bunnyattack

Forgot to mention that I did a buttload of CD reviews for Local Sounds Magazine this past month: Butt Funnel, Brainerd, and the Crustacean CD compilation. Not my best writing, soon as I get out of school and heal my ulcers so I can drink more then maybe I can write properly.

Caught another sinus infection, but a very minor one. I can easily predict how severe a cold/sinus thing will be by how sore my throat gets beforehand. Sunday it was just kind of a minor irritation in the back of my throat, could barely feel it and most of the time didn't notice it at all. Was boogery the next 2 days but I think I'm mostly over it already. Unlike in May, when I needed to numb the back of my throat with anesthetics to quell the ginormous pain that a day later resulted in hamthrax and gallons of daily goo for 2 weeks and losing my voice for almost as long.

NyQuil hangovers suck a goat's ass.

Been sorting through the clutter and since its about that time, my top 20 CDs of the decade, sort of in order from best to next best but sort of maybe kinda not (post yours in your own bloggering holes so I can see what I might have missed out on or forgot):


assemblage 23 - failure
battery cage - a young person's guide to heartbreak
in strict confidence - holy
descendents - cool to be you
razed in black - damaged
combichrist - everybody hates you
stromkern - light it up
ministry - rio grande blood
ignite - a place called home
front line assembly - artificial soldier
boole - the vital few
state of the union - inpendum
ignite - our darkest days
manufactura - precognitive dissonance
steel panther - feel the steel
parallel project - fusion
kompressor - world domination
hocico - signos de aberaccion
iron maiden - dance of death
unter null - failure epiphany



When I saw mc chris in October I was blown away by one of the opening bands, Whole Wheat Bread (beware all ye who tread there, link goes to myspace), an all-black punk trio who shredded righteously. One of my more interesting discoveries of the year.


I caught the Queers at the Frequency on Thurs night when it was 2 degrees F out and we had gotten 16 inches of show (I shit thee not, in case you don't live here, everything was closed on Wed except for hospitals and where I work, and it took an hour and a half to make the 25 minute trek to work on Thursday when places opened their doors again and all the cars came back out but the roads weren't plowed because salt don't work when it's less than 15 degrees F outside). Thought I'd catch them since I missed their sold out gig this summer, wasn't sold out because of old man winter but it wasn't all that thrilling IMO.

Believe it or not, I actually do try to have an attitude of gratitude for what I do have. But it's a lot more fun to whine and pitch a bitch about what I don't.



Now to let my ego take over and inflate itself for a minute. I got my usual quarterly call from the school financial counselor to talk about how things are going and will be going. But this time he also told me the school was looking for advice from me. Apparently a lot of people are having trouble passing the Java II class, some people have taken it 2 or 3 times and not passed. Since I got an A in it when I took it a few months ago they wanted to ask me what seemed to be the problem and what they can do to get people to pass the damn class. I told them the truth, that every week I'd look at the programming assignment and think I might not pass the class myself because it would ask us to do things that were not explained in either the online textbook or the supplemental material. I had to google for most of the code to get the programs to work, or consult the old Java book I had by Rogers Cadenhead (a very intriguing domain thief that I've been following since he ran cruel.com in the 90's) which I got for a previous class I took at a different institution 6 years ago. Some of the code I needed I couldn't find anywhere (old Java book had some deprecated code that wouldn't compile and I was too cheap to get a newer book) and thus small parts of my last assignment were incomplete but it was apparently good enough to get that A. What saved my ass was previous experience; I haven't done any professional programming outside of some html / php for a project at work, but I was an Apple Basic guru when I was a kid and I've been creating webpages for fun for 13 years now. The only other people in the class who weren't struggling were the few who were already professional programmers. I told him it helps if the class materials actually tell us how to do what we're required to do (not those exact words, I was polite about it).



The professor for my current class (Operating Systems) is a bit of a comedian, he asked us the first week to tell the class how experienced we were with OS's, using these guidelines:

Beginner: some experience but would not consider myself to be anything more then a beginner. When geeks gather at the water cooler they let you listen at a distance. You know how to turn on a computer, and think that a GUI is very pretty.

Intermediate: a moderate amount of experience, you know at least one OS very well (not just the interface, but how the OS works including memory, device, processor, and file management), and have been around computers long enough to have your spouse or S.O. want you to change professions. If you have children they still know who you are. You hang around the water cooler and occasionally are allowed to speak, but no one takes you seriously.

Advanced: you are very knowledgeable about all aspects of an OS, and are very familiar with at least 3. On weekends you build your computers using spare parts from the microwave oven. You have attempted to write your own OS, but have not yet finished it. You carry on most of your conversations in C, snub your nose at C#, and find C++ to be amusing. Your spouse sends you email, and your children IM you. You select the water cooler topics.

Guru: You feel you should be teaching the class, and are not afraid to say so. You write OS’s for fun, and don’t use C, thinking it is for wimps but prefer to write your OS in machine code, or using cat redirect. You have no spouse or children and are not sure what to do with them if you did; or if you do you have forgotten where you put them. You have no idea what a water cooler is, and prefer Jolt and cold pizza for snacking. The last person you had a face to face conversation with was your mother at age 2. You understand all of the in jokes on Big Bang, and don’t get the attraction of Penny.



I have the next 4 Fridays off from work, I plan to get rid of some of the clutter in my life that I keep saying I'll get rid of but never do, so I'll probably do other things.

chixdiggit - where's your mom
bad religion - the answer
megadeth - peace sells
anthrax - got the time
cycle sluts from hell - i wish you were a beer
samhain - halloween II
toy dolls - nellie the elephant
steel panther - death to all but metal

slayer - black magic
suicidal tendencies - you can't bring me down
dirty rotten imbeciles - shut up
nofx - leaving jesusland
dead milkmen - smokin' banana peels
descendents - wendy
turbonegro - don't say motherfucker, motherfucker
propaghandi - the only good fascist is a very dead fascist
camper van beethoven - take the skinheads bowling
iron maiden - the prisoner

testament - practice what you preach
me first and the gimme gimmes - the spy who loved me
codeseven - boys of summer
the dickies - gigantor
misfits - devil's whorehouse
ramones - beat on the brat
suicidal tendencies - institutionalized
sepultura - the hunt


Next punk nite is tomorrow and it will be like twice in a row that I'll have to miss seeing Melt Banana when they're in town because I've had to DJ. Not a huge deal as I've witnessed them before, but they have an kickass guitarist and it was perhaps the best mosh pit I've ever been in. Maybe I can convince the humans who do go to come to the Inferno after the MB show for more punkage.

I'm sorry, did I say my stomach ulcers were getting better? Turns out I was unintentionally bullshitting everyone, they came back. Appears that I've been the victim of misinformation in my attempts to heal it. Apparently tomato products are bad for them?!? That sucks huge ass that a lot of my favorite foods and drinks are heavily acidic (haven't completely cut out booze and caffeine but dramatically reduced). And I should know better than to believe everything I see on the intertoobs. So, armed with new information, I'm going to try and shut up about it and see how I feel around Christmas or January or so as this is going to take a while or might be chronic thing I have to manage. And you should cockpunch me if I ever say that I'm better because that apparently jinxes it.

Been hibernating more or less as it's been a bit of a miserable month with my stomach pains and being sad / kind of angry / in the Twilight Zone about what happened to my favorite uncle.

Finally saw Revenge Of The Fallen. Bought the Blu-Ray, watched it once, then promptly sold it on half.com. Even the heavy nostalgia factor couldn't save this turd.

I did my annual shopping for Toys For Tots today because if I was emperor of the universe I would declare an edict that all kids should get a shitload of Transformers for Christmas, and all the good stuff is usually gone from stores by Turkey Day. So I do it early to make sure I have good stuff to give the little shits. And I scored myself an early Christmas present, a reissue of the 80's Perceptor transformer because I'm a sucka for that sort of thing.

During the short downtime I get between classes I've been doing a little bit of writing here and there for Local Sounds Magazine, I shat out a review of the new Null Device EP for the last issue and I'm working on some stuff for the next ish.

The ulcers seem a lot better *knockonwood* now that I often give it 3 or 4 days in a row without putting any evil fluids in me, and it's weird mostly giving up caffeine. Last night I took a nap after work and decided to hang out a bit at Taco Wednesday at Inferno and did not partake in the absinthe that I've been consuming there recently (they have Mansinthe there now, among other brands) and pounded a couple of Makers Mark & Diet Cokes instead with the usual crew (and Kim repeatedly asked me to play bar trivia with them on Wednesdays at another place, which I might do if my ulcer heals sufficiently) and got 6 hours of sleep. Somehow I survived the workday today without any caffeine. I was told by others who gave it up for a few days that they noticed nothing different, and it seems true. I wonder how alcoholics are able to have such an iron tummy and not damage anything. Then again there's new evidence that most ulcers are caused by bacteria that stay down there and can only be fully annihilated by a few weeks of antibiotics and pepto bismol.

My head has been in such a lalabusykissmyassfuckspin that I didn't really care much when back in August I got a letter under my door from the apartment management stating that they were aware of the fact that someone had been breaking into everyone's storage lockers in the basement and that they were pretty sure who it was and were going to get proof and evict that person.

About 2 days later I mustered enough giveashit energy to check my storage locker and sure enough it had been broken into and boxes were popped open and shit was in a mess. The odd thing is that they didn't do me the favor of stealing anything. Everything was still there as far as I could tell. I wasn't going to put anything of value down there since apartment storage lockers are too easy to break into, so there really wasn't anything worth taking. There's some old comic books in a box that might be worth more than a few bucks but they're all still there from what I could see. It's mostly old books and magazines and unused cooking utensils and obsolete computer parts/games and other old crap that I should just give to St. Vinnies and be the hell done with. But I'm a packrat and I find it hard to part with things I might have 2 seconds of use for at some point in my future life.

Now that I have a moment I'll be the bringer of late news and blurt about the interesting adventures I had for about 17 hours a week ago. Well, its as interesting as things get for me lately which isn't very. Last week Friday was the mc chris show downtown. Not his best performance, he was a bit under the weather and it was just him and an iPod. And I expected about 6 people I knew to be there and didn't see any of them so I drank alone. One of the opening bands, Whole Wheat Bread, were particularly awesome.

That Saturday morning I slept for about 11 hours, it had been a hell of a week. I had an vivid and awesome dream: I was in a campground arcade and there were old school arcade games there like Qix and Centipede, and I vividly played Centipede and there were too many mushrooms on the screen and when my shooter died each segment of the centipede would say something in Japanese in a speech balloon. Then I was playing a sit-down game that would move itself down a corridor for vibration effects I guess, but the monitor was broken so it didn't work. There was a sit down helicopter game that had a big helicopter on top of it. There were 3 Ms. PacMan machines there but they were all out of order. Then none of the games had any power and I saw that magickkittykat had unplugged all the games and was smiling at me like she had played a joke on me and I was pissed at her for unplugging all the games. But then the arcade was closing so I left and it turns out the arcade was attached to some shopping center. So I took a nap in the clothing section of the store and a guy who worked there woke me up and started showing me their selection of dress shoes and I saw that he was searing black eyeliner.

Then a phone call woke me up and prevented me from sleeping longer than I should. It was 1pm and I was being summoned for lunch by a friend. We went to the QQ Asian Buffet place a few blocks away that I hadn't checked out yet. The place is relatively awesome, I say relatively because I haven't been to an all-you-can-eat food-on-a-stick buffet place in many years because there isn't one near work and don't want my ass to be visible from orbit. But I stuffed my face with eel sushi and flying fish egg sushi and pork dim sum and mac & cheese and good hot & sour soup and fake crab and mint ice cream and green tea and it was a damn good breakfast.

Most of the rest of the weekend was spent writing SQL queries and fuck that noise.

Arcade games and lakes/rivers are very common elements in my dreams at night and I wonder why. Perhaps I'm destined to open an arcade museum next to Lake Monona. In a dream I had a few days before the aforementioned dream I saw eevilyounggirl swimming in a lake and I saw the cops were coming for her because she wasn't supposed to be swimming in that area of the lake and I tried to tell her where to swim to shore and hide in the woods but the cops eventually caught her in the woods. Then she tried to make out with me.

Tonite: DJs Bunnytron / Fauxed Up / Koffeegrinder dropping punk / metal / hardcore / ska / horrorpunk and other stompy / spooky / forwardslashy tuneage. Free pool and dirt cheap drinks for those who like to get buzzed on a Wednesday.

$2.00 Import and Microbrew Pints, $2.00 RAIL MIXERS, and $2.00 JAG SHOTS all damn night.
Doors at 9PM, 21+ ID required. NO COVER all night.
Inferno.


The Butthole Surfers show last night at the Barrymore was..... eh..... better than ok I guess. It was good considering most of them looked like they might drop dead at any moment. Their buttholes have not aged well and they ain't nowhere near as wild on stage as I heard they used to be.

Finally got to see a couple of bands that I've been wanting to see but keep forgetting to see. Killdozer played another reunion show last week. They actually got called for a double encore, the background music was playing after encore 1 but people kept yelling for them to come back out and they finally did after 7 minutes or so, the singer came up to mic and said "SHUT THE FUCK UP ASSHOLES", and they played one more. He's my hero.

Saw the Koffin Kats on Tuesday night, but left before the end of their set as the show started real late due to technical difficulties. I met a girl named Mouse there who was so into her job as a copy editor that she had a giant apostrophe tattooed on her arm. I assume that she removed all the apostrophes from the writings of dildoheads who constantly put them in plurals and then put them on her arm to form of one big apostrophe that keeps getting bigger. But there were lots of other people who had the stereotypical unoriginal rockabilly tattoos / clothing. Here I thought that other genres of music like metal / punk / industrial had lots of sheep who had to look all alike (and I've been guilty of that in the past) but no gym teacher could get this many people to look alike.

Blip.fm kicks Pandora's ass and I'm finding lots of groovy / ungroovy / interesting / weird shit there. Are Steel Panther the best thing ever, or are they simply the greatest thing ever? (NSFW)
( the YouTube preview image is sort of NSFW also )


Apparently in Europe bands like Gothminister can get a major record label deal. In my mind I like to replace some of the words he's growling so it sounds like he's singing about bunnies. (possibly NSFW).

I decided to finally back up whatever the hell was on the 5 ancient Zip disks I have, assuming anything hadn't already turned to dust. Had to grab a Zip Drive power adapter off of eBay to complete this unholy ritual. Took a while to pump 500mb of data through a parallel cable. Lots of old pics and mp3s from 7 to 10 years ago. Lots of cam pics. Fond memories. Regrets. Some porn. Some pics of old girlfriends. Some porn pics of old girlfriends. Mostly things that were either already backed up or didn't deserve to take up valuable backup space, perhaps I should have just immolated those disks like what we'll be doing to USB flash drives 10 years from now.

But it was an interesting history lesson. Apparently I had a Discharge tshirt at one time. I wonder what the hell happened to it.

But here's some old pics I unearthed from them for you to mock me with. I thought for a while that Doyle would look better with bunny ears.





And my old pal Gweedo (not of Killer Pimp fame) animated me playing with an Anthrax puppet in college. Try not to have nightmares tonight. (I wonder what happened to that Samhain shirt as well?)

While riding my bike near the lake I remembered that there was a triathlon going on today that had some roads still blocked off though I thought it would be over by then. I went over to one of the triathlon bike paths and saw a guy ride by on a bike. Other people by the side of the road were cheering and clapping for him. I was tempted to shout "boooooo you're in last place!" but I kept my mouth shut.

In the middle of a 2 week break between classes and I've been making good use of this time by sitting on my butt watching Code Geass and the Packers and not doing much else this weekend. Feeling burnt out still and unmotivated to do anything. Looking forward to a mini vacation next week where I help my sister move. Too bad I haven't caught this new round of porky pig flu that's going around, I need a few more days off from work.

It has been said time and time again by a multitude of philosophers throughout the history of time that the only happiness anyone ever finds is inside themselves, you don't find it by having things or moving to other places or finding a new significant other or anything else in the outside world. Something I didn't learn until later in life and has been helpful in shitty times. But I've still felt real shitty the past couple weeks. Or maybe this philosophy is the only thing preventing me from having a complete mental breakdown. Will be glad when I'm done with skool next summer, this last class took a big bite out of my fanny.

Einstein is quoted as saying "If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut." I've sure done plenty of x and people tell me I'm too good at z for my own good, so perhaps I need more of y. Playing Robotron 2084 on the XBox hasn't helped much. Will have to throw Halo in there as maybe splattering alien brains on the walls is the ticket.

Today was the first time ever that I got ice cream from one of those ice cream trucks that drive around and play annoying music. I think. I might have done it before but I can't remember. I heard the unmistakable cacophony as I was about to make a run to Rocky's for some lunch after spending 4 hours cursing at a nonfunctional Java program I'm writing that won't obey. I decided since I was about to go outdoors anyway that I'd hit up the dude and dudette that were in the truck for some frozen sugar since the understaffed ice cream store by my pad is usually extremely busy with little butterball kids and their stupid parents holding up the line.

steel panther - asian hooker
sonic youth - youth against fascism
black flag - slip it in
therapy? - church of noise
fear factory - archetype
anthrax - madhouse
me first and the gimme gimmes - the spy who loved me
pantera - the badge

dir en grey - child prey
anthrax - caught in a mosh [r]
iron maiden - the trooper [r]
misfits - skulls
ramones - psychotherapy
minor threat - in my eyes
dead kennedys - forest fire
me first and the gimme gimmes - mandy
reverend horton heat - bales of cocaine
johnny cash - ring of fire [r]
7 seconds - 99 red balloons

codeseven - boys of summer
decendents - i don't wanna grow up
bad religion - suffer
dickies - gigantor
misfits - horror business
less than jake - jonny quest thinks we're sellouts
reverend horton heat - baddest of the bad
hank iii - grand ole opry ain't so grand anymore
x - soul kitchen
sloppy seconds - you've got a great body but your record collection sucks
dirty rotten imbeciles - think for yourself

slayer - south of heaven
dead kennedys - too drunk to fuck
dropkick murphys - shipping up to boston
nofx - linoleum
me first and the gimme gimmes - danny's song
diesel queens - fuck 'n' drink
megadeth - peace sells
pantera - cemetary gates



Next "no cover free pool lets get drunk on a Wednesday" night is this Wednesday Sept 3rd @ Inferno. After the past week it seems like a good time to play lots of Dead Kennedys, nyuk nyuk.

Also included in the bag of crap I picked up from Z104 that had the State Fair tickets and free pop coupons: A Z104 t-shirt. A Z104 mouse pad. A Jordin Sparks CD. Looks like a trip to St Vinnies is in my near future. Or maybe alternagirl wants them.

I went to see the Misfits in Milwaukee on Friday and I didn't think I would enjoy the gig all that much but it turns out there was a kinda small crowd, I think they sold out way less than half the capacity so it was easy to get way up close to the stage. And when they played Six Pack and Dez Cadena sang with Robo playing drums I was like "OMFG half a Black Flag reunion!" They played a few more Black Flag songs (per Wikipedia this was common knowledge that they did this but I'm out of the loop) and I went nuts. But I probably went nuts because I got in the place and you aren't allowed to leave without paying to get back in and I had forgotten to eat and all they had for calories was candy and soda and beer. So I chugged a few cans of Miller Genuine Draft and an energy drink for sustenance and it made me a bit loopy.

So loopy I had a fanboy moment, even though I despise fanboyism, but we're all human. I got my picture taken with Dez:



I had Dez sign my ticket stub and he also drew 4 black lines on it to represent the Black Flag logo (double fanboy moment!). Dez I'm sorry and I promise the world no more fanboy moments from me. Maybe. I bought merch to atone for my sins. And I got a pic of me hiding behind Jerry Only, I was too scared of him to get next to him as I thought he might try to grab my fanny.

The dudes in the band were real friendly after the show and came out right afterwards for pix and autographs and to chat. Except Robo, and instead of throwing his drumsticks into the crowd his used drumsticks were for sale for 10 bucks each at the merch booth. Not everyone is benevolent, and 2 out of 3 ain't bad.


During lunch on Friday I walked to a gas station to use the ATM and there was a stand there where they were giving away free samples of some kind of blue Mtn Dew, I tried to avoid them but they called me over, turns out it was Z104 at the booth and they had me sign up to enter a drawing for a free trip to Las Vegas, they said the drawing was at 3pm. I got home and there's a message from them on my answering machine. I freaked at first but it turns out I had only become a qualifier for the grand prize, not a winner. But I won 4 free tickets to the state fair and a coupon for 2 free 12 packs of Mtn Dew from the local Stop N Go out of the deal.

On the downside, it means I had the ignominy of my name being mentioned on the air on Z104, probably between them playing Britney Spears and Pink.

I went to the Stop N Rob today to use the coupon and got a 12er of Pepsi Max to see what that's like, and I got a 12er of that new World Of Warcraft gamer Mtn Dew that has a picture on it of an evil looking woman with glowing eyes and elf ears and big tits. I don't drink much soda and never drink Pepsi products and have never gone to the state fair so I don't know what I'm gonna do with all this crap. Anyone want State Fair tickets?

neurosis - eye
anthrax - among the living
iron maiden - sanctuary
slayer - black magic
fear factory - demanufacture
turbonegro - ubermensch

therapy? - knives
antiflag - fuck police brutality
screeching weasel - i can see clearly now
descendents - wendy
dropkick murphys - born on the docks
me first and the gimme gimmes - take it on the run
codeseven - boys of summer [r]
7 seconds - 99 red balloons
the dickes - nights in white satin
anthrax - sabbath bloody sabbath
slayer - divine intervention [r]

slayer - raining blood [r]
blatz - berkeley is my baby (and I wanna kill it)
antiflag - die for your government
x - nausea
bad religion - the answer
misfits - skulls
fear - i live livin' in the city
suicidal tendencies - you can't bring me down

([r]equests)


We were graced by another impromptu suspension show and got to see people swinging on meathooks while blasting Slayer.

Next punk night, otherwise known as "no cover, free pool, lets get drunk on a Wednesday" night, is tomorrow / tonight Wednesday August 5th @ Inferno. I has STEEL PANTHER.


Had drinks and foodage with my grandma tonight @ Prime Quarter (her 82nd barfday) and we were too tired to take her to the nudie bar next door afterwards.

Blip.fm has been awesomesauce to me, its groovy to have one javascript-enhanced place where I can learn about tuneage I might not know of, and where I can quickly find and play almost any song. I'm sure the RIAA will try to find some way to stick their fingers in it so enjoy it while it lasts.

I finally solved a musical mystery. Ever since I was like 3 years old I'd been hearing the Badfinger song "Day After Day" on the radio here and there but could never find out who did it, google failed me with the few lyrics I could make out, up until yesterday. I always associated that song with tragedy as I didn't know the words that well and for some reason it always reminded me of a documentary about the Peshtigo Fire of 1871 that I saw when I was a kid. Looking Badfinger up on Wikipedia, they had not one but 2 main songwriters commit suicide, which is twice the usual average number of suicides per band. Now that I've read the lyrics the song seems kind of not so groovy now.

I seem to be a bit more sensitive to caffiene as of late. Last night I had a few Makers Mark / Jim Beam & Diet Cokes plus a Mtn Dew Voltage, today I woke up after only 6 hours of sleep and was too out of it to do anything of substance so I went back to bed around 2pm and ended up sleeping until 6pm.