FRIDAY NEWS ITEM

Again with the blogging of news articles on Yahoo because sometimes the titles change during the course of the day: right now this one is "Democrats push for quick end to nomination battle", but by the end of the day it'll probably be "Democrats beg for sweet release from months of incalculable suffering." Yes, McCain is old and crazy, har har, but it says something about the perceived state of the party that I think they still should have quit dicking around over this nomination business ages ago and gotten down to girding themselves for battle against him. Even against a doddering foe they need to consolidate strength and resolve. Oh god, we're all fucked, aren't we.

I know I've complained about this election before and it hasn't even really started yet, but I feel the need to get my prophetic wisdoms down in writing so they become all the more quaint after the fact.

WELL, WHAT'RE YOU GONNA DO

It's a testament to the amount of free time I seem to have that an episodic game (whose theoretical average number of play hours is measured in the single digits) still takes me four days to beat. It's the only game I think I've beaten this year aside from Mass Effect, which took weeks (I was playing with a person, and it was worth every second). It was fun! I had a good time.

Your Dogblog update for the month of May went up today too, by the way. So you've got that going for you.

DIFFERENT FASHION QUESTION

People who are playing or have already finished On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness (Episode One) -- did you also give your character the jaunty top hat and/or bushy moustache. If not, why not.

People who have not or will not play this game need not answer.

THE ENCROACHMENT OF ENTROPY

I am running out of time. The hole in my jeans that I mentioned has begun a process of expansion that cannot be meaningfully halted (I am mediocre at sewing, even when instructed patiently by a hand more expert than mine). The quest for a new pair of jeans must begin, but not for another three weeks at least. That is how crazy my next two weekends are. These jeans have had a good run for an item of clothing I bought four years ago. Good job, jeans!

A SHOWER OF THANKS

Before it slips my addled mind, I need to sincerely thank everyone who made it to the Rickshaw Stop last night for a basically unforgettable show. You -- each of you, individually -- are the reason life is awesome. Know this.

NEWSMEDIA DISAPPOINTMENT #76513

I need to report a minor failure of 21C reporting, which is that none of the articles I can find that discuss Mr. Yosuke Nakamura include an audio clip of the individual in question. Is it so hard in this day and age? I want to know what a parrot speaking Japanese sounds like.

26-HOUR WARNING

You've got about 26 hours to cancel all your other plans and prepare to be at the Rickshaw Stop for my band's CD release show.

Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell St
Wednesday 5/21
8pm
18+
$8

The Definite Articles
Arcadio
Mist & Mast

We go on first, so don't be fashionably late or you'll miss us. You do not want to miss us.

If you were already planning on coming, I will personally hug you right in the soul.

PHONE ANNOYANCE

My phone's text message storage capacity is basically pathetic. This wouldn't irk me so much if I didn't know a single god damn thing about computers; text messages cannot take up a lot of space. Keep in mind that this phone has an onboard 2MPx camera that I almost never use -- it's got 30MB of space free right now. I could store all the text messages. But I can't make it do that; I have gone through every single menu option on this thing looking for some sort of memory configuration utility, and I can't find one. Bastard animal.

In case there's a way and I just haven't found it, I use an LG VX8700. Internet, do your thing.

BACK TO 1998

I can't actually remember when I got my first cellphone, so I'm going to guess it was ten years ago. Whenever it was, I'm back there now, because I forgot my cellphone at home today. Nobody better have anything really important to tell me for the next eight hours or so.

DRAGON STANCE TWIST STRIKE

We all wish movie martial arts were real, don't we? It's appealing enough to believe that by training hard enough, you can learn the location of the spot on a human being that when struck causes his liver and kidneys to trade places, or fall unconscious for exactly thirty-eight minutes, but that shit ain't real.

Do you know how I know this. It is because nobody has hired a secret super ninja or taken it upon themselves to hit Ralph Nader (and Matt Gonzalez, I guess) in whatever spot is necessary to knock him the fuck out until November 5th, at which point he'll wake up and go about his business.

What I want is for some major news organ to write a story called "Ralph Nader, No! Bad!" and run a picture of him getting struck with a rolled-up newspaper alongside it. Our country has taken an unbelievable amount of damage, we need to try and fix this shit, and your clown ass is not helping. This election is not about you!

I am practicing my Ten Thousand Snake Reverse Punch just in case.

BOOKTAGBACK

The Excellent Danielle tagged me on this action, and as above, so below. It is written.

The Last Book I Bought:
City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer. I bought this because the copy I borrowed from Kate started to fall apart on me, and, thinking I had unwittingly done something to it, I bought her a new copy, because I'll be god damned if I'm going to return to someone a destroyed book that they gave me whole. It's great, so I'm pleased that I now have my own copy. My housemate and I had an idea on how to repair it that actually worked, so there's that too.

The Last Book I Read:
Coincidentally discussed in the last blog post, The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, he of the unfortunate book-jacket author photo. It's basically a light fantasy Ocean's Eleven with more stabbing. I know I lifted at least part of that from a back-of-the-book blurb, but it's true. I enjoyed it! I had a good time.

Five Books That Mean Something To Me:
1. (Whatever collections I have) by H.P. Lovecraft. This dude's stories were the first thing I read that produced a horror feeling of actual depth once I grasped them. They get kind of repetitive, though, so you really only have to read like five.
2. Steel Beach by John Varley. I just reread this, so it's floating near the top of my mind, but this is a book where the setting really permeates the whole thing and makes it what it is. Can't explain it any better, sorry.
3. My senior high school yearbook because I worked on that thing. That's right, I said it. That, and there are a lot of words written in it by a lot of people who were (and are) important. Though that's true of any yearbook from 10th grade on. We packed a lot of living into those years, it seems like.
4. Imajica by Clive Barker. Between this book and China Mieville's Bas-Lag, there are a lot of reasons to wish fictional universes were true, and I'm not even getting into science fiction here.
5. Watership Down by Richard Adams. Rabbits. RABBITS

Tag Five People:
Man I have no idea who reads this thing. If you read this entry, give some thought to doing this! Say I tagged you! That's how I'm going to have to roll.

UNWISE DECISIONS BY OTHERS

If you've written a book, try to take an author photo that doesn't make you look like someone the rest of us would want to either avoid in a bar or punch repeatedly in the face. I enjoyed The Lies of Locke Lamora, but even the fanciest, frilliest faux-Italian nobleman character from that book would call Scott Lynch a ponce of the highest possible order and kick him off a bridge at the first opportunity based solely on the picture of him on his book. Did nobody tell you your picture made you look like an asshole, dude? I am telling you this information now.

MORE MYSTERY INJURY

My right knee hurts, in the place where you usually get tapped when they test your reflexes. There doesn't seem to be a bruise, but it hurts as though one exists there. What in the dickens is that all about. You'd think I'd remember slamming my knee on something, wouldn't you?

IT IS UNCLEAR

The eternal mystery of rock shows, particularly acoustic ones: The people who talk through the headliner. What are you doing there? I'm paraphrasing Mike Doughty when I say: You paid $12 to come inside a bar and talk bullshit? You know there are places you can do that for free, right?

HOLLYWOOD PREDICTION REPORT

One of the trailers before Iron Man* was for the M. Night Shyamalan movie The Happening. When the trailer was done, the theater rippled with audible laughter. Unless the dude is moving into totally committed self-parody, I'm reasonably confident in saying this was not the intended effect (my moviegoing friend agreed -- to be honest, she pointed it out first, but I was right there with her).

I'm going to go ahead and predict that this is the last movie we're going to see from M. Night Shyamalan for a very long time, if not forever. For fucksake, the trailer even had the patented "loud-as-fuck noise out of nowhere in the middle of a quiet part for MAXIMUM SURPRISE SPOOK EFFECT" bit.

* Which was really damn good, btw.

UNRESTRAINED LAUGHTER

There is a reason Ron Paul is the butt of many a joke across the internet entire, if not the country itself.

Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, was the only member of Congress to vote against the bill.

Curiously, his website does not appear to contain material explaining this choice. I'll admit to not delving too deeply therein, however; I didn't want to get any on me.