Monday, August 15, 2005

and may your sun never set
Double dose of disappointment teh Sunday rock show was. First off my lovely wifey was sick, and didn't make it to the show. I don't really care much about the lost ticket $$, but it sucks to not be able to go to a show when you want to. Luckily I had some chemistry pals coming along anyway. So the show was ok, the sound for CKY wasn't that great because the bass and drums overpowered the guitar. The whole draw of CKY is the guitar! It wasn't too too bad, bad not as good as I hoped. That and Voodoo doughnut was closed! Alas, my non-vegetarian friend was unable to eat the donut with bacon on it. (That was the second disappointment, not the sound).

So that chapter is over, next show is next week Friday where the minibosses are playing at an old-school arcade + bar. That should be a lot of fun, videogames and videogame music combined forces for a good time.

Other than that, Rachael has an uncle that she has met about four times in her life thats coming over today. In fact he might be there right now for as far as I know? It should be interesting since she doesn't know him very well and I've never met him, but he's crashing on our futon for a day or possibly two. Sounds pretty much like the definition of awkward, but I guess I don't mind. Should be interesting to see what happens.
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Sunday, August 14, 2005

lazy
The president gets more vacation time than I do! What the hell? isn't he supposed to be running the country? Instead he gets a big 5 week vacation with no distractions but the woman who is camped out outside of his ranch. And what has he really been doing recently anyway? The "war" in Iraq isn't exactly changing at all, still people getting blown up everyday.

Maybe its just a matter of his ultra-stubborn convictions. They work out rather conveniently since he never admits a mistake and never changes course. That way once you've laid out a plan, you can just sit back and do nothing. There are just so many bad examples of this behavior from him. The baseball player accused of steroid use tests positive for steroids. Bush knows him from being an owner in Texas as believes that the guy unwittingly took roids. How blindly loyal can you be? Does he really believe that crap? Pisses me off is all. I shouldn't feel smarter than the leader of my country, there just is something quite wrong with that.
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Tuesday, August 9, 2005

heart grows fonder
Hmm, well I know there was something I was planning on saying here...

Oh yeah! I went to Portland this past weekend for a mini-vacation. Left Friday and went to Multnomah Falls. It was actually a pretty cool place until we got to the falls itself. There was a short hiking path to a smaller falls before the big one, and that was really cool. You could walk up right next to it and get wet. Then instead of driving to M. Falls we took another hiking path that few people were on and that was fun. It empties out into a big parking lot and touristy section. The falls itself was awesome, but the gaggle of squealing babies and fat people eating ice cream at the gift shop pretty much ruined it for me. I really hate it when they build a big tourist area right around the attraction. Mt Rushmore felt the same way, and was crap. There should be a rule that these types of attractions should be at least a quarter mile from the tourist city.

After that we stuck our feet in the Columbia river and did some shopping around in Portland. We were staying at this hipster hotel that is attached to a restaurant and Bar/Lounge. Some bad Ani DIfranco-type singer was playing which we ignored. Actually the real goal of the night was to go to Voodoo Donut (http://www.voodoodoughnut.com/menu.html).
Its worth taking a look at, if for nothing else than the dirty shaped donuts. The king of the night was the Portland Creme; which was basically the same thing as a Boston creme but with about three times the filling. The thing was heavy, and will probably kill me. All I know is that I'll be back there this Sunday for CKY and need some mad donut action after being around all those 14 year old Bam wannabe's.
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Wednesday, August 3, 2005

Music Industry
Well, what Tony said on the comments for the last post sounds appealing. I had always been pretty adamant about not letting anyone copy my albums until fairly recently. I still don't much like the idea of giving away ripped copies of small label bands except as samples, but a battle cry of "bankrupt the major labels" sounds pretty good to me. We all know that they suck. They make way more money off the music than the artist does. They only follow existing trends, which makes you wonder how any new "genre" gets through. They also suck (so so eloquent). The cost of concerts for any fairly popular band makes me mad too, but thats for another time.

I think that in a way, pop music has become like commercial jingles. There were always these old timer guys who had a knack for writing super catchy songs. It didn't matter if it was really annoying or not, it would still stick in your head. There is a small part of my brain filled with bad commercial jingles, a testament to their effectiveness.

The most obvious example of this right now is the Pussycat Dolls song "don't cha". If you ignore Gwen Stefani's solo album, its by far the dumbest lyrics I have ever heard. They package it with some sexed up girls and send it out there. The worst part is that since I saw the video for it, now its gets stuck in my head badly like old Weezer songs used to. They just have perdected this formula for making these songs that stick in your head no matter how much you don't like it.

Blah, blah I've also had a lot of fun recently putting together my new website design. I have been tending to learn new stuff I can do with it, but then not really using any of those techniques and keeping it simple. Sounds and stuff are hard to use without making things annoying. I'm going to try to put it all together with a lot more added content before I toss it online, so I don't get complacent. Its easy to say that I'll do some comic and game reviews one by one down the line, but really it doesn't happen. We'll see how it goes.
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Tuesday, August 2, 2005

Die Music Die
As per the last post of mine and comments, I sent out the first four tracks of the Oslo CD to you (Tony) so you can check them out at your leisure. They cetrainly aren't groundbreaking as far as the genre goes, but they write some great songs in my opinion. And to the long lost Blinky: I'm glad someone else likes the Ratatat, its one of my favorite CD's ever. One last thing about PS3, they better not have errors on their first shipment of consoles if they're going to charge a lot of money. Sony has such a bad history of their first run of consoles being sub-par.

Speaking of Sony, has everyone heard of the "payola" scandal? I guess it seems kind of obvious after thinking about it, but how sad is it that they have to bribe radio stations to play songs. For the life of me I couldn't figure out how that J-lo song with the really annoying repetitive horn sound in it actually made airplay. Now I guess we know how. Clear channel (etc.) have been pretty transparent that they suck, and make repetitive playlists of pop drivel, but this is even more pathetic. Helping retards make music for years I guess.

Its not like I even listen to the radio unless I'm really bored in the car and don't have any music on me. Its so bad that on longer trips I go for talk radio anyway. One of the few moments I did listen to some radio was just yesterday and I swear that they put a commercial in the middle of a song. The crap song faded out quickly and had some 5 second add, then the rest of the song played. How lame is that?

I know that the problem can be easily avoided by simply not listening to the radio, but its not quite that simple. Radio has so much potential to spread new music, but its all turned into some half baked MTV-esque mess. If you could somehow take college radio and expand it, there could conceivably have an all indie rock station, a heavy metal station, etc. The biggest problem with listening to current college radio is that you turn it on and you might get salsa music one hour, and underground electronica the next. It usually is just too scattered for regular listening. Here's to hoping that it gets better within the next 10 years.

So in short, if you scrolled past all of the text: Radio is horrible, Clear Channel sucks and the FCC really sucks.

Also, before I forget...I saw an add for a bunch of bands on MTV (alkaline trio, my chemical romance and some other emo/rockish band I forget right now) and they all had long hair in their faces. Mostly balck clothes, dyed black hair all hanging down in their face (which you know is uncomfortable) like they want to look troubled or something. It was so lame I laughed.
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Saturday, July 30, 2005

cows and livestock
I went to the CD store today with pretty much utter disappointment. They didn't exactly have any of the albums I was looking for. No older Ted leo Cd, no Art brut. Bastards.

I'm making a mix CD fot one of my old college friends, he beat me by sending his first so I nead to get my ass in gear. Here's the list of songs:

1. Every man has a Molly: Say Anything
2. Capitalism stole my virginity: International Noise Conspiracy
3. I’m a Monster: Ours
4. Wow: Snow Patrol
5. This is not: Blonde Redhead
6. Plug in baby: Muse
7. Desert Eagle: Ratatat
8. All terrain: Oslo
9. Masquerade: Hyde
10. When you see the light: Pete Yorn
11. St. Louis: Cub Country
12. Elected: Inouk
13. One Winged Angel: Nobuo Uematsu
14. Track 16: Katamari Damacy
15. Bed of razors: Children of Bodom

I've been obsessing over Ted Leo lately too, and bought tickets for their show in portland Sept. 1st. That should be really cool, barely better than the minibosses playing in an old-school arcade.

This is pretty scattered since I'm in the middle of a conversation about canning Blackberries, so sorry about that. Not too much excitement going on right now. I'm going to Canada next weekend to check out Butchart Gardens in Victoria, BC. Its supposed to be really cool and is where my pops had his second Honeymoon...(or is it 3rd?). They are open really late on weekends and do a big firewors display on Saturdays. That and the park lit up at night sound very cool.

The PS3 price debate (WIP) is pretty interesting, and I've been thinking a lot about that lately. Seeing as I don't even have a HDTV its weird to pay a lot of money for some super high resolution game console. Maybe they are really trying to advance too far with the next generation of videogames. I'm actually pretty happy with the current systems and personally I was hoping that they'd take longer for PS3 etc. Another round of games that are of the quality of MGS3 graphics and production-wise would make me pretty happy. A $400 PS3 could really be about 10 new games instead:(
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Tuesday, July 26, 2005

crazy crackheads
Apparently about 15 minutes after I left the lab yesterday, some guy came upstairs and confronted a chem grad student in another lab. He was trying to buy chemicals (likely for making crystal meth) from this guy. I onlt have the story second hand, but he also might have tried to steal a computer, and when the kid resisted, the meth-head flashed a gun. Thats pretty fucking scary. I literally left the building 15 minutes before that happened. I'm not sure exactly what I should be doing about it, but I might start carrying my knife with me daily. This place is more of a target during the summer and on holidays. We've had stuff stolen before during vacation time.

There has been a lof of attention to stopping the sales of sudafed off the shelves. I guess the ephedrine in decongestants is used to make methamphetamine commonly around here. Now you have to get it at the pharmacy, and possibly with a prescription if another bill passes. Maybe its putting the heat on these druggie weirdos?

Edit: Here's the report from an email:

Summary: At approximately 6:15 PM on Monday, July 25, 2005, a male subject entered a room in Klamath Hall, attempted to steal a laptop computer, and threatened a staff member. According to the staff member, the subject displayed a handgun. This Public Safety Bulletin is intended to alert the campus community to the occurrence of this incident. Anyone who may have information about this matter is encouraged to contact the Eugene Police Department at 682-5111 or the Department of Public Safety at 346-5444.



Incident Description: Attempted Burglary 2 and Menacing: At approximately 6:15 PM on Monday, July 25, 2005, a male subject entered Room 323 Klamath Hall at 1370 Franklin Blvd. and removed a laptop computer. Upon exiting the room, he was confronted by a staff person who inquired about the suspect's business in the building. The staff person retrieved the laptop computer from the suspect and told him to leave or the police would be called. The suspect displayed a handgun hidden in his waistband and stated: "I'm ready for the police." After further discussion, the suspect left the building in an unknown direction of travel.
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Monday, July 25, 2005

Epilogue
I tend to get lazy on the weekends, and haven't really posted much. Then again I did go to a high school football field and kicked a field goal, so maybe only lazy in an internet type of way.

I thought that last weeks Justice League (I know none of you watch it) was the last one, but to my suprise they had an episode called epilogue which gave a proper ending to the Batman Beyond series. It made me very very happy to have an ending, since Batman Beyond got cancelled in a weird way and spun into some awful cartoon about an android character from a previous episode. The very last BB episode was a poorly animated hand off to that show.

I'm glad they care about their characters and do that sort of thing (finally give a good ending). It also had a great Batman story in the middle given as a flashback.

Also this weekend I've started the long process of re-designing my smelting pools website. I learned more about CSS and am getting better with Dreamweaver using layers ans some other tools. It will probably take me a while to get it done, but I'm planning on sticking with the theme from teh title picture, maybe playing up the transformers aspect a little bit more.
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Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Potts
I think Rachael (my wife) was the one who first lent me the Harry Potter books back before we were dates. I guess Since I read those three I had been sucked into the story and am now one of the millions to be reading the new book. I'm more than halfway through it since its super easy reading and its pretty enjoyable just like the rest of them. J.K. Rowling's family is pretty much set for 10 generations with the money from the books and lisences.

I started watching my season 2 box set of Batman: The animated series and realized just how much I love that show. I can't wait til the new adventures season comes out where they redesigned the characters. The first new scarecrow episode where Batman is being hunted down by the cops and James Gordon might be the best episode of the series. I see myself down the line with a lighter wallet and a full collection of Batman, Superman, Batman beyond and Justice League sitting on the shelf sparkling.
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Monday, July 18, 2005

Killing is good
We have an older PC desktop computer that runs for shit, mostly because it has too much stuff on it and probably a ton of spyware. Finally got all the important stuff off of it though so we could reformat it. Now of course it runs like a charm and has absolutely nothing on it. We're probably going to just get rid of it and donate it to Rachaels school.

Got to watch a classic cliche action movie this afternoon: Assault on Precinct 13. It has everything from the troubled cop who got his partners killed to the crustly old veteran. It has corrupt bad guys and super tough gangsters. Its pretty funny. I grew up watching almost nothing but action movies so I like that kind of stuff. I think if they hadn't kept making direct to video movies I could have claimed to have seen all of Steven Seagal's and Van Damme's movies as dubious as that is. Good man against an army movies are pretty scarce these days (new ones). Vin Diesel looked like he might have been the next action star in teh vein of Arnold and Stallone, until he made that remake of Mr. Nanny. Maybe the Rock is the last hope to the action movie? He really is the ultimate wrestler turned actor. He's hard not to like.

Well you can always go back to the classics like Rambo and Predator, though I think while I'm on the internet I'm going to add Over the Top to my list :)

Oh yeah! I almost forgot that I found out this morning that after the old (90's) Spiderman cartoon on ABC family channel is reruns of the Tick! Its on their Jetix block that shows old Power rangers crap and some of the shittier anime shows about spinning top battles. The episode I saw was the Breadmaster, who made ever-expanding loaves of bread that destroyed buildings. His sidekick was Buttery-Pat who looked like he was made of butter. Man I love that show. Dinosaur Neil rules! Its on at 11:00 PST and I imagine the same for eastern.
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