S-Success

Well, apparently my previous outburst of rage was enough to keep Cam from updating for a while and also enough to propel me to victory against Southern Rock Assholes "The Outlaws." In other Rock Band related news Cam and I have also accumulated over a million fake fans thus cementing our reputation as incredibly committed wasters of time.
Unfortunately, like everyone who achieves great success in their own lifetime, I am left with a hollow place in my heart. There are no great deeds left to accomplish. Furthermore, there are no great post ideas sitting around either, thus forcing me into the realm of random personal news:
Something like 19 days until the momentous Second Coming of Spoon. I have literally been anticipating this since the first time I saw them in concert. This time, however it will not just be me, Cam and Cam's ridiculous friends but rather me, Cam, Karen and different ridiculous friends of Cam. Incidentally, there's a hilarious story about the first Spoon concert we went to but it might be the kind of thing you had to be there for. Let's find out! We were nearing the venue when we were approached by a homeless man. "What's the greatest nation in the world?" he asked. We uncomfortably replied we didn't know. "A Do-nation," he responded. I found this clever enough and delivered with enough charisma that I would have given him some money if I wasn't saving it all for band t-shirts. The others seemed less impressed, and more anxious to get away. As we hurried along the homeless guy addressed Cam's friend, I forget his name at the moment. "Where you goin' Elvis? Come on back." A pause, then, by way of explanation: "All he needs is to dye that hair." Ordinarily this might have been simply a crazy non-sequitur but Cam's friend really did look remarkably like a blonde Elvis. Man, did we laugh. There's nothing more hilarious than being burned by a hobo, especially when he's completely right. Now given that April's concert is a good 45 minute drive from the location of the previous one, we probably won't see the same hobo. But I'm an optimist, I think I'll try and work on some celebrity hairstyles for the occasion.

ed. Dammit, already I've forgotten to put a quote at the end of the post. ALREADY

Rage

Incoherent rage, to be more precise. I don't know how or, for that matter, why Cam keeps thinking up new ways to piss me off but I'll be damned if I'm going to let that friggin' Chuwero get away with it. He knew I didn't want to have to post more than once a week and now he goes and posts three goddamn times in the last week. Not only that but he's done this thing where he ends each post with some quote, knowing damn well I'd have to start doing the same. And, and! he stole my joke about that shark repeller doo-dad and he corrected his typo of burrito so I can't make fun of it now. rrrrraaaaaggggghhhhhh!!!!!
Cam's not the only thing pissing me off lately, though. I also wish I'd never heard the song "Green Grass and High Tides" which I have deliberately not linked in order to spare others the same annoyance. I've resigned myself to never beating the goddamn song on expert in Rock Band but why, oh why did I waste my time beating the 44 preceding songs?

It's like you're begging me to hate you

Le sigh

God damn Cam. Not only does he post in his blog again (forcing me to update as well) but he makes his post about Bill Maher, someone who bothers me more than any other comedy oriented political news analyst. Needless to say, I didn't actually read the post but I did make it halfway into the third paragraph before mounting disinterest overcame any polite curiosity. I once spent an entire afternoon and much of an evening listening to Bill Maher's show on Cam's television as I tried to concentrate on levelling up my Oblivion character. How someone can listen to that guy talk for five minutes let alone 6 or 7 hours is beyond me. Fortunately levelling in Oblivion is a process that encourages one to turn off most cognitive processes anyway, otherwise I might have done something rash.
Okay, so enough about political commentary and dull rpg's. Cam and I did, in fact, defeat the endless setlist on hard (I'm not nearly masochistic enough to want to play the solo in Flirtin' with Disaster on expert again (and also Cam has a tough time with the bonus songs (which we never play otherwise) as it is), I couldn't stand to get like 54 songs into the damn thing and then fail out because my star power wouldn't activate in time) and having done so the only major milestone left that I care about is getting a million fans. This will, unfortunately, necessitate playing on expert but at least we can choose songs that are actually enjoyable. This brings up another point in my mind: when I first bought the game I was disappointed there weren't more good songs available to download, now as I look at my meager finances and escalating credit card bill I desperately hope they release only shit from now on. Unless I can somehow convince Cam to waste money on intangible resources that he won't even be able to enjoy in another... shit, two months. le sigh
(download "The Spore Cult" from here and listen to the section around from 29:10 to 29:20 for unnecessary elaboration on this matter). Sorry I couldn't find a more convenient method to access that soundbite without you having to listen to the whole 50 minute podcast (which you should do anyway, really).

The Decision

So after much debate and a great deal of insulting each other's band name ideas Cam and I settled on "Powder Blue Stanza." Since then we have rocked pretty hard at least three times a week. Not even the plague can dull Cam's commitment to the game, although he did have to switch from vocals to guitar (mostly cause I don't want him sneezing on my damn microphone), a situation that places both of us on our weakest footing.
If you had told me two months ago that I would eventually care how well I can sing Weezer's "Say It Ain't So" I would have said "I don't even know that song, why would I care about it? Who are you, anyway? How did you get here from the future?" But now it tears me up inside.
And there have been other challenges to overcome. Last week during my one and probably only Rock Band Party Night the blue pad on the drum stopped working entirely. It had been on the fritz for a while before that but my heart was still filled with unreasonable suspicion of all my friends. And Cam's friends. And Cam. Sometimes even me. When something that expensive breaks logic usually falls by the wayside, at least in my experience. All is not lost though, EA sent me a new drum pad set, supposedly free of charge as long as I send back the broken set. Hopefully everything will work out.
In the meantime after weeks of playing as a band Cam and I have yet to fully complete a single city, mostly because every single one contains at least one horribly, horribly annoying setlist. And these usually go under titles like "Crowd Favourites" or "Jukebox Regulars" or "Harmonix Favourites". It just seems absurd to me that what the people who made the game consider to be the best songs are actually the worst songs. How did any good songs get in there that way? There must have been an influential minority of programmers with decent taste in music, I guess.
But, in the end, the decision to buy Rock Band (and let Karen buy the supporting X-box 360 for me) was a good one. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go practice singing while no one's around.

Band Name Ideas

So today Karen and I (and possibly Cam, but more importantly Cam's car) go out to our local electronics store to conspicuously consume expensive merchandise. With any luck, by the end of today I will be rocking out on my new Xbox 360 with Rock Band special edition. Thus finally solving all my problems except one: what should Cam and I name our band?
We tried randomly snatching a band name from the tv listings scroll but although I was really excited about "Anderson Cooper 360" Cam seemed less than convinced. Runners up in my mind were "Dakar Rally" and "Max and Ruby".
Other ideas stolen from non-random television shows include: "World's Most Giant Doctor", "Jet Boy and Jet Girl" (I'd even let Cam be Jet Boy) and... dammit, I can never think of third example to round out a cool list.
Only a few ideas come from life rather than tv: "Strawberry Nazi" and, if we decide to become a Christian band that later sells out and renounces their religion, either "The Apostates" (for a ridiculous death-metal band) or "Aftermaps" (for a ridiculous any other sort of band).
Maybe I've put too much thought into this.

Hint hint

Sorry for the long delay between posts, but it was incredibly difficult to update while I was at home. You see, due to coarse language and mature subject matter I'm trying to keep this blog a secret from my family. Unfortunately it's a small house, there's always at least one person home, and no one has any qualms about walking up behind you while you're on the computer and asking what you're doing.
Anyway, I'm back in the armpit of Ontario now. Rather than list all the things I don't like about Windsor it's probably much more efficient to list the exceptions: Karen, Cam, my space heater, Dragon's Inn, Cam's Xbox, Cam's playstation two, Bill's friend's Xbox 360. By the way, I really need 350 dollars and then 170 more dollars. Badly.

I love Karen.

To market, to market to buy a fat pig/

Well here I am up in the frigid north again, visiting the folks for Christmas break. So much has changed at home I hardly recognize the place. New doors, new bathroom, flimsy shelves erected just above my bed holding our family's entire book collection... I had visions of being woken from sleep by the entire collected editions of Stephen King tumbling down on my head. Fortunately those fears proved groundless, I was instead awoken by sundry miscellaneous noises throughout the house, all the things you forget about when you live (almost) alone.
Speaking of my better half, I wonder what he's up to this week, besides working and sobbing in loneliness. Without any factual gossip to repeat here I'm afraid I'm forced to resort to vicious lies... I'll work on some of those for next time. Right now I'm going to enjoy my first full day of vacation in the Soo by going out and shopping for really, really mediocre Christmas presents for my family. Perhaps some sort of fat pig....