Monday, oh Monday, thou art an unwelcome punch in the face. Some quick reviews just for the hell of it: MUSIC: – AUDIOSLAVE, Out of Exile: 7.98/10 stars || awesome guitar; chris cornell remains god. – GORILLAZ, Demon Days : 7.14/10 stars || nice beats but lost some funky cheese? MOVIES: – REVENGE OF THE SITH: 5.95/10 stars || reaffirmed that papa vader is, indeed, a big raging asshole. – HAROLD & KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE: 6.23/10 stars || bonus points for the “twinkie” reference (banana, anyone?) and cameo by the patron saint of bloggers, neil patrick harris TV: – THE WEST WING SEASON 4: 8.16/10 stars || even…

If WinXP has an aneurism during re-installation and defaults to the Blue Screen of Death, with the dreaded error 000021a and the mysteriously simple descriptor: “Unknown Hard”, slap the monitor and the keyboard around a few times (I’ll give you hard, bitch!) and kick the minitower around until you smell smoke. Alternatively, insert the WinXP install CD again and set the boot order in BIOS to optical drive first, hard drive second, then reboot and try, try again. Bill Gates can be a real asshole sometimes.

I placed a down payment on a theremin yesterday. I have no idea what it will end up looking like, but this is for the best, I feel. For this particular instrument (which I have never played before BTW), not knowing how it will turn out creates a certain excitement I could never attain by simply ordering online or through a music catalog. This was only made possible by hiring an otaku to do the job. Kasama-san is a nice guy, a most skilled bassist, Taro’s business partner (they sell antique condensers, specialized mic shields, and other maniac music shit), and one of the most functional denki-otakus I have ever…

Look at what they’re finally confirming: Japan Offers by Far Fastest, Cheapest Broadband Services: OECD April 21, 2004 (PARIS) — Japanese firms are offering by far the cheapest and fastest broadband services of companies operating in 30 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), according to the first such report compiled by the international organization. The survey, which was conducted in October 2003, shows Japanese companies leading the pack with KDDI Corp, NTT East Corp. and usen Corp offering throughput of over 100Mbps with their fiber-optic networks. This really trickles my bits. My pal and I talked about this happening over three years ago, when Korea…

I wanted to take photos this weekend but I somehow managed to lose BOTH chargers for the rechargeable Li-Ion batteries. I invested in a second unit since I thought it would be nice to always have one in the car for trips. How I lost both of them is a complete mystery and makes me want to buy a whole new camera. Gadgets can be clever and evil, and conspire to either sate you only temporarily or completely consume you; toys beget toys.