Music: "A working example of faith versus physics."

El-P and Nine Inch Nails.

Pairing Mr. Reznor with Mr. Meline - post-industrial music's iconic one-man army with the mad genius ringleader of DefJux's left-field circus - is one of those ideas that so obvious that nobody thought to do it for an embarrassingly long time. Though I imagine everybody involved wondered if putting two artists with such distinct production approaches was letting one too many cooks into the kitchen, the result - "Flyentology" off of El-P's excellent I'll Sleep When Your Dead - successfully fuses Reznor's droning, crunching death disco dirge with EL Producto's cubist take on the driving, propulsive Bomb Squad Era thumping that once served as the engine room for band's like Public Enemy.

It works, is what I'm saying.

Plus the paranoid sci-fi horror invasion cartoon that serves as its is nifty.

Link Proliferation: Humerus? No. It's dead serious business.

Parts Is Parts

Giving new meaning to "forced to sell you body," the German magazine Der Spiegel takes a look at the global market in human remains. Volunteer programs have pretty much put paid to classic resurrection men, but corpses remain a hot commodity: The tissues of the deceased are used to create spare transplant materials, provide demo bodies for medical tech firms, and create tech parts that the human body won't reject.

Plus, there's this hand graphic to make sure you don't get taken to the cleaners come time to sell your windpipe.

Horror Poetry, Automated

The fine folks at the Artic Chaos Gothic Off-Ramp website have created a Goth-O-Matic Poetry Generator. It's sort of a Mad-Libs for the white face paint set.

It's the Only Way To Live

Here's NIN backing Gary Numan on his post-punk classic "Cars."


Where's Lucien?

From the folks at Shelfari, here's some shelf porn from Neil Gaiman.

Music: "You know me. I hate everyone."

I haven't seriously thought about Nine Inch Nails since I was in college, some two trillion years ago. There was a brief moment, back then, when it looked like the twin attack of NIN and Ministry was going to push industrial music into the mainstream (including the legally-mandated David Bowie style cop that let's you know when a particular music is ready for mass production). However, just a few years or so after Closer and Psalm 69, it all fizzled and the public started diggin' a resurgent wave of pop and embracing mall punk. Apres le Ministry, Blink 182.

To my shame, I did not keep the faith. I was vaguely aware of NIN's Year Zero album/game/lifestyle-choice whoopjamboreewho – though I caught up to it late in the cycle and it all seemed a bit daunting to come in on the middle.

Given this neglect, I find myself oddly moved by the news that Reznor is calling it quits and shelving the NIN brand. This is, I think, only news to me. After all, his current tour is called the "Wave Goodbye" tour and the merch for contains the one-man-sonic-factory's incep and termination dates (1989 – 2009). Still, my utter invulnerability to the obvious doesn't change the fact that the news saddens me.

So, Screamers and Screamettes, let's wish Mr. Reznor happy trails and enjoy this clip from what is reported to be NIN's last US performance ever, from this year's Bonnaroo.