Slang Editorial :: Never Underestimate The Value Of A Holla'

Slang Archivals:

Sunday, January 31, 2010
I Haven't Felt So Disconnected From Popular Culture Since I Fought In The Great Yak War In '97

At work and watching the Grammys for the first time probably in 10-15 years and experiencing a feeling of immense disconnection from popular society at large. It would perhaps not feel as disorienting if I wasn't really into music in general, but it's definitely odd caring about music as much as I do and yet feeling like I know almost nothing about any of these people.

Connected/disconnected: not precisely my idea of entertainment to watch Jamie Foxx and T-Pain trade duelingly indistinguishable autotune lines while Slash rips nonsense on guitar.

Labels: music, quicksnaps, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 1/31/2010 09:36:00 PM 0 comments

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Thursday, January 28, 2010
On New Technological Concerns

"Empty Store In Brockton, MA" -- Dec. 2009

I spent about 4-5 hours today reading and thinking about the newly launched Apple iPad device. Please allow me to just say briefly:

The reflexive, immediate and always dichotic LOVE!/HATE! for apple products is always so insane.

It kills me that few people are saying: "For $489 you can get the black and white screen Amazon Kindle DX to read e-books. For $499 instead you can get a similarly sized beautifully full-color, e-book reader that is also an instant-on wifi-enabled computer that plays movies, music, games and, of course, surfs the web (incredibly well).

Given the nuanced development of their identity as savior/antichrist of the tech world (slash Future Of Life), it makes sense that the releases of their products would lead to such fervent and crazed responses from fans and haters alike, but it still blows me away nonetheless that most people either see this device as an inexplicable orgasm of humanity or a predictably colossal failure of overhyped garbage.

The iPad may not be The One Device The Will Rule Them All, but that isn't the point--it represents the continuing growth and innovation of American society toward its never-ending goal of cerebral self-domination. And on that level, it looks to me to be just about right.

Labels: quickthoughts, technology

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 1/28/2010 12:54:00 AM 5 comments

5 Comments:

KJ said...: I agree with your sentiment mostly, but I think the Kindle comparison is apples and oranges--I like having a dedicated device just for books, personally, and what you're paying for there is the eInk technology (which the iPad doesn't have).; 1/28/2010 09:41:00 AM
No Name said...: I agreed at first, but reading later on that the ipad doesn't have simultaneous multi-functionality was disappointing. What the kindle has going for it, is an easy to read screen that doesn't tire the eyes after reading for awhile. I could get behind ipad if I could listen to music on it or surf the net in between pages but since it doesn't look like I can, the tradeoff of straining my eyes doesn't seem that great.

Also what's up with no flash capability?; 1/28/2010 11:55:00 AM
snp said...: Apple's been out to destroy Adobe for a long time now. With this iPad thing, makes me think Flash doesn't have more than another couple years left before it becomes totally obsolete. Which is for the best, I think, but makes for a frustrating transition for us users.; 1/28/2010 12:35:00 PM
Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything said...: Yeah i hear y'all dudes. On the e-ink matter though, frankly i don't find reading on a regular screen problematic at all. must be my generation but i stare at computer screens all day long without problem--and this isn't like reading off a tiny iPhone screen. Given that the backlit LCD screen allows for reading without another light source, I see this as trumping e-ink for sure.

On the Flash point, I agree--i've heard that there's expectations that HTML 5 will run Flash out soon.

And again, while it's a bummer that you can't stream Flash on the iPad, i still think that this isn't a make or break--not for the price point to get everything else.; 1/28/2010 12:40:00 PM
Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything said...: Yeah i hear y'all dudes. On the e-ink matter though, frankly i don't find reading on a regular screen problematic at all. must be my generation but i stare at computer screens all day long without problem--and this isn't like reading off a tiny iPhone screen. Given that the backlit LCD screen allows for reading without another light source, I see this as trumping e-ink for sure.

On the Flash point, I agree--i've heard that there's expectations that HTML 5 will run Flash out soon.

And again, while it's a bummer that you can't stream Flash on the iPad, i still think that this isn't a make or break--not for the price point to get everything else.; 1/28/2010 12:40:00 PM

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Friday, January 22, 2010
Love Letters

O Night, I still love you
But I do not anymore spend my hours

Lying slavishly in wait for your return
To our home. Which was

never really mine:
Yours, always.

Yet from time to time
I cannot help but creep
To the ledge of your window, to catch
A glimpse of something dark.

Labels: le nuit, poetry, quicksnaps, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 1/22/2010 12:26:00 AM 0 comments

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Sunday, January 03, 2010
It's 5:29 AM And I'm Still Awake And Realizing I Need To Listen To And Write More About The Electronic Music I Used To Love

No photo needed.

Labels: music, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 1/03/2010 05:29:00 AM 1 comments

1 Comments:

hotdoorknobs said...: i was listening to clark's body riddle the other day and thinking of you.; 1/03/2010 05:38:00 PM

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Wednesday, December 02, 2009
More Thoughts On Sand

"Birds on the Beach", Staten Island, 31 January 2009. Larger here.

I don't read a whole lot of music criticism or even music writing these days, but every once in a while I'll flip through some reviews or read a feature or two. But if I actually find something that makes me say, "Fuck! wow!", rest assured it was a piece written by Pitchfork writer Mark Richardson.

I have read a lot of writing on music in my life and I can say without doubt that Mark Richardson is the best music writer I've ever come across.

To be clear: there are certainly more gifted writers who cover music in their writing, and others still who are able to write about music with a grand romanticization befitting our near-desperate need to blow up life balloons with emotional helium to lift our clippers into the sky and sail us to special lands. But none of these people or anyone else are able to write about music like Mark Richardson, to talk about the sounds heard and meanings meant, and describe it all in a fashion that is simultaneously analytical, emotive, discursive, ambiguous, and personal.

I won't espouse any further on Mark's talents because he's the humble sort of man who would prefer his writing itself to speak louder than my blubbering about his royality. But let me just say that there's a reason why he's the only music critic I've ever written to directly for a reason other than to question decisions made or opinions posited.

It could be though that one of the reasons I love Mark Richardson is because his brain seems to draw many of the same connections as does my own***. Case in point: I've been going on for the past few days about the awesomeness of the lo-fi glory Real Estate and in particular their majestic track "Beach Comber"--well, sure enough, Mark has been too, as he discusses in his latest Resonant Frequency column on Pitchfork.

This article, which is actually a very uncharacteristic and atypical stitching together of "Nine Fragments on Lo-fi's Attraction to the Natural World", gets directly at the heart of the some of the ideas I was trying to get at in my post on Real Estate and others in the past few months. I love that, like with my own assessments, Mark appears clearly engaged yet still sort of fails to actually hit a nail on the head in defining what exactly is happening, and why--because sometimes you just can't get more precise than "fuzzy", even though it might still be worth talking about.

Check out all of Mark's Resonant Frequency column at Pitchfork here. A few of my personal faves are this (the first piece of his that really hit me), this, this, this, this, this, and this. Seriously, read all seven of these. I could have easily put up 1o or 15 other faves.

I fucking love this man.

Good night.

NOTES:

*** - Our lone point of genuine disagreement: Mark loves the fuck out of Bruce Springsteen, while I personally have always been disinterested in the Boss at best and a total hater at worst. But Mark is also older and, hey, no one's perfect.

LISTEN:

Santo & Johnny - "Sleepwalk"

Modest Mouse - "Sleepwalkin'", from Interstate 8 EP and Building Nothing Out of Something

Labels: heroes, music, quickthoughts, thoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 12/02/2009 04:54:00 AM 0 comments

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Tuesday, December 01, 2009
There Are Mice Running Rampant In My House And All I Can Do Is Drink Whiskey And Play The Same Songs Over And Over

Labels: fucktactics, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 12/01/2009 02:34:00 AM 2 comments

2 Comments:

Eklittleblog said...: I've so been there!; 12/01/2009 12:01:00 PM
E-BAD said...: Get a cat and set the house on fire. Another benefit of no mo' loft bed: Don't miss no fighting ceiling rats above my face; 12/02/2009 04:16:00 PM

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Monday, November 23, 2009
Jingo Bingo, Best Rest, Grandma QTip, Nana Mandindo, A Tribe Called Quest

JeffreyBeaumont: i'm having a few people over tonight to play scrabble and drink hot toddys
jaychampionvinyl: haha of course you are
jaychampionvinyl: just like my Nana
JeffreyBeaumont: "Best Grandma Alive"
JeffreyBeaumont: "when she play scrabble she only go bingo / dominate her foes til they go jingo / for her, that is: queen above the rest / Nana on top, the motherfucking best"
jaychampionvinyl: who is that?
JeffreyBeaumont: umm
JeffreyBeaumont: i just made that up
JeffreyBeaumont: as an ode to your fucking Nana
jaychampionvinyl: hahahahahahaha

jaychampionvinyl: oh
JeffreyBeaumont: you are supposed to say, "Wow, that was quite clever"

jaychampionvinyl: I thought it was weird Q-Tip line I didn't know!
jaychampionvinyl: how's that for a compliment??

Labels: family, IMs, lolgore, quickthoughts, rap

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 11/23/2009 02:45:00 PM 0 comments

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Friday, November 13, 2009
I Destroy Romantics, Actors --- KILL IT!

"I have never felt better in my life"

--Mark E. Smith, "The Classical"

I am a bit hobbled and certainly fucking exhausted right now, but I'm
always good to add a little MES guiding light in the Leben des Jeffrey
Beaumont.

Labels: BEAUMONT, plans, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 11/13/2009 08:10:00 PM 0 comments

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Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Sometimes I Am Productive And Sometimes I Am Very Much The Opposite

Tonight being one of the nights of the latter. I very much wish it were at least a 50/50 distribution ratio.

Labels: quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 10/27/2009 02:21:00 AM 0 comments

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Monday, October 19, 2009
Looking Back And Whatnot

For those of you who ever wondered....

JeffreyBeaumont: why the fuck did kanye give all those beats to common
JeffreyBeaumont:at the time it seemed cool but not crazy
JeffreyBeaumont:but given kanye's ascension since then it seems pretty nuts
jaychampionvinyl: because Common 1) is also from Chicago, 2) used to be legitimately awesome, 3) was friends with the producer who mentored Kanye (No ID), and pre-love fuzzy vibes makeover, was exactly the kind of thoughtful, reflective, yet still boastful and funny sort of rapper Kanye wanted to be
JeffreyBeaumont:haa POW
jaychampionvinyl: it only seems like a crazy/terrible idea in retrospect, now that he has become rap's Sting
JeffreyBeaumont: dum dah-duh

Labels: case studies, IMs, Jayson Greene In Spirit, quickthoughts, rap

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 10/19/2009 03:45:00 PM 0 comments

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Sunday, October 18, 2009
A Writ Of Exit Did Not Exist

Another long bus ride, another stop at Arby's (yech). If the smell
could get any worse in this bus, i'd be plowing through that window.

A few additional thoughts:

--Lil Beau pointed out that this Arby's must do real well if a
Chinatown bus stops there every hour every day

--It has so definitively hit the point of fall>into>winter, as
evidenced by this week's awful cold and dreariness, coupled with my
desire to listen to Joanna Newsom for the first time since last
February. Of recent years I've listened only to sophomore (superior/
mature/etc) follow-up Ys, but today I put on Milk-eyed Mender, and was
reminded both of its bucolic beauty and impish pretention. Obviously
the album title is a starter, followed by song titles like "'En
Gallop'" and "Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie", but I was reminded how
nothing from this record seemed more of a don't-play-this-one-to-gain-
new-fans than "The Inflammatory Writ". Already lesser as one of the
few harpless tracks on MEM, the lyrical content alone is enough to
induce both laughs and groans--beyond said "writ" and the wry of
discussion of it, is Newsom's casual dropping of the Did She Really
Say That? stunner "poetaster". Poetaster! I'm all for encouraging
intellectualism and our mock-pursuit of "forward-movement", but the
neo-Victorian nonsense of this song is so absurd that it could easily
become (or might be already, I guess) a Steampunk procrasturbation
anthem. Only today did I bother looking up the true meaning of
poetaster, and I suppose I'm satisfied to learn it means "writer of
inferior verse". Pleasantly ironic. Love you, Jo-Jo***.

--After Joanna, I was still looking for kind of appropriately dark and
wintry bleak tunes, and ultimately turned to Modest Mouse's 1999
errata comp Building Nothing Out of Something. Beyond "Sleepwalking",
a special night time mood track that will stay with me for evermore, I
was reminded in listening to this record how absolutely no other mess
of music will ever be able to so appropriately encapsulate the
overwhelming prickly life darkness of my extended post-adolescent
depression from Age 17-22. While i was typicaly confused and depressed
from Age 12-15 as well, the 17-22 period in my life stands out as
being the real time where I thought it might be possible enough where
my near-adult brain and its capacity for "analysis"-born Weltschmerz
might actually pull me into absolute End-of-Day darkness. During all
of this time, the tunes of the three '96-99 Modest Mouse releases (and
to a lesser extent, The Moon and Antartica) played over and over in my
various Death's Head Chariots as calls to march like Wagner's
Valkyries or Morricone's "Dollars". But unlike a decision to blast the
inarguably black doom tunes of Nine Inch Nails or Slayer, there was
always just enough ambiguous hope in Modest Mouse so as not to cast me
among the world-is-over goth-wannabes. But, yes it was always
ambiguous at best, and if anything, made me feel like I was The Man in
Cormac McCarthy's The Road, constantly heading "forward" under the
cover of night down a road to who-know's-where, hoping that I might
wind up in Salvation even if I knew I'd probably just find more dark
road. The haunting strangeness of Isaac Brock's yelp-lisp, coupled
with the stark wire-guitar minimalism of the tunes and Brock's
penchant for opaquely existential wasteland lyricism added up to make
a body of work that any thinks-he's-wise future-doubtful teen could
turn play as a soundtrack for forever (for night time as much if not
more than winter). Thankfully, I've found my own place to be now,
where there is sunshine and light (albeit different and less dramatic
than the Salvation I once imagined), but it still feels weird and
powerful to return to the old MM every once in a while.

-----

And please, dear god, let this bus ride end.

NOTES:
***-- The only hanging remotely resembling a pin-up I've ever hung in
my home (certainly this one but possibly any of them) is a cut-out
from a 2006 Arthur magazine of Joanna, currently taped to my
refridgerator door. Hot nerds, please, always, forever. Also, Fuck you
Andy Samberg and Bill Callahan.

Labels: crushes, Joanna Newsom I Love You., memories, Modest Mouse, My Love Of The Imaginary West, quickthoughts, thoughts, words

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 10/18/2009 05:31:00 PM 0 comments

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Friday, October 16, 2009
Strange Architecture

Yeah, yeah, creepy shake-cam action, but still: really? This was the ONLY urinal at an entire rest stop in Connecticut. Which, in case it isn't clear by the blurry photo comes up a height far below a short Asian man's knees.

Additionally I can't fail to include that according to Lil Beau, the women's bathroom had a sign in it that said, "Please do not urinate or throw feminine products on the floor. Thanks."

What was this fine establishment? You can probably guess that this rest stop was, yes, an Arby's, arguably the worst and most disgusting of all fast food chains--one predicated on the most visually and intellectually disgusting sandwich imaginable, the hot roast beef sandwich--and so for some reason it makes a deprarious level of sense that the lone urinal would come only 12 inches off the ground and patrons need to be warned against their natural urge to just let it rain whenever/wherever the fuck they feel like it.

Somehow I imagine that this is close to what Hunter S. Thompson had in mind when he described the "savage heart of the American Dream".

Labels: deprarious, quicksnaps, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 10/16/2009 08:18:00 PM 0 comments

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A Time Of Movement In Various Directions

I am 27ish years old and well aware of my place in the world as a man nowhere near "settling down." I'm honest with myself; it just ain't happening soon.

Nonetheless! This is the kind of shit that makes me feel like I am 1,000,000 years old.

A BIG baby prize!! I would even say why hold out on the kid--may as well give her the "Super-Double Baby-Ingrown Toenail WOW WOW WOW Songbird Prize"! This is the route to the heart of champions and unquestionably a path toward baby happiness and long-life livingness. Winning winning cornish hens morticians nonsense cow's dung tinkerbell linger dinger alpha male.

Can it be I stayed away too long?
Did you miss these rhymes when I was gone?
As you listen to these crazy tracks
Check them stats then you know where I'm at
And that's that!

Also: I read that post four times before only realizing that by "airplane rides" she means "rides on a gas-powered airborne craft" and not "flying high in the air on daddy's legs".

Labels: fucktactics, kids, plans, quickthoughts, thoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 10/16/2009 01:20:00 AM 1 comments

1 Comments:

E-BAD said...: errr... maybe a big baby davis prize?; 10/16/2009 07:31:00 PM

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Thursday, October 15, 2009
Procrasturbation

Sanam: word birth!
Sanam: procrasturbation
Sanam: "to waste time pleasuring one's self"
Sanam: I didn't make it up
Sanam: but I will be spreading it like wildfire

That it will, yes, that it will.

Labels: deprarious, IMs, quickthoughts, SP, words

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 10/15/2009 03:41:00 PM 0 comments

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Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Vivian Schiller says NYT made $10m from TimesSelect: "I don't think it was worth it."

There you go, in case you were wondering.

Vivian Schiller was formerly Senior Vice President and General Manager of NYTimes.com

Labels: quicksnaps, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 10/13/2009 02:32:00 PM 0 comments

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Thursday, October 08, 2009
Graphos, Et Tu

"The irresisitable proliferation of graphomania among politicians, taxi drivers, childbearers, lovers, murderers, thieves, prostitutes, officials, doctors, and patients shows me that everyone without exception bears a potential writer within him, so that the entire human species has good reason to go down the streets and shout: 'We are all writers!'"
—Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Sister quote to my glory standard-bearer never forgotten life slogan.

Labels: authors, books, deafness, god letters, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 10/08/2009 06:44:00 PM 0 comments

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Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Two Bold Statements I'm Increasingly More Ready To Go To The Mat For

1) That the mid 90s works of The Brian Jonestown Massacre are astonishingly good and the strangest meeting of original and familiar I can remember encountering

2) That the pairing of tomato and cheese is the greatest combination of two flavors in the world

LISTEN:

The Brian Jonestown Massacre - "Vacuum Boots" from Take It From The Man

LOOK:

Note: I obviously did not take this photo.

Labels: case studies, quickthoughts, thoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 10/07/2009 12:42:00 AM 2 comments

2 Comments:

pas d said...: bjm = fucking genius
vacuum boots is one of my faves.; 10/08/2009 04:24:00 PM
jayson said...: I pretty much get behind both of these sentiments entirely.; 10/12/2009 02:58:00 PM

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Friday, October 02, 2009
On My Own

"A Strangely Isolated Place", by Marcelo Halmenschlager. Available here.

I'm always fascinated by the ways and circumstances in which people decide to share private, sensitive information with others. Sometimes it's standing up on national television and sometimes it's just blurting out thoughts to whichever stranger happens to be nearby...

Right now I'm at a cafe near my home waiting for a waffle and I'm overhearing a barista telling a woman he clearly doesn't know well about how on Monday he has to go to jail for not paying child-support. The calmness with which he's retelling his story, with laughter and sighs even, is jarring almost to the point of belying the absolute tone of gentle sincerity in his voice. There is no doubt that he carries an weary uneasiness about himself, but also a resigned steadiness against the acknowledgement of his plight and a true expression of a man offering some kind of honesty to the world.

I do not know this man, nor have I ever seen him before, but right now all I can think about is how sad I am that this has happened to him and how fucked everything is and how I'm sure he's been wronged in some grave way, if only by a world that couldn't possibly ever work out for him. I don't honestly know of course if he is Guilty--or even guilty--of crimes deserving of the punishment he's about to receive. Some people are slick, and others so delusional of their relationship to the world as to be unforgivably irresponsible to themselves and those around them. But I know that for whatever reason, my heart goes out to this poor stranger, and I wish that I could hold him and let him know that everything will be all right.*

---

...Or sometimes it's just through a hardly read, mostly unknown-enough-to-not-even-exist blog.

As a semi-tangential digression, I repeat this last sentence on the barista to myself and recognize the degree to which my feelings about him speak to my own plight, as a man (historically) far more interested in caring for and assisting others than himself. I've spoken at length recently about possibly adding a canine to my life, and in response a close friend encouraged me to do so because--while admitting that he would never feel this way about most people--he was convinced that being responsible for a dog's well-being would cause me to in turn take better care of myself.

How does one take on this duality of love and neglect? It's unfortunately all too easy to see how many people are able to care for themselves and neglect those around them, but it's a bit harder and more complicated to understand the reverse. For me this distinction was rooted for a long time in a lack of self-confidence and self-definition--summarized best by saying that I did not know how to "dare to dream"--which was significant enough that even in the absence of being able to "help others" I didn't know what to do with myself. Now I finally seem to have made enough strides to have figured out my identity and get a better sense about the things that I feel I want and need in my life... but somehow the emptiness of Who Am I? has been replaced by a strange and steely I Live To Live that is somehow just as resultantly neglectful.

I have been thinking quite a bit about this topic since Wednesday evening, when some friends were over and, through the course of many cigarettes and glasses of wine, we somehow touched on the topic of death and the fear of dying. "I just couldn't do ___," said one friend, "I am just too afraid of the possibility of death to let it go like that." And then another followed by saying, "I am afraid of a lot of things, of course. But in fact, what I really fear is that I might get to a point where I no longer fear death, which is the most terrifying idea of them all." But I, as an insouciant late-twenty something, arrogant in his beliefs in the great possibilities of the world, firmly stated that "I do not fear death at all. I am ready to walk out my door right now and be struck down forever, if that is what is to be."

Despite my occasionally macabre attitude and the name of my online "handle", I do not believe that tossing around statements like these are casual (or forceful) acts of nihilism, nor are they a sign of some kind of degradation of my cares for the world or the value of my life. It's really just so simple that despite the many things in life I have been afraid of, I don't really know how to fear death.

I have spent far too much time and energy in my life anxiety-ridden dwelling on overimagined outcomes of seemingly very real sequences of possibility, and the ways these outcomes could represent the crumbling of a life I'd worked hard to put together for myself. Largely these digressions into fear-world produced, at best, wasted hours or days or weeks, and at worst led to legitimately self-destructive behavior that actively brought on an unnecessary reality of the very fears I had lost sleep over wanting to avoid. Luckily I am largely past this kind of brain-tracking now, but only as long as I am on-guard against their attacks and always keeping in mind that for me, the wolf will always be at the door.

BUT: as destructive and unhelpful as those fears always were, at least they were rooted in some kind of understanding of a possibility that, however remote it may have been, was an extrapolation of the potential of me understanding the way things might someday be. In contrast, thoughts on death, however, bring no sensation of the sort--to die would be not to live, which would mean the end of outcomes and possibilities; if I am dead, then there can be no painful reactions, no terrible consequences to deal with. Death means [STATIC NOISE], [silence]. All of which is to say that in my years of confusion and non-happiness, I have gained an acute understanding of what it means to fear the outcome of being alive and living badly, and so the thought of living in fear of no longer being able to feel seems almost laughable.

As strange as it may sound, all of this is actually a good thing, I think. I spent a solid 15 years of adolescence and early adulthood incapacitated by my anxieties over what could possibly torture me while being alive (situational irony alert), and now that I am free of those bounds, the idea of being tortured by nothing is just a conversational "whatever" (... or maybe not, judging by the length of this post).

Still... to bring it back to my earlier thread:

I know that there is a connection between not fearing death and not taking good enough care of myself, and I do think the root lies in the continuing to be true fact that I just don't know what the fuck I'm doing with myself. I'm fairly convinced that I've made important changes to put myself on a good path, and that not being preoccupied with life-constricting generalized anxiety is an important measure of progress to hold onto right now... but at some point not far down the road I know it will be time to take another couple of steps, and I'm sensing that that time is steadily approaching. Perhaps with a little more concrete understanding of not just who I am but what I want, perhaps then I will worry a little bit more about ceasing to exist. And frankly, I don't think a dog is going to be much of a savior here--I just need to keep looking out, looking within, and experiencing life on a day-by-day basis.

LISTEN:

Ulrich Schnauss - "On My Own", from A Strangely Isolated Place##

Nina Simone - "Isn't It A Pity", from Emergency Ward%%%

Gogol Bordello - "Through The Roof N' Underground", from Multi Kontra Culti$$$$

Brian Eno - "An Ending (Ascent)", from Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks^^^^^

NOTES:

* -- Trust me, I know that most likely this is the last thing he needs right now.

## -- Someday I hope to get around to writing about this record, one of the warmest and strangest pieces of electronic music I've heard. My associations with this record are deeply intertwined with my real-life goings-on at the time when I picked it up in spring 2003 (Carmiel, where are you?), but other no record I've ever heard so closely resembles the humid cloud-must of a waking-life fever dream.

%%% -- Yes, I called on this one once before already. And I will certainly do so again at some point.

$$$$ -- I discovered this tremendously sweet little curio of a song as a backdrop to a quirky and mediocre-but-still-interesting indie film called Wristcutters: A Love Story. Though flawed in all sorts of ways, there was still a nice spirit of light "c'est la vie, and so it goes" that I appreciated tremendously and which this song represents precisely.

^^^^^ -- This is literally the endpoint of all ambient (not ambient) music. Nothing there could ever possibly get better that this.

Labels: BEAUMONT, JB screeds, mp3, plans, quickthoughts, thoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 10/02/2009 11:52:00 PM 0 comments

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Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Sounds Of The Road

Shot from upcoming film of The Road, starring Viggo Mortensen

Continuing a bit on the Calexico tip, I discovered today this great interview between writer Howard Wolfson and Calexico singer/songwriter Joey Burns.

Burns is loose and thoughtful throughout, and the whole thing is worth a read, but I was interested (though entirely unsurprised) to see Burns reference the writing of Cormac McCarthy as a key inspiration for the Tucson-based band's music:

There’s a history [in the Southwest] which I find really exciting and it’s probably a boring thing to talk about but...it’s had this really interesting historical crossroads, which is if you’re a fan of Cormac McCarthy – it really resonates with some of his themes. Blood Meridian and "The Crossing", the Border Trilogy. When I moved here, I picked those books up and then I just loved the fact that some of his stories are more modern and so even though there are horses involved and traveling out in the desert, it still stems from or weaves through modern cities or towns. For me, when I moved here, I was just fascinated with all of this history and culture and character coming together. And it just - more so than anything, it just inspired us to dig into old vinyl records, old instruments, make sounds. Because we’ve been traveling over the years, we kind of bring that different mindsets from overseas back home here and you see there are more similarities than not.

Hearing a connection between the sparse southwestern road music of Calexico and the bleak spaces in McCarthy's writing is pretty much a "Duh!", but I still enjoy the idea of musicians verbalizing the way that books and words influence the way they create sounds.

Also, it goes a little deeper: adding to it all is a nifty column from Portland's great Powell's Books on "Calexico's Literary Influences". Make sure to read this one as well.

And of course,

LISTEN:

Calexico - "Frontera", from The Black Light

Calexico - "Waitomo", from Tool Box tour album

Calexico - "Glowing Heart of the World", from Roadmap tour EP (sorry, to come soon!)

Labels: books, calexico, mp3, music, My Love Of The Imaginary West, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 9/30/2009 11:57:00 AM 0 comments

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Thursday, September 24, 2009
Wilburrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!

Wilbur Wood is one pitcher i've always wanted to read more about but never have. He was one of the few great knuckleballers, which made him more durable, and he also had his hayday during a period of crazed high innings starting pitching that i think we still fail to understand today... but STILL: check out his innings and starts for a five year stretch from 71-75.

In 72 and 73 he made 48 AND 49 starts. 49 starts!! For 376 innings!!!!!!!!!!!! This is totally fucking insane. In the first four of these seasons he threw over 320 innings and in all of them he made at least 42 starts; though, clearly the high usage got to him, as he managed "only" 291 innings despite starting 43 games in 1975. And then, poof! He injured his arm and his career was more or less over, at the age of 34.

What the fuck was in the water in the 70s? Clearly strategy and usage patterns had a lot to do with it all, but I am always surprised that more conclusive analysis hasn't been done to test whether or not the decision to use four man, high-volume rotations throughout the early to mid 70s was ultimately a more effective strategy in both the short and long-term (ie injuries, etc). But if you wanna see some crazy stats, just go to baseball-reference.com and check out the lines of Wood, Mickey Lolich, Nolan Ryan, Gaylord Perry, Don Sutton and so forth. Among them, Wood was by far the most used, but all of them regularly ran 38-42 starts and 300+ innings throughout the 70s. And while some guys from the period (Frank Tanana, JR Richard, Vida Blue, Mark Fydrich) gassed out early, Ryan, Perry, Sutton, Lolich, and many others enjoyed very long, consistently successful careers. So how knows? But I'm sure that there's more thinking here to be done than already has.

Labels: baseball, MOM'S BASEMENT, quickthoughts, statistics

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 9/24/2009 03:48:00 PM 1 comments

1 Comments:

jayson said...: Honestly, I love when reading when you write about baseball so fucking much (and, I mean, think about what this statement means coming from ME) that I sometimes secretly wish you only ever wrote about it. But of course, please don't only write about baseball.; 9/25/2009 10:38:00 AM

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Thursday, August 27, 2009
Got Nuffin (To Lose)

Strange days, lately. End of summer always brings odd tidings. Sometimes I get really sick, sometimes depressed, something things just don't seem to add up. Sometimes it's nothing more than a strange wind that keeps me looking over my shoulder and a little more restless than normal.

On Saturday, bike pal Mike and I are completing a summer of high RPMing with a second 2009 ride to Montauk, this time not the 100 but in fact the full 145 New York City to Montauk bonanza. I have never biked more than 115 miles at once (the Montauk 100 last May) so I truly have no idea what I'm in store for, but it should be interesting to say the least.

Sadly, while the heat looks to be not a problem, I guess we're expecting a little rain now:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mike D
Date: Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 11:58 AM
Subject: Re: it better not
To: Jeffrey Beaumont

ok, really:

A fucking tropical storm, you have to be kidding me!!!!!!!

Yeah. As you know, I don't mind a little rain, but eleven straight hours of rain will push the boundaries I set before myself between fun and masochism. Let's hope it don't come to that.

-------

Finally, if you haven't listened yet, please do. Cannot for the life of me get "Got Nuffin" out of my head. And that's a good thing.

Labels: BEAUMONT, biking, quickthoughts, Spoon, thoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 8/27/2009 02:16:00 PM 0 comments

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Monday, August 10, 2009
Age of Universal Deafness and Lack of Understanding: Bi-Annual Reminder

I had a weekend filled with much existential debate, and once again my thoughts return to the brilliant writer and great womanizer, Milan Kundera. I think about this quote almost every day and surely you've heard it from me many times already, but here it is again for those who've checked in only recently:

"Every individual without exception bears a potential writer within himself. The reason is that everyone has trouble accepting the fact that he will disappear unheard of and unnoticed in an indifferent universe, and everyone wants to make himself into a universe of words before it's too late.

Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not that far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding."

- Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Labels: quickthoughts, thoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 8/10/2009 11:38:00 AM 0 comments

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Friday, July 31, 2009
Not Today

Yeah, think No Code was enough of a reminder to feel comfortable passing on the Jam today.

Labels: bad ideas, music, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 7/31/2009 11:35:00 AM 0 comments

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Monday, July 20, 2009
One Of These Four Does Not Belong

Found this bit today while having a lobster roll lunch today in the town of Wolfeboro(ugh) at a place called the Dockside Grille. Maybe I'm crazy but I don't think "blueberry muffin" when running through the various side dishes I might want to have with my fried clams or lobster roll.

Labels: curiosities, quicksnaps, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 7/20/2009 08:17:00 PM 0 comments

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Saturday, July 18, 2009
Riding Into The Sun Ready To Face The Day

Georgia (from here)

"I do not like the idea of happiness--it is too momentary. I would say that I was always busy and interested in something--interest has more meaning to me than the idea of happiness."

--Georgia O'Keefe

As suspected, intense feelings of love and liberation have begun spreading and expanding through my body as I embrace the dual intensity of being free on vacation in the beautiful wilderness of New Hampshire and not having a telephone where anyone is able to reach me (there is, of course, always Internet).

I did yoga outside in the backyard for 90 minutes with my friend/yoga instructor Kate today and now I am eating yogurt and nectarines and wandering around taking photos of dogs and flowers and lazy people lying on docks and in the grass. We are listening to Bob Dylan and the Kamikaze Hearts and it seems that for at least a minute more I couldn't imagine feeling any freer than I do right now. There are a world of possibilities at my fingertips and I plan to explore every single one.

Love,

Jeffrey

6txa3ukg5y

Labels: interest, quickthoughts, thoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 7/18/2009 04:12:00 PM 0 comments

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Sunday, July 05, 2009
Bus Wheeling Again

On the road home again from upstate. Apparently Adirondack Trailways has finally upgraded their buses to include wifi and power outlets--kudos to them and nice for we who must spend too long in their shitty overpriced buses ($90 roundtrip to home.... by bus?? gah). Of course, my experience so far has been no more than 10 minutes of uninterrupted wifi at a time before losing it for 30 min or more... but I suppose it's better than nothing.

Labels: quickthoughts, travel

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 7/05/2009 06:34:00 PM 0 comments

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Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Be Still, Your Beating Heart

"I still want to have a family, but first the wounds must heal. However, I still want to have a few little Dirks running around later. But it won't be easy to win my heart."

--Dirk Nowitzki, on beginning the recovery process after the end of his strange and apparently farcical relationship with a serial criminal.

Labels: basketball, Dirk, disappointment, FAIL, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 6/24/2009 02:02:00 PM 0 comments

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Thursday, June 18, 2009
James Murphy Is, Relatively Speaking, A Fucking Champ

From a recent James Murphy blog post:

tomorrow i'll wake up early, do a little jiu jitsu stuff, swim, shower, get into my making-a-record outfit, eat an avocado and a hard boiled egg, make an amazing coffee, and get to work on a new song. gavin russom (gavin and delia, black leotard front, black meteoric star) is here for a few days, so maybe i can get him to wrangle some synths with me. i have a good feeling about tomorrow, frankly. and i'm also terrified that i'll never make anything good again.

Wonderful. The last two sentences bowl me over.

Labels: copied emails, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 6/18/2009 03:01:00 PM 0 comments

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Annual Summer iPhone Crazings

Great headline from today in response to Apple's release of iPhone software 3.0:

"Apple launches new iPhone OS, servers crash, everything OK now."

Labels: quickthoughts, technology

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 6/18/2009 10:44:00 AM 0 comments

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Monday, June 15, 2009
Gr***r

Jay forwarded this to me over the weekend and I'm glad that somewhere I have a precise treatise on why I hate the theoretically music-crit term "grower". Please, friends, never ever ever use it.

love

Jeffrey

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jayson Greene
Date: Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 9:47 PM
Subject: Fwd: gr***r
To: Jeffrey Beaumont, Alex Doorknobs

I am going through old emails tonight.

I love you, Jeffrey Beaumont.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jeffrey Beaumont
Date: Mon, Nov 19, 2007 at 1:19 AM
Subject: gr***r
To: Alex Doorknobs, Jayson Greene

from the otherwise solid That Truncheon Thing blog:

"Andorra, which I understand is something of a more pop-oriented departure from Snaith's earlier work, is a sonic tour de force -- one made for the headphones. It's a certifiable grower, albeit that rare grower with initial appeal."

The inane non-meaning of this sentence is the most wonderful demonstration of why this pseudo-terminology makes me want to throw up on myself, slowly eat up every bit of the vomit, and then climb into my computer and travel to this writer's machine, finally spitting it all out through his monitor directly onto his face.

Please promise me that if I die of cancer or leukemia before the age of 40, you will insist to my family that they MUST inscribe, "He said 'There's no possible way,' but that sure was a grower after all" on my tombstone.

thank you.

-JB

Labels: fucktactics, Growerage, IMs, late arrivals, memories, old flames, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 6/15/2009 11:55:00 AM 0 comments

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Sunday, June 14, 2009
UPDATED: At 5 AM In Paris The Streets Are Clean (With Photos)

Many hours and one pack of French Marlboro reds later, I arrived home
last night at 5am after wandering the streets of the Left Bank for
hours and hours. I thought about continuing all night but my feet were
tired and my soul was sore.

I was surprised that during my entire walk from 1:30 to 5 am, I found
not a single open bar except the one in front of the apartmen I'm
staying in. At around 4 I finally passed a club under a bridge on the
river but at that point it was mostly nighttime spillage.

In all, it was an evening alone to myself, with my thoughts and my
music. After buying cigarettes at 9, I spoke to no one the entire
night except a man on a bike who stopped me around 3:30 and said as he
rode by, "It's nice taking photos of Paris at night, isn't it?".

Yes, my friend. Here's a few I took last night:

Labels: BEAUMONT, fucktactics, quicksnaps, quickthoughts, travel

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 6/14/2009 07:57:00 AM 0 comments

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Saturday, June 13, 2009
Last Chance To Dance Strance

I'm finally really at the end of my trip. It's 1:45 am in Paris on
Saturday night and tomorrow is my last day before I board the plane
home at 7.

It's been a beautiful night in Paris and I've spent the last hour
listening to Deerhunter and lying half-awake on the fields of Parc du
Champs des Mars in front of the Tour Eiffel. I had sort of
contemplated trying to find some secret rad French club or dive and
stay up all night, talking to strangers and getting drunk and swimming
in the world, but I'm basically too exhausted too commit to anything
like that on my own right now. I went to bed around 8:30 am this
morning after a long crazy night out with friends and then woke up at
11 still feeling alcohol in my body and at this point I guess it just
needs to be enough that I'm even still awake. As much as I've seen and
done while on this trip, I know feel like there are five million more
things I am excited about doing now and just want to get started on.
But really, I need rest, somehow.

It's strange to think I'll start work again on Monday, though in fact
I've been working periodically for at least a bit of each day since
our conference ended on Monday. But of course, I ain't complaining.

Labels: BEAUMONT, fucktactics, quicksnaps, quickthoughts, travel

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 6/13/2009 08:06:00 PM 0 comments

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Thursday, June 11, 2009
Rain Washing Us Clean

"If elections made anything happen, they would be forbidden."

-Kurt Tucholsky

--------

Today is my eighth day in Berlin and I have two more after today before I fly to Paris for a quick night there before, on Sunday, heading home.

It is raining but the sun is shining and nothing will deter me from feeling that everything is possible (because it always is).

I feel like I am metaphysically on the cusp of something big and new; or, perhaps I am riding a wave to my next destination--insert whatever metaphor might be appropriate here. Everything around me is sparks and crackles***.

Now I am going swimming.

LISTEN:

Lately I am LOVING Daniel Johnston to pieces, particularly 1990 and Artistic Vice.

-- Daniel Johnston - "My Life is Starting Over Again", from Artistic Vice

-- Daniel Johnston - "Tell Me Now", from Artistic Vice

-- Beck - "True Love Will Find You In The End," Daniel Johnston cover from The Late Great Daniel Johnston

-- And go here for five versions of Daniel Johnston's amazing "Somethings Last A Long Time" (from a Hyperliving post last year)

NOTES:

*** - One of the side effects that always happens while I vacation is that I almost immediately lose interest in tracking the sports news that I obsessively follow everyday in the States. As much as I love following sports, I think that doing so is also a bit of a lifesuck, and only when I am REALLY gone do I have the headspace to step back and think, Wow, i feel liberated. Dirk, I am truly sorry--especially being here in your homeland!!!--but I guess THIS is what it takes for me to unclench the iron vise grip that basketball has on my mind in spring.

Labels: mp3, music, quicksnaps, quickthoughts, travel

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 6/11/2009 05:43:00 AM 0 comments

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Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Morgen In Deutschland

All those weeks of almost literally no sleep have made it fairly easy for me to wake up at 7am after going to bed at 1. I'm still waiting on that night where I sleep 10 hours or something--I'm on vacation in an exciting new place, so I don't see that happening anytime soon--but I still am feeling rested again, finally.

Today I am planning to go out and rent a bike and ride around Berlin to see parts of the city i've never seen before. One of my friends who lives here has just returned home from France and hopefully she and her partner will join me as well. Either way, the sun is shining and I'm looking forward to the outdoors and maching vielen Fotos.

Speaking of making photos, I'm not what I would call a "cat person" really, but I do enjoy photos of animals and I'm staying with a friend who has two very silly cats:

Labels: BEAUMONT, photography, quickthoughts, travel

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 6/10/2009 03:38:00 AM 1 comments

1 Comments:

E-BAD said...: verrückte deutsche Wannenkatze!; 6/10/2009 12:08:00 PM

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Thursday, May 07, 2009
P Is For Providence ... is for Paper Rad?

The below is the newly designed logo for Providence, Rhode Island, in an effort to rebrand themselves to the rest of America as the "Creative Capital":

And it took me literally four and half seconds to shout out, "Paper Rad!!" upon seeing this. Everything about this ID screams the veritable Providence/Baltimore/Pittsburgh design hive in love with Lisa Frank, Hypercolor and 80s cartoons... and yet, Paper Rad it is not. Instead, the creators of "P" are a corporate brand-design company based in Nashville called North Star Destination Strategies.

Weird? A little, especially because Paper Rad is at least indirectly associated with the Providence art/music scenes (Wizzards et al). And certainly their work is only plundermashups of recent trashpast, but still... I dunno here. Hopefully the explanation is because one of the Paper Rad dudes actually works for North Star, but I found nothing on the internet corroborating such a possiblity.

Still, nice to see a little outside-the-comfort zone work on the part of a major city.

UPDATE:

In looking again, I noticed that on the WSJ page below the photo it says "Ben Jones"... which is also the name of one of the three main Paper Rad dudes. So maybe he was involved in this project in some fashion? That would actually be kind of awesome. Or maybe i'm confused and the logo above isn't actually the Providence logo (which is actually described in the article as "A bright orange P"), but is instead someone else's interpretation of the new logo? Fuck if i know.

anyway...

Labels: paper rad, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 5/07/2009 03:32:00 PM 0 comments

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Thursday, April 30, 2009
Wow

Just watched one of the most insane basketball games I've ever seen before. Celtics vs Bulls, three overtimes. In the end, Celts lost by one. But all all all completely crazy. Derrick Rose played 59 minutes!!!

Totally totally out of control crazy.

Basketball, you are killing me and I fucking love you.

Labels: basketball, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 4/30/2009 10:54:00 PM 1 comments

1 Comments:

Anonymous said...: best series ever
- hendo; 5/01/2009 07:35:00 AM

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Monday, April 27, 2009
Summer Breezy

It unofficially and unexpected turned summer on Friday and the past two days in particular have been completely insane--a high 80s heatwave in April! Tomorrow it will cool down to 80... but followed by a most insane of all 90 on Tuesday. Weird! And then, back to normal as things drop down to the 60s again after that.

All of which is a way of saying, "Peace dooodz". I have definitely thinking of little right now besides being outside, riding my bike, thinking of rap jamz I wanna hear, and trying to come up with new "realistic" scenarios for how I could quit my job and still survive (any suggestions??). But i'll be up to my tricks again this week. few large posts on the horizon. stay tuned.

Labels: quicksnaps, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 4/27/2009 12:41:00 AM 0 comments

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Sunday, April 19, 2009
On The Topic Of Things That Are Crazy

I heard my boss leave a phone message for his wife last night where--no shit--he used the phrase "no homo".

Umm....

!!!!!

Life is weird some times.

Labels: fucktactics, lolgore, quickthoughts, REAL LIFE IMs

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 4/19/2009 11:15:00 PM 1 comments

1 Comments:

hotdoorknobs said...: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO WAY; 4/20/2009 09:32:00 AM

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Thursday, April 16, 2009
Mighty Hercules

I have been listening to the Hercules and Love Affair album constantly, nonstop and back-to-back. I think that I actually listened to the entire album four times in a row while working late last night.

Since when did this become what I do? Because now it appears to be who I am.

Labels: CRAZY, music, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 4/16/2009 12:57:00 PM 0 comments

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Monday, April 13, 2009
Sing To Me, Nomi

Hercules and Love Affair (Nomi on left)

So despite the frequency and voracity of the lengthy and detailed internet lovefest word spewages I write, my entries generally do not include straight-up "I heart ____ hot lady" treatises$$$. Why? I am not exactly sure, and I don't think it's intentional. Perhaps it's cuz I did the wimmin studies*** n' shit, or maybe just because I like to keep my tastes to myself when it comes to matters of the heart (I am fairly certain most of the people who spend time with me would dispute the claim with a hearty laugh of dismissal). But for whatever reason, I give most of my love to music makers, basketball players, and the strange people I come across in my travels across the world and the internets.

All of which, I suppose, makes it curious that the first lady I choose to feature nerdlove for is in fact not a lady at all, but the stunning transsexual Nomi Ruiz, singer of 2008 all-the-rage Hercules and Love Affair.

I came on to the H&LA record a little late in the game (compared to average warp speed NYC taste timelines), but let me be the 1,000,000 person to add my four cents that HL&A is a fantastic, wonderful, joyous record that celebrates the great throb of music in life. I can't say enough about it and it should appeal to literally anyone who either loves pop music or enjoys moving their body rhythmically.

I have been listening to this record for probably six months or so, but it wasn't until I watched New York Noise### tonight and saw a live Nomi-sung performance of "Blind" that I realized that she is in fact destined to be my fantasy crush for the next few months.

I understand the theoretical hilarity of these PROPS, but sometimes you just gotta transcend boundaries, you know? Those legs! Seriously! Nomi, you are a million feet tall and a million times DREAMBOAT.

Yes yes. So Nomi, if your internet travels bring you here, give me a call. In preparation, I will listen to one song on your records each day until I hear from you. Don't keep a boy waiting.

hearts,
Jeffrey

Listen:

Hercules and Love Affair - "Hercules Theme", from s/t album
Hercules and Love Affair - "I'm Telling You", from s/t album (iTunes only b-side)

NOTES
$ - Call me out on this shit if I'm wrong; I've done literally zero research into checking whether or not this is in fact true.
*** - Seriously.
### - Yay Shirley!!! New York Noise is amazing and you are also incredibly awesome (and cute). If you live in NYC and have never seen NYN, give Shirley some love and check out channel 25 at midnight on Sundays. Expect to get a fresh overview of whatever is new and happening in the world of indie rock and roll. Holla!

Labels: BEAUMONT, crushes, mp3, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 4/13/2009 01:00:00 AM 1 comments

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Lil' Beaumont said...: http://twitter.com/NomiRuiz; 4/13/2009 11:02:00 AM

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Saturday, April 11, 2009
Sometimes Being "Best" Means Being "Oldest"

Was poking around some piles of random basketball stats this morning while waiting to go out on an ill-fated bike ride in the rain, and discovered the following interesting tidbit:

I haven't really looked too deeply into how this compares to other teams of the past, but I noticed that the 95-96 Bulls, NBA champs, winner of alltime record 72 games and arguably the greatest team in NBA history, did have not a single rotation player younger than 27 years old. The only young folks were extras Dickey Simpkins and Jason Caffey, who each played under 12 min/game. See the chart below for the full team info.

1995-96 CHICAGO BULLS, 72-10 and NBA Champs

I'm interested in learning whether or not this is a rare example or not. It's common for great teams to have young players who simply ride the bench, but the Bulls simply had no young players at all. And in fact, my cursory glance at some recent great teams (00s Spurs and Lakers, 80s Lakers, Pistons, and Celtics) reveals that each of these teams not only had young rotation players but stars--each one of these teams featuring players under 27 who made significant contributions to the team.

Yes, this is mostly tiddlywinks, but I find it curiously so.

Labels: basketball, quickthoughts, statistics

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 4/11/2009 09:27:00 AM 0 comments

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Thursday, April 09, 2009
If Malik Yusef Is His Competition, He's Probably Right

JeffreyBeaumont: i feel like in this current day as rap ombudsman and elder statesment, jay-z might no longer push such lines as "Get a couple of chicks, get 'em to try to do E / Hopefully they'll menage before I reach my garage"
jaychampionvinyl: RAP OMBUDSMAN
jaychampionvinyl: hahahahaha
jaychampionvinyl: that is fucking hilarious
jaychampionvinyl: or "I like my hoes on X like Eminem"
JeffreyBeaumont: wouldn't it be "I like my hoes on E like Eminem"
JeffreyBeaumont: ?
jaychampionvinyl: he says "x"
jaychampionvinyl: haha
JeffreyBeaumont: or else perhaps "I like my hoes on X like X-Ray Spex"
jaychampionvinyl: HAHA
jaychampionvinyl: OBSCURE
JeffreyBeaumont: if i ever write a rap song i will make sure to include that lyric
jaychampionvinyl: "get next to jay, know that he'll shank ya/rename you John Doe, Exene Cervenka"
jaychampionvinyl: < takes bow >
jaychampionvinyl: <-------most critically acclaimed wordsmith in the game

Labels: IMs, lolgore, quickthoughts, rap

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 4/09/2009 03:19:00 PM 0 comments

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Get With Dave Gahan

I've forgotten how much I absolutely LOVE the now-forgetten/ignored 1993 Depeche Mode album Songs of Faith and Devotion. The last album released before their first real hiatus, Faith and Devotion is DM's first attempt to abandon the 4/4 dance anthems and make a ballad-driven pop album. Despite having a little success at the time of releasedue to their general popularity, this album was ignored upon release due to the dual factors of not properly meeting the expectations of their fans and the simultaneous explosion of hard-rocking Seattle riffage, of which SofF&D ver much isn't.

I will speak more on this album later, but suffice it to say that it is a forgotten gem that sounds remarkably not dated (can't say that about any other DM album, can you?) If you have it, pull it off the shelves again. And if you don't, go check out the cut-out bin of your local used record store and you might be able to pick is up for just a few dollars.

Labels: loved sounds, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 4/09/2009 02:22:00 AM 0 comments

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Monday, April 06, 2009
Spring Is Here Pt 2: Braves Edition

Derek Lowe (Photos taken from AP/ESPN here).

Also, I hope to look forward to seeing a lot more of this this year. Braves win, 4-1? 8 innings, no runs, two hits, for Derek Lowe? There's no way you'll be worth $15 mil a year in 2011 and 2012, Derek Lowe, but this year and next, I'll take it!

I have tempered but real enthusiasm for this year--make me proud, Atlanta.

Jordan Shafer homers on first ever AB (Photos taken from AP/ESPN here).

Labels: baseball, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 4/06/2009 03:31:00 AM 0 comments

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Spring Time, Sunburns, Jeri Curls

The years may change, but one thing always stays the same: I am a fair-ass motherfucker with constant farmer's tan.

It's 3 am and of course I'm still awake because I took a THREE HOUR nap this evening, as a result of biking 62 miles and getting a wicked sunburn (see above). I can't remember the last time I took a three hour nap, but just last night I was telling somehow who claimed to nap "an hour every other day" that I probably nap 5-10 times per year. Though, in my case right now I am not helped by the fact that my forearms feel like they are literally on fire right now. On the other hand, my thighs are too sore to move all that much so I'm sure i'll fall asleep eventually.

YAY SPRING!

LOVE
Jeffrey

Labels: FAIL, fucktactics, lolgore, quickthoughts, VICTORY

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 4/06/2009 02:57:00 AM 1 comments

1 Comments:

Accidentally Disastrous said...: Dead serious. This is the best thing in the entire world for those of us who burn like paper.

http://www.amazon.com/Aloe-Moisturizer-99-9%25-Pure-Processed/dp/B000SY38PM

It is like liquid nitrogen gel.

You can find it at a lot of drug stores.; 4/06/2009 02:35:00 PM

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Friday, April 03, 2009
The Torrential Onslaught of the Future

Thanks to Ez-rock Diehard for this one:

It sounds like something out of a Philip K. Dick novel: a tiny computer, worn around your neck, that lets you surf the Web from any location and project it onto any surface. But MIT Media Lab’s Sixth Sense machine allows you to do just that.

Seriously, I am on this shit:

All of which is working toward the eventual biomechanical creation of forearm embedded touch screen control devices, followed down the road by in-brain WiMax computer interfaces.

Not joking.

Labels: curiosities, empty promises, junkjunk, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 4/03/2009 12:29:00 PM 0 comments

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Thursday, March 26, 2009
A CONVERGENCE OF BAD VIBES

JeffreyBeaumont: DEAR GOD, oh ho!! http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=4016566

JeffreyBeaumont: you should love that one

JeffreyBeaumont: this is like a confluence of the three worst people in basketball (according to Bill Simmons): "Isiah Thomas is actively seeking work again, and he spoke several weeks ago with Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling in a meeting arranged by current coach/general manager Mike Dunleavy, ESPN.com learned Wednesday."

hotdorknobs: good god

hotdorknobs: what a shit show

JeffreyBeaumont: just throw in pete babcock for consulting and you might have the most inept collection of front office non-talent ever

JeffreyBeaumont: it just seems too fucking horribly appropriate

JeffreyBeaumont: for the historically worst franchise in the NBA to hire (one of?) the worst GMs ever

JeffreyBeaumont: "to add another executive to the Los Angeles front office to alleviate some of Dunleavy's responsibilities in his dual role as coach and general manager."

hotdorknobs: SPREAD THE SUCK AROUND

JeffreyBeaumont: All they gotta do is trade Baron Davis and Marcus Camby away for Jerome James and Jamal Crawford and sign Marbury to a max contract and they will have literally the worst team in the history of the NBA.

JeffreyBeaumont: YES, EVEN WORSE THAN THE '07-'08 KNICKS.

Labels: CRAZY, fucktactics, IMs, INSANITY, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 3/26/2009 05:30:00 PM 0 comments

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Sunday, March 22, 2009
Wilt, You Are My Father

Shaq recognizes the importance of carrying a sword on any father-seeking quest

As I think both Doorknobs and Hendo Crocus will attest, Shaq is and continues to be the motherfucking man.

After passing Moses Malone today for fifth place on the all-time scoring list, Big Aristotle had the following to say:

"It was good, but I'm still kind of disappointed in myself," O'Neal said. "Mathematically, I've missed three years worth of games and I missed 5,000 free throws. If I was there, I'd probably be No. 2 or No. 3 right now."

Then he added, "It shows I've been consistent at what I've been doing and the next guy is my illegitimate father -- Wilt Chamberlain -- so just like in Star Wars, hopefully I can catch up to my father."

I LOVE this man. Good god I love him and the NBA will be an immeasurably worse place when he's goes.

Labels: basketball, love, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 3/22/2009 03:16:00 AM 0 comments

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The Internets Bringeth Great Promise

...By providing us with trailers like these to whet our appetites for days to come. To quote Senator Clay Davis, "Sheeeeeeeeeee-it!"

I can imagine a definite possibility that this movie might turn out to be nothing more than a half-baked attempt to throw a bone "for those pain in the ass kids", but my brain is still auto-tuned enough to trigger a reaction of automatic and immediate stoked-ness over a film featuring two great actors in a scene where one makes the other's heart flutter by revealing a shared dotage over Morrissey and his Smiths.

Right now I'm assuming off the bat that I'm gonna love this one, and let's leave it at that, shall we?

Labels: la cine, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 3/22/2009 02:46:00 AM 0 comments

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Saturday, March 21, 2009
BIRDMEN RULING THE ROOST / WAMP WAMP

My third favorite NBA player--second favorite white player, holla--had an amazing game last night, propelling the Nuggets to victory over the Wizards: Chris "Birdman" Andersen had 18 pts, 11 rbs and 6 blocks over only 22 minutes. Birdman missed two entire seasons due to a drug suspension but re-entered the NBA last spring as a reserve on the Hornets and is now back on the courts dunking, blocking, and flying high. Like this:

God damn, I love this man.

Note also:

Musical soundtracking in video by "The Other Birdman", Lil Wayne dad stand-in Ronald Williams aka Baby.

Baby is more or less an ATROCIOUS song-killing rapper, and is mostly noteworthy for appending his trademarked (non-word) "birdsound" to southern rap tracks over the past ten years. A runthrough of Baby's career includes far too many terrible cuts to list--including, allegedly, an entire collabo album recorded with R. Kelly in 2004--but one unquestionable highlight was his Neptunes-produced track with Clipse, "What Happened to that That Boy", which thankfully limits Bird to one not-terrible verse and tons and tons of "brrrrr" birdsounds. Brrrrrrr!!!!!:

And fuck yes:
Watching that shit is making me HUNGER for the next Clipse record, to come sometime later this year. The first track, featuring Kanye, was rumored to be dropping March 9 but it's March 21 now and I ain't seen shit. However, do pick up the ...Road Til the Casket Drops mixtape though if you haven't already. It's brief and ain't sniffin' Vol 1 or 2, but I feel it way more than 4 Cheap Vol. 3 or that slept-on Re-up Gang record (unnecessary rendition of "Pop Champagne" notwithstanding).

Man, I love these motherfuckers:

WAMP WAMP!!!

Love
Jeffrey

Labels: basketball, BIRDMAN, loved sounds, quickthoughts, rap

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 3/21/2009 02:06:00 PM 0 comments

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