I'm actually advertising for competing events but I have a lot of friends in the events and I love them all equally. :)

( Flyers behind cut )

Personally, I'll be at Mardi's workshop Saturday, Tales of Desire Saturday night, and at Bliss on Sunday. It's going to be a great weekend!

Oh, and I just joined the community. Hi! :)

Music Review: Dir en Grey - Uroboros
Written by Jordan Richardson
Published November 21, 2008
See also:
» Music DVD Review: Public Enemy - Revolverlution Tour 2003
» Music Review: Christian Scott - Live At Newport (CD+DVD)
» Music Media: Metallica, Opeth, Hate Gallery, Mind Assault, Cloudscape, Legion of the Damned
According to press, Japanese experimental metal outfit Dir en Grey wanted to move in a more beautiful, graceful direction with their latest release. While that may be true, there is glorious pandemonium within the stunning configuration and Uroboros winds up as one of the most face-meltingly remarkable metal albums of the year.

Dir en Grey has conquered the Japanese rock scene, delighting audiences with their brand of madness metal for over a decade. Once unleashed on American shores for the first time in early 2006, indie metal fans couldn’t get enough of the diabolical quintet. With the release of Withering to Death, Dir en Grey hit the festival circuit throughout Europe and the U.S. Lead vocalist Kyo was hospitalized for “inflamed vocal chords,” but the band was still able to join Korn on the Family Values Tour in 2006.

In February 2007, Dir en Grey took off on their first American headlining tour. Their sixth album, The Marrow of a Bone, was released and the band toured with Deftones before heading back on a European tour. With their influence in the world of metal growing, the release of their seventh record, Uroboros, gives fans even more bloody and brutal metal to chew on.

For starters, like it should matter, the songs are in Japanese (lyrics in English are included in the liner notes, but they are damn near impossible to read without a bright light and a magnifying glass). Kyo is incredible, thrashing his vocal chords over lyrics that encapsulate the record’s theme of guilt and reincarnation. He screams, shouts, bellows, moans, growls, and sings superbly and smartly. Kyo’s range is almost overwhelming; his electronic-effect free vocals are second-to-none in the metal world.

Instrumentally, this is a complex and rich album. The arrangements are intricate and well-designed, resonating with crunchy guitar, congas, electric sitar, thundering drums, and a mandolin. With guitarists Kaoru and Die recording some of their instrument’s portions directly from an amp, the songs are given an earthy resonance.

Perhaps the most striking thing about Uroboros is just how lush the whole thing is. Dir en Grey is throwing the kitchen sink into the record and seeing what works. And everything works. Arrangements course through like blood in the veins, unfolding with neat piano that meshes gently with Kyo’s vocals (“Glass Skin”) and guitars that drive hard through a 10-minute epic of shocking proportions (“Vinushka”).

“Ware, Yami Tote…” is a gorgeous, expressive cut that uses acoustic guitar and tons of atmosphere to tell its story. And “Doukoku to Sarinu” takes the opposite approach, thundering ahead with head-splitting guitar and a brisk, hammering pace over Kyo’s screams.

Uroboros, translated literally to “tail-devourer,” is one of the best metal records of the year. Coated with an experimental spirit that may shut out some overly obdurate “purists,” this is a ballsy and monstrous record. Dir en Grey has earned every single member of its huge fan base and will doubtlessly continue to grow it with records like this. It is striking, roaring, maddening, breathtaking and fan-fucking-tastic.
Link to Site
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/11/21/100332.php

Apparently 7-Eleven had looked into bringing Ramune into the stores here in the US, but decided it was to complicated. The needed the help of one of the Japanese guys here to work the bottle. I think I am going to bring up the Gummy Chocos to the person in charge of Candy.

God is a Vogon?!?
Where exactly is that dolphin swimming?
Hmmmm....

My first Macro of my Morrissey.




( And the slightly more offensive. )

not much has happened to day
little upset that I the paper work i was sent was not completed all the way then i kinda had to figure out what to do with the 65 new shirts i was given to add...its not going to take me that long to do them, but it did take to long for the stoopid lady to send me the stuff i needed.

my cat like to sleep under the covers with me

EDIT: 4:50PM Scrapbook (aka pics.livejournal.com) is back up! Thank you.

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Sorry guys for the late notice! We've had to bring down the ScrapBook databases for some emergency maintenance. This means pics in your LiveJournal gallery are going to be unavailable. They should be back up within the next hour. I'll update this post when they're back online and we've checked them out.

bt

I just finished setting up the Prebook for Halo Wars, Sims 3, Res Evil 5 and Street Fighter IV
this games ship out next near early feb to early march.

now i am working on adding 65 freaking items, its only 4 shirts but each one has a male and a female type and 4 differentsizes.

Some of my coworkers have decided to start calling me Hector.
On of the managers for the Merchandising was calling me Hector. I decided to tell one of my supervisors, since then she has started calling me Hector...then it spread to a another supervisor, then some of my coworkers.

For the last two mornings there has been this older gentleman getting on the train with me. What makes this man stand out is the fact that he is wearing a kilt. I feel compelled to praise him.

I am ashamed with the Chesapeake division of 7-Eleven. They have been stoopid and causing me unnecessary work.

I guess i should get to work.

Inspired by the alternative beauty pageant "Miss Catwalk Tragedy" this 134 page, full color 8.5" x 11" collection features some of the country's top alternative photographers and a few promising newcomers.

Features:

• Lithium Picnic


• Kyle Cassidy


• Jeff Cohn


• Scott Church


• S. Jenx


• And many others! (See full credit list on the purchase page.)
  
  Look for an upcoming interview with photographer S. Jenx on Alterati about this collection in coming weeks, covering what inspired him to curate this collection, his own photographic process, and knowing us, probably a lot more.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  James Curcio.

This is probably old but, here you go anyway

EDIT@6:54PM PST

We just implemented a temporary fix for our internal network and it *looks* promising. We'll let it bake in overnight and see how well it performs tonight and tomorrow.

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Hi hi!

We've completed the majority of the move and had the site back up by 20:00 UTC (hey, look, I can post! You can read! Yay!) , but there's still some lingering issues that we need to clean up and are aware of so please be a little more patient while we wrap up the odds and ends.

I want to echo the lj_releases post where we thank burr86 and dormando for their ceaseless efforts, skill and knowledge. The LJ Ops and Engineering teams have/are *still* working their butts off but without burr86 and dormando's expertise, we could not have pulled this off.

For you techies, the slowness on our website is known, and the issue is currently isolated to oversubscribed ports on our core switches. That's direct from our vendor. Yeah, I know... Anyways, we're trying to implement a temporary workaround and we'll be looking to upgrade our hardware as a permanent solution. Please, hang in there a little longer!

bt