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It’s either that or stay so bored with it that I give it up completely.

Apparently, Red Sox Nation is to be overshadowed. Overshadowed by the behemoth that is Yankee Universe.

So the first pitch of tonight’s Sox/Yankees game will be thrown from space. That’s… interesting. My favorite part of the article however, is this gem:

Reisman, a lifelong Yankee fan, carried a Yankee banner, a cap autographed by George Steinbrenner and a pile of dirt from the Yankee Stadium pitcher’s mound with him onboard the International Space Station on March 12.

He has an autographed Steinbrenner hat? Really?

Congratulations, sir. You have just been demoted from “Biggest Yankees Fan in Space” to “Outerworldly Tool”.

Coming right on the heels of digging up their new stadium’s visiting clubhouse because of a piece of polyester, there seems to be just a whiff of desperation in the New York air.

This month, eMusic adds a big name artist to their ranks, and I completely ignore it.

The Mountain Goats — Heretic Pride (13 Tracks)

I’ve gone from never hearing about John Darnielle before to wanting to hear more in about a month’s time. Still not sure if I want to brave his earlier lo-fi (i.e. press “Record” on boom-box and play) efforts yet, so I shot for his latest release. The new stuff is excellent, with a lot more instrumentation, mostly in the form of strings. It comes close to overpowering his voice, but it works.

Only low point of the record is “New Zion”, through no great fault of its own. It sounds far too much like TMBG’s “Dirtbike”, which I find highly distracting. Here’s the video for “Sax Rohmer #1″.

Black Francis — Svn Fngrs (7 Tracks)

Since it’s already been a few months since his last release, Bluefinger, Black Francis throws us an EP. (Why not a full album? You gettin’ lazy, Black?) Unfortunately, the first track here features Mr. Francis rapping. And to make matters worse, he sounds just like Fred $#!@ Durst. Yipes. Let’s listen to “I Sent Away” instead.

Meshuggah — ObZen (9 Tracks)

What? What’s that? I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the new Meshuggah record. I’ve never been able to sit through an entire Meshuggah album in one sitting before, and the new stuff is no exception. It’s just too much for my puny human brain to process all at once. You can listen to the first track here.

Helmet — Monochrome (11 Tracks)

I’m a huge Helmet fan. Page Hamilton could rarely ever do wrong by me. Can’t really explain why I never picked this album up until eMusic finally added it this month, but I’ll do my penance by listening to it constantly now. The title song played during the closing credits for Saw III—of all places—but here’s the album’s opener, “Swallowing Everything”.

This morning, I scraped a layer of ice off of my windshield, which can only mean one thing: It’s time for the home opener at Fenway Park. After getting swept in Toronto—where Julio Lugo forgot how to throw—one can only hope that the Sox don’t end up serving the 0-6 Tigers their first win of the season.

Looks like my return stint with DirecTV is only going to last a (complimentary) month. Trying to get the DirecTV receiver to work with Vista Media Center via an IR blaster was a success, but only marginally. The whole experience ended up being too sloppy for its own good, and I’ve already scheduled Comcast to come out this weekend to upgrade me from Basic Cable (~20 channels) to Standard (~100). Included in that list is NESN, which will carry me though the summer.

For now, I’ll let the Media Center tuners handle everything, and just sit back and wait for the HDPC-20.

Tried Sudoku for the first time this week. That was a mistake. I barely have enough brain function to survive, let alone care which box the number “7″ goes in.

Was Laura’s birthday yesterday. All of your well wishes to her are now officially “belated”.

Started playing Urban Dead after the AV Club posted a really, really late review of it. Kevin (Scout) and I (Firefighter) need help in creating a more self-sufficient group that’s larger than say… the two of us. That is, if we’re ever both alive at the same time. If anyone feels like joining (we could use a NecroTech employee), we’re in/around the Judgewood area.

Peter’s horror film blog gets all AJAXy with a kick-ass new swooshy calendar. Clicking has never been so fun.

Back on DirecTV again. Partially because I needed NESN back for the new Sox season, partially because they offered me a good deal (and no commitment) to return, but mostly because I want this. As long as they don’t screw it up a la CableCARD, I’ll be looking forward to its release.

Henry still loves monkeys. But not as much as he loves ducks.

Ugh.

Yesterday, one of my two Citrix servers died. I mean a hard “system halted” hardware-related dead. Since it’s just over two weeks until the tax deadline, it was Not Good. Thankfully, I had a good support contract and was able to get some replacement hardware in quickly.

I don’t need another day like that any time soon.

My Xbox 360, which failed on the 24th of last month was returned to me yesterday, revived to what appears to be fully working condition. Total turnaround time: Three weeks and three days.

I was told—by some who have gone through this process before—not to expect my original machine back, but outwardly, it is identical, down to the build date. I meant to check the serial numbers, but the piece of paper that I wrote the original on is now lost.

Not that any of that matters. What does matter is that it does not fail again.

Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 was released yesterday/today/some damn time this week, a game that I have been looking forward to quite a bit. The Rainbow Six series is what prompted me to get the 360 in the first place, and in this regard I am easy to please. All I need are new maps filled with terrorists to hunt. Oh, and points. A new system of gaining experience points to more quickly unlock orange camouflage (my favorite oxymoron) only makes everything that much better.

I’m not going to bother to write a review for this, but here’s a helpful hint. The next time you think about renting Dan in Real Life, starring “that nice fella from The Office”, do yourself a favor and just turn on the Hallmark Channel instead. Or perhaps drown yourself in a vat of hot glue. Ultimately, it’ll be less painful than fighting through the film’s suffocating hokiness.

After making last February’s disappointing eMusic picks which failed to psych myself up for new downloadable thrash songs for Rock Band, my interest has been suddenly rekindled. Today, it was made public that next week would be the pack’s release, and it would contain “D.O.A.” from The Haunted instead of “Shadow World”.

Can I call it or what?

So now it’s two out of three songs that are worth downloading instead of just the one. As for Evile, you can forget about me paying for that garbage.

The Mountain Goats — Tallahassee (14 Tracks)

From sleepy folk to caffeinated acoustic guitar flailing, some of these songs sound like they could easily be transformed into children’s songs. Others, not so much.

The Twilight Singers — Blackberry Belle (11 Tracks)

Formed by Greg Dulli from Afghan Whigs, the first impression I got from this album was that it was a bit overdone. If you could peel back a few layers of instrumentation, it’d probably work better for me. Or maybe it works better live. See for yourself on this version of “Teenage Wristband”.

The New Pornographers — Twin Cinema (14 Tracks)

This is an album I’ve had in my “Save for Later” queue since I opened my account, which will teach me for waiting so long. Going in, the only song I knew of theirs was “Electric Version”, as I had played it in Rock Band. Here’s “Sing Me Spanish Techno”.

Life of Agony — Love To Let You Down (Live) (1 Track)

After all of that, I had one track left, so I grabbed a live version of a song from LOA’s most recent album. Next to Quicksand, they’re the band I’ve probably seen live more than any other. Here’s the video for the studio version.

I think I’ve decided that this year will be my last as an eMusic member. I’m still grandfathered in on the 40 downloads a month plan, and could stay that way if I continue, but I don’t know that that’s enough. There are just too many holes in the new releases for the bands I want to listen to.

My subscription ends in November, so the decision to make now is what to do with the downloads I get from now until then. Go crazy experimental and download stuff I would typically never would listen to? Fill in the huge holes in my Frank Black and Fugazi back-catalog?

I read this morning that Martin Scorsese is shooting his new movie on location in neighboring Taunton, MA. The movie, Shutter Island (or Ashecliffe, depending on who you ask) is a drama “set in 1954, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels is investigating the disappearance of a murderess who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane and is presumed to be hiding on the remote Shutter Island.”

So why film in Taunton of all places?

“Scorsese is using the antiquated industrial buildings in the rear of the Whittenton Mills complex as a backdrop for the replication of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a World War II concentration camp in Poland.”

That’s right! Because Taunton looks like a Nazi death camp! Hooray!

Either way, we welcome our DiCaprio/Kingsley/Ruffalo/Clarkson/von Sydow overlords.