I feel woozy

I'd like to commend BP on their new, bold, pro-huffing campaign:



I mean, the swirling green apparitions are classic hallmarks of an ether binge, the high-class huffer's drug, and the gentle indie rock should sooth those post-binge tremors. (Maybe I'm just feeling vindictive toward what I feel is a particularly vicious co-option of green iconography in order to sell more gas, which is, y'know, pretty fucking toxic shit. Or maybe I'm just bugged by the goddamned song stuck in my head.)

Send more braaaaaains...

The scary thing about zombies is their creeping inevitability, like the slow descent of old age or the metastasizing Starbucks invasion.

Deanimator emphasized the slow march of death by putting you behind the gun of a never-harried nebbish, standing off an endless army of newly risen silhouettes. The play is simple, with one upgrade (a shotgun) that's ultimately unsatisfying. A cruel mediation on the nature of living?

Boxhead slapped the player into a Lego-meets-Robotron endless killing spree. Unlike Deanimator, the upgrades are plentiful, but ultimately extend the game too far. After, what, the 100th level or so, killing the zombies just lacks any sort of sense of accomplishment. That, and frankly, the shotgun is the best weapon by far, making all the other upgrades largely irrelevant (aside from maybe the fake walls, which are handy for reshaping the field).

The Last Stand deals with the zombie hoard in a broad, "castle defense" sort of way, and largely overcomes the deficits of the other two games— it has enough upgrades that the gameplay is varied, and differing zombies keep the difficulty a bit more in line. It still ultimately becomes too easy (assuming that you get lucky— one complaint is that chance can make the game way too hard or way too easy, depending on how your scavenging runs go), but it has the good sense to end the game. Sure, that undermines the hard determinism that makes zombies thrilling, but it works in terms of fun.

I want my money back, give me my money back...

Fiber optics? What fiber optics?

Baby Bells ripped us off. Wonder what SBC's Michigan promises looked like. Maybe I'll get the book, now that I'm done with school and looking to read...

These are the breaks

Need a history of hip hop? Year by year breakdowns. Just did a paper on hip hop's concept of ownership being tied to its development as an oral culture, and these would have been priceless. It's fucking sweet, chiefs.
via ILX.

Popular Songs reimagined as Murder She Wrote episodes

Black Eyed Peas, My Humps.

Jessica Fletcher's nephew Will.I.Am (Robert Goulet) has become involved with Fergie (Dinah Shore), a materialistic woman; he buys her all these ices, Dolce & Gabbana, Fendi and NaDonna. He is accused of killing her after she is found battered. Jessica discovers that Fergie had been faking cancer and defrauding Apl.de.ap, who bludgeoned her to death.

The Arcade Fire, Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels).

The body of a local doctor is found in the Cabot Cove snow, and Win (Jerry Orbach) is suspected of the murder. He explains to Jessica that no one had seen him because he had been visiting Regine Cassagne (Lynnn Redgrave) by way of a tunnel dug through drifts. Jessica traps Cassagne by prompting her to sing a hymn that the doctor had hummed while performing her abortion, which she attempted to cover up.

Eric B and Rakim, Microphone Fiend.

A karaoke competition turns deadly when Jessica's old student Rakim (LeVar Burton) is forced out for rapping "Total Eclipse of the Heart." Accused of killing contest impresario (played by Don Ameche) by lacing the mic with Drano, Rakim is exonerated through the efforts of Eric B (Yaphet Koto), and the revelation that Big Daddy Kane's "Set It Off" was a declaration of murderous intent.

Everything is everything

Through a handy slab of link hopping (ILX to Detroit Techno Militia to Detroit Radio Flashbacks), I'm diggin' the ancient station IDs of old Ohm 88.7 and Electrifying Mojo.

Revamp

I ran into a couple of people who complained that I hadn't updated this in, well, forever, frankly.

So, now I'm dicking around with the formatting, and that means that the old Haloscan comments are gone. They were a pain in the ass that was only instituted to provide some deterant to the massive amount of blogspam... Ugh.

Hopefully, I can get this up and going a little more smoothly. If anyone who IS a programmer (or can make CSS not stand for Consistently Shitty Screwups) wants to plane off the ugly edges, lemme know.

Now I just need to cajole the Cousins Vinyl guys to let me use their file hosting, so I can put music up quickly.

Anyway, I won't get too attached. Longterm plans include a dedicated domain, ideally administered by someone else, where I can stick up archives of writing and portfolio stuff. But who knows? Maybe by then I won't want to taint my professional prospects with this blog.