The Z Axis

crass commercialism part one

I've got a whole geeking out entry almost done, including the excitement of minor blog design changes, and an amusing if technical story of the spam butler I finally got working. However, I'm tired now, and it's late, so I will hold off on that.

I've been feelin' absolutely great the past couple days. It's a combination of intoxication, laughter, and great sleep that comes from intoxication and laughter. I guess I've also been pretty happy and comfortable about my ring of personal relationships for the first time in a while.

I'll tell you something, there is little in the universe better than pain killing pills, beer, and uninterrupted, widescreen versions of Arrested Development, the show.

All who read this and can find about 25 bucks at a retail store, go buy it.

To crib Tycho, it's like having boiling hot joy pumped into your rectum.

Seriously.

[i command you to purchase material goods]

just the narrator, checkin in

After a day or so of not being able to place it, I knew there was something out there that had influenced the track I made yesterday - by sheer cooincidence, today I found out.

It's Rebirth, my favorite track of one of the only 2 "local" bands I affiliate myself with, Slowearth. (For those interested, the other is Col. Bruce Hampton and the Codetalkers. Fucking Warren. Represent.)

I haven't pimped out either enough on this blog, so there we go.

In other news, part of me must possess this shirt. But there's the finances, and the fact that it's at Hot Topic. This is a very tough quandry.

Oh, I added Lazlow to the the Stuff I like box on the right of the main page. Yes, it's that Lazlow. You should check him out.

I will probably be adding a blogroll list of blogs to the side of the page at some point, despite my several-month resistance to do so. If nothing else, it will make my daily reading rounds easier, and also serve to tell random people things that I occupy myself with, and if that's not what a blog is for, well, I guess I continue to have a mediocre presence on the web. Whippidy doo.

Tonight I go to Atlanta, to maybe or maybe not spend the night and vote early.

[gummy, shut up]

at night it feels cold

A new TRB song is available.

the rage box - that day in winter

The last track was almost entirely bass, drums, and harsh sounds. This one has hardly any of those. It's almost...pretty. And though the composition is sloppy, it has the best sounding strings I've ever had a hand in.

Really I was just trying to test my keyboard over lunch break (I rearranged a bunch of USB wires) and this sorta happened. I was trying to figure out how to do a Gapper effect in Reason, which I was more or less successful at. Well, you be the judge.

I've also updated the official TRB page. Well, the download pages anyway.

Now, I go back to the cleaning and chores that led me to reorganizing my computer area, and subsequently this accidental creative outburst.

Later I shall regale you all with the tale of the Cursed Washing Machine of Marrakech.

[it washes people]

don't need money, don't need fame

The following entry will be sprinkled with observations garnered from watching Back to the Future, which I'm doing as I write this.

Lessee, what's been going on of late. I was bad and spent more money on video game stuff, but that will get its own post later in the day. Then, probably as some kind of karmic retribution for my misguided priorities, my washing machine konks out, and I am now unable to wash clothes. This is noted here so I can beat myself up for the fates taking me to task, but also because it explains some of the BS on my Atlanta trip Tuesday, which is what I was attempting to do laundry for.

I just realized that the judge for the battle of the bands that Marty is attempting to enter is none other than a hillariously geeked up Huey Lewis.

So, Tuesday I went down to see my recently-octagenarian grandmother while she was in town, see my nephew while my mom would have something to do other than crush his spirit, and see Leslie, since I didn't go with her to the thing in New Orleeens.

Which brings me to to a side tangent - during her trip to New Orleans, or Nawlins, or Boobtown Lousiana, whatever you want to call it, the ever thoughtful Leslie got me a bottle of this. The official address on the bottle points to a more tame label, calling it simply "The Reaper," and leaving out the "that's your ass now" tagline under the name. Truth be told, it did not, in fact, make me wish I was dead, as the official site would seem to imply. It is, however, insanely hot, and beats the ever loving crap out of the Virgin Sacrifice sauce I mentioned before. Yes, it does come with a little Reaper robe. You're all jealous, it's mine, nyea nyea. Dank yoo Leslie. Someday I shall make a spicy chicken dish that will destroy humanity as we know it.

Christopher Lloyd is a damn genius. And someday I will have an entourage that includes a guy who wears crappy paper 3d glasses all the time.

Anyway, back to the documentation of the uninteresting. Tuesday, when attempting to leave for Atlanta, I found myself blocked in by fire vehicles, as apparently one of the units in the complex had, shall we say, caught fire. This was the first of many things that did not go as originally planned - which, with one exception, all broke badly. After getting underway far later than planned, I drove through the rainy mess, and was able to begin doing laundry at my parents' largely without incident.

You know, the version of "Twist and Shout" in Ferris Beuller's Day Off sounds so close to Broderick's voice, I didn't realize it was Lennon until way later. But man, that is so obviously not Michael J Fox singing "Johnny B Good", it's almost painful.

You know, my zeal for pointing out stuff about Back to the Future has surpassed my zeal for documenting the stupid crap of my week. So, I'm abandoning the plan for this entry.

There should be an award, not an annual one, but a single one for all time, that is the "Damn, damn" award. Bestowed upon Chrisopher Lloyd for, well, the "Damn. Damn damn. Double damn." scene.

[don't need no credit card to ride this train]

inadvertently political post

I swear, this started out just a collection of links, and then it snowballed into a political thing. And people say story selection cannot account for bias in a newscast. Ha. If you're turned off by political stuff in blogs, blame Greg. Well, and I suppose the jokes our national electoral process / fourth estate have become.

This is the greatest thing since yourethemannowdog.com.

This is a beautiful beautiful video archive of Jon Stewart's attempted smack-down on the fungus on American discourse that is Crossfire.

And, continuing the political vein, this is more bad news for anyone who's been following the Nathan Sproul "Get Out the Vote, unless you're a democrat" scandal. Good lord, the liberals may get a "-gate" to use against the opposition for once. The Clinton Administration was subjected to like Jiffy-Lube-gate when it was learned that the motorcade limos were past their 3000 miles between oil changes, and for some reason we've yet to get a "gate" to stick to the Bush administration. No WMD-Gate, no Left-stockpiles-of-weapons-unguarded-in-Iraq-gate, no Halliburton-Enron-Corporate-Glory-Hole-Gate, not even Horrible-torture-prison-gate. Nothin. And we had pictures of that one.

But then again, massive voter fraud can hardly compare with Dan Rather making a bone headed but ultimately accurate report without double checking his sources, so probably not.

This is just one of the craziest goddamn things I've ever seen, but its mildly entertaining to play, very creative, and most importantly, educational. I'm not comfortable with the way they changed He-Man's hair though.

This is one of my favorite political blogs, which not only informed me of the Stewart Crossfire thing, but has also had the most sane and eloquent commentary on the faux-Mary Cheney "scandal" of all the political stuff I read, and consistently has since the whole trumped up outrage became a story.

For any right leaning person reading this, my Sullivan fandom is I'm sure but a small buoy against thinking of me as crazy liberal ACLU hippie communist, and the rest of my political read list would certainly ruin even that. For a long time I've tried to keep my politics out of this blog, because there are enough wonks out there and enough flaming going on (even on frigging IMDB boards) that I see little point in jogging into that particular minefield. But what the hell, there's important shit happening here. I no longer care if someone reading this thinks I'm some communist leftie nutjob - I consider myself a moderate, but only by average. I have beliefs that are on the wild extremes of both sides. Probably more liberal ones that conservative ones, and even my conservative ones are practically considered moderate now, but I like to call it Common Sense instead of some variant of "centrism." (Ed. Note: This is not due to actual change in the parts of me that are "conservative," it is due to the gradual shift of the official Republican party platform from fiscal discipline and small government to extreme right fundamentalist God Shall Tell Us What To Do (ps he already said it's ok to hate the gays) reactionary craziness. On that note, it's bad when hardcore Reaganites go "Man, that guy has gone too far right even for me.")

For those interested in what I spend my increasingly frequent insomnia nights reading up on, here's a pretty quick rundown of the political stuff, which, for obvious reasons, has recently taken precedence over the entertainment infosites I also frequent.

Andrew Sullivan - I disagree with him a lot. We have different politics. But I'm never angry with him, because he explains himself with an eloquence and articulation that would make the Republican party dominate this country if they'd stop screaming long enough to adopt it.
Josh Marshall - In some ways seems to simply skim Dailykos and dig deeper, but that's not such a bad thing.
Tom Tomorrow - Also seems to crib Kos frequently, but cites it as such, and has the added bonus of drawing an insanely funny weekly comic strip.
Rawstory / Blue Lemur - Okay, basically the hyper-liberal Drudge report. I read this for the juicy stuff, and take a lot of it as simply hysteria until it gets a bit more fleshed out and distilled by less ravenous folks. Like Drudge, while they are highly speculative, that also results in them being way ahead of the curve on some stories.
Fox News - Part of my effort to combat cognitive bias. Also, as a media savvy and indeed college-educated student of media, it's hi-freaking-larious how some stuff gets framed on their site.
Cnn Political / Cartoons - While it still has the "scandal this," "attack ad that" stuff, it also digs a bit deeper to deliver some headlines you don't get from the rabid political blogs. For the cartoons, Bill Mitchell is freaking awesome.
The Daily Howler - Somerby is like Michael Moore to me in some ways, harming his own cause by frothing away at something where he has a legit point, but in making it overreaches and discredits the person and all work they've ever done. But, He's absolutely vicious to the "stewards of our national discourse" we call the media, and is ridiculously prepared with citations for each criticism, and we need more people like that.
Dailykos - Co-op liberal blogging at its best. Highly slanted, but not advertising itself otherwise. If you want to know what at least part of the news is going to be a day and a half from now, read.
Kevin Drum - Just started reading him, but has entered my routine browser check. Did a great quantitative writeup on debate #2.
Michael Moore - Look, I have my beefs with the guy, and have my praises for him. I think some of his tactics hurt his brutally effective arguments, but whatever, people all pretty much have their opinion of the guy. Nonetheless, his site is a fairly good news aggregate, including some things I never would have otherwise encountered, such as the letter from Dwight Eisenhower's son or the letter from Kurt Vonnegut about the Patriot Act.

So anyway, yeah. I read a lot again.

Lately it's been a lot of political stuff, but maybe soon I'll post my a-political reads.

[i'll sleep in november]

thank you liam howlett

A new TRB song is available.

the rage box - someone's at the door

It's actually pretty good, though again in the > 2:00 club. This is one of the only songs I've ever done where I've done all the drum stuff myself, and I don't totally hate the song. It's actually got a sort of smooth beat to it. Yay me.

Too bad I got a little nutsy with the nine inch nailsy sounds. Must be all the Prodigy I'm listening to.

Oh, and if any of you have actually decided to listen to this, do so on a system with some bass. You'll be glad you did.

[total glass breaky sound]

bahahahah

Necromancer, to his army of Zombies:

"What Do we Want?"

"Brains!!!"

"When Do We Want It?"

"Brains!!"

-- found at this thread, which is an interesting and at times heart wrenching political story that became a comment sounding board

[tickled my funny bone]

spam tales: a-woo-ooh

I now get about 30 spam emails a day, and most of them are pretty predictable, but I save the ones with really choice subject lines, because while I despise it, the art of trying to get spam through does sort of fascinate me.

The following is a rundown, with some commentary, of ones I've recieved this week-

"Average wemon want to meet you" - I'm reminded of the Simpsons episode where they crossed over with The Critic, and they show Jay interviewing Rainer Wolfcastle, who had just made a wretched movie. After playing a clip, Jay asks him, "How do you sleep at night?" and Wolfcastle, with his thick and not-so-well-done German accent, says "On top of a pile of mohney, with many beautiful weemon."

"Patrick! Do you wish you could stop telemarketing calls?" - OK. I hope the irony here is self-evident to anyone intelligent enough to be operating a computer and simultaneously reading English. See, it's Spam offering to help with Phone Spam. Yeah.

"is her boyfriend coping with the pain" - I just don't even know where to start with this one. This is the best of a sort of pack of quasi random-gen sentences, that all tend to circle around people you would indirectly know getting over feelings or hardships, like "his father's in the hospital." Anyway, I'm used to random computerized attempts at plausible subject lines with spam, these just caught me as being strangely twisted.

I had a couple more, but it occurs to me this may not be as interesting a read as I'd initially thought.

Though, since I'm doing it, I'll hit the hall of fame ones I've mentioned in the past:

"Introducing Uncle Rummy's Hangover Pills" - the wonderproduct that mocks you as it helps you.

"i was told you are fat" - See, people just delete "Lose 20 pounds in 45 minutes" spam. This has that personal, highly tactless touch.

In a neck-jarringly different vein of conversation, you guys can check out some of the work I'm doin' on a project I came up with earlier this year, that has now mutated from a flash cartoon to a comic strip, because that's easier for one person to do...

click for gallery

Oh yeah, and I've now been informed that the 2002 version of Teenage Caveman is actually not a remake. It's just an unfortunate cooincidence that 2 awful movies share the same nonsensical name.

So, one could say that almost all of my last entry sort of falls apart now. However, I stand by my statements about additional Blade movies being indirect works of Satan, and David Warner totally rocking the house.

Oh, and the knock on Andrew Keegan too.

[not pony tales or cotton tales, no]

that decision got a lot easier

The following is a circuitous tale that doesn't fit into any of the ongoing blog stuff. To paraphrase God, think of it as a blogging aberration. I'll get back to tending my ego and etc etc no one is going to get this reference later. Oh, and Donna gets a boyfriend.

AAAAAnyway. So, tonight I'm talking to Leslie, and she is telling me about this god awful movie called Teenage Caveman, starring 10 Things I hate about You's Andrew Keegan, and in the process expressing her utter disappointment at the fact that rationally speaking the movie features zero cavemen between the ages of 13 and 19.

That's right, good ole Andrew Keegan, or as I like to call him, That Guy in 10 Things I hate about You who wasn't Heath Ledger or the Kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun, and therefore nobody gives a Flying Acorn Turd about him. Guy. I decided for the duration of this paragraph to just let the capital letters have free love, and not be kept down by "the man" and his "rules."

Due to her hillarious description of it, I got to thinking I'd like to see this godawful crime against cinema, and I maintain that this desire is only partially because it is apparently overflowing with nudity.

Then, hours later, and in a completely unrelated vein, I am reconnected with this movie, though I have learned it was in a less compelling way than I initially thought. Relax, I'm going to explain. Or better yet, stop reading, because this is a dumb story.

So, I pop in a Transformers DVD, and seeing all the un-skippable Rhino Home Video crap makes me decide to check what they've released in the cartoon "Selling your childhood back to you at today's prices" marketing trend that is sweeping DVD publishers such as Rhino and Time-Life. (If anyone doubts my read on this, they just released Land of the Lost season 2 on DVD. I win.)

In the course of looking over their offerings, I finally decide to see what is actually -on- the Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVD sets they've been putting out. I long ago considered buying some of the individual episode/movie DVDs, and I've been thinking maybe they did the multi-disc sets up right, but the prohibitive cost has kept me from even looking. Anyway, I finally did, and while Pod People is on one of the sets (and is available as an individual DVD) there is sadly, as of this writing, no way to get Prince of Space on DVD. Well, an official copy, anyway. There's a guy on Ebay offering custom DVDs for 6 bucks an episode. I dunno bout all that though.

Anyway, the mix-and-match, not seasonal nature of the MST3k boxed sets got me curious and trigger happy with my "New Browser Window" command, as I am wont to do when faced with insomnia and an interesting line of inquiry, and so I decided to see which season Prince of Space was part of. (8, by the way. Also, in an unrelated editorial note/old school MSTie crack, Joel rules, bah on Mike forever.)

And so I went to this episode guide, and started scanning. And there, in the middle of season 3, lay the following.

315-TEENAGE CAVEMAN with shorts: AQUATIC WIZARDS and CATCHING TROUBLE

Now, I should have realized at the time that this episode would have been made in like 1991, and Andrew Keegan was probably still playing with Hot Wheels then. But for a brief moment, I had this eerie confluence of whatever with the cosmic such and so forth, and it was cool.

Afterwards, and a visit to IMDB later, I realized that this could still be an amusing story. The Andrew Keegan version I was told about is in fact a REMAKE. A remake of the movie featured in the 15th episode of season 3 of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Yes. They took an awful movie from the 50s, one that had been branded by the highest stamp of "God Awful Movie" in the land, by Best Brains Inc, and decided, "You know what, guys, Let's give it another go." And then, at least in my imagination, one of them said "Also, let's make another Blade movie. And for the love of Jebus, can we put Kirsten Dunst in some more things? Oh, and another thing, where's that Air Bud 13 script?" And then they all did a bunch of coke and renewed their loyalty to Satan.

Okay, so perhaps my insomnia is fading and tiredness is making me a bit harsh.

Anyway, I've decided to see both versions. I'm sure you're all immeasurably pleased to posess this information.

To make it up to you, and reward you for reading this far, I will let you know that "Quest of the Delta Knights" is also an excellent MST3k episode. Some kid and Leonardo Da Vinci go up against evil David Warner to prevent him from using secret doomsday weaponry developed by Archimedes. Yes, you read that right. The buoyancy guy. It's basically Star Wars, but with an almost Pocahontas-level historical butchering.

Also, I say "evil" David Warner because he plays the Obi-Wan good guy and the Darth Vader bad guy, and also narrates the film. Which he can do, because he's David fucking Warner. It's just, he has a crappy agent, and also suffers from Jeremy Irons/Patrick Stewart/Ian McKellen/Guy who played the Commandant in Police Academy syndrome, wherein being a classically trained British stage actor means you have to play crappy villain/idiot roles in horrible or demeaning-for-Shakespearean-stars American movies for a while.

I'm just saying, David Warner rules, he just keeps doing crap.

I really can't believe anyone's reading at this point.

[i didn't say it was a good story]

the rumors of my death have been etc etc

A new TRB song is available.

the rage box - after these important messages

It's not very good. I was messing around with some plucked guitar string samples and got sort of carried away. It's very caustic, not very well composed, and simply put, not as good as the last thing I put up, which I like a lot better in almost every way. Plus, the main thing I was trying to do, which is replicate an effect I'd heard, I managed to do, but I only use it for like 3 seconds at the very end of the song.

But I suppose it was a learning experience.

So Hey blog, what's up. Bloggin' it up, eh? Checking out a little blog porn, am I right? Running across the street in between cars, playin' a little Blogger? (Or, shall I call it, Highway Crossing Blog)

Okay, so that last one was a bit of a reach.

Oh yeah, about me almost dying. So, I don't yet have the full report done. But there are now some pictures (WARNING: This pic is SERIOUSLY GROSS. You may barf, ralph, or otherwise vomit uncontrollably) of what I have taken to calling "That time I almost died" or, in more private circles, "That time that Satan attempted to attain corporeal form via my throat."

So, I almost died of dehydration. And then, tonight, I watched the presidential debate, and almost wished I had.

Anyway, I'm feeling mostly better. Though I don't suppose there is an antibiotic that can cleanse one's ears of hearing "nukeular" like 45 times.

There are plenty of people with better blogs for debating political stuff, because at this point to me it's just a sad game of PR strategy, and while I believe I have intelligent opinions, I'm simply gonna let the more qualified and less hostile bloggers out there out-wonk each other and call it a night.

Except perhaps to reiterate someone else's words, that I simply want to encode in my own record of this part of history.

As said by some crazy politician who clearly had no idea what ideals went into forging this country-

"Dissent is the highest form of Patriotism."

--Thomas Jefferson

As if he ever did anything.

['nü-klE-&r]