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In California (and Seattle), April 5 has finally arrived. This makes the eighteenth anniversary of the passing of Kurt Donald Cobain -- Kurt Cobain Day.

When I first heard that Kurt Cobain had killed himself, I was in junior high and wasn't a fan. It seemed like just another crazy thing rock stars did.

It wasn't until a few years later than I learned Kurt Cobain was a Gen-X icon, and that the stereotypical Xer listened to Nirvana. I learned songs like "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Come as You Are" and "Lithium" from the radio.

When I was 19, I bought my first Nirvana cassette -- Nevermind. I now have MTV Unplugged in New York and Sliver as well.

The messages of Nirvana songs are easy to miss because Kurt sang so unclearly, making the lyrics indecipherable ("I'm so dire, lately I've become your pupil/You taught me everything about a poison apple"?) The lyrics are also very subtextual and metaphorical. "Polly", for instance, sounds like a song about torturing a parrot: clipping her wings, shooting a cracker off her head, and scorching her with a blowtorch. But it is actually a song about raping a girl named Polly. One boy who didn't understand the anti-rape message played it while raping his girlfriend.

You've got to credit Kurt for his progressive views. He asked homophobic people not to buy his CD's. What with his marriage to Courtney Love, many people are unaware that Kurt is actually bisexual.

During his 27-year stay on Earth, Kurt had a being-Jesus fetish, collecting Jesus figurines and remaking the Christian folk song "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam".

Some say Kurt's surceasement was a suicide, while others say Courtney Love killed him. The "Courtney killed Kurt Cobain" (CKKC) folks argue that Kurt had too much heroin in his system to pull the trigger. The "it was a suicide" side points out that several of the Cobains had previously committed suicide. I remember reading an issue of Under 25 on teen suicide that interviewed Beverly Cobain and learning that Kurt wasn't the only Cobain to have (allegedly) killed himself. I'm undecided myself as to the suicide vs. CKKC debate.

Today marks the decade anniversary of another grunge death. For ten years, Layne Staley has lain stalely in his grave. These two fellows, both born in 1967, succumbed to heroin on the same day of the year spaced eight years apart. There is something poetic about this commorient relationship between two grunge musicians. The Layne Staley death occurred on the first Kurt Cobain Day after the 9/11 attacks, when Baby Boomers and Generation Jones were rallying around Bush and shouting, "My country, right or wrong!" and a new youth culture renaissance touched Generation Y as a rebellion against the lock-step jingoism of older generations. This renaissance included Avril Lavigne, Jimmy Eat World, Good Charlotte, American Idol, Eight Mile and the album The Eminem Show. Could it be that the death of Layne Staley occurred as a replay of April 5, 1994, as a message from the cosmos of the immortality of American youth culture, that said youth culture would not perish and the American spirit would live on after 9/11?

Generational theorists Neil Howe and William Strauss predicted in their book Millennials Rising that Gen-X genres of music like alternative, new wave and hip-hop would survive when the next generation was creating music, but would change to reflect a Gen-Y sensibility. And alternative has changed. Today's alternative songs have lyrics like: "When she was just a girl/She expected the world/But it fell away from her reach/So she ran away in her sleep/She dreamed of para-para-paradise . . . Every time she closed her eyes". Very Generation Me. Or the new Fun. song "We Are Young" that's topping the charts now. Did young Xers wear their youth on the sleeve as a mark of pride the way today's teens and twentysomethings do? And then there's the political radicalism in such Muse songs as "The Uprising" and "Resistance", aimed at one of the most radical youth generations ever. Nirvana, conversely, was often hailed as quintessentially Gen-X in its outlook. Xers were often unfairly stereotyped as apathetic.

I never knew Kurt Cobain, but I will miss him for as long as I live. I do my hair like him too. 8)

R.I.P. Kurt Cobain
February 20, 1967 - April 5, 1994

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My Kankonian-English dictionary: 36,000 entries and counting

31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!

Well, I remember seeing that album with the toddler in the water offered in a mall where I used to buy CDs some years ago, but ignored it as the band name was Nirwana, which lets you expect some east asian psychodelic music.

Some weeks ago, I skimmed through a pdf which isn't allowed to post here, and also found Kurt Cobain. Didn't know that he had something to do with Nirwana, before. Sometimes, while listening to youtube, said album shows up, so I listened to ''Smells Like Teen Spirit'', which surprisingly sounded differently than I expected. (Actually quite ''tame'' compared to the music I usually listen to, and I didn't try to understand what he actually sings.) I maybe heard that song before, not knowing that it was Nirwana.

R.I.P. Kurt Cobain

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My neurochemistry has fucked my impulse control, now I'm diagnosed OOD = oppositional opinion disorder, one of the most deadly diseases in former soviet union, but can be cured in the free world.

Makes it almost poetic that Jim Marshall died. I'm fairly sure Kurt smashed a fair number of the guy's legacy. :P

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I speak English and a touch of Gàidhlig.
I am creating a conworld, which I refer to as the Carrion Series, that will contain three languages, Iriex, Dvoen and Maxna.

Oh yes, the Nevermind cover. Considering you could see Eldon Spencer's penis, I'm surprised I didn't hear about anyone in an uproar about the cover art being child pornography.



Do they transliterate the Sanskrit /v/ as W in your language?

Fun fact: There was actually a band in the 60's that was also named Nirvana.



I got your PM. 8)



Well, from what I've read, the lyrics in the chorus are: "A mulatto/An albino/A mosquito/My libido". I misheard the "A mosquito" line as "I'm a skater", and I thought to myself, "I think grunge is more like it, Kurt".

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My Kankonian-English dictionary: 36,000 entries and counting

31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!

This is probably because of the added banknote. It makes it art, because then, there's a deeper message in the picture: the whole world is just a combination of sex and money. I somewhat miss the rubber duck.


Have you read the material it points to? If yes, did it provide you some new insights?

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My neurochemistry has fucked my impulse control, now I'm diagnosed OOD = oppositional opinion disorder, one of the most deadly diseases in former soviet union, but can be cured in the free world.

That makes sense. Too many Americans think that any picture of a naked person is automatically pornography.



Yes, I read it. The list of celebrities who died from drug use reminds me of the Conservapedia article on Hollywood values. As I read before, Kurt was diagnosed with ADD as a child and put on Ritalin, and then diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a twentysomething.

_________________
My Kankonian-English dictionary: 36,000 entries and counting

31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!

It came to my mind that additionally to my despice of the supposed eastern psychodelic style of Nirvana, I didn't buy that CD as I also didn't like one of the other song titles, besides ''Smells like teen spirit''. I also wouldn't buy a song called like this just because of the name. Ok, now I know that the work is ok, but the title is also important if you decide on buying and not know the content/genre. As I'm not American, I didn't have any information on Kurt/Nirvana back then, so why buying that CD?

According to Wikipedia, Kurt did not sell that much in his living years.


As evil people like me will go to Hell for sure, I needn't bother about the spelling of Nirvana.

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My neurochemistry has fucked my impulse control, now I'm diagnosed OOD = oppositional opinion disorder, one of the most deadly diseases in former soviet union, but can be cured in the free world.

I absolutely hated Kurt Cobain/Nirvana when I first heard it aeons ago, in college. I thought,
"What a bunch of poseurs". But some younger classmates turned me on in grad-school.

Of all the lyrics and infectuous songs, these lyrics haunt me for some reason:

Where do bad folks go when they die
They don't go to heaven where the angels fly
Go to a lake of fire and fry
See them again 'till the Fourth of July

I think of Lucifer from Dante's Inferno holding Sparklers standing on a lush, verdant lawn- whoa!

Gone too soon.

With eyes so dilated, I have become your pupil.
You taught me everything about a poison apple.
The water is so yellow, I'm a healthy student.
Indebted and so grateful, vacuum out the fluids.

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I am a conlanger, a guitarist, a liar, a songwriter, a marijuana smoker, and a reader. Who are you?

I thought it was:

I'm so dire, lately I've become your pupil
You taught me everything about a poison apple
The water is so yellow I'm a health/hostage to it
Indeed it is a grateful fact you never flew it

May Kurt Cobain be resting in Heaven today. Nineteen years!

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My Kankonian-English dictionary: 36,000 entries and counting

31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!