. . . : ; C h i c o ' s G r o o v e ; : . . . . . . : ; . . . : ; enoytfif - july 13 2000 . . . : ; . . . : ; http://www.disobey.com/ . . . : ; The "WHAT THE HELL?" Notice This is incredibly strange - I'm actually typing this issue rather calmly, a whole three days before it is to be released. I'm not sure why. I'd much rather by playing DIABLO 2. Dungeon crawls make me hot. . . . : ; The "I GOT YOUR CRAWL RIGHT HERE" Notice Although largely identical to the first DIABLO, that's what makes the new game so enjoyable. For those who love collecting weird items, hunting down every monster, making sure every corner of their automap is explored, and filling the screen with magical effects, DIABLO 2 is a definite winner. . . . : ; ANNOUNCEMENTS and morbus has a lot of armpit hair NEW DEVIL SHAT (#SixtySix): Devil Shat bores you with Morbus' dreams of yesteryear (do we really care? what is this? some kind of crackwhore's journal of memories?) and Rown Garnbii comes in at the nick of time with four articles. Yup. The Devil's Dump has returned after a year hiatus. Read it, laugh, chuckle, and go throw up. TWO NEW VIEWER DISCRETIONS: Viewer Discretion reached a milestone this past month. 50 issues. Observant people noticed that the Groove reached 50 last month. And next month, Disobey is turning three years, Ghost Sites is four years, and in a week or so, 10 million hits will have graced Disobey in its obscure history. And what does this have to do with VD? Absolutely nothing. Besides the fact that both VD and what you've just read are unwanted. If you really want to know what VD is about, you should read it. This is no Yellow Book. YELLOW BOOK?: I simply can't remember the name of those stupid little books that dummy up great novels in a few pages. So that football players can cheat easier. I keep thinking Fodor's, but I know that's so far off the mark that I've just humiliated myself. Sigh. NEW NETSLAVES MATERIAL: Tons of new NetSlaves material appeared this past month. Along with the daily posting (you mean, you haven't been reading daily? Shame on you!), you've missed four weeks of Mirsky and three weeks of a new column called "Shut the Fuck Up!". Put your pasty faced shit caked mouse down, and get your ass to NetSlaves. Bitch. XML: Why did Morbus buy an XML book, three new domains, and hired a cute designer? New idea! New idea! Actually, its an old idea that got a big push after I read a few articles on XML. Of course, I'll probably make crazy headway with it, and then it'll sit itself back in my folder of "Too Busy to Work On". The good thing is that I'm looking for help. If you think you're worth it. Let me know. MISCELLANEOUS: Various exciting things happened miscellaneously. Paul V. Piescik sent a grammarized and spellchecked quote script from the Detergent section. For that, I'm grateful - there were some stupid mistakes in there. Also, four new stories were added to Collected Works: "Breaking & Egging", "Breast Cancer In Her Coffee", "Flavor Martians" and "Fabulous", all from the inexhaustible Ben Ohmart. Let him know what you think. Also finalized this week was a new design for "The Box" - that damned thing on most pages of the Disobey site which harangues you about subscribing. It's 30% smaller (OOOoh!) and loads faster (oOoOOohh!). . . . : ; EVERYTHING else and he showed me one day. ew. RANTRADIO: As is usual, I've been listening (wait a minute. I'm not listening to it right now. dammit. hold on.) to RantRadio an awful lot. I simply can't stop. It's fucking addictive. So besides NetSlaves being interviewed this past Sunday on their live show, you may here various promos cycling around by yours truly. Nothing big and nothing exciting. They're also only played when you're sleeping. (If you really want to hear my melodious voice, check the newest column on NetSlaves, "Shut the Fuck Up!"). NEW GAMES: As you could guess from above, I recently grabbed DIABLO 2 for the PC. Also for the Playstation, I grabbed CRASH BANDICOOT and CRASH BANDICOOT 2. The first one has already been won, I'm just trying to get 100%. And since I'm intensely queer, I haven't played the second one yet. Also picked up this pinball game which is so bad, I won't even mention its name. I should have known that when CVS (a drugstore / pharmacy) had this game for sale that something was wrong with it. NEW MOVIES: Grabbed tons of new movies this past month. In no particular order: SCREAM 2, DEAD OF NIGHT (a third movie of the same name), STIR OF ECHOES, RUNAWAY BRIDE (shaddup! just shaddup!), BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (hey, it was 3 bucks), some Zacherly special (two points if you know what I'm talking about), SCANNER COP, SUMMER OF SAM, THE DEAD HATE THE LIVING, WISHMASTER 2, and THE WILLIES. I think there were some more, but my mind is blurred from what was last month and what was the month before. And I don't feel like figuring it out. STARCRAFT: Happy readers of the Groove will know that I've been playing STARCRAFT (on PC, not the suckass N64 clone). Welp, recently the game just started fucking up. Videos would play slowly, and the game would skip like a lonely CD. I spent a week trying to figure the stupid thing out. Defrag. Scandisk. Norton. Reinstall. Reinstall in different directory. Mess with the CD device properties. Undo the modem speed up I did earlier. Uninstalled craploads of software. Repeat. Leave out a step. Add a step. Repeat. And then I bought DIABLO 2. The same thing happened. And it only happened to BLIZZARD's game - not to AGE OF EMPIRES 2 or THE SIMS. Hmf. Uninstalled webcam. Uninstalled webcam! Uninstalled webcaaammm!! That fixed everything. And I reinstalled. It broke again. I eventually traced the stupid thing down to a TSR (two points if you DOS junkies remember what this is) called StiMon, or "Still Image Monitor". Disabling that bitch, and I'm a happy camper again. Damn. A week. . . . : ; BLAHBLAHS OF THE WEEK: ( june 7th - july 13th ) [Book-of-the-Week]-= MYSQL ---From Paul DuBois, MYSQL is a wonderful book to have. I needed ---to pick something up that would give me a crash course in MySQL ---(duh), and this was a perfect choice. Heartily recommended. [Book-of-the-Week-NOT!]-= XML BY EXAMPLE ---Remember when everyone used to go around saying something, ---and then yelling "NOT!" at the top of their lungs? Yeah. Ok. ---I was looking for a crash course in XML. This book got five stars ---at Bookpool. Ok. Sure. Uh huh. Book was horrible. The guy ---who wrote it doesn't know English, is repetitive like a mother ---fucker, and it's just plain old horribly written. [Craziness-of-the-Week]-= PROGRAMMING PERL ---Just finished the PROGRAMMING PERL book from O'Reilly. No. Not ---skimming. No. Not perusing subjects I wanted to learn about. ---No. Not a bedside companion (not anymore at least - injoke! ---injoke!). From cover to cover. Crazy fucking Morbus slurped ---the book up like a wet pixy stick on a humid day. [Question-of-the-Week]-= Why so Early? ---Why am I writing this issue so early? I've been going on another ---one of those "organizing" bins - I've printed out some calendars, ---marked up some important dates, caught up on a number of minor ---things on my TODO list, and generally tried to collect my ---thoughts. Give me another week, and everything will be back ---to the sad state of normal you've come to expect. . . . : ; The Issue Could Have Been Shaven . . . : ; SUBSCRIBE: majordomo@disobey.com BODY: Subscribe ChicosGroove . . . : ; UNSUBSCRIBE: majordomo@disobey.com BODY: Unsubscribe ChicosGroove