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phongn wrote:

Mrs Kendall wrote:I don't get ITunes, why pay for songs one by one like that?
Maybe it's cause I don't use our I-Pod shuffle (which we got for free) since I don't go anywhere without the car for any length of time. I just don't get why people pay so much for just one song.

Well, you can buy the whole album, often for a bit less than the cost of a physical CD. That said, sometimes people just want the single song.

I really like being able to pick and choose. Most of the purchases I've made with iTunes are one or two songs picked out from an album I'd otherwise never want, or want to buy. So, $.99 might seem like a lot of money for one song, but often the album is $9.99 (or sometimes a bit more, depending on how many songs it has on it), so if the album has 15 songs on it and you only like 10, you come out ahead buying the whole thing. If you only want 9 out of 15 songs, you still save money if they are purchased individually.

If having the physical CD is important to you, well, you may pay quite a bit more, but in most cases I don't care about having the company-manufactured disc.

80s glam metal was mostly considered shit by music fans even in its time. Even when Poison was a brand-new band, almost everyone I knew thought that their presentation was a fucking embarrassment to popular music. And a lot of bands back then sold records on the basis of the "one radio hit sells the other 9 piece of shit songs on the album" technique. The music business was different back then: customers put up with a lot of shit, like not being able to preview albums before they bought them. Why do you think the RIAA is so nostalgic for that era?

I am incredibly thankful I grew up in an era where the Internet allows easy access to virtually every piece of music ever released. I have a very eclectic collection of music and there is simply no way I'd be able to do it if my only means of buying music was from the local record store. Thank Christ for mp3s.

HemlockGrey wrote:

80s glam metal was mostly considered shit by music fans even in its time. Even when Poison was a brand-new band, almost everyone I knew thought that their presentation was a fucking embarrassment to popular music. And a lot of bands back then sold records on the basis of the "one radio hit sells the other 9 piece of shit songs on the album" technique. The music business was different back then: customers put up with a lot of shit, like not being able to preview albums before they bought them. Why do you think the RIAA is so nostalgic for that era?

I am incredibly thankful I grew up in an era where the Internet allows easy access to virtually every piece of music ever released. I have a very eclectic collection of music and there is simply no way I'd be able to do it if my only means of buying music was from the local record store. Thank Christ for mp3s.

Tell me about it. Even mainstream stores like Amazon let you preview part of every track on the disc nowadays. That would have been unthinkable when I was in school. Some people might look at those "preview booths" they have in some music stores where you can preview a CD and say that it's the same thing, but those things started sprouting up as a response to widespread on-line filesharing, as old-fashioned record stores tried to hang onto their business. It was MP3 that started a revolution in the way people listened to music.

Stark wrote:Is THAT what he was talking about? My ability to decode Bear's insane ramblings is minimal, I'm afraid.

And you missed the point of Lovecraft, man! It's about boring dudes who do boring stuff for ages before something vaguely fucked up and unnameable happens in the twist ending!

Thank you for reminding me of the other aspect of Lovecraft's bullshit that I don't get. "Oooh, it's so scary and ancient we can't even name it or describe it because it's just that scary! OooOOOoooOOOooohhhh!"

"oh yeah well superman is so powerful that there isn't a number big enough for how hard he could hit a dude!"
"oh yeah well cthulu has +infinitybillion to his intimidate check!"

I mean really, that's basically what it sounds like to me. I might be off seeing as I've never bothered to read Lovecraft, but that's the impression I get from most of the references to it that I come across.

Uraniun235 wrote:

Stark wrote:Is THAT what he was talking about? My ability to decode Bear's insane ramblings is minimal, I'm afraid.

And you missed the point of Lovecraft, man! It's about boring dudes who do boring stuff for ages before something vaguely fucked up and unnameable happens in the twist ending!

Thank you for reminding me of the other aspect of Lovecraft's bullshit that I don't get. "Oooh, it's so scary and ancient we can't even name it or describe it because it's just that scary! OooOOOoooOOOooohhhh!"

"oh yeah well superman is so powerful that there isn't a number big enough for how hard he could hit a dude!"
"oh yeah well cthulu has +infinitybillion to his intimidate check!"

I mean really, that's basically what it sounds like to me. I might be off seeing as I've never bothered to read Lovecraft, but that's the impression I get from most of the references to it that I come across.

I read exactly one Lovecraft novel. After that, I swore I'd never read another one again. The buildup isn't bad, but then he has to go and finish it. He'd be better off handing the second half of any given story off to M Night Shamalamadingdong.

It's horrible cliched nonsense that apparently intentionally makes no sense.

Lovecraft was trying to scare people of his time with his stories... you know, people that would have been horrified by concepts such as inter-racial marriage, microwave ovens, or non-euclidean geometries.

If taken with a bit of perspective, his stories can be quite scary, just like Stephen Kings', regardless of objections to his particular style (just like Stephen Kings').



What I don't get why is so popular, is the obsession with matching up and facing-off characters from different fictions. I like the angle given here to the SWvsST debates, and have a liking for Alien vs Predator.... But Freddy vs Jason? Come on!

Still without Call of the Ctullhu there probably wont be The Thing and consequently probably no Alien.

J.

hawkwind wrote:Still without Call of the Ctullhu there probably wont be The Thing and consequently probably no Alien.

J.

Oh yeah, because the whole concept of monsters and corrupted human forms was invented by Lovecraft, right? It's not as if that's a recurring theme through thousands of years of literature or anything.

No, off course not. And I m not defending Lovecraft, his writing is about as boring as watching paint dry, but the Call of Ctullhu inspiration in The Thing is rather blatlant and I m getting the same vibe from originall Alien.

J.

Well, The Color Out of Space was fairly good reading. I don't think Lovecraft ever quite got the hang of "scary", though, let alone "not boring".

Gullible Jones wrote:Well, The Color Out of Space was fairly good reading. I don't think Lovecraft ever quite got the hang of "scary", though, let alone "not boring".

In his defense, Lovecraft is on record as considering Colour his only tolerable story. Personally I enjoy his stuff, possibly just because I can effective slog through the boring for the few bits of good in each one.

But in the end, I much prefer Clark Ashton Smith. He's pretty much the best parts of Lovecraft combined with a delightful fantasy/sci-fi setting.

Hawkwind wrote:No, off course not. And I m not defending Lovecraft, his writing is about as boring as watching paint dry, but the Call of Ctullhu inspiration in The Thing is rather blatlant and I m getting the same vibe from originall Alien.

J.

Actually there was more than enough inspiration there even without Lovecraft. The Weird Tales era of writing had a couple handfuls of writers who did a lot of similar material to Lovecraft, even tossing settings, characters and religions back and forth between each other.

Hey I love Lovecraft stories. I'm just not going to argue that they're not cliched silly nonsense.

Stark wrote:Hey I love Lovecraft stories. I'm just not going to argue that they're not cliched silly nonsense.

I put Lovecraft in the same boat as Tolkien and others: Good at creating an awesome backdrop for stories, but horrid at making the stories themselves.

Anyways, back on topic:

I don't get thin-ness. I'm thin, I'll admit. But I'm naturally thin, I've got a metabolic-rate from hell and everything I eat is essentially fed into a blast furnace. Thin people can be pretty, sure, but it sure as hell isn't because they're thin. Emaciation in general is just plain ugly. Anorexia is a disease that simply shouldn't exist. People in 3rd world countries would give up their freedom simply for the chance to have half a meal a day and people here are having fits at the thought of forgetting to get the calorie count of one piece of toast they took a bite out of two days ago.

I don't get why TV series like OC and Lost are so popular.

I kind of get Lost - the utter weirdness of it is probably very refreshing to viewers. It sure looks like it drags on though. Although it is at in good company there. *cough* babylonfive *cough*

The OC on the other hand, I'm quite happy to say I never understood the appeal of.

hawkwind wrote:the Call of Ctullhu inspiration in The Thing is rather blatlant and I m getting the same vibe from originall Alien.

Hmmmm, I'd rather say that H.R. Giger had some more.... basic inspirations for the shape of the Alien... I mean, check his work, the Xenos are, quite literally, dickheads.

Um, Giger DID design them. You know that, right?

The original Alien was apparently based on a deep sea shrimp.

No, Giger designed it along with all the other alien structures. Preproduction art is available in books of his art, so I imagine someone would have sued him by now if it was someone else's work.

Stark wrote:No, Giger designed it along with all the other alien structures. Preproduction art is available in books of his art, so I imagine someone would have sued him by now if it was someone else's work.

Oops, I meant to say that Giger was inspired by a deep sea shrimp, but I cocked it up.

Oh sorry... you didn't even say Giger didn't base it on a shrimp. I think I'm just being argumentative.

No worries.

I know Giger designed the Alien creature, got an ilustration book of his myself (disturbing as it is).

What I meant is that Giger has a tendency to mix genitalia in many of his designs, and that the Alien's elongated phallic head might not be just a coincidence... Specially considering some other illustrations from Giger where you see creatures with similar elongated heads wich are, quite clearly, penises.


And in case someone wonders, Giger did not design any of the Alien variations in the sequels. (He did design the creatures from Species).

What the hell is it with and Nirvana. I mean they're okay but their nothing to get too excited about. And then when ever I say this I'm the weird one. Seriously .