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I found this track from the Gary Numan tribute album RANDOM... it's awesome. What ever happened to Matt Sharp? I'm friends with P. Particularly spooky is An Pierce's take on "Are Friends Electric?", I wish I could have afforded this double disc set when it came out a couple years ago. If you haven't heard the song, it's main riff was ripped off in a cosmetics commercial and a Sugababes song this last year. Also guilty in this category are Basement Jaxx - the riff from "Where's Your Head At" is a slightly sped up sample from "M.E.". Me I eat dust, We're All so Run Down. I love the Pleasure Principle - bar none a fantastic record. All the human ornaments era albums are wicked rad. Maybe I should replace my vinyl copies with CDs. The last CD I bought of his was 1996's "Exile", which was a very industrial collection of songs. Apparently I've missed a couple records so I'll have to be on the lookout, because Exile was a fave when I was going through a NIN/Goth electronica phase a couple years ago.

I spent all day today running to the bathroom and back. Picked up a bug from something I ate.

Video games are rushing out again. I'm almost through Metroid Prime (without a FAQ!) and there's tons of material for me to sink my teeth into. I spent all day at work "evaluating" Freelancer and have found it to be an acceptable substitute for Privateer 3. It goes in the "Buy" pile (as soon as I obtain a good enough computer to play it at home). Moo3 is preordered and picked up. My Zelda : Ocarina of Time bonus disc was picked up last night as well! A whole new set of HOMM4 campaigns are coming out soon. I've been playing a lot of games lately. Since Christmas I've finished Yoshi's Island, Metroid Fusion, 2 scenarios of HOMM4 and bits and pieces of a couple other games. I'm about 25% through Res. Evil 0 (not in the mood to continue it atm). Gee I need to do more exercise and hobby coding.

Movie night crowd is coming over on Thursday night for a 'git-together! Computer karaoke is on the agenda!

Also, my close personal friend, Ryan Fitzpatrick has his blog, Process Documents, up. If you are interested in current events articles and long form poetry, by all means swing by. Ryan also gave me a copy of "evergreen : six new poets", a collection of poetry he is featured in. I read his section tonight and while it may take me a while to analyze everything in it, I felt like I understood the ideas and images being painted. I am not a trained or particularly astute poet but I enjoyed reading it thoroughly, and I intend to give it a second pass here after some mulling.

You know, I hate to ask.. but are friends electric???

Listening To : Matt Sharp + Damon Albarn - We have a technical

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Monday night... lots to update. On Saturday night, I went to see Pocket Dwellers with Mark, Christine and Ryan. They put on quite the show at the Night Gallery, even though we showed up super early and had to wait forever for things to pick up. Actually as soon as DJ Djewel started spinning, the wait went quickly. I met a lovely lady named Melanie who had received a lap dance earlier in the evening (It was her 30th birthday!) and was very excited about it. Also, while we were waiting, Gord the bass player for the band came over and introduced himself. He told us about the new live CD and about how the tour was going.

Getting to see a gig with the gang was a blast, and it was really fun earlier in the day to practise with just me and Ryan. Songwriting seems to be coming together well, we have 6 songs in the bag, and if we can get 4 or more together I think we'll be ready to record our demo ep and get our act together. AS6.com is getting designed and structured with a lil' help from Christine.

I haven't really added that many features to any of my projects lately, but I've been getting lots of quality hangout time with my friends, which has been awesome! Mark and I had an awesome discussion after con.Verge last night... maybe even a life changing one. I feel sometimes that my cynicism is a difficult burden to bear, and something that I need to deal with in order to grow in my faith. I listened to David Cross' new comedy album, and it just pointed to me that his extreme cynicism is the way that I've been conditioned to act to everything besides my faith, and that it seeps into it and can make me into a total jackass. It's something I want to avoid in the future, that's for sure.

I missed Amanda's call tonight. DOH! I was out hanging with pals at Grant's place!

Listening To : the Aquabats - The Invisible Man

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The last week and a bit has been INSANE... I finally finished my ASME paper, and submitted it on last Friday. On Friday, I went grocery shopping for my ski trip, rented skis, prepared some tabs for guitar, met some out of town SF'ers for some casual play, picked Jill up and went for Valentines Kareoke BLOW OUT! IT WAS AWESOME! We met some old guy named Mr. T who brought, I kid you not, props and outfits for each number. I wasn't intimidated because I kicked out the jams with soul shaking versions of Guns 'N Roses' "Sweet Child of Mine" and the Doors' "Touch Me". Crowd pleasers to be sure. I was so tired though, so I slept in on Saturday morning.

Saturday morning I left around 10 to go to the hill, went to the hostel first to drop off my stuff, and managed to get a half day of skiing with Fox in. Also did a half day on Sunday, although conditions weren't as good. The baby situation at the hostel was ok, I wasn't wakened by them once, although I was wakened by the bed because it was too short for me. The time spent at the hostel was awesome, punctuated by some guitar singalong of variable quality (I'm not entirely responsible OR innocent either), some games of Settlers (MATT CAN'T WIN!), and lots of good hanging out and making new friends. There was a pretty awesome game of Guesstures too (I had to act out BEAVER). My only regrets were that we didn't hit the hot tub at the Delta, or get more skiing in, but there wasn't much that could be done about that. This was my first ski trip where it wasn't just a bunch of single folks and a keg (there were lots of health conscious folks there because I think they were all part of a X-country ski club) so it was different, but still lots of fun.

This week has been pretty good, not too busy, decompressing after a bit of a rough stretch. Going out with Amanda on Friday night. Playin' 3s at Trung's house tonight. Doing a little work on my MP3 Organizer program and the OpenGL Settlers today.

Listening To : Green Day - Brain Stew/Jaded

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So this week's quote is from the Sex Pistols' "New York", which was apparently originally entitled "New York (Dolls)", after the eponymous band. If you put the lyrics in context, it's pretty obvious that it's a harsh (hypocritical, homophobic and angry) indictment of the Dolls. This lyric refers back to the lyrics of "Looking for a Kiss", which is a pretty harsh little song of it's own ("I just want a hit and a kiss").

For those of you that don't know, the New York Dolls were a band from the early 70's, who christened the punk rock tradition of dying of Heroin overdoses, even BEFORE they became famous. They're most noted for their raw, distorted guitar sounds, and their pioneering presence in the punk and glam rock scenes in New York at the time. They dressed in drag, and did that just like they did everything else, in as crude a fashion as possible. Musically, they played a lot of blues influenced rock as well as 60's girl group pop, but some songs like "Jet Boy" are rollicking romps through early punk/new wave syles. Combining this you could say they were pretty much the shock rockers of the time. I recently picked up the New York Dolls' self-titled CD after hearing some of the tracks off the internet. It's a good disc that I'd recommend to anyone who enjoys proto-punk, trash rock or 70's music. Although there's some pretty bad blues-based songs inbetween the gems (ed.-the gems would be Looking for a Kiss, Bad Girl, Jet Boy), but they're mostly forgivable, especially when considering that it's their debut and this was recorded in 1973. Remember, "Raw Power" by the Stooges is blues based too!

After doing some research on the net, I came up with the shocker discovery of the day. Whatever happened to the lead singer of the NYDs, David Johansen? He's famous. He's probably someone you've seen on TV. You probably have a track of his, on an 80's compilation disc... "David Jo Hansen" is none other than....

BUSTER POINDEXTER!!!!

This may not be a revalation to some musicologists, or rock lore enthusiasts.. but I was frankly pretty shocked. Now you have to ask yourself, was it a good thing or bad thing to do the image change. He didn't die of a heroin overdose as I believe everyone else in the band did, that's a definate upside. He got 15 minutes of fame in the 80's and got to hang out with Joe Piscopo, and the rest of the cast of SNL... that must have been pretty cool. On the other hand, he doesn't have the same level of cultural capital, as say Johnny Rotten, the Ramones, or even other members of New York groups have (as most of us who were kids in the 80's remember him as the "Hot, Hot, Hot" guy, who Young MC made fun of).

I was thinking it would be awesome though if they reanimated the rest of the band, and they had a reunion tour. THIS SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SOMEDAY, The ultra-crude, rude, proto-punk, zombie-drag rock reunion tour of the DECADE (decade, decade). Featuring 4 (4, 4, 4) Reanimated Corpses, including ZOMBIE JOHNNY THUNDERSzzz (THUNDERZZZZZ). Performing live and undead, songs from 30 years ago, some of which are BAD (bad, bad, bad). This may not happen again, until the Voodoo zombie reanimation spells are useable again... so call TICKETMASTER NOW!!!

Anyways, pNucky McPunx0r... that's my take on the whole thing... I still think it's pretty funny, and that's one more piece of useless trivia in my brain (and now yours, if you remember). Of course, it wouldn't be useless if you met Buster Poindexter, and how often does THAT happen?

Listening To : The Sex Pistols - New York

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That's probably my favorite pop lyric from the last year. I've sang it and meant it so many times over the last year, and I finally think I understand it. Last weekend at the retreat was fantastic. I reconnected with the community, made some new friends, and renewed friendships that I hadn't for years. I met a girl who seems to be somewhat interested in me, and I'm learning for the first time how to be vulnerable after being made exceptionally jaded. I don't know that much about her, but I think I want to know a little more.

I'm just doing some laundry before I go to bed... I want nice dry gym clothes for tomorrow..

Work is going well (aside from today, where I played some 3s with Trung, and almost finished the barbarian campaign from HOMM4). I need to get cracking on that ASME paper. 67 2nd draft thesis pages are in the can, and counting.

Also, I've been tuning into www.animutations.com and have been dazzled at the insanity of the movies... quite cool and funny.

Last night I dreamt I was a pro-wrestler, whose gimmick was to distribute warez to the audience.

That is all, back in the evil jar for you!

Listening To : Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Love Burns

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