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SIDS Vicious
Jan 1, 1970


I would like to test my buttons and couldn't think of a clever way to involve the posting of one's favorites in the thread title, luckily the request side of things is perfect. Post here and I will probate you for 6 hours. Your compliance is appreciated friends.

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Derpies
Mar 11, 2014

by sebmojo
I'm gay

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Shinjobi
Jul 10, 2008


Gravy Boat 2k
In honor of :goku:

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Sjs00
Jun 29, 2013

Yeah Baby Yeah !
gently caress YOU CHINATOWN SUCK MY SCROTUM SKIN UNTIL ITS RAW

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Captain Hygiene
Sep 17, 2007

You mess with the crabbo...





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beer gas canister
Oct 30, 2007

shmups are da best come play some shmups they're cheap and good and you like them
Plaster Town Cop
:goatsecx:

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Motherfucker
Jul 16, 2011

I certainly dont have deep-seated issues involving birthdays.
You wanna probe me? Wanna press that big button?? Yeah... cmon, you wanna give me a big ol' sixter don'tcha?

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Ixtlilton
Mar 10, 2012

How to Draw
by Rube Goldberg

RocktheCaulk posted:

I'm gay

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im gayer than this guy

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Honky Dong Country
Feb 11, 2015

Gimme a sixer with the :frogdunce: sid

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SIDS Vicious
Jan 1, 1970


My buttons are in working order.

LITERALLY A BIRD
Sep 27, 2008

I knew you were trouble
when you flew in

:patriot:

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Weatherman
Jul 30, 2003

WARBLEKLONK
8===========D~~

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oldpainless
Oct 30, 2009

This 📆 post brought to you by RAID💥: SHADOW LEGENDS👥.
RAID💥: SHADOW LEGENDS 👥 - It's for your phone📲TM™ #ad📢

Better men than you have tried to probate me ya punk rear end bitch

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egyptian rat race
Jul 13, 2007

Lowtax Spine Fund 2019
Ultra Carp
I have been a Bad Poster and need to cool off

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Brother Tadger
Feb 15, 2012

I'm accidentally a suicide bomber!

Grindcore did a better version of this thread

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Sally
Jan 9, 2007


Don't post Small Dash!

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

:patriot:

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Teagan
Sep 20, 2002

Out here, everything hurts.

Ooooohhhh I don't think that I have been probated before?!?! ( that wasn't IK related ) Pick me! Pick me!

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communist kangaroo
Oct 2, 2006

those are my principles, and if you don't like them...well, i have koalas.
smoke my balls, coward

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Burt Sexual
Jan 26, 2006

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Switchblade Switcharoo
Frankly, I was expecting better. The probe reason better be loving witty.

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iospace
Jan 19, 2038


Ween.

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QCS Marketing VP
Jan 8, 2020
Unhelpful

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funmanguy
Apr 20, 2006

What time is it?
Gratz Sid.

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UHD
Nov 11, 2006


hell yea lay it on me

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Junpei Hyde
Mar 15, 2013




I'm about to go to sleep and am tired of only having self probes on my rapsheet

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Plant MONSTER.
Mar 16, 2018



I was watching simpsons at 0.75 without knowing until a scene where homer and bart were getting back massages at a hotel and the noises they were making were super drawn out like a youtube poop
I've never been probed. :(

having second thoughts

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Ariong
Jun 25, 2012



RIP IT

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Stex T
Mar 7, 2005

Shut the fuck up and get out. Have fun being a slave of the rich and powerful.
In the background of the bleak modern music scene, like the quiet kid at a high school party, one can find the band Tool. From their 1991 EP, ‘Opiate’, through to their latest album ’10,000 Days’ (2006), Tool have consistently defied commercial trends and single-mindedly pursued their visions as artists to create brilliant and original music. Tool’s lyrics frequently explore personal and disturbing areas that few other bands would be able to tackle – on one album, they cover child abuse, self-hatred, drug addiction, and the slaughter of carrots in such an intimate way that listening to it is an uncomfortable experience. The members of the band, far from being the drug-addled rock stars that one sees in the media, are intelligent and educated in diverse areas, and this results in music that covers ideas that perhaps no other band ever has.

In this essay, I intend to examine in depth Tool’s 1996 release, Ænima, with the intent of revealing and interpreting the Jungian themes of the lyrics. To do this, it is necessary first to give an overview of Jung’s theories and approach to psychology, including his idea of archetypes, the shadow self, and the anima. I will then relate Jung’s ideas to the lyrics of the album, going through each song and highlighting the elements that can be clarified by a Jungian interpretation. From this, the overall nature of the album – a Jungian quest for re-integration with the anima, and the unconscious in general – will become clear.

Jung, like Freud, believed in an unconscious part of the mind, which was often in conflict with the conscious mind. Jung believed that humans experience the unconscious through symbols, as they are unable to communicate directly with it. These can include dreams, fables, myths, fantasies, and other areas in which symbols stand in for emotionally potent concepts. Neurosis, according to Jung, is an expression of the conflict between opposing forces in the psyche. The goal of psychoanalysis is to reconcile the conflict between the conscious and unconscious into a whole, unified state of mind that he called the Self – the fullest possible consciousness of one’s personality. He called this process individuation. For Jung, this process is teleological; the desire for reconciliation with the Self is inherent in every person, and it is the end result to which all strivings are directed. This process for Jung is inherently painful, but he believed that it is only by working through this pain that people are able to realise their true selves.

Critical to this process of individuation is Jung’s idea of archetypes. Archetypes are the natural, evolutionarily predicated instinct to act or react in a certain way to a certain kind of person or situation. Jung believed that everyone is born with these archetypes as ‘psychological organs’, or skeletons, onto which experience grows like muscle. An archetype – for example, the archetype of the Mother – will blend with the individual’s experience of mothers to form the Mother complex. A principal aspect of the process of individuation for Jung is to connect (or reconnect) the archetypal dimension with the world that the individual finds around them. Failure to do this results in ‘spiritual impoverishment and a sense of meaninglessness in life’.

The anima is one of the main psychological complexes found in men. (In women, it is called animus.) The anima is the feminine archetype in a man, combined with the individual’s experience of women; it represents nurturance, interrelatedness, empathy, and other ‘feminine’ traits. If a person is not in touch with their anima, they find it projected onto other people. For example, Jung attributes the phenomenon of falling in love at first sight as a case of anima or animus projection. Reconnection with the anima leads men into their emotional and passionate lives.

Another important psychological complex in Jung’s work is the shadow self. An individual does not wish to think of himself or herself as possessing weaknesses, shortcomings, or unsightly instincts, and so they repress these negative parts of themselves when they experience them. The shadow is the dissociated secondary personality that is formed from this repression. If the shadow self is not properly acknowledged and understood, it is often projected onto others. Instead of viewing oneself as being unattractive, for example, a person may perceive many of the people they meet to be unpleasant looking. The goal of analytical psychology is not to integrate the shadow self completely into the ego, but rather for the individual to have a good relationship between the two.

Jung’s contributions to psychology far exceed just these ideas, but they are at the core of much of what he wrote, and they have the closest relation to the themes of Ænima. Similarly, there are many interesting themes and ideas present in Ænima, but this essay will focus only on those that relate to Jungian concepts.

The best place to start a Jungian analysis of Ænima is the name of the album. It is a combination of two words – anima, Jung’s concept which I outlined above, and enema, an anal douche. This not-quite-a-word sums up the key themes of Ænima. On the one hand, it is about reconciliation with the anima, soul-searching and introspection; on the other, it is about flushing things away – in the singer’s words, ‘cleaning out the house to refurbish or redecorate and start over’. With these two ideas taken together, the word Ænima comes to represent a flushing out of the soul, purging oneself of impurities, suffering through a painful process of re-evaluation in order to achieve a higher state of being. This concept is crucial to an informed understanding of Ænima, so it is important to keep it in mind while analysing the album.

The first two songs on Ænima, Stinkfist and Eulogy, introduce the album and state of mind of the singer (who can also be thought of as the ‘narrator’, given the story-like nature of the album). The singer is alienated and disconnected from himself, and constantly has to seek greater heights of stimulation in order to feel alive. While these songs are important in understanding the album as a whole, they have little relation to Jungian concepts and thus do not fit under the scope of this essay. For this reason, I will start my analysis with the third track, titled H. As with many of Tool’s songs, the song’s lyrics are cryptic and it is unclear at first what the song is about. However, Maynard James Keenan, the vocalist and lyricist for Tool, has given clues as to its meaning: at one concert, he introduced the song by saying, “This next song is about having children. Do any of you have children? It’s amazing how much they change your life, isn’t it?” At another show, he said:
So, any of you ever watch those Warner Brothers cartoons? Sometimes there's that one where the guy's having a tough time making a decision, he's got an angel on one shoulder, a devil on the other... Usually the angel's the one that's going to give the good advice, and the devil's trying to get him to do what's going to be bad for him. It's not always that simple though. Most times they're not really angels or devils, they're just friends, giving you advice, looking out for your best interests but not really understanding what's going to be best for you, so it kind of comes down to you. You have to make the decision yourself.
Finally, in an interview in 1996, Keenan mentioned that his son’s name was Devo H.

With this information, one can better understand H. The singer has experienced, at the start of the song, something that has changed his conception of the world: the birth of his son. This causes him to feel emotional and passionate for the first time. This forces him to look at his life (“what’s holding up is a mirror”), and finds that his friends (“a snake/looking to turn this piss to wine”), though they seem to have his best interests at heart, are encouraging him in unhealthy habits and ways of thinking. He says, “They’re both totally void of hate/but killing me just the same”. This can be interpreted to mean that, on the one hand, his friends are “considerately” killing him by encouraging his negative habits, and on the other hand, his son is killing him by forcing him to confront and expel the parts of himself that led him into this situation. The “storm” of emotion that comes when he attempts to separate himself from this lifestyle causes him immense pain; however, “beneath the storm, under these tears, the walls came down”, and he is finally able to “drown” the snake and accept the pain that he will have to endure to cleanse himself.

Immediately, one finds numerous Jungian elements in this song. Before his son’s birth, the singer was in a state of malaise and found life to have little meaning; for Jung, this would be seen as a symptom of him being shut off from the archetypal world of the collective unconscious (as well as his own personal unconscious). The singer’s first experience of an archetype comes with his son’s birth. Likely it is his anima that the singer experiences for the first time here; the feelings of emotion and passionate in Jungian psychology are related to one’s connection with one’s anima. This gives him a glimpse into what life could be like if he further healed his psyche and came to totally reconcile his fractured unconscious. The pain that he experiences when he attempts to separate from his old lifestyle reflects another Jungian idea – the painful nature of the process of individuation. For Jung, pain and suffering were inevitable if one honestly wanted to heal him- or her-self. One can see that idea mirrored in this song; it is far from easy for the singer to separate himself from the “snake” and try to move his life into a better path, but it is necessary for him to deal with that pain in order to move forward.

Tool often includes short tracks in between songs as transitions. The track after H. is interesting because it is just the sound of a record clicking, as though it had reached the end of one side and had to be turned over. This furthers the idea that the singer has come to a turning point in his life – he has reached the end of his old life, and is now starting a new path. The title of this track, ‘Useful Idiot’, is the name given to those people in Soviet countries who obeyed the regime and had unswerving loyalty to the party, even when they were suffering immensely from the party’s actions. There is a clear parallel between these ‘useful idiots’ and the state of the singer before the birth of his son, in that he obeyed his desire for stimulation even when it caused him such suffering. This furthers the idea that after H., the singer’s life is on a different track.

The next track, titled 46&2, is the song on the album that most depends on a Jungian translation in order to make any sense. It describes the singer’s confrontation with his shadow self; he says, “I’ve been crawling on my belly/Clearing out what could have been” and “change is coming through my shadow”. The shadow self, as previously mentioned, is a complex composed of all the repressed or rejected parts of oneself. In order to grow, a person must examine their shadow self and find ways to incorporate it into their ego. This is clearly what the singer is doing in this song. He says he is “wallowing in my own confused and insecure delusions/For a piece to cross me over/Or a word to guide me in”. In other words, this means that the singer is introspecting and examining himself, his psychological processes, the assumptions he makes about the world, and all of the other previously unquestioned parts of his psyche, in order to discover the repressed parts of himself. The singer referred to this in an interview:
I really went out of my way to discover the things I don't like about people, in essence, for self-reflection, so really just going off on the deep end, going, "What is it I don't like about you? What is it that bugs me about you? Why do I dislike what you do and how you do it?" And as soon as I get all of that stuff on paper and write it down, I just kind of turn the you into me, and you really come up with some interesting things...
This is clearly a description, in layman’s terms, of the process of discovering and examining one’s shadow self.

The title of the song, 46&2, echoes the idea of growth and evolution present in Jung’s psychology. 46&2 refers to chromosomes in the human body. Currently, each human has 46 chromosomes – 44 plus the 2 sex hormones. Thus, the idea of “46&2” is that of people evolving to reach a higher state of consciousness. The idea comes from the mystical and New Age ideas of Drunvalo Melchizedek, but removing this unscientific origin still leaves a valid metaphor for the evolution and growth that the singer experiences when he confronts his shadow self.

The section after the second chorus – “I choose to live and to grow, take and give and to…” etc.) – can be interpreted as the singer coming to terms with and accepting all the parts of himself that he had previously rejected. Instead of shying away from the ugly parts of himself, he unconditionally accepts it all as part of the growth that he has to go through; he will “do what it takes to step through”. Finally, at the end of the song he can “See my shadow changing/Stretching up and over me”. This process of reflection has let him finally come to terms with his shadow self and incorporate it into his ego. He “[comes] out the other side” to see that “forty-six and two are just ahead of me”.

The next significant track is jimmy, though it does not contain as many overt Jungian influences as the previous two tracks. In it, the singer realises that his problems are rooted in a trauma that he suffered when he was eleven. Taken autobiographically, the singer is likely referring to an accident that his mother suffered when he was eleven that left her paralysed and unable to care for him. He refers to this in the lyric “Eleven and she was gone/Eleven is when we waved goodbye”. Introspecting, he realises that this was “where it all began, eleven”. In this introspection, he personifies his eleven-year-old self as another person, and says that “Under a dead Ohio sky/Eleven has been and will be waiting/Defending his light and wondering/Where the hell have I been?” He reconnects with his eleven-year-old self, and begs him to “hold your light/Eleven, lead me through each gentle step by step/By inch by loaded memory” and says, “I’ll move to heal as soon as pain allows/So we can reunite and both move on together”. Clearly, his mother’s paralysis caused the singer some significant trauma, and by recognising this, he is able to work through the conflicted and painful emotions that he felt in order to finally overcome it.

Again, this song shows the singer working through his pain in order to reconcile himself with his unconscious. His eleven-year-old self could be seen as an archetype, in this case the archetype of the child; in this interpretation, the song shows the singer reuniting with this archetype which has been laying dormant in his unconscious. Alternatively, this eleven-year-old self could be seen as a personification of a time in the singer’s life before he was traumatised, and the reunification that he talks about means that the singer has remembered what life was like before he was scarred by his mother’s paralysis. He describes himself as being “sleeping, lost, and numb” until that point; this phrase aptly describes the singer’s state of mind at the start of the album. The trauma he suffered at a young age can thus be seen as the root of all his subsequent problems; by moving beyond this, he is able to reconnect with the archetypal dimensions and overcome his feeling of meaninglessness in life. He is now “wide awake” – he still feels the pain of the separation within himself, but he is fully conscious of it and can now heal.

Pushit is the next major track after jimmy. The version I will be talking about is the one released on the Salival mini-box set; it is slower, has slightly different lyrics, and is in my opinion superior to the original. It describes the singer’s experiences as he confronts the most painful part of his journey - separating himself from his partner, with whom he has a co-dependant and abusive relationship. He begins the song by saying, “Saw that gap again today/While you were begging me to stay”. Though he suffers from the abuse they each receive and inflict on each other, he feels that “What is this but my reflection/Who am I to judge or strike you down?” The music gradually becomes more intense, and finally, despite his best efforts, the singer finds himself “slipping back into the gap again”, and says that “I feel alive when you touch me/I feel alive when you hold me… down”. Afterwards, the singer reflects that “I am somewhere I don’t wanna be… [I] never wanna see that place again”. After a guitar interlude, he eventually finds the strength to reject this person and the abusive relationship they have, saying, “Remember I will always love you/As I claw your loving throat away”. Though he is “terrified of what may come” he realises that “it will end no other way”.

The intensity and emotion evident in Pushit suggests that this is the most painful part of the individuation process for the singer. Jung believed that the phenomenon of falling in love at first sight is often due to a person seeing his or her anima or animus (respectively) in another person. The singer may have entered into the relationship with his partner by projecting his anima onto her, and given his splintered psyche and the repressed problems he had to face, it is unsurprising that this relationship became abusive. The “gap” that he talks about refers to intimacy between them; he realises that this relationship is unhealthy, and thus pushes his partner away from him, but at the same time he feels irresistibly drawn to it, and so again he “slips” back into it. The turning point in the song comes when he realises that “I am somewhere I don’t wanna be”. This is the point at which he realises that the person he is in love with is not in fact his partner, but rather his projected anima-image. Thus, he is finally able to “Push myself away/And you as well, my dear” – he pushes himself away from the temptation that his partner yields, and he pushes his partner away from himself. He realises that the emotions which he previously thought came only from his relationship actually come from a proper connection with one’s anima, and finding this connection is the only path he can take.

Though it is the title track, the song Ænema does not actually relate much to Jungian concepts. The song represents the singer’s final break from society – he looks at the people of Los Angeles and the lifestyle they represent and says that “the only way to fix it is to flush it all away”. He also separates himself from that society and the parts of himself that are attracted to it. From a Jungian perspective, the most interesting aspect of the song is the water imagery that he uses – “I’m praying for waves/I’m praying for tidal waves”, “Please flush it all away”, and his repeated cry to “Learn to swim”. Water has many archetypal properties; it represents purification, flow, the dissolution of obstructed libido (psychic energy), death, renewal, and many other images. The singer’s desire to “flush it all away” represents his desire to break down unhealthy structures back to their constituent parts. This is the pinnacle of his quest to purge himself of imperfections, to destroy the obstructed libido within himself and achieve personal renewal and purification.

The singer said in an interview that this song “can…be looked at as involving the whole collective environment and how all of us as individuals need to learn how to go into the deep dark waters." In this interpretation, the song serves as a cry to other people to undertake the same journey of self-discovery that the singer has. He sees the city of Los Angeles, and probably the rest of North American society, as suffering from the same problems that he once did, and so he recommends to them the same violent purging of the self that he has experienced.

The last song on the album is the 13-minute long epic, Third Eye. The idea of the “third eye” typically represents enlightenment, knowledge of inner realms, and spaces of higher consciousness; from a Jungian perspective, it refers to the state of full individuation, where one has completely assimilated all parts of their psyche into the Self. Thus, this song represents the culmination of the singer’s journey towards enlightenment and full self-knowledge. Unfortunately, the lyrics for Third Eye are so metaphorical and vague that one could interpret them in almost any way; furthermore, as the song is the culmination of all of the album’s themes, it is difficult to separate the Jungian elements from the other concepts present. Within the scope of this essay, all that one should note is that the singer’s journey has by and large come to an end and he has achieved full individuation.

In this essay, I have attempted to highlight the Jungian themes present in Tool’s album Ænima. The concepts that Jung discovered and outlined in his works – the psyche and the Self, the process of individuation, archetypes, the anima, and the shadow self – are useful in understanding the journey that the singer goes through over the course of the album. From a state of malaise and meaninglessness, the singer becomes aware of his anima for the first time, and gradually explores his personality and purges himself of imperfections to reach a state of full individuation.

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SIDS Vicious
Jan 1, 1970


We'll be back tomorrow with more PLR, probation request live, but it's bedtime for me

SIDS Vicious
Jan 1, 1970


We're back

buglord
Jul 31, 2010

Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!

Buglord
I had some weird dream last night that I got my arms torn off in a boss battle.

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GRINDCORE MEGGIDO
Feb 28, 1985


gently caress me up, Sid :tipshat:

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Allegedly Allergic
Nov 3, 2002

Crazy Bus Person #3
poo poo, why not?

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beer gas canister
Oct 30, 2007

shmups are da best come play some shmups they're cheap and good and you like them
Plaster Town Cop
Thank you sir may I have another

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Daztek
Jun 2, 2006



:ohdear:

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Captain Hygiene
Sep 17, 2007

You mess with the crabbo...



Someday I'll get that actual probe safely hidden on the second page :sweatdrop:

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mikerock
Oct 29, 2005

Light me up!

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PhysicsFrenzy
May 30, 2011

this, too, is physics
sid you're cool, please give me my first ever probation

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excellent bird guy
Jan 1, 2020

by Cyrano4747
can i get a handbeezy

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criscodisco
Feb 18, 2004

do it
Sid if you probate me we gotta bang it's a contract

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SIDS Vicious
Jan 1, 1970


criscodisco posted:

Sid if you probate me we gotta bang it's a contract

I am gonna need a notary here please he isn't joking

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