Is “Human After All” Good?

Posted on April 19, 2016 by Joe Bush

In fall (I think it was fall, it may have been summer) of 2010, I downloaded Daft Punk’s compilation Musique, a collection of their greatest hits from their first three albums, from the Zune Marketplace with my Zune Pass, a service which allowed for unlimited music downloads for the low, low fee of only 15 dollars per month. I would like to take this sentence to apologize to my dad for making him pay for that.

Anyway, that compilation was great, and is still great. From there, I bought it, and then Homework and Discovery on CD (I think my dad put his foot down and stopped paying for the Zune pass by the beginning of 2011). Actually, here’s the chronology of me buying Daft Punk albums by year:

Musique (2004): Probably like November of 2010 (Vintage Stock)

Discovery (2011): May 7th, 2011. (Best Buy)

Homework (1997): August 11th, 2011. (FYE, Mall of America)

Tron: Legacy (2010): Probably spring 2012

Alive 1997 (1997): I think that was a Christmas gift in 2012

Random Access Memories (2013): May 21st, 2013 (Amazon)

In case you’re wondering, I have some sort of documentation for all of those exact dates. My memory of triviality is far too vast but it’s not that exact.

Anyway, to finish this thing that’s probably taking up too much space on the page:

Human After All (2005): April 2016

I don’t know why it took me so long to get to this point where I’d actually want to purchase this album, but I bit the bullet last week because I wanted to listen to the track “Human After All” and let the rest of the album figure itself out. Here is what I figured out:

“Human After All”, the song, is a great song

It really is. It’s a great opener for the album, definitely sets the tone for the record, and creates probably the best example of the musical ideas that define the record – Repetition and anticlimax. They don’t waste repetitions of the main theme, they constantly build up, and then they hit you in the face with a beautiful climactic yet isolated “AFTER ALL” at the end of the track. Of course,

Nothing is done as well as “Human After All” is for the rest of the album

Listening to this album again made me realize that I think maybe three tracks are actually good. Those are the aforementioned title track, “Robot Rock”, and “Steam Machine”. The rest is either mediocre or mishandled. “Robot Rock” is a classic, with that sample and the robot voice, I remember driving while listening to it when I was 16 or so and looking down seeing I was going like 80 in a 65. This anecdote would have more impact if you knew how cautious of a driver I was when I was 16. “Steam Machine” just jams itself into your face and you have to accept it, it’s like an audio version of Shaquille O’Neal on Chris Dudley.

Obviously I’m going to put this in here.

I appreciate a song that can do that.

“The Prime Time of Your Life” starts hot but builds up to lost ideas. It’s like digging for treasure, except when you get the treasure, you find, like, a Mounds bar. “Make Love” starts cold and builds nowhere. “The Brainwasher” is like a sludgy mess of a song, rehashing everything that was wrong with “Rock and Roll” off of Homework. “On/Off” builds up to “Television Rules the Nation”. “Television Rules the Nation” starts well and then really doesn’t go anywhere with it. Also, “Television Rules the Nation” as a concept for something insightful sounds so dated today, when I watched more TV yesterday due to two MLS games and an NBA Playoff game than I probably had in the past three weeks combined, and that was maybe four hours at the most. Also,

“Technologic” is not good

It basically represents everything that I don’t care for about this album. The sample is grating, sure, but it’s not just the fact that I don’t like the sample that hurts it (I like Joanna Newsom, I can deal with high-pitched voices). It sticks one idea, the sample, in there, and just sort of lets it hang out until the song finishes.

Also, I can’t ignore the fact that this totally would work as a commercial for like, a Nikon camera or something else technology related in 2006 or so.

I was close. This song makes me want to buy products. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but I don’t go around listening to commercials for fun.

“Emotion” is not a desirable ending

This feels like they knew what they had with “Too Long” at the end of Discovery but they couldn’t quite update that idea for the next album. It’s really difficult to make such a long track interesting on a typical album, which is what made “Too Long” such a good album ender. “Emotion” just doesn’t do that, doesn’t provide the listener with that much to keep them entertained for the full six minutes. You catch yourself looking at whatever’s playing the song and asking “how long is this song?” in a negative sense, rather than the positive form of that same question that you’d get with “Too Long.”

THE VERDICT:

Is Human After All good?

Not really. Some of it is really good. Ironically, the song of the same name is excellent. But the album as a whole? Not entirely. It’s a good album to remind you of what 2004 sounded like, but past that, I don’t take that much enjoyment out of it.

Posted in Music | Tagged Daft Punk | Leave a comment

I am bad at April Fools Jokes and I’m Sorry

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Joe Bush

It’s April 1 again, and I, the guy who has a website named after himself and insists he’s not a narcissist, made a joke for April Fool’s. Nobody will know what the joke is until late Saturday or early Sunday, and it’s Friday, which makes it all the worse. Nobody online’s even going to know about it so I don’t need to tell you about it anyway, but I realized my joke wouldn’t hit anyone for a few days earlier today which is a problem because I actually liked my joke this year. Let’s go back in time and look at my other bad ones.

2015

https://twitter.com/joebush_joebush/status/583252763003494401

This is false

https://twitter.com/joebush_joebush/status/583252923536261120

This was true

https://twitter.com/joebush_joebush/status/583270966530326528

https://twitter.com/joebush_joebush/status/583307562860224512

Actually, reading this again, this was a good joke. The other one I did was bad

I’m not, like, great at French now, but I’m a hell of a lot more confident than I used to be. I struggle to get through so many words in this video, I don’t know the word for “goal” (it’s ‘but’) and I didn’t really have many people watching the videos at this point so it didn’t really matter. If I did this joke this year, it might be funny past the whole “oh this dude’s doing a different language”

2014

https://twitter.com/joebush_joebush/status/450740691472097280

Okay, looking back, I didn’t put anything at all on Twitter on April 1st of 2014. I think that was the joke

https://twitter.com/joebush_joebush/status/450751260208029696

I may have made this joke like well over ten times by this point. I did last week, I know

2013

https://twitter.com/joebush_joebush/status/318855918936813568

2013 was also the “Bear” year. My sister and I used to drive home from school together when I was a Senior in high school and she was a Freshman. April 1st of 2013, her and I thought, while driving home, “we should prank our dad.” We ran into our house, ran to our dad’s office, and repeated”Dad! There’s a bear outside!” It was so impressively bad that my sister apparently kept doing it the next year’s April Fool’s. To a certain extent, in my family, April Fool’s day is synonymous with a fake bear.

2011

I don’t think this is a joke. This doesn’t make me sad now, I don’t know what me at fifteen thought, but I don’t think it was a joke. I didn’t put anything on Twitter for this year, and I didn’t have Twitter until fall of 2010. The rest of these will be from memory or Facebook.

2009

She was my first and most caustic critic. I put a bunch of towels in the shower, if I remember right. Maybe an overreaction, and I may have embellished it, but I’m glad someone called me out on a bad joke.

2008

You know what, I didn’t have to post this video up here. I could’ve been like, oh, yeah, I didn’t start putting stuff on YouTube until May of 2008 and there wasn’t a channel started by me, age 12, in March of 2008. But here’s this. It’s not even an April fool’s joke. I think I just happened to put it out on April 1st of 2008. I’d actually like to pretend I didn’t make this but here I am, right here, stating I made this video and I thought it would be a funny joke.

I got a lot of mean comments for it, too, which isn’t surprising, but, like, whoa. I was 12 at the time! That’s way too mean to be to a 12 year old. 13, maybe. But 12?

Circa 2006

The start to this story is that my sister hates Golden Grahams. Or, at least, she hated Golden Grahams in 2005 or 2006 or whenever. She loved Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I got up early and swapped the Golden Graham bag and the Cinnamon Toast Crunch bag. She got really, really upset. I mean, really, really upset, she threw a tantrum. This is probably why I shouldn’t make jokes. Jokes can hurt and can put a bowl of Golden Grahams on the table when you want something that isn’t vaguely honey flavored ridged trash flakes that don’t taste good in this life or any others. Comedy should be about giving them the Cinnamon Toast Crunch, the cereal that advertised the fact that you could see the pure sugar you’re about to ingest to get your day started off right.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Things I Will Put in Virtual Reality Once I Have the Means, Funds, and Ability to Do So

Posted on March 31, 2016 by Joe Bush

For those of you out of the loop, the Oculus Rift premiered this week! We are now in a different world, one where the line between actuality and virtual reality is drawn by a giant thing you have to put on your face. I’ve beaten Teleroboxer over 200 times and I tried to petition my local hospital to surgically graft a Tiger R-Zone to my face in 2002 though they didn’t want to risk a malpractice suit, so I’d say I’ve been ready for the virtual revolution since the beginning of my life.

You don’t know “lucid dreaming” until you pass out in one of these bad-boys

My issue today is that I don’t have the money, or the resources, or the talent to do so. So, consider this a “kickstarter” of sorts. That is, if you like any of these ideas, feel free to give me five dollars and maybe I’ll put forth the effort to do something someday. Do not steal my ideas they are Copyright of Joe Bush On the Web Enterprize 2016

Some Sort of Virtual Island that Takes the Place of Your Real Home

Alright so this is like you just walk out of a charming little bedroom and hang out on a virtual beach. Kind of like that guy from the Oculus Rift was on the TIME magazine cover, except this one’s in low-fi. It’s Koopa Troopa Beach from Mario Kart 64. That’s what I want. I want to live on a low-fi beach until I die and I won’t have to face the CVS staff again after the Tostitos Queso incident.

I thought it was weird how they had him take his shoes off but still kept the cord in the shot

Getting Yelled-At Simulator

Nothing better than that sweet, sweet feeling of losing the trust of someone you care about and having their emotions fly back into your face at amazing speed and volume. Several settings – Your boss at the McDonald’s, your dad after you pushed the lawnmower down a hill to “see what it looked like”, a teacher who thought you had potential, and even your football coach who assumes this will be something you’ll look back upon fondly in a few years when you can’t cry in front of a loved one but you know the value of “tough love”. It’s all there, all the classic hits of “Getting Yelled-At” coming straight to your eyeballs through Virtual Reality!

Awkward In-class-where-teacher-calls-on-everyone-and-you-haven’t-really-done-the-reading Experience

It’s the closest thing to a firing squad in American education. You know you should know something about where the name “Carolingian” comes from, or who “Thomas R. Marshall” was, but you don’t, and let’s face it, you’re just hoping not to get called on. With a VR headset, you can aggressively not make eye contact and pretend to be taking important notes and actually drawing pictures of ducklings in Real Time! Feel the tension as you get the question “and what part of the animal was Aldo Leopold focused on when he watched it die…[YOUR NAME, drawn from a bank of over 337 real names!]!” and you’ll have to answer. Get it wrong and you’ll get either the confused huff or the shrug and attempt to turn it into a correct answer from your professor.

The Bible

It’s the top selling book of all time and what better way to experience it than with your own eyes? Stare face to face with a serpent, take the bite of the apple, resist Satan, read the family trees of like 300 people for an hour, meet Judas himself, it’s all there in The Virtual Bible.

The Role Play Server from Half-Life 2: Deathmatch That Started in 2002 But Like Seven Dudes Have Kept Up With

They’re all millionaires in their fake money in their fake economy, they’ve got fake jobs, and they’ve got the best weapons. You’ve got a crowbar and a fleeting interest. Except now you can see it in real time through your own eyes for like ten minutes before you go actually have fun with the game you bought.

This is actually me in 2010 btw

The Authentic Being at A Sporting Event Where You’re Not Really as Intense as Everyone Else Experience

Okay, real talk here. I was at a basketball game in January. During a part of the second half, some guys around me sat down for a few minutes during a timeout or something. Someone like ten rows behind me started yelling “HEY! We don’t do that here! Not here! Not us!” It was the most awkward moment for me, because I wasn’t sitting down, and I didn’t really feel like sitting down but I all of a sudden became the intense focal point of a debate. If I were to sit down, I’d be taking the side of those sitting. If I were to remain standing, I’d be taking the side of someone who won’t let us sit down because we enrolled here. I pretended that I didn’t hear them and hoped that nobody noticed my fence-sitting. Or, fence-standing. Whatever.

Now with Virtual Reality, you can experience the real creeping dread of standing next to someone screaming death threats at the star player of his favorite team while you stand silently with your own eyes and ears. You can stand and clap your hands but not sing along to the songs you don’t know. You can pretend you don’t see the guy next to your trying to high-five you after a dunk. Now this is all possible with Virtual Reality.

“Scott’s Tots”: The Game

Hey Mr. Scott, What’cha Gonna Do? What’cha Gonna Do? Make Our Dreams Come True! Feel all of this in real time. I actually have only seen this episode once in my life and I never want to watch it again.

Other Ideas that Might Maybe Exist But I’ve Only Thought of the Title So Far

Still Image of Charles Barkley

Reading Erotica on a Train Sim

Upton Sinclar’s “The Jungle”

Some Kid Tells You How Good Bohemian Rhapsody Is for Ten Minutes

Panda Express Menu

If you like what you see here, please let me know, and send me five dollars or buy me something off of my Amazon Wishlist, please.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged me prime, Virtual Reality | Leave a comment

The Top 5 Upsets in March Madness History

Posted on March 19, 2016 by Joe Bush

mid tenn.jpg

Whoa! Did anyone else see Michigan State get upset by Middle Tennessee State (Right? I’m not doing any research this morning if I don’t have to) yesterday? My bracket sure is busted, alright. That game was great, but how does it stack up against the other great March Madness upsets in history?

Continue reading →

Posted in Sportstalkin | Tagged I wrote two basketball posts in one week, March Madness, this is how I die | Leave a comment

BREAK THE BRACKET: 15 Tips to Make Your NCAA Tournament Bracket a Winner

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Joe Bush

DISCLAIMER:

Alright here I am again, talking about the college version of basketball, again. Last year I put a lot of effort into insightful social and political and athletic commentary, so be prepared for more of that. I’m simply going to list a few (exactly fifteen) factors to keep in mind to make sure your NCAA Tournament Bracket takes home whatever office pool you happen to be a part of. These are my fifteen essential tips.

1. Don’t Put Stake in Teams from Smaller Conferences

They don’t win. They rarely win. Everyone points to 2010 and 11 Butler and how they kept winning but their best player was a dork who became inexplicably attractive around like 2014, so that’s a fluke. Don’t count on anybody small.

2. Don’t Look at Oregon

I don’t know what they’re doing here, but get ’em out. Oregon’s like, way too far west to be good at this sport. Take ’em out in the first round. Also, your friend’s dad probably hates (and uses the word hates) them because they wear more than one uniform in a season and that’s… confusing? I guess? I don’t try to understand the logic here.

3. Write the Bracket in Cursive

You can fudge a lot of stuff if you write it in the font that whoever is grading your bracket won’t understand. This is how I made it through 11th grade, I got so many “nice handwriting” points on my papers that people didn’t even notice that I didn’t know what I was talking about. I’d have three times the reader-base if people were obligated to believe that I’m smart because I write in cursive and it’s not just difficult to understand what I’m saying. Certain words, like “Gonzaga” or “FGCU” or “North Carolina” don’t look like they should in cursive and whoever’s running the contest will probably assume you picked right no matter what you wrote down.

4. Only Fill out Your Bracket in a McDonald’s Dining Room

You don’t want any pretense when you fill out your predictions. That’s how you make bad mistakes like “picking Drake to go to the final four”. I’m at a coffee shop right now. I know the other two people in the coffee shop are doing homework, one guy on some crazy Kinesiology textbook and I assume the other guy’s doing something important as well. I’m writing something about basketball on a website I named after myself but since I’m doing it in a coffee shop I feel good about it. If I went to the McDonald’s across the street I’d be less self aware of that fact, and I’d probably feel weird about googling “Gordon Hayward Attractive” in public. Anyway, you might feel smart in your kitchen writing that some mid-major is going to shock Kentucky in the Sweet Sixteen, but once you’re staring down 600 calories worth of french fries, you’ll realize what you’re saying.

5. Pick SEC

Every year I’m like “oh the SEC isn’t a good basketball conference” and then Kentucky and Florida or whoever else ends up in the third round. It’s the best conference, they put the most money into their programs, it’s understandable how it happens, just, pick the SEC, it almost always works.

6. If There’s a Team in the Bracket that Shares a Place with an NBA Team, write the NBA team name

I’ve done this like each of the past five years and nobody cares but I think it’s funny. Miami and Indiana are in it this year so that’s two jokes out of like 46 that I have to write on a bracket that my fifteen year-old cousin is going to see and nobody else. I know he doesn’t think it’s funny.

7. Put out a novelty bracket on your sports blog website

“You know what would be quirky is if we put out like “The NCAA Tournament of Cars” or “The NCAA Tournament of Nintendo GameCube Launch Games” or something like that.” says a writer in a board room somewhere in, like, Boston. They’ll put it out today, the Tuesday Before Everything Actually Goes Down, and you’ll be like “oh that’s cute” and click the Facebook share button. By the way, my final four would be like, Luigi’s Mansion, Wave Race: Blue Storm, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, and, like, Super Monkey Ball, I guess.

i’m really sorry

8. Get Prepared to Hear “Send Me On My Way” fifty times

ooonnnmyway

onnnmmyway

ooonmmyway

thank god for Rusted Root

9. Don’t Do Your Bracket in Blood

It’s just not a good idea unless you want a shockingly perfectly accurate bracket and dreams about sacrificing goats from now until the Summer Solstice. You’ll hear a pounding at your bedroom door every morning at 3:00 AM and cracks will start to appear in your ceiling, but, hey, at least you predicted that Lehigh would upset Duke in 2012.

10. Name your ESPN.com Bracket Something Terrible

That way if it’s the one entry that’s still perfect into the elite eight they’ll have to say “i’m bermie????” or “Cal *the emoji for heart* Sheep” fifteen times an hour on SportsCenter and that’ll be really funny

11. Pick Duke

Just, do it. I know we’re supposed to hate them but they win all the time except when they lose in hilarious fashion.

12. DO NOT TRY THE TWO GLASSES OF WATER DIMENSIONAL JUMPING METHOD TO SUCCEED IN YOUR NCAA TOURNAMENT POOL

I tried the glass of water method in 2008 when I wrote “Georgetown” on one glass and “Generally Bad at Basketball” on another and I entered a new dimension wherein Georgetown is bad at basketball and chokes all the time but also the Arby’s by my house closed down and my dad has never had a mustache, I guess.

13. Just get really worked up about everything all the time

Generally this is a good rule of thumb. Let people know that you hate how Florida Gulf Coast celebrates or that you hate Duke/Iowa State/North Carolina/Notre Dame/Kansas/Kentucky/Duke/Michigan/Iowa/Wisconsin/Oregon/Texas Tech/Baylor/Virginia fans (I was about to post all 68 teams there but thought better of it) and everybody’s gotta know about how angry you are that an upset ruined your bracket. This is like complaining about bad drivers or the fact that everything at Walgreen’s costs slightly too much. It’s a very general problem that everyone faces and the main difference between complaining and not complaining about it depends entirely on you.

14. Write the full name of every team in your bracket

It’s “Virginia Commonwealth University” and “Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University”. You’d be surprised how fun this is each year.

~~15. Do not get urine on the bracket~~

~~This is our NCAA Bracket “‘ool”. Notice there is no P on it.~~

15. Celebrate the Good Things

What we remember years later from the NCAA tournament are the buzzer-beaters, the Cinderella runs, and the upsets. It’s the beauty of agony and ecstasy (that’s like the fifth cliché I’ve put in this post) and I don’t think you see it in any other major sporting event. However, in the moment, we’re really upset that someone dunked at the last second or that a fanbase said rude things to me on Twitter. When your team inevitably loses, remember that 67 out of 68 of them do each year and you’re lucky to see them on this major stage. “Keep it Classy” is a fancy way to say “I’m upset that my favorite team lost.” This is probably the greatest moment in these athletes’ lives up to this point and they’re going to be excited when they pull off the impossible, and you should be too. This can be the best sports month of the year if you let it be.

by the way my final four is Kansas, Oregon State, Michigan State, and Kentucky. I guess Michigan State wins

Posted in KUpostin', Sportstalkin, Uncategorized | Tagged BASKETBALL, NCAA Tournament | Leave a comment

Everything I am Blaming on the Mandela Effect This Week

Posted on March 11, 2016 by Joe Bush

For those who are unaware, the Mandela Effect is the idea that certain memories can be “misremembered” by a large group of people. I’ll try to explain it but this person does a better job. The name comes from the fact that a lot of people remember Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the early ’90s, I think, and you’ll see it manifest whenever someone asks you to spell the name of the fictional family of bears that had all the adventures in the ’70s and ’80s. (It’s actually “Berenstain” though many are inclined to write “Bearenstein” or “Berenstein” or “the ones from Country Bear Jamboree”).

Many assume this is due to dimensional jumping, where you jump from one reality to another. I remember that Chick-Fil-A was spelled differently because I actually come from a different timeline where it was spelled that way, definitely not because I don’t put effort into knowing exactly the spelling of the name of a chain chicken restaurant.

The Mandela Effect has ruined my life within the past week. At the beginning of last week, I was in a timeline where I was generally highly skilled and was a suave and adored individual that a lot of people liked and when I walked into a CVS Pharmacy they didn’t laugh at the fact that I had to buy seventeen individual cans of Arizona “Arnold Palmer” iced tea for research. (In my former Mandela Effect timeline, I remember said drink being named after Tennis Legend Bjorn Borg). Here are a list of the major memories that have shifted since the last week.

1. I did NOT get kicked out of a party for smashing a vase, yelling obscenities, and trying to steal a VHS copy of Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine” from my friend Greg’s house.

I would appreciate it if Greg would talk to me again. I definitely do not have said VHS copy of the film and I have no memory of the event. I have tried many times to jump back into my own dimension to repair these issues. Greg said I picked up the vase, yelled “This is what I’d do to that darn Captain Hook!” and smashed it on the ground during a particularly heated discussion of the Robin Williams film “Hook”. According to him and to four other people at the party but not me because that was a different dimension, I tried for 20 minutes to shove the VHS tape into my back pocket. Upon confrontation, I ran out and threw the VHS tape at Greg’s dad. I refuse to pay for these because, as I said, I did not do this. My version from your dimension did, Greg, and I’m actually the cool version of me who doesn’t get that upset at that cretinous Hook fellow from the film.

2. I did NOT have a breakdown at Applebee’s last week.

I had one this week, sure, but that’s because I’m from a timeline wherein the “Pineapple Blueberry Cheesecake Shooters” are actually called the “Pineapple Blueberry Cheesecake Slammers”. I appreciate the Eugene, OR Applebee’s staff’s understanding during the episode and would like to thank them for the complimentary order of Pineapple Blueberry Cheesecake Shooters that they gave me in pity.

The alleged confrontation made by this dimension’s me (We’ll call that “Me Alpha” and we’ll call me “Me Prime”) came because Greg ate one of my mozzarella sticks even after I found out I had to pay twice as much as typical because it was 8:30 at night and the half-priced Apps don’t start until 9:00 PM but Greg and Greg’s Horrible Girlfriend Michelle wanted me and “Thomas” (we call him “Not As Cool & Naturally Talented as Joe Tom” in the Me Prime timeline, by the way) to go before the Nick @ Nite FRIENDS rerun at 9:30. Greg would still be left unforgiven for this incident had it actually happened, but I stress that that was Me Alpha and not Me Prime, who is the one writing this right now. I am cool and naturally talented at many things – Me Alpha may not have been, but I am.

3. I did NOT get kicked out of Toys R’ Us for trying to pass off a Lego Hard Hat as an actual hard hat in order to get said Hard Hat for free.

It’s a good idea, sure, I mean, if you make a convincing enough construction worker you might as well get the hat for free. I didn’t do this in my timeline, but I can understand the mindset. That should work, and I’m surprised it didn’t. Me Alpha must not have been that cool and naturally talented.

4. I did NOT get caught committing knife-based larceny at the house of Major League Baseball Legend Pete Rose’s house

My god, that man hit a baseball many times, and he was able to afford only the finest of fine Knife Blocks. My god, you should see that beautiful block of sharp, sharp little knives. He can cut stuff real good with those, I bet. I really bet. Anyway, I didn’t wait for the guy he hired to walk his dog to leave the door cracked open for me to run in and take that 23 blade set in beautiful mahogany from his kitchen counter. Me Alpha may have done that. Not me. Not me.

5. I did NOT scream the thing that Duckie says to the Molly Ringwald character in the climactic scene of “Pretty in Pink” at a girl on the third floor of the State Capital building

“God, I would’ve died for you” was not something I said to the girl wearing the orange shirt and the glasses who Me Alpha had only met ten minutes prior. Me Prime would not have done that. Definitely not. I’m cool and collected and naturally talented and women appreciate me when I go get them a coffee from the little stand with the coffee on the third floor of the Nevada State Capital building. But I guess that’s just “Tough Shit!” huh? That’s what the guy says in the movie – Not what I (and I mean Me Prime) said to that girl before taking the coffee back and throwing it against a bathroom wall.

6. I was very good at guitar and would NOT have “ruined grandpa’s birthday party” by failing to play Stairway to Heaven for 25 minutes

I come from a dimension where I’m great at the guitar and did not just pick one up at the store followed by listening to three youtube tutorials on learning guitar in the car on the way to Grandpa’s. I’m sure the party wasn’t as good as it could have been but I didn’t stop him from turning 78, right? No. He’s still 78 so as far as I’m concerned you can get over the fact that I happened to have a little misstep. But I did NOT ruin the party, Mom.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged knife theft, Mandela Effect | Leave a comment

The Games of February 2016

Posted on March 1, 2016 by Joe Bush

I’m continuing something for a second straight month. This is a big step, ladies and gentlemen.

Roundabout (PC)

Between this and Crazy Taxi and that Simpsons game from like 2003, I’m convinced that “chauffeur” is my favorite genre of game. Since I can name three games I like in it, and none that I don’t, I believe it’s earned it’s place. I very much recommend Roundabout. It’s a game about driving a limousine that is constantly spinning, and it has video cutscenes wherein a silent limousine driver falls in love with a customer. There’s a talking skeleton in there somewhere as well. This game was perfect for probably me alone, so take that with a grain of salt, but I loved it.

Final Fantasy VII (PC)

This is still pretty good. I’m not huge into the story but I’m enjoying it so far and the fact that they let me name my characters has given me classic screenshots like this one:

FFVII shot

I named Barrett “PRINGLES” as well.

PRINGLES

And that’s about all. The PC version’s a little difficult to get used to because the backgrounds and the character models are different resolutions, but I’m not playing this for a modern experience anyway. I played about ten hours into this game on the PlayStation roughly four years ago and I’m just going to try to get further this time. I don’t know if I’ll actually reach the end but I’ll see where it goes.

Halo 5: Guardians (XBONE)

I think I got to the final boss fight. I don’t enjoy this game enough to spend as much time as I would need to getting through it. Halo 5 single-player is an okay experience but not really memorable enough to warrant a recommendation here. The multiplayer from what I played was what actually warrants praise, and unfortunately I don’t have the ability to use it anymore. If you were to ask me if I enjoyed this game you’d get a very firm “yeah” and not much more, it’s not an interesting sort of ambivalence like I got from The Beginner’s Guide or Heart of Darkness back when I played those games, just a sort of “it’ll kill a few hours” recommendation. Those hours have been killed and there’s still a void somewhere in my soul so it comes out in a wash. The whole package of Halo 5 is still one of my top 5 games of last year, but the single-player bit isn’t what made it that way.

Also if you wanna buy my XBOX One with one controller and fourteen games, make me an offer @joebush_joebush on Twitter or joebushdotnet.tumblr.com

SUPERHOT (PC)

People love this game. I really don’t. It’s hard to be in the minority here because I really wanted to enjoy this but after a few attempts I just couldn’t get into it. It’s like the Matrix, except in a video game (rather, except in a good video game). I’m sure this is a fun experience for a lot of people, and I’m just in the minority, but I’m not going to pretend it worked for me. The mechanics wore old really quickly and the lack of a story didn’t really help it. The closest comparison I could draw for myself were games like “Score!” on the iPhone, and it wasn’t worth the $25 you’d spend on Steam for it. I know it works for a lot of others but it just wasn’t enough of a game for me, and the constant small failures that led to a necessary restart got too frustrating. And, yes, I know I’m spurning this right after recommending Roundabout, but this gameplay feature didn’t work for me while the other one did.

On My Own (PC)

I’ve seen an image like this one on my Facebook probably six times in the past month or so:

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I can’t find the version of the thing in English despite minutes of research, but this asks if you’d live in a cabin alone in order to receive a million dollars. I’m fairly sure that everyone would do this for a million dollars. The real question is this: Would you pay eight dollars on Steam to do this in a virtual capacity? I would. This is a decent little experience but I don’t know that it has the staying power of a game like Minecraft or Terraria or one of the other games that dominates the top of the services like Twitch for years on end. After a certain period of time you’re just living and I do that all the time anyway. For as small as it is, On My Own is a good time to come back to every once in a while.

So thus ends February 2016. I liked February 2016. I think I grew as a person and I’m hoping March will be even better, but in the optimistic way. Really only Roundabout will probably stick with me from this month (at least the BETH & GEORGIO FOREVER tattoo I got will be with me for a while) but I had a good time with what was there.

Also I’m serious about the XBOX thing. Looking for $400 right now but I’m flexible.

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Music from High School Report – Does It Offend You, Yeah?

Posted on February 25, 2016 by Joe Bush

If I had taken the time to write out the entirety of this band and album’s name, it would have shattered the record for the longest title of any post on this humble blog. The full name of this album is “You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Yourself Into” by Does it Offend You, Yeah?. It was one of my favorite albums when I was 15, I listened to it on my Zune HD with the Zune Pass that gave me unlimited access to the Zune Library for the low, low price of 15 dollars per month (jesus christ, 15 dollars per month?). That sentence alone should show you how long ago 2010 was, but I’ll throw in that I thought Halo: Reach was disappointing and Taylor Swift’s “Fifteen” was childish. Anyway, this album came out in like 2008, or so, and I found it on Spotify last week and wanted to get back in that mindset. I’m going to go track by track with it and give each track a rating on a ten point scale.

1. Battle Royale – 6/10

I don’t know if the video I linked to was the official video or not, but I always admired whoever decided to sync this song up to an old Super Sentai clip. It goes along well. This is standard fare for the rest of the album, and one of the better instrumental tracks. I’d guess this would be something you would hear in some sort of rave in one of the smaller English cities in like 2009 or so. Listening back now, it’s very bland and they don’t go anywhere with the decent foundation they built.

2. With a Heavy Heart (I Regret to Inform You) – N/A

I got thirty seconds into the song and decided I would never ever have a circumstance in my life where I’d want to hear “With a Heavy Heart (I Regret to Inform You)” Does it Offend You, Yeah? in it’s entirety. I just can’t do that to myself. It’s not even that bad of a song, but that’s the problem, there’s nothing to latch onto with it. It’s pure blandness. It’s like shotgunning one of those cans of water they have on airplanes, except you have to do it for three minutes straight. Even if you hate a certain artist, like, if you dislike Joanna Newsom, for example, and I know many do, you typically have something to latch onto and say “That’s what I don’t like.” (In Joanna’s case for most people, it’s the voice. I really like the voice, keep that in mind if you get the “what does Joe think about Joanna Newsom” question in JoeBush.Net Trivial Pursuit next weekend). This track doesn’t have anything close to that. This song is like Desert Bus, except presented entirely straightforward.

3. We Are Rockstars – 6/10

The hook on this is still good. I first heard this song and by chance learned about this group from TheBest404PageEver, which is another incredibly 2010 thing to say. That site was like YTMND except five years later in humor. I searched for around 20 minutes through their index to find the clip that introduced me, and found it here. The rest of the song that surrounds the hook could be much better, it suffers from the same issue that the first two tracks do. It’s very static and doesn’t really grow over time.

4. Dawn of the Dead – 9/10

I can’t fill this entire post with self-importance and snarky jokes taking down some grunge-house act from seven years ago. I’ve kind of set myself up to be ashamed of actually enjoying any song on this album, but I genuinely adore this one. It’s like a shot of clarity in this album so full of blandness up to track 4. This song’s about leaving home. The singer here accurately captures that sense of forcing oneself to actually get out despite the fear of the unknown and the fondness for what’s being left behind. The bass guitar part during the verses shines here, the steel drums in the chorus are delightful, and even the cheesy “ooh-ahh” really hits. 2010 was a bad year for me but this song manages to touch on what nostalgia is still hanging around from that time. It’s a song about growing up, and it hit me during one of the first times I noticed that I was doing it.

5. Doomed Now – 6/10

I could just copy and paste the entry for track 2 here. We’re back to painfully boring, except the sort of bridge part somewhat saves it. I can enjoy those parts.

O’Reilly Auto Parts Ad followed by Guy Struggling To Ask Girl Out Until Spotify Ad Plays – 3/10

I don’t remember this being on the album initially. Really breaks flow but I’m still in debt from fifteen dollars a month for All-Access MP3 Downloads on the Zune Marketplace so I can’t justify getting away from this

6. Attack of the 60 Ft. Lesbian Octopus – 8/10

I had an idea for a scripted TV show when I was 15 that used this as the theme. I watched a lot of Mega64 back then, and this song really reminded me of “Sequence Erase”, which they used as a theme for their scripted TV show. I had a lot of original ideas back then. This song would still probably work well as a TV theme, though. It’s so forceful, like I want to drive slightly too fast while listening to it. It’s totally out of place as far as the album is concerned, but it ‘s a good dose of energy after so many plodding grungy house tracks.

7. Let’s Make Out – 1/10

I remember I liked this song at one point. My sister heard me listening to it and started laughing at me (she was like, 12 at the time, by the way). I tried to explain to her why it was a good song and then I had to stop myself because, no, the premise falls short if you think about it for more than any time at all. The idea is that he says “Let Me Go” at the same time he says “Let’s Make Out.” The 15-year old depth and complexity here is suffocating so I’m gonna throw it at you all at once:

She believed. How Can Mirrors Be Real If Our Eyes Aren’t Real? Do you wanna watch this South Park episode on my phone? That “That Boy Needs Therapy” song.

It’s Media. The red circle there is the bad thing and the camera represents a camera

8. Being Bad Feels Pretty Good – 7/10

I haven’t praised the bass guitar on this album enough but it’s probably the most consistently quality part of the whole thing.

I was at a trivia contest about a month or two ago, and one of the categories for questions was just “2010”. It wasn’t until we went through that category that I remembered just how far we’ve come since that year.

It was the year I had a job for the first time. There was a winter olympics at the beginning of the year and Americans all cared about hockey for a short period of time. One of my best friends stopped talking to me. I bought a Sega Saturn, I think (that may have been 2009). I had surgery at the end of the year. My school’s basketball team fell in the second round to Northern Iowa. Haïti got destroyed by an earthquake. My dad was diagnosed with cancer.

I looked at the Wikipedia page for 2010 and I was floored to find out Toy Story 3 came out six years ago. That’s hard to believe. Train had one of the biggest hits of the year. B.O.B. was in the news for reasons related to music.

For whatever reason, this song in particular brought all that back. I don’t really care for it, but it still has some sort of effect on me personally. Even though, I know, this song doesn’t actually come from that year, it triggers very specific nostalgia.

Also, yes, this song title is probably the worst of them all on the album.

9. Weird Science – 7/10

This one’s okay as well. Back when I had this on my Zune HD, I listened to this track while riding in the car with my friend’s dad on the way back from a boy scout campout or something of the sort. This song took such a hold of me rhythmically that I physically couldn’t stop myself from moving along with it even though I was in the car with someone I only slightly knew and it would’ve been embarrassing if he had noticed what I was doing. This is probably the only song that’s ever done that to me.

10. Epic Last Song – 8/10

This song has some effect as well. Not quite as heavily as Dawn of the Dead or as vividly as the one with the dumb title, but I will safely say that I enjoy this song. It’s like Dawn of the Dead except they don’t take as many risks and it’s not as rewarding as a result. I think it’s about finality, which would make sense with the title of the song. I’d make some comment on it being an edgy wink towards the audience but in reality I don’t really care any more. After thinking the phrase “Being Bad Feels Pretty Good”, I’m immune to bad song titles any more. I wouldn’t use the word “epic” necessarily, because I don’t use that word in general, but it’s alright.

So that was the album with the long name by the band with the long name. I hope you enjoyed getting into the mindset of me at 15 and I hope you understand why I don’t like to talk about the past. The reason is because I really love to talk about the past and I get too into it every time.

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The BEST Deadpool Viral Marketing

Posted on February 18, 2016 by Joe Bush

Ah, yes, Deadpool! The internet’s favorite superhero. I hadn’t heard of this character before the internet put him out in the forefront, at least, so it’s gotta be true. He’s different than a lot of other heroes, he speaks to the camera and to the audience directly. You’ve heard of superheroes getting busy? Well this guy get biz-ayy. He’s the next generation of heroes and get ready to hear about him on Twitter.

The American Heart Association truck out in front of the CVS

You see, Deadpool’s power is that he cannot and in fact does not bleed. You can stab him so many times but ain’t no blood comin’ out of that man. This is why it’s so funny to see the American Heart Association truck out in front of the CVS every weekend. If you were to actually walk in, there will be an actor strapped to a table and two other actors will be trying to get blood out of him. They will try, and eventually say “Wow, you don’t bleed, you’re just like Deadpool, the comic book and future film character! Deadpool is a trademarked character of Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios the film will be released in theaters on February 12th at [LIST OF LOCAL THEATERS]. This production may not be used without the Expressed Written Consent of Disney and Marvel Studios”

The Super Bowl Halftime Show

In canon, Deadpool is a huge fan of the band “Cold Play”. In fact, in issue #58 of Deadpool Strikes Back from 2009, he uppercuts a man in a trenchcoat while yelling “For A Minute, I Lost Myself, I Lost Myself, I Lost My Se-e-elf”. In fact, he got his powers of not being able to be seen while moving through an electric field created by a machine known only as “PH” for the first few issues. Most fan theories point to “PH” actually standing for “Pablo Honey”, which is the title of Cold Play’s first album. Beyoncé and Bruno Mars represented Deadpool’s two largest villains – Donnie, the woman who carries two sashes at all times, and GEMINI RENFROW, the man with big hair and a bunch of men behind him constantly in choreographed dance. At the end of the halftime show, the entire crowd held up signs that spelled out “PEACE AND LOVE FOR PEPSI” or something of the like. If everyone had flipped their cards upside down, it would have read “IT’S DEAD POOL TIME BABY”, which is Deadpool’s catchphrase.

The Entirety of Waiting… (2005 film)

Ryan Reynolds as “Dead Pool” and Justin Long as “Jim Halpert” in Deadpool (2016)

The guy with the frosted tips in this movie is actually the same guy who plays Deadpool in the 2015 film. It’s no coincidence that both movies came out on the same date ten years apart, and it’s no coincidence that Deadpool’s secret identity before becoming the titular hero, Horace “Bacon” Moltrés, is a palindrome for… It’s not palindrome, is it? Like when you mix the letters up and it means something else… Pentagram? Tangram? something like that… Horace “Bacon” Moltrés is actually a tangram for the name of Ryan Reynolds’ character in Waiting…, named Monty “Buy it on UMD for your PlayStation Portable” Yellowcard. There’s a scene where Deadpool kicks Luis Guzman’s character, named THE PRINCIPAL (He plays a stuck-up high school principal) in the chest and says “Never Mix Mexican With Continental!” which is actually a quote from Waiting…

Oh, god, that’s actually a quote from Waiting… I’ve seen Waiting… at least three times.

The Kid who uses the word Sports as a verb to show disdain for the concept of athletics in general

I consider myself partially responsible for this phenomenon. I was doing it in 2011. This kid, everyone knows him, was paid off by the Deadpool corporation. He will continue to do this until you ask why, and then he will say “Ask Lionel Messi, why don’t you??????” Soccer superstar Lionel Messi appears in this film as “Soccer Superstar Lionel Messi from F.C. Barcelona” Deadpool lands on the ground next to him, says “Can I Kick it?” (at this moment a split-second frame of Q-Tip and Phife Dogg appear at a speed faster than you can cognitively see) and then kicks the soccer ball that Lionel Messi was holding under his foot at MISTER CROCOBOT, a giant crocodile enemy played by who Fucking Cares Anymore, killing it instantly. Deadpool flips in the air thanks to his super power of being able to Jump Really High and Flip Really Fast and says “Spoooooooooooooorts!”

Two Blokes and an Armchair

This clip, originally probably put on a floppy disc sometime in like 1992 or so, is viral marketing for Deadpool. The two blokes – Majic Mushroom and Def Base, all of the characters mentioned in the song Urban Hype’s “Trip to Trumpton”, and the armchair itself appear as enemies to Deadpool. At the beginning of the film, the two blokes kidnap him and his girlfriend, who doesn’t have a name, and kill him with the armchair somehow. He comes back to life and becomes Deadpool, a man with the power of instant death.

The Miami Dolphins

Just, as a concept, the Miami Dolphins are Deadpool. Ryan Tannehill is Deadpool. Dan Marino is Deadpool. Ricky Williams was Deadpool. I’m Deadpool. I’m Deadpool. I’m Deadpool. I’m Deadpool.

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The Ways in Which a Flash Cartoon from Well Over 10 Years Ago Has Affected My Life

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Joe Bush

This flash cartoon was uploaded to Newgrounds in 2002. I embedded this YouTube clip because back in 2002 it was socially acceptable to have your flash video play noise immediately (This was back when it was also understood that you’d have one window open at a time generally).

Now, I will point out now that you will need to dedicate six minutes to watching “Ark and Kerrigan: All Your Pie” in order for this post to make sense. If you don’t, I’m going to be relating my life to something you’ve never heard of.

The story goes like this – I probably first saw this cartoon around 2004 or so. I remember finding it funny, but I can assume that I hadn’t watched it in around 11 years up until last week when someone posted it up on Tumblr (I don’t remember if it was done ironically or not). I ended up watching the whole thing again not necessarily out of nostalgia – It hadn’t been an incredibly important thing to me when I was growing up, not like Homestar Runner or Angry Video Game Nerd – but more out of the surprise that I remembered every line.

I grew up on video games and internet humor like this. This is probably why my mind is a constant stream of like 4-5 second clips and I never get to feel and appreciate the silence that I so, so badly desire. “All Your Pie” takes up way too much real estate in that constant Russian-spy-radio-station-except-with-dumb-shit that is my typical internal monologue.

When someone talks about cooking a pie, I always think “Don’t You Eat this Pie” in the voice of the girl character, Kerrigan. To be fair, I don’t live in a literary version of rural Nebraska from the 1890’s so I don’t know that many people who do this (Evidenced by the fact that I used the term “cooking a pie” one sentence ago) and I don’t often think about it.

I watched this video well before I watched The Simpsons’ “Last Exit to Springfield”. The particular scene referenced (Dental Plan/Lisa Needs Braces) didn’t make sense to me until I watched that episode, but the bit from the Simpsons is still great today (It’s a good example of the humor that Family Guy really drove into the ground, making a joke run on too long). When anyone talks about dental plans, or health plans in general, or unionization and insurance benefits, needing braces or hell, a free keg of beer, that scene will worm its way into my skull for a few seconds.

If I use the phrase “self-control” by itself I will say it the way that Ark says it in this video. I don’t even find that line funny but it will not leave me.

This is the weirdest one. When Ark turns this song on the radio and starts moving along with it, he makes a specific hand motion at about 3:27 into the video on the words “Don’t Go”. I will catch myself doing that almost any time that I hear this song, the theme from Kingdom Hearts, a game I never even played, (and it’s not that often, but often enough for me to notice and for me to have been shocked when I realized where that came from).

If you learned anything from this piece, please understand that I was really, really impressionable when it came to basically any entertainment as a child. I go through the same thing with Homestar Runner all the time, sure, but I didn’t think my life would have changed in even minor ways due to the influence of “Ark and Kerrigan: All Your Pie” from 2002. I don’t even know what the two characters are supposed to be, or how they’re related, or if they’re in an amorous relationship or just friends who live together and eat pies or something. “Ark and Kerrigan: All Your Pie” was something I could’ve gone the rest of my life and just thought “oh yeah, I remember that” the same way I remember that cartoon with all the Badgers or that Sears Air Conditioner commercial, but I’m glad it let me learn about myself.

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