Archive for March, 2012
Researchers Say Hitting Yourself In The Face With A Hammer Could Potentially Be Dangerous
Posted by Keith Spillett in Health Tips for An Early Death on March 14, 2012
Apparently, hitting yourself in the face with a hammer isn’t safe after all. An extensive study done by researchers at Harvard University claims that striking yourself with repeated blows to the face with a hammer could potentially lead to terrible side effects. The surprising study, done with 100 small children over a five year period of repeated daily strikings, claims that beating your own head in can lead to loss of appetite, excessive bleeding, blindness, holes in your face, rapid eye movement, death and restless leg syndrome.
According to Harvard Scientist Mark Cranium, “this research should prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that hitting oneself with a hammer in the face is a bad idea under most circumstances.”
However, there was some good news for people who enjoy the dull thud of a hammer hitting their skulls. The research showed no connection between repeated hammer strikes to heart disease or Type 2 Diabetes. Also, the Harvard study failed to address the effects of eating hammers, so most likely that is still safe.
The study itself was called into question by researchers for Ace Hardware Store’s Corporate Office who did a separate study and arrived at very different results. The hardware chain found no link between hitting yourself in the face with a hammer and any negative outcomes. As a matter of fact, the Ace study found a direct correlation between two hammer blows a day and a longer, healthier life.
In spite of the recent warnings, many Americans continue to bang away at their faces. “That Harvard government ain’t gonna tell me what to do,” said Beau Clemens, a recent recipient of America’s first state-subsidized face transplant.
Dr. Dean Sluggish, a noted expert from the Southern California Institute of Facial Hammering, also believes that hammering one’s face is not just a personal problem, it’s an environmental problem. “Think of the thousands of trees cut down, the thousands of pounds of metal, the carbon footprint made by smashing one skull to a pulp. In order to turn one face into a bloody mess it requires enough fuel to run a Hummer for 3 minutes. Obviously, there are better uses of nature’s bounty,” he wrote in an editorial that accompanied the study.
“To a man who hits themselves in the face with a hammer, everything is a nail,” added Dr. Sluggish in an attempt to say something quotable.
New Jersey Plans April 24th State Holiday in Honor of Prong
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on March 13, 2012
New Jersey’s most famous residents are about to get a day in their honor. Timed to coincide with the release of their new record, “Carved in Stone”, New Jersey governor Chris Christie has signed into law a bill making Tuesday April 24th “Prong Appreciation Day”. Schools will be closed and all government office buildings will not be in service on that day in order that people have time to wait in what is expected to be 10 hour lines at local music stores to get the album.
Prong has derived a cult following among the thousands of gelato vendors and carnies that control the beaches of the Jersey Shore. They are also quite popular among the warlords, car thieves and flesh-crazed cannibals that run the better part of North Jersey. According to Armond Peterson, Head of Prong For a Better America, a Political Action Committee, the message of corporate neglect and snapping one’s fingers while snapping someone else’s neck really resonates with the people of Jersey, whose love of the band is “unconditional”.
Governor Christie, who claims he decided to go into politics after seeing the band at CBGB’s in 1990, made this holiday a cornerstone of his election campaign against former Goldman Sachs CEO and pension looter Jon Corzine back in 2009. At a press conference today, Christie celebrated his major political victory. “I can’t even freakin’ believe it. What a freakin’ day for metal, huh!?! C’mon, I mean, it’s freakin’ Prong we’re talking about over here!”
When questioned by a 9-year-old reporter from a elementary school newspaper who asked if this was going to be taking time away from creating new jobs, Christie fired back with furious rage. “Hey, first of all, shut the hell up kid! All of a sudden, you’re nine and you think you know how the world works? What the hell do you know, you little punk?!?! You think you can run New Jersey, c’mon up here. Otherwise, go dunk a cookie in some milk and shut your face before I shut it for you.”
Tuesday April 24th is shaping up to be a great day in New Jersey. At 9 AM, frontman Tommy Victor will be handed the key to the city of Trenton. At noon, a parade through Wildwood will take place honoring the band. At 4 PM, the band will be playing a concert on the roof of Newark Airport with New Jersey’s other favorite sons Southside Johnny and The Asbury Jukes. At 9 PM, Victor and the boys will be taking a blood oath and be symbolically inducted into the Genovese crime family by actor James Gandofini.
Over the years, Prong has been one of the best and most consistent bands in metal. If the new album is even a shadow of their earlier work, it will be a masterpiece that should be blasting on every car stereo from Passaic to Perth Amboy.
Drexel, Seton Hall, Cannibal Corpse Snubbed By NCAA Tournament Selection Committee
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on March 12, 2012
For three groups of committed young men, their dreams of a national championship ended before the tournament even got started. Bubbles burst for Drexel University, Seton Hall and Cannibal Corpse during Sunday night’s selection show. Drexel, who went 27 and 6 and 16 and 2 in the always-tough Colonial Athletic Association, had a great regular season but lost to VCU in their conference tournament. Seton Hall, who racked up 20 wins in the Big East and had an RPI of 54, got bumped after an uninspiring stretch run that featured losses to DePaul and Rutgers.
The most surprising omission from the field was famed death metal band Cannibal Corpse. Corpse, who won a band record 28 regular season games and had an RPI of 19, seemed a shoe-in, but a loss in the Horizon League conference tournament finals to Detroit-Mercy seemed to cloud the picture. However, with out of conference wins against Indiana, Michigan State and Testament, few people expected Cannibal Corpse to be on the outside looking in.
The NCAA Selection Committee, which is often tight-lipped about why they picked one team over another, was far from quiet about their exclusion of Cannibal Corpse. “Those guys are animals,” said committee spokesman Michael Newton. “We like to reward teams for good sportsmanship. Beheading the cheerleaders from Cleveland State and mounting the heads on sticks in front of the arena is not the sort of thing that we at the NCAA condone.”
The Cleveland Beheadings were only one event in a season of turmoil for Cannibal Corpse. Point guard Alex Webster was suspended for two games early in the season for removing and chewing the spleen of Butler forward Roosevelt Jones. Forward Paul Mazurkiewicz is currently banned from ever playing basketball in the state of Pennsylvania again for gouging out the eyes of the entire starting Bucknell basketball team and making a necklace out of them. NCAA President Mark Emmert went a step further saying, “Not only should not be in the NCAA tournament, the lot of them should probably be awaiting appeal on death row.”
The band had planned the release of their excellent new album “Torture” on March 13th to coincide with the first round of the tournament. Cannibal Corpse had been considered filing suit against the NCAA for excluding them from the tournament based on their character. “There have been teams of guys just as bad as us who have won National Championships. Ever heard of UNLV?” said irate center George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher. However, Fisher quickly dropped the idea of a suit when he realized it might cut into the 567 consecutive hours of World of Warcraft he is planning on playing in April.
(Thanks to Shawn Von Deathmetal from Universe Number Five for inspiring this fantastic piece of Pulitzer worthy journalism)
A Monument To Nothing
Posted by Keith Spillett in Existential Rambings on March 11, 2012
Imagine it for a minute. Nothing. Somewhere between the Korean War Memorial and the ever looming, alabaster figure of President Lincoln there stands a room. It is a small room, the size of a tiny studio apartment. The walls and ceiling are made of clear black granite. On a spring day, when the sun is shining, it appears to glow. Beyond its stunning features, its contents themselves are wholly unremarkable. Inside it is absolute emptiness.
The monuments around it all boast a rich and proud history. In some cases, it’s a history that we proudly cling to. Jefferson standing rigidly, an unbending symbol of the triumph of the individual over the menacing tentacles of the state. Lincoln staring passionately into a world that did not always share his vision, commanding dignity and respect for those who have been silenced by the oppressive spirit of commerce without compassion.
There are also the nightmares. The memories that we keep close to us in order to remind us of our most terrible moments. The misunderstood carnage of Korea. The endless horrors of Vietnam. Memories of so many wars where bodies and minds were mangled and destroyed. These memorials are there to remind us never to forget those who gave up their place in this world. Of tomorrows never realized. Of futures never lived. Of families smashed into a million pieces. These are the last testimonies of those who never came back and rejoined this bizarre American carnival of ours.
While each of these monuments and so many others throughout the Capital District are deeply meaningful, it is the empty room that represents the most to me. It is the monument for the wars that were never fought. A symbol of the lives that were never lost. It is endless possibility. In this room there is no time. It is a monument to the dramatic, life-altering power of a moment recognized.
Its central message is stillness. It seeks not to change the world, only to understand it. This memorial doesn’t spread the American Way of Life around the world, or seek to share the gift of democracy, or do much of anything at all. There are no words inscribed and there is no plaque attached. It announces nothing, proclaims silence and only communicates one fleeting, whispered message.
The room is a memorial to a world without struggle, stress, or strain. Where people can live together in complete acceptance of one another. Where people don’t wish to change those around them. Where people simply are and that is enough. This room is meant to be a place free of judgment. Everything and everyone are okay in this room, not because of any great achievement, but simply because of the beautiful array of skin, bones, organs, and personality that comprise their identity. In this room, you are enough and worthy of every bit of beauty the world is capable of showing you.
In truth, there is no place like this in Washington or any place else that I know of. Peace is often spoken of. We pay a price for peace or we struggle for peace or we are awarded prizes for who among us are most peaceful. But where in our world is peace? Real, enduring peace. It is certainly not embedded in our institutions, which encourage us to push forward and milk every drop of energy from our bodies and spirits. It is not in our homes, or our jobs, or our competitions. It is most certainly not to be found anywhere within our wars. This memorial would be one small island in an ocean of turmoil. At least there would be one place a person could go and simply be without being anything in particular. It is not a religious place, not a secular place, not a capitalist place, not a communist place, not a liberal, conservative, pro-life, or pro-choice place. It’s simply a place for people who want to be something more than they are labeled. Even for a moment.
Darkthrone’s Fenriz Arrested For Carrying Concealed Copy of Spice Girls’ “Spiceworld” Album
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on March 9, 2012
At 9:32 last night, the creative force behind black metal legends Darkthrone, was arrested at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport with a copy of the 1997 album “Spiceworld”. Apparently, Fenriz was on his way through security attempting to catch a flight to Trondheim when an astute security guard noticed the album in his bag. The album, rapped in coffee beans in an attempt to throw off Spice Girl album sniffing dogs, was confiscated and Fenriz was escorted off to jail. He currently sits in Mimico Correctional Centre awaiting his release on 300,000-dollar bail.
Fenriz, for his part, initially claimed the album was not his, but that he was actually carrying it for an unnamed friend. However, after intense questioning a tired and bewildered Fenriz broke down and admitted that he had purchased the album because he “couldn’t get that ‘Spice Up Your Life’ song out of his head” no matter how hard he tried.
Not only could Fenriz be facing three to five years hard labor for his possession of the album, there is a good possibility that he will be an outcast from the black metal world. The National Association of Black Metal Bands, a 100,000-member organization committed to keeping black metal pure, has already considered banning him from taking part in church burnings for the next five years. They have also considered taking the unheard of step of indefinitely suspending him from throwing parts of animal carcasses into the crowd during concerts.
The only such probation in the past took place in 2003 when Dani Filth was prohibited from using the word “Satan” for one year for what was referred to as “crimes against black metal”. In Filth’s case, the so-called “death penalty” was considered, a sanction that would have been forced to record an entire album of Air Supply covers.
Many metal artists have already come to Fenriz defense. According to Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine listening to the Spice Girls is not healthy but “at least he wasn’t trying to marry another man or receive free health care like most people in Canada do.” Immortal frontman Abbath also indicated that he’d support Fenriz if he joined a twelve-step Spice Girl rehabilitation program. “Free Fenriz” tee shirts have already been popping up around Norway and Cleveland, Ohio. It’s entirely possible that with a good attorney and the power of prayer, he will overcome this terrible transgression and become an upstanding citizen once again.
Rumors of 2013 Pantera Reunion Picking Up Steam
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness, Uncategorized on March 5, 2012
In a story that may set the entire metal world on its ear, several sources have speculated that Pantera may reunite to play a series of shows in 2013. Pantera, whose seminal Vulgar Display of Power record turned 20 this year, have been broken up since 2003. The band was a major force in heavy metal, topping the billboard album charts in 1994 with their release Far Beyond Driven. A Pantera reunion would, no doubt, be the concert event of 2013, if not of this decade.
The rumors began during a conversation last week between my friend Matt and I. We were discussing the merits of “The Great Southern Trendkill” and I mentioned, “Wouldn’t it be great if they got back together!?!?!”
Matt replied, “Yeah! I’d travel anywhere in the country to see them, but Vinny and Phil are on really bad terms since Dime died. No chance.”
I looked at Matt and said, “But there would a lot of money on the table. A whole lot of money. My cousin Johnny ate a bag of thumbtacks once for 20 dollars. He ended up having to have surgery and now he can’t drink milk or ginger ale. He was never right afterwards. Sometimes, he acts like he’s a pirate and digs enormous holes in his backyard looking for treasure. He even makes fake treasure maps and ‘finds’ them in strange places that he hid them hours earlier. The point is, this Pantera reunion can happen if someone, like maybe the Koch Brothers or George Soros or somebody big puts about 100 million in front of them. That sort of cash moves mountains.”
Paulie Reznik, the guy we hired to fix the hole in our roof from last week’s storm, confirmed that a Pantera reunion could happen. “It could happen, man. For sure,” said Paulie, a diehard Pantera fan and owner of nearly 300 heavy metal bobblehead dolls, in a recent interview with Tyranny of Tradition.
However, my wife adamantly denied the possibility of a Pantera tour. She claimed that the rumors are baseless, that I had skipped a dosage of my medication again and that I was ‘allegedly’ pretending that things that I make up are really happening. “Honey, why don’t you go lay down for a while? You’re doing that thing where you are confusing fantasy and reality. Remember last month you thought Picasso had come back from the grave and told you to spray paint the cat orange and speak only in Aramaic? That wasn’t true either. You just need some rest.”
Pantera, for their part, have yet to comment on the rumors. Often, when a person or group refuses to confirm or deny a story it is because there is some truth to it. Where there is smoke there is fire, or so the saying goes. If Pantera continues to refuse to comment on the rumors that I am making up, you can pretty much bet your life savings that they will be back on the stage in 2013. Sometimes silence speaks volumes.
A Sadomasochistic Review of Sigh “In Somniphobia”
Posted by Keith Spillett in Pointless Music Reviews, Uncategorized on March 2, 2012
All that is left in my world is Sigh’s new album “In Somniphobia”. I love it. I can’t stop playing it. Over and over and over and over again. I love it so much I want to rip off my shirt and paint the letters S-I-G-H across my chest and run around the local Walgreens screaming at the top of my lungs. I want to beat myself over the head repeatedly with a claw hammer until I do such severe damage to my hippocampus that I forget I’ve heard the album just so I can have the pleasure of experiencing it again for the first time. I long to leap off of a bell tower screaming the lyrics at the horrified spectators. I dream of ripping each of my teeth out and sending it to members of the band to thank them for all the joy they have brought to me.
My love for it transcends all possible love I could experience. I want to go to a beautiful meadow, set out a picnic blanket and caress the album telling it all the things I know in my heart and have been afraid to say. I want to run through a field with it in my arms, laughing girlishly, dancing to the wonderful sounds of the wind whipping through the grass. I want to whisper lovingly into the albums ear, telling it my deepest secrets and most personal desires. Surrender unconditionally to its alluring charms. Bathe it in pure, unadulterated affection.
I feel jealous that others will have the chance to hear this album. When I think of others listening to this album I am filled with rage. I will kill them. I will grind their bones into dust. It is my album. Mine! Their love is cheap and tawdry while mine is filled with the sincerity and innocence of a child. They cannot feel what I feel for this album. They are mere mortals while I have been imbued with the gift of second sight by the god Amen-Ra. They live shallow, meaningless lives. Their love will flicker and fade the minute something else comes along. My attraction will never fade, no matter what happens. If nuclear bombs reign down on the city of Atlanta and all around me is melted and disintegrated, the only thing left will be my boney, skeletal fingers embracing the album, stroking its brow.
Don’t listen to the album. You and the mortals around you don’t deserve it. I’ll know if you are listening to it because I’m in front of your house right now. Watching you. I was at the supermarket yesterday when you bought two bags of pork rinds for 2 dollars and 28 cents. I saw you stop at the gas station and get approximately 8 gallons of gas. I know that you stopped in Hot Topic at 3:45 just to look around. You didn’t buy anything. I am watching you all the time. Even as you sleep. If you dare to listen to this album, I will tie you to a chair and feed you hundreds of pounds cheese dip until either your stomach bursts or your entire body explodes.
I’d give it a 2,389,124 out of 10. I am currently in the process of undergoing a medical procedure to add an additional thumb so I can give it 3 thumbs up. There will never be anything better. Music as we know it is over. People should not even bother to try to create anything else. This is the pinnacle, the zenith, the apogee, the climax of all civilization. It is the Hanging Gardens, the Taj Mahal, the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. There is no future, there is no past, there is only Sigh’ “In Somniphobia”.
Dissecting CARCASS’ Heartwork-Seventh Incision….Arbeit Macht Fleisch
Posted by Keith Spillett in Notes on Carcass Heartwork on March 1, 2012
This is the seventh in a series of articles analyzing the lyrics from the 1993 Carcass album “Heartwork”.
Prognathous gears grind
So diligent and serrated they mesh
Toothed cogs churn
So trenchant, against soft flesh
Worked to the bone
Up to the hilt, depredated
Raw materialism
To stoke the furnaces
Toiling, rotting
Life slowly slips away
Consumed, inhumed
In this mechanized corruption line
By mincing machinery industrialized – pulped and pulverized
Enslaved to the grind
Blood, sweat, toil, tears
Arbeit macht frei/fleisch
Grave to the grind
Inimitable gears twist
To churn a living grave
Stainless cogs shredding
Scathing pistons bludgeon and flail
Stripping to the bone
Retund mandrels levigate
Just raw material
Your pound of flesh for the suzerain
Toiling, rotting
Life slowly dissipates
Consumed, inhumed
In a corruption line, mechanized
By mincing machinery, industrialized – crunched and brutalized
A grave to the blind
“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
-Winston Churchill
The ghoulish, omnipresent nature of the Protestant work ethic is everywhere you look in these last days of our dying empire. It’s offered as the panacea for all that ails the American spirit. After all, those who worked hard built this great land. If we simply do more, exert ourselves we can attain our dreams. That house with a trampoline in the backyard and the smiling kids and the really big television can all be yours. We go to our jobs, acting out our lives, pacing, stammering about how we’ve been here since 6 AM, afraid to appear to be idle even for a moment, repeating our actions over and over with terminal efficiency. All the while we run headlong towards our own demise, with only the better mousetrap we’ve built as proof of our worth. If one takes a step back from the banality of modern life they might quite honestly want to ask the question, “Is all this effort worth it?”
This question is at the core of the Carcass song Arbeit Macht Fleisch. The title is a play on words based on the expression was emblazoned above the gates of Nazi concentration camps like Auschwitz. The original expression, Arbeit Macht Frei, translates to “work will make you free”. While I strongly doubt Carcass was looking to compare the Holocaust to life in the modern world, I believe the deeper idea is that work is often mindless drudgery that can, over time, deprive someone of the experience of being human. It is a series of meaningless, mechanistic actions that create nothing more than the need for more meaningless, mechanistic actions. Most people are familiar with the rags to riches Horatio Alger stories so deeply engrained in the myth of America. A person who works hard will eventually attain the American Dream or so the story goes. In this song, Carcass proposes another horrific possibility. They offer the idea that work will not make someone free, but it will make one’s flesh (fleisch) a part of a great senseless pageant. Certainly, all work is not pointless as all jobs are not mindlessly dull, but it is fair to say many careers are built on the endless drive to create things that are simply not needed based on illusions that, held up to the light, hardly seem worthy of a lifetime of stress and strain.
If this idea has a measure of truth to it and those experiencing it recognize this, what makes them move forward and continue to show up day after dreary day? One possibility is the sheer power of the mythology that surrounds work. In America, work has taken on nearly chimerical significance. It is often assumed that those who are the most successful are those who have worked the hardest. The perception of someone’s work ethic has become, on some level, the measure of a man or woman. Those who possess the least resources are perceived to be lazy and apathetic. Those on top of the ladder seem to be entitled to whatever they own because of their Herculean fits of labor. Sure, there are your occasional lottery winners or millionaire heiresses, but the system itself is basically fair. When a persons worth becomes defined by a characteristic they are motivated to push harder. After all, no one wants to end up like “those people”, the ones who give no effort and are rewarded with lives of poverty and destitution. They are the ones who deserve blame and scorn. They are the ones who have failed the American Dream; it certainly has not failed them.
Being able to buy into this myth, and it most certainly is a myth, comes with a cost. The cost is paid in hours, minutes and seconds. We are given so little time to be alive, a pittance in the larger flow of endless time. So much of this time is spent chasing a fantasy, not just the delusion of material paradise on earth, but also the promise of worthiness that indeterminate spasms of labor supposedly grant. However, we can never prove ourselves in this arena because the finish line keeps moving forward. Just out of our grasp. So close we nearly taste it, but never close enough to touch.
I doubt that Carcass intended this song to be a complete renunciation of the importance of work. They are talented musicians who must have spent untold hours honing their craft to the point where they could create a masterwork the likes of “Heartwork”. However, the elevation of work to the central position in the lives of people and its use as a defining characteristic in the worth of the individual is a driving factor in our sustained race to nowhere. Our value should not be based on what we create or do for a living, but rather for the very fact that we exist. Each life, regardless of what it is used for, is a life worthy of respect, adoration and esteem. It is this outlook that offers us access to compassion and empathy for those of us traveling together through the formidable struggles, terrible humiliations and unyielding indignities that comprise life in our world.
The Tyranny of Tradition 