Caught In The Whirlwind
Jason
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Posts by Jason
Weekends Too Short!!!
Jan 19th 2009
Another weekend down, another couple days that went by way too fast.
Saturday, as usual was the hanging out with friends day of the weekend. I went over to their apartment to hang out, have some very nice pot roast and watch Tropic Thunder. We ended up seeing the Directors Cut because the one that I got from Netflix didn't come in time. So I went out to blockbuster to try and find it but they only had the directors cut version, not the theatrical cut. But in any case, the movie was extremely good. I especially enjoyed the DVD menu with epic music and the visuals poking fun at all sorts of war movies. I was very impressed with Tom Cruise as well. It was Tom Cruise not playing Tom Cruise if that makes any sense to you, and it was a really good performance. Very fun movie.
After the movie and the pot roast we moved on to more relaxing. We had a bottle of peppermint schnapps that we were going to partake in, however there was a little oversight in reading the label and er…we ended up VERY tipsy. We're not the kind of people who drink with the aim of getting drunk. We much prefer it for being tasty and getting a little bit of a buzz. This was a little more than a buzz…don't think I'd care to repeat that experience again although it was pretty fun once.
I ended up feeling a little queazy on Sunday, but nothing too bad. Sunday I spent doing a major clean of my bedroom. Every time I do one of these I get just a little bit further along in the process. I got about 60-70% done and I'm planning on working on it some more this evening to see if I can get it totally done. So far so good though. I've been working on keeping things cleaner because I'm tired of having to spend entire weekends cleaning the place up all the time. The living room/kitchen area is going pretty good so far, but I know me…so we'll see how this ends…
QotD: Draw Your Own Conclusion
Jan 16th 2009
Which cartoon character best represents you?
In the past I've always sorta identified with Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes fame. I wouldn't say I'm quite as imaginative, but there's definitely similarities. Growing up, I was always the kid who would ask a ton of questions. Probably my all time favorite Calvin and Hobbes strip would be this one (My dad is also a lot like calvin's dad in many ways):
I also identify with Jason Fox, from Foxtrot. He appeals more to my geeky side. And once or twice some of his doomed to fail schemes have come dangerously close to something that had run across my mind at one point or another.
This Weekend…Too Short…
Jan 12th 2009
This was the first regular weekend I've had in a couple weeks due to
Christmas and New Years extending things outward, so needless to
say…it felt REALLY short. Also compounding the shortness was a nice
trip out to Syracuse with my friends for some shopping and dinner.
Wassy needed to go out to Syracuse to pick up some art supplies (the
supply stores in this area are really bad) so we planned a day trip out
to syracuse for our usual weekend hanging out. The art shopping took a
lot less time than anticipated because they didn't have a certain type
of marker that she wanted to browse for. So we ended up getting to
Carousel Center for the window shopping with approximately 4-5 hours to
kill before we had to eat dinner.
Some actual shopping was done (they needed to get some clothes stuff
and pillows at JC Pennys and I was shopping for a measuring spoon for
tea measurement at work) but most of the time was spent wandering
around and browsing items. A couple things of note happened. While we
were sitting in pottery barn in some of the display chairs, a woman
walked up to us, set her bags down on the couch and said that we should
watch them since she couldn't cary them another step. We thought that
was weird…I'm not sure we look very trustworthy either…I'm pretty
certain I'd never just drop my bags off with random strangers sitting
in a store…
We also spent a lot of time in Brookstone playing with the gadgets they
have on display. Especially the massage chairs. Ooooh…I want one of
those. Sooo nice. The feet massage specifically was well appreciated
after wandering around most of the day. I was a little worried they
were going to kick us out of the store since we were spending so much
time in the chairs, but we ended up wandering out eventually.
I also discovered a coffee based beverage I like. At the urging of my
friends I tried out a Mocha Frappuccino from starbucks and I found out
I really liked it. I don't like coffee mostly because I'm fairly
sensitive to bitter tastes and coffee is a little too much for me. But
this was a good ratio of coffee to chocolate taste and was quite good
indeed.
After a quick stop at Barnes and Noble we ended up at Olive Garden a little early (5pm)
which was a good thing as even by that time, it was a 35 minute wait.
We hung out for a while and eventually were seated for a fine meal. We
had a good waitress, good conversation and good food. So it all worked
out quite nicely.
By the time we got done eating, it had started to snow, so our drive time got extended because the roads were becoming very slick. We eventually made it back in one piece though.
Sunday was the standard hanging out and relaxing day. I did a little
bit of cleaning around the apartment but nothing major. I ended up
playing City of Heroes for a little over an hour for the first time in
a while which was fun. I was really missing the game as it turns out.
And later I watched the Golden Globes because I was interested to see
if Heath Ledger won. Which he did, but I totally missed it as I had
stepped out for a few minutes to head over to my parents and didn't
hear that award was coming up. Dah!!
I caught it later on through the magic of the internet and it was
really moving. He totally deserves any award he can possibly win for
that role and I really hope that the fact that he died doesn't cause
him to not be nominated for an Oscar. His performance as the Joker is
probably the best bit of acting I've ever seen.
So, another weekend down, 5 more days until it rolls around again…
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Jan 7th 2009
![The Curious Case of Benjamin Button [Theatrical Release]](http://derango.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/6a00c2252137ea8fdb0109815c2571000d.jpg?w=202 "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button [Theatrical Release]")
I mentioned I went out to see The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button last night in my post from earlier, but didn't really give my thoughts on it because I felt the film deserves it's own post.
My friends (Jay and Wassy) went to see it over Christmas and they really enjoyed it, so I wanted to make sure I caught it in the theater as well. I prefer seeing movies in the theater with other people…Wassy wanted to see it again (Jay isn't big on seeing movies twice) so we went last night. Aside from the 300 degree heating going on in the theater itself, the movie was really good.
It's the story of a man who was born an old man and ages backwards, becoming younger as the movie progresses and everyone around him gets older. I don't want to spoil anything specific about the plot beyond that, so I'm not going to go into any more details.
If this movie doesn't win an Oscar, I'm going to be really surprised. It's very good all around. Great performances by the lead roles, especially Brad Pitt as Bejimin who completly sells the unlikely situation of a man aging backwards. The cinematography is excellent as well and really deserves to be seen on the big screen. I was also impressed by the fact that, yes…this is a film with a message to deliver, but it doesn't beat you over the head with it. It makes you think without trying too hard at it and it's really deep. I feel I've only scratched the surface of what is in there in my single viewing and I'm looking forward to hearing the commentary track on the DVD release (hopefully there will be a commentary).
The movie is long (runs about 3 hours with trailers and stuff factored in) but I never really felt that it was too long.
Highly recommended.
The Little Things
Jan 7th 2009
Every so often I find myself thinking about how I got to where I am and how I met the people I know. And it's interesting to look back and realize how much of my life has been defined eventually by the small decisions and events that didn't seem to be very important at the time but ended up tremendously important later down the line.
Perhaps I'm just thinking of this now because I saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button last night, but I have thought of this before as well.
For example, my friends. One of the things in my life that I value the most that could have turned out drastically different depending on many factors, big and small.
I could have gone to a different college. My adviser could have placed me in a different set of classes when I first registered. I could have sat in a different part of the room, not struck up a conversation, I could have been late one day and on and on. There's a thousand things big and small that could have been just slightly different and I wouldn't know the people I know today, and my life would have been almost totally different.
Every moment there's millions and millions of possible choices and we get to pick just one. Sometimes the decisions don't have any real meaning to them…other times they mean everything and most of the time it's impossible to know which ones are which. It just really makes me glad that I stumbled onto this particular set of decisions that got me here and with these people, as I couldn't imagine things any other way.
Also interesting is how the small decisions of other people can change the course of a total stranger's life. Events are all interconnected and fluid. For instance…somebody could totally miss a job interview because a tractor trailer overturned on the highway caused a traffic jam. The accident was caused by the driver moving at unsafe speeds because he was running late. And he was running late because the waitress at the dinner he had breakfast at was late with his coffee. The waitress was late with the coffee because somebody had decided that they would be nice and get a whole bunch to go to take into their co-workers, so they ran out.
So that one decision to be nice and get your coworkers some coffee caused another person to not get a job.
Even the most insignificant of events can cascade into having huge consequences. There's not really much we can do about it since, I mean…who knew that getting coffee would affect so much. But I just find it interesting that we can agonize over the huge stuff but sometimes even something as small as waking up a little earlier one morning could have just as big of an impact. Just funny how things work out sometimes.
Gingerbread…Things
Jan 4th 2009
This weekend went by so crazy fast I can't believe that it's currently Sunday. This weekend was another one where I went over to my friends for a couple of days for a massive amount of hanging out and fun times.
There were only a few planned activities for this gathering. We were going to have a turkey dinner, play some rock band/guitar hero and we were going to make gingerbread men. But being the creative people we are, our gingerbread cookies weren't going to be your standard man sized shape…we were going free-form. But more on that later. Also, there was going to be homemade eggnog.
I arrived early afternoon on Friday. The first thing we were going to do was work on crafting the gingerbread abominations, however, the gingerbread dough turned out…not good. It looked more like a pile of gingerbread crumbs than actual dough. Too much flour added it seems. Anyway, it worked out because doing the gingerbread men and the turkey dinner was going to take too much work at once, so we pushed the second attempt back to the next day.
While Wassy was working on getting the turkey all ready for roasting, I played some Soul Caliber 4 with Jay. He's good at fighting games…I am not. So as expected it was pretty much a gigantic blood bath. I did manage to win once without cheating and a second time with cheating (playing as a boss character and increasing my health to two times normal…). I really do enjoy fighting games even though I suck at them. Ah well.
After the turkey was done and dinner was completed (and some Justice League Unlimited was watched) we tried peach schnapps, which was the drink of choice for the evening. Quite good too, it was my first time having it and…very tasty. Also had a nice kick to it. Well, for me and Wassy…not for Jay. The man feels NOTHING. I really can't believe how unaffected by alcohol he is. I mean, it's not like we're drinking to get drunk or anything, but seriously…he didn't even feel a buzz…
Anyway, after the drinking began, we started playing Rock Band/Guitar Hero and rocked out quite a bit while we were waiting for our desert (apple pie) to finish baking in the oven. It was quite an interesting session. I started with guitar on Rock Band but transitioned into vocals when we moved to Guitar Hero. And as it happened, one of the songs we ended up doing when we were playing guitar hero was Korn's Freak On A Leash and it has this strange vocal type part in the middle of it with a lot of strange noises. Lets just say that if there was drums or guitar during that section of the song…we probably would have failed because my friends were enjoying my attempt to emulate the song.
Once the pie was done we took a break as a band and Jay went to clean up the kitchen. I ended up playing drums for a little while solo to pass the time and Wassy decided to see if I could play the drums while she: a) poked me multiple times through the whole song (answer: no…failed) b) dropped an ice cube down the back of my shirt (managed to play through that one) c) walk back and forth in front of me (that one I managed quite well too). The best one though was when she sat right next to me on the couch and commented on my playing the entire song. I was quite amazed that she had enough stuff to say to keep going through the entire long song, but…she did.
Then we decided to play a song together, her taking the notes on the right and I took the ones on the left and the bass pedal. After a few false starts, this worked out pretty well. It was one of those things that you seem to come up with at like 3am, but we did it before it was even close to midnight. By that time the kitchen had been cleaned and the pie had cooled, so we had our desert. Mine was upside down…because apparently Jay (who was serving the pie) got a tad upset that when I was cutting it into slices, some of the crust broke off and landed on his freshly cleaned counter. I thought it was an extreme reaction…but oh well. The Eggnog turned out pretty good as well (we had it after the pie). It was a little too thick for our liking but it was tasty and I think if we have it again in the future it'll be better due to adjustments.
In a valient effort by me, I managed to stay up until 2am, watching the rest of the Justice League Unlimited DVD that we had. After that though, we went to sleep.
The next day was a lot more hanging out-ish. We ended up lounging around watching various movies and things on TV. Eventually, we worked up the gingerbread cookies again and this time the dough worked out a lot better for the making of actual cookies. It was real dough! I have some pictures of this, but Vox isn't liking me adding pictures right now for some reason, so I'll see if I can add them later. But we made our gingerbread…things. The recipe didn't make as many as we were expecting but there was enough to satisfy our creativity. I made a fish, a penguin and in response to Wassy's creation of a mario mushroom, a tetris block. There was also a weighted companion cube from Portal, a Zelda tri-force symbol and a cat…among other things.
After we got done with making the gingerbread things, there was a bit of a flour fight. Since there was flour everywhere including our hands there was a bit of a contest to see who could get the most flour on the other person. Eventually it escalated from just smearing it to flinging it from the flour container. The kitchen was a mess anyway due to all of the shaping of cookies…but shortly after a truce was called and the flour warfare was over.
The icing stage made us realize that…we are not bakers who can make fancy things out of cookies. They came out a little strange at times. My fish was a bit…odd, and the penguin had reversed coloring because I accidently made the wing out of white icing instead of a darker color. However, the winner was Jay, who created an angry looking face on his gingerbread cookie. As he was going on making the face it started looking an awful lot like a gingerbread version of hitler… Sometimes I worry about him…
After that there was some more hanging out, but I eventually packed up my things and headed home. It was an excellent gathering and I had an awful lot of fun. So, I would rate this weekend a 5 star weekend, for sure. And with that, it marks the end of my massive vacation at the end of the year. I'm back to working my standard work week tomorrow. Man, it's going to feel so long…
Getting Back In The Habit
Jan 3rd 2009
Ok…here we are again. I know I've made these posts before but, it's time to make another one. I've really been pretty bad about my quest to lose some weight recently. I haven't gained it all back yet, but it's starting to get pretty darn close and I need to put a stop to it now. So I'm officially back on the weight loss wagon…well…starting tomorrow. I'm over at my friends at the moment and we're doing sort of a massive get together thing, which is going to prevent me from eating as well as I should.
But I have a gym membership now and I'm going to start going Sunday. Also on my list of things to do: For the love of all that is good in the world…stop buying donuts thinking I can ration myself this time…that this time will be different. I need to get back to basics, eating better and exercising more. So…it starts! Again!
Best New Albums: 2008 Edition
Dec 30th 2008
It's that time again…the time where I look backwards and reflect upon this years new musical offerings. In order to be eligible for this list, the album must have been released in 2008. I might post a best new discoveries list later detailing the non-new music that I've stumbled across this year.
As far as new albums go, 2008 was a fairly slim year. Not a lot of new stuff that I was interested in getting (although I still have to check out other people's top music lists to pick up the things I totally missed through the year) but what it lacked in quantity, it made up for in quality. There's some really awesome releases this year. So without further delay…let's get right into this.
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Opeth – Watershed
My top album of this year, without any doubt is Opeth's Watershed. If anyone isn't familiar with Opeth, they're claim to fame is blending death metal elements (growled vocals, heavy riffs) with much lighter elements (clean vocals, acoustic guitars, keyboards, etc) to create music that's all about contrast. Everything has a purpose, particularly the growling which isn't overused and adds emotional impact to the songs.Watershed is their first album after losing 2 out of the 5 members and replacing them, so I was a little worried about the direction it would go. As it turns out those worries were totally unfounded. This album is totally Opeth, but it's something different too. They're progressing their sound while maintaining the elements that make their music special and unique.
Probably the best part of this release is it's composition. It plays really well for listening as an album. It's very heavy up front (after a short acoustic introduction) followed by a very mellow couple of songs and then returns to heavy territory towards the end of the album. Heir Apparent has quickly become my favorite Opeth song.
So, in conclusion, this was far and away my favorite release of the year.
- Ayreon – 01011001
This was the first new album I bought in 2008 and I knew it was going to end up on the list as soon as I had my first listen to it.
For those not familiar with Ayreon…this band is the brain child of Arjen-Anthony Lucassen, a man who can do pretty much everything. he plays all the instruments on this release except for some guest spots, the drums and most of the vocals. In fact, Ayreon really is all about the vocalists…17 vocalists in this case. All of Ayreon's albums are concept albums, part of a much broader story. The music is very eclectic, pulling heavily from the progressive rock genre, but there's also a lot of electronic and folk influences as well leading to an interesting mix of sounds.
This album's story weaves it's way through all of the previous Ayreon albums, referencing past efforts and story events, becoming a thread that ties the massive storyline together. Interspersed into the main storyline are several songs that seems to be disjointed, referencing the doings of current humans, seeming to try to send the point that we're all trapped in our own little worlds and that we should look up and see what's really around us more. These sections are my only real complaint about the album as they don't really fit in with the rest of the storyline.
But overall, this is one of my favorite Ayreon releases and I'll be playing it in heavy rotation for some time to come
- Frost* – Experiments In Mass Appeal
I wasn't sure if I would get this album in time to include it on the list, but thankfully, it arrived just in the nick of time about 2 weeks ago.
As the last two picks, I'll explain the band a bit…Frost* is the result of a Pop music producer and songwriter Jem Godfrey. While spending his days writing and producing jingles and theme songs for various things, his free time is spent working on progressive music that sheds many of the traditional cliches that one associates with the prog rock genre.
Their latest album is different in feel than their first, but it has the same Frost* undercurrent running through it. A little off-putting to me at first, I quickly came to terms with the new, slightly more pop oriented sound and really got into the album. Jem's hallmark is a very busy "wall-of-sound" sort of production on his albums. There's a TON of stuff going on in there, but it's mixed in such a way that it's never confusing and never becomes just a bunch of random noise.
It's not quite as unique as their first effort was, and overall I like Milliontown better, but this is a very solid effort that went a little too far into standard pop structures. I also prefer Jem's vocals to the new vocalist, but Jem still does nearly half the vocal lines on th is one, so it's not such a big downside.
- Porcupine Tree – We Lost The Skyline
Ok, so this is the part of the list where I start reaching for albums. I told you this year was pretty slim. This album is a live album, of an in store appearance of part of Porcupine Tree, performing for about 30 minutes.
What makes it really interesting is that because it's only 2 members of the band (Steven Wilson and John Wesley), they did a stripped down acoustic set with just the two guitarists, which lead to some really interesting and unique arrangements of the songs. Some work better than others, but overall, it's a very solid album and I'd like to see some of these get studio treatment, maybe as a B side somewhere.
The best part is hearing Normal played live and hearing Steven Wilson talking about how hard it is to play on guitar. And in fact, he messes up once and starts the song over to do it right.
- Apocalyptica – Worlds Collide
The only thing you need to know about Apocalyptica is contained in the opening sentence of their wikipedia page: "Apocalyptica is a Finnish cello metal band." All of the music is created with the cello and, these days, drums. They got their start working on metallica covers but eventually they started writing their own material. This album is almost entirely original material from the band, aside from a cover of David Bowie's Heroes done in German.The band shines on their non-vocal tracks, creating really heavy riffs and emotional melodies in a very unique way. Songs like Dreamer and Peace really showcase their beautiful melodic side whereas songs like Ion are really all about being very heavy. It can be hard at times to tell that all of the music is done with the cello and not an electric guitar, but…it is.
The downside of this release is the vocal tracks. They lean very nu-metal and are my least favorite part of the album. They could really do something special with vocal tracks but instead when vocals are introduced into the mix the music automatically swings into the generic nu-metal spectrum. The lone standout is the cover of Heroes which ended up quite nice.
While I really like this album, the vocal tracks dent it's awesomeness enough to where if there was anything else released this year that I had purchased, it would probably get dumped off the list.
Monday Of Fail
Dec 30th 2008
I had a little bit of a late Christmas present yesterday. I woke up at around 2 am with a very unhappy stomach. I sat in bed for a little while until it felt like I could move and then went to get a little glass of water. Obviously that was not a good decision as I ended up making a mad dash to the bathroom instead. I ended up not going into work because I was still feeling a little off and very tired. As near as I can tell, something I ate disagreed with me violently, since after that it was a steady progression of getting better all day. Nothing else which indicated that it was an actual stomach bug.
While I was home though I decided I wanted to start my macbook into Windows so I could play some Civilization 4 to pass the time. Before that I had installed the demo for a game a friend of mine (Jay) recommended (Overlord) and…I'm not sure what happened but that seemed to trigger my windows install to totally melt down. So I spent the morning reinstalling windows XP and calling microsoft to prove that I wasn't a pirate.
And the print for my new piece of artwork that has been previously referenced was delayed by UPS due to a late trailer, so that didn't come yesterday either.
Oh, and then I totally screwed up the chicken I was making for dinner, making me get take out.
So pretty much the best thing that happened yesterday was that I didn't end up with a cripling stomach ilness. This week is going to be looong as I'm really looking forward to doing a lot of hanging out with my friends this weekend. Is it friday yet?
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