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.
In places like cf_hardcore those of us who have no kids and want no kids have a few fun pejoratives for bratty kids: "snotleigh," "bratleigh," "nose-miner," "crotch-dropping," "cunt-nugget," "twat-waffle," and many, many others. We also have words for stupid parents, like "moo" (mom) and "duh" (dad). The thing is, parents hear these terms, and don't grasp that we're not bashing parents or children, just lousy parents or bratty children. Fifteen percent of any group are assholes, and we like having terms to refer to them.
(It doesn't help that fifteen percent of us childfree types are assholes ourselves, and use these terms indiscriminately to refer to all children, or all parents. That's why parents have their own pejoratives terms for us, like "freetard.")
So, to educate people (but mostly as an excuse to post some things I found amusing), I'm going to illustrate one of these terms: "entitle-moo." Basically, an entitle-moo is a mother who thinks the world owes her a silver platter and everything that will fit on it, because she's doing the Most Important Job In The World.
So! An entitle-moo is a mother like this one. Or this one. Or these three:
This bit of filk is dedicated to the most hardcore of the hardcore anime fans -- the ones who watch it for ten hours a day and think that watching it makes them an authority on Japanese culture. The ones whose devotion to Japanese cartoons overpowers all other concerns, like nutrition or basic hygiene. The ones who... ah, you know what I mean. The original song can be found here, but if you haven't heard it before, what rock have you been hiding under, really?
Turning Wapanese
I've got some manga! You'll like it too! I've got some manga! To share with you! I watch it every day, I've nothing else to do!
I buy my manga! Right here in town! I've got more manga! Can't put it down! I wank and read it when there's no one else around!
I've got some manga! I've got some manga! There's lots of manga here on all of my shelves! I've got some manga! I've got some manga! And lots of anime dvds as well!
I'm saying nan-deo and nan-des'ka and baka-baka-baka-baka...
Chorus: Turning wapanese, I think I'm turning wapanese, I really think so! Turning wapanese, I think I'm turning wapanese, I really think so! Turning wapanese, I think I'm turning wapanese, I really think so! Turning wapanese, I think I'm turning wapanese, I really think so!
I want to see the! Vending machines there! For the pocky and used undies they sell! I've got stale pretzels! I've got stale pretzels! But when you cover them with chocolate they're swell!
I'm saying nan-deo and nan-des'ka and baka-baka-baka-baka...
Chorus: Turning wapanese, I think I'm turning wapanese, I really think so! Turning wapanese, I think I'm turning wapanese, I really think so! Turning wapanese, I think I'm turning wapanese, I really think so! Turning wapanese, I think I'm turning wapanese, I really think so!
No sex, no job, no life, no sunlight, No fun, just me in mom's cellar, no wonder I'm dull. Everyone around me sees my chibi boner. Everyone avoids me and my body odor. Everyone. That's why I'm --
Chorus: Turning wapanese, I think I'm turning wapanese, I really think so! Turning wapanese, I think I'm turning wapanese, I really think so! Turning wapanese, I think I'm turning wapanese, I really think so! Turning wapanese, I think I'm turning wapanese, I really think so!
(Links lead to the same movies. I only include them because embed tags are giving me grief lately.)
This is a scene from the straight porno This Ain't Star Trek, in which the Starship In-her-prize (or some other, no doubt, equally cheesy and entendre-riffic name) takes delivery of a cute female alien. Of course, this porno is a spoof of the classic Star Trek series, with Kirk, so we all know what's happening next, don't we?
This is a scene from the gay porno Whorrey Potter and the Sorcerer's Balls, in which Fag-Hag(rid) takes Whorrey Potter to Diaphragm Alley to purchase school supplies. This bad dialog is deliberate, and includes puns and other wordplay so horrible that even Spider "The Pun-nisher" Robinson would likely consider it beneath his dignity.
So, a friend of mine (who shall remain unnamed, unless she cares to comment here) found herself the owner of two tickets to an opera, and didn't want to go by herself. As a result of this, I recently got my first taste: Il trittico, by Giacomo Puccini.
(Unless you've lived under a rock, you've heard Puccini. Trust me.)
It was amazing. The hall itself was a marvel of engineering -- everything you've ever heard about the acoustics in great theaters is absolutely true. Despite being over a hundred feet away from the stage (and the orchestra pit below it), I could hear every note clearly, and there wasn't a microphone or a speaker to be seen. In the second of the three acts, there were several ailing children onstage; the sounds of their crutches making contact with the floor, and the wheels of their IV stands clattering on the floor, were all clearly audible. In the third act, in which several people are rummaging through papers to find a will, I could hear paper rustling.
The lyrics were all in Italian, but for the benefit of those of us who don't speak Italian, there was a screen above the stage, about ten feet tall and sixty feet wide at a guess. As the actors sang, the translated lyrics were projected on this screen. A nice touch, that. I don't know if all opera houses do this, but I can hope, right?
Anyway, the opera itself was three separate plays, each told in a single act, and all of them were wonderful. The first, "The Cloak," is about a married woman who takes a lover, and it ends in a murder. The second, "Sister Angelica," is about a nun who discovers that the child she birthed before going to the nunnery (and hasn't seen since) died at the age of five, and it ends with her suicide. The third, "Johnny Skeevy," is about a bunch of people who engage a swindler to forge a will, and it's hilarious.
(These three plays are frequently performed separately. Puccini never liked this -- he felt that they all belonged together, despite having nothing in common thematically. I'm inclined to agree with him. They all just seem to fit.)
Anyway, I has half-worried that I'd be bored to tears at the opera, despite the fact that seeing an opera was on my list of things I want to do at least once before I die. I was also half-expecting to be completely confused, like Spike Jones going into Pagliacci expecting a western, and then being surprised to see a fat guy in a clown suit onstage. (You can hear that tale here. It's amusing.) Anyway, it turned out these fears were needless.
If I'd tried to go to an opera at the age of twenty, I'm sure I would have hated it. As it is, I was not only well-entertained, but enchanted. At the end of each play, the performers all came onstage and took their bows -- I suspect that they do this partly to get some well-earned applause, but also to gently bring their audience back down to Earth.
Opera is not a cheap habit to get into, and I don't expect to be able to go very often... but I am very glad I got to go this one time.
This is the last two songs from Carmina Burana. (Actually, it's the last four songs, but it's the last two I want to inflict on you.) The very last one you've heard -- the one before it, probably not unless you own a copy of the opera.
(I know, I know, late to the party again. Extra hours at work, and all that. But I've been dying for a chance to use this video clip, and it may be a long time before I have another opportunity.)
A long time ago, I posted this guide to classical music you already know, even if you think you don't. I'd meant to follow that up, even make a whole series of posts like that, but kept shoving it to back burner. Anyway, I'm just now getting back to it, and I need to raise the tone of my LJ since my past public post was links to really bad porn snippets, so here are excerpts from three operas I can probably guarantee you've heard.
First, one you've probably (hopefully!) known since you were six years old, at least in the United States: Overture, from The Barber of Seville by Gioachino Rossini. You're familiar with Bugs Bunny, aren't you? You've seen him and Elmer Fudd mix it up on the opera stage in a barber shop? This piece got beautifully mangled in that cartoon, and mangled considerably less beautifully in many cartoons since.
Next: Un bel dì vedremo (One beautiful day, we will see), from Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini. With this one, it's possible that you've only heard the first couple of bars, but oh, what a first couple of bars! The whole song is worth hearing -- in fact, it swells as it goes on. If you have the patience, the whole damned opera is worth hearing, too.
Last, Vesti la giubba (Wear the costume), from Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo. As with Un bel dì, this one has one especially famous line in it, and it's been heard everywhere. I remember an episode of one of the Batman cartoons in which Penguin attended this opera and sang along (horribly). This one line starts about 2:00 in.
I'm posting these to my own LJ because I plan to visit a friend soon, and I want all of these videos to be in easy reach so that I can inflict them on him show them to him. Anyway, some funny awful things I swiped from bad_porn_2:
So you think you can do porn: a PSA-style video for all you hopeful exhibitionists. Aside from the content, it's in the style of 1950s educational videos. (Speaking for myself, I'll never think of the game Mousetrap in the same way again.)
So you think you can sing: a porn dick who sings (for want of a better verb) while he does his thing. With bonus link for the rock remix of his performance!
And just as a (lousy) bonus: this video. Because when I hear music by a band whose lyrics are a giant mess of medical terminology talking about death, gore, grime, and guts, the first thing that pops into my head is pornography. Or something. Yeah.
Once upon a time, I was really enamored of satellite radio. Not enamored enough to subscribe to it myself, mind, but it seemed like such a huge improvement over AM/FM. When customers asked me about Sirius, I used to describe it as being "a lot like regular radio, if regular radio didn't suck." I was impressed by the metal station, which regularly managed to come up with bands I'd never heard, and by the classical stations, which actually played the Eighth Symphony by Shostakovich. (The Eighth is excellent, but it's dark and depressing, and not exactly radio-friendly.) Even the pop stations managed to surprise me, frequently in good ways. And best of all, even individual stations had a lot of variety, unlike AM/FM stations which each tend to pick about fifteen songs and play them over and over and over. (Fuck you very much, ClearChannel.)
Then, Sirius and XM merged. Then, a while later, we were given a new list of approved radio stations at work. Then, satellite radio -- at least, this one approved station -- started blowing goats with great enthusiasm.
In related news, a rant.
I'm sick of that stupid "gives you hell, it gives you hell, it gives you hell" song. I'm sick of the Fray, and their whiny-ass "how to save a life" song, and all their other equally-whiny-ass songs. I'm sick of how O.A.R. can "always turn the car around." I'm sick of that one Three Doors Down song, asking "will you let me be myself," which I've also come to associate with breathtakingly stupid car insurance ads. I'm sick of Avril Lavigne.
"I would like to see the whiny bitch decapitated! It would give me joy to see the brat defenestrated! And she whines, and she wails, and she moans, and she groans, and her lyrics are total shit, and I wonder how the hell she got so fucking overrated!"
I'm sick of hearing each of these songs at work every day, every three or four hours. I'm even sick of Pink, and considering how much I liked the song "Sober" before our satellite station drove it into the ground, that's saying a lot.
But most of all, I'm sick of Katy Perry. "I kissed a girl, and I liked it!" Yeah, whatever. Jill Sobule also kissed a girl once, and she has more talent in her pinky than Katy Perry will ever possess. You want edgy? I'd be more impressed if a band like Pansy Division performed it -- that would turn some heads, and get people talking! Or, if you'd rather not give heteronormativity the small victory of having gay guys singing about kissing girls and liking it, we could write a gay version in the opposite direction:
"I fucked a dude, and I liked it. He was tall, dark, strong and hairy. I fucked a dude, and I liked it. He was better than Katy Perry..."
We could get a band with a bisexual frontman, like Green Day, to perform it. Or maybe David Bowie might be willing to sing it. That would be awesome!
It's not that I have anything against bisexuals, or screwing outside one's orientation. Believe me, I don't, and I'd be a gigantic hypocrite if I did. It's just that the song is so fucking bad. She tries so hard to be "daring" and "edgy," and in truth she's about as edgy as two cute drunk chicks kissing in front of a horde of drunk cheering fratboys.
On the other hand, the power metal version of the song is pretty damned amusing, and it's a huge improvement over the original. (Thank you, matrexius.)
(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.)
...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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This song has been stuck in my head all day. It's likely to be blatantly offensive to people who have sticks up their asses, and the delivery, while vulgar, is just too damned cute for words. This combination is almost guaranteed to result in something that will bash its way into your head and never come out. This particular performance is made even more fun by lots of young gay vloggers hamming it up.
Oh, and check this out! The singer of this wonderful wonderful song, one Lily Allen, shows a nipple on The Friday Night Project! (Sorry, embedding is disabled.) Have I mentioned how much I love The Friday Night Project? Oh, wait, yes, I have. Well, lemme say it again!
A while back, I posted the video "Jizz In My Pants." Well, a few ladies saw it, and took it as a challenge. Well, sorta. It's a bit of viral marketing. Still, it beats NOM-NOM-NOM, right?
So there, I was, over at bad_porn_2, clicking over to something that will no doubt make me regret clicking... and I saw this ad. Well, their version was animated.
Oddly enough? No. I can safely say that I've never fantasized about that. I would never fantasize about that in a million years. If I were really fuckin' drunk, I might come up with a mental image like this, but it would be as a wisecrack -- I'd certainly never attempt to arrange it in real life.
So, no, this ad didn't turn me on. On the other hand, it made me fall off my seat laughing. But then, this is the same company that has ads with a woman fondling a man who's jumping up and down while wearing a chicken suit, with the caption "please don't choke your chicken." I still chortle when I see that ad, and it has left a positive impression on me, by making me laugh.
This is how advertising is SUPPOSED to work. Too many ads on TV seem to be designed to be as godsdamned fucking annoying as possible, often with the unspoken message of "total asshole douchebombs buy our product. So should you." But then, as one of my friends has pointed out, I'm not the target demographic anymore. And clearly, those ads do work, or they'd stop making them. But I stray from the point...
This ad is brilliantly whacked, and would be entertaining even if it were intended as bizarre performance art, rather than marketing. I'm not about to use the company's services, but I wish them all the best, and I must admit that as with Hulu, I'm paying attention to their ads just to see what they come up with next. (Their current one is a guy with boxing gloves swinging at a side of beef, with the caption "please don't beat your meat." Not as funny as chicken, but still not bad.)
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