Another song for Tuesday, January 14, 2014

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Random Song Stuck In My Head - Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Random Song Stuck In My Head - January 13, 2014

Random song stuck in my head - Tuesday, November 27, 2013

Singing In the Shower - Friday, June 14, 2013: New Order - Touched By the Hand of God

Random song stuck in my head - Monday, May 20, 2013

It's been a long time since I played this

Random Song Stuck In My Head: Friday, February 8, 2013

I know how this got in my head as well. About a month ago I went on a binge of old Smashing Pumpkins music. Well, so I know how it got there, but I don't know why this particular one came up and stayed stuck there out of all the others. This song feels perfect for my life right now — not the lyrics at all really, just the tone. PS: I hate the weird Corgan picture they are using on this youtube clip. That totally clashes with the song for me.

Random Song Stuck In My Head: Wednesday, December 19th, 2012

This one I actually know how it got in my head (due to the marvelous Jimquisition), but I don't care, because it's great.

Random Song Stuck In My Head: Wednesday December 5th, 2012

Stuff like this is actually a guilty pleasure of mine. I mean, it's not a bad song, but it would definitely be made fun of in some of the circles I belong to...

Random Song Stuck In My Head: Monday December 3rd, 2012

If I ever have another gig, I'm playing the shit out of this. Possibly the only Ministry song I will ever like.

Random Song Stuck in My Head: Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Today you get two! (you lucky, lucky bastards) Because for some reason I had the guitar riff from Pump It Up fading in to the chorus from 20th Century Boy stuck in my head.

Random Song Stuck In My Head of the Day

Assuming that I remember to do this, I'm starting a new dealy where I'm going to post the song that is randomly stuck in my head that day. This happens to me a lot. A song I probably haven't heard in months or years will just start looping in my head. Anyway, I'll only be updating this when it actually happens, so intervals will be whenever. Maybe one day, generations past, my progeny can look back at this and track my descent in to madness. Or, more likely, I will update it 8 times and then promptly forget about it. Going to do a double post today, since I "owe" a song that was definitely stuck in my head yesterday. So here's the song for Monday, October 15, 2012:

Not even my favorite Iggy track, not by a longshot. Beats me...

How Temperature Controls On Every Shower Work for Some Reason

You would think that with such a large turning area for the knob, there would be some kind of moderate gradation in temperature from hot to cold. More often than not, I've found that showers have one absurdly tiny spot in which the temperature is acceptable, and to either side is either extreme hot or cold in drastic contrast.

Dear HBO, I can't take you seriously

Recently, I moved apartments, and was forced to use Comcast for cable service at the new place.  On the plus side, my lovely girlfriend has taken it upon herself to pay for the service, and she wanted the full package, so we have 6 months of HBO.  This is my first direct, persistent experience with HBO, so I was quite excited to finally watch all these shows people wont shut up about.

We started by watching the first season of Boardwalk Empire.  We both thoroughly enjoyed it, and are looking forward to the next season.  However, there are some aspects of the show that... well... come off as ridiculous to me.  More on this in a moment.

Yesterday, we decided to check out another much-acclaimed HBO series, Game of Thrones.  It shared many of the same qualities as Boardwalk, notably the aforementioned "ridiculous" ones.

After taking in this HBO material, the network itself has become kind of absurd to me.
So, what am I talking about here?

The over-the-top, constant graphic sex and gore.

Let's be clear: I'm not some kind of religious prude who decries all violence or sex in entertainment.  It has its place.  I like boobs and naked women.  I play "violent" video games.  I watch porn.  However, I find there is a certain level of such things which come off as absurd in "serious" media.  HBO shows have surpassed this level.

I feel that, since HBO is a subscription-only premium channel, ostensibly only intended for an adult audience, they do this simply because they can, and not actually in service to the plot or atmosphere of the show.  To me, that is kind of... well, stupid.  Graphic sex and violence should be used sparingly.  When used appropriately, it can have an impact, some poignancy.  When used gratuitously, it becomes almost comical and demeaning to the rest of the presentation.

I'm being slightly hyperbolic when I say this, but it seems almost every 10 minutes in either show, you are going to have a graphic sex scene (just barely not porn), and someone with internal organs splattering all over the screen.  If there hasn't been such a scene within the first 10 minutes of an episode, I'd probably check to see if I was on the right channel.

What I find funny about this is that no one I've ever heard speak about these shows has ever brought this up.  Usually they are too busy gushing over how spectacular and marvelous they are, how amazing the cinematography is, or some such thing.  Critics and non-critics alike.  Everyone seems to take the shows incredibly seriously.

Don't get me wrong, the shows are immaculately produced, and extremely well-acted.  They are engrossing.  The underlying story-lines are certainly worthy of "high-brow" entertainment.  However, the inclusion of all this constant graphic material gives them a decidedly low-brow feeling.

This has lead me to conclude that these shows are popular because they give people an excuse to watch what might otherwise be porn and slasher flicks without the guilt and societal shame that comes with watching those things.  People can even talk about watching them in public — and because HBO shows are regarded as cutting-edge and top of the line, people who like them are even seen as "better," if you will.

Bottom line:
It's base entertainment in a dressed-up package that allows people to indulge in guilty pleasures without fear of social reprisal.

So my problem with it (aside from the implied hypocrisy of anyone who praises these shows but wouldn't openly talk about watching, say, Big Boob Milf Fuckfest 3), is that it just kind of makes the shows themselves feel stupid.  Like I said, I like the shows.  I like their premises, their plots, characters, acting, production values, etc.  But when multiple times an episode it will cut to a gratuitous scene of people going at it doggy style, or to pause and focus on someone's intestines falling out of their abdomen, it undercuts the drama and tension and everything else "serious" going on.  It also sort of makes me feel like kind of a loser for watching it (there's that societal guilt, I suppose).  If I want to watch people doing it, I will go watch some porn.  I don't want porn interrupting my serious drama.

Use graphic scenes sparingly, use them when you really want to shock someone, use them purposefully.  Just stop using them all the damn time.  It's silly.

Leave a comment if you think I'm full of shit :-)

F@#k You, Nvidia. Redux

Way back in the old-timey days of 2007, when senators were looking for airport glory holes, the iPhone was pre-fanboy, and China was just poisoning us with lead instead of economic policy₁, this blog was making its first crawl out of the primordial goo.  One of my earliest posts was a juvenile rant directed toward 3D-graphic hardware and software company Nvidia.  Well, it seems a tiger don't change its stripes, and four years later, Nvidia is back to their old tricks of shoving undesired bloat down its customer's throats.

I'll try to keep this brief and to-the-point.  There's no real reason to pad out a rant like this, and most of it would just be excessive fucking cursing anyways.  Basically, with its most recent iterations of ForceWare (Nvidia's drivers for its GeForce series of video cards), Nvidia has seen fit to include HD audio drivers as part of the standard installation.  These would allow you to use the HDMI-out on your video card for audio as well as video output.  Not a terrible feature, in theory.  In practice, it's completely nonsensical.  I realize there are some people out there who want such a feature, but the vast majority of PC gamers are using a dedicated sound card or onboard sound on their computers.  Using the HDMI instead would, afaik, require you hook your computer up to an HD audio receiver, which would then presumably go to some surround sound system.  This would go well with using an HD tv as your monitor.  Because, you know, every PC gamer likes to sit on their living room floor when they play.

Even despite the current impracticality of the feature, it wouldn't be so bad — that is, if it didn't cause your computer to BSOD₂ all the goddamned time.  That's right: due to one of those really difficult-to-isolate driver conflicts, the installation of this superfluous HD audio driver causes computers to say "fuck you," often as soon as you log in to Windows (since the "log in sound" plays).  Other times it will crash when you are watching a video, or sometimes when you are just twiddling your thumbs and admiring your desktop wallpaper.  Basically just whenever the hell it feels like it.

Lest you think this is just some problem isolated to my own PC configuration, go ahead and Google "gtx470 hd audio bsod."  There are message boards full of other angry, ranting nerds.

The worst part about this?  The solution would be incredibly simple: just include it as an option to un-check during the driver installation process.  Nvidia already do this with their 3D Vision drivers (which are useless unless you have a special monitor & glasses).  Yet for some reason, they have forced you to install these HD audio drivers for the entire past year of driver releases.  There are some complex workarounds and processes you can go through to try and fix this problem, as outlined on those aforementioned nerd forums.  I've tried a couple, and the thing still rears its ugly head (plus you have to repeat the painful fix process every time you update the driver).  Thankfully, it never seems to occur during actual gameplay, but it still happens with enough frequency that it is murderous-rage-inducing.

Come on Nvidia.  Seriously.  Fix this bullshit.

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1. For some reason, I originally wrote this section for 1997, saying "Way back in the old-timey days of 1997, when scientists were busy cloning sheep, Heaven's Gate was spiking the punch, and boxers were eating each-others appendages..." Man, 1997 was such a cooler year than 2007.  Oh yeah, China has been screwing us with economics since before 2007, but saying it this way was funnier.

2. BSOD = Black screen of death (formerly, blue screen of death). Basically a system crash where your monitor goes black and you are forced to restart your computer.