Translation

Here's the translation from the poster.

"Nine Inch Nails is founded in 1989, there is only one permanent member in the band, that is its founder and brain trust Trent Reznor, he played almost all the creative, playing and production roles , the other members are just studio hands or players.

Nine Inch Nails’ style is part of the heavy music, but Reznor fits the pop sensibility perfectly into Nine Inch Nails’ unique style. NIN’s music is not just fill with artistic expression, it also created some memorable melodies. But Reznor’s songs is moving yet not stale at all, it also won the liking of the alternative and hard core rock fan base, and it pushed industrial into popularity.

Michael Trent Reznor was born in Pennsylvania’s Mercer. He started to learn piano when he was five, the same year that his parent divorced, he was raised by his grandparents. Then, eh learned saxophone and the tuba. Then he attended the Allegheny College for computer engineering, then he graduated (note: that a mistake) and moved to Cleveland. In 1989, he founded NIN, early on, he began to search for dance music, at the same time he absorbed the industrial and electronic style.

NIN’s debut alum was “Industrial Nation” (note: okay…), and won them the spot opening for Skinny Puppy, Jesus and Mary Chain, and Peter Murphy. But the album that brought NIN success was their 1990 album (note: What?) “Pretty Hate Machine” and in it was the popular song “Head Like A Hole”. This album included heavy metal’s brutality, pop song’s structure, industrial music’s volume and rich dance beats, it was on the chart or more than two years.

In 1991, NIN participated in the famous Lollapalooza music festival, and became the selling champion of T shirts. But the band’s dispute with its label delayed the second album’s release. Then Reznor founded his own label “Nothing”, and signed new bands in 1992, including Pop Will Eat Itself, Prick and the famous Marilyn Manson. The same fall, the band released “Broken”, and the record debuted on #10, its song “Wish” won a grammy for Best Metal Performance.

In the spring of 1994, NIN release their sophomore album (The Downward Spiral”, it labeled the jump to popularity for the band. Reznor also recorded with the famous singer Tori Amos in the album “Pass the Mission” (note: isn’t that a song?). TDS was advertised as a “concept album” and displayed Reznor’s inspiration of the record---70s rock and roll, in it was former King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew. This record debuted at #2 on the chart, and Reznor appeared on the cover of “Rolling Stone”, and became Playboy’s (note: Playgirl!) “ten sexiest rock star”. The band was on the 1994 Woodstock. All of this was great for all those who sang along to “I focus on the pain, the only thing that’s real”. “Even though now we’re popular, and filled the mainstream media’s channel” Reznor said, “But I felt that I’m walking on my own path>”

After the TDS, Reznor created the creative soundtrack for Oliver Stone’s controversial movie “Natural Born Killers”, the movie dialogue and the songs (including SICNH and Burn) fits together perfectly.

In 1995, NIN release their remix album “Further Down the Spiral”, and toured with their idol David Bowie. In 1996, the song “Happiness in Slavery” (The Woodstock live version) won the grammy for the best metal performance. The end of 1996, he was preparing for the new album, and wrote 3 new songs for David Lynch’s “Lost Highway”. Reznor and Lynch appeared on the 1997 Feburary edition of Rolling Stone.

In 1997 NIN release the double album “The Fragile”. Without exaggeration, “PHM” (1989), TDS (1994) and TF (1999), these NIN’s classic catalogue chronicled Reznor’s peak, and we witnessed how NIN pushed industrial music into the popularity, and became one of the rock movement in the 90s alternative scene.

In 2005 the band release their fourth album “With Teeth”, this album debuted on #1 on Billboard. Then after only after one year (note: two years), NIN released the new album “Year Zero”, and changed their habit of long gap between releases. Not only Rolling Stone gave it a four star review, AMG music gave it four and a half stars, and gave it the words “very amazing, moving the listener’s mood, and it cannot be missed”. And, Year Zero debuted on top of England’s rock chart, and the single “Survivalism” was #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock charts.

Now at its 18th year, NIN received two grammys, and was named “Greatest 90s band” by the internationally famous magazines like “Rolling Stone”, “Spin”, and “Q”, its platinum album (note: they’re talking about TDS) was also named “90s best rock album” and “200 most important album of the 20th century”. Their music influenced so many famous rock bands and rock innovators.

Discography. "

There's some mistake on there, and I noted it in parentheses.


Here's the translation of the letter on nin.com

"Trent wrote to the Chinese fans:
I want to thank the Chinese Nine Inch Nails fans. We felt very excited and honored about this trip to China. Because we want you to further understand our band, we prepared the following information about our band.

Nine Inch Nails is looking forward to the music festival.

In this period, following the fans who decided to go online and “steal” music and not go buy a CD, the Western music industry is experiencing a rough time. These fans, because of whatever reason, felt that this was reasonable, and I’m not completely oppose to their thinking.

Because of China’s special situation, it’s not an easy task to obtain Western music by official means, so I’ll suggest to my fans the following: if you can buy a official release of our album, I appreciate your support. If you can’t buy it, I think that illegal downloading from the web is desirable way to get it. Our music is very easy to get on the web, and you can find most of our music easily. If you like what you heard, please share it with your friend. I’ve put all my effort into my music, so I truly hope I can let more people share it.

Trent Reznor"

Didn't translate the blip about Year Zero because I didn't see it at the first place, and upon reading it, it's exaggerating and have some mistake on it. Also, I have enough translating already.

Photos Blah

Since we brought a digital camera, I have been taking photos everywhere. These photos were taken outside of my home, and I'll just put it here to let loose a copy of it on the web, just in case I go nuts one day and delete it all, and I'll still be able to find a copy on the site.

Arms Raised



The Mystic Channel


Looks Like a Cigar

What I Learned While Having A Summer Job

The planets aligned, the stars lined up, and I finally got a job this summer at the beginning of July. Yes, it’s over now, and I got my money, I got my experience, I got realism.

I got a job at my Housing Projects’ office (that’s right, I live in the ghetto, the ‘hood), and my boss was a social worker. People often come to her, and she knew who was on heroin and who was in jail. There’s more messed-up people in my area than I thought I knew.

From her, I knew a lot more tragedies and screw up kids on the block, she even pointed out the drug dealers to me, just across the street.

I met a bunch of kids that was pretty wild. You know, even if they’re loud-mouthed and belligerent, there was intelligence and care in them.

One of the little girl had a BIG attitude, and she was like ten. She had a MySpace and pretended she was fourteen (seems like all of them have a fascination with MySpace), and she had a big family and her siblings aren’t that close, I’d guess. Another little girl’s mother was a heroin addict who was pregnant, and considering giving the baby once he was born. A boy’s father was in jail, and he was screwing his girlfriend while humping another. Jeez.

I wonder if some of these kids are going to repeat the fate of their parents, and become heroin addicts and whatnots. Does family and childhood life make them want to turn away to an alternate path, or does it twist them into an inevitable fate like their parents?

I hope it’s not the latter. But I guess there’s more of the latter than not.

Retrospective: The One Year Anniversary of Cryptic Experiment

Okay, stop patting yourself on the back.

See, it’s not really the One Year Anniversary now, since I believe this thing started on August thirteenth, two thousand and six, so I guess I’m a bit late.

Time seemed to pass by fast, it seemed not so long ago that I went nuts and thought having a blog was a good idea. And this little blog does provides me a place to rant on this vast space we call the Internet. Even if no one reads it, I know I can look back one day and read Cryptic Experiment’s archive and think: “What the fuck was I thinking?”

Yep, it’s gonna be one of those things.

Something That Can Make Me Cringe

In a desperate attempt to find something to read, I stumbled upon real-person fiction. Actually, I was reading the Nine Inch Nails' Encyclopedia Dramatica entry, and I followed the link to a fanfiction. And hola.

Actually, what really made me cringe about that fiction was that it was a slash fiction. You know, with two guys doing it (or something, I didn't really read the Wikipedia entry on that). Without going into details, that fiction was about Trent Reznor and Christian Bale.

While I admit that the writership was rather good, the plot itself was...I don't know, I was cringing while reading it.

I have no problem with homosexuality, but what I don't quite get was why some people fancy about gay sex so much. Is it more exciting? Is it because it's more stimulating? And especially with real person fiction, it gets a bit invasive. I wonder what the celebrities think about it when they read a story about them fucking so-and-so.

Anyway, I went on an extented research on these real person fiction area just to see what's there, I found that there is a lot of them on Livejournal, there's a few sites that specializes in My Chemical Romance slash , (which I thought sadistically was a good thing). There's a few sites that's for band fictions (type that in Google), all of which I believe is mostly slash.

There's a lot of people that enjoy slash, I guess. But to me, it gets creepy afterwards.

Quote of the Day

"Diplomacy is the ability to tell a person to go to hell in sucha way that he actually looks forward to the trip."

---From watching "Secret of the Kremlin" on Discovery Times

Harry Potter is Going to Die!

No, I'm not sure if Harry Potter is going to die or not, but I think so.

To be honest, I don't really care if Potter is going to die or not, the most important thing that I wanted to find out is whether Snape is on Voldemort's side or Dumbledore's side.

I was an avid fan of the series, but as I get older, I got a bit apathetic. I can't really remember what happened in the fifth and sixth book, except a general blurred outline of the big things that happened and who died.I did remember just flipping through the pages of the last two books and read the death scenes, and upon reminder, I also remembered that there was A LOT of teenage angst in the fifth book, and it was kind of annoying.


Anyway, I have never loved Harry Potter the character. He was always a bit too nosy, too rash, too hotheaded. Not my type of guy. In fact, my favorite character is Severus Snape, the sarcastic and complex potion master. I always have a thing for anti-heroes, characters that are dark and quiet, yet there's more to them than just being the typically "bad". Byronic heroes, that's the type of character that I like.

When I heard that two important characters is going to die in the Deathly Hollows, my first instinct was that it's going to be Harry Potter and Snape. You know, Harry suffers an injury fighting Voldemort, and the last minute Snape comes in and tries to help Harry and he dies saving Harry. Then Harry kills Voldemort and dies a heroic death killing Voldemort.

But, I don't think it's going to be this simple and easy. I was constantly surprised when I was reading the books, so I believe that I will be surprised in this one too. There's already a few "endings" that leaked online (which I never bothered to search for),and I'm sure that people are going to go nuts and wait in front of the bookstore and dress in Gryffindor attire and scream for the new book. Hey, this book mesmerized millions.

Oh well, I'll buy the book on the first day that it comes out, but I'm sure as hell not going to wait in line and dress in costumes. If it's all sold out, I'm just going to get one off Amazon.com.

RANDOM RAMBLINGS TO FILL THE SPACE

So we tried to get Verizon DSL for our home again, for the third time, and it still doesn’t work! So now for the third time, I have to wait for them to mail me the returning label and have the mail the modem back. I don’t think I’ll ever get the luxury of fast internet.

Applied for a summer job and supposedly to start on July 9th, but have not got the call about where I’m going to work. I don’t expect things to go smoothly anyway.

If I have a dog, I would name him Cerberus.

DW from Arthur is a bitch. By the way, what is Arthur? A mouse?

My mind is completely blank these days. Apathy has washed upon me and I found I lost the past passion on a number of things. I guess I have one of these “apathetic phrase” every once in a while. With that said, even in my “interested phrase”, I sometimes cannot fathom why some people are so dedicated and passionate about certain things, and why they cared so much.

But perhaps these passions fill a void. Now that I’m in the “apathetic phrase” and have no commitments (as of today), I do fill a certain empty spot. At times. And now that I think about it, I didn’t really ponder on life like I use to anymore, I didn’t think about the “meaning of life”, religion, purpose of life or whatnot like I used to . Did I found answers to these, or am I just being apathetic?

The above bulletin is rather pretentious.

Things I Learned From Reading Fanfictions

I found myself reading fanfictions. Again.

From time to time, through my endless "stumbling into stuff", I would find that my interest peaks at some particular subject, be it books, movies, whatever. Sometimes that interest will lead me to read fanfictions (no, I DO NOT write them, as a personal rule, becuase I'm weird about it).

Perhaps it was me just me wanting to know the characters in interest to a greater extend, perhaps it was me trying to envision the characters in a different setting with the help of the stories, perhaps it was pure entertainment, perhaps I'm just weird.

Anywhoo, I do gathered some stuff from reading those wonderful fanfictions:

1. Like all things, there's some very good, some are very bad. (Duh)

2.Some authors have no idea a what a "paragraph" is.

3.People often times pick shitty songs for songfics...Like the ones using Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend"...oh well, what do I know?

4.Lots of people cannot correctly use :"to", "too", "then", "than"

5.People really do like their characters to be gay, do they?

6.Rated M fictions makes me twitch at times, now I just gave up on them.

7.Usually those with a lot of reviews is a good indication that that story is good.

8.Almost all stories of the same genre have the same plot, just with different characters and different settings.

9.I like ambiguous characters, the bad guys that are actually good.

10. I found that I have no desire to write a fanfiction. I would rather just read them.

On a side note, my email inbox is now full of spam. Damn it.

Various News Roundup

Marilyn Manson is Angry
Marilyn Manson said that Gerard Way is ripping off his style. Okay Manson, when are you going to apologize to David Bowie and Alice Cooper then? I don't like My Chemical Romance either, but this just makes me dislike Manson more, what a way of the pot calling the kettle black. I can rant on and on about Manson's attempt at grabbing attention (dating a 19 year old (now 20) and his publicized divorce). But whatever.

Paris Hilton Goes Back to Jail
Most of the time I like playing devil's avocate, but this time, I'm happy about this news item like everyone else. I was quite angry when I heard about her getting out of jail just after 3 days, and that proves that money can get you out of anything. I was pissed. But now she have to serve her full sentence, so suck it Paris.

Here's some real news:

Global Warming at G8 Summit
It's a good thing that the leaders finally address this issue and actually attempt to do something about it. It's a step, and we may take a long time to be able to walk, but it's a step.

In other stuff:
I just saw the Pride Parade, lots of drag queens, biker chicks, half-naked dudes, and a bunch of bears. Good times. I saw couples that were together for many years and were just recently married, it's quite heart-warming. Now the bible thumpers wanted to put an option of banning gay marriage on the ballot in 2008, and if it does, I don't think there's enough people that will vote "no" on banning. There's lot more conservatives in America than you think, and they're the powerful ones.

Finals, Music Chart, and Summer Reading!

It’s been busy as hell in school, with all the final testing coming at you at once. But you got to take it as it is. We just got through the biology final, which was okay, and I'm pretty sure I fucked up on at least serveral questions. Then next week is the English, then next next week is algebra, Latin, and whatever else, woot!

Anyway, with all of this whirlwind, I still managed to find some time to keep an eye on the music chart. I’m always baffled at what’s on top of the charts, I don’t even know why I care anymore. I don’t know if people really want to be force-fed Daughtry and Nickelback, or that they really believe that the album deserves their buying. Ahhhhhh, who am I to judge?

Commercial success is not about quality, it’s about status and promotion.

As the summer approaches, so is all sorts of exciting summer activities. And because the school hates its students, we have summer reading to do. And seriously, most of the students are just going to read it the two weeks before school starts, and write some half-assed report on it. At least this year’s format is more interesting, and breaks away from the “summary-character-comments” format. “original writing” of the students, as they put it.

God, I hope it’s going to rain.

Collective Thoughts

www.myxertones.com is awesome.

Now that the school year is almost over, all the final tests are coming in. YEE-HAW.

A Call From the Grave of Cho Seung Hui

Many are disgusted by the footage of Cho that NBC played. I wasn’t disgusted, but certainly disturbed. I’m sure the footage is on YouTube somewhere right now, but I didn’t bother to look.

Cho’s call from the grave is now going to live a everlasting life (or until the Internet disappears, or until human extinction). This is a call for attention, and NBC granted him that. Is it “clues to the reason of the killing” or a bad step that only fulfills the killer’s goal? Both, I would say, but more of the latter.

The only thing that we got from (or at least me) the video is that Cho is angry. Angry at the world, angry at society, but angry at no one at particular. What triggers this? Is it society’s mistreatment (and what exactly is that?) or his brain chemical imbalance?

I wonder how many people share the same feeling of mistreatment like him.
And switching gears, will this have a negative effect on Asians? I’m Chinese myself, and I just have to wonder. But I haven’t heard anything yet, but again, I didn’t bother to look.

Rant of the Day: Hipsters and Metal Heads

You know what irritates me?

Indie-pseudo-intellectual-holier-than-thou-hipsters. Stop fucking talking about Of Montreal, Arcade Fire, or whatever band you read on Pitchfork.

Once the band sells more than 500,000 they’re going to piss all over the bands that they praised to high heaven. Talk about flip-flopping and narrow minded.

Same goes to I-just-like-guitars-and fuck-electronics-metal heads. Stop talking about how a band “isn’t metal enough”, or how a band doesn’t scream enough.

Once a band put out a record that isn’t as “heavy”, they’re going to spit all over the band and call them “gay”. Talk about meat-headed and closed-minded.

Of course, all of this yapping from me isn’t going to help. And what demographic do I belong to? I don’t even want to know.

P.S. Who the hell is buying the new Lavigne disc? Wait, I had her last two albums, things you do when you’re younger…Now I’m a flip-flopper.

Mass Suckers

It is just another sad thing that I see.

People at the end of the day just want something that’s easier, something that won’t challenge them. They want fucking packaged pop, escapist but not thinkers.

This week there is two major releases---Nine Inch Nails’ Year Zero and Avril Lavigne’s The Best Damn Thing. One is a dense concept album with a challenging theme and sound, one is an album with pop songs designed for Top 40. Which one do you think is going to sell more? Lavigne, of course.

According Hits Daily Double, it looks like Avril Lavigne is expected to debut #1 with about 250k in sales, while NIN should be right behind her with about 200k in sales. While the margin is not big, I was a bit sadden by it.

PEOPLE JUST FUCKING WANT DISPOSABLE POP.

Yes, NIN has Internet buzz with the ARG campign, has mostly positive and some very positive reviews, (yes, the album is great). But it touches darker subjects---mass sedation, a controlling government, rebellion, a giant hand of god---stuff that makes for good science fiction. Set in place 15 years from now, it represents a bleak future, and perhaps something that the mass does not want to think about. Hey, there are still a lot of people who still won’t believe that global warming is upon us.

Lavigne, on the other hand, has something better (in terms of sale)---she has Top 40 radio play, a bunch of TV appearances (how punk is that?) and a mass-circulated video. She got mostly average to negative to reviews, but does it mean anything? Nickelback sold a ton.

I guess that’s why most of the time discs that ends up in “Best of the Year” list is usually things that wasn’t a mass –commercial success (again, mostly), because to achieve critical success, it has to be challenging, daring, interesting, and audacious. The average mass is not going for that, they just want something normal, something peaceful and something ordinary.

And who am I to judge?

I don’t even know why I should care anymore.

The Definitive 200

The Definitive 200 is the list that the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame came up with for music lovers, or something. Not surprisingly enough, the list is consists of albums that sold a ton with some artists of minimum talent (though perspective may vary). And of course, The Beatles is #1.

I printed out the list to see how many album I own on the list, for a minute I thought I own none of it, but it turns out I own 10 out of 200 albums that’s on the list. Including:

The Marshall Mathers LP by Eminem

Speakerboxx/The Love Below by Outkast

Get Rich or Die Tryin’ by 50 Cent

American Idiot by Green Day

Eminem Show by Eminem

Hybrid Theory by Linkin Park

OK Computer by Radiohead

Diary of Alicia Keys by Alicia Keys

The Black Albumby Jay-Z

Dangerously In Love by Beyonce

7 out the 10 album are hip-hop and R&B, so does it mean that I own more classic hip-hop and R&B album than classic rock albums? And the funny thing is, only about 21% of the albums that I brought are actually hip-hop and R&B. So this means that I only buy mainstream, top-selling hip-hop album? I guess.

God, I knew I should have brought Nevermind and Ten.

Weekend Playlist

Wolf Like Me
By TV On the Radio
From Return to the Cookie Mountain
Fuzzy guitars mix with blaring bass, with dreamy backing vocals on the background. Can’t help but sing along to it.


Ruby
By The Kaiser Chiefs
From Yours Truly, Angry Mob
It’s all in the chorus. In fact, their new album (which Ruby is on) Yours Truly, Angry Mob is full of delightful big choruses.


In This Twilight
By Nine Inch Nails
From Year Zero
With a crackly noise that recalls a rusting machinery, this song has a extremely melodic chorus that showcased Reznor’s singing ability. The crooning makes a great morning listening when riding on the bus and the sun is rising (ironic), or setting (as the title say).



Living For the Weekend
By Hard-Fi
From Stars of CCTV
An electric lead from the song goes permeating into a working class anthem---shitty job, long hours, and the celebration of the weekend. From the debut album Stars of CCTV, this certainly match loads of people’s mind.



True Mathematics
By Ladytron
From Light and Magic
The throbbing bass goes together with the slashing drums to create a dance track that hard-hitting. Points added to the weird vocals in a foreign language that’s probably made up.




Years later if I read this, I’ll know what I was listening to. Isn’t this what a blog is about?

PS. Writing about music is like dancing about architecture, and I sound a pretentious music critic.

Sideline Commentary

I am a big Internet person; there is an unlimited amount of information and entertainment. Almost every bit of information that you need and want is within your fingertips, and you can watch some obscure 80s television ads on YouTube (no, I didn’t watch them).

Aside from researching information about otters for biology class, forcing myself to watch that horrible video(and song) “Girlfriend” by Avril Lavigne (that’s got to be a song written for 13 year olds, and I only watched it after hearing some mumbling about it), and reading some weird blogs, an integral part of my venture is reading comments that people leave at various sites (this includes message boards to blogs).
One thing that’s great (or sometimes bad) about the Internet is that it brings out all kinds of people from all kinds of places. This is the clash o cultures, personalities, tastes, and views. Take a Rolling Stone article for example, whenever there’s a post about a modern star of choice, the commentaries below the article will bring out the best and the worst of everyone. This is actually the most entertaining and most frustrating part, you usually get a few laughs out of it, and there’s bound to be comments that make you want to spit at the person who wrote it. Take the above Avril Lavigne “Girlfriend” video on YouTube, there’s tons of comments on that thing. It ranges from “elle est troooo belle et jkiff tro sa chanson “, to “I <3 THIS VIDEO!!! IT ROCKS!!!!” to “that was the stupidest thing i have ever seen i thought the bitch was annoying before but now its just sad n the rest of you idiots who think avril is so punk you need to be shot in the face” and these are just a few of them.

Yes, I actually spent more time reading those than watching the video. There were a lot of times when I questioned my sanity after I found myself reading the comments time after time. I had nodded my head to plenty of them, yet more often than not I found myself frowning, or worse, being upset by it. There was always a sick feeling after some guy insulted your favorite band/singer/book/whatever.

But there’s a lesson that’s hidden in these brilliant, infantile, thorough, incoherent ramblings: no matter how great something is, there will be its haters, and no matter how atrocious something is, there will be its lovers. And more importantly, it’s hard, borderline impossible to change the views of some people.

I figured this out a few years ago when I was younger, and I sometimes have to constantly remind myself of this:
Your opinion sucks, and so does mine.

We all have our own opinions and views, and we need a venue of venting somewhere, and what’s better than the Internet? You may remain anonymous, take on a double life with a completely different personality, and throw out you opinion at any topic any time. I often see vicious slews and just complete assholes on the Internet giving out their view, and there’s a large population of them, and why is that? This is the time for them to shine. Everything seems to be boasted bigger and more malicious on the Internet because it allows people to be protected.
But really, does these comments that I see on message boards matters? Does it contribute to my benefit? Does opinions make something better or worse for you? And what is good or bad?

Of course, the “this sucks ass”, “they’re awesome” and “fuck you” are going their everlasting life on the Internet. I’ll continue reading comments and shake my head at the immature and iniquitous fucks that are clearly idiots, their opinions suck, and the funny thing is, my opinions suck too.

Flowering Plant Reproduction

Flowering Plant ReproductionFlowers reproduciton Flower diagram plant blanReproduction information about lily

MySpace

There are some very incoherent and just plain inane posts on MySpace, I mean, more than any other message boards or whatever.

I can feel my IQ being lower while reading those posts.