It should come as no surprise that I accomplished next to nothing on my week off. The most I can point to is upgrading my .NET knowledge from "I have no idea what I'm looking at" to "Hey, is that a clue over there somewhere?"

I'll be making the trip to WV sometime soon. My grandmother is on her deathbed. I don't believe I've spoken to her since the late 80s. We weren't close at all and I'm really only going because my mom asked me to. (And hey, an excuse to go back home is one I'll take.)

Given the way life has been going lately, it'll be hard not to feel a little envy when she's lying there in her casket surrounded by people saying nice things about her that they neither mean nor believe. Some days I think that's gotta be better than dealing with life. Not so much life, I guess, but the other upright biological lifeforms that tend to take up so much time, space and energy while you're coursing through life.

I can't tell you how many people have disappointed me. I'd have to put just about every person I ever met into that category. (Including me!) I'm so sick of it. I feel like I've lowered my standards way down, yet people still find a way to effortlessly lambada under them. If I could just get rid of that part of my brain that expects something good to come out of human contact, I'd be a lot better off.

It's funny - I'm such a hermit and so antisocial, yet there's some small part of me that requires positive human contact. I think you can lump me in with people who hate humans not just for the sake of hating them, just because they expect more from them. I don't know why I expect more from them. I can't help it. I know better than to do it, but I can't help it.

That's reason #257 why I'm trying not to be so analytical and not care so much. Giving up hope is such a neverending process for me. I think I've lost all hope, then a month later I find some behind the couch. It's nice for a minute or two, but it always ends up hurting in the end.

I try to keep things in perspective. We're only human. We're just these bags of meat and water that have somehow gained self-awareness through a very unlikely series of extremely unlikely events. We are the universe waking up, looking around at itself and saying "Holy crap!" Out of all the molecules in all the history of the universe, we have won the cosmic lottery - we get sentience. We can be conscious and awake for a brief time, capable of awe and wonder at what has happened. Sometimes I'm not sure if that's a blessing or a curse, but it doesn't really matter. It'll all be over in a moment.

And THAT is as much useless philosophy as I can muster or stomach. What's for dinner?

The Metal Refuge and Uranium Music have both (re-)published articles of mine in the last couple weeks. They like me, they really like me!

I've done away with all of the music in last week's StormClad Radio broadcast and replaced it with shiny new tunes. Over three hours of stuff you would like if you were as cool as me. Check it out. And send me money.

A few weeks ago, I had a small revelation about the way I view movies. It just never occurred to me before, but it makes perfect sense: I view movies as if I'm watching documentaries. I don't give a shit about character development, plot, subtext, allegory, acting or any of the shit you're supposed to care about. I think there are just three qualifications I have for a movie to be good:

1) It can't ruin my suspension of disbelief. The acting, the dialog, all of it is usually acceptable as long as it maintains the illusion. To illustrate: It's totally lost on me why people would think Johnny Depp is a better actor than George Clooney. Even though I agree with that opinion, I couldn't offer a technical analysis of why I agree with it. Depp seems interesting when I watch him. Clooney doesn't. That's it. As for dialog, watching Fight Club will ruin my suspension of disbelief every time. The dialog doesn't seem at all spontaneous or real. It seems really, really, really, really contrived. I realize intellectually that every single element of every single movie is contrived, but there are some things about some scenes that just snap me out of the "viewer" mode and into the "critic" mode. (Even though I couldn't critique my way out of Gene Siskel's colostomy bag when it comes to movies.)

2) It has to keep me interested until the end. I have a really short attention span. If I can make it to the end of a movie without wanting to go do something else, it's a good movie. End of story. I don't need to analyze every minute detail. I'd rather lop off a hand than spend more than ten minutes afterward thinking about most movies. I simply don't care that much. (Then when I hit a movie where I do want to spend a lot of time thinking about it, it seems I'm one of the few that sees anything redeeming in said film. I might be the only person on Earth who has seen Steven King's Sleepwalkers more than three times and still wants to see it again.)

3) The most objective of all - It can't be set in the real world. It has to be futuristic or supernatural or surreal or something along those lines. There are very, very few movies that have any appeal to me that look like the real world. I'd watch Evil Dead 2 over Casablanca 100 times out of 100.

I remembered that I did the same thing when I was a kid. I didn't understand why people would say movies were bad because this happened or that happened. Looking back on it I guess I thought, "How can that be a dumb thing to happen? That's just what happened." I realize now that I always looked at them like I'd look at factual stories. Strange, given that I was more likely to be watching movies about werewolves or Godzilla than about anything that could be factual. But hey, I was a weird kid.

But enough of that...

There are three noteworthy updates to StormClad since last week's update. So let's go over them:

1. Discussion Forum Revamp - This is a major overhaul of the board. The reaction so far has been mixed, but I'm leaning more and more toward keeping the new way. There's just so much more functionality available. The look and feel can be tweaked over time. I may switch back to the old way of having it blend seemlessly with the overall site navigation, but other than that the adjustments will be minor.

2. StormClad Radio - That's right. Check out the link in the upper lefthand corner of the navigation bar. No longer will you have to settle for one crappy download each week. Now you'll have over two hours of crappy poorly-streamed music on demand! The radio station (hosted by Live 365) will have a varied playlist based mainly on whatever is tickling my fancy at the moment. You might hear Carcass followed by Johnny Cash. You just don't know. I plan to change it often. Those of you hung up on the morality of downloading mp3s can rest assured that Live 365 has already been sufficiently ass-raped by the RIAA - there's nothing illegal about the station.

Note that a fast connection is pretty much a requirement for listening. The bitrates have been scaled way down to help with streaming, but a dial-up modem is still going to have problems.

I've got the station for three months so far. If enough people use it and support it, I'll keep it going. Which brings me to the next addition.

3. Pay Pal Donation - Since Beren sank so low as to sell out to corporate greed, I feel I can sneak in under his massive shadow without too much commotion. I'm not bracing for a great deal of contributions (or even to break even) but a few bucks here and there would be nice. *hint hint*

This week's lesson: Nothing will make you remember you're antisocial more than trying to be social.

I'm sensing a theme. I think animals are starting to side with The White Man™ Something just tells me this is happening. Maybe it's all these racist police dogs. Maybe it's the redneck critters playing banjos. Maybe it's the fact that this popped up in a Google Image Search. I don't know. It could happen. You tell me.

Remember me mentioning the Heavy Metal Is The Law discussion board a couple weeks ago? We have a SoulSeek project we're trying to get people to participate in. If you use SoulSeek, stop by and check it out.

New review time: Napalm Death's Harmony Corruption.

How Like A Winter really wishes they were early My Dying Bride. It's true.

If I told you I had written another trendy tongue-in-cheek anti-metal article, would you laugh or be annoyed?

Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit is really quite morbid and depressing, all things considered. I can't believe this was done by a black chick in the 50s. It's moody and sorrowful and here's this woman singing about blood, bulging eyes, twisted mouths and the smell of burning flesh. Holy crap! I know she did Gloomy Sunday way back when as well. Small wonder she found her music banned on the airwaves.

Other pleasant musical finds this week include tracks from The Cramps, Snake Corps and Die Apokalyptischen Reiter. I know The Cramps in particular have been around forever, but I never checked them out before.

I've also been working on getting the full Dead & Gone series. It's a collection of funeral marches and other songs about death from various cultures. Pretty interesting stuff.

And then there's The Danielson Famile. Again, what can I say besides holy crap? These are some wacked-out Jesus freaks with bizarre and catchy music. Their main vocalist sometimes goes onstage dressed as a nine-foot tall tree, squealing out contagious high-pitched warped melodies while the others parade around in nurse uniforms and play songs which won't leave your head for days no matter how hard you try. Add them to the small list of Christian bands I like. (Which, incidentally, would also include Virgin Black, Sixteen Horsepower and Woven Hand) Who says all Christian music has to be...well...uninspired?

Lake Of Tears might reform again and make one final comeback album again. Fine by me, as I like their stuff.

It's the hottest new video game this Summer:



I'm 31 years old. This past week I ate my first salad ever. Nothing too extravagant, but I manged to finish about half of it. If you knew me, you would know this is a sign of the end times.

Another sign of the end: Black people are paying white people to hang around them now. Unbelievable.

Ever seen Good Clean Porn? It's a new show on TRIO that shows porn without the distracting sex scenes, so that we may appreciate the glorious acting and storylines involved. It is a thing of beauty.

Street Smarts is another fun half-hour game show I've started watching lately. Anything making fun of terminally stupid people is worth at least a try.

This is the second week in a row I'm gracing you with a new review. Surely I am the most productive human being on the planet. This time it's Metallica's Kill 'Em All.

I was smart enough to save a copy of everyone's review requests from before my hard drive crash. However, I wasn't smart enough to remember where I put it. I'm working on it...