Desmond Morris

The Human Zoo by Desmond Morris is a brilliant attempt to explain the evolution of man, in a sense. It is a very interesting commentary on how man fails to grasp that he is just one more species on the surface of the planet. Man surely has achieved a hell of a lot of more things that our animal counterparts haven't even got the ability to begin understanding. But the biggest drawback of our evolutionary process seems to be that our biological system has failed to evolve on equal terms with the immense evolution of the human brain. Biologically we aren't much different from the monkey - as a result, at some fundamental level, the big urban societies we have built for ourselves suffer from essentially the same problems that animals in captivity have to face. The book takes us through a brilliant analysis of the human zoo.

Gonzo

I read The New Journalism by Tom Wolfe not so long ago. It had some of the most entertaining short stories in the first person narrative. They aren't exactly short stories, as one could call them essays or journals or articles or even, poems, sometimes. I need to get into more gonzo journalism.

The Dillinger Escape Plan

Its been a while since I've written anything here. Life in the last one year has for a large part been a vague blur. Owing to no broadband at home I haven't listened to any new music and the only listening I've been able to do is on my train ride to work. If there's one band that has really rocked my world in the recent times, it is The Dillinger Escape Plan. Fans of music in the extreme-hardcore realm will do well to check out the band's twisted debut EP Under the running board, which has a total running time of 7 minutes and 33 seconds. I will write about that album in another post. What I'm here to write about is the band's second EP Irony is a dead scene which features one of the greatest vocalist of our times - Mike Patton. Mike Patton is an enlightening musician. When did vocalists forget that language and lyrics were just convenient tools for making melodies? The true vocal melody should bend the mind by using not mere words, but by chanting and sceaming. Mike Patton's vocal style is a marked departure from the convention, emphasizing clearly what we expect to get out of music - madness and bliss. To see my point, go listen to the song When good dogs do bad things. The guitars and drums on the album are also equally genius - end result - a masterpiece of sound.