I Have Found the World's Least-Effective Ad

Why in the hell would they use a picture like that? I'm straight and even I want to suck that guy's dick. It is this complete and utter disingenuousness on the part of the movement that leads me to believe in some sort of conspiracy.

Random Wikipedia finds:

Best new phrase, from the "Fault-tolerant system" page: "graceful degradation", apparently the property that allows a system to keep functioning normally in the event of a failure.

A phenomenon attributed to quark matter, given that the baryon density is high enough and the temperature is below 10^12 kelvins: "color superconductivity".

A hypothetical particle consisting of a bound state of roughly equal numbers of up, down and strange quarks:

A "strangelet". ("Oh, honey, come look at the adorable strangelet! What's that scamp done now? Why, he's instigated an 'ice-nine' type of catastrophic scenario. The little dickens.")

I Suppose it's Allegorical

As anyone who's ever owned a puppy will tell you, they are a mess. A primal engine of entropy on four legs. They can't help it. They must go, do, interact, with all the curiosity, tenacity, and aggression they can muster, which is a lot. So you can't be overly fastidious around one.

A lesson I learned today. The little scamp that occupies the apartment decided recently to investigate my closet, which, as I am not the neatest of men, had quite a pile of clothes collecting in it.

So moved must she have been by the spectacle of my unwashed togs that she was inspired to leave more than a little of herself behind.

This, of course, was unimpeachably natural and unimpeachably disgusting. (Lock your doors, I hear you crying even now. Can't, I reply. My bedroom door won't shut all way. Hell if I know why). I decided to chuck a few items of clothing that I deemed duly doomed by doggie detritus.

Now, I am loath (there's an understatement) to throw some old things away. If I have deemed them helpful, useful, emotionally resonant or particularly faithful, I find it harder to part with those items than I do with most people. The clothing I tossed were undeniably old campaigners. One was a plain black-and-white shirt with a Japanese ideogram on it. (I can tell it now-- reliable sources ID'd it for me as the character for "love", but I always claimed ignorance whenever anyone asked its meaning, because I would've been embarrassed to be walking around with a shirt that said "love" on it. Silly, really). The other was a pair of green twill pants, and by God, I'll swear by the seven seas of Rhye they were some of the best pants a man ever had. But their time had come. They were worn out, faded, ripped, and displayed some truly gargantuan holes around the general buttock-area. They were only a few tenacious stitches away from being disparate pieces of cloth, instead of a singular article. So it really was time, aided by dog's unerring instinct...

I suddenly realize that it may have been that skulking ginger bastard of a cat instead. If that yowling little son of a whore was responsible for ruining two of my most-loved duds, I'll make it my mission to somehow shit on his head in reparation.

I know I've been showing this to a lot of people, but if you haven't seen it yet, man, check it out. This will probably be my favorite thing that Trent Reznor has ever done (I'm not craaaazy about the man's work, but I respect his aesthetic). T-Rez leads the gang through "Night Clubbing" while Bela Lugosi in sideburns makes Bryan Ferry sound overwrought.

"Oh, isn't it wild?"

There's something really special, to me, about the setup they've got going here. It's amazing how sound technology has evolved to the point where you can get this sort of pristine intensity and precision, all while playing to like 12 people. I mean, to get that guitar to squall like that in the old days, you'd need half a dozen effects pedals, a cranked-up stack, and enough volume and feedback hum to bristle Zappa's soul patch. Here it's a tiny little set-up, like a very small hurricane. Yeah... music for small rooms. I still think it's an interesting challenge. How can one fill the space with music, but still allow enough room to move through it?

The Graveyard and the Ballroom

So a few days ago, I watched Anton Corbijn's film Control, about Ian Curtis (primarily) and Joy Division (by extension).

I thought it was good if you knew about the band. If you'd never heard of Joy Division, then I'd imagine the film would come off as still sad and affecting, but kind of a snooze. Everything in it was filtered through a stark, but somehow luxurious black and white look. The emotional content was passed through a similar filter-- dialogue was muttered under the breath, all poses crisp and obviously staged. The ultimate effect was stiltedness, distance-- which I imagine was meant to echo Curtis' feelings of isolation and emotional pain.

But that's not really what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to (since I've been listening to some classics of the genre) talk about the movement that seems to be called post-punk, and one band in particular's album, The Graveyard and the Ballroom.

The group is called A Certain Ratio (certain bands' propensities for messing about with Nazi ide- and terminology remains consistent). They rose up in the formidable shadow of Joy Division, sharing a link through Factory Records.

Their sound was somewhat similar, but different enough to allure. Whereas Joy Division had a hollow, booming sort of sound, A Certain Ratio fell firmly on the kinetic side of angst. Just take a listen to the opening track, "Do the Du":

http://theguydeborians.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/do-the-du/

(And honestly, if you could only listen to one Certain Ratio track, this would definitely be it, at least off of Graveyard and Ballroom). The hollow, declamatory vocal delivery is there, and a corpulent, aggressive bassline, but Joy Division never flirted with this kind of spidery funk. The guitars chatter away at the edges like St. Vitus-ing skeletons and some sort of listless chorus keeps up the handclaps. The overall effect is like getting beaten with a chain-link fence. Meanwhile, singer Simon Topping lists off his lobotomized series of visceral observations and complaints, like Jeffrey Dahmer writing a goodbye note to his girlfriend. ("My heart was just/ An open sore/ Which you picked at/ 'Til it was raw").

Not a song that goes down easy. More of a formaldehyde cocktail, really. The second half of the album showcases a live set, where the band was opening for Talking Heads. The melodies are somewhat lacking-- or, in some cases, not really there-- but of course I doubt they're meant to be. It's all about that scritchy beat and war-zone guitars. Highly recommended for fans of Factory Records, Gang of Four, Talking Heads, and anyone who likes hyperactive gloom (and I do mean gloom-- listening to "Crippled Child" all the way through is like listening to Caligari's somnambulist spell out your personal demise). It's got teeth, and to quote Ian Curtis, "And we could dance!"