Newfoundsoap

Dragon naturally speaking...

2006-08-16T21:03:00.000-07:00

I wouldn't imagine that many people know what my blog title is referring to. Both of my friends who are named Steve know what this says. Steve from work told me about it, and I told my good friend Steve about it. Dragon Naturally Speaking is the voice recognition program.I can dictate more or less to a microphone plugged in to my computer and the program will tie words for me in a live browser word processing tool and many other things. You have to use various vocal commands to do the things that you want and it's a little weird of dictating your punctuation as well. I think it's going to save me a lot of time when it comes to blog entries. As we all know I really do value my spare time. I think you will also be beneficial for when I go back to school in September and have to write notes. I would really like to take this opportunity and thanks Steve for lending me a microphone so I could test this program and my friend Steve from work for telling me about the program.

Speaking of my good friends he he was recently married. Congratulations Steve!! The wedding was on the fifth of August and I meant to update my blog since then but I was waiting to use this program for my next entry. The ceremony itself was very nice and everyone looked really spiffy as well. Sarah was worried that the kids would not be well behaved for the ceremony because they were not well behaved for the rehearsal but they did surprise her. Kevin, whose blog you can read by clicking on the link to the right, came all the way from England to go to the wedding and MC the reception. After the wedding I picked up some Chinese food because I was worried I wouldn't like the food of the reception. After picking up Jon and Beth we wandered around trying to find where the reception was located. We went to a gas station to get directions and an older gentleman was trying to help us that they were probably the worst directions we've ever received. We did manage to find a place okay.

I decided to drive because I didn't want to drink. I had gone to a wedding in August the year before this one and I was very drunk. Being drunk wasn't that but the hangover was horrible. I hadn't drank the whole year since that wedding and since it was another wedding in August I thought it would be a bad omen to drink. Kevin did a good job hosting the reception and everyone who made its toast did a good job in my opinion. In fact, I half wanted to make a toast myself but I decided against it because I'm not very good at public speaking. The food at the reception was pretty good but I wasn't that hungry since I had Chinese food prior to getting there. After food and the toasts the dancing began and of course I was nowhere to be found on the dance floor. Actually, I did dance with Chuck for a short while. I was just mostly speaking with people the whole night. Nearing the end of the night I'd drove Steve and Sarah after to a bed and breakfast which I found a bit of an honor.

With the wedding money Steve ended up getting a 50 inch high-definition TV. It's really quite a magnificent machine. Chris joked that we should get married so you can get lots and lots of money and then get a divorce a few weeks later. While Steve was on holiday and managed to watch Indiana Jones and Raiders of the lost Ark as well as the last Crusade. It was fun to see the Indian Jones movies again and I hope we get the opportunity to see the temple of doom to as well. I haven't really watch that many other movies lately. We did get a scanner darkly in the theater afterwards which I wanted to go see but it doesn't look like I'll get a chance before it leaves theater again. I also downloaded Slither to today and I hope I get the opportunity to watch it soon.

The unimaginable happened recently. Just the other day I asked a coworker out on the date. Well, I actually asked them out for coffee not a date but I was thinking of it in terms of getting to know them as if it were a date. She said she was going to be going out of town and I believe her. I did find out however that she has a boyfriend but I still think she interpreted my offer for coffee as a platonic friendship sort of deal. The weird part of it was that I wasn't even very nervous and I didn't feel totally rejected afterwards. There's actually another girl at work that I considered asking out. I don't think I will though because I haven't spoken with her as much as the other girl that I asked out. Maybe after a few more conversations. I have also increased my activity on the dating web site that I go to every now and again because I think they am getting sick of being single.

There's not really much else that I can think of to say today especially since I'm using this program to make the blog entry it feels very weird. Since this can save me a lot of time I think I'm going to try updating my blog more often. Then again I always say that and it doesn't usually happen but you never know maybe it will happen this time. I'm sure that there are plenty of grammatical errors in this blog entry due to using this program and I apologize ahead of time. Have a good day people!

~M

Work and Play...

2006-07-28T22:44:00.000-07:00

Well, I just got home from work. Work is actually alright, which is surprising for me because I'm extaordinarily picky about everything in my life and I usually dislike anything that cuts into my free time. If you haven't read any of my previous posts, I work at Teletech which is a call center that services Sprint's mobile phones. I've been working there since the end of March and have been working night shifts, usually ranging from 4 - 12:30 or 6 - 2:30 but on Monday I start a new shift (shifts are given out monthly by the way) which I'll usually be working 11 - 7:30pm, The only unfortunate aspect about the new shift is that I don't get fri & sat off which I've become accustomed to over the past 3 months. I figure it's a small sacrifice because now when my friends get off at 6 or 10pm I can get together with them. I don't think weekends are going to be that bad anyways because less people will call on the weekends and you can dress casually for those two days.

What is there to say about the work? Well, I sit down and answer phone calls all day. Sure you get your occasional irate customer but I think it also depends on how you talk with the customer. I think I do a very good job there because I usually sell the most attachable options on my team and I have been getting a lot of compliment calls which is pretty rewarding. Speaking of rewarding, since my attendance and monitored calls were excellent, the past two months I have recieved 10% of my monthly wages. This has been a big help in setting out to complete one of my objectives which is to pay of my credit card. My other object is to have my Futureshop card aid of by September but that doesn't look like it's going to happen. I should get fairly close to doing that however. Why September? Well, September is when I will be quitting Teletech and starting my Practical Nursing course. Some people have said I should be able to stay on part-time, but others have said that they don't offer part-time. I guess I'll find out eventually. If I don't think I'll like nursing I'll probably go back to Teletech. The other option is to try one of the other call centers because I heard if you have 3 months call center experience under your belt that you can get higher starting wages. If I don't like the new call centers I can always quit after training and then go back to Teletech.

I have also met quite a few nice people at Teletech which almost makes me sad for leaving. It's a pity that the nice ladies that I have met have all been taken... not that I would have asked them out anyway. Well, there was one I had seriously considered asking on a date until I found out for a fact she was taken. I'm sure some of them I will still see when I leave Teletech but strangely enough I think I will miss when I walk by certain people and they say "hey ballz!!" and a few heads turn. I'm also worried that when I leave Teletech that I'm going to have a major change in diet which would be unfortunate because I've actually manages to lose approximately 20 - 25 lbs. in the past 4 months. I realize that not everyone is cut out for call center work, but I do actually think it was something I was good at and it didn't drive me crazy. It's probably the best job that I've had so far. Microplay would have been a better job if the owners had been more nice to me. At Microplay I always felt like I was living in fear at of the owners whereas at Teletech I feel somewhat respected and/or looked up to by my coworkers and supervisors.

Ok, well enough about work. What else is there to talk about? Well, I try to keep bitching to a minimum on my blog but I really do feel like complaining about being single. Well, it's really not that bad because I know how twisty and turvy relationships can go, and how much time they take up. I think moreso than anything else is that being single for so long is just worsening my self-esteem because my mind is really playing tricks on me. I constantly begin to wonder if there is something wrong with me, since I have been single now for more than 3 and a half years. Well, I was dating someone around new years for a few weeks but there's not much to say about that. Actually there's no need to wonder if something is wrong with me because I know that my friends would tease that I'm too picky. They are right and maybe I will be alone forever because of it but I think if I'm patient enough that I'll eventually find what I'm looking for. As I said, being single isn't that bad but after being single for as long as I have, I think it's time for a change, even if it's just a temporary change. I don't actually see things changing for a while yet though because I don't put myself in situations to meet new people often. I've met a lot of people through work but outside of that I spend my time home or with my friends. I don't tend to do activities which would facilitate talking to strangers. I do have a lot of trouble just initiating conversations with random people. Don't take that to mean that I'm shy because I don't really think that I am, I just don't like to initiate conversations or talk in a large group setting.

Another thing that's been irritating me is that I don't feel like I have a creative outlet. I guess this is as close to anything creative that I do but it's not like I put a lot of thought into my blog postins because I just tend to type what I'm thinking. I can't draw/paint, I'm not into photograpy, I can't play any instruments, and I don't think I could write poetry or have the patience to write a story unless it's of my own life. I do actually own a bass guitar which I bought with the intention of taking lessons but about a week after I bought it, I was told by my boss that I was going to be laid off. I knew I wouldn't have the money for taking lessons, so I never did learn. It's not really an excuse because at one point I did buy a book to help teach as well as I know friends that play guitar but I just never did get into it. I regret not learning and it's never to late to start but I don't actually see myself starting.

The closest thing that I've had to a real creative outlet in my life is when I was playing a collectible card game known as Magic: The Gathering and I apologize for the nerdish comments that I'm about to make and if that seems pathetic, but I am who I am :) Anyway, one might wonder: "how is magic a creative outlet?" Well, playing Magic itself is not an outlet for creativity, though it definitely gets the strategic thought processes moving in your brain. If you know anything about competitive Magic, it's that having a good deck is half of the battle when it comes to being successful, so the deck creation process is very important. Making your own decks as well as testing them out and fine-tuning them to be effective is not only a creative outlet but something I really miss doing. I just miss Magic in general. I quit because I played to be competitive and when you do that, Magic is a very expensive hobby. Just to give you an idea, I collected Magic for about a year or a little longer and when I sold my collection about 6 years ago I recieved about $1200 Canadian (it was $800 US at the time). I may have actually pumped more money than that into my collection but for that amount beyond what I got back I look at it as a worthy cost for the year of entertainment.

Gaming is something I've always really been into, whether it's a card game, board game, video game or pen and paper rpg. I don't think it's ever going to leave me. At one point (sometime after I finished up at Microplay) I sold basically all my video game systems and games but now I have a fair amount of them again. After high school I sold all of my pen and paper rpg books and stopped playing, but I play occasionally now with a few of my friends. I quit Magic but every now and again I think about picking it up since I make ok money. I probably won't but you never know what can happen in the future. In fact sometimes I think I would be better off playing Magic than video games because I but video games and some of them I just don't play and don't feel like I'm ever going to play them. With Magic, it's a game which is fun in and of itself, but collecting the cards is great too because the cards are worth money, they have excellent art work, as well as interesting writing on them which is known as flavor text. Then again being naturally picky doesn't make me alone forever, a huge Magic card collection might hahaha. Video games have definitely broken the 'nerd barrier' appealing to a wide variety of audiences, but I can't see Magic as being thought of as anything but nerdy. I guess it shouldn't really concern me though because you are who you are and if people don't like you for who you are then they aren't worth knowing.

I don't know where all of this random thoughts have come from tonight but I said I would update on Sat so here it is at Sat at 4:22am. Enjoy!

~M

The unrelenting laziness...

2006-07-25T22:33:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am posting again. I know that I haven't been a very good blogger and only updating every now and again. I know I have lots of things to talk about but I'm just not used to having so little free time now that I'm working. I also kind of tend to think that my entries are not that interesting but I guess I shouldn't let that discourage me from writing. Ok, so to star things off, I'm going to quote one of the comments in my last post which said "Mark, I need you and I want you. I'm sorry that you don't." I would just like to comment on this. I would like to say primarily that if this is not some sort of prank by a random person then I am extremely flattered because I tend to not think of myself very highly. In fact since I've been single for so long I was beginning to wonder if there's something wrong with me. Well, I do know that I'm not a normal person but I just figured most would consider me unattractive or I wouldn't have been single so long. I was complaining to Steve about this on Sun night and he made a point that some people do like me, but I just don't reciprocate it. I guess it's sort of true because I am extrodinarily picky and sometime you women just freak me out. Perhap I will pay for my pickiness with eternal lonliness but I'm willing to risk that to get what I want. I would also like to point out that I'm not so narcissistic to think that I have any right being as picky as I am but you can't help who you are and what you like right?

I'm going to continue on with that comment that was made, just because it's odd... I apologize in advance for going on about it :) Well, obviously I wish I had known who posted it because it makes wonder who could possible think that. If you feel like you want to indulge me please e-mail me (it should be on my blog somewhere) and let me know. Even if I don't reciprocate your feelings sometimes it's just good to talk about it, and I wouldn't be the sort to make fun of you behind your back or anything. That's not how I roll. I just think it's good to get things in the open. Take for example my friend Andrea. I like her but she doesn't feel the same way about me. We've talked about it and it doesn't seem to have hindered our friendship. Well, she might not go with me to my good friend Steve's Wedding (Congrats buddy!!!) because I get the impression that she might not be comfortable which I found out through Divine Intervention... Praise Jesus! ;) It's ok Andrea, I completely understand. The point being is that I just think that it's better to talk about things that dwell on your mind, whether it's positive or negative.

Ok, so enough about the comment. What else do I have to talk about? Well, there is no chance of me getting addicted to World of Warcraft again. I did post about this game before, with it's horrible addictiveness and waste of time I consider it to have been. I no longer possess the game or my account which had my characters on it. Recently I was talking to a friend of mine named Jon who wanted to sell his PSP which I had been wanting for a while, but the $300 price tag was really turning me off so I waited. When Jon offered to sell his PSP to me with 3 games for $130, I jumped on the opportunity. I knew that Jon was a WoW (World of Warcraft) nut and that he didn't posses the Collectors Edition that I did. Well, I offered to trade it to him with $40 for his PSP and 3 games and he decided to go for it. That basically put my WoW CE at $90, it's not really what I wanted to sell it for but considering how cheap I got the PSP it was completely worth it. Now that I have no game and the inability for me to ever access my characters again (meaning that if I did restart I would have to start from scratch) there's no chance I'm going to play again. The PSP is an awesome little system that has a nice huge screen and also good sound as well. How do I think of it in comparison to the DS Lite? Well, I think the PSP has better capabilities (in terms of programs and things it's caable of doing outside of gaming) than the DS Lite but there are more games that I like and have what I consider to be better games on the Nintendo portable.

So I have a PSP, and I guess I'll tell you a bit about what I've been playing. The main game that I have been playing is a Tetris-esque puzzle game by the name of Lumines. I think it's perhaps the best puzzle game that I've played or at least the most addictive. Well, it probably resembles Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (which I still wish I had on PS1 >_< ) moreso than Tetris. I know at least two people who crave to get a PSP just because I let them play a few games of Lumines. Besides Lumines, the other two games I've been playing is Mega Man Powered Up and Loco Roco (which has only been released in Europe so far but will be out in North America soon enough). Mega Man Powered Up is basically a kiddified version of the original Mega Man game but with a lot of additional features. New graphics, new levels, new bosses (Oil Man and Time Man), playable boss characters and a level editor. There is more features than that but that alone is worth sinking hours into the game LocoRoco is a very odd game. Basically your main characters is a rolly ball with a face. You tilt the world left and right by using your L and R buttons on your PSP which causes him to roll and press you can press both and then release to jump. As your ball rolls around and eats fruit he will become a fatter blob. You'll traverse through the gorgeous wold with the singing blob of fat with crazy japanese tunage going on (think Katamari but actually catchy). It's just a simplistic side-scroller that's very fun due to the visuals and level design. I can't wait to get into more.

Onto movies. I think the only movie that I've mentioned so far this summer was Mission Impossible 3. Well, I'm after seeing in this order: MI:3, The DaVinci Code, X-Men 3, Superman Returns, Pirates of the Caribbean II and Clerks II. Well, I already stated that I wasn't fussy on MI3. The DaVinci Code was decent but the thing I found most interesting about it was the actual comments on Catholocism and I probably would have been better served with a documentary. Well, Ian McKellen (spelling) was great as always. Speaking of Ian, I had insanely high hopes for the latest X-Men move since X-Men 2 was probably my favorite super hero movie I've watched. Well, I saw it and again it was decent but it was very underwhelming considering how much I enjoyed the others. I guess it would have a lot to do with the new director, since Bryan Singer is no longer associated with it. Now Singer left X-Men to do Superman Returns so I was actually getting excited about it, especially with Kevin Spacey playing Lex Luthor. I have to say that again I was pretty underwhelmed by the movie. It was about 45 mins too long and not entirely entertaing. I was expecting a little more action but I thought the actors (note: actors and not actresses) played their roles very well. Maybe the next will be better.

After seeing all of the above movies, I was beginning to think that this was not a very good summer for movies and it had me worried about the remainding films. I had been anticipating the new Pirates movie for quite some time and figured it would probably only be decent. Upon going though I was completely blown away. It was exceptional and the best movie that I've seen so far this summer. I'm not going to go into any specifics, so just go see it for yourself. I didn't even really know about Clerks II or when it was being released, heck I hadn't even seen Clerks until about 3 weeks ago. I went to it and I have to say it was as funny as the original. Most people I know that have watched it tend to think the same thing which is surprising because people hold the original in such a high regard. If you liked the first you should feel safe going to the sequel. So, after seeing two good movies I'm hoping the trend will continue when Trailer Park Boys The Movie is released, I believe, sometime in August. I'm a huge TPB fan and have all of the seasons so far on DVD and the trailer looks awesome so I'll definitely be going to this one asap.

What else have I been watching? Well, I watched 4 animes lately... 2 series and two movies. After seein the amazing Samurai Champloo, I had to sit down and watch Cowboy Bebop. Bebop is a good series but I vastly prefer Champloo, with the exception of the music. The other series that I've watched lately is Serial Experiments Lain. All I have to say is: EWW EWW EWW!!!! It was very weird, and not even in a weird but enjoyable fashion such as Akira. I'm not even gonig to talk about the series anymore because I consider it to have been such a waste of time. The two movies I watched are Samurai X and Howl's Moving Castle. I really enjoyed Samurai X which is based on the anime show called Rorouni Kenshin. Samurai X is just another Samurai flick but I guess they aren't all the same because Samurai X and Samurai Champloo have a completely different feel to one another. As for Howl's Moving Castle, it was alright. There were things about it that bugged me and I vastly preferred other Miyazaki's work such as: Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. I think I would definitely have to sit through Howl's Moving Castle again thought before I could give it a final verdict.

Well, I've type a fair amount and I haven't even touched on music yet so I will only mention on CD that I've been listening to lately and that's Black Holes And Revelations by Muse. Most people consider this a 'love it' or 'hate it' sort of album. At first I thought it was their worst album to date but I could instantly apprciate the songs 'City of Delusion' and 'Knights of Cydonia'. Upon repeated listenings of this album it's really begun to grow on me like mold. I still don't consider it to be their best work, aka Origin of Symmetry, but it definitely is a solid album that deserves some recognition. Well, I wasn't going to talk about any other bands but I just remembered that I ordered the US version of Pure Reason Revolution's The Dark Third album which is simply a masterpiece in my mind. I've owned the UK version of the album for quite some time but the US version has at least one new song that wasn't on the UK edition so I ordered it. It was released today but I ordered mine from amazon.ca so I probably won't see it for a bit. Go out and see what your missing!!

Ok, well, that's all I have for now but I do have some other things to talk about so hopefully it won't be a month until I do another update. In fact I'm hoping it will be this weekend, but I can't predict whether I will or not. I hope everyone is doing well and keep in touch, ok people? :)

~M

Sausage in my mouth spewing warm fluid...

2006-06-25T07:16:00.000-07:00

No, no, no I haven't become homosexual. What I'm referring to in my topic is this food I've been addicted to for about the last month. Steve was oh so kind enough to introduce me to these Butterball Montery Jack Turkey Sausage. Well, it's as I've said: they are turkey sausage and they have montery jack within them. The best part is that they're only like 10 grams of fat per sausage which is good considering how big these things are. It's funny because I remember when Krista and I used BBQ these 'Cowboy Sized' Calgary Stampede burgers and those things had like 30 - 40 grams of fat per burger which is absolutely crazy but I do remember them being pretty tasty. I will say that it's good to see the sun coming out and the weather getting a little warmer because it means my friends and I can BBQ a lot, or at least I can go to my friends house and dirty up their grill if they aren't doing any BBQing (sorry Steve/Chris :) ). As for the other joys of summer, it looks like Salmonfest will be coming soon to Grand Falls and since I went last summer I think I would like to go again. I know this year that Billy Talent and Live are playing. I know there's supposed to be another band but I just can't remember them. I don't even care that much about seeing Live but I did see Billy Talent when they were at Mile One Stadium before and they put on a completely amazing show. I do like some of their material as well. I think I just want to go to Salmonfest to go on a roadtrip and just sort of get a way from it all here in St. John's. My only problem in this endeavor is trying to find someone to go with me. I had considered posting on our work bulletin board but people probably would like going with me because I would have to lay down the law beforehand: paying an equal portion of gas for the trip, no eating/drinking in the car, no smoking, my car so I get to listen to my music, willingness to go out and come back in the same day which I don't think too many people would have the stamina to do even though they wouldn't be driving. I really want to go to Salmonfest but I bet it's just not going to happen.

Ok, for a second post in a row I'm going to have to give a big shout out to Krista. Steve gets a shout out too. Why? Well, I found out recently that I was accepting into the LPN program. What is LPN for those of you who don't know? Well, that would be the Liscenced Practical Nurse Program. I applied way back in March and Steve and Krista were gracious enough to give my my references. Told you that you would be a good reference Krista :P Anyway, I was told I was going to hear back from them in the end April or beginning of May but then at the beginning of June I began to wonder what happened. Myself and Chris made our way down to the Center of Nursing Studies and they told me that I was the first on the waiting list and if anyone drops that I would be accepted. I knew that someone would drop and that even if they didn't I could just get the Newfie Mafia located in Gouldigan territory could certainly address the issue :) Well, someone did decide that they wouldn't go so now I'm in. This is what I had written up in my other post but I forgot to copy/paste.

So it looks like thise Sept I get to go to nursing school and be surrounded by mass amounts of women... as good as this sounds I'm having some major apprehension not only because I don't know how well suited I'm going to be changing bedpans, washing the elderly/incapacitaed, and other yuckiness. Beyond the 'I don't know if I'm going to like it' I've been working hard in trying to get myself out of debt with credit cards and this is hard enough, but that would be considered chump change compard to a student loan. So yeah, I don't know how well this is going to go down. I am gonig to go and try it though because I'm sure there's a period where you can go to the school and get a full refund if you decide not to stay. The thing is that doing this in school could be very lucrative because the program is only about a year or year and a half I think and when you get out I think you usually make $16 - 19/hour here in Newfoundland. My father was telling me that just recently that they were looking for LPN's up north (I guess Yukon or Whitehorse) and the job would pay about $30/hour not including isloation pay/benefits. That's pretty damn good. The other thing to consider is that even if I don't like the LPN program I could always stick with it for a while and then upgrade my diploma into a full on Nursing Degree by doing more schooling. 'What to do' has always been a big problem in my life and even after being accepted in to school, it doesn't looking to be getting anywhere. What I need is an office job where I have my own office away from other people doing boring repetitive work where I can listen to music. In fact away from other people and doing musicy sort of stuff (perhaps mixing/engineering at a studio) would be an ideal job. Blah, kill me.

Well, there is a crazy amount of stuff that I've been doing lately that I've written down to talk about in my blog but I don't know where to start since there are so many things to talk about. I guess first I'll talk about what I've done most recently and that is: I've finished The New Super Mario Bros. on Nintendo DS. Well, I've completed everything there is to be completed in the game and I would have to say that it was a very satisfying experience. Almost everyone that I know that has played this game has really enjoyed it as well. If you like Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario World then this game would be right up your alley for some old school sidescrolling platforming. The only thing it lacks compared to these previously mentioned Mario titles is a flying item. I only looked up about 5 things on the internet to unlock so that I could have everything completed. I'm sure I could have figured out about 2 of these 5 things but I was getting impatient. Well enough about Mario, I do want to say though that I'm really loving my DS system. Yes, it was super expensive (mainly due to importing and my flash cart), but I really love a lot of the games on GBA/DS, the crazy bright screen on the DS Lite and the convenience of having this gaming on the go, so if there's crazy amounts of FPS's going on at Steve's I can keep my sanity ;) j/k haha

The next thing I would like to discuss is the album I'm currently listening to while typing up this entry. I'm listening to 'The Blue Notebooks' by Max Richter. I would describe it as very subtle but moody instrumental music, in an almost classical/ambient sort way. It's the perfect music for when I'm just writing or browsing the web to have in the background. One odd thing that I found out is that Tilda Swinton does the only vocals on this album, but it's spoken words and only sprinkled throughout the album. The music on the album is beautiful and haunting in the way that Shadow of the Colossi' soundtrack is, but without the heroic and fighting anthems. What else have I been up to in the realm of music? Well, I have bought 3 Porcupine Tree DVD-A's which sound absolutely amazing. Through this I've gotten Steve into Porcupine Tree which is awesome and had also rekindled my interest in them. Not that I have ever really lost interest in the band but I've just been listening to so much new music that I hadn't listened to them for a while. I think I've also criminally undervalued how PT's album Deadwing should have been assessed for my top 10 of 2005 but I knew tastes would be bound to change over time.

And as always there's a lot more I could talk about but I'm pretty much finished for today and hopefully I'll update again next weekend. I can't promise that I will but the more people bug me to update in my comments the more likely I am to update sooner. Take care for now everyone!

~M

I... Live... Again...

2006-06-08T22:56:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know I said I was going to start doing more frequent short posts but as we can see that didn't go according to plan. Why didn't it happen? Work. When you're somewhat used to having 7 days off a week to do whatever you want and you still don't find the time to do everything you want and then you start working full-time, then sacrifices do have to be made. I don't really mean to sacrifice my blog but it is hard sometimes to force myself to write. When I see comments that people want me to keep writing then that helps to encourage me. The truth of it is that I have so much to talk about now that I really do have to start writing or I would probably have to do some 10 hour marathon writing session of what I have been doing lately. So here's what's been going on lately...

Ok, first and foremost I would like to give a big shout out to my ex Krista who I'm still friends with but don't talk to nearly enough. I'm giving her a shout out because her and her husband Curtis just recently had a child. I would like to think I had a part in making the baby... well not directly you sickos :) You see many years ago when myself and Krista were going out I heard about Warcraft 3 and that there was an 'unofficial' beta testing which I wanted to get into. Eventually that lead me to a site called war3pub.com (which is mainly just a message board) and that's when I met Curtis who helped me set up the beta. I was immediately hooked to warcraft 3 and introduced it to Krista who also became quite hooked. Eventually I convinced her to join the site and we started running Warcraft 3 tournaments together for the war3pub patrons which was a ton of fun. Eventually things became very clear to the both of us that things weren't going to work out so it was sort of a mutual break-up. Well, that's in the past long ago, but we managed to stay friends. Both of us stayed on war3pub and she started to talk to Curtis more and more until they decided to meet one another and develop a relationship. Of course the distance was a challenge in the beginning (her living in Newfoundland and him living in the US) but after she finished her degree she moved to the States. Who would have known that she would find love on the internet, move to the US, get married and as of the past week have a child! Big congrats!! So you can see how I had a hand in making her baby and helping her find love, so now she needs to find me a Wife. Good luck with that one :)

Ok, so the next huge piece of news is one of my best friends from all the way back in Jr. High has moved back here to Newfoundland. I'm sorry to hear that the circumstances revolving around the reason for his move back aren't good ones but it is great to see him again and I'm sure he is happy to see all of his friends once again. We'e been getting together almost everyday since he's been back either playing some Mario Party (> Halo), wandering around the town or watching a movie. Just yesterday we watch Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children and Shaolin Soccor. I've already talked about Advent Children so here are my thoughts on the latter. It was pretty weird. Basically the synopsis is that a bunch of Kung Fu monks get together to play soccor. It was a pretty fun movie and has a very similar feel to the movie Kung Fu Hustle, both staring Stephen Chow.

I have recently made a very expensive purchase. For a long time I have been wanting a portable system and I did used to own a GBA but I sold it when I was in my anti-gaming frame of mind. There have been quite a few games that had been released on the DS system that had caught my attention but as soon as I had heard that they were releasing a new design for the DS called the DS Lite (more battery power, lighter, smaller, and brighter screen) as well as a new top down Zelda game called The Phantom Hourglass. The DS Lite isn't out yet in North America but it will be released on June 11th, 2006. I happened to import mine from Japan because mainly I wanted a Navy Blue DS instead of the White one that was going to be released here. It wasn't really an issue for importing it because the Japanese use the same electical outlets with the same voltage as North America so I don't have to worry about frying the system. All GBA and DS games are not restricted by region like you would see with console games and DVD movies which is very convenient. The last concern was being able to read the settings of the system, but thankfully you can change the systems defualt language as well. Since purchasing the system I've been playing the following games a fair bit: The New Super Mario Bros. and Tetris DS. I had thought about getting a PSP but I decided that I would rather have DS Lite because I just like more of the games that are currently released on DS than the PSP and the same goes for upcomming games as well. I acknowledge the PSP is quite the beast but I prefer my DS Lite.

I could write a pile more I'm sure but that's all I'm going to do for now. I would like to say that I'll update again soon but I'd rather not say that incase I don't end up making a new post for a while. I do hope it will be soon however. Have a nice day people!!

PS - 2 points to anyone who knows what this blog post title is quoting

PPS - Tried to post this earlier but blogspot was down so I'm just getting it up now.

The Thornley Stadium of Advent Children...

2006-05-07T08:17:00.000-07:00

Before I get into anything else, I'm just going to talk a little bit more about work. When I got my schedule for 4 weeks starting May 7th I was disappointed to see that I got about my 5th or 6th least favorite schedule of 28 possible choices. It was 3:00 - 11:30 Mon, Tues, Fri, Sat and Sunday. Now I really did half expect a horrible schedule because shifts are give out by seniority and me and my group that I was trained with are the newbies. Well, what really annoyed me was that my friend Pat that sat next to me got about my 3rd most wanted schedule and it wasn't even at the top of his list. I talked to the supervisor because I wanted to see if I incorrectly filled out my shift bid. She tells me that where there are so many people in this training group (about 70 - 85 people) I could have been at the bottom of the list and got stuck with that. Great. So, I brood at work and wait for my break to roll around. On my break I offer Pat $30 to switch shifts with me and he agrees so things are ok and I return back to work. Well, I'm just sitting there answering calls when the manager comes over to me and asks if I would like to switch to a Mon - Fri 5:30pm - 2:00am which turned out to be awesome. I mention it to Pat that I got my schedule changed and he said he didn't really care that much about not buying the schedule off him anymore because he didn't really like mine either. The person who got my schedule didn't really like it either but they had to get the same schedule as their gf because they drive in together and it would have been easier to get my schedule than that night shift that I got. Sweet! So I start on my new schedule tomorrow. It's going to be pretty scary without the floor support that we have currently but I'm sure things will be ok.

Ok, so this Tuesday the new double CD by the Red Hot Cilli Peppers, entitled Stadium Arcadium, will be released. I've already had the pleasure to listen to it and I have to say that it's great. You might have already heard the single Dani California on the radio or a video. Well, being a double cd (one entitled Jupiter and the other entitled Mars) we have 14 tracks on each and the both clock in over an hour each. How would I explain the album? Well, there is quite a bit of variety on there and not a single song that really bugs me (which each previous album usually had). Now if you're wondering what I like in terms of Chilli Peppers, well I'm the oddball that like One Hot Minute the most. I also enjoyed Blood Sugar Sex Magick and Californication. I wasn't overly fond of By The Way with the exception of the title track. The Chilli Peppers has always been a 'Sounds of the Summer' sort of deal which is ideal for just driving around in the sun or lounging around having BBQ with a bunch of your friends. If you like the Chilli Peppers then getting this album is a definite no brainer, especially consider how inexpensive it is for a double cd.

I've also been listen to a fair bit of Ian Thornley. If you're unfamiliar with who that is, well he's the lead singer of the band Big Wreck. Unfortunately Big Wreck broke up after their second album was released but in 2004 re-emerged with his new band called Thornley. I even had the pleasure of seeing Thornley when they visited Club One here in Newfoundland. Thornley is a decent band but I prefer his works with Big Wreck. Thankfully when Thornley came to Newfoundland they also played a bunch of Big Wreck tunes. In 1997 when 'In Loving Memory Of' was released I listened to to it quite a bit and still enjoy it today. Four years later they released 'The Pleasure and the Greed' which for some reason I didn't bother listening to until just recently and I have to say that I wish this band was still on the go. The use of Banjo in the song 'Ladylike' from the aforementioned album is great but you won't hear anything but a wall of distortion from the Thornley album (but that's not always a bad thing either). It's for this reason that I vastly prefer Ian's work with Big Wreck but no matter what I'll listen to anything new music he decides to release... well, I guess not with some of the work he did with Nickelback. Ewww.

Ok, so this Tuesday past the computer animated feature film Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children was released. If you've played the video game Final Fantasy VII on PC or Playstation 1 then you'll be in for a treat for the following reason:

The movie takes place after the events of the video game. The ending of the game was a bit ambiguous and some interpretations was that everyone but Red XIII's race was annihliated but with the movies realese we know that that isn't the case.
If you like the Limit Breaks from the game, you'll get to see some of the characters from the game perform them in the movie which is great for a lot of gaming geeks like me
The soundtrack is absolutely amazing. Four words: Advent One Winged Angel

Like the game the movie is pretty hard to follow in terms of storyline. Probably not quite as much as the game but things do get a little weird and if you haven't played the game you probably wouldn't find much of interest with this movie except for the jaw-droppingly gorgeous CG animation. So as I said, this movie isn't for everyone but if you have already played the game, then this is the perfect answer to what happened after the events of the movie.]

Well, that's about it for now, but I've been on a major anime kick which I'll probably discuss pretty soon. Take care peeps!

A change of pace, perhaps...

2006-05-03T06:18:00.000-07:00

Ok, so here's the sitch. I apologize for not updating in over two weeks and that I haven't posted my top 5 like I said I would get around to doing. The reason for this is that I'm working 5 days a week and 8 hours on those days. I guess that's typical for most people but I'm just not used to that anymore and thus not used to having so little free time. I think the specific reason why I haven't updated in a while is because I'll wake up about 12pm or so and have to leave for work about 3 hours or so later. So what does that have to do with anything? Well, when I post super-long blogs they typically take me longer than 3 hours. The idea of giving up all of my time before work on a day just isn't appealing to me so I just haven't updated. This morning, I think I've come up with a solution which will be a change of pace. What I'm going to do is just take 30 min - 1 hour (approximately listen to 1 cd, which I tend to do anyway) to do a blog entry and update my blog more often. I'm not saying I'll update everyday but it should be much more frequently than I have been lately.

Now that that's out of the way let's talk about my work situation. In my last blog entry I posted that I was in training. Well, I guess I'm still technically training but I'm not longer in a classroom doing school-esque tasks. Right now I'm doing what's called 'learning lab' which is on the floor taking calls from Sprint customers like a normal employee would. The difference is that not only do we have a few managers around, but we also have a ton of knowledgeable employees acting as mini-supervisors to help people with questions that we have. We also even have a few people from Sprint in the States at Teletech helping us out with questions and taking manager calls. How do I like it? Well, the job isn't hard because you're just sitting down answering peoples calls. Then again I haven't had any extremely irrate customers that have cussed me out yet, but I'm told they're coming. So the job isn't hard and it pays $8.50 an hour. Sounds good to me. The only thing I don't really like is that I feel like I'm clueless and that training didn't teach me much. Most everyone feels like that, but I'm after learning so much in learning lab so far that I'm hoping I eventually won' have to ask as many questions as I currently am. Unfortunately, learning lab ends as of Sunday, so I'm not sure how well I'm going to do. I'll keep you updated though. Oh and if any of you are looking for a job teletech is hiring people from now, throughout to the summer and the training in classroom for 4 weeks is the easiest money you can possibly make because it's more like school than work but with a more relaxed atmosphere than normal school. Who wouldn't want to make $8.50/hour for sitting around in a class meeting a bunch of new people, having a few laughs, and doing some fairly easy work for 160 hours over 4 weeks. If any of you are interested in a job with them I can give you instructions on how to apply, and for anyone that gets hired and lists me as someone who recommended you to Teletech, I get some money :)

Andrea, if you're reading, your good friend Sherri during highschool is currently training at Teletech. I ran into her a few times and chatted with her so that was pretty interesting. During training I met a bunch of cool people who I think I would like to get to know better. Not all of them are really nice but there's always bound to be bad apples. Just to give an example he's one of the more popular guys in class and I can see why because he's pretty charismatic but he's not that nice. He's never done anything to me personally though. I'm not going to name specific names and I'll try to be a little vague here on out because I don't want coworkers readin this to know who I'm talking about but who knows, maybe they'll piece it together if they do happen to read it. Anyway, so I was outside chatting with the 'charismatic guy' and this 'other guy' when the other guy makes a sort of sexual joke and says 'what good is this joke when no one is here for me to offend' in a joking manner. I comment who would probably be offended if they were here and both guys agree with me. Then the charismatic guy says 'you know I bet she's probably still a virgin'. The other guy mentions that she has a boyfriend. The charismatic guy comments 'who would want to fuck her? I know I wouldn't. Would you?'. The other guy says no and I'm not sure if it was because he was trying to get in the good graces of charismatic guy, because he's seeing someone, or because he just answered honestly. The charismatic guy asks me if I would. I become flustered and I think I said I don't know and I think the conversation changed. It annoys me that the charismatic person would talk about someone like that behind their back but he has also talked about other people behind their back. I really wanted to say something to this guy like she doesn't deserve these sorts of things said about her. I didn't though because then they would probably just mock that I have a thing for her and probably then talk about me behind my back, that I'm not a good sport or something. I guess I do like her a fair bit but I'm not about to be mocked about it and have her find out about it. This is especially so since she already has a boyfriend. Nice guys finish last is definitely the truth, where is the asshole within me :P

Well, enough about that before it annoys me more than it currently does. There about two weeks ago the new Tool album 10,000 Days was leaked onto the internet. Not only that but there was also some picture leaked about the packaging which is absolutey gorgeous. I was going to post it and share it all with you but my procrastination got the better of me. I apologize! On the plus side, the album is now released so everyone can go out there and buy it. The packaging alone with worth the price tag. As for the music, I think it's perhaps Tools weakest album. There are 11 tracks on it and only 4 of them really stand out to me. Those tracks ar: Vicarious, Jambi, The Pot, and Right In Two. The rest I find to be heavy ambient stuff. If I'm sitting down and listening to it carefully then I will enjoy the whole thing, but it's definitely not good background music for when you're doing something else. I picked up 10,000 Days yesterday for the low low price of $9.99 CAN which was excellent. I also picked up a CD that was just release in North America that I've been listening to for the past 6 months since it was released in Australia: Wolfmother. The CD was only $11.99 and it's absolutely fantastic retro rock with a bonus track that wasn't on their aussie release. If you go back and look at my Top 5 of 2005 you can see that this ranked very highly so I would recommend that you all give this one a listen, espeically since it's now available for purchase at a low proce.

My CD I'm listening to is almost over so I'm going to rap this blog entry up. I do have a lot more to talk about but I don't want to give up all my time before work. I have this Thur and Friday off so I will probably do another update one of those days. Take care everyone!

~M

I kind of accused her of having herpes...

2006-04-16T08:33:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I haven't had a true entry in a long time. I apologize. Remember in one of my posts about talking about having no time. Well, that's pretty much how I feel since I've started work. Well, I have definitely had free time, but since it's a lot more limited I've been hogging it al to myself mostly listening to new music and watching anime. Did I say work earlier? I'm working at a call center called Teletech which focuses on wireless customer service. Well, right now it's more like school than work because I'm still in training. I have to say that I wish I could stay in training longer than 4 weeks because it's been pretty fun, especially considering I'm getting paid $8.50 an hour to do so. At first I wasn't so fond of the idea of having to get to know people in the class and having to do some roleplaying in front of others but it's been great so far. I even got roleplay as a irrate customer. That's not too much of a strech for me. The people in my class are pretty cool too. Sean is a bit of a nutbar but not in the bad sort of way. He's after giving everyone in class a nickname. He couldn't think of one for me right away so I suggested the one I had in high school which was Juice. Why was I called Juice? Well, it started as people just calling me Johnson which somehow evolved into Juneson which finally just got changed to Juice. Eventually Sean decided that I would be blue balls. WTFBBQ? I guess it's not so bad considering how long I've been single but I didn't offer that information up to my co-workers. Rather than calling me blue balls all the time people just call me Balls now. I guess there could be worse things to be called.

Well, I'll get into what I've been doing lately besides work. I went and saw two movies in theatre over the past few weeks. The first movie I saw was Inside Man. At first I was skeptical because it's a 'Spike Lee joint' and I don't think I'm very fond of his movies but this had Clive Owen who I consider to be quite amazing as well as Denzel Washington, so that along with the trailer sold me. I have to say that I really enjoyed it. If you like crime movies about hostage situations and the negotiations between the police and the hostage takers then you should definitely have no trouble enjoying this. Some other people have said unlike most Spike Lee this movie has a bit more of mainstream vibe than his other works which I think would make it more enjoyable to the average joe. Since I've just talked about Clive Owen I have to talk about Closer. I know I've talked about it before but I'm going to say it again. It was awesome and you should watch it if you haven't already. Well, this drama is mostly dialog between 4 people and their incredibly screwed up sex lives/relationships. I guess I wouldn't really recommend it if you just like watching things go boom.

The other movie I went to see was Ice Age 2: The Meltdown. It was alright but I was sort of out of it. The only really enjoyable parts that I keep thinking about are the ones with Scrat. Is that his name? The one always after the nut. For this movie I went on a meet and greet with a young lady. As usual nothing came of it which is typical but I figured I would have still been talking to this person since we had some cool conversations and had been talking like a month and a half before meeting. Time to go off on a tangent. So, we had this conversation about how things didn't go very well with this girl I had dates for a little while. She asked me why and other people did too when it was over. My response is always "I kind of accused her of having Herpes". People then give me really weird look or are like 'Whaaaaaaaaaat?!?'. Here's the thing. Me and this person who I had been dating were talking one night and she said that she could feel a cold sore coming on. I was like "oh you have herpes?" And she was like "NO!". Then I said, oh ok. Of course it couldn't end there. I recalled from doing my human sexuality course that cold sores were supposed to be caused by the Herpes Simplex Virus. After going home I decided to research a bit online and every website that I went to confirmed my recollection about Cold Sores being caused by Herpes. I then preceeded to e-mail her and just let her know about what I found out. I put it delicately because obviously no one wants to think they have an STD. The thing is, Herpes may be a disease, but that doesn't mean you have the Herpes STD that will cause cold sores on your genitals because there is two types. One type is the ones that give you cold sores on your mouth and the other is the one that gives you cold sores on your genitals. Also, don't confuse canker sores with cold sores and freak out that you have herpes like I did for a little while, because I didn't know the difference. Back to my point. I e-mailed this person I was dating and tried to tell her about what I had learned. I didn't say 'I did research, you have herpes!!!'. I basically said, you meantioned to me you felt a cold sore coming on, you might want to do some research yourself or see a doctor to see if the cold sores you're getting is caused by the Herpes virus. Well, she freaked out and then that wa the end of that. I never thought she had the genital variety or anything.

Anyway, after reading up on herpes it really makes me afraid to enter the dating world even more so than I apparently am already. Think about these statistics I've gathered for you: Oral herpes, an infection caused by the herpes simplex virus, is estimated to be present in 50 to 80 percent of the American adult population. 20 percent, over 50 million people, are infected with genital herpes, also caused by the herpes simplex virus, and the majority of these cases may be unaware they even have it because they don't associate cold sores with herpes. That or they don't want to admit to themselves that they have herpes maybe because it makes them feel dirty and they associate it with genital herpes. It's not something people should feel bad about. It's not like it means the person was with some sexual deviants or anything. People could have been infected since they were children by a contagious aunt or uncle that gave you kiss. The scary thing about herpes is that not only do a lot of people have it, people not knowing they have it or not wanting to admit to themselves that they have it but the fact that there is no cure. Here are some more facts for you:

Transmission is caused by close oral, anal, or genital contact, including intercourse, masturbation, kissing, or any direct skin-to-skin contact which allows for the transfer of bodily fluids.
A person is considered contagious when prodromal symptoms, active sores, and healing lesions are present.
Herpes is potentially contagious when no symptoms are present. That is, a person who has genital herpes is potentially always shedding active virus. ]
Approximately 1 in 6 members of the general infected population is thought to shed active virus occasionally without symptoms.
Some people do not get typical blister-like sores but harbor active virus in their saliva, vaginal, or penile secretions, and can shed the virus without knowing they have herpes.
Lesions can occur deep inside the vagina where they cannot be seen or felt, but can readily transmit the virus.
An uninfected individual has about a 75% chance of contracting herpes during intimate contact with someone actively shedding virus.
Oral herpes can be transmitted to the genitals, and vice versa. Symptoms are similar.
Auto-inoculation: An infected individual can spread the virus to other parts of his or her body by touching an area shedding virus and then touching, scratching, or rubbing another susceptible part of the body. Towels are especially conducive to this.
It is possible for a person to contract genital herpes if the partner with oral herpes performs oral sex. Oral herpes can be transmitted to the genitals, and vice versa. Symptoms are similar.

As I was saying it's very scary being in the dating world when there is stuff like this out there and I doubt many would offer the information that they have it if they did know about it. Think of how easy it is to kiss or make out with random people. It's not something I have done personally but I know many people have in their life. Even outside of making out/kissing random people, would there be any polite way to say to someone you're dating but haven't kissed 'do you get cold sores on your mouth?' I guess one could be sly and if someone asked you what you were up to, you could say something like 'I was out for coffee with my friend and all he was complain about his job, his girlfriend, his parents and even his cold sore... everyone has similar problems so he should just deal with it. Well, I don't get cold sores but everyone else has these sorts of problems, right?' If they don't say anything about cold sores then you could always ask if they get them and it's not like it would be out of the blue or anything. I'm thankful that I didn't get any cold sores from the person that I was dating, then again maybe they didn't have cold sores or just mixed them up with canker sores. Anyway, sorry for going guidance counselor on all of you that are reading out there. I just felt like I should share the information with you since a lot of people are uneducated about it.

Well, now that that's out of the way, I'll go back to more of what I've been up to lately. Well I order 4 cd's from Amazon: Arrival by Aviatic, The Dark Third by Pure Reason Revolution, Somber Wurlitzer by Greater California, and You Are The One Who Can by Kieskagato. If you want to hear any songs by those bands, just click on the links which will take you to each bands myspace page. The various Amazon websites are retarded. Retarded in a good way of course. For example, I went to amazon.co.uk to order the Pure Reason Revolution cd because it won't be in north america for a few months and it only cost me £8.00 + shipping. If I had imported it locally I probably would have paid $29.99 + tax. It still would have been more expensive than £8.00 if I had bought it under the import version of the CD at Amazon.com or Amazon.ca. Why I can order it for cheaper from those sites, I'm not quite sure but it's awesome. I always thought registration or mailing adresses would be restricted for each amazon website but they aren't. My friend Steve even ordered a CD from amazon.jp with is the japanese website. Sure he couldn't understand anything written on it but the buttons are mostly in the same spot and it's still cheaper than importing from local stores and faster in most cases as well. The other great thing about Amazon are the resellers who often sell things cheaper than Amazon itself. The Kieskagato CD I ordered was $0.50 US, though shipping was like $5.50 US, but that's still great. Dont' even get me started on how much cheaper Amazon is for gaming books that you would normally have to buy at specialty stores like Time Masters. Amazon is your friend!!

So what have I been listening to lately? Well, of all the cd's I've ordered, so far I've only recieved Aviatic. I managed to find the Pure Reason Revolution album online however to tide me over until the actual disk arrives. Well, as for Aviatic I really liked it. Their a great rock band incorperating paino. Don't think Coldplay because while Coldplay is awesome, Aviatic has a larger rock sound whereas Coldplay is a bit more mellow. Now I mentioned Pure Reason Revolution about 4 months or so ago on my blog when I heard their EP Cautionary Tales For The Brave. Thier full lengthed CD entitled The Dark Third has been released and It's definitely going to be in my top 5 of 2006 unless some seriously good albums come out the rest of the year. How would I describe PRR's sound? Well, they are a progressive rock act in the same vein as Porcupine Tree. If you like Porcupine Tree or Pink Floyd you should definitely give The Dark Third a spin. If you haven't heard of Porcupine Tree you would also do well to listen to them as well. I guess it's possible for PRR to not be in my Top 5 because there are still some bands who I love that are supposed to have an album out later this year such as: Muse, Incubus, Silent Drive, Radiohead, Estradasphere, Blackfield and probably more that I'm forgetting at the moment.

As for other bands I've been listening to, I have a few to tell you about. The first is a band called Russian Circles. Kind of an odd name, but they make great music. I guess they would be along the same line as acts such as Isis, Pelican and Rosetta. They are an instrumental only metal band and I really enjoyed this album. A lot more so than the bands that I've already mentioned anyway. If you want to hear a few songs, you can check out there myspace page HERE. They kind of remind me a bit of Irepress which I mentioned a while ago in one of my earlier blogs. Unlike Irepress though I don't hear anything that sounds like Metroid. This is just kick your ass instrumental metal. Speaking of metal, another band that I have been listening to is Katatonia. They hail from Sweden which a lot of metal acts seem to be coming from these days. They have a bunch of CD's out already and I've listened to a bunch of them but I wasn't overly fussy on them for the most part. Their latest effort entitled The Great Cold Distance is the one I've been listening to and I have to say that it's very good. I wish there had been a tiny bit more range in the vocal department but the song structure is top notch as well as great production value too.

This past Tuesday I picked up two CD's for my friend. Both Canadian rockers as well. The first is the album Exile And The Kingdom by Jeff Martin. Jeff Martin was the lead singer and guitarist/multi-instrumentalist of the well known band The Tea Party before the band broke up and went their seperate ways. What did I think of it? Well, as with all of The Tea Party's albums, I find it to be very hit and miss. The songs that I like, I love and the songs that don't immediately strike me probably never will. If you enjoyed The Tea Party then there is no reason not to listen to it. The second album that I picked up for my friend was Chemical City by Sam Roberts. I actually wasn't eager to hear this album because on his debut CD I only really enjoyed about 4 or 5 songs. I have to say that I was completely suprised by Chemical City because I'm really enjoying every single song on it. I've heard Sam Roberts described as Dylan-esque rock/folk with great hooks. Though I find with Chemical City, its a *little* more tripped out than his previous material which is probably why I'm digging it a lot. Everyone should listen to this album, so go for it. Also if you don't mind using iTunes and you want the album there are 2 exclusive tracks as a bonus which is pretty nice.

Another band I want to tell you about is People In Planes. When I say that they were on the Wind-Up label, I was worried they would be another Nickelback/Creed/Default/Theory of a Deadman Clone but thankfully we get a very different album. I'm not really sure how to describe them. A few of the songs remind me a bit of Queens of the Stone Age but that's only like a song or two. A few people have compared them to Muse but I can't really see those comparisons. The singers voice sounds very familiar to me and I think it's either Serj from System of a Down or the singer of The Apex Theory. Maybe I'm way off but that's what I think of when I think of this band. Either way I love it. I know one of my friends hated the lyrics but I rarely pay attention to lyrics by anyone so it didn't bother me. Give them a listen and decide for yourself. In other news, If you live in a City with a great rock/alternative or metal station, Tool's new single Vicarious will be impacting radio on Monday. We'll never hear it here in Newfoundland but thankfully over the weekend it was easily found on various Bittorrent sites. My anticipation for 10, 000 Days couldn't be any higher than it is right now.

Ok, so out side of music what have I been watching? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that I watched all of Season 1 and 2 of Battlestar Galactica for a second time. If you have no idea what this is, I'll give you a little background information. Battlestar Galactica was a show that was originally made I think in the 1970's around the time the original Star Trek was around. It is supposed to be horrible and cheesy if you watch it this day and age but thankfully about 2 and a half years ago it was re-invisioned and remade into a new TV series. The basic premise of the show is that man created robots called the Cylons and eventually they rebelled and war was waged between man and cylon. Eventually war ends (I can't recall why) and the Cylons leave to make their own home. The whole time they've been advancing and waiting for the time to strike back at people. I know this sounds like a copy of the back story of the Matrix but that's about the end of the similarities. So the Cylons have advanced to the point where they now have machines that look like people. I wouldn't really call it a typical Sci-Fi show because I'm not really fond Sci-Fi in general. This is more like a Drama set in space with occasional action sequences involving spaceship battles or fighting robots. It's a good show worth watching in my opinion. My only complaint is I dislike how they use fake swearing in the show. They use the word Frack instead of F%^&. They have the exact same meaning and they say it fairly often. I also didn't like the slang used in Firefly to replace actual swearing. It's probably the most popular Sci-Fi show in a long time, so watch sometime if you think it sounds interesting.

There are 2 other things I've been watching lately and that falls into the category of anime which I mentioned in a post not too long ago. The two series I've watched are Samurai Champloo and Amazing Nurse Nanako. Amazing Nurse Nanako is very strange. On one hand there's this religious/miltary theme involving cloning which is made out to be very serious, then anytime you see the main character Nanako it becomes complete goofball slapstick anime goofiness. It's a really weird amalgamation but I enjoyed it. It was pretty short only having about 7 episodes I think. As for Samurai Champloo is directed by the same person who directed the popular series called Cowboy Bebop. In Champloo, it follows 3 characters: Mugen, Jin and Fuu. Mugen is a typical 'I don't give a f___' mercenary. Jin a soft spoken, highly trained Samurai and Fuu is a typical goofball anime girl, but she's out to find the mysterious Samurai that smells like sunflowers. The three unlikely companions end up travelling together andI have to say it was one of the more entertaining animes that I've seen. I haven't seen Cowboy Bebop yet but I most certainly have the incentive to do so.

As for my gaming situation. Well, I haven't done any of it. There's a bunch of games I have that I want to play but of course the draw of the computer is too strong. Eventually I'll get around the The Metroid and Metal Gear series. I think there's more stuff I could talk about but I'm pretty much done for now. Also since I this one is so long I'm going to do my next Top 5 next Sunday instead of this Sunday. I figured people would rather a real update rather than another Top 5. I'll try to update a little more but we'll see how work and my free time goes. I hope everyone is having a good easter!

~M

Top 5 in 2002...

2006-04-02T10:12:00.000-07:00

Okay, here we go for my favorite albums of 2002. I'm not going to waste anyones, times, so here we go:

#1 - El Cielo by Dredg

When I first heard of this band, I thought this is about the most nu-metal sounding name out there. The funny thing is that Dredg started out as a nu-metal band with their EP entitled Conscious. This is the album that got me started listening to Dredg when I hard heard them being compoared to a more modern day Pink Floyd and that fans that like Tool would probably like Dredg. Well, I haven't really listened to much Pink Floyd (yes, I know... shame on me) but I do like progressive rock so I thought I should give it a listen. I have to say that I was very pleasently surprised. This album is probably the most mellow thing that they've done so it's a pretty good place to start if you like soft music. I think with this album moreso than the others, it's a concept album that you really need to listen to from start to finish, rather than just listening to a few songs or jumping all over the place. Dredg are amongst my one of my favorite music discoveries in the past 3 years or so, and they might be yours too if you give them a try.

#2 - Steal This Album by System Of A Down

System of a Down is one of my top 10 favorite bands and Steal this album is a shining example of why. I say this because it's basically a album that consists of a lot of B-Sides from the Toxicity sessions. You know a band is really good when their b-side album is better then 90% of other bands normal albums. You'll find typical System of a Down quirk in the form of Chik-N-Stu and Pictures but you'll also find some of Systems best songs such as Mr. Jack and Ego Brain. This was an odd release because I hadn't even heard of it until I actually saw it in one of my local music shops. It was also a little weird because it had no liner notes as well as 3 or 4 different images on the actual CD. I got the one that's shown above that looks like a writeable CD. A lot of these songs where available online for download before this album was released but this about the time when I started getting into downloading music online so I never found them. Bottom line is this definitely stands out to me as a great album despite the fact that it's supposed to be mostly comprised of B-Sides. Give it a listen!

#3 - A Rush Of Blood To The Head by Coldplay

I remember when the song Yellow was floating all over the radio and at that point I hated Coldplay. I really dind't like that song at all. The thing is after hearing the singles In My Place, Clocks, and The Scientist I got to thinking that they sounded to be a pretty good band. My co-worker at the time Jeremy was obsessed with them so I borroed his CD and ripped it onto my computer to give them a try. I have to say that I liked every single song on the album and it got me to try their first album Parachutes as well. I also enjoyed Parachutes though Yellow is still my least favorite track on that album. Coldplay seem to be a love'em or hate'em band since they've become so popular to the general populace. On one hand you have the radio junkies and brit pop/rock fans loveing this album but then on the other side you have the people that dislike Coldplay for 'trying to sound like Radiohead' and people who hate things just because it's popular. I'm kind of indifferent to the arguements, I just know that if I want to listen to something enjoyable this album is never a bad choice for me.

#4 - Untouchables by Korn

As I said in one of my previous blog entries, Korn is a band that is popular to hate or make fun of. Now granted I do feel their music has been going downhill in their past few releases (Take A Look In The Mirror and See You On The Other Side) but Untouchables was an album that I got a lot of enjoyment out of. I think Untouchables is considered to be by most of Korn's fans to be one of their worst albums but right now I think it's probably my favorite one to listen to. Either this or Follow The Leader are definitely my most listened to Korn albums. I think perhaps one of the reasons I like this album of some of the others is because on other Korn albums they seem to have at least one or two songs that are meant to be offensive or overly vulgar whereas I find with this one they just wrote what they wanted to write and if there was vulgar it's because that's what they were feeling at the time. Maybe I'm completely wrong or maybe I'm just forgetting some of the songs on this album, but that's what pops into my head when I think of this album. Regardles of what anyone else thinks about it, I will always think of it fondly.

#5 - Resonance by Mad At Gravity

I hadn't actually heard this album until 2005 but I definitely would have to say, better late than never. Much better!! This is just a good hard rock band. I guess they could be put into a similar vein as Nickelback or Creed or what-have-you but I hate to do so since I really dislike both of those bands. It has some good rock ballads that would fit perfectly on radio and just some other great tunes as well. It's too bad that I've heard that the band has more thna likely broken up. I'm not sure what year it happened but the lead singer left to do his own solo work. I read on the site that the band has started to look for a new singer but I don't know how long ago that was posted and if anything is going to happen with this band again. The singer has some demos on his myspace website and it looks like he'll have a solo record out in the next year or so. Well, it'll be interesting to see what happens to both the band and ex-vocalist but in the meantime I'll always have this album to listen to.

---

Honorable Mentions:

Headspace by Pulse Ultra

Breathe by Leaves

Terraforming by The Postman Syndrome

---

Enjoyed But Didn't Make The Cut:

30 Seconds To Mars by 30 Seconds To Mars
Topsy-Turvy by The Apex Theory
Audioslave by Audioslave
Dirty Sexy Knights In Paris by Audiovent
The Audio Medium by The Cancer Conspiracy
Tides Of Tomorrow by Cave In
What If It All Means Something by Chantal Kreviazuk
Wonder What's Next by Chantal Kreviazuk
Demon Hunter by Demon Hunter
Believe by Disturbed
Letting Go by Earshot
27 Days by Erase The Grey
The Target Release by Hoobastank
The Beginning Of All Things To End by Mudvayne
Hullabaloo Soundtrack by Muse
Development by Nonpoint
Deliverence by Opeth
Precious by Ours
Riot Act by Pearl Jam
137 by Pineapple Thief
Metanoia by Porcupine Tree
Songs For The Deaf by Queens Of The Stone Age
Night Bugs by Sarah Slean
Wiretap Scars by Sparta
Love Is Here by Starsailor
Welcome by Taproot
Waking Hour by Vienna Teng

Well, that's about it for another week. I'll hopefully post another update throught the week or next weekend. I do have a few things to talk about but since today is my only day off before I do another 5 days of work I'm going to try and relax and enjoy it. Plus I ordered a few cd's through Amazon recently which I should get this week so I can talk about that and my training as well as some other stuff to. Take care peoples!!

~M

Sunday mishap...

2006-03-30T08:22:00.000-08:00

Well, I tried to update for my Top 5 of 2002 but unfortunately for some reason I couldn't upload any pictures of album covers. I know I could have just did a write up but I'm a very particular person and I don't want to do something if it can't be done my way :)

I started training at the Teletech call center and it's been keeping me busy and I don't have nearly enough free time, or at least compared to what I'm used to so I probably won't be updating as frequently, though I'll try my best.

Today is my birthday! Yay, one year closer to my ultimate demise!! On the plus side my father is taking me out to lunch before I have to go to work at 3pm. Hopefully I'll get a few dollars as well so I can pick up a few games that I have on hold at Microplay.

I will do my Top 5 of 2002 this Sunday regardless of if I can get pictures uploaded or not. If I have enough time I might also do another post. Well, time to get some lunch before work. Take care people!

~M

Step by step...

2006-03-22T10:42:00.000-08:00

So here we go, I'm attempting to remember what I wrote before and praying to god I don't accidentily erase my post halfway through again. There should really be an auto-save feature while typing up an entry, I think google mail auto saves drafts ever minute or few minutes. That would be a really handy feature. I guess I'll have to do it the oldfasioned way and just copy and paste a paragraph from my blog after I finish each one so if something does happen at least I only have to re-write a paragraph. Re-writing from memory is so anoying because I can't usually phrase it the way I had done so the first time around it I don't think it ends up sounding as interesting as it was the first time. Not that what I write is all that interesting anyway but I guess some of you out there read what I have to say.

Ok, about a year or a year and a half ago I decided that I wasn't happy with my current weight/look. I mean I'm not huge or really fat or anything but I am overweight and I want to do something about it. In the past, I've tried dramatically changing my diet and such but it never ends up sticking so what I tried doing about a year and a half ago was take baby steps and change small things to improve for the better. So the first step was cut out all the crappy pop I was drinking because that's pretty much all I used to drink. How can black-ish liquid that can disolve a nail if you leave it in that liquid long enough be ok for drinking? Well, first I scaled back to drinking diet pop. After a while I decided that I would switch to juice and so I drank Orange and Apple Juice a lot. While their both pretty good for you (Vitamin C and all that) I decided I wanted to just drink water religously because it has no sugar, calories or anything like that. I've managed to stick with it fairly well only occasionally having juice or diet pop and have even lost some weight in the process. That's awesome, so phase one complete.

The next phase wasn't exactly to change what I was eating but rather when I was eating. I used to eat at any hour without any regard and eating before you go to bed is probably the worst thing you can do because you don't burn any of what you're eating while you sleep. I find it's best to have a large breakfast (or lunch if you don't eat breakfast) and then smaller meals throughout the day and never eat 5 - 8 hours before going to bed. I managed this next step ok. I still have late snacks occasionally but then again sometimes I can't predict how late I'll be staying up either so that makes things a little more difficult to plan meals. The next step is to cut out as much take out as possible. That part was pretty easy since I have been unemployed for the last little while. If you think about it, take out is such a waste because it tends to be really fatty and more expensive then something you could make at your house. It also seems like the price of take out scales up the healthier the take out gets. I don't know if this has to do with veggies being more expensive than meat and cheese but either way, it's absolutely rediculous how expensive a sub is.

The next step is the one I'm currently stuck on: eating food that's good for you/having a balanced diet. For a while I tried to be a vegetarian but that didn't really work out. I had also considered trying vegetarianism again around my birthday (March 30th) but I figure what's the point? Why? Well, if I didn't eat meat then I would be severely limiting what I eat because I'm already a picky eater. I eat virtually no veggies except potatoe, corn and I can sometimes eat carrot in soup but that's about it. If I gave up meat I wouldn't be a vegetarian, I would probably be a fruititarian, grainitarian, or pastatarian. With all of these meat only diets and low carb diets people now realize how you can gain a fair bit of weight from Carbohydrates since they're apparently really hard for the body to break down. I mean I thought having a bagel with light cream cheese would be pretty good but someone said that it's probably as bad as a slice of pizza except it has lots of carbs whereas pizza would have a lot of fat, but the result of eating a large amount of either would be weight gain. So my problem is that I don't know what's good for a person to eat besides veggies which I don't really like. I guess some types of soup, some healthy types of cereal, non-fried rice and well, really that's all I can think of. I guess I'll have to look some information up on a nutrition website or something. If anyone has any advice or can point me to a good website, please do so in my comments or e-mail me.

The step after I figure out my whole diet is to actually get some excercise. Yesterday I walked and partially jogged to the mall and I think it broke me. Well, not really but it really showed me how pathetically out of shape I've become. I also rubbed my heel raw so I think it's time for new footware. On the plus side I got to see V for Vendetta but more about that later. A few years back I decided to buy a gym membership but shortly after I bought it I got the flu and didn't go much and even when I got better I couldn't force myself to go. I guess the flu isn't much of an excuse because I probably would have stopped going anyway. I do want to try again though at some point. It's also not like I want to get really buffed up or anything, I just want to do some cardio so I won't be huffing and puffing from doing a bit of walking/jogging or going up lots of stairs. I guess that wouldn't be so bad, so I'll have to do that at some point but I'm not going to do that until I figure out a proper diet... yes I'm weird and like to do things my own way but so far I've been doing ok to make improvements with my life.

If I am to get a gym membership I really want to do so at the Aquarena's 'The Works'. That way not only can I get in some cardio and enjoy the eye candy of the women around but I can also go swimming to my hearts content! Huzzah!! Whoops, did I say swimming? I mean doggie paddle around and generally just manage to stay afloat. Excercising in the water must be the best because even if you get your heart rate up and start sweating you're in water anyway so it wouldn't feel so bad. It doesn't matter that I'm not really good at swimming because I just really enjoy being in the water and it's been that way since I was a kid. I remember when I would go on vacation with my parents, anytime that we weren't out sight-seeing, eating or whatever I would spend 90% of the time in the hotel pools. Hours and hours and I just wouldn't get bored. I mean even getting into showers I stay in about 15 - 20 mins on average but sometimes when I'm just really enjoying the hot water I stay in longer, and no it's not me doing anything naughty either, so get your head out of the gutter :P So yeah, I need to get an Aquarena membership so I can excercise, swim, and have access to when they heat up the pools to simulate a hot tub. This reminds me of when I was visiting Banff and I went to the hot springs. It would drain your energy but all of your worries and and stress would be washed away as well. I will really have to invest in a Jacuzzy (spelling?) when I'm a home owner or in the market for a house.

So, when I had originally written this entry and I deleted it I hadn't seen any new movies or listened to much new music. That isn't really the case at this point in time but I'll talk about that later and I'm still going to write about something that was in my original entry. I have recently rekindled my interest in Anime. I guess some of you may be unfamiliar with what anime is but I'm sure a lot of you have seen some anime or at least heard the names of some animes even if you didn't know that they were atvthe time. Anime is japanese animation. For a while it was also known as japanamation, but that term seems to have disappeared over the years. Anime can come in movie form or short episodal (is that even a word? haha, it is now) television shows. Some of the most well known anime here in western culture would be Pokemon, Sailor Moon, Astroboy, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Inu Yasha, and Robotech. Like I said, if you haven't watched any of these I'm sure you would have to have heard about them unless you were living under a rock. The thing however is that pretty much all of the anime I just listed is geared towards kids and the fact of the matter is that a lot of it isn't. A lot of anime has violence (excessive to mild) and sexual themes (excessive to mild). Even Sailor Moon had to have some aspects changed before it could be shown in North America television. Not only do some have violence and sexual themes, but there are also a fair few that have excessive gore and nudity (and even to the point of animated pornography which is known as Hentai).

Anime usually isn't Timmy's Saturday morning cartoons

I guess, I'm sort of painting a bad picture of anime, but that's not really my intention. I'm just trying to mention how diverse it really is. With anime you can find virtually any genre that would would find in a live action movie or TV show over in North America. Animation geared towards adults isn't exactly a new concept either because if you think about it The Simpsons and Family Guy isn't exactly geared towards kids, and I know a few mothers that wouldn't let their young children see it. Anime just takes that concept a step further, well not all anime because there is stuff out there geared for kids but a lot of it isn't. As for a little history about anime, it seemed to get popular in the late 80's and early 90's. Some of it was from cartoons like Astroboy and Robotech, but the landmark of adult anime came in the form of the movie Akira. When I saw this in my early teens, it blew my fragile little mind on what I thought animation films/shows were supposed to be. Calling it weird would be a little bit of an understatement but maybe I wouldn't find it as weird if I watched it now, then again I probably would. Who would of though that even here in Newfoundland anime would get popular. I remember at MUN there was (and maybe still is) a society called the St.John's Anime Film Society which got me and my friends interested in it. Eventually when blockbusters opened up they started getting anime in, and the rest as they say is history. You can sometimes even catch anime in the theaters every now and again like Ghost In The Shell and Princess Mononoke (well we didn't get former, but we did get the later). Either of those movies would be a good place to start if you wish to see what anime is all about.

Ok, so as I mentioned earlier I saw V for Vendetta yesterday. I know some people will be very closed-minded because of Wachowski Brothers involvement. It seems to be the popular thing to do after the abysmal Matrix sequels but enough about that because we're talking about V For Vendetta. I would have to say that it's probably the best movie that I saw this year in theatre. Then again I haven't seen much in theater yet this year, but it was still excellent regardless. When people say they didn't really enjoy it or it's been given a bad review they usually do for one of three reasons: 1) They feel it glorfies terrorism or 2) The movie apparently doesn't remain faithful to the graphic novel or 3) The Wachowski Brothers involvement. Well, I haven't read the graphic novel so I can't comment on it. Regarding the Wachowski's, I don't think it's fair to judge this film on past failures. As for the glorification of terrorism well, I'm not a very politcal person so I'm not going to go into a deep discussion on societal values of government and when revolution should be needed. The bottom line for me is that this didn't suddenly make me feel 9/11 was justified, and if it did I think I should be more concerned with who impressionable I am, rather than the films content. I'm simply going to say that I thought the story was well thought out and put together. The character V was particularly done amazingly well. For someone that we never see the face of, I believed in his character and motivations far more than a lot of non-masked people in other movies. If you haven't seen it do you self a favor and see it as soon as you have the opportunity to do so.

>>>>>
Ok, just after the above I had started a paragraph about the new album by Dog Fashion Disco entitled Adultery and tried to open a tab to Amazon.com to link Adultery like I just did but Firefox had a critical error and I would have lost all of my entry had I not been copying/pasting each paragraph into notepad. I will have to do that all of the time from now on. Well, I was going to talk about Dog Fashion Disco but I'm just going to skip that and write one more paragaph, think of a name for this entry, and re-insert all of the links and pictures that I had in this post before firefox died. I'm worried I'm going to have something else go wrong like my computer spontaneously turning off or having a power flicker and lose everything. If that happened I would freak!!

Ok, so last paragraph. I finally got a job!! This monday coming I start at Teletech which is a call center that handles incoming calls for Sprint. It's pretty good in the fact that I enjoyed previous call center work that I've done and it starts of at $8.50 per hour. It'll be good to finally have a job and it couldn't have come at a better time because there are a pile of movies coming out in theater between now and the summer that I have see. Well, I hope it goes well and my luck continues with getting accepted into the school I applied for going to in Sept. I'll keep you posted. That's it for now, and sometime I'll probably eventually re-read this entry to look for spelling and grammatical errors. I hope everyone is doing well. Tata for now!!

~M

A very quick update...

2006-03-20T22:54:00.000-08:00

I apologize for not updating sooner. About 3 or 4 days ago I had about an hour of typing done and was tab-browsing on Firefox and then closed Firefox when it was on my non-blog tab. I really shouldn't have disabled the confirmation box when closing Firefox when multiple tabs are open. I looked through the options and I couldn't find a way to enable it so if anyone knows how to please leave a comment or contact me directly if you know me. I'll get to doing a proper update in the next day or two. Here's just a little something for the time being:

This is the artwork for 10,000 Days by Tool according to toolband.com and it is awesome.

Object, insult, phallus... band...

2006-03-14T21:09:00.000-08:00

Well, if you appreciate good music you must have heard of the band called Tool. I try not to be act all high and mighty when it comes to my taste in music but this is one band, regardless of whether you like them, you have to respect the art they have created, and I'm not just talking about audible. Not only are Tool one of the pioneers of progressive Metal but are commonly referred to as a heavier Pink Floyd for this generation. As I mentioned, they are not only talented in the field of music but also imagery. Adam Jones of Tool handles all of the art direction for their videos as well as posters, shirts, album covers/inserts, etc. It may be some of the weirdest things you've ever laid your eyes on but you can't deny his talent and bringing forth the imagery in his head.

This is weird, but it's even more strange in motion... thanks Adam!

If you haven't been living under a rock, you would know that they have a new album coming out in 2006. According to toolband.com it will be released on May 2nd, 2006. It was also posted that the track listing will be as follows:

Vicarious
Jambi
Wings For Marie (Pt 1)
10,000 Days (Wings Pt 2)
The Pot
Lipan Conjuring
Lost Keys (Blame Hofmann)
Rosetta Stoned
Intension
Right In Two
Viginti Tres

If you know Tool, you know that they can be very enigmatic and not everything that you see is what you get. This does seem like the accurate information, but I guess no one will know until we have the album in our hands. There are some pictures floating around about the cover art and insert and some say it's fake but some of it looks so convincing it seems hard to dispute. Either way, you can find a collection of the fake/unconfirmed art for the album at the following website:

http://www.toolcollector.net/fake_artwork/

The pictures seem pretty real to me or at least some of them do. If the picture of the insert with the bands names and kudos is real then it would appear that someone is a fan of my favorite book series called A Song Of Ice And Fire by George R.R. Martin. The reason I believe this is because they mention The Mother, The Maiden, and The Crone which are part of the Seven Gods of the land of Westeros in the novels. I'll show you a pic:

click to enlarge!

Speaking of pictures, even if everything we've been feed so far is fake, we can at least look at some real pictures of the band. I happened to find a bunch of recent pictures of the band and I'm sure you'll get a chuckle out of them. Click the pictures to enlarge them:

Ok, so now you at least know the new album is coming out. The question is, what are you going to do between now and May 2nd (or whenever the album actually comes out)? Well, over the years I've heard a bunch of bands that commonly get compared to Tool. Some of these aren't so great but some have a similar style without trying to imitate and are great in their own right. So here are my 10 favorite bands that are similar to Tool that can keep you busy until the new album arrives:

#1 - Oceansize - This is a band from the UK and out of all of the Tool sound-alikes these guys would be one of my two favorites. I've already talked about two of their albums in my Top 5's so if you want to read more about them you can do so there.

#2 - OneSideZero - This is the other band that I would consider to be in my two favorite bands that sound like Tool. They don't have as much of a progressive edge as Tool, seeing as the longest song on their only album entitled Is This Room Getting Smaller is 6 minutes. That doesn't mean they aren't good though. In fact they are very good. They were broken up for a little while but thankfully they are back together and working on material for a new album.

#3 - Cog - This band hails from Australia and I have to say the vocals are nothing like Tool but they definitely have a Tool vibe going on with their music. They only have one album out right now called The New Normal which I really enjoy listening to. It might be a little hard to track the album down, but it's worth your while to.

#4 - A Perfect Circle - I can't help but place this band on the list since the lead singer of Tool, Maynard James Keenan, is in the band. That being said, the music definitely has a completely different feel to it than Tool. I would have ranked them higher except I wasn't too fond of their 3rd album which was mostly not-so-great covers. I don't really need to say much more about this band because if you like Tool you probably know about these guys already. So, instead of talking about them, I'll just say that if you like APC, then also check out the band 10 years. They aren't as good as APC but they are worth listening to.

#5 - Indukti - This band is from Poland and I like to think of them as a crazy crossbreed of Tool and Apocalyptica. It sounds weird but it's really quite good if you sit down and listen to it. About half of the album entitled S.U.S.A.R. is instrumental and the other half has a guest vocalist from fellow Polish band called Riverside. There's not really much else I can say about this band except give it a listen if you have the opportunity!

#6 - Acroma - I have to say that I like this band more than Rishloo, Ermine, and Earshot but I think that's because sometimes they do sound a bit like Tool but othertimes they seem to go in a more general hard rock vibe. I think only album entitled Orbitals sometimes sounds like Tool because it was produced by Sylvia Massy who has produced albums for Tool as well. I highly recommend this album.

#7 - Rishloo - This is a band that I recently had brought to my attention. This is another band that to me sound like they are trying too hard to be Tool. I will say though that their fist album entitled Terras Fames was much better than Earshots first. Maybe on the next album these guys will branch out a bit more for their own sound and it will be more enjoyable. Either way if you're crazy about Tool's style of music, it's at least worth one listen.

#8 - PEACH- Another band that I have to add to the list just because a member of Tool is actually in this band. That band member is bassist, Justin Chancellor. Justin happened to be in this band and toured with Tool until Tool's current bassist at the time, Paul D'Amour, left the band. I have to say that their album entitled Giving Birth To A Stone is pretty good despite the fact that I don't listen to it very often. There is even a cover of a King Crimson song on the album. Tool has also been known to cover a few Peach tunes while playing live shows as can be heard on the CD portion of the very rare CD/DVD set entitled Salival (which I just so happen to own :) )

#9 - Earshot - This is a band that really went out of their way to try and mimic Tool's sound on their first album entitled Letting Go. It was an ok listen but it makes you think, these guys are trying so hard to sound like Tool but it just doesn't come off that well and makes you just crave to actually listen to Tool. Their second album entitled Two was a little bit of a step in their own direction which made it a more pleasent listen.

#10 - Ermine - This is actually a Canadian band from Nova Scotia. I first heard of them when I stumbled onto the Maps Of The Rise And Fall EP which was very good to my surprise. I then found out the released a full lengthed album entitled The Murra but after listening to it a few times, I'm just not completely enamoured by it. That's not to say that it's bad, it just didn't quite appeal to me, but it may appeal to you.

That's more than enough to keep you busy, but if it isn't you may want to check out the original soundtracks to both of the Underworld movies because each of them contain a song by the band Puscifer which Maynard James Keenan and Danny Lohner are a part of. The songs entitled 'REV 22-20' and 'The Undertaker (Renholder Mix)' are really quite different than Tool but if you're craving to hear more of Maynards voice then you'll be in for a treat. Speaking of Maynard's voice, you can also hear him on the song 'Know Your Enemy' on Rage Against The Machine's self-titled album as well as the song 'Passenger' on the album White Pony by the Deftones.

Anyway, if you don't have any these albums, buy them... right now:

Opiate (click here to buy me)

Undertow (click here to buy me)

Ænima (click here to buy me)

Lateralus (click here to buy me)

Well, I never meant to make such a huge post, I just wanted to mention about the new album, but Tool are good enough to warrant such a post and it breaks the silence I've had for a while (not including Sunday's Top 5). I hope May 2nd is the date for the new album and I hope it's as good as we all want it to be. Try not to go too crazy while waiting for it and have a nice day!

~M

Top 5 in 2003...

2006-03-12T08:28:00.000-08:00

I know it's been a little while since my last update but I haven't really had much to say. Not a lot has happened. Well, things aren't going so well, but I try not to make my blog a "my life sucks because..." sort of deal because I don't like to focus on the negative. Well, I try not to anyway, I'm sure it slips out every now and again. I have no idea when my next update (besides the bi-weekly top 5's) will be but hopefully it won't be any longer than a week.

Ok, so 2003 was my favorite year for music. An unbelievable amount of music that I enjoyed was released in that year. Just to give you an idea, 5 of my 10 favorite bands released albums this year. Not only that, but it's when I started listening to less heavy metal and more of the rock groove that I seem to be enjoying now. So, here we go for my top 5 of 2003:

#1 - In Absentia by Porcupine Tree

In Absentia is what I consider to be the best Porcupine Tree album that was ever released. This is quite the accomplishment considering how many albums they have released over the years. I guess you wouldn't think that they released a lot because you probably have never even heard of them. Don't worry, they are widely unknown to a lot of people. They do, however, have over 7 albums released but I think this particular album is a good place to start if you haven't heard of them. How would I describe the music? Well, there's a lot of range between hard rock, metal, soft rock, and instrumental/progressive pieces. The variety of the album is what makes me appreciate it so very much. Thankfully with the internet, Porcupine Tree is getting more well known for their very unique music that they offer to people. I guess people will just have to start looking past the name and give the band a try. Those who do will definitely be well rewarded.

#2 - Effloresce by Oceansize

You have no idea how long it took me to get into listening to this album. I just couldn't decide whether I wanted to listen to it on a regular basis or not. People told me about the band about a year or so ago and did listen to this album and their EP Music For Nurses that was released in 2004 but it just wasn't clicking with me. I don't know what made me decide to try this album again but when I did give it another try, it was like the music was finally fitting into my brain like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. After I finally started to get it, I just haven't really been able to stop listening to the album for about the past 6 months. As I stated about their 2005 release, they remind me of a cross between Mogwai and Tool. It sounds like an odd combination but they make it work. There is just something about the textures of sound that the band creates with the three guitarists they have. I don't know if this or Everyone Into Position would be the best album to start with, do start somewhere and listen to the album more than once to get a feel and understanding of what the band is trying to give to the listener.

#3 - Damnation by Opeth

This is not typical Opeth. Typical Opeth songs are about 7 to 10 mins in length. Typical Opeth albums are 65 to 79 mins in length. Typical Opeth albums have Mikael Åkerfeldt howling his death metal vocals with only sparse use of clean vocals (which he does do remarkably well). Typical Opeth albums have crazy distorted guitars and death metal drumming. I would not have liked typical Opeth albums if I hadn't started with this album. I don't really know what possessed Opeth to do this sort of album but I'm so happy that they did because I never would have listened to them otherwise. Basically with most Opeth songs you'll have a 10 min death metal song with about 2 - 3 of those minutes having soft accoustic sound and nice and clean vocals. This is what all of Damnation is like. I would recommend this album to pretty much anyone. If they do like heavier music as well, then I would consider introducing them to other Opeth albums after they have a firm appreciation for Damnation. There will certainly be a surprise after hearing any other Opeth album but I think if you like heavier music you would come to enjoy what they have to offer. I first took interest in Opeth when I found out that Porcupine Tree's mastermind: Steve Wilson produced this album as well as provide backing vocals as well as mellotron and piano. I consider this album a work of art and even if you'll never appreciate their other material, I dare you to find faults in this album.

#4 - Antenna by Cave In

Back in 1995 Cave In started as a hardcore metal but then in 2000 they started experimenting with a mixture of hard rock and space rock. Some old time fans felt forsaken, some welcomed the change but they definitely gained a new audience in the process. After 2 EP's and an album of this non-hardcore music they got picked up by major music label RCA. Some consider them to have sold out since they didn't do the hardcore music anymore and their song selection on this album is even a bit more relaxed then their other rock efforts. Whether they sold out or not I'll leave for someone else to discuss but in my opinion, this is an absolutely fantastic album. If you want an idea on the sound, well this album has a similar style to a Foo Fighters album. I guess it wasn't a commerical success though because Cave In are no longer with RCA. Their 2005 album was a mixture of hard core and the hard rock that can be found on this album and Jupiter. I have no idea what's going to happen with this band but this is a good album to ease yourself into the other material.

#5 - Absolution by Muse

Muse is another band that I love for the shear fact that they have a lot of variety on their albums. This is the 4th European band on this top 5 so it would be understandable if you've never heard of them. You probably have sample a snippit of their music however. In the trailer for Unleashed when the action starts happening you'll hear piano with so cool sounding rock accompanying it. This is from the song Apocalypse Please from this album, though they removed the lyrics for the trailer. They are very popular over in the UK because they are often getting compared to Radiohead. I guess I could see the comparison though I would say they tend to be heavier than Radiohead as well as less experimental, but theys till sound quite a bit different than everything else out there. People also say the lead singer guitarist/vocalist Matthew Bellamy is a dead ringer for Radiohead vocalist Thom Yorke, I guess because of all of the falsetto. I don't really agree with this. I think he sounds more like Jeff Buckley when Jeff sings in falsetto. A lot of people actually consider this Muse's worst album but I really like it. It's not their best work but it's still very entertaining. If you like Radiohead give this a try. If you don't like Radiohead because they are too weird, then this might be a nice alternative.

---

Honorable Mentions:

Heroes And Villians by Paloalto

A Natural Disaster by Anathema

Love Is Worth It by Silent Drive

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Enjoyed But Didn't Make The Cut:

Lost Dogs by Pearl Jam
Blackout by (hed) PE
Thirteenth Step by A Perfect Circle
Orbitals by Acroma
Unstable by Adema
Käärmelautakunta by Alamaailman Vasarat
Gravity by Anekdoten
Reflections by Apocalyptica
Two Conversations by Appleseed Cast
Elephunk by Black Eyed Peas
Begins Here by The Butterfly Effect
Cardia by Cardia
Slow Hole To China by Clutch
Dancing Echoes, Dead Sounds by Codeseven
Year Of The Spider by Cold
Two Angels And A Dream by Depswa
Comitted To A Bright Future by Dog Fashion Disco
Songs For The Restless by Endo
Painter's palette by Ephel Duath
It's Understood by Estradasphere
Quadrapus by Estradasphere
Fallen by Evanescence
Finger Eleven by Finger Eleven
Lover-Fighter by Hawksley Workman
The Reason by Hoobastank
The Quicksilver Meat Dream by I Mother Earth
Time To heal by Jeff Greene
Meteora by Linkin Park
Lo Pro by Lo Pro
Manmade God by Manmade God
De-loused In The Comatorium by The Mars Volta
Avalanche by Matthew Good
In Lake 'Ch' by The Mayan Factor
Beginnings by Memento
Happy Songs For Happy People by Mogwai
Motograter by Motograter
Skeletons by Nothingface
Office Of Strategic Influence by OSI
Variations On A Dream by Pineapple Thief
Vulture Street by Powderfinger
Animals Should Not Try To Act Like People by Primus
Sender.Reciever by Quitter
Hail To The Thief by Radiohead
Places For Breathing by Revis
Ghosts by Sleeping At Last
With The Tides by South
Every Given Moment by Stereomud
The Beautiful Letdown by Switchfoot
Three Days Grace by Three Days Grace
House Of Ill Fame by The Trews
Becoming, I by Unloco
Elephant by The White Stripes

Fear and Loathing...

2006-03-04T12:31:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm going to try again and if it get's deleted this time well, I guess you won't be reading this because I'll be giving up. Let's see if I can remember everything I said before:

Hi again!

Well, I apologize for all past, present and future grammatical erros, mispellings and typos. When I do a normal sized entry it will probably take me at least about an hour or two and but then end of that time the last thing I want to do is to re-read all of it to look for these errors. Now I do like to go back and read what I've written, it was in fact one of the purposes of doing this whole blog thing but it will probably be days after writing a blog entry that I will edit some typos I missed. I'm a stickler for proper english instead of people talking like 'hey u whattya at today m8?'. For this reason I try my best to make something readable and I think most understand what I'm trying to say. Anyway, the reason I'm doing another entry so soon is partially because there were a bunch of things I was thinking about that didn't get into my last entry and partially because I haven't been listening to much music lately and just sitting down and listening to music with nothing to do is usually not that great unless I'm in a specific mood to do that. So I have 65daysofstatic blaring while re-writing this entry. I'll also be listening to Franz Ferdinand, Time Lapse Consortium and the Matthew Good Band.

For a long time I've been meaning to watch Mulholland Drive, which I think I even mentioned in one of my other blog entries. It's supposed to be a very weird movie, but that didn't really scare me off because I've always had a taste for the odd and quirky. Once my friend told me that Naomi Watts had a lesbian scene in the movie, that sealed the deal ;) So I borrowed the movie from Steve to watch. Since it's a thriller I was hesitant to watch it for a while because I'm very much a pansy and get freaked out a little too easy. About a little less than a week ago I happened to wake up early and I figured that watching it during the day would be a good idea. Well, about 12 mins into the movie a person in a diner is talking to someone about how he's having deja vu about talking to the person he's currently chatting with in this exact same place and that the go behind the diner near some of the garbage bins where he sees the most horrific face he could possibly concieve. At this point they decided to go and check out behind the diner. At this point I'm thinking if this happened in a dream or I had deja vu about what was going to happen I would have got the f^*& out of dodge. Well, low and behold they go behind the diner and then they see the face and that's when I click stop on my remote and declare 'f$%^ this $h*&', and I'm not normally a vulgar person. Lesbian scene or not, I'm done. Steve tells me that the yucky face is only in there one more time at the end of the movie but seeing it once was one time too many.

Not, even this face could keep me watching Mulholland Dr. *drool*

So yeah, I'm a horrible coward when it comes to thriller/horror movies. Now I don't don't mind gore and blood and guts (as long as it isn't jumping out at you anyway), but anything even remotely suspenseful will get me a little freaked out. You want to know how bad I am when it comes to this sort of thing? I guess I could give you an idea. I remember my cousin bringing me to see ET in theaters was released in 1982... wow that would have made me 4 years old. I didn't think I was that young but I guess I was. I guess I'm getting a little off-topic though. Well, I remember ET's teeth really freaking me out when he showed them. Come to think of it, I remember seeing The Neverending Story and there was this pure black creature in it but it had these really sharp white teeth that freaked me out evertime I saw it. I also remember in my youth going to see Ghostbusters in theater. I saw the opening where there's a library and then this ghost pops out which really scared me to the point where I ran out of the theater and then I think my parents grabbed me and brought me into The Karate Kid which was playing at the same time.

I even recall some TV shows freaking me out. I remember the first and only time I watched an episode of the X-Files. It was in the first season and the episode was about this killer who would steal peoples kidneys and I think he would shrink himself to be able to go into the plumbing of peopls houses. Another scary TV moment that sticks out in my mind was Seaquest DSV was in one of it's final seasons. Near the end of the show's cycle it got very weird and paranormal, so I used to call it, deep sea X-Files. Anyway I remember this one episode where there was this woman who had these really weird eyes and spoke in the voice of a man with some weird effects done to his voice. I don't like when an weird non-normal voice comes out of people like in Constantine when Keanu Reeves character is exorcising a demon from a girls body. The girls voice freaked me out. I also don't like when people do weird things with eyes, like the end of Michael Jackson's Triller video freaks me out and I always avert my eyes. I remember going to see Event Horizon in theater and I had my eyes averted a fair more than actually watching the film. The simplest things really can freak me out. I mean even in Fellowship of the Rings there were two points I averted my eyes: When Bilbo is staying with the elves and his face turns all freaky and evil when Frodo won't let him see the ring of power. The other instance is when Galadriel is tempted by the ring of power. Come to think of it, maybe that's why Fellowship is my least favorite of the Lord of the Rings movies. Nah, I think it has more to do with the two war sequences in the latter two movies. The only thing scary movies are good for is getting close to lady friend ;)

Speaking of lady friends, I feel like I'm going to be single forever. Not only am I kinda weird but I'm extremely picky. I'm not just saying that in the physical sense either. My friend sthat no me well know that I'm picky in all aspects of my life. Though when I think about people's appearences I think that I may have higher standards than the average guy, but trust me, I don't feel like I deserve to have high standards. In fact I think it's almost silly for a person to have high standards because I feel when a person is in a relationship with someone, as you become more emotionally attached to them they in turn will become more physically attractive to you. Let me guess, you think I'm very superficial? Well, this is how I've always viewed my standards: If I'm attracted to a person, then I'd be willing to date them and if I don't find them attractive or if I find them repulsive I wouldn't date them. If my friends or the average person thought someone was unattractive but I found them attractive then that wouldn't sway whether I would want to date them. If I find them attractive then that's good enough for me. Do you really think you would be interested in dating someone that you found unattractive? If you do I think you're deluding yourself. Maybe you aren't deluding yourself though depending on your gender, because guys and girls tend to look for different things in the opposite sex.

If you're wondering what I'm talking about at the end of the last paragraph, I'll talk a little more about it. In a documentary on human sexuality and attraction it's noted that on a subconscious level, men use visual stimuli to choose their mates. It's mainly based on their hip to waist ratio (which I also learned about in a Psychology course I did in University called Sexual Behaviour). The reason for this is because men are looking for a suitable mates to give birth to their children so they can pass on their genes to another generation and larger hips will mean an easier time for child birth in comparsion to someone with very small hips. It's basically subconscious for men to evaluate potential mates based on their appearence. Now, on this documentary it says that women are more concerned with a man's place in society and their financial security. The reason for this is that women subconsciously look for partners that are able to care of the children they birth. Obviously times are changing with both women entering the work force and seeking more equality but that used to be a general rule of attraction.

Disagree with the documentary? Think about the term Golddigger. It's basically a woman that's going out with/marrying men for their money. Have you ever heard of the term to refer to men? I'm sure it's possible but it's on a much lower scale. Ok, outside of that term men often like young attractive women (visual stimulii) and women tend to go out with older guys and are less picky about appearence. Still not convinced? Just think about it in these terms: Porn for men outsells porn for women by a huge margin. If women like sex as much as men do, then the only explanation would be that men are much more receptive to visual stimuli. Not only that but in my Human Sexuality course we learned that, if you look at the pictures in pornographic magazines aimed at men and then compare them to the pictures in pornographic magazines aimed for women, there is a pretty big difference. The ones aimed at men are just flat out, in-your-face nudity and/or sexually explicit. The ones in magazines aimed at women don't show as much complete full frontal nudity. Not only that, they supposedly have a more artistic look to them for women to 'create fantasies' to.

When I think about superficialty and dating, I always think of what a guy said on Much Music's Speakers Corner (I'm just paraphrasing here): A male will not usually become friends with a female unless he considers them attractive enouugh to date. He will not necessarily try to act on the attraction he feels however. Maybe I'm crazy and this isn't how it is with other people but in my own experiences I've found it to be true. On this subject some would ask, can men and women who hangout together often have a true friendship? My opinion is: Can males and females who are both straight be friends? Yes. Can males and females who are both straight be very close friends without any sexual tension? Probably not. That doesn't mean either will act upon it, but some level of sexual tension probably exists for one or both of the individuals. I can only draw upon my own experiences and the women that I consider worthy to be my close friends, I usually become attracted to. When it comes to platonic friendships, I've never had a female become as close a friend to me as a male unless it eventually led to feelings of attraction. Personally I don't really see that as a good thing but you can't help what you like. Am I right?

Anyway, I think that's all I'm going to do now for fear of losing everything I typed for a second time. I will however leave you with a cute little flash video. The music/speech is pretty quiet in it, so I would recommend turning up the volume a bit on it: Click Me!!

Have a good day!

~M

Angst...

2006-03-04T10:28:00.000-08:00

I was doing another post today but unfortunately when I was tab-browsing with Firefox I erased about an hours worth of writing due to one missed mouse click. Grrr...

Maybe I'll start re-writing it in a few days or so when I'm not quite so annoyed.

*cry*

~M

Demon Plastic...

2006-03-02T15:14:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone! First and foremost: Thanks for the few positive comments that I've received on some of my blog entries. I know it lists people as anonymous but you don't have to be. You could always just posy your name and I still probably would have no idea who you are, or even some initials so I know if it's the same people leaving comments or not. Well, it was just a thought, if you don't want to that's fine. At someone's request, here's a new blog entry.

Ok, so credit cards I often refer to as Demon Plastic. Well, I am the unfortunate victim of my own bad spending habits and the credit card companies laugh behind my back. My new goal is too pay off my credit card completely. I'm hoping to get this done before Sept but before that happens I guess I have to get a job. It's not exactly a good time of year but I had an interview at Canadian Tire about a week ago and I had to do an aptitude test which also had a section on morality as is typical for large chains to do. During the test I did something very stupid. The questions were numbered like this:

1._________ 2.___________ 3.__________ 4.___________ 5.____________
6._________ 7.____________ 8.__________

but I filled it out like this:
1._________ 5.___________ 9.__________
2._________ 6.___________ 10.__________
3._________ 7.___________ 11.__________
4._________ 8.___________ 12.__________

At least I recognized that I did that and when it was over I asked if I could fill out a new sheet. I figured even if I'm showing that I couldn't even fill the questionnaire right at least my score might turn out to be good. The lady then let's me know she'll be correcting them and she'll make note of it. At this point it looked like a test you would put in an automatic corrector so I just figured she was brushing me off and that would be the last I will have heard from Canadian Tire. Later on that evening though they called me for an interview for Tues of this week which I decided to go to. The interview was pretty good as far as I can tell and they informed me that they were still interested in me and that they would call be back on Wed. or Thur. Here it is Thursday night and no call yet. I hoping it's just that they had a little trouble getting a hold of one of my references instead of them changing their minds. I really need a job. I mean working is really annoying but I need money right now. I want to completely pay off my credit card and it would be nice if I had a bit of spare cash in case I go out on any meet and greets in the near future. Ugh, 27 and looking for a minimum wage job. How sad is that? Well, I guess it's better than being unemployed. I guess I just wish Sept would come sooner.

I'm a weird guy. I mean I've known that I'm different for a while but it never struck me how strange until I told my friend about eating cereal in a plastic cup and the fact that it's a regular occurrence. A Lipton cup of soup was already strange enough but eating cereal out of a plastic cup... yeahh... I apologize to all you environmental people out there to what I'm about to say: I hate housework!! Especially dishes! So much so that I use paper plates and plastic cups regularly. Maybe environmentalists called all plastic cups and such demon plastic haha. Well, anyway, to my defense I do reuse them a lot so I can cut down on the waste as much as possible, like if I just have water in a cup than I'll use it more than once. Even if I have a pop every now and again I usually wash it out so it can be re-used. Same thing if there are just some crumbs on my plate from toast, I'll re-use the plate. Since I've never seen plastic bowls I just decided to use a cup for my cereal. When it comes to making things like soup or some tomatoey pasta, I'll just eat it out of the dipper. I do all of this just so I can save time and not have to do dishes very often. I often liked to joke that if I ever got married and my wife-to-be didn't want to use disposables then she could do the washing afterwards, though in reality I know that in the future I'll just get a dishwasher. Yes, I am strange.

Ok, so what have I been doing lately? Well, as always I have been watching two episodes of Seinfeld on TV week daily. Did you like that phrase? I just made it up. Anyway, it used to annoy me that on TV they would only show from seasons 1 - 6 so I decided to download seasons 7 - 9 just so I can re-watch them. That's the thing I love about Seinfeld, no matter how many times you watch it you just never get sick of it. It's probably the best TV ever created, in my not-so-humble opinion. I don't really watch a lot of TV. The only shows that I actually like are Seinfeld, Duckman, Trailer Park Boys, Firefly, Survivor and Battlestar Galactica. Of those shows, only half are still running new episodes/seasons. I used to never miss an episode of Survivor and Thursday was Survivor night but lately I just don't watch it when it comes on. The beauty of bit torrent has been shown to me and I think it's the only way I can digest television anymore. The benefit of downloading TV shows is that I can watch them whenever I feel like it (which I guess I could do if I taped it on a VCR... but then again who still owns these in this day and age?). Not only is there the convenience of watching it whenever but now there are no commercials. Even if you tape something off on a VCR the quality probably won't be as good as what's recorded by people online and you still have to fast-forward through the commercials.

Personally I think television is pretty useless. There isn't that much good on TV and even if there are shows that you like you have to watch the commercials. I often thought I wonder what would happen if I sold my TV. Could I still function? Well, at the time when I thought this I never had any gaming systems, so that's one less use. At the time the only show I watched on TV was Survivor which I guess I could cut out. What else would I need a TV for? Movies. I guess that's the only thing that kept me from selling it. I mean yeah I could watch movies on my computer now where I have a DVD rom and to be honest I wouldn't mind it. I could feasibly live without a TV but then again if I was ever to have company over, it's not like it would be a good idea for me to say, let's gather around the computer monitor on these kitchen chairs and relax and enjoy. Who am I kidding? I never have company over though. I guess it's possible in the future but I have no need to sell my TV so I'll be holding on to it. Though I don't ever see myself investing into a large screen television.

Other than watching Survivor, Battlestar Galactica, and Seinfeld re-runs, I've been wtaching some movies. A day or two after Valentines I watched The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. Both movies were really good adventure flicks and if you haven't seen them I would recommend that you check them out. They kind of remind me of a cross between Indiana Jones and Army of Darkness. I can't really speak for The Scorpian King though because I haven't seen it. I heard it was really bad however. What else? I also watched The Saint as well as Mission: Impossible and Mission: Impossible 2. The Saint kind of reminded me of Mission: Impossible. In fact I'd say that The Saint was closer to Mission: Impossible than Mission: Impossible 2. A lot of my friend weren't too fussy on MI2 because it was so action packed (which I guess is due to it being directed by John Woo). I decided to watch both MI's because # 3 will be out this summer which I'm really looking forward too. Here's a trailer for it if you haven't seen anything on it: click me baby, one more time. I know some people are really disliking Tom because he's apparently 'gone crazy' what with his talks about people shouldn't be using medicine and acting like a school girl in love when it comes to the young and beautiful Katie Homes, but the guy can still act and act well. That's enough for me.

Can you really blame Tom? =)

So TV and Movies have been mentioned. I guess the only other things I've been up to is playing a game and listening to music. The game I've been playing is called: Jak and Daxter and The Precursor Legacy (click link for review). I must say that it's a pretty good platforming game. It wasn't fantastic but it was a bit of fun. I was so looking forward to finishing it because now I can start on Jak II and then Jak 3 which are all supposed to be absolutely fantastic. I also have Ratchet and Clank here at my house to play which is supposed to be good but also not as good as the later games in the series. I don't know what it is about games lately but games that only take 7 - 15 hours seem to be the ideal for me. At one time I used to think that there was no point in buying non-rpg video games because they are so much shorter and thus you're not getting as much bang for your buck. That isn't the case for me anymore. If a game is really good I don't care how long it takes to complete. I just don't seem to have much stamina for playing long rpg's like in my youth. I'll still make an exception for when the next Final Fantasy game is released but until then, I'm sticking more towards action/adventure and platformers.

Oh, I also forgot to mention that I finished the game: The Legend of Zelda, The Wind Waker. It's on the gamecube system and is probably the prettiest game I've ever had the pleasure of viewing. It's like playing a cartoon. In fact the animation in the game is probably better some cartoons. As with all of the Zelda games the dungeons with the puzzles are the most fun aspects of the game. One grip I did have with this game however is the Triforce fetch quests that you have to do before facing the final bosses tower which completely grinds the action to a shuddering stop. Another minor detail that is less in this games favor is that it only has about 5 true Zelda dungeons. Normally there are about 10+ but there's only about 5 in the Wind Waker. Well, I really loved this game and Ganondorf is a total badass. If you have a Gamecube, you should buy or at least rent this game.

I haven't been listening to a lot of music with the TV, gaming, and job searching that I've been doing but I do have a few tasty nuggets for you. The first band that I've come across is Aireline. I don't really know how to describe this band with the exception of piano driven rock. I guess you could compare them to Coldplay when Coldplay is using piano. If you really want to know what they sound like just click the link in this paragraph and listen to a few of the clips that are available. I'm really surprised that I discovered this band because there doesn't seem to be much information on this band floating out there on the good ol' internet. Their website seems to have been replaced by an actual airline website and their myspace page also seems to be gone. Either way, they have one album out called 'Ocean Songs From The Year Of The Horse' and an EP called 'Winter Song'. Do check them out of you think you like Coldplay-ish rock. Hey speaking of Year of the Horse, that has to do with my birthday. I was born in the year of the horse and I have a birthday this month. I hope it turns out to be pretty fun.

Do you like Incubus? If you do are you one of the many fans out there that preferred their earlier and funkier music? If so, then you're in for a treat. I never heard of this until recently but in 2003 basically all of Incubus (minus Brandon and Dirk Lance) played a show in which they dubbed themselves Time Lapse Consortium. The bassist for this project is now Incubus's current bassist since Dirk left the band. It also has a variety of other guest players because there's a lot of instruments and crazy sounds going on in the music. They did put out one live album 'Live At The Roxy 1.24.03' and I have to say that it's fantastic. It's very upbeat and funky. Brandon even guest stars on a Time Lapse Consortium cover of 'A Certain Shade of Green' which is very different than the original. In fact, with the exception of the aforementioned song, the entire album is instrumental. I think the material is very similar to what was done for the Halo 2 soundtrack. Definitely give it a listen if you like Incubus and don't mind instrumental music.

Online is a weird and wonderful place. A place that I like to call home. I spend a lot of time on the internet and since I am shy and don't have the opportunity I have used the internet for trying to find a date as well. I think I've mentioned how the disadvantage is that even if you see a picture, what you see is usually not what you get. There are advantages, but I guess it's mostly for the women. If I were a woman I would almost exclusively try to meet people through the internet. Why in God's name would I do this? I'm glad you asked. Safety! Let's look at the points:

1) You're using a website to communicate with men. If you don't like them, or they harass you, you can simply block them from contacting you in the future. If you meet someone in real life and want to get to know them you have to meet them and/or give them your phone number before you even know if they're a psychopath or not. With communication on a website they don't know your name, your phone number or your address. In fact that don't even know your e-mail address unless you give it to them

2) So you're talking to someone through a dating website and they don't seem to be too crazy but it's annoying talking through mails rather than in real time through a messenger program. Here's what you do: set up an MSN account specifically for contacts from the dating website so you don't have to give anyone your real e-mail address. If you talk to them and everything seems to be going good you can then give them your true MSN or you could wait until you meet them.

3) One thing I would recommend for ladies looking to try online dating is when you do contact someone and are chatting with them, don't meet them for at least 2 - 4 weeks. I think some guys have a tendency just to act nice because they're trying to seem like a nice guy when all they're interested is in getting into a girls pants. Well, if you make them wait a decent amount of time before meeting them you have the potential of weeding out some bad seeds. If they are only interested in trying to get you into bed they'll probably get impatient and move on to the next person. If you make people wait you can ensure that they're really interested in you.

4) So you've been talking to a guy online and have been talking to someone for a while and it's going well. If you want perhaps you should meet them and see if it's going to go somewhere or not. If you want you could give them your phone number or not. Not is safer until after you meet someone because some people just know after seeing someone if they would be interested in them or not. So, set up a meeting time somewhere public. Not getting them to pick you up or drop you off is safer but it's up to you whether or not you want to give this information up.

5) If things go well, then you can give whatever personal information you feel comfortable in doing so. If they don't well then you can put them out of your life without any trouble or worrying about harassment. I should also say that it's great for women on dating sites because on paying dating sites it's usually free to respond to peoples mails and since males are typically in the role of initiator it won't really cost you a penny.

There you have it. How can online dating be less safe than going downtown being partially intoxicated and around a bunch of intoxicated men who could be there just to 'get their skin'. If you were downtown if you wanted to get to know someone you would have to talk with them (probably in a non-loud environment) which would require a phone number or being around them. It just seems a whole lot less safe. Anyway, for those ladies that haven't tried internet dating, what's the harm? Just try to not let the pervs and people twice your age scare you away and always remember that you have a block button.

So speaking of trying to find love on the internet, I've just had the most odd thing happen to me in the past week. On myspace a person from Russia contacted me and wanted to chat. I'm always up for meeting new people so I gave the person my e-mail address and the first e-mail I received from here was pretty standard getting to know you stuff. So I respond to her in a normal fashion and await a response. She mails me a few days later and here's a snippet:

Well, my main hope and dream is the search of loved male and creation with him
the family.
I search male which will support me when support will be necessary for me, that
who will understand me.
But my male should be strict with me if I choose not a correct way.
For me the main thing is the man loves me, and I  shall love him and it is
necessary for me that he pais me attention!
I do not ask to sit near me every minute. No, I simply want my beloved not to
forget date of our acquaintance, Date of our wedding, I want him to be
interested in my health and mood.....
I am sure, that I shall have the happiest family. I shall make all that my
husband and I will live in harmony and mutual understanding.
I will take care of my beloved when will be sick. My grandmother has told to me
some cunnings of national medicine.
I would like to spend every evening with my beloved and to speak with him about
my dreams, I would like to hear it from him the same!
I want to help to cope to the husband with difficulties of a modern life
I do not think, that the age and education are very important, though I am
rather well prepared for a joint life.
What is important for you and how you concern to our friendship?
I know this life from many sides, and I am ready to try  to make my family
happy.
I do not know, whether you are ready to answer me and whether you want our
friendship but why not to try?
I shall regret, if i do not make it!.
I think, that we should use all opportunities to find our happiness.
The life is too short to use it only for ideas and dreams.
I sincerely hope, what we shall meet each other, and probably we shall be more
than friends?
Certainly there will be many problems on our way. Probably that we can remain
only friends.
Probably it will appear strong feeling of love between us, and we cannot live
without each other. However I do not know. The life will show.
If we are sure, that we are necessary for each other we wll meet to know about
each other, you agree with it?
I would like to arrive to you for more close meetings and conversations.
I aiso heard about scam on the Internet and I promise you that I shall not tell
a lie to you and I shall not cause to you evil!
I have serious intentions and I shall not play on feelings of  people!
I only regret that such people create problems for fair girls and because of
such people appear mistrust to fair people!
I am ready to meet my beloved, I prepared for this,
I respect mum and I promise that I shall keep a good name and surname!
I want to know about you everything, therefore I ask  to write to me the letter
and I hope that we will continue to get acquainted if you are against certainly?
Do your dreams coincide with my dreams?
Please answer sincerely to all my questions.

When I read this but I couldn't help think of mail order brides. Am I being a little harsh? I have no idea but it is in my nature to be skeptical. For all I know this person could be reading this blog entry but I can't help how I feel, but it just seems like there's something fake about this or a catch I'm not seeing, especially after seeing her picture :) Well, I guess I'll just mail this person and say I would like to be friends but that's all I can offer on this side of the world. The response should be interesting and maybe I'll keep you all posted on further developments.

Blah, now that I'm actually doing a blog entry I feel like I could go on and on about other things I could talk about but I'm going to stop it for now since I've been at this for so long. Your kind comments is what keeps me writing so by all means drop a few lines, negative or positive. Take care everyone!

~M

Top 5 in 2004...

2006-02-26T10:31:00.000-08:00

2004 was a good year for music, but it was more because of all of the new bands I discovered moreso than what was actually released in 2004, but it really did have some gems. So here we go:

#1 - Blast Tyrant by Clutch

2005 had 2 Clutch releases but one was b-sides and old demos but asyou can see from 2005's reviews Robot Hive/Exodus ranked very highly. Blast Tyrant was also an exceptional release of good ol' rock n' roll with Clutch's odd lyrics. It was This album that got me back into listen to the band after about a 3 - 4 year period. It was also the first album that I noticed that they started using organs in their music. It's more prominent on Robot Hive/Exodus however. While both Robot Hive/Exodus and Blast Tyrant are excellent they have very different feels to them. RH/E tends to have a bit more of an expermental nature whereas blast Tyrant just tend to be more straight forward kickass rock. I'm not really sure what else to say other than you should either buy this album, borrow it or download it. Just listen to it now and enjoy.

#2 - A Crow Left Of The Murder... by Incubus

This is probably where some people are going to think that I've lost my marbles because a lot of people consider this album to probably be their worst. I'm not sure if I can agree on it because I like pretty much all Incubus albums equally though they all have different feel to them. So what can you expect for this album? Well, in a way it reminds me of Morning View in the fact that it seems to be less heavy than S.C.I.E.N.C.E. and Make Yourself but they did do more experimentation than in Morning View. One thing I do find with this album is that some of the songs I like on this album are amongst the best Incubus songs I've heard (ie Sick Sad Little World) but other songs are amongst my least favorite Incubus songs. Either way I still find this album to be better than a lot of what was released. I think a lot of why this sounds so different is the new Bassist Ben Kenney. He deinitely can play but I don't find his bass lines to have as many great hooks as Dirk Lance's. Well, I think this album is great but if you prefer the more odd sound like in early Incubus you may wish to check out the Halo 2 Soundtrack because it has about 30 mins of instrumental Incubus which is quite different than their last two albums.

#3 - This Type Of Thinking (Could Do Us In) by Chevelle

I think this was probably my most anticipated album of 2004. Either this or the new Incubus album. Well, this is Chevelle's 3rd album and is pretty much nu-metal but with the singer has a great voice. He screams but not too often and I don't find that it takes away from the music. One nitpick I thought I would have about this album is that it included a song called 'Still Running' that was already released on a movie soundtrack. I really don't like when bands do that because it's like they couldn't think up enough good material, so they put on something they've already done. Well, 'Still Running' was redone in studio and slightly changed as well. All I can say is that definitely the best song on this album and one of my favorite heavy songs ever. I liked the original but wasn't ready for what this version would hold. The rest of the album is also very good but I definitely prefer the first half to the second. If you like this also check out their other albums. The first is much more raw and less polished but it still is quite good.

#4 - Blackfield by Blackfield

I hadn't even heard of this and just stumbled upon it by accident. Someone sent me a song that was labelled Porcupine Tree that I hadn't heard which is odd because I pay a lot of attention to the band. I really liked the song, so I checked what album it was from and google tells me that it was from the album Blackfield. It was also by the band Blackfield so I looked into it. Blackfield is the side-project of producer, bandleader (No-Man, Porcupine Tree) and multi-instrumentalist Steven Wilson who joined forces with Israeli singer/songwriter Aviv Gefen. When you look at the two latest albums from Porcupine Tree there is a definite heavy rock/metal vibe to some of the songs but if I was to describe Blackfield it would be similar to Porcupine Tree but with a more pop-rock vibe to it. Steve Wilson does most of the singing on the album but there are times when Aviv Gefen sings as well. I don't like his vocals as much as Steve Wilson but they're still really good songs. If you like Porcupine Tree there is no reason why you shouldn't check this out, in fact everyone should just give it a try to see if they like it.

#5 - Amplifier by Amplifier

I hadn't heard of Amplifier until after I started listening to Oceansize. I was told to check them out because both British acts have a similar sound and are even friends which tour together from time to time. Well, I would definitely consider them in the same genre (which is a progressive metal/post-rock hybrid, picture Tool mixed with Mogwai to get an idea) but they definitely have a different sound than Oceansize. This is definitely more evident when you listen to the later releases by each band. I have been listening to this band a lot in recent days and if I had even more time I could see them ranking higher than they currently are but I'm not going to be doing any revisions to my Top 5's once they are posted.

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Honorable Mentions:

Hopes And Fears by Keane

Out Of Myself by Riverside

Everyone Lies Alone by The Grand Silent System

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Enoyed But Didn't Make The Cut:

Crash of 47 by Atomship
The Big Eyball In The Sky by Colonel Claypool's Bucket Of Bernie Brains
Two by Earshot
Endangered Species by Flaw
The Other Side by Godsmack
S.U.S.A.R. by Indukti
Our Endless Numbered Days by Iron And Wine
It Dreams by Jakalope
An Evening With John Petrucci And Jordan Rudess by John Petrucci and Jordan Rudess
Breakaway by Kelly Clarkson
Say Something by Kyprios
Minibosses by Minibosses
Recoil by Nonpoint
Music For Nurses by Oceansize
12 Stories Down by Pineapple Thief
Happenstance by Rachael Yamagata
Porcelain by Sparta
Silence Is Easy by Starsailor
Chuck by Sum 41
Electric Samurai by Tomoyasu Hotei
2 AM Wakeup Call by Tweaker
Warm Strangers by Viena Teng
Winning Days by The Vines
When It Falls by Zero 7

Well, that's it for the Top 5 of 2004. Next time will be 2003 but I may start doing Top 5's weekly instead of bi-weekly. I guess it will all depend on how busy my Sundays are. Well, I hope everyone is doing good and doesn't have too much shovelling to do after the Storm we had yesterday. It's times like these I wish I had a digital camera so I could take pictures of crazy Newfoundland winters for anyone that reads this blog that isn't from here. Take care everyone!

edit: I realize the my Top 5 descriptions are not very descriptive and there are no descriptions for the honorable mentions so I will now include links to reviews who may be able to describe the sound better than I ever could. If they have a review on allmusic.com, I'll use that, otherwise, I'll just try to find one at random. I'll go back and add link to 2005 as well if you want to check it out. If it's a review that isn't stellar for the band I may not agree with it but everyone is entitled to their opinions so I'll post it regardless.

~M

Musings...

2006-02-23T22:04:00.000-08:00

I figured it's about time for another post but I don't feel like doing any actual writing so I'm just going to grab various things I've written on various message boards. There's no real theme it's just all over the place. Kind of like my brain.

Being Friends After a Breakup

On the subject of friends with ex's, it's extremely difficult to maintain a friendship after a relationship. I think the two of the largest reasons for this is:

1) Break ups are almost never agreed upon by both parties. Even if they are at the time of the break-up that doesn't mean that both people have given up hope. Once the person realizes there is no hope, there is usually a lot of bitterness and resentment, which is tied into the dumpee having to deal with feelings that they aren't and/or weren't good enough for their ex.

2) When two people have had a very close and intimate relationship I think each person will have feelings of ownership towards the other, which would be evident from when people say 'my man', 'my girlfriend', 'my boyfriend', etc. As I've said earlier, one person generally tends to break up with the other, and thus disassociating them as their property whereas the other is still trying to come to grips with these emotions. There will come a time when an ex will start dating someone else and depending on how well the dumpee is dealing with the emotions of the break-up will result in a varying level of stress on the current friendship. How well they are dealing with these emotions has a correlation between how long they were once together and how long the new relationship developed from the time of break-up. It's difficult to have a friendship if you still think of a person as your's but that person is sharing their mind and body with others and you are forbidden from it.

Even if you can maintain a friendship with an ex it becomes a very strange situation and the friendship will never be like it once was (assuming there was a friendship before the romance). Even if a friendship doesn't happen after a break-up or it isn't like it once was, it generally tends to be worth the risk. Why? As cheesy as the saying is: It's better to have loved and lost, then to have never loved at all. There are so many things you will have learned from the relationship whether it works out or not that it generally turns out to be worth the time, effort, and friendship that may be sacrificed.

The Curse Of 25 - 60 (varying depending upon the individual)

Daily life to me is the problem. Let's look at a time frame: you need sleep (for me that number is around 7 - 9 hours), then you have to work for 8, then there is transportation to and from work as well as preperation for the day (about one to two and a half hours), and then you have your meals for the day (about 45 mins to 2 hours depending on preperation and the amount of meals). This brings our total to 16 hours and 45 minutes to 21 hours and 30 mins, leaving you with about 7 hours and 15 minutes to 2 hours and 30 mins of free time in the day. This isn't a lot of time in a day to enjoy yourself because I haven't even calculated in other things that a person would potentially do that isn't involved with enjoying themselves (ie picking up groceries/necessities). With such a short amount of time and depending on things like mood and availability of others to truly enjoy your time, it's a wonder that anyone is happy. How does one find the time to enjoy themselves? Sure you may have two days off in a week, but this life must not be very enjoyable to only have two days to yourself. The days pass by to quickly. I didn't realize it when I was in my youth because I would have a whole summer to myself with no obligations and all of the time in the world. Ever since high school ended it's been the fastest 9 years of my life and I haven't even begun a career for my life. I suppose this is why you should love or at least like what you do for a living. I shudder to think how quickly time will seem to have passed me by when I'm on my deathbed.

Am I A Bad Person?

Lately I've been thinking on doing some volunteer work. I don't actually want to do it but I'm considering doing it for the validation of being a good person. I'm not doing it for alterior motives like having something good on a resume or for a college application but then again, I'm not doing it because I want to help the needy either. I just figure that I want to be a good person and that's what a good person would do.

I guess, I shouldn't consider it validation if it's not even something I want to do of my own free will, but then again if I do volunteer, the fact that I am doing something good when some other people wouldn't, regardless of the motives, wouldn't that be considered good?

Are you the type of person that would do something you don't want to do so you come out as the nice guy or do you just look out for yourself (with the exception of friends and family)?

A people truely born good or are they just your average person that does good things for the fact of looking good? I'm sure there are a few selfless souls but do you think many people are born good and selfless?

When I think of being a good/bad person in terms of humanitarian issues, I often like to think of this quote:

"I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am."
~Joseph Baretti, quoted in Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson

The Funny Thing About Sex

Before you have sex you tend think it's going to be this big life changing event. Then when you do finally have sex you're like what's the big deal? Sure it feels good but I don't feel any different (unless you weren't careful and got pregnant or an STD). The funny part is that:

'Sex is like air, it's not important unless you aren't getting any.'

When you're forced into a situation where you don't get to have any for while it infects your brain and you tend think about it a lot. It finally clicked in my brain that it was a life changing event because you now have a new need in your life besides water, air, clothing, shelter, and money. You don't think sex is a need? Think about it, after having sex, do you think you could really go on the rest of your life happy without ever having it again? Sure there are a few exceptions (ie Vows of Celibacy, though even those are sometimes broken) but I'd say 99% of the population, at least in North American society would agree that sex is a need

Death

Do you think about it much? I mean do you really truely stop and think about the fact that no matter what happens you will die and that will be the end of your existance. Well, maybe it won't be the ending of your existance depending on your faith but I personally feel that it will be the end of your existance and that even if there is life after death, you will have no recollection of your previous life.

You are going to die and you probably won't even know when that will happen. Everything that you know and love will cease to exist for you. Well, at least you won't be able to think about it. Knowing that it's coming is still what gets to me. It's a scary thought, is it one you have truely thought about? I used to think about it a lot. In fact I would obssess over it in my youth and think about the black void of nothingness and as self-centered as it sounds, how can I concieve of a world going on without me. Well, not exactly that, but it's going to be horrible to not see the evolution of things to come considering a humans life span is but a fraction of a blink of an eye when you think of existance. It made me want to scream out "I don't want to die!!".

Don't waste your time because it's limited. People say time = money but time is more important than money because if you had infinite time than you could have infinite money. Since time is limited, it's far more important than money. Don't waste your life on a job you don't enjoy or get some satisfaction out of or you could be regret the rest of what little time you have left on the earth.

Someone once told me that Religion was made for those who are too weak willed to accept the concept of their own mortality. These people could then have 'faith' that there would be something after death so that they could live a happy life in the present instead of wasting their life worrying about death. Then again people have wide debates on what Religion was created for, which I'm not going to get into.

When you think of the finality of it and the impending doom that is coming for everyone and everything with the decay of time, it kind of puts the notion of 'don't sweat the small stuff' in focus. Why stress out about asking a girl on a date... or anything for that matter? In reality, if someone did turn you down I doubt you would obssess over it for a long time and even if you did, you'll eventually be dead and that fits no where in the grand scheme of things. It's a pity I can say that nothing we truely do matters in the large scope of things but my neurotic brain can't back me up on it when it comes to actually doing something.

Who Am I?

Mark is someone who is thinking about himself probably more often then is necessary and/or healthy. He likes to call it self-reflection, and perhaps it is, or perhaps it's the obsessiveness that definitely resides in his psyche. Punctuality is important to the point of going by this motto: Early is on time, on time is late, and late is unheard of. A strong sense of duty, in that he will do what he feels is expected of him or what he feels is the 'proper' course of action, which makes him dependable as well. He is serious minded to the point that people who are just having 'fun' can be observed as immature and/or annoying, depnding on how silly the fun is. Enjoyment can be had, but fun is in another category which isn't explored. Stubborn to a fault. When he believes he is right then there is no point in trying to convince otherwise. You can try to explain your point of view (and often times it's even desired) but it won't affect his point of view. He's physically disatisfied with himself though most think he is average. He's often mentally dissatisfied with himself as well. If online was his true personality, his real life would be a censored and meek version of himself because what a person says and the way a person says things can have a way of coming back to bite you in the ass. That being said, he is a good listener who tries to remember every small detail should it be of importance at a later date.
Thinks of himself as having very good taste and somewhat a sense of refinement in the non-fasionable sense as well as good intuition.

2 main philosophy's:

1) Say what you mean and mean what you say. He tries to be this way and wishes others would as well.

2) All or None. This comes back to stubborness/obsessiveness. If you are going to do something half-assed, there usually isn't a point, so don't bother at all. If you can't have everything you want, don't get anything. This doesn't always come into play, but it does frequently and is not a conscious choice.

He tries to think the best of people until he is proven otherwise. He is one to forgive, but never forget and will often hold grudges indefinitely until a situation is rectified. He thinks he subconciously tries to sabotage the things/people he cares about perhaps to have something to work on with restoring order. It probably comes back to the obsessiveness that resides within. The obssessiveness is theorized to exist due to being unhappy and if comething he obssesses over gets completed in an appropriate manner, perhaps it will yeild a small amount of satisfaction for a time. Tries to never be optimistic because when you are trying to think positively you are bound to be let down and is thus thought to be pessimistic, however he feels he has a realistic view of the world. He has a love/hate relationship with women. He loves the way the look physically, they have a different mental/emotional side to them in comparison to males which is refreshing, and vocally they are wonderful. In most cases however they are the largest source of grief, stress, and irritation in his life at any given moment. He feels largely incompatible with basically everyone and fears being alone. Speaking of fears, death is the largest and may have some connection to his current faith.

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I have other musings that I have not written down but I'll save them for another day because, this entry is long enough as it is, I'm feeling lazy, and it's 3:35 am and I have a job interview in less than 7 hours. Take care everyone.

~M

More than a comment...

2006-02-18T05:57:00.000-08:00

My good friend Steve started a new blog where's he's going to be talking about video games and consoles as well as marketing trends. You can find that here:

http://busted-controller.blogspot.com/

On his first post he talked about the upcoming console war in which Microsoft has already entered with their Xbox 360. I left a huge comment on his blog but it was so long I thought I might as well post it here on my blog to give people my opinion on it. So, here's my take on the upcoming and current console war:

The Xbox was to me, nothing more than a Dreamcast except for the fact that it was successful. There was very little in the way of good platformers and rpgs, but it did have a lot of good FPS, Sports, and Fighting games. The 360 from launch looks a lot like the Dreamcast as well, but whether or not the can stand against Sony will come down to software. I will say that they've done wonders with the hardware with all of the things Steve has mentioned and I've experienced at his house but nothing so far has WOW-ed me enough to warrant purchasing a system.

The PS2 was and is a great system. There's nothing else that really needs to be said about it. As for the PS3, if they continue with the software line that they currently have (there's too many good series to mention in this short summary) but make them with next-gen graphics, there's no doubt in my mind that they will be the leaders of the industry for another 3 - 6 years or so and if they do everything they could with the system (psp connectivity, great online system similar to or better/cheaper than Xbox Live, etc.) it will probably be the greatest console ever made.

Finally there's Nintendo. I will admit the N64 was/is garbage but I still think Steve's being a little harsh on the Cube. Sure it was probably the worst in sales compared to MS and Sony but that does not make it a bad system. I know Steve feels the old series don't have the same magic but they are good games or at least they are according to gamerankings which he says he uses for guidance. I think Nintendo's main problem in this race was their image. They wanted to make a system that was fun for all ages, but I think they focused it being more friendly to kids and somewhat more embarrassing for the average gamer (male, age 16 - 27) to want to buy for themselves.

I don't have actual numbers to back me on this but if you look at GBA sales in combination with their Gamecubes, they could't really have done that much worse than MS in terms of net profit, maybe even better. This has kept Nintendo going and allowed them to enter the next-gen console race. I think they could have quite the success if they focused more on what the average gamer wants combined with the fact that the Revolution will be backwards compatible with all games from every console Nintendo has released. Do I think they will be a success? I think they're going to do similar to what Nintendo has done this current generation: Nintendo still wants to trail blaze by developing ideas MS and Sony are unwilling to try (at least until they find out if they are successful) and appeal to kids (in terms of software) and parents (in terms of hardware prices). Which means Nintendo will always have their niche market and handheld sales (though things have gotten a little more interesting Sony entering the handheld market) to keep them going into the next, next-gen console war.

Love is in the air...

2006-02-14T18:38:00.000-08:00

Has anyone noticed that the acronym for Valentines Day is VD? I also like to call Valentines Day: Singles Awareness Day, which also has an interesting acronym: SAD. Well, just to let you know, I didn't have any date for today. I spent most of my time today just hanging out with my good friend Tony. I let him drive my car because he has his permit and needs the practice before he takes his driving test. I was putting out more resumes for most of the afternoon. I guess it's sort of good I'm not with anyone for VD because since I'm currently unemployed I wouldn't have been able to get the person much or bring them anywhere really nice. I only had about $40 to my name but with that money I did manage to snag a Gamecube, memory card, Zelda Collectors Edition, and Zelda: The Wind Waker. Talk about a steal! I love you Tony, in a strictly platonic way, mind you ;)

I really did want to get a Gamecube because not only do I love the above Zelda games that I've mentioned but I also really liked Metroid Prime. I never even played Metroid Prime 2 and there's also a new Zelda game coming out hopefully before the end of the year. Wow, have I ever been geeking out lately: Buying a new game system, listening to video game cover bands, and on Sunday my friends and I watched the live action movie Masters of the Universe based on the He-Man cartoon and I can freely admit that I enjoyed it. As my friend said Skeletor was a far greater villian than Darth Vader (especially after seeing his origins from Anakin Skywalker). I can't believe Masters of the Universe had Courtney Cox, and I also can't get over how young she looks in it.

The past day or so I've been listening to a band called Mute Math. Since I'm not good at describing bands, I'll just steal a description from their webpage: The four piece (originating from New Orleans) has scattered influences that are apparent without being obvious, and touch on everything from DJ Shadow styled beats, moments of beauty and grandeur a la Bjork, and vocals that pay legitimate homage to Police-era Sting. When asked about this vast expanse of musical territory that we are asked to find them dwelling within, Meany replied, "I blame it on the past forty years of music." They act on the idea that their magic is to be found in the mixture of countless thoughts. Their live show thrives on this random energy too… involving homemade instruments, live sampling, and a junked-out keytar. I believe they toured with Switchfoot and are also considered a christian rock band. It's been fun listening to it so far anyway.

Well, no massively huge update today, but I thought I would post something considering the day it is. Now it's time for me to either go to bed or maybe watch both The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. I hope your VD is more lovey-dovy than mine. Have a good one!

~M

Top 5 in 2005 + 6, 7, 8, 9, & 10...

2006-02-12T10:15:00.000-08:00

I finally get my Top 5 of 2005 finished and every two weeks from today I will post my Top 5 of the year before the last one that was reviewed. All the way back to 1991. I sort of wish I had started from 1991 and forward, instead of 2005 and going back because I would have had a much easier time deciding my favorite albums of 2005. It was very difficult because there are a bunch of albums that I didn't hear until November & December of 2005, so how can I compare those to albums I've been listening to since early 2005? In the end I decided to start at 2005 because if I started from 1991 and went forward to 2005 then I probably wouldn't have my top 5 of 2005 until almost 2007, which didn't seem to be a good idea to me. Since I was so unsure of a Top 5 I've decided to extend it to Top 10. I know that a Top 10 encompasses a Top 5 but I felt that by picking just a Top 5 not nearly enough albums were getting recognition. As I said it would be a lot easier if I had spent more time with all of the albums because as I listen to them more I my feelings will probably change and something that didn't make Top 10 might end up being my favorite as my tastes change.

My normal format will be Top 5 albums of the year with a brief description of the band or album. After that I will post my honorable mentions which are albums that I really like but couldn't break into my Top 5, but they won't have a description. Finally after that, I will post all the albums I had to choose from, outside of the ones that made my Top 5 and Honorable Mentions which will be under the heading: Didn't Make The Cut

Without further, here is my Top 10 of 2005:

#1 - Mezmerize by System Of A Down

The first and foremest thing that everyone notices about this albums is that Daron Malakian sings almost as much as the normal lead singer, Serj Tankian. A lot of people seem to say that this makes the album weaker but it didn't seem to bother me in the least. Now, why does it deserve to be my favorite album of the year? Well, System Of A Down are one of my favorite bands that only have 2 - 3 songs that I dislike out of their 5 albums they have released and there isn't a single song that I dislike on the album. Not only that but it's probably my most listened to album of this year. Mezmerize was the first cd they released this year with the second, entitled Hypnotize, which was released later in the year. Hypnotize only had 3 really stong songs on it, whereas with Mezmerize every song was great, although a little bit more odd lyrically than some of the more political tracks of the past. Either way, hats off to you SOAD for not only putting out my favorite album of the year, but another album, which I might find to be inferior, but other people may enjoy a lot more than Mezmerize.

#2 - Wolfmother by Wolfmother

Well, the three guys in this band are from Australia which seem to be churning out a lot of popular acts these days. If I was to try and describe their sound, it would be a mixture of Led Zeppelin, The White Stripes (just because I think the singer sounds a lot like Jack White in some songs), and a dash of Stoner Rock. The lyrics are a little out there but I don't feel it takes away from the experience of the album, but then again I've never been the type of person that's pays close attention to lyrics. Their sound is definitely channelling the sounds of the 70's but make no mistake, the retro style rock doesn't rock any less than what's currently out there, even when they break out the organs and flutes. I don't really know what else to say except give this album a listen. I predict these guys are going to very well when they eventually release the album in North America. Maybe it will be on a lot of peoples favourites of 2006.

#3 - Robot Hive/Exodus by Clutch

I started getting into Clucth in 1998 and I really liked all their albums at that point. After The Elephant Riders, they released Pure Rock Fury and Jam Room, neither of whoch I was very fond of. I pretty much thought that was the end of my listening to Clucth until 2004 when they released Blast Tyrant which was absolutely amazing. What completely shocked me was that less than a year later they released Robot Hive/Exodus. What shocked me even more was that not only was it good but probably as good as Blast Tyrant which at the time I considered to be the best album by Clutch. Well, for any of you that know Clutch, they still have strange lyrics and with Blast Tyrant they introduced an organs which is also included and more prevailent on this album. I can't exactly describe the differences between Blast Tyrant and RH/Exodus but there is definitely something that feels different but I still have no preference when listening to either album. Rock on Clutch, like few others can.

#4 - Everyone Into Position by Oceansize

Now this is probably a band that few of you have heard of. They hail from the UK and if I were to describe their sound, I would say somewhere between the progressive metal sounds of Tool and the post rock sounds of Mogwai. It took me a very long time to actually get into this band but now that I am, I must say that I feel quite enriched for it. Since Tool doesn't release albums very often, Oceansize have filled that spot quite nicely. They have quite a texture of sound due to the fact that their are three guitarists, so there is often quite a lot going on that you won't hear in the first listen. Just listen to it from start to finish and quite often and you'll be bound to understand why this band is good. The album was just released in North America less than a month ago, so now you have no excuse to not listen to this band.

#5 - Catch Without Arms by Dredg

The main thing I have to say about this album is that 3 of the songs on this album are not only my favorite Dredg songs of all their albums and b-sides I've heard but are amongst some of my favorite songs period. Those songs are: Ode To The Sun, Bug Eyes, and Sang Real. The rest of the album is good and I can't say there is a song that I dislike but if the rest of the album shined like the songs I've previously mentioned, not only would it be my favorite album of the year but it would probably be one of my favorite albums ever. Either way, if you haven't heard this album or any other album by Dredg then you definitely ought to do yourself a favor and give it a listen. If you want something a little raw, start with Leitmotif which is their first album. If you want something a little more easy going try El Cielo, which is their second. This is album is a little more of a mainstream sound of everything else you've heard by Dredg which could be considered a great place to start if you are interested in checking out the band. Each album is different but so many people would unanimously agree that Dredg are a band to keep your eyes and ears on.

#6 - Ghost Reveries by Opeth

Opeth are one of those bands that take extremes to the extremes. Basically this band can range anywhere from death metal complete with cookie monster vocals which cause the lyrics to be almost impossible to distinguish to soft accoustic rock with an singer with an amazing voice with songs usually ranging from 7 - 10 mins long. The difference is so drastic, you wouldn't think it was the same band. The death metal is always the more prominent part of their music, but the soft parts add a dimension to the music that should be universal. To any wishing to listen to Opeth, I highly recommend starting with the Damnation album because that was a one-time album where they only played the softer style of their music. If you like that, than Ghost Reveries would probably be your next best choice despite how much the heaviness will shock you. Opeth is rewarding to those that can look past the gruff exterior of the Death Metal to the nuiances of the progressive music that they have to offer, that only they can do.

#7 - The Triptych by Demon Hunter

It's common in nu-metal for bands do do the screaming vocals, then melodic singing and Demon Hunter is no different in that respect. I know many people consider the genre of nu-metal to be bad but it's one that've always enjoyed with particular artists. I'm not really good at describing artists or the sound of their music, but I've always liked this description by Allmusic: "Demon Hunter's sound is of contrasts -- in which moments of intense brutality are followed by hauntingly melodic passages. One minute, Demon Hunter is mercilessly beating listeners into submission; the next minute, it provides some breathing room and shows how thoughtful its melodies can be. And these two sides of Demon Hunter usually have a way of complimenting one another."

#8 - Wreck Of The Day by Anna Nalick

I saw the video for the song Breathe (2 AM) on MuchMore Music and thought to myself, what an excellent song. I immediately got the album and also enjoyed it a lot. I really like female artists, but one thing I find with female artists is that the music is good but there's not quite enough variety. I don't know what other people would say or whether or not they would agree with me, but I feel this has quite a variety of songs that make full listens of the album to be very enjoyable. There are some Fiona Apple or Tori Amos similarities, I guess having to do with her paino playing but it doesn't feel copied and flows rather nicely from song to song. I can't really think of much else to say other than if you like female vocalists than this may be for you.

#9 - On The Outside by Starsailor

This is an album I'm very surprised that not only I like but made into my Top 10 considering this is what I consider to be the 2nd best year for music for my personal tastes. I will be honest and say that I didn't like Starsailor when I heard a few singles by them from their earlier albums. I'm not quite sure why I tried this one out but I'm glad I did because it is amazing. It's made me find more appreciation for their previous works but make no mistake, I think this one blows the other two albums out of the water. What's more surprising is that Coldplay (whom I love) released an album this year and Starsailor (whom are sometimes considered to be Coldplay clones) made a vastly superior album. So whether you enjoyed previous Starsailor albums or not I think this album definitely deserves a listen. Finally, of all the albums that have the potential of ranking higher than it currently is due to more future listenings, I think this has the highest chance of that. I guess only time will tell.

#10 - Extraordinary Machine by Fiona Apple

This was a hard one for me to put at the bottom of the list despite the fact that any album that got into the Top 10 of 2005 is an accomplishment in and of itself due to being such a great year for music. It was hard for me to put here because it was Fiona's first album in 6 years. I guess part of the reason it only ranked at 10 is because there was another version of this album completely produced by Jon Brion which was leaked on the internet around late 2003 or early 2004. So I'm after listening to this album a lot in the past year and when I hear albums that just came out this year it has a more new feeling to it. The retail version was produced by someone else and sounds different but ultimately it's still something I've heard quite a few times and while I enjoy it a lot, there are at least 9 other albums I would rather listen to most of the time. Also I consider the retail version of Extraordinary Machine to be inferior to the Jon Brion version, though a few new rendition of the songs are better on the retail version.

---

Honorable Mentions:

Brass by The Minibosses

Leaders Of The Free World by Elbow

Deadwing by Porcupine Tree

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Enoyed But Didn't Make The Cut:

The Autumn Effect by 10 Years
Jagged Little Pill Acoustic by Alanis Morissette
The Exotic Sound Of The Altar Boys by The Alter Boys
The Astronaut Dismantales HAL by Amplifier
Apocalyptica by Apocalyptica
Monkey Business by Black Eyed Peas
Perfect Pitch Black by Cave In
Pitchfork And Lost Needles by Clutch
The New Normal by Cog
X & Y by Coldplay
A Vicious Circle by Day One Symphony
Say Hello To Sunsine by Finch
Flyleaf by Flyleaf
Paints Lane by Gauche
Samus Octology by Irepress
In Between Dreams by Jack Johnson
Build-Ups And Breakdowns by Jeff Greene
The Angela Test by Leaves
Frances The Mute by The Mars Volta
Your Favourite People All In One Place by Medications
Untitled by Mister Metaphor
Lost And Found by Mudvayne
With Teeth by Nine Inch Nails
You And Me by Open Hand
Serenity - Original Soundtrack
The Chronicles of Narnia - Original Soundtrack
Wander And The Colossus - Roar Of The Earth - Original Soundtrack
Warszawa by Porcupine Tree
XMII by Porcupine Tree
Total Pwnage by Powerglove
Cautionary Tales For The Brave by Pure Reason Revolution
Aperitif For Destruction by Richard Cheese
Second Life Syndrome by Riverside
Voices In My Head by Riverside
Karma & Effect by Seether
In Due Time by Submersed
Hypnotize by System of a Down
Blue-Sky Research by Taproot
The Weight of An Empty Room by Veda
Untitled by Wintersleep

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Well, that's it. I know a few of you will not be able to comprehend my choices, but that's the thing about music: what sounds great to one person can be noise to someone else. In two more weeks I'll post my Top 5 of 2004.

More blog updates to come, like probably how I'll be alone on Singles Awareness Day... boo urns.

Have a great day!

~M

Frustrating state of affairs...

2006-02-07T21:05:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm just about completely caught up on what I've been doing for the past few months since I stopped posting on myspace. I guess the last thing I really need to talk about is my general life situation, which can be summed up in one word: frustrating. Why would I describe it as this? Well, the primary thing that has always bothered me was not knowing what to do after high school in terms of post-secondary education. Actually that's a little bit of a lie in the fact that when I was younger I had wanted to be psychologist because I consider myself to be a very good listener and I wanted to help people with their problems. So I figured I would be majoring in psychology. The thing I love about psychology is that it was a subject of study that was actually interesting, or at least one that I found interesting. So what turned me off of it? Well, I was always told you'll never get any sort of job by getting a degree in Psychology. I was told I would at least need a masters or Ph.D, which didn't appeal to me because it would take so long to get. The sad part is with all of the time I've wasted so far I probably could have a Ph.D or at least a masters or 2 degrees. Another thing that prevented me from pursuing Psychology was the fact that I just wasn't ready for University. In fact I've tried University on multiple occasions and haven't been able to do well. When I was in high school I did fairly well with a 78% overall average (with no 4th year). The thing with my 78% average is that I did next to no work to achieve it. I could have two tests on the same day and I found the courses pretty easy, so I wouldn't end up studying until the day of the tests. Let me just say that it was a huge shock from doing next to no work in High School and then going to university where you have to do a lot of work to succeed. It's not an excuse because I have no one to blame but myself but I think that's why I had so much trouble with the transition.

So yes, I've been frustrated with the fact that outside of Psychology I've never had any sort of direction with what I'd like to do for a career. Not only that but also I've ruined a lot of opportunities if I was to go back to university because of my poor grades that I got while I was there. I would have to probably do an extra year or so fix my GPA for what I ruined while I had previously attended. I figured, oh well, if I don't know what I want to do I'll just pick something that has a good job market for now and the future and just deal with it. That lead me to choose to do Construction/Industrial Electrical, which I eventually completed at Academy Canada. While I was going through this program I knew it wasn't for me but I couldn't quit due to the fact that I was being sponsored by HRDC and if I quit partway through the program I would owe a fair amont of money to the Government and have nothing to show for it. I remember that the part that I enjoyed most in this program was the mathematics part which is what everyone else hated. It lead me to believe I should have done something like engineering, but I wouldn't have the work ethic for that. I also felt that I was selling myself short by getting a college diploma rather than a degree at university. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with college diplomas but I feel I'm capable of getting a degree, so I should. If that makes any sense.

Since I know Electrical isn't the path for me I have to decide yet again what I'm going to try and do with my life. I should be thankful for all the chances I've gotten and being debt free so far. I have one last chance at school and it will have to be paid for by student loans so I better make a good choice. I've had a few ideas floating around in my head but I just can't seem to make a decision. I mean, how am I supposed to know if I would like to do a specific job for the rest of my life, unless I try it beforehand? One of the things I've been considering is a course to become an LPN (Liscenced Practical Nurse). I like the idea of after about a year and a half of school being able to find a job and start at about %15-$18/hour and in Newfoundland no less. As with a lot of healthcare jobs, it means you can pretty much work anywhere in the world you choose. I was also thinking of doing the LPN course because maybe I could use what I've already learned and upgrade it to an Nursing degree after having worked in the field long enough to pay off my student loans. I also like to joke that this would be a good school option because I will be surrounded by girls and when I get to the job I will get my first dose of what being in a marriage is like because I will be often taking orders from other nurses (which 90% of the time are women). Haha!

A friend of mine told me of other medical job options that are available that seem more appealing like: Medical Laboratory Sciences (doing blood and urine analysis) and Medical Radiology (doing sonograms (spelling?) and x-rays). The unfortunate aspect of either of these options is that the only place that seems to offer these 3 year programs is CONA (College of the North Atlantic) and they have 3 year waiting lists. I don't want to just starting my life career in my mid-thirties. I looked at doing these options outside of Newfoundland but a lot of the colleges don't seem to be taking any more applications for these programs. Not only that, but I don't know if I could get a student loan to do something out of province if it's offered in my home province. Grrr! The last thing I had really considered was a Law Clerk program, but unfortunately it's only available outside of Newfoundland and I would much rather stay in province because I have some good friends here, I have a car, my own apartment, my cat, and I just prefer Newfoundland to other provinces (having lived in Alberta for a while).

Outside of school and career choices, my job situation is also pretty annoying, or should I say lack of job. In January, I had a temporary position as a Telemarketer at Cabot Call Center doing polling for the Conservative politcal party, but that ended on the 23rd of January. I did get an interview for a permanent postion at the call center which would be calling around and asking for donations. I should hopefully find out whether I got that job in about a week. I have a few more resumes out now, but unfortunately Febuary isn't the ideal time looking for a job due to it being a slow time for retail. Either way, the plan is to get a job soon and then work until Sept, when I'll hopefully be going back to school. While I'm waiting for Sept, I'll try to completely pay off my Credit Card which I wasn't so responsible with, thankfully I have a low maximum limit. Hopefully I'll figure out what to do in school. One of my friends suggested that I become a writer since my blog entries tend to be so long, but despite the fact that they're long, I just don't think I would have the imagination to be entertaining enough to write professionally.

Thankfully, my living situation is great. I live in the basement apartment of my father's house. Wait a sec, isn't that the antithesis of what women want to hear? Oh well, I'm not going to lie about my situation and this is a really good situation until I have my education completed. It would be different if I was all finished up school and working at a good job, but even then living here would be a good opportunity for me to save money towards a house. Plus I like spending some time with my father. Well, either way, it's great because I have my own entrance into the apartment so I won't wake him up when I'm coming in after he's in bed (he's a super-lite sleeper), I pay a reduced amount of rent, and he'll often make supper for us to eat together and caht. It's kind of the best of both worlds, in living at home and on your own. It's kind of weird having so much space to yourself though. My apartment is a two bedroom and kind of spacious but since I never have company over it's like the space and privacy is going to waste but I still love it and am thankful for having such a great spot. I'd say it get's lonely here but my cat, Mica, keeps me company when I'm home. Since I rarely have guests though, that usually means I often go to my friends houses.

So that's pretty much my general life situation and what I've been doing lately except for I guess about the last two weeks because I was backtracking on my blog what I had been doing for like a month and a half. So what have I been doing the past two weeks? Mainly looking for a job. In the entertainment field I saw two movies in theater. The first was Hoodwinked. I was told to go by my friend Tony who's seen it twice I believe. It was also from the creaters of Shrek, if I'm not mistaken so I was really looking forward to it. My friend and I went to see it but neither of us really enjoyed it. It was kind of mediocre but I could see a lot of kids enjoying it. That was probably the intended audience. Then again I'd say the same was true of Shrek and I loved Shrek 2. The first was pretty good too. Sufice it to say, I'm going to be a lot more cautious about seeing kids movies again (I hadn't even seen the trailer for Hoodwinked) and of Tony's opinions on movies. Sorry Tone!

What else? I went on a meet and greet with someone I met from online. We decided to go and see The Chronicles of Narnia. I was surprised to have still enjoyed it considering it was my 4th time seeing it in theater. I know some people would say, that's a date, my friend! I don't care what the activity is, anytime you meet someone from online for the first time, it's a meet and greet. Some would say a movie is more than a meet and greet but I think it's one of the better meet and greets. Why would I say that? Well, first you meet for the movie, you get to eye the person and decide whether or not you find them attractive. If you do find them attractive, great, you now have something specific to talk about when the movie is over. If you don't find them attractive, then at least you didn't have to look at them for a long period of time or talk to them and you can then proceed to try and end the meet and greet asap (but do try to be polite). As for my meet and greet, the person was nice and they were fairly attractive which is why I went on a second meet and greet. How can there be a second meet and greet? Well, true I've already met the person but we never got a huge amount of chatting done and our second get together was a spur of the moment thing. Well, after talking the second time I knew that she wasn't my type. Sadly it looks like I'll be single again on Valentines Day.

Well, that looks to be just about everything because I haven't been listening to much new music that I enjoyed or played any new games over the past two weeks. What I have been doing however is listening to a lot of albums released in 2005. I've been doing this so I could post my favorite albums of 2005. Yes, I know this should have been done back at the beginning of January but I didn't even know I was going to be continuing doing the whole blog thing. So my next post WILL be my top 5 favorite albums of 2005. About every two weeks after I'll do my top 5 favorite albums of the year previous to the last year that I reviewed. I already have them all done all the way back to 1990 or 1991. So, I hope that's something you'll be looking forward to.

I hope everyone is having a nice day, and will have a nice V.Day since I might not be updating before then because 2005 is tough for me to pick my five favorite albums! Toodles!!

~M

I'll never let that dirty game recapture me...

2006-02-05T12:24:00.000-08:00

Ok, the last few things I needed to update is Video Games and I guess my general life situation. I'll get right into it:

Video Games

In my youth I was really into video games, and I mean all the way back to Kalecovision (spelling?) and Atari. The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) hooked me deeper than I could have predicted. I even remember owning a game before I had the system. A friend of mine down my street had one and I was completely amazed when I saw it so I decided I had to have it. I harassed my parents for the system and ended up getting Metroid before even having the system. What a great game to be me first. I used to play it at my friends house until I I got my NES for Christmas of that year. In a short time I had a fair amount of games, a subscription to a NES magazine called Nintendo Power, and this official Nintendo TV stand thingy. I think one of my teachers in elementary even dubbed me 'Nintendo King of Bishop Abraham' when everyone was moving on to Jr High School and saying goodbye, maybe I wrote and talked about it a lot, who knows? It wouldn't surprise me in the least.

Of all the games that I've played Final Fantasy had always been my obsession. I had played it from back in the NES days, and they still make games for the series even to this day (it's up to 12 actual Final Fantasy titles, multiple spin-offs, and even 2 movies), though it didn't gain a huge following until Final Fantasy III on SNES (which in actuality was Final Fantasy VI) and Final Fantasy VII on Playstation 1. I don't know what it is about these games but I just really like the story and it's kind of neat how each Final Fantasy is it's own seperate story with it's own new characters and battle/ability system. It's really kept the series fresh over the years.

Back in about 2002 or 2003, I ended up getting what I thought would be my dream job at Microplay, which buy/rent/sell/trade video games and DVD movies. The crazy thing is that I think it really turned me off of video games. I've always felt that you shouldn't make your hobbies into a job because when you make something fun your job then I think since you're required to deal with it, it becomes less fun. Now I won't lie and say I didn't buy many games during this time. When I was working there I could get games really cheap so I ended up buying a lot but I didn't even play half of what I owned. In the end I felt trapped because there were all these games coming out that I knew I would like if I played them but then I knew I wouldn't really play most them either so I didn't want to waste my money on them. Am I neurotic? Your damn right I am, haha. What did I do? I sold basically all my games and systems and decided to mostly forsake video games for a time, or just play ones that I could get for free on the internet and/or buy for my computer.

Basically during the time I was at microplay (1 and a half years) and about 3 years after that I could count the number of games I played on my fingers, which was an extremely low amount compared to what I used to be like. What I did end up playing was usually at a friends house or on PC. One game that I did end up playing on the computer was an MMORPG (which stands for Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) game called World of Warcraft (or WoW for short). Just to let you know a little bit of what it's like: you have to pay a $20 monthly fee to access the servers where you play your characters and play with thousands of other players all across the world. I must admit it's pretty cool to play/talk/interact with so many people trying to accomplish similar goals. There is a critical flaw about these sort of games. Well, it's a flaw for the people who play the game, and a benefit to the company that created the game: They have no definitive end. Not only do they have an end but they constantly add new things to do to keep playing. Time to rant:

RANT, skip down to end rant if you don't want to read!!

When you're playing these sort of games, you've basically just started to pay for doing a second job (that is assuming you are employed at the moment). Why do I say this? Well, basically when you're playing WoW you're trying to advance yourself in your chosen career (ie class in WoW such as Warrior) and gain money to buy the things you want. Like life you never get a definitive end to this process until you retire or die (or basically you probably won't want give up playing this game until the next big MMORPG starts up). Even when you get to a maximum level you're still not finished! You can still advance your character by getting better equipment and items (which can dramatically enhance your character), however to be able to do such things you'll usually have to apply to big end game guild on the guilds website. Imagine, applying in real life to get into a group in a virtual world. Crazy, I know. Why is it necessary to get into a guild to advance your character? Well, there are areas of the virual world called a raid dungeon which contains creatures so powerful that you need 40 people to defeat. It's not so easy to organize 40 people to all be on at the same time so there is a lot of planning to organize specific days and times to meet for a raid which will take multiple hours to complete. Anyway, when you do get into a guild you are pretty much expected to be around on raiding days and you don't want to miss those days for fear of being kicked out of the guild and not being able to get a chance at obtaining good equipment for your character. The problem with these sorts of games is that when you're playing them, is that it mimics life in the fact that you have to really work to improve upon yourself. The kicker is that all the work you're doing makes you feel like you're doing something productive when you complete a task but if you spent that time on things to improve upon in your actual life you would probably be much better off.

Some would argue that this is fun. Well, yes the social aspect can make these games pretty fun but often times there is a social aspect to a real job such as interacting with co-workers that makes the time spent doing your job a bit more enjoyable. Some also might say that by gaining really awesome gear you earn a lot of respect which is fun and gives a sense of accomplishment (because character appearence changes with new equipment gained). Yes it is an accomplishment but it's not even a real one. It's a virtual accomplishment that only people you'll probably never meet will bear witness to and a normal person who hasn't played the game would think 'what's the big deal?'.

Let's looks at some of the aspects of the game: I don't think anyone who's played WoW can honestly say they truely enjoy the faction grind (the word grind meaning doing a very boring a repetitive task over and over again, like killing one specific creature for hours upon hours), the honor grind, grinding for money, items, and trade skill materials. What they enjoy is when the task is completed because it's an accomplishment, but the actual grinding part is rarely ever enjoyable. If the massive amount of time put into these sorts of games actually paid off in some fashion then maybe that would make it worth it. I guess some might chime in and say 'well, you can sell your gaming account with your characters for humdreds of dollars!!!' but the thing is if you had done actual work for a similar amount of hours of time spent playing this game (even if it was at minimum wage), you would literally have thousands of dollars. Not only did you sacrifice days of your time but you have to pay a monthly fee to do all of this work. Also not everyone sells account, and if you play the game until 'the next big MMORPG' is released (maybe world of starcraft or something else) the account won't be worth nearly as much as if you sold your account when it was popular.

You still think it's fun because it's something you're doing in your spare time? I'm sure many of you who have played this game and have done the raids that I mentioned previously have put in at least 21 straight days of playing between your various characters. Now think of how many 10 - 40 hour games you could have finished in that amount of time. Think of how many great cd's you could have listened to. Think of how many books could could have read. Think of how many movies you could have watched. Think of all the excercise you could have done to enhance your health. Think of anything you enjoy doing outside of an MMORPG and think of how much time 21 days of your life is. Do you truely feel that the time you spent in WoW could equal the other enjoyable things you could have been doing? If you true think that your enjoyment would be equivilant than I congradulate your ability to delude yourself into thinking so. The thing is many people don't think about the time they are spending on these sorts of games so you don't realize what's going on, you're just obssessed with virtual accomplishment. That's why I've written this. You no longer can say I never realized what I was doing with my time.

I played World of Warcraft and I quit. It was hard and I still read about the game on a semi-regular basis but after thinking things over I can't honestly see myself playing another MMORPG again. I emplore anyone who plays these sorts of games to do some thinking about it, and for those that don't, to never start. The bottom line is that games are a good way to waste time and have a bit of fun and entertainment, but as with everything in your life, moderation is the key. The problem with MMORPG's is that they use techniques to make you want to play it at a much higher volume of time than moderate, so please be wary.

END RANT!!

Wow, that was crazy long and I haven't even begun to talk about what's been going on with video games for me at the moment. Here goes: Well, not too long ago I got a Playstation 2 and a Nintendo DS. The PS2 was a steal at $45 (Thanks Steve!) and the DS was only $100 used. Since microplay had a 'buy 2 used games get one free' deal I picked up a bunch of games since they were only $20 used each. I picked up: Final Fantasy X-2, Ratchet And Clank, Kingdom Hearts, Super Monkey Ball Deluxe, Prince of Persia: Sands Of Time, Legacy of Kain: Defiance, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. For my DS I bought Castlevania: Dawn Of Sorrow (aka dinosaura :) ). The funny thing about those games I've bought, I haven't played any of them yet. I'm sure I'll get through them slowly but surely but I'm not in any rush.

My good friend Steve lent me his game ICO. I had been really looking forward to playing ICO since playing Shadow Of The Colossus because ICO is like a sequel (despite it being released after ICO). ICO was quite fun. The slight synopsis is that you are a boy who was banished to this ancient castle for having horns (which is consider very bad luck). In the castle the boy meets a girl who is supposed to be the daughter of a witch that resides in the castle. So basically the point of the game is to traverse throughout the castle as the boy and make paths for the girl to follow since you don't get to control her. She's a lot less maneuverable than the boy which is why you have to make special paths for her by solving puzzles and calling her to you. You also have to defend her from from the witches minions, though this isn't a combat heavy game. It wasn't terribly long, clocking in at about 7 hours long but I found it to be very fun and satisfying by the end.

Since I talked about ICO, I should talk a bit about Shadow of the Colossus which myself, Steve and Kevin used our combined gaming power to defeat. This was a few months ago but it's such a good game that I just have to mention it. Well, Steve bought it and myself and Kevin just happened to be there when he played it for the first time. This game revolves around nothing but boss battles. Sixteen of them to be exact. After Steve killed the first boss he decided that we would take turns killing the Colossi. What else to say about the game? Well, the soundtrack is perhaps once of the best that I've had the pleasure of hearing. I also can't think of a game that consists of nothing but beating up bosses. There is also nothing like the WOAH-factor of taking on bosses that can be over 10 times the size of you that you have to climb on to defeat. As with ICO it's not terribly long but it most certainly is a satisfying experience. Do yourself a favor and rent it for a few days and complete it.

The other game I played not to long ago was God of War. This is a hyper violent game that's set in ancient Greek times where the purpose of your character, Kraatos, is to kill Ares, the God of War. There are some puzzle aspects to the game but there is a lot of running around and fighting mythical creatures like Medusae and Minotaurs. Not only was this game hyper violent but there are women in the game that are topless. Not only that but there is a bunch of CG cutscenes with womens breasts in it which completely took me by surprise. The reason why this baffles me is because in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas there was this sex mini-game which caused the game to be recalled but yet this one is still on the market in it's current form. I guess I just find it weird when games are incorperating such violence, nudity and a large amount of vulgarity. It doesn't always outright bother me, but it will usually surprise me. Anyway, it took me about 12 hours to complete this game and I would have to say I thought it was pretty good. Then again, I like just about anything that has to do with Greek Mythology or Fantasy.

Another long-winded post. Hope I didn't bore you all to death. I really wanted to add links, pictures and also proof-read this but I have to get ready for this superbowl party thing which I think is happening at a bar called Club One. I don't even watch football but my friend had an extra ticket to offer me and I thought it would be an ok idea for me to get out of the house. I guess I'll try to get around to editing this at another time but you'll just have to be patient. By the way, bonus points go to anyone who knows where I took the title for this blog entry from. Bye!

edit: There shouldn't be too many grammatical errors in there now, and links to pictures and gaming reviews. Enjoy!

~M

Music and stuff...

2006-02-01T11:35:00.000-08:00

Ok, time to pick up where I left off: Music, Love Life, Video Games. Being that music is probably my favorite past time I'll discuss that first:

Music

The primary band that I want everyone who's reading my blog to listen to is Pure Reason Revolution. I had actually discovered this band before Wolfmother but for some reason I hadn't posted about it. Well, this is another British band that I love listening to. How would one describe their sound? Well, I haven't listened to a lot of Pink Floyd but I've heard them described as a modern day Pink Floyd except the both male and female sing in the band and often at the same time. It just sounds so good, in a trippy sort of way, but I'm a big fan of progressive rock anyway. Right now they only have an EP released called Cautionary Tales of the Brave as well as a bunch of CD singles. They have a full length album being released in the UK around March called The Dark Third. Right now I can honestly say that it's my most anticipated album of 2006 and that's even including a new Tool album, so that should be an indication of how much I like this band. Check them out!

Speaking of CD singles, what's with the British bands putting out mass amounts of b-sides on CD singles? I guess I shouldn't complain because more new music by a beloved band is still more new music. I guess sometimes it's just difficult enough to sometimes keep up with full length albums that are being released by bands but having to try to aquire b-sides on top of that is time consuming. Let's just look at a few bands: Radiohead: I have about 34 b-sides, Elbow: I have about 16, Coldplay: I have about 14, Keane: I have about 10, Leaves: I have about 9, and Muse: I have about 24. Surprisingly Starsailor don't seem to have too many. Speaking of Starsailor, I've really been enjoying their new album called On The Outside. When I had heard a few singles from their first album like 'Good Souls' I wasn't really fond of them. The new album made me see the light and I definitely consider it their best work to date even after my new appreciation of the previous two albums. If you didn't like Starsailor I would still recommend listening to the new album before writing the band off.

A few posts ago I mentioned that I had been aquiring video game soundtracks. Well, that phase has passed but over the past month or so I have been listening to a bunch of video game cover bands playing great music from old games on the NES system. The albums are as follows: Brass by The Minibosses, Elf-Titled by The Advantage, and Total Pwnage by Powerglove. Nostalgia is an amazing thing, in fact it's one of the very best things which is why I like to revisit the music of these old games done with a Rock twist. I guess you just can't help your roots.

Do you like Weird Al? Well, if so, you may wish to see out a few albums by Richard Cheese. So who is Richard Cheese? Well, he takes many hits of the 90's/2000 from rock, hip/hop, metal and pop and does it in a parody with Big Band style. Unlike Weird Al's parodies, Richard Cheese doesn't usually change any of the lyrics. Some of the songs he's redone, which you may recognize are: Rape Me by Nirvana, Crazy by Brittney Spears, Down With The Sickness by Disturbed, Long View by Green Day, Enter Sandman by Metallica, and Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2. If you're not sure what I mean by Big Band style then just listen to a clip of his rendition of Rock The Casbah by The Clash (Link will die in about 7 days from the day this was posted).

Love Life

Ok, basically for those of you who don't know me, I'm a very shy person and when my ex and I broke up about 3 and a half years ago I haven't had much luck meeting people. Why haven't I had luck meeting people? Well, where do people usually meet people? I'll tell you where: school, work, downtown, and through mutual friends. Well, when I was at college I was at the trades division of Academy Canada. Trades Division means that about 95% of the student population is male, the other 4% are females not worth looking at (yes, yes that sounds horrible superficial but could you honestly date someone you aren't attracted to?), and well the other 1% had the other 95% of the student population wanting to get to know them better. So school is out.

As for work during that 3 year period I was in school and working at a place called Microplay. There are only 4 employees (myself included) between 2 stores and they were all male. So work was out. Downtown has never really been my scene. I drink about 3 - 5 times a year and when I do go downtown it's just usually to see live music. When I do go to see live music I'm more or less paying all my attention to the band rather than the eye candy. Also downtown isn't really the best place to meet someone because it's usually just a meatmarket for people looking for one night stands, which I've never done. I'm sure there are a few people that would like to meet the sort of person I am but since I'm shy, that kind of impedes the process of introducing myself. So downtown is out too.

My last hope appears to be mutual friends. Unfortunately a lot of my friends have moved out of province or country. I pretty much only have about 3 really good friends left in town (with a few other aquaintences). Of those friends most of their friends are male and those that do have female friends, I believe they are all taken or my good friends have no intention of introducing me to their single friends which I consider to be understandable because I've never been fond of the idea of friends being set up and then things going sour. So there you have it. My luck hasn't been good for meeting people during that time so I decided to go with the taboo or frowned-upon internet dating sites.

So I've tried a few: Lavalife, Nfsingles, and Plentyoffish. It's been good because I've actually had the chance to talk to women which I hadn't done for so long. The one thing about internet dating I must warn you about if you get into internet dating: People rarely look like their pictures. Sometimes there will be similarities, sometimes people will look better than their pictures, and sometimes people will look worse than their pics. I just don't think pictures are an accurate representation of what a person looks like in motion. Another thing that kinda sucks about internet dating is that there are a lot of perverts and old men that hit on girls half their age that tends to scare away all of the nice women on the site. Well, I have to say that I'm after meeting quite a few people from these sorts of sites (probably about 10 - 12) for 'meet and greets' ie. a coffee or movie. Only one person I've met from online has ever progressed passed the intital meet and greet which I'll talk about now.

So back in November I started talking to someone my age, though I found out later that she had kids. Not just one but two. I decided that I would keep talking to her and just get to know her a bit and if I liked her I would ask her out regardless of the fact that she had kids. If I didn't like her, no big loss. If I did like her but couldn't stand to be around kids in general, it would be unfortunate but I would move on. After almost a month of talking I really started to like her since when we talked it felt like we had known eachother for a while. About a week before Christmas we decide to meet for coffee and I think we were both a bit nervous but things go fairly well. So I talk to her again and she actually wants to get together again sometime! Booya! Well, she ends up getting the flu and hurting her back not to mention it is a week before Christmas so we end up not talking very much over Christmas or a few days after. I was beginning to get the impression that she had no interest in me and/or was lying about being sick/hurting her back. Yeah, stupid me :P Eventually we start talking again and she's still a little sick but she wanted to do something with me for New Years. I was ecstatic.

So, we have been chatting a few times before New Years and then make plans. On New Years day I picked her up at her place and presented her with a Rose. We then went for supper together at Swiss Chalet (which I absolutely love!!). The conversation seemed to be ok and she mentioned that if we could it would be nice if we could meet her sister for the fireworks and I didn't see a problem. After supper we decided, that we would go see King Kong. On the way to the theater the weather was after getting a bit stormy and we were worried that the fireworks wouldn't even go ahead. Well, we both enjoyed the movie and were trying to figure out what we would do for an hour or so before the fireworks start.

We ended up driving around for about an hour unable to decide where to go or what to do, so we just drive all over town doing nothing in particular except chatting and listening to music. About 30 mins before the fireworks we start heading down and she decided that we would not meet her sister and just go see the fireworks together. So we go down and chat until the fireworks start and I have to say that it was fantastic. It's been years since I had seen the fireworks and I can't recall how they were in past years but I think I want to try and check them out again another year. Unfortunately I'm a shy person and I didn't know how she felt about me so I kind of wimped out on kissing her after the New Years countdown. After the countdown I was feeling a little hungry so we went to Subway (which seemed to be the only place open) and ate another meal together. After that I go to drop her back to her place. So we get there and she invites me in for a little bit and we have a cup of tea each and do some innocent chatting which was all fine and good with me. It's approaching the time for me to leave and I wonder if I should kiss her goodnight. Since at this point it had been over 3 years since I had kissed anyone, I'm as nervous as anything and wimp out again. As I'm getting close to leave, however, she says: 'I would give you a kiss goodnight but I still have a bit of the flu'. I think I said 'that's ok' and I gave her a small kiss goodnight. I think she was hoping for something a little more and I felt a bit akward and maybe broke the kiss of earlier than I should have and said goodnight and then left. It felt like I was embarrassed and running away but that's all I could do.

This past New Years was probably the best I had ever had or at least can remember except how it ended. I would have liked to have given her a better kiss. The end of it didn't really matter to me though because I talked to her the next day and she still wants to see me. I'm thinking that's pretty crazy after having been single for so long, but it should be good. Since she had 2 kids and I worked nights our time together was limited to when her ex would take the kids on the weekend but it was still really nice. I thought things were going pretty well. Well, there were some minor issues that I had that made me think it wouldn't last but I liked her enough that I wanted to see if those issues would be enough to want me to break up with her. Things were going good for a while and I even met her kids who I liked and thought were nice, but after one of our date nights I accidentily insulted her. I really never meant to and apologized profusely. After talking to her on the phone things seemed like they would be ok, so I bought her a Tulip (can't get roses all the time right?), a little Fairy ornament (because she had a thing for fairy's, and a movie for her kids. She said she couldn't accept it, but I made her keep the stuff anyway. I thought everything was going to be ok but I was mistaken. She then e-mails me the next day and says that she doesn't want to go out anymore and she wants me to take the presents I gave her last night so I reluctantly accept it.

I wasn't crushed when this happened because like I said I had some issues that made me believe it would only be a temporary thing but I did like her had hoped that it would last longer than it did because I did enjoy her company and talking to her. I have to say though, that I'm glad we didn't end up having sex because let me say, that after having gone without it for 3 years I'm sort of used to it, as annoying as it can be sometimes. If we had had sex and then broke up shortly afterwards, it would be tough going without all over again (for what will probably be another few years lol). I don't know, maybe I'm a little weird holding onto what I like to call my 'second virginity' but since I've only slept with one person and it's been so long since then I really do feel like another virgin in the fact that it should be saved for someone special rather than trying to find someone to drag home downtown. She might have been that person had our time together been longer. What baffles me about this person was that she said she found me attractive and knows that I'm a nice guy but that it wasn't good enough for her. I don't know if it's all the hormones but I'm beginning to think women are crazy. Anyway, so while I was going out with this woman I deleted all my accounts from the dating site because I had hoped things were going to work. I just recently put my profile back up and it's back to 'happy hunting'. I really should just work up some courage and talk to women in person that I don't know, but it's so hard. I've been trying to psyche myself up for it sometime though by convincing myself that nothing truely matters because in the end I'm going to die anyway and my memory is bad anough that I'll probably forget about about it after a short time lol. Well, there's that and the fact that I truely believe that you will mainly regret the things you've never done moreso things you have done.

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Again I was going to get into Video Games and general life situation but I think this is long enough for now so I'll post it as is and proofread it another time. I hope it was entertaining for anyone that's read it. Have a nice day!

~M

And So It Begins, Part 2...

2006-01-30T19:02:00.000-08:00

Ok, so maybe you've read some of my previous posts that I had on myspace but now here's what I've been doing in the past month and a half as well as a little more background information about myself. So what's up with newfoundsoap you ask? Well, for a long time I've used the alias Soap. It actually started way back in 1994 when I was on irc and I used to go by the alias TheCowGod (after the Green Jellÿ song). Eventually I signed up to hotmail in about 95 or 96 and TheCowGod@hotmail was taken so I had to some up with something else and I knew it would be another song title. I was listening to Clutch at the time and decided to go with the song The Soapmakers and made it: The_Soapmaker. Eventually people would just call me Soap because it's shorter to type out so I started using Soap all of the time. Soap.blogspot.com, as well as the username soap was taken on this website, so I was contemplating a new alias. I've also recently gone by the username Eeeville, stangely enough it said that eeeville.blogspot.com was taken too even though when you go to that address it's not there. Newfoundland is my home and I'm commonly go by Soap, so I decided to put them together and Newfoundsoap was born. I had debated other names such as Anonynewf but I decided I didn't want to be anonymous, I want people to know the true me. Yes, that's right. Be afraid, be very afraid! :)

Ok, so hopefully I haven't frightened too many of you away already with my talks of aliases. As for me you can read my profile to the right and click on it for more detailed info. I was disappointed in the fact that I couldn't list all of the music artists that I like because it's limited to 600 characters. It's truely a pity, so in the end I decided to pick my 10 favorite bands. How does one choose 10 favorite bands when you listen to as much music as me? Well, I basically decided that they have to have at least 3 albums. Maybe when some of the new bands I've discovered in recent years put out more albums, my top 10 will switch around but the list that's currently there will have to do. I know I have a bunch of books listed but in actuality it's basically just 3 book series: A Sword of Truth (by Terry Goodkind), A Song of Ice and Fire (by George R.R. Martin) and Harry Potter (by R.K. Rowling). I'm not a big TV fan like in my youth but it also would have been nice list a few of my favorites, so here I'll just type them out here: Trailer Park Boys, Duckman, Seinfeld, Firefly, and Survivor. I think my good friend Steve is trying to convert me into a Battlestar Galactica fan though by lending my Season 1.

Time to discuss what's been happening in my life the past month and a half since I stopped writing on myspace and started this blog. I'll break it down in categories, so you can feel free to skip any you're not interested in reading:

Movies

Well, I guess the primary movie I should talk about is The Chronicles of Narnia. Why should I talk about it moreso than any others? Well, I did see it 3 times in theater, I love fantasy, and as far as I can remember it was my favorite movie of 2005. I do, however, have a pretty shotty memory so you'll have to forgive me if I'm forgetting another movie. So what should I say about Narnia? Well, I just think it was a fantastic fantasy movie and just plain good all around, though I suppose some might disagree because of some of the religous imagery that it contained. Well, it didn't really bother me a lot I just enjoyed it a lot. Wow, I'm so bad at reviewing stuff. I guess I don't want to say what I like or dislike about a movie because I don't really like to give anything away. I guess it's not an excuse though because I can't review music that well either.

Another movie I saw more than once in theater was Peter Jackson's King Kong. To me this was basically just a new Jurassic Park, I mean it even had Dinosaurs in it! It reminded me a lot of the first Jurassic Park in that the beginning 40 - 60 minutes are kind of necessary for the film to make sense but after seeing it once, on subsequent viewings you mainly want to just get into the action. I must have really enjoyed it because I gave up part of my New Years Eve to go and see it, but I'll discuss more about that futher on down this blog. I really admired what Peter Jackson did with The Lord of the Rings, so I had a feeling I would like this movie regardless. Speaking of Peter Jackson, have you seen the crazy weight this guy has lost? During LoTR (<-- Click), and during King Kong (<-- Click). Crazy!!! Now if only I could lose crazy amounts of weight too. Well, I'm going down just not as quickly as I would like... pizza owns me :(

I think the only other movie I've seen in theater since I last updated was Underworld Evolution. What to say about Underworld Evolution? Well, it's the sequel of a movie called Underworld where an ancient war between Vampires and Lycans (short for Lycanthrope or Werewolf) has been raging for hundreds of years. When I saw the trailer for the first movie I thought it was going to be a Romeo & Juliet set in modern day times with werewolves and vampires... that would have been weird to say the least. The first was pretty cool but I can only stomache to watch it about once every few years. Ok, ok onto my thoughts about Underworld Evolution. Well, if you like the first you should see this one at some point. The thing with the second however is there's more gore, more vulgarity and the inclusion of nudity so that might turn some people off. I think it was about on par with the first but that means I have no desire to see either of them for a few years to come or they'll probably annoy me. It was weird because Kate Beckinsale and the guy (Scott Speedman, is that right?) are like totally nude in one part and do as close to softcore porn as possible without showing any actual private parts. Yes it was cool to see Kate this way but I totally felt that it was out of place.

As for new movies on video that I've watched the only one I really remember seeing was Red Eye. What did I think of it? Well, it was an ok movie. It was kind of short, clocking in at about 85 mins or so. I actually don't think I would have enjoyed this movie that much except for the fact that it had Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams in it, both of which I really like. It's just a not very suspenseful suspense movie by Wes Craven, which is saying something because I don't really like horror and suspense/murder movies. I think the only other movie I've watched lately that I hadn't seen before was Blade Runner. I must admit that I did enjoy it. It's kind of sad that I hadn't seen it sooner because I probably would have enjoyed it more and had more appreciation for it. I still did like it, but it's hard for me to enjoy old movies if it doesn't come with a good dash of nostalgia.

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Here I was going to do a bunch of other categories tonight like Music, Love Life, Video Games, and general life situation but I think if I typed all of that out nobody would be reading to the end of this post. So I guess I'll save that for another day. I have a bunch of free time this week and weekend so I'll probably post again very soon. I hope it wasn't too boring to read :)

Take care everyone!

~M

Long Overdue...

2006-01-30T15:07:00.000-08:00

Well, I've changed from using myspace as a Blog to here, but I'll post old entries anyways, enjoy!

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Originally Posted - December 08, 2005

So, it's been a while since my last substantial blog post. I've been up to quite a bit lately, and the biggest thing to have happened since my last post was one of my cousins weddings. Well, she was married weeks ago in Cuba, but she had her wedding reception this weekend past out in Carbonear. It was good to see my cousins since I don't see them very often and I will see them even less now that they're in different countries and provinces. I haven't been to many weddings in my life, probably about 3 now, but they always manage to make you feel lonely if you're single. Maybe I should pull an Owen Wilson and be a wedding-crasher and meet women. Well, I guess that wouldn't work because the requires talking to women which I seem to be incapable of doing unless it's online. Oh, and by the way that movie Wedding Crashers with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn was a pretty good. Check it out if you have the chance.

So anyway, back to the wedding. I normally only drink about 3 - 5 times a year, but when I drink, boy do I intend to get SMASHED! Well, this time was no exception. I drank a full flask of Vodka, 2 shots of Rum, and about 3 shots of this 18% alcohol Liquere. Needless to say I was feeling pretty good. I was drunk to the point that I danced! I never dance, because that usually requires asking people and plus I don't know how to besides. I remember also playing pool with my cousin for one game in which I won. The only problem with getting really drunk is you'll usually end up with a hangover the next day. Well, I got one of the worst hangovers ever. The weird thing about it though was that I never had a headache, but my stomache was not happy with me at all. I must of went to bed about 4:30 am on Saturday morning and when my father woke me up to drive back to St. John's at 12pm, I think I was still drunk. Basically from 12pm to 5am I was sleeping and vomiting. Now I don't always get sick, but I certainly did this time, and I think it was the non-Vodka that was messing with me. So, I'll probably try drinking once more with only Vodka and if I get sick off of it then I'm going to quit drinking all together. If it works out ok, then I know what the problem was :)

Now it's time for me to go into the obligatory 'what I've been listening to lately' paragraphs. The new Korn album See You On The Other Side leaked Friday night which I listened to on the way into my cousins wedding. All I can say is ewwww. Now I know that's the general concensus of Korn these days but I still like some albums by them (and not s/t like most people do). I'm far from normal. Maybe you don't think so but I know I am... time to go off on a tangent...

Ask yourself a few of these questions:
-Do you drink alcohol more than 3 - 5 times a year? I don't
-Have you smoked a cigarette in your life? I haven't
-Have you done an illegal drug in your life? I haven't
-Have you ever had a one night stand? I haven't
-Have you ever gone for more than 3 years without kissing someone or having a date (not including your pre-dating years)? I have
-Do you have any piercings? I don't
-Do you have any tattoos? I don't

Do I need to go on, to set myself apart from other people? I didn't think. so. I'm not saying, 'love me, I'm different!!!' because I think it's far to common these days for people to try to be chaotic and random because it seems to be the 'in' thing to do now. Just look at myspace profiles, or the way people talk on messageboards (omgwtfbbq!!!1one1) and you'll see what I mean. I'm not saying everyone is trying to be random either... there are some generally weird people. I don't even think I'm weird. I think I'm just kind of different than most people I encounter and probably in a boring way =) Oh well =P

Well, time to get back off my tangent. So yeah, the new Korn album is pretty terrible. The only tolerable song to me was their first single Twisted Transistor. After seeing the video and hearing the song a few times even then it was beginning to wear on me a little. The new cd also comes with a bonus CD with three b-sides and two remixes of Twisted Transistor. I actually liked two of the b-sides more than all of the album tracks. I think they have more of the trademark Korn sound whereas the album sometimes sounds like it's trying to be industrial. There is one very good thing about having listened to the album: I am now free to put up my review for top 5 favorite albums of 2005 in my next blog post. I have narrowed down the top 5 but I'm not sure how to rank them yet so I'll be giving them each another listen or two over then next day or so.

Another album I listened to recently was 'Samus Octology' by Irepress. The interesting thing about this album is partially in it's title (samus octology which contains 8 songs) and the fact that one of the songs is called Samus. If you have played any amount of Nintendo games you might know that Samus is the main character of series of games called Metroid. So what does that have to do with this album? Well, the music in Metroid is very distinct in my opinion and a lot of various parts of the album sound like they are rock covers of Metroid soundtracks, particularly the tack called Samus. The album itself is very good after only a few listens but like all instrumental albums I can only listen to them so often so I'll have to come back to it more in a few weeks to a month. Oh and slightly off-topic, if you do like Metroid music, you would be well advised to check out Metroid Metal to listen to some very cool covers of Metroid music from various games. Even further off-topic if you like old 8 bit nintendo music you should check out some original 8 bit music HERE.

Well, that's about all I've been up to the past few days besides trying to find a job. So, I think I'll leave it at this for now. As I said, next post will be my top 5 favorite albums of 2005 which will probably be in 2 - 5 days depending on what happens over the next few days.

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I wrote the above about a week ago maybe longer and I don't know why but I was going to quit doing the whole myspace thing, but maybe there are people out there who are interested in the few things I have to say. What have I been doing this whole time? The same thing I always do: listen to music, hang with friends and watch a movie or two.

I may as well get into what I've been listening to. The album I've been listening to the most is the self-titled album by the name of Wolfmother. Weird name, I know. These are three guys from Autralia and damn are they ever good. The music remind me of some weird fusion of Led Zeppelin, The White Stripes (the lead singer sounds a lot like Jack White in a few songs) and some general stoner rock. I don't really know what else to say except give it a try if you like hard rock with a bit of a retro aspect to it.

Lately I've also gone on a video game music binge. Yes yes, I have official admitted that I'm a nerd if you haven't guess it already. I'm not really as much into gaming as I once was but there are no doubts about my nerdom. To be fair though I haven't played that many games over the past 5 years or so. The only ones I've played extensively during that times is: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Super Monkey Ball, Metroid Prime, Zelda: Wind Waker, Zelda: The Minish Cap, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, Shadow of the Colossus, and World of Warcraft. That's not really a lot over 5 years compared to what I was like in my youth. I think I stopped being into it as much when I started working at a video game store, but I still enjoy a good game every now and again.

Well, I'm going to leave it at this, my next post should be about my top five favorite albums. I'm not to sure how 2005 is going to play out since some of what I've listened to in the past 2 weeks is quite possibly worthy of being in the top 5, but I have solid choices from 1991 - 2004. I'll get more into that in my next blog however. Have a nice day!

~M

One Hour To Kill...

2006-01-30T14:58:00.000-08:00

Well, I've changed from using myspace as a Blog to here, but I'll post old entries anyways, enjoy!

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Originally Posted - November 24, 2005

As you might have seen on the main myspace page I like Survivor. Well, I have an hour to kill before it comes on and since I'm just sitting at the computer I may as well jot a few things down right?

So yeah, I like survivor. I remember when the first season came out so long ago, I thought it was the stupidest thing ever. Then shortly before the second season started I decided to watch it. Why? Well, so many people I knew were always talking about it, so I figured it would be a decent topic of conversation at MUN (Memorial University of Newfoundland). I couldn't have predicted how much I would like the show and have watched it faithfully ever since. I would probably like all of the other crappy reality TV shows if I actually spent the time to sit down and watch them. Truth be told, I rarely watch TV. Of the ones that I listed on my main page that I like, Duckman, Seinfeld, and Firefly are finished, though I do like to watch Seinfeld re-runs. So the only current TV shows I tend to watch is Trailer Park Boys and Survivor. Can you believe it? I've never seen a single episode of CSI, Lost, or anything else that's been popular the last few years. Soprano's?

Now in my youth I was a TV whore. I watched so many of the sitcoms. You name it, I've probably watched it. Friends, Frasier, Full House, Cosby Show, Blossom, Cheers, just a whole bunch more that I can't even remember. I don't like dislike TV, I just always feel I have better things to be doing with my time. I consider reading to be one of the best things you can do with your time but I don't feel I do as much of it as I would like because the computer is often far too tempting to not be around. I mean that's what I'm doing now and it also means that I can listen to music which is what I do at just about every opportunity that I can.

Speaking of music today I just recently checked out the solo CD by Powderfingers lead singer: Bernad Fanning, entitled Tea And Sympathy. Well, I really like his voice but I wasn't overly fond of the album. I'll probably give it a few more listens however before I pass judgement on it. It's a lot less rock and roll than Powderfinger. It has a sort of Folkie/Bluegrass sort of feel. Maybe not though since I don't really listen to that genre much. My feeling when listening to this album was that if I was in the mood to listen to something like this I would be better off listening to Iron And Wine. I'm sure if you like Powderfinger than the new Bernard Fanning disc is at least worth a listen.

Right at this very second I'm listening to Tourist by a band called Athlete. I decided to give it a shot because they often get comparisons to Coldplay which I really like. So far it's ok, but in terms of bands that 'sound like Coldplay' I would rather listen to Keane, Leaves, Elbow, or Starsailor. I'm not even the whole way through the album yet so I guess I shouldn't be to hasty since even Starsailor took a while for me to get into. Just thinking about it now, I listen to so much from Europe. Well, I've said this to my friends many times. I should really move over there because not only could I see all these great bands but I could visit my good friend Chris and maybe, just maybe I could find myself a nice British Tart. haha. I do love their accents and most European accents in general.

Well, 30 mins down and 30 mins to go. What to say? What to say? Well, I think I've talked enough about music so onto movies I suppose. The last one that I saw was Harry Potter And The Goblet of Fire like I mentioned in my last blog. I do have a few movies here that I should get around to watching: Mulholland Dr and Derailed. I hear Mulholland Drive is supposed to be pretty messed up. This is actually a good thing because I tend to like weird moves. Memento is in my 10 ten favorites. I also did like Rules of Attraction and I don't think anything could be weirder than seeing Fred Savage in his underwear lying on a bed, holding onto a joint with his belly button haha. As for Derailed, I bearly even know what it's about but it has Clive Owen in it and he was the man in the movie Closer.

Closer is an awesome movie if you haven't seen it. It's basically just a lot of dialog and a story about 4 people and their incredibly screwed up sex lives/relationships. Sounds like it could be a snore but I really enjoyed it. Hey, at the very least you get to see Natalie Portman half naked :) But in all seriousness it also had Jude Law and Julia Roberts which rounds out to be a great cast. Definitely take the time and rent this movie unless all you like is action, action, action!!

Well, I have about 20 mins left but I think I'll take that time and proof read this to ensure it's cohesiveness. Until next time!

~M

And So It Begins...

2006-01-30T13:15:00.000-08:00

Well, I've changed from using myspace as a Blog to here, but I'll post old entries anyways, enjoy!

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Originally Posted - November 23, 2005

Well, Lately I've been doing some reading. Here are two books that I've read recently:

Feast For Crows by George R.R. Martin

and

Chainfire by Terry Goodkind

A Feast For Crows was the 4th book in the series A Song Of Ice And Fire by George R.R. Martin. If you haven't read this series please do yourself a favor and pick up A Game Of Thrones which is the first book in the series. Just to give you a little info about it, it's fantasy but not your typical fantasy. In what way you ask? Well, typical fantasy often revolves around: mythical creatures, magic, and prophecy. You will see these aspects in the book but they definitely take a backseat to the character development and story plot of your regular humans. Basically this series is a politcal intrigue/warefare book set in medievil times with some fantasy aspects included.

Wow, I just went off on a tangent... back to A Feast For Crows. Anyway, I had been waiting for this book for 5 long years and picked it up the day it came out which was Nov 8th 05. I was a little worried about the book because it was taking so long for him to finish it and before releasing it he made it aware that the book was becoming too large so he split the book in half and will hopefully be releasing the second book next year. After reading the book I was a little disappointed because not a lot had happened and the book didn't focus on my favorite characters. It was still good to read the book after being away from the series for so long, but after 'the shit hit the fan' in the last book I had no idea what he would do next. I'll just say that it's good, but after waiting for so long it was a little hard not to feel complete after reading it. Perhaps I would have been better served if I had waited to read the two halves togther.

Onto Chainfire. Well, this is the 9th book in the Sword Of Truth. People say it's the Wheel Of Time part 2 because it seems like the series is never going to end. Well, I could understand those feelings after reading nine 650 - 900 page novels. Terry has said that there is only two books left which I think would be a good thing. Despite the characters that I enjoy, the series is dragging out longer than necessary. In fact I could go so far as to say if you just read the first 2 books and then quit, you wouldn't be missing much and I think most of the story lines are clued up. As for Chainfire, I could see people being disappointed with it since basically there's a big mystery that starts from the beginning and goes throughout the whole book until finally in the end when the characters figure out what's up, we have to wait for the next book to find out what their going to do about it. For some reason I didn't find this as bad as A Feast for Crows, but then again I wasn't waiting for 5 years for this book. Not really sure what else to say about it without getting into specifics, so I'll leave it at that. If you want to start this series you'll want to start with Wizard's First Rule.

Ok, books are out of the way, what else is there to talk about? Movies? Well, I just saw the movie Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire twice this past weekend. I liked it. I knew everything that was going to happen because I've read the books, but I still enjoyed it. There was a fair bit of details cut, but then again you would have to because the book is fairly large. People say this is perhaps the most action packed out of all four of the Harry Potter movies. I'd probably have to agree with that.

As much as I did like it I do feel that it was a good movie, nothing will ever be as magical as the first time you experience a given story regardless of the medium it's presented unless you missed a lot of what was going on the first time. For the Harry Potter movies I saw the first two before reading the books. After that I just couldn't wait to find out what else was going to happen so I read all of the other books. Goblet of Fire and Prisoner of Azkaban were my favorite of the books, but I didn't enjoy these movies as much as the first two and I think it's because I knew what was going to happen. Likewise I didn't really enjoy the first two books because I knew what was going to happen. Something else to consider is that almost nothing was left out of the first 2 books in the movies because the books themselves weren't very long. Don't ask me if it's better to read a book first or watch a movie because I think that's personal preference ;)

Ok, time to chat about 2 CD's that I just started to listen to this week:

Hypnotize by System of a Down
and
The Angela Test by Leaves

So this is the second album this year by System of a Down. The first album was Mezmerize. I couldn't believe they would release two albums this year. I can't tell you how ecstatic I was when I heard this. Then again getting 2 albums by System isn't as cracked up as one would think because both albums clock in at under 40 minutes each. I have single albums by some artists that are longer than these two combined. Regardless of the time it's still 22 new songs which suits me just fine. As for Hypnotize, I wasn't as awestuck with this album as I was with Mezmerize. I like every single song from Mezmerize, and a lot of them I really like. On Hypnotize I can listen to the whole thing but the only songs I love are Soldier Side, Lonely Day, and the title track. Overall it was a great year for System fans but I would have thought it would be better with the announcement of 2 albums. In the end, it doesn't really matter because this has been one of the best years for music in a long time, as far as my tastes go anyway.

The new Leaves album completely took me by surprise. It's only natural that I didn't hear about it because it was only released in the UK at the beginning of Sept and hasn't even been released over here yet and they aren't exactly the most well known band this side of the pond. Well, for those of you that haven't heard of them, then you're in a treat for reading this far into to my overly long blog :P Well, that is if you like Coldplay. I say that because there is a very big similarity in the two bands, particularly in the vocals. While we're on the topic of bands you should listen to if you like Coldplay, try: Keane, Athlete, and Elbow. Well, not much to say about the new Leaves album itself except that I consider it to be a very good sophomore album. I think it might grow on me more than the first album Breathe after a few more listens.

So is anyone still with me? I don't think future blog spots will be this long but you never know, I might find something to rant and rave about. I'm hoping to update at least once a week. Also, after I hear the new Korn album a few times I'm going to list my top 5 albums of 2005 and then every two weeks thereafter I'm going to do a top 5 for the year preceeding it. I'm going to do this all the way back to 1991. I know I won't slack on this because I've already got it done. My sleeping schedule has been horriby messed up lately. Last night I went for a nap but didn't end up waking until 10pm in the night so I decided I'll get my schedule back on track by staying up 24 hours and then sleeping. So don't think I just slapped together my top 5's because it took a few hours for me to get it completed. Not only that I'll have to do a little write up when it comes time to put up the top 5's.

Well, I hope anyone who's read this got at least something out of it. Please comment on anything at all if you feel like doing so :)

Cheers

~M