Blog: updated. Also, torture.

Posted by Johnny at 3:49 p.m.

Well, they finally allowed Premium Mediocrity to upgrade to Blogger Beta. I decided to commemorate this momentous occasion by updating the site template to what you are looking at right now. What do you think? I made small adjustments to the Rounders theme.

I almost forgot the original reason I went to the Blogger dashboard, but luckily, alcohol hasn't destroyed my memory yet.

If you feel like reading about a US citizen's account of being tortured in Iraq by the US, read this article. If you don't, however, allow me to re-post what I think is the most important part of the article:

The fluorescent lights in his cell were never turned off, he said. At most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He said he was...

When you think of music that could be used for torture, most people would think "heavy metal" fits the bill perfectly. More specifically, they are thinking about any music that involves screaming, unrecognizably distorted guitars, and rapid-fire double bass drum sequences. Oh, and maybe some bass fuzz for good measure.

I would agree that when played at loud volumes, this would become torturous to me after a few hours, but there are some cases in which I'd enjoy it for a little bit. More specifically, if it was The Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge, or Mastodon that they were playing, I probably wouldn't complain. But as indicated in the article, heavy metal and hardcore aren't the only styles of music that could be used for torture.

Yes, he said they used country music. This made my day. I don't like to generalize, so I'll just say that I dislike most country music. There's just something about the twangy vocals, concrete lyrics, and repetitive instrumentals that doesn't sit well with me. I'd classify it with any other kind of pop music in that it's 70% repetition, but has added twang and in some cases, depression. Just imagine "Achy Breaky Heart" being played for 4 hours, let alone 4 minutes.

The more I think about it, there are even more musical styles that they could use to torture people. A little Will Smith, anyone? How about some O Town? Or maybe they could loop "What is Love" for 6 hours. And nothing says "kill me" (or "rape me") like listening to 50 Cent. On the flip side, we could pipe in a Shine FM broadcast for a couple hours and make any normal person try to puncture their ear drums with a coat hanger.

My brain is bursting with ideas. I think I have some John Zorn / Mike Patton collaborations that most people would burn after the first couple songs. I also downloaded an album by some weird 2-person band called Orthrelm that could drive you insane - it was basically a 40 minute set of ultra fast and ultra repetitive drum and guitar prog metal licks. If I wasn't so amazed by their musicianship (the entire thing was recorded in one sitting), I would have vomited.

Speaking of vomit, I think I've come up with the ULTIMATE torture: Kenny G. Specifically, play all of his Christmas albums in a big loop until the inmates kill themselves. I bet you could even use this for population control in overcrowded countries. Just pipe it through loud speakers in the streets and eventually, the population will lack the will to reproduce for fear of creating the next Kenny G.