Tired of Haulin' Oats! vol.1

DVDs;
Aftermath/Genesis
Ichi the Killer
Guinea Pig Double Feature; Mermaid in a Manhole/He Never Dies
Romper Stomper
Rubber's Lover
Tetsuo: the Iron Man
The Untold Story

CDs;
Antigama/Drugs of Faith split 3"
Portal/Rites of Thy Degringolade
Candiru - Unloved and Weeded Out
Flatigious Idiosyncrasy in the Dilapidation 2 song CDR
Gorguts - Obscura
Havohej - Munudjinn
Immolation - Shadows in the Light
In Slaughter Natives - Resurrection
Integrity - For Those Who Fear Tomorrow
Lugubrum - De Vette Cuecken
Outlaw Order - Legalize Crime
Raw Radar War - s/t
Semargl - Attack on God
Total Fucking Destruction - Compact Disc Version 1
Watchtower - Control and Resistance
YDI - Our for Blood

7"s;

Iskra
Dissystema
Protestant

Breakfast-Farts vol. 3

so i'll be off to the Maryland Deathfest tomorrow morning. i'll be seeing an insane amount of bands this weekend;

Pig Destroyer, Insect Warfare, Pisschrist, Flagitious Idiosyncrasy in the Dilapidation, Skitsystem, Rotten Sound, Cock and Ball Torture, Extreme Noise Terror, Brutal Truth, Retaliation , Misery Index, Birdflesh Cripple Bastards , GUT, Dead Infection... it's like the best underground grind/death mix tape ever brought to life. plus they'll be vendors selling stuff.

the last couple of days i've been listening to Miranda Sex Garden's version of Radiohead's "Exit Music". they are devastating and morose in their beauty. another band to tack on to the "get this shit" file.

new song titles; "CANNIBALS ARE PEOPLE TOO" and "GLASGOW THE CLOWN".

Guess that's all. C U Next Tuesday.

The History and Future of Post-Blues

OXBOW's the Narcotic Story

"Down a Stair Backward" is officially the song of the year. Badder than the Baddest of the Bad Seeds. everything that's ever been a poison resides within these tracks. Deep. Dense. Dark. Depressing. Depressed. Depressive. an Invitation to being Alienated. A kiss blown from a beautiful girl slouched in a corner of a roach-ridden motel, a filthy red dress hiked just above where her scissor-sliced fishnets end. she has two black eyes, mascara goes down her cheeks in crooked purple streams, her front tooth is hanging from her death-rattle smile by a single nerve ending, dark roots are threatening to overtake what's left of her bleached hair, and track marks run down her arms like scab-constellations across a vampire-white sky. "She's a Find".

indeed she is.

I Dunno, Just a Thought vol. 7

The Joker revealed

this site is for next year's sequel to Batman Begins entitled The Dark Knight. when the pixel from the defaced Harvey Dent campaign poster evaporate, you see a shot of the Joker.

i have to say...i dig it. i love how harsh the red and white looks; clownish, but in a frightening and ugly way, which fits in with Nolan's world. it looks painful and disfiguring without being to far removed from the classic look of the character. it's very reminiscent of the Ichi the Killer villain Kakihara, only with grease-paint (i'll go as far again as to say that Kakihara is a primary source of inspiration for the creators on this film, maybe as big an influence as the Joker himself). i like that horror-edge Nolan is giving the character. i think the Joker is at his best when he is done in a more ghastly fashion, and they've translated that fashion to the film. it may not look as if it was ripped from the pages of The Killing Joke, but it does what Nolan is striving to do; retain the essence of these characters while adapting it to his cinematic vision; a grittier (i won't say "realistic") world. I also like that you can't tell if it's Heath Ledger or not.

the popular theory is that the Joker is going to go through different phases in the film; starting out with a messier, more low-budget look that will progress into a slicker, more refined appearance. it makes sense...this is basically Joker Begins. he's not going to just fall into a vat of green stuff, come out looking like a clown, than suddenly have all these magnificent tailored clothes. He has to start somewhere. that's how (in cinema at least) you develop a character. cinema has different rules than comics, but Nolan has found a way to retain the integrity of both. I can't wait until next summer.

I dunno....just a thought.

Breakfast-Farts vol. 2

i've been wound up since April. feels that way at least. i'm now for the first time seriously contemplating medication, if only because the line between the internal and the external is becoming thinner and thinner, almost evaporating. i can't tell where other people being assholes ends and where me being an asshole begins. it's getting heavy. and when i say "heavy" i mean "heavy"..like i've got eggs filled with lead where my joints should be. like my chest cavity is a collection of open nerves that shrieks from the even the most gentle gust of wind.

In Heaven....Everything is Fine

Jerry Falwell's foul rantings prove you can get away with anything if you have "Reverend" in front of your name.

By Christopher Hitchens

The discovery of the carcass of Jerry Falwell on the floor of an obscure office in Virginia has almost zero significance, except perhaps for two categories of the species labeled "credulous idiot." The first such category consists of those who expected Falwell (and themselves) to be bodily raptured out of the biosphere and assumed into the heavens, leaving pilotless planes and driverless trucks and taxis to crash with their innocent victims as collateral damage. This group is so stupid and uncultured that it may perhaps be forgiven. It is so far "left behind" that almost its only pleasure is to gloat at the idea of others being abandoned in the same condition.

The second such category is of slightly more importance, because it consists of the editors, producers, publicists, and a host of other media riffraff who allowed Falwell to prove, almost every week, that there is no vileness that cannot be freely uttered by a man whose name is prefaced with the word Reverend. Try this: Call a TV station and tell them that you know the Antichrist is already on earth and is an adult Jewish male. See how far you get. Then try the same thing and add that you are the Rev. Jim-Bob Vermin. "Why, Reverend, come right on the show!" What a fool Don Imus was. If he had paid the paltry few bucks to make himself a certified clergyman, he could be jeering and sneering to the present hour.

Falwell went much further than his mad 1999 assertion about the Jewish Antichrist. In the time immediately following the assault by religious fascism on American civil society in September 2001, he used his regular indulgence on the airwaves to commit treason. Entirely exculpating the suicide-murderers, he asserted that their acts were a divine punishment of the United States. Again, I ask you to imagine how such a person would be treated if he were not supposedly a man of faith.

One of his associates, Bailey Smith, once opined that "God does not hear the prayers of a Jew." This is one of the few anti-Semitic remarks ever made that has a basis in fact, since God does not exist and does not attend to any prayers, but Smith was not quite making that point. Along with his friend Pat Robertson, who believes in secret Jewish control of the world of finance, and Billy Graham, who boasted to Richard Nixon that the Jews had never guessed what he truly thought of them, Falwell kept alive the dirty innuendo about Jews that so many believing Christians seem to need. This would be bad enough in itself, and an additional reason to deplore the free ride he was given on television, if his trade-off had not been even worse.

Seeking to deflect the charge of anti-Jewish prejudice, Falwell adopted the cause of the most thuggish and demented Israeli settlers, proclaiming that their occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was a holy matter and hoping that they might help to bring on Armageddon and the return of the Messiah. A detail in this ghastly narrative, as adepts of the "Left Behind" series will know, is that the return of the risen Christ will require the mass slaughter or mass conversion of all Jews. This consideration did not prevent Menachem Begin from awarding Falwell the Jabotinsky Centennial Medal in 1980 and has not inhibited other Israeli extremists from embracing him and his co-thinkers ever since. All bigots and frauds are brothers under the skin. Trying to interrupt the fiesta of piety on national television on the night of Falwell's death, I found myself waiting while Ralph Reed went all moist about the role of the departed in empowering "people of faith." Here was the hypocritical casino-based Christian who sought and received the kosher stamp from Jack Abramoff. Perfect.

Like many fanatical preachers, Falwell was especially disgusting in exuding an almost sexless personality while railing from dawn to dusk about the sex lives of others. His obsession with homosexuality was on a par with his lip-smacking evocations of hellfire. From his wobbly base of opportunist fund raising and degree-mill money-spinning in Lynchburg, Va., he set out to puddle his sausage-sized fingers into the intimate arrangements of people who had done no harm. Men of this type, if they cannot persuade enough foolish people to part with their savings, usually end up raving on the street and waving placards about the coming day of judgment. But Falwell, improving on the other Chaucerian frauds from Oral Roberts to Jim Bakker to Ted Haggard, not only had a TV show of his own but was also regularly invited onto mainstream ones.

The evil that he did will live after him. This is not just because of the wickedness that he actually preached, but because of the hole that he made in the "wall of separation" that ought to divide religion from politics. In his dingy racist past, Falwell attacked those churchmen who mixed the two worlds of faith and politics and called for civil rights. Then he realized that two could play at this game and learned to play it himself. Then he won the Republican Party over to the idea of religious voters and faith-based fund raising. And now, by example at least, he has inspired emulation in many Democrats and liberals who would like to borrow the formula. His place on the cable shows will be amply filled by Al Sharpton: another person who can get away with anything under the rubric of Reverend. It's a shame that there is no hell for Falwell to go to, and it's extraordinary that not even such a scandalous career is enough to shake our dumb addiction to the "faith-based."

I Dunno, Just a Thought vol.6

so the cartoon Bratz is now a live-action film.

wow.

for those who don't know, Bratz is a saturday morning cartoon about CGI-animated high school girls with big heads (figuratively and literally) who dress like Hip Hop videos and talk about boys and shopping and so forth. like any good saturday morning show, it is little more than an extended commercial for the Bratz line of dolls.

simply put; Bratz is the reason your little girl is a cunt.

Bratz is the reason your little girl thinks she's a VIP wherever she goes.

Bratz is the reason your little girl is going to grow up to be a vacuous ninny whose only goal in life is to take pride in being a vacuous ninny.

Bratz is the reason your little boy is going to be an emotionally damaged heart broken sexual predator by the time he enters middle school.

Bratz is the reason your little girl is going to get knocked up...and Bratz is the reason she's going to leave on the doorstep in the back of Chinese restaurant @ 2 am Prom Night.

Bratz is the reason your little girl will someday wind up as little more than a tattered leopard-print tube top, wading in a mud puddle on the side of a deserted road or draped over a dumpster in a poorly-lit alley on the bad side of town.

Bratz is the death of all existing generation and all generation to come.

it reminds me of the underrated film In the Mouth of Madness, where a popular horror author's book is so powerful that anyone who reads it is driven to delirium.

"what about those who don't read?" one man asks.

Sam Neil replies;

"....there's a movie."

so you see....you can't escape it now. Bratz will be everywhere...creating selfish twits on every shore...pitting man against his brother....until man exists no more.

I dunno... Just a Thought.

TV on the Radio on the Internet

videos;
Staring at the Sun
I Was a Lover
Wolf Like Me
Dreams

live;
"Wolf Like Me" on Letterman
"Staring at the Sun" on the Late Show
Province
Ambulance

Breakfast-Farts vol.1

had a dream where i looked over my fence and saw the back of a huge vulture peeking over the fence. i could hear the squishing noises of its beak stabbing and ripping the flesh from bones. it was feasting on a garbage pail full of horse parts. there had been a dead black horse in our living room and my mother took it out back to chop it up. "great...now we've got vultures". i also seem to remember reading on a message board that the Untold Story was going to be on IFC, competing against HBO's new block of Hardcore Porn films, which go from Chasey Lain to Holly Hollywood. that's all i can gather.

did the noise thing last Wednesday night. wore a snot-encrusted pillow case with butterflies on it while doing my best Oxbow/TV on the Radio/Diamanda Galas impression over the Metal General's 15 minutes of feedback and brief drone. i read half of Dana Levin's "Personal History", sweating under the pillow case. we succeeded in what we set out to do, which was to alienate and fuck with the crowd, but at the same time we were ultimately unsatisfied. all it made us want to do was play our usual stuff. that's where our heads and hearts are; deranged hardcore metal.

i now have a new found respect for the noise bands i already loved. it really does take a rare specimen(s) to do that kind of music full-on. i consider myself a fan and an admirer, and as of 2 days ago i decided to remain just that. leave it to the ones with a real head for it. hopefully the pretentious phonies that populate much of today's noise scene will follow my example.

they won't.

I Dunno, Just a Thought vol. 5

Exclusive: Spider-Man 4 Villains Revealed... Already?!

When Spider-Man 3 was being prepped Sam Raimi and Columbia Pictures tried to hold the announcement of Venom for as long as they possibly could... confirming the news just before Comic Con in July of 2006. But here we are, the day Spider-Man 3 hits theaters, and your good pal here has the skinny on who you will see in Spider-Man 4 - with or without Sam Raimi (hater of all things symbiotic).

Before I hit you with the news, let me make it clear that we got this news from a 100% reliable source working on the film. He's the one who told us Venom was the villain in Spidey 3 and nobody believed us. So here you have it, the biggest announcement of 2008... NOW!

Our regular scooper tells FreezeDriedMovies that plans are underway for Spider-Man 4, which were (obviously) set up in the third film. In the third entry, Dr. Curt Connors (played by Dylan Baker) looks at a piece of symbiote with Peter Parker. The movie then travels along it's path without another mention of that "piece" of symbiote. This is the set up for Spider-Man 4 where that small piece of alien symbiote becomes CARNAGE. Yes Cletus Kasady is coming to the big screen, one of Spider-Man most horrifying and evil villains. Not only with Parker have to deal with the red lean mean killing machine, but Connors is set to become the long awaited LIZARD! these two villains have all been CONFIRMED for Spider-Man 4. There is talk of the Black Cat making her first appearance, but that's all but official.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

now who knows if this is really true, but i wouldn't put it past the Sony Executives. after all, Spider-Man 3 has made an obscene amount of money this week, so who cares really if most people thought it was bloated, meandering, and underdeveloped... they paid to see it and by that logic they'll pay to see it again.

the Lizard has been building, and would be a good addition to the series. Black Cat has never been much more than a Catwoman knock-off and really adds nothing but yet ANOTHER girl for Parker to mull over. Carnage, on the other hand, would be ultimately pointless. sure, you can right the wrong and make Carnage the character Venom should have been in part 3, but at the same time it might be better to just give Venom a second chance...bring him back some how. Venom is clearly the stronger character.

if you're going to go ahead and do this...i'd say get some fresh blood. new director. new writer. new cast. it's clear to me that the cast of the last 3 films is worn out on the material, proven evident in the PR interviews, where Dunst, Maquire, and Franco sounded beat, bored with the films that made them money and gave them star power. Comics change writers and artists all the time...it's how these characters stay fresh and relevant.

shake things up. i'm sick of seeing Spider-Man cry about girls. let's have a Spider-Man that's fun and heroic without being put-upon. make the villains human, but not necessarily sympathetic. no redemption, no "i'm just trying to raise funds for my dying wife's sick uncle's dog and that's why i'm evil" stuff. make them menacing. if you're going to juggle multiple villains, than split the film in half; make it almost like a double feature. devote one hour to the Lizard. during that hour Carnage can be built up in the background. have the Lizard defeated, then devote the rest of the film to Carnage. their connection doesn't have to be that defined...maybe Connors worked on the new symbiote and Cassady gets a hold of it. that enough. they don't need to team up.

Connors/Lizard is easy. he's the perfect Monster Movie character and should be treated as such. Carnage needs an overhaul. more accurately, Kleuts Cassady needs an overhaul. instead of making him an one-dimensional amalgam of serial killer cliche, maybe make him some sort of a twisted intellectual...someone who maybe goes to the same school as Parker...maybe even some kind of professor at that school. perhaps a English/Philosophy major or professor. make him a philosophical anarchist with a caustic world view who despite his often misanthropic leanings and contemptuous attitude toward his peers has never really been a danger...maybe make him more of a wallflower/introvert who has suddenly come in contact with a way to finally bring his words to life. don't make him a Venom knock-off...have his progression culminate in being something more akin to a virus run amok than a typical super-villain. he won't be out for revenge or redemption, but for chaos and disorder at it's very worst. make him a nightmare. make Carnage not so much his alias but more about what he creates...what he is.

i dunno...just a thought.

I Dunno, Just a Thought vol. 4

threat is rarely real.
twin of promise.
those leeching Gemini.
larval ouroboros.
sent in packing.
reflexion in weights.
IVs mercury-heavy.
the love of a Venus.
the hum of her choking victims.
a simple beat.
a rare threat.
invalid offers a treat.

i dunno... just a thought.

I Dunno, Just a Thought vol. 3

this is Nora Zehetner....and she could be the most beautiful woman i have ever seen.

more than simply that, she may very well be the physical manifestation of everything i find desirable in the opposite sex compressed into one being, transcending any idea i've ever had about what makes a gorgeous female, thereby reinventing it. no online pic can do her justice. you have to see her move...you have to hear her voice...she makes me melt.

last night i saw her in Brick. in her first scene she was wearing a magnificent red silk dress...sort of like what Kirsten Dunst wore in the first Spider-Man movie. Dunst wishes she looked this heavenly. if Peter Parker would've saw how much better Nora wore the gown, he would've let MJ drop to her death.

and that was it. i was hers for an hour and 45 minutes. when she wasn't on the screen, all i could do was wait breathlessly for her next scene, perking up at the mere mention of her character's name. at the end of the movie, when she and the protagonist are face to face, their lips inches away, i could only applaud the actor's (Joseph Gordon Levitt) restraint. to be literally a tongue's lash away from tasting complete perfection and not exploit the advantage...i can't decide on whether to champion your strength or question your heterosexuality. but i digress.

as i eased into sleep later that night, she's lying next to me, her thin arm draped over my chest, her head resting on my shoulder as those incredible eyes look up at me and she smiles. i kiss her forehead. she gently closes her eyes and snuggles closer into me.

i dunno....just a thought.

NP: Smashing Pumpkins - Perfect.

Joe Horvath Hospitalized

CODC founder & vocalist, Joe Horvath, ran into complications following a surgery he had to have done about a month ago. He was re-hospitalized last week after developing a very serious and potentially fatal staph infection which has rapidly traveled into his body and bones. He's undergone another surgery recently and is due to be under the knife again for at least three more surgeries in the near future. He is currently out of the Intensive Care Unit but has to remain hospitalized for undetermined time after which he will be under the care of home health nurses, etc.

Anyone who has been waiting on email responses, interviews, et cetera from Joe please be patient or direct them to someone else in CODC.

Friends, fans, etc. feel free to send him email, etc. as it will be read to him when possible. The support is needed at this time more than ever.

read

I Dunno, Just a Thought vol.2

i love the albums that Depeche Mode and Duran Duran did in the 90s; Songs of Faith and Devotion and The Wedding Album (respectively). really elegant and pretty, but sad and bitter at the same time. they perfectly capture the tribulation of anachronisms. here you have two of the biggest party bands of the 80s. millions of records sold, thousands of women bedded, every other indulgence exploited to its maximum. they were synonymous with the 80s. thing about that is the 80s had to end. the decade needed to bottom out, making way for some intense introspection on those who survived the decade's high life.

so here they are in the early 90s. brooding is in. escapism is out. the songs Depeche Mode and Duran Duran released in 1993 are like Orson Welles at the end of Citizen Kane; all the isolation money can buy. they've got money, they're world famous, and now they're living in a time where it's en vogue to loath those things....even if they're in your possession. you also realize that it was all empty. when faced with the void, it's almost impossible to deny it. you can either wallow in it or explode from it. songs like "Come Undone" from Duran Duran and "Walking in My Shoes" by Depeche Mode are like walking down a corridor blackened by your own shadow, gliding your fingers over the glass walls holding back the emerald water of the void.

the songs play off each other. "Come Undone" illustrates the unbearable unraveling, where "Walking in My Shoes" is the acerbic reinvention in the wake of the unraveling.

the irony is that in perhaps the darkest hours of these bands, their strongest and most beautiful material comes to surface. it takes loss to grow up. to reinvent yourself, you have to destroy what you once were, in the eyes of others and in the eyes of yourself.

i dunno....just a thought.

sorry, ladies...

This is the moment that you know
That you told her that you loved her, but you don't
You touch her skin and then you think
That she is beautiful, but she don't mean a thing to me
Yeah, she is beautiful, but she don't mean a thing to me

I spent two weeks in Silver Lake
The California sun cascading down my face
There was a girl with light brown streaks
And she was beautiful, but she didn't mean a thing to me
Yeah she was beautiful, but she didn't mean a thing to me

I wanted to believe in all the words that I was speaking
As we moved together in the dark
And all the friends that I was telling
And all the playful misspellings
And every bite I gave you left a mark

As tiny vessels oozed into your neck
And formed the bruises
That you said you didn't want to fade
But they did and so did I that day

All I see are dark grey clouds
In the distance, moving closer with every hour
So when you'd ask, "Is something wrong?"
I'd think "You're damn right there is
But we can't talk about it now
No, we can't talk about it now"

So one last touch and then you'll go
And we'll pretend that it meant something so much more
But it was vile, and it was cheap
And you are beautiful, but you don't mean a thing to me
Yeah, you are beautiful, but you don't mean a thing to me
Yeah, you are beautiful, but you don't mean a thing to me

- "Tiny Vessels" by Death Cab for Cutie

I Dunno, Just a Thought vol. 1

for some reason i've been listening to Mudvayne a lot lately.

despite the stupid-ass misspelled name, saturday morning evil image, and the often childishly disaffected lyrics, the band is actually pretty tight. solid rhythm section, decent guitar work, strong vocals. even when the first album came out...where they were automatically compared to Slipknot, i knew from hearing "Death Blooms" and "Dig" that they were an infinitely more interesting band than Slipknot. the song structures reminded me of Acid Bath (not as good of course). the two albums that have come out since than prove they have surpassed their "peers" that reside on the heavier/more evolved side of Nu-Metal (Nothingface, Cold, Slipknot, Kittie). if they dumped all the mallcore baggage and brought their imagery and lyrics up to the same code they've brought their music, they'd be perfect. to bad that's what probably made them sell so many records.

i dunno, just a thought.