Review: Guns ‘N Roses – Chinese Democracy

Guns 'N Roses - Chinese Democracy There is a lot to be said about this album, which for many people was anticipated about as much as Duke Nukem Forever. The release of Chinese Democracy marks the release of new studio material from GNR since Use Your Illusion I and II in September 1991. I can’t honestly say that I was expecting a whole lot from the album when I heard that it was really for real going to come out. But I decided that I would pick it up and give it a listen.

I will start out by saying that if you aren’t a fan of Guns ‘N Roses, or more specifically Axl Rose, you probably won’t like this album. There is no doubt in any of the songs that he is the one singing and he definitely want’s to you to know that it’s him. I also noticed that almost all the songs have some weird techno beats in the intro and throughout the songs. It threw me off a little at first, but it’s kinda cool on some of the tracks. I’d say that the two standout tracks for me right now are “Better” and “Sorry”. When I was listening to this album today I found myself repeatedly losing focus thinking that this didn’t sound enough like the Guns ‘N Roses that I know and love. But I had to stop and just let myself listen and take it in. When I was finally able to set aside the fact that there was no Slash, there was no Duff, just Axl; I was able to hear a whole new sound. A sound that is so close, yet so far from the sound that anyone would associate with GNR.

I am absolutely more than pleased with the album, and I recommend it to all who have ever been keen on GNR. Allow yourself at least one good listen to take it all in and let it grow on you. Just don’t drink any Dr. Pepper while doing so, please.

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Mobile Site Up

Thanks to a handly little plugin called WP-PDA, the blog now has a mobile version. You can access it on your web enabled device (phone, PDA, iPhone, iPod Touch, etc.) by hitting the plain old URL into your browser (no fancy “m.” or /mobile/) and it does the rest for you :) If you have any questions, let me know.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, may you enjoy gorging yourself on wonderful food as much as I am about to.

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Review: Paulie Shore Is Dead

Pauly Shore Is DeadI’m fairly certain that no one reading this has ever seen this movie. Or at least, I hope you haven’t. I remember seeing trailers for it when it first came out and it looked slightly funny. But the trailers gave me the impression that Pauly Shore faked his death, and filmed the reactions of other comedians and actors to see what they had to say about him after he died. However, that was entirely not the case. It is all staged and not really all that funny. The film tells his life story and features a lot of big name actors and celebrities, but it isn’t funny and it isn’t entertaining at all. I never thought of Pauly Shore as a good actor. But I did find him to be funny in Biodome and In The Army Now. So go ahead and skip over this and watch one of those instead.

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Blog Block: What is a type of food or dish that people think you are strange for eating?

Many moons ago, a new concept was created. This concept was called Blog Block. It was sort of a collaboration between myself, Kayla and Cass to give not just ourselves, but the world a reason to blog. Basically, a topic would be posted and then everyone would write their replies on their blogs, and link back to the original post containing the idea so that others could read their post. However, it was only done a total of one times. So, here’s the new plan. Someone (anyone!) writes a blog on some random topic. If someone else reads the blog (let’s hope so..) they can reply in comments with their thoughts (obviously), and also link to their post on their blog for the same topic. Make sense? Good.

ANYWAYS, I was sitting here at 2:30 in the morning with some serious hunger issues and decided to dig around the fridge for something to eat. My options were quite limited, but I was able to create what has surely got to be one of the finest meals available anywhere: a cheese sandwich. That’s right, I said a cheese sandwich. Let me lay it out for you. Basically, you’ve got your bread (wheat, if you know what’s good for you.), a healthy serving of Miracle Whip (on both pieces of bread, of course), and two Kraft Singles (American, of course.). Simple spread your Miracle Whip on both pieces of bread, place two slices of gourmet Kraft cheese in the middle, and that’s it. Enjoy what is sure to be the best meal you’ll eat all day.

Cheese SandwichNow, on to the matter at hand. This edition of Blog Block was initiated because I made myself a tasty cheese sandwich and while I was compiling all of the components for this masterpiece, I thought to myself: “Hmmm, I remember when I was a little kid and I ate cheese sandwiches for lunch almost every day at school. Everyone else had their PB&J, Ham, Turkey, soup, leftover somethingorother, and I was just happy as could be chowing away on my cheese sandwich.” Which was true, I ate cheese sandwiches pretty much every day of my childhood, and for a short (a month or two) period of time it was the only thing I would eat. Needless to say it is definitely not a treat I have the opportunity to enjoy in this day and age. I still get the most awful looks when someone sees me stuffing my face with one of these puppies and they ask what is easily the most annoying question ever when you’re eating: “Whatcha got there, pal?” First, we’re probably not pals, so back off. Second, it’s my food, not yours, so back off some more. And then once I’ve relaxed a little and swallowed the mouthful of cheese, Miracle Whip and bread I simply reply: “a cheese sandwich.” I then have to go on and on explaining everything you just read to them, only to have them come back with: “That doesn’t sound too tasty..” And I refer them to reason number two why they started it by asking the most annoying question ever. So the next time you get that late night hunger (or any time hunger really) try a delicious cheese sandwich. Just make sure you’re alone when you eat it.

Now to extend to you, the reader, what is a food or dish that people think you’re strange for eating? Write about it on your blog and post a link here in a comment. Share this post with your friends and make them participate too. It’s fun.. sort of.

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Boy allegedly hits mom with saw, offers her $5

FORT PIERCE, Fla. – Authorities say an 11-year-old boy hit his mother in the head with a saw and then offered her $5 not to call police. The St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office reported that the boy and his 41-year-old mother got into an argument Wednesday when she was trying to get him to take his medication.

The boy left and went to another home, where he began hitting a tree with a saw. When the mother finally caught up with the boy, authorities say he hit her in the head with the saw, causing a minor laceration. A sheriff’s report said that’s when the boy began pleading with his mother not to call police and offered her a $5 bill.

The boy is facing an aggravated battery charge.

[Source]

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Review: Nickelback – Dark Horse

Nickelback - Dark Horse If you’re like me, you’ve never been a huge Nickelback fan. Sure they’ve had some good singles, but they all got overplayed and turned to shit on the radio. However, I picked up a copy of this album before ever hearing a single track from it, and now I can’t stop listening to it.

It’s definitely got the typical Nickelback sound, with Chad singing in his distinctive voice and pretty heavy backing riffs. I first listened to the album on the way to work, and much the same as the new Shinedown album that I recently listened to and reviewed, I found myself rating a lot of the songs pretty higly. The album flows really well and almost makes me forget that it’s Nickelback. With the exception of “Gotta Be Somebody” (which I don’t really care for), the whole album is pretty heavy. I really like “Something In Your Mouth”, “Just To Get High”, and “Burn It To The Ground”. Like I said, it’s definitely still Nickelback, but I personally think it’s better than most of the other stuff they’ve released.

I would say it’s definitely worth a listen if you’ve ever been a fan, or if you’re looking for some new rock with a rougher harder sound than a lot of the other stuff on the radio right now.

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We Have A Place To Live!

The offer that Bill submitted for the house that we like was approved! :D

Our new house :D

It’s a two bedroom two bathroom off of I-94 and Ruth in Saint Paul (near 3M). It’s about 1600sq/ft, with an unfinished basement and unfinished attic (not counted in the square footage); so there are a lot of possibilities for renovations there. The kitchen is pretty big (compared to our current one) and has newish stainless steel appliances, including a fridge over freezer, and a double oven. It’s pretty sweet :D Bill bid $10,000 less than they were asking, and they took it. There is an inspection on Monday, and I don’t recall the closing date, but we could be moving in as soon as December 17th. Which will be really nice since our current lease does not expire until January 31st, which would give us a whole month and a half to move out and clean this place up. Last time we moved our new lease started on July 28th and the old place expired on July 31st, so we had to move everything out in just one weekend.

For those of you that don’t know the whole story regarding the current living situation, I will explain it briefly. I first moved in with Robert and Sarah a few years back to our apartment in White Bear Lake. They broke up and she moved out, so when our lease expired, we started looking for places. We ended up getting a townhouse in Oakdale (where we are currently) with his friend Bill. Well now Robert is moving in with one of his co-workers in order to be closer to work (Bloomington area), leaving us in need of a new place or a new roommate. Mae and I tried to find a place for just us, but we couldn’t really afford it on our own, so we talked to Bill. He brought up the option of buying a house, ran the numbers, and the price was right for us, so we started looking. I think we got really lucky with this place, being that it was only the fourth place we looked at.

Expect more information as it becomes available, and some sort of shindig to break in the bar in the basement once we’re settled ;D

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Armless Man Steals TV

A thief with no arms managed to steal a 24-inch TV in Munich, Germany. He had two accomplices who used clamps to fix the TV to his body.

When the staff noticed that the TV was missing from its stand they looked back at CCTV recordings and saw the armless thief walking out of the store with their TV attached to his body.

“It’s hard to believe that the sight of an armless man walking along with a giant TV clamped to his body did not get anyone’s attention,” said a police spokesman.

[Source]

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Music Stats Updated

I did some tweaking to the stats display engine that I wrote for generating my own music stats today, which now includes data about the top 10 albums by play count, play count by genre, and I improved the execution time a bit with some newly learned functions. I also squashed a bug that was causing artists or albums with “&” in their name to display improperly due to the way PHP handles “&” in URLs. Rich helped me out with that one and we got it all squared away.

I looked around at a few scripts and libraries that allow you to easily make charts and graphs from your data, but I didn’t get too far. After all the work to get things to the state they’re in now, I didn’t feel like creating another headache for myself. At least not today. But it’s on the back burner for now. I am also thinking of some sort of way to track the history of say, the top 100 tracks/artists/albums to show how their play counts change over time. The only problem with this is that I would need to sync at specific intervals, which doesn’t happen very much right now.

Anyways, with the new data that I was able to harvest, I found some interesting information regarding my listening habits:


Genre Plays %OT Total %OT
Rock 41,379 48% 4,928 42%
Metal 21,633 9% 2,545 12%
Classic Rock 7,962 9% 1,412 12%
Punk 7,440 9% 1,558 13%
Country 4,559 5% 516 4%
Rap 1,556 2% 329 3%
Alternative 1,160 1% 218 2%
Pop 683 1% 133 1%
Industrial 490 1% 142 1%
Techno 135 0% 12 0%


This table illustrates the number of plays that each genre has, and the percent of the total plays for that genre on the left; and on the right it shows how many songs there are for that genre, and the percentage of the total library that that particular genre accounts for. While it’s pretty much assumed that these two would have very similar percentages, I found it interesting that Rock takes up nearly half of all of my listening time.

http://www.robmonroe.net/music

Anyone care to share their listening habbits? I would be more than happy to run your iTunes library through my stats engine so you could have a gander. Just let me know!

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