“I used to like ‘My Way,’ but after all the trouble, I stopped singing it,” he said. “You can get killed.”
The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”
The killings have produced urban legends about the song and left Filipinos groping for answers. Are the killings the natural byproduct of the country’s culture of violence, drinking and machismo? Or is there something inherently sinister in the song?
. . .
Karaoke-related killings are not limited to the Philippines. In the past two years alone, a Malaysian man was fatally stabbed for hogging the microphone at a bar and a Thai man killed eight of his neighbors in a rage after they sang John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
A pilot furious with the Internal Revenue Service crashed his small plane into an office building that houses federal tax employees in Austin, Texas on Thursday, setting off a raging fire that sent workers fleeing as thick plumes of black smoke poured into the air.
A U.S. law official identified the pilot as Joseph Stack and said investigators were looking at an anti-government message on the Web linked to him. The Web site outlines problems with the IRS and says violence "is the only answer."
Federal law enforcement officials have said they were investigating whether the pilot crashed on purpose in an effort to blow up IRS offices. The Web site featured a long note dated Thursday denouncing the government and the IRS in particular and cited the Austin man's problems with the agency.
Die Antwoord? I still like this stuff very much. If I can't dance, I want no part of your post-nation, post-race, post-genre, post-ironic, anti-Calvin Gibson-esque digital mongrel future.
The Walrus | Canada’s Best Magazine
When most people, South Africans included, think of Afrikaners, they conjure up a homogenous community blindly following the apartheid uber-mind. Not so. .... After apartheid, Afrikaans culture predictably split into two cultural streams. One was nationalistic and confrontational, as in the hugely popular anthem lauding the Boer War Afrikaner hero Koos de la Rey. The other was an attempt to redefine Afrikaans culture and create a space outside of traditional nationalistic discourse. Bands like Fukofpolisiekar brought a hardcore punk sensibility to the conversation, and anti-art movements like Bitterkomix undermined Afrikaner nationalism and exceptionalism, viciously lampooning the rugby, barbeque, and lager set.
Die Antwoord are a rap act, certainly, but they are also a way-station along the lengthy road of this punk ethos. The links are clear — members of Fukofpolisiekar and Afrikaans junk-rapper Jack Parow guest on the album. But the differences are telling. Die Antwoord use the patois of the Cape flats, which swallows all, as their idiom. When the Guardian hastily compared Die Antwoord to London white trash garage rap, the paper missed the nuances of Ninja’s brilliant appropriation of Cape flats culture. Die Antwoord remind us in $O$ that South Africa is a mash-up nation. No South African community embodies this more than the Cape coloureds. They are black, white, English, Afrikaans, everyone. By moving to the flats and buying wholesale into local gangsta culture, Waddy is reframing South Africanism anew. While Afrikaans punks positioned themselves in opposition to the ultra-conservative, Calvanist ethos of die volk, what Die Antwoord are doing is not an act of rejection, but an act of embracing.
You say cultural appropriation -- I say big fucking hug.
TV presenter Ray Gosling has been arrested on suspicion of murder by Nottinghamshire Police after he admitted killing his lover.
The 70-year-old's confession that he had smothered the unnamed man who was dying of Aids was broadcast on the BBC's Inside Out programme on Monday.
The Nottingham filmmaker said he had made a pact with his lover to act if his suffering increased.
Police are questioning the presenter over his claims.
A police spokesman said: "A 70-year-old Nottingham man was arrested earlier on suspicion of murder following comments made on the BBC's Inside Out programme on Monday evening."