Category Archives: Nihilism

Many twists, many turns.

As the WSL (somehow) soldiers on, its easy to lose track of of the absurdity of the last eight months.

Lets examine.

July 17, 2020:

The WSL cancels the 2020 Tour, citing the health and safety of athletes and the challenges of international travel. While many lament the news, it seems rather prudent given the state of things.

Maybe a reset is just what the WSL needs.

In the same breath, the WSL introduces a new and improved Championship Tour. It boasts a revamped finals event (with a mystery location), new event locations, and kick-off events at Pipe and Maui.

The optimists among us muse about a finals event held at a tropical reef, but the realists remind us of a little cobblestone A-frame in Southern California.

November 10, 2020:

The WSL announces that the WSL Finals will be held at. . . Trestles.

Kolohe and Filipe rejoice.

The WSL also announces a myriad of new event locations for the 2021 Tour, axing Portugal and G-Land for Sunset and Santa Cruz.

The WSL never releases a formal statement regarding Portugal and G-Land. The November 10th press release simply reads postponed and TBD, respectively.

December 2020:

The first leg of the Tour kicks off, with the women at Honolulu Bay and the men at Pipe.

The morning before the womens finals, a man is attacked and killed by a shark, putting the event on hold. Elo introduces us all to some new corpospeak, calling it a shark incident.

The womens event is subsequently moved to Pipe, where the competitors opt for turns in lieu of tubes. Tyler Wright is crowned the winner of the Maui Pro at Pipeline.

Meanwhile, the men start the 2021 Tour at Pipe in pumping surf. Surf fans rejoice.

Then, the Billabong Pipe Masters is suddenly suspended as a result of positive COVID-19 tests within the WSL staff, including WSL CEO Erik Logan.

WSL viewers are largely left in the dark. Pipe continues to pump, unsullied by professional competition. Rumors abound about patient zero.

On December 15 the event resumes, albeit in smaller surf. John Florence banishes Gabriel Medina for the win and old man Slater takes a third place finish alongside Italo.

January 5, 2021:

Hawaii suspends all surfing competitions, forcing the WSL to cancel the Sunset Open and Jaws.

The WSL additionally announces the suspension of the Santa Cruz Pro, scheduled for February, citing the surge of cases in California.

Surf fans are left in the lurch. The next event isnt scheduled until April.

January 7, 2021:

A Pulitzer Prize worthy bit of investigative journalism (snub of the year!) reveals that the WSL has failed to acquire the necessary permitting for the Trestles Final Event.

A finals event in Californias Central Valley seems more and more likely.

Kelly celebrates.

January 31, 2021:

Rumors abound of a potential CT event at Lennox Head, adding an additional contest to the Australian leg.

February 2-3, 2021:

The Lennox community rebels against the WSL, threatening protest paddle outs, while the WSL claims community support.

It appears the WSL has largely acted in the dark, leaving many community members out of the loop.

Surf journalism takes yet another step towards the edge of the cliff, with the likes of Stab and The Inertia ignoring the fallout.

Said community quickly mobilizes, forcing the issue to a head. Ballina Councillors reject the event.

WSL General Manager for Australia Andrew Stark says, If you dont want us to come to your town, were not coming.

I mull staging a protest in Lemoore.

February 6, 2021:

The WSL quickly pivots, securing an event at Merewether.

The intention is to charter a plane for both Tours from Los Angeles to Sydney for a two-week quarantine in mid-March.

February 7, 2021:

Bells is cancelled, resulting in a reported $8 million loss for Torquay.

The WSL cites the governments failure to approve a plan for quarantining the athletes.

The Newcastle Cup is scheduled for April 1-11. Mayor claims $15 million boost for economy.

February 15, 2021:

The WSL releases yet another updated schedule.

The new Australian leg will include events at Newcastle, Narrabeen, Margaret River, and Rottnest.

Snapper is the latest casualty, along with Pat OConnell, who after only a year will be replaced by Jessi Miley-Dyer, the new Head of Competition.

Eight months. Six cancellations. Two Heads of Competition. Mass COVID infections. One shark incident.

Too many press releases.

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Scientific research paper on international surf travel reveals intrinsic nihilism of shredders: The greater the surfer's ability, the less they value...

Its tough to sum up all of my feelings about Palm Springs. Not because of an exaggerated sentimentality or that its some enigmatic art piece that should be left up to audiences to decipher. Quite the opposite, actually. My memory is just terrible, and 2020 made it so much worse.

The last five years feel like a meandering journey to discovering what this story really wanted to be about. In hindsight, the movie was mostly an attempt to capture the feeling of being in love and making that terrifying leap of commitment. But its also the culmination of a creative friendship. Maybe a reaction to 2016. Maybe its a look at depression, the wedding industrial complex, or some journey through the subconscious. Or maybe it was just my long-winded attempt at getting dinosaurs into a movie because thats all Ive ever wanted to do since the summer of 93. Ill try to distill what I do remember into something coherent.

June 2015. Max Barbakow (director) and I headed out to Palm Springs for a creative retreat of sorts two buds playing make-believe in a therapeutic sandbox. The simple goal was to throw around ideas for a micro-budget indie that we could feasibly get off the ground. How one gets that off the ground, I had no clue. I was living with crippling debt, so the idea of finding a way to finance this nonexistent dream project was already outside the realm of possibility.

Our conversations didnt have much of a shape, either they were more like stews of love, fear, shame and armchair nihilism brought on by mai tais and existential angst. But we left the desert with the seed of an idea to see if itd be possible to take a character on a journey from caring about nothing to finding a reason to care. And that was pretty much it. This wasnt a time loop love story at a desert wedding yet. I didnt really know what it was.

So, of course, I carried that ignorant confidence forward and started writing, without a real plan or outline. Turns out thats a super inefficient way to write a screenplay.

There were countless false starts, abandoned drafts, a version thats one extended bender-montage. I wouldnt call the exploratory nature an act of rebellion, because that implies that someone cares about what youre doing; no one was keeping tabs on us. That lack of oversight freed us up to draw inspiration in everything from The Great Beauty to Dumb and Dumber to Saving Private Ryan to Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, because why not? And thanks to this inefficient approach, I eventually stumbled upon a magical cave.

October 2015. Max was filming my own Palm Springs wedding as I broke down into a blubbering mess during the vows. In the movie, Sarah (Cristin Milioti) tears apart the whole idea of weddings and marriage and I agree with her. At the same time, I also share some of Nyles point of view: Bask in the love. Maybe the pageantry is archaic and detrimental to the progress of humanity, yet here I bought right into it and I loved my wedding. Theyre strange affairs, where hundreds of people can come together for the purpose of connection and while Ive watched countless new relationships form at weddings, Ive seen just as many old relationships crumble to their death. They manage to bring out the best and worst in people. Its great!

Suddenly, Palm Springs wanted to be about a relationship at a wedding. What better way of torturing your main character, a guy who cares about nothing, than to trap him for all eternity in a place where people care perhaps too much about the trivial details that have no real significance in the grand scheme of things.

2016-17. The script evolved into this tale of two people who decide to give up on the disappointing real world, because floating on pizza rafts, eating burritos and drinking away their life is so much easier than actually doing something to change their miserable existence. But apathy can get tiresome, they meet in the middle on the spectrum of caring, and so on. Plot stuff, quantum physics, Irvine, etc.

January 2018. We knew itd be hard to find the right partners to get behind the movie. I failed at hitting that micro-budget mark with all the plane crashes, dinos, goats . And with a tone that intentionally shifted from silly to sincere, thats tough to pull off in execution. Luckily, we found the one guy who said: Lets do all of that and more! Maybe we should put a bomb in the wedding cake, too? Suddenly, with Andy Samberg, this nonexistent dream project found a way.

Here is the original post:

Andy Siara got past the endless drafts to find 'Palm Springs' - Los Angeles Times

In Adam Curtiss recently released documentary series Cant Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World, Curtis describes a world that has been damaged by the infection of individualism in our modern societies and how this infection has caused any real change to feel like an impossibility. Issues like climate change, corruption and alienation are almost innate, and theres seemingly nothing that we can do about it.

In Ignorance, the new album from The Weather Station, each song also concerns itself with these modern anxieties. In 2021, were now realizing that our lives are becoming increasingly inhuman, and whether we fall into the established nihilism of our political structures is up for debate.

Fronted by Tamara Lindeman, The Weather Station group has been active for more than a decade. In the current era, where crises loom in our minds, Lindeman made her album about these pressing issues. Robbers is about those who steal and exploit, the ber rich and colonization in general. The lines, No, the robber dont hate you, he had permission / Permission by words, permission of thanks / Permission by laws, permission of banks are especially poignant.

Atlantic is directly about climate change: My god, I thought / My god, what a sunset / Blood red floods the Atlantic, and then later: Thinking I should get all this dying off of my mind / I should really know better than to read the headlines.

Finally, Separated pulls this together with the topic of how technology actually is pulling us apart: Separated by all the work we had to do / Separated by all the arguments you lose / Separated by all the things you thought you knew.

Lindeman focuses on the hollow promises of our modern systems. The race to the bottom, a term for government deregulation, is in full force, and the purveyors of power no longer need to actually provide anything to rake in money from the people, which is all they want. Curtiss documentary tells us how we got here; Lindemans words reflect the present.

Sonically, Lindemans album has a dream-like, stream-of-consciousness feel. Much like Destroyers 2010s output or albums like Montreals Paralytic Stalks or Julia Holters Have You in My Wilderness, Ignorance is lush with distant strings and continuous percussion to convey Lindemans messaging and musings in an incredibly digestible way. Her lyrics are direct and lock together seamlessly with her hooks and choruses.

Listeners will find a pleasant nostalgia for her NPR Tiny Desk Concerts, or, more broadly, the indie sounds that were most likely to appear on the channel around 2010 to 2014. The Weather Stations sound is organic and dedicated to the canonized instrumentation of piano, drums and strings.

Together, with the songs that have themes of societal collapse and degradation, theres a balance with more personal songs like Trust, Heart and Loss. To create a snapshot of a certain moment in time, its important to have those kinds of messages as well.

In Heart, she sings, My dumb eyes turn toward beauty / Turn towards sky, renewing / My dumb touch is always reaching / For green, for soft, for yielding. Lindeman finds herself digging deeper for something more important, something that has actual meaning, since it is no longer provided by the world around us. The myth is ours to make, for better or for worse.

Daily Arts writer Vivian Istomin can be reached at vivaust@umich.edu

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The Weather Station corrects the record that 'Ignorance' is not in us, but in what controls us. - The Michigan Daily

Thefinal episode ofClassic Rock's new podcast seriesThe 20 Million Clubis out now, with a look atMeat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell, the third best-selling album of all-time.

Hosted by British broadcasting legend Nicky Horne,The 20 Million Clubalso features guests appearances from Classic RockEditor Sin Llewellyn, alongside Scott Rowley, former Classic Rock Editor-In-Chief (and current Content Director of Music at Future).

On its release in 1977, few people would have put money on Bat Out Of Hell becoming the third best-selling album of all time. The week that it entered the UK album charts released October 1977, it didn't hit the chart until March 1978 an album called Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols sat at 31. Meat Loaf scraped in at 60.

In a year of massive change for the music business, Bat Out Of Hell seemed out of step: theatrical and overblown at a time when punk was seemingly ushering in a new wave of gritty realism and anti-rock stars. But maybe that was the secret to its success. Maybe it was the fun antidote to punk's nihilism and prog's navel-gazing. And what was Meat Loaf if not a new kind of rock star? Big and daft, with gloriously huge songs about teenage love and going-all-the-way, Bat Out Of Hell is both preposterous and actually very relatable.

This is the final episode of season 1 of The 20 Million Club, but you can catch up on the whole series now. Since launch the team have argued the merits ofAC/DCsBack In Black, Led Zeppelin's 4th album, Alanis Morisette's Jagged Little Pill, Queen's Greatest Hits, Prince's Purple Rain and Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon.

The 20 Million Clubcan be listened to right now onApple Podcasts and Spotify or anywhere you get podcasts.Subscribe to never miss an episode and please leave a review.

According to the Official Charts Company, Bat was in the UK Albums Charts for 522 weeks, and reached a high point of 9. Bat Out of Hell II went to number 1 but only stayed in the charts for 67 weeks. Bat Out Of Hell entered The UK Album Charts on March 5, 1978 for the first time (at no.60).

The picture above is a reissue of the Stoney and Meatloaf album from 1971. You can tell it's a reissue because the sleeve has Meatloaf (one word) as the lead artist, hoping to capitalise on the success of Bat Out Of Hell. But back in 1971, original sleeves had 'Stoney and Meatloaf' at the top. Stoney was Shaun Murphy, a singer who worked with Bob Seeger, Eric Clapton and later fronted Little Feat. The album was released on Rare Earth records, an imprint of Motown.

Even back in 1971, Meat's weight was used as a marketing device. Check out (I'd Love to be) As Heavy as Jesus:

A: Yes, there are millions. Just to choose one: Olias Of Sunhillow by Jon Anderson is more ridiculous than Bat Out Of Hell.Gentle Giant, Gong, Rush they had some crazy ideas for albums. In comparison, Bat is just a bunch of horny love songs.

In the podcast, Scott comments that he'd probably been sent an album that day that was more ridiculous. Was that true? "Well today," he said, "I got sent a press release for a band calledSuffocate For Fuck Sakebut yesterday's press release for'UK underground shitgrind act' Shiteater probably beats that: their album is called Annointed In Urine, Crowned in Faeces and the press release boasts that it contains 'elements of old school death metal, grindcore, and thrash for one thrilling stool loosening experience' and songs like Reigning From a Throne of Cold Porcelain, Uncontrolled Projectile Defecation, Left Hand Cack and Wicked Tyrant of Repugnant Feculence.

"C'mon: that is more ridiculous than Bat Out Of Hell."

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The 20 Million Club podcast: Is Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell the most ridiculous album of all time ? - Louder

"God has given us the internet as a hamster wheel... strap in and ride, bitch, Patricia Lockwood tweeted gleefully in January. The droll author has just released her first novel, No One Is Talking About This, in which she channels the whirling dervish of feeling awestruck/horrified/seduced by the online experience: that new slipstream of information, that locus of context collapse! Lockwood has previously published two books of poetry and the 2017 memoir Priestdaddy and contributes to the London Review of Books (including an uproarious deep dive into John Updikes slimy catalogue). Her latest work features an unnamed woman with ascendant social media notoriety navigating what she terms the portal, a Donnie Darko-sounding term for inglorious Twitter.

The portal is a mlange of observations (Capitalism! It was important to hate it, even though it was how you got money) and imagistic curios (a chihuahua perched on a mans erection, memorably). A critic for Bookforum marveled of Lockwood: Reading her metaphors is like watching someone pull out a scalpel and cut the cleanest line youve ever seen, and then in the next sentence throw the knife over her shoulder with her eyes closed, grinning. In a whiplash shift of tone, the novels second half shifts the stakes from digital absurdities to heartsick circumstances around early mortality and deep loss.

No One Is Talking about This

Lockwood spoke to ELLE.com via email about rethinking approaches to history, replicating internet behavioral patterns in literature, and the real necessity of charging ones phone in a separate room at night.

I liked the idea of there being an echo of internet language in the title, something almost co-written, that had been passed from hand to hand and put to many different purposes. And the protagonist puts the line to her own purpose in the second half of the book; she speaks of wanting to stop people in the hallways, grip them by the arm, and tell them what is happening to her and the people she loves. Do you know about this? No one is talking about this! I think in that moment, this becomes an all-encompassing word, able to contain anything, even a whole human life.

I dont think I couldve written it any other wayI had to work in the portals own form. The book had to resemble that reading experience, both in its fragmented nature and its sense of falling through a series of someone elses thoughts.

And as for it coalescing, part of the danger and the exhilaration of working on a book like this is that you dont know if it ever fully does. Its like the mercury the protagonist speaks of in the novels second half; the beads of it are always trembling toward each other, trying to come together into one shining piece.

Disparate-feeling moods is probably an understatement, haha. The first part takes place mostly inside the internet, so we see the protagonists face lit by that gentle blue glow. The second part is set in the heart of her family, and the light is that fluorescent light that we experience in the most urgent human situations. I united those moods for the simple reason that life unites them: Real life breaks in on us when we are doing something else, mindlessly moving among unexamined others, wasting our wonderful time.

Real life breaks in on us when we are doing something else, mindlessly moving among unexamined others, wasting our wonderful time.

Are we even in charge of our own informational hierarchies? I dont know the date of the Treaty of Versailles, but in its place Im storing the memory of that video a woman made to explain Gritty to the French. Gritty is popular because of nihilism. For some time, Americans have felt that life has no meaning. Gritty also has no meaning. It might seem that we have willfully and obstinately chosen the path of the absurd, but I think we have done so for a reason. The stones of historythe facts, the dates, the interpretationsno longer march in any sort of order, and neither does there seem to be an overarching narrative to modern life. How else have we experienced the last four, ten, twenty years but as an endless series of absurdities? To reflect that is realism, not perversity.

Perhaps I should have said that I wasnt concerned about having good taste, because I knew that was a standard I would never meet. But this knowledge freed me too. It allowed me tohunt my own Bigfoot, is what I wanted to write, so Ill just go with that. I was able to be idiosyncratic in my reading, my obsessions, the literary routes I traveled. As for my own criticism, I do write about a lot of dead people, and its hard to be wrong about dead people in a way that anyone cares about. So I wouldnt describe myself as a tastemaker so much as a little freaky clerk in the dead letter office, or a silverfish that has turned completely transparent in a library.

As a critic you pay more attention to structureyou often have to reverse-engineer a novel in order to think about it roundly. So probably some of those thoughts about structure do make their way into my own work, buttress it a bit, give it a nice bony nose. But my turn as a critic is also fairly recent, within the last few years, and I developed my voice and my aesthetic long before I thought of writing from the other side.

How else have we experienced the last four, ten, twenty years but as an endless series of absurdities? To reflect that is realism, not perversity.

2011 Twitter was truly a wild wild west; we followed each other early on and I think I just asked her! I even paid myself for her cover art for Balloon Pop Outlaw Black, which I love so much. We definitely share an aesthetic that is very centered on the body but also out in space, shooting starlight from every hole. Cartoonish, in the most playful sense of the word.

I do often have a vision of my workIm an unusually visual reader and that extends to my writing as well. I experience individual words as both images and tactile sensations, which I guess qualifies as synesthesia, though my form of it is not very flashy. Actually, I had a bit in the book for a while that talked about the protagonists overly literal case of synesthesia, where she saw ice cubes when she read the word refrigerator and heard a fife whenever she thought about the Revolutionary War, and thats pretty much me.

Its the easiest rule, and so impossible to live by: Dont look at your phone first thing in the morning! Charge it in another room, so you dont wake up at 4 a.m. and accidentally learn something new from British Twitter about Piers Morgan! No, when Im living my best life Im surrounded by books and pens and papers until three or four in the afternoon, totally absorbed, with a cat spread completely across my notebook because she hates all my ideas and wants me to become a tuna fisherman. Too online for me is absolutely a physical sensation, as it must be for all of us. When my blood starts to feel like Predator blood, I know that I have to get off.

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Patricia Lockwood on the Absurdity of Modern Life and Being Too Online - ELLE.com

Its anew dawn, its anew day and Marshall Gallagher is feeling good. Yesterday, the United States drew aline under four years of Donald Trumps inflammatory rhetoric and divisionary reign, swearing in its 46th President, Joe Biden. Today, Teenage Wrists singer and guitarist has woken up with abounce in his boots, filling his lungs with the fresh air of optimism as he heads out for awander around the sun-dappled streets of Koreatown, Los Angeles. The grim, sobering reality of the bigger picture still looms large over everything, but this isnt amoment for dwelling on the negatives. Today is for celebration, for renewal, for life and forliving.

The sun is out, its abeautiful day and Iget to go outside, which might not sound like much, but thats pretty rad, the frontman beams. Its about trying to stay positive. Im so happy that Trump has gone. Well, from office at least hes not going anywhere until he goes to fucking jail. Its all about squeezing the silver lining out ofeverything.

Mixed metaphors aside, Marshall makes avalid point, irrespective of politics. For reasons that hardly need explaining, optimism can be in short supply right now, but its important to cling onto the little things that get you through the day to recognise the glimmers of hope for abrighter tomorrow. He speaks from the perspective of contrasting prior experience, having been someone prone to pessimism in the past. But thats the old Marshall. The person talking to Kerrang! today is aman who has taken along, hard look at himself and made changes to become someone better, more positive someone to believe in. It makes his bands new album Earth Is ABlack Hole acomforting soundtrack for these strange, dark times were all experiencing, positioning Teenage Wrist as not only one of rocks best new bands, but also, maybe, an importantone.

If youre looking for any sort of meaningful change in the world, it seems like you have to start with yourself before you can work on anybody else, Marshall begins, before breaking into aself-aware cackle. Its like John Lennon said, man, You gotta free your mind instead!

This behavioural audit and newfound optimism didnt start out as alaughing matter, though. Alittle over two years ago, Teenage Wrist made waves in alternative music circles with their debut Epitaph Records full-length, Chrome Neon Jesus amelodic, modern take on grungy, shoegaze-soaked ennui. As Marshall and drummer Anthony Salazar began work on Earth Is ABlack Hole in 2019, however, much had changed. Having said goodbye to two band members, each faced up to some uncomfortable truths about themselves the natural culmination of a number of things according to thesinger.

Both of us had started this super-necessary journey of self-improvement in our personal lives, he explains. We made adeparture from negative energy, pessimism, ignorance and all the stuff that had bogged us both down. We were stuck in old cycles. We needed to start the process of growing the fuck up, and not being such bummers all the time. Oblivion and apathy took atoll on me, and it took atoll on some other people aswell.

In tandem, musically the band were edging away from their heads-down, naval-gazing origins, opting for more of aradio-friendly pop style of songwriting akin to Jimmy Eat World or Third Eye Blind, making a concerted effort to write faster tempos and working with co-writers to bring in outside perspectives. At the root of all this renewal was honest self-assessment, throwing out that which they had outgrown and attempting to become the band and the people they wanted tobe.

Im not an asshole, but Idefinitely recognise my tendency to just kind of shut down, says Marshall, reflecting on the beating he gave himself as part of this process. I used to accept the way that things were with an overwhelming sense of nihilism. For the first time, probably ever, Irecognised that as anegative thing in my life. Then we wrote the bulk of the record and well everythinghappened.

Had things gone according to plan, everyone would have heard these songs way before now, singing along with the duo in shared sweat-drenched spaces, as the band spread their carpe diem message and buoyant spirit around the world. Alas, that was not to be, despite the record having been wrapped in springtime last year. When producer Colin Brittains computer got hacked in the middle of it all, jeopardising the security of the recordings, theyd have been forgiven for assuming they were cursed, and the universe wasnt exactly backing this bold new upbeat direction. But theyve stayed resolute and doubled down on their determination to be the best versions of themselves. Marshall has started exercising and meditating and hes been busy with new music, writing songs for pop artists, and recording and producing an album with his dad and working with ex-Teenage Wrist bandmate Kamtin Mohager on his new Heavenward project. The devil makes work for idle hands,evidently.

Staying positive is always abattle, Marshall admits, being frank about how hard it can be undoing the habits of alifetime. As ahuman who has settled into behaviours and learned something over and over again from childhood to now, to break those cycles is tough. So obviously you fall back into the destructive things that hold you down sometimes. This record is about releasingthat.

[The song] Wear You Down is relentlessly negative, he offers by way of example, Im feeling so apathetic in it, Icant seem to find that spark within myself, but at the end of the song Im pleading, like, Please, somebody help me. Ineed to get out of this. Ifeel that way about the title track and Stella too. All these things on the surface appear to be prettymelancholy.

Shy not from that which tests us, appears to be the underlying message, however. Only through challenging ourselves will we discover what were capable of and who we reallyare.

I hope people read between the lines and catch the irony or the sarcasm in my lyrics, the frontman asserts. I hope they take the sadness thats being evoked and appreciate it as an important thing. We need to take events in our lives that are difficult and recognise them as the formative experiences that they are. Imean, obviously sometimes shit still happens and it just sucks, but you have totry.

If all goes well and taking aleaf out of Teenage Wrists book, lets hope they will across the course of 2021, life might return to something approaching normal again and the band could yet play this record in rooms surrounded by friends and fans. But what will those who havent seen Marshall in over ayear make of his new attitude and demeanour? Does he worry they might think, Who the hell is this guy?

I hope they do, he nods. I kind of hope to see that in afew of my friends as well. Ihope to affect some positive change: in my own circle, my family and my little unit. Istill maintain asense of pragmatism and cautious optimism. Im not about to become amotivational speaker, but maybe Im somewhere in the middle, for the sake of myself and the people around me (laughs).

What that means for you is up to you. Whether youre free to walk down your street today, regardless of how optimistic you are about those in power, or whether the sun is shining or not, try to find something positive to put your faith in and build from there. The sun might shine tomorrow, afterall.

Its fucking difficult, man, Marshall accepts of the challenge holding onto hope can be during all of this. Its really hard, but its not that hard. Ifeel like its okay to release some of the negativity and to talk about the things that are bringing you down on the journey of getting to aplace of acceptance. Youve got to acknowledge your problems to fix them. Thats what this record is allabout.

This too shall pass, then. Until it does, though, let Teenage Wrist guide you through the worst ofit.

Earth Is ABlack Hole is released on February 12 viaEpitaph.

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Posted on February 10th 2021, 1:00p.m.

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How Teenage Wrist "grew the f*ck up" and learned to celebrate life Kerrang! - Kerrang!

About two months ago I deleted Uber Eats from my phone.

Not because I didnt like using it. I loved it. Ordering precisely what you feel like eating, silently and seamlessly, only to have that hot meal delivered to your door within about 30 minutes is an obscene luxury, for a small fee. Its the kind of service-on-demand once reserved for the ultra wealthy. Now regular, middle-class nobodies lying hungover on their couches, working late in their living rooms, or isolating at home during a pandemic (all me) can do it too.

Like most cheap, modern luxuries though, there are hidden costs. And in 2020, it got harder to pretend we couldnt see them.

Restaurants are barely surviving. Delivery apps will kill them was a headline in the Washington Post last May, one of many stories exploring the predatory sign-up tactics and high commissions and fees deployed by the VC-funded, tech behemoths. In Australia, commission rates on the big apps hover around 30% significantly higher than the 20% rate recently legislated in New York.

But the most apparent human toll in Australia is even more literal. In a horror run last spring, five delivery riders were killed in three months. The deaths of these men all immigrants, some supporting families in their home countries came amid a slew of stories about working conditions for riders. We learned riders were often paid at rates lower than the minimum wage and, because they were classified as independent contractors, were working without many of the basic protections enjoyed by the rest of us.

These most vulnerable members of the labour force were also doing their jobs in an unsafe and frequently hostile working environment our city streets. This is particularly the case in Sydney, where some major media organisations have railed for decades against the construction of safe cycling infrastructure, state governments have previously torn up bike paths and talkback hosts routinely dehumanise cyclists.

Until December, I had justified my use of the apps through a belief that only intervention by governments, via labour laws and cycling infrastructure, would make delivery safer and bring these companies to heel. In the meantime, what was the point of depriving more people of work? Especially during a pandemic. Every time I read a horror story though, I found myself tipping a little more.

But after the fourth death, in November, the disgust became overwhelming. As one friend put it to me: I cant bear the thought of someone dying delivering me a McFlurry.

That was it. I deleted the app and havent used it, or any of its competitors, since.

Learning to live without them has been more of an adjustment than Id like to admit. Ultra-convenience is addictive.

But this adjustment was actually just a reversion. While the apps are no doubt a godsend for those with mobility issues, for most of us, living without them means returning to the entirely comfortable lives we were living just five or 10 years ago.

Instead of ordering on a whim, now I either cook something good, fix up something crap, or get takeaway from a place in walking or driving distance, or one that has its own delivery drivers (they still exist!).

The incentive to cook better food has been an unequivocal plus, forcing me to be more adventurous and ambitious. On the nights when I cant be bothered doing something proper, I discovered, just as generations have before me, that I can sustain myself by throwing together whatever is in the kitchen. This approach reminds me of the Sunday night dinners I often had as a kid, when my tired parents would just let us eat baked beans, or eggs, or cereal in front of the TV.

This approach has also saved me a lot of money. Like a lot of online shopping, Id been ordering food mindlessly, with only a brief thought about each transactions value, or if I could afford it. Cooking is almost always cheaper (especially the aforementioned CBF meals) and so is old-school takeaway.

The standard order my boyfriend and I got from a local Thai place was about $40 through the apps ($35 for the meal plus around $5 for delivery), and I would always add a guilt-tip (which would only amplify my guilt, as I assisted our slide towards a nightmarish US-style tipping economy). The same takeaway order directly over the phone from the restaurant comes with a 15% discount (an incentive to stop people using the apps), so costs just $29.75.

All of these changes have cost me one thing time. One reason the apps are so popular is because so many people are burned out, stressed, or seduced by convenience. Delivery let me ignore questions of dinner until that moment I had finally finished work, returned from the gym, or had a drink with a friend, by which time I was already ravenous, possibly a little buzzed, and the neighbourhood grocery store was long since closed.

But rather than adding to my stress, having to plan meals again somehow made life less so. Some days its been a good incentive to stop working earlier, to close my laptop and go to the shops, walk to the pizza place, or start chopping onions.

Cooking is one of those activities that requires both your hands and all your attention. Walking to pick up takeaway forces you to, well, go for a walk. The change in habit forced me to be on my devices a bit less, to be in my actual life and neighbourhood a bit more.

The process has made me think about how a lot of technological advances do save us time, but time for what? For me, the answer was often just more time working, or more time mindlessly online. Making my own food feels like a reclamation of time I too easily ceded to things far less nourishing.

I have no illusions that my stance will make a whole lot of difference. Like many of the infinitesimal consumer choices we make for ethical reasons, like switching to Keep Cups, or refusing to shop at Amazon, its done in the face of overwhelming economic forces, environmental destruction and human misery.

We still need governments to take a stand against the corporations reshaping our lives and our communities for the worse; to make our cities safer for everyone, including cyclists; to stop the creation of permanent underclasses of workers making less than the minimum wage. So far the response from Australian governments has been slow and meagre (though Labors policy announcement on Wednesday of greater protections for gig workers is encouraging).

But the value of exercising what little agency you have in an unjust world should not be discounted. And neither should resisting the pervasive nihilism of our age, that makes us feel like the changes brought on by these companies are some unstoppable force; that there is no other way to live. You dont need a long memory to know that is not true.

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I quit food delivery apps the absurd convenience was not worth the cost - The Guardian

Photo: Fernando Ortiz

Sludge-caked guitars, brutally slow tempos and unsettling premonitions of imminent doom rule the day onThe Event backed with Abuse, the latest from Nashville experi-metalers My Wall. Out Friday via drummer Carlos Ortizs No Sabes label, the 45-RPM 12-inch follows Aprils longformMine, which consisted of five trudging, gnarly tracks inspired by Sunn O))) and the mighty Electric Wizard among other nihilist noise-mongers, splayed across 46 minutes.

My Wall serves up a smaller dose of doom this time around, yet sounds even more troubled and feral than before. I want people to hear it and say That was bleak and fucked up, Ortiz tells theScene.To mark the release, the trio will perform a virtual gig from The 5 Spot Friday at 8 p.m. Below, hear the new tracks and put in an order via Bandcamp, and check out my talk with Ortiz, bassist Vaughn Walters and guitarist-vocalist Frank Hand.

Where are each of you from?

Vaughn Walters, bass: West Virginia.

Carlos Ortiz, drums: South Nashville.

Frank Hand, vocals and guitar: Born in Birmingham, but went to high school here in Nashville.

How did you discover the type of music My Wall plays?

FH: I was really into grunge growing up Nirvana, Soundgarden, Melvins, all that Northwest stuff. Bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana, thered always be a song that was heavier than the others like the Pumpkins The Aeroplane Flies High, which is super heavy and slow basically a doom song. But when Id get on Pandora and type the titles of those songs in, it would just give me more 90s alternative stuff. No! I want wholebandslike thatThen, in college, I got turned onto Electric WizardsDopethroneand was like Whoa, OK,thisis what I was looking for.

VW: Give me something like Smashing Pumpkins, but more satanic. [laughs]

Is there a difference between doom and sludge, to you?

FH: I think doom is more broad, and sludge is generally dirtier closer to hardcore punk.

Carlos, you grew up here in Nashville. What was your musical upbringing like?

CO: My dad was always into rock music, 105.9 The Rock and stuff. The first shop I ever went to was Phonoluxe. Thirteen was when I really started getting into music that was heavier, faster, weirder collecting CDs and trying to learn every instrument I could. I just wanted to keep pushing my limits, my musicianship, as much as possible. But I didnt start taking drums seriously till way later, when I started my first band Negra and met Frank.

FH: I was in a band called Poodle when Carlos was in Negra. He and I were talking at a show and were like Where are all the doom bands in this town? We saw an opportunity, so we took it.

CO: I also had this band Magmar that was sort of an offshoot of Negra a bass-and-drums duo, Lightning Bolt-type thing. That was a different sort of heaviness, but my approach was the same letting as much out as I could, just at a different pace. With this band, I just want to be as aggressive and as heavy as I can, naturally.

How do you get yourself in the proper headspace to play music that is so intense?

FH: We all focus on mindfulness in our lives in some way.

VW: Where mindfulness meets nihilism.

FH: We all really like this type of music, [even] if some people find it depressing or whatever.

What do your families think? Too loud?

VW: Theres basically nobody who doesnt think its too loud. [laughs]

FH: Carlos mom got really concerned this one time while I was recording vocals in his shed.

CO: Yeah, she was grilling outside and he was going at it in there.

FH: It was one of these new ones, Abuse I think, and she thought something was really wrong, that someone was in real danger. She came in to check, and I could see it in her face. I had to talk her down in Spanish. Todo bien grabando. [Its OK, we were recording.]

Have you been happy with the response My Wall has received in Nashville up to now?

FH: From the people who give it a chance, yeah. Weve played a lot of shows at Bettys to four people. I love Bettys. Weve played there more than anywhere else, and really shaken that place.

Outside the band, whats some music thats helped get you through the last year?

VW: Sharon Van Ettens first record,Because I Was In Love.

CO: This label called Analog Africa, out of Hamburg, Germany. Theyve rediscoveredall this psychedelic cumbia, funk-soul stuff from Ghana and different sections of Africa. Sick label.

FH: I just picked up the Emma Swift record,Blonde on the Tracks. Listened to it earlier tonight and probably will again after this. Its perfect.

Read the original here:

My Wall: The Cream Interview - Nashville Scene

Is it true that it doesn't matter who wins, that our government has an agenda so firmly set in stone that it will tick on no matter which party is in power? (CBC)

This column is an opinion on the N.L. electionby William Ping, who lives in St. John's. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

When the Newfoundland and Labrador election wasannounced, I asked everyone I knew what were their main concerns for the upcoming race.

I heard a variety of responses;people were concerned with taxes or the vaccine rollout, or even the province's over-reliance on oil and gas. But the one sentiment I heard from everybody was, "It doesn't matter who wins, everything will be the same anyway."

I'll admit, I can feel that way too.

Would the turnover to a new regime create an impact we could actually feel? My first instinct would be to say "no," and then point toour national neighbours to the south and say, "Now that's where the results of an election matter."

Butsurely this must be wrongheaded, short-sighted thinking.

Is it true that it doesn't matter who wins, that our government has an agenda so firmly set in stone that it will tick on no matter which party is in power?

I think back to the election of Dwight Ball in 2015 and the calamitous fallout when the province's budget was announced in 2016. None of us can forget the protests following that budget, with angry public confrontations and posters ordering Ball's resignation taped to poles throughout the city.

While the blame fell squarely on the shoulders of Ball, then finance minister Cathy Bennett and the Liberal party, was there really anything else they could do?

The economy they inherited already had its drastic pitfalls and their onslaught of taxes was perhaps the only way out of it. That said, there was an unfair advantage given to Newfoundland's upper class: the Bay-geoisie, if you will.

But if Paul Davis and the PC Party had been re-elected in 2015, would it have not been his face on the posters when the eventual budget was announced?Would we have not blamed him for the same things?

And what of the epic boondoggle that is Muskrat Falls? The disastrous project remains to be the root of many problems in the province, and while the Danny Williams-led government can be made to blame, it must be noted that it is unlikely that this project would have unfolded exactly the same way under the leadership of another party.

After all, every premier since Frank Moores in 1972 had attempted to start a Lower Churchill project and none had succeeded until Williams. If another governing body had been the one to establish the project, perhaps things could have unfolded differently.

Conjecture like this is admittedly somewhat pointless. Not only is there little value in fixating on what could have been but also we must consider that sometimes defining moments during a premiership are not related to campaign promises or the issues we are thinking about on voting day.

Sometimes the lastingeffects of government are related to decisions and problems that none of us could have seen coming.

Certainly two years ago, none of us would've said, "I think Dwight Ball will handle the upcoming global pandemic well."

It is entirely possible that if the government were in someone else's hands that our response to the dangers of the novel coronavirus could have gone more poorly. The province's well-handled response to COVID, greatly aided by the isolation of our province formerly something that rarely worked in our favour can likely be just as credited to the efforts of Dr. Janice Fitzgerald and John Haggie, perhaps even more so thanBall.

The efficiently managed COVIDresponse is certainly one major boon for Furey and the Liberal party in this election, although the spectre of the Moya Greene report looms large over this election.

Even when defending the as-yet non-existent report, Furey makes its unknown nature sound scary, saying in turn that there is no "frightful" budget ahead and that there is "no bogeyman" hiding in the pages of Greene's report.

Of course, we have heard this song and dance before, when Ball was on the campaign trail promising no job cuts as well as future tax cuts. Furey's opposition leader,Ches Crosbie, is leaning on the "secret" nature of the report, with his campaign website alleging that the report contains plans to have "deep cuts" to services like "ferries and hospitals" while simultaneously alleging that the Liberals have "no plan."

While I agree with Crosbie's general suspicion of the Greene report, I think his attack lines fall flat, as we know them to be both contradictory and opportunistic. Crosbie's own suggested plans include tax cuts for big businesses like Loblaws, the same company that has already besmirched their local employees of an extra two dollars an hour. Indeed, it would appear that no matter which party wins, the Bay-geoisie will continue to profit.

So does the election matter? Would the candidates affect our lives if elected?

Despite the nihilism, of course the answer is yes, elections matter, and yes, different governing bodies will lead to different outcomes for the province.

While there would likely be no immediately felt change at the moment a regime changes, the change can be felt over time.

When Muskrat Falls comes online and power bills spike, we will have finally felt what it meant to have Williams as premier, albeit not until several years after he left office.What are we, the average citizens, to do about it?

Perhaps the way forward is for citizens to raise issues and push the candidates towardideas and goals that we desire.

Take for example, Furey's recent suggestion that school washrooms should provide tampons to whoever may need the product. This is a common-sense initiative, and although it does carry the potential to be divisive, when prodded on the matter Crosbie said he"probably" could support it. An underwhelming support of the issue, yes, but at the very least the issue is now part of the conversation.

It is up to the citizens to push and direct the conversations that the party leaders are having, and while our future seems to be one of precarity and hollow campaign promises, we must engage in democracy.

For despite all the campaign attack lines, there is one thing we know to be true: the province is in dire financial straits and big changes will have to be made. Changes that will likely please few.

No matter who winner is, the province loses.

Money, that is.

Indeed, that's all there ever is.

Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador

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Does the election even matter? Here are my reasons to silence your inner nihilist - CBC.ca

The institutions are functioning. This phrase has been repeated, with or without a question mark, in the United States for over four years and, since the end of the military dictatorship, it has not been used as much in Brazil.

Its hard to believe the institutions are working when we wake up to news that a rogue QAnon spokesperson manages to hold the Republican leadership hostage in the House in Washington, and that a distraught extremist has won the leadership of the powerful Constitution and Justice Commission in Brasilia.

The functioning of the institutions does not depend solely on the independence of the three powers. In the American case, more than two centuries of unbroken constitutional rule have been crucial in stemming the lawless wickedness of Donald Trump. He had neither the time nor the competence to undermine the entire institutional apparatus of the federal government. But he has tried and achieved successes that will mark the legislature and the bench, in addition to Joe Bidens tenure.

The funeral ceremony at the Capitol Roundabout on Wednesday (3), when MPs and Senators paid tribute to policeman Brian Sicknick, murdered during Trumps invasion of the House, spoke of the contrast to the violence and chaos that reigned supreme in the same room. , January 6th. A sign that the institutions are functioning?

The presence of Republican leader Mitch McConnell at the roundabout does not eclipse the fact that he has spent the past two weeks maneuvering to obstruct the Senate committee scrutiny that Democrats have rightfully won at the polls. The nihilism of the party is still personified by the leadership of McConnell, who, despite hating Trump, decided the former president was a useful idiot.

The tenuous Democratic control of the Senate 50 seats plus Vice President Kamala Harris tie-breaker vote at a time when the Republican Party does not decide whether it wants to be the bunch of lunatics and renegades that instigated the Capitol breach , makes it more urgent. question: does the Senate work?

In the mythology of American exceptionalism, a clich coined in the 19th century describes the Senate as the greatest deliberative body in the world. No one demoralized this pride more than McConnell himself by declaring in 2010 that his only mission was to make Barack Obama president for one term.

The composition of the Senate is often criticized as a guarantee of minority power, a modern Republican electoral project since the years of Richard Nixon. Since every state, regardless of its population, has the same right to send two senators to Washington, the 50 Democratic senators today represent 41 million more Americans than the 50 Republican senators.

Tuesday (9) we will have another opportunity to ask ourselves whether the Senate serves American democracy or the power projects of its members. Unfortunately, there is no suspense in sight. It will be impossible to rally Republican voices to condemn Donald Trump in the second and unprecedented impeachment trial.

If in the first trial a year ago hypocrisy was barely disguised as absolving the presidents criminality, this time the senators who insisted Biden stole the election are more difficult.

How can a large deliberative body go unpunished for a president who launched the terrorist invasion, which barely claimed the lives of its members?

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Trump's impunity is another sign of the degradation of the US Senate 02/03/2021 Lcia Guimares KSU | The Sentinel Newspaper - KSU | The Sentinel...