Reviewing Fog

Fog is a musical group (it is I assure you) or project (look it up) or whatever highfalutin concatenation. If I was stubborn and vain enough to try and review the group I would be forced to review at least three albums. On a blog, and I don't profess to know much about those, three album reviews is virtual suicide. You might as well bake bread, or bet on Political Maverick Jack Layton.

Please take a moment and note how both alternatives are good ones.

Now to properly review an album, you have to state with methodical correctness who authored it, who published it, and the year it was published. If you are a particular rebel you will open with a quote from a review of another type of art. Then you move on to comparing it to other albums that it sounds like. Once you have completed that torturous step, you get personal.

Break out some adjectives and make a good time of it: after all, you've broken the album down into a series of ethical and musical and historical components to make it relatable. Plus you've already established your judgment by your tone, and most of your thinking audience has already agreed or disagreed with you. Then you write a paragraph about how the album sits in the context of the times as you see them, and when you attach it to a particularly noxious news story they come and sit on your legs and stuff hot peppers into your nostrils.

Since I'm reckless and generally a sloppy blogger I will raise the stakes and tell you I can review Fog's first two albums in only one image. The album names (so you can be conscious of the true extent of my wager) are the eponymous "Fog" and "Ether Teeth":
 

You're all welcome

The Canadian Political Situation as of March 27, 2011

There are a shit ton of things I could blog about in this apocalyptic month. Shit I could even go the frivolous route and write about something that happened to me, or what I think of a recent movie, or Charlie Sheen. I got a good Charlie Sheen joke I'm holding onto for the first anniversary of the BP Oil Spill of 2010. I think I could write three parts about snow melting. I could even do another off-colour joke about school shootings.

But I'm going to dial it back a little and give everyone some breathing space whilst I write speciously about the political situation in Ottawa, Canada. With so much trouble in the world, it's only right that I do what the US MEDIA does relentlessly and contextualize it in the candy-coloured terms of geopolitics.

The effortless government of Stephen Harper finally rolled into the rough last week; parliament was dissolved, and the thing Canadians feared most (an election) finally rose out of the slightly toxic, slightly oily, slightly radioactive water of Canadian politics. What kicked it all off was a budget bill nobody agreed with, which led to slightly bemused finance minister who took it not at all personally saying that only time would tell.

If you ask any Canadian on the street, especially if they're unmarried and under the age of 30, they'll tell you they know nothing about the situation at all. Who could blame those fools for not caring about how their country is managed? Sorry, anybody who's lived under a repressive regime: things are so good in Canada that we can afford the fatal luxury of political apathy. Under these conditions it's pretty easy to see how professional politicians could shake up an election season out of nowhere: with strife and struggle raging all over the world, they just wanted a piece of the action.

I've seen ministers out on the streets begging for lights and spare cigarettes. Tim Hortons franchises are packed with political bookies offering huge odds on Jack Layton. Oil-hungry representatives and death-lobbyists from other parts of the world are getting away with murder in the capitol while obscure backbenchers search for their parking passes. The RCMP is letting anybody into parliament who agrees to adjust their pay to 2011 levels. Michael Ignatieff looked considerably smug earlier this week, but I saw him a few minutes ago with a pained expression on his face, as if his earlier enthusiasm was but an act.

Meanwhile, Harper made the most intelligent comment of the month when he alluded to the fact that 'most Canadians do not want an election'. Sure, a small portion of politically literate Canadians balked at the idea that he had the gall to speak for them, but the rest of us are not very impressed by this year's lineup. Also he was right. We preferred complaining about the Conservatives and the fact that we were the first country on earth to have a robot as our leader.

In terms of betting it is far too early to make an half-decent wager. The smart money has not been placed yet, but by mid-April we will wish we had done this last year, and sullenly bet on Blue, again, out of sheer spite.

Today's Celebrity Death: Brought to You By Twitter

I know this is a serious event for lots of people, but for me it is a death in the midst of thousands of others that are not reported, so don't think of me as callous. I am a realist and goddamn, I am sort of happy the media only reports 'big deaths', because the worst kinds of death happen either en masse or without reportage.

Elizabeth Taylor died today at the age of 79, after ailing for some time and disappearing from the public eye. I just want to talk about how this affects me, personally, because this is my blog, and I am a heartless, callous, pseudo-realist type of person.

J.G. Ballard's novel Crash will never be the same after this moment. Vaughn's hoodlum scientist ambition to die in an automobile wreck with Elizabeth Taylor is now completely hopeless. I even doubt it will change any future reading of the book, but you have to admit (if you've read it. And you should.) that is now an even more ghostly tale with serious undertones of having been written almost forty years ago.

I've done my own research on Elizabeth Taylor today. Her last Twitter post (did she write or dictate them?) is dated February 9th, 2011. Let's gloss over it for now and find a memorable, positive, wise statement under 140 characters that we can remember her by:

Not at least until I'm dead, and at the moment I'm having too much fun being alive...and I plan on staying that way. Happiness to all.

6:20 PM Jul 22nd, 2010 via web

Which was in reply to this earlier, equally formidable post:

No one is going to play Elizabeth Taylor, but Elizabeth Taylor herself. 

6:19 PM Jul 22nd, 2010 via web

In retrospect: as somber as it is stubborn. She must have drifted into 'out of touch' after years of 'simulated plutocracy'. Lots of explanations and rationalizations and whatnot. It's sad for sad people. I myself felt a lot worse the day Leslie Neilsen died. But since I'm a horrible person I will reveal that these were all dictated, and her final post proves this, because what kind of hyper-rich, aging celebrity is going to plug her interview with a much less important celebrity in some unheard of, insular magazine?

My interview in Bazaar with Kim Kardashian came out!!! http://j.mp/eqQsGa 

 7:48 PM Feb 9th via Twitter for iPad

I guess this doesn't even solve the mystery. I was wrong. It is equally likely that a hip, image-obsessed aide would use an iPad as that an aging, ailing, rich celebrity would bother to try out this new plebeian cyber toy. I guess T.S. Elliot was right, and the final lines of The Wasteland stand like demented statues guarding the advance of the modern world. After only 131 tweets, too.

Sure, Twitter is filled with respectful, cautious asides to the regrettable death of this famous person, but lets not forget that she was the target of a car crash suicide in a very important (and awesome) 70's novel by an established dead writer. Go check Twitter yourself, and you can probably find other people with the same perspective. What's the real tragedy here? Geopolitics? Geological Disasters? Social Media? Celebrity Death? Or that nobody read and remembered Crash, by the inimitable J.G. Ballard?

Abandon All Hope and Sell Yourself to Your Superiors

Even if there is some type of ultimate meaning, doing the above would make you immune to it.

You really should watch the show this image comes from

Just promise me one thing, entertainment system:

Say you won't typecast the hell out of him when this is all over.

The Invisible Fist

This is Historic Times has struck again!

The art of combining two not unrelated subjects into a protest metaphor is an old one, but editorial cartoons have been known to get complacent or relaxed. Often, political cartoonists take aim at lame-duck political (non)issues with a heavy-handed eagerness that belies their agenda. Some manage to be valid, serious and (darkly) humorous at the same time, but that kind of balancing act is difficult, and the public may not be comfortable with it – and newspapers are already lacking for subscribers.

I haven't seen an outstanding, explicit political cartoon in a while, and the only place I can see them done well seems to be Terrence Nowicki Jr.'s website. This man's output is consistent and some of his work borders on that level of awesomeness where substance and style are realized in equal amounts. Humor isn't always his first target, but I like the new seriousness as much as the next anonymous blogger.

The cartoon I'm blogging about is a dark one, which tends to happen when art treats the issue of corporatism. From the callous murder of the toy homunculus in the science-fiction chapter of Cloud Atlas (Oh you haven't read it? You should.), to the sanctioned slaughter of replicants in Blade Runner, the corporate scene could easily be mistaken for a large dark cloud raining on the straggling masses – and let's not forget Robocop.

In all seriousness, I do not know if Nowicki was the first to equate philandering corporations with abusive spouses, but his execution is brilliant. What the abusive figure of 'corporations' says is exactly what it says and does in real life. Have corporations abandoned ship? Always. Do they threaten to, even when they already have one foot on the neck of another populace? You bet.

Which reminds me a bit of the recent news stories about investment banker 'brain drain' which might happen if governments refuse to underwrite firms. Firstly, no other country in the world will hire an American investment banker. Sheer protectionism, not to mention the checkered past of Wall St., will keep all but the most desperate countries from – but foreign corporations hire at will, don't they? America's paymaster, at least, would never hire one of those New York gold-bugs.

That's all incidental, however, and I was digressing a little. There was supposed to be a joke about how investment bankers are not brawny enough to be worth a similar cartoon, but I suppose they have already proven themselves to be more psychologically and financially abusive – the visual metaphor escapes me. Then again, I don't have much talent in that department.

If you want to see talent in that department, I should refer you to This is Historic Times, a political cartoon I might have mentioned in the past. It's pretty good, and recently presented a rather impressive and emphatic treatment of corporate America, in which America plays the part of...

What time is it?

Daylight savings time, snow melts that lead to ankle-deep slush/water hybrid puddles, birds returning to chirp and swoop and shit on everything. That's springtime, but thanks to all of these impediments and blessings, I don't actually know what time it is. Winter dies with a vengeance – real winter, I mean. Some of you out there might think that a dusting of snow and -10 Celsius weather is a serious ordeal, but you're weak and have nothing noteworthy to brag about or discuss.

Anyways, my computer and my alarm clock are at odds about what time it is. My cellphone agrees with my computer, and most 'stupid' electronics in my place agree with my alarm clock, so I expect it really is 7:19 right now, and everyone could attest to that. I have somewhere to be at... 7 PM.

Survivor Watch: 22

Russell leaving was not a huge surprise, but the duel he lost was still a barnburner. And just seeing him break down was worth the watch, but the real event was his final act of revenge-trickery, how close Ralph was to stepping into the trap, and how well it worked despite Sarita's (quiet mastermind or what?) supervision. Holy hell, Russell Hantz just cried on television. That was awkward. Awesome but awkward, yet at least that crazy Survivor-game-mode breaker was tripped before he left.

What's the hat for, Russell?

And ultimately, his departure opened the game up. Despite his own protestations that he was playing a different game, he was still ousted (by a protestant) at just the right time. He gets to leave his final impression, the audience gets its tears and blood, and his tribe's scheming works. Three seasons, almost in a row, was a little bit too much: it doesn't detract from what he did in his first game, and he was a strong personality in a game that thrives when things get aggressive, but there are new players who are not Survivor Celebrities, at least not yet, and I want to see what kind of skulduggery they come up with. In absentia Hantz. Hopefully it doesn't turn into a muddle of passive-aggressivism.

The greatest part is, Boston Rob pulled a Hantzian move by finding a hidden immunity without letting his team know. He really is playing to win, and everyone thinks he's just a swell guy, and he is encouraging them to think so. The game is still in the stage, however, where the most silent characters are likely to make it furthest. Matt's a great underdog bet, though. He's got the drive, the ability, and the off-screen position to make a fantastic run whenever the Redemption Island gimmick plays itself out. Also he's very polite, likely understands the social game, and possesses the consummate positive attitude (this has been known to be helpful).

Good stuff, and Zapatera even won the challenge again. This jeopardized Phil, the social servant who can smell lies, but led to Ometepe voting off another fringe player. For all their losses, the orange tribe manages to remain rather positive. But this is how most seasons begin, these days: one tribe is fairly dominant, but has dormant social issues; the other loses, but is really not very uptight about anything.

Although the challenges are mostly palette swaps from previous seasons, this is definitely better viewing than Heroes vs. Villians was. Or even the most recent season. Lots of things happened, at least, and the producers are promising, via the previews, that yet more excitement will occur.

Nice shot, camera crew. Very subtle.

User Comment Rodeo

User comment boards are now-ubiquitous elements of the internet (or 'web 2.0' if you're an I.T. hipster) which allow spectators to wax sycophantic, display their ignorance, or attack their enemies. The historical precedent for the user comment board is graffiti, and how this obvious connection escaped the people who created and encouraged user comment sections is anyone's guess.

User comments are not entirely negative, nor entirely positive. Nor are they entirely like graffiti, because some people use these sections to engage in reasonable discussion. However, the percentage of society mature enough to post positive or non-offensive comments is often less than 25% – when anonymity is provided. User comment boards are repositories of hatred, anger, stupidity, and ignorance that display the opulence and redundancy of the world's internet. User comment boards are an overt concession to populism that often endorse only the forced sterilization and elimination of humanity, which makes them explicitly anti-populist, since they do not form an encouraging picture of the masses.

If you take the internet seriously, the existence and content of user commentary can bother you to a serious extent. It doesn't have to be this way: you don't have to be angry. I have been known to skim user comment sections and find useful information amid the proud declarations of idiocy, self-marketers, and trolls. For my part, I rarely post user comments, but I welcome them on this blog, and I don't mind their existence anywhere (including the famous, fractious YouTube boards). We all have to accept how they work, and that their problems are unlimited and difficult to solve.

For my example, I went to CBC.ca and read a story about the ONE and ONLY case of BSE in all of Canada this year. Considering the number of cattle raised in Alberta, let alone the country, the existence of one cow with a misfolded protein disorder is not very surprising. Considering the way livestock are farmed, it is even something to be expected, which means that the public safety organization is prepared to take necessary preventative steps and then publicize the case.

The story reads like you might expect: very basic, with plenty of nuance between the lines. It puts you at ease, but reminds you of the various threats of entropy, and the frightening class of afflictions that ravage the brain. That's it.

Then you look at the user comment section, just for the hell of it, already knowing what you will find:

There is the usual, know-it-all power user who is highly literate and knowledgeable but even more eager to display that knowledge and wisdom. Typical semi-activist user, between ages 15 and 30 (sometimes older), who will point a finger and throw as many affective terms into one sentence in order to let you know that things are scary, and that the powers that be do not care about crucial earth-shattering issues. Prions kill, but politics kill much more quickly.

Next:

There is another user, the anti-alarmist, who knows almost nothing beyond general information and disinformation and who likes to misuse logical arguments to try and force hideously biased or ignorant conclusions into your brain. In this case I will disagree with the post and write it out so you can see how user comments divide people: BSE does not exist in chickens, there are almost never bugs in cereal boxes because this is not the early 1900's, and we cannot simply trust inspectors, because inspectors are fallible and governments are fallible. Note the very high rating compared to the former poster: these are the populist types, who do not flog their own knowledge for the show, and who advocate obedience, power-worship and calm. These are people who, in all likelihood, work for an inspection agency or the government, or are lobotomized versions of the first poster, now used to placate the masses.

Next:

Ah, the common troll. The most distinctive, invariable, and prolific type of poster – the smoking gun of the internet. Trolls have loud, unashamed agendas that they flog at any opportunity, even if (as in this case) not a single opponent (animal rights activist - 'petafile' ) has posted in the user comment section. From hackneyed and rudimentary fact-arguments that are quickly abandoned for straw-man tactics to outrageous statements, the crippled mind of a common troll displays all the sorts of argumentative prowess that are not unknown to children, and therefore universally understandable: "Look at me: I'm right! Hey! Listen to me, I'm going to shout at these losers! Look how foolish they are: the facts speak for themselves. Let's lynch these losers!"
For trolls, context and timing never have to be right; only the feeling of perverse, stubborn righteousness.


Next:

This final post (from YouTube) is merely to place two types of posters in proximity. The upper poster is the 'average user' who posts earnestly to learn or sometimes merely to state an unoffensive personal opinion. These users do exist and sometimes form a majority. Often they post simple truths and maxims by which other users can avoid pain and suffering. They are friendly, responsive, and not particularly noteworthy.

The lower poster is a classic self-promoter. The classic self-promoter is often buoyed by his ability to confuse and dupe the unspoken 'idiot majority' who believe that ghosts, reversals of the law of conservation of mass, and free unofficial internet giveaways exist. Self-promoters are worth knowing if you have a million 'perpetual motion machines' to sell, or a warehouse full of decorative tacky china, or are yourself a Chinese businessperson looking to rip off westerners.

This is just the tip of the user content iceberg. These are just a few examples of the archetypal users you can find on the internet, and I hope it helps you stay cool when confronted with the multitude of unenlightened discourse available on the internet.

How Puns Fail

The worst kind of failed pun is the one that goes over the head of 80% of an audience and is not funny enough to goad the understanding 20% into laughter. Nobody loses their head about a Shakespeare or classic quotation pun. Time, after thousands of years of flight, has crash landed and is buried in mud and silt. In fact, in cases where quotations are misunderstood or archiac the capacity for pun failure is often in excess of 200%; in languages other than English some puns have an estimated failure rate of 800%, give or take a few percentage points for intersecting dialects.

Punning isn't very easy. Puns vary. Puns fail. Puns miss their target. Puns go awry and offend. Puns are errant, and they elude wit, and they emerge at inopportune times. Aside from a few, typically lazy newspaper headline puns, I have gone without seeing any noteworthy puns for years. It's been months since I made a good pun. I don't even know if I can.

And I'm thinking very hard about a 'canned laughter' style pun, but this is a destitute internet blog, not a sitcom. I could use some star power, but I need longevity, not light echoes. Okay that was a pun that is not even astrologically sound. Now I'm on a roll, but I am unsure whether anyone will detect the gravity of these recent puns...

Indie band names are great for punning. For instance, take this band name meant to criticize the famous Indie Rush of 2002: The Blanque Cheques. It has that aroma of ennui and distracted annoyance, which serves to castigate both the target and the medium, which is beautiful; it also features intentional misspelling to emphasize the point that American English does not have a properly spelled version of 'cheque' which is an outdated way of transferring money from a financial account by writing details on a prepared document and endorsing them by signature.

Other groan-inducing, indie band names I hastily thought up to impress my non-audience:

• Shoegazer's Telescope
• No Sound Unturned
• A Tribe Called Reverb
• Tempo? Fugit.
• A Voice to Scry For
• Distracting Derivative Demi-movement

Survivor 22? 23? 22.

This is shaping up to be a great season of the world's favorite ongoing simulacrum of what happens when real people are thrown against the elements (and each other!) without the support of the 21st century. Survivor used to be all about hoping the one cute girl wasn't about to get voted out, and wondering about whether pee on a jellyfish sting was actually a remedy, and cheering for the old man. Ten years later the show is about: watching the cameramen oggle the women (of whom 3/4s are HOT and/or CUTE), debating whether or not the 'social game' is tricky editing, and knowing the old men tend to look older than they are and are not likely to make it far, regardless their competitive spirit or ability. Most long time viewers have a reasonable chance of predicting how each episode will end, and the sneak peeks are not likely to throw them off.

This change in emphasis has not detracted (much) from the appeal of the show. Now that most of the competitors are actors, bartenders, or other service industry lackeys the show looks great – and the realest people don't even complain that they're outnumbered (if they are, in fact, real people). The most used objection to Survivor is that it's stupid, meaningless, empty, misleading, over-edited, false, scripted, and something only consumerist nincompoops would watch. So, basically, this is exactly the sort of elite-and-artiste-bait that should be widely employed for the detection of snobs, fobs, and hob-nobs.

But background be damned (the Survivor motto), let's talk about this new fancy season with the new feature (new only if you have watched only American Survivor). Redemption Island. Sounds pretty exciting, and includes duel systems for epic showdowns and promises to return a castaway to the game, hopefully to shake up the rather predictable slide into 'end-game' that keeps happening. This gives the scriptwriters all kinds of options for narratives, but since the island is likely to return only one player to the game, it will result in one narrative that will end in failure.

There's at least 6 beautiful women, and there's no Jane from Last Season (or even a Shambo), there's a hillbilly style dude who runs around, and Russell and Boston Rob have returned. Russell was voted out tonight, and was last shown residing on Redemption Island. Boston Rob, of course, is ensconced in his very trusting and safe tribe. Plenty of drama, slick editing, and skulduggery are likely to take place this year and are already occurring.

I'm impressed that Russell was voted off so quickly, though his team was very passive-aggressive about admitting they (quite openly) failed a challenge on purpose to vote him out. Julie, the swing vote, played a wicked double-play and has definitely shewn herself a contender. Stephanie, his brunette lackey and Sarah Silverman's little sister, was too confident and is next week's most obvious target. This is when the purple tribe will likely enter a multi-challenge slide into obscurity. So Sarah Silverman's little sister is probably going to be voted out next.

The irony is, this slide is when Russell is at his best, and you know he'll be annoyed to miss it – unless he loses next week's duel and finally stops haunting this series like a portly, hatted, scheming, rather confident ghost. He might lose, because the narrative of the betrayed, white-bread, surfer Christian coming back to win is more compelling than the narrative of the schemer returning to exact revenge on his passive-aggressive enemies.

Assuming you can stand watching 'reality crap that's shoveled down our throats by the entertainment complex in a vain attempt to distract us from pressing issues', Survivor is going to be the best reality show option for the next few months. If TV is a social barometer, Survivor is the TV barometer.