megidish dot net: genius at work

A few days ago, while dusting off some old cds of mine, I came across my good old copy of Metallica’s Load. Now, you have to realize. Unlike my older brothers who grew up in the 80s, I’m not that high on Queen, Eurythmics or The Smiths. My heroes were Kurt Cobain and James Hetfield. While Cobain made sure there is no new material coming out anytime soon, we still had high hopes for Metallica in high school. And indeed, by 1996 Metallica has released Load, after 6 years of total drought. The cliche’ goes about a rain and a desert, and was absolutely just like that.

When the new album hit the stores, I remember the day I took the bus to the city, just to walk 30 minutes to that special and only place around that sold punk/metal music. If you were of the lucky early birds, you also got this cool ass poster of the band with short hair and 1970s pornstar mustaches. Load was a great album, and the 1997 compliment of Reload made it a swarm of new material. We were happy.

Back in 2000s, when P2P file sharing was booming, Metallica took a stand to lead the industry war against piracy. That was almost a decade ago, and I’m not dumb enough to believe there was no pressure from records label to fight till the death. But for some reason that made question why am I still buying every album they release. What really broke me was MTV Cribs; in the early 2000s, MTV toured rockstar houses. One episode that really caught my eye was of Korn’s bass player, Fieldy. He bragged about everything he owned, and especially his gold coated toilet set and bathroom sink. That really pissed me off. That was the day I stopped buying major bands albums. No more Metallica or Korn. I still buy a lot of cds, but they are mostly either local or indie.

Years have passed and Metallica kept releasing new albums. It slowly fade away for me and letting Trujillo sit at Newsted’s chair at Metallica Icon just made it less attractive. Last I heard from a friend was that St. Anger had no solos. Their signature was broken. It’s very sad to see your idol die. Metallica still play the old their good ol’ stuff at concerts. I’m not ruling out attending (another) one. Their shows are awesome and it’s authentic nostalgic at a low price.

Heavy Robot Nixon bombarded Vietnam’s ghouls; Napoleon raided Flesh Eating Pharaoh’s tombs in early days. It sounds ridiculous, but with enough time, it will happen. See what happened in the a decade: id’s Return To Castle Wolfenstein featuresd zombie Nazis, conquering Europe by the masses. When I’ll ask my grand kids about World War 2, what do you think the answer is going to be? Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. A bit over 60 years ago, more than 6,000,000 Jews (and higher numbers of other nations) were slaughtered by Nazi Germany. With time passing, people remember less and less of it. Luckily there are many videos and coverage of this war, so nobody can deny it never happened. It is said that this war was of the European jews; a few years ago I have discovered that my dad’s grandparents were sent to a labor camp. It was a complete shock to me finding out so late. My family is not European.

Alas, zombie nazis are just the beginning. Earlier this month I saw this very funny game called Stalin vs Martians. It’s an utterly stupid rts, but the concept is refreshing. Wait, why is it different, aliens not zombies? I’ve never been against violence in video games, but now I’m starting to worry that future generations will lose interest in history and what will stick will be old screenshots in their memory. Maybe I’m thinking too far, but look at us, 2,000 years later and we have no idea about the pyramids or Jesus.

Last but not least, I’m uploading a screenshot from the original Castle Wolfenstein game (1981). It is, and always has been, one of the most scariest games I have ever played. It had a really strong concept: if you get shot, you die. You had to work your way through bunkers, bribing and killing officers. If one fired up the alarm, you’re done for. If they shot your leg, you are done for. One mistake and the game is over. There is no save/load, and you can’t idle much. They don’t make games this serious anymore.