Fort Reno Again Tonight

Cuz, fuck you, it's free. Should providence keep the rain away, I will see Kid Congo Powers, The Shirks, and Girl Loves Distortion.

I couldn't locate a website for The Shirks. I am somewhat surprised by this.

This Totally Tarantula Tuesday Brought To You By My Unconcious Mind

This post probably brings an altogether and impressive layer to phoning it in, but since I am not mo-blogging this, we'll just call it all even. Some of the most brilliant posts on 3Bulls aren't even written, they are dreamed. They aren't even written by the whoever-knows-how-many-contributors to 3Bulls. This is of course totally appropriate for their oeuvre and possibly even their under. I hereby present to you five posts straight from the horse's apple AKA my dream state:
Hugo Weaving, Bruce Lee and Hope Chest
Jeff Kober and James Gandolfini
Indira Gandhi and Paul Rudd
Stephen Colbert and Helob
The Best Cast of Law and Order and my friend E

US Air Guitar Finals Tickets On Sale

Don't be a cobnugget and miss out. The US Air Guitar Championships are in San Francisco at the Grand Ballroom. Get over your stupid "I'm too cool for air guitar even though I totally do it" attitude and buy tickets, chundernozzle. Take pictures, maybe even movies. Make me horribly jealous.

If you don't, I'll just resort to arching you, on the internet and possibly in real life. I may not have moppets, but I do have henchpersons. Even if I'm no longer allowed to call them henchmen due to the conditions of my parole and certain court rulings.

Things I've Missed

So...I've been away from the blogs and the general interweb for a long time. I've been wallowing in the fictional worlds of warcraft and warcraftier and neither are healthy places for the unemployed and those prone to extended pity parties. I've also been playing Supreme Commander in case anyone cares. Of course you don't, forget I said anything.

Anywho...

I just heard about Dr. Horrible and his sing along and normally I hate musicals but I'll give this one a chance. I may have to download iTunes finally. I have avoided this for the same reason I avoid facebook and myspace and all those other sites: everything requires a separate damn password and login and wants all sorts of information about The Genius and his life. I don't mind people knowing about my life or whatever parts of my life that I choose to reveal on my blog, but keeping track of all the damn logins I have all created all over this system of tubes is a pain in the ass. Also, I don't have any damn money and I would just be tempted to spend notmoney on songs that I probably won't be able to find on iTunes anyway. Although, I did hear that The Moderate has some songs on iTunes "which just screams legitimacy" in the words of Jim Dempsey.

I have also begun enjoying The Guild, (FOR WHICH I MEANT TO THANK MDHATTER!!!) which I know sounds a lot like a heroin addict talking about how much he loves a twelve step program and methadone. Don't bother trying to click that link, their bandwidth has been obliterated by a link from Penny Arcade and it will probably be a week before that site is up again.

Bob Novak is an Asshole

Bob Novak claims that he didn't have any idea that he had hit an elderly man in a crosswalk when he was finally pulled over by a bike messenger. That's a load of horseshit. Every car I have ever hit with something while I was in a crosswalk and the driver failed to yield has reacted with surprise or anger. One cobag stopped his car in the middle of the intersection and yelled at me that I had better not ever touch his car again. I told him that he better yield to pedestrians in the future or he was going to kill someone.

Given this clearly empirical evidence, Bob Novak is a lying asshole cobag. Which we all knew a long time ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair but I digress.

Thanks for the tip, Super Secret Awesomegirl!

The Celebration Schedule

Why have a birthday party when you can have a week long series of events in your honor?

Monday night - Fort Reno with Pup Tent, North of Canada, and RaRa Rasputin.
Tuesday night - Iota with The Moderate, Brandon Butler, and The Wax Standard.
Wednesday night- Class with Our Instructor and Adobe Creative Suite 3. I will probably play Guitar Hero until my arms cramp after class.
Thursday night - Fort Reno with Statehood, Imperial China, and Tsarina. (What's with all the commies this week? It's like a tribute to my childhood!)
Friday night - Guitar Hero and libations at Le Maison du Smartass.

If you can't make it to these events, I expect epic gifts in the mail. If you don't know my mailing address, just guess. Someone will end up happy.

In yet another public calling out, I have found three bands that have been around for a while that fulsome would probably like, if he weren't married to his job and his cable television:
Death By Sexy (don't judge a band by their goofy name)
Screen Vinyl Image (kim k. even kinda looks like fulsomegirl, too)
The Apes (Although I am not sure about vouching for a band that doesn't have a guitar, given my predilection for air guitar and guitar hero)

The Dark Knight

It's been a busy week. I have been productive but Friday is shaping up to be rather unproductive. I don't know how I'll be able to function tomorrow. Too many late nights for The Genius. I just saw The Dark Knight and I can only say this:

DO NOT WAIT FOR THE DVD RELEASE.

More artful discussion after I wake up.

Somebody is a Cancer

Happy birthday, dudeguy. He's a quality guy, even if he does eat the occasional corpse after sexing it up.

And if he doesn't get that reference, I am going to look mighty strange.

The Push

My tendons flex and ache, the muscles retort painfully to my insistent ministrations. The letter and conversation ring loudly in my lobes, bouncing around my skull. I trot down the narrow trail and concentrate on my footing while I attempt to force the distracting thoughts from my conscious mind. Breaking out into the dim light of the wider path, I run as fast as I can through the tall weeds and thorny bushes. My feet catch on vines and I nearly stumble. I push forward, faster.

There is no breeze. There are no birds. There are no bugs. There are no planes crashing through the sky. The highway noises are muted. There is only the letter and conversation, shaking for attention, while my mind calms and my body pushes faster. The only wind I feel is an ephemeral zephyr created solely by my strange desire for more speed.

The letter was pleasant and polite. A material response to my hopes at last. Despite the crushing disappointment it carried, the letter was a response, which is an improvement. I run on.

I measure my time by the distance between telephone poles. I pass the third pole and keep running. The fourth and fifth pass before I notice. I stop at the sixth and walk for the seventh. My parents' voices rise above the pounding of my heart and the intake of breath. They worry, this is only natural. They will always worry. I will always give them reason to worry. The tide of our relationship is controlled by a cycle of security and uncertainty that I feel powerless to change. Security seems too close to comfort, and comfort is far too near settlement for me to enjoy. Uncertainty brings adversity and chaos, inspiration. I run until there is only the overgrown trail, the encroaching darkness, and me.

Microsoft and Zone Alarm and Comcast

So Microsoft's recent malicious software removal tool (or whatever) is a piece of crap and won't work with Zone Alarm's firewall. I haven't been able to do anything since Tuesday because I was unable to get on to the internet to check it out and the library's connection is slow enough to drive any sane person mad.

I have been visiting with visiting friends. That was less stressful than I thought it might be. Anyway, I'm back again and will be finishing some excellent posts.

Soul Searching or Moping?

The two are oddly similar.

Fireworks and Me

Good Idea: Playing with BB guns, .22 rifles, and 12 gauge shotguns before drinking anything with alcohol.

Bad Idea: Playing with explosives after drinking alcohol.

Result: I think I lost some hair and I have a few burns on my hands, but I still have all of my fingers and toes. I also have some strange bruises, and an odd welt in my hairline.

It was a hell of a party.

How Dare They?

Wall-E…supposes that the human race of the future will become a flabby mass of peabrained idiots who are literally too fat to walk.

Shouldn't we be so successful that all Americans can be fat and lazy now? Aren't we the best nation in the history of the universe, ever in all creation, for all time? How dare Pixar and Disney suggest that Americans are anything but fat, lazy, and all consuming!

In all seriousness, while I may have my own struggles with the ease of over-caloricating and the general lack of effort needed to live in the US, I don't agree that we are a lazy people. Shit, most people are lucky to get a full ten days of paid vacation a year and goddamn blessed if they are actually able to take those vacation days. This is not a great indicator of an lazy workforce, but ask yourself how many nights you have worked late and put in tons of overtime for your office without any direct compensation for that effort.

Or maybe that is just me and my bosses.

Staples of small-town conservative life such as the small farm, the “atomic family,” and old-fashioned and wholesome entertainment like “Hello, Dolly” are looked upon by the suddenly awakened humans as beautiful and desirable.

As an editor, I take issue with the use of scary air quotes. The quotation marks around atomic family are entirely unnecessary. The marks around "Hello, Dolly" are appropriate but whether that film is wholesome is another matter. After all, don't those gheys like show tunes? Are "Wall-E" and Patrick Ford promoting the insidious homosexual agenda?

You Want My SAT and ACT Scores?

Huh?

This is the first time in at least five years that any employer has asked for those scores. I am no longer certain of my ACT score, except that I remember doing considerably better on that test than on the SAT. I am pretty sure I got a 1210 on the SAT and I think I got a 31 on the ACT. Or maybe a 29? That was...thirteen years ago. Or twelve.

In any event, what the hell is the point of asking for a potential employee's SAT or ACT scores when you require a BS or BA? You are not hiring any high school graduates, so how would tests from at least four years prior, and much education prior, help an employer determine whether you are worth interviewing? GRE or LSAT scores I could see being a very interesting number, but high school scores seem so pointless.

Another Odd One

I had a dream in which an ex-girlfriend and I were solving crimes. I was mute and she had to interpret my gestures and various frowning expressions to the audience of assorted officers of the peace. At one point, we ran through a subway tunnel. I may have shot at a suspect. Thinking about it, this dream is rather allegorical for our relationship. Except for the subway tunnel and the shooting.

Maybe that represents my pursuit of love and the self destructive nature of my heart? The tunnel could represent my fumbling approach to emotions and the shooting would then symbolize my ill-advised manner in which I attempt to emotionally involve myself in my relationships.

Or I could have been thinking about the X-Files movie trailer I saw before Wanted, which I saw with my ex-girlfriend. Don't even get me started about the cobags who brought a child younger than 4 to that movie, or the other cobags who let them bring the child into the theater. Fuck it, next time I wait for the damn DVD. The movie sucked, too. The scene my companion found most amusing was ripped off of Equilibrium.* I kinda feel bad for Timur Bekmambetov because there were a lot of great touches in the movie but there were some aspects that were just plain dumb. A fraternity of assassins named The Fraternity. Really? Was The Order too close to that movie about witchcraft titled The Order? Also, a fraternity with Angelina Jolie isn't exactly a fraternity. I guess frarority still sounds fucking dumb. Why not go with The Weavers? or The Fate Guys? or the Curving Bullet People Who Also Sometimes Go All Matrix And Jump From Tall Building to Tall Building Despite Their Being No Indication or Support of This in The Context of The Movie?

Ok, I have to admit that just about every action scene was frigging cool, kinda the way Ultraviolet wanted to be, but the suspension of disbelief was ruined by some of the goofiness of everything. The director does have a singular sense of humor that really brought a shine to some parts (the "I Quit" scene) but also took away from other parts (Morgan Freeman saying "fuck" or "motherfucker" is not enough).

Anyway, it should do well enough to avoid turning the director into a pariah, which is nice because I really liked Night Watch and Day Watch.

* I don't really mind that it was ripped off, I just want to sound cool by pointing it out.