I posted this a long time ago and decided to play it again as I have more blog readers now:
Post the names of 20 musicians.
See who can guess which is your favourite track by each.
Once someone guesses right, bold the musician and include the track.
1) The Mighty Mighty Bosstones:
2) Flogging Molly:
3) Madness:
4) Danzig:
5) Tori Amos:
6) The Kinks:
7) Depeche Mode:
8) Johnny Cash:
9) Lily Allen:
10) John Cougar Mellencamp:
11) The Violent Femmes:
12) Guns N’ Roses:
13) AC/DC:
14) Brian Setzer Orchestra:
15) Prince: Prince:
16) The Doors:
17) The Ramones:
18) They Might Be Giants:
19) The Clash:
20) The B-52′s:
Some of these bands I only like one song, but it is such a great song they made the list!
You know, I’m glad Angelina Jolie is using her money to take care of children, but before running off to another foreign country, has she contemplated a child in the USA? More power to her taking care of the needy children of the world, but there’s needy kids here in our own country too.
I think I finally have put my finger on what I find wrong with the Saturday Night Live sketches of the past couple seasons… they’re too flippin’ long! And then if they are even mildly well accepted, we get them on a recurring status.
Recurring used to be reserved for only the best known sketches, now it seems to be anything they get half an idea for gets another visit. For instance, tonight we got yet another “MTV 4 – Deep House Dish” sketch… please let this die. It was funny once, but this is easily the fifth, if not more, times it’s popped up. It’s not worth it! It’s a one joke sketch, we’ve heard it, move on!
As for the being too long… I think that’s pretty self-explanatory. We get to the natural conclusion of the joke and… it keeps going… then goes even further. STOP IT! Learn when you’ve gotten your joke across, stop there, move on.
Yes, I realize I am being an armchair quarterback, and I don’t care. I’ve watched this show since episode 1, I’ve put in my time, and they need to go back to basics, and soon.
As some of you know, I used to go to work seven days a week, about a year ago I tried cutting back to five days like the rest of the world. Well, I’ve started going in on the occasional Saturday or Sunday if we’ve had a particularly heavy weekend of mail order, but for the most part, I am sticking to it. While this may not sound like a big accomplishment to most people, for me it is as I had turned in to a workaholic. I had been doing this for about ten years, so while I’m not convinced I have fully broken myself of it yet, I’m hoping I’m on the way.
Now comes the thing everyone seems to yell at me about… I have not had an actual vacation since Labor Day weekend 1996. Yes… ten years, going on eleven. Yes I have gone to Japan three times during that time, but all of those have been working trips. Now, see, this is my problems with vacations as a concept:
- Spend money for no return
- Go some place and do things to the point of tiring yourself worse than when you left
- Go some place and… sit.
Is there something I’m missing in this concept? None of those three things appeal to me. I could spend money on a new computer… I can sleep at home an enjoy it more… I can sit at home in comfort… WHY do I need to *go* some place to do those things? I truly don’t get it and this is an actual request feedback. Someone please explain it to me!
(Yes, this entry is backdated… I wrote it on the 15th in Word, but my cable modem was down, so I had no way to post it!)
I have talked about my love of Flogging Mollybefore. I was thrilled to hear the was new live EP coming out this week, with two unreleased songs (“Requiem For A Dying Song” and “Float”), I just wasn’t thrilled with the method of release… only on iTunes Music Store.
I understand the scale of economics here, it’s a fabulous idea in principle. Shorter lead time, no physical pressing, higher profit margin for the band, but then the customer is stuck with only being able to buy it with DRM (Digital Rights Management) included. Let me make this abundantly clear, this is NOT Apple’s fault, nor Flogging Molly’s, this clearly goes back to my good friends at the RIAA.
DRM is a draconian system of making sure ONLY the person who bought the music can play it. No loaning it to a friend like you can do with a CD, cassette, LP, 8-track (what, you don’t still have an 8-track player?!?), no, if you choose to go in to the futuristic world of buying music online, you best get used to only you being able to use it! There are many people calling for an end of DRM, including my Technology Hero, Steve Jobs… you know… the head of Apple?
In an open letter he wrote on February 6th, 2007 entitled “Thoughts On Music“, he called for an end to DRM, and barring that, for all the online music sellers to work together. Honestly? I think he wants it to just end. It’s a pain in the behind for everyone, it’s NOT going to increase piracy, if anything, it will increase sales. I haven’t bought anything at the iTunes store in ages because I don’t want DRM! I want to be able to slap the songs I listen to on any computer of my choice, on any player of my choice, and listen to it how and when I want. (Yes, I am aware of the extremely easy way to strip the DRM off the iTunes purchased songs, not the point of my post though)
DRM is a stranglehold on the consumers, nothing more. It is not a way to fight piracy. Do you really think pirates don’t know a way around something as silly as this? Of course they do! It’s their livelihood and they know how to defeat it without blinking an eye. To the masses though, those of us lacking either time, patience, ingenuity, or any other number of things, DRM hurts us, not the pirates. Let’s say you bought the new Flogging Molly on iTunes, due to DRM you can’t play it on your Zune. Okay, bad example, you shouldn’t have bought the Zune in the first place. Beyond that though, how is that fair? It’s not.
Steve Jobs, and other legit online sellers, are in a bind in that they can not get the rights to sell the music if they don’t include DRM. No DRM, no sales to consumers. However, consumers, such as myself, are avoiding purchasing the music because of the DRM. Remove the DRM, free up consumers to do with the files as they please, your sales of online music will go up. Yes, piracy may go up *SLIGHTLY*, but the increased sales from people who had previously been avoiding purchasing the music will far outweigh the new pirates.
And yes… I did give in and buy the Flogging Molly EP, and I love it… just wish it was DRM free.
I loved Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, and think Joss Whedon walks on water…this review will be slightly slanted.
Anyway, for those who haven’t heard about this, Joss is doing “season 8″ of the TV series as a comic books. I just read it, and… spoilers follow!
Characters Seen:
Buffy
Xander
Dawn
*someone who appears on the last page as a surprise, old character, but not a Scooby*
Characters Mentioned, But Not Seen:
Andrew
Giles
Willow
Overall I liked it. Was mostly set up, but Joss did it quickly and daftly.
- Established the Slayers and how they’re organized, hints they have money, or really, really good hackers. 1800 Slayers total, 500 work with Buffy, broken in to 10 Squads. 2 Buffy impersonators to protect her, one of them is in Rome dating The Immortal.
- Dawn has gone to Berkley, appears to have had bad first time sex, as is common in the Summer’s girls
- Andrew is still in Rome
- No one is sure where Willow is
- Xander works directly with Buffy in Scotland
- Giles is mentioned, but not sure where he is
It flowed well, Joss’ trademark snarkiness is evident, and you can “hear” the characters delivering all these lines nicely.
I look forward to more.
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Thanks to Roy for pointing THIS out to me. Who in the world wouldn’t want Darth Vader Samurai Armor? This may be the coolest thing ever… yes… I am a geek. You knew this.
For those of you know in the know, Vader was inspired by Samurai armor, and the crest on his helmet in these pictures is the Imperial crest.
I have yet to see what their reasoning is behind this, but I’m not sure it really matters. It’s asinine. Booing is as much of the sporting event experience as is cheering. If you ban one, you have to ban the other. And no, I’m not kidding. This is all part of the “home court advantage”, so…no booing or cheering. Welcome to the world of silent sporting events! Course, then comes the question if booing falls under “freedom of speech”. True, you can’t yell “fire!” in a movie theater, but will the WIAA try to apply the same thought process to the booing?
It appears to me to be clear this can’t stand, but then you have to ask yourself why it was even proposed? Are we now going to try so hard to insulate children from negativity, we will ban an act as old as competition itself? Are we so much wiser in the 21st century Unites States of America, are we so egotistical, as to believe that something that happened at chariot races in ancient times is now in poor taste? Detrimental to a child’s sense of well being? And what happens when this child gets up to the college level of athletics and there is suddenly *gasp* booing?!? Oh the horrors! We’ll have to ban it there too as the, now an adult, was not prepared for the shock of hearing something other than cheers.
Really folks…are we this far gone down the “busy body” road as to we are down to booing?
So, I spent the majority of my day updating various things to get ready for the change in Daylight Savings Time tonight. My PDA (A Dell Axim 51v) was 2 hours of a nightmare trying to get it to synch with the updated copy of ActiveSynch, still never got it to work. I cursed…a lot.
My Blackberry seems to have gone smoother, but I’ll find out for sure in a couple hours. I always thought it pulled it’s time from cell towers, but oh well.
I think all my PCs are updated, but who knows.
Who’s bright idea was this? Did they give NO consideration to the headaches it would cause? Apparently not.
“They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.â€
- Benjamin Franklin
The Patriot Act was passed in an air of panic, and has always had a sense to me of closing the barn door after the cows got out. It wasn’t thought through, the powers to broad, and some of the things it considered were just insanely trivial. And so no, I am not surprised some of the powers it granted law enforcement have been mishandled. It doesn’t sound like the powers were intentionally abused, but it sure seems like they weren’t handled properly. To give these sort of powers to agents not properly trained in their use was just a horrible lapse in judgment on the part of the government.
In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit to having run afoul of the Patriot Act. My crime? My family/business had too many checking accounts. We had to condense and it was a huge pain, but yes, we are evil people having too many different checking accounts. It’s true. I’m a horrible person.
I was having all sorts of problems with my web host, DreamHost and so ended up discovering it was a server load problem. DreamHost was very prompt to recommend moving me to another server, but that means 2 – 48 hours of up and down service.
Oh this is SO much fun! No clue when my sites will be working properly.
