Dir En Get Out Of My House

Well, that was damned awful Smile

After a Gestapo search for cameras and recording equipment, half a million statements about cameras not being allowed but NOT ONE request/form/statement/whatever about me giving consent and permission for their authorised photographers to film/photograph me, we got in and smiled at some of the sillier outfits. Then Raging Speedhorn came on and started shouting at me, which wasn’t very nice (I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but Emma and I agreed it was probably about rainbows, unicorns and kittens). They left and things got really disturbing.

Every time a stage hand came on to setup a microphone or something everyone started going conpletely insane. That kind of fanatacism is scary, and needs help. Anyway, Dir En Grey came on and I found it amusing how powerful the crowd’s collective cheer was. They started playing some pretty below average sounding songs (well, they were below average after I blocked out the vocalist, who had also decided to shout at me. With him they were terrible). Disregarding the headbutting I got I thought it was pretty amusing (well, topless Japanese men shouting at high pitches whilst headbanging with tshirts over their heads generally are), and the vocalist guy’s got a really hot body. Plus there was a guy with waist-length hair whirlwinding next to me which made a nice breeze. Then though, the vocalist got up on one of the stage gizmos and started slashing at his chest the stupid emo whore (amid my disgust I did manage to giggle when he couldn’t even get it right). All of the bopping little girls were cheering him on, as if it’s something cool, then all the lights went down and everyone went quiet since it was meant to be really deep and meaningful or something, so I shouted “EMO!” as loud as I could and went to get some water. I looked across after and saw the vocalist was spazzing out which made me laugh quite a bit (it reminded me of Elliot), then I left since I wasn’t going to endorse that kind of obnoxious disregard for responsibility (I’d already lost Emma amid the crowd by that point, and there was no way to get back to the front after I’d got a drink).

I walked up the road and got complemented by some guy about my hair (he said his wife would love it and I should go on X Factor). He shook my hand after I told him I’d rather die than go on X Factor, then I went to the Devonshire Chippy and got a spring roll and chips (chips >= self harm) and waited outside Corp for Emma.

So yes, all in all I was pretty disgusted. I quite liked having a load of female bodies pressed against me (I couldn’t bop along myself at the beginnning or else the girl in front of me would think I was trying to anally rape her), since it reminded me of Saturday nights, but I was outraged that some of them might give in to that twisted brainwashing (based on their reaction to the stage crew and the “you’re not allowed cameras” people I would say they’ve already been warped quite a bit) and then get home and harm themselves (probably on a webcam or something too, which would make it worse. Then to rub salt in they’d be broadcasting it using that Microsoft MSN Hotmail Live Windows Messenger Vista thingy). It reminded me of a public execution, but where people were going “Wow, that guy is so cool”. Trying to pass that stunt off as art made me die a little inside, and made the bits left alive get angry.

My thoughts on Dir En Grey? Well, if you know someone who doesn’t like themselves and you really don’t like them either and think that the world would be a better place if they stopped whining on and on about the emotional crap that they think they’re going through but actually have no idea about and just shot themselves already then I think it would be a good recommendation to get them to see. If, however, you know someone like that who you DO like, or at least don’t dislike enough to wish them dead, then in your shoes I would do everything in my power to stop them getting drawn further and further in and down that ridiculously merciless spiral, part of which is wanting to listen to people screaming then idolising them when they go “You think I’m cool now? Wait until you see this!” miss attempt to cut onesself miss again miss again actually manage it put tshirt on head and spasm out in the manner of an epileptic fit. If you don’t know anyone like that but want to, then pop along and maybe get yourself some underage emo pussy (get a friend to tell them they’re fat or something, then they’ll assume 1) it’s true and 2) that it’s a bad thing and then they’ll turn on their emo powers, at which point you can step in to offer an understanding shoulder to cry on, then you’re in (maybe I should stop going off on disturbing tangents?)). If you don’t fit into any of those catagories then I suggest you go to the Devonshire Chippy and the nice guy in there will sell you some chips and spring rolls (and Chicken and Mushroom pies, depending on what you fancy) then impress you with his chip fork flourishes, then amuse you by picking your change up off the floor after failing his money flourish, plus he’ll give you water if your friend is feinting outside, unlike the bastards at the wannabe-trendy place next door.

The best thing about tonight? I didn’t pay, and thus was not condoning such a blatant display of consumerist culture’s ugly reality.

Feel free to reply, but I don’t come in here often since forums are just bastardised versions of mailing lists which have no place inside a web browser.

So yes. I really would urge you not to endorse them. Apathy can die in a bin as far as I’m concerned.

I handed in my Physics work today which was nice.

I’ve also been spicing up my laptop with funky 3D effects. I’m trying out the Avant Window Navigator, which is a big fat rip off of Mac OSX’s dock. HOWEVER, it does reduce desktop redundancy which is nice. It doesn’t seem to have a very useful system tray, which means I would lose a bit of functionality if I used it exclusively, and also whenever I drag a desktop launcher onto AWN it never seems to stay in place.

The reduction in redundancy is seriously VERY nice. Blingy too (I have the “squishy” effect on, which is the same as the KDE launcher effect next to my mouse pointer :P )

I am using Emerald with Compiz, since emulating Metacity makes me feel dirty. I also have Xwinwrap displaying the glslideshow screensaver for my desktop (although that occasionally quits :( I’ll have to look through the options, or if the worst comes to the worst run it in a perpetual for loop). Quite impressive I must say. Plus it is still rather subtle (well, compared to the Airplane effect in Compiz that is :P )

Now I want them to fix the window-flashes-up-momentarily bug that has appeared for some of the effects (which means I can’t use Burn on my drop down menus at the moment)

In slightly more productive computer news I’m trying to create an extensible physics simulator for use (amongst other things) on the XO laptop. I’m currently getting help from the developers to get an emulated system up and running (I tried the standard build image but it keeps resetting X at login when I run it in QEMU, KVM doesn’t even get very far into the boot process and VirtualBox ONLY supports VMWare-style hard drive thingies, rather than allowing raw images to be used). I’ll see if eToys works for me now (it didn’t used to) and play around. If it looks good enough to build on then I’ll do that, if not then I’ll write a new one in Python.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I’ll be booking rooms tomorrow for a Free Software Society installfest. Should be good hopefully :)