www.warprecords.com

A WARP classic. Yet has always seemed like a missed opportunity to me.

Problems with text:

• Doesn't follow a progression of thought.
• Juxtaposes curious polemics i.e. "do you have spells of being sad and depressed for no apparent reason?" with utterly neutral fluff, "are u a slow eater?"
• Ends with a card that gives more insight into the creator of the piece than it does the audience.

Problems with image:

• Is meaningless.
• Neutralizes any/all charge the text may or may not have.
• Montage effect never adds up - most of the time is misplaced.

New Version:

• All the Bush footage and tangential assasination stuff feels really naive, really soft.
• I don't remember the above still and other synched still frame vignettes. How these pieces add anything, I'll never know.

This could've been such a sword.

I agree, the promise is there, but I still think it was nice as a good ol' We Are Anti-Social People vid. With this and that Crumanx Rins vid, it looks like Bob Jaroc is going for 'somewhat unsettling', not 'ball-bustingly brilliant'.

Makes perfect sense if you recognise the text as an assassination aptitude test (you flunked it, lusk81); the neutral/meaningless/uninvolving imagery is deliberate, as the last text points up - sighting a target is no more emotionally loaded than watching the lights change. This one seems to hang together better than the orig.version(www.warprecords.com), but clearly not as well as the current summer train schedules.

SWAMP: Is that what this is? An "assasination aptitude test"? Does that even make sense? Would the answers to the posed questions get one any closer (or further) from the idea of 'assasination'? I'm a slow eater, does that mean I am prone to assasination? When I lose things, my first thought is not theft, am I pulling away from assasination?

Are you sure it's not a "can you read this text before it's cut off screen" test? Or "Can we fill the screen with half thoughts while a nice track plays underneath" test? Or is this a "rediculously nonsensical, non thought out diatribe of post modern nietzscheisms" game of hide and seek?

Save the above, I am completely on the same page as you. Miscellaneous footage tends to reflect a piece's ultimate aim (thematic, narrative, editorial, etc). And in the case of the promo, meaningless nonsense is reflected throughout.

By the way, they keep changing the Passaic schedule for summer repairs and I occasionally find myself waiting in stations for an hour plus. Maybe I'm feverishly approaching a state of assasination.

But that's impossible! The machine says you flunked the test! Y're waaay too engaged + articulate to fit the target parameters of 'lone-gunman pawn of the shadow overlords'! Y're right of course - pulling meaning from the answers to any such psycho-predictive questionning, is voodoo rather than science, no argument w/ you there at all. I was merely pointing out a possible context that showed a greater intent to the piece than you gave it credit for. Perhaps I am simply multiplying the negatives into a positive, rather than, as you do, adding them into a bigger "meaningless nonsense", but I think it's valid interpretation. Apologies for the tone of my earlier post, it was in no way meant to sound dismissive of yr comments. I am new to posting here, + so must hurl myself in shame before the bullet-train headlights of yr superior knowledge + seniority : )

Thx for the enlightenment on it, the vid makes more sense now, and is from that perspective quite good - Is this text from a real test they found, or is it fictionalized, I wonder (if that's what it's from).

If it's real, thankfully I fail the test. (If things seem vague or unreal, please see a doctor or psychologist about that.)