Karma Ghost

So, about a week ago I posted a blog on BillyBlob.com: its still a winner, never doubt me. That said, I was at home in glorious SWVA (Southwest Virginia, jonx), surfing at about 2, 3AM, all jumped up on sugar, Diet Coke, Invader Zim, and Jack Daniels. I glanced at my blog to see if anyone had posted comments and remembered that the guy who did Billy Blob had mentioned on his site that a rock group had named themselves after Karma Ghost. I jumped on MetaCrawler and did a search and damned if there wasn't just such a band (hailing from Denver, CO) with artwork on their site suspiciously similar to that on the ol' Blob site. Well, they had exactly what makes my heart go pitter-pat: online music. I listened. I like it. I'm gonna' order their CD. And I'm recommending it to you-all. All Hail the Blogosphere.

Their music, well, its a little dark, kind of, I dunno', Pearl Jam-y or Dredj-esque or 10,000 Maniacs-ish. Heh. Strings on strings on strings with drums that blend with the music and vocals, rather than try to overpower them - kind of a nice change. My immediate reaction is that it is real rock and roll - not entrenched in any particular genre, just music for the sake of music. At first this had very little effect on me. I took it for what it was. Then, after my second listening to "Lady" I remembered what my pal Christopher Raines told me once: real rock is nearly extinct - its either so inbred that it suffers from all sorts of ailments or its crossbred out of recognition. I think I'm hyperbolizing, but hey, that's what I do.

My favorite song, so far (again, I don't have the whole album in hand) is "Orchids." Its "driving in the rain to grab a cold beer in late spring with a friend after his bad breakup when it's just a little hot but not uncomfortably so in a 1990s model sedan on I-81 after you've been on the road for two minutes and nothing more needs to be said" music or, alternatively, "sitting on a front porch in November watching the sun set before going to the party you don't really want to go to since you have a rocking chair and a full cooler here" music. Yeah. That.

Final Note: Take heed of Karma Ghost; if you're an aspiring musician, please, for the love of God, give us samples. In the 21st Century if we can't hear it, odds are we won't buy it and we won't come see you.

UPDATE: I got these in the magical, mystical "e-mail" the other day. . . thanks for reading Dave and Jace, and keep producing the good stuff:

1

Greetings,

Since the release of our record back in, well, November, I've been eagerlyawaiting its release on iTunes. I'm something of an Apple fanboy, and Iknow exactly how popular the music download service is, so more thanNapster or Yahoo! Music or being sold in stores or even Amazon.com, I couldn't wait to see our record on iTunes.

Imagine my excitement when it was finally made available yesterday. Onlya few months late.

I do this every so often. Whenever we hit some kind of milestone (orsometimes if I'm just bored), I'll Google our name and see if we've made any progress in usurping link rankings from Billy Blob. I love the name,and I'm thankful to him for giving us permission to use it, but damned ifI don't get tired of sifting through pages about his cartoon to get to theego-serving good stuff. This is what I get for naming my band after a webcartoon.

When I stumbled across your blog, I was a little taken aback. We've had nice reviews on Amazon and such, but yours was an honest retelling of yourfirst experiences with our music. More than that, it was well-written,interesting, creative, and most importantly, positive.

To usher in the point, would you mind terribly if we used your post in our press kit? To compensate, I'm sure we have a t-shirt or a sticker orsomething around here I could send you.

Thank you for the kind words.
Dave Christopher
Karma Ghost

PS - If the artwork on our site is in any way similar to Billy Blob's,it's an unintentional theft. I patterned the ghost after the littleghosts in Count Chocula. They're just so cute and tasty.

2

Hi. You don't know me. Hell, I don't know you. But you said some
awfully nice things about the band, and, well, we appreciate it. It's
hard, being a struggling musician, trying to keep a normal 40hr a week
job, and still devote a great deal of your time, blood, sweat, and
well, life, to doing what you're most passionate about - making music
with friends. And that's exactly what its all about for us... we do
it for YOU guys, the fans, and for us three, just because it's so
damned fun.
Anyway, I won't get all long-winded here, though I am a bit choked up.
Thanks again, for the kind words, it really does mean a lot to Dave,
Jan, and I. And if we can do as Dave asked, and use the bit you said
about us in a press promo, we'd really appreciate it, and of course
give you all the credit. :)
I can't say it enough... THANK YOU! It's the positive feedback we
continuously receive that keeps us going... and working on that next
album.
-=Jace=-
Karma Ghost
http://www.karmaghost.net
(Truin has been my 'handle' since the old BBS days... don't ask. )

The Avalanches

Now, I don't know a whole lot about The Avalanches. From what I can tell (primarily from their website), and I may be wrong here, they're an Aussie band. They do techno with a humorous twist. They have only done one major album, which of course they've produced eighty-eleven times. They seem to be mildly insane. If you doubt this, check out their most popular song (and its video) "Frontier Psychiatrist" and their more Fatboy Slim (on a downer) "Since I left You." You will not doubt me again.

Their sound is definitively techno - in partcular "Frontier Psychiatrist" leaves you wondering what they're sampling and what is original, or if they are dealing entirely with found material - creating some sort of sonic collages.

Tell you what. Read the following quote and then decide if you want to listen or not. You will. I know you. We're in the trust tree. We're in the nest. Lock it up.

". . . tighten your buttocks, pour juice down your chin, I promised my girlfriend I could play the violin. . . Frontier Psychiatrist"

This Modern World

There is a man. His name is Tom Tomorrow. I don't think that's his real name.

Let me tell you flat out. I first read This Modern World on a road trip. It was in some little Bohemian publication, a free weekly, that I picked up at a mall in Charlottes, NC after going to see the traveling King Tut exhibit (which was, of course, rock bloody solid). It was before I understood that I didn't just love history, but politics as well. Let me tell you what. I was blown away.

Here's the deal. Imagine the ultimate, biting satire you consider - universally anti-Beltway, anti-Business-as-Usual, anti-fadish politics, the whole nine yards - then draw it in a unique, quasi-1950s Advertisements/Golden Age of Cartoons style. Add a dash of a 1980s Punk-style sunglasses-wearing penguin named Sparky. Its a little (cough) more liberal than me. . . okay, a lot more liberal than me, no doubt about that, but its good - never stupid, never cheap, always funny as hell. You can check'm out here. There's a blog. . . I've read it, but hey, you can.

The Beverly Hillbillies

Recently, a local television station began airing The Beverly Hillbillies from the first episode. This coincided with my December/January break from teaching, so I have been at home, most days, to see it. Let me tell you some thoughts.

1) The idea that people from Appalachia (or, since its not quite clarified, the Ozarks) in the, and I emphasize this, mid-Twentieth Century had not heard of modern appliances is a myth, but one I can live with. The idea that Mountain People of the time were utterly naïve is slightly insulting (especially given that such a high proportion of us either lived in urban environments, had been virtually enslaved by corporations from outside of the region looting our natural resources, or had been displaced by Federal programs intended to benefit virtually everyone but us), but I can deal with this on the basis that this naiveté is probably intended to as a foil to “modernity,” a way of saying that modern American life, with its airs of technology, its socio-economic distinctions, formalism, and shysterism is moving away from our cultural ideal and fails to accomplish its goals as effectively as it did in its own recent past—think of how Romantic novels portrayed native Americans—The Beverly Hillbillies is like that, but without the deep, moving nobility (which slightly annoys me). What really irks me, though, is the fact that the characters don’t change—oh sure, Jed learns, adapts, chooses to retain his culture though he ultimately understands the one he surrounded in quite well. But no other character learns—Jethro (in fifth grade well into his twenties), Ellie Mae, Granny, they all stay exactly the same—ignorant. Apparently the lesson here is not that all Hill Folk are stupid: only the 3 out of 4 are.
I don’t think I’d be so disturbed if it weren’t for the fact that I think you can make any group of people the core of a good comedy without insulting them—like how some sports teams have used nations as mascots without insulting them (Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish, FSU’s Seminoles, and good ol’Maryville College’s Scots). Consider The Andy Griffith Show. Are the people friendly? Sure. Are the naïve? If by naïve you mean trusting, decent, genteel, sure. Are there some people who are ludicrous? Hell yes—but they are the exception, the jokers in the pack. Are there some people who are willfully ignorant (which is radically different from being simply ignorant)? Yeah—but again, they are exceptions. Granted, Mayberry is a pretty well-off little place for the mountains, but the number of towns that were pretty well-off in the region is pretty substantial. Even in towns that are (or historically have been) less well-off, though, it is generally from the same world-system effect that impoverishes hard-working people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Difference is, it’s considered a faux pas to insult people from those states.

2) Oil in Appalachia. What the hell? Coal, sure. Natural gas, sure. Timber, limestone, shale, gravel, hydroelectric power, burley tobacco, dairy products, or magical leprechaun gold, I can buy any of that. But oil? Seriously. Get a book. Any book. Any of them.

3) Good theme song, though.

We

I was wading through one of the new bookstores in town (its tough not to delight in those extreme sales prices) and I found one of those books—you know, the kind you’ve been hearing about for years, but you’ve never actually sought out. Its called We, its by a man named Yevgeny Zamyatin, and its incredible. It was written in 1920/1921 by a Soviet who was critical of the state and was influential enough that Stalin let him immigrate, rather than just catch a serious case of the death. Its set around a thousand years in the future in an undetermined location. After a Two Hundred Year’s War in which the world population dropped by 8/10ths (one can only imagine between the First and Second Worlds), the surviving populace form the One State, a totalitarian political organization administered by the Great Benefactor whose aim is to form the perfect rational society. Humanity is on the verge of perfection, as defined in terms of becoming truly machinelike through the purge of imagination from the human brain. “Numbers,” as the citizens of this state are called, are identified as code terms: the narrator is D-503, his friends are O-90 and R-13, and I-330 is the source of most of the action. D-503 is the Builder, an engineer in charge of developing a starship (The Integral) that will allow humanity to spread its rationality across the face of the universe, rationalizing, by carrot or by stick, all sentient life they come across. There is no privacy (all buildings are made of glass), no property, and even human relationships are non-exclusive (all humans have a right to access, or have sex with, all other humans—they merely must apply through the One State).
The book itself is meant to be a journal, to be added to the databanks of The Integral. All humans on earth (apparently several hundred million) have been instructed to write literature vaunting the One State and rationalization. In the process of writing the journal, however, D-503 records his waning faith in the system, brought about by his infatuation with I-330. I must restrain myself from writing the whole plot out, but if I do, well, you might sleep at night. Consider:
I started reading it at about 5 or 6PM and couldn’t stop until almost 7 the next morning. It is amazing, like written caffeine—I wasn’t even tired. And, as a SciFi junkie, my recognition of its significance didn’t hurt. I mean, the influence We has had simply cannot be overstated. Huxley’s Brave New World, Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984, Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (both the Federation and the Bugs {Book NOT the Movie), Card’s Ender series, Herbert’s Dune series, Asimov’s Foundation series, Lucas’ THX-1138, Star Trek (both the Federation and the Borg), and Aeon Flux (judge by the series, not the movie) are all deeply in Zamyatin’s debt.

The best way I can characterize it—this will fall deeply short—is to say that We is a science fiction equivalent of A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. Its also vaguely, in some manner I’m not entirely sure of, reminiscent of Abbot’s 1884 Flatland. ‘Nuff said.

What to look for? The deification of humanity by virtue of removing anything lofty or moving from art in the Twelfth Entry, the discussion of fog in the Thirteenth Entry, D-503’s lauding of walls in the Seventeenth Entry, the Thirtieth Entry’s stark vilification of historicism and the notion of history as having an ‘end,’ the Thirty-First Entry’s discussion of rebellion as being the same as not wanting salvation (in the orthodox system), the any discussion of the concept of the square-root of –1.

A History of the World in 6 Glasses

Christmas, for graduate students, is a time of paritcular delight. During this period there is not only a break in the action (read a break in the forcible reading of texts necessary to graduate) and the ever-lingering chance that books will be given as gifts. Note that I don't just mean books on the subjects we read about every single bloody day (its more repetitive than you'd ever imagine), but furthermore books that are 1) fictional or 2) interesting. For Christmas I received a book of the latter catagory entitled A History of the World in 6 Glasses. It is by a fellow named Tom Standage (who apparently is a frequent contributor to The Economist, which is one of the best publications on earth) and, as intended, it is a history of the world as seen from the perspective of beverages, specifically beer, wine, liquor (particularly whiskey and rum), coffee, tea, and soda (particuarly Coca-Cola). I have a few things to say:

1) This book is part of the newest trend in popular history writing, specifically the concentration on either a particular date (e.g. 1421) or a particular consumer good (e.g. Salt). Some of these are really good, some are really spotty in terms of historical accuracy, and some of them are flat boring (I know I'm the only intellectual who has read Salt and didn't like it, but damn, its salt. . . like, salt. C'mon.). This work, however, while written for popular consumption, is a great piece. Interesting (I couldn't put it down, reading to 4AM on three consecutive nights), smart, funny, and really, really informative. If you're a foodie, in particular, you should check this one out.

2) This book is academically interesting to me as well - the author makes it a point to explode our belief that globalization is a new process, noting that beverages are near universals and that four of the six beverages discussed are the direct of process of global economic and intellectual connectsions, connections dating back to the Western Middle Ages.

3) Things to read it for otherwise: the discussion of the Greek symposion (56), the invention of spirits in the Islamic world, its adoption by the Western world, and the ultimate development of uisge beatha, the "water of life" in the Scottish and Irish countrysides (93-111), the repeative efforts of social conservatives to restrict access to all new innovations in the field of beverages (the whole book), The United States v. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola (244), and the role of caffiene in facilitating modernity and development (the latter-half of the book).

Read it. You'll like it. Dig.

Encyclopedia Mythica

Some things are self-explanatory. The image attached to this entry is not. Nonetheless, I will not explain it, for it terrifies me. Shiver.

Encyclopedia Mythica, on the other hand, is pretty self-explanatory. Its an encyclopedia about mythology (and religions, which is to say mythologies which more than a few hundred million people still believe in, and vice-versa). Think about it. You and your buddies are sitting around, drinking some Mountain Dew and Mountain Dew (think about it) and you get into a debate over whether or not Brauron is the Goddess of Nature or the Goddess of Phillis Diller. Bam. Or you're playing b-ball out beside the school, listening to Ray Charles on your "Boom Box" and drinking Mountain Dew and Powerade (think about it) and your buddy says, "you shoot like Vestius Alonieus", well, now you'll be able to tell him," you're so full of $#!@, Vestius Alonieus was a military god associated with bulls. You bastard." Think of the possibilities. Yeah. Its a cool site.

Chris Echols

Greene County is in East Tennessee. Romeo is in Greene County. Chris Echols is from Romeo. Originally. Sortof. Dammit.

You know those people that do a little bit of everything? Those guys that, I don't know, are particularly useful for trivia teams? Chris Echols is one of those. Think straight-up pimp-artist-cameraman-writer-interpretative dancer. Thats the Big CE. Holla'.

Regardless, anything I say is going to miss the mark. Check out his website - you'll see what I mean. . . its all flip-out quality jonx. High-ya.

Also, he fights people annually with fireworks. For fun. You know, like 'Nam.

http://www.mnftiu.cc

In the world of literature, history, magic, ballet, animation, and comics, there are three kinds of names that really work - those that are purely iconic (think Spider-Man,Superman, or Batman), those that are just flat freaky-deaky (think Vlad the Impaler, Nosferatu, or Richard M. Nixon), and those that are so abstract and simple that they defy easy description (think YHWH, Homer, or THX-1138). In the latter category is http://www.mnftiu.cc/ (link from here). How do you describe this strange internet artifact? Okay, take 1940s and 1950s pulp magazine art. Got that in your head? Super. Now make it cuss. A lot. Like it was going out of style. Now, give it an explicitly political slant, obsessed with US foreign policy. Alright, don't let that overwhelm you, cause you now have to poor in a massive dose of pop culture, think Hong Kong kungfu theater (my preference, The Drunken Master and Legend of the Drunken Master starring Jackie Chan). Gottit? Okay, now add St. Augustine Bear. No explanation possible. This is mnftiu. Go to it. Read it. Love it. Revel in the personification of North Korea.

Billy Blog

Let's see - it was the summer of 1999, just temporally removed enough to make me feel on alternative days that it was either yesterday or that it was approximately 65 million years ago. It was hot (old people were dying of heat stroke in Chi-Town) that summer, I was in intensive language school at Beloit College. One day I decided to hell with Chinese, I was going to 1) take advanatage of the first high-speed internet connection I'd ever had and 2) I was going to get drunk'r than hell. I went to the Wal-Mart (yes, my Southern friends, the Wal-Mart) and bought a fifth of SoCo, went home, and snuggled up to a warm, glowing computer monitor. I found a number of sites that night, but only three come to mind. First, and at first blush my favorite was Joe Cartoon. . . I mean, what recent frat boy wouldn't giggle at a foul-mouthed hamster in a blender? Later, however, Joe took on advert after advert and I have long since ceased to look in on his work. Second was Bogbeast, one of those sites that the administrator seems to have lost interest in, but worth a look to this day, assuming its up and running that day (and you're not in Krystal where they edit all the really cool stuff in an act of “child-protection.” $#!&.).
All that said, the best of the sites I found in terms of durability and real quality (and your ability to look at it at work and in Krystal) is Billy Blob. Think of it as one of those instances wherein an artist, on a whim, learns to krank the net. There are movies (see “Karma Ghost” in particular, especially for the rock-solid music), there’s fine art, and there are printable banners (just the sort of thing that’s perfect for decorating a single pad or affixing to a public bathroom wall in an act of semi-sophomoric, semi-gloss rebellion), and so forth. If you don’t like this website, then you hate me. Seriously. You bastard.

Chuck, Christ, and a Modern Sci-Fi American Mythology

So, there I am, sitting in my cabin's living room, watching football and drinking wine, when the phone rings. On the phone is a man I can only describe as a living Muppet. This inebriated, Muppet-Human interbreed is giddy (in the background my brother is also slightly drunk and yelling light, amusing obscenities) and can't seem to speak slowly enough to actually communicate anything. I encourage him to calm down and find his qi, and ultimately he does. He tells me that my little brother in my fraternity, a man name Charles "Chuck" Clark has dedicated enormous time and effort to building a diorama which can only be described as unusual. In this diorama the Baby Jesus is presented with gifts amidst the legendary Battle of Hoth (in which the Rebellion was driven into exile by Imperial Stormtrooper forces). Furthermore, certain key elements of the classic Christmas story were represented by major figures of the Star Wars saga (e.g. Yoda is the Star of Christmas).

This is just the beginning, however.

Chuck then had posted his collection on-line, at a website called RebelScum.Com, a Star Wars fansite. I don't have the internet at home (I'm "poor") but I knew what needed to be done. I picked up my laptop merely three days later and went to a Krystal's (on the strip in Knoxville, TN) where I ordered a soda and a Krystal Chik sandwich. After checking my much-neglected e-mail, I checked out the site, and you know what, its pretty interesting (see it here). First, I didn't find any baby Jesus (though I may have missed a symbolic baby Jesus, such as the helpless C3-P0 carried by Chewbacca, circa the Cloud City, The Empire Strikes Back) but I did find an AT-AT walker with a wreath on its, um, grill, like tractor trailer. Also, all the inhabitants of the undertree kingdom (heh) had presents they were presenting to one another, even as they looked primed for imminent combat. This I found reminiscent of that one time in the First World War when the Germans and French declared a cease-fire for Christmas and exchanged gifts and played soccer (on the ice-planet Hoth). Is this thing a little weird? Yeah, it is. But you know what, its exactly the kind of thing the internet is great for - eccentricity. So, even though its 2006 and you're already forgetting what your grandma got you for Christmas (or any of the other assorted holidays of the November-through-December period), check this out. You might just feel your Holiday spirit revived for just a minute - As Tiny Tim said, "May the Force Be With You, One and All."