Saturday, February 14, 2004
Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
In an effort to get my mind off of the trailer-trashyness of my last meal (does it get worse than KD with wieners and ketchup? Well, other than swapping the ketchup for BBQ sauce, that is...) I'm listening to Into the Electric Castle again. Wicked album if ever I've heard one, and I think the reason is the instruments. Yes, the dominant sound is the vocals and the guitars, but there are many many places in the disc where more unconventional instruments like flutes, mandolins, lutes, minimoogs (whatever those are...) and cellos (yeay cellos!). Makes for a much different listening experience than your typical cookie-cutter guitar/vocals + guitar + bass + drums band formula. Now I'm not saying that doesn't work, since it is the norm for the recording industry, but it's nice to have a change every now and again. Also, another band that I've neglected to pimp is Nightwish. Basically the unholy spawn of speed metal and classical opera music (it sounds way better than that description implies), these folk are from Finland and they kick ass. I've got a link on the sidebar there, and I have all (pretty sure) their albums if you want a sampler or something. In line with the new links as well, I've added a new blog (well it's more of a site, really...) to the list of those that I read, and this one is Honey Bee Manor, as written by Kitsune. I think I mentioned her blog last time, but the whole site is entertaining enough to link to. Plus, her link button with the kitty rules!
The Days Day!
I think that it's quite depressing to think of how many "Days" we actually have. I mean, Mother's Day, Father's Day and those are all fine since they've been around so long, but this Random Acts of Kindness day? National Compliments Day? Do we really need a special day to set aside so that we can compliment each other? Does that mean we can have a National Insult Day too, since to have the one and not the other would be so politically incorrect and unequal. Or maybe we can recognize all these days in National Day Day, where you go around and do things exactly as normal, but bearing in mind that you're honoring all the effort put forth by people you've never heard of to make Days for us to enjoy. Food for thought at any rate...
Another thing I found interesting was an article I saw recently about nuclear proliferation. One of the points raised was that for all America's ranting and tirading about weapons of mass destruction and how we can't have them in the hands of terrorists and blah blah blah, I haven't heard very much about the fact that the US is still researching new ways to blow things up. I mean, apparantly one of the projects going on at ARPA/DARPA/Pentagon/Evil Black Ops Division/Some other government agency is the development of mini-nukes. The goal is to make these tiny nuclear bombs that can level down to a city block, but leave virtually no radiation or other nastiness. Now there's a double standard if I ever saw one, and one of the things that burns me up more than anything is the double standard. Why is it completely acceptable for Iraq and Iran to be attacked and ostracized for having nukes and bombs and stuff, when at the same time, major players like the US and China can freely make the same thing scot-free? (Just writing that makes me wonder where the term scot-free comes from... maybe a remnant of the British being anti-Scotland or something?) Anyways, I can't find the article, so no link, but trust me, it was interesting.
CHEESE!
The legendary, awe-inspiring, totally awesome List of Lists!!!! Actually, it's not that special at all, except for the fact that I found it totally by chance after accidentally Googling "lol". (Freak GAIM mishap... go figure.) Other than that, it's just a weird collection of lists, organized in list form.
For those of you that are Transformer fans, and especially those that have the robots but can't transform them, this should help. Similar to the Lego instruction site I posted a while ago, this place has the transforming instructions for just about every Transformer that there ever has been. It's like the Holy Grail for Optimus Prime or something.
If you read Mac Hall, you've probably already seen this. I guess this is a digital art project Ian did for school or something, but it's really neat. I think somewhere in here is his art portfolio and links and stuff, but I just can't get tired of hitting the little dino dude with the ball and watching him spaz.
On a closing note, when I was buying a coffee at Second Cup (the best coffee shop in my happy little opinion), there was a genuine, grade-A certified, completely crazy lady there talking to nobody in particular about the wonders of Christ and how powerful his name was. I had originally planned to sit and start reading Neuromancer, (considered the novel that "started" the whole cyberpunk thing... I'll let you know) but I decided that she was just too weird and I left. Somewhat anticlimatic, but whatever. ¶ 5:00 p.m.
In an effort to get my mind off of the trailer-trashyness of my last meal (does it get worse than KD with wieners and ketchup? Well, other than swapping the ketchup for BBQ sauce, that is...) I'm listening to Into the Electric Castle again. Wicked album if ever I've heard one, and I think the reason is the instruments. Yes, the dominant sound is the vocals and the guitars, but there are many many places in the disc where more unconventional instruments like flutes, mandolins, lutes, minimoogs (whatever those are...) and cellos (yeay cellos!). Makes for a much different listening experience than your typical cookie-cutter guitar/vocals + guitar + bass + drums band formula. Now I'm not saying that doesn't work, since it is the norm for the recording industry, but it's nice to have a change every now and again. Also, another band that I've neglected to pimp is Nightwish. Basically the unholy spawn of speed metal and classical opera music (it sounds way better than that description implies), these folk are from Finland and they kick ass. I've got a link on the sidebar there, and I have all (pretty sure) their albums if you want a sampler or something. In line with the new links as well, I've added a new blog (well it's more of a site, really...) to the list of those that I read, and this one is Honey Bee Manor, as written by Kitsune. I think I mentioned her blog last time, but the whole site is entertaining enough to link to. Plus, her link button with the kitty rules!
The Days Day!
I think that it's quite depressing to think of how many "Days" we actually have. I mean, Mother's Day, Father's Day and those are all fine since they've been around so long, but this Random Acts of Kindness day? National Compliments Day? Do we really need a special day to set aside so that we can compliment each other? Does that mean we can have a National Insult Day too, since to have the one and not the other would be so politically incorrect and unequal. Or maybe we can recognize all these days in National Day Day, where you go around and do things exactly as normal, but bearing in mind that you're honoring all the effort put forth by people you've never heard of to make Days for us to enjoy. Food for thought at any rate...
Another thing I found interesting was an article I saw recently about nuclear proliferation. One of the points raised was that for all America's ranting and tirading about weapons of mass destruction and how we can't have them in the hands of terrorists and blah blah blah, I haven't heard very much about the fact that the US is still researching new ways to blow things up. I mean, apparantly one of the projects going on at ARPA/DARPA/Pentagon/Evil Black Ops Division/Some other government agency is the development of mini-nukes. The goal is to make these tiny nuclear bombs that can level down to a city block, but leave virtually no radiation or other nastiness. Now there's a double standard if I ever saw one, and one of the things that burns me up more than anything is the double standard. Why is it completely acceptable for Iraq and Iran to be attacked and ostracized for having nukes and bombs and stuff, when at the same time, major players like the US and China can freely make the same thing scot-free? (Just writing that makes me wonder where the term scot-free comes from... maybe a remnant of the British being anti-Scotland or something?) Anyways, I can't find the article, so no link, but trust me, it was interesting.
CHEESE!
The legendary, awe-inspiring, totally awesome List of Lists!!!! Actually, it's not that special at all, except for the fact that I found it totally by chance after accidentally Googling "lol". (Freak GAIM mishap... go figure.) Other than that, it's just a weird collection of lists, organized in list form.
For those of you that are Transformer fans, and especially those that have the robots but can't transform them, this should help. Similar to the Lego instruction site I posted a while ago, this place has the transforming instructions for just about every Transformer that there ever has been. It's like the Holy Grail for Optimus Prime or something.
If you read Mac Hall, you've probably already seen this. I guess this is a digital art project Ian did for school or something, but it's really neat. I think somewhere in here is his art portfolio and links and stuff, but I just can't get tired of hitting the little dino dude with the ball and watching him spaz.
On a closing note, when I was buying a coffee at Second Cup (the best coffee shop in my happy little opinion), there was a genuine, grade-A certified, completely crazy lady there talking to nobody in particular about the wonders of Christ and how powerful his name was. I had originally planned to sit and start reading Neuromancer, (considered the novel that "started" the whole cyberpunk thing... I'll let you know) but I decided that she was just too weird and I left. Somewhat anticlimatic, but whatever. ¶ 5:00 p.m.
