8-bit truth

on music!

on inevotable robot uprisings!

on national generalizations!

on indie rock snobs!

Today's blog entry brought to you by www.dieselsweeties.com in honor of my friend Kurt finishing his master's degree project of building a robotic dog! NEWS FLASH: It did not rampage and kill everyone in the room! Yet!




... or did it?

Snakes on a Plane!

Okay so first of all, this is the first time I've ever put foreign "code" in my blog, which is I guess pretty exciting. Maybe I am learning! Now on to the good stuff...



If you haven't heard: SNAKES ON A PLANE! It's true, this is a real movie starring a real Samuel L. Jackson. It is about a terrorist or assassin or something who is trying to kill a witness, blah blah blah. I really enjoy the fact that this "teaser" trailer makes no attempt to justify why this shit is going down. It's not important, and you and I both know that. What is important is SNAKES ON A PLANE. You see, snakes are on this plane! I really can't say enough.

If you do a google search for "Snakes on a Plane" you come up with all kinds of things that are worth seeing. Seriously, just click down the page. I actually first heard of SoaP (as the "insiders" call it) through my future brother-in-law Morgan, who sent me the still-hilarious Overcompensating link (itself an offshoot of popular webcomic Wigu). It sums up the movie, and the reason people are getting so excited about it, so well. To paraphrase what one dude said on one of the links I clicked on, "You either get it or you don't." I suggest you DO because SNAKES ON A PLANE.


PS- The penultimate sentence is probably the most specific sentence I have ever written. It is surgically precise, balanced with a perfect lyrical beauty.

Change My Stride

Yesterday I bought Tricky's 1996 album Pre-Millennium Tension and I listened to it while driving around today. The album anticipates a post-apocalyptic aesthetic with trembling beats, guarded whispers and shifty sideways glances. The whole album explores different aspects of this lonesome feeling, which made it an interesting soundtrack to my day. Since all my errands and outings were fairly nearby, I didn't spend very long in my car at once and thus it took me all day to listen through the album. From 9am until the following 1am a dude experiences a lot, feels a lot of different ways. It was a strange experience having PMT as my emotional soundingboard between my daily outings. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it was outright jolting (but in a quiet, anxious way). The album (and similarly, my day) hinged on the moment of clarity that is "Makes Me Wanna Die." Everything before track 5 anticipates it as everything after slides away. Indeed, the pure desolation of "Makes Me Wanna Die" and the creepy shuffling of "Christiansands" are enough to make the album worth owning. You may not find yourself reaching for it all that often, but when you need to it'll be the only thing that satisfies.

"when the bomb hits (what music will you look to for shelter?)
when the bomb hits (what music will you look to for shelter?)
when the bomb hits (what music will you look to for shelter?)
not that mine'll help ya" - Sage Francis

Something important

I believe, with all my heart, that one should be able to purchase a satisfying lunch for $5 somewhere in every city in the world. This may well be one of those things that "dates" me when I am an old dude.

Back in my day, you could get a gyro sandwich, fries, and a pickle for $5!

Sounds good already.

Where has Jack been?

I recently got back from a fantastic spring break adventure! Woo! Four of my friends and I drove from Cleveland to St. Louis (10 hours) to visit a friend, then east to Boulder, Colorado (14 hours) to visit another friend and hang out in the Rocky Mountains. While the Rockies may not have the most creative name, they are stunningly beautiful. We then drove back through St. Louis to get home, putting about 3000 miles on the car. And speaking of the car, in case you missed it, that's 5 dudes in one vehicle. A Toyota Camry to be exact which means not much room. However, we overcame the cramped space to have a fantastic time with many great discussions punctuated by delicious food, breathtaking scenery, and tasty and tipsifying micro-brews. One of our secrets: equal sharing of front-seat time. People were eager to drive 4-5 hours at a time just because it meant more leg room. A less intuitive secret: standup comedy on the iPod! It provided entertainment that we could all participate in without actually talking to each other, preventing boredom and/or getting on each other's nerves. Thank you David Cross, Mitch Hedberg, Dave Chappelle, Dane Cook, Bill Hicks, Jon Stewart, and George Carlin. To Richard Pryor: thanks for trying, but none of us were/are black dudes in the 70's so we found it difficult to relate. I will try again later when I am not self-conscious about the other people in the car not enjoying it.

Did you know?
- St. Louis has the coolest bar (Vienna Cafe) and the single coolest place (City Museum) that I've ever been! And that's in addition to the Anheuser-Busch Brewery/Headquarters and the St. Louis Gateway Arch. What a place it was!

- Colorado has more days of sunshine than any place I could imagine. Unless it is hardcore snowing it is clear and beautiful, thus the sunniness makes it not as cold as you would expect.

- People in Colorado love micro-brewery beers. Even the little suburb that our friend's uncle lived in had 3 microbrews! Yum!

- Elk don't give a crap if you drive your car right by/through their herd. We were like this close!

- Kansas is as flat and boring as any place ever possibly could be. Especially in winter, when there are no amber waves of grain, it is just miles of flat dirt until the horizon. I'm glad someone else wants to live there, because I sure as hell don't.

- Many "edgy" comedians like to make fun of church. I guess it is a slow-moving target, as are most gigantic institutions with really old rules (see: governments, fraternities, ethnic-groups). Everyone should be able to laugh at their group(s)'s idiosyncrasies without being offended! Hear that, Scientology?

Tattoos

I think tattoos are pretty remarkable. I would not have thought of the idea myself, had I been raised in a world without tattoos. Basically I guess the idea is that they are like a scar, but it is ink that is scarring you. It is like taking your favorite peice of jewelry and wearing it forever, under your skin. WEIRD (but cool). Before you say anything, consider that you would be speaking to a computer screen and that I am unable to communicate with you via this medium. But while I am not into getting tattoos myself, I definitely enjoy them on other people.

white ninja: http://www.whiteninjacomics.com/comics/tattoo.shtml

Crisis in the bathroom

I just had a weird self-referential thought.

I remember once describing a movie as "Good, better than I expected it to be!" My question is, was this a complement? I think I meant it as such, but basically I was saying that all I required was that it surpass my low expectations. Perhaps simply by saying that it was "better than I expected" I have ruined the credibility of my opinion (at least on this matter) by pointing out that I had a skewed perspective. I threw the standards of critical objectivity in my own face! OH NO WHAT HAVE I DONE?!!

PS- yes, this existential (yes?) crisis hit me while I was in the bathroom. I was washing my hands, thank you very much.

PPS- Incidentally, the movie I was referring to was Woody Allen's "Melinda and Melinda," which has an interesting premise. Perhaps you would enjoy hearing about it from someone else?

Worth Noticing

I had one of those nice little moments yesterday. My temp job sent me to the 20th floor of an office building downtown. I left work about one minute before five, and I wasn't surprised that it took a few moments for the elevator to arrive (it's a high-traffic time, after all). One of the elevators went "ding" so I turned to face it, and when the doors opened there were about five people inside all smiling right at me. Just the biggest old grins on their faces, all warm and friendly, looking right at me. I don't know if some joke was told, or if they thought it was funny that the elevator was stopping at every floor, or if they were just generally happy that it was 5pm and Monday was over. Whatever it was, when I stepped on that elevator I couldn't have stopped myself from smiling, and passing it on to the next person who joined us. By the time we got off the car was crowded full of smiling people, some even chuckling about the many stops and the tight squeeze. When we got off we all went our separate ways, got on with our days. But that little box full of geniality, even just for a minute or two, was the closest I've ever been to a real-life Happy Machine!

I'm reading Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf to pass the time, and she had a few of these types of moments today.

What she liked was simply life. "That's what I do it for," she said, speaking aloud, to life.

Sometimes, all it takes to enjoy life is simply noticing that life is worth enjoying. Not that life is all roses. Sure I don't have a real job, and I'm pretty much poor, and I don't know what my future holds, but I still like going about my business, and being with people, and singing, reading, watching, eating... generally I simply enjoy being. Now, without my handy SSRI's I would have considerably less of an even keel. Some days are harder than others, especially down here near the bottom of the food chain, but it doesn't take a profound understanding of the world to be content. Happiness is really worth it.

What a busy weekend! I have several reactions to share with you... the internet.

I went skiing! I'm going on a sweet trip next week that will involve skiing, so I went with some friends to try and figure out how not to break both my legs. And guess what? I didn't break both my legs! This trip is looking up. The main thing that I noticed is that it is much easier for me to turn left than right, which has to do with favoring my right (downhill) foot, but really it made me feel like Zoolander. Also, snowboarders move really fast. They zipped around me with fast "whooshing" sounds, enhancing my already-heightened sense of peril. I felt like I was in Ski Free. SUMMARY: I felt like Zoolander in Ski Free?

I'm at a temp job now and I'm getting tired of being interrupted while writing this, so I'll just finish quickly. I also ate a huge burrito, read and watched some fun science fiction, and recorded several fantastic songs with my a cappella group! Hooray for the weekend!

It's time to move on

Most of us saw Napolean Dynamite, and most of us loved it. There is something very wonderful about such a small story. It's just few days of private successes with no stunts or big soundtrack, and almost no character development. I loved it, and my 70-year-old former boss loved it. It was a cultural experience.

But now it's over. The novelty that made it seem so revolutionary is long past, and even the people who haven't seen the movie can quote you every funny line. Now if you hear someone say "gosh!" or "friggin' idiots!" it makes you wince. I mean, I bought the DVD, and I plan to watch it again. I'm just going to wait a few years until that post-novelty wince turns into a nostalgic chuckle.

So I offer two items for you to transition smoothly through this, I think appropriately titled (by me), "post-novelty" phase.

First, what is post-modernism to what was modernism, a post-novel t-shirt is to the t-shirt that was novel. You see? You see.

Second, remember who the real Napolean was, and what he was all about.

This is my gift to you, to help you.

Preparing for My Sister's Wedding

Everyone? Excuse me everyone! Excuse me.

Thank you. I'd like to propose a toast, to the one thing that truly unites us all. The one thing that is understood by people across all cultures, that brings us together, that, if you'll excuse the cliché, makes the world go 'round. I'm not talking about laughter or music, I'm not even talking about love. One thing transcends all of that, and all of us. No, not God. Good guess though! I'm talking of course about The Internet.

Originally thought only to be a way for 13-year-olds to pose as 20-year-olds and 50-year-olds to pose as 13-year-olds, it has transcended to be so much more. Perhaps those in my generation and older can remember the first time we used the internet. "Wow!" we thought, "I can't believe AOL would give away 10 whole hours for free!" We found instant access to watered-down world news and extraordinarily detailed celebrity gossip. We found message boards where we could post our opinions for all the world to see (as long as they were willing to read through the first 15 pages and find our entry). We found those fantastic chat rooms, where two people were inevitably swaering at each other while the rest of the group tried to respond to points from several lines ago. Ha ha! You know what I'm talking about! We were such slow typists, it was impossible to converse in real time. But we tried anyway. We persevered.

And now look at us, and look at our internet. Thanks to instant messaging our wpm's are skyrocketing. My cousin could type before he could write his own name with a pencil! We can now be in contact with someone five different ways other than walking upstairs to talk to them. Leave them a note on myspace! We can tailor our online community so that we are filtered exactly the type of music, books, news, jokes, and colors that a million other people with similar tastes also liked. I am consistently amazed at how accurate those million people are. And yes, we are becoming dependent on the internet. Yes, "old fashioned" letters and talking and ordering-out for Chinese are slowly going extinct, but we can look up how to make eggs over easy in seconds! We don't even need the opinions of our friends, because the collated opinions of a million people are more accurate. I mean, they're collated by a computer, you know?

Seriously, in all seriousness, it's not just the wine talking. I love the internet. Without Amazon and The Onion and Weather.com, I wouldn't know what to do with myself. So stand aside, mother's milk, the internet nurtures us now, and I think we can all raise our glasses and say we're better off. Join with me now, to the internet!