The Post-Rock Post, or, Hipster Hippie Circlejerk Celebration 2010

My band of choice is super vague, you've probably never heard of them :smug:

At some point in high school I was introduced to a little band called Godspeed You Black Emperor. I couldn't really get into them as much as I wanted to. I felt like it was the type of music I should be listening to, but it could just be so dark. Then, as a young and impressionable college freshman, a friend in my dorm introduced me to a band called Sigur Rós. This was what I wanted. Their songs were long and epic like Godspeed, but they differed in a major way -- they were happy.

With the exception of most of the pretentious pricks who make up the fanbase of this genre, nobody likes the term "Post-Rock." But it's stuck, so there's nothing anyone can really do about it. There's nothing special about this music. It's just music without lyrics. That's all. And I like it that way. To me, lyrics often seem to do nothing but get in the way. All too easily, you can get lost in trying to interpret what this or what that is supposed to mean, and then you just outright stop listening for the sake of music; you're simply listening to mediocre poetry.

Post-rock is probably the most beautiful form of music I've ever listened to. As I clumsily picked away at my guitar all those years ago, this is the type of music I fantasized about eventually playing. If it could be summed up in one word, it would be minimalism. And I propose the genre's name be switched to that. Minimalism strips away all the fanfare around rock, and focuses solely on the bare bones of music. As Ian MacDonald said, minimalism is the "passionless, sexless and emotionally blank soundtrack of the Machine Age, its utopian selfishness no more than an expression of human passivity in the face of mass-production and The Bomb." But that's not necessarily accurate, because not every band listed below is passionless or emotionally blank. It's just one of those things that can't be easily defined, and I feel like such a god damn hipster for saying that I am so sorry okay. Wikipedia:

As a musical genre, post-rock is arguably too vague to be useful. Don Caballero and Tortoise were among the more prominent bands described as post-rock in the 1990s, but their styles are very different, despite being instrumental bands centered on guitars and drums. As such, the term has been the subject of backlash from listeners and artists alike.

[...]

The post-rock sound incorporates characteristics from a variety of musical genres, including ambient, jazz, electronica, and experimental. The traditional method of power chords is replaced with timbre and texture for guitar-play while the song and voice is abandoned by its ambience. The rebellious overtones of rock as we remember it is no longer the theme for post-rock groups. In fact, utilizing dub reggae, hip hop, and rave, post-rock manages to create an androgynous and softer means of subversion. The clubs were also a response to the emergence of a new post-rock vibe where musicians escaped musical genre labels and traded ideas. Early post-rock groups also often exhibited strong influence from the krautrock of the '70s, particularly borrowing elements of "motorik", the characteristic krautrock rhythm.

Post-rock compositions often make use of repetition of musical motifs and subtle changes with an extremely wide range of dynamics. In some respects, this is similar to the music of Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and Brian Eno, pioneers of minimalism. Typically, post-rock pieces are lengthy and instrumental, containing repetitive build-ups of timbre, dynamics and texture.

Vocals are often omitted from post-rock; however, this does not necessarily mean they are absent entirely. When vocals are included, the use is typically non-traditional: some post-rock bands employ vocals as purely instrumental efforts and incidental to the sound, rather than a more traditional use where "clean", easily-interpretable vocals are important for poetic and lyrical meaning. When present, post-rock vocals are often soft or droning and are typically infrequent or present in irregular intervals. Sigur Rós, a band known for their distinctive vocals, fabricated a language that critics call "Hopelandic" (Vonlenska in icelandic, a term even used by the band), which has been described by the band as "a form of gibberish vocals that fits to the music and acts as another instrument."

This is my favorite genre of all music, ever. Before I knew about my ADD and I got on Adderall, listening to these bands was the only possible way to get my brain to just shut the fuck up for a second so I could actually focus on something long enough to get it done. I'm not exaggerating when I say I probably would've been forced to drop out of college without them. This music really does mean a lot to me, and so I would like to share. Here's a very small selection of my favorite post-rock songs. If they manage to bring somebody only half of the happiness which they have brought me, I'll be satisfied.

Godspeed You Black Emperor



I think my brother Chris first told me about Godspeed. This was right around the time I was first introduced to Dredg and The Mars Volta as well. In high school, I was way too obsessed with classic rock bands like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix. While all of these artists are extremely good, I've come to realize that this obsession was more of a way of rebelling against the bands most other people liked. Emo, pop-punk, and "alternative" were the big things back then, and they all fucking sucked. I just couldn't believe people enjoyed that shit. I still can't. Finding out that good music had been made after 1979 was one of the greatest discoveries of my entire life.

Oh, and it's basically an unspoken rule that when describing any post rock band, you must compare them to Godspeed. Everyone knows about Godspeed.



Sigur Rós



As I said, a friend introduced to me to these guys soon after I entered college. I was blown away, and to this day "( )" is still one of my favorite albums of all time.



The Album Leaf



After my uncontrollable orgasm ceased, I went to this friend again and let him know how much I fucking loved these guys. In addition to burning me another Sigur Rós CD, he then told me about The Album Leaf. I didn't even know this type of music existed. There was more of it!!



Explosions In The Sky



And for a while, I just stuck with the above three. It took a long time for me to go actively searching for more stuff like this, and once I finally did, I wanted to fucking kick myself for not doing it sooner. Explosions in the Sky has become my favorite "post-rock" band. I'm not even sure if it's fair to categorize them as post-rock to begin with, because they seem to do away completely with the minimalist style typical of the genre. They use elements more common in conventional rock, and in doing so their style seems much more emotional. I want to say they might be my favorite band of all bands ever, but I just said Murder By Death was exactly that in my last music post, so I'm not sure if I'm allowed to do that yet.



These are the four bands most people are familiar with if they know of the genre. The lesser known shit is just as good.

Johnnytwentythree



JXXIII takes the crescendocore of Godspeed, and adds their own touch. Their mood never gets to the "slit my wrist" point like Godspeed. It's still a bit dark, but with much more of a relaxing or hopeful atmosphere to it.



The Ascent of Everest

The Ascent of Everest is relatively new, and they need to be more known, so spread them the fuck around. They take the epic post-rock crescendo to a whole new level, in that the notes played within the crescendo are actually pleasing to listen to.





This Will Destroy You



Reminiscent of Explosions in the Sky, This Will Destroy You makes much more use of conventional rock instruments instead of overdoing classical string instruments. This is something that needs to be done more. I love violins and cellos as much as the next guy, but the guitar may be the most versatile instrument ever invented, and there is nothing wrong with it.



Mogwai



Mogwai formed in 1995, and they're one of the most important bands of the genre. Most of the above bands will list them as one of their influences.

Sunday Youtube Post

My roommate freshman year had MTV on all the time. I can't believe how accurate this is.

Oil has been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico nonstop for about a month and a half. BP has somehow taken control of the beaches away from the Coast Guard, preventing photographers from documenting the worst coastal spill in the history of the country. Additionally, they now own the airspace above, so planes can't fly in for a look either. As much as 39 million gallons of oil have contaminated the ecosystem. Eleven people are dead. Those people had families.

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Friday Youtube Post

Skippy decided to put me on rifle and shotgun this summer instead of archery, so coworker buddy Amanda and I will be carpooling to Missouri tomorrow to some scout camp so we can be trained for our respective jobs (she's waterfront director). I'll be gone for a week, so I'll do this today.

The artist is Jamie Hewlett, he draws the Gorillaz.

Anime Part 2

I haven't really started anything else from the last post yet. But thanks to the Recommending Anime Thread on Something Awful, I've found things that look shit loads better, and I think they all deserve a new post. I'm going through the original 1979 Gundam series right now, and while the animation and sound quality is complete shit and the characters seem to be cardboard cutouts at the point I'm at (still at the beginning), it still looks like has a lot of potential. I've never paid attention to any Gundam series before, and the action sequences are surprisingly technical. They don't treat the viewers like a bunch of idiots like other shows I've seen. I mean they put in lagrangian points, reentry blackouts, etc. Real shit. It's incredibly awesome, and I'm not surprised in any way that the series bored the hell out of me when I was 12.



I really want space operas. There's probably over a dozen different Gundam series, but there are other things I've discovered that look really fucking amazing too.

Macross

I'm still confused as to where I'm supposed to start on this series. There's like seven movies, and then one show that's sort of part of the series, but not really? All I know is that I want to watch it very badly. The people on Something Awful who recommended this agreed that it's one of the best animes ever made, and I've never heard of it before. Some sort of alien technology was recovered from a crash, and humans were able to reverse engineer it for their own use of blowing the fuck out of things. This video is going to be boring at first, but wait for the action scenes. Holy balls.



Legend of Galactic Heroes

This series sound like it's exactly what I'm looking for. As one goon put it, "the ship battles aren't dynamic space dogfights like Macross or Gundam, or even like Star Trek - they're more naval-esque with formations of ships lining up and firing barrages at each other while their commanders shout orders."



Planetes

Planetes takes place in the year 2076. It's not about epic space battles. It's about a small team collecting space debris orbiting earth. It's apparently really good at keeping things realistic. The youtube comments say this is a terrible trailer and that it doesn't do the show justice.



Zeta Gundam

I'm really excited for this. It takes place a few years after the original series, and many of the characters are still around. With the war over, the Earth Federation is taking more steps to stamp out any opposition. When rights start being taken away, a new rebellion arises.



I feel like such a nerd for spending so much time researching this stuff. Now I'm able to better understand why the lives of anime nerds are completely consumed by this shit. I don't know how the hell I'm going to watch all of this.

By now most should've heard about the attempt by Texas schoolboards to completely make up history. They're altering textbooks in their schools, omitting important facts, and in some cases printing outright lies. For example, the slave trade is no longer called the slave trade. It's called the "Atlantic triangular trade." Secularist Thomas Jefferson is largely taken out, and more emphasis is put on the "significant contributions" of pro-slavery traitors. Regardless of the fact that America was not founded on God, their books will now say that America was founded on God.

"There seems to be a denial that this was a nation founded under God. We had to go back and make some corrections."

This is a big deal because the state of Texas is the largest purchaser of textbooks in the country, and textbook companies often cater to them. So that means other states may be getting the same material.

Texans For Truthful Textbooks held a rally yesterday. Atheist, historian, writer, and professional badass Christopher Hitchens was not present at the rally, but he did send in a speech to be read.

We know of no spectacle more ridiculous — or more contemptible — than that of the religious reactionaries who dare to re-write the history of our republic. Or who try to do so. Is it possible that, in their vanity and stupidity, they suppose that they can erase the name of Thomas Jefferson and replace it with the name of some faith-based mediocrity whose name is already obscure? If so, we cheerfully resolve to mock them, and to give them the lie in their teeth.

Without Thomas Jefferson and his Declaration of Independence, there would have been no American revolution that announced universal principles of liberty. Without his participation by the side of the unforgettable Marquis de Lafayette, there would have been no French proclamation of The Rights of Man. Without his brilliant negotiation of the Louisiana treaty, there would be no United States of America. Without Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, there would have been no Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, and no basis for the most precious clause of our most prized element of our imperishable Bill of Rights — the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

We make no saint of Thomas Jefferson — we leave the mindless business of canonization and the worship of humans to the fanatics — but aware as we are of his many crimes and contradictions we say with confidence that his memory and example will endure long after the moral pygmies who try to blot out his name have been forgotten.

As Abraham Lincoln died, after a cowardly shot in the back from a racist traitor, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sighed and said: “Now he belongs to the ages”. Or did he say “Now he belongs to the angels”? In a roomful of highly literate and educated officers and physicians, in an age of photography and stenography, and with newspaper presses around the corner on Pennsylvania Avenue, there was no agreement among eye-and-ear witnesses as to what Stanton had actually said.

Those of us who write and study history are accustomed to its approximations and ambiguities. This is why we do not take literally the tenth-hand reports of frightened and illiterate peasants who claim to have seen miracles or to have had encounters with messiahs and prophets and redeemers who were, like them, mere humans. And this is also why we will never submit to dictation from those who display a fanatical belief in certainty and revelation. They try to tell us that to do otherwise is to collapse into “relativism”. But it is they who wish to promote the life and work of Jefferson Davis — an advocate of slavery, backwardness, treason and disunion — to an equality with Lincoln, who suffered agonies of doubt, who never joined a church, who was born on the same day as Charles Darwin and who introduced his colleagues to the work of Thomas Paine — and who was the last brave casualty of a war: a war begun by devout and fanatical Christians, that preserved our Union and in the end led to the striking of the shackles from every slave. It was inscribed in the documents of the Confederacy that the private ownership of human beings had a divine warrant. And so it did — to the everlasting shame of those who take the Bible as god’s word.

It is notorious that the news of the Emancipation Proclamation was kept from the people of Texas and not celebrated until “Juneteenth”. There may be those in Texas now who believe they can insulate their state — a state that had its own courageous revolution — from the news of evolution and from the writing in 1786 of a Constitution that refuses to mention religion except when demarcating and limiting its role in the public square. But we promise them today that they will join their fore-runners in the flat earth community, and in the mad clerical clique of those who believed that the sun revolved around the earth. Yes, they will be in schoolbooks — as a joke on the epic scale of William Jennings Bryan. We shall be fair, and take care to ensure that their tale is told.

As President, Thomas Jefferson received a letter from a concerned group of Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut. These people were the objects of persecution and the victims of discrimination, and they beseeched Jefferson to uphold their liberties. Of whom were they afraid? It should be remembered, and taught in our schools, that these poor Baptists were afraid of the Congregationalists of Connecticut, who subjected their fellow-Christians to insult and insecurity. Thus it was the secular and unbelieving Jefferson who insisted that, by means of a “wall of separation” between religion and government, all faiths and communities could take shelter under the great roof of the godless Constitution. From that day to this, the only guarantee of religious pluralism has been the secular law.

We inherited these principles and these freedoms and we here highly resolve that we shall pass them on, as we will pass on an undivided Republic purged of racism and slavery, to our descendants. The popgun discharges of a few pathetic sectarians and crackpot revisionists are negligible, and will be drowned by the mounting chorus that demands: “Mr Jefferson! BUILD UP THAT WALL”.

Glenn Beck literally claims to be a prophet reciting what God is telling him

This is why he's telling everyone to leave their churches. He's starting his own cult!

Some guy named Dan Carlin has a fantastic podcast called Common Sense. He's extremely intelligent, and the show continuously forces you to question your own beliefs, which is something every person should always be doing. He's fiscally conservative but socially liberal, and he's bound to piss you off no matter what side of the aisle you're on.

Sometimes he puts forward little thought experiments. A few weeks ago he brought up the question of whether it's even worth it to pay attention to politics anymore. Even if you do pay attention, and go so far as to vote, things never change at all. And those who don't follow anything are spared from the national pissing contest and don't suffer the constant stress brought on by worrying about everything.



All I want to say is that this idea sounds more and more appealing to me every time Glenn Beck opens his fucking trap. Why does he have any audience at all? It's just so depressing. I don't want to believe that people can really be this god damn stupid, and in such great numbers. Everything is explained in the video.

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Sunday Youtube Post

Disney + Dali =

Anime

I've always had mixed feelings about anime. On the one hand, I have trouble taking it seriously. The general style annoys the hell out of me. In almost every single anime I've ever seen, it seems like the animators are just lazy. It looks like every other cell is missing, leaving the flow of the animation looking dumb and clunky. What the hell is that? Is it a budget issue or something? Do they do it on purpose?

On the other hand, anime has given me hours upon hours of happiness. I know I'm not the only person who sat through classes every single day anticipating the moment I can get home and see what's going to happen on the next episode of Dragonball ZEEEEEE!! That show and Pokemon are solely responsible for bringing this art medium to America. I never really paid attention to anime beyond those. I figured nothing could possibly be better. And the anime fanbase in general is pretty annoying and weird. I did occasionally catch Cowboy Bebop and Outlaw Star, but I missed two out of every three episodes that aired, so what was the point?

Well I've had a spontaneous change of heart recently. I figure that I read American graphic novels about zombies and Batman, so this isn't really much different, right? I finally finished Cowboy Bebop about a decade after its release, and it was pretty friggin' amazing. Then I wanted more.

When it comes to anime, it's really hit or miss. I heard Bleach was really good. I tried the first few episodes, but I'm not really feeling it. It just seems like another version of Naruto where they're allowed to say "bastard" once an episode. So I did a bit of internet research, and after a few ADTRW threads and about a dozen neckbeard-written "TOP BEST ANIMEZ EVER" lists from google, I'm going to try to devote my time to the ones that look interesting to me.

Baccano!



Each of the stories in the series involves several unrelated plots intersecting and crossing each other as events spiral farther and farther out of control. Immortal alchemists, mafia operated speakeasies, and many other elements of pulp fiction mashed together for a world straight out of the movies.

I'm about halfway through this right now and I'm fucking loving it. It's the only anime I've ever seen with an actual plot. The timeline jumps around everywhere like Pulp Fiction or Momento, and you don't really know what's going on most of the time. It has something to do with mobsters and Satan and some immortality elixir or something. And it actually makes laugh. Most jokes I see in anime are lost in translation for me and just come off as retarded, but this is genuinely funny. Real dark humor. Serial killer humor.



Berserk



Guts, a man who calls himself "The Black Swordsman" looks upon his days serving as a member of a group of mercenaries, the Band of the Hawk, nicknamed "the Grim Reaper of the Battlefield." Led by an ambitious, ruthless, and intelligent man named Griffith, together they battle their way into the royal court, and are forced into a fate that may change their entire lives.

Homygawd this series just looks badass. This fucker disabled embedding so you have to watch it on youtube, but holy god this fucking trailer.

Blue Gender



Yuji Kaido was diagnosed with a serious disease and cryogenically frozen. He wakes up more than 20 years later--and Earth is nothing like what he remembers. A race of alien bugs called the Blue have taken over the planet, and a few select humans have retreated to the space station Second Earth. Yuji is taken back to Second Earth, where he learns that he and the other sleepers will be instrumental in defeating the Blue. And his relationship with one member of the recovery squad only serves to complicate things.



Claymore



In a world rife with deadly creatures called "youma", a young silver eyed woman, Clare, works on behalf of an organisation that trains female youma halfbreeds into warriors with the ability to destroy these creatures. Considered a rogue for picking up a stray child & almost losing herself to her youma side by "Awakening", she is constantly assigned rather dangerous missions...



Otaku Approved! ~ ^_^ ~

Black Lagoon



Okajima Rokuro is a Japanese businessman…in a town full of Japanese businessmen. His normal day consists of social drinking with clients and being kicked around by his bosses. He finally gets a break though, as he’s sent by his company to the tropical seas of Eastern China to deliver a disc…only his boat gets hijacked by a band of mercenaries that were hired to steal it. “Rock” (as he is newly dubbed by his captors) catches the interest of the only female merc “Revy” as she thinks he’s worth a ransom, taking him hostage. However, the disc turns out to be more trouble than its worth, and complicates things both for Rock, and the mercenaries known as Black Lagoon.



Lupin the Third



Arsene Lupin III is the grandson of the master thief Arsene Lupin. With his cohorts Daisuke Jigen and Goemon Ishikawa XIII and his love interest Fujiko Mine, he pulls off the greatest heists of all time while always escaping the grasp of Inspector Koichi Zenigata.

Lupin III is basically what Cowboy Bebop ripped off of, except it takes itself ten times less seriously. It was on Adult Swim a few years ago but I was only able to catch a few episodes. What I did see was amazing. Lupin really likes boobs -- COMEDY GOLD.

Pretentious Art Post - Francisco Goya

If I had to think of one place in history I would not want to be under any circumstances, being a soldier on the battlefields of World War I is a likely candidate. Think of the most absolutely terrifying nightmare you have ever had. Now amplify that by a thousand. And imagine yourself being raped while dreaming it. With bullets. That's World War I in a nutshell. The Great War had been building up for decades. Everyone knew it was coming. Nations were anticipating it, and in a sense looking forward to it. With war, comes spoils.

No one could've imagined the devastation it would bring. How could they? Their thinking was still stuck in the 1800s. There were no 'good guys' in this. It was nothing but a 19th century war of imperialism fought on a global scale with modern weapons, and the results were indescribable. If you were fortunate enough not to be one of the millions of people killed for nothing more than clumps of earth, then you had to live on and sustain all the night terrors and thoughts of suicide for the rest of your life. The world was horrified by the status quo. And it had every right to be.

As they typically do, the artists were paying attention. This unified feeling of confusion and despair, when translated into art, paved the way for modernism, and we're left with utterly brilliant movements like dada and surrealism. People were depressed, confused, and above all, really fucking tired of war.



(These aren't Goya, these are dada and surrealism.)

This is all nice and interesting, but it really doesn't have much to do with Francisco Goya at all. Well, except that Goya had already thought of it all an entire century before. But his story is much more tragic.

The aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars made Goya lose all faith in mankind, which went completely against the Romanticist era he was in. He shut himself up in his home and spent his final years completely alone, inching ever closer to the edges of madness. During this dark time, he produced his disturbing Black Paintings. The post-WWI art movements worked because everybody agreed that the world fucking sucked and it needed to change bigtime. Virtually no one held that opinion in Goya's time except for Goya. Sure, Romanticism was typically anti-establishment, and it did occasionally cover political topics, but for the most part it had its head too far up its own ass to realize that the world really needed a big fucking shake. Goya was alone. He was powerless. It was too much. Even after the Napoleonic Wars set the world ablaze, and after millions upon millions of people lay buried, the status quo pressed forward unfazed and unchallenged. No one cared. And he couldn't do a thing. You would've gone insane too.

But Goya did have a very successful career before all this. At an earlier time in his life, he was very active in Spain's political scene. In 1808, the Spanish King Charles IV was growing increasingly unpopular, and the public threw its support behind his son Ferdinand VII, hoping he would initiate reform.

Here's Goya's portrait of the royal family. Reminiscent of Velázquez, he puts in his own portrait in the shadows on the left almost as a signature.



Ferdinand wanted to overthrow his parents, and so he ran to Napoleon for military backing. Napoleon, being such a swell guy, was eager to help. He sent French troops over to Spain, because Napoleon Bonaparte had the best interests of the Spanish people in mind. As soon as Charles was ousted, Napoleon decided that his own brother Joseph would be more suited for the Spanish throne. France was now in control of Spain. Ferdinand had been royally fucked, and I think that's the first time I've been able to use that phrase in the literal sense.

The Spanish soon acknowledged France as the hostile occupier it was. An uprising occurred on May 2, 1808, and the fighting spread throughout Madrid. Goya was in Madrid during this time, and saw all of this happening firsthand. In The Second of May, painted six years later, Goya depicts the French Imperial Guard charging into a crowd to disperse them. Instead of allowing themselves to be dispersed, the crowd fights back.



It's a companion piece to Goya's most famous painting, The Third of May. The uprising was successfully beaten down, but the French were pissed. The next day, they went around massacring unarmed civilians.



The central figure in white is a metaphor for Christ, and if you look close enough, you can see the stigmata on his hands.

In 1819, Goya wanted to isolate himself. He bought a house outside Madrid called La Quinta del Sordo. He spent most of the remainder of his life there, eventually fleeing to France once Ferdinand's absolutist monarchy returned to Spain. He often forgot canvasses altogether and painted directly onto the walls. The works he completed there are known as the Black Paintings. They were never meant to be seen by the outside world. These are said to have been a huge influence on Manet and Picasso.



Saturn Devouring His Son


The Dog


Witches' Sabbath


Two Old Men Eating Soup


Procession of the Holy Office


Now go grab some ice cream and watch cartoons or something so you can cheer the fuck up after this.

Cartoonist Lars Vilks Attacked by Muslims at Uppsala University Seminar on Free Speech

I STRONGLY DISAGREE WITH YOUR CONCLUSION!!!!!!!!!!!

The Taliban offered a $100,000 reward for Vilks' death because he drew this.



It's supposed to be Muhammad as a dog. It's very offensive you guys.

Here's some more info on the attack. This sentence really pissed me off:

"Debate continues about whether the cartoons are simple freedom of speech or if they are offensive."

Of course they're offensive you dipshit. Can you not have freedom of speech if what you say offends someone? What would be the point of having a discussion if you can just say the other person's opinion offends you so they have to shut up? Does Europe have weird hate speech laws or something? Did I lose something in translation here? This is retarded. Muslims are retarded. Religion is retarded. I fucking love freedom of speech. What, this is America. Huh? Oh I'm sorry, I thought this was America.

You know, multiculturalism is only good when the cultures living together aren't violent towards one another. I'm sick of hearing about this shit. Usually when a Christian or a Muslim or a Jew who was raised in the west is offended by what someone says about religion, he just glares angrily. At worst, he mouths off and throws insults. But you rarely see violence. Not so, with Muslims and Jews born in the Middle East. This problem is a difference of cultures that can't be reconciled. Europe already grew past this phase during the Reformation and Enlightenment, and the Middle East needs to catch the fuck up and stop pretending their bullshit applies over here. When I hear about fathers murdering their own daughters out of honor killings, or barbers being brutally beaten and gang raped for shaving someone's beard, I just wish we could draw a line somewhere between the West and the Middle East so everyone will keep on their own damn side.

And the saddest thing of all is that there's a younger generation growing up in the Middle East right now that's typically more liberal and just as sick of this bullshit as the rest of us. They have to keep silent or else they'll be killed. Remember all those protestors during the Iranian election wearing the green? That group is made up almost entirely of a younger secular generation who wants to open up better relations with the west. They seem to be going through the same problem we're going through in America with the generational gap -- the older generation is fueling the flames between the West and the Middle East, they're fucking up the entire world, and there isn't shit we can do about it until they do us all a favor and die out.

New Murder By Death video. That is all.

Sunday Youtube Post

The Republican Party's Slow Crawl to Fascism

Given that communism and fascism are opposites, it's not necessarily a surprise in retrospect that America teetered more and more towards fascism during the McCarthyist era in response to Soviet Russia. Joseph McCarthy's goal was to eradicate all voice of dissent by scaring the shit out of people. Joseph McCarthy was a fascist.



I genuinely wonder what historians will be saying about this period of American politics. My take is that the Cold War babies who bought into McCarthyism want to desperately return to the only era that gave them any sense of security. So they're trying to recreate it, and they are fucking terrified that they're losing. The simple fact that we're in the middle of a transition between two eras makes them angry and confused.

And now terrorism has given the right wing everything it wants: another communism. Just like how Republicans convinced everyone that they were the only ones capable of protecting America during the Cold War, they've been beating that same drum with terrorism for the last decade. Here's Dan Fanelli, a Republican running for Congress in Florida.



Look at those greedy Jews with their huge Jew noses scary brown people with their funny voices.

As much as I hate using the word 'fascist' to describe American politicians, I really can't think of another word. The most horrifying thing to me is how lightly he's treating this. He's acting like we're fighting Snidely Whiplash. He says he would have no problem being stopped at an airport if a bald white guy flew a plane into the twin towers, but why doesn't he mention the bald white guy who flew a plane into that IRS building in Texas? Because that guy wasn't a member of the minority group he's exploiting for political gain. Because this guy is a pseudo-fascist.

Republicans need an invisible enemy to point the finger at so they can scare people into voting for them. Arizona blamed everything on Mexicans, and so they got that immigration bill passed. Seeming almost disappointed that the terrorist in New York failed, Republicans went ahead and blamed Obama for terrorism anyway. John McCain wants us to start taking rights away from American citizens whenever we damn well feel like it. Where is the fucking outrage about this among the Tea Partiers, who claim to love that Constitution so very much? I thought Obama wanted to take away our rights! Joe Lieberman wants to give the U.S. government the power to take away anybody's citizenship. It is absolutely terrifying that people are even suggesting these things. Why wait for the terrorists to take away our rights when we have fascists right here in America more than willing to do it for them?

I'm very frightened of the direction America is heading. When 70% of the country supports torture, I don't know what country I'm from.

I've already posted this on Facebook, but I'm putting it here as well because it's just so fucking good. I do poke fun at Keith from time to time for going so hilariously overboard so often, but when he gets it, he gets it.

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Greece

See? This is why financial systems need to be regulated.

After a decade of prosperity, the Greek financial system has collapsed. Their parliament passed an austerity package with huge spending cuts, aimed at stopping their economy from further implosion. It was pretty harsh, and a lot of wages and pensions were cut from the nation's workers. They didn't like that.








It was initially peaceful, but just like every other European protest in the 21st century, it was highjacked by the anarchists and it turned violent. At least three people have been killed so far, when the protesters set a bank on fire. Not a very proud time for the birthplace of democracy.

Right now they're really depending on other European nations to help bail them out, specifically Germany. They're trying to blame everyone but themselves. Greece's most famous composer Mikis Theodorakis said "the crisis was probably a plot by dark forces in the United States and other capitalist centres to subdue proud, independent nations." (Not a literal quote, that was the article paraphrasing.) Greece still has a Communist Party, and it won 8% of the vote in the last election. The nation is extremely paranoid about outside influence.

The truth is, the entire Greek culture is pretty corrupt, and this crisis should not at all come as a surprise. The amount of tax evasion among Greece's citizens is astronomical, and the country loses as much as $30 billion dollars every year because of it. And nobody cared. The government bears even more of the responsibility. For a decade, they just kept spending and spending and spending, without any means to make it all back (Reaganomics works!). Additionally, Greece has just become extremely lazy. They have short workweeks, retire early, and have lots of vacation time. Their government programs have switched from being a safety net, to being a crutch. They really brought a lot of this on themselves. AND IT'S ALL OBAMA'S FAULT!!!

The stocks have been crazy today. The DOW plummeted about a thousand points, and then recovered about half of it again.


The media's shitting itself right now, blaming this all on Greece. And I don't really know if it's Greece's fault. I don't know dick about economics, and I'm not going to pretend to. I just think it's really funny, because I saw no less than two pundits today making plugs for gold. "GOLD IS STILL HIGH, PEOPLE ALWAYS INVEST IN GOLD IN THESE TIMES BECAUSE IT'S ALWAYS GOOD!!" The gold industry often pays people on TV to say these things, and it's more than obvious that they manipulate the markets and count on crashes like these. AMERICA'S financial institutions shouldn't be regulated though, financial reform is obviously a power grab by the libruls! They started the financial crisis, after all!

WELL AT LEAST THEY FOUND DRUGS SO THEY ARE RIGHT

I usually don't give a damn about the marijuana legalization issue one way or the other, but then I see videos like this. This was back in February. Police bust into a man's house and shoot his two dogs while his seven year old son was present. One was caged, and the other was a welsh corgi. They found a little pot. Don't watch this if you're not in a mood to cry.



It's good to know from those heartwrenching cries that the last moment of that dog's life was nothing but indescribable pain.

I'm not going to say that guy isn't a shit head for having that stuff around his son, and in all honesty he shouldn't have reproduced to begin with, but the kid probably didn't become traumatized until the police stormed into his house and killed his dogs. Instead of viewing police officers as people who he should turn to when he's in trouble, that boy will now hate them for the rest of his life.

I would never smoke pot because people who do are god damned retarded, but I would be all for its legalization if it would stop things like this from happening. The stuff's really not that bad. It's almost comparable to having alcohol and cigarettes in one drug, so treating it the same as drugs like heroine and crack, or drugs that actually have a real potential to kill you, is fucking insane.

I'm a little embarrassed about this now, but I originally majored in law enforcement. I wanted to help people. I just didn't know I secretly wanted to be a firefighter. I got out once I took a few classes and realized what kind of people want to be cops. There are two types of people who major in law enforcement, and they're almost always broken up by gender: the female law enforcement majors usually think CSI is real, and the male law enforcement majors are usually fratboys who get off on powertripping and racist jokes. There's the occasional intelligent person who's getting into it for the right reasons, but those people are fairly few. I just didn't think it was worth it to deal with those fucking morons for my entire career, or you know, to actually put my life in their hands.

One of my professors was the leader of a SWAT team. He wasn't retired or anything, he was the leader of a SWAT team at the same time he taught at Western. He always kept a pager on him in case he was needed. He was a really cool guy, and he knew his shit. One time the topic of corrupt officers came up. He seemed reluctant to talk about it, but this one guy kept pressing him. He basically said "You'll meet them. The best thing is to just stay away from them. That's all you can do." And that was where he left it. That's why everyone hates cops. Half of them are corrupt assholes, and the other half who actually do their jobs ignore the corrupt assholes. Why can't they all just be like the nice ones who talked to us at school :(

Animals and Emotions

Human beings are animals. We're apes. Emotion first evolved to help us survive. When we feel love towards other members of the group, we're more likely to go out of our way to make sure they live, and likewise, they are more likely to go out of their way to make sure you live. Emotion became more complex (and arguably unstable) as our brain size increased and we gained intelligence. It has the benefit of getting our brains results very quickly, but at a high margin of error.



I've always thought the way animals interact with each other is the most interesting thing in the fucking world. We're essentially looking into our own past. The coolest thing is that there is not a solid line separating animals "with" emotion and animals "without" it. It's an extremely blurry line. Some animals, such as elephants or whales, are capable of shockingly advanced interactive societies, and other animals like ants are nothing but mindless drones. Very often, our desire for animals to have emotions gets in the way of what's actually going on. Dogs are a great example, owners love projecting emotions onto them when there isn't anything there. When a dog "looks guilty" or "knows what he did," he's actually only being submissive because he perceives the alpha as asserting his dominance. He doesn't have a clue what you're angry about because he's a fucking dog and dogs can't talk to humans. That's not to say dogs don't experience emotion, they can actually be quite bipolar (depression has even been observed). But it's important to know the difference between what only human beings are capable of experiencing, and what is natural animal behavior. This can be very difficult to do, because we still don't know everything about what animals are capable of.

Radiolab spent an entire show interviewing biologists about this very subject, it's really good and everybody should listen to it.

Sunday Youtube Post

Post-Rock > All Rock





From The Ascent of Everest's album "How Lonely Sits the City." I just discovered them today, boy what a find.

Pretentious Art Post - Bernini

Break out the wine and cheese, because it's liberal elitism time. This Pretentious Art Post would also not be complete without pretentious music to listen to while reading it. Click on each picture to see a higher resolution.


This is Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Michelangelo perfected sculpture before his time. As if it were even possible, Bernini took it a step further. Michelangelo's sculptures were absolutely perfect for what he was intending for them, but they were still missing one thing.



What's missing in this? Action. David isn't doing anything. It's basically a contrapposto study, and nothing more. There is a legitimate debate on whether Michelangelo or Bernini were better at sculpture, though since it's generally accepted that Michelangelo was probably the greatest artist in history, most agree that he comes out on top because there would've been no Bernini had he not set the groundwork. Without him, the next big art movement would not have been possible.

After the Renaissance would come Baroque, which was obsessed with dynamic action. And at this, Bernini was the fucking master. Check out Bernini's version of David.







I mean, look at that. Look at how much stress is being put on David's muscles. He is biting his lip.

This is Pluto and Proserpina.









Tears had never been seen before in sculpture. And never had this. Your mind is about to get fucking blown.



Those fingers are pressing into her flesh. This is marble. Bernini was only 23 years old.

Apollo and Daphne



Check this shit.



How did those branches growing out of her fingers not break off when he was chipping away at them? Shitfucking dykeballs.



Damned Soul

This was one of his very first works. He was younger than me and he was already on par with some of the greatest sculptors in history.

The Ecstasy of St. Teresa


A window above takes advantage of natural light.