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I recently discovered Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, though I'm not sure how. I think it was from listening to Sirius XMU, but somehow or another I heard the song "We No Who U R" and my jaw immediately dropped. The slow instrumental and deep, soothing yet brooding voice stunned me. It's incredibly beautiful music with beautiful lyrics. The first two lines of the song are as follows:
Tree don’t care what the little bird sings
We go down with the dew in the morning light
Nick Cave's lyrics are beautiful and poetic and for some reason they occasionally remind me of T.S. Eliot and at times his sentence structure makes me think of Hemingway. It could be all in my head, it's been awhile since I've studied either.
To my surprise I discovered Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds has been making music since 1983, and their 2013 album Push The Sky Away is their 15th studio album! Talk about being prolific. I have a lot of catching up to do, but as of right now I'm so in love with Push The Sky away it's hard to listen to anything else. I'm most definitely ordering this album on vinyl, I imagine it'll sound great on my record player.
Two of my favorite songs from the album are actually bonus tracks, "Needle Boy" and "Lightning Bolts". The narrative in these songs and the way they're sung just leave me in awe.
And the girls from Jubilee Street hang out their windows,
And they wave and ask me how I am tonight,
I say I'm good, I'm all right.
I just love that!
"Needle Boy" is very brooding, it gives me the chills.
Last, but not least, I'll leave you with "We Real Cool" (love the title!)
This weekend my girlfriend and I got bored so we got in our car and started driving around. Ended up on the Main Oregon Trail Back Country Byway outside of Mountain Home and it was a fun drive. Though it was a little rough on my Nissan Versa...I really need an off road car for around here.
I'm not sure if YouTube will allow the music to stay in the video, we'll see. Anyway not the most exciting video but I figured I'd share. Skiing the Showcase trail at Bogus Basin; Boise, Idaho.
Netflix is getting more and more into original programming with the return of Arrested Development and the Lilyhammer series. Today its newest original series, House of Cards, debuted with all 13 episodes of season one available on day one. House of Cards stars Kevin Spacey and its list of producers include David Fincher (Fight Club, The Social Network), Kevin Spacey and Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) among others.
I haven't watched it yet, but the show looks quite interesting. I'm definitely looking forward to watching it. Many people are discussing just how they'll go about watching the series. Would you try to watch the entire season at once, or one episode a week? The nice thing about Netflix's distribution method is it's entirely up to you to decide. It's "on demand" in a sense. This seems like it'd take away from the social aspect of watching a series. For example every Monday you might hear people at work talking about the previous night's episode of The Walking Dead. With House of Cards some of your friends may watch the entire series by the time you're only on the second or third episode. With its original programming, Netflix hopes to change the way television works. Reed Hastings has said:
Imagine if books were always released one chapter per week, and were only briefly available to read at 8pm on Thursday. And then someone flipped a switch, suddenly allowing people to enjoy an entire book, all at their own pace. That is the change we are bringing about. That is the future of television. That is Internet TV. [CNET]
I certainly look forward to the future of Netflix programming, and agree entirely with Hastings' statement that the viewer should be in charge of how they consume their content. I look forward to checking out House of Cards this weekend, and will be sure to return with my thoughts on the series.
I was able to see Compliance, a thriller that shocked and disturbed its audience at Sundance 2012 before its limited August release. The film is written and directed by Craig Zobel who is probably most well known for co-creating Homestar Runner. It is based on a series of prank calls commonly called the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip_search_prank_call_scam">"strip search prank calls"</a>. The film follows the events of the most disturbing of these calls (there were at least 70 reported in all), which took place at a Mount Washington, Kentucky McDonalds.
Without spoiling too much of the movie, basically a guy calls a fast food restaurant and claims to be a police officer who is too busy to come by in person. He instructs the store manager that one of her employees has stolen money and she needs to help him investigate. He tells her he is fully responsible for her actions and the investigation and she won't be doing anything wrong. She is ordered to detain the employee, and things roll down hill fast.
The film explores how people respond to authority figures and just how far they'll go to obey an authority even if common sense seems counter to their actions. The entire movie I was writhing in my chair and nearly screaming at the screen. Who would let these events happen? Who would comply with these absolutely insane actions? Why? And this REALLY DID happen!
I highly recommend seeing this movie and reading about the story. Compliance has an 89% Rotten Tomatoes score and is definitely worth a watch.
The annual end of year Steam Sale has been underway for a few days now and it's been quite an interesting sale. I had $10 in my Steam Wallet going into the sale and I decided to limit myself to that amount for the sale. Therefore I was able to pick up two games for $4.99 each. I bought Hotline Miami and Faster Than Light (FTL). On Amazon I decided to pick up GTA IV for $4.99. I have it on the 360 but figured it'd make for some good jump in and out fun on the PC. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpEEknM68KI&w=560&h=315] [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgocqJ9Em04&w=560&h=315]
It's been a little busy during the holidays, so I figured I'd do a quick check in. I've been playing Saints Row 3 (Saints Row The Third) on the PC and I've had a lot of fun with it so far. It's a great game that offers plenty of chaos and laughs. I absolutely love the story missions so far, and it's a blast to drive around the city in various cars causing all sorts of mayhem. The weapon variety is also nice and it's awesome to be able to call in a UAV to rain missiles from above when you get into a jam. Below are some assorted screenshots from my playthrough so far:
I've played a little bit of Need for Speed Most Wanted (rented through GameFly, I tend not to like arcade racing games... Forza 4 satisfies my racing needs) and I have to say it's interesting. It's definitely arcadey....Your car can change colors multiple times during a race just by driving through a repair booth which makes absolutely no sense to me....But anyway...I recorded a video. It looks awkard..I recorded it with my MacBook in Windows 8 using the camera app...Not sure if that has something to do with it or not, but it's sort of stuttery.
The PDA is one of the many devices that you could argue no longer exists (or rather is no longer practical) due to the smart phone, and in large part due to the iPhone. Think about it. Why have a 'digital assistant' when an iPhone can perform all of its functions and also double as a phone. Why have a MP3 player, when again your phone can do it just as well (sure you can argue about space, but with everything being in the cloud these days I don't see that as a valid reason).
Just a thought. Check out the Palm Pilot ad in the link above. Used to be cutting edge technology, now it's something we take for granted.
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