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semper-legens · 4 years ago

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11. Epic, by Conor Kostick

Owned: Yes Page count: 315 My summary: Humanity have reached the stars, but life is not better for those at the bottom of the social order. People’s lives are run by Epic, a fantasy game that makes up the legal and financial systems for New Earth. Erik, a teenager from a farming town, just wants to make his life better. But when he sets his sights on the masters of the game, the Committee, Erik finds he has bigger battles to fight. My rating: 5/5 My commentary:

Why do all the best YA books of the noughties come from Ireland? Darren Shan and Artemis Fowl were a huge part of my young life, and this book came along about the same time and knocked my socks off. I was thinking of it recently, and remembered both loving it and owning a copy, so I decided to track that copy down and reread. What I was expecting was an upbeat fantasy adventure about the underdogs rising up against the people who run their broken world. What I wasn’t expecting was a really good socialist metaphor about the only real way to defeat oppressive authorities - through solidarity, and ridding them of their power.

So let’s get into it. The main character of the novel is Erik, a kid from a farming community who dreams of taking on a dragon and gaining untold riches - first to help his family, then to challenge authorities. He’s joined by a few friends, Ingeborg, Sigrid, Big Erik, and Bjorn. If I have one criticism of this book, it’s that the kids’ personalities aren’t really that fleshed out - gun to my head, I couldn’t tell you three differences between Ingeborg and Sigrid - and probably with less characters in Erik’s group it’d work a bit better. They’re joined by Harald, Erik’s father who was exiled for violence, and Anonemuss, Harald’s fellow exile who pushes for a shadier way to deal with their problems, namely murdering the Committee in real life. One thing I can say is that despite not being the deepest characters (understandable for YA aimed at younger audiences - I’d say this is more on the 12-13 reading age than 16-17) all of the characters in this novel feel like real people, with motivations and wants and desires and flaws, and that helps me get over the fact that they’re not as deep as maybe I would want.

I love the worldbuilding in this novel. See, New Earth has laws against violence - any type of violence, even kids playfighting. The event that got Harald exiled was when he defended Erik’s mother from what’s heavily implied to be attempted rape, but he was the one punished because he punched a guy. The book is very quick to examine this true pacifist outlook that the characters have and point out its flaws, which ties into the greater theme of resisting oppression. The central conceit, the game of Epic being used as the legal and financial system, is also really interesting. Your character’s money is your money - if your character dies, you have to start over with nothing, so people keep creating very safe and predictable class builds, fighters and mages and healers with a decent party balance but that are able to to fight solo. If you want to challenge a law or decision made by the Committe, you have to fight their characters in the arena, which never works because they have access to greater magical weapons and skills than the average person, and they can risk dying in ways that the regular person cannot.

This all, of course, provides a solid metaphor of the real world. Social inequality is rampant - farmers and labourers like our main characters have less time to spend in the game as they have to work as well, so they have fewer resources. The privileged have more time to devote to study of the game and building their characters, and access to generational wealth in the form of magic items handed down from their parents. They have the luxury to be a little riskier with things like stat builds and character classes, whereas common people have to choose predictable and boring ones in order to survive. It’s a stark metaphor for very real class inequality. One of the inciting incidents is when a team from Erik’s village challenge the Committee for discriminating against them - they gain an impressive and unprecedented victory, but it only leads to a tie against the Committee team, and they could only do it because Erik’s father Harald was trained and equipped by them; his privileged background, in other words. And the second they win a small concession, the Committe look into his background, find out he escaped exile, and put him straight back along with Erik’s mother Freya, punishing him dearly for helping his community.

Along those lines, it’s an excellent parable for exactly how to take down these oppressive authorities. Erik starts out wanting the dragon hoarde just to improve his life and the lives of his friends and community. When he gets it, he finds that he can do so, but that didn’t stop his parents being exiled for, essentially, speaking out against the Committee. So he decides to equip a team to challenge the Committee to get major laws changed, working within the system. The thing is, though, this isn’t going to work. The Committee cheat - we see them plotting to illegally murder Erik’s team’s characters (PVP is meant to be impossible, but they have a secret character that can do so) even before Erik and co have decided to entirely lawfully challenge them, just on the off-chance that they’re a threat. They plant a spy in Erik’s party and are covertly working to silence them before they have even begun. So the novel offers another solution - to shut down the game entirely, stripping the Committee of the thing that gives them power, but also freeing people of the world to work on what they really need. Farming, building, technological innovations in the real world that can build up their society, instead of focusing entirely on Epic. And the reason Erik wins? He turns to the common people of the world, tells them what he is doing, and invites them to join him. The forces the Committee field against them are overwhelmed, and Erik can sneak in and end the game.

It’s not a perfect analogy. I’m not sure how I feel about the character of Anonemuss, who advocates for violence against the actual Committee members, not just their characters, to create change. The idea of this kind of violence being wrong is a thorny one - in real-life fascist countries, sometimes you have to kill people to get rid of those in power - but it is mitigated by the aforementioned cultural attitude about violence that all the characters share, and the fact that this is a YA book. The main antagonistic character on the Committee is Ragnok, who’s an irredeemable bastard, and sometimes it does come across like the book’s saying that Ragnok’s the sole evil authority as opposed to the system of power entire being corrupt. Again, this is mitigated by the other members being at least willing to turn a blind eye to his actions if not actively endorsing him, and the conclusion not being We Got Rid Of Him So Everythings Ok, more that We Got Rid Of The Game So We Can Actually Live Our Real Lives.

Also, I now read Erik as being a trans woman who doesn’t know about it yet. Erik’s character is a woman, a charisma-build swashbuckler called Cindella, and making characters in video games to roleplay as someone of your actual gender is a very trans thing to do. It stands out more in this world where everyone’s characters are very close to themselves in terms of looks because it’s common to meet partners in the game. There’s also the fact that Erik misses Cindella when the game is destroyed, and is told that the aspects of Cindella he misses were in him all along - it’s so easy to extrapolate that into Erik being trans, I am just saying.

Next up - there’s a library in Hell, and the books are escaping.

#Epic #Conor Kostick #bookblr #book blogger #book blog #5

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rafat · 6 years ago

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Patience: The Radical New Business Model

Skift is turning six. Of all the achievements anyone can ask of a company from its infancy, staying power — mere survival — is the toughest of them. Let no one tell you otherwise. Make it a media startup in an age of existential crisis in media all around, and you’ve created the biggest odds against yourself right from the start.

Six years into the serpentine journey of building Skift — 2,191 days after launch — we are still here and intend to be here for a long, long time.

Longevity is not top-of-mind for many founders just starting out. Certainly, having a legacy is even further off the map. But there are certain catalysts that move you toward that realization as a founder, and I had mine about halfway into the six-year journey.

My son was born in early 2015, right about the time when the company I founded three years prior was growing out of its early-stage, survival-at-all-costs phase. Clichéd as it may sound — because everyone who has ever been a parent tells you so — the new life in my life ended up changing everything about my outlook on, well, life and business.

As I started thinking about this new life we had to take care of, I started thinking about the values I would love our son to grow up with, and that would have to start with us parents teaching him what we held dear, the values we got from our parents as we grew up.

The biggest one I kept thinking about and finally honed in on was patience. In the on-demand world of instant gratification we all live in now, patience — in intent, in living, in outlook on life — is becoming a rarer and rarer life skill, incredibly. And make no mistake, it certainly is a life skill.

Having grown up in socialist India in the 1980s, the precursor to learning patience, frustration, was not a bug in the system. It was the feature of how everyday life worked. Anything and everything was a wait. It was a wait with lots and lots of people in line with you, and that was if there was enough civic value in us to form a line in the first place. India breaks you down if you come in with Western notions of efficiency, a clean logical version of input versus output of effort. If you grew up there, like I did, it builds you up with an ingrained sense of equanimity about everything.

The daily knocks on your inner resolve to not give up, on your self-esteem, on making do with what you have, taught us patience. It taught us the long view, that in the end everything will work out if you just keep at it. All is well in the end. If not, it’s not the end.

That is the life skill I want to teach my now-pre-schooler-and-already-impatient son. “Le pause,” the great way French parents teach their kids patience. Pausing before rushing in. As simple as that.

It is the value I have brought to the company I started and I am building now along with the Skift team.

Not raising lots of money, and deciding not to raise any money beyond seed and building our own way, has given us patience. Patience gives us the ability to block out the extraneous noise and buzz of the startup ecosystem, and focus on building the products and brands that matter.

Think it through, slow down a bit. Go slow to go fast, a philosophy we adopted in 2015. I wrote this in that memo: “This is the new Skift operating principle — both in our work and culture — that we want to embody going forward.

Doing less with more is the new doing more with less.

Going slow to go fast is the new scaling up.

Less is better, less is deep, less is slow and deliberate, less is human, and humane.”

When every prevailing startup wisdom says move fast and break things, there is value to doing the complete opposite. When everyone wants speed, pivots, scale, fail quick, there is value in focusing on your vision, burrowing deep, and taking time in building. Quality is the end result of patience. Quality is the table-stakes start of longevity.

That means reorienting everything patiently to this long-term thinking.

For us as a media company, it starts with our editorial and research: Think beyond headlines, to the trendlines shaping the business and future of travel, something we have embraced for all of our existence: finding, following, and deciphering the trends in travel. Think in multi-year narrative arcs — that is a mantra I tell our editorial leadership at every occasion I can. Every story we are chasing has a longer-term view, a history longer than we can imagine, a wider and deeper perspective we are currently planning to write. Everything we write can be enriched by speaking to sources beyond the usual suspects. The diversity of views makes the writing we do more relevant today and relevant in the long term. Writing in a human language — outside of the current buzzwords — about the business of travel means we are readable today and likely readable a long time from now, when the industry has completely changed.

That also means redefining what innovation means to us. One of the fallacies of media innovation today is 1) new = innovation 2) new formats = innovation. It is the basis of much of the ruin in media, chasing every new thing that comes along. Innovation for us, what I have bet my media companies on, is not chasing formats, but new ways of looking at existing sectors. Chasing new formats and hoping for innovation is like changing your reading glasses again and again and hoping you will read different things with each new pair you put on. Bringing new perspectives requires a lot more patience and innovation than cosmetic format changes. New ways of looking at the world — that’s the real innovation we are betting on long-term.

That also means redefining what scale means to us. The internet changed what scale meant to everyone, and it became a never-ending quest of chasing bigger and bigger audiences. It became “scale for scale’s sake” and investor-driven frenzy to prove out a model that ultimately ate itself. We gave up chasing scale around 2014, after this realization and have redefined it since: The media we are building is a big part of those who care about travel. That for us is scale, to be a big part of the professional lives of the people in the travel industry. That is how we gauge the effect we are having.

That also means redefining what hiring means to us. We want to hire and groom travel careerists, people who want and have deep expertise in travel — not dilettantes — and want to make a career in one of the most exciting and largest sectors on the planet. We give an audacious four-point promise to our employees, a long term commitment from us to them:

Joining Skift will be a transformational move for your career.

You will do the best work you have ever done while you are at Skift.

You will be the happiest you have ever been at work, while at Skift.

You will be set for life; your success beyond Skift means everything to us.

That’s also what performance — of us as a company, of our team — means to us. That means show up and produce, every day, day in, day out, over and over again. Consistency, in the right amount every day, matters a lot more than being consumed by work and work alone. The quality of our work is the end result of this consistency mixed with patience. That’s the not-so-secret of our long-term fecundity.

That also means redefining what culture means to us. It is not this mythical, magical thing that comes at the end of work, an add-on to make the drudgery bearable. For us, culture stems from the meaningful work we do, and each of us seeing the tangible in-situ effects of that work — helping change the direction of the future of travel and dining, even — in a reasonably short time frame for the people for whom we create everything. It gives us a purpose to create a long-term culture, around the larger promise of travel and our promise to the travel sector: We are eternally curious about the business and creative possibilities of travel, and what it means to the world at large. “If you are tired of Skift, you are tired of the promise of travel,” is a line I use often. That is what inhabits our culture, today and well into the future.

That certainly means redefining how we look at creating value in the company we are building. What does it take to build a media company that matters to people in their daily personal or professional lives, that can survive any kind of micro or macro correction, that can thrive in the long haul?

We have come up with a “metric” to gauge the longevity of media brands. It goes something like this: Imagine, because of some catastrophe, the media company you know suddenly shuts down tomorrow. Will anyone miss it, and will the disappearance of said company harm the ecosystem at large in various ways? The first part of this question is a level-one test, the second part a level-two test, both of which take time to build up to.

What would happen on day two and beyond, if you suddenly go away tomorrow?

These are two ways of saying the same thing: How much of a personal or professional utility value do your users ascribe to your brand? And how indispensable are you to the ecosystem you exist in?

All of this hides an ugly unspoken truth about media in general: that it is disposable, in so many ways. The key is to move toward making yourself indispensable, by adding enough value.

That also means redefining what leadership means to me. Instead of “leading from the front” as I have done for the first five years, a necessary role to build a company in its infancy, I am now transitioning to “empowering from behind” as is the management of our company. After being the face of Skift, being a face of Skift is role that I now cherish. The long-term goal of any founder is to make themselves useless. I am on that journey now.

Last week we launched a book, “For the Long Haul.” This book is an aspirational manifestation of our philosophy on longevity, using travel companies as a mirror to look at the qualities of long-lasting companies and brands. From the efficiency-focus of JR East in Japan, to the courageous will to disrupt from Southwest Airlines, to never putting a price on serving your customers from Oberoi hotels, to Expedia’s realization it could make real people’s lives easier, the chapters here offer valuable lessons. Autogrill’s ability to create a sense of place with all its offerings, and the South by Southwest festival’s willingness to embrace outsiders are testaments to the long view. We, at Skift, salute these strategies as we look ahead to many more of our own anniversary celebrations.

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a1detective · 5 years ago

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Update, 12/19/2019

If we can be forced to say a man is a woman, there is nothing we can’t be forced to say. If a lesbian can be forced to have sex with men, there is nothing we can’t be forced to do. We will all increasingly be pressured to publicly affirm our support for these mores to the point where there will be nothing we can’t be forced to think. And that’s the point. A society whose subjects must not only declare but actually convince themselves that 2+2=5 is a society that is truly totalitarian, regardless of whatever lip service its politicians pay to democracy.

Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/12/transgenders_attacking_ Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

——————————————

Original Article:

Satire: BY JEFFREY A. FRIEDBERG

FROM BENEATH AREA 52….

images.techhive.com

<<<<<——————>>>>>

NOTE from beneath Area 52: 9/8/2019

This piece of satire really struck a nerve or a thong or jockstrap or tooth or something. Because it’s still getting Visits, and heated “Comments,” even though it was originally posted, 7/8/2019, which a relatively long time ago, in Internet days.

9/12/2019: ACTUALLY, it even seems to me, to be under some sort of attack….

If you hate the article so much, why don’t you just scrub the article from your site(s)?

Why Not?

I GUESS, MAYBE, BECAUSE IT GETS YOU CLICKS ?? 🙂

This article is getting so many clicks, maybe I should put some ads on my site, which earns NOTHING, and write more articles like this one?

Thank you so much for the Traffic 🙂

<<<——->>>

Let me “signal” here that I don’t care what “Gay” does with each other. We always had Uncle Maurice—who was NEVER, “in the closet.” The Gay Hairdressers Association of Philadelphia always treated me politely as an 18 year old, hot-looking, lifeguard.

Jeffrey A. Friedberg…”Even I was Once As You….”

<<<<<——————>>>>>

KATHY GRIFFIN IS DOING **WHAT** TO SMILING, SELF-PROCLAIMED, GAY ANDERSON COOPER? “Kathy Griffin has taken TV to a whole new level by giving Anderson Cooper’s ‘sack’ (her words, not mine) a smooch on CNN’s live New Year’s Eve broadcast. I wonder if she missed the announcement that he’s gay? You can see the whole twisted thing here.”

———

Groin To Groin??

cdn.newspunch.com – OMG! I thought that was a woman! – Child laying on top of “Drag Queen Reader,” at a “reading.” Laying there, Groin to groin?

BUT—OH, WAIT!

STOP THE PRESSES!

THIS UPDATE (9/12/2019) EXPLAINS EVERYTHING:

Drag queen blames little children for shocking photos at public library

Child Abuse, Drag Queen Story Hour, Drag Queen Story Time, Homosexuality, Oregon, Portland, Public Libraries, Transgenderism

PORTLAND, Oregon, September 10, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — The drag queen who was shown in multiple disturbing photos to have frolicked on the floor with young children crawling over him at a Drag Queen Story Hour blames those children for the backlash he experienced.

LifeSiteNews first brought photo evidence of children having inappropriate contact with drag queen Carla Rossi at Portland, Oregon’s St. John’s Library to the attention of the public in July. The photos, which had been posted on the Multnomah County Library’s own Flickr account in October 2018, were quickly removed after the LifeSiteNews report went viral.

Drag queen Rossi, who last year said the kids were climbing on top of him after a dance move called a “death drop,” changed his tune after receiving criticism, saying the kids knocked him over as he tried to fight them off. He also blames his bad hip and the six-inch heels he was wearing at the time.

In an October 2018 Instagram posting in which he was pictured with a little girl lying on top of him, he said, “Drag Queen Storytime yesterday ended with a death drop on a bubble wrap dance floor as the babies crawled all over Carla Gulliver’s Travels–style, and I have the best job in the world.”

Shortly after LifeSiteNews drew attention to the troubling scene in the Portland library, Rossi’s gleeful tune changed. In a subsequent Instagram post, he said he didn’t so much want to “set the record straight” as “break it altogether.”

“The photographed kids knocked me over and piled on me, and I laughed with them and their parents and the library director and told them we had to get up as I tried to look out for my bad hip in the process,” said Rossi.

“What would you do differently if kids having a Cher dance party — on bubble wrap — knocked you over in six-inch heels and a floor length rainbow caftan?” he asked.

—https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/drag-queen-blames-little-children-for-shocking-photos-at-public-library

https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/drag-queen-blames-little-children-for-shocking-photos-at-public-library

———

Ass To Groin??

rwcnews.com – “8-Year-Old Becomes Drag Queen, Left Supports Behavior Despite Claims Of Child Abuse.”

Duckduckgo.com

<<<——————>>>

GAY MEN IN MUSLIM HANDS. “Kill All The Gays:”

“اقتلهم.”

What does the US Liberal say? “Oh, that photo was taken in Turkey.” I see—so— what? In that case it doesn’t matter? Ca ne fait rien?

OMG! And I Thought This Was A Woman! i.dailymail.co.uk

GAY SEX TO BE REQUIRED FOR ALL? (“EXCEPT MUSLIMS?”)

Probably not immediately, but maybe—yeah.

Well, no, but—yeah, could be.

Nah. No.

Oh, speaking satirically, maybe at some future time, maybe when the diseased media, politicians, Hollywood, and other perverted social warriors decide, “The time is right,” but not right now. Nah.

BTW, no word from Muslims, but I already, however, totally do see maybe having Gay sex as a Test—a pre-requirement for joining ANTIFA (pronounced, “an-teefa.”) 🙂

youtube

* I read someplace where Transgenders are upset and mad that “straights won’t date them.”

I can’t remember where I saw that. But this obviously has to be fixed. It can maybe be done by legislation or Executive order. Under democrat rules of equality, these trannie “folks” are apparently entitled to have sex with ANYbody they choose.

It seems to me that the LBGTXYZ (or Whatever) already rules Earth.

fthmb.tqn.com

It seems impossible to make a million, run for office, or keep your job without extolling a Gay Lifestyle, praising all sorts of not-usual sex, and watching Supergirl on Canadian TV.

When you even have the failed bartender, calling itself, “AOC,” on the Gay Bandwagon, then you know there is a large, loose, and smelly Movement coming.

“UHHhhhhhhh…I feel it COMING! (EEehhhhhhhh!”

Google, July 8, 2019

* I read someplace where we have already been asked to “take in” Nancy Pelosi’s gentle, divine, illegals. You know, board and feed them in our homes? The way King George had us take in British soldiers around 1776?

# # # #

UPDATE, 7/9/19: “

“NYT: Middle-Class Americans Must Sacrifice Their Suburbs to Aid Poor Immigrants”

I CAN ALMOST NOT EVEN KEEP UP WITH THIS WILD DEMOCRAT LIBERAL CRAP. IT JUST KEEPS POURING OUT—LIKE PROJECTIVE DIARRHEA.

YET, I REMAIN PROPHETIC.

SUBSCRIBE HERE.

* I ask, can demanding that we all have gay sex be far behind?

The intention of a group called SHFA (Super Happy Fun America) to run a Straight Pride Parade in Boston drew a whopping amount of poisonous attacks from the Left media, both social and mainstream.

The SHFA has been adjudicated as promoting homophobia, which is totally untrue, but at least could be remotely perceived, giving the usual twisted logic from the Left. There are gays among the SHFA members and main figures of the event — Milo Yiannopoulos, a “right-wing” openly gay activist, has been appointed the parade’s grand marshal.

Nevertheless, the “homophobia” tag is not nearly enough. On top of that, the parade organizers have been branded in the mainstream media as “people with connections to white supremacists” (defined as such by the ACLU) and the Alt Right. Apparently, some among SHFA have certain association with the ResistMarxism organization, built with an aspiration to defend our Constitution, our Declaration of Independence, and the economic system based on capitalism (rather than communism or Hitler-style national socialism). That, in the eyes of “progressives,” is a major sin on its own.

—americanthinker.com

Wow, I give this group, SHFA, positive credit. Even though they are already an object of leftist, deluded, lying, communist scorn. And will probably draw hatred, and violence.

I mean—they represent what was normal in America just a few years ago. Now, apparent maniacs have seemingly turned a world upside down with an unfathomable drive for seemingly “gay” ultimate supremacy.

And, “Socialist” sounds so much nicer than, ‘COMMUNIST.”

Who will protect this patriot group from the “tolerant,” benevolent, divine Left? Not the mayor of marathon-bombed and 9/11-airport Boston; he appears to be a deluded fool. Not the politicians, media scum, or kneeling (kneeling?) “entertainers.

The police? Maybe; we still have to see if they will even “approve” the march, we are told.

Because, you see: in my opinion, a “Gay,” Leftist, Communist, Illegal, Muslim-Jihadist, and Democrat-almost-Mafia-like Rule has somehow been insinuated into America’s Blood—as being “the new Normal.”

d.ibtimes.co.uk

YOU HAD BETTER OBEY.

BECAUSE, “Social media,” and mafiosi, ‘bots, algorithms, search engines, leftists, and communists, can Find you.

They can SILENCE you.

Not only might they critique your punctuation, and grammar, But They Might Also evaluate sentence construction!

WORSE— they can be FUNNY!

Even though it’s just satire, they can say it’s not— that it’s “the government,” that it’s “a conservative ploy,” or that it’s “from Area 51!” Nothing matters to Them—certainly not the truth—only ascendancy, of their Communist Doctrine.

But, they Can Still Fix You in Place. They can Scorn and Attack you, They can Swarm as taught doctrinally in “schools,” Destroy you, and Get You Fired. Your Life could be over.

Therein lies your democrat “freedom” and “equality.”

Love it. Live it:

“FREE AT LAST!”

Hey Kids, on both your sides: Jeez—CAN YOU MAYBE BE MORE TOLERANT OF EACH OTHER?

Jeff Dunham’s, “Achmed The Dead Terrorist.” – i.ytimg.com/vi/kF7znANAAkM/maxresdefault.jpg

* * PS: Kids, I had so much hate mail, sex-filth, and death-threats from the “tolerant, fair, humorless, peace-loving” side—who seemed so hatefully intolerant and violent toward satire—that I could not keep The site cleaned of their remarks. I mean, I don’t think I can print what some sent me.

So, I closed down “Comments.” 🙂

<<<——————>>>

UPDATE: Will Having Gay Sex Soon Be Required For All American Citizens? (“Excluding Muslims?”) Update, 12/19/2019 If we can be forced to say a man is a woman, there is nothing we can't be forced to say…

#gays #gays rule #Gays usa #transgender gay

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gerardwayisarchive · 6 years ago

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MSI’S JIMMY URINE ANNOUNCES SOLO LP FEATURING GERARD WAY AND…ROBOTS?

https://gerardwayisalive.tumblr.com/post/176963498454

https://www.altpress.com/features/jimmy-urine-james-euringer-solo-record/

Jason Pettigrew August 13, 2018

“I wanted it to sound as if Depeche Mode hired J Dilla and DJ Premier to drop loops while Frank Zappa produced—and then I came in and shit all over it.” So says James Euringeraka Little Jimmy Urine of ADD-addled electro-rockers Mindless Self Indulgence when asked to describe his new solo album under the handle Euringer, featuring cameos from folks such as Gerard Way, System Of A Down’s Serj Tankian, Grimes and Chantal Claret.

(Read more: Jimmy Urine talks MSI, Guardians Of The Galaxy role and new album.)

The album—slated for release Oct. 19 by Metropolis Records—is the beginning of a whole new chapter for the multi-instrumentalist and programmer. After visiting New Zealand a few times in the past, Euringer and his wife, Claret, decided to leave their Los Angeles home and move to the other side of the world.

“I totally think New Zealand is the most awesome place in the world,” he says. “It’s like a combination of San Francisco, New York City and Middle Earth. And I’ve always wanted to live in Middle Earth.”

“We loved [New Zealand] when Obama was president, but now we love it more since it synced up with the world turning to shit!,” he continues. “Awesome! We’re ahead of the curve!’”

Moving is one big step for a whole new reboot. While his previous album The Secret Cinematic Sounds Of Jimmy Urine was primarily an instrumental dive into various synth-laden idioms inspired by such classic electronic composers as Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre, Euringer is a whole new pint glass of piss altogether.

The album’s audio verité vibe is best described as sneaking through Urine’s diary, with diversions of everything from metaphorical politics to wild-assed cover versions to having his buddies and parents (Ma Euringer counts in Spanish on “That’s How Jimmy Gets Down” while Dad assumes the role of disappointed parent on “Two And A Half Years” and a bitter old record producer on the cover of the Doobie Brothers’ “What A Fool Believes”) helping him out on the record.

“This album is kind of a psychedelic, counterculture, avant-garde record with vocals,” he opines. “I’m calling it Euringer because I didn’t want to corrupt any of the other stuff. It’s not Cinematic Sounds. It’s not MSI, which have always been a provocative in-your-face kind of band. [The solo album] allows me to experiment with various BPM speeds, lyrics and tones and try some other avenues.

“It is very personal,” he agrees. “As much as I like being in a crazy shock-rock band, the one thing that gets lost is that people focus on the shock rock and don’t really focus on the fact that I’m a really fucking great programmer, and I’m a deconstructionist and an audio collagist.”

“I sculpt audio and make songs around it,” he continues.“And that’s the first thing that gets lost. [imitates fast-talking industry type.] ‘Awww, Jimmy! You’re crazy and the band’s crazy and they’re great and they do all this provocative amazing stuff,’ and that’s fine—that’s what Mindless are supposed to be. But nobody ever says, ‘I like how you programmed that beat and sampled that stuff backwards.’ [Laughs.] That area is what I went full hog into.”

Urine is thrilled with what his collaborators brought to the proceedings. On “If It Ain’t You Today It’ll Be You Tomorrow,” Urine and Tankian updated Rev. Martin Niemöller’s famous anti-Nazi sermon, “First They Came For The Socialists…” “I always thought that quote was really great,” Urine says. “I wanted to write something a little bit political considering the climate, but not a whole record. Serj was in one of the most amazing politically charged bands of the last 20 years. He went through a whole bunch of lyrics and poetry that he had and screamed stuff for an hour. We had coffee, and I went home and edited [the parts] I liked. The point I’m trying to make [on the song] is that we should all stand up for fringe causes because once they’re gone, you’re next.”

Urine teams up with Claret on “Fuck Everything,” describing it as “our ex-pat song. We kind of wrote it while we were packing up our house and leaving, and then we recorded it in Wellington. She’s a really great songwriter: I’ll be sculpting a song for two months, and she’ll write one in a day. I was like, ‘Oh, my God, that was so quick! No wonder I married you!’” [Laughs.]

For “The Medicine Does Not Control Me,” Urine was trying to write a song about alcohol that wasn’t about partying or rehab. “I don’t have an addictive personality. I’m not trying to use alcohol to escape; I use it for time travel,” he explains. “I can pull myself a glass of scotch and then go watch a ton of movies that are based in New York. I can find a movie that was shot in the neighborhood I grew up—‘Oh, there’s the place I went to school. There’s the place where I used to play pinball’—immerse myself in it and then fall asleep. I don’t drink to get crazy. I think there’s a middle ground where people use liquor to get creative, but you never hear songs about it. You only hear the ones where people ‘went too far’ or they’re ‘gonna party!’”

He wanted to work with electronic/hip-hop maven Grimes because of her hands-on work ethic. “She’s DIY like a motherfucker. There aren’t a lot of ladies doing synth work, producing, mastering, editing their own videos, everything. Because she’s so talented, I wanted her to write the track and to produce me singing it, like a reverse Britney Spears thing: I’m the ingenue, and Grimes is the mastermind. We didn’t have enough time to do it that way, so I gave her some tracks and ["Medicine”] was the one she chose.”

Urine has been friends with Way back in the days when My Chemical Romance were opening for MSI in NYC. So having the 21st century polymath appear on the fast-paced “Sailor In A Life Boat” was a complete no-brainer.

“First of all,” he begins to laugh, “Gerard could have sang every song on the record! MCR did a B-side from something off Danger Days [�["Zero Percent”]here the programming was drum-and-bassy, very weird and hard at the same time, like MCR being MSI.”

“This time, I figured we’d go the other way and leave it up to Gerard,” he continues.“I sent him the song, and he obviously knocked it out. The lyrics—“you’re a dogface on the frontline,” “a pilot on a ship that’s going down,” convey that you used to be a sailor in the Navy, but now you’re just some dude sitting in the middle of the fucking ocean. His vocal and lyrical style comes across to me like a Frank Miller comic book from 1981, like Sin Cityand stuff.”

As usual, Urine can’t resist taking a swipe at the scene. And here he is with “Random EMO Top Line Generator,” one of the most heartfelt songs he’s ever written. And the joke is on all of us: Much like the net’s random name generators for everything from porn star names to Wu-Tang handles and other monikers, Urine had the net write lyrics.

“I loaded up, like, a thousand random generators that gave me words,” he explains. “I put in a word, then a random generator would give me a sentence. Than I’d put that sentence into a different random generator, and it would give me a phrase. I wrote this song based on what I’d get out of these random generators, and I made it a very emotional and heartfelt song.”

“So the schtick is people will say, ‘Wow, it’s so deep, look how mature Jimmy is,’” he continues.“Motherfuckers, a robot wrote that song. The robot wrote the lyrics, and you’re lovin’ it! A robot wrote a song that’s so emotionally empowering it could have been written in the last 10 years. And random generators are all over the internet, you could write a whole album that way! We’re really living in a William Gibson cyberpunk reality these days.”

With all the cool collabs with women, men and machines happening on Euringer, it might be easy to ignore the elephant in the room. You know, the one with “MSI” painted in 4-foot DayGlo letters and festooned with crudely rendered drawings of penises. Urine swears that everything is good with his homies in Mindless, and the door is always open.

“That’s not the reason I made a solo album or why I moved to New Zealand. We were all on different coasts. These days, the technology exists so you don’t even have to be in the same room to make a record. MSI are a wonderful art project that never stops.”

And you’re not going to see Euringer on tour to support the new album, either. “I’m not going to tour for it because I’m gonna chill here in New Zealand for a while,” he says. “I’ll make some videos, do press and work on some top secret projects—maybe a Mindless record—down here. Incorporating New Zealand in all the stuff I’m doing is really cool and fun. I like touring with Mindless; I don’t need to put a whole new band together.”

Right now though, he’s enjoying his time in Middle Earth and keeping busy. He’s also working alongside Tankian and the animation house ShadowMachine for an English gangster cartoon called Fuktronic. Expect more, but on his terms, as he steadfastly refuses to reveal if the other projects he’s got rolling are for film, video games or elevators.

“Oh man, I wanna do stuff for elevators really bad!” he beams excitedly, in the same perverse glee that has marked every creative avenue he’s cartwheeled and silly-walked on for decades. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve gotten into an elevator that had music playing in it.” He pauses for a moment. “Damn, we gotta bring Muzak back into elevators. I’m gonna change all the Mindless songs into Muzak. The future is elevators.”

You can preorder Euringer here prior to its mid-October release date. Check out “Problematic” from the LP and the record’s artwork below.

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a1detective · 5 years ago

Text

Satire: BY JEFFREY A. FRIEDBERG

FROM DEEP BENEATH AREA 52….

images.techhive.com

<<<<<——————>>>>>

NOTE from beneath Area 52: 9/8/2019

If you hate the article so much, why don’t you just scrub the article from your site(s)?

Why Not? I GUESS, MAYBE, BECAUSE IT GETS CLICKS ?? 🙂

This article is getting so many clicks, maybe I should put some ads on my site, write more articles like this one— and make money?

Thank you so much for the Traffic 🙂

<<<——->>>

Jeffrey A. Friedberg…”Even I was Once As You….”

<<<<<——————>>>>>

———

Groin To Groin??

cdn.newspunch.com – OMG! I thought that was a woman! – Child laying on top of “Drag Queen Reader,” at a “reading.” Laying there, Groin to groin?

BUT—OH, WAIT! THIS UPDATE (9/12/2019) EXPLAINS EVERYTHING:

Drag queen blames little children for shocking photos at public library

Child Abuse, Drag Queen Story Hour, Drag Queen Story Time, Homosexuality, Oregon, Portland, Public Libraries, Transgenderism

“What would you do differently if kids having a Cher dance party — on bubble wrap — knocked you over in six-inch heels and a floor length rainbow caftan?” he asked.

—https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/drag-queen-blames-little-children-for-shocking-photos-at-public-library

https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/drag-queen-blames-little-children-for-shocking-photos-at-public-library

———

Ass To Groin??

rwcnews.com – “8-Year-Old Becomes Drag Queen, Left Supports Behavior Despite Claims Of Child Abuse.”

Duckduckgo.com

<<<——————>>>

GAY MEN IN MUSLIM HANDS. “Kill All The Gays:”

“اقتلهم.”

What does the US Liberal say? “Oh, that photo was taken in Turkey.” I see—so— what? In that case it doesn’t matter? Ca ne fait rien?

OMG! And I Thought This Was A Woman! i.dailymail.co.uk

GAY SEX TO BE REQUIRED FOR ALL? (“EXCEPT MUSLIMS?”)

Probably not immediately, but maybe—yeah.

Well, no, but—yeah, could be.

Nah. No.

BTW, no word from Muslims, but I already, however, totally do see maybe having Gay sex as a Test—a pre-requirement for joining ANTIFA (pronounced, “an-teefa.”) 🙂

youtube

* I read someplace where Transgenders are upset and mad that “straights won’t date them.”

It seems to me that the LBGTXYZ (or Whatever) already rules Earth.

fthmb.tqn.com

It seems impossible to make a million, run for office, or keep your job without extolling a Gay Lifestyle, praising all sorts of not-usual sex, and watching Supergirl on Canadian TV.

When you even have the failed bartender, calling itself, “AOC,” on the Gay Bandwagon, then you know there is a large, loose, and smelly Movement coming.

“UHHhhhhhhh…I feel it COMING! (EEehhhhhhhh!”

Google, July 8, 2019

# # # #

UPDATE, 7/9/19: “

“NYT: Middle-Class Americans Must Sacrifice Their Suburbs to Aid Poor Immigrants”

I CAN ALMOST NOT EVEN KEEP UP WITH THIS WILD DEMOCRAT LIBERAL CRAP. IT JUST KEEPS POURING OUT—LIKE PROJECTIVE DIARRHEA.

YET, I REMAIN PROPHETIC.

SUBSCRIBE HERE.

* I ask, can demanding that we all have gay sex be far behind?

The intention of a group called SHFA (Super Happy Fun America) to run a Straight Pride Parade in Boston drew a whopping amount of poisonous attacks from the Left media, both social and mainstream.

—americanthinker.com

Wow, I give this group, SHFA, positive credit. Even though they are already an object of leftist, deluded, lying, communist scorn. And will probably draw hatred, and violence.

And, “Socialist” sounds so much nicer than, ‘COMMUNIST.”

The police? Maybe; we still have to see if they will even “approve” the march, we are told.

d.ibtimes.co.uk

YOU HAD BETTER OBEY.

BECAUSE, “Social media,” and mafiosi, ‘bots, algorithms, search engines, leftists, and communists, can Find you.

They can SILENCE you.

Not only might they critique your punctuation, and grammar, But They Might Also evaluate sentence construction!

WORSE— they can be FUNNY!

But, they Can Still Fix You in Place. They can Scorn and Attack you, They can Swarm as taught doctrinally in “schools,” Destroy you, and Get You Fired. Your Life could be over.

Therein lies your democrat “freedom” and “equality.”

Love it. Live it:

“FREE AT LAST!”

Hey Kids; on both your sides: BE MORE TOLERANT OF EACH OTHER.

Jeff Dunham’s, “Achmed The Dead Terrorist.” – i.ytimg.com/vi/kF7znANAAkM/maxresdefault.jpg

So, I closed down “Comments.” 🙂

<<<——————>>>

Will Having Gay Sex Soon Be Required For All American Citizens? (“Excluding Muslims?”) Satire: BY JEFFREY A. FRIEDBERG FROM DEEP BENEATH AREA 52.... <<<<<——————>>>>>

#gays #gays rule #Gays usa #transgender gay

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