These are my favorite Halloween themed cards from Someecards:

A big group of us (10+) will be at the Kabinett Halloween costume party tonight.  Unfortunately, I won’t be dressing up as a slutty witch, a slutty nurse, or a slutty school girl.  Slutty costumes are SO 1980’s-2007.  Instead, I’ll be going as a cute-but-not-overtly-sexy pirate.  The only regret I have is that my costume is a dress.  It’s going to be cold tonight and I wish I was covered up more.  It should be fun times!

Previously, when you called Ras, you’d be bombarded with a loud, obnoxious, hip-hop song.  This lasted 2-5 rings, or until he answered.  Everyone complained about what a terrible song it was.  Recently, when he bought a new cell phone, he went online with his phone to get a new English hip-hop song.  Unfortunately, they were all Korean artists.  So, he quickly picked an artist he knew, without really thinking about what song it was.

If you call him today, this is what plays:

Wonder Girls - Nobody

Other than the bathroom humor (which Koreans seem to love), I really liked the retro-ness of the video.  No, the song doesn’t match him.  Still, the chorus is catchy and I find myself singing it after getting off the phone with him.

He doesn’t know it yet, but when Ras gets home, we’re watching Dexter tonight while having fajitas.  I’ve been holding off on starting this new season because it’s such a good show.  Like desserts I shouldn’t be having, I like to have a small collection built up before devouring them.  If I don’t, I get disappointed that I can only consume one.

[Picture courtesy of Lao Cook.]

I finished watching the Beijing Opening ceremony tonight, and gave a little cheer when the Laos delegation (of four) entered.  Matt Lauer’s commentary was,

“A lot of people back in the States refer to “Lao” as Laos.  The people there do call it Lao.  It’s a communist nation, [and] a hub for eco-tourism.”

Yeah, we call it “Lao” but it’s usually “Muang Lao,” with muang roughly translating to land.  The Thais call their country “muang thai,” which translates to “Thai-land.”

Just because Italy calls their country “Italia”, Germany calls their country “Deutschland”, and Korea calls their country “Han gook,” doesn’t mean that’s what I would call it when talking to other English speakers.  Read more about this topic here.

Anyway, wasn’t the opening ceremony freaking gorgeous?  If you didn’t watch it in HD, you don’t know what you were missing.  The Chinese really know how to do fireworks, don’t they?  Hehe.

On Monday night, I got a call from Michael (The Metropolitician).  After a few moments of hellos and how are you’s, he told me that he and Clarke were getting ready to watch Batman Begin at his place.  He continued and asked if I knew about the group of people going to see The Dark Knight in Yongsan on Tuesday.  Well, of course I did!  It’s just that I’m in Daejeon right now, and being there was not a possibility.  I did get a chance to see the movie last night, though.  It was very good, and I hope to see it properly on an IMAX screen in the next couple of weeks.

One thing that kept me from truly enjoying the movie was one of my seat partners, an acquaintance of mine.  She’s not a bad person, just a terrible person to sit next to in a movie theater.   She’s one of those people that talks during a movie, which isn’t that bad by itself.  In addition to this, she was talking to the screen, laughing extremely loud when no one else in the theater was, throwing her hands up and gesturing when something frustrating or exciting happened, and felt the need to inform me about what was happening in the movie.  [Stage whisper] “Oh my god, did you see that?  He took all the ballerinas on his boat!  Hahaha!  That’s too funny…”  Ummm, of course I saw it.  Are we not sitting next to each other, staring at the same 60 foot screen?

In other news, I’m going to take the plunge and invest in a new lens.  I’ve been putting it off, saying, “Later.”  Well, later is now.  A friend casually hinted at me photographing his wedding in September, which kind of put me in a bit of a panic.  I don’t even have the correct lenses for a wedding, on top of it being a little stressful!  Even if I don’t end up shooting this wedding it’s about time I go big, or go home.  So, Michael said he’d go with me for some lens shopping, so that makes me feel better.  The lens quality I want will be in the $1000~$1300 range.  That’s a bit more than the cost of my Canon 400D itself, but I don’t see this photography thing being one of my phases.

Speaking of cameras, I loaded film for the first time in… at least 5 years!  I want to experiment with film again and bought a Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim from eBay to play with.  It’s a toy camera, so I’m just trying to have fun with it.  Here are example of shots people have taken with this unassuming camera.  The ones that are really saturated are cross-processed.  That’s something I also want to try, but first, I want to see how this regular roll of film will turn out.  I’m hoping to get lots of lens flare!  I’ll have lots of opportunities to practice, since next week looks to be sunny, sunny, sunny!