“Populuxe Skyscrapers”

“Populuxe Skyscrapers”, a track slated to be on the next Transvaal IV album, is now online. In contrast to my last track uploaded (a four second blurb of another track, “Dead Signal”), this track is actually the finished mix/arrangement presented in its entirety.

So could this be an indication that the next album (titled Vanden) is almost complete?

No.

In fact, with the exception of this track (which is technically a remixed version of a Postcards From Zurich outtake dating back to almost two years ago) and another demo that was given to Demi-Sec Quietus, everything recorded for the album has been scrapped.

Chalk it up to perfectionism I guess.

Eventually LP#2 or EP#6 will be released, and odds are this song will be on it (it’s too good to not see a proper release). In the meantime, enjoy the little bit I have to offer.

<3

“You are not other people…”

One thing to always remember; you are not other people. Their problems aren’t yours. You have your own shit to deal with. It’s not fair to yourself to compare your problems to the deep shit others go through.

Hell, if we’d all compare our ’simple’ problems with, for example, that Fritzl girl who was locked up by her father in the basement for 24 years, raped and birthed 7 of his children, while her mother thought she’d disappeared off to some cult, most of us wouldn’t have a problem what so ever in comparison. But is it fair to degrade our own problems just because others have bigger ones?

No. Because you’re not living their lives. You’re living your own. They have their shit to deal with, and you have yours. It’s noble to think like that, but the bad thing about humbleness is that it’s destructive when taken to the extreme where you don’t allow yourself to be bothered by your everyday problems just because there are people dying out there..

It’s constructive to care about others. It’s ultimately destructive to care more about others than yourself, however respectable it may be.

Allow yourself some breathing space, take the liberty to be bothered by your problems, no matter how trivial they may seem to you in the grand scope of things. I’m sure if those people with ‘huge’ problems had that luxury, they’d take it with both hands. The suffering of the world is not your burden to bear. We are all assigned our own crosses, some smaller, some bigger.

Don’t trivialize your own problems. It doesn’t help others and it doesnt help you.

-Marcel

I myself have fallen victim to this line of thought countless times.  Given the events of the past two days, these words are something worth remembering right now.

“Redheaded Slut”

“We will be arriving at Dallas/Ft. Worth at approximately 8:30pm, one hour from now,” informs the captain. “There is some mild fog, but otherwise it should be a balmy 85 degrees. In the meantime, complimentary beverage service will resume until landing.”
I recline my seat slightly to help take the pressure off of my back, adjust the volume of my iPod, and tuck my left arm in slightly so the beverage cart won’t slam into my elbow. If I’m going to be stuck in a plane for several hours, I may as well make myself as comfortable as possible, regardless of how unlikely it is that this will actually happen.
The woman in the window seat to my right, who had spent much of the past hour with her nose in an old book (some arcane volume by some pre-Renaissance thinker I’m completely unfamiliar with according to gold lettering on the spine), does not notice my visible discomfort or my attempts to not feel like a sardine.
I’m still trying to get comfortable when the steward pushes the beverage cart into my elbow. Thinking that he’s saying something, I remove my headphones.

“-did not see your elbow there,” he says, clearly embarrassed.
“Are you ok?”

“I’ll live,” I say.

“What can I get for you?”

“Can I get a redheaded slut?”

“I’m…sorry. I’m afraid we don’t have the liquor on board for that.”

“I wasn’t asking for the drink,” I mutter to myself before ordering a ginger ale.

“Ok. And for you ma’am?” the steward asks my fellow passenger. She lifts her gaze from her book and orders ice water.
“How’s the book?” I ask, attempting again to make conversation with her for the third time.
“It’s fairly interesting,” she says absent-mindedly as she returns to the page she left off on.
I try to place where her vaguely European accent is from, but conclude that I have no idea where it’s from and that, given her general disregard towards my gestures, I probably won’t find out. Instead, I put my headphones back on and listen to Hayley Williams sing about how we’re broken and that that’s what I get when I let my heart win while I watch the ice melt in her untouched drink.
The fasten seatbelts sign comes on sometime later. Behind Ms. Williams singing how we should be more than this, I hear the faint murmuring of the captain over the intercom. I remove the headphones.
“-the increasing fog we are unable to land the plane on schedule. We will maintain a holding pattern over Dallas/Ft. Worth until the fog lets up. Thank you for your patience.”

“Do you have a connecting flight?” I ask my fellow passenger.
No response.
I sigh and sink back into my chair. Before I have a chance to get frustrated by this turn of events, it occurs to me that I have no idea what I will be doing once the plane lands.

Imperial Bedrooms

Here’s a tantalizing literary morsel for…well, myself mostly.

Bret Easton Ellis is a fairly infamous novelist. His first novel, cult-classic Less Than Zero, was published when he was only 21 (and later adapted into a terrible movie starring Christian Slater), and his controversial third novel, American Psycho, was banned by most booksellers because of the graphic violence and misogynist attitudes of the main character (the 2000 film starring Christian Bale faced similar controversy).

He is also one of my favorite writers, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Less Than Zero is one of my favorite novels.

I bring this up because Ellis has been stating in interviews that his next novel, Imperial Bedrooms, will be a sequel to Less Than Zero that will depict the novel’s characters at middle age in the present day.

Color me excited.

A few words on the Rock Band franchise

I’ve made no secret over the years that <I>Guitar Hero</I> has never impressed me.  While there are some complaints I have towards the game mechanics itself, most of my dislike comes from the fact that the majority of the music that soundtracks those games is music I would never listen to outside of that game (honestly, have you ever seen me listen to SRV or Aerosmith on my own accord?).

<I>Rock Band</I>, however, is a game I would for sure be owning had I a next-gen system (especially since you can now buy the prepherials seperately).

Why?

For one, singing and/or pretending to play drums is something I’ve always found more entertaining than playing with a plastic guitar.  More importantly though, <I>Rock Band</I>  has a more diverse selection of material to choose from, and that most of it is songs I would actually listen to or, in several cases, already own in some form or fashion.  It also doesn’t hurt that every song is based on the master recordings (no crappy cover versions with altered guitar parts!)

I bring all of this up now because the tracklist to <I>Rock Band 2</I> has been published.  Here’s what’s going to be on the game:

AC/DC: “Let There Be Rock”
AFI: “Girl’s Gone Grey”
Alanis Morissette: “You Oughta Know”
Alice in Chains: “Man in the Box”
Allman Brothers: “Ramblin’ Man”
Avenged Sevenfold: “Almost Easy”
Bad Company: “Shooting Star”
Beastie Boys: “So Whatcha Want”
Beck: “E-Pro”
Bikini Kill: “Rebel Girl”
Billy Idol: “White Wedding Pt. I”
Blondie: “One Way or Another”
Bob Dylan: “Tangled Up in Blue”
Bon Jovi: “Livin’ on a Prayer”
Cheap Trick: “Hello There”
Devo: “Uncontrollable Urge”
Dinosaur Jr.: “Feel the Pain”
Disturbed: “Down with the Sickness”
Dream Theater: “Panic Attack”
Duran Duran: “Hungry Like the Wolf”
Elvis Costello: “Pump It Up”
Fleetwood Mac: “Go Your Own Way”
Foo Fighters: “Everlong”
Guns N’ Roses: “Shackler’s Revenge”
Interpol: “PDA”
Jane’s Addiction: “Mountain Song”
Jethro Tull: “Aqualung”
Jimmy Eat World: “The Middle”
Joan Jett: “Bad Reputation”
Journey: “Anyway You Want It”
Judas Priest: “Painkiller”
Kansas: “Carry On Wayward Son”
L7:  “Pretend We’re Dead”
Lacuna Coil: “Our Truth”
Linkin Park: “One Step Closer”
Lit: “My Own Worst Enemy”
Lush: “De-Luxe”
Mastodon: “Colony of Birchmen”
Megadeth: “Peace Sells”
Metallica: “Battery”
Mighty Mighty Bosstones: “Where’d You Go”
Modest Mouse: “Float On”
Motorhead: “Ace of Spades”
Nirvana: “Drain You”
Norman Greenbaum: “Spirit in the Sky”
Panic at the Disco: “Nine in the Afternoon”
Paramore: “That’s What You Get”
Pearl Jam: “Alive”
Presidents of the USA: “Lump”
Rage Against the Machine:”Testify”
Ratt: “Round & Round”
Red Hot Chili Peppers : “Give It Away”
Rise Against: “Give It All”
Rush: “The Trees”
Silversun Pickups: “Lazy Eye”
Smashing Pumpkins: “Today”
Social Distortion: “I Was Wrong”
Sonic Youth: “Teen Age Riot”
Soundgarden: “Spoonman”
Squeeze: “Cool for Cats”
Steely Dan: “Bodhitsattva”
Steve Miller Band: “Rock’n Me”
Survivor: “Eye of the Tiger”
System of a Down: “Chop Suey”
Talking Heads: “Psycho Killer”
Tenacious D: “Master Exploder”
Testament: “Souls of Black”
The Donnas: “New Kid in School”
The Go-Go’s: “We Got the Beat”
The Grateful Dead: “Alabama Getaway”
The Guess Who: “American Woman”
The Muffs: “Kids in America”
The Offspring: “Come Out & Play (Keep ‘em Separated)”
The Replacements: “Alex Chilton”
The Who: “Pinball Wizard”

Based on the tone of this rant, I’m sure you can figure out what my opinion of this new installment will be, as this set more or less follows the same formula as the previous game (some current hits, some classic rock, some vintage alternative).  I was, however, legitimately surprised by several of the inclusions for this game, such as:

Bikini Kill: “Rebel Girl”
Aside from the fact that this band, who were the poster girls for the riot grrl movement (Sex Pistols meets radical feminism for those of you not familiar) when they were active, were never that popular to begin with, they’re on the Kill Rock Stars label.  This was the label that refused to sell a member of Soundgarden a shirt at Lollapalooza because he was in Soundgarden!

Don’t get me wrong, I like this band (I own the album this song was on), but this was the LAST band I was expecting to see.

Lush: “De-Luxe”
In a way, Lush were the most popular shoegazer band in the US.  They were, after all, the only band out of the entire movement to have a song played on American radio.  However, that particular song was released after the band had more or less abandoned the genre and started aping Britpop bands like Elastica.  More to the point though, the song I’m talking about was called “Ladykillers”, not “De-Luxe” (which was released several years beforehand).

I never held out any hopes of seeing any first wave shoegazer music in a videogame like this, and if I did, I would’ve put my money on either My Bloody Valentine (the critical darlings) or Ride (who actually had hit songs).

Sonic Youth: “Teen Age Riot”
I’m not surprised to see SY on here (they were on the previous installment after all).  I am surprised, however, to see a song that clocks in a over seven minutes on this list.

The Replacements: “Alex Chilton”
This was one of the inclusions that pleased me the most.  For one, it’s a great song by a great band that is, assuming you aren’t a indie snob or a music critic, ridiculously underrated (in spite of the fact that so many ’90s alterna-pop bands ripped off this band mercilessly).  Besides the fact that this game is giving exposure to a deserving band that many might not have heard of otherwise, I like how the makers of the game are not simply going for the most popular/obvious song (“Alex Chilton” may have been a great single, but “Bastards of Young” was their most popular, if only for its controversial video/SNL performance), which I guess is why all of the songs I’ve mentioned have surprised me.

So who wants to start a band?

Good Morning America!

Stumbling downstairs with a mild case of gut rot, I find my father watching An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s Powerpoint presentation about how the planet is melting.

After cooking up some waffles and chopping some melon for breakfast, I sit down and read the newspaper, which is currently in a panic over record oil prices and the potential collapse of “Fannie and Freddie” (two of the biggest mortgage companies in the country) and how severe the consequences would be on the nation’s economy.

Meanwhile, Wall-E, a film starring a trash compactor assigned to clean up the planet (which has devolved into a glorified landfill incapable of supporting organic life, is one of the biggest movies in the country.

Good Morning America indeed.

“Nice shoes. Wanna…?”

Earlier this week at work I was picking up everything off the floor in the shoe department. Save for a small pile of Converse at the end of the last aisle, I have the whole department picked up. As I go over to pick them up, a girl who couldn’t have been older than sixteen comes around the corner and says that they were hers. She smiled at me, then slowly bent down to pick up the shoes.

Normally this would be a fairly innocuous occurance that I probably wouldn’t even remember now (much less feel the need to share online). However, there are two details that make this a story worth telling. The first is that she was staring at me almost the entire time.

The second was that she was very aware of the fact that the low cut, loose fitting shirt she wore with nothing underneath left nothing to the imagination when she bent over.

“So what do you think?” she asked as after she took her time picking up the shoes.

“Two things. First, I can imagine this is what it feels like to watch a porn flick, only to find out that it stars your little sister. Second, what do I think of what? THERE’S NOTHING THERE.”

At least that’s what I would’ve said if I wasn’t speechless from embarassment.

Polaroids and Fire Safety

Originally uploaded by initheque.

This is what happens when you microwave a polaroid on high for three seconds immediately after exposure. If it looked like the photo burst into flames, well…that’s because it did. Those black dots near the center are actually holes where the emulsion completely burned off.

Retrospectively, seeing a flaming polaroid in the microwave is kind of amusing, but honestly I was more concerned about not ruining the microwave and setting the kitchen on fire. The flames must’ve been a good four inches high.

Plus it took over an hour to get that chemical smell out of the house.

Layout Change

Yeah, after a year and a half of the Cutline layout, I thought it was time for a change.

As per usual, I’ve replaced the stock photo with one of mine (though this one doesn’t have the distinction of being shot in the Swiss Alps).

So yeah….

Jon Arbuckle is a sorry sack of shit

Some people are afraid of things like spiders, bugs, and flying.

I’m afraid of the possibility of growing up to be Jon Arbuckle.

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.

Garfield Minus Garfield