| Fuck me. I guess I get to go to uni, then. Woah. | ||||||
| Nov. 4th, 2009 | 07:02 pm | ||||||
HOLY SHIT. HOLY SHIT. HOLY SHIT. This is probably the best thing that's ever happened to me. That's the next three years of my life sorted, then. Yee! |
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Choke | |||||
![[mood icon]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v119/Crimson_Moon/K9%20Moodtheme/happy.gif){kind=small}
jubilant
| Also, those horned helmets are massively historically innacurate. | ||||||
| Nov. 4th, 2009 | 12:58 am | ||||||
The people who lived in Scandinavia between one and three thousand years ago, who did a bit of raiding around the Northumberland coast and worshipped Odin, Týr, and Thor? NOT. VIKINGS. Well. Some of 'em were Vikings. That is because Viking was a job description. It more or less meant "far-farer" - i.e. a travelling, sea-faring warrior/pirate/raider/killing-people-who-a The correct word is, if you need a unified word for the many disparate and often terminally argumentative groups of people who populated - broadly - that area at - broadly - that time and worshipped - broadly - those gods and partook - broadly - in those activities would be Norsemen. Okay? |
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Choke | |||||
![[mood icon]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v119/Crimson_Moon/K9%20Moodtheme/scared.gif){kind=small}
nit-picky| Also his name has too many variables for Wikipedia's liking. | ||||||
| Nov. 3rd, 2009 | 09:49 pm | ||||||
John Harvey Kellogg was a Seventh Day Adventist who believed that masturbation was the greatest vice and sickness known to man, and advocated the blandest imaginable diet to "cure" it. According to him, sensible treatments also included applying pure carbolic acid to the clitoris, and electrocuting the penis. By the way, he also believed in twice-daily yoghurt-and-water enemas to keep the intestine "squeaky clean". So why is the Kellogg corporation proud of this guy, exactly? He did have a rather excellent moustache, though. |
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Choke | |||||
| But I want to rage against the patriachy! | ||||||
| Nov. 3rd, 2009 | 12:02 am | ||||||
 feminist_rage keep rejecting me for membership. IDK why but it makes me quite sad. Am I not a feminist now? Do I have to present my "not a jackass" card? :c
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Choke | |||||
![[mood icon]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v119/Crimson_Moon/K9%20Moodtheme/sad.gif){kind=small}
sad| LIVING DEAD...pumpkin. Um. | ||||||
| Nov. 1st, 2009 | 05:09 pm | ||||||
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Choke | |||||
![[mood icon]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v119/Crimson_Moon/K9%20Moodtheme/accomplished.gif){kind=small}
accomplished| I know it's fashionable to be an extremist in metal, but this is fucking stupid. | ||||||
| Nov. 1st, 2009 | 04:50 pm | ||||||
Candlelight gives them money. Proof. Scroll down to under the credits, and in the notes section there's a line proudly proclaiming "Candlelight supports PETA". Also this, also this. These aren't from "the bad old days" - this is all within the last four years. I've made a list of bands I'm into who are either signed to Candlelight or use them as an international distribution service (there's a lot of those - some labels, such as Reprise, use Candlelight for all their American distribution). It's a pretty fucking long list. Eighty-seven albums I'd consider buying, or (in some cases) really want to buy or (in a couple of cases) already have, but now can't get because I'd be giving money to a terrorist organisation. What the fuck. What the fuck. The bands, by the way, include BAL-FUCKING-SAGOTH (not signed, thankfully, but The Chthonic Chronicles was released in the USA on Candlelight, without the band's knowledge or permission), Emperor, Opeth, Insomnium, Gorgoroth, and Ensiferum. This makes me very sad. I can only hope the bands involved are just ignorant of Candlelight's policy, rather than actually supporting it. |
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Choke | |||||
![[mood icon]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v119/Crimson_Moon/K9%20Moodtheme/angry.gif){kind=small}
angry| Electricity is a mysterious and creepy thing. | ||||||
| Oct. 24th, 2009 | 01:24 am | ||||||
But it's just turned on! Without me touching the switch! WHAT THE HELL. D= |
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Choke | |||||
![[mood icon]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v119/Crimson_Moon/K9%20Moodtheme/confused.gif){kind=small}
confused| And I still didn't look as cool as Obama | ||||||
| Oct. 23rd, 2009 | 03:19 pm | ||||||
Ewew. :c |
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Choke | |||||
![[mood icon]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v119/Crimson_Moon/K9%20Moodtheme/sick.gif){kind=small}
icky| And the thing is, free immigration is GOOD for the country. | ||||||
| Oct. 23rd, 2009 | 12:59 pm | ||||||
Turns out, Griffin's father never fought in WWII - he fitted radios to Spitfires. Also, having a parent who was drafted into the military =/= not being a Nazi. An image to keep in mind, whenever Griffin claims that he's "not a Nazi" and to have "no links to fascist organisation":  In other news: someone at the Co-op is clearly a True Blood fan. They were playing the theme tune over the PA when I was in there earlier. XD |
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Choke | |||||
![[mood icon]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v119/Crimson_Moon/K9%20Moodtheme/hungry.gif){kind=small}
hungry| Multiculturalism, my arse. | ||||||
| Oct. 19th, 2009 | 08:42 pm | ||||||
What I've never been exposed to the kind of things that the two people doing this documentary have been - they're both British Muslims, posing as a married couple who have just moved into an area of Bristol known for high levels of racist violence. They walk the streets to see people's reactions - she wears a headscarf and conservative clothes, he sometimes wears a taqiyah - and the level of abuse they encounter is...beyond appalling. They get verbally abused, bricks, cans, and stones thrown at them, they get threatened with serious violence, and the guy actually get punched in the head. There are constant taunts of "Paki", "jihad", "terrorist"...the level of hatred shown by the white people in those areas (read: everyone, because racial diversity is hardly a byword of the place) is astonishing. Maybe it's because I'm used to Nottingham, which (in the nice bits, anyway) is diverse and relatively welcoming and at least less racist than many other places, but I didn't realise that this kind of behaviour was still around, at least in England, and not in the kind of concentration that I've just seen. I'm sure that makes me seem dreadfully naive. Perhaps I am. Until now, I thought people who voted for the BNP did so because they were taken in by their rhetoric about jobs and benefits and all that nonsense - not because they honestly hated people of colour. Apparently, I was wrong. They really are that full of pointless, poisonous hatred. I was shocked when the BNP got their people elected. I'm not shocked now. I'm fucking furious. |
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Choke | |||||
| I DO COCAINE | ||||||
| Oct. 18th, 2009 | 04:45 pm | ||||||
"No, we didn't agree nothing. We just all yelled and then he was beaten, that was our conclusion." That is maybe the story of the last two weeks for me. Just with fewer clowns. Sent off my UCAS form. Eeee. >.< Seeing Bellowhead tonight. Eeee! =D |
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Choke | |||||
![[mood icon]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v119/Crimson_Moon/K9%20Moodtheme/awake.gif){kind=small}
awake| He's being quite poetic, though. | ||||||
| Oct. 16th, 2009 | 10:50 pm | ||||||
I'm not sure what to think of this. |
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Choke | |||||
| Pumpkins! (Are gross but fun.) | ||||||
| Oct. 15th, 2009 | 11:37 pm | ||||||
Happy Jack!  Creepy Jack!  Otis!  These were pretty fun to make. Gutting pumpkins is really, really disgusting, though, and they smell vile. I am still amazed that Americans consider the pumpkin to be an edible object. As far as I am concerned, it is the least edible member of the squash family, a set of foodstuffs I am in any case very much not fond of. I don't seem to be able to get the smell out of my hands, which is pretty gross. Living in a courtyard of priests + creepy pumpkins = FUN TIMES around the corner, methinks. I think it'd be better if we had the weird breeder family over the way instead of the CRAZY TALKATIVE but quite nice new people, but whatev. I bet the Dean will freak out. Bwahahaha~ My final thought for tonight is that everyone should listen to Metsatöll, and someone should buy me a kantele and some bagpipes. And preferably an accordion, too, because I played one for the first time today (and left my bag in the shop FFFFFFF but thankfully it didn't get nicked) and liked it VERY MUCHLY. If I have some job money saved up by Christmas I may get one~ |
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Choke | |||||
![[mood icon]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v119/Crimson_Moon/K9%20Moodtheme/exhausted.gif){kind=small}
tired| I've got a pink sparkly unicorn in "my world." PROVE ME WRONG. | ||||||
| Oct. 15th, 2009 | 11:27 pm | ||||||
Actually, it's going to be a pretty short rant, because I'm quite tired and would like to sleep at some point. Also I smell of pumpkin (more on that later.) Here is an amusing video for your enjoyment. Bollocks. You might see things differently to other people but that doesn't change what the world is and is not. There is one world, material and testable and empirical, and whilst we may experience it in different ways because of our different backgrounds, opinions, and levels of intelligence and knowledge (amongst other things), that doesn't change the world itself. The only way we can really learn about the world is through empirical, rational testing of it, because that is the only way to find out anything concrete. There's no reason to believe anything that can't be proved (beyond reasonable doubt) through empirical enquiry, because what you can tell about the world without the scientific method is biased and flawed. The scientific method, applied correctly, is neither of these things. So no, apologists, it's not okay to have a god in "your world." There is no "your world". And, frankly, there is no god. Empirical world, empirical statement, lack of empirical proof. I'm sure most of that didn't make any sense to anyone but me, but fuck it. ANGRY GOD STUFF AT NEARLY MIDNIGHT RARR. |
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|
Choke | |||||
| Woop woop well done fellow pinko-Commie liberal Guardian-reader! | ||||||
| Oct. 13th, 2009 | 11:58 pm | ||||||
Ahem. I KID, I KID. Damned if I know why Littledick won an award, though. I'm more of the inclination that he should be disqualified from the human race, if anything. |
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Choke | |||||
| Tumman virran taa! | ||||||
| Oct. 8th, 2009 | 12:05 am | ||||||
Tracedawn are sweet but have some growing up to do. Metsatöll rock out with their...bagpipes out. Ensiferum are gods in kilts. That is all. I leave you with a picture of the Metsatöll frontman, Markus "Rabapagan" Teeäär, and his very impressive facial hair. |
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Choke | |||||
![[mood icon]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v119/Crimson_Moon/K9%20Moodtheme/silly.gif){kind=small}
giddy| I stand behind my "self-aggrandizing, martyr-complexing twat" comment, though. | ||||||
| Sep. 29th, 2009 | 10:38 pm | ||||||
Euuurgh. I'm not even going to link to the page he posted, because it's just...vile, stupid, hateful spiel, as we've come to expect from Varg. But for fuck's sake, I'd kind of hoped my friend had more sense than that. |
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Choke | |||||
| If I could expose people who try to be "edgy" to this, Clockwork Orange-style, I would. | ||||||
| Sep. 28th, 2009 | 08:57 pm | ||||||
"As it's commonly used, "PC" is a deliberately imprecise expression (just try finding or writing a terse, precise definition) because its objective isn't to communicate a substantive idea, but simply to sneer and snivel about the linguistic and cultural burdens of treating all people with the respect and sensitivity with which they wish to be treated." This. Just...this. |
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Choke | |||||
![[mood icon]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v119/Crimson_Moon/K9%20Moodtheme/relaxed.gif){kind=small}
mellow| I feel all abandoned and lost | ||||||
| Sep. 24th, 2009 | 09:34 pm | ||||||
It's not that I'm complaining - all stories have to end, and it's not like the artists/writers aren't going on to other things (certainly, K. Sandra Fuhr and John Allison, of Friendly Hostility and Scary Go Round respectively, started new comics immediately after their previous ones finished - Other People's Business and Bad Machinery - both of which feature characters from the previous comics in secondary roles, which makes me happy.) It's only that webcomics are, pathetically, one of the most constant things in my life (you only have to look at my Webcomics Pimping List to see how many of them I read) and comics like Friendly Hostility and Yu+me - which, I think, are the first two I started reading, way back when - are actually pretty important to me, in a weird way. I invest a lot of emotion in them, because, unlike a book or a film, they're a very long-term involvement. A film lasts two hours, a book maybe a week, but a webcomic can last over a decade, with the same core cast of characters. I suppose it's like a soap opera, just...less awful. And without the horror of bad acting. But you see my point; Fox and Collin, Lia and Fiona, Otra and Winter have been a part of my life for something like five years, and letting go of them is quite hard. I can only imagine how hard it must be for their creators. Of course, the solution to this would be to get a goddamn life. But this seems an unlikely thing to happen. |
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|
Choke | |||||
| Why does he bother? IDGI. | ||||||
| Sep. 21st, 2009 | 09:10 pm | ||||||
Every time I watch it he doesn't just leave the room; he stays there to make disparaging comments about how "he's just making a funny face!" Now that's a level of loathing I may never achieve. |
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|
1 fatality//Choke | |||||
| Fffffff I hate my family. | ||||||
| Sep. 18th, 2009 | 10:18 pm | ||||||
I do not get on with my grandparents. My grandmother is sitting next to me, making little "hmph" noises every three seconds or so. What the fuck, can she not breathe without making noise? I'm trying to watch television, for fuck's sake. =| Gods forbid I get old if this is what'll happen to me. |
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|
Choke | |||||
| Yllä harmaan korven korpit laulaa | ||||||
| Sep. 13th, 2009 | 12:52 pm | ||||||
No, what this is is a complaint. Not about the album - I have no complaints about the album. My complaint is about the way the media (er, I say "media", I mean like two magazines and a few websites) have treated the last album, 2007's Victory Songs. I love Victory Songs. I actually think it's probably Ensiferum's best album (though the new one may have taken that title. I'm not sure yet.) I think the scope, execution, and concept of the album and songs is fantastic. The non-metal instruments are well-integrated, the lyrics are actually meaningful and at some times even poetic, and there's a good balance between headbanging kickassery and more sensitive melodic content. I fucking love that album. Apparently, this is not a view shared by the musical establishment. Or, rather, it was, but is no longer. I can't remember (or find on the internet) how ZT and Terrorizer reviewed it but judging from everyone else's reaction of the time it was probably pretty good, if not entirely rave. Metal Hammer (*spit spit*) gave it 8/10, AllMusic gave it 4/5...that's a general indication of its reception. Positive with a few reservations. Now, however...in the interview with Ensiferum in the most recent (#188) issue of Terrorizer, it's described as "a whimper" (as opposed to a bang, I guess). This is a view I'm seeing a lot in reviews of From Afar. It's as if, in the view of an outstanding new album, the merely very good older one has been kicked in the balls and relegated to the corner. The hell? It's not really the first time this has happened, either. I don't disagree with Kyle of Metal Reviews when he calls Iron "One of the best folk metal albums of all time in my opinion" - a view that's echoed in many halls, since Jason of the same site gave it 96/100 and it's standing at 88% from 11 reviews at the Encyclopaedia Metallum - but it's generally used as a benchmark by which to judge all subsequent Ensiferum releases. The problem is, those comparisons inevitably wind up as "Iron was fantastic, ergo [insert release here] is shite." By the looks of it, this is what's happening now, retrospectively, in light of From Afar. Bollocks. Iron was great. From Afar is great. But you know what? So was Victory Songs, so (to a slightly lesser extent) was Dragonheads, so was Ensiferum. Lest they turn into a Europop group, Ensiferum are unlikely to release a bad record. So can we please stop retonning our opinions of past albums to give the illusion of balance? |
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|
Choke | |||||
| I'm looking at a picture of a dog pissing on an angel's Converse and thinking of you | ||||||
| Sep. 9th, 2009 | 11:56 am | ||||||
Turns out, not so much. It finished on fucking Sunday. We so nearly went on Friday. Fuck fuck fuck. That aside, we actually had a really good time. Derby's Westfield shopping centre is - for something in Derby, anyway - surprisingly cushy, with video screens everywhere and touch-screen information points and shiny shiny floors. It's a pretty good place to spend the better part of a day, especially since it's probably bigger than the Victoria Centre and the Broadmarsh put together. I found out that Ana's mother (and by extension, Ana herself) likes CocoRosie (HAPPY JOY I've never before found anyone who's even heard of them), we ate the sourest candy ever - as documented here (Maya's reaction) and here (mine) - did some shopping, played a lot of Pokémon (BITCH THAT'S MY FLAG no hold on MOVE YOU'RE IN THE WAY wait wait AHAHAHAH YOU FELL IN A HOOOOOLE) and generally made the place our own. Turns out the bus we got into Derby (the indigo, which takes maybe an hour and twenty minutes) was...not the fastest route. We got the Red Arrow back, which took, er, maybe twenty-five minutes. Oops. My bad. Chris and Guy's 19th birthday party tonight. I can't be bothered to go - it'll just be a piss-up, of course - but it's fancy dress, with points for "hilarity, sexiness, and originality", so Maya's going as, er, a flasher. We went to Backlash and she got a big overcoat and a belt, and she's going to wear sexy underwear underneath. I think that'll be quite excellent. XD I've been so...I'm not even sure, actually. Recently, I've been feeling kind of bored but unsure how to alleviate that boredom, kind of wanting to do something practical but then deciding not to, iconing and giving up half-way through...I need to find something to do that's not just watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The other new thing is I'm going on a hydration binge. Well, not a binge, more of a "lifestyle change" (I sound like the Fat Man) in that I'm trying to drink two litres of water a day (plus my usual can or two of Diet Coke and morning glass of orange juice) in the hope that all those promises they make about improved skin and health and mental clarity might have a grain of truth in them. It's probably too early to tell, but I don't fell all that better. And I think my skin's gotten worse over the past couple of weeks. Huh. Oh, but, in health-related good news: I've gone down a jeans size. I'm now one size above the national average. Woop woop. I'm not going to hype that up too much - actually, there's a whole blog post to be made about my attitude towards weight and weight loss, but it's a separate, politics-skewed post that I'll not make yet - but I am quite pleased. And also slightly confused because I've not done any exercise in ages and I've not noticed any real diet change. Maybe I'm just eating a little less? I've gotten an account at Shelfari, too. It seems like a useful, pretty-in-a-digital-way method of keeping track of my books and so on. And of guilting myself into reading some of the books that have been sitting on my bed-side table for a couple of years. Knowing me, I'll forget about it/get sick of it in a month or two (cf. Twitter, the Kill Everyone Project, voice-recognition software), but it's nice in the interim. In other book-related news, I got Wet Moon 5 yesterday, totally adored it, screamed at the cliffhanger and also shrieked at the CocoRosie poster in Audrey's bedroom. It's the Noah's Ark album, too, which is my favourite! Everyone should listen to that album, especially Bear Hides and Buffalo and South 2nd (apologies for the weird video, just minimise the window and listen, the song's hearbreaking.) I'm not sure if I've got much more to say at the moment. The weather's been really strange recently - it was so cold over the weekend that I needed a hot water bottle at night, but then it was scorching yesterday and I think it's hot today, too, judging from the blue sky and bright sun outside. I'm not sure if I like this. The weather seems to have moodswings on a par with mine. Also, I'm not sure if I want to do Bach Choir this term. Not only are all the works in English - and I know it's stupid but I deeply hate singing sacred music in English, because if it's in Latin or German or whatever I can kind of ignore the words, but it's almost physically painful to me to spout the kind of awful words that crop up in the libretto for a lot of cantatas - but the music's also pretty terrible. The Vaughn-Williams "Five Mystical Songs" is lovely because Vaughn-Williams is always lovely, and I don't know the Parry "Bles't pair of The thing that really bugs me is that if I tell my parents that I don't want to sing it because I can't stand the religion in the text, I'll be laughed at. If I converted to a non-Christian religion - if I became a proper Muslim or Hindu or whatever - they'd probably accept it, after a while, but because I'm an atheist my objection to religion is somehow less valid than it would be if I was just objecting to one religion because of the faith I'd chosen. Some of the sentiments in sacred music are horrifying - have you listened to some of the Psalms recently? - and I feel really...sick and wrong and uncomfortable singing them, but whenever I try to explain this I just get mocked. The underlying fear, for me, is that I won't be able to escape this. All opera singers have to work the oratorio circuit, it's how it works - it's the only way you can support yourself because opera productions are few and far between. So what am I going to do? I can't just avoid all oratorios and cantatas in English, I'd go bankrupt. But I just can't bring myself to promote the vile lies in sacred music. What am I going to do? |
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|
1 fatality//Choke | |||||
| To rid myself of the taint of conservative news sources... | ||||||
| Sep. 3rd, 2009 | 11:45 pm | ||||||
IDGI. |
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|
Choke | |||||
| As if this is even news | ||||||
| Sep. 3rd, 2009 | 11:31 pm | ||||||
This is what patriarchy does to people. This is what humanity does to people. I think I want to throw up. |
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|
Choke | |||||
| SO OKAY | ||||||
| Aug. 31st, 2009 | 03:30 pm | ||||||
*winning smile* I'm not going to bother writing up Bloodstock, because - da da-da daaa! - Lorn and I are talking about it on the first edition of our upcoming podcast, details to follow when we're less lazy. Eheheheh. In any case, saves me writing a stupidly long post here. I'm home alone right now - parents are in Liverpool Saturday - Tuesday, which is very agreeable. I've been watching Buffy, eating cookie dough icecream, and doing Tredoku. This is also what I'll do for five years as a student. WOOP WOOP. I've been correcting the observations made about Britain in Buffy. Eheheh. By shouting at the screen. Um. IT'S MATHS NOT MATH FFS AS IN MATHEMATICS ARE YOU SOME SPECIAL KIND OF STUPID. Yeah, so. Um. What else has happened in the past three weeks? Umm. IDK. I have discovered that there's basically no dignified way to finish eating a Magnum. You know when you've eaten most of it, and you've just got that kind of shelf of chocolate at the bottom with some icecream on top? How do you eat that? If you eat the chocolate bit the icecream'll fall off, but it's hard to eat the icecream because you basically end up deepthroating the stick. OH, THE DILEMMA. This must be how Obama feels in the situation room. I'd really forgotten how much I love Buffy. The show, not the character. Every time a character I recognise makes a first appearance I'm like YEEEE JONATHAN/SPIKE/DRUSILLA/OZ YEEEE. I'm glad no-one's home, frankly, because they'd probably have had me sectioned by now. I'd not blame 'em. I've been getting quite a lot of reading done, which is nice. I've finished off Susan Jacoby's "The Age of American Unreason," which was actually very interesting. I didn't agree with everything she said - I do think that videogames and the internet constitute culture, and I'm pretty sure "liking dead Greeks who thought about stuff" doesn't automatically translate to "being smart and educated." I'm reasonably fond of several dead thinky-Greeks but I don't think they're the be all and end all of intellect or culture. I'm not really of a mood to write a proper response to the book right now - and what I just said makes it sound as if I enjoyed it far less than I actually did, because aside from maybe the last chapter I agreed with everything she wrote and enjoyed the way she wrote it. In any case, it's an excellent book, and totally worth reading. Therefore, buy! I'll stop here, for fear of this turning into one of those distressingly frequent stream-of-consciousness catch-up posts. I'll leave you with my enduring unease at the fact that we have Waitrose baked beans in our cupboard. I'm not sure why we've got a more expensive, horrendously upper-middle-class, and yet inferior-tasting product rather than our standard but it's a little creepy. It's not like Heinz is unavailable all of a sudden? |
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|
Choke | |||||
| Summer holiday, motherfuckers | ||||||
| Aug. 12th, 2009 | 07:00 pm | ||||||
*collapses* I've been thinking about how to approach this blog post - quick lowdown? Long, in-depth decision? Throw-away non-explanatory statement? I'm far too tired/busy/lazy to do the second, the third is fundamentally unhelpful and a little perverse, so I suspect that leaves us with option number one. I was fecking terrified beforehand, but I really shouldn't have been. It was an incredible experience, everyone was really nice, I learnt a huge amount from the staff - who were brilliant - it was totally exhausting (fourteen hour days oh my god) but I am absolutely going back next year. I made a load of new friends - who I've now added on Facebook because I am a pathetic fucking nerd with no life outside the internet - which is awesome, because I was really worried that I'd not be able to relate to anyone there or something. I had this weird idea that they'd all be freakish child geniuses but actually I was in the top third, maybe quarter, of ability there (and in the top half of the age range, which was also good) which was really comforting. I like being above the half-way mark, which is why I'll never join Mensa, haha. So yeah. In brief - amazing, amazing, fucking amazing. However, I have now nearly lost my voice. Also, I have a waterbottle that makes weird noises. For y'all who want to check it out, the website's pretty good. |
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|
2 fatalities//Choke | |||||
| "And I'm not just saying that because I want my coat back." | ||||||
| Jul. 31st, 2009 | 10:22 am | ||||||
Basically all I have to say is more eloquently expressed in this five-star review, though the reviewer neglects to mention the utter awfulness of the Casken piece. It was, as far as I could tell, essentially random notes. As if someone had taken the early stages of a monkeys-and-typewriters experiment and applied the principle to music. But the point must be made that a) the conductor made it absolutely the best collection of random notes it could have been and b) the Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky more than made up for the Casken's failings. The finale of the Stravinsky, in particular, sent shivers down my spine. The fact, however, that the name of the antagonist in The Firebird is Koschei, which was also the Master's true name when he was on Gallifrey, makes me want to write a Doctor/Master story based on the myth. (Doctor as Ivan, Master as Koschei - duh - various companions as the Princesses, either Romana or Jack as the pretty one, and probably an OC as the Firebird.) If only I could write. Ho hum. In other news, I'm increasingly worried about the Eton course, had a horrible bout of abdominal migraine this morning (which left me retching, crying, and nearly unconscious at various points) from which I am still recovering. But I am watching my West Wing DVDs, so I'm surprisingly happy. |
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|
1 fatality//Choke | |||||
| These titles are becoming more and more like xkcd alt text. | ||||||
| Jul. 29th, 2009 | 11:09 pm | ||||||
Came home to a good deal of post. Volume 2 of Preacher, my birthday present from Lorn - Ikigami volume 1, which is really good - and a couple of...other things. Woop woop. =D I also bought a shitload of books at Foyles, and found - Glory! Joy! Excitement! - a replacement pair of trainers. In fact, they're identical to my old trainers, which I've worn every day for two years. I thought they'd discontinued the line, but we found a pair in my size in a little shop in London, so that is Quite Excellent Indeed. The problem with Blyk going out of business - well, one of the many problems - is that I now have to find another network. I've been going through the major networks and I'm probably going to end up on 3, I think. They've got a good unlimited texts with topup offer that I like, and frankly the coverage here in North of fucking Nowhere is going to be shite no matter who I go with. I'm never going to get 3G coverage at home. :c Also there's a massive cathedral in the way. That doesn't help. I slammed my ankle into my bedframe while jumping onto my bed earlier. My ankle is now very hurty. :c Also we had a fucking adventure for lunch today. Actually, it felt less like an adventure and more like a miserable board meeting. We went to a restaurant that we've been to before (apparently. I don't remember this) which used to be owned by some big TV cook, and was supposedly quite good, back in the day. Him having left, however, it is now...not good. To be fair, being with my parents - or, at least, my father - made it significantly worse. It took them - well, him - five minutes to settle on a table, because one wasn't clean enough, one was under an air con vent, one was under a speaker...and so on and so on until he'd ruled out most of the tables in the place, by the process of sitting down, getting settled, then deciding he didn't like it and getting up again. We order drinks; they fuck up my mother's, but dad's not bothered about that nearly as much as the fact as his beer was at lager temperature, which is maybe 5°C lower than beer temperature. It's hardly the end of the world but that doesn't stop him spending ten minutes bitching about it just loud enough for the serving staff (who didn't even pull the fecking pint) to hear but quiet enough for it to be reasonably assumed that he's not directly talking to them. So, in any case, we order the food. And we wait. And we wait. And we wait. Three-quarters of an hour later, we tentatively ask (I say tentatively - "patronisingly" is more accurate, in the case of my father) where our food might be. "We'll check." Five minutes later, the poor waitress - whose hands were shaking the whole time we were there, which was a little disconcerting - comes back and says that the kitchen has lost our ticket. Lost. Our. Ticket. There were maybe four people in the entire restaurant other than us. It was not exactly hectic. The collective response amongst the three of us - and it's pretty rare that we have one - was "Fuck this shit," so we finished (and paid for, to be fair,) left, and went to the Little Chef down the road. It felt a little bit like a service station after a nuclear holocaust, but the food was prompt and actually extant, so we were happy. Aaaand then we came home to find out that car insurance firms are cunts, we can't use our no claims discount on the new car, and so we owe Direct Line an extra £900 on the insurance. Oh dear. |
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1 fatality//Choke | |||||
| Not that I'm mercenary at all. | ||||||
| Jul. 27th, 2009 | 09:20 pm | ||||||
Also, I have spent a disproportionate amount of my time today gardening. There's something pleasant about it, though I'm not sure why. I end up very muddy and with cold toes, but whatever. Maybe it's because I get to feel virtuous for going outside on occasion. And I do mean occasion. Also, I'm getting paid. That's an incentive. |
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Choke | |||||
![[mood icon]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v119/Crimson_Moon/K9%20Moodtheme/working.gif){kind=small}
alluvial| I better get something good in the post this morning to make up for all this | ||||||
| Jul. 27th, 2009 | 10:18 am | ||||||
I seem to have lost sound on Flash video, with no prompting. I get no audio on YouTube, the Escapist, even my ukulele tuner. This is what I believe is known as A Right Bugger. I spent two hours last night trying every fix I could find, from registry patching to uninstalling/reinstalling Flash to fiddling with my hardware settings, and...nothing. The bizarre thing is I can't think what caused it? The only possible thing could be PodProducer, a podcast producing software that I booted up today. It muted the system volume on all sliders and didn't unmute it when I closed the program, but I can't imagine that it would fuck with my Flash settings. I'll check their bug reports. The other shitty thing is that Blyk - my beloved mobile network - is shutting down its UK service. So I'm losing my £15 a month free credit. That's really shit. I don't want to have to use real money with my phone again. I don't HAVE money to spend on phone credit. I guess now I have the opportunity to shop around and find a really good PAYG deal, but...blegh. Money. And it also means I'll have to port my number over again, which I HATE because it is a MASSIVE fucking hassle, and took ages last time I did it. Urgh. D< Crappy way to wake up this morning. :c |
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Choke | |||||
| The worst part is my taste in music. Uuugh. | ||||||
| Jul. 26th, 2009 | 06:39 pm | ||||||
This is very, very embarrassing. But a little sweet, in a weird way - just read the first ever mention of Carri, before I even knew her name, when I gave her a pseudonym based on the sandals she wore on non-uniform day. Aww. Unfortunately, that's all drowned out by BAWWWW MY FRIENDS ARE SHIT AND BAWW I'M IN LOVE WITH ONE OF THEM AND BAWWW I THINK I'M DEPRESSED WHEREAS I'M ACTUALLY JUST THIRTEEN YEARS OLD. *cringe* |
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Choke | |||||
![[mood icon]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v119/Crimson_Moon/K9%20Moodtheme/embarressed.gif){kind=small}
mortified| Aaa | ||||||
| Jul. 26th, 2009 | 06:36 pm | ||||||
I can hear him four rooms away. Aaaaaaa. :c |
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Choke | |||||
| Domo-kun says RARR | ||||||
| Jul. 26th, 2009 | 06:08 pm | ||||||
I am, it turns out, covered in bug bites from yesterday, including one on my foot which kept waking me up overnight. Ugh. I also have a mole on my ankle that I think may have appeared a few weeks ago that I'm a little bit worried about. I'll keep an eye on it, I guess. I'm a little cancer-paranoid right now, since my mother's best friend has been diagnosed with it. Totally irrational, but there you go. I guess it's more at the forefront of my mind than usual. I caught my foot on one of the kitchen chairs and broke a toenail right down to the bed, which was really painful and looks pretty grody. It's going to snap off quite soon, I think, which is going to hurt like a bitch. Dammit. ROBIN BOUGHT ME A DOMO-KUN PLUSHIE FOR MY BIRTHDAY. He's really cute! He's also now the wallpaper on my phone. Hee~ A quick endorsement: Everyone (and I do mean everyone) should listen to the Little Atoms podcast. It's an Enlightenment-centric, British podcast about ideas, featuring guests such as Tim Minchin, Professor Noam Chomsky, David Aaronovitch, and Dr Simon Singh. It's really, really interesting, and a very good way to spend half an hour of your week. |
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Choke | |||||
![[mood icon]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v119/Crimson_Moon/K9%20Moodtheme/excited.gif){kind=small}
intrigued| We're here, we're queer, give us free bags and mousemats! | ||||||
| Jul. 25th, 2009 | 07:57 pm | ||||||
I now have a sparkly rainbow cowboy hat, which I wore in conjunction with my Stonewall shirt, and the Pride flag that becomes my ~*Rainbow Cape*~ when I transform into....DYKE-GIRL! :D Very much win. Had a lovely time in the Arb with Robin, Robin's ex-boyfriend Lewis, Lorn, Chris (briefly), John (who I have now met in the flesh! Hurrah!) and John's friends Cal (who's also Caitlin's boyfriend) and some other guy whose name I never did get. ALSO we bumped into Jameson - YAY - and Hannah, the nice girl I met at the Apocalyptica gig who liked Saint-Saëns and fangirled about Grieg with me. The weather was beautiful, the crowd was huge, and the event was great. Lots of free stuff, good food, good people. Plenty of people with the same shirt as me, which was pretty cool, actually, and a bunch of people I'd not really expect to see at a Pride event - clearly straight families, people in very conservative religious dress...it's awesome that people can get through those barriers and enjoy an inclusive event like this. Bring on next year! <3 |
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Choke | |||||
![[mood icon]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v119/Crimson_Moon/K9%20Moodtheme/giggly.gif){kind=small}
giggly| This is probably the most link-heavy blog post I've ever made | ||||||
| Jul. 25th, 2009 | 12:06 am | ||||||
Not that I think the campaign will do any good - like Russell T Davies has ever given a shit what the fans think - but, since all the money's going to Children In Need, it's at least a nice way to raise some money for charity. Couple of issues with the article, though: did they have to choose more or less the least flattering picture ever for the article? Could they not have used one of the Children of Earth or season two promo photos, rather than one of him having a breakdown in Cyberwoman? Also, the use of the word "baddies" to describe the 456 (which they misspelt, which is quite impressive with a number) may be accurate but it furthers the worryingly inaccurate perception of Torchwood as a children's show, which it most definitely is not. To get my opinion out of the way: I was fucking devastated when Ianto died, as he was more or less my favourite television character ever. I have been a part of the Torchwood fandom since a month before the show started airing (and a Doctor Who fan all my life), and as a queer rights/anti-defamation campaigner I was damn happy to see a queer relationship as not only the main relationship on a mainstream TV show but portrayed as something other than either completely heteronormative or miserably dysfunctional. With this death, one of the most visible and positive queer characters on television (who came in at number seven on AfterElton.com's list of the best queer Sci-Fi characters, with Jack as number one) has been dropped, as has one of the most visible and positive queer relationships. Not only was the death a blow for queer representation on TV, it was a cheap ploy for "drama" and "heartbreak" in a series that had quite enough of that, thank you, with two major characters dying at the end of the previous season (and I had plenty to say about that at the time) and the main character having to kill his own grandchild in the next episode. It was both unnecessary and exploitative and it pissed me off majorly. However, I accept that it's the writers' decision to make, not mine or any other fan's, and that caring about a fictional character to that extent is quite stupid. tl;dr: Ianto is dead, lots of people are sad about it, I am also sad and quite pissed off, but it's not going to change anything as he will stay dead because Uncle Rusty hates the people who have made him rich. |
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1 fatality//Choke | |||||
| And I could save you, baby, but it isn't worth my time... | ||||||
| Jul. 24th, 2009 | 11:26 am | ||||||
My Amanda Palmer book came. When I realised what the package was, when it dropped through my door, I started shaking. I'm still a little trembly. I've read the book. It is very beautiful. She is very beautiful. On a more materialistic and craven note, my cheques cleared, so I can now buy all the fripperies I've been wanting for a while. Like a Distorted View Sideshow membership, a new EHD, and membership to the Liberal Democrat party. Friendly Hostility, despite much terrifying foreshadowing, ended on a happy note. Fox and Collin are, as yet, not broken up. This makes me happier than, proportionately speaking, I should be. But I've been reading that comic for five years, it was the first webcomic I ever read, and it's a pretty strong connecting thread for me, so I'm very much emotionally invested in the characters. Sandra's new comic, Other People's Business, appears to have gotten off to a good start. I'm glad to know that some Friendly Hostility characters will be in the new comic as secondary characters, though. I'd miss them an awful lot if they were to disappear entirely. Last night was also good. Tim Minchin's live set on E4 was beautiful...he played "Not Perfect" and "You Grew on Me", so I was basically in tears. I can't wait until I see him this autumn. I kind of talked my way through an essay on webcomics last night, too. I might write it at some point. I've got the bare bones of a Loveless essay (on Names and Zeroes, mostly) in a Notepad file somewhere, so I'll finish that first. It's a matter of remembering to take all the manga downstairs with me so I can use it as reference. I hope rereading the important bits of the manga won't put paid to any of my theories. That'd be a fucker. Anyway, I must cease and desist - I've got to do my hair and makeup and so on, since I've a driving lesson in a couple of hours. Tootle pip. |
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2 fatalities//Choke | |||||
| A fucked up little try-hard wannabe rock n' roll nerd | ||||||
| Jul. 23rd, 2009 | 10:15 pm | ||||||
I approve. <3 |
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Choke | |||||
| Sleep deprivation makes everything look weird. | ||||||
| Jul. 22nd, 2009 | 09:35 pm | ||||||
- Watched all 25 hours of Red Dwarf, except for Season 6, which I feel asleep during, since it was at about four in the morning. - Accidentally hit Lorn's dog with a plate. No harm done. I think. - Ate cake. Mmm. - Was, in fact, served cake by Lauren's houseboy. - Ate nothing for twenty-four hours, then ate an entire pizza. - Got a new phone that is identical to my old phone which my mother destroyed by accident. - Cashed rather a lot of checques. - Was nearly killed by Becca for singing the Red Dwarf themesong after we'd heard it 52 times over the course of two days. - Had a surprising amount of fun. |
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2 fatalities//Choke | |||||
| Happy birthday to me, motherfuckers. | ||||||
| Jul. 21st, 2009 | 12:19 am | ||||||
Woah. I can now: - Watch 18-rated films (which I have been watching since I was about twelve) - Drink (I'm teetotal) - Smoke (I'm a singer and also don't want cancer) - Shag my teachers (...no) Woop woop, meaningless calendar event! :D |
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Choke | |||||
| This level of nerdiness must be unacceptable | ||||||
| Jul. 19th, 2009 | 11:58 pm | ||||||
I did a five-minute victory dance around my bedroom. I should probably kill myself now. |
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Choke | |||||
| Voitonlaulut soi ainiaaaaaaaaaan~ | ||||||
| Jul. 19th, 2009 | 04:08 pm | ||||||
I may do an Auditory Moose post about it at some point. I swear that was going to be a regular thing, you know. It ended up being a 2000-word dissertation on one Leviathan song about 18 months ago and then nothing since. Well, whatev, I'm lazy. Woo! Bloodstock draws ever closer. Yaaa~ |
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Choke | |||||
![[mood icon]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v119/Crimson_Moon/K9%20Moodtheme/energetic.gif){kind=small}
victorious
| Bloop bloop~ | ||||||
| Jul. 18th, 2009 | 11:50 pm | ||||||
I fear the washing machine won. Now my phone is making sad dying noises and acting rather like the flying robot in "Flubber" when she gets hit by a baseball bat. Just bought a replacement from eBay. It's chrome rather than black, but oh well. At least this one won't have a huge chip out of the screen from when I dropped it. And it'll be, y'know. Alive. |
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Choke | |||||
| Aaaaaaaa | ||||||
| Jul. 17th, 2009 | 09:17 pm | ||||||
Especially when they hide their number. And when there's party noises when I pick up the phone (shortly before slamming it down again. And then turning it off.) I'm such a coward. :c |
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Choke | |||||
| I have to get up in the morning, godammit | ||||||
| Jul. 17th, 2009 | 02:12 am | ||||||
Tried reading book of T.S. Eliot poems next to bed. Now thinking too much to sleep. Bollocks. |
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Choke | |||||
| New Bishop Blues | ||||||
| Jul. 17th, 2009 | 12:11 am | ||||||
To clarify: living as I do in a courtyard of priests, and with a father in church music, even though I'm an atheist I tend to care about the state of the Church of England. Our new bishop, in contrast to the old one who was kind of a jerk but kept his nose out of most things, is an evangelical, anti-gay, happy-clappy idiot. He wrote a letter to Michael Nazir-Ali supporting his campaign to send the Church back, essentially, to the Middle Ages - anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-divorce. I am not happy. |
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Choke | |||||
| On the other hand, my new bookshelf looks happy and populated now. | ||||||
| Jul. 16th, 2009 | 12:41 pm | ||||||
- A PAPERCUT ON MY FACE what the hell. - Spending an hour looking through photobooks instead of doing anything productive. - Spending an hour hugging pictures of King instead of doing anything productive. - Being very embarrassed by some of the books I own and had forgotten about. - Hurty arms. :c |
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Choke | |||||
| Is "Blatant Sexism" their new flavour or something? | ||||||
| Jul. 15th, 2009 | 10:39 pm | ||||||
My list of "Things to Boycott" keeps getting bigger and bigger. Which is a pisser because before this advert, McCoy's were my favourites. |
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Choke | |||||
| Ásatrú, metal, and the ugly spectres known as -isms | ||||||
| Jul. 15th, 2009 | 03:10 pm | ||||||
First, a quick ident, so you know where I'm coming from with this. I am Caucasian, of Norwegian and Danish descent (mostly), British, female-assigned and on the female side of genderqueer, lesbian, an atheist, involved in the Ásatrú movement, politically liberal, a feminist, a queer rights activist, a civil rights activist, and maybe the biggest extreme metal geek you'll ever meet. My particular corner of extreme metal, and certainly the place I spend most of my time in terms of forums and publications, is in the grimy nook of black metal, folk metal, Viking metal, and pagan metal. And pirate metal, but let's not get into that inevitable argument here. We all - and by "we" I mean "me and other extreme metal nerds" - know how black metal started, over twenty years ago. A group of upper-middle-class white teenagers from Norway (mostly) took a look at the conformist, moderate-Christian atmosphere they'd been brought up in and decided they needed to rebel. They took their cues from the darker end of the metal scene of the day - the heaviness of American thrash and speed, the lyrical themes of the NWOBHM, and the visual style (but not the dreadful glasses) of Venom. They made a conscious and sincere effort to reach for the most extreme, the most despised, and the most fearsome things they could emulate, because if you're going to rebel you should damn well do it properly. Amongst those extreme things were Satanism, Ásatrú, and - and this is the big one - National Socialism. Varg Vikernes and his cohorts (I must point out that I include Euronymous in their number, because being murdered didn't actually make him a nice person to begin with) found a monstrous ideology and put it on like a costume, because it scared people and made them feel important and powerful. In doing so, they also made some very, very good music (to my ears.) Other people heard that music - teenagers, young people, people - like me - who were thirteen or fourteen when they first heard harsh vocals and downtuned guitars, and had yet to develop the critical capacity to filter the messages they were being presented with. Teenagers, especially rebellious and non-mainstream ones, are massively idolatrous - at least, in my experience - and those who listened to Burzum, to Absurd, to Infernum, poured their admiration and respect onto the men at the forefront of those bands, men - and they were always men - who espoused the most vile, dangerous, and divisive ideologies the world has seen in a long time. I don't necessarily blame these teenagers, these children; I spent two years of my life parroting the sayings of Anton LaVey because I respected him and didn't yet know how to separate a man's creative work from his thoughts. I'm long past that now, but some of the black metal youth, those touched by the pollution that took hold of the genre, never moved on. Let us look, now, before I get too far ahead of myself, at religion. Religious discord, disharmony, and dissonance were major motivating forces for the Black Metal Inner Circle back in the day, and for those who work in the genre now. It began as an anti-Christian movement and, but for some Christian bands (generally known as "unblack"), has stayed true to its origins. The anti-Christianity took two paths, which have traded dominance at various points in the last two decades. First, Satanism. As an anti-Christian ideology it is, and was, the logical step: what better way to strike back against a hated religion than to align yourself with its direct adversary? Some bands stuck to LaVey, holding high their Satanic Bibles, whereas others went back to Crowley, or to earlier (purported) Satanists such as the Hellfire Club of the 18th century. All you need to do is look at black metal, past and present, to see the influence in the imagery - Baphomets, inverted crosses, naked women covered in blood, severed goat heads...it's a popular theme, to say the least. The pioneers of the genre largely subscribed to this avenue of anti-Christianity, at least at the beginning. What came later was Ásatrú. Ásatrú (those who subscribe to it are known as Ásatruar) is the worship of the Norse gods - Odin, Thor, Týr, and so on. It was, of course, the dominant religion of Scandinavia for about fifteen hundred years, between 500 BCE (once it had evolved from proto-Norse Germanic mythology) and 1000 CE, when the Norse people were forcibly converted to Christianity as part of the Danelaw. Black metal musicians who chose this route (many of whom had previously gone for Satanism and quickly retconned their past interests as "an artistic posture" or "an avatar for the All-Father") argued that the truer way to strike back at the Christian oppressor was to opt for the pre-Christian belief system of their land and ancestors. (As an atheist who nevertheless wears a Mjollnir pendant at all times, I can see where they're coming from.) There was never much of a clash of ideologies between Satanism and Ásatrú in black metal, or at least not a big enough one to warrant mentioning - the general understanding was that we're all against the Christians, so it doesn't matter that much whether you're fighting for Odin or for Satan. Either way, let's sever some heads. Unfortunately, the price of a lack of clash was that some assimilation occurred between the National Socialist Black Metal crowd, who were largely neutral on the Satanism-Ásatrú question, and the two differing factions. The assimilation took the form of a worrying trend that began to emerge perhaps a year before the murder of Euronymous - the conflating of a racist, sexist, and homophobic ideology with the teachings of Ásatrú. This simmered for a long time, edged along by the occasional mad dribbling by Vikernes (by then safely in his prison cell, from which he was released in May of this year) and similar. Vikernes' longest dribble took the form of a Mein Kampf-like volume, written in prison, entitled Vargsmål (-smål is an Old Norse word meaning "speech" or "treatise", so the title translates as "Varg's Speech".) This book (and I use the term loosely) solidified his oft-meandering and famously mercurial ideologies (he had, in the past, been a vocal member of various Nazi, white-supremacist, or similar groups, but generally not for very long - he invariably decried them after leaving, sometimes denying he had ever been involved in the first place) into a weighty slab of racist, perverse bullshit. The basic idea was thus: "The Norse race, to whose gods I hail, are superior to all others and destined to rule the Earth, because the All-Father decreed us strongest and wisest amongst the people of the world. Men, who hold the swords with which we will reclaim dominion over the land, are superior, and women must breed with them to produce pure-blood Aryan children. Homosexuality is abominable for no defined reason, but those who engage in it are to be put to death. I am the leader of this movement, and though the enemy holds me within his fortress I shall suffer for the betterment of my people." I think I've gotten the general tone more or less right. Mad, self-aggrandising, racist, sexist, homophobic, and generally monstrous. But it was too late for some people to realise just how far away from "reasonable" or "humane" Vikernes' views had gotten - they'd been touched (as I had, with notably different consequences) by the music, and more or less surrendered their critical capacities in the face of blind idolatry and obedience. Or, perhaps, they were just insecure teenagers who needed a group in which they could feel accepted and important. Either way, black metal changed. Not all of it, not by a long shot - some of the bands who had been there from more or less the start, bands like Gorgoroth and Satyricon, had never subscribed to that kind of ideology, and were never on Vikernes' side to begin with. But other bands, newer bands, American and British and German bands, saw Vikernes as a hero, or - worse - a martyr (never mind that he wasn't dead, in stark contrast to the people whose murders he was responsible for, both directly and indirectly.) But, nevertheless, in dark corners of my beloved genre, a rot set in. A rot that said "We are the white man, and we want racial purity." A rot that said "We are the strong man, and we want female subjugation." A rot that said "We are the straight man, and we want gay extinction." Time moved on. Come the year two thousand, and the rise of newer genres in the miasma we call metal - pagan metal, folk metal, Viking metal. Bands took up their swords in a more literal sense, not to chop anyone's head off, but to hold high in photoshoots. Vocals refined, cleared, became chants. Hair was left undyed, leather became brown armguards rather than black trousers, and my musical home was born. It started small - to be truthful, the concept of battle metal had been around since before Manowar, and folk metal had started with Skyclad some ten years previously, but the two had never really met in such a way - but it grew, and grew, and now, nearly a decade later, seems to be poised over the dourer side of metal with a big sword in one hand and an alehorn in the other. A joyous thing, surely? After a rough ten years of enforced misery and bad ideology the dominant force in metal was shifting to a group who were rather more aware of the distinction between fantasy and reality. The pioneers and sustaining forces of the genre - Ensiferum, Amon Amarth (not, in the genre sense, folk or Viking metal - closer to melodic death - but lyrically and visually basically the same), Týr - were neither extremists nor violent madmen, opting for alcohol over the blood of dissenters as their beverage of choice. Yes, a good thing. But the rot, steadily eating away at a few corners of black metal for ten years, had touched some of the more obscure members of this new genre, many of whom had spent their teenage years listening to just the kind of thing that this new move was hoped to change. They were by far in the minority, these clingers-on to the old ways, and they were a far smaller proportion of folk metallers than of black metallers at any time, but they existed. And the rot kept on going. So, today. The year 2009, nearly twenty years since the genesis of black metal, a decade or so since pagan metal first stuck its head above the parapet. Where are we? And why do I care in the first place? Where we are is something of an impasse. The racists, the sexists, the homophobes - the Nazis - are still there, griping and spitting and polluting a beautiful genre and an ancient mythology with their filth. Everyone knows this, no-one outside their group likes it, but there's nothing we can do. After all, we're a genre (a super-genre, I suppose) built on freedom of expression, freedom of speech, even for that which we find distasteful or horrifying. We try not to associate with them, and look with shame or sadness on the idols of our youths, who now, as middle-aged men, spew the same muck to an ever-dwindling audience. We learn that a band we liked (and this happens rather a lot, in a genre in which it's more or less impossible to hear any of the lyrics) have, all along, been promoting white supremacy, and we feel sick. We treasure people like Satyr, Gaahl, and Tom G Warrior, because they were there in the beginning and are still with us and never fell to the same madness as some of the others. Certainly, Gaahl is a good example of how an Ásatruar black metaller can avoid being a Nazi - he severed all links with those like Varg Vikernes a long time ago, and is now possibly the only openly gay black metal musician to have achieved any semblance of success. Ásatrú as a faith has been...less fortunate. There's a moderate core - those of us who honour our ancestors and their ways, and who have taken their gods as our own, but acknowledge that there are some aspects of an Iron Age war-based society that don't translate to 21st century living, such as the mad bigotry that other people seem rather fond of. Those other people, however...they're still there. They're sitting there with shaven heads and Algiz tattoos (I have my own gripes about that, since that's my namerune and I don't like seeing it at BNP rallies), saying that the Norsemen will come again, that the All-Father will "cleanse" the Northlands of what they see as "pollutants" - people of races other than theirs, women who know their own minds, people who aren't necessarily into breeding. They take the faith of my people - of my musical clans, of my ancestors, and of the gods I love - and twist it and poison it and then hold it up as a broken caricature of what it could be, what it should be. And I sit here, with my Guardian newspaper and Pride flag and feminist books, and wonder what to do now. |
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Choke | |||||
| Music-y meme | ||||||
| May. 18th, 2009 | 06:42 am | ||||||
(Treating The Lord Weird Slough Feg and Slough Feg as the same...) 1. Bal-Sagoth 2. The Lord Weird Slough Feg 3. Amorphis 4. Ensiferum 5. The Dresden Dolls 6. Gamma Ray 7. Opeth 8. Korpiklaani 9. Elvenking 10. Kamelot What was the first song you ever heard by 6? I think it was "Dethrone Tyranny". What is your favorite album of 2? Traveller What is your favorite lyric that 5 has sung? Oh god, there are so many... And you can tell From the state of my room That they let me out too soon And the pills that I ate Came a couple years too late And I've got some issues to work through There I go again Pretending to be you Make-believing That I have a soul beneath the surface Trying to convince you It was accidentally on purpose. from "Girl Anachronism" How many times have you seen 4 live? Never, but I'm seeing them in September! :D What is your favorite song by 7? Gnh. Er. Um. Ah. Maybe "Reverie/Harlequin Forest" because the vocal harmonies in that are just stunning. What is a good memory you have involving the music of 10? Just listening to it, man. Finally finding a power metal song ("Soul Society") that wasn't all YAY GOD and was more GOD IS BULLSHIT. Woo~ Is there a song of 3 that makes you sad? Not really~ What is your favorite lyric that 2 has sung? Where is the road to lead me home? For my eyes and arms are weary and I wear a crown of thorns. Who will come to set the prisoners free? For their fate look dark and dreary, and they're infidels like me. from "The Wickerman" What is your favorite song by 9? "Pagan Purity", though their cover of Skyclad's "Penny Dreadful" is also amazing. How did you get in to 3? I can't remember too well. I think the song "Two Moons" from the Eclipse album was on a CD that came with a magazine and I just loved it. What was the first song you heard by 1? "The Hammer of the Emperor". It was on the Nuclear Blast sampler that came with Metal Hammer like three years ago. What is your favorite song by 4? So many to choose from! Either "Blood is the Price of Glory" or "Victory Song". How many time have you seen 9 live? Never. :c What is a good memory you have involving 2? Listening to "The Wickerman" (and then Iron Maiden's song of the same name) immediately before watching "The Wicker Man". Ahahah such a nerd. Is there a song of 8 that makes you sad? "Gods on Fire". What is your favorite album of 5? Umm. Probably their eponymous debit, actually. It's a real classic~ What is your favorite lyric that 3 has sung? Umm. They darkened the face of the moon They would have tried to kill it If they could have reached that far As it spied on the clouds. from "Two Moons". What is your favorite song of 1? !!! Either "Draconis Albionensis", "The Dreamer in the Catacombs of Ur", "A Tale from the Deep Woods" or "Thwarted By The Dark (Blade of the Vampyre Hunter)". What is your favorite song of 10? "Soul Society". How many times have you seen 8 live? Never which pisses me off because apparently they're INCREDIBLE live. What is your favorite album of 1? Grargh. Either "Atlantis Ascendant" or "Battle Magic". I can't possibly choose between the two. What is a great memory you have considering 9? First hearing the segue from "To Oak Woods Bestowed" to "Pagan Purity". Good times~ What was the first song you heard by 8? "Väkirauta". It was on a Fear Candy CD. What is your favorite cover by 2? DEARG DOOOOOOM. Incredible song, ahahaha. Much better than the original~ |
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