shanesemler

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I was watching a segment about Schindler’s List on Spielberg on Spielberg tonight and I had a realization: patriotism isn’t morality.

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Me and my brother did an interview for Mercury Wire relating to our music (Shadowjack and The Dark Aeons) and Second Life in general. Check it out here.

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“I’m a Man (On the Moon) demo” available here: MySpace.com and DMusic.com.

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I don’t often post in here about my geeky side but I’m a dual booter. I’ve been using Ubuntu since the first version (Warty Warthog - I love the names) and next to SuSE 10.2, Feisty is the smoothest Linux install I’ve ever experienced. I find myself using it as much as possible and avoiding Windows, just so I can drink in all that Beryl goodness. Unfortunately, audio apps for Linux pretty much suck and I don’t know how to get my old Echo Darla 20 working so I need Windows yet for making music.

Speaking of music, I’m still on hiatus. Chances are good I won’t be making any new music or playing shows in Second Life until July, at the very least.

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Some old ideas for paintings I never uploaded or maybe I did and deleted. I don’t remember. In any case, here they are for whoever visits this blog/gallery.

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When science fiction ceases to be about the future and attempts to be “relevant” to the present, it ceases to be relevant at all.

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Messing around with Shi-Painter, an online drawing application. I kind of like how it came out. I’m never quite happy with my clouds.

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I’ve been thinking for many years that Weird Al is an unacknowledged genius and it seems I’m not alone. Check out this article from The Village Voice. Al’s music transcends the songs it parodies. I’ve always felt “Another One Rides the Bus” stands on it’s on as a brilliant recording, apart from the original Queen tune. Weird Al is great, I loved his stuff in the 80’s, 90’s and i love his stuff even more now. The guy is brilliant as he is funny!

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On the internet there is a Seniority of Assholes. If you’ve been around long enough, communities grant someone the privilege to be a total asshole. And they will defend Senior Assholes to the death. Senior Assholes believe that because of their precieved help to some community or other, they have not only the privilege but the right to be an asshole and will exercise that right any chance they get. I have zero respect for that “rule” or those people and their communities. Maybe that is simply the way groups of people work so I guess that’s why I don’t get along in groups very much.

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I have lots of sketches but I rarely show them to anyone, just a few that I think I might to do something with. I was thinking about turning this into a painting. It originally started out a doodle for an adventure/puzzle game concept.

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“I love this country more than I love this process. As debasing as it can be, sometimes we forget that when Politics works, Americans live better and safer lives.” –Harold Ford Jr.

This might be one of the few elections in American history where the loser came out looking better than the winner.

These close races all over the country demonstrate an important fact, every vote counts. If you’re a registered voter, you have no excuse. Get off your ass and pay attention to the government.

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There’s a big difference between Hollywood sci-fi and sci-fi in literature. The best science fiction literature is about big ideas, expanding one’s mind beyond the mundane. Hollywood thinks it’s about splashy effects, technobabble and worse of all, social commentary. I predict a ratings slide for the new season of Battlestar Galactica. I hate when hollywood thinks that for sci-fi to be relevant, it must club you over the head with it’s parallels to real world events. Such is the unfortunate case of the new season of Battlestar. Sci-fi is an escape, I dont want Iraq in space, thank you very much. Hear that splash? It’s Fonzie, he just landed after jumping the shark.

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If you consider yourself any kind of metalhead, you need to pick up a Candlemass album! I first heard them on Tales of Creation back in 1989 and was hooked. I didn’t have access to the album for years, finally I went looking for it a couple years back and fell in love with it all over again. Along with Celtic Frost, these guys are one of the really heavy Metal bands from the 80’s. In fact, their sound is crushingly heavy - no, not fast, not screamy - just really fucking HEAVY! Messiah Marcolin (the lead singer) is one of the few operatic-style Metal singers that doesn’t annoy the shit out of me. They carried on the spirit of Black Sabbath when Black Sabbath was a joke (remember Black Sabbath featuring Tony Iommi?) Candlemass is the best!

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I got Last.fm working again so now anyone who wishes can spy on what music I’m listening to at any given moment.

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I love them! I have a couple of (legal) mp3s of songs off of A Radical Recital and I want the rest of the album bad! No, I need it!

In other news, it appears I can cross-post to LiveJournal once again. Cool!

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I’ll be streaming live at the Sunset Paradise Music Shell June 25th 11:00 AM SLT, 2:00 PM EDT. Second Life is free so I hope everyone downloads it and comes to the show. My avatar is known as Ehdward Spengler so please IM me if you need any help finding the place or have any general SL questions. However, I will be busy the day of the show so I may not be able to return messages very quickly.

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Another small painting for Second Life gallery Enigmatic Artworks. The theme of the show was “macro.” Most people turned in macro photos of flowers and insects, this was my interpretation of the theme.