Hey, that was pretty good.

Thanks, Axl! I just listened to Chinese Democracy, so I don't have to buy it! Although honestly, if I did...it'd probably be worth the money. At any rate, I have much, much, much worse albums in my collection.

Yeah, this was pretty damn good. Say what you want about the son of a bitch, but he still knows how to throw a song together. And although his voice is great, what makes this album a damned good listen is the guitar work. I don't know who did what (Bumblefoot, Robin Finck, and Buckethead are all credited if Wikipedia is to be believed), but the guitar work is much, much, much more interesting than Slash's basic bluesy jams, with Rage Against The Machine-esque screeching, Dream Theater-like chromatic chords and just flat-out shredding.

Of course, Axl could've recorded 45 minutes of fart noises and Hawaiian nose-humming and Rolling Stone would've given it three stars, but a four-out-of-five star review, although slightly high to me, is certainly understandable.

Shackler's Revenge, Better, and Catcher in the Rye stood out to me.

So. Next one in what, 2023?

"In fascination...with the eyes of the world we stare..."

I've been noticing more and more the phrase "final shuttle flights" popping up in articles, and I can't help but feel a little bit wistful. Sure, it's almost certainly time to retire the old workhorses. Maybe if you regularly maintained a 30 year-old car it'd still purr like a kitten, but a 30 year-old SPACESHIP needs more than an oil change every now and then.

Still, the shuttles were an important part of my childhood, and that of many kids my age, I imagine. I cheered for Columbia's first liftoff and cried for Challenger, and also felt that sick feeling when Columbia fell to earth. It's a dangerous business, but it's also exciting, and all those who work and pilot these leviathans plant seeds of dreams with every take off and landing.

In an era where we find water on Mars and planets circling other nearby stars (only four months away on TNG's Warp 6), let's hope the new fleet inspires us the way the old one did.

Still looking...

Yep, the corporate sponsorship fell through. But I have a media deal in the works with a new network. This might work out, as long as their shows are responsible like they assured me...

Still sleeping on the job...

Sorry, though my bro and sis have updated their blogs recently, I'm still behind the curve. I have been working recently to try to attain corporate sponsorship, but I don't think the only company who responded is going to work out:

In lieu of anything worth saying...

...here's another video of Phil Hellmuth losing his shit.

Today's lesson in humility...

Take it away, Phil Hellmuth!

Odds and sods...

* Via Slashdot, a summary of the world chess boxing championship. Four minutes of chess interspersed with boxing rounds. I think Andrew Golota has a future in this, if he can just get through the first chess round...

* Via Slashdot and Gizmodo, a new crowd-control gun that puts voices inside your head. This gets early nomination for Scariest Fucking Thing Made This Year, and will probably beat out canned cheeseburgers and The Love Guru for the prize. And you have to believe that advertising will latch upon this as soon as possible.

"Stop by Cap'n Ron Ronco's Used Vehicles for the sale of a lifetime! Until you do, here's Jim Carrey's most annoying sound in the world!"

* So apparently John McCain lurves the dice! I can't break his chops on that, because I've played craps more than once, and it is sick-ass fun. It's also an extremely, extremely, extremely fast way to lose your money if you have a bad session, but hey, his wife's loaded, so who am I to judge?

Now, if he starts hanging with John Daly, I'd be more worried...

Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with meeeeeeeeee...

Regular readers of this blog (both of you) are well aware that I'm a huge science fiction dork, and have a boner for interstellar travel in general and solar sail technology in particular. So I would be remiss in not pointing out that there's an experimental sail, NanoSail-D, ready for launch at the end of this month. Jump with all your might...

And the Planetary Society's version, Cosmos 2, is still in the works, hopefully a step above Cosmos 1, which turned into space confetti...

Boosting the economy...in your PANTS!!!

America has received our economic stimulus checks, and we have spoken. Hello, incredibly disgusting pornography!

An independent market-research firm, AIMRCo (Adult Internet Market Research Company), has discovered that many websites focused on adult or erotic material have experienced an upswing in sales in the recent weeks since checks have appeared in millions of Americans’ mailboxes across the country.

According to Kirk Mishkin, Head Research Consultant for AIMRCo, “Many of the sites we surveyed have reported 20-30% growth in membership rates since mid-May when the checks were first sent out, and typically the summer is a slow period for this market.”

Really? People pay for porno? You can't tell me people have problems finding it on the Internet. Randy Marsh sure didn't. God, all I need to do is turn Google Images SafeSearch off and...ah, I'll stop before my grandma Hulks up and breaks out the Lifebuoy.

But you have to hand it (no pun intended) to the industry, much as they spurred the Internet video revolution once before, they're coming (again, no pun intended) to the plate and moving America forward again.

So when you're renewing the subscription to your favorite site, choosing an ID based on a reviled ex, and clicking on the Alcatraz Assplay channel, be sure to thank your local elected official! Better yet, send them a trial subscription, just on the off-chance they don't have one...

Stupid video game shit staves off existential malaise!

*sigh* Coming off a cold and a failed job interview, so allow me to cheer myself up by reveling in subjects dear to my heart and those of many other perpetual adolescents:

* Diablo 3. I played version 2 of this sucker well into 2007, and version 3 looks like everything I loved about v2 jacked up to the nth degree and including World-of-Warcraft-esque jeancreaming boss battles. Sign me up whenever it's released...which is...whenever...

* Visited Nevsky this weekend and in between fawning over my niece and her too-ridiculous-to-be-believed adorableness, I put a lot of time in on his and his friend's video games. Boom Blox was a mixed bag, with the fun minigames being really fun and some others inspiring tedium. There were a lot of laughs as Nev almost succeded in psyching me out of a win by virtue of a shaky Wii hand. And then we switched to the Xbox and GTA4, which is immediately the greatest thing ever produced by human hands. In the first two minutes of playtime, I jacked a limo, ran over pedestrians, erupted in laughter at the spectacle, and managed to scare the hell out of everyone in the room.

* Another game I put a lot of time into was No More Heroes. While it's got a strong love-it-or-hate-it reaction amongst reviewers I'm firmly on the love-it side for its INSANELY fun combat, despite acknowledging obvious video flaws and collision issues.

I'll let Yahtzee do the rest...