because indie rock sucks

metal up yr ass.


megadeth: "wake up dead"
on the ARRM (awesomely rad riff meter), "wake up dead" scores a 9.5. nearly every riff is rad, particularly at the -2:34 to -1:54 mark and (especially) the last riff at -0:59 to end.



metallica: "the prince"
here are those dinosaurs covering diamond head's "the prince." it was from a 2004 show, so it's kinda old, kinda tired, but it's competent. in a word: dad. hammett sounds like fucking rubbish. his solo at the beginning is embarrassing. and lars. well, it's lars. poor grandpa looks like he's about to keel over. anyway, "the prince" is about a 8.5 on the ARRM. every riff is rad, but not the raddest.

now, contrast that with:



metallica: blackened"
christ all effing mighty, what happened? the boys are playing "blackened," easily a 10.0, back in 1989. it's unnerving how good they were. the rage (most likely because of death of cliff burton) is palpable. james hetfield looks like he's about to pummel the shit out of someone. they're a laughingstock now, both their music and public image, but there was a time when metallica were a force to be fucked w/.

bonus:


14-year-old jacqueline mannering playing the solo from "blackened." pretty good, pretty good. i was way better at that age, but you know. i'm kidding. (not really.)



celtic frost: "into the crypt of rays"
here's everyone favorite thrash/proto-black metal outfit, celtic frost, performing the classic "into the crypt of rays" on some whack-ass swiss tv show. a solid 9.0, for sure. every riff slaps the step-child, but still not quite the raddest. i have to give thomas fischer cred for headbanging between every verse, though.

bonus: the frost's cover of "mexican radio." not nearly as good as the original, but a chuckle-worthy novelty nevertheless.



slayer: "angel of death"
easily a 10.0. the riff after the second chorus-- tell me that shit doesn't make you wanna hit something. even public enemy had to sample it. actually, dave lombardo's sick fucking drumming elevates this to a 12.0-- on a riff meter! it's that metal!



the dillinger escape plan: "sugar-coated sour"
another 10.0. every riff is masterful. but this is really a drumming song. the guitars and drums are a punishing machine. even though the drummer himself is a right d-bag.




carcass: "heartwork"
every riff in this song is a 9.5, but the verse riff elevates it to a 10. best played at extremely loud volume.



accept: "balls to the wall"
oh, man. the riffs, the leather, the fatigues, the Vs, and udo. the sheer germanness of it all! this is shit is so metal i feel ionized just watching the vid. when i was younger i thought they were saying "wolf blitzer" in the chorus. not really, but it sounded good and funny enough so i still way it when i sing along. easily a 15. it just doesn't get any more metal than accept, it's that simple.


and there you have it. some of the raddest riffs in metal. tell yr mom i say what up.

huh?

i don't get it. seriously, what is the big fucking deal w/ this chick? is it because she was, until a few days ago, underage? is it because she resembles jon benet? is it because we're a schizophrenic society that purports to despise pedophiles, yet sexualizes kids?

all pedophilia implications aside, i reckon i'd find it hard to find the appeal if she were, say, 24. maybe then she'll look different, more like a woman, but when you boil it down, she's just another nondescript blonde. maybe growing up in orange county has raised my tolerance to this kind of thing, but nah, probably not. em is blonde. but then, em is hot.

but maybe i'm the weirdo for finding her age and resemblance to a child beauty queen a turn-off.

another m.i.a. interview, and another reason to buy/subscribe to radar

very interesting interview w/ m.i.a. in the new issue of radar. you can read a little bit of it here.

Have you felt pressure to be less outspoken?
It's a double-edged sword, always. I don't feel lucky that I can't get into the U.S. I guess that's what happens when you choose to say something other than, "My humps, my humps, my humps." Yeah, if you have something to say, you pay the price, but it's an interesting lesson for us all. When I talk about politics, I talk about them as a daughter of somebody who was persecuted because of them. My experience with the government was discovering things like, because of them, maybe my cousin was killed. My aunt was in a refugee camp. My uncle was arrested for selling magazines. These are the stories I heard growing up. I'd hear how my neighbors got tortured to death, my cousin was hung upside down on a van and beaten. So I was always vexed about politics, and then suddenly you watch the news in London and hear that your freedom is being taken away there as well. Not just that I couldn't get on the Tube because bin Laden was going to bomb us, but having to, like, justify all these sodding two-hour airport security checks, and being treated different. I call that shit. It's useless. London is a beautiful, multicultural place, and after the 7/7 bombings it became ruled by unspoken prejudice.

is there anyone cooler in music today? i think not!

ain't talkin' 'bout love

i'll always love eddie van halen's music and i'll always respect what he's done for the guitar, but personally i find the man himself to be cretinous. on the eve of their big reunion tour w/ diamond dave (bibbidy bop!), van halen have, inexplicably, decided to delete ex-bassist michael anthony from their history. why? when it comes to van halen, who the fuck knows why? evh has been fucked out of his skull for years, his brother is apparently the biggest sycophant in rock history, and i'm sure roth is aware he had better keep his yap shut lest he loses out on the millions this tour will no doubt rake in. as others on blabbermouth have said, this is a trainwreck and where it stops, how gruesome it'll get, and how many will go down in flames is yet to be determined. but rest assured it will happen. i'd like to think evh is digging his grave w/ this kind of sociopathic behavior, but methinks the hordes of middle-aged, acid-washed rockers will be too drenched in their jager-soaked nostalgia to vote w/ their feet on this one.

"that crunchy part's the thorax"

i'm obsessed w/ this pepsis wasp now, a.k.a, the tarantula hawk. first of all, they're beautiful. second, they get drunk off fermented fruit. but the real clincher for me is what it does to tarantulas. get a load of this madness:

A female wasp finds a tarantula by smell. Generally, she scampers across the ground to locate a burrow. She will enter the burrow and expel the spider, then attack it. She may also encounter a male tarantula during his search for a mate. In an attack, the wasp uses her antennae to probe the spider, which may raise its front legs and bare its fangs. (A tarantula does not always counterattack.) She then attempts to sting the spider. She might seize the spider by a leg, flip it over on its back and sting it, or she may approach from the side to deliver a sting. Once stung, the tarantula becomes paralyzed within seconds. The condition will last for the remainder of its life. The wasp may drink the body fluids oozing from the spider’s wounds or from its mouth to replenish nutrients and water she used during the attack.

If the wasp expelled her victim, she will drag it back into its own burrow, now a burial vault, lay a single egg on the spider’s abdomen, then seal the chamber. If the wasp succeeds in stinging a male tarantula on a mating hunt, she will excavate a burrow, drag the paralyzed spider inside, lay her single egg, and seal the chamber.

Once the egg hatches, the tiny grub, initially connected to the spider by the tip of its tail, bends over, attaches its head and begins to suck. It continues sucking until its final moult. It then rips open the spider's abdomen, thrusts its head and part of the thorax inside, and "feeds ravenously," as one entomologist described it. As one might hope, even for a spider, the tarantula at this point is finally dead.

remember that the next time someone uses "it's natural" to justify something. now for some videos:



the fight



the kill



the schlep.

be sure to watch these before you go to sleep. (next to a feather duster that will lightly graze your arm as you nod off, causing you to jolt up in abject arm-flailing hysteria.)

snap!

did you know there's a fucking pain index!? check it-- the schmidt sting pain index. it's a "pain scale rating the relative pain caused by different Hymenopteran stings" (hymenopteran are ants, wasps, and shit like that).

but check out the scale:

• 1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
• 1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.
• 1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
• 2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
• 2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine WC Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
• 2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.
• 3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.
• 3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of Hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
• 4.0 Pepsis wasp: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath (if you get stung by one you might as well lie down and scream).
• 4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch nail in your heel

bullet ants are out-of-control crazy. they're like an inch long and will cause a green beret to quiver like a babe. i love the description of the pepsis wasp* sting: "blinding, fierce, shockingly electric." or the red harvester ant: "someone using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail." yum. but i think my favorite is the yellowjacket: "hot and smoky." oooh, sounds like a slow-cooked sausage.

you can go ahead and thank me for not making a joke about the ultimate level of pain being "chuck norris," described as, "more painful than watching christ himself backhand your mother like a snaggle-toothed hooker."

*these maniacs eat tarantulas! ain't that some shit? a wasp that eats tarantulas. nature is some fucked up shit.

casey kasem tantrum

crap, it took me like nearly 6 mins. to find this clip. it's casey kasem freaking out about doing a dedication to some family's dog (snuggles!). he wigs out because he's got to transition from some shitty upbeat pop song into a death dedication. you gotta admit he has a point.

trv cvlt

well, shit, i've literally listened to nothing but the entire darkthrone discography all week. okay, that's not true-- i've taken some "wuss breaks" to jam along to "chocolate rain" here and there, but other than, it's been strictly 'throne. anyway, so you know what that means: videos.



this is a pretty boring video for "transylvanian hunger," but the song is a classic.



and here's nocturno culto, guitarist/vocalist, discussing the band's studio set up, complete w/ "whole pizza."

tractate it

i just finished reading philip k. dick's valis. fuck. i'm not even going to try to summarize that shit, save to say that it's like that one night when i smoked weed that was, unbeknownst to me, laced w/ angel dust (in which i saw a pink elephant, not a pink laser, alas). pkd is often called a science fiction writer, and while valis has vague elements of the genre, it's more accurate to think of it as a hallucinogenic fever dream. set in orange county.

good, good stuff. best book i've read in years, by far. but then, i have a soft spot for art that tries to capture that elusive drug-induced hallucinogenic state. call it my bid for nostalgia. from now on, whenever bizarre shit goes down, i'm going to declare it "all valis."

more video nostalgia

that "jessie" video got me in the mood for some '90s rock vids.

for your viewing/listening pleasure:



alice in chains: "would?"
this video always reminds me of the big bear/landers earthquake.



soundgarden: "rusty cage"
he's a bit of a douche now, but chris cornell, for a time, was a songsmith to be reckoned w/. this is definitely one of the funnest songs to play on guitar. and on bass. and drums. and to sing.



kyuss: "green machine"
blues for the red sun was another teenage staple. "capsized," despite being less than a minute in length, is one of the most beautiful songs ever. this video always reminds me of skating in huntington beach.



candlebox: "you"
stfu, this song is awesome.



afghan whigs: "debonair"
one of the rare videos that doesn't seem gay ten years later.



therapy?: "screamager"
the day-glo instruments give this a bit of an '80s feel.



porno for pyros: "cursed female"
i remember liking this video a lot when i first saw it. watching it now, years and years later, i think it's one of the best music videos ever made.

paw's "jessie"

man, paw was fucking awesome. definitely one of the top three underrated bands of the '90s. how many bands today would write a song about a dog and perform it like their fucking lives depended on it? undertow's been a staple since i was a youngin and hasn't aged a bit. auralgasm at the end of the second chorus w/ the introduction of a pedal steel guitar. simply, there isn't a more beautiful instrument than the pedal steel.

aaron, why do you hate brett ratner?

well, since you asked, i'll tell you. first, i don't "hate" him; i just think he's douchey. for three basic reasons: first and foremost, his movies fucking blow. even michael bay is better at that schlocky shit than ratner is. ratner's movies are just painful to watch. w/ bay, you can't expect to see anything other than shit being blown up. if you expect more than that, you're a fool. but ratner tries to be more and, bluntly, he isn't.

second, he's a rich kid. his mother was a socialite and that no doubt had an effect on his success (the privileged look out for its own). do fratboys have to run everything?

third, he fucking wanted to direct a remake of the killing of a chinese bookie. bookie is my favorite film. ever. anyone who remakes that movie runs the risk of having his throat slit by me. most recognize that you cannot remake a film like bookie. most, save, for brett fucking ratner. brett fucking ratner remaking bookie is like good charlotte covering hendrix's "machine gun." not only is it wrong, it's stupid. it's a complete misjudgment of abilities; a monstrously gross lack of self-awareness. the sort of misjudgment that arises when one is totally consumed by one's ego.

so there you go. my reasons for finding ratner douchey.

another nugget of celebrity wisdom

apparently, today is brilliant celebrity quotes day. this next one, on relationships and male biology, comes from kate hudson, the gena rowlands of our time. quoth:

"As primal beings, men are not supposed to be monogamous.

"When people ask, 'Do you believe in monogamy?' Well, of course that's what you want.

"But part of what I love about men is that it's hard for them to be monogamous.

"Women, I think, need to spend more time understanding men than changing men.

"And vice versa."

wow. so deep. so deep. see, what she's saying is, men are biologically incapable of monogamy. in the spirit of kate's great logic, i'm going to cease shitting in the toilet. because shitting in the toilet isn't natural. from here on out, it's turds in the trousers-- wherever, whenever. wait! no more trousers, either! trousers aren't natural! and sometimes it is hard not to shit your pants. you're hurtin' and you're squirtin' and a potty isn't at the ready-- these things happen. so to avoid that mess altogether, why not just give up that "whole bathroom" thing? god. so simple. so. just-- empowering. thanks, kate.

link

terrence howard, decidedly not down w/ the funk

good eve and god bless.

the most beautiful thing in nature, terrence "smooove-rrence" howard, has spoken. and women, you had better listen up:

"I like women who look like me. Generally, you're attracted to women who look like you, because the most beautiful thing in nature is your own reflection."

absolutely.

"If a relationship is built on sexuality, it won't last long. Now I'm completely chaste through a relationship unless I get married. I don't believe in premarital sex. It enabled me to date three or four women at the same time, because as long as I wasn't having sex with them, I could always just walk away."

this is so true. as long as i'm not beautifully inserting my manwand into her, thereby purifying her, i can easily walk away. it's only after she's ensnared me in her nefarious, filthy web w/ sexual compromises, that i find it difficult to cut the succubus loose.

"There were some [past girlfriends] who pushed for sex, and sometimes they won. Afterward, I would feel unclean, like I'd compromised my own values. So I would have to let them go because they didn't help me to be a stronger person."

truth be told, it's near impossible to be truly clean as long as you're within 50 feet of a woman. but pre-marital sex is mos def the filthiest act imaginable. silky-beautiful, true cleanliness is only achieved when 2 b-come 1 through holy union. the man is more pure, the penis being the purifying instrument (pe-nis, n. latin: shaftus radius), but the man is only slightly more pure than the woman. true, holy purity is only attainable through holy union. that, and baby wipes:

"Toilet paper - and no baby wipes - in the bathroom. If they're using dry paper, they aren't washing all of themselves. It's just unclean. So if I go in a woman's house and see the toilet paper there, I'll explain this. And if she doesn't make the adjustment to baby wipes, I'll know she's not completely clean."

this, i feel, speaks for itself.

"I was in love with her, but she was not in love with me. I can't be upset because she doesn't find me the most beautiful thing on the planet."

woman is a fool. as hard as it is to believe, this has happened to me as well. in fact, i'm not sure em finds me the most beautiful-silky thing on the planet. but she is unclean.

link
link

yeah, but can you press buttons?

i'm not cool enough to play guitar hero, so i just have to play one of those "real" guitars, like the one over there to the left (to the left-- k, sorry). not quite sure how the thing was able to up and sit itself on the edge of the futon-- found it a bit strange myself. anyway, this beaut plays like a dream. i drive everyone within earshot crazy w/ my constant tapping and pinch harmonics, but fuck 'em-- fuckin' rock n' roll, man.

head over to the flickr page for more pr0n.

oh no they dihn't!

apple's blurb for the new imac:

"you can't be too thin"

yeah, so as everyone already knew, apple unveiled the new imac. and, as everyone already knew, its update was largely cosmetic; however the specs aren't anything to sneeze at (320GB in the higher-end 20-inch? really? and firewire 800?). after i've had all day for it sink in, i have to say i think it looks cool, but i'm not sitting here glaring at my 17-inch imac and muttering, you worthless piece of shit. in fact, i'm still quite fond of the thing.

what i like: the specs, the aluminum, the black back casing, the black border around the screen
what i fucking don't like: glossy screen

it's this last point that really kills it for me. i hate glossy screens. one thing i love about my computer is its matte screen. thing is fucking radder than fuck. someone at macrumors posited a theory, and i'm apt to believe this, that apple put glossy screens on this imac to deter hardcore professionals from buying them (and cutting into mac pro sales).

if i was still shopping around for a mac i would probably buy this new imac. like i said, the glossy screen kills it for me, but i need the space for the shit i do. as it is, i'm definitely going to have to upgrade to a pro at some point when i have around $3,000 to spend lavishly. for audio and video shit, you mos def need one of those beasts (16 fucking GB of ram possible), especially if you're going to run pro tools, reason, ableton live, final cut, etc. and similar programs. the imac is really apple's simple home desktop machine. plus, the imac was my first mac and i didn't want to go all hogwild, even though i've used pros in the studio before.

anyway, i'm feeling pretty gay and geeky at this point, so i'll shut it. one thing that did catch my eye, though: the new keyboard. might have to pick one of those puppies up this weekend.

update: engadget has a bevy of imac pr0n.

i've a feeling i'm about to get annoyed

apple is about to unveil its new thing-- whatever it is. most of the rumors have speculated that it's a new imac. these rumors focused mainly on cosmetic updates, which calmed me, being as i bought a new imac a couple of months ago for school and i don't really care if the new imac is aluminum or whatever. however, some have said that the new imacs may come equipped w/ a blu-ray drive, which, if true, will make me a very surly fuck.

oh, well. as my brother said, "there's always craigslist."

navigating the intertextual landscapes of thicketed perpetuity (the throes of a turkish loggerheads) a.k.a, academic rockstars

i don't know about you, but i get a kick out of postmodern writing. well, i should qualify that: i get a kick out of it when it "deconstructs" pop culture. take this popmatters article on martin scorsese, for example. quoth:

When any eager genrephile, from a rank and file movie-goer to a film scholar, tries to pigeonhole a Martin Scorsese film into a neat category, their attempts are almost unilaterally frustrated. Testosterone-laden male youths view his works as action “flicks” replete with headshot gratification, the older set looks upon his oeuvre as a chain of endlessly amorphous dramas that exposes the underbelly of society, and the 21st century intelligentsia waves the banner of Lyotard and calls Scorsese a filmmaker deeply entrenched in the postmodern aesthetic.

However, I find that Scorsese’s work is too complex—indeed polysemy is the very core of Scorsese’s filmmaking—to be satisfactorily subsumed under such simplistic headings. I posit, as an alternative, that Scorsese’s cinema is an admixture of distinct renderings of each of his respective narratives: that of hyperrealism and that of neo-realism. Through a mosaic of simulacra, a hyperbole, a-canonical plot structure, and a salient omission of clear protagonist antagonist demarcations, Scorsese creates what a sort of “grotesque neo-realism”. The dualistic nature of this style is precisely what has allowed Marty, as he is affectionately referred to by fans, to sit astride the division between popular and art filmmaking, and endlessly confound viewers who try to reduce his work to a singularity.

further:

A true taxonomy of every outrageous performance in a Martin Scorsese piece would rival the length of the combined credits of his oeuvre. Directing actors to play their characters in this manner, Scorsese’s players become archetypal grotesques. His figures play parodies of themselves and their baroque identities flesh out his diegeses as hyperreal. For virtuality to be fully constructed, it is insufficient for the world alone to be markedly simulated. The characters must be as well. In this way, Scorsese points his discursive finger at his viewers and safe-guards his schema from being misinterpreted as reifying the world as hyperreal. Rather, Scorsese shows his manifold of simulacra to be progeny of the figures which people his diegeses.

Here we will break from the topic of the grotesque and advance to that of the neo-real. This latter component rescues Scorsese’s films from the threat of absurdism and masterfully transfigures his exaggerated worlds into ones which viewers may relate to. This is not to say that Scorsese’s wielding of neo-realism immerses the audience in the diegesis and welds their humors to the sentiment of the film; spectators are rarely emotionally attached to Scorsese’s works. Rather, viewers are safely distanced from empathy by characters who are boors at best and alien environments such as the world of taxi drivers and aristocratic 19th century New York. However, the true faculty of Scorsese’s neo-realism is to ground his otherwise baroque narratives in some semblance of humanity. This serves as the bridge between the hyperreal and the everyday experience of members of the audience. As imitation of their reality, the neo-real aspect suggests that perhaps the hyperreal (with which it is conflated) is also a mirror of the viewers’ world.

good god, what hideous nonsense! has someone been reading baudrillard lately? yes? and now we feel the need to show off, hmm? very well. tragically, this article makes very little sense, simply because postmodernism itself is nonsensical. yet no matter how severe its grotesquerie, i'm never hard-pressed not to find chuckle-worthy gems. but it's not even that postmodernism fails to make sense so much as it gussies up very pedestrian ideologies in fancy words. take baudrillard's "hyperreality" bit-- basically, it's just fake environments, like las vegas. but instead of simply saying that, he had to coin a new term and drench it in tirelessly abstract, opaque prose.

the biggest offender, and possibly one of the grandest douchebags of the 21st century, is slavoj zizek. for an example of such buffoonery, i bring you his myspace "about me":

In Cyberspace all positive properties are externalized in the sense that everything you are in a positive sense, all your features can be manipulated. When one plays in virtual space I can for example be a homosexual man who pretends to be a heterosexual woman, or whatever: either I can build a new identity for myself or in a more paranoiac way, I am somehow already controlled, manipulated by the digital space.

this is not even syntactical, but whatever. again, it's somehow too proletariat simply to say: "i can bullshit online much like how i do in the classroom," but that would be too boring. and i find the whole "swinger" distinction frightening (please don't haunt me in my dreams).

but i do give postmodernists, and zizek in particular, credit for building careers out of shamelessly bullshitting people. hey, we all gotta hustle, right?

don't make me spit at you + then get annoyed when you cry about it

i know, you've always wondered, have i got asperger's? well, now you can find out! i scored a 17, which makes me an "average female scientist." scores over 32 "are generally taken to indicate Asperger's Syndrome or high-functioning autism, with more than 34 an 'extreme' score.'"

via edward champion.

afflict the comfortable

damn! m.i.a. delivers the smackdown in her interview w/ richdork media:

Pitchfork: So tell me a bit about Kala. I just heard it for the first time today, and--

M.I.A.: Diplo didn't make it.

Pitchfork: Uh, what?

M.I.A.: He never made Arular, but you guys keep writing it.

Pitchfork: 'He' being Diplo?

M.I.A.: You're not listening to me at all, are you?

Pitchfork: I'm trying. It's a little hard to hear you.

M.I.A.: Forget what I said. [Pauses] What do you think I said?

Pitchfork: I heard you say something to the effect of "he didn't make Arular and he also didn't make this record." I'm wondering who you're referring to, though I could take a wild guess.

M.I.A.: Yesterday I read like five magazines in the airplane-- it was a nine hour flight-- and three out of five magazines said "Diplo: the mastermind behind M.I.A.'s politics!" And I was wondering, does that stem from [Pitchfork]? Because I find it really bonkers.

Pitchfork: Well, it's hard to say where it originated. We certainly have made reference to Diplo playing a part on your records, but it seems like everyone plays that up.

M.I.A.: If you read the credits, he sent me a loop for "Bucky Done Gun", and I made a song in London, and it became "Bucky Done Gun". But that was the only song he was actually involved in on Arular. So the whole time I've had immigration problems and not been able to get in the country, what I am or what I do has got a life of its own, and is becoming less and less to do with me. And I just find it a bit upsetting and kind of insulting that I can't have any ideas on my own because I'm a female or that people from undeveloped countries can't have ideas of their own unless it's backed up by someone who's blond-haired and blue-eyed. After the first time it's cool, the second time it's cool, but after like the third, fourth, fifth time, maybe it's an issue that we need to talk about, maybe that's something important, you know.

dayamn, girl. loves it. of course, the rich dorks over at stereogum, do not love it. their post on this is entitled "bigmouth strikes again," because heaven fucking forbid someone (read: a brown woman from a third-world country) say something that doesn't sit well w/ scene politics. lily allen, of course, can say + do anything she pleases, no matter how revolting, simply because she's a privileged white kid. don't you just love these "liberal" scene people? anyway, she goes on to say:

There is an issue especially with what male journalists write about me and say "this MUST have come from a guy." I can understand that, I can follow that, that's fine. But when female journalists as well put your work and things down to it being all coming from a man, that really fucks me up. It's bullshit. I mean, for me especially, I felt like this is the only thing I have, and if I can stick my neck out and go for the issues and go through my life as it is, the least I can have is my creativity.

well, could be that it's not just a sexism issue-- there's also class to consider. i think this is why lily allen has become so popular amongst scene types + why m.i.a has become "played out." allen took m.i.a.'s basic template + stripped it of its grit, its balls, its originality + injected it w/ a bratty sense of privileged entitlement. since music is more about identity than anything else/ w scenesters, allen is much more appealing, as she is privileged, white, narcissistic, etc-- everything the majority of scenesters are. she's not weird + alien-looking like m.i.a. is. sure, m.i.a. has an exotic appeal, but that is a simple novelty.

anyway, i've always dug m.i.a.'s music, but now i have a whole new respect for her as a person. i can't wait for her new album-- it'll be money well spent.

wow wow wow, seriously seriously?

the world's most dangerous fucking band, the yeah yeah yeahs, on their new ep, is is, have a new song called "rockers to swallow"; obviously, the most awesome song title ever. "rockers to swallow." wow. amazing. almost as good as is is. this band is just so rad. never heard anything like them before. ever. new york city is so fucking cool, dude. all that talent. anybody who doesn't live there is such a loser.

mark my words

i know who killed me will become a kitsch classic.