Craig's Blog

Some kind of monster

I just finished watching the widely acclaimed documentary Some Kind of Monster. It's a documentary (or rather the new term is “rockumentary”) on the heavy metal band, Metallica. Before I start off on this review, I will admit I am not a fan of their music. Listening to their music is like listening to somebody yelling at you. There is no melody, no instrumentation, shallow lyrics and all aggression and anger. Perfect for teen angst which is their main audience. The band has already peaked in the late 80's and were living off the residuals in the 90's and on up to today. The lead singer James Hetfield looks like he just stepped out of biker bar, the drummer Lars Ulrich is a little whiny Euro shit that needs to be seriously bitch slapped. If anyone remembers the Napster days, this was jerk that tried to sue them and anyone caught downloading Metallica mp3s. Metallica recieved a massive fan backlash and probably explains their sudden disappearance for 5 years after that incident. The lead guitarist, Kirk Hammett, is probably the only sane one in the group. A seemingly calm guy that just wants to play music. Hetfield and Ulrich are clearly the guys in charge of the band and constantly bicker like an old Jewish couple. To be honest Ulrich needs to lighten up and realize he's not the only one in the universe that can make music. These guys are aging, have families and little kids now. Kids are running around while the dads scream anger into microphones and beat out loud crappy music. It's just so Californian. In fact San Franscisco is where they are from. Hetfield has an alcohol problem and departs the music studio after an argument and checks himself into rehab for like a year. Must be nice when you're a greying rocker with too much money to just say screw it for a year. There's something to be said for musicians who struggle to make ends meet, it does bring out the best. These guys are so far from those days they've forgotten how to even put lyrics together without having to pull it out their ass to just keep the song going. Kind of sad to see that. After a phone call to their manager one of the radio stations threatens to make Metallica look bad unless the band does some promos for them. Hetfield claims so it's now I'll wash your back so you won't stab mine. Bingo! we have a song everyone! Wow. Lot of thought went into that one. It's kind of reminisent of Spinal Tap when these guys try to make rhymes around “I'll wash your back so you won't stab mine”. Hilarious at times especially when they agree on some of the dumbest sentences. Who cares since most fans will never hear them anyway after it's screamed and drowned out with a excruciatingly loud wall of guitar noise. So they hire this travelling therapist they pay $40K a month to help them resolve their differences. This guy is such a fucking loon he needs to check himself into a clinic. Talk about taking money from a couple of fools. When they decide to let him go he actually has the balls to say no you guys still need work. And this is after 2 years of being with them!! What a leech. This guy sells his house in Kansas City to move to SF to be closer to his “work”. Wtf?! Not to bash UIrich again but this guy is a work of art. Speaking of art, he claims he's really taken to art and has painted several large paintings that he hangs on his walls. Total crap. Barely art, much more like massive doodles on a chalkboard. But he thinks his shit don't stink. He decides to “break with the past“ and sell off all his art and start again. So he auctions it off at Christy's in New York. He tells us he doesn't care how much it sells for, he just loves his work. Lars could you please just cut the crap? His paintings end up selling for million of dollars to some vacuous art buyers. I couldn't help but wonder about the economics of such a sale. Anyway he's like a little kid overjoyed people love his art. Cut the crap Lars, you're in love with the money. It was never mentioned that he was giving it to charity, so I assume his bank account just blipped up another few million dollars. One of the better parts of the movie was how these guys struggle to come up with music. After making music for 20 years they resist repeating the same old sound, or as Lars says “it's too stock man“. Stock.. what a dork. But really, their music is artistically dead, it's noise, anger, agression, in your face music to get off on. Sort of like punching a Porche 911 at 150 mph on the Autobahn, it's just a speed buzz, there's not a lot of depth to it.

I give this movie a 2 out of 5 stars. It's way too long and not that very interesting. I'm sure if you're a Metallica fan you'd give it a higher rating because it really does delve into these guy's lives, thoughts, issues they have and how they create their music.

Jesus doesn't like Imax films

I think I need to add a Religion category to this blog. I seem to be blogging on it a lot lately. But 'Lusions is such a good meta category for it.

I picked this up off of slashdot today:

"The New York Times is reporting that a number of Imax theatres are passing on science-themed films that might provoke controversy among a handful of religious fundamentalists. Films that are having their distribution impacted include '"Cosmic Voyage," which depicts the universe in dimensions running from the scale of subatomic particles to clusters of galaxies; "Galápagos," about the islands where Darwin theorized about evolution; and "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea," an underwater epic about the bizarre creatures that flourish in the hot, sulfurous emanations from vents in the ocean floor.'"

First off, everyone has to remember that Imax theaters are in the business of selling tickets, and not delivering education. They make money off the "wow" effect and tie in some education to make it presentable at science museums. So they are bowing to some kind of perceived market force.

Secondly there's always room for a competitor to test out the assertion that, what I like to call the "jesus fundies", can really effect ticket sales. Or do the theaters have an ulterior motive?

I feel like this country is reverting back to the Reagan era where jesus fundies had a lot more power. Like Chris said, they ended up selling their souls to the neo-con movement and eventually were left on the road for dead when their usefulness had expired and the public rejected them. Like the movie line “theeeey are back!”. Like all good shows, it never really dies, it just returns in a different time slot. I read a good sig the other day “May God protect you from his followers“.

Poping

So does anyone know who the next Pope will be? Anyone want to put up odds on when the pope will finally release his mortal coil? I put it at the end of this year, around xmas time, should boost Catholicism somewhat in the world. He's a good pope and will die at a profitable time.

Latest news from the Vatican is that some pinheaded cardinal is requesting that all Catholics abstain from reading the popular book The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. It's been a best seller for almost 2 years now and is expected to be for some time. I read it and enjoyed it very much. I learned a lot about Catholic history. Of course I'm sure some of the historical events were fabricated to make the story more appealing but the element of mystery in the church's beginnings was intriguing. In fact it's so popular that Tom Hanks will be playing the protaganist in an upcoming movie based on the book. Anyway back to Cardinal Pinhead. I had to laugh at his request seeing how it's lent and the Catholic church always seems to enjoy telling it's members what not to touch, look at it, listen to, etc. The interesting point in the news is that this guy is being considered as the next pope. Wow. Will they ever learn?

Fall of a peacemaker

I read today that the lead singer of Molly Hatchet died of failing health. I was never a big fan of the group, they had a standard southern rock sound like the Allman Brothers or Lynard Skynard. I did however really like one of their songs which was written somewhat outside their normal theme of whiskey drinking and hell raising southern boys. It was called Fall of the Peacemakers --

A king without a sword
A land without a king
A truth without a voice
One song left to sing
One song to sing

A wise man told me there's something you should know
The way you judge a man is to look into his soul
And you'll soon see everything.

A voice from the past cried "Give peace a chance"
He paid our price now he's free at last
Imagine, we called him a dreamer!
How many times must good men die?
How many tears will the children cry?
'Til they suffer no more sadness
Stop the madness,
Oh, stop the madness.

If ashes are ashes and dust is dust
At our journey's end then return we must
To the sands of the shore
White doves in flight
Peace to all
But tell me why the peacemakers fall
Must we bury anymore?

The hush of the crowd as the horse rode by
A black lace veil hid the tears from her eyes
And we all wept in silence
How many times must good men die?
How many times will the children cry?
'Til they suffer no more sadness
Oh, stop the madness
Oh, stop all the madness.

 

Iran and nukes

You know I'm all for letting a country decide it's own future. In the case of Iran wanting to pursue nuclear energy I say leave them alone. The rest of the world is of course worried since Iran isn't .. well they don't really have a good record as being a country of nice people. So my question is this -- how come a country that sits on top of most of the world's oil reserves wants to pursue a dirty potentially hazardous form of energy like nuclear fission? Why does any oil rich country need nuclear energy? Why not just say “look having the bomb protects our sovereignty, so we plan on figuring out how to make one” and be done with it. I guess they have to play guessing games in order to obtain the necessary fissionable material for “peaceful purposes”. You  know the NRA says if everyone was given a gun before boarding a plane, we would never have hijackings. Happiness is a warm gun...

Voice synthesizer

Here's a million dollar idea that I'll give away for free --

Create a voice synthesizer to convert spoken Indian English accent into an American English accent. People will no longer get that sinking feeling when they call tech support and hear the Bombay sing song English accent. This will really sell if McDonalds goes through with offshoring their drive thru operations.

Comment spam

Ok I dropped the anti-comment spam control from my blog. Chris lost a comment due to it. Those letters are hard to read I guess at his age..whoa! ;-)

New skin too. It's called Blue Curve, fashioned after a Linux variant from Red Hat. Looks clean.

All hail to Thorium

I just read an interesting article on scifi.com about a new type of nuclear reactor. Apparently by using the element Thorium (just to the left of Uranium) and low energy neutrons a safer reactor can be built, one that doesn't operate on the chain reaction principle. Scientist recently discovered this process in the late 90's and India is currently developing a pilot plant. The article says that Thorium is in good supply in the country of India. I wonder how it's abundance compares to a common heavy element like Lead?

America's wastetime

Can somebody please explain to me what the fuck our congressmen are subpoenaing baseball players?!? It ceases to amaze me how much of our tax dollars our goverment continues to waste. So they think baseball players are on steroids now that some of them are retiring and coming out of the closet and pointing fingers. Who gives a flying fuck!!! We all know it's true! Why does our US goverment feel it needs to butt it's head in on this corporation? Talk about tackling, excuse the pun, softball issues. You know if our congress had, excuse the pun again, any balls they'd do some real work like dragging those scumbags at Enron and Worldcom to their chambers. Invite the media from around the world and ask those pricks tough questions like why they thought it was ok to sink a company so they could live like kings. Investigate this travesty, expose those dickheads for what they are and in the end make them and anyone else who has plans on robbing a company that the people of the United States will not allow this kind of behaviour in their country. But no, let's go after the ballplayers cause they cheated their way into the record books. But you know what, who ended up losing in this? Who was out of millions of dollars, whose economic system was tarnished, people lives ruined? Nobody but dead ballplayers who are no longer ranked in the stats. The fans loved it when they broke Babe Ruth's record or started hitting balls farther than anyone thought possible. The teams made more money after nearly losing their entire business to a strike. The players got paid more, the fans were willing to pay more to see millionaire juiced up players break records. I don't get it. Once again our goverment has failed to do the right thing.

Dr. Who

So they are making new Dr. Who episodes in the UK again. Yay! This is the ninth doctor to do the role. I did a little reading and this guy seems to be one of the more serious actors in the UK right now. Funny he should take this role. His assistant is a little nubile blondie who was a pop star in the UK. So I got wind that the first episode got leaked to the bt world. I'm sure it was a publicity stunt by the BBC to garner some interest in the show, see if anyone cares, etc. I grabbed it and watched it tonite. My take on it is, yes I like the new doctor and his teenybopper sidekick, good choice there. The storyline in this particular episode was crappy as ever, plastic monster invades Earth and animates plastic objects. Yes one guy gets killed by a plastic trashcan eating him <long heavy sigh>. Ok now that is out of the way, everything else was up to par. The TARDIS looks really funky inside now. Instead of being the clean white interior it's now like some biological entity. Could prove interesting in later episodes. It's a shame we won't be able to catch any of the episodes here in the US unless SciFi channel carries it. Thank god for bt...

Getting a piece of the action

Looks like the state of Ohio is going to force people who sell on ebay regularly to fork over license fees in order to auction. Well I guess somebody has to finance all the pork barrel projects in that state such as those useless highway signs informing drivers that there is traffic up ahead while they are sitting in traffic.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/07/technology/ohio_ebay/index.htm

Sheeple

I watched Dateline over the weekend and they reported on this televangilist preacher named Benny Hinn. It's the same tape, just rewound and played again. He claims to have healing powers, begs for money for his ministry, pockets all of it himself, blah blah blah. The most amazing thing is people still go for this shit!? After all of these years, all of the scandals and exposes in this, what I call, “line of work”. If only Jesus knew how much his good name would be abused by the thousands of scam artists to come. You see you do a good thing and it becomes perverted the second you turn your back. Humans....

Highlander

Throughout the years I've watched the Highlander tv show. I've always really enjoyed it, the stories, the characters, the lightweight fantasy element. Some of the shows had some outstanding writing. Even the main character, Duncan MacLeod had some major babes as girlfriends in the show. So I decided, dang it I need to watch this series start to finish, all 119 episodes. I noticed that the shows were released on DVD. 6 seasons at $60 a pop, ouch. So I did the next best thing, I joined NetFlix. At $18 a month, 3 DVDs at a time, it might be a bit cheaper. I got the first 3 DVDs within a week, so far not too bad. There are 8 DVDs in the first season alone. We'll see how it goes. I worked with a guy a few years back that said the postal workers were stealing his NetFlix returns and he had to have them mailed back from another zipcode. Anyway I've watched the first two episodes of the first season. Once again, ouch. No wonder I've not seen the first season in repeats, it sucked bad. It was nice having some of the back story filled in though. Like where Richie came from, Tessa's knowledge of Duncan and Duncan's avoidance of "the game". There was a great shot of Tessa in the shower, unexpected joy :)

100th post!

This is my 100th post. Time to reflect? It's been fun, although I would like to be more consistent with blogging. My blog gets moldy too many times. Had to revive it only to let it rot again...xxx

A new look

Well I finally got around to updating this blog to most stable version, 0.95. I wanted a new skin and could only get one if I upgraded. The blog I use is called dottext, it's open source and free to use. I don't have any complaints. I wish there was a way to have links open in a new page when adding them in a posting. Anyway I've compared it with other ones and it's up to par. This version added a comment spam blocker and a calendar. I get comment spam from time to time, so it's nice to finally eliminate it. The other user on here still has a big wishlist though...