J Michael Straczynski Sucks Ass

Not as a writer or a person as a whole, but as a commentator on his show Babylon 5.

I enjoy watching the commentaries on DVDs. I've learned some interesting things. For instance in Seven Samurai by Kurosawa when actors are shot with arrows, they are truly shot with arrows. An expect archer is standing right off camera and shooting an arrow into the guys chest. Of course the guy being shot has a board strapped to his chest under his robe. Or the sound of laser fire in Star Wars is actually someone hitting a high tension wire with a hammer.

These things are fun to find out and fun to know, but what I shouldnt learn in the commentaries is that Sheridan will become President of the Earth Alliance or that his wife is still alive and works for the shadows a full 3 seasons before it happens!

Thanks Mike. Thanks for ruining the fucking surprise. Next time put a disclaimer in the commentaries, something like "Don't watch this commentary because I tell you exactly what is going to happen and ruin your viewing experience over the next 3 seasons." That warning would have been nice.

Here's some others:
Crying Game - its a guy
Sixth Sense - bruce willis is already dead
Star Wars - vader is lukes father and leia is lukes sister

Worst. Game. Ever.

Its disappointing to watch your team go out with a whimper. No fire, no hustle, nada. Getting beat to a missed rebound in the last minute is sad, getting beat to TWO in the last minute is unforgivable. They didn't want to win tonight.

Other than that, thank you JJ, for a great year and a great career. Now just 7 months until next year, which, unfortunately will see the team with the powder blue as national champ contenders, not Duke. Unless there is a fiery bus crash or a crazed sniper somewhere on the UNC campus

A Couple Of Things

I cannot put into words my disdain for the people who refuse to use their turn signal.

GET OFF THE FUCKIN PHONE AND TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK YOU ARE GOING TO DO WITH THAT GOD DAMN ESCALADE IN FRONT OF ME!!!

Am I overreacting? This is common courtesy people. What kind of lazy fucks have we become?

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The Greatest-80s-Song-That-Never-Became-A-Huge-#1-Single

"Bringin' On The Heartache" - Def Leppard

This song is 80s to its core. The great opening riff, a great chorus, not one, but three heavy metal solos. And not the crappy speed solos of the 80s, more 70s british bluesy solos. This was Def Leppard at the top of their game. They still had the long hair and everyone had two arms. They fuckin rocked. The second greatest Def Leppard song of all time ("Photograph", duh) and it fell flat on the charts and almost crushed my 11 year old spirit. I mean, look at the the top 10 singles of 1981, the year the song was released:

# 1. Bette Davis Eyes - Kim Carnes
# 2. Endless Love - Diana Ross & Lionel Richie
# 3. Lady - Kenny Rogers
# 4. (Just Like) Starting Over - John Lennon
# 5. Jessie's Girl - Rick Springfield
# 6. Celebration - Kool & The Gang
# 7. Kiss On My List - Daryl Hall & John Oates
# 8. I Love A Rainy Night - Eddie Rabbitt
# 9. 9 To 5 - Dolly Parton
# 10. Keep On Loving You - REO Speedwagon

"Bringing on the Heartache" is better than 8 of the songs on that list.


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My 7th Annual NCAA Vacation began today. It is a good time. I am happy now. I will watch more games this year than last. I will cook every day. I will clean. I will see the ducks. I will get at least 10 games right tomorrow. I will work on the campaign. I will shop at Target.

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Sad news, Games Galore moved from the corner of Glenwood and Duraleigh. They moved to Cary, which sucks, because the last time I drove to Cary, my car died for about 20 minutes. And I was in the mood to buy a board game. Maybe Hobby Master, but I dont think so.


Listening to - Pete Townshand 'Gold'

What Is Too Much?

Currently I am wondering what size my next external harddrive should be. The current one is 80GB and is almost full, mainly from music.

iTunes tells me that I have just shy of 50GB of music, 12359 songs, 37 days + 7 1/2 hours worth of music on the harddrive. This might seem excessive, especially since there are almost 2000 songs (almost 6 days worth) I have yet to listen to. At one point I was down to a day and half of unplayed music, but this has changed and I add albums faster than I can listen to them.

But how can you turn down the chance to burn 5 Miles Davis Box sets (an entire days worth of music!) in the span of a month? How can you not get excited skimming through the promo box at work thinking 'Sweet! I don't have to buy this. Sharon, I will be returning this cd tomorrow' or 'I think I've heard of this band, what the hell, let me burn it.'

Obsessed? Clearly. But iTunes is so much fun. And for people who are obsessive/compulsive about listing things (like me), its pure heaven. It tells me the first song added to my iTunes 'Eat It' by Weird Al (added 1/28/03 at 12:09 pm), most played 'Shake your Rump' & 'High Plains Drifter' (both by Beastie Boys, at 33 times), that its been 30 months since I listened to 'Is There Anybody Here That Love My Jesus' by Medeski, Martin & Wood (last played on 8/12/03) and that if you played every song longer than 10 minutes on my harddrive (360 of them) it would take 3 days, 14 hours 40 minutes and 29 seconds.

This might be too much. But, its never been easier to make mix CDs. I can type in almost any word and pull up at least a full cds worth of music, and since it finds the sequence of letters, not the word, you get all sorts of things. The word 'turd' pulls up a suprising number of songs, like those with the word Saturday. Or if I want to make a CD of 5 star rock songs from 1970-1975 between 4 & 5 minutes long I can with no problem because there are 43 of them on the harddrive.

So, again, is it too much? Probably. Do I care? Hell no. I love music and you never know when you might need 6 different versions of 'What A Wonderful World'.

Last Month

About a month ago I broke up with my girlfriend. After 6 years we decided to call it quits.

When people find out they want to know three things, A) what happenned; B) if I am ok; and C) whose fault it was?

When I get to the part about it was no ones fault, it gets kind of hard to explain and I've had trouble trying to describe the new status of our relationship. Last week I talked to Xris and she gave me the perfect description.

So, she gets mad props, not only for describing the impossible, but for the last 6 years of my life.

Although we are broken up, we are 'eligible for rehire'.


Listening To: John Coltrane - One Down, One Up (Live At The Half Note)

Airplanes

Everytime I fly home I enjoy it. There is something about seeing the world from 25000 feet that makes me want to play SimCity. Everything is so simple from the air. Everything is divided and clean. The nice sharp lines of property boundries. The meandering way a river makes it way across the ground. The way hills look like folds in a bed sheet from high above. Hell, even junk yards look nice from above.
The best height is somewhere around ten to fifteen thousand feet. You can spot the specks of cars making their way along roads. Structures become distinguishable. Look for the small oval (high school track), normally in proximity to a green wedge or two (baseball fields). Malls become rectangles stacked on each other sitting on a larger black rectangle of parking spaces. Golf courses are large green swaths with numerous different green dots across it.

When I fly into Raleigh I try to find my house, and now it should be easier, since the normal flightplan takes you over the North Raleigh Borders, which I can usually spot. Find 540 to the north of the store, then find the water tower to the south, in between is the store. Unfortunately some old hag had the window, so I didnt get to spot anything but her blue head.

Now I have to find my copy of SIMCity3.

Following The Flame

Just 5 days left until Winter Olympics XX, the big double X, the 'Score', a dozen & two-thirds of another dozen.

Watch the opening ceremonies for sheer TV pomp at its best, and for this: The Sparks of Passion.
The Ceremonies involves choreographers, directors, costume designers and international professionals; they will also involve a choreographed exhibition on skates called Sparks of Passion, in which eight ice hockey athletes will race at 50 km an hour inside the Stadio Olimpico. The uniqueness of this exhibition is also guaranteed due to the Sparks of Passion, generating red flames 2 metres long.


See where the flame is right now!
The Route

Best Live Albums

The Who - Live At Leeds (deluxe edition) Although the single disc version is very good as well, you need the second disc with a live version of Tommy. A wall of noise comes from just three guys and show The Who as the best live band of any from the British Invasion.

The Allman Brothers - The Fillmore Concerts The two-discs covers the best of the four sets. The best from a great, great live band. Just think, in a world without 'Freebird' the Allmans would be looked at the undisputed champs of southern rock.

Frank Zappa - YCDTOSA Vol 2 (the Helsinki Concert Volume two of Zappa's career spanning 12 disc set, these two discs highlight one of the most talented bands ever, playing some of the most ridiculously complex music ever. And they play it very well and very quickly. Anyone who loves supremely talented musicians will love this concert.

Santana - Live At The Fillmore 68 Five men find a groove and ride it for two hours, laying down some of the funkiest rock music ever. Greg Rolie's keyboard (of later Journey fame) swirls around while Carlos soars over the entire band with his distinctive sound.

Van Morrison - Its Too Late To Stop Now The tempermental Van and his band are in top form on this set and as a bonus, no live cover of Moondance.

The Grateful Dead - Dicks Picks Vol 10 The band synonymous with playing live, this is one of the best efforts in their catelog. Jerry and the boys play with abandon and the songs teeter on the brink of exploding into chaos.

The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

I know spring is just around the corner when i see Cadbury Creme Eggs in the store. The Creme Egg is my absolute weakness, I'm pretty sure the Creme Egg would be in my last meal. These things rock, a chocolate shell covering some white/orange spongy, sticky mass of pure sugar. Whoever invented this thing should be fucking knighted.
It also has one of the most timeless advertizing lines of all time. The Cadbury bunny has been schilling these sugarbombs for as long as i can remember. Also the eggs are only available for a short time, disappearing right after easter like jesus.

But the Creme Egg is only the predecessor to the real star of the junk food spring scene. Girl Scout Cookies. These things hit strip malls like mating season and people go fuckin nuts. Tell me of another time you've ever bought more than 2 of the SAME kind of cookie in one shopping trip. These too have remain relatively constant over the years, allowing me to buy box after box of thin mint every spring until the girlscouts disappear, returning to their magic tree to start baking next years batch of chocolately goodness.

Also, I heard some magical words today. "Two weeks until pitchers and catchers." A glorious phrase, especially this year with a stronger team. Delgado & Wagner. I love Omar Minaya. In fact if i ever get a dog, his (or her) name will be Omar.

Time Machines

Dont you wish sometimes you had a time machine to go back in time and redo something? Even if it was a limited time machine that set you back an hour or two. Especially after you read the instructions on something and say 'Well, whats the worst that can happen?'
Here's a tip, when the instructions on the bath mat say 'wash alone and on gentle cycle' listen to them. I didnt, figuring whats the worst that can happen.
The worst that can happen is that your mat sheds blue over everything else in the load and starts to come apart, so you spend 10 minutes pulling out chunks of the rug.
So beware, read instructions, especially during washing.

I can't believe...

I forgot how good De La Soul's 3 Feet High And Rising is. Fuck.

The Great Game of Cricket

I have no clue what this next means, but it sounds good... maybe...

Match State: Drinks

And the drinks come onto the field

End of over 17 (4 runs) Pakistan 56/1
SC Ganguly 2-0-5-0 (1nb) - Pavilion End
Younis Khan 25* (42b 4x4) Shoaib Malik 18* (56b 3x4)

16.6 Ganguly to Shoaib Malik, no run, short of a length and outside the
off, punched off the back foot to cover
16.5 Ganguly to Shoaib Malik, no run
16.4 Ganguly to Shoaib Malik, no run, full and on the pads, clipped to
the leg side
16.3 Ganguly to Shoaib Malik, FOUR, short of a length and outside the
off, Malik stands tall, opens the face of the bat and eases the
ball past the lone slip fielder to the third-man boundary
16.2 Ganguly to Shoaib Malik, no run, short of a good length and outside
the off, driven off the back foot to cover
16.1 Ganguly to Shoaib Malik, no run, just short of a good length and on
the off, defended back down the pitch


That was a portion of a cricket boxscore between India & Pakistan. Two HUGE cricket rivals. Think Yankees-Red Sox, but with 80 million fans on each side.

Now cricket looks epic, but also very English. A huge swath of perfectly maincured lawn. Men scattered across the lawn, standing still. Its quite serene. Then the bowler runs at a batsman and throws a ball right at him. Then the batsman swings a giant flat bat and all hell breaks loose. Since you can hit the ball (a small rockhard sphere) in any direction, there is no foul ball. After that i have no idea what the hell is going on.

It would be interesting to learn what 24.3 Kumble to Shoaib Malik, no run, low full toss on leg stump, Malik flicks but cannot beat midwicket means, but what purpose would it serve? Where is this going to come in handy? Should I even learn it? Wouldnt my time be better spent doing something else than trying to dechiper a cricket box score?

You know what, fuck it, i will waste my time learning this. I've always wanted to know what cricket scoring meant, just so i can say i know it. And I'm gonna do it.

It would be another bizarre fact i know in place of actually knowledge, something that may actually be useful in life. Like Ted Williams life time average [.344], or the level adjustment of an ogre mage [+7], or the first novel ever written on a typewriter ['The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'] or that the word 'typewriter' is the longest word in the english language that uses only the top row of the keyboard.

Why the fuck would anyone know this kind of stuff off the top of their head?

For some reason I do. I cant name both my state senators, i dont know how to change my oil, but i know that the USS Hood was the ship that Riker left to join the Enterprise. What good is this knowledge going to? Which cancer will it cure? How is my life going to be better because i know there are 3 golfballs on the moon?

But then again it will help me get the cricket jokes in Sports Night.

My Post Apocalyptic Choice

I've always wondered which kind of post-apocalyptic world I would like to live in. Would it be the pastoral simplicity of 'The Postman'? the future utopia of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'? or the hiding-from-robot worlds of 'Battlestar Galactica/The Terminator/The Matrix'?

There are definate pros and cons to each choice:

pastoral/Postman
pros: no laws, everyone gets a horse, all natural food
cons: Cosner doing shakespeare, being overrun by an insane power hungry warlord

utopia/ST:TNG
pros: warp speed, Risa (the pleasure planet), the holodeck
cons: jumpsuits, Q, the Crystalline Entity

robot-hiding/BG
pros: everyones in shape from running & hiding, everyone gets a gun, the ability to tell a fable testing the strength of the human spirit against overwhelming odds
cons: running & hiding all the time, evil robots, mind/anal probes

I'd probably go with the Next Generation world; its clean, sterile and your computer can spout any song or piece of music from all history by voice command. Plus I like Starfleet. I'd probably be some kind of Liutenant working on an Oberth-class science vessel, but only if the ship had a holodeck.

Work

Started the new year in a good way. Got written up for an inter-office email and learned an important lesson. Dont send these to Gary.
Now, i dont really care that i was written up, its not like its the first time, but now there is one less happy thing that can happen at work.
A logged on email account can bring sun on a rainy day, turn lead into gold and make work a bit less sucky for a while. It makes me forget about lp, about scum bag thieving 10 year olds and being at the red-headed stepchild of the triangle stores. Sales wise only, we clearly have the best staff & the best looking store.

The upcoming inventory nightmare is scaring me. our numbers will be shit, especially if they include a bounce back from last year. i'm fearing the worse.

Listening To: my ITunes Mix Stoner folder

speaking of music, does anyone have the Donnie darko soundtrack? Im looking for the song "Mad World" by Michael Andrews, its a Tears for Fears cover. I'd get it from itunes store, but the individual song isnt available to buy. fuckers.

NyQuil III

Unfortunately a third night of nyquil produced no dreams, but i did find out that NyQuil makes my kneecaps sweat. Cough still wont go away so its onto Duratuss.

Listening to: CAN - Ege Bamyasi

NyQuil II

Another night of the big fuckin Q, another fucked up dream. This one contains 3 borders people and one of the stores.

I'm in the Cary store back in music and Lane is trying to shelve the Beatles cd 1963-66 (the red 2 disc set), but there are already close to 100 in the section, so i tell him to put them in understock. That's when Joy comes over and asks what this door is. I look up and there is a locked metal door in a place that didnt have one before. Oddly enough my key works and we step into an field between to buildings.
In the field there are rows of corn, no two rows are the same height (some are 12 feet tall and others 2 feet tall), they aren't in any ascending or descending order either, its very chaotic. There is some one tending the corn, its Joost. Then i notice the pile of cigarette butts by the door.
Then on the wall of the opposite building there is a large flat screen tv, so we sit down and watch whats on. It's a piece of notebook paper, torn from the book and cut in half. On it is a game of hangman, but instead of single words, there are complete phrases, one of them being 'He thrusts his fists against the post and still insists he sees a ghost' and other tongue twisters. We sit there entranced staring at the screen unable to move, it feels like being so high that you can't (or rather, don't want to) move, but we are not high.
The channel changes to two high school students' home movie project that involves acting out a scene from 'Great Expectations' page 171 from a baby crib. The one with the camera is lieing under the bed shooting the other one as he hangs over the edge of the crib to act out the scene. I reach up to the shelves and grab a copy of 'Great Expectations', but the book looks exactly like 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' (the white qp, same cover design, thickness, etc) so I can follow along with the scene.
Then the scene ends and the tv switches to the Israeli Prime Minister making a speech in the UN in 1968.

That's it. Once more down the rabbit hole tonight as NyQuil again is on my to do before bedtime list.

Listening to: Phish - New Years Eve 1995

NyQuil

The cough medicine of the gods, if the gods were continually fucked up.

I always have the most fucked up dreams on this stuff and last night was no exception. I was in a Resident Evil game, but you could play either side, human or zombies and even the zombies had guns. The guns zombies carried allowed them to shoot their serum into humans to make more zombies. I was a human first, then I was a zombie. I had more fun as a gun toting zombie, creating legions of zombies that overran the humans.

Also, the map was my old grammar school.

The Metro

My girlfriend, and a few other of my friends, call my car The Metro, as if it was the only one in the world, which I know its not. But, I'm pretty sure its the only one in the world thats lost all four of its hubcaps while in motion. Not all at once, although that would be impressive. No, they've fallen off one by one, usually when I race around a turn at speeds Metros arent supposed to do around corners. I know this because I saw the first one fall off.

Back when I lived in Cary I spent way too much time at Cary Towne Center. It was between work and home and I enjoyed many of the shops there. Speeding through the parking lot was always fun, as it was relatively deserted. Long sweeping curves around the backside of Cary Towne center were always a fun place to open my car up (40MPH! back off MF! woo-hoo). One day while exiting a swooping curve I saw something roll in front of my car that was round, plastic and going faster then the car. Neat, I thought, then, Fuck!?!, was that mine?

I got confirmation that I had lost a hubcap when home and found my car was missing one. I never saw the other 3 fall off the car, but it only took an additional 9 months for me to lose them all and the Metro's been that way ever since.

Now seven years later, the Metro (who I call Polly) passed the 100,000 mile mark and is doing fine. It makes many noises, the hatch refuses to stay up, the heat has only two settings [very high & volcanic] and the dome light is always on; but other than that its in good shape. It still gets 35+ miles to the gallon and continues to get me from home to work & back, which is all I need it to do.

I looked into replacing the hubcaps for Polly, but since she's got such odd sized wheels, the hubcaps would cost about half what the tires do. $50 for the 4 hubcaps, $120 for 4 tires, and I refuse to replace them as I will just fling them off my car eventually.

So, here's to you Polly, the best car I ever had. May you continue to shuttle me around.

listening to: The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society

Good News

Good news

We find that the secular purposes claimed by the board amount to a pretext for the board's real purpose, which was to promote religion
Judge John Jones

Our Future In Domes

How creepy will it be if in the year 2043, when we are living in our corporate controlled housing units inside the city sized domes that protects us from the global-warming super storms that rage across the world, we finally find out that it was Bush and his neo-con cronies who planned 9/11, just to be able to justify his secret monitoring of communications at the end of 2005, which would lead to the eventual repealing of the First and Fourth through Eighth Amendments, thereby ushering a new world where large corporations run the government. [Like the Shadowrun world, without the magic, although having magic would make up for living in a sterile cookie cutter world. Sort of.]

Be very afraid. The president is urinating all over the 4th amendment. What he's doing is very frightening. He must be stopped. I know I don't want to live in the Greater Atlanta Coca-Cola Dome




Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.