Well, I finally saw the U.S. version of The Eye and I have to say, it was one hundred and fifty percent better than I thought it was going to be! I was all geared up to hate the film like I do with every other remake of an Asian horror film, but I was pleasantly surprised by this one! WARNING: HUGE SPOILERS BELOW!!!!

First of all, with very few exceptions they stayed very close to the original story, using America in place of China and Mexico in place of Thailand. This was a very good idea, and it turned out to be a great way to get the story to the screen in the west.

Their ghosts were fairly true to form, although they did make some of them ( including the Shadowmen aka The Claimers ) far to aggressive, adding scary faces and lion roars where there hadn’t been any previously. I don’t understand why they’d do that, since, in my opinion, the original Shadowmen were scary - not because of aggression - but because they would only show up when someone was about to die.

Another problem I had with the film was the fact that they cut the mother out of the process of saving her daughter from re-enacting her death by giving her a heart attack so that Sydney could save her, which is a mistake often made by American film makers - the mistake of Last Girl Standing where the heroine has to live and be responsible for anyone else who makes it through a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In fact, they Last Girl Standing’d up the climax of the film in which Sydney manages to save a stretch of road full of people who died in the first film, and while they did a decent job with it, that really took away from the original point of that part of the story - that gift is really a curse because you can’t save people destined to die, because no one believes you.

They also took out the whole arch where she is removed from her job in the orchistra because she’s not blind anymore, but I suppose that’s neither here or there.

They did add some great scenes though, which I’m shocked about. They did ruin one of my favorite scenes, the ‘you’re sitting in my chair’ scene but they did add a great element to the new version. All in all I was really happy with it, even if the love interest is a tool, lol. Alba did a fantastic job, everyone pulled their weight except the love interest guy, and it was thoroughly enjoyable! I’m gonna say, on a scale of 5 stars I’d definately give it a three and a half with the original being all 5.

Well, I’m in a snit. I finally get a payout from Google Adsense for that damn downloads and file hosting site, I take it to the bank and they won’t cash it. They won’t even look up Google Adsense or let me login to my account in front of them to show them that it’s a real place, they don’t care, they just won’t cash it. They even suggested that I may be trying to defraud them - can you believe that?

This isn’t the first problem I’ve had with this bank, when Laota and I walk into the building we get ‘down-the-nose’ looks from everyone, eye rolls, whispers between bank tellers - it’s like being in 7th grade, only I’m not a lot thinner and they are too old to act like this. They’re rude, cocky and up their own asses and if it weren’t for the fact that I can’t help but use their bank because I live in a one-horse town, I’d have switched by now. It annoys me that I have to use a bank to pay my CC and use paypal, I wish I could just pay my CC directly from paypal and use the CC as my only back up funding source.

I’d say this were in my head if it were only Laota and I experiencing it, though I think we catch the brunt because we’re ‘witches’. A lot of people have told me that they feel like the bank employees don’t feel they are good enough to use that bank, and I’m starting to think it’s just how people are out here. They’re so unbelievably full of themselves, they all act ( yes, grown soccer moms ) like you want to be on their varsity cheerleading squad and they don’t want you there, in fact I once watched two helmet haired 40-somethings giggle and whisper about another woman during church.

What’s worse is that Laota and I are automatically bad news because we’re not Christian, and we’re not from this town - that’s two strikes against us. People tell their kids to stay away from our house, there are stories circulating town that we kill cats during sacrifices and we molest children - you heard me right. This is what happens when you live out in the boonies, and I get told all the time that it’s my fault for not just saying I’m Christian and ‘going along to get along’.

Generally this doesn’t bother me, because other than it being annoying and occasionally my feelings get hurt, most of the time it doesn’t really impact my life, but this has to do with my cash flow and I don’t like things interrupting the flow of tampons, shampoo and dish soap in my house.

To be honest, I don’t much care if they think I’m evil, because what they think doesn’t matter ( also it’s kind of funny, lol ) - besides, if they’re grown people who believe in cartoon-style witches then they deserve to be afraid lol - but what pisses me off is that my sister and I are treated like criminals just for not being the same as everyone. We get followed in the store, asked to check our bags and Laota’s had to check her umbrella before and leave it up at the cash register, we get threatened and harassed by people we’ve never met and it’s resorted to physical vioilence on more than one occasion, we can’t even walk to the store without fear of someone trying to hit us with their car for the umpteenth time.

I actually became friends with a former boyfriend, and current supafriend Jon and some of his friends because they were going through the exact same thing. When I met Jon, he was athletic, tall, decent looking and stylish but he didn’t wear overalls and baseball caps and waste gas cruising around for no reason, and the fact that he wasn’t even from Missouri didn’t help anything. Jeff dealt with that, too, though eventually his Adam Sandler-ness won over some people in town which I’m still amazed by, lol. But we sort of all meshed so well I think partially because we knew what it was like to have our lives threatened on a daily basis.

All that I can deal with, people are going to think and do what they think and do, you can’t change that, but I dislike being treated like shit when I walk into my bank because that messes with my money, which I don’t have much of as it is. They shouldn’t be allowed to do that, honestly, and I don’t like it being implied that I’m some kind of fraud artist because they’re so backwards they’ve never heard of Google before. Seriously, people in town ask you to repeat yourself when you use the word ‘blog’. All of this, of course, after I had to deal with someone cashing fraudulent checks on my and Laota’s account, and the bank didn’t bother even asking them about it they just up and cashed it - even though the sign-ee wasn’t in either of our names. Ugh, rant!

Well, I missed this hilarious crap the first time around, but apparently The Beouf ( who I’ve become quite a fan of when he sprouted a decent hind-be ) spent some time on SNL recently, and the ensuing chaos resulted in maybe one of the best episodes of Saturday Night Live I’ve seen in a long time. It was weird, nonsensical and hilarious, and the goofy parts were actually my favorite parts ( like Keenan Thompson’s French comedian ), and featured possibly one of the funniest shorts I’ve seen on the show in 10 years - the musical clip-let, “The Best Look In The World”. Here are a few highlights put together by a random person on Youtube:

I can’t stop laughing at that “Doi, doi, doi” thing - the faces, dear Odin, the faces they’re making. Always Keenan is the worst aka the funniest, but The Beouf comes in a close second with that horrible face - he managed to make himself look kind of toothless. I’m not sure how he did that, lol.

Now onto the good stuff. It’s the Sour 18th of the world famous, supasexful King of Filth himself, Nick Dickferbrains, so do as you’re told and go and wish him a happy birthday or I’ll kill you, okay? Okay. Happy Birthday, Straighty!