The Headless Horsemen

An open letter to Colts fans, from a Saints fan

Things are made worse when panic looks friendly. @jimirsay

I saw it happen. You saw it happen. That happened.

The Indianapolis Colts' 62-7 loss to the New Orleans Saints on Sunday night was one of the most spectacular flameouts of the past two decades... though trainwrecks like that happened sporadically before the NFL instituted its current policy of parity, such a complete domination hasn't been seen since, oh, the Super Bowl Shuffle. 

As a lifelong NOLA fan, I should be thrilled. And some of us were. The reaction among most hardcore, lifelong Saints fans, however, was a sense of acute embarrassment. We know loss. We know sloppiness. We know about being dominated. Not that 41-10 drubbing you gave us in 2007, or that in the 55-21 pounding you gave us in 2003, though. Those were just bad losses. We don't know what that was Sunday night.

It was more or less a given, this weekend, that the Colts would be defeated by the black and gold. Their offense had been a total mess since the neck injury of QB Peyton Manning, who was signed to a five-year, $90 mil contract even though he was 35 and had already gone under the knife. That may be all over: to many football fans, it feels like he's at the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies now. So Stampede Blue pulled Kerry Collins -- who's three years older -- out of retirement, but he got a concussion in Week 3, forcing the team to go to third-stringer Curtis Painter. He's from Purdue, like Drew Brees. But the similarities grind to a halt there.

Still, that only explains the 7. How does any modern team give up a 55-point differential? The Colts were, according to the media line, only improving after six losses, shaving the point spread thinner and thinner ever week -- there'd be more losses, for sure, but they could mark out time (or, depending on who you talk to, rebuild) with dignity. Then this happened.

You all know the stats, which read like a Guinness Book of World Records all on their own. Forget Manning: the defense allowed the Saints to score on their first nine drives. Our boys didn't have to go to third down until they were up by 28. Drew is also a future Hall of Famer, but 35 of 39? Come on.

This is not to add insult to Joseph Addai injury; any fan who got on the black-and-gold bandwagon before Sean Payton showed up knows how you feel right now. Watching the home team collapse like Lindsay Lohan at a sentencing is never fun. But, man, only 20 months ago you were giving us all kinds of hell in the Super Bowl. Until 3:12 before the end, that was anyone's game.

No, what I want to know is, who's running the show over there?

Watching the sidelines that night, you would have thought Manning -- who we consider a hometown boy, btw -- was the intense, stern head coach, slowly boiling over from sheer frustration, while actual head coach Jim Caldwell was the stone-faced assistant. We all know that Caldwell's always been stone-faced. But he's also always been an assistant. I understand he was part of the Peyton Manning deal, as departing mastermind Tony Dungy lobbied for his former right-hand man to take over the top job. Thing is, he's only ever been on the big stage once, in college ball, and his record at Wake Forest is a nearly-as-ridiculous 26-63. He used to work with someone we couldn't get out of town fast enough, QB Jim "Chris" Everett. Also, as it turns out, not ready for prime time. 

NFL coaches are a notoriously weird and wobbly bunch, defined by their quirks, all over the map personality-wise. They're not paid to be friendly and they're only somewhat accessible. Even given that, Caldwell's almost never seen talking to anyone on the sidelines, for any reason. He just seems to stand there, like the Sphinx looking out over the French army. Except the Colts fall apart like the modern French army. What's he doing out there?

I wouldn't even be disrespectful enough to ask, except that Peyton is not just revealing himself to be the MVP of all time by not suiting up, he's also looking more and more like the team's entire motivation. The whole team. Manning can't rally a defense on the field, of course, but his long drives kept them off the field. Freeney, Johnson, Muir, Bethea, and Mathis are still there from the Super Bowl lineup, and they were practically getting out of the way of our guys. Defensive coordinator Larry Coyer is likely to be out on his ass soon for giving up that sixtyburger, and he's been sticking with a scheme that was figured out long ago, but before this massacre, he was only giving up an average of 10 points a game. The team is clearly dealing with something mental, something only a leader can fix. A shame spiral it badly needs to shake itself out of.

Is owner Jim Irsay, as some speculate, hands-on enough to provide it? VC Bill Polian? It doesn't seem likely. The suits are too high up. I submit that Peyton Manning, for all intents and purposes, the guy who calls his own plays on the field and keeps the defense off it, has been the defacto head coach since Dungy left. Sure, he was on the sidelines Sunday, but when the other team goes 28-0 in the first quarter, there's not much motivating you can do. Sunday night, the "coaching staff" decided that, in the loudest domed stadium in the world, that their new, third-string QB, who wasn't familiar with -- well, with anything, should go no-huddle. Something is profoundly wrong.

Does it seem likely that Peyton would have explained that epic collapse at hafltime, when the game was already over, as a matter of details, of fixing the "little things"? Does that sound like the words of a guy who knows what's gone wrong? Also, when DB Justin Tryon wanted to start this year, you may remember he got in a shitload of trouble for tweeting this.

Who's running things?

Mind you, I don't really think Peyton had his hands on every aspect of the team when he was healthy. Yet more and more, it seems like Archie instilled a sense of noblesse oblige in Peyton and Eli over the years: when things go wrong, they don't just look upset, they look puzzled -- and worse, furious, like a child who has to stop playing football and come in for dinner. Things are not supposed to go badly when they're in the pocket. The world is supposed to co-operate. They're Mannings. Born to lead. Born to make things happen.

Perhaps for that reason, I've seen some of Colts Nation arguing that Peyton should just go ahead and replace Caldwell as coach for the rest of the season. Why not? He can't play anyway. The essence of leadership seems to have entirely disappeared from your beloved Colts, and the live shot of their coach walking away, all by himself, once again not speaking to anyone, without even an entourage -- that spoke volumes. It's not that the team's abandoned him, either. Quite the opposite.

“Honestly, I don’t think we showed up to play,’’ receiver Austin Collie said. “Our mindset could have been a whole lot better.’’

By contrast, our injured Payton, spelled with an a and sitting in the press box, didn't call any plays at all that fateful night. He had a hot dog. He hung out with Kenny Chesney. But his field general was on the field. And you can bet he pushed those guys all week.

Review: Bjork, "Biophilia"

Bjork
Biophilia
One Little Indian, Polydor
10.5.11

There's an app for that. Bjork's seventh studio album proper, was preceded by months of history's geekiest album hype, so much that it threatened to overwhelm the project entirely. Designed as a somewhat interactive multimedia presentation, Biophilia had the input of everyone from Apple to David Attenborough to Nikola Tesla to National Geographic in both design and execution: there's a set of songs you can download, yes, but there's also a series of iPad apps, written essays, games, animations, live shows, and for all we know, guerilla street theater. If the Icelandic performance-art chanteuse wanted to distance herself from the pop mainstream after the Timbaland constructions on her last effort, 2007's Volta, she picked a hell of a way to do it.

Since the Balkanization of the record industry, intelligent, cultish name artists have doubled down on this kind of thing -- no longer does a performer make a covers album or a Christmas album, but rather a project with a very specific set of reference points, feeding the maw of the information age with incredibly dense projects you can really dig into. In fact, the concept of "album" has already evolved into a cloud of which it is only the center; the art now only begins as an individual vision, and then expands outward into whatever the consumer chooses to make of it. If enough people are listening, anything you say can become a meme.

This review only seeks to understand Biophilia as an album. And that's okay, because Bjork created it that way at its center, sitting at home in Reykjavik and noodling on -- that's right -- an iPad. She's Bjork, though, so that also means she had a gamelan/celeste hybrid created that she could control with a keypad, as well as "gravity harps" that create random tones out of a series of Foucault-style pendulums, wrote songs in difficult time signatures like 7/4 and 17/8, and added a gorgeous-sounding Icelandic female choir to her own amazing multi-tracked vocals. 

Daunting, even for Bjorkophiles, even more so when you consider how seriously she took the project's theme: spiritual rebirth through the observation of universal phenomena. And yet, the effort sounds as natural as it needs to -- the end result of this arthouse orgy is a very gentle mix of Western and Eastern chamber music, with occasional dnb beats thrown in, and synth washes and delicate vocals for shading. A song like the opener, "Moon," stimulates more of your brain as you open up to it; like every track here, it mimics in form what its titular phenomenon does in nature, so there are repeating music cycles undulating against each other as she intones: "As if the healthiest pastime / Is being in life-threatening circumstances / And once again be reborn / All birthed and happy."

Because Bjork is as in control of her muse as she is her ever-more-formidable vocal instrument, you don't need to know all this to enjoy it. You can merely close your eyes (!) and dive into the brief, menacing interlude of "Dark Matter," for example, without knowing that it was written in gibberish simply because science doesn't know what to make of it yet. "Virus" isn't the first song to make falling in love seem like a disease, but it may be the first to make both seem like a healthy process. The single (and musical red herring) "Crystalline" sums up the album's zeitgeist perfectly in its zeal to open oneself to human emotional change the way natural cycles accept the physical kind. Biophilia is the most challenging album Bjork's made yet, not least because her subject matter forces all the songs to be taken at a slow, deliberate, methodical pace; it also means that voice, which she has more power over than ever, isn't allowed to soar to the heights it usually does. But as ear candy, it works just fine on its own, assuming you meet it halfway. Think of Biophilia as a planetarium show going on inside your soul. And wherever else in the physical world you agree to meet it.

Graded using the Third Eye Method:

Impact: 72. Our little ice pixie has an almost Kubrickian way of translating the universe sometimes. Like him, however, she can come off cold and dull if you don't get her vision.  
Invention: 95. Through the roof. No throat singing this time, happily.
Integrity: 83. Technology is quietly sneaking performance art into the mainstream.

The Loaded Question: Celebrity Halloween Costumes

What will celebrities be costuming as this Halloween?

And now, the meta-comic.

Words That Sold Out: Irony

This is the first installment of Words That Sold Out, what may or may not eventually become a series of grammar Nazi-like outbursts against words whose meaning is often misunderstood.

Proposed irony punctuation,
because nobody can recognize irony anymore.
This in itself is somewhat... you know. 

Irony

1

: a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the other's false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning —called also Socratic irony

2

a : the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning
b : a usually humorous or sardonic literary style of form characterized by irony
c : an ironic expression or utterance

3

a (1) : incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2) : an event or result marked by such incongruityb : incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play —called also dramatic irony, tragic irony

Thank you, Webster's.

Irony comes from the Greek Eiron. The Eiron was a comedic character, not a specific one, but an archetype, like "the straight man" or "the idiot." The difference was that the Eiron only pretended to be an idiot, taking his cue from the Socratic Method. If you've read Plato, you know that the old man used to love to pretend to take the other person's side of the argument in order to switch it around and prove it was bullshit. (Although Socrates himself rarely used the word "bullshit," unless he was arrested and forced to drink poison.)

The Eiron, then, was a kind of character that emerged from that type of discourse, the character who was actually brilliant, but pretending to be stupid. He always won the argument against the other guy, the blustery asshole known as the Alazon. Think of the Eiron as the verbal Greek equivalent of the Road Runner or Bugs Bunny; he seemed to be at a big disadvantage, but reality was actually on his side.

Eventually, the term ironic came into standard English usage, referring to a truth that one set of people (the  audience, in this case) knew, and that another set of people (the characters) did not. This brought forth the concept of dramatic irony. When Luke Skywalker goes to kill Darth Vader because he thinks Vader killed his father, only to find out that Vader is his father, that, my friends, is dramatic irony.

Unfortunately, over the years, the meaning's been watered down and altered due to misuse. These days, people use ironic simply to mean that things turned out differently than they wanted. This misses the whole cosmic joke of irony: it's totally meta. When it happens to you, the universe is the audience that knows the real truth. It's fate, being creative with you. And despite popular opinion, the end result doesn't have to be bad for you, just cosmically funny. It has a plot. If your boss catches you walking into a bar when you already called in sick, that's just coincidence. If you also catch him there with his gay lover and not his wife, and so he gives you the week off, that's irony. (And a sitcom episode. But I digress.)

Verbal irony has also gotten its meaning soiled in the past few years, as well, since so many people now confuse it with sarcasm. Merely saying the opposite of what you really feel is not irony unless someone doesn't know you don't mean it. If someone says "Your wife is hot," and everyone, including you, knows he's being a dick, that's sarcasm. If he says that sarcastically, and then later on you find out he's been fucking your wife, who he apparently actually found hot, welcome to Ironyland, population: you.


Irony is about a perceived truth that reveals itself to be diametrically opposite from the real truth, or true in a different way. 

Unfortunately, Alanis Morissette's 1995 smash "Ironic" further muddied the waters, because it's supposed to be about irony, and yet almost none of the scenarios she presents are ironic. Here's a handy deconstruction of the lyrics:      

An old man turned ninety-eight
He won the lottery and died the next day
(Level of irony: low. He was 98. That's just the law of averages kicking in. Unless the old man had sold his heart meds on the street for lottery tickets. That would be irony.)

It's a black fly in your Chardonnay
(Level of irony: none. Unless you became rich through providing pest control services.)

It's a death row pardon two minutes too late
(Level of irony: none. Every death row prisoner waits for a pardon. This is just bad timing. Unless you had killed your victim with a clock. That would be ironic.)

It's like rain on your wedding day
(Level of irony: none. Unless you're Axl Rose.)

It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
(Possible irony here, but more details are needed.)

Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly
He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbye
He waited his whole damn life to catch that flight
And as the plane crashed down he thought
Well, isn't this nice...
(Level of irony: medium. Would have been better if Mr. Play It Safe was an airline safety spokesman or some such instead of just afraid to fly. This way, it just looks like he had a point.)

A traffic jam when you're already late
(Level of irony: none. Unless you're that guy who was supposed to bring the
pardon for the Clock Killer.)

A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
(No irony whatsoever. The hell are you doing taking a cigarette break in a no-smoking area?)

It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
(Level of irony: none. Nice surrealism, though. I'm picturing some Dali-esque spoon painting.)

It's meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife
(Level of irony: none. Sometimes you meet people, and they're already married. It happens. Unless the beautiful wife was the ugly girl you used to throw erasers at in school, and then we just have a Jennifer Aniston movie. And no one wants that.)

Barstool Economics

Explaining the 53, the 99, and the 999

GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain's "9-9-9" tax plan has been getting a lot of traction lately, mainly among people who don't know what they're talking about. Call it barstool economics: the idea that one simple plan can fix everything that's wrong with the economy, plans which always appeal to "regular guys" on barstools holding forth on what's wrong with this country, because simplicity seems fair and the current tax code does not. As it turns out, they're right about the last part, but that's mainly because there are a ton of corporate loopholes in it, which, as billionaire Warren Buffett has become notorious/beloved for pointing out, means that quite a lot of wealthy folks don't pay as much as the middle class.


At the same time, those Occupy Wall Street protesters, no longer occupying just Wall Street but spread out across the country, have taken on economic inequality in the American system, which also means tax revolt. They characterize themselves as the 99 percent of us who don't share in the wealth they help create. The right has countered with their own effective strategy, dubbing themselves 53 percenters, so named because they label themselves as the 53 percent of Americans who actually pay income taxes, supposedly subsidizing the 47 percent who don't. 

And so it goes. It's a political trick, developed over the past thirty years, that might as well be trademarked by the Lee Atwaters and Karl Roves of the world:

1. Scream that the other side is committing something horrible, in this case class warfare.
2. While the media looks the other way, engage in actual class warfare.
3. When the media looks back, pretend to be disgusted that both sides engage in class warfare.

The 4th step comes when Americans get worn down by the constant fighting and long for an idea, an easy to understand idea, which will clear up their confusion. And one such idea has been put forth by GOP Presidential Candidate Herman Cain:  the 9-9-9 tax. It's a variation on an older sneaky conservative trick called the flat tax. And it's gaining momentum.

Here's why it's bullshit.

Americans mostly pay three kinds of taxes. The 9-9-9 plan affects all three. First:

1. The income tax. This is the rich man's tax, which it's why it's the only one you ever hear about. When the rich bitch about taxes, they're complaining about the income tax, because, as they love to point out, 47 percent of Americans don't pay it. That's because those people make less than $50,000 a year. And there's a good reason they don't pay income tax: they can't afford to. Turns out not taxing the poor is a good idea for two reasons -- because it makes them even poorer (the moral argument) and because they can't come up with it (the practical argument). Before the great crash of '08, the percentage of Americans who didn't pay income tax was actually more like 40%; it's jumped to 47 simply because the economy is that bad.

The underlying secret to understanding this is: It costs more money to be poor. It is more expensive to be poor. The man making $50K a year, even if he's lucky enough to be an individual taxpayer taking care of himself alone, will probably spend most of that fifty thousand over the course of the year. Mortgage/rent, gas, food, medical, different forms of insurance, you name it. If he's got a family to support, forget it. He gets to make maybe one or two big purchases a year, and gets to save almost nothing. And he's still lucky, because 80 percent of the people who don't pay income tax actually make even less than that -- $30,000.

Why does he catch such an awesome break? Because of the Earned Income Tax Credit. It was developed in the 1970s to, depending on whom you ask, either take money from the deserving wealthy and hand it to the lazy poor, or to give the poor an incentive to keep slaving away so that they won't rise up and murder the middle class in their beds. Either way, it is the very definition of a socialist wealth-redistribution system.

And yet, some Republicans have actually endorsed it. Conservatives like President Gerald Ford, who first signed the bill into law. Or Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and his son Dubya, all of whom raised and expanded the EITC faithfully while in office, whether or not they raised taxes elsewhere. The biggest windfall you can get under the EITC comes to you if you have 3 or more children and make $16,449 a year. That's raising three kids, feeding at least four people, and keeping a home on $1,370 a month. Lucky bastards.

Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan abolishes the income tax. It does, however, institute a "business tax" of 9 percent. Right now, your employer pays about 8 percent federal tax on you as an employee, for Social Security and Medicare. So it's not too big a change for him. Except that unlike the current system, he doesn't get to deduct the wage he pays you. And he can't raise prices if he wants to stay competitive. So that 9 percent? That comes out of your salary.

In addition, the 9-9-9 plan also abolishes the EITC. But wait! Why would he need to take the trouble to abolish both, if they're both part of the same system already? Read on.  

Now, then. If only there were some way to make these 47% deadbeats pay their fair share of the tax bill! Maybe a system where it was taken from them a little at a time, maybe every two weeks or so. We could call it...

2. The payroll tax. This is the poor man's tax. The rich don't talk about this, because they mostly don't pay it. Americans only pay this on earned income, and then only up to $107,000. After that, for all intents and purposes, nothing. This is the key. There are no deductions for this -- you earn, you pay. Up to that amount. Our $50K Average Joe pays on all of it -- he gets some of it back at tax time thanks to the EITC, which is the "no income tax" the rich complain about, but he still pays fully into Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment. Someone making $500,000 a year, on the other hand, by defintion pays on only one-fifth of his salary. A billionaire, who gets most of his money from investments, pays almost nothing.

See? The 9-9-9 plan giveth, and it taketh away. No income tax means a break for the nation's top earners, but a big increase on tax for the poor, because the EITC is gone. Now Mr. 50K has to come up with 9 percent of his salary at tax time: $4,500. And remember, he's one of the lucky ones.  

Cain has made some noises about poverty clausesthat would exempt the mega poor from all this. Except, well. 

Finally, there's the tax we all pay, at least on paper:

3. The sales tax. This is a tax on consumption. It is state and local, not federal, which is why there's always a city council meeting every time someone wants to raise it a penny to pay teacher's salaries or to build an airport. It's fairly straightforward -- and also more expensive for the poor, who again have to spend most of their income. If a millionaire goes completely insane and spends half a million dollars every year on himself, he still only pays half of his income on sales tax. Average 50K Joe, again, pays on almost if not all his income. And he also pays a much larger share of local and state taxes.

When you add up sales and payroll taxes, as well as excise taxes on gasoline and property taxes and the like, the bottom half of the country pays,. on average, about 25 percent of their income in taxes. (The lowest quintile -- the poorest 20 percent of us -- pay about 16%.) The 53 percenters who are supposedly footing the bill for the rest of us pay a slightly higher percent of their income in taxes: 28 percent.

The 9-9-9 plan taxes everyone at 9 percent. That's not 9 percent total. That's an additional 9 percent. Remember that gallon of gas that used to be $1.80, and then jumped up to $3.50? It's now $3.82. Enjoy.

This also might be a good time to mention how the rich often avoid paying sales taxes. There's a loophole for every product.

35% of the nation's budget is spent on Medicare, unemployment insurance, and welfare, and 36% of the nation's tax revenue comes from that demonized 47 percent making 50K or less a year. The Average Joes. And everyone pays into, and gets back, the portion of the budget reserved for Social Security. So no one is subsidizing us. We're subsidizing ourselves.

But wait. We forgot something.

4. The capital gains tax. And the estate tax. The US Census, who collects and harbors all these stats, defines "income" as "[money] received on a regular basis (exclusive of certain money receipts such as capital gains) before payments for personal income taxes, social security, union dues, medicare deductions, etc." This is the biggest, dirtiest secret about taxes: income and wealth are not always the same thing. They are for me, and probably you, and probably most everyone you've ever known, including your boss. But not for the 1 percent. Remember them? The ones those dirty hippie protesters keep whining about?

The mega-rich in this country are actually the real problem -- the 0.1 percent, if you will. They make, at bottom, $1.6 million a year, but are worth considerably more than that, and most of their wealth comes from what they've inherited and/or from the investments they make. The estate tax, which taxes inheritances, was rebranded by George W. Bush, in a spectacular display of disingenuousness, as the "death tax." Then it was gutted. The capital gains tax rate, under conservative icon Ronald Reagan, stood at -- guess what? 28 percent. That magic number. Bill Clinton reduced it to 20%, possibly as a way of offsetting the income tax hike he instituted on the highest percentile. George W. Bush reduced it to 15%. And there they've stayed.

Oh, and there are ways around these taxes, too.

The 9-9-9 plan, and I know this will shock you, does not touch capital gains, estates, or any other sort of accumulated wealth. In fact, capital gains taxes, now at a rock-bottom 15 percent, disappear entirely.

Here's what happens to taxes, for you and everyone else, under the 9-9-9 plan.

But don't worry. See, the 9-9-9 plan is only Phase 2 of the 9-9-9 plan. That's right. Phase 1 involves reducing the top individual tax rate from 39 to 25 percent. Just the top rate. Then the nines kick in, and when that's established, he chucks everything overboard in favor of -- a 30 percent sales tax for everyone. Which the rich have all sorts of ways to game. That $3.50 gallon of gas is now $4.55. 

The bottom 99 percent of Americans -- you know, the smelly hippie protesters -- make 79.8% of the income in this country, and pay 78.4% of the taxes. But they arguably do 99 percent of the work. And they only control 15 percent of the wealth, while owning 95 percent of the nation's debt.

And those are just individual taxes, not corporate ones. The nation's biggest corporations pay about 9 percent taxes. When they pay at all.

And this is why they're in the streets.

Review: Tori Amos, "Night of Hunters"

Tori Amos
Night of Hunters
Deutsche Grammophon
9.20.11

Say what you will about Tori Amos, you cannot fuck with her iconoclasm. When her particular flavor of the month left radio's mouth some time around 1998's From The Choirgirl Hotel, she kept herself in the game the way most stars do -- through a series of theme projects. But Tori being Tori, these desperate attempts for relevance took weird, arcane forms: she spent her electronica bid on a half-live double, her covers album was done by "personas" turning male-oriented songs inside out; her road trip mixtape dealt with September 11th; her sellout move was about a beekeeper. Her Christmas album was really a winter solstice album. All of which means she wasn't that desperate.

Having more or less found a home in pop middle age with her Abnormally Attracted to Sin comeback of '09, then, you might assume Tori would settle down there. You would be wrong. Night of Hunters is a classical pop piece commissioned by Deutsche Grammophon, and while her constructs remain cumbersome, her muse has come back full circle. This is her roots album; it just so happens that the fiery redhead behind the Bosendorfer piano has her roots in Bach and Chopin. The form doesn't just suit her, it revitalizes her.

Also because she's Tori, the cultural touchstones come from all over. She's savvy enough to include those two, smart enough to reference Satie and Granados, and strange enough to indulge her love of Mussorgsky and Scarlatti. The concept gels immediately: when she works Charles-Valentin Alkan's "Song of the Madwoman on the Sea-Shore, Prelude op. 31 no. 8" into a shattering portrait of domestic violence, you realize she's on to something.

If that's even what she's doing. Because while that opening proves that Amos' second-greatest virtue -- her clear-eyed, hard-headed version of romanticism -- is still present, her love of mythology has only grown stronger over the past few years. And she isn't making any pop moves for once. The result is the most rewarding sort of experience for her fans, but also the most difficult one for outsiders to get into, a 72-minute song cycle that stays idling at the same slow, measured, brooding place while Tori goes on about a fire muse, wolf spirit guides, and The Seven Lords of Time. Average track time: 5:16.

There are a few nice touches here and there, but they're all conceptual. If you don't already know about the Book of Taliesin, you may be lost by "The Chase." And it's not like Kate Bush or Joanna Newsom ever did four -- not one but four -- duets with her 11-year-old daughter Natashya Hawley, portraying her inner child and providing some much needed levity (Dig her Jewish-grandmother delivery of the line "Reactive, but I can work with it, dollface"). Taken in small doses, anyone could be convinced that Tori Amos is making the most beautiful and daring music of her career. But like one of her trademark lyrical visionquests, Night of Hunters requires constant attention... unless you want to end up stranded in Tori's emotional landscape.

Graded using the Third Eye Method:

Impact: 75. Tori's personal vision remains clear, even when her methods are decidedly batty.
Invention: 82."He'll play a Beatles tune / me, more a Bach fugue / Is this such a great divide / between your world and mine? / They both can purify / and heal what was cut and bruised."
Integrity: 83. You love Tori? You want this.

The Loaded Question: Occupy Wall Street

What do the Occupy Wall Street protesters want?

Always looking up: In memoriam

A visit from God

Okay, not a visit, an e-mail. Who still uses those? He's old.

Hey Rob: 

What it look like. Holding up okay? Yeah, I got your messages. You'll be fine. Hang in there.

No, I don't know why no one ever thought to just ask me why I let bad things happen to America like disasters and tragedies and stuff. I mean, I'm right here. You'd think they'd just hit me up. But no, they never send me anything. No event invitations on Facebook, nothing. Whatever. Yeah, I'm sure Pat Robertson and Michele Bachmann know what I'm thinking better than I do. That's not insulting or anything.

Anyways, here's everything I can remember. There's been a lot of stuff going on since I created you little monkeys. And you are monkeys. But don't get me started on that, either.

Why I Let Bad Things Happen To America, a list by God
---

Civil War: Wanted America to resolve its bitter white/black racial divide and concentrate on hating those dirty yellow Chinee

San Francisco Earthquake: Furious over lack of gays

Spanish Flu: Trying to wipe out the Spanish, not sure what happened there

Great Depression: Decided to take a "hands-off" approach to Wall Street

Attack on Pearl Harbor: Misguided attempt to impress Veronica Lake

JFK Assassination: Wanted to distract everyone from having accidentally killed Marilyn Monroe (me, not JFK)

Vietnam: Don't remember; acid comedown

Watergate: Nixon kept that one a secret from me, which is actually kind of impressive

Space Shuttle Challenger disaster: Just kind of pissy that day

L.A. riots: Koreans overcharged me for a bottle of Crystal Pepsi

Columbine massacre: Trying to make Marilyn Manson look dangerous again after that horrible "glam" period

9/11: Not nearly enough country music on the radio

Hurricane Katrina: Massive, unprecedented PR deal with NFL

Great Recession: Dick Cheney starts cleaning his gun in front of you, you don't ask questions, my friend

There you go! That's all I can remember offhand. Not what you expected, but remember, my ways are mysterious to behold, yadda yadda yadda. As everything goes downhill, I'll be sure and keep you posted.

Psych! Come on. You know better than that. And tell everybody to not be such a nation of whiners, while you're at it. You should have seen the shit I used to pull on Europe.

Stay up, playa.

God
The Almighty / Maker of Heaven and Earth / Creator of all that is Seen and Unseen
Heaven, The Firmament
>> Check out my blog! epicbeardgod.tumblr.com

Who's at the party?

 An updated guide to social networking

Several of you may remember this adorable little bit of fanart floating around the webs a few years ago, called "Internet University Cast":

Very accurate. At the time. But the internet's not just a young kid's game anymore: what the 90s used to hilariously dream of as the "information superhighway" has become a subway full of cranky, perhaps violent infocommuters, stepping all over each other and copping a feel in the process. And social networking is the awkward get-together we all have after during work. Who invited all these idiots, anyway? Oh, we did. Or maybe Al Gore. Here's a handy field guide to inform you, as of almost 2012, what each social networking site has become... and what we've become in using them. (BUTTHURT CREAM: I myself have maintained a presence on almost all of these sites. I'm as shallow as you are. Enjoy.)  

(Since so many people enjoy acting like stock stereotypes, I've used stock images to represent them. You. Us. These were all found at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.)

Users: 750 million

You know that overenthusiastic aunt who shows up at the family reunion and spends her whole time trying to get everybody to talk to each other? Even the people who hate each other? Especially those people? That's Facebook. She used to be cool when she was in college, which she just can't seem to stop talking about. Now, she's very, very desperate, and if this get-together doesn't go just right, her bout of nervous trembling and crying will create legendarily awkward silence to be remembered for decades. So you better talk to your mom, your ex, your old boss, everybody. Look how much work she did bringing you all together. You ungrateful little shit.

Users: 200 million

See this guy? Looks like a celebrity, doesn't he? He isn't. He works at AutoZone. But he acts like a celebrity, which he does in the mistaken assumption that this will a) make him famous somehow and, in the process, 2) make him interesting. I mean, there he is, standing right next to Ashton Kutcher! Sure, Ashton doesn't know him, and isn't talking to him, but he's right there. And in America, mere proximity creates the illusion of importance. Which is why this guy Twitter, irony of ironies, is popular, having gotten there by creating the illusion that people just like you (and me, and him) are somehow of the same value to society as Ashton. Of course, Ashton's greatest contribution to society lately has been replacing Charlie Sheen in Two and a Half Men. And if he stands next to you, or retweets you, guess what? You're contributing almost as much to society as that. (Except not really.)

Users: 13.4 million

Hey you! Cutie! Did you hear about that thing? Tumblr did! And she's here to talk about it! This is a party y'all, there's no time for deep and thoughtful discussion. She's also got ADHD, which is why she is just stopping off here by the kitchen long enough to freshen her drink and ask you if you saw last night's Glee, or that HP gif, or that Marilyn Monroe quote, or... hang on, brb. HEY YOU!

Users: 120 million

No one goes to a party to enjoy themselves. They go to network. Everybody's really just networking, if you think about it. And this guy is doing just that. He has no time for personal relationships, especially after what happened last time, and he just wants to concentrate on work right now, and he certainly isn't looking to do anything dumb and irresponsible like have fun. Besides, have you seen what it's like out there? People are stealing each other's plasma. He didn't work up 100K in student loan debt just to wind up working at AutoZone with Twitter. Especially since he can't pay any of that money back. Hey, it's his old boss! Awesome! Oh, he's not working either. Shit. And Mr. LinkedIn here can forget about sex, too, if the pleading look on that girl's face is any indication. Maybe he should have told her he liked her eyes first, then asked if she was hiring.

Users: 1.3 million

OkCupid is not talking to you. That's okay; she doesn't talk to anybody. You can get her a drink, sure, but that's it. She owes you nothing. She's specifically here to hook up, but you should be lucky she's here at all, because everyone here is obviously gross, which is why she's not talking to any of them. Why doesn't anyone like her? She's a good person. She just thinks you're beneath her, which is why you never get invited to any of her parties. But you shouldn't be upset by this, for several reasons: Her parties suck, she's very lonely, and if you look closer, she's not that hot. Also, there's the whole herpes thing.

Users: 20 million  

Failbook is fail. "Oh, talk to your cousin! Talk to your co-workers! My niece is so cute, you should meet her!" Fuck a bunch of that. I may be the new guy, but just because I'm young doesn't mean I can't change the game. We should totally go out back, just you and your friends, and get high, you know what I'm saying? Fuck this bullshit. I'm Google+. I know how to throw a party. Only the cool people. We keep it simple, and we let everybody be who they are. No bullshit games. Who goes to a party to play games? Like I'm 12 or something. I'm throwing a party next week, you should come, it'll be sick. How many people? Uh, I'm working on it. Do you have some sisters or something?

Users: 2 million

Yeah, LiveJournal is still here. For now. No, it's fine. She's just been... just been going through a lot. Which she would like to tell you about. In explicit detail. For hours. She could just join the party, but that's not what she needs right now. She needs some alone time. She doesn't even know why she came here, but she's glad you're here. It's good to see you again. She's really sorry about what happened. She never meant to say those things. Enough about her, how have you been? Better than her, she hopes. It's just been really hard. She's been going through a lot...

Users: 10 million

This awkward little dude is Foursquare. He's got a Blackberry. And an iPhone. And a Samsung thing. Because they have different coverages, yes? He can't miss anything. You should totally hang out with him, bro. He knows where all the cool places are. In fact, he visits them all, every night, ostensibly to "check in" but mainly to try and chase down that elusive inner peace he is sure waits for him around the next corner. (Bar.) Embrace life, my friend! He's not ready to go home yet! This is when all the lame people go home, is best time! When he starts to annoy you -- and he will -- get rid of him by asking what he's running from. He is tired. So very tired.

Users: 10 million

deviantArt usually doesn't come to parties. Or leave the house, really. She much prefers to spend time with her real friends, fictional characters who never judge her, or ask her to leave the house. It's hard sometimes, trying to explain your love for Riley Biers, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Sakura Haruno, especially when Riley's a woman and Sakura is fat for some reason and Sonic is in a dress. It's even harder to draw them all, or write about them making sweet love to each other. These artistic expressions of admiration will, likely as not, be very very horrible. But she will insist on showing them to you. And you will be repulsed. Because you, poor boy, have no soul.

Users: 20 million

where doid everybody go/ fucking lame ass motherfuckers i don't give a shit!!!! youc ant handle my kick ass fuckihg myspace website with the unicorns and the glitters because you ALL SUCKK!!! fuck all u hatas face it i;m stoo sexy for you retards so stfu plus oi think i just peeded in your bathtub so HA HA B(TCHES SEE WHAT U GET when u FUCK WITh THE bEST