Mike Mike
I agree, but don't blame that on metal heads, it was the east coast 2nd wave hardcore scene that brought all that jock shit about- not metal..when you have bands of skin head/thug/criminal NY types on stage promoting racism and gang mentality- the crowd follows suit, and soon the whole scene looks like a frat party or high school pep rally/ jail playground..it wasn't metal it was 2nd wave hardcore, which is not and will never be true punk..
deathtokoalas
i think you're contradicting yourself without realizing it. you're right that second wave hardcore wasn't punk; you're wrong that second wave hardcore wasn't metal. it had every attitude associated with metal, it was marketed to metal fans by metal labels and it didn't even sound like punk anymore. further, it's lineal descendants have realized this and integrated the term metal into their marketing - "nu metal", then "metalcore". i refuse to even call second wave hardcore "hardcore", or their fans "hardcore kids" (whatever their age). it's metal, and they're metalheads.
real hardcore mostly morphed into grunge and then split off into noise & etc.
Mike Mike
Eh, I see what you're saying but that second wave NYHC and east coast hardcore was 3 chord Black Flag influenced for the most part. It wasn't really progressive enough in anyway to hear metal influences in it, although I guess you could say it was also Motorhead inspired. The mentality at those shows was never seen at any metal show I've ever been to..gangs, fights, nazism, just really ignorant behavior all over the place. The thrash metal bands of this time integrated the sounds of Priest, Sabbath, and Maiden into their sound..The second wave hardcore groups were kind of just Black Flag with less creativity and more stupidity...(says a lot because Rollins era Black Flag was pretty stupid as well)
deathtokoalas
see, i've never heard much of it like that. it's always sounded to me like metalheads that can't play. metallica without the guitar and drum solos, sort of thing; what i hear is a lot of recycled thrash riffs, and not much ripping on black flag or bad brains. and, while i wasn't there, i'm of the understanding that the nazi bullshit came out of a common root as satanic black metal, that it came out of all that early 80s metal that glorifies white, northern europeans as this viking super-race that worshiped satan.
Mike Mike
There was definitely the nazi element in black metal as well, and while there's no excuse for hardcore nazism, at least the black metal bands usually did it with some knowledge of viking and pagan roots, and not all of those bands had nazi lyrics..The 2nd wave hardcore bands and mostly their fans (more so than the bands themselves) brought an 8th grade drop out gang themed, extremely ignorant nazi mentality to the scene. That black metal scene you speak of was so far from here (Norway mostly) and I don't even believe a lot of those bands played many live shows.
deathtokoalas
i don't mean to suggest the norwegian stuff was a direct influence on nyhc, though, and i don't mean to ignorantly directly label anything as nazi (because i just don't know enough about it, and don't really care to). but i think the norwegian church burning nonsense actually post-dates nyhc by a good margin. i think the earlier viking/satan stuff was mostly british, was rarely explicitly nazi (although was between the lines) and itself probably developed out of "immigrant song". i was more trying to get across the idea that black metal and nyhc shared a common influence in early 80s satanic viking metal, because i think that's where the bullshit in the hardcore scene ultimately came from.
Mike Mike
You could be right and it's wrong to generalize any scene as "Nazi" as you pointed out. Norwegian black metal definitely post dates NYHC by about a decade as well. First wave black metal had it's roots in stuff like Bathory, Celtic Frost and Venom (kind like thrash with satanic lyrics, sloppy playing) That stuff probably did influence some 2nd wave hardcore, although it's tough to say because it was really all happening at the same time. Agnostic Front came out very early along, I believe it was 83 or 84, the first wave of black metal hit a little earlier , and so did the early thrash metal releases. All pretty much happened rather quickly, tough to say what exactly influenced what.
Attila the Humble
Don't you like us koalas? :(
deathtokoalas
your despicable cuteness is subversive and must be eradicated for the well being of all other life forms in the galaxy.
Jorge Martín Pérez
This song remember me to Weezer.
deathtokoalas
yeah, there's an influence, but the thermals are generally fairly straight forward whereas weezer plays on the angular shit. the average non-musician may be surprised by how complicated weezer actually is. thermals are a couple of chords, a driving drum beat and a good attitude. if you take it back another generation to the general power pop sound of the early 80s and it's hybrid punk-pop offshoots (like the vaselines), you get a big common influence that's probably more important...
Jorge Martín Pérez
Ok, so you are right.
KYLEizaFOX
I normally don't respond to comments that are this old but you're way off. Weezer, complicated? Are you serious? Is there a bit more technicality than the thermals have? Sure. Complicated? No.
You're comparing two bands who power chord their way through 75% of every song they write. That's not a criticism, just a fact. Two bands that also happen to love down strokes. Two bands who take heavy punk influence and add some power pop into the mix. Then you're going to sit there and tell me and others that finding the two bands comparable is a stretch?
deathtokoalas
early weezer is quite harmonically (or vertically) complex. the beatles were very complex in that way, too - whereas the who were generally not. power pop is not all at a comparable level of simplicity, but you have to have some knowledge of music theory to be able to have the conversation. otherwise, you're not able to even understand what the words mean, in context.
KYLEizaFOX
Your arrogance astounds me. I have knowledge of musical theory as I am a musician. The style of music that weezer plays is absolutely comparable to what the thermals play. To argue that is asinine. The structure of each song, verse, verse, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus is there. The type of guitar chords used are there. The down strokes are there. The upbeat pace is there. The distortion is there. The pop is there. The punk is there. There are enough similarities to hear one band and say, with confidence, "hey this band makes me think of weezer" or vice versa.
deathtokoalas
you might think you have the kind of knowledge necessary to have this discussion, but the language you've used demonstrates that you don't.
i'm only going to correct one error: the chord types used in weezer and thermals are not comparable to each other. thermals are mostly one-five power chords. weezer very rarely used those kinds of power chords in their early records, and almost always harmonized them with leads full of 4ths and 6ths and 7ths when they did.
KYLEizaFOX
You might think you have "won" this debate, but your inability to start it, and your dismissal of everything I have to say shows you simply don't have a leg to stand on.
There is no harmonizing a power chord with one guitar. By doing so it is simply no longer a power chord. 1-5. (8 optional)
You also keep referring to weezer's early work like you actually know it. You mean albums like the blue album? Their very first? With songs like In the Garage, My Name is Jonas, The Sweater Song, Say It Ain't So, and Buddy Holly? Songs so riddled with power chords you would have to be a fool not too notice if you are any form of musician?
No one is saying the bands play exactly the same music and are the same band. To sit there and tell me they are not similar is just stupid, and at this point you are just arguing to argue.
You're confusing your arrogance with intelligence.
This is all you do. You tell me "you don't understand." Every similarity between the two bands, and there are many, that I bring up, you ignore. Then offer me this "way out" that YOU are clearly looking for.
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." -Albert Einstein
deathtokoalas
as i've pointed out repeatedly, weezer tend to write very harmonically complex rock songs while the thermals tend to produce very simple three chord rock songs. this isn't a controversial statement, it merely relies on an understanding of the music created by the two bands. all i've received in response is a lot of inaccuracies. i've corrected a few of them, but this argument remains meaningless to anybody that doesn't know what "harmonically complex" means. and it's not intuitive, so you almost certainly don't if you haven't studied it a little.
I was listening to "I am the Walrus" while working on a Master's Thesis (strange basis), and in the sidebar was the song in the subject line. I was floored. I cannot describe exactly what it is, but the entire song has been nothing short of amazing. (Admittedly, it has served as a good "backdrop" for working on my Thesis about cyberwarfare.) What inspired this absolutely incredibly frenetic work?
jessica
that version of the recording was written in late '01 as a stadium rock track for an unrealized rock project, but not constructed in it's existing form until about a month ago. there's consequently a set of influences relative to 2001 (it's half industrial, half no-wave/grunge) and a set of influences relative to 2014 (i've been listening to a lot of melodic hardcore recently), as well as a lot of stuff i've come in and out of in between. i've dubbed my work "blender rock", which means that it tries to take in as diverse a set of influences as is possible.
i should also point out that this is a reworking of what i call my fourth symphony. there are roughly ten versions of this track, and i will be compiling them shortly, but for now all i have is this, which is the version with the symphony title: https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/trepanation-nation
ganzonomy
It's some of the wildest, most interesting, stuff I have heard in a long, long, while. I'll take a look at those links when I resume my work on my MA Thesis, but from what I heard, I am thoroughly impressed.
I've been listening to a lot of late 1960s / early 1970s Miles Davis (The "Electric Era"), and I see parallels in it, especially the extent of keyboard and guitar work and the emphasis of such instruments. (If you have a chance, I highly recommend finding a copy of Dark Magus - Live at Carnegie Hall, for me, it seems to be his "peak" from that era). I've very often just sat down with a good pair of headphones and tried to pick apart each individual instrument and where it's going (or trying to go) compared to the others. (I like doing that with a lot of works, be it King Crimson, Frank Zappa, Miles, anything that has a lot of instrumentation that's intertwined, or just something that can be ridden like a "magic carpet").
Again, great work :-)
jessica
davis is an interesting parallel. i've certainly spent a lot of time listening to davis, but the times i've sat down with any kind of emulation purposes are pretty rare. i'd say i get my mclaughlin pull more out of the mahavishnu stuff. the prog is key for me: i was sort of reared on crimson, genesis, zappa and floyd and it formed the basis of my musical understanding before kurt cobain smashed a guitar over my head and made me take notice of punk rock, which i suppose was a fairly normal experience for people my age at that time. that prog rock childhood was very formative, though, and eventually defined my interests in post-rock in the late 90s and early 00s.
i'm glad you're enjoying it...
ganzonomy
Davis' work from 1972 to 1975 (post-McLaughlin, his primary guitarist by that point had become Pete Cosey), is less smooth and more a mixture of Hendrix-meets-Parliament. I got reared on what would be considered "classic rock", but one of the things I enjoyed doing was finding out where "the limits" were. I became a Disc Jockey at WHRW Binghamton from 2004 through 2008 (I was a student at Binghamton University, hated it... wound up going through the City University of New York (CUNY) Queens College from 2010 onwards to complete my Bachelor's... but I digress, back to Disc Jockeying. I found that era of my life to be the most musically expanding. I would play anything ranging from Django, to Antheil (Ballet Mecanique being a personal favorite), to Zappa (the show was named Frankly... Zappa for a time), to spike jones, etc., The premise was "if it's been recorded, it's playable, and if it hasn't, I'll figure out how to turn the random things in the station into musical instruments".
Alas, the master's thesis is on cyberwarfare - which due to the lack of political science stuff (but a TON of computer science stuff) is kicking my brains in. Thanks for making the research process easier. PS: I read some of your works from when you were in college for law, they're actually quite good. If you find the spark to finish, go for it.
jessica
i started off in theoretical physics and, after bouncing around quite a bit, finished a math degree in 2006. i went back in '08 to do a computer science degree for purely economic reasons and got to a half credit from finishing it before realizing that it really wasn't what i wanted to be doing with my life, so i mentally switched into law and finished up to the end of second year in it. i ended up concluding that i was arguing with the basic premises of the english common law and that there wasn't any future in continuing on with it outside of existing in some kind of purely theoretical space that is populated solely by anarchists. i couldn't possibly apply my perspectives in any kind of a real world context. i have loose plans on going back to school, but i think i'd probably want to focus on a master's degree in mathematics.
for the time being, i'm focusing on "completing my discography", which ran from roughly 1996-2011 and has dozens of half complete ideas. the track in question (as mentioned, from 2001 but finished last month) is a part of that process of finishing incomplete ideas. i've worked my way up to 2002, meaning i still have about ten years of musical ideas to finish before i start thinking about restarting an academic career.
ganzonomy
The basic arguments of law are some of the most absurd things i've seen, i'm not a lawyer (my area, were I to enter it after the MA, would be international law), but there are some arguments where i'm just like "REALLY.... what was being smoked when this was argued?!" (and that's even taking into account historical contexts in supreme court cases). I started out in Mechanical Engineering myself (discovered I couldn't do calculus) before going into psychology and finally political science. Insofar as anarchists, are we talking anti-government sorts, or are we talking about the IR idea of anarchy that is chaos?
The idea of having a vault of unfinished music, is something that has fascinated me. I'm a photography fan, and to see works that I've done years after they were made, I find interesting; particularly in seeing the things now that I could have improved, conditions that I could have changed (lenses, film type, etc.,), and I find I have very few that I'm like "Yes, this was PERFECT!". Admittedly though this travels to my writing, where I'm always - after the fact - going into analyzing every little grammatical mistake that was missed.
Side Question? What exactly did "death to koalas" come from?
jessica
one of the (many) assumptions i found myself having difficulty agreeing with was the idea that situations should be analyzed by an objective criteria. i'd ultimately take the perspective that this isn't even possible - which is essentially the critical legal studies view that law is functionally defined by actors using the rules to justify enforcing their opinion, rather than the other way around. where i'd break with the cls people is that i actually think this is preferable to an objective set of rules, so long as the class relations can be abolished or minimized in terms of decision making (and replacing incarceration with civil/tort law in all but the most extreme of situations would ease a lot of those concerns) and the decision making is take out of the hands of elitist judges and put more into the hands of the community.
even something as seemingly black and white as "thou shalt not murder" is not really acceptable to me. i can come up with endless justifications for murder that go beyond the immediate need for self-defense. so, i don't think that a system that produces these static, immutable rules and demands they never be broken is the right approach - i think a system that looks at the situation on a case by case basis and determines whether the behaviour is or is not beneficial to the community on that basis - completely independently of past decisions - is preferable. adopting this approach would throw the concept of stare decisis out the window and completely abolish the authority of the existing common law in favour of the authority of the actual, existing community.
the general position in opposition is going to be that a system of clearly delineated laws makes it clear what the boundaries are in terms of what behaviour is allowed and what behaviour is not. but i'd identify this "liberal" mindset as the basis of most of the problems we have in front of us, from financial speculation to environmental degradation. if we want to talking about improving our social conditions, we have to shift society so that people are thinking about actively making moral choices rather than behaving as badly as they can with the singular restriction of merely avoiding the law. if your only argument in favour of a behaviour is "it's not illegal", maybe you shouldn't be doing it.
but, in taking this position, i'm rejecting the very foundations of english society. it may be an interesting exercise in anarchist rhetoric, but it's not something i can explore in a courtroom or in a classroom. and, i ultimately don't feel i need those pieces of paper to write on the topic if i decide to in the future.
ganzonomy
The first two paragraphs are mind-blowing to me (not in a bad way, but in a way that I had never considered viewing things and will have to research further, since traditional law is built on absolutes and to a great extent ignores ethics for "if it's legal I can do it, if it's not deemed illegal, i can still do it!". Not to get too political-sciencey, but you are touching on the issue that existed between President Theodore Roosevelt and President William Howard Taft during the early 20th century. Whereas Roosevelt's mentality was primarily "if it's not stricken as explicitly illegal, I can get away with it", Taft's mentality was "it is only doable if the law explicitly states it is doable". (However both were notable for their "trust-busts" during the early 20th century as well as their presences in Latin America during that time period as well. As far as law goes - admittedly I'm not a law student in the US (right now, I'm finishing my Master's in CUNY Brooklyn, I may go for International Law after), I will agree that law is a construct that is built from the norms of the society of which it exists in, but the issue I have is that while not having "objective rules" may be preferable in either a small state / municipality, "objective rules" need to exist in some capacity for the purposes of providing a structure - however decrepit it may be - for judicial purposes.
I do agree with a case-by-case basis for things, because of mitigating circumstances. I find the allowance of organizations such as the MPAA and RIAA to act egregiously simply because someone's grandmother plays happy birthday from an MP3 download, to be asinine. (Actually, the fact happy birthday is copyrighted, and that the copyright law in the USA allows for it to be continually renewed, is mind-blowing. The recent movie, the butler, underwent an MPAA issue because Warner Bros. has a movie called the butler from about 1914, that is not publicly available (so it is not hostile-defended in a public market), but WB won the right to have that movie's name changed for "disambiguation purposes". Although I'm a liberal thinker in terms of economics (ie: I do believe some measure of patent law is necessary to protect original innovation, but the extent that such things are protected, and even what can be protected... is insane (video yoga, for instance recently was patented in the USA; DiMarzio has a registered trademark on its double-creme pickups for electric guitars, etc.,). Conversely, I do think there is a cost-of-service that comes with the rarity of the position and the ensuing difficulty (ie: an anesthesiologist should make more than a burger-flipper due to the level of skill that is required, but at the same time I have more respect for the working individual, regardless of whether he / she is a lawyer or a burger-flipper, than the welfare case, simply because of the effort being made). As someone who's put himself through undergraduate, and now graduate, school, I do appreciate the value of working - even though much of my work was physical, rather than intellectual, labor.
I think, if you could take what you are thinking, grind out law school for the LL.B or JD (depending on if you go in the USA or Canada or elsewhere), and then go for an LL.M or S.J.D., your views and the research you have for them, will be very fruitful. The first two paragraphs you wrote though - perhaps because i'm not a law student - were difficult to understand. So if I need some clarification, I apologize. The last two paragraphs though, I 100% agree.
jessica
i just want to clarify that i wouldn't align with either taft or roosevelt on this point. my position would be "as a sovereign individual, *i* decide if it's right or wrong". now, i'd give the community a sort of right to review the decision, but i wouldn't force any kind of a constitutional order on the community in their process of doing so.
so how do people know if something is legal? they answer is they don't and can't know by merely looking it up in a reference text - they have to work out those details and decide for themselves if the behaviour ought to be condemned (technically, behaviour cannot be restricted in a free society, so it's not a question of what is allowed or not allowed it's a question of what is censured or not censured) or not. there may be disagreements, but i wouldn't argue that this is a bad thing. i think the level of uncertainty is already inherent in the existing system and dismantling the facade of an objective system is merely being honest about it.
there are some obvious things: it's obvious that somebody that kills his neighbour for walking on his lawn should be censured. there are less obvious things: i would argue that somebody that kills his neighbour for raping his daughter is justified in his reaction.
ganzonomy
I'm going to ponder your argument a bit. I do like sharp conversation (A LOT!) and I thank you for that. (I'm pondering it because you have given me an incredible amount of info and i have to digest it mentally.)
I did see on your feed "He used to cut the grass". That album (Joe's Garage), has my favorite guitar solo (Watermelon in Easter Hay). That guitar solo was the first Zappa song I figured out by ear. I have the first part, and the last part, but I need to figure out the middle part. (But that solo... puts chills down my spine.)
deathtokoalas
that dog is thinking about what an easy lunch that is. it's licking it's lips. but it reflects on the general situation, computes the likely consequences of eating the baby and eventually concludes it's a better idea not to.
RedStinger103
Because dogs can contemplate, infer and conclude with their brains.
deathtokoalas
yup. they're not the best at innovating solutions to problems, but what i've described is well within the capability of the average dog. dog intelligence is more connected to individuality than breed, but, statistically, labs are also one of the smarter breeds.
RedStinger103
Yes, but you're way overestimating their intelligence.
deathtokoalas
i'm not. just about any dog understands the idea of action--->reaction. it knows if it shits on the rug it'll get in trouble. it knows if it bites it's cohabitors it's going to get in trouble.
i'd even go so far as to argue that dogs have the ability to form a defined mens rea and should consequently be held culpable for criminal behaviour. well, some behaviour, anyways. you could consider turkey theft, for example. the turkey stealing dog is entirely aware of the nature of the crime, forms an intent before the crime is carried out and may even take steps to hide the evidence. that's mens rea, if you ask me. other types of crimes? it may be less clear that a real intent is possible to establish.
so, i'm not overestimating anything. and i think i'm reading the dog's body language fairly accurately.
Jamie
You talk sooooo much shit.
Sound City Network
You clearly never had a smart dog before. I
had a White German Shepherd and she would hide things INTENTIONALLY.
Dogs are smarter than you think.
Gamingalkaline
I don't think that's talking shit, it's talking logically.
jsteel89
My dog has tried several times to take a mouth full or food from the garage and take it where he can hide and eat it.
catfoodtitans
Don't really think dogs have reasoning skills like that. Where would it have learned that would be wrong? Unless you're saying that dogs have morals.
deathtokoalas
well, i don't think humans really have "morals", either, but that's not what i said - i said it was able to foresee the consequences.
Shaul Rosenzweig
You are talking shit. If you knew anything about dog body language, this dog is gentle and submissive towards the child. He goes down below its level to lick it wagging its tail and then kisses the baby gently looking up towards it. Dogs are social animals, and body language is part of their instinct.
deathtokoalas
well, sure it is, after it decided not to eat it.
the tail wagging thing is more of a nervous reaction, and doesn't really indicate anything about how it's interpreting the baby. but, you'll notice there's a nice sniff before the lick. when dogs sniff like that, it's generally food related. now, chances are the dog is well fed. nor is it likely to really think the baby has a lead on where to find a dog treat. it's kind of a slip up that indicates it's thinking about food. and, sure it's thinking about food - it was just licking it's lips at the sight of the baby coming towards it.
but, it made the right choice, in the end. that face lick is indeed a friendly greeting. but what i'm getting across is that it had to think about it...
now, does that mean you shouldn't leave your baby with your dog? well, if your dog is well fed and well treated it's predictably going to make the same choice that this dog did. see, it might not be safe to leave your baby with your in-laws, either, if they're really hungry and don't have any other choice. it's not hard to find news reports about dogs eating babies, but you're almost always going to be dealing with hunger and abuse. so, is it safe? as safe as it is with any predator.
personally, i'd be a bit more cautious than what you're seeing in this video.
Blake
You understand that humans and dogs don't have a predator/prey relationship right? It's not ingrained in the mind of a dog to eat a child because their ancestry, evolutionary history, instincts don't provide them with that sort of impulse. If the parents have ANY dominance over the dog the dog will see itself as second in command, and the baby as kin that needs to be protected. Humans have socialized dogs for centuries that notion of a domesticated one even trying to naw on a baby is laughable. PLEASE do some research before you try to ruin everyone's fun.
The mind of a full grown dog is equivalent to that of a 2 year old. You're over thinking this.
deathtokoalas
canids are what you call "opportunistic feeders". they will eat whatever they can, including members of their own species. i would suggest you do some research, yourself.
and, while dogs demonstrate large amounts of variability based on both individual and breed, the estimated mental age of the smarter breeds (like labs) is more like 3-5.
SpicyHam
ahh the facts, ahhhh
Blake Prescott
I honestly don't think you've ever seen a dog in your entire life. A canid is the family a dog belongs to. A canine is the dog itself.
deathtokoalas
wolves and dogs are actually technically in the same species, and the ability for wolves and coyotes (and coyotes and dogs) to interbreed is relatively large, depending on the range of the species. hence the new species of "coywolves" that have appeared in algonquin park as a hybridization of wolves and coyotes, which perhaps should have never been considered as different species in the first place.
there are a few obscure canids scattered around the world that have diverged a bit further. but, broadly speaking, canids are really largely all the same thing, and the visible differences that we see between them are merely skin-deep phenotypes and local variation.
there's a valid point here, but i really wish they'd have approached it with rational sociological arguments rather than hippie jesus freak bullshit.
the rational sociological arguments might actually convince somebody.
hippie jesus freak bullshit is a feel good viral song sung to the choir.
debate and discussion is the preferable approach, but you have to understand what you're up against when you see it. you can't debate with a fascist coming at you any more than you can debate with a lion trying to eat you....
well, we've got to come to a choice with this - either we accept this is ok (and perhaps the boundaries could be blurred a little...), or we need to stop putting introverted women that came into themselves in their 20s in these kinds of situations.
24/15 is pushing it. you'll see 24/17 at any random trip to the mall. it's really not a strange thing. it's never been a strange thing.
one thing you could do is increase the educational requirements to get a teaching job. maybe teachers should have masters degrees.
but i don't see how you can expect anything different when you put 23 or 24 year old teachers in a senior high school classroom. that's like putting dogs in a room and locking the door.
i scrolled through dozens of threads here and it didn't cross anybody's mind to start a third party.
people talk about things being better in canada. some things are, for sure. it's a very simple reason - we have three major parties. now, the third party has never been elected, but the mere act of having three parties puts pressure on our "democrats". they're constantly forced to listen to a voice that is further to their left and adopt those policies. in fact, our "socialist" party (which isn't really a socialist party) is actually the opposition right now and our "democrats" are in third place. the reason that happened is that they thought they could get away with cutting services.
there have been periods in the past where america had a strong left movement. the reforms that roosevelt put through would not have been possible without a strong union movement, and the gains made in the 60s would not have been possible were it not for the groundwork that that union movement laid. there were big errors made in merging the left with the democrats. that has to be undone.
the situation is different: they shipped all the jobs off. so, there aren't any unions anymore.
but the only way out of this is to build a people's party that puts pressure on obama from the left. right now, the democrats take you for granted. you need to prove they can't do that if they want to win - make them lose and then make them listen. you have to tie electoral success to your demands being met.
deathtokoalas
the bible is pretty gruesome, but it's an iron age text - no less gruesome than the illiad, and really just as well written. it's really an elaborate justification for the jewish state, nothing more or less. "why do we have kings? why don't we kill them?". here, read this, kid...
....and the part about cutting the concubine up into 12 pieces (each representing a tribe of israel) is meant to describe the period of violence and anarchy that occurred before there was a centralized state, tying into the text's central purpose as a justification for that state. it's a hobbesian fairy tale. in fact, the village responsible for the crime was then burnt down by the israelites - which is a problematic reaction and everything but indicates it was taken seriously. in fact, the burning of the village is also presented critically.
so, it's one thing to point out there's a lot of gore in there. it's another to understand why it's in there.
ghenulo
It's impossible to understand why people live their life by this barbaric ancient fairy tale.
deathtokoalas
well, it's a little confusing why people still hold to it, sure. but it's really not hard to understand why the stories were written as they were written. there are entire departments at universities for this, and they present compelling arguments.
i'll admit the idea of the jewish scriptures as a justification for the jewish state is partially an original idea - the idea is danced around frequently, but i'm being far more explicit than anything i've read. it's also blatantly obvious if you sit down and actually read the damned thing.
ghenulo
If people took it as ancient literature, these satires wouldn't be necessary. But alas, we live in a crazy world in which horrible things are done in the name of these writings. Perhaps you heard about the man in Iran who got beheaded for doubting the story of Jonah. You don't see satires of the Iliad because everyone knows that it's historical fiction.
deathtokoalas
well, not everybody interprets it as fiction, but the people that don't tend not to seek power.
what i'm getting across is that disarming it means rationalizing it.
Damian Freeman (TheExceeder)
I really do think things like the Bible should probably be put in the Adults-only section. Knowing half the content of it makes me feel disturbed when I see those fluffy "Children's Bibles".
Also, am I the only one who finds it rather off that they never sell the individual books separately? They always force you to buy the damned compilation. I'm pretty sure if the books were all separated and presented individually we'd be able to find, on average, which ones that Christians actually endorse.
right. because ice cube was opposed to children's literacy when he started off. that's what nwa was all about - keeping people illiterate and ignorant.
who am i kidding? nobody listened to a word he said, they just liked his hat.
that's some of that wonderful private sector self-regulation at work, right there. it may be two billion dollars up in smoke - but don't worry, it's a better managed system. through cutting various corners, it will save the taxpayers money in the long run.
Sviaveldi
In my opinion the worst part about this thing is the one idiot who thinks he has the right to punch another person just because he doesn't like what he has to say. That's 'afk-SJW's' right there. Scum of the earth.
deathtokoalas
fuck that. what we saw there was a proactive response to keep racism out of the community. it was great to see somebody take the situation that seriously. warmed my heart. you know what they say about nazis - only good one's a dead one. you gotta fight the fasc wherever it appears...
Sviaveldi
I hope you're spared a situation where people would throw punches at you for your beliefs.
Frankly that you defend violence and even death of other people, however you might personally justify it is disgraceful to yourself.
deathtokoalas
as has been pointed out repeatedly, it's not a speech issue, and the fact that you're not acknowledging that indicates that you're not grasping the situation properly. you can repeat the same false statements as many times as you like, but it doesn't provide them with a greater level of truth.
beyond that, the kind of bullshit liberal rhetoric you're espousing has only ever led to the further production of greater and greater violence. you can't just sit around and appease community fascists, you have to stand up and get in their way. if you don't knock them out, it just emboldens them. when you're dealing with violence, you have to respond with violence.
nor am i interested in getting fucking cops involved. as was demonstrated here, the community can take care of itself - it doesn't need the government to send armed thugs in to sort it out.
this was dealt with properly in the way that it must be dealt with in a truly free society and the people that took these steps should be applauded for their reaction.
Sviaveldi
I'll conclude my interaction with you by stating I think you're insane, and I hope you get better soon.
deathtokoalas
right. well, i hope the light in your ivory tower is not as dim as your arguments have been. i take it you're reading up on neville chamberlain. maybe it's better that you stay sheltered, for your own benefit.
if you're unable to argue with me, so be it.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Orangeman5100
Ummm? Would somebody please enlighten me on the reforms these people demanded that didn't happen?
Future U-kraine
that didn't happen? and what happen they should go home?
Orangeman5100
What?
Thomas
The country at the start had a highly dysfunctional govt so a revolt happened and right sector came to power, Russia invades Crimea so then more territories divide to pro-Russian separatists like Donetsk. Interim Government of Ukraine is referred to be fascist, in the meantime allows justification of separatist territories.
Angela3083
Wrong the USA decided who
went into power in Ukraine regardless. Russia never invaded Crimea the
Crimean's choose to be part of Russia without 1 person being killed. It
all about gas pipes & Nato wanting a base in Ukraine. The Eastern
Ukraine know the score and are defending their corner.
Blake Smith
that's wrong the Russians
said they were the ones that went into crimea after the fact, and a
Ukrainian solider was killed during a confrontation with the russians
jakatom
Does it matter what they want?...if it did, they wouldn't protest for a whole year. It matters what the USA and their EU lackeys want.
Blake
im pretty sure this video is about the protestors
nightlightabcd
Apparently, you want what the pro-Russian "lackeys" want!
James Murrey
The current "government" was about to pass laws banning the use of Russian language. Since 90% of Eastern Ukraine speak Russian (you know.... the native language of the land), they are now trying to split from Ukraine to not be killed by the neo-nazi(s) in power. Do you own research, even this vice dispatch hasn't been 100% truthful. Avoid Reddit, it's purely 'murrican shills spreading false propaganda (like Russian invaded Krim [Russia never sent a single military unit there; instead they hired a PMC to go in and secure the region]).
Culturebreach
Explain to people how neo-nazis are the majority in the Ukrainian protests? There is a presence of neo-nazis in Russia whilst the 3rd largest party in Russia is considered a fascist party.
BlackCousins4life
These aren't the same people who demanded reform. The people who protested against Yanukovych wanted the country to move away from Russia and closer to the European Union, for economic reasons, lessening of corruption and whatnot. When Yanukovych fled the country, they basically got their wish. The newly elected president is committed to Ukraine becoming part of the EU. These protesters have now either gone home or are fighting against separatists and Russian green men is eastern Ukraine. The people now on Maidan are not the same people, so it's hard to see them having any demands. I think they're just homeless and have settled nicely there, so they don't want to leave.
ConcordDown
you got it all figured out, you should join FOX news and make a story :) lot's of people would buy it!
Mat
has the free trade agreement gone into place yet? outside of that, they got the EU association agreement, new president, and new parliament is set. the major euromaidan demands have been met.
there's still the implementation of those reforms, though.
The88Cheat
Change takes time and all these protesters are doing is taking up valuable resources that could be used to better the country. I doubt the new government wants to waste time fighting its own people (especially when they look completely idiotic and uneducated).
Haloreach2323
No one in America said Russia invaded Ukraine. They would be stupid to say so because we all know Ukraine would be at war with Russia. Russia didn't invade, they did something worse, took the land "for the people" like bitches.
Mat
they didn't vote, there was no actual vote you maroon. Who cares if 60% are Russian by ethnicity? That's some Anschluss thinking right there.
Haloreach2323
Doesn't matter. They still did it without the consent of Ukraine. Why not buy Crimea? Who knows? Putler probably forced the people to vote his way.
Jordan
Putin congratulated the Russian soldiers on a job well done in Crimea after it was annexed.
Was ABOUT to pass a law BANNING Russian? Are you high? First of all they tried to repeal a law that allowed Russian to be an official language. Not having Russian as official language is NOT the same as being forbidden to use Russian, you dipshit. Secondly, There are laws proposed in Russia that would ban women wearing high heels. Does it mean that anything that gets thrown up into the air becomes law? NO so you don't act on it UNLESS it becomes law. And enough with the nazi bullshit. The svoboda and right sector (parties who I assume you call nazi) ran against Poroshenko, and never got more than 1% of the Ukrainian vote. I'm willing to bet there are more xenophobic racist neo nazi skinheads in Russia than all of Europe combined. Fucking idiot.
Mat
Statistically, there are far more skinheads / neo-nazis in Russia per capita than in Ukraine by a wide margin
Look at Russia's parliament, Zhirinovsky is a racist bigot and he has the 4th largest party. The third largest, A Just Russia, supports the Russian Orthodox Army terrorist group. The second? The damn Communists!
Jordan
I find it infuriating that they have the nerve to open their mouth and call Ukrainians "neo-nazis" when they have nationalist marches in Moscow numbering THOUSANDS, with people making nazi salutes, chanting "AGAINST BLACKS" along with occasional skinhead gangs running around with bats, murdering people they don't like. Absolutely grotesque.
Jarcnus
US and EU involvement in the destabilization of the country, promotion of violence, arms and riots along with putting in puppet leadership is pretty much a fact. Whatever the FUCK Russia is doing, good or bad is reactionary. The US and west European establishment and their bankster friends wants global trade dominance. FOLLOW THE FUCK GOD DAMNED MONEY FOR ONCE. IMF nonsense abroad, austerity for the poor, international trade deal attempts and bs TPP, TTIP, TAFTA along with other nonsense. It's all to fuck over the masses in a globally run pyramid scheme. Most the wealth in the world created is fake, just so the rich can spend lavishly while the poor suffer and foot the bill.
U.S. Senators Make A Spectacle Of Themselves In Ukraine
Mat
You're so misinformed it's kind of sad.
Jarcnus
Your one sentence telling me "you're wrong" really defeated my argument, oh my.
What I learnt today
When the new president turned out to be "A strong leader for harsh times" or however the press (and people on the street) put it, i.e. the classic "fascist lie" we see in every hollywood movie.... The writing on the wall became pretty stark.
Jordan
I really wish a Russian would support his grotesque label of "fascist" even once with an actual argument. How is anyone in power in Ukraine a "fascist"? Im really curious.
Mat
It's interesting seeing as everyone calls Obama a Communist
deathtokoalas
see, it's hilarious to read these comments going back and forth. you've got multiple false narratives competing with each other, all of them promoting interests by various powerful parties. none of them have anything to do with the protests.
i had my first "aha" moment back in the late 90s, when i was still a teenager. the tv told me people were protesting against apec because of concerns over human rights abuses in china. but, that wasn't the protester's narrative - it was the narrative the state wanted, and so they replaced it. the protesters were actually concerned with the trade agreement, itself. i was a skeptical kid, i understood things were generally spun, but i never thought i'd be blatantly lied to.
the thing about the eu is not the protester's narrative, it's the state department's narrative. the reason it's the state department's narrative is that it reflects the state department's interest. so, what the tv does is show you the images of the people protesting and then tell you they're protesting for what the state department wants.
the maidan protests were/are about corruption. it was something roughly similar to the occupy movement in north america, except it got badly co-opted by a ukrainian equivalent of the tea party. the shuffle of power that happened didn't address a single one of their concerns. i guarantee you the new guy already has a slush fund and is just carrying on where the last guy left off, and the guy before him left off, and the guy before him left off....
What I learnt today
All true, except the girl before him was imprisoned for not being corruptible enough.
deathtokoalas
she was prime minister, not president, and it's not that she wasn't corruptible enough - more that she was so corrupt nobody in the sitting government could trust her.
What I learnt today
Trusting corrupt people is easy. They are predictable, just buy her. Now trusting an honest person, that is a mistake.
deathtokoalas
not really. when they're really corrupt, they're always for sale. so, you can never trust your purchase. yulia bounced around to the highest bidder, and in the end she crossed one person too many. that's why she ended up in jail.
Technology Fool
Those guys look hammered! Leave us alone more vodka
Willy
Ukraine will never be part of EU .I live in EU and nobody wants them to be part of EU.We got enough of our own problems without confronting Russian interests.Germany is the main power of EU and they have good economical relationships with Russia and depends on Russian gas. So despite the political talk Germans and rest of the EU know they cant mess with Russia.
Mat
Can't mess with Russia? Russia is nothing. It doesn't even have an economy.
What I learnt today
Russia has never needed an economy, they have resources. Not caring about all this stuff got them through WWII and will get them through again. They just don't care about anything outside Russia.
Mat
Everybody needs an economy. Oil prices drop and they're screwed. Iran or the US start exporting gas and they're sunk.
That's why you can't just be some resource sultanate.
What I learnt today
That's fine. However not how Russia thinks about it. They have a bumper crop and soon will have the pipeline to EU done. If they can beat US in Syria then the oil will flow. Until then, they laugh.
Mat
what pipeline to the EU? South Stream? That's cancelled.
What I learnt today
The overarching strategic to beat US to EU markets via Syria (or whereever US doesn't block them) is cancelled? heh righto... Guess that's why there is CIA in Syria and Russians in Ukraine. Everything you are seeing here is directly related to those markets, US fear of price differential between Syria/EU and Kuwait/US, and Russian desire to capture the EU market. This hasn't gone away, you are watching it play out.
deathtokoalas
well, it's more directly about controlling shipping lanes through strategic military placement, but controlling shipping lanes has a lot to do with opening up (or shutting down) markets.
you need to take a bit of a step back from the idea of the americans controlling markets, though, as it's a bit of an outdated thing. the united states doesn't create anything any more, except weapons. they don't have a product to sell. i see a lot of this - people trying to understand current events through the lenses of the nineteenth century...
there's some remnants of this, and russia is certainly still under state capitalism, but to take the position that america is defending markets leads to the question of what they're selling, and the answer is nothing at all.
but, the strategic military posturing has more than a little to do with it, nonetheless. they're certainly trying to control the trade routes, as a hegemon would have to do. that definitely means frustrating russian trade...
...but it's not really about competition, it's about dominance. the nineteenth century mercentalist states may have seemed like empires, but they weren't really - they were trading conglomerates that used any means necessary to get ahead.
the united states is legitimately an empire. it has tributary states, which it "protects". and those states are closer to the traditional 19th century state capitalist idea.
which goes back to the weapons, which are the product.
there's this sort of old argument floating around between trying to understand things in terms of empires dominating the world or in terms of commercial interest competing with each other. the americans have found a sort of synthesis in this, as they dominate the world by selling weapons systems.
there has to be conflict for that to happen. the commercial transactions in weapons systems consequently drive the lust for imperial domination. it's conflict for the sake of conflict, because that's the only way that america gets paid.
put a little more succinctly...
the british "empire" created conflict to open up markets.
the american empire creates markets by ensuring endless conflict.
What I learnt today
Just to add something "step back from the idea of the americans controlling markets".... It's not about selling stuff to markets. It's about making sure the EU can't/doesn't get oil 3¢ cheaper than the US.
deathtokoalas
there's certainly been some tension over the last few decades over some financial issues. you know who i think was behind 9/11? germany. yeah, the old german boogeyman, trying to start wwIII right? well, i think it was about the euro, primarily. it was a ploy to sink the dollar. every few months, you hear some news report talking about the "strained relationship", and it's quickly patched up in the media to counteract the optics. both sides are deeply interested in making things seem rosy, and the germans certainly remain in a vastly inferior position both economically and militarily - that is, they remain a client state. but i think the truth is that the germans and americans continue to see each other as their primary competitors in the world and relations are really downright hostile under the surface. if i was an american military strategist, i would not look at germany (or the eu in general, outside of the uk) as a reliable ally. when you've bullied somebody into doing what you want for 70 years, don't be surprised when they take the first opportunity they can to knock you out.
controlling the oil supply is a part of being a hegemonic power, but i can't see what you're suggesting as being an important aspect of american policy. what the americans seek is less to explicitly dominate everything around them and more to control the rules. so, they let british contractors into iraq, and refused french contractors - because they rejected the war. that's the reason france has fallen in line, since. the price of commodities is variable, and speculators make a lot of money from that. so, do the americans care about that kind of price fluctuation? no. why would they, so long as they get to write the rules of who sells what to who?
what does concern them is a russia that wants to ignore those rules, demand the rules be written collaboratively or even write their own rules. russia is a bigger country than iraq, but putin is being punished for the same reason that saddam was - he's not doing what he's told.
when genghis khan would approach a new city, he would send messengers to the city's government, offering them a choice. they could willingly submit, and be spared. or they could resist and be annihilated. a lot of cities were annihilated. a lot of cities were spared...
Willy
hmmm i wouldn't go that far to say Germany was behind it. I think that would be pretty hardcore conspiracy but hey, what do i know .At least you can think out of the box which is only good i suppose .But there sure are various reports that Germany secretly considering and negotiating with BRICS to join .Who knows maybe we will see comeback of German mark one day lol. USA sterility to provide Germany with their gold (which they don't have since USA do not own any gold resources) and empty promises to deliver their gold in near future only assure Germany to look for alternatives to ensure their economical stability.
deathtokoalas
brics is not an alliance, it's just something cnn made up. and gold is as worthless as paper. what's valuable is guns.
Orangeman5100
And oil.
deathtokoalas
commodities, in general, sure. but it's going to fluctuate with demand. if the trends towards computerization and renewable energy both continue, it won't be long before copper (also a finite resource) is more valuable than diamonds.
this is why it's so important to understand the dominance in terms of hegemony, power and control rather than any specific, narrow aim - although, that being said, the primary purpose of anglo-american foreign policy has not wavered from containing and controlling the russians at any point since 1989, or 1789, for that matter.
Orangeman5100
Sadly yes, but it'd be a lot harder for their neighbors if we didn't control them... For example, Ukraine would probably be entirely part of Russia...
deathtokoalas
well, you've got to keep in mind that a lot of the people in ukraine want to be a part of russia...
poland is a better test case, but is poland really better off in the eu? i'm not sure there's much of an argument for it, other than enforced western bias. i'm not saying they'd be better off in russia, i'm just not sure it really makes much of a difference to the average pole, in terms of living conditions.
fucking spain would be a part of russia right now, if it weren't for american intervention in wwII. but would they be worse off?
What I learnt today
OT but everytime I hear that I think of "Fast Show - Johnny Depp": "I remember during the war you yanks were in like a shot! I don't mean the actual fighting, you were a couple of years too late for that Sir." ;-)
deathtokoalas
yeah. the history books will eventually catch up, but they're kind of missing the point right now. there's all kinds of diplomatic cables from american ambassadors to the region in the 30s explaining that american policy was to covertly fund hitler with the hopes that he'd eliminate stalin. that is, it's the same old russian containment policy that traces back to the napoleonic period. when they did intervene, it wasn't to stop fascism or save the jews or help the british or anything of the sort, it was take over as much of europe as they could before the russians got there.
if the normandy invasion had not happened, stalin would have waltzed right through germany and france and parked itself outside franco's doorstep. how does the soviet socialist republic of france sound.....
Orangeman5100
Honestly, not very good...
high school records are apparently shredded, but junior high school records apparently aren't? i think one of them is wrong. they always told me the file was permanent. hrmmn. i've got stuff being forwarded, will see how that plays out before i start calling to find out...
this is going to go in your PERMANENT RECORD.
well, listen, i'm not really one for the surveillance state and shit, but when you're dealing with information that suggests a pathological condition, i think it really should be permanent. if it's shredded, that doesn't help me - and if it was worse than it is (mild vandal-type pranks, mostly), it wouldn't be in the interests of society, either.
i mean, i was always very careful and very cognizant of the well being of people around me. there were circumstances where i stood in between things happening in order to prevent harm, but nothing where i ever put anybody's safety at risk. the overriding driving force was mostly that i found the vandalism comical. what the behaviour demonstrates is more a conscious desire to flaunt rules - and some political activism, actually.
i enjoyed defacing student council propaganda, for example.
unfortunately, the really nasty pranks were mostly never uncovered. the master prank was probably the time i blew up the school mascot (with military grade dynamite) and placed it back where it was, and nobody ever caught me for that. they installed cameras in the school afterwards, but they never busted me for the best of them.
i think probably the worst situation i got caught for was the time i took the screws out of the exercise equipment in the gym, so that when buddy six-pack football dude got on the exercise bike it fell apart underneath him. that's the kind of thing that characterizes the file, if i can find it. was it funny? that's up to interpretation. the dude that sat on the bike thought it was funny. it's certainly anti-social.
the reality is that it got to the point that the school stopped providing evidence. it didn't feel the need to require it. when a prank happened, it was understood i was responsible. nobody else would have done these things. i suppose i could have been badly framed, but never was.
so, it's less that i "got caught" and more that i was obviously responsible...
....kind of a "j strikes again" type of thing...
it's a huge file, if it's out there, probably with all kinds of things i've completely forgotten about.
and, in my defence, i often caught the principal suppressing laughter. most of it legitimately WAS comical.
it's actually the same school dan aykroyd went to, and that was brought up to me more than once.
deathtokoalas
there's a subtext to this that attaches it to a specific urban setting; i just feel the need to point out that it would be misleading to attach the behaviour to that urban setting. just yesterday, i was walking down the street in suburban areas of windsor, ontario and got hollered at twice by elderly white men from their porches, 20 feet away from the sidewalk. as a transgendered person, i'm exceedingly aware of the differences regarding walking down the street with lipstick on v. walking down the street without lipstick on - it really is staggeringly different in terms of experiences. if you're denying that, you're just not living in this reality...
Ethan Ward
You're disgusting. Tranny turd. Why did you do that to yourself you fucking faggot?
deathtokoalas
i normally delete insulting comments, but i'm going to let the ones on this post sit for a little while.
Ethan Ward
Homosexuals are still fucking faggots so I don't know what you're on about. They will always be fucking faggot and they'll always be insulted and demeaned for their disgusting acts of homosexuality.
deathtokoalas
i wouldn't identify as a homosexual, but i'm otherwise not intervening on this specific post.
Ethan Ward
So you're a straight tranny.....
Doesn't that mean that lesbians don't want you because you're a guy and straight girls don't want you because they're straight......
Pathetic...
deathtokoalas
i'm kind of pansexual in theory, but primarily asexual in practice. you're kind of cluing in on something, but you're missing the point - gay men aren't generally attracted to women. this is a complex topic, but gay men aren't generally attracted to women, right? i said that twice, but, like get it. otherwise, they wouldn't be gay, would they? so a male that would be attracted to me would be either straight or bisexual. in the context of a relationship with a male, then, that's functionally a heterosexual relationship, where i'm fulfilling the female role and the dude is fulfilling the male role.
in the context of a relationship with a women, it's more complicated. the best way to box me in in this context is to understand me as transgendered - and the female in the relationship as bisexual. the relationships i've been in with women have been multi-faceted in this context, in that they take on heterosexual and homosexual tendencies. but it's hard for me to call myself a lesbian, in that sense because i'm really filling both gender roles. it's just too narrow - and i'm kind of appropriating something.
Ethan Ward
Sounds like some perverted, sick, twisted shit. I will pray for you.
deathtokoalas
in the end, i think you're entitled to your opinion - so long as you respect my right to not particularly care what you think about me and refrain from interfering with how i choose to live my life.
i mean, i don't really think there's much to fear about your ideas of "hellfire".
Joe Heuft
As a Marxist, I couldn't agree more without with the philosophical underpinnings of their lyrics.
welcometoskyvalley
With or without?
Anthony Diaz
If you play it backwards, it says, "Send me to the collective farm because Big Brother loves me"
EndTimeRunner
A snappy reply for all the philosophers with no personal experience of how their beliefs feel when realized. Leave Marxism out of good music, this is clearly about getting rid of issues bothering the spirit, not the state. It would stink if they'd play it at ANY political convention. And don't use it for commercials either. stephanieboyla
Marxism means no more big record companies funding albums like this...and no more fancy hair salons...
welcometoskyvalley
Thank you for sharing the fact that you have absolutely no idea what marxism is. The door is that way.
Dot Red
the state is inherently evil
stephanieboyla
Yes, there's the door out of music funded by record companies (and the big, bad profit that makes some richer than others (which, by the way, enables the generation of more music.)) - please use it!
deathtokoalas
the soviets weren't so keen on artistic freedom, and there were a lot of people (anarchists mostly, but also other types of socialists) that saw that strain in marxism coming before it happened. marxism is in fact one of the worst "work or starve" philosophies out there. when you work through it, it's clear that it doesn't really offer a solution to the enslavement of workers, it just tries to argue their condition is a perception that can be overcome.
from an artist's perspective, marxism is truly unworkable and the artists you see arguing otherwise are truly useful idiots. i'd rather suggest an essay by oscar wilde, the soul of man under socialism, as the starting point for an artist-centric brand of socialism. artists have an especially strong motive to suggest solutions that move beyond the old worker-centric calvinist work or starve status quo.
i agree that the band is generally critical of the neo-liberalism that was engulfing the world around them.
obligatory "influential on track of the week" post...
it's aesthetic, and sort of a random choice. the influence is the mellotron, in general. i was trying to get that "angels singing" mellotron sound at the end of the track. this song occupies such a weird space in my childhood, as my favourite lullaby...it's like implant-burned into my brain...
(relevant tracks: bipolarity, inertia, a sickening obsession, on sexual confusion in adolescence, confused)
obligatory "influential on track of the week" post...
these haven't been happening recently, but they'll be more frequent moving forwards as i'm now over that '96 hump. the second cassette demo is still messy, but more focused and more presentable. i was writing a song to open the demo about being bipolar that meant to capture that momentary swing from ecstasy to depression. i ended up using this is as the template for two simple reasons:
(1) it was one of the few songs in the style i'd heard
(2) i didn't really know how to play the synthesizer. in fact, i had to skip school to get access to the thing in my sister's room.
(relevant tracks: bipolarity, inertia, a sickening obsession, on sexual confusion in adolescence)
obligatory "influential on track of the week" post...
well, not really. but the funny thing is that this is basically identical to what i was writing at almost exactly the same time. i finished my track in march, 1997; this was first released in april. unless he's secretly a cia agent, billy couldn't have possibly heard my tune. in fact, nobody had, as i didn't want anybody to know i was sneaking into my sister's room to use her keyboard. i didn't actually hear this version of the end... until late 97 or early 98 - iirc, i downloaded it from netphoria and dumped it on a cassette with other pumpkins rarities. i didn't even have internet access in march, 1997 (i did by about august or so, roughly) . but the similarity is so strong that they're basically the same song.
these influential on posts haven't been happening recently, but they'll be more frequent moving forwards as i'm now over that '96 hump. the second cassette demo is still messy, but more focused and more presentable. i was writing a song to open the demo about being bipolar that meant to capture that momentary swing from ecstasy to depression. this is the dark half...
(relevant tracks: bipolarity, inertia, a sickening obsession, on sexual confusion in adolescence)
as for this tune? listening to it all these years later, it sounds strangely clinical. kind of like a grade school voice leading project. had he played those arpeggios on an analog synth instead....
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
i refuse to watch a buzzfeed video that wants to tell me what to eat.
nope. never. won't do it....
Monday, October 27, 2014
i think i'm starting to get the backlash a bit more, but it's confusing culture and gender.
who are your idols, jess? but, it's the wrong question...
i know that mainstream culture has this weird fetish with idolizing people, and it hit a high point in the 80s and 00s, but i grew up in this weird point in the early 90s where the underground and the mainstream were difficult to distinguish from each other. the most popular rock band in the world was nirvana, who represented the opposite of this kind of thinking. i ended up fully rejecting that set of mainstream values as the underground slowly disentangled from the mainstream, without really subscribing fully to any new underground (what i ended up connecting with most was the sexless, genderless blur of post-rock and the cold mathematical abstraction of idm). you could argue there was no underground in the 90s and mostly be correct, but you'd be equally correct to point out that there was really no mainstream, either.
so, who are my idols? due to my formative moments existing in this weird moment in time, that's just not the culture i was raised in - even as it totally defines the values of people born even two or three years before and after me. i'm in a singularity. rather, the culture i was raised in taught me to reject that kind of thinking, and accept myself as who i am. now, you can get meta about that if you want. you can ask the question "who wrote 'do what you want to do, and start today'". that person must be my idol! but if your idols tell you they're worthless and not to listen to them, and you do, you're stuck in a loop.
it was a very brief moment. but people born into it and reared on it are distinct. i know, we're all special. but your models aren't going to work.
i had band posters on my walls. i still do. but this was the messaging i grew up with...
i wasn't alive at the time and stuff, but my understanding is that even the initial punk movement - in the sense that it existed on the fringes of the mainstream - never hit that point of saturation, or was as violent about it. so it didn't hit *kids* the same way. you can make valid arguments about alternative rock being the commercialization of punk, but to a 13 year-old kid that's not really what's going through their head - they're listening to the messaging, learning from it, being formed by it. the hypocrisy is at most an abstraction. it's what they're saying that's getting through more than what they're doing.
i think a corollary of it is that the people in this age group that were formed by this *also* watched the hypocrisy hit a saturation point, and learned lessons from it. but that's not going to reverse the messaging so much as it's going to produce lessons about corruption.
i'd be exaggerating if i were to suggest this is absolutely unique. i'd guess there's going to be a generation of kids that were shattered by obama, as there was a generation of kids that were shattered by jfk. but the political is a different level than the social and cultural.
pfft. she just stopped smoking pot...
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
i think you're confusing popularity with youth culture, which is something the industry does, but it's important not to get too lost in it.
the decline of rock music has as much to do with industry decisions to phase rock music out as anything else. pop music is generally very pro-establishment, pushing the kind of consumerist messages that the status quo wants. rock musicians have historically tended to mess with that. the rock of the 90s ultimately failed, but it was on the cusp of getting people to think very differently about a lot of things.
even with that said, the truth is rock music has simply gone downhill. it's not hard to understand. if you're a creative person born after about 1980, you're naturally going to look more to technology as an outlet. that doesn't mean a demographic for new rock music doesn't exist, but it is leading it to a warping of the rock form. ultimately, stuff like st. vincent or even lorde is fundamentally still rock music.
the above list is a list of gen x music. it all still sells pretty well. but, it's mostly older people. understand this: tom petty just topped the billboard list, and his demographic is mostly in retirement age. he didn't get a 50 million hit video on youtube or massive radio play on the pop station, but he did sell more records that week than anybody else that did.
i think there's still some room for innovation in rock, and i don't think you've seen your last rock star. techno (like disco before it) seems unable or unwilling to address more complex subject matter. so long as that remains true, people are going to continue to default to the rock form.
Sunday, October 26, 2014
deathtokoalas
you don't think that mulcair or trudeau are going to shut down oil production, do you?
i mean, i'd like to see it shut down. but, nothing short of instability from a civil war is going to actually do it.
Slasherhorror19801
Of course you want it shut down it won't have any effect on you what so ever.
Who cares if tons of people are out of work.
No they wouldn't shut it down ,but they would do there best to sabotage it.
deathtokoalas
well, i think it's well established that it'll have a pretty big effect on the climate if we don't shut it down, actually.
the factor nobody understands is that that much oil on the border of the empire is a national security issue. it's in the hands of the military.
Jay Dubeta
actually she's not joking. Google it an you'll find out that the last election was rigged by the conservatives, similar to how there was a voter recall scam when Gore was up against Bush in 2000 - right before 911.
Here, I did it for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Canadian_federal_election_voter_suppression_scandal
deathtokoalas
this is largely propaganda, and i wish they'd drop it because it's annoying. there were some attempts to send voters to the wrong polls. while those kinds of tactics are illegal here, it's well established that it didn't affect the outcome of the election.
around '05 or so, i got a job working as a survey interviewer to give me some spending money when i was in school. i ended up going back to the place between jobs for many years afterwards, as there's a huge turnover in these places and the management liked me. some time between '05 and '11 the company converted itself from doing mostly ekos overflow to doing work for political candidates. the odd poll for liberal candidates came in, but, in hindsight, i wonder if they were legit; by the time of the '11 election, the firm was almost solely doing surveys for the conservative party.
the "surveys" mostly took the same form - call the number, ask them if they can "rely on the vote" of a conservative candidate and move to the next call. but, there were some funny aspects.
they had us harassing people in helena guergis' riding, for example. we were supposedly calling on her behalf. i doubt that. the numbers weren't refreshing, so we were just calling the same people over and over again. the purpose seemed to be to piss people off - "on behalf of helena guergis".
i was in the building the day of the election, but i was taken off the phone to do database work. at the beginning of the shift, the owner of the company gave a little speech to the room telling people to NOT read the part of the script explaining that the polling place had changed. he was very adamant about this, and stressed it throughout the day.
the firm disappeared within about a month of the election. but, that's the answer you're looking for - they weren't "robocalls", they were just kids reading a script. the fraud was being carried out by a series of polling firms connected to the conservative party. this particular firm did not co-operate, and seems to have lost the contract as a result.
but, if you've worked one of these jobs you know that:
1) 70% of people hang up without any conversation.
2) nobody believes what a polling douche tells them.
as mentioned, it's slimy. sure. but, it's a new way to do something that is endemic. and there's no evidence it made any difference.
this is a solid analysis, even if it's from a distance.
something that's not being reported is that the guards in front of the monument are fairly recent. the monument is a wwI thing, mostly. there's been some vandalism at war monuments across the country. wwI was....kind of not a good war to fight, especially not from a distance over in canada. we got slaughtered. the brits used us as cannon fodder. but, this is a guns & flags patriotic conservative government so they put guards in front of the monument.
the irony is immediately apparent. in the sense that we fought for something in at least the second world war, it was to fight against police states. then, you go and put some guards in front of the monument. there is actually significant opposition to this in canada, but it's the kind of populist opposition that is without any kind of representation.
regardless, the target is sort of curious, isn't it?
shit, that cage performance is an extended five minute piece. i think i'm looking at ten-fifteen minutes, tops. i'm sure it'll be interesting, but i wish it were a ten minute walk rather than a three-four hour process to get back and forth under the tunnel. i can't help but feel my time is better spent at home.
worse, it's that time of year where 5-6 degrees over night seems like trudging through a -20 blizzard. another week or two and you're used to it, but it's *right* at that icky point.
so, i guess i'm staying in.
i just assumed it was a concert-length piece.
it's more of a lecture, and a short "performance".
Saturday, October 25, 2014
peter gabriel - cloudless
you have to keep in mind that old people nowadays are mostly baby boomers (or just older than baby boomers), so it's not going to produce the same kind of heart palpitations. this is the generation that's responsible for this. i'd like to see one - just one - piece it together.
"you know, we're responsible for this. but we never thought it would go this far."
the art of the 60s and 70s mostly demolishes the kind of mass marketed crap that's out today. and, it's no different when the topic is pornography.
there should be a sobering process attached to the reaction to this video: equality is a partisan issue, not a populist one. the widespread idea that the kids are being used to push a "partisan agenda" (rather than stating universal values) indicates we have a lot further to go than we thought. perhaps it's even a measure of the extreme levels of regression we've experienced since the 80s. but it needs to wake some people up: gender equality is considered a "left-wing special interest" in the united states.
Friday, October 24, 2014
we day is the perfect clicktivist generation action - by doing absolutely nothing, to the point where there isn't even a coherent statement of purpose, you can accomplish everything! young people today would have it no differently. it's what they were taught...
they're not atheists and, as an atheist, i really refuse to treat them differently than any other theist. it's some kind of weird combination of pseudo-scientific magical disney-like thinking and blatant nihilism. like, at least you can construct the bulk of humanism out of christianity due to the shared roots in natural law. these guys don't even have that kind of basic grounding in rationalism. not only can you consequently not get anything at all worthwhile out of it, merely a set of ridiculous delusions, but it's decidedly more dangerous than the rest of them. so, satanism needs to be killed. with fire...
a real atheist would consider that ritual to be a stupid waste of time.
the concept of a "public place" doesn't negate the harassment. the courts don't operate like computers, they demonstrate a lot of flexibility. most of the time, they use that flexibility to screw over poor people, but once in a while they use it to clarify the laws.
you can use some common sense to come up with the right decision.
legal: casually flying over a topless tanner and coincidentally getting footage of it.
harassment: swerving in and out of a topless tanner's personal space, trying to get a good shot.
it's not really a question of establishing the legality of drones, it's more a question of establishing a level of etiquette in using them.
i hear you should invest in high tech stocks. what? it didn't work out last time? shut up, they weren't born yet...
this is a bit more interesting than the average trending youtube video. nice to hear. the afrocelt sound system were doing this in the 90s, though......
this isn't worse than most pop music. if anything, it's a bit more creative in it's use of genre splicing - a bit of a folktronica vibe. the backlash seems to be partly hierarchical and partly a response to the low budget.
see, it's a strange era to live through, because music barely really even exists at all anymore. popular culture is entirely manufactured by giant corporations and there is really no way into that. it's not driven by and doesn't demonstrate any kind of level of talent, it's all about upholding various concepts of style that conform to the capitalist value system. you get some space to play with the exact sound, but the moment you deviate from this value system you're deemed a heretic and attacked for not conforming.
there's not much you can do about this, ricky. you're using an alternative media vector to try to break into an industry that's controlled from the top. your best hopes are infamous joke or novelty act. use that ad revenue wisely....
Kazikox
Aren't they all atheists?
deathtokoalas
atheism is faith that the deity does not exist. agnosticism is a lack of belief.
satanists believe in magic. there must be a supernatural force that has the ability to produce the magic. therefore, satanists are not atheists.
PRHILL9696
Satanism is a subset of atheism. Satanists are elite atheists it is that simple
deathtokoalas
just because you believe something is true doesn't mean it actually is.
do you accept that you believe in magic? then you're not an atheist. deal with it.
further, there's nothing "elite" about satanism. you're a bunch of fucking delusional dipshits, as far as i can see. if it's elite, it's elite in the same way that certain classes are for the "special" kids.
PRHILL9696
you talk like a small child. I am trying to have an adult talk here can you try and do the same. I am giving facts and you are not it is that simple
deathtokoalas
the fact is that if you believe in magic then you are not an atheist and no amount of magical thinking will change that fact - no matter how elite you claim to be.
this is what you need to do when you find a satanist - throw it in their face. contradict their solipsism. prove them wrong in front of their own eyes. break the delusion. destroy the cult.
Painless1992
Nah, if you believe in Satan, it means you also believe in God, because Lucifer is part(character) of the bible and stands for the exact opposite of what God will stand for and "provide" you with. So this guy saying that they don't believe in afterlife, isn'tsatanist of it's essence, for them "hell" should be the afterlife but not from the point of view as Christians see it or the concept of it. For me it looks like he doesn't even know what he stands for. If he was "satanist in his belief", he would worship Satan as his lord and that there is some sort of different existence after this life. But if he believes there's no spiritual connection with anything and that there isn't any sort of other life besides the one you're living, he should be Atheist and shouldn't worship anything, because he doesn't believe in anything of the cult.
PRHILL9696
Satanists are not christians they are elite atheists who love life and deny the supernatural which is why so many atheistic groups embrace them
Painless1992
I never said satanists were christians, all I said is if you believe in satan as unholy force, you also believe in god. Don't mix atheists with satanists, because as I explained before, atheists don't believe in any of the religious cults, while satanists are opposite force to christians and "fight", represent the opposite of what christians stand for.
PRHILL9696
But satanism is a subset of atheism they are atheists, atheism is one of the components of the Satanic philosophy which is why many atheistic groups support them
deathtokoalas
pr hill sure seems rather.....
....brainwashed...
....doesn't he...?
like he's under the control of a cult, or something.
it's almost as though he's been influenced by a religion...
hey, mr "elite atheist", can you tell us something that differs from what you've been brainwashed with? can you think for yourself?
let me guess. you're going to respond by stating the dogma a 27th time.
PRHILL9696
Satanists are elitists who think for themselves which is something your cult is against as they want to control people. I am just happy more and more people are getting out of that shit and now lead happy normal lives as they should as they are good people
deathtokoalas
mmhhhmm
Painless1992
Buddy, no offence, but you sound hilarious.
PRHILL9696
no offense taken because I know I am stating facts and there is nothing funny about that
