Not shown: panting. Shown: nerding.

Picard Knows.

Behold Kris Mar, newest addition to the IllCon Team! Hail Kris Mar! May the rivers run red with the blood of your fallen foes, and may vampires tremble and expire at your feet just as they do under the mighty ax of Abe Lincoln!
I am impressed with the nerdiness contained herein, please feel free to contribute further in the future. Sweet.

-Cobras

Of course, a guy with the balls to disco a George Lucas cash cow must have a pretty sweet logo.

Meco proved the naysayers wrong. Those turkeys at MGM tried it themselves. look at the results...

I'll be honest with you guys: I ain't a big fan of John Carpenter's 1976 jam Assault on Precinct 13 (nor its 2005 remake, ugh)--after all, when you put that motherfucker side by side with JC's work in the 80's (The Thing, They Live, Big Trouble In Little China, hell, even second-tier shit like The Fog, Prince of Darkness, and 1994's In The Mouth of Madness) it just doesn't stand up. I mean, hey, what does? Nothing. That's what. But Precinct is still a good movie, to be sure: a study in isolation, paranoia, and xenophobia that plays out like an extended version of the police station raid scene in the original Terminator. It just came from a time when Carpenter was still in the process of perfecting his chops.

Speaking of his chops...

Goddamn this dude has a way of creating atmosphere with a Casio keyboard, a shit drum machine, and about six notes. He performed similar magic with the ultra-basic They Live score, but Precinct takes it a step further. The entire duration of this recording is basically a study on "variations of a theme"--never straying from the same tempo and basic root notes, only occasionally stumbling into dark alleys of either murmuring noise or complete silence. I've been heavily into shit like this lately--moody, repetitive horror/suspense scores, the more Euro the better.

I was stoked to see that WhatFreshHell over at The Living Doorway was giving new-school retro minimalist Moog-horror composer Umberto a spin recently, as I too have been basking in the man's meaty fart-bass and soothing synth as of late. I highly recommend visiting Umberto's Bandcamp forthwith if you're into that kind of thing, although a pioneer and/or innovator he ain't. Dude wears his influences on his sleeve when he isn't outright ripping them off--Goblin, Frizzi, and, of course, ol' Uncle John. Credit where it's due, I guess. Whatever.
Carp did it first. Carp did it best.

Download HERE
John Carpenter website/Last.FM



Today is Friday, February 24th.

Witch means:

a) You are either going to Eli's Mile High Club in Oakland to see Bell Witch, Worm Uoroboobyrobbybobdobbs 'R' Us, Alaric, Sutekh Hexen, and muthafuckin' APOCRYPHON tonight (get there EARLY! We are opening at like 7:30 or some such bullshit!), or:

b) If you are unfortunate enough to live outside the San Francisco Bay Area, you should tune in to FCCFreeRadio.com Studio 1A at 10pm for Episode 24 of IllCon Radio. I won't be there, so it will probably suck. But they have a demonologist or some shit coming on, so maybe it will be cool. I dunno. Call Cory, Erik, and Al at 415.829.2980 and give them some shit. Tell 'em Cobras sent you.

ALSO:

SRSLY GUISE SOOOOOO STOKED FOR THIS

Take a number, ladies.

As if the guitar-slinging, golden-throated, pussy-magnet shred wizard Stan Bush needs any sort of fucking introduction. You know him, you love him, you most certainly downloaded his finest work on the 1986 Transformers OST BACK HERE, you smoke his fingernail clippings, you masturbate to the liner notes of Higher Than Angels. You fucking know who Stan Bush is.
But on the outside chance that you don't already worship at the Altar of Stan, go to his website, have a look around, then come back here, crack a Carlsberg, and party the fuck down to the dulcet tones of "The Touch" (which most poseurs would probably identify as "that song from Boogie Nights"):



Thoroughly fucking pumped? Good.
Now that the Spirit of The Stan has ungently entered your body, it's time to get down with some super-obscure Bush Trivia. Now, I know what you're thinking: you're assuming this is the part of the post where I tell you that Stan Bush is one of the few people that crossed over between real life and the Transformers universe--via the Generation One, Season 5 scene in which, at an undetermined time period following the creation of the Headmasters and Targetmasters and the seeming defeat of Galvatron and Scorponok, Powermaster Optimus Prime spends a good deal of time relating Transformers stories to the human schoolboy Tommy Kennedy. Of course, after a series of stories wherein he describes the events of the battle with Unicron, Optimus Prime has to depart to attend an interstellar peace conference in the midst of a barrage of questions from Tommy. As he is blasting off, Prime declares "But until I return, I leave you with 'The Touch'!" Following this, the music video for "The Touch" begins, giving Stan his rare entrance into the fantastical realm of Transformers lore. This unprecedented appearance is also important when you consideHOLY FUCK THERE'S A LAZER COMING OUT OF HIS GUITAR.



But you guys all knew that shit already. I'm going deep on this one, into previously undiscovered regions of Bush Arcana. I will apologize in advance for your blown mind, for by the time you've finished reading this post you will be absolutely done for the day--no longer able to process any sort of information whatsoever.

I'll give it to you as quickly and bluntly as I know how:

In 2009, Stan Bush recorded a "re-imagining" of "The Touch" for the live-action sequel Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, a hella sick Linkin Park inspired rip-off gem which fuses the seemingly unconnected worlds of simpering 80's wuss-rock and post-90's rap-metal. No further introduction is needed.

Enjoy Listen:



Needless to say, director Michael Bay rejected the song outright, leaving Bush to post it, forgotten, like a sad bunk sock hanging from an inner-city clothesline, on his own website. Until today, that is.

Sorry for raping all of your childhoods once again. My bad.

Thanks to Doan at the illustrious Kissing Contest podcast for alerting me to the existence of this timeless jam. Kill yourself.

Holy shit, I didn't realize until just now that today is IllCon's three-year anniversary. Nice. What did you fuckers get me?

Nothing? Awesome.
Well, I got you three albums from Norway's own Gehenna (no, not that one), purveyors of only the finest elven/witchy/Dracula-based black metal that country has to offer. Are you into cheesy, mid-paced, mid-90's, synth-laden forest troll music played by a bunch of dudes (and a chick) wearing capes and shit? Good! Gehenna will be right up your alley, casting forth a etherial web of faerie magick to ensnare all your wildest Ren Faire fantasies! A little too "Opera Man" for you? Tough shit, man. Sometimes corny-ass Ouija board metal with the keyboards turned up way too loud is just what the Hessian soul needs, so far be it from me to deprive you of such Narnian majesties.
Three fucking years, man. Jesus.


FIRST SPELL EP (1994)


Download HERE
Purchase HERE


SEEN THROUGH THE VEILS OF DARKNESS (THE SECOND SPELL) (1995)


Download HERE
Purchase HERE


MALICE (OUR THIRD SPELL) (1996)


Download HERE
Purchase HERE

LOL

Metallum/Last.FM


PS check out this new logo I designed for Illogical Contraption Radio:


I'M A FUCKING GENIUS.

Here's a wacky fun fact for you: Ted "The Unabomber" Kaczynski, while enrolled in Harvard from 1958-62, was subject to several of Professor Henry Murray's early "personality tests" involving stress and LSD. That's right, one of the most infamous domestic terrorists in United States history was involved in a program with deep links to the CIA and MKULTRA. As documented in the book Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist, Kaczynski served as a subject in some Murray's highly controversial experiments involving acid, psilocybin, and Personology over there at the Harvard Psychological Clinic Annex back then, and concrete details about these practices went to the grave with Murray in 1988.
Hm. As this 1999 article in Counterpunch puts it, "What did Murray give Kaczynski? Did the experiment’s long-term effects help tilt him into the Unabomber’s homicidal rampages? The CIA’s mind experiment program was vast. How many other human time bombs were thus primed? How many of them have exploded?"



Interesting indeed, the possibility that early studies in mind-control-via-psychedelics could have unhinged Kaczynski in such a manner, leading him on his ultimate path to anti-technological mass murder--after all, isn't our old friend Lysergic acid diethylamide often credited with quite a bit of that late-60's/early 70's "mind expansion" that gave birth to the Computer Age?

But I digress. I'm getting ahead of myself once again, and there's probably a pretty fair chance that some of our readers have never even heard of the Unabomber. Wikipedia, do your thing:

"Theodore John "Ted" Kaczynski, born May 22, 1942, also known as the "Unabomber" (a portmanteau of university and airline bomber), is an American mathematician, social critic, anarcho-primitivist, and Neo-Luddite who engaged in a mail bombing campaign that spanned nearly 20 years, killing three people and injuring 23 others.

Kaczynski was born in Chicago, Illinois, where, as an intellectual child prodigy, he excelled academically from an early age. Kaczynski was accepted into Harvard University at the age of 16, where he earned an undergraduate degree, and later earned a PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan. He became an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley at age 25, but resigned two years later.

In 1971, he moved to a remote cabin without electricity or running water, in Lincoln, Montana, where he lived as a recluse while learning survival skills in an attempt to become self-sufficient. He decided to start a bombing campaign after watching the wilderness around his home being destroyed by development. From 1978 to 1995, Kaczynski sent 16 bombs to targets including universities and airlines, killing three people and injuring 23. Kaczynski sent a letter to The New York Times on April 24, 1995 and promised "to desist from terrorism" if the Times or The Washington Post published his manifesto. In his Industrial Society and Its Future (also called the "Unabomber Manifesto"), he argued that his bombings were extreme but necessary to attract attention to the erosion of human freedom necessitated by modern technologies requiring large-scale organization."

You can also study up on ol' Ted's side of the story by reading the "Unabomber Manifesto" in its entirety.

This snippet of a German (with english subtitles) documentary on Murray, Kaczynski, LSD, and MKULTRA is pretty helpful, too:



Also: "Harvard and the Making of The Unabomber" by Alston Chase, Atlantic Monthly

Some sweet photos of The Unabomber's digs right after the FBI nabbed him:

Good evening, ladies.

Can I interest you in a light snack?

A cocktail, perhaps?


Yeesh.
Whatever the involvement of the CIA/OSS (Henry Murray was a main innovator in the establishment of the Office of Strategic Services, the direct predecessor of the CIA, by the way), or acid, or psilocybin, or "stress tests", on Kaczynski, it's safe to say that he had a definite, deep-seated hatred for industrialism and technology--and every coin has a flip side.

The "flip side" to the Unabomber's particular coin can be found in futurist, tranhumanist, author, inventor, trancendentalist, and synthesizer enthusiast Ray Kurzweil (above right).
Kurzweil is probably best known for his deep explorations of "The Singularity": the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means. According to most educated guesses, The Singularity will occur at some point in the 21st century, when computing power finally matches the abilities of the human brain, and we are all fused into massive, biomechanical, exoskeletal war machines, armed with surface-to-air missiles, lazer guns, and an unquenchable bloodlust knowing no bounds.

Consider this graph:

Click HERE for full size--trippy shit.

It won't be long, friends. Kurzweil's vector implies some pretty crazy, spooky things--things that Kaczynski sent 16 letter bombs to destroy. Although Mr. Kurzweil has nothing but optimism for the approaching Singularity and the fusion of human and AI, there are many who have their doubts--after all, what are the Robot Overlords' motivations to keep us around after they gain the ability to govern themselves? I don't know, man... I'm a big fan of Kurzweil's prescient 1990 book The Age of Spiritual Machines and all, but we all know what happens when the robots get too smart for their own good...

Don't we?



It's all just a matter of extremes, I guess.
Kaczynski acted out of fear for the loss of our humanity at the hands of technology, while "futurists" like Ray Kurzweil and Vernor Vinge believe it will be our salvation. The concept of artificial intelligence and technology evolving beyond our ability to control it can indeed be a terrifying one, but the cold, hard fact is that eventually it will, and, barring some sort of massive, Kaczynskian "pre-emptive" strike against technology itself anytime in the near future, most of us will live to see it. And we will live beyond it as well... Toiling as slaves in the vast, cavernous Energy Mines under the watchful eye of the ruthless Cyborg Kings.

So what's my point here? I'm not sure, really. I actually just meant to write a post about Ted Kaczynski's tenuous ties to the MKULTRA program and got sidetracked. I fell down this whole "Kurzweil vs. Kaczynski rabbit hole" and blew my own mind.
I dunno... We live in a world of nanotechnology and evangelical Christians, of remote nuerosurgery and Holocaust deniers. The possibilities are endless, exciting, and frightening. The extremes are ugly and freaky.

Whatever, man. If you need me, I'll be in my shack.

This nearly-impossible-to-find score from the nearly-impossible-to-find film comes courtesy of IllCon Alumnus The Thing That Should Not Be, who submitted it in response to my pathetic pleas following our last foray into Tomita Territory. Having now heard this buried gem, I am utterly charmed by Mr. Tomita's seamless blend of sleazy wah-wah, Vegas horns, and nasty 70's funk, blended as it is with his omnipresent, reverbed-out synth--sort of like an absurd mix of Deep Throat, Tron, and Dead-On-A-Toilet Elvis. Fucking sweet.

But here's the rub. Now that I've heard the tunes, I REALLY need to see the movie (pulled from the shelves in 1980), which limited research has found described as such: "The film centers around the family of a scientist, Dr. Nishiyama (Tetsuro Tamba)... concentrating on hallucinogenic international imagery in a manner looking forward to such films as Koyaanisqatsi and Baraka. In the film, scientific advances cause an outbreak of giant slugs, oversized bats, children with genetic mutations enhancing their physical or mental abilities, and bizarre changes in weather, such as snow falling on the pyramids. The film gets bleaker and bleaker, until Dr. Nishiyama hypothesizes a scenario that re-edits the climactic war footage from The Last War, augmenting them with a scene of the surviving humans, looking like sufferers of neurofibromatosis, fighting over who gets to eat a snake." Whoa.

Another outstanding outing from an old-school IC favorite. FUCKING. TOMITA. RULING. SO. HARD.
Thanks, Thing.

dl: Epic Japanese Theremin 70's Soft-Rock Win.




Previous documentation of my Tomita obsession:

- May 27, 2011: Electric Samurai - Switched-On Rock (1972)/Snowflakes Are Dancing (1974)/Pictures At An Exhibition (1975)/The Bermuda Triangle (1978)
- June 30, 2009: Firebird Suite (1975)
- July 8, 2010: The Planets (1976)
- February 24, 2010: The Kosmos (1978)

Website/Wiki/Last.FM

Question: Who writes the algorithms for the Netflix "suggestion" system? I'll admit, I got bored one day and rated the shit out of a bunch of movies on Netflix (see below), hoping that it would cause the inner workings of the 'Flix to spew forth a cavalcade of obscure, awesome films for my perusal, but sadly, it has had quite the opposite effect.

Observe this recent interaction between myself and the Netflix "system":

INCOMING SUGGESTIONS:



Okay, cool. These all look like good movies. But one question, Netflix: why are they ALL based on my enjoyment of the same three films? I mean, yeah, 2001, Brazil, and Blue Velvet are all awesome, but I'm not gonna base my ENTIRE movie diet around JUST those three movies, right? What else ya got?





OK, OK. Maybe I haven't made myself entirely clear: Again, all of these movie suggestions are based on my 'enjoyment' of Blue Velvet and Clockwork Orange, but c'mon now, I've 'rated' over 2200 movies here, what else have you got?


Fucking Hell, Netflix. Again, we're back to Square One here. Blue Velvet, 2001, and Brazil are NOT the only movies in the world. I've given you so much, can't you just give me a little bit back?





Jesus fucking Christ. We've been through this already...
2200 movies. MIX IT UP a little, eh?!?!


NO.

WRONG.

Game over, Netflix. Put in another quarter.



OK, Netflix, you've made a little progress, but please note: EVERY MOVIE you've EVER recommended to me has been based, in part, on my 'enjoyment' of Blue Velvet. Yes, I DO like Blue Velvet. But that doesn't mean that EVERY movie I EVER see from now on needs to be similar to that film. Are we clear?


Apparently, we are not.

HOLY SHIT! A recommendation NOT based on my enjoyment of Blue Velvet! I've made contact! NETFLIX, IT'S ME, COBRAS! Can we move forward now?!?!?




Never mind, Netflix.

I think maybe we should see other people.


Editor's note: All screencaps were taken directly from only the FIRST page of my Netflix "suggestions" section. If any 'Flix algorithm-writers are reading this: WTF BRO?


'My Netflix Suggestions System Is A Lazy Twat' is the first in a series of posts documenting the "FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS" endured by the creators of the Illogical Contraption blog. Stay tuned for more whine and cheese in the near future!