Despite the excessive length and distracting number of policy proposals that marred Barack Obama’s State of the Union address last night, the President sent a two-part message to congressional Democrats and Republicans that I think deserves some attention:

To Democrats: you are the majority in Congress.  Govern like one.

To Republicans: don’t confuse obstructionism with political participation.

My own obvious political sympathies aside, I think it’s safe to make a couple of hopefully uncontroversial observations regarding the 111^th Congress: first, congressional Democrats would get a lot more done if they enforced party discipline and didn’t live in perpetual fear of the GOP; and second, congressional Republicans (who are masters of party discipline) have done a better job obstructing Democratic initiatives than they have in articulating their own agenda as minority party.

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Seems like forever since I wrote a blog post. I never managed to get around to generating a best of 2009 list as I promised in Zach’s sticky post above. It did occur to me that the best trip of 2009 was definitely going to the lake and the best laugh was the new present Bruce Willis scene in Disney’s the kid.

I believe I already mentioned this but watched a ton of anime over the holiday, however, it’s really fallen off since I’ve gotten back, as has my K-horror watching. So I’m not sure I can do another review rodeo at the moment but I can at least link to a pretty awesome song. Joey Tafolla shreds. The title of the song is ‘open house.’ I like the name because it works on multiple levels. First of all it’s about shredding on open strings, but then open house as a phrase can imply a lot, like an actual open house event or just the pleasant feeling of an open versus cloused house.

Anyway, last night I had what I thought was the best idea ever for a roaring shark podcast. I feel the ‘review’ podcast is too limiting, as much as I love talking about final fantasy and anime. The idea is to call the podcast the ’survival guide’ and having each episode be about areas of knowledge that you don’t necessarily think about. One of the ideas for a show I had, because I’ve been pondering it recently would be traditional board games, like you know backgammon, checkers, parchisi, tafl, mancala. I’ve just been thinking a lot about what strategy is recently. Another idea would be a show about the different kinds of scents.

I’m hoping to get another chapter of the fanfic up soon. I came up with a fun metal riff.

O_O

really, really long.

i skimmed over much of it, as you’ll probably end up doing too, but i like how the nature of the review itself seems to be a meta-review of the game; you experience the review as this reviewer experienced the game.

I’ve been playing a little Diablo II recently. I actually bought the game a while ago when I was getting interested in roguelikes. I have to say, it takes an initial investment of effort, but once you start to understand the gameplay it really becomes quite addictive. I know nobody here is interested probably but if someone is interested in a roaring shark dungeon crawl it’d be rad.

Also, Final Fantasy 13 is looking pretty awesome. Was actually considering getting a PS3. Although I don’t know how I feel about the voice acting.

funny meme, but kind of an interesting artist, too: wiki.

Over the weekend Chu and I checked out a farmer’s market in Sacramento and swung by a random thrift store that had a really energetic sign-waving guy standing out front. It was a spur of the moment thing but it turned out to be pretty sweet. Chu got a mug, and then we also bought a diner booth that they surprisingly had sitting around. It was marked at $75 but they must have been trying to get rid of it, because just by Chu and I appearing to be interested, the woman knocked 30 bucks off the price. The only problem was that the “table” portion of the booth was significantly slanted. Just about every screw on the thing was loose (and they had to take it apart anyway to fit it in the car), so Chu and I figured once everything was tight, it would all snap into place. As it turned out, it wasn’t the loose screws that were the problem. The cross-beam holding the tabletop up was bent out of shape. It took some significant effort to get the table put back together and in working order. Had to take a trip to Home Depot to get some nuts, bolts, and washers to replace the rusted or missing ones on the original unit, and then spent some time at CBST’s machine shop bending some metal and grabbing some drill bits (that I had to use manually to drill some pilot holes). Anyhow, it took a few hours and a medium-sized headache, but it’s finished. Here’s the end result, modeled by miss Chu.

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Okay, I have a lot to cover here so I should get to it. Here’s the latest chapter of the FF7 fanfic. I think I finally have some ideas for a plot which I owe to talking with darren during xmas and also playing through the game. Darren also helped me do some recording and songwriting and I’ve included the song in this chapter although it isn’t referenced. It’s foreshadowing. This started almost as an exercise in sweep picking for me and I have to say that while I like the chords and melodies in the song I’m not entirely happy with my playing. And I also think I have to work on my tone. But I still hope you enjoy it. In doing a project like this I think I’ll get stuck if I spend too much time reworking tracks.

Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters or any aspect of Final Fantasy VII

Cloud tried to be delicate, not being able to really tell how earnest Yuffie was about her changes to his song.

“Yeah…this could work too,” he offered.

“Hehe,” she laughed through slightly chattering teeth. Cloud sensed a growing restlessness in the young ninja and all of sudden felt a bit guilty. He had gotten so worked up fretting about having to perform that he forgot to extend the hospitality that a former member of AVALANCHE deserved. And it was still his home too after all.

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I’ve been considering some sort of music, book, or movie review for a while now, though I’ve been so busy and my culture and media exposure has been so varied of late that I haven’t been able to focus on any one particular thing to review.  So here’s a mixed bag of what I’ve been reading/viewing/listening to over the last couple of months:

Wavering Radiant, by ISIS:

What a difference a producer makes.  One of my complaints about ISIS’s last album, In the Absence of Truth, was its somewhat muddy quality, the fact that ISIS’s precipitous musical highs and lows were drowned by a generally undistinguished production style, as well as by the band’s annoying tendency to bury its songs in excessively piled-on riffage, guided by what seemed like a sort of metal geek concern with virtuosity.  With Joe Barresi at the helm, ISIS delivers a clearly superior album in Wavering Radiant. Sounding simultaneously more metallic and prettier, ISIS and Barresi let a good deal of space and looseness into the songs this time around, and the band’s earlier experiments with keys and sung vocals pay off in spades. Indeed, Aaron Turner’s “clean” vocals are unquestionably more interesting than on the band’s previous album, making the contrast between his singing voice and his growl that much more powerful. While ISIS will probably never be described as “loose,” this is about as close as they may get.  A great album, an album’s album, and highly listenable all the way through, from the menacing “Hall of the Dead” to the epic Floyd-ian ending of “Threshold of Transformation.”

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“I am in the third circle [of hell], filled with cold,

unending, heavy, and accursèd rain;

its measure and its kind are never changed.

Gross hailstones, water gray with filth, and snow

come streaking down across the shadowed air;

the earth, as it receives that shower, stinks.”

- Dante Alighieri, Inferno (Canto VI, verses 7-12; trans. Allen Mandelbaum)