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What I’ve Been Doing Instead of Posting Anything Here: Fiction I

October 4, 2008

I’ve been absent from this blog due to college, and this will continue until I learn how to balance homework with this kind of thing, which will likely be never. But there are poor hapless souls who may want to read some of what I’ve been doing in my Fiction Writing class at Columbia, and they must be served. Some selected pieces:

“Reaganomics” (Currently Unfinished):

I can’t really say where the idea came from, but it was a pretty dumb fucking idea.

It started on a Saturday in the park. The trees were shaking at the breeze and it was nice and warm but I was hot because of my thick green army jacket. It wasn’t like I had anywhere to put it though. I took a long drag off of a cigarette. This was what I did on Saturdays, I sat in the park with Jones and we talked, conversed about whatever and what have you. Jones was a good listener but he never had much to contribute, mainly because I never had any idea what the fuck he was trying to say. Jones was an old black guy with a stubbly, droopy face, always behind his Rayban sunglasses, looking like a schizophrenic Ray Charles.

“Hahzit?,” Jones shouted at the air to no one in particular.

“Do you understand what I’m getting at?,” I said.

“NawnawnawnawmahIsayhahzitgowhatchudowhatchudo.” The words had a way of hurrying out of Jones’ mouth in messy but single-file order, like antsy kindergarteners on their way down the hall from home room to P.E.

“Exactly, you get it. What I’m trying to say is that we’re invisible. The homeless, I mean. People care about us as long as they don’t have to look at us. They donate to charities and act all Christian-like and compassionate and like their making a difference and shit but they take a look at me and they think I’m about to rape them and take their wallet so they avert their eyes and keep walking.”

“IsawBahmananhewasgon’,” Jones interjected, jangling the coins in his Dixie cup.

“Totally, totally. I mean, look at all these sad fucks.” I gestured dramatically to the people milling about us: a woman with olive skin and long black hair pushing an unseen toddler in an expensive stroller, two girls in too-big sunglasses and too-short shorts chatting and absent-mindedly sipping at cups of coffee, a bald man in a dress shirt and tie rolling a heavy black bag behind him and thinking about the stock market or his fantasy football picks or some boring thing like that.

“Hypothetical,” I say.

“Hippozetical,” Jones parrots back.

“Hypothetical. Say that big shot nine to five asshole was sitting here spouting the crazy shit you say. Five minutes time, there would be cops here, paramedics maybe. ‘Sir, are you alright? Sir, do you have any prior medical conditions? Sir, Sir, Sir. Let’s get you to a hospital sir, let’s get you some help.’ But look at you, nobody notices a guy like you. This, my friend, is the foundation of Reaganomics.”

“IknewRaygun,” Jones blurted out.

“Right, then you know how much of a dick he was. Reagan didn’t invent trickle-down economics – that’s what it’s technically called – he didn’t invent it, mind you, but he made such a big deal about it that they put his fucking name on it. Trickle-down theory says that if you help out the rich, everyone else benefits. Of course that’s bullshit, but people believed it because it appeared to work. It was an illusion, an economic magic trick. Reagan was fucking David Copperfield disappearing The Statue of Liberty and everyone was going ‘Ooo’ and ‘Ahh’ and thinking it was real. Like I said, the poor are invisible, but the rich are so visible that you can’t help but see them. If the rich are obviously doing better, than everyone else will become convinced that the whole country is doing better. That’s how it works. Donald Trump is doing pretty well so I guess the economy is going good.

“But there are benefits to being invisible, ya know? You can get away with shit, if you want to. That’s where this idea came from, what I’ve been trying to get to. I’m gonna make my home right here in this park, and as long as I stay out of people’s direct line of sight, I could stay here for my whole friggin’ life.”

“…..Hahzit?”


I got started that day. I walked up and down the whole park, scoping out somewhere to set up camp. Most of the trees I found were too short or too tall or didn’t look like they’d support my weight. (Plus whatever I decided to bring up there with me.) As I got deeper in to the park, I ducked under a strip of yellow tape without thinking about it (See, that, that was dumb.) and was presented with my dream tree, a real beauty. She was a good ways off of the ground but not too huge to climb, a big strong pillar of a tree, I couldn’t tell you what kind. The boughs exploded off of the pillar and left a big wide space for me to set up, with a thick roof of foliage overhead.

I yanked some sheets of wood from a construction site while the workers were stuffing their faces with fast food, a tarp too. I’d been collecting other shit too, for weeks. I’d spent a week putting together a little rope ladder with planks of scrap wood as the rungs. I was proud of it though I knew I’d probably fall off of the damn thing and break my neck at some point. I’d even managed to “procure” a nice sleeping bag. Luxury. I got Jones to help me haul all of it up there, using some rope as a crude pulley system. It took forever because Jones kept tying everything up with fancy little bows.

“Gottabepretty!” he’d yell up at me as I goaded him to just tie a simple knot. I set up the sheets of wood as a flooring that rested on the branches. It was flimsy, but it worked. I tied the tarp up into the tree to make a tent, which was also flimsy but also worked. That night I made a trip down to see what I’d made from the ground. It was actually quite inconspicuous. The tree gave just enough cover that a passer-by probably wouldn’t notice that there was a guy fucking living up there. And there didn’t seem to be many passers-by in this part of the park anyways. I climbed back up and got to sleep in my grown-up tree house in no time, basking in my own genius.

I was woken the next morning at about eight in the morning by the faint smell of weed and the unholy sound of a Phish song playing. I’d been to enough music festivals in the nineties to recognize what this meant. I emerged from my tent to see a crowd of maybe a dozen kids, long-haired and sign-holding, a couple body-painted with words that I couldn’t read from that high up. Fucking hippies.

“Hey, there he is!” a girl in a green bandanna shouted, pointing up at me. The kids erupted with applause and cheers. Jesus Christ, it was too early for this.

“What the fuck are you people doing here?,” I yelled down to them.

“We’re here to support you, man!” someone cried enthusiastically.

“Oh god-what? What is this? Look, let me come down there – ”

“No, man!” the same voice interrupted. “You can’t give up the cause!”

“What fucking cause!?”

“The trees, they’re going to cut them down. Those damn Nazis who run this city are going to disrespect the inalienable right of these trees to exist. But not if you have anything to say about it, eh!” The crowd cheered at that.

“What? No! You jackasses are gonna ruin everything.”

“No, no, don’t worry, the cops should be here within a few hours but we’ve got it covered. We’ve all been practicing our non-violent resistance techniques and Sebastian here has some awesome protest songs that he’s gonna jam on and – ”

“Gah! Fuck off! All of you! Right now!” I stormed back into my tent and got back in my sleeping bag. A few minutes later, the sound of acoustic guitars and chanting wafted up to me. I angrily zipped the sleeping bag up and sealed myself inside, my little cocoon blocking out as much of the noise as it could.

I awoke a few hours later at the slight vibration of my haphazard floor. I unzipped the sleeping bag and crawled out of it to see a little basket sitting in front of my tent, attached to a rope. I crawled over to my tent’s opening and looked out. They’d devised their own pulley system using an overhead branch and lifted the basket up to me. It was adorned with flowers and I opened it to find more food than I’d had at my grasp in years. Homemade sandwiches, little baggies of trail mix, cookies, a bottle of water. I peered out over the edge of my platform and looked down at the crowd of dirty kids, beaming up at me and waiting for me to react. (There must’ve been twice as many by then.) I gave a grateful little smile and a wave. I leaned back and dug through the basket some more. I felt something at the bottom and pulled it out. It was a bag of weed and a little green glass pipe. Hmm.

I got to my feet and raised my fist in the air, proclaiming “NO ONE’S GOING TO CUT THIS TREE DOWN TODAY!!” Raucous cheers all around.

- – - – - -

“9/11″ (Journal Entry):

At that time, when I was in the sixth grade, I would get woken up by mom before she left for work. I’d get ready and then I’d sit and wait until it was time to start walking to school. The cartoons at that time were never very interesting to me at eleven years old so I preferred to watch the morning news shows. On all the shows they were talking about how a plane had hit some building in New York and they were showing footage of the building, with the other tower sitting next to it unharmed. There was a big hole in the side and the smoke was pouring out and climbing the sky like bubbles underwater. They were talking to some scared sounding woman who was on her cell phone. She’d been there when the plane had hit and was talking about how the ground had rumbled. I couldn’t figure out why she sounded so scared.

Then something glided nicely across the screen and turned into a ball of fire on the side of the other tower. The woman let out a small scream and Katie Couric and Tom Lauer suddenly stopped talking and everyone got silent for what felt like a long time. For the first time ever, it seemed like no one on TV had anything to say. Then they came back, calm and composed as ever. That was the way that I really knew that there wasn’t anything to worry about. I was thinking about this logically. I’d seen Michael Bay movies before. I knew that one of those jets filled with lots of people would’ve presented you with an explosion worthy of a record-breaking summer release, not the messy, smoky little holes I was looking at right now. The buildings would have collapsed immediately. No, these must have been very small planes, those ones that celebrities fly in. The buildings must have been evacuated. This must have been a small and insignificant tragedy, one that the news cycle will forget and discard a week or two from now. Besides, if this were truly something to worry about, that long silence would’ve been followed by screams and cries of panic, shocked and terrified voices. I suppose that at that age it never occurred to me that news anchors are likely trained for this kind of situation, taught how to be devoid of emotion in the face of all things.

I went to school, unaffected. It was a strange day, though. They announced early in the day that no student was to use the computers that were in every classroom. The teachers did though. They gave us our work and then rushed off to bury their faces in their computer screens, talked in secretive whispers in the halls, made quiet phone calls. When they released us at the end of the day, that was when it sunk in that something was indeed wrong. All the parents were waiting outside, more than I’d ever seen in one place at once. They stood separately, anxiously, as if they were all waiting for the mother ship to land. The curb was so choked with cars that it looked like someone was having a party down the street. My mom explained to me what had happened and I listened and tried to discern how I was expected to react. On the ride home, I thought about the one kid there must have been who’s parents maybe didn’t think to show up and had to walk home all alone, and it made me sad.

When we got home, my dad and my cousin were sitting out on the deck on the back of our house. They worked in the same building at the time, and they’d both been sent home early when they evacuated Chicago. They were sitting there smoking, watching the news reports on a TV that they’d brought outside, something I can’t remember my family ever having done before or since. It was actually a really nice day, not a cloud in the sky. It had been the same in New York. We sat on the deck and stared at the TV and talked and sometimes didn’t talk.

When it got dark my cousin went home and we went inside. I asked my mom if I still had to do my homework and she said yes and helped me with it on the couch. That night, we kept watching, soaking up ever bit of detail because we were too far away to do anything else. And that night the news anchors kept talking and didn’t sign off, and the talk show hosts never came on to say good night.

- – - – - -

“Wedding Night”:

In extreme body modification culture, the term ’subincision’ refers to a procedure in which the underside of the penis is cut open from head to base, effectively exposing the urethra, which is then left exposed. I underwent this procedure about eight months before I met Rachel at a John Mayer concert. The subincision had been carried out by a skinny pale twig of a guy who I’d known since I first got into body modification. His name is Elijah. Everybody knows Elijah, there’s no one else in the state who really does this kind of thing.

Elijah’s apartment is a ratty shithole in the south suburbs and it looks like a meth dealer lives there or something. (Considering how little anyone really knows about Elijah, that’s probably true.) The carpet’s filthy with dirt and dust and bits of food and shit and the furniture is bad and outdated and it looks like it would break if you sat on it. You go there the first time and you’re all scared and you’re thinking ‘why the fuck did I come here’? You’re wondering if this creepy guy is about to knock you out and you’re going to wake up in a dumpster at midnight, minus your wallet and your sneakers with a mysteriously sore asshole. You’re thinking about how hard it’s going to be to tell the doctors that you got AIDs because you let some perv drug you and cut your dick open on his piss-stained bed with a dirty steak knife.

Then he takes you into his garage and all that goes away. It’s not really a garage, not anymore. There are bright fluorescent lights on the ceiling and stainless steel cabinets on the walls. There’s a clean sink and a sort of metal gurney in the middle of the floor. It’s a standard operating room, basically. Thinking reasonably – as if you’d even be doing this kind of thing if you thought reasonably at all – this shouldn’t make you feel that much better. So the place looks nicer than you’d expected. It doesn’t make what you’re about to do any safer or this guy any more sanitary, but it works, ya know? The sterile chrome look of everything, the smell of disinfectant and latex gloves. It makes you feel as if you’re in safe hands, as stupid of a feeling as that might be. And before you know it, your pants are off, you’re on the table, the anesthesia or whatever Elijah gave you is putting you under, and he’s taking out a clean little scalpel from a drawer. Elijah always talks about how he did a bunch of years of medical school and dropped out, but how do you know to believe him?

Elijah tells you about the recovery process on the phone before you come over. You’ll be wrapped up tight with ice and bandages for a couple of weeks and it’ll hurt like hell at first. It’ll always hurt like hell but you’ll get used to it. That’s kind of the point. Come back in a few weeks and he’ll take off the bandages and check it out. You’ll probably have to invest in some kind of special undergarment to keep your dick in place and to keep it from getting infected too easily. Maybe even a good jockstrap would work. The point is, you don’t want it shifting around a lot down there. Sports or any kind of physical activity that involves running will be out of the question for a while. Keep the incision as clean as you can. Your urethra will let out at the base now and you’ll probably have to piss sitting down from now on, so say goodbye to the old urinal. Depending on how the procedure works out, you may experience spraying when you urinate from now on, meaning that it might come out as a messy spray rather than a uniform stream. That didn’t happen with me though.

Like I said, all this was about eight months before the concert. It was my third John Mayer show that year. You could barely hear him over the chorus of screaming girls but that was far from the point. My friends from the modification scene would laugh their asses off if they saw me at one of these concerts and they’d probably never speak to me again if they knew the real reason why I went. I saw Rachel for the first time after forty-five minutes of searching my way through the crowd of girls that surrounded the stage. She had long blond hair almost down to her ass at the time and was in a pair of blue jeans and a tight but cautiously not-too-tight pink t-shirt with a picture of a fairy on it. That’s actually kind of how she looks, like one of those little fairies they print on notebooks and diaries and t-shirts for girls like Rachel. Long hair and an upturned nose, wide-eyed and petite.

I can’t tell you exactly what it was that separated her from the swarm of similar girls who were mobbing the stage at the moment, but it was just something in those big green eyes of her and the way she stood there smiling in the dark. I sidled over to her and pretended like I was really feeling whatever nice thing John Mayer was strumming on about on his acoustic guitar. The awkward part is starting up a conversation. It’s not like the girls who come to these shows are looking for guys. I knew I’d caught her eye though. I was in my sky blue polo and khakis, clean cut and whitebred. My eyes were clenched shut and I was swaying gently. I looked like I was about to cry. That totally worked. Rachel taps me on the shoulder and asks me if I like this song and I tell her that it practically changed my life. She believes me. God bless her.

I suppose I look like an asshole right now, eh? Well, you’ve got to understand the position I’m in. I grew up in the most conservative and evangelical of households, a household that I left at eighteen in search of wilder times. The body modification thing started right away with piercings and such, which a lot of people are into, but I’m a part of that rare group that can’t help but take it further and further. It’s not easy to explain it to other people. I suppose we just see perfection in the things we do, like your body should represent how you feel. I’m sure the psychoanalysts would have a party if they got a hold of a guy like me.

We tend to congregate, my kind, because it’s good to know that there are people who feel just as strange about being human as you do. And in my group of friends I’d been presented with every kind of mutilated beauty you could imagine, with their labial piercings and split clitoral hoods. None of them held any appeal to me. My type of girl is more – shall we say – “vanilla”. The girls in the fairy shirts. The girls like Rachel. The girls like my poor, dead mother who I left behind and never got to say goodbye to. Seriously, Freud would love me. It’s just a sweetness, that kind of unconditional warmth and kindness that so many people lack. A respite from pain that I usually seek.

My taste in women obviously clashes with my lifestyle. I learned a long time ago that you have to lie your ass off if you ever expect to be happy. Pretend. Fake. Be a poseur. I started off cruising Christian rock concerts. ‘Cruising’ sounds like such a dirty term to use but that’s basically what it was. Anyway, that’s how I started out, but the girls were just too…into it. Fists pumping in the air and eyes filled with righteous passion. If these girls hadn’t been raised in churches they’d be blowing rock stars backstage. That wasn’t what I was looking for. No, it was the adult contemporary guys that attracted all the right girls. John Mayer and James Blunt and Jason Mraz and all those other pussies. It was slow going at first. It took me a while to learn how to work things, how to start talking to these kinds of girls. After that, the relationships never lasted long. I was always too scared. Scared of how they’d react when they found out about me. I wasn’t ready to give up my little fetish. I got too much out of it and it was too much a part of me. I knew it would take really falling in love to make me give it up. Yeah, I know how lame I sound right now.

A few months after I first started going out with Rachel, I was sitting next to her in the car on the way back from seeing some romantic comedy that she was excited for and I’m looking at her and I realize that I’ve got to give it up. That was when I made my choice. Within a few weeks, I’d pretty much dropped out of the scene. All my friends told me that we’d still be cool and everything, but I haven’t spoken to most of them in ages.

I gave it all up, but in a way, it was too late. The subincision procedure is often the first in a line of procedures that accelerate towards a particular goal. A few months after my subincision, Elijah said it was fine for the superincision, if I wanted it. That’s where they cut the top part of your dick open too. If you’re already subincised, they basically just split the thing down the middle, so that the head is still one piece but the shaft has a big space down the middle. There’s all kinds of places you can go with this stuff, sexually, if you’re into the pain. A month before I met Rachel I got the head split, too. Full genital bisection. With the full split, it basically gives the impression that you have two penises. Having surgery to get what others would pay to have fixed if their kid was born that way. It’s not easy to explain it to other people.

At this point you’re probably starting to wonder how I spared Rachel from my fucked up little buddy up until this point. Another unintentional benefit in a guy like me dating girls like her: she’s a virgin, and she’s saving it for marriage. I always figured that if it got to the point where she was going to see it and I was going to have to come clean, she’d love me way too much to let it affect her. I didn’t worry about it.

Fast-forward. It’s a few years since me and Rachel met and I did a crazy fucking thing and asked her to marry me. I still regret it to this day. I kept saying to myself that I was going to tell her beforehand. I was going to tell her everything about who I used to be and what I’ve done to myself, but the problem is…that’s really fucking hard. I never realized how much of a coward I was until I was faced with this and I couldn’t do it. I knew this was going to be terrible. What would it be like for her? Terrible. Terrible, terrible, terrible. I just couldn’t get the words to come out of my mouth. Every time I tried it was always came out wrong. Something like this:

“Rachel?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Okay.”

“I, um . . . my, uh . . . well, ya know I used to . . . it’s just – I really love you.”

Such a pussy.

No, believe me, it really went that far, all the way to the wedding. That week was agony. I could barely focus on anything. I have no idea what the ceremony was like, I was too preoccupied with shame and embarrassment and horrible thoughts of what the look on her face was going to be when she saw it. And then after the wedding I got strangely optimistic. I was sitting there at the reception thinking about how much she loved me and how much I love her and how love can overcome anything and all that, and I felt good. I felt like we could make it though this.

Jesus Christ, what was I thinking?

The night came and we went up to our hotel room, a real swank place that her parents paid for, with a jacuzzi and champaign. And boy did she want it at that point. Before I knew it we were in the bed, rolling around in the sheets and fooling around and somehow I’m so overcome with happiness that I’ve forgotten all about my disgusting fucked-up dick. And then Rachel reaches undoes my belt and reaches one soft hand down the front of my pants, feels around, and stops fucking dead. I swear to god that neither of us said anything or moved for eight hours. It couldn’t have been any less than that.

“…What is that?” she asks. She has this terror and disgust in her voice that I’ve never heard before.

“What?” (yeah, like I don’t know what she’s talking about.)

“What is-…it’s your-…it’s not…right.”

It’s at that point that I decide to sit up and start trying to explain myself. I give her every sordid detail of my secret life and how I’ve been lying and she sits there and stares at me with the iciest look on her face. She doesn’t even twinge like everyone else does when I describe my procedures. Occasionally she interrupts me with questions in a cool monotone. “How do you pee?”, “Can you still get an erection?” I finish and I start laying on the pleas of forgiveness.

Rachel stands up and turns her back to me. “I married a freak,” she says. My heart sinks. “Jesus, I can’t believe I did this.” She just keep repeating that as she goes into the bathroom and changes, and as she packs her stuff, and one last time before she turns and looks at me and shakes her head and walks out the door.

Our divorce was surprisingly speedy. She wasn’t weird around me, but her family totally was. They just looked so disgusted. They must’ve kept thinking the same thoughts the whole time. I can’t believe we had him over for dinner so many times, that we hugged him and shook his hand. I’m scum, basically. I might as well have turned out to be a sex offender.

A month after our wedding one of my old modification friends calls me up out of the blue and tells me to come over to his place. He’s got the computer on and he’s brought up some crazy fetish site and he goes “Either I’m really fucked up right now or that’s Rachel in this video.” In the video, Rachel walks around a hotel room and she licks stuff. Seriously. Doorknobs, dressers, the TV, the Bible in the bottom drawer, the friggin’ toilet, you name it. Running her tongue up and down whatever she can get her hands on and looking into the camera with cold, sexy eyes that I never saw in all my years with her.

We meet up at this restaurant after the divorce hearings are all over to say goodbye one last time. In a way, even after all this, I still loved her. It’s not easy to explain it to other people.

But I ask her about the website anyway. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wanna watch her squirm.

“That is not any of your business,” she hisses at me. She drops her voice low and ducks her head, as if she suddenly expects someone she knows to be sitting in the next booth. “It pays good and it’s not like I’m taking my clothes off or doing anything sexual.”

“God. Do you just do it for the money or do you actually like that kind of thing?”

When I say that, she looks at the table and then she looks to her side absent-mindedly and never says anything in response.

I get up and put my coat on. I’ve got to go, I tell her. “Maroon 5 is playing tonight and I’ll be late if I don’t leave now.”

And that’s about all that’s worth posting. Now back to ignoring this thing and trying to force myself to type this paper I have to do for Monday.

- Sean, toiling in the depths of academia, or whatever.

OCT08

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Real-Time Expert Film Commentary: BRAINSCAN

August 22, 2008

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Tonight on Real-Time Expert Film Commentary we review the 1994 Edward Furlong classic, “Brainscan”. This time with animated .gifs(!) and assistance from The Mysterious New Zealand Noodle Man. Let’s get started, shall we?

I’m watching a movie called ‘Brainscan’. It stars Edward Furlong and it’s about an evil videogame.

We shall see if it’s truly commentary-worthy. I’m already laughing at the mid-90s technology. about 20 hours ago from twitterrific

“Dude, its an interactive CD-ROM!!” about 20 hours ago from twitterrific

These kids seem pretty excited by the prospect of an INTERACTIVE video game. I don’t think they understand what a video game is. about 20 hours ago from twitterrific

BOOBS!! about 20 hours ago from twitterrific

Furlong is a creepy little voyeur. It’s the role he was born to play. about 20 hours ago from twitterrific

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If this kid moves in next door to you, you should probably invest in some curtains.

He called the company thru his computer! Whoa, dude. It’s like he can talk to people with his computer. I wish I could do that. about 20 hours ago from twitterrific

ProjectX2 @Dr_Moonmaster How are you sending these messages to me? STOP COMMUNICATING WITH THE DEVIL! about 20 hours ago from TwitterFox in reply to Dr_Moonmaster

Damn principle trying to screw with the horror movie club!….wait, what school would allow a horror movie club?? about 20 hours ago from twitterrific

@ProjectX2 I can’t stop. I AM THE DEVIL. about 20 hours ago  from twitterrific  in reply to ProjectX2

Furlong is playing the videogame, which let’s you see through the eyes of a killer. Y’know, like Animal Crossing. about 20 hours ago from twitterrific

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He’s cutting off a guy’s foot. I’m sorry, but that’s just taking a fetish too far. about 20 hours ago from twitterrific

The murder really happened, because this time – THE GAME IS FOR REAL. about 20 hours ago from twitterrific

Foot in the fridge. Almost as bad as head in the fridge, and not nearly as bad as balls in the fridge. about 20 hours ago from twitterrific

ProjectX2 I lost my balls in the fridge once. about 20 hours ago from TwitterFox

@ProjectX2 They’re such a pain to thaw too. about 20 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to ProjectX2

Oh shit, some creepy devil guy just came out of the TV! Bad special effects! Weird mohawk/mullet hairdo! Truly terrifying stuff. about 20 hours ago from twitterrific

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What. The. Fuck. A year after Jurassic Park and this is the best they could do? Wow.

He’s dancing around to Primus. It gets scarier and scarier. about 20 hours ago from twitterrific

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The horror.  The horror.

Apparently, watching a girl undress makes her fall in love with you. My suspicions are correct. about 20 hours ago from twitterrific

He tried making a video of himself playing the game. I think he also recorded some kind of rant about noodles. about 20 hours ago

He killed his obnoxious friend. That’s not being a very good BFFF, bro. about 19 hours ago from twitterrific

ProjectX2 @Dr_Moonmaster NOODLES! WHY DID THEY CHANGE THEM?! about 19 hours ago from TwitterFox in reply to Dr_Moonmaster

Devil Man gorges self on random food items. Story at eleven. about 19 hours ago from twitterrific

Furlong had a dream where he was getting it on with Neighbor Girl and she morphed into the guy he killed. How very erotic. about 19 hours ago from twitterrific

There’s a dog that they’re using, and I swear it’s the best actor in the whole movie. about 19 hours ago from twitterrific

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Devil Guy wants Furlong to kill Neighbor Girl. How utterly predictable. about 19 hours ago from twitterrific

Furlong tried to kill Devil Guy and then Devil Guy ate him, sort of. More terrible special effects, of course. about 19 hours ago from twitterrific

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“AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!! I WISH THIS MOVIE HAD A HIGHER BUDGEEETTTT!!!”

Now they are one. about 19 hours ago from twitterrific

Neighbor Girl was watching and photographing him, too. How sweet. Two perverts found each other. about 19 hours ago  from twitterrific

“Game over, you lose.” Cliche-ariffic. about 19 hours ago from twitterrific

THE WHOLE THING WAS A FUCKING DREAM!!! WHAT A TWIST!!! about 19 hours ago from twitterrific

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Now Furlong is freaking the fuck out, for obvious reasons. about 19 hours ago from twitterrific

“Kyle!” “No, it’s Axl Rose.” So very 90s. about 19 hours ago from twitterrific

It turns out Neighbor Girl really does like him, IRL. about 19 hours ago from twitterrific

He gave the game to the principle, to review. Revenge is a dish best served with corny 90s pop culture references. about 19 hours ago from twitterrific

But wait, there’s more! The dog, with a severed foot. Long story. And end with some fucking metal. Fuck yeah. about 19 hours ago from twitterrific

For a 90s movie, that was pretty 80s about 19 hours ago from twitterrific

I give it 666 Primus Dancing Devil Men out of ten. Or none, BECAUSE IT WAS ALL A FUCKING DREAM!!! about 19 hours ago  from twitterrific

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That’s seriously how the movie ends.

- Eddie Furlo-, I mean…Sean. Yes. Sean. (Did you know I can make .gifs now?)

AUG 2008

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The Dr. Barnaby T. Moon Adventure Blog!

August 12, 2008
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Real-Time Expert Film Commentary: MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE

August 7, 2008

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Taken from The Twitter:

Against all better judgment, I am watching Maximum Overdrive, the Stephen King movie about cars that kill people. Wish me luck.

Haha, the atm called Stephen King an asshole.

“Music by AC/DC” because when I think ‘cars that kill people’, I think AC/DC.

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Pictured above:  Algebra.

Cool, that truck has the green goblin on it. I didn’t know Willem Defoe was in this. 03:05 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

That black guy said ‘yo mamma’ to the pinball machine. Now, that’s just gonna piss it off. 03:07 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

THE COKE MACHINE SHOT A POP AT THE GUY’S NUTS! Brilliant. And then it killed him and started attacking some kids. 03:13 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

Some kid got run over and crushed! That’s horrible! 03:14 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

BRUTAL!! Knowing Stephen King, I bet it was a real child. His parents allowed him to be killed on screen because they read the script and realized that his life would be a small sacrifice in order to get this incredible film made.

It’s whatsherface who plays Lisa Simpson! Damn is she weird looking. 03:22 AM August 01, 2008 fromtwitterrific

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Yeardly Smith, in her most gripping non-Simpsons performance since “The Legend of Billie Jean”.

ICE CREAM TRUCK, RUN FOR YOUR FUCKING LIFE! 03:29 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

Who screams for ice cream? YOU SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM!! 03:29 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

“You wanna rock n roll with me puss-bag??” Great insult. Insult to a truck. 03:34 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

The truck just ran over a bible. Damn atheist trucks, trying to destroy the heartland with their San Francisco liberal values. 03:36 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

It’s a whole bunch of trucks. It’s like if all the gay truckers got together at one rest stop bathroom to play with each other’s wieners. 03:39 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

That truck fell off a hill but blew up before it even hit the ground. Lisa Simpson must have pyrokinesis. 03:43 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

WHY DOES THE FAT OLD GUY WHO RUNS THE DINER HAVE A ROCKET LAUNCHER?? 03:46 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

And why don’t the trucks just ram into the diner. These trucks are dumbasses. 03:47 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

Aww. Emilio Estevez is a tender southern gentleman. 03:48 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

The hitchhiker girl fucked Emilio Estevez. What a slut. 03:54 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

Pausing briefly to do something else. Mark my place. 04:02 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

This is what I was doing……Don’t you fucking judge me.

Aaaaand, we’re back. The drunk waitress went crazy. 05:06 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

Still forty minutes left in this movie… 05:08 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

The kid tried to climb into a pipe earlier but he couldn’t get the grate off. He tried now and it comes right off. What the fuck? 05:11 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK, WE SALUTE YOU! What appropriate music. I hope Emilio Estevez is about to rock. If so, I salute him. *salutes* 05:14 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

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Emilio Estevez, clearly about to rock. I, for one, salute him.

Quandary: How do the trucks see and hear people? Is it magic? I bet it’s magic. Or science. There’s no difference, really. 05:18 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

A bulldozer just smashed it’s way in. But the trucks didn’t. Apparently bulldozers are smarter than trucks. 05:25 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

And then some army truck shot a bunch of people because they were too stupid to fucking duck. 05:26 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

They sent them a message in morse code honks. Because they can communicate too. Was this based on a true story? It’s just so realistic. 05:28 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

They’re refueling the trucks because the trucks told them to. With “Hell’s Bells” playing in the background. This movie is incredible. 05:32 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

Emilio thinks it’s aliens. 05:38 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

They conveniently decide to smash up the place just as everyone is escaping. And boy are they a-smashin’. 05:42 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

You would think they could’ve done that earlier…

The diner done blowed up. The diner done blowed up real good. 05:44 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

OH FUCK NO ITS THE ICE CREAM TRUCK! … Oh, they killed it. That was easy. 05:45 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

They blew the green goblin to shit and then they escaped on a boat, all whilst rocking out to the sweet ruckus of AC/DC. Good for them. 05:49 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

EPILOGUE: a Russian satellite blew up a UFO and they got away from the comet or whatever, so everything’s fine now. 05:51 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

And “The survivors of the Dixie Boy are still survivors.” Thank god, cuz I was worried about that. 05:56 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

I give it twelve “She shook me all night long”s out of ten. 05:58 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

I subtracted five points for NOT MAKING ANY FUCKING SENSE, but add seven for it’s rocking soundtrack and it’s rocking Emilio Estevez. 05:59 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

FOR THOSE ABOUT TO TRUCK, WE SALUTE YOU!!! 06:04 AM August 01, 2008 from twitterrific

- Sean, shaking it all night long.

AUG 08

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Early Predictions for This Year’s Oscar Nominees

July 23, 2008

We’re halfway through the year, so I figured I’d throw in my suggestions for some early Best Picture contenders at the Oscars.

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- Sean

JULY 08

(Your beloved Master of the Moon can now be found at Twitter.)

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The Best Album Covers in My iTunes Library (Hey, why not…)

July 10, 2008

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Taken from my Last.fm page because as Johnny Rotten would put it, “I’m a lazy bastard”. I selected the ten best album covers out of my pitiful iTunes Library and ordered them accordingly. Perhaps, we may be able to determine what makes a great album cover great, or perhaps I will totally waste your time. The latter certainly seem to be more likely . . .

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10. Transformer, Lou Reed
A very iconic image. Reed in full glam regalia, guitar in hand and in stark black and white. What’s great about it is that it makes a bold visual statement and communicates the notion to the buyer that Reed’s music is going to have a sense of theatricality to it. Plus, it’s just a damn striking picture.

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9. “Heroes”, David Bowie
Bowie was always avant garde but the “Heroes” cover is just something else. In grainy black and white, Bowie strikes a completely bizarre pose. I still have no idea exactly what he’s supposed to be doing but it freaks me out. So y’know, job well done. (The cover for his next album, Lodger, almost made it on this list instead. It shows Bowie lying on the floor with a broken nose. It’s so totally uncharacteristic for the fashionable Mr. Bowie that you have to love it.)

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8. Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, Arctic Monkeys
I’m actually not a huge fan of the band, but I’ll be damned if that’s not a great album cover. The guy is apparently a friend of the band’s, I’m assuming after a long night of doing things primarily involving drugs, booze and exposed breasts.

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7. Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd
The cover of Wish You Were Here is a perfectly surreal accompaniment to Pink Floyd’s brand of dreamy, epic rock. Gotta love the way the edge of the picture is burning into the white. Fun Fact: the guy on the cover is actually on fire. Ah, the dangerous days before they invented Photoshop . . .

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6. Teenager of the Year, Frank Black
I think the cover speaks for itself.

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5. Sticky Fingers, The Rolling Stones
Another very effective shocker and an image that sums up what rock and roll is really all about. The original vinyl featured a real zipper that actually unzips, which is totally awesome, even though it apparently dented the record and ruined it. Fun Fact 2: They wouldn’t let them sell the album with that cover in Spain, so they replaced with an image of a woman’s severed fingers in a can of beans, which is obviously far more tasteful.

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4. London Calling, The Clash
This is punk. Based off of the cover of an Elvis album, The Clash replaces The King with Paul Simonon smashing his bass on stage. The “fuck you” message is just so potent and so perfect. Just a defining image, for The Clash and for punk music.

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3. Things Fall Apart, The Roots
There are five different covers for Things Fall Apart, all of which are designed to make white listeners feel guilty. The photos used are from the Civil Rights struggle of the 60s and show the Roots’ connection to politics and history, giving you a clear idea of what kind of rap album this is. The only album covers I can think of that create such an impression and force us to question ourselves and society.

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2. The Velvet Underground and Nico, The Velvet Underground
A very famous cover for The Velvet Underground’s first album, by Andy Warhol, who was their manager at the time. It’s just a great piece of pop art and The VU should’ve counted themselves lucky to have such an artistic genius provide them with a cover. The banana is in fact a sticker that can be peeled off to reveal the pink banana underneath. (You can’t see it but it says “Peel here and see” at the top.) Unpeeled copies of this album are big collector’s items.

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1. Abbey Road, The Beatles
Simple and sweet. This is my idea of album cover perfection. People love Sgt. Pepper’s and it’s certainly a classic but you just can’t beat Abbey Road. The cover was apparently shot quite spontaneously. It’s been parodied a thousand times and it’s also been the source of many “Paul is dead” rumors, mainly claiming significance in the fact that he isn’t wearing shoes, and that Lennon was dressed in all white, representing the undertaker or death or heaven or something. (Lennon was just really into minimalist design at the time.) It’s inspired every idiot who visits Abbey Road to stroll across that zebra crosswalk and yes, I’d totally do it if I went there too. My favorite album and my favorite album cover.

- Sean
JULY 08

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“Goddamn, I Wish I Hadn’t Clicked on That”: Why I Hate the Internet

July 6, 2008

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I hate the Internet. Here’s why. (If you’re the kind of person who hears someone else tell them that they should not look at something lest they be scarred for life but do it anyway, you might want to click “back” right now. (I know you’re not going to though.))

Last night, while looking around YouTube, I started checking out shock site reaction videos, to 2girls1cup, Lemon Party, Tubgirl. Y’know, the usual. The funny thing I’ve noticed that I have to admit is that this kind of stuff…just doesn’t shock me much. I have not watched 2girls1cup for various reasons, but most of the shock photos I’ve been subjected to have barely elicited a reaction in me. I’m not an easy person to shock and for some reason, that kind of stuff just seems funny/bizarre to me. What really freaks me out is anything having to do with violence, which I avoid like the plague. At that point I was reminded of a conversation I had with two members at Ultimate Central (I absolutely cannot remember who it was.) where we discussed the BME Pain Olympics. I’m sure those of you who know what that one is just collectively cringed. [member who I cannot remember right now] had already seen it but I and [other member who I cannot remember right now] hadn’t. We talked about it and the one of us who had seen it explained that he thought it wasn’t real.

Remembering this, I decided to googulize the video, with no intention of actually watching it, but just to find out if it’s ever been confirmed to be real or fake. While searching, I almost immediately came across a screenshot . . . and my first reaction was that I could totally see exactly how they would’ve faked it. Then I read various people pointing out things that didn’t make sense about the video: 1. You would absolutely bleed to death before you could apparently post the video on the internet for other’s enjoyment. 2. Any basic high-school anatomy textbook would tell you that the testicles are connected to the body by a thick cord and are wrapped in several layers of nerves and veins. Hence, you wouldn’t be able to pop them out like golf balls from a plastic bag full of ketchup. And then the clincher: the original version of the video actually said at the end that it was all fake and that it had been meant as a parody. Most people just cut out the warning when they started floating it around the internet. What a relief. But I was curious as to what it was a parody of. Here is where I should have turned back.

According to Wikipedia, BME stands for Body Modification Ezine, a website dedicated mainly to fans of tattoos, piercings, and other more unique ways to piss your parents off. But those with special subscriptions to the site can access areas having to do with considerably more extreme forms of body modification, with accompanying videos and pictures. From what I’ve read, it seems like what is simulated in the Pain Olympics video is most likely an exaggeration and that while people do do quite extreme things to themselves, you wouldn’t do something like that unless you were trying to kill yourself. If you wanted it done and wanted to live, it would have to be done surgically.

Anyways, BME is a pay subscription site, which was good because I meant that I couldn’t be tempted to actually visit it. (Considering the way he’s used the theme of extreme body modification in his work, I would bet my soul that Warren Ellis has an account there. This should be enough warning. Look at freaky body mod fetish stuff AND YOU TURN INTO WARREN ELLIS.) However, I saw that link to the “BME Wiki” at the bottom of the Wikipedia article and goddamn it, I had to click on it. I mean how bad could it be, right? It’s not like there’s going to be pictures or anything. Right?

My morbid curiosity led me to go to exactly the pages you would/wouldn’t want to see and…dear god…there were pictures. I could handle it for a few pages, a lot of them weren’t that extreme, but then I had to see what “Subincision” is. What it is…is a procedure that I would rather not try and find the words to describe. And of course, there were photos. But that wasn’t even what got me. It was the section where they started explaining why someone would have it done, what “pleasurable” activities could be pursued once you’ve had such a thing done to you. I finally became to queasy to read on when it began describing how hardcore of a masochist you’d have to be to be able to endure the kind of pain you’d experience just by having any kind of sexual contact once you’ve been “subincised”, and was unable to learn what “head splitting” is. (I could easily guess, but I choose not to.) I mean, I’m a damn hippie, love-everybody liberal and even I was horrified beyond belief. I consider myself pretty open-minded but I can’t come up with a reason why human beings who would be willingly “subincised” deserve to exist on this plane of reality. In fact, I have a working theory that such people are, in fact, Cenobites:

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How do they function?? How far have they descended into sexual deviancy that they would do something like that just to get off better? What if you get together with some girl who’s not into that kind of shit and she sees that thing? Wouldn’t she throw up all over you? And wouldn’t you then post it online for others to pleasure themselves to? Who are these people? WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE!?!?
Ahem.

And that’s why I hate the internet.

Note that I didn’t include any links to the material mentioned, even to the Wikipedia article. You may foolishly look up “Subincision” on your own time to figure out what it is but I hope that you don’t. I’m getting sick right now, just thinking of it.

Now. Let us cleanse the pallet with a good old fashioned video of thirty or forty people watching the Pain Olympics.

Hehehe.

Now excuse me, I have to play with kittens or hug a teddy bear or something until my soul feels clean again.

- Sean, recently subincised and loving it!!

JULY08

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Taking Another Break

June 19, 2008

I obviously haven’t updated in a while and I’m thinking I’ll be putting things on hiatus again for a little while.

See ya for now.

- Sean

JUNE 08

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Sarah Jessica Parker or a Horse?

May 29, 2008

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A Fun Quiz!:

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Is this: a. Sarah Jessica Parker b. a Horse

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Is this: a. Sarah Jessica Parker b. a Horse

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Is this: a. Sarah Jessica Parker b. Horse

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Is this: a. Sarah Jessica Parker b. Horse

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Is this: a. Sarah Jessica Parker b. Horse

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Is this: a. Sarah Jessica Parker b. Horse

See how you scored:

1. a 2. b 3. b 4. a 5. b 6. a

I hope that wasn’t too hard, lulz!!11

- Sean, I’m going to hell when I die . . .

MAY 08

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The Danger Mouse Seal of Approval, Don’t Listen Without It!

May 28, 2008

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This is Danger Mouse.

No, not the British cartoon hero, the enigmatic music producer.

It occurred to me recently that Danger Mouse’s name is practically a golden seal of approval. He’s been behind some of the best music of this first decade of the 21st Century and I’ve enjoyed just about every album he’s produced.

Danger Mouse, real name Brian Burton, comes from White Plains, New York and spent the late nineties making demo tapes of his instrumental, trip-hop inspired music. He did an album with rapper Jemini in 2003, but found sudden fame when The Grey Album dropped on the Internet like a bomb in 2004.

The Grey Album was a brilliant concept: Danger Mouse took the commercially released a capella version of Jay-Z’s seminal Black Album and mixed it with The Beatles’ seminal White Album. Every time I tell people about this for the first time, they’re utterly bewildered. They roll their eyes and assume that the album is just Jay-Z played over a bunch of Beatles songs. It’s much more than that. Danger Mouse set out to prove that oft-criticized practice of “sampling” was not stealing music, but cutting it apart and pasting it into wonderful new pieces of art, like the musical equivalent of a collage. The Grey Album chops and transforms Beatles songs into strange new configurations, while still preserving their original tone and matching them quite perceptively with Jay-Z’s vocals.

Copyright issues kept The Grey Album from every being officially released, but a group called Downhill Battle staged “Grey Tuesday” on February 24, 2004, hosting the full album on hundreds of sites across the internet. Sites were of course forced to take the album down by Beatles label EMI, but the damage had been done and it’s currently pretty easy to get your ears on a copy. The Grey Album launched the admirable “mashup” craze, as well as Danger Mouse’s career.

Former Blur frontman Damon Albarn contacted Danger Mouse and got him to produce the second Gorillaz album, Demon Days, and DM delivered another modern pop masterpiece. His efforts on the album got him a well-deserved Grammy. Up next he did The Mask and the Mouse with MF DOOM and teamed up with Cee-Lo to form Gnarls Barkley. Their first album, St. Elsewhere spawned the popular but ultimately overexposed hit “Crazy”, and a plethora of excellent tunes. The recent follow-up to St. Elsewhere, The Odd Couple, came after he produced The Good, The Bad, and The Queen for Damon Albarn’s unnamed British super-group, which I reviewed in detail a few months back.

This year Danger Mouse has produced albums for The Black Keys and Martina Topley-Bird and is working on Beck’s soon-to-be-released next album.

Rather than going into much greater detail about the golden touch of this be-afroed prodigy, I’ll let the music speak for itself. (Brought to you by YouTube, because I can’t figure out how to fucking upload mp3s here.)

“Encore”, from The Grey Album. A mash-up of the Jay-Z track of the same name and the Beatles songs “Glass Onion” and “Savoy Truffle”. This video, a fan creation dubbed “The Grey Video”, is pretty excellent.

“Kids with Guns”, by Gorillaz, from Demon Days.

“Smiley Faces”, by Gnarls Barkley, from St. Elsewhere.

“Nature Springs”, from The Good, The Bad, and the Queen.

- Sean, somehow DJ DangerFerret doesn’t sound as appealing.

MAY 2008