I have written about Ben Butler and his magical Mouse Pad on DM before, calling Joe Howe (who is in effect Ben Butler) the “Herbie Hancock of the Scott Pilgrim generation” and “Bernie Worrell jamming a Gameboy”. I stand by that because Joe is a brilliant producer. His lo-fi synthtastic noodlefunk is not to everyone’s liking, but if you dug some of the skwee sounds I posted a wee while back, if you like some 80s MOR pop but think it’s just too slick, or even if you just have a general interest in leftfield electronica, then BB&MP are worth checking out.

Having released their debut album Formed For Fantasy earlier this year, BB&MP’s record label LOAF are now giving away as a free download the first single, “Infinite Capacity (For Love)”, which features The Niallist on lead vocals. Who is that I hear you ask? Yes, it is me, and I know that makes me open to accusations of nepotism, but I would post about BB&MP even if I didn’t know Joe. There’s a reason I worked with him and that is because he is really good, and I am very happy with our collaboration. But you can judge for yourself - to have “Infinite Capacity (For Love)” sent to your inbox, enter your email address into this widget:
 

 
Other guest vocalists on the album include San Francisco’s Vice Cooler (aka Hawnay Troof), LA’s Bobby Birdman and the brilliant Scottish oddbod Momus. Formed For Fantasy is being streamed in full on the LOAF Records website. For more info (and free tracks) check out the Ben Butler & Mouse Pad Bandcamp site, and for general shits and giggles they also have a Tumblr. LOAF have also just released a new video for the track “Design” featuring Bobby Birdman. It’s the wigged out animated tale of a psychedelic Jesus-meets-Vishnu character:
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Supermotion: The sound of Ben Butler & Mouse Pad

 
The first episode in the new series by Adam Curtis, All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace is now available to watch in full on YouTube.

Starting by examining our current era of supposed economic, social and online freedoms, Curtis manages to join the dots between Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan, the IMF’s involvement in East Asia, radical Islam and Silicon Valley’s economic boom. This episode features some very interesting and candid interviews with Rand confidants Nathaniel and Barbara Branden, Nathaniel having had an affair with Rand that lasted many years. Presented in the typical, excellent Adam Curtis style, using lots of obscure stock footage and a great soundtrack, this is essential viewing.
 

 
Episode two of All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace (“How The Idea Of The Ecosystem Was Invented”) is available to watch here.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace: Trailer for Adam Curtis Doc
Adam Curtis on the death of Bin Laden

 
Please no smoking in the blogosphere.

 
I’ve never watched a soap opera in my life. But if this is what I’ve been missing, I suddenly feel a sense of loss and deprivation. This clip from The Guiding Light is like something concocted by John Waters in the midst of a Sirkian wet dream.

Apparently, this scene thrust actress Kim Zimmer into the realm of soap opera super stardom and won her a Daytime Emmy Award. She deserved it.

Melodrama at its most delirious. I love it!
 

 
Chris Stein of Blondie is not only a fine musician and songwriter he’s also an accomplished photographer. These photos of the last few days in the life of CBGB must have been heartbreaking for Stein to shoot. Blondie, along with some of the most significant bands of the past four decades, started their career on the ancient stage at the east end of one of the funkiest bars in the known universe.

Beneath these layers of band stickers and graffiti are more layers of band stickers and graffiti. They’re like the rings of a mutant tree, each layer representing a phase of CBGB’s evolution. Radiocarbon dating the walls of the club would have revealed the raw ages of the pre-history of punk rock.

It is a sad to see the once great disheveled beast gutted and splayed like a rock and roll King Kong fallen from the skies onto the yuppiefied streets of the new Bowery.

There are more of Stein’s shots of CBGB, as well as photos of Blondie, punk pioneers, Graceland, H.R. Giger and more, at Chris’s fascinating website Rednight.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
How dumb would someone have to be to watch this commercial, then pick up the phone and buy this for $100 bucks?

Via Christian Nightmares

 
This is stunning. I wish it were longer.

Created by Tadas Svilainis using photos by Jan Saudek.

Svilainis scanned the photos, cut the the images into layers using Photoshop and then animating them in After Effects.
 

 
Since the Rapture failed to materialize as predicted on May 21, the mainstream media has pretty much dropped 89-year-old crazy Christian doomsday kook Harold Camping and his un-Raptured followers like…well… the goofy losers they are. And rightfully so.

However, according to the Christian Post website which has continued following his dumbshit antics, Camping still insists that the Rapture DID IN FACT occur but only in a SPIRITUAL sense! Camping maintains that his dates for a May 21 Judgment Day and a October 21 real Doomsday are STILL—despite EVERY EVERY SINGLE BIT OF EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY—accurate and absolutely right on target. He was expecting maybe a little more in the way of some box office boffo special effects, sure, maybe some floods and for the earth to be torn asunder, but, hey, the Lord works in mysterious ways, fella! It’s not all shock and awe:

Judgment Day on May 21 did come, asserted Camping. However, he clarified that the Judgment Day arrived in a spiritual sense rather than manifesting in a physical Rapture.

On Monday, a caller asked Camping whether they would see any signs from Deuteronomy 28, beginning with verse 15, fulfilled in the coming End Days. The passage refers to the curse of God for those who disobey his teachings.

“Those who are unsaved are going to experience the curse of God,” affirmed Camping, president of Family Radio.

He predicted that whatever of a person’s corpse is left in the grave on October 21 “will be thrown out of the grave” and be “like manure on the ground.” Furthermore, those who die on October 21 won’t receive a burial, said Camping.

“They will be shamed in the eyes of God,” he said.

“On the last day, all the unsaved are going to come under the curse of God. They are going to be thrown out of the grave if there are still a corpse there or bones. If they are in the grave, they will be shamed in the eyes of God. If they die on that day, they’re not going to be buried. They’re going to be shamed in the eyes of God,” Camping further predicted.

He explained that the actual person himself will not really experience any of this beastliness because they are already dead. You mean like zombies? Exactly!

“But they will be shamed,” Camping insists. This coming from someone so impervious to shame himself, of course, but I digress…

Also on Monday’s radio show, Camping took some hits from a few of his pissed-off followers—some who are now broke and having a crisis of faith—on his radio show:

“I’ve been studying the Bible with you all those years,” said the caller Monday.

“I thought nothing would shake my faith that I would go through all the tribulations and all that. But now that I see that it didn’t happen once again, all I look at is disappointment from our Father.”

The caller commended Camping for “staying faithful” but expressed his own lack thereof.

“In my case, I don’t know what it means to be faithful anymore because I am really disappointed,” the caller said in a saddened voice.

—snip—

One ex-follower was so upset over Camping’s failed prediction that he threatened the doomsday speaker with violence and used profanity to address him.

“You’re really pathetic, you know? I wasted all my money because of you. I was putting all my money and my hopes on you,” an angry caller told Camping.

“Do you understand? I wish I could see you face to face, I would smack you.”

Camping attempted to explain himself but the caller sounded like he had enough.

“Mr. Camping, you always say a lot of (expletive). I lost all my money because of you, you (expletive),” said the caller.

I don’t feel one single lick of sympathy for these fuckin’ people. They got EXACTLY what they deserved: A really expensive lesson in REALITY.

 
Never judge a book by its cover, but on this occasion I’ll make an exception. A beautiful trippy design for Canongate Books’ edition of Incognito by David Eagleman. It reminds me of those fabulous paintings Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely.
 
Via The Casual Optimist, with thanks to William Clark

 
The intersection of Tolkien and “The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers”???

Over on BB Submitterator Ethan Freak writes: “Legolas looks more like a crime-fighting Robin than elf, Aragorn wields an ax, Tom Bombadil is sporting some groovy bellbottoms, & Frodo resembles a pig on crack. The best might be Gandalf “Keep on Truckin’” the Gray. These groovy Lord of the Rings stickers were recently spotted at a Tolkien convention. As you’ll see, the anonymous artist has taken liberties with Tolkien’s vision. Where they originally came from, no one seems to know. Shall the stickers be destroyed in the fiery chasm whence they came?”

See more Tolkien hippie stickers over at Ethan Gilsdorf’s website. He has a fun back-story to go along with these unearthed stickers.