Obsessive Component

<--- Look at that shit. How cool is that, huh? That boombox is just like orbiting the earth in the most chill, who-gives-a-fuck, lazy-sunday-morning type trajectory. Damn, I don't even think that thing is ON! If it is, it's probobly bumpin' something by War, or maybe that 'White Horse' jammy from bakinnaday.

Since I found that pic at The Boombox Museum, I am a better person.

The only possible explanation is that Byrdo is simply a vessel that god works through. I'm not sure why god would need so many fucking rad joysticks, but shit, tell me this thing didn't just fall out of heaven's rumpus room.

Somewhere sitting atop a shining golden throne, some dude is totally owning on SF2 with this blessed weapon of Gods vengance. If this dude is not named Jesus H. Christ, I just found a new motherfucker to accept as my personal lord 'n' savior.

Cuz without you, we're just a bunch of lame white people.

Say what ye will about Vice, but shitty little flash games don't come any better than this.

Better blog ARS Technica on the shitty DRM bill introduced Friday by congessmen intent on breaking your TV:

"Calling the ability to convert analog video content to a digital format a 'significant technical weakness in content protection,' H.R. 4569 would require all consumer electronics video devices manufactured more than 12 months after the DTCSA is passed to be able to detect and obey a 'rights signaling system' that would be used to limit how content is viewed and used. That rights signaling system would consist of two DRM technologies, Video Encoded Invisible Light (VEIL) and Content Generation Management System—Analog (CGMS-A), which would be embedded in broadcasts and other analog video content."

Spinning bird kick, cha cha cha!

This review of the official PS2 aniversary controller is absolute poetry. Check it:

"For Customs, it's difficult to do, for example, Sagat's standard Custom: Jab Tiger Uppercut into Close-up Standing Fierce into Roll, repeat."

"I could perform things such as Ken's Double Midscreen Jab Uppercut on the pad, very basic Genei-Jin Combos, Makoto's standard 100% Dizzy Combo on Akuma, and Hugo's delayed 720's without much problem at all."

"In terms of basic use, it felt fine, and doing "Tiger Knee'd" Air Hyper Viper Beams off of Standing Roundhouse with Cable was a breeze... I think it was actually the easiest time I've ever had doing it."

Wow.

The Johnney Cash Memorial Cube? Oh-Kaaaay.

Even more evidence of the war on Christ-ian-mas brought to you by better blog hackaday. First the lynchings in the south then the homos, and now this evil Jolt swilling terrorist hacker is taking aim at the jolly one in a blatant act of character assination! Ha! Nice try poindexter, but what you don't know is that Santa's head was built with logical-paradox absorbing crumple zones!*



*Be the first to find the Futurama reference in this post and win a handsome Nerd Alert™ bumper-sticker.

It's finals time, and I'm trying to work on a bitch of a paper. Down on the street directly below my window, a car-alarm has been going off for the last 3 hours. I tried turning on music, but it was too distracting. I'm pissed. I doubt anyone in the neighborhood would hold it against me if I dropped a cinder-block on it's windshield.
Mr. automobile owner, be forewarned. Tomarrow, after I turn this paper in, I am coming to kill you.

Man, that cat sure knows how to swing!

Open this link in Media Player, or click here if you like to watch commercials.

Better blog Boing Boing linked to: Bad-ass Brass Knuckle Implants

In my ten-plus years of web surfing I have found that if a topic on a blog/forum has generated more comments than a person cares to read, he can scroll directly to the last one and it will, without fail, sum up the discussion perfectly. The rule goes unbroken here. Being linked by BB caused the proverbial shit-storm of comments on the page in question. The opinions voiced ran the gamut from, "you people are fucking sick" to, "knuckles are for punching". There was much mention of something called a "straight edge". However, I think the final comment* really brings it home:

12-14-2005 00:17:30
If I ever saw a girl this dumb I'd come flying across the room and punch her in the chest as hard as I could, just so that shit would all pop and she would (hopefuly) die from the infect all that burst silicione would give her and never reproduce.

Projectile vomiting right now!

This comment forum is now closed.

*Posted with the author's permission. **
**Just kidding.

Photoshop for Retards: A place for retarded photoshoppers like you and me.

Have you ever just sat in your grey florescent-lit cubicle and dreamt of visiting such picturesque locals as Budapest Hungary, Wuhan China, or Le Chable Switzerland? Yeah? Well dude, that's just fucking sad. Quit daydreaming Henderson, management needs those reports filed yesterday! Maybe on your lunch break, you should check out my brother (genetic, not soul) Adam's photosets on flickr. Really great stuff. I absolutly promise you'll want to kill yourself for wasting your life counting beans in Lawndale, Idaho or wherever the hell it is you wait to die.

Yeah, you may think you have it all. Designer pants. Complicated athletic shoes. A big plastic townhouse on the North side. Fresh hair plugs. The flattest TV money can buy. A lobotomized trophy wife with new tits. Maybe even one of those gay ass Porche Boxters all you pricks drive. But you know what man? You will never, ever, evAr be this good at Street Fighter 3. So fuck you.

Stuff On Fire is, without a doubt, the shit. The style reminds me of something like Mister Pants five years ago. It’s not really ‘about’ anything, but it feels way more focused than 95% of all the regular weblogs out there.

No reason for you not to just go ahead and bookmark it right now, but i feel compelled to write some flowery bullshit. Check it:

Matt Norwood is no sweater wearing pink-boy. No, an adventurer is he. A haggard old sea captain perhaps, taking you on a stomach-turning tour 'round the perilous Horn of Stupid off the coast of Mongoloid Isle. You travel with sound mind however, as Norwood has sailed these black waters on near 12 score years (as the crow flies). He shares tales of the wide-eyed explorers who journeyed before, only to discover their graves. Their big, dumb, wet graves.

You know actually, I guess he's some sort of weird cowboy or something.

Tonight Bonnie and I make our public transit pilgrimage to Rosemont to see Depeche Mode. I'll be sure to let you know how fabulous* it was.

*I'm not gay, I swear.

Oh, you did too? Well, it did. Not everyone thinks so, however. Walk the Line definatly twists the truth for entertainment's sake, but it serves it's pourpose admirably. For a more factual biographical viewing experience I reccomend the 2003 BBC documentary The Last Great American (played ok on my Apex DVD player, your mileage may vary).

Every fuckin' video game.

On Gizmodo.

Opinions on reptilian ATV activity aside, Onsmith is actually a pretty cool guy and one hell of an artist. You should buy his stuff.

Would you believe I forgot to take my camera to the Captured by Robots show Wednesday night? Yeah, sucks huh? Good thing these people remembered when they went. It was one of the craziest things I have ever witnessed. It’s hard to believe all that junk actually works.

I don't care what Jeremy says, this person is sick.

This video is totally worth waiting through the commercial for (and you might have to open the link in IE). He put out an entire 70 minute DVD this sort of thing. Wow.

"Columbia College brought a very spirited contingent with over 100 people."

More pix.

Almost too good to be true. 6500 designs by over 1000 artists. Sort by Artist, country, character type or style. A great place to waste (a lot of) time.

Extremly entertaining interview with Kool Keith from August on koolkeith.co.uk. Infinitely quotable. A few examples:

"I am just that retarded funk maker."

"I went out to Africa to see that they are banging on the bongos. You get on the train in New York , you see bongos. Everybody's banging bongos. We funky right now."

"You got your gun talking motherfuckers who just gun talk themselves to death. Then you got me. I am the piss man."

That's right, he's the piss man. He says his next project will be called "Pissy Pete the Bed Wetter".

Pix on Flickr

I think digital rights management is a horrible practice and might even peacefully demonstrate against it if given the chance, but I doubt I'll ever be this upset about it.

Don't worry if you missed the RFID tracking party @ San Francisco MOMA. Next year the State Department is throwing one, and we're all invited! Yeah, I know some people would rather stay home, but why not check it out? They're serving Chinese.

Neat.

And speaking of 1984 here's SOS: Students for an Orwellian Society.

I've never payed attention to the comedy short film site channel101.com. I love good sketch comedy, but the only thing I was exposed to really was House of Cosbys and it was way overrated IMHO. Utopia however, an ultra-campy take on 1984 and similar distopian sci-fi, is fucking awesome. If Equilibrium had been filmed for $12 it would look like this.
Also, The Most Extraordinary Space Investigations is really good. Sarah Silverman always amuses me. Jack Black plays the villian in Laser Fart #2 so that's worth a look too i spose, but watch Utopia first.

Daily News Exclusive: Bushies feeling the boss' wrath

"'This is not some manager at McDonald's chewing out the help,' said a source with close ties to the White House when told about these outbursts. 'This is the President of the United States, and it's not a pleasant sight.'"

Yeah, I'd probobly be a bit testy too . It can't be easy to have people calling you "The Most Powerfull Man in the World!" Especialy when you know in your heart you couldn't competently manage a Pep Boys station.

I wonder if he's off the wagon yet.

The most intresting thing about this article is it's the first time I've read a report that cast's Bush as a "top". With bear's like Cheney and Rove up in there I always figured he'd play catcher.

Saturday night race riot in Birmingham, England. So unbelivably stupid. A man had to die over this foolishness? Let me get this straight, black immigants and asian immigrants in pasty-white England (a country that still celebrates monarchy) are fighting each other?!!! Jesusfuckingchrist.

BBC NEWS - Man killed in Birmingham clashes

Come on people, won't you please help? Have you no heart?

SFGate.com article on murder suspect Scott Dyleski

As the natural ideas of equality developed it was possible to conceive the sublime hope of establishing among us a free government exempt from kings and priests, and to free from this double yoke the long-usurped soil of Europe. I readily became enamoured of this cause, in my opinion the greatest and most beautiful which any nation has ever undertaken.

- Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier

Turbonegro - City of Satan

Yup, It's dumb. Real dumb. Looks like something White Zombie might have made 15 years ago, and they sound like a Judas Priest tribute band. No deathpunk™ here.

Yes, your printer is spying on you.

Via Engadget with link to EFF.

Especialy if your number is 867-5309. Link

Link

via boingboing

Speaking of fucked-up Hollywood politics:

20 congressjerks who want the Broadcast Flag -- give 'em a call and give 'em what for from Boing Boing.

For anyone with an IQ greater than their shoe size, it is completely obvious that 99.1% of Hollywood product is pure lama vomit. At least half of it borders on outright propaganda intended to pacify the will of the slave class. Is it any surprise that the subjects of race portrayed in American (and Americanized) film, television, and CD-ROM might not be reflected in a realistic manner? Huh, well is it?

Here some realities of race in Hollywood as seen through the eyes of one lame Midwestern white guy:

•Most small town / suburban whites never come in contact with minorities outside of work or Wal-Mart. Their ideas on different racial segments of our population are almost entirely based on media portrayals.

•Hollywood has invented a fictional “grey race” to portray minority characters in able to fit them comfortably within the entertainment universe. Network sitcoms are are especially guilty of this. The Cosby kids might as well have been able to fly and shoot lasers from there eyes.

• “Realistic” minority characters are usually broad characterizations that place zero emphasis on individuality. Of course everyone knows that.

•Everything on UPN is idiotic as fuck. Most TV and movies marketed to black or minority audiences are apparently written by the KKK.

Do these things even need to be said? Whites seeking more information on this subject are encouraged to visit the Steven Urkel Museum of Media History located in South Chicago.

American Eunuchs. I've been keeping an eye out for a torrent of this documentary for a while now. So far no sources have surfaced. Maybe that's for the best. Here's the trailer. Beware, not safe for work or anywhere else.

Cover of the April, 1978 issue of MAD Magazine from Doug Gilford's Mad Cover Site. I thought it was pretty intresting, and not just because that was the month I was born.

Word.

I have to give a personal narrative in my speech class today. I'm supposed tell some tale significance to my family or culture. I struggled for a while with the idea, because as a white male athiest raised in the bible-belt, my cultural history doesn't extend much further back than Thriller.
Here's what I threw together. I think it's just obsessive enough to be a componant. Peas.

I thought hard about what to speak on and only drew blanks.

I thought about embellishing some scrap of family history or making something up completely.

I'm sure there are many wonderful tales of family tradition and the hardships of immigration hanging on the branches of my family tree. But neither myself, my parents, or my grandparents have heard or choose to remember anything notable.

I doubt that my situation is uncommon.

Unlike the close knit immigrant neighborhoods of Chicago or New York that have celebrated their old world heritage with pride. I was born and grew up in the cultural vacuum of Middle-America that consumes the other 98% of the nation.

Some people have taken to calling it the Heartland, but any heart is purely artificial.

The view of American heritage presented to me was one of fast food chains, strip malls, and pre-fab trailer homes.

Every construct in my environment was designed to be cheap to build, quick to throw up and quicker to tear down.

I saw my small town's quaint downtown area turn into a ghost-town within a year of the Mall opening.

While our downtown wasn't Budapest, it was made up of locally owned businesses housed in well constructed buildings

Some still in the late displayed yellow and black metal signs showing that it would be used as a fallout shelter if the commies nuked us carrying out their insidious plans of world domination.

In the years before I left, that Mall became unpopular and the corporate chain stores fled back to wherever they came from. Most malls built in the 70's and 80's are empty. Consumer tastes changed again apparently.

Super Wall-Mart, Borders, The Gap built Lots on the other side of the freeway and put up tacky grey concrete and painted aluminum stores waiting to be torn down within 10 or 15 years.

my point is that it's no surprise that with the temporary nature of my community's surroundings and the near-sighted dedication to "progress" that any "antiquated" notions of heritage would be forgotten just as quickly.

Within less than 200 years, the "culture" of small towns like mine has become homogenized into a tangable sense of pride in the collective ignorance and xenophobia of the citizens.

Any cultural family ritual that doesn't begin in an automobile and end at Denny's is considered suspect.

Jews, Hindus, Catholics, Islamists, and atheists are well advised to begin worshiping our federally approved deity at the new high-tech mega-church conveniently located just off I-40.

This way the other citizens won’t worry about you holding any funny allegiances to some backward foreign land that would rather not be modernized by America’s gracious corporate representatives.

I never felt happy with this arrangement. So I have left the bland wonder bread safety of middle-America and moved into a large culturally diverse metropolitan city. I feel more at home here than I ever did in the town that I was born.

A steadily growing number young people who grew up in my situation are doing the same and many smaller cities are driving away the young talent they will need to grow economically.

The importance of cultural heritage, art, music and ceremony respected and practiced by generations for hundreds maybe thousands of years is huge and should not be lost to ideas of nationalism or progress.

I may never know where my great-great-great-grandparents were born or of the rigors of the frontier that they helped build, but the lessons I’ve learned about the fragile nature of society could be just as important.

I read that Hemingway said that it's always a mistake for a man to write about one's father. I can't recall reading if he thought it was a good idea to write about your mom, but Hemmingway was a total fucking asshole so who cares?

This week my mother is visiting me for the first time since I have lived in Chicago.

I think it's best I keep that statement concise, because I've been sitting here for twenty minutes trying to write a sixty word opening statement. Mom comes to us live via frequent-flier-miles from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (the city so nice they named it one and a half times) near where she has lived since my birth. She is, like most all mothers, the sweetest, most beautiful, absolutely perfect product of genetic coupling in natural history. Mom is extremely bright, free-thinking, culturally aware, and socially conscious. These are all qualities I hope to have myself someday. She is also, I must add, great fun to spend time with, a wonderful conversationalist, and possibly the least obtrusive houseguest to have ever guested a house. I love her unendingly and am forever indebted to her, not only for her deciding to allow me physical existence, but for allowing me to develop with her guidance the thought-tunnels that I can now perceive my universe through.

Hmm, that last sentence really just makes her (or maybe me) sound like some mud encrusted hippy with no aspirations beyond bong ownership. That is defiantly not the case, as hippies are not allowed to own property or to show themselves outdoors after mid-day without the escort of an elder Christian male captain in all of Oklahoma and most of Kansas. So forget that bit about the tunnels and shit.

Not my mom.

Robocop stickers: $1.00 - Bought at Quake Collectables. I waste too much time browsing in Quake and always feel like I need to prove that I haven't been shoplifting by spending a buck or two before I leave.

Ministry "Twitch" LP: $2.99 - I walked over to Lorie's Planet of Sound with this album in mind. It holds a lot of high-school nostalgia for me. I sort of re-discovered it a couple weeks ago through Soulseek and haven't listened to much else since. I was happy to find this unplayed copy of Al's 1986 pre-heroin masterpiece priced just shy of $3.

Infra-Man VHS: $5.99 - Also from Lorie's. The Shaw Bro's hallucinogenic Hong Kong take on Japanese masked-rider superhero flicks. I have always wanted a copy of this. A shop in OKC wanted 80 bucks for the same damned thing. Awesome.

Conspiracy Journal: $3.00 - Apparently, "they" are all out to get me. I had no idea.

Damn, it seems the last time I updated this thing was over a year and a half ago. I am completely amazed I remembered the login. Yes, the ancient god of the internets is surely watching over me tonight. And thus, it which must be done shall be done. Until ye golden trumpets toot from on yonder holy golden arches above ye promised kingdom of Jerusalem 2.0.

They ask, “But why?” Why resurrect this half-assed stab at a blog after letting it spin around Sol de la Tierra nearly 1.5 times untouched and unloved? Well friends, this week I started attending class full-time at Columbia College Chicago. You know, it’s that other art school downtown on Michigan Ave. The one where you can get work after graduation. My major area of study is audio production; however I still need to get some of my general education classes knocked out. Apparently our education in American high schools is a bit too general, and we must pay a college great sums of cash if we want to learn to write and comprehend a single language or perform long division. Anyway, my first intended GE KO at Columbia is English Comp II, which requires all students keep a journal. This caused me some anxiety at first. Must I suffer the disgrace of scribbling my secret crushes in a pink Hello Kitty diary adorned with a shiny gold lock? Thankfully, our most gracious instructor will allow the journal to be kept online. I assume that she knows someone who owns a computer with a dial-up modem or perhaps uses a public web access terminal at the airport or something. Well friends, no better excuse need I to don my bathrobe, sandals and crown of thorns and play amateur Jesus to this digital Lazarus.

Unfortunately, The whole point of keeping the journal is to practice writing, so ObCom can no longer just be my HTML driven letter to Santa (It seems Santa hasn't updated his site in quite some time either). So apologies in advance if either of the two people known to have visited stumble back to this site expecting more links to the greatest Korean vaporware of spring 2004. As for now, http://obsessive-component.blogspot.com will mostly be me attempting to coherently string together three-hundred words per week to fulfill my journal requirement. Count on learning the tedious minutia of my day to day existence, brilliant ideas for recording and electronic media projects that will never exist save as electro-chemical impulses waiting out their time on the death row that is my cereberal cortex, and witnessing how what used to be a cute "Gen-X disillusionment" has mutated over the last 10+ years into paranoid delusions of global Illuminati conspiracies and federal mind control devices. Damn that was a long sentence. I bet my instructor puts a big red circle around that one. Oh well, it will have to do. The backspace key on this computer has stopped functioning and I can’t afford to have it replaced until the college cuts me a check for the remainder of my student loans (8.3 million USD). God speed SFS, god speed.

oqo: hardware: video

'Matrix' co-creator ready for sex change

GBAx.com - GP32 review

holy crap I want one of these.

[SEGA]�Z�K��T�C�g �z�[���y�[�Wdig those crazy flash trailers man. Astroboy! Kunoichi!!!

Grex Ultra Dynamics

Faderfox-Homepage english

MoCoLoco - Modern contemporary design & architecture: "
"

Tick Tock Toys - Archives & Galleries

Jenny Everywhere

LiveJournal Images

Fetusmart: The Magical Land of Fetuses

JohnKerryIsADoucheBagButImVotingForHimAnyway.com

coggeshell for congress

K A T H Y A C K E R

Tokyoflash : Unique futuristic Japanese Watches

Glad I didn't buy one of these yet, because Wal-Mart (no shit) has the same damn watch for $9.95. differnt logo on top, but same fukkin' watch.

BIOS : First for IT Product News

Why are all the best tech sites in the UK?

BBC NEWS | Technology | 'Laser vision' offers new insights

Tokyo Times: Dutch wife

Worth1000.com | Photoshop Contests | Are you Worthy� | contest: "Vintage Products 4 Photoshop contest at Worth 1000"

AMD's $200 'Emma' Internet Appliance

X-bit labs - Hardware news - World's Largest HDD Makes it to Retail

dude... saw kill bill v2 today... maybe the single most entertaining movie theater experience of my life. thanks mr. tarentino.

(yup, it's a lazy lowercase kind of day)

I was fashionably late to ZOMBIE-Q 2 tonight, so I missed out on the promised edibles from Bob's BBQ, but had a splendid time on an empty stomach anyway. Thanks Scott and Melissa! I think you guys are onto something with the whole cannibalism thing, could be 'the next big thing'...

Damn, this blogspot stuff is way easy. Hell, I bet that even a Cox Communications broadband customer could set up one of these pages! Thankyouthankyou, what a great audience. But seriously folks...