Month: May 2005

Shot.

Last night I dreamt I was shot in the heart. I didn't much like this dream. The idea that if you die in your dream, you die in real life, was introduced to my young mind early enough in my formative years to still have a stronghold in my sometimes adult years. Whether my dreams are wondrous or nightmarish, they are always vivid. They might not appear every night, or even for stretches of weeks to months, but they are presented in glorious detail, if not artisticly rendered.

Do people who die in their sleep die in their dreams? Can we actually ever know this? Either this is conversation worth kicking around over a pint, or a thought only worthy to those who've indulged in multiple hits from the bong. I haven't been hanging around with Cypress Hill tonight, but this thought entered my head stone cold sober.

However vivid the dream was, my retention of details is poor. My brain has not been fitted with any type of cyborg Tivo to record this dream (without those fucking commercials), so all I recall is that there were some type of unsavory characters I was associating with, and I believe it was some type of doublecross on their parts (what can you expect from un-savories) that got me shot.

And when I say I was shot in the heart, it wasn't the anatomically correct, behind the breastplate heart location, Pulp Fiction OD Bitch adrenaline hypodermic heart. It was the upper left side, I pledge allegiance…, home of love letters and initials on school book covers and countless tomes of bad and good poetry heart. This can be analyzed however one chooses. I just was having some fun with that last sentence.

I want to go to be now. I'd like to go back in armed, and get those fuckers.

Hasta luego,

LL

BlogHarbor Cruise #3

Third installment of the fledgling podcast covering the BlogHarbor community. Hosted by John Keegan, this selection features lots of ways to improve your blog appearance. Something I've been meaning to do, but just haven't got around to. Content is still king, but window dressing gets people to stick around long enough to read. If a blog is constructed with care, viewers will suspect the author to put forth that same effort in their posts.

White Stripes, Blue Orchid

The White Stripes always seem to distract me now and again. It must be the color palette, or Meg's…ummm…drumming. Who knows?

The Blue Orchid video has a quite sinister feel to it, provided by Floria Sigismondi in conjunction with a burnt up old mansion, Jack's mustache, a girl with painful shoes, albino snakes, and ummm…Meg drumming on dishes with a hammer. The will not take over your entire conscious, subconscious, id, ego, and superego, like “Seven Nation Army” did. But it least it won't have your co-workers throwing stuff at you for sitting at your desk going, “Dum…Dum Dum Dum Dum Dum…Dum” incessantly. You'll just be making that swishy guitar sound with your mouth, but not nearly as often.

Whitestripes.net has an .mpg file.

Triple Tremolo has a .wmv file.

I actually wrote a review of Elephant that a never posted anywhere, not that anybody needs to read it, since they already have the CD by now. But perhaps it will appear. But then again, it looks better as a piece of paper lying beneath a bunch of credit card applications, receipts, post-its, random pieces of envelopes with unnamed phone numbers, magazines, crapalogs, and outdated coupons. Aesthetics are important, you know.

GTA returns to TBIMB

It's official. Grand Theft Auto for Sony PSP. Fall 2005. Now maybe I'll think about keeping that unopened box that wasn't going to fund my retirement on eBay.

Any PC users looking for multi-plaer mods of GTA. Try this.

I guess this post may as well include all things Rockstar, so here's the official site for Bully. No info, much like the GTA:LCS site, but bookmark these things, it will come.

Rockstar is supporting the PS3, apparently a Red Dead Revolver demo was shown at E3. No announcements of GTA for PS3 yet, there are rumours floating on the Yahoo Finance messageboards about Microsoft buying TakeTwo (Rockstar's owner/publisher), but as a lot of rumours on finance messageboards, there's a good chance they're crap. They probably heard from the same two morons at a Gamestop that told me last year that Microsoft already had XBox exclusivity for the next version of GTA. Of course, I knew they were full of shit, because I was a TakeTwo shareholder at the time. But as they possessed the oft time ugly “clerk-snob/god” attitude, there was no telling them otherwise. But now if there is any truth to the new rumours, these tow will pat themselves on the back, with the only real gain being the 4 words, “I told you so”. Meanwhile I've picked up 10 points on TTWO stock. Now I'm the one with the smug little smirk.

Mosh Pit Girl

I'm sure I'm quite late to the party, but the 7 people who read this blog (Is it that many, or is the circumference of my swelling head affecting my counting abilities?) are probably showing up just in time for cake crumbs and torn wrapping paper.
I'm all for Photoshopping pictures for fun and profit. Or just for fun and no profit as is the case typically. I've done some Photoshop work for no fun and little profit which is alright sometimes.
I just wanted to use Photoshop as a verb because it pisses off Adobe to no end. They create the category killer and then bitch about its gramatical use. Ooh…what if their chief competitor, Macromedia comes out with a Photoshopping, or worse, a photoshopping program…well, they could just buy them out before that happens and photoshop, I mean Photoshop, or did I mean photoshop becomes a generic term…oh, they did buy them, well then lets get to the pics already.
Mosh Pit Girl.

Coupon Ahoy! (not trademarked)

Today I got my response to the letter featured in the “Crumby Cookies” post, you know the one you didn't read, as opposed to the other one you didn't read. But that's your business, and I got no beef about it. So drop it, ok.

I'd put their response here, but it lacks the flavor of my original letter or any other flavor, except maybe that of plain steamed white rice, you know that minute rice you cook in the bag with the holes in it. Yep, that one. Imagine eating that with nothing. Now imagine that in letter form and you'll know why I didn't re-type it. Besides the fact that re-typing would involve some effort on my part.

I'll paraphrase:

Thank you for your letter we didn't read. Trained monkeys scanned for keywords to determine you were an unsatisfied customer, and there was no pending legislation to concern ourselves with. The context clarfication script determined the mentions of “severed fingers” and “razor blades” were made in jest, so we've sent you a coupon for free cookies, and to prove there was no personal involvement at any level, we did not address your humor, or include any of our own. You could even scratch that last statement, because that would involve concern on our part. The free cookies will not dent our bottom line, because the addictive additives will ensure future purchases, and encourage someone in your family to start smoking since the same additives used in our junk food, are also added to cigarettes produced by our parent company. Oh yeah, and smoking is bad for you, so don't do it. That's our message we have to mention, in case you or your children never ever even considered smoking before. This way, as a parent you'll be sure to tell your kids how bad it is and not to do it. Once that message is combined with television commercials, magazine ads, and posters in schools, your children will naturally start to smoke after developing a curiousity, and we'll have a new customer.
It's a win, win situation for everybody.
Thanks for your loyalty. Enjoy your cookies.

Yeah! Free cookies! Well, actually replacement cookies. I feel the power of a consumer advocate. Now on to the next letter, about how I flipped over my Corvair.