Will you stop, Dave? Stop, Dave. I’m afraid. – HAL 9000

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could do. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice. — La Rochefoucauld

The water a cow laps turns into milk; the water a snake licks changes into poison. — Zen saying

The most dangerous form of transportation, by passenger-mile, is the bed. — #micronations

I knew that if I lived long enough, something like this would happen. — George Bernard Shaw’s epitaph

What are the marks of a sick culture? It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn’t the whole population. — Robert A. Heinlein

A college student once asked the Lubavitcher Rebbe what is his job. The Rebbe gestured to the ceiling of his room and replied: “Do you see that light bulb? It is connected by wires to a power plant that powers the whole of Brooklyn. And that plant is connected to turbo-generators at Niagara Falls that power the whole of New York State and more. Every one of us is a light bulb wired in to an infinitely powerful generator. But the room may still be dark, because the connection has yet to be made. The job of a rebbe is to take your hand in the dark room and help it find the switch.”

I like the word `indolence.’ it makes my laziness seem classy. — Bern Williams

Stealing is not excusable if, for instance, you are in a museum and you decide that a certain painting would look better in your house, and you simply grab the painting and take it there. But if you were very, very hungry, and you had no way of obtaining money, it might be excusable to grab the painting, take it to your house, and eat it. — Lemony Snicket

(Note: your care mutual fund is likely to suffer critical shortfalls of care. Written for a specific audience).

The world’s biggest bodybuilding show has come and gone, and like always, the Mr Olympia contest seems curiously next to the controversy and drama. Two quick rules: a) everything in bodybuilding sucks except the bodybuilders, and b) complaining about sports is more fun than following sports. There were events in 2015 that we’ll be chewing over for a long time.

Phil Heath won a fairly uncontroversial victory. Shawn Rhoden was the only one who seemed to be pushing him, but when they turned around, it was all over from the back. Phil’s thickness and fullness just stole the show, and his structural issues (narrow clavicles etc) don’t seem to be holding him back at all. I noticed that one judge had him in second place in the prejudging. By the night show, all five had him in first.

The biggest story was Phil’s missing arch-rival: where is Kai Greene? Over the past few weeks he’s ended a long-lived contract with Musclemeds, launched his own company, failed to sign the contract for the contest, lost his chance at a near-guaranteed second place finish, and has released a nine minute video literally crying about it< all/a>. If you hear people saying he was “banned” from the contest, piss on them. He has not been banned. He did not sign the contract, and that’s the only reason he was not at the Olympia this year. Here’s IFBB promoter Robin Chang’s account of Kai Greene’s failure to put a signature on a piece of paper. Frankly, nothing about this story makes any sense, and although I have some theories I think we need more to go on.

Kai’s non-appearance left the door open for someone else to move up to number 2, and that someone else proved to be…Dexter Jackson. As a rule, he looks better in videos than photos. I don’t think anybody predicted this – Dexter is 46 and seemed to be a permanent fixture in the 4th-6th spot. I don’t know about this decision: his condition and proportions are great, but he’s fundamentally a pretty small guy in the lineup. Dexter is great…but top 2 great? My opinion vacillates.

Otherwise there’s just little storylines popping up and resolving themselves. Big Ramy was being touted as the heaviest bodybuilder ever to set foot on the Olympia stage…DIDN’T FUCKING HELP, DID IT? Enjoy your fifth place, you waterlogged Egyptian. I say this with the expectation that he will be a top-level threat once he figures out how to diet properly. The guy’s just overwhelmingly massive, and not necessarily in a good way. The cuts and details you want to see just aren’t there.

The big positive surprises of the show were Will Bonac and Dallas McCarver (who is just 24 years old). A lot of fullness and pop in both of them, and plenty of potential to shunt their way up the ranks. I’m concerned that Bonac keeps getting lost in the lineup – on his own, he’s pretty much flawless. Dennis Wolf and Branch Warren did their usual “ugly as fuck but still tough to beat” acts. Roelly Winklaar could have placed higher – he’s another one who keeps getting overlooked. Steve Kuclo had no business stepping on stage that weekend – does he even diet for shows these days?

In any case, the circus is over, and now these depleted athletes can partake in some bread.

What do you do when you have some new songs, but not enough for an album? When you’ve got unreleased tracks, but not enough for a compilation? When you’ve got a bunch of band members hanging around the studio, but they’re not seriously interested in a reunion? In 2010, Danish power metal band Iron Fire’s answer was to “do all three simultaneously.”

It’s hard to figure out exactly what sort of album this is – most database type websites consider it a new studio release, but most of it was written in 2003, and was present in rough form in various demos. It’s mixed up with a few, and all of them are recorded by the band’s former members: and it’s a metal band, so there’s a ton of former members.

I don’t know why they bothered tracking down every random asshole who was ever in this band to contribute instruments – you can’t hear any difference. The drums are very triggered and mechanical. The guitars are a pulverising backwash of distortion. You’re not going to be smiling and thinking “hey, that’s Morten Plenge on drums!” Everyone’s performance sounds fairly interchangeable, except for vocalist Martin Steene, who has always humanised some very inhuman music and continues to do so here.

The songs are all fairly strong, although it’s clear why some of them never appeared on a real Iron Fire album. “The Phantom Symphony” is long-winded, but contains a lot of tasty treats, tacky horror-movie obsessed lyrics aside. “Back to the Pit” and “The Graveyard” are just the usual fare. “Crossroads” is a ballad that serves to break up the relentless speed that dominates most of the album.

The new songs are better. “Reborn to Darkness” has a jangly, progressive edge to its riff approach. “Still Alive” lays on the quadtracked guitars, sounding more like Nevermore than a European power metal band. “My Awakening” is fast and powerful as fuck, probably the most immediate and memorable track on the album, with some well-placed death metal vocals in the chorus. The bonus version of the album contains an orchestral version of “Crossroads” and another re-recorded song called “Afterlife”, which sounds pleasant enough.

The presentation and production is good, but it’s not as much as a retrospective as you’d hope for – this is a VERY modern sounding Iron Fire. I hope you like downtuned guitars and death metal vocals. Ultimately I don’t know how necessary something like this is – Metalmorphosized is something aimed at the band’s hardcore fans, and they’d probably be more satisfied by hunting down the demos that these songs originally appeared on. Still one of the more memorable compilation-cum-studio-cum-reunion albums I’ve heard.