And As For You, I Know Don't You But I'm Sure You're A Jerk!

I'm sick as a dog, so I'm irritable and as such I'm going to bitch about something here:  People who seem to think that the year field on MP3s is for the year they encoded it.  Same goes for those who think that the artist field should have their name, or anything like that.

The purpose of the tags is fairly well defined, and, as such, they serve a specific purpose: not to glorify yourself, but to help identify a particular audio recording — be it a speech, radio broadcast, &c.  If you want to praise yourself to high heavens then that's what the comments field is for.  We use ID3v2.x now, we can write whatever we want, and not worry about the 28 character^* limit on the comment field.  (Same goes for people who classify every MP3 with the genre 'Blues', but I get the feeling that I should be bitching at programmers who make that the default choice for their encoding application.)

Finally, if you're in any way related to the person who's been filling my comments with spam, then I currently hate you more than anyone else on Earth.  For everyone else: MT-Blacklist is now active.  If you get a message telling you you're comment has been blocked, let me know.

^*Alternatively, there was also the 30 character comment field.  Of course, that's only for people who remember ID3v1.0 and the days before the track number field.

Title value is: one point.  Category is: hell diddily-ding-dong crap!

Further Observations

You know you have an even more serious problem when you go to the mall to buy a few picture frames and end up redecorating most of your bathroom.

That whistling noise you hear is just the wind blowing through my bank account…

Random Observations

You know you have a problem when you happen to see a children's cartoon while flipping channels, and the first thing that comes into your mind is "My, the father looks a lot like a caricature of Mordecai Richler.

You also know that you have even more of a problem when you then see the phrase "Based on the stories by Mordecai Richler" at the end of the opening credits and raise your arms in victory.

You, Sir, Are A Vulgarian

As of late, in between bouts of failing to order my thoughts in a manner so as to make a decent thesis chapter, I've been consoling myself over the demise of Black Isle and subsequent cancellation of Fallout 3 by playing Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel on the XBox.  (Not to be confused with Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, which is an entirely different game, and one that I never could get into.)  It's not great, and if I really wanted to visit the Fallout universe I should play Fallout 1 or 2, but I just don't have time to start a game that took me over one term and part of a summer to complete the last time I played it.

So, instead I've been playing Interplay's latest attempt to milk the success of the Fallout label (see Tactics for further reference), as well as the Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance game model.  (Readers are directed towards Dark Alliance 2 and D&D Heroes for further reference in the latter category.  Actually, no, they aren't, because, quite frankly, those games weren't very good.)

Anyways, I've been playing it, and something seems just plain wrong.  Gone is the classic tunes, replaced by heavy, distorted guitar chords. (Contrast that to Fallout 2, which used Louis Armstrong's 'Kiss to Build a Dream On' as its opening theme.)  Gone is the ability to talk your way out of a fight, but, given the game model, I'm not entirely surprised.  There's still tons of pop culture references, but they're thrust at you, instead of hidden away in the game.  There's still gore, and bottlecaps as currency, and they don't seem to out of place, but it's the language that really seems to do it.

Now, Fallout always had vulgar options in your conversations.  It had a M rating, and it deserved it.  But, not only were they far between (or at least, I remember them beign so), you also had to work at it to get those options.  They weren't there staring you in the face as the only option you had, and that's where Brotherhood of Steel seems jarringly wrong.  Every conversation, short of 'Hey, want to trade?' involves swearing on the part of you or the other party.  I'm not talking occassional words either, I'm talking sentences, where roughly half the words would result in getting your mouth washed out with soap, as the only option you have.  Now, maybe it's just the character I chose, but Fallout was never this bad.  You could, if you wanted, have been a sweet talker who could con the legs off an Arcturan Mega-donkey and then convince it to walk afterwards.  In BOS you're simply rude, uncouth, and ineffective at carrying on a conversation.  Maybe I'm outside the target range, but it's just not that amusing, and, after the first conversation, it's not that shocking either.

Maybe I'm just getting too old for these games, dag-nabbit!.

One point for the title.  Another point if you can give me the correct response to it.

Die Traumdeutung

I've been having reoccurring dreams lately.  They aren't the ones I normally have around this time of year, which consist of having registered for a course and having completely forgotten to go to it.  Rather, these dreams don't seem to have anything in common aside from one single linking element: in each of them, I have a stutter.

I'm not talking a minor stutter either, I'm talking a completely over the top, unable to pronounce words, stutter.  Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda would be the perfect example of what I'm talking about.  It doesn't leave me in a cold sweat upon awakening, like the forgotten course dream, but I still can't help but wondering if there's any reason to it.

Now, I know that dreams are generally considered to be little more than your brain doing a massive dump of ideas and memories, but sometimes you can't help but wonder if they actually mean something.  More importantly, I can't help but wonder if my inability to express myself verbally in dreams is a manifestation of my inability to get anything written on my thesis.  At the very least, I can guess what Freud would say all this means.

Today's title has value of one point. Category: Tell me about your mother.

Oh, My Orchard!--My Sweet, Beautiful Orchard!

Despite steady flurries, it was actually fairly warm today.  As such, Dmitrii and I decided to take a walk down to Queen St. to check out Owl's Nest, a second hand book store.  We arrived just as the gentleman in charge was getting ready to close up an hour early, as no customers had been in since he had opened at noon.  We managed to convince him to stay open a little longer, on the promise that we'd buy something.  I ended up with the usual types of things I get from second hand books stores: plays (Chekov, Miller, Sophocles, and Marlowe) and classics (Les Misérables), and Dim ended up with his usual stuff; namely 70s and 80s Sci-Fi, with some vintage Clarke or Asimov thrown in for variety.  But, it was a trip to one of the upstairs rooms that proved the most amusing and enjoyable.

Up there was where all the roleplaying books were kept, largely old Palladium and White Wolf games.  But, hidden in among the since long deprecated White Wolf books, was a graphic novel.  Why it was there, I don't know.  Perhaps the store keeper didn't know where else to shove it.  But there, for me to drool over, was one of the books from the original printing of Neil Gaiman's Stardust.  Although it is book 2, and I'm missing the other three, it's the first time I've ever seen a copy, and now it's mine!  All mine!

Additionally, I picked up copies of the first edition AD&D books; largely just for amusement, as I'm not a huge D&D fan.  While they aren't first printings, they are pre-revision copies, meaning they have the really horrible covers.  In addition, the Dungeon Masters Guide appears to be an earlier printing than the previous two; which makes it very odd to look at an AD&D book that only lists a total of two other books available for people to buy.

Grand total: $60 spent by me, $30 by Dim.  When we left, the shopkeeper told us that we had made his day.  I don't doubt it.

Title is worth one point.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

After almost a year of having borrowed it and left it sitting on an end table, I finally got around to reading the copy of I Am Legend that I borrowed from Dmitrii.  It's a good story, but the other stories contained in the same compilation just aren't up to par with the title one.

For those of you who've never heard of it, it was the basis of the 1971 film The Omega Man.  It's not on my list of movies to see, partly because it stars Charlton Heston, a man who seems to have learnt how to act by watching bad parodies of Clint Eastwood, and partly because it just isn't supposed to be all that good.  To clarify:  There's good Heston (Ben Hur), there's good bad Heston (Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green), and then there's bad Heston (just about everything else he's ever done).  This is supposedly the latter, although it did inspire The Homega Man parody.  (To continue the Heston thread, there is one further category: bad Heston in a good movie, as exemplified by Touch of Evil.  I've got no idea whose idea it was to cast him as a Mexican detective, but it must rate as one of the worst miscastings in history.  On the other hand, it was the only reason that Welles ended up directing it, so I suppose some good came out of it after all.)

From what I've heard of it, the movie appears to be much in the vein of Minority Report or Blade Runner; the screenwriter took the basis premise of the original story, and reworked it into something bearing only a vague resemblence to the original work.  The difference being that Blade Runner was a great movie and a lousy book.  (Minorty Report is an entirely different matter, being a great short story with a twist ending that was changed into a needlessly complicated chase movie with a sappy ending.  Damn you, Spielberg!  Damn you!)

Since I've finished his book, it's now up to Dmitrii to finally get around to finishing A Clockwork Orange, which I loaned him at around the same time.  He's at least started it, and informs me that the slang language designed by Burgess is quite interesting if you happen to know Russian.

On a completely different note: Mozilla Firefox users should really try out Firesomething.  Everyone else (or at least those of you with Quicktime) should check out this.

(Before anyone says anything: yes, I know Heston started acting before Eastwood.  It was just too good a comparison not to use.)

Title is worth one point. Category: I mean you're not helping.  Why is that, Leon?.

This Is Merely A Test Of The Emergency Broadcasting System

I updated some perl modules on my system earlier today, and it seems to have caused everything to go all SNAFUed on me.  If you attempt to post a comment and are greated by an error message, do not fear.  Despite the fact that the main page may not have been updated to show it, your comment has indeed been recorded.  I hope to get this fixed as soon as I can figure out what the hell I did to cause it.

Update:  Seems to be fixed.

The Dead Have Risen, And Are Voting Republican!

When I get bored, I get distracted, and when I get distracted I tend to node things over at Everything2.  That's been happening a lot lately, as evidenced by such recent write-ups as "My mother and your mother were hanging out clothes", and the answer to the last entry's title.

As of late, I've decided to do a write-up of the Canadian Alliance's Stockwell Day years under the title of Canadian Conservative-Reform Alliance Party.  (Those who pay attention to politics will remember that short-lived name, better known by its abbreviation: CCRAP).  Anyways, my memory is a bit fuzzy, and I will admit to having a bias as I never really cared for the Reform Party under any of its names.  So I decided that I should do a bit of background research prior to writing it.  During my search through the Internet I came across Mr. Day's homepage, and happened to click on the 'bio' section.  While I hardly expected anything too relevatory, after all, Mr. Day's tenure was hardly what one would call smooth sailing, I was quite simply, amazed by the spin job to be found in the description of the two years when he was leader.  To get an idea of what I mean, click this link, and scroll down past the bulleted list.

Now that I've bored you all, today's title is worth one point.  It should be an easy one.

!

A while back I ordered some books from Chapters.  Towards the end of February they shipped me my copy of Le Morte D'Arthur and Ivanhoe; having moved my copy of The Once and Future King to 'Temporally Unavailable to Order' status.  Anyways, I got free shipping, which meant that I couldn't track the item.  Instead, I could only get delivery confirmation.

Yesterday, I started wondering where the hell my books were.  After all, some merchandise I ordered from eBay around the same time had arrived here — and this stuff was coming from Florida and California, not Ontario.  So, I waded through my email until I found the message with the Canada Post pseudo tracking number.  Off to Canada Post's page I go, where I enter the code into the inquiry box and send off my inquiry.

Parcel delivered.

What?!  Parcel delivered?  I never had received the delivery attempt notification, much less the parcel.  So, off to Kings Place I go, as the last parcel I had had been delivered there for me to pick up.  A check of parcels for my address revealed one, and it was a book, but it's not from Chapters.

Since they didn't have the package, they gave me a number to call to find out just where in the system it was.  So, I trudge back home and call the number.  They have absolutely no problem with finding out where my parcel is, as it's at the post office in Kings Place.

Thankfully Scott was home by then, and he's got a car rented, so we pile into the car and I go back to the clerks who couldn't find the parcel.  They check the system, again, and still come up with nothing.  Finally, after I insist that it must be there, one of them offers to go back in the mail room and check.  Less than a minute later she's back and bearing books.  Someone had decided to mark my parcel as delivered, so it didn't show up in the computer.

And that's the story of how two books from Ontario took longer to get to me than one that had to go through customs.

Title is worth one point, and the catergory is "?"

Time For The Drum Solo!

I went home for the weekend yesterday, and decided to take a trip out to Future Shop last night.  While I was at the mall, I discovered a few interesting things: First, Charlie Daniels of Devil Went Down to Georgia fame was a member of Leonard Cohen's backing band in the late 60s/early 70s.  Secondly, Palm software can now be had extremely cheaply (Future Shop had all of theirs on for 50% off whatever it had already been reduced to).  Thirdly, and finally, I can tell too much about a handheld based on the CPU alone.

Furthering the final point, while at Future Shop I saw my first Linux based handheld.  Unfortunately the battery was dead, so I couldn't try out its recognition or see if it used a widget set based off of QT or GTK, however it did have the memory and CPU information posted next to it, and from the fact it used a Motorola DragonBall EZ (68EZ328 for those who like numbers) I could tell that it was a monochrome screen and likely ran some varient of ucLinux.  (You need a DragonBall VZ to support colour screens, and none of the DragonBall series has a MMU)  Price wise, the thing was twenty dollars less than a Zire 21, and contained 4 times the available memory for programs.  So, same CPU, more memory, and cheaper, that means the only thing the Zire 21 has going for it is a wider range of applications. (And, seeing as I know nothing of the state of Linux PDA applications, even that is debatable.)

On a final note, I picked up a copy of Futurama Season 3, which contains many episodes originally broadcast as season 4, including the classic becoming-your-own-grandfather episode, Roswell That Ends Well.

Today's title is worth one point.

Would Have Stopped Rommel In His Tracks

Since I started my quest to listen to all my music, I've managed to listen to 824 songs, which is good.  Unfortunately, I've now got more songs to listen to than what I started with.  Not only have I gone back up to 11 days of straight listening, but I have also moved backwards in time; no longer am I listening to albums from 1978, instead I'm listening to newly acquired albums from 1975.  (Hi.  My name is Andrew, and I have a problem.)

I am finding interesting things though: songs I'd heard when my list was on random but had never realised what it was, how good Brian Eno is, and the fact that if the Eagles's Hotel California gave me the creeps as a kid, then John Cale's cover of Heartbreak Hotel would have left me huddling in a corner.

Finally, I'd like to leave these two quotes:
Oh…my…god… You need a hobby… Or at least a new one. — Jill, upon hearing of my music plans.
I'll second that motion, but only slightly, 'cause I'm thinking of how I could do it. — My brother, after I mentioned Jill's comments.

I don't expect anyone to get the title, but if someone surprises me with the answer then they can have 5 points.

Have You Ever Been to Belgium In Fact?

Sunday night was the Academy Awards. (As well you know.)  The big winner at said awards The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. (As well you also know.)  Now, to quote a certain comedian turned unfunny partisan hack, I don't want to go off on a rant here, but I was extremely disappointed in this.

I can't say much about the best picture, having not seen any of the others, so I'll keep it to this:  Of all three Lord of the Rings, I thought this one was the worst.  Therefore, if the prior ones didn't warrant an Oscar, than this one most certainly didn't.  I also don't think it was that great of a choice for adapted screenplay.  My complaint here comes largely from the fact that there were threads left hanging — things that were mentioned in the film, but were never followed through.  (Who can tell me why they wanted to take Frodo's armour to the Black Gate? Only those of you who haven't read the books are eligible…  Anyone?  Anyone?)

Anyways, moving back to my train of thought, we arrive at best song.  I hated, H-A-T-E-D, hated 'Into the West'.  Disliked, despised, loathed — pick a word and you're on target.  Now, I actually have a choice for what should have won: Belleville Rendezvous, from Les Triplettes de Belleville.  It's fun, it's catchy, it's from a great film that didn't have a chance in hell in the other category it was nominated for.  But, no, it didn't win.  I've got my own opinions, largely that Lord of the Rings would have been seen by more voting members that Triplettes (to give an idea, there's almost twice as many reviews for Return of the King listed over at Rotten Tomatoes.)  It was robbed! 7 Robbed, I tell ya! But that's just my opinion.

Finally, in my quest to listen to all my music, I've managed to finish four hundred and one songs.  This brings me to 1973: Vietnamese Babies, 20th Century Boys, and Doctor Jimmy, ahoy!

Title is worth 2 points, but I'm going to be very picky about it.