Hi! It's been a while. I'll try to get this thing going again more often but I make no promises. Why do I soldier on? For the fans, friends. For the fans.

iTunes is basically the best program in the history of the earth and I suggest you get it immediately if you don't already have it. It has an interesting feature that allows you to view your most-played songs. Since I have nothing more interesting to share at the moment than this, here are my top 25 most played, in ascending order for dramatic effect.

25 - Don McLean - "Crossroads"
24 - Bjork - "Heirloom"
23 - A Perfect Circle - "Weak And Powerless"
22 - OutKast - "She Lives In My Lap"
21 - Cliff Martinez - "Wear Your Seat Belt"
20 - Pink Floyd - "Echoes"
19 - Nine Inch Nails - "Leaving Hope"
18 - Ice Cube - "It Was A Good Day"
17 - Pink Floyd - "Hey You"
16 - A Perfect Circle - "Orestes"
15 - Tool - "No Quarter"
14 - Cliff Martinez - "Maybe You're My Puppet"
13 - Pantera - "Planet Caravan"
12 - The Magnetic Fields - "Nothing Matters When We're Dancing"
11 - Tsunami Bomb - "Lemonade"
10 - Tool - "Reflection"
09 - Tupac Shakur - "Ghost"
08 - Westside Connection - "Terrorist Threats"
07 - Bjork - "Pagan Poetry"
06 - Alice In Chains - "Rotten Apple"
05 - Nine Inch Nails - "The Great Below"
04 - Dungeon Family - "Excalibur"
03 - Bjork - "Unison"
02 - The Magnetic Fields - "All My Little Words"
01 - A Perfect Circle - "Gravity"

I am pleased that despite the existence of such guilty pleasures as Justin Timberlake's "Rock Your Body" and Ludacris's entire "Word Of Mouf" album on my iTunes, I think this list of my most played stands up to even the most pretensious scrutiny.

Oh, yeah. The last Dark Tower book is out, and completed by me. It's interesting, I've been reading this series since I was 10 years old, it's something that's always been ahead of me, always waiting years for the next piece, until the deluge of the last three books within one year's time. It's just books or whatever but it feels more important than that to me; like I said, been reading them as long as I've been reading for leisure. It is like finishing Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings, there's a separation anxiety from the characters. On the ending of the whole series, the best analogy I can think of is this: Have you seen the film Hero? It's an astounding movie, often completely incredible, sometimes plodding, with an anti-climactic ending that will not be what you wanted to see happen, but is the right thing to happen for the story. Describing Hero that way kind of describes the Dark Tower for me. This is not a criticism; the story ended the way I think it had to, and the series as a whole stands far above King's other works, and is as good as any series of books, or any book, I have read. If ever I'm asked for a reading recommendation Dark Tower will forever be the first thing I say. Anyways it's over, it's not the ending I expected but it's the right ending, and I'm a little sad that it's over, that there isn't another book waiting for me three, four years from now, and so on.

Finally, I saw Ju-On today, as it received a stateside theatrical release in anticipation of its imminent remake The Grudge, out next week. My review is thus: Ack. It's really creepy and uncomfortable, and I like it more than I like Ringu, which I like more than its remake The Ring. Japanese horror seems less inclined to pull punches with sensibilities than domestic horror, which is content to just try and shock viewers every five minutes with red herrings and loud noises, for the most part. US horror seems to want to make you jump; Japanese horror wants to make you crawl under your seat and curl up into a fetal position. That's pretty much what I wanted to do for most of Ju-On.
 
¶ 8:31 PM