Writing about totally failing to get much painting done recently made me realise I've been very remiss in keeping my legion of loyal readers updated on what I have been doing: writing about TV! Over the last three years I've been in three more Outside In books. I wrote short essays on the Millennium episode "Wide Open" and the Twin Peaks episode "Slaves And Masters", and went off-piste with a fictional academic article written by a smug fascist to cover "The Sontaran Experiment".
Next year, I'll be in the Deep Space Nine book with a piece on "Business As Usual", assuming Stacey likes the smell of whatever I cook up!
The second half of this year has been absolutely miserable for painting, lads. I've averaged one miniature a month, all of them from my oldest two armies, meaning the colour schemes on them are extremely limited. Here, for the sake of contractual obligation, are two Dark Angels Tactical Marines.
Technically painted, I'm sure we can all agree. Fun fact, I only had these on my paint station because I needed them to make my army codex compliant for 9th Edition. By the time I'd finished them, we were on to 10th Ed, and a whole new set of ways in which what I have isn't fully usable. I've dutifully started a Dark Angels Ancient (current name: Old Steven), but I can't imagine being very far along with him at all before the new codex means another set of bullshit changes.
Also complete is the only unit I both started and finished this year: four bases of 'Nid Rippers.
So tiny! So bitey! They'll nom your world because there's, like, LOADS of them.
Two marines; twenty rippers. But which is best? There's only one way to tell! FIGHT!
(Ah, actually I'm being told you can also tell who's best through a series of "point scores" through which all models in Warhammer 40,000 can be compared. Ludicrous.)
I can’t claim I planned it, but the one-two quiet-loud pinch-punch
of these last two songs makes for a nice sign off to a playlist defined by the border
between misery and anger. It’s a long border, of course, covering a wide range
of terrain. “The Quiet Things…” is a multilayered mapping of cross-currents and
riptides, swirling just between the surface. “F.O.D” is a man telling his
about-to-be-ex to fuck off and die.
There’s a power in simplicity – “F.O.D.” doesn’t even bother
to go quiet again. The sheer broadness makes the song feel like it belongs to
you alone, and does the same for everyone. The steps may have been different
for all of us, but we’ve almost all seen a long, juddering dance lead us here. The
last thread snaps, and you're left with only the layers of Sellotape and
rows of safety pins you'd put in place to hold everything together. Just the outline of what used to be there.
When that happens, there’s nothing to do but take that last
snapped strand, that final frayed straw, and burn it to ash in front of your
new/old enemy’s face. You can’t even explain why this time was different; it
just completely, obviously, is. You want a justification? Justifications
are for the people I can still respect. Just fuck off and die.
One thing that I love about this song is how the chord progression actually gets more complicated as the narrator lets his fury slip its mooring. The obvious thing to do would be to go the other way; to lose complexity along with composure. Inverting this makes it clear how much this guy has been holding back. How careful he’s been to present only a part of himself. It's not so much a switch as an expansion, hence the repetition of the need to destroy the bridge between them past hope of repair. Besides, we often repeat ourselves, when we're that angry. When someone has made us that angry. Just fuck off and die.
I listened to "F.O.D." while driving across an actual
bridge once, belting out the words to myself, the river, and the night. I remember that every time I hear this song, even though I don’t
remember which bridge it was, or which river. I can't even remember the car. The association remains, but not
what lay on the other side of it. Just the outline of what used to be there.
I can’t remember whose face was in my mind I as I
sang along, either. Who was it I had so completely had enough of their daring to be in my life? Who was I so desperate to have gone, hat the memory of my exhausted, burning rage has so outlasted the name of whomever I'd directed it towards?
Just the outline of what used to be there. Just fuck off and DIE.
No Apologies For The Infinite Radness 1.2: Louder Now
B-Side:
I don't like to go negative with my music posts, but you just gotta stand back and marvel at how completely this cover misses the point of the original song, on every conceivable level.
