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| :: news archive :: | :: l i n k s :: | |||
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- tuesday 08 10 04 - A mere two days, and it begins. I've somehow wound up with a full entourage, including the wife and all three kids, accompanying me to the biggest gaming event this side of the Mississippi. I'm expecting to experience the glory of - saturday 06 05 04 - I finally found it - Microchip League's "New York" track, one of the seminal dance tracks from my ill-spent youth. I've been looking for this on the web *forever*, and thanks to the wonders of Google and BearShare, I've found it. This track was one of the main sounds at every dance I ever went to, included on a tape from one of my biggest crushes, and still reverberates through my head whenever I flash back to my days in high school. It apparently is only available by buying some Various Artists mix disc, but thanks to the wonders of illegal file sharing, I have completed the mp3 replication of one of my favorite mix tapes. All hail the mighty Internet! - wednesday 05 12 04 - Go to your nearest video rental place and get a copy of this. A warm, funny, touching movie based on a true story. Well done, and probably worth owning. - saturday 05 01 04 - I love freedom of speech, especially when it hits big, fat targets like the current crop of assholes running our country. Thanks to the Rayzen for the link. Further reading finds all sorts of think-tankers who agree with the above statements. It's frightening as hell when satire and reality are indistinguishable, especially when the subjects of the satire are in charge of megatons of nuclear weapons and the most powerful standing military force on the planet, *and* they're a bunch of ultra-right-wing fundamentalist flakes convinced of their God-given right to rule the world. We'd be better off with these fools running the country. - friday 04 30 04 - Oooooh yeah. Whilst meandering through my occasionally fuzzy memory, I tripped over some of this. I'd totally forgotten about these guys - their album The New Order contained shredding that stomped around the same grounds as the thrashers I listed below, but added a harder, faster, more technical edge. Combining Alex Skolnick's staccato harmonic leads with airtight rhythm guitar, bass, and drums, and topping it all off with Chuck Billy's roaring vocals, Testament dropped The Legacy, The New Order, and Practice What You Preach on us during the late '80's. Their cover of "Nobody's Fault" by Aerosmith made hearing the original a serious disappointment, and "Disciples of the Watch", "The New Order", and "Trial By Fire" topped off a couple of intense albums. I saw them live twice, once opening for Megadeth, and once for Slayer, and they tore it up both times. At the Slayer show, they wound the crowd up hard enough to crush the barrier in front of the stage, shutting the show down for half an hour while the grips frantically hammered together a new one. Great stuff. By the way, I've updated the music page. - thursday 04 29 04 - Woke up to the sound of rain and thunder outside, a beautiful 62 degrees. Wish I didn't have to go to work today. There's nothing quite like being able to sit down on the porch with a cup of coffee and listen to a nice rainstorm. Speaking of listening, I've been listening to some of this. After the Mighty Met and Megadeth, Anthrax was one of my favorite late '80's metal bands. Their album Among The Living is still a masterpiece of thrash, that wonderful mix of punk and metal that wandered out of the boroughs of NYC to make the world go "huh?". Anthrax stripped the grandiose pretentions out of metal and rolled a hyper-speed attitude into their songs, ranging from comic book heroes to anti-nuke rants. Vocalist Joey Belladona hit some high notes every once and a while, but it was his talk-sing-shout vocal mix (witness "Caught In A Mosh"), guitarist Scott Ian's Bronx-inflected backing vocals (WARDANCE!) and shredding rhythm playing (220+ bpm, all downstroke), and the unbelievably fast drumming of Charlie Benante (we killed one of our drummers trying to play "Skeletons In The Closet") that rolled up to deliver a frantic 45 minutes of true metal. One of the other things that Anthrax used to distinguish themselves was an organic sort of ebb and flow in their songs, beginning at one tempo and gradually cranking up the speed to warp 9, dropping back to a mosh beat for 30 seconds to let you catch your breath, and then winding back up for an outro. They seemed to lose focus as the '80's came to a close, with Persistence of Time delivering a few classic moments, but Among still packs a punch. Snag a copy and check it out. - sunday 04 18 04 - Been a loooooooong time since the last update. Sorry 'bout that. I've once again been labelled www.stagnant.com by my various associates. I've been working my ass off, and getting incredibly frustrated in the process, two factors which combine to make updating the old blog (I'm not really sure that I like that phrase) a chore instead of something that I want to do. SO, a bit of venting, some updates, and maybe I can make this a habit again instead of something I do when someone bitches at me. It's COMING again. This year, it's about five miles down the highway from my office, I'm registered, and I'm going to skip work to attend. The wife still can't believe it's a free conference for gaming nerds. I can't wait. Okay, okay. The real reason I haven't updated in two months is this new form of electronic heroin. If you'd told me six months ago (in the days of my Halo addiction) that I'd spend uncounted hours running around in a PC RPG, I'd have told you to put down the crack pipe. Here I am, with swollen knuckles and burning eyes, a level 42 Imperial with more money than God and game-ending weapons like the Umbra sword. I've seen about a quarter of an island the size of Been re-reading a classic of modern horror. This was one of the first really long books that I read, an introduction to the epic, if you will. I followed it up with such light reading as Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, but The Stand is still one of my all-time favorite novels. The un-cut version simply expanded an already magnum opus even further. The additional 500 pages weren't fat or excess, but a solid helping of meat. I'm in Boulder, waiting for Harold to start plotting his lethal exit to stage left. Reading this made me realize that King has some sort of death trip going on, killing off his major characters in almost every book. You can guarantee that someone with whom you have a major emotional investment is going to die horribly in his books, usually right about the time when everything should be turning up roses. At least in this one, your favorites just get vaporized in an atomic blast instead of being crucified, drawn and quartered, or otherwise folded, spindled, and mutilated. Joe Bob sez check it out. Active Directory and Exchange 2003, coming soon to a workplace near you. Finally got someone else to tell my boss that we need it, and they finally went ahead and spent the money. Now I'm going to be really busy for the next two months or so. After that, I can actually represent myself as knowing something about current Microsoft server technologies, something that might help once we put our collective foot in Dubya's ass and the economy begins to recover from the last four years of ill-use. And America wakes up! As we pull ourselves out of the media-induced torpor that has clouded our minds and left us flailing on the beach of Dubya Senior's New World Order of Economic Chaos and Quasi-Imperialist Aspirations, folks are starting to get publicly pissed off. The old reliables have been speaking out, but as shown by the year 2000 elections, Americans have spent a lot of time not caring, not deciding, and just plain not doing. A quick run across the web will find hundreds of well-informed, politically saavy people who are all saying the same thing. Things are seriously hosed and something has to change. Not sure if it will, but the political and social atmosphere today feels a lot like the rumblings that started as Vietnam dragged itself out, taking all involved down with it. Checking out the Doors first album, the mighty Floyd's Wish You Were Here, and some older Texas shred. All good, all necessary. Feel free to enjoy some on your own. - friday 02 13 04 - Happy Valentine's to those who need it. Went over to the local discount reading joint, peeked through their racks, and found her, some of the real stuff, some of the voice of God, some really big hair and gospel tunes, and a round of those pointy-headed Canucks from back when really nasty plastic clothing was in vogue. Great stuff, but the best has to be this re-master, re-release, re-hash, etc. - this has to be one of my favorite Beatles albums, and this version strips all the Looney Tunes crap off of the incredible composition and arrangements that just seemed to pop out of the Fab Four. From the gorgeously clean "Across the Universe" to the driving beat of "Two of Us", everything on here sounds like you've never heard it before. If you don't own the original mix on CD, you should go buy this version. If you do own the original, you ought to kick yourself, and then go buy this version. I've been re-discovering the Beatles catalog, and it hands-down whips the collective ass of just about everything else recorded in the last 40 years. Quibble, bitch, argue all you want, but the writing team of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr generated music that will be with us in 300 years, and it will still be beautiful, fascinating, and haunting music that you can sing, dance, or just think to. I really try hard to ignore the idiots running our country. I decided at about age 15 that I could love living in America, believe in it's people, and still know that the entire political structure of the country was corrupt, morally bankrupt, and populated with fools who have no business using toothpicks, much less deciding where my tax dollars went. Unfortunately, our mechanism for deciding which idiot runs the country every four years is as defunct as my twenty-five year old mode of transportation. I mean really, when this site provides a more realistic picture of the state of the nation than this one, you have to wonder exactly what country does this guy live in? It sure as hell doesn't seem to be in the same dimension as me ... - friday 01 30 04 - I hope to meet the source of these in hell some day. I'll be spending a lot of time dunking their souls in the eternal fires for the misery they've inflicted upon myself and every other mail administrator across the planet. These guys rank right up there with duck tape on your scalp and bamboo shoots under your fingernails. On a lighter note, I've finished re-reading The Hobbit. It's pretty entertaining to look at the differences in Tolkien's views of the Elves and the other races of Middle Earth. In The Hobbit, the Elves are fuzzy, warm, and cute. Elrond has a little bit of the mythic quality, but the rest sing, dance, and generally frolic. Trolls are bad guys, but not *that* bad. Gandalf is more a grandfather than immortal wizard. By the time The Lord of the Rings was finished, that had changed to a more mythical view - the Silmarillion had been fully developed and set the background for the themes and history that give the later trilogy such richness and depth. On the gaming side of the world, I've been hooked on this form of electronic crack. Best game on the system. More later once I get tired of getting the magnet ball powerup and sticking myself to the walls of those tiny-ass buoys out in the Monkey Pacific. - wednesday 01 07 04 - Oy! Vey! I have found the Holy Grail of weird music from my youth, and it is good. Feel free to download some BOMB. I've been looking for this album for well over 15 years now, and thanks to the wondrous powers of Google, I was able to find it, for free no less. Check it out to get an idea of the things that made Smack2™ what he is today. Other than that, I've been revisiting the mighty Halo - probably the best first-person shooter since SiN, and that's saying a lot. Great weapons, challenging gameplay, cool toys, well done scripting and story. Get it and play it if you haven't yet. - thursday 12 25 03 - Merry Christmas. I'm 31 years old as of yesterday, and occasionally feel like I haven't learned a damn thing since I turned 15. Egad. In answer to the questions, yes I have seen it - the best part of the best trilogy ever committed to film. I can't say that The Return of the King is the best movie ever made because it's merely the last third of the best movie ever made. They cannot be taken as separate parts - the three films are an utterly cohesive whole that makes up the most moving and powerful cinematic experience I've ever had. The films have melded with the books to the point that on my last reading of The Return of the King, the death of Theoden and Eowyn's defeat of the Wraith King brought tears to my eyes - I was able to envision the characters and their actions better than ever before. A friend from Indiana has avoided seeing the films for that reason. True fans of Tolkien and his works wind up with an emotional investment in the stories far beyond that of other authors. The completeness of his vision is captivating and brings each reader to their own set of imagery and ideas about how Middle Earth is. Peter Jackson risked a great deal by trying to bring that world to life in such a way as to be not only true to the novels, but to the genre of fantasy film. He managed to pull off both in such a way and scope that he now has crystallized the mythology of Tolkien into magnificent, emotional, and utterly cinema. Simply the best I've ever seen. - wednesday 11 05 03 - Wow, that sucked. Got home from work last night running a fever, and it only got worse from there. I didn't even get up and make coffee this morning. For those who know me, it is understood that this is similar to me saying "I got up this morning, and didn't have a pulse." Ran a 100° F or better all day today, feeling like somebody had kicked my ass up one side of the block and down the other. Yaaaagh. Still have a head full of infected shit, but at least the fever's gone. Checked out some Aussie fun before I got sick - a tight little crime flick called The Hard Word. It's not a classic, and it occasionally drops off into the surreal, but it was an entertaining way to spend a few hours. Is it just me, or does Guy Pearce just get grittier looking in every flick? |
things to make milk come out of your nose
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