Though I’m still kind of content-free for the time being. All the interesting stuff I’m linking is on Twitter, but Twitter are being right bastards about protecting their private ecology, so it’s hard going getting everything to work out in terms of automation. Still, it’ll get fixed, sooner or later. Though with patch 5.2 on the horizon and Borderlands 2 grabbing my entertainment hours, I’d put money on “later” rather than “sooner”.

Well, it’s  been almost two days, so I figured it was time to (re) post this image, taken from the his first victory, since, you know, the achievement is relevant again.

Ubiquitous vending machines, a photo by anduril on Flickr.

The days are warming up (slowly). This always makes me wake up in the mornings, dreaming of Tokyo’s streets. It’s been too long since I was last there.

A double post on this last day of June, to make up for my sparse postings this month, this time, taken from the Top 25 songs on my iPod:

1. Big Wreck – That Song
2. Wallflowers – 6th Avenue Heartache
3. Everclear – Santa Monica
4. The Darkness – I Believe in a Thing Called Love
5. 54.40 – Radio Luv Song
6. The Minibosses – Super Mario Bros. 2
7. Andrew W.K. – Ready to Die
8. Yoko Kanno – Tank!
9. Tal Bachman – She’s So High
10. Richard Cheese – Gin & Juice (Snoop Doggy Dogg)
11. The Darkness – Get Your Hands Off My Woman
12. Orbital – bagpipe style
13. L’Arc~en~Ciel – Neo Universe
14. Stan Bush – The Touch
15. Nirvana – Lounge Act
16. Buffy TVS – let me rest in peace
17. Maaya Sakamoto – Hemisphere
18. Paul Westerberg – Waiting for Somebody
19. Daft Punk – Harder, Better, Faster, Strong
20. The Minibosses – Megaman 2
21. Andrew W.K. – Party Hard
22. Fluke – Atom Bomb
23. Mike Post – Quantum Leap Main Title
24. Alabama 3 – Woke Up This Morning {Theme from ‘The Sopranos’}
25. Beastie Boys – Brass Monkey

It’s a bit different from the last time I did a Top 25 (-ish) song listing; I’d hazard that the summer heat and nostalgia make up the prime reasons for this change.

Notes:

1. Big Wreck was a great Canadian band specializing in catchy guitar riffs and memorable lyrics, with “That Song” being a great example of these, being a paen to music and memories.
2. The Darkness make me believe that the glam-rock of the Eighties is back in full force, and it’s freakin’ stylish. I’m not sure if it’s irony-induced nostalgia, or the pure brash energetic catchiness of their tunes that get me, but any band who use the phrase “Get your hands off my woman, motherfucker!” gets my attention.
3. The Minibosses do guitar-rock covers of classic 8-bit video game tunes; and they’ve got good range, from their jazzy Super Mario Bros. 2 to their ten-minute-long Megaman 2 super-crunchy power rawk-opera. And they’re going to be at the Penny Arcade Expo (along with MC Frontalot and Optimus Rhyme). Rawk!
4. Yoko Kanno‘s “Tank!” (with The Seatbelts) was the theme to Cowboy Bebop, a series that interlaced Kanno’s jazz stylings with hyper-cool anime.
5. I love and fear Richard Cheese‘s lounge covers of popular music. This one, as the title states, goes over Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice”, and is surprisingly good late-night driving music.
6. Orbital‘s electronic rythms have been some of my particular favorites, ever since the use of “Halcyon (On and On)” in the movie Hackers. “Bagpipe Style” gets points for sheer driving brashness.
7. You can’t have grown up as a geek in the Eighties without having seen Transformers: The Movie, and Stan Bush’s two standout works — “Dare” and “The Touch” are indelibly linked to this movie in my brain. “Dare” is definately an Eighties tune, but is so ridiculously optimistic and enjoyable you’d have to be a total curmudgeon to dismiss it.
8. “Let Me Rest in Peace” was Spike’s rock-ballad to Buffy in the seminal musical Buffy episode “Once More, With Feeling“. It’s out now, part of the Season Six collection, too.
9. Maaya Sakamoto sang the theme to Escaflowne, and here she does the overwhelmingly catchy theme to RahXephon, an Evangelion-esque anime with strong musical inspiration (its subtitle was “Tune the World”)
10. According to the iPod, I’ve listened to Andrew W.K.‘s “Party Hard” thirty-one times since I added it three weeks ago. It’s such a good, high-energy, boisterously-good-fun summer driving tune that I can’t help but peel out of work every day listening to it.
11. So, it turns out that Season 1 of Quantum Leap is now available on DVD, which is probably why I’ve been listening to the theme song for this show. I can’t explain it otherwise, because, honestly, it’s just not that good of a song, though it is memorable-by-association.
12. On the other hand, Alabama 3’s “Woke Up This Morning” is a damn good themesong for a damn good series. I definately need to watch more episodes of The Sopranos
13. You can’t really have summer night driving music without “Brass Monkey”. I think that’s a bylaw here in Richmond for all Asian male drivers between the ages of 18 – 30.

We had a recent Federal election, up here in the Great White North. While I have my own political stance (up with giant robots! rights for androids now!), I figured I wanted an MP who actually responded to me. So I sent out a bunch of emails to the candidates in my riding, asking them the same questions (including some pointed ones about their opinions on filesharing), and out of five emails, I got one response. So he got my vote, plain and simple. Still, I think the Simpson’s said it best:

Foolish Earthlings!

Bah. Politics.

thanks to John Moltz for the image. Incidentally, did you know that there’s a band named “I Voted for Kodos“. Must download.