The Cloud Of Unknowing.

I will be on vacation in British Columbia for the upcoming week. Posting will be on hiatus until I return.

The Rise and Fall of the Inland Empire.

This is perhaps the most unique mashup that I’ve posted on my blog. It is a mashup fashioned more as an art piece than as a reinterpretation of a movie.

Something Wrong.

The foot issue is getting more serious. Hopefully, the podiatrist will be able to solve the issue tomorrow.

In unrelated news, I am now finally officially done university. I wrote the final exam this afternoon. Now to relax for a month before the start of real life.

Lastly, I will try to write some more substantial posts in the near future. I have been a bit lax lately with writing them.

The Innocence Of Facts.

This is another short update. My foot, if it is getting better, is doing so at an imperceptibly slow pace. I would like this resolved soon as it has been a deplorable blight on my summer. However, I am seeing the podiatrist on Wednesday. Hopefully, he will deliver a good prognosis.

We take a path into illness and then are trapped there.

My foot infection is back yet again.  I’m so tired of these problems with my foot.  Let’s hope the doctors can find a cure some time.  Updates will be provided as the circumstances change.

Forever delayed.

Since my friend Kirsten has been bothering me to write longer posts, I thought I would oblige, even though this is probably not what she meant.

The song „Little Baby Nothing“ by the Manic Street Preachers is one of their most interesting early singles. Released on October 9, 1992, the 6th and final single from their album Generation Terrorists managed to reach #29 in the UK charts.

The song is rather directly about the sexual exploitation of women in society. Written by the late Richey Edwards, the song and music are claimed by the band to have been written in ten minutes flat. Initially, the band considered giving the song to someone else, but decided instead to get a female singer to accompany them on the track. Initially, they asked Kylie Minogue to sing on the track, but she declined due to contractual difficulties. (On a tangent, there were no hard feelings between them as the Manics did some work with her in the late 90s.)

Their second choice was Traci Lords, the notorious ex-porn star turned musician and actress. She agreed to take part in the song and contribute some of the vocals. The Manics saw her as a powerful woman, but one who exemplified the „sexual exploitation“ theme.

The video for the video, directed by gobtv, further contributes to this theme. The video features James Dean Bradfield playing in front of a musical group of Manic Street Preachers fans called The Dead End Dolls. The directors originally envisioned the song as „about women’s oppression, so we start with a little girl getting her head jumped on by a horrible old man and end with a woman committing suicide by shooting herself between the legs, having gained her revenge in the meantime by killing all the men. „

Needless to say, the record company nixed that idea pretty early on. Therefore, they altered their idea for the video. The set for Little Baby Nothing is a wall of slogans along the lines of White Men Are Sexually Inferior and All Rock And Roll Is Homosexual, with a large pink triangle in the middle, and a hammer and sickle in the middle of the triangle made from ripped up Union Jacks. Further, they hired a bunch of little girls to wear Ejaculate Your Desires, Carpet Bomb The Rich and I Laughed When Lennon Got Shot T-shirts.

Since Traci Lords, had scheduling commitments that prevented her from being in the video, they hired a Cindy Crawford lookalike called Blanche and had her lip sync the words with a „Hammer & Sickle“ beauty mark.

When the directors heard that the record company thought the initial cut of the video was very average. As the directors say „we went back and stuck right at the beginning the bit with the black karate woman in Doc Marten boots kicking the camera and we juiced up the He-man doll in the liquidiser/splatter shot, the Stalinist hero peasant woman shot, the porn-storm shot, the zombie-children shot, the samurai-geisha girl shot, the little girl playing with the hand grenade shot and the bit where Blanche is washing LPs in the T-shirt with a woman clutching a tommy-gun and saying ‘This is the only answer to rape.’“

In my opinion, the video is a bit overdone and dated but it is still effective, particularly for the content of the song. The song, itself, is one of my favourites pre-Everything Must Go by the band. It provides a good example of the excellent music they would produce in the future.

Quote from the single: „The sleep of reason produces monsters.“ – Francisco de Goya

Investor meltdown.

This guy is melting down faster than the stock markets.

Edit: The guy is Jim Cramer from the show Mad Money on CNBC.

Post-Surgical Update, Pt. 2

The post-surgical recovery is a bit slower than I hoped. For now, I must deal with a large uncomfortable foot bandage and a lack of mobility and thus, also deal with boredom. Maybe I should read a book.

Il Se Faufila Entre Les Arbres (Post Surgical Update Pt. 1)

The surgery is now complete and my foot is about bandaged as humanly possible. The resulting pain is fairly strong, particularly when any pressure is put on the foot. I am facing a couple days of slothfulness before I can really do much of anything. Oh well, it’s the summer. Everyone needs a break.

Can we ever be the same?

I just wanted to give a quick update on my seemingly terminal foot infection. I’m getting an outpatient laser surgery on my toenail.  Hopefully this will resolve the problems with infection. I’ll post an update post-surgery to comment on the results.