Lotzothoughtz

America’s Best Dance Crew…Yeah I Watched It

ATL — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 02:35:46 +0000

Well until BreakSk8 got kicked off, after that the show kinda went downhill for me. Why did I enjoy team BreakSk8 so much? They dance….on skates…..who does that? BreakSk8 that’s who. That’s some crazy shiznit.

Music Video: Panic! At the Disco : Nine In the Afternoon

ATL — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 01:18:00 +0000

YAY! Another week another music video. This one is from one of my favorite groups, Panic! At the Disco. It’s their most recent single. I enjoy it and kinda hope you will too. Leave a comment if ya like.

Why I hate the Olive Garden

ATL — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:38:08 +0000

I like food, some might even call me a foodie. Recently I have by virtue of my job and friends who don’t cook begun to eat out more and more, before this I cooked most everything I ate. So I’ve gotten to eat at a lot of various places I would never otherwise come by.

Today my friends I ate at the Olive Garden restaurant.For those no in the know the Olive Garden is an Italian themed chain restaurant owned by the powerhouse of casual dining, Darden Restaurants. If you’ve never heard the name Darden Restaurants then you just haven’t looked hard enough because chances are you’ve eaten at one of them. They own Red Lobster, Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, Bahama Breeze, Seasons 52, and the Capital Grille. They make a lot of money.Back to the Olive Garden, upon first entry into the restaurant you are greeted by a bizarrely open foray with an annoying pretentious (this is a chain restaurant) super-waitress who takes your seating order then in a strange waste of time walks over to an awaiting underling who prepares your table.

Throughout the restaurant you see the ideals of forced culture: the plates on the wall that if you look close enough are the same five plates on each wall, just in a different arrangement, the fake stucco walls, the hard painted chairs, the windows in the dividers in the restaurant that aren’t glass but plastic.Then there is the menu where each sub-menu has it’s Italian and English language counterpart, the most pretentious of which is the “Pizze (Pizza)” distinction. Pick a language, people aren’t drooling fools. The menu items themselves sound promising on paper, classic sauce and pasta combos, no real surprising or unique flavor combinations. Ho-hum.Well, one would reason, with a menu so sparse then the chefs must be well versed in their preparation and thus ensure a singularly satisfactory dining experience. Umm no. The food is bland as hell, the sauces are thin and uninspired, the pasta is obviously mass produced cheap crap, the salad is soggy, and everything about this food…is mediocre at best. If I had made any of these dishes I had sampled at home, I would throw them out and consider it a failure.

Food quality was just poor across the board, from the dry Chicken Marsala to the deflated plate of Seafood Alfredo. As if the chefs and servers know the subpar state of their food, the presentation of this food is dour and just plain sad. The food is arranged on the plate as though in the back room there is a slightly retarded monkey doing the plating.

This leads me to wonder why so many people enjoy this Olive Garden. Are they simply puppets of inviting, family centric commericals? Pawns of the marketing gods of Darden Restaurants? Or is the American public at large lacking in taste.I think it’s a little bit of both.

Music+Video = Good. The Sounds: Tony The Beat

ATL — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 02:29:06 +0000

I listen to a lot of music, so I was thinking why not put up videos of music I enjoy. So here’s the first of the vids I’ll be putting up, hopefully regularly. It’s a cool little vid from a Swedish band called The Sounds, which are kinda a pop-punk-new wavey kinda band. Weird, not usually my style, but damn catchy. So without further delay, here is The Sounds with their song “Tony The Beat”. Oh yeah and kids, remember, file sharing is bad. Embedding however, is encouraged.

Meow Mix Tastes Like The Internet

ATL — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 01:34:06 +0000

I am incredibly tired of hearing from older people how technology is destroying the world. You know the common refrains: video games make kids violent, music corrupts with sex and bass, the internet breeds dull drones. Give me a break.

Technology is a singularly complete mode through people can learn, communicate, listen, watch, be. For the sake of this argument let’s limit this to the internet. The internet strives to be a parallel universe to our everyday world and for the most part it succeeds brilliantly. And most people over age 30 don’t really understand it nor do they try.

The internet is the world in micro. It is music, videos, still images, interactive combinations. Plus these aspects in addition to worlds and objects live within their own worlds with their own physics. We are making the internet the world we wish we could have.

This dynamic, multimedia mix is unlike anything ever seen before. Accordingly there are those who will abuse this new world, pervert it for their own purposes. The most obvious example of this is the world of porn online. The sheer quantity of it and accessibility of it leads a lot of people into a lot of long, lonely nights. That is the easiest trap people seem to fall into. Aside form the sexualized abuses, there are tons of places people can abuse the internet. Abusing people via IM, message boards, blog postings, myspace posts, etc. But the people who abuse the internet, I would argue, are a very small minority when compared to the millions of people who use it without every committing any abuse.

This mixed up world has a little bit of everything for everyone. If you love music, u can browse huge catalogs of it, buy it, listen to it, talk about it. If you love some stupid anime show I guarantee there is a blog, website, forum, or social network niche for you to get your fix. That is the beauty of this multimedia driven universe, not only is it a place to find media, enjoy it, but its also a place where you can interact with people. And not just people sitting across the street, the internet brings together people with no geographical link who may or may not have the same interests, likes, dislikes, and passions.

What the hell is the point of all of this? To many older people the internet is a scary place, where if you download a single file you will destroy your entire computer (that thinking is soooo 1995). But in reality the universe that is the internet and its disparate worlds that inhabit it, are a rich and amazing place. Yeah like any society it has its fringe elements, its devious types that ruin the fun for everyone. But in the end the internet is an amazing mix that everyone can enjoy and should.

Indeed Roanoke, Indeed….

ATL — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:50:03 +0000

So about a week and a half to two weeks ago was it…Alfred Dowe resigned from the City of Roanoke’s City Council (weird of words yes, but technically it is the City of Roanoke, not Roanoke City). It makes you wonder what other financial oddities are out there within the city, both legal and like Dowe, illegal.

For instance the City’s “attempts” at youth retention and attraction, spear headed by Stuart Mease. Aside from his salary (50k a year I believe) how much more money has the city slapped at this effort? With a population that is largely under 34 years old, significantly under, the city is just slapping a bandage on a gunshot wound.

If Mr. Mease was bringing in hundreds of kids a year, sure I’d be the first to give him an oddly long hug, but he’s not. It’s not his fault, but going around to career fairs and area colleges only gets you so far. With a city unable to attract new and dynamic businesses (they all go to Blacksburg these days) and seemingly incapable of mining the rich fields of thousands of college students just 45 minutes away from the city, what is the point.

At the end of the day if you can’t bring in any new major businesses, while losing traditional businesses and/or those existing businesses weakening to a break point, you and your city are screwed.

Welcome to Roanoke.

Blah

ATL — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:37:32 +0000

Work is boring, through and through. Me wonders if Lotzothoughtz is due for another incarnation, perhaps a change of branding? I’m not sure. However, I do miss my blog. Stay tuned kiddies…..ummm but don’t hold breath, this’ll take some time.

I’m Alive

ATL — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 17:38:34 +0000

I’ve been quiet for most of this passed year, feb to feb, but I’ve had a long and busy year my friends.

It all began december 2006 when I graduated from college……my mom had to recover from open heart surgery while then I worked a crap part-time job, a grandparent died a month later, I got a new job a month later, bought a car, trained for 8 months, applied to grad school (waiting to hear back), got a new computer, have a possible new job on the horizon, and then one year later to the day (today) my other grandparent has just died.

I’m going to try to get back into my old style of blogging, reestablish contact w/ the bloggers I used to hang w/ online, and see what’s up in the ‘ole city of Roanoke.

Peace out homes (hehe, I’m so white)

I’ve been Gone

ATL — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 02:02:19 +0000

Life has just been kicking me in the gut lately, every time I get back up I get hit (metaphorically) over the head with another two by four. And ya know what, blogging so quickly takes such a backseat you have no idea.

Blogging is mostly a useless form of expression. It’s prime is over, most blogs are never read.

I realize fully that I am mostly just screaming out there into the ether.

And mostly I’m good with that.