PaleBlueScot

Watch your stickfoot step

jamesjk@gmail.com — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:37:18 GMT

It’s been a crazy deadline week for work, so until I have to time to write something, enjoy this sign located in the parking deck of my workplace. If you squint hard enough, you can see someone drew a falling stick figure. I don’t even know if this is amusing to anyone else, but I smile each time I see it.

Kirkpatrick in '08?!?!

jamesjk@gmail.com — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:23:22 GMT

With Liberty and Puppies for All

Dear Axl Rose

jamesjk@gmail.com — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:15:20 GMT

In this day and age of bit torrents and file sharing, I’m one of the few people who don’t actually mind paying for music and movies. I do view file sharing as stealing from artists and tend not to participate in newsgroups where you can get anything for free. Were I a poor college student, my attitude might be different but as of right now I buy my music via iTunes and rent my movies through Netflix.

That being said, I have a copy of 10 tracks from your now-almost-mythical album “Chinese Democracy” – more than 14 years after you actually started the damn project. Those songs got leaked the other week and how they’re easily attainable by anyone that wants it. Since I, like most Guns N’ Roses fans, don’t believe you’ll ever release this album; I have no qualms about having these unreleased songs on my computer. I also burned a CD and have been listening to it in my car on the way to work. It's on my iPod and other coworkers now have it too.

Here’s the thing – if you ever DO release the damned album (and we all know that won’t ever happen), I’ll still buy it. That’s the frustrating part. Of the 10 songs I’ve heard, 5 are “classic Guns ‘N’ Roses" tracks. Your voice is still great (at least in the studio), the guitar riffs are killer even though it’s not Slash, and I’m even willing to overlook the electronic sounds you’ve added here and there. All but 2 of these songs sound like they’re darn close to a final cut production-wise.

So here you are in 2008 and now the internet’s gonna bite you in the ass. I’m almost wishing that the supposed 100 songs you have crafted this past decade and a half get leaked and force you to officially release the album(s). Stop jerking the fans around. The sooner you realize your eccentricity and insane quest for musical perfection has alienated almost your entire fan base. You used to be the lead singer of the most important band in the world at the time. Now you’re an overweight joke with corn rows in his hair who tours under the name Guns N’ Roses simply because you own the name. Forget the fact that no other original member is still in the band because they all became fed up with you.

To put this in perspective, when you initially titled this album, the term “Chinese Democracy” truly was a far-out concept at the time. 14 years later, China is about ready to overtake the world and the term “democracy” won’t get you killed or run over by a tank.

Come back Monday

jamesjk@gmail.com — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:28:32 GMT

I’m going to take the rest of the week off from the blog and try to recharge the ol’ mental batteries. I’ve been a basketcase since coming back from vacation and am in a rotten attitude. The past few week’s worth of subpar blog entries are a testament to that. Plan on a new post on Monday, assuming I can get out of this funk which has simply rotted my brain and made me a miserable, unmotivated mope. I don't want this blog to be a pity party for my unhappiness (not to be confused with anger or ranting, which can cause good writing) so I won't expose you to this side of me if I can help it.

Hot weather in the south simply makes me cranky. Scotty, beam me out of here please.

George Carlin

jamesjk@gmail.com — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:00:06 GMT

To add a twist to the tributes to George Carlin today, I offer you a list of dirty words he’s not allowed to say, depending on where he is currently residing.

If he’s in Heaven (which, if anyone knows his routine, he’d be surprised as hell if he wound up there), then St. Peter handed him a list of 7 words/phrases he is not allowed to use:

Goddamn
Jesus H Christ
Hot as hell
Who’s a guy gotta know to get a fucking drink around here?
Anton LaVay
The Catholic Church
Whore/harlot

If he’s in Hell, then Lucifer handed him this list of 7 banned words/phrases.

Heaven
Christmas
Hope
Redemption
Parole
Ice cream
No pronunciation of the word “Jesus”, not even the Spanish way

Had George Carlin actually composed this entry, it might actually have been funny.

The Great Work Shorts Experiment - D.O.A.

jamesjk@gmail.com — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:05:17 GMT

R.I.P. 6/16/2008 - 6/17/2008

Warning: Objects in beer bottle are higher than they appear

jamesjk@gmail.com — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:40:12 GMT

Sometimes the eye can be deceived. I noticed in my beer fridge the other day that a six-pack of a local brew I had purchased seemed to contain a lot less liquid than 12 ounces. If you see the first picture below, one of the beers appeared to be significantly lower. The one in the middle was at the same level as the other five but when you compare it to another brewery’s bottle level (Dogfish Head), it was still significantly lower.

At first I thought that maybe that beer had leaked since that had happened once before but when I popped open the bottle it was as carbonated as any other beer. Then the conspiracy theorist in me surmised that maybe with the skyrocketing cost of malt and hops caused this brewer to shortchange the customer, saying there’s 12 ounces in the bottle when in reality there were only 11 in each one.

So I poured all 3 for comparison into the same style of pint glass and was quite surprised. The beers are shown in the same order as the picture with the bottles. Note the one on the right does have slightly more although that could still be due to a non-uniform height of a pint glass bottom. Don’t worry folks – all three beers were treated humanely and disposed of properly via the state of the art Kirkpatrick Ingestion System.

The bottom line is that even though these bottles appear to be the same shape, there are differences not visible (different inside circumference, different base height levels, different neck sizes, different bottle sizes used in the same brewery…). I was ready to go on a rant today about how Atlanta Brewing was cheating their customers but I fully admit my initial presumption was totally incorrect.

On a side note, the Red Brick Blonde Ale, which won a Gold Medal at the Great American Beer Festival in the Golden/Blonde Ale category, is really underwhelming. There are a lot better lighter blonde ales out there and while I like to pimp the local brews, this is not one of them. Seek out their Summer Ale instead, which is a tasty unfiltered wheat beer.

**********

On a side note, for those of you wankers who take a bottle from an expensive 4-pack and replace it with a cheaper bottle from a 6-pack from the same brewer, I cast a pox on you and your families. I can only hope the same thing happens to you one time when you spend $14 on a rare-4-pack and only get 3 of that actual brew.

Kickin' It Old School

jamesjk@gmail.com — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:59:34 GMT

For those of you who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s like I did, you’ll appreciate this t-shirt worn by a coworker yesterday. We played this all the time in grade school. Sometimes your opponent would try to cheat by wiggling his "goalpost fingers" as you were about to kick the extra point. This was when you would aim high and try to make the fooball hit their face in retribution.

In addition to paper football, we also played with 3 pennies. You would slide one of the pennies between the other 2 without hitting them until you reached your opponent's end of the table.

I wonder if today's generation even knows how to make a paper football?

The Butterfly Effect

jamesjk@gmail.com — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:03:21 GMT

No, I'm not talking about that horrific Ashton Kutcher movie

Daily Double links

jamesjk@gmail.com — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:19:06 GMT

Notes on Atlanta and Detroit from the past week