Happy Holidays everyone!

Merry Christmas everyone and a Happy New Year to the World!

See you in '09!

My first encounter with the grainy kind

Hmm, last Sunday we ate at Mexicali, and then it happened... A moment that will be etched in my mind for as long as I live... I, Mark Ramos, have, for the first time in the sixteen years I have been living on this Earth, eaten rice.

Now I can hear all of you right now, "What? What's wrong with that?" You don't get it yet, I have not eaten rice since the day I was born. Why, you ask? It's all just personal preference, but some of my college friends won't stop heckling me about it, I JUST DON'T FUCKING LIKE IT OKAY! As a Filipino, this makes me somewhat of an oddity, when almost 99.99% of Filipinos eat rice, I prefer not to. I once told my Dad, "When all Filipinos die of some freaky rice shortage, I'll be the only one left, I'll be Legend"

Made in MS Paint... Again!

So yeah, this is one hell of a milestone for me, but you know what? I still hate it.

Why? I just don't get it, it's tasteless and does nothing more than just stare at you... with its cold blooded eyes.

Oh the horror...

So I guess I'll just go through this lifetime without ever liking the evil grain, but maybe... Just maybe... Nah.

NARRATOR:
Will our hero ever eat rice? Will he fall into the evil forces of the grain? Can this blog get any stupider? Find out next time at the thrilling conclusion of... MARKED AND LOCKED ON DOT BLOGSPOT DOT COM! (never happening)

Damn you, Robert!!!

Sometimes a great read can be ruined by a horrible/sappy ending.

I recently finished Ludlum's "The Cry of the Halidon", not one of his best works but still good. Anyways, back to the topic, the book is filled with action, suspense and what you would normally expect from Ludlum. But this is not a book review!

Spoiler Warning!!!

So towards the end of the book, our hero leads his ragtag team of researchers through the forest, trying to narrowly avoid death. They set up their gameplan, each one of them will sneak up on the people sent out to kill them to what will become one very fast, not so suspensful ending.

That is not the ending I am speaking of, I am talking about this:

"They walked on the green lawn in front of the cottage that was a villa and looked out the sea. A white sheet of ocean spray burst up from the coral rock and appeared suspended, the pitch-blue waters of the carribean serving as the backdrop, not a source. The spray cascaded forward and downward and then receeded back over the crevices that formed the coral overlay. It became ocean again, at one with its source; another form of beauty.
Alison took McAuliff's hand.
They were free."

Holy Shit! Was I just reading a Judith McNaught/Danielle Steel novel? It's like Ludlum said to himself, "Damn, got all these flowery words I forgot to use. I know! I'll spend them all in this one tiny paragraph!". The supreme level of sap contained in that ending could even overtake the most sappiest of all the sappiest things ever devised! Its just so weird to see an ending like that after reading all the brutal deaths in this book. One I remember went something like, the protagonist clutches his enemy by the throat, after some body blows, he then takes a rock and smashes it in the guy's mouth and drowns him in the mud! Drowns him in the fucking mud! And then I'm treated to this ending?! Ludlum could've been less sappy when he wrote that. I just hope "The Chancellor Manuscript" has something better.

Markel's Gift Recommendations!

It's finally December again! Only a few weeks until we rip out decorated paper, tear open stapled bags like mindless savages! That's right! It's Christmas again!

And of course every Christmas comes the question, "What should I get so-and-so for Christmas?" Well, if you're a parent, I've one hell of an offer for you!

Has your child ever exhibited the strong desire to kill animals? Is he showing the signs of a future Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, or Jeffrey Dahmer? Well now you can satisfy him without the mess and avoid any lawsuits PETA might file against you! I present to you our newest book...
DEAD ANIMALS!!! Satisfy your child's inner Jack the Ripper with all time classics such as...

Dead dog!

Dead Cat!

But we go exotic! Featuring critters such as...

Dead Sloth!
Dead Monkey!

Yes! With DEAD ANIMALS, your child will have hours of fun while satisfying his violent fantasies! We cover every animal from Aardvark to Zebra!

If you call and order right now, you and you're child need some serious mental help! So don't pass on this incredible offer!

Aha! Part Deux!

Ah yes! I've found something else men can do but women can't! If I saw my feminist teacher again, she'll have what's coming to her!

This little nugget of inspiration came right after posting my first "Aha!" Plus I read this article.

6 Sex Myths as Explained by Science

Read it, seriously.

Anyway, the other thing men can do but women can't... (The world is about to be shaken out of it's orbit yet again!) Sleep right after having an orgasm.

Am I right men? Right after a release, don't we feel like taking a trip to never never land? (yay metallica reference...) Well, it's scientifically proven! Ladies, yet again, don't feel like your man treats sex with you like a chore, it's science working at it's finest!

Aha!

I once had a feminist teacher in in high school, she would always say things like, "Women can do everything men can do, even better!". So once she asked us, "Give me something men can do but women can't" one of my friends answered, "Pee standing up!" we all had a good laugh but when you think about it women can actually pee standing up.

This is where I come in, we had a seminar on sex and love at our college last Tuesday and the speaker made one damn good point. Men, next time a feminist tells you, "Women can do everything men can, and then some!" tell her that she's WRONG!!! Listen up guys, I am about t share with you a secret so profound, it could shake the entire world out of it's orbit. The one thing men can do but women can't is... Staring into blank space and thinking about absolutely nothing.

Yep, kinda like this

Women think about stuff 24/7 whilst men can lapse in and out of mental activity when bored/eating (that's why men rarely talk while eating). So next time ladies, when you catch your man staring at nothing and you ask him, "Hon, what are you thinking about?", if he says "Nothing" he's really telling the truth! So don't pester you're loved one with a "Sige na, what are you thinking about", men will just usually lie (because they know you won't stop interrogating them) and say the first thing that comes to their mind, "I was just thinking about you, baby".

For a guy my age...

... I don't really act like it. You can't label me as a "teen", like my mom said, "You're sixteen going on thirty".

First of all is my taste in my music, my preference for it is that it should be older than me. I recently got into the Beatles, "I am The Walrus" is really one of my favorite songs along with "Hey Jude". Ahh, the great things one can conceive while on acid. Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, The Misfits, got them all in my mp3. I try to keep my best away from mainstream as if my life depended on it, if some new not-metal video airs, I reach for the remote as if I acted on instinct.

The games I play are also another example, I loathe Mumorpugers (MMORPGs). I only joined because my friends forced me (althrough I respect other Mumorpugers, others I just grew to hate). The TV shows I watch, I still like watching cartoons as if I was still 10, I still watch Spongebob every chance I get, I'm not really fond of anime though.

The ages I really act like are on the opposite ends of the spectrum, I can act really childlike when around people I'm close to, or act real mature when around older people, but sometimes I'm just silent.

This blog is another example, most blogs of teens you'll see will be like a public diary (I'm talking to you! You know who you are! No it's not you Iggy) chronicling the daily events of their existence on God's green Earth. I prefer to write articles, I have running jokes on this blog! My references to Uwe Boll as one example (Bonus points if you can find the others). I don't like writing about how my day at school was, I don't want to cry all over the internet if my girlfriend left me (NOTICE: I don't have a girlfrend... yet, I'm available, ladies!). I have an obsession with punctuation and capitalization. I don't write LiEk ThIs, I avoid "leetspeak" (i.e. "LOL" or "ROFL") like the plague.

What am I trying to say here, you ask?... I have no fucking clue, insomnia must be messing with me, it's 3 a.m. and I gotta...

gotta...

Zzzzzzzzzz.....

P.S. sorry for the lame ending. YOU try writng an article while fighting sleepiness.
P.P.S. I'll write a proper article soon, consider this a filler article.

Arses!

Yargh! It's been a while since I've posted, dun worry though! I will be posting something within the month, hopefully. Maybe something car related.

Lewis Hamilton

I am an avid Formula 1 fan (as if you didn't know). I've been watching since the days of Minardi and Sauber, the Schumacher era, I think it was Mika Hakkinen's last season when I first saw F1. Anyway, this year was extremely competitive unlike the days when Schumacher had the season decided with 3 races to go, this was like last year, it went down to the very last race.

The last race in Brazil was extremely intense and went down to the wire, but there can only be one, and that was Lewis Hamilton winning the Driver's Championship by one single point. If you watched the last two laps, that was the whole race. Hamilton was down in fifth, which was fine because he would win the championship anyway, but then Vettel came from nowhere and was able to overtake Hamilton! So everyone thought that this was gonna be Massa's race, but they were wrong. When Massa crossed the line, the celebration started which would soon turn to silence and disbelief as Hamilon crossed the line... In fifth place! Winning him the championship. What happened was, in the midst of all the madness, Timo Glock was overtaken! Nobody seemed to notice, even Massa.

This season was awesome! Hamilton becomes the youngest ever Driver's Champion. I hope the season will be just as intense next year! See you in Australia '09.

"Uh, waiter...

... There's a wasp in my food" Now that's the last thing you wanna hear when you're eating, but it's what my sister experienced last week while eating at Italianni's. The fateful incident happened when my sister ordered the Ziti, at first it was fine but when she started to finish her food she spotted something... something unusual, it was a wasp cooked with the beef used in the Ziti. The only bright side to this is that we had a free lunch after finding the incriminating insect, so remember people, always bring a dead fly with you so you can get away with a free luch!

DISCLAIMER:
markedandlockedon.blogspot.com does not endorse the behavior of smuggling insects into restaurants to get free food, all views here are intended to be taken as jokes... except for Uwe Boll and Ssangyong, they suck.

Now that that's out of the way, I want to say that Italianni's used to have good food and the quality was great, but now their food seems... bland. Some of the ingredients used didn't seem as fresh, the Tiramiu was tasless and had the texture of a dishwashing sponge... eughhh. I didn't even finish it, which is a miracle because if you know me, I ALWAYS have room for dessert.

Overall though, I'm not trying to bring the restaurant down, I just want to tell them to increase food quality and possibly, remove all insects please. Who knows, if my sister had eaten that she might have become a superheroine.
... Or maybe not.

What is in a name?

All of us have names, it's the thing people call you by (obviously). We were all blessed with a name that our parents bestowed upon us because: a.) It reflected a personal experience in their life and they wanted us to be that eternal reminder. b.) Said name was all the rage back then, times when every parent named their child the same. c.) Your parents were uncreative and went for a simple name.

Where am I going with all of this? You'll see in a moment.

Names have ranged from the common to the truly bizarre, (I advise you to check the link out, personal favorite: Dick Assman) I however have a pretty common name, both first and last. My first name is Mark and my last name is Ramos, the combination of two common names to make one mega common name. Join me in my journey to see how many people have been blessed with a name like mine! Enter... GOOGLE!

After a quick search of my name I checked out how many results the search yielded.
Seven million and two-hundred thousand people! SEVEN MILLION TWO-HUNDRED THOUSAND. For fun, I wanted to see what the other Mes were doing with their lives, then I can unravel who I was in my past life!

First link was labeled Mark Ramos - TV.com. Looks promising, unfortunately I could not open the link because the damn Internet is acting up again! CURSE YOU DOWNTIME!!!

On to the next one which says RamosDesigns.com where I (presumably) design web sites. Pretty boring website, at least it wasn't interior design.

And then I see a website that says "Mark Ramos and Jan Ramos Married?"
That may sound fine to you but here's the disturbing part... I have an uncle named Jan... The Horror... The sheer true horror.

The advantage though of having a name like mine is the ability to stay anonymous, I mean if you had a name like: "Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfe­schlegelstein­hausenberger­dorffvoraltern­waren­gewissenhaft­schaferswessen­schafewaren­wohlgepflege­und­sorgfaltigkeit­beschutzen­von­angreifen­durch­ihrraubgierigfeinde­welche­voraltern­zwolftausend­jahres­vorandieerscheinen­wander­ersteer­dem­enschderraumschiff­gebrauchlicht­als­sein­ursprung­von­kraftgestart­sein­lange­fahrt­hinzwischen­sternartigraum­auf­der­suchenach­diestern­welche­gehabt­bewohnbar­planeten­kreise­drehen­sich­und­wohin­der­neurasse­von­verstandigmen­schlichkeit­konnte­fortplanzen­und­sicher­freuen­anlebens­langlich­freude­und­ruhe­mit­nicht­ein­furcht­vor­angreifen­von­anderer­intelligent­geschopfs­von­hinzwischen­sternartigraum, Senior" (no shit, it's a real name) everyone would know who you are! (If they can pronounce the damn thing). Let me give you a scenario: I rob a bank, I am fully covered from head to toe, I leave a name card ahead that says "Mark Ramos" the people will then say which "Mark Ramos? There's a million of 'em!" Am I right? But if you were stupid enough to leave a name card, or even find a card long enough, with your retardedly long behemoth of a name behind, the cops would know it was ajsnfncvdvdfdvv or what ever his name was.

Anonymity is pretty important this day and age, when you have multiple accounts make sure to have a unique name for most of them. I know a person who ues one, just ONE, pseudonym for every account she has! You enter that name and all of the sites she has ties with will come out! As for me though, you'll have a tough time findng me, I am the Internet Anonymous!!!! Search me, Fear me.

A Monstrosity that Must be Stopped!

Well, sembreak starts today until November 10, so one month of no classes!

Anyway, the monstrosity in question is NOT Uwe Boll for once, I am talking about an automotive disaster, they make horrible looking cars, they suck, and it's Korean. Yes, I am talking about the guys that try to pass themselves off as Benz, a name that strikes fear in the eyes of automotive enthusiasts... SSANGYONG!

Foul beast! Back to the Abyss from whence you came!

So you're wondering why they're so bad? Let me show you:

The weird bit is the rear window, is there any reason it's not connected to the main design? I think they just took one of their SUVs and added a poorly assembled extension. Imagine the rear part of the car gone, it looks A LOT like an SUV, my hypothesis may be correct.

Poorly made in MS Paint!

See? Now doesn't that look better?

This is a Ssangyong Concept car:

You know how that looks like?
2007 Toyota Camry, I got nothing more to say.

One last offender, and a personal favorite of mine:

...

The Ssangyong "Actyon" you know whats wrong with this car?

1. Looks like it has Down's Syndrome.
2. Looks like they couldn't decide whether to make a round car or an angular one, so they did both... IN ONE CAR.
3. "Actyon"?! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? This car would certainly make me not get any "Actyon", it will make me stay a virgin for the rest of my life!

Another problem with Ssangyong is that they pick out the stupidest names for their cars, like the Ssangyong "Rexton", Rexton sounds like the kid that got always picked on in class. The aformentioned Actyon and the "Chairman" which looks like a Lincoln Town car ripoff, Chairman?! The car naming process probably went down like this:

Exec: Boys, our new luxury car is complete and all it needs is a name! We want something that sounds fancy and something that sounds very dignified.
Employee: Sir, how about the "Chairman"
Exec: Hmmm, I like it!

Now the above passage may not be funny but the point I'm trying to make is why Chairman? Why not President? Was Senator taken? What about the Ssangyong Barangay Captain??? Does that sound good to you?!?!?!

Korean cars have made a name for themselves lately, we are seeing more Hyundais on the road and Kia is improving (although I wont buy one, trauma) Hyundais actually look good! and the problem is that if Ssangyong doesn't step up, they'll be eaten alive.

The thing with cars is that they don't only have to run well, they have to have the looks to match, I don't care if this car is safer than Volvo, I don't freaking care if this car cures cancer! What matters is it looks ugly and and I wouldn't be caught dead in it.

P.S.

Thanks sis for "Pimping me" in your blog, I shall now return the favor.

Crush With Eyeliner, awsumness, in blog form.

The Five Commandments of a Reality Show Narrator

All over TV you see shows like, "The World's Most Amazing Videos" or "Most Shocking", these reality shows concentrate on videos of criminal behavior and the like. One thing that gives this genre life is the almighty narrator, you never see his face... but he's always watching. One thing I've noticed is that they all follow a certain pattern, I have decoded these and I am presenting them to you now, one major follower is Sheriff John Bunnell.

Grrrrr, dun mess wid me, Ahm from Oregon

1. Thou shalt have an unfeeling accent, clearly void of any human emotion.

If you listen to all narrators, they seem to have graduated from the same college of speech. They always seem to have one known accent, and that is "Tough Dude Clearly Void of Any Human Emotion".

John Bunnell doing his thing

2. Thou shalt always have a full arsenal of cringe-worthy puns.

Actual example I remember from Most Shocking "This criminal who stole a truck full of bread is now... TOAST!" I... I don't even know what to say. The sheer retardation of that statement was overwhelming.

3. Thou shalt use big adjectives to make things sound a lot lot worse.

Whenever the mighty narrator starts a video he always starts with something like "A criminal robs a convenience store... AND GOES BERSERK/BALLISTIC!!!!!!!". Whenever he ends he says something like, "Fortunately, no one was hurt when they experienced... HELL ON EARTH!!!" which brings me directly to...

4. Thou shalt always sound contemptuous when nobody in the video gets hurt/dies.

They may not be vocal about it but you can sense it. Whenever they say "Nobody was injured" you can feel in their voice that their saying something like "No one died?! What kind of a pussy explosion was that?!" Or maybe it's the "void of human emotion thing".

5. Thou shalt always overreact.

Probably THE single most important thing a "serious" narrator has to pull off is hiding his False Enthusiasm, but everyone hears it anyway... because they lack emotion... because they're not human... because they're WATCHING YOU RIGHT NOW.

On that bombshell I have to end but not without a Special Parting Gift.

Prolly the most creative dessert I've eaten

I am a massive sweet tooth, (teeth if you're really counting). My first love, I can recall, is a bar of Hershey's... or a big glass of apple juice.Anyway, I am disheartened by the fact that Hershey's are changing a key ingredient in their products, they've swapped cocoa butter for vegetable oil, the change may save the company money but at the huge price of changing a taste which molded childhoods around the world.

My reaction shortly after hearing the news.

But that's for another article.

What I'm going to talk about now is this:

What is it? Is it another UWE BOLL... Whoops, got carried away there. Have you guessed? It's Ice cream sushi, the restaurant calls it "Frozen Maki" and trust me, it is frozen, if you have sensitive teeth, best to let it thaw first. "Ice cream sushi?!" you may ask and yes it really is. The wrapping is some kind of bread and the inside is vanilla ice cream with a mango slice inside, the dipping sauce is Hershey's (R.I.P. Cocoa butter era Hershey's) Chocolate syrup. At Congo Grille you can get this for... Eh, dad pays for the lunch, how am I supposed to know? It comes in five pieces, and it even comes with one of those fake grass thingies!

Taste, the most important aspect of any dessert. How does this one fare? Average, nothing really special. I mean, it's just Selecta vanilla ice cream wrapped in bread with a mango slice in the middle! Well, maybe for the extreme sweet-tooth like me, it comes up short on the sweetness scale, but for (ahem) normal people, this could be just fine.

This dessert will be judged according to the Iron chef Criteria. 10 points for presentation, 10 points for originality, and a maximum of 20 points for taste.

Presentation: 9/10
It is presented on a neat little sushi plate, it doesn't get any better than that.

Originality: 8/10
Have you ever seen one of these before? You have? erm...

Taste: 9/20
Pretty bland for my liking

Overall: 26/40
A fun little dessert that has little more to offer than a cool idea.

Death Magnetic 2

Metallica, I bought your new album yesterday and I must say, it.. is... freaking... AWESOME! This is a huge step up from St. Anger (it makes me squeamish just saying that... St Anger, eughh). There are finally guitar solos! The change of producers has definitely made a big change, so long Bob Rock! They'll hopefully keep Rick Rubin for a long time to come.

The great thing about this is that Metallica has definitely gone back to their roots but I can't say that its quite up there with Master and the Black Album although it's pretty damn close. There's a hint of every Metallica in every song, ...And Justice for all Metallica for instance, can be found on their single "The Day That Never Comes", it follows the same structure of "One", starts quiet and beyond the middle, it's thrash all the way. I get a bit of a Black Album vibe with "Cyanide" it follows more on heavy metal than thrash. Metallica have followed the previous tradition of putting an instrumental song in this album, like "Orion" for Master and "The Call of Ktulu" for Ride the Lightning, by putting in "Suicide and Redemption" 10 minutes of pure 'Tallica. Speaking of Metallica tradition, they have made "The Unforgiven III", it has that distinct Unforgiven sound, slow but heavy. The Lyrical theme of "The Judas Kiss" does sound a lot like Master of Puppets, the line "Bow down, sell your soul to me, I will set you free" does sound like "Come crawling faster, obey your master" and "Master of Puppets I'm pulling your strings".

The album is fairly long despite only having ten songs, their shortest song clocks in at 5:01. The album is definitely a good buy for any Metallica fan, the album starts with That Was Just Your Life and never goes downhill, definitely a breath of fresh air from all the music on the mainstream today.

Uwe Boll?!

Ok, you may notice that in some articles, I make fun of Uwe Boll. Before I receive a backlash of LEAVE UWE BOLL ALONE! Hate mail (From the undeniably few people who read my blog) I want you to get to know him first.

Fact #1: All three of the movies he released in the U.S. are in the IMDb bottom 100.

Fact#2: All of his movies are certified "Rotten" in Rotten Tomatoes.

Fact#3: His name's not pronouned "Huey", to know how to pronounce his name, click here.

Fact#4: He is an arrogant piece of fuck that is clearly a waste of human organs.

Fact#5: He's been raping our favorite games and turing them into horrible movie adaptations.

Fact#6: So horrible that a petition has been put up to stop him, Uwe says that if it reaches 1,000,000 signatures he will retire. What are you waiting for? Sign up and stop this abomination to mankind.

I think that's enough for now. Anywho, he's making a new movie, yes, a new movie. This so-called "movie" is going to be based on the game FarCry. It pains me to see such a good game be turned into an hour or more of sheer mindfuck that will pierce your pshyche because you haven't seen a movie that bad. It will undeniably be a rapefest for all of our unfortunate human eyeballs to gaze upon, causing excruciating pain and mental scarring for an eternity to come. Although there is a 0.00000001 percent chance that this movie will be good, if that happens, the apocalypse is among us. Only a few things can be said kindly about this man, all of them escape me right now, well there is the... Wait, no. How about the... Nope. Nothing.

Please Mr. Boll, if you will decide to make another movie, don't... Just don't. Save all of humanity from overwhelming mediocrity that will not only be an insult to the art of filmmaking, but also a blow to all of humanitie's balls as well.

This week in Review: The CAMPI Motorshow 2008

Just last Sunday, my dad and I went to the CAMPI Motorshow. My motorsport fanaticism got the best of me this time, looking at all the great cars, unable to resist the allure of those smooth, curvy, oh so well proportioned... Sorry, lost my train of thought there for a moment. Anyway, it was great! There was a notable abscence of one manufacturer though, Mercedes Benz. The luxury car giant isn't a part of the CAMPI, so you could imagine the dissapointment of me, a Lewis Hamilton fan, over the abscence of a true automotive giant. There were cars that made up for it though:

Oh baby, where have you been all my life?

V8? Oh baby!

That, my friends, is an Audi R8. Truly, mind-blowingly, beautiful.

And don't forget one of the sport car greats:

You're beautiful, You're beautiful, It's true

Yes, it's turbo, I checked

Porsche Carrera 911 Turbo, the ultimate version of the ultimate sports car.

One more for the road? Why not?

The 335i Coupé

The tires are barely painted on those 20's

Ah yes, the BMW 335i Coupé, literally baby steps away from an M3

In the Midst of all this madness, I remembered something, this show actually had a theme! That's right, this year's motorshow was supposed to be about clean, fuel eficient, green cars. Green cars?! Yeah green, GREEN WITH ENVY! There were a few stuff like Kia's new fuel cell system diagram thingy but it didn't spark my interest enough to take a picture of it.

Heading to the extension of the building, I found what I oh so longed for:

Support your team! Go Lewis!

Benz! Benz! Benz! Sure they weren't the latest models, but it's still a Benz nonetheless.

It's kinda sad to say that another car manufacturer has been infected by the plague:

The Badge! It screams!!!

I can only hold the badge and hide the pain under my smile. Volvo, why can't you hear my plea?

Well, anyways, in summary the show was good! Can't wait for the next one. It didn't really keep with the theme that much but who really cares? All we need is a few models and a few exotics (exotic cars, that is) and you have a great show on your hands.

Death Magnetic

Metallica, you used to be one of the biggest thrash metal bands in the world, your blazing fast riffs made us rock out and headbang until we developed a severe case of whiplash. Yes, those were the days (I'm only 16 and I've only gotten into Metallica about 2 years ago, but who cares).

Kill Em All, Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, ...And Justice for All were your absolute classics, the sound we have come to associate with Metallica to this day. Then came the Black Album, and Bob Rock. I really liked the Black Album and it marked a change in style from your usually adrenaline driven, rapid paced songs, but it was all right I mean, it is your best selling album and that's where Enter Sandman came from. Then came Load, it was really... Should I say "meh". Overall, a sub par effort. I really dislike Load, only coming before St. Anger, we'll talk about that later.

And then, OH NOES!, Reload???, RELOAD? Who the hell names their albums twice? After this album, fans who recognized them from the 80's and NOT the Black Album had been thinking that by this time, Metallica were past their prime and completely abandoned their roots, accusing them of selling out. The Unforgiven II and Fuel are the only songs I really like from this record.

And then again, Napster. If you don't know, Napster was like Limewire. Now I think you get it. Metallica sued them in 2000 after they found out one of their songs have been circulating before it was released. In that very minute that they announced their lawsuit, from thrash metal kings, they quickly became a laughingstock of the musical community. A band that was wealthy beyond belief sued a company because people were getting their music for free and therefore, Metallica wouldn't get any royalties. Now, fans believe Metallica, at this point, to not just be past their prime, but selfish money-hugging bastards as well.

I don't even know if I want to talk about this last one, but I will. St... Fucking... Anger. St. Anger was Metallica's eighth studio album and the first album they released in the 2000's, a long time from 1997's Reload. St. Anger is positively the absolute worst album Metallica has released. There was an abscence of guitar solos, which is almost a Cardinal Sin in Metal. The snare sounded like Lars was pounding on trash cans. Finally, gone is James Hetfield's throaty voice that he once used in earlier albums. A quote from Bob Rock about the album states he wants the atmospehere of "a band jamming together in a garage for the first time, and the band just happened to be Metallica". That was just WRONG. Thanks Bob Rock, I think you killed Metallica.

Obviously, I have my doubts about Death Magnetic, will it be good? Bad? Meh? One good thing is that they hired a new producer (YESH!) and that producer just happened to be Rick Rubin, the guy who fucking produced Reign in Blood. To get the complete list, click here.

So here's to Metallica! I hope you make a good successor to St. Anger. PLEASE make a good successor to St. Anger.

Screaming Badges

First off, I would like to dedicate this article to my Dad, while we spent hours gazing at cars, he pointed this out.

Screaming Badges, what are they you ask? Is it a badger that screams when you get close to it? Is it another (gasp) UWE BOLL MOVIE?! Thankfully, it's neither, especially the latter. I'm talking about the badges on cars you know, one of these things:
So now you hopefully know what I'm talking about.

I am a huge car and motorsports fanatic. I've loved cars for as long as I can remember. Cars in the 90's, when I was born, looked pretty good, sensual, practical, more rounded edges, but something has gone awry in recent years, a current trend in automobile designing where they inflate their badges so that you can see them from a mile away.

Seriously, the camera seems to be a good twenty or so feet from the car, look at that! It kinda spoils the look for me.

More examples:

Hello sir, I am a Toyota.

DO YOU NOT SEE THAT I AM A TOYOTA, BLIND MAN?!

I am a nostalgic person, I love classic cars. Fastback Muscle cars of the 60's and 70's had an underrated look to it. You wouldn't know that that car is gonna smoke your ass when you floor the gas pedal.

Under the hood, 400 horses of pure power.

Hopefully, designers will see the light! We don't want to know your car when it appears over the horizon. There used to be a certain charm when you got surprised with the car you just saw, now however, these cars are shaking their J-Lo asses around screaming, "I'M A BENZ, I'M A BENZ, SUCK MY DIIICK, I'M A BENZ!"

Yesh!

Midterms are finally over! I can finally get to write something!

Midterm blues.

Dammit! Midterms are gonna be this week, I don't think I'll be updating much this week, In the meantime, I give you more funny pictures:

It's the End of the World as we Know It.

With rising gas prices, endlessly inflating economy, and maybe another Uwe Boll movie on the way the world seems to be at the end of it's chain. Not to be a pessimist (which I sadly am) but look around you! The cost of living is hard these days, supporting a child would be highly illogical.

The very sign of impending doom would be the sheer presence of one of these things:

holy fucking shit.

This, my friends is the largest earth mover in the world.
Yeah, I'm scared too. Hold me.

If that's not enough to convince you, the faltering economy in Zimbabwe has forced them to release (Listen closely) a One hundred... BILLION Zimbabwean dollar bill. Damn.

A Zimbabwean gangsta' shows us his 500 million G's yo!

Ahh Zimbabwe the only place where you can be a billionaire... unfortunately everyone else around you is one too, and that's not a good thing. A can of beans costs, if i remember correctly, two-hundred-fifty thousand Zimbabwean paper. Once again, I say... Damn.

Funny picture time!

Nothing, just wanted to post these. You might even get a laugh or two.
Enjoy:







I'll be posting more in the coming weeks.