"Blastitude" is a word coined by Angus MacLise, original drummer of the Velvet Underground and quite possibly the coolest hippie of all time. (cf. track four of his posthumous CD release The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda, released by Siltbreeze/Quakebasket. Click HERE for immediate cf'ing.)

(but who is Bartislov Alvarez?)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Mr. Dolman-

Please include me in your list of those 6 people who can't like Radiohead. I too have tried and I too have failed. It all started so many years ago with that infectious ode to teenage loser-dom -- "Creep." At that point I was a teenage loser wearing my heart on my sleeve and looking for any good song to drench my angst in so I loved it. I rushed to the store to buy the album and what do I get but "Creep" done twice and a whole album of songs I can't remember one thing about, except that Thom Yorke's Bono-esque wailing over the top of extremely forgettable songs was really fucking annoying. I just went ahead and skipped the next album together. The only thing I remember about that one is Yorke being pushed around in a grocery cart on a video for some other forgettable song. But the hype for OK Computer was simply too much to avoid. Everybody had and everybody played and everybody praised it and I'm sure more than a few people masturbated to it. Yet I could never remember it from encounter to encounter. I sensed the same lack of any soul or personality that might have helped the band stick. I wrote 'em off again but I learned not to say I didn't like them if I wanted to avoid quick and decisive chastisement so I went on sitting through the album and forgetting it five minutes later. I finally burned the CD off a friend so as to give it a chance by listening to it alone and really trying to concentrate on what the fuck this band is really all about. I remember driving on the interstate trying, I mean really trying, to pay attention but just getting lost in the vacousness of it all. It was like when you're in a conversation and you're not hearing a word, just mumbling a non-committal response from time to time. My mind just wouldn't have any of it. He preferred to wander off and soon I was having really vivid sexual fantasies which I'm sure were designed by my mind to stave off the numbing sterileness of the surrounding music. I found myself pulling off to some country road to masturbate and again forgetting I had even heard the fucking album. It dissappeared once again.
         Now we have Kid A. A dik backwards. Thom Yorke is a dik. He promised me so much back when I was an impressionable teenager then delivered so little. I've really tried to listen to Kid A's "challenging" ideas and I will admit, some of it actually sticks this time. But, not suprisingly, I can't remember what. I do know that I could actually pay attention to the songs while they were on and I appreciated the tracks that are sans-Yorke for long periods of time. The ambiences are nice but certainly nothing new. Oh, well they do tend to make really nice music videos so I'll settle for that.

-That Fella Cootie

>> dormitory - dirty room
> evangelist - evil's agent
> desperation - a rope ends it
> the morse code - here come dots
> slot machines - cash lost in 'em
> animosity - 'as no amity
> snooze alarms - alas! no more z's
> Alec Guinness - genuine class
> semolina - is no meal
> the public art galleries - large picture halls, I bet
> a decimal point - I'm a dot in place
> the earthquakes - that queer shake
> eleven plus two - twelve plus one
> contradiction - accord not in it
> mother in law - woman Hitler
>
> And for the grand finale: PRESIDENT CLINTON OF
> THE USA can be rearranged (with no letters left
> over, and using each letter only once) into:
> TO COPULATE HE FINDS INTERNS

Yep, what we should really do when screening politicians is rearrange the letters in their names, in hopes of divining any warnings or descriptions of the bad things they would do if in office. Like how George W. Bush can be rearranged (with no letters left over, and using each letter only once) to spell "AN UNFORTUNATE SYMBOL OF JUST HOW BLAND, WHITE, HEARTLESSLY PRIVILEGED, AND BLISSFULLY IGNORANT MOST AMERICANS ARE MADE SINCE BIRTH TO WISH THEY COULD AFFORD TO BE." But seriously, my favorites above are "the earthquakes - that queer shake" (it's funny to picture an average L.A. resident describing an earthquake as "that queer shake...") and "Alec Guinness - genuine class" (could anything be more motherfucking true?).

If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following.

There would be:

57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans

52 would be female
48 would be male

70 would be nonwhite
30 would be white
70 would be non Christian (not the same 70)
30 would be Christian (not the same 30)

89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual

6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth.
All 6 would be from the United States.

80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth

1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer

Thanks to my sister for forwarding me the anagram thing and the above, both examples of junk e-mail that actually has something interesting to say, and most importantly, no request that it be forwarded in turn to "everyone I know" -- just something brief with potential to entertain or illuminate whoever it happens to reach. In the above population microcosm thingie, I especially like the part that reveals how few Christians and white people there are, because it might eventually influence the people in one or both of the groups to stop thinking they're the most important souls on Earth. (I mean, c'mon you Christian soldiers, it causes so much tension, to others and, let's face it, to yourself.) And, to the part third to last about the 6 Americans owning 59% of the entire world's wealth, as a third point I would like to add "All 6 are so unaffected by the world's problems that they would vote for a simpleton like George W. Bush again and again and again, simply for the tax benefits alone."

editor, designer, collater, curator, writer: Larry "Fuzz-O" Dolman
"The Re-Resurrection of White Tapes" and "Top 100" by Chris Sienko
"Only Seat in the House" by Christopher Dean Heine
"Our Gal in Nicaragua" by Lisa Spicka

BLASTITUDE #5 © 2001
Published by Tiny Press