I got the subject line from I believe another comment someone made either on my journal or another one. But that is OK.

Today was basically the first day this week I didn't wake up with a migraine and have to go to work late. Hooray!

Also -- KCTS, one of my local PBS stations, has said that despite whatever PBS may do, they are going to keep Mister Rogers on every day, so that is good. Hooray!

The Point of this post, however:

OK, every morning I have my clock radio set to The Worst Goddamn Morning Show In The World And That Is Fucking Saying Something, basically because beeping is too harsh, but bad radio makes me want to get up and not lie in bed forever. (For a while, I had the local Christian Pop station on, but that wasn't bad RADIO, just bad MUSIC, and really soft and mellow music besides, so it didn't really work out so well.)

But things about this bad radio show are maddening. So, I guess I have the side effect of waking up pissed, but that's OK. For example, in Seattle, our city council has just passed a law that'll kick in next year where if you get plastic bags at stores, you'll be charged an extra 20 cents per bag. Admittedly, I'm a little torn on this issue -- it strikes me as definitely a Heart In The Right Place type of thing, but I'm worried that it'll hit the poor hardest, which is Teh Suck.

HOWEVER, the dude on the radio, whenever this is brought up, he goes on a tirade about how they're "taking away our freedoms" and "taking away our rights". Non-ironically. Dude actually believes that, um, apparently "not paying 20 cents for a plastic bag" is in the Constitution. Perhaps the 8.5th Amendment. "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. Also, plastic bags are meant to be free, and fees shall not be required of any sort, nor even inexcessive fines imposed".

So, yeah, dude's a douchetard.

HOWEVER -- this morning, it wasn't ABOUT HIM that set me off.

They had a phone psychic in. Actually, OK, this one is kind of funny. The phone psychic had done a phoner, and was talking to the hosts and then was going to take calls. The one call that I heard was a woman asking if she'd get pregnant. She (i.e. the psychic) says, roughly, here "Yes, but you'll need medical help to do it. You'll have to go to your doctor -- but don't worry, because they've got all sorts of things that can help you produce more eggs, so you'll be OK."

Um, I don't even have the equipment and I know that's wrong.

Then, the hosts ask why she thinks the caller will need fertility treatments.

She says "The caller sounds like an older woman [No, she didn't - Ed.] and a lot of older women need help with that."

So, basically, she then ADMITS to cold reading... poorly...

But then, the caller goes "But I'm not really that old, I'm only (28-32.... can't remember the exact age, but it was in that range.)!"

The psychic still decided to not back down, but ended up disconnecting shortly afterwards. Oddly enough, no one called her on it host-wise (but then, hosts==douchetards), and that was when I got up and turned off the alarm, half annoyed and half amused.

(A couple weeks ago, the hosts were bitching about how they weren't even NOMINATED for the CMAs for best morning radio show. It was amusing because:
a) They kept going ON AND ON about this
b) No one cares but them
c) You NEVER do that sort of thing, for realsies. You might mention it if you DO get nominated, but you never bitch if you DON'T. You just don't bring it up. It's sort of like not mentioning other stations on the air -- you don't remind people that other shows/stations exist.
d) No fucking SHIT you weren't nominated, CHRIST.)

http://www.savemisterrogers.com

(via superdaintykate)

I've just sent letters to PBS and my two local PBS stations. Feel free to use this as a springboard for ideas, but PLEASE write your own letter:

I was incredibly saddened when I discovered that Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was going to be removed from the national PBS daily syndicated feed in September. Mister Rogers is one of the best television shows for children -- past, present and future. He teaches not only informational knowledge but EMOTIONAL knowledge -- compassion, understanding and, above all else, love. People of all ages need those skills, and Fred Rogers was the best person I've ever seen at teaching those. He has been one of my biggest heroes for a very long time, and I was lucky enough to grow up watching his show -- and even years later, at 28, I still enjoy watching the show. It was a tragedy when the man died, but at least we can still turn on the television to visit with our favorite kindly neighbor. I encourage you to -- even if the national PBS doesn't change their mind -- still carry Mister Rogers on a daily basis.

Thank you very much for your time.

EDIT: I've just posted this to Kittysneezes, too, and added a couple of links, including the facebook group, mcbrennan's post about writing your Senators and Representatives, and the article on Digg to vote up.

I mentioned it in the last post, but I think it got buried, so here goes again:

I am seriously considering commissioning/producing/whatever an animated short based on A Furry Story. Sadly, mister_f/Joe has no animation experience. Which is too bad, since I think his style would be just about perfect. But hopefully I'll be able to figure somethin' out. (I wish that I could draw and/or use Flash, but man, I am no good at either.)

I also got a bunch of wooden puppets for shorts as well, which I'm hoping to work on soon.

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The new Sparks album is FUCKING AWESOME. I liked Hello Young Lovers and Li'l Beethoven quite a bit, but the new one combines the strengths of both those records and amplifies them, cutting out any weaknesses. (Well, with Li'l Beethoven, I think about the only weakness was that the orchestral samples tended to sound like, well, samples, and the samples on here sound much, much more real.) I'm really happy on this one. I might review it for Kittysneezes; I'm not quite sure yet. Even if I don't though, you should still buy this album. Like, RIGHT FUCKING NOW. For reals.

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Last night I got to see Dr. Demento live! That was AWESOME! He basically did a live version of his radio show, with lots of cool video footage (including a rare Tom Lehrer performance and a VERY rare Steve Goodman performance! Not to mention two live performances from Dana Lyons ("Cows with Guns") and Jef Jaisun ("Frendly Neighborhood Narco Agent"). I got to meet Jef after the show and got a photo and bought the two 45s of "Friendly Neighborhood" -- the original, self-released one, and the Warner Bros. one that WB always claimed didn't exist. (He told the story where basically, the song was first released to wider distribution on one of Dr. Demento's WB albums -- and the song was a HUGE hit and kept the album in the top 200 for quite a while. And WB hated the song, mainly because of the drug references, but the Doc loved it and insisted it be on, and had the amount of requests and polls from fans to back him up. So, WB relented, and then pressed up the 45, but then ended up disowning it, and claiming it didn't exist. Jef said he actually got the ones he got by swiping them from the offices in Santa Monica!)

And then afterwards, I got to meet Dr. Demento! He's basically the reason I got into radio, and so, I was basically starstruck. I've gotten pretty good at NOT being starstruck anymore, because, you know, they're just normal people and all that, but that all went out the window with Dr. Demento, because he's NOT a normal person, he's basically a god and a hero to me. So, I got all starstruck and ended up kinda not really knowing what to say, so it was a little awkward, but I don't care, I got to meet him, and he was nice, so that was awesome. Dr. D!

I also got to meet Clay Eals, who wrote a huge book on Steve Goodman, and actually bought the copy of the book he read from on stage, as it was the only one he had with him (though he has a garage full, so it wasn't like I was putting him out or anything), and that was pretty awesome too. Steve Goodman was rad -- you might not know his name, but I can guarantee you know his songs. For example, "You Never Even Called Me By My Name" by David Allan Coe. Or, you know, a little thing called "City of New Orleans" (a/k/a to some people "Good Morning, America, how are ya"). You know, by Arlo Guthrie and Willie Nelson and just about everyone else. Insanely good songwriter, there, and a guy who did a lot of funny stuff, too. (Well, "You Never Even Called Me By My Name" is pretty funny, too, particularly the verse that makes it the Perfect Country Song.)

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I also finished What Is The What yesterday, which is very good, and I can see why Ben thinks of it as uplifting even though it is pretty depressing, too. It IS uplifting, and it's a damn good book. Y'all should read it.

I was basically gonna post this stuff in order of writing, but this is too awesome to shove at the bottom. Josh/etjabberwock just done himself up a short film, Rocket Man and it is FUCKING AWESOME. So go check it out, and check out his production company thingy at http://www.unfairdinkum.com/. Josh did a really insanely good job with this one. Only thing I noticed is that some of the audio was a little eh, but turns out he knew that, too and it's not THAT bad or anything, just stuff I noticed 'cause I'm kind of a sound guy.

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OK, so as folks maybe know, my apartment overlooks the beautiful Virginia Mason Parking Structure. And yesterday, for some idiotic reason, they decided that it would be a good idea to pressure-wash it. Despite the fact that NO ONE WOULD FUCKING EVER CARE EVER if a parking structure has some tire dirt and whatnot on there. But it turns out they only did the top two tiers, so they started again TODAY at 9AM, and man, I am gonna have to kill a fucker aren't I? It's funny because the ONLY reason to do something like that is to get the people in the apartment buildings nearby to want to kill a fucker. 'Cause, really, even if people DID care about their parking structures being clean:
a) It's Seattle, so there's enough rain and whatnot to wash that stuff naturally
b) Looking at the actual lots.... they're not even doing a GOOD JOB.

For reals, this is basically like the whole complaint charged against leaf blowers, where it's like a bunch of noise for a job done that is inferior to a rake. But at least with a rake, you actually have to expend effort that is saved by a leaf blower. The "rake" option here is the RAIN. Which doesn't even require effort. So, come ON.

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I am seriously considering commissioning/producing/whatever an animated short based on A Furry Story. Sadly, mister_f/Joe has no animation experience. Which is too bad, since I think his style would be just about perfect. But hopefully I'll be able to figure somethin' out. (I wish that I could draw and/or use Flash, but man, I am no good at either.)

I also got a bunch of wooden puppets for shorts as well, which I'm hoping to work on soon.

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From the_terrible:

♥ People who have been tagged must write their answers on their blogs & replace any question that they dislike with a new question formulated by themselves.

♥ Tag 8 people to do this quiz & those who are tagged cannot refuse. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. These people must state who they were tagged by & cannot tag the person whom they were tagged by. Continue this game by sending it to other people. [Hell no. You wanna do it, you do it. I'm not your NetMom. - Ed.]
( Der Memen )

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BORING RELATIONSHIP STUFF: So, like, this girl I was dating for a while ended up completely dropping off the face of the earth like, two days before we were gonna all go see the SubPop comedy thing. (Which was kind of annoying as I'd already bought her ticket, at least for one thing. Luckily, immediately after deciding to abandon the extra ticket, someone wanted to buy it, so I broke even! Yay) And, like, yeah. I've kind of made my peace with it, but it's still kind of annoying and sad and makes me wonder why it is that this is like the second time this has happened to me, where it's been all "Oh, everything is wonderful and we seem to be really into each other and then poof" so, yeah. I don't know. I know nothing is permanent, at least according to Brave Combo, and I can accept that, but it'd be nice to know WHAT exactly happened, y'know? So it's a learning process or whatnot. Or even just if it's "We're not working out despite appearances" or whatnot. Makes it easier to accept. Last night, we were supposed to go to the NIN show, but obviously that didn't happen, seeing as she hasn't contacted me (even been online AFAICT - just happened to check her MySpace and she IS online now in fact, so, huh. I still haven't heard from her and after the whole "Uh, where are you?!?!" type stuff from the day and day before the Sub Pop Comedy Show, I'm deciding to pick up the hint, unless she contacts me. Still, I suppose it's good to know she's alive and I won't be contacted by police looking for her whereabouts or anything.).

But that worked out as Dale, Ben and I went to the first half of the No Borders No Limits thing at the film forum which was AWESOME (particularly The Warped Ones, a/k/a Season Of Heat and, in dubbed/edited form The Weird Lovemakers), so hey. I wouldn't have been able to go to that if I'd been at NIN, so there you go! Hooray! And on Friday, Ben & I are gonna go see Dr. Demento (instead of said girl; by which I mean she and I would see Dr. D, not that Ben & I would see her, which would be kind of weird). So, uhm, yeah. I guess things work out, but it still would have been nice to have warning or somethin'.

I guess this sort of works with the whole single question above. I get lonely, but I've been single for most of my life and so I basically know how that works, too. So, yeah. I guess. Still, though.

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Yay, the pressure-washers have finally stopped! Though they did this yesterday, too, all playing with my emotions, thinkin' they're done and I can think again, and then start back up right away. Boo to that and them.

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I've been posting lots of little things to my Facebook profile, including three things today that were awesome from the Bulldada Newsblog so hooray for that! Check them out. They are rad. As is the Newsblog in general.

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Also, Ben and I saw Last Year At Marienbad on Thursday, which was pretty awesome. I recommend it, I think. The cinematography was beautiful, and I definitely have a soft spot for surrealist film. Which I am kind of amused by considering that all my stuff honestly seems to be pretty straight-forward.

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I am also thinking that I should ask here w/r/t doll clothing and, um, doll socks, I think mom said they were called? Basically for the puppets to dress them up and do different faces and whatnot with them. So, um, yeah. I'm a-askin'.

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OH man, I forgot that there was somethin' awesome on MeFi, but I forgot to check it. Let me see if I can find it.

OH! That's right! It was a thing on Strong Machine II! Yaaay! She is AWESOME.

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I also got a new cell phone, which is awesome. It was free, which is great, due to some sort of special. It works a lot better than my old phone which I hated AND I took a better picture of my cat to be the wallpaper so that is good, too.

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Speaking of cats, Dale is kind of taking care of a neighborhood stray. I have named her Cap'n Jimmy, but the neighbors have named her Piper. I like my name better. People keep questioning me on the name, and I'm all like "man, why don't you think that girls can be captains?" Sexism is fuckin' rampant, man.

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Also, my dad just ordered a brand new synthesizer! It's a Roland SH-201, which has gotten great reviews, and it's analog-modelling and, well, a ROLAND, which is pretty grand. So yes! (Though if my or his name were Ronald, I would totally make him do it all Ron Mael style.) So that is pretty awesome.

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Speaking of Ron Mael, any word on when the new album comes out in the US, dammit? Or the new DVD? Or anything else Sparks? Dang.

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Also -- on Tuesday, there's going to be a really awesome, long, in-depth interview on Kittysneezes, so check that out.

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Yep. Fucker's back at the pressurewashing.

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Man, I just realized that I'd always thought "Stratford-On-Guy" was "Strange Loop". What the hell is wrong with me. It's not like I don't FUCKING LOVE the song, too. Goddamn I am an idiot.

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OK. Joy Junction On Porn:

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OK, I am bored with not posting this so here.

a) In regards to the previous, friends-locked post, basically it's Status Quo for right now, and since I dig "Pictures of Matchstick Men", I'm fine with that.

B) spasmsproject did an interview meme! Here it is:

Their reply was:

1) Can you imagine yourself as a father?

I think so. I actually would like to have one kid. But just one. Since, I don't know, more seems weird. Perhaps that's just because I'm an only child. I don't know. But I'd like that. I WOULD LIKE TO SIRE A LITTLE GIRL

2) Truth or dare?

Truth, because if worse comes to worst, you can always lie!


3) Are you, or have you ever been, or do you ever intend to be, in this
nation or in any other, with the understanding that you are speaking
under oath and anything you say may be used against you, a marmoset?
Answer carefully.

No. Though they are pretty adorable.


4) Do you believe in a god?

Nope! It's just never really made sense to me, so there you have it. However, I don't particularly care if other people do, as being so hung up on what other people believe is not only silly, but kind of unattractive no matter the side of the fence it's coming from.

5) What about Naomi?

I like that song a lot. And the name, too, actually.

joshkassel is a big jerk and tagged me for a meme.

Here is the gist:

"List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to."


1. Ladytron - Ghosts
The new single/video from the new Ladytron album (which is VERY good, BTW), and it's insanely catchy. I am CONSTANTLY singing it to myself. Please make it stop. Because there's a ghost in me. Who wants to say "I'm sorry". It doesn't mean I'm sorry.

2. Sparks - Amateur Hour
I just picked up the "21st Century Edition" or somesuch of the first three Island albums. And I was able to sit down and go over the lyrics, and I really like the reference to Yehudi Menuhin which I'd missed the first bazillion times I heard the song. I also like that the song is about how it's OK to fumble sex for the first time. Another thing I didn't realize the first time through.

3. OutKast - Ghetto Musick
I think I even put this on one of the most recent mixes I did? Perhaps "Cup From A Sip Of Mercury"? If not, it's a good contender anyway. This is a really, really great song, and I just love the lyrics and flow. And the production is cool too. I also just heard "The Love Hater" again this morning on my iPod, and it reminded me again how much Andre 3000 must really love Zappa. Because that's one of the more Zappa-y tracks on Love Below, which itself is pretty Zappa-y.

4. Frank Zappa - My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama
This is SUCH a great angry rock song, and then it's got the weird bridge where it's kind of dissonant, then it goes into prettiness, then it goes back into the song. Zappa was great at those sorts of bridges that simultaneously don't sound like they should work in the song and DO work SO well.

5. Nirvana - Lake Of Fire
It's only been relatively recently that I've really gotten IN to Nirvana. I mean, I've always pretty much appreciated them, but I never really considered myself a fan. I'm still not a huge fan, but I really like their version of the Meat Puppets song. That Unplugged album was pretty grand all the way through, actually.


6. Chumbawamba - Jacob's Ladder
A great song from the Readymades album. Pretty cinematic and it really makes me want to write something based on it. Oddly enough, I'm pretty sure it's already based on something that actually happened as, um, a lot of their songs seem to be. That's what happens when you got an agenda, I suppose. You write a lot of great pop songs about true tragedies.

7. Foetus - DI-1-9026
Foetus is a band that I am sort of "Jesus, where the fuck was I?" on because I had known of them for a while, and even did a LOT of reading about them one day about... sheeit, 7 or 8 years ago, just reading everything on foetus.org, with the discography and everything, and for some reason, I only (relatively) recently checked Thirwell out (It's been a couple years now -- right about when Love -- a fucking GREAT record, BTW -- came out) and oh god so amazing. If you dig Industrial, you GOTTA know Foetus if you don't already. And if you don't dig Industrial... check out Foetus anyway, becuase Thirwell is an amazing songwriter/composer/whathaveyou and just does some really amazing stuff, be it harsh, big-band style, jazzy or even just really poppy. This one's on Nail, which is a really good album, and I just got Sink, an Odds-and-Sods type compilation which is pretty much wall to wall awesome too. (Like Damp, it's sort of a "this is the stuff you threw away?" deal.)

OK! TAGGING!!!!

boringpostcards, because it's actually just a coincidence you had the same Foetus track on your muxtape a couple days after I started really digging that song.
vovat - Since we have similar tastes anyway and you like memes besides!
limnrix; ditto
bettie_spyder... because you're sort of posting again and also have good music taste
aila76 | Again with the music taste.
goethe_re_scape = a dude with good and wide-ranging taste
you $ your MOM.

Ladytron and Datarock were AWESOME. And it was cool, because they played "Transformer Man" from Neil Young's Trans, which was a nice surprise. But still, Ladytron do one of the best live shows I've ever seen, and this was no exception. Goddamn they are amazing. I got to pick up the new record at the show (it doesn't come out for a couple weeks), so that will be pretty rad as well. I haven't listened to it yet, but they played a bunch of it at the show, and, well, it was all really good.

Datarock were likewise awesome, and I picked up their record and a shirt too. So, hooray! I like shows where all the bands are good.

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When I was younger, I used to always joke when a diaper ad came on that "Someone, somewhere, is getting off on this." And, well, D'oh. Granted, that can be said for everything, ever, so, um, yeah. Perhaps we can find people who get off on tampon and douche ads, as those can be pretty awkward. Or, you know, people who wanna fuck Meat Loaf so that goddamn phone ad can go away. (via the Bulldada Newsblog)

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I recently got a review copy of Vaistron from Slave Labor Graphics for Kittysneezes -- yaaaay! The book was really good, so check for the review hopefully this Thursday. Tuesday shall have something pretty dang awesome too, now that I've gotten through all the Youtubage.

Also: I'm kinda wanting to get on more review lists for Kittysneezes (which also will help other Kittysneezes contributors as well, since I'll hook them up with stuff too if they want) -- so, if anyone's got any advice for goin' about that, that'd be awesome.

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PIE!

When it first aired, I was about 2 or 3, and my parents were watching the original miniseries, and I remember watching parts of it, and kinda noticing that they all seemed to be wearing the uniforms that Mork wore when he talked to Orson, but the scene with the guy spraypainting "V" on the posters (providing the logo) freaked the holy bejeezus out of me, and I'd had nightmares for a VERY long time about the V.

To this day, I have still not seen V, and I even still get a little bit of a chill when I see the logo in a video store or something. I mean, I can look at it now -- when I was little, I'd end up freaking out a bit and hiding my eyes. Which is admittedly kinda silly, having nightmares about a friggin' LETTER.

One of the biggest nightmares I had -- and this is very, very odd, I know -- is that there would be shots of standard, random objects with the "V" in the lower left corner like a music video, then after a bit, the V would grow out of the corner to take up the whole image, the background would flash black-and-white with the huge V in front, then it would shrink back to the corner with a new random object. The one I mainly remember was a metal whistling teapot.

One of the other really odd nightmares I remember having was when my mom told me about the song "Medicated Goo" by Traffic. I don't know if I've ever actually heard the song, honestly. But she'd mentioned it as one of her favorite songs, and for some reason, the title just really triggered something in my brain, and I had nightmares that would be shots of surgeons doing, well, surgery -- no gore or anything in the dream; they were all around the patient, which was surrounded by a blue tent like you sometimes see, and the word "MEDICATED" in green, glowing letters would be superimposed on this image. This was around when I was in Kindergarten.

So, Friday was pretty dang awesome; it was the day of the Tim & Eric live show. And it was AWESOME. Great Job. They brought a bunch of folks with them, too, including Pierre, James Qualls, the Sit On You Guy and David Liebe Hart (!!). Tim & Eric said that they hadn't actually done that on any show for the tour, so this was the first night they'd done that particular show. So that was pretty neat. I also got hit in the face with a hot dog thrown by Eric! Even though I was relatively back-middle of the crowd, when it hit my cheek, it stung a little bit. Good arm, Eric!

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Yesterday was Free Comic Book Day, so I walked down to Zanadu. I don't think I quite get Free Comic Book Day, as I ended up buying way too many comics, but hey. Picked up volumes 5 and 6 of Doom Patrol, and the next Invisibles volume that I didn't have, along with some Alan Moore stuff (including his novel Voice of the Fire) and the Kochalka stuff I didn't have. And the new Jhonen Vazquez "Jellyfist". That was cool.

At the end of the day, though, I accidentally spilled water on my keyboard, which sucked, but I got a ride to the Apple Store from my mom and got a new one -- one of the new, redesigned ones, which I'm actually really kinda digging, really. I have to get a little used to the new layout of the function keys, but that's OK.

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Today is Dale's birthday! Also Kent State Day! That's how I remember! But yes! On Friday, I gave him his gift, so that was cool. (It was a Korg Micro; an analog-modelling synth with a built in vocoder. It's pretty keen.)

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Been making my way through Six Feet Under; it's a little frustrating going, just because, well, the 3rd season is UTTERLY USELESS, and the Fourth, as Kevin Millard said, doesn't honestly seem THAT much better... though I'm about on the 9th episode, and it seemed that the last disc was a bit better.

The most frustrating thing about the third season was that the show completely changed around -- for the worse -- and then, spent a bunch of time working on getting it back to Status Quo. I'm kind of annoyed how the deaths at the beginning are more likely to actually have nothing to do with the actual episode (like, f'rinstance, the one with the woman who died from a bloody nose; she was in the actual episode for two seconds when they go "Oh, how'd she die" "From a bloody nose." "Oh, weird." and then they immediately go back to the Dead Fat Guy plot. So, like, why not have the opening death be the Fat Guy, since he's actually PART OF THE PLOT and all. Oh well.), and, well, the character of Lisa was absolutely awful. I'm not sure if she was SUPPOSED to be absolutely awful, but, hey. And it appears that Joe is Brenda's (slightly less awful) Lisa, but at least it looks like he's out of the picture now, at least as of Fourth Season, 8th Episode. But yeah.

From the third season, I came very, very close to just reading the before-episode blurbs and skipping the actual episodes up through the fifth season, which is supposed to be just as good. So, basically for the most part, I've been slogging through to get to the Fifth Season, though I'm kinda wondering if I really needed to, since it doesn't really seem that any of the character arc-type changes are going to actually stick really. Lisa and Joe have been dispatched so Nate and Brenda can get back together, it's looking like George and Ruth are breaking up, Claire and Russell have broken up, and yeah. I'm betting dollars-to-donuts that Rico and Vanessa get back together, and we'll be back where we are coming into the fifth season, only with the addition of Maya.

How I would have worked it, is basically have the Third Season start with Nate recovering from his surgery, but NOT married to Lisa, and then having Ruth still be involved with Maya's life, and then when Lisa wanders off into the sunset, Maya's left with Ruth, who gives her to Nate, and there we go. Addition of Maya to the cast without the idiotic Lisa plot. Because, seriously, was she NOT supposed to be a stupid, flake harpy? I mean, near the end Nate was getting sick of her, but, well, um, she didn't really change. She was always like that. So, um, what, was he just not paying attention? Arrgh. Such a stupid, stupid, stupid plot.

Also: Don't even get me started on the David-Gets-Carjacked Episode. And how it starts with him getting gas for the dude at what seems like about noon, then trying to find an ATM at like, 7 or 8 or 9 at night. Dude, um, ATMs? Not hard to find. At all. They don't take like, six-nine hours to find. Come on. And when David knocked out the bad guy by accident and then, you know, DIDN'T TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT, come ON. ARGGH. So stupid. Stupid, stupid episode.

But it looks like I'm set to finish the fourth season today, so I can get to the fifth/last pretty soon, which I'm kind of excited for, since I really want to like Six Feet Under but the last two seasons have made it pretty difficult. It's a good thing I'm watching these on a cheap-DVD set that I bought, because I think if I were watching them as they aired, I'd have potentially even stopped watching after the Third Season Premiere. Wow, what a dog of an episode.

Basically: Does anyone know what HAPPENED here? Why did the show not only get worse, but get SO FUCKING bad? I know that apparently Rachel Griffiths got pregnant which made her have to be in the first few episodes a bit less, but, um, jeez, could they have handled it any more poorly?

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MEME! Cap'n Jimmy vovat came up with this one! (I don't know why I called him that there, his name's Nathan.) It's pretty good. From his post:

Here's a meme-style game I just recently thought up, which for lack of a better title I call "Things You Dislike About Things You Love." Basically, you list some things you enjoy (I ended up listing seven, but I don't think the number should be set in stone; it's cool if you think of more), and then mention an aspect of each that you don't like. You can be creative with them, but try to go with something that's more of a general trend than a specific item. For instance, don't choose a particular episode of a TV show, or a particular song by a band. That might also make (and probably is) a good meme, but it's not what I'm going for here.

So, yes. Here's my list.

1. Gary Numan -- that one period in the late 1980s where he started using really, really plastic sounds and the female backup singers which just seemed to make the records so dated sounding. The songs are still good, but the production is just so cheezy-bad.

2. Alt.Country -- The way that it seems a lot of Jam Bands are rolled up into this genre. It doesn't really seem to make a lot of sense to me, though I suppose some of that is more of my blinding hatred for Jam Bands. But really -- I don't really see much kinship between, say, Laura Cantrell and moe., or The Handsome Family and The String Cheese Incident.

3. Family Guy -- A lot of the stories just seem to END, particularly lately. I know this is a little funny for me to complain about, since I've long argued that Family Guy is basically just an animated sketch show, and it's not really worth it to get TOO hung up on the stories, but it is a little odd the way a lot of the recent episodes have just seemed to be "Tape Runs Out". I think, though, this is probably less their doing and more that Fox keeps cutting back the length of shows. Where an episode used to be 22-23 minutes, now they're 20-21.

4. The Simpsons -- It's gotten a little better, but the way that the first act is often completely irrelevant to the rest of the story. Or ones where they seem to burn through about 5 or so plots before settling in on what the REAL episode is. Also, the guest stars who are basically irrelevant, but luckily, they've scaled that waaaay back, too. It seemed that during the Scully era, especially, each episode just had a couple of guest stars for no other reason than to be on the show. This is particularly bad when the guest stars don't understand that voice acting is still acting, and so end up doing this whole "Oh, Hi, I Am Reading Linns. I mean Lines. Sorry."

5. The Dresden Dolls -- How they don't seem to want to do a studio version of "Bank Of Boston Beauty Queen". What's up with that? That's an awesome fucking song! Jeez.

6. CD Selling -- The trend of selling packages of/with blank CDs for you to go and download and burn your own self. Why? Especially when they're not much cheaper than real, pressed CDs I don't have to do anything with. It's stupid. It really is. I like the packaging, sure, but I also like when I buy something, all I have to do is enjoy it, I don't have to fuck around building it and whatnot. (Uh, this doesn't apply to stuff like kits where the building it is part of the implied contract. And sometimes that CAN be fun/enjoyable. But a CD isn't a shelf, people.) I like that, say, with Challengers, you could get future live stuff or whatnot, but, well, the whole remembering-to-go-to-the-website-checking-if-they-got-around-to-posting-anything-and-then-downloading-it-keeping-it-around-until-they-say-it's-complete-and-burnable-and-hoping-they-don't-then-add-new-stuff-anyway thing is a pain in the ass. Why not just have it where you can sign up on their list and they just send you a CD when it's done? Feel free to keep the empty cases in the Executive Edition Package, just instead of a blank disc, you get one in the mail later.

7. Kids -- Why won't they get off my goddamn lawn?

Actually, no.

HOWEVER: On Saturday night, I think at 9.30, 10:00pm, my dad's going to play a show at the Two Bells (on 4th and Bell in Seattle; the place Robyn Hitchcock sings about in "Belltown Ramble" from Olé Tarantula), and since we've both been taking guitar lessons from Earl, that show is gonna be our graduation, since Earl's moving to Sacramento real soon, too.

So, yes! But it'll mostly be Dad's show, but I'll play some stuff! So you can see me forget lyrics to "Drunk By Noon"! And maybe "Souljacker"! I don't know! And Earl'll play stuff, too! Yaaay!

If'n you want to come out, that would be awesome. Assuming you're in/around Seattle.

I might see about videotaping it, too, I don't know.

Been meanin' to write this for a little while now, but here goes! Last week was TV Vacation, when Dale and I took a week off our respective jobs (though it'd be cool if we took a week off each other's jobs), and hung out to watch TV, DVDs and films in theaters. There were actually a lot of theater films that we were delinquent in seeing, so we did a whole mess of that. DVD-wise, we watched The French Connection II, a bunch of John Waters, a bunch of Wonder Showzen, a bunch of Kids In The Hall, some Milk-Chan and some other stuff too. We were also rather disappointed by Flight Of The Conchords, so if anyone wants my DVDs of the first season, lemme know and maybe we can work out a trade/sale/kitten.

ANYWAY, though, THEATER MOVIE WISE! We have a list of films! Also, my thoughts on same!

Walk Hard: I dug this one quite a bit. It's not the best movie in the world, but it's still pretty dang keen. The music in it was awesome, and it wasn't nearly as predictable as some of these type of spoof-movies go. The only downside -- if there was one -- was that Jonah FatkidinSuperbad as Dewey's brother's ghost was sort of meh. He was basically playing his Superbad character, which, according to Janet and Kaethe is basically himself. And, yeah, that seems about as insufferable as they've kinda referred to him being. But he's only in there a little bit, and Dr. Steve Brule is amazing as he usually is. I liked seeing Besser in there, too.

Juno: I. Fucking. Hated. This. Turd. For reals. Oh my god. I know, I know -- I gave it a shot. And, oddly enough, Kimya Dawson WASN'T what I hated most about it! I'm as floored as you are! I mean, jeezus, my Kimya Dawson hatred is fucking LEGENDARY. And... yeah? What the hell. My main hatred is reserved for Diablo Cody. I didn't really know who she was before other than that, as Juno revealed, a terrible fucking writer. After the movie, I looked her up, and it turns out she got her start as a sex blogger. Way to go. Reach for the fucking stars. ANYWAY, though -- the writing. Shit. I mean, jesus. The phrase "Honest To Blog" is in the first five minutes, and I already wanted to kick the movie really, really hard in the crotch. And the interplay between Juno and the Store Clerk was... so terrible. Just basically everything was so goddamn contrived -- particularly the "fake-teenage jibber-jabber" as Dale termed it. No one talks like that. And if they do, I want them to die. I know Ben couldn't fully get behind Knocked Up because of the "OH MY GOD JUST FUCKING HAVE AN ABORTION" theme running through it -- though I agree that that SHOULD have been the answer to that movie, it didn't really bother me. However, it basically did in Juno. Though, luckily, there was so much more wrong with it that it wasn't exactly a deal-breaker. Like the constant namedropping of things to make you know how cool the writer/director are. And, well, Jason Reitman's style is kind of grating, too. He's technically adept, but he's got no soul. It's all flash, no substance. I recently saw Thank You For Smoking (better film than Juno, but, christ, aside from Go and Magnolia what ISN'T), and found it vaguely amusing that the first half or so was full of all the flashy effects and whatnot that were in the trailer... then it kind of stopped, like he got bored with it. Which, well, um, isn't a good thing to have in your movie. Cause if YOU'RE bored with it? Juno was a bit more consistent in this respect, but, um, when the biggest praise you can heap on a film is "Well, it was reasonably consistent in tone and feel, except for a couple of weird detours like the thing about the jocks wanting the nerdy McSweeney's (*coughnamedropcough*) Reading Chicks that seemed kind of left-field but whatever and oh yeah, they did play a couple Belle & Sebastian songs and that was OK," you're... um, not exactly fightin' the good fight there.

So, yeah. Fuck Juno so hard. (maybe she'll die in childbirth this time) oh my god i'm so sorry

Sweeney Todd: This one, however, was out-fucking-standing. I loved this one. Tim Burton is, of course, a genius, and one of those directors like Terry Gilliam who has an absolutely brilliant visual style that makes his films worth seeing REGARDLESS, but also happen to be gifted in the storytelling department. I'd heard people being turned off by the gore, and Dale said even he was to some extent, but it honestly didn't really bother me in the slightest. A couple of cringey parts, but nothing that really BOTHERED me or anything. And the songs were great -- I'm not really familiar with Sondheim, but what I do know I've really enjoyed. When I was spending the week with Kaethe and her parents, we listened to a lot of musical scores and stuff, and the one that I enjoyed the most was Assassins, though I often got the impression in the car, that I was the only one on that one. But I liked it, and I liked this one, too. Sort of a Tom Lehrer-esqueness to his stuff, at least that I've heard. Really, really good. Definitely worth seeing, in the theater if you can swing it.

No Country For Old Men: Oh my god, this one was good. This was the best film of the entire week, and I am annoyed that I waited that long to see it, though it was mostly just because stuff kept coming up and whatnot. But man, it was good. So very, very good. Really, really good. SEE IT. NOW. IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY. BECAUSE I KNOW I CAME LATE TO THIS ONE.

There Will Be Blood: I was really surprised I liked this one as much as I did. After all, it's PT Anderson, and you all know how I feel about Magnolia. But this one was much better; much less of the style-over-substance and an interesting story. It WAS still way too long; someone needs to sit Anderson down and tell him (a few times) that a film doesn't have to be 3 hours to be Important. I've thought about yanking this one down from BitTorrent and re-editing it. I don't know if I will or not -- that'd take quite a chunk of time, particularly for something I probably couldn't share very well -- but I'd probably take out a lot of the overly-extended scenes where nothing much is happening except it allows you to listen to the score. And, um, I know I'm in the minority here, but, well, I thought the score really didn't fit the film and was irritating more often than not. I know a lot of people love it, and were irate that Jonny Greenwood was disqualified from the Oscar, but, ahm, even if he weren't disqualified, I'd be mildly annoyed if he were nominated anyway. Still, though -- worth seeing, though a bit overrated. People seem to be saying this one and No Country are neck-and-neck for best picture of 2007 -- not even close, sorry.

Persepolis: And the last film was REALLY OUSTANDING. Just gripping all the way through. The visual style is beautiful (gorgeous, I dare say) -- it actually reminded me a lot of The Critic, and though you may laugh, I always thought that series didn't get enough credit for being as pretty as it was. I actually bought the book right after the film in the lobby, though I haven't read it yet. But this film just blew me away. I'd still pull for No Country, but if someone were to say that that and Persepolis were neck-and-neck, I would not complain. I know this got nominated for Best Animated Film -- but I don't think it got a nod for Best Picture, which is a shame. This one's a much smaller release, but if it comes to your town GO SEE IT.


AND THAT WAS TV VACATION.

If you want letter grades:

Walk Hard: B
Juno: D- (Belle & Sebastian, I suppose)
Sweeney Todd: A
No Country For Old Men: A+
There Will Be Blood: B
Persepolis: A

This is wicked awesome -- yesterday morning I posted a new interview between Joe and C.H. Greenblatt, the creator of Chowder (and also the voice of Fred Fredburger) on Kittysneezes -- and C.H. linked it! So that is AWESOME. Joe did a really great job, too, so go check it out and tell Joe how much he rocks. (Hint: It is a lot.)

Thanks to mcbrennan, who pointed me in the direction of Dr. Forrest's Cheese Factory, which has the Lancelot Link Soundtrack LP for download as well as Fink Along With Mad the second Mad Magazine Record for Big Top records (the third Mad LP total -- the first was a single on ABC, and the first album was Musically Mad featuring Bernie Green on RCA, then Mad Twists Rock 'n' Roll on Big Top. After that was The Mad Show on Columbia, and I think that was it, until Kid Rhino put out Mad Grooves, a best-of featuring some cuts from the Big Top records and the flexis that came bound in the Super Specials), which is awesome, but I think I basically fell in love with the site when I found that they'd posted this song -- The Wurzel's "Combine Harvester", a re-working/parody of "Brand New Key" by Melanie. I first heard it on Mad Man Moskowitz' show (RIP -- both the show, and sadly, the man) when I was in, like, sixth grade, and I've loved the song ever since... even though I haven't heard it basically SINCE THEN. So there you go. I just about passed out when I saw it for download. So there you go! Go get this from them! It's a good one.

So, I FINALLY fucking got Kittysneezes back online, at least with the generic template. I was kinda wondering if maybe someone could help me put together an at least Decent Template for the site to get it up back and at least not hideous.

Basically, I suppose I am asking:
a) Would you do this?
b) What would you need from me?
c) How much would you think it'd cost, since I know you do this kinda thing for a living besides and I don't wanna be that dude who's all "hey, do stuff you charge money for for me for free because like, mumble mumble!"

But yeah -- friggin' thought I could upgrade to Joomla 1.5 painlessly. NOPE. Then my frigging backup wouldn't work either.

Luckily, I still had the SQL table I had in the conversion, so after about a bajillion false attempts, I was able to get everything back, at least content-wise. But it's still not so hot.

( more venting )

Kittysneezes is currently down. This is because I tried to upgrade to Joomla 1.5 and figured that, you know, it would basically take everything and make it basically work. Or at the very least, keep the original base site templates in there so I wouldn't have to basically fuck around with everything from scratch. NOPE!

So, after fucking around with it, trying to get it to work, I give up, delete everything, and re-upload my backup pulled from the site this morning.

You'd think THAT would work, right?

NOPE!!

So, fuck.

I've got the .sql for Kittysneezes, so none of the content is missing, thankfully, but I'm thinking I might have to RE-upload 1.5, and go from scratch.

Or, you know, if someone could recommend a better CMS that I could import the Joomla .sql data in so I keep all the content and users and whatnot, that'd be good too.

For the time being, though, I'm going to let my crappy FTP client finish uploading, or rather, get to a point where it'll tell me it can't upload the rest of the logs or whatever, and go to bed. I'll deal with it when I get off work. Perhaps in the morning, I'll put up a quick "TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES" sign.

Crap. Is it just too much to ask for things to, you know, work? Without being stupid?

I've been having odd dreams lately. One was this weekend where I dreamt that my sub-par bass playing hurt both my mother's and Amy/spasmsproject's feelings. They wanted to record something, and I said I could help them with that and play bass, and that it'd be OK. But my bass-hubris was unwarranted, because I am but a terrible-to-marginal-at-best bassist, and feelings were hurt that I had wasted their time and ruined their songs.

Do not call on me to play bass -- I will only let you down.

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I had another dream last night where a friend of the family (no one in particular/real life -- just general "Oh, these people are Friends Of The Family" type knowledge that comes in dreams), where I had liked them quite well, although it turned out that for some reason -- and I cannot recall why, if a reason was ever stated -- they had chopped up their baby. If I recall, the baby was a secret -- perhaps it was an unwanted child and, um, a post-natal abortion? So no one necessarily knew, but I had stumbled across it, and while the mother of the family (whom I liked much more) knew the worth of keeping it secret, but was guilty about it and kind of wanted to confess, the father of the family (who was rather older -- both were probably in their 50s/early-60s in the dream) did NOT want to go to prison, and had cornered me and said if I were to let it slip what had happened, he would ruin my career by spreading lies about me. If I recall, I was less likely to actually squeal until he actually did this, because he really started obsessing on it, and, well, being a general jerk about it. (What, a dude who chopped up a baby? A jerk?!) So, yes. IIRC, the ending of the dream was the mother and I trying to escape to confess/narc.

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Whoo! Isabella Rossellini presents: BUG PORN $1!

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Yay! New Shintaro Kago strip! I love these. If you love this one too, Same Hat's got a bunch of his other ones linked, too.

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Tonight I shall post the last Fingertip Project at Kittysneezes! Yaaaay! Next week will have two articles I'm real excited about, actually. So hooray for that, too!

Man, so far only 7 responses to the Kittysneezes Reader Poll, but they've been corkers. joshkassel in particular has helped me out a whole mess. Due to him, I got the favicon.ico thingy working right all the time AND the RSS feed to, like, actually show up in the header so it'll appear in the address bar if you're using Safari. (And maybe other browsers.) I also submitted the site to DMOZ and got the Google Analytics scene all goin'. So, hopefully, that'll help not only with traffic, but making the site easier to actually visit and keep track of updates (for visitors, I mean), and all that jazz.

So, yeah! This is awesome! Thanks a lot!

And if you haven't filled out the survey -- which you probably haven't, since only 7 people have -- take a peek at it! SURVEY!

One of the other things I'm toying with is also printing up little posters (by which I mean on a photocopier, not like, Nice Posters) and postering a bit downtown (and encouraging others to do so as well, assuming the poster laws in their municipality will let them; don't want to have folks break the law!):

a) Does this sound like a good idea?

b) Would you want to do this?

c) Is there some big bad point I seem to be missing as to why this is a spectacularly bad idea?

d) I swear I had a D here, but I forgot what it was.

Anyway, though -- let me know on that, too! If you do, I might actually do an LJ post that's not about my fucking site for once, huh?

Feel free to fill this out and make any added comments in the comment section. I think only LJ members might be allowed to actually VOTE (sadly), however, anyone can comment, so if you don't have an LJ account, just hit the "Post a comment" button to share your thoughts. Thanks!

Poll #1116626 The First Annual Kittysneezes Reader Poll (that might not even be annual, I don't know.)
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What would you like to see more of at Kittysneezes?

If you said other, what other kinds of stuff?

Who would you like to see interviewed at Kittysneezes? (either specific people or categories, i.e. "Farmers", "Filmmakers", "Veterinarians", etc.)

Is there anything in particular you would like to see reviewed?

Are there any topics in particular you'd like to see essays on?

Do you want to see more people writing for Kittysneezes?

Would YOU want to write for Kittysneezes?

On a scale of 1-10, one being worst, ten best, what do you think of the content at Kittysneezes overall?

What overall could be improved at Kittysneezes?

How would you rate the design/visual layout of Kittysneezes?

Do you have suggestions for improving the layout of Kittysneezes?

Do you have any other suggestions for improving Kittysneezes in general?

Do you have any suggestions for getting the word out on Kittysneezes?

Are you generally satisfied with the Kittysneezes experience?

Are these questions suitably generic enough to accurately represent these sorts of Reader Survey things everyone hates filling out?