It's Jesus' Birthday!

He has risen! Well, it looks like something's a-risin' at any rate...

All the best to ye & y'all's, people of earth. Shalom aleichem & A-Salamu Alaykum as well.

Why I Won't Live In New York

No, no, no, not this time. Irresistible as it is to swing at fashion victims, dilettantes, subcultural sycophants, narcissists, obsessive self-documentarians, trust-fund-diapered fauxhemians, post-modernist dullards, nostalgia-wracked romantics, obscurantist one-upsmen, and practitioners of a sad, perfunctory hedonism... I'm not doing that today. After all, you can find all manner of these loathsome parasitic specimen in any urban locus larger than 100,000 people. Yes, there are dense concentrations of them in the Big Apple, but where aren't they in the western world now? Baltimore? Winnipeg? Blackpool? Maybe Dundee...

No, I fear what mutation New York would trigger within me over an extended period. Time seems to be unusually cruel towards New Yorkers (especially adoptive ones) who neither succeed nor have the good sense to leave. This spiritual deformity stems partly from the incessant shoulder-bumping between classes. Outside of police states, nowhere else is so little heat generated by the constant friction between the poor & the powerful, thanks to a détente predicated upon two paradoxical conceits:

1. The ruling class are, and shall forever be, the ruling class. Kiss the ring, bitch!
2. The American Dream: any schlub on the street can capitalize on his/her potential to become one of the ruling class. Horatio Alger, suck my dust!

Thus, whether you're looking up or down the socioeconomic ladder, those you see at the other end serve as evidence of these axioms. Of course, both are false and highly corrosive to dignity & compassion. But most pathetic is when someone past the crest of their youth & enthusiasm clings so desperately to the second factoid - someone who never got the brass ring, the corner office, the record deal, the sitcom pitch, the movie rights, the solo exhibition still despondently dry-humping the striated husk of their adolescent ambition because they never realized, as George Carlin did, "it's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it." It reminds me, most witheringly, of Armando Iannucci's reality check to the aged & developmentally arrested:

The past is a distant yacht. What you haven't done now, you'll never get done. Possibility is a private party to which you are no longer invited.

You see, over at Ads Without Products, some poor schmuck who happens to share a name with one of British blogdom's most esteemed thinkers felt the need not only to make his own existence known, but to claim dominion over his name in- and outside his own idiom and to request the offending post be removed. Perhaps his argument would have been better made if he hadn't tried crassly to Google-bomb himself, with what appears to be a 10-year-old Russian peasant's grasp of the English language.

(AWP sensibly did not remove the post, especially given that Mark Fisher stumbled upon it five months after the fact.)

This behavior is all too typical of folks over 40 I've met who've tried to take a bite out of the Big Apple and were themselves chewed up & spit out. They ooze a clammy insistence of their own importance, their self-promotional monologues pinballing schizophrenically between their achievements, their (poorly feigned) comfort with obscurity, and David Icke-class theories of how their rivals/corporate America/"the fuckers" have conspired to suffocate their career. They're often depressingly humourless, hyper-sensitive, and pepper their speech with more profanity than a sailor on shore leave. Consequently, they're unreasonably hard to follow in conversation (and even moreso in written missives).

This isn't to say that they haven't produced works worthy of admiration, or that they can be very pleasant & interesting people. But ceaseless nagging by the sad resentment that I never got my due isn't a fate I'd wish on anyone - least of all upon myself.

Speaking of assholes in New York City... allow me to dogpile atop the South Park/Mohammed controversy by basically reiterating what Jon Stewart said last night. If the threats of violence came from some shadowy fundamentalist cabal overseas, okay, Trey Parker & Matt Stone should probably lay aside any planned North African or Middle Eastern excursions, but that's where the danger would end. But these threats came from some baker's-dozen of lunatics based in Manhattan - where, mere miles from Ground Zero, they can praise Bin Laden, celebrate the anniversary of 9/11, and make intimidating pronouncements against South Park because they, the fundamentalist shitbirds, enjoy protection under the First motherfuckin' Amendment. And yet, with the full wrath of a vengeful god behind them, these self-righteous cowards haven't even the strength of their own convictions, offering some mewling mitigation that they were "helpfully" pointing to the historical precedent of Theo Van Gogh to "warn" Parker & Stone.

Quoth Mr. Stewart, to all those who would threaten violence based upon religious or political ideology: Go fuck yourselves. Two times.

Sing a Seasonal Song

What does one do in the afternoon once the internet's been disconnected but packing the suitcases can be put off for another couple of hours?

Bash out a (sort of/not really) seasonal cover song to hurl into the online ether at the behest of the yuletide spirit!

Merry Christmas (and a belated Happy Hanukkah) y'all.

Exit Only

I recently made use of my insomnia to take in this debate from last year between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza. As hard as it is to forgive Hitchens his last seven years of White Man's Burden-esque bullying, he's still got the sharpest knives in the antitheist butcher's block. (Unlike Richard Dawkins, whose utopian faith that humans are perfectable mirrors that of his targets; or Sam Harris, who - unlike Hitchens - makes time in his book to advocate the nuclear extermination of Islam.)

Meanwhile, D'Souza appears to have taken the same mail-order public speaking course as my elementary school principal: his head mechanically ping-ponging like a lawn sprinkler, D'Souza over-enunciates in a torpid lilt as though the audience hasn't yet learned to tie their own shoes. That this mental mosquito armed with cherry-picked evidence is not only a Stanford prof, but a leading intellectual among the American chattering class makes me want to award Russell Brand the MSNBC anchor's chair and promptly hang myself.

Given that almost every word D'Souza utters is easily rebuttable, I'm not typing the X-hundred pages of blogspace required for a complete evisceration of his idiotic demagoguery. I'll leave it to you to decide if (a) watching a fundie and an antitheist catfight on C-Span is worth 90 minutes of your life, and (b) it would be better painstakingly to refute every straw man and tautology D'Souza burps out or just sock him in the throat. Here are the highlights for those not quite curious enough to be arsed watching:

• Hitchens has achieved a Howard Stern-circa-'85 anti-fame, judging by the number of people who attend his talks just to cheer on whatever faith-enthusiast he's facing off against.
• Jump ahead to part 7, around the 7:00 mark, and dig on the more-books-than-brains pseud (in a trucker shirt!) who couldn't find a way of asking, "Ex nihilo, nihil fit - yes or no?", that took under a minute.
• Immediately following, the next question inadvertantly revealed a great deal about the fickleness of the "faithful," as Hitchens was asked by a Tongan gentleman, "What do you have to offer us as an atheist?" Put another way: I'm willing to trade up, so what's in it for me?

That last point hung neatly on a thread that ran throughout the debate. If what people tell the Pew Research Center can be trusted, athiests are the most disliked constituency in America. If you compiled a one-sheet of the false accusations & hysterical indictments made against atheists and replaced the proper noun with "Jew," you'd Godwin yourself faster than you could say "shemozzle." The faithful constantly prod athiests to prove their core contention - that is, to prove a negative, despite the fact that (as Hitchens said) if atheists are right, "the world looks how it would look without god."

The crux of the theist/atheist battle is faith: those with see it as their greatest virtue, while those without see it as the worst kind of wish-thinking. The problem of faith, of course, is that it's as unprovable as god's inexistence. Consequently, the defensiveness often exhibited by the faithful in debate can be read as the nagging ache of the phantasmic/fantastic doubt: "What if we ARE wrong?"

This question of being wrong - of acting irrationally, of inherent inconsistency - is far from some faith-specific quirk: it's the very keystone of ideology. As Žižek would say, it's one of "these unknown knowns, the disavowed beliefs and suppositions we are not even aware of adhering to." Another possibility is that someone would know damn well they're wrong, but continues unabashed - in which case, we're dealing not with an ideologue but a fetishist. But in either case (aware that they're wrong, or unaware that they're wrong), people live as if they were right. Which is bloody infuriating.

I've recently been engaged in some old-school correspondence with my grandfather, next to whom it's very easy to feel stupid. But I was thrilled to recognise this sentiment in his last letter:

[Deconstructionists] remind me of when I was studying political philosophy away back at Cape Town University after WW2, and there was one guy who was a Marxist and had the answer for everything. I'd be sitting trying to worry out my understanding of some writer - Hobbes, Marx, Hegel, or whoever - while this guy always had the answer - THE answer, from his comfortable Marxist standpoint. In fact I had, and have, a lot of time for Marx' analysis, but also some doubts. I used to envy that guy in a way, for his certainty, his lack of doubt.

This is precisely why I'm such a fan of Žižek, "an improvising philosopher, rather than a composer of philosophy," as it was put over at Endschwindet und Verghet. Hokey though his billing as "the Elvis of cultural theory" is, it's perfectly apt: a populist, ad-hoc repackaging of ideas derived as much from junk culture as from "authentic" sources. Being the toe-dipping philosophical hobbyist that I am, I'm considerably more comfortable with this frothing goofball than amongst the button-down self-seriousness of "authoritative" intellectuals. There's an ease in an enthusiastic sloppiness that can readily result in error that can't be found in obscurantist efforts at some abstract infallibility.

My growing distaste for any ideological orthodoxy stems not a little from the now-deafening furor about carbon footprints, eco-friendly food, renewable energy, etc. Suffocating under so many mixed messages about how best not to be a wasteful bastard, there festers a guilt so bottomless that, were it a combustible semi-solid, our energy needs could be filled forever. Of course, this guilt is precisely the consumer impetus that capital breathes, eats, and shits. That our problems can be solved by consuming less, consuming ethically, but consuming nonetheless is a dangerously brilliant bit of three-card-monte. As K-Punk put it recently, "the operations of capital do not depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief;" all they do depend on is "a subject who is open to all kinds of fluctuating identities and who is therefore ready to be plugged into every commodity." (That's Dany-Robert Dufour via Jodi Dean.) And once again, the most confounding aspect of this ethical hedonism is its certainty, the smug self-assuredness that drops the curtain on the conclusive truth that All Your Carbon Are Belong To Capital.

Like my grandfather, while I do somewhat envy the womb-like warmth of self-delusion, I've always kept Orwell's caution against all True Believers close to my heart. Even in the instances where I agree with the essence of someone's stance, I find it slightly sociopathic if they're not even dimly aware of contradiction or insufficiency - in which case, I see fit to invoke the eternal words of the Dude:

I'm not saying you're wrong, Walter... you're just an asshole.

Playing At VS Being: a Dosser

S F/J just posted what is probably not only the most succinct encapsulation of the blogosphere, but of my goddamned generation:

“I was new to New York and scared, so I drank too much and met someone.”

But since no one rides for free: could it be that, for all his cultural acumen, Sasha actually has seriously shit taste in music?

Elsewhere, Obama recently updated & appended his campaign slogan to: Change You Can Believe In, Or Your Ass Is Fired, Heathen. Brilliant. Thanks for vindicating every ugly, cynical molecule in me. What remains fascinating about Obama, though, is his ability to enchant or enrage people across the political spectrum all at once: even as he disillusions secular-humanists like myself by doing the above, he'll bitch-slap social conservatives with the harsh possibility that maybe, just maybe, they're bigots. About the only thing Peter Wehner gets right in his op-ed is that

the original conceit of the Obama candidacy–that he is an agent of “change” who will “turn the page” on the “old politics” and act as a uniquely unifying figure in American politics–looks more and more absurd.

Indeed, Obama sports a political scramble suit, being whatever to whomever, a chameleonic candidate who recalls the other great bullshit artist of our era, Bill Clinton. But on the bright side, at least that means he's electable!

And to those harping on Obama's smoking habit as though it were some festering wound upon his soul (as oppose to his lungs)... I presume "recovered" addicts or straight-edge health enthusiasts are preferable in all cases? Okay, yes, I just Godwin'd myself, but honestly, stop flexing your vindictive puritanism for a moment and take a studious look in the mirror.

What's Pissing Me Off About Music Today?

From the always epic FAIL Blog

For starters, this juvenile act of dick-swinging will only impress people who can't tell a record press from a waffle iron. Never mind that way back when Nick Sylvester eviscerated their record, it was the one-in-ten he gets right. I can't tell if Ackermann & Co. are trying to push this pathetic bumper-sticker marketing about "loudest band in New York" into some all-encompassing dogma, or if they're just so gloriously inept as musicians that they're not even aware of how records are made. Hey, I know: let's just make the lock groove a square wave the width of the record and it'll be the loudest vinyl release ever! Sure, it'll only be 1.8 seconds long and break everyone's stylus, but... dude! LOUD!

And as Pitchdork becomes the MTV of the post-millenial, I barely know where to begin with why this is so wrong. Do we start with the porcine mouthbreather who was assigned to be interviewer? Or how transparently, self-referentially agenda-driven Pitchfork has become, as can be inferred by the smug, reverent tone in which Dave Maher referes to a fellow writer? How about that outrrrrrageous accent on Xavier de Rosnay?

I'll confess an immediate bias against Justice: I distrust dance music because, bottom-line, it wants nothing more than to please, and that makes for bad art. Dance music - rooted in nightclubs and, thus, fashion - exists on the ficklest of stimulus-response reflexes. Hence the thoroughly unenjoyable video for "Stress", a clear knee-jerk distancing from the cutesy bubblegum bounce of "DA.N.C.E." as though to prove their balls have dropped. This isn't speculation: in the clip, a teenager in a tantrum literally kicks "D.A.N.C.E." off the airwaves. Comment la Justice est MACHO! This is the same measured approach to image construction that, say, Carrot Top employed when he wanted, if not respect, at least fear. As for the video itself, yes, indeed, what hath France wrought by producing such disaffection in its youth, but as Anna Packard argued, how is watching a gaggle of adolescents acting like total cunts going to help anyone? (Other than Justice, what with the extra attention garnered by the controversy.)

Back to the Pitchfork interview... something very symptomatically European about les hommes de Justice is the manner in which they deny any fundamental significance of ubiquitous religious imagery. This is in stark contrast to Americans, who generally minimize the public display of religious accoutrements but loudly and ceaselessly profess their faith. While these are very opposite approaches to worship, they both display a certain characteristic: a disregard or even disbelief in the power of the symbol or image. For Europeans, the symbol can be appropriated (as on the jackets of the ASBOs in the Justice video) and carries no inate power; for Americans, the symbol is an unnecessary, though occasionally helpful, signifier. This stands in stark contrast to Islamic society, where the image is still unimpeachably important. (See: Danish Mohammed cartoon reaction) Could this be one of the cultural disconnects that led to the rage of unintegrated immigrant youths portrayed in the "Stress" video? Oh, snap! The irony!

Now, in closing, perhaps what's pissing me off the most about music today is that I've expended such mental energy dissecting & discussing such inconsequential bullshit because no one told me that this is what happened here in Hamburg on May Day. I understand that I was out of town at the time, but for fuck sake, isn't this disquieting and dire enough that someone would have mentioned it to me before today?!

I'm one Molotov cocktail or inflammatory speech away from "Screw you guys, I'm going home..."

The Last-Minute Temptation

I've never understood Easter - not the least because of the non-sequitorial celebratory customs. Perhaps it's just because I've never had a loved one die in some unjust or gruesome fashion, but marking & observing the murder of someone is... ghoulish creepy. Lemme put it this way: I don't trust the American gov't at all, but if I met a libertarian who marks the assassination of JFK by wearing a rifle pendant and conducting elaborate rituals involving, say, a woodchuck using marshmallows to mark the possible locations of multiple assailants, I'd have to seriously question this person's sanity.

Anyway, the Germans have an interesting twist on holidays that mark someone's death: whereas Americans celebrate with door-crashing sales, Germans close up shop... leaving me with nothing to do and half the groceries I need to survive the weekend. So I had the time to throw together this last minute MP3 mix, based upon the narrative of The Last Temptation of Christ. Click on the title to download it.

The Cross Roads: Last Temptation

1. Brian Jonestown Massacre - "Jesus" (00:00)
2. Soul Coughing - "Blue-Eyed Devil" (06:26)
3. The Harvey Girls - "Your Evil Man" (10:26)
4. The Desert Sessions - "Creosote" (13:16)
5. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - "Up Jumped the Devil" (15:40)
6. Cave - "Hunt Like Devil" (20:56)
7. Johnny Temple - "Evil Devil Blues" (30:42)
8. The Smiths - "Headmaster's Ritual" (33:47)
9. Sonic Youth - "Kill Yr. Idols" (38:32)
10. Soundgarden - "Jesus Christ Pose" (41:07)
11. Laddio Bolocko - "The Man Who Never Was" (46:56)
12. The Skull Defekts - "White Lights Burning Eyes" (50:51)

Catholicism: Now with double the damnation!

Emperor Palpatine's got a brand new bag!

Evidently, someone in the Vatican watched Dogma and got spooked that the Church is perceived as "a passe, archaic institution; obtuse... even hokey." Which isn't an unfounded fear: possibly the only thing more outdated than Roman Catholicism is intellectual property & copyright law.

Well, he may have that patina of organic decay for which Lon Chaney needed makeup, but who says Pope Benedict XIV ain't a baller & shot-caller, a dynamo of papal decrees? Just in time for Easter, the Vatican has found a way to induce extra guilt that Jesus died for YOU, motherfucker: seven fresh categories of deadly sin! That's right, folks, seven brand-new, cutting-edge classes of one-way tickets to the Inferno. A Vatican spokesman explained that, “While sin used to concern mostly the individual, today it has mainly a social resonance... due to the phenomenon of globalization.” The new official list of the Fourteen Deadly Sins is as follows:

Old & Busted

1. Lust
2. Gluttony
3. Greed
4. Sloth
5. Wrath
6. Envy
7. Pride

New Hotness

8. “Bioethical” violations such as birth control
9. “Morally dubious” experiments such as stem cell research
10. Drug abuse
11. Polluting the environment
12. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor
13. Excessive wealth
14. Creating poverty

Perhaps this is my soulless, heathen frivolity talking, but I'm actually kind of excited about this new list, because based on this criteria, everyone is going to Hell. At least there's an admirable kind of consistency to this level of vindictive judgement that would doom itself as direly as anyone else. Think I'm kidding? Well, let's take a look at who might fit into the Church's newly-renovated Rogue's Gallery:

Bioethical violations

If not your mother, then your sister, your girlfriend, your wife... at any rate, a lot (hopefully MOST) of the women you know & love.

Morally Dubious Experiments

Yeah, bet the fundies never thought Saint Ron would've gotten behind stem cell research. (This is to say nothing of everything else the festering meatsack did to merit a permenant vacation to Hades.)

Drug Abuse

Dude, Hell is going to rock so hard if this who's gonna be there... well, except that last guy.

Polluting the Environment



Widening the Wealth Gap

Boo-yah!

Excessive Wealth

Double boo-yah!

Creating Poverty

She had it coming.

And on that note... happy easter, everybody.

God(less), What an Awful Racket

A frigid mid-November night in a Hamburg hostel with an empty wallet doesn’t offer many options in terms of entertainment. Either you try to chat up the Ukrainian cutie working the front desk, or, like me, you’re content channel-surfing on the tiny 8” TV chained to the wall above your bed. Luckily, a cultural news magazine had a segment about the somehow-still-nascent-yet-spreading Noise scene. There were a number of new faces (mostly Frenchmen with horrid haircuts) in addition to the usual cast of “marquee” Noise acts like Hair Police, Magic Is Kuntmaster, and Whitehouse. A larff though it was to see such sonic miscreants on prime-time TV, one thing Whitehouse mayor domo William Bennett said stuck out. I’m paraphrasing from memory:

“The way the audience reacts – they seem to be drawing things out of the music that we weren’t aware of. It says more about them than it does about us.”

So that’s where I was.

Meanwhile, I’d recently revisited Ian Svenonius’ brilliant book of screwball sociologly, The Psychic Soviet. Quite probably my favourite essay, “Rock and Rolligion,” deals literally with the parallels between major faiths and popular music. It’s not simply that each is an intricate (if often illogical) weave of rituals & values; the analogy is so immaculate that you can match Christian sects to respective rock subgenres. For starters, those greasy-pompadour’d rockabilly throwbacks are the Amish: history stopped at a certain point. Arena rock, with its emphasis on pomp & circumstance, is Roman Catholicism, while indie rock, with its semi-ascetic, guilt-driven work ethic, is 7th Day Adventism. The schismatic birth of Punk was equivalent to the Protestant reformation, and touring is doing missionary work. Similarly, hip-hop is Islam, with all of its competing constituent sects.

So that’s where my head was.

Now, the thing about Noise is that its tech-heavy cacophony is sufficiently abstract that, if you enjoy such sounds, you could feasibly be so entertained by traffic, wind, industrial plants, passing trains, the hiss of an untuned radio or TV. Some ham onstage with a table full of modded electronics is superfluous: raw sound becomes its own Art. There needn’t be a conscious creator pulling the strings. So a thought occurred to me…

Noise is the Atheism of Rock ‘n’ Rolligion.

Atheism is a rejection of many things – heirarchy, superstition – but foremost, it’s a rejection of a dogmatic interpretation of reality. Sense, perception, and experience can be judged subjectively, on their own merits without heeding an arbitrary set of criteria. Life can be glumly mechanical or viscerally poetic; a stoic procession according to scientific rationale, or an absurdly serendipitous success of a chemical cocktail. To squeeze the last sap from an overtapped cliché, beauty – or indeed its absence – is in the eye of the beholder.

All of which can also be said of Noise. Once the need for a conscious creator is rejected, then so too are tautological claims of truth or beauty. Dogmatic adherence to heirarchy & ceremony becomes delusional bufoonery. Sensory experience requires no mystical context to be enjoyed – so get to enjoyin’ it, ‘cuz what you see is all you’re gonna get.

Of course, some of the rituals and behaviours of the faithful are adopted by the faithless, but this is out of pragmatic deference to what is “socially acceptable.” A Noise concert, for example, would be like an Atheist celebrating Christmas: a decent excuse to get dressed up and congregate with those nearest & dearest to you (though this is sometimes more a chore than a pleasure).

This isn’t to say that there is no merit in the words or works of the faithful. There was a lot of wisdom in what both Jesus and Anton Newcombe have said, though I don’t necessarily agree with all of it, nor would I want to pattern my life precisely after theirs. Similarly, I appreciate the majestic contruction & meticulous design of both the National Cathedral and Pet Sounds, but neither betrays any more universal truth or higher aesthetic pleasure than, say, the spectrum-spanning eyefuck of Shibuya crossing or the whisper of falling snow.

But if nothing else, one parallel is unequivocal: Noise is as baffling to pop fans as Atheism is to the faithful. Always smacked with the same, stodgy old dismissal: What “art?” What “beliefs?” Isn’t the point that they don’t have any? Well, as the man said… if you have to ask, you’ll never know.

Don't Do As I Say!

Zizek said knock you OUT!

Though the Great I Cite Flame-War of '07 has burned itself down to glowing embers, I'm going to colonise the conversation by continuing here an exchange started with the mysterious-yet-engaging Six Foot Subwoofer (a.k.a. Hectoring Bore, a.k.a. Sincere Heckler - you know his steez!).

When we last spoke, SFSW was inquiring as to why I "take such stock in nonviolent disobedience and have such little faith in doing 'good works.'" Indeed, on the surface it would seem strange to praise & strive for one and not the other, but there are two distinct reasons why I value the former but not necessarily the latter.

The first is with regard to motive. My antitheism leads me to immediately distrust anyone claiming to do "good" in the name of "faith." Too often when a helping hand is extended, the other is clutching some evangelical tract, some recruitment scheme - a classic Bait-'n'-Switch. But even when the sales pitch isn't made, it's not an act of altruism but a matter of scoring points on some celestial tally. As Dominic put it so well recently, "this is simply a form of deferred gratification, a storing up of riches elsewhere that one will later enjoy at one’s (infinite) leisure... all one is really doing is making a metaphysically shrewd investment."

Also, in this global media-saturated environment, the corrupt motive of "good P.R." is a constant factor to consider. After all, one man's media blitz is another's opportunism.

The second, and more crucial reason I put civil disobedience above "good works" is the purity of negative definition. Now, as a Canadian, defining something by a negative is something I'm inherently adept at & comfortable with:

Q: What is a Canadian?
A: Well, it bloody well isn't an American!

But consider this: good works can be tainted by ulterior motives, unintended consequences, compromise, "the lesser of two evils," or the elevation of intention above result. (Remember with what the road to hell is paved.) Civil disobedience, on the other hand, is muddled by none of the factors because it is defined by what it does not do. Rather than leave a wake swirling with "Why?"s, civil disobedience succinctly answers the question "Why not?" by opening a vacuum in which we can clearly see one action that is missing. There is no room for rationalisation, appeasement, evasion, obfuscation, or half-assing in a void. As a wrinkled green Muppet once said, as simply as possible: "Do or do not. There is no 'try.'"


Also at the last juncture in our conversation, there was a question as to whether romanticism has a place in the revolution. I personally feel that it doesn't, even though I understand why SFSW would think romanticism is unfairly maligned by smug postmodernists. However, by definition, romanticism has little to do with the truth - and, in fact, even runs counter to it. This is not to cast myself as a staunch materialist, 'cuz I ain't. But romanticism is the same false path to the Real that religion is to a sense of purpose or morality.

Let's not limit ourselves to florid, purple fantasy as the only frame for our dreams. Even as rabid a materialist as Bakunin said, "By reaching for the impossible, man discovers the possible."

Next: Make an art noise here!

Here's your chance, god!

I was 9 years old at the time...

Okay, god - I know I don't believe in you and all, but if:

a) this is true and
b) I can see it with my own two ocular organs

...then we can begin negociations for my soul. (Note to other Higher Beings: MBV or best offer wins!)

And a Felicitous Easter to You As Well!

Mel's best drinking buddy

Happy Easter everyone! I'll spare you the polemics for now, 'cuz I'm too busy eating chocolate. If you wanna talk, drop a comment and I'll get back to you. Otherwise, enjoy the tunes!

Jesus: Unnailed

1. C. Keating - "And Their Leader Was Named Phillip" (00:00)
2. UFOMammut - "God" (00:52)
3. Laddio Bolocko - "Call Me Jesus" (06:55)
4. Johnny Cash - "The Man Comes Around" (08:48)
5. The Birthday Party - "Big Jesus Trash Can" (13:09)
6. The Billy Nayer Show - "Rabbits & Bears" (16:09)
7. The Melvins - "HOGLEG" (17:52)
8. The Velvet Underground - "Waiting For The Man" (21:12)
9. The Dandy Warhols - "Hard-On For Jesus" (25:39)
10. Rufus Wainwright - "Gay Messiah" (30:15)
11. Spacemen 3 - "Walking With Jesus (Live)" (33:25)
12. Stone Roses - "I Am the Ressurection" (37:26)
13. Husker Du - "Newest Industry" (42:13)
14. Nino Rota - "The Baptism" from The Godfather (45:33)
15. Glenn Branca - "The Ascension" (47:16)
16. The Brian Jonestown Massacre - "Their Satanic Majesties' Second Request" (01:00:22)

He Walks Among Us... Whoever "he" is.

Nobody fucks with de Jesus...

So leave it to another ex-junkie lunatic to convince a bunch of rubes that he's the son of God. In the words of the Mighty Hicks, "I think God put you here to test my faith, buddy."

Am I missing out on the world's biggest racket here? Hell, ol' L. Ron wasn't kidding when he said that religion's where the money is. What's stopping me from declaring myself Son of the Big Guy and getting fat off the misdirected donations of simple-minded marks? And how dare you besmirch the good names of my followers! They may be uneducated, isolated, semi-sociopathic outcasts, but it's not like J.C.'s O.G. crew weren't a little rag-tag & rough around the edges themselves. So what if Saul, a.k.a. Paul, a.k.a. Ghostface Vanilla, was a thug who enjoyed ostracizing & executing peasants?

Anyhoo, here's a catchy little ditty over the farcical panic of facing Judgement...

Billy Nayer Show - "Head of a Cat"
(from Goodbye Straplight Sarantino, I Will Miss You)