HELP!

Oh God, I don't know what to do. I'm panicking. My hands are getting sweaty. I can't stay focused. I can't think about anything else. My legs are jittering away under my desk as I type this. How did I ever reach this point? How did something this catastophic ever happen?!?!?!

Seriously, how does our pop machine run out of Diet Coke? What am I going to drink all afternoon? I only drink coffee in the morning. I don't like having it in the afternoon any more. I could make hot chocolate, but there's no caffeine in it. Tea is another option, but unfortunately all tea is gross. Water? Come on, who drinks water any more?

There is other pop in the pop machine, but I don't drink fully loaded Coke because it makes my teeth feel like they're rotting away as I drink it. Sprite lacks caffeine. So does that crappy Orange pop that's in there that I'm sure no one drinks. Root Beer tastes like crap. So it looks like I'm in for a liquid-less afternoon. Let's all pray that they get the machine restocked. It has to. I don't know how long I can hold out...

Philosophy and... Action?

Not many people in the world, if any really, think of philosophy as flashy, exciting, and action packed. I know because I majored in it and liked it and everyone I talked to about it definitely did not think of philosophy or philosophers as exciting. Heck, I didn't even think of philosophy as excitement filled. But, in less than a two day span I stumbled across two instances of action and philosophy being combined.

The first was when I was stumbling through Amazon looking for some interesting reads. What did I find when I was looking at independent graphic novels? Why, Action Philosophers, of course!

Amazing. A whole book dedicated to making quasi-superheroes out of classic philosophers. It turns out that there is also a volume 2 of Action Philosophers coming up this winter as well. I ordered volume 1 and preordered volume 2. Rockin'.

On top of graphic novels about philosophy, there are also philosophy action figures. Well, they're not actual action figures, but they're images and descriptions of what action figures for particular philosophers would be. A lot of the major philisophical players are covered over at Philosophical Powers. My favorite would definitely have to be "Vindictive" Wittgenstein, pictured below.

Wittgenstein was such a pain to read. Language philosophy in general is a headache to read. Although, I think I enjoyed Wittgenstein slightly more than Kripke, but that's just me.

It's too bad that these aren't actual figures, because I know for sure I'd order them just so I could see a steel cage match between the tag team of Kant & Hume (the philosophers that make the most sense) against Leibniz and Spinoza (the philosophers that are ridiculously off their rockers). It would be the cage match to end all cage matches.

Only Two of Me

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 2 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Looks like there are two people in the US with my name. I already knew that there was at least two. The other Rick Gebhardt had a website at rickgebhardt.com, but from looking now it seems like he let it expire. Maybe I should snatch it up and point it here so that I have both the .net and .com version of my domain.

What was interesting is that Rick is the 427th most popular first name in the US. That's a lot of other names that are more common than mine. And I am also happy to report that 100% of the people with the first name Rick are male. It would suck to find out that the majority of the people with my name were female. How weird would that be?

And apparently there are 4,140 people in the US that are Gebhardts. That's a lot. Outside of my little family clan here in Minnesota, I don't think I'm related to anyone in the states directly. Who knows, though? Not me.

Update: So I also did a search for Richard Gebhardt and found that there are 35 Richard Gebhardts in the US. I also found that Richard is the 8th most popular name in the US. That is really surprising to me. I didn't think it was that popular.

Two Totally Non-Related Movies

Watched a couple more movies this weekend, so let's add them to the thread.

V for Vendetta (8.5/10): The graphic novel was a phenomenal read so I was really worried the movie wouldn't hold up, but it did. With a focus more on mystery, contemplation, and mood than on action and explosions, you couldn't help but be drawn in to the discontent of the time, the political commentary on the current state of things, the struggles of Evey, and the ideological push of V. The only weak point of the movie is the climax, where things get a tad bit over the top, but beyond this, V for Vendetta is a superbly good movie.

Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit (8/10): What a wonderfully cute movie. I had never watched any Wallace & Gromit before seeing this, so I might have missed out on some of the inside jokes geared towards long time fans, but with being said, this was still funny as all get out, in that British dry humor sort of way. A lot of the comedy comes from quirks and oddities relating to particular situations throughout the movie as opposed to the usual set-up, delivery, punchline type of humor present in the majority of today's comedies. This is a great movie for all ages.

Happy Friday the 13th!

And it came in October too. Just think, within the span of about two weeks, ghosts, ghouls, zombies, monsters, and the undead can spread their reign over the world twice! It's quite possible the best month for spooks in years and years and years. Everyone should celebrate.

I really thought that something was bound to go wrong today with it being Friday the 13th, but so far so good. I woke up and I was not hideously deformed. I took a shower and didn't get soap in my eyes. I got dressed and my clothes didn't start on fire. Work has gone surprisingly well with nothing breaking or blowing up. I ate lunch without choking to death or projectile puking. It's been pretty darn alright around here.

And pretty soon Jared will be home, at which point we'll be heading over to the Triple Rock for a concert. Shai Hulud, One Dead Three Wounded, and Twelve Tribes coming at ya! Should be a rockin' good time. Hopefully we don't have to beat up any little kids who think they're all 'core doing their hardcore dancing and being obnoxious. I'll let yout know how it goes.

Enjoy your Friday the 13th!

Mother Nature Wins Round One

You know how it was freezing ass cold in Minnesota yesterday? I decided it would be a good idea to take on the cold and go for a run. My brain was telling me that I needed to get my body used to the cold as I still have a month or two of fall league ultimate frisbee, along with a tournament or two, yet this year. It's not getting any warmer out, my brain tells me. So I listened to my brain because it sounded like it made sense, got in my cold weather running clothes, put on my MP3 player, and jumped outside for my run...

...at which point every fiber of my body screamed at my brain that it was f'ing cold out. It wasn't just that it was in the low 30's outside, but it was also moderately windy. My brain assured the rest of my body that once I was into my run, I would feel warmer. About a mile into my run, I wasn't that much warmer. In fact, 2.5 miles later when I reached the gym, I was still pretty damn cold.

Then, to make matters worse, after I was done working out at the gym, I had to run the half mile home covered in a layer of sweat. Not my smartest moment, believe me. The entire way home I think I was propelled along by shivers. Actually, for being tired and really tight after lifting, I ran home about as fast as I ever have.

Mother Nature, I concede this round to you, but beware. In the future I'll be prepared. I realize now that shorts and a long sleeved shirt under a short sleeved shirt are not enough to protect me from your nipple densening cold winds. I'll dress warmer and I'll beat you. You just wait.

Another Movie Entry

Here's another one to add to the Movie Review Thread.

Inside Man (8.5/10): What surprised me most about this movie is that it was a Spike Lee joint. Instead of having a heavy-handed race relations message, like most Spike Lee movies do, we're presented with a clever heist flick that has a few race related nuggets tossed in here and there. As a "how are they going to pull this off?" heist movie, I was definitely interested all the way through, however, there is one glaring flaw - you never know how the "criminals" know the information they do. The whole heist revolves around a secret piece of knowledge that only one man knows. How the criminals also know this information is never touched upon and leaves an empty hole that I wish were filled. If you ignore that one piece of lacking information, this was a supremely enjoyable heist movie.

Tonight's Match Up

"For today's fight we have Rick in the blue corner and the newcomer, Winter, in the red corner. Rick hasn't been in a fight since March. Winter has been dormant for a few months but has suddenly slammed himself back into the fight world, recently knocking out Summer and Fall in a 4 round TKO. This should be a good, drawn out, heavy fight. Let's head down to ringside."

"Ok men, I want a good, clean fight this time. Last time you two went up against each other it got pretty ugly. Winter, try to avoid ice storms, 20 degree below zero temperatures, and taunting with 45 degree days in the middle of a cold spell. White outs are fair game. Rick, let's not have any excessive whining over not being able to run in the cold or attempting to let your driveway go unshoveled. Howewver, celebrating white outs is acceptable. Alright, let's see a show tonight gentlemen. FIGHT!"

Darkest Hour - Archives CD Review

Here we are again, presented with the inevitable cash-in re-issue release by a label looking to capitalize on a band after they've garnered a significant amount of popularity. Instead of seeking out new talent to cultivate, which is what a smaller label like A-F Records should be focusing on, there’s always the re-package and re-release “out of print” material route to take. Darkest Hour, having created the awesome Undoing Ruin for Victory Records now has a fanbase much larger than what they did when they were releasing EPs in their Washington DC area, and deservedly so, because Undoing Ruin was a monster of a metal disc. That being said, how many current Darkest Hour fans really need to or want to hear the rough version of the band from their first days, nearly 10 years ago?

Archives is a collection of Darkest Hour’s first two EPs (The Prophecy Fulfilled and The Misanthrope) along with an unreleased song and alternate versions of the songs from their EPs. Any uber-fan of Darkest Hour is going to have the original EPs so the alternate versions and unreleased track would be the only reason to pick this disc up, and it’s just not worth it.

Before touching on the new material, however, it should be pointed out that the remastering of the two EPs from their source tapes was at least tackled with a little bit of care. The songs, despite their age, come through to the other side sounding very good. Of course, with these tracks coming from the beginning of the Darkest Hour history, it is apparent that they were still finding their sound, at times trying to take on an epic, death metal feel while at other times focusing more on shredding and their more classic metal elements. The biggest difference between today’s Darkest Hour and yesterday’s is in the vocal department. You’ll notice a stronger focus on the deathy, pseudo-scream growls on this re-release. Many times, unfortunately, they feel forced and unnatural, such as on the song “This Curse”, but when you’re still finding your direction, that is to be expected.

Now, to take a look at the alternate versions of “This Side of the Nightmare”, “Reflections of Ruin”, and “This Curse”. First, you’ll note the clarity in comparison to the originals. There is a stronger audible differentiation between the various instruments on “This Side of the Nightmare”, but on the other two the recording quality is merely a slight bit better, still being a little murky. The differences between the versions of the songs is very, very slight with really the only thing being done are a couple of re-worked small passages within the songs. There are no real overhauls to be found, just small tweaks.

The unreleased track, “Faith Like Suicide”, isn’t truly unreleased as it was featured on a vinyl split with Groundzero, but the likelihood of anyone actually owning that is pretty small, so you can sort of think of it as unreleased. Oddly, this track is by far the best thing to be found on this disc. It has a very epic metal feel to it that sounds very mature, despite its age.

Again, in the end when confronted with a cash-in release such as this, it just isn’t worth the money, even if you are a fan. The old stuff is out of print for a reason — it wasn’t necessarily all that good. And the bonus alternate and unreleased tracks that are tossed on aren’t all that great either. Go spin Undoing Ruin a few more times because this would be a disappointment and waste of your money.

Spellfire is Still Alive!

When I was an early teen, into my middle teens, and even (I think) through my first couple of years of my third decade of life, I played the collectible card game Spellfire. You've probably only heard of it if A) you are a massive nerd, B) you are a Dungeons and Dragons nutcase, C) you played Magic: The Gathering, or D) you are a massively massive nerd.

I played Spellfire, which is essentially a Magic knockoff, with my brothers on countless vacations. For some reason it was our game of choice when we were traveling. Randy and I were both, unfortunately, pretty big Dungeons and Dragons nerds. We never got to the point where we sat down and played the pen and paper AD&D games, but we had all of the old gold box AD&D computer games and played D&D knockoff board games like Hero Quest.

For a while I thought that Spellfire would come and go like many other knock offs of popular fads, like pogz or trolls. Somehow it held on and there were expansion set after expansion set released. When we stopped playing I think that the game was on its 11th or 12th expansion. With each expansion being 100 cards and there being 400 cards in the initial run, that gave us about 1300-1500 cards to work with. And boy did we have a lot.

We mostly played with the first series cards and the first 5 or 6 expansions. We had some later run cards, but from the first five sets we had almost all the cards. In total, we must have had a thousand or two cards that we'd play with. It eventually got to the point where making a deck was way too complicated so we modified the rules.

Instead of playing with a regulation deck, we'd play with all of the cards we owned with our game being one perpetual war. We took all of the limiting rules and either jacked them way up or threw them out altogether. It got to be pretty wild and half the time we'd have to make up what certain cards would do at certain times because things would get so nuts, but it was fun as hell.

For the heck of it, I did a search on Google to see what came up for Spellfire and it seems like there is a fanbase for the card game. It's been well over a decade since the game was created so I didn't expect to find much, but quite the opposite was true. Now I know that Magic is still popular, but I figured it to be the only collectible card game that made it through the 90's and still was played. I was wrong.

The first thing I found was the official Spellfire website. It contains rules, news, and other things you'd assume to be there. What is interestingly present is four complete expansion sets that were custom created by users and posted online. You could print them out and use them for games. I don't know how you'd do that, exactly, so that they'd match the rest of the cards, but it's cool that the cards were made nonetheless.

Of course, there's the Wikipedia page for the game. It doesn't really offer up much information, but it did turn me towards a couple of other Spellfire related sites. The first is the Spellfire community page. It appears to be pretty dead, however, with the last relevant post coming earlier this year. I was hoping for throngs of players, but it does look like traditional players of the game are rare.

With the death of the actual card carrying and playing member is the rise of online play. Yes, you heard it right, someone has taken the game of Spellfire and made an online component called Crossfire. I didn't look at it too closely, but it looks like a way to play Spellfire online with other Crossfire users. Interesting.

So... that's probably way more information than you'd ever want to know about a card game I used to play in my youth with my brothers. Now if I could only figure out what triggered my memories on the topic.