Saturday, September 10, 2011

The Commander [chat]s Aloud - Long Winters



"The crew compartment's breaking up"

18 comments:

Mike Lewis said...

Now with a better recording.

Caleb said...

This version is even listenable.

_J_ said...

Ros said something about Banta leaving Hanover, but then sent no further texts.

The fuck? Has Banta left the building?

_J_ said...

Listening to the first 12 seconds of that song, I think I'm going to have to call Mikey a hipster.

Roscoe said...

You perfidious liar. I sent precisely one further text explaining that was the total sum of what I knew.

That said? I have to assume it's because the campus is going no smoking. Big Dave may have given up the noxious smoke, but he still has that nostalgia.

Because that's the only REAL answer, of course. Righteous rage over something truly important like that. couldn't be a better paying gig or anything.

Caleb said...

A person of magnificance so great must forever shift from place to place for fear of setting them alight with focused beams of glory.

Roscoe said...

Walking the earth with his two hands like Donald Sutherland?

Mike Lewis said...

long keyboard intro == hipster?

Roscoe said...

J DOES equate Freezepop with Hipsterism.

Which is odd, because Hipsterism is a religion to which you gotta be devout, and FP? Pretty much a passing fancy for any proper unwieldily groomed Fixie-rider, not a life long friend like a case of PBR.

Mike Lewis said...

"Hipster" is a Signifier without a sign. it is meaningless.

In 2011 is code for a thing that one does not bother to understand.

It has nothing to do with 2003 style in New York 2006 indie rock. It is only a "there-is-a-thing-those-people-are-into-and-i-am-not".

_J_ said...

Signifier without a signified. The phrase “signifier without a sign” makes no sense, as a sign is a bundle of signifier and signified.

Though, I wonder how there can be a signifier without a signified, a meaningless signifier, given that any signifier would mean, at the very least, itself. But that is a question of what counts as a referent.

Anyway. I contend that the term “hipster” does have a referent. That referent would be a general idea of a class of persons who preferentially consume PBR, dress like idiots, and employ poorly articulated and ill-conceived habits that are proclaimed to be counter-culture. Or, said another way, a hipster is “that which would be caught in this trap.”

Also, hipsters use the word “irony” quite often, or employ a sensibility that can be descrbed as “ironic”, as detailed in this scientific pamphlet.

Roscoe said...

Signifier w/out a Sign is probably a japanese Dylan import album.

Just a shiftless guy in hoboclothes, holding an empty placard.

Roscoe said...

Anyway. I contend that the term “hipster” does have a referent. That referent would be a general idea of a class of persons who preferentially consume PBR, dress like idiots, and employ poorly articulated and ill-conceived habits that are proclaimed to be counter-culture. Or, said another way, a hipster is “that which would be caught in this trap.”

This quote? That's precisely Mikey's point, though. Hipster, Hipsterism, etc? Is the aspersion casting placeholder, the Variable X.

It stands for whatever collection the speaker wants to cast scorn at. It's a J word for an entire lazy culture J hates. There's no agreement on even what general traits it collects.

In other words? It's not Autobots or Decpeticons, it's Go-bots. Just a collection of ostensibly transforming crap, from Cy-Kill and Leader One to the Rock Lords to those later Z-bots who bent at the waist and had a spring loaded back to "transform" into something else.

Mike Lewis said...

the point is - its a really great song.

Roscoe said...

That's the kinda thing a Hipster would say to get discussion back off of the topic of his foibles.

You know that, right?

_J_ said...

"Signifier w/out a Sign is probably a japanese Dylan import album."

This made me laugh.

"That's the kinda thing a Hipster would say to get discussion back off of the topic of his foibles."

That IS what a hipster would say!

_J_ said...

"It stands for whatever collection the speaker wants to cast scorn at."

But the scorn is justified and founded upon reasons. I mean, what right-thinking person prefers PBR over all other possible beers?

Roscoe said...

The same one who might argue that West Wing went beyond 4 seasons?