April 13, 2012

Celtic Frost’s Thomas G. Warrior Resurrected On Easter In Order To Save World’s Women From Despair

By Will Dukenfield

Newscaster:  (overly professional, pitch perfect radio voice) This is KHYZ Omaha, Nebraska…Omaha’s only 24 hour news radio station and I am Will Victor.  It’s 64 degrees and cloudy.  There was a two-car collision out on Route 17 South causing a half hour delay for motorists.  Otherwise, there is no traffic to speak of. 

Here are our top stories.  Today, President Obama hosted the annual White House Easter Egg Hunt.  Children from around the nation were invited to Washington to comb the lawn for chocolate filled eggs and other prizes.  According to White House Press Secretary, Jay Carney….wait….wait….there is a breaking story coming over the wire.  (sounding concerned and even somewhat frightened)  My producer has just interrupted me to tell me….this can’t be right…that former Celtic Frost frontman and true god of Black Metal Thomas G. Warrior has, well, uhmmmm…risen from the dead.  Apparently, Warrior, who starved to death while negotiating for dinner three years ago, has been resurrected on, of all days, Easter Sunday. 

As we speak, he is issuing his first statement from the top of Mount Olympus.  Warrior is in front of crowds of thousands of amazed, awestruck onlookers begging to hear his voice on anything but the song “Cherry Orchids”.  This is a momentous moment for humankind and, more importantly, fans of Warrior’s most recent project, Trypticon, which has been inactive since he left the earth plane.  Uh….we are working on our audio feed and….well…looks like we are now going to go live to Warrior’s speech, already in progress…

(static…then, the slightly tired, raspy voice of metal god Thomas G. Warrior)

Warrior:   The female kind, who had once molded me into the form of a human being and thence spawned me upon this Earth, continue to haunt me even past my long-yearned exaltation from the gravely circumstances of my existence. Having commenced in a village in Switzerland unknown to any, it unfolded into a worldwide fame and totally unique legacy which I still find very difficult to believe.

The consequent legions of fanatics and weirdos whom I’ve on more than one occasion had to remove from my premises, with my own bare hands and the police assistance available to me twenty-four-seven, are still craving the flesh explicitly denied to them, and are now summoning my Resurrection.  My flesh is sacred, not to be shared with mortals.  I exist on a level that few can perceive.  I am everywhere and nowhere all at once.  They want to claim for themselves my essence, which is too pure to be comprehended in this dimension or any other.

I, Warrior, left this plane in order to be unfettered by their vile and ludicrous demands. 

I shall not, even upon my return to this lair of lower animals, satiate their warped and grotesque needs by diminishing myself through the act of human copulation. My actions are supported by the totality of the metal brotherhood. My departure into the brightest light has once again been sabotaged by my charitable willingness to allow those…ehhhhhhh….women my presence, even for a moment.

While in the shape of a human being, although the latter has sometimes been disputed, I exerted full control over my wretched condition, and not once did I cave in to the lures of the flesh they so lust to devour.  The music I created was the product of my denial of joy and, thusly, to experience joylessness is to truly create.  I renounce joy.  I deny joy at every level.  Through the act of renouncing all that lesser men value, I created in myself a oneness from which poured a great legacy. 

There have been unsupported accusations of the contrary, but it wasn’t ignominy that made me abandon this planet.  I entered the metal scene to break from society, from their teachers and mothers – so why even depend on the opinions of others? No, that doesn’t make any sense to me! My time on this planet was constantly disrupted by lies and intrigue, but nobody could ever prove the existence of e-mails I was said to have sent worldwide. There are people who are very critical of me and don’t believe anything I say, but the actual facts are far removed from that, and it is the truth because I’ve written it on my blog.

I have nothing to prove to them, and still they persist with farcical egotism. Exactly three years, three months, three days, and less than twenty four hours into my departure, almost stripped from the drapery of worldly concern that once suffocated me, I have risen to once again find a mob dancing on the open wound of my chest with morbid depravity.

Uncounted other women, dark-haired, shapely and capable of birthing a worthy heir, have been gathering in lamentation around the this-far-undisclosed place of my eternal rest. Perfection so desired has thus been demolished, evoking inside of me a rage impossible to bear.

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am left with no other option but to cast upon them my thunder. It’s not the way I function, but I feel extremely creative right now, I feel unshackled.

Not for a single moment could they leave me be upon my Olympus, where I had been relishing the ultimate passion play of desire and denial, the sole Art which had been made clear to me in a vision.  They long for me, but I admire nothing of the human form, still yet, I dream of its extinction.  As I have said before, I am very picky and it is very difficult for me, but the only one I can totally honestly 100 % say I admire is Gaahl. It’s Gaahl by a million miles.  The rest are fools.

I don’t mean to whine or anything, but I hate what femalekind is doing to this planet, I hate what femalekind is doing to nature, I hate what femalekind is doing to animals, I hate how females lie to and hurt others, and I hate wars. I only wanted to be left alone. I’m tired of the attention, I’m exhausted with the commotion, and my anger is limitless. If I shall ravage planet Earth, thus fulfilling the Predictions, it will be their fault alone.  No one will ever be able to restore… what was ravaged by how they sent me into this world.  No one.

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in General Weirdness

April 12, 2012

Honest Validation of Unfair Cheese: Slayer and The Perils Of Free-Market Fanaticism

By Keith Spillett

In Slayer’s song Blood Red, singer Tom Araya bellows forth a challenging and powerful lyric that cuts to the core of today’s debate between a managed, centralized economy and a free market system where the “invisible hand” balances the wants and needs of the consumer against the production capabilities of the market.  When he shrieks “Honest validation of unfair cheese” at the 41 second mark of the song, it is clear that he is undercutting a basic free-market premise posited by thinkers the likes of Milton Friedman and Frederick Hayek.  The words are enlightening and deeply meaningful, particularly for an electorate on the cusp of deciding what sort of financial decisions it plans to make as it marches forward into a new millennium.

In order to understand the meaning behind Araya’s lyric, it is first critical that we understand the meaning of “unfair cheese”.  Nothing is more disappointing to a lover of cheese than when, upon returning from the supermarket, a shopper finds moldy, poorly preserved cheese in their bag.  Who is supposed to ensure the consumer is safe from a flood of this “unfair cheese”?  If the supermarket is left to its own devices, it might well sell all the out of date cheese it could possibly get away with.  After all, as Buddy Holly said in his 1981 hit song “Who is watching the detectives?”  In this case, maybe we need someone to even watch the people who are watching the detectives.  Or, it is possible we may need to hire detectives to watch the detectives who are watching the detectives.

Back to the cheese thing.  If it weren’t for the Better Food and Cheese Act of 1938, under the esteemed and underappreciated Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, humans would be consuming pounds upon pounds of rotting, vile cheese.  The Act empowered the police to arrest and jail any store clerk found selling “unfair cheese” for a period no less than five years in prison.  Higher quality cheeses began to appear.  Productivity flourished.  It was during this period that Gorgonzola cheese was first produced in a laboratory.  It was originally meant to be used as a weapon against the Soviet Union, but later it became appreciated for its velvety texture and tangy flavor.  In the preceding two hundred years, America’s cheese growers had not produced as much as a single new breed of cheese.

So, when Araya asks for “honest validation of unfair cheese”, he’s really questioning whether a purely free market can produce the quality goods needed in a modern economy.  Sure, it’d be nice to believe that the market is such a perfect force that can correct itself and keep the desires of its members in line, but it’s this sort of utopian thinking that caused the Great Wall of China to fall in 1990.  We cannot simply rely on market forces to purify the market.  Human nature tells us that humans, in a perfect state of nature, will do some really unnatural things.  In short, only a neutral arbitrator with no stake in the outcome can possibly make decisions that protect the consumer.  Only when the positions of these regulators are depoliticized and not influenced by corporations or individuals with expensive cars will we truly see an “honest validation of unfair cheese”.  Only then will children of all races and all creeds, of all nationalities and all socio-economic backgrounds, of all hair styles and all blood types be able to sit down at the table of friendship together and eat the same safe and healthy cheese.  Only then will we truly be free.

9 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing

April 11, 2012

Dennis Rodman’s Million Dollar A Month Heavy Metal Habit

By Keith Spillett

As rumors of NBA Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman’s possible bankruptcy fill the news, recent court documents have revealed that his collection of heavy metal albums may be a major factor in his current financial crisis.  Rodman, who is believed to owe hundreds of thousands of dollars to his ex-wife, apparently averaged spending 1.3 million dollars a month purchasing metal records over the past three years.

Rodman’s mind-boggling collection takes up two-thirds of his Malibu estate.  It features a mountain of great metal treasures from original vinyl pressings of Iron Maiden’s “The Soundhouse Tapes” to numbered collectors editions of the first ten Judas Priest albums.

Some experts claim that he overvalued many items and paid ridiculous sums for them.  For example, Rodman spent 40,000 dollars on two copies of the recent Morbid Angel IIud Divinum Insanus Wooden Box Set.  The set, which included a red 180 gram copy of the record, a leather bound CD edition and two red candles, was valued at 199 dollars.  He also spent 130,000 dollars to purchase all six hundred and sixty six copies of the Marduk-Panzer Division Set, valued at 40 dollars per copy.

Rodman was duped into purchasing many “autographed” albums that were fraudulent.  For example, Rodman paid 10,000 dollars for a vinyl copy of Anthrax “Among The Living” that was signed by Johnny Belladonna, clearly not the singer from Anthrax.  He also paid 30,000 dollars for a copy of Danzig III:  How The Gods Kill.  The album was autographed by Glen Danzig, a misspelled version of the singer’s name (which has two n’s).

Rodman even purchased European versions of albums that did not actually exist.  He paid 800,000 for one of the supposed 12 copies of Dimmu Borgir’s “Morbid Fascist Iconoclast”, a demo that the band was believed to have recorded in 1989 (four years before they were actually formed).

In spite of the problems, Rodman’s collection is still a sight to behold.  Imagine a record store with everything from Anacrusis to Znowhite.  Rodman has entire rooms dedicated to genres and sub-genres.  His NWOBH metal room, complete with life-sized photos of Steve Harris and Rob Halford, is located right down the hallway from his thrash room, which features a stuffed and mounted fake heads of Chuck Billy, Steve “Zetro” Souza, and Nuclear Assault’s John Connelly on the wall.

For a brief stretch, he even had the real Messiah Marcolin from Candlemass living in a caged room in near the garage.  Marcolin was kidnapped by a group of Hamas agents and sold to Rodman for 150,000 dollars.  He managed to escape Rodman’s collection by gnawing through the bars when Rodman was on a weekend vacation in the Bahamas.

Rodman did, for a brief moment, consider selling his collection.  It is, after all, valued at over 8.7 million dollars and would set him up securely for the rest of his life.  But Rodman believed that selling his collection might make him a poser, so he quickly shelved the idea.  He has instead, considered selling one or both of his kidneys in order to get himself back on firm financial footing.

10 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in General Weirdness

April 9, 2012

Researchers Link “Slayer Obsession” To Food Allergies

By Keith Spillett

John Murphy At A Slayer Concert After Consuming 12 Jars of Pickle Juice

In a surprising study done by Johns Hopkins University, a direct connection has been found between being obsessed with the heavy metal band Slayer and consumption of certain classes of food.   Slayer Obsession, known in medical parlance as Human Epiglottal Lymphogranuloma Lychosis or HELL, has been known to effect two in every three Slayer fans at least one time in their lives.  In more serious cases of Slayer Obsession, a diet rich in certain classes of carbohydrates and proteins has been linked to symptoms as serious as the need to carve the band’s name into a person’s arm, the desire to write “SLAYER” on random Facebook message threads or even the overwhelming need to write the lyrics to “Dead Skin Mask” and other Slayer songs on inappropriate places such as church pews or children’s foreheads.

One food, unsurprisingly, that can cause Slayer addiction is barley, commonly found in beer.  As many as 4 in 10 beer drinkers find themselves with mild to serious cases of HELL.

What is shocking are the other types of food that can lead to this disorder.  The researchers found that people who consume more than 12 ounces of butter per day were found to frequently listen to the album “Seasons in the Abyss” for between 6 and 8 hours in an evening.  Consumption of cucumbers or cottage cheese can lead to the desire to lock oneself in a room and listen to nothing but “South of Heaven” for entire weekends at a time.

The real stunner was that pickle juice is a major contributor to the disorder.  Apparently pryotophan, an amino acid found in pickle juice will, in almost all cases, lead to immediate bouts of HELL and a nearly mindless sense of euphoria.  Many fans at fans Slayer shows, who have recently been seen consuming entire containers of the water in pickle jars, have found themselves running wildly around in circles and running into one an other in a symptom that doctors refer to as “moshing”.  Some Slayer fans have even taken to smoking and free basing pickles before shows in order to get the desired effect.

While doctors for years have believed that only the love of Jesus Christ or a good woman could help HELL sufferers, the Johns Hopkins research team believes that eating certain things can help cure the disorder.  One such food is potting soil.  According to their study, eating 9 ounces of mineral rich potting soil per day can lead a sharp decrease in the need to listen to Slayer.  They also recommend eating at least 3 servings of donkey spleen per week.

For sufferers of this disorder, the future may seem bleak.  They may feel powerless over their obsessions and symptoms.  However, a diet rich in dirt and donkey parts can ensure that, in fact, HELL does not await.

7 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Health Tips for An Early Death

April 9, 2012

Deathtöngue Honored By Imaginary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

By Carrie Patrick

Bill The Cat (Frontman and Lead Tongue)

Metal fans are rejoicing today as one of the most iconic fictional bands of the 1980s, Deathtöngue, is finally inducted into the Imaginary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. As pioneers of imaginary metal, Deathtöngue had a lasting influence on non-reality-based musical history.

Based in Bloom County, USA, the band’s lineup featured Bill The Cat on lead tongue, Opus The Penguin on electric tuba, and that guy whose name we can never remember but we think he might have been a woodchuck or a beaver or something. Band manager Steve Dallas wrote most of their music, which included the hit singles “Snail Snot From Satan,” “Demon Drooler of the Sewer,” “Leper Lover,” and “Let’s Run Over Lionel Ritchie With A Tank.” Never afraid of controversy, the band famously one-upped Ozzy Osbourne when, live on stage, Bill The Cat bit the head off a roadie.

Opus (Electric Tuba)

Deathtöngue’s innovative tongue-based sound was never successfully imitated by any other group. “They really paved the way for a lot of modern imaginary metal,” says imaginary fan Mike Wilson, of East Armpit, Alabama. “When you talk about imaginary metal in the ’80s, most people think of the well-known groups like Spinal Tap or Wyld Stallyns, but Deathtöngue was right up there too. Today, we just wouldn’t have ugly obnoxious jerks such as William Murderface [bassist for imaginary metal superstars Dethklok] if Bill The Cat hadn’t been there 25 years before, showering audiences with spittle, hate, and incoherent songs about pus-filled pimples.”

The band broke up in the late ’80s, reformed briefly as Billy And The Boingers, and broke up again after a downward spiral of self-destructive behavior from its tongue player that included reading the Bible and experimenting with politics and televangelism. Attempts to contact any surviving members of the band were unsuccessful.

Steve Dallas (Lawyer, Manager, Songwriter)

The Imaginary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was built in 2009 to recognize the significant impact of imaginary music on modern society.

“No other single genre has had such a major effect,” said Hall of Fame spokesman Rufus. “In fact, a recent survey of well-known musicians showed that in 100% of cases, their very first musical experiences were in that genre. Whether we’re talking about Eric Clapton’s early performances on a tennis racket while jumping on his bed at the age of seven, or Dave Lombardo shrieking randomly while beating the sides of his highchair with a half-eaten hot dog, all had one thing in common: solid early training in pretending to be the best freakin’ musician ever.”

Rufus said there were numerous challenges in creating the Hall of Fame. “In many cases, because of the imaginary nature of the music, we do not have actual recordings that can be shown to the public,” he said. “But we find that most visitors understand these constraints. One of our most popular recent exhibits was a retrospective of the supergroup Blast Radius, formed in Wales in 1997 by 13-year-old Joey Thomas. As we all know, Blast Radius featured Yngwie Malmsteen, Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads on guitars, Keith Moon on drums, Chewbacca from Star Wars on bass, Rob Halford as backup vocalist, and Joey Thomas himself as lead vocalist.”

“While there is no surviving audio or video of Blast Radius’s performances, we were able to display the band’s logo, which was drawn by Thomas in the margins of his geography homework. It was a tremendously successful exhibit, with all visitors saying they learned a lot about Blast Radius and agreed it was one of the best imaginary bands of all time, especially after Thomas departed the band and was replaced by themselves.”

It Turns Out His Name Was Hodge-Podge And He Was Obviously A Rabbit

The induction of Deathtöngue will be marked by a special exhibit that will include a bottle of Bill The Cat’s verminous cocaine-laced urine, some of Steve Dallas’s hair grease, and a tuba similar to the one played by Opus. All admission fees will be donated to a charity that provides spaceship-themed wheelchairs to disabled veterans.

“The board of trustees of the Imaginary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame extend their warmest congratulations to Deathtöngue on this most excellent occasion,” said Rufus. “As a proud Imaginary-American myself, I am happy to see our nation hosting the world’s greatest repository of music that doesn’t even exist in any meaningful way but would be awesome if it did.”

Guest reporter Carrie Patrick plays both real and imaginary guitar. On the latter instrument, she was recently voted Greatest And Best-Looking Player Of All Time for the 30th consecutive year, by a panel of international experts who live in her head.

6 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in General Weirdness

April 8, 2012

On An Easter Egg Hunt With The Cancer Bats

By Keith Spillett

So there I was, participating in that most shameful American rituals, the Easter Egg Hunt.  Swarms of children knocking each other over, screeching at the tops of their lungs in the desperate hopes of laying their greedy little mitts on as many plastic eggs as they possibly can.  The whole exercise functions as a wonderful metaphor for American style consumer capitalism.  A bunch of wild-eyed humans released upon an uneven field with the goal of filling their baskets with as much stuff as possible.  Sure, everybody gets something, but those who are bigger, stronger, faster and, most importantly, start at the front of the line tend to get more.  All the while, this being a function of one of the local mega-churches, crackpot religious explanations are given for nearly everything.

“You know who really put these eggs out here, son?  Jesus Christ.  See, he works through us.  Remember that when you are eating those Skittles,” muttered a used car salesman looking church elder with game show host hair.

It was around that moment that I realized that if I didn’t put my headphones on immediately and listen to something angry I was going to tear my shirt off and run around howling like Lon Chaney.  These were the exact conditions under which I came into contact with the new Cancer Bats album “Dead Set On Living”.

I should admit up front that this hardcore punk metal hybrid thing never really did much for me.  Around the time Hatebreed and Converge were coming out I was busy trying to prove to the world that I was so metal that unless it came out in Europe, was from a band that had been around since Carter was President or had been approved by at least six members of the Central Committee that I couldn’t be bothered it.  It is really a shame, because I missed some pretty intense music and probably would have been easier to be around had I been a tad more open-minded.

Listening to the driving groove of the opening track “R.A.T.S” while watching a husky five-year-old girl rip an egg out of the hands of some pigtailed three year old seemed particularly fitting.  The whole scene was menacing.  The tone of the album helped me imagine the children turning into brain-thirsty zombies.  Somehow, instead of the eggs being filled with the sugar-laced, sunshine of God’s love, they were contaminated with some CIA tested drug that morphs children into predatory beasts.

The Cancer Bats singer Liam Cormier takes some getting used to.  He’s of the high pitched death wail school, which usually makes me a bit edgy.  It gets better as the album goes on, particularly because he offsets it from time to time with an almost David Lee Rothian snarl.  The guitars are what really what grab you.  They tend to create short, punchy, memorable riffs that carry you endlessly forward and flow from a nearly bottomless pit of energy.  About three listens to this record are all you need to be thirsting for it every second of the day.

Meanwhile, the kids began to get this panicked look around the time they realized the eggs were nearly gone.  Something like the expression they’ll have in twenty years when they are sitting in their car waiting to get gas for three hours.  I cranked the music louder steeling myself for some sort of toddler riot.  I knew I could handle a few of them, but if the whole group turned on me they’d tear me to ribbons.  Finally, mercifully, the eggs had all been collected and the mob was redirected with little violence towards a sea of bouncy castles in the church parking lot.

The whole experience was perplexing for me.  Here I was, surrounded by all that is supposedly good and right with the world. Except every bit of it felt dirty and degrading.  The only thing that seemed remotely moral to me was the driving rhythm of the music in my headphones.  I sunk into a moment of genuine despair as I realized that I might never be able to reconcile my values with those of my culture.  Maybe I was an alien.  Maybe I was simply wired wrong.  Would I ever be able to understand how people could find joy in moments like this?  Then, out of nowhere, my beautiful three-year-old daughter took my hand, looked at me and smiled.  And everything was okay.

4 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing

April 5, 2012

Lemmy Has Surgery To Remove Both Livers; Plays Concert That Night

By Keith Spillett

Lemmy On Stage Hours After Liver Removal Surgery

For most people, having one liver removed is a torturous affair that leaves them with months of painful recovery.  Yesterday afternoon, Lemmy Kilmister became the first man to ever have both livers removed at the same time.  The marathon 6-hour surgery was followed by a half hour of recovery, dinner at a local bar and a 2-hour set of classic Motorhead tunes in at The Rock Center, a metal club in downtown Pocatello, Idaho.

Doctors advised Lemmy to take at least three months off from performing, but his commitment to playing heavy metal was too great to hold him back.  “I didn’t want to let the fans in Idaho down.  After all, what do they really have to live for beyond the occasional concert?  They live in Idaho for god sakes,” said Lemmy this morning during his 3-hour weightlifting session.

Lemmy is no stranger to overcoming medical emergencies and soldiering on.  Everyone is, of course, familiar with the time that in 1983 in Antwerp, Belgium he was mauled on stage by 15 pit bulls and continued to play his bass in spite of missing 9 fingers.  Who could forget the time the Chinese government accidentally detonated a nuclear bomb at a test facility 1,000 meters away from a Motorhead concert in Shanghai in 1988?   Everyone within a radius of 12 miles was killed except Lemmy, who went on to play the entire Orgasmatron album from beginning to end to an arena filled with annihilated corpses. However, because of Lemmy’s advanced age, going on stage after a surgery of this type may be his greatest feat.

Doctors are baffled as to how a man who has done so much damage to his body continues to exist.  Their were rumors as recently as 2003 that he was killed and replaced by a Lemmy-like robot, but several doctors have done independent tests to prove that he is a human.  Their was also rampant speculation that Lemmy has regularly been shooting the DNA of famed Russian monk Rasputin directly into his arm in the hopes of becoming indestructible forever, but this also has not been confirmed. Some researchers have reasoned that it is possible that consuming the amount of Jack Daniels that he has ingested over his lifetime has actually made his body impervious to harm of any kind.  Regardless of what his secret is, it is very possible that Lemmy cannot be destroyed by traditional means and will live on well into the next millennium.

18 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in General Weirdness

April 4, 2012

Agnostic Front’s Vinnie Stigma To Publish Children’s Book Called “I Thought You Were My Friend”

By Keith Spillett

Vinnie Stigma has been many things in his long and intriguing life.  The enigmatic guitar player from Agnostic Front has been an actor in the hit film New York Blood, a professional stunt car driver and even the Secretary of Agriculture in the state of Oklahoma for a short time in the 90s.  However, few people expected his recent career change.  Stigma has become a renowned children’s author.

“You know, I was thinkin’ about how stupid kids are today with all of the hugging and sharing nonsense they get in the schools.  I want to rap them upside the head with a newspaper and say ‘What’s a matter with you?’  So, I wrote this book to help them not be so freakin’ dumb.  Teach’em some stuff that could make them so they don’t get their skulls smashed in everyday and whatnot,” said Stigma on the steps of his Brooklyn townhouse.

The book, which is the story of five streetwise but cuddly rabbits from Coney Island, takes place on the seedy streets of New York after dark.  The rabbits are drawn to a convention of animals that takes place in the Bronx where they discuss a truce between all the other animals in the city.  However, after the wise fox named Cyrus who called the meeting is gunned down, the Rabbits are pursued by the other animals who believe they killed him.

Most of the story centers on their journey back to Coney Island and their battles with rival groups of animals for survival.  The climax of the book is an all out fight between the rabbits and the rats out on Coney Island Beach.

Reviewers are already excited about the book, comparing his work to early Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein.  “Stigma has written a beautiful parable for the ages,” remarked noted New York Times critic Dwight Garner, “he captures all of the magic and beauty that children experience when hitting another child in the head with a tire iron for the first time.”

James Wood, book reviewer for The New Yorker, was even more effusive in his praise.  “Young people today are just too soft,” wrote Wood, “this book teaches them important life skills like how to hotwire a car and how to make a Molotov cocktail.  Things that our liberalized school systems have omitted from their curriculums in the name of political correctness.”

“I Thought You Were My Friend” is intended for children 3 to 7 and includes pop-up police snakes along with scratch and sniff sewers and subway cars.  However, Stigma believes the book will resonate with everyone, from toddlers to adults.  “Wanting to beat and maim someone because they are in your way is a simple human characteristic,” said Stigma. “If adults don’t read this book, fine.  I’ll go to their house, put my knee into their chest and read it to them.  People need to understand that this book has an important and timeless message and if I have to give a beating to every single American to get the message across, that’s what I’m going to do.”

25 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in General Weirdness

April 2, 2012

The Sound of Joyous Suffering: A Retrophiliac’s Review of Horisont’s “Second Assault”

By Keith Spillett

Listening to the new Horisont record “Second Assault” is an adventure in time travel.  You don’t simply listen to the record, you hurdle backwards towards it.  I am in a darkened, smoke-filled bar.  Twenty or so spectators in different states of inebriation hoot and howl arhythmically as the band spews molten rock’n’roll.  Half the crowd looks like Popeye Doyle, the other half look like Tuesday Weld.  A poorly dressed, ratty haired bunch of skinny kids reach into their chests and pull out their guts in the quixotic attempt to find a higher plane if even for a moment.  Their suffering is ours.

It’s an imperfect fantasy, mostly because of the smoke.  That itchy, uncomfortable feeling of unfamiliar scum clouding your vision.  Not knowing whether to choke or sneeze.  Somehow it doesn’t matter and it does.  Rock’n’roll itself comes with a bit of discomfort.  Loving it is a masochistic pursuit.  Horisont gets that in spades.  They explode everywhere, like a wayward roman candle knocked on its side.  They are dangerous, blistering and blood-fanged; they are the sweat in your eyes and the exhaustion of endless impossibility.

The 70’s reek of old carpet and cheap cologne.  The food isn’t nearly as good, the beer is almost always flat and no one seems to have air conditioning.  The world was a dark and foreboding place.  Nearly every worthwhile movie of the era ended with the protagonist getting his or her head blown off and the great forces of evil crushing the spirit of the individual.  Hope seemed ridiculous.  As they marched to the hangman, they wore a gallows cool on their sleeve that those living in the airbrushed, cleaner than clean, hyper polished new frontier no nothing of.  Horisont belongs there and not here.  When I hit play, I am there with them.

Occasionally, I hear a record where song titles don’t matter to me.  I don’t want to know what the tune is about, where it was recorded or who produced it.  I could care less about the album art and knowing the town where the band started playing is simply an annoyance.  I just want to hear the music.  Again and again.  When the album completes its long-winding journey to nowhere, I can think of nothing but finding the button that will make it start all over again.  For me, Horisont “Second Assault” is that type of album.

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Pointless Music Reviews

April 2, 2012

Judas Priest To Join A Judas Priest Cover Band Or…A Judas Priest Of The Mind

By Keith Spillett

In a move that has left many industry insiders scratching their heads, the remaining members of the band Judas Priest have left the band and joined a Judas Priest cover band called Nightcrawler.  The band, whose members have agreed to step aside and instead handle Judas Priest’s touring responsibilities, have been a staple of the greater Villa Rica, Georgia metal scene for the past fifteen years.  Rob Halford and the boys plan on taking over Nightcrawlers’ regular Sunday night gig at Joe Don’s House of Beer as well as occasionally traveling to Macon and Atlanta for gigs.

This began as another satire article, but I’m afraid it will not make it.  Instead, I believe the philosophical dimensions of this story are far more interesting.  Who is Judas Priest?  A collection of specific musicians who play a certain number of songs they have written in the past.  Maybe.  Think of Priest like you body.  If your body doesn’t have all of its limbs it is still your body.  If Al Atkins or Rob Halford or KK Downing leave the band, they are still technically Judas Priest, as we have seen.  While many fans would argue that the band changed greatly when Ripper Owens was the singer, you can’t really argue they weren’t Judas Priest.  After all, they put out two albums under the name Judas Priest.  You can go look on my mantle; they are filed under “J”.

Under what circumstances is Judas Priest not Judas Priest or, even more interestingly, under what circumstances would you no longer be you?  Lets say all the members of Judas Priest left and another group of musicians came in and played the same songs, would that still be Priest?  The band Yes has transitioned through new scores of new members at every instrument and they still are known as Yes (although their was some legal wrangling to determine whether that was true).  Similarly, if all of your limbs were removed, then all of your organs except for the brain, you’d still be you, right?  In fact, no one would have a kidney removed and say “I’m no longer me anymore”. You might not even need stop at the brain.  Take away the parts that control motor function and coordination and you are still you.  Really, what you are is that small section of the brain that contains memories and the idea of who you are.  You may argue that there is a soul, but until you show me one with a tag on it saying “Exhibit A”, I cannot enter it as evidence.

Back to our Judas Priest problem.  If Judas Priest left, but became a Judas Priest cover band, I’d have a difficult time figuring out who the real Priest is, but I’d probably eventually settle on the idea that the band playing that the members of Judas Priest joined was the real Priest.  After all, the audience might identify with the name Priest, but most people derive the identity of the band from their memories of what the band was and meant.  The meaning is not solely attached to the name, but the collection of memories that follow the band and some of the identifying, tangible characteristics.  However, if all the members left and started a mariachi band, that would not be Judas Priest.  They need to be playing the same songs, doing the same stage show, etc. in order to still qualify as the real Priest.  Some form of the identity must be the same.  Here’s where it gets tricky.  If Judas Priest’s members didn’t leave the band and kept the name, but chose to all of a sudden play mariachi songs and change their stage show, they would still be Priest, just not if they left and did the same thing.  Just like if you changed careers or got remarried or became a professional baseball player, you’d still be considered you.  So, the name Judas Priest does have value in terms of an identity marker for fans, but it is not the only characteristic that makes up identity and, as we will see, it is not always necessary.

If your brain were pulled out and put into another body, let’s say Lemmy’s body, I believe the person who had Lemmy’s body would be you.  Therefore, while people would call you Lemmy, you would still be you, just in Lemmy’s body.  As noted philosopher Shelley Kagan once said when presented with a similar problem “follow the brain”.  However, here’s where identity gets messy, most people would find it difficult to believe you if you were walking around in Lemmy’s body claiming to be you unless they knew about this brain transplant.  They’d believe you were Lemmy, even if you knew things Lemmy couldn’t possibly know about you.  So, it is safe to claim that what you perceive to be you is far different than what others perceive to be you.  Your internal identity does not match the identity the world has for you.  Let’s say that for years, all the members of the band were gone and replaced with lookalikes.  Unless you had some knowledge of this, you’d assume you were watching Judas Priest when you saw them in concert.  In our example, however, the audience was made aware of the shift, so the identity of the band would stay with Halford and the guys.  Had they not been and had the cover band from Villa Rica been convincing lookalikes, people would have been none the wiser.

The point is, we think we know what a band is, based on our memories and recollections, but really we only know our created image of the band.  The difference between the internal perceptions of the band and the external ideas are miles apart.  Our image of the band has some similarities to the views of others and a few similarities to how the band views itself, but for the most part there is no common relationship except for a few markers here and there.

This is also the great problem of personal identity.  How are we meant to function in a world where we see ourselves as one thing, but the world sees us as something else?  Sure, there are some meeting points, but overall we have no clue how they see us.  We are left to play a perpetual guessing game where we will never find the answer.

Who is Judas Priest?  I’m not really sure.  I know I have my version, you have yours and they have theirs.  The places where we meet are certainly Judas Priest, but the places where we don’t are also Judas Priest.   We know enough to know and agree that the band that left Judas Priest in our story is Judas Priest, but we lack enough evidence to understand what Judas Priest is in its totality.  We filter Judas Priest through our own minds and have an image completely exclusive to us.  Judas Priest is our Judas Priest, a Judas Priest of the mind.  We are forever stuck trying to reconcile that image with the image of those around us and failing miserably at the task.  Such is the lot of humans when searching for truth.  Stuck looking at one tiny, infinitesimal section of the map while trying desperately to figure out where everything is.

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