About a week after we moved into our current apartment last year we were walking down the street when we saw the lights of a Ferris wheel above us. It was a carnival right around our corner. Yesterday we went back for the annual St. Augustine Catholic Church Carnival to ride the rickety Ferris wheel and get sick on the rocking pirate ship (which wasn’t there this time). We did get a good ride on the Ferris wheel and enjoyed some good Filipino and Mexican food. We paid for these with tickets called Augies a currency nicknamed after the inventor of original sin and the man who brought Platonic Rationalism to Christianity.
April won a stuffed walrus while a Christian rock band played in the background. We’ll be back next year. I’ll need a break from Bar Review.
Below is a view of the carnival and Culver City from above. Maybe it’s not Augustine’s’ City of God, but it’s home.
Youtube of the Week: Stairway backwards. I’m sure this is just the power of suggestion because real backmasking is always more clear in reverse but this is fun nonetheless.
3 comments:
That youtube is kinda scary sounding.
Yeah, it is pretty creepy. The eeriness of playing a song backwards comes from the fact that the sounds are not quite what your ears would expect. It’s sort of like how people’s faces look scary when lit from below (the classic sleepover ghost-story effect). In the early 80’s a lot of conservative Christian groups were leading crusades against backmasking alleging that it was being used to subliminally indoctrinate the nation’s youth with satanic and drug related doctrines. They burned records and even tried to get laws passed that banned the sale of certain albums. Stairway to Heaven was one of their chief targets. These allegations were totally unfounded. The Youtube video seems somewhat compelling when you watch it but it is really just the power of suggestion mixed with the mind’s natural tendency to find patterns. If you listen to the video without looking at the words it just sounds like gibberish. Whereas when the song is played forwards the words are perfectly clear. Real backmasking sounds like gibberish when played forwards but is clear in reverse. An example of real backmasking occurs on Pink Floyd’s The Wall. There is a part of the song Empty Spaces that sounds like backwards talking. When you play it in reverse it says: “Congratulations. You've just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the funny farm, Chalfont." This is a joke the guys put in the song after being accused by these same conservative Christian groups of using backmasking on The Dark Side of the Moon. So don’t worry. Rock stars aren’t in a vast conspiracy to control our minds after all
Wow! Looks like you are having a lot of fun! And you are TAN!!!!!!!!!!! I love the blog.
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