Published by gawd June 5th, 2009
in Rant.

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.
Published by gawd April 22nd, 2009
in Life.
As I was walking the treadmill. (pause) Yes, walked the treadmill; I zapped through the infinite (40) channels that the gym was offering, looking for something to ease the pain and sweden the time. Call me crazy, but the Adventures of Bert & Ernie show is just epic! I started laughing in the gym (luckily I don’t give a frak) to animated clay characters.
The episode was hysterical, there’s this character who just shoves funny glasses and nose to everybody, without their approval. A bit that was especially interesting, was then Bert asked Ernie, where is that guy. And he said, No One Knows (Nose.) The thing is, the show was dubbed so he said “אף אחד לא יודע” (Af Echad Lo Yodea.) Literally, it’s the same joke, exact same principal applies on both. But what is truly amazing is that Knows phonetically sounds like Nose. In Hebrew, Af is either Nose or Nobody (lt. none). Knows translates to Yodea. I think it’s insane! Episode was great too. Loved it! Gym flies when you’re Disney-channeling.
Published by gawd April 20th, 2009
in Rant.
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.


Published by gawd April 10th, 2009
in Life.
Dating back to Oct of last year, I have neglected my blogging completely. The OCD hasn’t worn off, it just moved from blogging to micro-blogging. The new flavor of addiction sums up to one-liner status updates on twitter.
Follow me on Twitter is the new mantra. And like a journalist finding his way back home, I’m now considering myself recovering from this ill addiction. So this is a dummy blog post. Just a warm up for getting back in shape. My home is here, blogging. Everything macro fades away. Good to see everybody again, missed ya!
Published by gawd October 4th, 2008
in Life.
The black photo shown below is no error. It’s how it was really like.
Along with a friend, I went to the Dialog In The Dark (heb), a truly life changing experience. In a one hour tour, we were guided in a completely dark environment by a blind guide. The tour goes through 7 locations you are familiar with as a person, such as a public garden, your house and a bar. We were eight people moving around without seeing anything, only equipped with a walking stick. It’s amazing how you perceive stuff when your visual sensory system is off. Personally, I thought I’d go crazy in the first 10 minutes, and I almost did. It never grows on, and even after an hour of black, your brain still generates random white dots, trying to make up for what’s just not there.
I advise everybody to experience this. It has so many implications on your life, that you just can’t miss it.

Published by gawd September 13th, 2008
in Games.
An excellent post at Pixelation called pixelartists worldwide to collaborate in a heroic task of demading their favorite games. Follow up the original post for the full list, but here are my favorites:


Published by gawd September 10th, 2008
in Funny.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the LHC tunnel, sits and waits Lester and plays Minesweeper.
Published by gawd August 15th, 2008
in Philosophy.
The thumbnail in blue is of a photo I took in Sydney, Australia. This horrifying ad can be seen all over the city and calls people to give their friendly government-man a ring when they are -a little bit- suspicious of their friends, spouses and family members. Of all three Big Brotherish phenomenons, this one scares me the most. Think of a kid who needs some privacy and locks himself in a room to browse some adult rated websites; a husband who cheats on his wife (I don’t endorse it, but it happens and quite often). Regardless the situation, such ads discourage communication between humans and solving problems between themselves. Higher authority hould never come first.

Published by gawd May 1st, 2008
in Life.
Third newsprint to feature… me! Yeah! My friend Bianca suddenly stumbled upon a photo of me in Timeout Tel Aviv magazine. This shot was taken two weeks ago; I decided to go with my casual Threadless look. ’nuff said, enjoy the article
Oh! Btw, I’m also happy to tell you all that my blog, this blog, the very same blog that you’re wasting your time on right now, has its pagerank rate bumped to PR5! Yeah! It means I’m important, you are my friend; so you are important as well
Love you.
