Yesterday, I went to Best Buy where I acquired the Animatrix DVD. While I was there, I also went browsing, and couldn't resist a couple other items I ran across. Family Guy, Volume 1 and Spirited Away.

DVDs. They're my addiction. But at least it's a less expensive habit than crack cocaine.

First off, the Animatrix. As everyone who hasn't been living under a rock in Afghanistan probably knows, the Animatrix consists of 9 animated short films created by several anime legends who were commissioned by the Wachowski Brothers. The short features all compliment or act as supplements to the central trilogy in various capacities.

Thanks to the official internet download site, I had already seen several of them already. As was probably the intent, these served to whet my appetite for the full DVD.

My mini-review of each:

• Final Flight of the Osiris. Since this one was done by Square, it features the same semi-photorealistic rendering used to create the Final Fantasy movie. The film documents Captain Thadeus's discovery of the sentinel army, and the attempt to warn Zion about the attack before his ship is destroyed. Chronologically, it fits right before Niobe's story in Enter the Matrix begins. (Dropping the info into the mailbox in the Matrix made perfect sense to me, since I had played the video game. In fact, the whole first act about the P.O. Box breakin makes a whole lot more sense now.)

  Oddly enough, a significant chunk of the piece takes place in a training simulation, which contributes virtually nothing to the plot, but it might be destined to be the most memorable part. It's fun, at any rate. Sexy martial arts CG simulation, in more than one sense. Haha.

  As a whole, I like this piece. It would have been even better had it been longer. It felt like the action was just barely getting underway when the little thing ended. I think it would have worked better if they had taken more time to build up the suspense a bit before discovering the entire sentinel army. And maybe have Jue encounter a few agents on her way to the mailbox or something.

  Heck, just make it into a full-length feature of its own. Yeah, that would do it.

• The Second Renaissance, Parts 1 and 2. Documents the history of the war between the humans and machines. Part 1 is the rise of the machines from a servile race into a functioning society competing with a hostile humanity. Part 2 is the war, and the beginning of the power plant.

  It's a heavy barrage of sounds and images. Some of them flash across the screen for only a fraction of a second, but it feels like there could be an entire feature-length story behind each one. Decades of apocalyptic history squeezed into a few frames.

  The ending is particularly poignant, though perhaps a bit confusing if taken on a literal level. Amidst the scorched, hollowed out shells of ancient skyscrapers, a child whose world has just been obliterated wanders alone through the falling snow at night. A look of wonder crosses his face as he runs toward a cozy suburban home. Through the door he can see two silhouetted adult figures. His parents? No. Not for long. Agents emerge to replace them in the lighted doorway.

  Panning out, we can see that the child's body is now imprisoned in the familiar orange tubes that imprison the minds in The Matrix. But sitting atop his eternal cradle, the spirit watches over him as he slumbers.

  Beautifully artful.

• Kid's Story. Here, we learn of the story behind the kid in Reloaded who reveres Neo and wants to join the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar.

  In The Matrix, it's an implicit assumption that his high school life sucks. He searches for answers in his computer, typing questions into the familiar green text terminal. "Somebody tell me why it feels more real when I dream than when I am awake."

  Cryptic yet profound answers appear on his screen. (From Morpheus? Or Trinity? Or maybe even Neo? My guess is Morpheus. But part of the beauty of it is the way so much is left a mystery. From the nondescript green-on-black plain text giving no clue of the software or medium through which the information is transmitted, to the indeterminite identity of its source. The Matrix at its finest.)

  While he is in class, scribbling frantically about Neo, Trinity, and The Matrix in his notebook, Kid gets a call from Morpheus, warning him that They know. Agents chase him, and corner him at the edge of the roof of the building. As a final act of faith, giving up, or both, Kid lets go and falls.

  The world presumes him dead. Another troubled teenager unable to grasp reality. "A typical mental delusion. We get unbalanced kids like this all the time."

  Kid wakes up aboard the Nebuchadnezzar with Neo standing over him. "Neo, you saved me."

  Neo replies. "I didn't save you kid. You saved yourself."

  Then, in a style echoing The Matrix, the screen returns to the text prompt, the last question kid typed still on the screen. "Who are you? Am I alone?"

  The final shot. In what could be interpreted as breaking the forth wall (speaking directly to the audience, rather than any characters in the drama), an answer appears, emphasising each word, one keystroke at a time. "You Are Not Alone."

  I liked it.

• Program. This one was cool. Classic anime style. A medieval training simulation, in which one character attempts to seduce another to return to The Matrix (think Cypher). Or does he?

• World Record. A world champion runner manages to free his mind from the Matrix through entirely different means. Interesting.

• Beyond. This one might be my favorite out of all of them. It's hard to define exactly why. Maybe it's the way it infers so much while saying so little, at least in concrete terms.

  A glitch in the Matrix creates an area where normal physical laws become twisted and distorted. A bunch of neighborhood kids, who refer to the place as a "haunted house", start to play in it, and discover the magic of a reality where normal rules do not apply.

  Before long, the place starts to become a spectacle, as adults get curious and gather in a crowd outside. Agents move in and kick everybody out. The system is reconfigured. The anomaly is eliminated.

  We see the kids returning to the same spot. But now, it's nothing but a parking lot. They try in vain to reproduce what they had witnessed earlier. But there is nothing. The magic is gone.

  (Did I mention? All of this is seen through the eyes of a teenage girl who goes looking through her lost cat, who is also strangely attracted to the anomaly.)

  The description I have just given really only touches the surface. Somehow, it doesn't surprise me that in the Making Of documentary, they talk about how this one took the longest to complete. It has so many layers of meaning and depth, though not a whole lot of dialog.

  It could be interpreted as an allegory for the hard rigitity of western science killing the mystical wonder of nature. Or as a parable for loss of innocence. Or for our power structure's inability to tolerate anything that doesn't fall within its predefined limits of understanding.

  Or maybe it's just a glitch in the Matrix.

• Detective Story. This one is old style. Mostly black and white, with a few splotches of color. A private detective is assigned the job of tracking down Trinity. He gets everything he bargained for, and more. It's got a sad ending.

• Matriculated. The humans capture a machine, and put it into a sort of Matrix of their own. This one has got some wacky art. It is by far the most abstract of them all. I have neither formed my definitive interpretation, nor am I sure if I like it yet. I'm just going to have to watch it again. Maybe 2 or 3 times. It's out there.

The documentary stuff on the disc is fun too. There's Making Of pieces for each of the shorts (typically longer than the animations themselves), as well as a history of anime. Cool goodness. The commentary tracks (at least the first couple I watched) are in japanese with subtitles. Nutty.

Then I got into the Family Guy shows. Family Guy was a show that was just way too hilarious for the Fox network to handle. Every episode is jam-packed with stream-of-consciousness absurdity, borderline let's-see-how-far-we-can-push-it rotten jokes, enough political incorrectness to offend every interest group, and of course, Stewie!

Though I counted myself as a regular viewer for the first season and beyond, I dropped out when they started switching the night and time on a semi-weekly basis. But with this set, all the episodes from seasons 1 and 2 are there to enjoy.

I needed to laugh again.

In other matters, my car insurance bill arrived today. For some incomprehensible reason, State Farm decided to raise their already ridiculous rates by another hefty margin. I chose State Farm originally because my parents said they had always been good about honoring claims. But honestly, this is getting ridiculous.

They raise my rates by over $100 again even though I have been in NO accidents since the last term, gotten NO traffic tickets, and made NO claims. I haven't even changed addresses (I used my mom's address both times since losing my apartment). Yet somehow, they have the audacity to jack the premiums up into the stratosphere anyway. I'm sick of those assholes.

As such, I decided to do something I don't usually do. I responded to the snail-mail spam I recently received from another insurance company.

After going through their web forms, they gave me a quote significantly lower than what State Farm is trying to steal^H^H^H^H^Hcharge me. It's still fairly high. It's about the same amount I was paying to State Farm a couple years ago when I first signed on with them.

Maybe when I paid what they asked without question, State Farm figured I was a gullible idiot who would pay whatever was printed on the bill. So they tried to take advantage and get more out of me. And more. And now even more. I put up with it for a while because my parents said they had always been good. But this has gone too far. I'll probably be switching shortly.

That's my rant for the evening.

Holy cow, it's past 2am! I was meaning to go to bed earlier tonight. This adjustment of my sleep schedule is proving to be more difficult than I had hoped.

Oh well, that's all then. Over and out.