BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: September 2007
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Five Interesting Animals
Because I'm too lazy to actually blog anything worth reading, I'll just steal this meme from PZ's unspellable science blog. I run out of gas around #3, so be advised.
An interesting animal I had: Assuming this means "owned" rather than something that's illegal in most states. Lots of reptiles. Nile monitor (died). Savannah monitor (given away when dad tired of its avidly-carnivorous ways). Half a dozen chuckwallas (died or given away after years). Columbian red-tailed boa (gave away when I moved north to live with Malaya in 2003). Ball python (still healthy and with me, after more than a dozen years).
An interesting animal I ate: Pheasant. My grandparents used to hunt these every year and granny made a dish with pheasant and some cream sauce over wild rice. Pheasant is like really dry, flavorful turkey. About the best bird I've had.
An interesting animal in the Museum: I like skeletons. SD Natural History museum has some full size whale skeletons downstairs, and they arch overhead through about half the level. I enjoy walking through ribs; it's kind of reminiscent of those ossified Stonehenge-like rib cages shown in every scifi movie on a desert planet. (And then inevitably never seen up close, in bone or living form.)
An interesting thing I did with or to an animal: This one's just begging for admissions of perversion and/or criminality, especially since nothing interesting exactly leaps to mind. I've never dissected anything more challenging than a frog or baited a hook with anything more than a worm, or a small fish (the best thing to catch big fish with). Oh, I know. Deep sea fishing when I was in my early teens our boat was besieged by sea lions, who kept zooming in and biting onto the fish we'd hooked and were reeling in. I caught two half fish in about ten minutes, both times starting to pull in something weighing several pounds, then nearly losing the pole when several hundred pounds of sea lion piggybacked onto my catch.
An interesting animal in its natural habitat: The noisily-orking sea lions at Pier 51 are neither interesting nor in their natural habitat. So I'll say the wild moose I saw in Alaska, while touring around that northern state with my grandparents when I was about 10. They're basically just glorified deer, at least until you get close enough to one to realize you could pretty much walk under it without ducking.
I assume everyone's heard this song by now, perhaps many more times than you would have liked. I enjoy it; it's no Golddigger but it's catchy and has some nice verses, though there's at least 50% more of that digitized voice in the choruses than I think strictly necessary. I just have one question. What exactly is entailed in being a "my black Kate Moss tonight" ?
Update: Here's the video, for easier clicking. Not sure why I didn't think to include an embedded in the first place.
Thanks to the a comment by Jordan, I know that the endlessly sampled digitized voice is from Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger by Daft Punk. And thanks to a pointer from Malaya, I see that Hanzis Matter has posted a long dissection of the Hanzi characters seen in the video; unsurprisingly, most of them are meaningless, or at best poorly translated. That there were Hanzis in the video at all was news to me; I had played the video any number of times, but hadn't ever actually watched more than a few seconds of it. I figured it was another example of the impossibly vain Kanye prancing around in one his weird faux-preppy outfits, but I just clicked through it and saw that it was some sort of Blade Runner-esque futuristic Tokyo scifi thing. Good for him.
Neither item of feedback has yet addressed my initial question though, which expressed curiosity as to what being a "black Kate Moss tonight" meant. It's a catchy line, but I can't see how it's real flattering to anyone. Kate Moss is famous for being a model, but inexplicably so. She's one of those, "Why is she a supermodel again?" types, where she's not very pretty, or sexy, or charismatic, but somehow she is on every runway and sells perfume in every issue of Vogue. She doesn't sing, she doesn't act, she doesn't host a TV show, and she's only gained in some recent fame for repeatedly dating and breaking up and reconciling with the greasy, scab-encrusted, multi-junkie Pete Doughtery.
So Kanye's rhyme is either comparing his hypothetical ebony paramour to bony Kate Moss, or else comparing himself to Pete Doughtery. And I don't see why either interpretation is a desirable one, from Kanye's POV.
Finally, I'd like to point out that there is no consensus how to spell the man's name. "West" people are pretty sure about, but a YouTube search on "kanye west stronger" gets 1840 results, and a YouTube search on "kayne west stronger" gets 1980 returns. N before Y, except after... pie?
Last season the San Diego Chargers were a league-best 14-2 before losing a very winnable playoff game to New England. With the most all pros in the league, no major player losses, and expected continued improvement by their young QB, it seemed safe to project them as one of the league's best teams again this season. And virtually all of the "experts" did, putting SD on top or as one of the top 2 or 3 teams in the league.
Unfortunately, their coach had long feuded with the headstrong General Manager, and despite the team's exceptional regular season play, the GM refused to extend the coach's contract and then fired him during the offseason, weeks after his natural replacement(s); the offensive and defensive coordinators, had each left for head coaching jobs in other cities. This lead to a last minute coaching hire, assistant coach shuffling, and general confusion and mayhem during the off season.
Plenty of people still said they'd be a top team, and when they beat the defending superbowl losers, the Chicago Bears, on opening night, all seemed well. Then last week SD went to NE and got steamrolled. Not much offense, no running game despite having last year's league MVP at running back, and a defense that seemed uncoached. New England relentlessly dinked and dunked quick little passes to each side, racking up uncontested 6-10 yard gains at will, and when the defensive backs eventually crept up closer to the line of scrimmage, New England periodically, and quite predictably, lofted a longer pass down the middle for a big gain and/or a touch down. It wasn't just that NE beat them, it was how easily they did so, and how simple was the offensive scheme they used for the job. San Diego's secondary is not the strength of their defense; they have a ferocious front seven, but the coaches seemed to have no idea how to use them. They didn't rush heavy and cover tight to gamble on pressure and a quick stop, they didn't zone blitz and mix up their coverage in crazy ways, and they didn't put everyone in deep coverage to force NE to beat them with lots of risky short passes between defenders. SD just sat back in a basic defense, doing nothing to act and very little to react, and seemed surprised when the best coached team in the league, helmed by one of the best QBs in the league, with the best receivers he's ever had, picked them apart.
In light of that, I greeted most predictions that SD would win easily this week on the road in Green Bay, and that Tomlinson would have a break out game, with a lot of skepticism. The game wasn't on TV here, today was the first day I was able to sleep late since last weekend, and the only early game on TV here, SF @ Pittsburgh, was sure to be a rout I had no interest in watching. So I slept until noon, woke up and spent an hour reading some stuff I had to read, and then turned on the TV for the late game, with my eyes on the score ticker. And I was in no way surprised when I saw SD 24 - GB 31, with a bonus fact that Brett Favre had thrown for a bunch of TDs.
San Diego's certainly not doomed; their first 3 games were all against likely playoff teams, two were on the road, and no one in their division looks any good this year. Plus with their entirely new coaching staff and changed schemes, it's expected that they'll start slowly and improve over the year, as the players learn the new plays and assignments. That being said, there's no way anyone can still include them amongst the league's elite, and given their record last year and the talented players on the roster, that's unacceptable.
On the bright side, Oakland's already so bad that their second home game wasn't sold out, thus allowing me to see a good Cincinnati @ Seattle game instead of the local market Cleveland @ Oakland stinker. On the brighter side, this fall I have the least free time to watch football (or blog) I've had during any fall in my adult life, and with SD stinking it up I'm feeling even less reason to pay attention to the NFL than usual. Much to the relief of those of you who read this blog and give a rat's tin shit about absurd American professional sports leagues.
I saw a link to this site today and found it pretty amusing. More for the concept and the domain name than the actual content, but it's still worth a look.
No, it's not some sort of feminine product fetish page; it's just random snap shots of young couples in all sorts of public locations, and in every instance the chicks are hot (relatively speaking) and the guys are douche bags (metaphorically speaking). It's all written from a guy's point of view, since every man basically thinks every other man in a photo with a pretty girl is a douche bag, since every man believes, deep down, that the hot chick should be with him instead. Even if the guy in the photo is like, Brad Pitt, and the guy doing the wishing is like, the Elephant Man.
The designations of the men and women could be argued, since there are quite a few bleach blondes with orange-skinned, guido-looking guys, but this is the Internet... I know you didn't come looking for facts and measured, logical dialogue?
Some of the pics are pretty normal people, but in other cases... it's hard to argue with the domain name. Two of these three "chicks" pretty clearly qualify, and the brunette on the right is outright beautiful. As for the guys... wow. The one on the left looks literally brain damaged, as though he's got one expression and that's it. As for the one on the right... yikes. With his v-neck and plastic waxed chest and abnormally tiny head dotted with those blank, dead eyes... he's downright disturbing. Also, what's up with both guys having oiled their chests? It's not hot; the girls aren't sweating and the guys' faces are dry. They've just smeared baby oil, or something, over their hairless sternums.
There is some amusing writing. I won't include the picture of this guy so your interest might be piqued to click through and see him, but here's a quote from the caption.
Velvet has what may be the most dizzying array of 'bag signifiers ever captured in one digital image.
Make the list: Purple velour shirt, top 2-3 buttons undone. Faux-platinum wrist bling. Faux-platinum dogtags. Billy Dee Williams 'stache. Oversized "designer" sunglasses. Poorly-executed comb-over.
He's one mandana away from a complete sensory overload. And this made all the worse by the fact that he's clutching a pouty-lipped pink ball of cleavite with eyes sensuous enough to cause even the proudest of homosexuals to feel an explosion of self-loathing.
Tons of work in RL and trying to keep up the HGL site now that HGL is into the beta test (but still annoyingly under NDA) are leaving me like, no time for blogging. So until I think of something better, here's my favorite LOLcats of recent memory. Just because.
Feminism is an interesting phenomena. I'm supportive of equality for all people, in theory, and I realize that our society is permeated with patriarchal ideas and attitudes, which most people absorb without ever realizing or remarking on. But just how those issues are dealt with, and how society is formed or reformed, is a subject of much debate. I consider myself a feminist, in that I'm pro-equal rights, and I try to treat women equally to men. In fact, I tend to much prefer the company of women to men, and not just as potential romance partners; I just find women more interesting to talk and interact with.
Treating people equally doesn't mean the same, of course, and that's where things get interesting. Does a man who offers to pay for dinner and/or a woman who expects him to display sexist attitudes? Is an individual's feminism compromised by their tolerance for or appreciation of old-fashioned cultural mores? It gets more complicated when it comes to tolerance for potentially offensive material. I ran afoul of some site's attack squad of arch feminists last year when I posted a bemused blog entry about those humorously-stupid "Man Law" beer commercials, and the (IMHO) way over the top hatred they were inspiring amongst some feminist bloggers. My opinion was that the spots were sexist and stupid, but basically amusing in their mythology, and that it was a waste of time and downright foolish to spend time attacking them, in a world full of real, actual, harmful sexism. As my post concluded:
I can get behind using a dumb beer commercial as the starting point in a women's rights essay/blog entry, or at least an essay on men being humorously stupid (which is pretty much what all Miller and Bud commercials are about, being as their beer isn't good enough to compete on taste) but there's clearly some baggage being unloaded on a bunch of fairly innocent and clever commercials. "Poke it and own it" or not, these Man Laws commercials wouldn't even crack the top 50 most sexist beer commercials I've seen this decade. Overreactions to minor foolishness like this is what gives real assholes like Rush Limbaugh grist for their "feminazi" mills.
Like most of my blog posts, that one was written about as quickly as I could type it, and I thought it might attract one comment, if that. To my surprise, there were quickly over a dozen, most of them from highly-passionate women eager to defend their hatred of that beer commercial and equally eager to insult me for thinking them silly. Some feminist blog (I never bothered to figure out which one.) had clearly posted about my post, with predictable rabble-rousing results. At the time Malaya strongly suggested that I just let it go, so I didn't reply to any of the comment attacks, much though I yearned to. She was probably right, since after a couple of days of not poking the hornet's nest, things settled down.
At the time I was annoyed, but more than vexed, I was perplexed. I like to think that women are more reasonable and rational and balanced than men, and here my comments were filled with misdirected vitriol. I thought my blog post was (relatively) reasonable and logical, and I even agreed with the feminists on the issue; I just thought they were being foolish by making such a stink over something virtually everyone else regarded as beneath notice. I never dreamed a good dozen intelligent women would come along and turn the last line of my post into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It's a useful window of insight into extreme points of view, though. Most of us think we're pretty mainstream in our thinking, even when that's demonstrably wrong. I realize that my thoughts on religion and a lot of societal issues are way, way out on the edge of the bell curve, but since most of the people I know, and lots of bloggers I read, agree with me on those issues, I get reinforcement and think anyone who doesn't see those issues the way I do is misinformed and/or delusional. I retain enough of a grip on reality to know that they feel the same way about me, and I don't become angry when people speak things I think/know are wrong, though I do often mock them on my utterly uninfluential blog.
For many extremists though, part and parcel of being an extremist means not knowing you are one, or at least not caring. They're so deeply inculcated into their ideology that it seems perfectly natural to them, and that results in beer commercials that the rest of us ignore, or chuckle at for their silly absurdity, setting them off like bomb fuses. And when they see someone (especially a man) defending the commercials, and saying they are silly for being upset by the commercials, that's a red flag. (I hate that metaphor, by the way. Bulls are colorblind; the particular strain of animal abuse they've been raised in has simply trained them to charge at a waving flag of any dark color.)
This digression brings me around to a more current issue, and an illustrative blog entry about it.
Pandagon, a group blog I read semi-regularly, is best known for its most prominent poster, Amanda Marcotte. If the name's familiar, she had her 15 minutes earlier this year when she was hired by the John Edwards campaign to be their official blogger, and had to resign after a week thanks to a sustained campaign of faux outrage launched at her by various conservative religious political groups such as the Catholic League, and piggybacked on by right wing bloggers and media figures like Michelle Malkin and Bill O'Reilly. They were (allegedly) upset with Marcotte for her past comments on religion, and especially the way it's been politicized in America and used as a tool by patriarchies. Like the Catholic Church.
I sympathized with Marcotte's situation, especially since I already dislike Bill Donohoe and fundamentalist nuts of his stripe. At the same time, I had to chuckle at all of Marcotte's furious protestations and the seemingly genuine offense and surprise her supporters showed at how things turned out. My only surprise was that the Edwards campaign was foolish enough to hire an official blogger without more thoroughly vetting her past posts. The fact that I agree with Marcotte's opinions on religion and its role in American politics is irrelevant; I know my views and the blog comments I've made in support of them 100% exempt me from working on a major or minor political campaign, since assholes like Bill Donohoe are always out there to whip up the rabble (with a healthy assist from the scandal-hungry media) against anything that can even remotely be construed as anti-religious. I don't know much about Marcotte's personality, but the fact that she honestly thought she could blog things like she had and remain viable as a national figure tells me she's either impossibly naive, or outright delusional. A quote:
Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit? A: You'd have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology.
No one can run for higher office in the US without constantly professing their Christian faith. I'm sure a large percentage of them are lying (they are politicians, after all) but it's a requirement of the job, at this point in US history. I think there's one admitted agnostic and one Muslim out of the 600+ congressmen and senators now in office. It's not fair, and it sucks, but there's no way an outspoken, snarky, frequently Catholic Church-insulting blogger can work for a presidential candidate's campaign. At least not in an upfront, name-attached job like the official blogger. And anyone who wasn't aware of that last year certainly knows it now.
I sympathized with Marcotte's position; she'd obviously gotten a nice raise and had her hopes up high to make a difference for a politician whose views she supported, and then all that was snatched away from her. What I don't sympathize with is the narrative she's constructed since the events, in which she was persecuted primarily for being an outspoken woman, and secondarily for making numerous comments that can only be described as political suicide. Marcotte has a (not unfounded) Jesus-sized feminist persecution complex, but it amazes me that she and her most adamant defenders are able to maintain the belief that her gender factored into her losing the job. It might have been some small percentage of it, since the people who were out to get her were largely misogynists, by training, if not intent, but there are countless women in similar jobs who aren't singled out for anything. Perhaps the fact that they are not foul-mouthed, vituperative, atheist bloggers might have something to do with that fact? That Marcotte was a woman was largely irrelevant, IMHO, but then again, I'm the one who didn't think the Man Law commercials were worth anyone getting upset over.
This long preamble was necessary to provide background for a new post by Marcotte, and my comments on it. The post is about the cute brunette on that Disney high school musical show, who recently showed up nude all over the internet. Vanessa Hudgens is her name (I had never heard the name a month ago, I can assure you.) and I'm not going to post a pic since I can't be bothered with some lawyer sending me a C&D, but you'll have no trouble finding the photo(s) if you Google around a bit. All 5 are in the NSFW thread I just linked to, but don't worry. The photos are very recent and she's 18 now, so it's not a felony to look at the non-jail bait on display within them.
If Hudgens has offered an explanation for the shots, or their leakage, I've not heard it, but her PR person did admit that they were authentic. Since then Hudgens has offered apologies to her fans and Disney, hasn't been fired yet, has become exponentially more famous, and has received lucurative job offers from the Girls Gone Wild franchise.
I'd be curious to hear Hudgens spin the photos, but it doesn't seem like she's going to bother trying. I don't know how they could have been explained away; the girl was clearly lying around, alone in her bedroom and feeling frisky, and she used her camera phone to take some sexy pictures. It's not known if she sent them to her boyfroiend (who is allegedly her Clay Aiken looking costar, but I wouldn't be surprised if their romance is as authentic as the one the first 2 American Idol winners had, which lasted just long enough to give them a publicity boost for their albums and movie) or if someone saw them on her camera and stole them there, but however it happened, they were leaked and now everyone's seen them. They're not porn and she's not Paris Hilton, but she poses in various bras and pantie outfits, before offering up some full frontal nudity. Although her uncharacteristically full bush means she might as well have on a bikini bottom in the nude photo, she's clearly nude and clearly a willing participant in the photos. And that's where Marcotte, her blog, and her arch-feminist, anti-religious, "women are always especially persecuted in our society" attitude comes in. Her post is hard to encapsulate in a quote since it's mostly a rant and is all over the place, but here's the conclusion.
Who knows who leaked them? But I won't be holding my breath to see if we get an apology about violating her privacy if it's found out who leaked the pictures. Which just drives home the lesson for the kids, which is that treating women like garbage is not nearly the same kind of crime as being a woman with a normal, healthy sexuality is.
...In a better world, Hudgens would have released a press release reminding everyone that the person who leaked her private photos to the world is the person who owes her an apology and she doesn’t owe anyone an apology, since she didn't actually do anything to hurt anyone. "I'm really sorry there are horrible people out there who get a rise out of humiliating women, but I'm not sorry for what I did, since I was the victim not the perpetrator. I'm sorry that I was naive enough to believe that people would not abuse my trust in them, and I hope that I have better friends in the future." That sort of thing.
*Parents who do this: Everyone is laughing at you, because we're like, "How the hell did you get your kids, then? Prayed really hard in your separate bedrooms?"
I agree that young women are held to a very different standard than young men, and that it's all the worse if they're celebrities, but Marcotte is (intentionally) leaving out one key aspect of this whole thing. Her argument was fine when Paris Hilton's porn tape was leaked, (ignoring the fact that the porn tape was the best thing that ever happened to Paris' career, and that she would undoubtedly go back in time and leak it herself if she had to) since Paris was just some stupid, fame-grasping socialite. She had every right to behave in any way she wanted, and criticism of her for being a sexual being clearly stemmed from patriarchal societal attitudes that condemn female sexuality almost as vigorously as they jerk off thinking about it.
Vanessa Hudgens taking and losing nude photos of herself is very different though, because Paris Hilton wasn't famous for being a child star, and wasn't being paid millions of dollars to retain a wholesome, family-friendly image so the crappy songs she lipsynchs and the crappy TV shows she prances her way through could be marketed to the hordes of 8-14 y/o girls who worship her on the Disney channel. Regular people who get arrested for drunk driving or drug use don't get suspended from their jobs for 6 months. Professional athletes do, since they're role models for children and public figures in an entertainment product, and their employment comes with great benefits, but also with bad behavior clauses. I have no idea if Hudgens and her costars have such clauses in the contracts they've signed with Disney, but I would be shocked if they do not. I'm sure Disney would have been completely within their legal rights if they'd fired her ass last week, so that's certainly one reason for her to apologize most fervently.
The other is even more obvious, and it's the one Marcotte spent so many words denying and fighting against (in regards to Hudgens, but also in reaction to her own self-authored downfall). Conservative, religious people have a lot of political, economic, and media power in this country. This is not news to anyone, and you're free to protest reality all you wish, but don't pretend it doesn't exist. When a public figure does something like constantly insult the Catholic church and the concept of religion in general, and does it in a crude, intentionally-insulting manner, there are going to be repercussions. And when a young female actress whose target demographic's age is in the single digits is caught taking nude and suggestive photos of herself, she's going to get into trouble and have to make a lot of apologies.
Even beyond that, the vast majority of parents, no matter how liberal or irreligious, do not want to have to explain to their 9 y/o why that girl they love on that TV show is taking nude photos of herself. Nor do those parents want their 12 or 13 y/o daughters seeing this and thinking it's the sort of thing they should do with their camera phone. Sure, there's some sexism in the condemnation, but how different would the reaction be if her male costar had been stupid enough to photograph himself posing seductively in underwear, and fully nude? He'd be in just as much trouble, and in fact would probably have been fired already. At least Hudgens can play the female sympathy/victim card and claim she didn't mean the shots to get out. A guy in her situation would be assumed to be fully complicit in the distribution of the photos, and while he might not be shamed as vigorously, he would not be permitted continued employment on a children's TV program.
Remember Pee Wee Herman? He's still in exile, though Paul Reubens has returned to sporadic work, years and years later. And no one even saw him nude, and his children's show was weird and subversive and enjoyed by more adults than children anyway.
The Mtv Awards went off last weekend, and for once they didn't sink without a ripple outside of their target 12-18 demographic. This is largely thanks to Britney Spears' disastrous performance, but since I've refused to watch it and assume that you've seen it by now if you care, I'm not going to comment on it. What I do want to comment on is what Sarah Silverman said in her comedy routine after Britney's appearance. I'd heard that she made some nasty Britney jokes, but hadn't seen video or read a transcript. Thankfully, Mtv's moratorium on YouTube sharing of the event seems to have ended, and...
Well, I spoke too soon. I searched on videos half an hour ago and found a bunch, and watched (and saved) one, but now that I get around to writing this post, they're all dead links. At any rate, search for sarah silverman britney and you'll get a ton of returns; keep clicking, people are constantly re-upping deleted files on YouTube, and the Viacom lawyers will get sick of C&Ding them eventually. I'd post the one I copied but I can't be bothered with some lawyer mailing me, and it's in .flv format and I doubt many of you have downloaded a FLV player yet. They're only of use if you regularly save movies you see on YouTube.
Sarah's routine wasn't really very good; the first couple of minutes on Britney are good, but it goes 4.5 minutes and she seems to be stalling to fill time during the last 120 seconds. It's remarkable simply because she dared to speak the jokes everyone else thinks, and she gets away with them because she's a woman, and can therefore insult other women by calling them whores without being branded a misogynist (rightly or wrongly, and I'll post about that issue later today).
Sarah's jokes have been seized on since the event by some of Britney's enablers as possible excuses for why the meal ticket's performance was so awful, but reports are that no one heard Silverman's material in advance.
To finally cut to the chase, her best lines were:
Britney's amazing. She's 25 and she's already accomplished everything she's ever going to accomplish in her life.
Have you seen Britney's kids? They are the most adorable mistakes you will ever see. They're as cute as the hairless vagina they came out of.
The line about the kids being mistakes seems to be the controversial one, but when you think about it... why? Honestly, would you rather people thought you missed a pill or broke a rubber, or that you chose to have kids with Kevin Federline? On purpose!
That said, I don't think the kids are 1) that cute, or 2) accidents. True, Britney appears to be about as dumb as dumb can be; can a woman who doesn't remember to put on knickers be trusted to take one pill, and only one pill, every single day? On the other hand, she fucked dozens of guys over the last 10 or 12 years, managed never to have any of their babies, then had 2 in short order once she settled into her second marriage. That seems like intent to me. Idiotic intent, but intent nonetheless.
I don't follow console games, not that I especially follow PC games other than the ones I somehow find myself managing fansites for, but I really don't follow console games. I guess the PS3 and Xbox2 and whatever that other one with the cordless dildo is called have made great graphical advances and technological improvements, but I do not choose to spend my increasingly rare "free" time playing games, so those devices hold no allure for me. Well, perhaps allure, but allure of a sort analogous to my desire to drop everything and travel around Europe for several months. Not so much forbidden allure, but more of an, "in what fucking world is that possible?" attraction.
At any rate, a new console game, Heavenly Sword was just released, and the word is that it's incredibly beautiful and fun to play and has great, realistic character movements and cinematic movies and all of that... and that it's got about six hours of gameplay. I find this almost impossible to believe, but I guess it's not entirely unknown in the linear, non-randomized, non-MMORPG world of console titles. A lot of them are really fun games, but you play them for 10 or 15 or 20 hours, and that's it. There's only one character to play, there's only one storyline, you don't go online to play PvP or cooperative missions, or any of the other things most PC titles include as a matter of fact.
During the couple of months Hellgate: London has been in Alpha test I've played maybe 40 or 50 hours, and I don't feel I've done more than scratch the surface. I haven't even had time to fully explore the alpha with all the characters, and like most games in alpha/beta testing, only about the first half of the game is in the test, all the higher level stuff isn't available, lots of features aren't yet enabled, etc.
In light of that it's hard for me to understand how anyone feels Heavenly Sword is worth the $60 console games apparently retail for; even seeing a movie in a theater doesn't run you $10 an hour, though I'll admit that console games feature fewer commercials you must sit through or lose your seat, and better access to affordable snacks.
Still, reading about Heavenly Sword on and it's negligible length Penny Arcade this afternoon got me curious enough to look up some more info on it, and I found the Game Trailers page pretty useful. The video quality is excellent, with HQ versions of almost everything, and watching the footage I almost want to play, if only to soak in the delicious visuals. It's looks like some sort of fairy tale land, bathed in stained-glass lighting and filled with absurdly unrealistic battles with enormous enemy armies you single-handedly vanquish with acrobatic sword fighting moves, all while somehow never popping out of your historically-authentic sparkly bikini top or cutting off the flowing red, two meter pony tail sprouting from your head.
Absurd (but hawt!) character design aside, I watched a few of the "making of" movies and wondered how it could have turned out like this. How do you spend that much time and effort crafting something so pretty, and then only put in six hours of content? Was their production team 90% pretty stuff experts and 10% actual game designers? Would it have been that hard to add in some more missions and levels? They had all the animations and characters and enemies digitized and programmed; how hard would it be to shuffle them around and spread them out over a few more maps?
If this one tests out it will surely win someone a Noble Prize, or at least function as a plot device in an upcoming James Bond film. Flammable salt water.
John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies, it would burn.
The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel.
Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist, has held demonstrations at his State College lab to confirm his own observations.
The radio frequencies act to weaken the bonds between the elements that make up salt water, releasing the hydrogen, Roy said. Once ignited, the hydrogen will burn as long as it is exposed to the frequencies, he said.
The discovery is "the most remarkable in water science in 100 years," Roy said.
It's not made clear in the article, but I guess the wave excited salt just burns in the air, above the water? So you have a tank, point the antenna at it, and get flames on the surface, leaving you with unsalted water below. Nice way to clear yourself some space on the next set of breakers, if nothing else.
Amusing news about a leggy, mini-skirt wearing blonde who nearly got booted from a recent Southwest Airlines flight for having too much of teh hawt!!1!
Ebbert, 23, says she was judged unfairly by the airline and humiliated by the experience. Who wouldn't be?
She had a doctor's appointment that afternoon in Tucson, where temperatures had topped 106 all week. She arrived at Lindbergh Field wearing a white denim miniskirt, high-heel sandals, and a turquoise summer sweater over a tank top over a bra. After the plane filled, and the flight attendants began their safety spiel, Ebbert was asked to step off the plane by a customer service supervisor, identified by the airline only as "Keith." They walked out onto the jet bridge, where Keith told Ebbert her clothing was inappropriate and asked her to change. She explained she was flying to Tucson for only a few hours and had brought no luggage.
"I asked him what part of my outfit was offensive," she said. "The shirt? The skirt? And he said, 'The whole thing.'"
Keith asked her to go home, change and take a later flight. She refused, citing her appointment. The plane was ready to leave, so Keith relented. He had her pull up her tank top a bit, pull down her skirt a bit, and return to her seat.
It's kind of a ridiculous story, and is obviously only getting coverage because it's an excuse to contemplate a tall blonde in a short white skirt and what sort of flesh she may or may not have been revealing on a recent flight from San Diego to Phoenix. I only bring it up because I used to live in San Diego, and while I haven't been there often since 2003, and (thankfully) Shrek vests weren't yet trendy then, I can say that pretty much every 23 y/o woman looked like this. Though often a bit less Ann Coulter-ish, thankfully.
The article gets bonus points for the girl's mom stepping in and boldly opening her pie hole.
"My daughter is young, tall, blond and beautiful," Michele Ebbert told me, "and she is both envied and complimented on her appearance. She dresses provocatively, as do 99 percent of 23-year-old girls who can. But they were out of line."
Mom's (unfortunately) way high on her percent dressing provocatively estimate, but she's got a point. The problem, however, isn't the 99% of the 23 y/o's who can... it's the 99% of 23 y/o's who can't. And yet do so anyway.
I never got around to posting about it last week, but one of the most enjoyable college football upsets in memory transpired when Division 2 Appalachian State defeated #5 Michigan, in Michigan. I don't have any opinion of Michigan, and couldn't tell you anything about them other than that Bo Shembeckler used to coach them to an annual Rose Bowl shellacking, but I knew they were a "traditional power" and I therefore took great pleasure in them being whacked by some tiny, unknown, lower division school. It was the first defeat ever of a top 25 team by a Division 2 school, and when Michigan dropped out of the top 25 in the next poll it was the first time ever for a top 5 school to leave the rankings the next week. Rivers of digital ink have been spilled on the game, and if you care you've surely read about it by now, so I won't belabor it any further.
I bring it up now because this week Michigan is hosting Oregon. I wouldn't have taken any notice of this game, but after last week's amusement I had to see how Michigan, and their rabid fans, would react. So I set the game to tape this morning while I worked on other things, and I'm watching it now, with appropriate use of the FF button, while I eat lunch. It's great; Oregon scoring at will, Michigan making repeated mistakes, and it's 33-7 at the half. The TV coverage hasn't quite shown as many shots of shocked, dismayed, blue and maize-wearing fans than they have of the game, but it's pretty close, and we've got the dismal, soul-crushing 47-10 garbage time fourth quarter yet to come.
Adding to the fun, Michigan's QB stayed in the locker room at half and they've trotted out a freshman who could not look more overwhelmed. He handed off twice, one of which ended with Michigan's star running back limping off the field, then threw into a thicket of defenders on third down after absolutely staring a hole in the receiver.
Speaking of receivers, have the Colts drafted Michigan's #86, the misnomered Maningham? He's quick, sure-handed, and never met a sidelines he didn't try dash across. The best one so far was a crossing pattern on 3rd and 3. He caught it at the line and never even glanced upfield before darting, untouched, out of bounds for a gain of one. Fortunately for him there was holding on Oregon, so his meaningless, gutless effort didn't go into the books. He made more of an impact later in the 3rd quarter, when the freshman QB hit him with a strike across the middle on 3rd and long. Tragically, there were defenders in the area so Boyingham tried to catch it while sliding down so he wouldn't get tackled, and ended up deflecting it into an interception. But hey, he's fast and I'm sure when they're working out in shorts and t-shirts he's a fricking terror.
Update: Oregon won 39-7, but from what I saw of the 4th quarter, the producer must have grown tired of showing shell-shocked Mighigan fans, since they mostly stuck to the "action" on the field or showed celebrating Oregon fans when they did a crowd shot.
Not to turn this blog into all Prodigy mashups all the time, but I thought this one was tasty enough to warrant a post. Someone took Eminem's Superman and mashed it with Prodigy's Breathe. It's an especially inspired mesh.
Here's the original Eminem song; it's an idly misogynistic mediocrity; some pleasing wordplay, but nothing remarkable. The delivery is all that elevates it above countless other "talking with my dick" hip hop songs of recent years, since Eminem raps it like a love song/lullaby, and the words and the music create a pleasing cognitive dissonance. The video adds to the discord as well, since it's playful and absurd and comical.
And here's the mashup, with the identical vocals over samples from the Prodigy song. You can just let it play in another tab since the visuals are from the Neon Genesis: Evangelion anime. I enjoy them; it's some awesome robot battle porn, and the crazy eyes on the female driving the one red mech fits nicely with the song, but YMMV.
As for the song itself, I think inserting the remixed version of Prodigy's song (original here) as background music vastly improves Eminem's lyrics. The vileness and misogyny of his words really stand out this way, and the tune becomes far more catchy and with the darker, harsher tone, it goes from kind of queasily joking to downright disturbing. The chorus especially works, with the synthesizers and drums perfectly emphasizing the words. I'd never had any part of the Eminem's original version stick in my head, but since I've been listening to this for the past few days, it's constantly on the tip of my tongue.
But there's one thing I know, Bitches they come and go.
Hopefully it goes without saying that I don't agree with or approve of the content of the lyrics. I don't think you need to, to enjoy it as music, but here again, YMMV.
Well, you might be, but the Saints sure weren't. Thank god I taped that one and watched it hours after the fact, since it was boring even with heavy use of the FF button. Lifeless first half, and a second half that became completely one-sided the minute Indy started throwing the ball down the field. (The real question is why the hell didn't I record this instead? 58-42!)
My theory is that the Saints don't have a full-sized football field left in their ruin of a city. They practice on some half-flooded street, dodging the rusting hulks of abandoned, 22" rimmed Cadillacs, and as a result their offense doesn't realize the rules now permit teams to throw the ball more than twenty yards downfield, and their defense had never seen the offense do it, so didn't realize they had to continue covering those speedy guys in blue and white once they ran more than eight or ten steps.
I didn't see any of the Saints' preseason games, but man did they look unprepared for this one. I have never seen so many draws, end arounds, screens, and quick dump off passes, with never a toss downfield to loosen up the defense. It's admittedly unlikely, but could some kind of timeline-skewing wormhole have caught the team plane, and switched years? No one realized, but thanks to the wormhole last year's Saints were actually the 2007 version, with their big play/long pass offense and inspired play on defense. And now we're stuck with the chronological-challenged 2006 Saints, when everyone expected them to suck thanks to the hurricane disruption, and no one thought Brees would be able to throw the ball downfield after shoulder surgery.
This is opening weekend for the NFL, and after the promising (on paper) Thursday game fizzled, I turned my eyes to Sunday, hoping for some good games on TV. As the local listings loaded, I started to scroll down, before remembering that I live in the Bay Area now, where there's never a good game on Sundays thanks to the idiotic rules about exclusive air rights for the local teams' games. I looked to see which games were on anyway, and predictably enough... I'm fucked.
Sunday: Denver @ Buffalo early, Detroit @ Oakland late. There are a lot of early games, most of which aren't any good. This one definitely isn't, and I have no idea why it's on here. We should theoretically get an NFC game on then, since the Raiders host the late game, but both Denver and Buffalo are in the AFC. And it's a crappy game with two mediocre to crappy teams. It's the highlight of the day though, compared to the late game, which features the aforementioned Raiders playing host to the Detroit Lions.
This one might prove crucial in determining next year's top draft pick, since last season Oakland was 2-14 and the worst team in the league. Detroit? 3-13, good enough for second worst. Which actually worked out pretty well for them, since the always-incompetent Raiders picked a non-superstar QB with the first pick, then made no real effort to sign him to a contract. He's now the only draft pick not signed, while Oakland has two washed up geezers "competing" for their QB position and every other team in the league wonders what color the sky is through Al Davis' granny glasses.
Detroit has no doubt thanked their lucky stars any number of times that Oakland didn't manage to win just one more game last year, since with the Raiders picking first, Detroit went second and took a wide receiver most scouts say is the best talent at his position in a decade. Detroit has a legendarily awful general manager, but even he was smart enough to sign the WR and get him into camp ASAP, and as a result he's ready to play on week one, while the Raiders' QB of the future will be lucky to step on a football field all season, and may eventually end up competing against whichever QB Oakland selects at the top of next year's draft.
The annoying part is that there are only 3 late games on Sunday, and one of them features Superbowl loser Chicago @ San Diego. Those teams won 13 and 14 games last year, respectively (15 and 14 if you count Chicago's 2 playoff wins). Detroit and Oakland won 5. Combined. Just for fun, let's throw in 2005 too, which takes us up to 14 wins. Combined. For Oakland and Detroit. Out of their last 64 games. For real fun, we can factor in their last place finishes in 2003 as well, which takes them up to 25 combined wins... two less than SD and Chicago combined for just last regular season.
Needless to say, I'm setting the VCR right this minute, just in case all the tingly excitement of the "any given Sunday" NFL overwhelms me come the weekend.
What sort of sexual experience do you want a prospective partner to have at the start of a new relationship? By that I mean, if you're constructing your hypothetical new girl/boyfriend, or evaluating the real thing, how much and what kind of sex do you want them to have had prior to you? I'll discuss it primarily from heterosexual POV since that's what I know, but gay mileage will vary, obviously.
The stereotype is that men want a woman to be a virgin. I have no idea how common that desire actually is, and how it breaks down by age range (I can't imagine too many 40 y/o men looking for a woman in their age range give the faintest thought to her being a virgin.) but it's the stereotype, thanks to old fashioned American males and fanatical male Islamic suicide bombers. Do real men want a virgin, though? The (stereotypical?) male desire for a virgin seems to me to stem largely from insecurity; if she's never had sex before she won't know if you're any good or not, if your dick is small, etc. You'll be the best she's ever had!
Personally, I can't imagine wanting a virgin. I wouldn't want to date a porn star, retired or otherwise, but I would want a woman to know what she was doing in bed, and to know what she wanted done to her. That being said, I'm self-serving enough to not want her to have been with so many guys that I'd would just be one more for the list, or so many that I'd inevitably fail to measure up, by tactics or equipment.
How "experienced" breaks down into actual numbers, or events, is another question. It would scale by age as well, but not necessarily on a steady parabolic line. I kind of expect a woman would have more sexual partners from 18-24 (or so) than from 25-30, when she'd more likely be settling into mature, monogamous relationship(s). That's not true for everyone, of course, but we're dealing with hypotheticals and generalizations. You could also consider what type of sex. How do you rate "got drunk and sucked off a guy at a party" vs. "two month dating/screwing?" The later is a lot more sex, both by activity and frequency, but I'd figure the random blowjob'er as more likely to do that sort of thing again (with someone other than me) and that she'd therefore not be someone I could trust.
I suppose it also depends on what you want to come of your "relationship;" assuming you even want one. Are you looking to marry her, do you demand monogamy, or do you just want a friend with benefits and don't give a damn what she does with her vagina when you're not in town? The more extreme case would be random casual sex, like picking someone up in a bar, and in that case I can't believe a guy would even give it a thought. I've never been interested in one-night stand type sex, but if a guy were, wouldn't he have to assume a woman willing to engage in that had done it before, and frequently?
Of course this is only half of the equation, and the rather sexist half at that. I'm reminded of the surveys on sexual experience, when the average man claims something lke 40 partners, and the average woman about 8. I'm just making those numbers up and not citing any particular survey, but the numbers are always skewed like that, with men having far more partners than women. It's fairly obvious that that's mathematically impossible, unless the survey is taking the medium instead of the mean, and even then you'd need a not insignificant percentage of women reporting porn star type numbers to average things out.
How do we explain the survey discrepancies? Easy answer: everyone's lying, and they're lying to correspond with (American/Western) societal expectations. Women are supposed to be "good girls" and not give it up (much), and men are supposed to be studs and plow many a field, and then brag about it to survey-takers.
That does not delve into the original issue though, which is ideal hypothetical partner experience, from the female POV. Is there a clear stereotype of what a woman wants? It's not a virgin; I've never heard that one, and to the contrary, most women want a man who knows what he's doing and who can sweep her off her feet. That most men are (from what women have told me) fairly awful at sex, is not the point. It's perhaps assumed that a virgin will be awful, and awfully quick, but she can at least hope for competence from a man with a reasonable amount of experience. Not too much experience, though. Women are clearly prone to giving it up to "players" (literally, professional athletes), or rock stars, or movie actors, or other celebrities, that's not the type of guy a woman is hypothesizing as her ideal for a relationship. Women want to sleep with Brad Pitt, or whoever the hot rock/rap star of the day is (I so do not know, and honestly, Brad's probably older than young women want now anyway.) but are they thinking about marrying him? Maybe an actor, but rock stars and jocks are notorious for having Wilt Chamberlain-sized appetites, and while a woman might indulge her groupie urges once or twice, few want to marry a man they know will cheat (constantly) on them.
So, the average woman, looking for a real, non-celebrity man, for a relationship. How much experience does she want him to have? Not a virgin, but not a pre-AIDS Magic Johnson either. Is there a number? I have no idea. I suppose a higher number could be romantic in some way, as a woman might like to think that she's tamed him or she's so good that he settled down for her, when he just fucked 'em and left 'em previously. I don't think too many women are delusional enough to believe that in real life, though, dogs that most men are.
Another issue is what type of relationship the past sex was part of. I was talking to a female friend about this, and she pointed out that, at least from her perspective, a man who'd had one or more LTRs was much more desirable than one who'd been single and/or bed hopping for years.
Finally, I realize that I'm simplifying the whole desired aspect, since I haven't allowed for types of sex (if you're into bondage, you'd obviously want a partner open to that), and more fundamentally, I haven't clarified what people want from a partner's sexual history. It's easy to answer the question in terms of "how good will they be at the physical mechanics of sex," but that's not really the issue, in many/most cases. For lots of people, men and (especially?) women, the new partner's sexual/relationship history is more about how and why, than what and when.
I suppose if I had to make a pick and there were two identical women who hadn't been whores/porn stars in their previous lives, I'd want the one who had a bit more sexual experience, and who I thought could therefore be more fun in the sack. That's an entirely artificial scenario though, since no two people are exactly the same, and even if they were, the one who'd had more sex would not be magically more promiscuous without changing anything else. Having more or less sex isn't like eating chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla; it's an outward manifestation of internal values and beliefs that would color many other things about this hypothetical woman, for good or ill.
So, now that I've grossly elaborated on this seemingly simple question, and perhaps rendered the whole point moot with my final paragraph, I'm curious what my (hypothetical) readers think? If you're creating your hypothetical partner (pretend your single if you're not, and this isn't a perfect dream individual, but someone at least a bit realistic) how much and what kind of sex have they had? Please state your gender and desired age range, for the record.
I've been on a kick of YouTube videos (using FF extensions to download and save the good ones) for an hour or so a day lately, as a break from some tiring RL work. Tonight I wound up watching videos by The Prodigy, and goddamn they have some awesome ones. They were most famous outside their native UK for Fat of the Land in the 90s, which had the anthemic Firestarter and controversial Smack My Bitch Up (uncensored video is great, though the sound on this one sucks) songs on it; the only 2 by the band that most people know. I have 2 other 90s CDs by them but neither had any songs as good as those 2. I liked Breathe as well, also from Fat of the Land, plus the band looks incredibly cool in the video. Or do they?
Reading about the band on Wikipedia, they've apparently changed their sound with almost every album, so they are not easily classified. They're not a rave band anymore, and they're not Industrial or Dance or anything else summed up in a single word.
Here are the two videos I thought most interesting.
Voodoo (remix). I'm not a huge fan of the original version of this song, and I don't think this remix is a great improvement (I could mosh/dance to it, but it's tiresome and repetitive just to listen to.) but damn is the video awesome. Almost shocking, and on content, not just some cheap thrill. I have no idea if it's an homage to something cultural or cult-aural in the UK, but it's simply fascinating, though the cliffhanger ending vexes me terribly. But in a good way.
This one is wild. It's like Kids starring a bunch of 9 y/o boys from Hong Kong, and I sat through the 4:05 with my mouth almost hanging open. It provokes a mixture of "this is wrong" with "what's going to happen next?" and the inventive camera work (I like the one mounted on the woman's door frame, and the SWAT guy's gun), and great editing keeps your interest sharp. It's also cliffhanger-y, but in a good way.
If you want something different, there are even a fair number of Prodigy mashup videos. (There is much here of value.) I'd heard the Enya/Smack My Bitch Up one before, and it's pretty much genius, but this one of No Doubt's Hella Good is damn ripping too. I don't even know what to call this one; PolkaStarter? If they played music like this at parties, instead of nothing but R&B and rapidly aging Rap, I might actually leave the house once in a while.
After nearly dying several times from thyroid gland cancer and resulting complications, Roger Ebert is more or less back to health and producing his usual number of movie reviews. He's also doubling back to catch up on movies he missed reviewing while he was ill, and as a result there's pretty much an abundance of content on his site. Reading his latest Movie Answer Man segment today, I was struck by this reply, though not for reasons having anything to do with the film in question or cinema in general.
Q. In your zero-star review of "September Dawn," you stated that there must be a more thoughtful and insightful way to consider the tragedy of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. There is: A film professor of mine at the University of Utah produced a feature-length documentary about the massacre entitled "Burying the Past: Legacy of the Mountain Meadows Massacre," which has won several awards. The film speaks with descendants of the 17 children who were spared death that day in 1857 and explores in an intelligent and sensitive manner the deep emotions that continue to haunt them. The Web address is www.buryingthepast.com. --Aaron Allen, Los Angeles
A. Several readers have told me about Brian F. Patrick's film. The film finds that Mormons did indeed commit the massacre, while drawing a line between church teachings and the actions of a fanatic group of fringe-dwellers.
Yers. "...while drawing a line between church teachings and the actions of a fanatic(al) group of fringe-dwellers." Pretty well sums up every act of religion motivated mass murder, doesn't it? Except for the religiously motivated acts of mass murder that are directly directed by mainstream church directors, of course.
This is exactly the point Dawkins and Hitchens and other prominent critics of faith make in their books and innumerable public speeches. It's always some "fringe" element of a church doing the horrible things people do in the name of religion, and the fringe element is always condemned by the mainstream. But as long as faiths exist, there will always be fringe elements. Furthermore, in virtually every case the "fringe" element is being much truer to the faith by taking a more literal interpretation of the foundational texts, while the condemning mainstream are watering it down and infusing the bloodthirsty ancient teachings with a modern, non-religious morality.
This is essentially why Hitchens and Dawkins and others argue against faith. It's not so much about the specific teachings of any particular religion; it's about getting people not to see faith as a virtue. After all, even if every religion on earth went away tomorrow, people would just invent new ones, and continue to become enthralled to other faith-based belief systems. Faith is, by definition, "firm belief in something for which there is no proof" and as long as people are willing to believe things without evidence for them, and people want to be told how to live and what to believe, the human species will continue to be easily roused to mass murder, and other unsavory acts rational people would never engage in. Religion is the most prominent example, but there are plenty of others. Even discounting the previous 100,000 years of human murder and pointless warfare, just consider events of the last half century. Any logic-denying belief system, whether religious (9/11) or cult of personality (Jim Jones, David Koresh) or cult of the state (Stalin, Mao, Khmer Rouge), will use faith to turn people from thinking individuals into (mass) murderers/suiciders.
In lighter news, Ebert has inducted Pan's Labyrinth into his Great Movies list, even though 1) it was released just last year, and 2) he doesn't seem to have ever actually reviewed it. I guess he saw it on his death bed and figured it was good enough to enshrine immediately. He does mention that his previous ten year waiting period to become a Great Movie has been modified by his near death experience, and that's certainly understandable.
His commentary on Pan's Labyrinth is worth reading, and it reminded me that I never got around to reviewing that one. I saw it with Malaya in January and honestly, I'm not really sure what I thought about it. It was clearly brilliant in some ways, but incredibly frustrating in others (mostly because the characters we're supposed to be rooting for do such stupid things). The thing I found most interesting about it, in immediate retrospect, was that the movie never took a stand on whether or not the fairies and fauns and magical things the girl was seeing were real. They're never seen from any perspective but hers, and during the course of the film I went back and forth on the "are they real, or just in her mind?" question. I don't think it's resolved in the film, and I'm sure that's intentional. Ebert doesn't touch on that point, and I suppose it's kind of beside the point of the cinematic and creative brilliance that he appreciated in the film, but I think it's worth debating. Not that I've got anyone to debate it with.
I suppose I should see the movie again; it's very grim and unpleasant and painful, with only the escapes into slightly less grim and unpleasant and painful fantasy world there to enliven things, but who says a movie has to be fun, or um... enjoyable... to be worth watching? (The box office says that, but we're not motivated by such petty pursuits as money, now are we?) Pan's Labyrinth is definitely a good movie, and it might be a great movie, but by any metric it's a better movie than it is an enjoyable movie. Unless you're a film purist like Ebert, and can enjoy a movie on its technical and artistic merits, no matter how cruel and unpleasant and frustrating is the story it tells.
I've long referred to the Band Names section, and the feedback it sporadically elicits, as the gift that keeps on giving. I've not updated anything in that section in about 4 years, and yet every now and then, it still draws some sweet, succulent fruit. Today's example:
Subject: bands
your an asshole, you wouldn't know good music if it came up and kick you in the face
Perhaps not. But I do know how to read a FAQ, and I am not unfamiliar with proper verb conjugation.
