Just about every credible video game news outlet has been running pieces in the same vein as this slashdot thread these past few months. To be honest, I think it's absurd to think that the entire games indsutry is doomed to games with cadrillion dollar budgets, celebrity voice overs, and the same ole same ole just because historically new hardware and the eye candy that comes with it has been the primary growth driver. It seems like a no brainer to me, really... wait it out folks. It's still a young industry in terms of traditional arts/entertainment. There will be people demanding innovation and there will be innovative people meeeting that demand.

For every lame summer blockbuster there's a film like Sideways. For every Britney Spears there's a Stephen Malkmus. I expect the games industry to follow suit... eventually. **

Ranch 1 really is the greatest grilled chicken on earth. Well, at least if by Earth they mean the fast food industry.... regardless, delicious. --

I went to Boston last weekend. Aside from one very quick trip up there a few months back it's the first time I've spent a significant amount of time there in awhile. Towards the end of my time there as a student I was starting to become irritated with it and became incredibly excited to head back home. While I'm content here living in Jersey and working in New York for now, there's no question that I've grown to feel more comfortable in Boston than where I grew up. **

I downloaded the new Nine Inch Nails album, [With_Teeth] to listen to on the ride up there and I'm not so sure I was very pleased with what I heard. Perhaps it was the fact that it was pouring rain while I was listening and I was focusing on the road... or the fact that I was listening to it via my fuzzy iTrip... but it just sounded a bit thin to me.

I'll give it a shot with headphones during my commute home from work today, but in all likelihood I'll be passed out by the end of the first track due to my combined 8 hours of sleep for the entire goddamned weekend. I'm reaching new heights (or depths) in tiredness. For real, this shit is avant-garde. --

According to this article, if you're happy, you're healthy. It later offers up religion as its sole source of scientifically verifiable happiness, while (correctly) indicating that other sources of happiness are unique from person to person and far more elusive. So unless you're prepared to take the plunge into the land of naivety and insanity... the world at large best be prepared to find happiness in a much tougher way, or face the consequences of our unhappy bodies. **

Found a leaked copy of the new Stephen Malkmus album last night.. and I'm pretty darn happy with what I've heard so far. I was dozing in and out of sleep while listening this morning, but I heard the first and ninth tracks in their entireties and couldn't help but be reminded of older Pavement stuff. Pig Lib never did much for me, so it's nice to be pleasantly surprised with Face The Truth. --

Too much booze, too little sleep, and too much coffee has made my heart skittish. And I don't mean in a metaphorical way in which I'm using the word heart to describe the status of my personal life or even mental well being. I mean the beating thing in my chest that makes the blood course through my veins and whatnot. I've always had a slightly irregular heartbeat... but these past few weeks it's gotten a bit creepy. If you listen closely the shit sounds like some experimental trip-hop beat or something. I think I'll try to get more sleep. And maybe drink less coffee. Maybe. **

Been listening to the new Despistado a lot. Not great, but pretty damn good.

Rented Sideways last night. Very good except for the fact that midway through my Playstation 2 decided to stop working... leading me to tinker with wires for about 30 minutes before it inexplicably started playing again. Whatever. Saw Sin City Friday night. The white blood looks like cool whip and I love cool whip. Even the low-fat kind.

A few days late on this one, but I'd have to agree with this chick's review of the song "The Engine Driver" off The Decemberist's Picaresque. It harkens back to the days when people were pegging The D's as being the next Neutral Milk Hotel and shows how moving they could be if they downplayed the showmanship just the teeniest bit. I think Picaresque is a huge step in the right direction, way moreso than Her Majesty was and hope that this tune is a sign of things to come. **

Similar to just about every NY Post sports columnist... I think anyone that took to their feet and saw fit to boo Mariano Rivera yesterday should seriously re-evaluate their lives. It was game three of the first series of the season! It's essentially worthless in almost every regard other than in fueling the overhyped "rivalry"! And you do what? Boo the man that you owe just about all of your Yankee pride to over the past ten years? He's 35! He just got over Bursitis! You should die! Seriously.

Seiously, it's the fucking weather, man. It's very apparent that it's not just something I like to say to cheer myself up anymore.

There was this obsessive compulsive rich kid that lived down the hall from me my freshman year of college that used to have this weird-ass fluorescent light fixture at the foot of his bed. He'd stare into the fucking thing for 15 minutes every morning because he claimed to have some crazy condition in which lack of sunlight made him severely depressed. But he was so petrified of cancer that he had to avoid the real sun at all costs. He wore lots of black and was as pale as a goddamned vampire. At any rate, I never took him or his condition seriously.. because it was way more fun to tell him you had just finished whacking off and watch him cower away from you anytime your hands came within three feet of him.. but maybe there's more to it. It just can't be a coincidence anymore. **

May I cut in?

We need a band name. Not immediately, but sooner rather than later. I think it will help me envision the band we have going on being an actual thing that actually exists in time and space instead of this sorta non-designatable "thing" that "we've got going on". We've started out slow just kicking around a few songs... but last week things really started to solidify. I think we all compliment each other well and can create some pretty cool sounding stuff together. I know I should've learned by now to shut the fuck up about something when I get excited about it, as my words have pretty always come back to bite me in the ass... but I'm thinking that this is something beyond that. Something that's been slowly taking shape in my head for years that I'm not willing to fuck up. Most of the things that end up biting me in the ass are passing type things anyway, this is something that's been stewing inside me since I was a kid. And I'm happy to be doing it with the people I'm doing it with. **

These past few years my winter's have been incredibly cold. Filled with lots of bitterness and a lot of lousy things happening to me. Thankfully, these winters have historically been followed by warm springs with all of the wrongs becoming rights and all of the lousiness turning into luck and well being. I'm starting to think that the tides have turned, but that this time it's for the worst. It's just in the air... something I can feel. I hope that I'm wrong.. because I know the more I believe it the more that my own lousy self-fulfilling prophecy will kick into effect. So if you see me in a rut... Buy me a beer. Tell me to get over myself. It'll help, I promise.

No one has fooled me yet today.

However, it's worth nothing that today's Penny Arcade comic proved to be quite amusing. I do believe that the PA boys have hit a naztee stride once again, after what I thought were a few months of dissappointing comics. Or maybe it's a strut. Yeah, I think it's more like a strut. **

I just paid $9.33 for a medium chedder broccoli soup and an 11.6 oz. bottle of Ginger Ale. F Manhattan! --