alive : miriku

so for the people who are not going to devin's party, and not going to LoJ, and not going the noise effects show in LA, there might be a shaolin show this friday, assuming that mark is not late arriving from the middle east as scheduled 2 hours before our set starts

i was just thinking my life needs some sort of a stress source.

question: is there a term for bands that are/were intentionally bad?

in metal bands like Anal Cunt or Bad Luck 13 end up getting called Noisecore or Grindcore, but that doesn't really capture that part of it, since there are quite a lot of other noise/grind bands that do take what they're doing seriously and try to be good at whatever it is they do, vs bands that exist only to record unlistenable music and start fights at shows.

links both above and below are all safe, they're live shows.

and it's not like that spirit doesn't exist in other genres and different time periods, guys like otto von schirach, shitmat, warlock pinchers, gg allin, white house, etc

it's something that seems to be pretty ingrained into the human experience, at least in modern western culture, and i'm surprised there isn't a more common word for it

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edit: funny, i couldn't think of a single hip hop act like that. it's like irony is a luxury of sorts...

if you swim through the sea and an eel bites your knee
that's a moray

if there's stripes on your suit, and your photo's minute
that's a moiré

if it's early in the night, and the guests just arrived
that's a soirée

if you're quite resolute, about pillaging loot
that's a foray

if his last name's dali, and he's raving crazy
that's salvadore

if your truck just arrived, and it's on the wrong side
that's a lorry

if your plant flowers in light, and they wilt come the night
that's morning glory

if it starred in lost boys, and has a line of bad toys
it's a corey

if it's a bowie cd, from seventy-three
that's hunky dory

if there's a cross in it's digs, and it's fighting the whigs
that's a tory

if it's prose written down, and comes across quite profound
that's a story

if this song's got you annoyed, and it wasn't enjoyed
then i'm sorry :P

so periodically the webmaster@scripps email account gets crazy people emailing in. it usually reads a bit like the timecube guy, but the ones we get tend to involve the environment in one way or another.

got one today, or at least it seemed so on first glance. the entire content of the email can be found here except my subject wasn't "DOW $15000" but "STEVE JOBS MUST DIE". and it totally smells hoax to me.

the whole thing reads to me like someone trying to create a new 'crazy-person' meme out of boredom. it's like it's designed to be mockable. mentions britney spears, misfits, and slash by name, the crazy hypothesis (white colors make you happy, black colors make you sad) is presented clearly and consistently, and he has his own youtube channel that he bothers to obfuscate from web spiders.

yes, it capitalizes random words, but most crazies understand capitalizing as 'shouting', this guy capitalizes the way a person would use bold text: to accentuate the key concepts. and then there's the modern day pop culture references.

i guess it's possible that it's real and that technology is entering our communal consciousness to such a degree that even the ranting-in-the-street types will have youtube channels, but i guess i don't think we quite got there at the moment. dunno. post your opinion on real/fake in comments if you have one.

i'm not sure why the thought that it's possibly fake bothers me, or why the authenticity affects the value of this so much to me.

also, i'm personally annoyed he's copping my "no caps at sentence start" stylistic.

EDIT: hurrr i maybe should link the actual website

i mentioned that what worked in poland in forcing a political change was a general strike, and iranian opposition is now organizing something similar: they're trying to shut down the swap meets where people buy food by having "protesters" show up and overcrowd them. protesters are told to not wear green or carry any signs, just show up and not buy anything.

learn something here, america. when you protested the election results, it was pretty useless. if you had shut down all freeways in major cities with protesters, then you might have seen something happen.

also, as a math literate person, i'm sorta offended by how little effort the ruling regime put into faking the vote results.

twitter apparently is not enough characters to make clear what i meant, judging by the number of "huh?" comments, so here's an LJ post.

i'm really disheartened by the "solidarity with iran" stuff with twitter, but not for the obvious reasons.

human beings get the same sense of accomplishment from thinking they've done something as from actually doing it. in celebrating this sort of 'activism', we are effectively giving ourselves a little chemical dose of "hey, i did something important and good today", which resolves our need to actually do something important and good.

remember how we yelled about bush putting people into "free speech zones"? guess what, we just made our own one and we're happily sticking to it. it's an exclusive club for the geekiest of the geeky of the technologically hypermassive cultures. in keeping our protests on internet in general, and twitter in specifc we can be assured that all our friends can see us being politically active, but it won't even interfere with our lunch plans, much less work.

and more importantly, that anyone who might be annoyed by this protest, can filter it with a few keystrokes.

and no, i don't believe twitter will be some sort of a gateway into political action. i don't buy that. yes, i realize some people used it to help bring awareness to their marches/protests, but those people were already in that lifestyle and best as i can tell, all of 0 people on my friends lists who have green icons actually attended one. apologies if i'm wrong about that, and i'm not specifically looking at my friends, but speaking in general.

in fact, i think the opposite is true. in spreading the notion that these exclusive e-protests make an impact, we are progressively removing the public from the public government process. if we get it all out of our system with a few petitions, chain letters, and maybe a flamewar or two with someone who pretends to be a death-to-america muslim on some forum, then we won't do anything else.

it's a logical step in the "everyone is a broadcaster" direction that we're heading towards as a culture, but it's a negative one. we all broadcast our rage, everyone ignores it with their filters, nothing changes. pre-web2.0 you at least had to yell at a building in order to convince them to broadcast your viewpoint. it might be undemocratic and make us feel less powerful, but it actually forces us to chant at the tv station.

by 'empowering' people promising them the ability to make social change easily ("every blog's a newspaper!"), we're effectively disempowering them from the political process.

brandon asked me why i was so against this when poland itself had its government changed by protests, and my reply is: it wasn't just the protests in poland, it was the labor strike. people walked out of work in order to force the government to act, risking livelihoods and lives to do so.

if the american public was setting up a labor strike in order to force obama to act? well ok then. i might agree, i might disagree (based on the 'if america involves itself it will strengthen ahmadinejad' theory), but i will absolutely admit that you are showing the power of the people to effect change in government policy. you are making an impact from the grassroots up, and that's an accomplishment no matter how you look at it.

but changing your icon color green with a click? well, i guess it's the least you can do.

really, it's the least you can do.

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tangently, i hear that the 'set your timezone to tehran' thing does help cause it makes them read more to try and filter out the real people, so go ahead on that one. that's at least technologically sound.

spent 9 minutes not working in order to make a unicode goomba:

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prints inverse colors in most browsers for some reason. it looks fine on my terminal

edit: apparently my the width of a unicode square is font dependent. who knew. it will probably not be a neat box on your computer.

it's supposed to look like this:

alright world, let's do this.

Poll #1414655 hanzegretel
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

best/worst named Hanzel Und Gretyl song

so theme for x-sang party this year is zombies. i don't do zombies. even less than pirates.

so brainstorming time:

zombie hipstero?

no chance, bedwetting types

headcrab zombie?

better cause geeky. still too zombie

zombie hunter?

i'll pass. there'll be 12 of them

jesus?

too cheesy. there'll be 6 of those at least

lazarus?

unless you're carrying a tomb around, no one will get it. pass.

(incidentally, this was a first page result in google images for "lazarus". nsfw. internet ftw i guess)

that girl from cranberries?

chance of ANYONE getting that: 1%. pass. and i'd have to cut my hair

bela lugosi?

not this close to twilight.

bela lugosi's dad?
(no picture available)
not without a pic (accuracy uber alles!). also, you'd have to be serious 80s goth to get that.

whampire?

maybe. it'd be an excuse to grow a george micheals beard.

fainting goat?

stretching the zombie concept a bit there

zamboni?

PERFECT! other than it'd be impossible to move in a giant box with fake wheels. still, it probably would be funny to do "oh ZOMbie.. i thought you said..." for the whole night

david carradine?

topical and tasteless. come back to this one

a-team?

cons: completely not zombie. pros: awesome. sure why not.
hey, do 3 other people want to go in on an a-team setup?
dibs on murdock.

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my lj-etiquette. let me not show you it.

3 favorite screenshots from sam&max hit the road:

3
link for those with fixed sized css themes


2
link for those with fixed sized css themes


1
link for those with fixed sized css themes


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i'm your friends page, breaking your friends page layout

things i've learned. a short one this edition:
- the most important skill in life is being able to delay gratification.
- our brains are wired wrong, they will calculate incorrectly when personal risk is at stake.
- our brains are wired wrong, they will calculate incorrectly when fairness is involved.
- our brains are wired wrong, they will judge incorrectly when our tribe is involved.
- if you need to say "i don't care what you think" then you care what they think. if you didn't care you wouldn't even have consciously heard them, much less said anything.
- the difference between those who accomplish things, and those who want to but never will, is that group two waits infinitely for perfect conditions and one more piece of equipment before they start. group one, on the other hand, will improvise with anything they have on hand in order to experience whatever it is they want.
- when you're doing what you really want to be doing, there is no particular sensation of pleasure or joy, the only thing that it can be recognized by is a lack of awareness of time.
and on a lighter note
- cats can't taste sugar, they're only attracted to fat in foods.

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the 'difference' point above is why i never bought an expensive camera. if i was really a photographer, i'd have been constantly shooting with the tiny one i have, and i'm not. it's not like having a fancy one would change that

japan apparently banned rape-simulation games. the main newspost that everyone is copy pasting about it mentioned a video game called "Gang raped by the entire village ~young girls covered in milky liquid~", that got remade as "Trap set by an entire village ~bodies covered in milky liquid~" to fit regulations.

i totally thought that was a joke. like ha ha cliche name of an utterly preposterous game name, would never happen. then i googled it.

welp, here's the press release announcing the name change: http://www.syrup-soft.jp/top/machi/owabi.html

and here's the utterly NSFW game site website: http://www.syrup-soft.jp/top/machi/machi_index.html

can't guarantee 100% that that's what the press release says, but i do see 少 which means 'young' and 女 which means female, in the "before" title, but not in the "after" title (タイトル is 'taitoru' which is the japanese way of saying the english 'title'). so it looks legit to me.

by the process of elimination on the two titles, this leads to conclude that 姦 means rape, which creepily enough looks like a big fat 'woman' on top of two smaller 'woman's. let me post that bigger so it's more obvious:
girl: 女, rape: 姦

huh

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if you stopped scrolling only because you just saw "girl" and "rape" in huge letters above, you're a bad person. read the post though, it's interesting AND i can say with some certainty that i'll be the first person to talk to you about the above insight.

if you already read the entire above, i have a special prize for you: hand made unicode conceptual rape art:
女
女女

enjoy

dorian has alerted me to the existence of the attack hellbird of ucsd.

this is a photo of the hellbird of ucsd.

and this being our times, here's the twitter feed, and here's the facebook group.

a cruel avian air-terrorist in my own place of employ? warrants investigation, bien sur. what follows are the results of my own lunch-hour long bit of national geographic-like sleuthing

first, some history. ucsd was partially designed in the 60s, during the height of vietnam war protests. the designers had goal here: make protests as hard as architecturally possible. to this end, there are no large open easily accessible places at ucsd. the officially sanctioned 'protest zone', the price center, was designed to have confusing winding entrances across multiple levels. turns out this was mostly unfounded, the school could not possible have been more boring and uninterested in anything but cheating on their next biochembio midterm.

nevertheless as the campus grew, the bizarrely shaped, confined price center didn't, cause it couldn't. neither did the windy thin walkways in, causing ever growing crowds to walk ever slower in a confined, unroofed area. a perfect setting for the hell bird.

hell bird lives and preys on one of those price center entrances, a narrow path next to a (tacky) fountain/waterfall thing, at the center of this google map. see the diagonal heading up and to the right, covered by trees? that's the hellbird dominion.

hell bird takes up residence in a tree then scans. he spends his entire time looking around for a perfect victim, constantly moving around to judge distance. he also bides his time, taking up to a good 5 minutes between attacks.

the victim profile is very open, with one connecting thread. hell bird doesn't appear to care about age, gender, race, or hair style, only that the victim be unaware of it. anyone who looked at hell bird seemed to be safe, and all attacks occurred after the victim has already walked past, and was walking away from hell bird.

the attack itself is simple: hell bird swoops in, and pecks the victim once, before flying away and hiding. hell bird sometimes misses, and whooshes past the near-victim. in those cases, there is sometimes a follow up attack immediately after, sometimes not.

mind you, a lot of people seem to be aware of hellbird. people would run by, or hold their bags over their heads. they were all spared.

i brought my lunch to the grass part at the side of price center, put slayer on the iphone, and had myself a 1 person picnic. a bunch of people seem to be in on it as well cause hell bird had a cheering squad out further back on library walk, plus a few others besides me in quiet audience. gonna have to say that was the most fun i had over lunch in a while.

finally, iphone pic of hellbird taken by yours untruly, at no small risk to life xor limb

i told you, american christianity is not about christianity, it's about troglodytic social values.

unless you honestly expect me to believe jesus would have shot someone in the head.

i have a hard time listening to a bunch of new metal because the obsession with compressors.

quick detour for the non-sound engineers: a compressor in audio is a tool that makes volume consistent. the idea is that sometimes as we record, some moments are too quiet, others too loud. you can go through and fix all of these by hand, or you can run a math equation on the file that will turn up the quiet parts and turn down the loud parts. this is obviously not inherently a bad thing as it leads to music that better represents the human listening experience vs the human recording experience, ie it hides the flaws inherent to the microphone process.

high-compression has a second effect: it gives a strong feeling of power. the sound feels much more like a wall that's slamming into you, which makes it extremely appealing to metal bands. this wouldn't be a problem if not for the third effect: as you keep increasing compression, the 'space' between your loud parts and quiet parts keeps shrinking, until it's hard to tell what's going on.

of course, it wouldn't be fair without some examples, so let's pick 2 songs by the same band:
(you only need to listen to about 10 seconds from each, preferably switching between the two a few times)
children of bodom - towards dead end (1997)
children of bodom - hellhounds on my trail (2009)

the second one "feels" louder. it's not, it just feels that way. that's the point. but also note that at 3 seconds in, when only the right guitar is playing, you can't even make out his picking. the drums are also just a wall with a snare sprinkled throughout. compare it to the first song, that one has all instruments much easier to pick out, and drums that sound like drums, but feels more distant and dated.

mind you, this is not exactly a new gripe for audio people, this has been a complain since compression started as a concept since all compression destroys a tiny bit of clarity, it's just very in-your-face for me at the moment, as i've been listening to a lot of abstract ambient stuff and i'm currently bothered by difficult it is for musicians in other genres to just shut the hell up for a few minutes and paint with the negative space

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surrealistic mood indicator:

religious moral values: amazingly identical to small town hatreds and prejudices, no matter what region you happen to live in.

a lot of atheists get the cause wrong: it's not religion that's the problem, it's small town values.

so at the show we said we'd play a song that "sounds like wumpscut". and then we got informed we're about to hit curfew and didn't have enough time.

i felt bad about that and so here's the song in question:
the shaolin signal - sliver of fakes

it's really just the opening that sounds like wumpscut

saw this pic, thought it needed a caption:
link

art is like religion. despite us believing that we're uniquely and perfectly matched to the one we like, it's actually a product of our birthplace and birthtime.

your religion is not related to your personality. there isn't some world market where we go and say
"hm, i don't like pork, i like the idea of heaven, i like my ancestors, but i'm not crazy about lent. what have you got for me?"
"sounds either buddhist or protestant to me, how do you feel about eternal damnation for non-believers?"
etc

no, your religion can be pretty well predicted by two questions: "where were you born?", and "in what century?". it's fairly arbitrary. and religions that end up in a bad place or time? gone. it's not like there is some objective standard to saying "welp, islam is clearly superior to baal-worship, let's go ahead and upgrade".

your definition of art is also not related to your personality, not to the degree we think it is. i'm always amazed how so many self-proclaimed individualist artists end up doing the exact same thing as the people around them, since it's not like there's a workd market where we go and say
"hm, i dont like absurdism, but i like human figures, small canvases, though i'm not crazy about accuracy in the human proportions. what have you got for me?"
"sounds like mannerist or fauvist to me. tell me, how do you feel about bright colors?"
etc

no, your style of art can be pretty well predicted by two questions: "where were you born?", and "in what century?". it's fairly arbitrary. and art styles that end up in a bad place or time? gone. it's not like there is some objective standard saying "welp, early rennaissance is clearly superior to late gothic, let's go ahead and upgrade"
"how do we upgrade a cathedral?" "i dont even know, this is just a weird analogy"

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admittedly the art side of the analogy falls apart a bit in the modern era. it's spot on through like 1900 though.

point of the laboured story? don't trust anyone who's found the one true meaning of art, or the one true religion. they're just a product of their context, it's all the same, just humans finding ways to pass the time.