Artigos

This journal will be written from the perspective of myself at 12 years old. This journal entry can be called "Why I'm Better than You". I do hope you like it.

I am writing an essay on noise. Why? Me at 22 is commanding me to write an essay about noise. Ok, I'll give it a shot (Don't worry, I'll give you all of the ideas). Noise is fire. Fire is nature. Nature is fire. We are all one nature. ONE nature. The nature of ONE is natural. Noise is a fire that springs forth backwards all of the nizardy Nizardy NIZNIZNIZardy NoRoRoRoRoRoRoN. There's nothing wrong with Korn. They're just a little hip. Ugh, I hate that bad. Oops, I mean band. Same thing when it comes to KoRn. They're a terrible group.

I am very tired of being tortured by myself at 22. I'm only 12!

I can hear you right now. How is bigsexyshaq talking to himself at 12?. Because I remember when it happened.

*snare hit*

Folks, this may seem like a joke entry, but no, it's not. I seriously am doing this. The mind can do amazing things when it is in a highly charged state. I brainwaved myself up with Mindspa (www.avstim.com) and now the ideas are flowing. Flowing from where?

Where am I getting my ideas?

FROM ME AT 32. WHERE ELSE?

Where else? 42, 52, 62, 72, 82, whoa slow down there. Gettin' a little greedy, huh? There are a lot of drunk truckdrivers who would love to ignore pedestrian laws to kill yo mothafuckin ass.

I'm sure you'd like to learn how to speak from the future too. Here's how. Put a finger on the middle of your forehead. Now, that's your third eye. Imagine a The Residents-esque EYE right there. In fact, imagine all four Residents members. Right in the middle of your forehead. Now sing a Residents song. Don't know the Residents? That's ok, I'm just mentioning them to sound cool to my sophisticated popular discovered famous rich perfected me at 32. Now, if you want to reach yourself at an age 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years in the future or 10 years in the past (God's rule), imagine yourself in the middle of your forehead at that age. THERE! YOU'VE GOT IT! NOW, COMMUNICATE. Accept whatever comes to mind as legitimately clairvoyantly from the future or past.

TYPE WHAT THE FUTURE OR PAST YOU SAYS IN THE REPLY BOX AND POST IT.

I hope you enjoyed this entry, WHATEVER AGE YOU'RE AT!

Top 25 Albums of 2007

1.Battles-Mirrored

We often tend to associate the term “supergroup” to a vanity project where egos intersect and piles of money are made on huge arena tours. In Battles' case, it's kind of difficult to be petty and selfish when you're constructing a mishmash of math rock and prog-metal unlike anything ever heard before. On Mirrored, the garbled vocals of Tyondai Braxton shuffle underneath the skullblasting drums of John Stanier (fmr. Helmet), the proggy guitar of Ian Williams (fmr. Don Caballero), and the gyrating bass grooves of Dave Konopka (fmr. Lynx). Although Battles have tried numerous ventures into improvisation on their earlier EPs, Mirrored is the band's first structured effort, and the mastery of these structures within the dynamic of the band gives the aura that Battles has somehow existed for hundreds of years, building up a storied career on another planet. As Mirrored scatters from happy hardcore metal (“Ddiamondd”) to wildly abstract R&B (“Leyendecker”) to full on prog marathons with enough pounding to force you to move (“Atlas”,”Tonto”), Mirrored stands as this year's most shocking musical revelation. Prog is back, but with snares and samplers rather than ships and serpents.

2.Animal Collective-Strawberry Jam

Believe it or not, it seems that songs actually suit the boys of Animal Collective a lot more than hippie commune circle jams. The darkly absurdist minds of AC have carried their mentality from the corner of the berry patch to behind enormous walls of knobs, dials, and pads that have replaced analog instrumentation in their live shows. These transformations have come to be the foundation of Strawberry Jam, their finest album yet. Songs like “For Reverend Green” and “Peacebone” play like working class anthems, with melodies that melt the soul and a passion wild enough to make every sheep in New Zealand dive into scalding hot mercury. And yet, the lyrics are still as inscrutable as ever. Avey Tare's vocals have become wildly abrasive, lending enormous amounts of sincere angst to songs about really random and scary things that probably have no meaning at all. A gajillion of today's emo-rock vocalists have attempted to achieve the level of compelling passion in their voices that Avey has displayed, yet it's he who's the first to actually achieve those heights, and all this while not even mentioning a single girlfriend or parent. Thus, if this generation were actually made of free-thinking individuals rather than trend-gobbling lemmings, Strawberry Jam would be its mission statement.

3.Silverchair-Young Modern

Giggle as you may, but the year's best guilty pleasure was performed by none other than Silverchair. Yes, 15-year-old, mid-90's post-grunge growlmongers Silverchair. The big difference is that they're in their mid-20's now, and oh yeah, they sound completely different. In 2007, Silverchair stepped forward as a rock-solid glam-pop outfit and delivered Young Modern, and unpredictable set of uber-memorable power pop gems. The musicianship on these wonderfully simple radio-ready nuggets is nothing to marvel at, but it adequately sustains a set of wonderful songs that Coldplay, Travis, and The Fray only wish they could have written.

4.Feist-The Reminder

Canuck chanteuse Leslie Feist crafts an album of melodic sunshine and makes each and every track count, unlike on her sludgy debut album. Her vocal range is finally existent and her alliances with her Arts & Crafts cronies in the rhythm sections is apparent. Look beyond iPod Nano ditty “1234” and find such blustery blues-rock ramblers as “My Moon My Man” and “Sea Lion Woman”, or watch her do the introspective singer-songwriter thing without sounding homogenous in heartfelt ballads like “I Feel It All” and “The Park”

5.Of Montreal-Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?

The indie-glam-pop veterans return with the follow up to 2005's superb The Sunlandic Twins, this time with a dark streak within Kevin Barnes' songwriting and an even more expanded sonic repertoire. The bass grooves are deeper, the synth pulses stronger, and Barnes' vocals infinetely more varietal, all transformations that were necessary to match the band's newfound inclination towards the slightly morbid. The screechy “Faberge Falls For Shuggie” skids along with a Prince-on-crack vibe, while “Suffer For Fashion” and “Heimdalsgate Like A Promethian Curse” stomp harder than anything else in the band's catalog. A surprising improvement on the band's already distinctive twee style.

6.Modest Mouse-We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank

Indie rock's more stubbornly anti-mainstream followers might have cried foul as Modest Mouse's sixth full-length debuted at No.1 on the Billboard 200, but in this instance the old “sellout” argument proved difficult to believe. Certainly, the production value is as hi-fi as it can get, but that didn't change the fact that Isaac Brock and his cronies (including strange bedfellow Johnny Marr) remained as gritty in their songsmanship and as dedicated in their creative process as they have been in the past.

7.!!!-Myth Takes

What started out as the most disorganized entity sprouting out of the dance punk craze at the start of this decade suddenly came into its own on Myth Takes. On their sophomore effort, the jam brigade led by strutting showman Nic Offer developed strong backbones to songs with stronger, pop-influenced structures. It's like the surreal accessibility of Can's surprise chart hit “I Want More” stretched out among 50 minutes.

8.The Dillinger Escape Plan-Ire Works

After surviving abundant bandmember shakeups, it's surprising to see a band operate as cohesively as The Dillinger Escape Plan. The New Jersey-based mathcore giants delivered a third album in the later part of 2007 that was able to emphasize the band's skills as a screamy, facemelting, scene-approved apparatus and their ability to craft precise melodies in equal proportion. They made a risky move in creating an almost tranquil section in the middle of the album, but their grace in doing so proves that within every truly great hardcore musician, there's an urgent need to stop and focus on songcraft away from massive amps and stacks.

9.LCD Soundsystem-Sounds Of Silver

There's probably not much to say that hasn't already been said about James Murphy, but aside from the same praises many carried over from LCD Soundsystem's self-titled debut onto this album, it's hard not to note the biggest change Murphy made in his sense of professionalism on his sophomore effort. On Sounds, Murphy downplayed the shameless irony that pervades his attitude in favor of amazingly solid dancefloor fare which, in partnership with far less tongue-in-cheek, helped establish him as an indie poster boy with actual staying power. Look for LCD Soundsystem's chart-topping ninth album to pop up on many year-end lists in 2022.

10.Keiran Hebden & Steve Reid-Tongues

It's usually difficult to remember anything that two guys screwing around might record for more than 20 minutes afterwards (Thanks, Garageband!), but when one of those guys is the most soundly principled producer/composers in modern music (Fridge guitarist Keiran Hebden, aka Four Tet) and the other is one of the drummers behind some of America's most memorable contributions to the beginning of pop music (Motown session drummer Steve Reid), memorability doesn't really matter. Hebden and Ried's improvisation on this record is so outlandishly engaging in its unpredictability that it takes several very exciting listens to grasp onto.

11.Kings Of Leon-Because Of The Times

Kings Of Leon saw it fit to follow suit in what many rock bands have been doing lately: tearing guitar techniques out of The Edge's book. It's a sorrowful trend, of course, but when a vocalist with such a severely backwoodsy drawl sings over it, it creates something that is actually really interesting. Although it somewhat abandons the post-punk-meets-Skynyrd idea they started off with, the new sound displayed on Because of the Times is a brand of spacious arena rock that is truly original. The Kings' finest album yet.

12.Jens Lekman-Night Falls Over Kortedala

Sometime during the development of this album, Jens Lekman must have heard me say that I was tired of hearing singer-songwriters settle for sparse instrumentation like acoustic guitars and pianos. He knew that his tales of bizarre heartbreak and dark humor needed a more colurful palette to paint with, and thus Jens chose some truly masterful sampling for his second album. Hearing him croon soulfully over grandiose horns on “And I Remember Every Kiss” or over vintage mirrorball grooves on “Sipping on the Sweet Nectar” and “A Postcard to Nina” proved something unlikely to his listeners: Jens Lekman can and will be a star.

13.Saul Williams-The Inevitable Rise and Fall of Niggy Tardust

Most notably known for following the In Rainbows pay-what-you-like method of online distribution, Niggy Tardust was a criminally underrated hip-hop album that was represented by a public opinion of nine inch nails fans who were disappointed that it didn't sound like NIN after hearing that it was produced by Trent Reznor. This is a shame, because Tardust reaches into so many different musical styles that it should have really been a perfect opportunity for avant-garde hip-hop to expose itself to the ignorant “rap is crap” wing of rock fans. Like it or not, Williams' strong efforts as a singer, rapper, and slam poet were at times layered underneath Reznor's production, so perhaps this kind of backlash was anticipated.

14.Bloc Party-A Weekend In The City

Dubbed by many as a sophomore slump, Weekend is actually quite the opposite. Their debut, Silent Alarm, was a partly meek endeavor into hipster-approved dance punk that tried so hard to be thoughtful and meaningful, but just couldn't because it was too busy being trendy. On Weekend, the band drop the abrasiveness of their naturally bouncy sound and let their earnest songwriting lay itself bare. The result is consistent, honest, unashamedly massive, and even takes a bit of time to really master the desired effect of Silent Alarm on the perfect “The Prayer”.

15.Capgun Coup-Brought To You By Nebraskafish

In the underdog effort of the year, Team Love newcomers Capgun Coup seize control of their bruised lo-fi bedroom rock and stretch the possibilities of this aesthetic across a schizoid album packed with sound collaging, intentionally awkward pacing, and deadbeat punk. It's these types of shambolic compositions that truly capture what it is to be DIY.

16.Dizzee Rascal-Maths & English

The positon of Dizzee Rascal's music in the American market is at this point indecipherable. His flow is so normative by British terms that he's a frequent UK chart topper, however his generally glossier beats and more Americanized inclination have confused Americans so much that XL didn't even bother to distribute his third album in the U.S. on CD. From the swirling synths of “World Outside” to the strange decision of abrasive, blaring metal-like guitar on “Sirens”, poor Dizzee's endeavor to be more accessible has only established him as that much more experimental.

17.Minus The Bear-Planet Of Ice

I might have attributed the true revival of prog in 2007 to Battles, but Minus The Bear have certainly kept the long forgotten genre in mind when they assembled their third album. The emo-math-rockers go more visceral and slightly less song-oriented on this record, exposing their true technical proficiency and proving that when the Myspace scenesters worldwide finally decide to fully embrace them, they'll make sure it isn't at the expense of their mind-boggling musicianship.

18.Ween-La Cucaracha

Speaking of prog...Gene and Dean Ween take a surprising turn in their career as they embellish their latest album with six minute mellotron solos and multi-movement instrumental suites. JKLOL!!! You've been Punk'd!!! Really, La Cucaracha is more of the same madcap genre-hopping and middle school humor that gained them a cult fanbase 15 years ago. Hearing something different from the brothers Ween in every single track in an album is a comforting reminder that some people don't always screw around with proven formulas.

19.Dan Deacon-Spiderman Of The Rings

The Wham City art collective expanded out of Batimore into the nationwide scope in 2007, turning the underground on to what it is to truly find pleasure in the unabashedly tacky. Its' constitution can be heard in Dan Deacon's second album. As Deacon's various thrift-shop keyboards, mixers, and general baubles clank along in joyful dissonance, it's possible to truly feel the positive energy emitting from Deacon's flashing green skull as he's holding it above his head and dancing like an emancipated raver with hundreds of sweaty hipsters in a basement somewhere.

20.Les Savy Fav-Let's Stay Friends

The back-to-basics post-punk of Les Savy Fav reached new heights this year with Let's Stay Friends. While alternating between their classically raw riffage and hummable mid-tempo anthems, they come forward as a smarter, more likeable entity then they've been in the past.

21.Air-Pocket Symphony

Just like James Murphy stripped away much of his irony in 2007, the French electronica duo Air distanced themselves from the kitsch factor that imbued their past work, perhaps in an attempt to reveal their sharp musicianship. The album carries hints of lite-jazz and soft rock in its glossy tones, carrying simple grooves while managing to stay away from the goofy bossa-nova frumpiness that sometimes used to bog down their older work.

22.Lupe Fiasco-The Cool

The maverick Chicago MC returned with an expansive sophomore set at the end of the year, with harder-hitting verses and a tighter relationship between him and his producers' work. Additionally, Lupe moves away from the nerd-hop aspirations of his first album and focuses on honing in on more meaningful messages. Lupe faces the issue of materialism along a twitchy ambient noise sample on “Gold Watch” and fights the primitive tendencies of the mainstream on the gurgly “Dumb It Down”. Whereas Lupe mostly only claimed he was eclectic on his first record, on The Cool, he actually is.

23.The Go! Team-Proof Of Youth

For a band completely born out of samples to come out on their sophomore album and go almost entirely organic is a bold choice to make. To maintain the true Go! Team feel, they needed to forge their own sound as a unit that generated the same fun as their jubilant playground soul samples on their first album. Although it didn't result in complete success, I'm still incredibly thankful that they still sound like the same Go! Team they've always been. Sparser ballads in the vein of “Hold Yr Terror Close” are sprinkled throughout the album (“My World”, “I Never Needed It Now So Much”) that wreck the ballistic pacing of the rest of the album, but this is compensated by an overall grittier sound.

24.Field Music-Tones Of Town

On their second album, Tones Of Town, Field Music develop a more distinctive sound, honing further their inclination towards a strong and calculated rhetoric between instruments that peppers every song with an almost glitchy bounce. As it is a Futureheads side project, it sounds sort of like Steely Dan playing Futureheads songs. But where that was their only attraction on their first album, the band works much harder to develop independently on this album.

25.Cocorosie-The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn

Judging from their past work, it would have been difficult to foresee a solid album that sticks with a hip-hop formula coming from Cocorosie. It seemed that they were content with simply bearing their strange personalities onto record with shock-seeking freak-folk randomness, but as it turns out, the Casady sisters form a pretty solid MC/singer partnership. The woozy, carnival-like “Japan” is a highlight of this exciting new entry into the avant-garde hip-hop forum.

Honorable Mention:
Maroon 5-It Won't Be Soon Before Long
Queens Of The Stone Age-Era Vulgaris
Common-Finding Forever
Ted Leo & The Pharmacists-Living With The Living
Sondre Lerche-Phantom Punch
Fountains Of Wayne-Traffic And Weather

Top 30 Songs of 2007!!!! (in ascending order cos it's cooler)

30. Maiximo Park-Girls Who Play Guitars
29. Kanye West-I Wonder
28. Queens of the Stone Age-Turning On The Screw
27. Silverchair-Young Modern Station
26. Radiohead-Bodysnatchers
25. Ted Leo & The Pharmacists-La Costa Brava
24. The DIllinger Escape Plan-Black Bubblegum
23. Animal Collective-Winter Wonderland
22. Modest Mouse-Steam Engenius
21. Battles-Atlas
20. LCD Soundsystem-Someone Great
19. Timbaland feat. Keri Hilson, D.O.E., and Sebastian-The Way I Are
18. Les Savy Fav-The Year Before The Year 2000
17. Do Make Say Think-The Universe!
16. !!!-Myth Takes
15. Sondre Lerche-Phantom Punch
14. Bloc Party-The Prayer
13. Pinback-From Nothing To Nowhere
12. Saul Williams-Black History Month
11. Animal Collective-Peacebone
10. Gorillaz-Hong Kong
9. Interpol-The Heinrich Maneuver
8. Spoon-The Ghost Of You Lingers
7. The Chemical Brothers-Saturate
6. !!!-Sweet Life
5. Modest Mouse-March Into The Sea
4. Feist-My Moon My Man
3. Silverchair-Straight Lines
2. Battles-Ddiamondd
1. Animal Collective-For Reverend Green

Fer realz kidz. Well, okay, so I haven't updated my music blog in about 5 or 6 months. That doesn't mean I haven't enjoyed the buttloads of music released this year that were totally awesome. In all honesty, this does not consider EVERY album made this year. I made a "shortlist", so to speak, of the 65 albums released in 2006 that I listened to from beginning to end. Out of these, I whittled down the 10 best albums of the year and the 10 biggest disappoinments. So, kids, observe and prepare to be dazzled.

THE TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2006-

Album Of The Year: Ghostface Killah-Fishscale
There was tons of great hip-hop released this year that was criminally neglected so as to carry on the only occasionally true theory about the genre: that the good ol' days are gone and mainstream hip-hop is nothing more today than a parade of money, cars, and booty. Before 2006, I felt mainstream hip-hop was going by that wayside. That was until Wu-Tang Clan legend Ghostface Killah released his awesomely crazy yet still deliciously accessible album Fishscale. From the surprisingly listenable radio fare of Back Like That, to the loopy cocaine funk of Kilo and Shakey Dog, and even to the glorification of child abuse in Whip You with a Strap and the immersive dream landscape that is Underwater, Ghost has effectively taken a conscious look at the lifestyle of a straight gangsta rapper, wowing the nerds with his wordplay and appeasing the thugs with his message. This transcendence went purely unmatched in 2006.

2. TV on the Radio-Return to Cookie Mountain
Coming off the enjoyably krautrocky Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes, Tunde Adebimpe & Co. knew that all they needed to do to advance their songsmanship was to tighten & elaborate their sound, so they did just that. Displaying a multidemensionality that's a pleasant suprise to the ears from every angle, Return to Cookie Mountain follows through on the hype and the anticipation beautifully.

3. Clipse-Hell Hath No Fury
Whoever decided to shelve this album for 3 years was nuts. The Neptunes unleash a few more of the firestorm beats they became famous for in their heyday, long before Pharell made In my Mind. MCs Pusha T and Malice are still on point and at roughly the same level as they were on their landmark debut album, Lord Willin'. And check that harp on Ride Around Shinin'. Oh lawdy.

4. Destroyer-Destroyer's Rubies
Dan Bejar of The New Pornographers delivers his flamboyantly sinister wit without the jubilant motif of the Pornos taking the macabre elements out of his songwriting. Kinda sounds like Steely Dan's registered-sex-offender evil twin.

5. Prefuse 73-Security Screenings
Look out world, here comes instrumental hip-hop. It's not his masterwork (That's still One Word Extinguisher), but one listen to a glitch patchwork like With Dirt and Two Texts-Afternoon Version and two things become clear: One, this is Guillermo Scott Herren, and two, it is indeed impossible to turn off.

6. The Decemberists-The Crane Wife
A Capitol Records contract cannot stop the Decemberists' prog-pop brigade. Its predecessor, Picaresque, was my 3rd best album of 2005, and Colin Meloy's crew stakes their claim in my top 10 once again with a set that is much more ambitious. For example, 13-minute epic The Island: Come & See/The Landlord’s Daughter/You’ll Not Feel The Drowning strongly channels, and perhaps even exceeds the work of the legendary early lineup of Genesis that featured Peter Gabriel.

7. Grandaddy-Just Like The Fambly Cat
It's sad when a band as essential as Grandaddy breaks up, but at least they left us with a record that can stand as one of the top achievements of their career. The group's top attractions, Jason Lytle's childlike voice and their ironically tacky electrodynamics, work together beautifully on Elevate Myself, Where I'm Anymore, and Disconnecty.

8. Girl Talk-Night Ripper
The most pleasant surprise of the year. On this mashup record, there is one point where the iconic verses of The Notorious B.I.G.'s Juicy bounce in synergy with Elton John's Tiny Dancer. If you think that's crazy, the entire album is based upon such juxtapositions.

9. Band of Horses-Everything All the Time
When I heard the album's lead single, The Funeral, I was quick to dismiss them as emo My Morning Jacket ripoffs. However, their riffs are so strong and the album so persistient that it proved an apt replacement for MMJ in my year-end list.

10. Belle & Sebastian-The Life Pursuit
In the past, B&S' wispy indie pop had made for a wonderful backdrop to the life of a hipster. But now that they've tried different sounds and more immediate melodies on this record, it's the band that's put themselves on the forefront this time around.

THE 10 BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENTS OF 2006-

1. The Killers-Sam's Town
The Killers turned a synthalicious dance party into a rythmically deficient amateur hour novelty act that steals ideas from other people and claims it's the greatest thing yet. The regression is painful. They are now the Oasis of Las Vegas.

2. Snow Patrol-Eyes Open
Since towering indie-pop with an ability to muscle it's way through other wussy bands just became too boring for them, Snow Patrol traded that for the sound of a neutered U2, a display of sappy balladry so bleak it probably pissed even Tears for Fears off. The payoff? Heavy rotation on VH1! Shock horror...

3. The Futureheads-News & Tributes
The XTC comparisions went to their head. XTC are amazing,yes, but the Futureheads are no XTC. Although they both started their careers with stripped down punk rock, XTC were smart and melodic enough to expand. The 'Heads were in the business of being loud, primitive, obnoxiously harmonic, and most importantly, decadently fun. When they are as ponderous as they were in this record, it's weak and generic.

4. The Fever-In the City of Sleep
Their debut album, Red Bedroom, was a thoroughly enjoyable piece of fast and glamourous electro-punk. Trying to pull off a cabaret style was a mistake.

5. Graham Coxon-Love Travels at Illegal Speeds
The latest from the godlike Blur guitarist and the man behind last year's second best album, Happiness in Magazines, LTAIS finds Coxon without all the experimentalist fury that spawned his solo career in the first place, leaving nothing but a sludgy anony-rock backdrop upon which to project his now repetitive songs of lost love and a hate for Blur which now seems a bit unjustified.

6. The Strokes-First Impressions of Earth
As much as the blame for this blatant bluder was placed upon former Sublime producer David Kahne, he would disprove his respnsibility for the stinkiness of this record with his stellar work on Regina Spektor's Begin to Hope. That leaves the apparent loss of sharpness on the band's part as the catalyst for the record's misfired attempts at ecclecticism.

7. She Wants Revenge-She Wants Revenge
When I bought this album, I thought the themes addressed on singles Tear You Apart and These Things kicked major ass. Today, I express regret at falling victim to the combination of a bad Paul Banks impressionist rapping and the overwrought, plasticine work of an untalented producer.

8. DJ Shadow-The Outsider
Granted, I loved Enuff, the vicious instumental Artifact, and the album's two best tracks, Erase You and You Made It, which feature obscure power-pop vocalist Chris James. But 75% of this album is hyphy, and this album says DJ Shadow on the front. Something's gone awry in the mind of Josh Davis, and this time it wasn't much good.

9. The Buzzcocks-Flat-Pack Philosophy
It's a hoot listening to singles going steady and then watching those same people performing Lipstick on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson wearing golf shirts and sporting receding hairlines at the age of fiftysomething. But it's just way too self-deprecating of them to write songs so ridiculously bad and gussy up what's left with tragically glossy production.

10. John Mayer-Continuum
Mayer's voice and refeshingly meditative wisdom hold a special place in my heart, but the latter's just completely gone on this record. Plus, the sharp production that served as a surprise perk on Heavier Things is absent, and the music and I are feeling the withdrawal symptoms.

See y'alls in 2007!

NO MORE FREE BOOK. FUCK THE FREE BOOK. FUCKING BUY IT, ASSHOLE.

You may have been hearing about a certain multi-selling Amazon.com blockbuster on my left. Talm Psalms: The Complete First Season were 50 stories I wrote last year during the peak of a very distinctive creative phase of mine. The humor was extremely potent. It really hits hard on the heart of humor in general. There's humor everywhere; it's as inescapable as Death in Talm Psalms.

Could it be true? Talm Psalms: The Complete First Season completely FALSE?

Not exactly. To punish you for not paying, it's a lot more basic. You don't get the fancy bolding, athena, bold athena. Nothin'. You don't get the big super-white binding. You get a less funny introduction, a less aesthetically appealing table of contents, and NONE of my award-winning variations on "The End" for each story. However, you get the best part; the ideas! NO YOU DON'T. SORRY. NOT.

Easily my best ideas are in this book. It's the textbook on incongruency.

I describe more on the Amazon.com page. Many more morons are described in the book though. LIKE YOU, BIGTHCGHTHH!!!!!

Your choice. No sorry. No choice.

EDIT. BUY THE FUCKING BOOK.
The Award-Winning Classic Talm Psalms: The Complete First Season

I had no fucking clue that Sufjan Stevens was gay. Don't call me out as a hypocrite on this one... in my last entry "Sufjan Stevens: Gay Culture's Next Cher?" I basically said that Sufjan Stevens is an idol to the gay community, like Judy Garland, Cher, Madonna, all of whom aren't gay. I didn't know that he actually was gay. Honestly, I don't know what to think of him anymore.

I'll be totally honest here. When I read, in one of your posts, that Sufjan Stevens was gay, I cried a little. Here I was, blindly persuaded into his gay trap. It makes me burst into tears just hearing myself call his music a gay trap. But it is! I can't take that realization. It's making me so sad. I can't even think straight. It's all because Sufjan decided to ruin my life.

I'm the most liberal person you'll ever meet. You could even say that I'm a communist. However, I need the male figures I look up to, to be masculine. Imagine if Frank Sinatra jumped around like a little girl with his hands flailing. Or if Clark Gable fell in love with a gay guy in "Gone With the Wind," (maybe then it would have been called Gone With the Brokeback, jk ;-)). Sorry for the joke, I feel like I needed to lighten the mood.

Is it alright to stop liking someone just because he's gay? I'm a bit uncertain about this, it feels wrong, but logically it makes perfect sense. Why should I keep liking him if he's not going to help me out as an inspiration in my heterosexual adventures? Maybe I unconsciously knew it all along, and that's why he's not in my Top 50. I respect gay people more than anything in the world, but honestly, I couldn't see myself permitting a gay man into my Top 50.

Yes. Let me explain.

Back in the early 1900's, the record labels Sony, Capitol and what is now Flip/Interscope got together and created what we now call Popular Music.

The idea was to create a sellable form of music, and convert the system of selling music into the system that was currently used for food. It started small, with the blackface routines of Al Jolson and Bert Williams, being paid by the George Gershwins of the world to sing their songs. The record labels would pass out "free samples" in the form of vinyls of Jolson singing Gershwin's Swanee, just as a suevenear. They expected small reciprocation, such as seeing another Swanee show. They never thought it would go as far as it did. It was no suevenear, it was the beginning of the Popular Music industry, or as I call it, the audio fast food industry.

This lead the industry to create a wide variety of musical foods. Some people liked their music raw, some liked their music cooked (heavily produced). It was all very healthy and mind-stimulating though. The Beatles, Neil Sedaka, Radiohead, all excellent artists, well cooked, and delicious in all ways. Keep making this great food, don't stop! Keep making it. Don't stop the music!

What these record executers couldn't foresee, was that music, like all food products, would one day expire. This day was 1992. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Silverchair. This is the sight of once great food gone rotten. I'm so sorry, you were too late. We told you that dinner would be ready at 6, and you had to keep playing those video games. Now it's cold and expired and The Strokes.

And don't blame Kurt Cobain for being a terrible musician, blame the record executies for not stopping the selling of music before its expiry date. By selling us crap like Incubus, they are doing our bodies and our health no favors. In fact, they are doing them a negative amount of favors. In fact, we owe them favors.

Blonde. Doesn't that describe Jessica Simpson perfectly? Hahaha! Nick Lachey would probably approve of that title!

I grew up on joke music. Spike Jones, Weird Al Yankovic and Dr. Demento are literally in my blood. However, my father strictly prohibited me from listening to anyone outside of these three. So I've had to find out about the other worlds of music myself. Lately I've been delving into the classical genre. The works of Mozart remind me much of the music I listened to as a child.

Compared to all the other classical music out there, his music is a lot more fun and playful. Also, it seems like most of the songs never really go anywhere. They're very awkward sounding. Not quirky awkward like Frank Zappa or somethen', it's just awkward. I first considered, maybe he was on crack or E or somethen'. Then I realized that this was a completely different time period and different things were considered 'acceptable' back then. Like I'm sure people from the future will think John Mayer is terrible, despite that today we are convinced that he is our generation's James Taylor. But his music hasn't dated, according to critics. Apparently, it's timeless. Yeah, it's timeless, it's timeless BAD MUSIC.

I'm starting to come to light, that maybe this Mozart thing, is a joke the classical snobs are playing on us lesser music fans. You know how nobody actually likes Radiohead and people just say they're this amazing brilliant experimental act to be ironic? I think it might be the same thing with Mozart. Because, really, think about it logically. His music is so boring. You can get the same effect from Mozart's music that you get from a 10 year old jumping on a trampoline. Yes, it's playful, what's your point?

I think Mozart was sincere in his attempts to make music. So he's probably not a joke band like Anal Cunt or somethen'. Since Mozart was probably a retard, what he was trying to convey in his music was received on a completely different, ironic, level that he didn't know about. So I don't think he was actually a comedian, but it's sort of a Wesley Willis thing. People who say he 'sucks' will be called off as unsavvy. Most savvy people use extreme words to use towards Wesley like 'genius' and 'brilliant.' I constantly hear the same words applied to Mozart.

Again, sorry if this is obvious to you. But I'm new to this music thing, as I explained earlier. I don't know who's ironically liked and who's not.