Dan Dickinson: The Primary Vivid Weblog

1. Are you going to school this year? No. 2. If yes, where are you going (high school, college, etc.)? If no, when did you graduate? I graduated from Cornell in 2002. 3. What are/were your favorite school subjects? Anything computer related and functional, media analysis, and wine tasting. 4. What are/were your least favorite school subjects? Physics, theory based computing courses, and I had a really hellish Anthropology course. 5. Have you ever had a favorite teacher? Why was he/she a favorite? I can’t honestly say there was one teacher that stood out far beyond all the others. Plenty were good, a handful were great, but there’s no one teacher that was better than all the rest.

As usual, I didn’t watch the MTV Video Music Awards. Nor will I watch the 1,244,281,729 back-to-back repeats of it. I mean, what a huge shock that The Song That You Never Saw The Video Of That Covered The Other Song You Never Saw The Video Of didn’t win. I fully expect They Might Be Giants to be nominated next year and everyone to think that’s totally legitimate. You see, They Might Be Giants do indeed rock, and they certainly make good videos, but if you ever see someone at MTV tell you that, they are high. Katie turned it on for about fifteen seconds, and I saw Kelly Osbourne giving Duran Duran a Lifetime Achievement Award. Someone at MTV obviously has a good sense of irony. In any case, there is one positive thing to come out of all of this. Due to a poorly executed attempt to be “shocking” and “hip” by Britney Spears, Katie has finally hit her breaking point and has purged everything Britney from the house. All MP3s, gone. Bookmarks, gone. Stages book, gone. Britney’s Dance Beat, actually we sold that back a couple days ago. I can’t stop crying. Buckets of tears. OF RELIEF.

I am blogging this live from the New York State Fair. Katie is enjoying her Pucker Snow Cone. We passed by a booth in the Verizon Hall Of Technology that was for Alcoholics Anonymous. No one was there. I don’t think we’ve ever laughed that hard. The rides are pretty terrible. The DDR machine is okay. The food is expensive. My feet hurt. Katie wants me to add that she is drunk. More news later. Oh yeah, don’t forget to check out Y31, where Jared has put into effect his PHASE CHANGE.

I’ve long believed that the art of being able to stomach a bad album is truly an art form. It takes strong will power, a steady nerve, and grapefruits the size of bowling balls. Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to listening to Toshiba EMI of Japan’s Dancemania series. With a cult following in the US thanks to Dance Dance Revolution, the series has rapidly gone to shit over the past year with ridiculous covers, generic trance, and an occasional gem. The recent release of Dancemania EX 4 was greated with groans, and one semi-resounding question – “when is Remy going to review this pile of crap?” Today is the day, my friends. I have overcome a hard crash which killed 5 of the individual song reviews. I resisted the temptation to play GBA (just got Pokemon Pinball Ruby / Sapphire!), watch DVDs (Mr. Show Season 3!), or read (Al Franken’s new book). Yes, I have put it all aside to listen to this album which will likely just make me wonder what the hell I was thinking.

Crystal just let me know that Yahoo has RSS feeds for their news as of today. Woohoo!

I will be appearing tonight on MacRadio.com’s The Gamesome Mac. I’m also on MacGamer’s Gamer’s Den this week talking about games I like and things of that nature.

Not being late, this time. [friday five] 1. When was the last time you laughed? Earlier today I had a serious chuckle over an excerpt from Al Franken’s new book, which is getting an early release and should be widely available tomorrow. 2. Who was the last person you had an argument with? A certain asshat online by the name of Loopuze. 3. Who was the last person you emailed? Pat Miller from MacGamer, regarding an interview with me for Gamer’s Den which should be up in the near future. 4. When was the last time you bathed? Around noon, Thursday. 13 hours ago as of press time. 5. What was the last thing you ate? Grilled cheese sandwich with tomato.

I really should start a new category for these. Was in Hollywood Video near our house today. While we were browsing the DVDs, I heard what sounded like guitar strumming. I look over, and the following people – all around 18 years old – were standing in a circle, talking: Guy, wearing a poncho and a few scarves, holding a guitar. Girl, wearing a black trash bag and an orange hunters cap. Guy, wearing what appeared to be an apron and what I can only think to describe as a slightly feminine hat. Girl, wearing a neon green soccer jersey and a neon green cat-in-the-hat sized hat. The details are a little blurry at the moment, as I was also grappling with trying to get a free rental because the copy of Wasabi we had rented was scratched enough to skip over 2 chapters worth of plot. (Movie was surprisingly good and I recommend you rent it, and not just because Jean Reno plays DDR in it.) Regardless: who the fuck are these people, and what are they doing in my town?

Ugh, so that wasn’t fun today. It started innocuously enough; I wanted to add calls in my blog for Instant Gratification, an extremely nice service that will IM you when someone hits your blog. I don’t actually get hit logs, so I have to try and quantify my traffic in other ways. However, when I tried to add it to my Individual Archives, MT started throwing errors like there was no tomorrow. It eventually tracked down to a database fuck up, which I was able to resolve myself, but I lost my archive template. So things are looking a little different temporarily. Hopefully I can get it resolved soon.

Edited for legibility: <IguanaGrrl> change that goofy thinking <IguanaGrrl> :P <Phrekwenci> goofy? <rampage> DID SOMEONE SAY GOOFY? <IguanaGrrl> GOOFY <rampage> FOREVER LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU (something in korean) FOREVER LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU (more stuff in korean) <Remy> ADAM <Remy> YOU SUNG SUK <rampage> SHOCK <rampage> BU DAM YOU REMY <Remy> WA