Random Crap

So yesterday I had to make a long journey across the suburbs. On my way home I was reminded that in the Chicago area, speed limits are merely a suggestion. I was heading south on the tri-state when I noticed the car ahead of me was a cop. Instinctively I glanced at the speedometer. 80 mph. I looked around me and noticed that I was just keeping pace with all the other cars. I think the speed limit there is 65, maybe only 55. I’m not really sure even though I drive this piece of road frequently (further evidence of the speed limits’ irrelevance). Anyway, I sure as hell wasn’t going to slow down if nobody else was. The cop didn’t have his lights on and he was going 80, so fuck it.

Jack Black and Jack White should really do an album together. Or at least present a grammy together. Given the scarcity of talented musicians these days, what are the chances that two of them would share a first name and have opposite last names?

Saw a car today that had a license plate frame that said “It pays to consult a realtor”. The car was a brand new BMW. Guess it pays the realtor at least.

This post brought to you by Mr. Brain’s Pork Faggots.

Fry’s is Cool

My house is on what must be the most shitty, antiquated piece of the power grid in the country. My power’s always cutting out at the strangest times. We could be having an ice storm with 80 mph winds and everything will be fine. The next day will be calm but a bird will land on a power line somewhere and take down the whole fucking neighborhood. This apparent randomness ensures that my computer will be on whenever the power goes out.

It happened again a couple weeks ago, just like I described. Power stayed on through the snow, ice and wind, but the next day it went down. It didn’t just suddenly switch off either, no that would have been nice. Instead it took its time deciding whether or not it wanted to go completely out. The lights dimmed, came back up and finally went out. Before I could reach the power switch on my computer it had cycled power three times in quick succession. Guess I should have set that “system restart on power failure” CMOS setting differently.

Anyway, I always thought I was safe having my shit on surge protectors, but when ComEd finally got us back up 3 hours later I discovered that every few minutes the signal to my monitor would disappear and not come back without a reboot. I’d try to do a clean shutdown blindly (Alt-F4, Alt-F4, Alt-F4….) but it didn’t seem to work. Eventually through trial and error I figured out that as long as I was running without the nVidia drivers and using windows default VGA settings my computer would work. I could go clear up to 32-bit color at 1280 x 1024, but my refresh rate sucked stanky ass. Sure acted like a video card problem, and eventually by trying different drivers I was able to get my computer to not boot at all and give me an informative beep code confirming it. It was really annoying having my display suck so badly, but for some reason (oh yeah, I had no money!) I put up with it for a week or two.

So anyway, once I had it budgeted I knew I needed a new video card and a UPS so it wouldn’t happen again. Well, I didn’t feel like waiting for delivery and we all know that Best Buy completely sucks, so hey, perfect opportunity to check out the new Fry’s Electronics in Downers Grove.

Now Fry’s has been around for awhile in California and in the southwest, but I’d heard of them on slashdot and other places. Now they’ve come to Illinois in what I hope is the beginning of the nationwide slaughtering of Best Buy and CompUSA. I hate monopolies as much as the next guy, probably more, but I really hate Best Buy and CompUSA.

Overall I’m pretty impressed. Imagine if Best Buy was bigger, geared more towards computer stuff, had a really good selection, decent prices, and was decorated like a Barnes and Noble. That’s Fry’s, or at least the one in Downers Grove. They seemed to have everything a computer geek could want. It was not nearly as warehousey as I expected. In fact it wasn’t warehousey at all (yes, I said warehousey again…and again!). Think they even had a coffee shop. Kind of a shame, because I imagine without all the fancy architecture and shit they could lower prices, but god forbid a stupid yuppie cock would have to shop without sipping a fucking latte.

As I mentioned, I was on this quest for a video card. A cheap one. I’ve got no illusions of my computer ever being able to run Doom III and I’ve got a Playstation2 for gaming, so as long as it can render Windows apps and porn I’m happy. I found a decent nVidia-based Leadtek card for $50. Looked it up online and found it for $46. Not bad if you consider shipping would’ve been $1.50 minimum. I’m willing to fork over the remaining $2.50 to have it now instead of now-plus-one-week. And you know what else? You can’t get a $50 video card at Best Buy.

The other thing I needed was a UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply for those lacking the geek gene). Found a decent Belkin one with shutdown software for $35. Same one is available online for $33, but they weigh a ton, so with shipping considered I actually came out ahead on that one. When was the last time you saved money by not shopping online?

So in summary, Fry’s is cool.

The Exorcist

My wife and I rented The Exorcist a couple nights ago. I hadn’t seen it since I was about 10, and even then I don’t think I ever saw all of it. So anyway, I have no idea if it was the new “version you’ve never seen” version because she brought it home from the video store, and all I had was the disc. I’m thinking not, because the disc itself was nothing fancy. Double-sided, movie on one side, special features on the other. The movie itself had a long rambling introduction by William Friedkin which I watched about 30 seconds of. So actually I can’t really say if it was long and rambling, but all indications were that it was going to be so I skipped it.

Hold on, I feel a brief digression coming on.

OK, so it was a double-sided DVD. These are rare, but they always confuse me. The disc is shiny on both sides instead of shiny on the bottom and screen-printed on the top. In tiny little letters near the hub, one side is marked one thing (typically “movie” or “wide-screen”) and the other something else (”special features”, “full frame”, etc.). But because both surfaces are shiny read surfaces and because I’m not a fucking moron and know that DVD’s and CD’s are read from the bottom, my instinct is that the side marked “movie” should be in the tray facing down, i.e. the actual read surface containing the movie is marked “movie”. Of course then I realize, “no, most of the world is fucking idiots” and insert the disc in a position that is to my mind upside-down. Of course this is the way it works.

OK, so back to the movie.

The movie was moderately scary and of course it contained about 40 seconds of Mike Oldfield’s awesome Tubular Bells, which will be forever be known as “The Theme from the Exorcist” by people who think the markings on double-sided DVD’s make perfect sense. Given that Tubular Bells clocks in at almost almost 49 minutes, it has become widely known as “The Theme from the Exorcist” based on about 1.4% of it being used in the movie. Anyway, Tubular Bells rules and I highly recomend it, though it can be slightly hard to find.

But anyway, watching this movie got me thinking. Not about faith and good and evil and all that shit. No, it got me thinking “Could this movie be made today?” I’m thinking definitely not with an R rating, probably not at all. Observe.

In 1973, a movie containing a scene of a 12-year-old girl repeatedly stabbing a crucifix into her bloodied crotch while saying “Let Jesus fuck you!” over and over can get an R rating.

In 2004, a movie featuring simulated oral sex by anatomically-incorrect puppets can’t get an R rating. How far we’ve come.

Now even though I never believed in ancient religious mumbo-jumbo, there was a time when I wasn’t a complete skeptic of all things paranormal. During this time, I always found demonic posession stories intriguing. They always talked of the posessed person being able to speak and understand hitherto unknown languages, contort themselves into bizarre positions, and of course perform the obligatory feats of telekinesis. A couple years ago I saw a “documentary” on the always reliable Discovery Channel about a boy that was exorcised in the 1940’s, and they claimed some pretty remarkable shit happened. Supposedly this was the case that The Exorcist was based on. Seeing the movie again made me decide to look this up and see just how much of it was bullshit. Imagine my complete lack of surprise to learn that all of it was.

Here’s the article. It’s very long but well worth it.

They’ve Officially Run Out of Rock Stars

The 2005 inductees to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame were announced today. They seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. I have to wonder if maybe somebody in Cleveland’s going “Hmmm, maybe we shoul have limited ourselves to one a year….”

So let’s go down the list, shall we?

U2

This is the choice I have the least trouble with. If we were talking about FatDave’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, U2 would never even be considered, but we’re talking about the real Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and apparently U2 had some kind of impact. I guess they may have even been cool for about 10 minutes in 1983. So anyway, I’ll reluctantly give you U2. If they ever open the Overrated Self-Important Rock Star Hall of Fame, I expect Bono to be near the top of list (just above Sting).

The Pretenders

The Pretenders were far from horrible, but hall of fame material? Not in my book. They had a couple hits but so did Adam Ant. Shall we put him in the Hall of Fame? There’s always 2006….

The O’ Jays

Personally, I’d consider them more soul than anything else. And I don’t think they ever did much besides Love Train. But Love Train made it onto Freedom Rock, and there’s gotta be a Freedom Rock clause somewhere in the Hall of Fame by-laws.

Percy Sledge

See above, but substitute “When a Man Loves a Woman” for “Love Train” and take out the whole Freedom Rock thing. Nothing against Percy Sledge mind you, but to paraphrase Dire Straits, it ain’t what I call rock & roll. Come to think of it, Dire Straits hasn’t been inducted to the Hall of Fame. Yeah, I mean it’s not like they’re the Beatles or something, but c’mon, they’re more rock & roll than Percy Sledge.

Buddy Guy

OK, you know what? Buddy Guy fucking rules. But you know what else? That’s blues, not rock & roll. Was the blues a huge influence on rock music? Well duh. Was Buddy Guy specifically a huge influence on rock and roll? Why don’t you ask Eric Clapton. But the blues is still not rock, at least not until you speed it up and play in straight-8ths instead of triplets. Now, there is an “early influences” category which contains the likes of Woodie Guthrie, T-Bone Walker and Les Paul. If that’s where they’re putting Buddy, then what took them so fucking long?

Interestingly, these artists’ competition was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (not rock), the J. Geils Band (not legends) and Conway Twitty (you gotta be fucking kidding me).

Now obviously the term rock and roll is somewhat amorphous. What is and isn’t rock is open to debate, especially when you consider genres like funk that are direct offshoots of rock. This is why I don’t bitch about Curtis Mayfield and Parliament/Funkadelic being in the Hall of Fame. That and I like their music much more. Some would say soul is also an offshoot of rock, though I’m not convinced. I think it has an independent bloodline. But if you think Percy Sledge belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by all means write your own rant and send me an email telling me I’m an asshole.

And it should go without saying that the worth of one artist over another is largely a matter of opinion. I mean, there’s maybe ten acts in the history of rock that everyone can point to as legendary. But this is a Hall of Fame we’re talking about. Can we really let in any band that had a couple minor singles in the 80’s?

Yet Another Reason to Hate the Holidays

You know what else I hate about Christmas time besides that fucking Menard’s jingle? Commercials where people give each other cars for Christmas. If you’re so god-damned rich that you can surprise your spouse with a Lexus under the tree, I automatically hate you. I hate you, I hate your Japanese luxury car and I hate your fucking giant red bow you wrap around it.

Not that I automatically hate anyone who can afford a Lexus, shit, I could probably afford one if I didn’t have kids. But you know, the whole act of surprising somebody with a $48,000 gift kind of rules out the discussion that should take place before a purchase of such magnitude. “Honey, I just put us $48,000 deeper in debt without consulting you, but Merry Christmas!”

And nevermind that for the same money you can get a much better car. Shit, you can get a WRX STi for $32K, and I guarantee it’ll be more fun to drive than a fucking soul-less luxury car or a “mine’s bigger than yours” SUV. For $44K you could have a fucking Corvette. Anybody who chooses a Lexus over a Corvette is fucking yuppie scum and deserves to die. And don’t give me that “I have a family, I can’t drive them around in a Corvette” bullshit. You can’t drive them around in a Lexus either without little Jimmy getting cookie crumbs all over the leather. If that’s your concern, buy a fucking minivan or station wagon. Here’s a nice wagon.