Convergence

Side 1: Blow into this paper bag, go home and stop grinning at everyone.


Side 2: If the boss sits there and accuses you of stealing, or not having the right motivation, don't just sit there and take it. Hit the fucker in the face.

As you may or may not know, Child's Play is a charity founded by Mike and Jerry of the popular web-comic Penny Arcade.  The aim of Child's Play is to improve the lives and raise the spirits of sick kids by donating toys and games to children's hospitals worldwide, hopefully combating the stereotype of gamers as violent, antisocial leeches upon society.

Though the charity accepts donations year round, the annual drive runs from November until the end of December, and Child's Play 2009 is officially a go.

In this spirit, I've decided to replace some of my ads with banners linking to the official Child's Play site.  Even if you don't usually click on ads, please do follow these links and follow through by making a donation or two.  In addition to this, one hundred percent of all ad revenue my blog makes (not that it's ever much) from today until the last day of the year will be donated to Child's Play.  This isn't an incentive to click on my ads; if you feel tempted to do so purely to help out the charity, then rather go to the charity's site and make a donation directly.

If you're on Twitter, you can also keep up to speed on things by following @CPCharity.

It is my personal philosophy - well, one of them anyway - that every person should own something (and I mean something physical, like an object of some kind, an heirloom, a collection, or a sentimental knick-knack.  Not a person, a pet or an abstraction like a business) that they treasure and value so much that they would rather die with it than live without it.

Buddhists teach that attachment to things blocks the path to enlightenment and is the cause of suffering.  Well, those misty-eyed fucks believe a lot of things that may or may not amount to a damned thing.  Karma, Nirvana, reincarnation?  No less stupid than anything I can hope to come up with.  Besides, suffering is a part of life; you need to take the bad with the good.  If you remove yourself from everything that could possibly lead to suffering (in a Buddhist sense), well then, quite frankly, your life fucking sucks.

Down there on the beach everything seemed alright. An uneven shore of darkened sand caressed by fluffy waves of Cristal. A dramatically sparkling vignette of diamonds upon the surface created by the setting sun, meandering off beyond the horizon, beyond vision, beyond the infinite.

The quick flicker of a buzzing fluorescent light yanks Limey Stark back from his ridiculous reverie beyond the third-floor barred window to the here and now... Wherever that is.

the meds must be kicking in. now i remember. east emerson mental hospital. i hate fluorescent lights. both the real and metaphorical. they illuminate everything. no shadows remain but at the cost of dulling it all up with the rigid uniformity. i dont ever want to be a fluorescent light. that's what i hate about mental hospitals... the rooms are made to be homely. comfortable. differently coloured linen on each bed in each bedroom. red. yellow. green. brown. usually pastels. striped. tartan. never white. never blue. a unique and blandly neutral colour palette on the walls in each bedroom. beige. warm grey. cool grey. never white. never blue. a different picture hanging above the bed in each bedroom. starry night. the persistence of memory. garcon a la pipe. nothing religious though. interior decor by committee. by bureaucrats. but the lights are cold fluorescence... not florescence. it makes me feel like an animal in a zoo. my habitat superficially resembling one where i'd be comfortable according to some dumbsaint committee but with a relentless artificiality to it. not enough to notice. not enough to hit me in the face. just enough to tap me on the shoulder and not be there when i look around. just enough to make me feel unwell enough to gratefully shovel down haloperidol. abilify. even the bifeprunox. fluorescent lighting is institutionalised incandescence. candlelight by committee. by bureaucrats.

Limey feels more at ease now. Bile no longer oozing from the walls. A few new faces spotted along the way to the first-floor rec room. Maybe just old faces lacking their usual distortion. Bifeprunox is unique among the antipsychotic medications that have been forced on Limey by his captors: it actually works. Well, at least according to them.

Personally I think the new faces are just poor saps kidnapped by whomever is orchestrating the abstruse Machiavellian conspiracy that will reveal itself with time. Poor saps turned into zombies by second generation antipsychotics. But then again, Limey is the crazy one.

In the first-floor rec room a few are enjoying their dinner while the television is watched. Limey's tray is collected from the adjacent kitchen before he settles down with it at a nearby table. On it, a travel magazine for New Zealand invitingly flailed open like a whore at an article about Mount Cook.

the food is great. three meals a day. nice selection or you can write whatever you want on the menu. i always wrote something different. pizza. french fries. it became a game to see what i could get. pizza was easy. scrambled eggs for dinner. hen to pan. foie gras with dom perignon usually gets me an egg sandwich and coffee. even at night. the game didn't always work. tonight is lasagne. i didn't ask for it but ticked it. hues of brown on my plate. salt sachets and some garlic bread on the tray too. fuck it everything's some kind of brown. they don't even take the goddamn lasagne out of the oven til the yellow cheese turns brown. even my coffee's brown. i guess i could've grabbed a tub of coleslaw but then the contents of my stomach would look like baby shit if i died and they cut me open. the food is great but that would be embarrassing. what the fuck does aoraki mean. why would they leave travel magazines in the rec room of a building you're not allowed to leave. denmark. romania. egypt. australia. malta. carnaro. deadbelly inquisitors mocking me. screw you i'm not that crazy. reading material picked out by pencil-pushers who think it'll keep you calm. us. me. crazy people. disturbed individual. some dumbsaint committee showing pictures of the jungle to an animal in a zoo that's never seen the outside of a cage. library by committee. by bureaucrats.

took away belts and shoelaces. so fucking stupid. i told them i could break the mirror in the bathroom if i wanted to. give me back my belt. art therapy everyday. blood pressure checked everyday. nurses asking all the time if im feeling dizzy. probably so i dont fall down and sue.

The lasagne, a popular choice, is gormandised by Limey, and the garlic bread has been picked at, but sedulously avoided due to the daffy hope that one of the Blues, Doc Benway, won't be disinclined to get nice and close to Limey when she is inexorably run into by the delusional fucker as he passes her office near the nurses' station so that his bedtime cocktail of Valium and Abilify can be collected. Inhale. Swallow. Idiot.

blue pill. white pill.

Blues don't work that way.

Coloured nametags are sported by the staff at East Emerson.

White for nursing staff, blue for psychiatrists on duty, orange for administrative staff, red for security. Reds are usually never seen unless things have gotten really fucked.

It might be argued by Limey that this is because of some bureaucratic tendency towards overcomplicating things. Introducing convoluted redundancy into proceedings in order to justify a budget, or get around budgetary constraints, or simply because that's what bureaucrats do. I happen to think, though, that it's to make it easier for the over-medicated, cognitively impaired, semi-vegetative denizens of a mental hospital to know whom to ask for food and whom to ask for help cleaning up the aftermath of an encounter with incontinence.

There really isn't too much of a discernible difference between the residents of a mental hospital and the population of a pre-school.

blue pill. white pill. blue pill. white pill. blue pill. white pill. thrice daily. after meals mainly. unhealthy diet if you ask me. gastronomy by committee. bureaucrats don't cook. they scald. seethe. coddle. decoct. parboil. the kitchen staff cook what i want. the bureaucrats what i need.

television was good. joanne woodward. they might be giants. great film. of course he carried it a bit too far. i need to feel her near me. time for my meds. blue pill. white pill. thrice daily. just keep saying to yourself im adequate. benway. she didnt even notice me walking past. didnt ask about my dreams. i need to feel her near me. her hair is different today. i wonder if she'll notice me walking past. she does. smiles. glances. glows. radiates. just keep saying to yourself im adequate. she asks me about my dreams. im there but somewhere else. time for my meds. i tell her if god is dead he laughed himself to death. because you see we live in eden. this is paradise. its hard to find but its here. all around us everything we want. i ask her for a hug like always she says no. smiles. glances. glows. radiates. good girl. i know how girls are. no means yes. no. i havent been a girl in twenty years and when i say no i mean no.

Limey is kindly motioned by the statuesque but plainly dressed Doc Benway towards the nurses' station as she heads home. Despite her best efforts of concealment through tying up her long blonde hair, modest application of make up and dressing like, well, a psychiatrist, her classical beauty shines through like the setting sun through a pernicious cloud.

Limey, in need of his bedtime cocktail, wanders towards the line at the nurses' station, slipping backwards and forwards in time. In his own mashed-potato mind still working up the courage to walk past Doc Benway. Of course, he carried it a bit too far. It's time for his meds. Time for bed.

He dreams.

Looking out of the third-floor barred window, Limey slips into a ridiculous reverie. He wonders if he'll have lasagne for dinner again tonight.

yes i said yes i will yes.

Down there on the beach everything seemed alright.

The obviously cool people over at the gaming blog Couch Campus have kindly invited me to write a few articles for them.  Feel free to study my first post, Cinema's 5 Most Incompetent Computers.

Have a look around and be sure to bookmark; some more of my work will be forthcoming.

Well, I have no idea where that last post came from.  Sometimes I like to think out loud... with my hands... on the Internet.

Anyway, a very strange thing happened to me today.  I was watching Predator for the umpteenth time, fascinated with how it seems to get better with each viewing.  Afterwards I went to check out the trivia and goofs on the IMDB page and came across this little nugget:

After Hawkins is killed, Anna is found, terrified. Poncho asks her repeatedly, "Que paso, mujer?" which does in fact mean, "What happened, lady?" Her answer is "No se, no estoy seguro, no se!" Poncho states, "She says the jungle, it came alive and took him." "No se" is Spanish for "I don't know," and "No estoy seguro" means "I'm not sure."

Now, this is the unit's first encounter with the Predator.  Up until that point - aside from Billy being spooked by something - they had no idea that there was anything out there other than rebels or enemy soldiers.  If Anna gave no indication of what she saw, how could Poncho have known that, in a sense, the jungle really did come alive and take Hawkins?  What the IMDB trivia doesn't mention is that, after Poncho tells the rest of the unit what Anna supposedly said, Dillon interjects with "Bullshit! That's not what she said."  It's safe to assume that Dillon was not just freaked out, but understood enough Spanish to know that "No estoy seguro" sure as shit doesn't mean "the jungle came to life."

Sure, it could just be a goof.  This seems unlikely, however, as it would be baffling how the writers - who understood enough Spanish to write Anna and Poncho's dialogue - would simply leave a glaring mistranslation in there.  Furthermore, Dillon's reaction to what Poncho said seems like there was a genuine intent in the way the scene played out.

I imagine two possible scenarios:

• Poncho was a government agent planted in Dutch's (Schwarzenegger's) team in order to draw out and investigate the Predator, and the entire rescue mission was just a snow job; an excuse to put Poncho and the rest of the unit on the creature's path.  Exactly which government he really worked for and how much they knew about the Predator(s) at that stage remains a mystery.
• Poncho was working with the Predators.  Either he was some kind of clone or automaton, or a bona fide human ally of the Predators.  In either case, his job was to lead the unit towards the creature's predetermined hunting area within the jungle in order to set up the hunt.  Take note of the fact that Poncho is the only member of the unit who, arguably, was not directly hunted by the Predator; he was injured by one of the team's traps, and finally killed by a plasma blast from the creature's shoulder cannon clearly meant for Dutch, who was carrying Poncho at the time.
  

One last thought that only just hit me: At the end of the film as the credits appear, we see shots of the principal cast along with their names.  Richard Chaves, who plays Poncho, is officially the first name we see.  The names are obviously not in alphabetical order, nor in order of appearance, so why would Poncho be at the top of the credits, even before Schwarzenegger?  Could it perhaps be a hint that there's more to the character than meets the eye, or that he could even be the film's true protagonist?  We may never know.


Enterprising Redditor guinunez tracked down the subtitles, and according to them, before Anna says the above line, she says "Ya te he dicho todo lo que se, la selva se lo llevó. qué más quieres que te diga?" which translates to "I've told you everything I know, the jungle took him. What else do you want me to say to you?"  So perhaps Poncho's honour remains intact!

You get two kinds of fear:  I guess you could call them "trivial fear" and "existential fear".  Trivial fear is the kind of anxiety you suffer from a direct external source; only occasionally, but to a great intensity when you do.  A fear of spiders or snakes, for instance.  A man with acrophobia who finds himself atop the Sears Tower suffers intensely while he's there, but as soon as he reaches the ground floor, that fear leaves him entirely.  This is the kind of fear that is a remnant of our primal instinct.  The urge to escape from perceived immediate danger.

Existential fear, on the other hand, is the kind of fear that rarely reaches great intensity, but it's always there in the back of your mind, affecting everything you say, everything you do, and every decision you make.  The fear of confrontation, the fear of disappointing your kids, the fear of not living up to your parents' expectations, the fear of being a bad wife, etc.  This is the form of fear that is truly limiting and imprisoning.  If the decisions that you make in life are in some way affected by the presence of that fear, then they are not truly your decisions. It's not truly your life.

When the self-help gurus talk about overcoming your fear, it is existential fear on which must be focused.  It pisses me off no end when someone describes themselves using words like "overcome," "reinvent," and "conquer," but then proceed to jump out of an airplane or play with a fucking tarantula.  This amounts to nothing more than masturbatory attempts at self-congratulations and it defeats the entire point.

Overcoming trivial fear is, well, trivial.  This is because the fear you may or may not be conquering has no effect on the quality of your life.  If some corporate executive could live his life over without his crushing fear of snakes, it's unlikely that he would've been an artist.  A single man without his fear of heights would probably not have been married with kids.  A grad student without his fear of dogs wouldn't have been a high-school drop-out.

However, a depressed middle manager without his fear of confrontation may well have been a wealthy entrepreneur.  A lawyer without the fear of taking risks might have been a travelling writer.  In any case, someone without the baggage of existential fear would be happier, even if only potentially.  At the very least, they'll be making decisions - even bad ones - for the right reasons.

Letting go of fear in general is pointless, because some fears are good, and some fears have so little impact on our lives that eradicating them is wasted effort.  The trick is first figuring out which fears are ruining your life.

As you may or may not know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  Even though it's good to be aware of the disease during the other eleven months too, it's easier to get attention for the cause - and assistance from selfish bloggers - when campaigning during only one.

This brings me to one of my favourite charities, Feel Your Boobies.  A non-profit organization that runs a campaign to remind women to, well, feel their boobies.  They claim that simply feeling yourself up is just as effective at identifying changes or lumps as a formal self-examination would be.

The informal tone of the campaign is meant to get the attention of younger women, who are also very much at risk (Feel Your Boobies founder Leigh Hurst was diagnosed at the age of 33.  Her cancer was initially identified through this form of informal auto-grope).

Check out the campaign's website, feel your boobies and remind your girlfriends to do the same (feel theirs, not yours... unless I'm invited and there's dip).

I don't normally like to link to older content (read that in a sarcastic or sincere tone as you deem appropriate), but I'll make an exception here.

Dr. Ben Goldacre, columnist for The Guardian, has written a pretty devastating article on the scam called Homeopathy.  As I - and most rational people - have always believed, homeopathy is to medicine what sacrificing goats on an altar to Baal is to veterinary science.  Unfortunately most people still buy into the whole thing, not so much because they're gullible (though they usually are), but because they are not really aware of the flawed methodology and flat-out dishonesty that pervades the homeopathic "field".

Dr. Goldacre's paper is short, lucid and an engaging read that effectively decimates any argument in favour of homeopathy like an intellectual hammer to a pseudo-scientific ballsack.

There haven't been any new posts recently, I know.  I've been a little busy (and more than a little lazy), but today's your lucky day... assuming you're an intellectual masochist.

With the month of October celebrating Halloween, the birth of Kirk Cameron, SIDS awareness, and horror in general, it seems apt to have at least one post dedicated to things which scare the shit out of us, or at least attempt to.

Movie monsters are a true staple of modern pop culture; from the Creature from the Black Lagoon, to Ridley Scott's Alien, they have fuelled some of our worst nightmares and some of our most fun memories.  These monsters all have something in common: they tap into our subconscious, find out what scares us most, and force us to confront these fears to the sounds of our own gasps and the odour of stale popcorn, all while giving us a good time.

Some monsters, though, are truly scraped off the bottom of the barrel.  So utterly banal and uninspiring that they would have done us all a big favour by just staying on the cutting-room floor.  It is from this morbid gallery that I offer you my personal selection of five laughably unscary movie monsters!

5: Flying Monkeys

Movie: The Wizard of Oz

The perfect way to make an otherwise ostensibly harmless critter like a monkey seem terrifying and monstrous is to strap a pair of wings to its back.  At least that's what was floating around in Frank L. Baum’s head as he smoked some more Peyote before carrying on writing.

The only time I have ever been truly frightened and disturbed while watching a monkey was when one was playing the straight-man role opposite Clint Eastwood.  Unless that faeces they're throwing happens to be highly acidic, monkeys with wings strapped to their backs are about as scary as Treat Williams in Everwood.

4: Killer hermaphrodite hobbits

Movie: Bleeders (aka, Hemoglobin)

I watched this movie on VHS back in high school with some friends and a case of Carling, and the morning after we avoided eye-contact and pretended like nothing had happened.  I can assure you we would've felt less awkward and ashamed if we merely remembered flashes of mutual fellatio.  Who ever thought that a movie about incestuous hermaphrodites could be so boring as to induce a coma?

As for the monsters, they are hobbits.  Who kill people.  And are hermaphrodites.  All in all, about as scary as the "back room" of your local porno shop.


Surely a low-point in Rutger Hauer's career; considering Blind Fury, that’s saying a lot.

3: Mothra

Movie: A shitload of Godzilla movies

Generally accepted as being female, Mothra is occasionally portrayed as a type of benevolent protector and loyal opposition to Godzilla, despite destroying Tokyo.  In her larval form she embarked on a lucrative career as body-double for Barbara Streisand before trying her hand at being a movie monster; only one problem, though:

IT’S A FUCKING MOTH!

Moths are the third most unthreatening insect in the animal kingdom, right behind butterflies and Joan Rivers.  Who was the genius at Toho who approved a monster so scary that it spirals into the nearest light-source?  The only possible way you can have a nightmare about something as dull as a moth is if you take NyQuil and Prozac together at bedtime.



2: Cranky woman

Movie: Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman

A woman finds out that her husband is cheating on her and is only after her inheritance.  She then encounters an alien who is on Earth looking for diamonds, which are his spaceship's only source of power.  How the fuck he got to Earth in the first place is one of those metaphysical questions which is left up to the viewer - how Kubrick.  Continuity aside, after mugging the woman for her diamond necklace, the alien then causes her to grow fifty feet tall, whereupon she decides to seek vengeance on her philandering husband…

I know what you're thinking, "What the hell are you talking about, man?  There's nothing scarier than a girl who's on the rag!"  Call me old fashioned, but while I find an angry woman unpleasant, she's still a hell of a lot less terrifying than some demon from Hell who'll eat your face off.  You may not be able to reason with a woman scorned, but at least you can defuse her fury by slapping Fried Green Tomatoes into the DVD player and watching it with her; that shit is like morphine to a cranky woman.

1: Leprechaun

Movie: Leprechaun 1 through 6

Unlike, say, Islamic militants, the Irish - even the three sober ones - are laughably unscary.  So are midgets. Combine the two, and you get the veritable antichrist of movie monsters; a poster-boy for the whole laughably unscary movie monster demographic.  I speak, of course, of The Leprechaun.

You've got to hand it to Warwick Davis for having carved a career out of playing offensive stereotypes.  Oh what, dwarf actors only get offered roles that are offensive and stereotyped?  Tell that to my friend Danny DeVito, who, despite being only three feet tall, has never played a leprechaun, Ewok or George Shapiro.

I've refrained from commenting about the Roman Polanski controversy for a few reasons.  Firstly, every other asshole with an opinion has already done so, so there isn't much left to say.  Secondly, I didn't care all that much; so some director (a talented one, I admit) finally got arrested for a thirty-year-old indiscretion.  Big deal.

Unfortunately, the shocking response of the so-called Hollywood elite has forced my hand.  As Paulo Freire (allegedly) said, "Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."

I won't rehash any of the details, but to recap: in 1977 Roman Polanski gave a 13-year-old girl champagne and quaalude (known as Mandrax in South Africa), then proceeded to anally rape her despite her begging him to stop.  Fearing arrest, Polanski fled authorities and has been on the run ever since, but was finally arrested recently in Switzerland.  Let me explain something to you, Polanski.  This business requires a certain amount of finesse.

This seems in order, right?  A child rapist is arrested and it appears justice is finally served.  Sadly, most of Hollywood doesn't see it that way.  Following Polanski's arrest, many of the big hitters have come out in support of Polanski.  What the fuck?  People like Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, David Lynch, Ethan Coen, Harvey Weinstein and Jonathan Demme have signed a petition demanding his release, and other big names have vocally supported him.  Whoopi Goldberg has sparked a shitstorm by publicly claiming that it wasn't "rape-rape".  I see you like publicity, Ms. Goldberg.  Well, you're going to get it.

So how is it that otherwise intelligent and talented people (and Whoopi Goldberg) suddenly become psychotic?  Granted, Polanski is a respectable filmmaker.  'Course he's respectable.  He's old.  Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.

First of all there's the very valid point that the victim, Samantha Gailey (now Geimer, left) wants to avoid reliving those events to the point where she even stated that she doesn't want Polanski to be arrested.  I can understand her sentiment, and the controversy will doubtlessly stir up old wounds, but unfortunately it doesn't work that way.  If rapists were spared punishment to protect the dignity of the victim, the prisons would be empty and rape would be the world's number one pastime.  The Hollywood crusaders, however, don't seem to give two shits about the victim.

Some sympathetic folks say that, being a Holocaust survivor and having suffered his pregnant wife Sharon Tate being slaughtered by Charles Manson's followers, he's endured enough hardship in his life.  What can I tell you, kid? You're right. When you're right, you're right, and you're right.  I agree that his life has been filled with tragedy, which is something he should've thought about carefully before he raped a child.

The best arguments in defence of Polanski centre around alleged judicial abuse of the case.  Polanski claims that he had no idea she was thirteen at the time, and to have pleaded guilty as part of a deal that was then reneged upon, which was why he fled in the first place.  You may think you know what you're dealing with, but, believe me, you don't.  You see, these arguments are bullshit.  As the actual plea bargain transcript points out, he swore before a judge, under oath, that he knew she was only thirteen, and it was made clear to him that he may be sentenced to anything up to twenty years and that the plea bargain guarantees nothing.

The truth is that the Hollywood folks are rallying around Roman Polanski for no other reason than that he is "one of them."  He's rich! Do you understand? He thinks he can get away with anything.  Do you think that if a nobody like me raped a child, Harvey Weinstein would put my poster up on his wall?  Or that Whoopi Goldberg would march the streets in my defence, claiming the kid was asking for it?

Forget it, Jake.  It's Hollywood.

As you may know, I am an avid electric guitar player.  My current axe is an older model from the Ibanez GIO series.  Though it gets the job done, it is by no means perfect.  The perfect guitar, however, is exactly what this post is all about.

I set about designing my dream guitar with one simple, guiding philosophy in mind: as much control over the produced sound as possible without sacrificing quality of tone.  A working title for the design is the Transmitter (a really bad pun on Broadcaster).  Unlike many mutton-as-lamb "signature" models, The Transmitter has quite a few customizations.

Body

There have been a couple of times in my life where I had the privilege of playing a Fender Telecaster.  Though I'm not as big a fan as some of the twangy tone produced by the Tele's slanted bridge pickup, I do believe that it is the most comfortable instrument I have ever played.  Its comfortable and attractive body, enduring design and rich history have made the Fender Telecaster my favourite guitar.

It is a touch on the heavy side, though, so I'd go with a lighter wood such as Ash, or maybe even an f-hole as found in the Telecaster Thinline as seen below:

Neck

In keeping with the philosophy of maximum control over sound, I should prefer a 24-fret neck.  Modern Telecasters have 22 frets, an increment to the 21-fret neck of classic Teles, but 24-fret variants do exist, such as the Bajo Sexto Baritone Tele.  However, taking into account the preference for a lighter body, this could result in an instrument which is unbalanced and neck-heavy, especially considering the longer 25.5" scale length Fender tends to use - and which I prefer for its tonal qualities and comfort for my larger hands.  With this in mind, I'm happy to compromise with 22 frets, seeing as that's what I'm playing right now anyway.  Fret size should be jumbo.

The neck radius should be 12" (stock Les Paul).  For additional control, all frets from the 17th upwards should be scalloped, similar to the Ibanez shown below (I believe it's a JEM series [As kindly pointed out by Matt08642 on Reddit, this is probably an RG1570]), which features scalloping from the 21st to the 24th fret:


As far as fretboard wood is concerned, you generally get two types of people: those who believe the choice of wood affects tone, and those who believe this to be an urban legend.  I fall in the former category, and would prefer a neck and fingerboard of maple for its (perceived) clarity, definition and control.

Electronics

And thus we get to the real meat-and-potatoes of the design.  It should come as no surprise that the Transmitter will be electronics heavy, seeing as I am a techie, and recalling my mission with the guitar: total sonic control.

A major part of the setup will be the transplanted electronics from a Line 6 Variax guitar: a saddle-mounted piezoelectric pickup feeding a per-string signal to active electronics.  These electronics model the tone of 25 classic guitars, from a 1928 "Tricone" resonator, to a selection of classic and modern Stratocasters, Les Pauls, Dreadnoughts, and more.  Yes, that's right, it also models acoustic guitars.

Before you ask; yes, I do know of the Fender VG Stratocaster, but I'm a fan of Line 6 products and trust their impressive modelling capabilities.

The tone and volume pots from a Variax respond - I believe - appropriately to the guitar model being used, and so their presence in the Transmitter is crucial.  This means that the Transmitter will have two sets of pots: tone and volume for the Variax electronics, and tone and volume for the "proper" pickups.

The Transmitter will have a variation on the Fat Tele (or Tele HS) pickup configuration featuring a bridge humbucker and neck single-coil.  These will be used by the humbucker and "driver" pickups of a Fernandes Sustainer FSK401 kit.  The pickup configuration I have in mind is shown on the right (this Tele also features a Bigsby tremolo unit - classy!).


Originally I considered a Floyd Rose tremolo system - which wouldn't be impossible to use with the Variax electronics, as Ibanez have at least two models using a Floyd Rose with a piezo - but the amount of wood that will have to be removed from the body to fit the unit is just blasphemous.  Keep in mind that some space will already have to be made to fit all of the active electronics, and removing so much wood from the body will have a disastrous effect on tone.  In any event, even though a locking tremolo unit will give me more control over the sound, I'm not a whammy bar user in the least and will be more comfortable getting similar effects from a Digitech Whammy pedal.  A better option in almost every regard.

In total, the Transmitter will have six pots: the Variax tone and volume, the "normal" tone and volume (from the Fernandes kit), the Variax guitar model selector, and the Fernandes sustainer intensity pot.  In addition, two toggle switches:  one for the Fernandes pickups and a "modelling" one for the Variax piezo.  Throw in a killswitch, and I'm in woodshed heaven!  Sure, this is a very complicated interface, and it sure as hell ain't gonna be pretty, but I'm willing to live with that for the level of control it'll give me.

Aesthetics

Finally, what some may consider to be the most important element of a guitar: its appearance.

I'm not a huge fan of the more outlandish guitar designs; the shape of your average BC Rich axe or the chrome finish on Satch's signature Ibanez are just too much for me.  Forgive the elitism, but I want my instrument to look like an actual musical instrument.  My first instinct was to go with a classy tobacco sunburst finish, but such a finish - evocative of a Stradivarius - suffers a jarring incongruity with the cutting edge technology on board the Transmitter.

Instead, being an admirer of Dave Gilmour's famous "Black Strat", I've opted for a modern but not obnoxious black finish featuring a black pickguard with white detail.  Identical to the Telecaster Custom below:

Well, that pretty much covers it, my dream guitar.  If any luthiers are reading this and want to build me a prototype, you'll get no complaints from me!

This is easily the most fucked up thing I've read today:

I worked in a five star hotel once and a lady in the middle of the night had a miscarriage. She kept extending her stay saying she liked the room and didn't wish to swap. When she did check out the housekeepers found the fetus in the bed which was covered in blood. It appeared the poor lady was so distressed at losing the baby she was cuddling it for days on end.

And in the end, the hotel sold the mattress at an employee sale.

Found on this thread on Reddit.

Job Silver walked through the Casino de Monte-Carlo's atrium and its many slot machines as he approached the Salon Europe where he hoped to make a profit that night. No, he didn't hope; he knew. He knew that he was going to walk away with more than the one-thousand euros worth of chips he had bought at the cashier's cage. Unlike almost everyone else in the casino that night, he wasn't dreaming of breaking the bank. No, that wasn't part of the plan.

On the way to the European Room's English roulette table, Job walked past a moustachioed man in a white dinner jacket and a pair of round, tortoiseshell glasses. Ostensibly just another patron hanging out by the slot machines, he gave Job the slightest of nods as he walked past.

Job sat down after trading his chips for the table's colour-coded tokens. He knew that the scariest part was always right before it started. The usual worries entered his mind, not least of which was whether the fake passport he had displayed when paying his entrance fee aroused any suspicion. Did it look as authentic to security personnel as it did to him? Did he look like a Paul Polchinski? It was time to put those thoughts aside. It was almost game time. Time to focus. Time was always on Job's mind.

The casino being devoid of clocks of any kind, he glanced at his wristwatch. Moments later the croupier said "Faites vos jeux." The game was on. Job played with the style of a sensible gambler, a professional. He placed many even-money wagers and rarely took the indulgent risk of a straight or a split bet, but when he did, the results were usually in his favour. Occasionally he would peek over his shoulder at the moustachioed man by the atrium who was watching the table's action with a vested interest. Job won regularly, but lost just often enough to keep the eye-in-the-sky cameras off his back, and the croupier's suspicions in check. When he won, there was no excitement in his eyes, no relief on his face greater than a forced grin. He had the demeanour of a man earning his daily wages in a cramped office. After twenty minutes, Job's chip count had risen to sixty-two thousand euros. Despite being on such a roll, he calmly cashed in his tokens for standard chips and did the same with those at the cashier's cage. He always insisted on cash and carried it in a small, black messenger bag despite the protestations of the cashiers.

It was 10:05 PM when Job strolled along the cobblestone pavement toward the nearby Hôtel de Paris. He walked with a determined pace, but slowly enough to make the most of the summer night's refreshing Mediterranean air.

His fourth-floor room offered a glorious city view to complement its beautiful nineteenth-century mahogany interior. As he stood by the window admiring the vista, he understood the irony of the realisation that he was just lucky; beyond what had become a calculated, methodical approach to the way he made his money, ultimately it was all thanks to a cosmic fluke – pure dumb luck. He knew that his gift was much more than an unfair advantage, but he was not one to waste a talent.

Job put aside his contemplative mood. He may have already had the score in his hands, but he knew that the job was only halfway done. He hung his "do not disturb" doorknob hanger outside, locked the door, stuffed the messenger bag with its valuable contents into the closet, and then sat on the side of his bed. His wristwatch said 10:12 PM, as did the bedside clock. He laid back with eyes closed and started concentrating. Soon the familiar vibrations began behind his eyes and worked their way to the base of his skull and down his spine to all of his extremities. A moment later he experienced a sensation unique to him: similar to the hypnogogic falling-sensation, but much more intense.

He sat up and held his head for a moment. No matter how many times it happened, it never failed to make him feel sick to his stomach. His wristwatch still said 10:12 PM, but the bedside clock now said 9:25 PM. He set an alarm on his watch and then walked to the closet. The messenger bag that he had just put there was now gone, but Job was unperturbed. He removed a large plastic bag from one of the shelves and emptied its contents onto the bed: a wig, a fake moustache, a pair of clear-lensed, tortoiseshell glasses, and a passport with the name Joseph Horwich. He went to the bathroom and donned his disguise, then swapped his black jacket and waistcoat for a white dinner jacket, and his silk ascot for a bow tie. He stuffed the passport and plastic bag into his jacket pocket.

Job took the elevator to the eighth floor; the Le Grill restaurant where he had earlier made a reservation for two. As Job was shown to his table, he noticed that the roof was slid back, revealing a dramatic view of the French Riviera. The clock on the wall said 9:34 and his wristwatch said 10:23 PM. Job reached for his pen and scribbled a series of numbers on a piece of paper. A couple of minutes later he again checked his wristwatch, and looked up only a moment before a familiar man entered Le Grill. Not just any man, but Job himself, albeit without the itchy, yet effective, disguise.

"Beta," he greeted Job as he sat down at the table.

"Alpha," Job reciprocated with a nod as he scratched his scalp underneath the wig. "Good timing, as always."

Job-Alpha smiled.

"You know the rules," Job-Beta said as he handed him the piece of paper. "I know exactly what's going to happen and you don't, so I tell you the score and you play ball."

Job-Alpha nodded.

"These are the numbers, memorise them. The croupier will call 'faites vos jeux' at nine forty-two exactly."

"Nine forty-two. Got it," Job-Alpha said.

"Make it look good," Job-Beta continued, "try to stay on even money, no straights or splits. Use your head."

"Relax, will you? I know how this works."

"No, you don't, but I do. That's my point. That's why I make the rules and you follow them exactly."

"No problem," Job-Alpha said.

"Remember to be back here at ten twenty-three, and don't forget to go get the stuff in the men's room tomorrow morning," Job-Beta said as he got up out of his chair.

"Ten twenty-three. Men's room. Got it," Job-Alpha confirmed.

Job-Beta left Le Grill while Job-Alpha spent a few minutes committing the numbers to memory before burning the paper in the ashtray. He left shortly thereafter and headed for the Casino de Monte-Carlo.

Job-Beta got past casino security after paying his entrance fee for the second time, although, chronologically, he was the first Job to give the casino his ten euros that night. Thinking about that sort of thing made Job's already busy head ache. He didn't much like to think about things like paradoxes, which was why he had always gone out of his way to avoid them. Just because he was holding all of the cards didn't mean he wasn't fully prepared to play it safe. In fact, maybe that was the perfect reason to play it safe; ripping off a casino was one thing, but God knows how much shit he could get into if he stained the fabric of time through sheer negligence.

He was standing by the slot machines in the atrium when he saw Job-Alpha coming towards him on his way to the roulette tables of the Salon Europe. Job-Beta gave him the slightest of nods as he walked past before sitting down at a slot machine and pretending to play while watching the action at the English roulette table.

After about twenty minutes of watching Job-Alpha doing clinical work at the table, Job-Beta's wristwatch alarm went off. 10:50 PM, the watch said. Just as Job-Alpha started cashing in his tokens, Job-Beta walked to the men's room and locked himself in one of the stalls. He removed his wig, moustache, glasses and bow tie and wrapped them, along with the fake passport, neatly in his dinner jacket which he slipped into the plastic bag that he had in his pocket. He hid the bag inside the toilet's tank and sat on the floor. He checked his wristwatch again: 10:59 PM. He blacked out.

Job woke up with a jerk. Not on the floor of a men's room stall in the Monte Carlo casino, but lying on the bed in his room at the Hôtel de Paris. He sat up and checked his wristwatch: It said 10:59 PM, as did the bedside clock. He spent a few seconds gathering his composure. He had no memory of wearing a wig, of writing any numbers on a piece of paper, of playing a slot machine, nor of blacking out in a men's room. In fact, he had no memory of anything that had happened between first blacking out on his bed and waking up on it again now. This didn't bother him, because that was how it had always been. He didn't know why it worked that way, he just knew that it did. He did, however, remember meeting himself in Le Grill, and following a precise set of instructions that he had spent days planning. He remembered the job, he remembered the execution, and he remembered the score, and that was all that mattered. Especially the score.

He got up and walked to the closet. Inside was a black messenger bag containing sixty-two thousand euros.

Job smiled.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivatives 3.0 License.

Being a Muse fan, I have been looking forward to their new album, The Resistance, for a while.  It was finally released on September 14th, and, although a very strong effort, is a bit of a mixed bag.

Muse have long shown a penchant for flirting with excess; from the title track off 1999's Showbiz, to Origin of Symmetry's Rachmaninoff-esque Space Dementia, to the pseudo-epic Knights of Cydonia from their last outing.  Well, The Resistance is quite literally excess of symphonic dimensions.

The loud and funky Uprising opens the fare on a note which is rather, well, loud and funky.  It seems to pick up where Supermassive Black Hole left off and does little beyond proving that Muse haven't forgotten how to kick out a good din.  The opening bars feature a theremin-esque Phrygian melody which, lest my ears deceive me, reference the original Doctor Who theme music.  How prog!

The next two tracks, Resistance and Undisclosed Desires, left me a bit cold.  The former's preachy lyrics alienates and the latter can't seem to decide if it wants to be R&B or eighties' New Wave.  Desires' dubbed vocals and slap bass make me wonder if Bellamy's been shooting up with Dave Gahan.

The first major highlight of the album is the colossal United States of Eurasia.  Bellamy clearly wants to be both Brian May and Freddie Mercury on this track, with lushly multi-tracked vocal harmonies and a proper guitar solo that sounds like it was actually played through a VOX AC-30 amplifier.  Eurasia segues into the melancholic piano piece Collateral Damage - which is actually just a loose interpretation of Chopin's Nocturne in E flat major.

Guiding Light is another stand-out track.  Another eighties throwback, this tender power ballad enters the fray with reverbed snare drums and eventually delivers possibly my favourite guitar solo on Muse's entire discography.

The scary pipe organ opening Unnatural Selection promises much, but the song quickly devolves into a rather standard and pointless modern rock song.  MK Ultra left me equally bored.

I Belong to You/Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix made me feel as though I were listening to a tarantella in 4/4.  European folksy with a funk beat, it's fresh and interesting compared to the preceding couple of tracks.  It then develops into a montage of the popular aria from the French opera Samson et Dalila.  It also features a solo by what, I think, is a bass clarinet.  So good, so pretentious, so prog!

Finally we get to the album's big sell: the three-movement rock symphony Exogenesis.  An ambitious and long (close to fifteen minutes) piece featuring, I am told, over 40 musicians.  It evokes a calmer and more hopeful tone than the rest of the album.  If the prior eight tracks describe a world collapsing, then Exogenesis represents leaving it behind.  Traveling into the terrifying but promising unknown of deep space.  Entirely composed by Bellamy, it's his magnum opus and features more Chopin and Liszt inspired moments.  Stirring, clever, captivating and haunting.

The first half of the album is largely hit-and-miss featuring nothing we haven't heard before, while Exogenesis is so good that it could be boxed and sold on its own merits.  The Resistance is not a bad album by any means, but an album whose musical scope doesn't quite match the lofty heights of its concept.  Oh, and those pompous and preachy lyrics don't help.  Fantastic stuff, but progressive rock is all about doing something which is both good and inventive, and you won't find much of the latter here.

While I'm pleased with The Resistance, I'm hoping that for their next studio outing Muse return to playing to their strength, which is despondent, symphonic space-rock.

3.5 / 5