The RedMolly Picayune-Democrat

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When you're evil

A very fine song by Voltaire (no, not that Voltaire; this Voltaire), BTW. Listen to it if you like.

So this whole "evil" thing has been weighing on me rather more than the results of a dopey online quiz have any right to do. Especially because my "angelic" dearly-beloved keeps giving me weird sidelong glances and getting all huffy when I tease him about fantasizing about entertainment. (I mean, really... spending valuable daydreaming time thinking about Jonny Greenwood and Chan Marshall... with their clothes on? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, my friends?)

And naturally, one thought leads to another and then one finds oneself musing about the nature of evil and its varying definitions by varying interest groups, from the Genitally Obsessed to the Environmentally Conscious to the Wiccan Threefolders. Is sex evil? What about premarital sex? Homosexuality? Prostitution? Is it evil to drive a car? To buy an imported-from-China unnecessary but highly enjoyable electronic gizmo? To use birth control pills, knowing full well that traces of the hormones they contain are accumulating in waterways and possibly wreaking havoc on innocent previously-non-gender-confused fish*? Is it evil to go merrily about one's business, knowing full well that billions around the world (probably including many of one's own friends and relatives) are, according to a particular read of a particular set of beliefs, destined to roast forever in the pits of Hell? Heck, does evil even exist, or do bad things just happen?

For a cranky old heathen freethinker like myself, the idea of "evil" poses a special problem--it seems that evil is often identified as an external force, intrinsic to the the universe and opposed to an equally externalized "good." The Force and the Dark Side o' the Force; Ahura Mazda and Ahriman; Jehovah and Lucifer; Batman and the Joker; Meatwad and Shake.

But if one considers evil to be not a specific force, but rather a choice and its consequences, then Big Scary Evil immediately loses its power--both its fearsomeness and its lethal attractiveness. Evil doesn't need the trappings of the black-spired castle, the fab black cloak, the sinister laugh.

Evil is as banal as the sweet-faced old Hutu grandfather who points out his Tutsi neighbors to the mob; as omnipresent as the legions of basement-bound keyboard warriors spewing their anonymous hate onto the Internet; as local as the alienated teenager who sits in his bedroom and strokes his rifle's stock and waits.

Evil consists as much of omission as of commission. Evil sees suffering in the world and passes by on the other side.

Evil is charging rape victims for the forensic tests performed on their broken bodies.

Evil insists that Christians have a duty to slaughter babies if it is God's will but that if God were to order "a man to lie down with a man," he would be no longer good and no longer God.

Evil is swindling an elderly woman out of $1 million for home repairs you claimed she needed, cleaning out her savings and sending her into foreclosure.

Evil is killing an Amur tiger to grind its bones into powder that some misguided idiot will swallow in the hope of enlarging his tiny penis.

Evil is sending troops into battle so ill-equipped that they are forced to capture enemy weapons just to make sure there are enough guns to go around.

Evil is selfishness writ large. But selfishness writ small is just survival.

Evil does not consist of thoughts; it consists of thoughts carried out. You can think whatever insane psychotic shit you want, but once it crosses the brain-body barrier, you have gone from Just a Little Twisted to Seriously Messed Up. And if you can't keep your thoughts from turning into actions, you have problems above and beyond understanding the philosophical definition of evil and should probably check into some nice inpatient program somewhere.

Evil causes harm, and where there's no harm there is no foul. Where there is no choice but to cause some harm, evil fails to minimize the damage. When it comes time to pay the piper, evil shrugs and says "Don't look at me."

Evil is not cognate with "sin." There is a difference between evil and trashy, ill-considered or even self-destructive behavior. Lust? Gluttony? Sloth? Have at it, y'all... you know I'll be right there next to you partying like a snowboarder, or sitting there like a particularly recalcitrant bump on a log, or whatever the occasion calls for.

But, y'know, don't listen to me. I'm evil myself. Some quiz on the Internet said so.

*On a skeptical Science Fridayish note, it should probably be made clear that this "study" consisted of dumping vast amounts of estrogen into a "small lake in Canada" to see what happened to the fish and was not based on any observations made in nature. Also, before you succumb to the siren song of the concern-troll anti-contraception nutjobs who are certain to leap onto this particular hobbyhorse, please note that it's apparently not a big deal to retrofit sewage treatment plants to filter out estrogen.

**One more song for you on an evil theme: Reggie and the Full Effect's truly weird cover of Slayer's "Raining Blood."

Compelled, yet uncompelling

It's Wednesday, I feel like crap and yet I feel compelled to blog about remarkably uncompelling things.

1. Sore throat. Ecch. How can having a sore throat make the rest of you feel awful too? I just want to go to bed, but I don't think that's an option. [Checks.] Nope.
2. Grey. Grey weather, grey mood; grey is the color of disappointment and I'm feeling remarkably disappointed today.
3. All I ask is one day of non-rain. One day when I can actually go outside. Even just for a little while. I mean, this is Portland, and I knew what I was in for, but still... WTF, weather?
4. Why am I listening to this incredibly freaking depressing music? ("Terrible Canyons of Static" by godspeed you! black emperor if for some reason you wanted to know. I'm at the part with the violin/xylophone/reverby guitar solo and I just feel like ripping my wrists open with my teeth. But my god it is beautiful.) But it looks like Teddybears is coming up next on the Party Shuffle (Everybody do the Party Shuffle! Take it to the left... move it to the right...) and that should take care of the whole depressing music thing.
5. I came up with a new beginning for The Book; not a completely new beginning, just a better opening. If only, if only I would write it. Not quite as straightforward, a little bit more imagery-ridden... hell, it'll probably suck but I should write it down anyway just in case.
6. Our book club's most recent book was Jane Eyre, which I was supposed to read in high school but managed to evade, and gosh darn if it wasn't actually a pretty freaking awesome read. Except I bought this edition (the Penguin "Red Classic"), with a creepy pink chick-lit cover and quotes from romance writers all over it, and it spoiled the vibe a teeny bit. Best part, though: the writeups of other "Red Classics" at the back which managed to make Wuthering Heights, Lolita and A Spy in the House of Love all sound kind of uniformly tripely chick-littish, which is awesome in its own marketing-department-on-steroids way.
7. I need an MP3 of the Smiths' "How Soon Is Now?". Does anyone have one to share?
8. What should I write my next photo column about? Actually, the next one will be on why you should be shooting RAW instead of JPEG. How about after that? Srsly, I would love to do one on Naughty Photos (for married people only, you evil-thinkers! Gosh!) but I think that idea will get ye olde editorial kibosh.
9. I was so good at our book club meeting. I had one, and only one, glass of wine--a delicious Kathryn Kennedy Santa Cruz Mountains 2004 Syrah--and it was delicious. I thought I was friendly but not overbearingly chatty. But I am still thinking maybe the two new ladies in the club did not like me so much, and I'm not sure why. Alas.
10. And now, for your viewing pleasure, a picture of the lovely Princess Ella von Smella Bella.
    

And how is your week?

How I know I'm really a boy, Reasons #4678-4681

1. Football (srsly, if anyone had to beat the Packers, I'm glad it was the Giants. I may feel a post brewing on Eli Manning.)
2. Mogwai, also Mastodon, also Godflesh
3. Fear and loathing of rom-coms
   
4. Unstinting adoration of movies made from comic books (or sharing a comic book-style aesthetic, or leading to comic book spinoffs) (X-Men, The Crow, Sin City, Grindhouse and Army of Darkness, respectively)

Do you think President Huckabee will send me to the gender re-education camps, or do you think he'll let me slide on account of my uncanny fondness for makeup and girly T-shirts?

Best. Worst. Is all same.

I got an e-mail this morning from our friend Trevor, announcing that he'd put up his Best Music of 2007 list on his MySpace page. Trevor, being a community radio/singer/drummer/all-around music geek type, usually has some worthwhile opinions to offer. In fact, when I had my KAFM show, I'd regularly decide which stuff to play off the new rack by flipping through the CDs and pulling anything with raves from Trevor on the review card.

Anyway, seeing Trevor's list reminded me that I'd been meaning to come up with my own Best Of lists for '07. I just love inflicting my judgments on other people, though mine are pretty much guaranteed to be less well-thought-out than his. And so here goes:

Best Music of 2007
I feel a little weird about a couple of these, because they've popped up on every rock critic's list in the known freakin' universe, and that's usually a sign that the music is overly wonky and precious and should be shunned at any cost. But whatever, you know. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, yeah?

• Amy Winehouse, Back to Black. I love this insane little bundle of talent and manic self-destructiveness. I love (and yet mourn) her steepening downward spiral into madness. I love her raw voice and rawer, purely honest lyrics. I love "Rehab" so much that I turned it into a ringtone. (It's gotten me a few funny looks from fellow shoppers.)
• Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. They are the masters of awesomeness! Hooktastic insanity and deceptively straightforward-sounding song structures that conceal unplumbed depths of snark and bitterness. And they sing about a little Japanese cigarette case, and I myself own a little Japanese cigarette case. Which currently contains no cigarettes; they stay fresher in the hardpack.
• Of Montreal, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? and the bonus exciting EP Icons, Abstract Thee. "The Past Is a Grotesque Animal," clocking in at 11:53, hits a big trifecta: the longest good song of the year, the most guaranteed suicidal ideation-inducing song of the year, and also quite possibly just the best damn song of the year overall. And "Du Og Meg" is the sweetest cutest love song about a rocker girl ever written.
• Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, 100 Days, 100 Nights. Recorded using only '60s-era instruments and '60s-era studio technology, this album is a deliberate, delicious throwback to the golden era of soul. Sharon Jones' voice is both playful and impassioned, and the lyrics are worth writing down and sharing with a friend (especially one who's having Man Trouble). Even my mom liked it! (Crap. I've just realized this one was actually released in winter 2006. But I didn't hear it 'til halfway through 2007, so I'm running it anyway.)
• Dethklok, Dethalbum. What does it say about a musical genre when the same album can be simultaneously a dead-on satire and a perfect piece of musical brilliance? "Murdertrain a Comin'," "Fansong" (featuring the chorus, which Fisher looooves, "Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate.", "Blood Ocean," "Murmaider"... the classics just keep on coming. And, slightly embarrassingly, this album has both rekindled my lurve of heavy metal and sparked a passion for the genre that Jim never knew slumbered within his breast.
• Kanye West, "Stronger." You Can.Not. feel anything but aggressively empowered while listening to this song.
• Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra, "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." Proof positive that absolutely anything can be sung to the tune of "House of the Rising Sun." (See? You're doing it now, aren't you?)
• Okkervil River, "John Allyn Smith Sails." Yeah, it's "Sloop John B," but the tune and some of the lyrics are different and it's just a great freakin' song.
• Dat'r, "!Um!Hot." Local band, single not particularly well recorded, but it's still catchy as freakin' hell, and you should see how it brings down the house when they play it live.

And now, the biggest most horrendous musical disappointment of the year:

• Bloc Party, A Weekend in the City. This record was boring. It was frightfully boring. It wasn't bad, it wasn't sad. It was just boring. I hated it so much that it kinda made me start hating their first record Silent Alarm too, which is weird because Silent Alarm was pretty spectacular. Sigh. Even the title's boring, isn't it?

Next time, or at some other time, or perhaps never: Best Books of 2007, or, more accurately, Best Books I Read in 2007.

It's all COD's fault

because he pointed me in the direction of this fine and amazing CD boxed set.

Heavy Metal! Four discs tracing the evomalution/devolution of metal from the earliest mutterings (Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida;" disappointingly, this collection includes only the abbreviated single version and not the seventeen-minute, ten-second album version complete with "dinosaur" guitar squeals and lengthy drum solo) to the full-blown early-'90s doomcore (Sepultura's "Dead Embryonic Cells," an uplifting little ditty indeed).

I had the originals of many of these tracks once upon a time, long ago in the days when one listened to cassettes. But I never upgraded to CDs for most (er, pretty much any) of them, and so they were lost in a haze of yesteryearishness and deck-mangled wads of magnetic tape. So I had to, just had to, pony up for the first CDs I've bought in years and years... and now I am the proud owner of a set that Goes To Eleven. (It really does. There's a knob on the front of the box you can turn and everything.)

Along the way, the set highlights the likes of Lita Ford (Homeschooling mom! Did you know that? You did not.), Judas Priest (there is nothing to make you feel mugger-proof while taking your constitutional through questionable neighborhoods like "You Got Another Thing Comin' "), two Metallica tracks (sadly, neither of which is "Crash Course in Brain Surgery"), Mercyful Fate/King Diamond (one of each) and even the duly-much-maligned Stryper (who really should have realized that it's striped Lycra jumpsuits that are the tools of the devil).

But for me, the Bestest Part of All was the inclusion of two of the original versions of songs covered by Metallica on Garage Days Revisited (actually, a pair of B-sides from Ride the Lightning, later to spawn  the best Metallica record of all, Garage Days Re-Revisited). All covers, all unmitigatedly ass-kicking. And this set has Blitzkrieg's original "Blitzkrieg" (not to be confused with Black Sabbath's original "Black Sabbath"or They Might Be Giants' original "They Might Be Giants").  AND the best song on the whole set, Diamond Head's "Am I Evil?" ("I admit; yes, I am.")

Listening to the set, with its ample representation of various metal genres, is reminding me that I was always kind of on the musical fringe, even for a metal fan. The hair metal did little or nothing for me then, and it's still the same (though I'm a wee bit disappointed there's no Cinderella included*... "Nobody's Fool" was a GREAT FREAKIN' SONG). Even the standard-issue hard-drinking metal seems a little wimpy compared to the full-on evil stuff. I guess I like my metal loud, fast and angry (er, like my men?).

Now I'm having the uncomfortable feeling that I'm coming out as a metalhead in front of you guys. Yeah. Sorry about that. Um, on my high school speech team I once did an expository speech about heavy metal. Won a prize, bitches!

*Yes, there is. Thanks, COD, for pointing it out. Derrr. It is, however, not nearly as good of a song as "Nobody's Fool."

This blog goes to 500

Where was I? I was reflecting. Reflecting, dammit.

Anyway: part of the reason for reflecting, rather than blogging, is that this is the Pic-Dem's 500th post. Five hundred. Um, twenty-five score, right? Five hundred posts, 2204 comments (thx gyz), ample opportunity to ponder and self-edit and re-evaluate and eventually realize that I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about here.

But that will change! O, it will change verily. Just check out the new header if you need proof. More about that later... for now, let's take a walk down memory lane and revisit a bit of Pic-Dem history. (About eleventy-four years ago, or way back in September, anyway, Lynn at Bore Me to Tears tagged me with a "discuss your blog's history" meme. Look, Lynn, I finally did it! But your post was/is better.)

1. Stick-figure comics from the early months! Check them out here, here and here. Also a stickfigurish self-portrait.
2. Music: a constant companion. What I thought of some metal reviews, rhapsodizing about a White Stripes show, a rant about bands' MySpace pages (Putinella being a notable exception), some ten songs posts and of course my like favoritest post of all time which gets its own entry:
3. The Church of Listening to Radiohead.
4. Homeschool madness! Why we homeschool, Rhys' first day at the Jedi Temple Academy (OMG a chalkboard), what we learned from Eminem, what we (don't) do for homeschool.
5. Tuesdays and Fridays; that would be Random Tens and Science Fridays, at least on the days I do them. A couple random tens: the first one, the travel edition and the All-Vice Spectacular. And a couple Science Fridays: archaeology, bees/justice/Madeline L'Engle and caffeinated thigh cream.

Well, that's about enough dredging up of the past. Onward to the future! With jetpacks!

As this year lurches to a close and a new one glitters with falsely bright promise ahead, I am reflecting upon my goals and all that good stuff. And I am thinking of refocusing the blog a bit to, er, focus on my goals and all that good stuff. I have no illusions, or very few; I am thinking I will be have to be startlingly diligent to attain even one of them. But maybe having a little bit of accountability here, in the form of occasionally regularly posting about the steps I'm taking or should be, might help maybe a little bit?

Wow, that's one hell of a definitive mission statement.

Also: as inspired by the illustrious Lynn, I bring you Loldinejads. (There are more where this came from.)

Jaan Pehechaan Ho

The greatest musical number ever, from the 1965 Bollywood flick Gumnaam.

If you're thinking this looks or sounds like the clip used in Terry Zwigoff's 2001 film Ghost World (one of my favorite movies ever! Love you, Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson! Love you, Steve Buscemi!), then you are exactly correct.

(The song was stuck in my head, which led to my looking up the dance number on Youtube, which hence.)

What is "Norwegian black metal," Alex?

And the answer, of course, if you were taking "Newman Family Activities" for $200, would be "Jim and Molly are going out on the town tonight to listen to this whiplash-inducingly exciting form of music."

Gotta take a break from the pre-Thanksgiving, post- but still kinda mid-deadline madness somehow.

(The band: Enslaved. No, I don't know a single song by them. Yes, we're planning on having a perfectly lovely time.)

It's been a while since I actually posted, yes? I had all kinds of thoughtfulish posts on frugality and constraint and DIY and anthologies brewing, but this is all I got for ya. Sorry about that.

(Another thing about Enslaved: They download sheep.)

Tid-bits

• "Party People": Parliament's most boringest song. (Which is kind of like saying that you went to Rick James' most mellowest party, but hey, whatev.)
• Speaking of parties: nobody threw one like the Hellenistic Alexandrians, apparently. During a giant civic procession staged in the 270s by Ptolemy II, "...[A]ctors and masses of women joined officials...dressed as satyrs in a show which included scenes of Dionysus' drunken return from India, the figure of Alexander, and an enormous gold phallus, 180 feet long, covered with ribbons and tipped with a large gold star."* Where, oh where, can I hire one of these last for our next holiday bash?
• Rhys: reading. "Go, Dog. Go!" remains a favorite, joined of late by the Word Bird series... and, of course, Lego Magazine.
• Fisher: reading (nothing new) and drawing up elaborate plots for the robo-mechanical domination of the world (also nothing new). He's cranked through the Harry Potter books again--he and Jim are reading them simultaneously--and he's now revisiting the Lemony Snickets. Any suggestions on how to get him to pick up a book he's not already read would be most welcome.
• Science marches on: A fossil of a Miocene whale--possibly of an entirely new genus--was unearthed by a group of amateur paleontologists along the Oregon coast last week.
• Most fun quote from a hip-hop song ever: "Whoop! Whoop! That's the sound of the police." Just try to stop saying it.
• Dangerous diversion: creating your own free ringtones with Audacity. Jim is now the proudish owner of brand-spanking-new "Paranoid Android" and "Knives Out" ringtones, while I kept it simple with Beck's "Truckdrivin' Neighbors Downstairs." Now I just need to find someone to assign it to. 'Cuz it's not quite good enough to dethrone Amy Winehouse's "Rehab," which earns me a funny look every time my phone rings in the grocery store.
• How you know your kids are getting properly exposed to D&D: Rhys comes upstairs and asks "What's the difference between an ogre and a troll?" Fisher grabs the Monster Manual and says "Let's find out."
• Halloween: Fisher is a bandit. Rhys is a... well, can you guess?
  
  All costumery 100% homemade, which rocked. Thanks, Papa, for being the wardrobe master! Hooray for UHU glue, which bonds plastic cups to cardboard box with notable success!
• Never rains but it pours: Should probably return to pursuit of deadlines, which I've been composing this post by way of avoiding.
• Eternal bloggery: I want to write a brief monograph on the topic of Constraint as a spur to Creativity. Would you read it?

*Robin Lane Fox, "Hellenistic Culture and Literature" in The Oxford Illustrated History of Ancient Greece and the Hellenistic World.