everl00tion

COUNTDOWN

2007-10-21T12:13:00.000-07:00

64 Days, 9 Hours, 45 Minutes...

My First Post [for a while]

2007-10-21T08:20:00.001-07:00

First posts can be hard things to write, but these challenging tasks need to be undertaken none-the-less. Similarly, after substantial thought and research into a piece of work, writing a summarising yet enticing opening paragraph can be difficult. Despite these drawbacks Alan Cairns is writing the opening paragraph of the first post on his new blog.

The idea came to him when he was trying to change the colour and font formatting, later realising that apart from a title and an empty archive, his blog contained no content. Quickly the opening paragraph was followed by a couple of substantially less interesting ones.

Alan began using Blogger a while ago, and his star sign is Aquarius. His favourite meal is porridge and blueberry or bacon and mushrooms. He is unsure of the spelling of particularly. AT 23, it was high time he got a job and moved out of his parent's home.

www.myspace.com/n01
www.myspace.com/audreyslittlecottage

CENSORSHIP ON MYSPACE

2007-05-21T13:25:00.000-07:00

Just look at the success of Lily Allen, the Arctic Monkeys and wannabe chav mag tit flashes. MySpace is undoubtedly a useful tool for any budding musicians/artists/tarts to promote themselves, but what price are they paying for the convenience of a blog, a friends list and a slide show?

Recently I met a Canadian death-metal/trance/indie disco band called Kids on TV, who told me that they had their MySpace account deleted with no warning, and no explanation, other than a form letter reading as follows:

Your MySpace account has been deleted for violating our Terms of Service.
This is usually due to one of the following:
* Nude images, sexually suggestive or violent photos * Covering our banner ads with HTML * Harassing other users * You do not meet the minimum age requirement * Spamming the classifieds, forums, bulletins, or other sections of the site * Attempting to artificially inflate scores * Scripting the site
Your account cannot be restored. If you choose to return to MySpace, please follow the rules.

Kids on TV now run four different myspace pages in the fear of future deletion. Having to open a new account can mean breaking hyperlinks and losing friends/stalkers. While the band were unsure about why their account was deleted, they presumed it was due to the band being "thematically, visually, conceptually and politically homosexual."

KOTV found many other MySpace fags who shared their experience of unexplained deletion. Various MySpace censorship profiles & websites sprang up declaring Rupert Murdoch a homophobic media tyrant, and eventually the Kids on TV account was restored, still with no explanation or comment from MySpace.

Late last year, Associated Press revealed they were compiling a database of registered paedophiles in the USA, in order to create software which trawls myspace to locate and delete these profiles. Maybe some moderation is required on MySpace to prevent some paedomaniac from tracking down his next victim, but the internet is supposed to be a space where the conglomerates which control the rest of the mass media have equal footing with independent producers.

Most of the features used by people on MySpace are well within the realms of free beginners' web design. Before MySpace came along, kids used Geocities and other free hosts for their crappy band and fan sites, now Rupert Murdoch has financial and editorial control over those sites. Even those silly anti capitalist American punk bands have MySpace accounts, not because they want to be part of Murdoch's MySpace, or even necessarily because of the different messaging (or spamming) systems available on it, but because it is what everyone else uses.
We could all go and use Friendster, a similar social networking site which isn't owned by News Corp, to show Murdoch what we think of his virtual gay bashing. But the owners of Friendsters are bound to have financial interests at heart, and their own set of sensitive subject areas.

Of course, you have to wonder what degree of editorial control is really exercised on MySpace when a profile exists about Murdoch himself, noting how his newspapers "frequently contain cross promotions and endorsements of my other products and business interests".
MySpace.com/rupertmurdochmustdie wittily dubs him "Rupert Murdouche" while MySpace.com/murdrupert goes further :

"Tom is my face man, my gimp. Ever notice how slumpy he looks in his newest profile pic? That particular night, fresh out of his box I took off his mask, made love to his mouth before praying to the all seeing Eye of Magog. Satisfied by my extreme perversions, I popped a few more viagra and returned to my beautiful wife, Wendi. I gave her the business and jumped on myspace for about an hour."

So maybe everything is functioning as it should. As long as we can talk about Rupert Murdoch face fucking Tom Anderson (MySpace president) on their website, everything must be ok right?

DOWNHILL FREESTYLE SKATEBOARDING

2007-04-21T13:22:00.000-07:00

Downhill freestyle, or slide skating, a skateboarding phenomenonoriginating in 60s California , has been brought back to life by a team of skaters from Cornwall who are continually developing new tricks and moves.

When I first moved to Falmouth from the south for university, I had the good fortune to move in with Alex Brinnen and Chris Humphris, two keen skateboarders and eventual founders of Faltown skateboards. Skateboarding was nothing new to me, but when I went out with them and saw what they were doing I was in shock. Sliding around on all fours, on a skateboard, on a big hill, around corners at speed, with cars on the road. It was no wonder one well used local run was simply referred to as 'A&E hill'.
But as they informed me, slide skating is a technique developed by US skaters to save injury on fast downhills. Riders wear special gloves and move their weight to their hands allowing them to slide and slow down. In Cornwall this has progressed into a sport of high speed spins and turns, more style than safety.

The team formed in 2000 when a handful of skateboarders in Falmouth – Tom Clough, Mark Short, Dom Lilly, Andy Lewis plus Alex and Chris – rediscovered the lost art of sliding and set about creating their own gear to help progress the moves.

"I remember skating around Falmouth and then seeing two friends of mine sliding their skateboards down the hill sideways and on their hands!" recalls Alex, "It blew my mind and I knew right then I had to give it a try.

"That morning I skipped all my college lectures to get some chopping board and some gardening gloves ready to make some slide gloves." The nylon chopping board is cut and melted with a blowtorch and then stuck to a decent pair of gardening gloves. This allows you to put your hands down, kick the skateboard into a slide and then spread your weight across your body. Then come the spins, switches, grabs, manuals, toeside and heelside slides and god knows what else.

What initially was our student house soon became a makeshift warehouse for what became Faltown skateboards. Piles of blank decks lined our hallway, Chris would be spray painting skateboards in the kitchen while Alex was loading decks into our bathtub so they could be shaped. Grappling with the production techniques involved, our personal hygiene suffered.

"We never intended to start a company" Chris assures me, "we just could never afford new skateboards. We loved our boards and we kept making more, experimenting with different shapes and wheelbases." 6 years later and Faltown decks are cut by machine in California , and are for sale from their website and 10 skateboard shops and 'urban boutiques' in Europe .

There are four different shapes of board; pool, slide, free ride (or bomb) and cruise. There's also all the t shirts, hoodies, jeans and workshirts you'd expect along with specially selected wheels, trucks, grip tape and nylon pucks for gloves to save you buying a chopping board and cutting it up. The site is packed with information, photos, profiles of the skaters and over 45 minutes of footage which has caused a stir across the pond.

They received a lot of attention through online skate forums, exchanging videos with fellow skaters the world over, to astonishment. "I suppose whilst our technique is based on that 60s style, we have really taken downhill freestyle to a whole new level by using the slide gloves to allow us to do various spins instead of simply to slow down".

Cliff Coleman, the Californian granddaddy of sliding who pioneered the sport in the 1960s, was so impressed with the growth of sliding in Britain – and the performance of the Faltown skate team – that he came to the UK to meet the Faltown crew. He spotted them as they took the top six places at a Sheffield skate event in May 2005. His latest trip to Britain , last summer, was with Brazilian slide legend Sergio Yuppie, who came with him to see the Faltown boys perform. Footage of their skating antics will become part of the Faltown Skateboards DVD due out in March this year.
Cliff, who is now in his mid-50s and living in the Berkeley Hills, California , said: "The Faltown guys really motivated me. Here I am, still re-learning things I learned 20 years ago because of guys like this at Faltown. The level of skill in the UK regarding sliding is awesome; the UK sliders are the real thing."
After meeting Cliff, the boys made the pilgrimage to visit him in California last year and found that their brand of skating went down a storm. They speak fondly of "butter smooth hills" and the kids who came lined the streets to see them skate after watching video clips online. Cliff added: "The Faltown guys are the epitome of camaraderie. Their bond is sliding on skateboards and their youthful competitive nature has taken their slide skills to new levels and given them global notoriety."

In August they hold their own FalJam 2007, around Falmouth and Cornwall , with downhill and slide sessions as well as workshops and a slide school for newcomers. In September they head to Cadwell Park in Lincolnshire for another slide, downhill and slalom jam. They are also heading back to America for the 'Danger Bay ' event in Canada on the 24th of May and Slidefest 2007 in San Francisco organised by Gravity skateboards, an event which Faltown skater Mark Short competed in last year, finishing fourth overall against stiff competition.

Mark speaks passionately about how seeing what the Californians and Brazilians are doing has motivated him to push the sport and himself further than he originally thought possible. Keep your eyes peeled in 2007 for these guys in the West Country pioneering a new part of skateboarding, or check out www.faltownskateboards.com

HOW OLD IS TOO OLD TO SKATE?

2007-04-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

Clearly, there is a time in life for everything. Pre-teenage adolescence is for smoking and making small paper fires. Teenage years are about taking your liver out for that first pint, trying to impress girls and skateboarding (not mutually exclusive). But should 18 year olds abandon their skateboards as abruptly as their innocence? Maybe 25 is more appropriate age. Just how old is too old to skateboard?

On November 4th this year, his 39th birthday, Mark Short competed in the World Slide Skating Championships in California. Skating against the strongest in the field, Mark finished fourth overall in Slide Fest 06, a competition organised by Gravity Skateboards. And he's not finished, "It was a learning experience, I think that's the point, next year will be better." Pushing 40 and Mark's enthusiasm for skating seems more powerful than ever, talking of his new training regime and focus.

From sprains to fractures, concussion to shattered spleens, skateboarding can leave you with badly damaged ankles, legs, feet and worse. Some of what Mark does is very dangerous, but says he has never hurt himself sliding, "apart from bruises and a skin rash. Niggly kinds of injuries, not like Evel Knievel. Not twisting or snapping anything, you're low to the ground most of the time with sliding".

But let's face it; the dangers of skateboarding can go well beyond cuts and bruises. "Downhill is a lot more dangerous, I broke my foot racing downhill. But short boarding, that's just nasty, short boarders are young and foolish". By riding a bigger skateboard Mark is safer, and looks cooler because the board is in better proportion to his adult body.

"The short boarders just leap off enormous things, do extraordinary things on a piece of wood, much more technically advanced than sliding, they're ballsy, and just plain crazy. I'm too old for all that stuff, it's hard enough to ollie (jump) let alone kick flip down 20 stairs. Flying off ramps and doing stupid things, off stairs and long rails, I mean what if something goes wrong?"

Mark fends off any idea of being 'too old to skate' by proudly revealing that he didn't even start until the age of 31, when most people would consider packing it in. He is sure he'll never willingly stop. "I want to carry on until I'm 60 at least".

He endorses the health benefits of slide skating as exercise. "Your arms really work hard to move your body, there's a lot of anaerobic work, and then you've got the walk. You spend the majority of your time walking back up the hill you've just slid down." And, reassuringly, this is where Mark really gets excited, reminiscing about good times walking back up the hill. "It's kind of nice to settle down as you walk back up. Often you're on your own, and you sort of meditate if you like". Maybe there is a bit of 39 year old creeping in.

Mark is not alone, Rick Hurst is a web developer from Bristol who started skateboarding at the age of 30, and started a blog about getting back into skating after years of neglect. After 2 years of posts at 'Too old to skate', documenting skate jams, injuries and exploring 'the fear', Rick has closed the blog explaining that "I want to distance myself from the idea that I was too old to skate at 30".

"I'm currently 32 and I can honestly say that I feel like a fraud for having a site with the name too old to skate. When I first put the site together and thought of the name, I hadn't met any of the hoards of skateboarders my own age (and beyond) that I now skate with on a regular basis, some of whom are at least ten years older than me and skating better and more frequently than me. It seems the world is full of genuinely old gits on skateboards, most of whom don't feel the need to write websites about it."

Mark skates with MAMOS, Middle Aged Men on Skateboards & Rick Hurst skates with MOTHS, Mostly over the Hill Skaters. You're never too old to skate, join the thirty and forty somethings reclaiming the streets (and maybe their youth) with their skateboards. You don't need to go dropping onto a ramp from a helicopter like Tony Hawk (who's 38 by the way); skateboarding can be defined as a mode of transport rather than a lifestyle or attitude. Can you still stand? Well then you can still skate, grandad.

Rick Hurst now runs a skate website with some other old gits on skateboards. www.dfrskatezine.com

Mark skates with FalTown skateboards www.faltownskateboards.com

BEWARE OF POO MAN

2007-03-21T13:17:00.000-07:00

Poo play enthusiast spotted at Danish rock festival. Scandinavians seriously grossed out.

Roskilde festival in Denmark this summer saw the return of the 'pooman'. A grown man willing to play with not just poo, but the worst kind of poo there is : festival poo. I heard a first hand account of him swimming in the cess pit below the toilets at the festival, encouraging the 79 thousand strong population of the festival poo on him. He's got to be an EU citizen so there's nothing to stop him bringing his poo-ey posterior onto British soil for next year's festival season, we clearly need to know more.

The pooman has been sighted at numerous rock festivals around Sweden and Denmark. During the late 80s and early 90s he was referred to as "Hydro sperm". Although there is thought to be more than one poo man, the most notable and consistently spotted has long dreadlocks and has been seen diving into toilets, wearing a blue overall.

Clara Ostman tells me that she met this poo man, "First time was in 1992. Me and my friend shared a train carriage with him and his very good looking girlfriend from Kobenhavn to Roskilde. He seemed to be a very intelligent and friendly person with lots of humour. When I later saw him at the festival area he was running around smeared in poo and a toilet ring around his head screaming "I am a toilet!"."

One unwitting festival-goer had an aggressive encounter with the poo man. A guy I personally wouldn't want to mess with. Or on. "We saw someone who claimed to be the poo man at Hultsfredsfestivalen in 1996. He walked up to our neighbours' tent and asked them for some spirits and threatened to come back and poo in their tent if not given anything. They told him they didn't have any spirits but had some alcohol used for their gas stove, which the poo man took a sip of and then left".

Johan Nelesburg, a 20 year old student from Stockholm spotted the dreadlocked poo man this year at Roskilde in Denmark, "he was underneath the toilets sticking his head up and encouraging people to poo on him. When the poo pumping truck came he got out through the toilet lid and ran away. He wasn't aggressive with anyone but he was encouraging the girls to crap on him. Noone could believe it and so whilst lots of people were interested in the guy inside the toilet, noone would use it. He sounded very happy though, like he had been waiting." OK so the guy isn't aggro but there has to be an easier way for a white guy to maintain dreadlocks.

The technical term for such an affinity with turd is coprophilia. Described as an "abnormal, often obsessive interest in excrement, especially the use of faeces for sexual excitement", it can also be known as scat play, japscat, poo play or the somewhat more sinister sounding fecalphilia. The German word for scat fetishism is Kaviar.
Formal definitions make this stuff sound normal. But we're talking about poo here. Whilst playing and even eating your own poo (known as coprophagia) is relatively safe, playing with someone elses is extremely dangerous. Risks include hepatitis A, B, C and parasitic infections such as giardiasis, cryptosporidiosis, campylobacter, and other very sinister sounding stuff. With this kind of danger involved, I think we can safely call scat an extreme sport unless played alone, and where's the fun in that?

This kind of behaviour would make most of us sick, and for good reason. Even seasoned scat enthusiasts say they vomit the first time they tasted shit, and they're into it. A variety of different explanations have been given for this. Darwin wrote in the 1870s that our disgust reaction to poo was not a simple instinctive response but was a value judgement. However, Freud thought we internalised our parents attitudes towards poo, rather than making up our own minds about it.

So do we choose to hate poo? Dr Mary Phillips conducted brain research, using MRI brain scans to analyse the parts of the brain active when the subject was disgusted. She found that the part of brain which was active during this disgusted response was millions of years older (in evolutionary terms) than even the oldest known civilisations.

So it is natural to be disgusted by something which comes from our body? And something which, at an earlier stage, passes through our mouths, as food? Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or OCD, is a condition in which nearly the whole world disgusts the sufferer. Items (or body parts) must be washed rigorously for fear of dirt. Other symptoms of OCD can include turning light switches on and off a ritualistically and tidying up a lot. Pork disgusts jews, not because there is anything inherently disgusting about a pig, but their teachings and upbringing educate their response.

Anyway, we live in a society obsessed with poo right? Whilst celebrities line up to appear on 'colonic irrigation island', nutritionist Gillian McKeith from Channel 4's hit show 'You Are What You Eat' believes that stool samples (that's poo to you and me) is the key to understanding our health, like Kim & Aggie for your anus. Greasy ones that won't flush show a liver imbalance, Sticky ones mean you have too much dampness in your body, rabbit droppings means your liver is congested, whilst thin, shreddy stools mean your colon is "screaming for help".

Cheap spicy foods available at festivals tend to resemble what you see get sucked out of the portaloos by the big vaccuum lorries afterwards. What you are left with is a pit of sloppy, ring-stinging oily poo and thick dark wee. I know from my own experience that at festivals my stool is transformed from a well formed, obviously bran influenced log to a splattering of oily sludge which would probably stick to the bowl if I stuck around long enough to find out. A mix of liver imbalance and dampness I now know. Nothing to do with the torrent of drink and drug abuse. As anyone who has been to a commercial rock festival will know, the toilets provide probably the worst cocktail of bodily discharge available anywhere.

So, before you go booking any tickets for Scandinavian rock festivals for next summer, consider the possibility of encountering a man who cares little for preventative health measures and social norms, a man who shuns traditional rock concert entertainment, preferring to get stuck into the remnants of the previous day, a man who wants your poo. Watchout.

NEVERLUTION FASHION SHOOT

2002-07-08T11:58:00.000-07:00

STAIND STAINED

2000-02-12T11:47:00.000-08:00

News has broke this week that it seems Staind's career was nearly brought to a standstill last week when their singer (Aaron Lewis) was severely mentally disturbed after spilling his milk.
His tour manager explains what happened: "It all transpired when the band were on tour over in Canada, after a show one night Aaron Lewis was carrying a glass of milk back to the tour bus when he somehow managed to lose his grip on the glass which was containing the milk. Before he had time to full register what had actually happened."

"At first it felt unreal" explains the Staind front man, "I've never had anything like that happen in my lifetime and it was a big shock to me, at first I was spellbound, I guess I was a bit shell-shocked, then eventually the actuality of what had happened sank into my head, like the milk into the carpet I suppose".

According to the various reporters at the scene, He began to cry over the spilt milk for several minutes, screaming "boo-hoo". A boot-legger passing by managed to get a copy of this crying, which is not available to us since Fred Durst snatched the tape and is (allegedly) releasing it as the band's 4th long player.

Neverlution tried to contact Staind and give them our deepest commiserations about the milk, Their press officer told Neverlution "The band are thrilled with the amount of support to have had from all the fans after these tragic incidents, and are hoping to make a full and proper mental recovery in their own time".

Our condolences go out to Aaron Lewis and all of Aaron Lewis's friends and relatives, as well as to all associates of Aaron Lewis.

Linkin Chester Wife Beating String-Vester

1982-10-21T11:34:00.000-07:00

The picture perfect nu-metal scene has been sent into chaos recently as news broke that Linkin Park's "hug me" lead singer Chester, is a wife beater. Suddenly the refrain on the Park's chart-topping debut single 'One Step Closer' - "Shut up when I'm talking to you" becomes nothing but a bitter reality.

Nu-metal ambassadors Fred Durst and Staind (!!!!!) have pledged they want nothing to do with the band anymore. Meanwhile Papa Roach's Coby Dick has commented: "Lincoln Park are f****d up, Like me. My dad used to force my mum to stick her vagina up my bum while he jerked off and hung himself, I eat cats!"

Lots of parents are very fearful of the effects that this could have upon their children. Lots of Linkin Park fans have already got their boyfriends to beat them up, To try and make their boyfriends more like the handsome nu-metaller.

Certainly the question must be asked that is this the sort of message the media world should be sending to the next generation? Hormonal pre-pubescent teenage boys shouting at their girlfriends beating the crap out of them. Prince Phillip hasn't passed comment as yet, But the ITC has; "No matter how bad Linkin Park are, at least they're not a real metal band, therefore we must keep showing their shitty videos over and over again, To encourage young musicians to operate within theframework of obedience to both the record labels, and all the huge mediaconglomerates.

So there." Fair enough I suppose, But next time you see Linkin Park on the telly, Forget looking at that guy wondering why he's got headphones on, Don't pay any attention to the blonde one staring into the camera, pouting, And stop looking at the DJ, to see what he's ACTUALLY doing (!!!!!!!!), Instead, think, "Would Craig David be promoting violence and (alleged) child abuse?"