Random Wrecks

I use the word random because it describes the nature of this post which covers a series of events that are in no way related. But that's how life is sometimes, and that's also David Lynch's excuse for some of the things that happen in his movies. I don't find the excuse any more than an excuse, but he does have a point in that randomness plays an important role in life and adjusting to that randomness without trying to find meaning in everything is actually somewhat worthwhile.

You know, I've found that the most difficult part about blogging is not finding something to write about. There's enough going on out there to fill an unlimited number of blogs, and although I only have one piece of that pie, I could personally fill hundreds. What I run into is lacking the time to write these things out. While filling a hundreds blogs would be easy, writing them would take hours upon hours that I flat don't have, so I have to be satisfied with my meager entries when I have time to write them. And let's face it, who has time to read all that drivvel if you put it out there all at once? So I will endeavor to put out my personal drivvel more frequently to the tune of going for once a day...we'll see if I achieve that.

Our top story involves Rock Girl, who was progressing very well on Guitar Hero III, but now will be no longer jamming on the game because she jammed her finger on a log creating a nice, deep, nasty bruise. Painful to the touch, this bruise caused concern for The Queen, who had the school nurse have a look. The nurse suggested we take her into the doctor to have it looked at, since it hurt bad and looked bad, too.

Well, Rock Girl loves school, so unlike every other kid in the world, she was put out for having to leave it to go to the doctor. X-rays were done and no fractures were found, so she was good to go, but with the provision she not use it. Well, it's the third finger of her left hand, so that means no Guitar Hero or regular guitar until it heals up a bit.

The amusing part of the whole bit, as the Queen relayed it to me, was the girl way of answering a simple question. If you ask a guy, "What happened to your finger?", he'll say, "I jammed it on a log."

If you ask a girl the same question, you'll get, "Well, we were staying at home while mommy ran out to pick up a friend of hers and get daddy from work, and Engineer came over to watch us for a while and I was hoping we could play the Wii for awhile, but since it was kind of nice outside and I like to play outside, we all went outside to play for awhile, and my sisters were putting stuff in the tree, as usual, and it really makes me crazy sometimes because they get stuff stuck up there, and than I have to be the one to get it down and they really shouldn't put it up that high anyway, so I thought I would ask for a snack in a minute because I was really hungry but I knew I had to wait for dinner because we were so close and I really wanted to see if I could build a teepee with the logs in the backyard and that's when I hurt my finger on a log." Granted, I made half that up, but that's the gist of what they were doing.

A couple weeks ago, I'd gotten the movie Jeepers Creepers from Blockbuster as a freebie for returning my online movie. I did what any geek would do...rip it onto my iPod and return the disc so I could watch it without worrying about being late. It's long since deleted, and it sucked too, but strangely, the other day, we got a call from Blockbuster saying the movie had not yet been returned. Well, we knew it had been, so we asked about it the next time we were in, and they said we had nothing out. No problem, right?

Well, not exactly. I checked our account yesterday and found a $10 plus tax charge on it from Blockbuster. So, last night we went back into the store (swapped Exorcist: The Beginning for Die Hard 2), and asked about it again. Again, nothing. I pressed, so the manager there (who just happened to be the person helping me) checked the history of my account and sure enough, there was the charge for Jeepers Creepers. She went out into the store and found the movie, so she checked it in and refunded the charges.

But the story as to why it happened was the best. Apparently, I'm not the only person to have this problem recently. They had a guy working there who wasn't checking in any ovies at all, but just putting the lock in them and placing them out on the shelf. I guess one thing lead to another, and he was actually fired the previous day. Not willing to go down quietly, he raised a huge ruckus in the store, and they had to call the police to escort him out. The moral is that we'll forgive them this little infraction.

On another side of life, Optimus Prime's wife was in a car accident a couple days ago, which worried us since they're trying to buy a house at the moment, and with house buyting, you're supposed to freeze your credit spending until it's all over (which in most cases, is no big issue). Well, they finally got everything worked out and will be fine with the house deal since they're looking at using the potential payoff of the old vehicle (which is currently believed to be totaled since the airbags deployed) to buy another one to minimize the needed cost to get it.

In the meantime, they have this rental that exemplifies the car industry at the moment. First, it has a ridiculous name that is supposed to inspire the ooh's and aah's: Caliber. You know, the unit of measurement commonly used to measure gun barrels. Naturally, it has a series of letters after the name: SXT. I'm sure they mean something. It has an array of killer features such as the illuminated cup holders, cell phone holder (for old style bar phones like the Nokia 5100 series from 2001), and 1/8" Auxiliary in jack on the radio (ok, I wish I had one of those, but anyway). Now, a couple of cool features had to be the Sirius Satellite Radio and built-in power inverter on the center console.

The most amusing part, though, was the listing of the color of the car. I've gone over colors before, and car color schemes have always ranked as downright silly. I'm sure all the little words are very, very important, but this car is inferno red crystal pearl. Optimus and I stood and looked at it, and said "It's red."

My final bit of amusement for the moment (and my apologies that these are more musings than the story of the Geek and the Queen) is on the game Guitar Hero III. The piece de resistance of the game is the song Through the Fire and Flames by the group DragonForce (listen to it and watch the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3H4liC2sWg). DragonForce's music consists of relentless guitar riffs at breakneck speed to the point that you wonder if you can get soem of the stuff these guys are on to survive your day (you'll understand after you see even a small piece of the video -- check the solo section though in the middle -- it's a trip). Anyway, Guitar Hero has always had these little smart alek remarks related to the rock genre between levels such as "It's probably not a good idea to tackle your lead singer," "No one wants to pay money to hear you jam," "I think there's something wrong with your bass amp -- I can hear it," and my personal favorite, "Can I get a little less suck out of the monitors?"

Well, the level differentiation on Guitar Hero takes you from easy, which only uses three buttons and a minimal number of notes, to expert, which uses all five buttons and contains every single note in the guitar part of the song (and yes, I can play songs on expert, though I am working to master medium). The very thought of playing the DragonForce song on expert is enough to spin your head, but I thought I'd see how crazy it was. Yeah, I didn't get past two bars before the song failed at 1% (I suspect it was rounded up), but the best part was the comment it made before the song began. Clearly, this one wasn't randomized as this post is since it came up both times I tried to the song. It said so much in only a few words and you wait for the craziest song in the game to load.

The game just tells you: "Good luck."

P.S. I found this also in YouTube. It's someone achieving 5 stars on the song in GH3. It's a trip just to watch. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4M7f4-bhbE