John’s Crawlspace

Wow. Well, I’m not really sure what to say about last night, but it was absolutely insane. Some friends and I met up in the city and caught the last three innings of the game at Good Dog on 15th Street. After the Phillies won the World Series, everyone went nuts. No one needed to say anything, everyone immediately took to the streets. We followed the crowd over to Broad Street, and for the first fifteen minutes or so we basically just ran around screaming like maniacs and high-fiving everyone in site. Then things started to get ridiculous. Everyone left the bars with beers in hand, and soon enough those beers were flying through the air. People started climbing road signs, and I actually saw a guy fall from one. Celebration turned into destruction pretty quickly. People were flipping potted plants, smashing store windows, and starting fires. There were cops everywhere - The only time I’ve ever seen more cops in one place was at a PSU/Ohio State game. But the abundance of cops definitely didn’t stop people. I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty exciting. Believe it or not, I didn’t participate in any kind of destructive behavior. I missed the last train out of the city, but was able to catch a ride back to a friends house. We decided it was time to get out of the city around 12:30, and on the way out we saw a flipped car. You can check out some pictures of the chaos here and here. God my head hurts.

I took off work tomorrow so I can go to the parade. They’re releasing free tickets @ 3 PM on Phillies.com for the post-parade celebration. At least I think that’s what the tickets are for, I’m not positive. But I’m grabbing some either way. I have a feeling tomorrow is going to be pretty exhausting. I have tickets to see Of Montreal tomorrow night at the Electric Factory, so hopefully I can make it to that after what is sure to be a ridiculous day of drinking and screaming. I’ll probably end up taking my shirt off too.

Dammit! I just deleted all of the comments on my posts from the past month and a half. Why? While I was in Ghana, something happened to my Akismet(spam filtering program for Wordpress) plugin, allowing all comments (spam or no spam) to get through, and the spammers went wild - I had over 80,000 spam comments, mostly in older posts. I’ve been slowly but surely making my way through and cleaning them out, and I got a little careless. So yeah, that sucks.

Slayer is back in the studio, working on the follow-up to 2006’s Christ Illusion. You can check out a video of them in the studio here. Sounds good to me. Why do you love the devil?

Some of these Firefox-themed desktop wallpapers are pretty damn cool.

I think I might start doing this more often - Making smaller (but more frequent posts). Often times I’ll come across a news article or something that I want to post, and I throw it in a text file. By the time I actually accumulate enough content to justify making a post on the site, the news article is at least a week old, and sometimes no longer relevant. What do you (all 6 of you) think - Should I make smaller posts more frequently? I’ll try not to delete your comments this time. I’ll be heading into the city after work again tonight to (hopefully) watch the Phillies take the World Series.

My buddy Nick and I ended up taking the R5 into the city last night to watch the Phillies game. I obviously didn’t have tickets, but I knew that tons of people would be crowding into bars to watch the game and get rowdy, and I didn’t want to miss it. A bunch of people were meeting up at Fox and Hound on Spruce, so we headed there, but it was at capacity when we got there, and there was a decent sized crowd standing outside in the rain waiting to get in, so we took a taxi to Finnegan’s Wake instead. I’ve been there a good amount of times before and it’s definitely not my favorite place in the city, but I knew some people that were already there. $25 all you can eat/drink, which was a good deal, but probably not in my best interest, since I left my car at the train station and would need to drive it back to my apartment later that evening. Anyway, those of you that read this site can probably tell I’m not a huge sports fan, but it’s easy to get into it when that many people are so worked up for the game. As I’m sure you know, the game was rained out in the 6th inning after the Rays tied it up 2-2, and my understanding is that the game (which won’t be happening tonight) will be resumed at the exact point of suspension - “The completion of a suspended game is a continuation of the original game.” That was a pretty big dissapointment, but I still had a good time. The train on the way back was absolutely packed. They said it wasn’t going anywhere until they fit everyone in, and it didn’t even end up leaving 30th Street Station until probably around 1 am. I ended up getting back to my place around 2:30 or so, and I’m exhausted today, but it was worth it. People seem to be pretty dissapointed with the suspension, and there is definitely a good amount of negativity surrounding the continuation of the game, but it’s definitely understandable considering this team’s track record. Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens next. In a way I think it’s good that the Rays tied it up right before they called the game - Who wants to win a World Series in a rain shortened game? It’s actually snowing in PA and NJ right now…

I somehow managed to forget to post this when it originally leaked… Between the Buried and Me have released a live album which consists of them playing their latest album, “Colors”, in its entirety. It’s an awesome album, and if you’re into any kind of metal/progressive rock you should check it out. A few weeks late on this one, but you can download Colors - Live here.

Apparently Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler has been jamming with Led Zeppelin, and he may replace Robert Plant. I’m pretty sure that’s some major BS.

As f’ed up as this is, it’s pretty funny to me. The guy who put up the display actually stated that “the message isn’t political, it’s racist”. It’s funny to me that he isn’t beating around the bush at all. Oh no, I wasn’t trying to be political, I just hate black people. Also, two white supremacist skinheads (read: morons) got busted while plotting to kill Obama. It’s pretty funny how that the article mentions that “the plot did not appear to be very advanced or sophisticated”. Morons.

I still haven’t had a chance to watch Pineapple Express yet. I watched about half of it last night before I fell asleep, and definitely liked what I saw. Anyway, there’s a decent quality workprint floating around, the color changes to black and white every once in a while, but it’s definitely not a big deal. You can download Pineapple Express here.

Or, you could watch this video about AIDS orphans in Kenya, which really bummed me out, but made me want to travel again so badly. Minus the crime and glue huffing, those kids reminded me a lot of the orphans that I worked with in Ghana. Speaking of which, I do plan on getting that last Ghana post up soon - I recently moved and I’ve been busy settling into the new place. Not spending almost 2 hours a day driving to and from work is nice, since my new place is about 10 minutes from where I work. Anyway…

This picture was tagged on Digg as “It’s a beautiful world!“, and I really can’t think of a better caption myself.

Ever wonder how much it would cost you to drive from point A to point B? You can always estimate, but CostToDrive.com will give you a pretty accurate figure. I was surprised to learn that it’d only cost me $306.65 to drive down to Carson, CA and black out with some friends. Flying wieners.

Alright, well I’m leaving work early today, heading to DC to make a quick $300. No homo.

Want to get 25% off of anything on eBay for the next few days? Live.com’s cashback feature will credit your account with up to 25% of your purchase on eBay (minus the cost of shipping and handling). This was actually at 30% for the past week or so, but it didn’t dawn on me to post it here until just now. You’ll need to create a free account at Live.com. If you want to activate the 25% savings, head to Live.com and search for something like ‘cheap PS3′ or ‘cheap Wii’. At the top of the SERP (search engine result page for you non-nerds) you’ll see an eBay ad with something along the lines of “You may get 25% off with PayPal if eligible.” Click on that, and it will take you to eBay. Find whatever it is that you’re looking for - I’d suggest ‘Buy It Now’ items, I’m not even sure if this works on normal auctions. When you click ‘Buy It Now’, the green “Microsoft Cashback 25%” graphic should still appear on the screen. It should also appear at the checkout page. I may have done a crappy job explaining this, so if you’re looking for more detailed instructions, check out this thread on the SlickDeals forums. Something I learned the hard way is that you wanna look for Buy It Now items with free shipping. Even if they cost more than the items that don’t come with free shipping, do a little math and figure out what your total cashback amount will be. Let me know if any of you actually take advantage of this. It takes like 60 days to actually credit to your account, but it’s definitely worth it in my opinion, especially on the larger purchases. I just bought a new digital camera, as my last one was stolen a few weeks ago at a party in Philly. This is my 8th digital camera… Yup.

Minus the Bear released an an acoustic album last week. The first track, “Guns & Ammo”, is new, and the other six songs are acoustic versions of songs from previous albums. Anyway, enough beating around the bush, you can download it here.

I’m actually seeing Minus the Bear on the 23rd. Last time I saw them was at Langerado (this past March) and we managed to sneak into the press area, so that was pretty cool. Anyway, they put on a good show, so I’m looking forward to that. Last Wednesday (the 8th) I saw Between the Buried and Me (the “Blooddrunk Tour” with The Black Dahlia Murder and Children of Bodom) which was pretty cool. BTBAM opened though, and we were about fourty five minutes late for the show, so I only caught their last song, “White Walls”… Which was awesome to hear live, by the way. It sort of made me want to eat someone. The next night (Thursday the 9th) I saw Buckethead, which was also pretty awesome. And Saturday night (the 11th) I saw Yonder Mountain String band (for the second time). They put on an awesome show as usual, and I had a great time. I never would have thought that I could get into bluegrass, and I have no idea how that happened. Also, last month I got 4 free tickets to Carcass (with Necrophagist, Suffocation, and Dying Fetus, at the Starland Ballroom) from Jose (a DJ from Sirius Hard Attack), which was pretty awesome. He mentioned on the air that he had some free tickets, so I sent him an email, and he got back to me the next day with 4 tickets, simple as that. Considering the fact that Sirius is pretty huge and has an enormous subscriber base (an estimated 19.5 million by the end of this year), I thought it was pretty cool that he hooked me up. It’s weird how I’ll go months without seeing any live music, and then a bunch of shows that I can’t miss just pop up out of nowhere.

Banksy recently opened a pet store in New York. As those of you who are familiar with Banksy probably guessed, it’s not your normal pet store. Check out a video of the place to see what I mean.

How many times have you fallen asleep watching a DVD, and throughout the night you’ll hear the DVD menu audio looping over and over again, but for some reason you don’t get up and change it? Most of my memories of this usually had something to do with alcohol and/or a “guest”. Anyway, not that it’s something that you want to experience, but this site does a pretty good job of simulating it. Totally random.

Don’t have a Halloween costume yet? If you’re lazy enough, you can probably pull off wearing one of these masks. Me? I just dropped more money than I probably should have on a Green Man suit that I’m not even sure I’ll be wearing. Y’all see this shit? It’s a chrome garbage can!