I feel so toothless. Yesterday was a horrible day. I’ve extracted a molar two years ago but it wasn’t as painful as my last night’s experience. It almost felt like my entire jaw has been ripped off my face as soon as the anesthetic wore off. The pain has subsided somewhat today but the stitches gives a bad feel in my mouth. I’m not supposed to eat solid food until I have them removed but wth! lol I’m having noodles now. I can’t resist.

On another note, Ramadan Mubarak to my Muslim visitors. 30 days of mental relief and peace of mind are ahead of us so I’m eagerly looking forward to it.
God bless you all~

Below is a mixture of reviews edited by me along with my thoughts on the film “Blood Diamond” because I couldn’t have phrased things any better than what these reviewers already did.

I never thought I’d ever like a movie with DiCaprio in it. Not until I watched this movie and seen his brilliant performance in it. I liked Blood Diamond so much I watched on DVD 3 times in row!!! When I first heard of this film I was expecting your standard innocent Westerners trapped in war torn Africa but the movie was much more than that and much better than that too. It’s easily one of the best movies I’ve ever seen in my life and I’m not exaggerating.

Don’t be fooled by the official trailer up there. Only crappy movies get good trailers, you know.
To sum it up, Blood Diamond is a combination of an action flick, a rescue mission and political issues all woven together to make a truly captivating and heart wrenching story. Leonardo DiCaprio gives a great performance *deserving his Oscar nomation for it* as Danny Archer, a diamond smuggler who, due to certain circumstances, forcibly teams up with the villager Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) in a harsh quest to recover a rare large pink diamond buried by Vandy behind rebel lines. Both men seek the diamond for different reasons but are forced to work together.
Jennifer Connelly was also pretty great in this movie as reporter Maddy Bowen trying to uncover proof of the connection between the atrocities of conflict diamonds in war-torn Africa and the mainstream diamond industry outside of the continent.

What made this movie so moving to me is knowing that this isn’t an entirely fictional story. It’s based on the real horrors of the Sierra Leone conflict and it is also a reminder of the current conflict in those regions. The events surrounding Vandy and his family especially his son were very heart wrenching; even more to know that such events are still taking place on a daily basis in certain parts of the world. Not that we ever hear about such events on the news. Connelly had a pretty striking line when they arrived at the refugee camp: “This is what a million people looks like, although you won’t see it on CNN.”

In addition to being a great action/adventure/character flick, this movie had an important message to tell about conflict diamonds. I was glad that the movie didn’t beat us over the head with that message; but on the other hand, I feel like maybe it should have. What is it going to take for society to finally get the message and take a firm stand against such atrocities? My heart sank a little in my chest when Vandy asked Bowen “after you write about us, your country will come to help us, right?” I knew the answer before Bowen even spoke it: “probably not.”

Yes, this film has a reasonably happy ending and some resolution for all concerned. What it does not have is any fear of covering it’s subject matter. Blood Diamond is brutally honest in it’s coverage of the troubles in Africa and the Western consumer’s role in them.

The atrocities on display in this film, while only moderately graphic, are utterly harrowing. To see groups of children mutilated, families slaughtered and the remaining youngsters hered away and brainwashed into cold blooded rebel killing machines, is at the very least heartbreaking. At worst it makes you ashamed and angry of the lifestyle we all lead.

In one significant scene the film takes great pains to remind us that the word infantry literally means child soldier, and as a young boy coldly shoots the faith-filled social worker who tells us this, we are told that there is no place for hope and idealism here. This is Africa.

Blood Diamond is a movie with a message, and a conscience. It is made to tell us that bad things are happening, and not only do we largely ignore these bad things, but indirectly we contribute to them.
It concludes with hope, but then again, as I said, it’s a movie. In reality the troubles do not end when the credits role, and it makes sure we know it. It does not preach. It is not trying to necessarily make us feel guilty but director Edward Zwick wants us to feel something.

As a movie carrying the heavy weight of a dark and important subject matter on it’s shoulders Blood Diamond is a huge success.
As a story and a film set against this terrible backdrop Blood Diamond is even more of a triumph; fascinating, emotional, exciting, beautiful and communicated perfectly by it’s two outstanding male leads.

Everyone should see this film so make sure you watch it too if you haven’t yet.

p.s.:
Make sure you get it’s soundtrack by James Newton Howard. It has some amazing tracks that’ll always remind you of your favorite moments of this film.

And on an unrelated note, here is a small art update for today.

I’m so disppointed in certain someone but at the same time I’m not blaming this certain someone. I knew I shouldn’t have asked this person for help but oh well. I never thought I’d be turned down in such a way lol. Now that I’m totally broke thanks to my Afghanistan trip which completely drained my wallet, I guess I’ll have to accept taking commissions again in order to buy a new tablet; something I need terribly bad. My current tablet is dying on me. It’s tip is 75% worn out and it’s overlay is so filled with scratches I feel so uneasy while using it. I so badly want to buy this beauty before it runs out of stock but I’ll have to collect $370 first orz orz orz. Life is so cruel at times orz.
Osh! I’m going to work my ass off this coming few months and hope I’ll be able to get it on my own very soon.

Time for another update. It’s been a long while since I’ve last drawn any HagiSaya centric image ;3;
I think the picture below is probably my first fully detailed with background image that’s been completely drawn using sai! I love the part of this software where I can customize my brush tips. The background took alot of work and time but it turned out great imho. This drawing was so much fun ;3;
And aldkjf;aklsjf;alkjsfd@#$(@#_($ I DREW A GIRL OMGLOL! AHAHHAH
8DDD;;;

HagiSaya FTW!

On a different topic, I got around updating my wordpress stat plugin just few days ago and for the past three days, I’ve been observing my stats and noticed that 95% of all the visitors who found my site through google were looking for a cracked version of easy paint tool sai lol!

I dunno if anyone is reading this but to my knowledge, there is no effective crack thing for this software. Sure, there is this tiny tool for resetting the trial date but it’s going to cost you all your sai created files and your work in progress. If you try to open a file that’s been created by the expired sai, your newly reset program will revert to it’s previous state and you’ll return to square one!
Solution, you ask ? Buy a liscence and get rid of this headache of backing up and resetting every 31 day. If you like it that much, support the developers and start saving for it ^^
If I, the poor person, could do it *well, not me literally but lol anyways -eyeroll-* then you can definitely do it too :DDDDD

p.s.:

The nico orchestra lol!!!
This is so precious. Even Abe san is there! :DDDDD *you need a nico account to watch*

I wish I had something intersting to write. I feel very uncomfortable for some reason orz and the fact that my gallery and exit page’s CSS act weired by displaying big fonts is making me very irritated.

I should’ve drawn something cute and happy but lol anyways 8D