Friday, March 31, 2006

explicit lyrics

youtube is probably one of the best things since ytmnd.com

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

plus tax

back when Squarepusher played his FIRST EVER LIVE SHOW IN AMERICA, right here in lovely san francisco, california at the lovely great american music hall the lovely opening dj was mira calix. she played a cool set, tons of stuff i'd never heard, super brainy but still mellow and danceable but one track stuck out in a major way. i was nearly frantic to find out what it was, but of course that didn't happen...

fast forward a few months and i find a copy of an album called One/Three by an artist named Dabrye lying around on the internet. it looked sad and lonely, so i brought it home to my computer and listened to it. i was thoroughly enjoying the listening experience when, lo and behold! track seven comes on and sends shockwaves of familiarity through my spine. i discover it is called Hyped-Up Plus Tax and instantly make it the first song i listen to every day on my minidisc player on the way to work for months to come...

fast forward a few years and Dabrye releases an album called Additional Productions, Vol. 1. on it is a live version of Hyped-Up Plus Tax that causes me to nearly fall off my chair at the first listen. it was such a surreal experience, warping my memory into this new mold. anyway, i really like both (as you may have gathered) and i offer them here for your aural reference. i recommend listening to the first about 37 times in a row before listening to the second, to get a feel for the impact i felt.

Hyped-Up Plus Tax
Hyped-Up Plus Tax (2002 Live Version)

postscript: i smuggled in my MD recorder to bootleg Plaid and Squarepusher's sets at that show: blank discs, battery pack and the unit in the hollowed-out tongues of my skate shoes; microphone wrapped in a bun in steph's hair... oh, and i eventually bought a copy of One/Three, as i do with just about every album/artist i like. if we don't buy their music, they won't be able to afford to make more music and then there won't be any music to trade on P2P networks, now will there? but stick to the indie labels, major labels are insanely corrupt and hell-bent on screwing the artist and listener alike. i'll stop now.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

title

i type this weblog entry as i sit and wait for steph to get off work so i can get a ride home. i'd thought about going to the bar to throw back a cold one with the sales rep from our color separator but decided against it as that decision has never led to being home at a responsible hour in the past and the VP is dropping in to check on us at 8am tomorrow. ew, work talk... well, i am still in the office. still, that's gross...

waiting sucks and i keep eating handfuls of nilla wafers that someone left by my cube. that might be the weirdest thing about working with lots of females, they all complain vociferously about their weight but still maintain a steady supply of snacky, cakey, chocolatey things on hand for all to enjoy. that, or the extraordinary backstabbing hatred that sometimes erupts from seemingly nowhere.

hey, how about that sculpture of an "idealized" britney spears giving birth? awesome.

Monday, March 27, 2006

yes, excellent

happy, happy, joy, joy, with the upgraded xboxlive features i can freaking finally change my ridiculous gamertag. gone are the sad days of being "madt5000" (due to rushing into the whole process with unclear mind, unhealthily determined to be fragged incessantly by 13 year olds with potty mouths); i, for one, look forward to the dawning of a golden future as "hecka dumb." if you ain't understand it, go buy the new E-40 album. unless you are easily offended by cussing and/or the glorification of thug culture, specifically the aggrandization of chauvinism, domestic violence, irresponsible sexual activity, alcoholism, recreational drug use, illegal sale of narcotics, reckless driving, fistfights and homicide. (the beats are slappin and the man can rhyme, though. and i really wanna get a scraper that's lifted now.)

i had a whole bunch of other stuff i was gonna say, but the tylenol cold just kicked in and i'm having a hard time with recall and cognitive reasoning. good night.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

bahahahahahahahaha!

man, this made my day:

stay the course!

so that was the technerd weekend and now, as a eminem once said, "back to reality..." a couple days ago on BART i watched as a lady in one of the zoomer wheelchairs attempted to floor it (joystick it?) from the elevator and onto the train as the doors were closing. one is not supposed to laugh when the train doors close on the battery pack and rear wheels of an electric wheelchair, but one is hard-pressed to not do so when the pilot of said wheelchair commences to yelp and curse out the driver, who doesn't really have control of the automatic doors. the icing on the cake was the six or seven passengers who leapt heroically to the trapped person's aid only to be told in no uncertain terms that she was more than capable of taking care of herself and that the (cursed) train driver had better start watching what the (heck) was goin on.

public transit: eternal battleground of etiquette and reflex.

Monday, March 13, 2006

piracy

to the person that is wasting their time looking at this ridiculous weblog,
sir or madam, it has come to our attention that the RIAA is completely evil. please inform everyone on the planet at your earliest convenience.
thank you,
the management

Sunday, March 12, 2006

...

that was the sound of me sitting in dazed joy, watching ricky gervais 2: politics streaming from my computer onto my softmodded xbox on my delicious television. man, you'd think someone would've built a device that works this elegantly, because i'm sure they'd make a ton of money at the right price. but no, instead we have homebrew apps running in linux on a hacked game console, all completely illegally. three cheers for the DMCA! maybe someday they'll realize, the more they manipulate laws and cripple functionality to control the ways people can and cannot interact with devices and media, the more creative and widespread the circumvention becomes.

treat me as an intelligent person and offer me choice, not as a helpless idiot who doesn't need to understand your reasons...

happily, i discovered a method for upgrading the HD in a softmodded xbox, no soldering required. only thing is you have to have a windoze pc, so i guess i either need to find a friend who doesn't mind me yanking their HD for a spell so i can put my own in for formatting, or i need to build one of my own. yyyyeah, that can wait.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

mmmBLEAUGH!

that was the sound of me puking with excitement after finding out the ebgames by my pad had a hard drive for the 360. now i can play halo 2 with a controller that doesn't weigh as much as my cat and, better still, i can get around to softmodding the old xbox and installing XBMC on it. someday i plan on actually doing the hardmod and upgrading the HD in that thing, but i don't have a soldering iron right now and i'm way too into the prospect of immediate gratification.

now then, i think i saw some xvid files tucked under the rug in the computer internet just the other day...

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

40oz malt liquor commission

has selected me for a very important survey.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

twitchy thumbs

so i managed to get my hands on an xbox 360... if ever there was a double-edged sword... the graphics are stupid good and these are just a part of the first wave from developers. it's going to be jaw-dropping when they really get in there and figure out how to code for this thing. the xbox live improvements took what was already very good and made it nearly perfect (it finally logs you in automatically). on a slightly creepy tip, i entered a "motto" in my gamercard at xbox.com and have already seen that motto scrolling across an in-game screen in one of the DOA4 arenas. yeesh. i've barely touched the thing, maybe 1.5 hours of gaming total, but it's all i think about during work hours (personally, i view this more as a reflection on my job than my gaming habit, but i'm sure convincing arguments will be made to the contrary).

now i just gotta talk ryan into getting xbox live on his or some (mitchell) other (shernoff) friend into getting one so we can absolutely waste shocking amounts of time together.

yesterday was joni's birthday:

Friday, March 03, 2006

we need cell phone police

when people whine about cell phone etiquette, i am the first dude to roll my eyes and sputter demeaning comments about shutting up and joining the present... but today, a first. a middle-aged gentlewoman jewelry buyer for neiman marcus, sitting next to me in chicago o'hare airport, holding the phone to her head, WHEN IT'S ON FREAKING SPEAKERPHONE. volume is, of course, at 11 and my left ear is being pierced by the shrieking squawk of her coworker on the other end. hole. lee. crepe.

and now we look forward to the apparent futility that is trying to fly standby on the next three flights to the city by the gay. gotta love it when the travel agent says "that flight doesn't even have queue space."

two final thoughts about travel: non-business travelers are the best, they completely ignore all posted signs and placards and announcements even if the announcement was just made right in front of their face by an apoplectic gate agent. conversely, schmoozy 30-something sales guy travelers are the best, sweet-talking the gate agent from the side of the desk and always sitting next to the only hot chick in the gate area. together, they are the matter and antimatter of airport spacetime.