Sweet Jesus, go play STALKER Now!

Seriously, just do it. Download Steam, upload your credit or debit card info, buy and download this game. You may need a new graphics card, but fuck if the game isn't all kinds of awesome. Seriously, there isn't much like it. It will beat the shit out of you, but go play it. Seriously, do it. Whatever power or sway I have over you compels you to. Seriously, do it. Like...now.

Now that the whole 30 Day Challenge is postponed, time to post shit!

So yeah, this just straight up made my day. This is really fucking nerdy so yeah, be warned all you sexy exciting people who are too busy having sex to play tabletop games. http://theglen.livejournal.com/16735.html

Jesus H. Sebastian Christ has this month been busy.

Yeah, so that whole...30 challenge thing? Not gonna do that this month. Too much going on to be updating my blog with shit like this right now. To say things have been hectic is to say that drinking the Pacific Ocean might not be good for one's health. So yeah, no 30 day challenge this month. Next month maybe. December might have to be it though. No school in December. Also hopefully I won't be taking care of my mother at that point. We all can dream can't we?

Day 3 and 4 of The 30 Day Challenge.

So my favorite show is probably Misfits, because it's like what Heroes should be. And my favorite books are a toss up between The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, A People's History of the United States, and 1984.

30 Day Challenge: Day 2

My favorite movie is probably Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders. It is truly nothing less than a masterpiece. What I love so much about the movie is how so much of the lines from the actors is poetry. Pure and simple. To say the film is purely magical is an understatement.

The 30 Day Challenge: Day 1

So I'm gonna do a 30 Day Challenge, mostly because I need to update this fucker more. So yeah, here it is, but I am probably gonna not have the one of a picture of me from 10 years ago...yet. So yeah, that second part of the post might not ever come. Oh wells, deal with it. So here is the challenge!

Day 01 -- your favorite song
Day 02 -- your favorite movie
Day 03 -- your favorite television program
Day 04 -- your favorite book
Day 05 -- your favorite quote
Day 06 -- whatever tickles your fancy
Day 07 -- a photo that makes you happy
Day 08 -- a photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 09 -- a photo you took
Day 10 -- a photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11 -- a photo of you taken recently
Day 12 -- whatever tickles your fancy
Day 13 -- a fictional book
Day 14 -- a non-fictional book
Day 15 -- a fanfic
Day 16 -- a song that makes you cry (or nearly)
Day 17 -- an art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Day 18 -- whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 -- a talent of yours
Day 20 -- a hobby of yours
Day 21 -- a recipe
Day 22 -- a website
Day 23 -- a youtube video
Day 24 -- whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 -- your day, in great detail
Day 26 -- your week, in great detail
Day 27 -- this month, in great detail
Day 28 -- this year, in great detail
Day 29 -- hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 -- whatever tickles your fancy

This'll be interesting. So here I go with the first challenge. My favorite song is actually pretty hard. I dunno what my favorite song is. I have songs that I love dearly, but they are too many to count. Also I kinda feel like I'm betraying Nirvana (aka my favorite band ever) by not having them as my favorite song. But Pennyroyal Tea is one of the best songs ever. As is Lithium. As is Opinion and In Bloom. Also Come As You Are. But there are songs that I listen to more than that. I mean...songs like One Too Many Mornings by The Chemical Brothers, the City on the Edge of Forever by A Skylit Drive, Raise Your Weapon by Deadmau5, Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites by Srillex, Entombed We Collide and Forever and a Day by Death by Stereo, Counting Back to One by Beautiful Small Machines, Crack Pipes and Makeshift Patriot by Sage Fracis, Thrash Unreal and You Must Be Willing by Against Me!, The Last to Say by Atmosphere, Thou Shalt Always Kill and The Magician's Assistant by Dan Le Sac VS Scroobius Pip, Lake Michigan and Fantasies by Rouge Wave, too many songs by Bad Religion, pretty much all of the discography of Rise Against, Wall of Water by Mayhem, My Prayer Beyond Ginnungagap by Blut Aus Nord, Norden on Fire, Withstand the Fall of Time (which was the song that made black metal click with me and started this wonderfully dark and bleak romance) and Years of Silent Sorrow by Immortal, SAOT and I Saw Empires Falling by Eraplee Noisewall Orchestra, Melting Nails by Igorrr, When All is Said and Done by Napalm Death, I've Got a Straight Edge by Minor Threat, too many songs by the Beatles, Zetsubou Billy, Shimi and Akagi by Maximum the Hormone, Courtship Dating by Crystal Castles, Keep Hope Alive by the Crystal Method, Dogma by KMFDM, 1 Trillion Dollars, Police State in the USA, and the Consumer's Song by Anti-Flag, Last Train Home by Lostprophets, all of Float by Aesop Rock, Cherry by Ratatat, Vermilion and See In You by The Album Leaf, and waaaaay too many more to count. I mean, I guess I am just a huge music junkie. Oh and I haven't even gone into all the great pieces of classical music out there. Or the classics, like Led, The Dead Kennedys, ELP(Emmerson, Lake and Palmer), Simon and Garfunkle, Lou Reed, The Ramones, Rakim, Public Enemy Number One, Bad Brains, GBH, Pink Floyd, The Grateful Dead, Johnny Cash (aka one of the greatest songwriters of all time), Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Neutral Milk Hotel, Lenard Cohen, Hank Williams, MDC, Patsy Cline, Bikini Kill, The Gits, Susan Vega, Kate Bush, Hybrid, The Winstons, and all those countless progenitors who have given us all fantastic music. So yeah, I have too many songs to choose just one. Also I think I should do a music thing for day 10 instead. So yeah, here we go!

Modest Mouse, Dubstep, The Craft of Writing, Being "Real" and Other Stuff Part 1.

Two posts in one night, because I can and I can't sleep. So...time to write like a mad-man.

So Modest Mouse was a band I actually hated for a really long time. Mostly because I hated Issac Brock's voice. I really hated his voice, it kinda grated on my nerves. I was used to really good vocalists and my mom is a great singer, so Issac Brock's voice was...jarring to say the least and straight up obnoxious at the most. But then something happened. I actually started to listen to them for long periods of time. First I listened all the way through We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. I listened the shit out of that CD. Then I listened to Good News for People who Love Bad News. And then I realized that I had accepted his voice as an essential part of the music. Then I started listening to the lyrics. That kinda cemented them as a favored band. Then I had a really intense personal experience with the song Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset. I laughed and cried, because it was about me. I used to be suicidal and deeply existentially depressed. Doesn't help that I'm manic depressive(aka bi-polar but I think manic depression is a better term, that's just me though), and didn't have medication. So yeah, I really had a Dark Night of the Soul. And then along came a song that kinda encapsulated who I was at the time. I had really tied myself into a noose. I did blame my town and my friends, when really it was my outlook and my own brain chemistry that was the cause. Then I heard the Explosions In the Sky-esque solo. And I realized that they were one of my favorite bands. I don't like all their songs, not yet anyway, but the ones I really like are really fucking good and only Modest Mouse could write those songs. I mean, songs like Cowboy Dan, Dramamine, Breakthrough, March Into the Sea, Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset, 3rd Planet, Spitting Venom, Novocaine Stain, Black Cadillacs, The World at Large, Parting of the Sensory, and tons more could only come from them and they are the only ones who can deliver the emotional intensity that is needed for the songs to work. And fuck if I don't have a whole lot of run on sentences. But fuck it. So yeah, I really had to warm up to Modest Mouse. But after that, I really got into them. They might even be on my Top 10 Bands. Or at least they are fighting for a spot. Them and twenty other groups. But they are special.

Now time to shift drastically to another subject. Because right now I'm not feeling Modest Mouse. Might go back later. Or maybe time to step away from the keyboard. Shit, 2 AM. Yeah, time for sleep. More later.

A Long Time Away, And a Format Change.

So, I've been absent for quite a long time. And I have to say, it's a bit strange to be back. But I'm not here to remark on how I feel strange about my homecoming. I kinda started this blog to be kinda professional and be about actual writing and essays and stuff, and it still will, but now I kinda have to revamp what this site is. It's still gonna be about professional essays, critique and all that jazz, but I feel like I need to kinda change things up a bit. I'm thinking of adding in personal stuff too, kinda like a public diary. But it's not gonna be like...all drama and angst now, just a bit more personal. If that turns some people off, whatever, I get it. Emotional disclosure is messy and not fun to read, but I feel almost compelled to do just that. Because if not here, then where? Real life? That's no fun, especially when I can get all artsy fartsy with how I express my feelings in blog format. I think this will be an interesting new development. Besides, this helps me grow as a writer. So yeah, that's what's new about the blog now. Hope this works.

Holy Shit, Das Racist is awesome. I'll talk more later.

Seriously, smart hip-hop that deconstructs the genre is awesome. I mean the way they play with words is reminiscent of George Carlin. Shut Up Dude is amazing. Talk more later, but they are awesome, go listen.

The Psychotic Sound of the New Underground

So yeah, new post in what seems like forever. And I'm going to use it to totally wank and talk about the greatest genre you've never heard about(at least in my mind). Breakcore is possibly one of the greatest advances in electronic music ever. It's brought back those frenetic old skool jungle beats, butched up DnB, brought some digital hardcore into the mix, then tossed in some IDM just to fuck with people, and added a dose or two of metal, depending on the artist. And most songs are different from eachother too. Sure some have similarities, but when you look at an album, no two songs are exactly alike. I mean, the albums are usually pretty cohesive in their sound, but each song is pretty unique. For example, the artist Eraplee Noisewall Orchestra has this one album called "The Statement" and every song on it is part of the statement of the album. The statement is one of nihilism and a rejection of mainstream society and all it's trappings(and I just realized that I'm gonna sound like a total intellectual prick from here on out). In his song "Desperation Speaks" he has a rant by an anti-television person, underscored by frantic old skool Jungle beats and touches of balls out metal. Later in the album we have "Animal Groove", which is more standard jungle/breakbeat fare. But it's not without that distinct flair that makes breakcore what it is. It's got these great little drum trills in the background and all these shambling ancillary beats coupled with a slightly glitchy thing hanging around waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay towards the back of the soundscape. But not all of E.N.O's stuff is strictly hardcore jungle/DnB flavored breakcore. "Urban Jungle Victims" has this great mellow groove to it, all the while with a jittery drum line in the back and some glitchy shit going on there too. The centerpiece of this song is a monologue by a woman talking about her idea of an ideal lover. As she says in the song "Imagine such a perfect understanding someone who can reflect your image back to you, something beautiful and pure." The song should by all rights be a mellow song, but there is this constant menace of violence that is brought to bear in the rather dissonant melody, and the implied threat of "Yeah this shit is calm for now, but just you fucking wait, I could fucking wreck your shit right here and now with some balls out hardcore beats right now." "Osho" continues this trend, but it keeps this wonderful jittery drum line all through the song, and the glitches are nigh on constant and are a part of the implied threat. That's something that I really kinda like about ENO's music. You are never truly safe with it, there is always this implied threat that at any moment, shit will go down and he'll whip out some really nasty tracks like his fucking fantastic "Life for Science". "Life for Science" is him at his most brutal in the whole album, with a rather vicious metal attack with a furious blaze of beats behind it, making it all the more...........I dunno, hardcore? I wanna give it more credit than that, but that's all I can really say. Anything else I could say would just make me sound like more of a wanker that I am gonna sound like at the end of this post. Needless to say, I will be posting the song to show you what I mean, hell I might even post the link to his page on Jamendo, where he has all of his shit, for free. Anyway, so yeah, he's fucking awesome, check his shit out. Also he has a more dubstep/mellow album too, called "The Gloomy Side of Noisewall". It's less breakcore, but awesome. So yeah, enough about him. I wanna talk about Igorrr.

Igorrr is a fucking genius. He's like ENO except that whilst ENO gives off a Sour Kraut vibe, Igorrr is a total Mad Frenchman, and being a quarter French, I enjoy that. He's apparently not as breakcore as I thought, some people terming him drill n bass, but fuck that shit, he's a brilliant breakcore artist. His style is a bit different than Eraplee, his samples are more diverse. I'd say that Eraplee's music is kinda like a really fucked up city, whilst Igorrr's is more like a Baroque castle that has been taken over by the doctor from The Human Centipede(except he's French instead of German. And no, I have not seen that movie nor will I ever see it. Fuck that movie, fuck that director. Or better yet, don't. Besides, I wonder what the fuck sorta messed up sex that guy likes to have. ANYWAY, moving right along....). And this doctor invites you in, and instead of fucked up surgeries on people, he's done that thing to songs. Oh and I'm bored now, gonna go swim. Post later.

Stuff that was removed(or was it?) and other things.

So yeah, other stuff was here, but now it's gone. Because fuck that post. Also now talking about other stuff. Like metal. But first, I need to talk to some indie bands about something which has really been pissing me off for a while now. C'mere for a second indie bands, I promise I won't bite. See? No biting! Now put your collective ears to my mouth so I can whisper a secret in your ear. Whats that you say? "Dorian, this is a blog, people read blogs!" Oh silly indie bands, I can do really tiny print that'll be sure to piss of my one reader, which may not be a good idea, but this is a secret so I'll have to piss off my reader to so that. Ready for it? Here it comes, the big secret thing that I want indie bands to know.












STOP FUCKING IMITATING SIGUR ROS!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously, why do indie bands keep trying to do that falsetto shit? It's obnoxious and really only Ben Gibbard can do it right. Also Sigur Ros sucks. The Album Leaf is much better and you'd have to have your head stuck so far up your own ass that you can accurately describe the contents of your own stomach if you think that Sigur Ros is better. I mean, The Album Leaf is like.....one of the best downtempo bands ever. And Sigur Ros are only a crappy indie pop band. Let me demonstrate why The Album Leaf is awesome for all the poor saps who have never heard of them.

I mean, check that shit out! It's all mellow and shit! Also awesome. I mean, I can't say enough nice things about this band and this song. It makes my top 100 Greatest Songs of All Time (which is actually really hard to do) easily. Anyway, now that I've gotten that nasty bit of business off my chest, time to talk about the greatest nu metal band you have never heard of. And I'm gonna do it in another paragraph, fucking crazy isn't it? Well mostly I'm doing it so my Senior English Teacher Mr. Isackson doesn't want to drag my sorry ass back to his class if he ever catches sight of this blog.

Anyway the name of this awesome band is Maximum the Hormone, and..........................well what more can I say other than they are probably one of the greatest metal bands in Japan (well, them and the ever awesome Gallhammer) and probably the entire gorram world (Gallhammer too in fact). I hate to label them as nu metal, because they are so much better than that label. But it fits, in that they are a bass heavy metal band with a screaming/singing dynamic. They don't take themselves seriously though, I mean, songs like Kuso Breakin Nō Breakin Lily are just so, well, kinda silly just bright and light(even though there is a dude screaming his throat out for one of the vocals on the song). So yeah, go look em up. I gotta go do stuff. I'll talk about the band more later.

Totally Nothing. Move Along!

Totally nothing here. Nothing was ever here. Move along.

Stuff

Well, tomorrow I'll be starting my first Psychology course, which of course means that I'll know how the whole world works by the end of the first class. Just you wait, I'll start going off on know-it-all rants about how things work and all that jazz(so not much different from what happens on here anyway!). Prepare for my know-it-all bullshit. It's gonna be obnoxious. Trust me.

Great OPs in Anime(Part the First)

Like many people on the Information Super Highway, I love anime. And like many people who watch anime, I watch the opening title sequence. First to see what song plays before the show, and secondly to get a sorta general vibe about the show. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with anime, what usually happens is that the anime studios and the writers approach bands or their managers for a song. Or the studio contacts a record label and they pick a band and one of their singles. And there are a couple of other ways that OPs(opening songs), but explaining how that happens is boring, and I'm not too sure all the ways songs get there anyway.

Anyway, most OPs are usually either okay, inoffensive, kinda lame, or good. Once in a while, an anime will have a really top shelf OP song. Like, so good  that you hunt down that OP through any means necessary. A great OP can change an anime too, it can colour your experience of the show. Great OPs can make a good show great, a great show a classic, or a bad show tolerable. This is a post devoted to such OPs, along with an explanation of which anime the OP is from and a bit about the anime in question.

First off is the OP from the absolutely amazing Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Second Gig.

The song here is called Rise, it's performed by Origa, a Russian pop singer. The programming and instrumentation is all done by the show's composer Yoko Kano. Now, this OP really fits the theme of the show, because the show is about a group of SWAT-esque police officers in the near future. And yeah, I know that sounds silly, but trust me, this show is really great. But watching the original 1995 movie and the first season of Stand Alone Complex(Second Gig being the second season). A link to the show's wikipedia page, for a better explanation of the show

Next we have the rather over-the-top, balls out metal OP from the equally over-the-top anime Needless

The song is written and performed by GRANRODEO, and the song is called Modern Strange Cowboy. And if I may say, this song should go with everything. I mean, like, everything. Car commercials, skin-care ads, McDonald's Happy Meal ads, depression medication ads, you name it. Anyway, Needless is a parody of almost every action anime ever, it's very much the Stephen Colbert of anime. Not as subtle, but still. Where you can watch this amazingly awesome show

And now for a show which Needless probably parodied, but which has a bitchin' OP, 11eyes.

This piece of bitching music is written and performed by Ayane(whose name is Japanese for sound design). The song is entitled Arrival of Tears. Now, 11eyes was well.....................................okay. It's not a great anime, it's just a kinda goodish anime. My reveiw of the anime says it all. In fact I'll just post a link to the show page and you can read the reveiw for yourself. I'm Elicoor13 on there too.



Making up for the lame show preceding it comes Durarara!! A rather well done, Tarantino-esque anime.

Now, this song really kinda encapsulates the series and the attitude so well. I dunno the lyrics, but the music and the way it's sung really kinda give a sense of what kind of anime it is. It's actually very similar to another FUCKING AMAZING show called Baccano!(the exclamation point is in the title by the way). Watch Durarara!! here. And totally go check out Baccano, seriously. But give it a few episodes, things may not make sense at first. Actually, think of Baccano kinda like Pulp Fiction. It'll help, trust me.

And last but certainly not least comes one of the greatest anime ever, Serial Experiments Lain.

This OP is one of the few OPs that is actually done in English, and was written by an English band. Which is actually really unheard of. And it really does make sense that the OP would be so unique, because this is a very unique show. The show is very unique and is not for everyone. Hell, most people really don't like this show because it's pretty confusing. But if you roll with it and actually think about the show while watching, you will be rewarded by one of the most profound anime shows to ever come out of Japan. If you're up to it, watch Serial Experiments Lain here. Good luck, and I don't blame you for not watching the show all the way through.


 Well, that was fun. I'll definitely do more of these sometime later. Also if the videos don't work on Sky7, make a user account and click the broken link button. One of the amazing linkers will go and find another mirror.

HA HA! Now I got a new title! Suck on that everyone else who is as unoriginal as me!

So yeah, now this blog is The Smithy of My Soul. That's taken from a line in James Joyce's book "The  Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man". Good book, you should go read it. Like, now. Because it's awesome. But make sure to get Mythic Worlds, Modern Words by Joseph Campbell to go along with it. It's a wonderful help to have in case you get lost in all the symbolism. Also it's really cool to read as far as you can into TPoaAaaYM(The  Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man), then read Mythic Worlds Modern Words. And it's also really cool to compare your own ideas to that of Campbell's. Needless to say, I have a more original title, you need to go get those two books, and well, people need to read more books. Because books are more than just things for the intellectual elite to hold over everyone's heads. More average people need to read the classics, because they have so much to offer. So enough of my yakkin', or else this post will be as long as War and Peace(pro-tip, don't read it. It's too long, there are too many characters, and it's just a mess. You need a flowchart to figure what is happening half the time. But I'll reveiw War and Peace some other time(Lucky you!)). So yeah, until next time!

GAH!!!

Just found out that my blog title isn't as original as I thought. Damn me and my unimaginative blog title!

The First Post

So I have my own blog now eh? Pretty slick.