Honey, I need to talk to you about something. You might want to sit down. Well, it’s hard to know exactly how to say this but…

I’ve been cheating on you with another blog. Her name is PopTen. She’s a dot-net.

I’m sure you’ve been wondering where all my introspective political posting has been of late, or whatever happened to Your Weekly Media, and why don’t I ever tell you stories from European and Asian lands. I don’t even want to talk about the pictures. I can say now that all those things will always be ours.

But this new blog – I met her through friends – she just offers a different kind of outlet, you know what I mean? I can be more myself with her. Goofy and nerdy and use cuss words and all the other things I just don’t feel I can be around you. It’s top-ten lists (the horror) and pop-culture musings.

I’ve given it some thought, and I think it’s time for us to add a little e-spice to our lives. So we’re going to have a blogging-threesome. That means that from now on, I’ll cross-post my PopTen posts over here at What-What.com. I’ll still add personal and other things to you from time to time, and I think you should also start subscribing to her RSS feed to keep up with what her other authors are doing.

To give you a head start on my secret history, you can see all my PopTen posts here. I’ve discussed some important things, as you’ll see, from which lovable movie alien life form kicks more ass, sorry, butt, to a top ten list of the worst band names from this year’s Warped Tour.

I hope this new relationship status works for you, and I have some other “just us” things in mind for you very soon (hint: shifting to a design/photo showcase site cuz I need some jobs plz).

I still love you baby, and I know we can work through this.

Thankfully, I woke up this morning only hearing the music of this infectious electro duo, because the following video is effing creepy. It uses stock commercial footage (you can almost hear an ad for some pharmaceutical, or Tampax, or a car rental company just by watching) and very subtle “enhancements” that pretty much make these mopes into hellspawn.

Which is to say, it’s still a pretty good video.

Had this song stuck in my head when I woke up this morning. The Grey Album remains solid six years on – a testament to Dangermouse’s talents. I think it would be easy to mess up a Jay/Beatles mashup, and I’ve maintained that this version is better than the beats on The Black Album.

Anyway, here’s the tune (no official video).

Constituent parts after the jump.

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I’ve been chipping away at a collection of George Orwell’s essays. They’re fascinating, whether he’s dissecting Charles Dickens’ faux-distaste of the gilded class or ruminating on the plight of unskilled laborers in Morocco, or, most vividly, reporting on his experience of shooting an elephant. At present I’m reading “England Your England”, and the following bit of wisdom stood out to me:

England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare’s much-quoted passage, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr. Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kow-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income. It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. Still it is a family. It has its private language and its common memories, and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks.

Substitute Shakespeare with Mark Twain and Goebbels with, say, Glenn Beck, and I’d say this portrait makes for a pretty accurate assessment of the United States today.

(editor’s note: I couldn’t find the original video, if it exists. There are a host of fan-created ones such as this. It’s the music that matters.)

As usual, an oldie but a goodie. Probably inspired by an idiotic decision to spend some time playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which is essentially one long, interactive, game version of that leaked video of US helicopter pilots murdering journalists and civilians. The sequel, which has been one of the best-selling media properties ever, apparently has a section where you take on the role of a terrorist and murder civilians in an airport.I mean, I get it that it’s a sick, violent world out there and that we’re all partly responsible by allowing it to happen, but sheesh!

The insidious part for me (and the reason I say it was an idiotic decision), is how bloody addictive this and the other Call of Duty games are, and not to note that it’s extremely fun to play would be remiss. The originals were set in World War II, and while many people feel little remorse for killing lots and lots of Nazis, a game, even one that’s fictionalized, set in a modern war with middle eastern terrorists is just a little too close for comfort. It really is stuff like this (masterfully, artfully created) game that programs our perceptions of violent conflict.

This one’s not hard to trace. I went to karaoke last night (it was crazy expensive – $9 beers anyone?) and attempted to sing Kanye West’s “Gold Digger“. Although I thought I knew the lyrics, the delivery is actually really hard. Say what you will about Kanye, but his style is hard to emulate. Also, it was pouring rain, so it made me think of flooding, and then probably the disaster that was New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina. In the wake of that tragedy, during a benefit fundraiser, Kanye, in one of his first outbursts, said on live television: “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Hence, the inspiration for this amazing song.

(Editor’s note: I’m not sure if this is the original video, but it’s the only one I could find.)

A local hero who has been blowing up the LAirwaves. Great stuff, buy the album.

Here’s a video for the lead single, Maybe So, Maybe No. It features a bunch of iconic LA spots, from Venice Beach to the Santa Monica skate park to Crane’s Tavern in Hollywood.

The newest frontier of wordplay. I can’t quite figure out which beat (got it – Exhibit C – thank you KCRW playlists!) was on repeat upstairs when the alarm went off, but that might have to do with the fact that I was having a dream about zombies (I totally hit snooze and jumped back into the fray). So I’ll post two videos. The first is a teaser for his first big single, titled Exhibit A:

Listen to the full song here.

The second track, called Dimethyltryptamine, is a heavy hitter, politically and visually. Be warned there is some disturbing imagery.