God's away on business

a song that has totally grabbed me by the shrivelled testicle i keep in my leisure suit pocket is 'Soulsuck' by 'FBCFabric & Reindeer' released by Buttercuts, available from them (awesome material cd cover) or online download from Beathut. it's a fucking great album and 'Soulsuck' has got the best lyrics i've heard in a long long time. classic line "if God had a fast car and big tits we'd all buy in" and "if you drive this car you will get laid along with this style of beer but remember to not drink and drive or smoke..." (i stole the blog title from them also). it's so long since i've heard a meaningful lyric that didn't reek of insincerity. i guess i'm getting past it. i bought all the P.E. cd's the day they came out (from "It takes a nation of millions to hold us back" onward) and i still think Ice Cube's "The Predator" cd is awesome.

i could rant at this stage about 'the plight and/or blight of modern music' but obviously (to me) music is a mirror of society as much as any artform is. (stereotyping here) the vacuous nature of present musical trends mirrors perfectly the state of western civilisation (in the most part). we don't really have any beliefs anymore, nor needs. we've covered 'em all. of course if you're homeless or a minority you don't count, we can't fucking see you anymore. plus you can't vote in the most part so your pariah status gets upgraded for free (sorry, no frequent flyer points. your card was made redundant when our company merged with that company and all our current stock options and benefits were replaced with 1/2 shares in a landmine/chemical plant that unfortunately exploded, killing 2.5 million locals. luckily they were indigenous so we can forget 'em. the shares of course are now worthless. if you have any issue with your present financial strife, take time to reflect on the poor directors who had to retire to a small private island each, somewhere in the carribbean).

maybe it's just the 'getting old' thing that makes me dislike the majority of modern releases but fuck-me, how much shite can hit the charts. even the charts are more suspect than ever thanks to the favoured trend of labels to spend a fortune buying their own releases to keep the latest 'king or queen of whatever' alive for another two weeks. the only reason they do this is it works. they keep some nimrod in the charts and most people buy into it and go buy the fucking single/record/dvd/vhs/minidisc/laserdisc/whatever. it seems every second week the next 'saviour' of music appears in a flurry of press and expensive video-clips, only to vanish and be replaced 3 days later. no substance, exactly how people seem to like it. not that pop-music should always (or ever?) be filled with substance but it would be nice for a few to even pretend. please ignore my ramble and in the words (kinda) of Bill Hicks, "ignore thought and enjoy your hair".

one a bighter note, here's our pet cat bonnie.

also, here's a page i did for a friend of mine rusty who had a b.a.s.e. jumping accident. he's ok now and living in vanuatu with his olds. having a friend in a coma is a pretty fucking horrible thing. feeling so impotent at being able to do nuthing for him or his family, all the while wondering if he'll come out of it. but he's back with us, fit and healthy. awesome.

quote for the day:
"without music, life would be a mistake"
- Friedrich Nietzsche

balls to the wall

read this Wired News article: 'Cisco Security Hole a Whopper' for what seems like a man with the balls to do what's right. it's inspiring to read, hear or see someone who has the balls to bust-up their own comfort zone for something they believe in. i really hope the guy gets picked up by a decent company next although the nature of business means that he simply may not be trusted by most-if not all-others.

(new info relating to the above story: 'Whistle-Blower Faces FBI Probe' 1 August 2005)

while i'm sending you (i say you, but obviously i'm talking to nobody except myself on this friggin blog and i've already seen the article. exercise in pointlessness right there.) to Wired News, check this story about a 17 year old games whiz who just happens to be blind! awesome. it certainly makes we wonder at the incredible talents some so-called handicapped people have, i mean Beethoven composed some truely incredible pieces of music yet went deaf half way through his career! man, i'm apparently completely physically-able and all i can do is be average at Xbox and first-rate and saying a lot about nuthin'! oh well, no point complaining. there's no one to hear it, expecially on this blog!

it's been a slow day in my life and as i meet with two friends every thursday for coffee and a chat, my vitriol has been drained clean away. then again the day is young. still, the whole reason i started a blog was to force myself to write something, anything, everyday and hopefully learn how to write again. if all things go to plan i'll have a literate, correctly spelled and gramatised point of view sometime mid 2009. that being said, i'll still be writing for an audience of two (my girlfriend Myra feels obligated to read this crap). anyways, another source of 'learning to write' info i am enjoying the Chuck Palahnuik writing essays. the website membership is reasonably priced in my mind but i'm a bit ofa freak about his books i guess.

is there anybody out there...

well Penguin have done it this time. To celebrate their 70th anniversary they've released 70 'reduced' titles. that is, small sample (approx 60 page) stories or papers from authors, giving you a feel for the author. awesome idea and really great cover design, i love 'em! the set is about A$200 so until i win lotto (or xmas time) i'm just buying a few.


i read Noam Chomsky's 'Doctrines and Visions' last night. really good stuff, although that's no surprise if you know of the man. on the first page he quotes Ernst Mayr's comments regarding the likelyhood of higher intelligence elsewhere in the galaxy. when talking about Earth "Mayr estimated the number of species since the origin of life at about 50 billion, only one of which 'achieved the kind of intelligence needed to establish a civilisation'..." (see note 1 here - PDF). I love it, as a family member years ago argued that if there was alien life then why hadn't it visited us. i viewed that considering we'd only got to the dirtball circle-working around our planet (once! and that may not even be true) then it was a tall order discrediting alien life on it's inability to reach light-speed. a friggin single-cell amoeba is life, and i'm not sure they can pilot space-faring vehicles yet! Chomsky then goes on to talk in some detail about civilisation and power in the US of A. a great quote here from Samuel Huntington, " the architects of power in the United States must create a force that can be felt but not seen...power remains strong when it remain in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate." (see note 11 here - PDF). methinks a few x-files fans / conspiracy nutjobs have read that little number a few thousand times.

quote for the day:
"Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself."
- Henry Miller (1891 - 1980)

today's gold

music
:: self-important knobjokey Steven Seagal has released a cd. obviously mankind has finally reached the end of the road. if you're really bored, read his spirtual interview, bad enough to make you cough up both lungs.
code
:: an awesome Flash/AS2 resource. Laco has a lot to offer in regard to tweening prototypes based around Penner's tweening classes.
culture (sort of)
:: classic. The ipod flea.
film
:: i saw Bubba Ho-Tep last night. not bad but not great. i love Bruce Campbell but the film was simply too slow in it's directing and editing (in my insignificant opinion).
people
:: the hits just keep on coming for OJ Simpson (deservedly), he's been fined for ripping off cable. gold. i guess we'll be reading about him peddling his ass to pay the rent sooner or later.

today's gold

art
:: wicked painter Joe Sorren which i first saw work of on the first Tweaker album 'The attraction to all things uncertain'.
code
:: an opensource javascript library called Rico.
film
:: early release trailer for the johnny cash movie.
game
:: a friggin time waster here based on the Halo 'puma*'.

*see 'Red vs. Blue' to the right.

for all the tools

if anyone apart from myself ever reads this crap, the name of my blog comes from 'Hush' on Tool's 'Opiate' disc. i'm a huge fan of their work. my favourite comment from Maynard about the band is "Tool is a verb, not a noun" which is an attitude i appreciate.

i was talking music with some friends the other day and raised the point about Tool using the Fibonacci math sequence to plan patterns for some of the 'Lateralus' album - read here. It was pretty funny, as the guys i was with immediately went into a rant about tool using this to "unleash the beast". weird, but a lot of people think of tool as some heavy, satanist band or some such. i guess if you rate Belle and Sebastian as anything but cockless drivel you might lump any band that uses a double-kick bass drum pedal as demonic followers.

funny, but if anything i would class the music as being closer to 'christian rock' than death - bare with me on this one (and i'm not a bible basher). sure their music is heavy(ish) and they use naughty words from time to time but almost all their lyrics are positive ones and many are highly spiritual to boot. tracks that are more popular such as 'Sober' and 'Prison Sex' may seem dark but they are all stories of progressing through nasty experiences and elevating beyond. unfortunately many people seem to miss the tongue-in-cheek nature of Maynard James Keenan's darker sense of humour. as i understand it, he grew up a baptist which would account for the humor (insert "reverand lovejoy' from the simpsons here - i love the baptist church's as they almost always have a sign out the front with some bent comment or affirmation).

still, i can understand why some don't like Tool although the view that it's 'prog-rock' and that it had it's day during the 70's is a strange one. especially coming from the mouths of people who like Jet, The Vines & any other average 70's-80's rock knock-off band that swagger around these days as though they have invented some new musical movement (they do what they do well, it's simply not particularly original is all i'm saying).

continuing the positive angle, A Perfect Circle's (Maynard's other band) cover album eMOTIVe certainly had a comment to make about the current world situation without soapboxing. their version of Marvin Gaye's "what's going on" simply blows me away.

one of my favourite Tool songs:

Lateralus: The Patient (track 3)

A groan of tedium escapes me,
Startling the fearful.
Is this a test? It has to be,
Otherwise I can't go on.
Draining patience, drain vitality.
This paranoid, paralyzed vampire act's a little old.

But I'm still right here
Giving blood, keeping faith
And I'm still right here.

Wait it out,
Gonna wait it out,
Be patient (wait it out).

If there were no rewards to reap,
No loving embrace to see me through
This tedious path I've chosen here,
I certainly would've walked away by now.
Gonna wait it out.

If there were no desire to heal
The damaged and broken met along
This tedious path I've chosen here
I certainly would've walked away by now.

And I still may ... (sigh) ... I still may.

Be patient.
I must keep reminding myself of this.

And if there were no rewards to reap,
No loving embrace to see me through
This tedious path I've chosen here,
I certainly would've walked away by now.
And I still may.

Gonna wait it out.

links:
:: Tool
:: A Perfect Circle
:: Maynard James Keenan

quote for the day:
"I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood."
- George Carlin

graphic design whinge: zero-one

desktop publishing / graphic design / whatever you want to call it can be funny at times. everyone is so confused over technology and what it can or can't do that common sense just seems to go sailing out the closest window. there are some fairly odd requests from time to time, as though they are just making this stuff up. usually, the 'professional' is going to know more than the client (hopefully) yet when you try to point out the impossibility of their request you get hit with the "do you know what you're doing?" question. two classics i've been hit with lately.

1. alterations to full colour jobs, written on a colour printout or printed piece, faxed through.

genius. the first practical fax was created in 1902 (history of the fax machine) yet people still struggle with the concept. newsflash to any future genius, the fax is black and white. no colour, no grey, no magic layers or talking. black and white. that's it.

ball-point pen writing on a colour photo comes through as a massive black square. i found the point even more highlighted by a 44 page brochure being faxed through one day. 44 pages of almost solid black. it made it most of the way before the toner ran out.

2. altering photos.

yes i'm aware of something called photoshop but wow, some tools really think magic happens (people apart from those social-sputum bumper sticker ownners i mean). imagine this: a photo of several items next to each other, a few are sitting behind the others. the request, "we want to move those two at the front and bring one from behind to the front". far out. yet when you say that you can't do it and you'll have to reshoot the whole "don't you guys have photoshop?" raises it's ugly head. the cloning tool in photoshop only goes so far! you can 'clone' but not suddenly invent stuff. the cartoon below covers it beautifully:


Click on the image to see one you can read without suffering a migrane. He's got more great work here: Greystone Inn.

quote for the day:
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."
Robert A. Heinlein (1907 - 1988)

reality tv and other myths.

man i hate so-called 'reality tv'. a no-content, no value, cheap vehicle to make massive advertising revenue. still, people should be allowed to like what they like, i guess. even so, i love well written stick-giving: net dating is a painful reality.

quote for the day:
"You know those Germans; if you don't join the party,
they come get you."
- Peter Griffin

and it starts...

i've always thought blogs were a funny thing. people posting their rants to public domain under the illusion that their opinion means anything. in the words of Dennis Leary, "what sort of arsehole thinks anyone else gives a shit?" well, i sure don't think anyone gives a shit but hey, if some 42 year old nancyboy (wearing their mothers underware while rubbing their nipples with a frozen chook) in the middle of some backwater shithole can post their in-depth views on every star wars film, then i can post complete shite for my amusement.

quote for the day:
"...I'm not a girl, I'm a guy you know? But at the same time, I tell ya how you can solve this abortion issue right now. Ready? Those unwanted babies that single moms leave in alleys and in dumpsters? Leave about 12 of those on the steps of The Supreme Court. This is over. Like that. "You guys said we had to have them? Then you guys...FUCKING RAISE 'EM." "Raise 'em then, you fucking fuckers raise 'em. YOU raise 'em. You said I had to have it? Then it's yours. Fuck. It's yours..Take it"..."
- Bill Hicks (1961-1994)