Well…. I’m thoroughly bored, I’ve virtually finished all my PS2 games (NFS:Carbon I got to 98% when it corrupted my save, and I’m almost back) so I’m going to write some longer pieces again. Back in the day these pieces were called ChaotiColumn and ran on their own site (and the SL website). These new pieces (name TBD) will just be posted here; unless a real publication wants them.

Of course, the subject matter will be a little different from before…. although I’ll be starting with a series on the 7 deadly sins….

“I have to say that in all my years of attending Church, I never found most Christian women to my liking. I considered most of them to be romantically-repressed prudes who felt that having romantic feelings for a man other than Jesus himself was blasphemy!”

From here, not that I entirely agree, for it was always my view that there were 2 kinds of christian girls; those from the quote (like [name deleted]), and those who were just as lustfully driven as the heathens, but were in denial (like [name deleted]).

“You are full of hate and loathing and I gotta tell you, I love it!”

Caught somewhere between my fears and dreams
And all I have are demons here for company

Come and look inside, hope you like what you see
And if you run and hide, you’re scared of what is me
Bind my idle hands, they only claw at me
Drown in emptyness, my soul is left to bleed.

I was watching “Down in the Valley” today, a nice indie flick with Edward Norton as a “cowboy”. Of course he’s actually a delusional psycho, but it got me thinking; why is it that I always identify with the crazy movie characters?

• Kissing Hank’s Ass – a good satirical interpretation of the standard evangelical gospel presentation
• Mr Deity – Short satirical videos also based on “Gods truth”, but more general in nature.

So…. there is this section in my music collection that I’ve been doing some thinking about especially in light of my last post (and in light of that earlier post). The thinking has been on whether I should excommunicate those CDs whose content is religious. I’m torn, on the one hand I no longer believe that singing “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” is of any use in a metaphysical sense; but on the other some of those songs are good.

I think I’ll be treating them like I treated the blasphemous metal while I was sincerely deluded: I’ll still listen, but only on the odd occasion when the mood strikes.

I might set fire to my Hillsong stuff though, seeing that it has no redeeming musical value whatsoever.

Well not really, this was a thread from a webforum I frequent. I decided to go all esoteric and avoid the “big names”, instead I dived into the obscure and picked what is probably more my topen 10 albums from artists people have never heard of.

1. Dream Theater – Metropolis Pt 2: Scenes From A Memory The best album, by the most technically talented band, but any of their stuff is good.

2. King’s X – Dogman Another band where any album could be chosen, I almost went with Gretchen Goes to Nebraska but this has a better tone (both lyrically and the guitar)

3. P.O.D. – The Fundamental Elements of Southtown Rap-metal, but with a San Diego vibe, they changed as they went on but this had a great groove

4. Apocalyptica – Inquistion Symphony Metal on Cellos. ’nuff said

5. Nitocris – Nitocris Aussie Grrl Rock. This is one of the few Australian acts in my collection.

6. Anthrax – The Greater of Two Evils Its just like a best of album, but with the new singer singing the old songs. Which works because the vocal styles are so different.

7. Corrosion of Conformity – Wiseblood I saw these guys when they supported Pantera, they rocked – Southern Groove, Hardcore energy.

8. Vivaldi – The Four Seasons Everyone should have some Baroque.

9. Kittie – Until the End These lovely ladies somehow broke during the numetal phase, but they had no nu. Plus they are canadian metal….

10. Devin Townsend – Ocean Machine: Biomech More canadian metal, but from my favorite manic depressive. His solo stuff is more depressive, while his Strapping Young Lad stuff would be the manic. All of it is good.

I’ve been thinking that I wasted a goodly block of time at uni, and not just in the way people think since I wasn’t the most dedicated student around (or asquare). I enrolled at uni doing a BCompSci, and graduated with a BA(Computing); which is a degree of unmatched uselessness. The reasons for such a degree change are manifold, but it seems that it is mostly Gods* fault.

Firstly, if someone had kept track of my attendance in class, and the time devoted to various assessment tasks it would be easy enough to show that such metrics had a marked decline after I converted. It basically boils down to the idea that I had “better” things to do than attend my Algorithm Theory and Design lectures (or the like). The “better” things were of course saving souls, snatching people from the clutches of Satan thru my gospel work (aside: as far as I know this work was futile and none were saved, thank science)

Secondly, since I was aiming to be a great Christian preacher or some such, I only ever paid attention (or turned up, or put in effort) in subjects that would help this end, like Ancient Greek, Early Christian Literature and Thought, and the various Music subjects. Which in turn skewed my degree to such a point that they only way to graduate was to transfer to the dreaded arts degree.

So, because of God I wasted my time at uni getting a useless degree – and to top it all off I missed out on all the fun stuff that people who graduate with useless degrees normally get to do :-(

Although the fact that many people are now wasting their time praying that I turn from my unbelief is a small comfort.

* Not that I believe in such fairy tales anymore, but the God Delusion was the root cause – and its also a good book to read

I watched the whole quicktime stream….

1. iTV – useless in oz (since we can’t buy TV or movies), just an un-portable iPod. No tuner, no recording, no dvd….
2. iPhone – everything I don’t want in a phone, to the iXtreme. I want a phone that just makes calls and does sms. Nothing else. The widescreen video iPod stuff is nice, but I like my devices to be separate. Plus it won’t play my high bitrate ogg vorbis music. Plus it isn’t 3G. Plus it’ll get scratched to death like every other 1st gen apple product.