Scare Tactics

Hallowe'en has never been a big deal in Japan. This is largely because of the absence of the entire cultural context (however flimsy & fabricated) for the holiday, but also because there's already more than enough opportunity to apply ghoulish makeup and extravagant costumery. This year, however, appears to be different: paper skeletons & plastic jack-o-laterns are ubiquitous, and every nightclub (as opposed to only the ones that cater to foreigners) is hosting some kind of haunted happening. Granted, I've been absent the past two years, but my friends here confirm that this sudden enthusiasm in All Hallow's Eve has arrived without warning. I'm convinced this is an economic stimulus effort that's helping to resurrect the Japanese economy: hype an accessory-emphatic holiday, pushing everyone to purchase the necessary accoutrement.

I doubt that Hallowe'en will become a staple of the fall season, though. Other countries have had fleeting love affairs with the holiday, only to discard it once the novelty wore off and the candy hangovers kicked in. In the early part of this decade, that bastion of high culture France "went batty" over Hallowe'en, reclaiming their stake in the ancient European celebration while enjoying its New World lunacy. A few years later, of course, the French lived up to their reputation and quickly ditched Hallowe'en like the autumnal fad it was. Now, Hallowe'en is little more than an excuse for an extra ladies' night on a nightclub's event calendar.

Which isn't to say nothing scary happens on Hallowe'en in France. Last year, I witnessed in Paris some of the most ghetto bullshit I've seen since leaving Baltimore. Traveler's Tip: when some drunk steps to you in the 11th arrondissement, let it slide and believe him when he says he makes bank. I don't care about their military history, the French will fuck you up if they have to.

Click on the mix title to download.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

1. Black Sabbath - "Black Sabbath"
2. The Birthday Party - "Release the Bats"
3. Chain & the Gang - "Cemetary Map"
4. Public Image Ltd. - "Graveyard"
5. Wendy Carlos - "The Shining (Main Titles)"
6. The Caretaker - "Haunted Ballroom"
7. The Jesus & Mary Chain - "Nineteen666"
8. Scientist - "The Voodoo Curse"
9. Pete Rugolo - "Finger of Fear"
10. Suicide - "Ghost Rider"
11. Big Lazy - "Just Plain Scared"
12. Johnny Pearson - "Graveyard"
13. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown - "Fire"
14. David Bowie - "Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)"
15. Teeth Mountain - "Ghost Science"
16. The Bourbons - "A Dark Corner"
17. The Fall - "Mansion"
18. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - "Red Right Hand"
19. Lucifer - "Exorcism"
20. Lord Dent & His Invaders - "Wolf Call"
21. Sonic Youth - "Hallowe'en"

And All Hardcore Fiends Will Die By Me

Not entirely timely, given the past number of days were eaten up by a brief escape from the metro region, but...


I've already had my say about this "grey vampire" nonsense, so all that remains is to dedicate the mixes below to the architects of this ignis fatuus "new orthodoxy."

Still, mind you... I wonder, reading such smug & protective excuses & egotism, if those paralyzed by prolepsis aren't simply exhausting themselves defending bad ideas.

Click on the titles to download.

Righteous Maelstrom (The Autumn Edition)

1. Brian Eno - "No One Receiving"
2. The Flaming Lips - "Convinced of the Hex"
3. Pissed Jeans - "Half Idiot"
4. Wu-Tang Clan - "Shame On a Nigga"
5. Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup - "I'm Gonna Dig Myself a Hole"
6. Big Flame - "Every Conversation"
7. The Jesus Lizard - "Mouthbreather"
8. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - "If 6 Was 9"
9. The Jesus & Mary Chain - "Suck"
10. The Billy Nayer Show - "Only I Can Save the World"
11. Grouper - "Disengaged"
12. Flipper - "Living For the Depression"
13. Busta Rhymes - "Woo Ha!! Got You All In Check"
14. XTC - "Outside World"
15. The Mothers of Invention - "Who Are the Brain Police?"
16. NoMeansNo - "I Am Wrong"

Righteous Maelstrom (The Fall Edition)

1. The Fall - "The Man Whose Head Expanded"
2. The Fall - "Fantastic Life"
3. The Fall - "Mere Pseud Mag. Ed."
4. The Fall - "What You Need"
5. The Fall - "Slates, Slags, Etc." Live
6. The Fall - "Recipe For Fascism"
7. The Fall - "Who Makes the Nazis?"
8. The Fall - "Gut of the Quantifier"
9. The Fall - "New Puritan" Peel Session

Re-up: Nothing Says Patriotism Like Screaming Like an Idiot

Recently, word from back west came that CBC Radio 2 was hosting a li'l something called the Great Canadian Song Quest, a listener-commissioned swing for the bleachers of immortalising some classically Canuck minutiae in song...

...kinda like what I did four months ago.



Now, I myself am not eligible for the GCSQ: the specific sights/smells/experiences to be enshrined in sound are first voted upon by the public, and then a handful of established Canadian musicians will write the tunes about the elected subjects. The roster of redoubtable artists include everyone from Hawksley Workman & Martha Wainwright to Sloan & Joel Plaskett, so no wonder my phone never rang.

Certainly, the Song Quest is full of noble intent: it's a bit embarrassing that the closest Canada comes to a self-celebratory anthem is the domestic-only hit "At the 100th Meridian" or, uh, "YYZ". Perhaps our famed modesty (at least compared to our noisy neighbours to the south) prohibits us from getting overly patriotic. But hell, if you want to run with the big dogs, your bark has to be as loud as theirs. If you want to compete with "I Love L.A." or "La Marseillaise", then you can't be shy about ceremonialising cultural ephemera or even bloodthirsty jingoism. If you want cops singing your song at wakes for their brothers-in-arms, you've got to aim bigger than bagels and go for heart-rending abstraction like the Pogues did with "Body of an American".

Which is why I spent two-and-a-half minutes hollering like a drunk at the Calgary Stampede about such True Northern staples as Mounties, Trudeau, and (of course) Tim Horton's. Damn the torpedoes! Show some love for the donuts!

For those of y'all interested who haven't already, you can download "A Hesitant Pride" as part of the Breeds With Anything EP for free over at SVC Records.

Sniping (3)

K-Punk's "new orthodoxy" translated into layspeak:

I don't give a fuck how wrong I may be, and I don't give a fuck how vague or amoebic my ambitions may be - I will be Napoleon for a day if only at my own desk!

K-Punk's slide towards self-righteous incoherence has already been noted by myself and others, but what's shocking at this point is that, in seeking "to impose a new orthodoxy in the way that the right did," K-Punk is actually pulling pages from Karl Rove's playbook. Banishing all discourse except sycophantic acquiescence; equating "nuancing" a position with abandoning it; accusing critics of giving comfort to the enemy (or at least of conforming to the enemy's prescriptive narrative); maligning the libidos of those unwilling to charge headlong & blindly into battle... at this rate, it'll won't be long before K-Punk blows Ads Without Products' cover and Dominic Fox accidentally shoots Owen Hatherly in the face.

What's beyond surprising, utterly perplexing in fact, is that anyone would want "to impose a new orthodoxy in the way that the right did." The ultimate result of neoliberal capitalism's utter domination of the past decade has been bloody fucking disaster - not just for the "little people", leftists, and Iraqis, but for the Masters of the Universe as well. The right's politics weren't so much politics as moronic bumper-stickers plastered on a vehicle fueled by psychopathic greed & an insatiable lust for power, which doesn't offer much of a long-term strategy once every house of congress, parliament, and boardroom has been occupied. Given how badly this chapter of our civlization is ending, why should we put our trust in the bulldozer militancy & smoggy philosophizing of a handful of Joy Division fans?

Much as K-Punk may wonder on the "libidindal impulses" of we who'd ask a theorist to bother defending their own ideas before lending them our full faith, I wonder about said impulses of a leftist who'd rather headbutt everyone into submission or sulk in the corner than articulate a position. The more he prattles on about the "punkish demystification" the militant dysphoria enables, the more he sounds like some prat at a rave in denial that the pill he popped was just Tylenol, and the more I wonder if he's just trying to punk us.

Sniping (2)

The esteemed Ms. Hopper asks a question whose time, between the Buju Banton furor and the VA "horrorcore" killings, is ripe:

Should music be moral?

I've already dashed off an initial response, which will be scrubbed & expanded before being reproduced here, but in the meantime it looks as though the question's already been complicated by Jane Dark, who countered Jessica with "the eternal brain burner":

Who gets to decide what morality is?

...which is fair & relevant, though its relativism ain't in line with the "My militant structual Marxism is bigger than your militant structural Marxism" shit she was talking over at Ads Without Products. It's all well & good to pray to Saint Jude while calling someone a sellout, but who gets to decide what's dysphoric accelerationism versus Pyrrhic pseudo-revolutionary role-playing?

The Revolution Will Not Be Twittered

Were you to believe it from a specific cluster of blogs, the single most momentous event of the past two weeks has been the student occupation of various buildings around the University of California Santa Cruz. Too bad no one else thinks so. Granted, the students couldn't have counted on above-the-fold competition from dual disasters in southeast Asia, the polarizing arrest of Roman Polanski, more crotch-grabbing by Ahmadinejad, or the aneurysm-inducing echoplex of phony outrage over Kanyegate.

However, they certainly didn't make it easier on themselves by launching their incursion concurrent to China's "60th birthday" bash and the G20 clusterfuck in Pittsburgh. Doubtlessly, this coincidence was intended to highlight the shortcomings of the post-globalised economic model, but being 2600 miles away from the action in a town often derided as a patchouli-soaked corral for space cadets & pinkos is not the best strategy for scoring headlines, let alone sympathy.

Lest someone think I'm not on the students' side, let me be clear: education is a fundamental right, not a privilege, and the keystone to any society that can even pretend to be free. Distended tuition costs, the erosion of available scholarships, and funding diverted like water from Noah Cross' Los Angeles pose as great (if not a greater) threat than any nebulous group of extremists broadcasting ill-defined grievances from caves.

That being said, a well-funded & equitably accessible secondary education doesn't do shit for a country without a functioning primary education system. Speaking of too many students chasing too few dollars, the only state with a high school graduation rate above 80% that is also among the 20 most populous states is New Jersey, and 26 of the 50 largest school districts see fewer than 60% of their students complete high school. The most dreadful failures are the cities:

• Chicago (52.2%)
• Los Angeles (44.2%)
• New York City (38.9%)
• Baltimore (38.5%)
• Detroit (21.7%)

Sorry, bioethics undergrads and comparative lit doctoral candidates, but as long as almost a third of Americans can't parse the 5th-Grade prose of USA Today to read for themselves how fucked the public schools are, you'll have to wait your turn.

Another, more manageable problem facing the UCSC protesters is how they're presenting themselves & their agenda. They're flush with the same spurious romanticism as every placard-waving pseud & bumper-sticker doctrinaire from the past forty years, but because I'm sympathetic to their ends I'd like to offer them a little advice. I first thought it best to address them in their own language - that is, in a needlessly declarative, excessively florid manifesto that's as impalpable & impractical as a Japanese anti-smoking ad. But in the interest of avoiding doublespeak, I've decided to employ the more direct method of a concise list.

• "Occupation" isn't a term that rings progressive - quite the opposite. It smacks of subjugation & imperialism; just ask any Palestinian or Iraqi. May I suggest "engagement" or "reclamation"?

• If grad students are going to take anything over, they'd perhaps want to infiltrate an environment that isn't, according to this UCSC spokesman, paid for, operated by, and "used by graduate students for everything from studying to a lounge area." That's like a second-amendment rights rally "occupying" a NASCAR track. City hall, the state legislature, or even the university administrative offices might make for more effectively sensitive targets.

• For god's sake, don't blast weak-ass reggae over the PA. You'll turn yourself into a South Park stereotype.

• Do not make dangerously contradictory statements for sake of rousing the rabble. Do not proclaim that "older strategies of political action and involvement have proven themselves entirely incapable of enacting change" while employing tactics as dog-eared & assimilated as sit-ins, especially on neutral terrain. All this proves is that your revolt is but one of the squeaky wheels on the apparatus that does, on occasion, start shrieking for a little oil. Sounding the death knell of capitalism while accepting that crisis is inherent to the system itself demands concrete directions towards an exit off this hellish roundabout, not some garnished eulogy.

• Speaking of concrete directions, how about making some explicit directives? Its laughable petulance aside, "WE WANT EVERYTHING" is as meaningless a demand as "WE WANT NOTHING" in that it points to nothing as a goal. If what "we" want isn't yet clear, we should at least be able to express what we don't want and issue demands in the negative. Even to demand the impossible is more effective than demanding "everything": again, the impossible at least offers some imaginable (albeit amoebic) ends towards which to work.

• If you want to be taken seriously, don't cull your slogans from cloying cocaine-nosebleed disco or self-involved emo "anthems"; do not ironically appropriate Bonnie Tyler lyrics; don't make presumptive statements about "the working class" or "proletarian" anyone unless you're damn certain you can count them amongst your ranks; and for crying out loud, don't declare that "we are power hungry." That makes you sound like a bunch of authoritarian thugs.

But beyond that, I wish the UCSC protesters nothing but the best of luck. I'm only asking their bravery match the level of their rhetoric; you can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding. The reason I don't bandy about "smash the system" hyperbole (anymore) is because I know I'm incapable of following through on the threat. The level of violence - on every level and in every sense of the word - requisite to enact a revolution, any revolution is far beyond the bounds of my own conviction. This doesn't mean there isn't nobility, righteousness, or good within the revolutionary's heart; it does, however, require a certitude found only in True Belief, in fascists, in fundamentalists, and in sub-criminal psychopaths. As I believe the ends don't justify the means, I'll gladly play along until my "counterrevolutionary" skepticism lands me in the gulag, which will serve me as an incredibly shitty, lifelong Told You So.

Below are some tunes dedicated to those fighting to get their learn on; click on the mix title to download.

The Revolutionary Gesture

1. The Birthday Party - "Mutiny In Heaven"
2. Metallica - "For Whom The Bell Tolls"
3. Harvey Milk - "War"
4. Nation Of Ulysses - "Target: U.S.A."
5. GZA - "I Gotcha Back"
6. The Clash - "The Guns of Brixton"
7. Erykah Badu - "Soldier"
8. Hoyt Ming and His Pep Steppers - "Indian War Whoop"
9. Spacemen 3 - "Revolution"
10. Michael Yonkers - "Kill the Enemy"
11. Lungfish - "Black Helicopters"
12. Pelt - "Hippy War Machine"
13. The Stranglers - "No More Heroes"

Updated (Oct. 4): Ads Without Products makes an invaluable expansion upon my last point, regarding the "adolescent insanity" of "toussled-haired hipsters, laptopped and bespectacled," fancying themselves urban guerrillas.

And they call it "news"...

Nadir Of Western Civilization To Be Reached This Friday At 3:32 P.M.

Of course, we as a species have always been fascinated with our own fates, interpreting even vaguely adverse events or signs as portents of some inescapable apocalypse. But the idea that we were hurtling at high speed towards total collapse in the immediate future used to be peddled only by fringe cranks, religious screwballs, and schizophrenics. Now, this has somehow become the consensus - though for anyone looking for ill omens, if reality does even 30% of the work, confirmation bias will do the rest.

Speaking of which, I'm currently cooking up something about how Japan's attempt to "civilize" something inherently barbaric & unnatural will someday contribute to its dissolution as a society. In the meantime, I ask y'all what you'd care to hear more: tunes about the end of days, or junk food?

Attn. Yankee Comrades

If you want to know why this is happening, then watch this - Right America: Feeling Wronged, Alexandra Pelosi's documentary about Republican supporters during the run-up to the 2008 election.

I went through a strange cycle of emotions watching the film. Beginning with gritted teeth in preparation for the inevitable litany of lies & lunacy, I soon felt an odd pity for the people in front of Pelosi's camera. Their earnest, deep-seated, and sincere love for their country, for their culture, for their future was... touching, I'll admit it! These people honestly want only the best for their homeland, and it's hard to begrudge anyone their dreams.

And then, forty-three minutes later, after having heard innumerable innuendos, inaccuracies, and willfully ignorant claims that Barack Obama is a Muslim, a non-citizen, a socialist (as though any of these are inherently bad), a fascist, a one-man sleeper cell, the Anti-Christ, an Illuminati puppet, a pimp, a mobster, a racist, an NLP-employing mass-hypnotist, and quite possibly one of David Icke's lizard people... the small step towards empathy for the right wing that I'd taken was swiftly erased with a retreat to my previous position: that America is being drawn-and-quartered by a gang of megaphone-mouthed, purposefully uneducated Christian fundamentalists, yahoos, self-styled guerrillas, selfish simpletons masquerading as civil libertarians, and sore losers, none of whom can see past their microscopically myopic cultural conservatism or straight-up, old-school racism.

I'm tempted to reiterate my post-election bipartisan stance, but instead I'll keep it civil and say simply that I'm so goddamn glad I never have to live in that country again.

This Week in White People Saying Stupid Shit - now with bonus Kanye backlash!

Bill Maher on Obama's big healthcare speech, during the Friday night broadcast of his show Real Time:

It was a great speech. Y'know, when Black Elvis gets jiggy with his teleprompter... (4 second pause for a laugh that doesn't come) there's nobody better!

Elsewhere, Matt Welch of Reason Magazine found Obama's vow to push back against slanderers a "nearly Snoop Doggesque display." When Joan Walsh of Salon.com called him out for his "totally gratuitous racial imagery," Welch fell back on the ol' I Have Plenty of Black Friends excuse by professing his undying admiration for Mr. Dogg: "I'm from Long Beach..."

It's a pity Maher's too in love with the sonorous hum of his own voice, and Welch is a little proud of his "keeping it fresh" to heed the pointed observation that Maher's own buddy, Chris Rock, made about Colin Powell thirteen years ago - a point that, unfortunately, is too easily tailored to fit Obama.

What do you mean, "he speaks so well"? What, did he have a stroke the other day? He's a fuckin' educated man! ...What voice were you looking to come out of his mouth? What the fuck did you expect him to sound like? I'ma drop me a bomb tuh-day! I be pray-zo-den'! Get the fuck outta here...

Updated Sept. 15th: Sweet merciful crap, this is what I get for posting about white people saying stupid shit before the MTV Awards aired on Sunday night: a tsunami of Twittered racism in the wake of Kanye West's ill-advised, alcohol-enabled (but kinda hilarious) hijacking of the spotlight from jailbait android Taylor Swift. Harry Allen has done the unenviable task of rounding up a depressing array of posts from around the web that go so far as to advocate lynching.

Kanye's bumrush recalls another stage invasion during a highly-publicised awards ceremony: Ol' Dirty Bastard's considerably less topical commandeering of the 1998 Grammys. Perhaps everyone was more relaxed during those halcyon days of the Clinton era, or maybe racists were just more zipper-lipped & self-policing at the time, or quite likely Michael "SOY BOMB" Portnoy managed to steal ODB's thunder, but I recall much bemusement and no outrage (manufactured or otherwise) when Russell Jones swiped the mic to proclaim that, "Wu-Tang is for the children."

Also, that was at the Grammys, an event so devoid of tension or thunderbolts that even accidental spontaneity is met with that quietly insolent eye-roll perfected by the ruling classes and the French. The MTV Awards, on the other hand, are fueled by the screams of dumbfounded teenagers and so have to up the Faustian ante annually, concocting evermore ridiculous & grotesque spectacles to elicit shock & awe instead of yawns. But in its quest to appear freewheeling & hedonic, MTV's "events" are reduced to a dully predictable procession of micro-stage-managed cockteases - so much so that, prior to the genuine purge of badwill, many speculated that the Kayne/Swift collision was staged. Staged or not, the hysterical pitch of the proceedings doubtlessly encourages less measured & more vehement audience reactions, as per below:

There laid bare is the loathsome side of the democratization of communication. Social media as a solipsistic emetic does as much to encourage the laxative expression of people's most splenetic & debased thoughts as to enable reconnecting with old classmates. It's no mere coincidence that now the western world is awash in a rising tide of race-related violence and screeching harpies decrying the collapse of civilization as they knew it. This seedy undercurrent has always existed, as testified by the initial hoots of laughter audible at the onset of Michael Richards' infamous onstage shitfit. But it took the election of a non-white to the highest office in America to trigger the socially atavistic's Howard Beale moment. As Driftglass elaborates in this astute essay:

Because during the Bush years, people... never saw their love of their Dear Leader and their fealty to his Administration as something "political". They saw it as normal. As the Universe being at its proper, wingnut default setting: White, male, fundamentalist Christian, Conservative, flight-suit clad and killing scary brown people.

And once the Dear Leader's reign ended... the natural order of mindless obedience in exchange for a smug and blissful ignorance collapsed.

And worst of all, "their country" suddenly had a Scary Black Man living in their Dear Leader's pretty White House, probably having dirty, Muslim sex in the Dear Leader's sacred, Christian bed and putting his filthy, Kenyan hands all over "their county's" pure, white Constitution.

And thanks to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Yahoo chat groups, these reactionaries & racists can clasp hands across time & space and mobilise.

But as Newton's Third Law teaches, there can and must be a push back against this sickness. While the web can easily operate as a Stasi-esque Panopticon ordered upon intimidation & paranoia, it also offers nowhere for racists, thugs, fascists, and obstructionists to hide. There is no excuse to offer for allowing this aggression to stand uncontested. It is all of our responsibilities to live up to Obama's oath: We Will Call You Out On It.

Forget But Don't Forgive

Today marks the eighth anniversary of what was billed as the game-changing cataclysm of this generation, drawing a hard line between the antediluvian giddiness of the '90s and the steady deterioration of the Bush era, panic now seeping up past our knees as the clamor of some mad-dog future grows closer.

At the time, everyone tried with apparent earnestness to react appropriately, searching for some elusive happy medium between the agreed-upon "inappropriate" extremes of Toby Keith and Cassetteboy. And of course, everyone failed.

Eight years later, "9/11" has been reduced to the most overworked political shorthand (though its translation depends very much on which cipher it's read through), the man purportedly responsible & his semi-nonexistent network remain at large, several other nations have been struck by spectacular & tragic attacks, the most heated online argument remains whether or not there was US involvement in taking down the towers, and half the American population seems to feel their own president is a greater threat to their nation than any foreign entity.

The only certainty, the only thing that hasn't vanished in plumes of dust & a whirlwind of dissonance is the anger. Anger at some amoebic phantom enemy, who strikes without explanation or a list of demands; anger that America learned the wrong lessons and become a greater bully that it had been in years (though not even a decade); anger at the maudlin, melodramatic tones in which the event is discussed; anger at the taboo of discussing the event with anything other than reverent, cotton-soft solemnity; anger at anyone who even appeared to exploit the event for box-office receipts or a political boost; anger at anyone who'd undermine the newfound unanimity of a nation in grief; anger at those who'd invoke God to justify either the event or that which followed; anger at those whose denial of God led to the event and that which followed.

Now, so many of those threads of rage have become interwoven that it's near impossible to remember which one we started with. We certainly can't see where it's going, and we see no way of divesting ourselves of it - nor would we want to. We've been angry this long, we want to be see only red until someone cures us (a miracle!) of our crimson blindess... just to make sure it's all been worth the wailing & gnashing of teeth.

Personally, I'm just exhausted of it. It's a beautiful day outside, so I'm going for a stroll. Meanwhile, here is one of my absolute favourite pieces of music, from Nino Rota's score to Fellini's Il Casanova.



Addendum: Anyone up for a rousing game of Jenga?