Earlier this month I traveled to Barcelona and Rome and Florence and played rock paper scissors in each place in front of famous things but we kind of got bored of the joke by the time we got to Prague.

Old Town Square.

The Dancing House.

But What Did You Actually Do?

Mostly just wandered around and took in how pretty Prague is.

We went to the Prague Castle, which is gigantic (it holds the world record for biggest castle) and crossed the Charles Bridge, where we saw a… street performer?

In all fairness, the didgeridoo seemed fine and I’m sort of impressed by his ability to play the recorder with his nose, but overall, weirdest U2 cover I’ve ever heard.

But it wasn’t the weirdest thing we saw in Prague.

Wencelas Square was also a ton of fun. It was upsetting that the National Museum is closed until, oh, 2015, but overall, it’s just a fun city to wander around in and see how pretty it is.

But Do You Have Any Fun Hostel Stories?

There were two Australians in my hostel room and I went to an Irish bar with them one night. In Prague. Because why not?

First Barcelona, then Rome, and now a different part of Italy!

On a ledge overhanging a bridge next to the Ponte Vecchio bridge.

Somewhere I don’t remember, but a friend of mine who reviewed these pictures on Facebook told me that this is in Piazza Della Signora, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, and I will just take her word for it.

The Duomo

But What Did You Actually Do?

We ate nothing but pizza and pasta and gelato. It was wonderful. As for actual sightseeing, we went to the National Gallery and saw David and the Uffizi Gallery and saw Birth of Venus. There were other things at those places too, but those are the ones I knew before going. We also took a day trip to Fiesole and found another terrifying playground.

But Do You Have Any Fun Hostel Stories?

We made a friend that we hung out with for a few days. We went to museums and one time we went to dinner. FRIENDSHIP.

When my friends first introduced me to FLCL about four years ago, their description of what we were about to watch was “a show that doesn’t make any sense until the last ten minutes of the last episode”, which is quite accurate. The show doesn’t really explain much of its context until the second half of the series, and a good portion of it at the last minute in the second half of the last episode. It also demands a second viewing, at least, before the whole thing really starts to come together.

Yet for all the complaining most people do, FLCL is really straightforward enough. Basically, it’s a show about (spoilers) a boy named Naota’s coming of age story set in the middle of an intergalactic war between an organization attempting to defend the earth from an extraterrestrial corporation named Medical Mechanica that “flattens” worlds. Medical Mechanica has somehow also captured a powerful alien named Atomsk who has the ability to instantly transport anything across the universe, who an alien named Haruko is attempting to free, apparently working for another extraterrestrial party, but by the end it is revealed that all along she only wanted to free him to gain his powers for herself. Along the way, she interferes in Naota’s life and relationships with his family and his semi-expatriate older brother’s ex-girlfriend that now he’s sort of dating, using them as pawns to progress her plan.

Like I said, straightforward enough. Obviously, there’s quite a lot of holes in there, but they can largely be accepted as things we don’t necessarily have to understand. Medical Mechanica wants to “flatten” planets in order to “remove the wrinkles” so they “can’t think”, which makes absolutely no sense, but in an acceptable, out-of-our-control kind of way. It’s beyond the realm of Naota’s knowledge, so there’s little reason for us to have to understand it either.

However, there are a number of things that happen that still make no sense whatsoever, such as:

1) Where are the robots coming out of Naota’s head coming from?

As part of her efforts in the war against Medical Mechanica, Haruko takes advantage of Naota’s N.O., which is his previously unknown ability to instantaneously transport objects across space through his head.

Most of what comes out of Naota’s head after Haruko opens it up as an N.O. channel are Medical Mechanica robots. Except who’s sending them?

It’s sort of implied that Haruko is pulling the robots out of Naota’s head, but this only accounts for a small number of instances. Most of the time robots are just kind of popping out of his head whenever they want to.

So who’s sending them? Is Medical Mechanica sending their robots through Naota’s head to try to kill off the person who opened up the N.O. channel, because then that seems like an incredibly poor tactical decision on Haruko’s part, especially since many of the robots that come through are integral to the progression of Medical Mechanica’s plans, not hers. It would seem, then, that Haruko has quite a bit of explaining to do, or at least she would, if it wasn’t for this other thing that doesn’t make sense…

2) Who is Haruko talking to?

Throughout the series, Haruko appears to be using cats to communicate with her authorities. Fair enough.

But what about by the end of the series, where we learn that she’s not actually taking anybody’s orders? Is she only pretending to work for some organization and betrays them at the last minute, never having intended to help them at all? There seems to be little incentive for her to do this, since she’s still free to do whatever she wants after revealing her true colors. So is she just making up halves of conversations to mess with Naota?

And speaking of messing with Naota…

3) Why does Amarao let Naota do whatever he wants?

Amarao is the man who represents the earth corporation trying to stop Medical Mechanica, although it would seem that they’re incredibly bad at doing so, since they let them build a factory there and allowed a young boy who they knew was key to either sides success just kind of do whatever he wanted.

Now, obviously the reason for this works metaphorically, since the story is primarily about Naota coming of age and trying to learn how to be an adult, but this explanation would have to look pretty bad at Amarao’s performance review when they ask him why the earth was almost destroyed.

So far, it’s basically a show where everybody has very clear objectives that they’re absolutely terrible at following. Although it could be argued that Haruko intentionally draws out the Medical Mechanica robots (which, to remind you, are trying to kill her and everybody else) to activate the factory in order to free Atomsk. But in that case…

4) Why doesn’t Medical Mechanica just release the robots themselves?

At the beginning of the show, Medical Mechanica has already put something on earth that does the flattening, but nothing that actually activates it. The thing that activates it is in multiple parts, and only arrives on earth when Haruko, their possibly insane enemy, brings them there herself.

So Medical Mechanica, the only entity that’s a clear enemy throughout the entire series, seems completely uninterested in actually following through doing anything bad. They literally have everything they need to take over or destroy the planet or whatever it is that they want to do, but apparently can’t be bothered to actually do it themselves. But at least they’re just apathetic, whereas, once again, Haruko just makes terrible life choices…

5) Why does Haruko train Naota to defeat her?

Haruko makes a number of baffling tactical decisions throughout FLCL, such as how in the middle of her grand plan to trick Medical Mechanica into putting Atomsk in a position where he can be freed, she more or less just decides “fuck it, I’ll just blow everything up instead”.

She (apparently) changes her mind at the last minute, however, when she realizes that the timid Naota actually ballsed up enough to save the town from the bomb, and goes back to help him finish the job. Now, of course, it’s entirely possible that this was her plan all along, but why?

There’s absolutely no reason for her to make Naota stronger. In fact, there are many fantastic reasons to not make him stronger, primarily so that he doesn’t undo her entire plan when she puts the success of the whole thing in his hands. So why spend the entire series intentionally putting him in situations that offer valuable opportunities for personal growth?

So not only is Haruko insane, but her clever plans to screw everybody over also completely lack any sort of logic. And as long as we’re addressing characters with little to offer but insanity…

6) What does Mamimi’s cigarette mean?

This is kind of right on the border between things that don’t make sense that don’t need to make sense and things that don’t make sense and actually make it difficult to understand what’s going on in the show. On the one hand, pretty much everything Mamimi does is just to showcase her insanity. While Haruko is a wild and dangerous insanity, Mamimi’s is a broken and self-destructive one, and easily makes her the most heartbreaking character in the show. When Naota asks her how much she likes his brother and her response is “watermelon” and then a series of other things that have absolutely nothing to do with how a sane person would describe emotions, that’s totally okay. But the writing on her cigarette towards the end of the first episode is just baffling.

Oh my god, if I could have any one question about FLCL answered, it would be what the hell does this mean? It’s different than anything else Mamimi says that doesn’t make sense, because this is just so damn enigmatic.

Is it only part of a sentence? Was there a word that has since burned away that never knew best? Is it a complete sentence? Does the concept of “never” somehow know best? How? To me, this one image flirts with profundity is almost better than the way the entire show does.

As you might be aware, I was recently in Barcelona, where I played rock paper scissors all over the city. Now I am in Rome!

Outside the Colosseum.

Inside the Colosseum.

Inside the Colosseum again.

Arco di Constantino.

Fontana di Trevi, the largest fountain in Rome.

Pantheon.

Piazza Della Repubblica.

Outside the Vatican.

But What Did You Actually Do?

We got lost a lot. I never thought that at any point in my life I’d say “we’ll know if this is the right way back if we see the Colloseum on our left”, but life is just full of surprises. Eventually I figured out how to navigate the city (still not as confusing as Amsterdam, or as “AGH I’M GOING TO GET RUN OVER BY A BUS/CAR/BIKE/PEDESTRIAN” as Amsterdam either, but notably so all the same), and we crammed the Fontana di Travi, the Vatican, the Vatican museum, and the Pantheon into one day, which isn’t quite as impressive as it might sound, but we did get to fill our “run the fuck all over a city in a day or two” requirement.

After all that we ran to the Gallery Borghese on the opposite end of Rome only to find it had closed half an hour before we got there. So we went back the next morning and crammed it in before our train to Florence.

But Do You Have Any Fun Hostel Stories?

Not like I did for Barcelona, but I did have some really cool, really nice university students in my room. Two girls traveling together, one of whom lived in the next city we were going to, recommended some places to go, and a guy from Peru studying abroad in Madrid checked in around midnight when I was the only one still awake asked me if I spoke English or Spanish and, as I did, we had a nice conversation while he moved in, and then talked a bit more in the next few days too.

Scary hostel stories? NOT SO.

One time I participated in a creative writing program. The story gets more interesting, I promise.

We were told that we were going to listen to a mixtape of songs from a wide variety of genres for about half an hour, freewriting during the whole thing. What we were supposed to write about was up to us, but the main idea was that it was supposed to reflect the constantly changing music. Afterwards I had some weird-ass, rambling attempt at a story (“story” being used very loosely) about a cowboy doing… something. I don’t remember. What’s significant, however, is that afterwards we were told to go through it and highlight three to five word segments that we particularly liked. Then we cut them out, and were told to rearrange them into a poem in some way. I ended up with a rather surreal poem that I had a very fun time working on because of the unconventional approach. I decided I’d do it again sometime.

This story happened about three and a half years ago.

Recently, at another creative writing workshop, we were given a very similar exercise to do. The key difference was that we were all told to write down a verb and a location, put it in a hat, and we all drew random ones. The verb I got was “procrastinate”, which, being a college student, was more than a little expected. The location I got was “a shoe”, which was a little stranger (and ultimately just dropped from what I was writing). We listened to about half an hour of music that ranged from country to indie to classical to Disney to Lady Gaga (who is now a genre for the purposes of comic effect). I didn’t really free write prose, but instead wound up with a very lengthy poem telling a loose narrative (the course of which was determined by the shifts in genre). So I decided to cut out my favorite lines and rearrange them into a poem.

Ultimately it just turned out like a very condensed, and oddly less fun version of the original three page poem. It didn’t turn out to be anywhere near as much fun or successful as the last time I attempted this exercise, which I guess makes sense given how experimental it was.

It’s a pretty fun exercise, and if you like writing or have writer’s block, it’s an exercise you should definitely try sometime! Just put your iPod on shuffle or have a friend make a playlist drawing from a wide variety of different genres. Have fun!

Anyway, the poem I ultimately wrote wasn’t all that great, but I figure I might as well put it up anyway, because there doesn’t seem like much other reason to post the rest of the story without an example, regardless of how subpar it is. In case you’re curious where the elements of the thing came from, the playlist started of high some high-energy indie rock, so I decided it was a party attended by a bunch of hipsters (hence the PBR and the, uh, party setting), and that I’d see where the procrastinating, and maybe the shoe, came in later. Then the song “I Won’t Say I’m In Love” from Disney’s Hercules came on, and I decided, “well, that’s what they’re procrastinating on.” Then the playlist moved on to “Hallelujah”, the requisite “serious part of the movie” song, so I decided it was time to get two characters to get together. But then the song changed to “Born This Way” before I got them there, and for whatever reason that totally killed the mood for me, so they didn’t get together. Sadness.

And, um, that is the poem?

- – - -

this begs some important questions
they are at a hipster party
or simply its emotional intensity
there’s enough understanding of the song
others are too drunk to notice
they have drank a lot of PBR
but we return to our heroes
here, the chords are resonating
and they are moved
and they move closer
until the song changes
and now we can address what they’re procrastinating on
layers of synths
the moment is lost in the mix
slowly being buried under layers
this rather complicates things for everyone
a stiff, frustrated drink
the night is over half over
there’s still an offer that wants to be made
we still don’t understand the significance of the shoe

As regular readers know, this academic year I’m studying abroad in England, which is exciting to me because this is my first time in Europe, which means that I have a lot of stuff to see. About a month ago, I told some friends that all the travel pictures I would take would just be me playing rock paper scissors in front of famous things around Europe. Apparently some people thought I wasn’t being serious.

Sagrada Familia, a perpetually unfinished church.

Torre Agbar, a famous office building that in no way looks like a giant penis.

 The Parlament building of Catalunya.

 

Outside the Barcelona Zoo.

 

The Arc de Triomf.

 

The bench at Parc Guell.

 

The lizard at Parc Guell, which was so busy it was damned near impossible to get this picture.

 

The view of the city of Barcelona from the top of Parc Guell.

 

But What Did You Actually Do?

The first day there, we primarily just wandered around aimlessly, getting our bearings, which we did not get, but it was our first of many trips to Las Ramblas, a long street full of restaurants and tacky souvenir stands, where we made a great deal of travel plans primarily based on what we saw on postcards, calendars, and magnets. In the following days, we literally walked all over Barcelona seeing the Parc de la Ciutadella, the Barcelona Zoo, the Picasso Museum, Parc Guell, Sagrada Familia, the Olympic park that I don’t know the name of, and a few houses famous for their modernist architecture such as La Pedrera.

And we found the world’s smallest playground.

 

But it was fun.

 

But still kind of spooky.

But Do You Have Any Fun Hostel Stories?

Absolutely!

The hostel we stayed at in Barcelona had something like fifteen people per room, which actually wasn’t all that bad because the way the room was designed, we had walls and a curtain that actually offered us a great deal more privacy than I would have expected in a hostel. Unfortunately, you still have to hear everybody else in your hostel. On the first night, an American girl came in, announced her presence, and spent the next two hours roping other people in the room into being as loud as she was, and then later on as drunk as she was. Then she fucked one of the French guys in the room, which was predictable. Less predictable, however, was how much the French guy shrieked during sex. Like a child. Which is something I sincerely hope not all French people do.

The loud American girl left after the first day, but the French guy stuck around another day, where I got to hear his shrieky voice again in the shower, where he proceeded to sing the only two lines of LMFAO’s “I’m Sexy And I Know It” anybody actually knows for the duration of his shower, which was more than a little annoying.

Last year, during my sophomore year of college, my roommate and I noticed something very strange about our neighbors. Namely, that one of them screamed all the time. When I say “all the time”, I mean that his screaming was truly unencumbered by what time of day or night it was. The man never introduced himself to us, so we simply referred to him as “The Screamer.” The Screamer also rarely limited himself to simply screaming words. Perhaps 90% of the time, his screams were random gibberish. Just noises or wails or some ungodly combination of syllables never before used to try to communicate. Of that remaining 10%, perhaps 9% was simply him screaming the word “fuck”.

But in that final one percent of his screams were actual sentences. And the results were terrifying. It didn’t take my roommate and myself very long to realize that we were doing the world an injustice by not keeping a record of them, and so we got a giant piece of yellow paper, hung it on the wall, and wrote down everything he ever said.

Everything.

The Screamer’s roommate, on the other hand, seemed relatively normal, leaving us thoroughly perplexed how he lived with such a person. We didn’t have any complaints against him, really, except whenever his girlfriend visited, which, due to the thin walls of our residence building, we nicknamed “The Moaner.”

Eventually we learned a little bit more about The Screamer. First, apparently he was one of the top ranked Madden players in the world, and actually made a lot of money giving people lessons, which is apparently a thing people will pay for. Second, and more terrifying, we also learned that he had a kid. So, I suppose to attempt to wrap this story up, I guess the moral of the story is always use protection, otherwise people like this will reproduce.

Happy New Year!

Good Lord, three hundred posts? Arthur Darvill, get over here! We have to celebrate!

But really, three hundred posts? And I’ve been running this blog for almost four years now? Oh my God, why did nobody stop me? And to make things even more fun, my 300th post is conveniently at the end of the year? Wow, so much celebration is to be had! Quick, guys from Ted’s band from Scrubs! You guys gotta get in on this too!

But I couldn’t possibly have much more success to celebrate after all that. It’s not like since my 200th blog post at the beginning of the year I’ve gotten over 30,000 hits in this year alone due to a multitude of mildly successful and popular things I’ve written or anything like that.

What is this?! I got over 37,000 hits in 2011? And I wrote a post that accounts for almost 20,000 of that? Holy smokes! Guys from Ted’s band from Scrubs, get back over here and celebrate again!

But seriously, the past year and past hundred posts were absolutely fantastic for my blog. And it’s pretty much all thanks to Rebecca Black, so, yeah, thanks for that Rebecca! Writing a satire close reading of “Friday” proved insanely popular, and, thanks to a ton of idiots who didn’t get the joke, also surprisingly controversial! But as a mature person who realizes life is way too short to get caught up in arguments on the internet, I just let them be wrong in silence. Besides, I was raking in more hits than I ever had in my life and, even more fantastically, spent an incredibly long period of time where a Google search for “Rebecca Black explanation” or “Rebecca Black interpretation” and stuff of that nature saw my post not only on the first page of Google, but in many cases the first result. Also on that first page, was some dick who copy/pasted and took credit for my satire on, of all things, a bodybuilding forum. Seriously.

Additionally, I wrote more posts making fun of Pokemon (it’s a thing I do), and those pulled in a ton of hits too! At one point, one of them was even fourth on the list for a Google search for “stupidest pokemon”, which, of course, helped draw in about 2000 hits and, um… more negative comments from people who didn’t get the joke…

Wait…

So while I stand by my decision to just ignore the negative comments from people who didn’t understand the joke, I see no reason why, for my 300th post in a year where I got quite a bit of success for making fun of things like Rebecca Black’s “Friday”, Rebecca Black’s “My Moment”, Pokemon, and Pottermore, I can’t write a post where I make fun of people who tried to make fun of me and failed miserably, primarily because they can’t read.

Release the Kraken!

Let’s start with the Pottermore post. When J.K. Rowling announced Pottermore earlier this year, that was basically all she said. That it was a thing that was going to happen, leaving everyone to wonder what the hell a Pottermore was. So I decided it would be humorous to pull a super obvious joke on anybody looking for information about Pottermore that simply didn’t exist: namely, what it was. But whatever it was going to turn out to be, it certainly wouldn’t have been this:

The rest of the article made blatantly false claims about what Pottermore was going to be, which I decided was exactly like World of Warcraft. Hell, most of the joke was copy/pasted from the Wikipedia article for World of Warcraft.

And people didn’t get the joke.

Okay, I would love to give this person the benefit of the doubt. Maybe their intention was to troll me right back. But the thing is, if this person isn’t trying to play the same joke on me that I tried to play on them, that means it took them until details of what Pottermore actually was to be released before they realized that Pottermore wasn’t a computer game that had already existed for almost eight years. That has nothing to do with Harry Potter. Which would be really sad. But at least some people figured out it was a joke!

Yes, A. Washington. “Thisd” is very sad indeed. Seriously? I even left the name World of Warcraft in the post to make the joke more obvious. Good job.

But I hate to say that it only goes downhill from here. We’re going to deviate from “people who didn’t get the joke” for a little bit and move on over to the Top Ten Stupidest Pokemon From The Original Games post. When the newest Pokemon games came out earlier this year, lots of people complained about how stupid the new Pokemon looked. I thought it would be fun to point out that, while true, there were quite a few poorly designed Pokemon from the original games too, and do so in an obviously humorous way. This is when I learned that people take Pokemon way too fucking seriously.

This one’s actually really funny. I love how he doesn’t actually try to argue against anything I said, but rather makes excuses for why they are that way. Apparently my thinking some of the first batch of Pokemon were stupid ideas, which according to Zaekal is totally okay because they were new at the whole Pokemon thing after all, isn’t just wrong because it’s, you know, an opinion, but because it goes against some deep secret of the universe that I’ll just “understand” someday, like it’s the birds and the bees or trickle-down economics or something.

But don’t worry, it gets even crazier.

Wow, does somebody like Pokemon! We’re going to have to go all high school English class on this and break it down!

“Are you fucking serious who the hell wrote this stupid piece of shit.”

It’s okay, John. It was all the way at the beginning of the article you just read.

“So you’re telling me that all the new pokemon are way better than these?”

Well, no, what I said was “The criticism that the new Pokemon are terrible is fair.” and “For all the complaining people are doing about how stupid the new Black/White Pokemon look, here are ten of the originals that are just as bad.” But it’s cool, John, I understand how saying 7% of one thing is just as bad as 100% of another thing could look like it’s saying that all of the first thing is way worse than the second thing.

“i love how you make fun of diglet and dugtrio because there just the same ‘stupid’ idea and that electrode is an upside down voltorb. ok look at serprior he looks like he’s fucking wearing count dracula’s cape. Emboar looks like an satanic pig.”

Yes, those are much higher quality arguments than mine were, John.

“OH!!! Krookodile oh how fucking creative.”

Yep, there’s a crocodile named Krookodile! Well, John, you’ve clearly done your research that the new Pokemon from Black/White are pretty stupid. I’m pretty much convinced of a point I already agreed with at the beginning of the article you’re responding to.

“yeah you’re right these are stupid…LMAO your so fucking gay.”

My so fucking gay? What about my so fucking gay? Goddammit, did I leave my so fucking gay lying around somewhere again? I hate when I do that! But really, John, I love how you use the correct “you’re” and the wrong one within the same sentence.

“please i love for you to have a legit combat on why the new gens are way more creative and better than the old ones.”

This is my absolute favorite part of the comment. Every time I need cheering up, I read the bit about how I should “have a legit combat” and start laughing. As beautifully worded as this is, I’m even more captivated by John’s notion of somehow having “legit combat”, by which I assume he means legitimate combat involving violence, is somehow a good medium for debating the finer details of the creativity between two intellectual properties.

John’s comment was certainly the angriest, but it certainly wasn’t the strangest!

Yes, clubpenguin52537, as can be determined by your comment on a blog post about Pokemon, we see how well having a computer kept you away from Pokemon.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand it’s time for Rebecca Black.

As I mentioned earlier, I had a massive success with a blog post that was a satire analysis of Rebecca Black’s infamous “Friday”. A few people, however, had much less success understanding that it was satire.

Now, even though the whole thing went way over Lindsey’s head, she did compliment how well the article was written, which was nice of her, so I don’t see much reason to mock her for not getting the joke. This is more of a pat on the head sort of thing. Unlike this guy.

Oh, Sid Palma, you poor humorless soul! You don’t realize that you’re the thick one here! What makes your comment extra hilarious is the comment that came right before yours.

Right after someone points out how people missed the joke and didn’t realize the post was satirical, we have a comment where someone completely misses the joke! It’s fantastic! Oh, Sid Palma, somehow you managed to read the article and not get the joke, and then leave a comment and not get the comment literally right before yours explicitly explaining the joke you missed. Oh, Sid, you’re going to be a senator someday, I just know it.

I have just one question for you, Kole. Do you understand the irony of posting Occam’s Razor in Latin? Because it’s really funny.

Apparently all the ridiculous claims I made in the satire analysis would be true if only Rebecca Black wrote the song herself. Damn, she really missed an opportunity there! I guess Anon holds Rebecca Black in even higher esteem than I pretend to! And another thing, Anon, how exactly does your ass need help? Because as much as I’d like to help you out here, that’s probably something you should go to a doctor about, not a random person on the internet making fun of Rebecca Black.

To wrap this whole thing up, here’s the first “I didn’t understand the joke” stupid comment that the Rebecca Black satire got, in which somebody congratulates me and my two readers for being annoying. But here’s the best part.

C, your comment was the fourth one on this post. Meaning that, at the least, I actually have three readers, not two. Now, either one of two things happened here. First, maybe you miscounted. That’s alright, it happens sometimes, and you got close. You were only off by one. In counting to three. Alternatively, maybe you did this on purpose, and you’re intentionally not congratulating one of the three readers! What the hell, C? That’s not nice! Who did you leave out? Was it Vlads? Dr. Scholarton? Lucy? Why would you do such a thing? Really, C, not only do you have difficulty reading and maybe also counting, but you’re also kind of a jerk!

But on a serious note, oh my goodness, everybody, Angry Postcards From Nihilist Penguins is three hundred posts old! Also, I’m fairly impressed that I managed to write a hundred posts in one year. Maybe I’ll be able to do it again next year? That would be fairly convenient, in terms of combining end of the year blog celebrations with these milestone celebrations.

But I digress, this wouldn’t have been possible (as is evidenced by this post especially) without you. All of you! You guys have read something that I’ve written over 50,000 times! That is absolutely remarkable, and I am sincerely thankful for all the time anybody’s given me and this project of mine. 2011 was a fantastic year for my blog, and I hope it was for everybody else too. Here’s to me being super mature on the internet in 2012, and hopefully I’ll see you then!

I’m changing this feature back to an every few weeks sort of thing. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the idea of having a blog feature where I keep a music journal, because I think that gives the whole thing a nice little personal touch. In between my snarky satires and other reviews and creative writing ramblings, it’s fun for me to just rant about all the music I’ve listened to lately as if people cared. Pretending people care is all part of the fun of running a blog! The reason why I’m considering making it every other week, and paused it over the summer in general, is just that since I don’t always have two other posts ready to go every week, it gets really boring when every other blog post is a Currently Listening music journal.

Less Than Jake – Greetings From

I absolutely love Less Than Jake, but mostly just their older stuff. It was interesting to see them try to get back on the ska bandwagon with GNV FLA after the power-pop of In With The Out Crowd, with mixed results. The new EP (sort of, I only just realized it came out a few months ago) hits the marks a little more closely than GNV FLA did, but nothing feels like Losing Streak or Hello, Rockview. What it does feel like, however, is promising. “Goodbye, Mr. Personality” and “Oldest Trick In The Book” are interesting because they sound like mildly forced efforts at getting back to their ska roots, but clearly stand out on their own. They’ve got more of an Anthem or B Is For B-Sides vibe to them, which isn’t bad at all. Chris does way more singing than Roger on this EP, but the horns show up all the way through, which is exciting enough. Basically, the EP is a really nice surprise from a band that still so earnestly loves its fans and wants to do more for them.

Best Tracks: Goodbye Mr. Personality, Oldest Trick in the Book

Check It Out If You: like that sort of post-sellout but now trying desperately to get back to its roots sort of ska music

Evil Eddie – De-Sex Your Ex

I absolutely loved the Australian rock/hip-hop/ska/whatever band Butterfingers, which went on hiatus years ago and now appears to be broken up or on super hiatus or something. On the plus side, frontman Evil Eddie has finally started a solo career, and it’s pretty identical to how Butterfingers sounded (not surprisingly), so YAY more music in that vein! We only have a four song EP and two singles at the moment, with the promise of a full album coming soon. If this is any indication of what a whole album will sound like… again, it’s pretty much Butterfingers, but it sounds more like their first album Breakfast at Fatboys than their second album The Deeper You Dig. It’s not that Fatboys was a bad album, but it had a lot of filler and was absolutely inferior to The Deeper You Dig in every single way. “De-Sex Your Ex” is sort of a poor man’s “Yo Mama”, and showcases Eddie’s crass and often unsettling sense of humor. It’s a decent enough song with catchy music and shockingly crude lyrics, but I’ve heard him do both better before. “In It For The Money” is fair, and “Unsustainable Orbit” is a decent enough bit of sampling and electronics. The blistering anti-war song “Fuck a War” is probably the most promising song here, interestingly enough more in a Rage Against the Machine vein than Butterfingers. Of course, Butterfingers was an incredibly musically diverse band, so trying to determine where Eddie’s going as a solo act based on four songs is difficult, but I imagine the best is yet to come.

Best Tracks: Fuck a War, De-Sex Your Ex

Check It Out If You: liked Butterfingers, like crude humor, at least aren’t put off by crude humor

Radiohead – OK Computer

A pig in a cage on antibiotics.

Best Tracks: Paranoid Android, Lucky, Karma Police, Let Down

Check It Out If You: don’t understand the human condition, want to know what perfect music sounds like

Lupe Fiasco – Lasers

I remember once saying that I preferred Lasers to Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Well, that’s more than a little embarrassing. It’s a damn good album though, but Fantasy has grown on me way more than Lasers has. I still think “Words I Never Said” is one of the most badass songs of the year. It’s another one of those albums that’s mostly a lot of fun to listen to, but I tend to forget to give it as much attention as it deserves.

Best Tracks: Words I Never Said, Till I Get There, State Run Radio, Beautiful Lasers (2Ways)

Check It Out If You: want an easy introduction to hip-hop

Nirvana – In Utero

It’s easy to say that Nevermind is the better album because it has the hits and, generally, is a stronger album. In Utero, however, is a far more interesting choice. It’s got more filler, certainly, and the standout tracks aren’t as good as the standout tracks on Nevermind, but the overall package is more than the sum of its parts. This is genuinely angry noise; an entire album of self-hatred. This is more challenging material, and doesn’t get boring in the same way Nevermind has an unfortunate tendency due to its ease to pick up. Kind of like Favourite Worst Nightmare to Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, to be the only person in the world to draw a parallel between the Arctic Monkeys and Nirvana.

Best Tracks: Serve the Servants, Heart-Shaped Box, All Apologies, Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle

Check It Out If You: like the sounds of self-deprecation

Talking Heads – Fear of Music

SAME AS IT EVER WAS SAME AS IT no wait wrong one ah this is awesome too.

Best Tracks: Heaven, Memories Can’t Wait, Mind, Cities, Life During Wartime

Check It Out If You: forget that Talking Heads were awesome before Remain in Light too

The Mountain Goats – All Eternals Deck

This week on “I listen to The Mountain Goats way too much”, I listen to more perfect music by John Darnielle. Good job, John.

Best Tracks: Damn These Vampires, High Hawk Season, Estate Sale Sign

Check It Out If You: enjoy crying

Skrillex – Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites

I know absolutely nothing about dubstep except that it makes for an easy punchline (“What’s the opposite of the blues?” “Dubstep!”) and that I enjoy it, but I’m not sure why. Also, I don’t understand any of the dubstep/post-dubstep/brostep argument. All I know is that I want to get into dubstep, but I really have no idea what I’m doing. Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites starts out favorably, but gets surprisingly boring as it goes on.

Best Tracks: Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites, Rock N Roll (Will Take You To The Mountain)

Check It Out If You: want an easy introduction to dubstep, are curious what the most awkward thing to listen to while in a library is

The Blanks – Worth the Weight

Horrible pun aside, I actually like this considerably more than their first album Riding the Wave, most likely because they actually made an album this time. I’ve seen these guys live twice now, once just recently, and I was thrilled that they had a new album out. Even more thrilled to see their absolutely perfect covers of Hey Ya! and Over the Rainbow in it. There’s still quite a lot of filler, especially for an eleven track album, and they play to their strengths as a cover band even more here than previously, with only one original song (with a full band for some reason). But if you can find this album (it’s not online yet, they’re only selling it on tour at the moment), DEFINITELY PICK IT UP.

Best Tracks: Hey Ya!, Over the Rainbow, Teenagers Forget Streisand Because The Only Girl Is Cooler Than Dynamite

Check It Out If You: liked Scrubs, like a capella, like silly a capella mashups of Top 40, like ukuleles

You may be aware that over the summer I decided to record an album. It was mostly covers with three original songs. It was mostly a lot of fun, but also a lot of difficult, often annoying, work. So, naturally, I decided to do it again.

DOWNLOAD THIS THING HERE

Or, rather, I had a few leftover recordings from the summer, and decided to record a few more to have enough for an EP or something, and thus Not As Good: B-Sides From Or Around the Murderers or Nuns LP That Vary Quite Considerably in Quality was born. Most of them aren’t even b-sides, but whatevs. This one’s a lot more straightforward than the Murderers or Nuns album was. Almost every track is just vocals and a ukulele.

So in case you missed it last time, here’s the disclaimer:

• Yes, the recording quality is, say, “lo-fi”
• Yes, I am not a particularly adept vocalist, but I do my best
• Yes, I plan on doing more stuff with the Murderers of Nuns moniker, so telling me I’m a shitty musician will accomplish astonishingly little

So hopefully you enjoy this new batch of songs, because I’m not done with this thing. I’ve recently made songwriting a much higher priority for me, and recording covers is always lots of fun. So enjoy, and if you want to know a little more, here’s a little blurb about each track on the EP. Happy listening, everybody. And, of course, thank you for listening!

Coffee & TV(Blur cover)

I attempted to record this while recording Murderers or Nuns over the summer, but it was so horrible I wound up rerecording it when I got to England (I’m currently studying abroad for the year). A huge difference between Not as Good and Murderers or Nuns is that most of the recording is now done with a $5 microphone I bought for my iPod classic. My original intentions were to be able to use my iPod to record lectures, but I soon discovered how useful it was for making recordings of me singing and playing an instrument. Most of the recordings last time were made with either a digital camcorder or the microphone built into my laptop, the latter of which especially was, to put it mildly, bad.

The Recognition Scene (The Mountain Goats cover)

Yes, I do love The Mountain Goats entirely too much. This was recorded completely on a whim, and it turned out decently.

Back Against the Wall (Cage the Elephant cover)

One of two recordings leftover from recording the Murderers or Nuns album over the summer that didn’t make it onto the album, but were saved for this release. It basically did not turn out anywhere near as well as I was hoping it would, and I decided it wasn’t good enough for the album, replacing it with The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton instead. This is the only song I’ve done with two layers of vocals, not because I tried harmonizing or anything fancy, but because I tried the chorus with softly sung vocal and with muffled, distorted screaming vocals, and couldn’t get either of them to work. So, naturally, they’re both in there. Because why not. Also, this is the only song on this release that uses my electric-acoustic ukulele, because my acoustic didn’t have enough frets for the riff in the original key.

Summertime Clothes (Animal Collective cover)

The other leftover recording from Murderers or Nuns. I never really intended to put it on that album, though, and the recording is more than a little half-assed. I tried singing and playing at the same time, and the vocals are kind of drowning under the ukulele, but that might be a good thing. It’s also worth pointing out this is the only Animal Collective song I actually like.

Boring Fetishes for Boring People (acoustic)

“Boring Fetishes for Boring People” is an original song on Murderers or Nuns that came into my head as an overproduced pop-rock song and I did my very best to faithfully replicate. The original recording of the song had three layers of guitars, a ukulele, a piano, a synthesized bass, and a drum machine, in addition to a guitar solo and, of all things, a synthesized trumpet solo. I rerecorded it on a whim just with vocals and acoustic guitar. I almost like this version of the song better, because it’s a lot softer and mellower, whereas the other version is “RAR EMOTIONS RAR”. I would still like to rerecord a full band version of this song someday with better production and such, but having an acoustic version is nice too. This might be some of my best singing.

Erase Me (Kid Cudi cover)

The last thing to be recorded for this EP, it also might be my favorite. It was a thoroughly enjoyable challenge to turn a heavy-hitting, distorted guitar-laden hip-hop song into a softly sung, softly strummed acoustic number. It took forever to figure out how to do the vocals, but I feel like what I ended up with sounds fantastic. If I ever play live (which, HAHAHAHA! NO!), this would definitely be something I’d play. Also, you can listen to this right now without having to download it!

Hungover (Perpetually)

Hint: Try listening to it backwards sometime.

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (Neutral Milk Hotel cover)

I was asked a long time ago to cover this song, but it’s kind of late now. Oh well.