time for astro-pleasure.

Not to be mistaken with your favorite condom flavour, you sick fucks.
From the 'bands you used to love in high school' file:
Remember the metal band Tool? Claymation music videos with the spooky dolls?
Many lyrical references to Alistair Crowley? Lollapalooza?
Apparently singer Maynard has found jesus.
*ahem.* Yeah.
*cough.* apparently, this isn't a prank.
Remember KoRn? Seven-string Ibanezes? That goddamn-awful clankity-clank bassist?
One of the guitarists also "found jesus."
So imagine it: you are a forty-something member of a late-nineties metal band from L.A. You are, (ahem), working on new material, y'know, walking to your rehearsal space in Orange County, and one of your buddies comes in: "guys, I'm quitting the band; I, like, totally found jesus."
It's totally, ya know, kind of a rapid transformation, don'tcha think?

Now I'm thinking of some of nu-metal dudes I knew in high school, and I'm hypothetically thinking of what would have happened to them if their limp-bizkit cover band had "made it"...
yup... I think I have the answer.
Y'all 'find jesus' when your dreadlocks succumb to male-pattern baldness.
Shoulda just put on a baseball cap like Tom Morello.

On a lighter note:
Remember the Minutemen? D. Boon chubby telecaster-scramblin' wonderloaf? All playing the songs of wonderment with the wordy spiels? No? Me neither, but I've got the album and really liked it.
Mike Watt hasn't found jesus, no sir! Watt is still touring, still peeing in the bottle while driving to gigs in a phat econoline van. Watt has his homepage here. Upon perusing some of his tour diaries with, ahem, Iggy Pop, (update: still hasn't found jesus!!) i fell in love with his writing style. "Popped and hosed" is equal to waking up and showering, to "spiel" is to shoot the shit, etc. There is a pretty informative log during the two weeks he was recording his latest album. Pretty interesting, how he tries to match descending/ascending/cyclical riffs and song keys to match the three stages of Dante's 'inferno.' Pretty wordy, but worth the three hours of insomniac surfing that I spent.
* * *
I really hate to try and read books or essays on the computer screen, which is pretty ironic considering how much time i spend by the old Cathode Ray feeding tube. It's a shame, because there's lots of nutritious literature out there.
This here was mighty fine read. Click on 'E-texts' and find 'And Island to Oneself' by Tom Neale. Story of a man who, for reasons he can't really identify, decided to go live on a deserted island. Now, the meat of the story is a lot of what he built and how he overcame adversity, etc. etc. Some of it gets tiresome, like he's fishing for your approval. But overall it's a good read, and I do enjoy survival stories.
On that note, here is a freeware game where you have to survive on a deserted island. Click on 'Schiffbruch' on the left. Hmm. German translation=funny. The main character can't tell you enough about the 'lovely' rocks he found, the 'splendid' tent he built... but it's fun, and fuck... what a great game concept. Recommended if you dug the 'Sims', but hated how the game was about buying a more expensive couch.
More game stuff.... i don't play them, but i'm getting sick of seeing programs where you play 'an elite mercenary travelling to hotspots around the globe' or whatever nonsense you can string together to put on the box. It's interesting how the realm of software has shaped itself by an obselete concept of conventional warfare. How many games are there where you play on an empty map, monopolizing resources and manufacturing more tanks than the other player? And then the kids who played Command and Conquer get shipped off to Iraq, and wonder why the 'bad guys' aren't wearing matching red clothes. I'm still waiting for the strategy game where you infiltrate a living city, studying the enemy occupier and setting up ambushes and jailbreaks...
Jagged Alliance 2 had you waging an insurrection against a Batista-like dictator. And this game looks fairly promising in simulating a nonviolent revolution.

Finally, more books online. Start at project Gutenberg. Then there's the classics. And then:
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy. A textbook.
Counterculture throughout the Ages. Hippy.
sniggle.net documents the War against common sense.
I promise: 20% more verbs next week.