Phenomephrene

Aye. It helps with my anxiety, can be an excellent escape and provide a different frame of reference on things, is a way I deal with extreme pain, and overall just enhances quality of life.

Highly recommended.

All of the above depending on what your budget is.

Many software emulations are more than serviceable, and again depending on your budget can offer some really advanced parameter controls to mimic different types of speakers in differently sized cabinets being recorded with different types of mics in different recording spaces.

Pedals can still vary widely in quality, but there are some really good ones out there that can serve as a backup in case there's any on-stage technical problems, or even serve as a completely fine fly rig in and of themselves.

Kemper makes the top of the line stuff these days (so far as I know, it's been a couple years since I payed very close attention to cutting edge tech). Their profiling amps allow you to make complete profiles of real amps and cabs through recording a series of signals through that rig. These profiles can be shared online and downloaded straight onto their "heads" which can be rack mounted in a studio setup. For stage use they have versions that serve as a typical amplifier head would, or use the form factor of those multi-effect floor units. They sound incredible.

Guitar tube amplifier emulation.

I love it because as absolutely horrid as it was when it was emerging tech, those sounds along with every other link in the chain comes with certain nostalgia for music that was created using it in whatever intermediary period it was at in that time. Today we've basically hit endgame in that the emulations of today's tech are so close to the real thing that they're basically indistinguishable from the genuine article. We have access to the full range of sounds from Boss DS-1's to the old Line6 Pods to modern Kempers. If you're a guitar player who likes experimenting with the over all sound of your rig, this is the good stuff.

Everyone in Minnesota has been forced to learn and conduct business in Mandarin. The number of depictions of dragons in city streets has quintupled under his administration.

Aww, and here I thought I was contributing to a discussion. I'll leave you alone now since I ruin your fun. Hopefully you can feel free to be a bit more lighthearted in my absence.

No.

I'm in the camp that believes that Jesus was a real person. And being that he was a real person, he did not rise from the dead, because that doesn't happen. So, Jesus was not a zombie.

If Jesus wasn't actually a real person... sure, knock yourself out. Zombie, Lich, whatever else you want to call it. Doesn't really matter if we're just making up stories with no real historical basis.

I'll be curious to see what the medical debt relief package looks like in detail. I can imagine (and probably expect) this being structured in a way that's bittersweet, though it's far too early to start speculating. It's not going to be the overhaul that's needed address the travesty that is the medical insurance industry in this country. It'd be great if I get to see that in my lifetime.

Yeah, can't be certain, but it would have had to have been one of four that I remember from my earliest years:

Pong Space Invaders Super Mario Bros Duckhunt

Yeah, that's fine.

I'm just saying there was plenty going on between '86 and '94 to challenge the limits of chugga-chugga as you put it. And I won't argue against Destroy Erase Improve being a watershed album, and I'd even consider it a respectable stance if you want to say it might be the heaviest record ever if that's your opinion, but it's not like it's an unquestionable monolith that no other records from around or before then could stand up to.

I wouldn't say the Foo Fighters are any kind of Nirvana, let alone a MOR version. There are a lot of significant differences between the two. Probably the biggest one being that the Foo Fighters have a decent number of songs that are listenable from beginning to end, whereas Nirvana only ever came close once with Lithium, but still fucked it up by making the bridge vacant gaze, drooling mouth agape level stupid.

This is an interesting analysis. 'Heavy' is a nebulous enough concept in music that being so definite with assertions like this is basically inviting contention. It can only ever really be a discussion as opposed to anything concretely absolute.

My current vehicle is The Blue Meanie.

Previously, I had a Kia that I called The Kill Ya, a cavalier that I dubbed The Crasholier, and my first car I called The B-Mobile.