thanks oglaf

this is a fairly accurate depiction of my flirting technique when i'm out of chloroform.
brilliant.

r.i.p. guitar hero

Activision is shutting the doors on the Guitar Hero franchise. This is the least surprising video game announcement I can think of. Guitar Hero, as a 'thing', has been dead in the water since just after the launch of Rock Band. Sure, the sales figures were good for a while, but for comparison:
In the time it took us to get Rock Band 1 and 2 (I am leaving out the Green Day, Beatles, etc expansions and sticking to just main releases) Guitar Hero dropped World Tour, 5, Warriors of Rock, Metallica, Van Halen, and Smash Hits.
Rock Band has 1200+ songs. Guitar Hero has. . . less than that. When Harmonix announced they had 500 downloadable songs, Guitar Hero had fewer than 100 available.
This is a matter of personal preference I know, but I think it's worth mentioning; Rock Band has the superior fake plastic guitars.
Oh, and the quality of the charting and gameplay was noticeably better, again, in my opinion, with Rock Band. The time frame you have to hit the keys is a tiny bit more lax in RB, making the game easier overall. I also felt that the charting was less retarded, there are songs in GH (3, especially) that are only hard because the chord progressions are fucking murder on your fingers, the charting on RB is like that on fewer songs, the hard songs are rarely hard just because the chords were selected to be difficult to transition to and from.

oh look, this is my shocked face

ayn rand is full of shit.
i cannot believe that the founder of a philosophy that it takes all of a half semester of logic, philosophy, psychology, or sociology to tear into shreds would also be forced to live contrary to her own principles to make ends meet.

still waiting on someone to clip ann coulter or rush limbaugh in the knee with a 9mm round to see if it changes their viewpoint on gun control laws.

this is exactly how ethical i am.

so, i usually pay "money" for cds and music, like a "fucking idiot". that being said, i still use soulseek here and there to check new things out or to grab the one decent song a band managed to cobble together.

soulseek is a pretty substandard tool though, so i'm looking for a new / more efficient way to grab a couple albums.
comments or emails will be much appreciated.

in the event that you're wondering what fuckall horrible nonsense i'm after at the moment, the short list is as follows:
corrosion of conformity - deliverance
straight faced - guilty, broken
i against i - headcleaner
zero down - with a lifetime to pay

i'd feel bad about ripping off punk rock bands, but the only one of those that's still even around in any fashion is c.o.c.

and, as an aside to tarcos, i did find a band i listen to that was formed in the last decade. 'lights out god help me'. so, you know, there's one.

and i didn't even lose that much blood

so, the set's finally fucking done. after fighting with substandard materials, a lack of proper tools, daily revisions and changes, 90% of the help never showing up, and the space i need to work in being booked more or less solid until just before the show opened, the set has been built, painted, and no longer needs my attention.
shit that made it to the blooper reel:

- dropped a screw and drove a power drill into my finger. thankfully, the bones in my knuckle stopped the bit before it marred the 2x4. bled all over the damn place, managed not to swear in the presence of church folk.

- actually broke that same bit removing a stray screw from some of the random hazardous lumber.

- held temper in check when actor guy showed up to help, started blasting the greatest hits of amy grant and hurting himself on every surface possible. i had not previously seen someone supposedly familiar with power tools injure themself 4 times in 15 minutes with just a drill.

- stepped on exposed 4" screw in 3x6. registered mild annoyance, used claw hammer to remove shoe from board.

- rebuilt half of the platforms, supports, and braces available due to their entirely shitty construction and / or patch jobs done with fucking shoelaces and scotch tape.

now, i am going to spend a couple days recuperating, and by that i mean playing a couple rounds of 'fuck my liver' with mr. miller high life, and then i'm going to have to go back and tear it all down.

merry fucking christmas

My original post for this space was taken out back and shot, so I'm cobbling together some random things from the last couple days / week(s) for some kind of update (read: filler).

first off, and most amusing to me personally: one of my former drinking partners has started taking medication to wean themself off of the demon booze. this is hilarious. so now, every time they take a drink, the medication makes them want to throw up. oh please modern science, get that weak shit out of here. i've been drinking with this individual many, many times, if throwing up was enough of an impetus to "stop", that stopped being effective loooooong ago.

second, i have been advised that it's not my taste in women that is wrong, it's that i am an awful fucking human being. personally, i'd say it's about 50/50, but it's not like my judgement has been all that spectacular, so what the hell.

i told my little sister my plans for christmas day, and she was torn between an utter lack of surprise, and obvious, naked disgust. she's known me for over 20 years, she should know better than to ask me shit like that.

fuck off 2010, you were a terrible damn year, here's to 2011.

Do not do this

Ok fuckers, I didn't think this was actually going to be necessary, but be advised:
Whereas my phone is a piece of shit (a), and I occasionally do things which will render me unresponsive (b), if you shoot me fifty text messages in a row (c), I will find something you love and burn it.


(a): I have this fucking thing. Out of the three cell phones I have had in the last 14 years, it is, by far, the worst one out of the lot. Every part of this phone performs worse than it has any right to. The feature that prompted this goddamned post is the phone's lack of a setting to auto-delete text messages, coupled with it's extremely small internal memory for such. It holds 140 messages at a time, in and out. After dicking around with it for a while, it will now automatically delete the oldest incoming message when I get a new one, but will not free up space if I'm trying to send one out. This is horseshit. My last phone held 180 in, 180 out, and would auto delete the oldest message as needed, and gave me the option to lock messages that I didn't want purged.
Other 'features' include a substandard camera, the inability to see any of your contacts' information when you're not in service, shitty reception, short battery life, and the worst sound quality ever. Seriously, using this thing as an actual phone is about on par with getting ear fucked by spastics.

(b) I do occasionally sleep. Also, my phone gets shit for service in a lot of places. Even better, it can't figure out timestamps with any degree of accuracy, so I will occasionally get your replies 'before' a message I sent to you, in which case the phone doesn't alert me to an incoming message. Or, I'm busy and not answering my phone.

(c) Seriously, do not send me a shitload of 'hey!' text messages. I hate this more than people leaving me voice mail. I will eventually see your call or message and be in an appropriate place to respond. If I have to manually clean a bunch of shit off my phone because you're acting like fucking navi, I will burn something you like. Patience is a virtue, do some deep breathing exercises or something, I will get back to you at some point.