Conveniently Misplaced

This was posted on a message board at college. It made me smile.

Having so much fun here. Lima was a blast for the time I was down there and Findlay has been super amazing as well. I’m so glad I decided to get away for a while, I needed it. 

Is back on, leaving on Wednesday Morning, or if adventurous, tomorrow night. But most likely on Wednesday.

Hopefully, there will be none of this kinda nonsesne to fuck up my trip.

I gave my car a good once-over today, fixing a few minor issues (like the Thermostat being screwy and a brake light being white instead of red), but it’s all good now.

I just ran a speed test on my internet connection, here’s what I gotNot too bad I suppose.  They have the averages on there, the highest average download for a region is the United States at 4738 kb/s. But what upsets me is the upload speed, the highest for that is in Europe at 1051 kb/s and in the United States it’s 893 kb/s.  C’mon WOW, let’s kick this up a little bit. 

This is some video I shot in late 2006 at Game Crazy, this is what is done to the merchandise when people aren’t looking. Watch the video, then read all about it below.

I don’t remember who started the whole thing, but I believe it started with this little soccer ball that came either as a promo for Fifa07 or Mario Strikers or something like that. Then it evolved into this game where you would stand back, bounce the ball off the floor and see what you can hit off the shelf. How many points you get would be equal to the value of the game you hit, if you got the price tag, if you knocked down multiple copies, and it depended on if you just hit the game, knocked it on the shelf, or knocked it on the floor. There were multiple times where this happened, but this is the only time I was there with my camera to record it all. I edited out all the crap and just got the highlights of it all.

The store was still open for business, for the first half of the video where I’m not playing you can see I’m hiding behind some demo units. My camera bag was nestled in between them and it we saw a customer coming in I would put my camera back in the bag quickly and someone would grab the ball. In a couple of rounds you can see people checking over into Hollywood Video or looking outside to make sure that there are no customers  were coming. There were a few close calls but nothing ever came of it.Most of those PS2 games got a good beating out of it, and it was a substantial amount of fun.

Of course there were security cameras but the video is only in the system for a certain amount of time, and even so, they are only reviewed by the manager if there is substantial reason to review them (like they think someone is stealing or something). The district manager may also check the tapes, but that hardly ever happens regardless.  All the people who partook in this event no longer work there, which is why it’s been sitting on my computer for all this time.The last person in the video who worked there finally quit last week, so it’s all good (another one quit a while ago another was fired for another reason).

So if you’re wondering why you get a game that is rattling from a video game store, there may be a good reason for it.

Enjoy.

Props to Clovis Bowman for some input as to what I should do with the video, he is the only one besides me to see it before it went online. 

I know someone who isn’t always keen on letting the world know how she feels. And I can sympathize, as I’m pretty good at hiding how I feel if I’m pissed off because I don’t want people breathing down my neck about it, trying to make things better. So she would use a code phrase whenever she was pissed about something to express her feelings withoutt letting the world know how she was feeling.

Until today, I don’t think I fully understood it. She let the world know that she wasn’t in the best of moods and was immedately bombarded with an internet “what’s the matter” attack.

I’d make something up too if I knew that as soon as something was wrong everyone would rush to get the inside scoop. Whatever it is, I hope it gets better, but I’m not gunna start bugging her about it.

I like to check my hits to see where my visitors come from for numerous reasons and I came across this.

All I have to say is this: Dude, why are you hanging out at the Department of Student Affairs at 12:41am? Don’t they lock that place up at some point?

So I was at Meijer the other day for a hair straightener, but found something that really did disturb me. Why have he hit the point where Easter needs to be perverted by this?

Now I understand that this Meijer was 5 miles away from Detroit. But still. What the fuck is this? It’s one thing to completely distort and commercialize a holiday, turning it into a place where children worship candy instead of religion. But at what level do you decide it’s acceptable to pervert the thing that perverts the holiday?

We already know that the Easter bunny can be more frightening than Santa, Leprechauns, Indians, or flying naked dudes that shoot people with arrows.But in all honesty, why did we have to give him some gaudy gold chain with a beany? That shit is just uncalled for. And to top it off, look at his eyes: the rabbit looks higher than a kite. But apparently it’s OK, because he’s made with real milk chocolate. Is it just me or does this cross the line between trying to hit your demographic and being just plain absurd?

Why can’t a rabbit just be a damn rabbit? Why does he have to be from the hood to get people to want to buy him? I mean, he’s already a cheap chocolate thing. What else is needed? Does this really work? Do black families actually buy this thing because they don’t want their children eating a “white” rabbit?

It boggles the mind.

When you have a friend that you’ve known long enough, you know when they’re being insincere. Basically, you can tell when they’re bullshitting you. No matter how hard they try to cover it up and spin in, you can look into their eyes and tell “you don’t mean that”, and you’re insulting us both by lying.

You can see it in today’s music. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes on accident. When musicians are under contract to make X albums, they have to do it. Or when they are commissioned to write a song for specifically for a movie soundtrack, they do it. If you listen to the lyrics, watch the way the songs are performed, and just say “how does this feel”, you can tell. Take Jay-Z for example. Watch the videos for 99 problems, then Blue Magic done for American Gangster. You can feel the sincerety in the first and the obligatory stuff in the second. Get past the catchyness of the song you’re listening to and you can feel how sincere the person singing it is. When Chad Kruger belts out “I wanna be a rock star” he really hopes he will get there one day, and who knows, maybe he will.

I’ve been listening to the new Counting Crows album Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings (while I’ve already mentioned how much I was looking forward to). Despite a Best Of Album and an Oscar-Nominated Top 40 hit, there hasn’t been a new Crows album in six years. And six years is a long time for an active, touring band to not record an album of any sort.

However, I can assure you that it has been worth the wait. A lot can happen in six years and this album is a true reflection of that. It tells the tale of what happens when you are just reckless, you get drunk, fuck things up, do things for all the wrong reasons and come the morning time you try to pick up the pieces and move on. Unlike what we heard with Accidentally in Love, this is some of the most sincere stuff I’ve heard Adam (Duritz) sing. His lyrics are strong and heartfelt.

As bands get bigger, the subject of their songs changes, and it becomes more about making a hit record then it does about the music. When you are first starting, you do it for the music, you throw your sound out there and hope someone picks it up, which is what they did with their now famously called “Flying Demos” album and even on August. But with Recovering the Satellites, This Desert Life, and Hard Candy behind them, the Crows now have enough staying power to truely do what they want as far as a record goes. I’m not dismissing their other work by any stretch, but this album is as sincere as any other words you have ever heard. It speaks honestly, from the heart, and in a very powerful tone.

I get the same feeling listening to this then I do with August although the albums themselves are very different. It is the feeling of the album being so honest that is done so well here and helps me to draw the parallel. There are also a few lyrics throughout the album that are similar to some ones from that album.

As a whole, the album is very polished, although some of the mixes I find a little strange (I did with AIL as well) but that’s a mute point at best. It also feels like a complete album. I was disappointed with You can’t count on me as the first single, as there are about half a dozen songs that would have made for a better single than that. It also sounds weird by itself, you almost have to listen to it in the album for it to make sense and transition well. The cool thing about this album is that it feels like a complete album, a group of songs that belong together. As opposed to an album which is just a bunch of songs thrown together on a disc.

It’s a shame that the Best Of album has already been done. It’s been amended once already to include AIL, but it might get re-released again with some of the amazing tracks on this new album. I’m not going to get into detail here about what each song is like and rate each one in turn. I’m not even going to say this album is a “X out of X stars”. That just doesn’t work here. The album is amazing, be sure to pick it up when it hits the shelves on March 25th or preorder it from amazon.

At this point, the actual album review is over, below is some person stuff of mine that relates to it.

Adam said about the album “Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings is the story of what happens when all the bright lights start to burn instead of glitter and you become more of a part of the shadow they cast behind you than the person you are in front… it’s about a flood of sin and liquor and dissolution and insanity and it’s about trying to rebuild the life you wrecked in the wake of that flood. It’s about the way it feels.”

Unfortunately, that has been my life during 2007. In my 22nd year on this planet, I have magially managed to have more sin and regret than I really want to admit to, but at the same time here I am, still trying to pick up the pieces of a live that I screwed up in more ways than I imagined I could. There are too many things on this album that I have said to myself over the course of the past year that I could do an entire book on how these lyrics relate to something that has happened to me, or something that reminds me of someone or a situation.

At the beginning of 2007 I was on top of the world. Newly single, I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted. I had a good job, was driving a Cadillac, and didn’t have any set commitment to anything other than myself. The year ended with me lying on my back unable to walk, stairing up at the sky. In that time I took my new found sense of self and came to the realization that I didn’t know who I was anymore. I tried to figure it out with concerts and parties, but there were too many Saturday (or Sunday) mornings where I woke up and said to myself “dammit, how can I be so fucking stupid?”.

I burned a lot of bridges without regret. I did some things that nobody should do and said some things that nobody should say. I took some risks that backfired on me and didn’t take other ones that I wish I would have. Some people I miss terribly, others I hope I never see again. 2007 started off with a bang, and ended up with a wimper of me trying to recover myself. Unfortunately, I wasn’t all physical recovery.

Cheers to Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings, the soundtrack to my life in 2007.

In fall of 2005, Apple held a special event to announce a new program: Front Row. A multimedia interface for your Mac that allowed you to access pictures, movies, and video via a remote. Not a lot of people cared, myself included.  Now that things have all come full circle, I can see that Front Row wasn’t as much an effort to making an entertainment center out of your Mac as it was trying to perfect the software for their set-top box, the AppleTV. Which is cool, but still something that I never think that I will ever buy until it does more stuff that I want it to do. I’ve dismissed Front Row up until recently as not being able to find any realistic use for it.

Well, I found one.

I no longer have a need to buy a stereo for my bedroom. Sometimes I’m just lying around, going to bed, etc and want to listen to some music, but even with buying a stereo my music would be limited to an iPod input (and my iPod stays in my car now 99% of the time) or CDs or even worse, radio (I’m not paying for XM, screw that). Either way, I’d have to get up to change it.

So now, I’ve discovered that I can put my Macbook on my dresser, and with the Apple remote, fire up front row and have everything in my music library in 1 place where I don’t have to get up and change the music when I want to.

The only thing that’s bugging me is I don’t know if it can repeat songs/albums or not. Which is a bit frustrating. But I’m working on it. Either way, I’m very happy with this program. Good job, Apple.