Finishing the office cleaning, bopping around listening to loud music, gonna watch some fu and drink some beer. People are coming over in trickles throughout the day, which is always fun :)

One of my co-workers just turned 21, so we're hitting Ascension on Saturday. Was thinking pre-party at my place (8ish?). Anyone down?

Newton & Jezebel, both good kitties, miss you both.

So, heading off to Ryan's to try to get some sleep where gardeners are not running leafblowers and mulchers, etc. Been stuck on lyrics on the new CD, I've found sometimes that doing a couple covers can help (frees me from having to write lyrics). So, here, have a Jethro Tull cover:

http://alturl.com/2wy2

Suddenly, all your history's ablaze
Try to breath, as the world disintegrates
Just like autumn leaves, we're in for change
Holding tenderly to what remains
And all your memories, are as precious as gold
And all the honey, and the fire which you stole
Have you running through all your red-cheeked days
Shaking loose these souls, from their sacred hiding space

Hold your heart courageously
as we walk into this dark place
Stand, steadfast erect and see
that love is the province of the brave

Pushed under this expanse of bursting stars
Let this burning brightly illuminate the where we are
In this hollow that lovers' voices occupy
Let it follow that we let it free, let it fly

Breaking open the walls of this cage
Intoxicated, oh so amazed
Much like falcons tumbling from the heights at play
Conjoined, talons engaged

Hold these hearts courageously
as we walk into this dark place
Stand, steadfast beside me and see
that love is the province of the brave

The thing about Zack Snyder, is he is proficient at removing any ambiguity in anything he does. While I've on one level enjoyed the films he's done, at the same time, another part of me is always a bit disappointed. He's uncomfortable with the uncomfortable parts of the adaptations he's done, and that's pretty much all he's done at this point, is take other people's work and smooth out the chewy bits. He really has to make there be good guys and bad guys, and while in Watchmen he plays around a bit with the notion that everyone is the good guy in their own story, he still simplifies and tells the viewer who to root for. I think, in a lot of ways, he's the Walt Disney for the 2000s. Not really sure how I feel about that. It was fascinating to me how he had the World Trade Center in every skyline shot he did, except for the final destructo-shot. We're supposed to root for the Night Owl II & Silk Specter II couple, and ignore their complicity, and the journal is definitely found at end, instead of left up in the air. In a lot of ways, it was probably the best adaptation of the source material that could be done, especially because so much of it was tied into the milieu in which it was originally written. I'm interested to see the longer cut on DVD, I think this version was dumbed down to the point of incoherence in some places.

And, let me add, he really doesn't know how to do an action scene. I thought the same thing about 300, every fight scene he does just feels like a second rate music video. It's amusing to me that some reviews have been comparing the prison break to the corridor scene in Oldboy, they're nothing alike. There's not a single fight scene in this movie (or 300, for that matter) where the outcome isn't pre-determined, not only that, but you could easily describe every beat he's going to hit. He does what, for me, is the cardinal sin of fight scenes, exactly what you expect him to. And wow, there was really shitty wire work. You shouldn't be able to see the people swaying on the end of the wire when they're supposedly being held in the air by somebody. I really liked the rest of the movie a lot better.

All in all, I do think it was a good movie, in a very Cliff's Notes kind of way. It at least captured some of the spirit of the book, and lord knows it was light years better than the League of Extraordinary Ordinariness. It was probably about 10 years too late, but I will also probably go and see the next film he does.

Saw it, pretty much liked it, made me want to re-read it, so I shall do so.

If you do it through a hole in a sheet:

http://www.kutv.com/content/news/local/story/Senate-Panel-Approves-Hiding-Restaurant-Bartenders/c_MbGVuqMk-_XhBmnOkYsg.cspx

So, I'm trying to do some of the final mixdowns for the new CD, and I need to know how things sound on a variety of sound systems. So, below, I've posted links to a mixdown of one of the songs, Warmer. It's the poppiest, most straightforward song on the CD. Anyway, if you can, please listen to it on whatever means you have, (preferably the FLAC version, if you can, if not, then the MP3 version), and respond with how it sounds on your system (e.g., "too bassy", "can't hear the drums", "your vocals suck", etc.). Then I'll try to take the responses into account this weekend and do another mix of it. I really want to get the mixing right on this one, the last CD had too many problems. Thanks in advance.

http://www.pleasuresick.com/MP3s/AT/Warmer.flac

http://www.pleasuresick.com/MP3s/AT/Warmer.mp3

Was going to try to write down a dream I just had, but it's defying the attempt. It involved a super-powered Wii/rack mounted drum machine/teleprescence device (there was a long discussion with Matt about how it could only let us see things far away; even though it felt like we were there, we weren't really because then we'd be outside our own light cone and therefore time travelling, and the realizing that we were anyway, and suddenly we had actually been teleported to Palm Springs), the fact that Pictish genes are mixed with Viking genes in Orkney due to the Vikings killing off all the males, a video about that for a rap song that sampled Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" that Neil Gaiman posted about on Twitter (and Twitter adding the ability to change the font color on posts), a huge online uproar about the video on the internet, me interviewing the creator of that video and discussing how it wasn't misogynistic/racist (was actually anti-), and saying it was the best hip hop sampling of Sledgehammer I'd ever heard, me referring to "Hip Hop Hooray" then correcting myself that I meant "Pop Goes the Weasel" (then remembering this morning after I woke up that no, "Hip Hop Hooray" samples it too), and then some stuff about Creative Commons licensing, and then I woke up.

There's a lot I'm leaving out, and it was one of those dreams where I was awake and thinking about things in the dream with no clean break from being asleep to being awake, and such a weird mish-mash of half-remembered facts and things(there was a whole long discussion about the sample rate of the drum machine). Like, where the hell did my mind pull the Orkney stuff out of? Interesting way to start the day.

Looks frickin' sweet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Onmgwe5xi8

Anyone know anyone who's looking to hire people? I'm really not seeing much of anything.

Having a hard time staying optimistic right now, part of it is that I am still sick. Probably should get out of this room and go do something, but I'm broke. Tried working on music, but got nowhere fast. Really need to start sleeping more than 3 or 4 hours a night, too, but between being sick and the dreams I've been having, that's not really happening.

Maybe a bath will help.

Is there anyone that Obama's gonna pick for his cabinet who isn't an ardent drug warrior? Holder for AG? Really? The man who wants simple pot possession to be a felony?

I'm just curious at this point how man people we have to lock up before people start wondering why we're spending 50 billion a year, locking hundreds of thousands of people up, destabalizing other countries, making a violent black market, etc. etc. etc., and any drug anybody wants is still readily available? We're at around 2.4 million now (with another 1.5 million under supervision, i.e., probation, parole, etc). So, 4 million people actually locked up before people go "huh...we've been doing the same damn thing for 50 years now, and it hasn't had a single positive effect...maybe we should rethink this"?

But, hey, on the bright side, lately Russia's (with the second highest incarceration rate in the world) been almost catching up with our incarceration rate, at this point we only lock up about 33% more of our population than they do...

Current Mood: pissed off

The best time to be handed several hours of work that "HAS TO BE DONE" for a 9:30 am meeting tomorrow is at 4:35...

Fuck, I don't know that I can make it out tonight, this is gonna take most of the night.

I am so, so shocked that my overtime has suddenly doubled now that they don't have to pay for it.

Only one QA position that I haven't applied to already in the last week, and I think I may have already applied to that one, through a different headhunter. I'm stuck here for the forseeable future. But, damn, I'm going to be happy to finally leave this place.

I can't even start working on this until other people finish their work, and they were supposed to get this shit to me on Monday. But, like always, everybody but the last guy gets to miss their due dates.

OK, looks like Edgar's gonna throw some stuff on tonight, I won't be there.

If I had any sort of job opportunity that looked even remotely good, I'd flip these fuckers off and bail right now. I'm so damn pissed right now. I swear, I have never worked with such a collection of fucktards. It's amazing what 8 years with out a competitor will do to a company's efficency and skill. It's like I'm working for the phone company circa '78.

Confirmed, no Distortion.

Never mind, they're listing bands for tomorrow night instead of us, we appear to have been given the same treatment as desade, except without the text message.

Very questionable that pleasuresick will be playing there next week, my general inclination is to not set foot in the place again.

Took forever to get the patch installed, and then to get on the server, but too many important add-ons are broken. If Baud Manifest doesn't get updated in the next couple weeks, I may have to try to fix it myself. Only way to deal with inventory. At any rate, I think I'm gonna wait a week or so to play for things to settle down, should be focusing on music, anyway.

So, due to a bunch of work spleenfuckery that I'm not going in to, i had to reschedule my dentist appointment twice, which means I lost my slot tomorrow, and I don't get to get this fixed until next tuesday. Also, supposed to pay more for rescheduling with less than 24 hours notice, may be able to talk them out of that. Also, get to work in the office late late thursday (my part is supposed to start at 9:30, which around here means midnight), for no overtime. Hooray for Shama bringing me mac and cheese, but I managed to bite down on my temp filling, which was rather like being stabbed through the head with a hot coathanger. Fuck it, when I get home I'm taking a vicodin and playing some WoW, assuming the new patch downloads in any sort of timely fashion.

Something I've always wondered about (OK, wondered about since it occured to me this morning in the shower): In the Hokey Pokey song, it talks about putting body parts in, taking them out, putting them back in, then shaking them all about, and THEN doing the Hokey Pokey. So, besides the fact that the Hokey Pokey is not described in the song but the little arm waving dance has been passed down in some kind of generational folklore, what is the rest of the dance, the body-part oriented part, called? It can't be the Hokey Pokey, because that's what you're doing after the body-part part. So what is it?