Last night I dreamt I was shot in the heart. I didn't much like this dream. The idea that if you die in your dream, you die in real life, was introduced to my young mind early enough in my formative years to still have a stronghold in my sometimes adult years. Whether my dreams are wondrous or nightmarish, they are always vivid. They might not appear every night, or even for stretches of weeks to months, but they are presented in glorious detail, if not artisticly rendered.

Do people who die in their sleep die in their dreams? Can we actually ever know this? Either this is conversation worth kicking around over a pint, or a thought only worthy to those who've indulged in multiple hits from the bong. I haven't been hanging around with Cypress Hill tonight, but this thought entered my head stone cold sober.

However vivid the dream was, my retention of details is poor. My brain has not been fitted with any type of cyborg Tivo to record this dream (without those fucking commercials), so all I recall is that there were some type of unsavory characters I was associating with, and I believe it was some type of doublecross on their parts (what can you expect from un-savories) that got me shot.

And when I say I was shot in the heart, it wasn't the anatomically correct, behind the breastplate heart location, Pulp Fiction OD Bitch adrenaline hypodermic heart. It was the upper left side, I pledge allegiance..., home of love letters and initials on school book covers and countless tomes of bad and good poetry heart. This can be analyzed however one chooses. I just was having some fun with that last sentence.

I want to go to be now. I'd like to go back in armed, and get those fuckers.

Hasta luego,
LL

Third installment of the fledgling podcast covering the BlogHarbor community. Hosted by John Keegan, this selection features lots of ways to improve your blog appearance. Something I've been meaning to do, but just haven't got around to. Content is still king, but window dressing gets people to stick around long enough to read. If a blog is constructed with care, viewers will suspect the author to put forth that same effort in their posts.

I knew if I looked there would be new White Stripes' mashups. And here's two:

DJ Zebra - Voodoo Stripes (White Stripes vs Prodigy) Thanks, Totally Crap.

Team9 - Blue & White Antenna (White Stripes vs Kraftwerk)

The White Stripes always seem to distract me now and again. It must be the color palette, or Meg's...ummm...drumming. Who knows?

The Blue Orchid video has a quite sinister feel to it, provided by Floria Sigismondi in conjunction with a burnt up old mansion, Jack's mustache, a girl with painful shoes, albino snakes, and ummm...Meg drumming on dishes with a hammer. The will not take over your entire conscious, subconscious, id, ego, and superego, like "Seven Nation Army" did. But it least it won't have your co-workers throwing stuff at you for sitting at your desk going, "Dum...Dum Dum Dum Dum Dum...Dum" incessantly. You'll just be making that swishy guitar sound with your mouth, but not nearly as often.

Whitestripes.net has an .mpg file.
Triple Tremolo has a .wmv file.

I actually wrote a review of Elephant that a never posted anywhere, not that anybody needs to read it, since they already have the CD by now. But perhaps it will appear. But then again, it looks better as a piece of paper lying beneath a bunch of credit card applications, receipts, post-its, random pieces of envelopes with unnamed phone numbers, magazines, crapalogs, and outdated coupons. Aesthetics are important, you know.

It's official. Grand Theft Auto for Sony PSP. Fall 2005. Now maybe I'll think about keeping that unopened box that wasn't going to fund my retirement on eBay.

Any PC users looking for multi-plaer mods of GTA. Try this.

I guess this post may as well include all things Rockstar, so here's the official site for Bully. No info, much like the GTA:LCS site, but bookmark these things, it will come.

Rockstar is supporting the PS3, apparently a Red Dead Revolver demo was shown at E3. No announcements of GTA for PS3 yet, there are rumours floating on the Yahoo Finance messageboards about Microsoft buying TakeTwo (Rockstar's owner/publisher), but as a lot of rumours on finance messageboards, there's a good chance they're crap. They probably heard from the same two morons at a Gamestop that told me last year that Microsoft already had XBox exclusivity for the next version of GTA. Of course, I knew they were full of shit, because I was a TakeTwo shareholder at the time. But as they possessed the oft time ugly "clerk-snob/god" attitude, there was no telling them otherwise. But now if there is any truth to the new rumours, these tow will pat themselves on the back, with the only real gain being the 4 words, "I told you so". Meanwhile I've picked up 10 points on TTWO stock. Now I'm the one with the smug little smirk.

Star Wars Kid: A New Hope.

Just found this appearance in Tony Hawk Underground 2.

Perfect time to revisit young Ghyslain. (Follow the links for video.)

Star Wars Kid (original)

Star Wars Kid vs Matrix Agents

Star Wars Kid vs Drones

More Star Wars Kid vs Drones

My personal favorite - Star Wars Kid vs Star Wars Kid

Star Wars Kid vs Blasters

And what it's inspired...

Space Ghost Kid

I'm sure I'm quite late to the party, but the 7 people who read this blog (Is it that many, or is the circumference of my swelling head affecting my counting abilities?) are probably showing up just in time for cake crumbs and torn wrapping paper.

I'm all for Photoshopping pictures for fun and profit. Or just for fun and no profit as is the case typically. I've done some Photoshop work for no fun and little profit which is alright sometimes.

I just wanted to use Photoshop as a verb because it pisses off Adobe to no end. They create the category killer and then bitch about its gramatical use. Ooh...what if their chief competitor, Macromedia comes out with a Photoshopping, or worse, a photoshopping program...well, they could just buy them out before that happens and photoshop, I mean Photoshop, or did I mean photoshop becomes a generic term...oh, they did buy them, well then lets get to the pics already.

Mosh Pit Girl.

Today I got my response to the letter featured in the "Crumby Cookies" post, you know the one you didn't read, as opposed to the other one you didn't read. But that's your business, and I got no beef about it. So drop it, ok.

I'd put their response here, but it lacks the flavor of my original letter or any other flavor, except maybe that of plain steamed white rice, you know that minute rice you cook in the bag with the holes in it. Yep, that one. Imagine eating that with nothing. Now imagine that in letter form and you'll know why I didn't re-type it. Besides the fact that re-typing would involve some effort on my part.

I'll paraphrase:

Thank you for your letter we didn't read. Trained monkeys scanned for keywords to determine you were an unsatisfied customer, and there was no pending legislation to concern ourselves with. The context clarfication script determined the mentions of "severed fingers" and "razor blades" were made in jest, so we've sent you a coupon for free cookies, and to prove there was no personal involvement at any level, we did not address your humor, or include any of our own. You could even scratch that last statement, because that would involve concern on our part. The free cookies will not dent our bottom line, because the addictive additives will ensure future purchases, and encourage someone in your family to start smoking since the same additives used in our junk food, are also added to cigarettes produced by our parent company. Oh yeah, and smoking is bad for you, so don't do it. That's our message we have to mention, in case you or your children never ever even considered smoking before. This way, as a parent you'll be sure to tell your kids how bad it is and not to do it. Once that message is combined with television commercials, magazine ads, and posters in schools, your children will naturally start to smoke after developing a curiousity, and we'll have a new customer.

It's a win, win situation for everybody.

Thanks for your loyalty. Enjoy your cookies.

Yeah! Free cookies! Well, actually replacement cookies. I feel the power of a consumer advocate. Now on to the next letter, about how I flipped over my Corvair.

George Lucas didn't just make movies. He made movies better. Good article.

So if you were disappointed with the more recent Star Wars releases, don't take the Lucas name in vain. (Although I agree with Daniel W. Drezner on the Natalie Portman thing. I mean, come on, she was great as a kid in The Professional and Beautiful Girls, but give her something more to work with, like a believable love story.) The movies you liked better than Episodes I & II, are better, because of technology he made available at a reasonable price.

And non-Star Wars geeks are probably not aware of the magazine, Edutopia, published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation. He cares about your kids (and mine), and wookies too.

Oh, I guess there's no need to mention Episode III, right.

Heard about this on WBAI. But I didn't hear the audio earlier. The army shut down recruitment for a day because of this mess. Perhaps they will go for a softer approach or employ greeters a la The Gap.

Scroll down that Salon page I linked to from Google's cache for the story. If anyone finds a more permanent link, please comment. Muchas gracias.

This is probably old. But so am I. Sort of. Well...you know. It's relative. Whatever.

It's all about the juxtaposition.

Found at Get Your Bootleg On.

This is fun. More great work from StarvingEyes Industries. A brief distraction before returning to the mindnumbingness of work.

Whoops. Didn't save the post yet. I got distracted. Be careful. Kicking is quite addictive.

Death from Above 1979. They rock. Unapologetically. No shit. They are not ashamed to rock. They are proud to rock. They rock well.

Click through to get to the mini jukebox to listen to some tracks. Look around, there's a couple mp3s for download.

They would fly a plane into James Murphy's skull. If they could get their hands on one.

Rock on.

I love local television commercials. And when they deal with video games, even better. Red Devil Games is in Red Bank, NJ. I've been in their shop before, although I'm not sure if I've bought anything from them yet. But I've bought hot dogs and soup from the guy a couple doors down. Damn good soup. And the big dogs rule.

I'm completely out of the GTA: San Andreas loop, for understandable reasons. I just started picking up Katamari Damacy again. Not sure if I wrote about it before, and I'm not about to now. Maybe some other time. Great game though. In addition to GTA, I've got Alien Hominid and Ratchet & Clank III, collecting dust. But not for too long.

More of my offline writing, this one was to Nabisco.

Usually when a child bites into your “Chips Ahoy! Chunky” cookies, they are happy. Yesterday, this was not the case. My son bit into your cookie, and immediately there was a sad look on his face. He chewed and eventually spit out the cookie on the verge of tears. (He’s only 4 years old.)

He said these are not the same as the cookies at “Poppy’s house”. But I know he buys the same brand. I looked at the expiration date on the package, which read “30AUG05”, so I figured they must be fresh.

Upon closer inspection of the rest of the package, I saw that most, if not all the cookies looked overdone, with darker patches of color more frequently interspersed with the normal “Chips Ahoy!” non-chocolate part color. Perhaps this batch was in the oven too long.

Also, I checked the bottom side of the cookies, and saw that often there was a whitish color on the chocolate. This is often indicate of age, perhaps these cookies were warehoused in your facilities in such a way, that premature aging occurred.

Since there were no razor blades or severed fingers in the cookies, I’m not asking for you to finance my son’s education or issue a settlement that will cover the new house I’m considering, but with the price of food and the cost of gas for making another round-trip to and from the supermarket for more cookies, perhaps you could offer something to remedy this.

Of course financing my son’s education would work fine as well.

I wrote a few words about my Dad to read at his funeral. More than a few, actually. Unfortunately, the Diocese of Metuchen in New Jersey doesn't allow eulogies during funeral masses. So these words were delivered that morning at the funeral home. The outpouring of people the night before was overwhelming, that while it would have been nice to address the whole group at once, there wasn't really a moment where someone wasn't offering their condolences, their assistance, or just sharing a story about my father, which was actually wonderful, both as a testament to my father, and as comfort to my family.

I don't know why eulogies aren't delivered more often. Every wedding I've ever attended has had a toast from the best man to the bride and groom. I realize funerals, by nature are obviously more somber occasions, but in essence, we are celebrating the life of the deceased, and not their death. At weddings there is only a brief history between the newlyweds, and the toast looks toward the future. At a funeral, we have the opportunity to refelect back upon an entire life, which could span encyclopedia volumes.

But if my father could speak to you today, he certainly wouldn't want all this focus on him. In fact, he'd probably tell you, "You should be at work right now", or ask, "Why aren't you in school?" He wouldn't want people fawning over him. But since you're here already, he'd ask how your kids are doing, or, how's work these days, or, how you've been feeling since your surgery. I know this, because despite his illness, I've seen him do it the last few months, during the course of the income tax season. Always one to finish what he started, he was sure to stick around through April 15th.

Perhaps I'm not qualified to deliver this eulogy today. I wasn't born in the Depression Era, and couldn't tell you what life was like being born in those times. In my youth, my father and mother always had food on the table and in the fridge, we were never concerned where the next meal was coming from and always had plenty to share.

I didn't grow up in East Boston on West Eagle Street and watch the Boston Red Sox as a kid, and live and die with a team that always came so close, but not close enough, until recently.

I wasn't around to serve in the U.S. Navy during World War II, in perhaps whatmay have been the last just war, if there is such a thing.

I never left my family to marry the woman I fell in love with, 250 miles away from home in a strange land known only as New Jersey. But my love was only two towns away, and her parents liked me...I think...so it was a little easier.

I don't know what it's like to be the head of accounting for a large corporation, and leave it behind to build my own income tax practice from the ground up, but I guess I didn't have to.

I never helped raise two wonderful daughters (who probably weren't wonderful all the time) and watched them grow into beautiful women, who raised wonderful children of their own. I'm still a novice as a dad, just learning what its like to help raise a son, and not make the same mistakes he made.

I've also never lost my true love before, to have her snatched away from me too soon. I've never felt the same pain he felt. But I know the cancer could never create nearly as much pain as he felt when my mother died. I pray I never know this pain.

Really I can't think of anything that would qualify me to eulogize my father, I haven't bowled a 700 series or a 289 game, I can't play poker, or pick a winner at the track.

About the only thing I can think of is that I cared about my father very much, and I know he cared about everyone gathered here today in his honor.

Arthur La Raia was my father and my friend. A few weeks ago he told me what a great friend I'd been to him. And I could say the same about him. He was my (best) friend and I'll miss him very much.

I would like to thank everyone who has paid their respects to my father over the last few days. This means a great deal to me and my family, as it is comforting to know that the loss is not ours alone. In some way or other, my father has touched your lives as well, and I could also say to you, "I'm sorry for your loss."

-- Lawrence La Raia, 4/28/05