Musings From New York

Mein Tiel

The funda behind the song is gruesomely interesting.

Does anyone remember the German sensational affair last year of some whacked out dude posting a message on the Net (or something similar) for a 18-35 year old he could kill and eat? And that some other whack job actually showed up? The story can be read up on at the BBC ... well this song is about that.

I was tripping on the song enough to look for translation of the lyrics. And trust me, it's gruesome! The verse talks about what it'd feel like to kill & eat a person and the pre-chorus bridge goes:

Denn du bist/ was du isst/ und ihr wisst/ was es ist ... which translates into ...

Because you are/ what you eat/ and you know/ what it is

The song itself is soul-crushing industrial metal. Repeated hearings have given me headaches! Cool!

Boy Bands Gone Bad

haven't watched Resident Evil: Apocalypse yet, but I am totally tripping out on 2 songs from it's soundtrack. One's Rammstein's "Mein Teil" (German for "My Thing").

The other song is one that I recommend to everyone on this group. It's very radio-friendly and very catchy. It's also very morbid ... a pleasant combination, I might add. It's rare that one hears a radio-friendly pop-oriented number on teen suicide. Some of you know the song (Don't Fear) The Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult, which is about teen suicide as well. Well ....this song isn't as subtle about it's subject. :-D

The song is called  "Join Me In Death" by a Finnish group called H.I.M. (His Infernal  Majesty).

And what do I mean by pop-oriented? Think boy-band (Boyzone, Backstreet Boys, etc.) ... but H.I.M. is boy-band plus guitars on overdrive! The song actually is built on a piano-driven melody. It's Goth Metal at its most accessible.

Check it out folks. All you've got to ask yourself is one question: Are you ready to die for love tonight?

More on Star Wars

You can see what alterations have been made in the new version of the Star Wars trilogy here.

Speaking of Star Wars Humour ...

There's a bunch of lists on TheForce.net ... my favourite was Why Star Wars Is Better Than The Matrix. The really funnier lines were:

 

Star Wars has Anthony Daniels play a robot - The Matrix has Neo played by a robot.

   

Can the Nebuchadnezzar make the Kessel Run in 12 Parsecs?

   

Star Wars didn't fall apart after two movies. It took four.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away ...

(Insert Johns Williams fanfare here)

I hate Amazon. They only just shipped my copies of the DVDs. I hope I get them by the weekend (All 3 Star Wars movies back to back to back ... 18 hours of glorious Jedi action!). I'm surprised that Bill Amend's Foxtrot comic strip hasn't commented on them already.

So half the Star Wars fandom is up in arms about the new tweaks in Lucas' movies. I'd say it's a good thing - I mean, it's his vision. If he made the changes on an artistic level, then kudos to him. If he made the changes for purely commercial reasons (which he hasn't) then the detracting fans have I case.

I remember the Star Wars vs. Star Trek fan fiction/parodies I used to read on Yahoo Humour Pages in the good old days of dial up ... for a fan of both series, those parodies really were a good laugh. They don't seem to be up anymore :-( But there are some good humour sites out there in any case ...

 

:: how jedi are you? ::

It's George "Dubya" "War President"

It's George "Dubya" "War President" Bush! He's adressing the UN tonight ... or is it tomorrow? I'll have to tune into the Daily Show to find out :-)

Needless to say, my block has been barricaded again.

You've got to love weather predictions

A colleague of mine at work (Steve) and I used to have heated debates about who was better at predicting weather - the Brits, or the Americans.

My take was that the Brits didn't have any weather to predict ("Uh, it's going to be foggy in the early morning, raining by mid-morning, maybe a tornado in the afternoon, followed by intermittent sunshine, and we end the day with more rain. Tomorrow may be sunny, or it may rain.").

I saw this prediciton of Tropical Storm Jeane (from a link on Dave Barry's blog) and figured he's probably won the argument!

The Blue Screen of Death

A whole new dimension to the above phrase was brought to my attention today when I heard last week's edition of "Wait, Wait! Don't Tell Me!". Basically, the (British) Royal Navy will install Windows O/S on its subs - including those carrying thermo-nuclear warheads.

"Are you sure you want to launch this missile?" Yes-No

"This Sub has perform an illegal military operation and will now sink. If this war persists, please contact the MOD." (find this quote and the full article here)

Roger Ebert's New Website

Yeah, my UIUC alum has a new website. A lot of his older reviews can be found theree too. Be sure to check out the Little Movie Glossary section. it's a reader-defined/spoofy list of movie effects/scenarios/plot devices, etc. For example:

Harrison Ford Situational Reassessment Doubletake: Scene where Harrison Ford chases a small number of bad guys. He then stops suddenly, his expression changes to one of shock, and he runs back the way he came, as we see that the bad guys have been joined by a large number of reinforcements. (See "Star Wars," "

Indiana

Jones and the

Temple

of

Doom

." JEFF CROSS,

Marblehead

,

Mass.

Just Here for the Ambience: Characters order full meals, talk for a few minutes and then leave without eating any of the food or paying the bill.

Flushing With Excitement

So unfortunately, Ramji couldn't make it out of Florida ... what with the hurrciane and all (is it just me, or does it seem like a hurricane hits Florida everytime there's a major sporting event ... or is it actually the other way around?!) ... and so Metal & I got his tickets ... and only I landed up yesterday to watch a couple of matches (Davenport bt. Bovina 7-6(7) 6-2 and V. Williams bt. Rubin 7-6(4) 6-3).

Amazing atmosphere, but I wonder how much of that was Heinikin induced. I mean, I've seen crowds on TV at other Grand Slams, and they certainly seemed more restrained. It wasn't an Indian cricket match by a long shot, but it wasn't one of those Polite-Claps-After-Each-Point either!