Hey folks. I've decided to create a new art form. It's called Reading Poetry to the Lawn Mower. This new medium is sure to revolutionize the art world. You see, garden equipment needs more culture. It's starved for some lyrical content. As such, I've taken up the task. I've even offered services to read to my mower on commission.

There's nothing quite like the expression on a weed wacker when you read it a nice passage from Frost, Poe, Dickenson, or Lady GaGa. You can see the years of abuse melt away. I had to document the phenomenon.

For my first forray into this new, emerging artform, I've taken on a song by the budding English artist SiFu Music .

You may ask yourself: "Why SiFu Music???" or "What the hell is SiFu Music?"

To answer both of those questions, I present to you "Aint Whatcha Say", the classic opus by SiFu Music:



I know what you're thinking: "Wow, that's the most amazing thing I've ever fucking heard!!". Well, my friends, you are correct. Your life has been altered. You may thank me, later. I, too, was blown away. With lyrics like "Ju Ju Ju Ju Ju Ju Ju Ju Ju", Bob Dylan's legacy is sure to fall.

I then proceeded to listen to the song for 24 hours straight. Although, it might have been 24 seconds. You see, I can't tell because listening to "Aint Whatcha Say" actually has time travel as a side effect.

So, when I returned to my senses, I said to myself: "Self, your lawn mower needs to hear this...". After hearing myself say that to me, I sprung into almost immediate action. (Ok, I waited like a week, but I'm a busy mo'fo and there was time travel going on.)

I grabbed my trusty video camera and made a movie... check it out:


But that's not all. I felt this song deserved more. It needed a tribute. An homage to the inspiration. Sleepless nights ensued. I was haunted by the sound of "Ju Ju Ju Ju Ju...".

It had become the white whale to my Ahab.

I had to conquer "Aint Whatcha Say".

So I busted out my trusty axe. I started riffin' in tongues. I traveled to the netherworld. I spoke to the animals. My soul took flight. I made an mp3.

::DOWNLOAD SOUND::

he iPhone's a pretty neat device. Sure, it's not the best at being a “phone”, but it is a very handy device to have in your pocket. As advertised, there really is an “app” for just about anything you can imagine. Sure, most of those apps are silly crap, but in truth, most of what people can imagine is silly, in fact, crap.

Over the past year or so, my little black iPhone has become an integral device in my daily life. I use it for e-mail. I surf the web on it. I use it to find restaurants, look up directions, answer random trivia, it's my camera, about 90% of my tweets and Facebook posts come from my iPhone. It's also my music player of choice. (Nothing yet designed tops the design of the iPod.)

So, what could be so wrong with the iPhone that I am considering ditching it? SMS popups. They are unstoppable.


That's right, iPhone's SMS Popup can't be stopped!

When a user receives an SMS on the iPhone, it pops up. By default, this “feature” will display the message on your screen, no matter what you are doing. The iPhone will light up, even if it's locked and asleep to show that text. So, by default, your text message is shown to whomever is looking at the screen at that time.

You can imagine the obvious implications of this. In fact, there are people who've run into nightmare-like problems because of it. All you need is the wrong text coming in at the wrong time and you could lose a job, a girlfriend, or ruin someone's birthday. (Thanks iPhone!)

Apple's solution: Users can shut of the “preview” mode for texts. This setting, which is buried in the phone's settings menus, will prevent the iPhone from displaying the message in the popups. However, the popups themselves appear to be unstoppable.

So, this setting removes the content of the message. The name (or number) of the sender will still show on the screen. So, if you don't want someone you're with to know who else is might be texting you, you're shit out of luck with the iPhone.

Apple's die-hard kool-aid drinkers will tell you “Just flip the phone over and you've got no problem”. I could not agree less. I should not have to worry about which side is facing up to keep my privacy intact.

Other iPhone-o-philes will say “Just download X app and it'll handle SMS differently...” Well, I have two retorts to that. Number one: I shouldn't have to buy some third party app to properly handle a core feature (SMS) on a phone. That's just stupid. Number two: None of those apps truly handle SMS. They handle e-mail, which is not SMS. So, using those apps, you cannot receive SMS from short-code based services. Therefore they are really all just shitty email clients. (Again, why the hell would I want to buy a feature that my crappy old BlackBerry could handle??)

If this were a new problem, I'd have more patience, but this has been a problem with iPhones since their initial release. How does Apple not see this as a privacy problem?

Oh wait, it gets worse. This can also become a power/battery issue.

Consider my situation: I receive SMS messages from a server. I get a text every time a process runs, and every time it finishes to let me know that things are working OK. This process runs about a hundred times a day, sometimes more. Needless to say, this adds up to a lot of texts. Hundreds per day. With my iPhone, this means that the display lights up every time a text comes in, sucking my battery dry for no good reason. On top of that, typing an e-mail, playing a game, tweeting, or doing just about anything is constantly interrupted by popups. (Very annoying.) All I want to do is shut the popup off. Doesn't sound too earth-shattering, but it appears that the “genius” designers at Apple are dumbfounded.

In general, I'm a fan of Apple's products. My Macbook is the best laptop I've ever owned. My iPhone is, in general, the best handheld device I own. However, this one flaw may very well be unbearable. How can Apple, who spend so much on design, let this slip by? How could they have not noticed this when beta testing SMS on their devices? Worse yet, they've had several years to correct this problem and, despite a vocal outcry, have utterly ignored this obvious flaw in their otherwise well designed device.

Sure, a year or two ago, there was nothing that compared to the iPhone. However, the worm has turned. Google's Android phones have caught up in features and useful applications. This small annoyance may very well be the tipping point that drives me to Android.

I used to love vampire movies. Even the corniest of vampire movies had my attention (Fright Night, anyone?).

Vampires used to be the best bad guys. Evil, cunning villains who you could survive by following a few simple rules that everyone knows. (Garlic, sunlight, wooden stakes, etc.)

I can list off classic vampire flicks by the dozen. Everything from the classic Nosferatu, the animated gem "Vampire Hunter D", to Tarrantino's piece of shit slasher film (From Dusk 'Til Dawn), to the uber-exploitive classic, Blacula. Heck, I'll even chalk up the Lost Boys as a movie I still will watch whenever I catch it on cable. (Who doesn't love the "DEATH BY STEREO!" scene?)

Anne Rice decided to make vampires extra sexy, and Hollywood did a good job transitioning that in Interview with the Vampire. Hardly an Oscar worthy flick, but the vampires were at least kinda bad guys and it was a watchable movie.

For the most part, all vampire movies are somewhat terrible films. The stories are pretty predictable. The special effects are usually pretty lame. By Oscar standards, they're all junk, but they're fun flicks and they keep a tradition of sorts alive.

Then along came Buffy... Joss Whedon used the vampire genre as a springboard for clever writing and a fantistic TV series. (Again, cheesy, but fun.) Not all of his vampires were bad guys, but then again, it was (for the most part) a lighthearted show about dead stuff. Joss Whedon's show redefined the genre a bit and while Buffy (and Angel) were brilliant shows, their influence seems to have killed the vampire as a bad guy.

HBO's latest offering (True Blood) seems to want to be a "more serious" version of Buffy. It's OK for a TV show. I'll watch it because I like the genre. (Special girl falls for "good" vampire with a sordid past... has a bunch of friends who help her thwart evil... same fucking show, without the snappy writing of Joss Whedon.)

What do today's kids get? Twilight. WTF. I'm sorry kids. You're getting cheated. The story just sucks. The characters all suck, yet none of them suck blood. One-dimensional, boring characters who have nothing to offer. The female lead is a helpless damsel in distress who can't make up her mind on whether she wants to fuck a dog or a dead guy. (Niether of which have the balls to actually kill anything.)

This isn't a horror film, or an action film. It appears to be a live action version of "Bunnicula" crossed with an awkwardly written teen-aged masturbatory fantasy. It's completely devoid of anything spooky, scary, or even suspenseful.

My case in point: They swapped out vampires, the most bad-ass of all things-that-go-bump-in-the-night for goddamn fucking faeries that sparkle (yes, sparkle) in sunlight. No, that's not a joke. The vampires in the Twilight Saga sparkle when the sun hits them.

Unfortuantely, I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. Up next, they're going to start making "friendly" wereworlf movies. (Aww fuck... I guess Teen Wolf kinda shit in that pool already.)\

Can't wait to see Hollywood try and make zombies into a cute-n-cuddly monster. It's coming, I'm sure.

Love the Onion...

... and all I got was a crumby rehash of Jacob's Ladder.

(If you haven't seen Jacob's Ladder, you should b/c it's bloody brilliant.)

Wow. I'd kinda forgotten I had this journal page. Oh well, maybe I'll start using it again as the "Facebook" thing is getting old. (An iphone app for e-strip would probably make me use this site more, as I'm lazy like that.)

Anyhow, at the request of Chris ((e:Ruleofblue)), I've finally posted some of the songs I've been recording on ReverbNation.com. (Feel free to pop over and download some free mp3's if you want.)

It's really just a mixture of tracks I've recorded @ home. No real theme or style. I recoeded everything myself, but I think some of these came out OK. No band to speak of and I'll not be bugging anyone to come see any live shows.

Anyhow, there's 4 songs up there now and I'll be adding a few more when I finish mixing them.

The first track I posted is a ska song. I decided it needed a video and that video needed muppets. (In my opinion, everything is better when muppets are added.)



Watching the video now, I totally should have included the scene where I get the muppets drunk... perhaps I'll do a "director's cut" next...

Chris and I are enjoying a yummy dinner at El Palenque in amherst.

I dunno what "el palenque" means. From the menu, it must mean "the cock fight."

Anyhow, the food rocks. Sure, it all looks like brown goop, but it's yummy goop!

If you're looking for some decent Mexican chow, hit this place. Yum!

A good friend makes you more than you thought you could be.

A good friend can even make you into a lucador.



I have a good friend, indeed.

Spent my new years with some friends. We went to Marinaccio's on Main Street in Williamsville.

It's supposed to be fine dining, and Lance Diamond was playing their ballroom, so it looked like a perfect fit. I'd given my wife one of them "good anywhere" gift certificates, and Marinaccio's is on the list. She wanted to try the place... so off we go.

Well, seeing Lance Diamond was fun, as Lance always is. The man's a Buffalo, NY staple. The restaurant, well that's another story. We quickly found that the place is WAY overpriced (Surf and Turf for $76... you gotta be kidding me!!), the wait staff was kinda rude, and they actually tried to refuse to take a gift certificate. Not a coupon... a gift certificate. I had to explain to the manager that this wasn't a discount. I'd already paid them when I bought the certificate. After some arguing, they realized that they were wrong and took the certificate.

On to the meal...

I had shrimp with scallops over angel hair pasta. It was OK. I didn't take a picture b/c it wasn't worthy. Totally average. I was so expecting above average. (The prices mandated above average!) Others among my friends had salmon steaks (neither finished them due to blandness), and one of us had the chicken. At $21, a chicken entree better be yummy. The review was: This tastes like boiled chicken. Not good at all. A $160 check later, dinner was over and no one was too satisfied... So, it's on to LANCE DIAMOND!


We decided to make the evening more fun than it was...

Here's Andy and Shannon...


Andy drank about half a bottle of Cutty Sark (yeah, Cutty Sark... *barf*) This is Andy looking kinda evil.


Here's Lance attempting to get the party moving. Unfortunately, most of the crowd would require 3 to 6 Viagra and/or a Rascal Scooter to actually get moving.


Lance rocks a mean party. We got to watch about 30 nearly-geriatric couples shake things that shouldn't shake. I did notice one Buffalo school board member on Lance's bongos. It got me thinking... Bongos in Lance's band and Buffalo's school board members. What do these 2 have in common? If you guessed "They're both totally useless and just suck up resources." You'd be correct.


Chris ((e:ruleofblue)) insisted I take a picture of the under-developed balloon embryos that appeared to be digesting in a transparent plastic whale above the tiny dance floor. Note the old geezers shaking it to Lance Diamond. Man, his show's too good for that place. WTF was lance doing out there??

Here's a pic of me with a cutout of Lance. I was drunk, it was late. No excuse...



Anyways... much fun was had, and I learned that Merinaccio's is a waste of money. I also get to pass that along to you in the hopes that others will not fall into the pitfall we fell into.

Tomorrow I start a new life working from home. Got my home office all set up, my work vonage account set up. I'm ready to go. The feeling of freedom is mildly terrifying. No office to go to. No clock to punch.

I'm looking forward to the work, that's for sure. I'll be working with new technologies in a budding new field on a top-notch product. I just pray I don't come to resent my new office confines as much as I hated cubicle life.

So I got me this cool new gig working for www.e2campus.com

It's a work from home job (awesome) and requires me to be up on the latest mobile technology.

Thus I've got this new "blackberry curve". I was skeptical at first, but man, this thing is sweet.

It even takes decent pictures. Here's a shot of my lil dog, Miss Millie.