Internet piracy saves the day again

Since I had to get a new computer (again) money's going to be tight for a while. (again) And my discovery that I've been getting free cable for no reason has also led to the discovery that there's still nothing on TV. (Although putting the History Channel and finding out all the whacky methods they used to kill Confederates and Hitler-dudes back in the day is okay sometimes.) So as a money-saving measure, I've forsaken the used DVD racks at Hastings and returned to the old ways of finding my entertainment in free and highly illegal ways. Ahh. Anyway, here's a brief rundown of the crap I've acquired lately:

Jurrassic Park Trilogy - All three movies, and I've never seen the third one, so it'll be a bonus, once I get around to watching it. But I think that's the one where they pretty much made up a new dinosaur to be badder than the T-Rex, so until further notice, fuck Jurrassic Park 3 preemptively. The Tyrannosaurus is king of animals, and even Spielberg cannot change that. I was willing to let the velociraptor thing slide, (the Hollywood version was more like a deinonychus [that's a different dinosaur, and I'm a nerd] crossed with some cyborg ninjas than a little piddly-ass velociraptor) but you don't besmirch Tyrannosaurs that way.

American Hardcore - Documentary someone made not too long about about the hardcore punk scene from the early 80s, back before "hardcore punk" meant "bad heavy metal played by short-haired dudes singing about unity." It was good enough to almost make me want to try to like Black Flag again, which says a lot. Highlights include the dude from TSOL casually mentioning being a grave-robber back in the day with no further explanation, that Moby dude talking about singing for this one band followed immediately by other band members saying it never happened, and the fact that Ian MacKaye somehow looks exactly the same as he did in 1982.

Heavy Metal Parking Lot - Short little documentary shot from the parking lot outside a Judas Priest concert back in the day, consisting of brief interviews with concert goers. It will make you ashamed to have ever listened to Judas Priest, any sort of heavy metal, or any other form of music made by man, but it's still hilarious. Oh, and you can watch it here.

GWAR - Phallus in Wonderland - 1992 movie by your favorite monster costume-clad shock rock band, GWAR. I haven't really watched it yet, but a quick skim through it seems to indicate that it's a bunch of music videos from the America Must Be Destroyed album, with interludes of goofy, retarded crap in between. And oh yeah, this was nominated for a Grammy and based (loosely, obviously) on a true story. Wow.

The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years - Another music-type documentary, this one being a sequel to another one that probably had a lot of the people from American Hardcore in it, now that I think about it. Anyway, haven't watched this yet either, but I'm pretty sure it's got a bunch of 80s glam rock bands in it, along with a bunch of Megadeth stuff. Should be okay.

An Evening With Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder - Man, the first one of these was hilarious, but much like pretty much everything else Kevin Smith is involved with (I'm still bitter about Clerks II) this blew really, really hard. Basically, it's like three hours of Kevin Smith answering questions about the first Evening With Kevin Smith DVD, occasionally interrupted by him still trying to convince people that his wife is as hot as he thinks she is. Also, despite the fact that all of this was filmed in the 21st century, half of it has Smith STILL sporting some sort of crew cut mullet haircut disaster.

The Bill Cosby Collection - The greatest thing I've ever found on the internet. Essentially a file folder with about TWENTY Bill Cosby albums in MP3 format. This alone is why they started the internet.

Web Surf Nicaragua Colon Song Tune of the Day for Browsers

Mastodon - "Cut You Up With a Linoleum Knife"

Don't talk, watch!
Don't talk, watch!
You came here, watch it!
Don't like it? Walk out!
We still have all your fucking money!

Do not nudge, kick or jiggle the seat in front of you.
I'm sitting there!
I am everywhere at once
and I will cut you up.

If you make out here,
I will cut your lips and tongue
from your head
with a linoleum knife.

Do not explain the plot.
If you don't understand, then you should not be here.
Your money is our money
and we will spend it on drugs.

Do not crinkle your food wrappers loudly.
Be considerate to others,
or I will bite your torso
and give you a disease.

Did you bring your baby?
Babies don't watch this.
Take the seed outside. Leave it in the streets.
Run over it after the show.

If I see you videotaping this movie,
Satan will rain down your throat with hot acid
and dissolve your testicles
and turn your guts into snakes.

This is copyrighted movie for Time Warner.
If I find that you've sold it on eBay,
I will break into your house
and tear your wife in half.

Dell Dimension Trials and Tribulations

With major system upgrades comes major problems, like how moving up to XP in 2002 left me without a scanner or a cheap, shitty digital camera. So far, here have been the issues I've had to deal with: (WARNING: If you're normal enough a human to not know stuff about computers, this is all going to be a bunch of nonsense)

• Had to download new drivers for my printer. No big deal at all, except for the fact that HP's download servers are slow enough to take an hour to send me a file that would take less than twenty seconds to get from anywhere else.
  
• Onboard graphics have no DVI connection, meaning I have to hook up the monitor with a VGA cord. Only available VGA cord is horrible and unshielded, meaning everything is all ghosted, like cable TV that's being stolen from a neighbor or something. I could have sworn I had a better cord somewhere, but apparently not.
• Old graphics card, (ATI Radeon 9250, for the record) despite not being as good chipset-wise as the onboard GeForce 6, has more video RAM and a DVI connection, so it would be something cool to use until I find a real VGA cord. The problem? Despite being fully able to run DirectX 9, it's still somehow totally incompatible with Windows Vista. Basically, it would work, but the Windows Aero theme wouldn't be available. And Windows Aero is basically the main difference between Vista and XP. D'oh.
• Hey, the new computer uses SATA connection type stuff to hook up disk drives, instead of IDE, which works a lot better. The problem? My old (as in maybe six months old) DVD-RW drive is IDE, meaning it's useless to me now. Not too big a problem, since this computer came with one, but I lose LightScribe functionality that the other drive has. (That's the thing where you can flip the disk over to the label side and basically burn a picture on there) So, uhh, anyone who wants a DVD-RW drive that can do LightScribe and about 15 or so LightScribe CDR disks can make me and offer or something.
• PS2 connections are old as hell and outmoded by USB 2.0, which is the new hotness, at least as long as FireWire never really catches on. So this computer got rid of the standard PS2 mouse and keyboard connections in the back, making USB the only option. No big deal, seeing as how my mouse was USB and a new USB keyboard came with this thing. Oh, except they didn't think to add more USB slots when they got rid of the other stuff, meaning I effectively go from six available slots to four. And between a mouse, a keyboard, a video game controller, a printer, an external hard drive, the external DVD burner I use to capture videos with, and assorted other cameras, MP3 players, and bullshit like that, I have something like ten things that need a USB slot to connect to the computer, and of those things, six are pretty much never disconnected. So I had to steal back the old USB hub thingy I bought to put in my old, ancient computer that only had USB 1.0 and then gave to my brother, whose computer had similar problems. So that problem's solved, giving me a total of ten slots, not including the bizarre, useless one that's housed inside the computer. But now, I only have one remaining PCI slot (old school PCI, not PCI Express) for internal-type expansion.
• I've only ever used Windows Media Player for audio and video files, and I've never had any complaints with it. But with the new and improved Windows Media Player 11, (exclusive to Vista, oooooh) videos slow down for the first few seconds, and MP3s start cutting out toward the end of the song. Also, if you've got a playlist and want to skip to the next track, it takes like ten seconds to do so, when it happened instantly before. So ITunes is looking really good right now, and I usualy hate Apple stuff. (Seriously, fuck Quicktime.)

Yeah, Technology's Gay.

Ahhhhhhh

Well, I'm in close to 800 bucks of debt right now, which means eating tuna and noodles for a month or two in the hopes of paying this thing off before interest kicks in, but I've got a PC that works now, and there is hella-computing going on right now. It's not the one I really wanted, (which was way better and would have been about $100 less, but I couldn't get that one because I didn't want to wait another month of saving up money, because Dell seems to be the only place willing to give credit to people who actually pay stuff off quickly...) but it's still a huge upgrade. I go from a fairly robust 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 to a freaking sweet dual core AMD processor running at the equivalent of about 4.4, and the available memory has quadrupled from 512MB to 2 gigs. Nice. There are some problems though, like the graphics card. It's a GeForce 6 series, which is way better chipset-wise than what I had, (the $65 Wal Mart card) but it has half the video RAM (64) of what I used to have, and there's no DVI input, so I have to run to Best Buy to try and find a VGA cord for my good monitor, so I can stop using this blurry, eight year old one. Also, contrary to my fears, Windows Vista seems fairly sweet so far. I like having stuff like headlines, notepads, and local weather on my desktop without having to be slowed down by massive spyware to do so. And it looks all pretty and stuff. Aww. But yeah, this monitor is killing my eyes, so I better head out before the place closes. Later, jerks.

Soon.

New computer has been ordered. I am in debt again and old computer is now my brother's problem. Updates to come... Soon.

DOES NOT COMPUTE

Stupid hard drive. Stupid Microsoft.

In other music news

I have decided that Mastodon ("Mastadon") has surpassed Metallica, ("Mettalica") Megadeth, ("Megadeath") Emperor, ("Emporer") and Cannibal Corpse ("Cannible Corps," among other spellings) as the current leader in highly-misspelled heavy metal bands.

This is happening like an hour or so away from my house, and it frightens me greatly

ROCKLAHOMA~!

A three (3) day festival, featuring the following:

Poison
Ratt
Vince Neil
Warrant
Slaughter
Quiet Riot
Winger
Dokken
Jackyl
Faster Pussycat
Enuff Z'Nuff
Steelheart
36 Inches
Y&T
Firehouse
Bulletboys
Bang Tango
Great White

On one hand, this is like the AIDS of music to me, but on the other, if I went, I could have the once-in-a-lifetime chance to throw things at members of Great White.

another stupid chicago bear post

Over at the Bears Official Website, they have this thing where this dude, Larry Mayer, answers questions from fans. In the latest edition, someone asks if the Bears are interested in signing David Carr, to which he replied

"David Carr wouldn’t be an upgrade over either Rex Grossman or Brian Griese, so I don’t see any way that the Bears would be interested in signing him."

Um. Here, let me break this down for you: Granted, Carr had a losing record last year, and the threw one more interception (11) than he did touchdowns (12), while Grossman won a bunch of games and threw three more touchdowns (23) than interceptions (20). But here's the thing that kind of skews those numbers: Rex Grossman played for what was an otherwise Super Bowl-caliber team in the NFC, where every other team sucks. And Carr played in the AFC. AND HE PLAYED FOR THE TEXANS. You could take a 25 year old Joe Montana, feed him steroids, and make him drink from the Holy Grail like they did in the one Indiana Jones movie, and he would STILL be able to do not a damn thing. He was sacked forty-one times to Sexy Rexie's 21, yet still managed to complete 68.3 percent of his passes to Rex's 54.6, and had an actual decent QB rating of 82.1, which was way better than Rex's 73.9. He also only accounted for 19 turnovers (12 picks, 7 lost fumbles) to Rex's 29. And the kicker? David Carr didn't single-handedly lose the Super Bowl last year. David Carr sucks because he's a good - possibly great - QB playing for a team stupid enough to draft Mario Williams last year, when they could have traded that pick to any of the 31 other teams who would have mortgaged their teams to have Reggie Bush, used the players/picks/first-born children they got in return to build an offensive line and win some games. Rex Grossman sucks because he just fucking sucks. The Texans sucked and dragged David Carr down with them. The Bears won a bunch of games, and they did it in spite of Rex Grossman.

I'm calling it right now. By this time next year, all the columnists and commentators will be applauding some team (probably the Vikings) for being smart enough to pick up a franchise QB like Carr, after he has a breakout year. Meanwhile, Rex Grossman will just be hoping to catch on somewhere as a backup, in a Joey Harrington/Patrick Ramsey "this is his last chance, seriously" situation. And the Bears will still need a starting QB, which is essentially something they've been looking for since Sid Freaking Luckman retired.

Also, they'll be looking to draft a running back, but that's a rant for another day. 2007 is going to be a looooong year.

I spend money sometimes.

Whenever a Bears player I like gets traded or signed by another team, (which is usually the case) I always start checking places like NFL Shop to see if that guy's jersey has gotten cheap yet. That's how I picked up $75 Anthony Thomas and Marcus Robinson jerseys for $20 apiece. Well, the bottom hasn't fallen out of Thomas Jones jerseys yet, but it has fallen out of Super Bowl XLI jerseys. So for about 50 bucks less than what it should have cost, I managed to pick up a reminder (in the incorrect color, no less) of the day the Bears sucked and the guy who got traded as his reward for not sucking. I love this game.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: FUCKING DEAD

Oh yeah, spoiler warning.

Heh.

Tremendous.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Officials detained an Iraqi man during a security scare at Los Angeles International airport on Tuesday but said a suspicious object found in a body cavity search did not pose a threat.

The man, identified by law enforcement officials as Fadhel al-Maliki, 35, was detained at passenger screening at the airport just before 6 a.m. on Tuesday morning.

The bomb squad was called as a precaution and authorities said they found wires in his clothing and a magnet inside a lower body cavity.

The man was preparing to board a US Airways flight to Philadelphia. The flight left without the passenger but with his luggage aboard. It made an unscheduled landing in Las Vegas where the plane was thoroughly searched but nothing was found.

So... A dude from the Middle East has suspicious looking wires on him and a magnet up his ass. Could be a terrorist; could just be a guy who really, reeeally loves magnets. But just to be on the safe side, you detain him. Okay, sounds like a solid plan. After all, the guy could have made a bomb with something... Something with other bomb parts... That were in his luggage... His luggage... That's still on the fucking plane.

There's a lesson to be learned here, and that lesson is that if you want to explode a bunch of people in L.A., just pop a random suspicious object up your poo-hole, and you won't have to actually be on the plane when your fat sack of bombs you smuggled on there goes off.

R.I.P. BAD NEWS BROWN

Man, God is taking the fucking boots to my childhood lately.

Here's a clip from back when wrestling didn't suck:

NOOOOOOO :(

Thomas Jones traded to the Jets

Lance Briggs demands to be traded, too

The hurting never stops.

YAY

Chicago Bears stop being assholes, give Lovie Smith his money.

Now, if they would only stop being assholes to Thomas Jones and Lance Briggs.

I trust in heaven, and I'm already there, motherfucker

Cracked.com: The Seven Most Insane Moments From Cable Access TV

This is today's version of the greatest thing I've ever seen, in case you've got about an hour to kill. Discover the horrors of rogue helicopter pilots, the worst Janet Jackson cover possible, a guy calling you a bitch for not loving Jesus, and a guy who combines jogging, painting, and making blended drinks, like I'm sure we've all done before. I still haven't watched #1 yet, though, partially because it's thirty minutes long, and partially because I'm not mentally, emotionally, or spiritually prepared to face such a task.

I remember the days when Cracked was just a retarded, unfunny version of Mad Magazine for ten year olds, and it's weird to see them being a thousand times better than Mad at this point.

someone buy this for me.

Because I must have this, yet can't justify $100 for a shirt.

I just spent ten bucks on Ebay and got this

DOUG MOTHERFUCKING ATKINS

Mike Awesome, 1965-2007

Christ, ANOTHER one. Apparent, suicide, too. Just when you think that wrestlers are dropping like flies, they start going faster and faster.

CHICAGO BEAR OF THE DAY

RON RIVERA