Trance

So it's like 2 a.m. where I am now, and it occurs to me, I am listening to trance. This is probably something a friend of mine, who is my source for all this, Alex, predicted would happen sooner or later.

If angry, spiteful hardcore is one side of the coin, then absurdly shiny and pretty trance and J-pop is the other, darker side of the coin, which lands face down far more often than not. Anger and rage have been a big part of my life, and trance, while an addictive substance in its own right, just doesn't have the same place in my head. I don't ask myself "How do you keep your arms raised?" for nothing. Sandstorm wasn't the song that saw me through, it was Malt Liquor Tastes Better When You've Got Problems, which I still haven't seen the band play yet, and probably should talk to Vinnie about that. I'd call him by his last name and Mr. (out of respect), but the band doesn't want that part of their lives out there. Surnames be damned!

To change gears quickly, the Escapist feature Zero Punctuation has, within a matter of hours gone from unknown to me to "must digest", the same way I feel about, say, Penny-Arcade. There's at least a couple points where the two sites intersect, most notably for videogames, but also for the way they speak about videogames. Both games have a way of speaking about videogames with a clarity and obscenity that gets to the point quickly while also being savagely funny. Sadly, ZP videos take far longer to put together than a comic and newsposts. As the title suggests, Zero Punctuation doesn't have periods. That is to say, the narrator goes a kilometer (he's English, now living in the Outback) an hour and doesn't appear to release a breath between thoughts, and the animation is in the Wii style and executed with...flair, for lack of a better term.

Also, there have been no updates for a while because I have been vomiting words out of my fingers for a week or two now elsewhere, in between games of D&D, reading, studying and catnapping.

I, too am watching Baccano now, and while I'm only 15 minutes into the first episode, the only humor I've seen is a train called the Flying Pussyfoot, the happenings on which, got conveniently swept under the rug, and the opening sequence. So far, it's mafia guys shooting each other with tommy guns and beating the stuffing out of low level thugs. I was promised hilarious robberies, douchebag! Instead, I get some guy reading Poe in a bookstore and then being shot, some guy riding a train and getting shot, some guy in a liquor store and getting shot, and I think you all can tell where this is going...

Zach, you promised me heists filled with frivolity and humor! I expected inept gangsters bumbling around scheming up epic heists! I did not expect a body count of over 15 in the first episode, that is, if anyone in this series would stay dead for more than 30 seconds...