Quick question before I take my pre-karaoke nap. This is the sort of thing that I ponder for substantial periods of time while I'm at work:
Okay, so if a kid comes to my door on Halloween and says Trick or Treat, and I produce a rabbit out of a hat, am I then allowed to say, "Good day to you, then," and close the door?
After all, the kid is saying Trick or Treat, which implies that he'd rather have the trick than the treat, since he is giving primary treatment to the Trick half of the option?
This is not unlike a criminal saying, "Your money or your life." He would much rather have the money, but will take your life, but only as a last resort, if a deal cannot be reached with regard to the money.
AIM: therbmcc71
Friday, October 19, 2007
Liars Everywhere
So, I was bopping around the internet, as I commonly do on nights like this, where I just can't sleep, and I noticed the news story about the Turkish killings of a number of Armenian people, and how Congress is trying to figure out whether or not it's genocide, and whether or not they should condemn it. And this is one of those parts where we realize that Congress, despite being run by the Democrats now, they're still the lapdogs of the President.
No, seriously. The Democrats campaigned and won almost a year ago on this notion of change and getting things done, and –this was their big one– ending the war. The closest they've gotten to getting shit done all year is sending a bill to the President to give more kids health care, which the President promptly vetoed, at which point the Democrats celebrated victory. It's totally fucked up out there in Washington, and nothing has changed. The last nine months are proof positive that the Democrats are just as inept as the Republicans, just as self-serving, and it's not like next year is going to get any better, because they're going to have to spend the next year fund-raising, rather than actually working, because it's an election year.
Case in point: Congressman Joe Knollenberg (R-MI) wants Nancy Pelosi to rally the Democrats to essentially 'vote yes for genocide.' Okay, that's poorly phrased, and deliberately so, but Joe Knollenberg is the same guy who's introduced a House bill to promote Mandarin language instruction. No shit. Seriously, the guy wants you to be able to personally train the Chinese man who's going to take your job back to Asia and do it for thirty cents a day. So, of course, Knollenberg is the voice of reason, and so we should take his word that a vote for genocide is a vote for ... exporting American jobs? Something like that.
I mean, it's genocide. It totally fucking is, and there's really no denying it, although Turkey has managed to for about the last century. I think their official position is, "It wasn't genocide; it was merely a forced deportation and massacre of only about 1.5 million Armenians. That isn't genocide. It's not genocide until you hit Hitler kinds of numbers." It's absolutely laughable that Congress is bowing to Presidential pressure to not label this as genocide, because we won't be able to fly over Turkey in order to continue the war in Iraq.
Let's flash back a year, here, and remember that the Democrats were all for ending the war in Iraq a year ago. Today, they're perfectly willing to continue the war and, as a bonus, allow Turkey to continue to labor under the delusion that their people have always been morally upstanding. I mean, it's not that the war would end if Turkey suddenly cut off access to its airspace, it would just be less convenient. And yet the Democrats allow this shit to keep going on.
They're all liars. Democrats, Republicans, delusional third-party Presidential candidates. Liars, one and all. They promise us a better America, and then they can't deliver on their main campaign points. They can't even start to deliver, because they're afraid for their own jobs. They can't cut the war budget, because that would be equated with accusations of, "This soldier died because the country didn't give the army body armor to stop that bullet!"
You want the best way to save soldiers' lives? Get them out of the way of the bullet by getting them the hell out of Iraq. This is not rocket science. It's not hard to understand. The notion of, "If we don't get them over there, they'll get us over here," doesn't hold water, because logistically we can't invade every country that has a sect of people who don't like us. Furthermore, I don't remember the United States invading, sanctioning, or condemning Saudi Arabia for producing the majority of the 9/11 terrorists.
Of course, if there's one thing we can be sure of, it's this: As long as Saudi Arabia still has oil to sell us, the United States isn't going to be condemning them for much of anything. I mean, I condemn them. Hell, I condemn them on women's rights alone. It doesn't take much to get me to take the moral high ground against ass-backward countries that will be relegated back to third-world status about three days after the oil runs out.
So, in conclusion, Turkey has us over a barrel. If Congress declares their actions to have been a matter of genocide, they have every right to cut off our military access to their airspace. I say, "Fuck 'em." Pull the troops out of Iraq, ship them home, tell Turkey they suck and that they're bad people, and take the $200 billion that Congress appropriated for this year's war in Iraq, and we'll build the best thousand schools in the world.
AIM: therbmcc71
No, seriously. The Democrats campaigned and won almost a year ago on this notion of change and getting things done, and –this was their big one– ending the war. The closest they've gotten to getting shit done all year is sending a bill to the President to give more kids health care, which the President promptly vetoed, at which point the Democrats celebrated victory. It's totally fucked up out there in Washington, and nothing has changed. The last nine months are proof positive that the Democrats are just as inept as the Republicans, just as self-serving, and it's not like next year is going to get any better, because they're going to have to spend the next year fund-raising, rather than actually working, because it's an election year.
Case in point: Congressman Joe Knollenberg (R-MI) wants Nancy Pelosi to rally the Democrats to essentially 'vote yes for genocide.' Okay, that's poorly phrased, and deliberately so, but Joe Knollenberg is the same guy who's introduced a House bill to promote Mandarin language instruction. No shit. Seriously, the guy wants you to be able to personally train the Chinese man who's going to take your job back to Asia and do it for thirty cents a day. So, of course, Knollenberg is the voice of reason, and so we should take his word that a vote for genocide is a vote for ... exporting American jobs? Something like that.
I mean, it's genocide. It totally fucking is, and there's really no denying it, although Turkey has managed to for about the last century. I think their official position is, "It wasn't genocide; it was merely a forced deportation and massacre of only about 1.5 million Armenians. That isn't genocide. It's not genocide until you hit Hitler kinds of numbers." It's absolutely laughable that Congress is bowing to Presidential pressure to not label this as genocide, because we won't be able to fly over Turkey in order to continue the war in Iraq.
Let's flash back a year, here, and remember that the Democrats were all for ending the war in Iraq a year ago. Today, they're perfectly willing to continue the war and, as a bonus, allow Turkey to continue to labor under the delusion that their people have always been morally upstanding. I mean, it's not that the war would end if Turkey suddenly cut off access to its airspace, it would just be less convenient. And yet the Democrats allow this shit to keep going on.
They're all liars. Democrats, Republicans, delusional third-party Presidential candidates. Liars, one and all. They promise us a better America, and then they can't deliver on their main campaign points. They can't even start to deliver, because they're afraid for their own jobs. They can't cut the war budget, because that would be equated with accusations of, "This soldier died because the country didn't give the army body armor to stop that bullet!"
You want the best way to save soldiers' lives? Get them out of the way of the bullet by getting them the hell out of Iraq. This is not rocket science. It's not hard to understand. The notion of, "If we don't get them over there, they'll get us over here," doesn't hold water, because logistically we can't invade every country that has a sect of people who don't like us. Furthermore, I don't remember the United States invading, sanctioning, or condemning Saudi Arabia for producing the majority of the 9/11 terrorists.
Of course, if there's one thing we can be sure of, it's this: As long as Saudi Arabia still has oil to sell us, the United States isn't going to be condemning them for much of anything. I mean, I condemn them. Hell, I condemn them on women's rights alone. It doesn't take much to get me to take the moral high ground against ass-backward countries that will be relegated back to third-world status about three days after the oil runs out.
So, in conclusion, Turkey has us over a barrel. If Congress declares their actions to have been a matter of genocide, they have every right to cut off our military access to their airspace. I say, "Fuck 'em." Pull the troops out of Iraq, ship them home, tell Turkey they suck and that they're bad people, and take the $200 billion that Congress appropriated for this year's war in Iraq, and we'll build the best thousand schools in the world.
AIM: therbmcc71
Sunday, October 07, 2007
We Care A Lot
So, I'm typing this post on my nifty new iPod Touch, and it's kind of a rough go, but I'm getting faster by the minute, and the predictive spelling is very nice on the regular occasion that I mistype a word. It's really a neat device, but I don't imagine I'll be using it for this sort of thing very often, as it really is a bit of work. And I have no idea how you kids do text-messaging on phones that don't have real keyboards (of the QWERTY sort). This is neat, though; everyone should get one, or an iPhone, if you have sixty bucks a month to blow on your iPod.
AIM: therbmcc71
AIM: therbmcc71
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Update 6: Hey There Delilah
I'm home, finally. I got my truck back yesterday and drove sixteen straight hours to karaoke, where they made me sing. Ugh. As much as I like karaoke, and as much as I really respect these two guys' ability to sing Linkin Park (they're almost as good as the Stevie Nicks guy, but in a totally different way), but a man can't drive a thousand miles and be expected to sing as Eric Cartman at the drop of a hat. ... Okay, I can do it, but I don't necessarily like it. It's like work.
Speaking of which, I have to be at work in seven hours, after two weeks of being away. They only broke one piece of my machine so far, at least as far as I can surmise. Actually better than what I was expecting, and my new boss appears to be doing her job, which makes it so that I don't have to do it anymore, which frees up a bit of time during my week for me to not stress out over things I don't get paid to stress out over.
Yes, I just ended that sentence with a preposition; kiss my ass, Freshman English. One thing they never taught you in proper English classes is that style trumps substance any day of the week that doesn't involve being graded on grammatical propriety.
I saw God again this morning. No, seriously, that's twice in a week. Okay, the first time was with the risotto, and that was touching the face of God (see one of the prior posts), but I actually saw God today. And not in some bearded "Jesus, but like seventy years older and extremely fit" sort of Star Trek VI kind of God. No, I saw God. Not like it'd get me to subscribe to some sort of organized religion or anything like that, and I spent a goodly amount of my time rationalizing what I saw, but if you ever get the chance to take I-470 about two or three miles north of the airport exit outside of Denver at about seven in the morning (yes, this is asking a great deal of most of you), you, too, will see proof of The Almighty.
Take this with a grain of salt, of course, as I initially managed to equate connecting with God to a rice dish.
I'd have taken a picture, but 1) it wouldn't have done it justice through my already dead-moth-soiled windshield; 2) cameras just aren't that good; and 3) it's one of those "Now I Can Die" moments that you get precious few times in your life, which generally happen after really good sex or after you see something you think you might never see again. This was, unfortunately, the latter.
Yeah, so that post about the High Renaissance and the length of a mile, I'm not sure what crack I was smoking that day, but it was probably really good, and I've every intention of finding some way to get employed by the National Lampoon of tour guides. I'd even settle for doing the almanac (or "almanack," as they were in the years before the Great Letter Economization Act, which coincidentally dropped the letter U from words like "color" and "flavor;" this is clearly an American act, as the Canadians have not yet adopted such legislation for themselves).
But, anyway, I think I'd really like to take road trips, get paid for it (this part is very important), and write blatant falsehoods about the things I pass and the places I go through. I think it would be a great deal of fun. ... This is the part where the literary companies are supposed to cough up the dough to get me out of working another season in retail.
See, what set me on this notion is the fact that Route 34 (Interstate 34, Ogden Avenue, whatever the hell you want to call it) ends in Greeley, Colorado. First, I had no idea that it ended so close to Denver, and I probably would have gone to see it and taken pictures, if not for the fact that some broad decided to run into me and Triple-A decided to recommend having my car brought to an auto shop that was run by the mechanic version of Sling Blade. "I reckon we're gonna have to do yer alignment for three days, mm-hm..."
But I digress. I want to see America. You can't see America from I-80. Interstate 34, Interstate 30, Interstate 6, even... Those are America. For the illiterate in the audience who have gotten this far, I assure you that there will be no pictures of Alicia Silverstone naked in her ad for being a vegetarian (read: Google bait), so just move on now. Anyway, there are places in America that you can't see from the main roads. Sometimes you can, and I regret not getting to stop in at the zoo in Omaha, or the geographic center of the United States outside of Lebanon, Kansas, but the best you get while doing eighty miles per hour on Interstate 80 is driving underneath some arch in Kearney, Nebraska, which apparently went over with tourists about as well as the aforementioned geographic center of the United States.
So, yes. If anyone reading this would like to front me the several thousand dollars (make the check payable to "Cash," please) to take a nice road trip and write all manner of slanderous falsehoods about the places I pass through, feel free to leave a comment. I also take money from special-interest groups, such as state boards of tourism, that might like for me to mock other states, so as to prop up interest in whichever state pays me to remain silent. Note to the State of Illinois: There is no amount of money that will prevent me from pointing out the fact that Gibson City constantly reeks of twice-baked soy.
Regardless, I had a very good time in Denver, despite the absurd amount of time I spent there, and I think everyone should go sometime, if at least to personally count the number of obvious prostitutes on the streets of Federal and Colfax (the correct answer is thirty-one, but feel free to audit this fact yourself). I'd tell you all about it, but –again– I have to work in the morning. As such, given the day I've had, I may very well go to sleep after work and consequently miss the weekly Trivial Pursuit game that I do look forward to on a weekly basis (though if I do miss this week's game, the correct answer you are looking for is either 'Saskatchewan' or 'Cal Ripken, Jr.'), and for that I apologize, but I need rest.
EDIT:
Word of the Day: Vegabond. n., A vagrant, often confused at first glance with the run-of-the-mill hobo, who rides the rails from town to town, only leaving the trains to partake of shrubs and/or berries. The vegabond can be discriminated from the run-of-the-mill hobo by his disdain for clothing not made entirely from hemp and his general resistance to that great scourge of nomads and wanderers, which most of us better know as scurvy.
AIM: therbmcc71
Speaking of which, I have to be at work in seven hours, after two weeks of being away. They only broke one piece of my machine so far, at least as far as I can surmise. Actually better than what I was expecting, and my new boss appears to be doing her job, which makes it so that I don't have to do it anymore, which frees up a bit of time during my week for me to not stress out over things I don't get paid to stress out over.
Yes, I just ended that sentence with a preposition; kiss my ass, Freshman English. One thing they never taught you in proper English classes is that style trumps substance any day of the week that doesn't involve being graded on grammatical propriety.
I saw God again this morning. No, seriously, that's twice in a week. Okay, the first time was with the risotto, and that was touching the face of God (see one of the prior posts), but I actually saw God today. And not in some bearded "Jesus, but like seventy years older and extremely fit" sort of Star Trek VI kind of God. No, I saw God. Not like it'd get me to subscribe to some sort of organized religion or anything like that, and I spent a goodly amount of my time rationalizing what I saw, but if you ever get the chance to take I-470 about two or three miles north of the airport exit outside of Denver at about seven in the morning (yes, this is asking a great deal of most of you), you, too, will see proof of The Almighty.
Take this with a grain of salt, of course, as I initially managed to equate connecting with God to a rice dish.
I'd have taken a picture, but 1) it wouldn't have done it justice through my already dead-moth-soiled windshield; 2) cameras just aren't that good; and 3) it's one of those "Now I Can Die" moments that you get precious few times in your life, which generally happen after really good sex or after you see something you think you might never see again. This was, unfortunately, the latter.
Yeah, so that post about the High Renaissance and the length of a mile, I'm not sure what crack I was smoking that day, but it was probably really good, and I've every intention of finding some way to get employed by the National Lampoon of tour guides. I'd even settle for doing the almanac (or "almanack," as they were in the years before the Great Letter Economization Act, which coincidentally dropped the letter U from words like "color" and "flavor;" this is clearly an American act, as the Canadians have not yet adopted such legislation for themselves).
But, anyway, I think I'd really like to take road trips, get paid for it (this part is very important), and write blatant falsehoods about the things I pass and the places I go through. I think it would be a great deal of fun. ... This is the part where the literary companies are supposed to cough up the dough to get me out of working another season in retail.
See, what set me on this notion is the fact that Route 34 (Interstate 34, Ogden Avenue, whatever the hell you want to call it) ends in Greeley, Colorado. First, I had no idea that it ended so close to Denver, and I probably would have gone to see it and taken pictures, if not for the fact that some broad decided to run into me and Triple-A decided to recommend having my car brought to an auto shop that was run by the mechanic version of Sling Blade. "I reckon we're gonna have to do yer alignment for three days, mm-hm..."
But I digress. I want to see America. You can't see America from I-80. Interstate 34, Interstate 30, Interstate 6, even... Those are America. For the illiterate in the audience who have gotten this far, I assure you that there will be no pictures of Alicia Silverstone naked in her ad for being a vegetarian (read: Google bait), so just move on now. Anyway, there are places in America that you can't see from the main roads. Sometimes you can, and I regret not getting to stop in at the zoo in Omaha, or the geographic center of the United States outside of Lebanon, Kansas, but the best you get while doing eighty miles per hour on Interstate 80 is driving underneath some arch in Kearney, Nebraska, which apparently went over with tourists about as well as the aforementioned geographic center of the United States.
So, yes. If anyone reading this would like to front me the several thousand dollars (make the check payable to "Cash," please) to take a nice road trip and write all manner of slanderous falsehoods about the places I pass through, feel free to leave a comment. I also take money from special-interest groups, such as state boards of tourism, that might like for me to mock other states, so as to prop up interest in whichever state pays me to remain silent. Note to the State of Illinois: There is no amount of money that will prevent me from pointing out the fact that Gibson City constantly reeks of twice-baked soy.
Regardless, I had a very good time in Denver, despite the absurd amount of time I spent there, and I think everyone should go sometime, if at least to personally count the number of obvious prostitutes on the streets of Federal and Colfax (the correct answer is thirty-one, but feel free to audit this fact yourself). I'd tell you all about it, but –again– I have to work in the morning. As such, given the day I've had, I may very well go to sleep after work and consequently miss the weekly Trivial Pursuit game that I do look forward to on a weekly basis (though if I do miss this week's game, the correct answer you are looking for is either 'Saskatchewan' or 'Cal Ripken, Jr.'), and for that I apologize, but I need rest.
EDIT:
Word of the Day: Vegabond. n., A vagrant, often confused at first glance with the run-of-the-mill hobo, who rides the rails from town to town, only leaving the trains to partake of shrubs and/or berries. The vegabond can be discriminated from the run-of-the-mill hobo by his disdain for clothing not made entirely from hemp and his general resistance to that great scourge of nomads and wanderers, which most of us better know as scurvy.
AIM: therbmcc71
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Update 5: Hold Me Now
So while I've been stranded at the house here in Denver, I've been watching a great deal of Top Chef and have been considering making risotto for days. It's a side dish, which we had with these really good steaks in a teriyaki marinade and baked potatoes. I wasn't quite sure how the risotto was going to come out, though, since the guys on Top Chef are always bitching about how the risotto came out. But I made it anyway.
I'm pretty sure I touched the face of God. It was that good.
AIM: therbmcc71
I'm pretty sure I touched the face of God. It was that good.
AIM: therbmcc71
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Update 4: Edge of Seventeen
Okay, so you should have seen this guy at karaoke several nights ago. The guy looked like he should have been the front man for a heavy metal band, and he goes up to the stage, and I hear this guitar riff with a delay on it, so I'm like, "Okay, so is this Floyd?" because "Run Like Hell" and "Another Brick in the Wall" both have this delay effect, and then he starts singing the words, "Just like the white-winged dove..."
Dude sounds just like Stevie Nicks. Best karaoke I've ever seen. Ever. Ever, ever, ever. The guy was even doing those Stevie Nicks dance moves and stuff, which would have been funny if everyone in the audience wasn't totally shocked by his singing.
Anyway, Fiddy Cent says he won't ever record again if Kanye West's new album outsells Fiddy's in their first week of sales. At the moment, it's looking like Kanye west is winning. And there was much rejoicing.
So I'm stuck in Denver for about another week, because that's how long it's going to take to get my new fender, wheel, and bumper, apparently. It's sort of like being on the dark side of the moon (as I think this sort of things would take about three days in Illinois), so I'm going to have to take to doing yard work tomorrow. A man can only watch so many episodes of Top Chef before he goes completely insane.
Denver's a cute little town, though. It's got this miniature skyline that makes me consider Chicago for a moment and go, "Wook at the wittle skywine... it's so pwecious!" Half of the people out here apparently have never seen a real city (as Las Vegas doesn't count). They seem to have most of the standard amenities (McDonalds, Taco Bell, et cetera), a few things that I haven't seen since forever (Winchell's Donuts, Sinclair gas stations), but no fucking Sizzler Steakhouse! I have to go to Utah for that, I guess.
Tonight's plan is apparently to go out to a movie and then hit someplace for food and drinks afterwards. God, I just hope the food doesn't come from Del Taco again.
AIM: therbmcc71
Dude sounds just like Stevie Nicks. Best karaoke I've ever seen. Ever. Ever, ever, ever. The guy was even doing those Stevie Nicks dance moves and stuff, which would have been funny if everyone in the audience wasn't totally shocked by his singing.
Anyway, Fiddy Cent says he won't ever record again if Kanye West's new album outsells Fiddy's in their first week of sales. At the moment, it's looking like Kanye west is winning. And there was much rejoicing.
So I'm stuck in Denver for about another week, because that's how long it's going to take to get my new fender, wheel, and bumper, apparently. It's sort of like being on the dark side of the moon (as I think this sort of things would take about three days in Illinois), so I'm going to have to take to doing yard work tomorrow. A man can only watch so many episodes of Top Chef before he goes completely insane.
Denver's a cute little town, though. It's got this miniature skyline that makes me consider Chicago for a moment and go, "Wook at the wittle skywine... it's so pwecious!" Half of the people out here apparently have never seen a real city (as Las Vegas doesn't count). They seem to have most of the standard amenities (McDonalds, Taco Bell, et cetera), a few things that I haven't seen since forever (Winchell's Donuts, Sinclair gas stations), but no fucking Sizzler Steakhouse! I have to go to Utah for that, I guess.
Tonight's plan is apparently to go out to a movie and then hit someplace for food and drinks afterwards. God, I just hope the food doesn't come from Del Taco again.
AIM: therbmcc71
Monday, September 10, 2007
Update 3: Come Pick Me Up
So, about two hours after my last post, I got into a fender-bender in the parking lot of the Denver International Airport, so I haven't been able to get to the local Pantera Bread to keep everyone updated on my vacation. At the moment, I'm quite stuck here, as some broad blew through a stop sign and ran into my front-left quarter-panel and knocked the wheel about ten degrees off of vertical. Thanks, lady. At least I'm having a good time here in town.
Elitch Gardens, the local amusement park, used to be owned by Six Flags; used to because it's like the redheaded stepchild of any of the other amusement parks I've ever been to. For the sake of comparison, Elitch Gardens sits on 28 acres with six roller coasters, by comparison to Six Flags Great America (in scenic Gurnee, Illinois), which occupies 300 acres and has twelve roller coasters. Cedar Point (just off of beautiful Lake Erie, which I'm still waiting to catch on fire again) occupies 364 acres, with 17 roller coasters.
It should also be stated that the rides at Elitch Gardens generally suck. Of course, I only went on one roller coaster, because one of the girls in the group I was with wanted to ride nothing more complex than the tilt-a-whirl, and then would begin moping every time someone mentioned going on, I don't know, an actual roller coaster. When four of us finally actually got on a roller coaster, the thing seemed like it was going to fly apart at any moment, or maybe it was the fact that there was absolutely no padding on the shoulder-harnesses, which would be really good if the park was trying to channel a sort of old-school carny-vibe, which no one ever should, even if they are actual carnies.
I found out, shortly after my last post, that my blog cannot be accessed from Pantera Bread's free wi-fi connection, as they deem my site to feature 'Objectionable content' or some such thing, which is actually the same excuse they give for hardcore pornography. Thankfully, I got the internet up and running at my friend's house, which I was supposed to do several days ago, but didn't have the chance to get around to for several reasons, not the least of which was that awesome Broncos game yesterday, which preceded the giant clusterfuck that was the Bears' season opener.
Now to fix the DVD player's display, which has apparently been quite messed up for a while. I'll leave another message, at the latest, from one of Iowa's fine wi-fi enabled rest stops, which oddly puts Iowa leaps and bounds ahead of other seemingly more technologically savvy states, such as Illinois. I think there's one right before I turn south to go hit the Whitey's Ice Cream in Davenport, which has two notable things to it: 1) It's a place in the twenty-first century that's called Whitey's, and 2) They've apparently got very good ice cream. Pity it's probably not carrot cake ice cream season yet.
AIM: therbmcc71
Elitch Gardens, the local amusement park, used to be owned by Six Flags; used to because it's like the redheaded stepchild of any of the other amusement parks I've ever been to. For the sake of comparison, Elitch Gardens sits on 28 acres with six roller coasters, by comparison to Six Flags Great America (in scenic Gurnee, Illinois), which occupies 300 acres and has twelve roller coasters. Cedar Point (just off of beautiful Lake Erie, which I'm still waiting to catch on fire again) occupies 364 acres, with 17 roller coasters.
It should also be stated that the rides at Elitch Gardens generally suck. Of course, I only went on one roller coaster, because one of the girls in the group I was with wanted to ride nothing more complex than the tilt-a-whirl, and then would begin moping every time someone mentioned going on, I don't know, an actual roller coaster. When four of us finally actually got on a roller coaster, the thing seemed like it was going to fly apart at any moment, or maybe it was the fact that there was absolutely no padding on the shoulder-harnesses, which would be really good if the park was trying to channel a sort of old-school carny-vibe, which no one ever should, even if they are actual carnies.
I found out, shortly after my last post, that my blog cannot be accessed from Pantera Bread's free wi-fi connection, as they deem my site to feature 'Objectionable content' or some such thing, which is actually the same excuse they give for hardcore pornography. Thankfully, I got the internet up and running at my friend's house, which I was supposed to do several days ago, but didn't have the chance to get around to for several reasons, not the least of which was that awesome Broncos game yesterday, which preceded the giant clusterfuck that was the Bears' season opener.
Now to fix the DVD player's display, which has apparently been quite messed up for a while. I'll leave another message, at the latest, from one of Iowa's fine wi-fi enabled rest stops, which oddly puts Iowa leaps and bounds ahead of other seemingly more technologically savvy states, such as Illinois. I think there's one right before I turn south to go hit the Whitey's Ice Cream in Davenport, which has two notable things to it: 1) It's a place in the twenty-first century that's called Whitey's, and 2) They've apparently got very good ice cream. Pity it's probably not carrot cake ice cream season yet.
AIM: therbmcc71
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Update 2: Nebraska
Nebraska smells. No, seriously, it does. In fact, lengthy sections of my trip reeked of cow, pig, and I think I may have passed a lemming farm along the way, which you'd really have been amused by the sign for. Sadly, I brought no digital camera, which I may very well have to rectify sometime while I'm here in Denver, as we do have Tarzhay stores here. Sure, they're all inconveniently located, not unlike their placing of super-size bottles of laundry detergent on the top shelf.
Anyway, Nebraska stinks. It's a lot easier to tolerate driving through in the dark, as the sheer boredom generated by the scenery isn't quite enough to make one want to drive into the Platte River, which is apparently pronounced "plat" as opposed to the pronunciation rules given me during my days of working at Starbucks, which explains why they were looking at me so funny when I was buying a bottle of Mountain Dew in North Platte.
I'm currently only a short drive from the west end of Route 34, which is, oddly enough, not marked with annoying signs denoting that it is indeed Ogden Avenue. Perhaps the local children are stealing the signs and putting them in their basements next to their black-lit Grateful Dead posters.
I'm typing this across the street from a Renaissance Hotel that looks nothing like something one would expect out of the architecture of the renaissance. I say this because it looks like the Contemporary Resort of Walt Disney World fame. Of course, it's entirely possible that it may be a relic of the renaissance, as I only ever studied the High Renaissance, which was Shakespeare's creative low-period, when he supposedly wrote several now-lost comedies to star Cheech and Chong.
Coincidentally, Denver is known as "the mile-high city." As a point of fact, all of the official information about the city does indeed say that its elevation is 5,280 feet, but it is my firm belief that the mile was originally to be set at precisely 5,000 feet until Denver's powerful and well-funded altitude lobby got to the first continental congress, who wrote that "the length of a mile shall be 5,280 feet on the back of the Declaration of Independence." Watch the movie National Treasure, it's right there. No, go watch it; I'll still be here when you get back.
By contrast, the capital of Nebraska is Lincoln, as we all learned from the "Big Jim Slade scene" in Kentucky Fried Movie, and it is otherwise a completely unnotable city, with neither a clever nickname nor any crime, the latter of which is likely due to the fact that the city recently abolished all of its laws in favor of total anarchy (which is actually preferable to partial anarchy). Something that you won't find on your AAA map: The next city west of Lincoln is indeed Tire Town.
The Denver Airport has a roof that's built to look like the snow-capped Rocky Mountains, or that's what they say. In reality, the roof is actually a casting of the last settlement of an American Indian tribe made up completely of giants, wiped out in the 1930's by rogues from the backwoods of Wyoming. Eventually, the settlement was discovered and moved to Denver after spending a short time as a covering for the world's largest flea market. It was cast out of steel and then painted white to evoke the snow-capped Rocky Mountains, which will be quite the joke in a decade or two.
AIM: therbmcc71
Anyway, Nebraska stinks. It's a lot easier to tolerate driving through in the dark, as the sheer boredom generated by the scenery isn't quite enough to make one want to drive into the Platte River, which is apparently pronounced "plat" as opposed to the pronunciation rules given me during my days of working at Starbucks, which explains why they were looking at me so funny when I was buying a bottle of Mountain Dew in North Platte.
I'm currently only a short drive from the west end of Route 34, which is, oddly enough, not marked with annoying signs denoting that it is indeed Ogden Avenue. Perhaps the local children are stealing the signs and putting them in their basements next to their black-lit Grateful Dead posters.
I'm typing this across the street from a Renaissance Hotel that looks nothing like something one would expect out of the architecture of the renaissance. I say this because it looks like the Contemporary Resort of Walt Disney World fame. Of course, it's entirely possible that it may be a relic of the renaissance, as I only ever studied the High Renaissance, which was Shakespeare's creative low-period, when he supposedly wrote several now-lost comedies to star Cheech and Chong.
Coincidentally, Denver is known as "the mile-high city." As a point of fact, all of the official information about the city does indeed say that its elevation is 5,280 feet, but it is my firm belief that the mile was originally to be set at precisely 5,000 feet until Denver's powerful and well-funded altitude lobby got to the first continental congress, who wrote that "the length of a mile shall be 5,280 feet on the back of the Declaration of Independence." Watch the movie National Treasure, it's right there. No, go watch it; I'll still be here when you get back.
By contrast, the capital of Nebraska is Lincoln, as we all learned from the "Big Jim Slade scene" in Kentucky Fried Movie, and it is otherwise a completely unnotable city, with neither a clever nickname nor any crime, the latter of which is likely due to the fact that the city recently abolished all of its laws in favor of total anarchy (which is actually preferable to partial anarchy). Something that you won't find on your AAA map: The next city west of Lincoln is indeed Tire Town.
The Denver Airport has a roof that's built to look like the snow-capped Rocky Mountains, or that's what they say. In reality, the roof is actually a casting of the last settlement of an American Indian tribe made up completely of giants, wiped out in the 1930's by rogues from the backwoods of Wyoming. Eventually, the settlement was discovered and moved to Denver after spending a short time as a covering for the world's largest flea market. It was cast out of steel and then painted white to evoke the snow-capped Rocky Mountains, which will be quite the joke in a decade or two.
AIM: therbmcc71
Update 1
Have been in Denver for about two hours now. Am currently at the Apple Store, where I've been for about two hours now. New iPods announced, probably not arriving today. Must leave computer before I am discovered.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
River Road
Well, I'm just about to leave on the Great American Road Trip. No, I'm not going to be seeing all of America, but I'm going to be seeing the most important part of it; the part that isn't made up of tourist destinations and travel resorts. No national parks, no Disneyplaces, just America. Yes, I'm going alone, now stop looking at me like that. I've got 23 hours of music on the iPod, more on my laptop, and so I'll be going out Elizabethtown-style to put together a truly American soundtrack.
Of course, I'll be hitting the Apple Store sometime while I'm in America. I can't be expected to leave civilization entirely behind, now, can I? Anyway, with any luck, I'll let you all know how things are going from out on the road, just as soon as I can find free internet access.
AIM: therbmcc71
Of course, I'll be hitting the Apple Store sometime while I'm in America. I can't be expected to leave civilization entirely behind, now, can I? Anyway, with any luck, I'll let you all know how things are going from out on the road, just as soon as I can find free internet access.
AIM: therbmcc71
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Eclipse
In keeping with my regular updates on the weekly Trivial Pursuit game, Greg and I lost to Jay in Genus 5 last Sunday. We blame bad rolls, trying to get two pie-pieces and hitting the center, as we were up six pieces to three, and then Jay rallied to win the game in a finish that would have made Seabiscuit jealous.
Yesterday (technically, seeing how it's after midnight, so we're talking about the 24th of August) was Danimal's birthday. Is, was, I'm not sure what the terminology is, exactly. I posted something about it briefly several months ago, but it all runs together, and I don't remember when it was. I remember it well, but I don't remember when. Funny how memory does that; how you can't remember the specifics beyond an event itself. But I heard Floyd on the radio today, and Danimal loved Pink Floyd, so I figured I'd throw "Eclipse" up as a title for the post.
Tonight was karaoke night, and I contemplated singing a Pink Floyd song, but I wasn't entirely sure whether that would be apropos, so I didn't. This is to say nothing of the fact that "Wish You Were Here" would have made half of the bar cry in volumes that would have drowned the city, much like the rain yesterday. Also, I think that Roger Waters-era Pink Floyd is done best by a pair of singers (at least where karaoke is concerned) with one singing falsetto. I probably won't be able to find anyone to sing with me on that one, sort of like how Danimal was the Chef to my Eric Cartman when I would sing Cartman's version of Styx's "Come Sail Away".
My vacation has been greenlit and it starts Tuesday after next. I'm very excited. I'm oddly looking forward to spending a day in Omaha, somewhere in middle-America. The last time I was in Omaha, I was thirteen years old, and my family's Ford Explorer broke down for some odd reason, and we spent four of the longest hours of my life in that city (only called a "city" by Nebraska standards, because we know better, out here in civilization).
Okay, here's an example of how much Omaha sucked: We're stuck in town and so I go to the local comic book store, and that day they're having a signing by one of the great comic book writers (no, not Alan Moore, since I didn't say the great comic book writer). I see this in the window, and I'm like, "Holy shit," so I go in, and there's like four people in the store, including the owner, who's behind the counter, and the writer, who has a table in front of him, and nobody asking him for his autograph. So Neil and I strike up a conversation, and we end up talking at length about how America, by and large, is a very cool place to drive around, but Nebraska is like this void in the universe where culture just ceases to exist, like the inverse of the Field of Dreams. If You Build It... Yeah, it's fuckin' Nebraska.
The shop owner, with five people in the store, said it was a pretty busy day.
So, in honor of Neil, I'm going to Lebanon, Kansas on my way back, and I'm going to see the geographic center of the contiguous United States of America, because no one else ever did.
Totally getting off the subject, Bioshock for the Xbox 360 is a great game. Okay, it's great for the first three or so hours, which is how far I've gotten in it. The level design isn't the best I've ever seen, but the art direction is absolutely fucking amazing, and the story unfolds in much the same manner as Monolith's F.E.A.R., in that you can completely miss out on the plot if you don't just sit down and listen to some tape recordings now and again. Skipping those basically turns the game into your standard shooter, which I'm sure the Halo crowd will enjoy for the next thirty days or so, but the fact is that the game essentially takes place in a deep-sea version of Galt's Gulch.
No, seriously, I'm about to get all literary, here. It's a videogame that deals with objectivism. It's not nearly as heavy-handed as Ayn Rand ever got, nor does it repeatedly refer to any of the main characters as slender (yes, that's a crack at Ayn Rand's lack of adjectives with regard to Dagny Taggart), but the art direction, particularly in the opening fifteen or so minutes of the game, is very reminiscent of the covers of the Signet Fiction versions of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, with one of the background characters essentially taking the role of John Galt.
I can't really make any judgments as to how much of the game is derivative of Ayn Rand's writings, given that I haven't played through the game in its entirety, nor was I ever able to make it through Atlas Shrugged (since I made a deal with the book and said, "Ayn Rand, if you call Dagny Taggart slender one more time, I'm going to throw this book out the window, and so she did, and so I did), but I've been seeing some distinct parallels to objectivism in general withe regard to the establishment of ... whatever the undersea city's name is.
It really is a very good game, though. If I were to break it down to its component parts, I'm sure there's a little bit of Fallout, some Max Payne, a whole lot of Deus Ex, and more than a bit of F.E.A.R., none of which are less than stellar games. At no point does Bioshock necessarily steal from these games, but it certainly lifts gameplay concepts with the promise of enhancing the genre and thereby paying homage to the originals.
Seriously. It's a game that's worth the sixty dollars. It's rare that I'd ever say such a thing, but it's true. The last game I liked this much for the 360 was probably Dead Rising, and its only flaw was that it was the hardest game I've ever played in my life. Dead Rising, though, wouldn't have been enough for me to want a 360 of my own. Bioshock very nearly is. Another few games like this, and Microsoft might get $350 of mine. Of course, they've had eighteen months, and this is two games that I've truly adored, for a system that costs more than my yearly car-insurance bill.
Anyway, I've found my write-up on the opening band for the last Small Shiny Things show I went to, so hopefully I'll get that up before I go on vacation.
Oh, shit, I got sidetracked. So, anyway, Omaha, somewhere in middle-America: One of my regulars at work told me that he'd been there recently, and that they have a really good zoo and a surprisingly good jazz scene. Now, I don't know much about jazz, but I know i totally dug the Ken Burns documentary, so I could totally go for a night in Omaha for that. This is to say nothing of the fact that the city apparently also has a movie theater that, like the Normal Theater downstate, shows nothing but classic films. A few days ago, they were running The Wild Bunch, which pissed me off to no end, since I really would have liked to have seen that.
Anyway, I have to be at work in five hours, so I'm going to go. Hopefully I'll have a bit more to report on on several subjects before I leave for vacation.
Happy birthday, Danimal.
AIM: therbmcc71
Yesterday (technically, seeing how it's after midnight, so we're talking about the 24th of August) was Danimal's birthday. Is, was, I'm not sure what the terminology is, exactly. I posted something about it briefly several months ago, but it all runs together, and I don't remember when it was. I remember it well, but I don't remember when. Funny how memory does that; how you can't remember the specifics beyond an event itself. But I heard Floyd on the radio today, and Danimal loved Pink Floyd, so I figured I'd throw "Eclipse" up as a title for the post.
Tonight was karaoke night, and I contemplated singing a Pink Floyd song, but I wasn't entirely sure whether that would be apropos, so I didn't. This is to say nothing of the fact that "Wish You Were Here" would have made half of the bar cry in volumes that would have drowned the city, much like the rain yesterday. Also, I think that Roger Waters-era Pink Floyd is done best by a pair of singers (at least where karaoke is concerned) with one singing falsetto. I probably won't be able to find anyone to sing with me on that one, sort of like how Danimal was the Chef to my Eric Cartman when I would sing Cartman's version of Styx's "Come Sail Away".
My vacation has been greenlit and it starts Tuesday after next. I'm very excited. I'm oddly looking forward to spending a day in Omaha, somewhere in middle-America. The last time I was in Omaha, I was thirteen years old, and my family's Ford Explorer broke down for some odd reason, and we spent four of the longest hours of my life in that city (only called a "city" by Nebraska standards, because we know better, out here in civilization).
Okay, here's an example of how much Omaha sucked: We're stuck in town and so I go to the local comic book store, and that day they're having a signing by one of the great comic book writers (no, not Alan Moore, since I didn't say the great comic book writer). I see this in the window, and I'm like, "Holy shit," so I go in, and there's like four people in the store, including the owner, who's behind the counter, and the writer, who has a table in front of him, and nobody asking him for his autograph. So Neil and I strike up a conversation, and we end up talking at length about how America, by and large, is a very cool place to drive around, but Nebraska is like this void in the universe where culture just ceases to exist, like the inverse of the Field of Dreams. If You Build It... Yeah, it's fuckin' Nebraska.
The shop owner, with five people in the store, said it was a pretty busy day.
So, in honor of Neil, I'm going to Lebanon, Kansas on my way back, and I'm going to see the geographic center of the contiguous United States of America, because no one else ever did.
Totally getting off the subject, Bioshock for the Xbox 360 is a great game. Okay, it's great for the first three or so hours, which is how far I've gotten in it. The level design isn't the best I've ever seen, but the art direction is absolutely fucking amazing, and the story unfolds in much the same manner as Monolith's F.E.A.R., in that you can completely miss out on the plot if you don't just sit down and listen to some tape recordings now and again. Skipping those basically turns the game into your standard shooter, which I'm sure the Halo crowd will enjoy for the next thirty days or so, but the fact is that the game essentially takes place in a deep-sea version of Galt's Gulch.
No, seriously, I'm about to get all literary, here. It's a videogame that deals with objectivism. It's not nearly as heavy-handed as Ayn Rand ever got, nor does it repeatedly refer to any of the main characters as slender (yes, that's a crack at Ayn Rand's lack of adjectives with regard to Dagny Taggart), but the art direction, particularly in the opening fifteen or so minutes of the game, is very reminiscent of the covers of the Signet Fiction versions of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, with one of the background characters essentially taking the role of John Galt.
I can't really make any judgments as to how much of the game is derivative of Ayn Rand's writings, given that I haven't played through the game in its entirety, nor was I ever able to make it through Atlas Shrugged (since I made a deal with the book and said, "Ayn Rand, if you call Dagny Taggart slender one more time, I'm going to throw this book out the window, and so she did, and so I did), but I've been seeing some distinct parallels to objectivism in general withe regard to the establishment of ... whatever the undersea city's name is.
It really is a very good game, though. If I were to break it down to its component parts, I'm sure there's a little bit of Fallout, some Max Payne, a whole lot of Deus Ex, and more than a bit of F.E.A.R., none of which are less than stellar games. At no point does Bioshock necessarily steal from these games, but it certainly lifts gameplay concepts with the promise of enhancing the genre and thereby paying homage to the originals.
Seriously. It's a game that's worth the sixty dollars. It's rare that I'd ever say such a thing, but it's true. The last game I liked this much for the 360 was probably Dead Rising, and its only flaw was that it was the hardest game I've ever played in my life. Dead Rising, though, wouldn't have been enough for me to want a 360 of my own. Bioshock very nearly is. Another few games like this, and Microsoft might get $350 of mine. Of course, they've had eighteen months, and this is two games that I've truly adored, for a system that costs more than my yearly car-insurance bill.
Anyway, I've found my write-up on the opening band for the last Small Shiny Things show I went to, so hopefully I'll get that up before I go on vacation.
Oh, shit, I got sidetracked. So, anyway, Omaha, somewhere in middle-America: One of my regulars at work told me that he'd been there recently, and that they have a really good zoo and a surprisingly good jazz scene. Now, I don't know much about jazz, but I know i totally dug the Ken Burns documentary, so I could totally go for a night in Omaha for that. This is to say nothing of the fact that the city apparently also has a movie theater that, like the Normal Theater downstate, shows nothing but classic films. A few days ago, they were running The Wild Bunch, which pissed me off to no end, since I really would have liked to have seen that.
Anyway, I have to be at work in five hours, so I'm going to go. Hopefully I'll have a bit more to report on on several subjects before I leave for vacation.
Happy birthday, Danimal.
AIM: therbmcc71
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Lecture 03: Orbiter Sub-System Design
So, the coolest thing in the world on iTunes is this whole iTunes U thing, in which you can listen to lectures from schools and courses you might never be able to afford or get accepted into. I'm currently listening to a 44-hour lecture course on Aircraft Systems Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, because the entire course centers on the space shuttle. So I've been doing some reading, as well, because you never know when there's going to be a pop quiz, and I found out something pretty interesting:
The space shuttle always takes off from Cape Canaveral. Okay, everyone knows that. However, it doesn't necessarily always land there, as sometimes weather or other factors make it so that the space shuttle will land at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Fine, whatever, that's not terribly shocking. To get the shuttle from California to Florida, it has to be blown on the back of a specially configured Boeing 747-100. It's been this way for almost thirty years.
But here's the kicker: That 747, when flying from California to Florida, gets 125 feet per gallon.
AIM: therbmcc71
The space shuttle always takes off from Cape Canaveral. Okay, everyone knows that. However, it doesn't necessarily always land there, as sometimes weather or other factors make it so that the space shuttle will land at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Fine, whatever, that's not terribly shocking. To get the shuttle from California to Florida, it has to be blown on the back of a specially configured Boeing 747-100. It's been this way for almost thirty years.
But here's the kicker: That 747, when flying from California to Florida, gets 125 feet per gallon.
AIM: therbmcc71
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Hot, Hot, Hot
So today, because I'm extremely tired and I don't feel like coming up with my own material, I'm stealing it from comments left on other people's blogs and products I found on Amazon, because I found them terribly entertaining.
Actually, there was a bunch of potential candidates for this first one, but this particular comment was the one that stuck out, because it made me actually stop, try re-reading it, and I still went, "What...?" Enjoy:
AIM: therbmcc71
Actually, there was a bunch of potential candidates for this first one, but this particular comment was the one that stuck out, because it made me actually stop, try re-reading it, and I still went, "What...?" Enjoy:
I’m a stakeholder in the Wal-Mart chain. Their four Wal-Mart store in my area, over the past five years I have seen the quality of the merchandise dementias. The customer service at Wal-Mart is disappointing, it’s like the employee have not been train in customer relations. The stores always crowded with mechanic and junky looking. As I stated I’m a stakeholder, but if I do not have to go in a Wal-Mart store I do not; I go to a Target store first. The customer service is better and the quality of the merchandise is much better.And then here's a couple of five-star reviews for the first Left Behind book. This first one's by Ted M. "Ted", and it's a doozy, as can only be written by someone who would be hailed by Sean Hannity as a member of the intellectual elite:
And here's my favorite review of all time, for the same book. Also (clearly) five stars:
I am not normally a reader of novels. I mostly read fact books and books of that nature.
I have never really liked books like that. I have even read many and had trouble paying attention to them.
This book is different. It is the very firs novel I read from cover to cover in less than 3 days.
It is the incredible Christian story of the Rapture and the chronicle of how God will take all of his true followers to heaven before the last days to spare them from the horrible things that will happen.
There are more books in this series and it is one of the bestselling Christian series of all time.
This book gives an important message that the last days are approaching and that Jesus Christ is returning soon.
I just dun finished this here book. Now I'll tell all ya fellas that I aint too much on book learnin or readin words but I was goshdanged by this here book. It's just like I always dun knew it was gonna be. The Lord Jesus God gonna come down here on this Earth and be a whuppin up on all those people that aint right like christians. That includes all the dirty muslins and the stoopid aytheists (can't never be spellerin that word correct-like). Anyways I only hope the Lord God Jesus's repersentive on Earth, George W. Bush, can a get this here 'pocalypse a comin soon enough. Theez damn books are a goshdamn sight better than a watchin Jerry Springer or beatin up ma kids like I usually be doin'. One of them stoopid revewers said this here book was a ritten at a sixth grader level. Well thats a bunch of spit and possum vittles. I dint even finish the fourth grade and I'm a readin it just fine. Ima just hopin somebody gonna make nifty cartoon out this here book. YEEEEEHAAAAWWWWW!!!! PRAISE JESUS!!!!!I tell ya, I live for this shit. This is the kind of idiocy I just don't find in the world I live in. Okay, granted, the last one's probably a fake, and a very good one at that, but with regard to the first two entries, I can totally see these posters' mothers pulling a Chinatown and eventually confessing, "She's my daughter AND my sister!!!"
AIM: therbmcc71
Monday, July 23, 2007
Don't Stop Me Now
I went one and one in Trivial Pursuit tonight. I'm pretty impressed with the Totally 80's edition of Trivial Pursuit, in that it was apparently mixing the absurdly easy (for anyone who was actually semi-conscious in the 80's) with the ridiculously difficult. As I see it, since I don't have much experience working as part of a team in the game, the hardest part seems to be coming to a consensus while the other team sits back waiting for your team to come to a unified answer. Yes, this has to do with the Elvis question. No, I'm not assigning blame to anyone, because Elvis was dead for five years, while Lennon was only dead for two, but my first guess was still right.
Regardless, it was good seeing Kevin, Jay, Greg, Krista, Matt, and the other people whose names I don't actually recall at the moment. If I didn't have to work until close on Saturday night, I'd have gone to see the band in Yorkville, but that wasn't the case. And then I have to close the joint on Friday night, too, which means I'll miss the band yet again, but at least I'll be able to get some Neil Diamond and maybe some Otis Redding or something in. No, I won't be drunk enough in two hours' worth of drinking to do any Smokey Robinson or Marvin Gaye, so don't even ask.
A couple of guys from the not-so-old days are crashing my guys-from-the-old-days internet hangout, and it's just not cool, particularly since one of them referred to me as a prick at one point. Had I only the power to call down the thunder like the old days (read: ban them and then alter their personal photos to some horrific act involving livestock), life would be good and life would return rather quickly to normal, but I don't and it probably won't. Regardless, I look at the two of them showing up in such a short time-frame as meaning only one thing: Invasion. I figure everyone else would consider me paranoid for this line of thought, but my job has taught me that paranoia is your best friend because it keeps shit from going horrifically wrong.
Anyway. Getting back to that post before about The Hunt For Yoshi and the song "Somebody", I've been listening to what fairly little Depeche Mode I've got (hey, I was dark and emo once, back when emo didn't put you on a list of people likely to shoot up your high school), and I'd never really noticed how unique David Gahan's voice is. Furthermore, it's made me really want to get the six-hundred-plus track Complete Depeche Mode collection that's available on iTunes, but I don't have the $170 to drop on it, which is a shame, because it's about fifty percent bigger than the Complete U2 collection I bought about two or so years ago, and only twenty bucks more.
I suppose that all goes back to my nature for being a completist. I like to have the entire collection of things, even if I don't necessarily enjoy them. It lets me sit back and contemplate the evolution of a series of works and come to a conclusion about its overall artistic merit. This is never more evident than in my need to buy Marvel Comics collections on DVD-ROM for about forty bucks a hit, which is a phenomenal value, considering the price of back-issues, but I can't help but notice that the majority of comic book issues are mediocre at best, particularly in the 1990's. Regardless, once I start into something, I end up having to complete it, like a sort of absolute necessity. It drives me completely batshit insane that I don't have the fifth season of Smallville or the ninth season of X-Files on DVD, because I've got all the others.
Anyway. It's no wonder there are no women here as I type this. I have the house to myself at the moment, and I should, by all rights, be knee-deep in shepherds' daughters, but instead I'm bitching about the fact that I don't have the last season of X-Files. And I know you're thinking the same thing I am: What the hell is the point of the last season of X-Files, since Good Ol' One-Arm Krycek is dead? I mean, that fucker should've had his own spin-off show instead of that Millennium show with Lance Henriksen.
Don't get me wrong, Lance Henriksen is the shit, but I think Chris Carter was grasping at straws on that one. I mean, it's like how I worked for a company called Video 2000. Where the hell do you intend to go with a show called Millennium if it gets picked up beyond January 1, 2000? It didn't, and I'm pretty sure Video 2000 folded by the middle of 2001, most likely because the bosses didn't believe me when I said this new DVD thing was the future and we oughta jump on that bandwagon.
I'm sure I initially meant for this to be a short post that was relatively to some point or another, but now I've lost it, and I freely admit that. I figure I'd probably update more often if I had an editor, preferably an attractive female editor who's smarter than myself, as that would really serve to inspire me to write more often. If she used red ink to correct errors and such on my pre-published posts, that would really kick ass, as that would inevitably cause me to have flashbacks to my high school political-science student-teacher, because that woman was built like a brick shithouse.
You remember that scene in Big, where they knock over the books on the desk so the teacher will bend over so they can look down her shirt as she picks the stuff up? It was like that. I like to think those are the happy memories we go back to when we die.
Oh, fuck yeah, I forgot: Terry Moore, the guy who wrote Strangers in Paradise, which is probably my favorite non-Alan Moore-miniseries comic book, is going to be writing Spider-Man Loves Mary-Jane, which is this super-cute little saccharine-sweet comic book about Peter Parker and Mary-Jane in high school. It's drawn pseudo-anime style, but without, like, the tentacles and giant robots and huge spherical tits on the high school girls that one might tend to expect from anime after a lifetime of watching nothing but hentai pornography.
Okay, that is seriously too much personal information that I have given away now, so I am going to go to sleep and attempt to forget that I have ever written any of this.
AIM: therbmcc71
Regardless, it was good seeing Kevin, Jay, Greg, Krista, Matt, and the other people whose names I don't actually recall at the moment. If I didn't have to work until close on Saturday night, I'd have gone to see the band in Yorkville, but that wasn't the case. And then I have to close the joint on Friday night, too, which means I'll miss the band yet again, but at least I'll be able to get some Neil Diamond and maybe some Otis Redding or something in. No, I won't be drunk enough in two hours' worth of drinking to do any Smokey Robinson or Marvin Gaye, so don't even ask.
A couple of guys from the not-so-old days are crashing my guys-from-the-old-days internet hangout, and it's just not cool, particularly since one of them referred to me as a prick at one point. Had I only the power to call down the thunder like the old days (read: ban them and then alter their personal photos to some horrific act involving livestock), life would be good and life would return rather quickly to normal, but I don't and it probably won't. Regardless, I look at the two of them showing up in such a short time-frame as meaning only one thing: Invasion. I figure everyone else would consider me paranoid for this line of thought, but my job has taught me that paranoia is your best friend because it keeps shit from going horrifically wrong.
Anyway. Getting back to that post before about The Hunt For Yoshi and the song "Somebody", I've been listening to what fairly little Depeche Mode I've got (hey, I was dark and emo once, back when emo didn't put you on a list of people likely to shoot up your high school), and I'd never really noticed how unique David Gahan's voice is. Furthermore, it's made me really want to get the six-hundred-plus track Complete Depeche Mode collection that's available on iTunes, but I don't have the $170 to drop on it, which is a shame, because it's about fifty percent bigger than the Complete U2 collection I bought about two or so years ago, and only twenty bucks more.
I suppose that all goes back to my nature for being a completist. I like to have the entire collection of things, even if I don't necessarily enjoy them. It lets me sit back and contemplate the evolution of a series of works and come to a conclusion about its overall artistic merit. This is never more evident than in my need to buy Marvel Comics collections on DVD-ROM for about forty bucks a hit, which is a phenomenal value, considering the price of back-issues, but I can't help but notice that the majority of comic book issues are mediocre at best, particularly in the 1990's. Regardless, once I start into something, I end up having to complete it, like a sort of absolute necessity. It drives me completely batshit insane that I don't have the fifth season of Smallville or the ninth season of X-Files on DVD, because I've got all the others.
Anyway. It's no wonder there are no women here as I type this. I have the house to myself at the moment, and I should, by all rights, be knee-deep in shepherds' daughters, but instead I'm bitching about the fact that I don't have the last season of X-Files. And I know you're thinking the same thing I am: What the hell is the point of the last season of X-Files, since Good Ol' One-Arm Krycek is dead? I mean, that fucker should've had his own spin-off show instead of that Millennium show with Lance Henriksen.
Don't get me wrong, Lance Henriksen is the shit, but I think Chris Carter was grasping at straws on that one. I mean, it's like how I worked for a company called Video 2000. Where the hell do you intend to go with a show called Millennium if it gets picked up beyond January 1, 2000? It didn't, and I'm pretty sure Video 2000 folded by the middle of 2001, most likely because the bosses didn't believe me when I said this new DVD thing was the future and we oughta jump on that bandwagon.
I'm sure I initially meant for this to be a short post that was relatively to some point or another, but now I've lost it, and I freely admit that. I figure I'd probably update more often if I had an editor, preferably an attractive female editor who's smarter than myself, as that would really serve to inspire me to write more often. If she used red ink to correct errors and such on my pre-published posts, that would really kick ass, as that would inevitably cause me to have flashbacks to my high school political-science student-teacher, because that woman was built like a brick shithouse.
You remember that scene in Big, where they knock over the books on the desk so the teacher will bend over so they can look down her shirt as she picks the stuff up? It was like that. I like to think those are the happy memories we go back to when we die.
Oh, fuck yeah, I forgot: Terry Moore, the guy who wrote Strangers in Paradise, which is probably my favorite non-Alan Moore-miniseries comic book, is going to be writing Spider-Man Loves Mary-Jane, which is this super-cute little saccharine-sweet comic book about Peter Parker and Mary-Jane in high school. It's drawn pseudo-anime style, but without, like, the tentacles and giant robots and huge spherical tits on the high school girls that one might tend to expect from anime after a lifetime of watching nothing but hentai pornography.
Okay, that is seriously too much personal information that I have given away now, so I am going to go to sleep and attempt to forget that I have ever written any of this.
AIM: therbmcc71
Monday, July 16, 2007
Shiny Happy People
So I'm listening to this bunch of 90's covers by The Hunt For Yoshi (appropriately titled Nintendo Goes 90's), and they're really quite faithful to the original material, except they sound like they're being played through a Nintendo Entertainment System (yes, the 1985 one) sound processor. It's fun, but you really have to be into that sort of thing. The cover of Depeche Mode's "Somebody" is actually better than the original, I think, but equally depressing for the die-hard emo Depeche Mode fan.
I'm in a financial/business news kind of mood today:
Gerber is recalling half a million packs of organic rice and organic oatmeal cereal that may pose a choking hazard to infants. The non-organic stuff apparently doesn't have this issue. So take that, you damn hippies. You're just going to have to feed your kids the same genetically engineered stuff that your parents gave you when you were a baby.
If you're in college right now, I'm sorry, but your books are probably going to cost even more, since Houghton-Mifflin is buying the Harcourt divisions of Reed Elsevier, which, if I look over my old college textbooks, basically breaks down to ... over seventy-five percent of what I've got. Not only that, but consider the implications for potential abuse, such as if the head honchos at Houghton-Mifflin were to one day go, "You know what? The Holocaust was bullshit. We're not putting that in the history books anymore." I'm pretty sure that just about all of my high school textbooks (outside the Norton literature anthologies) were from either Houghton-Mifflin or Harcourt-Brace, so it doesn't bode well for anyone in the future.
The International House of Pancakes is buying Applebee's. I can't understand why anyone would buy Applebee's, because that's where you take your wife for dinner when you've been married for thirty years and neither of you gives a shit anymore; it's just too much work to go through the divorce, so you just stick it out until the other one dies. I'm pretty sure that's the point my parents are at. They go to Applebee's once every couple of months.
I also read that McDonald's is pushing breakfast and coffee more, which is driving up their sales, apparently at the expense of Starbucks. I'm not too sure that it's necessarily that McDonald's is taking away from Starbucks customers, as much as I think it's the fact that you can feed breakfast to a family of eight at McDonald's for the price of a venti latte and a scone.
Okay, it's not quite that dramatic, but, having worked at Starbucks, I know how the two companies differ with regard to their systems, and McDonald's, over the past few years, has turned into this amazing logistical spectacle. If there's five cars in front of you at McDonald's, you're still going to get your food in probably five or six minutes and be on your way. Starbucks? Fuck that, you're in for the long haul, especially when it gets hot and people start ordering three different kinds of Frappuccinos per car, because those things don't come out of a soft-serve machine; they have to get mixed and blended individually.
If you really want to see the Starbucks logistical nightmare in a level of chaos that could only be equaled by the release of a biological agent into a heavily populated area, watch what happens to a Starbucks drive-thru when it rains. The cars will wrap themselves around the building, and people will wait for twenty minutes for a cup of coffee they could have gotten in two, if they'd just gotten out of their cars and walked in the front door. And then they complain about how long they've been waiting, which was always my favorite part. It's like, you see how long the line is, you see that it's not moving, but you get in it, and you stay in it, even after the ten minutes before you reach the point of no return, where you're now stuck in the drive-thru line. Rain or shine, though, that McDonald's drive-thru gets the cars in and gets them the fuck out.
I suppose it all comes down to a mission-statement sort of thing, where McDonald's figures what's good for everybody is essentially good for the individual, whereas Starbucks takes the tack that every individual is different. Personally, I think it's just a matter of too many fucking options over at Starbucks and not enough automation. It's just coffee, people.
AIM: therbmcc71
I'm in a financial/business news kind of mood today:
Gerber is recalling half a million packs of organic rice and organic oatmeal cereal that may pose a choking hazard to infants. The non-organic stuff apparently doesn't have this issue. So take that, you damn hippies. You're just going to have to feed your kids the same genetically engineered stuff that your parents gave you when you were a baby.
If you're in college right now, I'm sorry, but your books are probably going to cost even more, since Houghton-Mifflin is buying the Harcourt divisions of Reed Elsevier, which, if I look over my old college textbooks, basically breaks down to ... over seventy-five percent of what I've got. Not only that, but consider the implications for potential abuse, such as if the head honchos at Houghton-Mifflin were to one day go, "You know what? The Holocaust was bullshit. We're not putting that in the history books anymore." I'm pretty sure that just about all of my high school textbooks (outside the Norton literature anthologies) were from either Houghton-Mifflin or Harcourt-Brace, so it doesn't bode well for anyone in the future.
The International House of Pancakes is buying Applebee's. I can't understand why anyone would buy Applebee's, because that's where you take your wife for dinner when you've been married for thirty years and neither of you gives a shit anymore; it's just too much work to go through the divorce, so you just stick it out until the other one dies. I'm pretty sure that's the point my parents are at. They go to Applebee's once every couple of months.
I also read that McDonald's is pushing breakfast and coffee more, which is driving up their sales, apparently at the expense of Starbucks. I'm not too sure that it's necessarily that McDonald's is taking away from Starbucks customers, as much as I think it's the fact that you can feed breakfast to a family of eight at McDonald's for the price of a venti latte and a scone.
Okay, it's not quite that dramatic, but, having worked at Starbucks, I know how the two companies differ with regard to their systems, and McDonald's, over the past few years, has turned into this amazing logistical spectacle. If there's five cars in front of you at McDonald's, you're still going to get your food in probably five or six minutes and be on your way. Starbucks? Fuck that, you're in for the long haul, especially when it gets hot and people start ordering three different kinds of Frappuccinos per car, because those things don't come out of a soft-serve machine; they have to get mixed and blended individually.
If you really want to see the Starbucks logistical nightmare in a level of chaos that could only be equaled by the release of a biological agent into a heavily populated area, watch what happens to a Starbucks drive-thru when it rains. The cars will wrap themselves around the building, and people will wait for twenty minutes for a cup of coffee they could have gotten in two, if they'd just gotten out of their cars and walked in the front door. And then they complain about how long they've been waiting, which was always my favorite part. It's like, you see how long the line is, you see that it's not moving, but you get in it, and you stay in it, even after the ten minutes before you reach the point of no return, where you're now stuck in the drive-thru line. Rain or shine, though, that McDonald's drive-thru gets the cars in and gets them the fuck out.
I suppose it all comes down to a mission-statement sort of thing, where McDonald's figures what's good for everybody is essentially good for the individual, whereas Starbucks takes the tack that every individual is different. Personally, I think it's just a matter of too many fucking options over at Starbucks and not enough automation. It's just coffee, people.
AIM: therbmcc71
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Over and Out
I'm so pissed off about this whole Chris Benoit thing, and in a number of ways.
I have to tell you up front that I hope the guy rots in Hell for what he's done. I do. Whatever mitigating circumstances there might be, there's no excuse for what he did. None. I don't care what kind of drugs he might have been on, there's no excuse for killing your kid, unless you've got testimony from at least two priests who will say that the child is the devil; and even then, they have to at least perform an exorcism or two before they can give up hope.
Anyway, I just got home from karaoke, and I'm watching the Nancy Grace show, despite the fact that I know Nancy Grace is the most abhorrent show on television; as believing half of the shit that the anchor of that show (generally Nancy Grace) says is tantamount to lobotomizing oneself with a spoon, watching six hours of Fox News Network, and then reading a Bill O'Reilly book. Anyway, I'm watching this broad substitute for Nancy Grace, and she does the job exceptionally well, except for the fact that she's a brunette, and her teeth aren't as blindingly white, and she's got Bret Hart on as a guest commentator.
Now, Bret Hart is a legend. I just have to say that. I've never liked the guy much, but I do recognize his prominence as a wrestler, as I will ultimately recognize Peyton Manning, despite the fact that he robbed my Bears of a Superbowl victory. Regardless, Bret Hart's been out of the game for a couple of years, and he certainly has no reason to defend Vince McMahon, and so he goes on the show to be some sort of voice of reason...
If there's one thing the Nancy Grace show frowns upon, it's reason. They prefer to jump to the simplest possible conclusion, or the second-simplest, if that one will provide better ratings than the simplest conclusion. Nancy Grace is a big fan of finding guilt where the authorities have not yet determined reasonable expectation for guilt to exist, almost as though she's the world's biggest fan of Occam's Razor. The problem is, the world doesn't necessarily exist like this.
Take the Benoit case for example: Guy kills his wife and kid, then kills himself. Steroids are found in his home, along with painkillers and other drugs, all of which the local sheriff whatever spokesman said were legitimately prescribed (this is Tuesday, mind you). Now, the Nancy Grace show hears the word "steroids" and immediately assumes they're being taken by Chris Benoit, without considering the fact that Benoit's kid had Fragile X Syndrome, which is a form of autism, one of the side-effects is an extremely low degree of muscle mass. We're not talking about "oh, the kid's a little underweight," we're talking about something along the lines of the kid beyond beyond the Nicole Richie degree of being thin. The kid's gone past being gaunt.
Okay, so I'm not trying to excuse Chris Benoit's actions; I'm just trying to understand them. So, if this big, beefy professional wrestler had a kid who needed constant attention and wasn't ever going to be a normal kid, never going to be a normal adult, who was going to require constant attention for the remainder of his life, the wrestler's going to think, "What the fuck happened?" Again, I don't excuse the guy. He certainly had enough of an opportunity to find some sort of support network (although I understand it's very difficult to find a support network for Fragile X), but he didn't want to be a spokesman for the syndrome, according to something I found on WWE's website. And I can partially understand his desire to keep his private life private, but I still have to think that he was in a unique position to be a hero to a lot of wrestling fans who might have children or other relatives with Fragile X or other forms of autism.
Two or three days after the discovery of the bodies of Benoit and his family, the Massachusetts Institute of Technolgy announced that they have been able to reverse the effects of Fragile X in mice. Maybe if the news had come out a week sooner, if it was the stress of his son's condition that caused Chris Benoit to kill his family and himself, maybe Benoit would have found the strength to hold on for a while longer. Granted, it's going to be years before this discovery hits human trials, but it's hope for a lot of people.
And if it wasn't his son's condition that drove Benoit to do it, maybe it was the drugs; and I'm not talking about steroids, here, because nothing in this case screams, "'Roid Rage!!!" No, the Bibles at the bedsides of the victims doesn't shout, "Yeah, I'm fuckin' batshit insane;" it's more along the lines of an act of contrition. Furthermore, these guys get knocked over the top rope every week, get body-slammed, suplexed, clotheslined, powerbombed, you name it. They're in a lot of pain after every match. If you think wrestling is fake, you're wrong. The wrestling is real; the outcome of the match is predetermined, but the wrestling is real. So maybe the guy was on a bad cocktail of pain-killing drugs.
Now, I don't know if they have one or several or none at all, but I would hope that the WWE would take this opportunity to enlist at least one, if not a permanent staff, of psychiatrists to keep track of these guys. Granted, the WWE probably isn't liable for Benoit's actions, but it's really in the best interest of the company to make sure that their employees are as sound of mind as they are of body.
I just find this whole situation tremendously sad for all parties. I find it sad for the extended family of Chris Benoit and his wife; I find it sad for the WWE corporation, because they're being burned at the stake right now, as much as Chris Benoit is; I find it sad for the fans who have taken down their posters of Chris Benoit because he's rotting in Hell as we speak; but I find it sad, most of all, for Daniel Benoit, whose only sin was being born with an unusual X-chromosome.
Anyway, back to Bret Hart. I'm not a fan, generally. Never have been. But the thing that drives me absolutely batshit insane about the Nancy Grace show is that any time that someone starts to make sense of a situation, particularly when that bit of sense runs against whatever sensationalistic angle the show happens to be running with, they cut the person off as soon as humanly possible, despite the fact that the commentator might actually be a legitimate source of actual information. So Bret Hart, wrestling legend, was pretty much limited to about thirty or so seconds of comment before being cut off for either a commercial or some schmuck who thinks this is all the result of 'Roid Rage.
Bret Hart, today, you are my hero. I only wish there were any channels out there that were actually devoted to finding truth, rather than just getting ratings. I loved the way they said under Bret Hart's name, "Close friend of Chris Benoit," when everything I've read said that Chris Benoit really didn't have any close friends. Clearly, being a fellow Canadian and professional wrestler is close enough for Headline News to deem "close friendship."
So, in closing, fuck you, Nancy Grace Show. Fuck you, your substitute hosts, your producers, your sponsors, and anyone at the corporate level involved with keeping your show alive.
On a lighter note, I wholeheartedly recommend dropping ninety-nine cents on the Chris Cornell cover of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean." It is as good as you'd think it is, just from reading that sentence.
AIM: therbmcc71
I have to tell you up front that I hope the guy rots in Hell for what he's done. I do. Whatever mitigating circumstances there might be, there's no excuse for what he did. None. I don't care what kind of drugs he might have been on, there's no excuse for killing your kid, unless you've got testimony from at least two priests who will say that the child is the devil; and even then, they have to at least perform an exorcism or two before they can give up hope.
Anyway, I just got home from karaoke, and I'm watching the Nancy Grace show, despite the fact that I know Nancy Grace is the most abhorrent show on television; as believing half of the shit that the anchor of that show (generally Nancy Grace) says is tantamount to lobotomizing oneself with a spoon, watching six hours of Fox News Network, and then reading a Bill O'Reilly book. Anyway, I'm watching this broad substitute for Nancy Grace, and she does the job exceptionally well, except for the fact that she's a brunette, and her teeth aren't as blindingly white, and she's got Bret Hart on as a guest commentator.
Now, Bret Hart is a legend. I just have to say that. I've never liked the guy much, but I do recognize his prominence as a wrestler, as I will ultimately recognize Peyton Manning, despite the fact that he robbed my Bears of a Superbowl victory. Regardless, Bret Hart's been out of the game for a couple of years, and he certainly has no reason to defend Vince McMahon, and so he goes on the show to be some sort of voice of reason...
If there's one thing the Nancy Grace show frowns upon, it's reason. They prefer to jump to the simplest possible conclusion, or the second-simplest, if that one will provide better ratings than the simplest conclusion. Nancy Grace is a big fan of finding guilt where the authorities have not yet determined reasonable expectation for guilt to exist, almost as though she's the world's biggest fan of Occam's Razor. The problem is, the world doesn't necessarily exist like this.
Take the Benoit case for example: Guy kills his wife and kid, then kills himself. Steroids are found in his home, along with painkillers and other drugs, all of which the local sheriff whatever spokesman said were legitimately prescribed (this is Tuesday, mind you). Now, the Nancy Grace show hears the word "steroids" and immediately assumes they're being taken by Chris Benoit, without considering the fact that Benoit's kid had Fragile X Syndrome, which is a form of autism, one of the side-effects is an extremely low degree of muscle mass. We're not talking about "oh, the kid's a little underweight," we're talking about something along the lines of the kid beyond beyond the Nicole Richie degree of being thin. The kid's gone past being gaunt.
Okay, so I'm not trying to excuse Chris Benoit's actions; I'm just trying to understand them. So, if this big, beefy professional wrestler had a kid who needed constant attention and wasn't ever going to be a normal kid, never going to be a normal adult, who was going to require constant attention for the remainder of his life, the wrestler's going to think, "What the fuck happened?" Again, I don't excuse the guy. He certainly had enough of an opportunity to find some sort of support network (although I understand it's very difficult to find a support network for Fragile X), but he didn't want to be a spokesman for the syndrome, according to something I found on WWE's website. And I can partially understand his desire to keep his private life private, but I still have to think that he was in a unique position to be a hero to a lot of wrestling fans who might have children or other relatives with Fragile X or other forms of autism.
Two or three days after the discovery of the bodies of Benoit and his family, the Massachusetts Institute of Technolgy announced that they have been able to reverse the effects of Fragile X in mice. Maybe if the news had come out a week sooner, if it was the stress of his son's condition that caused Chris Benoit to kill his family and himself, maybe Benoit would have found the strength to hold on for a while longer. Granted, it's going to be years before this discovery hits human trials, but it's hope for a lot of people.
And if it wasn't his son's condition that drove Benoit to do it, maybe it was the drugs; and I'm not talking about steroids, here, because nothing in this case screams, "'Roid Rage!!!" No, the Bibles at the bedsides of the victims doesn't shout, "Yeah, I'm fuckin' batshit insane;" it's more along the lines of an act of contrition. Furthermore, these guys get knocked over the top rope every week, get body-slammed, suplexed, clotheslined, powerbombed, you name it. They're in a lot of pain after every match. If you think wrestling is fake, you're wrong. The wrestling is real; the outcome of the match is predetermined, but the wrestling is real. So maybe the guy was on a bad cocktail of pain-killing drugs.
Now, I don't know if they have one or several or none at all, but I would hope that the WWE would take this opportunity to enlist at least one, if not a permanent staff, of psychiatrists to keep track of these guys. Granted, the WWE probably isn't liable for Benoit's actions, but it's really in the best interest of the company to make sure that their employees are as sound of mind as they are of body.
I just find this whole situation tremendously sad for all parties. I find it sad for the extended family of Chris Benoit and his wife; I find it sad for the WWE corporation, because they're being burned at the stake right now, as much as Chris Benoit is; I find it sad for the fans who have taken down their posters of Chris Benoit because he's rotting in Hell as we speak; but I find it sad, most of all, for Daniel Benoit, whose only sin was being born with an unusual X-chromosome.
Anyway, back to Bret Hart. I'm not a fan, generally. Never have been. But the thing that drives me absolutely batshit insane about the Nancy Grace show is that any time that someone starts to make sense of a situation, particularly when that bit of sense runs against whatever sensationalistic angle the show happens to be running with, they cut the person off as soon as humanly possible, despite the fact that the commentator might actually be a legitimate source of actual information. So Bret Hart, wrestling legend, was pretty much limited to about thirty or so seconds of comment before being cut off for either a commercial or some schmuck who thinks this is all the result of 'Roid Rage.
Bret Hart, today, you are my hero. I only wish there were any channels out there that were actually devoted to finding truth, rather than just getting ratings. I loved the way they said under Bret Hart's name, "Close friend of Chris Benoit," when everything I've read said that Chris Benoit really didn't have any close friends. Clearly, being a fellow Canadian and professional wrestler is close enough for Headline News to deem "close friendship."
So, in closing, fuck you, Nancy Grace Show. Fuck you, your substitute hosts, your producers, your sponsors, and anyone at the corporate level involved with keeping your show alive.
On a lighter note, I wholeheartedly recommend dropping ninety-nine cents on the Chris Cornell cover of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean." It is as good as you'd think it is, just from reading that sentence.
AIM: therbmcc71
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Stupid Typo
So, I thought I was going to look at pornography this evening, but instead I'm reading about rhotic versus non-rhotic accents. I had no idea there was even such a thing or terminology to define it. I figured accents just vary so wildly that it's impossible to simply categorize them as one or the other. During all of this, I started to read about African American Vernacular English, which is actually quite entertaining once you get to one simple conclusion:
There are people (generally college professors) who think this shit is monumentally important.
Why, no, I've never been a fan of Noam Chomsky's work. Why do you ask?
AIM: therbmcc71
There are people (generally college professors) who think this shit is monumentally important.
Why, no, I've never been a fan of Noam Chomsky's work. Why do you ask?
AIM: therbmcc71
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Alex Descends into Hell for a Bottle of Milk
So I can't find the notebook in which I placed the review of the opening band for the last show I went to. Oh well, I think we'll all live. I'll find it eventually and cruelty will ensue.
At the moment, I'm involved in a war of comments over at Joystiq, with regard to the sales of the Sony PSP versus the Nintendo DS. There's a PSP fanboy over there who seems to think that the DS and the DS Lite are two completely separate creatures, and that their sales should be regarded separately, which would allow him to say that the PSP has outsold the DS Lite in the worldwide arena. First, this is probably untrue, since DS Lites started appearing on shelves again, as well as a nice boost in sales since the two new Pokemon games came out. Second, he's throwing logic to the wind, which inevitably causes me to do the same, but he doesn't understand that I do it from the standpoint of satire, mocking his idiocy. For proof of his idiocy, he thinks that four movie titles in a month being released on the PSP qualifies as support for the UMD format, despite the fact that the only studio releasing movies on UMD happens to be... Sony.
Unfortunately, he hasn't responded to my last comment in about ten minutes, which means he's probably waiting a few hours until I go to sleep so he can get the last word in. In the meantime, we'll cover the day's news:
Yeah, that's all I've got right now. Slow news day.
AIM: therbmcc71
At the moment, I'm involved in a war of comments over at Joystiq, with regard to the sales of the Sony PSP versus the Nintendo DS. There's a PSP fanboy over there who seems to think that the DS and the DS Lite are two completely separate creatures, and that their sales should be regarded separately, which would allow him to say that the PSP has outsold the DS Lite in the worldwide arena. First, this is probably untrue, since DS Lites started appearing on shelves again, as well as a nice boost in sales since the two new Pokemon games came out. Second, he's throwing logic to the wind, which inevitably causes me to do the same, but he doesn't understand that I do it from the standpoint of satire, mocking his idiocy. For proof of his idiocy, he thinks that four movie titles in a month being released on the PSP qualifies as support for the UMD format, despite the fact that the only studio releasing movies on UMD happens to be... Sony.
Unfortunately, he hasn't responded to my last comment in about ten minutes, which means he's probably waiting a few hours until I go to sleep so he can get the last word in. In the meantime, we'll cover the day's news:
- Jerry Falwell is dead. Can't say I'm any more upset by this than he would be upset if a gay man died of AIDS. I guess the good lord didn't love Jerry Falwell enough to keep him alive.
- Apple's increased the clockspeed on the MacBook line, but the graphics processor remains the Intel GMA950, which is incapable of doing on-chip Transform & Lighting rendering, which drives me batshit insane.
- Smashing Pumpkins are coming back... except it's Billy Corgan, Jimmy Chamberlin, and ... well, some people to fill the roles of D'arcy Wretzky and James Iha, so doesn't that technically make it more of a Zwan comeback?
- Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are teaming up to do an animated Tintin trilogy. I fuckin' hate Tintin. Have since grade school.
- The movie Mr. Sardonicus is free on the local movie-on-demand service. I've watched it twice, because it's such a bad movie. Seriously, if you've got Comcast, give it a whirl and then come back and tell me the main character (not Sardonicus) doesn't look just like David Hasselhoff.
Yeah, that's all I've got right now. Slow news day.
AIM: therbmcc71
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Come Sail Away
So it didn't hit me what Danimal's passing really meant to me on a personal level until probably twenty-four hours after I made my last post: I'm never going to be able to sing "Come Sail Away" ever again, because I've lost my Chef. I don't do anything else well at karaoke, and now my Chef is gone. So it reminds me of this tribute to Mel Blanc:
I have to be at a funeral in seven hours, so you'll have to excuse my being so brief. By the way, the next time I post, it is going to be about that band I saw last Friday. Life's too short to lock something like that away forever.
AIM: therbmcc71
I have to be at a funeral in seven hours, so you'll have to excuse my being so brief. By the way, the next time I post, it is going to be about that band I saw last Friday. Life's too short to lock something like that away forever.
AIM: therbmcc71
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Fell On Black Days
So I was going to post this running commentary I was scribbling last night while I was out seeing the band, but I'm not going to bother doing that today because my friend (and the guy who runs the karaoke I regularly attend) Dan died suddenly yesterday. One of those "just dropped dead" things. So I'm not really in the mood to type up something really extravagantly entertaining. I think he'd have enjoyed what I wrote last night, but now's not really the time to giggle to myself as I type.
I'll post it at some point. It's not as entertaining as the show with Gypsy the Biker, but there are some good zingers in there. But it'll have to wait.
AIM: therbmcc71
I'll post it at some point. It's not as entertaining as the show with Gypsy the Biker, but there are some good zingers in there. But it'll have to wait.
AIM: therbmcc71
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Boys Don't Cry
So I told Kevin that I'd try to update. To be specific, I told him that I'd try to try, but I took the time to hit iTunes and go shopping. I still haven't found anything that I particularly want to buy, but at least I'm out of this bizarre week-long fetish that I had for post-Rammstein European electronica/industrial music that I only use for playing player-versus-player in World of Warcraft, which I've fallen back into ever since they released the expansion back in January, at which point I decided to make myself a Paladin on a new server. It's quite the experience, and it's been taking up a fair bit of my time.
Right now I'm listening to this rather eclectic mix of Unplugged performances, from Alanis Morissette to Oasis to Paul Simon to Elton John to Lenny Kravitz. I'd mention Hootie and the Blowfish, because it's in there, but will be deleted at my earliest possible convenience. But the mention of music kind of hinges on the reason that I stopped blogging some four or so months ago:
I realized that I'm starting to get old, and I made a note to myself that by my next birthday, in standing with a promise I made to myself several years ago, that I have to put together a Bruce Springsteen cover band. I've always wanted to be in a bar band, and I've always thought the E Street Band is probably the best bar band on the planet, and so it makes perfect sense that I'd like to be Bruce Springsteen. After all, who wouldn't? I figure I'm halfway there, with my Parker P-36 "Telly knockoff" that I'm fabulously in love with but don't play nearly enough. Sadly, I can't sing like Springsteen, but Kevin said, "Just scream," which is probably about accurate. I mean, hell, I can sing "The River" or "Brilliant Disguise," but "Born to Run" and "Born in the U.S.A." and the end of "Jungleland" are a bit of a challenge.
But I saw Kevin and the boys (read: Small Shiny Things) tonight, and it was a good time. Probably would've been better if they'd gone on earlier, but I can't complain, because I saw a lot of people I hadn't seen in several months, a few that I really wasn't expecting to see, and a lot of people that it was a real joy to see. My friend Shawn was unexpectedly in attendance, and he showed me his new tattoo of Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise. It was a really good St. Patrick's Day show.
I would elaborate, but I just had to switch over to iTunes and immediately delete the Bjork song that was on there. Stupid compilation CD's. There are precious few things that I will not listen to willingly: Screaming children who are not related to me, Imogen Heap, and Bjork. I can tolerate most other things, but those are the big three that make me want to hit people.
While I'm on the subject of music, I've asked all of the girls at work who went to the Justin Timberlake concert, and none of them can answer this for me: What the fuck is "Sexyback" about? Every single one of them says, "I don't know," and it pisses me off, because it takes one or two listens to a Springsteen song to get the gist of it. It took me more than a few listens to Nirvana's Nevermind before I got the joke and realized, "Y'know what? These songs don't mean shit."
I need a vacation. I really do. Unfortunately, situations at work preclude this, because we have this one girl who's completely incompetent, and I can't leave for more than two days until she's off the schedule (read: hopefully fired) without thinking that she's trying to burn down my lab. Unfortunately, I have no control over this and management doesn't seem to think it's a priority, as I can't prove to them with invoices and things the dollar amount of things that she's destroying on a daily basis. But I really want to take a vacation, or at least have three or four days off in a row without work calling me to ask how to do some particularly complicated thing that they shouldn't be doing in the first place.
I've bought a number of videogames, a few movies, and probably several other things that I should have commented on over the last few months, but I'm not going to at the moment, because my comments are quite wordy. I'm trying to figure out how to put together a new site, but I need a domain name and a lot of control over the layout; far more than Blogger is willing to offer me. I'm trying to do something with a page in which there's no scrolling involved, and the pages look and flip like a magazine or newspaper. I find that columns are a hell of a lot easier to read than the "wall of text" that comprise most blogs. For some sites, you'll find something like this on the front page, but then you'll find walls of text on the subsequent pages, but I'm looking for something uniform, which means a lot of work up front, and I'm really not sure how long I'd like to keep it up, anyway. At this point, this paragraph should look like a wall of text in your browser, so you now see what I'm bitching about.
Anyway. I'm going to go to sleep now, as I have to work tomorrow. I'm going to fall asleep watching the Miami Vice movie, as I have the last two times I tried to watch it. As much as I like Michael Mann films, for some reason I don't think this movie is as good as the TV show. And I don't mean the TV show as a whole, but pretty much any episode Michael Mann ever had anything to do with. Given the several years of Nash Bridges, I never figured I'd want to see Don Johnson step back into the loafers and bright pink shirt of Sonny Crockett, but I just don't think Colin Farrell really brings much to the table in the role. I think it's the fault of Michael Mann's script, as I've seen Colin Farrell make much more out of a lot less (read: Daredevil), but I watch the movie and keep thinking to myself, "Y'know, I bet Don Johnson and Phillip Michael Thomas would have been badass in this movie."
Yeah, so like I said. Sleep. I told you I'd update, Kevin! Ha-ha!
AIM: therbmcc71
Right now I'm listening to this rather eclectic mix of Unplugged performances, from Alanis Morissette to Oasis to Paul Simon to Elton John to Lenny Kravitz. I'd mention Hootie and the Blowfish, because it's in there, but will be deleted at my earliest possible convenience. But the mention of music kind of hinges on the reason that I stopped blogging some four or so months ago:
I realized that I'm starting to get old, and I made a note to myself that by my next birthday, in standing with a promise I made to myself several years ago, that I have to put together a Bruce Springsteen cover band. I've always wanted to be in a bar band, and I've always thought the E Street Band is probably the best bar band on the planet, and so it makes perfect sense that I'd like to be Bruce Springsteen. After all, who wouldn't? I figure I'm halfway there, with my Parker P-36 "Telly knockoff" that I'm fabulously in love with but don't play nearly enough. Sadly, I can't sing like Springsteen, but Kevin said, "Just scream," which is probably about accurate. I mean, hell, I can sing "The River" or "Brilliant Disguise," but "Born to Run" and "Born in the U.S.A." and the end of "Jungleland" are a bit of a challenge.
But I saw Kevin and the boys (read: Small Shiny Things) tonight, and it was a good time. Probably would've been better if they'd gone on earlier, but I can't complain, because I saw a lot of people I hadn't seen in several months, a few that I really wasn't expecting to see, and a lot of people that it was a real joy to see. My friend Shawn was unexpectedly in attendance, and he showed me his new tattoo of Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise. It was a really good St. Patrick's Day show.
I would elaborate, but I just had to switch over to iTunes and immediately delete the Bjork song that was on there. Stupid compilation CD's. There are precious few things that I will not listen to willingly: Screaming children who are not related to me, Imogen Heap, and Bjork. I can tolerate most other things, but those are the big three that make me want to hit people.
While I'm on the subject of music, I've asked all of the girls at work who went to the Justin Timberlake concert, and none of them can answer this for me: What the fuck is "Sexyback" about? Every single one of them says, "I don't know," and it pisses me off, because it takes one or two listens to a Springsteen song to get the gist of it. It took me more than a few listens to Nirvana's Nevermind before I got the joke and realized, "Y'know what? These songs don't mean shit."
I need a vacation. I really do. Unfortunately, situations at work preclude this, because we have this one girl who's completely incompetent, and I can't leave for more than two days until she's off the schedule (read: hopefully fired) without thinking that she's trying to burn down my lab. Unfortunately, I have no control over this and management doesn't seem to think it's a priority, as I can't prove to them with invoices and things the dollar amount of things that she's destroying on a daily basis. But I really want to take a vacation, or at least have three or four days off in a row without work calling me to ask how to do some particularly complicated thing that they shouldn't be doing in the first place.
I've bought a number of videogames, a few movies, and probably several other things that I should have commented on over the last few months, but I'm not going to at the moment, because my comments are quite wordy. I'm trying to figure out how to put together a new site, but I need a domain name and a lot of control over the layout; far more than Blogger is willing to offer me. I'm trying to do something with a page in which there's no scrolling involved, and the pages look and flip like a magazine or newspaper. I find that columns are a hell of a lot easier to read than the "wall of text" that comprise most blogs. For some sites, you'll find something like this on the front page, but then you'll find walls of text on the subsequent pages, but I'm looking for something uniform, which means a lot of work up front, and I'm really not sure how long I'd like to keep it up, anyway. At this point, this paragraph should look like a wall of text in your browser, so you now see what I'm bitching about.
Anyway. I'm going to go to sleep now, as I have to work tomorrow. I'm going to fall asleep watching the Miami Vice movie, as I have the last two times I tried to watch it. As much as I like Michael Mann films, for some reason I don't think this movie is as good as the TV show. And I don't mean the TV show as a whole, but pretty much any episode Michael Mann ever had anything to do with. Given the several years of Nash Bridges, I never figured I'd want to see Don Johnson step back into the loafers and bright pink shirt of Sonny Crockett, but I just don't think Colin Farrell really brings much to the table in the role. I think it's the fault of Michael Mann's script, as I've seen Colin Farrell make much more out of a lot less (read: Daredevil), but I watch the movie and keep thinking to myself, "Y'know, I bet Don Johnson and Phillip Michael Thomas would have been badass in this movie."
Yeah, so like I said. Sleep. I told you I'd update, Kevin! Ha-ha!
AIM: therbmcc71
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
