Second Video of the Day

One of my favorite Robbie Williams songs. The video is crazy though. I think Robbie has a very dry sense of humor. Once I understood what the joke was though, I couldn't stop laughing.

Videos of the Day

It occurred to me that instead of describing funny Robbie Williams videos, I can just link them. Here's the one where he portrays himself as the leader of a cult. Guaranteed to make you smile.

Saving the best for last

That last song on the new TMBG album (The Mesopotamians) is great. I loves it. Watch so that you might loves it too.

And while I'm at it

Here's the middle song from the newest TMBG album. There's one more coming, the last song, and it's probably the best, but I'm trying to get some word of mouth going. Or something. In any case, it won't be posted until later when you've had a chance to digest properly. Actually, this video fits nicely with the one just below it as it is anti-establishment in nature, albeit in a "light-hearted romp through authoritarianism" kind of way.

Thursday night video

Hi all,

This is the first song off of the new TMBG album. I like it, but you can disagree in comments if you like.

Parking Brake!

Parking Brake!
Originally uploaded by hbot3000

This is what I walked out to this morning. Apparently my parking brake has seen better days. What's funny, is that this happened last night when I left the car in idle in drive-way without parking brake at all. So I parked it in driveway again, this time sure to use the parking break. And then walk out to this, this morning.

Wheeee.

Quote of the Day

"I don't want to say that I'm special . . . but I'm a bit special? Do you know what I mean?" -- Robbie Williams in "She's Madonna" music video

What I did this Week

Monday: Did not eat Beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, nuts or seeds.

Tuesday: Drank clear liquids all day. Starting at 5:00, drank god-awful salt-water mixture in tall glass every ten minutes for 3 hours. Imitated some sort of hideous human water rocket rest of evening.

Wednesday: Let's just say there is now photographic evidence of what the inside of my stomach and bowels looks like. I won't go into detail about the process (largely because they gave me a drug that made me forget it), but think Japanese tentacle sex.

Thursday: No problems detected, recommence solid food intake.

Friday: To Be Determined.

Good times.

Minmei fan club

This will make no sense to you if you don't know what Robotech is and/or find the cartoon unwatchable.

Why the hell does Minmei only have 3 crappy songs in her repetoire? It's maddening.

Our collective brain

What the hell am I going to do if the internet ever goes away? I had a random thought just now wondering if there was any video of the hindenburg disaster, considering I had only seen stills or very short clips up until this point. It took me under a minute to find the original film, complete with commentary. How crazy is that? I pulled random information from our collective digital memory and experienced it in under 3 minutes. Are there any negative consequences to our thinking patterns as a result of this? For instance, the urge to memorize certain categories of information? Why bother, when I can pull it up in under a minute?

Digression: The reporter was interesting. He struggles to remain professional and ends up breaking down as it happens in front of him. He came across as a human being, who is a reporter, reacting honestly to a tragedy. Conversely, modern talking heads on TV come across as reporters/anchors, who imitate human life, reacting eagerly with ghoulish hunger to a tragedy. Homework: What is bullshit about this perceived dichotomy?

Returning to main point: What the fuck are we going to do when we can't google text and video knowledge anymore? I predict rioting in the streets.

Musical Fixations

My new favorite band. You may enjoy or dislike them as you see appropriate. You may or may not have to get over the fact that their band name is the ditty bops.

scattered and streaming

I don't do a lot of things to edify myself.

The first mention of self-edification I recall came through my religious education in my pre-teen years. Various authority figures asserted, in writing or verbally, that studying the Bible every day was the preferred and approved method of edifying myself [Edify: To instruct or improve, especially in moral or religious knowledge]. Of course, reading the definition as an emphasis on religious self-improvement, there's nothing wrong with that assertion. If my religion is indeed Christianity, then reading the the Bible is the best way of improving myself spiritually.

But let's not get hung up on that word. I usually take it to mean "general improvement of self in knowledge or character", which is suppose is my own murky, but similar definition. In any case, assume that's what I mean by edify.

In any case, I never really bought the assertion presented. In essence, I cannot now, and could not then, understand how delving deeper into religious abstraction made me a better person. True, by pursuing a daily ritual of study of the Bible and reflective thinking I would form habits of discipline and careful thought, but couldn't I do that by reading and thinking on many other non-religious philosophical, scientific and other-wise instructive tomes? It seemed that the hidden assumption there was that by studying the Bible, God was going to magically align my thinking into clearer and deeper patterns, whereas he would refuse to do so should I decide to study works of a secular nature. And so I rejected the idea that the Bible was the thing I needed to study in order to edify myself. I could edify myself just fine on my own thank you.

But let's not get hung up on whether studying the Bible is really, truly self-improvement. The funny thing here, is that while I was averse to Biblical study to improve myself, it turns out I was also averse to almost ANY OTHER FORM of self-improvement.

Why? Starting mid-way through college, I finally had some money and a lack of parental oversight and could finally start supplying myself with all the things I had been forbidden or could not afford as a child. Namely video games and comics. Now, I am not blaming video games and comics for anything per se, I will continue to enjoy them greatly in the future. What I am saying is this: Using video games, comic books and movies as my only focus outside of work and friends has not strengthened me in mind or body. Again, it's not that these things are bad, or should be discarded, but I focused on them to the exclusion of everything else. I have spent 11 or so years viewing work as "that thing I have to do until I can go back to playing games or reading comics." It's true, the other 3 contributers to this blog enjoy those things as well, but while they would play games and read comics, they were also teaching themselves to program, editing and writing for the school newspaper, and playing in bands. And while they were doing that, I was playing through starcraft again, wondering why I was so inept socially and had such a hard time meeting girls.

My sleep doctor would tell me that I've probably had apnea since I gained weight in college, and because of that have not had a decent nights sleep since college which has led to scattered, ADD type thinking patterns which lend themselves naturally to video games and comic books. Actually, he did kind of argue that with me a little bit. And there may be something to the fact that these revelations are starting to sink in after I've been on a breathing machine that enables me to have R.E.M sleep again. But I don't think my lack of self-edification can entirely be the result of outside forces. In other words, choices were made in regards to how and when to improve myself.

Please understand, this is not intended to be some sort of angst-ridden confession. It's just that I look back at the last decade or so, and I realize I've done very, very little to edify myself. Yes, I got my Bachelor of Science, and then my Master's degree. Yes, I have a great job where I am appreciated. But I think I could have done all of them much more rigorously and impressively. If you'll pardon the massive white-boy ego, I am looking back on the last decade of my life and realizing I have fallen far short of what I believe I am capable of. It feels like I have put 90% of my energies into memorizing the changing dynamics of the X-men over 400 issues (and other similar projects) and about 10% of my energies into my school, work and learning new fun and/or useful skills. And that disturbs me. So I'm thinking that with my thinking patterns emerging from the no-sleep cocoon, I should probably re-consider how I spend my time. Not to cut the things I like out, just maybe to put them in their proper proportion.

What I've also realized, is that as interactive as a video game is, it's not really a creative outlet. And due to all the other crap going on with my life now, I'm starting to realize I need to really develop a creative outlet. One of the edifying things I wanted to do over the last ten years, but never did of course, is write. So for now, I'm going to start by doing more of that. Not that it needs to be good, just that I want to do it. The most perverse consequence of this re-awakened ambition has been the urge to write poetry. Really, godawful poetry similar in nature and design to those that I used to torture others with in high school. I probably won't be torturing the blog with it, but should it appear, now you know why.

On a related note

I love this post by Arthur Silber. It might be a little much for some of you, but I whole-heartedly agree with it. Nothing in this country will change until we start pissing off people who have gotten entirely too comfortable.

My very own spawn.

I've been trying to figure out how to write this announcement in such a way that you all could share in the wonder and awe that I feel. Or is that icy terror? Hard to tell. . .

It's true: my wife is playing host to my parasitic spawn. I'll post some photos when the opportunity arises, but for now I will simply declare that I have known my wife and sired a daughter. We expect her to make an appearance in late February.

So in addition to the cradle, changing table and other furniture necessities, I will also be investing in firearms, security cameras, and robotic canine escorts capable of humane castration in 0.75 seconds.

--Hazmatt out--

Stop dying

I'm a few days behind on this but I just found out Robert Jordan died. My reactions to this are:

Crap, I needed closure on that series.

And, with a touch more humanity:

Crap, an author I liked just died. This is a sad thing.

It's not a fitting eulogy to a guy who was by all accounts very nice but:

Crap, this sucks.

It's incredibly unfair that we don't get to be immortal.

Office View

Office View
Originally uploaded by hbot3000

This is the view from my office. Today I set up the webcam monitor on one of my desktops. It's kind of funny that as much as I have a view now, I hardly ever look outside. Hopefully the webcam monitor will encourage me to change that.

The Dark Lord of the Bedroom

Tuesday night I was wired to a circuit board in a manner somewhat reminiscent of the matrix. I was then asked to fall asleep, which did not go as planned. 3 blissful, wired-to-15-instruments hours later I guess I finally did, although I don't think I slept very well, for reasons that were difficult to fathom.

2 days later they informed me that the results of the test indicate that I have mild to moderate sleep apnea, which is not a problem in the short run, but possibly leads to bigger health problems long term. They casually mentioned that if I WANTED they'd be happy to remove my uvula, tonsils and assorted unnecessary fleshy bits at the back of my throat. I decided to forego that option in favor of positive pressure air masks favored by sith lords and bounty hunters alike. But other than questionable bedtime machinery, I am fine.

Apart, that is, from a nagging suspicion that I was programmed with a secret objective by whatever agency uses the sleep clinic as a front. I keep trying to find my trigger phrase.

"Apocalypse cow!"

"The Blind Pig Flies North."

etc.

I should probably stop.

How I learned I was undead

Soooo, after many complaints of my loud, heard-from-several-rooms-away snoring on vacation this summer, and talking about these and other symptoms with my physician, I went to a sleep clinic. The nice doctor palpitated the fleshy outsides of my throat and took a peak at the topside of my airway and declared "You have a small throat!" After a brief discussion on how that affects my worth as a man (a conversation which was entirely imaginary), she told me I probably have sleep apnea (which was not imaginary). I don't think this is a big deal, it's generally not a serious condition, but now I have to go do a sleep test this coming Tuesday night. As far as I can tell this involves being wired up to 50 machines and then asked to sleep. so, you know, fun.

My only concern is that it's being run by a cult and I'll wake up the next morning brain-washed. "Why yes, I do worship a highly evolved form of the color purple, why do you ask?"

In any case, I do not look forward to sleeping with a breathing mask. Although I suppose it does have darth vader appeal.

"LUKE! I am your pillow!"

Herbie the love civic

So my Honda died and had to be towed to the shop the other day. Two otherwise rational people have now told me it was because I was openly discussing selling the car in front of it. Am I crazy for arguing that the car is, in fact, inanimate? I mean, I understand the urge to anthropomorphize the hell out of everything I use in daily life, but I draw the line at giving people crap for discussing certain things in front of in-organic objects for fear the object might take offense. I'm sorry, that's just how I roll.

Hirsute Kiln-boy

So last night, I was busting through harry potter and the deadly marshmallows, in the final legs, ready to finish the book and devour it's secrets when I hit page 610. Now, there was nothing in particular wrong with page 610. In fact, it was a rather exciting moment in the book. It's just that it was followed by page 643 all the way up to where 643 should have been, at which point page 643 started all over again. So . . . huh . . . how irritating.

No worries though, I have a second copy for the girlfriend! I'll just go read that one. Oh, huh. It seems it suffers from the exact same flaw. Oh good. So anyway, I will be journeying to the book store tonight to buy two more copies. Wish me luck.

What are the odds I can sell two flawed books from the first printing to a collector someday?