Minphis Don’t Play

U might not be aware, but several US cities have rap scenes with a lot of local pride.  One particularly infamous local rap scene which intrigues people to this day: Memphis, Tennessee.  Or as people with that accent call it, “Minphis.”  When I say “Minphis don’t play,” I’m quoting a random loudmouth I overheard on the bus a very long time ago.  As I recall, he also claimed that city invented pimping, for what that invention is worth.  I’ll accept this as truth.  Moving on…

I’ve mentioned the biggest success story from the Memphis scene a few times, The Triple Six Mafia.  And what did that success bring them?  A great number of Memphis rappers, famous or otherwise, are dead from drugs or violence.  Bad times, but maybe that has something to do with the intrigue.  For some reason, hipsters out for the “realest” music have latched onto the Memphis scene as Tha Source.

Why I am I fucking with it?  Isn’t rap homophobic and misogynistic and glorifying of violence and irresponsible use of chemical recreation?  True.  Some of it is worse than others.  Well, Memphis tapes are about as bad as any.  Call it a problematic fave.  I won’t justify it to you and you don’t have to justify yours to me.  I’m not the world’s biggest Memphis rap fan, but hipsterism hath perked up my ears to it.

I think it’s funny because this could just as easily been any city and any genre.  In my hometown of Auburn, Washington, we had a number of punk bands with moderate local success.  Some of them put music on CD, cassette, even vinyl.  Where are those albums now?  Will they ever receive this kind of love?  I really would like to see all the art of the world given that respect, no matter how pathetic or retrograde or disposable.

I’d love to see the internet become a true archive of the whole breadth of human experience, and of art, which was the cry of some nowhere people against the void – I matter right now.  Hear me make music about it.  But we can’t.  You literally can not find everything on the internet.  Even very recently created art has been lost forever.  As everything ultimately will be, so it’s not a cosmically big deal.  But it is kind of sad.

We don’t even have all the Memphis tapes – and mysteries abound.  Check out this blog post wherein a guy was researching the strange story of how one rap dude released some tapes with his voice pitch shifted, playing a lady rap persona seemingly inspired by an ex, and never copping to it.  Why did he do it?  Maybe we shouldn’t push the question, knowing one possible explanation is being trans, and you don’t want to push people out of a closet – especially now.  But that doesn’t seem likely to be the case here.  It’s just kind of funny seeing a guy named Skinny Pimp release a Chipmunk-styled song called Where the Big Dicks At?, then duck when people ask him about it later.

Maybe Minphis do play, after all.

–

Lostwave

You might not be aware, but there is a whole internet subculture bent to the task of investigating cultural obscurae.  Presented with an image or a snippet of audio or a video clip, they try to find the origin.  This is not always possible, because despite idealistic dreaming and much human effort, you literally can not find everything on the internet.  Much of humanity’s artistic and intellectual output, even from the internet age, has been lost forever, or was never recorded in the first place.

With regards to music, they call this “lostwave,” a genre defined by what you don’t know about it, and nothing else.  There were a number of lostwave songs that people had just about given up hope on having their origins revealed, when recently they came to light.  Check out the reddit community to see a lot of interesting stories of independent research, and observe some odd bits of culture that were nearly lost forever.

I just want to talk about one such story briefly.  A guy posted a clip of a song and asked if anybody could identify it, then the poster disappeared.  I forget what reason he gave, for why he had a clip but didn’t know the origin of said clip.  Speculation was intense, the mystery lasted a few years.  But at last, it was revealed to be a studio song used in the pornographic film Angels of Passion.  You can find that moustache-tacular porn its entirety online, if you are so inclined.  I skimmed it.  Anyway, the guys that made the song published a remaster on yewchoob, so we can all check out this porn quality jam together…

The best part of this little tale is that you can tell from the clip the original poster had presented that it was carefully cut around the moans and groans of 1980s style fucken.  He knew where he got it, set people up to get pink-faced about it, and bounced forever.  Good one, man.

The song shows up at about 1 hr 7 min 30 sec into the porno, depending on which copy you’ve found, probably.

–

The Herfy Diaspora

Fast food franchises in the USA.  Megacorporation offloads some amount of liability and expense by making deals with small business fuckos, whereby the small business fucko owns and operates a restaurant with their branding, and varying amounts of their everything else.  The big boys like McDoodoo and Gag in the Bag exercise a lot of control – everything has to be set up just so – which is a boon for food safety.  Left to their own devices, small restaurants tend to cheap out on important elements of hygiene.  In my county, there are little food safety scores posted outside all the restaurants, and fast food places are more consistently “excellent.”

Enter Herfy’s, or rather exit Herfy’s, which was a fast food franchise until a few years ago.  Generally a burger and fry place, but with some amount of seafood on the menu.  When I was security guarding in the lead-up to the subprime mortgage collapse, my fellow guard / homeboy would sometimes get lunch at the Herfy’s across the street, and always regret it due to foodborne illness.  What’s up with that, Herfy’s?

It makes sense.  Herfy sounds like the condition of being afflicted with foodborne illness.  Oh man, think that fish sandwich isn’t done with me yet.  Pull over, I’m gonna herf.

Thank you, Garth.  Herfing accomplished, I proceed.

The Herfy’ses were always much more variable and independent seeming than franchises of the big boys.  I have no idea why, but it had an interesting effect.  When Herfy’s corporate went out of business, many of the restaurants carried on as if nothing happened!  Due to IP law and whatnot, they had to change the signage, but many of them – such as “Cow & Cod” in Auburn, even kept the Herfy’s color scheme.

I think it’s cool because more active businesses is more jobs, more variety of places to eat.  Cow & Cod is pretty great, by the way.  The corporation went down, but the Herfing continued unabated.  I’m guessing up in Seattle the exHerf that sickened my homeboy is still sickening other people’s homeboys to this very day, and classier ones like Cow & Cod are giving you an alternative to corporate fast food.  Fantastic.

I don’t know if Herfy’s was just a PNW thing or if the situation looks similar elsewhere.  Feel free to herf about them in the comments.

–

Tradescantia

Tradescantia is a genus of “flowering herbaceous” viney things that include a number of popular houseplants.  Because they creep around your room if you let them, and probably some medieval nonsense, it was called “wandering jew” for a very long time.  But have you heard the new hotness?  People are calling it “wandering dude,” and it’s taking over!  You can see the new name all over tha plant web now.  That’s progress, babes.

–

You Dig on Multiverses?

Did you catch that reference?  Apologies if you did.  I finished all the Elric I’m going to be able to find, and have returned with my accursed demon blade Stormbringer to feast upon thy souls.  Or tell you about it.

I kid, I kid.  I really don’t have a lot to say about it.  There were elements that aged very poorly in terms of cultural mores, and elements that aged poorly because the march of fiction has rendered them quaint and pedestrian, but nothing wholly outrageous on either count.

Moorcock may have coined the word multiverse.  I could probably find out with a little googling but I don’t care enough to.  While now it’s in service of bloating and bleeding film franchises, it once was a very literal homage to joseph campbell’s ideas.  A victim of time, I don’t find those elements at all interesting.

Oddly, fiction from the 19th century doesn’t hit me like that.  Maybe recency produces something like the uncanny valley in writing, I don’t know.

I don’t think I ever reached the end of the story, assuming it was ever written, but that’s alright.  Tho it had more continuity than sherlock holmes, it was always written to be short stories for sff pulp mags, it seems.

In looking up interesting things about it, I discovered that Wendy Pini of Elfquest comic fame had attempted to get an animated adaptation done, and failed.

That info loops back on itself because Chaosium once did an Elfquest rpg with basically the same rules as Call of Cthulhu, and also for a time had Moorcock’s license to Elric rpg.  Did that also use the same system?  If so, it would make for an amusing combination…

Alright, I gotta jet.  Tired as hell.  Zzz.

–

 

So Many Magical Mysteries

Remember the audiobook snorings?  I chanced to look at the rest of the videos on that channel and a huge amount of it is devoted to the ostensible health benefits of urine.  Drinking it, soaking your feet in it like a vulture or a slender loris or a binturong*.

So here’s the mystery.  Is the thespian the piss drinker?  Or did he merely mirror videos produced by another content creator?  I could find out by playing a peepee video, listening to the man’s voice, seeing if it matches.  But I am not doing that, thanks.

*why nature so into water sports?  and why did i have this knowledge on tap?  i know not.

–

Soulsborneringkiro Games

U might be aware there is a genre of video games spawned by the Japanese company From Software, famous for both difficulty and for weaving a spell over players with oppressive atmosphere and heavy vibes of baroque desolation.  This began with the Demon Souls and Dark Souls games, to which have been added Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring.  They called them Souls-likes for a minute, then Soulsborne genre, and now?  Whatever.

I have been put in mind of them a few times lately, most recently when some video game media named Elden Ring as the best game ever on their top 100.  Is it the bestiest?  I’m not gamer enough to find out, but I’ve watched some people play it on youtube.  I’ve watched a number of these games.

I swear I had something to say about them, but here I am trying to compose my thunks at 2:00 in the morning, tired enough to die but not quite able to sleep yet…

A uniting element of these games, at least the FromSoft originals, is that your character is basically or explicitly already dead.  The “multiple lives” aspect of video game unreality is given an excuse:  This guy can keep coming back because he’s just a phantom.  I think that’s a big mood right there.

Anyway, what do y’all know about these things?  Any experience playing them?  Just interested in the aesthetic like my poser ass?  Discuss.

–

Titty Hurts

When I first got the gynecomastia, there was a generalized firmness and sensitivity to mild injury that was probably what you’d imagine for growing breasts.  Lately one then the other of my tetas are experiencing more of a sharp pain.  It runs in lines but I don’t think I’d characterize it as a shooting pain.

I looked it up and I’m almost certainly fine; mastalgia from boobening can take more than one form.  And maybe I’ll be more chesty on the other side, huzzah, but it’s a pain for now.

Titty hurts.  The more u kno.  (o)(o)

–

Todd in the Shadows

You might have recently become aware of Todd in the Shadows as the guy who compiled James Somerton’s lies, whacking him with a steel chair after HBomberguy body slammed him from low earth orbit with the plagiarism exposé.  Todd is usually a music reviewer, with popular video series such as Train Wreckords and One Hit Wonderland.  My bf told me Todd’s Somerton video was among his most popular, which got me asking about where his other videos ranked.  I found out this one never even hit a million views, and was scandalized.

Behold, the best Todd in the Shadows video ever:

–

Leftover People in Fiction

I wasn’t able to track down the 19th century book that inspired this post, but I suspect the book itself was the work of a theosophist (perhaps intentionally) over-applying the hindu concept of yugas and turning it into something more like Western concepts of magic.  Whatever, I’ll just lay out some of the things that are on my mind:

In that book, it was asserted that there is a Middle Eastern concept of cyclical creation and destruction (there isn’t as far as I can tell) wherein man’s world is god’s seventh iteration of the idea (maybe more, maybe less? don’t remember).  Holdovers from previous versions of creation include djinni, who iirc were kinda sassy about the situation.

In the TTRPG Feng Shui, which is similarly Orientalist but in a 1980s ninja ultimate power sense, there were sites in the world with cool mystical power, and whatever faction grabs the most of them gains some control over reality.  The previous owners of reality can skulk off to a netherworld outside of time to scheme a return to power.  So, like the djinni aforementioned, these guys are misfit leftovers from an earlier version of reality.

In the TTRPG Kult, something like judaeo-christian cosmology is sort-of true, but much nastier.  God, there called The Demiurge, has vanished into a hole, leaving his Archons in charge of maintaining humanity’s prison – an illusory reality called Elysium which prevents us from realizing our godhood.  There’s a lot more to the game that I won’t get into here, but central is the idea humans used to be god-like beings, running reality from an ur-city called Metropolis.  In that capacity, we were nasty ourselves, conquering other races and destroying their worlds.  The leftovers of those realities ended up – again – in some kind of netherworld slowly crumbling into an engine of oblivion called Achlys.  Reality leftovers.

It’s just an interesting idea to me – people who don’t belong in the world, persisting, watching other people prosper in their stead.  Envious?  Miserable?  Free, in a sense, but dying out.  Can you think of more examples?
–