Saturday, November 24, 2007

went shopping...
wandered lots of stores...
found nothing i couldnt live without...
or that said 'so and so needs this'...

came out and found my trunk open
i didnt lock it... though there wasnt anything IN the car...
but it's always nice to know that there are nice people in the parking lots making sure my car isnt loaded down with material goods i dont need...

Thursday, November 22, 2007

"On the advice of an astrologer and others, he decided to marry a bitch to get cured. Then we arranged Selvakumar's marriage with a bitch."

FYI... having married one, I wouldnt recommend it...
oh, wait, nevermind... still wouldnt recommend it though...

Wednesday, November 21, 2007


Happy Thanksgiving everyone....
except you, you little consumer geekaroids...


From the BBC:
"Without doubt, the defining image of McClaren's short reign. With their backs against the wall, England need blood, sweat and tears, and yet McClaren stood there helpless, umbrella aloft, not even prepared to get his hair wet! What would Churchill say?"

This one's for Dave and Paul... i only hope they can capture the magic

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

at least the lorax could fly...

Dinner tonight...

2 10oz cuts of organic grassfed beef tenderloin that have spent a day soaking in redwine vinegar and black peppercorns...
a sauce of equal parts beef broth, chicken broth and california old vine zinfandel, reduced with a smattering of diced shallots, and obliterated walnuts, a touch of sugar (the wine is dry... a pinot noir might have been a better choice), more peppercorns, a bay leaf (i'm getting into the habit of using these), and some whole coriander seed. reduce dramatically - then strain...

35 minutes in the oven at 350... then circle-wrapped with bacon

Side #1 will be homestyle cut baby red potatoes - sauteed in unsalted butter, peanut oil, and a dash of white truffle oil
Side #2 is sauteed mushrooms - using the red sauce leavings and more unsalted butter.

Dessert is a home-made cheesecake, heavy on the sourcream - with a honey drizzle and sprinkled walnuts.

the question is...
should i skip the bacon?

Friday, November 16, 2007

ok people...
its 2007... there's no excuse for not understanding how the internet works...

So when you're a crap company that makes a game with a couple unflattering reviews
And people make fun of the fact that you try to sell said game by using the attractiveness of the producer with an offcolor webcomic
And you follow this up with a threat to sue someone notorious for being an asshat for a link to said comic that was posted in their threaded discussion boards
You should pretty much expect fallout

Uguu...

Thursday, November 15, 2007

From Jake as per Warren as per the Original

I think he knew this one would set me off... when people ask me 'why do you seem such a misanthrope' i should just point them at this story. If I weren't sure Pony had been replaced by another - maybe I'd be more encouraged by the rescue... then again - considering the way we treat female HUMAN victims of sexual abuse in some countries...

Maybe the universe is better off without us making it off planet... maybe global warming and epigenetic damage from pesticides and lead toys are good things.

Sorry - today was a day to be disappointed... that we suck as a species is usually just background clutter.

Once upon a time there was a band...
a band known for breaking all the rules...
a band with shows so extreme they had to cover themselves in makeup...

not so much anymore - now it's all about the benjamins...
and these kids today, with that whole not paying me for my genius!?! hell no...

The record industry is in such a mess. I called for what it was when college kids first started download music for free -- that they were crooks. I told every record label I spoke with that they just lit the fuse to their own bomb that was going to explode from under them and put them on the street. There is nothing in me that wants to go in there and do new music. How are you going to deliver it? How are you going to get paid for it if people can just get it for free?

well Gene... you know, all those jerk kids that recorded your music off Q102 at midnight onto crappyassed cassette decks when they played entire albums were crooks too i guess... though i'd bet you'd consider anyone who wasnt giving you $20 for a $2 fruit of the loom t-shirt made in china with prison labor and slapped with a plastic KISS logo that would no doubt shred after a 4th washing someone unworthy to receive a gob of your blood-filled spit either... and god help the kid who went to Bills and SOLD your old Kiss LPs when they bought the CDs...

Dude. Shut up. Find a way to make it work. Madonna is doing it - by focusing on TOURING and tying record sales directly to the touring entity. She's smarter than you are - jackass... and just because she's also managed to age better than your sleaze bag i wouldnt touch that with BOBs dick pornstar wife doesn't mean there arent people finding business models that DO work in the entertainment industry. Get over yourself - or get a show on VH1 with Flava and Brett and blow goats for all that anyone cares about your music. Piss off.

Monday, November 12, 2007


too warm - allergies are back for a couple days i think...
but i dont think i've ever felt this badly..

Saturday, November 10, 2007


I dont often get to reach back for the history degree... but Remembrance Day is something we'd all be better off taking a bit more seriously. World War I was one of those many wars fought by legions of brave but ultimately poorly cultivated souls so that a few plutocrats sitting safely behind the lines could play at soldier and tyrant (which makes it different from certain more modern events exactly how... but then, if one thing has been proven by history it's that we are absolutely incapable of learning from it).

This was a more Commander McBragg sort of war - prone to the pompous buffoonery of commanders one might find fictionalized in Flashman or Sharpe - famously elitist generals ordering proletariat infantrymen back and forth into meatgrinders - with a brutality and callousness that's still hard to imagine nearly a century later. This was a war that broke societies... 3 million widows... 10 million orphans... but the battles; the battles of this war involved death on a scale and stupidity that's hard to fathom in todays terms. Yes - some of the eastern front battles were bad during Barbarosa - especially in the sense that many of those captured found their way into death camps - but this war was a different sort of insanity altogether. At the Somme, 1.1 million men lost their lives. 1.1 million men stood up and faced certain death... and still they stood.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.


We may not teach the history to our children... Franz Ferdinand may live on only as a fairly crappy Scottish band... we may find the history itself at odds with our current belligerent mindset - or simply may not spend the money to educate the teachers much less the children on the truths of man's inhumanity to man... but on this day some few of us will remember - and live in hope that one day others can be bothered to care.

I hope you all keep that in mind tomorrow.

Friday, November 09, 2007

well....
sometimes...
when they put a cordon around you its a good thing
and sometimes its a bad thing
of course there's usually an easy way to tell...

were people involved?
[nyoro~n]

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Why does this make me laugh? (this one's for the orchestra geeks)

You know those nights where you just grab a bunch of music that makes you happy, turn it up exceptionally loud, and bounce around with a big stupid grin on your face for hours?

Yeah...

THIS.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Jake is gonna be pissed...
Prop 10 passed

sigh...

Monday, November 05, 2007

Hmmm...
So it's pretty clear that waterboarding is A-OK in this country...
whereas 11 young men ganging up on a young mentally disabled girl, sexually assaulting her, filming the assault and distributing it on DVD is not... oh wait - yes it is - sorta... though in this case it's not IN this country...

But it makes me wonder - why cant we institute waterboarding as a standard punishment? If we're not going to bother rehabilitating people anyway - lets just make their time in prison as absolutely miserable as possible. The old 'throw up a wall around manhattan' just isnt enough, not when we have a modern day Devil's Island running down in Cuba... I mean - leg irons 24x7... a constant 50db of Michael Bolton's 'When a Man Loves a Woman' on infinite replay... and hell, if waterboarding is good enough for the govt - how about making it standard when dealing with government officials guilty of fraud with public funds. Hey vice president Vader - watch your cornhole buddy...

I suppose the 'right' answer in dealing with these 11 men is rehabilitation - so it never happens again... but damn if a couple decades strapped to a chair watching Beastmaster 2 doesnt sound like a good idea.


05.11.1605 - Never Forget

Well, i could go on about what's going on in Pakistan because that's a situation that's on the verge of out of control... but hell - what am i really going to say - it's not like there's anything positive to point out - and all this negativity is bothersome somedays. So instead i'm going to post positive things. Hmmm... I like Clannad, though Bamboo Blade is probably the surprise positive for me this season (haven't seen enough Ghost Hound to cement a judgment but it has a good feel). Weather's been nice. The NE/Indy game was pretty good - almost as much fun to watch as the Horns game. Shiner Black Lager has a Pale Moon Ale thing going - which works for me. Might have some sense of movement re work this week - i'm hearing happy noises.
Still - the Pakistanis seem like they want to make a region that's already a mess even more so - so I think i'll just focus on Dango and not really worry about it.



While i'm on the subject - one of my favorite things about anime today is that it's become edgy - the way comic books changed when guys like Miller started pissing off Lonestar by pushing boundaries with more adult story lines (it wasnt that long ago that the mainstream distributors wouldnt carry a comic that wasnt built for the 12 yr old crowd - you younguns prolly dont remember the stink over Epic). So what you have now is an environment where the bands, as fellow artists, are recognizing the somewhat more intersting nature of anime in japan (with stuff like the fairly well exposed Lain series hopefully you understand what i mean - if not, just nod your head). So now anime is an avenue for japanese bands to nail some broad exposure (having a song leading a popular anime is almost a guarantee to making the japanese pop charts) - and the avant-garde artists that're driving the genre are happy go have them along for the ride.

For example - i give you Kojima Mayumi's song Poltergeist used by Ghost Hound in their op (i linked the OP above)
They rock. I mean damn - what a perfect smoky mysterious open... if these guys came to town I'd go see them - and this is austin, we get guys like the New Pornographers and Ted Leo rolling through without very many noticing pretty regularly... (though, that's not really fair, since i dont go see bands terribly often... perhaps i should say 'i'd make jake go see them with me' since that's probably more accurate)

L'Arc en Ciel's 'Daybreak's Bell' for Gundam topped the charts the first week it was available in japan - though that might not be fair since they're pretty old hands in the japan chart-rock scene. I'm not a Gundam person to be honest - but damn if it isn't one of the prettiest damned cartoons i've ever seen.

A couple of other examples showing different genres -
Tears Infection by Kaori - from Myself Yourself (freakin youtube and their copyright crap... i've fixed this twice) - which is better for the way they use it in the OP... but it's always interesting to watch the culture cross the pond...
and of course this season's OP for ShanaJOINT by Mami Kawada.

Some artists really belong in the old 'make a song for a cartoon' genre - and they've built a career on it... and honestly there'll always be a place for them Kotoko's OP for Hayate no Gotoku for example (though you really do begin to recognize their voices after a while...)
So as you can tell from Kotoko's resume - i'm not going to pretend all anime is edgy - but whats interesting is that the japanese music industry has noted that some of these shows sport target demographic markets - and they can sell records. Example a new manufactured band - Buono! - a young girl idol group with music for Shugo Chara - with a target demographic of 12 yr old girls (this thing will suck all your body's insulin out through your eyes - it MUST be for coming of age girls...). Then again... when you see the band doing their live 'tiffany at the mall' performance... - you'll note the somewhat disturbing nature of the actual fanbase for acts like these (give the guys credit... they're REALLY into it... - odd, if 20-something american girls go nuts like this over a boyband its just fine... but guys just dont act like this over here...). One of these 'we made a popular song for a popular anime' bands rolled through during SXSW last time - Oreskaband (and yes, they play their own instruments) - who's Pinocchio ended Naruto for a while.

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Rule of Thumb?




You know... i really cant make it more clear than this: under NO circumstance is it ok to pursue violence with your wife/girlfriend. There is nothing they've done (or you've done) that justifies violence. And girls - if the guy EVER does anything like that you need to leave him (and take his testicles with you please). That whole 'oh but he loves me' crap is just wrong - so dont make me smack you... oh wait... nm....

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Grab a paperback...
look at the spine...
find the US price...
now - usually - theres a CAD price too...
Now, with the dollar at $1.04 and falling - doesnt this seem wrong?