Dave Lombardo Has Additional Arms Added To Keep Up With Younger Drummers
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on March 26, 2012
Dave Lombardo Today
Eventually, Father Time catches up with us all. Former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo was once thought to be the undisputed greatest metal drummer on earth. Scores of adolescents spent many a Saturday night watching Headbangers Ball and air drumming his fills from the beginning of “Seasons in The Abyss”. Nearly every great young drummer used to be called “the next Dave Lombardo”. Then, at some point, the world caught up with him.
“Some of the new wave of drummers are just quicker today. They have taken my style and improved it with a youthful energy that it’s hard for a 47-year-old to match. I needed something to get my edge back,” said Lombardo last night in an exclusive Tyranny of Tradition interview. What Lombardo did was both amazing and terrifying. In a first of its kind surgery, Lombardo had two additional arms added to his body. The arms are functional and just as useful as the two he was born with.
The possibilities for Lombardo are now nearly endless. His drumming style will most certainly take on a uniqueness that the metal world has never thought possible. He will also probably become an amazing juggler and will be able to put away groceries with the speed and dexterity his family has never seen. But, the deeper ethical concerns about a drummer being able to add limbs was the talk of the metal world after Lombardo’s announcement.
“It’s not right that someone can just have limbs added to be a better drummer,” said Battleax Kidneystone, drummer from the death metal band Malignant Pancreas. “If a major league baseball player added extra legs to run faster there is no way they’d let him play.”
Others, like Chainsaw Bloodcolon, from the band Carpathian Impetigo Sore, were less concerned. “If he wants to run around the rest of his life looking like a freak, I say, let him. I’m sticking with the two arms that Satan gave me.”
Still, Gene Hoglan, the recently named Commissioner of Metal Drumming, is looking into whether Lombardo should be allowed to play for Slayer on their next tour. Hoglan, who recently ruled that performance enhancing drugs like beer, crack and Moon Pies were allowed for drummers, is faced with an even more challenging issue here.
Some argue that this could lead to a slippery slope where drummers will have more and more arms added to be competitive. Imagine if Sean Reinert from Cynic decided he was going to add 10 arms and 14 legs. Dream Theater would take Mike Portnoy back in a second if he showed up with no less than 100 additional limbs. The next phase would be guitarists having additional fingers and singers having additional mouths with separate voice boxes. Think of how many strings a djent guitarist could put on his instrument if he had 52 fingers to play with. It is possible that if Hoglan allows Lombardo to keep his additional arms, the metal scene in five years will be indistinguishable from a circus sideshow.
However, if Hoglan rules against Lombardo, the case will surely end up in court. As most legal scholars know, the 2nd Amendment to The Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms. “The founding fathers wanted us to have life, liberty and the pursuit of additional limbs, otherwise they wouldn’t have written it down. Besides, what is more American than using technology to grab every possible competitive advantage over others,” said Lombardo. “Being a highly successful four-armed mutant is, in many ways, the American Dream.”
Extremely Literal Terrorist Group Kidnaps and Attempts To Mail Anthrax
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on March 22, 2012
A national tragedy was avoided earlier today when the FBI arrested members of People For Truth And Freedom Against Tyranny and The Lack of Freedom With Liberty and Justice for All Who Believe In Freedom and the American Way of Life (PTFATLFLJABFAWL) a terrorist group from Islip, Long Island who kidnapped the members of the heavy metal band Anthrax. Members of the terrorist group were captured at the local Islip post office trying to fit five enormous human-sized envelopes into a tiny mail slot.
Earlier that day, PTFATLFLJABFAWL had captured members of the group at various locations around New York, drugged them, brought them back to an apartment and attempted to wrap them in bubble tape so they would be uninjured on their journey through the mail. Guitarist Scott Ian briefly became conscious during the seven-hour ordeal and remembers feeling like he was in some bizarre episode of the TV show Batman. “They had five of us tied up and were weighing us to see what the postage would be. They were wearing Slipknot looking masks so I couldn’t recognize them. Next thing I know they were trying to stuff me in a giant envelope that was addressed to Tom Brokaw at NBC News. When I tried to tell them he was retired, one of them hit me and I blacked out.”
One of the neighbors of the terrorist group initially tipped off the FBI when they heard high, falsetto screaming coming from the envelope of Joey Belladonna. “When I noticed humans in envelopes being carried down the hallway, I was a bit suspicious. I was about to go back to watching The Price is Right when I heard that melodic screeching from one of the envelopes. I could tell by the high pitched, more 80’s era sound that it couldn’t have been John Bush. It was either Neil Turbin or Joey Belladonna in that envelope. I called the FBI right away.”
Jonathan Winthrop, the group’s leader and a former writer for Tyranny of Tradition, believed his arrest was another example of the liberties of Americans being taken away by the repressive Federal Government. “Where does it say in the Constitution that mailing members of a thrash band in protest is a crime? I ask you….where? I say to you, mailing Frank Bello in the defense of liberty is no vice!!!!”
Beyond the Ian letter to Brokaw, the other letters were meant to go to President Obama, George Clooney, Rush Limbaugh and Tim Tebow. While the Brokaw letter was just about publicity, the other four were meant to be sent to the leadership of both American political parties in order to alert them that the current status quo would not be tolerated.
All the letters contained notes with similar words:
C11H17N2O2SN A
Who Is Caught In A Mosh Now
We Are The Law
Tnemnrevognikaerfecin
The last part of the note had agents stumped. After being analyzed by over 300 of the top code breakers in the government for ten hours it was revealed that it was actually “Nice Freakin’ Government” spelled backwards.
Abbath Creates Gluten-Free Cellphones; Now Worth An Estimated 11.8 Billion Dollars
Posted by Keith Spillett in Health Tips for An Early Death on March 21, 2012
The biggest surprise on this year’s Forbes 500 Richest People on The Planet list was a name well known to those who follow black metal. Right below hedge fund manager Steve Cohen and above newspaper magnate Rupert Murdoch stands the name of one of the most revered members of the black metal community, Abbath. While he is mostly known for his guttural vocal wails and sweeping guitar riffs in the band Immortal, he has actually made most of his money from a very strange source. Abbath is the world’s number one distributor of gluten-free products.
After reading a study back in 2002 claiming one in every seven people had an allergy to gluten, Abbath started to think about the millions of people gluten-free products could benefit. Weeks later when Horgh, the drummer for Immortal, was diagnosed with gluten sensitivity Abbath created special gluten-free corpse paint for him to wear on stage. A rash of gluten related issues hit the black metal community in 2003 and Abbath’s makeup began to catch on. This was only the beginning.
In 2005, Abbath discovered the idea that has taken the world by storm and turned him into a multi-billionaire…gluten-free cell phones. “There are so many people whose systems can not tolerate gluten. It can cause terrible side effects that range from severe headaches, to rapid eye movement, to explosive logorrhea. I just wanted to help make a difference for people who wanted not to suffer,” said a wistful Abbath in an exclusive interview with Tyranny of Tradition.
Since Abbath began mass marketing his Non-Celiac Cellphones seven years ago, they have become an important part of the lives of millions of people. His next step in 2007 was to create a gluten-free line of clothing. While gluten-free collared shirts have yet to take off, many stylish French teenagers have taken to recently wearing gluten free pants and socks. Gluten-free capes and fangs became the number one fashion trend in Romania last year.
The War on Gluten continued in 2009 with the introduction of gluten-free appliances. It’s hard to make it though a Wal-Mart without seeing one of Abbath’s gluten-free toasters or washing machines. He has even created gluten-free gluten, an invisible substance that cannot be detected by any of the five senses or absorbed by the body. The Pentagon purchased three cases of it for over 12 million dollars last month.
Abbath has major plans for the future. He is currently researching the possibility of gluten-free prosthetic limbs. By 2017, humans could be outfitted with gluten-free arms, legs and even torsos. He has also been working with several space nanotechnology companies in the attempt to create planet-sized, gluten-free computers. A gluten-free spaceship similar to the Death Star from Star Wars is currently in the early stages of production. It would possess a death ray that could extract all of the gluten from a planet while killing all of its inhabitants in less than three seconds.
A Historiographical Review of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining
Posted by Keith Spillett in Pointyheaded Highbrow Stuff on March 20, 2012
“We may be through with the past but the past ain’t through with us.” -PT Anderson
History is inescapable and never-ending. In spite of protestations from some historians, like the famous one by Francis Fukayama in 1992 that the end of the Cold War essentially meant history was “over”, we have yet to come anywhere near something that could be considered a conclusion. History, on many levels, is a trap from which we cannot extricate ourselves. Its long arm reaches through time and pushes us in directions we never believed we be capable of going. This, more than anything else, seems to be the central message of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic “The Shining”.
While it would be easy to dismiss the film as an exquisitely told, elaborately filmed ghost story, there is a deeper meaning at the heart of the film. The story begins with Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) and his family undertaking the westward voyage that so many Americans have. Our history as Americans are filled with just this type of journey West in the hopes of finding fortune and freedom in a new place.
They arrive at the Overlook hotel; a resort in Colorado that shares is decorated in a Native American theme. This is not a surprise, because we learn early on that the hotel is built on a Native American burial ground. While this idea itself has become a horror cliché, it is important to note that, within the context of this film, it indicates the connection with a brutal past. One could argue that much of Western America was a burial ground for indigenous Americans who were steamrolled during the United States’ drive from seas to shining sea.
The ghosts of the past are not simply ghosts in The Shining. They are reflections of a troubling history of violence. Dick Halloran (played brilliantly by Scatman Crothers) offers us a metaphor early on that perfectly describes this. He tells Danny, Jack Torrance’s boy, that the ghosts in the film are like the smell of “burnt toast”. They may no longer be with us, but their presence is still strongly felt. Where Dick is terribly wrong is in his claim that the past cannot hurt us because it is like pictures in a book. The movie seems to argue that these “pictures” are very much alive and deeply at the root of the conflict that was raging through America in the 1960s and 70s.
In order to understand the film, it is critical to note the three separate reactions of the main characters in the film to the horrors of The Overlook. Jack gains from them a sense of belonging. He longs to be a part of the horrific history of The Overlook. He loves the violence at the core of its polished veneer. Jack is a metaphor for one view of those with power in the 60s and 70s. Disinterested in the suffering that takes place below their feet, they revel in excess while Rome burns. They are the governmental father figures that were supposed to protect the average American and instead gave us an overwhelming glut of consumer goods coupled nightmares like the Vietnam War.
Wendy (Shelly Duvall) is meant to be the symbol of most Americans. She cares deeply about her family but is blind to the actual circumstances of her life. She explains away much of the horror she’s experienced at the hands of Jack. Wendy doesn’t see the hotel for what it is until her family is shattered apart. Her awakening is meant to mimic what so many Americans feel when they look underneath the façade of the American Dream and see the massacred corpses it was built upon. Much of the interplay between the hotel, Jack and Danny go past Wendy, who is only focused on the immediate events at hand and misses the greater context of what is taking place. Her recognition of the violence around her is very much the climax of the film.
Danny (Danny Lloyd) is the next generation. He is equipped with the power to see and recognize what was there before him. He shines, or can telepathically see the images of The Overlook’s horrific past. The expression shining was actually taken from the John Lennon song “We All Shine On” by the book’s author Stephen King. The idea is that this new generation, the hippies, the yippies, the Panthers and the other groups of Americans in the late 60s and early 70s have become unwilling to play the game of forgetting the past and going about their lives. They were able to see how the past has impacted their world and they felt a desperate need to make the world see what they were witness to. Danny serves as a reminder of the violence that permeates the center of our collective fantasy. We must not be reminded of it or we might be willing to destroy it in order to save ourselves from it. Both The Overlook and Jack recognize the danger present in Danny’s vision and realize he must be controlled or even murdered.
Is this vision of America an accurate one? On some levels it is. Keep in mind this book and movie were created in the shadow of the chaos, both political and social, that were taking place in America in the 60s and 70s. The Presidency had been debased, the myth of America’s military superiority had been unmasked and the entire concept of the American Dream had been called into question. America could be seen as a madhouse on par with The Overlook. While this might be true, it is a massive oversimplification to argue that the “new” generation could be easily characterized by a visionary innocent while the leaders of the past simply lumped into the category of tyrannical, blood-thirsty madmen. There were so many shades of grey; the protest movement was far from beyond reproach and the government was not solely filled with violent, greedy sycophants. When discussing mass movements, simple narratives are rarely completely accurate
The deeper question at the heart of this film is of the role of the past in modern life. It’s simply not accurate to argue that the past is totally behind us. The world and its resources were divided up a long time ago and to accept these divisions as “the way things oughta be” does a profound disservice to those who today still suffer from decisions made lifetimes ago. Think of how the territorial distinctions made at the Berlin Conference in the 1880s have come to shape today’s Africa and you can get a glimpse of the power of the past. While much of the past is inescapable, I believe it is also something that can be understood in a way that makes some sense of the world. We owe it to ourselves and to those who are still among us to try to rationally understand the world we live in and how it got to be the way it is. This means living free of as many illusions about our history as possible. This may mean giving up some of the sense of identity that myth of a pristine past gives us. But, there is a redemptive power to truth and, while it may not save us, it can help us shine enough to at least see what is actually around us.
Metalhead Insult Form Letter
Posted by Keith Spillett in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing on March 19, 2012
Occasionally we receive insulting or life-threatening posts or emails here at Tyranny of Tradition. While we enjoy these greatly, we have begun to notice an alarming trend. Most of them are either poorly written or possibly symptomatic of a severe break with what we commoners like to refer to as “reality”. In order to improve the quality of these insults, we have created a form letter for those of you that struggle with expressing yourselves in writing.
The answers are based on the most common, clichéd insults or recycled comments that we have received over past year and a half. We left out any profanity or pseudo-ironic internet abbreviations that tend to be a major part of these letters so that we could focus more on content. Questions 6 and 7 are meant to be representative of the majority of our insulters, so feel free to add your own information after the word “Other” if the responses don’t properly represent you. Please use this form if you feel the sudden urge to attempt to humiliate or degrade us. It will save us the many seconds that were wasted trying to figure out what you were talking about.
Dear ________________________________,
A. Internet Warrior
B. Poser
C. Guy who lives in his mother’s basement
D. Troll
E. Idiot
Your blog sucks. I read your last post and you are ______________.
A. not funny
B. not heterosexual
C. a little troll who lives in his mother’s basement
D. a butthurt, hipster English major
E. overweight
F. skinny and frail
G. the type of guy who thinks his beard and haircut makes him look like Kerry King when in fact it just makes him look homeless
H. Both E and G
I. Both F and G
J. All of the Above
I hate you. Your blog is _______________.
A. second-rate Onion
B. a third-rate Onion
C. just like The Onion
D. like that internet site that does parodies of news articles
A. drown in a lake
B. die in a fire
C. get a girlfriend and stop writing
D. start doing something productive with your time
E. stop spamming pictures of Scott Baio onto my Myspace profile
F. move out of your mother’s basement
G. Learn the proper uses of there and their
A. Everybody Loves Raymond
B. dog vomit
C. The Onion
D. the last Morbid Angel album
I spend a lot of time judging other people’s writing in my time as _____________ and yours is the worst I’ve ever read.
A. a metal message board moderator
B. inmate 657891 at the Dannemora Correctional Institute
C. the president of the fan club of some black metal band that no one has ever heard of
D. a highly bored casualty of the current downsizing trend
E. Other___________________________
If I see you on the street I’ll probably _________________.
A. stare at you with a menacing look and hope that you notice my Burzum hoodie
B. tell you how much I love your blog
C. mutter under my breath about you living in your mother’s basement and hope you didn’t hear me
D. ask you if you write that blog that’s like a metal version of The Onion
E. drive a spike through your head and dance on your corpse while singing “Transylvanian Hunger”
E. Other_____________________________
You suck,
Your fake internet name here_______________________________________
New Book Claims Nixon Considered Assassinating Black Sabbath Members
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness, Pointyheaded Highbrow Stuff on March 16, 2012
For years one of the great mysteries in American political history was what President Nixon said in the missing 18-½ minutes of tape that was “accidentally” erased before it was given to investigators. A new book may just answer that question.
According to Nixon’s story, his personal secretary Rosemary Woods erased the missing section of tape when she was trying to transcribe the details of the conversation for the Watergate Hearings. In a new book, “Knowing Dick: My Mother’s Time Under President Nixon”, Petey Woods, Rosemary’s eldest son, claims that she revealed to him that Nixon had detailed discussions about assassinating members of the metal band Black Sabbath on the deleted section of the tape. He also claimed that his mother was asked by the President to destroy the section because he worried about “a wave of heavy metal coming over to the U.S. from England and spreading lawless, godless communism.”
The book claims, Nixon, who has also been rumored to have encouraged the assassination and overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile, wanted to see a similar fate for Bill Ward, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler. Nixon was much less concerned about Ozzy, who he felt was a drag on the talents of the rest of the band. However, Nixon was concerned that “Sabbath might go ahead and get someone like that fellow Dio from the band Elf. Then, they’d all have to go or they’d be unstoppable.”
Nixon believed the CIA could be enlisted in plans to get rid of Sabbath. “After all, we used them to overthrow Mossadegh in Iran and Arbenz in Guatemala. They helped get rid of Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Diem in Vietnam and Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. They even tried to kill Castro 8 times for god sakes. Getting rid of a bunch of angry, power-chord obsessed Brits should be no trouble whatsoever for the boys over at Langley.”
“The President was deeply concerned about the potential dangers of a style of music that loud and that intense,” says Woods in his book. Apparently, most of the 18-½ minutes is an anti-metal rant that featured the President raving about the future of metal. “Eventually they’ll be bands that play a style called speed or thrash metal. They’ll have names like Slayer and Demolition Hammer and they will corrupt the young. I can envision a world where kids run into each other in a dance they like to call “moshing”. They’ll be encouraged to kick their friend in the head and have a ball. Is this the type of America you want, Haldeman?”
One of the most shocking revelations about the tapes is Nixon’s Nostradamus-like ability to accurately predict the path of heavy metal. At one point, he allegedly referred to a style of metal from Scandinavia that he believed would be called “bleak metal” and would feature band members wearing corpse paint and playing fast, angry metal filled with high pitched screams. He then allegedly went into graphic detail about his concern that there might be a so-called “death metal” scene in Florida in the early 1990s where bands like Death and Morbid Angel “could completely warp the minds of an entire generation with satanic imagery and blast-beat drumming.”
Nixon even went as far as saying that if Black Sabbath isn’t killed, we’d see a future with bands like “Suffocation, Pig Destroyer, and Goatwhore telling our kids god knows what”. By “taking out Sabbath”, Nixon believed he could strike a final and decisive blow against the forces of heavy metal. “All we need are a few bullets, a little arsenic in their beer and a car bomb or two. Then the kids will start listening to positive stuff like Anita Bryant and Bing Crosby again. And just what the hell is a Goatwhore anyway?”
However, if Sabbath was successful in their metal mission young people would “fall like dominos” and eventually America would be filled with a majority of “black tee-shirt clad, long-haired maniacs who live to thrash all night and sleep all day.”
Later in Nixon’s life, he slowly began to accept heavy metal and even was rumored to have listened to Pantera’s “Cemetery Gates” on his deathbed. However, his willingness to use the power of the Presidency to kill members of a heavy metal band is deeply troubling for the remaining twenty or so Americans who believe that America doesn’t have the right to go around the world murdering people who are a perceived threat.
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.
The Tyranny of Tradition 