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The Black Laser

On the Advice of Torgeir, The Black Metal Extremist II

August 24, 2011 |

Vox Critica and Writing

Question:

I work for a media company. We’re quite busy lately, and I would like to send our interns, who are unpaid college students, on the occasional coffee run, but it seems wrong somehow. I know they wouldn’t be learning anything, but isn’t it better for the company to have an unpaid intern and not a paid employee do this?

If I am correct in my assumptions, you work for some miserable nameless drone factory spreading the disease of capitalism across the world. You seek to poison minds with your Christian agenda. Though I do not support your doctrine of the light, let us examine your question from an intellectual standpoint, something I am sure you know nothing about.

First, if you are going to draft students into working as slave labor for you performing menial tasks, is it really so inappropriate to send them on other less educational menial tasks? Nonsense. Banality is banality. Whether they are filing a heart-crushing stack of paperwork or fetching coffee for you and your lazy officemates, what’s the difference? Both are a supreme waste of the students’ time. What could they possibly be learning from such nonsensical tasks as you have appointed them? Don’t waste the time of people you actually pay to be there on something as foolish as coffee runs. Use the slaves.

In the darkened days of college, I spent the longest winter of my life working as the intern at a local radio station here in Trondheim. I took the job primarily to steal blank cassettes on which to release my countless, brutal black metal projects and demos. Everyone know that cassette tapes are the ideal medium for distributing black metal demos. Only sell-outs would use CDs. And digital files? Worthless.

During my internship I was sent out for coffee many times, but did I ever feel like it was a waste of time? Of course I did. It was an enormous waste of time as are all internships. Therefore your interns are wasting their time by just being there, so if you waste their time in turn by sending them for coffee nothing is lost.

You know what, maybe you should all—paid and unpaid—go on coffee runs all day. Then your pathetic propagandist media empire would crumble into dust as is the fate of all humanity. I beseech the wolves of the new moon to feast upon your bones.

Hang yourself.

Soundtrack: Darkthrone’s “Transylvanian Hunger”

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> Continue reading...On the Advice of Torgeir, The Black Metal Extremist II

Chromeo’s “Night Falls”

August 22, 2011 |

Music and Music Videos

Oh, Chromeo, will I ever get tired of your inventive, slick, hilarious music videos? Probably not. Getting chicks explosively pregnant? The only other person I’ve seen pull that trick is my dad. HEEYYYOOOOOO.

Anyways, this video rules and you should watch it. Why do I even say that? Of course it rules. That’s why it’s here. If it was bad, I would let you know. Otherwise, from here on out, let’s just assume that the video is going to be awesome if you see it here on The Black Laser.

I’m not feeling particularly clever right now. My head hurts. Watch the thingie.

> Continue reading...Chromeo’s “Night Falls”

Skrillex’s “First of the Year (Equinox)”

August 19, 2011 |

Music and Music Videos

Look, Mr. Rapist, we all know that you only wanted to ask her if the rag smelled like chloroform, but you picked the wrong psychic demon girl to try and force yourself upon. Now, you’ll never force yourself on anyone again.

Obviously inspired by Chris Cunningham’s “Come to Daddy” video, this video is one of the slickest pieces I’ve seen in a while (forgiving the dodgy demon CG at points). Certainly, when I think of Dubstep (Brostep, really), these sorts of visuals are what comes to mind: wet, cityscapes, green, darkness, grit. It’s a point I’ve discussed before.

I hope Skrillex gets the opportunity to make more videos like this. It is really, really cool.

> Continue reading...Skrillex’s “First of the Year (Equinox)”

Get Drunk Tonight – TBD

August 19, 2011 |

Vox Critica and Writing

TBD – Greenpoint, Brooklyn (Franklin & Green St)

Suppose that it is a nice day outside and you think to yourself, “What would be better right now than ruining the rest of my day by getting way too drunk after forgetting to eat anything? Oh, right. Nothing. Where to do my day drinking?!” And then you start to think of different places you might want to go have a drink or 17. Berry Park is full of shit heads. Nope. Radegast is terminally full. Nope. Ditto for Spitzenhaus. Nope. Loreley in Williamsburg is stuck under the freeway and the service sucks. Nope. Loreley in Manhattan is ok but tiny and gets packed. Nope. Züm Schneiders only has seating on the street which is not my favorite thing. Nope. The Bohemian Beer Garden is a bear to get to. Nope. Beer Island is great, but Coney Island is similarly hard to get to. Nope.

Where is a man with the desire to ruin his day supposed to go? The answer is TBD. Oh, how I love TBD on a perfect afternoon. The first drunken Sunday at TBD of the year is the sign that winter has broken and warmer days are ahead. This year it happened in April. I look forward to it.

Saddled with an unfortunate name and an even more unfortunate interior, one quick glance in the door at TBD and you might think, “No way, Get Drunk Tonight, you’re full of shit.” But trust me here. Go inside. And then go all the way to the back past the ping pong table, past the shitty furniture, past the bathrooms, and out in the glorious backyard fill with umbrellad picnic tables. It is a magical wonderland of empty tables and quiet and sunshine. It’s one of my favorite places to while away an afternoon with a couple good friends, my credit card at the bar, and a plan to be asleep at my house by 10pm.

TBD always has a good selection of interesting beers, usually one per variety so your palate will be tickled. They also have a grill in the back which is good, but can take quite a long time which is not a problem, of course, if you’re settling in to spend the next 6 hours assaulting your liver with foamy beer sodas. It’s a little out of the way for Manhattanites, but right near the Greenpoint G for those of you who live in real places. It’s never so packed you can’t find a table. The crowd is relaxed and diverse. TBD is just a great place to get your drink on. Just don’t go during the winter. The inside is the worst.

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> Continue reading...Get Drunk Tonight – TBD

On the Advice of Torgeir, The Black Metal Extremist

August 18, 2011 |

Vox Critica and Writing

Editor’s note\\\ This is the first of a bunch of advice columns I’ve written for Vox Critica in the character of Torgeir The Black Metal Extremist. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them. -TBL

The world can be a tricky place to manage and we all need a little help from time to time. But, all too often, the advice giver is just as messed up as the givee, what with all their pretensions about what’s right and what’s wrong and all the hang ups that come with giving advice for a living.

Today we introduce a new Vox Critica advice columnist: Torgeir, the Black Metal Extremist. We think you’ll find his particular brand of austerity is not out of place amongst the many advice columnists who flitter about the interwebs. Greet him warmly, for surely there are consequences who stand in defiance of his decree.

As always, the questions are real.

Question:

My girlfriend of six months has worn the same bra every day now for two weeks. I really wonder: Is this a normal thing for most women or a psychological issue? I feel it is a matter of hygiene, abnormal behavior, and also really gross.

If something so insignificant as whether or not she regularly changes her underwear bothers you, I suggest you stop analyzing her and start thinking about exactly what is wrong with you. Let me ask you some questions. What is normal? What is hygiene? If your vile lifemate has not changed her filthy undergarments for two weeks, what does it matter to you? Who are you to impose your fascist standards of cleanliness on her? What do you find, and I quote, “gross” about this? Are you some paragon of virtue who has never worn the same socks two days in a row? Who are you to judge this woman? When did you first recognize that you were a vile worm?

Do you look down on me, Torgeir, when you learn that I once wore the same leather armor for months without removing it or cleansing it of blood?

Many years ago, in the grim light of a winter’s dawn, as smoke rose from the embers of a recently burnt church, I raised my knife to the sky and plunged it into the chest of a man I had formed my first band with, a man who brazenly accused me of not truly being committed to the cause of purging this country of Christianity. When I felt his heart pumping blood all over my hands and I saw the light dim in his eyes, I knew that I was the victor. From his floating rib I fashioned a necklace as a grisly totem of my triumph. And what was the point? Nothing. There is no point. We are meat and when I took his life I changed nothing. His wasted existence is just another moment in time so vast and incomprehensible that our pathetic, weak, human brains can never possibly understand it. We are led by nature to believe that we have meaning and purpose, but this is a cold, dead world that will consume you and then forget you even existed.

To put this into words your feeble mind can comprehend, if you do not like that she does not change her bra for two weeks, liberate yourself of her. Stop being such a weak-willed worm and do what you must. In the end nothing matters at all. Do you think future humans will look back and care in the slightest that she did not change her bra? No one will ever even know she existed, just a stain on humanity’s poisoned genetic lineage. Soon she will be in the ground feeding worms and you will be dust.

Stab yourself.

Soundtrack: Emperor’s “Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk”

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> Continue reading...On the Advice of Torgeir, The Black Metal Extremist

8 Hours in Brooklyn

August 16, 2011 |

Film and Film & TV

Holy shit. This is sick as hell, though I am not convinced the slip-n-slide on the concrete’s such a great idea.

More about the project.

All footage was shot within an 8 hour span in Brooklyn, NYC. Several of these shots will be used in part w/ a series of spots we are directing/producing which will be released sometime in the near future.

Check out our blog for more info:
nextlevelpictures.com/​blog/​2011/​8/​11/​8-hours-in-brooklyn-w-the-phantom-flex.html

Awesome track too. It’s Skream’s “Where You Should Be” from Outside the Box.

> Continue reading...8 Hours in Brooklyn

Tiger Love’s “Gio Gio”

August 11, 2011 |

Music and Music Videos

You know how earlier I was all, “Blah blah blah boobies blah blah blah cheeseburgers instead”? You don’t? Ok, WELL, this video makes me feel a similar thing in the sense that it makes me want to throw eggs at people, granted that those people are hot chicks in gold bathing suits. You know, that raises another question: would anyone actually go swimming in one of those things or are they purely for lounging pool/oceanside?

The song itself is pretty good for slick ass synthy disco music. I’m into it. I’d listen to this album while throwing a dance party, driving through the desert, or cooking dinner. Those are all suitable venues for these guys. The woman singer’s voice reminds me of the woman from Vocoder quite a bit, but separated by time and geography and grocerystoreness.

I dug around Spotify, Amazon, and the Googles for more on these guys but all I can find is their Myspace and Facebook pages which seems to indicate that they’re fairly new on the scene. I hope to see and hear more out of these folks in the future as I can never really have too much cheesey synthy dance music in my life. They have a few more videos which I’ll be posting over the next few days intermingled with other content so you don’t get too overwhelmed.

> Continue reading...Tiger Love’s “Gio Gio”