I did some additional YouTube spelunking and found some more Nick Cave awesomeness:
(Are You) The One That I've Been Wating For?
So I've sat and I've watched an ice age thaw...
Red Right Hand
You're one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan...
Breathless
Someone posted a video of himself doing a (not altogether bad) cover of this on YouTube, with the comment "OMG, the happiest song I know is by Nick Cave!" On the version of this song on the album, the flute work is rather more cacaphonous, sounding sort of like a 4th Grade Recorder recital, which I think adds a nice touch to the theme of breathlessness. Oh, and Nick Cave + Cute CGI Animals = Teh Awesome.
Hey Joe
Notable if only for what is probably the most famous song performed by the harmonica player accompanying him (though that really only adds to the existing awesomeness).
Loverman
L is for Love and O is for Oh yes I do...
I couldn't find a decent clip of People Ain't No Good, but there's lots of good stuff out there, for anyone interested.
Oh, and if you don't understand why any of this is awesome, the odds are you never will, so it would be pointless for me to try to offer any explanation.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
That's What I'm Thinking To Myself Right Now
On the topic of things that - like New Frontier - are awesome, I just found this video clip of Nick Cave (and some guy I don't know; Nick is the one in the blue jacket with the mullet) singing What A Wonderful World:
Rain Delay
We had some snow and freezing rain overnight and into this morning, so when I got up I called the “Inclement Weather Hotline” for work and learned that we would be opening two hours late.
I thought about going back to bed, but decided instead to just take a more leisurely approach to getting ready and to take the opportunity to start my car and let it thaw out completely before heading in to work.
By the time I left the roads were merely wet, and thus easily traversable, and I was pleased to note that there was considerably less traffic than normal, so, overall, I’d have to say “Yay snow and freezing rain!”
I ended up pulling in about 45 minutes later than usual, but given that I typically get there 45 minutes early, this meant that, technically, I was on time.
Most everyone else took full advantage of the delay, and more besides, rolling in somewhere around 11, and a lot of other people clearly opted to work from home, so the place was pretty quiet all day.
I had considered working from home – opting to bring my laptop home with me yesterday rather than simply locking it up in my cabinet in my cube – but there was a meeting I was scheduled to attend at 9. I figured it wouldn’t actually happen then, given the delay, but assumed that my boss would probably reschedule it for later in the day, which he did.
Of course, after the meeting started my boss turned to me and said that I could leave, as it turned out that my involvement wasn’t required.
(He’d thought that one of the results of this meeting was going to be a document that I would have to produce, but it turned out that someone else was producing the document, which was fine by me.)
It was a pretty boring day for the most part, as I didn’t have much to do. I have a lot of projects on my plate, but for pretty much all of them I’m waiting on information from other people, and am unable to really do much until I get the information.
On Tuesday, the latest in DC Comics’ direct-to-DVD animated adaptations of classic comic storylines, Justice League: The New Frontier, will hit the shelves.
I decided I couldn’t wait that long and did a search of the newsgroups to see if an advance copy had made its way out to the public. I found several copies and downloaded one to watch last night.
(I don’t feel guilty about this in the slightest, as I’m still going to buy the DVD come Tuesday, if for no other reason than that I’m hoping that, just as Superman: Doomsday had a sneak preview of New Frontier, New Frontier will have a sneak preview of The Judas Contract, which is the one I’m really waiting for.)
I won’t post a review – I already did a write up, via e-mail, for the only regular reader who cares – but I will discuss some of the troubles I encountered in watching it.
(Okay, mini-review: it was awesome. The too-short running time meant that a lot – and I mean a lot – of the story from the comic it was based on didn’t make the cut, but the essentials were there, and the animators absolutely nailed Darwyn Cooke’s style, producing something absolutely stunning to behold. The voice work was top-notch, with only a few minor exceptions, none of which were anything close to being deal-breakers.)
I’d started to watch it on my computer, but decided that while my new monitor is big and bright, it would still look better on the HDTV.
When streaming to my Media Lounge there are some issues with audio quality, so I decided to copy the file onto my USB drive and play it back from there, as the Media Lounge has a USB input for just that purpose.
However, there were still some audio glitches, so I decided to burn a DVD.
The encoding of the DVD took forever, and then, during the actual burning process, it crapped out at 92.9%.
Finally, two and a half hours later, I was back to where I had startedand decided to just watch it on the computer, though even that wasn’t without complications, as some encoding issues with the file caused it to randomly switch from color to black and white and back again at odd intervals.
Still, it was ultimately well worth all of the trouble, and I eagerly anticipate picking up the DVD on Tuesday.
I thought about going back to bed, but decided instead to just take a more leisurely approach to getting ready and to take the opportunity to start my car and let it thaw out completely before heading in to work.
By the time I left the roads were merely wet, and thus easily traversable, and I was pleased to note that there was considerably less traffic than normal, so, overall, I’d have to say “Yay snow and freezing rain!”
I ended up pulling in about 45 minutes later than usual, but given that I typically get there 45 minutes early, this meant that, technically, I was on time.
Most everyone else took full advantage of the delay, and more besides, rolling in somewhere around 11, and a lot of other people clearly opted to work from home, so the place was pretty quiet all day.
I had considered working from home – opting to bring my laptop home with me yesterday rather than simply locking it up in my cabinet in my cube – but there was a meeting I was scheduled to attend at 9. I figured it wouldn’t actually happen then, given the delay, but assumed that my boss would probably reschedule it for later in the day, which he did.
Of course, after the meeting started my boss turned to me and said that I could leave, as it turned out that my involvement wasn’t required.
(He’d thought that one of the results of this meeting was going to be a document that I would have to produce, but it turned out that someone else was producing the document, which was fine by me.)
It was a pretty boring day for the most part, as I didn’t have much to do. I have a lot of projects on my plate, but for pretty much all of them I’m waiting on information from other people, and am unable to really do much until I get the information.
On Tuesday, the latest in DC Comics’ direct-to-DVD animated adaptations of classic comic storylines, Justice League: The New Frontier, will hit the shelves.
I decided I couldn’t wait that long and did a search of the newsgroups to see if an advance copy had made its way out to the public. I found several copies and downloaded one to watch last night.
(I don’t feel guilty about this in the slightest, as I’m still going to buy the DVD come Tuesday, if for no other reason than that I’m hoping that, just as Superman: Doomsday had a sneak preview of New Frontier, New Frontier will have a sneak preview of The Judas Contract, which is the one I’m really waiting for.)
I won’t post a review – I already did a write up, via e-mail, for the only regular reader who cares – but I will discuss some of the troubles I encountered in watching it.
(Okay, mini-review: it was awesome. The too-short running time meant that a lot – and I mean a lot – of the story from the comic it was based on didn’t make the cut, but the essentials were there, and the animators absolutely nailed Darwyn Cooke’s style, producing something absolutely stunning to behold. The voice work was top-notch, with only a few minor exceptions, none of which were anything close to being deal-breakers.)
I’d started to watch it on my computer, but decided that while my new monitor is big and bright, it would still look better on the HDTV.
When streaming to my Media Lounge there are some issues with audio quality, so I decided to copy the file onto my USB drive and play it back from there, as the Media Lounge has a USB input for just that purpose.
However, there were still some audio glitches, so I decided to burn a DVD.
The encoding of the DVD took forever, and then, during the actual burning process, it crapped out at 92.9%.
Finally, two and a half hours later, I was back to where I had startedand decided to just watch it on the computer, though even that wasn’t without complications, as some encoding issues with the file caused it to randomly switch from color to black and white and back again at odd intervals.
Still, it was ultimately well worth all of the trouble, and I eagerly anticipate picking up the DVD on Tuesday.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
When You Care Enough To Send A Picture Of Someone Pretending To Blow His Brains Out
While sitting at my desk this morning the kid from the mailroom came by to deliver a package for me.
It was a gift from Kathleen that I was supposed to get last week on VD, or rather Singles Awareness Day, consisting of some ginormous cookies and a card featuring Jim from The Office pretending to blow his brains out.
As can be seen in the crappy cell phone picture below, the card now adorns one of the walls of my cube.
Apart from that, the day was largely uneventful. I did see the cute girl from the elevator in the hallway at one point, though we didn’t interact in any fashion.
Of course, immediately after that I discovered that my fly was totally unzipped.
*Sigh*
On a more upbeat note, and to pad/round out this entry, watch this video of a song about Alan Moore (found via Neil Gaiman’s blog):
It was a gift from Kathleen that I was supposed to get last week on VD, or rather Singles Awareness Day, consisting of some ginormous cookies and a card featuring Jim from The Office pretending to blow his brains out.
As can be seen in the crappy cell phone picture below, the card now adorns one of the walls of my cube.
Apart from that, the day was largely uneventful. I did see the cute girl from the elevator in the hallway at one point, though we didn’t interact in any fashion.
Of course, immediately after that I discovered that my fly was totally unzipped.
*Sigh*
On a more upbeat note, and to pad/round out this entry, watch this video of a song about Alan Moore (found via Neil Gaiman’s blog):
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
DAMN THESE EYES!
So the eye doctor was pretty much baffled by what’s going on with my eyes, particularly given that things were going so well and then, randomly, I just started having trouble.
The best theory she could come up with was that while the lenses fit well when my eyes are open, it’s possible that because my eyes have fairly small apertures (Shut up) when my eyes are closed my lids are putting too much pressure on the lenses. This could explain why my eyes responded to the molding so well after my first night wearing them, as the extra pressure initially helped force my eyes into shape.
The solution she came up with was to order me some looser-fitting lenses and have me stop wearing my current ones. Also, as I’ll not be wearing any lenses for at least two weeks, if there’s something else going on with my eyes the period of not wearing the lenses might let things sort themselves out.
So that sucks, as it means I’ll be back to wearing glasses in the interim.
My eye trouble reminds me of a sketch on that old MTV comedy series from the early 90s called The Idiot Box, starring Alex Winter (Bill of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure/Bogus Journey), called “Damn These Eyes!”
“Eyes” was a spoof of 50s sci-fi movies and told the story of a scientist who was in an accident that caused visible dotted lines to emanate from his eyes which pointed to whatever he happened to be looking at. This, of course, led to all sorts of problems, as it became apparent, for example, that he was staring at women’s breasts, or that when he was at the newsstand buying scientific journals he was really interested in the girlie magazines. Naturally it all led him to periodically exclaim “Damn these eyes!”
Fortunately I haven’t had that particular problem. Especially today when I was at the eye doctor’s, as one of the girls working there has pretty big cans and was wearing a shirt with a plunging neckline.
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to be polite, you just can’t help but stare.
There was a bartender who worked at my regular bar back in Michigan with whom I – and pretty much everyone else – had that problem. Even women, by their own admission, could not help but stare. I theorized that her breasts were so massive that they actually had their own gravity and pulled your eyes inexorably towards them.
One night I actually told her, “Look, I’m sorry, and I don’t mean to be rude, but I just can’t help it.” I went on to say that it was almost – almost – a shame that they were such attention-grabbers, because she was also extremely pretty, but people almost never noticed simply because their eyes were always drawn elsewhere.
(The nephew of one of my friends had stopped by the bar one evening before coming over to his aunt’s house, and when he arrived he kept talking about this girl who had a great ass. We couldn’t figure out who he was talking about until we all went to the bar later on and he pointed her out, because while she did have a great ass, and pretty much a great everything else, it wasn’t the most obvious attribute to use to describe her.)
Luckily she was very good-natured about the whole thing – and just good-natured in general – so she seldom took offense, and being aware of what an asset they were, she generally dressed to maximize her tits in order to maximize her tips.
Hastily – and poorly – drawn artist’s rendering of a typical interaction.
Speaking of eyes, and her effect on them, when I was in rehab, there came a point during which clients established enough trust that they could venture out into the world for brief periods of time on their own, though we were generally encouraged to take along a buddy. (Certain areas of town, obviously, were off-limits.)
On one such trip out to a local store I bumped into her (not literally, sadly), and while I was standing there talking to her, the guy who’d come along with me spotted the two of us talking and his eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw her.
(For the record, yes, I did once ask her out. I think you can guess how well that worked out.)
In any case, the latest news on my eyes is pretty much the only news for today, so I think I’ll give my damnable eyes a rest and post this.
The best theory she could come up with was that while the lenses fit well when my eyes are open, it’s possible that because my eyes have fairly small apertures (Shut up) when my eyes are closed my lids are putting too much pressure on the lenses. This could explain why my eyes responded to the molding so well after my first night wearing them, as the extra pressure initially helped force my eyes into shape.
The solution she came up with was to order me some looser-fitting lenses and have me stop wearing my current ones. Also, as I’ll not be wearing any lenses for at least two weeks, if there’s something else going on with my eyes the period of not wearing the lenses might let things sort themselves out.
So that sucks, as it means I’ll be back to wearing glasses in the interim.
My eye trouble reminds me of a sketch on that old MTV comedy series from the early 90s called The Idiot Box, starring Alex Winter (Bill of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure/Bogus Journey), called “Damn These Eyes!”
“Eyes” was a spoof of 50s sci-fi movies and told the story of a scientist who was in an accident that caused visible dotted lines to emanate from his eyes which pointed to whatever he happened to be looking at. This, of course, led to all sorts of problems, as it became apparent, for example, that he was staring at women’s breasts, or that when he was at the newsstand buying scientific journals he was really interested in the girlie magazines. Naturally it all led him to periodically exclaim “Damn these eyes!”
Fortunately I haven’t had that particular problem. Especially today when I was at the eye doctor’s, as one of the girls working there has pretty big cans and was wearing a shirt with a plunging neckline.
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to be polite, you just can’t help but stare.
There was a bartender who worked at my regular bar back in Michigan with whom I – and pretty much everyone else – had that problem. Even women, by their own admission, could not help but stare. I theorized that her breasts were so massive that they actually had their own gravity and pulled your eyes inexorably towards them.
One night I actually told her, “Look, I’m sorry, and I don’t mean to be rude, but I just can’t help it.” I went on to say that it was almost – almost – a shame that they were such attention-grabbers, because she was also extremely pretty, but people almost never noticed simply because their eyes were always drawn elsewhere.
(The nephew of one of my friends had stopped by the bar one evening before coming over to his aunt’s house, and when he arrived he kept talking about this girl who had a great ass. We couldn’t figure out who he was talking about until we all went to the bar later on and he pointed her out, because while she did have a great ass, and pretty much a great everything else, it wasn’t the most obvious attribute to use to describe her.)
Luckily she was very good-natured about the whole thing – and just good-natured in general – so she seldom took offense, and being aware of what an asset they were, she generally dressed to maximize her tits in order to maximize her tips.
Hastily – and poorly – drawn artist’s rendering of a typical interaction.
Speaking of eyes, and her effect on them, when I was in rehab, there came a point during which clients established enough trust that they could venture out into the world for brief periods of time on their own, though we were generally encouraged to take along a buddy. (Certain areas of town, obviously, were off-limits.)
On one such trip out to a local store I bumped into her (not literally, sadly), and while I was standing there talking to her, the guy who’d come along with me spotted the two of us talking and his eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw her.
(For the record, yes, I did once ask her out. I think you can guess how well that worked out.)
In any case, the latest news on my eyes is pretty much the only news for today, so I think I’ll give my damnable eyes a rest and post this.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Happy To Be Mistaken
I don’t mind being wrong – it happens often enough that I’m well used to it - but in this latest instance of being wrong, not only do I not mind, I’m actually pleased, as, unexpectedly, my new monitor was delivered today:
As Carl might say, “Sweet nectar!”
I did have enough room to keep the dual monitor setup, but as you can see, the new hotness positively dwarfs its little brother (which, at 20.1”, isn’t exactly tiny).
Now if only my pupils would constrict so that I could actually stand to look at the thing…
As Carl might say, “Sweet nectar!”
I did have enough room to keep the dual monitor setup, but as you can see, the new hotness positively dwarfs its little brother (which, at 20.1”, isn’t exactly tiny).
Now if only my pupils would constrict so that I could actually stand to look at the thing…
Hail To The Sleep
I woke up a bit before 8 this morning in a mild panic, forgetting that I didn’t actually have to work today. Once I remembered, I went back to sleep for about an hour and a half.
After that, I got up and showered and ventured out into the world with the intention of seeing if the barbershop I go to was open and getting a haircut, then going grocery shopping.
However, my eyes, once again, were jacked – I have an eye appointment tomorrow and hopefully we’ll be able to figure out what the deal is – so while I was going to stop at a branch of my bank that’s near a grocery store (Giant) to get some cash before heading over to the barber shop near the grocery store I was actually going to shop at (Shoppers Food Warehous), I decided instead to use the ATM inside the Giant and just grab a few groceries there.
Then I came home, put in some of the drops I have left over from my trip to urgent care, and then went back to bed.
My eyes feel fine now, but the drops dilate my pupils, so my vision isn’t what it should be.
Shortly after I woke up from my nap Kathleen called and we went to Subway to get lunch.
Yesterday we had brunch and did some (non-grocery) shopping.
My monitor is currently in Virginia – in Chantilly to be precise – but it appears that they won’t be delivering it today due to the holiday, so it’s just going to sit there fr 24 hours, and get delivered when I’m not home.
I asked Kathleen to hang out here tomorrow – she’s got a key to the house – but she has a bunch of other stuff to do, so can’t devote too much time to just hanging out here waiting. Hopefully it’ll arrive early enough.
Anyway, I can’t see what I’m typing, so I guess I’ll bring this entry to a close.
After that, I got up and showered and ventured out into the world with the intention of seeing if the barbershop I go to was open and getting a haircut, then going grocery shopping.
However, my eyes, once again, were jacked – I have an eye appointment tomorrow and hopefully we’ll be able to figure out what the deal is – so while I was going to stop at a branch of my bank that’s near a grocery store (Giant) to get some cash before heading over to the barber shop near the grocery store I was actually going to shop at (Shoppers Food Warehous), I decided instead to use the ATM inside the Giant and just grab a few groceries there.
Then I came home, put in some of the drops I have left over from my trip to urgent care, and then went back to bed.
My eyes feel fine now, but the drops dilate my pupils, so my vision isn’t what it should be.
Shortly after I woke up from my nap Kathleen called and we went to Subway to get lunch.
Yesterday we had brunch and did some (non-grocery) shopping.
My monitor is currently in Virginia – in Chantilly to be precise – but it appears that they won’t be delivering it today due to the holiday, so it’s just going to sit there fr 24 hours, and get delivered when I’m not home.
I asked Kathleen to hang out here tomorrow – she’s got a key to the house – but she has a bunch of other stuff to do, so can’t devote too much time to just hanging out here waiting. Hopefully it’ll arrive early enough.
Anyway, I can’t see what I’m typing, so I guess I’ll bring this entry to a close.
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