Audience of Strangers

So. Looking for songs with a loose impression of... hhm. "I'm a bastard, I screwed up," something with at least some regret to it (which lets out things like "Where the Wild Roses Grow"). Preferably not with unreliable narrators.

Idea sparked with "I Ain't No Nice Guy" and "Biggest Mistake", and am also thinking Prozak's "Sucks To Be You".

Suggestions?

...also, "Fairytale of New York" totally counts. It's not as lonely as the others, but between the recrimination and the shared regrets, yeah.

ETA:
* "Burning Bridges"
* Trying to figure out if "The Fire Inside" works. Love it, but there's not exactly anyone doing anything wrong in it, just a lot of forever-lonely people.
* "Devils and Dust" seems workable, and am thinking I may need to limit it to one song per artist.

Laptop is still not working after being shut, but have just finished a fresh backup, so am not too worried. Need to walk Piper (and it's cold, and I have a headache I cannot shake, and I don't wanna go outside, and yes I realize all this is not relevant, because I need to walk Piper).

I put a wreath on the front door and got a glass (well, plastic) pane for the front of our porch light. And did laundry.

Kind of hoping the headache is due to Rob Halford opening for Ozzy Ozbourne[1], and not to lack of coffee. Which I have just realized I had Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday evening. So caffeine withdrawal would actually be on schedule right about now, if it was that, although I'm hoping I didn't have enough to restart the cycle...

Dammit.

Ah well. I think I'm going to grab painkillers and find socks. Furbeaste of Beasten, Noble Warriorette and Guardienne of the Backe Yarde, needs her walkies. Maybe see about Christmas gifts when I get back. The shopping is not getting any less urgent.
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[1] Thursday? Thursday was awesome. Heard about a show on the radio when the alarm went off, decided to buy tickets a bit before noon, and went that evening. With earplugs, which I sort of forgot to put in for Rob Halford. Which is okay. (Having them in for Ozzy was a bit disorienting, so I ended up going with just one of them for the encore... And two days later, the bruises from clapping and the raw throat from yelling are gone. And so worth it.)

I've got a friend. She's going to go see Nine Inch Nails. They've got something going where if you donate three hundred to a charity of NIN's choice, you get to hug Trent Reznor.

(I swear I could hear her squee at the thought from all the way down in PA.)

So, in the name of doing such a thing, she's ditching the LEs that don't suit her. So she's auctioning off 5ml BPAL bottles of Snake Charmer Ressurected, Angeronalia 07, Melainis, Archangel Winter, Longing, Hay Moon, Long Night Moon, The Shattered Pumpkin, Hunter Moon 07, and Fairy Market. Her auctions are here, if you want a look.

So, apparently there's this song by the Beatles called "Octopus's Garden". Who knew?[1]

I love my husband, because he finds me pictures like this:

Oh, this movie. I am *so* going to be at this movie.

Also: my Weird Tales finally came in! Profile updated. Glee. And so forth.

========

A little less of a smallnote and more of a ramble.  By the way, this does contain spoilers for the movies mentioned below.

Been thinking about The Ruins (and The Descent, and Hostel, and Saw, and, 30 Days of Night, and Night of the Living Dead) and trying to put my finger on where the line between torture porn and survival horror comes in. Because all those movies are about protagonists in a horrible situation with the world turned against them, and how they try (and most often fail) to cope with it, and how they suffer.

Correction: all those movies *involve* protagonists in a horrible situation etc.  I am not sure torture porn is about the titular protagonists (not as people at any rate; perhaps only as meat).

(Hm.  The difference between torture porn and survival horror is like the distinction I occasionally hear people describing between porn and erotica?  The one merely has meat, the other has a person?  That's not all of it, but that's part of it.)

There is a distinction.  I know this.  And I think a huge part of it is the antagonist.

(Jigsaw is kind of interesting in this regard; in the first movie at least[2], he is portrayed as a morally correct force--a kind of retributive angel who tortures people into the realization that their lives have value.  Horror movies have a long history of the people who get it "deserving" to get it; the people who die are (a) the people you shouldn't be, or (b) the people you don't want to be.

(Jigsaw differs from said long history in two ways that seemed important.  First, he is human.  I don't mean he's not the monster of the piece, not monstrous, not a Dionysian other.  I mean that he's just a madman; he's not supernatural, he does not exist in a context which confirms a supernatural dimension, his existence does not indicate the presence of metaphysical evil[3], and his victims are not portrayed as particularly worse than anyone else.  And second, there is no opponent worthy of him.  Where's Ben, Laurie Strode, Nancy Thompson, Sidney, Clarice Starling?  He's not something to be met and challenged and survived (or not); there's no valiance in those who oppose him.  Jigsaw is not harsh but just desserts for the relatively bad; he's a bad accident that could happen to anyone.

(And this annoyed me, actually.  Because I very much got the impression the movie wanted me to question presumptions and admire the boundary-shattering brilliance of the guy who leads people to realization, and had somehow forgotten to fix the fact that he was a torturing murderer who spun some line of bullshit about not *really* being a killer.)

I look at Saw, and I think of it as being on the boundary between torture porn and survival horror.  It does involve physical violence, but it puts a huge focus on characterization and psychological pain, and that was what I found allowed it to be disturbing.  And if I dismiss it in spite of that, if I call it torture porn, what keeps Band of Brothers or A Clockwork Orange from the same category?  The aspect that had me curling my lip at it was the attempted valorization of the villain (which didn't really have much to do with the story), not the dismissal of the humanity of the victims.

The antagonists in Hostel, on the other hand--

--okay, I think I just got something.

All the movies I've described involve people in situations where their whole world's gone wrong, either because they're trapped in a small part of the actual world (a cave, an industrial bathroom) or because a terrible disaster has overtaken the world (zombies).  They're not needing to beat back something that's intruded into the normal world, they're trapped in an abnormal world.

Everything I can think of that I classify as torture porn involves a social setting dominating the situation which says that that abnormality is okay.

In Hostel, you've got the group working to collect people for killing, and the buyers; the organized group cooperating to make it happen.  In Captivity, you've got a pair of people who regularly abduct, torture, and murder people in a set environment; nearly the entire movie happens in the setting of that ongoing abnormal situation, and it's established as an uncontested norm in the opening shot. In Turistas, you've got much the same planned and organized setup as in Hostel; different purpose, but same case of "This is a place where the norm says the protagonists are meat."

(Jigsaw, again, is borderline here. He does dominate the situation.  But he knows he's not normal; he justifies himself.  The world outside and its attempts to deal with him are covered.  And unlike the villains in Captivity, he is not bringing people into his home; he is interfering with theirs.)

Zombies, on the other hand, do not say that their norm is okay.  Neither do giant bugs, anacondas, or vampires in a small Alaskan town.  They simply moan/chitter/hiss/speak ?Russian?, and attempt to eat you.  They are not *people* gone wrong; you're not trapped in their society.  They are simply things which have invaded yours.

Incidentally, the latest Cemetery Dance had a scathing review of Live Feed and Turistas.  Something about how the great crime of the evil non-white foreigners was not kowtowing to the Americans being drunken idiots, and if travel broadens the mind, what can we say about a work that attempts to villify it?

So.  Elements of torture porn: lack of characterization, established social setting in which it is acceptable to treat humans as meat, human villains, and the (given) promiscuous use of blood and pain and screaming?  I don't know.  Maybe.  It's a good start.  I'm not looking to establish a checklist for anyone else, I'm just trying to articulate to myself where my boundaries lie.

It's been on my mind, you see, because I want to go catch The Ruins tomorrow, and I'm wondering how good it'll be.  I know they've changed it a little from the book; looking at the trailer, I can see that Stacy's been infected with vines (attractive blonde woman with body distortion--possible bad sign in direction of cheap body horror), and they don't actually show Pablo at all, although he may still be in there (removing slow death of somewhat undeveloped character as protagonists are helpless to save him--possible good sign in direction away from torture porn).

Anyway.  This has taken me nearly an hour to write.  I am going to go crash.
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[1] If you listen to theweaselking , *everybody*. Except me.
[2] No, I didn't see the others, and am honestly not interested; compelling counter-arguments will be heard.
[3] Yes, I know Jason's mother is another example of this.  So's Norman Bates, if you want to stretch back.  However, I think the lack of moral differentiation between the victims and everyone else is also an important difference.  (I will stop repeating what I wrote above, now.)

But if you keep on screaming, you'll make me deaf, you know.

A slow and sludgy morning, unpleasantly interspersed with spikes of adrenaline.

Still-and-all, very few things cannot be improved with coffee, lemon poppyseed, and Judas Priest's "Parental Guidance".

Ergh. I need to grab an icon of that Ursula Vernon dragon with the cup of coffee.

Lacking other recognition of the season, it is actually possible to get your hands on a copy of "Auld Lang Syne" in approximately 47 seconds and then put it on repeat.

It helps, at quarter to one in the morning.

As per tradition in previous years, it's 2008.

I'm gonna go do the dishes.

Well, you can't turn him into a company man,
you can't turn him into a whore.
And the boys upstairs just don't understand anymore.

So, I was putting a dent in the dishes, and I am suddenly overcome by a desire to hear Tom Petty's "The Last DJ". I've always liked it (although I honestly never remember it's Petty). It's a pretty standard lone-wolf/artist/truthspeaker thing, I guess. And I've had the CCA and Dr. Frederick Wertham[1] kind of in the back of my mind since mid-late afternoon, which was probably part of it.

Well, some folks said they're gonna hang him so high
cos you just can't do what he did.
There's some things you just
can't put in the minds of those kids.

And now, mind you, I'm reminded of that radio DJ in The Stand--Ray Flowers, I think?--who wasn't getting sick, and who showed up to the (empty) station, and just ran a no-time-delay no-ads call-in show for people to discuss Captain Trips. (And the Army showed up and they shot him and he died sprawled over his control panel.)

But that's a *real* tangent. Anyway, I was listening to the chorus.

There goes your freedom of choice,
there goes the last human voice.
There goes the last DJ.

And I start, in defiance of all things reasonably associated with the decades-old vibe of this song, thinking cyberpunk.

Not the hard-edged metal-laced chipped-brain gunfight side of it. The information. The truth. Max Headroom. Johnny Silverhand. Hiro Protagonist. Spider Jerusalem. Hell, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. Even the grand revelation of the NES cure at the end of that god-awful movie adaptation of Johnny Mnemonic[2], although good god the execution on that mostly made me groan.

The angry, giddy, honest voice howling out in the middle of the prepackaged indifferent monoculture that would really much rather you didn't think. And, by extension, the setting where you could fight *with* information, where it wasn't just a prize to squabble over and steal. The neon and glass and carded doors, not just the steel and bullets and (rainy) streets.

I need songs for this. Suggestions?

(And yes, I've already thought of Warren Zevon's Transverse City. :) )
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[1] *turns head, spits*
[2] I may be being a little harsh on it. I can't tell. I'm too busy being frustrated with how they portrayed Molly.

So. wicked_wish posted a link to a collection of 80s music videos.

This is new and wonderful. See, I had a TV while we were growing up. But it had four channels--no cable--and I think the most attention I ever paid to it was betting my Dad that I could go without watching TV for a year and winning.

So I know the songs, but I've never seen most of the videos. Actually, I don't think I've seen any of the videos they have; the site only seems to have one per artist.

And most of them are pretty ineffective. But I liked Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire". It's not a happy song. It's fun to listen to and fun to watch, cheerful little beat and a bunch of bright pictures, but it's not a happy song. One of the clips in the video is Joel sitting in front of a huge (slowly burning) blow-up of a black-and-white picture of a man tied up, pulled one way and another by ropes. There were a couple of others I'm sure I should have recognized.

So I went browsing. Dug up the photo of the guy standing in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square. And the one of St. Paul's surrounded and rising through the flames in the Blitz.

And now I'm listening to the Jonestown death tape.

( Cut for courtesy, sensibility, and avoidable angst-burgering. )

Just realized, when reading this post, that between last-minute rescheduling and taking Angel to the vet[1] and hanging out with waterspyder and Alice Cooper, I *completely* forgot that yesterday was Free Comic Book Day.

G'damn. I think I loose geek points for that.

A/y. Found out when I called my grandma on Friday that she'd had a heart attack four days earlier. My mother is currently in China and my grandma was busy getting better (they let her out of the hospital, and someone is coming in to see her every day), so I can kind of understand no-one calling and telling me, but damn. (My mother apparently knows. She's getting back on Monday. She was doing this in any case.)

My ears have stopped ringing, but my throat is still sore from screaming myself hoarse at the aforementioned concert. Apparently the guillotine routine is something he hasn't done onstage for years. And I have "Lost in America" running through my head, of all things. (This is understandable, unlike directly after the concert, when I had "Are you going to Scarborough Fair" and "Living on a Prayer" running through my head.)

Also, burning hash smells like sage. And here I thought the people in front of me were just smoking a very bad quality of pot. Ah, my fragile innocence. (I confess to being confused about why anyone would want to go to an Alice Cooper concert and mellow out. Mind you, I also confess to being confused about why anyone would go to an Alice Cooper concert and turn their back on the stage, but what the hell.)

Still looking, vaguely, for brown paper bags. I think there might be some at Loblaws. Haven't seen them anywhere else.

Got theweaselking a copy of the gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster yesterday. Just 'cause. Also, grabbed myself a book full of Cross Sums, which are apparently also called kakuro. Am very happy with that; I've never been able to find more than eight of them at once in a book, and usually don't pick up puzzle books as a result.

Just remembered I have to meet my sister in an hour. Cannot forget. She would have my head. I would not blame her.
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[1]She's fine, but back on foul-smelling antibiotics until the bottle is empty.

There is a great deal of 80s music that is, frankly, insipid. It doesn't even have the bounce to justify being called 'fluffy'. It just kind of spins around in place, showering you with dime-store dramatics and perfectly posed cuddles.

And yet, if you're willing to assign it far more value than a coolly rational assessment might grant it[1], it's uplifting. Happy happy bouncy invigorating rah-rah music. God, even "Cry Little Sister"[2] or "Temple of Love" are so damn *active*. (Have I mentioned my /Floodland/ CD went missing? Agony. Withdrawal. Tangent.)

This is good. I need something to destress right now. I've got... ehm... fourteen hours and change before running people through a /Deadlands/ session, and I just noticed none of them have any Medicine skills. You know, that happy thing that stops you from bleeding out after you get your face chewed off.

So I sit here, contemplating mining towns and strange events and monstrosities not of this earth, and how to not let them suck, and it's all fine. 'cause there's 80s music playing.[3]

Should probably stop rambling now, since the image of a zombie with 80s big hair is hammering at the back of my brain, demanding to be let in.
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[1] I'm an English major. You learn to do this for fun. Catch me in a rambling mood and give me ten minutes and I'll explain to you how Bonnie Tyler is addressing the question of spiritual development in modern society and how it parallels the Hero's Journey. 'cause I *can*.
[2] Someone slap whoever insists on attributing that to the SoM, 'kay? Not literally. That'd be wrong.
[3] This would *so* not be an appropriate soundtrack for Deadlands. The almighty Cowbell might be, however.