Political affiliation

Is this person liberal or conservative? Democrat or Republican? I’ll leave it to you to judge.

I’d say this lies wherever “pretentious” is on the political spectrum.

I’m finally back

Not that I went anywhere, but summer school started and ate up the small bit of time I had allocated to the blog. I’ve seen a few weird things since I last updated. The fun part about cameraphones is that instead of just telling you about them, I actually get to show you. So, here they are.

GIT TO DA CHAPUH! GIT DOWN! WHO IS YOR DADDY, AND WUT DUS HE DO? Also, RIP Mr. Myagi. It’s always scary when Internet fads leak into real life. Speaking of Internet fads, I heard Never Gonna Give You Up on the radio. Granted, it was the 80s station on XM. BUT WHAT ARE THE CHANCES!? Quite good, actually. It was a number 1 single in America, Norway, Sweden, and the UK. Oh.

Apparently someone had a party on the sidewalk outside my apartment. The couch ended up in a dumpster a week later. I’m not even gonna tell you what was in the trash pile next to the couch, but let’s just say it must’ve been a very hot party.

I saw that on the back of a van I was behind. What the hell does it even mean? The van was white with no other signs on it. I’m guessing the owners of this company are Asian, because if that’s not Engrish, the maker of that sign should be ashamed.

So, this is what passes as literature these days. I should have no trouble breaking into the book market. I didn’t notice at first, but there are actually three dudes in the bed. I was afraid to touch the book.

That’s what’s been going on in the last two weeks. Sorry I didn’t have anything more exciting than an überqueer book. Feel free to berate me in the comments, and/or tell me about how much more exciting your life is. See you again next month, all 5 of you who read this.

They’re finally back

Finally, the madness has ended, and I can get tomatoes again. I also hear McDonald’s has started putting tomatoes back on burgers. Hopefully everyone else will follow suit, and we can all put these dark weeks behind us. Moments later, that tomato entered my gaping mouthhole.

Shouldn’t have parked there

Sometime between yesterday night and this morning, someone decided to anonymously scrape the side of my car with theirs. No note or anything, and there was no car there this morning.

I managed to find the thing that fell off and put it back on. Props to the offending driver for not even bothering to put the crap you knocked off my car near it. Were you afraid I was gonna dust it for fingerprints or something? I had a blast hunting around the parking lot for the parts that held it on. The damage itself isn’t too bad. I’m just pissed that some dumbass thought it’d be best to take the classy route and pretend it didn’t happen. I hope you live here, because I’m looking around for the car with black paint where it shouldn’t be.

No, I didn’t move my car, because whoever did it isn’t going to park there again.

APPLE MADNESS

Steve Jobs using Time Machine to display this post at Macworld 2008 in January.

Tomorrow is the 2008 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, the second time of the year that Steve Jobs dons his black turtleneck and preaches to his flock. I have no less than 5 Apple products within reach at the moment, so I’ll be interested in what he has to say tomorrow. His keynote, the only part of the conference that anyone outside the conference pays attention to, will be at 12 CDT tomorrow.

Most likely, he’ll announce a new iPhone with 3G capability, and the availability of new iPhone firmware, allowing legitimate third-party applications (finally). It’s also possible that Mac OS X 10.6 will be announced (not made available publicly, just for testing by developers. The final version will then come out sometime next year). Interestingly, banners at WWDC don’t say “Mac OS X Leopard”, but just “OS X Leopard”, which leads some to speculate that it’ll be announced that Mac OS X will be available for just regular PCs. It’s possible, but I think if you’re getting that just from the banner, you’re reading too far into it.

Less interestingly, Apple may be revamping their .Mac online service, which no one cares about. It’s basically just expensive webhosting. It’s also rumored new laptops will come out, but I haven’t seen anything to substantiate that.

16 hours to go until my phone becomes obsolete.

What can Brown do for you?

Big Brown races in the Belmont Stakes today. I really don’t care about horse racing, except for the awesome names, of course. I’m just putting this here to remind myself to watch it today. Why? This year, it looks like Big Brown has a seriously good shot at winning the Triple Crown, which hasn’t happened in 30 years. What makes this horse so amazing? His performances in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes have already been outstanding (so says Wiki), but he’s had luck on his side so far for Belmont. First, Big Brown drew Gate 1, meaning he’ll start on the inside, a huge advantage. Second, what was considered his main competition, a horse named Casino Drive, has had to drop out of the race due to an injury. If Big Brown wins, he’d only be the second undefeated Triple Crown winner. The race is at 5:25 CDT today.

But enough about horse racing. Let’s list some awesome horse names. I like how horses’ names are so weird because they inherit their parents’ names. Distorted Humor is the father of Sharp Humor, Awesome Humor, Hystericalady, It’s No Joke, Dash of Humor, Twisted Wit, and Funny Cide, among others. Funny Cide’s name goes pretty far back itself. Seattle Slew is the father of Slewacide, and Slewacide and Belle of Killarney had Belle’s Good Cide, who got with Distorted Humor to have Funny Cide. So now you know where those random names come from.

As for Big Brown? He was named after UPS, who sponsors him. I’m looking forward to horses named Captain Pizza Hut and Goforstarbucks next year.

Update: Not this year. Big Brown became the first Triple Crown hopeful to finish last. The horse just didn’t feel like running this race. Disappointment all around. :’[

Thanks a lot, salmonella

So, maybe you’ve heard about this recent salmonella outbreak that’s resulted in a massive recall of tomatoes in Texas and other states. You can’t get tomatoes anywhere now. All the grocery stores have taken them off the shelves, they’re gone. The worst part is, all the burger joints have taken their tomatoes out too. I went to Wendy’s today, and they have a big message up saying that all the tomatoes are gone for now.

Does this make any sense? It’s not like every tomato in the United States is infected. Please, for the sake of my hamburger, import some tomatoes from somewhere else and let me eat them. I’d be willing to pay extra for tomatoes for the time being. Hamburgers just aren’t worth eating without that deliciously juicy fruit-vegetable in the middle.

TBS, Very Annoying

TBS has always been a bad offender for putting highly obtrusive advertisements at the bottom half of the screen during shows, but their latest advertising idea is really annoying as hell.

Are you kidding me, seriously? Interrupting the TV show itself? TBS is well on its way to earning the “network I never want to watch, ever again” award. Not only am I appalled that someone thought this would be a great idea, but that enough people thought it was good enough of an idea to actually put on the air. If I catch you watching TBS, I’ll set your TV on fire. That’s a promise.

Coldplay - Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends

I’m in an unreleased album reviewing mood today. This is Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, Coldplay’s followup to 2005’s X&Y, which I found extremely disappointing. Coldplay’s first album, Parachutes, had a very vanilla piano rock sound, which was listenable and enjoyable. A Rush of Blood to the Head expanded on that sound with some harder rock incorporations, which was a good fleshing out of their sound. X&Y was disappointing because they moved in this airy, fluffy direction that I really didn’t care for. Speed of Sound was a good song, but the album was too homogeneous.

Why the brief overview of Coldplay’s previous albums? Because Viva la Vida kicks all those other albums’ asses. I don’t know what Coldplay did between X&Y and this, but we should all be extremely thankful that it happened. Coldplay is really experimenting on this one, and it comes out beautifully. All across the record, they’ve employed a much wider variety of instruments. The rhythms are also more creative, pushing the songs forward in interesting ways, instead of the usual boom-thump-boom-thump. The first track of the album starts out slow and picks up pace toward the end, pushing you to the next track, and each track does the same after that, making for a great experience just listening to the album straight through from beginning to end.

Every song on here really stands out on its own, while still contributing to the overall feel of the album, so I honestly can’t single any of them out. They’re all great. It’s extremely well made, and I can’t recommend it enough. This is a new Coldplay, and it’s undoubtedly going to alienate a lot of the fans of the older stuff. However, I am not one of those people, and Coldplay has redeemed themselves in my eyes.

Here’s the video for their first single, Violet Hill:

Venetian Snares - Detrimentalist

If you’re not a fan of “intelligent dance music” (i.e. Venetian Snares, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Autechre, etc.), then you can just skip this review, unless you’ve never heard of IDM and want try some new music. Venetian Snares is one of my favorite IDM artists, because his stuff is so unique, even within the genre. However, I was disappointed by his previous release, My Downfall (Original Soundtrack), which sounded like a weaker version of Rossz csillag alatt született.

Now, he’s back with Detrimentalist, which more than makes up for My Downfall. Interestingly enough, rather than exploring new ground, he’s really gone old school with this one, incorporating a lot of typical drum and bass (Gentleman) and acid (Flashforward) sounds. There’s even some Hoover (Circle Pit) thrown in for good measure. Giving these classic sounds his modern Venetian Snares twist, he makes an incredibly listenable album. Highly recommended, pick it up wherever it is you get albums.

If you like it, I also recommend his albums Rossz csillag alatt született (a classical twist on IDM) and Cavalcade of Glee and Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms (I especially like Pwntendo, made entirely with a synthesizer that actually uses the original sound chip from the NES).

You can listen to MP3s of this album at the record label’s site, Planet Mu Records.