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| Sunday, July 12th, 2009 | | 10:00 am |
While I'm not using this journal for anything at all useful...
Why don't I share with you all, my friends, some of the strange, trivial knowledge I have been acquiring whilst reading my Complete Guide To U.S. Presidents and other books? I love presidential trivia (especially when the presidents themselves are trivial), and this helps me to remember, so I think I will update and share with you and myself some random facts about U.S. Presidents and Other Things As Well. First, let's talk about Andrew Jackson. We all know him as the backwoods hick that slaughtered enough Indians to make him a hero and later 7th President of the United States, sure, but what you may not have known about him is: ( Turned out a little longer than I thought )Whew! That was fun. Hopefully none of that was too boring, basically Andrew Jackson I feel was a misunderstood bad-ass who may not have been the best President, but was certainly responsible for a lot of the way our country operates, in fact it's said that he's considered the first "modern" President. Of course, this could be a tongue-in-cheek statement since he was the first one to battle with Congress constantly, vetoing a total of 12 bills, more than every other President preceding him combined. Either way, his most major faults I would say were representative of the times more than him being the "illiterate barbarian" his opponent John Quincy Adams publicly accused him of being. Stay tuned, I'll either go back in time or forward to Martin Van Buren, depending on how things go. | | Saturday, July 11th, 2009 | | 2:33 am |
Need advice on hats
So I am totally broke right now, and the thing I like to do the most when I'm broke is shop for stuff I'm going to forget about by the time I actually have money enough to buy it. However, this is one item that, one of these days, I'd like to buy, but I can't seem to find it. I want a new baseball cap with some reference to SOMETHING I like on it (preferably video games but I'm pretty open). The problem is that video game apparel often has that horrible stigma of having stupid, inane mottos on them. T-shirts are the worst, but the hats are not much better. So I am looking for a hat that is: -all black -with something I like on it -subtle, preferably without any words Does anyone have any ideas or at least a favorite online apparel store? I know I sure as heck won't find this stuff in a mall. | | Saturday, July 4th, 2009 | | 2:25 am |
Happy Locust Day
Hey everyone! Happy fourth of July! That's right, on this very day, in 1776, a committee that I suppose you could call our "founding fathers", though many were not in attendance, decided over the wording to Thomas Jefferson's Declaration Of Independence, despite the fact that the vote was cast to declare independence two days earlier and John Adams even famously wrote that July 2nd would go down in History as the epochal date of America's celebration of its independence. Also, nobody actually signed the declaration until August 2nd of that year, and it took quite a while to get all 56 signatures on the same copy, but you know July 4th, INDEPENDENCE DAY, WELCOME TO URF. This July 4th well-wishing was brought to you by a U.S. History nerd. Did you know it's said that locusts swarming the building where the meeting to decide the wording on July 4th was the catalyst for a speedy agreement? Hence, happy locust day! | | Thursday, June 25th, 2009 | | 5:06 pm |
| | Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 | | 11:49 pm |
I JUST GOT IT
Oh! That crazy guy that Harvey Dent ties to a chair and interrogates in The Dark Knight is Jervis Tetch, who is actually The Mad Hatter, which is kind of by default one of my favorite Batman villains because I am such a sucker for Lewis Carroll's writing in all its forms that do not involve American McGee! Dude now I am totally hoping that weird guy from the Wendy's commercials follows through and becomes a villain in one of the new movies. After all, The Mad Hatter is technically a plausible character to pull off, since his power isn't derived from anything but a rather sizable amount of eccentricity. I fully support this idea, as long as he doesn't wind up looking like the *ahem* newest take on the classic character. I miss Ed Wynn, he was the best Mad Hatter in the worst adaptation of the story. | | Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 | | 7:02 pm |
Still trying to figure out how to network roms
Aside that, however, I am playing lots of Secret Of Mana on my brother's Wii, and man I do not remember the game being quite so buggy... Has anyone heard of the Virtual Console version being some kind of 15th Anniversary Edition with Extra bugs? I went into one story mode with the male hero, BEEF, shaking as if he were clipping out of the universe. Also, I am almost sure the cave above Matango is not supposed to have sprite transparency issues (all the items in one room, like a skull on the ground, or whatever, are surrounded by the rest of the sprite's usually invisible pixels so there are WHITE BOXES EVERYWHERE). Also my supporting cast, FISH the girl and PORK the sprite, are getting extra stuck in the scenery. I know this was always a problem, but it's getting to where I can hardly move for those two. Still, despite these hiccups, the game is as lovely as ever, and I'm having a good time here in W'furd so far, relaxing and casually unpacking. If only I could get that ROM box to find the ROMs, I'd be set! | | Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 | | 2:49 pm |
Blargh
Thanks to Sardius, I was imparted a lovely gift before leaving Austin, and that is that he modded my Xbox with XBMC and some emulators. Sweet! I've just got a tiny problem, I'm not sure how to get ROMS on it from a networked computer. I made a workgroup, and it works just fine in the actual media center for movies, etc., and I shared a ROMS folder that has all the roms in it, but then what? Technology confuses me so :( The other thing is that I can't seem to find a single guide online that says how to do this... I know it's gotta be easy, I'm just missing something that is probably right there and remarkably simple. HELP ME ROM FRIENDS | | Sunday, May 31st, 2009 | | 2:03 pm |
Back in Weatherford
Well THAT sucked, at least the drive wasn't bad and I'm already mostly unpacked and set up. I'd have to say the worst part was dealing with Uhaul in general. The BEST part is that I now have a bed (a nice one, too!) and shelving enough to hold my ridiculous amount of media. Also my Nintendo systems are on a shelf aligned like the Evolution Of Man (all next to each other in order: NES - SNES - N64 - Gamecube - Wii). I'm considerably more proud of that than the fact that my Sega Genesis/Sega CD are sitting on top of my Philips CD-i, blah. I'm gonna miss the ROMhouse, SGE can't get here soon enough :( but I'm really happy that they got an actual HOUSE now. I have a story about Whataburger for later, so I'm reminding myself of this. Now is time for sleep or something! | | Thursday, May 28th, 2009 | | 4:46 am |
Ask me any dang thing chapter 2
So my bright and shining flash card sometimes loses the save file that contains my 100% completed Castlevania: Dawn Of Sorrow which I had just started on Hard Mode with all the souls and best weapons. It also pushed my Etrian Odyssey back in time, to a save I saved months ago... weird eh? I'm sure it has something to do with switching the microSD cards, I'm sure I did something wrong, but still, inconvenient! I have half a mind to complain about my stolen games not working correctly! Not really... If you remember, I did an entry where anyone could ask me anything and I would answer honestly. Well, here's the second question I was asked, from Freakservo: "Okay, here's one: Do you have any comics...web, newspaper, action, etc...do you read, and if so, which ones? If you want to fill out the post a little more, mayhaps you can add some descriptions or opinions to your comics of choice." Actually, comics are one of the facets of entertainment I am woefully inexperienced with (less woefully is anime), so there are no comics I read, not even webcomics. However, to avoid totally dismissing this question, I will talk a little bit about how I feel about comics. I actually like them! If I see a comic book, no matter what it is (yes even Prime), I am always thinking about how I would like to read it. My problem with anything serialized though, and this is also true for television shows, is that I HAVE to start from the beginning and see it all the way through. I can never start anything in the middle unless there's a great deal of incongruity and knowing what's going on so far is absolutely unnecessary, but even then, I get uncomfortable. So yeah, I want to read comic books, but it's far too late in life to start an actual collection, and I actually do have some saved to the ol' computer, so I might start getting into them at some point. I am especially interested in this Watchmen thing everyone keeps talking about, and that Neil Gaiman guy everyone keeps raving about. Of course, I would want to read Batman too because I love that character. | | Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 | | 4:23 pm |
Writer's Block: Same Name
Why yes, there's a Chris Taylor who is a musician in San Antonio that I met on one occasion. He was a cool dude. There are many, many Chris Taylors, in fact on Facebook I'm part of a group that has like 130+ members, but I've only ever met the one. | | 2:55 am |
Total Honesty Post 1: Desert Island Video Games
Ok, so 2 responses to my "total honesty meme, and they're both interesting questions! First is from Ross, and the question is: "When it comes to video games, what are your enduring favorites? You know, games that if you were stuck on a desert island, you'd enjoy playing over and over. (You can assume for any 2 or 4-player games, that you'd have friends on the island willing to play them with you.) You can do a list of 5, 10, 20... however many you like." ( Here are some answers! ) | | Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 | | 10:26 pm |
These are the kinds of conversations that MEN have
Chris: she's saying that if she were a boy she'd somehow transcend boys' unavoidable and inherent inability to understand what it's like to actually feel the emotion of love (unless they're gay because they only don't know how to love girls), despite the logical fallacy that she thinks that all boys don't understand, but if SHE were a boy, she'd understand because she's a woman Wes: Beyonce can take her stupid face and eat my butt with it. | | Monday, April 6th, 2009 | | 12:25 am |
Exciting news!
So between playing the new Suikoden game on the DS (which is not nearly as bad as Jeremy Parish thinks it is) and finally re-vitalizing my habit of playing Etrian Odyssey (which is so good why do I not play this all day), I somehow lapsed back into Puzzle Quest addiction. I haven't even tried the Galatrix one yet (though that's in the queue). Either way, I'm almost through it again so once that's out of the way I'll be gaming it back up like a crazy person. Just in time, too! Turns out Nintendo decided to sneak out an Excite Truck sequel-of-sorts called "Excitebots: Trick Racing", which I haven't been able to find much info on (not even a Metacritic score). It's coming out in 2 weeks people! Apparently it is going to ship for $50 with a Mario Kart steering wheel, or $40 without. Uhh, thanks Nintendo, I'll be taking that $40 version because I can tilt a controller without placing it inside a $10 plastic donut. Anyway it looks like a more vibrant, unique... oh hell, basically it looks like Excite Truck for kids because the cars themselves all look like animals, like a frog truck and a thing truck, and I think I even saw a flying truck? Anyway, kidsy or not, if it still has the same playability and custom soundtracks of my favorite Wii game, then I may just make that yearly Wii purchase. I'm also thinking of getting Dragon Blade because it's only $15 at Wal*Mart now and my burned copy barely works, and what would my life amount to if not for that did-tastic intro story? Speaking of burned copies barely working, it's been almost a year since I updated my Wii (it still plays mp3's) but I'm hoping I won't need to for Excitebugs. If I do, I am going to take preliminary measures and at least see about transferring my purchased DLC before making an attempt. Or maybe I'll remove the chip before updating? Surely that would work? I don't know, man, I am no good at this modding stuff. :( | | Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 | | 1:15 pm |
| | Friday, February 27th, 2009 | | 11:29 pm |
Black Books
My late Christmas present was from my sister in the form of the Complete Series of Black Books on DVD. I can't tell you how much I love this series, I am re-watching it at the moment with the actors' commentary, and so much about this show is perfect. In essence, it's kind of Fawlty Towers meets Father Ted, and some of you (I won't say who) will like it automatically since it was produced by Nira Park. It's basically a tale of Bernard, a misanthropic alcoholic Irish bookshop owner (played by misanthropic alcoholic Irish standup comedian Dylan Moran, the man of my dreams), who has a confrontational hatred of customers in his shop, and indeed seems to exist on no income by smoking and drinking and cursing the world around him. Acting as the foil to his black soul is the lovable, hippy-ish, musically gifted Manny (played by lovable, hippy-ish, musically gifted standup comedian Bill Bailey) and his childhood friend Fran (played by a non-standup comedian called Tamsin Greig who eerily resembles my first ex-girlfriend aged about 4 years). The ways in which this show wins my heart is through the absurd gags set up by the writers of Father Ted, both of which write for a few episodes, and by the way it represents an irrational frustration with humanity, well-meaning or not, that I think we all suffer from at times. I absolutely relate to Bernard Black and his irrational, almost uncontrollable impatience with anything that lives and breathes, but where I keep it all bottled up, he just explodes at anyone and never relents until he's properly drunk. He's kind of one of the reasons I don't drink, actually. The other thing I love about this show is the character Fran. She starts off as a wonderfully badly-written female character, given some early episodes where she tries to hit it off with men and struggles, but eventually becomes much more likable and complex, and the relationship between her and Bernard is one of the very, VERY few male-lead/female-lead friendships that does not lead to some awkward romantic subplot that has to be worked out. No, there is no time in all the drinking and smoking and foolish situations to get anything done romantically. For that reason, I applaud the writers of the show and really wish there were more like it. Unfortunately, British Comedies do not last as long as American ones, and they have all the good television. It is to weep. Anyway I am going back to watching. | | Sunday, February 15th, 2009 | | 3:01 am |
Achievement unlocked!
"Congratulations! You've received the Silver Artist Power Listener Badge for listening to Johnny Cash." GOING FOR THE GOLD!!!! Seriously though, I have listened to Johnny Cash 1255 times on my Zune since October 4th, when I first got it. That means I listen to an average of 9 Johnny Cash songs every single day. That is not a very surprising number, actually. I guess what might be a little crazier is that the runner-up is Warren Zevon with a mere 478 plays. So my 3 day vacation in Weatherford was nice, got to see a couple of friends very briefly and didn't follow through with my plans to bring down some of my furniture from up there. Ate pizza twice. All in all, a pleasant time! | | Friday, February 6th, 2009 | | 12:53 pm |
You know the news story to which I'm referring, no links necessary
Here's the thing. I have never drank, smoked cigarettes or marijuana, done drugs, or anything like that. Not for religious or moral reasons, I just don't find them interesting, so the following comes from someone who is merely putting forth speculation about a topic of which he has no actual experience. If you earned 14 Olympic Gold Medals and earned not 7, but *8* World Records, since one of those World Records is Most Olympic Gold Medals Won By Anyone Ever, you have EARNED a trouble-free night of bong-hitting. Is all I'm saying. I think Bill Corbett of MST3K put it best: "America has decided to concern-troll Michael Phelps' HEALTH for a bong hit. One minor wrinkle: he's a GOD." | | Saturday, January 31st, 2009 | | 9:05 pm |
PHEW
With the month of January coming to a close, I have just completed my first month of Album Du Jour. I'm quite happy with the amount of consistent viewership I have somehow miraculously obtained (25-30+ views a day with 4 peaks at 190, 131, 101, and 83 independent views), and I feel like I've done at least a dozen half-decent write-ups of the bunch. Then again, I have resisted the urge to be critical of myself, since I only started this thing to be more prolific with writing, not necessarily better at it. The only thing I can say about writing up a different album every day is that it's been hard to resist talking about only the artists I'm currently obsessed with, since I tend to listen to artists in clusters of albums. The fact that I've more than doubled my Johnny Cash album collection has only been mentioned in passing on the blog, and I've resisted talking about some artists I've recently gotten into because I don't feel like I know enough about them to really give them a fair writeup (I made a few exceptions like with the Jarvis Humby album and have since gotten really cooled off on that album). The writing schedule has been a little awkward keeping up with as well, since I have started working mainly really early in the morning and practicing/playing with the band at night, it's been either write or sleep, or sleep a little and write quickly. I may have to consider pre-writing in order to assure my updates will remain being daily and I won't have any un-linked days on my calendar. Whew, what a year so far. | | Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 | | 1:10 am |
Bizarro suggest-a-song
Ok, so I just had an idea. Basically, my band Shy One Horse is playing at a pizza parlor on February the 14th. Anyone who has ever been single may know this as the most reviled of holidays, Valentine's Day. We decided to do the show on a "Heartbreak" theme, as most of us are pretty well versed in it. We're calling the night "Heartbreak City" and Wes and I are going to try and joint-write a song called the same. However, I figure, why let us have all the fun? We're going to make it a rock song, one that is hilarious and catchy, so I figure I'll give YOU, the potential listener, the chance to help us out! In the comments (filtered), just write anything, a verse, a rhyme, an idea, anything that YOU would do if given the opportunity to write a song called "Heartbreak City". Once we've written the song, I'll make sure we get a recording up so you can hear the results, also I will reveal, with the writers' permission, the other ideas that didn't make it. Come on, guys, let's see what you got! | | Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 | | 3:16 pm |
Today
I am going to eat a sandwich. I have mixed feelings about the inauguration of a new President. I'm kind of happy for the sake of something being different, but also don't really care. I'll be paying attention, though. As someone interested in U.S. History, it's a matter of course. |
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