Last night I downloaded the Amazon music downloader program for OS X and bought the new Gnarls Barkley album, The Odd Couple.  Rather than comparing the experience against that of iTunes or Oink I’ll just compare it against 2 other things I did last night.

First, the details.  For $8.99 American (roughly 6 Pesos w/ the current exchange rate) you get 13 songs encoded as 256KBps MP3s w/o DRM.  Pretty good!  But how does it stack up against the crepes I made for dinner?

The crepes featured real butter, while the MP3s were fat free.  I had a raspberry spread between crepe folds, but no whipped creme.  You might think the lack of whipped creme was a deal-breaker because the Amazon downloader automatically imported the songs into iTunes, but you underestimate the powdered sugar I sprinkled on top.  Crepes win.

That’s fine and dandy, but how does digital music purchasing compare to a massive nosebleed?  The Amazon downloaded hid any download speed info, but the entire album was finished in under 2 minutes.  My nosebleed was epic and extremely inconvenient.  The inconvenience made me mad, and the madder I got the faster the blood squirted out of my nose.  It was difficult to throttle blood download speed, while I would never throttle MP3 downloads.  Also, the Gnarls Barkley album didn’t leave my bathroom a bloody mess.  Amazon wins.

Now it is clear:

Crepes > Amazon music downloads > bloody noses

My advice to you is that you go fetch some Egg Beaters and Nutella from the store and make yourself some lovely crepes.  While you are digesting, go download The Odd Couple, which is clinically proven to sound delicious.

Life’s a game; OK?

Actually life is a series of games.  Games I’ve been playing today include Driving In The Snow and Tuning My Stereo and also Guitar Hero 3 (stereo) and Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles.

I am the reigning champ at DITS.  Everybody else sucks. Hard!

I haven’t won yet, but I did advance a level in TMS by turning up the volume on my subwoofer.  Kanye West sounds boss.

GH3 still pwnz me hard.

RE:UC cheats.  Know this before you begin or else you will suffer.  And what’s the point of suffering?

OK, the reason I’m writing this post is because of a particular game that I play that none of my friends play.  I don’t think they even understand this game.  It’s called Beard Trimming, and it’s fucking hard.  Like Japanese NES Game hard.  (You know how all the NES games have alternate versions in Japan and the USA because of languages?  Well the JAP versions are harder too; they like it that way.)

So games like Tuning My Stereo involve me and 7 pieces (5 speakers, subwoofer, receiver) and games like Driving In The Snow involve me, the roads, and all the NPCs out there.  Beard Trimming features 2 sides: me vs. about a million facial hairs. Compare that to Bejeweled or Chess and you’ll instantly recognize that this is one tough fucking game.

The catch is that each individual hair features a level of AI not often seen in even the most sophisticated video games.  They aren’t smart, but they each have goals: grow out, twist around, scratch the skin and increase the Itchiness factor.  Keep in mind that they exhibit a primitive flocking behavior that is similar to head-hair flocking, but ever more complex by virtue of being flattened out, twisty hairs.  If you think even head-hair flocking is easy to model, talk to one of the animators from that non-Final-Fantasy Final Fantasy movie; it was a big deal for them.

So there’s me and about a million enemies.  I get like 3 weapons (disposable razor, electric razor, beard trimmer), and they’re all shit.  Total rubbish!  But at least they have infinite ammo.  Oh yeah, and as soon as I beat a level the next one starts without pause and I can never quit.  Never.  Fuck.

Oh yeah, and from all accounts after you die your hair keeps growing (or appears to), so how fucking lame of an ending is that?

OK, I have to admit that I didn’t do any research before the primary voting yesterday. Hell, I didn’t even know there was gonna be all those races on there to research. But the presidential race, that’s a biggie! You gotta stay tuned in for that one!

So why didn’t I? Why didn’t WE?

Had we done our research and done a little interweb snooping we could have all known that this half-Lebanese redhead was lil’ Denny Kucinich’s wife. Check out the happy couple! I didn’t know, otherwise I’d have been campaigning for him. Why?

She’s from London, so probably has an English accent.

Look at this gallery of past First Ladies. Add her there (mentally, don’t deface the Wikipedia!) and tell me it doesn’t make you giggle.

Face facts, some couples look good, and some couples are so funny looking that it’d be worth electing him just for the entertainment value. Plus, can you imagine the Presidential sex-tape that would get leaked? IMAGINE IT!

The failings of our postal service have been previously discussed here on Tiny Gods, but they had not been inducted into the HoS proper – until now. The story goes like this – I moved into a new apartment this past weekend, and after checking the mailbox, I found the following notice inside of it (Note: spelling errors are theirs, not mine):

VACANT
TEAR AND DESTORY AT THIS LINE WHEN COMPLETED
————————————————————————————————

ATTN: NEW RESIDENT
Dear Postal Customer:
This address ************** is Presently considered as a vacant residence. All Former residents have either submitted a change of address or have been listed as “Moved- Left No Order”.
Please complete this form as no mail will be left in box until Post Office is notified of all last names that should be receiving mail at your residence.
__________ __________
__________ __________
__________ __________

Dublin Post Office
6400 Emerald Parkway
Dublin, OH 43016

Thank You,
Your Letter Carrier

So, I write the last names on the lines, and stop by the post office on my way to work this morning. The clerk won’t take the form, telling me that I need to leave it in my mailbox for the carrier. What the hell? Why did you STAMP the location of the local post office at the bottom? Why does it say “until POST OFFICE is notified”? If you want me to leave it in the mailbox for the carrier, why don’t you say that on the damn notice? Don’t tell me the post office needs to be notified and give me the address of the post office if I don’t actually need to GO TO THE POST OFFICE. ARGHH!

I’ve only given them an dishonorable mention for this misdeed, as it was not a major inconvenience – I work right next to the post office, so I only lost about ~5 minutes out of my day. It’s just the sheer idiocy of it that has me all worked up over it.