31Jul2008 1750: Sleep

You want to know how my week's been? I just hit 49 hours for the week today, on top of the 46-odd hours last week, and I still have to go for a full day tomorrow and possibly Saturday. As soon as my laundry is done I will have a shot of gin and sleep for ten hours.

[Katie Armiger - Unseen] is some redneck chick whining that her man couldn't look past the facade she puts up to keep people distant.

[Belanova - One, Two, Three, GO!] is probably an utterly vapid song about dancing but I don't care. I am naturally predisposed to music with "Go!" in it.

23Jul2008 1900: Praise?

In summary: hell yeah Dark Knight. I'm seeing it again on Sunday but I'm afraid that may not even be enough. When was the last time I saw a movie three times in theaters? Matrix? Sin City? It's two and a half hours long, and I spent most of it giggling quietly and covering my mouth. Once the Joker takes the screen the movie only lets up in order to beat you down again. My favorite line of any review (not linked because it is teh spoilerz) comes from Capone's review on Ain't it Cool: "[Nolan's] film made me dislike a film I once enjoyed because I now see that Nicholson's Joker is a pussy."

And oh yeah, there was also this trailer for Watchmen. I happen to know that Morgion is watching it like five times daily. From what we're shown here it seems to have captured the look of the comic perfectly. I don't even have complaints about Ozymandias' suit, the most prevalent complaint on the Internets. We'll see how much of the writing is intact...

Oh noes my childhood!

There's also this impending doom, so I spent the weekend getting reacquainted with Ender. I had already read Ender's Game a few times, but I had never moved on to Speaker for the Dead or Xenocide. They...they get weird. Speaker is an extended "mystery" that readers get let in on about 100 pages before any of the characters...when the characters finally got around to solving their problem(s) I just wanted to reach in and poke them in the eye for not getting it sooner. And then in Xenocide they invent magic, so....yeah. Conclusion: see Batman again instead.

Only two free singles this week. Do not be tricked into clicking the third item in the row without looking. It is a trap set by Alvin and the Chipmumks.

[Bajofondo - El Mareo (feat. Gustavo Cerati)] confused me for a minute. I liked it, yes, but how was it good? It's like the theme from a mid-70s Bond movie played in double-time. There's little string interludes and an otherwise smooth delivery. Soothing!

There was no doubt that [Kerli - Walking On Air] would find a home on my computer. "Creepshow" is one of my favorites on the Burnout Paradise soundtrack. Estonian gothloli pop music is a very narrow niche, but it's completely inoffensive pop to me. The song also has some autobiographical things going on, and I'm a sucker for that. High point is definitely the Bjorkdown at 2:45.

18Jul2008 0326: MAGNIFICENT

I love it when a plan comes together.

16Jul2008 1946: Batman

No time for a witty headline, as Batman: The Dark Knight approacheth! Let me lay out how my Thursday's going to look:

1. 0730: Work
2. 1130: Screw work, it's time for IT fun day
3. 1700: Dinner
4. 1900: Home to watch Batman Begins on DVD
5. 2120: Anibatrix
6. 2235: Go check the line at West Acres. At this point Morgion and I either get in line for the midnight premiere or head to Granite City for a pint.
7. 0002 (technically no longer Thursday): Batman: The Dark Knight!

Fuck yeah, that's what American bread and circuses will get you these days!

[Amandititita - Metrosexual] is the first time in a long while I would consider the song improved if I could understand the lyrics. From the tone of voice I think it's making fun of metrosexuals, and I am down with that in a three-star way, but until I actually care enough to look up a translation I can't be sure.

[Fela's Egypt 80 & Seun Kuti - Think Afrika] is far less intelligible than the Spanish song. It could be in Afrikaans; it could just be a thick accent. I'm pretty sure there was some English in there, but it's layered in other words I have no hope of making out. It's jazzy and has a lot of nice instrumental interludes, but whenever Mr. Egypt 80 starts singing I wish it was a song about grilled cheese. DELETED.

[Scars on Broadway - They Say] is okay. It has a good message that is hit pretty hard with a radio edit. I'll keep it around until the missing words push me over the edge.

Okay, so it doesn't look so great. It tastes magical. Bacogna is sound in theory, but my execution is lacking. It's pretty much this recipe for lasagna with all the noodles replaced by thick-cut bacon. And replace "boiling noodles" with "frying bacon". And you really only need like a quarter of that sauce. Serve with red wine and caution.

12Jul2008 1510: Inspiring

A thousand times, yes!! This video has it all: feeding my ego, pronouncing everything correctly, URL ending in a text editor, and pointing me towards a Let's Play of motherfucking COCORON!!

09Jul2008 2206: Restored

Booya, bitches! I'm back in XP! This is the first time I've ever heard of the built-in XP System Restore actually fixing something, but I restored to last night and the fatal Windows Update disappeared and took its winsock bullshit with it. I had been all over the place looking for solutions... I was becoming quite desperate. In fact the only winning move was not to play. Not only not to play, but to travel back in time and prevent the game from being invented.

The best part is that the nefarious updates are already lurking in the Windows Updater in my system tray, pleading to be let back in. "Updates are ready for your computer", they say in plaintive mosquito voices. "Click here to destroy your registry!"

Quick word on Hancock. Will Smith can sell just about anything, but this movie is getting murdered in the press. I'm not sure why; it's definitely not as bad as, say, Fantastic Four or Superman 3, and I really don't think it deserves a (currently) 35%. Put it at 70%. It's hard to recommend any movie over seeing Wall-E for a second or third time, but Hancock is not bad. Morgion and I agreed that we enjoy this trend of Will Smith movies hiding a twist from all advertising...so now you know there is one and you should go see it. I should probably watch Pursuit of Happyness and see if he's an undercover CIA agent or something.

I am right now on a quest to track down the movies that were playing at First Av between bands last Thursday. That would be Yo-Yo Girl Cop, Immortel, and the super-secret trump card I'm going to spring on the SciSat crew. Anticipate!

[Blind Pilot - Go On, Say It] is a nice mellow indie pop song. It strikes me that "indie" now describes more about the song type than it does about the band's label-signing status, and I should probably come up with a better word. But you know what I mean; this isn't top-40 radio pop, with blonde divas or 20-something ex-boy-band members. This is something you would hear opening for Modest Mouse. It's pretty good.

[The Body Snatchers - Call Me (feat. Stereotypical Gangsta Nicknames)] would be way cooler if it actually said "feat. Stereotypical Gangsta Nicknames", because then it could be taken in some kind of meta context. You know I don't love any song as much as a meta-song. But this is an electronic/rap song about a party or parties. That doesn't really touch me. If it was a LAN party, sure, but this is like drinking parties and hotels and whatever. Then there's a noise breakdown that resolutely doesn't sample from Pac-Man. DELETED.

[Ximena Sarinana - Normal]: chick playing a piano? SOLD. We'll work out that whole "Spanish" thing later.

09Jul2008 2120: Nor Any SYN to ACK

Ftaghn, if it's not one thing, it's another. The carpenter came and rehung the doors on my water heater cabinet -- he had to extend the front frame to allow for the new catch pan -- but while he was working I discovered my Internet was being a jerk. That's the technical term. I can ping and tracert to any site I please, but all of my web browsers and mail and IM clients fail to connect to anything.

Then how are you seeing this? Windows 98, baby. This is why I kept the dual-boot around. From here I was able to track down that it's probably a corrupted Winsock something something registry mumble mumble I'm boned good luck. I do remember a WinXP security update last night, and this morning when I booted up it did a disk check that took longer than usual. I guess that was Microsoft hosing my registry.

Any iTunes and posting will have to come after I fix my only remaining computer...or next week I may be posting from my Nintendo DS.

06Jul2008 1651: And All the Boards Did Shrink

It took all my resolve to follow through on not posting on Wednesday. I still wasn't ready to download iTunes singles, but man! Tuesday night! I was about to go to bed and getting my usual glass of fridge water, and I flipped on the utility room light to make a quick litterbox check. And there was water on the floor.

Through dumb luck, I had managed to catch the death throes of my (raised, in-a-cupboard) water heater. There were only about two gallons down out of a potential forty...and that's the last good news I had for about two days. I called a plumber, turned off the circuit breaker, and figured out how to drain the whole thing into my sink, but I've still had to deal with missing a half-day of work, paying a rather substantial sum of money, and the dampness that got under my washer/dryer and behind the sheetrock. Wednesday's morning shower quickly went from painful to surreal; have you ever combed your hair with a completely numb scalp? Where your only feedback that you are, in fact, combing is from the mirror?

The saga continues tomorrow. A carpenter is supposed to call re: the dangerously sagging cupboard floor where it got the most soaked.

The concert on Thursday began a marked upswing for the holiday weekend. There was definitely no filler here -- a key difference from most Rilo Kiley concerts -- and I discovered to my horror that my avoidance of dance makes me a target when "mosh" erupts around me. The last ska concert I saw was Reel Big Fish back in 99, and I stood well back from the stage in that instance. This time I took up my usual just-right-of-center four-rows-back Rilo Kiley position, which worked well right up until Suburban Legends started the first note of their first song. That's when the destruction began...

And after all that, I've gotten iTunes running fully once again, so here's this week's reviews! [M.J. - Lento] is a slow-paced electronica/rap song that probably has a better genre descriptor but falls just inside the DELETE rating, so I don't care. [Steve Reynolds - Save the Best] and [Holly Conlan - You Are Goodbye] are both middle-of-the-road folk songs. I'll keep them, but neither of them are going to change my world.