Archive for October, 2007
October 31st, 2007
Fun extras
New I Woke Up LA collage! Since I haven’t done one in a while…Ha. This is the result of my immense boredom last night. I like how it turned out though! I played with a few different poses from the norm, and I particularly like how I used Adeline’s pose to reach for Mat’s foot.
Maybe this will help inspire me to be productive for real tonight. My inspiration falters considerably when everyone manages to disappear from the internet. But maybe my playing around with the characters more will get me in the mood.
I’m home from work early today because I had a doctor appointment that didn’t last so long. Really, it was one of the best appointments ever because one, they didn’t even make me get on the scale; two, I didn’t have to wait in the secondary waiting room of death; and three, for some reason I didn’t have to pay a co-pay! Weird, but I’m not going to argue!
Obligatory Fight Club post title to go along with the image, which made me think of Mischief and Mayhem, and now I’m just going to have to go watch the movie again!
October 30th, 2007
Nerd time
Ugh. Where does everybody go during the week? Don’t you know it’s during the week that you’re supposed to fuck around on the internet the most…because who wants to actually work? One can only read Perez Hilton and I Can Has Cheezburger so many times in a day.
Other than completely exhausting my sources of entertainment on the interwebs, I have been preoccupying myself with Harry Potter. I finished Prisoner of Azkaban last night–and it was all kinds of wonderful goodness! I’ve discovered a few things while reading the Harry Potter books. First, I don’t know why I didn’t read them before; they’re totally up my ally. Second, I sure do have a shitterific memory. I didn’t remember crap from the movies while reading the books, which, I think is turning out to be a good thing. I didn’t remember at all about the time traveling! The whole time with Hermione, I couldn’t remember why she was able to go to all those classes.
I’ve been re-watching the movies after I finish the book. So this weekend I’ll watch the Prisoner of Azkaban movie. And now I’m reading the Goblet of Fire. Good times. I’ll be sad when I’m done with these books now! Andy says Prisoner of Azkaban is his favorite, and I can see why after finishing it. I like it the best so far. But we’ll see if it’s still my favorite after reading all seven.
In other news, I have no other news because I’m rather bored. I could be working on I Woke Up LA right now, but I don’t much feel like it. Eh, we’ll see.
Three cookies to who can spot the song with lyrics mentioned in this post’s title. The song reminds me of being 18 and driving around in my old red Acura doing incredibly stupid and bad 18 year-old things. Nine years ago! Insanity. Good times. Hint: Why don’t you get the fuck out of my face?! NOW!
October 29th, 2007
In the Making, Music
Believe it or not, I actually made some progress on I Woke Up LA this weekend. And by this weekend, I mean last night mostly. I now have 26 pictures completed. It’s amazing how long those 26 took, and while granted–they were probably some of the more difficult of the bunch, I’m not looking forward to the remaining 100+. Picture taking used to be the best part of making the story for me, but now…it’s just too much of a pain in the ass. I think the standards are too high for my lazy butt now, and my lots are just disgusting now after 6 chapters and nearly 2 years.
Just plain barf, really. I have at least 800 Jills running around in that neighborhood, and as hot as that may sound to some of you, I just want to get a shotgun and start killing some of them off. Of course, I do that, and something will screw up the neighborhood, so I’m just dealing with the mess to avoid complications at the moment.
Anyway, on a plus side, I think I’m done with ridiculous blanket editing. I gave up and took an easy way out on one picture, but I don’t care anymore, and hopefully most of the pictures from the scene turned out alright.
Okay, new topic: it’s Monday afternoon and I’m taking a break at work right now because I just found the solution to something that was looming over my head for a while then causing me massive amounts of grief this morning with its lack of an ability to work at all. But now it’s working and I’m super excited and rewarding myself with the treat of coming on here and blabbing away about nothing.
Today’s nothing topic will be a follow-up to my gushing on about Tool in the last post. Today I will mention the coolest cover-mix I have ever heard. A cover so awesome, I’m willing to listen to it at major McPoo quality because no higher quality is available that I know of. It’s entirely possible I’ve blabbed about this song before. It’s A Perfect Circle’s live cover combination of The Cure’s Love Song and Ozzy’s Diary of a Madman.
It amazes me how APC put these two songs together. Completely seamless as if they were meant to be that way. Mentions of diarrhea and all. Listen to it; it’s all kinds of coolness. And if you’ve been living under a rock covered in a hundred other rocks, here are the originals: Love Song and Diary of a Madman.
Friday night at last, and I’m currently sitting at my desk with the patio door open listening to Tool loudly, because I’m sure the neighbors here in hickified Bryan, Texas love it. To pieces.
In my list of 250 songs (which I managed to leave some key players out, so it might be more like top 300 when I’m done), I have several songs by Tool listed. Tool is a great band because they’re heavy, have incredibly fucked up lyrics, and yet Maynard has this insanely beautiful voice. Which is the key to me with heavier music really, the voice. I’m very picky about the screaming and growling that comes along with heavy rock, but Maynard does it perfectly.
I don’t know when or how I got into Tool exactly. I think it was sometime right after high school, and perhaps the song was one of their radio songs, like Sober or something. Whatever the case, I soon got all their albums, which were just Opiate, Undertow and Ænima at the time. One of my first obsessions was the song Opiate, from the same-titled album. Then there’s my favorites from Undertow: Prison Sex and Swamp Song; and Ænima songs, Stinkfist, Eulogy and H. As the (many) years passed, Lateralus comes out and I’m of course drawn to Parabol + Parabola. Separate tracks, but they must be listened to together because for some reason Parabol just makes Parabola that much sweeter. I don’t have anything from their newest album on my list because I haven’t gotten into it quite as much yet, though there are definitely songs I like–just not love to absolute pieces like these mentioned.
If I had to pick a single favorite, I think it would be Prison Sex. Probably one of the more fucked up of the bunch, but incredibly catchy.
It took so long to remember just what happened.
I was so young and vestal then,
you know it hurt me,
but I’m breathing so I guess I’m still alive
even if signs seem to tell me otherwise.
I’ve got my hands bound,
my head down, my eyes closed,
and my throat wide open.
Do unto others, what has been done to me,
Do unto others, what has been done to you.
This post has no other purpose than to superficially gush about Tool. Oh, and if you really want to know what a crazy person I am, the song which alphabetically precedes all of the Tool songs in my top favorite list is 867-5309 by Tommy Tutone. Only extremely cool people will admit to loving both. Ha!
Happy weekend, all.
It’s a good thing tomorrow is Friday, otherwise I might have to jump out my office window and then I Woke Up LA would never be finished. Nevermind that our “windows” don’t open and I’m only on the second floor.
Earlier this week I went through my giant music collection on my computer and picked out my favorite songs of all time of the moment. Make sense? No? Yeah. Anyway, it ended up around 250 songs, but then I think I started adding a lot more toward the end of the alphabet than I did at the beginning–like I was being more strict in my qualifications at first or something. I was thinking I would post about these songs in this blog, but now I may have decided I’m too lazy for that. But we’ll see, I might just get that bored here in the next few days.
For the time being, I’ll talk about my current complete and utter obsession with a couple Chris Isaak songs, which I’m often obsessed with, actually, and they are definitely on this top 250 list I spoke of. I dare you to listen to Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing and not have it stuck in your head for hours. Such a silly song. I think it makes a perfect “soundtrack” type song. I could see using it in a soundtrack to I Woke Up LA, or several movies and pretty much anything.
I looked up the video on YouTube and saw that it was basically a big strip-fest. Not that I should be surprised after the Wicked Game video, but still. It’s funny. I like Chris Isaak, but bloody hell man, stick to white t-shirts and jeans, please. This psychotic florescent clothing obsession of his must be stopped. Seriously, it’s not just the purple suit in the Bad Bad Thing video. Google image him and such things as this and this (what is that?) turn up. Though you are my mother’s age, you are incredibly good looking, Mr. Isaak. No need to doo-doo on that. Perhaps I’m missing something.
October 21st, 2007
Nerd time
Really, the only thing I did this weekend was play SimCity 4. The game has grown on me quite a bit. It’s a lot more challenging that the previous versions of the game–and perhaps that’s an understatement. Actually, it’s kind of funny, because there are several aspects of the game that are more like City Life. Such as how when you zone, the zones auto-fit themselves with streets. Which is nice and incredibly annoying at the same time. And due to the way I’ve always played SimCity 2000 and 3000, this provides me with a big challenge. I would always make zones of specific sizes with specific spaces between for parks and subway/bus stops; doing that with the way SimCity 4 zones is not practical.
Plus the monthly costs of everything is more like City Life. But that’s not so bad. The regional idea and making neighbor cities to fit in is interesting, but I rather like it. I’ve gotten a lot better since it’s all I’ve been doing recently. Though I’ve yet to make a successful city with awesome high-density yet. I’m working on it. Haha.
All night, while playing SimCity and doing laundry (grumble), I’ve been listening to the Once More, With Feeling Buffy episode soundtrack, which I purchased off Amazon at the same time I got SimCity 4 (so I could get free shipping–haha, brilliant). I actually downloaded it several years ago, but decided to buy it, and I’m glad I did. I don’t think that episode or the silly songs from it will ever get old. Of course, neither will the show. I’m not even usually one to ga-ga over musicals. But man, this one is just an over-abundance of guilty pleasures. And the CD came with a few bonuses at the end that I adore. Like the creepy suite from the Hush episode. Gah, Buffy really was a brilliant show. I miss it. Joss needs to get another show now. And it needs to not be on CW, Fox or UPN where it will get canceled. >:|
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October 15th, 2007
In the Making, Music
I started taking pictures for Chapter 7 tonight. No, I’m not done writing. But I didn’t feel like writing tonight, I felt like starting pictures. So here we are.
Remember that post from July where I griped about how difficult pictures were going to be for this chapter? Well, mostly difficult because I am the suck at drawing things like blankets. I think the one here kind of looks like a swirly slug shake. Oh well.
On the upside, those magic display tray objects or whatever they’re called that let you pose sims on objects are fantastic! Definitely making things easier on that front.
I got ten slides done tonight; let’s see if this keeps up. The entire time I was taking pictures, I was listening to the new Radiohead album. Obsessed much? Oh yes. It’s good to be obsessed with something new because I was entirely bored of my music before this came out. And I love the “pay what you want for it” thing Radiohead is trying out with this album. Only they would do something like this. So if they’re only going to release it online (not counting crazy ass box set), then I’m glad it’s like this. I don’t particularly care for paying a great deal for digitally downloaded music. If I pay for it, I typically want something tangible (a CD). 99 cents for one song on iTunes is positively ridiculous to me, and would be a last resort for me to obtain a song.
So yeah. I highly recommend buying the album. My favorites at the moment are 15 Step, Reckoner and Jigsaw Falling into Place.
October 15th, 2007
Nerd time
The more time goes by, the more I hate IE 6. And the longer IE 7 has been out, the more I hate that people still use IE 6. Though, I guess in some circumstances, users can’t upgrade to IE 7. But damn it, they can use a different browser for the love of God!
I just finished going through and making my IE 6 style sheet to make my site not look ridiculous in that stupid out-dated POS browser that apparently half the population still uses. At first, I wasn’t going to accommodate IE 6 users, because I tried to tell myself that if they’re going to use crap, then they deserve to look at crap too. But, sigh, I caved in anyway and made a bunch of shitty GIF versions of little transparent PNGs.
At work, it doesn’t bother me quite as much to accommodate for ridiculously out of date browsers, but then, that’s a much different environment than the one I have for this little pleasure site here.
I think I’m just impatient. I’ve been having to deal with IE 6’s crap for so many years now…and now that IE 7 has been out a little while, I’m just ready for IE 6 to be gone. Even though I know that is truly a long, long time away from actually happening.
I wish somebody made a “virus” of sorts that infected only IE 6 or lower users, in that it inhibits them from viewing any website at all, except for those that link to downloads of modern browser alternatives. And if they don’t do it after a while, they get flooded with the goatse picture (don’t worry, it’s just a wiki article) for all eternity! Ha. I am obviously being ridiculous, but you know, that would totally make my year.
And I blame coming across a comic from xkcd for putting goatse in my head for the first time in years. This comic could not be more accurate for me and my college forum days, I kid you not. Though Andy pointed out that perhaps nostalgia is not the correct term in this case. I think I disagree; those days were pretty funny.
October 14th, 2007
Website updates
I know what you’re thinking. She updated her layout again? Yeah. I did.
I decided that the format of my former front page wasn’t working for me anymore. I also decided that I no longer want my other blog and want to keep everything in this one, especially since me writing “story updates” regularly hasn’t been working out. The truth is, I just can’t work on Sim stories all the time; I get into phases where it’s all I do for few months, and then the next few months I won’t touch the thing. Unfortunate, but I’ve accepted that’s just how I am.
Though, you’ll be glad to know I have worked on the next parts of I Woke Up LA a little bit the past week or so. I’m up to around 105 slides now. It will probably be 150+ by the time I’m done. Ugh.
I haven’t been playing Sims 2 very much the past few weeks because I’ve been too obsessed with Sim City, or I suppose I should say city building games in general. It started with a random urge to play Sim City 2000. Then Sim City 3000 and City Life. And toward the end of last week, I ordered the original Sim City and Sim City 4 from Amazon and they should be here in a few days. I never got into playing Sim City 4, though I did try it a few times. I think part of the problem was the time frame it came out in and me not giving it a chance. But I’m very much in the mood to play it now, so perhaps it will finally grow on me. And I got the original Sim City just for shits and giggles. Andy actually has this game for Super Nintendo, but I found it a bit impossible, plus the fuzziness of the ancient game on the TV screen was just too much for my eyes.
In other news, it’s Sunday, 4 PM. I just woke up, Andy is still asleep, and I’m already upset about having to go back to work tomorrow. Well, mainly about having to set my alarm and get up at crap thirty in the morning.
