NEW!: Lacuna Coil - "Dark Adrenaline"

How's a music review sound? It's been a while since I've done any, and I couldn't help but write something when I got a chance to wrap my head around this album. Hopefully, you'll enjoy the review even if you're not as much of a Lacuna Coil fan as me!

ARTIST: Lacuna Coil

ALBUM: "Dark Adrenaline"

RELEASE DATE: 1/24/12

GENRE: Gothic metal

LABEL: Century Media

After 2009's Shallow Life, which was received with either overwhelming love or violent hatred depending on who you ask, Lacuna Coil's released a new album, in stores today. Dark Adrenaline is 12 tracks - 13 in the bonus edition - and runs just over 45 minutes.

Adrenaline has a strong opening in "Trip the Darkness", a song that's received well-deserved praise, and a lot of air time. It's been described as being unlike anything the band has released until now, and I wholeheartedly agree with all of that. The second track, "Against You", is similarly strong, but less influenced in its sound than "Darkness" is by the far-superior vocals of Cristina Scabbia. Between the to, "Trip the Darkness" comes out on top, and its no wonder that the song was chosen as both the first single, and the album opener.

As a whole, Dark Adrenaline should sit well with longtime Lacuna Coil fans, bringing a little something extra to the great sounds that were present in Comalies and Karmacode, and still has plenty of draw for someone looking to get into the band. The band continues to improve as they go along, and this album's biggest praise from me is that Andrea Ferro's vocals were as distractingly far below Cristina Scabbia's as they've been before. Ferro is an "acquired taste", albeit not one that I have a huge preference towards.

Dark Adrenaline hits stores today, so if you haven't already bought a copy, check out some of the band's music on YouTube, and grab a copy if you like what you hear.

RATING: 8/10

Karaoke Ring of Death!

Hey, everyone! The 20sb (20-Something Bloggers) community has spawned a hellish beast: KROD!

For over a year now, bloggers have been going on camera and singing their hearts out, doing post-swaps with other bloggers. I've butchered "Brand New Day" from the Dr. Horrible soundtrack over at jesgettingstarted.blogspot.com, and here is Liz from landscapes-of-me.blogspot.com performing Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now"

Unfortunately, I'm snowed in to my house with no internet, so I can't get the embed code to add the video. Instead, follow this link to her YouTube video, and enjoy!

http://youtu.be/3kn_6_dhTjs -- Liz performing "Don't Stop Me Now"! Enjoy it!

Even though I'm not hanging out with anyone yet, I'd forgotten how nice it could be just being out. Lots of people here at 8th Street Ale House, good drinks, and some awesome music played by a local musician (who writes for the newspaper).

:)

The Benefits of Not Being Anonymous

or, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet... Hard, Fast, and Apologetic Afterward"


I love anonymous bloggers. The mystery of who they could be, and if I might have already met them at some point in my life, and the openness of their stories (names excluded, obviously). It's great. but not everyone seems to agree. In some cases, a lot of negativity is hurled at these people who want to tell their stories and still have some privacy, and that's kind of depressing.

From the day that I started blogging, I've been out in the open. Even before then, on message boards like 9thWonders and a few others, I've openly listed my name, birth date, and the area that I live in. Maybe it comes from years of low self-esteem, but I figured that nobody would choose to track me down for murder-rape and any other bad things. Even my Twitter handle is my first and last name, just like my blog URL. I gave up on internet privacy a long time ago, and haven't had to worry about crazy people since... well, except for Kelly and Ralph, but I've grown pretty fond of them and their kids.

I think that the mystery of those anonymous bloggers, alluring in more than a few cases, is the problem and not just the draw. Most people aren't really the type to let a mystery stay as it is, especially not one as "minor" as who the blogger could be. Sometimes that results in wondering about your interactions with people ("could _____ be that cool blogger?"), and sometimes people unfortunately take it to the dark side, and get a little stalker-y.

The problem is that this "minor" mystery is only minor to these people. To the blogger, the mystery is their identity, their everything. Anonymous users can be - and have been - tracked down by their "fans", making the paranoid attitude towards the internet that much more reasonable.

For two years, I've aired out my "dirty laundry", on this blog and in the earlier days of Random Ramblings, and haven't had any problems. Maybe it's because I'm an uninteresting asshat (I'm willing to keep that possibility open), but the lack of mystery might have an effect too, even if my small readership never really thought about it that way.

How did I make the decision to be publicly me? Because I figured nobody would care enough to stalk me. What are my results? Local friendships, a visit from Australia, and a fantastic trip to the east coast, with a lot of fun spending time with Matt, Nikki, Sohail and so many other cool people that I met through them. I've had nothing but good come from my openness so far, and hope that continues.

So, to all of the anonymous bloggers - I'd love to meet you some day, if you're anywhere near my part of Washington, and I love your blogs. The internet doesn't all suck, and not everyone online is out to destroy your life. Keep blogging, despite your bad experiences, and I'll keep reading.

To everyone else, thank you for your impact on my life. You all are fucking awesome.


-----


In the interest of continued openness, I'm going to start sharing stories that I haven't told yet, or haven't told the whole story. I've got a few listed, so you can take your pick of which:

• Life Without Religion
• Worst Stripper Bar Ever
• Never Again, Greyhound
• Better Off Platonic
• Verbal Diarrhea
• When I Was "The Other Guy"
• Stupid Orange Bastards
• You Got Some Nerd On Me

DELICIOUS: The "Muenster Mash"

You like the name? Maybe it's not as amusing to everyone else as it is to me, but it cracked me up when I thought of it, so it works for me. After all, I'm the only one that I have to amuse. :P

It may not be as seasonally-appropriate as my chicken noodle soup was, but it's another one that takes less than half an hour, and I'd say that it turned out better than the soup did. Just like the soup, there was something great about it: I had no idea what I was making when I started doing it. I pulled some eye round steaks, veggies and seasonings out of the fridge and went with what felt like a good idea.

INGREDIENTS:
Carrots
Celery
Green onions
Steak (cut is your preference, I used some eye round steaks that I had handy)
Muenster cheese
Hot sauce (optional)
Seasonings to taste

• Dice up the vegetables, and then use a blender to get them really fine. I used the Magic Bullet that I got in July to get them pretty well tossed-together and minced up.

• Cut the steak(s) into bite-sized pieces and toss it into a medium-sized bowl with the vegetables.
                   
• Here's the part where you have to get creative on your own - seasonings/sauces to mix in with it. I've used two different hot sauces the two times I've made it, and both turned out great (the first was Laughing Bull hot sauce, and the other was Dat'l Do It "datil gold" hot sauce). I've also put a bit of soy sauce, salt/pepper, onion powder, and steak seasoning in mine.
• Put your chosen seasonings/sauces into the bowl, cover it with some sort of plastic wrap, and shake the hell out of it to make sure that it gets thoroughly mixed. Then toss it in either a lightly-oiled pan, or a good non-stick pan and fry it up. Normally I like my steak to be medium-rare, but with pieces these small and this particular meal, there's not much room for anything other than well-done little pieces.
• Finally, dice up some muenster cheese (or, if you insist on using another cheese, you can - horseradish cheddar would work well) and mix it in as it melts. I served my "Muenster Mash" on thick-cut slices of French bread, as seen above.

So, here's another delicious meal that satisfies at least a portion of everything in the food group, including fruit if you use the datil pepper hot sauce like I did. I definitely recommend using the hot sauce unless you absolutely can't handle hot sauces or peppers - but if that's the case, you should avoid my cooking-related posts anyway, because I put the stuff in almost everything!

I've been working a little too much to post more often, but I might have some exciting news to share soon. I'll keep you posted, and you'll also be able to see my contributions to the Grays Harbor Down blog, a community project started by a friend of mine!

DELICIOUS CHICKEN SOUP

I MAKE IT.

It's (almost) winter, it's cold as hell, and I got the idea to make some chicken noodle soup to enjoy. Chicken noodle soup is great comfort food, and eating my delicious soup while writing my guest post for Reynard City was a pretty good time. I'm a firm believer in being as comfortable as possible when reading or writing. :)

There are two great things about this chicken soup, aside from how good it turned out: (1) It was my first time making my own soup, and (2) it didn't take that long to cook. I mean, if you've got half an hour - or less, I was cooking distracted - you've got a great soup, prep time and all.

INGREDIENTS:

Chicken broth

Chicken breast

Celery

Carrots

Green onions

Egg noodles

Salt, pepper, seasonings to taste

• Start off by cooking your chicken. There's lots of ways to do this, but the one that I chose was boiling. You have to be careful with this one, though, because it can lead to your chicken being really dry if you don't pay attention. I filled my pot with water, salt, pepper, poultry seasoning, and some finely-diced green onions.
• When the chicken is cooked all the way through (165°F as measured with a meat thermometer), empty the pot through a strainer, so that only the chicken is left. Let it cool a bit, and then cut it into bite-sized pieces.
• Chop the vegetable similarly, or to your preferred size. Some like 'em big, some want them so diced that they barely know they're there. Me, I like them just a little smaller than bite sized.
  
  
  
• Put your chicken broth, chicken, and raw veggies into the pot, and cook on a low boil, covered, for about 8 minutes.
• Uncover and add the egg noodles, cooking an additional 7 minutes, or until the noodles are cooked.

I didn't put any portions for the ingredients intentionally, as I figure it's kind of up to you how much you decide to use. I used just under a pound of chicken, about 50 ounces of chicken broth, one carrot, two sticks of celery, and six or seven green onions. A little garlic might've been good, and for my tastes, it needed a little pepper. But overall, it turned out great, and I'm looking forward to making a bigger pot of it soon.

I'm going to be cooking a lot more, as often as I can. What do you guys think? Should I start putting recipes on here? :D