06.23.2009
Categories: Personal
Which is better?
The original:
or
The acoustic version:
??
And here’s a bonus, just because it’s a really beautiful song.
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Tags: , cocteau twins, Music
06.09.2009
Categories: Personal
I saw Christopher Walken on Friday. He walked right by me. I didn’t want to bother him while he was eating. The other patrons of the bar I was at went off on the usual quoteathon that happens when you see celebrities, namely “MORE COWBELL!! HUUUUUUUURRR!” I was just satisfied that he was in the same bar as I was.
That night I watched a documentary on Terry Gilliam’s attempt at making “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” called “Lost in La Mancha“. I enjoy Gilliam’s films, and it was interesting to watch a total disaster of a film being made. In the end, the film doesn’t get made due to all the difficulties they came across during filming.
Saturday night we went out to dinner with my in-laws for Katie’s other sister, since she wasn’t able to attend Wednesday’s dinner. Afterwards I went out to Dave’s and watched the hockey game, and had a few beers.
Sunday I saw “The Hangover” which I thought was actually really funny. I had heard about it a few weeks earlier and that it was supposed to be good, but the trailers for the film started to make me doubt that. With lowered expectations, it was really enjoyable, and even darker than I thought it would be.
Sometime during the weekend, I also watched a Godfrey Ho film called “US Catman: Lethal Track” which was another Godfrey Ho special where he basically mashes up two films that have nothing to do with each other. Since one half of the film is usually in a foreign language, the actors are dubbed to fit whatever happens in the English half of the film. Unfortunately, the Thai half of the film is godawful, but the English part is tolerable and funny in the unintentional way.
I’m trying to figure out when I can watch the Mike Tyson documentary that came out recently, and I also have a Luna documentary I want to get to.
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Tags: , weekend
06.04.2009
Categories: Personal
I was eating salad for lunch, one of those ordinary bagged salads that you buy from the supermarket, nothing special. I poured the rest of the bag into my bowl and started munching, and I got about 3/4ths of the way through it and I don’t know why I did it, but I looked at the forkful I was about to cram into my mouth, and I noticed something on it. There was a little ladybug on my lettuce leaf. It was dead, but it could have passed for being alive, except for the fact that it looked a little faded – not so red anymore.
Well hello there! how did you get into my salad?
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Tags: , lunch
05.26.2009
Categories: Personal
I’ve noticed that these random musings of my daily life are becoming less frequently as of late. Let me update myself on my life.
Katie recently got her cast off, and is actually walking around. I started getting resentful being her chauffer for the last few weeks and not really getting any time to myself to do what I want to do. Once I realized that’s a total dick thought, and this won’t last forever, I got over it. Hopefully her recovery stays on track and she’ll be back to independence soon. Today was the first day that she’s been able to drive herself to work, so I’m sure the end is in sight.
This weekend, we went and saw Terminator: Salvation, and I yelled at some 14 year olds because they wouldn’t shut their damned mouths. Needless to say, I felt like quite the tough guy! I don’t think it wouldn’t have bothered me so much if I hadn’t just paid almost $40 on movie tickets and popcorns just to have some bratty assed kids dropped off at the movies by mommy and daddy so that they could get some space from their anal spawn. If your kid can’t shut up, don’t let the movie theater be their baby sitter, please.
I also bought a grill and put it together on Saturday. I celebrated by drinking myself stupid on Sierra Nevada summer fest lagers, which were delicious (as far as lagers go). Sunday I grilled at my parents house where James proceded to eat almost everything off the table including about 5 hotdogs and 3 hamburgers which he stuffed into his face at once. I’m surprised his face doesn’t have it’s own gravitational field once he opens up his mouth. I also don’t understand how he stays reasonably thin when he eats like a professional football team.
Monday was spent over Katie’s sister’s house where more beers were drunk, in this case Magic Hat Wacko.
Also, in the last week my power supply on my pc shit the bed. Unfortunately, when I pulled it off, I didn’t realize that the cables ran under my heat sink so that meant more money for thermal paste that the store forgot to send me (or so I thought). I went to radio shack and got thermal paste and days later after I had everything working again I realized that they taped the thermal paste to the bottom of the power supply box. Because I never set the box on a solid surface, instead put it either on carpet or on my little futon thing, I never realized it was there. Now I have two tubes of thermal paste and nothing to use it on. So.. I think I’m going to save up money to build a new pc. Hooray.
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05.13.2009
Categories: Personal
I haven’t had much time recently, and while I still don’t have much time now, I figured I should update so I can look back on this date and see that I was still a live.
My birthday passed 11 days ago, thanks to those who wished well wishes. I’m now officially a year older. I think I’m in a better place health wise than last year and that feels pretty good. Not too much else has changed that I can think of besides that.
I went out bowling for a few games with my mom and dad and Frank, and I think I had a 600 series… maybe. If not, I know it was at least a 580 series, which I think is actually my best series ever. Not too shabby for not bowling in about 2 years. Afterwards I went to dinner with my parents, my sister and her husband, and Katie. We had ice cream and cake and then Dave came over and we watched the Hatton vs. Pacquaio fight. While I’m a huge Ricky Hatton fan, I also like Manny Pacquaio quite a bit too so either fighter winning would have been fine with me, but I was not surprised by the outcome.
I took last week off, and I usually don’t update when I’m on vacation for some reason or another. Mostly I took the week off because I like to have the week either before or after my birthday off, but also because Wednesday Katie had foot surgery and I knew that my help would be needed since she wouldn’t be able to do much on her own besides hobble around on crutches. That occupied my time for the rest of the week/weekend. I don’t think we left the house more than 3 times between Wednesday and Saturday, and that was probably just to go get coffee or pick up a pizza or something and just to get out of the house for a few minutes.
Katie is a stubborn as a mule though. She wanted to go out shopping or whatever like the day after her surgery. I may spend money irresponsibly or whatever, but she just likes to shop. She won’t even necessarily buy anything, but she enjoys the aspect of looking at every single item in the store. When I shop for something, I have a clear idea of what I’m looking for and I don’t like to float around, browsing. I go right for what I want and if they don’t have it, I leave. She can turn a 10 minute shopping experience into hours, and that has got to be some kind of black magic shit right there.
Other than that, I used some of my birthday funds and some money I had been saving and bought a PS3. It came with Motorstorm and Resistance: Fall of Man, which I haven’t opened and I bought Killzone 2. In addition to that, I bought a game from their online store called Pixel Junk: Eden, which is really an awesome game. I spent quite a few hours just swinging around and enjoying myself. I’ll include a little boring clip of the game at the end of this post if the 2 other people that read this are interested in checking it out.
When I got back to work, I had a mess of stuff that needed attention and only just recently did I get caught up (and by recently, I mean like minutes ago). It only took me about 3 and 1/2 hours to say to myself “These people are fucking idiots”, so I’m pretty proud of that… I knew I was back in my favorite place!
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04.22.2009
Categories: Personal
So, I’ve had a twitter account for a while. I use it to “promote” my website and advertise new posts and stuff after reading all these articles on how you can utilize twitter to reach a broader audience. Unfortunately, I think that’s a big pile of bullshit. I do get a few hits whenever I post a new review, but other than that, I don’t see much return from it. I also don’t use it enough for more people to follow me. I’m not the type of person to update what I had for lunch or what I saw, because frankly, it’s not that interesting and I’m not that interesting. I’m almost 32 years old and I realize I’m never going to be an internet star (not that I’d want that anyhow).
I’ve been following people but at first I was following people because they followed me first. Now I realize that’s really not what you should do, since you get to read a lot of stuff that you probably don’t care about. I don’t see how someone could follow more than about 30 people. I check twitter about 4 or 5 times a day and if I have more people to read than that they get lost in the shuffle. I actually removed someone a couple weeks ago and they asked me why I stopped following them. BECAUSE I’M SICK OF HEARING HOW AWESOME YOU ARE, that’s why.
Maybe I’m an old douche, but I really don’t see the point of it. I’ve been on the fence for a while on if I just want to stop checking or posting all together. At least with my little gig here I know only 10 people read it and this is for me, I’m not obsessing over how cool I am and how I love lobster claws attached to people’s testicles or that I saw Kevin Costner riding a dolphin at Sea World or whatever fucking bullshit people write about.
If I checked it 50x a day I might find it more useful, or if I knew how the fuck to find people who talk about shit I’m interested in or whatever, but for now it seems like it’s just an exercise in narcissism.
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04.20.2009
Categories: Personal
I let Raz give me a haircut on Friday. I bought some new clippers and saw some videos on Youtube, so I figured I was a good instructor, and he could give me a sweet fade. It took about 40 minutes, but he didn’t do a bad job, and only left a few longer patches. I ended up going to get myself a look (wow, Check it out!) on Saturday morning just to clean it up a little bit. I’m so anal about my hair even though I wear a hat 80% of the time. I need to get out of the wearing a hat rut again, so I need to will myself out of this hat. I also want to get back to the guy that used to cut my hair a while back because it always seemed like he did a really good job.
Saturday was spent shopping with Katie. It was tiring. We left the house at about 11 and we got home eventually around 9 or so and ended up catching up on some TV shows that we’ve been neglecting. I got a couple bottle openers out of the shopping deal, and a few pilsner glasses to enjoy assorted beers in. She picked up clothes for her vacation she’s going on in a few days. I almost scored myself a mouth harp, but I decided I’d probably fuck around with it for an hour or two and then totally forget about it. It was only 8 dollars, and I”m regretting not buying it, but I’m sure it will present itself again.
Sunday, we lazed around for a while and went to see “Observe and Report”. It was bad. I think there was a single audible guffaw throughout the entire movie. The jokes were flat, and the characters weren’t funny at all. There was an extended scene where two characters just say “fuck you” back and forth for about 3 or 4 minutes. Comedy gold, right there. After that we went to Sam’s club and I scored a case of Bell’s Oberon, and we went over to Katie’s sister’s for dinner where I polished off 4 or 5 beers.
I’ve been getting the itch to work on music again, which happens about once a year and I end up maybe completing 1 song and then my mind moves on to something else that I get the itch to work on. If I could focus my brain on one productive activity, I’d be a star!
Also, lost a writer for my site 
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04.10.2009
Categories: Personal
Today was the Detroit Tigers home opener. I went down there with Frank, and we got to the bar around 10:30 after traffic and all that mess. We met Dave and had a few drinks once we were able to secure a table, and I drank Labatt’s instead of my old standby of PBR, mainly because I don’t think they had PBR
The game was good, the Tigers won 14 – 2 over the Rangers. After I had to take Frank home, and after I dropped him off, I’ve been lazying around the house. My head feels like it’s on the wrong body today, and I’m dizzy for some reason and my voice is hoarse (and I wasn’t yelling at the game). I had some leftover pizza and I’ve been all gassy and gross. I’ve been trying to beat some of my nemesis’ bejeweled blitz scores in the meantime with House playing in the background…
And then there’s this…
amazing.
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Tags: , tigers
04.03.2009
Categories: Personal
I’ve given in. My will has been broken. I’ve succomed to organizing my music in itunes. I got a program that will auto update my library from a set folder (no matter how buggy it is) and last night I went through and moved all the music I lost from my drive crash off of my ipod on to my computer. I retagged my hundreds of Led Zeppelin mp3’s and Misfits and Depeche Mode and saw just how much stuff I lost (all of my Acetone and most of my Massive Attack, etc.) Musicbrainz helped a lot on that, but now it’s mostly showing up correctly in itunes with a few exceptions.
This is the real fucking dawning of the age of aquarius, make no mistake you hollow headed mofo’s. I’ll be able to make a playlist of all my most recently acquired music instead of adding it to my ipod by dragging and dropping and then forgetting that I added it about 5 seconds after I disconnect the thing and never remember what it was called or who it’s by. I can sync playcounts and all that bullshit and make smart playlists and roll them up and stuff them directly up my corn hole. Can you do that?!? Probably, but this is a life changing event for me, so back the fuck up.
ION (In other news – the new feature of my blog posts! This is the inaugural entry! Exciting, right?) there has been a female duck that has been in my backyard for the last two mornings, quacking away and freaking out my cats. I wonder if she’s missing another duck or something, because it doesn’t seem normal for my backyard to be used as a duck landing/sounding pad. I also like to think that she’s just stopping by to say hello and good morning, too. Maybe that’s the case.
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04.01.2009
Categories: Personal
So, I was thinking I was going to write something really salacious (I can’t believe I spelled that right on the first try!) on my little site here and be all “APRIL FOOLS!” later today, but I figured there aren’t that many people reading this anyhow, and this is more or less for me to look back and laugh at what I thought was a big deal. I’m going to look back at this thing in my waning years and realize that I got upset about a lot of stupid stuff that in the big picture doesn’t mean half a horse shit. That’s what living’s all about though, right? There has to be something that occupies the spaces in between the memorable moments, and that’s where I live, in those spaces.
APRIL FOOLS! haha!
Random thought of the day #1: I dislike not seeing people for a long time and when you see them again, I act like I’m on a first date or something. I always hated first dates in the first place.
Random thought of the day #2: I like warm weather more now, but the one thing I resent about spring and summer is all the yard work. Not cool.
1 month and 1 day from now is my birthday. I should take some days off or something, but what will I do?
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03.31.2009
Categories: Personal
Dear diary,
I’m really getting sick of cleaning up birdshit from my desk at work. Yeah, you read that right, there is birdshit on my desk… I work indoors, and there are those high, unfinished ceilings. Birds get in here and they can’t figure out how to get out and since my desk is against a wall, they get all crazy and decide to expunge their bowels on my stuff. Thankfully I haven’t had any on my keyboard, mouse, monitor or PC itself, but I have had a few splatters on my work phone. I of course promptly scrape it off and eat it… ugh, that made me sick to my stomach to even joke about. I have to disinfect my entire work space. A few weeks ago I had something on my steno notepad, and I thought that someone got mustard or something on my book, but now I realize it was dried bird shit… fucking disgusting and utterly ridiculous at the same time.
I watched an awesome zombie tv show from the BBC called Dead Set last week. It’s about a zombie outbreak that happens during a season of the Big Brother tv show in the UK, and the people inside have no idea it’s going on. It’s 5 episodes long and it was awesome. I really like the whole 10 episodes in a season and then it’s over attitude that the BBC takes with their shows. There are a few shows that return for a couple seasons, but it’s a rarity that they have these shows like Cheers or something that go on for years that just meander around the whole point with filler. I also watched Dead Snow this weekend which is the best Nazi zombie movie I’ve seen. I was pretty impressed actually. It’s a more ridiculous and over the top zombie movie (zombies are pretty over the top as it is, right?) that seems to borrow a lot from Evil Dead.
Everyone is out today going to some pep rally rah rah bullshit, so it’s pretty quiet here today, just the way I like it.
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03.19.2009
Categories: Personal
Since we last spoke, I went to Lakeland, Floriday to watch the Detroit Tigers play in some spring training games. The weather was really nice – around 80 degrees, and low humidity – that’s the key. I actually used sunblock and didn’t get purple burns on my skin like the last time I was in Florida, so that was good. The Tigers went 1-1 to the games that we saw, so it wasn’t too bad. Jeremy and I mostly spent the day at the game and the night in the hotel room drinking beers. Maybe we should have taken better advantage of the time we spent there, although we did walk to 7-11 on one of the days, so that’s something.
I’m going to attempt to cook with a wok tonight. I got my rice cooker out on Tuesday and figured out how to work that, so now I’m going to try to make some fried rice. While I have some of the stuff necessary to make an honest to goodness stir fry, we always seem to be deficient of vegetables. While the rice cooks, I’ll probably go out and get the rest of the stuff for my sauce and marinade.
I’ve been slacking hardcore on the gym this year, and I actually went on Tuesday for cardio. I’ve missed the last few days and I feel myself getting complacent so I decided yesterday that I’m going to try the 100 burpee challenge. If you don’t know what a burpee is, I’ll tell you that it isn’t a little burp. It’s an excersize where you start standing, then you crouch down, and put your hands down, and push your feet back so that you’re into a pushup position. Once you drop into the pushup position, you go all the way down so that you’re on your chest, then you push yourself up. At that point, you bring your feet back underneath you into a squat, stand straight up and then jump into the air. When you get back to your feet, you start the whole thing over again, in rapid succession. Here’s what I’m talking about:
So, what the 100 burpee challenge is, is on day 1, you do 1 burpee. On day 2, you do 2 burpees. Day 3, you do 3, etc. If you miss a day, you make up all of those burpees on the next day, plus the ones that you have to do for that day. So, if you miss day 49, on day 50, you do 99 burpees. They don’t have to all be right in a row, as I plan on doing about 10 in a set when I get past day 15 or so. I’m also doing a few extra just to make sure I get the right form down. I can already tell this is going to be a good test, and something that will be a good supplement to my current workout. I guess it won’t hurt right? Plus, I’m looking for something to help me kickstart my weightloss, since that’s slowed since I’ve slacked off.
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03.09.2009
Categories: Personal
someone got added to my shitlist today
first off, they came up to my desk and got right up in my personal fucking space. I don’t know why they didn’t just stick their tongue in my ear when they were talking to me. Then they asked the ubiquitous “Are you busy”, I playfully answered “Always” and they said totally straightfaced “No you’re not.”
Sorry, you don’t even know me. You don’t know who I am, you don’t know what I do, and you’ve never talked to me. Just because you’re some lifelong prole at this company and you hate your job, don’t come over to me and tell me you know what I’m doing, regardless if I’m joking or not. Maybe if they would have at least had said it differently it might not have set something off in my head, but when you say shit and you’re not joking, you can eat some shit.
Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I’ve been missing. I got sick last week and I missed some days from work and I’m leaving Thursday again for the weekend.
This past weekend, I saw Watchmen on Friday, which I thought was absolutely awesome. I enjoyed it a lot more than “The Dark Knight” – mostly because TDK was 2 1/2 hours long and it just felt like it kept dragging on and on. Watchmen was actually longer, but because I knew the source material, I could roughly gauge where it was in the film, but I wasn’t bored at all. I also saw Slumdog Millionaire on Sunday, and that was also excellent. It wasn’t what I was expecting but I really enjoyed the way the story was told. Danny Boyle continues to do awesome work and he totally deserved his accolades.
I wish I had more original thought to share but I’m lost.
