Bier, otherwise known as Madonna Wayne Gacy, sued [Marilyn] Manson for more than $20 million last year, claiming Manson siphoned off millions of dollars in band revenue.

The funds allegedly paid for drugs, assorted Nazi paraphernalia, the cost of [Dita] Von Teese’s engagement ring and the ex-couple’s 2005 wedding, and the interior decorating of Manson’s mansion, which features a stuffed grizzly bear, a pair of baboons and the skeleton of a 4-year-old Chinese girl.

• Diablo II is getting tough. Any possibility of addiction is not coming true.
• The shoutbox breaks the Cynthia Says compliance, so this page is no longer compliant with those standards and the button has been removed.
• The tapes are all backed up. They rock.

Now it appears the same thing is occurring with STP. This band has existed since 1992 (1991 if you count the non-grunge Mighty Joe Young demo material)

Their first album in 1992, the grungy Core, has lots of hits played on classic rock stations, including “Sex Type Thing”, “Plush”, and “Wicked Garden”.

1994′s Purple (incorrectly considered self-titled as the word “purple” is written in Chinese) is very 70s rock sounding, Led Zeppelin-like. Two hits from Purple are frequently played by classic rock stations, “Big Empty” (also used in The Crow) and “Interstate Love Song”. (A heavier hit, “Unglued”, is no longer heard on the radio)

I was a fan of this band since I was in 6th grade. This was 1996, after Tiny Music was released. This had a more messy sound, wasn’t always heavy, and sounded similar to the Beatles at times.

In 1999, after a brief break-up (including terrible solo work by singer Scott Weiland), No. 4 was released. It was very heavy, kind of like Core, and there were a few softer Tiny Music-like songs, but also very messy, as there were psychological issues at the time, including Scott Weiland’s drug addiction.

Shangri-La Dee Da, released in 2001, was mostly acoustic. I didn’t like it and found it boring, but others disagreed with me. There were frequent obvious references to Courtney Love (Hole like most others had “sold out” at the time), including the hit “Hollywood Bitch” and the conspiratorial “Too Cool Queenie”

(note I can only find a session recording, if you are interested in the conspiracy theory click here for the lyrics)

A greatest hits album, 2003′s Thank You (from which the above video came from, as I am told, I do not have this album). The buy-this-anyway-hit was “All In The Suit That You Wear” (sounds kinda like a cross between No. 4 and Shangri-La Dee Da):

After another break-up, Scott joined members of Guns & Roses to found Velvet Revolver, which I didn’t like (nor do I like Guns & Roses). The rest of STP joined Filter’s singer Ray Luzier to form Army of Anyone, or, “The Rest of Shangri-La Dee Da”.

A few months ago, they came back with their self titled album, Stone Temple Pilots. This album was just plain excellent. IMO Shangri-La Dee Da is no way to end a career unless you’ve given up on music. The radio hit “Between the Lines”, which will probably be locked away in the ClearChannel vault, is heavy yet polished, with the bridge lifted from Nirvana’s song “Stay Away” Hopefully they will continue to release records and not break up with another Shangri-La Dee Da Here are some songs from the new album, and the Nirvana song for comparison:

Having heard all these songs, go check out the reviews on Amazon for Stone Temple Pilots’ new 2010 self-titled release. All of the negative reviews say “This isn’t Core or Purple“, as if this was STP’s third album released 10 years after being a one-hit wonder.

To put it another way: as classic rock and modern rock radio have become merged over the past 5 or so years, too many songs were lost, reducing great careers into one-hit wonders. Pearl Jam for instance had dozens of releases on old modern/alternative rock stations. Less than 5-8 of them are played now.

1. Started going to Bingo at my local church two weeks ago. Last week I won 3 games.

2. Went to a Tea Party march yesterday. I was surprised how many people honked and cheered for us on the street – it was in Monroe County, PA, traditionally Democratic. We had a cab driver stop by to disagree with us, maybe 1 other person, but everyone else in this Democratic county was on our side! Weird (in a good way)…

3. Been having a lot of problems sleeping lately. I found out what was causing it – I had started playing some games on Yahoo, and you can be up all night with those. So I cut back wasting my time, and hopefully tonight will start sleeping right again.

4. Also started using BOINC again. Now the software not only lets me limit CPU use, but suspend when something else uses the CPU. Currently running Enigma@home and OGR. I will no longer use SETI as it strangely and quickly dismissed a potential alien communication.

Damn there are like 3 gnats that hang out right around my computer right now. They’re not going anywhere but flying in my eyes. Late at night, when the lights are off and I might log on to the computer, the three gnats fly right on the monitor

Believe it or not the phrase “X-Cop Fly” has a similar origin. When I was in 2nd grade, there would be these brown gnats (much more than 3) that would fly around the family computer. The name probably derives from “XCOPY”, as it was a 286 MS-DOS machine, or perhaps an incident in school regarding one of those “kids club” things 2nd graders do. In this case, my friend had a club called CPC (“Central Police Club” I think), and after loser kids like me weren’t invited, I started my own NPC (“New Personal Club”). Didn’t work of course, but it might have inspired the name of the gnats, and almost 20 years later, a booming dot com

Here are all 3. Apparently Warner fucks are roughing up minors again, so #3 might get “muted” in its entirety for a Whitesnake clip in the credits (it is muted on other usernames).

(Click here for the previous post – contains details on the game)

The game consisted of simple arcade-style jump-and-shoot games with goofy graphics. Not a bad idea, but definitely not worth $199, regardless of inflation or the existence of Shockwave Flash.

More info here.

(I was a Super NES kid, not a Sega one, and didn’t own a SNES until two-three years later, so I didn’t fall victim to this, fortunately)

Also, as this funny video review points out, many of the games could not be continued due to inability of the character to jump or other issues caused by poor design.

Watch:

I have been putting off deciding this – I will not use the popular Creative Commons licenses because later versions include a sneak GPL-style provision allowing relicensing under “compatible licenses” approved by Creative Commons (the organization) as “in the spirit” of existing Creative Commons licenses. The hard-to-find page of “compatible licenses” states that no additional licenses have been approved yet. But the GPLv2, created in 1991, featured an automatic upgrade to later versions, unless one was smart enough to take it out of the template. Many thought this was not a problem, as the GPLv2 came out in 1991, and just used the standard template. Version 3 of the GPL came out in 2006, and was very favorable to special interests.

In keeping with my attitudes towards modern copyright law, privacy rights, freedom of speech and censorship, I have decided to (mostly) stop being hypocritical and release portions of xcopfly.com into the public domain, with other portions subject to copyright.

UPDATE: Apparently Creative Commons’ “CC0 1.0 Universal” allows waiving additional rights (and responsibilities) in addition to copyright, which is what I had intended, and there are no special backdoors specific to Creative Commons Inc.’s management decisions (at least if the version number is stated). As of October 16, 2010, the use of “public domain” in the terms below has been changed to reflect this.

Here are the details:

1. All publicly-accessible text content originating from xcopfly.com (with the exceptions listed below) is dedicated to the public domain according to the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
2. Unless explicitly stated, this excludes software, audio, video, images, graphics, comments, ZIP files and their contents, the shoutbox and its contents, all material found on the Rogue Central @ coredumpcentral.org site, and any content copyrighted by others.
3. Certain non-text content originating from xcopfly.com may, but only if explicitly stated, be in the public domain or subject to CC0.
4. Any thumbnail images, which have been created for images which the X-Cop Fly has explicitly stated are dedicated to the public domain according to the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, are also dedicated to the public domain according to the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. This does not apply to copyrighted images.
5. Certain content not originating from xcopfly.com may already be in the public domain or subject to CC0.
6. All additional waivers found in the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication apply to material released into the public domain by the X-Cop Fly Company prior to October 16, 2010. If waiving the copyright to any of this material was not possible in your jurisdiction at the time, the whole of the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication applies to such material.
7. The statements given in this list of inclusions and exclusions also apply to xcopfly.com Web feeds and their contents, and no additional restrictions apply to syndication or other use of these feeds.
8. This list of inclusions and exclusions, including the portion below under the heading “HISTORY”, is copyrighted by the X-Cop Fly Company. The X-Cop Fly Company grants you the right to reproduce this list in verbatim form only. According to the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, reproduction of this list is not a requirement for any use of material dedicated to the public domain.

HISTORY:

11/23/2011: Added note regarding Web feeds as #7, shifting pre-existing #7 to #8.

9/19/2011: Added note regarding thumbnail images as #4, shifting pre-existing #4, #5, and #6 down to #5, #6, and #7. For clarity, in #2, “all contents found on the Rogue…” changed to “all material found on the Rogue…”

9/18/2011: Added the Rogue Central @ coredumpcentral.org site to the list of exclusions.

8/9/2011: To avoid confusion, “downloadable content” in #2 was renamed to “ZIP files and their contents”. To make #2 easier to read, this phrase’s position moved in the list from before “software” to before “the shoutbox and its contents”.

7/2/2011: To avoid confusion, removed “now” from #5.

12/12/2010: Replaced “CC0 1.0″ with “CC0 1.0 Universal” for clarity. No other edition of “CC0 1.0″ exists as of this date, and all links on this Web site referring to “CC0 1.0″ instead of “CC0 1.0 Universal” went to the same “CC0 1.0 Universal” page.

11/14/2010: #5 Grammar fix: “any or all of” changed to “any of”. #6 clarified to state that this “HISTORY” section is part of the copyrighted list and asserts the CC0 1.0 status of the work with regard to reproducing the list.

10/16/2010: CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication replaces “in the public domain” in #1. “or subject to CC0″ added to #3 and #4. #5 moved down to #6, and new #5 deals with material which had been previously released into the public domain prior to the X-Cop Fly Company utilizing CC0 1.0.

(the date the shoutbox was added, sometime after 7/19/2010) Added “the shoutbox and its contents” to the list of exclusions.

(unknown date after 5/18/2010) Added “software” to the list of exclusions. All software on the site had been “downloadable content”, but clarity was needed, for example, with Web-based games, if any would be developed and/or hosted in the future.

i often complain about shifting cultural values since 1997, as i reject their superficial nature, but as i get older i can see a more extreme version of a small part of them emerging, not that the extremism is bad, but the fact that i’ve dedicated about 5 years of my life to catching up and it frightens me to even consider the possibility that due to my age or financial status i missed too many boats and cannot possibly catch up to what exists now (or at least something equivalent or similar). it gets me very upset and frightens me and makes my stomach feel weird.

papers. albany. rush.

Go to the “Download Library” tab above and download ScopaFree and TrackWords.

Sited upon small volcanic cone in the high desert midway between Las Vegas & Los Angeles, this 60-acre retreat seems to cap the mountain top with its dome-like roof: Concrete and truss beams form its dome allowing the interior to embrace 360 degrees of stark, strong almost lunar landscape. Main house of two bedrooms, 2 baths and open entertaining areas. Guest house of one bedroom and bath, lake, and ultimate privacy. Truly one of a kind property in the most impressive of settings.

Cost: ……Seven Hundred Fifty Thousand Dollars!!!!!

“So would you run if I told you I love you,
would you run if I asked you to stay?
“Would you cry if I said that I missed you?
Sorry is all I can say…”

From an era of better weather, which I keep praying that it will return and these horrible Januaries and Februaries will go away forever:

Here are some real people dressing up like The Beets and singing to their songs “I Need Mo’ Allowance” and “Killer Tofu”:

Rick Springfield, 1981:

The Coca-Cola Company, 1993: