New Shit

The new Fundy Post blog. Keeping an eye on the loonies back home.

Dan Savage's podcast. Great stuff as long as you're comfortable hearing about diaper fetishes or proper etiquette when contacting a transgendered prostitute while riding the bus or walking to work.

Plus this blog just moved to the new version of blogger. If it eats your pets or murders your family let me know.

American Psycho

by Bret Easton Ellis

A truly great work of art in any medium, be it a novel, a piece of music or a film, can leave you with a feeling that permeates into your day to day life. Most of the time these feelings are happy ones; wonder, hope or belief in the goodness of humankind. Not too many good artists set out to make their audience's lives worse, but some of them do, and those that are good enough produce an experience so unpleasant that it casts an ugly pall over everything you see in the real world afterwards.

And so we have American Psycho, not only do it's unbelievably gory torture scenes pop into your head at inappropriate times (try attending a design meeting at work when images of a woman being tortured by having a car battery attached to her nipples while her eyes are burnt out with a cigarette lighter keep popping into your head), but its whole perspective of modern life as shallow, worthless and without compassion, leaves the reader with a lingering morbid depression.

Of course from an unemotional point of view it's a very good book. I certainly appreciated the clever way it was constructed. Our protagonist, executive and serial killer Patrick Bateman, seems like a normal rich arsehole at the beginning of the book and to start with the story is a goofy black comedy about shallow yuppie idiots. As we make it further through the tale more and more evidence of Bateman's true nature is dropped and the book becomes more and more gruesome. By the halfway point we start getting snippets of Bateman's murders in flashback, and then we begin to see them in more and more detail from a first person perspective. At the same time Bateman's psychosis becomes more and more pronounced, and the novel climaxes in a murder scene so disgustingly gory that I can't even bring myself to mention any of the details here.

All the meanwhile Bateman's idiot colleagues and brainless girlfriends carry on performing the same repetitive running gags (not being able to remember anyone's name correctly, not listening when Patrick tells them to their faces about his crimes) right up to the end. Their unchanging stupidity contrasted against the continually escalating horror scenes makes it seem as though our murderous protagonist is somehow admirable in comparison to them, as he at least realises what a pointless mockery his life is and rages against it (although perhaps killing people in unbelievably horrific ways is not the most ideal way he could have chosen to express himself).

So while it's a very intelligently constructed book it's very hard to read and its bleak theme, that our modern lives are devoid of meaning and that too much leisure and aimlessness is driving us to self-loathing and cruel inhumanity, is not likely to make anyone feel better about themselves for having read it. And yet for some strange reason, I am glad I read it. It made me feel bad at the time but once I'd finished it I felt like I'd learned something or gained something from it. Of course, I fucked if I can explain what that 'something' is...

Behold, The Flying Spaghetti Monster

WTF

I'll never eat McDonalds again:


Oh wait, maybe I will:

Random Observation Of The Day

Kylie Minogue died of cancer over a year ago, but they just kept it quiet and replaced her with computer animation.

Lucifer: Mansions Of The Silence

by Mike Carey

Well it's been a while since I read an instalment of this series and it seems that absence has made me less fond of it than I was. The plot still seems to be going somewhere interesting so I will continue reading it, but without much enthusiasm because the details (little things like the characterisation, dialogue, and art) are fairly plain and uninspired.

The set up for the plot arc of this collection is quite promising. In a fit of loose end tying, all the remaining major characters of the series (save Lucifer himself and a few other exceptions, such as the archangel Michael and, to no great surprise, God) are bundled up on a boat together and given a quest. In a Gaiman-esque detail, the boat is forged by Nordic giants out of the fingernails of dead men, and the quest is to retrieve the soul of a little girl from the afterlife. Sounds pretty cool right? Well unfortunately Carey found a way to retell a soul imperiling journey through the godless nether realm between the worlds of life and death and neglect to include any memorable events of note or exciting encounters. If the best you can do is a bunch black bat people and a wall of thorns, it's probably best to leave this sort of thing to the experts.

Still, the overall series story arc, involving God and Lucifer's competing plans for the universe, has me hooked (plus these things are a quick, easy read) so we shall see if future volumes improve.

Lucifer: Inferno

Lucifer: The Divine Comedy
Lucifer: Children And Monsters and Lucifer: A Dalliance With The Damned
Lucifer: A Devil In The Gateway

Motions That Make Gods Cringe

Dillinger Escape Plan: Plagiarism

Poor old Dillinger Escape Plan. A year or so ago I couldn't stop singing their praises but now, for two reasons, I've gone a bit dark on them. The first is their new EP, Plagiarism. When I first heard about it I was quite excited about the idea of these guys doing a covers album. They have such a fucked up, unique style that I expected them to come up with some interesting reinterpretations of the songs they'd chosen. Sadly, it was not to be.

The EP starts out with the radio edit of their single 'Unretrofied' which is utterly inferior to the album version. It's surprising how just a few small cuts of ambience and interludes can completely neuter a good song.

'Unretrofied' is followed by four covers. Nine Inch Nails' 'Wish', Massive Attack's 'Angel', 'Jesus Christ Pose' by Soundgarden and (for some reason) Justin Timberlake's 'Like I Love You'. There's a lot of potential here. I think all of those songs could have been twisted in interesting ways to match Dillinger's style but unfortunately every version is played more or less completely straight. It is impressive how vocalist Greg Prusciato does bang on impersonations of the voices of Trent Reznor, Justin Timberlake and Chris Cornell, but a cover version that sounds exactly like the original does little to interest me, and it's especially frustrating when a band like Dillinger, whose original material is so distinctive, chooses the easy route.

The last track is a live version of 'The Perfect Design' and it's pretty good. Perhaps they should have released a live EP instead.

Mike Patton And Faith No More Are Awesome

Item #497 in a series:

Soulfly Video Clip

Soulfly at the gig I attended the other weekend:



Don't you think Max looks kind of tired?
Marc is going nuts though...

The Sun Sets Forever...

Opeth: Blackwater Park

I must admit I'm rapidly running out of ways to say how awesome these guys are. Blackwater Park is by common consensus Opeth's masterwork (at least to date) and, with the caveat that I'm still working my way through their back catalogue, I'm not inclined to disagree. The style and tone is much the same as that of Deliverance and Ghost Reveries; melancholy, elegant and heavy. Once again I'm very impressed with Akerfeldt's vocals, no other cookie monster singer I've heard manages to convey as much emotion as he does while growling. The truth is that I could go on fellating this guy for paragraphs, his guitar solos are always brilliant, and his songwriting is even better. One of the things I find so great about Opeth's songs is the way that every riff and passage segues perfectly into the next. Each song comes across as a wholly conceived piece where every part has it's meaning in the greater context.

Blackwater Park starts strongly and only gets better as it progresses. Every track has something special to recommend it as a candidate for 'most brilliant song ever', 'The Leper Affinity' is a good album opener, and is notable for a beautiful extended piano outro. 'Harvest' is probably the best acoustic ballad they've ever done, 'The Drapery Falls' has a haunting, sad main riff that will stay in your brain for days and 'Blackwater Park', the finale, just fucking rocks out more and more before culminating in one of the most powerful album climaxes I've ever heard. However I think my favourite track is 'Bleak', which manages to pack excellent examples of every style of Opeth's writing into nine too short minutes. Moody gothic passages, heavy metal, quiet peaceful interludes and a surprisingly catchy chorus. It's definitely a good place to start with these guys, and if you've never heard them before then your homework for this week is to listen to this album.

How To Make A Truly Realistic Computer Game

At Curmudgeon Gamer.

Speed Dating

Ever get tired of spending a long time getting to know someone only to be rejected? Ever wish there was a way to simplify and streamline the elaborate social rituals of meeting new people? If so then speed dating might just be for you! Now you can save time by being rejected by up to a dozen people in a few short hours! Recommended for everyone looking to lose a whole lot of excess self esteem.

Random Search Phrases

People have used the following terms to get to my blog:

"balding retaining widow's peak"
"wildebeest catfight artist"
"is there a song called stuck in your eyes?"
"you're still alive of course i'm alive no one can defeat me"
"the great singer jhon cash"
"chloroformed sleep video"
"falling out of my top"
"starfuckers britney comic"
"tequila and gatorade"
"good old fucking"
"buffy his sex slave"

and one that makes me feel this whole blog thing is worthwhile:

"midnight tides review steven erikson capitalism"

...possibly the first searcher who has found exactly what they were looking for (and it wasn't something dirty or inane).

N.B. forgive typos. Been speed dating. Very drunk.

A Virgin Whore In A Dirty Wedding Dress

Lamb of God: Sacrament

Smart enough to be interesting and relevant, rock 'n roll enough to satisfy an urge for a good hard munt, Lamb of God are a solitary example of decent American metalcore in a sea of shite. Sacrament, their newest album, is somewhat of an attempt to break into the mainstream (based on its more catchy nature when compared to their earlier singles that I've heard). Even though it doesn't have the more aggressively 'mathy' (there's another term I hate) aspect of their older stuff, there's still enough of it to make things interesting, in a way they're kind of like a poppy Meshuggah. But aside from that twist it's pretty much just straight up, catchy metal.

It's brilliant for the most part, the highlights are 'Redneck' (with its must watch video) and 'Blacken the Cursed Sun' (which I mentioned when writing about their live show), but there's unfortunately some filler to be found on this album and the mood is pretty much monotonic, so it's best to listen to it in small doses rather than all at once.

The Wildebeest Asylum Saves The World

Looks like some important economists listened to what I had to say about climate change.

Fables: Legends in Exile

by Bill Willingham

The Fables graphic novel series has been produced for a few years on the Vertigo label, also home to the Sandman and Lucifer series'. Fables has a similar sort of premise to those other titles, only instead of mythological figures the protagonists are the inhabitants of European fairy tales, Snow White, Bluebeard, The Big Bad Wolf and so on. These characters have been exiled from their traditional fictitious homelands by a malevolent evil force (left fairly mysterious in this volume), and now reside incognito in New York City.

In this first collection Snow White (with the help of The Big Bad Wolf) investigate the disappearance and suspected murder of her sister Rose Red. The story is a clever enough murder mystery, and there are plenty of cute uses of the fairy tale setting. However while the mythological inhabitants of 'Sandman' or 'Lucifer' invite plenty of allegorical resonance, it's hard to do the same with fairy tale characters, as they're fundamentally shallower. Unless of course you do something like the Alan Moore 'Lost Girls' route and explicitly modernise them, but that's a post for another time...

The Saturday Lesson

Gay dudes don't like it when you move in on their fag hags.

This Is The Place We Have To Go... To DIIIIIIIIEEEEEEE!!!!

Mayhem: De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Black Metal? Brutal grimy blast beats? Stupid facepaint? Or a bunch of maniacs running around Norway burning down churches? For most people with a partial knowledge of the genre it's the latter. Now meet Mayhem; the band more or less singlehandedly responsible for establishing this reputation. I recommend their wikipedia page for a run down on their general shenanigans. It's a good read, I laughed all night.

This particular album marks the last release of their 'classic' lineup. The only member remaining in the band after the release of the album was the drummer, Hellhammer, the others being respectively dead by suicide, murdered with a knife and in jail for murdering his fellow band member with a knife.

Although their music is broadly similar to death metal, when compared to the likes of Cryptopsy this album is much slower and less technically impressive and also very low-fi. The vocals too are completely different, rather than a death metal scream stand in singer Attila Csihar's voice (original singer Dead being, uh, dead) is more of a gurgle. For these reasons I wouldn't have expected to like it a lot but for some reason I can't get enough of this shit. Maybe it's just because I get a kick out of knowing that my music is being played by genuine honest to god homicidal maniacs, or maybe it's just because playing with balls to the wall insanity counts for as much as technical wizardry or amazing songwriting.

A Gigantic Queue For A Gigantic Tour

Gigantour: Sydney 22 October 2006

This Sunday past I was counted among a fearsome throng of bogans, munters and generally feral metal heads that descended on the quiet Hordern Pavilion for a night of vigorous moshing, guttural screaming and wanky guitar solos. Young and old alike were united in their desire to drink too much beer and get covered in one another's sweat. It was time for Megadeth's Gigantour, not quite as big as the U.S. version (I would have wet myself if Opeth had stayed on for the Australian bill as well), but it was still one of the most metal-mungus nights out I've ever had.

The lineup was Caliban, Arch-Enemy, Soulfly and Megadeth. Due to a long wait in the line to get inside, I only caught the last two songs of Caliban's set. The parts of their performance that I caught were good, although their last song contained some ill-advised misadventures into balladry.

Caliban

They were followed by Arch-Enemy, who started seriously rocking out immediately with some catchy 80s style thrash but even though it sounded great I wasn't paying any real attention until a song or two into the set, when I finished my important business in the drinks queue. “Ha! Their singer looks just like a chick!” I laughed when I first got a look at the stage. I then performed several consecutive mental double takes as I realised that the brutal death metal grunts were being produced by the little blonde chick on the stage. I don't know if I'd enjoy Arch-Enemy so much recorded, as thrash isn't really my thing, but live these guys rock out something awesome, best set of the night.

Arch-Enemy

Featuring Small But Loud Blonde Chick

Next up, Soulfly! The band I was there to see. Unfortunately I don't have many photos of them as I spent almost the entire set deep in the moshpit excising some existential rage. I have to say that even though they were good, the band seemed to be kind of tired. I suspect that (considering that Prophecy and Dark Ages came out quickly in succession) the Sydney show was the second to last date in a very very long touring schedule. Even though their musicianship was stellar, they didn't quite bring the fire that I was hoping for. Of course they were still great, Marc Rizzo in particular was totally amazing. His flamenco guitar solo during 'Mars' was easily the highlight of the night. It was just a pity that my enjoyment of it kept getting interrupted by a bunch of munters trying to open a circle pit that they didn't even use properly. Some day I'll have to get around to writing a post on moshpit etiquette. Having said that, any lack of energy on the bands part was more than compensated by a what was for the most part a fun, enthusiastic moshpit.

Max Cavalera does this cool thing where he goes all blurry

The setlist was very much a greatest hits kind of deal (Disclaimer: this list is pulled mostly out of my mosh addled arse and is probably highly inaccurate):

Dark Ages
Babylon
Prophecy
Roots Bloody Roots
Seek and Strike
Jumpdafuckup
Mars
Chaos A.D.
Execution Style
Porrada
Arise Again
Back to the Primitive
An Eye For An Eye

Marc Rizzo: Hey, it's hard to take photos in a moshpit

Finally, Megadeth. To be honest, I couldn't have bought to mind a single bar of this bands music before the show began, but within a few songs it was apparent that a passing knowledge of generic 80s thrash is more than enough to make one familiar with Megadeth's music. They were decent performers, handled a competent wank solo or two and Dave Mustaine's intersong banter was at least somewhat witty and went a long way towards improving my opinion of him (at least after putting up with those idiots from Killswitch Engage last week). They also really rocked out while playing 'Holy War'. It's interesting to see how some bands manage to turn their most popular songs into a chore to be gone through at every show and others (such as Mustaine and Cavalera) can still do them justice even though they've had to play them every other night of their lives for ten years. It must be hard to tour for months and months and still bring passion to your music when performing every other night is your 9 to 5 job, so I guess it's understandable when not every set is a scorcher, and when a smaller band like Arch-Enemy outrocks a bigger (and better, at least on record) band like Soulfly.

Somehow it figures that the only decent picture I took all night was of Megadeth

Wildebeest Asylum Special: Fashion DOs and DON'Ts

Based on my observations at the industrial club thing I went to last night:

• 40 years of age + somewhat chubby ass + incredibly tight leather pants = Fashion DON'T

• Pot belly + saggy man tits + tight see through mesh top = Fashion DON'T

• Incredibly hot chicks + dreadlocks + kinky PVC outfits = Fashion DO

Concert Clashes

January 24th:
Tool
Muse

January 25:
Big Day Out
Roger Waters

Does anyone have a cloning machine I can borrow?

Can You Smell The Fear?

Cryptopsy: Once Was Not

I've had this album for a couple of months now and I'm still not sure if it's brilliant or merely good. Earlier (in the context of writing about Rob Zombie's movies) I suggested that Cryptopsy were inferior to Opeth because their music, while impressive in some respects, was shallow and one-dimensional. I'm now prepared to take that statement back; while one-dimensional (they do only do more or less one style of music), it's completely unfair to call them shallow.

The sheer insane assault of their music is enough to confuse even the most open minded of listeners. As well as having the standard death metal full speed thrashing, their spastic, 'technical' (I hate that term) riffs and rhythms take things to a truly astounding level of controlled chaos. The drummer, Flo Mounier, deserves special mention, his combinations of Fantomas-like fills and freaky time signatures, done at typically absurd death metal tempos is frankly face-meltingly amazing. The vocalist, who goes by the title Lord Worm, makes up for having an uninspiring death metal voice by being an excellent lyricist. The subject matter may be standard death metal cheese, but it's very eloquently phrased:

One last
perfect night of Life on Earth,
I saw
a pestilence descend on wings
plague black,
as it rode the ancient Star Wind:
there are
things more horrible than death

Nice.

Given that I've been on a solid diet of Opeth and Tool for most of the year it's not surprising that Cryptopsy didn't grab me when I first heard them, as they completely lack those bands melody based musicianship. However if you approach them as a band out to make the most completely fucking insane noise imaginable, they can't be surpassed. I expect to grow more fond of these guys, as I'm getting more into the album with each listen, but for now, crazy fucking noise alone doesn't make for more than an enjoyable diversion.

It's Big It's Heavy It's Wood

In a random fit of restlessness I flipped out and paid a scalper far too much money for an Unearth/Lamb of God/Killswitch Engage ticket. The band I was interested in seeing, Lamb of God, were pretty good but overall the show wasn't worth what I paid for it.

Impressions and shaky digital camera photos follow:

Based on the two songs of theirs that I caught, Unearth sound pretty much the same as Lamb of God. I hadn't heard them before and was interested but not as interested as I was in the drinks queue.

Lamb of God rocked out quite satisfactorily. A good mix of old and new stuff (their older stuff sounds a lot more fucked up than their new album, I may have to pick some of it up). They performed with ferocity and got the moshpit fairly intense towards the end of their set. I was stoked to hear them play 'Blacken the Cursed Sun', which is pretty much the reason I decided to go, just for the awesome call and response at the end:

Can we still be saved? (Hell No!)

Does your God hold a place for us? (Hell No!)

Is there time to repent? (Hell No!)

Will we rise from the dead? (Hell No!)

Can these sins even be forgiven? (Hell No!)

I was into it but the response from the audience could have been better.

Then it was time for Killswitch Engage. I honestly couldn't have named a single one of their songs before the start of their set, but thirty seconds in I picked them as the author of numerous shitty second rate nu-metal anthems that I am tormented with weekly in the local metal clubs.

I would just leave it at those few words of disdain if it weren't for their atrociously retarded between song banter. “Dude this stuff you're throwing up on stage isn't like, made of loads of money!” apparently plays well to the brainless 'just graduated from emo to nu-metal' crowd, but to anyone not giggly on account of their being at their first ever concert with actual beer in little plastic cups and sweaty fat old guys with mullets and West Coast Chopper t-shirts it makes you embarrassed to be listening. And I guess that goes double for Killswitch's music as well.

Scary Animal Photo Of The Day

Sorry Bob, couldn't find any truly gory photos.

Cute Animal Photo Of The Day

There Is A Day That Is Dawning

Opeth: Deliverance

Some bands are constantly changing and progressing their style. Others just do one thing and do it very well. Opeth are definitely one of the latter. In terms of style there is little to differentiate Deliverance from Ghost Reveries or Blackwater Park, it's still the same crunchy heavy metal outside with a delicious prog rock centre. Deliverance lacks the slick production of its successor Ghost Reveries (the first to be released on a major label, the munt-tastic Roadrunner Records) but that's easily ignored because the quality of the writing and musicianship is as stellar as ever.

The acoustic guitars make fewer appearances on this album than on others, due to it being released as part of a two disc set with Damnation, which is in turn almost entirely distortionless. Deliverance still contains one short acoustic song 'For Absent Friends', and 'A Fair Judgement' alternates slow, heavy parts with pretty, mournful ones to relate a sad tale of loss. The opening track, 'Wreath', isn't their best work, but the album ends with 'Master's Apprentices', a perfect example of heavy done heavy, and 'By The Pain I See In Others', in which they exercise their more trippy, moody side (while still remaining loud and growly).

Deliverance is not their best album. It's still fantastic but Ghost Reveries, Blackwater Park and maybe even Damnation are better. Still absolutely everyone must have this album for one very good reason. You may have heard that the end of 'Deliverance' (the song) is something special but it simply cannot be overstated just how awesome it is. The last five minutes of the song, the outro and it's leadup is an example of Mikael Akerfeldt's songwriting at its finest. At about the ten minute mark the song suddenly drops into a monotonously chugging, menacing riff, flies off into a glorious guitar solo and then descends into a peaceful acoustic part, over which Mikael sings “Deliverance, thrown back at me. Deliverance, laughing at me.” It will give you chills when you know what's coming next. The solo guitar riff that introduces the outro is fairly innocuous when you consider just how much it will stay in your head once you've heard the song a few times, but when the whole band kicks in to join it, anyone who's paying attention can do nothing but stand with their jaws hanging open and their underwear growing moister with each bar of glorious syncopated goodness.

In honour of this truly worthy contribution to art, culture and civilisation I am presenting Opeth with the very first Wildebeest Asylum Award for Excellence:

Well done boys. You've earned it.

1001 Albums – Number 2

Elvis Presley: Elvis Presley

Well it's only taken me six months but I finally got round to listening to some more of the stuff in this book. The delay is of course a natural consequence of my extreme and visceral dislike of the first album on the list; Frank Sinatra's In The Wee Small Hours.

Fortunately Elvis has impressed me a hell of a lot more than old Frank. Listening to this record (probably one the of the first real rock and or roll albums) in contrast to Sinatra gives an insight into just what made rock music so popular and revolutionary in comparison to the pop music that preceded it. While Elvis is pretty tame stuff by today's standards, you can still hear in the lyrics many of the techniques used by songwriters in any rock genre from indie to black metal, such as smutty innuendo and threats of violence.

Yes I must admit that I enjoyed this album. It will probably never be a regular feature on my playlist but I do appreciate its upbeat energy as a contrast to my normal musical diet and I was also very surprised by just how more impassioned Elvis is when compared to Sinatra or even to today's kings of the middle-of-the-road snooze-a-thon such as The Killers or Jet. Elvis had more balls in his little finger than either of those bands do in their collective testicles. Even if he does seem twee in some respects by modern standards, he at least sang like he meant it and not like an actor reciting melodramatic bullshit while knowingly winking at the audience the whole time.

What To Do With A Problem Like Korea?

Cross your fingers and hope the Chinese sort something out. (via No Right Turn)

Down The Stairs On To The Street And Into Traffic

Einsturzende Neubauten: Unglaublicher Laern

It's a little hard to keep up with Neubauten releases now that they're using a fan subscription based distribution model, based around two separate websites, which is why it's taken me over a year to get around to this particular album.

I've also somehow managed to miss getting the full story behind the recording of this album, but I do know that it involved an 'installation' in a small room and extraordinarily loud volumes. The album is an hour long continuous ambient noise piece and is almost completely amusical; no rhythm, no structure and only the occasional nod to tonality. But as long as you're prepared to handle that it's another excellent release from these guys. The music is a kind of found sound collage, which ranges in tone from noise done noisy to more gentle interludes. I found it captivating listening, but to someone not interested in industrial it would almost certainly be just another 'washing machine falling down the stairs' album.

I Only Just Found Out

that Isis made a music video for one of the greatest songs ever written.

Five Things I Hate About Sydney

5. The heat.

4. The poodles with painted toenails.

3. The indie rock.

2. The pink shirts on straight guys

1. The fact that everyone here, whether they are the most dedicated drum and bass nut or the trve-ist black metal psycho loves Kylie Minogue.

Worse Than John Howard

The second thing I've read to cause me to grind my teeth today.

I mean, Tool. There had better be something good on another stage when Tool are playing. Rarely has a band been better named than Tool. Lumbering, po-faced boys' music that lets squares kid themselves they're being edgy, that's what Tool is.

Okay, the Killers will be good, but Muse? Does anybody really like Muse? I seem to recall offering them some advice from the stands when they played in 2004: give up you pretentious bastards, or something of that order.

My Chemical Romance? Undeniably hot. The Violent Femmes? If it's to be rock reunions, I'll take the Lemonheads, thanks: that eponymous new album really is a beaut.

People who listen to My Chemical Romance deserve to be shot. End of story.

This Shit Really Fucks Me Off

By which I'm referring to this shit here.

John Howard is attempting to deflect attention from the fact that committing Australia to the war in Iraq was a stupid and ignorant blunder by attempting to stir up fear amongst conservative country folk about the evil cabal of liberal city dwellers who are going to surrender to Osama Bin Laden, turn your daughter into a lesbian and make you marry a dude.

What Do You Think?

Incredibly cool or incredibly stupid?


Can you even tell what it is without prompting?

That Man's Voice Is Scary

Riders On The Storm

by John Densmore

In a sensible, rational world Jim Morrison would not be nearly as cool as he his. A junkie who was obsessed with death, and dead by twenty seven, and by most accounts a total asshole to boot, he's nevertheless remembered as one of the twentieth century's greatest musicians simply because he was able to skilfully channel his darkness into song. His voice on songs like 'The End' gives chills every time because he evokes the universally human fear and fascination with death, rendered more poignant because now it is coming from beyond the veil. No one seems to be able to explain just why he headed on such a morbid, self-destructive path, but judging from the two autobiographies written by the other members of The Doors he was one of those rare larger than life figures who sucked everyone in with their charismatic aura. Both Ray Manzarek and John Densmore's books are ostensibly autobiographies, but are more about Jim than their authors. It gives the impression that they've lived in his shadow their entire adult lives.

It's interesting to compare the two books. They both tell more or less the same story, with many of the same anecdotes (and no contradictions as far as I could tell, not like those clowns Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and broadly agreeing on their assessments of Jim's character. The books differ superficially in the style of writing, while Manzarek is flowery and pretentious Densmore is sober and succinct, a contrast that matches predictably with their instruments of choice. More interestingly they differ greatly when sermonising on what the philosophy behind The Doors really was. Manzarek offers a predictably hippy interpretation, about hope for the future and 'Breaking On Through'. Densmore's moral is far darker, claiming that The Doors were about death, darkness and the blues, in counterpoint to the prevailing life affirming hippydom of the time. In this context Jim Morrison's decline and demise is the logical conclusion to such a philosophy; the confluence of sex, drugs, general hedonism and death. A warning both to the pollyanna flower children, reminding them of the myopic nature of their beliefs, and to those of a darker disposition, reminding them of the sad futility of a life of nihilism.

Perhaps it's my own myopic nihilism speaking but I greatly preferred Densmore's book. Not only is his message more grounded and balanced but his style of writing is far more personally affecting. Manzarek often seems to be putting a glossy sheen on the story, as if he is more concerned about preserving the legend of Jim Morrison and The Doors than in truly describing what it was like. Densmore's writing may be blunt and workman like but it is also touchingly honest, and although it ends on an incredibly grim note, pairing Jim Morrison's death with Densmore's brother's suicide, the final message is a very positive one, in which he learns from the mistakes of the dead and puts their shades behind him. It's far more genuine and worthwhile conclusion than Manzarek's flower power clichés.

First Big Day Out 2007 Announcement

Well after last years shit fest it looks like I shall be attending the ball this year, on account of must-see headliners Tool and Muse. The rest of the lineup is another train wreck in progress however. Peaches is cool but as for the rest... The Killers, My Chemical Romance, Jet, Violent Femmes, Scribe... could they have picked worse bands? Personally I'm still holding out for Paris Hilton...

What I Did On My Long Weekend Part 2

A pleasant trip to the countryside...

Unexpectedly turns into a life or death confrontation between man and nature!

The result:
Bird: 1

Humans: 0

 

What I Did On My Long Weekend Part 1

A day at the races

Lots of wind + lots of beer = bad hair day

Lots of wind + lots of boofy dresses = lots of drunken photos that won't be published here

 

It's All About Rolling Things Up

We [Heart] Katamari

I never played the original Katamari Damacy game. It's rave reviews made me very interested in doing so, but alas as far as I could tell not a single copy ever made it to the South Island. Fortunately more recently I finally got my hands on a copy of the sequel, and as it was the only PS2 game I had with me for several weeks I gave it a serious amount of play time.

The first thing that grabs the player about this game is the goofy Japanese style. The art is incredibly brightly coloured and cartoony, the music is infectiously upbeat and the story is goofy and fun, belied only slightly by a few macabre overtones. In the first game the story was that the King of the Universe accidentally removed all the stars from the sky and you had to replace them by collecting items from Earth and rolling them up into a big ball; the titular Katamari. In the sequel the King (a vain and obnoxious monarch) is enjoying all the attention he's been getting since the first game came out (it's all very meta) and sends you out on various Katamari related missions in order to please his fans.

The game is very charming and is made more so by the twisted nature of Katamari creation. To start with you pick up small objects (household waste and insects) and you gradually get bigger and bigger, uprooting animals, people and buildings, until you get so huge that you can pick up entire cities in one go. The seeming disinterest of the King and the fans in the fact that creating a Katamari usually involves the wholesale destruction of entire civilisations is part of the game's perverse charm.

The gameplay itself is incredibly addictive in that way that only very simple games are. The Katamari is controlled entirely by the two analog sticks on the gamepad and this makes for a very fluid, intuitive game. The combination of relaxing, simple gameplay and the sheer glee you get from driving an almighty vehicle of destruction through city streets absorbing everything in your path means that it's easy to spend a lot of time on this game. Still everything wears out it's welcome after a while and I've more or less stopped playing it by now as once you've gotten as big as you can a few times there isn't much more to see. However it's a good 'pick up and play' game so I expect I'll pull it out every now and again in the future.

Always Falling Down The Same Stairs

Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones

Ever notice how solidly console video game controllers are built? It's a tradition left over from the 8 and 16 bit era. Many were the NES and Mega Drive controllers hurled at great force toward the TV screen back in the Travaglia household in the early nineties. The TV might get damaged, the controller cord might be ripped out of the console and cause all of your saved games to be lost, but the controller itself always remained perfectly functional. “Maybe you should go play outside for a while,” my dad would suggest.

“Motherfucker piece of shit cocksucker Ecco the motherfucking dolphin!” I would reply.

The era of two day gaming marathons spent patiently chipping away at some diabolically inclined side scroller is long past for me, but I'm sure many of you still remember the source of all the anguish: the genre known as the fucking platform game. Today's gaming industry has forgotten the traditional platformer, as gamers nowadays don't have the tolerance (or the anal retentiveness) for such titles, so I was surprised when they revived the Prince of Persia series. The first entry in the new series, 'Sands of Time', was a critical success but a commercial failure (an all too common misfortune for good games). The publisher Ubisoft responded by sexing up the sequel, 'Warrior Within', with more mature content (and of course when we say 'mature' we mean marketed towards horny teenagers instead of preteens). As much as the gaming intelligentsia derided this stupid need to appeal to the fourteen year old boy demographic (and the twenty-somethings with the buying habits of fourteen year old boys demographic) it seemed to work. I never played any of the games in the series (except for a very brief go at 'Warrior Within') but the latest instalment, 'The Two Thrones', came free with my new video cards (so I now have two copies, maybe I should have a competition and give one away) and I gave it a whirl.

It turned out to be great fun. The frustrating game mechanics of its old school forebears have been rethought and improved. Platformers have traditionally suffered from a tendency for a single false move to send your character over a cliff to instant death and back to a save point you passed ten minutes ago (if you were lucky enough to have a life left). The new Prince of Persia game still has fundamentally the same game concept: lots of jumping, climbing, swinging, swordfighting and general swashbuckling (only now in 3D), but the obnoxious frequency with which you plummet to an untimely death has been reduced by some nice innovations which also make the gameplay more fun. For example your character will never slip off a platform just because you pushed the controller in the wrong direction. Unless you specifically tell him to jump he will always catch the edge of the platform and allow you to get back on. Maintaining direction while jumping is no longer required, as the game automatically points you toward the nearest valid target and you merely have to worry about the timing and the choice of technique used to get to your destination. It probably sounds like they've made it too easy but it's more that they've stripped away the frustrating fiddly stuff and just left the aspects of platform jumping that actually made those old games fun. You still die often but another nice gameplay gimmick they've introduced in this series is the sands of time, a special power that the Prince has to reverse time (up to a maximum of six times before being recharged), so if you make a mistake a quick button tap pulls the Prince back up out of the bottomless pit so you can have another go. Invaluably handy in a game with arbitrary fixed save points.

The story also warrants a bit of a mention. While predictable, cheesy and full of fun historical trivia (did you know that Babylon was the capitol of Persia?) it is presented much better than the embarrassing efforts of most of it's peers and even contains an interesting plot hook in the form of the Dark Prince. The Dark Prince is the protagonist's evil alter-ego (bought to life by a magic spell gone awry, of course), and as the plot unfolds the Prince periodically transforms physically between his two forms (with different abilities and weaknesses for the player to contend with). It's kind of clever how the protagonist's two identities represent his different personalities in the two games preceding, but to no great surprise the writers naturally avoid any chance to turn this into a compelling allegory and keep things firmly in the 'cackling villain' mould of dramatic conflict. Still, even the fact that a video game contained the potential for an interesting story is heartening.

The game itself is great fun to play and manages to recapture that exuberant platforming fun that us oldies are too slow and decrepit to slog away at for hours and hours any more. Just one caveat. The PC port is jerky and buggy, you're probably better off getting a console version if you can.

NEEEEEEEEEEEEEERD!

I took the geek test too:



I only got 34.51677% though.

Via Joel

Random Shit

A fun flash game: Flow

Only on the internet: Lowtax gets the shit bashed out of him by Uwe Boll

Both via Penny Arcade

Lost

Just finished watching the second season of Lost the other day. The show has received a bit of a critical backlash recently, but that was more or less inevitable given the enthusiastic fellatio it received during it's first year. Even though I thoroughly enjoyed the first season I was not ignorant of it's faults, so when it started to founder this year I neither surprised or disappointed.

Despite a pretty dull midseason slump the season started and ended quite strongly. They did a great job of resolving last year's cliffhanger, and both satisfied our desire to learn what was in that fucking hatch and set up a new mystery to keep us engaged for the new season (what happens when the timer in the hatch runs out). The new mystery didn't work as well as it should have because we all knew that the writers wouldn't let it run out until this year's finale, but at least when they did they did it in a clever way; by showing it during a flashback.

Speaking of which, they need to get rid of the damn flashback gimmick, or at least to stop using it every episode. They were great in the first season but the only one I found interesting this year was the Scottish guys one in the last episode, which was admittedly pretty cool.

The actual cliffhanger for this year isn't nearly as compelling as last years, I'm very curious to see what happens to Michael and Walt, as they seem to have been given a chance to be rescued, and also because I'm a sucker for 'good man forced into incredibly shameful acts' stories. Somehow I don't think they'll be getting very far, Walt is the kid with Magic Spooky Powers and I doubt that the bad guys would just let him go so easily after going out of their way to kidnap him in the first place. The other dangling plot threads are not so interesting. I'm a little bored of watching the bad guys play games with the protagonists and I suspect that whatever they find at their lair won't be particularly exciting. At any rate, we'll find out in a few weeks when season three starts in the US.

Before The Bourbon Kicked In

Placebo – Live In Concert

Ah Placebo. Few other bands are so frustratingly adept at failing to deliver. They're great songwriters but when it comes to performance, whether live or on CD, they always seem to not be giving it their best. I last saw them in concert at the Big Day Out 2001. Their set was professional and I doubt anyone would have walked out thinking it was poor, but five years on the only thing I remember about it is their performance of 'Black-Eyed', which I did particularly enjoy, and some obnoxious random teenybopper asking me to let her sit on my shoulders. They then proceeded to be blown right off the stage by Rammstein, a band that could never be accused of delivering a forgettable show.

Nevertheless I'm sure these guys at least have the potential to give a great concert so I dutifully headed down to the Hordern this Thursday past to give them another chance. The opening act was The Howling Bells, who I had never heard and in fact have still never heard because I was distracted by a sudden craving for an inappropriate amount of bourbon (see previous post). Placebo themselves were better than the last time I saw them. At times they showed the same lack of passion but at others they quite sufficiently managed to rock the fuck out on the loud songs and to touch my alcohol sodden heart on the soft ones. There was also a really good crowd in attendance. Placebo are really past their prime in terms of popularity so for once I got to attend a big concert that was more or less devoid of munters and bimbos who are only there to brag to their friends about it at school the next day. Still too many emo kids around mind you. Anyway it was a good audience with most people dancing and enjoying themselves, a sight that is regrettably rare to come by at big concerts.

The setlist (to the best of my recollection):

Meds

Infra-Red

Drag

Because I Want You To

Bionic

Sleeping With Ghosts

Black-Eyed

Song To Say Goodbye

Every You Every Me

Follow The Cops Back Home

Special Needs

One Of A Kind

Special K

The Bitter End

-

Running Up That Hill

-

Twenty Years

They suffered from the same old lack of vitality on probably about half the songs. 'Song To Say Goodbye' in particular didn't meet my expectations, but they seemed to gain momentum as the set went on. 'Special Needs' was very heartfelt and 'One Of A Kind' was delivered with a lot of guts. Placebo's specialty is a kind of melancholy romanticism and when you get a whole concert full of people singing their hearts out to that kind of music it's one of the best kinds of shared experiences. The highlight of the concert was 'Sleeping With Ghosts' which achieved exactly what I just described. The lowlight was the two one song encores. What's with that?

So in spite of (and probably because of) a few real highlights Placebo are still a frustrating band. They could easily be so much better!

The Friday Lessons

Bourbon is not my friend.

Four dollars of sushi is not a proper dinner.

I seem to have developed a thing for girls with sleeve tattoos. Not sure when or how this happened.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – B-Sides and Rarities

Three discs full of Nick Cave for $30 could never be a bad deal, but I think that your money to satisfaction ratio would probably be bettered by a purchase of Abattoir Blues or Murder Ballads. I probably just had my expectations raised too high by a few b-sides albums that were easily as good as the rest of the bands output by the likes of Muse and System of a Down.

There are a few real gems in this collection, such as a stellar acoustic performance of 'The Mercy Seat' and 'Time Jesum Transeuntum Et Non Riverentum' and 'Little Ghost Song', a pair of sad, haunting songs. Most of the tracks I like come from the third disc, betraying my preference for Cave's later stuff. Most of the other enjoyable songs are silly but entertaining tracks that keep things lively, such as 'There's No Night Out In The Jail', which is pretty much about what the title says, and 'God's Hotel', which has a lot of fun with variations on repetitions of the things that you don't find in heaven.

But the majority of songs on this collection are b-sides for a reason. Even the good ones lack that vital coincidence of design that would make them as transcendently beautiful as the best tracks of Cave and co's other albums.

Pitchfork Media...

Give the new Justin Timberlake album 8.1/10. Death of culture imminent.

Viva la revolucion! One glorious day the blood of the martyrs shall wash away this stain on civilisation!

Fighting For The People's New Free World

Kronos Quartet – Black Angels

Given all the cringe worthy attempts at protest music that the soft cocked mainstream losers that call themselves the rock and roll of today have given us over the last couple of years, it's just as well classical music is around to do it right.

The majority of Black Angels' running time consists of performances of Shostakovitch's Quartet No.8 and the titular composition by modern composer George Crumb. Crumb's piece is a reaction to the Vietnam war and as is appropriate for a historical event which casts such an unpleasant and shameful cloud over today's world the music itself is disquieting to say the least. The abrupt, brutal start of Dillinger Escape Plan's Miss Machine is nothing compared to this albums opening, which with no warning drops violins shredding tritones at high volume and pitch; a great early morning workout for your ears. It's not most people's cup of tea but nevertheless if you have a tolerance for avant-garde unpleasantness its a great performance.

Shostakovich's Quartet is in contrast far more listenable, like 'Black Angels' it is a requiem for those who died in a war, in this case for the huge loss of life suffered by the Russians in World War 2. I've never listened to Shostakovitch before but I found this piece very beautiful and I can see why he's so highly regarded.

In between these two performances are a couple of shorter pieces. 'Spem in Alium' ('Sing and Glorify') is a very old baroque piece inspired by the biblical story of Judith. The peacefulness of this work is a very well chosen contrast to the violence of 'Black Angels' which precedes it. 'Doom. A Sigh' is another avant-garde modern piece, based on recordings of an obscure brand of traditional Romanian music that was wiped out by the Soviets in the communist era. Finally there's 'They Are There!', a World War 1 era patriotism song reworked into a sarcastic repudiation of jingoism. 'Spem in Alium' I like a lot, whereas the other two are a bit too avant-garde for me, but still don't detract from the album as a whole.

And there you have it. One antiwar album, no simplistic comparisons of George Bush to Hitler, no embarrassingly stupid politics and best of all no fucking Green Day.

I Am Pleased

David Farrar uses the correct term. I think it's the first blog post I've seen to use the term 'Islamist' instead of the meaningless buzzword 'Islamofascism'.

Eyeing Little Girls With Bad Intent

Jethro Tull – Aqualung

As a wise man once told me, “Jethro Tull isn't the kind of thing you want to listen to a lot, but when you do feel like it you'll be really glad you have it.” When people say these kinds of things to me I usually just nod and smile.

Jethro Tull's album Aqualung fits right in with a bunch of other famous British albums from the late 60s and early 70s such as Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, The Beatles' White Album and a whole bunch of Led Zeppelin's stuff, made at a time when rock music was just starting to expand musically and thematically, but before it became arrogant and pretentious.

Like a lot of those albums Aqualung is an ambitious concept album, using the tale of a lonely old hobo in order to criticise Christianity. In contrast to the weighty concept the music has a pleasant 60s folksiness. It seems very simple when measured against all the Opeth I've been listening to recently, but the more 'complicated' music you listen to the more appreciative you become of simplicity. Even with simple arrangements and a straightforward approach there's some nice, evocative stuff on this album.

Jethro Tull's only gimmick is leadman Ian Anderson's flute playing, which actually works very well in the context of this kind of music, and it's a bit of a surprise that other bands haven't tried it. Like all good classic rock albums there's plenty of flashy guitar virtuosity which always goes down well, and they have some pretty cool dual solos between the flute and the guitar.

By today's standards the concept is pretty mundane stuff, even if it might have seemed terribly transgressive at the time, so I wasn't very engaged by the lyrics or the theme, but the music is very solid and it's quite an agreeable album. I don't think I'll listen to it a lot but, uh, I'm glad I have it...

In The Distance, I Hear Them Devouring

Opeth – Ghost Reveries

I hate to disabuse my readers of their perception of me as a savvy, literate intellectual with my finger on the pulse of the underground, but I'm actually just a lazy fuck in front of the computer and as such I tend to miss out on a few things. Number one on that list at the moment are Tool tickets to the concert in January, but besides that one of my major musical regrets of the last couple of years is overlooking Opeth for too long.

After having more than a few people rave to me about this band I gave them a perfunctory listen before deeming them uninteresting and categorising them in the 'more dopey metal shit that I don't get' folder. Of course now that I've realised my folly and given them a decent chance, everyone else seems to have moved on. Saying you're getting into Opeth is very 2004.

Opeth fit comfortably within the death metal genre, and although some might argue with that statement, saying that they incorporate different styles such as jazz and folk and contrast melodic passages with heavy, aggressive ones, I would reply that this is merely a distinction between 'good metal' and 'boring metal'.

Ghost Reveries was a critical success but as you might expect most metal hipsters are dismissive of it in comparison to Opeth's older stuff, as they are starting to move vaguely in the direction of not being obscure any more. However they may have a point as besides a few excellent tracks, a majority of the album does feel slightly uninspired, but even a subpar Opeth album is a great album in general.

There is a loose concept to Ghost Reveries, dealing with death and the occult. Like almost all metal ever written the lyrics are fairly overblown and probably a little ridiculous taken out of context, but Mikael Akerfeldt (singer, lead guitarist and songwriter) manages to bring a fresh breath of literacy to the standard subject matter of satanic rituals on foggy moors, and after all, that is all that I really ask for from song lyrics. No matter how cheesy it is to hear about ritual murder in frozen forests, I can't deny that I get a real kick out of it when it's done right.

What really sets these guys apart is the complexity of the music (which is especially unique in light of how almost all the rock music popular today is influenced by the simplicity of punk). Most of their songs are ten minute epics with interlocking, recurring themes, and the parts themselves are a joy to learn as a musician, because there's always so much going on both rhythmically and melodically. The members of the band are all stellar musicians themselves, of particular note is the drumming and Akerfeldt's vocals, which are impressive not only because he alternates effortlessly between clean and growly singing, but also because he has some of the best tone in his death metal voice that I've ever heard. Sure some other guys are deeper and more guttural, but Akerfeldt is able to add a really nice crunch to his voice without overdoing it, so that it still conveys emotion (and sometimes you can even understand what he's saying).

So back to Ghost Reveries in particular. Even the naysayers won't deny that the opener, 'Ghost of Perdition' is a classic, even by Opeth's standards; ten minutes of truly epic heaviness punctuated by beautifully sad acoustic pieces, made only more melancholy by the fact that the song is about some dude murdering his own mother because the devil told him to. The next two tracks, 'The Baying of the Hounds' and 'Beneath the Mire', initially suffer in comparison to their predecessor but after a few listens they grew on me a lot. They both have intense moody breakdowns in the middle and 'Hounds' in particular has some inspired passages.

Unfortunately the remainder of the album doesn't quite live up to the start, 'Harlequin Forest' and 'The Grand Conjuration' are both decent songs with some great riffs but they don't hold together overall as well as the earlier tracks. They are integrated with a few acoustic(ish) tracks, 'Atonement', 'Hours of Wealth' and 'Isolation Years', which are all great but rather short and are really designed as interludes to the heavier tracks.

Of course, that's still six great tracks out of eight so it's not like I don't recommend it, it's just that there are other Opeth albums that are better.

You Go Ahead! I'll Cover You!

Half Life 2: Episode 1

Valve's Half-Life games are arguably some of the best video games ever made, and nothing about them is particularly innovative or original, but both entries in the series simply have the slickest, glossiest production ever seen in games. From beginning to end the gameplay, graphics and sound are flawless down to the smallest details making the games truly immersive, almost cinematic experiences. Half-Life 2 even took things a step further, introducing actual subtext into the story that was actually enhanced by the interactive nature of the game.

Valve have chosen to continue the series in episodic format, although seeing as how their idea of episodic is one episode every six months to a year I wouldn't look to them as the best example of this new business model (hopefully the upcoming Sam And Max games will be the first real contender for that title), and the first instalment in the Half-Life Episodes series is a satisfying taste of that Half-Lifey goodness, although it's too brief to attain the epic heights of its predecessor. That's not to say it was too short though, the game was actually much longer than I expected, and I was quite satisfied that I got my $30 worth. Plot wise not much happens, once again we start out exactly where the last game leaves off and your goal is to safely escape City 17, as the alien fortress that you infiltrated in the last game is about to blow up and take a good chunk of the countryside with it. Along the way you are accosted by the remnants of the alien invasion that you took down in Half Life 2. A few more plot elements are introduced, ranging from the obvious and stupid (“Whatever is in this mysterious data capsule must be incredibly important to the aliens!”) to the potentially interesting (your egghead scientist ally from Half-Life 2 taking charge of the human survivors and his ardent hatred of the posthumans), but we'll have to wait for later instalments to see how they pan out.

Valve have obviously listened to what their fans wanted more of, and it appears that what they wanted more of was clearly the gravity gun! I am fairly sure you could do the whole game (excepting maybe the boss battles) using only the gravity gun as a weapon as almost every part of the game requires it in some way, and with your well armed sidekick Alyx backing you up for most of the game it's very rarely even worth swapping it out for a different weapon. You'd think that picking stuff up and throwing it around would get boring, but the designers once again show their talent and produce a large variety of interesting new scenarios to chuck stuff around in. Introducing Alyx (a major character from the first game) as a permanent partner is nicely done. Her AI is generally pretty good and her comments on your actions (like for example gushing with admiration after you take down a boss enemy) makes the game feel a little more immersive.

Mostly however it's just more of the same that we got in the previous games. The boss battles are recycled from Half-Life 2, and you'll recognise many of the locations you visit from that game too. This is by no means a bad thing of course, just like the first two games this episode is a joy to play simply because of the simple attention to detail and imaginative level design brought to it by the developers. Yes, many of the scenarios are variations on those found in earlier games but these guys seem to have some clever knack to making them fresh and fun each time you encounter them.

Hey! Girls Name!

So over at Uncertain Principles Chad Orzel has a post listing songs on his ipod named after women. Since I had nothing better to do I did the same myself, and I found that I only have thirty (out of about 3600 songs). Fewer than what I expected, and it seems that I probably have more with men's names.

Anyway, I figured we'd make a little game out of it. See if between all six of my readers, you can name the artists who perform these songs. A couple of them are obscure, but I'm fairly confident that even between Barnes and Joel alone you could get most of them. And just to make it interesting, if you don't collectively get over %50 by midnight on Saturday, I'll murder all of your families!

1) Aisha

2) Ruby

3) Alice

4) Judith

5) Deanna

6) Xtal (This one probably shouldn't count, but hey.)

7) Sabrina

8) Grace

9) Magdalena

10) Lucy

11) Minerva

12) Jezabel

13) Rose

14) Madeline

15) Katrien

16) Vera

17) Pauline

18) Lydia

19) Tracy

20) Polly

21) Sophie

22) Jessamin

23) Maria

24) Elizabeth

25) Sylvia

26) Brena

27) Candy Jones

28) Lily

29) Lilith

30) Anna

Forty Signs of Rain

by Kim Stanley Robinson

One of the easiest ways to irritate me is to start an argument about global warming. The issue is one of the most obnoxious and aggravating examples of the general public's scientific illiteracy, and it's incredibly frustrating to watch dishonest politicians and big business take advantage of this to further their own agenda. The nadir (or at least what I hope will be the nadir) of their efforts was the release a few years back of Michael Crichton's State of Fear, a science fiction novel (easy on the science) which suggested that global warming was thought up by a bunch of scaremongering environmentalists (not 'conservationists' of course!) who needed a new boogyman in order to keep the millions of dollars of income they were receiving in the lucrative business of being hippie activists.

Fortunately as an antidote to such drivel Kim Stanley Robinson has written Forty Signs of Rain. Unlike the other novels of his that I've read it's very low key and character focused. It seems he is deliberately trying to avoid the image of the hysterical, zealous environmentalist by calmly and rationally stating the facts. The book is set at some point 'in the not too distant future' (OK he's a little fuzzy on some of the facts) and the effects of climate change have become noticeable, but there are no giant icestorms, tsunamis or plagues of locusts. The changes are enough to impact peoples lives, but not so much to wreck civilisation. I have a vague recollection that this is the first book in a series, so maybe we'll have a few more dramatic scenes of national monuments being destroyed, just like in that stupid movie, but for now he keeps his doomsday predictions rather conservative.

As much as I approved of the message, the book itself was a bit of a drag, as he keeps things perhaps a bit too low key. The principle characters are a group of scientists doing work loosely related to climate change, and as much of the narrative is spent on describing their family lives (or lack thereof) as on the science or the gradually encroaching catastrophe. A part of me hopes that this is to make it all the more heartbreaking when the protagonists' annoying kids buy it under a rogue iceberg in future books, but I'll probably be disappointed. Nevertheless I do appreciate his effort to keep a human focus in a story that is primarily about political issues, I just think it wasn't executed as well as it could have been.

The biggest problem for me with the book is Robinson's pollyanna solution to the lack of attention given to climate change by the worlds governments, a mix of Buddhist philosophy and an exhortation for all the scientists in the world to join hands and WISH REALLY HARD!!!!! that they can suddenly stop being politically impotent. It's a nice sentiment but my view is that if you want to win this fight you have to realise that it's all about money. If I were a climate scientist what I would do is put an emphasis on the cost of catastrophic climate change in actual dollars. Any and all of us, whether individuals, corporations or states, have a lot to lose, not just personally but financially if these predictions come to pass. Nobody is going to be making much money when the Sydney CBD is underwater, so it makes financial sense for any business which genuinely has a long term view of its interests to co-operate with plans to avoid this scenario.

Of course, that's more than a little pollyanna-ish too. It doesn't do much good for a small business to spend their entire profits to convert to clean energy when the USA, China and India sit under three huge columns of CO2 flying up into the air, but I believe that an emphasis on the financial cost of climate change in the future, as compared to the cost of making moves to avoid it now, would be a good way to get the attention of the greedy and short sighted in businesses and governments around the world and present the issue to them in terms that they cannot ignore.

A Bit Of The Old Ultraviolence

During my long period of unemployment I got to catch up on two movies that I'd been meaning to watch for some time: The Devil's Rejects and Oldboy.

The Devil's Rejects surprised me a little bit by just how disturbing it was. I still haven't seen its prequel (House of 1000 Corpses) and I was expecting something a lot goofier, more in tune with director Rob Zombie's cheesy industrial metal band. However the titular group of psychopaths engage in some pretty nasty behaviour, and in particular the extended torture and kidnapping scene in the middle of the movie was pretty twisted.

Zombie's movie is very ambitious, but in the end it left me unsatisfied. The story is a nice and elegant allegory to current world affairs, but it lacks depth and insight, and the violence, while some of the nastiest I've ever seen on the screen, only offends in the shallowest manner, especially when compared to Oldboy.

The violence in Oldboy is very infrequent, especially when compared to The Devil's Rejects' non-stop gore-o-rama, but the two or three mutilation scenes are so gutwrenchingly disturbing that even I, he who likes to spring viewings of Mr. Hands onto unsuspecting visitors to my house, found them difficult to stomach. I'll express the reason behind the difference in my response to the movies by way of an analogy to black metal. Opeth have been the best musical discovery I've made so far this year and while they can loosely be described as a black metal band the growly, thrashy parts of their songs are balanced out by plenty of acoustic, melodic, moody or otherwise restrained passages. This means that when they launch into a heavy part it feels a whole lot more heavy than the music of say Cryptopsy, who undermine the incredibly brutal assault of their music by kicking every song off at maximum power and never dialling it down for even a second. In the same way, The Devil's Rejects' non-stop gore is unaffecting because we've (or at least I've) been exposed to so many gory movies that meaningless violence is no big deal no matter how disgusting it is. On the other hand Oldboy's few moments of genuine violence are disturbing because they occur in a much more realistic setting, and because it takes place in a much more meaningful narrative.

SPOILER WARNING: I'm going to ruin the end of Oldboy for you now, so if you haven't seen it, go away and watch it right now and then come back.

Oldboy is a very clever movie. For most of it's length it is a mostly straightforward revenge flick, as our protagonist (played by Min-sik Choi) tries to track down the man who imprisoned him for fifteen years (and also tries to learn the reason why he did so), looking (in what must have been a deliberate decision) more or less exactly like a Korean Charles Bronson. However by the end the genre conventions are completely reversed, it is the antagonist who ultimately gets his revenge on Choi, and once having achieved it, promptly kills himself, as there is nothing left for him to live for. Choi's character, robbed of his own revenge, must live with the horrible things that he has done and that have been done to him, but he still gets to live. And in the final scene he seems to have found, in a very twisted way, some kind of peace.

The climax of the movie, in which the protagonist is begging his nemesis for mercy and has been completely broken to the point of cutting out his own tongue, is an incredibly good example of how to use violence effectively in a movie. It's shocking, unexpected and blunt nature is grotesque enough, but the real reason it works is because of the story and characters that have caused it to come about. It's one of the most powerful scenes I've seen in a movie for a long time and it will stay with me for far longer than the rapes and eviscerations in The Devil's Rejects.