"I'd rather be up to my elbows in shit all day than talk to people like you..."

...perhaps I should become a plumber.

1) the world is insane
It's great and all she has a husband and kid and what not, but, ummm... you have to worry about the motives of someone who'd fuck that.

2) I was going to post an "epilogue" of sorts to my GE Washing Machine Rant. I have a voicemail saved that I was going to record and upload and link to and everything, but I'm lazy. It was left at 7:58am the day of the appointment and essentially goes like this:

"*crunch* *crunch* *crunch* Hello, this is GE. The tech is, uhhh, out of the field today, so you'll have to reschedule. The next available day is, uhhhh, Friday the 22nd (exactly one week later), Bye!"

I have a hunch their stupid online thingy just got sent to some contractor who had a better job that day and that was his wife eating potato chips for breakfast or some shit. Really freaking professional. Luckily my mother had already been talking to some of the people she works with about the whole situation and someone recommended a repair man who was able to meet her THAT DAY after 1pm. Everything is fine now, my clothes are clean, but don't buy GE, 'cuz they eat dicks.

3) Meraud asks for absolution for being too nerdy because he read the Silmarillion and loved it.

I am now asking for absolution for not being nerdy enough.

I read The Watchman and didn't like it.

The first half was righteous enough, but the second half went into La-La Land. For some reason the "we can do anything we can draw!" thing that turns people on to comic books and anime just doesn't work for me.

Gemma was in town and made me go into the comic book store near Roots because she wanted to pick up a HorrorClix booster pack.

My girlfriend fiancee is a 12 year old boy

I have this thing about small, independent stores. I don't like going in them and not buying something. It's weird. I assume the guy at the register is the owner. I feel like I owe him at least a little something for existing in his space and time continuum. They didn't have HorrorClix anymore, Gemma wanted to look around and it seemed like we wouldn't be buying anything.

I am neurotic.

Years ago, I read V for Vendetta and didn't like it. (Spoilers the next paragraph, skip it if you plan on reading/watching the movie.)

I thought the point of it was that V was the lesbian Valerie from the concentration camp. Then I saw the movie that came out a few years ago and loved it. Except for the part where V tortures Evey. That just never worked for me.

So anyway, The Watchmen is supposed to be, like, the pinnacle of the whole "graphic novel" genre. And they're coming out with a movie of it in 2009, so I'm somewhat interested because I liked the V for Vendetta move so much. It was there, it was $20, so I bought it. It turns out Gemma bought a smutty comic called "Purgatory," but I had already been carrying around The Watchmen, and I'm neurotic and didn't want to put it down because I didn't want the guy at the register thinking I snuck it under my coat. I need therapy.

The first half is great, the second half is masturbatory. The ending is poo. Meh.

I read about the Watchmen movie on wikipedia. It turns out Terry Gilliam was once attached to direct, but has since left the project saying it's, "un-film-able." I'm inclined to agree. There are five main characters and the entire narrative is so flashback heavy, I just don't see it working as a movie. Now the guy who is directing it is the guy who did, "300." I haven't seen that yet but I am interested in seeing it someday... for free. Maybe the Watchmen movie will be good, but I don't have high hopes for it and don't really care either way.

4) Audiosurf recently released an update, everything is smoother, it bugs out less, and it seems like they updated some of the graphics. Audiosurf is my new religion.


5) Oh hey, a Blofeld review.

Audiosurf

There's a bit of buzz about a new game called Audiosurf that was just released on Steam. Apparently it's been in beta for a few months, so a lot of people already knew about it, but I first heard about it today. Basically, Audiosurf reads an mp3 file and then generates a "level" from the song - similar to visualization plug-ins for Windows Media Player and Winamp and shit, only instead of generating it "on the fly," it takes a few seconds to pre-render it before you play it, so it comes off as a bit less random. Once the level is rendered, you then control a little spaceship and try to maximize your points by collecting colored blocks. It probably fits into the same genre as Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero and Rock Band, in terms of being a "rhythm game" where you try to hit things in time with the music.

It essentially has three "modes," of play; Mono, "not-mono" and co-op. Mono is where there are colored blocks and gray blocks, and you want to collect the colored blocks and avoid the gray blocks. The colored blocks are always the same color, so the player doesn't need to worry about color matching. "Not-mono" is simply my term for what seems to be the "regular" style of play, where the blocks are different colors and you have to match them, kind of like Bejeweled or some shit. There are a handful of different "not-mono" spaceships to choose from, each with its own special ability, such as the ability to shuffle the colored blocks you've collected or the ability to pick up a colored block and put it down later, when it will have a better impact on your score. Finally, co-op is what it sounds like; you need a partner and one person has the left two lanes, the other person the right two lanes.

Here are some YouTubes:

Mono - NIN "The Wretched" (remix)
Mono - Rick Astley "Never Gonna Give You Up"
Mono - A-ha "Take On Me"
Colors - Daft Punk "Around the World"
Colors - Dethklok "Murder Train"


It's loads of fun, and only $10 on Steam. I've found that Haujobb songs make the best race tracks. In fact, "Faith in Chaos" from Vertical Theory was so cool, I wanted to make my own video capture and put it on YouTube, but it appears that recording my own video with sound without spending any money is just not going to happen. (I did try a freeware program called CamStudio and it says my soundcard lacks the ability to capture the sound playing out of my speakers. *shrug*)

So if you have $10, thinks this looks fun, and want an excuse to sit in front of the computer listening to music all day, check out Audiosurf.

Politics and Machinery

Politics:

My post from Jan. 30th was apparently right on the money. I predicted that if Hillary Clinton had less elected delegates than Barack Obama, but still by a close margin, she'd try to get the Michigan and Florida delegates to count - y'know, the Michigan and Florida delegates that she and every other Democratic nominee agreed to screw over in or to pander to Iowa and New Hampshire primary voters. Aces!

What I did not know back then was how the whole Super Delegate thing worked. Apparently the Democratic party decided being totally retarded was totally awesome back in 1968 and set up a primary system wherein elected Democratic politicians and non-elected party activists and insiders get a vote roughly equal to x-thousand primary voters to decide, in their own "judgment," who the Democratic nominee for president would be. Not very democratic, is it?

So Hillary's people are going on TV saying that it would be totally cool and absolutely how the system is supposed to work if she were to, say, end up with less elected delegates than Obama, but convince enough Super Delegates to vote for her anyway that she "won" the nomination. This morning I woke up and turned on MSNBC and was met with Terry McAuliffe telling me that was exactly how "the system" was "supposed to work." At which point I screamed at the TV,

"NOBODY FUCKING WANTS YOU."

Terry McAuliffe is a former Bill Clinton fundraiser who ended up heading the Democratic National Committee from 2000 through 2004 - y'know, the years when Democrats did nothing but lose. So here we are, four years later, after riding what seemed like a never-ending wave of victories since 2006, definitely in part to the Republicans being themselves, but also in part thanks to the leadership of the Democratic National Committee's new chairman, 2004's insurgent presidential nomination candidate, Howard Dean. Dean implemented a 50 state strategy for the Democratic Party which allowed the Democratic Party to make big gains in Congress in the 2006 elections by competing in states and districts that the previous Democratic party establishment would have simply surrendered to the Republicans. Hence, when the Republicans screwed the pooch and voters weren't happy with them, the Democratic Party already had candidates and organizations and shit in place. Had McAuliffe been in charge, a lot of the Democratic challengers would not have had the infrastructure and support to actually compete; even when it turned out that the Republicans were harboring a pederast.

So after just two years of relative AWESOME, the old Clinton folks who failed in 2000 and 2004 are back to get on the gravy train. Here's the problem with that: They're fucked.

Hillary Clinton hasn't lost this race yet, and she may still yet win - legitimately. However, the genie is out of the bottle. She can't take back what she and her lackeys have been saying all week. Die hard Republican voters already think she's an authoritarian, now they're accusations have some merit.

What her campaign has been saying this week is this:

Even if the *voters* choose Barack Obama over me, it is still perfectly legitimate for that to be overridden by my friends and colleagues in the establishment.

That's pretty fucking authoritarian.

So-called moderates and independents will see it that way. And I suspect that young voters and minority voters will see it that way too. The former don't see John McCain as being "that bad," the latter will likely choose to not vote at all or vote for some third party candidate (Nader's already got an exploratory committee going).

Hell, even I recognize just how bad John McCain *really* is, compared to his media hype, but right now even if Hillary wins via the most elected delegates, I sure as fuck don't want to vote for her.

I would think that, especially after the 2000 Presidential election, there's a point where a rational person would say, "Well, maybe I should just hold off here a second. Essentially staging a coup of my own political party might not just be bad for me and my reputation, it might actually be bad for a political party that is the only real opposition in this country to the Republican party." But apparently Hillary and her people are not rational, and apparently they lack ethics, decency and principles. Or they're just Republicans incognito. I've suspected that at points in the past eight years, too.

My prediction - if Hillary is the nominee, whether legit or not, we will lose to John McCain. And that. Fucking. Sucks.

Machinery:

I have a GE washing machine, it's only 4 years old. Last Sunday, it broke. The "basket," where the clothes go in, is apparently no longer held into place by some doo-dad, so when it comes to spin cycle time, it's pretty much just getting thrown around inside the chasis and tossing water everywhere. I'm good with the inside of computers, I'm good with the inside of pig carcasses, but when it comes to the inside of machinery, including cars, I fucking suck and apparently that means I'm a fan of the butt sex - with men.

Instead of a phone number, it gives a website for if you need service. I have my mother go to the website, 'cuz I'm a busy man with all my pig guts and blood and shit, and she schedules an appointment. Apparently they're supposed to call and confirm the appointment. That's good, because the online appointment is for 8am to 5pm. I go to the pork plant at 10am but my mother can be here after 1pm.

Tonight I get the call. It's a fucking recording. "Press 1 to confirm the appointment, press 2 to cancel." Well, fuck, I don't want to cancel, so I press 1. "If you have pets, such as dogs and cats, please put them away (wtf?) for the service call, as they may interfere with or delay the service call." Now I'm pushing zero because I'd like to speak to someone live to narrow down the time frame to something like after 1pm. It continues about the pets, "If this is a problem please call 1-800-blah-blah-blah to cancel. Good bye. *click*"

I'm sitting there with a pen trying to jot down the number it just spit at me. No luck, I had the last four digits in my head, but not the middle three. Fuck. Caller ID gives me nothing, and I'm too stupid to think of *69.

So now I'm thinking, if he pops in at quarter to 10 tomorrow, I'm going to tell him, "Either come back after 1pm, give me a number so I can call and talk to *someone* to get an appointment in a narrower time frame, or go fuck yourself, because I'm just going to have to eat it and buy a new a washing machine and SEE TO IT THAT I NEVER BUY ANYTHING GE EVER AGAIN!!!"

The problem is this: they're making appliances shoddier nowadays to get you to buy more often. And they're making service calls harder schedule in order to get you to buy a new one instead of repair the one you have. What they don't seem to have figured out at this point is that I'M NOT GOING TO BUY A NEW APPLIANCE FROM THEM IF THIS IS HOW THEY TREAT ME.

Fuck off and die, GE. Just fuck off.

Waldorf Blofeld (part infinity)

Well, it appears that if you type "Waldorf Blofeld" into Google, one of my previous posts shows up on the first page of results. That's kind of bad - I'm just a pork plant worker in the middle of Indiana who has nothing to do with the Blofeld, but me blogging my anticipation for one is apparently one of the easier-to-find articles out there. I'm surprised there still aren't any user reviews at either Sonic State or Harmony Central, however I've found that some people have apparently gotten theirs and they're all posting to the Waldorf User Forum, which is an old-school style mailing list. You can read the posts in their archive without subscribing to the list, that at least proves it exists out there somewhere and that people seem to be relatively happy with it.

Some of my older Blofeld posts also got some comments:

RikMaxSpeed said...

I recently ordered a Waldorf Blofeld via www.Thomann.de - they expected delivery on Jan 31st, and they have now been told to wait till March 31st. So unfortunately it looks like this little beast is rapidly becoming obsolete :o(

That sucks, but I don't think "obsolete" is the word you're looking for... It definitely did feel like it was never going to come out, but apparently they're out there. I'm sure you'll be getting yours shortly after March 31st, it's obvious at this point that Waldorf had to resort to a production strategy where there was a small initial run (almost a beta test from what some of the bugs sound like), and the orders from that first run are paying for the manufacture of the second run. The money made from selling Blofelds is probably going to be used to finance the manufacture of the Stromberg. Like I said before in this post, I'm not an insider or anything, just a guy who disembowels slaughtered animals for a living, so everything I say is speculation, but it seems pretty plausible at this point, no?

panda said...

hey! i think the snow is going to beat the blofeld out of the gate, but.. its rocking a street tag of about twice the price.. (blofeld 700, snow 1300!)
that almost ends the game if you ask me. if waldorf can actually ship the unit. it will end up on more desk/table tops.

At the Unofficial Virus TI Forum, Access employee Ben Crosland (he demos all the new Virus hardware (TI, Virus Control V.2, Snow) in the NAMM videos you find at Sonic State (except the upcoming Atomizer effect, which was demo'd by Richard Devine)) pretty much stated that Access doesn't see the Snow and the Blofeld as competitive products, essentially because the TI is a hybrid soft synth/hardware synth with audio interface capabilities and the Blofeld is a hardware synth only.

Poster: "So can we expect it to be competitively priced with the Blofeld at $699 USD?"

Ben Crosland: "Why should it be?

Just because they are both small, doesn't mean they should compete directly with each other in price - the Snow has double the polyphony, Total Integration, audio ins, full FX per Part, MIDI out, soundcard functionality etc.

Really, the Snow is an alternative option for those who want a Virus TI, and hence needs to be priced relative to the other models in the range, not to a completely different synth by another manufacturer." - Source.

The way I see it, Waldorf as a company depends on selling X-many Blofelds. When they initially announced the Blofeld at Winter NAMM 2007, they announced twice the polyphony, the ability to edit it via your computer, and a price tag of $500 (see this video). Keep in mind, Waldorf was recently bankrupt and is now technically another company that bought the old one and is trying to restart it. Here it is a year later, they've had to cut some of the features of the Blofeld (no computer editing) and increase the price (although the price increase from $500 to $699 may have something to do with the U.S. dollar sucking butt).

Access is doing fine as a company and has been since 1997. It is simply introducing a low frills version of its current generation synthesizer to gain market penetration at a price point they haven't had since the Access Virus Classic. I don't think Access cares if more Blofelds end up on desktops than Snows because there are already more TI Desktops, Polars and Keyboards in studios than Blofelds and that's unlikely to change. The theory behind the Snow is to offer a $1350 (MSRP, $1250 in actuality) Virus TI for amateurs/hobbyists who can't afford the $2000 Desktop version. (The wrench into this of course is the fact that you can get a Reboxed Desktop for ~$1600 from NovaMusik, but I guess that is neither here nor there to the people involved.)

As for me, personally, I bought a Reboxed TI Polar from NovaMusik right before Virus Control 2.0 increased the price of the TI line, so I'm quite simply not interested in the TI Snow. I am interested in the Waldorf Blofeld because I don't have a Waldorf Q or Microwave, and while I like the sound of both, I never was really interested in paying $500 to $900 for one or the other, but I am willing to pay $700 for a Blofeld which is essentially both with a few more features added on (drive curves *drool*).

However, I am not interested in paying $700 now and not knowing when I will actually have one in my hands, so rather than pre-order one, I'm content to wait until they are readily available here in the States, which may be a long, long time.

Gossipy prediction: The Access TI Snow will be easier to get in the U.S., sooner than the Waldorf Blofeld.

My qualification for making such a prediction: ZERO.

Super Bowel

To the New York Football Giants - For beating the Packers in the NFC Championship game: I FORGIVE YOU!!!

To the Green Bay Packers - For losing to the Giants in the NFC Championship game: YOU ARE ABSOLVED!!!

I honestly thought the Giants were a shitty football team this season. I honestly thought Eli Manning was only a starting quarterback because of his last name. I am proven wrong and glad for it.

Fuck. The. Patriots.