“The current crisis environment of world terrorism, massive debt, and general shittiness of economy has caused great concern in the Department of Treasury. As many of you are no doubt aware, we like to be simultaneously on the cusp of world events and digging into history which is why we commissioned the State Quarters, Sacagawea Dollar, the President Dollars, the First Spouse Coins, the Legacy of Great Eleanor Roosevelt Impersonators Coins, and also why we pawn off more recent events on the Franklin Mint and Liberia.  The U.S. Mint strives to provide the great American public a fantastic source of collectibles that have utterly no connection to Star Trek or George Lucas.  We feel that the Hojillion Dollar bank note will satisfy both collectors and consumers, especially at the gas pump.  Jesus Christ, I mean shit!  I drive a freaking hybrid and I PRINT MONEY FOR THE UNITED STATES and I still can’t afford to drive anywhere.  We hope that this new note will speed transactions everywhere, so that more people can fill up their tanks faster at the cheap place in town.”

*In all semi-seriousness, the upcoming coins are pretty darn sweet looking.  I have two of the new President dollars and none of the First Spouses.  I didn’t even know they were minting those, but I was going to insert a joke about them until I saw that they were real.  And yeah, I do actually collect coins.

I should apologize to Holy Fuck as I missed all but the last couple songs due to the fact that I am an idiot. The doors opened at 8 and I got to the club at 9. I figured that the first band wouldn’t start until then, but I was clearly wrong. Holy Fuck sounded like techno-house with those annoying incessant beats that last for hours for the ecstasy-addled, except without being annoying or incessant. Imagine a house song with real drums, synths, a bass player, another drummer and all sorts of weird effects and the song actually ends. These guys play music like I cook, throwing stuff in because it is good and blends. You can roll a song around in your mouth, turning over new flavors and strange tastes with each chew. They are like pita chips and cheescake, but musical. An aural alchemy. I will be buying their two albums as soon as I can. (I have yet to buy these albums as of 8-18-08, but I am broke and unemployed.)

The Fiery Furnaces were on next and I was excited to see them since I had missed them the last couple times they were in DC. They didn’t seem to really get into it until they played Blueberry Boat, but the crowd also seemed rather reserved until then, too. I liked seeing them but felt sorta blase about it because they looked so tired or bored. After they perked up, the music felt a lot more vibrant. I suppose you can’t blame people for being tired, everyone has off days I guess.

Super Furry Animals were a complete unknown to me until Uncanny Canadian instructed me to see this show no matter the cost. They were amazing, awesome would be a completely appropriate description as I was was awed by their music. Live shows are almost always better for that certain something, even if the songs are played almost exactly the same way as they were recorded on the albums. You can let yourself get caught up in the performance and forget all that stuff that gets tacked on to a home listening, like that time you made out with some girl while listening to Wish You Were Here, or how you played Transmissions from the Satellite Heart to psych yourself up to ask out some person at a coffee house. If you have never heard the songs before you see them live, you will always have that experience to play in the back of your mind while you listen at home. I’m drifting but maybe you follow me. SFA blew me away. They played and seemed to really be having a blast, and that feeling transferred to the audience. I can’t tell you what songs they included in the set, but they were all amazing. I would recommend SFA to anyone. They sound like bottled joy. At one point, the lead brought out some sort of huge, red, Power Rangers-looking helmet and held the microphone up to a hole in the top right and sang though the helmet. It sounded like he was singing from the back of some cave, or with a helmet on his head. Uh. Anyway, I have some pictures of that on my phone:

Um, yeah, so…my pictures were so bad that they broke the bloggio.  We’ll have to wait a minute or two for those.

The blob on the left is the singer.

That is the red helmet on the singer, the light blobs are his hands.

Unfortunately, this has led to him not ever posting … ever.

So in an attempt to at least to get the occasional update, I’m thinking we’re going to get him involved in some microblogging.  The plan right now is to get him setup with a Twitter account and then modify the little quote above to be ‘Dispatches from Fulsome’ or some such nonsense.  Then Fulsome will be able to update with the observations he’s so well known for.

I know it’s not ideal as I don’t think pictures of burritos will fit in the space except if they’re very tiny[Ed. note, the burrito or the picture ... your choice].  Still, we’ve got to try anything to get him to update something.  I mean, it’s like he doesn’t even know we exist anymore.

I’ll be honest and say that I doubt he’s going to actually update it very much.  Don’t worry though, I’ve already thought of that though.  The plan is that since I’ll create the Twitter account he’s going to be using, I can just make up crap and pretend it’s from him.  Everyone’s happy!

Anyway, that’s it for now.  I’ve got to head back and play some more Bionic Commando: Rearmed (or keep working on getting the latest version of the software set for release … I hate configuring package installers!).

Update: The ‘Nerds’ box is currently rendering kind of weird in IE so I will be getting to that eventually.  If you notice any other weirdness, let me know.

Otherwise, enjoy the newly added recent comments functionality or giant number of indiscriminately labeled and duplicated links.

Update X2: I think it’s fixed.  The spacing is a little different between IE and Firefox still but I don’t know that I care enough to keep working on it.

Update X3:  Took care of some roving ‘Â’ characters that were causing problems.

I hope you all like music reviews because I am working on a lot of those.

I used to pat myself on the back for having made it through undergrad without taking stats … now that decision is coming back to bite me on the ass.  I’ll be wasting money and 2 nights a week at class making up for it.  I’m actually interested in my design course though.  I always wanted to take more design/art classes in college but never really had the time (I took a bunch of Chinese instead and now I never use that junk … Ni hao communist overlords!).

It’s weird to think I’m going back to school.  Especially considering the thing I did when I got out of school was thank the crap out of finally being done with class and swearing that I wasn’t going back … unless it was because I needed an MBA so I could be rich.

Back when I was first attending college though, I never really appreciated how much the foundation you get in school can help you professionally.  I don’t know how many times those concepts we covered in that ’stupid’ algorithms, machine intelligence, or compiler class has cropped up.  Heck, even algebra/geometry/trig stuff crops up fairly often.

For me, what’s interesting in going back is that this time I’m not just trying to get done so I can get a job and quit sitting in a classroom, it’s because I actually want to understand and excel in a different area.  I’m not promising I’ll care about statistics … but the rest of it, I’ve really got an appreciation of how often the fundamentals and even more esoteric concepts can come up in a profession.

Remembering those concepts and experiences can be the difference between floundering around and having to change course mid-development or picking the right approach from the beginning and easily meeting deadlines.

Of course, the first day of class does have to be my birthday.  Worst part about the late August ones. Blah.

Unfortunately, in our post 9/11 world we’ve started ignoring that great Cold War tradition and chosen to instead focus on places that obviously were not at all related to that conflict like Afghanistan and the Middle East.  In order to help keep our victory over Communism (as depicted in the historical drama Rocky IV) seem relevant today there are a number of approaches that educators and parents can take to keep kids interested.

While some techniques such as friending the Cold War on Facebook, requiring mandatory viewing of Red Dawn/Red Heat/Hunt for the Red October/Red Sonja, and even requiring reading of history textbooks have done a little to help the cause, today’s world requires something more.  Something magical.

The answer: COLD WAR UNICORNS

Crafted by skilled tradespeople in communist China, you can be assured that every person making this educational tool was fully aware of the mythology and legends behind the history of both Unicorns and the Cold War.  Being magical people themselves, the Chinese manufacturing facilities that created these items help provide a sense of authenticity that is often devoid in American crafted resources like books and movies.

Finally a tool that combines the intricacies of foreign policy with mythical monohorned creatures.  In case you were wondering, there are other similarly fantastic items that depict other great moments in US history like:  Good Vs. Evil (make sure to use Freedom unicorn to represent ‘good’ when re-enacting to ensure historical accuracy), Unicorn Vs. Narwhal and, most importantly, the landmark Supreme Court decision, Unicorn v. Mime.

I’ve also been busy trying to work through some more games (Stranglehold, MGS4, Blue Dragon) after having given up on GTA4.  That game is just too huge for me to make it through without taking a break.  I’ll probably go back to it this Fall as the weather starts to cool off.

Anywho, I guess I’ll try to update this more.  Chuckles keeps sending me emails asking what his password is so that he can make a post but then after I email it to him he never does.  Maybe he’s busy brushing up to retake his college entrance exams?  Word of advice, they added a horrible essay section to it so uh, it sucks way more to take now.

Well, that’s it for now.  I’ve got something lined up for tomorrow though.

Sometimes I just wander around trying to get achievements (finally lost a 4 Star Wanted level and survived 5 minutes a 6 Stars) other times I do one of the many missions available to me and other times I just go around blowing the crap out of things.  Even the multiplayer is fun (if not more intense than I generally need).

I’m afraid GTAIV will end up like GTAIII or Oblivion where I just kind of quit about 30% into the game.  Oh well though, I’ve gotten plenty of hours of entertainment out of the thing.

Anyway, if you’ve got a console and haven’t picked this up yet, what’s your deal?  Go do it already.

I don’t really know.  I will say that it’s good for Democrats throughout the country to get to have some say in the nominee.  It’s pretty cool that even in these last weeks that people are still getting excited about having a chance to go out and vote.

I’m pretty sick of pundits talking about crap at this point but I already don’t watch the news or political shows (and actively discourage others from doing the same thing) so I don’t really know what else I can do.  It’s hard to believe that the first ballot was cast just a little over 4 months ago.  It seems much longer than that.

Still, with the changing of the seasons hopefully we’ll get a nice clean start and a nominee here in the next couple weeks, letting the general campaign can begin in earnest.

Either way, I hope we don’t end up hosed for another 4 years because people are pissed off at each other from the primary.  There are so many things that happen just based on the letter next to whoever is president that we can’t really afford another term of the status quo.

Who am I kidding, at this point in my life I’m more invested in GTA IV than I am in the political process.  Cops ‘n’ Crooks is a lot of fun though so I think you’ll understand.