2007 { The Year In Review

Nothing happened. Glad its over.

casual_friday { Happy Holidays

I'll be traveling tomorrow for a catfish Christmas so I'm posting today. To everyone, everywhere, Seasons Greetings, Happy Holidays, Merry Festus, etc. Maybe your holiday season(s) be safe and joyful. Peace on Earth. Goodwill to everyone. May the New Year bring new change and new joys.

Now a collection of holiday related items.

'All I want for Christmas'


Mad TV 'ReinFather'


Klingon Christmas Carol


South Park 'Jesus vs Santa' (nsfw)

politics { The next President

Read this article at Hullabaloo. He's right, if the next President is a Democrat the Republicans will make him/her pay for their sins and we will be bogged down by accusations and investigations.

Personally I hope (although I don't expect it) that the next Democratic President doesn't listen to the Republican hate and propaganda machines (which really have less influence than they say) and does clean house from top to bottom. I hope the Democrats take both houses of Congress and some much needed inquiries and investigations occur.

I don't think it will happen.

I also expect that the last few months of 2008 will be a flurry of Bush putting many, many, many documents under 'Executive Privilege' to hide the bodies and it will probably be (if ever) 15 years down the road or whenever Bush Jr. dies until the truth is dug up. I'm afraid these clowns will never see a trial and will never be held responsible.

But I hope I am wrong.

MN { The consequences of 'No New Taxes'

Infrastructure pays the price. And in the case of last summer, we pay the price in lives.

From the UpTake:

games/reviews { Guitar Hero

Below is the best review of Guitar Hero I've seen and I agree with with 95%.

entendre { this video does not match...

...what I imagined based off the lyrics...but now that I've seen it, it makes perfect sense...

casual_friday { Casual Friday today!

Because I'm not waiting.


('Rock me Amadeus' by Falco

musings { Tech Zen

Sometimes beauty is sitting right in front of you but you are too busy to see it. I stopped for a second and experienced the moment, and I found the hard disk that I took the top off sitting on my desk to be a thing of beauty.

holidays { Old Holiday Radio Shows

Public domain holiday radio shows available for listening/download here.

germs { MRSA

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus aka MRSA.

Nasty bug. Resistant to an increasing array of antibiotics. Every time I've been in the hospital I had to sign a waver that I could contract MRSA. We're partly to blame for this bug. Our society prescribes antibiotics like candy and the bacteria they're meant to treat are adapting. We're putting selective evolutionary pressure on them. In the mid to late 90s our society seemed to be at its worst (surpassed only by the Anthrax insanity of 2001-2002) where many household cleaners had 'anti-biotics' in them. Our society has become one of clean freaks. Occasionally I'll see commercials that prey upon our fears to protect our children. Most notable one I can think of is the Lysol commercial where they show a stereotypical housewife going around spraying all parts of her house with the aerosol cleaner. A marketing label 'KILLS 99% of viruses int eh air!' appears overlaid on the image. This is marketing bull shit.



I worry that we may be weakening our immune systems. Kids are supposed to be exposed to things, its what helps us adapt and build stronger, better, immune systems (regular exercise also helps).

On the flip side, we're also a dirty society. I can't count the number of times I've seen people go to the bathroom (number 1 or 2) and not wash their hands, not even the half-assed "I ran water over them" attempt. Proper hand washing is a key to help survive cold and flu season (along with covering your mouth when you cough and avoiding children).

warcarft { Spoiler alert: This post contains WoW related themes and situations

Viewer discretion is advised.

But seriously. I've been a bit absent in WoW lately. Since the upheaval and general shittiness that happened over a week ago I stepped down at Guild Master after the title was dropped on me when the previous GM left. I stayed Master long enough to help staunch the bleeding (with the help of wonderful officers who stayed). I then handed the reigns over to another with more energy, charisma, and most importantly time online. See its December and that means busy social life, busy work life and travel and I've not been on much. With the late unpleasantness I developed a serious case of the blahs and mehs and decided a little distance was needed. So I've not been on WoW much. I've been reading, writing and rediscovering some old games.

I tried to install and play a space station sim called 'Startopia', but it was created in the days of Win98 and no amount of effort allowed me to get it to run on WinXP (even under varying combinations of 'run as' combatibilty options). I recently wiped my C: partition and did a fresh install. Its like having a new machine. I'm being cautious with what I install. My previous install lasted 3 years. Which is how old my CPU is and I've not had a blue screen ever on XP, save for a bad sound driver I installed when I tried to use the AC'97 onboard before buying my Audigy 2.

Anyways, I re-discovered a game that I had shelved for a while and its consumed me. Its 'Dawn of War: Dark Crusade'. Wow! I've been a fan of 'Dawn of War' since the franchise was released. Its a great game with a great engine that looks beautiful and the game play is intense. Its the standard I hold most RTS games to now. DoW has gone through many expansions. 'Dawn of War' which is set in the WH40k universe when it was first released, it let you play Space Marines, Chaos, Eldar, or Orks. The campaign was from the perspective of the Space Marine Chapter the Blood Ravens. It was engrossing. The game also let you play skirmishes and use custom maps as well as multi-player online. Its first expansion, 'DoW: Winter Assault' improved the game play and add a new faction, the Imperial Guard. The storyline let you track the campaign from any of the factions and it had a surprise ending involving another faction, but I won't provide a spoiler. The last expansion released was 'DoW: Dark Crusade' took it even a step further. Two new playable factions the Tau and the Necrons. It was set on the world of Kronos and the campaign was the (re)conquest of Kronos based upon which faction you played. The planet was divided into zones and you had an army and planetary resources used to conquer the various zones. Some zones gave planetary buffs, some gave you access to body guard units (personal commander units that you could start with). I've long been interested in the Tau (Tau and Imperial Guard being my favorite WH40k armies) and I've been playing the Tau campaign. I'm doing well, almost half the zones conquered and I've defeated the Ork, Necron and Chaos armies and pushed them off the planet (pockets of their faction still remain, but leaderless and they won't attack me now). I'm currently in the process of trying to dislodge and crush the Imperial Guard, a tough nut to crack with all their artillery and armor coupled with cheap to build infantry units. But my Sept is shooty and my Hammerhead tanks devastating. I lost my commander to Vindicare assassins, so I'm not sure what will happen. I'm still only a third of the way through conquering the IG capital map and going is slow as I'm constantly being shelled.

So anyways, this is why I haven't been in WoW much.

pimp { Bitch bettah have my money...

...or else she be hav'in a Merry FIST-mas!

reviews{ House of Leaves

Spoiler alert: this post contains no WOW-related events, people, photos or themes.

I've just finished Danielewski's House of Leaves, a lengthy book that has (1) generated its own cult following and (2) dragged around our house for awhile, both reasons which prompted me to read it. The book is quite engaging, replete with a relatively complex narrative structure and a reasonable ghost story. It even contains obscure literary references and mocking tributes to academic publishing, but somehow I can't bring myself to strongly recommend this thing. The novel and most ambitious part of this book is not overtly narrative, but structural- I spent a lot of time thinking about Derrida, and had to laugh when he (J.D.) was directly cited in the text. The flow of the story, as well as the arrangement of text on the page, are designed to evoke the physical experience of the narrative space. This effect was well-executed in many places, but detrimental to the book in others: clumsy passages were frequent and themes were self-consciously repeated into mindless overexposure. Moreover, Danielewski needs to learn when to say when; the textual arrangements themselves slipped from entertaining structuralism to creative-writing class hell every so often.

Net: Two and a half stars (out of 4)

As an aside, Danielewski's sister wrote a song for her debut album that seems to involve the narrator of this novel, and which appears in hex on the back cover. See video below:

musings { Everything on CubeZoo is the truth...

...this flowchart says so and its on the Internet so it must be the truth!

Now for some facts:
1. Flying Monkeys started modern banking, its wasn't the Knights Templars.
2. Coffee is actually distilled pixies and contain the elixir to life.
3. When you walk, you don't actually move, the universe adjusts to your will around you.
4. There is no gravity, Texas sucks.
5. My cat's breath smells like cat food.
6. Pi actually has an end, the last digit is X.
7. I am the walrus.

casual_friday { Everything Zen?

I don't think so...



('Everything Zen' by Bush)

sad { "Nah they still had Christians back then..."

I saw this (see below) as a link from here and
watched it. I regret I did.

tech { Future of tomorrow today!

Or so, testing out some new blog functionality.

Thinking about going to see the Klingon Christmas Carol referenced on GG
and Avindair's blog.

Thinking of going to see this:

URBAN EXPLORERS: INTO THE DARKNESS - A DOCUMENTARY FILM NR
Thurs Night (Dec 6) only at 7:00. Tickets $8, more information
available at http://www.urbanexplorersfilm.com
(showing at the Riverview Theatre)

UPDATE: preview of the KCC from Fox (blech) 9

cult { I sensed a great disturbance in the Force...

...and now I know why. Scientology is opening the largest 'church' in the world in St. Paul. Saw it first here. Read about it here.

musings { My day so far...

...can be best summed up via a cartoon.

(cartoon from toothpastefordinner)

foreign_policy { Circularity of the Hawk Mind

The NIE report released indicates that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Bush says it won't change his policy.

Not content to lie ala bald realpolitik to justify pro-war hawk policy, the current administration has now taken to simply quit caring about evidence altogether. When information that undercuts their goals is brought up, they disregard it. We're supposed to trust their goals and not the evidence.

This is faith based policy.

Iran represents no real threat, and certainly not enough to justify another illegal war of aggression (whose major goal is a resource grab of the maybe 132 billion barrels of petroleum still under Iranian soil and to cut off any direct pipeline of Southwest Asian oil to China).

When you persist in a belief beyond the point where evidence shows you are mistaken, we call that delusion. Its a dangerous affliction for any mind, and all the more dangerous when it is the faith of war for American dominance, as it seems to be for this administration.

musings { Favorite old computer RPG

You can list up to three.

Rules:

1. Playstation 1 technology or older. (no Xbox*, Playstation 2+, or similar, basically prior to 1998).
2. Has to be a computer or console game.

Here are mine, in order from most memorable/favorite to least:

1. Ultima V (C64)
2. Mars Saga (C64)
3. Wasteland (C64)

Runners up, in no order:

*Final Fantasy 7
*Fallout
*Elder Scrolls I

blog { CubeZoo requires the consent of a parent or guardian to view

(saw the rating over on Evil Bobby)