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Posts published in “Life”

Following up on a post made yesterday concerning rap-rave music from South Africa

February 3, 2010 |

About Music, Music and Thoughts

Yesterday, before posting Die Antwoord’s music videos, I sent them to my friend Gardner, absolutely sure that he would enjoy them. I was, of course, right. He loved the hell out of them right away. And, being Gardner, what does he do? He finds the band’s e-mail and send them an e-mail about how awesome they are.

To: Die Antwoord
From: Gardner Loulan
Subject: You are now my gods.

I just came across your stuff via my friends blog TheBlackLaser.net and I am totally obsessed now. I was a VJ for MTV Networks in the US a few years ago and have a knack for getting excited about the next level of music and you are it. It’s like you’re bitch slapping Lady Gaga while melting The Knife in her propelled by The Sounds and blowing up Golgol Bordello with an M.I.A. bomb—- putting them all int he past and back together again in the future where you clearly reside.

Well done,
-Gardner Loulan

Now, one usually expects this sort of missive to go unnoticed or unreplied to. But did it? Of course not!

From: Die Antwoord
To: Gardner Loulan

what a FUCKIN nice thing to say
we fuckin love you for saying this

once my blaar!

NINJA
out

This trifecta of e-mails was completed with a brief note from Gardner to me.

To: Me
From: Gardner Loulan

My day is now complete.

Awesome. Thank you, internet, for allowing us to have such remarkable instantaneous contact with such diverse people from all around the world. Though we often take it for granted, the ease with which we can communicate with folks from such places as far from us as South Africa is truly incredible.

And also thanks, Die Antwoord, for being cool enough to respond to Gardner.

And thanks, Gardner, for being enthusiastic enough about everything to go out of your way, if only a little bit, to track these dudes down.

If you haven’t yet watched the music videos below, do. And get yourself to Die Antwoord’s website and listen to their, frankly, amazing debut streaming in its entirety. Go now!

> Continue reading...Following up on a post made yesterday concerning rap-rave music from South Africa

Famous Literary Addicts

January 27, 2010 |

About Writing, Thoughts and Writing

This story is making the rounds today, but I thought it was cool enough to share.

There’s no secret that substance abuse has always traveled hand in hand with people in the literary world. It’s just a thing. It doesn’t make it ok, but it’s fascinating nevertheless. For example, did you know that Ayn Rand was addicted to speed? No, neither did I. But here she is, looking a little crispy around the edges.

It's the eyes, man.

Intense.

Life has posted a gallery of famous literary addicts. I knew that Burroughs was a junk addict, but I had no idea that Louisa May Alcott (of Little Women fame) was too. Wild!

Famous Literary Drunks & Addicts

Check it out.

> Continue reading...Famous Literary Addicts

The Black Laser enters MEAT SPACE.

January 20, 2010 |

Thoughts

Dearest Deegan,

Thank you for the incredible birthday gift. I know that I actually received this a while ago, but I felt like today was a good day to post it. There’s only one, and I’ve got it. Fuck yes.

The Front.

The Back.

To be perfectly honest, it took me a while to start wearing it out mostly because it feels like being in a band wearing its own t-shirt—a serious no-no in the metal community as we both know. But then I started to think of it as determined self-promotion and thought, “You know what? Fuck anyone who’d bust my balls for wearing this awesome shirt of my own equally awesome website.” And there you have it. Interestingly enough, a post yesterday on Invisible Oranges called “The rules of metal t-shirt wearing” confirmed some of the things I’ve already been feeling.

But you still won’t ever catch me wearing the band’s shirt to the show.

Anyway! Thanks for the shirt, dude. It slays.

Sincerely,

The Black Laser.

> Continue reading...The Black Laser enters MEAT SPACE.

Redesign of The Black Laser

January 19, 2010 |

Thoughts

So, I’m growing bored with the utterly awesome design I have here on The Black Laser. It’s basically just a customized version of the freeware theme Pixel. I tweaked the colors and the fonts and whatever quickly, just to get the site up and running. If I had spent a million years fucking with the design, there would be no Black Laser for all of you to read. That would be horrible, wouldn’t it.

Well, now more than a year has passed since I made this place public and it seems to me like it’s time to really go super duper with this place.

There are a few elements I think are critical.

  • Lasers.
  • Bright pink.
  • Black.
  • Comments than differentiate me (the admin) and you (my loyal readers).
  • Good search engine optimization (which I know nothing about).
  • Unicorns.
  • Serif fonts.

I like my color scheme. I think that black and pink are basically the perfect colors for this place. But there are some problems, like the huge empty space at the top. Or the black bars on either side. It feels like my text is floating in space and I think it makes it a little hard to digest the sometimes quite large blocks of text I post. Yes, Tiffany, I know, TL:DR. But for everyone else, I’d like to make it easier to read on this site.

Some people have complained about how reading white (actually light grey) text on black hurts their eyes. Personally, I think it’s more tiring to look at black text on white on the computer, but different strokes, right? I could play around with that, but it probably won’t change.

Another thing, I’ve got a jumble of boxes on the side with very little delineation between them. I’m not even sure how useful that stuff on the side is to anyone. Do any of you even read it? I update that stuff fairly regularly or when appropriate. It could definitely be laid out more smartly.

Other than that, I don’t really know. I have some pictures in my head of what it should look like, but nothing definite. I should also probably finally do something with josephdillingham.com.

Anyway, thoughts? Suggestions? Fears? Concerns?

> Continue reading...Redesign of The Black Laser