February 2009

Book Review: "To Perfect This Feast: A Commentary on Liber XV, The Gnostic Mass"

February 17, 2009 - 12:44pm — lsmft

To Perfect This Feast: A Commentary on Liber XV, the Gnostic Mass
James and Nancy Wasserman; Bishops Tahuti and Mara

Book reviews are strange territory- they stand only as opinion, and yet pretend to objectivity, influencing the reception of the text. They habitually disclose little of the nature of the reviewer's thought process in arriving at Hir conclusions. As this is the first book review I've posted here, I'm going to start with a bit of disclosure, in hopes that it benefits the reader.

RIP: Lux Interior

February 5, 2009 - 4:16pm — lsmft

In the Spring of 1990, my 13 year old self was hanging out with a friend in a sketchy lean-to of a garage in New Hampshire, cleaning up from tinkering with another friends car, and listening to cassettes on the ghettobox. We'd been listening to headbanger standards for most of that day- Iron Maiden, Metallica and the like.

I was pawing through the cooler for another can of piss-water beer when I saw this bright yellow cassette case with a freaked-out zombie dude on it. I tossed it in the player, twiddled some thumb while it damn thing rewound, and pressed play.
A hollow, 'verbed out jangler of an intro riff.
Dead simple drums, all backbeat.
And then, this tweaked out caterwaul that could only have come out of some Frank-n-furter's monster made from parts of the Big Bopper and Patsy Cline"

"you ain't no punk, you punk..."

I wanted to turn it off, but I was afraid to get close enough to the player to do so- as if increased proximity would have been enough to contaminate me.