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»14th October 2005

Fred hates video-cameras.

As Blog is here to serve whatever purpose I feel like, I think I'll report, or fabricate, events which have happened this week.

God Hates Us All

A certain Slayer album has been eating up a lot of battery power on my walkman. To quote one of the few level-headed Slayer fans from the War at the Warfield DVD, "Slayer represents the first amendment; the seperation of church and state". If you didn't guess by the title 'God Hates Us All' then I might as well explain that Slayer seem to get their kicks from baiting those ne'er do wells on the conservative right-wing in America, which is all good fun. The album itself is pretty decent, to quote another Slayer fan from the Warfield DVD, "Slayer have been the shit ever since they first came out, they've been doing the same shit all this time and they haven't conformed to what society percieves them to be, and if you don't like their shit, then fuck you.", erm- yes, that's right, fuck you.

That is what is missing from modern rock.
Well basically God Hates Us All everything I like to see in a Slayer album, the longest track is a comparatively epic 4:31, it's got such delightful track titles as 'Darkness of Christ', 'God Send Death' and 'Here Comes the Pain', it's produced by Rick Rubin, it's a whole lot of speed, volume and anger and it's got some totally bitching performances by the various members of the band. I'm not doing a track-by-track review because it's a) too time consuming and b) I made up too many adjectives describing bits on Further Down the Spiral and I don't want to inflict my attempts at putting the first solo on 'Disciple' into words. It's good to see that Slayer's sound has moved forward in a good way since my most recent encounter with them on 1990's Seasons in the Abyss.
It appears that whilst the heavy metal genre was in turmoil in the 1990s, Slayer were busy spending money on effects pedals. There's a whole wealth of crazy sounds sitting alongside the regular Slayer thrash chords and wild solos, most notably on the uplifting soul ballad 'God Send Death'. God Hates Us All can be seen to suffer from the recurrent Slayer problem that some of the weaker songs on the album tend to sound a bit samey. However, this is greatly off-set by the amazingly fresh sound Slayer have managed to capture, the two stand-out tracks are without a doubt 'Disciple' and 'Bloodline', the latter being most directly comparable to 'Dead Skin Mask' from Seasons'.
I'm not going to jump into the terrible place which is the debate over what the hell is up with most of the Slayer fans on the Warfield DVD but as a final note, "If you don't like Slayer, you need to just fucking die.". So sayeth the weird Slayer fan who apparently liked 'getting into fights' when he was at school. Those guys are weird.

Fucking Mim

More was learned about the nature of the enemy known only as Mim... or Miriam. Not only is she diong some kind of joint-honours perhaps with history of art and history (obviously a ploy just to be able to annoy me more), but it turns out she spent last summer teaching children in Cambodia to speak english, possibly the most despicable act of student arogance ever. I suppose all those silly natives need us to go over there and show them how it's done. Maybe the empire wasn't so bad after all. Let's invade Laos!



How to survive a history debate!

Aside from learning about America from the late eighteenth to early twentieth century, the 'America in the long nineteenth century tutorial' is now serving as a forum for stupid debate about things no one is very clued up on. Oh, hang on, so that's like EVERY history tutorial then. I think a short example of the level of debate is required.

Q1. What is the topic of debate?
A1. To what extent could the American revolution be described as 'radical'.
Note: It's not really important what the topic of debate is. If you want, I suppose you could try and use words in the question related to the topic, such as in this case 'America' or 'radical', but it's not really that necessary if you follow this guide.

Q2. Do I have to do any reading?
A2. Fuck no. Reading is for suckers.

Q3. What should I do at the beginning of the debate?
A3. Put on your best 'looking thoughtful' face. The goal is to look like you are in deep contemplation about the next illuminatory and thought-provoking observation or inquiry you are going to unleash on your unsuspecting and captivated audience.

Q4. So what is my next illuminatory and thought-provoking observation or inquiry?
A4. This is what it all comes down to. You can usually get away with any of the statements below. Precede each of the following with 'I think', 'Perhaps' or 'Surely':

Q5. Great, so what happens if I get asked to ellaborate on one of those points?
A5. You probably won't. However, if you should get asked to expand on what is already so self-explanatory, try defining one of the words or phrases from your responses, such as 'status quo', then repeat your illuminatory and thought-provoking observation or inquiry again to remove any doubt that could possibly exist in anyone's minds.

Q6. So what do I do when I've run out of things to say?
A6. You can either resume 'looking thoughtful' or you could say that you agree with people's ideas, re-wording their responses to demonstrate your vast understanding of what they were struggling to express initially. Don't ever disagree, you'll have to explain yourself.

The second Archaic Age of Greece tutorial

The second Greek tutorial was different from the first in two respects. Firstly, there was no longer the over-powering stench of solvents. Secondly, we actually did what could be described as work.
The tutorial took the form initially of Dr. Moxon, the Greek History professor, continuing his arching account of Greek History that he started sometime last year and has been working his way through over the course of the previous three lectures and tutorial. After a while he put his epic Idiot's Guide to Greece on hold long enough for the class to have a debate. We were talking about what brought about the emergence of the polis or city-states in the archaic age. You'd be surprised how little twenty history students can know about that, it's truly amazing. For some reason, the people who expressed theories about why the city-states emerged were also those who knew the least about the subject. Well, apart from the guy who looks about twenty three but claims to have just been on one gap year.

One of the fuckos from the Nelson Mandela tutorials last year is in the tutorial group and he proposed what Dr. Moxon described as a 'psychological' (read: wishy-washy half-baked) theory on why the city-states emerged which boiled down to some vague idea about the aspirations of ancient Greeks. The speed at which Dr. Moxon completely dis-credited this idea, built it back up again, only to give it a final verbal smack-down, leaving the fucko responsible in complete dis-array and confusion, was, to say the very least, phenomenal. Three more subsequent theories got the same treatment, a complete intellectual bitch-smacking. I considered jumping into the fray with my idea, which would probably described as 'economic' and was what Dr. Moxon was actually looking for, but it came to the end of the tutorial and I didn't have a graceful way to say it giving me the best defence against a complete destruction of my idea. I could settle with a 'well that was one school of thought in the 1950s, but it was subsequently dis-credited by counter-revisionists in the 1960s', that would let me save a little face and hopefully not make painfully obvious how little I knew about archaic Greece as well.
The end of the tutorial brought us our marked pieces of work from last week about hoplites. We were asked to write 500 words related to some photos of hoplite armour and pottery depicting hoplites. Such primary source work makes a refreshing change from the usual presentations and essays as is usual of the infrequent bouts of work given to us by the history department. The marking system the professor devised was most welcome, we get 50, which is a 2.2, just for handing in the work complete, you then get additional groups of five points for anything interesting you might say. I got 55 which rather worryingly suggests that I only managed to say one interesting thing in 500 words, which doesn't bode well for 3,000 word essays containing only six interesting sentences. The sheer amount of the professor's indecipherable writing around my paragraph where I tried to touch on a debate surrounding hoplites as cavalry and not just spearmen indicated that my flailings into the world of ancient Greek warfare had largely been a mis-fire and that I should have just stuck to the origins of diplyon shields rather than speculating anything at all.

Lost Highway

Seeing as I had nothing better to do on Monday evening I thought I'd give Lost Highway another spin. Being one of my favorite films I was hardly disappointed with this decision. Over the course of the film I managed to cook up another idea which holds water for about half of the film. My current theory, which in no way improves on previous ones, is that Fred and the Mystery Man were the two men who Pete's mum and dad said came round while he was away. Previously I presumed it was Mr. Eddy and the Mystery Man, which helped explain one strand of the plot. This current theory kind of improves one of the police officer's remarks near the end about there being 'no such thing as a bad coincidence' when they discover the picture of Fred's wife Renee on the same photo with Andy, Renee/Alice and Mr. Eddy/Dick Lorande (sorry, I'm not checking the spelling for that name), who all end up dead. The theory is full of holes though, as with all theories about the film, that's what makes the film great.
I also noticed some of David Lynch's signature moves this time round too, such as a strange fascination with red curtains. No, I don't know what that signifies either.
Because I like the logo and because I have no qualms about starting a sentence with a 'because' if I do so choose, I think I'll finish this update with the rather appropriate Lost Highway logo.


Extar, over, out.


I might have to start making a move to archive this better.