Day #3 - Terminator Salvation Blows My Nutsack

Today my roommate Michael, who is a terrible, horrible, no-good, dirty piece of shit of a human being woke me up at 7:20, because I had mentioned the night before I planned to wake at 7, and he wanted to make sure I didn't oversleep (I had, unbeknownst to him, set my alarm a half hour later). We went down for breakfast, met the rest of the people from out class (there are 8 of us altogether), and then walked across the valley of death to get to class at 9 AM (from now on it starts at 10, but the first day was an hour early, for whatever reason).

A note about the valley of death: It's fucking terrible. It's about the length of a football field, but sloped so you walk 50 yards downhill, and then 50 yards uphill, in never-less-than-90 degree weather. The downhill's not bad, but the uphill is the worst thing I've ever had to do in my life. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh_Trail

That's a good example of what it's like, walking across the valley of death. And it's the only way to get to class, which is in a building directly on the opposite side of the valley from our housing, which includes the cafeteria and lounge and everything else we need.

So, we walk across the valley of death, get to our classroom, sit for ten minutes, and then some lady appears and says "LAWL! JAY KAY! ROFL ROFL ROFL ROFL!" ("Your professor hasn't even arrived in Florence yet, so you have the day off"). So, we walk back across the trail of tears to our building, go back to breakfast, and then hang out for a bit until we all walk into town to go grocery shopping (groceries include: Jack Daniels, Jagermeister, and two four-euro-each bottles of wine). Then we walk back to the building (it's at least 20 minutes to and from the closest signs of civilization, and the walk back at high noon blew my nutsack-- which we will get to, in relation to Terminator Salvation, later in this blog).

Orientation at 3 PM went something like this:

"Hi! Welcome to Florence! We're going to call you, one by one, up here to go over your passport paperwork."

Then they called us up one by one to go over our passport paperwork, and when we weren't the one going up to go over our passport paperwork, we sat there and did absolutely nothing for two hours. Eventually, they went over a powerpoint as we were still being called up one by one, and the powerpoint went something like this:

"If you're drunk, don't be too loud, because you might be fined lots of money. If you get on a bus, don't not get your ticket validated, because you might be fined lots of money. If you go to a club, don't leave your drink aside, because then you might be raped." 

This orientation was long and redundant and boring, which roughly can be equated to how it feels to sit through an anal pap smear, finally ended just before dinner. So I briefly sat in the lobby and worked on my next cartoon-- Werewolf President 2: Fang a More Perfect Union-- which was nice, because due to the hell that was Drawing and Design for Animation last semester, I didn't draw a single new cartoon, then went to dinner. Afterwards, we all hung out briefly in the lobby, and decided that The Tims should have separate knicknames. Not "Tim 1" and "Tim 2," because that connotates that one is better than the other, as does "Tim Alpha" and "Tim Beta." So, being that one is from Boston, and the other is from Texas, we are now referring to them as Boston and Texas (Boss and Tex). However, together, they are The Tims. Also during this conversation, we discussed the bullshit that is Terminator Salvation, a film which blows my nutsack. Now, reader, you might be saying to yourself, "Blows your nutsack? That sounds pleasurable!" Well, you're fucking wrong. It's terrible. Here are the issues with Terminator Salvation, because I know you care a lot:

1) It's fucking bullshit.

2) They don't address time travel. Why is this bullshit? Because the first three Terminator movies are ALL ABOUT FUCKING TIME TRAVEL. The one time it's mentioned is when John Connor QQs about how if Skynet kills Kyle Reese, his teenaged father, he will never exist (John Connor, in the first Terminator, sends his friend Kyle Reese back in time to save his mother from being murdered by Arnold. Kyle totally bones Sarah Connor, and winds up being John Connor's father, even though he's younger than John in the future world). In Salvation, Connor destroys the factory which is producing the T-800. Now, this makes no sense, because the T-800 is sent back in time to kill his mother, which is what prompts him to send Kyle Reese back in time in the first place, to save his mother. If they destroy the T-800's, then Kyle won't need to go back in time to bone Sarah, and then JOHN CONNOR WON'T EVER EXIST. Yet, in Salvation, they destroy the T-800 factory. See how this is bullshit? Yes, maybe, there are other T-800 factories in this movie world, though they're never addressed.

3) Arnold appears, and Connor barely reacts. This makes no sense, because Arnold was like a father to Connor. Seeing him for the first time in at least ten years, Connor might react, at least a little bit, before Arnold tries to kill him. It's a big deal, finally seeing the skin on the T-800. This movie sucks.

4) It's fucking bullshit, and it blows my nutsack.

After this, we went for a walk looking for a cafe. We went right out of the campus, and found nothing but a sign saying we were leaving Florence (and the road immediately devolves into a country road without a sidewalk). Then we doubled back, and halfway down the road we typically walk to get to Florence, we took a right at a roundabout that we usually take a left on, and it brought us to the middle of nowhere, and we walked for about an hour before we wound up back at the same restaurant we had lunch at, because we couldn't find anywhere else in the area.

Looks like we will be taking the bus from now on, and hopefully validating our tickets so we don't get fined lots of money, since there's nothing within walking distance.