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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 16, 2014 16:35:38 GMT
I'm staying home and doing nothing today. Maybe I'll watch a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 14, 2014 17:20:30 GMT
I visited the Canadian side of Niagara Falls with my family way back when. The border crossing was very low key.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 14, 2014 4:28:37 GMT
Actually, I'm feeling enough better now to listen to Quien Sabe Sabe by Orquesta Aragón. They're a charanga band from Cuba—a big band with violins and flutes instead of horns.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 14, 2014 0:38:50 GMT
These bugs spread disease to humans and dogs. It's us or them.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 13, 2014 23:37:53 GMT
I've made some progress at work. We finally got the supplies we need to run our big experiment, so now we're doing test runs to get all the kinks worked out. The experiment involves putting pesticide in these insects' meals, and seeing how large a dosage will kill them. We just need to make some adjustments to the feeding apparatus, and find a way to make the bugs feed more consistently.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 13, 2014 23:25:46 GMT
I'm feeling gloomy. The first real cold of fall hit us yesterday, and it's been overcast as well. I need something to make me feel better. Something seasonal. Something to turn this ennui into existential dread, and then turn that into ecstasy. I need Sufjan Stevens' Songs for Christmas box set. Anyone who's interested can stream the whole thing online: music.sufjan.com/album/songs-for-christmas
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 13, 2014 23:01:54 GMT
I think American bakeries make their fruitcakes different from the rest of the world.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 13, 2014 1:10:57 GMT
My favorite Christmas tradition is nailing the Christmas Onion over the threshold, to prevent Baal-flagellon the Goat with the Voice of a Man from eating the Santa Claus.
And on Christmas Eve we'd leave D cell batteries by the fireplace, for the Santa Claus's lightning hammer. And by the next morning, they were gone! In retrospect, the whole thing was kind of silly—the lightning hammer was magic. It didn't even need batteries! I wonder what the Santa Claus used them for.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 12, 2014 3:59:41 GMT
Holy crap holy crap.
I was at CD Exchange today, browsing the "Marked down to 99 cents, if it doesn't sell we're gonna throw it away" shelves. There was a used copy of Starflyer 59's She's the Queen EP. I had all the songs already (thanks to the deluxe edition reissue of Silver). But those versions were remastered, so maybe they sounded slightly different from the originals? Also, I didn't have the liner notes (which include that great photo of Brandon Ebel's mom as homecoming queen). And Sf59 is my favorite band. And it's only 99 cents. So I bought it.
Anyway, I get home, open up the case and look at the liner notes, and see that it's autographed by Jason Martin.
If Sf59 were more famous, that would actually be worth something. At least I think it's cool.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 11, 2014 20:09:36 GMT
Mariachi El Bronx: Mariachi El Bronx (2014). Yes, all their albums are self-titled. There's a small but vital difference between this and their two prior albums: this time, they've got synthesizers and electric guitar. They're used pretty tastefully, so the overall effect is still mariachi with some post-punk flourishes rather than rock music with horns. Also, it has my favorite cover art of any album this year.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 11, 2014 2:02:32 GMT
Orange Juice: Rip It Up. One of those post-punk bands that I only ever hear about when someone is praising them to the heavens. I'd say they live up to the hype, though I still just tolerate Edwyn Collins' voice. (Dude sings like his nose is stopped up at all times.) But the music itself is great, and I particularly like the disco songs.
John Fahey: The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death. Instrumental guitar music. Fahey plays a steel-stringed acoustic, sometimes playing slide and sometimes finger-picking like a banjo. The songs draw influence from old-time music, Gospel, and country. Wonderful stuff.
Mariachi El Bronx: Mariachi El Bronx (2011). So, the hardcore punk band The Bronx started recording mariachi music on the side. Apparently when they started, a lot of the punks and music critics thought it was some kind of joke. Well, the joke was on them, because the Bronx amigos were completely sincere. They've put out three mariachi albums so far, and this is the second. Perhaps it's not 100% traditional (they mix in some harp band, and some Norteño, and there's plenty of percussion which I think traditional mariachi lacks) but it still feels pretty respectful. Unfortunately, this album loses a bit of steam at the end, which is unfortunate because the first half was so promising.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 10, 2014 23:06:09 GMT
It's another good, hard sci-fi film. Most of the movie is Sam Rockwell talking to himself, but he pulls it off quite well. And GERTY is one of the great movie robots.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 10, 2014 21:52:05 GMT
Did you ever see Moon? It was similar. Though it's a hard movie to discuss because nearly half of it is spoilers.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 10, 2014 21:23:57 GMT
It's funny that we've gotten so conditioned to stories where the robots turn against the humans in some way, that it now feels refreshing when the robots don't do that.
"90% honesty." Heh.
ALSO I watched the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode The Castle of Fu Manchu. The movie was so incompetently made that large parts of it were impossible to understand. Christopher Lee is usually a great actor, but to say he was phoning in his performance in this film, would be an insult to phones. Interstellar was great for washing the taste of that out of my mouth.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 10, 2014 21:04:36 GMT
Got today off from work, so I saw Interstellar. I definitely see the comparisons to 2001: A Space Odyssey, in terms of theme and the scope of the plot. Only the plot was easier to follow, and the humans felt more like human beings.
TARS was awesome.
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