Currently Reading:

I’m not much of an environmental activist, but this has been a good read. Most of the information takes place in the pre 9/11 America, but I think that goes to show how much worse the climate struggle has become.

You can read an excerpt here.

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High School Obsessions

At work today, an old friend came in while I was loading one of the display carts. Erik, whom has used nicknames such as ‘Reaper’ over the course of our friendship, has moved back from Washington this summer. When I was in high school, I was really into the “Insane Clown Posse Thing” with him. Embarrassing to admit, we used to wear the clown face paint, only have 5 ICP shirts in our clothing circulation, and knew just about every lyric to every song. We’d tell people that it was about being part of something bigger than ourselves. But it really wasn’t.

Looking back at my obsession and involvement, I can see that a lot of it is an exploitation of adolescent desires, and the vague references to spirituality were only that. One of the members of ICP, “Violent J,” argues that, ‘If people were really listening to what we have to say, then they’d get what we’re doing.’ Of course this was in response to criticism regarding media involvement with teenage violence, but I feel that the ‘if you’re not getting it, then you’re just not getting it,’ attitude says a lot about how they promote their art. They have produced six concept albums, which vaguely led up to a Judeo-Christian catharsis, but did so sporadically. One of the things that bothered me when I fell to the allure was that nobody could provide me with an answer to what these six “Joker Cards” actually meant. I think it’s an incredibly idea, and they had a lot of the pieces to put together something beautiful, but in my mind nothing came out of it. I’ve considered pursuing each one with what I know now about narrative theories, but I really can’t. I firmly believe that this has become a marketing point for them.

However, that isn’t to discredit the individual songs and albums for themselves. In my mind, there are some ups and downs. Some songs like “Bitches,” where there are disgusting levels of misogyny, or “Fuck the World,” where they literally just try to have the most recorded F-bombs in the span of three minutes, will never be played on my iTunes again. However, some of their songs I can listen to as if I were reading Stephen King’s short stories.

I guess that they’ve announced the beginning of a new deck of “Joker Cards.” I can’t say that I’ll be drawing a hand, but I might listen for a story. I encourage everyone to form their own opinions, whether they’ve listened or not. I will admit that ICP has worked hard to be as successful as they are now, and their label-mates are very talented artists as well.

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