Rikard Olsson Must Die

Testar testar å ä ö Å Ä Ö

It got boring only blogging in swedish so I decided to bring this dead beast to life again, some months since the last time I updated it. Nevermind, eh? It feels neat to be back, and I shall be more prolific in the future, if not just to have an excuse not to do revision or something similarily dull and sloggy.

Another beastly abomonation I have recently shaken to life again is my deviantart-account, mainly due to me finally getting a brand new camera and as such I felt the need to prove myself to the wolfish tough love of the DA-community. Check me out at http://rockydennis.deviantart.com

I really don't update here often enough. It's been way over a week since last time and for that I apologize a great deal. A lot of stuff is happening now, the main being that I'm soon moving out of my student flat and going back to Sweden over summer, and before that I'm desperately trying to get a job to earn me some spare change during the holidays. All such attempts have been unsuccessful, as neither of the plenty of applications I have sent have even received so much as a reply yet. I have one more ace up my sleeve though, and I hope that that will be the one that I get lucky with.

A fourth part of the podcast has been set in motion. I have a feeling this will be the best one yet, as I will have a special guest appearing and we're going to review a couple of new movies and talk my favorite robot; Mega Man! So please stay tuned for that goodness, which should surface sometime before the weekend hopefully.

It's going to be good to come home to Sweden soon though. I really miss my pals and my family, ad I can't wait to spend an entire summer with the lot of them. I'll be home in little more than three weeks, so that is going to be amazing.

For now though, I need to scoot. Keep smiling!

Just a quick entry before I trod off to bed. I just saw Rocky VI (I refuse to call it Rocky Balboa) and it was a real treat. More closely related to the first movie than any of the sequels, it was a moving, if predictable gem. It was more drama than entertainment, which is a nice change of pace, and it really gave the franchise a good ending - because dare we receive a VII? - something that V failed to do. 
To all extents and purposes it was a very good film, and definetly second best in the series, which is one hell of an achievement. I definetly recommend it.

Now, I really, really need to sleep. Keep smiling.

And it is finally here! The third, highly appreciated (?) episode of The One Dollar Thoughts is done, mixed and uploaded and you can now get it and listen and maybe even drop a line or two about it. If you like what you hear, please subscribe in iTunes. There are more stuff I have to say about what's going on, but for now I'll go and have a midnight snack and I'll see you some other time. Keep smiling!

Instructions:

If you want to subscribe via iTunes and get every episode downloaded as they get public then all you need to do is open up iTunes (download it from here if you haven't got it already) and then press this button:

Or if you want to download each episode individually just download it from this link right here, and then just listen in whatever program you normally use to listen to mp3's in:

The One Dollar Thoughts - Ep III: The Lost Episode

Thanks to anyone that still reads this thing after all of my "breaks". Terribly sorry, but I'm smothered in essays and exams but now the worst storm is over, so I'm free to write more often now. Promise, promise.

First bit of cool news is that I've started writing for the swedish music site The Music Blog, so check it out as I will post reviews, previews and all kinds of music related things there. I'm Rocky Dennis, should you not know that already. To check out my very first post, which is a review of the new Linkin Park album Minutes to Midnight just skip on over there right away; http://www.themusicblog.se/ 

Secondly my operation went smoothly and without any weird hick-ups. The stitches have also been removed and I've only got a strange scar on my neck to show for it. Should anybody want to I will post pictures of it, if you're not to icked out. 

The third episode of The One Dollar Thoughts is halfway done now. It will feature some Barenaked Ladies stories and some general ponderings as usual. I want to become better at this thing so I'm sorry for taking my time, but I hope it will be worth it in the end. Expect the episode out by monday or tuesday sometime.

Until then, keep smiling and DO NOT forget to visit The Music Blog!

Just a quick one to tell you that I just performed a scientific experiment and the outcome is clear; essay really can't write themselves. Shit!

On the upside it's a lovely day but I'm stuck in Erica's flat while she's at school because she's got the one key. When she gets back I am in so need for an ice cream or a cold drink. THEN I will write the fucking essay. I promise I will.

Yesterday I recorded, mixed and completed Episode number 3 of The One Dollar Thoughts. I saved it up and was just about to listen to it when I notice that the file was corrupted, and so was all the files I had saved along the way. Hence the entire episode was made in vain, it was unlistenable, and I have to do it again. I'm sorry about this, but these things happen. I'm currently waiting for my brand new spanking new external harddrive to arrive (250 extra gigs, woohoo!) and then I'll remake the entire episode as soon as I can. It'll feature a lot of stuff, amongst those a lengthy review of both the BNL-gigs I went to see and also some other random stuff so please stick around for that.

One of the things I'm going to bring up is the Virginia Tech shooting which obviously has to be talked about. I'm not going to go on a massive rant about it here, but I will say that when I see a certified fuck-klump like Jack Thompson use this horrendous tragedy as a means to progress his agenda then that makes me royally, and I do mean extremely, pissed the fuck off. He's gotten on my tits before but somewhere your urge to be on TV and condemn innocent people's pastimes because you have a "hunch" that it could be video games fault, even though no factor points to that at this stage. His using of a national tragedy just to get attention is not just frustratingly ignorant and despicable, it's borderline hellish. That is all.

And I do also want to say that I feel very bad for everybody that has been affected by these incidents, it's a real horrible event and while I do hope that we'll learn something positive from it I doubt that anybody will. I do hope that you'll try to keep smiling until I see you next time.

So me, Erica and her groovy brother Ed went to pick up some cheap games the other day. I left with Metroid Prime for the 'Cube which is probably one of the five best Gamecube-games ever, and I found it for 5 quid so I snagged it. Secondly I got Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne for the PS2 for £3 which was another bargain I just couldn't resist. The original kicked ass and so far this sequel has not left me disappointed. 

Those two games are awesome and all, but what I felt inclined to tell you about is the third game I left with. For a whooping £2 I picked up Demolition Girl, or Daibijin which is its original japanese title. I had heard stories about this game and it's lameness, and being the avid fan of lameness that I am I decided that this was an opportunity to go to stand up. Demolition Girl is probably one of the worst games I have ever played. It barely qualifies as a game, it's a soft porn simulator in which a hot japanese model turns into a giant version of herself and starts to run amok and the way the japanese army decides to deal with this pickle is to send a helicopter to...

...I'm not even sure I'm going to finish this sentence because you all know where this is heading, but...

measure her breasts, crotch and ass. That is the whole point of the game, to manouver a different type of vehicle for each course and in some way explore this gargantuan woman's holies. This is critical gaming mass. This is like getting the bad parts of mastrubation - the guilt, the shame, the acute sensation that you're a bad boy - without the good bits i.e. the orgasm. Throughtout my experience with this game I felt nothing but shame. Demolition Girl might well be the Halo of sneaking-a-peek-em-ups, and it's a novelty product like I've never ever seen. But still I cannot in good conscience recommend it even for entertainment value. You'll die a little inside.

I have now taken the time to listen through Nine Inch Nails' new album Year Zero (and so can you, legally and for free right here) and this is my two cents about it. I wasn't really terribly impressed with With Teeth, while I did enjoy about 50% of that albums songs, but it was nowhere near a masterpiece and treading far away from NIN's previous efforts. Which is why it's natural to be a little cautious when Trent breaks his normal custom of taking half a decade of between albums to produce this effort almost on a whim it seemed in about a year and a half. Well, well, I said with a slight worry on my mind. However, that was when his masterplan began unfolding around me in form of the World of Year Zero. The term "concept album" gets more and more abused by the day but this takes it very seriously, because this isn't so much a concept as it is an experience. If you sink yourself into mr Reznor's nightmare dystopian vision of a world a mere 20 or so years into the future then this - what could probably be classified the soundtrack - bites its vicious teeth into you even deeper.

Year Zero is probably as far from rock as Reznor has ever ventured with guitars cut to a bare minimum and ambient noise and almost Public Enemy-type beats in their place. In no way is this negative, in fact it's daring and genius. Trent ventures closer into hiphop and dance electronica but by no means loses his edge and heaviness. Because this is one hell of a punch audiowise. Tracks like My Violent Heart and The Beginning To The End is sure to rock your face off while sombre numbers such as In This Twilight and the thumping God Given will have your goosebumps on highest alert and your feet and head swiftly bounding to the beat. Fantastically, this is an album that is just as deep as you want it to be. It serves as an excellent dance album, intelligent political commentary and massively interesting piece of science fiction at the same time and that is a feat that very few, if any at all, artists could muster up. Year Zero is apparently being turned into a book and a film by the man himself and those will probably be all good, but right now it's the music that hits home the hardest. Two decades and five albums into one of the most solid careers in musical history, Trent Reznor still proves himself to be just as original and masterfully inventive as ever.