Ok, via usr/bin/girl this movie Gamers.

I think those of you who are into RPGs will find it amusing.

I will say this though. LARPing is lame. Real gamers use dice, paper, pencils, tables. Stuff like that.

Almost done reading the Lord of the Rings. I do have this to say though. The first bit of the book is quite hard to get past, but once I finally made myself get past the whole "We're still in the Shire" bit at the beginning, I have loved it. I can't put it down.

For those who have read The Watchmen, by Alan Moore, there is this annotated web site. It's pretty cool. The Watchmen is probably one of the coolest things ever written for the comic book format.

I still remember the time when Clint and I were rooming together at Cheryll Lynn apartments, way back in '92 I think it was, and I was very bored one night. He had a rather vast collection of comics at the time. So he let me read his collected Watchmen, with the warning that I shouldn't do it all in one sitting.

Which I promptly ignored. I sat up all night reading. And in the morning, he came downstairs, and I was devastated. "WHY DID YOU LET ME DO THAT?" I think I asked him.

It's quite a mindshattering experience.

And I highly recommend it.

For those who missed it the first time:

Wigu. The Monkey Represents Sharing.

New coffee drink recipe:

The AlPacino.

It's a short triple shot cappucino, with a shot of vanilla, 1 tablespoon of molasses, and nutmeg sprinkled on top. It's bitter and short, but kind of sweet.

Some of my circuit bending experiments lately are very much inspired by the work that David Tudor did. David Tudor was a modern classical composer who did a lot of work with electronics and worked with John Cage for some time. He made these mystery boxes that were just found circuits with audio ins and outs. Very interesting, and I have plans to start doing the same sort of thing. What kind of sound would the circuits from a pager or cell phone make if you abused them horribly?

Finished putting up the new bookcase in the back laundry room. Now my computer room/studio is starting to shape up. I moved the couch out into the living room, so I can put Mike's computer and the keyboards against the wall that's free now. Putting all my old copies of Future Music, Computer Music, Scientific American, and Discover out in the back room on the bookcase.

Peter's wish list 2:

A dubplate cutter. Dubplates are temporary "records" that are cut into acetate substrates. They're not vinyl. They have a limited use, because the acetate wears out fast. A lot of jungle/Drum N' Bass DJs in the UK use these to play tracks that they just made out in clubs or raves or whatnot.

Or, alternately, an old record press machine. I have had no luck even finding any for sale. I know there used to be a record pressing company in Fayetteville back in the 60's and 70's, but the machine was probably sold long ago.

A huge warehouse space to record in/ have performances in.

An old public address system with all the speakers from an old drive-in theater. The reverb effect you got from the sound of nearer speakers getting to you before the sound from speakers further away was really cool. Would be super cool to use in a huge warehouse space. See above.

Old broken pianos, if I had the warehouse space to store them.

Frodo failed.

Mike is now in Costa Rica.

Attention Supreme Court Justice Scalia:

The separation between Church and State must be inviolate and absolute. Any attempt by the majority to force their views (i.e. placing the words 'under god' in the Pledge of Allegiance in the 1950s, it wasn't originally in it) on others is an act of tyranny. Yes, worship the way you wish to worship. But this is not a "Christian Nation." Yes, many of the founding fathers were Christians. But many of them were Deists who didn't trust any of the Churches mainly because of the power and influence that Churches invariably wish to wield over people.

My America is big enough for everyone. My America includes Christians and Jews and Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists, and yes, even Agnostics and Atheists. And people who just don't give a crap, except that they don't want to live in anything that even faintly smells of a theocracy. So keep your religion out of my government, thank you very much.

You're either an idiot or unbelievably corrupt if you think that the Constitution doesn't protect us from just the kind of religious tyrrany that I'm describing and that you endorse. When I go to a state funded school's football game, I don't want to hear a prayer. THAT is endorsing a religious viewpoint over another. When I step in a court-room, undeniably a part of the state, I don't want to see ANYTHING that endorses one religious viewpoint over another.

Please, Justice Scalia, join the rest of us in the 21st Century.

I have a new favortie artist. OHNO. Kind of minimal glitch IDM dub type stuff, with ambient washes of drifting sound.

Via Anil Dash, whom you should read.

"The only loss of freedom that conservative people complain about while looking backwards is that they pretend their speech is limited by "political correctness". I'd say we're all a lot freer if it's considered rude or impolite to call a person by an ethnic slur, or to use a demeaning term to refer to a handicapped person. Those who feel restricted by societal demands to be considerate are poor arbiters of what exactly constitutes liberty.

So let the conservatives look to the past. It'll be their undoing. Right now the status quo is to pontificate on basic cable about various issues in sound-bite sized assertions, unburdened by the responsibility of accuracy, with rewards for combatativeness. And they are truly good at it. But I'm not hoping for increased participation in the realm of politics driven by television. I don't see that political talk shows have improved the tenor or content of discourse about policy in this country, nor have they resulted in an improvement in legislation or the execution and enforcement of laws already on the books."