I’ve always thought that the theme song from the 1983 PC game M.U.L.E. was one of the greatest pieces of music in video game history. (Yes, these are the things I think about.) I’ve also thought an enterprising band like, say, Man or Astroman could make a kickass cover version.

A discussion of old LucasArts adventure games on A-Button prodded me to check Google for M.U.L.E. music. I found the original theme in MIDI format, but I think more people would be interested in this excellent ska/funk cover version called “Mule-Funk-Shun” by DelMurice.

Cue up the Queen albums! Everybody hug and jump on the sweaty, writhing man-pile! THE CARDINALS WIN THE WORLD SERIES!

Posted to Flickr by sigsegv.

St. Louis might actually win this thing. They’re up three games to one.

I wish I hadn’t read about this anti-stem cell ad featuring Cardinals Game 4 starter Jeff Suppan yesterday, though. Makes it much harder to root for him. I just have to remember: I’m not rooting for the players, I’m rooting for the uniforms. I’m rooting for laundry.

Laun-DREE! Laun-DREE! Laun-DREE!

Finally, this blog might be useful for something.

Chris Bowers on myDD had the idea of Googlebombing the election so that when users search for Republican candidates, negative articles appear high in the search results. It’s similar to what the GOP did to Kerry in 2004, and what Dan Savage of “Savage Love” did to Rick Santorum.

mikebarklage.com gets trolled by Google and other search engines quite a bit (and I have the spam in my filters to prove it). I’ll post the link list in the extended section.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sweet. I got my win.

Actually, if the Tigers want to keep playing like kittens, I’d be more than willing to take a World Series championship off their hands. The last one for the Cardinals happened when I was 7.

Also: if Todd Jones can be hit by a batted ball in every game like he was tonight, that would be okay with me.

Cardinals-Tigers? Are you fucking kidding me?

I barely paid attention to baseball this year, at least compared to seasons past. I started following it more in the final month, when the Cardinals almost blew a huge lead to the Astros. I was sort of rooting for them to collapse, because they’re such an obviously flawed team and I didn’t want them to be humiliated in the playoffs.

But they hung on and won the division with only 83 wins. I figured they’d exit quickly because of the Padres’ superior pitching beating a Cardinals lineup that included no healthy talent outside of Pujols. I didn’t watch a single inning of the division series, instead opting to watch the entertaining Tigers-Yankees series.

But they won three out of four to advance. Then I figured the Cardinals’ mediocre pitching staff would get stomped by a Mets lineup that includes superstars like Reyes, Beltran, Delgado, and Wright.

But Suppan and Weaver pitched well and the Cardinals won a seven-game thriller over the underachieving Mets.

Dammit.

I just hope they win one game against the Tigers. In 2004, the Red Sox swept the Cardinals. In 2005, the White Sox swept the Astros. The AL is obviously the vastly superior league. Just one win would break that streak.

I mean, I’ll admit that I was whooping and cheering when Molina hit his unlikely HR in the 9th and Wainwright struck out Beltran to end it. But that’s all I’m hoping for in the World Series: the Cardinals valiantly stave off total humiliation and the Tigers win in five.

Keith Olbermann aired another fiery, eloquent Special Comment on his show last night, this one about the legalization of torture and the death of Habeas Corpus. Crooks & Liars has the video.

In the course of his speech, Olbermann mentions something that has come up in my conversations with James but I’ve never heard anyone else explicitly point out:

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who may now, if he so decides, declare not merely any non-American citizens “Unlawful Enemy Combatants” and ship them somewhere — anywhere — but may now, if he so decides, declare YOU an “Unlawful Enemy Combatant” and ship you somewhere – anywhere.

And if you think this, hyperbole or hysteria… ask the newspaper editors when John Adams was President, or the pacifists when Woodrow Wilson was President, or the Japanese at Manzanar when Franklin Roosevelt was President.

And if you somehow think Habeas Corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an “unlawful enemy combatant” — exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this Attorney General is going to help you?

Habeas Corpus applies to either everyone or no one. No “partial” limits can be applied.

Shortly after I returned to Tucson, looking for a creative outlet, I had an idea to do what I summarized as an “MST3K podcast:” Write and record the equivalent of a DVD commentary on MP3, designed to be played at the same time as the movie, in sync with the dialogue. I dubbed it a Riffcast.

By July, I had recruited a group of friends to write the script that Ron and I would later record. Our first movie was Wing Commander. In subsequent riffcasts, I wanted to do Zardoz, Night of the Lepus, Alone in the Dark, Left Behind, and others.

But coming up with two hours of funny jokes is harder than it looks. We tried the methodical approach — stopping the film until we came up with a riff, writing it down, starting again — which resulted in the first ten minutes of the film lasting two exhausting hours.

Attempt #2 involved watching the movie straight through and adlibbing out loud while recording ourselves to MP3, sort of a “first draft” to be transcribed and expanded later. That worked a little better, but I lacked the attention span (and perhaps the comedy chops) to finish the process. So I gave up.

It’s probably just as well. As it turns out, the experts had the same idea at the same time.

Over the summer, Mike Nelson launched a web site for what he calls Rifftrax, with help from fellow MST3K alumni Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett. Among the MP3s posted so far are The Fifth Element, Star Trek V, Roadhouse, XXX, Top Gun, X-Men, and Point Break.

One major difference (aside from probable quality): my Riffcasts would have been free, while Nelson is charging three bucks a pop. That makes me somewhat less inclined to try it — or at least to try more than one.

Quite the social calendar ahead for me for the next three weeks. Tonight is Ron and Vern’s Friday the 13th party. Then tomorrow I’m going to Club Asylum, partly to spend time with Roseann and her gothy girlfriend, and partly to research ideas for my Halloween costume.

I actually have two Halloween parties to attend on consecutive weeks. The weekend before Halloween, Roseann invited me to her friends’ party, where she will be decked out in a red latex “naughty nurse” outfit, complete with booze-syringes. And the weekend after, assuming her busy PhD/work schedule allows for it, Alex will accompany me to Ron and Vern’s party in her traditional corseted vampiress costume.

Going as Goth Boy complements both of their costumes pretty well. I might as well drop some serious cash on my outfit at Hydra, since I’ll get two uses out of it, maybe more.

Yes, I will post photos. At least the PG-rated ones.

And yes, despite my previous blog entry… my life isn’t too bad right now.