The Family Portrait

(Garkee is my dorky amalgam of Gardner and McKee) Do yours at simpsonsmovie.com

The Belt Ceremony

Samantha's Choi Kwang Do belt presentation ceremony. She's now a White-Senior. (click for larger images)

It Hurts

I forgot how painfully bad Ernest Goes to Jail is. I was sitting in the living room in agony last night watching this with Samantha. This movie came out when I was 9; what exactly did I ever see in it?

The Freak Out

I've been having a week long freak out and I think it's finally coming to a close. I've been freaking because I've been thinking that I'm royally financially fucked, and that we're never going to be able to afford anything. I just did what I should have done a week ago, which was add up all my outgoing expenses, and I'm not nearly as royally fucked as I thought I was. Turns out, I've got a little extra money that I can save. I was already doing this, saving money I mean, but for some reason I got it in my head that I wasn't nearly making enough money to save anything. I was putting money in the bank, it was being saved, and yet I ignored that fact.

Last night when I came home I wanted a drink of the alchaholic variety and I started to worry that I couldn't afford to ever have a drink ever again in my life. I don't even drink that much. I have one or two drinks a week, if that. I've been known to go 2 or 3 weeks at a time without even so much as a beer and yet I was worried that I couldn't afford to have a screwdriver. I tallied up the cost of that drink in my head and it came to about $1. Even that estimate is prabably a little high. 1 shot of Vodka and 1/8 carton of OJ that cost $1.99.

This isn't to say that I'm now relaxing about all of this. I still need to be making a bit more money to afford a new place. I still need a new job and I'm still applying. I still want to go back to school or at the very least get my MCSE certificate. I think I'm going to shoot for the later first, I just don't have the time to go school right now. Also, I don't want to incur any more debt at the moment.

Relax Trevor, smell the roses, and have a drink.

Music Reviews, Smashing Pumpkins and Justice

I've acquired a few very good albums recently. The first of which is the Smashing Pumpkins first new album in seven years titled Zeitgeist. It took me a few listens of this album for it to grow on me, but when it did, it really did.

This is Smashing Pumpkins mkII, sans D'arcy and James Iha however it sounds more like early era Pumpkins. If I didn't know better, I would have thought this one came out after Siamese Dream but before Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. That being said however, it still has a fresh never-before-heard side of the band that keeps them from sounding dated.

If you buy the Target edition (which I recommend) you get the bonus 13th track Zeitgeist that I'm disappointed wasn't included in the standard edition. The song delivers a nice closing 3 minutes to the album.

Other highlights of the album include the songs Doomsday Clock (which was in Transformers apparently), That's the Way My Love Is, Tarantula and Bring the Light. A track I didn't like was For God and Country. I was never sure if he was being sarcastic when he's says he'd die for it (god and country). If he was, or if it was a metaphor it wasn't very clearly conveyed. If he did mean it literally, it comes off as a little creepy.

The other album was Cross by Justice. I initially avoided this album due to the obvious Christian overture the band paints it's image (They also perform with a 3-story high light-up cross, so I've heard). But I decided to give it a shot and I'm glad I did.

I'll start of by saying that there's nothing Christian about the music, but also not to say that there's anything anti-Christian about it either. I quit listening to Gus-Gus for their Christy (thank you for that term, Bill Maher) lyrics. This begs the question of why they even bothered slapping Christian symbols all over their stage shows, albums and t-shirts. I understand that Christians think it's their job to spread Christianity, but you're not going to do it with secular music and a light up cross as a stage prop. If anything, they're alienating potential atheistic/agnostic/secular (or just non-Christian) fans. Trust me guys, you're not converting anyone, you're just making yourselves look like judgmental jerks.

All of that aside, I loved album. It very much picks up where Daft Punk left off at their height (pre-Human After All). It's no wonder either, since Justice is also a French group doing the disco-electro-house thing. Also present is Daft Punks' tendancy to uber compress the whole song seamingly pinching the music inward at the beats. It's a stylistic choice but it works well for this kind of music.

Another good album I recently heard was the latest from And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. But that'll have to wait for another day.

The Amazing Toilet Phone

My Samsung cell phone fell in a public toilet, was fully submerged in nasty toilet water for several seconds and after just a few hours dry out time, was completely unharmed.

I'll be honest, I was nervous at first when nothing was working right, but one by one all functions returned to normal.

Samsung, I tip my hat to you; for making a toilet-proof phone.

Game Time

Sammy and I playing Super Gem Fighter Turbo

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO