Month: June 2012

San Ber'dino

2012-06-26, 11:02 pm
Categories: Music

As surely as night must follow day, San Ber'dino must follow Evelyn, A Modified Dog.

I love this one. I love the sound, I love the rhyme scheme and the vocabulary, I love the way it tells a story with three-dimensional characters in so few words. And I love the gentle admonition against snobbery and judgement: "You may think they're dumb an' lonely, but you're wrong 'cause their love is strong." A bit of perspective we should all remember the next time we feel like looking down our noses at somebody.

And hey, special bonus Adrian Belew.

Boxes are Hard.

2012-06-26, 10:14 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness, Tech, Work

It's vexed me for years and years that end users seem unable to comprehend very simple things like what a Web browser is, the difference between Windows and Office, and how to come up with effective search terms to type into Google.

In more recent years, I have come to understand that, for some of these people, simply putting a thing in a box and affixing a label to it is a nigh-impossible process.

Today I received a desktop computer that was just thrown into a box with no padding whatsoever -- a current model and redeployable (well, maybe not anymore) -- and an old, past-end-of-life laptop packed inside of multiple boxes and wrapped in layer after layer of bubble wrap with tape. The former shipped from out-of-state, while the latter came from an office two blocks away from mine. Would be nice if they could work out some sort of happy medium.

Two weeks ago I missed a day of work with a migraine. The day after that I scrambled and played catchup and shipped two days' worth of computers in one day. Turnaround time from shipping a new computer to receiving the old one is right about two weeks, so today I was hit with two days' worth of returns in one day.

And okay, I've spent enough of this post complaining about stupid users that I'll take a moment and acknowledge my own stupid fuckup of the day.

I had a giant pile of boxes in front of me and a small pile of outbound machines, and I started to stress out about it a little. And I made a mistake.

I took a break from processing returns to ship a machine out, and I got my wires crossed and started going through the return process. I deleted a user's old computer and its access group from ActiveDirectory, before shipping her replacement. And since I don't have access to fix that, I had to ask my coworker to take care of it.

It's about that time I decided I should probably take some deep breaths and try to relax before doing anything else -- not just for fear of more sloppy mistakes, but because if I'm not careful I'll give myself another migraine, and then I'll just be going through this same song and dance again in a couple weeks.

Still opted not to take a break right away -- because that just means more crap I gotta do tomorrow -- but I slowed down a bit. Got through maybe half the stack, finally got enough facefuls of dust from old Dells that I decided to call it quits for the day.

So, more to do tomorrow. But I guess that's the closest thing a temp ever gets to job security.

A Modified Evelyn, A Modified Dog

2012-06-25, 9:00 pm
Categories: Music

Found this one last night and I love it. It is a Japanese man singing Evelyn, A Modified Dog. (Well, the first minute or so is. The rest he's just talking, and, well, let's just say his English is better than my Japanese. I have no idea what he is saying.)

I mentioned the other day that you can hear Zappa's inflection in Bozzio's vocals on Titties 'n Beer. Similarly, this nice young man copies Zappa's inflection perfectly, and though his accent is overwhelming he enunciates each word precisely.

My Japanese is rusty (I took one year back in college) so I'm not sure where this was or why they picked Zappa, but it appears that they performed the entirety of One Size Fits All (with Zomby Woof from Over-Nite Sensation replacing Can't Afford No Shoes). The videos are all titled "Live'98", so that's presumably the year they were recorded -- which means that's actually a surprisingly high-quality video, considering.

Great Opening Titles: Mad Men

2012-06-25, 8:44 pm
Categories: Cartoons, TV

All right, another one of these. Like the last one, it's recent, it's obvious, it's Emmy-winning, and Simpsons did it.

Mad Men -- the falling, the skyscrapers, the sexy ads. In thirty seconds we've got a picture of the glamor and the horror, the loss of control and even identity -- but, at the same time, the slickness, the class.

The black-and-white figure is presumably Draper, but it could be anybody -- he's literally faceless. Draper may have the most obvious and literal identity problems, but the entire cast grapples with them. The figures in the ads on the walls -- they're otherworldly, they're a little creepy; they're not more real than the falling figure, but they're certainly more defined.

And here it is on Simpsons.

And here it is on Daily Show three weeks ago.

And once again, Art of the Title has more.

Duchess the Orangutan, RIP

2012-06-24, 9:46 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness

The other day I posted that Duchess, the Phoenix Zoo's orangutan matriarch, had been diagnosed with lymphatic cancer.

I've just read that they euthanized her this morning. It's a relief to hear that she didn't suffer.

[Phoenix Zoo spokeswoman Linda] Hardwich said the decision to euthanize the orangutan matriarch was to give her some peace and preserve her dignity in her final days.

Duchess has been at the zoo since 1962. She was the oldest living Bornean orangutan in North America.

Duchess was born in the Borneo jungle where she was orphaned at about the age of two. She had seven offspring, six grandchildren and a great-grandchild who live at various zoos around the country. A daughter, Bess, and granddaughter, Kasih, lived with her.

Duchess' 50th birthday in 2010 was marked by presents, an ice "cake" to lick, a card signed by zoo guests and a chorus of "Happy Birthday" sung by zoo visitors.

I haven't been out to the zoo in a year or two, and the last time I was there the orangutan habitat was closed down for renovations. So I haven't seen Duchess in years. But she's been there since before my mother was born and I'll miss her.

Inca Roads

2012-06-24, 9:11 pm
Categories: Music, Stream of Consciousness

Another damn headache today. I haven't gotten them this frequently since high school; going to need to see a doctor about it.

So, just a Zappa post today. I guess technically that makes two in a row (though again, that RU Sirius one barely had anything to do with Zappa), but what're you gonna do?

This is Inca Roads by Zappa Plays Zappa, in two parts. Looks to be the same tour as the Camarillo Brillo video I posted the other week but probably not the same show, as Napoleon Murphy Brock is wearing a different red shirt.


I love his work on the flute. The flute was my first instrument largely because it can sound like that, but high school band arrangements give you little opportunity but to play high-pitched trilly things and get called a fag by the other kids. Eventually I switched to sax -- more over the former than the latter; if I were worried about people indulging in conjecture about my sexuality I wouldn't have photos on the Internet of me performing in Rocky Horror -- but haven't played it since graduating.

Belladonna's Bad, Mmmkay?

2012-06-23, 9:15 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness

This one's only tangentially related to Frank Zappa, but I figured I'd include it because it's a fun read (for certain values of "fun"). I just saw this in a BoingBoing post by Mark Frauenfelder: The Belladonna Shaman, by RU Sirius, detailing his experience, at the age of 15, taking a recreational drug called asthmador, which, as the title implies, contained belladonna.

So what's this got to do with Frank Zappa?

I entered Our Lady of Lords Hospital wrapped up in a straightjacket and was immediately given a shot of morphine. Once they got me to stop flailing, they were able to find my wallet. They pulled it out to see who I was. In those far less paranoid times, teenagers didn’t necessarily carry ID cards. But my friend Vinnie had found these sort-of IDs that had a space on them to write your name and address and phone number and we’d had some fun one night writing the names of our heroes, or of odd characters, onto the cards and sticking them in our wallets. I had two cards on which I had written two different names. Since the admission authorities knew I wasn’t Ho Chi Minh, they figured the other ID must be the correct one. I was admitted as Frank Zappa.

So, uh, don't do belladonna, kids.

(And, ironically, Zappa was pretty vocally opposed to drug use.)

Not My Batman

2012-06-23, 8:39 pm
Categories: Cartoons, Comics, Games

I've been talking about fanboys and entitlement. It's kind of amazing the extent to which fans can be territorial and proprietary about characters they don't actually own or control.

To wit: you've probably heard the phrase "That's not my Batman."

The wonderful thing about Batman is that he is, quite possibly, the most versatile superhero in all of comics. (The most versatile supervillain, on the other hand, is Dr. Doom, and Chris Sims did a great job of laying out the reasons why in a recent column.) He's been around for close on 75 years and has, in that time, appeared in virtually every kind of story. You've probably got a "your Batman", the one you consider definitive and canonical -- and it's probably the one from when you were a kid. I'm no exception -- more on that in a moment.

I saw an Amazon review of the Arkham Asylum game that gave us this great bit of That's Not My Batman:

No, this is not the BAM, WHAM, KA-POW batman you saw David West in and it's not the weird new batman from Batman the Brave and the Bold cartoon and that is such a relief !!
This is the TRUE Batman, the one Bob Kane had in his mind even in the late 30's[.]

Yes, who could forget the famous Batman TV series starring David West? It was a huge departure from the TRUE Batman who Bob Kane had in his mind in the late 1930's -- you know, the one who wore a red costume, wings, and a domino mask, and was called Bird-Man, because that was Bob Kane's pitch until Bill Finger suggested some changes. (There's more on the origins of Batman at Dial B for Blog, and I strongly recommend the book Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones.)

Of course, the funny thing is that the guy who wrote the script to Batman: Arkham Asylum, Paul Dini, also gave us the following exchange (on Batman: The Brave and the Bold, the one with "that weird new Batman" -- specifically, in the episode Legends of the Dark Mite):

I always felt Batman was best-suited in the role of gritty urban crime detective, but now you guys have him up against SANTAS? And EASTER BUNNIES? I'm sorry -- but that's not my Batman!
Batman's rich history allows him to be interpreted in a multitude of ways. To be sure, this is a lighter incarnation, but it's certainly no less valid and true to the character's roots as the tortured avenger crying out for Mommy and Daddy.

(You can see the clip on YouTube, too, but the uploader prevents embedding.)

Because Dini doesn't just understand that there's more than one "valid" interpretation of Batman, he excels at jumping between them. He's a true chameleon like few Batman scribes in the character's history -- Grant Morrison springs to mind, as does Bill Finger himself, who wrote everything from Batman's earliest appearances and origin story to a two-part episode of that "BAM, WHAM, KA-POW" TV series with Adam "My Name is Not Even Remotely Similar to David" West.

And the funny thing is, playing Arkham Asylum, I've realized something: this isn't my Batman.

He sounds exactly like my Batman. And the Joker sounds exactly like my Joker. And the writing sure sounds a lot like my Batman too.

But it's meaner. It's more violent. An asylum littered with the bodies of murdered security guards. Batman himself sticks to the "no killing" rule in this version (unlike, say, the Burton movies), but he's brutal. The game features fetishistic slow-motion beatdowns that look like something out of the Watchmen movie; Batman may not kill, but he snaps bones and smothers perps until they lose consciousness.

Don't get me wrong -- I like the game. It plays fantastically; it's expertly designed, fun as hell, and it fits Batman -- at least, a version of Batman.

I guess that's what this comes down to: I can recognize a Batman as Not My Batman and still enjoy and appreciate it.

PC Gamer's Dilemma

2012-06-22, 10:08 pm
Categories: Games, Status Updates, Stream of Consciousness

Well, I finally got me an Xbox 360.

It was free. My fiancée got a new computer with one of those student "comes with a free Xbox" deals.

Here's the thing: I've got a pretty solid gaming rig. And another pretty solid media rig. So I haven't felt much need for Xboxin' up to this point.

The advantages and drawbacks of PC gaming are pretty well-documented. A PC can support crazy high-end hardware, but while the games are cheaper the gear is more expensive and fiddly and there's a whole lot that can go wrong.

Me, I'm something like a niche of a niche of a niche of a niche -- I run Linux on a Mac Pro as my primary OS and keep Windows around for gaming.

This is pretty cool when it works. But here's the thing: even a good Apple makes for a pretty crummy gaming system.

Last year I bought a pretty high-end Nvidia card. ATI has better Mac support, but I've had nothing but headaches trying to get ATI cards working with Linux. Nvidia's always run smoother for me -- galling considering their total lack of cooperation with Linux and the open-source community, but true.

But it's not an officially-supported card. It works under OSX (as of 10.7.3) but it's not entirely reliable under Windows -- when it gets taxed too heavily, I get a bluescreen.

It happened a few times when I played through Witcher 2, but, perversely, it's given me more trouble on Mass Effect 2 -- a game I had no trouble playing through with all the settings maxed out on a lower-end (but officially-Apple-supported) ATI card.

I thought it might be a heating problem but it occurs, consistently, even when I crank up all my system fans with third-party software.

The game worked fine up until Omega, and then started BSoDing randomly. I managed to recruit Garrus in-between crashes, but by the time it came around to Mordin's quest I couldn't get past loading the corridor.

I could just try some other missions, but seriously, you want me to put off getting Mordin? Hell no.

I've found, from searching, that this appears to be a fairly common problem with ME2, even among people not running eccentric hardware configurations such as mine. And I've found a few suggested fixes, but none have worked for me.

I've tried running the game under WINE on both OSX and Ubuntu. Under OSX it plods (I suspect my helper card may be to blame; maybe I'll try disabling it to make sure my higher-end card is the only one the system's putting a load on); under Ubuntu it runs fine up until the menu screen but then doesn't respond to mouse clicks or keystrokes (other than system stuff like Alt-Tab or Alt-F4). I haven't turned up any other reports of this same problem, so I can't find a fix -- maybe one of these days I'll try a full clean install and see if it still does it. Nuke my WINE settings too if I have to. (Or maybe I could set it up on my fiancée's new computer...)

Needless to say, I haven't tried Mass Effect 3 yet.

And that's before we get into all the DRM bullshit plaguing the PC platform.

Never played Batman: Arkham Asylum, largely because of the SecuROM/GFWL/Steamworks Katamari of Sucktitude. Similarly, I gave Dragon Age 2 a miss once I heard reports of people unable to authenticate their legally-purchased games because they'd been banned from BioWare's forums for saying mean things about EA. (Which obviously totally disproves that EA deserves to be called names.)

It's a great damn time to be a PC gamer for a lot of reasons -- a huge indie scene supported by the likes of Steam and the Humble Indie Bundle, with both pushing more gaming on OSX and even Linux -- but it's a lousy time for other reasons.

Anyway. Now I've got an Xbox. All else being equal, I still prefer to play games on the PC, but for cases where the Xbox has less restrictive DRM (like Arkham Asylum) or titles that aren't available on PC (like Red Dead Redemption) or just shit I can get for under five bucks (like a used copy of Gears of War I just picked up), well, it's kinda cool to have one.

Playing: Batman: Arkham Asylum.