Money Kills.

Let's get this out of the way first. I love money. I love that these little electronic numbers and green slips of paper get me toys, food, and occasionally out of trouble. This issue is, I have only found one way to make these things accrue.

Working. And for the time being, I hate working. Pains in the ass, forever-irritable managers, stress abounds always. It's like no matter how early before my shift I pop in (free of pay, by the way) there's always some new issue, some other thing which has to be done, or some emergency which will become my responsibility. A lot of the joy from my job has been removed, and the art of it all is feeling beyond dead.

As much as I hate working though, I hate being broke more. I think. It's a definite conundrum, especially in that I don't think i'm making enough friggin' money to get toys AND food AND stay out of trouble. I already got rid of toys for my daily needs list, and food is scarce. Morale low.

-The0

Temporal Fill-In

Where exactly does all the time go? I wake up on a day off or few, and before I'm ready, It's time to cram my nose back into a fucking grindstone.

I have decided to find out where a lot of this time goes, and I am disappointed with my results.

Roughly 45 of my hours every two weeks goes into me escaping reality, and playing video games. This is a fun thing for me, but I am also well aware that there are better uses for my time

This time is usually spent drunk or drinking. They're not mutually inclusive though. I'd say I spent at least 10 hours of every two weeks drinking.

At the rate of 9 ill-planned hours every day off, and 5 hours every day on, I sleep. I sleep very hard, to the point where nothing can wake me except an explosion or the setting sun. Roughly 120 hours every 2 weeks. Yuck.

And then there are good uses of time. 12 hours every two weeks for band practice. Those are fun times, and I'm still usually late to that. Thank goodness they like me. Another good use of my time is, uuh....

Crap. I may be an exemplary case of irresponsible time use.

-The0

I Hurt You

Rammstein has released their second video from the new album, Liebe ist für Alle Da. They chose the track Ich Tu Dir Weh, a powerful, driving song about, well, various sado-masochistic acts. It's one of may favorite of many songs on the album, and while it's not my first choice for a video from this album, it's a welcome addition to the visual library.

The Video!!!

At first view, it makes me swell with pride. My first concert was seeing Rammstein, on their Mutter World Tour from 2001 to 2002. The excitement, the smoke, the fear of being hurt, and the love of going deaf. When they took the stage, they were dressed in a full motif from their album, and of the flames went into their set. They were more pyrotechnics than Independence Day, more people sharing a unified love than there were in college, and I had more fun, in my sweaty singed t-shirt then than I have had in a long while.

This video woke up distinct memories of that very show. This video is a fantastic image of Rammstein. Spiky, flame-broiled, active, and in love the the heaviness of their art. Of course, this is the idea of industrial. Note the massive machinery, churning with the metal of the guitars. The electronic sparks as the synths plays. The activity of the band members as the play. Lastly the lighting effects out of Till's mouth was an especially nice touch. Enlightening us with hurtful words.

This is all a very impressive display, as it only took them 3 months to kick this video out, and they're all (still) pushing 50 years old. This is what I love about this group, and what I imagine and envision think out every time I hear good industrial music.

God I hope they come back to America, just one last time.

-The0

Not Smart.

I had my wisdom teeth taken out recently. You remember when I mentioned that horrible chip in a molar after I had my foot butchered? It turns out that was simply a portent into worse times to come. I went to a dentist to see what could be done, and well, it turned out that nothing could be done.

Without grossing you out too much, my mouth was apparently a mess. I can remember previous visits to the dentist, but I haven't a memory of my last dentist visit. Doctor Teeth said he wanted them removed so that he wouldn't have to end up repairing something that would probably break again. I can't afford to have any of this work taken care of anyway. I might as well have chosen to leave them in.

The oral surgeon was a good acquaintance, I learned, and after a little consultation, he went to work early in the morning. Novacain is a bad ass painkiller, and significantly cheaper than anesthesia for an hour. I was very thankful to the following things during the procedure: iMetal ear-bud headphones, for being able to overpower the grinding sound in my skull, DJ Tiësto and his continuous In Search of Sunrise track, for being a soothing yet distracting track, and the 4th generation iPod, for being easy to use when you can't move. The literal thought of what was happening as I felt the vibration was terrifying, like a good horror movie.

On the first run, the doctor missed a little bit of root on the right upper molar. He opened me back up, and drilled the last of it out. This is my main irritance, because when he did this he perforated into my lower sinus. Such a communication between my mouth and sinus makes it impossible to play my saxophone. At least, play it well. I can't build up the pressure needed to play the lower notes at all. It's maddening to have this shit not heal. I'm very concerned that I'll miss out on playing my favorite instrument forever. If I do, I'm not certain who to blame, but I promise, I'm going to burn something expensive to the ground.

After all this pudding and soft food I was required to eat, I did get a good sense of what was at stake. I had to have some meat one day. Had to, avoiding it wasn't an option. I crammed a Reuben into a food processor and ground it into paste. It was awful. Flavorless, without texture, and pretty much just sick. I ate it, but if I don't wind up caring for my teeth, I'm going have to eat that every damn day by the time I'm 50.

No thanks.

-The0

The Blood Farmer's Dilemma

So, I recently saw Daybreakers with the good doctor. It was pretty enjoyable. I'm always happy to see Sam Neill get more work (a long-time respect for Dr. Grant is to blame for that) and anything with Willem Dafoe is going to be a hit. I couldn't tell what was rougher, the skin on his face or the grain of the film.

While I'm disappointed to see yet another vampire flick hitting the screens, I'm glad that it stuck to some sort of canon. These vampires can't be seen in mirrors, a stake through the heart kills instantly, and nothing but human blood fills their hunger. The mirror thing hasn't been explored in a very long time, and while there probably won't be a sequel, it was very interesting to see it presented.

The premise of the movie was unique as well. The vampire-human wars were long over. They won, and since they have to feed on human blood, we literally became a cash crop. Humans were snatched up from the streets they used to own, to live out the rest of their lives as blood machines. The victorious vampire vanguard continued to get their supplied and rationed blood from various avenues (think: StarBlood's, St Louis Blood Co, Panera Blood, Drippin' Donuts, Hemo's Pizza, Plasma Hut [stop me!]) as they took on our old streets, jobs, and undead lives.

This, of course, can't go on forever, setting up the conflict we need in order to have a story. Blood runs low, they start running out of humans, and they start searching for alternative fuels. Foods. Sorry. They can't get an artificial blood created, and reserves are drying up. People in advanced stages of blood deprivation are like crazed humanoid bats, devoid of all thought but to get more blood. They needed more humans in a bad way, or an alternative, or a way to wean their hunger. Enter Willem Dafoe as the world's first cured vampire. Without giving too much away, the cure is something that kills them, and then the cure is something that sustains them. Deus ex Machina, right out of nowhere.

A weird thing to see was how human these vampires turned out to be. Shuffling in line, waiting for coffee, watching the news, and struggling at jobs. It's like being a vampire doesn't have that undertone of sexual lust, power and control, and the fascination with the immortality of the undead was profoundly understated. Like the rat race never has a finish line. A healthy embrace of classic vampire lore, with a good reality check. I liked this movie, if nothing else as a thought exercise. 80%, will probably buy the DVD. See this film if you like lots of syrup-y blood, gore, Sam Neill, Willem Dafoe, fire, and classic cars. Don't see this film if you like sparkles. You'll cry.

-The0

Stitches

There are memories that each person has, be they good, bad, bitter or sweet. Some are a healing presence, and every time you think back to them, you feel better, empowered, and can't help but smile. Others are scars, reminders of hurt long or recently past, and teach us a lesson or refrain us a twinge of frown when reflected. Memories are key to helpings us be who we are, and I am pleased to say I have many memories over such a relatively short period of time.

I have one memory that doesn't really fit the previous metaphor. This memory is more like broken glass, stuck deep within the skin. Any looking at the scar lets me know it's there, but any scuffling of the area starts a new cascade of pain and subsequent healing effort to be expended.

This scar I got long ago, nigh on 9 years ago. It was probably through a series of my own blunders and assumptions, but suffice it to say, it hurt me badly. Psycho-scarring, and nearly in a life-ending way for me. This was folly, but it wasn't the end of the wound.

I made several attempts to convert the memory, try to make it from bad to good. 3 attempts to be precise. These ended unhappily, and the glass went deeper than could be retrieved out of me on the last of them. I lost many happy things to this memory, most again to my own folly, and I'm happy to see it undisturbed.

Recently, it got disturbed. Not scuffled, just scratched. I'm not happy about it, and to try and protect my meager façade of happiness and integrity in front of a warehouse of messy and hateful boxes, I'm not going to go into details regarding what exactly I'm talking about. It's supposedly in the past, and nothing can change it.

To sum my shard of reflection, I think I would rather have been in a train wreck than to endure all this. It heals better, makes for a better story, and doesn't cost you nearly as much.

-The0

Saddle Up.

It has been a very nice break for me. I logged just over 90 hours into all my Steam games, and ate pretty well whatever I wanted. I stayed up late, I slept in. I saved the universe, only to doom it to total fascism. I melted about a hundred faces off with a face-melting solo, and I got my foot mostly all better. I hang out for extended periods with my favorite people, and had a few drinks almost every day. A great way to start the new year.

I made ZERO dollars during this little vacation.

Despite this I still went out. Dr. Girlfriend treated me to Eddie Izzard. A good show, and I still always laugh at his skits. Many friends were at that show, and we ended up at a nearby cordials bar. A cute place. This is all in faded memory.

After such a long pause I am surprised I have this much to say. More disasters are in the works, but suffice it to say, I just don't care to write right now. Suck it up.

It's not gold, but it's a start. There are some events that deserve their own separate posts. Important ones. Revealing ones. Ones that would probably be better off not written out, but that's not my style.

-The0

A Happy Christmahanukwanzaakah to all!

Well well, that time of year is here yet again. A time for some of joy and receipt. A time for others of sorrow and tax. Where the tides of the season find you, let it be know that this one bids you much happiness! It is a dear pleasure to know you!

My season has been a little weird. A good friend in the country, my first Christmas with a partner in a long while, and barely enough cash to stretch across all my friends for gifts. The main save-all for this season has been my blessed deal-a-day sites and Steam.

Let me digress for a paragraph. Steam has been the best thing to happen to gaming since Nvidia came out with SLI. A community where you can buy the games, connect automatically with friends in the same game, track your acheivements and all with a simple email address. Steam is what XBL wishes it could be. Steam offered literal fleets of sales for the holiday season. The gift of game will keep me consumed for many hours in the coming month.

A few hours with friends and family is enough to cure what ails you in most any case. My foot feels better, and I'm going to get my teeth taken care of sooner than later. There is a LOT of New Year time-off coming up, So I plan to have a a lot of fun and a lot of alchol.

Merry Holidays and Happy New Year!!!

-The0

Surgery! Good times!

I was recently hospitalized and released on account of a infection. Tiny little bacteria, all swarming around inside me, began to get hunger and eat up on my flesh. I have no idea how that got there, all I know is that few would be able to make it through the multiple shifts I had to endure simply to spend a couple days off of it. At the end of my couple of days off, when it started to look more like a bratwurst than a foot, I took a roundabout trip to the surgery wing of St. Lukes hospital, via route of family practice.

After a quick look from a bevy of aghast nurses, the surgeon walked in. He took a quick survey of the area, stabbed me a couple of times with a lidocain needle, and began to slice. This was astounding. It was a world-opening pain, the kind where you don't really even feel it anymore. Needless to say, I think this guy was something of a sadist.

I was hospitalized for about 4 days, dreading the next visit from the surgeon. Rough asshole. While I was laid out on a back breaking bed, one of the molars chipped horribly. This is a molar which supposedly was supposed to be removed when I was closer to 19. I'm beginning to see why. I was accompanied near the whole time by friends and the ever-dear Dr. Girlfriend. I saw a good few movies, watched enough TV, missed a lot of work, and learned that morphine doesn't really do much more than itch. The moral of the story is...

is...

I don't know. Fuck, that surgeon fucking sucks.

-The0

Treachery on the 7 Seas

Recently, through a very lucky set of conditions, I was able to obtain a version of Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. I am currently running Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit, and I was actually pretty happy with it. But times, they change, and so must I. I wanted to have the 64-bit capability so that I could expand to more RAM, and be on the curve of 64-bit programming. What I learned may startle you.

YOU CAN'T JUST TRANSFER OVER 32-BIT FILES AND PROGRAMS TO A 64-BIT SYSTEM!!! Who knew?! Not this guy. So here I am, I have cloned my whole full hard drive to one twice its size. The end result I desired was to have a Windows.old folder on my bigger hard drive, not just on my old hard drive. This Windows.old folder would have all my old settings, all my old programs, even all my old music and libraries! I could simply copy and paste those all onto the same drive, and be done with my upgrade. I. Am Stupid.

I went ahead and tried to do most of this. About the only thing that wound out working was transferring my steamapps folder over to the new steam folder. With that setting the precedent, I decided to copy over every program file in it's like program file. Windows 7 64-bit has a special Program Files folder for 32-bit programs. Cramming files like I did messed up a LOT of things. I guess you could say it'd be like trying to cram a Neon onto a V8 engine, even if you get it to friggin' fit, how in the snot will you make it run? Not very well.

So I decided to try and go back and delete these files. This is the most annoying thing about Windows 7. Just because you put a file somewhere, or install a program, doesn't mean that 7 will let you remove it. It's not enough to be the Administrator. You need to have the permission of Trusted Installer. Who the hell is Trusted Installer, and when did he touch my PC?! This probably applies only to direct Windows features though. Still, quite confusing.

The best thing I wound up doing was formatting and starting from scratch. That works well. I'll be careful this time, and copy over My Documents one folder at a time. Then, fresh installs of all my old programs. The most convenient discovery so far is a site called Ninite. It's a site that allows you make one massive download of all the common applications you would want on a new PC or OS. Pretty nifty.

This is going to be a long voyage. All ashore who's going ashore!

-The0

Public Awareness

Radio Iodine. Have you heard of it? Not the radioiodine which is used in the treatment of thyroid cancer. The Radio Iodine that was an alternative band born in St. Louis. It was short lived, only pushed out one EP and one album. I recently came into possession of both of these collections after some rather avid hunting on Amazon, and I'm glad that I did.

Now, I would've been another member of the public not aware of this band had it not been for one weird thing. When my older brother went off to college, he left a good sum of his old clothes behind in his room, which henceforth became my room. I found a nice long sleeved black t-shirt in this room a couple of years after he left, which I started to wear around frequently. After a while I found that there was a weird crust-like collection of lines on the left sleeve. It took about 15 minutes to ascertain that this was no stain, but a logo for Radio Iodine. I thought my older brother hadn't listened to 30 minutes of alternative in his life, certainly not to my knowledge. I did the research then, found out what the hell this band was, and made it a goal to have their material.

That was about 4 years ago. Since, I finally found the CDs at a beyond reasonable price, and become a good fan of them. This is all despite the fact that they broke up in 1997. They have an alluring sound. Dirty yet smooth. Think Cranberries + Garbage + Megaherz = Radio Iodine. So I of course had to tell my older brother about this whole enterprise. The odd thing is that he had no idea how he came into possession of the shirt either. It was a total mystery to the both of us how that shirt came into our possession. Still, I had new music, and it was good.

Later that very day, my older brother had lunch with one of his old high school friends. They reminisced about the olden days, and somehow or another they came to the conversation of the first concert to which he dragged my brother. A small, simulated excerpt from that conversation:

'Wait, wait, I remember that now! Did a band called Radio Iodine have anything to do with that?"

"Yeah it did! I was really into them for a while!"

"Did you happened to have any merchandise from that show?"

"Yeah, I bought a shirt."

"My brother has that shirt now!"

My older brother told me about this conversation. I insist now that whether it was his or not, this shirt, through a semi-bizarre set of circumstances, has opened me to the small, short-lived story of a good St. Louis band. I like their stuff, it Audiosurfs very well, and it appeals well to any small party.

I'm keeping that shirt.

-The0