Odds and ends

First: Resident Evil 5: It's good. Not stupid amazing good, but a solid game that is trying to do shake up the series by placing it in a hot sun-drenched environment. This works for the most part, but there weren't as many spooky parts, and the vehicle driving sections were generally boring. Sitting at the turret of a gun and blazing down enemies doesn't make for a very fearful experience.

That all said, I've gotten quite a bit out of the Mercenaries subgame. With two players who even know a little about what to do, I have felt like I was accomplishing a great deal. It's fun! I wouldn't like to see an entire game around that, but the value that Mercenaries gives to this helps make the game worthwhile.

Second: Left 4 Dead 2. I really wish they would do it as DLC. Or how about giving coupons to people who have bought L4D so the sequel isn't as expensive for us?

I don't know; I worry that this really awesome game I've been playing will suddenly have a much smaller userbase, and currently I can't afford a new game. Hopefully by November, this won't be an issue, but it's hard not to fret about the unemployment thing.

I got on Xbrick Live just to play L4D with people, and I'd hate to see that pleasant experience go away, especially after dropping $110 on it (game + Live membership).

And also: I'd like to see some extra content for the original. The lighthouse in The Last Stand is obviously some kind of end-chapter. Give me the 4 lead up chapters!

I realize that Valve needs to make money, and I've had a good time with their game, but there was an implication that there would be at least some new content coming for the original (although I may be making that up in my head) so this sequel feels a lot like a letdown.

Third: I've started making lists in the morning of daily tasks. So far it's helping, and I think it may be the first step on my way to getting a personal organizer. I think I'd like it to it via an iPod touch because that way I can just copy/paste things into a calendar, but for now writing things down is a start.

Fourth: Usual depressing looking for work thing. It just feels all fucked up.

Fifth: Star Trek is good. The new one hits all the right notes, doesn't invalidate any older Star Trek that people may've loved, and is all around fun to watch.

I guess that's all for now.

Healthcare costs

A really good article on the costs of healthcare in America.

As with so many things, it seems to come down to greed vs care.

Hm

While building my most recent Magic deck, I realized something.

I have run out of basic forests. I didn't think that was possible. And I'm not sure this is a good sign.

On Fatalism

Was called a fatalist last night by Jim, in our discussion about newspapers. This was after I'd called him one.

The perspectives divided thusly: He thinks that newspapers are on their way out, and that when they go, we lose something critical to our democracy because there's nothing to replace them. The internet (with bloggers being the definition there) and TV do not have the credibility nor the standards of accuracy that newspapers do. And once they go, they're gone and that resource cannot be replaced. Our democracy will be fucked once that happens.

So: we should save them.

Me: newspapers are going to die, at least as we know them. That cannot be prevented but the idea that nothing will replace those things is one that historically as been false. New things rise up to replace old things in every system you can talk about, and there's no way to prove that in this case, the new thing is going to be worse or somehow be unable to give us the truth we need to continue to function as a democracy.

I know the world is going to change, and not always for the better, but not always for the worse, either.

I had a troubled sleep last night, though.

Get a haircut and get a real job

I got my haircut yesterday. Probably the best $5 haircut I've gotten since the early 80's, but I think I would've ponied up 5 more to not have to listen to shitty, shitty pop music for forty minutes. There was one song with a really catchy riff, wasted in a song that was otherwise drivel. The Foo Fighters could've done something awesome with that riff. But this band wasn't even close.

Although the haircut looks ok, I spent today mostly depressed. Yeah, I made beer and I wrote some and it didn't all suck, but what I realized walking back from the comic store was this; I am admitting that I cannot get a job. I'm cleaning myself up, which will include shaving off the soul patch I've kept on my chin for at least six months, so I can go into a temp agency and ask for work.

I don't have a dream to follow, I don't have a path to look to. Going to the temp agency isn't so bad; hopefully they'll be able to place me. It's that I don't really know anything that makes me valuable, and I don't really love anything that people would want to pay me for. And that's...no fun.

More things not to do:

Lock yourself out of the house.

The cats will not let you back inside.

Step 1

Well, I finished the first, handwritten draft of a book I've been writing for 3 years. It's not the most triumphant thing ever, but it is an accomplishment in the process of making a complete thing. So I'll take it.

Huh

Got yelled at by an anarchist tonight for not knowing what anarchy is, apparently.

When I asked her what she wanted, and she included, 'democracy' and I said, you can't have democracy and anarchy at the same time, she yelled a me, about how I ought to read x,y,z.

But she didn't actually tell me what the difference was, when I asked. Or how I wasn't a liberterian because I thought regulated capitalism was a good thing.

I may be getting the details fuzzy; I was being yelled at. But it was nice to be yelled at by a left-winger, because it's an excellent warning against extremism of all kinds.

It's one of those days: Resist Despair.

It's not that things are bad, but they do not appear to be hopeful in any interesting manner.

I kind of want to use the internet like Twitter today; just leave my short comments and leave. I don't abhor Twitter per se, but there's so much noise out there in the Universe anyway, and nobody cares about what I have to say in comparison. Especially since I am not eating tasty sandwiches or pooping.

Even writing that 'joke' feels forced and kinda meh. Real writers wouldn't let that go.

In truth, the inclination to hide out is very strong. I guess I'm doing that already by staying at home, but I guess there's my conflict. The days when I want to go away and be forgotten, and the days when I don't. Which isn't much to aspire to, it seems.

Maybe I just need lunch. Everything seems better after lunch or a nap. I have a place to write and things ain't so bad.

On drama

I've been encountering the usual internet drama and it was in the shower today that I had a realization; some people are addicted to it. They need to create (or bear witness to) a whole lot of anxious misery in order to feed some weird hunger in themselves.

I have the internet trolls to thank for this, but I don't mean that in a congratulatory sort of way. I get that everyone is the asshole sometimes, but it is the consistent engagement of lousy behavior that defines an addiction and rewarding that behavior with attention of any sort just feeds into that bullshit.

The problem is that sometimes you just need people to shut the hell up.

So once again I'm back to the necessity of moderators in any given culture. Yeah, yeah it brings up the whole 'who watches the watchmen' thing, but I have yet to see any non-familial group work without a set of rules and someone to enforce them. For the most part, the community keeps each other in line, and my feelings about moderation in internet arenas is that it should be kept to a light hand.

Because the drama is going to show up no matter what you do or say. There's something about people that causes them to conflict.

Bah. I'm rambling now. I guess part of what I'm trying to learn is when to stand up to the addicts and when to let it go. But even with that knowledge, it doesn't mean very much unless standing up to them can be enforceable. How that works, I don't know.

The Failure Option

I'm doing a podcast now, for people interested in hearing my voice. Linky above.

I'm having trouble finding jobs that I think I can work in. I seem to know so little.

On the other hand, all the time at home is giving me space to read, write, and listen to music I haven't in a long time. You may not be aware of this, but the Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the blahblahblah is a shitty record. It could've been a good one, but out of the 28 songs there, 4 are really good, and another 5 are OK. Maybe 2 more songs after that, and you're done.

Metallica's 'classic' ...And Justice for All? Bloated and tired.

But there's beer. So it's not all bad.

I went to the rock tonight

And it was good. At this point, it kinda goes: Andrew WK, It's Time To Party = Metallica, Creeping Death = Pelican, Angel Tears. And then there's everything else.

I don't care what you've seen live, I'll put those three experiences against anything.

(but, I've had booze and so this is not the be all end all.)

Twitter summation

My sister asked me what I thought of Twitter while I was in Spokane, and the link pretty much sums it up.

It does have some uses; A.Ho has told me of how they use it at his job to let people know about shifts they can pick up, and Bailey's Taproom uses it to let people know what's on tap, but these are really narrow applications. Just like the service itself, I think.

Visiting

When I went back to Spokane last week, I brought with me a whole slew of old cassette tapes which had songs on them I hadn't listened to in twenty years. I learned a few things along the way. The Pet Shop Boys' 'It's A Sin' is a gay anthem. 'Living in a box' is an incredibly offensive song, when I step back from it for even a moment. (Although to be fair, I was far less aware of the plight of the homeless at 16) 'Pop Goes the World' is a bad song.

I spent a lot of time feeling like I had no idea what Spokane was like, almost as though I was lost in a city I grew up in. It was very strange; the winter filth and the starkness of the city had it adopting an alien landscape that felt like I was a stranger now. Maybe it was because so many things evoked the past-old friends, old hangouts, old music, that I had been thrown back, and the city stayed in the present.

Of course, it could be that I'm just out of my head currently. I got sick while I was there, and I'm still recovering from that. NyQuill does a number on your head, and even this morning I'm feeling a little spacey. Perhaps it is best not to be too hard on Spokane, as it's coming off a difficult winter, and the city is in a state of disrepair.

Or, it could be that my birthday is tomorrow and I'm feeling reflective. That's possible too.

Gotta say that 2009 has been one where I've had to accept my successes based on the level of personal growth I'm having to endure. It has not been fun, though I've been becoming more aware. I don't envy anyone the path I'm on though.

I'd also like the insomnia that's been shooting me in the mind between 2 and 4 a.m. every night for the past month to go away. For a long time.

There are days

When I swear to god I think I could fix the internet by having the 'reply all' email button give you a shock and nosebleed.

2008 mix tape part 2

The first song I heard when I touched down in NYC last year was You're A Wolf by Sea Wolf. It's one of my favorite songs from the album, and hearing it at random made sure I wouldn't forget to include this at the end of the year.

Once again, I found myself listening to Jesu more than any other band this year. Supple Hope is another one of Jesu's textured songs with a title that misleads; the lyrics themselves are depressing as hell.

I don't know that I can explain my love of Armor for Sleep, but I've two albums and the songs that I like on them, I really like, while the others are less memorable alt-rock. But as I said; when they do a good song, I really like it, and it's hard for me to beat a song that opens with "I've got soul working for me half the time". So Run Right Back In goes on.

Bats Over The Pacific Ocean is one of those nonsense titles that bands like Jaguar Love give to their songs. Given that the band is made up of former Blood Brothers members, this kind of silliness makes a lot more sense. Jaguar Love has songs that are a lot more danceable though, so hopefully that will open up some people to their stuff.

A very late addition to my music collection in '08 was Fucked Up, and their song Black Albino Bones caught me right away. Punk rock growls with a light chorus, and I was hooked.

Dead and Divine was a band I swayed on for much of the year. Do I keep this album, or do I just burn a couple tracks and let it go. But whenever I would listen to the album for purposes of burning, I liked a lot more songs than I thought I would. When I played it as background music, it didn't stick, except for Get Down With Your Bad Self, which has the line: I have a way with failure.
I wish that didn't speak to me, but it does.

Next up is Baroness's Isak. This is another album that was probably on last year's tape, but eh. Whatcha gonna do? It's dirty stoner rock, and I like that.

Nineteenhundred by Burst was another late addition to my ears. Burst's record, Lazarus Bird is a strong one, and it's too bad it's been consigned to the 'metal' bin. Don't get me wrong, it is metal, but the band wants to stretch what metal can do-and in this song, they use saxophones to do it. Really neat stuff.

My Apocalypse by Metallica. Yeah, I'm surprised too, but there you go; it took them twenty years to do another album on par with Master of Puppets, but they did it. Is it as good as their landmark albums (namely Ride the Lightning or Master of Puppets)? No. But it's pretty damn solid, and the guys are playing again like they have something to prove.

Finally, All Hope Is Gone by Slipknot. The title is beguiling again, reflecting a despair that the song doesn't exactly have, but since I've been feeling a little bit of both, I put that song on. Plus, it's just blistering.

I finished with Unearth's instrumental; Big Bear & the hour of Chaos. I wanted that song to be the bridge between My Apocalypse and All Hope Is Gone, but it didn't work out that way; there wasn't enough room on the tape. Still, I got it on; that's what matters.

2008 mix tape part 1

I kicked this year's tape off with Tales of Girls, Boys, and Marsupials by the Wombats. It was a song that made me smile in a year when smiling was hard for me to come by.

Against Me! was a band I was happy to discover this year. I'd heard of them for years, but never gotten around to listening to them until I found a copy of New Wave used. It was a great album, and the nice thing about getting into a band late is that you get to explore their back catalog, and usually get more good music out of the deal. One of my favorite songs from New Wave was Thrash Unreal, and so it comes up next.

It's probable that Kevin Drew's Spirit If came out in 07, but I still listened to it in 08, so Safety Bricks gets the nod.
This is true of a few bands; I didn't find a lot of new stuff I was enamored with, so I went back to the things I had playing them to death.

Of course as I say that, the next song is TV On The Radio's Golden Age, and their was on many people's top 10 list for '08. TVOTR doesn't seem to grab me quite the same way ever since I saw them live, but they still put out good albums.

In the same way that I got into Against Me! this year, I also finally heard Minus the Bear. Same situation; lots of people telling me how great they were, but I waited until I could find a CD used. Hooray! is hands down my favorite song from that album, not just for it's thrilling guitar line during the chorus, but the fond tale of snowball fights too.

Fumes is by Aesop Rock. I don't know much about rap, but Aesop and Dalek (who makes the list in a song) both made albums that didn't sound like any rap I'd heard before. Aesop seems more traditional, but his wordplay is very clever too.

Wiper is by Amusement Parks On Fire, and again they probably were on last year's list too. Every time I was in a used record store this year, I spent time looking for their 2nd album to no avail. This is why I'm considering downloading music off the internet; just so I can find things I want.

From this song Dalek's Ever Somber felt like the right thing. He seems to use industrial-stylings as his backbeats. A rapper descended from Ministry-like swirls of noise. This song was chosen in part because of the title, which seems to fit my current mood more than I'd like.

The Gutter Twins didn't make quite the splash I thought they would, but their album was admittedly a little uneven. Still, I am sad I didn't get my ducks in a row to see them live. The Body hooked me in with it's soft chorus, and I never got away from it.

I got Band of Horses' last record late in 07, so Is There A Ghost? makes it on. I would've listened to it more, but my girlfriend absconded with it for most of the year.

Finally, Mogwai's Auto-Rock. I first heard this at the end of the Miami Vice movie, and I loved it, but didn't have it together to find out who did the music. Then I forgot about it, as people sometimes do.

About the middle of '08, I heard it again while in Everyday Music. I had one of those tingly moments, hearing this song--Oh yes, this! I need this. So I went up to find out who was playing, and walked out with a scuffed CD of Mogwai's Mr Beast. The album isn't great, but that song is magical for me.

This side closes out with music from Girl Talk's Feed the Animals. I can't quite distinguish the songs on this album, but that's OK. The mashup fun is too good to ignore.

Work musings 1.6, 1.7, 1.9

Right now I have to work under conditions where people can walk into my workspace, and just 'hang out' doing things. This makes me not want to work. I want people to go away. Having someone you don't like much around disrupts the workflow. And he's in space I need to use anyway. It's like a megalose.

It's weird, realizing I have to quit. It's crazy, since this is the worst time to not already have a job since something like 1952. Still, I also feel kind of good. I mean, when I'm not batshit frightened.

They just cut my hours by 7.5/wk. That's almost enough to convince me to stick around.

That was just your life

I'm realizing that I'm a very bad advocate for myself.

It is...not a pleasant realization.