An elaboration and a juxtaposition

Mike wrote a nuanced hatchet piece on my treatment of O, Inverted World. Originally, Mine was meant, you know, as a rumination on the Shins in general, thus many of the things I said were more reflective of Chutes Too Narrow than the album I was supposed to be talking about.

My fault.

So here is my rejoinder to his rebuttal. Eat this Sheffler.

By the way, after doing so absolutely horribly-deplorably on the verbal section of my first GRE practice test, I'm forcing myself to use the startling number of vocab words I'd never seen before in these very posts, along with definitions. Look at rejoinder above for an example.

Tangentially, to ETS, lachrymose is not college level vocab, that's some archaic Herman Melville bullshit. Not even I, the most shamelessly verbose person I know, would use that in place of tearful. Get your act together.

Chief amongst Mike's complaints with the album, or perhaps with the Shins in general, are the sometimes overwrought lyrics. I see his point. Anyone who's ever tried to actually listen to a Bad Religion song knows this. But James Mercer never digs that deep into his thesaurus of tricks (Most Lucubratory Bad Religion line ever: "The anechoic nebula rotating in my veins is persuading me contritely to persist"), and those transgressive moments on Oh, Inverted World almost completely disappear in Chutes Too Narrow.

And secretly I want to bury in the yard
The grey remains of a friendship scarred

Most importantly, and for this Mercer is a savant, the lyrics always fit the melody and rhythm. Nothing ever feels forced. It all flows.

Except for "Turn a Square", That song shouldn't even be in there.

Mike called it the "mood," and I think that's it exactly. There's a visceral experience created on both albums that's utterly unique. Two of my favorite bands of late do it, the Shins and the Decemberists. Lyrics, Rhythm, instrumentation, instrument choice, tempo--all of that--fit so seamlessly, that it's not really just music any more. I'm not talking metaphysics, it's multimedia, it's narrative and characterization and mysticism and pageantry all at once. It's a feeling, fully realized.

Of course I was raised to gather courage from those
Lofty tales so tried and true and
If you're able I'd suggest it 'cause this
Modern thought can get the best of you.

This rather simple epitaph can save your hide your falling mind
Fate isn't what we're up against there's no design no flaws to find

Plus, they've got the cheeky, optimistic nihilism thing going, which is tough to pull off.

Let's contrast this with another area band, Helio Sequence. I've had this album for a long time, but never had the desire to give it a full working over because. Frankly, it's not worth it. However, in the context we're working on here, it will serve nicely to illustrate outlandish artsiness and landing just on the other side of pointless.

On the surface, they have the earmarks of a successful indie band. They're pretentious. They are connected, via drummer, to Modest Mouse (such connections being the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon for our generation). They're conspicuous music consumers: they've heard it all, they've been influenced by it all, they want it all on their record. Love and Distance has synth, it's got Brit pop melodies, it's got clap tracks. At times it even delves dangerously into euro-trash Kylie Minogue club-drug surreality. For fans of John Popper, it's got enough bluesy harmonica to make you never want to hear harmonica ever again.

Vocally, I can think of no one human more antithetical to the current indie scene than someone like Scott Weiland. Stone Temple Pilots, remember? Shirtless, writhing, decadent. Preoccupied with his own sexuality; enamored with the sound of his own voice?

That's what most of the vocals on this album sound like. Scott . . . Weiland.

What I'm getting at is, it's genre overload.

I know it's hip to flex nuts and show people the diversity of your influences. Everyone does it. Everyone lines up as many instruments as they can and starts playing.

In that milieu, the difference between cacophonous and mellifluous is slight, but you know it when you hear it.

As for their lyrics. GOD.

This is an SOS / SOS / can you hear me?

Look, if you're a two-man band and you have a pop-art CD cover, I'm paying you for arrogant and myopic profundities, not bland disco regurgitate.

We were all trying to just not care

The first clue that you're not a very good songwriter is when you use the word just haphazardly where it doesn't belong in order to preserve your rhyme scheme. When the same song talks about "lines on the mirror" at "a little get together," well that's just stupid.

So far, I've learned two things, your friends do coke and your songs suck.

Read the full thing here.

Two and two together, forever

Thank God for the Feminist Majority Foundation. Seriously.

If not for them I'd have forgotten entirely the woeful state of gender equality in this and all other nations. I'd have forgotten about the hopelessly disproportionate amount of household labor women do, even as freshly laundered clothes found their way mysteriously into my closets. I might go a day without being reminded of the sex slave trade in South East Asia and the continent of Africa, hip-deep in mutilated pre-teen genitalia. So too might the consistently powerful made-for-TV performances of Valerie Bertinelli pass my sphere of perception totally unnoticed.

Yes, I might have missed all of that.

And now, continually reinventing themselves, some good news from that stalwart source. Ripped from their headlines: the pill prevents cancer, and other things.

And not just one particular drug, any will do. Ladies who take absolutely any "oral contraceptive" have a far smaller chance of developing "heart disease, stroke, some cancers, and high cholesterol" than those who use Norplant, the Pope-sanctioned rhythm method or even those who impregnate themselves to save failed relationships.

But how is this possible? The pill is a generic term for many kinds of medications that prevent untoward baby-birthing in a variety of ways. How can all of them prevent all those things?

Well, let's investigate.

See if you can spot a trend: Heart Disease . . . Stroke . . . High Cholesterol . . . Cancer . . .

The common denominator is stress.

Ortho-Tri-Cycline's ability to curb acne? Stress again.

And nothing spells stress like U-N-W-A-N-T-E-D P-R-E-G-N-A-N-C-Y. Nope. Nothing quite as stressful as accidentally ruining your life, then raising a child amidst the post-partum rubble. Probably more stressful would be not raising the child at all. Yessir, either would suck.

Personally, I'm sure that mere second-hand contact with the ubiquitous pill has lowered my risk of heart disease and stroke significantly.

So really, it seems like most dangerous ailments women risk later in life, along with the cosmetic ones they have in youth, are all traceable to horny asshole boyfriends [identifiable by their distinctive mating call: "rubbers is too constrictive"], and are remediable with a daily dose of prevention.

That is not to say abstinence.

According to the Hollywood Upstairs Journal of Medicine, the leading stressor for young men is getting blue-balled by their prude girlfriends. If they all have heart attacks, with whom will you populate the world once you actually do want to have kids? You'll be up a creek then.

So keep those gents alive. But remember, the pill don't stop syphilis and it won't keep him from sleeping with your best friend.

Please, choose your emotionally crippled and sinful liaisons carefully.

Read the full thing here.

The Danger of Google

I'm a little worried I'm being misrepresented by the ubiquitous search Gods. Yesterday, freakishly early in the morning, someone came to my blog via google. the search string looked like this:

search?q="green day" mature paradigm beautiful inspired

I don't think I want Google extending the welcome mat to people who would consider Green Day worthy of sharing a search string with a word like paradigm. There is nothing paradigmatic about Green Day. Iconic maybe, but even then, not the kind of icon I'd want to worship, or even keep around the house.

My dislike for Green Day comes not so much from the actions or music of the band themselves, as what those actions and that music has incubated in pop culture. Put simply, Green Day is the Pater Familias of a motley and annoying brood of worthless pre-teen-pandering angst punks.

I guess that makes them paradigmatic . . . though in the worst possible way.

From the Pentateuch of Anguish and Parental Disdain:

And there came to pass, in the year of Billie Joe, a great trembling amongst the people. Three men walked among them, and when they spoke, they spoke with one voice. And when they complained, theirs was the bitchiness of untold multitudes.

And when they sang, many albums were sold.

In this way the three reaped great bounties for their record company. And, living by the mandate of their lords, A&R representatives sought out others from amongst the multitudes to mimic the three. Many would take up the mantle, for the resonance of the three came not from talent, nay, but from juvenile anger. Verily, from the people, the cup of anger flowethed over.

In that way Green Day begat Blink 182, MXPX and AFI.

Those who liked Green Day but whose parents refused to buy guitars "when you never even play your trumpet/trombone/saxophone/upright bass" became Catch 22, Save Ferris and Reel Big Fish.

Blink 182 begat Sum 41, New Found Glory, Jimmy Eat World, The Ataris and thirty other bands who really like the word penis.

Those who liked Blink 182 but who weren't allowed to curse and who could not afford amplifiers became Dashboard Confessional and Yellow Card.

MXPX inspired a bunch of straight edge kids to stop blaming God for their parent's divorce and start worshipping them. AFI started out as whiny 16 year olds, but inexplicably went Goth after four albums, developed a fixation with eye shadow and begat Mourning After, Alkaline Trio, and Good Charlotte.

Album sales soared as children frittered away the toil of their hands.

The A&Rs saw that it was good.

Now, I also hate Green Day for making me do a Google search on pop punk bands to fill that list, which led me to this forum of 12 year olds discussing what it means to be punk. It contains the quote:

"Never heard of em,but if they are the least bit pop punk or posers(which is pretty much the same thing)I wouldn't like them." -- Slasherpunk18

Gaaah. Bad enough, yes. But then, just minutes later, someone was directed to the blog after typing in the following:
search?q=jerry stiller rush concert

My past haunts me.

I hate you mom, I hate you dad / Why'd'ya hafta go and make me feel so bad? -- from the demo for my new band: Pissed Pierced Punks Who Hate Everyone and Who Will Never Sell Out, Not Even for a Million Dollars. PPPWHEWWNSONEMD for short.

Read the full thing here.

Trending

I guess I can't hold off any longer. Though I am still sick to high heaven of all forms of politics, even those conducted by the humane and svelte Martin Sheen, this race has been getting very interesting the last couple of days. By couple I mean since whenever that large group of Americans who treated the RNC like the Sermon on the Mount came to their senses.

Once again I've been referencing the very good electoral-vote.com for my bi-daily dose of electoral what-nots. The work and analysis is fastidious and consistently impressive. The site is even-handed, but does seem to trend a little Bush-heavy compared with other sites I've seen. This only makes what I'm seeing all the more interesting.

Disregard the bold numbers up top, they swing more wildly than the mood of an abusive John Travolta in Urban Cowboy. Those "barely" states are essentially dead heats. If a candidate has a lead that is smaller than the statistical margin of error, it's no kind of lead at all. Flip through a few days and you'll see this. Wisconsin went from barely Kerry to weak Bush between Saturday and Monday. Useless really.

What is interesting, though, is the post-debate bible-belt trending. Some of the states that have, for months, shown a fondness for our Lay Preacher in Chief are slipping further into the undecided realm. Here are some examples from the month: Oct 12th, 16th, 18th, and yesterday.

Suddenly that swath of red from Georgia to Idaho isn't looking as much like a united heartland as as it is mottled and conflicted. Between the 12th an 19th, The number of electoral votes for which Bush held a 10 point or greater lead slipped from 148 to 138, which might not be a good sign for a campaign that is focusing on its base to drive voter turnout. These have been very solid states for Bush.

In the last four days (16th-19th), the number of votes Bush holds by a greater than 5% but less than 10% margin has fallen from 84 to 45.

That's beginning to feel significant.

Moreso when you compare it to Kerry-friendly states over the same period. States in which he enjoys a greater than 10% lead have leapt from 88 to 103 in the last four days. "Weak" Kerry states have increased from 91 to 125 electoral votes since the 12th.

This might be the payoff of that play-from-behind strategy Kerry has done well in the past. It may simply be an insignificant correction in what has been a steady decline for Kerry since his July and August highs.

However, with the day of days approaching--and in a race this tight--an insignificant correction might be enough to carry the White House.

There's another interesting tidbit I heard for the first time last night, and actually on a variety of channels. Traditionally, and this goes not just for presidential races, but for senatorial and state-level races as well, whatever numbers the incumbent has in the day leading up to the election are the numbers he/she will end with. "Overwhelmingly" was a word used. To within 1%.

That means, if history bears out, as it almost always occassionally does, those still undecided by November 1st will turn out for Kerry if they turn out at all.

Bush's nation-wide numbers right now are around 45-47%, Nader has around 1%. If things stay this way through the 1st, Kerry has to like his chances.

There was also an article in Slate (which I've lost, sorry) that showed a majority of those polled could not differentiate, didn't know or just flat out got wrong both candidate's stances on pretty much everything. They expect Bush to tax the wealthy and Kerry to support faith-based schools, proving once again the only thing anyone can say for certainty about the outcome of this election cycle: no matter who wins, we're still a country of uninformed morons.

Read the full thing here.

Carteresque

Fresh off some breath-taking three-post days, you may have noticed that the frequency of my blogging has dropped off considerably.

I'd apologize if I thought anyone really cared, but we can all take some solace in the fact that I don't think it's going to last forever. I've got a lot of things on my mind, like what the goddamned heck fire I'm going to do when I grow up. I also get tired of things really very easily (See: Computer Science degree, See also: singing career, See also: the marriage to Susan Sarandon). Luckily [for you] the one thing I never tire of is hearing myself talk and watching myself type. This could go on forever.

No, what I think I'm experiencing is something the man-to-be-judged-by-history would call malaise.

It's a caustic bitch's brew, this emotion. It's sickening and emboldening, bitter and savory. It's an ache I have like I'm having too much fun at the world's--and my future's--expense. Like soon it'll be time to pay the fiddler.

What it boils down to is personal freedom. I'm unemployed, living off the deposits of capital I've stored up like Victoria Gotti's pet camel. I have no day-to-day responsibilities, yet, for a time, I can pay my bills. Also, somewhere in there, I have a deep desire, once this money runs out, to be well on my way to staving off those bills indefinitely. Barring catastrophic personal injury or the kind of uncharacteristically selfless humanitarian lunacy that would send me to the Peace Corps, the only way to back burner the bills is to get back into school. This is Fear and Trembling.

Thankfully, school's actually something I think I would want to do even if I didn't have a sizeable, federally-subsidized debt monkey clinging to my shoulders.

Academia, as an abstract concept--as a reek of old books and tweed--tugs at me like the horniest of sirens. Oh how I yearn for her. It's not so much the pursuit of knowledge as it's the high-minded and pointless meta-speculation and long summers. Also, it's the captive audiences. I want to be listened to and revered for not really knowing anything. That means I'll have to stay in Academia as long as possible. First, I return as a student. Later, I weasel my way in as an instructor--preferably a tenured one.

Hence, for ease of getting in and staying in, I've narrowed the program search to that academic subset--that dinosaur--the liberal arts.

This is for no other reason than loyalty. So far this set has been good to me. I spent two years with Sparknotes, Playstation and Carlo Rossi Paisano [the least expensive of all alcohol-based ethnic stereotypes], walking away with dual liberal arts degrees. Not bad for failing succeeding to [not] learn a goddamned thing. I want to see how long this can continue.

True: Going into literature (the current front runner) will mean that I will have to learn something (two languages that aren't English for example). But: even that isn't really learning anything new. It's more taking what you know and expressing it differently. Spanishly or Germanly.

True: This costs much more of the money I didn't have in the first place. But: I'm fiscally irresponsible and hedging my bet on a graduate fellowship and a book deal.

So school it is. Bought m'self a book fer lernin the GREs and gave myself one sprawling week in which to prepare for it. I sit down at that terminal next Monday. I want to do well enough to get hired as a tutor at the Princeton Review or some place like that. Prior instructing would no doubt help with the graduate fellowship thing. The GRE subject test will be more troublesome because, rather than being esoteric like the SAT, the GRE Lit test actually tests you on facts, dates, movements, authors, essentially all the crap I'm trying to avoid learning.

I also have to figure out what schools have really good [contemporary world literature] programs, so that I'll hopefully be able to ride the tenure track on strength-of-school alone.

This morning I drive my uncle to the doctor. He has problems with his colon. The main problem is that he doesn't have one anymore. They split over a difference of opinion. He felt the colon should do its job like all the other colons, without slowly rotting away. The colon had other ideas.

For those who were grimly riveted to the story of my grandmother, I may write a followup about this character, or about my grandfather, who, in one short election cycle, became more cynical than even I.

Also, I just bought Palaniuk's Diary, so that might be a post soon, if I can stop playing Tecmo Super Bowl long enough to read it.

I just don't know.

In other news, a different uncle effectively called me a faggot tonight. Here that's like calling someone a liberal, only with more gender ambiguity. Certain friends have been calling me that for years, but with more playful affection.

Read the full thing here.