Recent content by Caostotale

I generally stick with music that lies outside of the first-world-white-peoples' consumer orgy that is the 'Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame' set of bands (and especially fucking stadium rock acts from the 70s forward like both of these examples), but if I were forced to make a decision, I'd take Queen...

Where have you been these past few months? Everything that doesn't accord with the entrenched tastes of the STEM master race is part of some overarching agenda or 'narrative' to ruin geek culture on the whole. Bob is certainly a colossal offender, what with all of his non-objective views towards...

To be sure, I wouldn't hold any band teacher responsible for churning out classically-trained instrumentalists, especially for esoteric instruments like bass clarinet, bassoon, baritone saxophone, etc.... From what I've heard from friends in the music-teaching world, operating a school band is...

As a long-time fan of both chamber music and modern jazz, I can't get enough of the bass clarinet. The instrument is just versatile as hell and, through its sound, really underscores the 'wood' and 'wind' of its instrumental family's namesake.

I'm a male who's generally attracted to females, am married to a female, but still wouldn't ever throw around the idea that I'm 'straight', a term I find kind of horrible, i.e. are people attracted to others from their own gender meant to be viewed as 'crooked' or something? Having very clear...

I've been playing bass for almost 20 years, guitar for about 15 years, and can handle the basics on percussion and keyboard instruments. With the former two, I've recorded maybe 3-4 different rock/prog/technical-hardcore/etc.. records worth of material and played in a few busy groups during the...

Having grown up as a rock music fan in the nineties, I got to experience an age when musical style was in flux and record companies were putting out all kinds of new shit. No one had a clue what the next big thing would be, so bands like Rocket from the Crypt, Jawbox, and Spacehog were being...

None of these holidays are all that appealing. Nice as it is to see everyone, my family and my wife's family both get too high-strung about Thanksgiving and Christmas, the traffic in the area gets horrendous, Black Friday is what it is, and all of that collective stress tends to spill over onto...

I'm pretty sure he's not trying to appear very neutral or understanding, and I don't blame him. He doesn't owe either 'side' anything. Gamergate's not signing his checks and, if anything, its loudest mouthpieces would probably like nothing more than to see his career fucked up, i.e. for having...

Agreed, and if a person wants to indulge in the pipe dream of 'objective criticism', they should stop begging to be nannied by the system and instead go over to Amazon, Gamespot, Bestbuy, every single gaming site, etc... and start tabulating and averaging every single user review and, after the...

As with the music world's out-of-touch underground metal and hardcore scenes and that embarrassing segment of movie-goers that still supports Uwe Boll's career, this isn't even close to something that's going to deeply affect the medium, just a fringe group's bidding for wider...

Whether it's by the terms of romantic love or the terms of physical sex, an act of rejection is almost always just an act of rejection, i.e. nothing tantamount to an act of segregation sending somebody to some preconceived social 'zone'. Reading that far into an act of rejection as a matter of...

For me, the rejection of the label 'gamer' has little to do with awkwardness or any negative social taint. Rather, I simply think that it's superfluous identity inflation and, in its worst sense, a shallow marketing term, sort of like the equally-dubious 'gaming culture' (I'd recommend the...

If a parent's young child even recognizes who one of the Breaking Bad characters is, I'd say they've got bigger first-world problems to worry about than the fact that the toy store is carrying the toys. Outcries like this are barely worth anybody's time. From my point of view, the whole range...