Slutever

Slutever is the alias of 23 year old New Yorker turned London squat dweller Karley Sciortino who also features on Vice, Dazed and has recently begun writing a blog for Platform. Whilst previously Karley lived in a squat affectionately known as Squallyoaks with other artists/musicians/prostitutes, according to the latest entries times appear to be changing as the gang have been evicted from their old home and whilst some appear to have found a new place to live, several members have gone their separate ways. So now seems as good a time as any to recap on my some of my favourite moments from the Slutever blog which will be hard since it's all COMEDY GOLD so I could probably turn this into a series or something...I won't though since that would be pretty lame.

- Moon Cup, or being doused in the DNA of a mildly overweight lesbian, a romance of sun, sea, sex and environmentally friendly medical devices.

- Next on the list, Shark sex, which makes me wonder if she reads Fuck Yeah, Sharks if not she totally should


- Jail, A terrible indictment of our legal system? Or why picking fights when you are totally wasted is probably not a good idea even if they deserve it.

- My new sex BFF, a cautionary tale of what might happen if you try being open about you know what, to you know who...If you know what I mean? Bit of a long shot really.

- Another just as important life lesson is importance choosing your wrestling opponents carefully, it could end in you being accused of rape, or being stabbed with a makeshift trident.


- One thing I've always liked about Karley is her ability to make even the most sordid fantasies sound like a walk in the park or a drive through apple country with a bearded twenty seven year old and her dedication to gynecological experimentation.


- I smell dead people, highlights why exactly hospitals can seem like the worst places on earth and don't let scrubs or Grey's anatomy tell you otherwise.

- What is an STD? a terrifying tale of razor lined genitals and the morning after pill, there are so many quote in that particular entry I could take out of context and they'd still be funny, I won't though just to make sure.

- Art Slut, just because I bet most car models don't get the chance to meet Hugh Grant or Jarvis Cocker or for that matter get attacked by women with armpit hair, JEALOUS.

So those are are some of my slutever highlights, although in all honesty this entry could be twice as long, but I decided to leave it there in the hope that by shrinking the entry slightly there might be a chance more people will be inclined to finish reading it.

Now For Something Completely Unrelated

Proper entry to follow shortly.

Fraction Of One

As well as mentioning older more established sites it's occasionally nice to ramble on about new sites too. Like Fractions of One, a new music site that launched around the beginning of November and concentrates on features, recommendations and in depth interviews rather than record reviews.

Recently the site has featured artists like new Brainlove signing Mat Reviere, bittersweet rock band The Tailors and avant pop upstarts Munch Munch and previously it has featured the likes of Shoes and Socks Off and Alloy Ark.

So indulge your web 2.0 craving and subscribe to their RSS feed or follow them on twitter, it's totally worth it.

Failbook

Ah Facebook how you've changed. Once you were just an innocent way of communicating with casual acquittance through a medium which required the least actual interaction and now you've become a time sapping monster, a way to stalk previously long forgotten exes and a way of relaying us constant messages about the pointless minor details of our friends lives.

However not all of these are without merit, and Failbook is a way of bringing some of the most amusing Facebook updates to the attention of a far wider audience. Whether it's people repeatedly clicking 'likes this' after receiving news of a couples separation or people placing spoilers to popular films in their status updates.

The content is largely user generated so there's plenty of leeway for you to submit your own Facebook fails and embarrass your family and friends.

My Week In Links #5

Mirror, Mirror on the wall who's the wittiest of them all? Vice magazine you say? That can't be right...


This week I:

- have finally broken my ban on christmas related activity and started to think about this years christmas shopping strategy, chances are I won't buy anything from this list though.

- looked at some pagan flavoured photos courtesey of platform and Suzanna Zak

- Found a guide to picking to the perfect christmas tree , although to be honest I'll probably stick to buying something more artificial and fiber optic that glows unnaturally when you plug it into the wall. Yep I'm one of those people.

- Saw the worlds smallest Snowman, somewhere around 1/5th of the size of a human hair.

- Considered working for Vice magazine, well actually this is more of a half truth, the thought did flash through my mind when i saw the vacancy advertised but in all honest I was more intrigued by this album cover.

- Watched the new video by These New Puritans , I like it. Even if it does seem slightly reminiscent of Snowman.

- Started reading an interesting article on Salon magazine which sheds a little light on one of the most mysterious and maligned genres around, Black Metal.

This entry is brought to you by the letter B for Ben Frost who's album 'By The Throat' is fast becoming one of my favourite releases of the year. It's streaming from here where you can also download the album using the misleading 'name your price' option where you can pay whatever you like... as long as it's over 10 euros. I'll let that slide though as it is a brilliant record.

Dronea, Dronea

Dronea, Dronea is a blog covering everything from psychedelic folk to ambient pop music which goes well with the cool blue background. When coming across a new blog it's a nice surprise to find a lot of artists I like featuring in the user's Last.fm window which, among other things featured Ben Frost who's release of 'By The Throat' is starting to turn a lot of heads.

However whilst you won't find that on this site, you can find some amazing artists on the front page. The writing is another high point of the site as rather than purely relying on little bits of information written by the artists, or found on press releases, the Dronea team pen their own evocative descriptions, which illustrate well what each release is about without coming across as over wrought or contrived.

Some of my favourite picks from the front page include music from Xela/Grouper two of my most revered Type signings. Improvisational drone from Final and imaginative celestial sounding ambient drone from Aidan Baker & Noveller.

Vice Magazine(has a lot to answer for)

Since it's creation way back in 1996 where it broke with it's government funded origins as the Voice of Montreal, moved to New York and changed it's name. Vice magazine has been known for it's provocative use of irreverence and immersion journalism and covering everything from the war in Iraq to mental disorders. Whilst pre 2007 vice dedicated whole issues to these subjects, post 2007 vice has become even more wide ranging and now covers even more subjects under the umbrella of popular culture and information technology. The online home of Vice magazine is a curiosity in itself, the home page is divided into various sections on the right is the do's and don't section where innocent (and admittedly not so innocent) members of the public are harshly critiqued by Vice in regards to their fashion sense and perceived outlook on life. Below that is a link to information about the print magazine and below is an events section which links you to the old blue last web page.useful.

In the middle of the page are recent vice articles which when I last checked involved selling post-it art, The Vice guide to Liberia, which is actually going to be a documentary film based on interviews with three men who participated in the 14 year Liberia civil war and a piece attacking that previously untouchable institution, the high brow music award. On the left there are also links to the music, film and photo blog which seems to cover trendy London party goers and tits same thing though right? LOLOLOLOLOL.

One thing that seems to have landed Vice in hot water over the years is the Vice Guides, those tongue in cheek looks at various aspects of life including sex, finding yourself and shagging Muslims which admittedly I could kind of see would cause a little controversy, but actually raises some interesting points...no really. Most of them are pretty funny and I have to admit..for me anyway the guide to being totally crushed out did have some parallels with my life, but with less drugs...and rock and roll...and se...oh wait.

So when it comes to covering popular culture you could probably do worse, although it might be best avoided if you're easily offended but then that's probably like 90% of the internet down the drain already.

In which I 'review' the current livejournal spotlight communities

Livejournal Communities: once an important internet

force to be reckoned with. Now: everyone just uses

Blogger. Or something. I don't even know. I use it

daily, but only forfashin. Even though though I'm not

lying, you're probably thinking "She's lying. No one

outside of the Sci-Fi community uses it". But then

again, I'm a pretty big Sci-Fi fan myself. What am I

saying? What I'm trying to say is, believe it or not,

other people actually use it.

Sorry.

Anyway, on with the reviews.

note_to_cat

It's a bit pointless really, because cats can't read. Sorry.

foundphotos

Really good but I don't like the layout. Sorry.

bookfails

If i ever wrote a blog, it would be like this. Well, maybe

just the really angry posts - the other ones are boring.

Sorry.

My Week In Links #4

Hooray, this week Please Get Off The Internet reaches it's one month anniversary and to celebrate, this week will involve more nonsensical quotes and less actual information about my online browsing habits.

This week I:

- Am very excited about new records from Rolo Tomassi and Kayo Dot in 2010, I thought Blue Lambency Downwards was good but still a bit sketchy in places, previously if an artist said a segment of music wouldn't make sense out of context I'd probably think they were being pretentious but with Kayo Dot such a statement makes perfect sense. Rolo Tomassi's Vice London show looks like it'll be a blast come December.

- Debunked the top ten myths according to Listverse, I actually feel a bit annoyed by the Darwin one since that's something I should probably have known all along.

- Am looking at the stars. They are so far away, and their light takes so long to reach us. All we ever see of stars is their old photographs.

- Had a listen to the BRNLV 10 mixtape which has some big contenders when it comes to picking albums of the year personally I think that Mount Eerie record is HUGE.

- Read a courageous/insane attempt at writing 100 poems in one day.

- Developed my collection of apps with additions from lifehackers 61 free apps they're most thankful for. Everything in particular was useful for providing lightning quick searches for missing files and Pidgin provides a neat cross platform IM alternative for msn aside from it's unfortunate lack of webcam support but who uses those anyway?

This entry was brought to you by the letter F for Faux Pas, who has very kindly put his latest single the seriously cosmic 'Silver Line' up for download over on his blog. It reminds a little of latter day Air but with whimsical chill out elements replaced with shimmering synthesizers and reinforced with throbbing bass set to stun.

Listverse

Making top ten lists is something I've done for as long as I can remember, it's a fun way to pass the time and can help you reminisce about your favourite tv programs for example my top ten scrubs moments, I'd actually struggle to do this but the JD and Turk drum line would be somewhere up in the top 5, oh and 'betrayal five' would definitely be in there too.

Because of this I found that Listverse, a website focused purely around lists of trivia from a variety of different sources is pretty fascinating, although perhaps it really shouldn't be. But where else can I read about the top ten unusual cat breeds *spoiler* the number one choice isn't Siamese but it is possibly the scariest thing I've seen since The Thing it doesn't even look real, more like one of those creatures that would feed on humans on some god forgotten planet in a futuristic sci-fi horror film.

Other favourites are the top 10 Bizarre Tourist Attractions which include the dictator inspired Neutrality Arch, a life sized depiction of the great battle of Sekigahara featuring life sized depictions of mutilation and ritual suicide and a house featuring around 2,100 real painted skulls.

This isn't to say Listverse isn't without it's flaws the top 10 genres of Extreme Music coming across as not only slightly uninformed but the inclusion of 'Political Hip Hop' seems head scratchingly odd particularly when the first paragraph highlights the fact that many artists who could be said to have formed the roots of todays modern hip-hop came from a highly politicized background.

This aside there's plenty of other lists on the site to both entertain and inform and chances are provide the answer to that elusive pub quiz question and as per usual there's space under each list to debate inclusions or exclusions on the latest list addition.

Keytars and Violins

Maybe it's due to my own personal lack of knowledge on the subject or perhaps it's simply the vast amount of material that is covered under it's umbrella, but dance music can often feel like a fairly difficult genre to inroads into. This is probably what makes Keytars and Violins so essential as it covers such a wide variety of different sounds all of which could collectively be described as dance music, alongside some other non dance orientated music.

Over the time I've been reading K/V, about 6 months which is only a small segment of it's 3 year history, I've heard everything from deep Detroit techno to deliciously dark electro and garage tinged dubstep and there are heaps of downloadable mp3s to sample some of the sounds on offer.

One of the recent highlights was Nathan Fake's glitchy 'We Fear Silence' mix is available over on mixcloud

Or you can download it here.

Get it before the RIAA get you colonclosedbracket*.

*May not actually result in being tracked down by the RIAA

Recycle This

Whilst the Climate Change debate rages on and
on, I think both sides would agree on the benefits
of recycling rather than letting things go to waste.
So the question is where to start? Sure you can
put your biodegradable waste into those miniature
grey plastic bins or into the compost heap. You
can drink from biodegrable corn oil based plastic
bottles and you can put your paper into a
recycling bin but what about your old clothes and
worn out shoes.

picture from recyclethis.co.uk

Recycle this, suggests all sorts of novel uses for
items that would usually be thrown away from
regluing and repairing battered canvas shoes, to
fixing old waterproof trousers with hairspray (no
really). A large portion of the content is reader
generated to enable people to pool ideas and it's
interesting how innovative people can be in their
desire to cut down on waste. Turning coffee
grounds into candles has to be one of my
favourite examples.

The site is also developed using free and open
source software and all images used on the site
are available under the creative commons act.
Which is nice... if you care about that sort of
thing.

My Week In Links #3

This week I:

- Downloaded the free mp3 single by the American dream-pop duo Beach House. It kind of reminds me of M83 without all the in your face bombast. Well worth a listen.

- Downloaded Lucky Dragons' Anti War Song album 'Hawk and Sparrows' which also features contributions from Aa and comes across sort of like an immersive collection of soundscapes made from heavily edited field recordings of anti war protests but morphed from their original incarnation into something entirely new. It's also totally free from here.

- Downlo....er wait I mean discovered Listverse's top ten methods of execution, the brazen bull is pretty horrible but the sawing image gets to me the most eugh.

- Realized the true secret to Microsoft's success brightly coloured t-shirts and the electric slide.

- Rediscovered Sesame Street, you know your show has made it when it's being parodied on Sesame Street congratulations Mad Men.

- Had my first glimpse at the Google Chrome OS, it looks a little like that modified version of xandros which I saw on the EEE pc, but much more colourful, I have to admit..I'm intrigued.

- Still don't get the fuss behind Google Wave...but for all those interested Lifehacker are running a weekly invitations thread.

This entry is brought to you by the letter W for Wavves who seems to have been annoying and thrilling audiences in equal numbers, whilst I was disappointed to hear that Zach Hill couldn't make it for the latest tour I'm just happy to get the chance to nod my head along to 'So Bored'.

The Microsoft Shuffle...No wait how about The Microsoft Slide?

So you're in charge of running one of the retail branches of of the biggest software company's in the world and whilst taking a break from providing new innovative methods of customer service it hits you, people don't want to see the positives of the latest Microsoft OS, no, what people really want to see is a bunch of people in brightly coloured t-shirts performing some kind of synchronous dancing.

This I presume was the thought process that guided this 'spontaneous' outbreak of the electric slide. I was kind of procrastinating over investing in windows 7 but now I'm sold. Now all I need is a well written account praising the events that happened. Thanks Brad Slavin :-).

Rose Quartz

I came across Rose Quartz whilst looking for more information on the (at the time) forthcoming ES, Chris Forsyth and Ignatz tour which I found alongside some brilliant samples from all the artists involved. Whilst a fair chunk of the site is given over to psychedelic/experimental noise the Rose Quartz team generally cover a wide spectrum of music alongside vivid, informative but stil concise descriptions of each artists and links to their labels/distros.

There are also links to pictures of the various events covered by the transatlantic Rose Quartz team including recent(ish) tours by Pocahaunted and Jackie-O and links to a quarterly Rose Quartz mix which last time featured new and old music by a variety of artists including Nico, Heather Woods Broderick and Washed Out it's definitely worth the download.

They've also been fortunate enough to grab interviews with artists such as surf noise maestro Wavves and the electricity shunning Foot Village and links to all these of can be found on their front page which is handy.

Picking a favourite artist from the front page is difficult but if forced I'd probably go with the blissed out guitar based ambiance of Kevin Greenspon.

Sludge Swamp

The idea of heaviness isn't something which is universal in every musical genre, so often it can be trickier to find music which falls into that particular category. Maybe this is why I find that Sludge Swamp is one of the blogs I can continually come back to since undoubtedly much of the music found there falls into the heavy music bracket with genres such as doom, stoner-rock, black metal and of course sludge featuring regularly on the site alongside other genres such as post-rock and drone.

With a seemingly tireless group of hand selected bloggers staffing the site Sludge Swamp is updated fairly regularly with new content and each release is backed with a few concise paragraphs giving some background to the music, which can be heard by following the links supplied at the bottom of the entry.

There are so many releases on the front page it's hard to pick favourites but the Down demos are well worth sampling and whilst I haven't listened to it yet just by looking at their influences (Sunn, Nadja, Cult of Luna and Neurosis) the Osoka album also sounds it could be a very good listen.

It's probably worth mentioning at this point that pleasegetofftheinternet is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites. So you know surf responsibly, don't surf and drive, stay in school and all that jazz.

Read Platform

Platform has gone from being totally unknown by me to one of my favourite places to go on the internet. I first read about it whilst perusing a guardian article about sites made by (and for) young people, which made me a little cynical admittedly since I thought it'd be purely composed of crass 'edgy' articles, a little bit like the tongue in cheek article how to pick up children which has been featured on the site this week, and yoof slang but when I finally got round to looking at it I actually found the site to be quite refreshing.

Not only for the fact that the editorial content covers in knowledgeable fashion the some of the most popular elements of youth culture insert compulsory < "what booze drugs sex?"> comment here but this is also bolstered by the use of cross site material from places like lookbook.nu and coverage of up and coming bands such as the casio drums and guitar toting Internet Forever and US punks Pissed In The Eye. The site also updates ridiculously fast, so there is always something new to look at whenever you check back. Although I suppose the only disadvantage of this is that articles don't stick around long on the front page and it can be a bit tricky to find older articles.

One of my favourite regular features is the Secret Diary Of A Teenage Boy which achieves that rare standard of being realistic without compromising on being humorous. The 'I'm joking' paragraph in his latest entry is funniest things I've read in awhile which probably hints at the fact that I should probably read more. Oh well.

My Week In Links #2

This week I

- Picked up a free track by S.C.U.M check it out it's legal and everything.

- Watched internet forever pay more than a little tribute to the 90's in their video for cover the walls.

- Looked at pictures of Kazakstans radioactive legacy some of which were oddly beautiful, such as the big dipper rising over the nuclear polygon and the sun setting over Semey but some were chilling and even horrific in their depiction of effects of post nuclear fall out.

- Pondered the possibility of time travel after reading about some of the possible hypotheses surrounding the issues with the Large Hadron Collider.

- Witnessed the entire internet in 5 minutes, oh shiiii what am I going to write about now?

- Read some thought provoking commentary on the future of the music industry.

I've been trying to keep all my comments on this blog internet related however I've always been astounded that a industry which operates on a buisiness model where around 90% of the endevours it embarks on are likely to fail, as in result in a financial loss, has been able to keep going relatively trouble free for so long. Not to say illegal downloading isn't a problem but perhaps looking at the way artists are managed and how their work is retailed is one of the ways to tackle the issue. I'd also be interested in what record label owners had to say about this article on illegal downloading.

- Considered the problem of the corporate-run two party system.

- was the best mistake she ever made :-D

This entry is brought to you by the letter R for Roy Orbison, whilst many people have laid into Jamie for slaughtering this song I think the real issue is Roy Orbison's voice defies imitation.

Ladies...Would You Give this Man Your Number?

So how do you ask a girl for her number? Is your technique anything like Darrell from Mad TV? With 2 million hits on Youtube it seems like more than a few people are picking up on his particular pick up technique and I'd imagine gaining themselves black eyes in the process.

I've got to admit though “May I have the secret code, when if entered telephonically, will be yo’ beautiful ass number” is some truly beautiful wordplay.

Another interesting thing about Darrell's character is that he's actually played by the actress Nicole Randall Johnson weird huh?

Embedded video is a pet hate of mine, so the link to the first video can be found in the above text and the second one can be found here.

Antennas To Heaven

To mark his return to the blogosphere (incidentally I hate myself for using the term blogosphere surely it's one of the worst neologisms from this decade), I thought I'd spend a little looking at Antennas To Heaven which belongs to the occasional rock sound scribe Joe.

Focusing largely on music from the ambient drone end of the music spectrum but also covering a lot of heavier releases such as OM's recent album 'God Is Good' and sublime electronica from the likes of The Sight Below Antennas To Heaven is a delight. Rather than purely focusing on record reviews Joe also fits in the occasional interview including a deeply thoughtful piece featuring John Porras otherwise known as Elm who with 'Nemcatacoa' has released one of the years musical highlights and a brief live review of the recent Fennesz/Grouper/Natural Snow Buildings gig in London which incidentally would be one of my lineups of the year, if I'd managed to get tickets.

There are also links to other multimedia content including podcasts such as the sublime TouchRadio station podcasts and rare live sets including Elms triumphant show at SXSW.

Antennas To Heaven can be found here.

Download Squad

I really enjoy reading Download Squad, there's just something so refreshing about the way that the articles bypass technological jargon and instead provide readers with easy points of comparison.

Like for example their recent coverage of Google's acquisition of AdMob, a deal worth 750 million, I mean I can tell that's a large amount of money but I mean it's given even more weight when you think that that's enough to buy 3.9 million people iPod touches, which is almost the entire population of Ireland. Sort of like how the total bomb tonnage in the Vietnam war was 7,078,032 tons thats equal to 1,000lbs of bombs for every man, women and child in Vietnam. Basically that's a lot of iPod touches.

Alongside news from the front line of desktop and mobile technology, also featured on the front page are various productivity boosting tips including 14 Extremely Useful Firefox Addons and Four apps that will/might keep your wife from killing you and to be honest I can see why despite any previous indiscretions any husband who can restore his wifes data with the click of a button is going to be well on his way to watching that frown turn upside down.

There's also a Time Waster section which gives you plenty of games to while away the hours with including my personal pick of the bunch Small Worlds which despite the simple exploration premise managed to keep me entertained for hours.

My Week In Links

This week I have:

- scored a lowly 33/100 on the times 100 best movies of the decade, seems like I have some catching up to do.

- watched the trailer to 'the carter' Lil Wayne documentary...strangely melancholic for such a flamboyant rapper, I'm still looking forward to watching it though.

- Finally solved the age old question of how to eat a chicken wing with little to no mess, although I have yet to to try this out IRL, I'm have a faith that the theory will hold tight.

- Been outdone by a 13 year old girl's Halloween costume design skills.

- Marveled at a feline embodiment of a classic Billy Idol song. 

- Found out the various intricacies of forced sex fetishes and internet porn addiction via platform magazine and slutever. 

- Discovered the definition of tribadism and apparently it has nothing to do with tribes, who knew? 

- Realized that following a psychics advice is every bit as good as conventional police techniques. No wait...

- Salivated over a 5 disc directors cut edition of the watchmen film.


This entry was brought to you by the letter B for the lovely sitar embellished stoner rock of Bong ahhhh.

Until next time.

N.B, This is so true I challenge anyone to try and understand Primer in it's entirety.

She Is The New Thing

She may have her detractors but ever since escaping doubts about the authenticity of her blog there's no doubting that the precocious Tavi Gevinson of Style Rookie is one of the most popular young people in fashion.  

With a blog that has received over 50,000 hits and a fresh insight into the world of fashion Tavi helps to bring far away worlds of the NYC and Paris fashion weeks to the attention of the masses expressed via her writing style which comes across almost like a stream of consciousness. She also posts photographs of herself in her own outfits modeling a style that has been described by nowpublic as a mix of 'haute couture and Abigail Breslin from Little Miss Sunshine'.

She has recently appeared on the covers of LOVE and POP magazine as well as being interviewed by the New York Times and this year celebrated the second anniversary of her blog. 

Not to mention her Halloween costume was far better than anything I came up with when I was 13...or indeed when I was 21.

Stoneskilled

Music blogs have always been instrumental in introducing me to bands I probably wouldn't listen to normally and Stoneskilled, is a great example of such a blog, covering everything from obscure psychedelia to stoner rock, noise, doom alongside a plethora of other genres.

The criticism is one of the major of the high points of the blog as rather than relying heavily on the use of musical jargon, stoneskilled instead utilizes a broader palette of terms to describe each release he covers along with helpful directions showing where to buy them and the occasional mp3 sample.

My favourite picks from the first page of the blog are: Bong, Spare Death Icon and Nackt Insecten and you can find stoneskilled here.

In addition to this Bong's soundcloud profile where they've uploaded the entirety of the  'Bethmoora' EP plus some other awesome tracks can be found here.

Life Hacker

Ever wondered about how you could open a wine bottle with your shoe? Or perhaps you'd like to learn how to create a command line calculator? The answer to all of these questions plus many more can be found at lifehacker. A daily weblog which covers new developments in software and innovative methods of boosting personal productivity otherwise known as 'life hacking'.

Personally I'm looking forward to finally mastering how to eat a chicken wing with little to no mess a life long source of woe, and also the source of one of the highest metafilter comment to youtube video hits I've ever seen.

Amor Mio

Footballers don't exactly have the best reputation for having distinguished singing voices we've all heard John Barnes fabulous rapping on world on 'World In Motion', some might remember Johan Cruiffs - Oei oei oei(Un Buen Chut) or Glenn & Chris belting out Diamond Lights on TOTP way back in 1987.



So I never thought I'd say this but I have to admit, watching Cristiano Ronaldo croon his way through 'Amor Mio' doesn't fill me with an instant sense of disgust, dare I say it...it's even likeable.

I call Auto-Tune.