I haven’t been blogging. It’s not for lack of excitement in my life or a lack of video games, politics, or bullshit to rant about either. I’ve just not been blogging. But winter’s coming and I live in the fucking Snow Belt. Rest assured. Blogging will begin anew.
This message goes out to the 4 people that read my blog.
-=Grim=-
This past Saturday my friend Mike and I did a whirlwind attack on New York City: We drove down at 3pm Saturday, saw Skinny Puppy, went to the after party at Club Pyramid, and then drove home, arriving back in Albany around 7:30am. It was a grueling trip. But the trip isn’t the part that annoyed me (it was actually fun). No, what annoyed me is the fact that Skinny Puppy needs to break up and move on in life. ARGH!
Here’s the deal: the lead singer is what pulls peoples’ attention to the stage. Failing that, the guitar players. The drummer and keyboard could have all the presence in the WORLD, but it won’t matter: the stage will seem empty if the guitar players and lead singer can’t pull it together. Skinny Puppy, being Skinny Puppy, didn’t have any guitars on stage, so the whole thing fell to Nivek Ogre. Many people consider him a titan of industrial or something, so he should have been able to pull it off, right?
*sigh*
Wrong. Want to see what I had to deal with?
That’s right: Ogre was behind a fucking sheet the whole time. The stage seemed really empty and devoid of energy. Sure it was nice and artsy at first - “Ooooh, look at the cool shadow play when he sings.” But the keyboardist looked bored and the drummer looked like he’d rather be somewhere else, so it really was up to Ogre to pull this shit together. Of course he didn’t. My friend Mike thinks he was on some serious drugs and too wasted to sound like Skinny Puppy (seriously, he sounded like shit). I think he just needs to call it quits for a while. His voice sucked and his presence wasn’t there. BORING. The whole damned band wasn’t there, mentally or emotionally. I felt like I was watching some crap high school band or a geriatric ward slowly die of old age, not Skinny Motherfucking Puppy! The thing is, once in a while Ogre would come dancing out from behind the sheets and start singing to the crowd. Then there was a noticeable surge in crowd energy; they went from zombies standing there looking confused by the bright lights to something resembling insomniacs trying to dance. The latter was an improvement, trust me. But I don’t blame the crowd at all. You can’t get into a show that isn’t there. Even when Nivek came frolicking out from behind the curtains to scream in the crowds’ faces it still wasn’t anything to get excited over. Sure he *looked* cool, but image only goes so far.
This is boredom:
To make a long story short, Skinny Puppy was a waste of money. Mike and I left before the set was even over. We just couldn’t take it any more. The after party was fun though, but I admit that we mostly hung out outside with my other homies that we met there. Gnargh! Friggin’ Skinny Puppy. What a let down. But like I said, what we did before and after was cool, but that’s all for another blog.
-=Grim=-
Jon Stewart said what I’ve been thinking. This arming of insurgents is rediculous. Aw, did we make them say they were sorry before handing them a crate of AK-47? Those weapons *will* be turned against us. They are not our friends and most certainly not our allies. Oooooh, they reject the Al Qaeda. Gee, thanks. Have some hand grenades, but promise you won’t use them against us. Notice in the article they drop a nice veiled threat too. “America, this alliance lasts as long as it takes to oust the Al Qaeda - then you better be gone!” Fuck that. We just armed the same chumps who were blowing us up last year.
This whole things reeks of the administration having no fucking idea how to fix the problem they got us in to. “So uh… we’ll arm these, uh, insurgents and they’ll fight with us… and stuff. Right? We’ll retinal scan them and… um… hey we can keep them under our thumb, right?”
Christ. We just ousted a tyrant that got his start the same way. The supposed mastermind behind 9/11 was trained by the CIA. These Muslim “enemies of our enemies” make *great* allies. Yea.
-=Grim=-
The Albany news is claiming that the chaos outside is “vicious rioting in the downtown area”, but those aren’t looters pounding at my door. Looters don’t eat your neighbors. I used to be an atheist; now I can not ignore the God-given apocalypse standing on my doorstep. Christ I wish Val hadn’t gone outside to find the cats. I haven’t seen her since and she isn’t picking up her cell phone. If anyone does manage to find her, living or dead… or “undead” for lack of a better term to describe these things… call me. My phone is still working, but who knows for how long. Why won’t Val pick up her phone? Christ Val, just answer the fucking thing!
I tried putting the radio on to drown out the ever-present moaning of these things. Hundreds of dead things outside, thousands in the city, all moaning at once… it’s maddening. I almost welcome the sporadic screams of those caught outside, the gunfire in the distance (I knew I should have moved into the ghetto; it sounds like they’re making a stand), the breaking glass, whatever. The radio didn’t work. It only made me more insane. Fuck the Emergency Broadcast System. Does anyone have any real news? Last I heard the nearby shelter was overrun. Before that I was hoping Val made it there. Now I dread that notion. Where *is* she? Why won’t she answer her goddamned phone!?!
All I have is a few kitchen knives and one boarded up door between me and oblivion should these things break through into the building’s lobby, and there’s not much preventing them from doing so. I mean really, what shitty Albany apartment complex is prepared for “rioting”? I refuse to use the “Z” word. I’ll just keep trying to pretend that they’re looters and drug-addicts. Anarchists. Terrorists. Whatever. I can’t count on the Feds to protect me. They couldn’t even handle a friggin’ hurricane and one war overseas. The news this morning said that this rioting was a social pandemic throughout most major cities in the world. Yea, right. Who am I kidding? The Feds won’t be the cavalry coming in to save the day. They’re holed up in some underground bunker that will serve as their living tomb.
No one is coming to save me. No one is coming. Not even Val.
-=Grim=-
…at least don’t look like a basement-dwelling World of Warcraft dweeb. Yea, sure, whatever. I’m a callous prick or whatever you want to call me. But this shit had me cracking up:
I mean COME ON. What, were they out of Black Metal drummers in Norway (or whatever Midwest town this group is from) so they had to ask the high school marching band snare section to come lay some tracks with them? Look at this guy! They even gave him sad clown makeup instead of corpse paint! *sigh* It really ruins a band’s image when people like this try to do the rock n’ roll pose for photos. I don’t give a fuck if you’re gutter punk or some other anti-establishment band, image is everything (the gutter punks would have the image of “we don’t need an image!”, usually the standard punk image, i.e. “We really do have an image, but we like to think we don’t.”). For Black Metal image is about eating babies, skull-fucking the pope and destroying all things pleasant. You can’t pull that off when your band has that one weak link in the photo. Look as bad-ass as you want, the weakest link is the image presented. Yo, it’s even funnier in the unmarked photo:
Holy D&D dork, Batman! He probably goes by the name Zamoth Gar, Bane of Light. Why couldn’t they give this guy a mask or something? Some mean looking thing with rusty nails and fangs or whatever is this years trendy thing in the Black Metal scene. No, they give the Chess Club looking guy sad clown makeup. Whatever, I’m an asshole. Bite me.
Christ…
-=Grim=-
P.S.: For the record, the band is called Emaciation. I have a feeling there’s another 30 Black Metal and Death Metal bands with that name, probably meaner looking too, but whatever.
I shit you not. Look here and… well. I dunno. Weep? Laugh?
-=Grim=-
I refuse to believe this is real. I know it is, I just refuse to acknowledge that I know it is, and thus I live in blissful denial. Listen to the lyrics, especially the last half. I almost fell off my chair laughing. I should have known what I was in for when the song title came up. “What What (In the Butt)”? What what was I thinking watching it (besides butt sex)? Damn that Emily Sixx. She got me again. Time for me to find some puke sex videos to send her. This means war!
-=Grim=-