Tuesday, April 26, 2005

digital lifestyles and overpopulation

So I've been slack about updating. I've been keeping a very demanding video game schedule. I've been a part of so many virtual worlds I don't know where I am anymore. I've been hooking up with my brother playing both Starcraft and Diablo 2, which are both cool. I sold him out yesterday because I just needed a break.

I've also been hooking up some Halo 2 since the new patch and yesterday they released two new maps. Those are fun, but one of them is exactly like the Wizard from the first Halo and it makes me wonder why it took them so long to come out with new maps. I dunno, whatever.

And, of course, my dedication to WoW knows no boundaries. Been taking down a few high level instances and have finally got my infernal quest down. I'm part way through the quests to get my epic mount, just a few more goals on that and I'll be all speedy.

On a completely unrelated note, congrats to Nick and Abby. They are now proud parents and little Gus seems to be doing fine. Check out a myriad of photos at Nick's blog (conveniently linked on the left). I'm still freaked out by all my friends having kids... but I suppose I have little recourse aside from getting used to it. Anyway here's to happy times for Gus.

In other baby news, my nephew Cameron is growing like a weed (so says his father) and is doing well. So all seems right with the world as far as the munchkin crowd goes.

Thursday, April 21, 2005

Snit

I'm in a bit of a mood, but figured I should post something here. I don't know why I'm feeling grumpy, but I suspect it has to do with the fact that my downstairs neighbors enjoy having loud gatherings in the a.m. Those are always annoying.

Anyway I haven't done a lot this week. Continued reading the Incarnations of Immortality series and have been noticing that they are hot and cold. Finished reading Bearing an Hourglass, the one on Time and it was meh. and I read With a Tangled Skein, about Fate, it too was blah. I finished reading Weilding a Red Sword, on War, and that is probably my least fav. of them all. I'm about halfway through Being a Green Mother, on Nature, and it's def. in the top two with On a Pale Horse, about Death.

Anyway, I think I'm starting to lose some interest in WoW. It's not over yet, but some of the new stuff is irritating and I'm running out of new stuff to do. We'll see how that goes. Could just be my mood lately.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

E.B. gets left out

The new Deadwood episode was still more excellence. Man is that show the shiz. You've got to love Swearingen trying to hold off the cursing in front of the widow, unsuccessfully.

Watched that yesterday at Trip's after Gabe and I played Diablo 2 online for an hour or so. The wonders of the internet. My brother and I, separated by an ocean, can still take part in nerdery together.

Speaking of being an ubernerd, I'm downloading the new WoW patch and it's taking forever, as usual. This patch will be nerfing my warlock yet again, that's something to look forward to huh.

Anyway, Trip and I are gonna hit up some seafood tonight. Mmm, seafood.

Monday, April 18, 2005

Slapass leapfrog

So I am still recovering from helping Trip pull up the carpet in his basement this Saturday. It was quite a job and I had to get up in the A.M.! But we got it all up, cleaned up the dog urine and tack strips and now all that's left is some fabulous asbestos tile. Woo.

After all that I returned home, planning a long nap. But it was not to be, Kevin came down and we hung out and played a little Halo 2 and watched Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle again. High quality stuff.

Then on Sunday, Adam gave me a call and we hooked up on Xbox Live and I schooled he and his brethren. Later my bro called and we chatted for a while, then we got online and played some Diablo 2. That was cool. We're gonna hook up and play some more tonight.

So yeah, that covers the weekend. My life could not possibly be more exciting huh.

Friday, April 15, 2005

Freak Meat

Terms that made us giggle during MTV2s Wonder Showzen: Scrote poker, freak meat, Your worse than my grandma's stinky junk. You had your chance and you gobbled its balls, This is where we learned to accept murder, The secret ingredient was botulism.

That show is magnificent. It's what a kids show would look like if demented freaks put it on and let the kids do drugs. I highly recommend anyone with a sick sense of humor and a distorted perception of reality check it out.

Anyway, Trip and I have been hanging out, goofing off and playing Starcraft. I schooled him four times in a row. Four! Man I rule him. Now if I could only get some game at Warcraft 3.

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Childless whores

Another day to fill in my mindnumbing life. Can you believe it? I just sit around the house and wait for credit card companies to call and harass me. It's great, I think I'm getting a nice new hole in my stomach thinking about it.

But anyway, I spent the weekend watching The Incredibles. I think I watched the movie twice and then watched all the non-commentary special features. I can't get enough. If it was still in the house I'd have watched the commentaries. But it went back to the library. Sarah Vowell had a cool little segment on the dvd. She voiced Violet and I've been a fan of her's for a while. She writes cool books about American history and has done lots of radio stuff for NPR. I recommend you check out her books, they are awesome.

Anyway since the forced shut in of race weekend, I went over to Trip's a couple of days. Got smoked at Warcraft 3. You'd think that having some success at the older games would translate into skill at this one, but no...that is not the case.

Yesterday I went with Trip and his parents to get sushi and that was cool. His rents bought me dinner, which I appreciated a lot. I went with the full sushi meal and tried some new things. I have to say that I think I need a counterpoint to the sushi to fully enjoy it. When it's all I had, it was a little much. After that we watched House, which was very good, and I went home.

Once here I decided to hold off on my WoW addiction for a night and I finished reading Douglas Coupland's new book Eleanor Rigby. It was good, albeit a bit too depressing at times. It tackles the idea of loneliness and dealing with it. He's so good at feeling out the soul of his characters and making them easy to relate to that you have to be impressed with his work, even when it's a tad off kilter. I'd rate this a foot massage book.

I then decided to tear into a series I read years ago, the Incarnations of Immortality by Piers Anthony. I read the entire first novel last night, On a Pale Horse. It's really good. The series deals with a universe where actual people assume the roles of Death, War, Time, Fate and Nature. Actually God and Satan are thrown in there too, to spice things up.

The first book is all about Death and is very good, although it suffers from having to map out the world. Still it's good. Next up is Time, in Bearing an Hourglass. I'm enjoying re-reading these books, because I was very young the last time around and some of the concepts about the subjective nature of good and evil may have been lost on me back then. Anyway I'll keep you informed.

Saturday, April 09, 2005

Wishing I were dead isn't the same as being suicidal

Thursday night Trip and I went to see Sin City and, man, is that movie awesome. It's fan-fucking-tastic. It's seriously like watching a comic book come to life right before your eyes. The stories are fantastic and the style Robert Rodriguez used was amazing. Far and away my fav. character was Marv, the brutal thug with the heart of gold. Mickey Rourke made me love him. At this moment I'm say it was a filet mignon film, but given the fallow period I could see it moving into the elite headcavingly orgasmic rating. It's that good.

Yesterday I got a new bank account, finally, and hit the public library. While looking around the biography section I blundered upon the cds. Man, whoever picks the cds that the library gets is a lot hipper than I expected. They had tons of good alternative music. Liz Phair, Juliana Hatfield, The Pixies!!!! I never expected to see those names in Martinsville. I ended up checking out a Bob Dylan live album and Concrete Blonde's Bloodletting album.

Anyway it's race weekend, so I'm probably not gonna leave the house if I can help it. I don't want to wade out into the mullet-infested masses.

Thursday, April 07, 2005

They got the new Yanni cassette

So I've got to decide on a new bank. I honestly hate banks at this point. Their whole reason for being seems to be to try and take as much of your money as possible without you noticing it. This fee, that charge, the bank makes a mistake? well they gotta charge you for it. They know they have you, you can't go without a banking account and who wants to change banks? It all adds up to the Man sticking it to you. There is my incoherent anticorporate ramble for the day.

Yesterday I didn't leave the house, in fact I barely left my chair. I played WoW all day. Did a couple of runs in Stratholme, which was cool. I hadn't been there before. The first one we did the dead side and I got some Dreadmist Sandals, which kicks total ass. The second one we did the live side with only five people and no priest or druid. We rock. After that we did a guild run of Blackrock Depths and that was cool, although I was starting to wear down. I didn't really get anything great after the sandals, but had a good time.

Yes I know most of you will find the above paragraph incomprehensible, but what can I do?

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Broken drum

Now listening to: the new Beck album, Guero

Monday I chilled out, applied for a coupla jobs and actually heard back from one of them. It was a school system sending me a full application, but it's nice to actually get some response other that "We got your resume and decided you suck." That's not what they say, but that's what they mean.

Haven't done a whole helluva a lot the last coupla days. Trip and I tried out Warcraft III on Monday and Trip sent a beating my way. It's been a long time since I played that and there are some quirks that I didn't remember. I also watched the new Deadwood episode on Mon. and that was excellent as always. I think the addition of some black characters adds a new dimension.

I got the new Beck and Billy Idol albums from Trip and the Beck is pretty good. I still haven't completely absorbed it and I haven't listened to Billy Idol at all. But Trip has said it's not bad in his initial listenings.

I'm almost done reading Miles Davis' autobiography, which Kevin loaned me many years ago. It's not bad, but I can't say it's well written. I suppose that's the price you pay for a primary source. A couple of things have struck me while reading the book. First that ultimately Miles did not trust white people. Admittedly he had plenty of reasons not to, but he always seemed to assume that whites had some plan to fuck over black people. Again, it's not entirely untrue I'm sure, but it's hard for me to conceive of that type of racism.

The second thing that reading the book makes me realize is how little I really know about music. Now there was never any doubt that Miles' pinky finger contained more musical knowledge than I will ever gain, but man some of the theories he tosses off in the book, about chord playing and modal playing and whatnot, I just have no clue. It's always amusing to be when reading a book makes you realize how ignorant you really are.

One final note, there is a new link to Nick's new blog on your left. He put the kibosh on the old one in an attempt to circumnavigate any potential scandal and now has one set up for the impending addition to his household, Augustin. Feel free to check it out and see a pround papa's struggle.

Monday, April 04, 2005

Somebody need to do dey shirt laundry

So I've been busy this weekend. After Thursday's bachelor party I kinda kicked back on Friday and went to Trip's. We decided to trek out for some uncharted Chinese food in Eden. While in transit we saw a billboard for a sushi place and decided what the heck. I've only had buffet sushi at Chinese places and frankly it wasn't that exciting. This stuff, however, was exquisite. Definitely worth the trip.

Saturday I attended Adam's wedding, which was nice. He seemed really happy so that's cool. Nick and Abbie picked me up and it was cool riding with them. Gotta shoot them some love. Once I got home I took about a five hour nap and then went out with Mike and Shannon. We hooked up with Chafin and proceeded to get buckwild. Honestly I don't remember the last time I had that much fun in a bar in Martinsville. I was expecting to be stunned, but we managed to have a kickass time in spite of all the odds.

Today I slept in again. The Trip and I forced Corb to go to the sushi place. I even got Corb to try some of my spicy tuna roll, even after his vehement denouncement of all things raw fish based. Anyway it was quite tasty (as was our waitress). After sushi we retired to Trip's where Corb and I watched Napoleon Dynamite and Trip snored. Not a bad day.

Friday, April 01, 2005

Magic crunch berry tales

Man I am beat. I got up early (10 a.m. is early to some of us) and rolled up to Roanoke with Mike and Nick for Adam's "Bachelor Party." Now I know that the term bachelor party brings up images of drunken hijinks and crazy strippers, but this one was pretty low key. We played some poker, got a little Halo 2 action and then went to a sports bar for dinner. We played more poker when we returned.

Poker-wise I did ok, I think I ended up up like $20, which I used to buy dinner. So that worked out nice. I coulda probably been up more, but I took a gamble at a decent sized pot after dinner and it didn't work out. Cest la vie.

At Halo 2, I ran some hoes. They play no shields and just rifles on the map. It was an essay in destruction. I was a little concerned about being competitive going in, as playing online has given me a whole new sense of humilty in the Halo world, but really none of those guys have Xbox Live and weren't prepared for the time of game I got.

Dinner was good too, the wings were kickass. I got some boneless Thai flavored wings. Mmmm, the perfect synthesis of spicy and asian flavor. Trip, I'm telling you, we should hit that place up sometime.

Anyway it was pretty damn cool hanging out. Kevin made an appearance, but had to leave early. I'd have given him a harder time, but it is his daughter's first birthday. So it was def. cool he made time to come out and hang. Hell I think it was cost effective for him too, as when he left, he was up in the poker game.