Evergreen Lee's Blog

Our copy of Rock Band 3 arrived in the mail yesterday, hence I spent a lot of time yesterday patching, exporting, looking at available songs, and playing (I’m a singer usually). The last time we played rock band was probably in late 2009; by December we had switched to crappy satellite Internet to save $ and shortly after that was the layoffs and the decision to move. For most of 2010 therefore, the components have been in a box, and our good drum kit still is. Gary tried the keytar some and seemed to like it; the main problem I have with it is that you can only play the new RB3 songs if anyone is using it. I found out that a bunch more of Jonathon Coulton’s songs had been put in the store (through RBN) and I wanted to play those, so Gary switched to drums, but he needs a different chair or exercise ball to play very long without his back hurting. Anyways, it was a lot of fun! One of the greatest things was that the leader boards are all new again, so if you do a song well on expert, you have a pretty good chance of ending up in the top 10 (whereas previously, even if you were flawless, you could still be pretty far down on the list). I even got the #1 spot on a couple of songs (mostly Coulton ones); very exciting, even if it won’t last long!

We had everything off the trailer by Tuesday night, and I unpacked a TON of boxes, so we should be set to get our last load this weekend. Most of what is left that is unpacked are books – not only do we have more of them than anything else, but they will be one of the most difficult to place and organize due to weight, quantity, and varying heights. Theoretically, we should have enough bookshelves for all of them, since they fit in VA, but several of the bookcases are currently holding other things or are in the room that we know still needs work done to it (and would therefore have to move again at some point).

Btw, “The girl with the dragon tattoo” – I have no idea why everyone raves so much about this. We watched the movie the other night and I had to watch The Last Unicorn afterward before I could try to go to sleep. It’s not that it’s a “bad” movie, although I don’t think it’s great either, but it shows a lot of graphic violence/rape done to women in unnecessarily vivid detail. That is something I can totally do without, along with violence towards animals. Also, most of the “mystery” was stuff we figured out fairly early on, and the only “smart” thing that this supposedly brilliant female character manages to do is something that I figured out pretty much as soon as I saw the numbers. Maybe I just watch/read too many mysteries, I don’t know, but it seemed pretty obvious. Why is it that for a lot of “acclaimed” movies, the only thing that really sets them apart from other movies is depictions of graphic violence/rape? Is there a fascination with human misery? Is it supposed to be “brave” or something if movie producers decide to include such scenes? Also, in this particular movie, although the women manage to “escape” for themselves, they do little to prevent other women from facing the same treatment. The main villain keeps on raping/killing for FORTY years; what kind of justice is that?