I found what seems to be the perfect lady on Tinder the other day. I gotta say: it's nice not having a fucking parasite draining my time, money, and energy this time around.

So the website where I host my reviews is getting all sorts of crazy changes coming, so now I gotta go through all 130+ of them to make sure they don't turn into liquid shit when these changes go through. Ugggghhhhh...

I ordered a new harness and husher for the dog, and FedEx shipped it not to my house, but to the Swiss Chalet. Going there to pick it up defeats the convenience of online shopping; so I was irritated at first but then I ate some chicken.

Swiss Chalet sauce is an abomination which should be wiped from the face of the earth.

I'm still waiting for a Katatonia CD to arrive from Amazon that the post office saw fit to deliver to North Dakota for no reason.

I'm actually considering moving to work full-time on music. Been thinking about doing vocals for whatever Swedish-style death metal band I can find. I've just been procrastinating because going through Craigslist postings is a tedious process.

You know that death metal bands don't make money, right?

Yeah, but I have experience in both landscaping and the restaurant industry. I can make money in other ways.

Go for it! Do you have a band?

Not yet, haha. I just contacted a Facebook page for the Cleveland metal scene and they said they would help me spread the word.

Well, good luck! Hope you can make it work for you.

Thanks, man. I appreciate it.

If you’re working other jobs, by definition you’re not “full time” you know.

That would seem to defeat the idea of "full time" music, though. One of my friends is in a band (Oak Pantheon, and they're on here), and they're easily the most talented and impressive Metal band I've heard from the Twin Cities area. Despite a perfect review on, I think, their debut album (don't remember where from, want to say Metal Hammer), they still have to work regular jobs. I know this because I met him when we both worked at GameStop well after he released his first.

Best of luck, though, man. Sometimes you have to just take the lead on that shit yourself.

I recall an old interview with Nergal from Behemoth in which he said that the first album that sold so well they were able to do music as a full-time job was "Demigod", which was released 13 years into their career. And it's not like they were unknowns before that album. That gave me the perspective on "pro metal musicians" that I still have today. They're very rare and if you're into metal, you probably heard of them

Overnight success is the hardest decade of your life.

and now with streaming, it's basically fucked the internal market. stop pirating music you fuckin cucks and pay artists for their shit.

I've just had a lot of musical inspiration, lately, and I want nothing more than to get back into playing guitar. It's been almost four years since I sold all of my gear and I deeply regret it. I technically got into a band with one of the old bassists for Nunslaughter, but I wasn't able to make the drive up to CLE every week to practice, so I had to decline

But yeah, I know it's very difficult to make any money playing in a metal band. I just need something constructive to do with my spare time.

It is saltier than a skinny-dipper in the Dead Sea.

This is something Wally from Dilbert would say.

Got news yesterday from a close friend that one of his closest friends passed in a fire. Very sad.

Then I made the mistake of finding a news report of this fire on YouTube and reading the comments. Nothing but disgusting, angry, lowlife far-right transphobic bullshit. ALL of it.

People are fucking terrible, sometimes.

You knew someone who knew Kate?

I'm rather surprised to see that come up on this forum (it's been making the rounds on various Doom websites all day).

Yeah, one of my longest-running friends I met from the Doom community was very close with Kate. Very unfortunate thing to have happened. I really couldn't believe it at first. Regretting having seen the comments I did today, but I guess shitty people will be shitty. Their life is of no value.

Don't listen to me or anyone else that tries to guide you in whatever direction they think is right for you. Get into your music. If you have to work in landscaping to scrape together some dollars, do it. Follow your dreams. Life is shit no matter how you slice it so go do literally whatever you want.

How did Quorthon manage to have such an (almost) perfect English accent?

by being exposed to british english, obviously. just guessing here, he was probably taught received pronunciation at school and exposed to lots of british music, movies etc.

I take it the person was trans?

On a related note based on that assumption, one of my best friends, who is trans (we work in the same office and team) was pulled into a meeting yesterday for their transness, which sounded awful on the surface. Turned out, it was with HR and they wanted to make sure they were properly looking out for them, and noted that the company updated their insurance policies last year so that they can cover their transition surgeries. Which is good, because they weren't looking forward to paying for that top surgery out of pocket.

So I recorded a vocal cover of Arch Enemy's "Dark Insanity" today. The quality is shit because I'm using a Chromebook and I had to download some third-party app to record videos, but you'll get the idea:

I really need to hear it with the instrumentals on the same level as the vocals to know if it's any good. Those kind of vocals sound a bit silly on their own, no matter if they're good or bad.

Yeah, I definitely need to upgrade my set-up for next time. I didn't have much time to record today, so it came out a bit half-assed.

I am so happy the Steamed Hams clip has become a meme on YouTube, because it has given us gems like this.

Merry Christmas everyone. Going to the old folks to visit graveyard and eat well. Play Motörhead, No Presents for Christmas, and Black X-mas.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas. It's already the 26th here and mine was alright, so merry Christmas to everyone here.

Should be good on my end. Just left work and the family agreed to wait for me to open gifts.

Best Buy around my way has Ghibli blu-rays for $13. You might wanna check.

My girl and I snagged:

My Neighbor Totoro
Nausicaa
Up on Poppy Hill
Castle in the Sky
Kikis Delivery Service

I haven't seen any of them. So stoked.

Oh wow that's a good deal! Usually those are pretty pricey. I own Princess Mononoke and so far that's my favorite of his films that I've seen.

Of those you listed, I've only seen Nausicaa and Kiki's Delivery Service. Nausicaa is pretty good though it felt like an early/unpolished version of Mononoke. Still worth watching and for that price, buying.

Amazing!

Nausicaä is probably my favourite movie of all-time. I'd save it for last. It's just so, so good in every way. <3

The Castle in the Sky sub was really bad last I saw it though... Disney took several liberties in the translation.

Example of a really terrible one: (very vague, mild spoilers)



Fuck Disney.

All of those movies are masterclass, Jonpo! But that's coming from a really big Ghibli fan. Just recently gave Kiki's and Castle in the Sky a rewatch since my girlfriend hadn't seen them. Obviously check out/buy Spirited Away if you haven't seen that one.

If I remember correctly, the subs are just the Disney dub as sub overall so you will listen to the Japanese but just get the subs for the dub.

But yeah, imo for a lot of the Ghibli movies I sort of prefer the streamline dubs which was during like the late 80's/early 90s? It's been a while since I've seen then but I remember enjoying those more than the Disney dubs (they only did Castle in the Sky, Totoro and Kiki. Okay so not really " a lot" more like "a few")

Imo, Castle in the Sky doesn't hold up (at all to me) but it is still a good watch.

Shush you. Shoddy translation aside Castle in the Sky is the second best Miyazaki film! It is known.