Country Metal?

One makes your head explode (as in Mars Attacks!) while the other makes you headbang (as in Metallica). Okay, not all country is bad, but there's awful country out there. The same can be said of heavy metal (although I like metal a lot more).

Even though both styles have great affinity for some things and after all, share many of the same roots, I've heard relatively little mingling between them. Let's face it; if a band leads the way in an imaginary 'Country Metal' genre, or 'Countrycore' (god I hate the -core suffix), chances are that it's forever labelled as 'cheesy', 'godawful', or a shame in the name of metal. However, I think there have been a few instances that I think could lead to some kind of interesting cool music based on both. Coming from a mix of heavy metal and southern rock, Black Label Society had the damn catchy "House of Doom" track, for instance:


From "Hangover Music, Vol VI".

Okay, it isn't country, but southern rock is well, a fusion of rock & roll, blues and country music! I think that it may be good as a platform to further mingling between country and heavy metal.

Other ways would be through punk music and that very very bouncy hill-billy stuff. Here, for instance, punk band Guttermouth created something really unique; that "barnyard" sort of rhythm fits punk and some kinds of country/folk excellently. Note the awesome violin and banjo interplay in the background and their solos:


I'm Destroying the World from "Covered in Ants".

Kid Rock seamlessly mixed southern rock, hip hop and not-quite-metal in "Cowboy", so figure, you can remove the 'breakbeat' influence and turn the metal one up a notch. It's not a bad song, considering that he managed to mix 3 things so well (when many nu-metal bands suck and they don't even mix country):


Song from "Devil Without a Cause".

Rebel Meets Rebel, with their eponymous track, to me seems to be real Heavy Country (or whatever), however, I'm not quite sure about that fiddle lead before the verses... they are annoying. They could sound a lot better. However, the vocals here, specially when they harmonise bring out tons of potential. Hmm, I think it's okay. Here we go:


From Rebel Meets Rebel album.

It gets better towards the end with that fiddle breakdown solo double-timey part.
"Coyboys Do More Dope" by Rebel Meets Rebel:



Quite like the piano there...

Now, the guitar-shredding angle of music is a good way to immerse into the world of country music. It may get a bit tiring after a while (like most country), but it's briefly the coolest thing in the universe:



We also have another band a bit like Rebel Meets Rebel but maybe a bit more palatable to some; Haf Bitten Moon:



Finally, I'll leave y'all with these two funnies. Meh...

Wordle and How Easy It Gets To Do Things

A few years ago, this might have taken ages to do, since nobody had programmed anything that would be able to arrange words from a text this way, and size each of them up proportionally to the frequency they appeared in the text. Then colour and change their fonts. But now, it's fun and quick:


(I know it looks crappy low-resolution, just click on it to see it better)

Wordle is quite fun. Here I got some text from a website talking about the basics of turntablism, and made this fun little thing out of it. Fun fun fun.

Hyperrealism and Abstract Art

Artist Nicolás Radic (who I met on one occasion, pleasant dude) broke my brain with several of his crazy hyperrealist paintings. Particularly that series of paintings I saw printed in a booklet my dad gave me called ''La Trampa De Luz'' (The Light Trap). I'm still impressed at the level of observation and precision required to replicate on oil and canvass the things he does, for example, the reflections a crumpled sheet of tinfoil creates. And that's why they're like abstract art but coming from realistic styles of painting, because what is reflected on his subjects is far removed from what it originally was. Wowee.

Óleo Sobre Tela

Then again, thinking about the process that went into making each of his works is really interesting. It seems that in this one, funnily enough, he's painting another painter, and his painting! And the reflections on a camera and every little detail. Really interesting, art within art:

espacios confinados

More of his paintings can be seen on these sites:

ArtSlant
Kunst.com- Chilean artists site

Superflat Takashi Murakami

Somehow Japan is really good at taking English words, combining them in unlikely ways and exporting them back to the West as a brand new thing. Think about the Walkman, for instance. The term I'm bringing up here however is ''superflat''. Japanese artist Takashi Murakami is a pioneer. His art screams in wild colours and outrageous characters with roots in anime and pop art (like Warhol's). He creates things in many media and he's able to merge all of them into one unified entity, hence the ''flattening'' (not 'flat' as in lacking). Truly something I'd like to try.

Anyway, this video provides some insight into his art and how the new wave of Japanese art owes to his particularly crazy and colourful mindview:

Warning: if you get offended by strange things, then don't watch this. Open your mind a little and maybe you won't get offended =P



And here I have the two adverts which he made for Louis Viutton. I say the first one was a mixture of crazy awesome music by the Fantastic Plastic Machine with Murakami's distinctively seizure-inducing colour explosion. The second one looks like a continuation a few years later, but it lacks the bang of the first loco one.



And



Seen enough? Kaikai Kiki Co., an artists' collective founded by Murakami himself. Apparently, they are working on a film called Kaikai & Kiki, to be released this year, featuring many of Murakami's brainchildren. More of this infectious stuff:



Now let's see, what will this mean outside of Japan?

Weaving Goddamn Webs

Do you use Twitter? Perhaps, if you have the time to indulge in such things. Facebook? Probably unless you're worried about privacy and well, you realise that nobody really needs one. A blog? Like this one or something else (even if it's the lame Fotolog)? If you have more than one account on anything in the web it probably means you have the time for that. I am sick of it, I don't want to sift through Facebook messages, or in any other social website (I have Multiply and it's the same story...). There's a lot more important work outside to do.

''But dude, then what are you doing posting on this blog then?''

Takes less time. Nobody else needs to have an account to comment. No hassle. Dunno, I thought it was a cool idea when I started it. I thought the same out of this stupid Formspring account but it seems it's dead. You can ask me something but who are we kidding, eh? The Multiply account I mentioned before, also. It was a nice place where to post random things, a lot like this place too. I befriended a couple of people there from all over the world and share things about anything. Really nice and fun people. Although we're all just online identities here, it's a shame maybe. I feel clogged up with all this stuff.

But then, Google Sites came in handy. It's like my own portable bookmarks page with anything I find useful. So that's more personal.

But then things mount up! For instance, my music project at Reverbnation, and then I'm releasing the music in Bandcamp too! Aaargh! It seems like it may save some time or be helpful promoting the music, but this is maybe a bit too much.

Then there's DeviantArt. I'm okay with it... I won't complain...
*coughlotsofmessagescoughcough*


However, there's an even more pressing issue here; if you've everywhere, it may be good when you're trying to promote something (so far my music and art provide me zero income), but it also makes you vulnerable to being found, um, and many other things. Here's Juanelo (in Spanish and translated below) summing up an important idea!


Juanelo belongs to Marco Canepa. All rights reserved. Vida larga a Juanelo.

Lion Spider = Lider? Splion? Arachleo!

Back in April when it was still summer here in Chile and life was coming back to normal after February's massive quake, I remember seeing a mosquito-like insect on a wall. I associated it
with horses due to its rather strange shape and although it wasn't much like a mosquito I began wondering what a horsequito would look like. So I had this:


Horsequito by ~skinsvideos21 on deviantART

Yeah... so in the description I jokingly mentioned its natural predator, the Lion Spider. And here I am now, several months later with my Splion (for the lack of a better name). It was even tougher to conceive since spiders and lions share almost nothing in common anatomically. Spiders have 2 body sections while lions, uh... I'd say 3 although the difference between abdomen and 'butt' doesn't mean anything in vertebrates, does it? :3

So, here are a few sketches (I got rid of the roughest unfortunately) with roughies of the idea:



As the sketches above show, I wasn't entirely sure where the hell the legs would go (again, spiders have abdomens that don't have legs and then they have thoraxes with legs), because the way a spider's legs kinda 'spread' outwards while a lion's legs jut below the body and are parallel. So it's just experimenting while the final design was a mixture.
And well, the final (although far from perfect work) is this:

It looks a whole lot better than Horsequito (a million times!) but I'm not perfectly happy with it. That irritates me. Argh!

Click for larger image:

Goddamit I Love Space Art!

''Space art?'', you say.
''Yes, of course! Art about planets n' stars n' black holes and loads of crazy stuff we don't actually know much about!'' I answer, my eyes as bright as fictitious constellations.
''Pfft, you don't need talent to draw stars, just paint white dots on a canvas and you'll get there!''
I suddenly darken up, and in a distant and redshifting manner I utter:
''It takes a lot more than that, even for simple stuff like star fields, mofo.''

Although I gotta say that realistic planets are even harder to create, but it's not that hard.
This really nice tutorial by the awesome Greg Martin (what a kickass website he has!) leads us into the basics of making realistic and beautiful star fields in Photoshop. Although it's true to some extent that it's all about ''painting stars at random'', this guy shows an excellent way of creating stars without painting them individually, and without the use of crappy starfield generators. Intuition at the helm!

So, did it work? I haven't had time to fully flesh out something, but my first attempt was okay. This is it:
...Yeah, it's alright. Not posting this in DeviantArt.

However, I want to understand eventually how these beauties are made:


Sea of Divinity 2 by *dylanxedge on deviantART


Lost in Bitterness... by =synax444 on deviantART


Brutus by *TixoL on deviantART

Ahem. Does this count as space art? NO!
However, it makes a nice wallpaper (I think).


Space Jungle Tile by ~skinsvideos21 on deviantART

Scrotoss! - It's nuts!

The sport that was supposedly going to grab the world by storm.. and didn't. Plenty of fun! Tell all your friends!

Scrotoss headquarters? ---> http://scrotoss.blogspot.com/





What are you still doing here? Shouldn't you be enlightening your friends?

The World Was Close to the Edge

Back in 1983 the world could have taken a really different turn from that which led to our reality. Of course: with the Cold War and all that, two warring parties, often envisaged in maps as blue and red were waist-deep in gasoline, both threatening to use one of the many matches they held in their hands if the other did any sudden movements. Mutually assured destruction was close many times, notably during the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, there was another moment in history (a lot less known) that could have been a lot worse. I don't know if it has any name, but it has a year: 1983.

You can find all the details out there. I don't even know how much of this tiny slice of history is actually true or if it is just a really really good story. However, the story roughly goes like this:

In the Soviet Union, a lieutenant colonel by the name of Stanislav Petrov (supposedly) averted a global-scale nuclear war. When working at an early warning satellite network system codenamed 'Oko', the system erroneously displayed missiles coming in from outside, and Mr. Petrov, in a deviation from standard protocol identified the error and averted a cataclysm. That kind of situation is likely to be a real nerve-wracker. Now, think that if you don't know if it's a system error or a real warning, you have two choices with four possible outcomes:

The first and second outcomes - You genuinely think that there are inbound missiles so you react to the warning and decide to retaliate with your missiles. If there were really missiles coming in, you just ensured a global nuclear war by answering. If there were no missiles coming, you still triggered a world war that would kill billions because now the hair-trigger systems elsewhere in the world will retaliate just like you did. Hooray we all die.

The third outcome: You identify the warning as an error. It wasn't. You probably aren't alive today to tell the story.

The fourth outcome: It really is an error and you know it. You and I are here today and you are reading this.

Okay. So where am I going with this? Oh yea. A crazy bunch o' dudes took the time to flesh out an alternative reality where Mr. Petrov didn't avert the nuclear disaster. He was sent to another base and some incompetent nincompoop pretty much screwed up when the false alarm appeared on his screen. 1983:Doomsday seems to be an interesting project in the making. Just the imagery of what happened that day 27 years ago is frightening, but like any good story, it shows glimpses of hope for the future, where after almost 30 years the world is rebuilding and seeking to make ammends. Countries and unions like the Celtic Union (say what?!?), the ANZC (Commonwealth of Australia and New Zealand) and the South American Confederation lead the new world order, mostly flipped upside down due to the devastation of much of the northern hemisphere!

I kinda cringe at some entries where at least the spelling could be better than ''seperate'' and stuff but it's on its way.

Am I done here? No. I have one more thing to tie into this topic: the irony of 1983. 1983 is the same year Samantha Smith, a young American girl wrote a letter to the then Russian leader, Mr. Andropov. Here's something about her:

(taken from http://www.samanthasmith.info/History1.htm )

"Actually, the whole thing started when I asked my mother if there was going to be a war. There was always something on television about missiles and nuclear bombs. Once I watched a science show on public television and the scientists said that a nuclear war would wreck the Earth and destroy the atmosphere. Nobody would win a nuclear war. I remembered that I woke up one morning and wondered if this was going to be the last day of the Earth.

I asked my mother who would start a war and why. She showed me a news magazine with a story about America and Russia, one that had a picture of the new Russian leader, Yuri Andropov, on the cover. We read it together. It seemed that the people in both Russia and America were worried that the other country would start a nuclear war. It all seemed so dumb to me. I had learned about the awful things that had happened during World War II, so I thought that nobody would ever want to have another war. I told Mom that she should write to Mr. Andropov to find out who was causing all the trouble. She said, "Why don't you write to him?" So I did."

The letter she wrote Andropov was the following:

Dear Mr. Andropov,

My name is Samantha Smith. I am ten years old. Congratulations on your new job. I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war. Are you going to vote to have a war or not? If you aren't please tell me how you are going to help to not have a war. This question you do not have to answer, but I would like to know why you want to conquer the world or at least our country. God made the world for us to live together in peace and not to fight.

Sincerely,

"Samantha Smith"

This heartwarming letter from Samantha got eventually this answer from Yuri Andropov:

Dear Samantha,

I received your letter, which is like many others that have reached me recently from your country and from other countries around the world.

It seems to me – I can tell by your letter – that you are a courageous and honest girl, resembling Becky, the friend of Tom Sawyer in the famous book of your compatriot Mark Twain. This book is well known and loved in our country by all boys and girls.

You write that you are anxious about whether there will be a nuclear war between our two countries. And you ask are we doing anything so that war will not break out.

Your question is the most important of those that every thinking man can pose. I will reply to you seriously and honestly.

Yes, Samantha, we in the Soviet Union are trying to do everything so that there will not be war on Earth. This is what every Soviet man wants. This is what the great founder of our state, Vladimir Lenin, taught us.

Soviet people well know what a terrible thing war is. Forty-two years ago, Nazi Germany, which strove for supremacy over the whole world, attacked our country, burned and destroyed many thousands of our towns and villages, killed millions of Soviet men, women and children.

In that war, which ended with our victory, we were in alliance with the United States: together we fought for the liberation of many people from the Nazi invaders. I hope that you know about this from your history lessons in school. And today we want very much to live in peace, to trade and cooperate with all our neighbors on this earth—with those far away and those near by. And certainly with such a great country as the United States of America.

In America and in our country there are nuclear weapons—terrible weapons that can kill millions of people in an instant. But we do not want them to be ever used. That's precisely why the Soviet Union solemnly declared throughout the entire world that never–never–will it use nuclear weapons first against any country. In general we propose to discontinue further production of them and to proceed to the abolition of all the stockpiles on Earth.

It seems to me that this is a sufficient answer to your second question: 'Why do you want to wage war against the whole world or at least the United States?' We want nothing of the kind. No one in our country– neither workers, peasants, writers nor doctors, neither grown-ups nor children, nor members of the government–want either a big or 'little' war.

We want peace—there is something that we are occupied with: growing wheat, building and inventing, writing books and flying into space. We want peace for ourselves and for all peoples of the planet. For our children and for you, Samantha.

I invite you, if your parents will let you, to come to our country, the best time being this summer. You will find out about our country, meet with your contemporaries, visit an international children's camp – 'Artek' – on the sea. And see for yourself: in the Soviet Union, everyone is for peace and friendship among peoples.

Thank you for your letter. I wish you all the best in your young life.

"Y. Andropov"

While I don't see his letter as dishonest or anything when it comes to intentions, it flies in the face of what I've been going at during the first part of this post! That same year a few months later the world almost became lit with thousands of radioactive mushroom clouds that would then be followed by decades of darkness. He didn't know, of course, we all assume that things that can go really really bad won't go really super bad. Like BP and their black death spill.

Rest in peace Samantha Smith. I think that probably you were a reminder of the things in this world we have to protect and nurture. You became a hero of sorts in Russia and people there loved you while back in your country the whole thing was seen suspiciously like a political stunt. Sad. (1972-1985)