The Wake

“I wanna take a ride on your disco stick.”

Chapter 1: All faith or dogma of any kind is fundamentally dangerous and an impediment to societal progress.

Chapter 2: Beliefs are assertions about the way the world is and therefore must shape the actions of their believers in drastic and potentially negative ways, and so they must be subject to evidence and, if necessary, modification in the light of that evidence.

Chapter 3: The positive things done by religious people throughout history are small exceptions in a long history overflowing with unimaginable brutality and violence.

Chapter 4: Holy fuck, Muslims are going to kill everybody unless we benevolent Westerners impose liberal dictatorships on them until they can get their heathen asses out of the 14th century.

Chapter 5: In the U.S. the infestation of religion at a government level results in the faith-based criminalization of things that are …

Read more →

[this post is part 4 of a 156-part series, "The Twilight Zone"]

This episode sucked and I don’t want to write anything about it.

Two Songs by Uncle Slam:

“Weirdo Man”

Psycho ward
Is your home
You’re so weird
You’re so dumb
Momma’s boy
Daddy’s disgrace
Snivelling wimp
Psycho face

You’re so week
You’re a geek
You’re a creep
Stupid freak

You got a psycho face
You are a psycho case
You got a real weird plan
You are the weirdo man

WEIRDO MAN

“The Ugly Dude”

He was conceived just like the rest of us
But when it came down to birth
He had a face like a butt
And his parents thew up
He went to school and the kids were so cruel
They all would torture and tease
And point and laugh at the freak
Kick the ass of the geek
And as he grew so did the hatred inside
The time for action was now
The next one laughing …

Read more →

“How small everything has grown, and how terrible is the deterioration in myself!”

“Fuck shit! Fuck shit ass!”

A Recipe For Those Who Cook Shitty Food Out Of Boxes But Still Want To Feel Like They’re Making Real Food

Instructions:

Make a boxed mac’n'cheese dinner of your choice (I prefer Kraft’s 3-cheese shells).

Cook the noodles like normal, but when the time comes to add the sauce mix, milk, butter, and whatever, also mix in:

1 small dollop of Mrs. Renfro’s habañero salsa (you can substitute for the super-spicy salsa of your choice, but Mrs. Renfro’s is the fucking best and you should have it in your home if you like spicy food (and if you don’t like spicy food get the fuck out, leave, now), her green jalapeño salsa is the best thing you will ever dip a chip in, so spicy but also so flavorful!)

2-3 little splurches of Tabasco (again, you could use a substitute, …

Read more →

[this post is part 3 of a 156-part series, "The Twilight Zone"]

Synopsis:

This episode begins in the American west, the old-time west of the Western. We meet the town drunk, Al Denton, a man who has no money and must live on the charity of the men of the town, who will buy him drinks if he amuses them with a song.

Denton used to be a champion gunman, but some traumatic event in his past shifted him from that path to the one he follows now. He does not sing very well, but sexy ladies feel bad for him anyway.

One day, Denton finds a gun in the dirt, and, drunk out of his mind, he picks it up and begins to carry it with him. One of his tormentors, a tall thin man in black …

Read more →

A Hurried and Last-Minute but Hopefully Coherent, Readable, and Informative—but I’ll Settle for just Tolerable—Dispatch from a Guy who reads both Books With Pictures, and Books Without

[in november '08, in the corporeal paper-bound wake, ali jaafar and i published an article about the literariness of comics, which we were both very excited about. we thought it would be awesome to make the thing itself into a comic, but though the idea was cool, it came out somewhat illegible. this is the original document which i sent to ali some 70 minutes after we decided we wanted to co-write a thing about comics and literature, already after the deadline for that issue of the wake. it is something of a reissue of that printed article, something of an artifact of the wake's production process, something of …

Read more →

In 1979 Gur & Sackheim developed a questionnaire to test how much people lie to themselves. The questions follow (in their study they asked participants to rank their responses on a scale of one to seven, which is bullshit because the questions are phrased yes or no, and deal with words like “ever” which it is impossible to respond to with gradients).

1. Have you ever felt hatred toward either of your parents?
2. Do you ever feel guilty?
3. Does every attractive person of the opposite sex turn you on?
4. Have you ever felt like you wanted to kill somebody?
5. Do you ever get angry?
6. Do you ever have thoughts that you don’t want other people to know that you have?
7. Do you ever feel attracted to people of the same sex?
8. Have you ever made a …

Read more →

I am not qualified to review this album. This becomes clear almost immediately as I begin listening to it. It simply is not made for me. I know how to listen to death metal, I know how to listen to rock and roll, I know how to listen to hip-hop and I know how to listen to post-rock, but while I listen to Antony and the Johnsons it makes me tense how vocal-centric the whole thing is. I think, “Where is the drumbeat? When are the instrumentals going to do something interesting? Where is the rhythm?” Which if that kind of stuff makes you uncomfortable while listening to this record, clearly you don’t know how to listen to this kind of music. Because it’s all about Antony’s voice.

Which brings me to the …

Read more →

[this post is part 2 of a 6-part series called "A Critical Investigation of Cattle Decapitation’s Six Full-Length Albums"]

Label: Three-One-G
Runtime: 21:39
Tracks: 16

The sound:

This album sounds pretty much like the last one, just better-produced. Though the guitar tone is the same, you can hear it much clearer, and the same goes for the drums and vocals. The low-end vocals are a little higher in the mix this time, and you can hear pretty much every bump in Travis Ryan’s throat. I liked it better when everything was muddy, because when you can hear everything clearly it stands out a lot more how sloppy they play. The drummer especially. I don’t know who was drumming for Cattle Decap on this record, but if he ever asks you to join your band, don’t let him. The first …

Read more →

[this post is part 2 of a 156-part series, "The Twilight Zone"]

The metaphysics of death:

It turns out death is a man, and he either has no name or his name is “Mr. Death,” it is not clear. He wears a suit, his hair is slicked back, and he carries a little book around with him which though it is the size of a small notepad contains pretty much all the information about everybody. He can teleport around a room all creepy so that during a conversation whenever you turn your back on him when you turn around he’s sitting somewhere else. He refers to death as “departure.” Only people who are gonna die soon can see him. He forewarns people who are going to die of natural causes, but he can’t warn people who …

Read more →

How to know exactly what this album sounds like without listening to any of it:

Band named after a Gorguts album.
Fancy-sounding science-word album title.
Song titles all about outer-space stuff.
Fretless bass.
Ex-members of Necrophagist.

Boom. Reviewed.

I got all excited about that last little bit of information, but really all it means is that there is flawless shredding on this record. The stuff that makes Necrophagist such a standout, their neo-classical melodicism and listenably technical songwriting, that’s all Muhammed Suiçmez.

Speaking of which, when is that band’s new album coming out? I bet it’ll be better than this one. Not that Obscura is bad, they’re undeniably solid. Just they’re about the least progressive “prog-death” band I’ve ever heard. Nothing will surprise you here if you’ve ever heard Gorguts or Death or Cynic.

So I guess if you’re nuts about prog-death, you …

Read more →

[an interview i did with the drummer of against me! was published in a february '08 issue of the wake. because the internet is really cool and you can write long things without having to worry about paper and space, here's an uncut transcript of that interview.]

Transcript of my 1/31/08 (approximately 4:30 PM) phone conversation with Warren Oaks, drummer of Against Me!

He is a very nice dude with a very nice beard and was very nice to me.

Warren: Hello?

Deniz: Hey, I’m glad I caught you.

W: Yeah, I’m actually in the middle of bowling right now, how’s it going?

D: It’s going good, how much time do I have to talk to you?

W: Whatever you need, I’ve got time to chat between bowls if you don’t mind.

D: Yeah, no problem. I’d like to start by saying that …

Read more →