http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:Isaidthatsblasphemy&section=today deviantART RSS for by:Isaidthatsblasphemy en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Wed, 23 Dec 2009 10:15:03 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://Isaidthatsblasphemy.deviantart.com/journal/19422405/ http://Isaidthatsblasphemy.deviantart.com/journal/19422405/ Wed, 16 Jul 2008 05:58:04 PDT
To sum things up, I had fun, got drunk, got a snog, tried proper green absinthe, made a bunch of new friends, worked my arse off, bought books by Murakami Pynchon and Woody Allen, got a certificate, returned to Malta after spending a sleepless night at Vienna airport only to find that the local be-pot-bellied bus drivers had decided to go on strike, recieved my University results, bought a Smetana album, didn't find anything by Pulnoc or the PPU despite ransacking all of Brno and passed all my exams.

Not necessarily in that order.

]]> ~Isaidthatsblasphemy http://Isaidthatsblasphemy.deviantart.com/journal/19194947/ http://Isaidthatsblasphemy.deviantart.com/journal/19194947/ Fri, 04 Jul 2008 02:01:22 PDT Won't it?

It happens to be my first visit to the nation that staged the Velvet Revolution and as such, i'm interested in sampling as much of the local pivo as possible, at least the Southern Moravian varieties. I'll also be doing my best to find some Plastic People of the Universe albums while there.

To those of you unfamiliar with slavic lingo's, pivo is a type of (generally) golden beverage of which about 90% is water. The locals seem to be rather fond of it, in fact, their fondness for it is known to be superior to the fondness of other golden-beverage-of-which-about-90%-of-which-is-water-drinking nations.

I haven't felt that good since archie gemmill scored against Holland in '78

]]> ~Isaidthatsblasphemy http://Isaidthatsblasphemy.deviantart.com/journal/18021872/ http://Isaidthatsblasphemy.deviantart.com/journal/18021872/ Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:11:39 PDT
To be quite frank, i'm exasperated at the fact that the internet has become a veritable breeding ground for all sorts of inane, puerile, shrill-yammering, finger-pointing, infantile, punch-you-in-the-stomach-and-run-away-laughing type of behaviour.

Fuck it, just get your own thesaurus.

I'm tired of the fact that every forum I become a regular of and begin to make my online home is taken over by a bunch of new regulars within a short period of time who make as much sense as a cross between a gray parrot and a non-neotenous axolotl whose idea of highbrow humour is posting links to mudkips.

Then again, it always has been that way, I was merely prepared to give it a few chances. Complaining about it has as much effect as a native of Phuket throwing a grain of sand at the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, anyway and behaving in a proper, mature manner has exactly the same effect.

Thankfully i've enough to keep me occupied until the beginning of June and probably beyond that. Besides my thesis, exams and my viva's at the end of June, i'll probably be spending my summer celebrating (and throwing up) in various places, and abseiling down cliffs to study Yelkouan Shearwaters.

~ Nick

]]> ~Isaidthatsblasphemy http://Isaidthatsblasphemy.deviantart.com/journal/17796479/ http://Isaidthatsblasphemy.deviantart.com/journal/17796479/ Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:57:40 PDT
There's some references to forum users from there in it, so don't bother trying to understand anything other than the plain english.

Enjoy




This thread is no more than a pathetic excuse for you to spam/troll/act inanely under the (very) thin cover of a cliché'd debate question. Were my thoughts able to take physical form, you would not be surprised to find a very targeted maelstrom made of acid and black bolts careening towards you at high speed, although thanks to you, several forum users desperate for something quotable to put into their signature are about to have a field day.

Besides, if discussing the meaning of life is a subject you honestly find so engrossing, do take a look:

Here. (note: this was a link)

If you'd please grab the nearest sharp-ended implement (preferably a rusty one) and, despite your lack of any Japanese heritage whatsoever, kindly proceed to commit seppuku with it, these fora would be infinitesimally grateful. Such an event would lead to prompt merriment and festivities on a scale last seen when the Christian mob under the guidance of Pope Theophilus the wise-but-in-retrospect-the-not-so-wise-at-all, in a fit of enthusiastic and wholly unplanned pyromania burnt the entire repository of knowledge at the Library of Alexandria to the ground and danced the polka on its embers to celebrate the advent of the Dark Ages with flair and panache.

Despite the fact that hearsay accounts claim that the award should in fact go to Genghis Khan's thirteenth birthday party, the arrival of Wowbagger The Infinitely Prolonged (on a quest to insult every living being in the universe in alphabetical order) provoked him to promptly decapitate everybody at the party and proceed to burn down large segments of Asia. Since there were no survivors (except for a small and rather insignificant long-eared jerboa – but its eyewitness account was misinterpreted as being a series of manic jumps and strange ear movements), the claim remains unsubstantiated.

Drinks will be had, people will be made fools of, games of very questionable legality will be played, virginities will be lost and live music will be blared at volumes that will make the plutonium rock band Disaster Area feel uncomfortable. Some members of the band will play in 3/4ths time, some in 4/4ths, some in 13/8ths and others in a kind of pie-eyed πr2, each according to the amount of sleep he'd managed to grab recently. Merlyn and Dr Frodo will happily consume a volume of vodka equivalent to the GDP of a small African dictatorship while the Van Steenberge, De Dolle and Bosteels breweries will claim a lack of stock for a period of three months (double that if Enimie decides to drop by for a drink or three-hundred*).

Kinjion will sit in a corner proselytising about the prodigious waste of our God-given hepatic tissue, practising his sophistry (at the bar, presumably) and evangelising to the unlucky soul who just happened to feel the need to empty the contents of his stomach in that general area.

But you shouldn't believe anything you hear at parties, and particularly nothing you hear about this one.

I ramble.

Now, in response to the title of the thread. Please open your dictionary. If you cannot find a dictionary at your place of abode, fear not, for there exists a type of outlet that deals exclusively with the problem of supply and demand in the affairs of the literati. It tends to be filled with papery things, of variable thickness - which may or may not contain illustrations - called books. Books deal with a wide variety of affairs such as poly-ticks, travel, self-help, DIY, the doings of hobbits and manically depressed robots, biographies, scientific things, not-so scientific things, not scientific things at all, anti-scientific things, and, religion.

Such shops are known to the commonfolk/layman/laywoman/layperson/peasant as, wait for it, bookshops. Find one, enter, and enrich yourself by the purchase of a dictionary – preferably an English one, but ultimately any language you’re particularly fluent in will do.

If no such shop exists in the near vicinity, or, you are unable to secure yourself a means of transport for your comfortable perambulation thereto due to lack of license, injury (sporting or otherwise), disability (mental, physical or both), or common sense, please, don't panic. Seeing as you have a connection to a worldwide, publicly accessible series of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using a standard protocol k... ]]> ~Isaidthatsblasphemy http://Isaidthatsblasphemy.deviantart.com/journal/17355934/ http://Isaidthatsblasphemy.deviantart.com/journal/17355934/ Sun, 16 Mar 2008 00:22:48 PDT three books. Whether or not the trilogy expands to become one of five (or more) rather than three remains to be seen - too many pan galactic gargle blasters can impair ones ability for numeracy.

But there, by the grace of the Abrahamic deity, I go.

I expect you want me to tell you what they're about, now? While i'm not sure how many of you have read any Huxley, Asimov or P.K. Dick, the topic and style will be familiar to any of those who have.

In much the same way as Asimov dealt with the topic of robotics, i'm hoping that my hat-trick of books can deal with the topic of humanity.

The first book would be set in the not too distant future and will focus on the issues that crop-up after the successful cloning of several interbreeding members of human-chimpanzee intermediates. (George, don't get any ideas now, eh )

For those of you who don't spend their free time reading evolutionary biology or genetics, this would imply that we would then be forced to come up with a clear definition of "human" that we've so far taken for granted - "accidents" of evolution should not be treated as though they were set in stone.

The second book would occur several centuries in the future at the point of a human speciation event. It will obviously contain thematic similarities to the first book. No it isn't a re-hash of GATTACA or Citizen Cyborg.

The third one, and probably the most over-the-top, deals with the question; "What would we do if we were to encounter an extraterrestrial race so far advanced that they considered us to be beyond contempt and we weren't being directed by Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich?" Since it isn't being written by the two gentlemen mentioned in the previous sentence, it probably won't contain the explosions that fans of the it's-a-bloody-alien-invasion-run-away-from-the-little-green-men
-with-disintegrator-blasters-aaaargh!-I-melt!! genre have come to expect.

I'll probably begin writing them sometime during my gap year.

]]> ~Isaidthatsblasphemy http://Isaidthatsblasphemy.deviantart.com/journal/15984556/ http://Isaidthatsblasphemy.deviantart.com/journal/15984556/ Tue, 18 Dec 2007 09:50:52 PST Person Pitch. This is long overdue, I promised this to ~jimmyjazz13 two weeks ago. Forgive me.

Strawberry Jam is like a good glass of whisky* , pour a dram of this album into a tasting glass and give it a go. Despite not breaking any ground, Animal Collective's sound is probably a lot like what White Light/White Heat would have sounded had it been recorded today with some help from Edgar Froese or Brian Eno.

The sound is dominated by Panda Bears drumming who manages to instill a manic, driving atmosphere throughout - the listeners timpani are only allowed a break when he does. His drumming reminds me a great deal of Maureen Tucker of Velvet Underground fame and Jaki Liebzeit from the German krautrock band, Can. The guy has bucketloads of talent, not only as a drummer, and his solo release, Person Pitch reveals that very well.

Avey Tare's voice is the second highlight of this album. Although his voice is nowhere near as eclectic as say, Tim Buckley's, his shrieks and high-register singing are rousing. The lyrics are surreal and interesting.

Impressive stuff that doesn't mess about. Deserves a 7/10.

1. "Peacebone" – 5:13: Well, good morning, sunshine. Pow!

2. "Unsolved Mysteries" – 4:25: This one's interesting. After being under Mr. Lennox's aural onslaught for five minutes, Avey Tare decides to take over and show off his vocal range backed by a glistening choir of electronic effects and acoustic guitar. A short but blissful mindfuck pokes its nose in towards the end of the song. Those last few seconds should have lasted longer.

3. "Chores" – 4:30: Nausea-inducing but excellent work from our friend the geologist.

4. "For Reverend Green" – 6:34: Probably the most benign track of the album, and deserves to be a hit. Dominated by Avey Tare screaming dementedly into a microphone and Noah Lennox behaving like a spoilt two-year old playing havoc with his mothers kitchen after having consumed a trifle too much caffeine.

5. "Fireworks" – 6:50: The song belongs to Avey Tare's vocals and his rhythmic shrieking innovately used as part of the chorus at the beginning of and throughout the song. It's something of a mood break from the rest of the album, being somewhat melancholic.

6. "#1" – 4:32: Begins rather minimalistically at a leisurely pace, yet picks up slowly. Noah Lennox takes on backing vocals on this one, with Avey clearly having fun making weird noises. The tone is surreal and dreamy and gives the listener a well-deserved break considering the three tracks coming up next.

7. "Winter Wonder Land" – 2:44: Should probably be used as a christmas carol as it would make a much-needed break from overplayed versions of Silent Night and Jingle-Bells on repeat. Inanely addictive chorus with some impressive vocalisation. Over too quickly (but thats where the repeat option comes in handy).

8. "Cuckoo Cuckoo" – 5:42: Throbbing Gristle-like and probably the most obfuscated track of the lot. The intro reminded me of something Tangerine Dream or Soft Machine would have come up with at their peak. The intro betrays the surreal cacophony that creeps up in thankful bursts throughout the song which lives up to it's namesake.

9. "Derek" – 3:01: A fitting ending to a strong album. The song begins as though the album is reluctant to bring itself to a close but its mood suddenly changes towards the half way point. Mr Lennox shows himself to be excellent at influencing the mood of a song with his clever and measured use of sudden pounding.



*If Isaidthatsblasphemy had to choose to compare this album to a single malt whisky, it would have to be Dalwhinnie.

]]> ~Isaidthatsblasphemy http://Isaidthatsblasphemy.deviantart.com/journal/15967078/ http://Isaidthatsblasphemy.deviantart.com/journal/15967078/ Mon, 17 Dec 2007 00:01:47 PST
]]> ~Isaidthatsblasphemy http://Isaidthatsblasphemy.deviantart.com/journal/13703912/ http://Isaidthatsblasphemy.deviantart.com/journal/13703912/ Thu, 12 Jul 2007 04:39:30 PDT
Apparently, the application was resubmitted after having been filed seven years ago (and refused), however this time round it was accepted on condition that the applicant obtain a bank guarantee in case the archaeological site be damaged during construction.

Pathetic.

Of course, no bank can actually guarantee to safeguard a temple from the damaging effect that demolition, heavy machinery and construction can have, especially a mere 5 metres away from the site.

In the meantime, all my country seems to fret about is the stance of our politicians on whether they favour entrenching an anti-abortion law in the constitution - you half expect them to picket the parliament, holding up banners saying "Cells Are People Too".

As the late Bill Hicks would say:

"We're pro-life"

"Ooh you look it! You look like you're filled with life!"

(i'll stop before this turns into an all-out rant)

To drive the point home, this article was deemed so vitally important that it was printed on the 19th page of todays newspaper, apparently - a chemical reaction taking place in the chlorine storage facilities of a hotel pool is more relevant.

Life in a catholic theocracy has never been better.

]]> ~Isaidthatsblasphemy http://Isaidthatsblasphemy.deviantart.com/journal/13579218/ http://Isaidthatsblasphemy.deviantart.com/journal/13579218/ Mon, 02 Jul 2007 14:15:27 PDT Draconis nobilis who probably never bothered a soul and would like nothing more than a nap in his cavern on top of a pile of gold that'd probably been in the family for generations anyway.

Of course, ownership doesn't even enter the question here - not to mention the complex inheritance laws that would enter the picture had said dragon been a human - seems to me - we've got a massive case of speciesm here where nobody talks for dragons.

Knights in shining armour my foot. ]]> ~Isaidthatsblasphemy http://Isaidthatsblasphemy.deviantart.com/journal/11308902/ http://Isaidthatsblasphemy.deviantart.com/journal/11308902/ Thu, 04 Jan 2007 02:30:07 PST
I've been listening to Fabrizio de André a lot lately. An italian singer-songwriter for those of you who don't know him. It appears my father was right, Bob Dylan is in fact, crap - compared to this guy at least. It's a pity I can't translate a few of his songs into english, because they'd lose a lot of their meaning - the technicality of the english language can be a bitch when it comes to translation.

]]> ~Isaidthatsblasphemy