Bla Bla Bla

January 4, 2009, 8:39 pm · Filed under General

Been really digging this song lately, thought I’d share. Oh, and… happy new year and all that.

“Bla Bla Bla” by Gigi D’Agostino. [via]

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2008 in Film (or: I have too much time on my hands)

December 31, 2008, 1:37 pm · Filed under Movies

Well, 2008 was a busy year. I took on the Newsvine Movie Challenge 2008, which was to watch 50 movies by the end of the year. The idea was to write a mini-review of each one and post it to Newsvine, but I didn’t actually get around to that part. I did manage to trounce the quantity goal, though.

I kept a list going throughout the year of what movies I’d seen. Unfortunately at some point mid-year I forgot to keep updating it so I had to revisit it and fill in some of it from memory. Two lists: one for movies from Netflix (on disc or via instant watching), and one for movies I saw in theatres, on TV, or otherwise without the aid of Netflix. Total, including a few TV series (not including currently running series), is about 180. I only missed two of the movies I was originally planning on seeing.

In no particular order:

Also in 2008, via Netflix (reverse chronological order – most recent first):

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Your Sarcasm Meter is Broken

December 17, 2008, 9:24 pm · Filed under Rants

Some people are just dumb. This is an excerpt from a news article I saw recently:

A human-sized heart found at a southwestern Michigan car wash has investigators wondering whether it came from a person or an animal.

[via]

Of course, my first comment was as snarky as I could manage.

A human-sized heart? That’d be ginormous! What, like 5 foot 10 inches and 180 pounds?

>.<

Immediately following my comment on the article, this clown comes along:

You’re kidding right? A human sized heart means it looks like it came form a human…

Seriously?? Am I missing something here? Are people really so dense that they thought I actually thought the heart was 180 pounds?

The terrorists have already won.

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Ducks Hate Costumes

December 15, 2008, 10:17 pm · Filed under General

Found on Twitter:

If I were Jesus, I’d make a rule that nativities had to use live ducks. Because ducks hate costumes, and Christmas should be hard but funny.

[via]

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10 Reasons Never to Have a Religion

December 6, 2008, 9:43 pm · Filed under General, Religion

While browsing through Delicious and Alltop looking for interesting things to waste my time on, I came across a great article entitled “10 Reasons You Should Never Have a Religion.”

The title is pretty self-explanatory, I think, but it raises some interesting points. Having been raised in a very religious household, I have a pretty clear understanding of most of his statements (though that’s not to say I agree with all of them). While I’m not about to declare myself free of all religious trappings, I have my own doubts and misgivings about organized religion (one of my favorite quotes is, “organized religion reminds me very much of a cult”).

A few gems from his article:

When you subscribe to a religion, you substitute nebulous group-think for focused, independent thought. Instead of learning to discern truth on your own, you’re told what to believe.

Religions offer a suite of special services to generate additional income. They’ll spout some gibberish while feeding you a crusty wafer, pronounce you bonded to a fellow human being, snip some of your excess skin, pour water on your head, proclaim your manhood, cast out your demons, pronounce your transgressions forgiven, and so on. When they can’t think of anything else, they make up some drivel like confirming you’re still loyal to them. The bill may read “suggested donation,” but it’s still a bill.

10 Reasons You Should Never Have a Religion

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Metric

December 4, 2008, 3:52 pm · Filed under Quotes

And… I’m back. For now. I know I’ve been silent for quite a while, but mostly because I’ve been busy and haven’t had time to write much of anything on here. As if I have anything interesting to write about. But I’d kind of like to get back into posting here.

Most likely this is going to take a different direction from this point on. Rather than big long novel-length posts, it’ll probably be more along the lines of blurbs, quotes, excerpts, mini-rants, and the like. Stuff that I want to get down on paper (ok, not actual paper) but is too long for Twitter to handle.

Starting with this. For some reason, I thought this conversation today was funny. It’s been that sort of day.

14:34:44: Jen: hey
14:40:20: Me: whassup?
14:40:32: Jen: how much do you know about the us and metric systems?
14:40:37: Jen: why haven’t we just given in already??
14:40:44: Jen: why do we insist on having us units too
14:40:47: Me: because we’re ‘merica.
14:40:51: Jen: that was all - just a rant
14:40:52: Me: we dont do things like everyone else.
14:41:06: Me: it’d be easier. i mean… we’ve already got 2-liter bottles of soda.
14:41:17: Me: right next to the 20 ounce bottles.
14:41:35: Jen: ha right makes perfect sense
14:41:35: Me: you can buy cocaine by the kilo. so that’s metric.
14:41:44: Jen: TOM
14:41:48: Jen: why do you know that
14:41:49: Jen: lol
14:41:50: Me: just sayin.
14:41:52: Jen: ha
14:41:55: Jen: right… okay

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Return the favor

July 14, 2008, 5:50 pm · Filed under Rants

I was going through an e-mail address of mine that’s been lying abandoned for a while, just out of curiosity to see what’s accumulated since I abandoned it — there are inevitably people who didn’t update their address books.

I found this little chain-mail gem, offering some tips on filling up on gas, and then some uber-useful tips on how to help reduce the high cost per barrel that our wallets are all painfully aware of:

WHERE TO BUY USA GAS, THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO KNOW. READ ON.

Gas rationing in the 80’s worked even though we grumbled about it. It might even be good for us! The Saudis are boycotting American goods. We should return the favor.

An interesting thought is to boycott their GAS.

Every time you fill up the car, you can avoid putting more money into the coffers of Saudi Arabia. Just buy from gas companies that don’t import their oil from the Saudis.

Nothing is more frustrating than the feeling that every time I fill-up the tank, I am sending my money to people who are trying to kill me, my family, and my friends.

But wait. If we only buy gas from companies that don’t import, eventually… they’ll run out. And guess who they’ll have to buy from?

Conundrum.

Oh, yes, and the Saudis who are pumping oil are the ones who are trying to kill us. Yep. Those oil drillers and the company execs go American-hunting on their days off. They strap on an AK-47 and head off on the nearest Boeing 747 (which they all no doubt own personally — we Americans buy Corollas, those dirty Ay-rabs buy airliners, right?) like we go deer huntin’.

This how-to-boycott-gas thing has been making the rounds for years, and no one has figured out that these stupid schemes don’t work. People are too apathetic (and too busy) to bother with hunting down these mythical gas stations that apparently don’t deal with “those Arabs.”

Grr. I’m just fed up with the excuses used to justify this blatant racism.

Okay, rant over. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

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100 Things: Getting Closer

July 4, 2008, 5:36 pm · Filed under 100 Things

A while ago, I announced my intentions to declutter my life following something resembling the “rules” of the 100 Things Challenge. I haven’t mentioned it since, but I am in fact making progress.

While I’m still not sure if I’ll actually hit the 100-things mark, I’m definitely getting closer. Foregoing the tedious task of first making a list of everything I own (which even I wouldn’t want to see or read), I decided to attack the job by first just going through my apartment as systematically as my apparent OCD will allow, and throwing out anything I know I don’t use. The tough part of that is getting around the “well I might need that at some point.”

A little tip if you’re going to do any decluttering yourself: if you can’t remember the last time you thought to yourself, “gee, I really wish I had that [insert ridiculous object here] right now,” then you don’t need it now. Packrat-ism isn’t healthy.

So while I haven’t made any official lists, there is a sort of list in progress. (Though, it’s stored entirely in my head, which arguably isn’t the greatest storage medium. It’s like trying to store your finest wine in a sieve.) It’s more of a list of stuff I know I need to keep. And no, I’m not posting it here. There’s just no need.

In the meantime, my apartment is starting to look a bit sparse. I’ve never really been much of an interior decorator. I moved my DVD collection from the nice media rack I’d bought last year onto some shelves in a little cubby on the outskirts of my living room, which freed up a giant chunk of empty space on the wall. I have absolutely no idea how to fill that giant hole in so my apartment doesn’t look like a jail cell.

Any creative ideas on apartment decorating? Obviously being a renter keeps me from doing any significant structural modifications — hell, I was taking a risk just painting the place a few months ago (it used to be an awful yellowish color, now it’s more off-white), so knocking holes in the wall is probably out. Help me out here, people.

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Rock on.

July 3, 2008, 5:28 pm · Filed under Music

Last night I went down to Summerfest, perhaps known best for being the world’s largest collection of fat ugly drunk people. Of course, the promoters call it “The World’s Largest Music Festival” but clearly that’s just marketing jive talk to hide the truth. I generally try to avoid Summerfest to the best of my ability, but last night there was an event so monumentally awesome that I was practically compelled to go.

I’m talking of course about The Crystal Method.

These guys are, without a doubt, hands down (as opposed to hands up) my absolute favorite musical group of all time. If you haven’t heard of them, first crawl out from under your rock and then go look them up. They make sweet sweet music. I suppose most people call it “techno” or “electronica” — I call it heaven. This was my first time seeing them, and let me say… it was like a two-hour orgasm for the ears. I’ve heard people talk about being able to “feel” or “see” music, but I’d never actually experienced that until last night.

I actually had the opportunity to see them from the covered “VIP” deck, but the stage acoustics were not meant for that area. They’re meant for the benches in front. So that’s where I was. Standing up on the bleachers, from just about 9:45 to 11:45 when the Summerfest organizers literally shut off the lights and speakers to enforce their curfew. I also discovered that it’s actually quite liberating to not be around anyone you know; I was supposed to meet up with some friends for the show, but they either bailed or we were split up. It’s okay, because it let me focus entirely on the show. …and the two girls making out in the row ahead of me (despite the best efforts of some guy to get them to include him, which they were having none of).

Holy awesome, Batman. On an awesomeness scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the most awesome thing you can think of, this show ranked somewhere around, oh, I don’t know, a billion. It’s quite possible that last night was the single greatest night of my entire life. Most of the two-hour set was new stuff as far as I could tell. They did include a few samples of their released stuff — off the top of my head I remember hearing “Busy Child,” “Born Too Slow,” “Trip Like I Do,” “You Know It’s Hard,” “Renegades of Funk” (their remix of the original Rage song); there were also some unexpected samples of songs I hadn’t heard them deal with before — a great mix of “Superstition” by Stevie Wonder, and a crazy take on “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees (made even more popular by the great John Travolta).

My ears are still ringing, actually. At 5:30pm the next day. That’s probably not good, but it was TOTALLY worth it. Too bad they’re not coming back anywhere nearby for the foreseeable future, according to their tour schedule.

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Banned.

June 28, 2008, 12:17 pm · Filed under Notifications

I was getting hit pretty hard by spam comments for a while (thanks to the excellent Akismet Wordpress plugin, none of it actually made its way past the filters), so I ended up banning the IP address responsible for 99% of it.

Life was good.

And now they’re back. Different IP, but same base range. So, that entire range is now banned from this site. Don’t worry - most people won’t be affected (and by most people I mean the two dozen people that ever read this site). The IP in question is a fairly well known, fairly prolific spam center.

So goodbye, 85.255.117.* — you won’t be missed.

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