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It's because of the secret nuclear weapons plant there.

I think it's very unlikely that a nice old potter is hiding a nuclear weapons manufacturing facility in an old growth forest.

That's what makes it the perfect hiding place.

But yeah, seeing that beautiful form of life sounds like the potential for an uplifting spiritual experience.

when I logged into youtube, this was one of the videos it recommended for me. Youtube is pretty smart. It knows how much I love horrormirth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD1Sd9SC4fM&feature=rec-HM-rev-rn

And to respond to some of that military shit: my contract says that the USMC can change my MOS any time until I go to basic. However, I am about 95% sure they won't, since they flew a band director up from KC (more than 500 miles away) to audition me, after I had already enlisted with my MOS as an electrician. Also, my recruiter had to beg me about 4 times to audition and make about 10 promises of good things to come if I changed my MOS to musician (none of which I got on paper, of course). Given these circumstances, I've pretty much ruled out the possibility that this is an elaborate bait and switch to turn me into an infantryman.

PS: Thanks, Nigel. I was really happy I did good in the audition, since I haven't practiced hardcore in a few months. Of course, it helped that I had studied the solo I played for the audition with my horn prof before i left school

I went to the midnight showing and enjoyed it. The preview for Sherlock Holmes made me want to go postal.
The movie was quite entertaining. The cave scene was very well done, the bathroom fight with Malfoy was good, Ron's love potion scene was legit funny, and the quidditch looked phenomenal. The dude who played Slughorn was great, and the broad who played Luna once again blew me away (they should have written her into more scenes). WTF was up with the Burrow attack? And Malfoy? They made him look like more of a dufus than they should have. Way too much focus on the shitty teenage love pentagram. And they really butchered the last 50 pages or so. I was eagerly anticipating an epic battle and a great funeral scene, but I left the theatre disappointed. All in all, I thought it was better than any of the previous films.

Psykovsky

Pretty much the ultimate in psychedelic dance music in my opinion. Only if you like things fast though.

Tchaikovsky is much better. This was pretty generic, IMO.

For psychedelic dance music, I'd go for above & beyond, infected mushroom, or jam & spoon. I'll have to check out Filteria and Pleiadians

Infected Mushroom > Psykovsky? Generic? You are so lol!
Perhaps it just takes a while of being into psytrance and the like to really get into stuff like Psykovsky but I've never found anything else so complex and goosebumpish.

Perhaps. I try not to pretend I know a lot about EDM, because I don't. I just thought I'd contribute my uninformed opinion and try to learn. I've hence listened to other Psykovsky tracks and think its better than my first impression. But none of the tracks I've listened to so far have grabbed me. A psychoactive drug would probably improve my perception of them. Its one of the big reasons I like the aforementioned artists.
Checked out the track Alcyone by the Pleiadians; it was a trip. I understand why IFO got sweet reviews.
Thanks for that list, AS. I just listened to Luomuhappo. Batshit crazy fucking COOL song.

Way to get the thread back on topic, Cain.

Led by Thatcher, western governments told the countries of the former Soviet Bloc that if they wanted prosperity, they had to import the free market.  The notion that one set of policies could have the same beneficial results in the widely different former countries of the Soviet Bloc was absurd, but it was of a piece of the mindset of the International Monetary Fund that had imposed similar policies on highly dissimilar countries, such as Indonesia, Nigeria and Peru.  Along with the bureaucrats of the IMF, emissaries were dispatched to the post-communist lands, carrying the same draft constitutions in their briefcases.  No matter how discrepant the countries they descended on, these neo-liberal ideologues tried to impose the same model on them all.

The IMF is also an international loan shark, loaning billions to these same countries for "infrastructure" and "development." This money ends up getting embezzled at just about every step of the bureaucracy, which leaves little to improve infrastructure and help out anyone who doesn't work for the government. Then that government is in massive debt to the IMF forever. The IMF and its neo-liberal policies are great for maintaining colonialism now that it can't be done directly.

Military recruiters are notoriously honest people.


No, really.

This isn't from my recruiter, this is anecdotal evidence gathered from the 60 other people at my recruit station waiting to ship out. At least 2/3 are signed up to be infantry, and are proud of it.

Psykovsky

Pretty much the ultimate in psychedelic dance music in my opinion. Only if you like things fast though.

Tchaikovsky is much better. This was pretty generic, IMO.

For psychedelic dance music, I'd go for above & beyond, infected mushroom, or jam & spoon. I'll have to check out Filteria and Pleiadians

ok assholes, I know I might die, i know there's a decent chance I'll end up in the desert, but I'll probably just play my french horn in one of the many bases stateside or in japan. they have so many people that CHOOSE to be infantry i don't really have to worry.

I meant to post this earlier, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij4w6_S_3Ls . General Stuart's band covers this tune.

mmmm. Bob Dylan is yummy. I'll have to check out your cover, general.

Here's something a little different. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UgFUEuc2JA

I'm going into the Marines as a musician (French horn, specifically), so I have a pretty low chance of getting sent into the desert to fight terrorism. They'll need me at home inspiring patriotism with my heavenly tones. I'm joining the Marines because I want the most intense and highest quality combat training available to me. I don't expect to have a whole lot of fun, but I do expect to learn a lot, and I think it will be good for me. The shittiest part so far is keeping my piss clean.

I hope to the gods you aren't referring to bluegrass yodeling, because that is my chief reason for hating bluegrass.

The banjo can be an amazing instrument if used by non-muppetfuckers (example: The Public Enemies bank robbery song). The problem is, the banjo and mandolin are played by this kid:



Now if someone without a history of inbreeding in their gene pool were to say, "bring it back" and reclaim the instruments normally associated with bluegrass, i wouldn't have nearly the amount of contempt i have for it.

But that isn't going to happen anytime soon.

Bluegrass yodeling and Tuvan throat singing are not at all related. Here is throat-singing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M3YFK3sJ54 Notice that most of the time he is producing at least two pitches with his voice, one in in the normal register, one a few octaves above it.

Here are some musicians who have "brought back" some of the traditional bluegrass instruments: Bela Fleck, Tony Trischka, Pete Wernick, Sufjan Stevens, Tim O'Brien, Alison Krauss, Jerry Douglas.
Now the two people on this list who don't really play bluegrass so much, but bluegrass instruments, are Bela Fleck and Sufjan Stevens. Stevens has been known to pull out the banjo on occasion, along with 80 other instruments. Here is a sweet little ballad, one of his more popular songs, which is just him and his banjo:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4tkiGvV_ek
Bela Fleck is probably the best banjo player alive, and performs with a jazz/bluegrass/folk/pop fusion group. Here is a sample of their shit:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWNiFw_W3mA&feature=related

Just so you know what happens on the UK "job seekers", ie; unemployed scheme.  You can decide whether or not its a good scheme.

1.  If you have been unemployed for more than 2 weeks (IIRC) then you can apply to a Job Centre for benefits while you look for work.  These benefits are conditional on you actively seeking work.

2.  You go in, are interviewed and assessed.  Under jobseekers alone, you are eligible for up to £60 a week.  I believe there are additional benefits for those with families or children, but I don't know much about them in personal detail.

3.  You also get to charge any trips you make, which are over £5 in cost, to interviews, so long as you confirm it beforehand and get a receipt (I once got screwed out of £150 worth of travel expenses because I didn't confirm beforehand, despite receipts, proof of interview etc etc).

4.  After six months of continuous unemployment, you are put on the New Deal.  This gives you additional funds which you can apply for if you think they are necessary to you getting a job (unless you need something like a laptop, in which case you can fuck off, even if 95% of your applications are done by computer).  It also gives you cheaper travel within your county and forces you to attend mandatory training classes, where such wonderful skills as "writing a CV" or "literacy and numeracy in the workplace" are taught.

5.  If, after a 24 month continuous period, you are still unemployed, the government will place you with a corporate partner (which you are required to comply with, or else your benefits are cut to nothing), subsidize your wages in order to entice said company into this, and you will work there until you find employment elsewhere, or are sacked. 


Personally, I think it sucks.  £50 is what I get from this, per week, and its a quarter of what I can get on the minimum wage.  Because I'm mostly applying locally, travel costs come in at just under £5.  Because I'm paying rent to my parents, there is no help for that, despite most of my benefits going towards that single cost.  Their "training programs" aren't worth shit for anyone with beyond the standard high school qualifications and most people who went into apprenticeships (ie the vast majority of people unemployed right now), and the additional funds have abitrary limits on them that make them worthless.  Finally, if I cannot get a job, a company will be coerced into taking me on (No resentment there, eh?) and I will be paid below minumum wage for whatever monkey work they decide I should do.

The problem isn't that I lack skills.  The problem is the economy is in the shitter and every employer thinks a graduate will cut and run the moment they get a better deal, even when there are no better deals going.  The government works from the premise that there are jobs, its just people aren't finding them.  This isn't the case.  I've applied for factory work in cases where there have been over 200 applicants.  Hell, I've gotten the paper the morning it came out on, rang to find out about a job and found it is already closed due to the sheer volume of applications they now have to sort through.

There are no jobs.  The system was designed on the premise that there would always be jobs and that the only people who couldn't get one are the terminally stupid and useless.  Going by a quick, informal poll of my friends, friends of my friends and their friends, just 3 in 20 of the people who graduated last year have managed to find permament employment suited to their skill level.  And most of those were a matter of luck or connections.

That is a really shitty situation, Cain. That sucks that such a small minority of college grads can find real work.
Wouldn't it be great if there were more jobs to be had, if the world economy wasn't so fucked up?
I, too, am unemployed. But because I've never been employed continuously by one company for more than a year, I can't even draw unemployment. The only job I have been able to get since I dropped out of college was in business to business sales, getting payed straight commission for selling Chinese shit that no one wants or needs. That was worse than being unemployed.
But I'm going to USMC basic training in a couple of months, so I won't have to worry about money anymore. I think its worth selling 4 years of my life to my fucked up government to be financially set for the rest of it.

Tuvan throat singing?  What the fuck?  Who the fuck listens to that?  Not even the fucking Tuvans, that's who.

There's nothing funnier than a pair of pretentious fuckweasels trying to out-esoteric each other.

There is no "but".  Bluegrass is unmitigated GARBAGE, recorded for assbats with green teeth.

Did you listen to the throat singing? It is a creative method of tone production that I find to be aesthetically pleasing.
Bluegrass is not garbage. Bluegrass can be shitty, just like any genre of music. But it can be simply beautiful, or fast-paced and exciting, too. There are some shitty rock bands and great rock bands; shitty DJ's and great DJ's; shitty rappers and great rappers.
There are talented and musical bluegrass players; calling their work garbage because you don't like the sounds of their instruments, don't like the vocal style, don't like the way it's presented, or don't like the people the music is associated with is narrow minded and cockish.

218: You stay up until 4:30 in the morning reading pages of shit like this.