Those Numbers Make Me Look Violent

Today, offhand, I looked at Bungie.net. Roughly two years after the release of the game (as of next weekend) I have played exactly 1000 games of Halo 3. Some of that time has been well, spent, some of it not. Most of it was fun though. Over the course of 1000 games, I've got:

*7853 Enemies killed in campaign
*631 Social Multiplayer games
*280 Ranked Multiplayer games
*550 Experience points
*-9 Experience penalties
*216 kills with Needler (It's okay guys, I've got it)
*268 Grenade sticks
*328 kills with the Ghost
*17 Splatter sprees (all of which were with the Ghost, I'm sure)
*1 Vehicular Manslaughter
*303 Splatters
*481 kills with the Warthog turret (see Alex, I've got a bit of experience here)
*243 kills with sniping weapons
*73 Snipe medals (Yeah, I'm efficient and skilled)
*1 Rampage
*31 Steaktaculars
*11,351 kills
*10,841 deaths
That's right, a positive spread. Thank you.

Well, I'm caught up for homework, so I think it's off for game 1001.

Mmm, Whatcha say?

Wow, I really let this thing die, didn't I? I wonder if anyone will actually see this.

So, here we go. Look out, I'm going to clog up your browser with videos. Sorry. I've been wasting some time on youtube again. Yay holiday weekend. Anyway, thanks to Rodney and Sean, I've become aware of the "Dear Sister" Saturday Night Live sketch, which is apparently actually called "The Shooting." It is a parody of a scene from The OC (rather violent, consider yourself warned):



Which led to this SNL skit (I know, I know, "Screenflow Demo"? Well, it was that, or some guy filming his actual TV. I'd consider this the lesser of 2 evils. This one's hard to find.):
EDIT: Linked because the embedding messed up the margins. I hate that.

Apparently, this sparked a huge meme with people making parodies that I somehow managed to miss. (Violence, Spoilers from the various movies used, etc.)

There's The Matrix:



300:



Lord of the Rings:



World Cup Soccer:



Duck Hunt:



The Office:
Link! (Embedding was disabled, but it's just too good not to include.)

"Charlie Bit My Finger":



Monty Python and the Holy Grail:



Scrubs:



... As you can see, it goes (or went) on and on. It would seem to be a rather old joke at this point, but since I missed it the first time around, I think I'm within my rights to post it! Sorry if you found this completely un-funny!

POST SCRIPT!
In case you were curious, the song used in the scene, and its subsequent parodies is "Hide and Seek", by Imogen Heap. It's a rather lovely song, I think.

Eine Kleine Nachtmaintenance

I've done some fiddling with features, sidebar items and such, so I thought I'd keep you, my loyal, enormous reader base, apprised of the changes.

Most obviously, the blog has a new title. I figured since Charlemagne being my close personal friend was all an extension of my April Fool's post from '08, it was probably time he be retired. I didn't do one of those for this year. Sad. They were always fun to write. Anyway, I was feeling a little Beowulfish, I suppose, and besides, Scyld wæs god cyning. Blog title is subject to change, as it has ever been.

The important poll from "About Me" is now an actual poll. I'm worried some of you won't pass, though. Don't worry, if you practice a good robot dance, maybe you'll only be prosecuted as a human sympathizer.

"Fun on the Internets" has had some changes to better reflect current internet interests.

I ditched my broken last.fm album quilt for a Recent Tracks widget. It's a shame, as it seems to only work intermittently. Hopefully that'll get better; I guess we'll see how long it lasts.

I added a followy thingy, in case any of you want to well... follow me. Anyway, I'll probably be looking over my shoulder a lot more often, ducking in and out of doorways and alleys when I walk down the street, that sort of thing. Seriously, WHY ARE YOU FOLLOWING ME!?

Ahem. Well. That about covers it, I guess. I'd try to give you an idea of what's upcoming here, if I had any sort of idea myself. Time and inspiration rarely strike together these days, it would seem. Hopefully that'll happen a bit more often, but I make no promises. I'd like to get back to writing some fiction, give some reading updates, talk about music, complain about current events, but there are only 24 hours in a day, and somehow my life manages to be somewhat full. As blogger seems to have added a lot of functionality that I had missed, please let me know if there's something else you'd like to see. Be careful out there, friends. You never know who might be following you!

Multi-Facial

"Ladies and Gentlemen! I would like to present an intriguing, thoughtful, and well-written short film* starring one of the most talented actors of our time, V- wait, what? Him? Really... you're sure? Okay, if you say so... As I was saying! One of the most talented actors of our time, Vin Diesel!"


*We ask that you disregard the terrible rapping.

Seriously... it appears that Mr. Diesel did his best work before anyone had ever heard of him and he had made any money to speak of. It's rather hard to believe that the gentleman we just watched is responsible for such diverse and complex characters as Riddick from The Chronicles of Riddick, Dom from The Fast and the Furious, and Xander from XXX. I mean, I liked Pitch Black as much as the next guy, but I'll take Mike from "Multi-Facial" over the others any day.

Silly Mizzou!

My apologies, everyone. It has come to my attention that my previous post was chock full of punctuation errors, due largely to my terrible, terrible formatting. Oh well. If I were not being lazy right now, I'd go back and fix it. Now, on to other business.

Last month, the Missouri Information Analysis Center released a report on how to identify domestic terrorists involved in militia movements. The report contained a controversial passage that stated that such people usually identify with third party political candidates, and mentioned Libertarian Bob Barr, Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin, and Republican Ron Paul.

Obviously, many libertarian-minded people took offense with being lumped in with the Tim McVeighs of the world. The whole thing caused a bit of an uproar among conservative commentators, and after pressure from the public and Missouri state officials, the report was recently retracted, with apologies issued to the candidates mentioned.

I mention this, obviously, for its ridiculousness and for the fact that I'm a little insulted (only a little though). I also mention it for the fact that a staff member of the Campaign for Liberty, the organization that grew out of the Ron Paul campaign, was recently detained at security checkpoint for carrying a large amount of cash. He had the cash because he was returning from an event they had where merchandise was sold and donations were accepted. They wanted to know why he had the cash, and he was reluctant to tell them. The key to all this is that he was flying out of St. Louis, MISSOURI. The great thing is that the sly little fellow covertly recorded the entire confrontation with his cell phone.

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

Honestly, I don't think any of them handled the situation all that well. I can understand Mr. Bierfeldt's hesitation to reveal his employment, and I can understand the cops' frustration with the situation, but seriously, you've got to let people know their rights. This reminds me of Alex's traffic stop. But that's a story for another day, from somebody else!

Seriously though, Missouri:
...and, I just checked, still not a terrorist!

Tragedy and the Inexplicably Offensive

I ran across something odd the other day when I was wikipediaing (if we can google, can we wikipedia? It's such an awkward verb, isn't it? something for the linguists in the audience to ponder).

Think back to the week following September 12, 2001. The country was in mourning, and transportation and economy had ground to a halt, thanks to a combination of fear and shock. Most of us were getting back in the swing of things, but the attacks had touched all aspects of life, even pop culture. Not only did we have to endure countless country tribute songs, and ditties about killing Osama, we had to deal with controversy and censorship. There was a techno-pop band named "I am the World Trade Center" who suddenly started getting bad reviews, and were forced to shorten the moniker to "I am the World". Hard rockers "Anthrax" refused to change their name, though apparently one member joked that he was stocking up on Cipro to "avoid an ironic death." And perhaps most strangely, a memo ciruculated the stations of radio giant Clear Channel with a list of songs that were "lyrically questionable," and were suggested not to be played.

A look at the list shows over 150 songs, many of which make sense, though I'm not a fan of censorship. I could see why people might find them offensive or unsettling. There are songs that reference plane crashes (such as AC/DC's "Shot Down in Flames", and Alanis Morissettte's "Ironic"), songs about suicide (Filter's "Hey Man, Nice Shot", Ozzy Osbourne's "Suicide Solution", System of a Down's "Chop Suey", Third Eye Blind's "Jumper"), songs with violent lyrics (AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, Alien Ant Farm's "Smooth Criminal", though curiously, not the original by Michael Jackson, Bobby Darin's "Mack the Knife", Limp Bizkit's "Break Stuff", Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust", Saliva's "Click Click Boom") and songs about death, either directly or indirectly (Buddy Holly and the Crickets' "That'll be the Day", Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heavan's Door", and the Guns and Roses cover, Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky", Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young", Kansas's "Dust in the Wind", Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven", J Frank Wilson's "Last Kiss"). Then there are the ones that have little or no offensive content, but somehow reference flying or planes (Foo Fighters' "Learn to Fly", Lenny Kravits's "Fly Away", Sugar Ray's "Fly", Peter, Paul and Mary's "Leaving on a Jet Plane, Elton John's "Benny and the Jets", Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Aeroplane"), and songs that reference New York (AC/DC's "Safe in New York City", The Ad Libs "The Boy from New York City", Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York", which was apparently one New York station's most requested songs that week). Then, there are some songs that seem to be there for no reason other than that they have revolutionary lyrics (Beastie Boys' "Sabotage", Black Sabbath's "War Pigs", The Clash's "Rock the Casbah", Jimi Hendrix's "Hey Joe", John Lennon's "Imagine", Don McLean's "American Pie", Nena's "99 Luftballons", Peter Paul and Mary's "Blowin' in the Wind", U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday".

Then, we move into the realm of the ridiculous. First, there are the songs with the mistaken lyrics (Drowning Pool's "Bodies", which is about mosh pits, The Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", which is about drugs, Boston's "Smokin'", which is also about drugs, The Gap Band's "You Dropped a Bomb on Me", which is about a girl, Jerry Lee Lewis's "Great Balls of Fire", which is about also about a girl). Then, there are songs which I can't figure out why they're there at all (Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World", because positive thinking is bad, I guess, The Bangles' "Walk Like an Egyptian", because Egypt is a Muslim country I guess, The Beatles' "Ticket to Ride", because the ticket might be for a plane, maybe, Neil Diamond's "America", because we wouldn't want to sing about how awesome America is, Ricky Nelson's "Travelin' Man", because I heard the hijackers were all man whores, Steam's "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss him Goodbye", because I'm thinking they watched that funeral scene from Remember the Titans a few too many times).

My personal favorite, though is "All songs by Rage Against the Machine". I mean, yeah, it's Rage, but that's just ridiculous. Thankfully, this didn't last long, and was not manditory. I just found it interesting.

I dedicate this post to Tom Morello's distortion pedal, and all of its warbly noises that were temporarily not banned.

R.O.P.D.R.P.W. Episode XIV: En la Plaza de Toros

Gratuitous Gradients! Luminous Layers! Sworded Lawnmowers! That's right, R.O.P.D.R.P.W. has gotten a little upgrade (read: I'm playing with a fun new image editing program). While some things are new, others are not. We regret to inform you that complete ridiculousness and bad puns shall continue indefinitely!

"MORE!" They Cried!

Well, sort of, anyway. Since at least one of you demands more, I feel I must oblige. Now, obviously, I've been a little light on inspiration of late, and when I go back to one old standby (ranting about politics) I'm either misunderstood, or nobody cares, so I figure I'll go back to another old standby. You're not going to like it.

That's right. I'm going to review stuff.

I told you you weren't going to like it. Now, to be honest, I do have a fairly ambitious little writing project bouncing around in my head, though I'm not sure it's entirely appropriate for this space, seeing as it would be a tribute to a work that's never been published in any real capacity. But, that is another post for another time, and a project I'd really rather keep under my hat for the time being.

For the first review, I'll start small.

Keane, a "piano rock" group from Battle, East Sussex, England, The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, has taken up the recently popular trend of artists, publishers, etc. having their own YouTube channels. On their channel, they've got music videos, behind the scenes stuff, and other little oddities. One of the nice little gems you can find here is what they refer to as a "live mash." It's a bit of a tribute cover for two different songs: "Another One Bites the Dust," by fruity yet bad-ass defunct rock group Queen, and "Dance Wiv Me," by British rapper who I had to look up on Wikipedia Dizzee Rascal, featuring Scottish songwriter/producer who I also had to look up on Wikipedia Calvin Harris. The result is the bizarre yet beautiful "Another One Bites the Dizzee." Basically, it's the verses and baseline from "Another One Bites the Dust" with the chorus and melody from "Dance Wiv Me." I found that once I got past the original "What were they thinking?" reaction, I rather enjoyed it. Keane singer Tom Chaplin's voice is a great match for Freddie Mercury's, and when you put the addictive baseline of "..Dust" together with the too-catchy-for-its-own-good melody of "Dance...," well, I don't know... it just works! They mesh so well! If I weren't familiar with one of the songs already, I would have sworn this was the original, which is, I think, the best compliment any cover (mash-up or otherwise) can receive. Hats off to Keane then, I suppose!