So this is my solution.

Soundtrack Incomplete tracks down these films, and these songs, and presents an entry for each film with a complete list of the songs. Each of them also has a link to the song on Amazon.com to make it easier still to get the songs.

All films are listed here with their release year in brackets after the title. I mean, it’s embarassing enough that I like Jersey Girl, but it only gets more embarassing when it’s the wrong Jersey Girl

The Addams Family (1991)

Addams Family Values (1993)

Addams Family Reunion (1998)

The Allnighter (1987)

After Hours (1985)

As Good As It Gets (1997)

Better Off Dead (1985)

Can’t Hardly Wait (1998)

The Chase (1994)

Chasing Amy (1997)

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Die Another Day (2002)

Dr No (1962)

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

Fight Club (1999)

Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

Freeway (1996)

Friday the Thirteenth (1980)

Friday the Thirteenth Part 2 (1981)

Friday the Thirteenth Part III (1982)

Friday the Thirteenth: The Final Chapter (1984)

Friday the Thirteenth: A New Beginning (1985)

Friday the Thirteenth Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)

Friday the Thirteenth Part VII: The New Blood (1988)

Friday the Thirteenth Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

Ginger Snaps (2000)

Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004)

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

Jason X (2001)

Jersey Girl (1992)

Jersey Girl (2004)

Licence To Kill (1989)

Octopussy (1983)

On Her Majestys Secret Service (1969)

Pump Up The Volume (1990)

Quick Change (1990)

S.L.C. Punk! (1998)

Teknolust (2002)

Tremors (1990)

Tremors II: Aftershocks (1996)

Tremors III: Back to Perfection (2001)

Up in the Air (2009)

A View to a Kill (1985)

You Only Live Twice (1967)

Zoolander (2001)

And as you have almost certainly realised, the title of it derives from W.B. Yeats’ classic poem, The Second Coming. For those of you not familiar with it, the relevant section runs:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand…

I can’t promise a revelation – but if I hear of one, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the subject matter of popular music all too often concerns itself with historical events, whether by simply referring to them, or by actually telling the stories of particular events. The Rock ‘n’ Roll History of the World attempts to track these events, and to tell you a little bit more about each of them.

Each day, a new event that occurred on that day some years earlier is related. (On those rare occasions where a day seems to have had nothing worthy of a song occur upon it, the day’s entry may consist of a historical event for which no exact date is known.) When you look at them here, they will each be listed in chronological order, with the earliest events listed first.

There are three ways to view the Rock ‘n’ Roll History of the World:

1. The complete, unexpurgated Rock’n'Roll History of the World – every entry in chronological order.
2. Via the Rock’n'Roll History of the World Calendar
3. Or by concentrating on just one of the following categories:

Crime

Which includes both the committing of crimes and the carrying out of sentencing for them, or otherwise related to crime and criminals.

Culture

All arts and popular entertainment, and anything that doesn’t fit anywhere else.

Dateless

Events which, while they did manifestly occur, have no recorded date.

Economics

Depressions, booms, legislation and important firsts.

Fictional

Events that are recounted only in works of fiction.

Future

Events projected to occur at some point in the future.

Legendary

Events of either dubious historicity or outright myth.

Politics

Including wars, which are after all, merely the continuation of politics by other means.

Religion

Including both events in religious history and in religious dogma.

Science

Discoveries, new technologies and events discovered only through the application of science.

Sport

Any and all sporting events, or events related to athletes.

It is the tale of the greatest science villain the world has ever known, genocidal mad scientist Doctor Armageddon, as told by his arch-enemy, science hero Jack “Stitch” Tyme.

Given that, as his name suggests, Jack Tyme’s powers revolve around time travel, this will be a time travel story, and I’ll make no apology whatsoever for telling the story as a series of fragments from various points in time. At the moment, the stories are undated, but that will change just as soon as I nail down the internal timeline of the stories. Such as it is.

If you’re not quite sure what a science hero or villain is, well, neither am I just yet. I know that the concepts partake of both super-powered and pulp era concepts, with a feel influenced by both but not dominated by either.

The astute among you will have noticed that Preventing Doctor Armageddon is filed under a new sub-heading of Fictions – Lokipowered – which is a pulpy, superheroey universe in which I imagine I’ll set other stories from time to time. In fact, I have three others in mind at the moment, but I want to do those as comics rather than prose (and as such, if you know an artist who might be interested… )

Anyway, hello and welcome and I hope you enjoy Preventing Doctor Armageddon!

It’s in this mood that I have decided to share my good fortune with you all. So for the month of October this year, in addition to the regular daily features, I shall be reading a chapter of Roger Zelazny’s “A Night in the Lonesome October“, and live-blogging my thoughts on it as I do. I can’t promise that these posts will come at any particular time of day, but I guarantee you one each day, no matter what

Now, since “A Night in the Lonesome October“ is possibly the greatest crossover story of all time, it will be replacing the regular Crossing Over feature for the month – if you’re really anxious to find out what I plan to cross Pirates of the Carribean over with, I’m afraid you’re going to be waiting until November 5 to find out – but I think it will be worth it.

I love to make them and, so long as I’m not the target, I usually enjoy listening to them as well. A well-executed rant is a pleasure to behold.

So for the next five weeks, I’ve decided to list the all time top five cinematic rants. If you were stuck on a desert island with one of these ranters, well…

…well, actually, I’d feel sorry for you. But to watch, rather than to be forced to watch, these rants are the gold standard.

Now, before we go any further, it’s important to distinguish between a speech and a rant. Because while all rants are speeches, not all speeches are rants. (Arguably, if your definition of a speech includes that it must be a monologue, not all rants are speeches. But let’s not split hairs too finely.)

A speech is much like a rant, in that it is spoken to an audience and intended to make a point, with the further intent of swaying the audience to agreeing with that point.

Rants differ in three major ways:

Firstly, the audience of a rant may be known, but it is rarely chosen. Speeches are pre-meditated, but rants are in the heat of the moment. Top Dollar’s inspirational outpouring to his men (moments before the Crow shows up and kills every man jack of them) may feature many rant-like aspects, but it’s a speech all the same, however fiery – he invited them there for the specific purpose of addressing them, after all.

Secondly, rants as a rule make their points with rather more force than a speech does. Consider the example of Tyler Durden: while there is much in the content of his words that resembles ranting, his delivery (most of the time, at least) is measured, almost laconic. A rant is expressed vehemently, or not at all – any attempt to provide a transcription of a rant should feature exclamation marks, possibly multiple exclamation marks, at the end of at least 90% of its sentences.

Thirdly, and finally, rants do not suffer from the same burdens of consistency or internal logic as speeches do. A rant, far more often than not, is incoherent, representing as it does the triumph of emotion over logic. Bugs Bunny rarely rants – Daffy Duck rarely does anything else.

Rants also have certain other qualities that distinguish them from other styles of speech. For example, a rant is rarely if ever brief. Riff Raff’s meltdown at the end of The Rocky Horror Picture Show certainly manifests in rant-style, but at a mere seven words in length (“They didn’t like me! Never liked me.“) it’s too brief to be truly considered a rant. (Or, alternately, at a mere seven words, it’s the shortest rant in cinematic history.)

So, who made the cut? Join me here next Saturday, and we’ll begin our countdown.

All of the content from the original site is archived here, plus all the content from Paper Edges (which will also be back someday soon, although in a very different way). There’s a whole lot of new content plus revisions to old content – and a whole lot of other stuff is on the way too.

But for now, and, if you’re of a comics reading persuasion, be sure to check out the Trade Paperback Timelines. Hopefully, later on today I’ll be putting the final touches on the annotations for Keating! The Musical – I’ll let you know if that happens

Until Tuesday the 12th of February, 2008, that is.

On that day, while I was bored at work, I had such an idea. A science fiction novel about a commercial genetic engineering project, where most the actual epistles making up the novel would be bug reports and the related chatter. (Hey, you’re supposed to write what you know, right?) The title, as you may suspect from its blandness, is a working title only. I have no idea what to call this one yet. Likewise, the dating at this point is yet to be fully resolved, so I’m dating things purely in terms of day 1 and so on…

This is definitely a Lokiverse story, although I’m not sure exactly where in the chronology it will fit, beyond the obvious “in the future somewhere, duh.” (It’s also going to be a challenging one to work crossovers into, although there’s one in the first installment, below.) Speaking of chronology, the individual posts that make up this story are displayed below in the correct reading order, rather than by publication date.

The Ducal Line has new posts three times a week, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and can be subscribed to as a separate feed should you wish to do so.

Hope you’ll come along for the ride.

Heavens:

The classic afterlife, the one where good people are presumed to go after they die. Generally features beautiful natural scenery and/or exquisitely well-kept gardens, angelic inhabitants, and a good (and quite often G-rated) time being had by all. Very frequently, Heavens are the abode of the god or gods. Also called Paradises. A traditional selling point of Heavens is that they are, in one or more ways, quantifiably better than the world of the living.

Limbos:

The in-between place. Limbos are often featureless voids or otherwise free from anything much of interest. The nicer Limbos tend to be Heaven-Lites. They tend to be where you go if you’re kinda bland in life, neither good nor evil, although in some belief systems they are the only afterlife.

Hells:

The other classic afterlife, the one where bad people go after they die. Generally features a whole lot of suffering going on, the details of which vary wildly depending on the origin of the Hell in question. A Purgatory is a Hell with an escape clause, usually release after time-served. In a particularly sadistic cosmology, those who go to Heaven may get to watch those who go to Hell. And eat popcorn.

This World:

The afterlife consists of hanging around this world until you either fade away entirely, or achieve some form of transcendence (often bearing a suspicious resemblance to ticking off a karmic To Do List until one has enough ticks to get into the local Heaven).

Other Worlds:

An afterlife that bears a great resemblance to the pre-afterlife portion of existence. Other World afterlives are often the result of a lack of imagination in either their creators, their inhabitants, or both. Similar in some ways to Miscellaneous (see below), only blander.

Batteries:

An afterlife in which the self per se ceases to exist, becoming merely fuel for either the realm itself or the rulers of the realm. This is not the same thing as achieving oneness with the Godhead, although the similarities are striking. It is the same thing as have your soul eaten by Great Cthulhu, though. Thankfully rare, and on the bright side, should you find yourself in one of the, the chances are you’ll never know it.

Miscellaneous:

More or less the opposite of the Other World afterlife, the Miscellaneous afterlife does not suffer from any lack of imagination. These are the afterlives that defy classification, often because they either let in almost no one or absolutely everyone. They frequently make little or no sense, and just as frequently, are all the more entertaining because of this. Very often, they are invented by science fiction writers, or members of other professions likewise notorious for the use of hallucinogens.

Oblivion:

Game over, no reset. When you die, you either cease to exist, or you are no longer aware that you exist (which amounts to the same thing from your perspective).

Reincarnation:

An afterlife only in the most literal sense, Reincarnation is another life in the same world. As such, it is beyond the scope of 1001 Afterlives to Visit After You Die, although if the belief system in question features an eventual escape from the cycle of Reincarnation, that escape is not.