The Doom Scroll - The Worst of Social Media ~ May 2021

 

Another dreary month passes, as humanity edges ever closer to oblivion. I mainly spent May following the ever-more-troubling events in Armenia, while also trying to distract myself from it with literally anything else for the sake of my mental health. That will shine through in this blog entry I’m sure. Don’t play a drinking game and take a sip every time I bring Armenia up, you’re going to get alcohol poisoning. Worrying about big world events while only being able to control the little microcosm of my life. That’s always fun. But again, that’s what Doom Scrolling is all about.

You know, I thought about putting a Table of Contents here because this post is really long (been writing it all month), but that would betray the format. This is supposed to mirror the experience of scrolling through Facebook/Reddit and seeing random stupidity. So just keep scrolling, skip stuff you don’t care about, just like you do on social media.

Anyway, time for some freewrites.

Ad-Blocking on Facebook

To start with, I felt like ranting about a feature of Facebook rather than a specific post. As you doom scroll, you will eventually be bombarded with ads telling you to consume. They listen to your conversations and find out what you buy. Your phone, your smart TV, your “Alexa”, are all spying on you. I have often brought up some product in conversation, or bought something at a grocery store, only to “miraculously” be bombarded by ads for that thing later. Just recently my wife said something like “we need more band-aids”, and lo and behold I started getting ads for them. Go ahead and say “I need more *insert product here*” out loud and see what happens. Surprisingly, everyone has simply come to accept this dystopian, dare I say Orwellian eavesdropping. The right-wing nutjobs who normally rant about government conspiracies never address the most obvious and demonstrably true one right under their noses. To do so would be to critique capitalism, which is their religion (money is their God, not Jesus, as they’d like to think). I think the advertisers probably know that I am a tough nut to crack when it comes to ads. They probably have me on some list of people who are awake to their brainwashing. I am at least aware that they are trying to invade my subconscious with their subliminal messaging, and I actively try to prevent it. I can’t say I am completely immune, maybe I am even less immune than I like to think I am, but I try my best. I hate that I recognize corporate logos better than I recognize varieties of plants and animals, or certain historical events, or world capitals, or even small countries. Without looking it up I would have a hard time placing Kyrgyzstan on a map, but I can tell you that Coca-Cola was founded in 1886 in Atlanta, Georgia, and they used to put cocaine in their drinks, and I don’t even drink the stuff and haven’t for over a decade now. Perhaps that is partly my own fault for not doing the research and memorizing it, but I would argue it is also a fault of the US education system. It’s an embarrassment that so much of my knowledge had to be self taught. The job was already done on me when I was a child, before I knew any better. An entire section of my brain is reserved for corporate brainwashing and I can’t erase it.      

In an effort to avoid advertising I no longer watch cable, with its constant breaks for five minutes of brainwashing in the middle of your show. I mainly watch YouTube and other streaming services, and I allow YouTube to charge my credit card each month so that I can have premium and avoid the ads. It is worth it, to me. I am less concerned with shielding my son from sex, violence and cursing, all things that he is going to encounter eventually anyway, than I am about shielding him from ads; at least as much as is possible in this consumerist society, which is not much. 

I am stuck with Facebook ads, however. The best I can do is hide the ones that get repetitive or that I find especially objectionable. The menu they give you when you do this is the above screenshot. Many of the categories, “knows too much” (they outright admit they’re spying on you there), “repetitive”, “too personal”, are usually equally true. But you can only pick one, so I always choose the one that is the most true. Irrelevant. Because everything is irrelevant in the cosmic sense, really. Humanity itself is irrelevant. Relevance is a manmade concept, and one which mankind does not even qualify as by their own definition. But least of all relevant are ads. 

Sphinx Bizimdir!

“Thə pyramids wərə built by Caucasian Albanians, Sphinx bizimdir!”

- Some Azeri, probably

With how dire things have been lately for Armenians, what else can we do but stupid stuff like this. Yes, that is the president-for-life of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev imposed over the sphinx. That man is probably the person I hate most in the entire world, I have to honestly say. More than anyone who ever personally wronged me. Քաք կեր, բոզի դղա:  I hate looking at his punchable, ugly ass donkey face. A hideous ape in a suit and tie. I want to knock the teeth out of that braying donkey grin of his with a baseball bat wrapped in rusty barbed wire (in Minecraft). They like to caricature Armenians as having big noses (as seen in that disgusting “victory park” they opened in Baku), but look at that ski slope. It’s projection, obviously. Carl Jung would find modern Azerbaijan an interesting case study in psychological projection. “Bizimdir” in their language translates to something like “is ours”, which is something they like to say about Artsakh. The picture mocks the tendency of Azerbaijan to claim the ancient history of Armenia, as well as Iran, as their own. Azerbaijan is an insecure nation, you see, that never existed on a map until 1918, while records of Armenia existing go back to at least 500 BC, specifically an inscription from the records of King Darius of Persia. But in their twisted historiography, Armenia is the country that only sprung up recently, while Azerbaijan is actually ancient, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary by ancient Persian, Greek and Roman sources. Pretty much no historian outside of their own country and Turkey would agree with their version of events, unless they were bribed or something. This may seem humorous, but it’s had dire real world consequences, as it is being used to justify the continued genocide of Armenians, as no doubt their claims that the current territory of Armenia is ancient Azeri land will give them an excuse to sell an invasion to their populace in the future, as soon as they think they can get away with it. Isn’t it great having a neighbor that wants to erase any evidence that you ever existed, and probably would succeed too were it not for the dubious, half-assed protection of Russia? Not that the rest of the world cares. No, but when a very similar conflict happens between Israel and Palestine, that gets their attention. Speaking of that subject:

Serj Tankian’s Take on Palestine

Serj Tankian, lead singer of System of a Down, had the best Armenian leftist take on the Israel/Palestine War/Occupation, and it is basically my take too. I more or less come down on Palestine’s side, but that doesn’t mean their leadership, the Hamas, doesn’t also suck. Neither party is any friend to Armenia. Which, perhaps selfishly, is at the center of my international political opinions (I don’t really root for the United States much if you haven’t noticed). I have personal beef with Israel for supplying Azerbaijan with weapons, knowing full well what they were going to be used for. But paradoxically, Palestine celebrated Armenia’s defeat last year too, despite Azerbaijan being BFFs with their worst enemy. I may have my issues with both governments, but I do feel bad for the regular people caught up in this mess, people just trying to go about their lives until suddenly Israel hurls missiles at them, and if I’m being objective I think Israel is in the wrong, they are the clear aggressors and occupiers, and they’ve created an apartheid state. I firmly believe if a group of people want to be independent from a country they should be. Right to self determination over territorial integrity. Anyway, if anyone asks where I stand on Israel vs Palestine, Serj Tankian’s opinion is more or less my own. 

In fact while we’re on the subject, here’s a take on the subject I saw that gave me food for thought:

Does the metaphor work? I mean I see where this is coming from, although the Romans no longer really exist, they converted to Catholicism and became Italians, and they were never native to England; while Jews have existed basically uninterrupted since ancient times, and did originate from the Levant area. I like the use of the Roman pagan religion as justification. That is a good metaphor. I still don’t think a book of old folk tales gives a country the right to establish itself on an existing country and kick the former inhabitants out. A big reason Israel happened was because of some batshit insane protestant Christians wanting to fulfill the prophecies in Revelations.  

This was the big news story this month, and I am pretty angry that no one other than Armenians gave this much of a shit when Artsakh was similarly attacked last year. Where was the media coverage, the internet outrage, even the memes? And no one cares about the current border crisis either. The Armenians of Artsakh are in a very comparable situation to the Palestinians. It is interesting what makes the news and what doesn’t. I have only just now begun to hear about a civil war in Ethiopia that has been going on since last November and a genocide against the Tigray people there, and not through the mainstream media but through individual Facebook posts from certain groups I’m in, and then looking it up on Wikipedia to see what they were talking about (and it is probably not the most unbiased resource, since they refuse to call it a genocide, but it’s just a general jumping point). An entire genocide that almost no one is talking about. How many others are going on in the world right now that I haven’t even heard about? I can’t help but be reminded of how Armenians are ignored by the mainstream media. I suppose it is because the Islamic world and the political left in the US and Europe sympathizes with Palestine, and that Israel is practically the 51st US state, that they have better PR and the conflict gets more attention than either the Armenians or the Tigray. Who also don’t have any oil. But for some reason you can’t get the American left to care this much about any other foreign conflict.

My solution to the conflict is to just do away with the concept of countries, borders, land ownership, nationalism and separate national identities. It’s all fake made-up bullshit in the end. Meaningless social constructs. Just the rich keeping the poor divided and at each other’s throats rather than theirs. The two-state solution would just lead to something like Armenia and Azerbaijan. Two groups of people who just cannot live together at all, fighting over who was there first, claiming each other’s land and fighting over borders, the stronger country gradually choking the weaker one out until the coast is clear for an invasion, all that fun stuff. The two-state solution is not going to stop the conflict. It is no solution at all. In fact, perhaps the entire concept of nation states just lends itself to conflict and war. That’s why humanity would be better off without it. The only thing that ever stopped the fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia was when the Soviet Union conquered both. Maybe Israel and Palestine need to be taken over by some bigger empire to get them to stop fighting. So there’s either the no-state solution, or just having both states get absorbed into a bigger empire which forces them to get along. Neither of which look like they’re happening any time soon. Humans are such territorial monkeys. I wish I didn’t care as much as I do. Let’s leave these warring little ants for a bit and think about the bigger picture.

The Vastness of the Cosmos

There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt in your philosophy.

A pallet cleanser. I also follow the official Facebook page of the Hubble Space Telescope, because I need a break from all the idiocy on this space rock. Perhaps thinking about space makes my problems feel small, and there is comfort in that. This is galaxy cluster ACO S 295 (why don’t astronomers ever give things real names?), with some stars in the foreground and other galaxies in the background. This is why “irrelevant” is the correct choice when you hide a Facebook ad. This is what the universe really looks like. Go ahead, break your mind by attempting to comprehend what’s really in this picture. “Reach inside a raging galaxy and grab a small glittering oddity.” Due to the finite speed of light these are galaxies as they looked hundreds of millions or even billions of years ago. An amount of time we can’t comprehend either. What else is happening in the universe, this very instant? How many different worlds are there? How many planets harbor life? Is there something else we cannot comprehend? If something is either alive or not alive, what if there is a third option? Are the very stars alive? Or the galaxies themselves? Or do they exist in that incomprehensible third option? With a universe this vast, do we really even need a multiverse? What are galaxies, really? Are galaxies actually cells in the body of an even grander living beast? There’s no limit to size. Maybe we all have a universe inside each of our cells and molecules. If galaxies are alive, we are all part of that life. Like how the microorganisms in our own bodies are part of a much larger living being, we are like microorganisms living inside something larger. 

Think about what this picture really is. We are the first lifeforms on this planet to peer this far into the universe and see what’s really out there. We’ve only known that other galaxies exist for about a century. There are people alive older than that. Have any other life forms become self aware enough to peer through space and see the other galaxies like this? Are we the only ones seeing this, and wondering what it is? Is anyone looking at our galaxy right now, and seeing it as it looked 100 million years ago? We will likely never see our own galaxy from a distance, because it would take eons to even leave the galaxy.

And they want you to waste your minuscule existence, the tiny fragment of time you get to exist in the universe, working. Telling you that you’re “lazy” if you do not comply. So they pollute the skies with light, blind the populace to what’s really out there. Keep people divided with countless labels like races and nationalities that are ultimately meaningless. Avoid teaching astronomy in schools. When you aren’t working, they lull you into slumber and submission with ads, television, internet. Humanity has established a way of life in which you do not enjoy your life at all. I’m not saying I’m above it all either. I’m online all the time myself. But I am beginning to realize what’s going on. I can’t change the world or how human society works, but I can try to control my own life, at least. 

Ruining Wrestling Pay Per View Titles

I felt like having fun on the Doom Scroll for once. So I grabbed this one off a wrestling meme group I’m in on Facebook. Pro wrestling has always named their pay per views either something catchy, generic, or just bad. These were the ones I thought were the funniest with “in the Ass” added to them.

Royal Rumble in the Ass

Summerslam in the Ass

Backlash in the Ass

Hell in a Cell in the Ass

Vengeance in the Ass

Armageddon in the Ass

The Great American Bash in the Ass

Halloween Havoc in the Ass

Tables, Ladders & Chairs in the Ass

Money in the Bank in the Ass

Fully Loaded in the Ass

One Night Stand in the Ass

Fatal 4-Way in the Ass

Great Balls of Fire in the Ass 

No Way Out in the Ass

No Mercy in the Ass

Anyway, I could go on, those just seemed like the funniest ones. I’ve written about wrestling on this blog from time to time, how I haven’t really watched it consistently since 2007 but kinda miss it, or at least how it used to be. I still have a collection of wrestling VHS and DVDs for when I want a nostalgia dose. Whenever I would order a PPV I would always be sure to record it on a blank tape in order to get my money’s worth, and I still have all those. I feel that since I stopped watching not only has the wrestling gotten worse but even the pay per view titles have gotten worse. When I was watching they had Vengeance, Backlash, Judgment Day, these were all good titles. Now they have stupid crap like Bragging Rights, Money in the Bank, Extreme Rules, Great Balls of Fire. What even is that last one? Some one-time event in 2017 apparently. I can see why they never reused that title again, what a stupid name. 

An Article on “Shrek” That Pissed Off Fans

 

This article got passed around a lot on May 18th, and many fans of the film were hurt by Scott Tobias’ words. I could have commented on people’s shares of it, but I would have been dog-piled for doing so, because I mostly agree with the article. It basically is a buddy comedy with fart jokes, vindictive jabs at Disney, and a pretty cliche “be yourself” moral to the story, albeit delivered in a way that was unusual for animated films at the time. I was fifteen when the movie came out, too old to harbor any nostalgia for it and look back on it with rose-tinted glasses. I get the nostalgia for it, some of my favorite films from my childhood like Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland and Once Upon a Forest have glaring flaws and probably aren’t movies I would like nearly as much if I were seeing them for the first time as an adult. But I was old enough when it came out to see Shrek more objectively than today’s twenty-somethings. 

  

Now Shrek on its own merits may not be the worst film ever made, but the trends it set, fairly novel when it debuted, made animated films insufferable for the next fifteen years or so. Perhaps it can’t be fully blamed for the demise of traditional animation in favor of computer animation, it shares that blame with Disney and Pixar, but it certainly helped drive it into the grave faster. But the worst influences it had were the infestation of inane fart jokes, needless celebrity voice acting and pop culture humor that quickly dates itself, in just about every animated film for the rest of the 2000s, and though the animation industry has recovered some in the last ten years, now that animated films are allowed to have genuine pathos again, its influence is still being felt. Even today you still see the Dreamworks Face on animated movie posters because they think “attitude” sells, largely a legacy of the success of Shrek. I would still say that perhaps a successful anti-Disney movie needed to happen at that moment in animation history. They needed to be taken down a notch. It was the first animated movie to challenge Disney since The Land Before Time in the 1980s. From the late 1980s on Disney dominated the market, and the only remotely successful non-Disney animated films (Ferngully, Anastasia) succeeded by not directly competing with Disney. After Shrek, the playing field opened up, and to this day Disney still doesn’t monopolize animated films like they used to. But the Hollywood movie studios just took all the wrong lessons from Shrek’s success. It succeeded because it was something different, not because of potty humor, celebrities and pop culture references. Ask yourself why Shrek is remembered but Chicken Little is not. In short, movie itself isn’t nearly as bad as the films it would later inspire, but that’s about the nicest thing I can say about it. 

 

If I must watch Shrek though, I prefer Shrek Retold, which is the far superior adaptation. I actually enjoyed that. 

 

“No One Wants To Work Anymore”

“Boo hoo hoo, no one wants to work anymore because unemployment pays more than we do!” Did anyone ever really want to work at a fast food joint? The original “No one wants to work anymore” signs have that “Girls only date jerks and not nice guys like me” energy. Nobody wants to work FOR YOU anymore. But this one’s a parody. The fine print on this sign is everything. This is far from the only parody Help Wanted sign I’ve seen floating around online lately, but it was my favorite one. What a humiliating process applying for jobs is. They want you to beg for jobs no one in their right mind would actually want to do, obviously the only ones who do apply are forced to apply by poverty. Capitalism thrives on desperate poor people. Can you imagine if everyone “pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, stopped being lazy and stopped buying lattes and avocado toast”? Who would flip the burgers? Who would work in the Amazon warehouses and piss in bottles? Of course, it’s all just victim blaming, everything depends on how rich or poor your parents were. Without a desperate working class it would all fall apart.

I loathe having to submit a resume and cover letter and then enter all the exact same information again on the application. Wasting hours of your life only to never hear anything back nine times out of ten. And they all want someone who’s twenty years old with 15 years work experience. “Why not show up in person with a hand-written application and shake the boss’ hand?” some old fogeys might say, who haven’t applied for a job since the 1970s. It’s never worked that way in my lifetime. Drug testing is just another way to test your submissiveness, as well as to make sure drug addicts can’t find work and end up in prison. The criminalization of drugs is simply an excuse to arrest people to provide free labor (i.e. slavery) to the capitalist class, as well as to keep as many of the dangerous poor minorities imprisoned and as disenfranchised as they can, to minimize threats to the power structure. The 13th amendment which outlawed slavery left that little escape clause in there, “except as punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”. Better invent more crimes to keep your slaves then. Even after they’ve been released they can’t vote or get anything but the lowest paying jobs (provided they pass the drug screening), keeping them impoverished, and under control. 

But most jobs serve a purpose along those exact lines as well. Read David Graeber’s On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant. David Graeber helped me realize a lot of this. The majority of jobs don’t even need to exist. But they do because it keeps the populace busy and under control. People stuck working 40 hours a week don’t have much time to protest. Make them pay rent and put them in debt and that’s even better. The pandemic is winding down, so the “get back to work you lazy bums” propaganda is in full swing. But people understandably are finding that they prefer being on unemployment rather than subjecting themselves to humiliating jobs that pay little and cost both ones dignity and precious hours of their finite lives. This is dangerous to the capitalist class, as these people do have time to protest. Fast food restaurants are resorting to bribery to get people to apply, but doing everything except actually raising their wages. They’re afraid. I hope people stay on unemployment as long as possible. There needs to be a nice shakeup in this dystopian hellhole. Of course the powers that be are already scrambling to sign in laws that make it near impossible to stay on unemployment. Got to get that human capital (live)stock back to servitude and get back to business as soon as possible, of course.

The solution is replace these jobs with robots and give people Universal Basic Income. But the rich will have to go down kicking and screaming first.

 

European Languages circa 600 AD, Or How to Piss off a Turkish Nationalist in One Easy Step

“This map is liəs sprəad by thə global shaytan Ərməni diaspora lobby!!”       

  - Some Azeri, probably

Well well well. What have we here? European languages circa 600AD. I see Armenian, I see Kione Greek, I see Georgian and Circassian, but my my, where is Turkish? I don’t see i- oh look, there it is, Common Turkic, that dark orange one way up there in the northeast by Oghur and Magyar. How very curious. What’s it doing way up there? I thought the almighty president-for-life of Azerbaijan, Führer Aliyev, said that Armenia was only founded in 1920 or whatever, and that Turks have been in the area since 1,000,000 BC. You mean to say the rest of the world doesn’t teach the same history as Baku State University? 

Sigh, don’t mind me, dwelling on the ancient past is a lot less depressing than dwelling on the present state of Armenia. Instead of going by old Soviet maps to demarcate the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, why not use this map? Just a thought.

Shared on I Fucking Love Maps. I’m sure there were some lovely and civilized discussions in the comments between the Turkic nationalists and everyone else, but I chose not to look at the comments and save myself some brain cells.

So, Let’s See How Ol’ Biden Is Doing This Month...

Well I am shocked! Shocked, I tell you! That the diet-republican candidate who was behind the bill that made it impossible to declare bankruptcy on student loans is now doing nothing at all to alleviate them despite promising to. At least the Orange Man is gone and the new president writes nicer tweets, am I right? Now we can all finally stop paying attention to politics and go back to brunch, while nothing fundamentally changes. Now you see, at least Republicans are upfront about being greedy assholes who bend over backwards for the rich. They promise nothing, and they deliver nothing. They’re honest. Evil, but honest. The Democratic Party is like Diet Coke. Masquerading as the healthier choice, but in some ways even worse. The puppet masters put a Democrat in charge when they need to silence dissent from the left while continuing business as usual. 

Recognizing the Armenian genocide last month wasn’t enough to make me like Biden. Besides, he undid that by lifting the sanctions on Azerbaijan and resuming selling weapons to them. In fact I think he only recognized the genocide to distract Armenian-Americans while he aided our enemies. I should have known the other shoe would drop. A brief moment of weakness where my cynicism wavered and I almost thought something good had happened for once. I should know better by now.

As for the student loan thing, my eventual plan is to flee the country to escape the debt. Until I do, I can never own a car or a home without it getting repossessed, and they’d forever be garnishing my paychecks. I’ll never be able to pay it off. They fucked me over for life by getting me to fall for the scam that is college. They think they own my soul. Well fuck that. 

This was shared on the Lost Generation subreddit. 

Another Day, Another Insensitive Tweet

Okay, imagine if you will. In an alternate universe, Twitter and Facebook exist in 2001. September 11th happens as normal, it’s a national tragedy for the US. And on September 12th, let’s say the UK Embassy to the United States tweets out “Look guys, here’s the history of the great British sport, cricket!” Probably wouldn’t go over well, would it? That’s what happens when the US Embassy to Armenia makes this idiotic post on both Twitter and Facebook the day after Azerbaijan infiltrated Armenia’s borders and took six soldiers hostage. Not to mention Artsakh having been ethnically cleansed less than a year ago, and the political turmoil in the months since, which they’ve also never commented on. Oh but please, tell us more about surfing! I mean this is probably pretty normal behavior for the US Embassy of every small country that the US doesn’t care about, but for some reason this time, it pissed everyone off. Even Serj Tankian commented on it (why not just make him Prime Minister of Armenia at this point, he couldn’t do much worse than any other leader the country has had since 1991), calling for the US Ambassador to Armenia to resign and be replaced. Really the only reason the US has an embassy in Armenia is to be a thorn in Russia’s side. They don’t actually give a shit about a little oil-free country like Armenia. I actually visited the US embassy in 2014 during my first trip to Armenia. I was with a class of Armenian students from Fresno State. They took us through a metal detector and I had to leave behind all my coins, my hat and my belt. We had a little tour, of which I don’t remember much because it was rather unremarkable. They took us into a conference room and we were allowed to question the US ambassador. One of my classmates asked why the US didn’t recognize the Armenian genocide, I remember how she skillfully sidestepped the question with some BS about wanting peace between Armenia and its neighbors and open borders with Turkey, never once using the word “genocide”. So this post is completely in-character for the US Embassy. 

Anyway, that was May 2021 on the internet for me. Next month Armenia is having an election, so I’m sure things will go from bad to worse and I will get to lament about that on next month’s Doom Scroll. 

So to the handful of you who read this, I bid you farewell.

Thoughts on “Ojo in Oz”

 

I’ve still been plodding my way through the Thompson Oz books. Some I feel like I don’t have a lot to say about, but I’ll briefly give some thoughts on the books I’ve read since The Lost King of Oz. 

The Giant Horse of Oz was okay. I find the title a bit baffling because the titular horse doesn’t appear until many chapters in and is not the main focus of the book at all, but that does happen in this series from time to time. I did wonder how the Munchkins and Gillikins felt about Ozma haphazardly assigning monarchs who she just met to their countries. Like “hey, you seem like a nice guy, here, rule one fourth of Oz.” Surely Ozma could have found better rulers than some guy she’s known for five minutes. I don’t think Thompson really goes anywhere with the characters Joe King (King of Gilliken Country) and King Cheeriobed (King of Munchkin Country) in subsequent books either. They show up at Ozma’s parties, that’s about it.

I didn’t like The Yellow Knight of Oz, partly because I just wasn’t ever invested in the character, and it seemed like just one event after another without much of a point. Like The Road to Oz, it was almost just a travelogue with not much at stake. The knight sets off on his journey because he’s bored rather than for any special reason, and he tours the often pun-based gimmicky communities of Oz. As Handy Mandy in Oz showed, even having a likable, well-rounded yet flawed main character can be enough to save a book with kind of a cliche and predictable plot, but the Yellow Knight was not a character like that, to me at least. 

And lastly I read Pirates in Oz, which kind of like Baum’s Rinkitink in Oz was only barely an Oz book, with 98 percent of it taking place outside Oz. I actually liked this book too, and I shall need to give the public domain direct sequel Captain Salt in Oz a read now that I’ve familiarized myself with its predecessor. Thompson’s character Peter, who visits Oz from America in a few books, has a little more personality in this book than the blank slate, audience surrogate he seemed to be in Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz.

Which gets me to the next book I read, Ojo in Oz. 

Nice hourglass figure, Ojo.

Overall, despite a few flaws I thought this was one of the better Thompson books, actually. I had heard mixed things about it. Working on an Oz book of my own in which Ojo is a character, I had long felt the need to familiarize myself with this book, although it is still under copyright and I couldn’t include anything directly from it legally anyway. It’s still canon. I can see why the modern Oz authors I’ve talked to tend to hate this book because its ending kind of limits Ojo’s storytelling potential, since (spoiler alert) he moves to Seebania to live with his newfound parents. Even Jack Snow, an official author of the Famous Forty, decided to retcon it and have Ojo and Unc Nunkie living back in their cottage outside the Emerald City as if Ojo in Oz had never happened. Its ending is going to force me to change my story around as well, that is, depending on how I publish it (if I’m self-publishing I will ignore this book too, if only for legal reasons). I think I can still work with it if I bend and twist the plot around, it’s not enough to completely sink my story. I may also have to work in other modern Oz stories I haven’t read yet to make it fit in with the Oz Timeline, making this story the least of my problems.

Anyway, back to the book. The first thing I would like to discuss is the title itself. Ojo IN Oz. It should have been Ojo of Oz. The titles of Oz books generally follow a formula, besides the odd titles like The Road to Oz and Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz. There isn’t always a character in the title (The Marvelous Land of Oz, The Emerald City of Oz), but when there is and the title character is a native of Oz, the formula is “((character name)) of Oz”. If the title character is from outside of Oz and visits Oz, the formula is “((character name)) in Oz”. Ojo is a native of Oz. Why then, is it Ojo IN Oz? Of course he’s in Oz, he’s never left Oz. The “in” makes it sound like he’s just visiting Oz. He’s a citizen of Oz. OF OZ. Ozma of Oz, Tik Tok of Oz, The Patchwork Girl of Oz, The Scarecrow of Oz, Glinda of Oz. They’re all of Oz, because they live there. Come to think of it, now that I’m looking at a list of the Famous Forty, two other books also have this problem, and both are Thompson books; Kabumpo in Oz and Grampa in Oz. Both title characters are Oz natives. It annoys me. It’s probably the publisher’s fault. Anyway, enough on that, it’s just a pet peeve.

The second thing I should discuss, and this story is fairly notorious for this, is the unfortunate racism. Yes yes, Baum could be racist too on occasion, and it was the 1930s, people didn’t know any better, but that’s less an excuse and more just an explanation. At the beginning of the story, Ojo is kidnapped by Gypsies, now widely known by the more politically correct name Romani. It is never explained why there is a group of Romani in Oz. Now Thompson could have easily replaced them with whatever fictional gimmicky group of Ozians she wanted and it would have been fine, but she had to go and needlessly vilify an ethnic group from the real world, in a way that makes zero sense in the context of the Oz series. I know attitudes were different in the 1930s, and this is far from the only negative depiction of Romani people in literature and media even going into recent decades, but I guess what irritates me about it most is how easily avoidable this could have been by simply replacing them with a fictional group of people native to Oz. It would both make more sense and be less racist. At the end of the book Ozma sends them back to Europe, and it’s the 1930s. Yikes. Not that Thompson would have known what was to happen in a few years. Thompson was merely a product of her environment. This book gives us a glimpse into the mentality that led to the genocide of Romani during World War II. 

Moving onto more pleasant topics, this book contains in it one of the most unintentionally hilarious chapters ever in an Oz book. Now it’s best read if you dumb your sense of humor down to the maturity of a 12 year old, which fortunately I can do on command. When Dorothy, Scraps and the Cowardly Lion are searching for Ojo, one of the towns they visit is a place called Dicksyland. Dicksyland is populated by the “queer” Dicks. Some Dicks are described as short and fat, others thin and handsome. Their leader, Dickus the Third, the Dicktator of Dicksyland, has a “Right Hand Man” (I guess the Left Hand Man was fired, he just didn’t have as good of a grip on his job). The innuendos go on; the fact that “dick” already had its current slang meaning in the 1930s makes one wonder if Thompson knew. Was she a pure and innocent children’s book author, or could it be that she was somehow privy to obscene locker room jargon of the day and wanted to see how much her publisher would let her get away with? The world may never know.

“The Second Dick was short and fat.” HAHAHA yeah I know I’m immature.

In all, while I appreciate the effort Thompson often put in to revive some of Baum’s more forgotten characters (it always bugged me how Scraps just kind of stopped hanging out with Ojo after becoming a favorite at the palace, despite their previously close friendship, and he became relegated to mere cameos from then on), she unknowingly and unintentionally threw a monkey wrench into the stories of Oz authors for decades to come by taking Ojo in her own drastic direction. It’s similar to how she did her own thing with the Scarecrow’s backstory. Not that I really blame her for it, she was the Royal Historian after all, given free reign over Oz by the publisher, and the only more legitimate source on Oz canon than her is Baum himself. To be fair, Unc Nunkie and Ojo always had being former royals as part of their backstory, as Baum mentions Unc Nunkie could have been king of the Munchkins had Ozma not ascended to the throne. It just so happened that characters turning out to be royalty was one of Thompson’s favorite plot twists, so it almost seems like something she made up herself. Plenty of royals to go around in Oz when their towns seem to have kings and queens instead of mayors. At least Ojo’s dad, the lovable rogue Realbad, is a pretty cool guy and a well-rounded character. His mom could have used some characterization though.

 In any case, Ojo later moved back to the Emerald City to be roommates with Button-Bright in modern post-Famous Forty canon, so there.

Top 5 Songs of the Month ~ May 2021/ Մարերի 4513 ~ Pitch After Dark, Camlann, ЭЛЕКТРОЦОЙ

It’s been an interesting month for me since I last wrote, as far as my music goes. My new mp3 player currently has 2,032 songs, and the room left is still 4 gigabytes. My entire CD collection, including every CD I ever burned (at least the ones I still have) since my teen years. I know I gushed about this last month too, but I wasn’t even done doing a deep dive into my archives and putting stuff on it yet then. It’s a blend of old and new. Music I haven’t listened to in years, mixed with music I have only just discovered and heard once or twice. But, I have still been sure to check my YouTube subscriptions for new music, as well as listening to a few DJ sets, which is where I found my top five songs this month. We have quite a diverse selection this time, groups from Indonesia, Italy, Russia, and the United States.

Pitch After Dark - Trapped Inside

“I want to dance the way we did before we were all trapped inside.”

You know, I obviously wouldn’t say I ever enjoyed the pandemic, but the novelty it had, however little, has definitely worn off. I’ve got no place to take my kid, those face masks make my face break out, and I miss concerts and night clubs. I’m over it. That’s what this song is about. Being trapped, having cabin fever and facing your demons in isolation. Although released May of 2020, it is even more relevant this far into the pandemic, when it’s been more than a year. If the singer was already feeling cooped up a year ago, imagine how much the poor guy must miss dancing now. It’s thanks to a months old DJ set by DJ Maus that I found his song, and it’s unfortunate that it flew under my radar last year. But it wasn’t too late to be relevant when I first heard it, of course.

Pitch After Dark is a post-punk duo from Las Vegas, Nevada. They released two four-track albums last year, which are both quite good. 

Get it here:

https://pitchafterdark.bandcamp.com/album/pitch-after-dark

Camlann - I’m Nobody

This is the first band from Indonesia I think I’ve ever heard. Camlann has a very unconventional look and sound for their genre, which they refer to as Dark Disco. Watching them I can’t help but be reminded of Romeo Void, a similar sounding band from the early 1980s. The singers of both bands even look similar. Is this her daughter? At any rate, “I’m Nobody” is a very scathing song that I would hate to have directed at me. She describes someone whose idealism and dedication to the philosophy of John Lennon has destroyed their life and left them and their family homeless. I mean agreeing with the lyrics to “Imagine” isn’t necessarily going to destroy your life and leave you homeless, is it? Maybe I do feel slightly targeted by this song. Which makes it weird that I like it. 

Anyway, this is off their album Circa 1983, which releases later this month and you can find here:

https://camlannmusic.bandcamp.com/album/circa-1983

ЭЛЕКТРОЦОЙ - Обречены

Electrotsoy is a Russian band I discovered late last year. Their first album “Ностальгия”, or “Nostalgia”, was a soft dreamwave/shoegaze album overall, but their newest album “Bedroom Gothic” has a darker edge to it. This track, “Обречены”, (“Enchanted”) is a good example. It’s been a long time since I found a song with pipe organs and wolf howls. Best hook I’ve heard in a song for a while now. That opener can only bring to mind Bela Lugosi as Dracula. Some of the other songs in the album do sound like their first album, but this track in particular definitely seems like a darker, more post-punk direction for the band, which suits me fine. I am eager to see what else this band comes out with.

You can find their new album here:

https://electrotsoy.bandcamp.com/album/bedroom-gothic

SKYND - Michelle Carter

Skynd is a darkly fascinating band. Style-wise they borrow cues from Industrial, hip hop, pop, slight dubstep influences. I would compare them to the Russian group IC3PEAK. Some people try to compare them to Die Antwoord, which...yeah maybe kind of, if you squint, but they’re way darker. The only things the bands have in common are some strictly musical genre-related similarities. Subject-wise and tone-wise I don’t know who else to compare them to. Each of their songs is about a different high profile murderer, each meticulously researched. It’s like if the show American Horror Story was a band instead of a show. Thematically, the songs are all about the darker side of human nature. It never feels like they’re celebrating the killer, as their videos focus on the victims. Listening to the songs without watching the video that goes with them is like missing out on half the song. The song that stood out to me most was “Michelle Carter”, about a young woman who gaslighted her boyfriend into killing himself through text messages; the actual text messages provide the lyrics to this song. “Columbine” was another powerful track with a gripping music video, and was my runner up. Skynd is a very controversial band for obvious reasons, and isn’t for everyone, but I appreciate the artistry and the themes in the songs. 

This song actually doesn’t seem to be on their Bandcamp, but you can listen to it here as well:

https://skynd.co/MichelleCarter

Horror Vacui - Corvus Corax

I discovered, or I suppose you could say I “unearthed”, this Italian deathrock band when I was reviewing the UNEARTH’D compilation album, which  Horror Vacui had a track on. I decided to check out their other songs, and they’ve got quite a nice discography. Out of the songs I checked out I liked this one best for its sound, but it was a tight race. This track is off their 2012 LP In Darkness You Will Feel Alright. The album title and cover are good at conveying the sound on the album. Deathrock is alive and well. Stylistically this could have come out in the 1980s, it has that same classic goth sound. 

You can find the album here:

https://horrorvacuilegion.bandcamp.com/album/in-darkness-you-will-feel-alright

The Doom Scroll - The Worst of Social Media - April 2021

 

Welcome to the third installment of my monthly series where I lament the downfall of our society, offer my spicy political opinions, and make fun of bad memes. They’re kind of like writing prompts for free-writes, I’ve just realized. Gods I miss my Creative Writing classes. Even though they financially ruined me. Should have just joined a writer’s guild. Ahem, anyway, here we go. 

No, I Demand an Apology!

The Whites are at it again. I say that being white as a sheet myself. So according to this person, God personally decides what shade everyone’s skin is going to be before they’re born, and what they’ll have between their legs. I think if you take away all of the social racial privilege issues and look at it from strictly a Darwinian survival perspective it’s actually more advantageous to have darker skin, because you don’t have to worry as much about sunburns and skin cancer. I wish I were darker, actually. White people are just jealous, deep down. See I have to be careful in the sun. I need a sun hat and lots of sun lotion or I’ll fry to a crisp. Thanks for that, God. My skin tone may work for the climate of Ireland, not so much Florida. But at least the cops are less likely to shoot me for no apparent reason. Sad but true.

You know what my biggest problem with Creationism is? Why would a supposedly flawless and perfect supreme being create human bodies with so many design flaws? Why is it so easy for food to go down the wrong pipe and for us to choke? Why can’t we go much more than a minute without breathing? Why do we have to wipe our asses after taking a dump? Why do we get hang nails? Why are our eyes so sensitive that we can’t even touch them? And here’s a big one, why are human testicles on the outside of our bodies? Couldn’t a divine being have found a better solution for keeping sperm cells alive than having what is essentially a vulnerable internal organ on the outside of the body with nothing but a flimsy skin pouch for protection? What the hell is that? It doesn’t make sense. To say nothing of what females put up with, like periods and childbirth. A divine punishment to an entire gender all because some lady ate an apple a long time ago, was it? And what was that about forgiveness and turning the other cheek, hm? Do as I say not as I do, I guess. There are millions of other flaws in our imperfect flesh vehicles that I could go into, not the least of which is how they break down with age, as I’m already experiencing at 35 years old. I’m missing a tooth and I have lower back problems, can’t even sit for long. And yet this body was created by a perfect divine being in their image? Now I’m not really an atheist. I’m more of a pantheist I suppose. I like polytheism in a more symbolic way. I can believe that perhaps the universe has an inherent intelligence, and I’m fond of the hypothesis of panpsychism, but if the universe does have a higher consciousness and intelligence, it’s not an old man with a long beard sitting in the clouds sculpting people out of clay. Evolution is still the best explanation. Homo Sapiens is a work in progress.

But I’m putting way more thought into this than the original person who wrote this did. Basically all they’re actually saying is “shut up and stop complaining about being on the receiving end of systemic racism and sexism, which I personally benefit from and justify using religion. Don’t blame me or my ancestors for your oppression, blame HIM.” This person’s an arsehole. Got to love that emphasis on “HIS” too. God is definitely a man, so get back in the kitchen.

 

This was shared in Creepy Uncle Joe Biden’s Demented Shambling Neoliberal Nightmare. One of the best group names ever. 

The “Great” Outdoors

This screenshot made its rounds through most of the lefty groups this month. You know now that I have a kid myself I notice this even more. How is he supposed to go outside and play when anywhere he goes he might get hit by a car, or trespass on someone’s property? The town I’m living in, Rockledge, Florida, is swiftly becoming just like this picture. A sea of bright neon signs that stay on all night, billboards plastered with ads, dwindling areas of greenery and very few sidewalks. Everything that isn’t paved over with asphalt is private property, consisting of manicured lawns coated in pesticides and dog piss. There is a meadow in a vacant lot nearby the condo complex I live in but there are so many ant hills it’s like stepping on landmines. The ants have been driven out of everywhere else so they just own that area. For now, that is. There are a couple parks in town, but not within walking distance. And people wonder why kids are absorbed in their phones these days. What else is there for them to do? Older people seem to have this idea that kids could go rafting like Huckleberry Finn if they wanted to, but they’d rather play video games and be lazy. All the ponds in the neighborhood where I live are surrounded by houses and are private property. You can’t go anywhere. Parks exist but do you really want to go to the same park every single day? 

This is the world that has been crafted for today’s children. Cities planned completely around cars, suburbs and shopping centers. You’re not allowed to trespass on people’s lawns, and no one talks to each other. In the populated areas of the United States at least, that is the reality. It’s a disgusting reality. Cars really ruined the world, that’s what it all boils down to. That and lawns. We could be using that land to grow our own food and barter it with our neighbors for their crops, but no let’s have useless grass that we have to waste water on. I sense a conspiracy; the food corporations wanted to monopolize the food supply so they got local governments and Home Owners Associations to outlaw using your land for growing food. People who live in apartments really can’t grow anything. Then you have Monsanto putting copyrights on plant seeds and going after people who plant them. That way you’re forced to work crappy corporate jobs for money to buy food in order to survive. This is how they’ve enslaved us. They’ve taken away our ability to be self-sustaining. Makes for a very obedient population. I decided to research when this started, and it all started in the 1500s when the German aristocracy took away the peasants’ ability to use the land for growing crops and hunting, and privatized it, thus resulting in the German Peasant War, which the peasants lost, unfortunately for all of us today who aren’t filthy rich. Then this concept of the privatization of land was imported to North America, to the detriment of the Native Americans, who had no such concepts of private property. And it was imported everywhere Europe colonized. There’s a little history lesson for you. This is why it’s BS whenever someone says “it happened in the past, get over it”. You cannot separate the present from the past. The present is the culmination of the past, and things that happened hundreds, even thousands of years ago built up to the world we find ourselves in today. Nobody even thinks about this stuff, they just accept that we need useless plants and sprinklers. It never occurs to them that there’s something very sinister behind it all.

That’s how all these little rants of mine end, isn’t it? At least my conspiracy theories make logical sense. Gee, I wonder why I never learned about the German Peasant War in school? Couldn’t have been purposely left out of the curriculum, could it? Nah I’m just being a conspiracy nut.

Genocide Recognition as Retaliation for Genocide Recognition 

Obligatory Armenia-related post time. So this month was the month that the US president finally dropped the “g-word” on April 24th, date of the Armenian Genocide Memorial. I was shocked, I must admit. Biden said he was going to do that last year, but I didn’t actually believe him. Nearly every US president in my lifetime promised to recognize the genocide while campaigning, and then once in office chickened out, bowing to political pressure from Turkey. In fact when Obama did that in 2009 it was kind of a turning point for me in my political worldview, a disillusionment that gradually pushed me further left. Obama was supposed to be different from the others, you see. Hope, change, all that. It was supposed to be a new era. If you were alive and old enough to be aware of the news in 2008 you remember. So many promises. But he was just another spineless corporate-owned warmonger. I’m never falling for that again. Obviously Armenian genocide recognition isn’t the only political issue I care about, but I feel that this particular issue is a good litmus test. If a politician can’t keep a promise like that, what else are they lying about? What other human rights violations will they tolerate in the interest of keeping good relations with dictatorships? No one was surprised when Trump didn’t recognize the genocide; actually what was different about him was that he never promised to recognize the genocide in the first place. That’s still better than promising and then not doing it. At least it was honest. But I never expected Biden to do better on this litmus test than Obama had. Anyway can we close the ICE camps now? Yeah, I didn’t forget about those after Trump left office.

Now of course, this wasn’t really about Armenia. They don’t care about an unfortunate little Russian vassal state. It was just the US putting political pressure on Turkey. It would have happened years ago had it been recognized for moral reasons. But especially in light of recent events, Armenians must take victories where they can find them, however seemingly small. This was the result of decades of lobbying, marches and protests. I’ve been a part of some of those marches and protests myself. If the Armenian diaspora community had stayed silent, none of this would have happened. So yes, it was an achievement. Now that the United States recognizes it, hopefully other countries will too, if only to avoid looking morally inferior compared to the US (a low bar to set). Israel is the next big recognition that needs to happen. But they’re such buddies with the Azeris it probably won’t happen soon. It also involves acknowledging that the Holocaust wasn’t the only genocide ever in all of history, which they are reluctant to do. (Yes I feel justified in that jab.) 

In any case, back when the US senate recognized the Armenian genocide in 2019 Turkey actually did do something like the meme above. “Oh yeah? W-well you genocided the Native Americans, so there!” Once again following that logical fallacy genocide deniers love to use, that before any country recognizes a genocide they should recognize and atone for every single bad thing their own country ever did first, thus conveniently allowing Turkey to be last in line for punishment. It was pretty funny when they tried to do this to Germany in 2016 after they recognized the Armenian genocide, when they have already atoned for their past misdeeds. Thing is though, no one really denies what happened to Native Americans. Even the most psychopathic right-wing American patriots that are proud of the genocide of the Native Americans aren’t denying that it ever happened. To be fair though, I think that if the Native Americans had their own independent country and recognizing the genocide might open the United States to being forced to give land or monetary reparations to them, then you’d start to see the US government denying it. It’s not as if Americans are more righteous than Turks. Americans only don’t deny it because they know no one is going to force them to pay reparations for it. Nationalist Americans and nationalist Turks are very similar. Just as one could argue that the Armenian genocide is actually still ongoing (because genocide is more than just mass killings, but also denial, cultural erasure, loss of language, forced integration, forced relocation, causing emigration via deliberate economic pressure and threats of invasion, etc.), the genocide of the Native Americans is also ongoing for mostly the same reasons. The US has the KKK, Turkey has the Grey Wolves. It’s all the same. So if anything, my only problem with the above meme is that it makes America look more morally superior to Turkey than they actually are. 

This meme came from the ArMEMEia subreddit. 

Saying the quiet part out loud.

Here’s a sign that really makes my blood boil. Basically, it is saying that by subjecting children to verbal abuse you are breaking them down so that they will accept verbal abuse from employers later in life, and we should all be okay with this because “it’s life, get over it”. I certainly wouldn’t allow my kid to be coached by someone with a sign like that. First of all, and I may have stated this on other blogs, I hate the attitude of “that’s just life, that’s just the way things are and always will be, etc.” It’s more than a pet peeve. It’s so defeatist. That very attitude is the reason things never change or get better. Sort of like how the reason third parties never win elections in the US is because people are convinced they’ll never win so they don’t vote for them. A self-fulfilling prophecy. What would happen if everyone voted for the Green party? We’ll never know because of this attitude. So we’re stuck with the lesser of two evils. How convenient for the wealthy overlords, who foster this attitude deliberately. It’s a generational thing too. You usually hear this kind of sentiment from older people who have had all their dreams and aspirations beaten out of them over the years and given up hope, while younger people are more open-minded. And do I even have to say why I hate “get over it” just by itself too? It’s a sentiment that dismisses trauma and mental illness as something you can just choose to turn off and decide not to let affect you. Together, “it’s life, get over it” is the quintessential American mentality. That of victim blaming, gaslighting and the protestant work ethic.

Ah but this sign exposes something else. It outright admits that the purpose of school sports, and school in general, is not to teach, but to  emotionally break children down and produce obedient wage slaves, who will never question authority, accept the mere breadcrumbs they’re paid, and tolerate any and all verbal abuse thrown at them by employers, because “it’s life, get over it”. It exists to stamp out any rebelliousness, to stifle creativity, to produce “human capital stock” that will never stand up for themselves. Mere cattle. Submissive doormats. I wish I would have realized this back when I was in school. Of course, it didn’t fully work on me because I am somewhat unemployable myself, as an artist and writer with a Creative Writing degree who is incapable of getting “over it”. But I still have a hard time being assertive and standing up for myself, because I went through this kind of abusive brainwashing in school. It’s a lot to unlearn.

Anyway, the sign brought to my mind once again the movie They Live, which I talked about in the last Doom Scroll. So I made my own version:

The original image I found somewhere on Facebook, but the meme here is OC. 

Digital Art leads to oblivion 

Now here’s an asinine post with enough wrong with it to write an essay about. I have been working on a webcomic myself, using of course digital art (shameless plug). That shit ain’t easy. It’s not just pressing a button that says “create art” and you’re done. It does however enable me to use colors and effects that if I were to try to do it traditionally would cost me hundreds of dollars in art supplies. The ease of correcting mistakes also allows me to push my art further and improve. It’s far beyond anything I used to do in sketchbooks with colored pencils. It’s just an improvement over traditional art. This post is like bashing writers who type on computers and saying “Pick up a quill and dip it in ink. Don’t you want to be Shakespeare?” You want to talk about dumb, how about not knowing the difference between “you’re” and “your”? Ah but yes, going after someone’s atrocious grammar isn’t really a counter to their argument, is it? So let’s properly debunk it.

Anyway, do I want to be “Van Gooh”? Assuming this person means Vincent van Gogh, no I don’t think I want to cut part of my ear off and die penniless and not have my art admired until after I’m dead. I’m not very concerned about whether I will be famous after my death because I won’t be around to enjoy any of it, quite simply. You can try to postpone it, but one day everyone will be forgotten. No matter how famous they were. I did a whole blog on this subject last year, about coming to terms with my eventual oblivion. Even if I were to do physical paintings instead, how likely is it these days to get famous doing that? In fact I have done physical paintings before, and whenever I tried to sell them no one bought them. You’re more likely to win the lottery ten times in a row than become a famous painter. I can’t name a single painter alive who is a household name like Van Gogh. It just doesn’t seem to happen anymore. Our society doesn’t value artists. It’s not a guarantee to being remembered either. How many countless artists were there 100 years ago that have no surviving paintings and no one remembers today? This person seems to think everyone who paints something becomes famous or remembered. Yeah I guess I should handwrite a fan fiction because “Don’t you want to be Shakespeare?” Again, it’s ridiculous.

And does this person not realize it’s possible to print out your digital art? Yeah, printers exist. I plan on doing that with my comics. Even if it doesn’t get properly published, I can still go to FedEx or somewhere and get it printed and bound as a book just for me to have, or I can make posters for single pictures and have them framed, so when a solar flare or a nuclear war eventually knocks out the internet forever and society crumbles I’ll still have it. It would be just as good as a physical painting. The ability to print out digital art is the biggest reason this person’s argument has absolutely no merit. What an apoosh. And do you really think that if something as huge as the internet disappearing happens people are going to be around admiring artists afterwards? Yeah, maybe your painting will be admired by some post-apocalyptic scavengers raiding the ruins of your house for supplies.

Found this screenshot on What If Phones but Too Much. Rest assured I sure didn’t get it off Twitter myself, I’ve been avoiding that toxic cesspool.

Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed doom scrolling with me. Join me again next month. You’ve reached the bottom of the newsfeed now.

Album Review - UNEARTH’D

 

One of my readers was kind enough to send me an advance digital copy of this compilation album to review, and I was of course thrilled to agree to do it. UNEARTH’D is a collection of underground darkwave, post-punk and deathrock, put together in celebration of World Goth Day on May 22nd, which is when this album will officially be released. As an aside I had forgotten there was a World Goth Day; I would have thought if there were such a holiday it would be in either autumn or winter, because it gets really hot being dressed in black leather that time of the year. Although I guess goths in South America and Australia will be fine. Anyway, I found this to be a very fine compilation, like a well put-together mix CD. It introduced me to several new bands; even though I like to think I’m well-informed about new music in the goth scene the only band I had heard of before listening to this was Secret Shame, so this album does a good job of exposing underground bands to new listeners. So I recommend this album if the genre is up your alley, because you might just discover something new that you like. I think it would be great if this album became an annual compilation released for every World Goth Day, giving spotlight to under-appreciated bands.

I liked every song, but if I had to pick a top three from the album they’d be “Lost” by Horror Vacui, “Goodbyes That Last For Years” by Feeding Fingers, and “Let Me In” by Vincas; the last of which made it into my Top 5 Songs of the Month for April because of its inclusion on this compilation. For that I did a mini review of the track. All of the bands on the compilation are worth checking out though. You can think of this as a sampler for new bands to discover and listen to.

You can buy the album on Bandcamp, as well as sample a few of the tracks for yourself:

https://brokensoundtapes.bandcamp.com/album/unearthd

Track listing:

Dead Cells - Listen 

Horror Vacui - Lost

Vision Video - Static Drone 

Secret Shame - Storm

Feeding Fingers - Goodbyes That Last for Years

Solemn Shapes - Concealed 

Vincas - Let Me In (Dream Tent Remix)

Entertainment - Voyeur (single edit)

M is We - Arts and Krafts

Night Battles - Summer of Loathe 

Cold Choir - Paper Flowers

The Machine in the Garden - Beyond

Dispel - Journey into Limbo

Of note, when I was looking these bands up I found that two of them released music videos for tracks that appear on this compilation, which I might as well share. Listen for yourself!