The Headbanger

A blog of humor and metal, two of life's greatest joys. Probably other stuff, too - no guarantees.

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Indispensable Writing Tips From Famous Authors

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This is the wall behind the bar at Paddy's Irish Pub in Portland, Oregon. It is a beautiful thing to behold. Had a few beers and a delicious Reuben sandwich here, and yes, that is an old-school library style rolling ladder to help reach the highest shelves of booze. That shit ain't just for decoration, it's for DRUNK-oration (that sort of works, right?)

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Pottermore Difficulties

Finally got my access to Pottermore, and the dang thing keeps crashing my browser.

I JUST WANT TO GET SORTED.  GAHHHHHHHHHHH!!! 

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YES.

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En Route to Portland

The Good: In-flight WiFi! The Bad: It's slow to the point of being nearly useless. This makes dial-up seem speedy. First world problems abound. The Ugly: Turbulence, small seats, and a crying baby 4 rows ahead.

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Flying to Portland

In an hour or so.

Holy frijoles it's early.  This is the type of morning situation that warrants hash browns.

Goal of the trip: find at least one place that Man vs. Food went to and eat there.  Possibly do challenge, we'll see.

[happyharry101]

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This is the sort of picture that I want hanging on my wall right now.

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Been getting more and more into electronic music these days, and this guy is one of the main reasons why.  The pad he uses is just so happy and bouncy and fun, can't help but have a good day when you're listening to this stuff!

I'm still into metal too, I promise.

[thedailywhat]

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thedailywhat:

TGIF of the Day: Yesterday’s historic Southwest power outage, which left as many as 6 million people without power in parts of California, Arizona, and Mexico, was the fault of a lone employee of Arizona’s largest electric utility, APS.

According to NBC San Diego, the electrical worker removed some monitoring equipment at a southwest Arizona power substation Thursday afternoon, triggering a domino effect that knocked out power across a large portion of the area.

“The outage appears to be related to a procedure an APS employee was carrying out in the North Gila substation, which is located northeast of Yuma,” APS said in a statement. “Operating and protection protocols typically would have isolated the resulting outage to the Yuma area. The reason that did not occur in this case will be the focal point of the investigation into the event, which already is underway.”

By Friday morning, power was back for many, but officials asked residents to conserve energy in order to “reduce the strain” on the fragile electrical grid.

Above: Before and after view of the San Diego skyline.

[nbcsd / latimes / ap via wapo.] 

Holy shit I was totally there! I'm, like, location-contact-tumblr famous! Sort of!

Anyways, if you think the second picture doesn't look that bad, you should have seen everywhere else in San Diego - outside of downtown the entire county was PITCH BLACK.  Pretty creepy.  Riddick would have been fine though.

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Redaction

A few months back I wrote a post about how I was reinventing my blog and blah blah blah and all that stuff.  The main point of it was that I was no longer going to be reblogging, in the interest of being totally original and thematically consistent.

Well now I am older and wiser and I have realized that when you have <30 followers, choosing not to reblog is a quick way to stay at exactly <30 followers.  Also, no one really cares.  So I am officially admitting failure making a pragmatic decision to reinstitute the institution of reblogging as a posting option for myself.

Hopefully this will make you all love me.

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Bwahahahahaha!!

So apparently power is out all over San Diego county right now...but thanks to backup generators and apparently lucky cubicle placement, I still have full power at my desk.  I'm going to start selling timed usage of my power outlets.  So begins the post apocalypse.

ANARCHY!!

I WILL RULE WITH MY SMALL AMOUNT OF ELECTRICITY!

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No More Excuses*

*With the exception of all future excuses.

I finally transferred my GIF folder to a damn thumb drive so I can post from work.  Unfortunately this now means that I can't justify not posting anymore.

Damn it.

Also, definitely getting spam-liked on that Power Tools post from a while back.  Kinda annoying.

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Ambition, and the Sad Admission of Truth

Well this is kind of sad.  I'm looking at my post history and finally acknowledging that my determination to provide daily original posts fizzled out in a spectacularly un-spectacular fashion as soon as I got a job.  I was pretty gung-ho about that for a while...it's always a little depressing to realize that you either (A.) don't have enough time to write a short post each day, (2.) Can't come up with good enough ideas to warrant posting each day, or (III.) Are just so unbelievably lazy that you'll hide behind either of the previous excuses to avoid admitting that you just didn't really feel like posting all that much.  If you can't tell, I am in the third category.

But, in the interest of not starting my day by depressing myself, I'm going to blame this all on something completely unrelated: the fact that I don't have my folder of GIF's and amusing pictures on my work computer.  

Yeah!  That's why I don't post enough!

*cue .gif with only slight correlation to post:

So new resolution: more posting, less ambition, less guilt.  And, finally stop faffing about and put my GIF folder on a damn thumb drive.

Also, seriously people, stop "Like"-ing the damn Power Tools post.  It wasn't that good.  For some reason that appears to be my blog's only legacy.  Half the reason I'm trying to write again is just to prove I'm better than that.

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Sooooo, Pottermore?

I am now registered with Pottermore, with the properly-metal-esque username "BloodYew".  Let's see what this shenanigans is.  I'm already somewhat skeptical due to the fact that, during the registration phase, the default "too many people trying to access the Magical Quill page" re-routing sends you to a Sony Harry Potter sponsored DVD-Home Theater set sales page (I honestly reloaded it about 5 times, thinking this was a spam re-route).  I swear, if this thing is just a massive sell-out for advertising dollars...but until I see it, I will remain cautiously optimistic.  Been reading HP since grade school, and I'm definitely glad to see the universe live on!

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Your turn! 11, 15, 16, 25, 39, 41.I give you lots.

A challenge! I love a challenge.  Ok let's see here... (I'll include the original question since I didn't post the picture with the numbers and all that):

11. Which Professor I'd Bone: Hmm don't really have an answer for this one, as my adolescent mind usually pictured all female teachers as some magical variant of Mrs. Davitt, my 6th grade teacher, who was about 150 years old at last check.  Could I go with, say, a female version of Lupin?

15. Favorite HP Creature or Beast: Either the Hungarian Horntail or a Centaur.  Dragons are just awesome, and I've always thought that HP's portrayal of Centaurs as huge, badass druid-esque warriors with intellectual sides was much better than most (Fantasia, I'm looking at you and your "My Little Pony" centaurs).

16. Most Upsetting Death: Sirius, without a doubt.  I read the next two books firmly believing that he wasn't really dead, and was just in some alternate world (see Moiraine and Lanfear through the Red Doorframe in The Wheel of Time) but eventually realized that he wasn't coming back.  There were tears.  Also, I felt that the death was much too sudden and "oops-I-fell-into-this-creepy-doorway-now-I'm-dead" for such a badass character...in my own fantasy world where I get to pick how books should end, Sirius would have had an epic "last stand" death, fighting off a pack of werewolves and dementors at a chokepoint in the Ministry of Magic (to give Harry, Ron, and Hermione time to escape), and his last words would have been "AL-A-KA-FUCKIN'-ZAM, BITCHES!!!!!" before he triggers his wand's self-destruct spell and vanishes in a giant, magical mushroom cloud in the shape of a middle finger, aimed right at Voldemort.  Fuckin' sweet.

25. What I'd See in the Mirror of Erised: Bacon.  Just lots of bacon.  And me in a Millenium Falcon-ish spaceship.  Made out of bacon.  I'm hungry, ok?

39. If I Could Make My Own Spell: Assclownium Parkius.  A spell that would turn poorly-parked cars into Fran Drescher, who would then find the driver and nag them for an hour before turning back into a car.

41. What I'd Turn Into a Horcrux: Well I guess this one could have two answers, depending on the nature of my Horcruxing...sentiment, or durability.  As seen from Voldemort's choices, choosing sentiment over durability can leave you vulnerable to the efforts of a few meddling kids, so as much as it would be great fun to turn my desktop PC into a Horcrux (think Tom Riddle's diary, just with more Starcraft), I think I'd be more likely to go with a solid lump of Titanium.  Try to stick a basilisk tooth in that, Harry!

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Metal Monday: In Flames - "Deliver Us"

Yes, I am perfectly aware that I have posted absolutely nothing in nearly a month.  I've been traveling and starting a new job, and really this is one of those things that is easy to let fall by the wayside, especially when you only have 20 followers (you guys are awesome though!)  However, I now have classroom-based job training, 8 hours a day for the next 2 weeks, so I can use our ample break time to start to post a bit again...hopefully I'll actually keep it up.

Anyways, let's get back to what you came here for: Metal Monday!  This is the first single off the new In Flames album, Sounds of a Playground Fading.  This is the band's 10th studio release, and has been hailed by many as one of their better albums...and by "hailed by many", I mean I saw some Youtube and Amazon comments that said it was really good.  I can't provide my own opinion yet, since I haven't gotten my hands on the full CD, but if this song is any indication of it, I'm pretty excited!  Great rhythmic guitar and drumming, with Anders Friden's always-excellent vocals over the top...just plain delectable.

This seems as good a time as any for me to weigh in a bit on the whole In Flames sell-out-or-not-sell-out thing, to which I say:

Stop whining and enjoy the music.

That's about the extent to which I care.  They still make good music, it doesn't matter if it's a slightly different genre or form than it used to be.  If the music went way downhill as they changed style, I'd have a bigger problem (*cough*A7X*cough*) but they've continued to make quality music, shifting their style as they see fit so as to keep from falling into the stylistic rut that so many bands are victim to.  If you're big into stylistic purity, I'm sure this is plenty offensive to you, but then you'd be a pretentious prick and probably don't read my blog anyways, so ha! I win.  The end.

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Found this guy while in Lucerne, Switzerland, dancing to a band playing in a park.  This was made even more amazing when, upon uploading the video, I found another one on Youtube from 3 years ago of the same guy, doing the same dance in the same park.  Gotta give him some credit for consistency...if a dance move ain't broke, don't fix it.