The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Here I am, sleepless again. Probably because I slept until Noon yesterday. So even with the fan it'll still take some time for me to get in sync with things. Oh well.

I listed my car on Craigslist and cars.com and have already gotten a few interested nibbles. I figure it costs me about $450+/month just to own the damn thing (between parking, taxes, and insurance), and I only drive about once a month. For those times I do drive and when mass transit isn't an option (like, say, going to Ikea), Flexcar and Zipcar and so on are much better alternatives to ownership, and generally I can just take the bus or Caltrain or BART, all of which are easy to get to from my apartment.

There's often a hidden cost to ownership which makes rentals cheaper. (Same reason I'm now fine with renting an apartment instead of owning a condo.)

QotD: What comics do you read?

According to Google Reader, I read Achewood, Bad Gods, Basic Instructions, Gone with the Blastwave, Bunny, Chibinasse, Dilbert, Dinosaur Comics, Desden Codak, Octopus Pie, Get Fuzzy, Hello Cthulhu, I Drew This, Kiwis By Beat, Lore Brand Comics, Lucid TV, Minus World, Newshounds, Orneryboy, Overcompensating, Penny Arcade, Pinkerton, Planet Karen, Quarter Four, Real Life Comics, Narbonic, Simulated Comic Product, Slow Wave, The Book of Biff, Questionable Content, Perry Bible Fellowship, The Soup Mines, Three Panel Soul, Unshelved, Pixelton, Whispered Apologies, and xkcd. I also read Crap I Draw On My Lunch Break, Schlock Mercenary, and occasionally Sluggy Freelance (though I barely pay attention to it anymore, much like how I still occasionally watch The Simpsons). Many of those don't update. I also read several webcomic-related weblogs (such as The Comics Curmudgeon and Your Webcomic Is Bad And You Should Feel Bad) and every now and then I go through a spurt of drawing my own comic.

I'm sleepless too, but it's because I have a lot of homework to do by 1 pm. I've been procrastinating. I just wrote an incredibly long myspace blog about things that I like. It's pointless. I am pointless.

I'm not going to sleep until 3 or 4 am tomorrow.

Last night some friends and I started a band. We're really fast metal/hardcore and we're called Dickfist. We are working on songs to play shows. I am the guitarist. My middle finger and thumb bled all over my guitar from playing too hard. That's what kind of band we are.

qotd: I read Toothpaste for Dinner, Married to the Sea, and White Ninja.

QoTD: I don't "read" comics, but I have collected then since I was little tike. My favorites were Batman, Spider-Man, X-Men, Spawn, and Ash, to name a few. These days, if I were reading, it would be graphic novels, Neil Gaiman (sp?), Frank Miller, and other good writers.

As far a stripes go, um, the only one I really looked forward to was The Far Side. Nuff said.

Fifteen Factorial?

wasn't this question asked last week?

The answer is still ' I don't read comics ' or play video games.

Gawd I'm tired...I don't think I wake up until Tuesdays each week anyways.

Hoblit wrote:wasn't this question asked last week?

I think Fluffy is inquiring about comic strips not comic books.

QotD:
Tartpop, Maakies, Rehabiliating Mr. Wiggles, a few Sunday strips.

Cheer up, Hoblit. Tuesday can often be the worst day of a Monday through Friday work week: Past the start but not even at the hump, Friday still way off. Blecchh.

QOTD - I don't follow any comic but will read any one I encounter as it's own thing. Far Side was kind of bold for it's time. The one I always think of had the Floating Head of Death in it.

From the Songfight! confessional:

I was thinking about the Songfight! tri-chumverate of FBF, JB, and ADD and wondering if there was a song that they all sing on together. How about a three verser, each guy taking lead voice on one while the other two support him. Nice, huh?

For many of my first months here I assumed that Anti-M was a guy until she put up a photo, with an appropriately masked face, of a petite gal in a homemade Chinese looking dress or something else neat. This was a good prompt to go to the archives and poke around. I've always liked the name, but if you ever hear me pronounce aunt as ant, call the booby-hatch because I'll have lost my mind.

Every once in a while I wonder if the little wavy thing in the back of Hoblits' avatar is a mirror image or not.

I worked for many years on the locked ward of a booby hatch. I am actually very sympathetic and far more caring than I may suggest, but I don't hesitate to use the word 'nut' where applicable. My very first SF! entry (Covered In Bugs) was about a guy in the seclusion room.

I saw that somebody picked a song from Jesus Christ Superstar for a GOM choice. I confess that that is one of my favorite albums of all time. If there was ever a Songfight! related undertaking of it, I would audition for the part of Caiaphas. Judas gets most of the best songs but I'm not a complete idiot yet.

I'm done, thanks for your time.

JCS is such a good musical. It's all about the Judas and the Caiaphas. I saw this reworking of it a while ago called something like "Jesu Christo Superstar" and about half the songs had at least 1/2 of the lyrics in Spanish. Their Judas was ooookaaaay, the Caiaphas was a little less than okay. I was kind of meh about it until they got to Herod and he was a luchador. It was so impossibly awesome. It was impawesomble.

I missed the last time comics were asked about. Feel free to substitute your own QotD.

anti-m wrote:Fifteen Factorial?

!= is how you write "doesn't equal" when you're a C programmer. (And 15! is much larger than 2007.)

Paco Del Stinko wrote:I was thinking about the Songfight! tri-chumverate of FBF, JB, and ADD and wondering if there was a song that they all sing on together. How about a three verser, each guy taking lead voice on one while the other two support him. Nice, huh?

Not quite what you're asking for, but I believe all three of them contributed to The Clanging Chimes of Doom in the <a href="http://songfight.org/coverfight.php?key ... >Christmas coverfight</a>.

fluffy wrote: I listed my car on Craigslist and cars.com and have already gotten a few interested nibbles. I figure it costs me about $450+/month just to own the damn thing (between parking, taxes, and insurance), and I only drive about once a month. For those times I do drive and when mass transit isn't an option (like, say, going to Ikea), Flexcar and Zipcar and so on are much better alternatives to ownership, and generally I can just take the bus or Caltrain or BART, all of which are easy to get to from my apartment.

With the job I have now - I have to go to building sites and not just get the train to the city like I used to do, so I thought I would have to buy a car. But my wife in her job gets a car every couple of weeks because she does on-call work. So I did the sums and now I just rent a car for a few weeks at a time whenever I need one. It is definitely cheaper - since I don't have to pay for repairs or rego or insurance. And I get a different coloured one every time, which my daughter enjoys.

An even better option is 'salary sacrifice'. I don't know if you have the equivalent - but I can lease a car through my employer and pay for it from my gross salary (for the car and all running costs, including tyres and petrol), which means the cost is reduced from my taxable income, reducing my tax bill. I would do that , but we are thinking of going to live overseas for a while so I can'tcommit to a 2 year lease.

Buying/owning cars is for losers.

Hm, I'd never heard of 'salary sacrifice' before, though I presume that some jobs do allow you to do such a thing since for some jobs you can write off part of the cost of your vehicle if it's used for work-related purposes.

Also, on the "different color" thing, while researching Flexcar vs. Zipcar (the two major competing short-term rental companies here), one of the big selling points of Zipcar is that they have much more upmarket vehicles, whereas Flexcar mostly sticks to economy cars. I figure, hey, if I'm going to rent a car for a day just to go to Ikea, it might as well be a BMW. Also they have cars closer to my apartment.

(The major downside to Zipcar is that their insurance coverage sucks, though, so you basically need to get a non-owner liability policy, a fact they don't advertise very well.)

fluffy wrote: != is how you write "doesn't equal" when you're a C programmer. (And 15! is much larger than 2007.)

Ah! I see.

Yes, 15! is big.

1307674368000 big in fact.

Hah! Paco, that's funny. That was a picture of last year's Halloween costume, which involved cutting 15! pieces of upholstery swatches into diamond shapes and sewing them into a motley fool sort of an ensemble. Kids, don't try this at home.

It was in this thread here.

I have historically always invested a lot of time into my Halloween garb. This might be the first year that I end up being lame, and not doing anything.

Uhh, about the only comic strip I read regularly is Luann.

I would absolutely be there for a songfight remake of JCS. Especially if the goal was to do a real "rock" version of it instead of "rock-ish orchestra" thing like the original and (especially) the movie soundtrack versions.

I s'pose the fairest way to do it would be as sort of a coverfight thing, but I would love it if we could have a few of the really good players here collaborate on the instrumental tracks and then get various songfighters to do the singing, so that it actually sounds like a consistent "musical" instead of a tribute album...

Charles (KA)

Here.

I'm in to sing Pilate - I love that - especially the Pilate's dream song. Totally in if I can sing him - and I'd be happy to contribute on guitars and/or french horn.

Comic strips... on Friday I read the Sunday comics, because for some strange reason we get them then instead of Sunday. Or maybe I read them on Sat or whatever. But the ones I read daily in my RSS reader are these:
Foxtrot
Calvin & Hobbes
Dilbert
Speed Bump
For Better or For Worse
Jump Start
One Big Happy
xkcd

I used to be reading Megatokyo and Sluggy Freelance, but I got way behind on them and it's hard to catch up. Oh, also a friend of mine does political cartoons, and I agree with him less than half of the time since he's a conservative/republican and I agree with them less than half the time:)
-bill

anti-m wrote:It was in this thread here.
I have historically always invested a lot of time into my Halloween garb. This might be the first year that I end up being lame, and not doing anything.

While historically I'm the complete opposite and I don't dress up funny for nothin'! 'Cept this year this silly band I'm in is playing on Halloween...(and will be dressing up)

QOTD:
None.

QoTD:
BlackTie
Sinfest
Penny-Arcade
Cyanide and Happiness
Spawn
(read) Marvel Civil War Series
Johnny The Homocidal Maniac
Squee

qotd: Just webcomics

Nuklear Power
Real Life Comics
Ubersoft
Dinosaur Comics

fluffy wrote: I figure, hey, if I'm going to rent a car for a day just to go to Ikea, it might as well be a BMW.

I always go for the tiny little Hyundai Getz (I have no need for penis subtitutes ladies). They are cheap, use hardly any petrol, are really easy to park and have mp3 players.

The other good thing about hiring cars from Hertz or Avis - is they give me Qantas Frequent Flier points - which can add up to the point where popping over to California for a weekend of Songfighting becomes feasible!

Caravan Ray wrote:

fluffy wrote: I figure, hey, if I'm going to rent a car for a day just to go to Ikea, it might as well be a BMW.

I always go for the tiny little Hyundai Getz (I have no need for penis subtitutes ladies).

Fuck that, if I'm going to drive somewhere I'd might as well have fun. Anyway, zipcar/flexcar/etc. pay for gas.

(For a traditional vacation rental I usually go for an economy car, yeah, but that's a different use case.)

fluffy wrote:

Caravan Ray wrote:

fluffy wrote: I figure, hey, if I'm going to rent a car for a day just to go to Ikea, it might as well be a BMW.

I always go for the tiny little Hyundai Getz (I have no need for penis subtitutes ladies).

Fuck that, if I'm going to drive somewhere I'd might as well have fun. Anyway, zipcar/flexcar/etc. pay for gas.

(For a traditional vacation rental I usually go for an economy car, yeah, but that's a different use case.)

I've been a flexcar member for years -- all the way back to the era when they were called "Carsharing" here in Stumptown. I ended up buying a car which I rarely drive.

Flexcar makes an effort here in PDX to use all hybrid vehicles... except for specialty thingees in their fleet like pickup trucks, minivans, and, of course the Miata.

Anyhow, I found it to be a very useful service -- although their rates used to be much much lower.

BMW for an Ikea run? I'd go for a truck!

--eM