Apathy Jack writes:

Today’s video is Through Glass, by Stone Sour. Song is bog standard, and the video has very little worth bothering with for the first minute or so (except the truly beautiful beard of what appears to be Stone Sour’s Unabassist) but after that it kicks itself into a very slickly done comment about Hollywood culture. Well deserving of three and a half minutes of your time.

(As per usual, linked to rather than embedded because of the drop in quality that comes with embedding.)

Books You Should Be Reading Number 28 Of A Bunch

Apathy Jack writes:

Gold by Dan Rhodes

Miyuki smiled and watched as Septic Barry headed to the other side of the pub, where he walked past the Children from Previous Relationships and sat with Blind Billy and Blind Billy’s wife. Miyuki had seen them coming in. She remembered Blind Billy from some of her previous visits. One evening Septic Barry had told her all about him.

It was clear that the child’s eyes hadn’t developed as they ought to have done, and when the doctors confirmed that there was nothing they could do to put them right, his parents made a decision. They had been planning on Richard for a boy, but instead they called him William. ‘It’ll be nice for him to have a nickname,’ the proud father explained to all and sundry, as his wife nodded her agreement. ‘I’ve always enjoyed having one. Jonesy, they call me – it really lifts my spirits.’ When they sent the announcement cards, they read:

IT’S A BOY!
WILLIAM ‘BLIND BILLY’ JONES
7LB 2 OZ

Apathy Jack writes:

“Mr! I need u 2 b a reference 4 my cv. U can brag on wata gr8 and honest student i was?”
“Of course.”
“Yay! Can u use a teacher as a reference on a cv?”
“Sure, It’s a bit weird if you’re, say, 25, but you’re less than a year out of school.”
“Thats sweet as! Thanx mr. I owe u one, il hook u up wit a nice asian lady oneday.”
“Well, I already have one, but thanks for the offer.”

Apathy Jack writes:

Today’s music video is Take Me Back To Your House, by Basement Jaxx. Bears, Cossack dancers and Beards set to just the right amount of ukulele. (Actually, that’s a lie: it’s never enough ukulele.)

Also, to those who wanted pictures during my Hoodrat stories, if you pause the clip at 4:19, you get the spit of The Preserver.

(As per usual, linked to rather than embedded because of the drop in quality that comes with embedding.)

Another Anthem For The Disappeared

Apathy Jack writes:

Here, you should all watch this:

The finest electro-industrial-darkwave band in Tauranga (shut up, I'm serious!) The Mercy Cage have released a video for their catchy-as-all-hell track Hymn_01. The Mercy Cage are responsible for one of the most depressing songs I've ever heard, the mentally-bruising Needle Marks (& Scars), but have now come up with lyrics almost as depressing, for example:

I never said that all was well
you know it scars like hell
man it hurts like anything
time to piss another useless lie away
we pray
to the church of the cathode ray

only managed to fit them into a really rather dance-able track.

The video's a bit baby's-first-hipster-communist-lookatmeimalternative-iconography, but it goes with the song, and the song is just damned catchy.

Helpful Hint #41

That Morthos Stare writes:

When seeing people you know socially but not musically at the Silver Scrolls you should not admit to being responsible for '1 + 1 + 1 It Ain't 2.'

Apathy Jack writes:

"Hey Sir, you know we’re not going to be at Classics today, right?"
"Oh yeah, you’re going on that field trip. Where are you off to again?"
"Rainbow’s End."
"What? For what subject?"
"Physics."
"That’s got nothing to do with Physics! There’s no educational merit to that!"
"Well what would we be doing in Classics if we stayed?"
"Watching 300."
"Exactly."
"Hey, that’s about ancient Greece!"
"Yeah, and roller coasters are about physics. Gravity and stuff."
"That’s not the same thing at all!"
"Whatever lets you sleep at night, Sir."

Apathy Jack writes:

So, on Monday the new series Flight of the Conchords, starring the titular music duo, starts at the user-unfriendly time of 10pm.

You should watch it because it is good. I've seen the odd snippet here and there, and, of course, these guys have been performing around the country for years now.

By way of a taster, here is one of my favourites; the Hiphopapotimus VS the Rhymnoserous in a rap battle...

Comics You Should Be Reading Number 1 Of Probably Not Many; Comics Are For Children And Retards

Apathy Jack writes:

pinapples
Originally uploaded by Brain Stab

ABC Warriors: The Black Hole, by Pat Mills and Simon Bisley

Remember 2000AD? I read those as a kid, and they were nuts. Total craziness. I couldn’t get over not only the weirdness, but just the sheer volume of the ideas.

Just finished rereading a childhood favourite; The ABC Warriors story The Black Hole, where, basically, a group of robot soldiers have to travel through an unstable time-tunnel to shut down a black hole.

Total craziness. Nasty, nihilistic, and the most fun I’ve had reading on the bus in ages.

Here, the thoughts of the commander, Hammerstein, as he’s undergoing his military programming:

Signals go back and forth between my master and secondary programs.

Contradictory signals.

It’s alright to kill humans in battle. But not in camps.

When they murder civilians, it’s an atrocity. When we murder civilians, it’s tough retaliatory action.

Rebels on our side are freedom fighters. Rebels on their side are terrorists.

It’s good to love animals. Then kill and eat them.

But not children.

Apathy Jack writes:

“Mister, this article you gave us to read is wrong!”
“In what way?”
“Where it says here ‘Look around you; you’re probably surrounded by diversity’ – that’s not true.”
“Fair point. That having been said, most people aren’t sitting next to their identical twin sister when they read the article.”
“Yeah, but still...”

Books You Should Be Reading Number 27 OF A Bunch

Apathy Jack writes:

The Gun Seller, by Hugh Laurie

Rayner, I estimated, was ten years older than me. Which was fine. Nothing wrong with that. I have good, warm, non-arm-breaking relationships with plenty of people who are ten years older than me. People who are ten years older than me are, by and large, admirable. But Rayner was also three inches taller than me, four stones heavier, and at least eight however-you-measure-violence units more violent. He was uglier than a car park, with a big, hairless skull that dipped and bulged like a balloon full of spanners, and his flattened, fighter’s nose, apparently drawn on his face by someone using their left hand, or perhaps even their left foot, spread out in a meandering, lopsided delta under the rough slab of his forehead.
And God Almighty, what a forehead. Bricks, knives, bottles and reasoned arguments had, in their time, bounced harmlessly off this massive frontal plane, leaving only the feeblest indentations between its deep, widely-spaced pores. They were, I think, the deepest and most widely-spaced pores I have ever seen in human skin, so that I found myself thinking back to the council putting-green in Dalbeattie, at the end of the long, dry summer of ’76.
Moving now to the side elevation, we find that Rayner’s ear had, long ago, been bitten off and spat back on to the side of his head, because the left one was definitely upside down, or inside out, or something that made you stare at it for a long time before thinking ‘oh, it’s an ear’.

...

Three things I have learned from reading Hugh Laurie’s book:

1) Hugh Laurie wrote a book! I know, who’d’ve thought...?
2) His second book is due for release at the end of this month. I may even buy it in hard cover, because I don’t want to wait.
3) Speaking as an English teacher with an interest in words and the use thereof, the simile “He was uglier than a car park” is going to get me through a few long, lonely nights. Seriously, if it was possible to make sweet love to language feature...

Apathy Jack writes:

It occurs to me that I’ve never mentioned the mannequin they replaced me with at Hoodrat. While he seemed relatively inoffensive the one time I met him, I could certainly think of better uses for eighty-five kilograms of meat. His teaching is best exemplified by my old Year 13 class. Wagging is as bad a problem as it always has been, with, as an example, the Creator’s thirty-four strong English class having up to a dozen absences every day. But my Classics class (comprised of most of the same kids) has been down to single-figure attendance for weeks now. I got three texts today during what would have been Classics, bemoaning the state of the class. This isn’t unusual.

Except...

One of mine accidentally hit ‘send’ to my old number instead of my new. My old number which you may recall was a school phone. Which is why in the middle of some rant or another barely connected to ancient Rome, the puppet’s phone beeped, and he read:

Sir clasikz is deteriorating without u... We have an exam next week and no one thinks theyl pass at all. Its madness! Any chance you can help?

My new colleagues wanted to know why I burst out laughing in the middle of the staff room. I’m not sure “so I don’t cry” was the appropriate answer...

Apathy Jack writes:

Today’s video is Tear You Apart by She Wants Revenge. I’m not quite sure what’s going on in this video, but there’s a faintly creepy narrative, and the song has one of the more disturbing choruses I’ve heard.

(As per usual, linked to rather than embedded because of the drop in quality that comes with embedding.)

Apathy Jack writes:

Just because I've been thinking about Henry Rollins since he was mentioned in the last post (he was mentioned by me. I think about him a lot...) here is part of his show in Israel, where he talks about the work he does with the USO.

Get your anger on.