.. or no metal at all!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QrUEg5msVk


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QrUEg5msVk


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icAzyx8EsKU

Ok, this officially pre-dates the "New Wave" period but, still..


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R7tWil0TKU&mode=related&search=

For the first time in about 2 years, I have resorted to dubiously legal means of obtaining the songs that iTunes couldn't give me.

I know, I know... they're not to blame for my lapse of ethics. They're just the proximate cause.

.. which we weren't, I think the building I work in has some phones that are 770 and others that are 678. And these are all (presumably) on the same PBX!

(When I worked for Sprint in the Kansas city area in 1999, I remember they had some offices in Kansas with Missouri area codes and vice versa.. but I figured they could only do that because they were a phone company)

One side effect of getting an iPod is that previously neglected parts of my music collection finally get listened to.

Among the hidden treasures I'd totally forgotten about are Judas Priest's British Steel and Screaming for Vengeance albums. Also, several Iron Maiden albums the best of which is Number of the Beast.

Some of you will recall that the Friday before Super Bowl weekend, I nearly had an opportunity to hook the iPod up through the PA system at a certain Norcross drinking and pool-table establishment. If they'd have had the right cables, I'd have treated them all to British Steel on shuffle. Oh, for a real-life Adapter Shack!

Meanwhile, I finally got around to using the $50 iTunes gift card that I got for Christmas. I don't want to sound complainin', but isn't it possible for them to simply have every album currently available on CD in their store? What is so friggin hard about that?

I now wish that I would've taken the time to figure out if they was a way to get access to the iTunes stores for other countries instead of the US. I bet they have a UK store with the original "Mama Weer All Crazee Now" by Slade, for instance.

Oh well, I didn't think of that. I just found 50 songs from what they had to offer. If they're profiling my purchases, I hope I don't know what to make of me. How many people purchase both "Angel Dust" by Venom and two different people's versions of "Wreck of the Old 97". In one sitting?

Because only the wild and wooly internet could make "banned" cartoons of the 1930's and 1940's available in this day and age. And only the concept of "public domain" prevents the likes of Disney and Time-Warner from getting them yanked off the web for copyright violation.

Classics you heard about but never seen on TV in your lifetime, such as "Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs" are trivially findable. Just google for them.

Some people have accused Walt Disney of being a Nazi, but that didn't stop him from making WWII propoganda films like Education for Death.

I may have blogged this before. Some of these album covers are NSFW.

There are people who will tell you that rock is straight 8th notes.

That's BS.

There are only two three ways to rock: shuffle, Bo Diddley beat, or the "Lust for Life" beat.

Pick one.

My money's on Iggy.

Straight 8's (or worse, 16's) are for disco.

A beautiful example of how f**ked up the web is, at a technical level, but we survive anyway.

Flash embedding is a ubiquitous feature of the "modern" web. Probably more important than Ajax.

Although many still associate Flash with its (apparent) original intended use for brochure-ware and subsequent horrible abuse in website ads, Flash has quietly become the de-facto way for various types (audio, video, animation) to seamlessly blend into a website.

Without flash there would be no YouTube, no Google video, no myspace band pages as we currently know them, no streaming podcasts in Bloglines.

And yet this high-tech castle is built on a foundation of sand. Quicksand even. Non-standard tags, competing implementations of the same tag in different browsers.

Cross-browser Flash embedding, much like cross-browser Ajax, is a technology that shouldn't work, given the competing standards arrayed against us.

And yet, here it is, a pillar of the Internet community.

This says something about the nature of rules, laws, and standards that I haven't completely wrapped my head around, but I believe when I do, it's gonna be a real mindbomb.

Five years ago, the winner of the "On My Block" song fight was "Elysian Ring". Listen to it again for the first time.

I was (apparently) in Las Vegas.

Went (with co-workers) to a casino whose facade appeared to be a trailer in a trailer park. Really you just entered through the trailer, the the bulk of the casino was in a massive building of yellow corrugated steel behind the trailer. Some features of the Bombay Grill may have been present.

Was late for some sort of business meeting. Decided to get there by walking through a high school. I knew I had to get through the school without being stopped by their security guards. I entered through door in the back of the building and went up a set of stairs. Briefly down a hallway, and then down another set of stairs. This set of stairs, obviously long neglected, actually came down into a classroom where the steps were being used as shelves for books and other supplies. Class was in session, and the teacher said "Hey, you're not in my class!" He let me take a pen and notepad, and sent me on my way. Outside the door to the classroom, a high school student in a completely unmarked olive drab military uniform tried to stop me, but I just kept walking and he didn't do anything.

Details of the actual meeting are vague. I know it involved a meeting with some sort of Big Boss guy. One of my co-workers made an off-hand remark about a half-remembered favorite TV show from childhood. Later we found out that after hearing this, the Big Boss's assistant went and researched it and found all the details about it for my co-worker.

Rather than praise from the boss, this was met with derision at the assistant's servility and brown-nosing. Everyone laughed at this woman behind her back. The Boss told all of us that we too would soon learn to have this kind of power over people.

Back at the hotel, I watched two male guests attempt to jump from the balconies of their hotel rooms into the pool. One made it into the pool, the other ended up dangling from his balcony by his leg and had to be rescued.

That's all I can remember.