always fun, just because I never do and they go so fast.

We found our way back to the hotel, and once I got back to the hotel, I watched an episode of Gold Rush, and then crashed and burned at 6 PM. It was going to be just a quick nap until it was time to go on the monument tour, but I was out cold until one of my roommates for the weekend came back at 11:30 PM from the monument tour. After that I brushed my teeth and took a shower and went back to bed.

Saturday
This was a good day. First thing in the morning, I had breakfast. I had waffles, fruit loops, and whole milk. Oh whole milk. After that, we all gathered up and got on the bus to go to the conference.

The conference was fun and informative. I got some cool stuff from the different pro-life organizations that came. Mostly flyers and literature, but got some pens and a mini Frisbee. I think it's for Frisbee golf, but whatever. We had some great speakers in the beginning, one of whom is a conservative, pro-life movie maker. He premiered his new short film, Crescendo, at the conference. It was about 15-30 minutes, and really powerful. It told the story of a young 18th century woman in Germany who's life is just horrible. Her first husband died, her second husband is a cheating sleazeball, and to make matters more complicated, she's pregnant. She decides she want's the 18th century equivalent of an abortion, but before she can take the potion/concoction thing to end her 9 month pregnancy, she goes into labor when a piano crashes through her window. I can't go on because it would spoil the ending. But I will leave you with this, it's powerful.

Lunch was good. I had a ham sandwich and a sierra mist. Still have the can since that's aluminum that my family will have fun with in the forge. After lunch it was time for the different workshops. I went to the one that was about exposing and defunding planned parenthood. We had a former planned parenthood manager there talking about all the different shady practices that PP has engaged in. To help prove it, she had her old pay stub showing the exact location that she worked at. After that, I went to one that was on pro-life apologetics, where some of the really convincing pro-choice arguments were shown how bad they were. After that one, I went to the "spreading the pro-life message with new media." As a blogger/vlogger, this one I felt I'd really enjoy, and I did. It focused more on Facebook, twitter, and tumbler than blogs and youtube, but whatever. Cool thing, apparently one guy who runs a pro-life apologetics tumbler is a semi-known user that was in the audience When it was time for the audience to give their advice, he told his story and his tumbler screen name, and one girl exclaimed "That's You!" I found that funny.

After those, time for dinner. It was pizza, and only of slightly higher quality than dorm pizza. After that, time for award ceremony for the different pro life groups. The awards were given out by the Student's for life of America president Kristan Hawkins. She's also gave a speech during the opening ceremonies before lunch. She's a very animated person, and has a signature bullhorn. These awards, best new group, most outstanding group of the year, most outstanding individual of the year, really amazing stories for why they're receiving them. I'll get the video up as soon as I get clearance. After the awards, really funny thing happened. All the group leaders rushed up to the stage and started doing the Gangnam Style dance. Bunch of pro-life, probably America loving young adults, doing the dance of a Korean pop song made by a guy who hates America and only started tolerating us once he started getting all the money from us; a tad ironic don't ya think? A pro-life rock group, don't know their name so sorry on that, played music and that was fun. Catelynn and Tyler came and gave a little speech. It was so cool seeing them again.

After the conference, we went back to the hotel. The people from my school were talking about shopping and other feminine things, and the people from the other group on our bus were talking about TV from my childhood and other good forms of entertainment. I went over and started talking with them. It was fun. Talked about the different shows on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network and Disney Channel before the Hanna Montana effect all from back in the 90s. Eventually we got onto politics, and this is why I love being with pro-life or republican groups; we just started talking politics and how we all had conservative views on the matter. We also talked about how awesome it is being in groups like this where we share similar views. Good time. Got back to the room, watched some TV, then went to bed.

Sunday
Sunday was our "Go to church then come home" day. Since most of us are Catholic, and if not Christian, most of us went to The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, aka, the really nice church outside of DC. Getting there was fun. We took the Subway, and as I mention again, not from a place with subways. We had our fun trying to figure out how much to put on our tickets. But riding the subway was the fun part. It was maybe a 30 minute ride, and the subway goes really fast if you don't know. One guy that was with our group had some real fun on it. He came up with "Subway Surfing." To subway surf, you stand up while the train is moving, and not hold on to anything. Train flying down the tracks at 40-50 MPH and not holding on to anything, it was a great idea. So great, I joined in. Luckily no one was stupid enough to the point of us actually hurting ourselves, but definitely not a smart move.

Once we got to our stop, we went to the church, and it was amazing. Just beautiful. It was kind of fun watching this group of 30 people trying to find seats together. Mass was good. Here are some pictures of this amazing church.

Want more, click here.

After mass, we had time to explore the church more. This is when I got most of the pics. The basement was really cool. It had a crypt and a little chapel underneath the big church. They also have a cafe and 2 gift shop/book shops. Really cool.

After we had about an hour to explore, it was time to head back. We had about half our group together ready to leave. I mass texted the other group members saying we were leaving. I tried to slow them but they wanted to go. There was some trouble because we didn't put enough money on our fair cards so we had to put more money on it. That was some confusion, causing us to miss the train. Well we found our way up to the platform, and waited. Right before our train came in, the other group members responded with "we're on our way." 2 of us, me being one of them, decided to wait around for them. Well, we did, and once the train left, we went down to the entrance and was talking the way to get the proper fair over the gate since we already paid and they didn't. That was fun. We eventually got them all through, and rode back to the station closest to our hotel. None of us had a strong concept of where we were, but we found our way back fine.

We packed up, and got on the bus, and started our journey home at about 1. Some of us found a regional planned parenthood headquarters and prayed outside it. I was not one of them because I waited around at the subway for our group members which set me back at least 30 minutes. The ride back was cool. We stopped at the big trucker stop we stopped at on the way there. It was different being there in the day when everything is open. I had Dairy Queen burger meal and a butter finger mini blizzard. Took the entire time to wait in line and they got my order wrong. I think I've developed a  6th sense where before I even unwrap my burger, I can tell if there's anything else on it other than pickles. Minor set back, but whatever. We watched friends and that was fun. Love that show. If I knew we'd have DVDs to watch, I'd have brought some of mine. Oh well. We stopped at 2 rest stops in Ohio. Since all rest stops in Ohio look the same, I wasn't sure if we were in the same as on the way there, but I quickly saw that we weren't because the pinball machines weren't the same. I would know since pinball is my all time favorite arcade game. On the second stop I played a round of family guy pinball. I even won a free game. That is probably in part due to the fact that they don't get many good players coming in and setting high scores. That was cool.

We arrived at our check point to get in cars. There was one problem, one of the group member's cars had a flat tire. That was a fun experience, sarcasm. I was ready to get on my hands and knees ready to put on the doughnut. We didn't though. We went to the 24 hour McDonald's. I got a fountain drink. We were there for about an hour and a half, so 2:30 until 4 AM. Turns our McDonald's changes to breakfast at 3 AM. We left at 4 AM, and it was about a 2 hour car ride back to college. Enjoy a sneak peak at the vlog that I'll get out eventually of the ride back.

We got back at about 6AM. I'm glad that I told my roommate to leave the door unchained. I slept until 12:30 PM. Now begins my week back.

Now for a few reflections. I've done trips with school before, but they were in middle and high school so we were minors, and as minors, we had chaperones. Here it was kind of weird, since same sort of set up, but because we're all adults, no chaperones and the trip leader was our students for life president. Just a little weird for me. Sure am glad I did it, since I'm not sure I'll be able to do it again. Well this has been Pokematic signing off and bu-bye.

Christmas Blog 2012

Hey everyone, Merry Kanishmas. Kanish Kringle loved our Smingerbread House and left great presents. That was a Chowder reference if you didn't know. It's Christmas which means it's time for family, fun, and presents. In our family, we start the festivities the day before, so lets start there, on Christmas Eve.

It started out with lots of cleaning up. Since I don't have that much stuff here since most of it's at college, I didn't have to do that much. After the cleaning we went over to my grandparents were we exchange gifts there first, or last depending on the year. We met at McDonald's, like we do every year. When we were little, it was so Santa could get set up while we were away. We're older now so we know some things we didn't before, but we still go over there because it's fun. I got some cool things. Got money, Blu-Rays, (continue list afterwards.) Here's a picture

Tin Tin not shown. I got a nice model of the Monkee Mobile, lots of detail, a set of American coins from my birth year, the hat that I'm wearing that will be really warm, the bag of money that's hanging from the hat, X-Men Origins Wolverine and Wonder Woman on Blu-Ray, Planet of the Apes, Amazing Spider man, and Big Bang Season 5 on DVD, and the new lounge Pants. The Fedora I've had and wear regularly, aka; not a gift.

After their house, we went to Christmas Eve mass. Good service like always. But the big thing was when we left mass we had an inch or 2 of snow. It was a Christmas miracle for all the little kids who wished for a white Christmas. We didn't have any snow before mass, so this was cool. We watched part of the first airing of A Christmas Story on TBS. Now time for bed and await the fun tomorrow.

Now time for Christmas Day. I went to bed earlier than normal the previous night. I went to bed at 11 instead of 12. I was about to wake up. I was. It was 8 AM and I realized I had my 9 hours, but I had to let my body catch up to my mind. Well then my brother came in and flashed the lights saying wake up. Actually it was "I'm the spirit of St. Nicholas and you've been a bad boy." I caught up quickly and corrected him with "actually the other guy punished the bad kids." He knew but couldn't remember his name, and neither could I. I get downstairs and we had our gifts around the tree like always. Here's a picture of it all.

 

Top Picture: Tool set and bag, new video camera, Yellow shirt; short sleeve, long sleeve, and hoodie, headlamp, whoppers, Hershey Cookies and Cream Bar, Captain America Blu-Ray, Amazon $25 gift card, light up pen, Pokemon Stickers, and a chocolate bar.

Bottom Picture: My brothers and mine new PS3, a second Dual Shock controller, Inception, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes both Blu-Ray

There's a story to the pen. Dad was at a seminar thing and the speaker had pens. He gave them out and said they made great presents for the kids. Dad the jokester. I also really like the digital video camera. I can do travel vlogs now. That's something I've wanted to do but didn't really have the tech nor the money to do that. Now my joke of "I have a webcam" when my video club asks what we have tech wise is dead. I actually have a camera. I'm still gonna say "I have a webcam" but also going to add "and a digital video camera with 4X digital zoom." It's no where on par with the DSLR cameras some of our members have but oh well.

Now for a fun thing. Because my aunt moved away we now have Christmas at our house. Prety sure I've said this in previous blogs but this is for you new guys. This is where the cleaning comes into place. We cleaned up and hosted a party. We had my grandparents, second cousins, grandparents good friends and their son, and one of my mom's friends. This is my cousin whom I share many interests with. It was fun talking with her, however short it was. She's not very talkative. We ended up watching Captain America on Blu-Ray our new PS3. It was cool even though we only got about a third of the way through. After a third we had our fun with our family sing along. My grandparents friend plays the accordion and she brings it to most every party. We sang our songs and I recorded some of the evidence on my new video camera. It's amazing what an accordion, a packet of sheet music, and maybe a couple of drinks can do. I won't upload the video because I don't have their OK and I don't think they'd want it out there.

After singing fun time it was time for dinner. We had the entire dining set, the chairs from the dinning set in the basement, the card table set, and an extra folding chair, all for us. That's 13 chairs and 2 tables in total. The "adults" sat at our dinning room table with the leaf in it and the "kids" sat at the card table in the living room right next to it so we are part of the dinner to an extent. We kind of just overheard our elders conversation and then add our own commentary on it or just go off on our own conversation. We had beef, smoked and roasted. We also had potatoes, green bean casserole, broccoli, and rolls. I had rolls and broccoli. I love cooked broccoli with salt. Afterwards we had dessert, homemade chocolate cake and pumpkin pie and store bought ice cream. I had cake and ice cream. It was good. The party didn't last long after that. I did get to show my cousin my latest set-up and additions to my nerd cave in the basement. She's a gamer, I'm a gamer, I put all the standard def games on our old standard def TVs in the basement.

Now I have one more party to host tomorrow. I'll post that tomorrow as an add on to this entry. So if you're reading this tonight, you are awesome so a shout out to you now. Well this has been Pokematic signing off and bu-bye, until tomorrow.

The next day.

Hi I'm back. Today I didn't do much for the day. At about 4, Mom's best friend and her kids came over. We went to our local comic book/trading card/video game/other nerd stuff store and looked around. I found they had Pokemon tapestries, and I'd buy them if I had the room. Things like that I would hang with pride, but I don't have the room. Got to many Naruto posters. Anyways, after that, we played super smash bros in my nerd cave. It's been a while since I used all my controllers on my N64. It was fun, and we almost got Ness unlocked, but then the game froze on me. First time that happened. We exchanged gifts and that was fun.

After they left, Mom's college friends came over for our Christmas party. Her friends have kids that are around the age of my brother and I. We hung out, played Risk, and enjoyed each other's company. Risk was fun, even though I lost. I got Asia for the most part, even though I was never able to get the 7 man bonus. Oh well. We had Pizza and enjoyed more fun time. We exchanged oranges and Chocolate bars. Now I can say this has been Pokematic signing off and bu-bye.

Lets shoot a short film

Hey everyone, so today I spent all day with my film club filming a short film. This was an all day event, that involved lots of shooting on location, with 4 or 5 different locations. One of which was a convenience store and another on a bus. It was really interesting.

Now as an engineer with some experience in video production, I lacked much of the skills which would be required to shoot to the level in which we were. I don't know how to operate an audio recorder of professional quality with all the specific settings. Low gain, high pitch, other things either on or off. I don't know what all that does. Mono or stereo or 5.1 surround, the extent of my understanding. I could work a DSLR camera if shown how, but I don't know all that would need to go into framing a shot. I could try, but I'll let the other guys handle it. I can act, but not to the level of the guys in the theater department. I ended up being an extra in one scene and equipment pack mule. I did have the plastic bag and the coke bottle that were useful, and added to the cool toys for the set up shot.

Now here's how my day went. I got up at 7:30 because I could have sworn the director said crew be there at 8:30, and I wanted breakfast, and since I lack a car requiring me to walk to the location, I allotted plenty of time. Well turns out the caf opens at 9 on the weekends. I wouldn't know that since I always sleep until at least 9 on typical weekends, with atypical involving some other form of breakfast available that's better. So I stocked my pockets with a couple power bars and ate one before leaving, since we were planning on eating at Jimmy Johns and I'm not a big fan of sandwich places. Well turns out no one showed up until 8:30 and that was just 1 person. Everyone else got there between 8:45 and 9. Oh well.

We start getting ready to film at about 9. Our audio person couldn't figure out how to turn on the audio or exactly what some of the settings were. I was able to do turn it on and that was the extent of my abilities. She figured out the rest. I ended up playing "guy milling about in store," and "dude," 2 extras. I got to just look around at the merchandise, and look like I was looking for beer with my friends, while watching the craziness. What exactly is that craziness, you'll just have to watch the video. We did end up making a bit of a mess with the fake blood. I asked our Director of Photography if he wanted help cleaning it up but he said it was fine. OK.

After that, we went on to do the exterior shots. Before I went out to do them, I got a 12 oz coke in a glass bottle. I've had 8 oz but not 12. This bottle is big. It doesn't have a twist off top, but good thing I have a can opener that I could use as a bottle opener on my multi-tool. This inspired one of my other friends to get one since he could open it due to my resourcefulness. Anyways, the next shot involved a little girl as a character. It's true, never work with animals or children. I later had a run in with the animal part, but here's what happened with our child. She was rather shy and quiet. When I heard that she might flub her lines but I didn't expect her to just not talk and get super stage fright. We ended up getting what we needed.

We waited for our main character to clean up to do the before the store scenes. And while waiting, a guy nicknamed "Sponge bob" came out to his corner and started his yelling free-styling and stripped dancing. He has his shirt pushed up so it's just on his neck and his chest is exposed, with his pants sagging. He harassed our guys a little since we were shooting some shots from across the street. Luckily once our director said that we were shooting a short film he left us alone. We got our shots on time, thankfully. Now time to break for lunch.

Most of us went to the caf right next to our next location on campus. In the credits, a joke is going to be Bistro 3 (the caf) catered the event. Our next scene involved the bus stop right our side the caf. It's adjacent to dorms, so naturally some guys start harassing us. They're throwing some really bad ones at us, ones I don't wish to repeat here since they got really R-rated and I like to stay at most PG-13. I was just thinking, "OK shut up guys, you're just being obnoxious." Then they quoted Money Python with "you're mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries." That made me laugh, but glad that the director was able to get them to shut up.

Our next shot took place on a bus. That was fun. All 7 of us and all our equipment just get on one of the city buses and go for a 45 minute ride and shoot. I didn't have any part because I had extra parts in the convenience store. I just ended up talking with a friend while this all happened.

Our final shot took place at our main character's house and his "girlfriend's" house. His house had lots of fun stuff, comic books, comic book DVDs, video game Lego's, action figures, and the like. It was fun. I brought my Naruto key chain, Naruto figure, Trunks action figure, spongebob cereal box prize, and hidden leaf headband. Everything else was brought by either our star, or the guy whose house we were filming at had it all on hand. We shot it at one of our member's house, and he and his roommates have a cat with extra toes. The extra toes look like a thumb on her one paw. It's really interesting.

Like I said, most of my duties for this project were equipment lugging and extra. I carried the tripods, boom mic, and other stuff from location to location. Well location to car, and car to location. The rest of the time I mostly spent time being behind the scenes and bonding with other guys who weren't doing anything at the moment. Fun time.

Now I've been keeping things under secret this whole time. I don't want to spoil anything. Once it gets all edited, I'll be sure to embed it here. But I warn you, it is R material. It has some f-bombs and some strong violence. So strong that it made one of the cameras get blood on it. It might seem like it has more swearing due to the amount of times we ran scenes, but there is swearing. Not something to watch with your kids or parents, unless you guys are cool with that. Well this has been Pokematic signing off and bu-bye.

Thanksgiving and Black Friday 2012

Hey everyone, hope you had a happy Thanksgiving. I know I did. Since my grandpa isn't able to travel like he used to, we've spent Thanksgiving at my aunts who's about halfway. It was great to see them again. We talked about how my year was going, and how they were doing. It was good fun. Since I don't like turkey, previous years I'd just eat rolls and stuff and then eat later, but because I'm in college and my dorm food is survivable, I had my grandma's beef. It is so great. It's hard to describe how amazing it is.

We left at about 6 because it was getting a little late for my grandpa. We went to black Friday after that. Now I know what people say, "black Friday is outrageous. People are crazy there. Try to avoid the stores if you can. ect." To that I say, "but that's the best part." Yeah, I love the crazy fun of black Friday at Wal-Mart, best buy, and GameStop. At Wal-Mart, I wanted some blu-rays and tried to get big bang theory season 5. I did get the blu-rays but wasn't able to acquire big bang. I tried reaching for BBT at 8 when the wrapping came off but missed out. My brother and I are just looking at other blu-rays, and not to much craziness on those. We got to enjoy the crazy from a safe distance. People were fighting each other for 50% off Black Ops 2 and such. They were rabid and fighting and such. There were some blu-rays that I wanted that were right by the games, so I'm just reaching down, trying to grab them, while people are fighting right next to me. Quite fun. I met up with my mom to give her our finds.

After checking out, here's the best part of the night. As you probably already know, I wear a safety vest for fun all the time. Well Wal-Mart employees wore similar vests so people would know that they work there. I was asked to remove it, and then I was radioed over the walkie talkies as a suspicious character. The employee said "alright I got him to take it off. He's also wearing a green striped shirt and a hat. It's not everyday that you're a suspicious character at Wal-Mart. Hehe, that was funny.

After Wal-Mart my brother and I went to GameStop to get a PS3 with their great deal. It came with 4 or 5 games, and they were uncharted and infamous, so it's not like they're crappy games. That's like a $100 value for free, also with a couple months of PlayStation plus, so $20 value free as well. It's quite a deal on the PS3 since we payed like $80 for it if you take away the games and plus. That's pretty cool. What added to the fun was that my friend Max joined us. He's always fun to hang out with. My brother and I were already camped out there, and it was like 10:30 when we got there, and he got there at about 11. GameStop opened at 12, and we were the first ones in line.

After GameStop we went to Best Buy. The line wasn't nearly as long as it was last year. It makes sense since we got there 30 minutes after they opened and all the door busters were gone. All that was left was our vulture scraps. I went there primarily for the deals they were having on blu-rays, but when I got there they didn't have as many that I wanted as I thought they would have. I did get a couple and it was just fun hanging out with Max. It was fun either way. Also remember how I said I wasn't able to get Big Bang Theory at Wal-Mart? Well they had it at Best Buy for cheaper. So I got mine there.

Now for a little rant. I think it takes away from the whole "black Friday" thing when stores open before midnight. I mean, it's technically Thursday, not Friday. It was only Wal-Mart for me that had deals before Friday, but still. Well this has been Pokematic signing off and bu-bye.

I meet MTV's Catelynn and Tyler

Hey everyone, it's things like this that keep me blogging. Today I got to meet MTV's Catelynn and Tyler from 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom. Now unlike the Romney event where I found out last moment, I knew about this for a while, because the Pro-Life Group that I'm in are the ones who brought them to us at my college. I helped with promotion by chalking "Teen Mom's Catelynn and Tyler, 8:30 at [name of location with-held for privacy reasons.]" I also put up posters advertising the event. This was also a free event on a first come first serve basis, so remember that.

So now it's the big day. I was scheduled to help set up at 6:30, so I get there around 6:20 because that's just how I am. There is a GIANT line that stretched to the end of the foyer, and this is a big foyer. I get my clearance to enter the ballroom that it was being held in, and manage to get through the eager fans that were there at 5. It was kind of crazy. We set up by putting all the little information things on every chair, all 600 of them. Help set up when necessary, and play the waiting game. It's now 7PM and it's getting down the hall. I help one of the guys with the group that partnered with us to get some more things. I help him in finding the best rout to his car to get the stuff. Since we're mostly Christian we prayed thanking God for this wonderful blessing and the turnout. It's now 7:30 and we're told we need to start letting people in because they're starting to loop around the hallway. 600 seated and 50 standing, after that we need to start turning people away. If security hadn't shown up, one of the other group guys and I were going to be the men of authority saying "no more, sorry." Thankfully security did show up, but I was ready if they didn't.

Now we're letting everyone in. The flood gates were opened and people started just flowing in, but we had a system. Fill the rows, as far as we could. After that move on to the next row. Near the end of seating when there weren't many visible seats left, I was the one who did the whole "alright so we're trying to fill every seat, no more saving seats, if it's empty it's open." I'm just standing up there going "where's a seat? If there's an open seat next to you raise your hand. Lets see them. Oh! There's one. Right over there. Come on raise them high. ect." Good thing I'm the kind of person who would do that. I'm playing with the mic a little but nothing to notice able I hope. Keeping it professional while still having some fun with it. When doing that you kind of need to.

Now after everyone was seated, they had note cards to ask questions with. I was one of the people who went around and picked up the questions from people. Getting ready and stuff. Now that we're all set, time for the main event.

I gathered with the Students for life members. We were all just kind of standing in one area. Our group president gave the introduction saying who we as Students For Life were and what not. Then the guy from Bethany, the group we partnered with, talked about themselves a little, and introduced Dawn, the adoption coach for Catelynn and Tyler. Dawn talked about the adoption process and introduced the videos to remind everyone who Catelynn and Tyler were, or let people like me who have never watched either 16 and Pregnant nor Teen Mom, know who they are. It was cool since they had an abridged episode of the 16 and Pregnant episode that gave the MTV version. After that, Catelynn and Tyler came out. They told their story from their perspectives and answered questions. The same questions that were collected from the audience earlier. There were ones that were left out because they weren't appropriate for the event. This is about adoption and how it's good for the child, instead of being murdered, I'm sorry, "aborted." Questions about the TV show or whatever were left out, as well as duplicates or similar. They were really entertaining. Even for someone who didn't know who they were until today.

After the questions they stayed on stage for 2 minutes for pictures and high fives. No one was allowed on stage, but just so people could get the up close picture for their facebook to say "yeah I was there." Once "we will be on stage for 2 minutes for pictures" was said, everyone just flooded to the stage. Just fwoosh. After that Catelynn was escorted off and to the exit that wasn't the one everyone else used. I said "Thanks for coming" on her way out and she thanked me for having her. Tyler on the other hand went right into the crowd. Maybe separate himself so that they could sort of split the mob or something, but my guess is he might have just been soaking it up and fending for himself. Either way he drew some of the mob off of Catelynn, so there was some gentlemanlyness about it. Once he was on his way out I said "thanks for coming." He also said "thanks for having me." I helped clean up afterwards.

As I stated earlier, I've never seen either 16 and Pregnant nor Teen Mom. If I'm going to watch a reality show it's going to be educational like American Pickers or Pawn Stars, or about a Pawn Shop that's not to far away from my house. I'm also just wary of a show called "16 and Pregnant." Like is it promoting teen pregnancy or something. The concept just doesn't sit to well with me. After seeing Catelynn and Tyler, I'll definitely need to check out their episode. It's great that they're pro-life and that for them abortion wasn't an option for them. And I know people who have adopted and it's made their lives so much better. Definitely a great message from them at least.

Now I can't quite remember when in the setting up it happened, but since our group was putting it on, we were able to get a picture with Catelynn and Tyler. Here is the one that I got on my camera.

Sorry that it's not the best. I'll see if I can find one that's better since many were taken. Tyler's in the white hoodie, I'm next to him, kind of, in the bright yellow vest and Fedora, and Catelynn is on his right in the blue and yellow shirt. Here's a better one, but you can't see me as well.

I did get one with them with just me, but since my batteries were starting to fade, it flashed like it was taking, but didn't. Oh well. I was there, and with them in a picture. This was really cool. Well this has been Pokematic signing off and bu-bye.

My Old Channel Description

With the current youtube lay out that prevents me from having a channel description longer than 1000 characters, and with me being a bit long winded, I haven't updated my channel description since it came out, since the old description was over 1000 characters and I was grandfathered in. What was keeping it over the limit was the links to my blog and dailymotion, and with the link thing, I could get rid of those. Before I remove it forever. Here it is.

Please rate videos, coment, and post video responces.
My Dailymotion acoun where i post Pokematic and happy gamer videos and backup my other videos.
http://www.dailymotion.com/user/catholiccontriversy
Our blog. This is where you can find info on upcoming videos.
http://pokematic-pokematicsblog.blogspot.com/

I had a bout of writers block, but I now have some ideas, and I was selected to alow longer than 15 minute uploads.

On some videos, you may see ads. I am alowed to monetize on my videos, but will do it sparingly limiting to videos I have put a lot of time and effort into and videos that recieve a lot of negative attention. The lot of time because I would like to be compensated for my effort. The lots of hate becaus I would like to be compensated for the emotional toll the trolls put on me.

I'm not monetizing everything because I am hear to teach, not to make money. I would like to keep money out of this, but when I recieve lots of hate or am required to put forth great effort, I feel some non-profit reembursement is fine.

Just to make known, all mone recieved will be put into production of content weather that be me, happy gamer, or pokematic.



The character limit is stupid, but whatever. This was made for old lay out and not the current one. Don't feel like signing out, so bye.

Audinece participation, you're doing it right

Hey everyone, since I don't have anything to do this weekend, and because I'm interested in it, I went to a meeting of "Anime Addicts," where we get together and watch anime. We watched Shakugan no Shana and .hack//BEYOND THE WORLD. I doubt that either of them was downloaded leagally since the subtitles on .hack had bad grammer and the translation of the subtitles for the English parts, where it was origionally in English so they had Japaneese subtitles that were then translated into English and they came from the same place, but that's the topic of a rant, not an experience. This is about the fun I had.

Normally the meetings are in the Chem building since they have lots of seets and have 2 screens to stream off of a computer. Unfortunately the leaders didn't do proper planning so we were locked out of our room. After we made the treck over to the student organizations section of the student union, we set up in the conference room, which probably has a maximum occupency of 12 but we crammed 20 people in there. There was some things about us getting the connections right so we could stream from the computer to the big TV in the room.

Now for where the title of this post comes into play. Since this is a group of young adult anime fans, there's gonna be some "audience participation." When there's a plot hole or just something to make fun of, someone will make a joke and hopefully get a laugh. When it gets good,then we all shut up and pay atention. Since the .hack movie we watched was kind of bad, there was lots of making fun of. Lots of jokes. It was great fun. Even Shukagan had some fun things to make fun of. And there was also some hypothetical what ifs that added to the fun while watching Shukagan.

Rocky Horror fans, take note, ANY SUB-PAR MOVIE IS FUN TO MAKE FUN OF WITH FRIENDS! Any movie can have funny things said at the right moment, and if it's all spur of the moment, it's alwayse different. You don't need a soft gay porno to have that kind of fun. If you roll that way, that's cool, but I don't want to see that, so stop saying it's such a great thing. These movies could have probably been good if they didn't have the fun of comentary with friends, but because of the comments, it was super fun. Hey guys, maybe you shoud get some of your friends together, get a bad movie, watch it together and make fun of it. You might find it super fun. A bad movie that is made fun by friends comments, at the end of the day is still a bad movie.


rocky horror review - The best home videos are here

As much fun as this was, I don't think I'll be able to go to more meetings. The meetings go on for hours on Saturday. Why, because we watch anime at them, and those take time. I spent the bulk of my Saturday with them, and that's something I can't do on a regular basis because I'm an engineering student. Since it's the first week, we didn't learn much so there's not much to homework to assign. Once the year goes on, probably within the next week, the work load will pial up, and last year my Saturday days were prety well booked. Now I know one of my friends who loves Rocky Horror might be reading this. DarkenOptomist I don't have anything against you, just don't like Rocky Horror. Well this has been Pokematic signing off and bu-bye.