February 24th, 2008
I consider myself at the forefront of technology. I have an iPhone, which I adore. I have several relatively modern Mac computers running the very latest operating system (including Vista! Ugh). I have the fastest DSL that “at&t” will provide. I have … an iPod shuffle. Uhh shit, is that it?
Maybe it is because my favorite new gadget is my new TV.
Let me tell you about my new TV. It’s silver plastic. It has stereo speakers. It weighs a hundred pounds. It has like three inputs, maybe four.
It’s a Sony KV-27FS100.
State of the fucking art.
In 2002.
Holland’s friend at work got a new plasma screen (or whatever — it’s flat) from his parents so with a small house and a big heart, he was willing to give away his old tv, which was only a gift to begin with. Props to you, Mister well I don’t know your last name. So there I was in South Austin (what a trek) loading this heavy bastard of plastic and glass into my back seat.
For nearly the past two years Holland and I have been watching most of our TV on my 20 inch iMac, downloading it from, well it must be from something. That wire plugs into the wall and I imagine it goes somewhere. We sure do get a lot of shows and movies from … somewhere. And no commercials either. I subscribe to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on iTunes and the rest, well I’m a big slut for hard drives and let’s leave it at that.
We have had a television, a 12 inch model from some abandoned room in Holland’s mom’s house. It’s very cute and easy to pick up with one hand. Back in NJ after I failed to convince Verizon that I only wanted DSL and not a telephone, then I subscribed to Comcast and got HBO by lucky accident, it got more use than I expected. But since moving to Texas the rabbit ears don’t pick up much worth watching. It’s kind of nice since you’ll turn on the tv when you know there’s something you must watch (mainly the Superbowl and the Simpsons). Otherwise it’s off.
It surprises me what a difference a big TV makes. There’s still literally nothing worth watching. With some sophisticated RCA rabbit ears bought only 2 years ago at Target, we get only 6 stations in English (but I’m debating my decision to delete the Spanish channels, since they offer an incredible level of enthusiasm). As far as I can tell, TV is a government franchised method to advertise pickup trucks.
But these 27 bright diagonal inches of nothing entice me. Only a little bigger (and less widescreen) than my iMac, which holds literally over 600GB of entertainment offerings, I’m watching CSI Miami reruns on TV. I like CSI: Miami because Horatio cares about the children.
Maybe this will pass.
About the time this TV was manufactured in late 2004, I bought a Nintendo GameCube. I hooked it up via trickery to an old Apple computer monitor. Recently Holland and I have enjoyed Paper Mario on the Game Cube and wish there were more GameCube games worth playing. Sadly there are not.
After so much time where the excuse not to buy a Wii was that our TV was the same size as the controller, now what is our excuse?
The excuse is you can’t fucking buy a Wii, even a year and a half after its debut. It’s just as well, because the next time I go to Target to pick up prescription drugs, expired meat, and beer, if they have a Wii on the shelf then it’s mine.
Regarding Pop Culture | No Comments »
October 9th, 2007
Maybe I’m years late on this, but Wikipedia vandalism’s best friend is a DSL router that changes its IP address every time you unplug it from the wall. Sit next to the router.
[UPDATE]
After I drunkenly vandalized the wikipedia page for a movie I just watched and hated, I slept and woke up and felt different about it. Thus, I hope the page for After The Sunset is the same as it ever was. I recommend never ever ever watching that movie. Though it is an idiotic shit of a movie, my comments about the actors’ personal problems and the bizarre changes even to the setting of the film were not called for. They were also not reversed, even after several days, by anyone except me. Oh, Wikipedia.
Regarding A Series of Tubes, Pop Culture | No Comments »
October 9th, 2007
Somehow a search for Jeff Garlin in XTorrent turned up After The Sunset even though he’s in it for less than a minute.
I downloaded and watched the whole movie. It makes me angry that I share a world with people who would make something like this.
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September 12th, 2007
How about that Britney Spears?
Her new song’s ok for listening. That is, once you get into the Britney Spears mode where you think only this is cool and might make a good remix by Tiga. That’s how I felt about Nelly and look what happened!
I’m surprised she got so savaged at the VMA’s. Although I didn’t even know the VMA’s had occured until a few hours ago. I don’t pay for cable and none of the news sites I frequent had any mention of it. Then again I didn’t even know the VMA’s existed until my first TV Studio class in High School (10th grade maybe?) where our first homework assignment was to watch the damn spectacle and pay attention to the camerawork.
My first impression of dear Britney was she wasn’t really into it. I suppose it could have been general lassitude and margaritas.
Speaking of music, why am I only now realizing (duh) that the Essential Mixes (BBC Radio 1, middle of the night on Saturdays … download later on the web) …
… Why am I only now realizing that the music in my favorite Essential Mixes is often largely from one artist that I could easily get on iTunes?
Is it because it’s often not the same guy as the DJ? (hell I loved that Rapture EM years ago but their albums aren’t worth having. DFA turned out to be LCD Soundsystem, though)
Sure I knew my Cagedbaby EM from early 2006 was lots of Cagedbaby. But it was also lots of Hot Chip. I didn’t know! Good thing Holland’s gay friend at work was listening to it and she grabbed it with XTorrent.
What about Phil Kieran’s EM from earlier this year. So much Alloy Mental. Good thing Pete Tong gave that away. (Why is this stuff categorized under Dance? Belfast Punk Dance?)
What’s blowing my mind now is Evil Nine’s album You Can Be Special Too. Many segments are so familiar from Adam Freeland’s Essential Mix in May of 2003. In fact I bought his album “Now and Them” next year in the hopes it would be similar but I wasn’t too thrilled. It was Evil Nine I wanted.
These iTunes links are for convenience. You know how to get music any way you want.
But hell I just bought a music video or two since they’re much better quality and easier to iPod than otherwise.
Rihanna reminds me of T.A.T.U. Check the sped-up french walls/outfit section.
[How'd I get the Britney Picture? I masked it out myself from a frame of the tv show I got somehow. Not to point out my clearly poor skills in this regard, but Acorn is a brand new and quite impressive Photoshop-alike. And it doesn't even have any proper masking features yet.]
Regarding Music, Pop Culture | No Comments »