Tuesday, October 5, 2004

Whipped
Man, I am tired...very very tired and just going through the motions so far. But I get to go see Ratatat tonight so maybe I'll get a nap in and then rock out.

Are you tired? Do you all take naps?
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Friday, October 1, 2004

BOOOOO
So I changed my profile picture temporarily to the character I'm going to be for halloween this year. Assuming you don't recognize him its "terminal" from Batman Beyond. He was a high school student who snapped and tried to off the one student that had higher grades than him. That in itself is a little lame, but he was a really cool villian voice by Michael Rosenbaum (Lex Luthor from Smallville) and I love the skull makeup. I've actually done that makeup in my undergrad days when me and my pals used to terrorize the dorms (in a silly way).

Other fun stuff, I tracked down Gradius V, which apparently not many stores carry for whatever reason. Its tons of fun. Basically just a graphical update for the series, it has similar levels and a lot of the same bosses from Gradius and Life force games. Its also super hard. I've been playing it on normal and most of the time the screen is filled entirely with things to avoid, my eyes sort of space out from the flashing and colors and its a blink and die kind of game. So in other words its excellent. I can get to level 4 on normal, but I tried it once on very easy and made it to L6 where it starts to get extra-insane. The up, up, down, down code works too which is always a treat.
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Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Ok ok ok...
Alright so I don't mind so much posting slow since next to nobody reads this.

I saw Rilo Kiley Friday and it was really good. The first opener was Tilly and the walls, a five-member "band" that consisted of a keyboard player, two female singers, a very gay guitarist and a tapdancer in place of the traditional drums or any sort of percussion. While the music wasn't that great, I was sold on them by the freakshow value of the tapdancing.

The second band was Now its overhead. I liked them quite a bit, theyre sort of a spacy, high distortion emo band. The singer was a bit fruity but overall they sounded really good. I wouldn't reccomend them though because their live show is really way better than their CD. I bought it at the show and barely recognized the songs I had heard. It really has no energy and just wasn't mixed well in my opinion.

Rilo Kiley came on and was a good payoff. Jenny is really tiny and was hard to see unless I stood on my toes, but she switched back and forth from guitar to keyboard and they did just about every song I like and wanted to hear. She was funny and they talked about how the bassist invented an ant free dogbowl with a water moat. At the end she sang in the crowd.

Muse was another story altogether. Not too enthused about Sunday night shows that are two hours away from home, I just had to go anyway. I tried to get there late to miss the line and opener, but ti didn't really work out since they started real late. The opening band I forget their name because they were absolutely terrible. They were the anti-Muse. The singer alternated between singing poorly and screaming, and their songs were really dull and plodding. I am not one to outdo anyone on guitar, but I've been in high school bands with much more well written songs and guitar parts. ugh! it was bad.

Muse started and it was bad news for one reason...way too much strobe light. My wife gets really bothered by it and she couldn't look. I think they strobed through the entire first song. While they played awesome and he sang just as powerfully as the CD's, that kinda sucked. I spent some time in the back, and for the second half I went up near the front by myself. They played songs off all 3 albums, and everyone flipped out when they played the radio song off absolution. Its weird because I don't think that song is any better or worse than any song on the album. I guess people like familiarity. I experienced something like that at a Weezer show. It was just before the green album was coming out and everyone would go nuts and sing along to Buddy Holly and Sweater song and all the old songs, but they play some new toons and everyone stands dead still. It was really retarded, it was like I was one of the only ones into hearing new songs. It was then that I learned that most people that go to concerts are lame, like 80%.
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Saturday, September 25, 2004

Concerto
I saw Rilo Kiley yesterday in Portland in a nice small show, it was awesome. Details later but they involve tap dancing.

Next up, Muse tomorrow so I'll be back in Po-town.
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Wednesday, September 22, 2004

School
The regular sessions at UO are starting back up again, so the morning bus is going to be packed with students again. A bunch of new students will be joining our lab for 10 weeks that I and my pals are going to have to train in the ways of chemistry as well. I also have to TA general chemistry which is a drag because it soaks up a lot of time that could otherwise be dedicated to my doctoral research. Ah, well I was pretty pissed about all fo the extra work for a while but its settled and I can deal with it OK, maybe I'll re-learn some stuff from teaching college freshmen (seem so young). I'll be turning 24 at the end of next month so I don't quite feel old yet, especially since most of the people in my program, even the ones who have started this year (I'm 3rd year) are older than me. Most people didn't go straight into grad school after undergrad. I pretty much know the jobs you get with a 4-year chemistry degree are boring as hell though, so the more school the better the job in the end.
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Friday, September 17, 2004

?
Hmmm, nobody likes the activism stuff eh?
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Thursday, September 16, 2004

Problem Economy
One of the biggest problems with our economy and capitalism in general is something that I don't think that too many people think about. In the current system, goods are imported and exported in a manner that brings the most inexpensive products to stores. The cost of say, banana's reflects the cost needed to grow them, harvest them and ship them to the stores.

There are problems with this assesment. A country like Jamaica which is a natural source of Bananas imports a large # of them from the USA. They do this because they are cheaper to buy from us than to eat their own. They are cheaper because we subsidize (tax money goes to farmers) farmers which makes our food products really cheap to outcompete foreign products even on their own soil. As weird and unfair as this is, there is another big problem with this system.

Current economic models that our government uses don't take into account any sort of environmental impact. Instead of using/buying food or other good produced in out country we buy imported goods and things shipped across the country. Shipping in huge boats and trucks impacts our environment through increased emissions and also things like the occasional oil spill. None of this counts against GDP. In fact if you comitted suicide it would increase GDP.

The answer is to consider these issues in your daily life. Hopefully our ecomonic model will eventually change to include environmental cost and affect the way big international corporations do business. It would have happened already if big business didn't have such a stranglehold on our government. Buy local products, or if you can't then buy regional products or at least things made in the USA. Do something to make a small impact.
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Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Music = Franz Ferdinand
Its not entirely original if you've listen to any music from the 80's, but by today's standards they are a pretty good band. Suprisingly enough I heard them on the MTV where a lot of airplay means song and video clips in between episodes of road rules and other BS. Their single "take me out" is super catchy in an 80's new wave kind of sound. I went out and bought the CD yesterday though and its really quite good. It doesn't suffer from any of the letdown where the single sounds nothing like the rest of the album (curse you crappy steriogram!!) and all of the tracks fit together quite well. Give it a listen in a good CD store or find some songs online, its a good album for 2004.
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Monday, September 13, 2004

Poop
Even though it didn't look very good at all, I went to see Resident Evil: Apocalypse opening night. I just took it all in and didn't try to overthink it and it was ok. It was really an action movie and didn't have many scary parts in it besides the occasional things jumping out at you. The action wasn't hampered by any pesky character development either as Jill Valentine from the videogames was tossed in the fray as a survivor. There were a few cool homages to the games (mostly from code veronica) like the golden guns and some settings seemed right out of the game. The zombies weren't scary at all, but I picked up the Walking Dead #10 (comic) that day to I could get some zombie action. Unfortunately that was all foreshadowing too!!! Ok....maybe I need to watch my 28 days later DVD even though thats not quite zombies....
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utter garbage
I'm a generally unfuckwitted, liberal, not-too-generous, not-too-selfish, pathetically simple-minded, dribbling child!
See how compatible you are with me!
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey
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