MASTERMIND

Del rockin' Skull Candy



I read an article about Del the Funky Homosapien (born Teren Delvon James) in High Times last week, prompting me to include some of his tunes on my Pod. And so it was my new favorite song is born: "Mastermind" from the album Deltron 3030by Deltron Zero a side project of Del's, aside from his main thing, rap-group Hieroglyphics...a show I caught last year that introduced me to Del. The song starts out really slow with a simple beat, a catchy melody of course, and Del's visionary lyrics:
"Who fuses the music
With no illusions
Producing the blue prints
Clueless?
Automator - defy the laws of nature
Electronic monolith throw a jam upon the disc
The futuristic looper with the quickness
Hyper-producin' hydrogen fusion liquids keep your distance"

Del's lyrics are a good example of underground hip-hop and why it should be supported. Do you tink Lil Wayne is singing about hydrogen fusion creatively? No, because Lil Wayne's is rapping about this shit:
"I ain't got no loves for broads
I ducks and dodge
I grab 'em, on they butts and all
She fucks my dog
Slut sucks nuts and all
And nothin' small
This dick make 'em hit the floor and touch the wall
Call my hoes to get salami, 'cause they brush the balls"

Seriously? Seriously....I can guarantee you that Lil Wayne will make more money than Del ever will and I find that to be such an indisprepancy in the music industry. So many artists can make a huge profit off of very little talent. The act of rapping itself is not so hard, I can rap alongside most songs I listen to. What makes a good rapper is his lyrics...the creativity, ingenuity, and originality that influence his music. This is just another good examply of the value systems people attach to the music they listen to.

What I wanted to point out about this song, however, is the spoken word between 1:33 and 1:53. We hear a womans voice hauntingly reading the following slowly and dramatially, much like poetry, the background a collection of soft eerie voices. Her words read:
"The day the walls of the cities will crumble away
Uncovering our naked souls
All start singing
Shouting
Screaming
(loud, loud, loud, loud...)"

Initially I just liked the fact that there was a breakdown in the song, followed by the return of catchy and staccato-like lyrics of "psionically, bionically, forget how ya feel.." but the more I payed attention to what the words were, the more heavily affected I became. I ended up searching these lyrics and came up with a song they were sampled from, entitled "Loud, Loud, Loud" by Aphrodite's Child. Upon further research I learn that AC is a progressive Green rock band formed in the 1967. The 2-disc album that was their crowning acheivement included "Loud, Loud, Loud" and was eerily entitled 666, a musical adaptation of the Biblical Book of Revalations. On the album cover it says this above the title:
"Anyone who has intelligence
May interpret this number of the beast
It is a man's number
This number is..."

Creepy. I wonder how Del found this stuff.

The Corporation//THE 28TH AMENDMENT

It's so fitting that I was shown The Corporation when I was. It was just 4 or 5 days before that marine toxicologist, commercial salmon fisherwoman, community activist, author, and all around bad-ass Dr. Rikki Ott was speaking on how she is working on an amendment to change the definition of a corporation so that it is estranged from that of the human person. A corporation, she argues is a collective and not a singular person with the human rights given to each American born citizen. This is precisely why I like going to a liberal arts school, in that I have talked about the idea of "The Corporation" in more than just this class and am using notes from another class to relate to this essay.

Anyways, Dr. Ott layed the foundation for us, which was good because I was pretty unaware of the legalities behind corporate America and all that jazz, saying that in 1886, American law granted right to "corporate persons," allowing corporations to apply our own individual rights that are so highly valued as a citizen of the U.S., amassing great wealth and power. More power. More money. More speech.

But as we have seen this power is an illegitimate power. We wee that these corporations, who were merely trying to produce "a whole galaxy of things to make a better life on Earth" (The Corporation) have actually been in the process of for many decades and will continue to
-abuse and corrupt the legal system
-abuse the environment
-abuse campaign finance
-spread globalization and
-continue to fuel the economic collapse

It is clear that the focus is simply on making money with no (intrinsic, physical, moral) value attatched. Dr. Ott even refers to the idea of a "corpocracy," basically the type of goverment that we're in and that is where corporate values are top priority, we see a "suicide economy," we are inundated with wars, cancer, divorce, etc. and all it is is about money exchanging hands. One needs treatment for cancer. $. One needs $ for divorce proceedings. BILLIONS of $$$$$$$$$$ are WASTED on wars. Acne is only a problem because we can sell you things to make it better. You think cavemen/the Anasazi/the Puritans gave a shit about their blemishes?

So what Dr. Ott is proposing to Congress is that much like the separation of church and state, we have separation of corporation and state. Instead of consolidating wealth and power, ultimately destroying everything, we as a nation should deem that corporations in fact don't have the same properties as natural persons. While I think Dr. Ott is very inspiring and legendary in her kind of word, I think she may have bitten off more than she can chew with Am 28. After all, what can a middle-aged, 100 pound woman do in the face of all the head honchos and big cheeses that are laced in a web of bribery, payoffs, lies, deceit, loss, and capital? I don't know if it is much. I really hope so, though. The point is though that it does take more than a hundred pound woman, or student activist, or factory worker, or single father to make the difference and if we all speak up, something can be done. I just fear that there's many more connections in this web from our goverment to the bigger corporations--money exchanging hands--for this to be solved anytime soon.


***To learn more about this amendment, visit
http://www.rikkiott.com/
http://www.civicengagement.com/
http://www.celdf.org/

Merchants of Cool

It's interesting to take the point of view as these "coolhunters" as anthropologists who are looking at the teenage demographic like a wild indiginous culture previously unseen. It's so difficult to step outside of our culture, especially our generation, and look at how money driven, delusional, and frankly psychopathic we are. If you think about the things we truly value, it's mindblowing. Kids now want cell phones before their 10th birthday. Hot Topic continues to make millions. Artists like (hed) p.e. sell records and kids still beg their parents for Happy Meals.

What happened to the youth culture being concerned with sustainability and being able to feed their grandparents? What does it tell us that in our culture, we pay to basically lock elderly people away instead of ensuring their safety and good health? It tells us that our values are seriously out of whack, misconstrued, often just completely wrong and misguided.

When looking at some old photos depicted in the segment, I was struck how everything shown was definitely "not cool." Try to sell rainbor suspenders now, I guarantee you, you'll get laughed at. Rollerblades? Cool in 1994. Not to much now. "Cool" is such an unstable concept. Obviously there is evolution in what is "in vogue" or trendy at the moment, and we see that these types of products as well as channels, songs, hairstyles, etc. can be off the shelves in a day or stay in style for several decades. Not the best example but Led Zeppelin has been cool for forty years and counting.

(hed) p.e. is not for girls...

I spent a fairly long trip in the car this weekend listening to (hed) p.e.'s (formed from "higher thought"/Planet Earth) new album, New World Orphans. For those of you who haven't listened to the musical genius (I'm being sarcastic here) of hed, there's not much else you can do but laugh, gasp, and recoil in disgust when you listen & pay attention to their lyrics. I suppose that the people who like hed like them for the beats and rhythms, guitar riffs, electronic sounds and loud cymbal crashes that constitute the "punk/metal/hardcore" genre, but I fear that many of them feel connected to and like their lyrics. Their style of music has also been called "trash-hop" and "G-punk."

Allmusic's Rob Theakston got right to the point when he critiqued hed's new album at the time, saying, "Back 2 Base X suffers from the same problems as Amerika: it tries to be conceptual in thought à la Tool and vicious in its political commentary à la Fugazi or System of a Down, but somehow falls short by sounding like an angry stoner on a soapbox. It won't win any new fans, but existing fans of (hed) pe's work won't be turning their backs away from the band in anger anytime soon, either."

While I do find myself enjoying the music, I feel like I am literally betraying the feminine collective by supporting hed pe. The biggest problem critics seem to have with their music is the misogynistic lyric content.
Just to give you an idea, the album of theirs--Only in Amerika--that I know has a track list as follows:
1. Foreplay
2. Represent
3. Truth
4. Wake Up
5. War
6. The Box
7. CBC (cum bitch cum)
8. Voices
9. Raise Hell
10. American Beauty
11. Chicken
12. Daydreams
13. Not Dead Yet

While number 7 obviously has derogatory overtones, my favorite songs, "Wake Up","Raise Hell", and "Amerikan Beauty" have just as bad, if not more offensive lyrics. "Wake Up," a song advocating smoking joints, popping downers, and driving drunk..... all the while, celebrating the Al-Qaeda burning in hell, highlights its best lyrics in the chorus:

"Die motherfucker, die motherfucker, die

Die motherfucker, die motherfucker, die

Get high motherfucker, get high motherfucker, high,

We ride motherfucker or motherfuckin die."

Really moving, huh? I can guarantee you any of our parents would have turned this song off after the first three words. Speaking of...my dad happened to start my car an get an earful of this gem, "Amerikan Beauty," a song centered around getting frisky with a 17 year old girl (mind you, these guys are in their mid to late 20s):

"I'm lookin for a big butt to squeeze on these nuts
I'm not tryin to think too much,
I'm just tryin to get fucked and drink too much"

after referring to this girl as "babygirl","little bitch", "slut" and "jailbait" she chimes in with an young and whispery voice:

"Hey Daddy can I talk to you
Daddy I'm only seventeen but I know just what to do
At the club fools pay big money for me
But Daddy you can get this lapdance here for free
I need love Daddy, Daddy give it to me, it's my birthday..."

to which our lyricist says:

"Ahhight - then let me see your I.D.
Cuz the last time I was fooled the bitch was just sixteen
Big ass - big tits - she looked at least twenty-three"

The chorus is basically screaming the line "If fucking you is wrong, I don't want to be right" and while he admits, "I'm going straight to hell..." the lifestyle centered around "teenage pussy" ("a thing of beauty") seems to be one he won't change anytime soon.
The most disturbing lyrics, and these are the ones that my father just so happened to catch are as follows:

"I'ma slap your little ass
Til it turns black and blue
Now ya put on these heels
and ya arch your back
And I'ma crack ya ass in half
With my eight inch staff"

followed by my favorite....

"She was like 'Damn what the fuck did you do to me?'
I was like 'Shut the fuck up - this ain't nothin new to me'
She was like 'You're suck a dick I hate you'
I was like 'Bitch shut up before I rape you'
I like fuckin these ninety-pounders
I watch it go in, I feel like I'm Shaqueil O'Neill
and I'm fuckin the Olson Twins
It don't take much more than a nice butt
The slut smiles at me - the slut rides with me..."

Bitch shut-up before I rape you? I'ma slap your little ass 'til it turns black and blue? No wonder my father was so blown away. The most disturbing part though, above all else, is that since their conception in 1994, (hed) p.e. has gone through several members, put out AND SOLD 9 albums. Nine cd's of ranting about politics, pussy, pot and pills. You'd think it'd get a little old; either they would get sick of making such worthless music or their audience would get sick of consuming it. Either way, these guys are making quite a bit of money off this SHIT. And I still listened to it in my car this morning. And there are still millions of starving people who could use the profit from every hed poster, t-shirt, and record sale. How sad.

As they are considered "underground" as opposed to "mainstream," hed doesn't have a lot of music videos for me to share with you all but I found this..."Renegade" off the new album. Enjoy! Or not so much...

SIMULACRA AND SIMULATIONS

"...with the decline of the Empire this map becomes frayed and finally ruined, a few shreds still discernible in the deserts - the metaphysical beauty of this ruined abstraction, bearing witness to an imperial pride and rotting like a carcass, returning to the substance of the soil, rather as an aging double ends up being confused with the real thing), this fable would then have come full circle for us, and now has nothing but the discrete charm of second-order simulacra.1"

The only way I can put this crazy babble into context of perceiving media (and with the help of a wildly philosophical and talkative friend of a friend) is to understand this map that Baudrillard speaks of as the world in relation to exposure to media. The Empire is clearly those in power who dominate the media and in most cases, law, money, distribution, power, etc. In contrast, the frayed and ruined shreds are those cultures that we don't see and interact with; the cultures that still hold true to oral tradition and traditional living, completely alien to (or from) television and film. Cultures who, if they could, would be "bearing witness to an imperial pride and rotting like a carcass."

Another easy way for me to understand the piece, and in using the knowledge I have of the Matrix, is the first paragraph under "The Divine Irreference of Images" where Baudrillard can help me to understand his concepts in conjunction with another--a metaphor (one of the basic elements of semiotics that we discussed in class). He spoke of reality in terms of a sickness. Citing Littre, Baudrillard says, "Someone who feigns an illness can simply go to bed and pretend he is ill. Someone who simulates an illness produces in himself some of the symptoms...Thus, feigning or dissimulating leaves the reality principle intact: the difference is always clear, it is only masked; whereas simulation threatens the difference between "true" and "false", between "real" and "imaginary". Since the simulator produces "true" symptoms, is he or she ill or not? The simulator cannot be treated objectively either as ill, or as not ill."

It then goes on to say that medicine and treatment for such an illness, supposing it is real is irrelevant at this point. If any symptom can be not merely feigned but produced, then every illness can be considered both "simulatable and simulated" and thus medicine loses its meaning in a world where every illness could be simulated, or is simulated, or will be simulated...

Baudrillard then asks, "Why should simulation stop at the portals of the unconscious?" Putting this in easier terms, I wonder why this simulation should stop at individually faking something, or "producing" effects when we could apply the idea to a whole. We can understand this in terms of a global simulation, making an entire version of reality that is separate from that of the true.


The babbling of my wise and seasoned friend led me to understand this essay in terms of the trail humans leave in relation to the technology we use (just think how all throughout the Bush Administration, all communications in American borders [yes, all of yours too!] were being monitored and basically funneled into a technological sieve). Our media and our digital trail are separate but can be viewed together to help understand both Baudrillard's piece and the Matrix. Think about the portions of the world we are not aware of. There are so many things going on that we are unable to perceive. There are many, many different ways of life that we could see if we were sensitive to other parts of the world. As I understand it, the Matrix is everything outside of what we can perceive and manipulate. Everything that is simply too fast, too invisible. And it's all around us. All the time.

Loggage (SUNDAY/02/09/09)

Please keep in mind that I made it a point to record on a day where I knew I didn't have to leave my house, resulting in less exposure to media, and also that while I did listen to music all throughout the day (and therefore didn't record every single song I heard), I made it a point to not watch T.V. I did this because my days at school are hard enough and I know that if I had to take time out of my day to reference every logo I see, every song, commercial, etc., well I just wouldn't have enough time in the day. So please keep in mind that I really "took it easy" this day and limited my exposure on purpose, but still got the point of the assignment and don't always cut corners :)

Awake! at 10:00. Just in the room I wake up in, I see from posters and stickers and whatnot:
-Metallica
-Yonder Mtn String Band
-Jack Daniels
-Guinness
-Telluride
-Burton
-Clif Bar
-LG
-Bic (lighters and pencils)
-Verizon
-Camel No. 9
-Tool
-Jolly Rancher
--Music from Pavement, Dave Matthews Band, Buckethead and Gorillaz

Come downstairs to make breakfast/lunch 'til 12:00:
-Steaming Bean Coffee
-Raw Sugar
-City Market brand/Kroger
-Jimmy Dean
-Lenders
-Kraft
-Kohler
-Fridgidaire
-Sony
-POM glasses
-Simply Orange
--Music from Tracy Chapman, instrumental music by the String Quartet, and Metallica

Loungin' from 12:00 to 5:00/shower-time:
-Cadillac
-Pantene Pro-V
-Suave
-Dial
-Bath & Body Works
-Arm & Hammer
-Colgate, Crest
-Swix
-Windows 98
-Campbell's
-Kroger (again)
-Scotchbrite
-Descente
-Bic (razor)
--Music from Jason Mraz, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Atmosphere

Trip to the grocery store, WAYYY too many labels and logos to record, but let it be known that shit is EVERYWHERE.

7:00-11:00/bedtime:
-Hidden Valley
-Timex
-Marlboro
-ConAIR
-Oil of Olay
-Listerine
-American Eagle
-Hurley
-Nivea
--Music from Led Zeppelin, Bela Fleck, Earl Scruggs, Zion I, and Tool

So while I didn't leave my house much and by entering the same rooms over and over again, I was exposed to the same materials rather than say, being at school where I would see something new with each building and each room I entered. That said, I am still overwhelmed by the almost subconscious and subliminal advertising around me. It's on my phone, my cigarettes, my milk, and my underwear. The importance of labels in relation to one's ability to recognize them--even with a millisecond of exposure--is pretty underrated.

My parents own and operate their own medical clinic. Recently, a representative from the local Yellow Pages came to them, offering their form of advertisement, but this year, unlike the other years, urged my parents to make a logo for their business (McGuinn Chiropractic). The man tells my mother, "it's all about being recognizable, marketable ." Now, I explained to my mother that this guy is full of it and for a small-scale, family-run business like theirs, being recognizable is not a priority. Keeping a low clientele base ensures that they come back because they know you, and not your logo.

We know the man is right though, and logos serve as shortcuts for our brain--immediately connecting the image of the logo with a phrase, an image, sound, idea, value, etc. has become an entirely thoughtless act. The advertising business as a whole raves, fists pumping, jumping and high-fiving, every time we make one of these immediate associations: they've got us right where they want us. How scary is that...

This is why I have been waking up in the same room for 3 months and never have I been critical of the font associated with Metallica on a tapestry or the popularity of a couple not-so artistic posters which are nothing more than advertisements for Jack Daniels whiskey and Guinness beer. Also oblivious to me was the insistence of logos on my everyday stuff, because it's definitely not enough just to have your name on your product that people use everyday and can probably remember, but we must have a recognizable picture or image to accompany it. LG, Bic, Camel, Marlboro, Arm & Hammer (my toothpaste), Windows 98--all things I use everyday and don't pay much attention to...though if you asked me to draw the logos for any of the following, I bet you I could do them all. My Jolly Rancher chapstick was a great and funny example of a new trend of brands merging with other brands to promote each other. In no way is the Smackers brand of chapstick related to Jolly Rancher candy, but for this particular product (and for thousands of little girls begging their parents for it) it works.

The place I spend most of my time outside of the bedroom is the kitchen, the place in the house that we see many, if not the most logos and product brands. Kraft cheese, Lenders bagels and Campbell's soup are all particularly well known in their respective areas and while I saw a few main brands like these, I noticed that many of my products are "generic" and either boast the City Market or Kroger brand. At City Market, there is usually an option, whether it is for pasta, milk, soup, cookies, soda, oats, salt, whatever, to either get the pretty packaging with the recognizable, brand-name logo (and this way we have some sort of idea of what the food is supposed to be like; we hold name brands more accountable) or a generic brand which is, on average, probably 25-50% cheaper. Being the low-income student that I am, I find that I buy more generic products than I do brand-name. Rarely does this affect me in the store unless the generic product really looks to be under par. Saving money is key in my lifestyle and it is evident when you see the things around my house.

While, like I said, this experiment could have had a bigger spectrum of results, a little more exposure, I definitely am basking in what I have found in all this. What I have realized is that to get away from almost any type of media, be it the noise of a siren, a billboard on the roadway telling you to swing by McDonald's, the recognizable logos on the computer screen as I write this (Blogger, Internet Explorer, Windows) the logo on the tag of your underwear, one would basically have to live as a social outcast, embracing life in a tree-top or something. IT IS EVERYWHERE. All the time. All over the world. Everyday. And while you may not think it, the marketability of the music you buy, the pills you swallow, the condoms you wear, or the air freshener hanging from your rearview can teach us all about what is important to the general public and what is important to the people in charge of the media we're exposed to, and maybe waht we can do to bridge the gap between these two ideals (especially with the economy falling and new "cheap!" advertising schemes). Be conscious. Make choices. Be an active citizen, supplier, buyer, listener and thinker when you're out in the world. Don't let others take advantage of the consciousness you have created. Own your thoughts. Go forth and prosper! (But whatever you do, don't eat McDonald's...)

WoW

No, not World of Warcraft. But War of the Worlds. I had never listened to the original broadcast but find that Radiolab's airing of certain clips of the broadcast, interlaced with questions regarding its modality and the actions it spurred, was much more beneficial to me. We talked a lot about in class how this probably couldn't happen now because you would have to have enough people watching/listening to the same thing at the same time which would be difficult with the thousands of options people have in their media intake. Not only would you have to get enough people to pay attention to your message for it to be effective, there are all sorts of FCC regulations, stations owned by corporations, and big cheese executives that would not let this happen.

I will tell you though that if I had a radio for under a year, as I would have in 1938; this mysterious box with words and music flowing from its speakers (but whose voices?) I would have definitely been one of the "1 in 12" statistic that went beserk--screaming and running to the streets. Think about it: with the radio being such a recent invention, the American public didn't know much about it: how radio frequencies work, who "DJs" the show, how the actual sounds are recorded so as to play them back at any given time. Add to this confusion, the idea that these "breaking news bulletins" had just come into effect a month before, and seemingly so often that "bulletins were interupting bulletins" (Radiolab). The tone of voice and the backgroudn noise are broadcast in such a way that it is designed to get the audience's attention and send them into a state of alert or panic. The way Orson Wells sounded to eerily similar to the commentator who had witnessed the Hindenburg tragedy (after he had reviewed the tape dozens of times) is a direct indicator of this.

So know you've got this box in front of me. I assume I've been getting truthful bulletins about Hitler and the Hindenburg and what have you. But you're telling me that you're going to deliberately, with the use of tone, rhetoric, outlets of media, strategic pausing and screaming, scare me so I run out of my house like a headless chicken, to tell me it's the radio's way of "jumping out of a bush with a white sheet and saying 'Boo!'" Not a funny joke. Not funny at all.

However, I can understand the point of the whole thing. The most significant portion of the Radiolab broadcast is the playing of Orson Wells many years later in the 1970's who explained that it was just a way to show people that anything the radio (or any media outlet for that matter) feeds us, we eat. And instead of digesting and regurgitating this information, he suggests we begin to ruminate (where cows chew, swallow, puke, chew, swallow, etc) and begin to think about the message and mull it over, considering its degree of modality.

Masculinity Fail

I must first state my reasons for sharing this clip and say that it is not in any way to poke fun or exploit the homosexual or those who possess "homosexual qualities" but are in fact, heterosexual. While I find this clip hilarious, I think is more based around this man's mannerisms and way of speech than it is around his assumed "gayness." Though while watching the clip (and laughing absent-mindedly) we must realize where this man--and the larger situation--belongs in the discourse around non-traditional lifestyles in modern-day America.

In looking at this clip, it's hard not to analyze current gender roles in America and why this video is in fact called "Masculinity Fail." We know that hundreds of thousanda of American men "fail" at masculinity by cultural standards everyday. The point of the video is that a young man, who looks Indian or of Eastern decent, is being filmed doing his job as a weatherman. At first, we hear him speak a little bit about rainfall. At this point, you can barely tell that he sounds more feminine thatn most men or is gay at all. Soon, though, he covers his mouth, gasps, lets out a little squeal, stifled moan, and then says "I am so sorry, Bill. OH MY GOD! Ahhh, this is what just happened, that thing was craaawlin' on my leg..." The next part is funnier, of course, when we realize that "it" is a cockroach, and 3 hours later, it is yet again plauging our weatherman with fear. This time he is in the middle of a segment and we hear him say, "Oh God, if that...OH MY GOD THERE IT IS! Oh shit, oh my God, ohh noooo..."

Maybe this is only funny to me because it would be pretty close to my reaction if a roach was cruisin' up my leg. Maybe it's funny to others because this man is seen as very flamboyant and clearly "out of the norm." However, the interest in this clip is in the fact that while women can act that way around bugs and roaches and spiders, men definitely cannot. Any real man would have used his Italian leather loafer to bust that roach in a second. Our guy can't even be in the room without shreiking a little to let his fears known. In American culture, this gives us the right to point, laugh, and make fun of his lifestyle. Not cool.