Candy Darling, still looking beautiful on her deathbed.
 
A few weeks ago I posted an article on DM that used the word “tranny,” and which sparked some debate in the comments section. The use of the word is a hot topic in the LGBT community at the moment, after the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) made a statement criticizing Glee over their use of “tranny” in their Rocky Horror Picture Show episode. Susan Sarandon, star of Rocky Horror lest we forget, in turn made a statement criticizing GLAAD, saying they were getting out of control. 

Even though my article used the term “queen” wrongly, I asked Elizabeth Veldon (the commentator who called me out) to write a guest editorial for us on the how the word should be used. Here it is:

Recently Dangerous Minds ran an article on a film called Ticked Of Trannies With Knives and it led to a debate on the page over the use of language. No, let’s rephrase that: it led to an all out cyber-brawl with much swearing and pissyness.

First things first: In my opinion, calling a Gender Variant Person (possibly the only non-offensive term I can think off) a “tranny” is no better than calling a Jewish person a “kike” or a black person by the “N word.” Indeed a Jewish Gender Variant friend of mine often suffered combined “kike” and “tranny” abuse and I myself have been “accused” of being Jewish when wearing a black suit on a Saturday. Are transgendered citizens all part of some Zionist conspiracy? Sometimes I wonder…

“Tranny” has its roots in drag performances, which is a fine and upstanding tradition, but not one Gender Variant People, on the whole, wish to aspire to. In fact Gender Variant People are not drag queens, drag kings, cross dressers (god bless ‘em), “poofs” who have gone too far or dykes who couldn’t cope with it and became men. Neither are we defenders of patriarchy, oppressors of women or a drag on the queer scene.

Gender Variant People should be of interest to radicals and liberals everywhere damned as we are to suffer violence, constant discrimination and to have our very bodies commandeered by systems of power beyond our control. But we have been left behind, labeled “trannies” (or worse), and left to the tender mercies of a medical establishments that insist we label ourselves as mentally ill before we are “allowed” to carry out body modification surgery (should we wish to). We are most certainly not mentally unstable crazies muttering over knives in our unheated bed sits.

Genderphobes take ownership of our deaths, medics of our bodies, “queer theorists” of our Identities and anything we have left is destroyed by the catch all term of abuse “tranny.”

So what should you say when you meet a “tranny”? What name should you use? The first problem is that you shouldn’t need a name, or a catch all term for other people. The desire to name, as Adam named the animals, and the name he gave them became their name, is to the desire to determine the nature of a thing. Why not ask? Some people are “transpeople,” some transexuals, some “gender trash,” some “gender queer,” some queer, some gay, lesbian, butch, femme. Just ask.

Finally in response to Isrial Luma [director of TOTWK] I offer a new vision of revenge – not ticked off trannies with knives but Diamanda Galas’s “Wild Women With Steak Knives” (with an apology to the guys I know):
 

 
Overly earnest young man gets down to the nitty-gritty of “Satanic” rock music in this clip from 1982’s Rock: It’s Your Decision. I like the parts where he’s offering his idiotic Christian exegesis on Barry Manilow and Eagle’s lyrics.
 

 
Bonus” “Satan is Real” by the Louvin Brothers. That’s country legend Chet Atkins on guitar.
 

 
Via Christian Nightmares

 
Apparently Abraham Lincoln is alive and well. Redditor hotmath snapped this pic with the title “He Lives.” 

(via reddit and TDW)

 
Jason Williams, a.k.a. Revok, one of the best known graffiti artists in Los Angeles, was taken into custody Thursday at LAX as he prepared to board a plane bound for Ireland. The arrest was for an outstanding warrant he had failed to pay restitution on.

WIlliams is a member of the Mad Society Kings, or MSK, graffiti crew. He is being held in the Los Angeles County Jail in lieu of $320,000 bail, according to the Los Angeles Times.
 

 
I was driving through Thrall, Texas today and spotted a garden of dead cars on the side of the road. I had to film it.

The Garden Of Dead Cars is not some splashy experimental film. You may find it boring. I found it accidentally. I merely filmed what I saw. And what I saw was the shadows of leaves playing against rusted and decaying cars. It was a breezy day and the shadows were excited. What I also saw was the metal of the cars eroding and oxidizing and taking on the appearance of planet Earth viewed from deep space, hoods and door panels looking like continents adrift in massive oceans, jutting walls of monolithic desert mesas and craggy, desolate mountain ranges or topographical maps of lunar landscapes.

As I looked intently at what I was filming, I realized that even the automobile has a body that is organic and that the elements will work upon that body until a Chevrolet or Ford becomes dirt, mineral and dust. All highways lead to the all-forgiving cunt of Earth to be ground into some essential molecular construct that will generate new forms, new life. In the extreme long run, not even cars die. Carma.

The video’s audio is what was going on around me: wind, birds, and the occasional sound of a car or motorcycle revving its engine, calling out to their dead brothers.

In these images I see our past but also our future.

 
From the air, Holland’s tulips fields look like a fabulous work of abstract art. These beautiful photographs of tulip farms in Lisse are published in the Daily Mail, which writes:

Tens of thousands of tourists have flocked to catch a glimpse of these spectacular quilted farmlands in all their technicolour glory.

Many flower-gazers are so excited by the views that they have parked caravans along the bulbfields in a bid to soak up every last hue.

More than three billion tulips are grown each year and two-thirds of the vibrant blooms are exported, mostly to the U.S. and Germany.

The tulip season begins in March and lasts until August with several shows held across the country, but the flowers are undoubtedly at their most spectacular at this time of year.

The cultivation of flower bulbs began more than 400 years ago and today Holland produces more than nine billion bulbs every year, of which two thirds are exported overseas.

Evenly distributed, this number would allow for almost two flower bulbs for every person on the planet.

Their dazzling colours are thanks to the years in the 17th century when Tulipmania swept the globe and the most eye-catching specimens changed hands for a small fortune.

The country’s reputation for producing the colourful flower has grown so much that the area between Haarlem and Leiden is now regarded as “De bollenstreek” or the bulb district.

But like a rainbow, this colourful landscape is a short-lived phenomenon.

When the flowers are gone, the land will be cultivated for a rather more mundane crop of vegetables.

 

 
More colorful pictures of Holland’s tulip farms, after the jump…
 

Here’s the first of a series of pieces I’ll be doing on one-hit wonders. While my intent is to be as informative as possible, I’m starting off with an artist that I can find very little information on, the mysterious J. Bastos.

“Loop di Love” was recorded in 1969 by J. Bastos (Juan Bastos) and became a big hit in Holland and Germany in 1971. It kicks off with one of the more bizarre and memorable verses in pop history and goes on to tell the story of a young man’s chance encounter with a prostitute.

I saw you walking down the street
Love di loop di love
Your hair was hanging down to knees
Love di loop di love
Your waist was waving like a ship
Love di loop di love
The way you look made me sick
Love di loop di love

The only biographical information I can find on J. Bastos is that he lived somewhere in northern Germany and the song was recorded as a joke among drunken friends and became a fluke hit. And that info is from an alleged disgruntled former employee of Bastos who claims he was hellish to work for and fell into being a popstar totally by accident. It’s odd, considering the notoriety and popularity of “Loop di Love,” that so little is known of its creator. Anyone got any info on J. Bastos?

The tune is based on a Greek fishermen’s song “Darla Dirlada.”

A double dose of J. Bastos - a promo video shot in Amsterdam and a performance on German TV.

Cock-hopping at 1:27.
 

 
Special for Easter, here’s a rarely seen document from the bowels of the New York No Wave scene: Ecstatic Stigmatic directed by Teenage Jesus and the Jerks member Gordon Stevenson and starring his wife Mirielle Cervenka (older sister of Exene). Both of whom would be dead within 2 years of the film’s completion, he of AIDS and she of a hit and run driver in Los Angeles. Also appearing is DNA’s Arto Lindsay. Despite the home made proto-goth silliness this is actually pretty relentlessly creepy and the music is fantastic. Definitely worth at least one viewing and/or skimming. Extra huge thanks to our own Marc Campbell for hunting down the best possible version, cleaning it up and uploading for your viewing displeasure. Probably NSFW.
 


 
Andrew Makes Comics imagines Robin the Boy Wonder as Holden Caulfield in J. D.Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. AMC also has a fine Trouble With Tribbles and Grand! Theft! Andy!.
 
Via Andrew Makes Comics
 

 
Max Matthews was a visionary genius who helped pioneer the use of computers as musical instruments. Mathews died on 21 April 2011 in San Francisco, California of complications from pneumonia. He was 84.

In the late 1950s Max Mathews created MUSIC, the first widely used music synthesis program while working in the Acoustic Research Group at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Over the next forty years at Bell Labs and then at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University, Mathews advanced and refined digital computer music synthesis.”

Matthews created the Radio Baton which is featured in the video below. His enthusiasm for his invention and love for the music he creates with it is inspiring. The video was shot in 2010 when Matthews was 83 years old. A marvelous human being.

A Radio Baton is an electronic instrument with two baton controllers and a receiving base called the antenna. In the end of each baton is a small radio transmitter. As the batons are moved over the receiving base, four antennas in the base are able to determine the batons’ location in three-dimensional space. The movement of the batons through space are converted into instructions determining how the music is to be synthesized.
The Radio Baton Conductor Model uses the model of an orchestra conductor controlling the musical tempo, dynamics and expression of the piece. The Conductor program puts the pitches and the durations of the notes in a score that the computer reads as a sequence of beats in the computer memory. The conductor can move the batons around with his two hands, controlling six variables, and assign these variables to whatever functions in the music are important at any instant of the music.
When asked if the radio baton was a successful instrument, Mathews answered, “I suspect actually it was too successful. It may have made music too easy to play. But my vision there, and the vision I think I got from John Chowning was that everyone could have his own orchestra and could interpret music according to his particular feelings about it. And that this might be a much more satisfying way than simply sitting and listening to a recording or simply listening to a concert in a concert hall.”

In the video, Matthews performs pieces by by Bach, Chopin, Beethoven and Appleton, demonstrating the artfulness of electronics.

Matthews once said that “a violin always sounds like a violin, but a computer is unlimited in terms of timbre it can make, so it can enrich music.” His mission was to learn, as he put it, “what the human brain and ear thinks is beautiful. What do we love about music? What about the acoustic sounds, rhythms and harmony do we love? When we find that out it will be easy to make music with a computer.” Enjoy Max Matthews making some music with a computer: