I've Been Thinking

Human beings have become the dominant form of life on this planet through a particular evolutionary advantage; the ability to reason, which gives us the power to build tools, both physical and social. Of course, this ability can only be used because of previous evolutionary developments, beginning with obvious things such as hands or speech, and moving on up to more complex social behaviour, much of which we share with other mammalian species. Without strong social behaviour, our reason would be vastly less effective. All human achievement, in science, technology, music and literature, has gotten to where it is today by building on the achievements of those who have gone before, by learning from the traditions and records that the society has accumulated over the centuries.

But humanity has been given another characteristic through the peculiar methods of evolution, the orgasm. Orgasms are fantastic, it's hard to keep dispassionately observing while you're having one, but the next time you do try and appreciate just how intense the pleasure actually is compared to anything else that might happen to you in your day to day life. However the experience is extremely transitory, so people usually focus on finding better ways to receive pleasure, such as drugs, fighting, religion, or god forbid, personal happiness. People pursue sex with great dedication, yet in todays frantic, self-obsessed world, it's usually not just the orgasm that we're after, rather validation or social standing or to just make the voices STOP goddamn it they just keep going on and on and I wasn't bad I promise but the dirty lady looked so pretty and please don't put me in the penitence hole again.

In fact, I don't think it would be an overstatement to say that of all the motivations that propel people through their daily lives in the western world, sex would be easily the most common (as most of us very rarely have to think seriously about securing food and shelter, it's really the only animal instinct still guiding us). How is it that this incredible interdependent society, so complex and with so many achievements, and so reliant on everyone following basic social conduct that specifically restrains self-interested pleasure seeking, can continue when everyone's wandering around in pursuit of the orgasm, natures own addictive high literally designed to be the best feeling possible and hard coded into our minds to be the goal of our lives?

One reason is that to a lesser degree human minds have also been programmed to desire a stable society, so unlike in the animal world sex for humans is not intended to be a violent, emotionless act. All human behaviour is governed by societal conventions, and sexual encounters, whether they last half an hour or a life time, are no exception. But that's bullshit, we've all read or seen how people behave during a war or in a lawless area, social pressures are just the cork holding back the selfish desires of the nastier elements of the human race. What is it that allowed everyone else to overcome the same instincts, rise above the animals and to form the society in the first place? And the answer is quite simple. Masturbation.

So the next time you go to the top of a huge skyscraper, miraculously towering hundreds of meters above the ground seemingly in defiance of gravity but made stable by principles worked out by hundreds of generations of structural engineers, or engage in communication with someone on the other side of the world via the intricate collaborative computer engineering feat that has formed the internet, or enjoy a piece of music composed by Beethoven, who wrote his masterpieces after studying and learning from the work of the musical scholars who came before him, remember to say “Thank you masturbation!”

Five Things I Learned From Watching Sin City

1. You can get shot several times from a pistol and not only still be alive, but ready to kick some arse.

2. You can get riddled with bullets from a machine gun at close range, but still be alive because it wasn't a head shot.

3. You can get shot several times and still have energy to beat up a few cops, be in a high speed car chase and swim through the sewers for a while.

4. If you're really tough, after that you can get run over a couple of times and still be walking.

5. And if you're really really tough, you can also take a full swing to the head with a sledgehammer and be fine.

But despite the ridiculous parts, I still thoroughly enjoyed it, mainly because of the style which emulates the comic almost exactly while also improving on it (with the splashes of colour and the way it perfectly reproduced scenes from the book in live action). On the other hand it's let down a bit by copying exactly the comic's dialogue and voiceovers, which sound good on paper but seem pretty cheesy when delivered in live action by Bruce Willis.

Well worth watching though, for a mindless but slick thrill, even if you haven't read the books.

It's an Emergency. There's an Emergency Going On

For those of you who don't regularly scan the sidebar for updates, Jeremy has a new blog.

Squeal, Grunt, Burp, Fuck

Mike Patton - Adult Themes For Voice

Many years back Mike Patton released a couple of albums for John Zorn's experimental/avant-garde Tzadik* label, one of which is Adult Themes For Voice. Believe it or not, they're completely off the deep end even compared to his normal output (yes, it even makes Fantomas seem accessible). Now you can't make an avant-garde album without a pretentious gimmick, and this album is no exception. The entire forty-five minutes was recorded using only Patton's voice and a microphone in hotel rooms all over the world as he toured with Faith No More.

By using all sorts of weird effects and mixing tricks Patton gets a lot of mileage out of a very limited set of instruments (not that Patton's vocal range is at all limited, but it's still only one instrument). Most of the time the result is a bewildering ear-splitting noise, fully indulging in the most confrontational, inaccessible tendencies of the avant-garde (not an obstacle to my enjoyment of the music of course), at other times he creates more conventional kinds of songs, which stand out as being cleverer than the others because of their unconventional composition methods. The most notable of these is the last track Orgy in Reverb (10 Kilometers of Lust), which is an ethereal ambient soundscape.

Now I'm normally a bit skeptical of avant-garde weirdness for it's own sake but I quite like this album. Sure it's not what I'd put on at a party, or even an album I'd listen to unless I'm in the mood for something peculiar, but it's very cleverly composed and a lot easier to listen to than Patton's other release for Tzadik, Pranzo Oltranzista (even I get a little impatient listening to three minutes of someone doing the dishes).

*Hey, wikipedia tells me that Tzadik means 'righteous one' in Hebrew. Wikipedia is cool.

But You Don't Shave Your Legs Every Day!

Seinfeld Season 4

The fourth season of Seinfeld is when the show suddenly became a huge success. Coincidentally, it was also the one when they moved away from the 'show about nothing' conceit and began to get a little more surreal. In the first episode Kramer is mistaken by the police for a serial killer, and the season as a whole has an overarcing plot thread where Jerry and George develop a sitcom show, neither of which are situations in which people would ordinarily find themselves in their everyday lives.

Fortunately the shift to a more mainstream style only enhanced the shows quality, proving that while being the show about nothing was a clever idea, the reason it was so good was simply brilliant writing. Some of the best episodes of the series run come from this season, most memorably 'The Contest', where the four main characters have a bet to see who can go the longest without masturbating. Not only is it hysterically funny, it was also written slyly enough so that the word 'masturbation' is never mentioned once, nor any other term that could trip the censors bad-o-meter, not too easy given the strict rules prime time TV must obey in the USA.

Other popular episodes include 'The Outing', where everyone believes George and Jerry are gay (“not that there's anything wrong with that!”), and 'The Bubble Boy', which you'll remember if you've ever seen it (“I'm sorry, the correct answer was actually 'The Moops'.”). My personal favorite has to be 'The Opera', which stars the character of Crazy Joe Davola, who likes dressing up as a clown and is obsessed with Elaine (“Are you scared of clowns Kramer?”).

DVD extras are little scarce on this collection, especially when compared with the first volume, but I guess there probably just wasn't that much interesting stuff to say that hadn't already been said on the previous discs other than 'Yay we won an Emmy!'

Volume 1
Volume 2

All I Want to Do is Go Out and Kill

Throbbing Gristle – Live Vol 2

If you consider yourself even a casual fan of Industrial music, you have to own at least one album by the original Industrial band, Throbbing Gristle. I used to own their 'best of' (almost a joke for a band as decidedly non-commercial as them) but it was stolen in the great CD heist of aught-two. Their CDs aren't exactly the kind of thing you see lying around in the music store in the mall, so when I saw one of their albums in a random market stall in Sydney I snapped it up.

Hardcore noise isn't really my thing anymore, but while such music makes up the heart of Throbbing Gristle's style, they often go on weird tangents, from jazz to their own twisted idea of pop. As the title implies this is a collection of live tracks, taken from three different shows. The first emphasises their full on confrontational noisy side, with their customised synths in total atonal squawk mode and Genesis P. Orridge indulging in his distinctive 'yell random phrases in a strange voice' vocal stylings. The second set consists of ambient, gentler songs, including the ever popular Hamburger Lady. Even in this mode their music is still the farthest thing from easy listening, but it is a little less teeth-clenchingly confrontational. The last set moves back to the more aggressive style, with the last track, D.O.A, being one of their more upbeat, vaguely poppy numbers.

I'd thought that my tastes had moved away from this sort of thing but I found that I liked this album a lot more than I expected to. While I definitely prefer the ambient songs to the aggressive ones, and the seven minute average track length does cause a few songs to wear out their welcome (especially given the repetitive nature of Throbbing Gristle's live performances), I've found the album as a whole quite listenable. Maybe the reason I stopped listening to this stuff is that I've been subjected to too many lame imitators and have forgotten how good the best industrial noise bands were.

Happy Birthday to Me

The Wildebeest Asylum celebrated its first birthday last night. It's customary to mark this sort of occasion by highlighting some of your favorite posts over the last year, but frankly I can't be fucked reading through the whole lot of them to pick out a few good ones. Go read them yourself.

Here are a few pictures from the Wildebeest Asylum staff anniversary party:

Sandman

by Neil Gaiman

So I just finished rereading Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic series last week. With the benefit of knowing the story (and Hy Bender's Sandman Companion book), I picked up on a lot of things that I missed the first time around. Gaiman's even cleverer than I thought, the way he foreshadows and sets up a lot of things before hand. It's even more clever considering he was writing it in monthly installments.

The concept behind the Sandman is not too far afield from that of your standard superhero comics. The title character is a fantastic being with strange powers who travels to exotic locations and battles strange creatures. To be precise, he is an immortal being who has existed almost since the beginning of time, and is responsible for the dreams (and stories and imaginations) of all the mortal creatures of the universe. But Gaiman handles his story completely differently to the usual comic book story. Firstly, the Sandman is almost invincible, he and his family are known as the Endless, and with good reason. While they can be imprisoned, driven mad or blackmailed, destroying one of them is almost unheard of. Because of this the Sandman is almost never in any actual danger, leading to a very non-action oriented story.

Even when the story focuses on characters other than the Sandman, the story remains dialogue driven and in everyway goes against the cliché of comics being written for teenage boys and geeks. One of the reasons this series is so well respected is because it catered to a more mature audience than most of its fellow comic series'. Despite the fantasy trappings, Sandman is at it's heart about a guy who takes his work too seriously and can't sort out his love life, a story that wouldn't be out of place in any other medium or genre.

Having said that Gaiman uses the fantasy genre brilliantly, creating many original and fascinating characters. The most memorable of these are the Endless, each of which (with some exceptions) has a personality completely the opposite of what you'd expect of someone with their function. Most obviously there's the title character, Dream, who is stern, unfriendly and inflexible. His brother Destruction is jovial and good-natured, his sister Despair is surprisingly gentle and soft-hearted, despite her hideous appearance, and the androgynous Desire is in contrast cold-hearted and cruel. And of course there's Death, the sensible, perky goth chick. On the other hand Delirium and Destiny are pretty much exactly how you'd expect, although at various times they do hint at paradoxes within their function. Destiny says “The choice is yours”, offering free will. Delirium at times shows she has a better insight on reality that many of the saner characters.

The artwork is great from beginning to end, although it varies so much in style over the course of the series run that it would be impossible to talk about it in detail in the limited space I have.

Pretty much anything Gaiman writes is gold, but Sandman is his crowning achievement. Well worth a periodic reread.

Go Trent Go!

Nine Inch Nails Live

So, the concert. Again, I don't have any photos, this time because they didn't want us taking cameras in there. In retrospect I probably could have snuck in with one quite easily, but never mind. Instead I shall endeavour to describe the gig in such luscious detail so as to paint an image in your minds eye to far surpass any mere photography.

Picture, if you will, a mighty throng of drunken Australians, all clad in black, and all pushing and shoving in an attempt to reach the front of a raised platform. Upon this platform a small pack of roadies work industriously, hurrying back and forth with effects pedals and bottles of water. A hot asian girl in a short skirt and with a number of facial piercings crosses your path. Being somewhat drunk yourself, you give her the glad eye but it is met with a steely 'fuck off' glare. But that's goth chicks for you.

Speaking of which, I was rather pleased to note how much more girls dress when they go out over there. I've noticed that wherever I travel people in general put more and more effort into their appearance in proportion to the size of the city, and I was quite delighted to see the display at the concert. I could try and paint you an evocative picture in words of what I was looking at, but I'd probably have to go and have a cold shower afterwards and never get round to writing about the actual performance. It will suffice to say that it was corsets, little black hotpants and thigh high boots for as far as the eye could see. (And people wonder why I want to leave Christchurch.)

My favorite outfits though were the half dozen or so people wearing shirts saying “Go Trent Go!” accompanied by a childish drawing of a black clad stick figure. Gave me a good giggle it did.

The opening band were pretty terrible. I thought their songs sounded interesting, but they made a bit of a mess of their first few songs. I know it must be very hard engaging the audience when you're opening for a big popular band like NIN, but having to stop ten seconds into your first song to get in tune with one another is more than a little unprofessional. The guy behind me helpfully yelled out, “Go back to the garage!”. I went back to the bar and waited for them to finish.

So after the obligatory half hour wait, the lights went out and we heard the menacing chords of Pinion being played. Naturally, every one went nuts, and started pushing like mad towards the front. Expecting a heavy, punishing song to open, I was surprised when Trent walked onstage alone (looking quite old with his short, sensible rugby players haircut) and sat down at the piano to play The Frail, while bathed in soft blue lights. He played it pretty much the same as on And All That Could Have Been, so it was no surprise when the rest of the band joined him onstage to go straight into...

The Wretched: I though it was a bit of a slow song to start with, but the audience didn't mind, with the moshpit pumping and everyone singing along, “It didn't turn out the way you wanted it to!”.

Wish: Always a solid crowd pleaser, and guaranteed to send everyone nuts.

Sin: There was no theremin solo on the intro like there is on the live album, which disappointed me a little. Other than that, it sounded pretty much exactly the same. It's all good, but I wonder if NIN aren't maybe a little too tight as a live band for their own good.

The Line Begins To Blur: I was surprised to hear this one, since it didn't strike me as a song that would go over well live, but I was very pleased, because it's one of my favorites off the new album. It did work well live too, although a lot of people didn't seem to know it, and the more aggressive punters didn't seem to appreciate the trippy, quirky chorus.

March Of The Pigs: Another heavy stomper, and another guaranteed crowd pleaser. It went down well, with Trent drawing out the peaceful piano breaks, and the extended outro sending the moshpit into a frenzy as one should hope.

Something I Can Never Have: Straight from one of their heaviest songs into a very very mellow song. Again I was surprised at how well this one worked live, for such a gentle song. Trent seemed to put a lot of passion into it.

The Hand That Feeds: As the swampy beat introduced the song, there was a gradually building cheer as people clicked to the songs identity. It got the whole moshpit jumping up and down, no surprise for a catchy upbeat single.

With Teeth: Not my favorite song off the new album, but I was looking forward to seeing it live, mainly for the chance to scream out “AWITHA TEETHA!”, which I did with much enthusiasm. One of the highlights of the night for me was when Trent pulled out a tambourine to close out the first section of the song, somehow I don't think you'd have ever seen him do that on the Downward Spiral or Fragility tours. He threw it into the audience when he was done with it too, it would have been awesome if I had caught it. The gentle middle section with the piano was really good too, with Trent singing “I cannot go through this again.” over and over, and I especially liked the way Aaron played the accompanying solo on the guitar.

Terrible Lie: Another catchy old favorite, but it didn't seem to engage the crowd very much, at least where I was standing. I decided to move closer to the middle, where the 'real fans' would hopefully be.

Closer: My decision to move was given greater impetus when this song started and the couple in front of me started making out. People making out in the moshpit are one of my pet peeves. Most annoying guys in the moshpit are easily dealt with by a timely push, elbow or shoulder barge. You can't do that when there's a girl in the way though, it wouldn't be gentlemanly. As for the song... I don't remember it that well, I was trying to get away from that couple, who seemed to be following me. I do remember how they mixed a riff from Down In It into the outro, which was pretty cool. I still think they should add Down In It to their setlist.

Home: Another good song off the new album that no-one knew. By this time I was starting to get a little annoyed with the lame audience.

The Big Come Down: One of my favorite songs off The Fragile. Of course, no one knew this one either, but it was great to hear it nonetheless. I really liked Trent's improvised non-vocals at the end. He ordinarily goes a little overboard on the 'Woah's and 'Hey's, so it was good to hear him doing some quirky and unusual improvisations.

Burn: An old b-side which almost no one seemed to know, but a track I was really looking forward to hearing. Trent seemed to be expecting the crowd to complete the 'call and answer' part of the chorus, but there didn't seem to be many others who caught on. Come on, all you have to do is yell "Burn" periodically, it's not that hard, and it's a damn cool song. I did my best on my own.

Reptile: This one didn't really work for me, but it seemed to be popular with the audience, I guess because it's off The Downward Spiral. I liked the dying-computer style light show in the background though, that was cool.

You Know What You Are: One of the rockingist tracks off the new album, it's really almost mandatory for them to play this one at every show. For a song that most of the audience wouldn't have known, it seemed to go down fairly well.

Suck: Another cool song that seemed to meet an unappreciative audience.

Gave Up: Like Wish, this is a guaranteed crowd pleaser, and they performed it pretty well. By the time it was finished I was feeling pretty wasted so it was just as well the next song was...

Hurt: Everyone knows this song. It must be weird for Trent, having this emotional, personal song be such a sing-a-long crowd pleaser. The guy next to me yelled out “We love you Trent!”, I wanted to do the same, but I bet he doesn't like people saying things like that during this song.

Dead Souls: A very cool random b-side (a cover of a Joy Division song from The Crow soundtrack) that I didn't expect to hear. By this time I'd made my way to the centre of the moshpit so I was among more appreciative people for this one.

Starfuckers, Inc.: When that deep drum and brass groove kicked in I was treated to the amusing but cool spectacle of a sweaty moshpit full of angry goths hitting the floor and shaking their booties. There was quite a funny moment in the quiet breakdown, when everyone started clapping along. Trent starts singing, then stops and says “If you have to fucking clap, at least can you clap in time? You've put me off and now I've lost my place in the song.” After abusing us a little more they skipped the whole breakdown and went straight into the outro. He's right though, most of the time when people clap (or mosh) in time to the music at concerts they're completely out of time. Call me anal but it annoys me.

Head Like A Hole: The last song of the night, and it went off like you wouldn't believe. I liked how Trent sang the vocal samples from the album (Hoo. Hoo, hoo) at the start.

Random notes:

• Aaron North (the crazy guitar player) was pretty passive for most of the show, but he did leap around a lot while he was soloing, which I found quite impressive.
• No Getting Smaller, Beside You In Time, Sunspots or The Day the World Went Away. Which are the songs I really wanted to hear. They played Beside You In Time the next night. Damn it, I should have gone!
• Trent says they hope to be back early next year (April/May).
  

It was a good show, but it was let down a bit by a somewhat ambivalent audience. I got the impression that NIN are a big name with a good reputation so they attract a lot of people (especially teenagers) who don't actually know the songs. That's all well and good, but I'd prefer it if they left the front of the moshpit to people who are actually going to go hard for the whole concert.

Another thing is that even though Trent is a great song writer, he writes for the album and worries about arranging it live later, and then makes the mistake of sticking too closely to how the album sounds. What ends up happening is that the live show doesn't quite live up to the very high standard of the album.

Which isn't to say that I didn't enjoy myself or that it wasn't worth the trip, but if they come back next year I probably won't be going further afield than Auckland to see them.

My review of With Teeth

The Not-So-Bad City

So I arrived back in Christchurch late last night from a busy long, long weekend in Sydney. The purpose of the visit was to see the Nine Inch Nails concert, but there was a definite 'God I've got to get away from work and Christchurch for a little while' motivation behind the trip too.

The flight over was relatively painless. I was pleased because the movie they showed was 'The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy', although I only got to see part of since I was sitting behind the guy with the hugest head in Australasia. Of course, like most peasant class flights the seats were cramped and uncomfortable. In the future I think I'll make an effort to fly on one of the nicer airlines like Singapore or Emirates when I go overseas, since the extra comfort is well worth paying a bit more.

The first stop after the plane arrived was naturally to the duty free store, where me and my trusty companion loaded up on booze and cigarettes. Of course, trying to navigate the public transport system halfway across one of the biggest cities in the world while carrying my luggage and a bag full of liquor bottles turned out to be more than a little awkward. Fortunately our host met us at the central bus station, which was just as well because the directions to his house he had given me the night before had gone in one drunken ear and out the other.

So we spent Thursday evening wandering around the city, paying a social visit to another ex-pat, looking in all the cheap CD stores and debating the relative merits of Australian and Kiwi girls. Sydney reminds me a lot of Auckland. It's big (in that it sprawls out far further than most cities with it's population do), it's grown up around a harbour (with a big bridge) and the CBD seems to be laid out in a similar manner. Despite being way larger, Sydney also seems cleaner and more organised than Auckland.

Friday was much the same, i.e. wandering around, plus a visit to the aquarium. Jellyfish are neat. Later on we went to the beach. A somewhat strange idea on a grey cloudy day in the middle of winter but hey, compared to Christchurch at this time of year it felt like it was summer.

A Nine Inch Nails day at the beach:


Later on we went to the concert, but I'll save that for another post. Hopefully coming tomorrow.

On Saturday night we tried to go out. The evening started out well enough, with moderate to large quantities of alcohol being consumed (hence the somewhat incoherent posts earlier), but things went a little awry after that. Firstly I learned that it's a bad idea to go to the casino while plastered. You can lose a lot of money, and then keep gambling because you're 'pretty sure you're about to win it all back'. Anyhow, after that we wandered around looking for a good club to go to. As neither of us had been out in Sydney before we didn't really have any idea to go, and since all the clubs over there have $20 cover charges, we weren't about to go in to any of them unless it looked really good. So after a little bit more drinking and a lot more walking we called it a night. Of course, I later found out that if we'd kept walking just a little further down Pitt Street we would have come across a big three level club hosting the NIN after party. We never should have stopped following the green man! Either that or I should have just gone to the second NIN show on Saturday night.

So on Sunday it was a stunningly clear day so we walked around, watched some street performers, did the tourist thing and went to see the opera house. A visit to the botanical gardens was also in order, as J. wanted to steal some palm seeds. Don't ask why, those of you that know him can attribute it to another crazy scheme.

Anyway, a good time was had by all. Sydney really appealed to me, being so big and busy, so it's gone on the list of places I'll think about moving to when I decide to get the hell out of shitty old Christchurch.

Five Things I Have Learned From Watching Rock Star: INXS

1) INXS still have fans. May God have mercy on our souls.

2) American Idol singers are actually pretty shit. (Don't even ask about NZ Idol.)

3) Being married to Carmen Electra doesn't stop you from being incredibly horny.

4) If your ratings aren't meeting expectations, it's time to throw a few Britney Spears and Natalie Imbruglia songs into the mix.

5) If you're in a world famous rock band you can get away with wearing a pedophile mo.

God Bless You Merry Gentlemen

Hi everybody, in Sydney at the moment, which is why there's been no posting recently. But I'm somewhat drunk and I'm near a laptop while the posting muse has taken possession of me. Stand by for a semi-topical post (posts about Sydney and Nine Inch Nails live will follow in a few days).

Unretrofied

Dillinger Escape Plan have posted their new video (for their new, relatively conventional single) here.

The video obeys one of the cardinal principles of metal videos: "You can't go wrong with hot chicks in kinky nurse outfits".

Another Milestone

My first bit of comment spam appeared today. It's gone now of course, but it's another indication of my blogs ever growing popularity!

This Useless Old Fucker, and His Twinkling Cunt

Nick Cave – The Boatman's Call

Now Nick Cave probably isn't anyones idea of amping, pulse-racing music, but 'The Boatman's Call' must be among the gentlest, mellowest albums I own. Maybe it's a little too mellow for me, I don't like this album nearly as much as the others of his that I own.

Having said that, a few of the songs appeal. 'Into My Arms', 'Brompton Oratory' and 'Far From Me' are all very pretty, sad songs, but I think the album as a whole could have done with a change of pace every now and again.

The lyrics are still great though. On this album Cave deals with his religion more explicitly than on the others. Somehow, despite my normal adverse reaction to religious expression, Cave manages to make it interesting and appealing. Maybe it's because he's not afraid to admit his own doubts and insecurities rather than pretending to be almost as good as Jesus (what I think of as 'Creed-styles'). After the half-way mark he moves on to the more familiar and comfortable territory of heartbreak and unfaithful women, which curiously enough doesn't appeal to me as much.

See also:
Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus
The Good Son

Random Shit Update

Touched by His Noodly Appendage

Scientific American: Little Kids are Stupid. My favorite bit is when they replace the playground equipment with miniature replicas, and the kids can't figure out why they can't use it anymore.

Excuses For Being Lazy

You may have noticed a lack of posting recently, this is the result of what I can only refer to euphemistically as 'personal issues'. Things will be back to normal after I've sorted my shit out a bit, which aught to be no more than a couple of weeks away.

In the meantime, here's an interesting article about how Saudi Arabia is fucked, and with it a quarter of the worlds oil supply.

Classical Music Day

So I bought a couple of classical albums the other week. 'The Best of Debussy' and the somewhat embarrasingly titled 'Chill with Ravel'. Not being a big classical fan I don't have anything really insightful to say about them. One thing that I did observe while listening to them was that I had to really pay attention before I got anything out of it, otherwise it just runs off my ears like elevator music, but I guess thats the problem with trying to appreciate a different genre of music.

Another thing I noticed was how many of the melodies I recognised. The start of Debussy's 'String Quartet No. 1 in G minor' is straight out of 'Even Deeper' by Nine Inch Nails (or rather, the other way around, but you know what I mean), and there are more than a few other examples of similar things. I wonder if it's deliberate or not?

Anyway, classical albums are cheap so I should definitely buy some more at some stage.

Just One More Sunday Lesson

Special Belated I Couldn't Sleep Properly for Three Days Edition:

'Herbal' highs my arse.

The Sunday Lessons

Absinthe: Twice the drunkenness, half the hangover.

Party Pills: So much fun it's almost worth the huge mother of all hangovers you'll have the next day.

Lucifer – Devil in the Gateway

by Mike Carey

This is the first collection in a spin-off comic series from Neil Gaiman's Sandman. It's taken a while for me to check it out, since the character of Lucifer in the Sandman books never seemed interesting to me, but other places around the booklogosphere have been giving it the thumbs up so I figured it was past time I gave it a chance.

Like the Hellblazer collection I also read recently, Lucifer tries a little too hard to emulate its progenitor series. The Sandman has a theme of reality being determined by dreams, which makes perfect sense, considering its protagonist is the king of dreams. When they bring up the same idea in Lucifer, it doesn't really fit. Secondly, one of the clever things about the Sandman is how the story reused characters from past plotlines that you thought were out of the story forever, and did so in a way that tied all the threads together elegantly. Even at the end of the first collection it's obvious that Lucifer is going for the same trick, which is not a good thing since the clever thing about the way Gaiman did it in Sandman was that these old plotlines kept popping up unexpectedly.

But Lucifer has a lot going for it too. Despite not being engaged by Lucifer's character in Sandman (this is the biblical Satan we're talking about, by the way) he turns out to be a pretty entertaining protagonist. In the Sandman we learn that Lucifer isn't all that evil, but this is still the guy who was in charge of torturing people in Hell for aons so he's not exactly a nice guy. It's fun to watch him callously use the people around him and ruthlessly punish those who get in his way.

This collection contains two seperate stories, each of which does little more than set up a larger overarching plot. In the first, Lucifer (who in the Sandman story retired as lord of hell) is asked by God to take care of a spate of irresponsible wish-granting on Earth. Along the way we get a reiteration of some ideas taken out of Sandman, as well as some cool new ones, plus we get to see Lucifer taking advantage of his companions and showing off his cool powers. In the second, worried by events of the first story, he attempts to consult the tarot, which for him has to be the original tarot, a bunch of malicious anthropomorphic representations of the cards.

It's a pretty good read, I'm glad I tried this series out.

Miscellania 2: Politics Edition

So the Black Caps are off to Zimbabwe after all. No Right Turn thinks the government should be ordering them to come back, but what does it really matter anyway? It would be a good political statement for them to boycott the tour, but if it's going to be costing someone (either the public or NZ Cricket) millions of dollars, is it worth it just to make a statement that will have no real impact on what's happening over there?

And, (via every political blog in the country) Labour have released their student loan policy; no interest charged for anyone staying in New Zealand. Sounds reasonable to me, but the right wing bloggers are up in arms about it, pointing out that ultimately it will only increase the level of debt further. And they're right, it will cost the taxpayer a lot of money, so wouldn't it be better to spend that money on more adequately funding the universities? That way students have to borrow less in the first place, and the goverment isn't giving out interest free loans. I'm no economist, but I think that works out cheaper in the long run for everyone...

Miscellania

I've been pretty busy over the last week or so, which is why I haven't posted too much recently. But there are a few little things I want to make a note of...

Every couple of months I get a bunch of search engine referrals searching for stuff along the lines of 'girls getting knocked out by chloroform video'. I realise that by pointing it out everytime it happens I only encourage them, but it always gives me a bit of a giggle.

On Blabbermouth today - Fantomas are touring Aussie in September... pity I'm already over there to see Nine Inch Nails in August, it would be a little expensive for me to go over again so soon. I'll just keep my fingers crossed that an Auckland date might be added.

And on the subject of Blabbermouth, here's a sample headline:

OZZY OSBOURNE: 'I'm Not Going To End Up Like A F**king Pickle In A F**king Wheelchair' - July 25, 2005

Do they really think that your average Slayer or Meshuggah fan needs to be protected from the word 'fuck'? Jesus, grow some balls already.

Sunday Lessons

Absinthe doesn't give you a hangover.

People on pills are entertaining, people on weed are boring.

Follow the God of Cyanide

Meshuggah – Chaosphere

Even though their new album 'Catch Thirty-Three' didn't excite me overwhelmingly, I quite liked a lot of its ideas so I grabbed a copy of 'Chaosphere', which I hear is Meshuggah's best album.

It's a lot more 'metal' than 'Catch Thirty-Three'; I wouldn't have done the mental double take I did when I heard one of their songs playing on the Axe Attack if they had picked a track off of this album. Having said that it's definitely still completely off the wall in the rhythm department. I looked up a tab for one of the songs that I thought I might take a stab at playing, and saw that it starts out in 23/16 time (personally I'd say it's in alternating bars of 10/16 and 13/16 time, but that's splitting hairs when it comes to sitting down and trying to play it).

While their trademark rhythms are no different, the format of the songs is a lot more accessible than on 'Catch Thirty-Three'. That is, more accessible if you like really heavy music. Each song is three to five minutes of full on thrash with deep growly vocals and squealy atonic guitar solos. Not as musically interesting as 'Catch Thirty-Three' but a lot more immediately, viscerally pleasing. The most unusual track is the last one, which starts out with five minutes of a normal song before slowing down into a deep drone for a few minutes with peculiar phase effects. Then it abruptly snaps back (the song is called 'Elastic') into a cut up, mashed together noise fest of all the previous tracks played together. It sounds fucking insane, but believe it or not, not a whole lot more insane than the rest of the album.

Hellblazer: Original Sins

Written by Jamie Delano

I never saw the 'Constantine' movie, because I heard that it stank, but what I heard about the comic series it's based on (that's 'Hellblazer') sounded pretty cool. 'Original Sins' collects the first 9 issues of the comic, which is a spin off from Alan Moore's 'Swamp Thing' (another comic series I've been meaning to check out). Hellblazer stars John Constantine, who is a kind of magician/con-man, and follows his adventures as he continually gets into trouble with the infernal powers of hell and ends up saving the world.

There are a few things I didn't like about this book, firstly the art is pretty generic and not especially good, but then again maybe I've just been spoiled from my reread of 'Sandman'. Secondly the dialog is pretty atrocious in places, especially the sex scenes:

“Like scientists we fall to our experiment. Exploring complex tactile formulae. Tasting the arcane chemistry of sex.”

Yecch, give me a break! Lastly, the political overtones are far too explicit. While it's somewhat relieving to read rants directed at Thatcher and Bush senior that could apply to their counterparts today, since it reminds us that the world has seen all this sort of thing before and came through it OK, but the spittle flecked invective is still not pleasant to read so overtly in a work of fiction. I think Delano is trying to emulate Alan Moore's 'Watchmen', which made similar political statements but did so with a lot more grace and subtlety, mainly by not directly addressing it's targets and instead making arguments against the philosophies of the right wing governments of the day. It gets particularly bad in the Vietnam themed issue, but fortunately the rest of the stories mostly keep it to a tolerable level.

Having said that the plot is fairly good (although a few of the standalone stories are a bit weak, namely the aforementioned Vietnam issue and the first two issues in which Constantine fights a demon that feeds off hunger, are not particularly engaging). Constantine himself is a pretty appealing character, as a rogue who never confronts trouble head-on, preferring to use trickery and mind games. I'm of two minds as to whether I'll keep going with this series, but I guess it'll come down to whatever tickles my fancy the next time a shopping spree takes me to the comic book store.

A Man Must Test His Mettle, in a Crooked Old World

Tom Waits – Blood Money

I was once very fond of this album, but unfortunately it was lost in the great CD drawer heist of Ought-Two, so I haven't listened to it for a long while. But over the last few years I've grabbed a couple of Tom Waits' other albums, 'Alice' which is good, but not as good as 'Blood Money', and 'Mule Variations', which I don't like at all.

Tom Waits has the most incredibly deep gravelly voice, death metal vocalists would kill to sound like that. God knows how it got that way, but it sounds great. The music is very unique too, full of off-kilter, obscure instruments, giving the album an dreamy old-fashioned vibe, which works whether the songs are gentle or menacing. Waits writes great lyrics too, on this album they're very dark, just look at these song titles, 'Misery's the River of the World', 'Starving in the Belly of a Whale' and 'Everything Goes to Hell'. Coupled with the peculiar music it creates a great ambiance, reminding me of Lewis Carroll in his more twisted moments ('Alice in Wonderland' was part of the inspiration behind 'Blood Money's companion album 'Alice').

It's not quite as good as I remembered, mainly because there are more filler tracks than I recalled, but this is still a very good album, and I'm really glad I got round to buying it again. Given that I like this one and 'Alice', but not 'Mule Variations', would anyone who listens to Tom Waits care to recommend which of his albums I should check out next?

Oh My Townspeople, What are You Thinking?

Alexander Hacke – Sanctuary

When a member of an obscure experimental band goes off and does his own thing by releasing a solo album, I kind of assume it's to get away from the commercial pressures of their main band and take the opportunity to really go round the bend. Hacke's main band is Einsturzende Neubauten, not a band known for their popular appeal or their mainstream ambition, so I figured his solo project would be well and truly bizzare. As it happens I was surprised by how accessible this album was. Sure, there's the occaisional minute long theremin freakout with rhythm provided by an alarm clock, but most of the music is quite catchy.

Hacke displays a wide range of styles. In 'Seven' he combines heavy metal guitars with jazz rhythms (a very cool idea, but Foetus did a whole album of it a few years ago), and 'Per Sempre Butterfly' has a more classical arrangement of strings performing a beautiful movie score type song with a female vocalist. And of course there are the aforementioned avant-garde weirdness.

Neubauten is an awesome band so I had high expectations from this album, but it's exceeded my expectations considerably. Of course, you have to be in the right mood to sit through the weird bits, but as long as you are they're very enjoyable too.

The Meme Worth Spreading

========================
Overview: This post is a community experiment with two broad purposes. The first is to create publicly accessible data about bloggers' personalities, which may have sociological value in addition to being just plain fun. The second is to track the propagation of this meme through blogspace. Full details and explanation can be found on the original posting: http://pixnaps.blogspot.com/2005/06/meme-worth-spreading.html


Instructions (to join in the experiment):

1) Take the IPIP-NEO personality test and the Political Compass quiz, if you have not done so already.

2) Copy to the clipboard that section of this post that is between the double lines, and paste it into your blog editor. (Blogger users may wish to use 'compose' mode to preserve formatting and hyperlinks. Otherwise, be sure to add hyperlinks as necessary.)

3) Replace the answers in the "survey" section below with your own.

4) Add your blog information to the "track list", in the form: "Linked title - URL - optional GUID".

5) Any additional comments should go outside of the double lines, including the (optional) nomination of bloggers you wish to pass this experimental meme on to.

6) Post it to your blog!


Survey:

Age: 24
Gender: Male
Location: Christchurch, New Zealand
Religion: Athiest
Occupation: Software Engineer
Began blogging (dd/mm/yy): 08/04

Political Compass results
Left/Right: -2.25
Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.85

IPIP-NEO results

EXTRAVERSION: 31
Friendliness 28
Gregariousness 72
Assertiveness 1
Activity Level 80
Excitement-Seeking 46
Cheerfulness 46

AGREEABLENESS: 62
Trust 61
Morality 81
Altruism 57
Co-operation 26
Modesty 74
Sympathy 52

CONSCIENTIOUSNESS: 9
Self-Efficacy 0
Orderliness 41
Dutifulness 54
Achievement-Striving 1
Self-Discipline 4
Cautiousness 72

NEUROTICISM: 86
Anxiety 81
Anger 52
Depression 95
Self-Consciousness 67
Immoderation 96
Vulnerability 58

OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE: 67
Imagination 89
Artistic Interests 60
Emotionality 32
Adventurousness 0
Intellect 87
Liberalism 97

Track List:
1. Philosophy, et cetera - pixnaps.blogspot.com - pixnaps97a2
2. ferrouswheel - ferrouswheeladef2
3. Wildebeest Asylum - wildebeestasylum.blogspot.com - wildebeestasylumppp8

========================

Some of those personality results are a bit worrying... no assertiveness or achievement-seeking, and near maximum scores for depression and immoderation. At least those are tired, hungover Jon's results, maybe I'd score differently on a different day of the week.

You Won't Believe the Brutality

God of War

This game generated a lot of good buzz on various game blogs so I was really looking forward to it. Unfortunately it's taken months to be released here, which annoys me a bit. I thought with games becoming bigger and bigger business over the last few years the market would be getting big games like this over here faster than it used to. But I guess it'll take a while longer before games get over here as fast as music or books. I'm just hoping that Katamari Damancy gets over here eventually. A lot of quirky games like that don't get released here at all.

Anyway, God of War turned out to be well worth the wait. It uses the same engine as Devil May Cry so like that game it's fundamentally an updated version of Golden Axe, where the gameplay mainly consists of running around smashing the shit out of zombies. While Devil May Cry 2 (which has been moved into the 'a bunch of shit I'll never finish' category over in the sidebar) made this gameplay mechanic into a tedious button mashing fest, God of War is just a hell of a lot of fun to play. The most obvious reason for this is the main character's fighting technique. Devil May Cry is all about the character Dante's graceful stylish moves, but God of War's protagonist Kratos, is a brutal thug in comparison. His weapons are a pair of blades attached to his arms by extendable chains, which provide for a wide variety of improbable but cool moves. It's incredible fun to turn Kratos into a death dealing whirlwind with enemies being thrown out in all directions. The combos and special moves are even cooler, some of the most memorable involve shoving your weapon down a minotaur's throat, and ripping the wings off of a harpy while planting your foot firmly on it's torso.

The real reason this game is so good though is the level design. The story takes place in ancient Greece, a setting that is suprisingly underutilised in computer games. This provides a huge number of cool enemies to fight, and plenty of neat plot devices. The locations are varied and interesting, and although they don't deviate from the standard action game settings (yes of course, there's a level set in the sewers of Athens), they're presented originally through the mythological theme. The most impressive location is the Temple of Pandora level, a huge dungeon that is carried on the back of the titan Cronos as he wanders eternally through the desert. The puzzles are both original and neither too hard nor too easy, and the locations are varied and interesting, even within the standard dungeon setting.

There are a few other things that should be mentioned, the plot, while not brilliant (you know you can't take the story too seriously once you fight the giant cyborg minotaur (whose appearance is still an awesome 'holy shit' moment)), is a little deeper than most console games. Kratos is a true anti-hero, a tortured soul with a brutal, evil past, now looking for forgiveness from the gods. The twists and turns of the plot are nothing completely unpredictable, but at least they're there and they're pulled off competantly with, gasp, decent voice acting. Lastly there's a clever gameplay mechanic where you can pull off special moves on wounded enemies by pushing the buttons you're prompted to by icons appearing over the enemies heads, it's not super original but it adds another element to the already frenetic battles.

There's really nothing to fault about this game, it even comes with a whole load of 'making of' videos, which reveal there's a sequel in the works. It's been a while since I played a new game I enjoyed this much so I'll be looking forward to it.

The Feeding Frenzy of My Starving Soul

Meshuggah – Catch ThirtyThree

The denizens of the heavy metal related parts of the internet seem to have a particular fondness for two bands, Dillinger Escape Plan and Meshuggah. Both bands are quite heavy, but there are a lot of bands heavier, what makes these guys unique are there extreme rhythms, or lack of them. I've already given Dillinger a listen, and they've become one of my favorite bands, but I only recently got around to buying a Meshuggah album.

Dillinger are completely off the wall, with no discernible rhythm, Meshuggah at first glance seem to be much the same, but after a few bars go by patterns start to manifest. They're not completely arrhythmic, the rhythms are just highly unconventional, often with different parts playing in different time signatures. It can be quite the mind melt, but underneath the apparent chaos it's actually fairly mathematical.

On this particular album, the individual track markers are almost meaningless, as the whole album is composed as one continuous piece of music. More often than not they just indicate a change in the rhythm guitar's riff, (the mathematical nature of the music means that it's very repetitive). But it's not all heavy grinding from beginning to end, there are quieter interludes found here and there, some of which are quite nice.

I can see why these guys are so popular, their style is unlike anything I've heard before and it's pulled off very skillfully. Perhaps a little too skillfully, the drumming on this album was all programmed and while this allows some insane rhythms it costs them a bit of passion. The other thing that lets these guys down is the lyrics. The first time I heard them I thought it sounded like someone taking the piss out of an overwrought Scandinavian metal band, but no, they're for real. Fortunately, the vocalist at least has a very good screaming voice and delivers the lyrics well.

I like this album quite a bit, I've been thinking of it as neo-classical meets metal which is a fairly unique combination, but it's missing something, like they've come up with this brilliantly original style but haven't quite figured out how to use it to it's full effect. I've already bought another of their albums, but I don't think they come close to Dillinger.

Lost

So I saw the final of Lost the other day (yeah, I know I'm a bit late with this), and it kind of annoyed me. The show had started to drag a little towards the end, although the final was pretty action packed. It's fair enough that they end on a cliffhanger, but I would have liked a bit of a conclusion for the season finale, and maybe some small bits of information about the shows mysteries.

There are two reasons why, firstly because the show had a structure, so I was expecting some things to be wrapped up at the end of the first season so they could start doing something a bit different next year, but instead it looks like it'll just be more of the same. The other reason is that most TV shows don't last long nowadays, and by dragging things out it seems like they're just asking to get prematurely canceled.

Of course, the other potential problem is that it goes on forever like the X-Files and turns into a big load of crap that no one watches.

The White Rose

by Glen Cook

Long before Steven Erikson decided to write the grimmest, darkest fantasy series ever, there was Glen Cook's Black Company series. Cook's protagonists are a band of tired, world weary mercenaries, with all the unpleasant behaviour you'd expect of such people in the real world. In a more conventional fantasy story, these would be the flunkies who get chopped to pieces by the heroes on their way to the final confrontation with the big bad.

'The White Rose' is the last book in the initial trilogy (although the series has ended up going on for another seven books after this one). In the first book 'The Black Company', the company is hired by The Lady, an immortal sorceress recently resurrected from her grave and in the process of restarting her attempted conquest of the world. 'The Black Company' is brilliant from beginning to end, mainly because of the nuanced morality of the characters on all sides (which can for the most part be described not so much as 'grey' as 'light black'), but also because of the cool battle scenes, which are as epic as they come, even in the genre of epic fantasy.

The second book, 'Shadows Linger', was a total disappointment in comparison to the first. I couldn't tell you exactly why, because I remember very little about it. Fortunately the last entry in the trilogy, while not as good as the first one, was still worth reading. It ties up all the loose ends and finishes off the Lady's war in grand fashion (but of course leaving enough open plot threads to carry on the series). It doesn't measure up to the first book in terms of cool sorcery battles, or in terms of the characters, which more or less resolve themselves into good and evil categories by the end. Still, there were enough cool plot ideas to make it an entertaining read, and Cook has an original style and has designed an original interesting world, which he has only begun to start showing us at the end of the first trilogy. I'll get the rest at some stage, but it's not at the top of my list.

Quiet Day

Even though this isn't a political blog, I definitely don't feel like posting anything wry or flippant today, so here's a couple of links to other peoples posts about the London bombings.

A Making Light thread on the subject with some interesting insights.

A Public Address post which appealed to me in how it illustrated the stoic British reaction.

Thee Goode Doktor

I'm live blogging the start of the new Dr. Who series. The first post is down here.

Currently we're in an ad break.

Dusty the talking vacuum cleaner! (Not a working vacuum cleaner.)

OK we're back. Wow, they cut away from that dude getting shot. I'm pretty sure when I was a kid I saw people getting killed all the time on this show, but apparently we can't have kids seeing that sort of stuff anymore.

At least they finished off the climactic battle with a satisfactory number of huge explosions.

So, that was actually pretty good! Maybe took itself a bit seriously, and it wasn't quite as funny as it thought it was, but well done BBC, for not completely fucking it up.

More Still Even Yet Some Stuff Who Dr.

Pizza pizza pizza biga pizza biga pizza!

A big fight scene in a restaurant. Pretty funny actually.

Now we get to see the inside of the Tardis. Spooky music again... I don't like it. The old ones looked much better.

Of course your boyfriend's dead sweetie. We need to remove anything that ties you to Earth before the end of the episode, so you can leave with the Doctor. I think your Mum will probably be OK, since we've established that she's an obnoxious slapper. Funny that, in American show it'd definitely be the parents that had to die before the hero could let themselves leave. British stories on the other hand always have this Roald Dahl sort of thing going on with regard to parents.

And after I wrote all that, the boyfriend shows up alive again.

Yet Even Still More Dr. Who

Well, now I feel dumb. That search engine is a special page that exists just to be used in TV and movie productions. Who knew such things existed? How hard is it hire someone to write a couple of webpages?

And we're back... with more exposition that those of us older than 14 already know...

Sweet! The girls boyfriend just got eaten by a rubbish bin, and replaced with a mannequin! This is more like the Dr. Who I remember!

Still More Dr. Who

Here comes the exposition... snore...

Well at least not all the jokes were forced and lame.

Ooh, he's getting into the Tardis... spooky music! Lame spooky music!

Hey! Now she's using an internet search engine of never heard of! And it actually exists too. What kind of search engine needs product placement?

More Dr. Who

Damn it, sent that last one off early by accident.

Hey, it's the walking shop dummies! I remember when the third doctor fought them...

Oh look! The Doctor saved the girl! Because of course she wasn't capable of running that way until he showed up and said 'This way!'

The new Doctor is kind of a smart arse, but he's fairly funny. Still nowhere near as good as any of the old ones, but they haven't completely arsed his character up.

Now it's the news (the real news). Apparentely it's raining. Thanks Prime News!

Dr. Who

In the absence of any real purpose or meaning to my life, I'm going to live blog the first episode of the new Dr. Who series, which has finally crawled its way to the antipodes.

I don't like the new music. The old music was much better.

The Doctor's new tart is kind of cute. I think. I get crappy reception of Prime here.

Unfamiliar, Unremorseful

Team Sleep - Self Titled

Team Sleep is the side project of Chino Moreno from the Deftones, along with about half a dozen other people who aren't as famous. If you're familiar with the Deftones, you might have some idea what to expect. 'Teenager' off of 'White Pony' started life as a Team Sleep song, and 'Lucky You' from the Deftones self-titled album guests DJ Crook, who is another member of Team Sleep. Another good reference point would be that Team Sleep is to the Deftones what A Perfect Circle is to Tool, the vocalists mellower, more melodic side project. Team Sleep is gentler than A Perfect Circle though, while there are still a couple of 'rock out' songs, they're nowhere near as heavy as the likes of 'Judith' or 'Pet'.

Chino sings on about half the songs, and his style is still the same twisted howling he does on the Deftones' albums, but given a different context by the quieter, more restrained music. His songs tend to be the louder ones though, the other main vocalist, Rob Crow, sings on the gentle, upbeat tracks. There are also a few nice instrumentals, which tend towards the moody, ambient side.

The album has a wide variety of guest musicians (Mike Patton was rumoured to be making an appearance, but he hasn't shown up in the end), so the music has a lot of variety, both in terms of the genre, varying between electronics and analog instruments, and in terms of mood. There's happy, gentle, upbeat songs, heavier rock songs, and moody downbeat ones. My favorites are, uncharacteristically, the happy upbeat ones, but the album as a whole is pretty good almost from beginning to end. Like the last Deftones album it takes a couple of listens before it really starts to appeal, as the songs aren't very hooky. Hopefully these guys will be making a new album at some stage in the future, but it probably won't be anytime soon as the Deftones have a new album out later this year.

Mildly Belated Link Roundup Day

Another music article from Arts and Letters - why pop vocalists suck, and why American Idol is making them worse.

No Right Turn explains why the Greens latest burst of anti-GE scaremongering is particularly wrong-headed.

And lastly, via Hard News, the blog of some psycho in America who just got done for murder and kidnapping. Warning: might give you the willies.

The Perils of Alcohol

So due to a combination of being a) drunk and b) asleep, I missed out on seeing the Pink Floyd concert at Live 8. A quick inspection of bittorrent reveals some audio captures but no video. Gutted.

I guess this means I'll have to wait until the Live 8 DVD comes out, and I can see a bit of their set sandwiched between Mariah Carey's bleating and Bono's Generically Uplifting Happy Clappy Band. Yay.

So You Thought Christchurch Was Cold this Week

You Came to Take My Heart and Soul

Mike Patton & John Kaada – Romances

After being impressed by the General Patton vs. The X-Executioners album, which I had been highly skeptical about before I heard it, I pretty much decided that Mike Patton was incapable of producing anything less than stellar each time he put out an album. I've changed my mind again now though. 'Romances' is OK, but not great.

Kaada is a Norwegian composer, and his music is hard to describe. Romantic is actually the best way to describe it, as it's mostly quiet and subdued strings, with influences ranging from Jazz to Opera. Of course, this being a Patton record, there's the occasional burst of free form noise or electronic weirdness. Patton himself is mostly in suave crooner mode (somewhat like the Lovage album, but without the sleaze), but again with the occasional bit off crazy screaming or bizarre grunting.

It's nice enough, but fairly forgettable, and not up to the standard of Patton's other recent output.

12 Tone Sucks Ow!

If you're needing a dose of music geekery, I found this article (via Arts & Letters) pretty interesting.

I think the guy who wrote it is a little hard on avant-garde music, but even though he argues that twelve tone music was a dead end, 'deeply flawed at their musical and philosophical roots', he does admit that plenty of good music has come out of restrained use of 12 tone and atonal principles.

Because even though a few zealots might never willingly listen to any tonal music, most people find the beauty in it's dissonance when it's contrasted with normal music. And even though real avant-garde never enters the mainstream (in fact, that's part of the point), some of the ideas it develops do seep through. I find that if I ever really pay attention to (God forbid) a Britney Spears or Justin Timberlake song, I can't help but feel that it wouldn't sound quite the same if people like Schonberg or Coil hadn't done what they did.

This Next One is Called 'The Wanton Folly of Me Mum'

Angel Season 5

Season 2 Part 1
Season 2 Part 2
Season 3 Part 1

So good old TV3 are still showing the last season of Angel, several years late at 11pm on Tuesday night. I can't be fucked staying up that late, and it's a pain to try and record it, so it's kind of convenient that they've waited so long to show it that it's already out on DVD. So I bought the two sets and watched the whole damn season over a week. It's kind of sad now that I've seen the end of my second favorite show, but at least it went out with a lot more style than it's parent. Anyway, if you're still bothering to watch it on TV, don't read the rest of this post because I'm going to tell you what happens at the end.

After four years of more or less the same concept behind the show (Angel as the underdog P.I.) they shook things up a bit by putting Angel in charge of Wolfram and Hart, the big evil law firm that had been his arch-nemesis for the previous four seasons. This turns out to be a pretty good idea because it supplies a lot of engaging plot hooks. The central conflict arises from our heroes trying to do good and change the big evil corporation from within, while still trying to please their clients (a nasty bunch of demons and necromancers) and keep on the good side of the senior partners, the mysterious demonic entities who own the company.

I would have liked the overarching plot to be a bit more cohesive, the senior partners' big plan behind giving the firm to Angel turns out to be little more than a variation on the 'Lets try and make Angel go nuts!' scheme they've been trying since the show began. I would have liked something a little more epic to finish up the show. Plus a few of the interesting plot threads introduced in the first half of the season, like Spike getting resurrected as a ghost and Angel having a new girlfriend, get resolved a little curtly, almost like they had lots of cool ideas at the start that got forgotten or cast aside later on (a problem that plagued (some might say 'ruined') the last season of Buffy).

The season takes a little while to build up steam, opening with a bunch of 'monster of the week' episodes which, while they aren't that exciting, introduce the new situation and the moral dilemmas the characters are facing this year.

'Soul Purpose' is probably my favorite off the first half. It uses the rivalry between Angel and Spike to great effect, and Angel has some hilarious hallucination scenes while he's in his demon-induced coma. The third to last episode 'The Girl in Question', is a bit of a classic too. Angel and Spike travel to Italy supposedly on business, but really to get Buffy away from her new boyfriend (an old enemy of theirs known as 'The Immortal'). The fact that neither The Immortal or Buffy ever actually make an appearance only enhances the humour (probably an artistic decision based on Sarah Michelle Gellar's unavailability). It nicely closes off the relationship triangle between the three of them.

Then there's the finale. The big confrontation comes out of left field a little too much for my taste (we only learn about the big baddies in the second to last episode). I think a bit more foreshadowing and build-up would have been good. Despite that it holds up pretty well, especially compared to the limp Buffy finale. The final scene is a little vexing though. On one hand it's cool that they go out fighting, but the ambiguity of it all (Do they all get killed? What about the prophecy about Angel?) is a bit frustrating, especially considering that it's the end of the whole Buffy story, at least for now.

Apart from that though, it's a great season, probably the best of the shows run. The character arcs are tied up pretty nicely, except for Angel's. I was a bit surprised that Angelus (Angel's evil alter-ego) didn't show up at all during the season, I thought a confrontation with him would be necessary to properly close off his story, but maybe that just means they're holding out to continue it someday. Well, probably not, but I can hope.

I've got Spurs that Jingle Jangle

System of a Down – B.Y.O.B

I don't normally buy singles, but I got this one for free. I was kind of excited to learn that it had live tracks from this years Big Day Out, and I had vague hopes that it might include Daron playing Sultans of Swing in Auckland. Unfortunately I was disappointed in that respect, as all the tracks seem to be taken from the Australian shows, but they're still pretty decent live tracks.

First up is 'Forest' off of Toxicity. I don't really like the way Serj sings it, but there are some cool crowd sing-a-long parts. Next is 'Prison Song', at the end of which you hear them start to go into 'Roulette'. The first time I heard it I turned around and yelled at the stereo, “Why didn't you play that in Auckland?”, but that mild annoyance aside it's a pretty good version. Lastly there's a kick arse version of 'Sugar', one of their best songs.

One more snark though, the single is almost twenty minutes long, over half the length of the album that B.Y.O.B comes off.

I Have Never Licked a Nipple

Rammstein – Lichtspielhaus

Rammstein's 'Live in Berlin' DVD is one of the best concert DVDs I own, partly because their brand of straight forward heavy metal suits itself superbly to huge arena live performances, but mostly because of their unbelievable stage show. I was hoping they'd release another one with footage from their 'Mutter' tour (seeing as they neglected to come to New Zealand as part of it). Unfortunately 'Lichtspielhaus' isn't a concert DVD, although about a third of it is made of live clips from throughout their career, (which are enough to whet my appetite for their rumoured appearance at the Big Day Out next year).

The rest of the disc contains a music video collection (containing the videos for the singles off all their albums up until 'Mutter'), and a bunch of interviews and 'making of' features for a few of the videos. The interviews are interesting to watch once, and the live footage is pretty cool (but I'd still be more inclined to watch the 'Live Aus Berlin' disc).

The real highlights are the videos. What Rammstein lack in seriousness they make up for with style. The highlights are almost too numerous to mention, but a few of my favorites are 'Sonne', 'Du Reicht So Gut', and 'Seeman'. 'Seeman' has the band dragging a boat through a desert, which doesn't sound that exciting, but it has a really well done mythological ambiance which suits such a sad song perfectly. 'Sonne' is a twisted version of Snow White, complete with Snow White snorting gold dust and a fairly amusing spanking scene. My favorite has to be 'Du Reicht So Gut' though, which is a dark, gothic clip involving werewolves and a hot chick, and that's pretty much all you need to know. There are about ten other videos and they're all pretty good as well (except for the one done for that crappy 'XXX' movie).

Normal Baby Vs. The Remote

Angel Season 3 Part 1

So after the angst and gloom of the last series this one starts out a more upbeat note, with Angel in a good mood and everyone getting along well. Naturally, this state of affairs doesn't last long, Angel's ex Darla shows up pregnant (to Angel), which spells bad news for several different reasons. One, Angel's not supposed to have been having sex with anyone (because it might turn him evil), let alone an evil vampire whose been trying to kill them all for some time, so his friends aren't too impressed. Two, vampires aren't capable of having children, so a whole bunch of mad scientists, crazy religious demons and other varieties of curious maniacs are after it. Wackiness ensues.

There are a few stink episodes. 'Billy', where Angel fights a guy who has the ability to make men attack women, overdoes the allegory by a significant margin, and 'That Old Gang of Mine' feels like it was included just because they had to close off the hanging plot thread of Gunn's old-school vampire fighting backstory.

While the episodes relating to the overarching plot are good enough, but my favorites are a few of the throwaway stand-alone episodes. In 'Carpe Noctem', Angel gets body-swapped by a horny old man. Wackiness ensues. 'Birthday' on the other hand uses a pretty cliched plot, Cordelia gets to see what would happen if she had never met Angel in LA. It's pretty funny seeing her go back to being an obnoxious self-obsessed bimbo, even if the plot is a bit silly. On the DVD they've added a deleted scene of Cordelia's TV show, which I at first thought was a brilliant parody of bland, brainless sitcoms like Friends and couldn't understand why they cut it. Then the commentary revealed that it wasn't actually meant to be a parody, so I guess it's fair enough that they cut it...

The third season is one of the strongest in terms of a consistently planned plot arc (and it's also where the show finally manages to pull out of the shadow of Buffy and stand well on its own), but that doesn't pay off until the second half of the season, (which I won't be watching any time soon, because I just watched all of Season 5 in about two weeks and I'm all Angeled out for now).

It's Si! The Photo Guy!

So I finally got round to watching One Hour Photo the other day. It's directed by Mark Romanek, who did the Closer and Perfect Drug videos for Nine Inch Nails, and the video of Johnny Cash's cover of NIN's Hurt, which are all pretty awesome videos so I had high expectations.

It stars Robin Williams as a lonely guy who works at a One Hour Photo shop and becomes obsessed with the family of one of his customers. It is very well directed, but it suffers from a weak script (which I think Romanek wrote too). The first half is pretty cool, as we meet the central character and see his peculiar behaviour, however in the second half it pretty much devolves into a boring conventional thriller with nothing especially interesting to say. It reminded me quite a bit of this terrible movie 'Strangeland' (written by Dee Snider of Twisted Sister) which I've unfortunately seen twice, and the whole point both movies is pretty much just 'Whoa! Check out this guy! He's CARAAAZZYYYYYYY!"

Hopefully we'll get to see Romanek direct a movie with a better script soon.

They Said it Would Never Happen...

It's pretty big news to me that Pink Floyd are playing at the Live 8 show in Britain (a Live Aid type thing raising money to fight poverty), which will be their first show in about ten years. But on top of that, they'll be rejoined by Roger Waters, who was the major songwriter for behind all their most popular albums and quit the band in the mid 80s.

It's a bit far fetched to think that they're getting back together permanently, or that Pink Floyd in any configuration will be releasing a new album any time soon, but one can dream!

I Help the Hopeless! I'm a Vampire with a Soul!

Buffy Season 6 Part 1

No one liked this season when it first screened. 'Too depressing!', 'Too gloomy!', 'Not enough strained adolescence analogies!', the critics cried. Of course, these same things make it one of my favorite seasons.

For those who aren't obsessive fanboys like me, at the beginning of season 6 Buffy is resurrected from the dead. It turns out that being resurrected isn't just a matter of chucking a Phoenix Down at someone and waiting for them to get back up in the Buffyverse, so there's a whole lot of angst and downbeat melodrama as Buffy tries to get used to living again after spending a few months in the afterlife.

The standout episode is easily the musical. It sounds like a stupid idea (a demon curses the entire town to spontaneously burst into song and dance) but it's done with so much enthusiasm and talent (Joss Whedon wrote all the music and lyrics himself, and the cast did all their own singing) it ends up being one of the best episodes of the shows entire run.

Pretty much everyone liked the musical episode, but then they followed it up with the Nine Inch Nails sounding trilogy of 'Smashed', 'Wrecked' and 'Gone'. The first two are as bleak as they sound, with Willow going nuts from handling too much magic and the other characters having relatively minor crises in the background.

At the same time, there's still a lot of humour going on. In 'Gone' Buffy gets hit by an invisibility ray. And instead of the typical TV plot of spending the whole episode trying to figure out what's happened, Buffy walks in, says “Hey guess what? I've been turned invisible!” and the rest of the show focuses on Buffy fading away from her life (metaphorically of course). I think one of the reasons I like this show so much is the way it mocks normal TV cliches.

The villains of the season are unusual too. Three geeky guys decide to become supervillians, and set about executing a whole bunch of goofy comic book style schemes (freeze rays, using demons to rob a bank). They're comic relief more than serious villains (at least at the start of the season) the real conflict in this seasons story comes from the heroes internal problems. Joss and the other writers obviously know their geeks though, these guys crack me up, and a lot of it is because I know exactly what they're talking about.

The Wildebeest Asylum Brings You this Important Political Message

So the bill to raise the drinking age has passed it's first reading by a margin of 2:1. Some people are confident it won't get much further, but the large number of both Labour and National MPs voting for it makes me think otherwise. After all, it's something that will appeal to both the moral conservatives and the nanny staters alike. (Interesting to see that both ACT and the Greens voted mostly against though.)

In their haste to pander to the shrieking moralisers on both sides of the political spectrum, parliament has neglected the needs of one minority, the single male in their mid-20s. To us, removing all the 18 year old girls from bars would truly be a cruel and heartless act, comparable to beating orphans with a wicker stick, or stealing Christmas. I hope our MPs bear this in mind as they make their decisions in the weeks to come.

Midnight Tides

by Steven Erikson

Your average fantasy novel protagonist is some adolescent chump from a shithole, backwater village. This convention gives the author an excuse to have one of the characters explain every detail of his world to the reader, by way of the protagonist. By contrast, the main characters in Erikson's 'Malazan Book of the Fallen' are almost all supreme badasses, who already know everything about the story's magic system and the worlds history, and never bother explaining anything to one another. The reader is simply dropped into it all, and has to figure out what's going on behind the scenes, in terms of the magic system, the world's history, and even the characters interpersonal relationships (those last two are often one and the same in the case of the older characters), from what's shown 'on-screen'.

There have now been five of these books (each one a 700 page plus behemoth), so by now we have a reasonable handle on how stuff works in the Malazan world, although there are still a lot of mysteries. It's interesting to see that you actually don't need any elaborate explanation of the magic system, since once you've been shown a few sorcerous battles you know how it works practically, and any 'a warren is a conduit of magical power' type explanation is revealed for the Star Trek-esque babble it really is.

The Malazan series will eventually be ten books in length, so it's now halfway through, and already it's huge cast of characters and sprawling plot dwarf the likes of The Wheel of Time. It's a very ambitious series, and it amazes me that Erikson can churn each episode out so fast with such consistently high quality. Midnight Tides starts on the far side of the world from the settings of the previous books, with an almost entirely new cast of characters (this is the second time in the series he's done this). Like the previous books, this one tells a discrete story which is somewhat independent of the rest of the tale, but still fits into the larger plot arc.

The plot is driven by the fractious relations between the rich and powerful kingdom of Lether, and the introverted but sinister Tiste Edur (vaguely analogous to Dark Elves in generic fantasy terms). The Tiste Edur are an old, magical, long lived race, who have mainly minded their own business for the past few millenia, but whose warring tribes have recently been united by the Warlock King, a powerful sorcerer who pretty much has 'hidden agenda' written all over him. The Letherii are their aggressive, expansionistic neighbours to the south, whose debt-oriented capitalism and glorification of greed have given them great power and dominion over almost all other cultures they've come into contact with, but at the price of a large discontented underclass, and providing Erikson with an opportunity to comment not terribly subtly on contemporary real-world politics.

While he made the commentary a bit overt, he still does it well. One of the Crippled God's speeches about the his take on 'honour' and 'loyalty' was particularly memorable and thought-provoking, despite it's obviousness. One of the things I like about the Crippled God as the major villain of the overall series is that he isn't just an evil force that came out of the blue to wreck chaos, his very presence represents the failures and the arrogance of the societies in the Malazan world. He might be an evil bastard, but what Erikson seems to be heading towards is that even if the Crippled God is defeated in a huge cataclysmic battle, (like most epic fantasy villains are), he has a lot to teach his enemies, and if they fail to learn from him, they'll just end up making the same mistakes over and over again.

The cast of characters is typical Erikson, including gods, demons and various kinds of superpowered mortals, but the central characters are two sets of brothers, one family Letherii, the other Tiste Edur, and you'd better believe they're all in for a whole lot of drama, angst, and big monsters exploding.

All of the books in the series have been dark and grim, but this one is even more so than the others. The Edur are all naturally reserved and moody, while the Letherii are part of a particularly unpleasant culture (one that probably seems more unpleasant because it is deliberately an uncharitable reflection of ours). To balance it out, Erikson increases the humour a great deal, but unfortunately chose to place most of it in one plot thread. While the humour is still usually pretty funny, the abrupt change in mood from dark to silly every time there's a scene change doesn't sit well.

But despite this minor criticism, it's just as good as the rest of the series, and I'm looking forward to the next one, due out early next year.

Warning, Crazy Arsed Political Post Ahead

So I read this post over at the Corpuscle the other day, and it got me thinking about separation of church and state. I've always thought it was a good idea, because we want to keep the nutcase Jesus freaks out of government, but after I read that article I started wondering, just what does constitute a religion in this day and age anyway? Are the Green party religious, (their morality often seems derived from a spiritual source)? The National Front? United Future are clearly Christian, but less so than the Destiny Church. There's also the Natural Law Party, very religious but with more in common with the Greens than the Christian Heritage party. Clearly there's a spectrum, but where do we draw the line? George Bush's 'faith based' programs have drawn ire for violating the seperation of church and state, and with fair reason, but if any of the above parties tried to do the same thing (with their own peculiar kinds of faith) for which ones would it be acceptable?

On top of that, the reason I don't like the idea of religion in government has more to do with my dislike of religion than with any objective incompatibility between government and religious ideas (as opposed to say, liberal ideas). I suspect the reason that Thomas Jefferson and his mates enshrined the idea in law was simply because of the practical consideration that religious involvement with government had a long history of corruption and intolerance back in Europe, and they thought it would be a good idea to start their new society without any of that bullshit.

Now this might seem like a trivial concern, and well, it probably is, but it just occurred to me that citing 'separation of church and state' while arguing with a religiously inclined nutbag isn't really a valid argument. Why should their belief in a higher power be treated differently than my beliefs, which are, in the end, derived from a source not much better defined (some scholars might call this source 'my arse'). When it comes down to it, it's still just 'my values vs. yours', and there's no objective reason they should take that argument seriously on it's own with no other justification (other than, of course, that I'm right and they're wrong).

Amusing Observation of the Day

Someone pulling into a car park, seeing another one 5 metres closer to the building entrance, pulling out again and driving to it. At the gym. (No, it wasn't raining).

The Gamers Manifesto

(via These Damned Machines are Killing Me)

A list of 20 things the gaming industry should change about their products as they move on to the next generation of consoles. Damned funny, and damned true.