There's no sense in it

I see heads hunkered down, fingers dancing across keyboards and the stench of boredom strikes my nose...I must be at work.

However, I can regail my dear readers of tales of gross inanity - hanging out with geriatrics at a confusing bar in Clayton; implicit racism, submission, torment and fiery redheads at Cho Gao in the city; and my personal favorite, running my low-rent media empire while wearing my trackpants.

All fantastical stories which would require a savage censorship before I even contemplated putting finger to keyboard.

Oh, and now I've spilled my glass of water across my desk. The most exciting thing to have happened to me today.

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http://twitter.com/crushtor

In the Driver's Seat

Matt and Crushtor discuss General Semantics
Matt: So if I'm not Matt, then who am I?
Crushtor: The essence of this sort of system is to stop semantic blockages. Things aren't what people say they are. If you say "this is shit" then the word becomes a substitute for the object. But a word is a sound to describe the object. It isn't the object itself.
Matt: So what you're saying is, that a word just refers to something, it's not the thing itself.
Crushtor: Exactly. Do you introduce yourself as Matt? You're not a word. You're a person. Your name is Matt, you are not Matt.
Matt: I'm not Matt. My name is Matt!
C: Now we're getting it.

I also used Hayakawa's "What is Red" example at this point, and he almost followed it all as if Hayakawa was writing it down as we spoke. Remind me to stop drinking so much coffee. And stop procrastinating so much. It's taken me ages to even start my Enslaved interview today...

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http://twitter.com/crushtor

Feckless, Witless and Chocolatey

Since my alma mater Harm.us (I remember writing for them in Year 11 of High School with a B average in English) is all but disintegrating from the inside out (it no longer works with the newer version of Firefox - in my view it's a write off.) I'll write my article on the watershed year for metal - 1994 - and how Kurt Cobain's legacy actually served to rejuvenate the metal scene despite the new wave of Alternative/grunge virtually decimating interest in the ailing genre just two years prior. I'll chronicle my progress right here at Crushtor.net in installments. I'll also be trying to contact the key players scene at the time as well as other journalists for their opinions, all the while shopping it around to various magazines to see if they'll hop on board my self-indulgent nostalgia trip and print out tickets for it (er...print it.)

The focus of the piece will center on six key albums that not only rode out to new frontiers but smashed old boundaries, breathing life into a moribund, directionless genre.

The names of the albums are:

Threshold - Psychedelicatessen
Cynic - Focus
Dream Theater - Awake
Edge of Sanity - Purgatory Afterglow
Tiamat - Wildhoney
Opeth - Orchid

As well as three albums on the cusp of this crucial period:

Paradise Lost - Icon (1993)
My Dying Bride - The Angel and the Dark River (1995)
Anathema - Eternity (1996)

See if you can guess the common elements they share! (Hint: they all broke the unwritten oaths of flirting with the "enemies...")

Thanks go to Jan for giving me the Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot" for my birthday, as well as Rae and Kris for "The Harvest" (a collection of literary Australian fiction) and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", Nat and Ash for the gift card. And thanks for all that braved the weather to attend the shindig too. Special mention goes to Shai for making a compendium of Achewood quotes in his inimitable literate and lyrical style. What's better than the awesomest thing in the world? An easily accessible Wiki in order to quote from it, of course! The man's an absolute genius - the extensional definition of a polymath if I ever saw one.

By the way; does anyone have a video camera that I could borrow?

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http://twitter.com/crushtor