Aleph Ersatz

Dan Savage is at it again!  After the wonderful perversion on Santorum, Dan Savage has been challenged to re-define Saddle Backing, and has gotten plenty of suggestions from his readers.  So far, two definitions are in hot contention.  The rest of this is NSFW so it’s behind the cut.

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Well I got me the DVD for Sacramento for the NIN LITS tour. Very nice quality, fast torrent download, just excelent! One single angle from the back of the crowd, but it nicely captures the whole expereince!
If you missed it, grap the torrent here if you want it.  Stupid Demonoid and their limitation of torrent downloads when they are popular!

I spent the day listening to the NIN Victoria HD rip.  Very impressive stuff, and I’ve almost got the fan-made 2 DVD Sacramento video.  I’ve seen some of the guy’s work on youtube, while the editing isn’t great, the film quality is magnificent!

Just watched the vast majority of Elizabeth.  I can’t seem to sit still long enough to enjoy any movie anymore, even a damn excelent one as this!  It may not be totally factual, but it was just magnificent.  The score too brought out some old Mozart, which got me listening to classical a bit again.  So glad I managed to find both of E. S. Posthumus‘ albums!  Their stuff is amazing modern classics, and ha been used in tongs of TV shows and movies!  Very much worth a listen.

I’m sure the bigs news today has been Obama’s Inauguration, but really, I have nothing to say about that.  I’m excited, I’m glad, but it explains itself.  Now we sit back and find out just how much of that was true.  (Albeit, I beleive almost all of it was.)

Around here, things have been very odd.  I tried to get some decent pictures of thee crazy fog we’ve had for almost two weeks, but no luck.  Each night it seems to get thicker, to the point that it becomes almost Silent Hill-eque.  My crazy co-worker, (the partner-in-crime on the desk wrapping), wants to make a Pyramid Head costume and wander around with an air raid siren blaring.  I’d love to help, but the fog will (hoepfully) be gone before this can come to fruition.

I finally found out what “The Gift” from NIN was.  405 gigabyes of raw unedited footages, torrented and hosted for editing and fan-made DVD creation!

They included data from three shows, Sacramento, Portland and …. Victoria!  I do not have the ability to edit, but I am anxiously awaiting the many DVDs and videos that will come.  I ranted and raved about the Lights in the Sky concert when I saw it, and it truly is an experience that deserves a recording to immortalize it in the digital era of cheap pop music.  I am vastly excited, and knowing how the fans are, I’m sure at least one DVD will be made!

Oh, and 320 kbps rips of the Victoria audio!  Getting it now as I post. http://www.megaupload.com/?d=X2OTDDIW

Started off my first session of D&D in probably seven or more years last night.  Got three characters that don’t really want to associate with each other wandering around a town, gatehring information but more or less passing time.  I did not fully prepare, because it was a kind of spontaneous session, and I am still missing one player.  But, it was still fun and a good warm up.  I got some hints at the plot was working on, and a couple of other minor notes, but other than that, it was kind of seat-of-the-pants flailing by all of us.  I have about two weeks before the next session, which is enough time to detail the town, the plots, some other things for them to do, and just generally flush out the town details.  I definentally need to give the plays more to do in terms of interaction, but it was a good start and warm-up for the group, mainly because half of us haven’t played in years, and we one entirely virgin player.

On a worse note, I think my dying power supply have a siezure tonight.  It’s about six months overdue for replacement, I just hope it can last untill at least february.

Points to whomever actually reads this andgets the song reference correct.  Actually, this is one of several post I’ve used a song title for since I started the daily posting concept.  Can you find them all?

If anyone kows how to turn on the extra hot-keys on a Microsoft Keyboard in XP, please let me know!  It is one XP tweak I do not know how to do, and really really want to!  Had to buy one of those because the spacebar on the other computer broke, and the spare keyboard has a wonky space bar.  (Space bars seem to be a common problem.)  However, with tha computer being used by the kids often, I want to disable as many hotkeys as possible!  Luckily this one doesn’t have Power/Sleep/Wake keys like the last one!  Those are very tempting for kids and very annoying when they use them.

On that note, Labtec keyboards suck.  They get chunky and gummy and hard to use.  I miss alot of keys because I have to slam half the buttons to use them.  Conversely, the standard Dell keyboard works very nicely, is very responsive, comfortable, and just alot better to use.  Perhaps one of the best straight-line standard keyboards I’ve ever used.  When you type nine hours a day, five days a week, having comfortable equipment is very important.

It’s amazingly hard to keep discussing stuff when your week day is mostly the same. Get up, commute, work, commute, deal with kids, do nothing (when I should be doing something) and sleep again.
Ugh, cyclic redundancy!

Well three days now.  What’s the next gap gonna be, five?

Not been doing much.  Have a cold that is discipating as slowly as it came on, riding the coat tails of a similar cold.  Such a pain.  Been busy at work, and doing alot of reading.  Finished the Guitar Legend issue on Metallica.  Was very interesting, had lots of interviews, including the last one with original-bassist Cliff Burton, and a bunch of guitar tech stuff on their songs, techniques, etc.  Kirk Hammett is amazing and ingenious aswell.

Been reading the Dungeons Master’s Guide slowly, working out a semi-detaile campaign with a decent starting point.  I have a chunk of Greyhawk called Flanaess that will be the background, just building my own little plot from that.  Still exciting, but I have quite a bit of work and I’m falling behind ever so slowly.

Haven’t done any Fallout 3 modding work yet.  Need to move on that soon too…

Been reading The Talisman as well.  Got my mother the sequel Black House for x-mas, only to find out she already has it!  So I get to borrow my “gift” and her copy of the main novel aswell!  Seems to be pretty good, and feels like it was an influence on Otherland.  (Which is also an amazing novel series.)

I need to get another keyboard this weekend too.  Damn things break too easily.

Made some good use of my guitar yesterday, and got my D&D 3.0 books too!  Woo hoo!  Now to just read them again and set something playable up.

Jammed with a relative of mine yesterday.  Was quite amusic because he owns a 5-string cut-away bass, so it was almost like playing a low-tone string-missing guitar.  The sound was great and applied amazingly to my crappy multi-effect pedal.  BEst part was, is he tuned the bassed to Standard E tuning, from lw to high, so the note progression worked the same as a stanard guitar aswell.  Made for some nifty and easy to match riffs, and I even tried some soloing and lead playing over a few neat basslines.  Spent a good four hours playing, including an hour or more on the bass, and damn my fingers went numb after that.  Music is a hobby I am willing to suffer for.

Props to anyone who knows what the title of this post is a reference to.

Is Tintin Gay? Is somehow a news worthy story I found this morning while using Yahoo!’s sports page.  Seriously, who the fuck cares?  He never does anything sexual at any time, and he is an age-old classic comic and cartoon of adventure and wonder.  That, and he’s ficitional! That’s right, not real, not a person, and not one whom should be put under the Christian Conservative microscope of immoral scrutiny.

There was a great comment on the site proposing that Jack of Jack and the Beanstalk could easily fall under this umbrella of sexual preference ambiguity.  Or what about Bugs Bunny?  That damn rabbit was always wearng women’s clothes and seducing the opponent of each cartoon?  Pretty sure those are some far “gay-er” things than wearing short pants and living with a sailor.

If anything, the biggested irrational concern would be how dangerous the Captain is from being drunk all the time.  That was actually shown in the comic, and is by far more dangerous of an influence.  Gay people are happy, just like any other couple, but drunks are dangerous, reguardless of whom they are or who they are with.  But really, this was written in the 1920’s in Belgium, manours of dressing and behaviour were much different then, so there is no point scrutinizing a fictional past with the eyes of a biased society of a different age.