The Last Candle

Jon Schaffer, lead guitarist and songwriter of excellent American power metal troupe Iced Earth, goes head-to-head in an interview with a Canadian journalist for the online magazine Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles:

BW&BK: “What’s your position on Iraq? Do you think the US was justified in going into that country and doing what it did?”

JS: “I think the truth is going to be known in the future. And people who are out to spin news in a certain way to make it look like a complete disaster are actually very dangerous people. And I’m not sure what the agenda is. I do believe that the truth will come out in time. Right now, we don’t know all the facts. We can’t know all the facts, because this is a different kind of war. Some of my best friends are special forces guys out there doing it. That are involved. And I can tell you from reading between the lines and being around these people that there is no doubt in their minds that when everything comes out that we are going to be vindicated on the world stage. And it’s just a matter of time. […] This is their job, let ‘em do it. If we found out those people lied to us, then let them hang for it. But, until all the proof and facts are out on the table, I’m going to stand by the United States of America.”

Not sure what political affliation Jon has, but he seems like a pretty outspoken, reasonable guy on what he feels. In any case, he’s resiliant to loaded questions:

BW&BK: “So you don’t see the Bush regime as being cultural imperialists? You don’t see them as trying to force the American way of life on to a nation that maybe doesn’t want it?”

JS: “No. If you think that’s true, then why are 70 or 80 percent of the people are thrilled to have us there. Have you not seen that? And it’s not a regime, by the way. You keep up that kind of language I’m going to end the interview right now.”

BW&BK: “Ok. I understand.”

JS: “I’m serious.”

Lots of good stuff in there. Reading the whole thing is highly recommended.

Iced Earth is probably closest to Blind Guardian in terms of quality songwriting and production. Meaning: they are near the top of the genre. (Hard to actually top Blind Guardian.) Iced Earth’s newest album, The Glorious Burden, focuses on conflict in world history. I’ve only heard a substantial amount of music from their previous album, Horror Show, which has songs devoted to classic horror monsters and concepts (Jeckyl & Hyde!), and I really like it. If the quality increases from Horror Show to The Glorious Burden like the reviews have said, then I’ll probably pick up Burden. A second disc with 32 minutes devoted entirely to the Battle of Gettysburg sounds like an album success in itself.

…Thus has been entered the first new log in the “politics” classification.

This guy has a nice big chart comparing Content Management Systems (CMS’s), such as Moveable Type or Wordpress, for weblog or online-content services. A great reference in addition to the guy’s excellent data is OpenSourceCMS, which allows you to actively test many of the products mentioned. Very cool.

I seem to use a different CMS every eight months or so. In the beginning (after manual updates! argh!) it was Blogger, which was shiny but ultimately inflexible due to only being able to update the page through Blogger’s browser entry. I used Jeremy’s Cubis for a while after that, which had much more lot of usability and flexibility than Blogger, but eventually Jeremy gave up the project, and let me tinker around to add features such as searching and easier entry.

I never “got around” to doing those updates (as in: I’m lazy), but I found Bloxsom by way of Rodent. I like the simplicity and transparency of Bloxsom — plain Perl source in one file for the whole bare system, no string-delimited files, no difficult SQL queries — but the complete control is somewhat overwhelming and tiring at times. A good GUI for management is like driving the car to the park instead of walking: you’re probably better off taking the slower route, but sometines you just want to get to Point B now now NOW.

(And, in the case of some IDE’s, the metaphorical vehicle is a shiny hovercraft, and the path is a putrid blog overflowing with nasty critters. Or in the case of emacs, it’s a hovercraft, kitchen, olympic-sized pool, amusement park, etc…)

That said, I’m looking into a slight redesign for this weblog. The main page probably needs just a few fixes, but the design brought over here isn’t terribly conductive to my plans and easy reading. I’d like a lot less empty space on the right and much more space to cram little bits and bobs on the left side, as well as increasing font size a tad, making the space between characters and lines larger, widening post sizes, and dropping a lot of the busy graphics.

While it was certainly optimistic, President Bush’s speech tonight on Iraq’s future was pretty scarce on actual details on projected positive momentum or evidence of said movement. I would have liked to hear about in more detail about what was presently occurring to make the future transfer of sovereignty less rocky, but instead he said (more or less), “It’ll go great. Trust us.” I guess I’ll just have to keep reading from the blogosphere to get the good data.

If one thing’s for certain from the President’s speech, it’s this man means business. Bush’s undying resolve to progress cannot be contested. Even if you don’t agree with policy, he looks like a guy that really believes in what he’s fighting for.

Al Ghraib coming down? An obvious move, but it’s still not effectively moving forward. It’d be more beneficial to the Administration, world, and the Iraq effort to propogate the news about sentences already being handed down to those who were guilty in the scandal. Erasing a marker of the past isn’t going to make this go away, but examples of justice properly condemning the guilty few will lighten the load.

United Nations mentions: 4. Not enough to make KJL’s proposed drinking game terribly exciting. I didn’t have any liquor anyway.(But I have Mackeson’s XXX Triple Stout! Yum!)

A bit about anime. I like that the genre brings adult concepts and material to the most flexible entertainment medium in the world. However, I don’t like that it still has that nightly network television feel of repetition and mediocrity. Inuyasha feels like Will & Grace. Robots with AI: technically sound, but you’re not getting any vibes that there’s a soul behind the thing.

But then again, I don’t watch too much TV or anime. So I’ll shut up before I get myself into trouble and say what I came here for in the first place.

A bit on my personal anime preferences. Cowboy Bebop has been a huge favorite series of mine for a long time. Furi Kuri (a.k.a. FLCL) is probably right below Bebop, being exceptionally executed and fresh. (And incredibly funky. The entire series is just six episodes, packed with more quality fury and finesse than 50 Dragon Ball Z episodes.) And in my top five films of all time is Spirited Away. And these past few days, I’ve been watching the energetic Bobobo, which in all truth makes FLCL seem realistic in comparison.

It’s also very, very funny. Bobobo’s major plot is that the lead character, Bobo-bo Bo-bobo, bulbously-built with a monstrous head of yellow hair, has the ability to listen to people’s hair. That’s right. In the 300X, during Bobo-bo’s time, a criminal organization called the Hair Snatching Group is turning people bald. Hearing the outcry of sadness of hair around the world, Bobo-bo takes up the fight to stop the Hair Snatching Group and save hair around the world. And how does the leader of the free folicle world fight back? Which his nose hairs, of course, in which his major attack is none other than the — ahem —true fist of the nose hair attack!

…Riii—ight. If you haven’t guessed already, Bobobo’s success at being humorous hinges on its ability to 1) be random and 2) good delivery. The result is Bobobo going in one direction that seems like an ordinary anime cliche and spins it on its head. And then spins it again. And again. And again. Sometimes the show breaks into “effeminate mode,” where the plot is comepletely broken away from and pastel colors, slow motion, and high voices enter the scene. How much a person likes Bobobo depends on how well they take the classic anime big eyes, weird proportions, and bizarre representations such as people with a hamburger for a head, and how long they can handle the fast-paced, extensive weirdness.

If you think the following sounds interesting, or heaven forbid, funny, Bobobo might be for you: scenarios where Bobobo’s hair opens up to give an impromptu rock concert, watching an unrelated scene about dogs voting to control Japan, a whole fifteen minutes about the offspring of a duck and women’s underwear (episode 3!).

Mugen Anime is seeding the first four episodes of Bobobo if you want to scope out an episode or two. I recommend #2 for maximum hilarity and weirdness.

And I can’t believe I wrote this much about something that is so crazy-stupid as Bobobo.

The never-updated Projects page on the site entry has been changed to something a little less formal and more broad. The new title is Dust and will contain all projects and submissions that aren’t bound for the gallery or this journal. Additions to dust will be larger, more substantial pieces of work. It already has one entry, and I have at least a couple more in the pipeline.

I also realize dust has also been collecting on the Interests, Gallery, and Links pages, which is a result of plain just not taking a few minutes to upload the backlog of material. I’m thinking about pushing myself to update all sections (except Dust) at least once a week (which shouldn’t be a difficult task at all) but with the new apartment and new job started this past Monday, I’m still getting acclimated. I think within a week or so I’ll get over the new tempo, and the updates’ll start arriving.