by RadialMonster | Jun 13, 2007 | General
I posted this up on zee’s blog, so without anything else of interest to put here I’ll copy here.
Back when I was a teen (back when, I’m sounding old) me and my friends (Marty and Scott) would go to the mall to hang out. There’s not a lot to do in Louisburg now, much less 10+ years ago. We’d go to Crabtree, the most popular and biggest mall in the area then. We’d walk around, browse the shops, eat in the pavilion, and hit up the arcade. I remember spending hours and hours in the arcades there. Me and my friends never looked for trouble anywhere, but if there was one excuse for going to the mall, it kept us out of it.
When Triangle Town Center opened up I was speaking with some of the people who worked there. I told them I’d come to their mall more often if they had an arcade. I was told specifically the mall management would not open an arcade because they didn’t want to attract the kids.
I believe the arcade is now gone from Crabtree very recently. Leaving the only good arcade I know about to be the one at Adventure Landing on capitol. It’s full of kids games though, some grown up games. Gillians in downtown has a huge arcade, but they’re all lame shooting games.
When I get rich, I’m definitely opening up a arcade somewhere.
— i’m adding to my post on her blog now, had some more ideas
When I get rich, I’m definitely opening up a arcade somewhere. In a huge building, throw in nice PA system, hook up a dj booth and techno the place out. I’d have a side stage with defunct chuck e cheese animatronic band up there, all retrofited to date.
And I specifically wanted to mention that because
So on youtube there’s these guys that have copies of old chuck e cheese and showbizz pizza videos and shows from when they were big. They’re posting the old videos they played in the restaurants, and they’ve even got recordings of the animatronics doing their thing. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, chuck e cheese was a family restaurant back a lonnnng time ago, like 80’s or early 90’s at the latest. They had a decent kids and teenagers arcade, sold pizza, and had a big room where you could see a cheese animatronic band play the latest tunes and kid songs. Most of these are now gone, you can read up on a pretty dramitic history of it at wikipedia.
My mom used to take me there in Raleigh. It was on falls of the neuse road, right where it turns into wake forest road i believe. There’s a bojangles there now, and I think a CVS or something. But in the shopping center right behind there was where chuck e cheeses’s stood. I don’t know whats in that spot now, but I think the shopping center is still there. Anyway, I remember they had the person dressed as a big mouse and he’d come out and greet the kids and things. When you’re like 5 this was awesome. So, I remember mom’s driving me home one day and I spot on that road, in a white convertable, chuck e cheese himself cruising down falls of the neuse. His big ass head sticking out the top of the car, I dont know how the guy kept it up. But he was waving at all the cars and my mom honked and he waved!! aww the rat waved at me! Of course, then I probabaly thought he was real, so I was pretty excited.
Well anyway, i’m rambling
Anyway, the animatronic show was pretty neat, it had several characters on 3 different stages. They would ‘play’ the song by moving and wobbling around. I was so fascinated by the whole thing. Even now. To look back that long ago and remember that stupid show, technicaly it was pretty impressive. Others thought so too. People have been buying up the old units and setting them up in their houses and garages, retrofitting them and getting them all working again as a hobby. This guy has this whole setup in his house, it gives you a good idea of the main stage. Keep in mind these things are huge. It still plays the old songs:
Well, some guys have been trying to reverse engineer the animatronics and making their own shows. They finally manged to create a custom interface for a USB port and some software that interfaces directly with the original system. Here’s one of the first full shows they put together, which is pretty awesomely done:
The other night I found this hilarous one, It’s just so funny thinking this playing to a bunch of kids! hope you enjoy:
by RadialMonster | Jun 11, 2007 | General
I so am in the mood to write, but I just can’t think of a good poem or story. So I’ll tell you about my latest escapedes.
Last weekend, the whootah crew, family and friends infiltrated Africa at the NC zoo. Pictures here: http://flickr.com/photos/radialmonster/sets/72157600306301540/detail/
Tuesday, I met Heather at Chili’s where we had a good dinner, and afterwards I failed at talking her into visiting the parking lot theme park the carnies had setup. We were debating if they were even running the thing as there didnt seem to be much action going on, but occasionally something would move or someone would walk around. Still, the Himalayan type ride, the pirate ship and the slingshot were out there in full force for willing victims.
That night after settling back in at home, a storm was abrewing outside. I started getting messages around 11 about something wrong at work so I logged in to check it out. I came to the conclusion a switch had failed and around 11:45 hit the road to check it out. I pull out of my driveway and onto the road and almost immediately a big strike of lightning occurs and a deer jumps right out in front of me. I was going so slow I came to a complete stop when I saw him and he jumped right across the road. Having hit a deer only a month ago and doing $3500 damage to my car, I just sat there in the road for a few seconds and thought that would of really sucked to have hit that deer right after I got my car all fixed up. Luckily I didn’t hit him though. So, I started on my way and just about as soon as I press the gas and get going another deer jumps right across and I slam into him. He rolled up on my hood and then fell back down and into the road. Then he just sat there. I thought well, he’s freaked out apparantly. And he just sat there right in the road for a good while. The he tried to get up and couldn’t. Thats when I realized his back legs must be broken. I was right across from my dad’s house so I tried calling him to see if he wanted a deer, but my step mom marie answered and told me my dad was out of town. So I hung up, and by that time the deer started to use his front legs and pulled himself across the road and went into the woods. I just know his back legs were both broke. but what am I supposed to do? I’d never find him I’m sure. So I turned around and went back home to see what damage was done.
After taking pictures, I debated about even going to work as the storm was still pretty strong, but decided to head on, not like I had anything to say goodbye to at home anyway. On the way there, (about 30 miles) I almost hit 5 different deer. They were just freaking out at the storm apparantly. And as I drove I thought, well it doesn’t matter if I hit one now, so might as well just keep going. I get there, and everything was ok. Apparantly the power had died for a while and now the power had came back on and everything was fine. Estimate for damage this time is right at $3000.
Didn’t do a lot this weekend, about all my friends were out of town so just hung around the house, did some cleaning, played some games, cut grass, that sort of thing. Relaxed.
My animazement pictures from a few weeks ago now have over 8000 views. In all I have 13,849 pictures and 48,402 views on my flickr.
Back to the ho hum tomorrow. I have a feeling this week will be a full one of major decisions, so when I know something for sure I’ll keep you updated.
by RadialMonster | Jun 5, 2007 | General
on the 100th episode
of the Simpson’s, Bart wrote on the blackboard “I will not celebrate meaningless
milestones”. does that mean anything to you today? but i wont dwell
on that. Tio used the bathroom on her
newspaper today. good job. It’s a shame they don’t just make rolls of
paper like that you can just buy in bulk to be used as a piss collector.
how would you feel if you spent long hours working on writing an article, and it
was good enough to be published, thousands of people read it, and all that
becomes of it is some creature dumps his load on it and then it’s put in a big
metal barrel and burned. i feel bad every time i put a fresh batch down.
i would hate to know that you do that to my web site. lay the monitor on
its side and drop your load onto the screen then close the browser window in
haste. i felt creative tonight. i even loaded up fruity loops to
work on a song. but that’s as far as i got. so i came here.
lets see what becomes of it.
A guy walked up to me today and ask about my past. I said
why do you want to know about my past? He said I want to know of your past
because my past is the same as your past. Then if you already know your
past, you know my past, so I have no reason to tell you anything. He said
I don’t think you understand. I used to be you in my former life.
come on now, that can’t be. it is. see when you die, you will become
someone as well. problem i have is i didn’t finish my mission my last
life, so now you’re here to see if you can do it. if you don’t, then you
will be replaced too. why is this? how can this be? God has a
will for everything. you are destined to do something really great.
but you may be distracted by evil. you will dishonor your God and you will
have to be replaced so you can continue your quest. Then what is my quest?
I can not tell you that. my quest is to finish this story, and i can
already tell that’s not going to happen. so see ya
ok that
was fun. did you know America has been donated 14 cows from a tribe in
Kenya? like just this week.
read all about it
by RadialMonster | Jun 4, 2007 | General
Found this on bash.org
<ahref> GOD
<ahref> BETRAYED BY MY PHONE
<ahref> I was at school, and this hot girl started talking to me
<ahref> And she was all like “Hey, you’re not as geeky as I thought you were”
<ahref> And I’m like “Yeah, I know. I’m actually not geeky at all.”
<ahref> And then my phone starts ringing
<ahref> And it’s the FF7 victory theme
So funny to me. Mine’s the FF6 victory theme
by RadialMonster | Jun 3, 2007 | General
Someone asked me recenlty about how I came up with radialmonster. Don’t know that I’ve ever explained that here, so here goes.
Years and years ago, before the internet even, I was maybe 15? Just guessing. There were services called bulletin boards that you could call up to and get on an online service. You could message, download files, do discussions, play games. But it was only local stuff, just some guy would run it as a hobby. Anyway, I started checking them out and at first I didnt know any better and used my real name. Well, as time went on then you get people that start knowing your name and things and the online thing suddenly doesn’t seem so fun once it’s not so anonymous. I mean nothing bad happened at all, just saying.
So I decided I needed a name. A cool name aha So I just started thinking about names and I was actually using the toilet one day (hey, you asked aha) and I somehow thought of the name Radial. I thought ya that sounded pretty cool, and I hadn’t seen anyone else use something close to that. But seemed pretty short, so I decided on a second part to be Monster. No particular reason or meaning, simply because I thought it sounded cool. And that it did, and the name has stuck.
I normally just use radial online but some places I don’t sign up quick enough and have to use radialmonster. I know there’s a guy in the Philippines, and one in Canada who have used radial before. So if you see radial anywhere it’s probably me, but if you see radialmonster somewhere it’s almost positively me.
The second story is about my nickname. Chicken.
I was maybe 18 or so working as a bagger at the local Winn-Dixie grocery store. Me and the cashier Jama were good friends, went to high school together, and hung out together numerous times. We’d always joke around and one day she was telling me about someone she knew that had all sorts of piercings. I was bagging for this old lady there, and the lady behind her was listening to the conversation. She started telling Jama that was sick stuff, how nasty that was. So I told the lady Oh I did all that stuff once. Jama, of course, knew differently. And there it started.
The lady said “Did you really?” I said ya… I got my ears pierced, my nose, my eyebrown, a chain between them all. Jama’s laughing, the lady’s getting sicker by the minute. I was milking it up and she was believing it all. And then for some brief second, I for some reason then said “I even had my chicken pierced.” I must of been bagging some chicken or something. I didn’t even realize what I said, or what it could mean. The lady’s mouth gasped wide open, and I just nonchalantly then took out the groceries for the old lady I was bagging for. I go back inside, and the cashier’s busting out laughing. The lady had already left, and before leaving she asked Jama “So how does he have sex??”
Ever since then, nickname has been chicken, and that particular part of the male anatomy has been referred to as chicken.
