Flaming Chords

This is my front page. All comments here are screened; if you don't have my email address, you can drop me a line here. If I know your email address, I'll reply by email -- if not, I'll reply to your comment, and then rescreen both your comment and my reply.

It's also got every tag I have -- this is because my current LJ style doesn't include a tag index. (At least half of my participation on LJ is on my Treo. I chose this style because it loads quickly and it's still readable on a small screen.)

I'd tell you more about myself, but that's what my profile -- and the rest of my journal -- are for.

(None of the links in this post are safe for work.)

This is FurTV. It's a show that gets played on MTV in the UK. It's fun, but made completely out of wrong. Try to imagine an even more demented version of Meet the Feebles, and you've got a good idea what FurTV is like.

This and this are two performances of Millie Jackson's "Phuck U Symphony in F minor." Well, actually, it's just called the "Phuck U Symphony." I added the F minor part.

This is an episode of Ask Alexyss, an advice column. In this episode, she goes in depth into male hygiene. In graphic depth. In really graphic depth. In really disgusting graphic depth.

(The first link was stolen from Sensible Erection. The latter two were stolen from ms_daisy_cutter.)

There are lots of potentially bad things about the moon. It's inhospitable to life as we know it. It could one day serve as a platform from which to attack the Earth, since anything heavy dropped on Earth from the moon would crash into it at about seven miles per second -- this comes up in Heinlein's book The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Oh, and according to a certain online petition, the moon is gay. Gay as the day is long. Gayer than Andy Milonakis' song "The Superbowl is Gay", though admittedly nowhere near as idiotic. Gay, gay-gitty, mc-gay-gay.

We should blow it up.

(Signatures 1391-93 on this petition are mine. Obviously, I'm not being even remotely serious. And let's face it it's not all that likely that the folks from NASA are going to look at this petition and say to themselves, "well, blowing up the moon wasn't on our original agenda, but all these people clearly want it really badly, so we should do it for them.")

You guys know about Mark Sanford, right? Disappeared for a few days, was thought to be hiking the Appalachian Trail for a while, turned out to be screwing around in Argentina?

Well, guess what? It's all Obama's fault. Really! Would Lush Rimjob lie about something like that?

Actually, we can do better. Rush says that Sanford is merely falling into despair because Obama is destroying the country, and after all it's completely natural to say "screw it." Michael Savage is even more literal. Apparently, Obama made it happen so that Sanford wouldn't be able to run against him in our next presidential election.

There's no funny I can make out of this. I sure as hell can't parody it.

...other than Twicon. And like so many other things now, it has ads on youTube! (I stole one of these from yourbob, but then decided to post links to all three.)

Two guys in one coffin. Personally, I think that if they're going for the Anne Rice vibe, the guys need to have much longer hair.

Taking off the makeup. The false teeth were a very nice touch, as were the contact lenses.

Zen and the art of fanging. This one is my favorite. I think it's the way the fangs come out of left field.

You realize, of course, that he's not really dead. We'll be hearing of Michael Jackson sightings for years to come, and he'll be making regular appearances in tabloids. It'll be the new century's Elvis sighting.

"I saw Michael Jackson at an IHOP!"

"I saw Michael Jackson at Graceland!"

"I saw Michael Jackson at a strip mall!"

"I saw Michael Jackson at the San Francisco Zoo!"

"Oh, yeah? Well I saw Michael Jackson at an elementary school!"



...too soon?

You guys know Burger King, don't you? Long-time purveyors of boiled cowshit on greasy bread, masquerading as food? Creators of super-creepy ads with Burger-Klingons twisting people's nipples and kicking them in the nuts? Well, apparently, their latest ad campaign seeks to equate their meat sandwiches with oral sex.

Personally, I disagree. Oral sex is much better than any of that garbage you'd ever find on the Burger King menu -- and much healthier, too! Admittedly, not all guys have seven inches -- in fact, most guys don't¹ -- but that doesn't make oral sex any less great, and it doesn't make Burger King any more edible!

(For those of you who are new here, the icon in this post is the censored version of this icon (NSFW!), which I use in case any of you look at your friends list at work. In a couple of weeks, I'll switch it to the uncensored version.)

---

1. Kinsey's studies claim that the average is six inches, but he allowed his test subjects to measure themselves, and men are notoriously dishonest on this issue. Later studies in which test subjects were measured by third parties put the average closer to five inches.

Way back when, Geraldo Rivera got punched in the face, putting me in the very uncomfortable position of cheering for a white supremacist. Lately, something like this happened again: Perez Hilton got punched in the face, which put me in the uncomfortable position of cheering for the Black Eyed Peas. And then, Hilton twittered for the police, as opposed to... you know, calling them. Because he's such a big star, and the police keep up with all his tweets, dontcha know.

Apparently, calling someone a "fucking faggot" can get you punched in the face. Who'd've thought? You'd think Perez Hilton would know better, being gay... but apparently not.

(Link to UFB here. Unfunnybusiness is generally devoted to stuff that's well, extremely unfunny, but this is the funniest thing I've seen all week.)

A lot of really bad music is well-known, and at times, impossible to escape completely. A lot of really good music isn't very well-known, and would probably sell a lot better if more people got a chance to hear it. I'm just doing my tiny part for four bands that I think deserve more attention than they have. All of these bands are technically metal, but they all push the boundaries of that genre.

All of these songs are presented as YouTube links. I know YouTube makes music piracy really easy, and I'm glad the songs are there, but if you like what you hear, these guys can use your support.


Katatonia was originally a death metal band, before vocalist Jonas Renkse developed throat issues. Then, he started singing, though perhaps not very well at first, and the band evolved into a more goth-rock sound, starting with Discouraged Ones. By the time they recorded Last Fair Deal Gone Down, the band was a jagged, angry, more violent answer to The Cure, and Jonas was starting to sound pretty good.

• In the White, from The Great Cold Distance
  
• July, from The Great Cold Distance
  
• Criminals, from Viva Emptiness
  
• Evidence, from Viva Emptiness
  
• Disposession, from Last Fair Deal Gone Down
  
• Sulfur, from Last Fair Deal Gone Down

Swallow the Sun is... well, most people think of death metal as violent, angry, and overall ugly music. Usually, they're absolutely right, but Swallow the Sun is one of the exceptions. I feel very strange describing a death metal band's music as beautiful, or gorgeous, or transcendent -- but yet, every one of those words applies. This is not even remotely happy music. That said, it's currently one of my favorite bands.

• The Justice of Suffering, from Hope
  
• These Hours of Despair, from Hope
  
• Hold this Woe, from The Morning Never Came
  
• Out of this Gloomy Light, from The Morning Never Came
  
• Ghost of Laura Palmer, from Ghosts of Loss
  
• The Ship, from Ghosts of Loss

Arcturus is the black metal band that isn't. Well, as far as I can tell, it was a collection of musicians, most with bands of their own, to get together and produce a lot of really weird, but really good stuff. It's not typical death metal -- for instance, only their first CD includes all that much gutteral howling. For that matter, it's not really typical anything. You'll either love it, or it'll annoy the crap out of you.

• Star Crossed, from The Sham Mirrors
  
• Kinetic, from The Sham Mirrors
  
• Chaos Path, from La Masquerade Infernale
  
• Ad Astra, from La Masquerade Infernale
  
• Shipwrecked Frontier Pioneer, from Sideshow Symphonies
  
• Evacuation Code Deciphered, from Sideshow Symphonies

Eluveitie has really grown on me, as much as I'm not normally all that fond of folk metal. Normally, I dislike bagpipes, and absolutely detest the hurdy-gurdy, but this band makes them both work. This is the sort of metal band you'd expect to see at a Renaissance Faire, except that they'd outgeek everyone else there. You think speaking in thees and thous is period? Try singing some of your lyrics in Gaulish.

• Your Gaulish War, from Spirit
  
• Tegernakô, from Spirit
  
• Inis Mona, from Slania
  
• Primordial Breath, from Slania
  
• Memento, from Evocation I: The Arcane Dominion
  
• The Arcane Dominion, from Evocation I: The Arcane Dominion

"And then Buffy staked Edward. The End."

It's not just a cool shirt anymore!

(Stolen from the Sparklefield. I'm very much impressed. Someone put a lot of work into this.)

I laughed my ass off when I saw today's installment of Least I Could Do.

Then, I was all but yelling at the screen: "Dude, GO FOR IT!"

The late George Tiller's clinic is closed, and Operation Rescue has expressed an interest in buying the building. I want to write about how angry I am about this, but at the moment, the only way I can do that is by typing the word "fuck" several hundred times in caps, with lots of exclamation points.

Let me be clear about this: I am not angry at Tiller's family or colleagues over this. It's easy to say things like "we will not negotiate with terrorists," especially if you're not the one who has to deal with them. Tiller was far braver than any doctor should ever have to be, and his family have lost far more than they should have had to.

The fact is, Wichita (and a rather large area around it) is now without abortion services. What I am angry about is that this sends a message to the aforementioned terrorists: abortion will go away if you harrass and shoot enough people.

And yet, abortion is still necessary. As long as rape, incest, and child molestation exist, there will be a need. As long as contraceptives have a failure rate, there will be a need. As long as teenagers have limited access to contraceptives and limited education about sex, there will be a need. As long as pregnancy comes with risks of health complications, there will be a need. As long as women are capable of getting pregnant before they consider themselves ready to become mothers, there will be a need.

And yet, do you see any of the pro-liar activists addressing any of these issues? Of course not. Yelling at women about how they're going to burn in Hell is more fun. Sure, some of them claim to care for feti, and some of them even have instruction manuals on how it's necessary to do things like feign compassion for pregnant women to be taken seriously, but it's all an act.

There is no common ground on the abortion debate. Either you believe that a woman's body belongs to her, or you don't. Either you believe that a living woman is of greater value than a clump of cells, or you don't. The closest thing that exists to common ground is the hope that abortion might be less needed if we do... well, we can't even agree on that.

If these assholes really cared about reducing abortions, they'd be supporting sex education in schools, and they'd be delighted that people are actually using birth control. As it is, they're trying to keep kids ignorant, based on the assumption that if kids don't know anything about sex, and are told not to do it until they get married, they won't do it -- and anyone who's ever known teenagers should know this doesn't work. They're going into pharmacy with the intent of making it harder to get birth control pills. They're working as nurses at clinics and yanking out women's IUDs.

They're not interested in the welfare of women, and their interest in the welfare of feti doesn't extend much past the day they're born. What they want is to see women punished for having sex. Go to a clinic sometime, and just watch the protesters. You won't see much concern for life of any sort there, just contempt for those evil whores who got pregnant. Perhaps there's some subtlety or nuance to "you had a choice: don't screw" that I'm missing...

...brought to you by pester.

Short version: in a thread on people's personal experiences with abortion, she posted her story about how she defied the odds and brought a child to term. Not the time or place, really. Of course, when the OP replied to her, saying "i am happy you have a daughter, and i hope your daughter is happy that you are her mother," she replied "[thank you for the well-wishes, too bad the child you fathered got aborted and can't say the same about you]."

Cue dog-pile. Including me, and I generally don't like joining dog-piles when I show up to one that late.

I want to post this in cf_hardcore, partly because the post includes some people baring their souls on their own abortion experiences... but partly because pester isn't well-liked there, and most of the the members would be delighted to watch her getting dog-piled. (Let's just say that her habit of following us around and running off to talk shit about us every time one of us says something stupid hasn't earned her many fans there.) I suspect that it would be viewed as causing wank, though -- which is the only reason I haven't done it.

I'm pretty sure I've blown a few years of learning how to deal with anger in the minutes it took me to reply to her. When I wake up tomorrow, I may think twice about this. For now, I'm thinking, "yeah, I did blow it... and it was worth it."

Bacon Vodka.

I've tried a lot of flavors of vodka, including several fruit flavors and a couple of weird ones like chipotle and noble fir. Most of them were quite good. I don't think I could bring myself to try this one -- to me, it just sounds unspeakably gross. But then, you guys know me and how I feel about bacon in general.

Still, I'm sure this stuff will develop fans. Everything else with bacon does...

...and all ten of them are complete bullshit. They're a very nice try -- none of them use that "sanctity of marriage" crap, and a few of them try to co-opt the language of equality and nondiscrimination... but they're all still complete bullshit.

Reasons 1, 2, 3, and 8 are all conditions that exist within marriage as a whole, and are in no way unique to any marriage contract that a gay person might enter into. Reasons 1, 2, 3, 4, and 9 are all based on the assumption that a married couple is somehow obligated to have children, and that any married couple that doesn't have children is "cheating the system." Reasons 4, 5, and 6 might as well have been written by that stupid bint on The Simpsons who screeches "won't someone PLEASE think of the children," dressed up to look like actual arguments. Reasons 6 and 7 are based on the assumption that being gay is somehow intrinsically wrong. And reason 10 is a badly-applied slippery slope. (While I suspect we'll one day see group marriage, I'm pretty sure that coming up with a legally workable version of it is going to be a monster headache -- it'll be legally closer to a corporation than to what we currently think of as marriage. But I digress.)

Translation: "WAAAAAAAA! We liked being able to treat them faggots as subhuman, and we can't anymore! Can't you let us keep them from getting married? You've already taken from us the right to stone them or fire them for being queer, isn't that enough for you? Now you don't want to let us keep marriage for ourselves! That's all we have left! Can't you see that's ALL WE HAVE LEFT!"

(Yeah, I know. I've likened the anti-same-sex-marriage crowd to whining infants before. Tell you what. When they stop behaving like spoiled children who are crying because that kid they don't like wants to be able to go into the store and buy the same lollipops they have, I'll stop treating them accordingly.)

Well, actually, he's gone!

Oh, Cuthwald theferrett.

Details here.

Recently, we lost one of three doctors in this country who perform late-term abortions¹. Well, no. We didn't "lose" him. That sounds like something trivial, like misplacing our fucking house keys. What really happened is some subhuman piece-of-shit fetus-hugger shot him down in cold blood in his own church.

A few pro-liar² activists are showing their true colors on this. Randall Terry is openly cheering Tiller's death³, and claims that Tiller reaped what he sowed. Jill Stanek is all but saying "one down, two to go." Most prominent pro-liars at least have to good sense to make half-hearted speeches about how appalled they are, leaving the "he had it coming" message in the undertones.

I have fucking had it with the pro-liar movement. I hope Scott Roeder fries. I hope he gets branded as a terrorist. And I hope that Operation Rescue is tied to it. Shouldn't be hard -- the internet preserves everything.

I wish I could say more, but I am too angry to think coherently. No doubt it's affected the quality of my writing, but I'm posting it anyway. It needs to be fucking said, even if countless people have already voiced it better than I have.

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1. I'm guessing that most of the people reading my LJ already know this, but I'm going to say it anyway: late-term abortions are never done lightly. The pro-liar image of that stupid whore who casually aborts at eight months so that she can fit into her prom dress is a complete fabrication. Late-term abortions are performed either because the fetus is non-viable, or because it endangers the mother. Period. If you believe anything different... I am sorry. You've been lied to. Hardly surprising, though: the anti-abortion activists are interested in stopping abortion, and they are not above telling a shitload of lies in service to their cause.
   
   
2. Yes, I'm using the term "pro-liar." When the other side learns what the "pro-life" label actually means, I'll consider letting them have it back.
   
   
3. I know, I know. I cheered when Jerry Falwell died, and I cheered when Jesse Helms died. Shame on me. Ya know what? As much as I cheered when they died, none of my actions actually contributed to either of their deaths. And as much as I hate Pat Robertson and plan to cheer when he dies, none of my actions will contribute to his death, either. My side doesn't do that. My side is too busy pretending that the other side will view us as human beings if we try to engage them civilly.

I took a lot of notes in my smartphone at BayCon, partly because I knew that I'd be drunk at the parties and thus unlikely to remember everything. Well, that's not entirely true. Let's face it, I was surrounded by geeks, and neat ideas were flying all over the place: good quotes, recommended books, tasty foods and drinks I haven't tried yet, the list goes on and on.

I've still got the codebreakers working on parts of my notes -- between sleep deprivation and intoxication, some of my notes are a little sloppy. Still, I captured a lot more than I would have without these notes. A few samples below:


Notes on Music:

I ended up chatting with about two or three people on music quite a bit. My notes here are a little fragmentary, but they're enough to summon more complete memories, or if not, I can punch them into Wikipedia and learn more. For instance, one of my notes was "helicopter quartet." This led me to the Helikopter-Streichquartett by Stockhausen, and then, "oh, yeah! That gent told me a lot about Stockhausen! I'm going to have to look that up!"

Some of the talk got very detailed, even arcane. You know how it's possible for engineers to completely geek out with each other, getting so technical that everyone who isn't also an engineer is completely left behind? Music theory can be just as bad. There was one chat with me, jon_decles, and one other gent whose name I don't remember, but I ended up chatting about Indian Music Theory with him last year -- and the three of us ended up driving all the non-music geeks off without realizing it.


Notes on Alcohol:

• Noble fir vodka: I have no idea who came up with this, nor what possessed bovil to try it, but I'm very glad he tried it, and was then eager to share it.
  
• Ginger liqueur (Koval, I think): Needed more ginger, but trust me to say that.
  
• Caol Ila: this is one of the really smoky whiskeys -- it's a slightly lighter Talisker, for lack of a better way to describe it.
  
• Ardbeg: For a moment, this one tastes really smooth and gentle. Then, it whacks you with a hammer and yells in your ear: "Ha ha, I'm smokier than Laphroaig!" Wonderful, wonderful stuff.
  
• Glenmorangie: I tried a bunch of these at the Whiskey Brothers party. This was an education! All Glenmorangie is made by a single process, but aged differently -- a batch that's aged in barrels that were originally used for sherry is going to taste different from a batch aged in port barrels, and I took this as my chance to find out how. (They're all good, if way too mild for my tastes.)
  
• Glen Kinchie: Very gentle. It's a little like Dalmore in how gentle it is, but it smells wonderful.
  
• Vanilla Whiskey: apparently really damned popular. I shared this with several people, most of who really liked it. If I bring a hip-flask next year, this is what's going in it.

Notes on Food:

• Edible flowers. Have never really gotten into them, but now I should. Violets are apparently criminally underrated.
  
• Macapuno is a variety of fucked-up mutant coconut. Where most normal coconuts have crunchy meat and water inside, a macapuno has no water, and its meat is gelatinous. I've never heard of it, but thanks to caprine, I now need to find some, and then find a use for it. Apparently they're wicked good in ice cream. Terrific! I have a couple of friends with ice cream makers.
  
• If farmount offers you chocolate... say yes, you idiot!
  
• If elaryn offers you homemade toffee... say yes, you idiot!

Aw, come on. Don't look at me like that. A friend bought me a T-shirt that says "and then Buffy staked Edward. The End," which I'd brought to the convention. (Thank you, diziara. I got no end of compliments on this shirt.) Because I had this T-shirt, I was pretty much obligated to attend this panel in it. So, there I went.

It was actually a hell of a lot of fun. There were tweens there, so certain more raunchy instances of batshit fandom didn't get mentioned, like the nutter who turned an Edward doll into a vibrator and tried to get it autographed. On the other hand, F-bombs did get dropped, and one of the panelists mentioned that she was a member of ontd_twatlight. (Somewhere, there's a picture of her in her official Twilight shirt and me in my Buffy shirt, standing side by side, both very much amused. Must look for that later -- I'm sure it'll be on the net soon, if it isn't already.)

Anyway, this panel was a lot of fun. It included a lot of hardcore fans who, nevertheless, could see why other people hated it, and didn't feel compelled to physically attack the haters stand up for their all-time favorite book. For that matter, while I'm sure there were a few people who'd not only love to see SMeyer die in a fire but would provide the gasoline, no one actually said so. Granted, the extent to which Mormon Theology colored her books did come up just a little, and I'm sure that stoney321's review got a bunch more hits over the weekend. And of course, the sexual politics came up...

Anyway.

I'm still not likely to read the books any time soon, but it was good to meet fans who weren't apeshit crazy. Helps keep things in perspective, especially since I'm in a comm on JournalFen devoted entirely to the crazy in Twatlight fandom.

Having fun here, and seeing friends is always great, but I'm quite sleep-deprived at this point. Seriously loopy. Tried to take a nap. Didn't work so well.

Con is great. Hotel is not. Had one meal in the hotel on Friday -- the waitress took my friend's order, then walked away before I got a chance to order, and then it took three to five minutes to flag her down. I'm accustomed to hotel food being overpriced, but that was just plain rude. And I swear, I'm going to drive a fucking sledgehammer through the toilet in my room...

Sorry. Minor complaints. Just getting them off my chest, so I can get back to enjoying the con. One more attempt at a nap...