Admittedly, as some of you know, I've been a NIN (Nine Inch Nails) fan for quite some time. Although never truly hardcore (not even sure how to define hardcore), I always enjoyed the mixture of weird instruments (or things that were trying to sound like instruments) and deeply felt, resonating lyrics.

I bought the album "The Downward Spiral" when I was in high school, and enjoyed it mildly. I never made it an effort to go pick up Trent Reznor's other music though. I kind of forgot about NIN for a while until I went to Australia in 1999. I borrowed a friend's CD which had 2 songs that got me turned on to 2 groups: The Perfect Drug, by NIN, and 6 Underground, by Sneaker Pimps.

When I got back, a CD was released of an upcoming single from The Fragile, which was due in late 1999. I must say I was so mightily impressed with this piece of art (even the artwork, shown below, was an indication of how unusual an album this was) that I was instantly hooked on NIN and went on to acquire the rarer tracks and other albums that I could.



Even on the logo, it's half hidden, implying that the sounds were such a major departure from NIN's earlier work. I was hoping it would be a good direction for them to go, as this album is still in my top 5 of all time favorites. The packaging, the feel, the constant melodies and flow of themes and lyrics fit so well, in a CD set that contains 20+ songs, it's hard not to be overwhelmed with what there is on the whole thing.

I even went to a concert in 2000 with some good friends and enjoyed it. The visuals and powerful songs really stood out in my mind. Read my previous post on concerts, but I think why I DON'T go to many concerts is because I want a performance. Musically, visually, emotionally. I want it to encompass me. Exampled by the image below, these concerts are pretty cool (from what I know/have heard).



So The Fragile was the first major release in 5 years. It would be another 6 before anything new came out, which was 2005's oh-so-crappy NIN album WITH_TEETH. Yeah, what?


Okay, so one thing I do like about NIN is that the art direction is very cool, I always enjoy seeing how things "evolve" and what kinds of enhancements are made to simple things like the NIN logo.

So, on this album...

Talk about maybe one or 2 good songs, nothing truly great on there. In fact, I think the best song was one that wasn't even ON the album, that I scoured the internet for (okay it took me 20 minutes). I was skeptical of buying the album at first simply because Trent had recently vocalized his political persuasion rather heavily. Extremely opposed to Bush and the Bush Administration, there were traces of his political ideas on this latest album. I was willing to look past those and try to find the voice of this album, but I simply couldn't. Political nonsense aside, this album sucked. Hardcore.

Fast forward to 2007. This Tuesday (April 17 - Tax Day!) is the latest NIN album, called Year Zero. The concept seemed interesting at first. It takes place in a Dystopian future somewhere around 2022 or something. It's about how the world basically sucks because it's run by religious "nuts" who control everything: the government, the military, and whatever else. Hmmm...is someone anti Republican?

Though the viral marketing campaign has been insane (read here), I can't help but being majorly turned off by this move. Yeah Trent we get it, you hate Bush. Join other millions of Americans. I'm not going to sit here and say that he's right (or wrong), but I hate it when someone abuses their spotlight for promoting their own agenda. I don't care what side he's on, who he likes, just shut the crap up and make music.

So with that in mind, I'm going to give this one a try. But I'm pretty certain it's going to be the last NIN album I'll buy. And maybe it's that I fell in love with an album that was unlike any other. Or maybe it's that I'm growing up and no longer feel that I need to listen to angry music that's flat out depressing. I like sad songs, sure, but NIN takes it one step further.

I still maintain that The Fragile is probably one of the coolest and best albums I've ever heard. And no matter how much I distance myself from this band (or Trent, same thing), I still believe in that. And maybe that's all that NIN will ever be to me, The Fragile.

It's weird. I've never been a huge concert goer, since the ones I've gone to have been from bands that I've really liked or wanted to support. I've only been to about 5 total I think, including: NIN, Incubus, U2, Paul Oakenfold, and I forget what else.

Starting this Thursday, the streak will be broken. Though not technically a concert, I'm going to see Jim Gaffigan in Boulder. We tried to see him last year but it didn't work out. This marks the first of my performances to be going to.



Next, in May, I plan on seeing an old favorite, Gravity Kills. The odd story behind this band is that they were a one hit wonder overnight in 1995, and had a couple of really good industrial records, but then dropped off the face of the map in 2002. They canceled their tour for their third album, which was mediocre.

Finally, in 2005 they did a reunion gig in St. Louis, and then again in 2006 for Halloween, and now they're doing it in May in Tulsa.

That's right: I'm driving to Tulsa to go see Gravity Kills. The cheapest part of the trip, ironically, will be the tickets. But for being one of my all time favorite bands, I never got the chance to see them live. Now I get to, and my great friend David Law and I are going to go see them. It will be my first real road trip with a friend which is doubly exciting.



Next, in June, I'm going to see the reunion concert of The Police. Although my mom and I are going, I'm really looking forward to this concert as well, since I grew up listening to their music. 2 reunion concerts in a row is kind of weird, but makes them that much more special. The tickets to this one though aren't nearly as cheap as Gravity Kills. Such is life though!



As the summer will be kicking off, I'm going to see a band that's rarely on tour, and even rarer to see their real faces: Daft Punk. Another weird favorite of mine since 1997's "Homework" (see attached picture below), this is going to be one wild ride. I can't imagine how many people are going to be on acid. Still though, it will be one awesome show no doubt.



So there you have it. For having been to about 4 real concerts in my entire life, this summer is going to add tremendously to my list!

So you knew it was coming...the inevitable Halo post. Now, I've been a guy who has been into plenty of shoot em ups before. A little Doom, a ton of Quake, some Kingpin. I stopped doing the shoot em ups mainly because I didn't like things like Unreal Tournament, and my computer progressively became unable to play such games.

There was a time when I still was into games but not as much. Rollercoaster Tycoon, Red Alert, and things similar. But there was a good period of about 5+ years when I honestly didn't get into the shoot em ups again. My parents worried about me because of Columbine and my desire to play games that dealt with killing people or just destruction. Understandably, they just wanted me to be healthy and happy. And I always was.

Then came the Xbox. My roommate from Regis, Ryan, had purchased one less than a couple weeks after they came out because he heard of this awesome game called Halo. He brought it back and I still wasn't too into it. In fact, I only played a handful of times simply because I would get rocked whenever I tried. I moved to Texas, and suddenly, about 18 months after Ryan bought his Xbox, I decided I wanted one too.

I went out after my 21st birthday and purchased the whole setup, and didn't buy the PS2 simply because it didn't have Halo. So I got into it that summer and played it for hours, and tried to have people over frequently to play it. Inevitably, Halo 2 came out when I was back in Colorado. The biggest factor was that it now enabled the Live service to play multiplayer over Xbox Live.

Of course that prompted us to connect both of our Xbox's at our apartment at the time in Boulder, and eventually would prompt me to Buy the Xbox 360 (with Adam's help, though I paid him back for it).

I can't tell you how many countless games have been played and have been an absolute blast with. There are moments that you just get rocked, and other moments you just rock. And some great kills that make you wish you could show everyone.

By far, the pic below indicates probably one of the best games I've ever played, back in August. I've had a few since then where I've gotten 42 or 43 kills (out of a 100 kill game, 8 players per team), but this was a milestone.


I was playing under the tag "COOKIEMONSTERS." The Ninja Noodles guy (4 players) left right after the game started...so it was 7 on 3.

Another cool thing is that combined, the 2 Xbox's at our apartment have logged nearly EIGHT THOUSAND games. Wow, that's a lot of time. One great thing is the ability to view the stats for these games online, via Bungie.net.

This is for my "gamertag" (your unique user ID on Xbox Live) "A DOPPELGANGER."
My Gamertag

It's pretty sweet I think. Also, you can view the Xbox 360 games I've played and such. It's a pretty cool system I think.

Anyway, Halo 3 is just around the corner. I've received word that I'm in on the public beta which I think is only a few weeks away. A test of 3 or so levels of Halo 3, I simply can't wait. It'll be even better to have Halo 3 on my shelf, as I'm sure it won't leave the Xbox for months.

Well, most of the projects page is now up and running. It's funny that some of those servers are running, when one clearly hasn't been updated in like 7 years. Not bad. It's weird to see some of that stuff though, coding that took hours (and still does) and how cool it was back then to have a site. The Strange Prange films one was when I had planned on going into the film business, but as you can see, most of the content contained on it is my writing.

Most of the content contained on the projects page is writing projects or has a lot to do with writings that I've done. I'm starting to see a pattern...I plan on getting the main part of the site up soon, but that's more coding and such that probably won't happen for another week or so. I kind of hope the blog will be viewed more than any other part of my site, but we'll see.

I will be updating some of the stuff from The Dig and The Thing that may be of interest to people who followed those, or perhaps not. One thing I was able to grab from The Dig were pictures and captions taken for the CD-Rom that I had compiled the end of my freshman year at Regis.

Anyway, on Friday I had a major accomplishment, I finished Ibuprofen from an entire bottle. The amazing part though is evidenced in the pic below:


That's right: the pills expired in 1998. That's like 9 years ago. It's a bottle from CostCo, so no wonder it took me forever to "finish it."

I haven't really posted about this either, but another part of my nerdy side came out about 2 months ago, as I picked up a brand new Dell computer. Why, you might ask? My "old" one (18 months) was short on memory, and I wanted to have Vista. I tried it for several months earlier in 2006 and liked it very much. So I bought this beauty, and side by side, this is what they looked like:


I didn't expect it to be bigger, but it has about 4 times the power the old one did. So far, so good. Only a few issues have cropped up with Vista but nothing too horrible or anything. Best Windows version yet, for sure. And I like that I can stream movies and music to my Xbox 360 (though no DivX yet - I'm having issues trying to figure that one out).

Anyway, enough rambling. I need to get up early, but I will making posting on here a normal thing.

Ahh the power of having a blog on a personal website.

So it may look like I've spent a lot of time creating this site so far, but that would be a lie. I've spent maybe a good hour or two tweaking things here and there, graphic work and server stuff. I must admit I like having my own domain again, especially since Batpad.net has been down for several months.

Of course, Facebook and MySpace exist and have some good ways to reach the masses with blogging, but I much prefer this, where I can edit it to my choosing and such.

So it's officially April Fool's Day. I've never been such a fan of the holiday, but admittedly haven't tried to prank anyone with it in years.

I'm going to the Denver Auto Show tomorrow with a bunch of friends and my brother-in-law. It will be a good time, mainly since I haven't gone in 6 years, that and it should be fun to go with a bunch of people I know.

Did anyone see this?
Chocolate Jesus exhibit cancelled

That's just crazy. People never cease to amaze me.

I'm currently reading a biography on Teddy Roosevelt. I've never been too much into books like this (historical accuracy tends to bore me - unless it's about technology or cars or something), but after reading about his expedition to the Amazon, I became intrigued by the man himself. His adventure hits home with my time in the Amazon as well, just because I know how scary some of that stuff probably was to experience. And I wasn't (too) near any danger.

Anyway, I'm planning on regularly updating this thing, thanks Kevin for the heads up on the blogging software!