A fine example of the sort of things people got up to for the sake of entertainment before television, video games and the Internet arrived to wreak havoc upon us all. Click on the photo and see it full size I say. It was taken circa 1929 at Revere Beach, Massachusetts, in da US of A. My (admittedly brief) research on lion dromes indicates that during the time period when this photo was taken, one could buy a ticket to watch this sort of inspired lunacy right under one's nose for around 10-15 cents, which was about the price of a movie ticket in those days. Motordromes are still operating today (although they're not nearly as popular as they were back in the 1930's when these events were at their peak of public interest), but minus the lions*.
Ladies and gents, I would like to play a video clip for you.
Its a song about meat. Or, more specifically, the processing of meat. It was written by a band named Skeptics (or The Skeptics), who formed in 1979 in Palmerston North, New Zealand. The song featured here is entitled AFFCO, which is an acronym for Auckland Farmers Freezing Company Ltd. Here is a brief description of the company AFFCO, taken from their official website: "AFFCO is one of New Zealand's leading food companies, having operated in this competitive and innovative sector of New Zealand’s primary sector since 1904. AFFCO processes and exports more than 150,000 tonnes of meat products and by products every year and is a major earner of foreign exchange earnings for the country."
I shall warn you now, it is a video that depicts, in a very graphic way, what goes on every day in a meat processing plant. The video itself has stirred up quite a lot of controversy over the years, but its worth noting that the band (and film makers) are not making a case for animal rights here, nor are they celebrating the killing of animals for human consumption. This is a song about people who "pack meat", and thus the video clip and the song itself are merely a reflection of the band's impartial stance on this issue. Plus it features lead singer David d'Ath (who died of leukaemia on the 4th of September 1990) wrapped in glad wrap and covered in baby oil and food colouring. That's got to be good for you all to see.
The song to my ears is a wonderful thing. I love the graunchy, stuttering and propulsory nature of this tune. The scuzzy, buzzing guitars, the clunky bass, the barked vocals and the claudicant drums all combine to make a rather selcouth aural experience. Especially for New Zealand in 1987. It comes from the excellent album Skeptics III, which is well worth checking out. If you can find it, aahahahaa. I have it on one of my hard drives in mp4 format.
What interests me is the sheer amount of public umbrage that has been stirred up over the years over this clip. Sure, some portions of it are by no means pleasant to watch, but this is what happens in an abattoir. I'm not going to sit here and judge anyone if they happen to enjoy eating meat, or if they are vehemently opposed to the practise. That's their business. What I do find rather ridiculous though are people who eat meat and yet get all upset when shown how the meat gets to their table. The picture below that I've slapped together is a fine representation of the process, but notice how it misses a very important step, which is how the meat goes from animal to that fancy shit people pay too much money for at restaurants.
OK, so that's not sheep meat he's eating there, but you get the idea. He looks like a putz anyway.
I myself also have a very nonpartisan viewpoint on the issue of animal processing for human consumption. This post is merely about the song and its video clip. Hopefully I have come across as neither for or against this particular practice. Whatever views you may personally hold on this issue are none of my concern, and I'm certainly not here to judge either way.
You can read more about how the video was conceived and made by clicking here to read an account of the video's production by the guy who initiated, directed, shot, and edited it. A well written mini-history of the Skeptics can be found here.
Right then. A few days ago Jimmy Misanthrope started making up useless monsters on his twitter, with the hashtag #uselessmonsters. This was primarily just for the sheer hell of it, but also it was a reaction to the usual boring and stupid things* that end up being hashtagged to the point of ending up in twitter's "trending topics". Things such as Bad Romance, #rihannasforehead, Zenyatta, Jedward, all of which I've just this moment culled from twitter's current trending topics. For those who are unfamiliar with twitter, adding a hashtag to a word or phrase will automatically add that hashtagged word/phrase to a list automatically generated by twitter that includes all the examples of that word/phrase that have been hashtagged and tweeted. *Boring and stupid topics, as a great deal of people are themselves boring and stupid, yes?
Twitter hashtags are yet another odious example of humankind's innate herd mentality. Something that is ripe for people like me to take the piss out of then. But whatever. This post is about a hashtag subject that started with "werepotato" and fairly rapidly expanded to include all sorts of wondrously creative examples of sheer silliness. Some were awesome, some were facetious, some were just plain stupid. And some my friends were utterly, utterly useless. In keeping with the spirit of the thing in other words. Listed below are all the twitter entries (and the people who tweeted them) that came with the hashtag #uselessmonsters that actually listed a useless monster and weren't just replies or reactions to the topic itself. They are listed in the order from the first person who started tweeting useless monsters to the last person who did.
@Bryn_Colvin Pretty much any Disney cartoon monster. The Black Cauldron is especially bad, ruined a good book that. The basalicks.
@Dagger_Arcana A one winged, bubble breathing dragon. Cerberus, the foofy poodle guardian of Hell. A blind basilisk. A blind cockatrice. A mute banshee. Paraplegic mummy.
@Tom_AIAC Brittany Spears. Flava Flav, yeeeeah boy! The Toxic Meanderer.
@LaBarceloneta The Adorable Snowman. Cerberus after a bizarre dumbwaiter accident. Baronet Kong. Cthulu's Friend, Skippy the Huggable Lil' Bunny. Frankenstein's Mopper. The Appendix-less Horseman. The Chupacabriolet. Jack the Inadequate-Tipper. The Minotard. Were-Wolfgang Puck. Swamp Thingy. Vampire Hugger D. Dorcs. Medouchea.
@mkmiddleton Were-Wolf Blitzer. Larry King Kong. iPodzilla.
@joangeluk In far off transylvania there lives a vampire duck. It's not his bite, that turns you white, but a very nasty suck. Were-Wolf Blass. Codzilla. Dr Jekyll and Dr Jekyll.
@essjayess Talos made of jellybeans #harryhausenFTW #godIwishtherewasoneofthese
So there you go folks. An example of the avalanche of odd that one little werepotato is capable of creating. Notice that there was not one single mention of sphinxes. That is because nobody fucks with The Sphynx, OK?
Randomitronica — what's it all about then, eh?
One of the largest cogs of The Vortex Machines, Randomitronica ran from May 8th 2009 until July 15th 2010, and was written in the "voice" of Chloé Kovac, one of the main characters in Maxwell Vex's Agents of the Endtimes webcomic (which can be found here).
Randomitronica contains a bunch of opinions, reviews, interviews, general musings on various topics that Chloé found of interest, and probably more than a handful of now-defunct hyperlinks.
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