Bong Party

Chain Letter

2011-06-28T12:26:00.007-04:00

Late in the morning one weekday in June, on a well traversed street in the city a payphone rings, and I know it is a call for me.

At first I don't answer it. But with each ring it becomes clearer in my mind that this call is not only for me, but that it's the 100% most important call that has ever been made to me. Still, I let it ring.

It happens to everyone. You could be taking your clothes to the laundromat, descending into the subway after work, even taking a different route home to avoid seeing someone you don't want to see, and something will happen. It could be anything. You step in dog poop, or you drop your scarf into the gutter. You find five dollars on the ground, or fifty. You see that person or place that you thought was gone and you'd never see again. Or the phone rings... And you know it was 100% supposed to happen to you. You KNOW it.

But phone calls are a little different than pigeons pooping on you, or running into a long-lost acquaintance at the grocery store. With phone calls, even when you know the call was 100% for you, it's different because you have a choice. Do you accept this call from fate... or do you reject it?

I decided after about the eighth ring, knowing the whole time that the call is 100% for me, to answer it. I told myself I would be stupid not to. When I answered, I heard a woman's voice. She said 'Stay where you are, I've got something for you,' and hung up. Naturally, I was a little spooked, but I knew the call was 100% for me. So I stayed.

After a few minutes I saw a woman, maybe ten or fifteen years my senior, walking intently towards me and I knew it was her who had called. 'Here,' she said, and handed me a white paper bag with white twine arch handles. She left back the way she had come.

Before looking in the bag my mind started to wander. I began to question if this wasn't some kind of advertising scam, or if I didn't accidentally fall into a drug smuggling ring. But I reminded myself, the call was 100% for me. So too, then, the bag and whatever it contains is 100% for me as well.

So I sat down on a bench nearby and opened the bag. Inside was a sheet of printer paper completely filled with words. Here's what it said:

100%

Here today you have received a gift. It is not a gift

you can return. It may seem insignificant, but it

has the power to shape your life from this day on,

if you let it.

There are an infinite number

of reasons why things happen and an infinite number

of reasons for those reasons. This sense of infinity

goes backwards and forwards. Reasons both beget

reasons and are begotten by reasons. It can be enticing,

and often illuminating, to follow chains of reasons. There is

much to be gained from this. But there is also much, no,

all, to be lost as well.

Maybe you believe what you have received here was

truly meant for you. Or maybe you simply stumbled

upon it and decided to look inside. If you believe this

was meant for you, then it was. And if you believe

it was chance which brought it to you, then it was

chance and nothing more.

And now you have an opportunity in the form of

a choice. If you received this randomly, put it down

and walk away. Leave this in the bag for someone

else to come across it by chance. But if you were

meant to receive it, and you certainly know if

you were, then call on fate to guide this onward.

Dial the number of the payphone and fate will

compel the next person who is 100% supposed

to receive this to answer. Become an agent of fate,

acknowledge and validate the existence of fate and

pass this on as it was passed on to you.

I knew what I had to do. I knew my life had meaning and this would only help validate it further. I got the number of that payphone and I called it from my cell. But no one answered.

I tried again... nothing. Again and again I redialed the number but no voice ever came on the other end. Day after day, week after week I held onto the gift, calling constantly, but all I ever got was empty ringing. In order to prove that I wasn't a fool, that this, that I, existed for a reason, I NEEDED someone to answer that phone. But still, no one did. Had fate abandoned me? Was I a fool to believe it ever existed? Was that original call really 100% for me, as I had truly felt it to be on that day? Without a voice on the other end of the line I just didn't know.

For months I kept calling that phone. Even when I knew I wouldn't be able to get there in any realistic amount of time to expect a person to wait. But I got nothing.

Finally, one day, after a half a ring, I heard a voice. I was thrilled at first, until I realized what was being said. '... this number has been disconnected. We're sorry, this number has been disconnected. We're sorry...' My heart started pounding. In the back of my mind I was worried something like this might happen. Quickly I rushed to the site of the phone only to see it had been dismantled and completely removed. It was 100% gone.

There was a sizable hole where the payphone had been. I put the bag into that hole and started to fill it with dirt. When the bag was gone, I took a deep breath and tried to move on with my life.

Off the Deep End in Shallow Water

2009-07-18T16:42:00.010-04:00

"Wow, she really does have a big ass." Its unblemished whiteness bouncing up and down on top of what appeared to be a pair of disembodied male legs and genitals filled most of his computer screen. Alan thought about how the video's description; 'white teen with pigtails gets her round ass fucked,' had been quite an apt description. He wondered to himself whether he would have been able to write such satisfyingly apt descriptions for Ebay-sold products at the job he was offered and subsequently declined last spring.

Alan got up and pressed the button to shut off the laptop. He made his way into his bedroom, found the notebook he hadn't written in in months and went upstairs. Outside, he found the hookah right where he had left it. As he picked up the coal with the tongs, part of it broke off and fell onto the big toe of his right foot. "Well, it still hurts way less than my ingrown toenail on my other big toe." Replacing the coal on the foil he sat down. "I'll give this description thing a shot, but instead of products," he thought, "It'll be about my morning."

When I woke up, I still had the aftertaste of the previous night's extended dream sequence embedded in my mind and body. I felt like I had to come, but decided not to, and went upstairs. "There's coffee if you want it," Sean told me. After a cursory walk around the cavernous living/dining room I poured what remained of the contents of the french press into a green mug. After I initially brought the mug to my mouth Sean instructed me to put it in the microwave. "Nuke it," he said ironically, an obvious parody of those domesticated sons-of-bitches who use pet names for appliances and actions in the household.

With my drink sufficiently heated, I stared at it for a few moments ultimately deciding to add milk. I thought of my mother as I poured the coolant into the hot beverage. She always had milk with her coffee, yet for some reason I chose to emulate my middle school trumpet teacher who drank his black. It was only recently that I began putting creamer, and sometimes even sugar into my brew, a direct reaction to the continuously decreasing level of coffee quality at work. The creamer, of course was being used to improve the taste of the drink as opposed to the milk, which was being used to lower the mean liquid temp. Ultimately, however, I concluded that both the creamer and the milk were being utilized so as to make the drink more palatable; improving the speed and decreasing the difficulty with which I was able to ingest liquid drug caffeine.

All this thought given over to liquid stirred something in his bladder. Alan went to the bathroom to relieve himself. Upon entering, he realized he had forgotten to flush from the previous time he had urinated (right before his shower). He felt slightly good about himself for forgetting to flush, since he was saving water and in effect acting 'greenly'. After he finished, he returned to his seat on the deck and picked his notebook back up.

I took a sip of my coffee and sat down at the octagonal table in the living room.
"Do you want to smoke," I heard Don ask me.
"I have to take a dump."
"I have to take a piss"
"I'll go downstairs."
"Thanks."

In the bathroom I was reminded of something Bill Mahr had said on the newest broadcast of his political talk show from the night before. It was something about America as a collective country being addicted to drugs. He used Michael Jackson's death as a comment on the fact that it is often the 'legal' drugs which are causing the most damage. However, as he went on to list some of our specific nationwide drug issues, potheads were described with almost the same level of derision as ten-year-olds on Prozac. While I felt a strange twinge of guilt as a result of these comments, I knew, as I had already concluded, perhaps subconsciously, that I would smoke the bowl of middies Don was undoubtedly packing upstairs. "Had I even agreed to smoke?" I wondered that as I flushed. I knew it didn't matter. Of course I would smoke.

I grabbed my laptop from my room and headed upstairs. After perusing the messages from insomniacs who, since I had forgotten to turn off gchat, had seen I was online at 5am and tried to contact me, I clicked a link for General Bullshit on forums.somethingawful.com. After a cursory glance at the list of threads, I clicked on a newer one entitled 'Black People Have Highest Obesity Rate.' The original post began with "July 16 (Bloomberg) -- Blacks were 51 percent more likely and Hispanics were 21 percent more likely to be obese than whites," which did in fact back up the thread title. It went on to explain how the government study came to those conclusions and what they signify to the writers at Bloomberg. The initial responses turned me of with their juvenile racism, however half-way down the first of seven pages I found a comment that reinforced why I read the forums in the first place. "Check out this response," I called to Don. "Have there ever been any other instances in history where the poorer classes suffered from over-nourishment?" We both got a good laugh out of this partly because of its ridiculousness, and partly because of its truth.

I clicked on a thread I had been eyeing for several days. 'My senator told me never to write him again.' I could tell this was a much better thread than the one I had clicked on previously. Unlike that first thread, which simply linked an article and called for discussion, this one offered a personal story complete with digital images of both the author's original letter and its response.

The author had attended a hearing for a Filipino woman who had been living with her American partner for 23 years and who was now up for deportation due to her illegal status. The defense attorney was explaining the woman's situation, why she deserved to be allowed to stay and work on getting her green card. Both the Filipino woman and her US-born child were seen to be shaken up as the attorney explained the woman's legitimate fear of returning to the Philippines where a man who had brutalized her and murdered her mother and sister, (an obvious cause for her originally fleeing the country), was recently freed from jail. As the situation was being explained, the young child had begun to cry. In response to this, the Senator in question stated "Okay, enough with the histrionics." The author of the thread described the Senator in question as being of the type who believes that illegal aliens up for deportation only cry as a way of garnering support for their cause. Here we get to the meat of the post. The author sent a letter to the Senator expressing his disappointment in his representative politician both holding such a sentiment and being willing to express it in the halls of the judiciary system. Below the letter was attached the Senator's response letter claiming he never said such a thing and ordering the author never to contact him again.

As I finished reading, I Googled the Senator's name, Jeff Sessions, as it sounded familiar. I quickly realized that he was, unsurprisingly, one of the same Republican politicians who had been hounding Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor for supposedly being a reverse racist. I had seen him on the news repeatedly asking her about her temperament, obviously unconvinced as to whether or not she might be the type of non-white female who might utilize 'histrionics' to garner support, or worse, might fall pray to those same 'histrionics' from others while on the bench. These thoughts reverberated in my mind as Don finished packing the bowl. I thought about trying to explain the story to him, as he is someone who would undoubtedly be interested in hearing it, but decided against it, figuring I could just show him the link later, now it was time to numb myself with weed.

While smoking, Don brought out today's Washington Post and alerted me to an image of Presidents Obama and Sarkozy seeming to stare at a woman's big white ass as she walked by. The article featured several responses from 'ordinary readers' including one which Don expressly pointed out for me to read. This response was from a woman who was calling for such images not to be brought to the public's attention as they serve only to debase both those in the picture and those who see it. It's funny," I said to Don, "the image and it's comment seem to negate each other. It's as if in their desire to be objective, the Washington Post becomes both the object of criticism and the criticism itself." Feeling good about my observation, I took a big puff of marijuana.

After Don left for Baltimore, I thought about the stories I had consumed recently and the media sources they had come from. I decided that print, Internet and television media should be able to co-exist. They all have their positives and negatives. My mind started to move towards something about how the future of media involves all players putting themselves on the line, everyone expressing their own point of view rather than the super-scripted heavily partisan yet masked as nonpartisan media of yore.

As he mulled these incomplete thought fragments in his mind, Alan heard his phone beep. He got up to check the text message he had received.

From: Harry
Unflushed shit in the toilet at empire chin buffet looked like a football and guess what no tp
July 18 3:54pm

To: Harry
You should have taken a pic. At least the perp is saving trees by not using tp.

After pressing send, Alan closed the phone and sat back down.

I was having trouble coming to any definite opinion on the subject and decided to take a shower and eat lunch. I thought about masturbating in the shower but decided against it. Something about that whole do onto others bit stuck out in my mind. For lunch I had a banana, a mug of highly caffeinated green tea and a bowl of soup. The soup had been purchased by one of my roommates, I only felt slightly guilty about it since I was pretty sure he was the one who ate most of my granola earlier in the week. Even if I knew for a fact that he was the one who ate it, I still would have felt guilty, seeing as how I was really confusing 'do onto others' with 'eye for an eye,' one of which I agree with, and the other I'm not so sure about.

When I had finished eating, I went outside and began reading the aptly-titled 'After the Banquet' by Yukio Mishima. After working on 'Infinite Jest' for the past few weeks, I decided I wanted something that I hoped would be a bit lighter. Again it struck me that 'After the Banquet' was a strangely apt title. Its sub-250 page large-font text seemed like an afternoon snack compared to the infinite feast that is 'Infinite Jest'. After setting up the hookah, I read about 30 pages of Mishima before deciding that the combination of low-grade marijuana, shisha and caffeine was having a bit of an uncomfortable effect on me. I thought about how nice it would be to have a girl appear, give me a blow job and then disappear, but I realized that was impossible. I couldn't fight it anymore. I went downstairs with my laptop, typed spankwire.com into my browser and clicked on a streaming video featuring a beautiful young girl with nothing less than a presidentially-sanctioned-and-approved big white ass to stare at.

Ambient Light

2009-03-12T16:25:00.002-04:00

Did you know the light bulb was actually invented in the mid 1970s?

Here's some more great tattoos:

I haven't felt like blogging much recently. If you're actually reading this post a comment.

Another New Remix: The Honeydrips - (Lack of) Love Will Tear Us Apart (RMX)

2009-03-11T10:44:00.002-04:00

Last night I made another new remix. I went out on a limb with this one. I think the original song is really good, but I could see how some people might perceive it to be too poppy or cheesy.
The mp3 audio quality turned out a little lower than usual this time. I'm not sure why. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I was up at 3am working on it last night. I still think it turned out okay though. Anyway, here it is in all its glory:

The Honeydrips - (Lack of) Love Will Tear Us Apart (RMX) from Bong Party on Vimeo.

Ms. Broadway Remix

2009-03-08T12:54:00.003-04:00

Hey all just wanted to bump my new remix of the Glass Candy cover of Ms. Broadway. You can find it on my MySpace. I'm going to put it on youtube as well since I still don't know how to do mp3 hosting. You can find the original Glass Candy version on the Italians Do it Better comp as well as their new odds and ends release Deep Gems.

UPDATE:
YouTube really doesn't like me anymore. Here is the song on Vimeo:

Glass Candy - Miss Broadway (ELECTRO RMX) from Bong Party on Vimeo.

CONRADCIGARSPIPES

2009-03-07T15:46:00.002-05:00

My attention was recently brought to a very prolific youtube poster named Conrad. Conrad has released thousands of videos of himself smoking pipes in different outfits. This may sound stupid, but trust me, Conrad delivers. Here are a few:

As of right now he has 6,310 of these videos, and only one of them features him without a pipe.

Myspace

2009-03-03T13:21:00.003-05:00

Hey guys I just made a MySpace. Well, actually I had created the account a while ago but never got around to actually putting anything in it. Well now I have.

You can check it out here: BLUE BLACK THINGS (bong party was taken).

Please be my friend. And if you know how to adjust the layout so it isn't so damn plain please let me know.

DOG DOG

2009-02-28T17:21:00.005-05:00

Hudson Mohawke - OOOPS!!!

2009-02-27T10:05:00.005-05:00

Can I tell you a secret? I love this song. I don't know why. It's a little embarrassing, I know. But I've seriously listened to it at least 20 times today. And it's like 10am. I mean, let's be real, it's obviously the best (maybe the only?) song about masturbating to your own image ever laid to record. THE NARCISSISM RIDES HIGH WITH THIS ONE. The original was by some B list R&B singer I've never heard of. It features Missy Elliot, who you can hear on this remix as well. Like I said, I don't usually listen to stuff like this, but this is just too infectious.

I WAS LOOKIN SO GOOD I COULDN'T REJECT MYSELF. SO VIRAL Y'ALL

New Song

2009-02-25T09:07:00.003-05:00

Here's a demo of a new song I put together in Ableton with a MicroKorg and my voice. Youtube was giving me trouble with uploading so I went with Vimeo instead. Let me know if there are problems with loading the player.

Variation on a Theme from Alan Hirsch on Vimeo.

Zomby - Spliff Dub (Rusty Remix)

2009-02-20T00:34:00.000-05:00

Too sick not to post:

Hercules and Love Affair in Oscar Commercial R.A.N.T.

2009-02-19T09:24:00.009-05:00

Did anyone else see that commercial for the Oscars with the fucking HERCULES AND LOVE AFFAIR song in it during LOST last night? What a great song that is. I remember dragging my friends to see them live on Halloween. Of course it all blew up in my face in spectacular fashion, but I got to hear them do that song and it made it all worthwhile.

Here's the song from the commercial:

It makes me wonder though. What's with the things I like becoming more universally accepted in popular media? I mean, first 3-6 mafia wins an oscar and now this! But seriously, it's not like I'm gonna watch the fucking Oscars.

Still, look at the Grammys this year, they got like Daft Punk and Radiohead and there was even a rumor going around that fucking Brian Chippendale was going to play with Lee "Scratch" Perry during the ceremony. THAT I would have watched for. Of course they got it all wrong in the end. I don't know who won most of the awards but I saw that Radiohead did in fact win one for In Rainbows. FOR THE FUCKING PACKAGING. I mean, does no one else see the irony in the fact that they won an award for packaging (which may be good, I've never actually seen the cd or vinyl for it) of an album they purposely released FOR FREE as an online download?

Maybe I'm getting it all wrong. Or maybe I'm deluding myself to the fact that my tastes are getting more mainstream? I don't know whether to be excited that songs I genuinely like are being used in commercials or not. But you've got to pick your battles. The music I like these days, it's not about a message of staying true and never selling out. But still. Should I feel better that I recognized a song I like, which 95% of other viewers probably didn't recognize, in a commercial for what is probably the second most commercially excessive annual event behind the Superbowl?

Well, whatever the case, at least we can all rejoice that we've got Hercules and Love Affair, Justice and Of Montreal in our commercials instead of the Lou Bega and Ricky Martins of 10 years ago.

New Royksopp Single and AWESOME Remix

2009-02-18T11:11:00.005-05:00

Man I'm such a bum. I compiled all these hilarious images to make V-day macros but I never got around to it. I'll just blame it on the fact that for some odd reason the only program that's locked on my work computer is MSPaint. Image macros are so 2003 anyway. Perhaps, over time, all of the pics will be posted. In fact, here's one now!:

maybe the caption could have been something like: "To my favorite drama teacher. Don't listen to the other kids, your hair looks great, now you'll have to let me to go work on that other patch of hair.... HAPPY V-DAY!!!!!"

Anyway, what I really came here to post is the new Royksopp single and an accompanying remix by Boys Noize. Chances are if you're into Royksopp you've already heard this. Pretty fun track, seems primed for a commercial though.

Here's the original:

Here's the Boys Noize remix. I love this remix. It seems to be getting a fair amount of hate on youtube, but whatever. I think it's great. It's so fucking grimy. I especially love the semi-uncontrollable synth at the end. It's like the DJ can control some of the sound parameters, but a lot is left up to randomization. It's not just random acid melodies either, it's something... different. It has it's own will and Boys Noize is attempting to break it.

Anddddd holy shit! Look at that. while grabbing the last link, I found a Datasette remix of the track too! God I love youtube.

Valentines Week 1

2009-02-11T09:05:00.005-05:00

I couldn't get online at all last night to post anything. Here's my first crappy attempt at humor. I know, the pictures are much funnier than the text, but at least I'm trying. WHAT ARE YOU DOING? (if you click on it you can read the text more easily)

Valentine's Week Extravaganza

2009-02-09T21:37:00.006-05:00

I am proud to announce that Bong Party will be hosting a Valentine's Week Extravaganza. From today until V Day, I'll be posting a series of image macro Valentine's Day cards based on pictures of love I've found on the Internet.

I've almost always celebrated Valentine's Day alone. As a child, my parents would give me candy and X-Men cards as a sign of their love for me. The first time I saw one of these image macro Valentine's Day cards was in my freshman year of college. I was so enamored with this card that I posted copies of it all around Hagerstown Hall. Here's a copy of that image:

I did not make that image macro but I absolutely love it. It's really come to define Valentine's Day for me. My next post, which I will make later tonight, will contain the first in my series of original Valentine's Day cards. I welcome contributions. Please send them to alanshirsch@gmail.com - I'll definitely put them up. Everything is welcome, although if you're going to use hardcore porn, it has to be funny or else I'm not going to bother putting it up.

Hey, if R. Crumb got his start designing cards for Hallmark, I'll gladly follow in his footsteps.

MS PAINT

2009-02-09T11:27:00.000-05:00

Who says MS Paint isn't a viable medium for art?

Oldie but goodie

2009-02-07T16:47:00.003-05:00

This is an old standby as requested by my buddy Tom "Rockhard" Rockwell (that is in no way a reference to his cock) ((or is it????)).

Anyway, here's the Godess Bunny:

Does anyone else think her tap dancing sounds like sloppy sex?

BONUS PIC OF ROCKHARD HIMSELF:

Dancing Guidos

2009-02-04T08:00:00.004-05:00

THIS IS THE REASON ELECTRONIC MUSIC HAS SUCH A BAD REPUTATION AMONG THE UNINITIATED. Just look at these tools. They're like the real life Beaver Boys. At least that girl in the bikini is fucking with them. (I think?)

Funny Kavinsky Interview

2009-01-29T16:30:00.003-05:00

Kavinsky says all the right things in this Australian interview from 2007:

Datassette/Datashat

2009-01-28T16:53:00.009-05:00

Oh man I came across some great stuff. Waffles had an article about some hidden gems you find from downloading a ton of music. One gem that someone recommended was Datassette. I got the cd and it's not bad, kinda like Aphex Twin but with a bit of an electro/down-tempo vibe. The best song by far is Minus Fourteen.

Can you tell I love electro yet?

(This image may or may not be Datassette)

Anyway, the real reason I wanted to make this post was to share another project by the same artist. Under the name Datashat he's released these two mixes in the businessfunk series. businessfunk one is 20 minutes and businessfunk two is 40 minutes. Both are highly rec'd by me.

This stuff is priceless. I guess it's a combination of synths and samples from old business education movies, science documentaries and stock production music from the '70s and '80s. Sounds cheesy, I know. And in a way it is. But it's really really well done. The mix does a good job drawing out some of the most ridiculously awesome melodies from old tapes and then launching them into space. Think Boards of Canada meets Tim and Eric.

I'm going to link to the two mixes here, but you should go to his site and check out everything.

These images and descriptions were taken from his website:

businessfunk one:
The very finest über-rare 80s Business-Presentation Funk (Businesscore), propulsive Science-Documentary Electro and Feel-Good Teletext Cheese. May cause mild grinning.

businessfunk two:
Another megamix of the finest ultra-rare 80s progressive electronic funk from the vaults of various production music libraries, resulting in 40 minutes of 100% awesome. Hold on to your hats.

They're both great, but if you only download one of them, go for businessfunk two.

Six Organs of Admittance - RTZ

2009-01-25T23:11:00.010-05:00

Amidst all the hype of the new AnCo album (and don't get me wrong, I love Merriweather Post Pavilion), a hand reaches through the fog and shakes you back to conscioness. The master abides. Ben Chasney is king, don't act like you forgot. The power of these melodies will tear through your consciousness.

I just ordered a new Six Organs LP that I didn't know was coming out until last night. It's actually a rerelease of a bunch of his really old stuff. I have most of these songs already, but listening to them again, together, really puts everything into perspective. Man it gives me chills even thinking about how good this shit is. I was listening to six organs around '02 and this was like coming out in '99. It's all him alone with a 4-track.

Highlights include: All of it.

These are some of the most epic examples of millenial freak folk ever created. It's got the organ/flute thing, bells, guitar body tapping, circular rhythmic patterns, all of those aspects of Six Organs that have seemed to fade out in favor of electric guitars and partners in crime on new recordings.

These recordings beg you to relook at the path Chasney has chosen. The fervant chants from Warm Earth Which I've been Told would fit perfectly alongside anything on Compathia. You can see the budding melodic structures that would go on to become such epics as School of the Flower and River of Transfiguration in all of these songs. It now makes logical sense that Chasney would expand his sound over time, trading dust and rust for the howl of the electric guitar. What he lost from one sound he gained from another.

Bob Dylan was blasted by critics and fans alike when he picked up the electric guitar. People were shocked, but look at where it got us. I'm not saying that Six Organs is revolutionary in the way Dylan was. Still, I remember an interview when Devendra Banhart was asked about the freak folk movement (back when it was still relevant) and he said something to the effect of 'I may be garnering all of the critical attention, but Ben Chasney is the truest example of freak folk that there is.'

The songs speak for themselves.

Here's the album description from Drag City (record label):

"When you think of the way you used to live, the way you degraded the planet. You didn’t know all creatures are equal! Today, you look back and see yourself in a different light. To think that Six Organs was all that held you up to the divine.

Six little organs of separation. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

The double-CD, triple-LP epic called RTZ (named after the button on a Tascam 484 that “returns to zero”) fashions several lesser-known pieces from Six Organs of Admittance’s early years into an massive prismatic arc, colossal and organic like some wonder of the ancient world. How could it be otherwise? Even when existing as only one half of a record, as many of these pieces once did (and still do, somewhere), Mr. 6OOA (Ben Chasny, y’all!) leans into the eternal — letting the winds of Time scar his face and the light of All There Is burn his skin black. Grandmaster Chas has sacrificed the body for his music time and again over the years. RTZ is an iridescent chimera in full flight, viewed through stained glass.

Cataloging these early non-album excursions requires a bit of leg-(and mind) work. RTZ travels back to the dawn of this century to locate “Resurrection,” half of a Time-Lag split 12” with Charalambides. “Warm Earth, Which I’ve Been Told” is half of a Mental Telemetry split CD with Vibracathedral Orchestra and Magic Carpithans from 2003. “You Can Always See the Sun,” was part of Three Loved Recordings’ Purposeful Availments subscription CD series in 2002. And Nightly Trembling was released way back in 1999 in an edition of 33 copies, all given away for free! That’s some spiritual shit right there. Combined with a never-before released extended piece called “Punish the Chasm with Wings” from pre-millennial days and you’ve got yourself a deep, DEEP box set, crammed into a multi-faceted LP jacket.

Rich with excursions to exotic musical climes and rhythmic with prayerful chants from the dark shadows of the earth, RTZ uses strings and bells, riffs both warm and icy, glowing lead guitars, massed voices and the pure, open air for its mantras and rituals. As the title alludes, these old sounds were forged in that bastion of personal expression, the four-track recorder. When a man can record a few feet from his bed, he becomes more inclined to render his nocturnal intuitions. And when that man is Ben Chasny, he can use those remastered (but still good and dusty) early recordings to attain the ultimate goal: a multifaceted triple-gatefold LP!"

Awesome.

Dove bar

2009-01-23T16:17:00.012-05:00

This is Dov:

Just like the white winged dove...
Sings a song...
Sounds like she's singing...
Whoo... whoo... whoo...

But, disturb not the dove, in silence to wait;
The touch of an angel, who summons her fate.

"And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove!
Then would I fly away, and be at rest" (Ps 55:6).
In chanting a song of triumph, David used an exquisite thought.
"When ye lie among the sheepfolds,
It is as the wings of a dove covered with silver,
And her pinions with yellow gold" (Ps 68:13).

WE LOVE YOU DOV. AND WE ALWAYS WILL!!!!

This is not a blog about LOST

2009-01-23T10:00:00.003-05:00

This is not a blog about LOST.

I just wanted to post this picture of John Locke.

LOST is the shit though, and the new season looks to be one of, if not the best yet.

Hobbies

2009-01-22T08:33:00.008-05:00

This is the first post in a new series I'm starting on hobbies. You may be thinking to yourself; Alan, your life must be pretty miserable if your hobby is blogging about hobbies. That's where you're wrong. While blogging about hobbies may be considered a hobby, I would never do it during my free time. Instead, I only do it while I'm supposed to be working (at work). I recognize, however, that most of you don't have the luxury to blog about hobbies at work. Therefore, I present you with some hobbies you may want to consider taking up.

This image represents the stress that occurs from office work:

People need a way to unwind, and reduce those stress levels. It used to be that you could count on your television to take take of that for you. However, with the exception of a few shows, this has got to be one of the worst decades for TV shows ever. Video games are at an all time high, but unless you're really really good at playing them online, you're almost always going to walk away feeling disappointed, like you could have spent your time doing something more productive. That's why it's important to find hobbies that are both fun and can provide you with a smug sense of self-satisfaction thereby making your otherwise pointless life more meaningful.

Here's an example of someone who really understands how to make a hobby work for himself:

This Urban Grandma-Thug recognizes that he only has so many hours in the day, as such, if he wants to really become adept at knitting, he needs to practice during all his free hours. Looks like it's been paying off, doesn't it?

Drawing is a great hobby too. Here's an awesome drawing:

Drawings like that take time effort. They don't happen over night. Once you learn to draw you can start selling your drawings for drug money, which you can use to make better and better drawings until you can do stuff like this:

The hobbies I've been describing so far are fairly personal, but some people take up hobbies that are selfless. Of course we all know that people who do things for other people only do it because it makes them look important/feel better about themselves.

Here's an example an illegal immigrant being secretly transported over the border to be reunited with his family:

Notice how the driver (whose hobby it is to reunite illegals with their families) is not shown. His selfless act is more about those around him than it is about himself. Or at least that's what he wants you to believe.

IF people actually read my blog, I'd ask them to comment on their own hobbies, or at least talk down to me about how the economy isn't strong enough to support hobbies right now. But alas, according to Google Analytics, no one will read this.

BONUS!!! monkeys who like monkeys hobby pic:

The Glass Bead Game

2009-01-16T10:45:00.008-05:00

Guys, I'm writing this post mainly as a way for me to sort out some thoughts I've been having about a concept in a book I'm reading. The book is the Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse and it's really, really good.

I just read a page and it really brought a lot of sort of frayed ends together in relation to a defining aspect of the book - the Glass Bead Game itself. So here, I'm going attempt to make a bit of sense out of what I have been able to understand about the game so far. Keep in mind I'm only 200 pages into a 550 page book.

The premise is that several hundred hears in the future, we develop the Glass Bead Game. It is important to note that it seems to be considered a game only insofar as it serves no purpose except that onto itself. The theory, as well as the games themselves, work to expand the language and mode of the game, but beyond that, and seemingly on purpose, the game has no purpose.

Now, to briefly sketch out the premise of the game.

Basically, what happens in a Glass Bead Game is that the participants take one to several basic components and build upon them to create a perfect and unified whole. These components can be anything from a bit of history, a famous quote, a mathematical figure, an astronomical movement, etc. In essence, anything that can be studied and understood can be dealt with.

For instance, one game that is described in some detail early on takes a saying from Confucius as its starting point and builds out from there. Eventually, the game players use other bits of knowledge (so to speak) in order sketch out the entire rise and fall of a now dead language. It seems to be a new way for humans to look at and understand the world around them.

Of course to go into the details would be absolutely ridiculous. Instead, Hesse leaves both the true form and the content of the games almost completely out of his descriptions of it. It's hard enough to simply conceive of the game, let alone actually describe one.

I think the closest analogy to a glass bead game is sort of like playing music with a group of people. A sound can come to represent any number of things. It has to do with physics, pure mathematics, history, sensory perception, anything. But, in the end, as much as it can come to represent, it is still just music. Yes, you can make an argument that music does this or that, but unless it is serving some specific function, perhaps in a religious sense, it has no purpose except that which we give it.

Anyway, that's probably extremely confusing and does nothing except help me sort out my own thoughts on this extremely confusing idea. Honestly though, Hesse is such a genius for thinking this up and here's why.

So going off of our Glass Bead Game/playing music comparison, here's an extended quotation from the book which I will attempt to explain the significance of after I write it out:

The foremost players distinguished two principal types of Game, the formal and the psychological. We know that Knecht (the main character and future "Master of the Game") belonged to the champions of the latter type. Knecht, however, instead of speaking of the "psychological" mode of play usually preferred the word "pedagogical."

In the formal Game, the player sought to compose out of the objective content of every game, out of the mathematical, linguistic, musical, and other elements, as dense, coherent, and formally perfect a unity and harmony as possible. In the psychological Game, on the other hand, the object was to create unity and harmony, cosmic roundedness and perfection, not so much in the choice, arrangement, interweaving, association and contrast of the contents as in the meditation which followed every stage of the Game. All the stress was placed on this meditation. Such a psychological-or to use Knecth's word, pedagogical-Game did not display perfection to the outward eye. Rather, it guided the player by means of its succession of precisely prescribed meditations, toward experiencing perfection and divinity. "The Game as I conceive it," Knecht once wrote to the former Music Master, "encompasses the player after the completion of meditation as the surface of a sphere encompasses its center, and leaves him with the feeling that he has extracted from the universe of accident and confusion a totally symmetrical and harmonious cosmos, and absorbed it into himself."

Whew

So yeah, basically in terms of music, the formal Game would be like figuring out a way to play a bunch of songs about springtime, for instance, or war, or songs that all follow the same sonata pattern, at once so as to create an image of perfection and a unified whole on whatever idea, from the broadest to the most singular the players focus on. This is more akin to traditional music playing.

The psychological Game is more like jamming, but REALLY REALLY good jamming.

I don't think the point needs to go any further than that right now.

But I will say this. As an analog for philosophical thought, the formal game represents the peak of scientific understanding. It assumes that there is no "greater" ideal than that which manifests itself in what we see and understand. The psychological presupposes something deeper, and something unifying which can only be got at by both piecing everything we understand together, but also by looking inward and finding that "missing" connector.

To quote Dickens, "Put that in your pipe and smoke it!"

I probably would fall into the category of formalists, but maybe it's just because I don't meditate enough. Hopefully I'll feel compelled to write more on this topic as I get further into the book.

BONUS FOR READING ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM! - PIC OF GLASS BEAD GAME PLAYER:

This Is Funny

2009-01-16T08:14:00.000-05:00

Listen to this guy scream

Are you gonna eat that pepperoni pizza?

2009-01-15T09:37:00.000-05:00

It looks zoooooo greasy.

Take a pen. Write it down: I Love The Teenagers.

Also I was found out about this pretty sweet EDM guy who posts on the SA forums.

Check some of his stuff out here:

I also wanted to give a bump to his album art cause it's awesome:

You can stream or download the whole album for free here:
http://www.last.fm/music/Baby+Diamonds/dB

Although it all pretty much sounds the same, it's not bad to burn and play in your car. Plus he told me he did it all with Ableton and a mouse. NICE!

2003

2009-01-14T07:39:00.000-05:00

2003 was the year I graduated from high school. That was six years ago. Things were different then. I was a starry-eyed child. I chatted with people on the internet. I went to (bad) concerts. I had my whole life ahead of me.

Mexican Michael Meyers

2009-01-13T15:43:00.001-05:00

came across this pic on my laptop, can't quite remember when I downloaded it, thought it needed to be posted:

Fever Ray - If I Had a Heart (Fuck Buttons Remix)

2009-01-13T07:48:00.001-05:00

Found this one on Pitchfork/Stereogum this morning and it RULES:

Apparently Karin Dreijer from The Knife has a solo album that's about to come out complete with a slowburner first single to turn away the uninitiated. Anyway, in order to secretly counteract that, she got who else but FUCK BUTTONS to do a remix! You can check it out here:

Fever Ray - If I Had a Heart (Fuck Buttons Remix)

The remix has the same general vibe as that transcendent Mogwai Fear Satan remix they did last year. Lots of buzzing, tribal backbeats and spiraling original song loops build to an epic swarm. IT ROCKS.

On an unrelated note: construction on the Leaning Tower of Pisa began in 1173. It's actually a bell tower for the chapel next door. It has seven bells - one for each of the notes in the scale! (don't count Do twice)

A NEW HOPE

2009-01-09T14:38:00.001-05:00

I think Barack Obama has already proven his inability to fix this country. I think it's time we look for a new hope:

But seriously though, hopefully Barack will be able to do what we need. Someone told me something interesting the other night that I hadn't thought of.

I hope people realize that things are going to get worse before they get better. If anyone is expecting this "change" to happen right after inauguration you're in for a rude awakening. In the mean time, keep on enjoying the electro renaissance for all it's worth!

Here's some cool rap from a group with the lamest name ever. Paper Route Gangstaz:

Offensive Youtube Videos

2009-01-08T12:00:00.000-05:00

Youtube videos can be offensive for a variety of reasons. Here are two examples of videos which the general public would probably consider offensive:

First, this is called a youtube poop. I've posted some of these before. I think they're really awesome. It's ok if you don't "get" them. But I do and that makes me cooler than you.

This video on the other hand, I find much more offensive and I actually can't watch it all the way through. Like what the fuck, I feel sorry for my cousins who are around this age. God I hope they aren't making videos like this.

I now present you with what I consider to be the most offensive video I've found on youtube to date:

Mustard Friends

2009-01-08T10:40:00.001-05:00

I was reading this thing on SA about 'Mustard Friends.' It got me thinking, what if you made a burrito but instead of the normal stuff in the burrito you put like six hot dogs a ton of ketchup, mustard, relish, onions, pickles, whatever else you want. Would that be good?

Actually I'm imagining a regular burrito from chipotle with one hot dog in the middle. That's such a gross image.

Actually nevermind, this one looks fucking delicious:

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

2009-01-06T10:45:00.000-05:00

For some reason I associated this book with certain other books I held in lesser regard as far as contemporary literature was concerned. However, after some friends recommended it, I decided to pick it up.

It's pretty great, like modernism in a contemporary setting. I love the cohesiveness that comes from it's intentional lack of cohesiveness. It seems to float along, changing subjects whenver it wants to, returning to and evading earlier ideas throughout. I guess that's where the title "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" comes from.

It's ostensibly about some people and their relationships. Events that shaped their lives, and the lives that they shape through events they undertake. It has a political theme involving the Soviet invasion of what was then Czechoslovakia (I think), but it seems to be more about how people deal with threats, attacks, things they can and can't control, etc.

I'm not done yet, but I like it so far. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to read something smart and slightly depressing. It's one of those books where the deeper you look the more you get, so read it slowly.

Here's an excellent quote:

When she told her French friends about it (her distaste for parades and marches), they were amazed. "You mean you don't want to fight the occupation of your country?" She would have liked to tell them that behind Communism, Fascism, behind all occupations and invasions lurks a more basic, pervasive evil and the image of that evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting idential syllables in unison. But she knew she would never be able to make them understand. Embarrassed, she changed the subject.

New Animal Collective

2009-01-04T08:56:00.000-05:00

Man, everyone kept telling me that the new Animal Collective leaked and that I should check it out. I didn't bother for a while but I got it the other day and man it's pretty awesome. I recommend everyone to check it out, or at least get it when it comes out for real. I thought this band was on their way out but it's a really refreshing listen and well worth the money. I'd post some on youtube, but I'd rather wait until it actually comes out.

Holla

2008-12-30T08:49:00.001-05:00

Man, my life is weird. At least Christmas was nice. I'm giving myself some awesome music equipment, so that should be be pretty cool. Also I think for New Years I'm gonna get a tattoo. Here's the design I have in mind:

What do yall think? That's Hall and Oates. Does anyone have any better ideas?

Rare Sports Post by Fullback Lorenzo Neal

2008-12-17T13:26:00.001-05:00

Man I'm so glad Le'Ron McClain made the Probowl. I was calling for that all season. He truly is a beast, and when he has his helmet on he looks kind of like a really ugly angry baby. It's fantastic. I can't find a picture that shows that, but this one sums him up pretty well:

Anyway seeing the probowl selections really washed the bad taste from 2nd Pittsburg loss out of my mouth. Obviously Ngata got snubbed, but he'll make it next year. The rest are exactly as I would have expected. Here's a pic of something I always want to see, Ngata along side Ray in posession of the football:

Anyway, since I don't want people to think this is a sports blog, I'm gonna leave it at that.

HAY GUYS

2008-12-17T08:34:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven't had much in the way of original content lately. I'll try and write a nice update later when I have some free time. I'm supposed to have been doing work for the last hour and half but instead I present you with this animate gif to end all animated gifs. Three people came into my office cause they heard me laughing hysterically at this:

I found it on a great LJ image cache repository. Trust me, I'll post more later!

Whoa! GOD DAMN

2008-12-15T13:32:00.001-05:00

God this picture is awesome:

And this one:

Walking On A Dream Remixes

2008-12-11T13:35:00.000-05:00

Man my stomach is kiiiilling me. I feel like such shit.

Anyway, not much has been happening. I had some fairly successful jam sessions last night. Once in a while it really seems like things sort of come together.

Here are some awesome remixes of Walking on a Dream, possibly the best song of 2008. Here's the best one I've come across, I'll add some more at the bottom of the post.

Electro music totally found some real, positive styles this year. I was afraid all that guido techno trash was going to completely overshadow all the good stuff that Aphex Twin, BOC, and others had put out over the past 10 years or so.

I think for me once I heard Untrue by Burial I knew we were onto something. That album really encompased the whole DIY aspect of electronic music, with overt and covert sampling, danceable beats and genuine heady lyrics/imagery. Along with that was the remix boom which has been helped along immensely by the internet. So many bands like Crystal Castles, Four Tet, Justice, etc. started doing all these sick remixes of each other and everyone else. They're all online and they're all free. It's amazing. So anyway, here are a few more remixes of Walking on a Dream from people I've never heard of:

Oh and just for kicks, here's an old remix I made a while ago. I'm pretty sure no one reads this, and if they do, they've probably already heard this song, but I'll post it anyway.

God I love this song

2008-12-10T09:33:00.001-05:00

Man I know this song is kind of old but it's just so good.

I love Crystal Castles' aesthetic. I heard the one guy is using an Atari chipset as an oscillator on his main synth. I wish I knew how to do that stuff. I wonder if Kath sings on this, since it's obviously not Alice Glass. It kind of reminds me of a really great Secret Mommy song that I'll try and dig up later. Alice Glass is OK when they really chop her voice up. On the other songs she's a little to screamy for me. I like it well enough I guess, like telling myself cough syrup tastes good. It does, I guess, but does it really?

Oh man I think I was wrong. I just found this video, which is awesome and totally legitamizes Alice Glass' singing style:

Here's the Secret Mommy track I was refering to:

The slump is over.. I'm back

2008-12-05T10:10:00.000-05:00

So I've been in a slump in my personal and internet life. Obviously November wasn't my best month - no posts, but it's December now and things are looking up. Everything sort of culminated in me crashing my car into two parked cars on Monday coming from work. Now that I've gotten that out of the way I'm ready to move on and back into the blogworld. I'm just gonna start off with a few questions that have no relevancy to anything:

you ever clam bake a room/car/closet with cigs just because?

you ever blow cig smoke into a bottle and close it up and let it sit for an hour then inhale the smoke inside it?

you ever take a bong hit of an entire cig and then vomit profusely all over yourself as you feel like you're going to die?

I hope you answered yes to some/all of these questions cause that's totally nasty, but I respect it.

So I was buying candy at 7-11 last night and I saw that they had confiscated a fake 18 year old ID. I remember once when I was about 19 or 20 I was at The Other Side in Towson and they tried to kick me out/confiscate my real ID cause they just knew it was a fake since they see so many. I mean what the fuck. Wouldn't it be more likely that I would get a fake under 18 ID, shave off my facial and body hair, (what little there is), let my face fester for about a week without washing and then try and pick up chicks at under age places of entertainment? Seriously, I would never do that, but I'm sure some people would.

This girl told me she was walking and this latino guy came up to her, (I have no problems with latinos, it just happens to be that this guy was one/this joke hinges sort of on him being from anotehr country), anyway he comes up to her and is like hey baby, you got a boyfriend? and she's says yeah I guess I do. and he says well you know in my country girls sometimes have 2 or even 3 boyfriends. SIIIIICKK pickup line.

Another even better one was a kid was walking home and again, a latino guy, comes up to him and is like hey do you have a girlfriend, and he's like yes. SO the guy says well in my country we can't all afford women so sometimes we do the -> points to his ass and then lets out a really animated sigh of relief/ecstacy. Actually in writing this story, I think I should end it there, even though the kid obviously said no, it really should end there.

Anyway, here's a video to end this post. It's not only a great original song, it also brings back some serious nostalgia to high school class trips that I used to take:

Priceless

2008-10-27T09:05:00.000-04:00

MAn this shit is funny to me:

Also this:

DRUUUUGGS

2008-10-09T10:43:00.000-04:00

SIIICCKKK
check this video out I love it:

The Ethics of Youtube

2008-10-07T08:46:00.000-04:00

INCORRECT AND UNETHICAL USE OF PUBLIC SPACE ON YOUTUBE:

Seriously this kind of shit infuriates me to no end. The worst part is that I'm sure she actually thinks she's cute. It would be one thing if it were sort of off the cuff, or if she had a bunch of little kids doing it. But you can tell that she poured hours of thought and effort into planning and producing that 1 minute long piece of garbage all by herself.

RIGHT AND CORRECT USE OF PUBLIC SPACE ON YOUTUBE:

I think that's pretty self-explanatory.

Bart the General

2008-10-02T14:32:00.001-04:00

I recently came across these Simpsons "parodies" online and was just totally blown away. -Bear with me I'm being serious here- Upon first inspection they seem like some weirdo's juvenile attempt at recreating the Simpsons. The low quality voices and animations can be a turn off. However, if you take the time to watch both of these you'll come to realize, like I did, that these are the work of someone who really knows what they're doing.

The artist was taking cues most obviously from The Simpsons, Beavis and Butthead, R. Crumb, etc. But there's a lot more going on here than simple mashup. There's a real post-modern sense of alienation here. As Stonefish tells Homerin Episode 2, "Your life was a long honeymoon mate, but I'm [Toadfish's] brother Stonefish and I'm fucking ruining your life from this day on."

There's also a Lynchian dissociation taking place. What comes off initially as poor animation, takes on a sense of dreamlike space. We begin to question whether we're really watching this or whether it's simply in our head.

So come along and see what happens when some new faces find their way into Springfield. Watch as Marge's affair forces Homer to live in a shack, missing out as Bart grows into an adult.

WARNING: These videos feature one of the best intros I've ever seen.

BART THE GENERAL EPISODE 1:

BART THE GENERAL EPISODE 2 - feat. Dr. House:

Barrrack

2008-10-01T09:17:00.000-04:00

seriously what the fuck...

Lazy Post

2008-09-26T11:34:00.000-04:00

Here's some funny pics for you:

This one speaks for itself.

Halloween can't come soon enough

Racial stereotype?

Dr. House?

The way it should have happened.

He later died in jail.

2008-09-25T13:43:00.000-04:00

So I was reading Webbie's (the rapper's) wikipedia article and I came across this gem:

"On Sunday, September 14, 2008 Webbie was arrested in Hattiesburg, MS, after he led police on a high speed chase when they attempted to pull him over for a traffic violation. He charged with one count of felony eluding, one count of driving under the influence, and one misdemeanor count of possession of marijuana. He later died in jail."

Now this seemed a little strange because I'm usualy privy to the deaths of rappers soon after they occur. I did a little detective work (see: Google) and realized pretty quickly that it was a blatant lie. I checked back later and sure enough the "He later died in jail." part had been removed.

I started to wonder who would perpetrate a lie like this, and immediately realized that I would!

My first stop was Alex Trebeck's wikipedia entry. I initally made it say this:

"On December 11, 2007, Trebek was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after suffering a minor heart attack in his home. He later died in jail."

However, I soon decided it would be better if it were here:

"Trebek once attended the former Royal Roads Military College, in Victoria, BC, Canada, but did not complete his first year.[3] He later died in jail."

Of course both of those were taken off before I could even link them to anyone else.

While I won't claim that "He later died in jail." is the new "in bed." I will say that it's pretty hilarious and works with almost anything.

Movie Idea

2008-09-24T08:45:00.001-04:00

I think I'm going to start pitching movie ideas to studios. Here's one:

The plot is that Stephen Baldwin, (playing himself, but reprising his role in Biodome) wins a round-the-world scavenger hunt on the Oprah Winfrey Show. However, the contest has been rigged by Dr. Phil in order for Oprah to rid herself of the Baldwin family for all the trouble they've caused her over the years (a stark departure from reality, where Oprah often has trouble remembering who the Baldwins even are) by sending her agents to take care of them on the trip.

Stephen travels through various real-world locations collecting items, with occasional cameos from the other Baldwin family members. Each of the movie's locales feature assassins who are distant relatives of Oprah (Fu Manchu Oprah, the Abominable Snow Oprah, Leif Winfreyson, Rhamses Tut Oprah, Arnold Schwarzenoprah).

Ultimately, Stephen returns to Oprah's studio in New York City significantly powered up. He, along with his brothers and friend John Candy, (played by John Madden) attempt to overpower Oprah. However, they are all violently mutilated when Bono brings an army African villagers and Tibetan monks to lay waste to the entire city of New York a la Cloverfield.

I think that with the right edits, this clip would make for a great trailer:

Sarah "Peggy" Palin-Hill

2008-09-23T09:29:00.000-04:00

Here's a little article I've drawn up in my free time between edits at work.

I've been editing a ton of these Bloomberg interviews with economists. They range from all the way to the right to all the way to the left. It's been pretty eye opening in the last few weeks. Anyway, I've gone ahead and wrote this to sort of sum up my feelings so far, I've included a few quotes from some of the interviews to bolster a few of my arguments too. Some of these people are pretty smart I think.

In case you've been living under a rock, the government has been bailing out specific loan institutions on Wall Street recently in order to free up liquidity in the market and try and make loan money available to people (businesses) that should be able to get it.

There are several things that are really scary about these bailouts. First and most obvious, it's billions of taxpayer's dollars that are being used by the government to buy up these institutions. What's happening is that as the Government buys up these things like Fanny and Freddie, they aren't putting their debt on the books. If they were to do that, and accept it as part of the process, U.S. debt would double over night just by the purchasing of those two institutions.

"The fact that politicians don't want to put that on the book and face up to the taxpayer and the voter to tell them what they've really done speaks volumes."

I agree that some of these bailouts are necessary. But the government has been choosing which companies to bail out based on how much money is at risk, not by whether or not they actually need/deserve the help. It's sending the message that Capitalism is here to allow people to make money by any means necessary, but that when you fail, or get beat, the government will be there to save you from disaster.

There's this economics term, "Moral Hazard." Sure, there's morality in even the most cutthroat laissez faire Capitalism. It's all in how you look at it. The companies that were using deceit and trickery in their loan processes should have to pay. Bankruptcy is a natural part of the process of the reallocation of capital into newer and fresher parts of the market. Bankruptcy is necessary. As long as we continue to bail out companys based on how much money is at risk, we aren't going to solve the problem and if anything, we're just going to make things worse.

"The best response is to add liquidity to the market to make sure that the loans can still be made, that transactions can still occur, and then companies with bad balance sheets are not going to survive. Companies which have an underlying health, and healthy balance sheets should be assisted over time, not over night."

Now that the government has been pouring all this money into saving the failing loan institutions on Wall Street, failing companies in other sectors have begun to ask for handouts as well. General Motors, for instance, is asking for $25 billion in government loans. They were originally asking for $50 billion, but they've wised up and lowered it.

GM has made poor decisions in the auto market. They find themselves backed up against the wall, as do other companies in Detroit. And they're looking desperately for some sort of federal handout. But the fact is, there's no real market failure in play here. Others in the auto industry are flourishing and there's no reason why a company that made the wrong decisions, who is now against the ropes so to speak, should be given a shot of adreneline (or steroids) to fight back against the companies that have legitimately planned and trained for the fight.

"In a capitalist market, you have to allow for failure. You have to allow for companies to go bankrupt. You have to allow for the engines of creative destruction to reallocate resources and assets among different order classes."

And if it means that these companies go under, then so be it. But we cannot have a capitalist system where it's okay to make money but if you lose money, somebody else is going to pick up the tab. Or if you ever need a helping hand, you go running to the taxpayer. Now I might be missing the point here, but this looks like social welfare for big business to me. Now THAT'S irony.

Another great example is the Nuclear Power industry. John McCain, who was arguing against these sorts of government loan guarantees in the primaries is now for them. He's flip flopped because of the actions of other people in his party and because it's such a tight election.

John McCain is talking about having the Federal Government build 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030. Now, the nuclear power industry says no power plant is going to get built unless the Federal Government underwrites every last penny of the loans necessary to build the $6 billion power plant.

If you do the math on that, 45 plants times $6 billion is what the Federal Government and the taxpayer would be on the hook for to guarantee the loans to these nuclear power plants. That's just stunning. It makes what GM's looking for look like chump change.

And amid all this, the Republicans feel it's okay to use Sarah Palin, yeah I had to go there, to avert people's attention from the real issues.

Sarah Palin has become a champion of the Conservative movement. Why? Did she outline what was wrong with the country's agenda, what was wrong with the country and how she proposed to fix it? No, she offered a class warfare schoolyard taunt and a bunch of cute (frightening) sound bytes.

We're moving back into a world where the Republican party stands for nothing except class resentment, cloth coat Republicanism, and the anger at elites who are supposedly out to take their red churches and Bibles and puppy dogs.

Remember when both Gore/Kerry based their campaigns around how bad George Bush would be/was? Remember how that didn't work and it angered a lot of Democrats to the point where they actually voted for third parties because they were so disgusted with the spinelessness of the Democratic Party?

Now it's the Republicans who are using the scare tactics to try and prevent people from voting for Obama.

In a world where information and ideas are traded more freely than ever, where people are finally given the freedom to self publish things, like this article for instance, which anyone anywhere can read, Palin and McCain are actually attacking Obama for using too many big words.

In a world where education is the true building block on which the future of our nation and our world stands, they want you to vote against someone for sounding too intelligent.

John McCain warned us from the beginning that this election wasn't going to be about the issues, but none of us expected it would be like this.

AZNA

2008-09-12T10:25:00.000-04:00

Here's an appology-in-advance scone:

THE SCENE

2008-09-09T09:29:00.001-04:00

Sorry I've been absent for a few days. I usually can't get online for very long outside of work.

Here's the best video on the internet (watch it until I find something better/more meaningful to post about:

Funny fake rapper interview

2008-09-05T11:02:00.000-04:00

I usually pass on stuff like this but for some reason I found this guy really funny. Yeah it's probably too long, but it stays consistantly funny throughout.

Really Amazing Video

2008-09-04T12:54:00.000-04:00

Here's a video I found that someone had posted to the Something Awful forums recently. The first part is really cool it's like some shamanistic song-language or something. I won't pretend that I understand what she goes through, but it sort of opened my eyes the ways in which I had previously understood both human-to-human and human-to-environment interactions.

While the first five or so minutes obviously came across as music to me, and there's no doubt that the "hurr music is a language onto itself" argument could be brought up here, her message is actually almost entirely in opposition to that.

It's not really that "deep" or anything but it's important to realize how closed minded it is to look at things from the perspective of cut and dry right and wrongs, even in terms of making music, when it comes to how one deals with thing things both in and out of their control.

It's totally rad when she sits down at her computer and seems to type entirely at random. Her typing is completely devoid of the normal type-pacing (I don't know how else to describle) that occurs when someone is using a keyboard, but nevertheless, the computer ends up speaking for her. It was kind of shocking to me since I assumed it was just another instance of her simply interacting with her environment.

Eno and Byrne - Everything That happens Will Happen Today

2008-09-04T10:33:00.000-04:00

I got the knew Eno/Byrne collaboration and I've been listening to it for the past few days. It's not bad, but it's not that great either. I liked Eno's Another Day on Earth (2005) much better. Like their other collaboration My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today has a few great tracks and a bunch of only OK songs.

Check out Eno's Hoodless Sweatshirt (sick) and Byrne trying too hard (again) to look smart:

I don't know it just sounds like Eno's arangements are a little weak and he's using too many canned insturments/effects. Likewise, Byrne just sounds sort of old by trying to sound young and vibrant. At times he sounds like Talking Heads Era Byrne, at other times he sounds like Byrne a la Bowie or even Byrne a la Bob Dylan.

While the album starts out sounding like a collection of Flaming Lips B-Sides it eventually finds its stride. That's not to knock some of the songwriting. The melodies are great. A lot of it is the kind of stuff that, like Rolos, really sticks with you. Another way of putting it is that it's the kind of songs that when you hear them the second time, you know you've only heard them once before, but it seems like you've heard them lots of times before, in a good way. That's Eno's knack I guess. I wonder how many of the insturments he really plays.

The one true standout on the album is Strange Overtones:

Donk Boys - Little Rat

2008-09-03T01:36:00.000-04:00

Giving the middle finger to the camera is so cool... this track is off the chain check it out here:

http://www.junodownload.com/miniflashplayer/SF1309532-02-01-05.mp3/

Hilarity

2008-09-02T08:32:00.001-04:00

So Sarah Palin's 17 year old daughter has a kid on the way. But she's going to get marriet to the father soon, (at least he's also in High School). I heard on the radio today that the only reason the McCain camp decided to even release this information (like people wouldn't find out eventually) is because they believe it will somehow dispel the rumors that the daughter actually gave birth to the down's kid Palin supporters champion as a testament to the beauty of the Pro-Life argument. I love it. SPIN CITY BABY. Like seriously do they believe that if they tell us a "reason" why they're doing something that it'll make everything OK? Give it up people.

Here's two Crystal Castles songs to make up for all that:

Crimewave:

Courtship Dating:

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits

2008-08-28T11:13:00.001-04:00

Taco Bell Commercials

2008-08-27T12:02:00.000-04:00

In an effort to keep this from being an entirely music focused blog, I'm going to post several classic Taco Bell commercials from throughout the ages. I was never a big fan of the chihuahua, although the phrase "Yo Quiero Taco Bell" is one of the most important cultural memes of our era. However, I won't be posting any of those commercials as they are really notably unblogworthy. I also won't be posting any Taco Bell commercials from the past 5 years as I don't remember any that were actually funny enough.

This guy really quiero'ed Taco Bell:

Also, I seem to remember a mythic golden age of late '90s early '00s Taco Bell commercials that I remember as being the best/funniest commercials ever. Unfortunately I can't seem to remember what any of them were about, nor can I find any of them online. Perhaps I was at an age where I was misjudging the quality of certain things in my life. If anyone can think of any of the one's I might be partially remembering please let me know. BONUS PICS OF ME AND MY FRIENDS EATING AT TBELL AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST!!!!!

This one is the best by far, I wonder if Santa's laughing like that because he thinks he used logic to trick you into going to taco bell twice a week or because of something much more sinister...:

The description says it all - It was the year 1995 - Taco Bell rolled out the Double Decker Taco, and this made Shaq and Hakeem homosexuals.:

This one has a song by a wannabe Huey Lewis and the News EVERYBODY LOVES TACOs:

Here is truly a WTF TBell Commercial. There are so many things wrong with it. Seafood taco salad, discount Corningware bowl, that guys face????:

This is the least noteworthy but I just really love the song:

Here's me getting my Taco Bell at a rest stop on the way home from our Youth Gathering Retreat:

These are my friends from the retreat, for some reason they wouldn't let me sit with them or brush my teeth on the floor of Taco Bell even though they did:

Seriously though, I can tell you what is ostensibly going on in that picture, but there's got to be something else to it.

Eliza - That's What She Said

2008-08-26T10:42:00.000-04:00

This is Eliza and the That's What She Saids. I don't know what they sound like but I do know that they rock.

TRACKLIST:
Rock-A-Bye Your Baby
The Big Hurt
I Wanna Rock (I Wanna Roll) (w/ The Breeze)
Mocking Bird
So Little Time
Stuff Like That There
Love's A Hurting Game
A Fool Such As I (w/ The Breeze)
In My Life
I Go To Rio
Deed I Do (Dat)
You're Gonna Miss Me
Second Hand Love
That's How Strong My Love Is
Shake A Hand
One Fine Day
We Bee Jammin'

She also does a duet on her other cd with a man named Bo Schronce who looks like this:

Also, this came out in 1999 in case you needed some temporal grounding after learning about this masterpiece. (I certainly did, and it made a lot more sense once I knew).

And no bump would be complete without a shoutout to the producer. WHAT UP CURTISS CARPENTER I LOVE YOUR RADIO SHOW KING CURTISS'S BEACH CLUB I LISTEN TO IT WHENEVER I'M IN LUMBERTON. WHICH ONE ARE YOU? HERE's TO HOPING YOUR'E THE GUY GIVING THE SUCKIT TO THE CAMERA.

Does looking this stuff up count as internet stalking?

BONUS EDIT!!!!: In looking for more pictures of Curtiss Carpenter I came across a memorial site for my new favorite artist of the day. I will attempt to recreate the memorial here:

In Memoriam
Dominic Vroman
September 25, 1975 - March 6, 2007

Which one is your favorite/represents you the best? I like the mexican baby one a lot, boy doesn't that binky look huge and awkward around his neck? Bonus for the But also the baby is too cute not to mention.

The Dead Texan

2008-08-25T09:19:00.000-04:00

I was in Philly this weekend, they have a lot of cool record stores there. I was gonna buy And Their Refinement of the Decline by Stars of the Lid on vinyl, but then I found this cd/dvd from something called The Dead Texan which is a collaboration of Adam Wiltzie of Stars of the Lid and Christina Vantzos.

The songs are great, they're like shorter and more direct but just as ambient/epic as anything by Stars, but the videos are really what makes it. Theres a video for each tracks and they are really just amazing. They totally capture the feel of the music, simultaneously lo-fi, personal, and utterly grand in scope.

Heres some clips of the stuff that I could find on youtube. If you're into Stars of the Lid at all and/or like watching music videos, I highly recommend you go to Kranky's (that's the record label) website and buy this right away.

Aegina Airlines

The Six Million Dollar Sandwhich (this one's so awesome on a big screen)

The Struggle

And now, to lighten things up a little bit, here's something funny from one of my favorite youtube contributors:

The Knife Interview

2008-08-22T11:28:00.000-04:00

I came into work late again so I don't have much time. But heres a video that made me laugh:

Dominique Leone

2008-08-21T08:01:00.000-04:00

Anyway, so there's this guy Dominique Leone who's not that cool looking or anything. I think he may have written some reviews for Pitchfork (another Pitchfork reference, I'm sorry) but I found out about him through a different source.

Whew I've got to make sure this doesn't turn into just a music blog.

I got his EP when it came out. It was like four or five songs and nothing really great. The first track was decent alt-house or maybe trance? I don't fucking know. The rest were scattershot. Good moments, boring moments you know the drill.

The last track kind of blew me away though. It's nothing special. Best lyric: "Conversational... can you hear it... no... you can't." It sounds like someone playing a repetitive piano riff on a midi controller set up to Ableton with some stock keyboard sound preloaded in. The singing fleetingly sounds like a wanna-be Roger Waters with way too much chorus on his voice (wasn't that always the case?).

Somehow, it works though. It's gotten under my skin. I've listened to it 1,000 times. I'm working on getting the actual album, which has been garnering some pretty positive reviews.

NONE OF MY FUCKING LINKS WORK ON THIS WEBSITE! They either get cut off or they don't show up at all.

In the mean time just go to his damn site www.dominiqueleone.com and scroll down towards the bottom and click on B3: Conversational. It's the best I can do.

If anyone knows a simple method for doing my own hosting PLEASE let me know.

Scandinavian Accents Are The Best

2008-08-19T14:21:00.001-04:00

I don't really know what there is to say about this.

M83 - Kim and Jessie

2008-08-19T14:04:00.001-04:00

Great song, great video, great upskirts!

Franco Nero

2008-08-19T13:36:00.001-04:00

I just found out about this guy Franco Nero. He's like this Italian Tom Sellec or something. I've heard that you can judge a man by the girdth of his moustache. If that's the case, this guy would have to be near the top of the list of men with the largest moustache girdths. Check out these clips from some of his popular films:

This one's hot:

Here's a longer clip but totally worth it. At the end the girl asks him who could've made a robot like the Alien Terminator. His response: "Not even the Japanese." Times were different then.

I wonder who would've won if he ever faced off against Mark Gregory:

Random Stuff

2008-08-19T09:54:00.000-04:00

I haven't been around for the past few days and I still don't have internet at my house. Anyway, I've decided that I actually do like the new LSF cd. I still think it might be a little overproduced, but some of the songs are actually pretty good. I couldn't find Comes & Goes online so heres an oldie but goodie:

Heres a video of a song not by LSF:

More LAter cause now I have to edit a transcript of WorldWater & Solar Tech's Corp Earnings Conference Call!!

Fruitopia

2008-08-14T16:38:00.000-04:00

Martin Luther King Jr. edition of Fruitopia:

I've been seriosly craving Fruitopia. you guys remember that junk?. I want it so bad but I can't even remember if it was good or not. Probably not. But that's not the point I guess. I'm sure they probably don't make it anymore, but here's to hoping!

(This fruitopia looks nasty but I would still drink it)

I mean, I chalked SURGE up to being dead and buried years ago, then I came across this in Norway:

It's called URGE but it's the same thing. And yes, they have Cool Ranch Doritos there, but for some reason they're called Cool American. I wonder if that means it tastes like cool Americans, or cool Americans are the only people who buy Doritos in Norway.

My bro told me recently that he knows a kid who claims he found a Fruitopia vending machine in the back of a building at UMD. I dunno if hes lying or not but he sent me a 3rd hand pic of it from his cellphone.

Enigmatic isn't it? It could be the button on the vending machine... or something much more sinister. UPDATE: Wentzel thinks it might be part of a soda fountain. If that's the case there's no telling what will come out... all I know is that it's almost assuredly not going to be Fruitopia. UPDATE UPDATE: That picture is in fact from a soda fountain in a Wal-Mart in North Carolina. As my bro has now pointed out - "The fabled lost [University of Maryland] fruitopia machine has no evidence supporting its existance"

Here's a video of an underage girl bonging fruitopia in McDonalds. Apparently it's the first legal substance she's bonged. I wonder if she's beer bonged cocaine or the blood of an illegal immigrant.

It's not nearly as funny as you would imagine. I think they might be Canadian based on the way the narrator says "about" and the girl named Spencer at the end.

I'll leave you with this final thought:

There is a beautiful person
living inside you!
Please share a Raspberry Psychic Lemonade
with him or her.

SYNTHESIZERS

2008-08-12T11:50:00.000-04:00

Synth's are great, I really want one. Here's something awesome you can do if you have one:

So ONEIDA's got a new CD (look for my review either later today or tomorrow depending on afternon work) that just came out called Preteen Weaponry. I think it has something to do with those kids who fake like they want it from men on the internet and then trap them with this guy who looks like Bacon kind of.

Since I haven't really figured out the whole hosting of MP3s thing yet, and I'm at work so I don't have access to them anyway, I'll post files of a bit of the new stuff when I get a chance. For now enjoy some more awesome synth work.

Here's a rad Oneida song and a song by SUICIDE which I only recently found out about through Pitchfork, (remember when it used to be cool/acceptable to admit that you found about a band/artist through Pitchfork?)

Bonus points for Harry Potter on Keyboard - but seriously that guy is SICK.

I totally broke my sunglasses the other day at Todd Norris' wedding reception.. I might get a pair the one's the guy is wearing in this video.

Kawasaki Ninjas Rule Kawasaki Ninjas Cool

2008-08-12T08:45:00.000-04:00

I don't know if any of you were (are) fans of Garfield but man I found these videos and I think they really encapsulate what the comics were all about. I'll leave the cartoon out of this just because watching that show was one of the most important activities of my childhood.

That one's got to be my favorite. But theres a ton so here's another good one:

As for that song: Vocalist Sammy Hagar has said that he was writing the lyrics to this song at the studio very late one night, and he heard Eddie Van Halen in an adjacent room working on a piano melody. Hagar said he suddenly realized that "we were writing the same song," so he walked into the room and began singing his words over Van Halen's music.

FIRST POST

2008-08-11T11:20:00.000-04:00

Hey all this is my new blog straight off the top of my head. Read it every day and TEll your friends!

This is my thoughts on the cooking channel: it would be tottaly hot if giada and RAchel Ray made out I think...

This is what it would be like if Natalie Portman coul dcook.

<---- wee willy wonka would be proud. Actually what I'd really like to see is Sweet southern Belle Paula Dean baking a beautiful cake for four hours and then farting on it. HEY GUYUS EVERYBODY CHECK OUT THIS SWEET WEBSITE: www.cakefarts.com Also check out her silver bluetooth or it might just be part of her wig

she could spice up the frosting on my birthday cake any day!

Hey guys in making this blog I found this on google is it
real?