Sean Daily is an English major from New Jersey now living in Las Vegas, the Other City of Lights. "I consider 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' to be comfort reading, I like the al pastor tacos at Tacos Mexico and I count among my literary influences the Chainsaw from 'Doom'. 'RRRRRR! You don't like that, do you, Mr. Undead Marine! RRRRRR!'"
Shanoah Alkire is our Discordian at large. "Born in Santa Cruz, I grew up in Grass Valley and the Bay Area, and now lurk in Las Vegas. My literary influences include Ray Bradbury,
Lewis Carroll, and Douglas Adams. I also program as a hobby,
and currently maintain the Gtk port of Angband. You can find
a rather old bio of me here."
Oh, I know what route I go down when I experience too much kawaii, too, Sean.
Admittedly, it first involves porting it here, where everyone can see it. But afterward, there are antidotes. In this case, I got together with a friend from work after work and played a board game he has with him called Arkham Horror.
Cthulhu won the first game, but we managed to beat an elder god the second time, though we house ruled one or two things. (Mainly because of only having two players.)
In honor of that, I thought I’d play a short creepy animation called A Lovecraft Dream. I think it speaks for itself.
I didn’t say we were Christians, Shanoah. I didn’t even say we were Christian Scientists. I said we were Christian Mad Scientists.
“Lessee here, take some of the less odious parts of the Bible, add a little apocrypha, a little Buddhism, a little gnosticism, a little discordianism, some fertility rites, some of the hotter goddesses, the Osiris-Horus myth without the creepy incest and necrophilia and stone phalluses, a piece of Lovecraft, a smidge of Douglas Adams and a couple nine-volt batteries… Voila! JESUS-STEIN! It’s alive! ALIVE! But only after three days!”
Didn’t John mention UFO’s in conjunction with Yoko Ono in Out The Blue, too? Interesting when there are recurring themes.
To give todays John Lennon song proper perspective, I’m going to do something rather unusual for this blog lately; play a song not by John Lennon. Here’s Bob Dylan with Gotta Serve Somebody.
All right, got it? Well, John Lennon heard this song. Apparently it upset him a bit, so he wrote this song, Serve Yourself, sung in psuedo-Dylan style. Rated not work safe for bad language, and stuff offensive to closeminded people of most major religions.
Theres a 8 minute version with less bad language, and without him trying to imitate Bob Dylans voice, too.
And I like it that way. There’s a reason why the song The Big Country appeals to me[1], with the chorus of:
I wouldn’t live there if you paid me.
I wouldn’t live like that, no siree!
I wouldn’t do the things the way those people do.
I wouldn’t live there if you paid me to.
Hell, that’s half of why I ended up as a pagan and a Discordian. A religion that tells you that you don’t have to be mundane. You can leave Greyface behind you, play Mind Games with the world, and dance around with bananas in your underwear.[2]
I’m sure John Lennon felt the same way at times. He wrote this song, after all:
[1] And, yes, both songs in that post have been taken down by the man. fnord! Wonder if song content had any influence on that?
[2] The Monk realised that the God must be waiting for him to make an act of worship, so he reverently danced up and down twisting his fingers in his ears.
His God stared at him for a moment, caught hold of him, twisted him round, slammed him forward spreadeagled over the car and frisked him for weapons.[3]
[3] And yes, Sean, this is a direct quote from a book you’ve probably read…
Don’t really have much time today, so I’ll make this post quick.
This is a song that was a Steeleye Span song. In this case, The Imagined Village is doing a really good cover of it that I thought I’d share. The song is Cold Haily Rainy Night. I’ve always liked Celtic / Indian fusions…
Well, I could easily go several directions with this, since I’m both fond of music by Andy Irvine, and of foxes. There’s the lore of kitsune in Japan, trickster fox spirits, and, of course, similar lore in Native American tales. Or the utter coolness of flying foxes.
So, naturally, I’ll keep with foxes as a theme. The song I’m going to play today is being sung by Heather Dale, who you may recall me posting a number of Arthurian songs from. This song is Black Fox or sometimes Little Black Fox.
And you know, claims of being the devil aside, this feels more like the Horned God, or something reminiscent of the Wild Hunt. Or perhaps a mischevious fox spirit tricking some hunters into thinking he is the devil.
Funny you should mention foxes, Shanoah. They’re right up there with bats in my list of favorite animals – flying foxes, anyone?
Anyway, I had the good fortune to know a folk musician named Stefan Dollak in college. As I remember, every day was Ren Faire for him – I can’t remember him out of garb – and he’d sing you a traditional song at the drop of a hat. This is one that made the biggest impression on me, Reynardine. It’s all about the immortal trickster doing what he does best: getting in the ladies’ pants and generally causing trouble.
And gorillaz evolved into cavemenz, making today’s neat thing from me a no-brainer.
This is Mastodon’s Divinations, which I heard today on Diane’s Kamikaze Fun Machine on WFMU. The video, it seems to me, shares at least a little DNA with Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head. It has all kinds of metal video madness, plus a resurrected cannibal caveman shaman who can shred a guitar. So it’s all good!
And if you think you’ve heard these guys on this blog before, well, perhaps you’re right.
According to the United States Naval Observatory, we passed the Spring Equinox today at 1:11 p.m. PDT. I was a little late in observing it, but better late than never, I guess.
We’re officially out of winter, and it’s time to relax a bit. The dark days are over, and it’s time to see who made it through and celebrate those who didn’t.
