I apologize for the lack of updates recently, but a whirlwind trip to San Diego and my transition to the State Department have been keeping my pretty busy. I should have everything straightened out soon.
I did upload some shots from my vacation though. I'm particularly proud of this picture of a tiny sand crab. Macro photography hasn't been easy for me.
I will also have a review for The Kingdom up soon (my girlfriend and I stumbled into a sneak preview last weekend somehow).
In the meantime, here is a music video for the Japanese metal band The Hizaki Grace Project. Hizaki is the blond chick in the red dress totalling shredding on lead guitar in their first hit, "Philosopher."
I am back from the Outer Banks. It was a pretty good trip and I only had to work about 12 hours the entire week. I will be posting some pictures that I took using my new camera on my Flickr site today.
I returned to DC to discover that my interim clearance has finally come in at the State Department. I am supposed to start orientation on Monday, but I will be San Diego that day on Army business. So that's going to be a bit of a mess.
In the meantime, I point my readers to two things I stumbled across on vacation. First is this Get Your War On strip from late July:
Sure, sometimes Get Your War On is a little whinny, but sometimes it hits comic gold, such as the above strip. Second, here is a video of guys playing with their home made flamethrower and other such nonsense:
I will have pictures uploaded and movie reviews posted later today. I will do all of that when I get back from San Diego. Sorry about being such a tease.
There is something deeply ironic about this short video clip. I'm glad to see that at least some of our troops are getting along with the Iraqi military well enough to horse around.
I keep getting the same question from my Japanese readers: REさん、日本の音楽の中で、どれが一番好きですか？(Mr. RE, what is your favorite type of Japanese music?) Do listen to a fair amount of Japanese rap nowadays, but my favorite genre will always be Japanese metal.
Like most American aficionados of Japanese metal, my first exposure was X Japan'sBlue Blood album. X Japan was a quintessential band for many reasons -- they dressed like the ill-gotten children of a one-night stand between Guns and Roses and Culture Club, their frontman hide met with a very Michael Hutchence end, their sound was very reminiscent of speed metal classics, such as Ace of Spades and Kill 'Em All.
During the heady days of Napster, when peer-to-peer sharing was really hitting its stride, I was able to sample a large portion of the Japanese metal genre. I also spent a summer in undergrad in the Kansai area, which afford me the opportunity to go to a bunch of concerts for relatively cheap (Japanese bands love to see Western fans in the audience). I would have to say my favorite band out of the genre is the now defunct speed metal group Sex Machineguns (yes, the name is a play on the Sex Pistols).
Their music videos are particularly interesting, check out this video for the 1997 hit "Burn":
And before I get a handful of quizzical e-mails asking about the guys in black jumpsuits running on treadmills and pounding mochi, I don't get it either. They show up on some of their other videos as well.
Update: I would be completely remiss if I didn't mention SEIKIMA II and their groundbreaking 1987 music video for "1999 Secret Object."
These guys are probably the most hardcore of any Japanese metal band. Like KISS, their make-up remained relatively unchanged for two decades. They also made good on their promised to break-up on December 31, 1999 and have stayed disbanded for 7 years despite popular pressure to reunite.
I can't wait for Ben Pluimer's studio to dramatize the New Look. I hope it involves zombies, Russian terrorists, and some sort of genetically-engineered doomsday virus.
Two technical points: Early on in the first clip, the narrator mentions 'BLEVEs' (pronounce "blevies"), which is an acronym that stands for boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion. This 1973 disaster in Kingman, Arizona1978 disaster in Texas City, Texas is what a "worst case scenario" terrorist attack on a LNG terminal would probably look like.[ed. - It is actually the 1978 Texas City BLEVE. I always mix the two up, my bad.]
From the second clip, ammonium perchlorate is the oxidizer used in solid rocket fuel in U.S. rockets, including NASA's solid rocket boosters and later-generation strategic missiles (the Minuteman and Peacekeeper). The largest explosion from the PEPCON fire was an air burst equivalent to about 250 tons of TNT or as this DOD Explosives Safety Boardreport suggests, the same effect as a 1-kiloton nuclear air burst. Just to give you an idea of how powerful that explosion was, this U.S. Fire Administrationreport mentions that at seven miles out the explosions cracked glass and blew open doors at Las Vegas's main airport and even buffeted a landing 737.
I'm wrapping up some final papers for class today, but I wanted to point out some choice videos. First is a sketch from the first season of A Bit of Fry and Laurie entitled "Light Metal":
I'm going to pull back with my right hand and get that front wheel off the ground indeed. Second is a new piece from this week's Acceptable.TV entitled "Drunk Home Makeover." I don't think alcoholism is funny, but I hate those home makeover shows and I bet Dan Harmon had fun smashing that living room set:
