"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."

Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc. (1989)

...just a little late to the party, that's all

motherfucking Sir Tim Berners-Lee has a blog.

When you invented the WWW....do you really need anything else on your resume?

Graffiti from Pompeii

Pompeii graffiti is fucking great.

samples:

I.2.20 (Bar/Brothel of Innulus and Papilio); 3932: Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!

III.5.3 (on the wall in the street); 8898: Theophilus, don’t perform oral sex on girls against the city wall like a dog

VIII.2 (in the basilica); 1820: Chie, I hope your hemorrhoids rub together so much that they hurt worse than when they every have before!

VIII.2 (in the basilica); 1824: Let everyone one in love come and see. I want to break Venus’ ribs with clubs and cripple the goddess’ loins. If she can strike through my soft chest, then why can’t I smash her head with a club?

VIII.2 (in the basilica); 1882: The one who buggers a fire burns his penis

VIII.2 (in the basilica); 1904: O walls, you have held up so much tedious graffiti that I am amazed that you have not already collapsed in ruin.

In defense of atheism

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/11/15/12016/649

You don't understand what's going on, none of this Santa stuff makes any sense and there's zero evidence for it, why can't everyone just admit that? What's the big conspiracy about? Why is everyone pretending there really is a Santa? Then it slowly dawns on you, around age ten or eleven ... the chilling, horrible truth:

They're Not Pretending. They REALLY Do Believe There Is a Santa Claus.

Your tongue is like poison

I hated The Cure. A Lot. But falling in love changes a lot of things, and the sad romantic lyrics and melancholic music struck notes closer to home as I started college, heartbroken and beat down. Every year when the winds kick up and it's temporarily nice weather, it always takes me back to being in school, climbing a hill and singing Cure songs.

Lovesong Probably the first Cure I started liking. I used to be up at all hours. A good friend of mine, who I was in love with at the time, was going to University in North Carolina. In between being a strange bird (I mean, how many Cubans could there possibly be in NC at any given time?) she worked an odd job as a research assistant and had classes all the time. So when it's 3 in the morning and you're bored and trying so hard to stay awake so that you can check which rats have died so that you can go sleep for an hour and then go to class at 730am, what do you do? You call me and I become your alarm clock. Long story short (too late), we fought about something and didn't speak for months. Then one day out of the blue I got a phone call a bit before midnight that consisted of nothing but kissing sounds (from her) and the Cure's "Lovesong" in the background.

We spoke about many things recently while having lunch at a local sushi joint -- notably my slow eating and relationships in general -- and how people change but not really etc and that I hadn't changed and I say "No, I'm actually more confident now than then...." and she laughed her charming laugh and mentioned to me how her impression of me in high school was one of high self confidence.

You could have knocked me over with a feather at that moment.

Mentioned this to the Bee and she just nodded like it was just accepted knowlege; like 'yeah, you're confident...and the sun will come up tomorrow...and water is wet etc'. Goes to show you how the things you see about yourself are not the things that others see in you. I was focusing on my attitudes towards the fairer sex and my nervousness with same, but looking back more analytically, yes, I was very sure of myself in some respects. I can't say I was ever worried or stressed about being wrong -- mostly cos I was accepting of the times I was.

I wonder how many other people saw me like that -- confident, I mean. I apparently give off asshole vibes like nobody's business, which OK, understandable; big fat hairy guy with weird facial hair (more normal now, although I still get comments when I let the ladies' tickler soul patch grow over-long), a scowl and listening to weird music and able to hold a semi-intelligent conversation about a large variety of things. I mean, I can see how that can come off as assholish or intimidating.

There Is No If.... is my favorite of their recent(ish) songs. It's from Bloodflowers, which tour I saw them on (thanks for those tickets Robert,), which is a great album. Tying those feelings when a relationship isn't going the way you want it to together with thoughts about mortality is just genius. "Remember the first time I told you I Love You? / You yawned, and I had to say it over / I said 'I Love You' I said / You didn't say a word". I think everyone has a moment like that in just about every relationship, where someone says something Important or Meaninful and the other person just...misses it. Not necessarily maliciously or whatever. But just because they don't care enough to catch it. Which can be more damning.

The Kiss, with it's pulsing bass, shrieking guitar and Robert Smith moaning "Oh, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me / Your tongue is like poison / So swollen it fills up my mouth" and "Get it out! Get it out! Get your fucking voice out of my head!", always sends me to that weird headspace where you're between pissed off and lust.

Tired of writing, so that's the end.

The Ministry of Unknown Science - Kung-Fu Fuck You - Google Video

Google, how did we get along without you?

Kung Fu Fuck You

Seriously

I love this fucking service: http://pandora.com
...and only half the reason is because of this.

a voice from long ago

So I got a phone call from a good friend that I hadn't spoken to in a long time (well, ok, we just recently-ish started talking again, in like December of last year and then didn't speak all summer but before that we hadn't spoken since like 2000) and reminiscing.

So expect a post about the Cure sometime soonish.

Evolution in the bible, says Vatican - The Other Side - Breaking News 24/7 - NEWS.com.au

Evolution in the bible, says Vatican - The Other Side - Breaking News 24/7

How bad is it when the Vatican is less of a stick in the mud than American religious fundamentalists?

international dark skies

Testing out blogger's post-by-mail feature courtesy of the ongoing blackout and my blackberry from work. Excuse spelling (assuminganyone's reading this blog--there's my ego, stroke it,yes).

Work itself has been hectic but fulfilling. The good thing about the lack of electricity is you see more starts and you feel people more --a lot of politeness at intersections w/o lights, a lot of "hey you need water man?" And personal interaction.

In some ways reminds me of being 19 and hitting the net in my dad's house, alone and learning to be comfortable in my own skin. Weather has been cool, mid to low 60s (hit 54 last monday!). People running generators to watch TV, which I just don't get man. Like, fucking do
something man....watching TV sucks your brains out. Fucking call your friends and play cards, or go fuck, or watch the night skies. As FPL gets their shit together, the light pollution is growing and it's kind of annoying me. I like finding orion.

FEMA gave us ice and snacks. Tax dollars at work, folks. You pay taxes so I can have cold pudding a week after a hurricane. Good thing we have family, canned goods and a gas stove, those fuckers took a week to get here. I can totally sympathize with folks looting food in NOLA. TVs and shoes, not so much.

The 'cane didn't bring much rain, just lots of wind. Busted some of my windows, but I'm still celebrating haloween (pictures of the horns and halo later, mayhap.)

At least we didn't lose phone lines like during katrina (but the cell coverage has been shit).

short and sweet

pending the hurricane's fucked-up-ness to go away, no real updates for the next week or so. But I leave you with pictures of the damage (see photos link in the sidebar) and a link to pandora a nifty music referal thing

WORDS: John Dies At The End

John Dies At The End is a great story. Just FYI.

MP3: Music to fuck to, part two.

I hated Aphex Twin. I heard a bunch of oh-my-god-he's-the-best-ever verbal blowjobbery about his music, and when I heard it, decided it wasn't anything special. At the time I'd just recently gotten into electronic music (it was probably 1997, I'm thinking, and I'd just started to get into Kraftwerk, Skinny Puppy and Orbital). My friend Eden wouldn't shut the fuck up about him though and eventually lent me "Selected Ambient Works, Volume II" when I asked him to recommend something nice, mellow and ambient.


Links from OpenDir
Aphex Twin: "Selected Ambient Works Volume II"
Disc 1
Disc 2

Something about the mostly-beatless waves of sound made it perfect when I snuck the girl into my dad's house; I worked nights then -- 11pm to 7am -- and so it wasn't unusual for me to come home at 730am, play some music and hit the sack. I always kept my hurricane shutters closed for the absolute darkness that they provided (windows faced East then,) and the only the LEDs from my gigantor stereo (oh, how I miss thee,) lit up the room. Something about the way it just subtly implies that it's playing, that the distant light is coming to you from somewhere different, special, somewhere between foreign and familiar is just....it's cold and comforting, clinical and a mess, organic and manufactured. Also, great for sex and/or love.

There's nothing I can tell you about the album that wikipedia won't. But if you do like the album, it's worth pointing you to this particular site that has an overly in-depth explanation of the song titles and album art.

Music to fuck to, part one.

I had probably heard about them through brainwashed. So I hopped on whatever p2p app I was using at the time and downloaded some Acid Mothers Temple. I was blown away by "La Novia" -- a solid fucking hour of the greatest psychedelic acid washed guitar I'd heard that wasn't made in the fucking sixties. Two weeks later, I was married and I was getting it on to a dozen hairy Japanese psychonauts blurring guitars with psychedelics and droning "la novia" over and over before the acid guitar starts building and explodes into everythingness. Not a bad soundtrack. Really.


Yeah, we're just regular old Japanese hippies that like to melt your brain with psychedelic rock and hang out with skulls. Alas poor Yorrick and all that. 

I don't remember much about that day after that. Listening to the song now, I can go "wow, those drums near the end are just pure fucking bombs!" and I can certainly appreciate the beautiful acoustic guitar interlude near the end, but how the music makes me feel is something I can't really put into words. I guess that's why they made music instead of writing a stupid blog entry. In any case, here's Acid Mothers Temple and The Melting Paraiso U.F.O., from

archive.org's Acid Mothers Temple live recordings (warning: far too much stuff to listen to, especially if you're easily addicted to psychedelic guitar)