WELCOME to the personal home page/blog of Matthew La France. Please enjoy your stay.

6/24/2005

Well, let's see, what has been going on... I've been doing some interior painting on my days off. It was going to be "day off" originally, but after about 6 hours I got pooped my first day and decided to come back my next day off. I was so sore from the first day however that I had to skip out and come back next week. I finished up today anyway, so that is done.

I've been a little down recently but that's nothing new. I guess I've just been letting myself get to myself a bit. Good news, I'm looking forward to Atelier Iris coming out on the PS2 on Wednesday. I heard the localization might not be very good though, but I hope that is not the case. I might crack out Atelier Marie Plus just to ease the anticipation.

I finished backing up all my Playstation games to images on DVD which I am pleased about. It's a fairly time consuming process. I finished burning a bunch of Sega CD games too which I still need to test. I got some decent cleaning and such done, at least my dishes are pretty much finished. I even decided I could afford some beer, so things are not all bad. ;)
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6/16/2005

I've posted on this blog about being understood before. I've started thinking recently that being understood is probably not necessary. I mean, how much can you truly understand another person? I don't even understand myself most of the time. But there is the thing. I still have a lot of questions about myself. Why am I the way I am, why do I do the things I do, why do I feel the ways I do? I'm not satisfied to just be and feel and do. I always ask myself why. Perhaps understanding myself is as unnecessary as being understood. At least not as important as I might think.

Something about the idea of living my life in ignorance of myself and others, the things that really motivate us and make us who we are scares me. I don't really know why. Like maybe I'll wake up one day and realize I don't really love the person next to me or maybe I'll discover that I've been doing something my whole life when I really wanted to do something else. Somehow I just want a little bit of confidence that I am doing things that are right for me. But maybe the whole thing isn't really that complicated. Maybe the best way to avoid mistakes and regrets is to be good at getting what you want.

I've thought of art as being an "expression of oneself", but what is "self" really? People are really the same aside from the face we present to the world and the beliefs we hold within. Expression may really just be us trying to project something onto the world that isn't really there. It's just egoism or catharsis and that just make us feel better about ourselves. Are we really a group of people trying to prove that we are better than the next person in whatever way we can? Maybe that is all that we really have, all things being equal, is the sense of our uniqueness and superiority, however artificial it is.

I don't know if I really understand anything about myself. I don't really have anything to express. I don't think art, or maybe what I mean is "entertainment" is about any of those things. There is no need for ego in entertainment. It's about being able to manipulate people. If you can give people what they want and get them dancing to your tune, you've won. That's all there is to it, manipulating things to go your way as well as you can for as much of the time as possible. If you can make people feel the way you want them to, it doesn't really matter if you understand them or they understand you, you've made a connection that has simulated understanding, and that's probably as close to real understanding as it's possible to get.
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6/12/2005

It has been really hot and humid. We had rain for like two weeks straight and now it's in the 90's. :P It's nice to have a change from winter, but I'd take dry and in the 70's any day. I've been doing a little translating for 3x3 Eyes. That's about all. Busy with work and being hot and stuff. I'm probably going to do a little interior painting for some extra money on my days off this week. Me poor. Money good.
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6/07/2005

I haven't meant to be so quiet. I feel like tonight is the first chance I've had to just sit down and unwind in a number of days. It's nice to have a little time to myself. I tried to cram a lot into my few days off. The best thing I got done was checking out my collection of PC-FX games. I got to sit down and go through a bunch of them which was cool. The PC-FX is such a great system. It was an anime fan's dream. It's too bad that it didn't do better, but it's got a nice library of games that's not overly large. About 70 titles in all. I have to think that it was overtaken by the Playstation and Saturn in Japan, the same way that those two systems overtook others like the CD-I and 3DO in the US. I'd like to know a little more about it's history though. I'm especially interested in doujin-soft created for it. I heard there was a cool dev kit for the PC-98 that may have been used for some fan projects. I may have to do some research on the internet and/or some leg work the next time I am fortunate enough to be in Akiba.
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6/02/2005

I watched a couple of movies yesterday, Wrong Turn and The Butterfly Effect. Watching The Butterfly Effect was a little depressing, partially because it's a heavy movie, but also it made me feel like I'm not creative enough. I sort of feel like I could come up with a story like that, but at the same time, I don't know if I would want to see it through to completion. Not that I don't think it would be worthwhile, maybe I just like watching things that are sad, but I would rather make things that are more happy. It's sort of an oxymoron I guess. Like I'm sad, but I want to make things that are happy. It was a cool movie though.

Wrong Turn was pretty good. I only watched some bits and pieces of the commentary. Surprisingly enough, the lead actress had some intelligent things to say, whether they were by accident or not. The main thing was that horror movies illicit an emotional response in the audience and that it's sort of like a drug, people enjoy things that give them that feeling, and go back to them again and again. I think that in it's simplicity is more profound than it seems. Also the director said something good about the fact that sexual tension in a horror movie serves to make the audience uncomfortable which adds to the excitement and sort of prepping folks to be scared. I thought that was pretty interesting.
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