#or at least had a history of being horrified or told about how shit UNIT can be

[thetimelordbatgirl]

Adding onto not being huge on a UNIT spin off: I'm also not really huge on the current status of a-lot of companions being that they end up associated with UNIT somehow, including Donna seemingly taking a job with them in The Giggle when back in S4, Donna was horrified by how UNIT was acting in the Sontarian situation.

[talkingpointsusa]

Michael Knowles argues that a Superbowl ad will convert secular liberals to Christianity because it speaks in "woke-ese" and tries to sell 20 dollar bottles of MAGA water

Ah, the face of a man who lost money by betting that the Superbowl would be violently overtaken by radical leftists (source; The Michael Knowles Show on Daily Wire)

Well, the griftosphere coverage of the Superbowl was surprisingly boring. Dave Rubin barely talked about it, Ben Shapiro rambled about how the Superbowl is proof that America is getting older, I don't think Matt Walsh talked about it at all, we just did Tim Pool so I'm not going to subject you guys to more of him that quickly, and Charlie Kirk interviewed three senators about how the commercials were too woke.

So where do I go to when I want an absolutely idiotic take on a current event? I check on Daily Wire third banana Michael Knowles!

00:00, Michael Knowles: "The Superbowl occurred, I am told, I don't know for certain. I actually attended a Superbowl party and still I did not catch even one second of the game, which is fine by me as I later discovered that the game began with one of the most offensive public displays around these days, the so-called black national anthem."

So, this is one of the main things that the griftosphere has been complaining about in the wake of the Superbowl and I figure now is as good a time as any to talk about the history of the black national anthem.

The actual name of the black national anthem is Lift Every Voice and Sing and it was written as a poem in the late 1800's by a man named James Weldon Johnson and put to music by his brother John Rosamond Johnson. The NAACP dubbed it the black national anthem in 1919. 1919 was actually more than a decade before the Star Spangled Banner became the national anthem of the United States. It has been a rallying cry for civil rights ever since and was even sung by crowds after the JFK assassination. So Michael acting like this anthem popped out of nowhere a couple years ago is ridiculous and ahistorical.

01:15, Michael Knowles: "But that song has increasingly come to be seen as an alternate national anthem. One of two national anthems because we now have two nations."

Or, this is a performance meant to provide an olive branch to the black community in the wake of a string of violent attacks against them, oftentimes being carried out by law enforcement.

I don't get why this is such a big deal. So they sang Lift Every Voice and Sing, what's the big deal? This is a complete non-issue in every conceivable way.

02:36, Michael Knowles: "I didn't watch the game at all while it was on."

Do you want a medal? I didn't either.

02:38, Michael Knowles: "I went back and watched some of the highlights. I watched Travis Kelce screaming at that poor elderly man, I watched the black national anthem or at least part of it, and I watched some of the ads."

There are two things you can always count on conservatives to throw a shit-fit about after the Superbowl; the national anthem and the ads. Now that we've got one out of the way, it's time to talk about Superbowl commercials.

Also, I love the implication that Michael was so horrified by the black national anthem that he had to turn it off before it was even finished. Keep in mind that it's not a particularly long performance clocking in at two minutes and thirty three seconds.

02:47, Michael Knowles: "And there was one ad above all that was extremely controversial and it elicited the most anger, the most loathing, the most rending and gnashing of teeth. It was an ad from a group called He Gets Us that was, well I'll just let you see it, you form your own conclusions."

Ok, so conservatives are really ticked about this ad from a Christian group called "He Gets Us" that depicted a series of images depicting certain people washing other peoples feet. The griftosphere is pissed because they feel like parts of the ad glorified things such as being gay.

While you might feel inclined to view this group as a well-meaning religious organization seeking to preach equality to the masses, don't be fooled. This ad is a trojan horse containing a group that is just as hateful as the things they pretend to be against. He Gets Us is funded by the Green family who have used the funds that they have acquired from their ownership of Hobby Lobby to fund anti-LGBTQ organizations. Their idea of "loving gay people" is to pressure them into revoking their sexuality. So, they are far from left-wing and deserve to be acknowledged as a hate group using sleazy marketing to trick people into viewing them as accepting.

I find the fact that these idiots are all pissed at this ad really hilarious because this group is super ideologically aligned with them. They want the same form of far-right Christian fascism as you guys do, they are just better at concealing it.

Anyway, Michael stunningly enough doesn't really mind this ad because he thinks that it's going to convert secular liberals to christianity.....yes really.

05:17, Michael Knowles: "I didn't totally hate this ad because it's in woke-ese. Because it's written in this woke language. Because the symbols and the signs and the whole language of the ad is for secular liberals."

"Woke-ese", does he even know what he's talking about? Was the Bible written in woke-ese? Because that's where the parable of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples came from.

I mean I kind of agree that this ad is trying to launder far-right ideology through an outward appearance of acceptance but I never said it did a good job of it. The ad was kind of cringeworthy and most people who I know on the left looked at it and rolled their eyes at how cheesy it was. Plus, when you Google this organization the info about the hate-groups that fund them comes right up.

06:27, Michael Knowles: "The conclusion that a lot of Christians are drawing is 'Well the ad is insinuating that if you protest abortion, your hateful. That the ad is insinuating that if you object to LGBTLMNOP style stuff that you are hateful.'"

Ding-ding-ding! You hit the nail on the head....well, not about the ad but about those things you mentioned being hateful!

06:41, Michael Knowles: "I'm not certain that that's what the ad is saying. I think the ad is reaching out to secular liberals who have an aversion to Christianity and to Jesus and to faith and is trying to speak their language."

They got lost in translation.

08:14, Michael Knowles: "Your orange haired lesbian cousin who hates her dad is not going to read the Summa Theologiae set that you did not buy her, ok."

As a guy who is friends with multiple lesbians, some of which have orange hair, I would like to make the statement that all of them are a thousand times cooler than Michael Knowles.

Also, the Summa Theologica? Yeah, that's some light reading that will help introduce young fence-sitters to Christianity. If your cousin refuses to read the Summa Theologica, maybe it's less about a hatred of Jesus and more about the fact that the Summa Theologica is a 3,025 page doorstopper that is a pretty complicated read.

08:27, Michael Knowles: "If an ad can get some secular liberal, and that's who these ads are for, for even one second to even consider our lord. To even maybe have some slight increase in affection for our lord, I'm fine with it."

Again, there is absolutely no way that a kind of corny ad that half the population made fun of is going to convert anybody. Especially when a google search for the organization reveals their more hateful funding.

09:32, Michael Knowles: "From what I can gather about this ad, the He Gets Us thing, it's funded by right-wing evangelicals. It's not totally clear but it sort of seems like that."

It seems pretty clear from what I've found but at least Michael seems directionally aware that these guys are on his team. That makes him at least slightly smarter than Matt Walsh. I still think it's super unlikely that this ad is going to convert anybody if only because of how ham-fisted it is.

Anyway, Michael plays an ad from Hallow which is one of the sponsors for his show. Definitely no conflict of interest there. Then he switches to his next topic....Trump's ad targeting Nikki Haley.

13:56, Michael Knowles: "The interesting thing about this ad is that it's against Nikki Haley. Trump is destroying Nikki Haley in all of the polls, why is he going after her in a Superbowl ad? These ads are very expensive."

So, Trump made a Superbowl ad attacking Nikki Haley for wanting to change social security rules.

I mainly view this as an act of pettiness on Trumps part, if anything, but lets see Michaels take.

14:07, Michael Knowles: "One, because anything can happen in politics. Especially when the liberal establishment is prosecuting you, trying to throw you in prison, I don't know they might try to kill him at some point."

Lets say Trump does go to jail or the left kills him like Michael has been saying for a while now (shockingly enough it hasn't happened yet), why exactly would an attack ad against Nikki Haley be the most reasonable course of action? If you're dead there's absolutely nothing you can do and in jail your capabilities are severely limited. This makes zero sense.

14:17, Michael Knowles: "He wants to make sure there's no even semi-viable challenge to him, so this was the kill shot."

If Trump is dead or in jail the options for other people to try and take his spot will open up really quickly. Again, this is a completely nonsensical argument based on nothing.

Anyway, here's Michael talking about how we have a "cultural problem".

14:44, Michael Knowles: "But you remember back in the day the Tea Party, the Paul Ryan types, broadly the conservative movement was all for entitlement reform. And the argument for it was 'we need to get our fiscal house in order before we deal with the social problems'. Some people even called for a social truce. Let's have a truce, lets put a pause on the social fights so we can stop the new red menace which is consisting of ink. And at the time it sounded like an ok idea. The problem was, we learned that you can't fix the fiscal problems without fixing the cultural one."

How are the two things related at all? The culture war nonsense that the right has been pushing is basically defined by such important issues as one beer can with a transwoman on it and commercials having too many minorities in them. It's all made up nonsense meant to distract from the real issues.

15:30, Michael Knowles: "Until you fix the border, until you fix the family, until you fix national sovereignty, until you fix basic social issues you're simply not gonna fix basic social issues."

Let's go through these one at a time;

1): I've talked about this so many times on this blog but the "border crisis" is basically a figment of far-right medias imagination. Also, the Republicans keep blocking legislation to make the border more secure. Also, since when did the border become a social issue? It seems pretty financial to me.

2): The family? Is the family broken now? This is probably a dogwhistle for a thousand different things ranging from gay marriage to surrogacy.

3): National sovereignty is even more confusing. Last I checked, the United States is still independent. I guess Michael thinks we're being governed by Britain again or something.

Note how these are either meaningless platitudes meant to inspire outrage or manufactured moral panics. If this is the best Michael has got to prove his point, it just ain't a good point.

16:16, Michael Knowles: "There are plenty of reasons to attack Trump and people will do it for all sorts of reasons. But one of the dumbest arguments I think is that Trump doesn't have a clear kind of Conservatism."

Oh yeah, that's an argument that people make all the time. Why just yesterday I was at the casino playing poker and the guy sitting across from me said "You know the problem with that Trump guy? He doesn't have a clear conservative ideology." I love how these guys just make up arguments for them to refute.

Trump does have a clear kind of conservatism. It starts with an "f" and ends with "ascism".

17:21, Michael Knowles: "Speaking of the presidential race, Democrats have had it with Joe Biden. That press conference I think was the nail in the coffin. They saw the special council report that Joe Biden is an amiable old man who is not fit to stand trial because he's so senile."

So, Joe Biden has recently been making a lot of gaffes which is a little concerning due to his age. You know who else has been making a lot of gaffes though? Donald Trump. For crying out loud, he called Viktor Orban "the leader of Turkey" and declared in one speech that Biden would lead the country into World War II while also saying that he was ahead of Obama in the 2024 polls. Strangely enough, you don't hear Michael Knowles talking about those missteps. The only way to argue this point honestly is saying that neither of these men have any business running due to their age.

That being said, the report that Michael is talking about is pretty partisan. Robert Hur was a Trump appointed U.S attorney. It's pretty clear that he's towing the Republican parties narrative line in his report.

I don't get the narrative in MAGA media about Biden by the way. He's a senile doddering old man who also somehow has the mental capacity to steal an election from Trump and cook up plots to replace the white population with migrants that will vote exclusively democrat. It's a complete and total narrative disconnect.

Anyway, Michael plays a clip from Bill Maher saying the Biden needs to go. I love how these guys all pretend that Bill Maher isn't one of them. They do the same thing with Tim Pool to a lesser extent. Notice how the only "leftist" they all seem to agree with consistently is Bill Maher. I wonder why that is?

18:55, Michael Knowles: "The Democrats realize that they are in a very bad situation. Even if they rig all the votes in all the different states, it's still gonna be tough."

I don't think Michael realizes what the term "rigging" means. See, when you rig an election that means that you have set it up so that you inevitably win.

Michael also plays a clip from CNN and then advertises one of the scamiest products I have ever seen.

20:50, Michael Knowles: "If the Democrats lose this election you know what we're gonna have a lot of? Woke Tears! That's why you've gotta check out Woke Tears water."

I normally skip over the parts where these guys try to hawk their shit because who gives a crap but I was intrigued by this product because it's so stupid. So, it's basically MAGA bottled water right and guess how much it costs? 8 dollars? Nope! 10 dollars? Yes....is what I would be saying if it didn't cost 20 freaking dollars for a six pack!

I know it says $18.95, but if you factor in tax it's $20.51. But hey at least the shipping's free! That totally makes up for the fact that you're paying 20 bucks for bottled water. For context on how absolutely insane this price is, here's the price of a six pack of Aquafina bottled water.

It's a totally insane price! I can't put myself in the headspace where I would pay 20 dollars for bottled water just so I could "own the libs". I know that all of these weird MAGA products like Black Rifle Coffee are complete scams but come on, at least try to avoid your grift being too transparent.

Also, if I was the Daily Wire I wouldn't be OK with this company ripping off my schtick. These guys ripped off your "Leftist Tears" tumblers and you're not only letting it slide but advertising for them?! I guess you can't argue with some cash. Come to think of it, how much does it cost to advertise on the Daily Wire? Is it possible that I could advertise my blog which is pretty focused on making fun of the Daily Wire on the Daily Wire? Could I force Matt Walsh to call himself a professional sociopath? Only time shall tell, back to Michael Knowles.

22:04, Michael Knowles: "There is a theory, you hear it in right-wing circles, 'Joe Biden is not really the president, who's really calling the shots?' I don't know, I'm sure he's neglecting whole swaths of the government but when he does assert something I think he gets it. I think Joe Biden, when he wants to be, is actually the president."

See what I mean? Joe Biden is a confused dementia patient but when he asserts himself he is actually the president and from the sounds of it is pretty dominant. These two narratives are completely incongruous with each other and Michael doesn't seem to understand that.

22:25, Michael Knowles: "If Joe Biden were not the president, he would not have been permitted to give that press conference."

Yeah, because the Democratic Party has a magic crystal ball that can predict when Biden is going to make a gaffe in a press conference. This is one of those statements that sounds really stupid if you think about it for more than 11 seconds.

Michael plays a clip of Karine Jean-Pierre addressing a question that Peter Doocy posed about Biden's mental state. Now it's time for Michael to talk about Mo'nique, would you believe that it's shockingly racist?

25:52, Michael Knowles: "Speaking of black women, talking about Karine Jean-Pierre not Joe Biden, speaking of black women-"

Golly, thanks for clearing that up. Carry on.

25:57, Michael Knowles: "Mo'nique just recently complained on some random podcast that she would be much more famous if she were a white woman."

Essentially, this was an appearance that Mo’nique made on a podcast called Club Shay Shay. It's less about being "famous" and more about money and payment.

The racial pay gap is quite a large problem. Black women are paid a third less than white men for the same task. Now, is somebody with a net worth of thirteen million the best representative of this issue? Not exactly. But what she does have is a platform and if her experiences can shed light on this issue, more power to her.

26:56, Michael Knowles: "I think she's basically half right. A lot of conservatives are going to jump down her throat here and say 'You're playing the race card and you're playing the victim and you're not really the victim and-' but she's probably right. If she were white she would appeal to the culture of more people."

He had me for about 2 seconds and then immediately lost me again.

27:19, Michael Knowles: "Her comedy has been specifically targeted at black culture and black people make up something like 12 to 14 percent of the country."

Naturally, white people cannot appreciate black comedy. No siree.

This is ridiculous. And she's also an actress. What about roles that she's cast in?

27:25, Michael Knowles: "America is a - was a white country."

"White people are the majority population in the US....wait, I also believe in the great replacement theory. WAS a white country guys!"

Also, define white country because America was an indigenous country first. Are minorities getting rights an erasure of America being a white country? Ascribing races to countries is just gross.

27:36, Michael Knowles: "So, yeah that's true. If you appeal to a minority population you're gonna be less famous than if you appealed to the majority of the population, that's true."

"Hey, I know you are being paid less than your white colleagues but have you ever considered being whiter?"

I don't see how Michael thinks that this argument is less racist than the alternative.

28:04, Michael Knowles: "But I think her concern is legitimate. She's saying there is this distinct culture within America that I appeal to but the culture that I appeal to and the majority culture are not synonymous and so that is just naturally restricting my growth potential. Yeah, that's true."

That's totally ridiculous. Again, is a black actress just automatically a part of "black culture" and walled out of white culture? If that is true, that's still racist.

28:41, Michael Knowles: "This is also why calls to radically change the demographics of the country will inevitably affect national culture. Now when we're talking about changing the demographics of the country we're actually not really talking about black and white anymore, we're talking about importing a lot of hispanic's into the country through an open border."

Only Michael Knowles could turn a segment about Mo'nique into a piece on the great replacement theory. Anyway, the Great Replacement Theory is a complete load of horseshit that isn't backed up by the data at all. Whenever I hear about the Great Replacement Theory, I just hear white paranoia.

"Wait, they might start treating me like I treat them? Unthinkable!"

Conclusion:

Michael Knowles is such a complete and utter clod and this episode is no different. I am kind of stunned that 20 dollar MAGA water exists and can't wait to see the uptick in Gen Z'ers converting to christianity after seeing some really awkward Superbowl ad from an organization funded by a hate group.

Cheers and I'll see you in the next one.

[tanadrin]

How /did/ things change after 2001? I was born in that year and everyone says it was different before, but I've never really gotten a sense of how.

It is difficult for me to emphasize just how different the world you see on the evening news is now, from what it was like before 2001, at least as I remember it. There’s a scene in Farscape, where after years of trying to get home, the astronaut protagonist John Crichton finally makes it back to Earth with his alien friends in tow, and when he’s reunited with his father, he’s shocked to discover his dad has gone from this optimistic, forward-looking, hopeful dreamer to a nervous, jingoistic conservative. His attitude is basically, “yes, there’s dangerous aliens out there who may or may not be trying to kill us--but the galaxy is a place full of wonders you’ve never dreamed of.” His father, in the meantime, has retreated from his hopes for a science-fiction future, and views his new alien friends with suspicion.

It’s not a subtle metaphor, but it’s true. The 90s--at least in the US, at least as I remember them--were a relentlessly optimistic period. Even if things were not yet at their ideal state, there was very much a sense they were heading there; politics was mostly down to what exact flavor of the neoliberal consensus you preferred, Clinton or Bush, and the international triumph of liberal democracy was either a fait accompli (cf. the erstwhile USSR), or just around the corner (cf. hopes for China’s liberalization in the wake of market reforms). Yes, in retrospect, this was kind of a dumb world view. If you actually lived in Russia in the 90s--to say nothing of the Balkans--it was a rough decade, and a lot of the relentless optimism of the period in the United States was down to the privileged position we viewed the world from.

The blunting of that optimism--the reminder that we were still embedded in history, and the final triumph of everything good and just was not foreordained--would not in itself have been a catastrophe. Terrorism was not a strange concept in the 90s, and even Al-Qaeda-style terrorism had its predecessors in attacks on American ships and embassies. 9/11 itself was confusing and chaotic and sad, but 9/11 wasn’t the catastrophe. The catastrophe came after, in how we responded.

I think something broke in America between 1945 and 1991. Something shifted, in a nasty way we didn't realize while we were occupied with communism and stagflation and the civil rights movement. I don't mean to say that America before 1945 was the Good Guys. But the American state and the American political class viewed the world with... humility? Like, sure, the can-do Yankee spirit before 1945 had its own special kind of arrogance (and greed, and hideous bigotry), but it still thought of the world in terms of obligations we owed other countries. By the time the Cold War ended, and the US was the sole remaining superpower, that wasn't how we viewed the world. It was still sort of how we told each other, and our children, what the world was like. We certainly talked a big game about democracy and human rights. But as soon as that principled stance was tested, we folded like a cheap suit. What we should have done after 9/11 was what we had done after every terrorist incident in or against the United States before then: treated it like the major crime it was, sent a civilian agency like the FBI in to investigate, and pursue the perpetrators diplomatically. What we did instead was treat it like the opening salvo of a war--in fact, invented a war to embed it within, to give ourselves narrative justification for that stance--and crank every element of paranoid jingoism instantly up to 11. It has never abated since.

Some of this is the little things. The TSA and the Department of Homeland Security--a name I thought was creepy Orwellian shit right from the get-go. The terror alert levels. (God! remember those?) The fact that airport security--despite being just as ineffective today as it was on September 12--is still routinely humiliating and invasive and just a total waste of everybody’s time. Some of it is the big things. The way security, and the need for security, trumps all other demands including the state’s obligation to protect civil rights. And the fact that this just isn’t even up for debate anymore. 9/11, as Chomsky presciently observed, was a boon for authoritarians everywhere. Suddenly, “counterterrorism” was the magic word that let you get away with anything, like “anti-communism” twenty years prior. At the most extreme end, this led to things like anti-atheism laws being promulgated in Saudi Arabia in the name of “counterterrorism,” but you don’t have to go that absurd to find ways in which the security state has fostered authoritarianism. In every aspect of our lives, this new, fearful outlook on the world justified a gradual ratcheting down of freedom, the gradual empowerment of petty tyrants everywhere, and the weak protests, fading into silence, of people who still believed in liberty as an important organizing principle for modern society. It wasn’t even that you’d get called a terrorist-sympathizer or anything that blatant. It just ceased to be regarded as important. It wasn’t that you were wrong, or misguided, or evil. You were just a non-serious person, someone whose opinion was clearly irrelevant, whose head was permanently in the clouds, if you thought that stuff still mattered. And that never went away.

And I think a big part of what changed between 1945 and 1991 was that the US started to believe its own jingoism. When did this start? Vietnam? Earlier? Korea? I don’t know. It’s hard to pinpoint, given that my understanding of the cultural zeitgeist of the decades before I was born mostly came from my dad’s old Doonesbury collections. I don’t know how to describe what we became--what we, hideously, revealed ourselves to be--except as a kind of machismo. A kind of ruthless, General Ripper-esque us-versus-them psychosis that gripped us where the Soviets were concerned, and never let up. And we still believe it. It still infects every atom of our political discourse. We don’t question the necessity of drone strikes, only who to drone strike and how much. We don’t really question the massive powers we’ve afforded the executive branch to wage war and conduct espionage--including kidnappings and torture--and we’ve kind of forgotten that we still have a prison camp in Cuba full of people who have never been convincted of any crime. In a way, we lost faith in law entirely: by God, we couldn’t try terrorists in American courts! (Why not? What’s wrong with American courts? Don’t we have faith in our own laws, at least?) No, justice wasn’t a matter for the law to decide anymore. Justice was a matter for the military only: justice came in the form of strength of arms. Ergo, shooting Bin Laden in the head and calling that justice; ergo, Jack Bauer; ergo, blowing up Yemeni weddings. Keep America Safe. I can’t begin to tell you how alienating and horrifying so much of the last 20 years has been, if the most consequential news stories of your childhood were the OJ Simpson murders and a discussion of the President’s cum stain.

In my opinion, the seminal text of the post-9/11 world was released in the year 2000. In the original Deus Ex video game, the year is 2150, and the world is a dark, depressing place. You, the game’s hero, work (initally) for a UN counterterrorism agency while a plague ravages the world. You hunt terrorists whose existence has provided the justification for an authoritarian crackdown on dissidents everywhere. You visit a Hong Kong firmly under the control of the CCP, you fight genetically engineered mutants created by huge businesses run amok, FEMA (no DHS then) controls the federal government, and, it turns out later in the game, the bombing of the Statue of Liberty that precipitated the creation of your organization was a false-flag attack used to justify its existence in the first place. Drones patrol the streets of NYC, and the whole thing is steeped in late-90s militia movement-style conspiracy theories about the Illuminati and the New World Order, that look weirdly out of place now that these things are more clearly aligned in the popular consciousness with right wing extremism, when back then they were just seen as kooky weirdos in Montana--but every year since then, we’ve been inching closer and closer to that world, and you know what? It wigs me out a little.

In 2000, Deus Ex was an absurdity, a fever dream of cyberpunk and early-internet conspiracism. It’s a shame that tonally speaking it’s been dead on for the two decades after. But honestly, I think the biggest thing that’s changed about the world since 2001 is our cultural capacity for optimism. I don’t mean in a sentimental way--although if you compare other texts heavily influenced by the post-2001 political milieu, you definitely see a sharp contrast with the optimism of cultural artifacts from earlier eras; science fiction was hit especially hard in this area (cf. RDM’s version of Battlestar Galactica). But I also mean this in a political/ideological sense. We cease to imagine that the world can be made better. We cease to imagine the possibilities that are afforded to us if we are willing to strive for our ideal society, even if we, personally, may never reach it. We make deals with the devil, we let the CIA violate the constitution and federal law six ways from Sunday, we don’t question the prevailing political-economic consensus even if it’s setting the planet on fire and pitching us headlong toward social disaster, because we forgot what it was to feel like those sunlit uplands we’ve been hoping for were just around the corner.

In the same way that my Catholic faith was eventually done in because the ethical principles I was taught were at odds with the manifest monstrosity of the organization that taught them to me and the metaphysics it espoused, my patriotism and my faith in America was done in because when I was a schoolkid, I really did believe that democracy and human rights and equality under the law were important. Some people probably had their illusions--if they ever had any--about the US government stripped away long ago, but I was a white kid from a reasonably prosperous part of town, so it took until the 2000s and my growing political awareness to realize just how flimsy these principles were when they were put to any kind of test. It made me angry; it still makes me angry. I was raised to believe there are some principles that are important enough that you don’t compromise them ever, no matter how scared or worried you are. Just as I was old enough to understand what was going on on the evening news, the United States betrayed everything I had been taught the United States stood for. And as a nation, we never turned back; we never apologized; we never repented. America, as an abstract entity, never was what I thought it was as a kid. But I think it could still become that, if it tried. Alas, very few people seem to believe such a thing is possible anymore. Most days, I’m not sure I do, either.

[griffinsandpeacocks]

Shatter My Expectations And I’m Yours (Shatter Me, Lindsey Stirling Ft. Izzy Hale)

Dorian had a set pattern. He knew that pattern well. If it were a walked path it would be well worn as much as a favored path through the forest, or maybe the faded cobbles under a guard patrol. Yet even so that well known pattern was monotonous and dull even when it had exciting outcomes they were a short reprieve from that same slow turning pattern. He was getting dizzy left to spin in this cycle endlessly. He wasn’t alive anymore with the excitement that came with something considered taboo, now he was so well established in the little steps that it had lost all charm becuase it never lasted and would end only to start again with a new contestant. 

He had no real light in his life. The one driving factor that kept him going was the passion to prove Tevinter could be great, and it need not use blood magic to be that way. It didn’t need constant power struggles, if it’s people could unite then they could prove every other nation wrong, they weren’t blood thirsty maleficar that bled slaves dry by the hundreds, they were a nation of great art, and strength that could prove mages need not be leashed like dogs. They could prove magic and mages specifically could add so much more to the world if treated as ordinary citizens and allowed their freedom. In fact the mages of the south had a much better chance of setting such an example... All they needed was the chance, but first this war and the crazed bastard from Chantry Myth had to be dealt with. 

He’s reading and trying to find the connections they need when the elf walks up to him. At first Dorian doesn’t notice him but when he sits back pinching the bridge of his nose before rubbing at his temples and looks up, all he sees is the lean form of the archer. Alarion was standing back watching him with a soft smile on his face looking slightly concerned. 

“Ah, Inquisitor, to what do I owe this visit?” Dorian says smiling and instantly masking his frustration and tiredness. Alarion isn’t fooled, in fact he rarely is. The archer was sharp eyed, even if his left was blind, he made up for it in his skill in observation. He rarely missed important details of the land around him and the minute shifts of a facial expression he was staring at. He’d learned Dorian’s facial expressions well. He’d done so with every person that followed him into danger. He even could tell you if Harding was nervous, or even if she was or wasn’t paying you actual attention rather than tuning you out. He could even give you pointers on what was giving away certain expressions. Josephine had even tested his skills out against masked Orlesian nobles. It was harder for him but he’d still hit more often than miss a mark. He was an empathetic passionate elf, who though he would focus on elves he often went out of his way to help everyone. 

“I was wondering if you were holding up alright... And there’s an issue I wanted to discuss...” He looks uncertain and Dorian only remembers that expression a few times. When they’d traveled to that twisted future and again when they’d been about to come back. Though he hadn’t just been uncertain then, he’d looked horrified and angry as well. When he’d gone after Alexius Dorian was surprised he’d chosen to spare his life. Alarion had the mage on the ground a dagger at his neck and had chosen to just knock out the mage instead of kill him as the Fereldan king swept in. Upon seeing the elf he went from bristled and ready for conflict to rather calm waiting for the elf to decide the fate of the mages. Dorian had had no idea why until he latter learned the man had to Consorts both elves and both men. Both were talented rouges. 

Alarion had decided to give the mages a second chance as allies, though made it expressly clear they would be around Templars they would need to work together with a semblance of civility and atop all of it, if they fucked up, as in one went and became an abomination, he’d cut them down personally if Templars didn’t first. Dorian later learned Alarion had had to kill his own sister after she’d fallen for an offer made by a demon of lust. The archer took no pride in the event but he was eerily comfortable when confronted by abominations. He’d cut it down rather than flinch. Though they’d learned those stories from a surviving clan member that had been dug out from The Temple. 

Apparently the young elf had been only ten when he’d landed the killing shot on his sister. He’d been in the forest edging their camp when he’d heard the screams start. He’d taken aim and moved through the bushes and taken her down even as he recognized the tattered torn remains of her robes. He’d loosened the arrow in shock and had stopped her before bursting forward and loosing a second arrow that hit her heart. He’d known the rules of the clans, should one of their own fall into the temptations of demons the clan was responsible for putting down the corrupted mage and ending their suffering. Alarion had been confronted by Solas about this and the elf had frozen.

“I did not kill her out of hatred, spite or anger.” He had admit looking down. He placed a hand over his blind eye and looked up at everyone who’d tuned in curious and eager to know more about the elf most adored and some still hated or feared, this had been as they traveled to Skyhold, so it was bound to happen that some personal history would come out for the inner members of the newborn Inquisition. 

“I killed her to end her suffering. Because I knew full well the reason she’d fallen was due to wanting to fix my eye. It was an accident she had felt responsible for that caused my to lose sight in it. Though I will never blame her... Even if it did lose my eye, if she had not done as she had I would have lost my life. Thus it was a small price to pay. She’d been looking for ways to cure the damage in the fade and a demon of lust had offered... She fell for the trap. I regret never thanking her for everything she had gone through... I was a child, but I was then seen as an adult. What better than to bear the mark of Falon’Din? I may as well wear the mark of Death.” He’d said then and Dorian had recalled how Solas had been quite in thought for quite some time after that and had looked lost in thought. 

“You feel guilt on it then.” Solas had said and Alarion had tilted his head lowering his hand and shaking his head.

“Of a sort... I regret not being able to help support her like she clearly needed. Instead I was self absorbed in my own troubles, children no matter their race can be cruel and being partially blind made me an easy target. I feel nothing at the fact I was forced to kill her. I had a choice. Die, and let others die, or kill her before she could kill me or anyone else. I chose the path that had the least blood on it. I just wish their had been a path that would have spared the blood shed altogether. There probably was... I was just blind to it until it was too late and it had become overgrown.” Alarion had said eyes sad like they were now. Dorian watched the other and frowns.

“I’m holding up well enough I suppose, though this library has all manner of volumes on whether Divine Galatia took a shit on sunday I’m afraid it has little on accurate Tevinter histories. Which makes my job difficult.” He groused and the elf smiles but it fades quickly.

“I’m not sure you’ll like this but it is a distraction. Here read this, it’s a letter Mother Giselle received, I’m getting tired of that woman... Sorry, she said it was from your father.” He says and Dorian feels his nose flare as he gets agitated he stands taking the letter and reading it only to scoff. Alarion stands perfectly still and watches.

“I know my son? Pft, he could barely fill a thimble with what he knows about me! Typical... I’d be willing to bet this ‘retainer’ is merely a henchman hired to knock me over the head and drag me back off to Tevinter.” Dorian hisses and Alarion tilts his head curiously, his black hair falls off his shoulder and rests behind him in a fall of braids and lose hair. 

“Could it be Venatori?” He asks and Dorian paused.

“Perhaps... Though this does look like my father’s penmanship. Or... He could have joined the Venatori... I doubt it but anything’s possible. Let’s go and meet this so called, ‘family retainer’, if it’s a trap we get out and kill everyone, you’re good at that, if not we send them back with a message for my father to stick his alarm in his wit’s end.” Dorian hissed and Alarion frowns and paused, he’d flinched, albeit only slightly, at being told what he was good at, he may have shrugged it off and embraced it in the most literal way he could but that didn’t mean he enjoyed it. Unless the one dying was a waste of air. Then he might get some satisfaction out of sticking an arrow in their eye. 

“Bad blood between you?” He asks and Dorian snickers a cringe on his face as he grimaced a slight grin.

“Interesting turn of phrase... Let’s just say we have disagreements on my choices and me with theirs.” Dorian says evasively. Alarion frowns.

“Like not getting married or leaving Tevinter?” The elf asks and Dorian shrugs.

“Two of many other things.” He says and Alarion knows he’ll get no where so shrugs.

“Let’s go see what this is all about then.” Alarion says, he paused and looks back at Dorian with his good eye.

“Should I have any others with us? I’d say we should at least have Bull and Varric along, we could even bring Cole. Help us get a read on everything?” He says and Dorian paused.

“Cole and Bull are fine... Varric might use this as an excuse to write in daddy issues to my long list of character traits.” Dorian sighs and Alarion smiles and huffs a soft laugh.

“Alright, let’s gather them up and ride out.” He says and they walk out and over to Herald’s Rest both ignoring the Mother that watches with a frown and disapproving stare. 

“Bull, come on I have a mission I need you for, I’m grabbing Cole and we’ll head out.” Alarion says and Bull nods and stands up from the slouch he’d been in and Dorian waits knowing the other’s watching him and picking apart every little hint Dorian is unintentional putting out that he’s pissed. 

“Something have you in a tiff, Dorian.” Bull says and Dorian growls.

“Someone rather.” He snaps and Bull blinks looking a bit more directly at Dorian trying to find what’s getting his fuse so short. Alarion comes down and he’d asked Cole not to try helping Dorian quite yet. They all head out at fast as they can for Redcliff. Going into the Gull and Lantern it’s empty just Dorian and Alarion, Bull and Cole wait outside. The elf sees someone move before Dorian does. His green eyes narrow and his hands slide behind him one hand on a dagger the other silently clipping the strap keeping the blade in the sheath. Anyone who saw him, and didn’t know him, would just think he had his hands behind him in a respectful pose. 

“No one here... This doesn’t bode well...” Dorian sighs and Alarion steps closer to say something keeping his eyes on the figure but they speak before he can.

“Dorian.” It’s just his name but Dorian feels anger course through him, he knows that voice and it makes his guts turn to ice. Though it oddly brings a tiny glimmer of hope. Foolish as it was. 

“Father.” Alarion drops his hands to his sides blinking at the man and then looking at Dorian.

“So an elaborate smoke screen..? Why?” Dorian snaps steeling his irritation. 

“Then you were told...” Alarion sneers.

“I don’t like having my friends walk into possible traps blind, a shocker that.” Alarion spits hands clenching as he can practically feel the unease radiating off Dorian. 

“I apologize, Inquisitor, I never intended for you to be involved.” He says and Alarion steps up to stand at Dorian’s side.

“You wanted him with that hag that doesn’t care for him you mean.”The elf hissed and Dorian looks over at the elf and sets a hand on his lower back which makes the elf step a bit back and just glower at Halward while a sneer seems to permanently fix itself to his face. Dorian can’t blame him seeing how that disgusted look shows on his fathers face even if barely.

“Of course not, the Great Magister Pavus couldn’t be seen with the dread Inquisitor, what would people say?” Dorian snaps as his head turns back to his father. He might freeze in fear when he might have a chance at someone for more than just a night of mutual pleasure but against his father, his temper peaks.

“What exactly is this, father? Ambush, kidnapping, touching family reunion?” Dorian snarls and Alarion keeps his eye on the man he’s steadily wanting to fire arrows at. Countless arrows. He’d run out of arrows. Several times.

“It has always been like this...” Who the idiot is appealing to Dorian is unsure given he’s certain Alarion wants to tear his father into little pieces and scatter them through the Wastes. 

“Considering you lied to get him here? I wonder why he would be angry?” Alarion scoffs. Dorian piviots keeping himself facing towards his father slightly but looking at the elf.

“You don’t know the half of it! Though... Perhaps you should.” He says thoughtfully and Halward clearly grows uneasy.

“Dorian, there is no need-” Dorian looks up and sneers before looking back at the elf.

“I prefer the company of men, my father disproves.” He says and Alarion paused brain almost blowing smoke out of his ears as several images run through his mind of Dorian in several questionable posses and positions on top or under men of varying races, stature and looks. Though a popular one seems to be himself.

“Ah... I’ve heard a bit about that... And I prefer the same.” Alarion clears his throat and glanced away flushing slightly and Dorian smirks.

“I should have known that’s what this was about.” Halward sneers and Dorian immediately gets back to spitting like an angry cat.

“No. You don’t get to make assumptions, you know nothing about the Inquisitor.” Dorian snarls. Alarion feels that blush get worse and almost wants to just drag him back to Skyhold and see exactly what Dorian preferred.

“This isn’t what I wanted.” The man gripes and Alarion snorts as if he could care what this bastard wanted. He’d known him all of maybe five minutes and wanted him to become a demented pincushion. 

“I’ve never been what you wanted, forgotten that already?” Dorian spits sneering and Alarion sighs.

“Then that’s a big deal in Tevinter?” He asks and Dorian shakes his head and looks back at the elf.

“If you want to live up to impossible standards. Every Tevinter family is inter marrying to distill the perfect mage, perfect body, perfect mind. The perfect leader. Which means ever perceived flaw, ever aberration, is deviant and shameful, it must be hidden.” Dorian snarls and Alarion winced. Every flaw is stacked against you, pressure slowly fracturing your mask no matter how carefully constructed.

“That’s what this is about?” The elf asks softly hating the fact the two were so far apart though he hates the older vint he also hates seeing children with such poor ties to their parents when he never knew his.

“Who you sleep with?” He asks and Dorian scoffs.

“Not all of it.” He says and Alarion shakes his head confused. 

“Dorian if you’d just listen..” 

“Why? So you can spout more convenient lies? He taught me to hate blood magic, ‘The resort of the weak mind’, those were his words. Yet the first thing you turn to when your precious heir refuses to play pretend the rest of his life? You try to change me!” Dorian is pacing now having gotten in his father’s face before retreating looking at the other man his pain is almost palpable. Alarion goes rigid. This fucking bastard did what to Dorian? Alarion hasn’t felt possessive in his life, but he’s beginning to understand what it might feel like.

“I only wanted what was best for you.” Halward tries to appeal but neither of the two in the tavern with him buy it or care. Dorian says what both of them are thinking.

“You wanted what was best for you! For your fucking legacy! Anything for that.” Dorian looks upset now and all the elf wants is to hold the mage. Dorian just feels so trapped and lonely like he’s just spinning in the dark. Alarion moves so he’s standing between the two and takes a deep breath. There’s the smallest chance the man is wanting to reconnect and at least try and fix his relationship with his son. 

“Don’t leave it like this Dorian... I may not like this prick, but... I can see the pain. Just a try.” He says softly. Dorian looks at him and nods. He walks up to Halward. Alarion stands back but is still ready to rip the older human apart.

“Tell me why you came.” Dorian says calmly or at least he is a bit more calm than he had been.

“If I knew I’d drive you to the Inquisition..” Dorian shakes his head and moves back a step.

“You didn’t. I joined becuase it’s the right thing to do. Once I had a father who would have know that.” Dorian turns and starts to walk to the door.

“Once I had a son that trusted me... A trust I betrayed.” Dorian paused turning to look back.

“I only wanted to hear his voice again... To talk to him and ask he forgive me.” Halward says softly and Dorian looks at Alarion who only slightly inclines his head. He sees the deep need in Dorian to fix this one burnt bridge in his past since his others were all beyond repair. The elf would do everything in his power to help the other. Alarion moves to the door and keeps it open barely a crack and waits there listening like a hawk for any sound of a scuffle or sound that isn’t hushed talking. When the mage exits he’s silent and they spend the ride back to Skyhold like that.

“He says we’re alike. Too much pride... Once I would have loved to hear that. Now... I’m not so certain... I don’t know if I can forgive him.” Dorian says staring out the window of his nook and Alarion watches him wanting to comfort the mage and woefully uncertain how.

“How’d he try to change you?” The elf asks softly.

“He was desperate. I wouldn’t play the part and marry the girl, keep everything unsavory locked away and private. Selfish, not wanting to spend my life screaming on the inside. He was going to preform some blood ritual. Alter my mind and make me... Acceptable. I found out and left.” Dorian says and Alarion feels ice run through him and he moves closer subconsciously knowing blood magic and demons were powerful enough that this was fairly possible.

“Are you alright?” He asks and the mage looks back and shakes his head looking back out the window.

“No. Not really.” He says softly. All the elf wants to do is hug the man.

“What he did was wrong.” The elf states stern and certain. Dorian shrugs.

“I think he knows that. Just struggles admitting it.” He says and Alarion can see why... Admitting a mistake was hard especially when they were proud and the Pavus family seemed to have that in spades.

“He’s a good man deep down... My father. Taught me how important principle is, he cares for me in his way. He’ll just never change.” Dorian sighs and Alarion shakes his head and swallows.

“Maybe you’ll work through it, see eye to eye.” He says though he wants to offer to kill the man. Dorian looks back at him with a slight half smile though it’s flat.

“You’re very optimistic, it’s charming really.” He says and Alarion smiles back feeling just as worn thin.

“Maker knows what you must think of me now after that display.” Dorian says as he walks up to Alarion who looks up at him feeling a sudden lightening rush over his whole form. 

“I’ll never think less of you. If it were possible I think more of you.” Alarion states certain to his core and Dorian chuckles looking amused and fond at him and butterflies are dancing in his chest. 

“My father never understood.. Living a lie it festers in you like a poison. You have to fight for what’s in your heart.” Dorian says fire and conviction in his whole form. Alarion feels it spread to him and speaks before he can think.

“I agree.” And he leans up as Dorian leans down to him and the kiss is like fire he never wants to stop. Dorian pulls back though.

“I didn’t think you’d enjoy playing with fire, Inquisitor...” He teases grinning stepping back into his safe pattern even as he wants to shatter it and burn. Damn all the consequences with the elf looking at him like he wants nothing more than him back in another kiss. He’s so terribly afraid... If he messes up he’ll fall hard. He doesn’t want to hurt like that.

“Anyway, time to drink myself into a stupor. That kind of day. Join me sometime if you’ve a mind.” Dorian says and Alarion smiles and nods and walks with the mage drinking with him and walking Dorian to his bed when the man is drunk and stumbling. He goes back to the bar after and joins Bull explaining it all and getting absolutely pissed laughing hysterically as Krem tells some ridiculous story of an old job involving tar and feathers. In the morning he wakes up curled up on Bull.

“Morning.” The Qunari says grinning as the elf goes white as a sheet.

“Not sore... Nothing happened I hope?” He asks and Bull shakes his head.

“Nah, I got morals, you were too trashed to leave alone. So... You have it hard for the vint?” He asks and Alarion looks away and curls back up.

“I want to make him happy... I want to skin his father. He’s sweet and soft under that bluster I’ve seen it... I want so much but he’s from a place that taught him it’s a shameful thing to love another man... His own father turned on him for it. Mine died protecting me and my sister. I don’t understand why family would do that.” Alarion sighs and Bull hmms.

“You’ve got work ahead of you then. He’s all tied up and content keeping those ties tight.” Bull says and Alarion hums thoughtfully.

“Let him set the pace.” He says and gets up thanking Bull he goes and the Qunari waves. Over the next weeks the elf shadows the mage and showering every hint he can making every advance and he is glowing when Dorian circles him in his rooms. He get’s flushed as Dorian purrs in his ear and Alarion pulls the mage into a kiss hungry and wanting everything Dorian will give.

“I want everything you’re willing to give me Dorian... I want you to be happy and I definitely want to be part of your life if you’ll have me.” Dorian paused in shock then just kisses the elf so very glad he’d let this elf in and shatter his walls and now there was this brilliant burning, bright light shining for him burning away everything and giving him someone to fall into.

[thepurplecatdork]

Its 2am and I'm not tired so it's time for a history of my technologically oppressed upbringing!

A little background: My dad is some kind of Heritage Foundation Exemplary Weirdo or some shit, so he thinks the internet was invented in order for Muslim Democrats to brainwash children and steal his social security number? So a lot of stuff that happened to me growing up is a result of his not being ready to accept the direction technology was heading because he just Knew it would end with stolen identities and empty bank accounts and no one loving him. It's funny now, but it actually sucked a lot at the time, and to this day I am learning of things I missed out on because of my lack of access to basically every means of communication my classmates were taking full advantage of. Please add to this if you've had similar experiences.

I didn't get a cell phone til I was 16. And my dad only agreed to that because he thought I would be getting my driver's license that year. (Joke was on him, took me two more years!) So for half of my high school existence (until 2007!!!!!), I had to use Other People's Parent's House Phones to let my family know where I was after school.

I didn't get texting til I was 19. That was 2010, people. I was at a friend's birthday party when my dad called to tell me it had happened, and I literally started texting people who were standing right next to me. I was so bad at it that after about a day no one wanted to text me anymore.

My family didn't get highspeed internet and until I was 20. This was after my first year of college. I had to do all my homework at the library. Before this, we had dial-up. This was 2011, people.

We also got wifi in 2011. My laptop at the time didnt connect to it, so it wasnt really that thrilling for me. But my brother's did, so of course we tested it by going outside and seeing how far away from the house we could Google. Everyone I told about this was too horrified that we didn't already have wifi to be happy for me.

Also my dad had a thing about the encryption with the wifi so you had to enter two passwords, a regular one and one that was kept on a secret notecard in the bottom of a desk drawer. It was a random combination of letters and numbers that changed far too often (in order to keep out the wifi terrorists or something) so people that came over always had to ask for the notecard and then my dad would know they were trying to use our internet which was to him somehow a bad thing??

Growing up, I shared an AOL instant messenger account with my siblings. We weren't allowed to have our own, so we would message people together as a unit or arrange certain times beforehand so our friends knew who they were talking to. For this reason it was pretty much a guarantee that no secrets were kept between the three of us, whether we liked it or not. Our only official "friends" were our cousins. If we talked to anyone else, we would type in the username manually and delete the conversations before Dad saw.

I wasn't allowed to have a myspace (or later, a Facebook). Not "until you're older", just straight not allowed. So of course my friends with regular lives would help me make secret ones on their computers, only for me to try to get into them from the school library and realize I'd forgotten the password. I made my current Facebook account while house-sitting for a childhood friend in 2009, and only kept it because I happened to remember the password.

My dad was horrified when he found out I had an email address. I was 14 and had been "purplecatdork@yahoo.com" for 2 years already, but I didn't tell him that.

When we were younger, the three of us shared a single Gameboy Color. Since I've always been a people pleaser and I was the least into video games, it was almost never my turn. And that's why I've played Super Mario for SNES so many times and I know nothing about Pokemon. (This doesnt have much to do with my dad being an insane person, but it IS a legitimate complaint.)

[doomedandstoned]

THAL Pave Way For The Heathen Invasion

~By Billy Goate~

I knew there was something special about this band when I first picked up their trail a few years back and listening to their debut album confirms this. It's especially effective listening in the dead cold of night, I've noticed. You've picked up on a badass stripe of stoner metal known as THAL. The Columbus duo of John "Vince Green" Walker (vox, guitar, bass) and Kevin Hartnell (drums, guitars, synth) proves yet again that the Ohio heavy underground is a definite force of reckoning. THAL's new album is called 'Reach for the Dragon's Eye' (2018), the band's second full-length following 2016's Glitter   (which I remember playing a track from back then on The Doomed & Stoned Podcast).

The new record has THAL continuing to kick major, major behind, but with a renewed sense of purpose and resolve. It's as if Down and Kyuss had met for a handshake and bumped into Acid Bath on the way to the head shop as I listen to a song like, "Under Earth." Others, like "Her Gods Demand War," give us a groovy Goatsnake beat fueled by some genuine Midwestern metal steam. You'll delight in the vocal collaboration with Sophie Steff at this point in the record, a musician I know little about but suspect we'll be hearing more from in the future.

You came here for hard-driving, riff-driven southern-fueled American stoner-doom, though, right? "Thoughtform" scratches that itch and then some, putting it in good company with bands like Pale Divine. There's a purity and simple forthrightness to the music-making here (see: "Soulshank") that pulls in a lot of what I love about Jerry Cantrell's Boggy Depot . The vocals jockey between clean and Neil Fallon dirty. All eight tracks have kept me company on the drive to and from work and I suspect you'll be riding them just as hard.

THAL's Reach For The Dragon's Eye drops Friday, February 16th in digital and CD formats via Argonauta Records. You can hear the record right here, right now on our bitchin' lil blog!

Give ear...

Interviewing THAL's Vince Green

What inspired you guys to start THAL?

I actually never touched a guitar until I was in my 20’s. I was into producing and recording hip-hop back in the 90’s. As I started getting older and maturing, my tastes started to change and I was feeling very limited by the hip-hop genre. Around that time my friend in college introduced me to Clutch and I was immediately hooked. THAT is the kind of music I wanted to make. So I started learning the guitar by playing an acoustic along to Howling Wolf and Muddy Waters records; learning basic chords and such. I also began to digest as much heavy music as I could. Obviously Sabbath was at the top of the list and I also got into Hendrix, Buffalo, Sir Lord Baltimore, Pentagram, The Obsessed, Kyuss and literally hundreds of others -- I have a very large record collection.

Finally, after getting to the point that I felt competent enough to record. I started making heavy music under the THAL name. It was just my solo thing for a few years. I played all the instruments and wrote/sang all of the lyrics. After I met David Jones -- my guitar partner in wytCHord-- and he introduced me to Kevin Hartnell, who came onboard as our drummer. Making the first wytCHord album with those guys was some of the most fun I’ve ever had creating music. In the meantime, I kept writing THAL songs on the side and decided to see if Kevin would have interest in drumming on my next record. He said yes and not only drummed, but provided quite a bit of additional instrumentation including two songs on the album, "Thoughtform" and "Death of the Sun," that are completely his instrumentals. I’m hoping Kevin would like to continue making music as THAL with me and that we can continue to evolve the band.

I know THAL is an acronym, but I thought I’d let you explain its meaning to the readers and tell us exactly how you came up with this for the name of your band.

THAL stands for The Heathens Are Loose. It was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek representation of modern society. Rock & roll is “music for heathens,” right? So I wear the title proudly. I also wanted something that when you broke it down into an acronym sounded primitive and heavy. THAL. As an interesting side note, I recently found out that Thal, Austria is the birthplace of Arnold Schwarzenegger whom I admired greatly as a bodybuilder. Totally unplanned.

You’re no new kids on the block – you’ve been making music for 4 or 5 years, right? Has the band evolved musically, stylistically, thematically from your earliest singles to your last record, ‘Glitter’ (2016), and the new album, ‘Reach For The Dragon’s Eye’ (2018)?

I posted the first THAL song up on YouTube in 2013. Listening to that, I think the biggest thing that has changed is the quality of the recordings. As I’ve added to my arsenal of tools and had more practice, the sound quality gets better each time. Also, I was not as confident vocally in 2013 and was still trying to find my voice. In 2016 Sam Durango of the mighty Rage of Samedi released Glitter on his Voodoo Chamber Records label in Germany. That was a great experience and was the first time a larger group of people were exposed to what I was doing and it was very well received. At this point, I am relatively comfortable with my range and do my best to work within that. I am far from the world’s best singer, so taking more chances with harmony and phrasing has “improved” things, at least in my mind. Ha! Thematically, I think my earlier stuff was more occult based and over time I am reflecting more on the struggles of modern life; although still from an esoteric viewpoint.

I’m really excited about debuting the new album. Can you take some time to walk us through each of the songs and tell us a little something about each? Could be the song’s history and development or meaning.

Absolutely! We are excited and honored that you are debuting the album, so thank you! Keep in mind that I think a song can mean something different to each person, so my intentions when I wrote the song may not match up to the meaning when you hear it and that is 100% okay.

"Rebreather": This is actually the last song we recorded. I was sent a piece of poetry by a friend named Randy Blood. That poem ended up being the words in the chorus and I built the narrative around it. It’s about us as a society being thrown into the deep end of the pool with all the snakes and trying to breathe for as long as we can. The title is homage to an amazing band from Ohio.

"Under Earth": I had written the riffs on this one for another vocalist that I thought I might work with at some point. That ended up not happening and it became the first THAL song that Kevin and I collaborated on. He sent it back to me with drums and a working title of “Under Earth”. Those words conjured images in my mind and it almost wrote itself. Each generation buries meaningful truths before it until we have a false representation of the way some things are meant to be.

"Her Gods Demand War": Ever since I came across Sophie Steff’s Sound Cloud, I wanted to collaborate with her. She has a crystal clear voice that conveys a lot of emotion. I sent her the instrumental along with the title and told her to write what came to her. She recorded that as the chorus and sent it back to me -- all the way from France! It was gorgeous. I wrote my parts around her choruses and added some harmony as well. In addition to the drums, Kevin added the beautiful guitar harmonies. One of my favorite songs on the record.

"ThoughtForm": Kevin sent me an instrumental he had been working on and it felt like Christmas morning to receive this track. Of course I was going to add vocals to it! This song has more groove than any other song on the album and is more about a personal struggle with the world kicking you when you’re down.

"Soulshank": I wrote this song not long after I was out of the hospital. I had just been through a surgery; hence the lyrics “Stick the knife into my soul and twist.” It’s an imagining of someone dying and returning to take the world back from the pieces of garbage that are running it now.

"Death of the Sun": This is the other track where all instruments are played by Kevin. It’s as “soulful” as I’m going to get when I sing. Haha! The concept was Kevin’s about the world ending and the words son/sun being used interchangeably at times. Basically, when the end comes we are all going to be in it together. The time for judging each other is done and whatever is going to happen is going to happen.

"Punish": I don’t normally call people out specifically when I write my music. I prefer to be more metaphorical. But in this case, I will gladly say it is about three pieces of shit (Shawn Whaley, Brandy Shaver and Gary Bubis) that tied a little girl to their truck and dragged her in addition to other abuses. Her mother was also complicit! The story horrified me and broke my heart. This song is basically my hope for their complete and utter destruction.

"Reach For The Dragon’s Eye": The “Dragon’s Eye” is an esoteric representation of knowledge and light, both spiritually and physically. You can assign whatever deity you want -- or no deity at all. Maybe the Dragon is your inner strength. Either way, the Dragon is meant to be a positive although sometimes we must go through a lot of negative to get there. That is what the album is about…ascending against the forces of negativity.

What message are you hoping to get across, if any, through THAL’s sophomore LP?

In the fall of 2016, I was in the hospital for a time and was in pretty bad shape. I had a lot of time to lay there and reflect. With that came internal realizations and “proof” to me of the things that are important in life. At that time, the US election season was in full force with many negative things happening in the United States and the world at large. It’s a helpless feeling seeing the country being manipulated and turning on each other. The only outlet I really have is writing songs, so those thoughts and feelings got tangled up into the lyrics.

How’d you get hooked up with Gero at Argonauta Records?

My good buddy Aaron Wall of the killer band Red Beard Wall is an Argonauta Records artist. I had contacted him for advice on what my next steps should be regarding signing with a label and distribution in general. He was very encouraging and recommended sending the album -- it had already been recorded and mastered at this point -- to Gero, the lead man at Argonauta to see what he thought. About a week later, he reached out and said he would like to sign THAL and put the album out on his label. Gero has been very good to work with. Since he is involved as a musician himself, he knows what it is like on both sides. He is relatively hands off and is all about the artist keeping control of their own music. I still handle my own Bandcamp and he gives advice on when to do certain things, etc. Not to mention, his stable of artists is amazing and Argonauta is the fastest rising label in the underground. It was really a no-brainer for me. It is an honor to be part of the family!

Tell us a bit about the recording, production, and mastering process – who did you work with to lay down tracks, how long did it take, and what instruments, pedals, and amps did you find most helpful in this process?

In terms of who I worked with, the whole thing is DIY. I recorded all guitars, bass and vocal parts in my home studio. Kevin tracked his drums and synths from his home studio (we live about two hours apart). Typically a song will start with a guitar riff idea. I’ll usually program some scratch drums to flesh out the arrangement and record bass parts as well. I’ll do a pre-mix of those tracks so that they sound generally “right” and then send the files to Kevin. He will track drums and additional parts on top. He will then do a more final mix of the whole instrumental and send those files back over to me. I then have the instrumental to write and record vocals over. I will do a final tweak to the mix, make sure the vocals are sitting correctly and then I will master the mix in my studio. I use a combination of rack gear and a software called Ozone for mastering. Everything is tracked in Cubase.

My go-to guitars are Les Pauls. I have a 2013 Gibson Tobacco Burst, a '77 Ibanez Custom and an Epiphone Les Paul Custom Silverburst that I am in the process of modifying. The low end comes from a black Squier Classic 70’s Precision Bass run directly into the board through an Ampeg DI box. An Orange OR50 stack and a 70’s Sunn Concert Lead are my workhorse amps, although I recently acquired a 100 watt Marshall DSL head and 4x12 cab that I am falling in love with. As far as pedals go, I use mostly Black Arts Toneworks for my dirt (Pharaoh Fuzz, Black Forest, Oath, Boneshaker), a Jimi Hendrix Crybaby Wah, and a Carbon Copy delay, EHX Small Stone and Small Clone for phaser/chorus effects. Kevin’s drum kit is a Tama with Zildjian and Paiste cymbals, and Vic Firth drum sticks. He uses a Korg Triton for keyboard parts.

What is in THAL’s crystal ball for 2018 and beyond?

I will always make music as THAL. It started out as a solo thing for me to get my musical ideas out and has now grown to include an outstanding drummer/multi-instrumentalist. I like how things are developing organically at their own pace. It is possible that we continue to add members such as a bassist and a second guitarist. Possibly some regional shows? The most satisfying part for me is the songwriting and recording process. It is truly a release. Reach For The Dragon’s Eye comes out on February 16th. After that, we may take a short break but we’ve already thrown a couple of new ideas back and forth. It wouldn’t surprise me if we released another album or EP by the end of this year. Otherwise, 2019 for sure. We want to thank our beautiful families and friends including everyone that has shown us support by purchasing an album, writing a review, or leaving us encouraging messages. Thank you Doomed & Stoned for highlighting what we are doing and for spreading the word about great music for as long as you have. Getting respect from those that appreciate music is the best part of the whole thing!

Follow The Band.

Get Their Music.

[televisor-reviews]

Top 10 BEST Films Of 2018

Taking this extra year to look at the film market of 2018 has given me the space to really look at the year as a whole as, what I’d describe as, really extreme. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t awful, and I wouldn’t really say it was mediocre either. There were lots of movies I loved but just as many I hated with surprisingly few I thought were just okay. Both the best and worst lists were pretty hard to put together because there were so many movies I really wanted to put on them. Cutting Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom from my worst list was a serious heartbreaker for me. But that only means that I’m particularly quite happy with how both turned out, there’s some seriously game changing films on this list. And keep in mind that, despite how much I tried, I still couldn’t watch every movie from the year: so as amazing as I’m sure A Star Is Born and Best F(r)iends are, I just didn’t get around to them. If you’d like a list of every movie from 2018 I have seen (in order from best to worst), it can be found on my Letterboxd here: https://letterboxd.com/animatorreviewa/list/every-2018-movie-ive-seen/

#10. Searching Back in 2014, the world was introduced to a new form of filmmaking that told a story via the screen of the main protagonist’s computer in Blumhouse’s Unfriended. Kind of like a modern day found footage film. And while I was one of five people who really liked Unfriended and its 2018 followup Unfriended: Dark Web, I think Searching is the penultimate of what this newfound sub-genre is able to accomplish. Similar to what Cloverfield was able to do for found footage, Searching was able to use the computer screen film style to heighten the tension and breaks down a part of the audience’s suspension of disbelief to create a horrific experience for anyone who witnesses it. Which also puts a ton of pressure on the lead, John Cho, as even a moment of bad acting can break this fragile fourth wall. Pressure that Cho overcomes like it was nothing. All of this combines into an incredible experience that keeps its audience on the edge of their seats and constantly on the brink of a heart attack. I’m almost certain that Searching will be considered an important piece of 2010′s film history. #9. Bad Times At The El Royale In 2011, Drew Goddard set himself apart as a director with a very unique and interesting vision with his landmark piece A Cabin In The Woods. In 2018, he did it again with, in my opinion, an even better film, Bad Times At The El Royale with a fascinatingly put together and complicated story featuring some of the best acting from such a star studded cast I’ve seen in years. From Jeff Bridges playing against the Big Lebowski type most are familiar with to Jon Hamm definitely playing towards his Richard Jewell typecast to Dakota Johnson making up for all three Fifty Shades Of Grey movies with quite possibly her best performance. Bad Times At The El Royale is one of the most uniquely made mainstream movies I’ve seen in a while with several scenes told several times from different perspectives and each character breathed life into them with such interesting backstories. My only real problem is that the whole thing with half the place is in Nevada and the other half is in California doesn’t really go anywhere but it’s made up for as soon as Chris Hemsworth shows up to ham the hotel up. Incredibly entertaining and amazingly fascinating, this is a movie that threatens you with a good time. #8. The Favourite I appreciate that powdered wig period pieces are coming back into style with shit such as Beauty And The Beast (2017), The Age Of Adaline, and Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. But among the failures of this once well respected sub-genre are good stuff too, for instance, The Favourite, a movie that actually remembers that British people spell some words with a “u”. One of my personal Favourite cliches of films nowadays is having a cast in which literally everybody is an asshole, see #9 and #1. And what I really like particularly with this is that old time-y movies about royalty can be really intimidating to hurdle, even now I have to hype myself up to watch something like Downton Abbey. But this overcomes it by being really entertaining with some great performances from the entire cast, especially Emma Stone showing once again why she deserves an Oscar! And the directing from Yorgos Lanthimos is so good, it actually makes me want to check out The Killing Of A Sacred Deer. The Favourite is a magnificently smartly fun picture that can satisfy both the most bored audience member and the most pretentious film critic. #7. Love, Simon Look, we all have biases. Some lead people to rave about how BlacKkKlansman is the best movie of the year because of how well it portrays black culture and their relationship with the police and evangelical racists. Some lead people raving about Crazy Rich Asians because it had the balls to fill its cast with Asians and Asian Americans. For me, an (at the time) openly bisexual 18 year old who masks most of my anxiety and fears with a very thin facade of comedy, Love, Simon really spoke to me while also entertaining the hell out of me. The script knew exactly when to be funny and when to be serious, when it should have a heartfelt scene and when it should go on a random tangent, and even when it’s trying to be funny or go on a tangent, it gives incredible insight into the main protagonist’s psyche. And for those moments, the context is everything. I remember cringing pretty hard at the whole “coming out as straight” bit in the trailer, but laughing my ass off when it showed up in the film. And Nick Robinson, who plays the titular character, kills it and I think he’s going to go places very soon. All of this culminates at the end, when the emotion is high and I (along with the rest of the theater) are on the edge of our seats, and Love, Simon got me to shed some tears. #6. Ralph Breaks The Internet Of the two million Disney movies released in 2018, this sequel is the highest one ranking on my list. And of the one million animated films released in 2018, this is actually the lowest one ranking on my list. Which kind of surprises me because you wouldn’t think so on the surface. On one hand, it’s just a sequel to a video game movie that lost Best Animated Picture to Brave, how is Wreck It Ralph 2 doing better than the emotional rollercoaster that was Christopher Robin or the long awaited and ton of fun that was The Incredibles 2. But then again, anyone who knows me knows that Wreck It Ralph is one of my favorite Disney cartoons, so how does it barely creep above the smart while not being funny at all Smallfoot or the only surface level hilarity that is Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation? Well, in some sense it’s much better than the original: with superior animation, a cooler concept, and finally realizing that the focus should be entirely on the real star, Princess Vanellope Von Schweetz. On the other hand, it doesn’t even come close to matching up: the humor is a tad sub par, too much is really going on, and considering the very cool concept, it should’ve done more with it. But did I still watch it a ton as soon as I could: absolutely. So who really won here: me for being a little disappointed or Disney who made a very entertaining film? The sixth spot feels about right to me. #5. Annihilation Between J.J. Abrams’s batshit crazy Nazi-zombie experiment Overlord, Steven Spielberg bringing his amazing talent to Ready Player One, Netflix throwing their hat into the “ripping off Big Hero 6″ ring with Next Gen, and do I even need to mention Marvel, 2018 was a damn good year for sci-fi in the middle of a decade that was, as a whole, great for the genre. And while Annihilation isn’t the last we’ll see from science fiction on the list, it is the one that’s here largely because of that. Flatly, I love how the science in this movie works; in general, I tend to prefer my sci-fi very grounded and that is how Annihilation works. I could kind of see how something like this bubble can exist and everything inside it really working this way. But what I really love about this film’s science is that it is a borderline horror flick. Once Natalie Portman walks through into the anti-Wizard Of Oz, the shit that goes down is horrifying. All of a sudden: up is down, left is right, and nobody knows what time it is and I loved it! This kind of gaslighting horror that I don’t see a whole lot of lately really throws the audience through a loop because for once, we don’t know what’s going on either. And for a film to really go so far just to confuse people, I have to at least respect. And to do it so well with some amazing acting on just about everybody’s part, I must love! Annihilation is a serious experience that I wished I was able to catch on the big screen. #4. Sorry To Bother You In 2018, Donald “Childish “Lando Calrissian” Gambino” Glover released his major #1 single, This Is America. Whether you love it or you hate it, you have to admit that it was saying a lot in such a unique way. The world that music video took place in was a nonsensical cartoon to somehow represent the plight of African Americans in the United States. I’m not gonna pretend like I totally understand because I definitely don’t; the point is that the portrayal struck a nerve with a lot of people and, personally, it did feel like a proper way of showing it. And Sorry To Bother You does something very similar, portraying the African American plight in a humorous, cartoonish, and unrealistic way to counteract the very serious, down to earth, and realistic parts. Do black people need to completely show themselves as white to get anything done; maybe not but we all know that people in general are much friendlier and nicer to those who sound like their ideals, usually meaning white. Are we, as a nation, (spoilers) turning poor (and considering how blacks are predisposed to being lower middle class because of reasons relating to how capitalism works, most of the blacks of the world) people into horses; I sure hope not but big companies and better off citizens do tend to think of the working class as just objects to do shit for them. Sorry To Bother You brings up a lot of the problems prevalent in modern society, especially those that directly relate to African Americans, in a palpable and entertaining way is ingenious and amazingly well done thanks to the overwhelming talent of Boots Riley and I cannot wait for his next big project. It’s definitely the best racial relations film of the year, beating out other great films like Monsters And Men, If Beale Street Could Talk, and The Oath. #3. Isle Of Dogs 2018 is a year that really threw me through a loop as far as films went. When I went to see Isle Of Dogs, I was certain that it’ll be the best movie of the year, absolutely no competition. Then, later on, when the #1 film came out, I was certain that would be it. Then the #2 spot came out and made me question everything all over again. Anyway, Isle Of Dogs is Wes Anderson being very Wes Anderson-y while combining it with the same kind of claymation he used in the fantastic Fantastic Mr. Fox and the traditional culture of Japan that’s oh so lovable. And as much as I love the Anderson style, the animation used here, and how Japanese culture is portrayed, involving my favorite animal brings my appreciation over the top. I am so down to get a million more films in which the theme of the picture is that dogs rule. This really is the kind of film that I love just about every aspect of, and though it might mostly be on a surface level way, I really don’t have anything bad to say about this film. It’s almost boring how much I enjoy this, I don’t have much to say except please watch it. It’s so good! #2. Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse Back in 2012, the world as a whole was introduced to a pair of directors mostly known for animation named Phil Lord and Chris Miller when they directed the surprise hit 21 Jump Street and its followup 22 Jump Street. The world then got to know them a little bit better when they seemingly single-handedly jumpstarted the beloved The Lego Movie franchise. Then in 2018, everyone learned that no matter how crazy, Lord and Miller know what they’re doing when their firing spelled doom for the financial flop that was Solo: A Star Wars Story. So when the pair brought their producing and writing talent to a Sony Animation made Spider-Man movie just a year after The Emoji Movie, I think most people were expecting to enjoy it if only because that snippet at the end of Venom was really well animated. But I don’t think anyone was expecting an Academy Award winning film. Whenever I went onto my Twitter for a solid month, all I saw were people exclaiming how Into The Spider-Verse was their favorite movie of the year and then again for another month after the Oscars took place. All of a sudden, Disney Marvel, Warner Bros. DC, and Fox X-Men (rest in peace), have a brand new and major competitor... and for good reason, this movie is incredible. I immediately accepted it as easily the best Spider-Man movie ever, but took a few watchings for me to accept it as the second best film of the year and a few more to accept it as my Phil Lord and savior. It is so much fun, so entertaining, so enjoyable with such great characters, amazing writing, and hilarious comedy all wrapped with a brilliantly animated bow. Another film I really have nothing bad to say about, this is just a fantastic film through and through. Before we get to #1, here’s some Runners Up:

Black Panther This was the year I got a little spent on superhero movies. Considering how I still put Into The Spider-Verse as my #2, clearly not that much, but I just wasn't super amazed by what Marvel, DC, or X-Men had to offer. But I don’t think I even disliked any: Avengers: Infinity War was fun but incredibly unfocused, Teen Titans Go! To The Movies was hilarious but was still just a poor child’s version of Teen Titans, and Deadpool 2 had some great action but not nearly as entertaining as its predecessor. Black Panther was the only one that really left a real mark on me, but even still, it’s not the best film of the year to handle black culture. Even as far as Ryan Coogler films go, I think I’d rather watch Creed or its sequel Creed 2. It’s good but I don’t think it deserved a best picture nomination. Instant Family Hear me out, the movie in which Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne adopt Dora The Explorer and her two bratty siblings directed and written by the same guys behind Daddy’s Home 2 and Horrible Bosses 2 is the feel good movie of the year, is incredibly hilarious and underrated, and even got me to shed a tear by the end. There is no excuse to let Daddy’s Home flourish and this beauty and die, I implore you to please watch it. You will not regret it, let it get big on home media, get more of these made! Vice I get that not everybody gets the Adan McKay style of making a dramedy like in The Big Short or Bombshell, but I do and I love both Christian Bale and Amy Adams so Vice was really up my alley! I just thought of it as a really enjoyable movie with a message I was predisposed to agree with. What really throws this into being a great movie to me is that Christian Bale really is that good in this, maybe one of the best performances in his career. I don’t know, I thought it was funny so I enjoyed it well enough. Won’t You Be My Neighbor? I think most people agree that this was easily the best documentary of the year. As much love as I have for Fahrenheit 11/9 for being my first theatrical documentary and Behind The Curve for being one of few docs that are incredibly entertaining, I had to eventually break down and admit that Won’t You Be My Neighbor (once again) made me cry because I grew up loving Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood that much. Especially now that we’re past A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood leaving not nearly as big of a mark as people were expecting and we’re still watching and talking about this documentary, I think this actually has the lasting impact it earned. Green Book It won best picture, I guess I’ll talk about it. As a movie, Green Book is fine. It’s well made with some good acting, I’ll allow it being considered good. Is it racist? I’d say probably not but it does definitely feel racist. Kinda like that scene from The Office where Michael Scott does his Chris Rock impression; you know he’s not racist and he doesn’t mean for it to come across as it but it still absolutely does. Considering the message of the story is “don’t be racist/homophobic,” I’m pretty sure that it’s not racist/homophobic, it just doesn’t know how to say it without coming across as such. My real big issue is with it winning the same year that had Roma and Can You Ever Forgive Me?, it had no business even being nominated. But outside of all of that, Green Book is an okay movie. Mid90s The 2010s owes a ton to Jonah Hill and I don’t think most people realized that. He told studios how to translate old properties to a modern audience with 21 Jump Street, showed how comedians can combine their sense of humor with the serious setting around them in The Wolf Of Wall Street, and most importantly to this entry, showed how coming of age stories should be told in this day and age with Superbad. Ever since, for better or worse, coming of age films have been trying to recreate that magic. The closest to get it right, in my opinion, is The Edge Of Seventeen but still goes wrong by being much much better, but Mid90s does some really great stuff as well. I appreciate any theatrical film that’s willing to be filmed in a way that doesn’t look theatrical at all. And I also appreciate the likable but very flawed characters portrayed. Mid90s really left a mark in my mind and is a great start to Jonah Hills directorial career. Aggretsuko: We Wish You A Metal Christmas And for my pick of short film of the year, let’s talk about what might be my favorite Netflix series, Aggretsuko! As a cradle between season one to season two, this does a great job at portraying these super relatable characters in a very entertaining scenario all set during Christmas! Maybe it’d make more sense to give this honor to something more impactful like A Sister or clever like I’m Poppy: The Film or even a nice surprise like Harvey Birdman, Attorney General, but no. I refuse. I enjoyed A Very Merry Aggretsuko Christmas much more. Book Club Considering how I’ve spent literally every Worst Of list talking about how awful Fifty Shades Of Grey is, even that year it took off I ended up watching and bitching about Fifty Shades Of Black, I’d like to talk about what is easily the best film to come out of this franchise. Book Club is basically a bunch of old lady celebrities getting together, reading the Fifty Shades books, and talking about their sex lives. It’s like a feature length Gilmore Girls movie and I loved not only the idea, but the film itself was hilarious. I enjoyed the hell out of it. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch As a die hard Black Mirror fanatic, of course I was excited for a full Black Mirror movie with, from what I’ve heard, five hours worth of footage. Especially since its story was told in such a fascinating and unique way, I was interested as hell into this and I loved it! I’ve loved select your own adventure books and games for a long time now, from Detroit: Become Human to Gravity Falls: Dipper and Mabel and the Curse of the Time Pirates' Treasure!: A "Select Your Own Choose-Venture!". So one set in the well established and amazingly well put together world of Netflix’s British Twilight Zone, sounds incredible and it was! It’s just so cool! Bumblebee Laika didn’t have a movie in 2018, but I feel like we still did with Bumblebee. Getting Travis Knight, the director of Kubo And The Two Strings, objectively their best picture, to do a Transformers entry is ingenious! If anyone should know how a creature like this would move and how to differentiate any one robot from another robot, it’s an acclaimed director from Laika. Now that we’ve finally pried this franchise from Michael Bay’s claws and Paramount playing it smart with their directors, maybe we’ll finally get a series of good Transformers films... or maybe Transformers 7 is cancelled and all hope is lost. #1. Hereditary I think the 2010s get a bad wrap when it comes to horror. All too often I hear Gen X-ers proclaiming how, “there’s no good scary movies anymore!” Completely forgetting hits like The Cloverfield Paradox, A Quiet Place, and The First Purge. Every new trend of a certain genre can usually be traced back to one major film: 1930s had Frankenstein, 1980s had Halloween (BTW, the 2018 one is also great), 2000s had The Blair Witch Project, etc. I think this new trend of mixing slow and suspenseful with big jump scares and everything is dark can be thanks largely to The Conjuring. While that franchise might have started the trend, I feel pretty certain that Hereditary perfected it. Every scare is at least mildly horrifying, the loops it throws you through is abundant, at no point are you sure what’s going on, and by the end, you find yourself breathing much heavier than you remember doing. Hereditary is a trip and a half that I loved going through again and again. I think when people think back to what was the best horror film of each decade: 1930s Dracula, 1980s The Shining, 2000s The Ring, 2010s Hereditary. I loved this movie in all its horrific glory.

[jmrphy]

The affective politics of keeping it real

It once made sense for professional intellectuals to bite their tongue in exchange for the influence they could gain by conforming to the dominant language. For a while, this was arguably rational and defensible—perhaps even a game-theoretic necessity for anyone sincerely interested in cultivating a genuinely public and political intellectual project. While it’s obvious the internet has changed the game, old stereotypes die hard and continue to constrain human potential well after their objective basis has disappeared. In particular, the contemporary stereotype of the public intellectual as a self-possessed professional who regularly appears in “the media” to speak on public affairs in the royal language, is a contingent product of the postwar rise of mass broadcasting (one-to-many) media. In much of the postwar period, the classic “mass media”—newspapers, radio, television—had extremely large, mass audiences and where characterized by high costs of entry. This technical and economic environment offered huge rewards for speaking the dominant language within the paramaters of respectable opinion. It was probably with cable television that a centrifugal tendency began the processes of fragmentation, polarization, and decentralization that would eventually bring us to where we are today.

Today, there is no longer any mass audience to speak to through dominant channels, overwhelming majorities do not trust mass media, and even the cognitively fragmented semi-mass audiences that remain will only listen to what they already think. Not to mention the masses probably have less power today than anytime in the twentieth century, so why bother even trying to speak to the masses? As a young academic, if I play by the rules for the next 10 years so that I might be respected by influential academics or gain access to regularly speaking on BBC or something like that, I would have sacrificed all of my creative energy for quite nearly nothing. As far as I can tell, today, the idea of biding your time as a young and respectable intellectual, to one day earn a platform of political significance, appears finally and fully obsolete. In one sense, this is already obvious to the millions who long ago stopped following mainstream media and long ago lost all respect for academic credentials; but in another sense, an overwhelming number of human beings continue to think, speak, and behave as if we are still operating in this old world, as if there is some reason to not say everything one feels like saying, as if there is some social or political or economic reward that will come toward the end of a respectable career of professional self-restraint. It’s easy for autodidacts and natural outsiders to say, “Duh, we told you so,” but this in no way comprehends or solves the really striking and politically significant puzzle that an extraordinary degree of human power remains voluntarily repressed for rewards and punishments that no longer exist.

Just as the self-restrained professional intellectual is shaped by the rewards of a media environment long dead, so too are they shaped by punishments which are little more than paranoid fears. Many academics and professionals believe that for the sake of their careers they must exercise the utmost discretion in what they put online, and they confidently tell young people to exercise the same discretion for the sake of their own futures. But the reality is almost the exact opposite. First of all, with some important exceptions of course, nobody gives a shit about what you put on the internet. Nobody with any power over you has the time to follow, and the few that do won’t care enough about you to follow or dig very much. In my now slightly above-average history of recklessly posting to the internet, before and after getting a competitive professional job, the worst that has ever happened is that nobody cares (and that’s most of the time). But the best that has happened, here and there, is that a lot of people care and appreciate it and new friends are made and all kinds of new paths appear, individually and collectively.

The self-restraining, strategic professional intellectual is not only operating on incorrect beliefs but beliefs which are almost exactly inverse to the truth: today, playing by rules of respectability is perhaps the straightest path to unemployment and impotent resentment, while simply cultivating the capacity to say or do something real (by definition prohibited by respectability), is a necessary (and sometimes even sufficient) condition for being genuinely valued by anyone, anywhere. Obviously if you have certain dimensions of poor character (i.e. you’re a racist or something) then reckless posting to the internet will likely, and perhaps rightly, lead to many negative consequences. But if you’re a basically decent person who just wants to push a little harder on what you really think, what you really feel, your experiences or your interests, or even just fuck around, the conventional wisdom still drastically overestimates the punishments and underestimates the rewards of doing so.

If these comments feel to you outdated because you think all of this already happened years ago with the initial rise of the internet, I would say you underestimate the quantity of human beings (and the qualitative intensities they could produce), who have yet to fully update their beliefs and behaviors around these matters. In some sense, the United States only just now, in 2016, elected its first President of the internet age. The fact that millions of people are genuinely perplexed and horrified by what is happening in this regard, is an index of how little the internet’s rewiring of power circuits has actually been integrated in the perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors of most people.

If political theory will ever be a world-historical causal factor in the radically fragmented and decentralized age of information, I believe it will at least partially have to consist in living, interpersonal transmissions of what works to produce power within concrete, available situations. I suppose it is on that belief that I am reflecting on matters such as the micro-politics of self-expression, with some personal context as anecdotal data. I believe there exist objective, micro-political mechanisms whereby being real generates real power; that many people under-estimate or mistrust the objective reality of this mechanism; that many people live under compliant resentment because of incorrect beliefs about how the macro-social institutional environment will respond to their idiosyncratic deviations.

If I speak about myself at all, it’s not because I’m special or great but precisely because I am nothing, nobody, yet it has always been in learning how to become nobody that I seem to unlock whatever few real powers now possess me. I’m a young nobody academic or writer or whatever, I’m not famous or influential in academia or even on the internet, but I have been able to cultivate and maintain an energetic, autonomous, creative intellectual life that feels to me on the right track intellectually and politically, by what I think is a more accurate but still uncommon map of our immediate strategic environment, combined with periodically forcing myself to push outward on what feels to be in some way not allowed.

I have almost come to see this as a methodological principle—wherever you genuinely think or observe or desire to do something that you would be vaguely punished socially for saying/doing at a dinner party, then saying/doing that on the internet almost always produces immanent power and its by-product joy; it almost always clears debilitating noise and advances one of the threads that make-up the continiuty of one’s life. The entire life orientation that believes facing toward power is the image of intellectual and political sophistication—this, in my view, is the spitting image of mystified contemporary complicity. If I am trying to share how I think all of this works, and how I have experienced it, it is because I dream of what would happen if thousands of highly capable intellects currently toiling under institutional respectability suddenly realized they have no reason to self-censor and everything to gain from simply disarming their objectively miscalibrated expression calculators.

from Justin Murphy http://ift.tt/2tKvQUW

[theliterateape]

Screaming at Weeds Doesn't Make Them Disappear

By Don Hall

Jesus Christ.

As the very real possibility that Trump & Company may continue to trample through our federal government, overturning established laws, creating distractions for us to buy into, freak out, and miss it when they do the real work of dismantling the safety net (that was filled with holes, anyway) things have become downright 1968.

Now that he gets another bite at the SCOTUS apple, it might be like 1950 meets 1968. Christ, all he needs is a war with a draft and someone send in the Terminator to kill him before he is born. 

People are anxious and enraged on both sides of the Trump Machine and a sense of petty vengeance is in the air like the scent of magnolias and burning dog. It's as if everyone forgot why we had to codify our rights in writing through war to get them even temporarily established. That our relatively short battle against thousands of years of tribalism, subjugation of women, religious persecution, and the guards of the king (or pharaoh) torturing you for saying the wrong thing was over because, in our arrogance, we decided that enough was enough. We put our foot down and said "No more racism." and somehow expected the march of inter-tribal animus and war that has been present and ongoing for thousands of years was going to simply evaporate out of fear of our online mob.

It's as if, in this fragile democracy, we've never been at our worst than this time in history. That Trump is the sum total of the most horrifying mistakes we could exact upon ourselves — like he's the really fucking fast zombies of 28 Days Later or the population killing virus of so many dystopian novels and films.

Except that I remember how angry I was when the Scalia-infused SCOTUS handed George W his screwy Electoral College win and spent the next eight years pissing and moaning about everything from the corruption of his cabinet to his inability to say certain words correctly to the fact that Cheney had no heart but a mechanism that ran on sand and hate. To me (and so many of us) W was the apotheosis of everything wrong with America. It certainly was the worst we had ever faced as a country, right?

"I say we had best look our times and lands searchingly in the face, like a physician diagnosing some deep disease. Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present, and here in the United States. Genuine belief seems to have left us. The underlying principles of the States are not honestly believ'd in, (for all this hectic glow, and these melodramatic screamings,) nor is humanity itself believ'd in. What penetrating eye does not everywhere see through the mask? The spectacle is appaling. We live in an atmosphere of hypocrisy throughout.

The men believe not in the women, nor the women in the men. A scornful superciliousness rules in literature. The aim of all the littérateurs is to find something to make fun of. A lot of churches, sects, &c., the most dismal phantasms I know, usurp the name of religion. Conversation is a mass of badinage. From deceit in the spirit, the mother of all false deeds, the offspring is already incalculable. An acute and candid person, in the revenue department in Washington, who is led by the course of his employment to regularly visit the cities, north, south and west, to investigate frauds, has talk'd much with me about his discoveries.

The depravity of the business classes of our country is not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater. The official services of America, national, state, and municipal, in all their branches and departments, except the judiciary, are saturated in corruption, bribery, falsehood, mal-administration; and the judiciary is tainted. The great cities reek with respectable as much as non-respectable robbery and scoundrelism. In fashionable life, flippancy, tepid amours, weak infidelism, small aims, or no aims at all, only to kill time. In business, (this all-devouring modern word, business,) the one sole object is, by any means, pecuniary gain. The magician's serpent in the fable ate up all the other serpents; and money-making is our magician's serpent, remaining to-day sole master of the field.

The best class we show, is but a mob of fashionably dress'd speculators and vulgarians. True, indeed, behind this fantastic farce, enacted on the visible stage of society, solid things and stupendous labors are to be discover'd, existing crudely and going on in the background, to advance and tell themselves in time. Yet the truths are none the less terrible. I say that our New World democracy, however great a success in uplifting the masses out of their sloughs, in materialistic development, products, and in a certain highly-deceptive superficial popular intellectuality, is, so far, an almost complete failure in its social aspects, and in really grand religious, moral, literary, and esthetic results.

In vain do we march with unprecedented strides to empire so colossal, outvying the antique, beyond Alexander's, beyond the proudest sway of Rome. In vain have we annex'd Texas, California, Alaska, and reach north for Canada and south for Cuba. It is as if we were somehow being endow'd with a vast and more and more thoroughly-appointed body, and then left with little or no soul."

— Democratic Vistas by Walt Whitman (1871)

1871?

Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present, and here in the United States.

The men believe not in the women, nor the women in the men.

The depravity of the business classes of our country is not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater.

I say that our New World democracy, however great a success in uplifting the masses out of their sloughs, in materialistic development, products, and in a certain highly-deceptive superficial popular intellectuality, is, so far, an almost complete failure in its social aspect...

OK. This is not to say that things aren’t bad in the United Skeets of Racist-murka. Is Trump bad? Duh. Is he Hitler Redux? No. Is he the worst president in our history? Perhaps the least qualified for the job but hardly the worst. I mean, so far. Are we going to have to refight the battles for the rights of women? Yup. For police to stop killing (mostly black) people? Definitely. Were we ever going to be able to relax and forget about these things? Not if we're smart.

This is to say that it has never been as great as the bullshit textbooks that erased women and blacks and Native Americans and immigrants told us it was. Never. In 1871, Walt wrote out how crap things were from his vantage and, as I read his text, it pretty accurately describes things as they are today. 

Breathe. Acknowledge this fact. 

Now what? 

Get a fucking grip on yourself, stop flailing your arms and typing fingers and cease the fearmongering and hyperbolic spew. Sure, elections based on fear and hatred of the opposition win all the time but when we go there, we get crap for leaders. Every time. 

Grab a can of perspective, crack the top, and understand that the march of history and the essential nature of human beings is to be constantly fighting for and against the concepts the country is founded upon. Going to war with one another is hardwired in our DNA, fighting for dominance is the defining element of our species. If equality among everyone was so fucking easy, why do we keep having to fight for it?

It's as if our ancestors have been toiling away, trying to get rid of weeds in the yard and we woke up to more weeds and threw up our arms, fell to our knees (all set to strains of Barber's Adagio for Strings in G minor) and screamed "But WHYYYYYY?" when we saw that more weeds had sprouted up overnight. Weeds, like tribalism, hatred for the Other, the enslavement of one another, superstition, and war, always keep coming back. The arrogance to assume that because we did some weeding before (I mean, women got the right to vote less than one hundred years ago in this Fabergé Egg of a society) that we could just stop weeding is Icarus Wax Wing-level shit.

Finally, this is also not a call to be more civil (despite the fact that it is called "civil disobedience" and not "act like a fucking asshole disobedience") but a call to be better at your incivility. If the best you can come up with is to insult Republicans with names a fourth grader could come up with after watching HBO for an hour, you’re a fucking dimwit. 

Also, if you absolutely cannot resist being an angry fourth grader barking at the weeds, do it while also doing the real work of systemic change, which isn't fun or exciting or blessed with any sense of immediate gratification. If the best disobedience (civil or otherwise) you have is to flip off the president or call anyone who disagrees with your worldview garbage, you're just fucking lazy.

The lesson we can learn from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is that, in order to win, we need to organize, get out the vote of people who generally don't, and provide a candidate of merit and hope rather than a well-financed campaign of fear and rage. Provide an alternative to the Trump Machine rather than shame people into a moral quagmire of our own making. Ideas rather than insults; hope rather than condemnation.