Hello Darkness! The Official Blog of Helen Keller

Back in the 90's there was a damn good band from London Ontario called the Gandharvas. Most people who have heard of them would have heard of them because of two songs, First Day of Spring and/or Watching the Girl. They ended up with three albums, the first two, a Soap Bubble and Inertia and Kicking in the Water were similar in tone. The third album, Sold for a Smile, was a major label release and showed a marked departure towards a grungier rock album.







The band imploded after touring for Sold for a Smile. They're hard to come by and I think iTunes only has the First Day of Spring available.

That said, of all the songs they wrote, they wrote a bawdy little rock diddy to close out Sold for a Smile called Diabaloney. I've always wanted to read the actual lyrics to it, but even with the power of Google, nobody has them.

Now, in a Hello Darkness! exclusive, I present my own lyrics to it. I'm not promising that they're mind blowing lyrics, just that I'm the fucking first and only spot on the net to read unpublished lyrics to an obscure song from a defunct mildly popular band:

Alright,

I fuck it up,
I got the fuck,
I got the luck,
I got the hands
That turn the tits,
I'm well equipped,
I've got the dose,
I've gotta boast
I've got the most,
I chuck the muck
I up the chuck

Now move
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey

Now move
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey

I fuck it up,
I got the fuck,
I got the luck,
I got the hands
That turn the tits,
I crack the whip,
I've got the dose,
I've gotta boast
I've got the most,
I chuck the muck
I up the chuck

I got the luck,
I...

[ Continued ]

Medium has always been a show which contrasted psychic Allison DuBois’ professional crime-bustin’ assistance with the DA’s officed and her home life of a hubby and three daughters. It actually managed to do this quite well. In addition to playing bush league Dr. Strange, Allison would be overcome by psychic phenomena every other week which required her to sort through the occult meaning.

The majority of her psychic intuition came from dreams; usually prophetic ones that would allow her to stave off an impending murder. Or, ghosts would visit her, bitch that they’re dead and then give her clues of various obviousness to point her towards the killer.

Then she’d balance out her home life which was actually pretty realistic given the bullshit psionic angle you’re expected to swallow each week. Jean Grey she is not.

Anyway, people stopped watching the show, ratings dwindled and then it ended up on the Friday night death-row. (Which has happened to Fringe, but it’ll last forever, right?) CBS had originally ordered a full 22 episodes but cut it short to 13 episodes and said, dat’s dat.

So the writers and producers decided to give the audience, the people who actually stuck around while the show floundered financially, a giant middle finger dunked in steaming shit.

THE ACTUAL FINALE. SPOILERS YO.

Joe, her husband, goes to Hawaii to work on some sort of missile defence demonstration, or something. He’s flying home and calls Allison to say he’ll be home early. Then the plane hits turbulence, then it plunges, then he says “I love you”, smash cut to Allison screaming on the phone.

Flashforward 7 years later, Allison has gone through law school, her daughters are grown up (save the youngest who is still in highschool) and she is an ADA for Phoenix. She’ prosecuting a drug dealer from Mexico. Through her dreams, Allison learns Joe didn’t...

[ Continued ]

I didn't necessarily want to rush onto the internet to register my disappointment with the Medium series finale (Alert the internets, I am displeased!).

That said, the series finale was an awful mess and I had a much better series finale cooked up by the time I got off the couch and took a whiz.

I'm actually going to take some time to write it, although as I understand from the ratings, nobody will actually care.

As may have been fair comment in the past, I have relied on outrage to fuel articles. Very rarely was the rage proportionate, but it makes for comic fun, in the same way colliding into somebody who took too long to remove themselves from the counter at Tim Horton's AFTER getting their coffee, putting their TimCard back in their wallet, rearranging their purse and maybe even sampling the TimBits would be.

Not this time.

I should confess that I can lose myself in entertainment. During Paranormal Activity, when Katie whipped Micah's corpse into the camera at the end (SPOILER!) and came walking in, I ran to the front of the theater, tore down the screen and ran screaming into the parking lot where I hid behind a dumpster till dawn. I may have murdered a hobo, it's still mostly a blur.

At the end of Inception, I stormed out of the theater and yelled at the popcorn maker for tampering with my totem. Then I cried. The police showed up, there was more yelling and I woke up in a hospital bed. To this day, I'm not sure if I managed to kick myself awake.

I walked out of the Happening horrified...that I had wasted 10 bucks on a piece of shit.

Rich Bride Poor Bride occupies a slot on Slice right before television prime time begins; 7:00 to 8:00 pm.

Here's the basic premise of the show: An engaged couple applies to the show to film the good, the bad and the ugly of their wedding planning. They submit a budget to a wedding producer, who immediately frowns at how little they're planning on pissing away on a single day of their lives. They then gripe, bicker and scheme for an hour before revealing at the end how much they blew their budget by.

For a show premise, it's not that bad, compared to other ones like IRT: Deadly Roads.

Here's where the anger comes in. 99% of all the episodes follow a simple script. In it, the bride and the wedding planner conspire to convince the groom that they are the arbiters of proper wedding ideas and, consequently, all of his...

[ Continued ]

Since the Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) policy has been up for recent review, I've had the misfortune of reading an awful lot of opposition to it. Essentially, the arguments against it run along very similar lines:

If we have a bunch of queermosoldiers sashaying around the front lines or being totally faboo in the mess hall, God-fearing straight soldiers are going to be so disgusted and packing their virgin assholes with cotton that the Army is going to be decimated in one fell swoop by Taliban/Iraqi insurgents that don't appreciate a good vagina either.

It's easily the gayest response to the whole issue at hand.

Each and every time I read one of those editorials, or God help me Fox News, all I keep hearing through the belchy noise is that the Army should continue to protect bigotry because soldiers will follow any order except one that involves fighting beside somebody who doesn't put their dick in the same hole they do. Somehow, in that one, brief moment, the Army magically becomes a democracy where Privates' concerns about privates are no longer private.

Private Daniel: Sergeant, I will no longer go on patrol with Private Bruno over there. He insists on shaving everything on himself, bemoaning the lack of a good scone-shop and listening to his iPod too loud. If I hear Rah-Rah-ah-ah-ah, roma-ah-ah-ah, ga-ga, ooh-la-la I will snap and throw myself on a roadside bomb.

Sergeant Wilson: War is hell.

I've never been in the Army, but from those with whom I've talked, the whole idea of basic training is to strip you of your civilian thoughts, break you down into nothing and then fill your empty body with thoughts of gloriously serving the Army machine. They do this by recognizing two distinct organizing principles at play in human social dynamics.

Task cohesion and social cohesion. Social cohesion is the clique-forming tribal principle where people take great pains to recognize that their Sky-Fairy is the only one capable of taking them to After-Death Eternal PlayLand...

[ Continued ]