It seems like lots of people are posting the lyrics to songs on their blogs, so I thought I would follow suit today. Here's a song that's close to my heart and it is...

 "A Boy Named Sue" – Johnny Cash

SING ALONG!

 My daddy left home when I was three
And he didn't leave much to ma and me
Just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze.
Now, I don't blame him cause he run and hid
But the meanest thing that my daddy ever did
Was before he left, he went and named me "Sue."

Well, he must o' thought that is quite a joke
And it got a lot of laughs from a' lots of folk,
It seems I had to fight my whole life through.
Some gal would giggle and I'd get red
And some guy'd laugh and I'd bust his head,
I tell ya, life ain't easy for a boy named "Sue."

Well, I grew up quick and I grew up mean,
My fist got hard and my wits got keen,
I'd roam from town to town to hide my shame.
But I made a vow to the moon and stars
That I'd search the honky-tonks and bars
And kill that man who gave me that awful name.

Well, it was Gatlinburg in mid-July
And I just hit town and my throat was dry,
I thought I'd stop and have myself a brew.
At an old saloon on a street of mud,
There at a table, dealing stud,
Sat the dirty, mangy dog that named me "Sue."

Well, I knew that snake was my own sweet dad
From a worn-out picture that my mother'd had,
And I knew that scar on his cheek and his evil eye.
He was big and bent and gray and old,
And I looked at him and my blood ran cold
And I said: "My name is 'Sue!' How do you do!
Now you're gonna die!!"

Well, I hit him hard right between the eyes
And he went down, but to my surprise,
He come up with a knife and cut off a piece of my ear.
But I busted a chair right across his teeth
And we crashed through the wall and into the street
Kicking and a' gouging in the mud and the blood and the beer.

I tell ya, I've fought tougher men
But I really can't remember when,
He kicked like a mule and he bit like a crocodile.
I heard him laugh and then I heard him cuss,
He went for his gun and I pulled mine first,
He stood there lookin' at me and I saw him smile.

And he said: "Son, this world is rough
And if a man's gonna make it, he's gotta be tough
And I knew I wouldn't be there to help ya along.
So I give ya that name and I said goodbye
I knew you'd have to get tough or die
And it's the name that helped to make you strong."

He said: "Now you just fought one hell of a fight
And I know you hate me, and you got the right
To kill me now, and I wouldn't blame you if you do.
But ya ought to thank me, before I die,
For the gravel in ya guts and the spit in ya eye
Cause I'm the [bleep] that named you "Sue.'"

I got all choked up and I threw down my gun
And I called him my pa, and he called me his son,
And I came away with a different point of view.
And I think about him, now and then,
Every time I try and every time I win,
And if I ever have a son, I think I'm gonna name him...
Bill or George! Anything but Sue! I still hate that name!

 

I cannot understand why rental discs always have scratches.
Always! Whether it's a movie or a video game, there is always at least one
visible scratch. It also doesn't matter where I go. It can be either
Blockbuster or the local library. There are scratches. Meanwhile, I have DVDs
and games over five years old that I use regularly and they still look brand
new. They don't even have thumbprints. What do other people do? Throw them
against wall just to see what sound they make? "Hey Ted, check it out. I'm
Tron! VOOOOSH!" It is for similar reasons that I try to avoid buying used
games. Nine times out of ten, they have a big, honkin' scratch on them. Clearly
the schmucks who trade their games in are pricks who want others to not be
happy. If I ever ran a GameStop, or some other trade-in shop, I would check
every disc that came into the store, and grill every person that tries to
return a disc with a scratch in it.

"Okay Mr. Stevens, please have a seat."

"What's this about? I just want to trade this game
in."

"Oh, I doubt that will happen very much, Mr. Stevens. I
just want to ask you a few questions. First of all, why is there this large
scratch on the back of this one?"

"I dunno."

"I need a better answer than that, Mr. Stevens."

"Look, I-I I dunno. I told you that."

"That's not good enough."

"Okay, okay! Just please put those clamps away. I just
kept it out of the case for a couple of days, and then I accidentally dropped a
box on it. It's no big deal. It still works."

"You kept it out of the case? You sicken me. Remove
yourself from my store immediately. You are excommunicated. Your picture, along
with this disc, shall be put on my wall of shame. May the gods have mercy on
your soul."

If you read my blog fairly regularly, you probably know that I am a big fan of the comedian Christopher Titus. If you don't, then you should know that I am a fan of the aforementioned guy. Last night, I had the chance to watch the ABC series Big Shots, the latest TV show he stars in. The show, in its entirety, resounded with mediocrity. It revolves around four guys who are all rich business execs as they go around and try to handle their relationships. Two of the non-Titus characters are the story drivers. They make the TV show fall into the "drama" category, and make it very dull. The only redeemable parts of the show were the comic relief scenes with Titus and/or Joshua Malina. They managed to mix into the boring dialogue some pizazz that the other two seemed to lack. There can never be enough jokes about Napoleans. I'm glad to see Titus is back on TV being as funny as always, but I just wish he could go back into a comedy. I might stick with the show a bit longer to see how it pans out. Hopefully the producers will up the comedy dosage of the show. If you ask me, the whole show should have been a comedy, but these TV producers never once talk to me. I'm full of ideas!

I don't understand why, but people always seem to be amazed
by the way I can read a book and be doing something completely different at the
same time. Most often it's when I'm walking and reading. It seems that most
people lack the coordination to walk and read, or even chew gum, at the same
time. The same goes for eating. I can eat an entire meal without once putting
my book down. I was recently asked how I do it after downing half of a
rotisserie chicken without once averting my eyes from my book. I don't really
know how to explain it either. It's just something I'm good at. I'm very
fidgety, and I don't like doing one thing at a time. I can often be seen
reading while eating, listening to music while doing classwork, singing in the
shower, playing video games while burping the worm, etcetera. I guess I've just
gotten good at partitioning my brain function. Maybe that's not what they mean
though, so let me go ahead and explain an easy way to read with just one hand.
To begin, put the spine of the book flat onto your middle finger, while your
index and ring finger balance the sides. Open to the pages that you are on and
hold them open using your pinky on one side and your thumb on another. To turn
the page, use your thumb to maneuver around until you can flip the page, as
shown in my little video here:

I know, it has a terrible ending, but it was
meant to be instructional, not entertaining. For those of you interested, the
book I was "reading" was Tim Allen's Don't Stand too Close to a Naked Man and the song was DragonForce's
Fury of the Storm. Also, for those of
you who did not realize, the hand was mine.

Are you all familiar with those self-checkout
lines they have at grocery stores and other shops? I love those things. They
are incredibly handy because most people seem to be scared to death of them.
They would stand in a cashier line with four other people rather than use the
empty self-checkout. I don't mean to brag, but I'm pretty tech-savvy. I can
turn on my PC all by myself, I'll have you know, so working a self-checkout device
is no big deal. What I do not like about those things is the voice they all
seem to use. It's always the same lady's voice, who must have retired young
collecting the royalties from all of those machines she lends her voice to. My
problem with it is that her voice is always loud at the most inopportune times.
Whenever she announces an item, she speaks as though she's trying to address
congress without a microphone in a class-5 hurricane. "Your NAVEL
ORANGES cost THREE... DOLLARS AND... SEVENTY-THREE...
CENTS! Please move your NAVEL ORANGES to the belt." You
do not realize how embarrassing navel oranges are until you have them declared
to half of the country. It almost makes me want to buy some funny sounding
items just to have them declared to the store. "Please move your RUTEBEGAS
and PREPARATION-H
to the belt." Maybe they should just go ahead and make a self-checkout
voice over in Ebonics. You can already select between English, Spanish, and in some
cases French, so why not some "smack-talk"? "Yo dawg, move yo'
motherf~~~in' HORMEL CHILI to the God-d~~~ belt, before I pop a cap in yo'
a~~!" Such an option would make school shopping with the kids an
entertaining experience.

In a very short amount of time, I am going to
enter into some serious discussions between myself and my rectum. Now, I know
it's completely full of shit, but I hope that, with the aid of my toilet, I can
make something go down. You see, my rectum has been under a lot of pressure,
and lately it has been appealing to me for relief. It is using the threat that
whenever it is under pressure, it will put me under pressure. If I do not
follow its wishes, I will be in a world of shit. Frankly, I was planning on
relieving it of its burden during these talks anyway. I brought all of the
necessary paperwork, so I can at least look busy and concerned while it blows
off some steam and lets out some hot air.

Yes folks, it's true. Neverland Software has announced that
it will be making a sequel to the excellent game Rune Factory, which scored a
5.5 out of 10 in Game Informer magazine. It has also come to my attention that
Game Informer is run by godless, communist kitten-killers and frequently hires
known child molesters and neo-Nazis. This post, however, is not about bashing
Game Informer and their blatant lies and necrophilia. It is about the sequel to
Rune Factory.

Things have stayed essentially the same from the first game.
The story takes place a few years after the ending of the first Rune Factory,
and revolves around a new guy named Kyle. How they chose that name is anyone's
guess, but I'll assume that there are less ways to misspell it. There have also
been several improvements to the user interface that I know I have been
yearning for since I started playing the first one. My favorite is the slightly improved item-management system. Now there are tabs along the bottom of the touch screen you can use to access your rucksack quickly and painlessly. The HUD also shows more detailed information about the tool you have in your hand. It does not, however, seem to show how much money you have in your wallet, but I hope that change takes effect before the game is released. The game takes place in an
all new town with mostly new characters. One addition from the first game is
the half-elf Cecilia as one of the marriage candidates. Frankly, she's the one
I'm most looking forward to and plans to stalk her once the game comes out
stateside are already underway. Other bachelorettes include a scantily clad
witch(?) named Alicia, a strangely emo girl named Dorothy, and a Maya Fey
look-alike named Yue. Seriously, she looks just like Maya Fei from the Phoenix
Wright series. There is still no word whether rune points will be expended
while doing farm chores, which wasn't that big a deal with me, but was a sore
point for others. Right now, people in Japan are looking forward to a release
date set in January of next year.

Rune Factory 2 official website

IT'S DANCIN' LOLI TIME!

Just the other day, I was eating an orange, and
the convenient little sticker on the outside told me, in no uncertain terms,
that that orange was grown in Africa. My first thought upon reading this was,
"my gods, could this be a 'conflict orange?'" You all have heard of
blood diamonds, or conflict diamonds, that are used as a universal currency for
the sale of every form of contraband from firearms to bootleg anime. With that
said, not all African people have access to vast diamond mines. How are these
people supposed to arm themselves? They use other forms of currency, such as
dirt, prostitutes, peace activists, and oranges in this case. Whatever company
imported these oranges (the sticker conveniently did not say) must have traded
for a few AKs, of which they have abundance. Who knows what evil and despicable
organization could have gone through with this trade? The Russian Mafia? The Yakuza?
Lockheed-Martin? Del Monte? I doubt we will ever find out, but I am sure US
customs officials are cracking down on these illegal oranges, and the blood
that is spilt for their tastiness.

Before I begin, let me just give my condolences to... somebody. Recently, a police sergeant in Japan was brutally murdered by his own teenage daughter. The reason I use "brutally" is because the weapon of choice was an ax. Also, just before deciding to chop up a bundle of father for the fire, she inexplicably changed into an all black dress. I guess she just wanted to get a jump start on the funeral arrangements. While in custody, she readily admitted that she did it. As if the blood stains weren't enough.

In a related story, many Japanese TV channels have decided to pull the last episode of School Days. I had mentioned this anime before. It was that almost-hentai anime with the delightful male role-model named Makoto and his harem. As it turns out, the eroge for School Days is well-known for its mostly violent ending scenes. The company responsible for the anime was going to follow suit with its ending for the series. The only hitch came with the aforementioned news story. Spokespeople from the television stations say that they did not want to air the violent ending in light of recent events, and rumors hold that the last episode entails a character running amok with an ax. Since most of the characters wear black school uniforms, they must've thought the similarities were too great. The show has been pulled and it is unsure whether it will be allowed to air. Crap, it's not like this is the first violent blood-bath of an anime to air. Lighten up, Japan! What are you? America?