An anagram of “The First Menomena Album”, “I Am The Fun Blame Monster”, 6 years later, is still an amazingly enjoyable album which I have yet to tire of no matter how often I listen to it. Menomena’s smooth, calculated, almost jazzy style of indie rock, full of slowly building tunes with soft lyrics throughout (until bursting at the seams in the finale of the ninth track “Monkey’s Back”), and the faintest hint of an electronica influence. Two albums which I somehow have yet to acquire have followed, but they’re on my list.
24/04/2009
[...consumed anew #93] I Am The Fun Blame Monster
04/04/2009
[...learned #93] kijiji/clisting
I’ve only once tried to sell something on Craigslist, and I’ve was brought to Kijiji about four months ago when the Boston Terrier rescue showed me that there were dogs on there. We have four extra appliances really taking up a tremendous amount of space in the basement which we’ve been meaning to dispose of for extra cash (if we can buy a barbecue from the earnings we’ll be happy). So today I finally got around to posting them on Kijiji and Craigslist. It’s surprisingly easy to do both, I guess as it should be.
“Kijiji” is swahili for “village”
Offered:
Hotpoint Washer and Dryer - $160 for the set
GE Spacemaker portable washer - $200
GE Nautilus portable dishwasher - $150
03/04/2009
[...i ate #93] leek and potato soup
from our cafe at work.
It was not very good.
The soup there generally isn’t.
My chicken club, though, was excellent (see “i ate #23″)
[...consumed all new #93] Legends of the Dark Knight #6 - 10
Grant Morrison’s 1989 story “Gothic” was one of his first published Batman works, and a blazing work of mediocrity from the then young writer. Trying his had at a “world’s greatest detective” story, Morrison introduces a new bad guy, Mr. Whisper, to Gotham. The story finds mafia dons taken down in extravagant ways by Whisper, enacting revenge for their attempt to murder him 20 years earlier. The remaining mafioso set up their own Batsignal in a desperate bid to enlist Batman’s help. Though he doesn’t agree, Batman’s curiosity gets him involved, especially when he realizes that Whisper has a connection to his own childhood. A trip to a monastery in Austria reveals Whisper’s origin, and perhaps the clue to stopping him.
It’s a fairly adventurous story, with obvious multiple points of approach. There’s a mystery, a ghost story, a thriller, a crime story, and dramatic horror, but it’s too much. The connection to Bruce Wayne’s past was overkill, and felt especially shoehorned in when it’s related back to the fatal shooting of Bruce’s parents. The origin story of Manfred Whisper as well is a dry slog, which I had to read over three times because my mind kept wandering. The more fantastical elements feel just as out of place as the young-Bruce connection, and Whisper doesn’t come across as a very well-constructed character.
The end of the fourth chapter finds Batman caught by Whisper (who managed to, somehow, instantly figure out he was Bruce Wayne) and strapped to an outrageously Rube Goldbergian death trap. The next chapter opens with a nicely illustrated payoff, but at the same time, as death traps so often are, the logic behind it is mind numbingly brutal.
Klaus Janson’s art, perhaps more than anything story wise, is the book’s biggest downfall. My own personal prejudice finds me instantly disappointed with whatever Janson does. His figure drawing is atrocious and his sense of movement in-panel and across panels is brutal. He does have a decent sense of architecture, and his execution of the death trap in motion was well orchestrated, but it can’t make up for the overwhelmingly ugly work that pervades. Ultimately “Gothic” features some interesting elements but fails, especially by Morrison’s standards, in executing them in a satisfactory manner.
[...about me #93] computers
The first family computer was a Commodore 128.
We had that sucker for about a decade before we moved onto a Windows 3.1 system when I was in grade 10 or so.
I don’t remember when we moved on to Windows 95 (probably in ‘96 or ‘97) after which the next computer was the one I went into debt to get whilst living in Barrie. It was a piece of crap Win’98 machine which got left behind with the ex when I returned to Thunder Bay.
Dad hadn’t upgraded to Windows ‘98 when I returned home, and the internet, dial-up, was challenging, given the height of Napster in those days. Dad’s since changed his machine at least twice in the past 10 years and has upgraded to ‘98 while also negotiating a split Linux install from time to time.
When I moved to T.O. in 2001, I bought a P3 which lasted me until, oh, last year or so. I ran Win2K and it was a solid machine with a solid foundation. It had problems with USB connections (it would reboot whenever you plugged one in) and it wasn’t capable of handling many modern games (but I’m not much of a gamer) so it did what I needed it to do and did it well for a long time. I had to replace its power supply with one from my brother in law’s dead machine, but I learned then the ins and outs of putting a machine together (somewhat at least).
Toasty built me a new machine out of scraps of his old ones last year, running XP, and it was a drastic improvement over my old workhorse. I’ve not used it much since receiving it, because it was stored in the basement at the old place and hasn’t been set up yet in the new. Aden’s had an iMac for a few years now, and laptops, especially Macs, sure are handy and easy to use. I need to get a TV-out card for my new desktop so I can plug it into the main TV and watch internet content on the big screen, but there are more pressing matters to attend to.
At this stage I use computers for internet, word processing and spreadsheets. Aden handles most of the picture management, and I’ve all but forgotten about my iPod/iTunes.