River Of Orchids

1) What album do you consider to be “epic”?

2) Which band do you feel is more important: Crass or The Clash?

3) You’ve been in a terrible accident.  You were horribly injured, so badly your heart actually stopped.  Shit, man—you were legally dead for three minutes.  Then you were in a coma for a week.  When you’re finally starting to recover, your best friend brings you your iPod as you lay in your hospital bed.  What song do you listen to first?

4) Name a musical collaboration you WISH had happened.

5) You’ve got a time machine.  What show would you like to see?

6) Vinyl?  MP3’s?  Favorite format and why.

7) If David Bowie had looked and acted like Joe Pesci his entire career but still made the same records, would they mean as much to you?  How about Madonna, Lady Gaga, Ozzy Osbourne, or other artists?

8) What musician would you most want to have sex with?  Assume you’ve still got that time machine.

9) What musician would you go gay for?

10) You’re directing a movie based on your life.  The screenplay was written by a psychic who knows you better than you know yourself, and even wrote scenes based on the parts of your life you haven’t even lived yet.  What song do you play on the soundtrack for your birth?  Your death?  And for when you lost your virginity?

11) Your pick for the most overrated band of all time.

12) Name a record you’re kinda embarrassed to admit you like.

13) Name a song that makes you cry.  Now tell me why.

14) Name a musician whose work you love, even if you suspect you’d absolutely hate him as a human being.

15)  You’re a musician.  If the only way you could support yourself as a musician would be to have Britney Spears’ career (not her personal life, but her career, singing the same shit Britney sings and raking in the same piles of money), would you do it?

16) Your favorite record that you’d never let your children listen to.

17) Name a song that makes you horny.

18) Name a song so bad it makes you angry.

19) You’re a radio DJ trapped in the studio as the world ends.  How does it end, and what song do you choose to play in those final moments?

(Source: docshoe, via jonathanbogart)

tumbledore:

Contronyms are special cases of homographs (two words with the same spelling). Some examples:

• anabasis - military advance, military retreat
• apology - admission of fault in what you think, say, or do; formal defense of what you think, say, or do
• aught - all, nothing
• bolt - secure, run away
• by - multiplication (e.g., a three by five matrix), division (e.g., dividing eight by four)
• chuffed - pleased, annoyed
• cleave - separate, adhere
• clip - fasten, detach
• consult - ask for advice, give advice
• copemate - partner, antagonist
• custom - usual, special
• deceptively smart - smarter than one appears, dumber than one appears
• dike - wall, ditch
• discursive - proceeding coherently from topic to topic, moving aimlessly from topic to topic
• dollop - a large amount, a small amount
• dust - add fine particles, remove fine particles
• enjoin - prescribe, prohibit
• fast - quick, unmoving
• first degree - most severe (e.g., murder), least severe (e.g., burn)
• fix - restore, castrate
• flog - criticize harshly, promote aggressively
• garnish - enhance (e.g., food), curtail (e.g., wages)
• give out - produce, stop production
• grade - incline, level
• handicap - advantage, disadvantage
• help - assist, prevent (e.g., “I can’t help it if…”)
• left - remaining, departed from
• liege - sovereign lord, loyal subject
• mean - average, excellent (e.g., “plays a mean game”)
• off - off, on (e.g., “the alarm went off”)
• out - visible (e.g., stars), invisible (e.g., lights)
• out of - outside, inside (e.g., “work out of one’s home”)
• oversight - error, care
• pitted - with the pit in, with the pit removed
• put out - extinguish, generate (e.g., something putting out light)
• quiddity - essence, trifling point
• quite - rather, completely
• ravel - tangle, disentangle
• rent - buy use of, sell use of
• rinky-dink - insignificant, one who frequents RinkWorks
• sanction - approve, boycott
• sanguine - hopeful, murderous (obsolete synonym for “sanguinary”)
• screen - show, hide
• seed - add seeds (e.g., “to seed a field”), remove seeds (e.g., “to seed a tomato”)
• skinned - with the skin on, with the skin removed
• strike - hit, miss (in baseball)
• table - propose (in the United Kingdom), set aside (in the United States)
• transparent - invisible, obvious
• unbending - rigid, relaxing
• variety - one type (e.g., “this variety”), many types (e.g., “a variety”)
• wear - endure through use, decay through use
• weather - withstand, wear away
• wind up - end, start up (e.g., a watch)
• with - alongside, against

(via tristn)

davebloom:

katherinestasaph:

A bit late on this, but here’s why Gotye’s track — now No. 1! — works, as a song and a certain pair of character descriptions. I’m a fan.

Great writeup about a song that I wouldn’t have thought merited such a ‘close reading’ approach (apparently, it’s too subtle for some folks?).

I don’t remember seeing anyone else mention one clever structural element that supports Katherine’s reading of the relationship (apologies if I’m unwittingly stealing someone else’s idea here). The best and most telling gag in the song is that Gotye doesn’t wait for Kimbra’s last line to fade out before he sings, “You didn’t have to cut me off!” After she puts some perspective to his histrionics, he proves her right with some well-timed hypocrisy.

Hi! I don’t know whether you’ll be happy or sad that I discussed how that gag does reinforce the unreliable narrator thing in my Vine piece on the song (which I wrote when it was #1 in Australia in August last year.

(Katherine’s piece is pretty great!)