This (well, this especially, but the last few as well) have been classic Achewood for me. It's funny, and then when you get to the punchline (the funny part) there's something else there. Funny, but also scary or depressing, possibly one quality because of the other.  Classic "glass eye in the gumball machine" sorta stuff. I guess that's what keeps me coming back.

Honestly, though, if you don't find the punchline funny (or disturbingly familiar), you haven't spent enough time meeting people in the context of trying to play an online game. Sometimes you get a nice round of checkers, but more often you get a larger than recommended dose of the personal life of somebody who only socializes via internet checkers (while wearing a brass diving helmet).

It's a little better with more complicated games... The people there have invested a lot in the ability to beat up imaginary monsters for their lunch money or what have you, and are more likely to actually go about doing that, but often you still learn something about someone that you'd rather you hadn't. It is sometimes like overhearing the locker room conversations of people who are afraid to leave their houses, with orcs and a Howard Shore soundtrack.

Blade? Damn, it's all 1998 up in here. That was abandoned by its deveper 2.5 years ago. It's all about the LAME baby.

As for legality, I think Fraunhoffer pretty much gave up on requiring a license fee for encoders. Although Winamp, WMP, iTunes, &c all ship with encoders now anyway so you must have legal one on your machine somewhere.

Well, this is the 400 mhz machine running a sketchy linux distro...  The machine that gets stuff done. There is no lowercase i this or Windows Media that near this particular box.

I won't try to liken my inferior compression ratio to the warm sound of a 1960 Fender Bassman, but I do think it says something that I got my MP3 encoder back when such things came from mirror sites in Croatia and pissed off The Man right from your command line. (Mostly it says, why don't I use Ogg Vorbis yet? But see, I am retro geek, or something. So bladeenc is a tool with historical significance, like an M1 Garand for home defense.)

Anyway, Pierced Lemur's Sample One, Now with slightly more madness.

One thing I do not have is a single musical bone in my body, despite my Von Trapp Family upbringing... I can only guess at what a fast and heart-maddened tempo should be. Ah well.