Thursday, October 26, 2006

surreal

SCORING
St. Louis 3 0 0 14 -- 17
New England 0 14 3 3 -- 20

1:21 left, on own 16 yard line, no time outs
better longer video

I had been taking part in some fantasy stock market deal on USA Today, and had wagered my entire winnings from previous NFL games on patsies...earned like a bazillion stocks on this game lol. After watching the Rams come back 2 touchdowns to tie it and then this surreally occured...quite the roller coaster ride!!! Took a couple minutes for it to sink in - was like, "WTF ROFL". Note the ultimate Madden insight, they cut some of his more annoying chatter in this video if you can believe that - "Brady MUST blah blah blah" rofl. SUCK IT, MADDEN!!!!!!!!

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

great photos

Great view of space shuttle launch from ISS!

Sunday, October 22, 2006

EULA

Somethingawful has a lot of extremely tasteless crap on their front page at times but this one is pretty funny. From the website's new EULA:

Something Awful LLC takes the privacy of its users very seriously. We reserve the right to install software on client computers that connect to our servers, including those that do not, in order to monitor your web site usage, computer use, and bowel movements. Something Awful LLC, at its sole discretion, will sell or share this information with its trusted partners for financial gain, fun, or to destroy lives. Something Awful will use this information to serve advertisements to the end user. A product or service will periodically appear in front of articles for you to consider purchasing. If you wish to purchase the product please say, "What the fuck is this shit on my screen?!" and it will be charged to an account already opened in your name that was used to funnel money to our offshore tax evasion huts. Users who disagree with the provisions set forth in this section of the EULA are welcome to come to the back ally between 6th and Main St. and we'll settle this like men.

good songs

Couple of good songs I ran into recently:

They Might Be Giants
Wearing a Raincoat
lyrics
The lyrics pretty much speak for themselves :) But great song.

They Might Be Giants
Your Racist Friend
lyrics
Another great song, made me feel a little unconfortable at parts, is about a party where some guy's drunk friend is making an ass of himself ;) I have really been getting into They Might Be Giants. They can take slightly off-the-wall or dead serious subject matter, turn it into a catchy song, and really put their all into it. Sometimes like in the middle of a weird song, unexpectedly, they just seriously start to JAM. Solid band :)

Ano Tsuku Kotoba
Ryoko Hirosue
lyrics
Am getting the jist that she pretty much knows what she wants to say but just not entirely sure how to say it. I can't find the song on Youtube but theres a lot of other videos of her at least..is fun swimming in the sea of Japanese popular music because there are some real gems out there. Anyways since I can't find a sample of this song, it's really mellow, with pretty piano and a guitar or whistle, with a great and pretty melody. I only had to hear a little bit of the song and I knew I'd like it.

Off Course
Oda Kazumasa
Kotoba ni Dekinai
lyrics
This song conveyed a lot of mellow reflective emotion without even paying attention to lyrics. "Kotoba ni Dekinai" meaning roughly "words to, not able to", or I guess I've read it as "more than words can say" in a couple places. Looking up the words I didn't know led me to conclusion that he is singing about the realization that his girlfriend frankly doesn't love him anymore, found someone better. I dunno it is pretty effective in conveying that empty helpless feeling.
I guess I discovered this song here on this youtube video..it's probably worth the watch, has a ton of funny or interesting images. I ran into it a couple weeks before it was on digg.com, now it has like 300 comments, holy cow. Anyways if you go up to like some of the very first comments there are explanations for each of the images. I think in this use this song's title means "a picture is worth 100 words" or the like :)

Oda Kazumasa
Love Story wa Totsuzen ni
lyrics
Hey I'm sure glad I decided to make this blog post because just learned something new :) I had decided to do a little write up on this song, and did a little research and found out it's from the same guy as who did the last song (right above here). This song has a real 80's Billy Ocean meets like George Michael or I dunno, some smooth 80's pop singer is only way my first impression was. Listened to probably 5 times since and really grew on me, heh. BTW I just learned it's the opening song to a TV Drama, lol. "Tokyo Love Story". Ah, it's still a great song.

I'm not sure yet of who sings it
Opening song to some dumb anime :)
Listen to this song at your own risk. Listen to it more than one time in a row at the peril of your entire day having this song stuck in your head :) First heard this song redid in a couple of "OLDSCHOOL HARDCORE JAPANESE RAVE" radio songs, then discovered the original a couple months later, and took me a couple weeks to put two and two together, why it was driving me crazy. Actually one of my favorite songs from that radio station uses this song (sped up and chipmonk voice) as it's closing part, but it's actually my least favorite part of that rave song. Still a great song. Had to check out the anime after finding out where the song came from...not bad, corny is good. Is from same company that did FLCL and Evangelion.

strange opening song from another anime
I dunno
is a weird one :)

Since updating KDE and QT and stuff a few weeks ago I realized that my kana and kanji input was broken so it's taking a little getting used to. On the plus side it's motivated me to copy the lyrics out by hand in kana..I do pretty good but my calligraphy is pretty sloppy. One thing I enjoy looking at my writing in japanese is that to my eye at least my handwriting has the same nuances in both English and Japanese character sets...both kinda scratchly or a little wobbly looking, I mean everyone's handwriting is usually pretty identifiable to themself. I guess what I'm getting at is you can definitely point me out as the writer no matter what font writing in heh. I'm getting pretty fast reading kana at least and maybe the 100 or 200 kanji that I know the best. Can follow along a lot of video game messages at least, and that's why I started studying Japanese in the first place!

kindof hitting a nerve

Here's a nice little editorial that is rather painful to read :) I don't live in a big city with nuts freeway traffic so can't really relate, I guess. When driving I guess my philosophy is just to minimize my stupid driving mistakes and to try to be aware of what crazy people in cars are going to do to try to kill me, and be ready... But if it comes to a choice between being an asshole or a nice guy, I guess I have problems being an asshole most of the time :)

I like this editorial, it's sortof difficult for me to decide whether the writer actually meant some of the praise he wrote about "Mr. Nice Guy Driver" or was |---| this close to a case of absolute road rage :)

I dunno, I guess it's best to try to not let other people unduly influence your day, but that's definitely easier said than done!!

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

xmms memory lane

This page has a few of xmms's old webpages up, the first from 1997. Back then winamp pretty much was the thing to emulate :) Is still good sometimes to just load up your entire collection and let it go random..who needs fancy pants playlists and such! Is a pity that there's probably literally 100's of old quake and quake2 websites that exist only in memories anymore :) I didn't start using xmms until after the last of the pages on this page, but it is still interesting.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

top 100 anime

The list is based on an online poll of the Japanese populace. Is sortof interesting that there are so many choices in that country for cartoons. Makes me happy, is a great way to absorb Japanese while watching quality (or not so quality) cinema :) I found it interesting that Macross is at #67 while Gundam is at #6. Am starting with the very first series (Gundam in 1979, Macross in early 80's) and both are surprisingly good. I'm also surprised that Evangelion is ranked #2, as on most english boards there seems to be a lot of snobs who would rank it low. I don't know...I found it entertaining, it has so many different levels of weirdness that was well worth the watch :) Currently am also into a few episodes of #4, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya...is pretty good and interestingly hillariously gripping :)

ouch

It's gotta suck being the worst rated player on Madden 07!

Thursday, October 12, 2006

nukes

Ueba put together a great page full of nuclear explosion pictures. These pictures are really pretty but make me think, "WTF!!"

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

super bowls

Was looking at the statistics at this page. Hadn't really realized the Pats are now in a league with the Raiders and the Redskins, at 3-2. Only the Broncos, Cowboys, 49ers, and Steelers have been in more SB's. Cowboys been in 8 of 40, not bad. Only the Vikings and the Bills 0-4. OUCH. Broncos are 2-4, but had great teams. Am not a Broncos fan lol... Guess I'd take a 3-2 over a 2-4, cause losing just sucks because you gotta be the SB losers the whole next year at least. Miaaami also in with 5, 2-3. Giants, Ravens, Bears, Colts, Chiefs, Jets, and Bucs other teams with winning or tied records. Rams only other team with a win, at 1-2. Just was wondering which team deserves a win for sake of poor fans, would have to say Vikings because it could be another 50 years and I don't care if Bills get another one :) Actually take that back I'd much rather see the Chiefs get another than the Vikings. Realistically I see the Bears getting there and winning this year maybe. I'd like to see the Pats improve to 4-2 though!!!!!! :)