Xatal

Mike Åkerfeldt, the frontman of Opeth, is known for talking about completely random topics in between songs when Opeth plays live concerts. Opeth is my favorite band and I’ve seen them live twice, and each time Mike Åkerfeldt has made me laugh quite a bit.

The other day, I was looking on the Opeth forum and saw a topic about Mikael’s stage shenanigans and I found a lot of them pretty funny:

“We have a new album out called watershed who likes it?”

*crowd cheers*

“I said do you like it?!”

*crowd cheers louder*

“Does anyone here not like the new album?”

*a few people cheer*

“Guards, kill them.” Keep reading »

Happy Mother’s Day!

I don’t know how many of my readers are mothers, but if you are, congratulations and thank you for all you do!

If you’re away at college, take some time to give your mom a call and thank her for what she’s done. It’ll definitely make her day!

On Friday night, I went to see the new Star Trek movie. I’d heard a lot of the hype beforehand, such as its high score on Rotten Tomatoes, so I figured I might as well give it a shot. I’m not a Star Trek follower, and except for a few major characters, I really don’t know that much about it at all.

I was pleasantly surprised by the movie. Keep reading »

Today’s XKCD definitely rings true.

I’ll regularly have dreams where I’m back in high school, where for some weird reason I had to leave college and go back to high school, despite that I already graduated. The dreams take on whatever focus — sometimes I’m the only one back and I don’t recognize anybody, sometimes my whole class had to come back, and so forth. But dreams about high school keep on coming.

Hell, I went to a private school through 6th grade, and I still have dreams that I go there on rare occasions.

“We don’t have Pepsi. Is Coca-Cola okay?”

Coca-Cola

At just about every restaurant you go to, the main soft drink is always Pepsi or Coca-Cola — restaurants never offer both. We rarely think about why this is — why are the two most popular soft drinks never sold together?

But why not sell both drinks? The Coke drinkers could order a Coke, and the Pepsi drinkers could order a Pepsi. Wouldn’t it make sense for restaurants to offer both?

From your point of view, yes, this would make more sense. But not from the restaurant’s point of view. Keep reading »

Finally, time to set the clocks forward!

Although I do dislike losing the hour of sleep, I’m going to be very grateful for the extra hour of daylight. When it gets dark at around 6:30, it makes the day feel incredibly short. I like the sunlight, and am eager for the change.

I just need to remember to change all of my clocks this year. Last year I forgot to change my alarm clock and ended up an hour late for work.

It seems like there are a few words that I can just never seem to right way to spell. No matter how many times I write them, I just can’t quite get the spelling down. Spelling words rarely comes hard to me, but these words are just a nuisance.

For every post that I write for Xatal, I (usually) always hit “spellcheck” before posting. Often times, the misspelled words are one of the words I have trouble with. I’ve made a nice list of words that irritate me:

Thank god for spellcheck

1. “Exercise”
2. “Necessary”
3. “Occurring”
4. “Severely”
5. “Separate”
6. “Exaggerate”
7. “Embarrass”

Many times, I can tell that the word looks wrong, but can’t figure out what I did wrong without referring to spellcheck. Even just making this list I misspelled four of them.

What words do you have a hard time remembering to spell?

Normally, I’m all about metal music. I love the heavy parts, I love the massive variety in the genre, and I love the lyrical themes.

I’ve explored metal pretty thoroughly, and it’s been a long time since I found a new metal band that I could really get into. I’ve been moving onto other genres of music lately, mainly post-rock and reggae.

The album cover for Open Container by The Expendables

One reggae band that caught my eye and completely blew me away was The Expendables. The Expendables combine a lot of heavier elements in their songs with reggae elements, creating a really soothing blend of styles. The reggae side is of course very smooth and laid-back, whereas the heavier elements create a lot of variety and keep the music very memorable. The Expendables even hail from Santa Cruz, so the local aspect makes them even more appealing.

It’s always great to discover a new band that rocks,  and lately I’ve been listening to The Expendables quite a bit. If you’re interested in hearing a bit from them, you ought to check out their MySpace. I personally would recommend the song “Let Loose”, though they’re all really good.