Posted on July 6th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness, Recovery.
I'm probably going to write again. Probably. It's very hard now, but I'm realizing that not writing is harder; so I must. Writing is my self-definition, and even though I suck right now (don't argue, it's true by my own definition), not writing would mean I'd be a different person, and, really, I don't know how.
My thoughts are scattered still. I'm sitting here, trying to gather them. They're mostly outside my grasp.
One thing: Sometimes I am very depressed. That's going to be my favorite thing to write about. Well, not being depressed, but the specific manifestations of my stroke. I certainly don't mind if you go away.
Posted on April 12th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness, Comedy, Old Posts.
Looking for a man who "walks to a different drummer," "takes the road less traveled," and isn't afraid to say the emperor's naked, even when it isn't "politically correct." Are you my "free thinker"?
Posted on March 12th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness, Old Posts.
Today, just now in fact [well, nearly thirteen years ago, but anyway], I created a very impressive special effect, and I wish i hadn't. You know how corningware's supposed to be virtually unbreakable, except when it shatters spontaneously deep in the cupboard? Don't believe them. I'm housesitting for friends, and I wanted some beans and rice. Pulled out an appropriately-sized corningware pot, and went to the kitchen where the lids are propped on a wall unit. I carelessly pulled the right-sized lid, and it took the next-larger one with it; that lid crashed to the floor, and astonishingly (I wish I were in a position to admire this) crashed right through the pot I was holding. Corningware all over the kitchen floor to the atomic level. Me left holding a very sorry little corningware pot handle. Now I have to (heavy sigh) go clean it up.
And, naturally, this means that there is now a pot without a corresponding lid, and a lid without a corresponding pot. I'd worry about replacing them, but right now I DON'T GET TO HAVE ANY RICE AND BEANS.
Posted on February 10th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Badness, Stuff.
And I am distressed. I loved zoos as a child, and Woodland Park Zoo was my second home. When the Nocturnal House opened, I was fascinated, and it immediately became my favorite. I went there for hours and hours. Now it's going to be closed, a victim of budget cuts. I guess I assumed that it would be open forever. Thank god I saw it last year with my family.
Posted on February 8th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Badness, Movies, Old Posts.
My roommate has a cat, Milo. A neurotic cat, but until recently within normal cat neurosis territory. But my roommate has begun a relationship that has him outside the apartment a great deal more than previously, and unfortunately Milo turns out to be a Desperately Needy cat, starved for attention after mere minutes of solitude.
I am friendly to cats, but allergic. Petting is out of the question; I swell up, choke, go blind, die a dozen unpleasant deaths. Milo begs for love, and though I cannot touch him, I speak to him kindly, endeavor to make him understand that his problems are heard, that he is appreciated and loved and that someday his master will return and shower him with the affection to which he is so manifestly entitled.
No more. Yesterday, as I prepared to meet my sweetheart to see a movie, the phone rang. My roommate's phone was closest -- he was gone, naturally -- and as I answered it, Milo ran up behind me and bit me on the fucking leg. Hard enough to draw blood. I whacked him with the phone receiver -- I'm sorry, but he was out of line -- yelled at him, poured disinfectant on the wound, and yelled at him some more. Not to put too fine a point on it, I was fucking freaked out; blood running down my leg, wound swelling, cat running around howling. Not fun.
Then Velma & I went to see Shadow of the Vampire. It was good and creepy, but I'm seeing Nosferatu in the cat's fuzzy face now.
Posted on November 6th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Badness, Stuff.
I got yelled at by a turning trucker, for walking with the light but too slow. So I stopped in front of him, yelled at him, brandished my cane, told him I was disabled, etc. And he yelled even more. Eventually I moved on.
Boy, I blew up. I was walking fine, in a okay mood, then out of the blue this irritant came up, and I felt myself get instantly very mad; and I felt myself shake, even before I turned and yelled.
I think I have issues.
Posted on October 21st, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Badness, Stuff.
"Hunting has been banned in parts of Austria after freak storms with tennis ball-sized hailstones killed up to 90 per cent of the wild game population.
"Hundreds of deer were discovered either dead or so badly injured they had to be put down by wildlife experts.
"In the country's rural Salzburg province, 90 percent of pheasants and 80 percent of hares were killed in the hail storms.
"Sepp Eder, the hunting chief, said : 'Animals sought shelter in farms, in fields of grain but the hail was so heavy it smashed right into them. It may take five years for animal numbers to recover, if they ever do so.'
"Farmers are believed to have suffered more than £60 million in damages to crops and buildings."
via Ed Ward at the Well
Posted on October 6th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Badness, Stuff, Untruths.
Americans, we have been shaken down for the money these people lost.
from BoingBoing
Posted on September 15th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness, Editing.
When presenting a short character, especially a short character presented negatively (as most of them are, and when they're not, they're presented as being extraordinary, which is almost worse), please resist the impulse to link height and character. This sort of thing isn't insight, it's second-hand pop psychology. If you throw Napoleon in there, it's also imbecilic.
The constant assumptions made about the psychology of short men (we're all insecure and overcompensating, don't you know), and the demonizing of traits that are admirable among the tall -- a short man isn't tough and no-nonsense, he's a ruthless bastard; he's not ambitious, he's power-hungry; he's not charming and charismatic, he's smarmy and slimy; he's not confident, he's arrogant and pushy -- aren't just cliches, they're offensive. Stop it.
Even an often well-meaning phrase like "making up for his physical shortcomings" is annoying, unless you're talking about being a fireman or something. The world throws constant shit at short men -- more than the non-short really comprehend -- so in that sense being short is a "physical shortcoming": in the same sense that it's a "shortcoming" to be female or non-white. But you wouldn't say of a character that she "made up for being a woman" or "made up for being black". At least, not any more (I hope).
Posted on September 4th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Badness, Music Criticism.
From the excitable reviewer files at RateYourMusic:
I can't believe that there are people out there that don't like this. The Exploited paved the way for all the shitty bands that are out today.
Posted on September 4th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Badness, Music Criticism.
Tom Nawrocki over at One Poor Correspondent yesterday wrote about Dave Marsh's bizarre assessment of Television's Marquee Moon in the 1979 edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide, a review that was still present in the 1983 edition he's quoting from. This provoked me to find the piece I wrote several years ago about the awfulness of the 1979 edition, and discovered that apparently I never reprinted the piece over here. So:
I've always found Dave Marsh's rock criticism dislikable, but revisiting the Rolling Stone Record Guide has deepened that dislike into contempt. It's an old edition, 1979, edited by Marsh and John Swenson; a blurb on the back advertises it as "witty, opinionated, and, above all, knowledgeable," and while a 33% truth score on a blurb isn't bad, anyone can have opinions and most people do; witty (and, above all, knowledgeable) would have been better.
Marsh has the most entries, naturally, and he seems to have taken particular delight in reserving to himself entries on famous or critically lauded artists whom he disdains. Many of the albums he puts down have since become widely accepted classics, which has the effect of making him look either brave or out of step with rock and roll, depending on how generous you feel. Any slack I might have granted him is vitiated by the needless bile of his putdowns, and the clunky predictability of his language; Pere Ubu's Dub Housing is labeled pompous, pretentious, and irrelevant, the last of which has been proven manifestly untrue; he also calls it "anti-rock for anti-rockers," whatever that means, though I gather if I like it I don't like rock, or something. Of Television Marsh writes that they were "somewhat mysteriously" "the most widely touted band to emerge from the New York New Wave"; Tom Verlaine was "an interesting Jerry Garcia-influenced guitarist who lacked melodic ideas or any emotional sensibility." Even his positive opinions frequently bewilder: Steely Dan, says Marsh, were "Not the greatest American rock band . . . but [they] remain unquestionably the weirdest." In 1979? Weirder than Talking Heads, Tin Huey, Pere Ubu, the Residents?
How about this judgment of Squeeze, then still U.K. Squeeze: "Not to be confused with U.K., this group produces anonymous, pedestrian hard rock of the same vintage as the other's. By the end of 1978, this band was so defeated it changed its name to the simpler Squeeze." You may recall that immediately after this ignominy Squeeze turned out "Pulling Mussels from the Shell" and "Another Nail in My Heart," two of the great modern pop songs. As U.K. Squeeze they had recorded "Cool for Cats," "Up the Junction," and "Goodbye Girl." Regardless of his idiotic assessment of their worth, though, his description is factually inaccurate: Squeeze are not a hard rock band by any definition and never were, and they sounded nothing like U.K., an art-rock band led by Eddie Jobson and Bill Bruford. Who is spelled Buford by this above-all-knowledgeable reference book.
Let's touch on that for a paragraph before returning to the invective. Rock and roll reference books are supposed to be opinionated, though by my yardstick the Rolling Stone Guide goes about four feet too far. While the Spin and the Trouser Press record guides certainly pursue agendas -- the Trouser Press guide less so -- the trade is supposed to be accurate information. A book that neither gives you a reasonably objective view of bands' relative importance nor accurate information is worthless. Basic errors abound in the Rolling Stone Guide, from editorial errors such as listing Pere Ubu under U, to discographical errors such as describing Richard Thompson's Live (More or Less) as including his first solo album (it doesn't; it includes Richard & Linda Thompson's I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, which is neither solo nor his first album after leaving Fairport Convention). The book is also fundamentally flawed by only including albums that were in print at the time the book was published, leaving gaping holes in many artists' discographies; inexplicably, everyone's albums are listed in alphabetical rather than chronological order.
But the saddest thing about the book is Marsh's pathetic invective. When putting down his betters he embarrasses himself, but he doesn't even redeem himself with his dismissals of true stinkers; he just isn't very clever or original or vivid, rarely rising above high-school newspaper level. A few examples of insult on automatic: "Laid-back drivel from the former Eagle. [Randy Meisner in this case.] Makes John David Souther sound like Led Zeppelin." "Great title for a hot delta blues band. Too bad this isn't it -- or much of anything else, for that matter." "Hard rock at its most wrongheaded and overweening, and without either rhythm or emotion." "Your usual mid-seventies rock: dull and conservative." "Dreary seventies funk." Each of these is an entire band summary, by the way. The string of insults hurled -- well, lobbed -- at various incarnations of the Osmonds achieves a kind of wretched somnambulance: "Well-crafted garbage -- trash is too elevated a description," "Wretched excess, accent on the wretched," "All of them deserve to be melted," "Epitomizes stupidity."
Then there are the ones that are outright clumsy, windbaggy, and smarmy: "Talking about half of the Righteous Brothers is like talking about one Siamese twin, and listening to one is little improvement." "Dabbles in Caribbean rhythm, with essential purposelessness." "Yes, [Stella Parton is] Dolly's sister. No, they don't have anything in common, musically or (ahem) physically."
Ugh, I can't go on. As a critic, Marsh is a blowhard, and he's entitled to be one (and I to ignore him). But as a reference book editor he's an irresponsible, offhand fathead. A snide dismissive review is only an act of contempt for one band, but a shoddy reference book is an act of contempt for everyone who bought the book trusting the Rolling Stone name. Rolling Stone should be ashamed. (Edited to add: To be fair, later editions of the Record Guide are far more responsible and useful.)
Posted on August 16th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Badness, Music Criticism.
I'm going to start collecting instances of music writers dismayed at the bad taste of their idols. Musicians frequently display more open-mindedness about music than the people who write about them -- not just more adventurousness, but more open admiration for uncool music, and less inclination to care what others think; more willingness to take music on its own terms, and to unironically give themselves over to the music they enjoy.
This one's several years old, and I can't even find a byline on it: a piece in the Telegraph celebrating the re-release of the obscure 1975 Phil Spector-produced Dion album Born to Be With You. The piece hovers between the writer's admiration for the album and conviction of its neglected classic status, and Dion's utter indifference toward it. Ultimately the story becomes more about Dion's polite disinclination to talk much about the album, and an air of sad head-shaking by the author takes over; by the last three paragraphs, the author's word choices and quote selections make it clear that Dion is pitiable:
...It is certainly an anomaly next to both his pre-1975 catalogue of intuitive, streetwise New Yoik rock'n'roll and his post-1975 descent towards his doo-wop roots via gospel and Christian music. Dion "found it" with Born to Be with You, but lost it too.
Today, Dion wants to talk about religion, his daughters, The Wanderer - anything but Born to Be with You, basically. "This week, I had dinner with some dear friends and we talked about how we could be better at loving our wives," he tells me, apropos of nothing. "Life is great. I give thanks every day for being alive. We're all snowflakes, y'know."
Poor Dion descends from "streetwise" to religion, family, happiness; in case you were wondering whether the author wanted you to think Dion "lost it", the author spells it out for you, and chooses a presumed inanity ("We're all snowflakes, y'know") as the last thing we hear out of Dion's mouth, a deliberate bit of manipulative tone-setting. Also note the "apropos of nothing": presumably Dion thought it was apropos of something, though we don't know what he was responding to; we do know that it isn't what the author wants him to be interested in, therefore apropos of nothing.
I said last three paragraphs, but I only gave you two. This was the capper of the piece:
Fine. But then he really, really shocks and appalls me: he tells me that he likes the music of Alanis Morissette. Final confirmation, perhaps, that it was some higher power, and not Dion, who sang those songs after all.
Poor fanboy writer, whose idol loves his wife and daughters and Jesus and Alanis Morissette. This can't possibly be the same man who made the music the writer loves. Final confirmation, perhaps, that the writer can't learn anything he doesn't already know.
Posted on May 28th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness.
section head for credit card / airline co-promotion:
Say "good-bye" to lost luggage!
Posted on May 11th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness.
ESPN's website has a headline on their front page right now that reads:
Ex-O.J. friend: Simpson admitted killing his wife
Leaving aside the small matter that the source would be better described as "O.J. ex-friend":
It is irritating that ESPN regularly refers to "his wife" rather than "his ex-wife". The distinction isn't trivial, and muddying that distinction has been one of the ways that some of Simpson's more repellent defenders have sought to manipulate emotional response to the case.
But it is doubly irritating when ESPN takes care to refer to the source as an ex-friend, yet still refers to Simpson's victim as his wife.
Posted on April 18th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Musicians, Badness.
Bill Wyman -- the music journalist, not the musician -- has been doing a lot of good work at his weblog Hitsville. The most important and disturbing piece he's written, one that ought to be more widely disseminated, is his extraordinary compilation of facts and allegations concerning R. Kelly's sexual history with minors leading up to his trial on one of the allegations.
I knew that he was in trouble for taping himself having sex with a minor. I knew that he married Aaliyah when she was fifteen. But I hadn't any notion of the documented extent of Kelly's history with teenagers. Eleven separate allegations of sex with minors have been reported. Some of the details, as Wyman notes, are "a little bit barfy". For example, a year after he'd settled out of court for $250,000 with a fifteen year old girl, the first sex tape emerged:
...showing Kelly having sex with a young girl. The girl’s aunt identified her, and Kelly. In the tape, the singer called her by her first name; she called him “Daddy.” Besides a variety of sex acts, the girl urinates on the floor at “Daddy’s” direction. “Daddy” then urinates into her mouth.
The girl was fourteen at the time. In the reporting surrounding the case, it emerged that Kelly had settled out of court with two other teenage girls.
Th details surrounding the marriage to fifteen year old Aaliyah are creepy, too:
...she was a singer and a protege of Kelly’s with whom, associates have said, he was having an affair. Without telling her what was going on, Kelly arranged an impromptu wedding at a suburban Chicago hotel and then swept her toward a plane. Fortunately, the girl called her parents. They came and got her and, articles have said, the pair never saw each other again. As rumors surfaced about the union, Kelly lied about it. But then Vibe magazine found a marriage certificate, on which Haughton’s age was listed as 18. The union was annulled a short time later.
There are several more allegations. I'll just mention one more:
Many of Kelly’s associates have been quoted saying they thought he was sick, or had an uncontrollable compulsion to have sex with young girls. Perhaps the strongest evidence of this is that, while already under indictment for filming himself having sex with a child, he was found to have in one of his houses a digital camera with new photos of him having sex with an underaged girl. ... The search that produced the camera was later disallowed by a judge, so Kelly was never prosecuted for those photos.
R. Kelly has been subject to a certain amount of mockery for what has been generally seen, so far as I can tell, as celebrity peccadilloes, maybe a little further over the line than most. I think the record Wyman has compiled makes a compelling case that Kelly is a genuine sociopath. Why he has not been held more accountable by the media and the entertainment industry, I don't understand. Read the whole thing and see if you don't agree.
Posted on April 10th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness.
In an mild argument at another web site I've been told I'm "kind of mincing words in the sense".
Posted on March 3rd, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness.
A couple more rhetorical bugs that signal the brief sleep of the conscious mind:
"Despite ... or perhaps even because of"
"That's not to say ... far from it"
Posted on February 9th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness.
A headline right now on ESPN's front page:
Did Stewart hit Busch with more than car Friday?
Hitting him with a car by itself merits a suspension, I think.
Posted on February 5th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Badness, Stuff.
If you're going to leave political propaganda in my weblog, have the courtesy to sign your name and the sense to link it properly.
Posted on January 24th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Musicians, Badness, Quotes.
Quoted from Idolator:
The Spice Girls are walking away with "£50 million between them" for their sold-out 17-night stand at London's 02 Arena. "The truth of the matter is, to put on this tour has cost £18.6 million," Ginger sez. "This is not a money-making expedition...Hopefully we will break even but it has never been about that."
I'm soliciting theories on what the Spice Girls reunions shows were really about, since they were never about making money (or breaking even), as pretty much everyone on the planet who isn't a Spice Girl might naturally assume.