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
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
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
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Until the End of the World
The last week or so has been absurdly crappy, so I'm going to go low-profile for a few weeks or so. In the meantime, I'm going to ponder things like the legitimacy, or lack thereof, of the ontological argument; where Superman Returns ranks in the grand scheme of superhero movies; whether I have to replace the CD-R drive on my desktop because of its sticking door; whether or not to buy Trauma Center for the Wii; read some books; crap like that. Before anything else, though, I'm going to read through the entire run of The Amazing Spider-Man, which should be arriving at my door tomorrow afternoon.
And I think I'm going to start exercising my writing skills again. I came up with an absurdly bad plot for a movie about a week ago, and I think I'm just going to knock the script out for shits and giggles. And, when I say it's absurdly bad, it's bad. I mean, I know I use the word absurdly a lot more than I should, but I'm not a walking thesaurus, and this plot is certainly absurd, to the point where I wouldn't have considered writing it when I was in high school and I thought highly of my writing skills. But the story (all thirty or so words of it) makes me giggle, so I'm going to knock out a really bad script for a really bad movie. I'm putting a handlebar mustache on the main character, which just makes me giggle that much more.
In any case, I'm not posting for a while; not that anyone's going to notice, since Technorati lists a whopping one site that links to mine. So I'm going to go be productive and shit, but it's going to be a while before anyone sees me again. In the event that you happen to instant-message me and get an away-message, chances are about fifty-fifty that I'm deliberately ignoring you.
AIM: therbmcc71
And I think I'm going to start exercising my writing skills again. I came up with an absurdly bad plot for a movie about a week ago, and I think I'm just going to knock the script out for shits and giggles. And, when I say it's absurdly bad, it's bad. I mean, I know I use the word absurdly a lot more than I should, but I'm not a walking thesaurus, and this plot is certainly absurd, to the point where I wouldn't have considered writing it when I was in high school and I thought highly of my writing skills. But the story (all thirty or so words of it) makes me giggle, so I'm going to knock out a really bad script for a really bad movie. I'm putting a handlebar mustache on the main character, which just makes me giggle that much more.
In any case, I'm not posting for a while; not that anyone's going to notice, since Technorati lists a whopping one site that links to mine. So I'm going to go be productive and shit, but it's going to be a while before anyone sees me again. In the event that you happen to instant-message me and get an away-message, chances are about fifty-fifty that I'm deliberately ignoring you.
AIM: therbmcc71
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
