SemiConscious Dot Org

Thanks for all the great sports-related swag you brought me this year, and thanks for a fourth consecutive New England Patriots division title.

 

Now, don’t get me wrong, Santa; I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I’m sure that, for fans of your average NFL team, division titles and playoff appearances are all fine and dandy, and cause for raucous celebration. However, for obvious reasons, we Pats fans naturally expect a little more. OK, a lot more. So, if you could just go ahead and deliver us that fourth Superbowl title in a month or so, yeahhh, that’d be great, mm’kay?

Your Friend,
Aaron

Yes, kids, it’s that time of year again. For 11 long months, you’ve been on the edge of your seats, waiting impatiently to be told which music is acceptable to like. It’s time for me to indulge in yet another exercise in pointless ego gratification, pontificating windily for the benefit of the five people who read this blog. Hot damn!

First, the Honorable Mentions. I enjoyed all of these cd’s, but for various reasons (weak tracks mixed in with the great ones, filler, suffering by comparison to a band’s previous releases, or just not enough listens to fully digest it) they didn’t quite make the cut. Were I to redo this list in a few months, several of these might, indeed, make the Top 40, bumping out discs currently in the list. (Time travel, however, is not an ability I possess at present.) In no particular order:

• The Knife, Silent Shout
• J Dilla, The Shining
• Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan, Ballad of the Broken Seas
• Slayer, Christ Illusion
• Gnarls Barkley, St. Elsewhere
• Neil Young, Living With War
• Voivod, Katorz
• Muse, Black Holes and Revelations
• Lamb of God, Sacrament
• Beck, The Information
• Eagles of Death Metal, Death By Sexy
• ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, So Divided

Yeah, yeah, the hell with those losers. Without further ado, the albums that did make the cut:

40. Dirty Pretty Things, Waterloo To Anywhere
39. Converge, No Heroes
38. Thom Yorke, The Eraser
37. Comets on Fire, Avatar
36. Celtic Frost, Monotheist
35. The Decemberists, The Crane Wife
34. Pink Mountaintops, Axis of Evol
33. The Thermals, The Body The Blood The Machine
32. Motorpsycho, Black Hole/Blank Canvas
31. As Fast As, Open Letter to the Damned

30. Boris, Pink
29. Clipse, Hell Hath No Fury
28. Tool, 10,000 Days
27. Drive-By Truckers, A Blessing and a Curse
26. Soledad Brothers, The Hardest Walk
25. Gomez, How We Operate
24. Johnny Cash, American V: A Hundred Highways
23. The Coup, Pick a Bigger Weapon
22. The Raconteurs, Broken Boy Soldiers
21. My Morning Jacket, Okonokos

20. Band of Horses, Everything all the Time
19. Isis, In the Absence of Truth
18. PJ Harvey, The Peel Sessions 1991-2004
17. Les Claypool, Of Whales and Woe
16. Hank Williams III, Straight to Hell
15. The Black Keys, Magic Potion
14. Pearl Jam, Pearl Jam
13. Ghostface Killah, Fishscale
12. The Melvins, A Senile Animal
11. Misson of Burma, The Obliterati

(more…)

Item 1: Today at work, we’re having a Christmas/ Hanukkah/ Kwanzaa/ Festivus party for the kids. A local construction firm has donated all the food, party decorations, and toys. The kids, many of whom come to us with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, are brimming with excitement at the prospect of getting a book or a doll or maybe some Dragonball-Z cards. Since most of their parents have no money to buy them anything, these may very well be the only presents they get during the holiday season.

Item 2: Last night, my team signed a Japanese pitcher, who has never thrown a pitch in the major leagues, to a 6 year, $52 million contract. Combined with the $51 million they paid his Japanese team for the rights to negotiate with him, that brings the total investment to $103 million. To have a guy throw a baseball.

Am I the only person who weighs these two disparate facts and becomes overwhelmed with the sinking feeling that there is something deeply, seriously wrong with our priorities as a society?

As previously stated, I am a huge fan of Thomas Pynchon. So when Brenda told me, a couple of months back, that there was a new Pynchon novel preparing to drop, I made mental note to purchase said novel with all deliberate speed. December 6th came and went, and I got sidetracked. Then, relatives started asking me what I wanted for Christmas. Noting that the new novel, Against the Day, is still available only in hardcover and costs $35, I figured “What the hell, I can wait a few more weeks if it means getting it for a present instead of shelling out 35 bones.” So now I’m in a holding pattern.

In the meantime, I’m very curious to hear what people think of the novel. I’ve noticed that the “professional” reviews of Against the Day have been decidedly mixed, which is par for the course with Pynchon; you either love his style or it drives you nuts. But for anyone out there who may have started reading it, what is your opinion? I don’t want any plot spoilers, just general impressions. Is it comparable in quality to his better novels (and, for the record, my favorites are Gravity’s Rainbow and The Crying of Lot 49.) Is it one of his weaker efforts? Should I rush out and purchase it at full price, or am I better off waiting to receive it as a present? Talk to me.

Ever since the Fifth Columnists in the Liberal Media announced their intention to let their Islamofascist allies win the War on Terra™ by henceforth referring to the Sectarian Disagreement in Iraq as a “Civil War,” we in the 101st Fighting Keyboarders have been fighting a counteroffensive in this important new War of Semantics. The stalwart patriots at Fox News took the lead, bravely supporting the troops by holding endless roundtable debates to parse the meaning of the words “civil” and “war.” National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg took up the torch, pointing out that Iraq is nowhere near as bad as World War II and blaming the media for making us think it is.

However, the “Blame the Media” ploy, a conservative staple for decades, sadly had less traction once it was revealed that even Obergrupenfuhrer Rumsfeld knew the Civil War Sectarian Disagreement was going badly. Clearly, if Dear Leader was going to survive this brutal War of Semantics, someone new must be blamed.

Luckily, General J.C. Christian, Patriot, has shown us the way. Let those traitors on The Left blame the war’s downward course on the people that have made all the military decisions since the war’s beginning; conservatives know better. No, those who betrayed Dear Leader and embiggened the Iraq insurgency are none other than the American people themselves!

The only remaining question is: now that the American public has been identified as the primary enemy of America, what steps must be taken to defeat them? That the necessary measures to protect this great and beautiful nation from its citizens will be drastic, we have no doubt. But practically, what can be done? Ideas, people!

For lo the many centuries since first arriving on these shores to rule them with an iron fist, we have kept alive the traditions of our ancestors. Primary amongst these traditions was keeping the Two Holy Days of the calendar (Festivus and Talk Like a Pirate Day, obviously) close to our hearts and celebrating them in the traditional manner. We thought it would always be thus.

But now, a gang of upstarts has arisen, creating a blasphemous new holiday and demanding that we pay them heed!

While we are leery of this holiday (since Ninjas notoriously practice Buddhism and Taoism and Shintoism and other non-Christian religions and are obviously thus bound straight for Hell upon their earthly demise) we must admit that, as Christians, the martial aspects of this holiday appeal to us. Were those martial aspects somewhat narrowed and focused (say, into a “Crusade,” for instance) we would be able to throw our wholehearted support behind it.

After all, as The Left begins its annual War on Christmas offensive, an army of silent assassins at our disposal would be most useful, especially since so many of the veteran Christmas Warriors, upon whom we had depended all these years to protect us from the Communist-inspired, objectively pro-terrorist slogan “Happy Holidays,” lately seem to be cracking under the strain of their awesome burden. We must ride to their rescue!

With ninjas.

Go Forth, My Son, and Rock. -Ronnie James Dio to Jack Black in Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny

I’m currently working on my gi-normous, breathlessly anticipated Top 40 of 2006 list. However, since the title of this blog is “Heavy Metal Librarian,” I feel it is my civic duty to rank the metal first. All of these releases will most likely show up in my overall Top 40, and Mastodon’s Blood Mountain may very well end up being crowned Album of the Year (it’s currently duking it out with The Roots’ Game Theory.) So without further ado, the Top 10 Metal Albums of 2006:

“Black Sabbath Meets Black Flag Meets Big Black” Division:

10. Converge, NoHeroes

“Class of ‘86 Rises From The Dead” Division:

9. Voivod, Katorz


8. Slayer, Christ Illusion


7. Celtic Frost, Monotheist

“Who Knew Post-Rock and Metal Would Mesh So Well?” Division:

6. Boris, Pink


5. Isis, In the Absence of Truth

“King Buzzo Will Still Be Churning Out Tasty Riffs Five Years After He’s Dead” Division:

4. The Melvins, A Senile Animal

“Zeppelin Was Wicked Awesome” Division:

3. Wolfmother, Wolfmother


2. The Sword, Age of Winters

“Mastodon Rules The Universe” Division:

1. Mastodon, Blood Mountain

Go forth and rock.

The 45-year-old victim, who told authorities he’d passed out nude on the shore after smoking crack cocaine, was rushed to a hospital in critical condition.

...........................

About five minutes into the nearly eight-minute call, the operator suggested Mayid tell Apgar to punch the alligator. “I don’t know if it’s true, but if you punch him in the nose … it may let him go,” Fulman said.

Mayid relayed the message and immediately came back with Apgar’s response: “Too big.”

The burning question: should this man be allowed as a 2006 Darwin Awards nominee, even though he survived? We need a ruling…