Flaming Chords

This is my front page. All comments here are screened; if you don't have my email address, you can drop me a line here. If I know your email address, I'll reply by email -- if not, I'll reply to your comment, and then rescreen both your comment and my reply.

It's also got every tag I have -- this is because my current LJ style doesn't include a tag index. (At least half of my participation on LJ is on my Treo. I chose this style because it loads quickly and it's still readable on a small screen.)

I'd tell you more about myself, but that's what my profile -- and the rest of my journal -- are for.

Don't eat soy, it's bad for you!

If your little girl eats or drinks soy products (like soy milk), she'll start menstruating while she's still watching Sesame Street¹. If your little boy eats or drinks soy products, it'll be much, much worse: he won't start puberty until he's out of High School, his genitals will be embarrassingly small, and worst of all...

(Insert the shrieking violins from the shower scene in Psycho.)

...he'll probably be GAY!!!

Oh, and soy also causes thyroid problems, obesity, breast cancer, childhood leukemia, infertility, and various other ills, but of course none of these problems compare to spending life as a pencil-necked queer with a small pee-pee!

It must be true! I read it on a right-wing tabloid website!

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1. And can you imagine what Sesame Street would be like then? Do we really need to see Count Von Count with his charming accent, as he teaches pubescent six-year-olds? "One! Two! Three! Three used tampons! Ah ah ah!" And let's not forget, he is a vampire. He can finish up his lesson by putting a kettle on for some tea...
   

Bastard Fairies!

A quirky little band who offers the entirety of one of their albums for free download. My personal favorite is track six.

"All you mormons who like cussing, you are going to hell!
All you preachers who like fucking, you are going to hell!
Little boys that choke the chicken, you are going to hell!
It's the nature of evolution, the dinosaurs went to hell!"


Bitchy and/or Gossipy

I thought of the sometimes crude and always very entertaining misskitten88 the moment I saw this list of the 40 Best Celebrity Rumors Ever.

From #1: "Hearsay ballooned into the most famous celebrity rumor in history when someone faxed dozens of Hollywood offices a fake ASPCA press release claiming that Gere had 'abused' a gerbil."

From #6: "Some have said that the rumor about Mick Jagger and David Bowie having an affair in the '70s was fueled by prurient homophobia. We prefer to think it became popular because it's fucking hot." (Personally, I disagree. David Bowie may be on my "guys I'd switch teams for" list, but Mick Jagger is definitely not. If that list exploded, Mick Jagger wouldn't hear the boom for at least two days.)

From #11: "In conclusion, arguments are strong on both sides of this important issue; judge for yourself. Incidentally, we're grateful for a job that allows us to spend hours Googling 'jamie lee curtis hermaphrodite'."

Sadly, nothing on Brandon Routh, either on his penis size (allegedly very big) or his orientation (allegedly very gay). Too bad. I knew someone on a web forum who claimed that Brandon Routh was all man, 100% straight, no cock for him, no sirree bob. It was so much fun to watch his head a splode the first time this topic came up.

( Dear Crazy Old Bat: Yes, I'm evil -- I'm so evil I poison the entire world with my presence. I'm delighted that you're so happy to see me for the poisonous entity that I am. What drug are you on again? )

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( Dear Twits on the Net: Mottoes like ''No fat chicks,'' ''pro-choicers are just as bad as nazis,'' and ''only drooling fangirls could ever like Brokeback Mountain'' are not the best way to make friends and influence people. Just a thought. )

---

( Dear Assbag: There's a right way and a wrong way to come on to a guy. Please learn the difference, you stupid creepy fucker. )

...but damn, they're trying. Who would have though a movie about two gay cowboys would have stirred up so much petty bickering?

Oh, wait...

(Does impression of Gilda Radner.) Never mind.

(Switches to Brent Spiner.) Could you all please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.

Iamspecial says "Tag, you're it!"

Write down seven songs you really like at the moment, then tag seven other people.

1. Octavia Sperati, "Hunting Eye." This band suffers from lyrics that only kinda make sense -- I'm guessing English is not one of their better languages. Still, their singer belts every word for all it's worth, and it's one of the more unusual -- but compellingly beautiful -- melodies I've ever heard in a chorus.
   
   
2. A Perfect Circle, "The Noose." A lesson in building dynamics. Quietly intense at first, but it builds toward something dark and powerful. The lyrics are kinda sparse, but poetic.
   
   
3. Pain of Salvation, "Undertow." Another song that starts off light, and builds up to something grand. It doesn't hurt that Daniel Gildenlow is easily one of the most brilliant lyricists I've ever heard, and he's in especially top form on this song. This one touches a few nerves in me, to the point of almost hurting.
   
   
4. Lorena McKennitt, "The Old Ways." Lorena McKennitt, like little girls and butterflies, needs no excuse. Here she is.
   
   
5. Coroner, "Sirens." This song doesn't have the outrageous and unapologetic technical excess of their earlier albums, but the songwriting is just as solid as it was on No More Color, and the lyrics are unusually good. (Coroner tried too hard to be death-metal, and their English was perhaps not the best. This song is about lost childhood.)
   
   
6. Fields of the Nephilim, "Psychonaut." I have no idea why I like this one. The lyrics are corny, it has a lot of endlessly repeating riffs, and have I mentioned that I burst into laughter when people use Enochian chants in their lyrics? And yet, I love this one.
   
   
7. The Gathering, "In Motion." Anneke van Giersbergen could sing the owner's manual for Microsoft Office and make it a thing of beauty. She needs no more excuse than Lorena McKennitt.

Tagging... whoever wants to be tagged. I'll start with trogula, though.


Not more of this maturity crap!

I've discovered a few more bands that do really technical death metal, and I put on the headphones in a music store and punched them up, hoping to rediscover an old love. I wanted to like bands like Necrophagist, really!

And yet, they left me completely flat. The guitarwork is stunning, the meter shifts are dizzying, and the music overall... is boring. Theory in Practice is a little better, but again, their technical mastery leaves no room for songwriting.

Have my tastes changed that much? Not really. I listened to my older CDs that feature technical death metal, and found they haven't changed. Coroner's No More Color is the same beautifully jagged leviathan it always has been. Atheist's Unquestionable Presence is the same band of crunchy smartasses I first saw live a couple of months before their original bassist died. Nocturnus' The Key is still Yngwie with a death wish.

The newer stuff is just a blur of notes, with little care whether the notes mean anything.


I feel dirty for saying this.

I recently read this over in a friend's LJ. Before now, I have never wished broken fingers on a musician, and I intend never to wish for such a thing again. In my defense, the person on whom I'm wishing it now sued the other members of a group that kicked him out -- the other musicians have had to file for bankruptcy, and will likely lose their instruments; the instruments will probably be liquidated for the plaintiff's lawyer fees.

Musicians become very attached to instruments, especially those few who are fortunate enough to be able to form a relationship with such fine ones. To a musician of that rank, it's akin to losing a child. I understand this, and that's still not excuse enough for wishing such an injury on a violinist.

(No matter how much of a shit-sucking bastard he is.)

Dicks in charge.

No, Bush, the Constitution is not "just a goddamned piece of paper." Trust you to think it is, though.

(I am looking for more mainstream sources as we speak. I have no trouble believing that he said it, or that he believes it, but quoting a questionable source without acknowledging that you're doing so is generally a bad idea.)


Dicks on screen.

So, it seems Brandon Routh is unusually tall on his back, and the studio is having fits over his package. Since such a thing could give heart attacks to nuns if it ever appeared onscreen, rumor has it they're thinking about digitally editing his codpiece to bring it down to size.

Sorry, I completely fail to see the big deal. As long as he isn't going to be putting his dick in anyone (that would be fatal, after all -- just ask Larry Niven), and as long as it's not flopping around in the breeze, or packed in spandex and clearly outlined, what's the beef?

Maybe this is all a publicity stunt -- you've noticed that none of the links in that first paragraph are exactly established news sources. (They made a big deal about Colin Farrell's dick in one of those movies he was in, I forget which. Maybe we'll start seeing this kind of thing regularly!) And while I haven't seen Brandon Routh naked or anything, looking at the photos of him in tights, I'd say he's not all that huge. He's not getting laughed at in the locker room, certainly, but women won't be asking him, "what am I supposed to do with that thing, burp it!?" any time soon, either.

Oh, well. I'm sure Burt Ward could relate. At least Routh's not being given pills to make him fit into a more modest codpiece.


Dicks and asshats.

Meet the LJ community anti_bisexual. According to them, bisexuality doesn't exist -- it's just a fad. All the people who claim to be bisexual are really just confused, straights taking a walk on the wild side, queers who want to hang on to hetero privilege, and drunken college girls with no self-esteem necking in front of drunken frat-boys.

I personally agree with nindada, and with the people at Fandom Wank -- the people in that community are all judgmental twats. (Well, there's at least one exception: visp is another person I've met over at Godawful Fan Fiction. I always knew she was clever -- I just didn't know she had a fondness for tilting at windmills. It was a noble effort, but I'm sure she didn't expect them to be intelligent about it...)

I'm tempted to approach bloodlent, one of the members of that community. A girlfriend and I would like to show him a good time. Come on, dude, how about it? I have a nine inch cock¹, and I know how to use it... and she's amazing in bed, too. And even the other straight guys in that community recognize that you are hot! (He has that younger Johnny Depp thing going. Go look!)

I'm not gonna do it, though. Fandom Wank doesn't have many rules, but one of them is "thou shalt not troll the wankers," and lately, enough people have broken it that the next person to get caught at it will likely be banned. Besides, knowing my luck, bloodlent would take me up on it, and then I'd have to chicken out and admit that I'm really straight and I was just coming on to him to piss him off.

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1. This is, of course, measured in internet inches. As a unit of measurement, internet inches are too unstable to be used for measuring anything -- the conversion formula includes multiplying by a number determined by the phase of the moon at the time the measurement was taken. They sure do sound impressive, though!

Generally, I don't try to keep up with Entertainment News...

...but this caught my eye.

Personally, I think if she's happier without the weight, that's the important part. As it is, she was hot on Cheers. I've only seen a little of "Fat Actress," and she was hot on that show, too. Having lost a lot of weight, she's still hot. One day, she'll do a shocking and controversial sitcom called "Old Actress," and I'm sure she'll still be hot.


Can't Filk, Willn't Filk...

Does anyone have an mp3 of Janet Jackson's "Nasty Boys" they'd be willing to e-mail me?  Thank you to the very generous sprite who e-mailed me a Janet Jackson song. I promise not to pirate it -- all I intend to do is create a midi of the music behind her singing, and write new lyrics. (I have this idea for a filk about girls in slash-goggles...)


Poor Arnold.

Poor, poor, Arnold. Poor, poor, poor Arnold. Poor, poor, poor poor Arnold.

He can STILL blow me.

Foamy the Squirrel, parodied well

Check this shit out, if you're NOT AT WORK. It's a tribute to Ill Will Press, and it's funnier than most of the actual episodes. I've just watched it ten times. It's twisted, wrong, and horribly offensive, and I'm starting to have stomach cramps from laughing.


If you thought Cho Aniki was gay...

I will never understand Japanese culture. Take these guys dressed up as big phallic flamingoes that I included as a side dish for a post on bitching in fandom about George (Sulu) Takei coming out of the closet. The head guy is apparently a major celebrity on TV in Japan.

Yeah. Japanese talk-show host or variety-show host or something. Weird.


A little late for Halloween, but what the hell...

Bonus Stage is one of those acquired tastes, normally, but redubbing Pop-Eye was close to genius.

A Quick Song Dedicated to Net Celebrity
(In B major, mostly)

Andy Milonakis is gay.
Andy Milonakis is fucking gay.
Andy Milonakis...
Andy Milonakis...
Andy Milonakis is gay.

( Andy Milonakis is gay... )


A Meme (stolen from aphrodeia)

I stole this meme from a fun-yet-evil battleaxe. I try to keep memes to a minimum in my LJ, as I am still trying to finish the last one, but this one seemed like fun. And I'm not one to argue with the results.

( Though I did monkey with the HTML that it spit out... )

Loki's hormones frothing and bubbling.

Because my manager (a longtime friend of mine) has been on bereavement leave, I've been putting too much time in at work, and thus, I've had relatively little free time, or energy, of my own. (I'm not complaining -- he needs the time to grieve far more than I need the leisure.) I've been... ahem, noticing college students at work a lot more. I've also been noticing sexy moms of college students a lot more.

Just to make things more interesting, for about a week, I was working with a really cool asian guy: longish wavy hair, body made out of wires and cables, very interesting facial features... overall, offensively pretty. If I had him in a room without clothes for an hour, I would have killed for a box of good art supplies. If I wasn't straight, I'd want to fuck him through a wall. I halfheartedly tried to talk my dick into at least looking at him. It wasn't interested.

(I wouldn't have approached him in any way -- he was a coworker, and I am not stupid. But dammit, my dick should have at least noticed him!)

Care to guess what I'll be doing with my next couple of days off?


I don't know what to make of this site.

MyStrength.org is a wonderful website, though I'm depressed that it's actually necessary. It explains, without rancor, that one of the duties of any man worthy of the name is not to hurt women, that a truly strong man does not rape women. Further, it tries to create a definition of manhood that embraces these ideals. Great ideas, all. It's just sad that for so many men, this actually needs to be said.


Latest Spat at GAFF

My personal opinion is that a snark community devoted to trashing bad writing is not the place to ask for help with schoolwork, no matter how much respect you have for the intelligence of its members.

Beyond that, I'm saying nothing. I have friends on both sides of it. I'm just happy it appears to be over.

Artful squandering

Something about wasting food is just funny to people. Food fights, pies in the face, Gallagher's melon-smashing fits... but most people tend to be a little nervous about it. For good reason, when you consider how many people are starving in the world. So, I present a few especially entertaining sights that involve wasting (junk) food

• I just melted five pounds of gummi bears!
  
• I just used marshallow peeps as lab-rats!
  
• I just used marshallow  peeps  bunnies as lab-rats!
  
• I just turned melting cheese into a spectator sport!

I am too easily amused.


I was in Berkeley...

...for their "Berkeley as you can be" parade, which is just a parade with a whole bunch of entertaining weirdos. Attractions included a boxing ring (in which two men in wedding dresses were beating the hell out of a couple of religious icons holding up anti-gay-marriage signs), a half-dozen giant cupcakes (these were actually small go-carts), a truck which lit off giant fireballs (the blasts rattled windows), a bellydancer driving a motorized magic carpet, and other fun displays.

Oh, yeah, and a group of doughy, naked, hairy old men. Definitely not something I wanted to see, but this is Berkeley we're talking about. I was half-tempted to go up to them and unbutton my fly, to ahem... up the ante. (Yes, I have a big dick. This is the internet -- all guys have big dicks on the internet!)


A Question for you Lit Majors

(To hilarypoet: you had a short answer, and I ought to have remembered to ask you for more detail, but we were both tired, so I'm bringing it up now.)

I'm about halfway through a downloaded PDF of the Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, and my current impulse is to spork this beastly shitstain on Godawful. The short version of this story, so far, seems to be as follows: a few kinda old, obscenely rich and powerful men decide to gather and lock up eight perfect little girls, eight perfect little boys, eight men with comically huge penises, some amazingly ugly women, and a few storytellers together in a huge house, and then engineer all manner of disgusting and degrading shit to inflict on their captives.

So, here's my question: is this all there is to this story, or is there actually a fucking point to it?

Stupid New Uses for Technology

Imagine calling one of your friends on his or her cellphone. Naturally, your friend is probably not psychic, so you fully expect to hear the familiar ringing sound a few times before your friend answers. But wireless technology is moving forward, so now you can hear things like this:

00ntz, AKK, 00ntz, AKK, 00ntz-00ntz-00ntz-- "My milkshake brings all the boys to my yard, and they're like, 'it's better than yaws.' Damn right, it's better than yaws! I could teach you, but I have to charge."

Thanks to a  fucking annoying  fabu-licious new feature called Ringback Tones©®©®™™™, customers can now choose the things that other people will hear instead of that plain old ringing sound when they call. Sadly, customers are limited in their options to a menu of RIAA-approved-and-licensed songs, because after all, the RIAA is afraid that people will P2P ringback tones or some stupid shit. And almost all the music that's available for use in this fashion is crap. "Can you shoot me now? Gooooooood!"

Fuck you very much, Verizon Wireless. What's next, ringback advertising?


And fuck you too, Enron.

We're doing inventory soon.

With federal auditors, apparently. Because any large retail corporation attempting accounting fraud on a grand scale is obviously accomplishing it by persuading lowly peons and store managers to do their dirty work. Because watching the poor bastards in the store as they stay long after closing to count everything in the store is the best way to maintain the integrity of corporate bookkeeping.

You. Stupid. Fuckers.


A Memo to the people of the world:

If you are the grandmother or grandfather of someone I care about, I hereby forbid you to die. Three of you passing away in the space of a month is too many already -- if one of you cares to try to go for four, I'll learn necromancy just to bring you back and chew you out over it.

(This awkward attempt at humor was brought to you by a very bad few weeks for a few close friends.)

Dreaming in black...

Since I've been sleeping poorly for the last few days (and oddly enough, meth has nothing to do with it), I've been hanging out online a bit too much, looking for bizarre shit...


Oh my gay thtarth!

Cho Aniki is, without doubt, the gayest video game on the fucking planet. And please note that I do not mean "gay" as in a word used by retarded high-school aged boys to mean "bad." I mean "gay" as in, well, gay. As in gay, adjective, "of, or pertaining to, men fucking each other in the ass."


Check this shit out!

From:Dennis Thompson(Esq) 23,Fabian Height Crescent, Pretoria,South Africa Dear Mr/Mrs ██████████,                       I am Dennis Thompson a solicitor at law. I am the Personal Attorney to Mr. Charles ██████████,who has lived in Zimbabwe for the past fifty years, and whom here in after shall be referred to as my client. In April 2002 , my client, was involved in crisis between the white farmers and the the government of Mr.Robert Mugabe . He lost his life during the crisis when the president wanted to disposses them of their farm lands.I am contacting you to assist in repatriating most especially,the money left behind by my client before they get confiscated or declared unserviceable by the bank where this huge deposits were lodged.Particularly, the bank where the deceased had an account valued at about USD9,000,000 (Nine million United States Dollars) has issued me a notice to provide the Next of kin, or have the account confiscated since they aware of his death. I seek your consent to present you as the Next of kin of the deceased since you have the same last name so that the proceeds of this account valued at 9 million dollars can be paid to you, as my clients Next of Kin, and then we can share the amount on a mutual agreed percentage.All legal documents toback up your claim as the deceased Next of Kin, will be provided. All I require is your honest cooperation to enable us see this deal through. I guarantee that this will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law. Please get in touch with me, to enable us discuss further about this transaction. Best regards, Dennis Thompson(Esq)

Isn't this just adorable? I just want to reach through the internet and squeeze this baby scammer's plump little cheeks! Maybe he'll grow up to be a real scam artist one day!

So Glad I'm on Vacation Right Now!

Once upon a time, Someone at GAFF had a perceived popularity problem. He started a thread to ask us how to deal with it, and most of us gamely gave him advice. When he did the exact opposite of what we advised and continued to bitch about the attention he was getting, we told him to quit bitching, and he changed the name of the thread to "Topic Closed," hoping to kill the discussion. The rest of us turned it into a "beer and pretzels" thread. (This is a GAFF tradition, sorta like the tradition of sharing recipes in a forum besieged by trolls.)

Anyway, after seeing a few friends complain about the goings-on in that thread, I decided to go take a look. It appears that my self-imposed exile from GAFF was very well-timed.

Heywood, I doubt you're reading this, but on the off-chance that you are... congratulations. You've managed to seriously disturb me, which is no mean feat. I seriously want to take a shower after reading that shit.

(Oh, and I've just given away all the photos I took on April First -- the recipient was hoping for new debauchery, but will hopefully enjoy the old photos. Unh! Unh! Unh!!!)


"A CHIIIIICK WITH A DIIIIICK!"

I've placed an order for "Jerry Springer: The Opera." I expect to have it in my grubby paws this Friday.

I've only heard a few songs from it, but these few have been wonderful. When the careless philanderer sings "I've been seeing someone else," he recalls I Pagliacci. When his betrayed wife replies "what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fucking fucking fuck?" she draws inspiration from Hall of the Mountain King, and the "other woman" replies with inspiration from Madam Butterfly. When the aspiring stripper sings "I just wanna dance," she brings to mind Fantine from Les Misérables just before her life goes completely to shit. The Audience, whose participation is fully as important as the guests, is a mix of Georg Handel and Carl Orff.

And in very shocking contrast, the subject matter is pure trash. Worse, it's horribly blasphemous trash. "Blasphemy! Blasphe-you! Blas for everybody in the rooooom...!" How could I not love it?


No surprise here!

Your word is FUCK. You like to come across as rude and rebellious, and often you do. You also are intelligent and maybe surprisingly sensitive, though God help anyone who said that in front of your friends. Which Swear (Curse) Word Are You? brought to you by Quizilla

I saw a weirdo transvestite today.

Don't scowl at me like that! I didn't say that all transvestites are weirdoes -- indeed, I am very fond of at least one executive transvestite, and one sweet transvestite. This guy was a weirdo transvestite. Or to put it another way, il n'est pas un travesti executif, il est un travesti marrant!

Well, the weird thing about him was that he was in a skirt, panty hose, and pumps... but he was wearing a men's shirt, and had a moustache. It was very Monty Python.

I am far too easily amused.


The new job site.

So far, I much prefer my new location. In my old location, I worked with a decent (but very new) manager, an even newer sales associate, and a complete fucking WASTE OF SPACE!!! (Sorry.) I'm doing a bit more work at the new store, but I don't resent it at all -- amazing what an equitable division of labor can do for morale! I've had relatively little time to fart around on the net, write music, or visit friends, but I can work on that.

In the meantime, I'm surprised none of my new colleagues has socked me for having said "holy shit, we didn't have this cool product at the old store!" for the tenth time in a given day. I've also met a few musicians asking for technical advice, and a couple have already started asking for me my name or hair color.


Harry Potter fandom is still batshit.

I'm trying, as per my vows to reclaim my life in RL instead of online, to stay out of the endlessly entertaining splooge-pit that is Harry Potter fandom. For the most part, I've been successful. A couple of friends ended up dragging me over to GAFF, however briefly (scowls at tripathy for a moment, then grins).

As evidenced by yesterday's entry (and thank you all for the enthusiastic response, he said as he blushed), I've been a bit less successful at keeping away from wank in general. For those of you who didn't follow the links, kapunua was trying to arrange for hot guys to be sent her way, in parody of cousinjean, who made the internet go boom by doing a PBS-style pledge-drive, asking for money so that she could write fanfic. That was too damned funny to stay out of.

But hey, at least I'm not in need of being turned toward the sun and watered!

I love the pussy. The pussy loves me. Meow!

I'm being glomped by other people's outdoor cats on the way home lately. It's cute -- they watch me walk by, they plant themselves squarely in my path, they watch me stop. Then, they rub up against my legs, get in front of me again, and roll over. "No human can resist... the belly fur!"

Well, some humans can. I'm just not one of them. But then, I'm a redhead, which according to Heinlein means I'm part cat myself.


I can dress myself just fine... really!

Men, take notice. If you dress on the right, keep your cellphone in your left pocket. If you dress on the left, keep your cellphone in your right pocket. This is especially important if your phone is set on "vibrate." After I spent a few days without having charged my phone, I had to relearn this lesson the hard way. At work.


"Every moment of the night, I lead another life."

Passenger planes are flying overhead, and as they fly above my sleeping body, everyone aboard starts thinking, "I'm horny and I don't know why." Wonder why no more -- I'm the reason for it!

Still dreaming up a storm, regularly. Still being tempted to find a dealer who traffics in ecstasy, which is an easy temptation to fight. Still reasonably free of temptation to find a dealer who traffics in meth, which would be a harder temptation to fight. My inner demons are still apparently incompetent.