The Stuff

Some miners find a weird white goo seeping out of the ground and their first instinct is to... taste it?? Anyway, it's apparently delicious and they get rich selling it. Too bad it's also addictive (hey, so is ice cream!) and also mind-controls you (hey, so does ice cream!). It's a pretty fun horror comedy if you ask me which you did not. PS - I can't believe I only just saw it for the first time!

RATING: 77%

A Month of Boring Things - Day Twenty-Four: Ramen

Ramen noodles are pretty much depressing. They're cheap and easy to prepare. You can give them to children for lunch because, whatever, they're children--what are they gonna do about it? College kids like them because college kids are lazy and don't know shit. I swore I'd never eat them again after I graduated. But I just had some. Which means I'm pretty much a failure.



Rating: 22%

Madballs

A Month Of Halloweenie Reviews #7

Madballs were not specifically made for Halloween time, but were little baseball sized toys shaped like heads with various injuries. They started making them again recently, except now if you squeeze them then squishy brain gel packs bulge out of their heads. I was obsessed with them as a child, and remember having a story assigned in Grade 2 that I had to rewrite because all the main characters were Madballs, and our teacher didn't want us to use licensed characters. Like, what, I was going to sell that shit and get in trouble for copyright infringement?

RATING: 67%

Halloween in September

Halloween is the best holiday ever (take that, Arbor Day). Part of what makes it so awesome is that, for a period of time before the big day, everything goes goth. Wal-Mart moves the Hanna Montana DVDs to the back and stocks the shelves with Friday the 13th and Saw flicks (or something really scary, like The Hottie & the Nottie). Even your local dollar store gets into the spirit (pun?) by replacing their displays of beach gear with racks of skeletons and those prosthetic scar things that fall off your face after, like, five minutes tops. Unfortunately, in an effort to squeeze more and more profit from Halloween, stores are putting out their ghoulish goodies earlier and earlier each year. It's starting to get out of hand. I mean, if I can't walk down the street covered in fake blood without getting arrested it's too early for the grocery store to be selling severed heads.

Rating: Al Jourgensen was right %

(Image from commoncentsical.blogspot.com/)

Epiphone Embassy Standard V

THE GOOD: The 10 lb, 8 oz solid swamp ash body could kill a hobo with one whack. It also looks futuristic yet retro, like an SR-71 Blackbird. The bolt-on maple neck is a bit beefy for my chubby little fingers but the intonation is nearly perfect. Best of all, at $399 it's cheaper than an 8-ball and a Craig's List whore, and probably has a tighter bottom end.

THE BAD: The Embassy's passive humbucking pickups are more "Polack on horseback" than "Panzer division," and are easily overpowered by a distorted electric guitar. Fussy owners may want to invest in some EMG's or at least a good equalizer. The low B is fairly clear for a 34-inch neck, but the low B is fairly clear for a 34-inch neck.

THE BOTTOM LINE: This beast won the 2006 Bass Player Magazine Editor's Choice Award and it's not hard to see why. I normally hate Gibson basses, especially Epiphones, but at the end of the night, the price is right.

RATING: 79% (that's a B+ in a real school.)

(Image from long-mcquade.com.)

X-Force: New Beginnings

Imagine this: you're a regular reader of X-Force because you love the darker side of mutant life, and seeing a bunch of heroes cross lines heroes don't usually cross, but then all of the sudden Warren Ellis' run ends and you have this bizarrely drawn critique of consumer culture written by Peter Milligan. While I can't personally imagine anybody liking X-Force before this book, it must have been a pretty big shock. That's not to say this trade isn't great, though, because it is. It's weird that a mainstream, (presumably) in continuity book would go in such a strange direction, but hey, it was the new millennium anything could happen. Oh yeah, the plot is that a corporation trademarks the name X-Force and then hires a bunch of mutants to fight crime/bad guys so they can make bank on all the merchandising rights.

RATING: 78%

Gibson Thunderbird IV

THE GOOD: The Thunderbird looks hella cool, like something Tommy might have wielded against the Bloody Hun during the Battle of Britain. $1,499 is also relatively cheap for a Gibson.

THE BAD: The headstock and body are so poorly balanced that the top end nosedives whenever you let go of the neck. It's also breakable, says John Entwistle (God rest his soul), but so are lots of other basses when you let a drunk Keith Moon (R.I.P.) knock them over. My biggest complaint about the Thunderbird is its sound, or lack thereof: remember the bass on Toxicity? 13th Step? Neither does anyone else. Basically, the T-bird's stock passive humbuckers sound flabby, muddy, and loose like wile bowels. I'd go as far as to suggest that you might get clearer low mids by standing pantless in front of a Shure SM57 and flossing your own ass with a length of brake cable.

THE BOTTOM LINE: You could probably save the T-Bird's dismal tone with a parametric EQ, but why bother? If you wanted to stand around twiddling your knob all day, you'd be a singer/guitarist, right?

RATING: 40%

(Image from www.zikinf.com.)

A Magazine

A magazine is a stupid thing to buy. It usually costs around $5, and it contains almost no information you can't already find on the internet. Like for instance pretend you were at the store today buying cookies for your students and you happened to see a magazine featuring an article about the best small town diners in Texas. Why bother buying it? A) if you wanted to find out about the best small town diners in Texas you could just Google search it, and B) I'm never going to do that anyway because I don't care enough. Also there were like 50 pages of ads for watches before any legitimate articles started so in conclusion Baudrillard was right when he said print was dead the Internet rules. I don't know if he said that but everybody else around here sounds all smart and I wanted to board the brain train.

RATING: 31%

The FURminator

At $22.99 + shipping, the FURminator might seem like a crazy waste of money, but I swear to you it was worth every penny. That picture is an actual photo of all the fur that came off of Thelonious the first time I used it on him. And then I went back later and used it some more and got another pile that was about the same size. I cannot for the life of me figure out where this cat was hiding all that loose fur, but he actually looks and feels thinner now. And now when I pet him I don't get loose fur flying all over and sticking to my face and stuff. In short, this cat brush is the greatest thing I've ever bought for my cat and I highly recommend it even with the high price tag.

Rating: 90% (10 off for it being so damn expensive)