Friday, July 23, 2004
In the Nick of Time
I hate to be gushing about FMA all the time, but episode 40 is so thrilling in its revelation of the last deadly sin. The greatest question on everyone's minds is of course, who is Pride. And it is revealed! Somehow the revelation makes you nod your head and go, yes that is perfectly logical, and yet it is no less shocking for being so. I really really cannot wait till the next episode, which coincidentally is a one-hour special (I think). So exciting!
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Some people have asked me about my choice of nickname - avaris. Um, so I try to provide reasons for using a word which obviously alludes to a negative aspect of human nature (and it is one of the seven deadly sins too, seeing as how avarice is a synonym for greed). And I find that the reasons I find are hardly likely to convince anyone but myself. Which is true for a lot of the things I do, really. I just find reasons to justify something which I had already decided to do before I came up with the reasons to justify doing it.
So, about the nickname, I could say it was just the convergence of many lines of events at one nice point that made me feel it was too much of a coincidence and that perhaps it was provided to me somehow. Firstly, I was thinking of changing my nickname some four, five years ago. If you really want to know, my first nickname, which I came up with when I installed ICQ in Sec One, was demona. Which is a lousy crap of a nickname. But I sort of kept using that nickname until sometime in Sec Three or Four, when I thought perhaps a change was in order.
Well, I have this thing for words that start with the letter A, which I think was somehow influenced by having a brother and two cousins with names starting with A (another very long and boring story). And I happened to be reading the Ramses series of books by Christian Jacq at that time. While reading, I came across Avaris, which is the name of a Hyskos city (which got destroyed haha) somewhere in Africa or the Sinai peninsula (never really remembered). And there was a puff of smoke; I had my new nickname.
I never really bother about the fact that my nickname refers to greed and covetuousness. In fact, I have never liked making my nickname nice and pleasant (the worst kind is the cute kind). Nice and pleasant nicks are pretty bland, in my opinion. No offense to anyone. And I think ending with an S rather than CE adds to the overall niceness of the word. I like the sibilant hiss at the end. Shall not get carried away with repeating it over and over again though.
I love telling stories. Makes me feel like an old man, though. And the story is not really anywhere near interesting anyway. But now you know.
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I was pretty sad at Jim and Marsha getting kicked of The Amazing Race this week. Last week when they got in in third place I was thinking they might just hold out for a lot more weeks in the race. But I suppose s**t happens when you travel.
I had hoped somewhat that this season of TAR might be a little different from the past few seasons. After all, you have perfectly healthy young couples like Dennis and Erika and Alicia and Donnie getting booted out in the first two episodes, and the "underdog" teams like Jim and Marsha and Bob and Joyce doing pretty well. Of course I was rooting for Charla and Mirna, but I was pretty disgusted when Charla lied that she needed to get on a plane because she was ill, just to get a priority on the standby list. All's fair in war, but it does not really mean what is fair is right.
Kami and Karli are just really dumb. It was so funny when they swam to get to the island, and all the other teams just walked. I mean, how stupid can you get, really. And I thought Donnie was dumb when Alicia had to tell him "a ferry's a boat, to get across the water". How funny.
I hope this season of TAR starts to show some promise soon, because it is starting to get really boring. Maybe I can hope that the twins will stay around and do more stupid things for laughs.
On the other hand, The Apprentice is the most entertaining reality television programme after watching really really bad auditions on AMI. EMJEM calls it the ultimate ego-booster for Donald Trump, since he gets to give little pseudo-gems of advice on succeeding in the business world and shake his finger at some poor person and go "You're fired". I will not argue with that. Did you watch episode one when they showcased Donald Trump's apartment? It was almost repulsively opulent. And he was saying "Very few people get to see this." Why, because they get blinded by all the sparkling stuff?
All the same, The Apprentice is entertaining because of the people that are taking part in it. I love Omarosa, even though everyone hates her. She is so confident in her own abilities that it asserts itself in a bad way sometimes, but I love it that she is so confident in herself, while some of the other girls are pretty wishy-washy about things. Of course, I would not like to work with her, but she's really cool all the same.
I think the only thing I would hate about going to school would be having less time to watch television. Sigh.
Avaris / 7/23/2004 02:34:00 PM
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