Those of you who have been here before will notice that I haven’t updated my blog for quite some time.

The best reason I have is the fact that my laptop is in Texas, I am in Kentucky. See the problem? It was supposed to have been fixed a long time ago, but fucking HP keep pushing the date back, and I am starting to lose my cool! How fucking hard is it to replace a damn motherboard? From my past experience it’s not that fucking hard.

Every time I talk to HP they give me some bullshit excuse, and I am starting to get fed up. If my laptop doesn’t arrive by the 17th (as agreed upon) I will be royally pissed. They are trying to convince me it’ll take them another 2 weeks (making it a total for 4 weeks) to fix the laptop. Bullshit. I want my fucking laptop back HP!

On a brighter note. For those of you that don’t know what else is happening on the 17th I’ll be more than willing to enlighten you.

June 17th, 2008 is DOWNLOAD DAY!

What’s download day?! It’s the day you get your sorry ass over to www.firefox.com, and download FF3. Do it. Don’t ask questions. Just do it.

It’s worth the time. Free yourself from the evil hands of Microsoft and Apple, and set yourself free with FF3!

Well that’s that, a quick update. I am sure I’ll be back bitching some more because my laptop isn’t repaired.

2:15pm – Saturday May 17, 2008

If you haven’t noticed I spent a week in Washington D.C. visiting my brother. It was one of those rare occasions where I get to relax, hang out with my brother and his girlfriend, and not worry about work or school. Sadly all that is good has to come to an end.

As I am typing this I am in my uncle’s car (keep reading why it’s my uncle’s car,) somewhat awkwardly position in the backseat, holding on for dear life. Well, I might be exaggerating a little, but I assure you that I am holding on!

This whole road trip began when my brother and uncle had this brilliant idea to buy a car. A car that is in D.C.. The problem is that I, as does my uncle, live in Louisville – Kentucky. No problem. I can go out to D.C. with my brother, in his girlfriend’s car, and then for the ride back we’ll take the new newly acquired car.

Fail.

The car might be new to my uncle, but there’s nothing new about it. He paid $300 for it. That right there should tell you everything. I yet have to see a car for $300 that can make the trip from D.C. to Louisville. That’s 600 miles I believe. So at 60mp/h it should take us around 10 hours of driving. The car, as you assumed by now, doesn’t exactly work. It’s a 1984 (it’s older than me!) Volkswagen Rabbit GTI. You know one of those rare cars. It’s so rare that even junkyards can’t find them. Anyway, even before my uncle leaves for D.C. my brother informs him that the car won’t stay on. Something is wrong with it. Imagine that. Besides being broken, it’s dirty. The rear driver window is a puzzle, and there’s mold on the seats.

Yeah, very rare indeed.

You’d think at this point my uncle would say, “Just sell it.” I wish.

This Idea wouldn’t have been half bad if my uncle had a truck, or some kind of car with a high output engine and preferable four wheel drive. However, the problem is that he doesn’t. He does have two Jettas though. One of them is my cousin’s car, a ‘98 Jetta. The other one is his, a ‘89 Jetta. Now you can imagine my cousin needs her car, so no way in hell is she giving that up. No biggy. He’s got old faithful. What could possibly go wrong?

———————————————

4:24pm Saturday May 17, 2008

Everything.

All seemed well at first. We were 60 miles outside of D.C., surprisingly the Jetta was able to pull us, the rust bucket, and itself at 65mph. However, like every automobile the Jetta needs that thing called gas. We pull in, pump up, snack up, ready up, and get ready for the road. As my uncle is turning to pull out hear this sudden sound, kind of like SNAP (imagine that)! Oh you guessed it, the tow bar snapped. It broke. It gave up on life. This is where the real adventure starts.

There we were in the middle of nowhere 70 miles outside of D.C. 530 miles away from home, with a broken tow bar. Not much fun. Good thing we were stranded on a gas station right? They know where shit is? Wrong. I asked if they knew of any hardware stores where we could find another tow bar. Nope. Closest one was another 40 miles away. Pretty close I have to say. So I pick up the yellow pages to call the tool store and ask if they have a tow bar. You know, so we don’t drive there only to find out they don’t.

Ring Ring Ring

Me: Hi, do you guys have a tow bar?

Lady: A what?!

Me: A tow bar.

Lady: No, bye.

Friendly people I have to say. Don’t get me wrong the ladies at the gas station were really nice, but as you can tell the woman that answered at the car parts store was a complete beeotch.

Well after two hours of trying to figure out what to do my uncle decides to ask the next door McDonald’s to leave the car in their parking lot till next week, since it’s a huge parking lot and all. And guess what? They said “no problem.” Thank god. So to make a long story short. We left the car at a random McDonald’s somewhere in the United States (we have their phone number and all) and continued on our 530 mile long trip.

Nothing exciting happened throughout the trip. I was home at 2am, and that’s about it.

Awesome trip.

If you look up the meaning of idiot in the dictionary you’ll find Kevin Jame under it.  But just ignore it for the sake of laughter. It’ll all make sense once you’ve watched the video.

This will be a rather short post. Not much to write about, actually nothing to write about, just watch it.

Click play. Sit back. And hope you don’t die of laughter.

I nearly died. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. It was a close call, too close.

Warning. If you experience fatal laughter during the viewing I will take no responsibility for your death.

Watch at own risk.

He ENERGIZED and LEGITIMIZED

He was an appeaser!

I hope everyone that reads this blog agrees with the statement, watching child porn is sick, disgusting, immoral, and have I mentioned sick? I know where I stand on this topic. Now you know.

The case that I am about to discuss is not the normal “that dude had child porn on his computer” case. This case is far more disgusting. Disgusting might be the wrong word. Disturbing is better. I was reading some recent valleywag news, and I came across the following heading. Accused of downloading child porn? Blame Google. Of course the fact that anyone would use “Blame google” as a defense trickled my curiosity.

For once I wish I had more self control.

How was I supposed to know the news I am about to read is simply downright sick.

To spare you from going through a lot of mouse clickage, I’ll quote the most interesting parts of the article, or shall I say most disturbing parts?

William Dalgleish, charged with downloading 16,000 “indecent images of children”, is trying for a Google defense. “If companies like Google did not provide access to such sites, he would not have committed the offenses,” his lawyer explained before a Scottish high court

Let’s not leave the good ol’ neighboring chaps out of this topic.

Britain’s own sex-offender database administrator was just accused of possessing 3,800 images himself.

Epic Fail.

If you yelled 16,000?! Welcome to the club. I am not sure how someone could find the time to look up, sort through, and save 16,000 images. For the sake of correctness it’s not 16,000, the actual number is 16,535. Besides the fact that the man has 16,535 disturbing images, he’s trying to blame it on google?!

How the fuck does that work?

Does google have a link or something? “For easily accessible child pornography click here.” I highly doubt that. But I am interested to see how far this defense will take him. Probably not far. Hopefully not far.

I salute you sick people. Once again you’ve managed to lower my respect for humanity.

I applaud you.

I tip my hat.

I am not done. How fucking stupid do you have to be to say google is the problem? I say really fucking stupid .

I am speechless. I could go on bitching. But I can’t. My mind simply refuses to go on with this topic.

It sickens me to write about it.

The End.

Who  do you think claims to be the first one to mass produce an electric car by 2010?  Is it Toyota? Or maybe Honda? Could it be GM? Perhaps Ford?

Well, according to the New York Times it’s neither one. The Times report that Nissan Motor Company has announced to have an electric car on the roads by 2010. It’s a really bold statement considering that Nissan was nearly bankrupt not too long ago. The other auto manufacturers say they’ll have electric cars ready in the year 2010 or after - not anytime before.

You’d think one of the four previously listed companies to make such a bold statement, since they have already released some kind environment friendly vehicle. Toyota has the hybrid Pruis, and other hybrid models leading the market in sales. Honda has the hybrid Civic, and don’t forget their zero emission hydrogen car, the FCX. GM has a large arsenal of E85 vehicles already on the road, and they are working on the highly anticipated Chevy Volt which is to be released sometime in 2010, but not before.

So why does Nissan believe they will beat everyone to the punch? The better question to ask is how exactly Nissan plans to have the cars on the road by 2010. The plan is make use of its Renault alliance, Renault is to supply the cars, and Nissan the lithium-ion battery packs.

Nissan dropped another bomb when chief executive Carlos Ghosn stated that the Israeli government would encourage sales of electric cars by keeping the taxes of electric cars lower than those of gasoline cars. I don’t know about you, but to me it appears to be a very risky move on Nissan’s part. I say so for a few reasons. For one, the consumer has not been exposed to any kind of Nissan hybrid technology, or for that matter any type of green technology. This appears all to be sudden considering the same chief executive touted hybrid vehicles as “a product to fill a niche.”

But don’t get excited, I highly doubt Nissan can live up to such a bold statement. There is more to it than just saying “we’ll do it by 2010.” It’s a lot to estimate that in the near future electric cars sold will account for 1/3 of all cars sold.  A very shaky assumption, considering the demand for Gas has never been higher world wide.

Nissan experienced a sudden increase in profit, $4.1 billion to be exact, and they like the taste of sweet ol’ Ben Franklin. Nissan simply wants a piece of the treasure, it saw the sudden increase in demand for green cars, and with that it saw another green opportunity.

Nissan is going green for sure - all way to the bank.

Have you ever asked yourself, “What exactly is the Web?” I know I have. My Information Systems professors have attempted to explain what the web is, quite frankly their “professional” definition of the web is no better than the one given on Wikipedia.

The World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, a user views Web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigates between them using hyperlinks.

It doesn’t take someone with a Ph.D to write that, so I completely ignored their description of the web. After all, it doesn’t take a genius to know the Web is a collection of interlinked documents throughout the world.

So there I was, hungering for a better definition of the Web, hungering for something that would satisfy my intellectual hunger. With no time to waste I jumped at the research. Soon I discovered terms such as Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0. But my search ended in complete failure, I found myself no more knowledgeable than I was before I started my quest.

There I was, dumbed down, and disappointed in the failure of the Web to hand me a definition of itself. While going through depression (can you call playing Everyday Shooter depression?) I remembered a very random saying, “When in the deepest depths of darkness one only has to look for a small glimmer of light to find the way to glory.” Believe or not that’s what happened. I was surfing Digg and I found a posted link to an article about Web 3.0.

I clicked, I waited, I rejoiced.

The article had an embedded video, which attacked the question of Web 2.0 from a completely new angle. I watched quietly, even my dog sat without barking a single time (quite amazing if you’ve ever met my dog.) With the ending of the video my hunger for more knowledge ended as well. I had finally succeeded in acquiring more knowledge on the Web.

To share my success I have decided to supply you with the link to the full article about Web 3.0, I have also posted the YouTube video for your benefit.

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

Enjoy my fellow tenants of the web.

About three months ago I was at a friend’s house, while there I was introduced to a simple, yet very addicting arcade game for the Playstation 3. I sat there in awe as my friend played this oh-so-not ordinary shooter.

As the player interacts destroys incoming objects music is created out of destruction. Well, the music isn’t all over the place; there is a main track that plays during each level, which also determines the length of each level.

As you can imagine after some time I ripped the controller from my friend’s hands and played the game. I was addicted, right then and there. The colors made me happy, and the music was new and catchy (whoever wrote the music should consider making it a profession.) After sometime I became oblivious to my surrounding, my friend, and the world; the world could have ended I wouldn’t have known, the game had completely engulfed my attention.

When I finally snapped out of my hypnotic spell I asked my friend what had happened.

Me: This is fucking tight, what is this?

Friend: I told you it’s addicting; it’s called Everyday Shooter.

Everyday Shooter, a game that had taken a step into a completely new gaming frontier. It combined music and arcade to create on entity.

Believe it or not, this game wasn’t made by some high priced, know it all jack ass company; it’s from the creative mind of Jonathan Mak.

The most addicting part of the game isn’t moving the little white dot and dodging the insane number of objects coming at you. The addicting part is the music; it grabs you from the first chord. It’s like watching the Windows Media Player animation to a song, only you control how the animation behaves.

Sadly my addiction was short lived, for at this time the game was only available on the PS3 through the Playstation network.

Fail

But today (May 8^th, 2007) was a great day. My friends over at Kotaku informed me, and the rest of the world, that Everyday Shooter has spread to the PC via the Steam network.

Success

Not only is this game fun, and extremely addicting, it also keeps parents and the government off the asses of young toddlers kids (Read my post on Politicians and babies to make the connection.)

Don’t be fooled I have nothing against the likes of GTA4, Manhunt, etc. I just feel that this game is by far more stimulating to the human psyche. In the words of Rod Stewart, Give me the beat, boys, to soothe my soul (luckily this music defiantly blows good ol’ Rod out of the water, sorry bud.)

The last few hours I’ve found myself glued to my laptop playing this game. At this moment my laptop appears to have some kind of odd trouble running the game, could be Vista or some process lagging my CPU in the background; I’ll find it sooner or later.

For now Everyday Shooter costs $8.99 on the Steam Network, but hurry, it’ll stay at this price only for a short time, it’s supposed to go up to $9.99 (Oh noes!) To get the game simply download Steam, and purchase it via the Steam network.

In the word’s of Jonathan, Everyday Shooter is…

…an album of games exploring the expressive power of abstract shooters. Dissolute sounds of destruction are replaced with guitar riffs harmonizing over an all-guitar soundtrack, while modulating shapes celebrate the flowing beauty of geometry.

I recently wrote about Coldplay’s new song Violet Hill, and I stated I would sooner or later (appears to be later) write about my interpretation of the song, and you guessed it, this isn’t it. This, my beloved fans, is the story of my failed attempt to interpret the song.

As you can imagine I’ve listened to the song a ton of times, literally a ton; and I still have nothing. As I attempted to listen to the song to jump start some kind of interpretation I found myself starring at my keyboard through my camera’s hood.

So, I thought I’d get my act together, listen to the song and not be a disappointed to my huge non-existing fan base.

Here I go.

For some reason when I hear the opening of the song I am reminded of the French revolution of 1789.

Was a long and dark December
From the rooftops I remember
There was snow
White snow

Fail.

The French revolution took place in the middle of summer. Strike one. Way to go Chris, not only do I feel silly, but I also feel stupid for forgetting that the French revolution was in July of 1789!

However, I didn’t let this minor setback drag me down, I stuck with the French revolution idea (yes I realize I had found my own mistake in my logic.) So I went on with the lyrics.

Clearly I remember
From the windows they were watching
While we froze down below

When the future’s architecture
By a carnival of idiots on show
You’d better lie low

Ok, I can see a connection between the first and second verse. It’s December and it’s cold, the French freedom fighters were freezing their asses off while trying to gain their freedom.

Anyway, let’s stick with this until we get to the third verse, it’s where the real pain starts.

No, I didn’t stab myself.

But what in God’s green earth is the third “paragraph.” I wasn’t sure if I should classify it as a verse or a bridge, so I sought guidance from a wise friend.

I asked my friend – who, unlike me, is very proficient at music - if a bridge could be in the early stages of song.

Me: So could a bridge be in the early stages of a song?

Friend: *Shrug* Wiki it, I don’t know.

Fail.

Talk about help. Just for shits and giggles, I didn’t go to Wiki, it’s too much work. I’ll go ahead and say following the conversation with my friend I’ve decided to halt further interpretation of the song for the good of my own health, and the health of my small non-existing fan base.

So, here I am, one leg resting on my table the other kicking the wall (impressive huh?) Either way, neither my foot nor the wall are benefiting from my frustration with this song.

Don’t get me wrong I am still highly addicted to the song, but it’s starting to drive me nuts that I can’t decipher the meaning of it. But there is good news, while surfing the web I found Chris’ brief and useless description of the song.

Chris Describes Violet Hill as “chalky, pastel feeling” which he says reminds him of his childhood. “Imagine a pseudo guitar-like circus music with a pinch of Chicago… It’s something new from us and you will be impressed.”

Yes Chris, I am very impressed. I am impressed with the amount of mental pain this song has caused me! To you people that are smarter than me and had success finding the meaning of the song, I tip my hat. For, I have failed – miserably.

Fail.

Note: No animals or humans were harmed in the making of this post.

As I was reading through Kotaku I came across the gayest dumbest news when it comes to video gaming. Don’t get me wrong the article was great, it’s the subject that boters me. News just arrived that Republican representative Lee Terry and Democratic representative Jim Matheson managed to pass a bill to enforce Video games, called Video Games Ratings Enforcement Act.

The article describes the act in simple terms, read the quote…

…would require video game retailers to display ESRB ratings and verify a customer’s age when buying an M or AO rated title. Now that all our other problems are solved, we can finally ensure that kids will never get their hands on a copy of Manhunt or Pony Friends ever again. The final solution?

And this is how they persuaded the house…

Terry argued for the bill, saying that “In some games high scores are often earned by players who commit ‘virtual’ murder, assault and rape.”

Ah, yes I remember just recently getting away with rape in a video game; that’s the best kind of video game if you ask me. Virtual rape…glad to see that our politicians are still being dropped on their heads as babies.

I’ve always strongly believed that games don’t harm children or society, it’s bad parenting that does. You have to agree, you have to be quiet a bad parent to allow your 10 year old to play Manhunt - don’t even try to make up some lame excuses - as a parent it’s your responsibility to know which games are for your child and which aren’t.

I can see it now, I’ll be at the store buying some M rated game and they’ll say “Can I see your ID, please.” Now I recently turned 21 and being carded while buying alcohol I have no problem with, but being carded while buying a game is just really annoying. I fear this is the beginning of the downfall of society. And they say educated people lead this country, look at our president and these two fools, very educated I must say. To read the full article click here.

It was an historic date yesterday; the British band Coldplay made “Violet Hill” available for download, free of charge, at their site. It will be available for download for a week (April 29^th, 2008 till May 6^th, 2008). I came across this magnificent find by reading some of my google news; I was so excited that I nearly pissed my diapers.

If I had to place Coldplay on a chart of favorite artists I would probably place it at numero uno. That’s right, numba one, why? Well, because I enjoy their music, to some it might not seem original, or creative, but to me there is nothing that measures up to it. You can listen to it when you are in any mood. I personally enjoy listening to them when I relaxed and when I feel like day dreaming. I also find myself listening to them when I am trying to draft up something in Photoshop. Maybe the reason I haven’t made any art lately is the fact that Coldplay has been missing in my life. Hmmm, that’s quite possible, when I look at my created work I find that most of it is influenced by Coldplay, that’s it! With this new single I’ll draft up something till the whole CD is available, damn I am so excited! Oh shit, hold on, I have to go change my undies!

Where do I start talking about the song? As the song starts we hear the piano which we all have come to love from Coldplay. Not only does Chris do an amazing job at the piano but his voice is that voice we all have come to love (no duh…) and more! The piano and the all too deep lyrics is complimented by Jonny’s guitar, which adds an edgy and blues like feel to the song. Will and Guy just top off the song with more magnificent instrumental work; I’ll go ahead and say it’s the best music in a very long time!

As the song goes on the guitar draws you further into it, all the instruments work in harmony, as they should, even the voice fits right in. In some songs the voice appears to be this inserted background noise, but here it goes perfectly with the other instruments. It doesn’t attempt to over cloud them, it’s not too quiet, it’s just right. Each instrument is operating at the perfect frequency and sound.

I simply love it

Obviously I am no professional music critic, but I had to write about this song. It threw me back into my old days of listening to Coldplay over and over, I am just thrilled that this new album is coming out; I simply cannot hold my excitement! For the love of god the album is going to rock my socks, I just know it! Anyway, go to their website, download the song, and listen to it for yourself.

Before I finish this off, I want to say that it’s not surprise this single is sparking so many creative ideas in my head. The album cover was inspired by artist Frida Kahlo, of you that don’t know who she is, google her, you’ll get plenty of hits. But to give a brief art history lesson, she’s a Mexican painter that was born 1907 and died in 1954; one of her most famous paintings is her self-portrait that can be found all over the web. If you do some further research you’ll learn about the vast artistic influence she’s had on the Mexican culture during the 80’s. But, don’t take my word for it, go out and discover it on your own.

I won’t talk much about the lyrics, because I am listening to it, trying find its meaning for myself. I am listening to it over and over to find out what it means to me. It usually takes me a long time, because I like to break it down to the smallest syllable. Most of the time my interpretation of lyrics is very farfetched, so when I write about it don’t hope that’ll make sense

Viva la Vida!