Happyblox

Impossible? No, Christian Music Now Sucks Even More.

I know, I know, how could it get any worse than Stryper right? Oh it gets worse my friends. Much much worse. Much like the rings of hell I suppose Stryper is only but the cusp of Christian rock suckieness. (see this vid of Scott Ian from Anthrax's take on opening for Stryper.... worth the click.) In fact it would take a higher power to properly gauge exactly how much suckatude has been produced from this genre of music. Impossible for mere mortals to calculate. Your really setting yourself up for failure as a religious rock band to begin with. It's rock, the epitome of discourse and rebellion. Somehow prayer circles and bible stories don't seem to blend in there too well. I was honestly looking up Christian rock bands to link you little buggers to but I can't do it. I can't sit though one video so I will not ask you to do the same. Except one. This video sinks even Christian rock to a new low. Make that music to a new low. Just because you can "do a voice" doesn't mean you should.....ever.


Oh and I am not being bias, I think Matisyahu sucks too.

White Water Rafting Pictures.

The bottom pics were taken by Joonbug and the top 2 by the rafting companies photographer.
I photoshoped a couple of them, see if you can tell which ones.


 
   

Flash Art & Imagining A Better Lunch Soundtrack.

HBP has been hard at work on project Interference. Of course it is top secret stuff so I can only release the small image to the left. All I can add to that is there are many like him but none the same. While a lot of raw animations and polishing still needs to be addressed the project so far has been fun and challenging. Old school frame by frame animation meets some 21st century tricks of the trade. I forgot how much work frame by frame animation is but I also forgot how gratifying it is to see the end result of a long string of frames. I equate it to a string of successful crab pots on a crab fishing boat on the Discovery Channel. Of course, I am in a computer chair in a wife beater drinking a cold glass of soda occasionally walking over to the tv to stand and watch brief periods of old Iron Maiden concert footage or a black and white World War 2 flicks... in Miller Lite flip flops. Anyway, other than those slight deferences we are practically the same. Maybe it was the previous fun outdoor weekend but by 2:00 today I felt like my eyes were bleeding from animating so I hoped over to "the beach" again and listened to the Jon Lennon album "Imagine" which I never really heard all the way though. It kind of sucks. It starts with Imagine, which is a brilliant song, the sun was shining, there was a nice breeze, really all the set up your ever going to get for someone enjoying an album was present. It still sucked. The song "Oh Yoko" was predictably annoying and hokey. I felt like Mr. Lennon decided not to polish any of his riffs or compositions and relied on his famous voice too much. The songs (other than Imagine) lacked soul and most of all lacked anything tangible to hold onto. The rhythms are upbeat but uninspirational. The melodies are boring and sound over whimsical, kind of sad like a kid trying too hard to sing to his girlfriend on a mix tape in high school. So after Jon Lennon half ruined my extended lunch break I came back inside to the bat cave and got back on it. Came up with some good stuff and below is the Flash time line from the latest sequence. I know xversusy will likes this stuff.

Mars Needs Women... & Ice. We Send A Phoenix To Find... The Ice?

This is the first image beamed back today from the Phoenix space craft which is presently chillin' on Mars. That is right, the good folks at NASA have done it again proving that smart people can do more with smaller budgets these days. I know 200 million dollars sounds like a lot but think about it, John Travolta has 200 million dollars, so he bought a few planes and joined a cult that digs aliens, the folks at NASA built a space ship and ARE aliens. They are on another fucking planet! Looks like John joined the wrong party. This Phoenix space craft is a piece of work. It deploys 2 Japanese fan type solar arrays as soon as it lands to kick on it's power. After the violence of landing I find there is a nice elegant touch to that. I see it from a Mars alien life forms point of view.... "wow, that is some cool shit! I wonder how it tastes?" When I first set eyes on this image I was half expecting to see a Transformers shadow. I will have to Photoshop that one soon. This sucker landed near the North pole of Mars to look for Santa  ice. Where there is ice there is most likely some kind of tiny tiny life. Hey, the Doozers were tiny and they ruled so don't be all not exited now. I hope all goes well for the rest of the mission and stay tuned for periodic Phoenix posts when it does something cool, like break dance or find Spock's coffin.

White Water Rafting & Not Driving 55.

This weekend the crew descended upon upstate New York's Gore Mountain area for some white water rafting to celebrate my friend Dave's bachelor party. We were blessed with a perfect weather day (thank you FSM) and spent the majority of it floating on and in the Hudson river. The water was cold and our boat was the by far the most vocal and excited out of the half dozen or so on the river that day. Daves brother Howie even sabotaged another ship during "lunch" by acquiring their pump powered water cannon. Of course none of the other rafts knew they were at war with us but attacking an unprovoked and unprepared enemy is historically pretty successful. Minus Pearl Harbor anyway. The class 1 through 4 rapids were super fun. I am not sure how they class rapids but I bet it was really more like class 1 though 3. In any case it was a very enjoyable day. Pictures will be coming soon from various sources. I know, the anticipation must be killing you.
 
It is inevitable that in your travels you will wind up on highways with strict speed limits. I don't get them. Here in New York state the speed limit for most of the highways is 65 miles per hour. When its busy or a particularly poorly maintained section it will drop to 55 but mostly cops wont even blink at you unless you pass 70. In the city speed limits are virtually non existent which is the way it should be because it's all about keeping things moving. Traffic is horrible not only for the drivers mental health but for a million other reasons like being extremely expensive and unnecessary. Similarly the local roads in the small towns off the highway upstate are 50 miles per hour and those are 2 lane local roads with houses, factories and trails criss crossing them. My average speed on those roads is about 65.  Highways in upstate New York and New Jersey are the minimum of 4 lanes with no houses or buildings at all around and any trail that crosses over gets it's own bridge overpass. My average speed on these highways is usually around 70 because of traffic and people nervous about tickets. So the local roads I average 65, 15 over the limit but on the highway you average 70, only 5 over the limit. This is unacceptable. The risk of an accident on the local 50 MPH roads has got to be far superior to the risk of upping the highway speed limit to 80, even 85 mph. The most dangerous thing about driving on these highways is the speed limit. The cops heavily ticket these areas and tickets are freakin expensive, trust me I know! This leads to 2 lane each direction highways being parking lots at 30 MPH. People get too close. There are only 3 ways of relieving this. One is to up the speed limit and enforce the use of the slow lane. (On the autobahn they ticket just as much for slow people in the fast lane as they do for reckless driving) The second is to put more lanes in so people have more room to maneuver and the third is to stop ticketing drivers who speed when there is space to speed. This will make people 10 times less nervous and maybe they will spend more time watching the road and not their speedometer all the time. I can't drive 55 man. I just can't. (I am not even mentioning the improvements in safety and performance on cars and trucks in the past 15 years.) Plus who wants Germany to have better highways? Germany people! We need to get on this, pronto.

Another Random Reason To Love New York.

New York City's Brooklyn Bridge was 125 years young today and I heard there were to be fireworks. (news story here) I live on the East side and I found myself already outside around sundown and decided to walk along the recently remodeled bike and walking path on 23rd Street and the FDR. It's nice, they put in new walkways, new light fixtures, new tables and benches and new rock and plant landscaping. They even have a few small mulch paths cutting though islands of trees and grass. Would be good for a picnic. I could not see the Brooklyn Bridge from here though, I would have to walk south around the 14th St. bend where that sinister Con Edison factory is. Before I could make it 1 block I start running into strange people. When a New Yorker says "strange people" they are not kidding because they are automatically eliminating the homeless whinos, the heroin freaks, the business men having breakdowns on the phone or the Mohawk toting psychopaths that are usually around. To make a long story short I never made it to the bridge because the fireworks started before I could make it past the Williamsburg Bridge. I did go out to see some things, and I did see some thing! Just another random reason why loving New York City is too easy.




 
  I am going to bring my camera out more often this summer. I took these with my phone. I am lucky to live somewhere this beautiful.

Challenger SRT-8 Shows The Mustang Bullitt The Vanishing Point.

Edmund's has put out the best Challenger video yet. They compare it to it's closest competitor available, the Mustang Bullitt car. This is the Mustang built to replicate the machine Steve McQueen drove in the movie of the same title. The famous chase scene VS a Dodge Charger is here. While that movie did not pit his Mustang against a Challenger the movie Vanishing Point pitted a Challenger against everything on the road. Another Edmund's post focuses on that aspect of the new Challenger specifically. That can be found here. If those links have not quenched your muscle car thirst, then check the vid below! GO EDMUND'S!

Emo Kermit and the Birds & The Bees On An Apple: A double Shot From YouVert.

Via Youvert and affiliate otglu.com. What can I say? Sam is on today! BRAVO! Double shot of goodness.

My Mopar day and the 5.7 liter Hemi.

I never claimed to be an automotive expert. I never claimed to be an expert in anything come to think of it. In any case, I do claim to be an automotive enthusiast. I like to drive and I dig cars is what I am trying to say so it was to my glee that the local Dodge dealer was hosting a Mopar muscle car day. I stopped by the day before to prod the Dodge salespeople for any info I did not already read online and to see if they had a Charger I could tool around in to at least get a taste of what the 5.7 liter felt like on the road. I figured no point in continuing the drool fest if the engine was crap. He informed me that the next day was muscle car day so I figured I would go for a ride after gazing at the old Mopar cars of late. This turned out to be a great day.

I don't test drive cars the way I used to which was never enough to begin with. I still feel like I am 17 years old in the dealerships and have to remind myself that test driving cars is not only okay it is encouraged. It is almost as if I am trying to swindle them into letting me do something I am not supposed to do. That's how much I like cars. I figure any normal person would not just hand the keys of a 400 hp monster to people but how else do you sell cars right? People have to drive them. I guess from a business standpoint it is totally acceptable but the theory just boggles my mind. It goes against "you don't get anything for free". Sure you do. With gas at almost 5 bucks a gallon you get even more these days on a test drive.

As the Avalon made her silent approach I could see the array of Mopar colors first. Reds with black stripes, crazy green fluorescents with black stripes and brilliant blues and of course Hemi orange. When I pulled in Kid Rock was blasting from in back a BBQ with a couple of dozen car freaks roaming around munching on hot dogs and talking shop. Even though I was in East Hanover New Jersey I felt like I was outside a diner in the mid west. I parked the Avalon and walked around the old Mopars first. They had Challengers, Chargers, Covair Cudas, Road Runners, and some top of the line models like Super Bees and Super Birds. The new boys were there too in their not as impressive Chargers but they can't be as interesting with 50 years between them and their neighboring vehicles. They did have cool mods like cold air kits and slight body modifications that I am sure in 50 years will be well sought after.

Here are some pictures I took with my phone of the event.

So now I am truly drooling and go for my test drive in a 2008 Dodge Charger R/T with SRT8 trim. The thing was loaded and was actually more than I would want to spend on the Challenger but it also had way more stuff than I would want. First off the trip tonic automatic / manual shifting mode sucks. It takes a good 2 and a half seconds to shift gears which really messes up your timing. The automatic shifts much faster and smoother. The 09's will have manual transmissions so no worries there. My first 15 minutes were spent in solid Rt 10 traffic so I got to experience what it was like as a regular every day car and it was very comfortable. Also very calm except for the slight "blub blub blub" from the exhaust.

Being familiar with the area I got off the main street as soon as possible and after a few turns I was in very light traffic and opened her up a bit. She responded immediately and filled the cabin with a horrific roar that pinned me back in the seat and sent the back end straight toward the ground and the hood bucking up slightly from the power. The red line came up quick but the automatic changes right before things get ugly. Being an automatic your foot is the only real control you have but it was pretty easy to figure out how much pressure at certain speeds it took to get what you wanted out of the engine. I was surprised how fast it calms down and becomes a regular driving car when you are done being a 17 year old. I kind of like that. It is more like the Mustang in the every day driving capability of it. I hope the Challenger is the same. Anyway, after some reasonably fast straights and some tight turns including one sweet fishtail around a little bend, my prognosis was very good. Very good indeed. I did not even get a change to diss the crappy plastic interior because I could not keep my eyes off the road. The car also gripped extremely well and it's road presents is strong and stout. I really enjoyed myself. I think that engine is a great heart for a car that can transform your driving experience from boring to freakin crazy insane.

Here is a picture I scanned from the new "pre-official" Challenger brochure.

Here are the 09 color choices along with your rim and wheel options.