Well Turn It Up, Man!

Yesterday I found myself trapped by TiVo watching The Right Stuff. It is a docudrama film about the rise of the American space program and the Mercury Seven astronauts. The entire story fascinates me, and the movie interests me. I've seen it maybe 20 times.

Here is why:

One of the film's subjects, Chuck Yeager, is probably the baddest motherfucker still living today. In fact, he's probably in line for being one of the Baddest Motherfuckers In the Fucking Universe. And few people know who he is.

I know, I know. It's a big thing to say that it's actually Chuck Norris is the baddest dude walking, but that guy, for all his karate, sushi, kung-pow, and other Asian words, is a pale fucking shadow to Chuck Yeager.

First off, Chuck Norris can't fly a plane. Second, Chuck Norris never really did shit except get his ass kicked by Bruce in Fury of the Dragon, star in a bunch of films where he wished he was Chuck Yeager, and inspire a bunch of young kids to take Tae Kwon Do for a few months before giving it up.

Also: Who fights in cowboy boots?

Now. Back to Yeager, since we've established that Norris is just a figment.

First off, okay, Yeager Broke the Fucking Sound Barrier. He is widely regarded as the greatest pilot of all time. Seriously: the best pilot who has ever lived, ever. Aside from his post-war test pilot accomplishments, during World War II he proved himself to be a total fucking bad ass by scoring an Ace in a Day - that is, shooting down five enemy aircraft in one day.

He did this before he turned twenty-two.

(Suck it, Norris.)

But wait, there's more!

He got shot down over France. This happens. But did he let that keep him down?

Hell no. The motherfucker's from West Virginia. Oh no; he joined the fucking Maquis and built bombs (which his dad taught him to make) to fuck up the Germans.

Later, and hand to $DEITY, this is the baddest ass thing ever, he carried another dude (who had lost his foot) over the Pyrenees mountains, evading German gunfire, in the snow, while barefoot.

( The Rest of the Story )

When he returned, he was one of the few people allowed back into air combat (policy was that pilots who had previously been shot down were not allowed back into air combat, in case they were captured, tortured, and could give up Maquis intelligence.)

(Suck it hard, Norris.)

Okay, so post-war. We all know that he broke the sound barrier in the X-1. (and if you don't know this, you should write a stern letter to the education department in your home state, because you are seriously fucking lacking in history).

Did you know that he did this with several broken ribs? He had been thrown from a horse two days previous and hid the injury from the Air Force so that they wouldn't ground him.

He was passed over for the astronaut program, despite being more qualified than anyone else, because he didn't have a college degree.

The motherfucker landed a plane in the streets of Hamlin, WV, just to see his lover. He could (and did) pilot on a dime and they turned him out for lack of a piece of paper.

One day, he took out an experimental plane (which would become the F-104 Starfighter) and shit went bad. He flew it into space. In hindsight, probably not a great move. It stalled, died, and went into a tailspin. So he ejected.

The ejection seat (which is on fire at the bottom, because it's got a jet on it) spun around and hit him in the face of his helmet, breaking it. This had the added effect of setting the rubber in his helmet on fire. So here he is, plummeting from 30,000 feet with his fucking face on fire.

He landed safely and they took him to the hospital where, for the next several months, he underwent an "extremely painful and experimental" procedure where they peeled any scabs that grew off his face in order to avoid burn scarring.

(Work the shaft, Norris.)

Oh, but we're not done.

After this, he took command of an Air Force base during the Vietnam conflict and by 1970 he had been promoted to the rank of Brigadier General. Yeah. A fucking star, bitches (he was later promoted to Major General in a post-retirement promotion).

(Don't forget the cajones, Norris.)

And he never got a fucking New York City ticker tape parade.

Why do I know this? Because he's from fucking West Virginia.

And that's how we roll.

These things really exist:



As Majcher says: "Scale that up to human size. These thirty foot tall flying monsters wipe out a city, rip apart buildings to kill everyone, and then pull all the babies out of hospitals and shit to store for snacks later on."

(Found at Cracked's 5 Most Horrifying Bugs in the World, which is a good read, but for the love of god do NOT watch the bloatfly movie.)

Jones' BIG ASS Truck Rental and Storage (dot com) is the exact awesomeness that the internet was promised to deliver.

The commercial alone is priceless.

Today, via UPS, arrived a package for me in the mail. It was a large, styrofoam cooler sent from Omaha Steaks. It was a gift from one of the factions (clans/guilds) in my game.

It had the following message:

ATTENTION DEAREST JORM. CHAOS CHAOS CHAOS WISHES TO FEED YOU WELL. PLEASE ACCEPT THIS AS A TOKEN OF OUR APPRECIATION FOR THE GREAT GAME YOU HAVE CREATED AND MAINTAINED.

It was further signed but I'll leave that to be anonymous.

Inside the package was twenty pounds of food, consisting of the following:

1 Box of Gourmet Hamburgers
24 Ounces of Beef Lasagna
1 Box of Bacon-Wrapped Steaks
1 Box of Stuffed, Baked Potatoes
1 Box of Potato Wedges
1 Box of Green Beans
1 Box of Pub-Style Battered Cod Fillets
1 Jar of Lemon Dill Tartar Sauce
and a whole pound of Tiramisu Cake.

I gave everyone in the game an extra amount of free play time.

This is one of the neatest things I have ever played with.

Log into Facebook, see this:

"In the past day you were compared 3 times. Your friends didn't think that you are a winner comparing to their other friends. 4 hours ago"

Thanks for the uplift!

Tonight, I took subtly_modded to see Danzig on the Blackest of the Black tour for her birthday (which is tomorrow, or, you know, today, or whatever, November 11, fuck off). We met up with diabolika, who was very much into one of the opening bands, a Norwegian black metal band called Dimmu Borgir - who I had never heard of before.

Here is a photo diabolika took:


I kick myself for not having heard Dimmu Borgir before because they put on one of the best shows I've seen in a long, long time. It was an awesome theatrical spectacle. A+++ WOULD WATCH AGAIN.

Even better, I would have called them a band that was parodying Dethklok if it were not that Dimmu Borgir has been around since 1996 or so. They had the face makeup, and the spiked boots, and the lead singer was decked out in satanic armor replete with pentacles and a kind of chainmail skirt. Long hair, swirling around in circles. Smoke, lasers, tempos: at one point, KBK leaned over to me and said, "I fully expect to see an army of Mordhaus goons come to the stage."

I swear to fucking $DEITY, the lead singer said, literally, "Good Evenings, Sans Fransciscos! We ares the Blackest of the the Blacks!" Only it was the Nathan Explosion voice speaking like Skwisgar. (And none of that makes any sense unless you know fuck all about Dethklok).

I could go on for a while about how awesome the Dimmu Borgir (which means "Dark Cities") gig was. They were a very, very tight band. They were tight musically, they were tight thematically, and their light show was just . . . well. I never really pay much attention to lights. And this time, I did.

(We skipped the first three bands. There were five: Danzig, Dimmu Borgir, Something, Something, Something. We missed Something[cubed], opting for burgers and beers instead.)

Then we were treated to a wonderful diatribe from a roadie about how if anyone took any photo of any kind with any kind of device, camera, phone, or otherwise, it would be confiscated and we would be kicked out and probably beaten.

And I said, "Because it's going to be 'pudgy' Glenn."

And Lo! I was not far off. More like "Old Glenn".

Lemme give the dude props: he's in his fifties. And, despite some pudge, he's still pretty stocky. His hair is thinning, but it still swings when he headbangs.

Honestly, the Danzig set was . . . not very tight. I'm being kind there. It was "sloppy". When he sang lines, maybe only half the words made it into the microphone. But this show wasn't about that: it was about nostalgia - especially for KBK, who is a huge Misfits fan and I know that Danzig was one of the first shows she'd ever been to.

And, in that regard, he pulled it off. He was one of the most enthusiastic performers I'd seen in a long time. He was very much engaged in the crowd - not only them, but also his crew (musicians and roadies). This may be because it was the last show of the tour (and the roadies were doing all sorts of weird shit, like bringing pizzas around the stage while the band was playing). Doesn't matter. They were having a lot of fun, and it infected the crowd.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, and I hope KBK is pleased with her birthday present.

Edit: Extra bonus stuff sent to me a friend via Facebook:

Here is the beautiful thing I saw today:

Patrick Stewart is going to be playing the Meddling Monk.

There is nothing like being served booze by a monkey in a kimono.

Once, long ago, many moons past, in a galaxy far, far away, I was a disc jockey at a nightclub. And one of the bartenders there had a special drink he called the "vomit comet".

It was whiskey plus Bailey's Irish Cream in one shot and then a bunch of lemon juice in another shot. And you had to take them both at once and swirl them around in your mouth.

As you did so, he would reach behind the bar and bring out a bucket so you could either a) spit the result into or b) vomit into.

Because cream plus lemon equals curdled cheese.

The absolute best thing about eating Oreos is that when you're finished, after even eating only one, your spit is fucking black.

I was thinking earlier that a white russian is basically vodka, coffee liqueur, and milk. So I wondered what a "black russian" would be and the best I could come up with was "coffee liqueur and vodka" (which it is, though I didn't know this at the time).

Now, however, I think a black russian should be "vodka and a bunch of crushed oreo cookies."

Edit to add:

[23:37] Maynard: that might not be too bad, especially if the vodka was super chilled
[23:44] jorm: you are not the first person to say that to me this evening.
[23:44] jorm: i have a bunch of super chilled vodka and a bunch of oreos.
[23:44] jorm: we could experiment.

How could I possibly not love a show like this?

Mom's surgery went well. She is now resting in intensive care and will be there for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, after which people will be able to talk to her, which will be a pointless exercise, because I've been on those drugs, and wow do they screw with your ability to hold conversations.

Or read.

Or watch television.

Or pretty much anything except eat hospital food, which, incidentally, is the bizzity-omb when you're cracked out on these kind of pain meds.


I had dinner with Jenny last night and it was good. Then Ivana got me drunk.

( Take a Picture of Yourself Right Now )

ITEM!

I am avoiding discussion with people about my mother and her impending heart surgery. It's kind of weird, but it seems that if I talk about it becomes more real.

However, everyone seems (at this point) to be optimistic. So there's that.

ITEM!

I, however, am less optimistic about the country's current case of economic botulism. So much so that I found myself awake at four a.m. worried about it, and couldn't get back to sleep until about seven.

I have no desire to repeat the Great Job Scare of 2001. I rather like my current lifestyle.

ITEM!

I am now 300 pages into Anathem and, lo and behold, there has been plot movement. Like, there have been actual things happening in the story rather than pages upon pages of mood-setting.

The book has started to catch hold of me, however, despite it's long-windedness. One thing that I think he did well is that he put all his little stories where the main character teaches geometry proofs to someone in an appendix. The main text says, "So I taught him about foo.*" and at the bottom it says "See XXXX". And if you go to XXXX, it's text that could be inserted right there (and probably was, in Draft 1). This is good: Stephenson has a habit of going into super spatter nerd mode and go into excruciating depth about esoterica such as the banking laws of Holland in the 1600s. For twenty pages.

A large part of the monk-life as described involves them engaging in philosophic dialog (though they call it "Theoric Dialog" and at one point there is a big deal about describing the difference between Theorics and Philosophers. This I find humorous, because many of the "dialogs" are pretty much lifted directly out of second and third year Plato (only attributed to fictional people from his universe).

ITEM!

This is really cool, and makes me want to build crap out of Lego again.

ITEM!

On Friday my venerable rear-projection teevee finally croaked over. It had been dying for a while - projectors going out of sync, whatever, audio glitches, etc. So on Saturday afternoon I went out and blew a chunk of change on a new LCD television.

This of course included an HD TiVo (see below), a mounting bracket, and a couple HDMI cables.

Maynard and I mounted it on Saturday night and got the most important thing hooked up to it: the 360. This was done via HDMI-1; the other things were set up component. Worked perfectly.

Until I hooked the HD TiVo into HDMI-2. At this point, neither the TiVo nor the XBox were producing audio. Since the TiVo had support for optical audio in addition to HDMI, and HDMI-1 allows for optical audio, I switched TiVo to HDMI-1 and pulled the XBox onto the HD Component cable system (not an HDMI cable).

So, wtf? Why would the HDMI inputs (all four of them - I checked) suddenly stop taking audio?

ITEM!

Man, TiVo HD and CableCARDs can eat a can of Spaghetti-os and then be sent to work in Hell's Scab Factory.

In theory, this is a cool idea: ditch the cable box; just slot a special kind of PCMCIA card into the TiVo. BAM! The TiVo becomes your cable box. Which is a neat idea, assuming it fucking works. Which, apparently, it only does about half the time. The other half of the time the cards don't sync up, or they're fried, or the TiVo software has bugs and needs an upgrade, or whatever. The intertron is filled with horror stories about this.

It seems to be a good idea but poorly tested and executed.

ITEM!

I started a new game of Grand Theft Auto IV in a hope that the game is "better" when it doesn't look like shit on a decade-old, dying television. I played it for about an hour and a half and so far it is more fun - though I'm not sure if that's because I'm at the early points, because I know the control scheme already, or because it looks so damned fine.

(Geometry Wars 2 looks utterly phenomenal in 1080p.)

ITEM!

With the removal of the Monolith TV, the furniture layout in my apartment has also changed. The new TV is above the fireplace, which pushed the couch into one of the bay windows. This has provided the downstairs with about 30 square feet of empty space.

I'm unsure what to put there. The place feels empty now.

Maybe a big table for building Lego crap.