Wednesday, October 31 gave rise to...

Happy Halloween

Themselves - You Devil You



bye

Read Full Post »

"Pony is an orangutan from a prostitute village in Borneo."

If a man walked near her, she would turn herself around, present herself, and start gyrating and going through the motions.

Jan 27 2008 - Link fixed nearly three months later. Sorry!

Read Full Post »

Things to do when you're bored

  • Get back into css
  • read about childhood obesity
  • don't look into graduate school stuff
  • poorly restring a guitar
  • make fun of the recently deceased:

Read Full Post »

Tuesday, October 30 gave rise to...

Bliss? Clearly, Sonata/MPD has never listened to Pig Destroyer



I guess most of the rest of this is pretty accurate though

Read Full Post »

Monday, October 29 gave rise to...

No OiNK

Increased ability to enjoy what I stole already have

Read Full Post »

This is me putting an idea on a burner so far back it's barely visible

Read Full Post »

I just watched this

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

Please get familiar

Read Full Post »

Need a reason to not shop at The Gap?

Here's a great one.

Buy second-hand, etc.

Read Full Post »

Saturday, October 27 gave rise to...


Read Full Post »

Let's do this Halloween YouTube thing now

ok let's go


basically last year i had a bunch of links to danzig/misfits videos but this year i wanted to do something a little different it's mostly music videos but also some other stuff too!

ok so first off let's do some blue oyster cult most people only know them for their "don't fear the reaper" song shout out to big ty whose senile grandmother who is about ready to check out turned him on to this song and didn't see the irony that she was about to bounce the biggest check written out to "vitality" rest in peace grandma ty see you next halloween in the mausoleum anyway so yeah blue oyster cult has lots of other good songs and damn some cool moustaches one of their songs "burnin' for you" from the album "fire of unknown origin" has a really tight riff that it starts with it's pretty tight but it isn't the best song from the album which would be "veteran of the psychic wars" but the video is tight and please watch it all the way through for some goofy 1981 style "scary" and "edgy" stuff but really just respect this i mean think about how it was fucking like 26 years ago and holy shit it's older than me but i'm also pretty old (22 years old now!) ok here it is:




ok actually there is a video on youtube for "veteran of the psychic wars" i mean it's just the coolest fucking concept for a song UNFORTUNATELY i will not be embedding it in this post but i will however give you a link to it so here it is if you liked the other video check this out for sure also i should mention this is a live version of the song so it is kind of masturbatory for the band but it is still cool if you like this "metal" classic rock kind of shit http://youtube.com/watch?v=nrd2xf5DIlU


ok next video is by bauhaus a real force a real legend in the 80s goth scene or something honestly i know fuck all about bauhaus but useff said to check out their stuff for this post and this video fits perfectly plus it's an achewood in-joke so i mean just check it out for a little while it's good for halloween spirit and shit



next video probably needs no introduction if you are between the ages of 18 and 25 today because it's bobby brown's video from ghostbusters ii so it will bring back some good memories for you because the video is tight and bobby brown says "found out about vigo, the master of evil. try to battle my boys? that's not LEGAL" so it's like he was cool with the ghostbusters and understood their plight and shit oh man so much footage from the movie this movie reminds me of a time period that will never come back, so shitty yet so good only because I was four fucking years old at the time and ghostbusters were awesome to me but check it out, and like everything else, think of this as a period piece and also especially check out the dancing and the outfits and the haircuts and everything also donald trump is in the video

also more important than anything is that bobby brown is fucking INSANE these days he's a fucking crackhead who dragged whitney houston down with him and now she's worthless too and their lives are a fucking mess and he had a fucking heart attack like last week while sitting front row at a fashion show, can you believe this shit? it's like everything we ever knew is going to start dying




ok the next two aren't music videos well one is kind of but they are both clips from "American Werewolf in London" which in my opinion is one of the greatest "horror" movies ever i mean it was made a long time ago but as you can see in the transformation clip it has some amazing special effects even by today's standards i mean seriously they made that shit look so fucking painful i included the version of the clip that has a little part in the beginning that shows him talking to his dead and zombified friend just so you can see that this is a movie that isn't all about horror i mean it's scary as fuck but doesn't take itself too seriously actually i'll include THREE scenes the first one is a bonus and i won't ruin it here! just please watch it!




next scene is the aforementioned transformation scene prefaced by one of the film's many hilarious zombie talks, this scene is kind of a music video because blue moon is playing as he transforms!



ok guys this next scene starts with tits so don't watch it at work! or just fast forward to like a minute into it this scene is very dear to me because not only is it cheesy but there are some really gruesome car crashes and deaths in this scene!



next is judas priest's hit single "breaking the law" it's corny as fuck and man I don't really know what to say about it, just watch it and fucking laugh. the opening riff is pretty tight though! also rob halford (the singer) is soooooooo gay seriously look him up on wikipedia or some shit!



ok final video I LOVE this video i loved the song before i saw the video and the video totally fucking changed the game for me this video is so awesome and deceptive and slightly creepy and has a lot of nuanced things going on that you might need to watch it a few times to catch but seriously i don't want to totally ruin this for anyone i'm just amazed that such an incredible video was made in 1979!











ok so if you are confused after that video the significance would be that it says "The Cure?" at the beginning and then those letters bleed away and we're left with what appears to be something like a 1960s british pop boy band performing in front of a sheet but the thing is if you know anything about the cure you're wondering where robert smith (the singer) is and he's nowhere but you can hear his voice and that one person looks like they're singing but it isn't him and then weird stuff is going on in the background and then robert smith's silhouette with glowing red eyes appears but only the silhouette and also if you go back and watch it again you will notice that the band member's shadows are "wrong" in many ways

ok so yeah all that stuff right above this isn't necessarily true it was just my interpretation of a youtube video that was poor quality and this video here is higher quality and has a different and better interpretation but I still like mine so if you want to read the strike through-ed text above this by all means please go ahead!







happy halloween









ok bonus super weird creepy video that useff showed me and said it was like scary and it actually is this motherfucker looks like he's possessed and shit this video isn't on youtube so please do not sue me for being a huge fucking liar sorry


Soccer Player Freaks Out During Game - Watch more free videos

Read Full Post »

Friday, October 26 gave rise to...

Coming in the next 24h or so:

Halloween 2007 music video list

last year I did a bunch of Danzig/Misfits videos, this year it will be more of a potpourri

Read Full Post »

The loss of OiNK

The disappearance of OiNK from the filesharing community is going to have major and far-reaching implications. HTTP filesharing indexing sites like shareminer.com will become more popular; this may lead to legal action against some of the sites it points to. We'll see an increase in traffic to mp3 blogs and forums, which generally post their files on the same sites indexed by places like shareminer.

Overall, expect fragmentation in the filesharing community with more people using a wider variety of sources to get their files.

Editor's Note: Did not expect Waffles!! (Feb 14, 2008)

Read Full Post »

Wednesday, October 24 gave rise to...

What is the last thing you downloaded from OiNK?

For me it was Pavement -- "Wowee Zowee" and "Slanted & Enchanted." I wanted to get some of the other Pavement albums that I liked too, but I didn't get around to it.

Read Full Post »

Tuesday, October 23 gave rise to...

OiNK is gone

Jack Valenti cracks a smile so rare his lips bleed

Read Full Post »

Monday, October 22 gave rise to...

Some real news

Emotions do not affect cancer survival

Read Full Post »

Dumbledore

At least he's not on the main page of Google News


yet

Read Full Post »

They're trying to make Aperture Sciences in Second Life

Read Full Post »

Saturday, October 20 gave rise to...

There is only one Nation of Ulysses

From the Nation of Ulysses track, "The Sound of Jazz To Come." Transcription found here.









Download mp3

There is only one Nation of Ulysses: the seriously unserious, reverently irreverent, amoral moralists whose iconoclastic assault on the received pieties of America place them in the front ranks of social critics.

What went into the making of the legend? There was their erudition, their stock of language, their lore in urban sagas, their ransacking of every literature, their knowledge of archaeology and racial history- of kitchen midden and skull measurements. There was the precision with which they knew the homely and workday details of culture as well as the big abstraction, the ease with which they moved about in history from neolithic times to the report of the latest congressional committee.

They were, as has been said, "The last group who knew everything"- and if they did not know quite everything they could distract your attention from the gap by a wry witticism. There were their strange songs, any one of which could have made a lesser band's career and each of which had the knack of standing the accepted doctrines on their head. There was their polysyllabic language and their slow acid style that corroded the sanctities. There were their conce, with their mumbled messages which only the better souls understood. There was the way they looked: shaggy eyebrows, ashen faces with unforgettable eyes, rough clothes that hung too loosely on their shrunken bodies, a shell of silence into which they seemed to have retreated for good and from which only the most persistent strategy could draw them.

They refused to be patronized or dismissed, turned into a cult or giggled at. The important thing was to build a social analysis that would encompass modern culture and make humankind reckon with it.

Read Full Post »

Stagnation and Feelings

You know how sometimes you just don't "go out"?

How sometimes you just don't want to do anything, but for no particular/identifiable reason? You aren't sick, nothing has happened to make you want to stay home, but you just don't do anything -- because it feels like there's nothing to do.

Now, maybe the way I defined this problem doesn't exactly make sense, but hopefully you still understand what I'm getting at. I think different people define this feeling differently.

Some work through it with uppers or a general bitterness toward the night. Those who do it bitterly ruin the nights of the others who cross their paths -- those who get caught in the undercurrent of someone else's shit [storm, wave, tornado]. Those who do it with uppers probably do it well.

For those of us that don't decide to work through it, what sort of excuse do we give our companions who may have been expecting our company on the night in question?

For some of us, it is appropriate to say "I just don't feel like it." But this is not all of us. Others would be more comfortable pretending to have fallen ill in some way.

What about the people who are superstitious, and have come to associate this unidentifiable lack of moxy with a "bad omen?" If our world is truly rational, these people are a bit of a social danger to their peers because they will extend their own personal bad feelings onto their friends. They might say "I have a bad feeling about the night, so you shouldn't go out." These people will plead with their friends not to go, to stay in, and perhaps to stay with them. They are superstitious, and so they think that it is in their friends' best interests to stay in.

Me, I'm slightly superstitious in this way, but I'm not in the right category of irrational thought to believe the type of shit I just wrote about. Most of the time, anyway. With me it's usually more along the lines of a feeling of tiredness with whatever "scene" it is that I'm wrapped up in at the time. I need to recharge and spend time away so that when I go back, I'm actually able to enjoy it and feel dynamic -- so that I'm able to avoid feeling that everything is the same.

Stagnation is everywhere, and it's only in hiding from it and reintroducing ourselves to it, that it can truly keep us interested.

Read Full Post »

Thursday, October 18 gave rise to...

Breakthrough

A new way of doing something (using a tool) that allows you to use it for more things and do stuff with it longer with more enjoyment.

Essentially, a deeper/different understanding (or path to understanding) of a thing.

I love experiencing breakthroughs. I wish I could experience more breakthroughs to help me pass some of the mental blocks I have in certain fields that I explore.

Read Full Post »

Wednesday, October 17 gave rise to...

RIAA wins lawsuit, decides to sue Usenet

I guess they really do feel like they can sue everyone now.

How do you sue Usenet?

Link

Read Full Post »

Tuesday, October 16 gave rise to...

Questions

Some people say "you get what you give." Does this ever apply to real life? Sometimes I think it does, but it's impossible to actually measure. Some people give their whole lives and never seem to get anything in return. A lot of people who do this seem to believe in a religious kind of afterlife, so maybe they've set themselves up such that they will receive reward in this afterlife. This presents a problem though: what if there is no afterlife? I guess it doesn't matter -- when this question comes up in a meaningful way, the person is, of course, dead.

I forgot the second question.

Read Full Post »

Friday, October 12 gave rise to...

This Is How A GNU/Linux (Free) Desktop Can Look Part 2



Read Full Post »

Tuesday, October 9 gave rise to...

This Is How A GNU/Linux (Free) Desktop Can Look



And it runs as good as it looks.

Read Full Post »

Monday, October 8 gave rise to...

Running Out Of Interesting Things To Learn

There's a lot I don't know, but for much of it I need to know pretty much everything from the beginning. I'm an idiot in a lot of ways.

Does anyone know a good place to learn cool new things comprehensively?

Fuck, cool is so subjective. This is an absolutely unreasonable request.

Read Full Post »

Pondering Linux and Usability

I may slightly alter my stance on the true usability of Linux for the "average Joe."

As you might know, I tend think GNU/Linux has reached a point in its development where it is currently a great solution for anyone who needs standard desktop software; in some cases it's superior to other operating systems, depending on the individual user's needs. But I've started to wonder -- is it really the great solution I've made it out to be?

I started thinking about this a few days ago when a friend asked me why I use Linux, and then I thought a little more just a few hours ago when my hard drive light was on, solid, and I was (incredibly slowly, because my computer's performance had dropped with the constant hard drive access) trying to figure out how to get it to stop doing that.

I realized that for me, Linux is great. Not so much because it's "usable" -- it's great because I love to tinker with things. Linux allows me to tinker and tweak all day if I so choose. I have access to gigantic repositories filled with thousands of free software programs (and some of them are actually useful to me).

I often compare computers to cars because I know little about cars except how to use them, but I know a whole lot about using and maintaining computers. I find it to be an apt analog for most of the scenarios I discuss.

If computers were cars, I think I'd be the kind of car owner who is a "gear head." I'd have built my own hot rod. I'd be messing around with all of the parts on a regular basis. Maybe I'd "break" it once in a while in an effort to make it cooler or squeeze a little more power out of it. I'd be that guy who could have the coolest car on the block if only he knew when to call it quits on the modifications.

I'd be the guy telling everyone else how they could make their cars more useful, more powerful, and more efficient.
(It is likely that much of this advice would be unwarranted.)
In telling people how to make their cars better, I might actually be giving them more trouble than they needed. I might recommend modifications that aren't entirely stable, and that really require the car owner to have a desire to tinker just like me.

Let's come back to computer land: this analogy is pretty apt, isn't it? Well here's the beauty of Linux: in this day and age, Linux is so much easier than it used to be, but the user still has the option of making it more complicated (with added benefits for those who truly enjoy it).

Basically, what I'm saying is that Linux gives you a choice. If you're looking for a great FREE operating system, you don't have to run your computer like I do. It won't be as cool, but it'll work. It'll probably "work" better than mine because it won't break as often.

My new, slightly altered stance on Linux: it's remarkably usable for the "average Joe" if he doesn't get ahead of himself. It is likely to be remarkably frustrating for the same person if he decides he wants everything his geeky/gearhead friend has, though. Joe might want to ignore his friend's higher level advice until he's good and ready to dive into something different.

Read Full Post »

Sunday, October 7 gave rise to...

Oct. 7 -- What The Rest Of The Internet Is Talking About:

The recording industry's victory over defendant in first file sharing case to go to court.

She has to pay them, like, over $200,000 for some songs she shared online.

I think this verdict will make this situation horrible for small-time digital thieves.

First, this will embolden the RIAA; it is likely that they will pursue a greater number of future cases, more fervently.

Second, this will make people everywhere really scared of going online and doing anything remotely illegal.

This isn't actually a solution for a broken and obsolete business model; like the little hack I wrote about in my previous post, it's a quick fix that doesn't really strike at the root of the problem. Unlike the little hack I wrote about, this verdict could have far-reaching and potentially liberty-reducing effects.

What good can come of this for anyone but the recording industry? Is this even good for them in the long term? It certainly won't work forever.

Read Full Post »

Hackish Fix For My MPD Hotkeys Problem

So, for a few days I've been agonizing over how to get MPD to recognize my keyboard's multimedia keys.

I tried a few varieties of a solution suggested by the collective Internet, but none of them worked. This failed solution was based upon mapping the hex values of the keys (the values were copied from their apparent values in gnome's keyboard shortcuts window) to mpc commands through gconf-editor. As I already stated, this failed.

My new, hackish solution is just to use Sonata and keep it minimized in the notification area. Sonata is simply a GTK2 front end to MPD (a nice one too), but it's graphical, and right now I'm not really into graphical for MPD -- I enjoy controlling my music with the keyboard, so I use ncmpc. Sonata is unobtrusive in the notification area, and it understands multimedia commands. Plus, I can look at the album's cover art easily with Sonata always handy.

Problem solved fixed.

Read Full Post »

When A Person Has The Most Pirated Record In History,

and you're their publicist/marketer, do you congratulate them? Do you console them? What do you do?

Read Full Post »

Monday, October 1 gave rise to...

Gutsy Gibbon Is Tight

Read Full Post »