Cards! (Green and Birthday)

 

Greetings!

Well, it's been a busy few weeks! So, let's go in chronological order!

We had our interview down at USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) for my Green Card application. We were kind of anxious about it, since we had heard stories from a couple of other couples who got grilled fairly heavily, moved to separate rooms and questioned separately to see if their answers lined up, that sort of thing.

We went in 15 minutes before our scheduled time, waited in a lobby for five minutes, and got called in. A lovely lady took us both into her office and asked us a few simple questions about where we met. We showed her the photobooks Katie had made of our trips to Cambodia and South Korea. She asked for copies of our joint bank account statements and asked if she could keep a picture of us wearing umbrella hats (for their files, ostensibly). This one, in fact:

Then she shooed us back out into the lobby, where we waited for another five minutes, then she called my name and gave me my passport with my Green Card in it. Actually, it was a Red Stamp; my actual Green Card arrived in the mail a couple of days ago. And yes, contrary to popular know-it-allishness, the Green Card is, in fact, actually green. Not like a lime green or anything. More of a money green. Like millions of green swirly lines. It's got my face, and my signature, and my fingerprint, and a picture of the Statue of Liberty on the front. The back is mega weird, it's got all these teeny tiny micro versions of all these flags from other countries (but not Canada, oddly), as well as a line of teeny tiny micro portraits of all the Presidents of the United States, from Washington to Obama. Weirdest of all, it comes with a little tinfoil sleeve, upon which is printed, "We recommend use of this envelope to protect your new card and prevent wireless communication with it." A little Caprica, a little 1984.

Overall, the Green Card process was fairly painless. By which I mean it was a huge pain in the ass, and involved reams and reams of paperwork, but nothing insurmountable. It was, by far, the most complicated thing I've ever had to do, but I'm fairly proud that we managed to pull it off by ourselves, without having to spend ten to twenty thousand dollars on an immigration lawyer. I can now vote in municipal and state elections, but not the federal election. Every little bit helps, though, ya?

I had a birthday in June, too. Thanks to all my friends on That Thing who left birthday well-wishes for me. Marshall McLuhan will spin in his grave at my heresy, but the message was more important than the medium in this case. Thanks, thanks!

For my birthday, Katie planned a secret outing. She laid plenty of misdirects, both ahead of time ("You'll need your passport." "You need to bring sneakers*, definitely.") and after we had actually reached our destination of the Jersey Shore, specifically, Asbury Park ("I just wanted to hang out on the beach." "We're having dinner at a nice restaurant."). As we moseyed down Ocean Drive after checking in at our hotel, Katie directed my gaze to the sign of the Stone Pony (a famous bar where Bruce Springsteen used to hang out, where I saw:

Well fuck me backwards and forwards. She did a superb job of keeping the secret.

Now, as I think I've discussed before, I'm not a Music Person. I'm a Video Game Person, a Book Person, a Cat Person, but not a Music Person. I like music, I just have some sort of fatal disconnect when I hear it. It tends to take rather a lot to make me pay attention to music. It might be my years of video games, it might be the way my dad always had a radio on in the house, even when no one was home, but I tend to regard music generally as a background thing, and I struggle to concentrate on it.

There are, of course, a few exceptions to this rule, and the main one is They Might Be Giants. Discovering their album Flood in the CD room at CHMR (when I used to jockey discs, if such an activity can be believed of the person who wrote the preceding paragraph) is one of the best things that ever happened to me. I fucking love Flood. And I love They Might Be Giants. When people ask me who my favourite band is, I just say TMBG, because it's the first band that springs to mind. There aren't many bands about whom I can say that I like, basically, every single song I've heard by them.

Anyway. If you had told me, while I was bopping around MUN with my cassette-tape-copy of Flood in my Walkman (yes, tape; yes, Walkman; I don't look it, but I am that old), never fully hearing the song "Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love" because I cut it off by mistake, that I would ever get to actually stand in a bar in New Jersey and watch them play, I would have said, "That sounds fucking awesome." And it was.

The boys are just stellar in concert. I'm guilty of not having kept up with their recent releases (see previous statements about not being a Music Person), so some of the songs were too new for me to know them, but they were all good, and I was able to sing along with about 75% of the songs (along with everyone else in the packed bar. TMBG have a lot of crazy fans - we actually saw some of the fanboys/-girls jostling for the sheet of paper with the set list written on it after the show ended).

There were puppets.

Also, there was a confetti cannon.

I had a blast. Katie is the best.

We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out on the beach and doing things like playing mini golf. (We tied the first game, and Katie won the second.)

We also went to SilverBall, which is a sort of interactive museum, where you can play pinball machines from various eras. Katie found one called Freefall which caused a bit of a stir. Allegedly, there's an exact copy of this machine in her grandpa's basement, albeit under a different name.

It was a splendid birthday weekend. On my birthday proper, Katie took me to Blondies for hot wings. It would be difficult for me to improve upon my life.

Speaking of improving my life! Have you seen this photograph?

Probably not, because I, in all my infinite wisdom, completely forgot to direct you to the website of our wedding photographer, Darrell Sharpe. Darrell did an "engagement session" with us when were in town in April, and he did a fantastic job. You can see selected pictures from the shoot right here. Darrell's a great guy, with an excellent eye, and we were mega lucky with weather and lighting. (Also, Katie's prettiness offsets the freakishly-plain look that I'm currently rocking.)

I'm keeping busy on this project for Oxford, which is good, and wedding plans are blazing. Invitations got into the mail today, almost exactly eight weeks from the date, not too bad.

Parting shot: I collected some of my old toys from the basement at Dad's house when I was home. Among them was the foursome of the Real Ghostbusters (the cartoon, with the guy who did Garfield's cartoon voice as Peter Venkman). I noticed something the other day as I was playing with them setting them up for display on my dresser looking at them. The (pardon me) white** characters, Peter, Ray, and Egon all have hands molded in the typical "holding" position common to action figures like GI Joes or Star Wars toys. But Winston Zeddemore (which I've been misspelling, apparently, for my entire life as "Zedimore") has one of his hands in a unique position.

That reminds me of something, doesn't it? Someone who worked at Kenner in the 80's was awesome.

That's it, that's all! Check out our wedding website if you haven't already. (It's due for updates this week!)

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Ooh, baby, I'm tired.

*Only she probably said "tennis shoes," in her strange Midwest way. I don't even play tennis. But I do LOTS of sneaking.
**At a recent meeting for the book I'm working on, one of the editors raised a concern over my choice of denoting ethnicity for the characters in the art specs. On the orders of my boss, I've been using "white", "black", "asian", and "hispanic", because these are the ethnic categories that got the largest responses in the most recent American census. The (white) editor was concerned, specifically, that "white" and "black" were not politically-correct enough, and "wouldn't Caucasian and African-American be better?" Quite apart from the fact that it's a lot easier to type white and black than Caucasian and African-American, if people are self-identifying as "white" and "black", then perhaps it's appropriate to use those terms. I never call myself Caucasian, and throwing a blanket over all the dark-skinned people on the continent and calling them African does them a disservice as well.

Busy? No excuse!

I really seriously dislike Facebook. This is a thing about me. Those who know this thing about me are most likely to be my actual friends. (In a world where "Facebook Friend" is a term, another thing that I dislike is having to qualify the word "friend".)

The reasons that I dislike Facebook are laid out fairly neatly in the Wikipedia entry called "Criticism of Facebook." The latest atrocities/idiocies/inanities to be laid at the feet of Zuckerberg and his posse are par for the course.

But enough about me. Or rather, enough about my problems with that thing over there. Despite the prevailing wisdom to the contrary, merely complaining about a thing does not fix it. There is a movement afoot to participate in a "mass-suicide" of Facebook accounts. quitfacebookday.com is the vanguard of the effort.

Katie and I together, on our Facebook account, have I don't know, maybe 200 friends. Which is about right. We don't approve everyone who tries to friend us, we don't join any groups or anything. We are highly antisocial when it comes to Facebook. I am sick of typing that word. We are highly antisocial when it comes to That Thing.

Still and all, what's the alternative? Yes, you can come to this website, but when I don't post anything for three months, it gets sorta boring. You can leave a comment to say hi, but nobody does that. If only there was another way that people could communicate with their actual friends and say something substantial....

I briefly toyed with the idea of writing actual physical letters and putting them in envelopes and sending them to people. And I may enact that plan sometime soon when the twin boulders of Work and More Work are lightened to some degree. But for the interim, I've decided to go back to the way things used to be, in simpler times, and write some reasonably-long-winded (medium-winded?) emails to people. Just one or two a week probably, just to reach out and touch base with someone I haven't heard from in a while. It's not a perfect solution, especially since I live so far away from 99% of the people I care about, but it'll have to do. Because it'll be a damn sight better than That Thing. Have you ever actually tried to figure out how someone's doing by looking at their That Thing account? You look at a bunch of smiling pictures, read 15 or 20 ten-word-or-less status updates, get confused by conversations you aren't involved in, see what groups or whatever they've "fanned". The voyeurism would be obscene if it wasn't so superficial.

Anyway. Watch out, you might get an e-mail from me. Send one back if you want. It's a fun new technology! I've recently started an e-mail correspondence game of chess with a very good friend of mine. The game is slow-going, but interesting. If you play at all, let me know, and we can arrange something.

About me: As it often happens, famine is followed by feast, raining is concurrent with pouring. After eight months of sitting on my bum, looking for jobs which stubbornly refused to materialize for Nonimmigrant Aliens, BookLinks now needs me to manage projects full time, while a project for Oxford University Press is finally building steam as well. It's better to be busy than to be fallow, but damn, little Adams need sleep, too. My work permit came through, as did my travel document, which let me get home for a rest and visit with my grandmother, Elizabeth Williams, who died three weeks after we came back to New York. I love my grandmother, and I'm going to miss her.

Katie and I have an interview with the Department of Homeland Security on June 2nd to prove that we have a real, loving, honest-to-God relationship, and that ours is not merely the story of a Canadian editor marrying an American to avoid deportation. Ahem.

I'm reading the last of my Christmas books, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon. It's quite good, but all the yiddish vocab can be a bit dense at times. I found it due to its having garnered both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for science fiction, so I've been surprised more than once when people who I know for a fact do not read such a genre ask me if it's any good.

I've been slowly chipping away at the monolith that is Final Fantasy XIII, but it's slow going. I've read that the game really picks up after the thirty-hour mark. Which seems like a long time to wait for a payoff, until you consider that the game's main storyline is expected to take nearly 100 hours to complete. Either way, chip, chip, one hour at a time.

Do not judge me! I will just say these things: I have been playing World of Warcraft. My guild, the Windrunners (of which I am "2nd-in-Command", lol), has been successfully raiding the first two wings of Icecrown Citadel, in both the 10- and 25-man versions. My GearScore (because such things matter) on my Paladin, Alessan, is over 5500. This is a "good" GearScore, I'm told. Most of that is gibberish, and I'm sorry. I'll make up for it by showing you my Paladin and his pet Baby Blizzard Bear outside the Human capital city of Stormwind:

Pretty slick. Alessan's sword is called "Rimefang's Claw", Rimefang being a fucking dragon that I killed.

Now I am tired, so I will present you with a video dump, for fun.

Since we were already talking about World of Warcraft, here's a funny song about zombies with a video using the game's engine (these things are called "machinima," for some reason). EDIT: As House helpfully points out in the comments, the song is by one Jonathan Coulton, who has become ensconced as the poster boy for geek rock. (That may not be the correct term. One could fill volumes with what I fail to know about music genres.) Please pursue him, it is well worth it:


Tron 2 (which is not actually called Tron 2) is coming. I continue to build barely-suppressed anticipation for it:


This is an excellent news story about news stories, which I'm sure you've already seen 2000 times on That Thing:


And this is a short LEGO-based sequence that manages to be significantly cooler than two-thirds of the Star Wars prequels:


Thank you for reading. I will close with a half-hearted promise to post more frequently as I find things floating in the twisting nether of the many internets.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Cormoks and unruns are delicious.

A Question, Followed by Reviews and Videos

Greetings! I challenge you to single combat on the field of honour. The weapons are to be sharpened spoons.

My playful drawing above asks a serious question. I will allow you to slowly come to the appropriate conclusion without further prompting.

Work continues to be ephemeral. I know it exists, but it floats just beyond my grasp. My refrain has become, "Well, it's not actually a visa, even though everybody calls it that; it's a 'status.'" No one ever understands me. *bangs head on desk*

We'll be hosting a guest this week from "The Miami of Canada." (Most bizarre nickname for a city EVAR.)

I've taken in a lot of popular culture since Christmas, so I'm going to favour you all with Adam's Review Dump!

Review: Taken

Taken, simply put, was a bloody fucking mess. Wooden acting from all except Qui-Gon Jinn; wretched dialogue; spastic, ham-handed editing; action scenes that require an actual effort to willingly suspend disbelief, and an ending so predictable it could have been called by a four-year-old.

No, Jean Grey and Shannon from Lost cannot save your film, Luc Besson, you hack. You've been making The Transporter over and over again for the past eight years. Stop it.

The editing of the action scenes in particular killed me. Jump cut, jump cut, jump cut, handbrake, jump cut, rearview mirror, jump cut. My eyes hurt. Apparently the editor watched the Bourne movies and thought that was all that was required.

I will not belabour the two-dimensional characters any further than stating their stereotypes: the Fretful, ex-CIA Father who Smothers his Daughter; the Sorta-Kinda Bitchy Ex-Wife/Mother, happily remarried to a Rich Guy, who feels that hands-off parenting is the way to win her daughter's love create a strong woman out of their Silly Daughter; the oblivious Silly Daughter who means well, but gets talked into things by; the naïve Brainless Best Friend, who dies to serve as the tsk-tsk example of the film and willingly gives all kinds of personal information to; the Guy at the Airport, who is cute and obviously Evil and works for/with; the various Bad Eastern European Men, who are brutally executed by Neeson one by one on his way to; the Evil Arab Sheikh (I swear to God I would not make this up), a grossly fat, eyeliner-and-silk-dressing-gown-wearing pervert who purchases the miraculously still-living daughter.

Taken was a fucking stupid movie. If it was a person, I would tell it to go die in a fire.

Final Score: 0

Review: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

No, it's not a Pixar movie. Yes, it's based on a famous children's book, and yes, the people at Sony Pictures Entertainment took some patently mind-boggling leaps to inflate a 30-page picture book into an hour-and-a-half movie. Loads of new characters, conflicts, and jokes, with only cursory nods towards some images from the book.

It was fun. It was a fun little movie. Bill Hader and Anna Faris provide throwaway voiceovers for the leads, but the rest of the cast is stellar. Bruce Campbell as the Mayor? Mr. T as the Police Officer? One of my personal heroes, Neil Patrick Harris as Steve the Monkey, delivering most of the films LOL moments? My mind is ablown.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a grand little movie. It's not a genre-defining masterpiece like Wall-E or Up, but it has its place, and is well worth a look.

Final Score: 10

Review: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Hoo-boy. Okay.

When I saw Michael Bay's first Transformers film, I reviewed it with a few trite sentences after a lengthy diatribe on the shortcomings of Spider-Man 3. This second... thing... cannot be overlooked as easily.

The 2007 film was easily forgiven for its whirling-tornadoes-of-steel action sequences, primarily because it had so many whirling-tornadoes-of-steel action sequences. The movie succeeded in justifying its title (Transformers, for those of you who've lost the thread of the review already) by featuring the frigging robots. The boy-gets-car-and-meets-girl subplot was annoying, but it never pulled us away from the giant transforming robots for too long.

The sequel (which doesn't even dignify itself with a 2, as though it is some sort of add-on, or fucking DLC) fails here. Michael Bay, that son of a bitch, spends practically the entire film following Shia the Beef and The Sweaty Midriff that Walks Among Us as they run in slow-motion, deal with irascible professors and slowly, agonizingly inch towards the boy saying, "I wuv yoo." Nnngh.

Add to that the deficient plot swirling around The Beef's character (that Spike Witwicky is somehow imbued with Cosmic Powers and becomes a saviour of both the Human and Cybertronian species - and, now that you mention it, who told Cockhead that he could change Spike's name to Sam?); the patent idiocy of having the "ancient" Transformer, named Jetfire, who's been on the Earth for millennia, be a geriatric, complaining old codger with a cane, whose vehicle form is a Blackbird jet; the lack of a vocoder effect on Soundwave's voice, which left Frank Welker sounding like Doctor Claw; and the absolutely, appallingly, mind-stunningly racist caricatures that are Mudflap and Skids.

Thing is, this was not a Transformers movie. It should have been called Humans: Revenge of the Fallen. This was a movie about humans blowing shit up, blatant over-sexualization and trivialization of women, and thinly-veiled, "come on, it's not that bad," casual racism. Michael Bay, like George Lucas before him, needs to go away for a while and have some alone time.

And let someone else reboot this poor franchise and make it cool again. (And for Christ's sake, get rid of Elrond and let Frank Welker fight with Peter Cullen again, please.)

Final Score: 0

Speaking of popular culture and dumps, here's a video dump for you!

First: a nice "awwww" moment to start the end of the decade.

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

No, stupid. It's not a new decade until 2011, the same way it wasn't the 21st Century until 2001. If you need me to explain this to you, you should go somewhere else.

Second: I always suspected that there was some cruel deity at work behind the scenes while I was playing Tetris.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Third: Everybody loves a good, gossipy scandal story, right?

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Fourth: Silly, but it looks right.

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Fifth: Final Fantasy XIII nerdiness for me and some of my more-nerdy friends. (Non-Final-Fantasy-nerds can skip this one.)


BBC News wins the award for Best Lead Sentence in a Legitimate News Story with this gem. (It's the bolded sentence that begins, "The elusive...")

And this picture was good for a giggle after someone stuck it up on the Book of Faces. (Knowledge of the Rivalry makes it only marginally funnier.)

In closing, a pithy comparison found on one of the internets.

That's all you get for now. Home for a rest in March!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Read? Nah, we don't really do much readin'. Not so much. (Skip to 1:25 on the video.)

Merry Christmas, with Apologies

Hi! Merry Christmas!

I'm not typically prone to over-self-analysis, but I realized that part of the reason I hadn't gotten off my duff to post something to the website is that I was mildly ashamed of the fact that I'm currently *ahem* under-employed. I have a job, but no hours to go with it; and, of course, I always want to put my super-successful-and-mega-optimistic-Adam face forward at all times, so when things don't go so hot(ly), I imagine I just kind of want to stick my head in the sand for a bit.

Pfft. Anyway.

It's Christmas!

Here's our tree:

As you can see, we've been naughty this year, and Santa's passed us over. (PROTIP: That's Ganesh on the wall behind the tree.)

And here's our door:

Katie saw these wreaths when we were in Columbus, Ohio (visiting Matt and Abby), that were made of jingle bells. We weren't able to find one for sale, so we hit upon the idea of buying a regular wreath and sticking a load of jingle bells on it, for the same effect. The Snowman cost a dollar at the Dollar Tower store down the street. A steal, pure and simple.

Meeting people in New York is a bit of a mission, namely because no one else will ever take any goddamned initiative. We successfully befriended our neighbours in Glendale, but distance has rendered that relationship sort of moot. (The remove between Glendale and Manhattan is nearly as great, comparatively, as that between Taichung and St. John's.) We've been in Inwood for about 8 months now, and only ever met a few of our neighbours (in a 50-unit building) in passing. So, in the spirit of the season, we had a party last night to celebrate Tipp's Eve (which, stupefyingly, doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry; WTF). We posted a little sign down in the lobby of our building. A grand total of five neighbours showed up, lol. They were absolutely lovely people, all of them, and we happy few had a nice time. But I'm simply astounded that so few people dropped by, just for a drink and how-do-you-do. New York is a strange place, and we continue to muddle through.

I've saved up a great deal of internet fun over the past few months. Here are some things to look at as your chestnuts roast over open fires, etc.

Obama has nothing on this guy.

Hooray, beer! I cannot believe I had never seen this commercial before.

I've never even had Red Stripe. Is it any good?

Not for kids:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

(Stupid video is too wide.)

Tron 2 is probably old news, but this is still pretty slick.

This is a pretty cool cover for a French gaming magazine. I can recognize everyone except for the girl holding the green vegetables. (I think she might be the character from Mirror's Edge. Oh yeah, that's totally her.)

Here's a weird, weird, weird CNN story about the world's weirdest guy. Read it all and watch the accompanying video. Then go hug someone and thank whatever god you believe in.

This is a very funny explanation of World of Warcraft, using Super Mario Brothers as an analogy. Amusing for those not addicted, hilarious for those who are. The screenshots kill me.

And, Hitler has, fantastically, finally become the object of utter ridicule that he deserves to be.

BlazBlue is a fighting game, I think.

That is all. I am going to sit and watch some Christmas movies with Katie. Her mom and stepdad are coming to town tonight. (They were supposed to come tomorrow, but something happened with a storm, and things got changed. Fun!)

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I really mean that. I miss you all. Call us on Skype or come visit.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Jinggedy-jing (hee-haw, hee-haw), it's Dominick the donkey. Jinggedy-jing (hee-haw, hee-haw), the Italian Christmas donkey.  La la la-la la-la la la la la. La la la-la la-la la-ee-oh-da....

Team of two.

Well, it was a good trip home. Rebecca was in New York for ten days, then ten days in Newfoundland where I finally screwed up my courage and asked Katie if she wanted to get married. Are you ready for some super-cute photos? Brace yourselves.
So, there was a whole super-secret plot that my dad, stepmom, and sisters were involved in to just get the ring in the first place. Then we went out to Bowring Park to "take a picture with the Peter Pan statue." We stopped under the weeping willow near the Bungalow (which Katie stubbornly insisted wasn't actually a weeping willow), and I took the opportunity to ask her.

I think she said yes. Actually, I don't believe I was quite able to get the question out before she said yes. Awww. (My next post is going to have to be all about fluffy adorable kittens if I'm going to keep the level of saccharine sweetness up to this post's levels.)

"What's your problem?" I asked.

And here we are, slightly overexposed under the willow (or whatever the hell it is).

Looks like Friday, August 20, 2010 is the date for the thing. Yes, b'y.

Well, there you have it. A wonderful marriage of convenience love.

Adam
No snotty little quote this time!

Review: 12 Women (+ Bonuses!)

So, an insufferable asshole I know wanted me to "review" his newest CD, based mainly on the fact that I left the longest comment on his message board when he released his first album, Small Apocalypse.

I am admittedly not a "music person." My hobbies are games, books, chess, and computers. Don't get me wrong, I like music, and I listen to it a lot. I've just never had the acumen for picking out new bands and songs that several of my friends have (i.e., Chris, Melissa, and Paco). I love hearing new music (Melissa's website is great for that), but I rarely seek it out. Similarly, I tend to treat music as background noise. I can listen to a song fifty times and never pay attention to what it's about. There are songs I've heard hundreds of times over 30 years, that one day I'll actually pay attention to and be surprised by their content. So reviewing a whole album represents a unique challenge for me: I have to sit and concentrate on it. I have to close my book, turn off my game, and pay attention. I listened to 12 Women about a dozen times on the subway going to and from work over the past week and a half, and god damn me, it was only this morning, a scant two hours ago, that I finally got what some of the songs were about. I'm not implying that Oliver's work is byzantine or opaque, but that my powers of analysis are about as sharp as an Apple Mighty Mouse.

Still, let it never be said that I do anything half-assed.

12 Women takes as its overarching theme the idea of women in general, and the album examines the 'gentler' sex from a variety of angles. There seems to be a bit of a skew towards women in the late-teens-to-thirties demographic, but that's perhaps understandable. The songs:

35mm: The album's first track. Sounds like a single. Not that that's a bad thing, but it has that undefinable feel of being the song that attracts attention. Which seems to have been borne out somewhat by its appearances on Electrical Language and Pop Free Radio's top ten.

Watch the World Burn: Some of Oliver's songs remind me of They Might Be Giants, and this is one of them. Granted, I'm biased, since TMBG are my "favourite" band (as far as someone who is so musically deficient can be said to have a favourite band). It is also a good song.

Substance Abuse: Best song on the album. The female vocal backbeat is so cool, the content is edgy, and bonus points for Kate Storey's fantastic characterization of Substance with only four lines of "dialogue". The extro/lead-in to the next song is slick, too.

Pretty Girl on Roller Skates: This sounds like the second single to me. Not a bad song, but following Substance Abuse, it feels a little bland.

Mall of America: I didn't like this one at first, but it really grew on me, especially the creepy, haunting chorus (courtesy of my compatriot Lisa Gillam, I've learned). I've been to the Mall of America. It was a bit much, but for all its size it felt empty. Plus, where do they get off being such a huge mall and only having two video game stores, both of them Gamestops? WTF. That chorus sounds familiar, too, but I can't pin it down.

A Million Dollars in Her Eyes: Not a huge fan of this one. The backbeat was a little too hiphoppy for me, and the sample (David Bowie?) with Oliver's spoken addendum felt out of place.

Extraordinary Handcuffs: Sometimes, even when I'm really trying, my attention wanders. That happened with this song practically every time I listened to it. It just didn't hold me. When I finally caught hold of it, it reminded me of Oliver's older, Moonshine Flush material.

The Money: Something about songs focusing on money always turns me off. That song by Pink Floyd does the exact same thing. I think it's that cash register sound, actually, because a quick search for "Money" in my mp3s reveals many songs on the topic that I like. Anyway. Wo buxiwan.

A New Summer: Another slightly hiphoppy song, but I like it better than Million Dollars. I think because it's slower? My listening skills fail me.

Lady Liberty: The sole incorporeal woman on the album. The song interested me from the outset, because it's about New York, and I live in New York, and I like New York. The "too much, too many people" conceit in the song is a bit predictable, and seems to oversimplify the city a bit, but it's a song, what do I want? I do like the subtle "Another One Bites the Dust" bassline I keep hearing in there. I thought that was clever.

Clubmare: A song about the decadent, speed-sniffing club culture and the inherent emptiness implied by it. I think. The clubby, dancy main track is offset nicely by the folksy intro (which works really well in the context of a "this is how partying has evolved" sort of thing). I'd like to hear a full-song version of the intro. Also, nightclub, nightmare, clubmare, I see what you did there, clever boy. Nightnight would have been less effective as a title.

I'll Find You There: Again, this sounds a bit like Oliver's older stuff. A nice solid love letter of a song.

(The repeated bits of the Pointer Sisters' Sesame Street numbers song were great. This was my favourite skit on Sesame Street, along with the ladybugs' picnic and the alligator king. Oh, hell, I'll just embed them all at the end.)

I thought 12 Women was a very good album, and you should both download it and throw a few dollars Oliver's way (he has a paypal account).

Final Score: 10

Also very much worth mentioning is Oliver's Gods and Devils collection of instrumental tracks. They're of uniformly high quality, but Ganesha's Last Stand and the most recent Mars Attacks really stand out from the crowd. Good background musics! Go give them a listen!

I have work that needs doing, so I'll quickly toss a few internet things at you and go.

Funniest detention slip ever, courtesy of Arnold's gmail status message.

A graphic representation of teh sex in Marvel's X-Men universe. No, not that kind of graphic representation, you hentai-craving sickos.

DARPA's new pet is a hummingbird-sized hummingbird drone. I want one.

And finally, I can't believe I haven't mentioned Lisa Gillam before or linked to her website. It's an atrocious oversight that I am correcting as I write this. Lisa's super fantastic, and she was kind enough to put up with my utter lack of musicality long enough to stand helplessly by and watch me butcher some Irish-Newfoundland songs at a couple of St. Patrick's Day parties in Taichung.

And, as promised, nostalgia in its purest, most concentrated form:



Get in touch! I'll be home in August!

Now fuck off.

Love Adam
We all live in the Mall of America, and we are fast asleep.

Flyin' solo!

Well, Katie's gone off to do her Montessori teacher training for the summer, leaving me to wallow in my own filth fend for myself for a few weeks. She'll come home on the weekends, though, so that's a good incentive for me to hide the bodies keep the place tidy.

I had a birthday. I got some cards from various quarters, a couple of games from Dad and Liz, and a slew of books I've been coveting from Katie. On my birthday proper, Katie took me down to Chinatown to one of the only games arcades in New York City (arcades having been pretty much slain by the current wild success of home consoles). We played $4 worth of games, Katie beat me down at Street Fighter II, we got some Häagen Dazs and headed up to Central Park, where we rented a rowboat and rowed around the lake for a bit. Then we went home and spent a goddamned hour trying to find a parking spot for the car because it was Puerto Rico day immediately went home and were happy and nothing was bad. Katie led me on a treasure hunt for the aforementioned books, then we went over to the park for a nighttime picnic! So fun! I loved my birthday.

Fun stuff:

I found a cool little toy on the internet that lets you create your own World of Warcraft-style item descriptions. Pretty funny for anyone who plays the game, mildly amusing for the rest of the people in the world. I created the item to the right. I think it's funny.*

[strained silence]

Fuck you guys.

Here's a little flash game that's cute and clever. It's called ClickPLAY!, and the framing story (such as it is), is that the poor neglected "Play" button, ubiquitous in flash gaming, has finally had enough and wants nothing more than to run away and hide. The object of the game is to click the little bastard. Fun!

Hefford tried to send me the link to this video a long time ago, but he made the miscalculation of sending it via Facebook. (Which, I must mention, was the source of many Happy Birthday wishes... some from my closest friends and relatives, some from complete or near-strangers, and some directed not to me, but [well-meaningly, I've no doubt] to Katie. Ahem. Facebook.) Either way, I can only hope for three things: 1. that they really are making Beyond Good & Evil 2; 2. that they will not release it only on the XBox 360, which I have no intentions of buying; and 3. that they will not release it too soon, because I do not have any money with which to buy a PS3.

Now, blogger is acting up, so I will cut this short and hope the post publishes without too much drama.

I hope to talk to you soon!

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
Never rub another man's rhubarb.

*The funniest part is that it's a Paladin-only item, but Paladins can't equip Fist Weapons! LMAO!