Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti #1 through #8

I thought about doing this, because it would be a nice thing to do. Here is the list of the official haunted graffiti numbering type system thing.

First a disclaimer: The "haunted graffiti" series or whatever is said to be a series of 10 planned albums. When I say "planned" in reference to Ariel Pink, your bullshit sense should already be tingling. I know mine is. What's more, you would think that by "planned," they mean something like he organised a bunch of previously written material into 10 sections and gave them all different names. This makes sense to me especially because of how mind-bogglingly prolific Ariel was in the 90's (90's for hauntology means 1995-1999), and the fact that haunted graffiti #1, Underground, came at the tail end of this seems to indicate that somewhere along the lines his cd-r's got backed up and he wrote out a plan to release that body of work in sections, and so he could go on with writing new stuff. That seems like a likely scenario in my head.

But then, he's only up to #8, and one of those is the Holy Shit! EP, which he could not have "planned" prior to 1999.

Next is the part about naming it "haunted graffiti." There is a lot of confusion about how, why, and in what context this name has to do with Ariel Pink. Generally it is considered to be the name of his "band" whether he's live or recording on an 8-track in his bedroom. This is probably an artifact (of that) of the haunted graffiti series being picked up by paw tracks, and his other stuff from the 90's not so much, making "Ariel Pink" more or less synonymous with "Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti."

To complicate matters, one cd that is clearly not supposed to be Haunted Graffiti from the 90's was re-realesed (or just released dependin on your definition), one called Ariel Rosenberg's Thrash & Burn + Pre, whatever that means. So is that "Ariel Rosenberg," or can we still call it APHG? Whats worse, he has gotten into the habit of calling his current band (Tim Koh and a bunch of guys I don't care about) "Haunted Graffiti," and his latest single is actually just labeled "Haunted Graffiti." Ariel Pink isn't even at the front of the group on the cover... so what the heck is it?

Peronally, if it's obviously supposed to be the obtainable, HG "series," or new stuff featuring an actual band it's "Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti" as far as I'm concerned. As for the story behind the "planned" haunted graffiti... I don't even have a guess.

Whatever, here they are:

HG#1: UNDERGROUND (1999/2007)

1. Shaven
2. Spiers (Spires?) in the Snow
3. Jack Off
4. Ghost Town
5. Crash Crash on the Drummer
6. Crusades
7. Tractor Man
8. Underground
9. Bobby's on the Phone
10. Auto Vanity
11. Don't Turn Back
12. Nana
13. Damage Done
14. Until the Night Dies
15. Sensitive Man

HG#2: THE DOLDRUMS (1999/2004)
1. Good Kids Make Bad Grown Ups
2. Strange Fires
3. Among Dreams
4. For Kate I Wait
5. Haunted Graffiti
6. Gray Sunset
7. The Doldrums
8. Envelopes Another Day
9. The Ballad of Bobby Pyn
10. Don't Think Twice (Love)
11. Until the Night Dies
12. Crying
13. Theme from Unreleased "Claris Gardens"
14. Let's Build a Campfire There
15. Young Pilot Astray

HG#3: SCARED FAMOUS (2002/2007ish)
When scared famous was re-released, it was sort of merged with FF>> to make this wierd mutant child that could only be called a "best of" if you're insane enough to think that "R. Stevie's Brain" and "One More Time" somehow top "Inmates of a Heartache" and "Jesus Christ Came to Me in a Dream." Of the two originals, Sacred Famous is easier to obtain. I'm only listing the original versions here.
1. Baby Comes Around
2. Facts of Destiny
3. Privacy
4. Passing the Petal 2 You
5. Beverly Kills (Freaks With Golden Heirs)
6. Why Can't I Be Me?
7. Something Isn't Something
8. Express, Confess, Cover-Up
9. Birds In My Tree
10. Shedon'tknow-Whattodowithherself
11. Moya
12. SteviePink
13. R. Stevie's Brain
14. Spiers in the Snow
15. I Wanna Be Young
16. Gopacapulco
17. Hoist Interlude
18. Scared Famous
19. Deathcrush 99

HG#4: FF>> (2002/2007ish)
1. Intro/Where Does the Mind Go
2. Twenty Two Eyes
3. Are You Gonna Look After My Boys?
4. Inmates of a Heartache
5. Make Room For Harry
6. The List (My Favorite Song)
7. My Molly
8. Howling at the Moon
9. Beefbud
10. A Tomb All Your Own
11. Victor
12. The Kitchen Club
13. The Lament of Edward Boggles
14. Crying
15. Talking All the Time
16. Girl in a Tree
17. Jesus Christ Came to Me in a Dream
18. One More Time
19. May the Music Never Die
20. Make Room For Harry (Version)

HG#5: HOUSE ARREST (2002-2003?/2006)
1. Hardcore Pops Are Fun
2. Interesting Results
3. West Coast Calamities
4. Flying Circles
5. Getting High in the Morning
6. Helen
7. Every Night I Die at Miyagi's
8. House Arrest
9. Alisa
10. The People I'm Not
11. Almost Waiting
12. Oceans of Weep
13. Netherlands
14. Higher and Higher

HG#6: LOVERBOY (2002-2003?/2006)
1. Don't Talk to Strangers
2. Didn't It Click?
3. Credit (cut on cd)
4. One on One (cut on cd)
5. She's My Girl
6. Poultry Head
7. Older Then Her Years
8. So Glad
9. Want Me
10. Loverboy
11. Johnathan's Halo
12. Hobbies Galore
13. I Don't Need Enemies
14. Let's Get Married Tonite
15. Ghosts
16. Phoebus Palast
17. Blue Straws
18. The Birds They Sing in You
19. New Trumpets of Time
20. Doggone (Shegone)
Track 19 on cd is You Are My Angel live, but it comes after Doggone (Shegone), since tracks 3 & 4 are missing.

HG#7: HOLY SHIT! EP (2003)
This one is wierd because it's supposed to be a side project of Ariel Pink and Matt Fishbeck independent of HG, but... it's #7. So, I'm not sure what to think of it. Also, the track listing neglects to list the actual first song, Oblivious Peninsula, and starts numbering after that. Hence why this starts with 0.
0. Oblivious Peninsula
1. Inaccurate Information
2. New Colors
3. My Whole Life Story
4. N M E's
5. The Castle
6. Jules Lost His Jewels
7. The Drummer
8. Estate, According to the Widow's Maid
9. ...contin
9 through 31 or something are a bunch of random nameless jams between the two, interspliced with parts of a thing with R. Stevie Moore which can only be called "What Else Am I Not Supposed to Do?" Here is the breakdown:
...contin: 9, 16, 20-31
What Else Am I Not Supposed to Do?: 10-15, 17-19

WHEN INDIE WAS GOD,

WE PRAYED TO GOTH

That's adorable. Next!

HG#8: WORN COPY (2003/2005)

1. Trepanated Earth

   a. Trepan Overture

   b. Heaven's Hotter Than Hell

   c. Trepan Reprise

2. Immune to Emotion

3. Jules Lost His Jewels

4. Artifact

5. Bloody (Bagonia's)

6. Credit

7. Life in L.A.

8. The Drummer

9. Cable Access Follies

10. Creepshow

11. One on One

12. Oblivious Peninsula

13. Somewhere in Europe/Hotpink!

14. Thespian City

15. Crybaby

16. Foilly Foibles/GOLD

17. Jagged Carnival Tours

As should have been fairly obvious, this is not a full Ariel Pink discography. I don't even think such a thing is possible. This is just an inventory on the haunted graffiti series and a little postulating as to what the hell that's even supposed to mean.

So yeah, you're welcome.

Tawa is a Jerk

Tawa. Four little letters that are simultaneously breathtaking and infuriating. What the heck is a Tawa you ask?

Yes, I know you didn't ask. If you did, you wouldn't have typed "Tawa" into the search bar. I love it for because no matter what other bullshit it caused, it will always be remembered by me for setting the "Coelophysid-Averostran" monophyly thing in stone, and that's nice, but it wasn't strictly necesary. I don't anyone really still though that Coelophysids were Ceratosaurs or anything stupid like that anymore.

Whats disturbing about it is the reactions real, honest-to-goodness, professional scientists are having to it.

So, Tawa is basal to both Coelophysids and Averostrans, forming a sort of sister group while still being recognizably Theropodan. The trick is it also holds on to some Herrerasaurid traits, traits that a) you'll have to go to tetrapod zoology or something similar to read about and b) decisively indicate that Herrerasaurs are close to the ancestry of Theropods, and must have occured after the Theropod-Sauropodomorph split, which then makes "Eusaurischia" paraphyletic and therefore not real except in magical Linnaen fantasy land.

I'm jumping straight to the point here because I already wrote something like this on my faceplace and because I assume if you searched for this you're already familiar with what I'm talking about. Tawa has been cited as suring up Herrerasaurids AS THEROPODS! This makes absolutely no sense to me, and I'm not going to pretend what the hell is wrong with some people just for the sake of argument.

First, the analogy: Remember when Pluto stopped being a planet? Didn't we all have a pretty curious reaction? Sure, anybody with a brain and an interest in the way the world actually works must maintain an objective viewpoint with all this science stuff, but saying Pluto was not a planet was a bit of a jolt to a lot of people. Funny thing is, it actually is still a planet.

You see, they redefined Pluto as part of a new category of celestial body called "dwarf planet," and said that they say is not a planet. For those of you who figured out the answer already, go ahead and skip this paragraph while the others catch up. The new category is a great idea in itself, because at the time countless numbers of little pluto-sized planets were being discoverd all over the solar system, so it seemed that Pluto is not an odd man out, but just a member of a different type of family, which makes perfect sense. "Dwarf Planet" is a perfect name for object like Pluto, as well as Sedna and Ceres, because that's what they are... small rocky planets that formed under similar conditions. Nothing wrong here, all the work is sound... so how do we get from Pluto being a new class of celestial body to it being legal to own dwarf people as slaves, being that they are no longer considered people? Who's job was it to proof read this stuff? Still don't get it? Here's the answer: a dwarf PLANET is still a PLANET, because the word DWARF does not negate the following word. If Pluto was a NON planet or ANTI planet, it would not be a planet. But Pluto is a DWARF... PLANET... a small planet that is now part of a special class, just a GAS GIANT, which doesn't eve have PLANET in the name. And nobody is saying Saturn isn't a planet are they?

So that's the situation with Tawa. Maybe some of you haven't figured out why calling Herrerasaurs "theropods" is a pretty stupid idea yet. That's okay, I'm going to illustrate it for you.

This is a cladogram of the relationships between Saurischians before we found Tawa. It features the now known to be paraphyletic "Eusaurichia." Notice the position of THEROPODA and Herrerasaurids:

SAURISCHIA
|--Herrerasaurids
`--Eusaurischia (I bet Eoraptor goes here)
   |--+--?Guaibasaurids
   |  `--Sauropodomorphs
   `--THEROPODA
      |--Coelophysids
      `--Averostrans
         |--Ceratosaurs
         `--Tetanurines

So, I'm not certain on where Guaibasaurids were supposed to fit, since I heard they were closer to both Theropods and Sauropodomorphs. Just for shits and craps, I'm putting them up with Panphagia. Pay close attention to the organization of Theropoda, so you can see just how much turmoil Tawa has thrown it into... truly it must be heinous. Here is the family tree after Tawa:

SAURISCHIA
|--+--?Guaibasaurids
|  `--Sauropodomorphs
`--THEROPODA

   |--Herrerasaurids

   `--+--Tawa hallae
      `--Neotheropoda
         |--Coelophysids
         `--Averostrans
            |--Ceratosaurs
            `--Tetanurines

Do you see it? Do you see the unruly state of affairs that the Theropods have been reduced to? 'Cause I sure as hell don't. So right away there's the obvious fact that nothing actually changed within Theropoda. It's now called "Neotheropoda" for no good reason. Go back and look at the other cladogram, go ahead and scroll back up, I'll wait. You see the yellow text? It's the same isn't it? Yeah, it is.

Now i'm going to introduce my new cladogram, based on a bunch of heresay and subjective nonsense that has no real basis in reality. Surely, this table is is amatuerish at best:

SAURISCHIA

|--+--?Guaibasaurids
|  `--Sauropodomorphs
`--+--Herrerasaurids
   `--THEROPODA
      |--Tawa hallae
      `--Neotheropoda
         |--Coelophysids
         `--Averostrans
            |--Ceratosaurs
            `--Tetanurines

The joke here is that, of course, this isn't my amatuerish cladogram, it's the same one as above, but proof-read. I moved the word THEROPODA to it's original position, included Tawa because I can see the kink in the jaw from where I'm sitting, and just to be nice, I even kept the "Neotheropoda" part.

The moral of that: Tawa didn't change anything within the cladistic structure of Theropoda, it only reaffirms the monophyly of the whole "Coelophysid-Averostran" set-up. It DOES INDEED move Herrerasaurs into a position close to Theropods, but it does not MAKE Herrerasaurids Theropods.

Let me repeat that: Tawa is a Theropod that retains traits from the last common ancestor of Herrerasaurids and Theropods, but DOES NOT place Herrerasaurids within the pre-established and recently strengthened monophyletic "Coelophysid-Averostran" Theropoda.

There is no need to say Herrerasaurids are Theropods. Turns out a lot of our old ideas about the placement of Herrerasaurids was indeed not the case, but our understanding of what is and isn't a Theropod actually looks clearer now. So there's too more things I need to address: 1) Why can't we move Theropoda to cover Herrerasaurids anyways, and 2) What makes a Theropod a Theropod anywhichways?

1. Herrerasaurids as Theropods is far from a new idea. Idiots have always argued for their inclusion. Does that sound harsh? Take a look at the facts: the ancestor of all dinosaurs was obviously a carnivore, probably an omnivore but let's not bet on it. Therefore, all basal saurischians closer to Coelophysis than Panphagia should have been carnivorous as well. So, a small meat eating dinosaur from the late Triassic could be almost anything. So meat eater does not equal Theropod.

Now, like the Pluto thing, Theropods are a personal issue for me, so I have a hard time being objective about these things. That said, the more radical the idea, the easier it is to be openly biased. I agree that outwordly, Herrerasaurus does look like a Theropod, but that isn't enough for me to except him as a relative to something like Tyrannosaurus or Aquila. Theropods are special for a reason, a whole slew of physiological reasons that some primitive saurischian just can't compete with.

So, I can back up my personal feelings in this case because Theropods really are very different than other dinosaurs, I could say better too, but then that's crossing the line.

2. Quick, name one thing only Theropods have and all Theropods have. It's okay if only very specialized forms that no one debates are Theropods don't fit, I'm looking for something clearly identifiable in Coelophysis and 90% of it's descendents, but NOT in any other animal.
Give up?
Well, the answer I was looking for was a wishbone or furcula. I've never heard of any other animal having a true wishbone. I have heard that Massopondylus (and I guess all Massospondylids?) have something LIKE a furcula gained from convergent evolution, but that's about it.

And that was the last nail in the coffin for me. According to Tom Holtz, who I'm going to totally trust on this because I can't find any other source on the matter, no known Herrerasaurids have been shown to possess a furcula. So, they can't be Theropods. It's all really very simple.

I am pretty stubborn about this, sure, but I've got a damn good reason. The case for Herrerasaurids being Theropods is valid ONLY when you find a Herrerasaurid with a wishbone. I except the conclusion that they are closely related, so don't bite me, Tawa.

I think I've already beaten this to death, but the real moral here is that scientists need to proof-read and stop missing such obvious crap. It's irritating when you hold someone's logical reasoning ability to such high esteem only to find out that they didn't realize calling something a dwarf planet does not mean it isn't a planet.

Also would someone please write a god damn Averostra article on wikipedia? It's 2010 now, this shit is getting ridiculous.

Welcome to your DOOM!

Cool beans. So, here's the thing: I can't fucking stand social networking sites. I don't get it, really. Why bother shitting around on some corny little website whining about whatever the latest vampire romance novel is when you can just pick up your god damn phone and call someone to do the same thing.

I've also got an email address, so it's easy to keep in touch digitally and send media. I've got two sites that I'm registered on, and each has a reason, but is filled with superflous junk.

I do have a myspace account, but I only got it because I was trying to get a gig at Super Happy Fun Land (now defunct) at the time, and they said it would be nice if I had a website, preferable with songs they could listen to. So I got on the thing and found a few of my friends on there (who never really do anything that I can tell) but never got the songs to upload right.

Blah blah blah found out I couldn't do .wavs because they were too big. So I flipped 'em to mp3 and they worked! I've got three on there now and that's about it. So that's that.

I say youtube counts because it's the same basic infrastructure but with something happening.

You know, I really don't feel like getting into this right now, so I'm skipping to the end:

...but then sometimes, blogs are the ONLY thing that shows up! So, I think that warrants me making one of these, so let's review:

1. Most social networking nowdays has boiled down to yelling at the wind, and not in a metaphorical way.
2. Carrots MIGHT taste better if they were pink.
3. Searches on small enough topics will weild blog results on google searches.
4. Sometimes, even big deal news stories like Tawa and Tianyulong get blog results as well.
5. The age of the shitty 1996 animated .gif website is apparently over, which sucks, but it just seems to have been passed down the era of shitty introspective online diaries, so the hilarity of the internet has not overall been comprimised.
6. I can guarantee you somebody is going to search for "Tawa wishbone" or "Tawa furcula" and when they do, I'll have an article that'll pop up, and I win.
7. It was in self-defense.
8. Since I write so much all the time anywhichways, and don't necesarilly care if it ever sees the light of day, writting one of these seems like an ok deal.
9. See #10.
10. See #11.

And that about sums it up. So, stay tuned, because I'm going to write that Tawa article pretty darn soon.

Meanwhile, here are my myspace and youtube pages for shits and craps. The last two or three videos I uploaded on youtube are worth watching, but past that just watch the favorites. I try and keep up with all the latest hauntology videos, so if there's a new Ariel Pink video on youtube you'll probably see it there. Myspace has 3 songs on it: King of the Universe, Save Often, and Billy the Face-Punching Mastiff Fights the Nazis (Death in Bune).

egdeltur666's youtube
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