Now with hyperlinks!!!

Final thoughts on the new Metallica album: it sucks. Oh well, worth a shot. Just saying this for posterity, since no one cares anyway. They had their day. It's not that my musical tastes have progressed, though they have - some of their older music is still pretty good. It's just that, uh, the new music isn't. That's okay, Primus hasn't had an album worth not breaking since Pork Soda, and I still like them, inexplicably. I think it's because Frizzle Fry will always be there for me. So rather than buying the Metallica album, buy instead two copies of the Radiohead album and give one to a friend.

Thoughts on Ang Lee's Hulk: I really really liked it. First off, if you don't think Hulk looks awesome you are a Nazi sympathizer. Hulk looks awesome. The action was great and had me grinning (apart from the dog thing, which was shockingly megaviolent, but also heartwarming, because he killed dogs) at times. The acting was pretty much what I expected but Eric Bana, Sam Elliott, and Jennifer Connelly brought surprising pathos to their roles. The star of the movie though was the editing if you ask me. The comic book framing of scenes was done so well, without being obtrusive, and it got the point across. On the whole though, this wasn't really a comic book movie - lots of plot development, not much action, an actual director, real actors, and so on. And this is good in my opinion. It over joys me that kids are going to flock to this movie and none of them are going to like it. On that note, the movie was horribly mismarketed. It's so not an action movie, really, and the advertising is all action. We'll see what that does to the word-of-mouth for the movie but I don't care, I like it, and the only misgivings I have are about the ending ("Unclear" would be an understatement), and that if there is a sequel (and why wouldn't there be?) I seriously doubt Ang Lee comes back.

Thoughts on going into Borders yesterday: The Dark Tower reissues are out. As I walked into Borders looking for them and saw a release date poster that had the dates for the final three books on it, I nearly began hyperventilating and was barely able to retain my composure. I came very close to totally freaking out in the middle of the bookstore and convulsing on the ground like an epileptic. With some deep breathing I was able to control myself, and I spent some time looking through graphic novels and DVDs to kind of allow myself to forget why I was there. An hour later I picked up the Gunslinger reissue, but I plan on picking up them all - Gunslinger is just a must right now because it's rewritten. The others are luxuries for the weeks to come, especially in that, why would one buy extra editions of books one already owns multiple copies of? Answer being, uh, I don't know. So I left with the Masterworks edition of Akira Kurosawa's Ran, P.T. Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love (in case you haven't seen that, it's terrific), and the Gunslinger in glorious hardcover. To further illustrate my insanity, I almost picked up the trade paperback reissue as well, so I wouldn't have to actually read the hardcover one.

Next time: Joe getting drunk with his dad!!! 
¶ 7:53 AM

  Sorry, haven't updated in a while. Update forthcoming, probably tonight. Interesting things have happened, among them the Spurs winning the title. Hey, at least one quarter of the finals was watchable, and if it was going to be any of them, it may as well be the last one. Too bad Duncan didn't get two more blocks. I will say that I'm finally a believer in him now.

More later, today or tomorrow. Maybe I'll wait until tomorrow, when I can share my opinion on Ang Lee's Hulk. Until then, please use this comments section to talk about which you like better: cheese, or sex. 
¶ 9:40 AM

  So the Spurs won. And while this has been easily the ugliest NBA finals I have ever had the misfortune to watch even one second of (it isn't even close to being the worst overall series, as the eastern conference still has all their qualifiers and semifinals and whatever else it is they do over there to determine who they're offering up as sacrificial tribute to the west), um, nevermind, there was nothing good about it. It was fucking ugly. Sweet Christ.

I don't really have much else to say except that Allen told me to post, so I am. I guess I'll say here, why were the Columbia astronauts heroes? Why were their deaths so important? How were they more important than the roughly 15,000 Iraqis we decided it was okay to kill immediately thereafter? A lot of those Iraqis didn't have much of a choice. Every one of the astronauts did. You know what, I'm pretty sure the very first thing an astronaut-in-training is told is, "Hey, there's not too minute of a chance that you could, at some point in all this, perish so fast it'll make your head spin, or rather, so fast it'll make your head instantly evaporate, to be more accurate." I'm sure they have to sign plenty of forms that say approximately that, just like when I had oral surgery once I had to sign a release that stated the anesthesia could kill me, conceivably. Well if I could die getting a tooth implant and I had to sign off on it, I'm pretty sure they had to sign a form to get hurtled forcibly into space atop a blazing plume of incinerated hydrogen at 27,000 miles per hour. Let's put some fucking perspective on this. Those people in the 9-11 plane that crashed not-into-a-building, if they really did storm the cockpit and that wasn't just another made-up thing also, those people are heroes. They didn't get paid, they didn't sign forms. While there is an assumed risk anytime you get on a plane, you don't sign off on it, just like you don't sign off on the assumed risk for getting into a car, or, say, having a peanut butter sandwich. However those astronauts knew the risk involved. This was nowhere near without precedent. So like yeah it's sad that people died and all, but it's no more sad than the tens of thousands of OTHER people who die every day who you don't hear about because they don't die in a flaming catastrophe in the stratosphere. Maybe all the starving people in Iraq and all the people with AIDS in Africa and all the people slaughtered in the Congo and so on would get better results if they could somehow get into the outer atmosphere and then burn up in re-entry instead of dying quietly in obscurity. It would make better TV. Too bad they don't have space programs.

Sorry, that's all, fuck you Allen, forget I said anything and go watch the fucking cats with viking helmets on dancing and singing about homosexual liquor houses again. And again.

Also, I'm secretly just pissed that PlanetSide froze on me after I spent fifteen minutes flying an entire squad in a Galaxy dropship to our dropzone. I'm pretty sure they all died, since the Galaxy would have been just like any other plane, without a pilot at that point.

Um, that's a parallel that was really unintentional. I think I'm going to vomit. Oh wait, that's just because I work in the morning. 
¶ 9:21 PM

  This, from Katie. Almost as good as soccer practice. Props to Chris for digging that second one up, though I suspect it was Jay first, then Chris.

That's all for today. As a last comment, I fucking rule, and also I have corrupted John Turnage. Please note the single eye, because, of course, he is a pirate. 
¶ 12:45 PM

  Marx's theory of alienation states that the working class feels a disconnect from meaning because their jobs have nothing to do with their actual lives - they perform tasks and functions that they don't understand for people they can't identify with. As I sit at my desk, moving theoretical green pieces of paper around for an arbitrary concept, I think of this, and I think of the introduction to Douglas Adam's Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which states most people are unhappy because of little green pieces of paper, and thinks it odd, since the paper itself isn't unhappy. My job can be ascribed no real meaning and I would not do it if I did not get compensated monetarily (pretty well for no degree, I should add). Whether I'm too quixotic or I'm just too lazy and looking for an alternative reason to be disdainful of work is uncertain. Considering how socially conscious I am, these two are probably working in concert, though I'd be hard-pressed to decide which one is dominant.

Did anyone else buy the new Metallica album yesterday? I did. I'm not sure why, though ten dollars is a very reasonable price to take a chance with. When I was younger and stupid (as opposed to just young, and not quite as stupid, but still somewhat stupid) I liked them a lot, although I also liked Megadeth, so what can you do. I "grew out" of them early on in high school and haven't gone back - the last Metallica album I heard was the black one, which was okay I guess (Unforgiven and Nothing Else Matters were the only tracks I think I still would like). Some of their older work is pretty good - Master of Puppets, ...And Justice For All, and Ride the Lightning all have quality music on them that I'd still listen to here and there if I hadn't dumped all their CDs long ago.

All that said, I've listened to the first half of the album so far, and it pretty much all sounds like the same song, over and over, recorded in someone's garage. I'm talking pre-Kill 'Em All sound quality, and variety, for that matter. The lyrics seem largely like the stuff I used to write on my binders in middle school. The only song that stands out so far is the title track, St. Anger, which tries for the intricacies and structure changes that made ...And Justice For All so ambitious. However, the rest of it is very eh. I'll listen to the last half sometime soon and regale you with my finished evaluation.

James Hetfield's voice doesn't seem to be what it once was - not enough beer anymore maybe? - and there is far too much country inflection in some of the delivery for my taste. That was never there before. Maybe in rehab all he was allowed to watch was TNN? It's unsettling.

Also, man, Metallica goes through bass players like Spinal Tap went through drummers.

In stark contrast, I also picked up the new Radiohead CD, and apart from already being great solely by virtue of being an anti-Bush/Blair concept album, just the first four tracks pretty much blew me away. Sonically, I don't know that any band on the planet can match them. They're so ahead of their time, it's frightening - nothing sounds like them. Thom Yorke has the most compelling voice in modern music this side of Maynard James Keenan. Either of them could sing a grocery list and I'd listen to it. 
¶ 7:47 AM

  On Chris "I wish I was Noam Chomsky" Durrance taking potshots at me: Everyone move their arms up and down as if jogging lightly while saying aloud, "Ooh ooh look at me, I'm Chris, I like Nintendo and bad music and being a jerk, I'm going to go be all liberal and stuff now, I'm sooo cool." Yeah, nice job on your six months of blogging, too bad your blog is totally suck.

In semi-related news, my good friend Mark "mopreme" Rogoyski has his own site-blog-thingie now as well, which I take near-full responsibility for. It was I, after all, who prodded him (verbally, not with like a stick or hot poker or anything) in this direction. He said who would want to read peoples' stupid journals online, and I said their friends. He said what if he wants to talk crap about people, he won't be able to help himself, and I said either a) go for it or b) just don't. He said he'd write way too much, he'd start and he wouldn't be able to stop, and I said I fail to see the problem. So anyway he has a blog now and he linked to me without prompting which proves he is a true friend, as if that wasn't proven enough already by him seeing Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within with me in the theatre and being the only other person in Texas who actually liked it. That alone links us inextricably for life, along with our irrational shared whiteboy love of Tupac Shakur. Also, he's had my Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for two years now, so much like a divorced couple with a child, we will always have something between us.

He has no comments thing on his blog (I hate that word, by the way), so I will comment here on his thoughts that people have an easier time sharing online than they do in person. The reason I like this as a format for communicating is that it allows me to talk to far more people than I do on a regular basis offline (I have many friends that I've met initially online, like Mark himself, and at least two really good friends who I've never actually met offline at all). Also, I like writing. I just like the actual process of it, the language, putting sentences together, all that. I don't stumble over my own thoughts in print the way I sometimes do in speech (by that I don't mean that I am a stuttering moron, I just mean I have an easier time keeping logic consistent and not contradicting myself in writing...which I guess is inherently true of writing as a format anyway, so nevermind?). Also, apart from with like three people ever, I hate talking on the phone for any length of time. Also I can do this from work. So this method of communication has its advantages. However, I'm still totally comfortable talking with people in person, as I'm sure anyone who knows me can attest, including Mark. I figure, just let it all out there. If people can't handle what you have to say or they don't care then they aren't your friends.

Two groups of people should be put to death. The first are people who push the "Door Close" button on an elevator when someone gets out on a floor that isn't the one they're waiting for. Never in history has this made the elevator doors close faster. People pushing it once is bad enough. Things that make it worse are when they push it as the doors are already closing, and especially when they jab it over and over, quickly, with compact strikes, like a snake lunging for a rat. Every extra time they push the button beyond the initial time should be another eternity in hell. Grow some fucking patience please. It's 2003. That elevator is now smarter than you are. A circuit in that elevator spends its entire existence thinking didtheypushthebutton?didtheypushthebutton?didtheypushthebutton?THEYPUSHEDTHEBUTTONdidtheypushthebutton?didtheypushthebutton? and so on forever. The elevator will figure out if you pushed the button or not. It does not need to be reminded twice a second. In between those two times you pushed the button in one second the elevator has checked to see if you pushed it again 34,829,002 times (this is an approximation). And it doesn't matter if you COULD push the button that fast, the elevator isn't going to get moving any faster than it already was. It's like those retards who hit "ball return" or "pin reset" at the bowling alley. You know what, the ball's coming back, okay? Calm down with the button-pushing.

The second group of people are the ones, and you know who they are, who do not react at all when there is a near-collision with another person while walking and said other person says "Excuse me" or its sibling "Pardon me" or even their more vernacular cousins "Scuse me" or "My bad, dog." If I almost walk into you and I say, "Oh, excuse me!" and you say nothing, in fact do not even acknowledge my corporeal presence, it should be my right, nay, my legal obligation to punch you in the face, preferably after at least two lead-in steps. Even a minor grunt is acceptable as compensation for a pardon-me type statement. Even "HOLY SHIT DOOD!" would be better, and certainly more comical, than nothing at all. I believe that shotguns were invented for use on these people, and violent video games such as DOOM were designed to train us for the day that everyone realizes this. I am ready.

Speaking of DOOM, its third iteration is at the point likely the only thing that will stop me from wasting my life away slowly building my kill count on PlanetSide. That or Half-Life 2. I think the former is in November, the latter is in September, so we'll see. Now that I think about it, November is going to be a scary month for entertainment...DOOM 3, Matrix: Revolutions, and the new Dark Tower novel (!!!!!!). My feelings can be summed up thusly: AIIIIIEEEEEEE. 
¶ 10:10 AM