TЭKИO

I haven't got a lot of time for blogging at the moment, because:

1. Work has not been slack.
2. All of my free time is going into a special art project, which I hope you'll get to see before I die. It has been slow going though.

That's why this post is basically just a bunch of music playlists.

When I'm doing something that requires a lot of concentration—like writing, or coding, or fiddling with config files—I like to listen to "euphoric" or "uplifting" trance. I don't really know anything about electronic music (don't really know much about music in general), but I do know that you can go on Youtube and find a hundred 1-2hr audio mixes, sometimes with titles like "study mix", or "music for concentration".

There's also a lot of these sort of videos featuring "house" music instead of trance—and I've heard people say that house and trance are so similar they're almost the same thing—but the two genres don't sound at all similar to me, and I really don't care for house.

I should clarify that I don't have any great love for electronic dance music and don't have an interest in it outside of a work situation—so I dunno—if it works for me, it might be worth checking it out for yourself. … And if not … well, while poking around Youtube, I've also discovered a few other things …

---

BONUS #1: Synthwave

This stuff sounds very reminiscent of '80s synth music. If any of this stuff is gonna be up Squib's alley, I'm guessing this is it. Dunno why the thumbnails are all pictures of half-naked women though … just kidding, I know exactly why the thumbnails are like that.

---

BONUS #2: Nightcore

For the most part, this is just trance that has been sped up—without using pitch shifting—to create very fast music with chipmunk vocals. Dunno why the thumbnails are all pictures of anime girls though … no seriously, I've got no fucking idea.

I dunno if it's got something to do with the fact that I've been listening to podcasts at high-speed, but for some reason I find some of it quite catchy. Oh, and there's also sub-genres that speed up other types of music as well. Of course, syphonic-metal is my favourite. I even think some songs sound better than the originals.

---

BONUS #3: Enjoyker

Lastly, these funky little clips—made by some bloke from Russia—are just too good not to share. Video #1 is the first video of his that I found and I still think it's the best, but #2 has become something that I actually seriously listen to when I need a little bit of motivation.

The same bloke also has a channel where he remixes Russian clips, some of which seem really clever, but since I don't speak Russian, I'm left scratching my head.

The first video is obviously political. It features Crimean prosecutor general Natalia Poklonskaya who became a minor internet celebrity amongst artists a couple of years ago, because—as condescending as it is—let's face it—she looks fucking adorable in that uniform.

These are just my faves.
Click thumbnail for full image.

She has been dubbed Nyasha, which—as I understand it—not only sounds a bit like Natalia, but is also a slang term for "cutesy". Apparently the title of the song translates to "Cutesy-shmootsy", and the chorus is something like "Power, blood, cutesy-shmootsy. Crimea is ours." The animation at the end looks like a peace offering between Russia and Ukraine; I just wish I knew how to decode the subtext. One of these days, I swear I'm going to learn some languages.

Oh, and the second video is just really catchy and adorable.

Borag Thungg Squaxx Dek Lexxy

Just ignore the title. It's a stupid joke that I know nobody here is going to get. I still couldn't resist making it though.

It's no secret that I like comic-books. They're probably my favourite medium of story-telling. You don't need pages of dialogue to describe what's going on, but there's still plenty left to the imagination. Done right, it's the perfect author/audience collaboration. Having said that, there's a lot of shit comics out there.

In fact, the only contemporary comic I still look at regularly is 2000AD. For those who don't know, 2000AD is a weekly British anthology comic with sci-fi leanings. The stories it runs aren't always great; in fact, some of them aren't even good; but then again, quite a few of them are; and being an anthology comic, there's usually something in each issue worth reading. As an added bonus, 2000AD is probably the only major comic that sells DRM-free ebooks; meaning that you actually own the comics you buy and can download them to your computer and do what you like with them. Why is this important? Well, it means you're not tied to some online service and your whole collection doesn't disappear if your account gets terminated.

Later this year, 2000AD will reach issue #2000, and next year, the publication will turn forty. Not bad considering most other British comics that launched in the '70s were flat out lasting two years. If I have time, I'd like to go back and look at some of my favourite stories from over the years. We'll see how that pans out. In the meantime, I've got a couple of other things to talk about.

First of all, there's a "history of 2000AD" documentary out that has recently finished its rounds on the festival circuit and become available for purchase. It's called "Future Shock", and you can get it on DVD, or from iTunes, Google, Amazon, and just about everywhere else, I think. Since it's so new, and easy to get a hold of, I'm not going to link to a full version of it; but here's the first 20mins, just to give you a taste.

I really enjoyed it. As you might expect from a "talking-heads" style retrospective about a comic that started forty years ago, it's full of cantankerous old men who no longer give a shit if everyone knows exactly what they think. This is especially true for the mag's founder, Pat Mills, who is the centre-point of the film and pretty much steals the show. Thinks that caught my interest were:

• Nobody wanted to work in comics. It was seen as a stepping stone to a proper job.
• Publishers valued comic art so little that a lot of the originals were used as cutting boards, or door mats, or paper-towels, or just thrown away.
• Censors kept finding hidden cocks and other lewd material in the artwork that simply wasn't there.
• Not only did British comics creators not receive royalties, they weren't even credited for their work. In fact, there were people payed to remove signatures from artwork. This was because:
  • publishers wanted readers to be loyal to the title rather than the writers and artists.
  • they were afraid other publications would poach the talent. Ironic considering that …
• There are only two yanks in the film. One of them is a fan who comes across as a bit of a violence-obsessed wanker.
• The other one is Karen Berger, whom—for me—is one of the most important people in American comics history, having head-hunted all of 2000AD's top talent in the late '80s, and brought them to The States to work under DC's Vertigo imprint.
• The stories of conflict between artists and editors, editors and publishers, and the inter-generational struggle that nearly killed the mag.
• The artist who was behind schedule and got a fax (that his mum actually received) which simply read "Where are my pages, you cunt?"
• The artist whose story was plagiarised by a film-maker who then threatened to sue him if he didn't sign over the rights.
• Pat Mills describing his interactions with film-producers thusly: "You know when you're in your twenties and you meet somebody from Hollywood and you're like "Oh wow"; well that's bollocks. What you say is "Fuck off, how much ya gonna pay me?"; that's how you've gotta talk to these people."
• The description of most female characters in American comics as being interchangeable vehicles for giant tits.
• One former editor talking about how he begged management not to run "the most offensive ad he'd ever seen", and then being forbidden from responding to the inevitable reader outrage; describing the experience as having to stand quietly and have pies of shit thrown in his face. (ad below)

If I had to level any criticism at the film it's that the last ten minutes is a little bit too "Raa! Raa! Go team!". Apart from that, I just wish I could listen to all the interviews unedited. According to the film-makers, there's about five hours worth of gold just from Pat.

And speaking of interviews, here's a three-hour monster from one of 2000AD's most renowned writers, and the creator of Judge Dredd, John Wagner. I'm including it in its entirety, because it comes from a free podcast that's basically put out to promote the mag. I did split it into five parts, because of DailyMotion's limitations on length, but they should all play consecutively.

I half expect that this might actually be of some interest to Melba or Squib, since it's a bloke talking about his forty plus years of experience as a professional writer. Some things that I found interesting:

• A lot of the greats started off writing girls' comics.
• There was a time when girls' comics were the best written stories going. Now they don't even exist.
• In the olden days, comics were cancelled when readership fell to 200,000. Now most comics would kill for those numbers.
• He lives in the country because he wants to get away from people and dislikes going to parties. (Hmmm, sounds familiar)
• His biggest regret is that he's not going to see all the amazing things that happen to the world after he dies. (Oh come on, now he's just pinching my material)
• Actually, he kinda reminds me of some of my old old rellies who were still alive when I was young. It may just be the Scottish burr and left-leaning politics though.
• When he writes, he makes a list of all the elements he wants to include in the story. Most interestingly, when he writes a Dredd story, he usually includes these two items:
  1. Dredd is hero.
  2. More importantly, Dredd is villain.

As a little extra bonus, I thought I'd chuck in the intro from one of Wagner's Dredd strips. It's not a famous story, but I think these five and a half pages sum up the style and content pretty neatly. Personally, I really like the humour.

Click thumbnail to view larger image.

Gut Reaction

I'd just like to say that I've never cared one way or the other about Madonna, and—apart from wondering about the legal implications of having a topless seventeen-year-old on stage—I don't particularly care about this latest incident either.

Having said that, I thought my mum's reaction was too good not to share.

Newsreader

After turning up to the concert three hours late and visibly drunk, Madonna delivered a number of profanity ridden diatribes, before bringing the seventeen-year-old audience-member onto the stage, where she proceeded to expose the girl's breasts to the audience … twice.

Mum

… What a wretched cunt of a thing.

LE ON SBS

SBS on demand has got Leon: The Professional up for the next two weeks. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favour. I haven't watched it in a while, but there was a time when I was absolutely crazy about this movie. I've probably seen it over a dozen times.

If you don't know, it's about a borderline autistic hitman Leon (Jean Reno (legend actor and all-around spunk)), who takes in damaged twelve-year-old Mathilda (Natlie Portman), after her family is murdered by bent copper Stansfield (Gary Oldman). Reno and Oldman are superb and Portman, whom—along with Keanu Reeves—may be one of the most over-rated actors of all time, gives what may be the only great performance of her career. There's also a pot-plant.

According to the notes on the SBS website, the running time is two hours and seven minutes. This suggests that it may be the director's cut. So, if you saw this flick years ago, watch it again for the extra scenes, including one where Mathilda threatens to shoot herself if Leon won't Love her. Look, just watch it, alright. It's really really fuckin' good.

sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/633090115743/leon-the-professional

Time for some family drama

NOTE: some details are intentionally obscured while some will be inaccurate due to the fact that I'm getting my information as 4th hand gossip.

I've got an aunt—let's call her Milly—who lives in a little, out-of-the-way place—we'll call it Ravenstit. Milly is about 90 years old; her husband's been dead for years and her children have grown up, moved away, and had children who have grown up and had children of their own. Milly wants to move into a retirement home (not at Ravenstit, because Ravenstit doesn't have a retirement home). If Milly had no money and no assets, she could get into a retirement home for free under a government provision. Well, Milly certainly has no money, unfortunately she does have one asset—the house and land where she lives at Ravenstit. Herein lies the problem.

In the days before bitumen roads, when steam-trains were the arteries of the nation and the country rode on the sheep's back, Ravenstit was a thriving country town; now it isn't a town at all. There is no commerce; no post office, no shops, no servo, NO PUB. If you want to buy food or petrol, the nearest place is 200k away. Nobody has sold land in Ravenstit for at least ten years—probably twenty. When residents leave—or die—their homes sit vacant until they eventually just rot away. Milly's children have said for years that they won't take over the property when she dies. Why? Why not accept a free house and land package, even if it's not worth anything? Well, firstly, the house is a rundown shack made of asbestos. Even if you wanted to live there, pulling it down and building a new house would cost hundreds of thousands. Secondly, even if you didn't want to live there, there's still rates that need to be paid. Effectively, the property is actually LESS than worthless.

The bureaucrat that Milly's family are dealing with has demanded they sell it for no less than 80 grand. Nothing can progress until it is sold.