We Are All Illiterate Preachers

An artist's depictiom of one of the kids from Family Circus and Rocko from Rocko's Modern Life.

Say what you will about the tenets of the internet, at least due to its nature as a sort of enormous octopus that grabs everything in sight and puts it in a massive junk heap, now having odd interests are made much easier. Allow me to elaborate.

A) I love literature.

B) I love hip-hop, specifically Wu-Tang Clan

C) I love clothes and care about them in a fashion that some would call “homosexual”. This could be a whole post, but I’ll save it.

Now, without the internet, these would never coalesce. It would be pretty difficult for them to. But sometimes, there’s a man. And that man is Samuel Beckett.

He got stabbed once, looked like David Bowie with more cocaine, and was mentored by James Joyce, later to fuck his schizophrenic daughter. Kiddies, can you spell P.I.M.P? Cause I can.

Look at those shoes. Pretty cool, right? I indeed like those shoes. It gets better though.

Once, Ghostface Killah murdered the face of a ghost. It cursed him and he is forever followed around by a red arrow pointing to a big yellow bubble showing his feet.

People, the man who wrote a play about the end of the world with people chilling out in garbage cans is wearing the same shoes as a guy who raps about being awesome. What’s odd though is that Samuel Beckett and Ghostface Killah are in some ways kindred spirits. Not only do they both like sick shoes, but they have transcended the labeling of their formative years and went on to create their own works. Samuel Beckett learned from James Joyce; and Ghostface Killah was a member of Wu-Tang Clan. He started off as a good but not fantastic rapper. That first Wu-Tang clan album is really all about GZA and Method, who annihilate every verse on that album and are the only two rappers to get solo songs (M-E-T-H-O-D MAAAANNN). Not to say everybody else wasn’t important, but those two shined the most, so much so that they were first out of the gate to get solo albums, both of which are now considered to be hip hop classics. However, in about two years, Ghostface had truly came into his own and found a style: rapping about things that make no damn sense. Literal word-salads. Not in an Aesop Rock “LOOK AT ME, I WENT TO COLLEGE!!!!1111″ way (disclaimer: I do like Aesop Rock but there are things about him that bug me), but in a complete bizarre fashion where you weren’t sure what meant what meant what and why. You weren’t sure if it was slang (possibly), a master wordsmith having a gay old time (possible), or a guy who smoked copious amounts of weed and just said stuff (possible). Songs like “Mighty Healthy” make so little sense that you have to approach them with an almost religious blind faith, not unlike what Faulkner said about James Joyce’s Ulysses. It takes the same sort of leap to appreciate somebody like Beckett, who I sadly am not an expert on, but know enough about him to know I’m not talking out of my ass.

This post was meant to further illustrate why Wu-Tang has such a cult appeal, but also for me to connect the abstract. Also, shoes. Yay. Thanks to nerdboyfriend for inspiring this post.

And here’s this video to prove I like white person music too.

Dribble.

That guy in the back is asking for a meme.

For some reason I’m on a writing role as of late. What follows is some life philosophy stuff that you can totally ignore, but it was part of my application for a scholarship. I felt like I killed the essay so I’m posting it. And sorry for the blatant Free Darko rip.

Like all incoming freshman, I have yet to figure out everything. Like most incoming freshman, I think I have figured everything out through the folly of inexperience and pluck, feelings brought on by the swelling strings of a soundtrack playing in my head as I go throughout the day. But what I believe gives me an advantage over some people my age is that I’ve been around people who were older than me and I’ve learned to shut up. I can and have gone long amounts of time while people around me talk, not because I have nothing to say; I was silent because I had things to say but I wanted the impact to be strong and powerful. Words are power. Mao Zedong thinks power flows from the barrel of a gun, and he might have set up a pretty powerful regime based on that, but when you don’t have a gun, words will do work just as fine. So if words have the impact of bullets and I am correct in my estimation that I am quiet and speak when I am most likely to make the greatest impact, then I could cause revolutions with my lips.

When people shoot guns, they don’t go out shooting deer first off. First its cans. Cheap cans you can bleed dry in five minutes through chugging. Once you shoot cans you shoot logs. From logs, maybe clay pigeons, and then you move on to the things that move and breathe because now you know the impact of a gun and the impact of that pin hitting the shell. Because in order to shoot the living you have to know what isn’t alive. If this comes across as militaristic, then I’m sorry, but again, I am going on what Mao Zedong said.

But to every Mao Zedong, there is a Karl Marx, to every Miles Davis a Charlie Parker.  There has to be somebody, whether you’re talking or shooting or playing, to slap you on the back of the head and say, “What are you doing?” I personally don’t have that. My Dad is the closest thing but he can’t always be around me. So now I have to go on what I’ve learned, and like I said above, I am like most freshmen and don’t know everything even though I believe I do.  So what I have taken to this point to say is that I don’t mind being slapped on the back of the head or if I have someone’s whose noggin I need to knock doing the knocking. Leadership comes from action. You can talk all you want but it’s the people down in the trenches with the ability to do the work but also have that quality and save up their words that one day can lead. So I’ll fulfill this in my life through being a student or a teacher or whatever it is that is needed. That’s what leadership is: doing what needs to be done.

C’Mon Son!

I bet the people that think all Muslims like carrying AKs and not letting women have visible faces also think the Virgin Mary is the God of the Catholic Religion and Gordo from Mortal Kombat is the Jesus of Hinduism.

The Jesus of Hinduism is SO going to be my rap name.

If anybody’s going to bring up the whole “TEH QURAN HAS A VERSE IN WUR IT SEZ KILL TEH INFIDELS!!!!1111!!!!!!!”, I tell you what. I’ve got a copy of the Quran on my Blackberry (just in case I get bored and want to read it for research and general knowledge), and I will read the whole damned thing and tell you what that verse means in context. And I swear to God, if anybody I know participates in “Burn a Quran” day WITHOUT irony, I’m done with you. You will be the Tyrone to my Erykah Badu, the Adam Whitman to my Don Draper.

Mortal Kombat and Magic the Gathering references in one blog post? The geek is slipping out of my closet and I will have to beat him back in with a foam bat while wearing a dress and a Alison Brie mask.

C’mon son.

Also, I’m a VCU student now. Yippeee. Since I’ve moved up here, Juggalos have tried to kill Method Man and Tila Tequila.

Wait a second.

Juggalos are attracted to fire………. Wu-Tang Clan references Voltron…….. according to Wu lore, Voltron is important because he has an arm, two legs, another arm and a head………. an acronym for Allah, the God of the Muslim religion.

Oh God.

Our Greatest American Hero.

I said what I said, and you know what I mean

Sloce’s Random Rules:

This isn’t a completely original idea. But I’m needy. I need to get some traffic on my blog. So I need to post stuff. Plus I want to listen to music. So what’s the idea: I put my Ipod on shuffle. I hit play. I write about the five songs that play. Let’s do this.

Caledonia Mission- The Band Music from Big Pink

And know I realize I have absolutely no idea what the hell to write about this song. I really like it, but it’s not one of my favorites on Music From Big Pink, which is one of those albums I really like and appreciate the existence of, but it’s not one of my absolute favorites. Music from Big Pink is basically Exile on Main Street: Canadian Edition. But it came first, so I have no idea how that works.

Anywhere I Lay My Head- Tom Waits

And it skips. ARGGHHHHHH. Why did that file have to get corrupted? Now, that is probably  one of my favorite songs on that album. Tom Waits sings over a weird gospel arrangement, which is ironic, because Tom Waits is probably Satan. If you found an old drunk, put him in an Oldsmobile, put that Oldsmobile in a wood chipper, and recorded the screams, then that’s what Tom Waits sings like. Or, as I said above, Satan. Then it turns into a brass band, swaggering like a soused man on stilts. The ultimate bohemian anthem. Or drunkards anthem, but in the end, is there any real difference?

Murdering Oscar- Patterson Hood

Well, this song exists. Patterson Hood is the figurehead of one of my favorite rock bands currently going, The Drive-By Truckers. Yes, the name is stupid. Yes, they’re southern rock. But that’s not all behind them. They’re funny, for one. The songs are full of these dry one liners, like a Barry Hannah short story. I could actually get into a pretty impassioned defense of that band, but I won’t for the sake of time. This song, however, is weird. It’s based on a rumbling guitar riff that sounds like two chords. The lyrics are pretty much okay. Basically Crime and Punishment in song. Nothing special, but then again, Patterson Hood wrote this song when he was playing at a pretentious folk club to piss off everybody by writing an apolitically correct song about murdering some guy. It’s alright.

Behold A Lady- Outkast

I always welcome Andre 3000 to any listening session. Of course, he’s too busy being in shitty Will Ferrell movies and wearing a straw hat without a shirt to show up. But hey, those are obviously cooler than hanging out with me listening to music. This is off that album where he all of a sudden decided he didn’t want to rap anymore, so he started singing robot funk. Coincidentally, this is the album that sold 5603902 million copies. Me, I liked it when he rapped. Because he was disgusting.

Dramamine- Modest Mouse

At the risk of sounding like a hipster, I prefer old Modest Mouse. I don’t mean “Float On”. That song’s okay and everything, but minus the emotional, fanciful association I bring to this song I don’t want to bore anybody with, this is that real stuff. The biggest secret of Modest Mouse is that Isaac Brock is a pretty good guitar player. He has an ear for playing rhythm that I’d kill for. He’s almost between rhythm and lead when he plays guitar like this song. The riff sort of floats along on this spacey, almost stoned logic, tossing in harmonics every now and then. This actually makes sense, because the song is clearly about being messed up on motion sickness medication.

Why does this song work so well? Because of that rolling logic to it. That three o’clock in the morning, no sleep sound, which is the closest I’ve ever been to stoned. It’s raw, but it swings. So what’s my point exactly: that power trio Modest Mouse had going was PERFECT. Stripped down, yet complex. Too many band members almost takes that away. There is nothing on “The Moon and Antarctica” that even gives that feeling to me. I prefer my Modest Mouse emotional and up close, not as an anthem churning machine.

Also, somebody needs to sample some old school Modest Mouse in a beat.

Alright. So those were the first five songs on my Ipod. What was the point of that exercise? I don’t know. To rant about Modest Mouse, I guess.

I’m taking my talents to Richmond

I thought about posting the Lebron South Beach video, but that would be giving him too much credit.

What instead I’m doing this post for is to announce an official bloggerhood between Diatome and Never Felt Better In My Life. What does this mean for the three readers of Never Felt Better In My Life…..

COLLABORATION, BITCHES. Once it’s done, Diatome.net will be posting my epic dissertation on why “Tik Tok” is the worst song ever written. It will be posted in a weekly series on there.

What the Ke$ha post will consist of:

-Cursing in a flowery manner

-Wu-Tang Clan references

-Statistical provements

-Kierkegaard parodying

-Musical philosphizing

-Me thinking I’m funny

It’s a celebration. Diatome is ran by Jefferson Harris; a fellow VCU student that likes photography, badass Ms. Pac Man sneakers, glasses, and Helvettica. He’s a funny dude. The only problem with him was he thought I was from Kentucky. But I wouldn’t hold that against him. I’m just not that kind of guy.

Done it before

I’ve done it before. I’m going to do it again. Come on, feet.