These days our intergalactic friends are a lot closer than we think. Trouble began two months ago when a scheduled space shuttle landing was cancelled due to a UFO sighting, near the Shuttle’s base. Following proper protocol from Chapter 9 article 1.7 paragraph three in NASA’s standard of conduct manual on the day of landing (SOCODOL) the mission was delayed. “If by chance an unidentified flying object (UFO) is acknowledged within 500 miles of shuttle on day of landing and if the US air force is unable to handle the situation by force, the preceding landing shall be postponed until the situation is investigated and the skies are clear of any activities that would other wise lead to any kind of danger towards a successful mission.”
The SOCODOL goes on further to suggest proper ways in misleading the press into the actual occurrences of UFOs near the Kennedy space center. “Sleet, snow, rain, hurricanes, and attempted kidnappings by past astronauts are all acceptable headlines worthy of necessary diversions.” “I have never seen anything so close to one of our bases since the great battle of 1992,” said NASA engineer Mary Portnoy.
When asked about the great battle of 1992, Mrs. Portnoy gave a response straight out of the SOCODOL manual, “Have you heard about the kidnapping attempt last month?”
Something is up. My connections with the Alien Black Market (ABM) tell me that the great hexagon at the center of Saturn's northern pole is not a sign of things to come but of things that have past...
I shouldn't tell other people my ideas. But what the hell. Somebody should start a language institute called Cyborg Language Learning Lab. C triple L. It's like connecting a computer up to your brain and learning the language automatically.
That's all I got.
Except I've been watching lots of movies and listening to lots of music. I have been torrenting like a madman. I'm obsessed with torrenting. I have so much music now that I'll never be able to listen to it all. It's insane. I've downloaded the discographies of Bjork, Nine Inch Nails, Bob Dylan--every bootleg, every re-mix, every everything.
I'll have to get a iPod cyborg chip so I can just listen to everything sped up but with my brain cycle sped up too. Come on iPod, you have to come up with the eVerything-pod for your brain so I can listen to all 30 re-mixes of Everyday is Exactly the Same.
Related or unrelated, we're creating a monster. (I'm not a Skateshearian, but I like the reading of The Ghost as a manifestation of demons broiling within and unleashed as bloody tragedy at the very end. If the past is not reckoned with, we will all pay tribute to our ignorance, stubbornness with our own blood.)
Have you heard of a pizza in a cone? Now you can buy a pizza in a cone. There isn't anything special to all of this except that you can buy a pizza in a cone. It's quite simple. Take your pizza, bisect it 4 times until you have 16 pieces. Remove one of these pieces and you and fold it in half. Or, if you wish you can turn it into a conical shape by fusing the cut edges together. Basic Euclid. Even if we had never invented calculus, air-conditioning, or the solar year we would still have Euclidean geometry. I had this idea a long time ago. Making a cone-themed restaurant. Serving all manner of foods in cone form. Of course, someone else thought of it too. It doesn't taste too bad, either. More power to them.
In light of Zentrout's recent contributions to A&S, I have decided to start a new contest. The contest is as follows: Find the worst Youtube video you can find. That's fairly subjective, I realize. I'm not looking for something so awful that it's funny, like an Ed Wood movie. But just something like this:
You and me, friends, let's plumb the depths of awfulness. Indeed, with so much information in this world it seems impossible to find the baseline of aesthetics. But I argue that no true art can be made until we can pinpoint the most awful of the awful. And I don't mean awful because it's mean, violent or stupid. At least those qualities are interesting. I'm looking for something far worse.
email me or post a link if you find something. But it must be as awful as these preceding examples, or Star Wars on the banjo.
UPDATE I.
Please email your submissions to solardriftwood at gmail.com
UPDATE II.
Maybe I should ban youtube videos that have video game footage--that's pure destiny for boring awfulness.
UPDATE III.
Kman aka Hiro-Sub Sandwich submits these two doozies:
in his email to me, subhiro adds: the spider one is the best.....take care....I've been busy trying to get reassociated with the Alien Black Market. I have a meeting in a few days. I have been attempting to get an intergalactic menu for trans-galactial travelling translated. It's been very difficult.,,
Actually, I'm sorry to say, that these two clips are automatically disqualified because they are both very amusing. I'm looking for boring awfulness, not amusement. Come on! Work harder! Get a clickin'! Let's get to the bottom of this culture!
UPDATE IV.--March 12
Okay. I might be the only one with heart in this whole thing. I've made this post my first official blog within a blog. Here are some links to some of the famous youtube wars between the big shots. Please note that most of these are not awful. They are quite fabulous because they are awful. They are amusing enough to be watchable. The best ones are gems. Here are the atrios posts. Here is a Sadly, No, salvo. To bad Atrios hasn't posted a video of his cats. (That would be spectacularly awful. Remind me to look up cats on youtube. That might where's to be found the shittiest of the shitty.) But stuff like this that he posted makes up for that:
This is almost as awful as we can get. Especially since there are people who like this. But somebody posts all this stuff. Isn't somebody categorizing and keeping record of the awfulness? Or do people only put things up on youtube that they like? It's confounding (but wonderful!). Sadly, of course, when a major blogger posts a terrible video, there's a likelihood that it'll get pulled by the youtubanistas; happily, that means, that the obvious awful things (that aren't actually awful) will get pulled, but the obscure, truly awful things will still remain rotting and waiting to be unearthed by me.
Anyway, note that many of these videos are of a political nature, and, except for this one, really aren't awful in the vein that I see as awful:
The clincher in this one is the end. It makes it so awful that it isn't really awful. So I guess it's disqualified.
Sigh. A boy can dream.
UPDATE V.
Now we're cooking with grease.
UDATE VI. -March 23rd, 2007
As one of the commentors mentions on the page:
As much of a RUSH fan as I am, and how much the lyrics are coy; a keyboard and synthesizer are the LAST things I think of when I watch medieval stuff. They totally kill the mood. This called for Celtic flutes and LOTR soundtracks, not Canadian techno. The sound of the music is far more important than the words of the music.
In other words, if you use things that intrinsically self-parodic, such as music by Rush, a live action D&D game that is video taped, and then you try to make a parody out of it, then it is pretty awful. The song or the original footage would have been much more interesting. I would prefer something that wasn't sarcastic in tone, but maybe awful sarcasm is the most awful thing in the world. What's more awful than something that doesn't even have it's heart in it's awfulness? Witness:
And yes, this is a cheap shot. But it's worse than the cat videos I've found.
UPDATE VII: March 29th
This dude has a feature of worst youtube videos of the week. Both the movies and the reviews are pretty awful. Double-whammy!
UPDATE VIII: April 22nd, 2007
This is a response to a very annoying video about Christ being the only way to reconcile our inability to solve the philosophical conundrum of induction. It is illustrating, and the guy, "Atheist Paladin" seems really smart, but his video is painfully unwatchable. It is really one of the most awful videos I have ever seen. Granted, it was inspired by something more essentially awful; and only exemplifies the typical youtube "response" aesthetic. Still, it's an argument for the increased awfulness of our world. I'm both proud and ashamed of myself for discovering this.
Pretty soon I'll be uploading my own awful videos.
UDATE IX: October 10, 2007
Here's a youtube player that I've filled with awful videos I found. I haven't made awful videos. Well, I have. But there not on a computer that is connected to the internet. But maybe they will see the digital light of day--someday. In the meantime, let's see if this works:
"After Lena and I unpacked our boxes, we set about arranging the furniture. Lena had a picture of her family from Siberia and my picture of my dear mother--these were to be the anchors of our new home. Also a woolen blanket that the man who played Huerequeque had given to me upon completion of Fitzcarraldo. (Lest I mention, that this trifle token of affection moved me deeply.) There were problems from the start. Lena and I rarely argue, we don't so much as talk, as I can tell what she is thinking--I can see through her like I can see through a tub of dishwater. But there was something different this time, I could tell. I said, "Honey, dear, what's the problem? You have to communicate with me!" My wife said, shyly, "Werner, I am unhappy with our sofa. We need a new one. And that TV set--we have the money, why can't we buy a Hi-def?" I bit my lip. "Did I mention that I didn't make a phone call until I was eighteen? Do you know what my mother did to feed her starving children after our father abandoned us?" Calmly, collected, coolly, Lena said in a icy Siberian whisper, "You forget who you have married. You're going to compare family histories? I'll match yours point for point--don't pull that sob story on me. I'm Siberian, I know who I married. I know how many movies you made. How many bullets you've dodged. But I'm still your wife. And we need a new sofa and I want a new TV!" Yes I stared down Kinski, and the guns of an elite Central African Guardsman, and an active Volcano, but I always find the inner strength of women beyond those earthly hazards. Man's soul versus woman's soul is the eternal struggle of God and Satan. Which is God and which is Satan--I couldn't tell you. It is just a feeling that is hard for me to articulate, and would even be beyond my powers to capture on film. Onward, though, I stubbornly persisted: "No new TV! This one still works fine. Last year my friend Harmony bought us the DVD player--and we have all of Kurosawa--we live like the Mycenians! How much more do you demand! And this sofa works fine! There are no more sofas like this in the world! It is a truly fine and good sofa!" Lena would not relent, however. And I was discomfited by my loss of composure. Lena was one of the few human beings on the world who could do this. And that thing inside me that I listen to told me that the moment I lost my composure was the moment that I had lost the battle. We were going to buy a new sofa. We were going to buy a new TV set. I don't know what I did in those next moments...the whole world quaked and I seemed to have lost my sense of sight even. What happens next I can't even explain--but I felt as I did so many years ago in the field of windmills. Just an ecstasy--The illusion that is LA and George Bush dissipated and I saw myself as a man with a cigarette and a typewriter, writing soap operas for a Spanish speaking audience. Would I trade everything I had experienced up until now in exchange for that humble life? I don't know. But not my Lena. I thank God on my knees for that momentary insight. I'm sorry if this anecdote has no end. I only see the beginning of it--but it is so clear that I had to share it."
I'm sure many people cheered when Al ore won an award a the Oscars last week. But perhaps you failed to notice that we might not be on the brink of disaster after all. New technologies with new solutions are being developed everyday. And if we can't depend on former VPs and the good folks at MIT to develop strategies, both economically and technologically driven then it is time we begin to search else where. Our good neighbors North are smart enough to suggest its about time we steal from our intergalactic observers. Don't you, too? I'm not afraid. Are you?
Perhaps you remember the story of William Huxesle. A rural farmer from Nebraska who, in the early 1960's, was able to harvest two billion pounds of corn. Never in the history of man kind had any such harvest occurred. When the man was questioned by the Feds about his god-given fields they discovered that he had what some historians call a SirusXP 3000. An interplanetary tractor believed to have been purchased on the ABM (Alien Black Market). This crop collection device not only picked, shucked and stored the corn in its two ton storage tank but it was also capable of duplicating genetically everything it held 100 fold. Huxesle was a humble man who used G-D as an excuse for such a large crop. "I'm just trying to pay my bills," his wife Gertrude remembers him saying. "And the good lord has blessed me with the best field in the universe." It was this quote which led the feds to investigate his farm. Even today scholars wonder what the real meaning behind the statement the best field in the universe really meant.
Sady, in 1965 Mr. Huxesle vanished, as did his machine. Some believe he owed too much money to the ABM, unable to meet the high fees in Beatles memorabilia that the ABM hustlers demanded. "All we demanded were locks of hair from Ringo, a couple bobble head dolls and a lunch box depicting the Beatles appearance on the Ed Sullivan show." A former ABM dealer said.
The cult of the SirusXP 3000 began shortly after that. Tales of the legendary tractor spread throughout middle America as Huxesly's corn created a minor crash in the stock market that year. Many people remember the taste of the corn being different than any other on the market. "It tasted like cotton candy mixed with peppermint spam," one nearby farmer, asking to remain nameless, remembers. "My child began speaking in tongues. His teeth turned green, he began to read Viking epics."
This technology was great. Limitless in its ability to end world hunger, with the possibility to engage children in historical myths,we can only wonder why was such a device taken from us? And who lead the investigation? We may never know...
And what else exists for us in our endeavours to save our own civilization? We have only the Canadian government to ask. Unless we can come up with that crazy Beatles album with the bloody babies on the cover, we may never know.
(The author's reconstruction of the SirusXP 3000 Interplanetary Tractor based from witness testimony and blue prints purchased from the ABM for an autograph copy of Julian Lennon's debut album. )
photo of reconstructed engine (built into my Yugo) from blue prints.
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Sarcasmus, aka Dan, aka meltmaster, is your host, and responsible for most of this. He is a musician and writer from Denver, Colorado U.S.A., working in Seoul. Here are relevencies: meltmaster myspace, A Better Tomorrow II, meltmaster last.fm; he likes melodies, noise and novels as serious as leukemia.
Subarashi Hinode is blogging again. [Insert updated bio here.]
thod is posting at Sara Tarkka and the Red Hero. Zentrout, the blogger known also as A. Marshall Jackson, biggest influences are the TiananmenSquare tank revolutionary, Kermit the Frog, Jack Kerouac, Pretentiousness, his fledgling family, Frank Miller, world-consciousness, the Arcade Fire and Jon Holen. He lives in a modest duplex in east Denver, in between the McDonalds and the Good Times. The list of Chinese take out orders from his friends the other night reads as follows: Hot and Sour soup- large, General Zao Chicken, Mongolian Beef (2), Shrimp lo mein, Sesame Beef, Fried Rice and Drunken Noodles.
Laogzed is god of the troglodytes. He lives on the 181st level of the Abyss. A self-described foodie (mainly seafood), free-jazz enthusiast and amputation expert, Laogzed was brought on board to bring to A&S what he makes best...slop. (And other gummy exudations.) He met Sarcasmus at a Church of Herzog, but prefers the ecstatic slop of Jodorowsky. Laogzed is on wikipedia if you wish to learn more about him. Are you on wikipedia? Oh, he sees. How interesting.
“…it’s hard to resist your own substance, you’d like to stop all this, give yourself time to think about it and listen without difficulty to your heartbeat, but it’s too late for that. This thing can never stop. This enormous steel box is on a collision course; we, inside it, are whirling madly with the machines and the Earth. All together, along with the thousands of little wheels and hammers that never strike at the same time, that make noises which shatter one another, some so violent that they release a kind of silence around them, which makes you feel a little better. You give into noise as you give in to war. As the machines you let yourself go with the two three ideas that are wobbling about at the top of your head. And that’s the end. From then on everything you look at, everything you touch is hard. And everything you still manage to remember more or less becomes as rigid as iron and loses its savor in your thoughts.”
Celine, Journey to the End of the Night
“It’s not that I like the empire—I hate it—but there’s nothing I can do about it right now.” Luke Skywalker, Star Wars
The SOCODOL goes on further to suggest proper ways in misleading the press into the actual occurrences of UFOs near the Kennedy space center.
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