The Glair - Imagine the World without a Pope
Imagine the World without a Pope
By Johnson Willy Geeter for Missive News
Last updated: 7:20 PM
Monday, September 18, 2006
Recently this reporter was privileged to attend a pro-Islamic rally at an undisclosed Mosque in the center of a major urban area in the heart of Europe.
“Imagine a world without the Pope!” These striking words, shouted in reaction to the pope’s critical condemnation of the supposed violent tendencies of Islam by the Ayatotal Jihadallalah, sparked a chorus of approval. Young Muslims immediately burned the pope in effigy, as if on cue. The Ayatotal (a.k.a. the Grand Muffititi) an outspoken proponent of world Islam continued with his fiery diatribe.
“Islam, that most reasonable of all religions, cannot tolerate such criticism and unreasonableness! Words kill us in our heart, make us bleed with fear and sensitivity, and saying bad things about us makes us feel really bad inside. Deep down inside. To correct this feeling of shame and bitterness we will all feel better when we have killed the pope!” Another roar of approval followed.
“When you criticize Islam it is like criticizing an unclean woman on her menstrual flow. You cannot do this and not expect the Wrath of Allah!”
“Our prophet said, ‘Kill all the Infidels’ and I say yes, kill everyone as the prophet says, peace be upon him. And the quickest way to peace is through killing!” At this point thousands of Muslims in attendance began to shout, “Yes, kill for peace! Kill for peace! Peace be upon them! Let them die.”
“We call the curse of Allah down upon the head of the infidel. Only then will the infidel understand that we kill him for his own good, so that he may burn in hell in the name of Islam. Peace be upon them! Peace be upon them!”
Allah was unavailable for comment, but speaking through his spokesman, the Grand Muffititi, it is apparent that Allah would naturally approve of the sentiment.
“Reason tells us that there is no way but our way. Reason tells us that we must blindly ignore all criticism and look away from the evidence. The evidence is a trick of the Great Satan. The Great Satan is the Father of Truth that lies. We must be children of lies that speak the truth. It is not up to us to reform, it is up to the infidels to die. There’s nothing wrong with us that a little mass killing can’t fix.”
“You tell em Titi!” A voice could be heard to shout in the background. Another roar of chants went up. “Titis for all Muslims, Titis for all Muslims!” At this the Ayatotal Jihadallalah smiled knowingly and nodded his approval.
“Yes, all Muslims should have Titis,” said the Ayatotal. “This is the way we are and the way we act. True Muslims have Titis and need their Titis to lead them!”
“Allah be praised,” was the natural reaction.
“We are like the American gansta rappers, we must be merciless and grab our crotches whenever we hear devilish criticisms of the true faith. We must frown and seek our revenge, we must be hard, street hard, and put on our game face, we must bust a move for Allah! We must pop a cap in any bitch who opens their mouth to backtalk us. Backtalk us bitch and get the prophetical beat-down!” The crowd erupted once more in pleasure.
“But, but, but…” continued the Ayatotal Titi, “deep inside we are like a delicate, little, vulnerable buttercup of a flower, full of peace and sunshine like the prophet, peace be upon him. We only cap bitches because they need a cappin. If we had our preference then we’d just beat out bitches till they was black and blue, wrap em up in bed sheets, knock em up, and keep em down on the old plantation. Bitches ain’t no trouble down on the plantation! Specially whens they can’t read nor write.”
“The pope is an old bitch! America is a good-looking bitch! Israel is a hot bitch!!” the crowd screamed fanatically with desire.
“That’s right,” shouted the Ayatotal in return. “And Islam knows how to treat her bitches. We enslave them! And if they backtalk us then set them on fire with petrol. And brothers, do we have plenty of petrol.”
“Yeah, plenty of petrol, plenty of petrol!” The young Muslim men shouted in loud cadence.
“But not so much we don’t need nuclear energy!”
“We need nuclear energy! We need nuclear energy!” came the determined reply.
“Burn the pope with uranium!”
“Burn the pope with uranium!”
“Peace through Jihad!”
“Peace through Jihad”
“Reason through murder!”
“Reason through murder!”
“Now imagine a world without a pope. How we gonna get there?”
“Kill that bitch!”
“Now you understand Islam,” said the Ayatotal Jihadallalah. “So go forth into all the world and spread the Good News!”
© JWG 2006
Showing posts with label rappers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rappers. Show all posts
Monday, September 18, 2006
Thursday, September 14, 2006
The Exchange - Why Modern Music Sucks
The Exchange - Why Modern Music Sucks
A couple of weeks back I went to the library. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular to read or listen to, just sort of browsing. I went by the music section to pick up some Opera and Art music, probably Verdi and Bach. My love affair with modern and popular music waned a long time ago as music began to decline, but occasionally I’ll still listen to stuff from earlier eras of even modern stuff just to see what it sounds like. I got a truly fantastic CD by the Squirrel Nut Zippers called Ballroom Bedlam that I highly recommend, but that’s a tale for another day. And my personal newsletter.
Anyhow while at the popular shelf I saw a CD called Hits of the Seventies and another called Greatest Hits of the Eighties. In my opinion neither CD had the greatest hits of those eras but the music included as tracks for the seventies was nearly all good, and there were a couple of stand out tracks on the eighties collection.
So I checked them out along with the new copy of Handel’s Messiah I got my hands on and went home and listened to both CDs. While I was listening I began to think to myself that popular music from the seventies and part of the eighties was vastly superior to most of the stuff produced nowadays and I began to wonder exactly why that was. I’ve always known this to be true and it’s why I don’t listen to local music radio stations anymore, just music off the satellite. But I began to really wonder if I could formulate real reasons for why the popular music produced 30 years ago was so much superior to the popular music currently produced. So I began to think on the matter and soon the seventies disk was over. So I put on the eighties disk and the very first song was an old song entitled Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles. Now I liked that song when I was younger but while listening to it this time I was suddenly struck by just how good the song was, and what it was really saying. Then I had an epiphany of sorts about popular music, then, and now. And slowly it began to take shape in my mind the exact reasons why modern music sucks so badly. Viciously really. Like an 8 lb. Oreck.
The first reason, and this is blatantly obvious if you stop to think of it for just a moment or two, is exactly what the Buggles’ song was speaking of. Video, and video music, and video images make it possible for supposed musical talent to fake being a real musician. Whereas in the past everyone in a band could play at least one instrument, everyone could read music, even if only in shortcut form, and everyone had exposure to making music personally, nowadays you don’t have bands, or musicians, you have singers, and acts. Music is no longer the important function of being a musician, performance is. Video has made it possible for acts to survive on appearance alone, devoid of anything any past age would recognize as in any way resembling real musical talent. Singing and dancing are the new music. Sounds and noises are the new tones. Squeals and raps are the new lyrics. Bitching and moaning is the new art. Thank God music has finally arrived.
Prepackaged individuals whose only real musical talent, if you can call it that, is singing and maybe dancing (often not) have debased music from the playground of the musician, professional or amateur, to the jungle of the entertainer. And the entertainer is always a professional, even when it is obvious he is not. Because video is like stage magic, it doesn’t rely upon the actual physical skill of the magician to make real things happen (in this case music), it relies upon the ability of the magician to deceive the audience into thinking something real is happening. And baby does it work. Because very, very little real popular music has been made since about 1985, but the way people lick up any old piece of auditory crap nowadays you would think they were starving to ingest a scurvy infested turd. But I can’t really blame em too much because turds and words is what passes for music nowadays, and the music industry is more than happy to hock what will hang in a dry wind. Why go to all the trouble of recruiting talented bands and real musicians when you can hire some guy who can dance and sing and all of your troubles are taken care of? Besides entertainers are a lot easier to promote because the entertainer has a natural talent for self-promotion that few real musicians possess. And then again if you are a performer and entertainer and you know that your shot at stardom is gonna come on stage, and not from any musical skill, then why bother to learn music? Your time is much better spent learning dance moves and vocal tricks. Real musicians don’t become American Idols, entertainers do. And that’s what the modern audience expects and wants, an entertainer. The music industry has pushed that kinda crap for so long that nobody much remembers what the real thing looks like anymore. A musician today is 9 parts entertainer, 1 part musician. And music nowadays is 90% performeration, and 10% imitation.
But aside from the fact that so few popular acts nowadays have any real musical talent at all, much less know anything about music; you also have the vexing problem of versatility. There is none. All acts today produce a million different versions of the same song, in the same type or category of music in which they will always produce the same kind of music they will during their entire careers. In other words you just play the same tune and sing the same song over and over again and vary the dancers and video images. This is related to the fact of the Balkanization of musical genres nowadays, a subject I’ll get to in a moment, but for right now let me just say that the lack of versatility and flexibility on the part of modern musicians (and every time I use this term in this article I feel more and more like I’m prostituting the word, making a whore of music so that the musician may eat cake) is a sort of microcosm of the entire musical industry. A band makes metal death hardcore split spine incest apathy tunes and that’s all they will ever make, metal death hardcore split spine incest apathy tunes. A performer makes R&B tracks, and she couldn’t even conceive of writing her own songs, much less of remaking an old bluegrass song. A gangsta rappa puts his pile on the streets, day after day, but he couldn’t imagine writing or performing a love ballad. I guess he’s afraid that if he smiled his face might stick like that. It’s juvenile of course, this calcification of musical categorization.
But that’s the Age of the Reptiles in which we live. It can’t last forever like that of course, but for now the dinosaurs walk again, and few seem willing to ask them what comes after the approaching Ice Age. Fewer still want to know. But you just don’t say this kind of thing in public, that the emperor has no clothes, that it takes a village of record producers to make a single idiot, and that the modern listener hears angel harps while Nero fiddles. But they do. Either because they want it that way, or because they are just too damned ignorant to know any better. The good news kids is that this generation of musically skill-less performers will die off. Nature will take care of that even if talent won’t. The better news is that their audience will either grow up one day, or die off too. It’s an even fifty-fifty as far as I can read it right now.
(To be continued…)
© JWG, Jr. 2006
A couple of weeks back I went to the library. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular to read or listen to, just sort of browsing. I went by the music section to pick up some Opera and Art music, probably Verdi and Bach. My love affair with modern and popular music waned a long time ago as music began to decline, but occasionally I’ll still listen to stuff from earlier eras of even modern stuff just to see what it sounds like. I got a truly fantastic CD by the Squirrel Nut Zippers called Ballroom Bedlam that I highly recommend, but that’s a tale for another day. And my personal newsletter.
Anyhow while at the popular shelf I saw a CD called Hits of the Seventies and another called Greatest Hits of the Eighties. In my opinion neither CD had the greatest hits of those eras but the music included as tracks for the seventies was nearly all good, and there were a couple of stand out tracks on the eighties collection.
So I checked them out along with the new copy of Handel’s Messiah I got my hands on and went home and listened to both CDs. While I was listening I began to think to myself that popular music from the seventies and part of the eighties was vastly superior to most of the stuff produced nowadays and I began to wonder exactly why that was. I’ve always known this to be true and it’s why I don’t listen to local music radio stations anymore, just music off the satellite. But I began to really wonder if I could formulate real reasons for why the popular music produced 30 years ago was so much superior to the popular music currently produced. So I began to think on the matter and soon the seventies disk was over. So I put on the eighties disk and the very first song was an old song entitled Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles. Now I liked that song when I was younger but while listening to it this time I was suddenly struck by just how good the song was, and what it was really saying. Then I had an epiphany of sorts about popular music, then, and now. And slowly it began to take shape in my mind the exact reasons why modern music sucks so badly. Viciously really. Like an 8 lb. Oreck.
The first reason, and this is blatantly obvious if you stop to think of it for just a moment or two, is exactly what the Buggles’ song was speaking of. Video, and video music, and video images make it possible for supposed musical talent to fake being a real musician. Whereas in the past everyone in a band could play at least one instrument, everyone could read music, even if only in shortcut form, and everyone had exposure to making music personally, nowadays you don’t have bands, or musicians, you have singers, and acts. Music is no longer the important function of being a musician, performance is. Video has made it possible for acts to survive on appearance alone, devoid of anything any past age would recognize as in any way resembling real musical talent. Singing and dancing are the new music. Sounds and noises are the new tones. Squeals and raps are the new lyrics. Bitching and moaning is the new art. Thank God music has finally arrived.
Prepackaged individuals whose only real musical talent, if you can call it that, is singing and maybe dancing (often not) have debased music from the playground of the musician, professional or amateur, to the jungle of the entertainer. And the entertainer is always a professional, even when it is obvious he is not. Because video is like stage magic, it doesn’t rely upon the actual physical skill of the magician to make real things happen (in this case music), it relies upon the ability of the magician to deceive the audience into thinking something real is happening. And baby does it work. Because very, very little real popular music has been made since about 1985, but the way people lick up any old piece of auditory crap nowadays you would think they were starving to ingest a scurvy infested turd. But I can’t really blame em too much because turds and words is what passes for music nowadays, and the music industry is more than happy to hock what will hang in a dry wind. Why go to all the trouble of recruiting talented bands and real musicians when you can hire some guy who can dance and sing and all of your troubles are taken care of? Besides entertainers are a lot easier to promote because the entertainer has a natural talent for self-promotion that few real musicians possess. And then again if you are a performer and entertainer and you know that your shot at stardom is gonna come on stage, and not from any musical skill, then why bother to learn music? Your time is much better spent learning dance moves and vocal tricks. Real musicians don’t become American Idols, entertainers do. And that’s what the modern audience expects and wants, an entertainer. The music industry has pushed that kinda crap for so long that nobody much remembers what the real thing looks like anymore. A musician today is 9 parts entertainer, 1 part musician. And music nowadays is 90% performeration, and 10% imitation.
But aside from the fact that so few popular acts nowadays have any real musical talent at all, much less know anything about music; you also have the vexing problem of versatility. There is none. All acts today produce a million different versions of the same song, in the same type or category of music in which they will always produce the same kind of music they will during their entire careers. In other words you just play the same tune and sing the same song over and over again and vary the dancers and video images. This is related to the fact of the Balkanization of musical genres nowadays, a subject I’ll get to in a moment, but for right now let me just say that the lack of versatility and flexibility on the part of modern musicians (and every time I use this term in this article I feel more and more like I’m prostituting the word, making a whore of music so that the musician may eat cake) is a sort of microcosm of the entire musical industry. A band makes metal death hardcore split spine incest apathy tunes and that’s all they will ever make, metal death hardcore split spine incest apathy tunes. A performer makes R&B tracks, and she couldn’t even conceive of writing her own songs, much less of remaking an old bluegrass song. A gangsta rappa puts his pile on the streets, day after day, but he couldn’t imagine writing or performing a love ballad. I guess he’s afraid that if he smiled his face might stick like that. It’s juvenile of course, this calcification of musical categorization.
But that’s the Age of the Reptiles in which we live. It can’t last forever like that of course, but for now the dinosaurs walk again, and few seem willing to ask them what comes after the approaching Ice Age. Fewer still want to know. But you just don’t say this kind of thing in public, that the emperor has no clothes, that it takes a village of record producers to make a single idiot, and that the modern listener hears angel harps while Nero fiddles. But they do. Either because they want it that way, or because they are just too damned ignorant to know any better. The good news kids is that this generation of musically skill-less performers will die off. Nature will take care of that even if talent won’t. The better news is that their audience will either grow up one day, or die off too. It’s an even fifty-fifty as far as I can read it right now.
(To be continued…)
© JWG, Jr. 2006
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