Happy Birthday to Myself

So a couple of cool things to tell you about on this fine day (which I seem to now be sleeping the middle section of away) upon which I will make up some words. Premierly, Farhydt led me towards Brian Posehn's myspace page. As I stated during the "look yonder," that guy could say, "I drank a glass of water" and I would collapse to the ground in face-contorting, yet comically blissful agony. No I'm not going to give you a link. He's a nerd, he likes (coolish) nerds, so go to the nerdery and nerd him up.
Penultimately, since Mr. Posehn is so ultimate, there is the matter of non-musical art. I'm going to be putting up more links to artist pages so that people can check out good stuff. I met Sam Sethi the other day and her work really impressed me, so go check it out. I have about 486 friends who are great photographers, so excepting people who don't have sites (Allison Cekala, I'm looking at you), I'll put some links up for them soon.
Thirdly, the United States and Iran kissed and made up today and decided that neither of them would further develop nuclear weapons and would instead devote more money to more pressing food and environmental issues. What? I've been sleeping for the past four hours and that was probably a dream? Oh...well, at least there's this:

Deadbird - The Head and the Heart
Codebreaker Records

Deadbird has put together one brilliant album here. This is an intense piece of work that cycles through the deepest pits of human emotion as it elevates to and underscores an astonishing vision of hope. Of the surprising elements that I found interspersed throughout the album was the use of melodic and vocal elements from both late-90s screamo (yeah, as strange as that sounds) as well as black metal that works incredibly well within the doom-y framework that they employ overall. There is a lot of later Neurosis influence and I picked up an Old Man Gloom-esque vibe from some riffs. As a bit of a departure from the musical heaviness there is a gorgeous instrumental passage ("1332") that not only adds even more weight to the album, but displays the band's quality writing and musicianship. If I may expose my old Yankee prejudice, it's basically the last thing I'd have expected to come out of Arkansas. And goddamn if it isn't amazing.