teh rock/metul

more Download news! Aerosmith is going. I'm tempted to continue my rant about the singers for the bands I like who are going to be at Download, but hey, this "let's replace Tyler" nonsense seems to be over for now so yay.

Also Iron Maiden finished recording their 15th album. The good news is I get more Maiden later this year. The bad news is Steve Harris apparently set out to make 15 albums, and now that he's met his goal, one wonders how long the band will go on. I say wait until you've made at least 15 with Bruce.

Something lighter

After a post about how futile life is and another one about how the zompocalypse(tm) will kill us all, I consulted my magic 8-ball and asked "will I write a lighter post today?"

"No. You won't."

Since that's not a standard magic 8-ball response, I shook it again and got the answer "give Bob all your money."

This raised some questions. Who was Bob? Why was he so desperate to get his hands on $93.02 that he'd go through all the trouble of hacking my magic 8-ball? How did he hack my magic 8-ball? And, most importantly, why was I taking advice from a magic 8-ball?

To answer those questions in their respective order, "some guy," "because," "magic," and "because my usual advisor was out."

Of course, I've just gone and spoiled the ending for you. So now I don't need to tell you the story of how I arrived at these conclusions, which is a shame because it involves drunk police officers, a high-speed chase to the border, twelve quarter-pounders with cheese, a mysical ring of power, the theft of a blank CD, and enough explosions to satisfy the demands of the next dozen Michael Bay movies.

Sadly, by the time I'd actually figured out who Bob was, the $93.02 he was after had been spent, mostly on bribes. We had a duel to the death, and that's where the explosions came in. Then we stopped playing video games for a while because we were both flat broke.

I know nothing about hearts. Here's a post about brains instead!

Experts all over the world plus one undergraduate who once got a B+ on a Calculus paper all agree that the world is doomed. The zombie apocalypse, or as I call it, the zompocalypse, is coming. For proof, I direct you in the general direction of the entire internet.

There are a couple of bits of good news. The first is that I hold the copyright for the word "zompocalypse." This really is about as useful as as a finger growing out of my elbow, and no, perverts, an elbow-finger has no practical use whatsoever.

The other bit of good news is that it's really easy to tell whether you'll survive or not.



But I kid. Your chances of survival are actually rather easy to determine.

1: are you physically fit?

2: are you genre savvy?

3: do you have a heart?

If you answered "yes" to all of those questions, you fail and will be excellent food. That's only because #3 was a trick question. If you have a heart you'll try to save the idiot kid who really, really needs to just go away and let everyone else get on with it.

Now, I'm a heartless jerk and I know enough about zombies to know that splitting up is only intelligent until all the deadweight is gone, and then it's a great way to lose the one or two other people you can actually use. However, I'm also a blogger, which should pretty conclusively answer #1 with a resounding "no." In fact, anyone smart enough to know how to handle a zombie outbreak probably isn't physically fit enough to survive. Some people might call it a catch-22. I call it braaaaaaaaaaaaaaains.

So once the zompocalypse comes to pass, we're all dead. Some of us will be unlucky enough to be reanimated with various bits missing. Others will be only merely dead (as opposed to only mostly dead, and no, true love cannot stop the zombies. They have no brains, and no hearts either). Therefore, we must prevent the entire zompocalypse from happening in the first place. I propose we send a Terminator back in time to kill John Connor, but since that probably won't work, let's keep sending Terminators back. They'll never kill him (not in the past, anyway), but they will ruin the franchise.

On a completely unrelated note, the Blues Brothers' "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" just came up on iTunes. I do believe my 8-year-old and clinically brain-dead computer is trying to tell me something.

It has occured to me that tuning to a top 40 station would be an excellent way to ward off the zombies. When you become a zombie, you won't want to eat brains that are infested with that, will you?


What, I put 30 seconds' worth of work into that picture! How could you not expect me to post it twice?

Of course, zombies don't discriminate. As far as I know. They lack the intelligence to do so (does this mean that it's intelligent to discriminate?!) and that means that a zombie society would be entirely, er, fair. Colorblindness really doesn't mean anything to the undead, right?

Does this mean zombies are better than us?

I'd just like to reassure you that I was not bitten while writing this post. Nor are the zombies paying me money to write propaganda for them. They're too dumb to think of that.

Life, Don't Talk to Me About Life

Here's the scoop: you're going to die. No, that's not a death threat. One of these days your body will betray you and you'll turn into a rotting sack of flesh. Nobody wants to think about it. They'll do anything to bury themselves in a fairy-tale world where they don't have to think about it that they'll pay $20 for bad movies and steal bad music off the Internet. And this is why the entertainment industry exists.

People simply aren't equipped to deal with the fact that they'll die. Athiests may claim to be; "Oh, you religious types, you do this and that to shelter yourselves from the fact that you will one day cease to be. Heaven is just an illusion you came up with to try to believe that everything will still be all right."

All very well and good, but an athiest can still live responsibly. As opposed to saying "there's no judgement; we all just die and that's it" and then going on a binge, athiests tend to follow a moral code and live by society's rules just like everyone else. Now it is certainly true that living intelligently can lead to living longer. It is also true that a car can swerve around the corner and kill you next time you're at a busy intersection.

I'm not trying to say that life is fickle or that there isn't a God or you should live your life in such-and-such way. All I'm saying is that you really don't understand the concept of never.

Never listen to the same song twice. Never watch the same actor in more than one movie. Never watch re-runs.

...yeah.

ps, suicide is never the answer. Ever.

I-vi-vii

Iron Maiden have literally made a career out of this chord progression. Hallowed be Thy Name, Revelations (the beginning and end), Fear of the Dark, No More Lies (which, really, is just Fear of the Dark in E with Adrian Smith added to the line-up), Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Wicker Man (at the end) Wasted Years comes close, Phantom of the Opera does it in reverse during the "don't you stray" part... (and these are just the ones I know how to play)

And speaking of it in reverse, I-vii-vi is the chord progression used in "All Along the Watchtower" and the penultimate part of "Stairway to Heaven."

And speaking of Zeppelin, play "Immigrant Song" and "Flight of Icarus" back-to-back when you get a chance.

I love Maiden, I really do, because they are, despite this rant, master-class songwriters and anyone who doesn't believe me should learn some music theory and then listen to "Hallowed be Thy Name" again. But seriously, I don't think they've done an album since Number of the Beast where this progression didn't pop up.

ScrUSA Today

I mentioned in passing that USA Today published a misleading chart a while back, trying to imply that Bush's numbers right before his first State of the Union were worse than Obama's at the time (right before his first SoU). Well, today they ran a political cartoon lampooning Palin for writing down three words on her hand. Full disclosure: I think Palin made too many mistakes in 08 to have a chance in 12. But writing three words on your hand in the age of the Teleprompter Presidency isn't one such mistake.

If USA Today were even remotely in touch with the massive joke that ObamaPrompter is, that cartoon would have involved the Secretary of Defense asking Obama for the nuke codes, and Obama having to turn to his Teleprompter programmer to get them. Seriously. Who needs a Teleprompter to talk to a bunch of sixth-graders?!

Radio Ga Ga

I missed the post yesterday because of a) a busy schedule and b) chronic laziness. But no one reads this anyway so it doesn't matter.

Second radio show was yesterday. I didn't get to play the new song I wanted to play because it wasn't on the computer. Someone should look into that. I also played Iron Maiden's "Twilight Zone" simply because I finished the regular set with about 2 minutes left on the clock and needed something else. Not sure I'm going to play anything heavier than Maiden. We'll see. I have some 'tallica and 'deth, as you should know by now, but I'm not sure I'll be playing them.

I am pleased to report that the Who Review will return sometime next week. I've ordered Patrick Troughton's swan song (sort of), The War Games from Amazon along with some guitar strings because I'm too lazy to make the 30-minute trip to the nearest guitar store for the strings, and because Doctor Who is cheaper on Amazon than it is at Best Buy. I saw it on YouTube a very long time ago and remember the important plot points (including the big one, the one that's actually window-dressing and shouldn't need to effect the story) but I've forgotten a lot of the details. So I'll go through one episode a day and post about it.

Cigarette tax

60% of voters would approve a $1 increase in the tax on cigs.

Now, I don't want the government to raise the tax on something just cuz they think it's unhealthy. God knows I live on ice cream. My hyper metabolism never stopped. I'm still waiting for the day I'll suddenly wake up fat.

And now for the "but" that you've been waiting for: this, in this one case alone, is an excellent idea. The government needs the money, and better yet, some people will actually quit. And as someone who has to breathe secondhand smoke all over campus, charging them an extra buck is perfectly fine by me.

Of course, the government being the government, they'll always take a good idea too far.

Blooger Indeed

Whoops, looks like the Megareunion is slightly more complicated than I thought, but the short answer is that what I said in my original post on the subject is correct: LoMenzo got shafted so Ellefson could come back. Ah well. James' myspace post doesn't seem resentful; I guess you know going into Megadeth that your number could come up at any time.

Also, I'd like to amend something I said in another earlier post about the Big Four playing Orion. Ellefson's no slouch; I'd like to see him take a whack at that solo at the end. I'm not saying I think LoMenzo couldn't do it; it just seems that James was a hired hand, whereas David Ellefson's the closest thing Megadeth has had to a second permanent member. And really, Metallica's been using hired hands on the bass ever since Cliff died; if that sounds like an insult to Jason, check out the number of songwriting credits he had in a 14-year period with the band versus Cliff's credits in four. So what I'm trying to say is that since Cliff isn't, well, available, the bassist-who-is-not-Cliff-Burton that I'd most like to see take a whack at it is Junior. And no, I don't really care about Anthrax or Slayer. I get that Scott Ian is the go-to guy anytime VH1 or MTV want to do a documentary on thrash metal, and I get that Reign in Blood is teh br00tul. I just don't care about those bands as much.

Cavemen Vs Astronauts - Weapons TBD

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you should know where the above comes from.

I'm kind of on the side of the cavemen for a couple of reasons: one, the astronauts may be better trained and have the ability to coordinate (can the cavemen even speak?), but the cavemen kill things and eat them for a living. Assuming an otherwise-even playing field, cavemen win easy. Two, take away our technology for just 24 hours and we're completely lost. "Do the astronauts have weapons?" indeed. If they do, cavemen need to run and hide until the batteries on the weapons run out. Third, as the superiority of music from before I was born over current music clearly demonstrates, we've clearly lost something in just the last 20-odd years.

Speaking of!

I have never noticed the plane buzz by at the 2:30 mark in Iron Maiden's "Where Eagles Dare" before. It's pretty awesome.

Now, let's keep the ADHD train shifting tracks by talking about new covers of old songs. Stop it. Stop it right now. That's like asking George Lucas to re-write Hamlet. Yes, the original Star Wars trilogy was awesome and contained roughly 300% more explosions than all of Shakespeare put together. And yes, Willie Shax had some clunkers. So what? Hamlet is Hamlet. Leave it the hell alone. I don't need 400 threads on the fan-sites saying how Yorick will feature in the prequels or how Polonius shot first. So: new artists: if you want to demonstrate proper respect for older artists' songs: leave them the hell alone.

The comma button on my computer is dying. I am amused to find that the colon works nearly as well.

Heck, my computer's been really slow recently. I can't tell you the number of times that I've been on YouTube and the "now" marker has caught and killed the "loaded" marker, and that's not because I have trouble remembering what comes after eleventeen. It's because my internet is really bad. In the time it took me to look up "anti-cavemen techniques" on Wikipedia, they'd kill me and eat me.

So yeah. Cavemen always win.

Ads, Not of the Super Bowl Variety

I have to wonder about online games whose advertisement consists solely of virtual scantily-clad women. If you're on the Internet already, you can just find regular porn.

No, I'm not telling you where! Sheeple are one of the many, many things I hate, right up there with rap "music" and most politicians. Think for yourselves occasionally.

On a related note, ads should be the last content that loads on any webpage, and you should be able to click links off the main page long before the ads finish loading.