Perl blog post #63

This week, I posted something over on my Other Blog.  So, if you’re a Perl person, check it out.  If not ... well, there’s always next week.

R.I.P. Jim Ward

As one gets older, more and more of one’s heroes tend to die.  And even hero-adjacent figures.  And, sometimes, people that you can’t exactly explain why they were important to you, and often you didn’t even realize they were that important to you until after they were gone.  I distinctly remember my father being very upset when Del Shannon died.  Now, you who are reading this very likely have no clue who that is.  I knew who it was, of course: he was the guy that sang that one song.  Not sure if he was a proper one-hit wonder by the strictest definition, but certainly I had never heard but one.  I was a bit taken aback that his death was that impactful to my father: this was not a Beatle, not Elvis, nor even Carl Perkins.  Any of those and I would (and did) understand that my dad probably saw it as a moment that represented the passing of part of his life, part of his culture.  But ... Del Shannon? the “Runaway” guy? really?

But by this point in my life I’ve felt this way many times myself.  I felt this way (and wrote about it) when John Perry Barlow died.  Before he passed away, I’m not sure I could have come up with his name if you’d asked me about him; after he was gone, I understood what an impact he’d had on my life.  And again when Neil Innes died; I remember it felt a bit unreal to think that the guy who wrote (and sang) about brave, brave, brave Sir Robin, who bravely ran away and hid, was just ... done.  It shouldn’t have felt that way, I thought—after all, he was just a guy, a year older than my father, whose songs were already a decade old by the time I heard them ... why should it be surprising that time had moved on and he was now no more? shuffled off his mortal coil? an ex-Python?  And, anyway, he was just the guy who wrote the music for them, and, once again, I probably couldn’t have come up with his name if you’d pressed me ... but it was still significant once he wasn’t around any more.

And now Jim Ward has died.  Who the heck is Jim Ward, you ask?  Another barely noticed influence on me, this time in the D&D world.  Not one of the co-creators of the game: that would be Gary Gygax, who we lost in 2008, and Dave Arneson, who we lost the following year.  But he was one of the first people to meet Gygax and play this new-fangled game that Arneson had conceived of and Gygax had put down (very complicated) rules for.  He played (sometimes) a wizard named Drawmij (read that backwards if you don’t immediately get it), who became a big deal in the D&D world of Greyhawk: he was a member of the Circle of Eight (which included such other luminaries as Bigby, Rary, and Leomund) and bequeathed us enduring legacies, such as the spell Drawmij’s Instant Summons and the magic item Drawmij’s undersea apparatus.  Meanwhile, in the real world, Ward himself became a very early employee of TSR, the company Gygax founded to produce D&D, and co-authored seminal D&D book Deities & Demigods, as well as designing Metamorphosis Alpha, commonly considered to be the first sci-fi TTRPG, and Gamma World, commonly considered to be the first post-apocalyptic TTRPG.  In his later years, he wrote a series of columns for D&D site EN World called “Drawmij’s TSR”; for the most comprehensive view on him, his “who is Jim Ward” post is a great read, though I favor his very amusing takes on corporate mismanagement, such as the story of why I got cardboard chits instead of dice in my first D&D box set.

It’s a weird feeling when someone you didn’t really realize was important dies.  You’re not quite sure how to feel.  It’s mostly sadness, of course, and maybe a little bit of guilt that you didn’t appreciate them more when they were still around. and a little bit of nostalgia over what has been lost, and a little bit of dawning realization of your own mortality.  It’s complicated, although that’s certainly part of what makes us human.  The ability to feel conflicting emotions.  The ability to think to yourself, it’s really a bummer that this person is gone, and at the same time I’m so joyful that they contributed so much.  And, even though it didn’t seem like a lot at the time, and even if it may not seem like that much now, in the grand scheme of all the myriad experiences that make up my life, it was something impactful, something meaningful.  So perhaps mostly gratitude.  That you were touched, in however small a way, by someone who probably felt like they were just doing their job, but really they were making lives better.  And that’s pretty awesome, and worth celebrating.

Something to Have Said

It’s long been a tradition on this blog that, when I’m having trouble coming up with a regular post, I take the opportunity to reflect on the blog thus far.  There are, in fact, 5 previous posts in this informal “series,” which you can find links to on the informals listing page (search for “Nothing to Say”).  Some of those posts were because I truly had nothing to say, some were because I had too many ideas but none of them were working for me, and some of them were because I ran out of time for a post and wanted to buy myself some extra time to finish up properly.

This is a bit like that last one: I did have a post all planned out, and I thought it would be fairly quick to write, but, once I started looking into it, it seemed like it was going to take more time than I could properly devote to it this weekend.  But there was also a bit more going on this time around, because I discovered a number of problems that needed attention.  None of them were particularly difficult to solve, but they added up.  And all these problems centered around blog maintenance.

See, writing a blog is about more than just the actual writing of the words, in the same way that making YouTube videos is about more than just standing in front of your webcam and talking.  There’s also editing, and the technical process of getting the work published on the web site, and, occasionally, going back and correcting mistakes.

In this particular case, I found of number of small typos in old posts while rereading them to get into the necessary flow state.  I also noticed a post or two that should have been added to a series listing page but had gotten overlooked.  And, even after I decided to turn this week’s post into a “nothing to say” post, I found still more issues.  See, in order to get a proper word count for blog posts, I’ve separated out my rough draft posts from the published posts, and I’ve written a little Perl script to count the actual words while ignoring the non-content bits.¹  So, the first thing I discovered is that there were a bunch of posts which I had neglected to move from my “drafts” folder to my “published” one.  Then I discovered that my wrapper script which ran the word counting script on “all” my blog posts had neglected to consider my ongoing novel, whose chapters and subchapters were indeed blog posts.²  Then, which I had fixed all that, I ran it and it said it couldn’t find the word counting script.  So I had to track that down and fix that too.³

And part of the reason for all this required maintenance is that I only do those sorts of cleanup tasks when I need to for one of these “nothing to say” posts ... and I just haven’t done one of those in a while.  The first such post was a year into the blog, and the second was a year later; after that, they fell into a fairly steady biannual pattern.  And, if I had kept to that schedule (loose as it was), this post should have landed in ... let’s see ... 2020.

Right in the middle of the pandemic.

So ... yeah.  That didn’t happen.

And now it’s been six years since the last time I counted up how much time and effort I’ve put into this blog, which means it’s been 14 years in total that I’ve been doing it.  Which is ... a lot.  In that time, the landscape of the Internet has changed significantly.  Text information has largely been replaced by videos; some opine that this is a sign that people don’t like to read any more, but I say it’s the nature of Internet commerce.  If you want to get paid for Internet content, good luck trying to make a buck writing posts of the length I typically do on this blog.  But it’s easy to monetize video content on YouTube, as long as it’s of a certain length.  Which is why the one sentence answer to a “how do I ...?” question is now a 2½ minute video which you watch at 2x speed because you’re just trying to GET TO THE FUCKING ANSWER: no I’m not going to like and subscribe and hit the bell icon, I just need to know how to reset my fucking garbage disposal!!!

So people don’t much write blogs any more.  Hell, I’ve even read that the entire concept of blogging is now considered passé.  Enh.  That’s okay: I’m old.  Although the truth of the matter is that this really has nothing to do with old vs young—it’s just that different brains work in different ways.  Some brains need to see and hear a real person explain a thing to them.  Some people prefer to read words.  My brain is a word brain; videos are ... I dunno, meh, I suppose?  I enjoy watching videos for entertainment, but not so much for information.  Unless they’re edutainment or somesuch.  But whatever.  The point is, I enjoy reading, and I enjoy writing, and I’m going to keep on writing this blog, and I don’t much care if it’s considered old-fashioned.  Or if no one reads it, even.  I even tell you not to read it right there in the blog title.  So obviously I just don’t give a shit.  I’m a rebel like that.

So, where are we in terms of stats?  Well, we’re about a week away from being exactly 14 years into it; this week is 729 weeks from the first post,⁴ which means that this should be the 730th post (because, again, you have to count both endpoints, ’cause there’s a post at either end).  Whereas my Blogger interface tells me I have 725 posts, not counting this one, so I’m actually 4 short.  Still, only 4 posts missed in 14 years—that’s not a bad track record.

I also used to consider how many were interstitial and partial and all that.  But that’s less relevant with the new blog schedule (which came into existence right before the last “nothing to say” post), since now every other post will be one of those two things.  Still, for completeness, I’ll run the numbers: of the 725 posts, 102 are interstitial (that’s 14%), and 100 are partial (basically the same percentage).  Which is not so bad.  But how about the big one? how many words are we talking?

Well, discounting all the quotes and footnotes and all that, the grand total comes out to 798,583 words.  So nearly 800K words in 14 years: 57K words per year, or 1100 words per week on average, even with the interstitials and partials.  That’s not too shoddy, if I do say so myself.  Nothing to sneeze at, I don’t think.

And whither hence?  I mean, I said years ago (in the aforementioned blog schedule post, in fact) that I would like to break this blog into several sub-blogs, each one aimed more specifically at its target audience.  And thus far I’ve totally failed to make good on that.  I still want to, of course, although blogging platforms to make that easier are getting harder to come by as the popularity of blogging declines.  But I have some thoughts.  Maybe ChatGPT (or other AI competitor) can help me figure out how to get going on that.  I have hopes.  And, occasionally, dreams.

But I see from my handy-dandy word counter that this “partial” post has once again grown into a full post.  Which I can’t really complain about, so I shan’t.  I’ll just say that I’m looking forward to ... what, another 14 years doing this?  I’m not sure that makes sense, at the pace technology is advancing these days.  But another 14 years of putting out something for you not to read, that’s for sure.

__________

1 I outline the exact specs of this script in the most recent nothing to say post, if you really care.

2 This undoubtedly means that my last official stats were off too.  But I’m not going to bother going back to correct that.

3 As it turns out, I had just renamed it since the last time I ran it from the wrapper script.  No biggie.  But it took much longer to figure out than it did to fix.

4 You may recall that I used the Perl date module which I wrote to work that out last time, and I lamented that it really ought to be simpler.  Well, now it is: perl -MDate::Easy -E 'say ((today - date("3/28/2010")) / 7)' prints “729.”

Thou wast not born for death ...

[This post contains light spoilers for all three campaigns of Critial Role.  Well, not “light” in the sense that they’re not very meaningful, but light in the sense that they’re almost definitely facts that have already been spoiled for you by now.  Still, read on at your own risk.]

One day I hope to live long enough to see Liam O’Brien play a D&D character who actually cares whether they live or die.

If you’re not familiar with Critical Role, you have no idea what I’m on about, and you can probably just check out now.  If you are familiar with CR, then no doubt you know exactly what I’m talking about.  In Campaign 1 (Vox Machina), there was Vax, who almost eagerly promised his life to the Raven Queen to bring back his twin sister from the realm of the dead.  It took years (and dozens of episodes) for that promise to be reaped, but it did eventually happen, and Liam has staunchly refused to consider resurrection for Vax.  In Campaign 2 (the Mighty Nein), Caleb’s crushing guilt at what he had done in his past often made him feel his life was worthless, and that it wasn’t worth living unless he could find a way to turn back time.  Liam has spoken of Caleb’s willingness to sacrifice himself to defeat his archenemy Trent.  And now here we are in Campaign 3 (Bell’s Hells), and Orym—who at first seems like a bright, sunny character, but eventually reveals a classically tragic backstory—has now offered to give up the remainder of his life in service to a powerful archfey in exchange for the tools to keep his companions safe.

It isn’t limited to just D&D either: Liam’s character for his run (as a player) on Candela Obscura was Cosmo Grimm, a 97-year-old occultist who, due to his advanced age, had a built-in reason for being willing to sacrifice himself at every turn.  Even several (though admittedly not all) of his one-shot characters seem to have a bit of a death wish ... and even the ones who don’t often end up dead anyway.

To some extent this makes sense.  O’Brien started out as a stage actor doing, among other things, a lot of Shakespeare.  When asked once what books he would keep with him at all times if he had a real-life version of Caleb’s “book holsters,” Liam replied Hellboy and Hamlet.  There is absolutely no doubt that Liam has a strong affinity to tragedies, and tragic characters in particular.  And, don’t get me wrong: he’s excellent at playing these characters.  He’s a brilliant actor, and his talent for the dark, brooding hero with the tragic backstory can’t be overstated.

But, just once, I’d love to see him play a character with some joie de vivre, with no tragic circumstances either before or behind, someone who really lives life to the fullest and is in no hurry to die any time soon.  I mean, I think he’d be really good at that too.  And I think it’d be fun to watch.

But I’m getting old enough nowadays that I ain’t holdin’ my breath.

Be Liberal in What You Accept

If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart.  If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.

— Winston Churchill

You may have seen this quote floating around online.  Certainly it’s a darling of modern conservatives.  And if so great a luminary as Churchill said it ... well, then, certainly it must be true.

Except, of course, Churchill never said that. The International Churchill society points out that:

There is no record of anyone hearing Winston Churchill say this. Paul Addison of Edinburgh University made this comment: ‘Surely Churchill can’t have used the words attributed to him. He’d been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35!  And would he have talked so disrespectfully of Clemmie, who is generally thought to have been a lifelong Liberal?’

By “Clemmie,” Addison is referring here to Clementine, the Baroness Spencer-Churchill, a.k.a. Winston’s wife.  So I think these are pretty compelling points that attributing this quote to Churchill is just wishful thinking.

If you really want to know the convoluted origin of this quote, you can read all about it on the Quote Investigator, but basically it likely started off as this:

A boy of fifteen who is not a democrat is good for nothing, and he is no better who is a democrat at twenty.

— John Adams, 1799

which then evolved to this:

Several of my friends urged me to respond with Burke’s famous line: “Anyone who is not a republican at twenty casts doubt on the generosity of his soul; but he who, after thirty years, perseveres, casts doubt on the soundness of his mind.”

— Jules Claretie (translated from the original French), 1872

Along with many, many variations along the way, and since.  Here’s my favorite of the ones QI cites:

An excited supporter burst into the private chambers of the old tiger Clemenceau one day and cried, “Your son has just joined the Communist Party.” Clemenceau regarded his visitor calmly and remarked, “Monsieur, my son is 22 years old. If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him. If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then.”

— Bennet Cerf, writing about Georges Clemenceau, 1944

That one at least is clever.  The rest are all at least moderately clumsy in the phrasing, not to mention not uttered by anyone as famous as Churchill.  Although John Adams is close.  But also pay attention to what Adams is really saying here: that, by the time you’re merely twenty years old, you should have learned not to have faith in democracy.  I know we Americans have a great belief that we live in a democracy, and that we do so because of our revered founding fathers, but often we forget that irksome things like the electoral college exist precisely because those founding fathers (or at least a majority of them) felt that the common man couldn’t be expected to be informed enough to vote sensibly, so the most they could be trusted to do was to elect someone smarter than they were.  

Of course, as I wrote in my very first blog post about quotes, “really it doesn’t even matter who said it: the wisdom or truth of the words is contained within them, regardless of any external attribution.” So who cares who said it, if it’s true.

Except ...

Well, except that it’s crap.  Even confining ourselves to the fairly modern definitions of “liberal” and “conservative”—and completely ignoring the far right (MAGA, QAnon, etc)—I can quite trivially provide two counterexamples: my father was the same conversative he is today at 25, and I continue to be just as liberal as I ever was well beyond 35.  Or 45 ... hell, I’ve now moved beyond 55, even, and I continue to be, what I’m sure is to my more conservative friends, annoyingly liberal.

And, yes, I do have conservative friends.  Remember: I said we were not defining “conservative” as meaning the MAGA crowd—I’m definitely not friends with any of them.  But, using the normal definition of “political conservative” to mean small government, taxes bad, trickle-down economics good, capitalism great, unions suck, etc. ... sure, I have friends like that.  People like that can be very reasonable and even fun.  The fact that they’re wrong doesn’t make them bad people.  (I’m kidding.  Mostly.)

No, this lovely idea that liberalism is founded on idealism, which is something you really ought to have when you’re young, but you really ought to grow out of at some point, is just crap.  Doesn’t make any sense, and doesn’t bear out in reality.  The best proof of this concept that I’ve run across is in an article from Scientific American, which posits (with some interesting studies to back it up) that conservative and liberal brains are just different.  Liberals have bigger cingulate cortices, while conservatives have bigger amygdalae.  Which means, broadly speaking, that liberals are better at detecting errors and resolving conflicts, while conservatives are better at regulating emotions and evaluating threats.  Nothing wrong with either of those characteristics, of course: each are good, in different situations.  And there’s still some disagreement over which comes first:

There is also an unresolved chicken-and-egg problem:  Do brains start out processing the world differently or do they become increasingly different as our politics evolve?

But I find this whole area fascinating.  Especially because there isn’t anything black-and-white about it, which as you know appeals to my sense of balance and paradox.  Sure, conservatives are less likely to question the status quo, but that means they’re often happier because they’re more willing to accept and enjoy their circumstances.  Sure, liberals may be better at processsing contradictory information, but we’re also prone to waffling and it can take us forever to make up our minds about an issue (that one hits particularly hard for me).  And, yes, all this is a whole lot of generalization, and individuals will differ in how they approach things regardless of their overall tendencies, and obviously we can rise above our programming ... but, at least to me, it’s actually a bit comforting to think that, when a friend expresses some surprisingly conservative viewpoint, I can say to myself, oh: they’re just wired differently.  And that’s okay.

As I’ve said before, the world would be a pretty boring place if we all agreed on everything.  So, while I continue to believe that my politics are the best politics, I don’t hate the other side ... hell, I don’t even dislike or distrust the other side.  But, I must once again stress: Trump supporters are not the other side.  Those are the folks who’ve gone way beyond the other side and out the door and down the road and across the field.  Even my father, bastion of conservatism that he is, is no longer a Trump supporter.  Trump gives conservatism a bad name, sadly.  And I think that Trump will likely not win in the presidential race this year precisely because more and more conservatives are realizing this.  I could be wrong about that ... but I don’t think I am.  And that’s a good thing.

I think proper conservatism deserves a reboot.  I still think they’re all wrong, of course, but it’s never great to have people in charge who all think the same way.  Diversity is important (again, ignoring those ultra-right-wingers who foam at the mouth when you talk about diversity), and, just as having diversity in the workplace makes your business more profitable (look it up if you don’t believe this; there are multiple studies which support this fact), so too is diversity of opinions in government important.  If the government were entirely run by liberals, we’d probably be in just as much trouble as we would be if it were run entirely by conservatives.  Finding the balance is what’s important ... but of course I would say that (balance and paradox again).

What I really wish is that our two political parties would both split in two.  The Republicans have become sharply divided between the MAGA crowd and the “traditional” conservatives, while the Democrats have become too crowded, and people as different as Biden and Sanders both claiming the same party feels weird.  If we had four parties, they could perhaps be led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Kamala Harris, Liz Cheney, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and I think the vast majority of Americans would know exactly which quadrant of the spectrum they fall into just from that alone.  I’d love it, personally.  I would probably vote for AOC’s party the most often, but I’d vote for the Harris ticket plenty, and probably even the Cheney party every now and again.  (The less said on how I feel about the Greene-led crowd, the better.)  But we’d truly have some meaningful choices again, that’s the important bit.  And I think that would be good for our country, for our government, and for our sanity.

Sadly, I think it’s mostly just wishful thinking.  I think the two-party stranglehold on our political system is not giving up its deathgrip any time soon, and we’ll be the poorer for it.  But, as fraught with emotion as the current times are, I think we should still all remember that conservative, liberal—they’re just a difference in how we’re wired, and that’s fine.  We can still all get along, and we can still see the good in others.  And I think that’s a worthy goal.

[Today’s title is the latter half of the Robustness Principle, a.k.a. Postel’s law: be conservative in what you emit; be liberal in what you accept.  So perhaps it’s just my technogeek nature to recognize that both philosophies have value.]

The Return of Stew-beef

I have, to my knowledge, seen nearly every episode of The Daily Show, since the very beginning.  That means I’ve not only seen what I believe to be every single episode hosted by Jon Stewart and every single episode hosted by Trevor Noah, but every episode in between and since, and even the majority of the episodes hosted by Craig Kilborn, who preceded Stewart.  It was a very different show back then, but I watched ’em all.  There’s been a lot of individual bits of various shows that I’ve disliked, but I don’t think there’s been a single show in these past 28 years that hasn’t made me laugh at least once, and most of them far more often than that.

So obviously I was pretty happy to see Stewart come back to the show a couple of weeks ago.  I thought his first show back was pretty awesome: as his Apple+ show (The Problem with Jon Stewart) proved, he really hasn’t lost a step since his “retirement.” He’s still got the rhythm, and the biting commentary that’s perfectly happy to skewer public figures on both sides of the aisle.  I laughed plenty.

Both not everyone appreciated his homecoming as much as I.  There was, in fact, quite a bit of criticism, perhaps most emblematically summed up by Keith Olbermann, who tweeted:

Well after nine years away, there’s nothing else to say to the bothsidesist fraud Jon Stewart bashing Biden, except: Please make it another nine years

Of course, Olbermann has been a critic of Stewart for years, going back to saying that he’d “jumped the shark” back when Stewart (along with co-host Colbert) put on the “Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear)” (which I quite enjoyed, personally).  So it shouldn’t have been news.  But, somehow it was ... perhaps boosted by similar criticism from Mary Trump, the hosts of The View, and a bunch of people described as “liberal media figures” whose names I’ve never heard in my life.  Basically, they accused him of “both-sides-ism.” Well, fair enough: as I noted above, Stewart is fond of not letting anyone off the hook, regardless of “sides.” But what did he actually say, actually?

Well, he said this:^*

What’s crazy is thinking that we are the ones as voters who must silence concerns and criticisms.  It is the candidate’s job to assuage concerns, not the voter’s job not to mention them.

and this:

Look, Joe Biden isn’t Donald Trump.  He hasn’t been indicted as many times, hasn’t had as many fraudulent businesses, or been convicted in a civil trial for sexual assault, or been ordered to pay defamation, had his charities disbanded, or stiffed a shit-ton of blue-collar tradesmen he’d hired.  Should we even get to the grab the pussy stuff?  Probably not.

But the stakes of this election don’t make Donald Trump’s opponent less subject to scrutiny.  It actually makes him more subject to scrutiny.

Which ... sounds pretty reasonable to me.  I’m not sure what Olbermann and friends expected Stewart to do—was he supposed to pretend that Biden isn’t old, or that no one realizes he’s old?  I mean, The Nation expresses it better than I ever could, so I’ll just quote them:

Stewart’s segment was fundamentally pro-Biden, a shrewd use of comedy to address unease while also, as Stewart at his best always does, keeping the big political picture in mind. It’s a way to address the age issue on pro-Biden terms but still maintain the trust of independents and nonpartisan Democrats, who are the swing voters in danger of abandoning Biden or staying home.

Yep, that’s what I thought too.

__________

* If you want to follow along at home, you can watch his monologue on YouTube; my first quote starts at 15:53, and the second starts at 17:30.

Creeping Rageaholic I

"Set Shit on Fire"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

This is one of my longest idea-to-realization mixes.  I originally had the idea for this mix back in 2003, when the guy who had been hanging out with a cartoon dog and entertaining my kids put out an album, and the first song on it sucked me in with a serene opening and then just exploded into existence about a minute in.  It reminded me rather forcefully of driving back and forth from where I went to college in Northern Virginia to my parents’ house in southern Virginia and belting out ”‘cos it already is!” at the top of my lungs, and I knew I had to pair those two somehow.  But I didn’t finalize this first volume (or at least get it as close to “final” as any of my mixes ever get) until just this year.

Part of the problem is that mix has a very specific mood.  Musically, the hook is that these are songs which lure you into a false sense of security, then just burst into being.  It’s a little more than just dropping the beat; many of these transform fully from ballads to full-on rockers, if not heavy metal bangers, somewhere between verse and chorus, or even between one verse to the next.  But, emotionally, that’s a very specific mood to capture.  Some of these songs are about loss, or about violent discovery, or about reflecting on one’s own faults and the inevitable frustration that comes when you know you need to be better but somehow just can’t manage to achieve it.  I’m just not in the mood for that very specific energy all that often.  But, when I am, these are the songs I reach for.

To give you an idea of the vibe you might get from this mix, I’ve assembled you a little cento, cobbled together from lines of the songs in this first volume.  When it comes to naming a mix volume, there’s two camps that most of them fall into: either there’s a perfect line from one of the songs that instantly suggests itself as perfect, or there’s nothing that really jumps out at me and I have to go scouring.  But this volume is a bit of an outlier: there’s an embarrassment of riches here, and I ended up with so many great candidates that I started piecing them together in my head.  Here’s what I ended up with (attributions given at the end of the post):

Day after day after sorry day,
the sun makes me sick.
One, ’cause you left me.
You hate the things that I like—
that fascist faith will kill you.
I think I’m just paranoid;
I’m fucking lazy ...
there’s just too much pressure to take:
I’m just another soul for sale.
It’s not my time to wonder why ...
You monkey, you left me.
Set shit on fire.

So that should give you a rough idea of what you’re in for.

For the most part, these tracks fulfill the original pattern: they start out slow, or mellow, or understated, then burst into a sudden sonic explosion (though we’ll see a few songs which subvert expectations in one way or another).  The mix title ... well, the imagery is a bit unusual, but overall this is one of my most intelligible mix names.  The volume title is the last line of the little cento above, of course.

So, the first two tracks of this mix were pretty much always going to be Steve Burns’ epic opener “Mighty Little Man,” from his Steven-Drozd-of-the-Flaming-Lips-produced debut album, closely followed by “For Nancy,” the midpoint banger from Pete Yorn’s debut.  Both songs play with quiet/loud dynamics in a way that’s quite different from the standard grunge pattern.  In grunge, the contrasting dynamics are just a part of the structure of the songs; bands like Nirvana and the Pixies have refined the pattern to an art form, but you can’t really claim to be surprised when they do it.¹  These tunes hit with more emotional impact when they explode: they lull you into a false sense of calm, then burst into emotional being.  There’s really nothing like that feeling.

“Shutterbug” was the next most obvious choice: it’s a magnificent dichotomy of almost-whispered vocals punctuated by raw guitar chords that are almost metal in their ferocity.  It was easily the most standout track from Veruca Salt’s excellent Eight Arms to Hold You.  It was perhaps a bit unimaginative of me to just tack it on as the third track in the mix, but, honestly, these three really combine to form an opening triptych that firmly establishes the mood.  After that, there were a few other obvious choices: Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory is basically composed of nothing but tracks that fit this pattern (from which I thought “Crawling” was the best exemplar), and the amazing “Bring Me to Life” by Evanescence was still fresh and darkly glittering at the time I was putting together the mix.  It opens with a simple piano melody and Amy Lee’s sweet, understated vocals, then Beny Moody’s grinding guitar licks kick in, and there’s that beautiful single beat of absolute silence before each chorus bursts forth ... it’s quite transportative.  Likewise, PJ Harvey was a no-brainer: I was pretty blown away by Rid of Me when I first heard it, and in particular the way that the title track starts very softly and makes you lean in, only to rock you on your heels with PJ’s aggressive guitar and Rob Ellis’ thundering drums.  There was never a world where this tune didn’t appear on the first volume of this mix.

After that, I looked a bit to the industrial scene.  Stabbing Westward’s “What Do I Have to Do?,” with its sparkly synth-noodling intro, was a pretty obvious choice.  Meanwhile, Machines of Loving Grace’s biggest hit “Butterfly Wings” inverts the pattern by starting out with standard industrial intensity, then dropping down to quiet moments between verses.  “Kiss Off” by Violent Femmes was another obvious choice: it starts with Gordon Gano’s acoustic guitar and quiet vocals, giving it almost a folk song vibe, and this time it’s Brian Ritchie’s bass that provides the burst of feeling; the song quickly turns and becomes a bit of a rant, which makes it fit perfectly here.  In the exact opposite department, it’s the slinky toms and bass of Green Day’s “Longview” that provides the calm before the storm of the guitars and snare.  Obviously Dookie was going to have to feature here, and I thought “Longview” was a great choice (plus it leads into “Kiss Off” quite nicely).

This mix was also started at the height of my fascination with Magnatune,² so it’s not surprising that several of its artists ended up here.  Perhaps most obviously, spineCar’s “Waste Away” follows a similar pattern to “Longview”: the rhythmic bassline is joined by a studied, pulsing drumbeat, then muddy guitars and quiet vocals join in, building to the crescendo where the lead singer breaks into a scream on the third syllable of the song’s title.  It’s a piece of undeservedly little-known nu-metal from the late 90s.  Then there’s “Dirtbag”: the original version of this tune, by Brad Sucks, is a perfectly lovely piece of alt-pop—the lyrics are a bit edgy, sure, but the melody belies that.  But part of the deal with Magnatune is the artists explicitly give permission for other Magnatune artists to remix their work, and what producer Victor Stone (working under the moniker Four Stones) does with “Dirtbag” is transcendant: he adds a seething undercurrent of anxiety and simmering rage by adding echoes and contrasting drones.  It’s really something to hear.  We’ve heard from Jade Leary before;³ “Meaner than Winter” is a short, not-quite bridge track that never really explodes, but always seems on the verge of doing so.  I felt it was a pretty good transition from the first half of the volume to the slightly harder edge of the second half.  Then we have “Charming Gun,” by trip-hop artist Artemis.  Honestly, I’m not sure this track really fits the theme all that well, and I was on the verge of taking it out several times.  But, in the end, I think it maintains just enough contrast (not only quiet/loud, but also slow/fast) to keep its place.

After that, two later additions were Metric’s “Black Sheep” from the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World soundtrack, and “The Pretender” by the Foo Fighters.  The former is just a solid post-punk offering that actually punctuates its quiet verses with strong guitar/bass/drum licks between the lines in a way that I found irresistible.  The latter ... well, I’m not one to think that Dave Grohl learned his craft from his time in Nirvana, because I think he was always pretty damned talented.  But I can’t help but wonder if his unerring talent for knowing when to crank up the vocals into a a full-on scream and when to back off is at least a little influenced by Kurt Cobain, who was undoubtedly the master of that technique.  When I first heard “The Pretender,” I knew unquestioningly that it had to be on this mix.

I follow that track with another one that manages to simmer without exploding and yet never feels unsatisfying: “Glycerine,” by Bush.  The only proper grunge song on this frist volume, the contrast here is provided by Nigel Pulsford’s crunchy guitars and strings, of all things.  Sixteen Stone is a revelatory album, and I’m kind of surprised it’s taken me this long to feature a track from it.  And I close with Smash Mouth, who, along with Nickelback, it seems to be fashionable to hate on these days.  But Fush Yu Mang is a pretty important album itself, and “Let’s Rock” is a great tune that hits a lazy, almost ska vibe for its verses, then bursts into a beautiful metal-inspired crescendo of emotion.  “Fuck it, let’s rock” indeed.

Creeping Rageaholic I
[ Set Shit on Fire ]

“Mighty Little Man” by Steve Burns, off Songs for Dustmites
“For Nancy” by Pete Yorn, off musicforthemorningafter
“Shutterbug” by Veruca Salt, off Eight Arms to Hold You
“Part 2 [Dirtbag Remix]” by Four Stones, off Ridin' the Faders [Remixes]⁴
“What Do I Have to Do?” by Stabbing Westward, off Wither Blister Burn + Peel
“Vinegar & Salt” by Hooverphonic, off The Magnificent Tree
“Big Mistake” by Natalie Imbruglia, off Left of the Middle
“Butterfly Wings” by Machines of Loving Grace, off Concentration
“Charming Gun” by Artemis, off Undone
“Meaner than Winter” by Jade Leary, off The Lost Art of Human Kindness
“Waste away” by Spinecar, off Up from the mud
“Black Sheep” by Metric, off Scott Pilgrim vs. the World [Soundtrack]
“Longview” by Green Day, off Dookie
“Kiss Off” by Violent Femmes, off Violent Femmes
“Crawling” by Linkin Park, off Hybrid Theory
“The Pretender” by Foo Fighters, off Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace
“Glycerine” by Bush, off Sixteen Stone
“Rid of Me” by PJ Harvey, off Rid of Me
“Bring Me to Life” by Evanescence, off Fallen
“Let's Rock” by Smash Mouth, off Fush Yu Mang

Total:  20 tracks,  78:00

Which only leaves us with the two tracks that break up my two industrial picks.  I’ve talked before about my discovery of Natalie Imbruglia’s amazing Left of the Middle, so I won’t belabor the point, but it’s a testament to her versatility that, in addition to all the other places we’ve seen her in these mixes,⁵ here she is again.  “Big Mistake” starts out sweet and synthy, then right at the one minute mark it turns on you and tells you what a big mistake you’ve made trying to pigeonhole the song based on its opening.  Then there’s the truly stunning “Vinegar & Salt” from trip-hop impresarios Hooverphonic (who we’ve also seen on a pretty wide variety of mixes⁶).  This track is barely more than three minutes long, but it packs so much emotion into its short span that it fairly makes your head spin.  The verses are an almost matter-of-fact enumeration of the problems in a relationship, then the bridges crank up the tension—“honesty’s your church”—and then the chorus explodes into the stunning revelation that “sometimes, it’s better to lie.” It’s a rollercoaster ride in all the best ways.

Next time, I think we’ll dip our toes into the darker side of synthwave.

[As promised, here’s my pseudo-poem along with which songs they derive from:

Day after day after sorry day, [“Meaner than Winter,” Jade Leary]
the sun makes me sick. [“Shutterbug,” Veruca Salt]
One, ’cause you left me. [“Kiss Off,” Violent Femmes]
You hate the things that I like— [“Vinegar & Salt,” Hooverphonic]
that fascist faith will kill you. [“Butterfly Wings,” Machines of Loving Grace]
I think I’m just paranoid; [“Let’s Rock,” Smash Mouth]
I’m fucking lazy ... [“Longview,” Green Day]
there’s just too much pressure to take: [“Crawling,” Linkin Park]
I’m just another soul for sale. [“The Pretender,” Foo Fighters]
It’s not my time to wonder why ... [“Glycerine,” Bush]
You monkey, you left me. [“Shutterbug,” Veruca Salt (again)]
Set shit on fire. [“Dirtbag,” Brad Sucks, remixed by Four Stones]

Yes, I used “Shutterbug” twice; it really worked for this cento.  Those lines, of course, are back to back in the Veruca Salt rendition, whereas I separated them by almost the length of the entire piece.  I don’t think this is as good as either of my two previous centos, but it has a certain charm.  At least I think so.]

__________

1 I’ve mostly avoided using grunge tunes here, but you can expect to see at least a few in future volumes.

2 I told the story of how I discovered Magnatune in Rose-Coloured Brainpan.

3 On Shadowfall Equinox V and VI, and also on Fulminant Cadenza I and Slithy Toves II.

4 Original version by Brad Sucks, off I Don’t Know What I’m Doing.

5 Besides the aforementioned Smokelit Flashback, there was Distaff Attitude and of course her triumphant tune on Cumulonimbus Eleven.

6 Starting with Smokelit Flashback III, IV, V, and VI, and thence to Bleeding Salvador I and Plutonian Velvet I.