Keeping up with the Joneses

Unlike us to let a week go by without some kind of post. Maybe all the thought, hyperbole and lyrical madness that went into the desert island discs took it out of us? Let's get caught up real quick. In the last 7 days Kim and I have:

• Gone looking for houses


• Seen 8 houses in person


• Fallen in love with 1 house


• Got pre-approved for a mortgage


• Put an offer on a house


• Had our offer accepted


• Got a full mortgage committment from a bank


• Faxed, emailed, called, written more documents than I care to remember

The short of it all is it's been such an intense and crazy 7 days I've not had time to think let alone try and document everything that's been going on in my life. Today was the first day I managed to get caught up on work and scoot out early to give my head a rest. It really would have helped the entire process if work had been nice and relaxed, but that's never the case any more. Always fires, hotfixes, patches, customer escalations to deal with. I feel like I'm finally on top of it all though which is great. Oh, and I don't care what you say, UNIX blows. Any computer worth tens of thousands of dollars that breaks hardware when the power goes out, sucks. End of story.

Back to the house - Fairfax in Virginia is an extremely competitive housing area, as one would expect from all the high-tech, government, and other abundance of jobs in the area. This puts a massive premium on the price but also on how fast these fucking places sell. I have a friend who went to look at 1 house in the morning, a couple more in the afternoon, then decided to put an offer on the first one. Sorry bucko, too late, already under contract. Say what?

It was with all that in mind that Kim and I were trying to be prepared, keep an open mind and expect the worst when we began looking for houses. It was hard to stay calm though when we fell in love with this one place which was so perfect for us. Light, airy, lots of space, a cool finished basement for my gaming pit, double garage for winterised motorbikes for Dallas/Phyxie, lovely hardwood floors on the main area for her, stunning spacious kitchen for both of us. It was pretty much at the top of our price range but we were so smitten we decided to go for it. The trouble was there was an open house there the next day which almost guarunteed the price would be bid up out of our range. What we ended up doing, as suggested by our realtor was putting a tasty offer out that expired the next day. Honestly, I really didn't think that we'd get the place but she called us back at 10pm that night as we were on the way to 18th Street Lounge saying that we had ourselves a house! Much screaming, champagne and long island iced teas followed. Mega fun night - coincidentally also Sapnasty's leaving do before she heads up to New York and 1 day after Kim's birthday. MEGA event :) Hangover the next day sucked though.

Since then, it's all been about trying to hustle up my documents in time to get the full loan approval 7 days after the ratified contract. This proved to be the most stressful part, as the lenders I had lined up could no way in hell meet the deadline, especially with the long weekend. Monday was spent frantically calling around places trying to find someone, anyone that could meet the deadline and persuade them that really, I did want to get a mortgage with them and their committment letter, even though I had full intention of switching to the companies Adam hooked me up with for much lower fees directly afterwards. Shitty, maybe, but you do what ya need to do. In the end only Bank of America could meet the deadline (same day committment, nice one) but I did have to pay for the privilige - it's so fucking stupid that I had to pay the application fee just to get a committment letter but to me it was worth it for peace of mind in meeting the deadline and not having any further worries with the deal. Besides, I'd make that money back in closing easily with the great deal Adam hooked me up with.

So that's where I am. It's all very interesting isn't it? I got home tonight and had to get it all out though. Maybe those reading this remember going through the process their first time wondering what the fuck PMI, HOA, HELOC were and how much there was to understand in a short amount of time. It's been nice to sit here with my chips and salsa / sam adams light and bash it all out. I think I understand why people keep diaries now - although blogging is a lot easier and faster! Like Randy said "You gotta have a place to get it all out man", and how right he is. I feel better than James Brown. Or maybe it's just the Sam kicking in.

Thursday tomorrow, wonder what we'll be writing about? Had Brandon and I got our act together we'd have a killer topic all ready and lined up. This is why we don't do online 'zines. That, and the fact the pay's abysmal.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Kim!

At least it better be your birthday or your husband's a fucking liar as to why he can't play Halo.

;)

Hope the day is splendiferous.

Home study

Our home study for the second adoption is finally done. About freaking time. Now we just need INS clearance and we're all set to sit and wait for 7 - 10 months. Yay? I mean, yay!

Sub-J's Desert Island Discs

Please, pass up yet another opportunity to talk about music? I don't think so. Besides, albums are different than bands, case in point, the fact that I consider Led Zeppelin to be the greatest rock band of all time, but "Born to Run" is the greatest rock album of all time. Well, that's as good a place to start as any, here we go (in no particualar order, might I add).

1. Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Bruce has said that when recording Born to Run he set out to make the greatest rock and roll album of all time. Through some cosmic combination of skill, luck and balls he actually succeeded. From the opening harmonica of Thunder Road to the soaring wailing on Jungleland there isn't one goddamn note wasted on this album. It's desire, desperation, exhilaration, release and the gritty, hot smell of wet, summer asphalt rolled into one amazing musical experience. When we bought my son's stroller, it came with small speakers so that he could listen to music while we walked him. Born to Run was the first album he ever listened to and if he foregoes rock completely to listen to country or classical or post-modern jazz, I will be happy to know that for one brief shining moment, he listened to the best.

2. How the West Was won - Led Zeppelin
A concert album pasted together from various California performances from the tour in support "Four", How the West Was Won is a perfect example of an amazing band storming into a venue and absolutely fucking owning it. Page's guitar screams, threatening to burn the flesh form your ears, Bonzo pounds the skins with fury, Jonesy, often overlooked Jonesy, manages to put down basslines to keep it all together and Plant's vocals are so varied and all over the place (in a good way) that it's hard to believe that it's just one singer up there. After "Runes" Led Zeppelin seemed to go more the way of strange, fantastical imagery, and away from interpreting blues classics, but this album has both in spades and showcases a band exploding into the supernova they would become.

3. Pearl Jam - Seattle 11/6/2000
This was the last show of a European and US tour supporting "Binaural", in their hometown no less and the band has that heady mix of a group ready to go home, but wanting to make sure it's one hell of a send off. Aside from being one of the band's longest shows, it's also one of their most varied, including the live favorites "Crazy Mary", "Yellow Ledbetter" and covers of "The Kids are Alright" and "Baba O'Riley". Much more so than in other discs from this tour, Eddie spends a lot of time going off on people, including the city of Seattle itself, which can be preachy, but at the same time, he's doing it out of love, so it's easy to forgive.

4. Brian Regan Live - Brian Regan
Brian Regan is the funniest comic touring today. I have listened to this disc to the point where I could probably do the entire routine and it never stops being funny. It's hard to explain why a comedian is funny, without using cliches, but Regan has an amazing ability to talk about things we all see every day in a way none of us would ever think of. Combine this with his goofy delivery style and you have an album that's hard to not listen to over and over and over. Besides, man can't live on music alone.

5. Paul's Boutique - Beastie Boys
In my opinion, Paul's Boutique is the best hip-hop album ever. It's like a big pot of chili which had thrown into it everything and anything that was found in the fridge and pantry, and ends up tasting amazingly good. It's got the stupid, jokey style of License to Ill, but set down over complex mix of beats and samples courtesy of the Dust Brothers. "Hey Ladies", "Eggman", "Shadrach" and "Shake Your Rump" are all dizzying forays into sonic complexity. The album grabs your rump, shakes it vigorously and casts it aside, searching for its next victim.

6. Become You - Indigo Girls
I've been a fan of the Indigo Girls from way back, and Become You was my least favorite of their albums when I first heard it, but has turned into my most favorite. It's important for artists to grow over time, and in both their voices and their song writing, this album shows how 15 years of touring and writing can produce amazing results. The songs are layered with amazing harmonies and arrangements, all the better to show off their haunting vocals and cover a wide range of styles and speeds. When I'm in the mood for the Indigo Girls, this is the album I listen to every time and I am never dissappointed.

7. Friction Baby - Better Than Ezra
See my last post for more on this, but "King of New Orleans", "R3wind", "WWOZ" and "Happy Endings" are more than any person should need when stranded on a desert island with a solar powered DVD Audio setup.

8. All-American Rejects - All-American Rejects
Something about this feels wrong, that I shouldn't be taking an album filled with 3 minute punk-power-pop songs over the other albums in my collection, but this album is the most energetic, fun album that I've heard in a long time. "Happy Endings" into "The Last Song" is the best 2 song album ending I've ever heard. Plus, if we're stranded on a desert island, we're going to need to draw vessels to us, and I've been known to sing along to this albums at volumes that makes one's ears bleed.

Not content to just have 8, I've come up with my alternate list, should I not be able to find the albums in time for departure. They are:

Jay-Z Unplugged - Jay-Z and The Roots
From Cradle to Grave - Eric Clapton
You Were Here - Sarah Harmer
Rock Crown - Seven Mary Three
Guster On Ice: Live in Portland - Guster
The Eminem Show - Eminem
From the Choirgirl Hotel - Tori Amos
By the Way - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Phyxie's Desert Island Discs

Appetite for destruction :: Guns'n'Roses


One of the best all-time hard rock albums. Growing up through teenage angst, Axl was every angry young man's hero. Whether it was the energy, the fuck-you attitude that resonates so well with teenagers or just the amazing guitar work of Slash, it still stands the test of time. I hadn't heard this in years and downloaded it from ITunes on a whim last week. It rocked me out just like the first time I heard it. Not a bad song on the album, and now I feel like putting on a bandana and sticking two fingers up at the world.

Check your head :: Beastie Boys


Ahh the Beasties. What to say about the Beasties that hasn't been said already. Not much, truthbetold. Another album that was played back to back to back to back on a CD90 minute tape copied from my old friend Si in Chester. The skateboarding every single fucking day period of my life, such good memories. 3 month long school holidays, sunshine and mini-ramp skating in the park, Beasties blaring from the car stereo on the way and way back. This album as such a mix of styles, sounds, lyrical madness and two tunes which were absolutely monster in the local alternative clubs at the time. So many nights spent pretending to be Michael Diamond.

When we were young :: Dusted


A change of pace, let's slow it way way down. Let's also dangerously use the word 'electronica'. It's so widely used and abused but this is the real deal. This album is a work of fucking art. It takes slow beats, synth, emotion, thoughtful lyrics and cools them out gently over some ice cubes and pours them for you in a tall glass. I think I've listened to this album on repeat over 5 times in a row just chilling out in days of summer, post-partying, or just plain maxing and relaxing. Dusted are one of the few acts putting out quality music for people who care about music, without the media-hype and pop-mass-appeal.

Ritual de l'habitual :: Jane's Addiction


The best alternative rock album ever. Perry Farrel, another freak hero of mine growing up, the mad, bad, wiry, philosophical, instigator on the microphone with Navaro laying down some of the most amazing riffs. 3 days has to be the favourite track, building, building into an orgy of noise, violence, and aural delight. Squeal to me all night long, Perry.

Deltron 3030 :: Deltron 3030


Hiphop is a recent diversion for me (last two years). Before then I only really listened to some Public Enemy with a mild interest. It was really this album by Deltron, combining Del's futuristic science fiction lyrics laid down over Dan the Automators' infectious grooves that caught me and threw me head over heels into the scene. I like intelligent, well thought out lyrics that take me to places and provoke thought. Deltron3030 certainly does that, and you can see the heavy influences from neuromancer, asimov, snow crash and other cyberpunk classics. Del has this great laid back flow that's like honey for your soul, along with a great sense of humour. Essential hiphop listening.

Henry's Dream :: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds


Ooh ooh, goth days. Not gothic, goth. Did I use the correct definition of the words? Fucking goth snobs, get yor head our of your pretentious backsides and drink some blood or something. I grew up with this guy James (still a best friend) and his sister Vicki used to be older and cooler than us - going to clubs before we did, listening to cooler music than we did. Needless to say, James got a lot of free copies of great friggin' music off her which we used to listen to as we played video games in his room. This album just blew me away the first time I heard it. From beginning to end, it takes you on a dark, dismal, depressing story full of hellfire and brimstone, love and betrayal, murder and power. So wonderfully depressing, I love it! And thus began my Nick Cave addiction. I have everything he's ever published, but this album in particular stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of a complete creative work.

The Stone Roses :: The Stone Roses


How can you grow up in England and not be thoroughly mad about the Stone Roses. Manchester hay-day music at it's finest, exponents of the indie scene before there was one, in the beginnings of shoe-gaze music and brit-pop there were the Stone Roses. Massively popular, and their first album was always the best. Timeless pop music that still beats the shit out of everything out there today. Full of love, spice, happiness, weirdness, full-volume-stereo, drunken-pub-singing songs, awesome.

The Eight Legged Groove Machine :: The Wonderstuff


The Stuffies! Another hand-me-down from Vicki, and a band that I will forever mourn I never got to see in concert. I'm as crazy about the stuffies as B is about Pearl Jam, I think. Again, we're talking alternative/pop music, but with the wittiest, dryest, snydest lyrics I can remember. More drunken raucous singing. Vioins. Bass Thing Bob. They never made the breakthrough over on into the USA or I think they would still be around today. Watching their final concert in the UK on video a tear almost fell from my eye, the end of an era. I think I must have something for first-albums by groups as this is another one. Legs is just a great pop album from start to finish, and Miles Hunt's touch is all over it. Regardless of what you think of his selfish, arrogant attitude, he writes some damn find pop songs. Sing the absurd...

Thursday Weekly Bits..

Brandon wanted to pick a day and have a weekly 'bit' where we'd both write about our personal opinions and takes on the exact same topic. The day is Thursday, because Thursday is a good day.

Today's bit: Desert Island Discs.

Shamelessly whored from the archives of the BBC, Island Discs is one of BBC Radio 4's most popular and enduring programmes. Created by Roy Plomley in 1942, the format is simple: each week a guest is to choose the eight records they would take with them to a desert island. We're going to modify that slightly and bend the rules a bit. Brandon and I are going to be allowed to take 8 albums to our Desert Island in the sun, and we'll even be able to take them on that oh-so-fine superaudio CD or DVD with a lovely surround sound system in the palm trees. Hey, it's our desert island and if there's only going to be 8 albums for the rest of our lives it fucking better had sound good. They're solar, ok?

EDIT: I see Brandon beat me to it sort-of with his below posting. We're still gonna roll with the Desert Island discs as well though. Partially because I'd like to hear the ocean, partly because I don't want him to have to re-write all of that good stuff, and partly because I'm currently listening to a great album.

Bands I am Unable to Survive Without

Ever since I purchased my mp3 player (Creative Nomad Zen 20GB for those interested) music has become even more important to me than before. Basically it's because I no longer have to pick and choose what to listen to. I have almost my entire collection at my fingertips, so why should I choose? Standing at the cd cabinet for 10 minutes in the morning before work, trying to figure our what cd's to bring are a thing of the past. As a result though, when I don't have my mp3 player things aren't good. Luckily, that's pretty rare, but so is smallpox and when it hits you, its rarety is a small comfort.

So, with over 350 albums available to me at any given time, it must be hard to pick out favorites right? Guess again. Behold, the list of Bands I Am Unable To Survive Without:

Pearl Jam
Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm a Peal Jam fanatic. At present, I have all of their studio albums, and 9 concert cd's spanning 3 tours on 4 continents. The number of concert cd's I have is limited only by my budget and my ability to store them all digitally. If I could, I'd have an mp3 player of nothing but live Pearl Jam. My wife can't understand why I need so many concert albums, but I know them like the back of my fucking hand and they're all indispensible. I know that in Verona, there's this amazing cowbell part on "Hail, Hail", that in Philly, Eddie can't concentrate because of women flashing him, and that in Brisbane he fucks up "Rearview Window" to the point where it become an entirely different song. I hated Pearl Jam when I first heard them, mostly because "Alive" was played way too fucking much. Then I saw them on MYV unplugged and I was completely blown away by their intensity. I even tried to grow my hair long like Eddie in college. The resemblance was less than striking. I first saw them in concert with my best friend Dennis, his now-wife Kathy and Kathy's brother Jay in 1998. It was, quite possibly, the greatest concert I have ever seen. Every fucking part of that band was left on stage by the time they were done. They were having such a great time playing, that it was hard to not be excited. I've seen them since then, but nothing matched that show (in their defense, the last time I saw them was at the end of the tour where a number of their fans were crushed to death at a European music festival, so their spirits weren't as high). My simple answer as to why I need so many live albums is because this band absolutely comes alive when they're on stage and each performance is like a new facet of their talent. Quite possibly the biggest influence on my love of music since Zep. Speaking of...

Led Zeppelin
The greatest rock band of all time, no question. In 1987, when I started listening to Led Zeppelin, it was a cool drink of water in a desert of hair bands. I was never into bands like The Police, The Pretenders or any of the great bands that came out of the 80's, choosing instead to listen to old Clapton, Cream, Blind Faith, etc. Then my friend Ed Gable forced a dirty, near-broken tape of Zeppelin "Four" (or "Runes" take your pick) on me. I was hesitant, because I had been in a long running Clapton-Page feud with a friend of mine. I listened to it, and it was if my whole world changed. This band grabbed hold of me and has yet to let go. The distinct parts came so well together, that it's hard to tell where one part of the song ends and another begins. Except for Bonzo's drums. He hit those drums so hard, it wakes up the primitive part of our brains that remembers what it was like when Gods walked the Earth. Even now, some 20+ years later, when I listen to their live stuff ("How the West Was Won" is an amazing set of discs) I know that there isn't anything like them out now, and there probably won't be again. I can only hope my kids accept me pushing my dirty, near-broken Zeppelin cd's on them.

Better Than Ezra
I bought BTE's first album because of "Good" (It was good, living with you whuh-oh) and thought it was OK. Then Friction Baby came out, it fucking blew my socks off and subsequent albums have blown my socks off to increasing degrees. BTE is one of those bands where the music takes second place to the lyrics. I mean, the music is good, and although the results are often mixed, they're not afraid to experiment with shit, but the lyrics are fucking amazing. I don't know why their songs connect with me so much, but when I hear ones like "Beautiful Mistake", "WWOZ", Under You", "Live Again" and "Briefly" I get all choked up. The grandaddy of 'em all is "R3wind". 3 minutes and 7 seconds of musical perfection about a mixed tape being the only artifact of a failed relationship. I know there may be those of you who can't relate because, to you, making cd's is better than making mix tapes, but to you I say this: Bite me. Making mixed cds is too goddamned easy. Drag and drop some songs onto a GUI and let the program tell you how much time is left? Screw that. Give me a pen and a pad, a calculator and a list of songs anyday, and I'll give you a work of art. I once made a 120 minute mixed tape for Linda that made her cry, so poignant it was. It took me 27 days and I failed out of 3 classes but it was worth it. I love my mp3 player with its playlists and ability to play music based on whatever criteria I want, but nothing matches the soul of the mix tape. Maybe that's why I love the BTE song so well, who knows, but see how much one song gets me going? Multiply that times 4 albums worth of BTE songs and you get an idea as to why I love the band so much.

Patty Griffin
While BTE chokes me up, Patty Griffin can actually bring the tears. I can honestly say that I don't think I've ever heard a more honest singer. Her first album, "Living With Ghosts" was an amazing pairing of her voice and her guitar and nothing else. The songs are amazing and bring out sympathy for characters that you would expect more in books or films. "Flaming Red" the second effort rocked the fucking house. Her third album "1000 Kisses" and her latest joint "Impossible Dream" get back to the more stripped down roots of her first album, with the same eye towards amazing storytelling and sheer emotional manipulation. I always, always, always get choked up when I hear either "Making Pies" or "Long Ride Home" and I sing like a fucking banshee when "Wiggly Fingers", "Useless Desires" and "Poor Man's House" come on. Seeing how I work in a cubicle, I'm sure my officemates have come to hate Patty Griffin, but screw them.

Bruce Springsteen.
What can I say about Bruce? He has a catalog of music that's absolutely staggering, an ability to tell stories about how shitty and wonderful America is all at the same time, and when he yells "Do I have to say his name? Do I have to speak his name?" when introducing The Big Man, I want to scream "Nooooooo" at the top of my lungs. Some of the best live music I have comes from Bruce and the men and women of the E Street Band. I don't see that changing any time soon.

Eminem
Personally, I've never found Eminem's music offensive, but mostly because I could care less about the opinions of most people regarding anything, so why the hell should I care what some rapper thinks about women or homosexuals? Shit, my dad has said things far more offensive about both groups, and I'm making ribs for that fucker this weekend. Plus, I've never actually felt that Eminem actually believes everything that he's saying, much like Chappelle probably doesn't believe everything that goes down on his show. In both cases, small nuggets of belief are grossly exaggerated for the sake of entertainment. The thing about Eminem is, and just listen to his songs on the 8 Mile soundtrack as proof, is that he could be rapping about a fucking pastrami sandwich and it'd be the catchiest, sickest track about that sandwich that you've ever heard. The man has skills, pure and simple, and as his production skills catch up to his rapping skills, I think you're looking at someone who is going to be able to have as much influence on the rap world as a one Dr. D-R-E. With other material from 2Pac, Mos Def, Jigga and Kweli out there, it's hard to say if Eminem is the best outright rapper, but no rap album I own gets me going like the Eminem Show. Belive that.

On the Mountain
Technically this isn't a band, but an annual mixed music cd put out by KMTT, a Seattle radio station. I look forward to this compilation more than I do Christmas, because the bands on these cds are so amazing, and their performances are so casual and wonderful. I have discovered a whole bunch of amazing new artists through these cd's, and that, despite what those cigar chomping, cock sucking corporate radio bastards might have you think, is exactly what radio is all about. Plus, it gives me happy memories of coming home on a beautiful Seattle afternoon, with the Mountain Music Lounge playing on my radio.

And this is just a sample, not even touching on bands like The Indigo Girls, Sarah Harmer, American Hi-Fi, Incubus, Seven Mary Three, Kanye West, MC Frontalot and dozens of others that make up my personal musical landscape. To get into them all would take time I don't think I have, and an attention span I know you don't have. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I hear a mix tape calling.

Gadzooks.

Reeeee-wind, take it all back Phyxie. Fuck those photoshops for weirdness, nobody can compete with the real deal crazy animal from hell, the star-nosed mole! Damn.

My point exactly

As further illumination on my previous post and the veracity of Halo players some 2+ years after the game's release, I offer the top 10 games sold last month (format is Title - $ Amount - Units sold):

RED DEAD REVOLVER - $4,269,550 - 86,887
FIGHT NIGHT 2004 - $2,314,411 - 47,289
T. CLANCYS PANDORA - $ 2,077,493 - 42,700
HALO - $1,831,614 - 62,572
RALLISPORT CHALLENGE2 - $1,720,862 - 34,910
HITMAN: CONTRACTS - $1,682,831 - 33,770
NBA BALLERS - $1,651,458 - 42,848
VAN HELSING - $1,594,113 - 32,720
MVP BASEBALL 2004 - $1,590,718 - 32,723
SHREK 2 - $1,497,357 - 30,107

Now, I know that the new Halo Special Edition Xbox factors into the surge of Halo sales, but that only strenghens my position. Not only did people buy a 2+ year old game, they bought the entire fucking console to go with it. I'm sure these same people will buy another console next year to play fucking nothing on it. Oh yeah.

And who the fuck is buying Red Dead Revolver? I mean, I don't know anybody who's been even remotely interested in it. Shows how much I know.

Oh my, oh my...

This is what happens when you take too much acid and are put in front of photoshop. Bizarre works, but very nicely done. Unsurprisingly, I like the penguin screamer cat type thing the best.















I need some more coffee to deal with this.

If I had a million pounds..

I just got this link off a post on 600rr.net and it took my breath away. I wish I had the kind of money to put every single bit of carbon off their site onto my bike. It looks so damn good I'm drooling at my desk. Taking donations now please :) Check it out the carbon honda work at Carbontek.com.

Things, wonderous and numerous

Lots to talk about so let's get right to it.

- Riddick the game and movie kick tons of ass. Phyxie has alredy said a lot on the two subjects, so I won't get into things too much, but basically, I agree with him. A couple of things though, first, about the movie. I liked everything but thought that the casting of the main bad guy wasn't quite right. The guy seemed too old. I know, for the mythology, he had to be that old, and maybe it was just the actor they used, but it seemed odd for him to be whupping Riddick's ass, despite his special powers. Second, whoever decided that they should give one of the movie's main villains an uber-mullet should be fired immediately. With his MegaMullet and his suit of armor, he looked like Billy Ray Cyrus at a Renaissance Faire. Now for the game. I loved it, except for the inane saving system. Why you wouldn't take advantage of the hard drive to let players save anywhere is beyond me, but OK, you didn't. Here's my question: if you can save in my profile the fact that I have a certain pack of cigarettes, why can't you save in the same profile the fact that I completed the mission that got me the pack? It makes no sense. Minor points, I know, but annoying nonetheless.

- Father's Day was good with my wonderful wife doing all sorts of things such as grocery shopping and child bathing so that I didn't have to. A real keeper, that wife is. She bought me this extremely cool thermometer (the one at the top of the page) which will allow me to remotely monitor both my smoker and the massive cuts of meat I'm smoking. This will also allow me to do overnight cooks as I can set the alarm to wake up should the smoker temperature drop too low. Mmmmmm, brisket for breakfast.

- Word from Microsoft is that the next Xbox will be out in 2005, at least a year before the PS3 and that it won't be backward compatible. Just one of these facts is kind of odd, but taken together it seems just plain stupid. First, the release date. I can see why they want to come out early, so that they can get a head start on Sony and have a nice established base of users before the PS3 comes out. That's all well and good, but only if you're coming out when your current console is on it's way out. Let's say that the Xbox2 comes out for the 2005 holiday season, Halo 2 will be a little over a year old. I know many, many people that still play the original Halo today, exclusively might I add, and it's over 2 years old. In 2005, there will still be plenty of people willing to develop games and plenty of people willing to buy games for the original Xbox. Coming out in 2005 means that developers will have to start developing for this console very soon, and not develop for other platforms. A multi-platform port is one thing, but a cross-generational port is something entirely different. If you're a developer and you have to choose between developing for the PS2, with it's install base of roughly 37 billion people, and the Xbox2, a platform you know nothing about, install base being one of the biggest unknowns, where are you going to put your time in money? Plus, if we look at some of the Xbox heavy hitters, your Bungie's, your Bioware's, your Rare's (included based on past reputation), they're all developing games to be done in November 2004 - Feb 2005 time frame. Now, maybe they're big enough to also be developing for the Xbox2 and we just don't know about it, but how likely is it, given how much time, money and resources are necessary to make a triple-A title these days? A year's head start won't mean dick if you don't have good games for people to play.

This brings me to the backwards compatibility part. From a hardware perspective, I can see it not being feasible, but Jesus Christ, you're going to put Halo 2 out and then expect people to buy a console a year later that won't let them play it? What mythical, magical creatures are you expecting to buy this new console? Let's not forget that in this last generation, the Dreamcast had the distinction of being first to market. "The what?" you ask. Exactly. I mean, I don't give a shit, as I'll be buying the console that has the games I want, and if the Xbox2 comes out with like one good game to it's name, you know, like when the Xbox came out, I'll steer clear. That don`t confront me, long as I get my money next Friday.

- I was all sorts of giddy when Creative came out with a firmware update that allowed me to shuffle amongst all of the tracks on my mp3 player (all 4500 of them). Alas, this giddiness quickly dissipated when I realized that the queue for said shuffling was only 200 songs or so. Here I thought that my player just really, really liked Springsteen's "The River" and Snoop's "Paid Tha Cost To Be Tha Boss". After visiting some Nomad forums I have been able to circumvent the problem. I now have a playlist on my player that is a shuffled list of all 4844 songs on my player. Song 83 is "Corduroy" from PJ's "Vitalogy" for those of you keeping track at home. I'm hearing songs I didn't even know I had, and finding some I'm happy to get rid of as well, therby opening up room for other, newer songs. Bliss. Absolute bliss.

- Finally, everyone who had a hard time telling Phyxie and Dallas apart due to their equally bald, gleaming heads in the motorcycle pictures raise your hands. That's what I thought.

Heh.

Adventures in Wrenching: The Akrapovic Mission

Yesterday did indeed kick ass - not only did Adam and I rock the shit out of Full Spectrum Warrior and complete it, Dallas and I got together to have a go at his bike and install the new Akrapovic slip-on exhaust that he picked up last weekend. We approached the mission with the usual degree of caution and preparation, in that we started ripping bits off the bike and figuring shit out as we went. I can hear the professional wrenchers groaning now, but honestly I reckon that's the best way to learn, and it's a whole hella lot more fun than doing line-by-line from a manual, so bollocks to you.

Mission Akrapovic :: Wail of the Banshee

Sure, there were a couple of points where we reckoned we'd bitten off more than we could chew, but it's actually a fairly simple process once you have it all figured out. Once again, I reap the benefits of Dallas being the guinea-pig for the entire process, and reckon that when we do mine (whatever exhaust I decide on) it will take around half as long. I was really happy with how it all turned out and I think Dallas is too - if he can hear anything after screaming home on I-66 testing out his new baby that is. Today is bright and sunny, perfect for a ride so I'm sure he'll be enjoying that bitch! Once again, our mission accomplished. Why are we doing this? Well, aside from my previous mods post:

• The joy of having something different to other riders


• It sounds awesome


• The dyno chart improvements

For me, that third reason is pretty compelling. While we ride mainly street, the exhaust seems like the easiest / cheapest way to flatten out that hole in the midrange stock exhaust without getting really technical with power commanders, remapping and all that shit. The improvement's really quite marked:


Rock - onto the next weekend modification!

Kill your productivity today

Sometimes, out there in a corner of nowhere, you get a sense for what the internet really was designed for. Save us all, so addictive, so fun.. Adam came up with the Yeti Olympics!!

Event 1 :: Yeti Smash

Event 2 :: Yeti Darts

Event 3 :: Yeti Fling

Event 4 :: Yeti Glide

Event 5 :: Yeti Golf

Addendum

Correct that shit. I'm in a GREAT mood. Always, ALWAYS listen to your favourite music first thing in the morning. Dance around your living room like an idiot, smile at the sun. It's going to be the best day.

You liars, you fucking LIARS.

I'm in a very ambivalent mood (see true dictionary definition)

On the one hand, I am listening to Blur's "The Universal", which we chose for the last dance at our Wedding which is, quite simply, the best fucking song of all time by anyone, ever. Whenever I hear it I feel so alive, so passionately in love with Kim and all these immensely powerful emotions well up inside me. Love is best simmered on a slow burner if it is to last, and occasionally seared over a white-hot flame. Sometimes it just seems to sink right into you and through you, just how incredibly madly deeply burningly yearningly in love with someone you are. It's so wicked, so utterly undefinable to anyone who isn't or hasn't ever been completely and head over heels in love. Sometimes you feel like your inner feelings are going to simply explode out of your chest they're so powerful, animal and untamed. What's this? He's not spitting, he's gushing? Well deal with it. I'm the luckiest and happiest fucking man in the world.

I like to watch her sway
She's luck before I'm going away
I like what she sees in herself
Gives me all of her confidence
Kim
Kim
-- Perry Farrell, Porno for Pyros

On the other hand, I am more than a little bit frustrated. Wait, I'm downright pissed off. The source of my frustration? Apple. Specifically, Apple - iTunes - Music Store. Say it isn't so! Unfortunately, it is. Allow me to quote a seemingly innocuous paragraph from the Apple web site for you.

Just 99¢ a Song, Plus Generous Personal Use Rights
The iTunes Music Store lets you quickly find, purchase and download the music you want for just 99¢ per song. You can burn individual songs onto an unlimited number of CDs for your personal use, listen to songs on an unlimited number of iPods and play songs on up to five Macintosh computers or Windows PCs. And the iTunes software works so smoothly on both platforms that you can share music with any combination of Macs and Windows PCs on a local area network — regardless of whether you’re running iTunes on a Mac or PC.

Mm. Ye-es. About that Ipod bit. You're not really telling the whole truth, are you? In fact, not only are you not telling the whole truth, you're lying through your back teeth, you shameless whores of Babylon. It's been very interesting to see the decline in Apple status from the Smith perspective over the course of the last year. In just 8 months they have gone from God-like visions of ethereal beauty and sinless perfection to Foul, depraved, demons of impiety and iniquity that incidentally happen to sell crap hardware. In other words, just like any other company. Damnit Apple, I thought you were better than that. First my Ipod battery after around 2 years of ownership refuses to charge properly. After 2 hours or so of usage now it waves a little white flag and dies a death. And we all know what happened with this symptom. I salute you, the Neistat brothers.

But that's not what's pissing me off today, I made my peace with the battery ages ago. Today, it's the fact that through IStore (which is, in all fairness, absolutely wonderful), through their weird M4U format that you download, I can't play a single purchased song on my Ipod. Before you all scream, I'm not a fucking non-techy, I know what I'm doing with this stuff. I've tried deauthorising, reauthorising, signing out, in, signing out, signing up, signing around, upgrading, downgrading, cursing, converting (failed), redownloading. NOTHING WORKS. None of the songs even transfer to my Ipod. There are only two possible conclusions from my tinkering on a Saturday morning. One. That my first generation Ipod is woefully out of date and that Apple don't give a shit about backwards compatibility, leaving the end user (me in this instance, but I can't be alone) high and dry. Two. That my Ipod's just fucked. That's a technical term. I'd like to believe it's the latter, but whichever it is the cost of repair is clearly prohibitive versus the cost of purchasing a new one.

So that's my Saturday morning story - 2 hours of wasting my time when I was meant to be blogging about something else entirely wasted fucking around with this shit. At least I made a cool, crazy Saturday playlist - then went to publish it so I could share it and only about 1/3 of the songs were available.. Kinda misses the point of trying to cleverly create apiece of aural art. So here's the list instead... Not quite the same.. Fuck it. Take the journey through classic 60's, Manchester shoe-gaze, rock, metal, electronics, hip-hop, and some heartachingly beautiful female vocals. And it goes a little something like .. this:

Whacked

Adam put up the little snippets out of the game Whacked at
his site! They are so friggen funny they kill me! Whacked was one of the first games out on Xbox live and is really really silly. It's a multiplayer game where you run around throwin' shit and gathering shit and.. Basically it's like a monopoly game on acid and speed with a healthy dose of sick humour thrown in. Rock!

Mods, mods...

As I write this, Dallas is bidding on the big daddy slip-on Akrapovic exhaust. If you know us, you know that we ride the same bike, have pretty much the same tastes, same haircut, and thus in our ever-present search to be just slightly different so you can tell us apart, the modifications to our bikes are ever so subtlely different. To be frank, most of the mods are aesthetic in nature - Honda do such a great job with the engine out of production, why would you want to fuck with it? For the mod-curious, here's the small current list of the mods I have to my CBR600RR:

• Larry's fender eliminator


• Small rear turn signals and plate lights as option on fender eliminator kit


• Zero Gravity SR Series dark smoke windscreen


• Greggs Customs front flushmount turn signals


• Honda rear passenger seat cowl

Which brings us essentially to the end of the phase where you take a knife to the ugly stock black plastic bits on the bike and replace them with small much more efficient nice techy bits. There's only so much aesthetic work you can do - I've thought about de-stickering the bike or possibly going for that stealth option by removing all the factory stickers, but there's a lot of them under the clear coat so bugger that for a game of soldiers. To be honest, I think exhausts are an aesthetic modification as well which is why I am considering one. Dallas and I agree on street riding all a new exhaust would do is give you a more distinctive growl/scream and be a nice pretty backend to the bike for others to talk about. I'd be surprised if the amateur rider on street notices the typical 2-3 hp difference most slip on exhausts give you.

So why do it? Hard to explain - I think part of it comes from the fact that we love tooling with our rides and anything that helps us understand how our bike works, albeit small gives you a sense of satisfaction. I'll never probably be able to re-bore an engine or to re-map the computer but that's ok. I'm happy with the small stuff. Perhaps it's the continual spirit of improvement that drives us to keep tweaking, although I suspect one day we'll run the danger of getting stuck in an infinite suspension tweaking loop only to throw our hands up and return everything back to the factory settings, which are probably the best anyway for our street riding.

So whats next.. Indiglo dashboard? Alarm? Power Commander? HID Lights? All of these options either seem a bit over the top or just plain expensive. I'm definitely attracted by the lights, and have the fond hopes one day of maybe frying cicadas with 2 billion watt headlamps before they can splatter their last over my visor, but at over a grand for a decent kit, that shit's gonna have to wait until we've secured the house, baby.

Update: Dallas won his ebay bid! Hooray! We're gonna wrench it on this weekend, so once again he'll be the wrenching guinea pig. Wheee! Here's what he got:

Pretty, innit? It goes vroom. Loudly. Me, I might just spring for the sticker and try to pass off my voluminous stock exhaust as a limited edition akra :)

Oh, and Brandon - I do hope your weed whacker is now satisfyingly whacking your weeds. What the hell is a weed wacker? Is that what I know as a strimmer? All this gardening talk.. Wheres my sofa..

I hate Sears.

Those of you without a yard that requires you to work on it, may want to sit this one out. OK, but I warned you.

I hate Sears. There, I said it, and I'm glad. Why do I hate Sears? Well, I'll tell you. For some reason, every piece of motorized lawn equipment I own came from Sears. I don't know why. Perhaps it's because they're nearby my house, perhaps it's because they have more stock than Home Depot or similar stores, perhaps it's because they have an ungodly amount of tools on display thereby giving you the illusion that they care about you and the work you have to do. I don't know, but the fact remains that all of my motorized lawn stuff comes from Sears.

Now, when you buy something from Sears, you get, in your instruction manual, a complete listing of every part, right down to the fucking molecules of your entire device. They even show you how all of these parts fit together, should you need to replace 5/8" Galvanized Screw #3. Great, you think, when I need a new blade for my lawnmower, or a new spool of line for my weedwhacker, I'm all set. Yeah, you'd think that, wouldn't you.

A few weeks ago, I ran out of line for my weedwhacker. I hate my weedwhacker, not because this particular model sucks, but because weedwhackers have suckiness inherent to them, bonded to their very atomic structure, if you will. They are all loud, they are all heavy and they are all about as easy to start as a dead monkey. They also have a finite length of line, a glaring design decision if ever there was one. Luckily, I still have the instruction manual for my weedwhacker, so all I'd have to do is go to Sears and I'd be all set, right? Oh, you poor, sad child.

The first problem became when looking for the part. My part number had 6 digits, all of the parts on the wall had part numbers with 5 digits. Now, I could leave out digits in my number to make them closer to the part numbers on the wall, but the closest I got would have had me installing a dishwasher on my weedwhacker, and that didn't seem right to me. No problem, I thought, here's a handy flip book to tell me what part number I should use for my weedwhacker. This is when the second problem came. My weedwhacker, is about 5 years old, and they only had parts listed for models that came out in the past 2 years. I was unaware that weedwhacker production was on a yearly schedule. I kind of thought that the weedwhacking conundrum had been sufficiently resolved such that yearly releases weren't needed. My mistake.

At some point in the past 5 years, Sears decided to use fucking Sanskrit as their model numbers, because I couldn't find something even remotely the same as my weedwhacker's model number, nor could I find any correlation between the part numbers in the flipbook and the part numbers on the wall. I think the flipbook is Sears's own brand of quirky humor and the clerks were all getting a big laugh out of my activities.

To their credit, Sears does have a website that allows you to put in your model number, select a part from the parts diagram and purchase them. It was through these means that I finally got my spools and could resume whacking weeds. As a side note, I promptly fucked one spool up beyond all recognition. I'm going to attempt to rewind that one on my own, and just install the other one I purchased, but hopes aren't high. The last time I attempted to rewind a spool I ended up losing my gall bladder. Long story.

Now, fast forward a few weeks and my mower needs to have it's blade sharpened. My father-in-law, who's like the handiest person on the planet, had shown me, previously, how to sharpen the blades. No problem. I take my spare blade, bring it downstairs, sharpen it up, make sure it's balanced and switch the dull one out with it. Problem. I don't know what the hell I did to that blade, but grass was shooting out of the mower from places that shouldn't have had room for grass. It was like eating something bad and throwing up from your hair. I managed to get the lawn mowed, but not before making my backyard look like a goddamned hay loft. Figuring that I did something wrong when I sharpened the blade, I consulted some handyman books I have (wasted paper if ever there was) and, armed with my newfound knowledge, went to sharpen the other blade.

I should have known that if I was unable to sharpen one blade successfully, a second attempt would prove to be only a hair less than disastrous. First, in my annoyance I didn't wear gloves, a foolish and ultimately painful decision as metal shavings and flesh do not a happy couple make. Second, the blade refused to balance upon being sharpened. If the blade isn't balanced, then when mowing it'll cut unevenly, the mower will shake and ultimately explode, sending you in a fine mist all over your neighborhood. The way to test for balance it to hang the blade on a nail, see which end is lower and file it appropriately. I spent 30 minutes balancing the goddamned thing and I swear it only got worse. I'd hang it, see that the left side was heavier, file the left side and rehang it, only to find that the left side was heavier than before. I must have one of those new-fangled reverse files that puts metal back on things. Then, I'd turn the file over, so that the front was now back and vice versa (not flipped left to right, I'm not that dumb) and it'd be unbalanced in a completely different manner. This lead me to believe two things, one is that I didn't do as good a job with the last sharpening job as I had thought, and second is that it isn't even fucking worth it to save the 13 bucks needed to buy a new blade. As a side note, in the manual for the lawnmower it says, and I quote, "We do not recommend sharpening the blade". That makes two of us.

Armed with my mower manual, back to Sears I went. This time, at least they had blades that seemed to match my blade, but again, the part numbers were completely different. I swear the blade I bought has its part number in hexadecimal. What I'd like to know, is that if you only sell one kind of 21" mulching blade, and all of the 21" mulching mowers from 1955 until now use a 21" mulching blade, why the hell, wouldn't the part numbers be the same? I can see if you sell like 15 of them, and some of them just cut the lawn, but some of them give you a fucking sandwich and a blowjob when you're finished, that you would need different part numbers between the blade and the manual. In this case, however, there appeared to be a 1:1 ratio between blades on the wall and blades in the manual. And even if they started making a different blade, made out of rubber or diamond, or fucking adamantium with kryptonite inlay, why not, for the sake of us, the poor consumer, just give it the same goddamned part number as previous 21" mulching blades. Why? Because Sears is evil, that's why and they make it seem that if you don't buy genuine Sears parts for your genuine Sears lawnmower you'll go to a special circle of Hell reseved for child molesters and people who don't flush public toilets.

It doesn't help that my lawn insists on growing at a rate of several feet per day. I try to water it just enough to keep it from being flammable, but it keeps on raining, which means that the grass keeps on growing. I told Linda that I feel like I'm always mowing the lawn. I didn't hear her reply as I had to go cut the lawn but I'm sure she agreed with me.

In other news, I'm going to see Riddick on Thursday, and getting Phyxie's copy of the game on Wed. so I'll chime in with my opinions of both at the end of this week. I know, I know, you can't wait. Also, I'm almost done with Thief so I'll have some thoughts on that soon too. If you don't feel like waiting for my final word, just go out and buy it now. It is such a monumentally entertaining game that you won't be dissappointed. This game has hijacked my very existance. I usually don't speak to Linda about games, because she gets this far away look in her eyes, letting me know she's just barely paying attention, but with this game I am powerless to resist speaking of it. As a result, she has had to hear of all of my thiefly exploits while doing her best to maintain consciousness, or at least a passing semblance to it. And really, that's all I'm asking for.

Get your shout out

A big old thanks to Thomas at grabbingsand.com for answering my email, chock full of Atlanta questions, to him . If we ever move there I shall deliver a beverage of his choice to him in a manner indicitive of his standing.

Oooh yes please sir, can we have some more

I don't care what the critics say. Riddick was awesome. Pure fun, action and lots of sweaty Vin Diesel all the way through the movie. I was on the edge of my seat from start to finish, thats what a movie is about. Ok sure it's not winning any Oscars for depth of characters but when I go to see an action movie who gives a shit? I still soak up Sci-Fi like a teenager and this was like Dune but with more muscles, computer graphics and tits. Ok so the comparison's not really a great one but that's what it felt like to watch. Yes yes I hear you, you Dune fanatics, put a sock in it. This is my site, and I'm Rick James, bitch!. Maddox doesn't like it, however. Well, quite frankly, fuck Maddox. I'm sure he'd be the first to agree. I still love him and that post's pretty funny.

For those of you who don't get that last sentence: first, watch the Dave Chappelle show, and don't ever miss it because it's the best thing on Tivo. Second, find someone with the "Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories" Episode and steal it from them. Watch it. Laugh. Repeat.

I digress once again. Must drink less coffee while scribbling on notepad.

So... yeah. Riddick. Lots of fun, especially as the movie theatre I went to seemed to recently have had some kind of audio upgrade so the deep bass throbbing of my cock I mean the spaceships sounded extra extra special. Kim loved it, but claimed it was ass due to the fact Vin Diesel never took his top off. I can understand that, he should be naked in every movie. The bad guys are really bad, the good guys are bad, and the wife of the High Lord whassisname in particular reminded me of Sherry Palmer in 24, only a lot hotter and with some very form-fitting dresses which I can only heartily endorse.

I'm an action flick sucker, sue me. Oh and while you're at it, take your Happy Potter film and bugger off. You're NOT 6 any more, bitch.

Beastly Boys

I took a listen to the Beastie Boys album today, courtesy of MTV.com. I was under the impression that MTV was only concerned with ride pimping and making people. It was nice to see them doing something with actual music. It's a good album, nothing groundbreaking, nothing revolutionary, just our favorite trio of MC's rocking the party in the old school way. Some artists I demand growth from, the Beasties not so much as they've grown about 10 times more than the average artist since their original joint, so they get a free pass. I'm not sure what the Amazon reviewer was talking about, comparing this album to License to Ill, cause it's classic Check Your Head all the way, circa 1992. For a moment I was transported back to Albany, NY where I found myself hitting tennis balls against the back of the Shop-N-Save. Thankfully it didn't last long.

Among the various references in the album, you'll find mention of the following topics:

Flapjacks
Mr. Belvedere
G. W. Bush
Trix (as in Trix is for kids)
Winnie the Pooh
George Whipple
Yoda
Captain Marvel
Ron Popeil
Herman Munster
Cool Whip
Bones McCoy

It is exactly this rich bounty of topics that allow them to indeed, have more rhymes than Abe Vigoda.

Despite the wealth of poor reviews for The Chronicles of Riddick, I am going to see this movie next week. Partly because I already have a ticket, courtesy of Pitch Black, partly because critics are big poopy-heads.

I'm hoping that this review of Psi-Ops ends up being the rule and not the exception as I've been intrigued by this game for some time. Several years ago, when I thought I wanted to make games, I had an idea for a FPS that placed you as an amnesiac who wakes up in a dumpster with rudimentary psychic abilities and no idea how you got them. Through the course of the game as you're hunted by fellow psychics, you get your memories back along with corresponding powers and discover what happened to you. You know, your traditional psychic on the run story. I had planned on making the game such that by the end, actually pretty early on if you didn't mind the extra difficulty, you would use no weapon but your mind. I had also planned on having each power have a weakness to it. For example you could do a psychic sweep that would alert you to the location of other psychics, but would also draw them to you. You could also shut your thoughts down to said psychics, but at the price of a temporary loss of powers. As with most of my ideas, it went nowhere. I don't expect to play Psi-Ops with the intention of pointing out all of the things I'd do differently, as that would be stupid, but it will be interesting to see a game that has something in common with something I came up with on my own.

The psychic powers look exceptionally cool, especially when combined. When playing Jedi Knight 2 and Jedi Academy, the combining of Force powers was the meat and potatoes of my gaming experience and this appears to be no different. In JK2, I loved grabbing someone with Force Grip, and then using Force Pull to pull them into my lightsaber. Using Force Grip and Force Push to chuck Dark Jedi off of very large towers became my signature move in JA. I look forward to picking up guards in this game and chucking them anew. For a new twist, perhaps I'll set them on fire first. I really can't say. OK, I can totally say. Regular or extra crispy?

Finally, the painter came out today to estimate the cost of painting Ben's big boy room. I wonder at what age we can stop calling it his big boy room, and just call it his room. Hopefully by prom, or he may have a tough go of things. All in all it will cost less than $500, a price I will gladly pay. Linda and I painting together is like asking a mongoose and a cobra to sit down and play pinochle. Adding a toddler to the mix will surely turn a situation that would have ended in divorce into one that ends in homicide.

Mortgages, homes, etc

I've put it off for way too long (ain't that always the case) but finally today have managed to make some solid progress towards choosing mortgage options, lines of credit, downpayment, company and all of the other good stuff. It's really impossible to choose with so many offers being thrown in your face but we decided to try and get pre-approved for the 5-1 ARM with ING direct, seeing as that's where all our savings is anyway which should (I think?) count in our favour. Then you're hit with how much you want to put down - think you'd want to put as much as possible down, right? Well, sorta, within limits. What we settled on was 80% mortgage, 10% home equity line of credit and 10% cold, hard cash.

So now we're hoping for our pre-approval to go through. This is the real bitch - because now we're all motivated and excited and don't know if we're going to get approved or not. Apparently it takes 48 hours, sniff sniff. Can't concentrate on shit.

• I want a friggin' home


• I want to stop pissing our rent money away and be able to customize the abode in which I reside!


• I want decent brick walls instead of this hard air shit they give you in apartments


• I want to play my games loud as FUCK without pissing off the neighbours


• I want to know NOW if I'm approved for my bazillion dollars or not so I can take the appropriate action


• I want I want I want..

Growl.

A question

Does anyone here know what it's like to live in the Atlanta area, either through personal experience or through the experiences of others? They have warm winters and very large, inexpensive (relative to VA anyway) houses. That's all I know about the area though, and I don't want to move into my big, inexepensive house just to be violently crimed or consumed by a swarm of angry locusts.

Please respond via comments, or email to suburbanjoe[at]catspit[dot]net. Or, you know, don't. It's your choice.

You are all my bitches, MOVE get out the way, get out the way..

Ok, so the game's brilliant. I've been playing The Chronicles of Riddick for an hour or so every evening and I'm loving it. Most game reviewers do a nice little breakdown of the review through Graphics, Audio, Longevity, Challenge and other stuff, but instead I'm just going to give you a brain dump of some moments that have been really fun and some moments that have sucked. You can read the professional reviews for yerself, punkitos.

So what is it anyway? The game mixes and matches between playing styles really well. One minute you're running through rooms, capping bitches left and right with the shotgun, dodging a hail of bullets. Next minute you're creeping through the cargo hold, keeping to the shadows, maybe snapping the odd neck or two in the process, just for fun like. Next minute you're clambering all over these difficult to get to bits and bouncing around like Sonic. Throughout all though the camera and mood transitions seamlessly, so seamlessly in fact that you don't notice the transition until you wonder why you're hiding behind a box instead of shredding everything. Very nicely done indeed. This great combination keeps gameplay fresh, interesting and overall, FUN. A lot of the ideas are taken from other games and built on top of (neck snapping, see in the dark, climbing manoevres, dropping on peoples heads, etc) but that doesn't matter. Riddick does them all well. Riddick is badass.

Vin Diesel adds a lot to this game. Not only is he every man's sweet salivation his voice is so deep in this game I think my walls were vibrating at one point. Turn up the subwoofer to 11. The other thing that adds a lot to the game is the violent and relentless swearing. Mothers and huggers, I don't wanna hear it. The first words in the game are 'Don't you fucking move' which was rockin'. I'm glad to see software developers with balls and who don't mind making a game with adult content (without being as daft about it as that XXX BMX game which was just fucking horrible). It makes you feel more immersed in an action movie, and it makes you feel badass.

So go buy. Take it from me - it ain't genre defining, but it's funfunfun baby. Now I'm all nice and prepped for the movie this weekend, which we shall be going to see at ridiculous o'clock in the morning to avoid all the teenage cocksuckers who think it's funny to shout at the movie in order to impress their girlfriends with 3 pubes between them. Whooargh.

And another thing

HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban was excellent, easily the best one in the series to date. This is to be expected as the book it was based on was the best in the series when it was released. There was even