April 2007 Archives
Forgive the impromptu logo. Hopefully.
CoverTrap by The Pop Group / Covered by Gogogo Airheart!
This is a nice little piece of spastic anyway you slice it. The Pop Group were a somewhat amazing and horrible band that crawled out of the wreck of '77 punk rock, but didn't fall quite into the arms of 'sound system ragga post punktronix' but still ended up sound like a dance band, but via funk. Like James Brown. One thing that was interesting where their political lyrics. Part of the band wanted to go more and more abstract, the other half was wanted to go more concrete. Trap is from their demo takes and rarities album We Are Time and sits its behind in the abstract column. So WRT and Trap both soundy-feely disconnected, but there other stuff is titled things like "We are all prostitutes" and "How much longer will you except mass murder?" Whatever, it's on Rough Trade, so it's canonical. Anyway, I found out about the Pop Group, which is a great name, it's a big 'oi! fuck you' to The Band, because of the Go go Go Airheart cover. Also, Sharon Singh didn't know who The Pop Group was when I asked.
Monsieur GGGA!'s cover mos def sat in a studio for a bit, despite the delightful tape hissies, and sounds pretty swell. Lot's of echo. Or is it reverb? It's nice to Airheart putting in so much energy, unlike their lazy cover of Queen's Death On Two Legs, but that's for another day. It's a typical cover, but brings a bit of GGGA weird and mixes it with some earnest nostalgia. And they prolly won't ever do a Misfits cover.
[Pop Group]--------[Gogogo Airheart]--------Annotated Lyrics Follow--------Comments Welcome
It is really worth your while to go check out WMFU's beware of blog right now. At the top of the page they have a video of John Cage performing on "What's my Secret". He is gracious, funny, and the performance is both hilarious and wonderful. This video made me love him, and respect his work in a whole new, non-fake kind of way.
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/04/john_cage_on_a_.html
P.S. In a totally separate vein, I will give a dollar to anyone who can help me get my hands on a digital copy of Marjoe Gortner's "Bad, but not Evil" album. To those who are like wtf, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjoe_Gortner. I know I can buy it for not too much, but I really don't want to ship it to Hungary.
edit: in motion
getting some yellow on it. for ikea.
Imagine being twenty, and playing a sweet prank... only its 1987 and you have to wait twenty years for the pay off. Somewhere in suburbia a dad of three is laughing his ass off. My hats off to you sir.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Time_Capsule.html
This game is made by a hungarian.
Another after the jump.
(Question-Proem: Why don't we have a frickin "Animals" category? I mean, come on, guys... Let's get on the ball. In it = to win it. Anyway...)
All the bees are disappearing.
This is obviously a sign that we are all dead; the Apocalypse has already occurred; only demons and (rapidly diminishing apiary arthropods) are left; thus we are demons.
This theory of demon-hood was posited by a friend recently. We were both drunk at a party. I thought about it, forgot about it, and thought about it again after reading about the Rapture Of The Bees (see below).
I would here quote poems by Emily "Bees-n-Depression" Dickinson, but I'm too frightened:
If I'm a demon, I'm a demon who loves some muthafuckin honey...
Read about the End Times, in the Times...
So... in March a woman had her gallbladder successfully removed through her vagina.
This is following some doctors in India removing an appendix through someone's mouth. Apparently there is a website to visit if, like these guys you would prefer to remove an ailing organ through your mouth, vagina or rectum, it's not very exciting, but it's exciting that such a place exists anyway. Check it out, or just read the Times article.
by Robert Pinsky
Samurai Song
When I had no roof I made
Audacity my roof. When I had
No supper my eyes dined.
When I had no eyes I listened.
When I had no ears I thought.
When I had no thought I waited.
When I had no father I made
Care my father. When I had
No mother I embraced order.
When I had no friend I made
Quiet my friend. When I had no
Enemy I opposed my body.
When I had no temple I made
My voice my temple. I have
No priest, my tongue is my choir.
When I have no means fortune
Is my means. When I have
Nothing, death will be my fortune.
Need is my tactic, detachment
Is my strategy. When I had
No lover I courted my sleep.
***
Robert THE MAN Pinsky arbitrated a metaphor-battle between Sean Penn and Stephen Colbert.
Here's some video...
by Mark Strand
Fire
Sometimes there would be a fire and I would walk into it
and come out unharmed and continue on my way,
and for me it was just another thing to have done.
As for putting out the fire, I left that to others
who would rush into the billowing smoke with brooms
and blankets to smother the flames.When they were through
they would huddle together to talk of what they had seen—
how lucky they were to have witnessed the lusters of heat,
the hushing effect of ashes, but even more to have known the
fragrance
of burning paper, the sound of words breathing their last.
I love Heidi. She's now bi. She also has a transcription of the beloved old crazy man's talky at bennington. Enter the sideways love balloon.
So Amazon has been spamming me, asking me to write reviews of products that I've purchased from them.
The thing is, if I write a review for them they own my words. Plus I've added value to their site. For free. They want me to work for free.
If you do post content or submit material ... you grant Amazon.com and its affiliates a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such content throughout the world in any media.
Yikes.
So I turned it in to a fun writing exercise with various degrees of success.
Last night in Manhattan, Crazy Old Man (and author) Kurt Vonnegut died in Manhattan.
I have been reading Vonnegut since high school, when I was required to read Slaughterhouse-Five. He has remained one of my top five favorite authors. He was a prolific writer, as a trip to any bookstore's "V" shelf will attest, and through it all his work was insightful, entertaining, and deeply human.
Except for Timequake, which was a bit of a reprint and rehash of older material. And, you know, plus A Man Without a Country, which was written when he had clearly lost either his marbles or respect for his readers because it consists almost entirely of reprints - verbatim - from the aforementioned Timequake.
Still, he was a fantastic writer and I will miss him.
Thanks, Mr. Vonnegut.
From A Man Without a Country
If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC
Times obituary here.
Vonnegut slideshow at nytimes.com.
His largely incoherent and curmudgeon-tastic second-to-last TV appearance (on the daily show) after the jump. Video courtesy onegoodmove.
That's right: All you corny motherfuckers making clownish videos of George Washington, watch out. Insulting the founder of a nation can get you in big trouble.
You Tube learned this recently when Thailand and Turkey started punching/kicking it in the taint, angry that the young video empire would not take down satirical videos mocking the former's current monarch and the latter's Leading Historical Badass (besides Suleiman), Ataturk.
I wonder what Thomas "The MAN" Paine would have said about both You Tube's woes and Tim O'Reilly's plan for a new era of internet Civility.
[Oh, and thanks, Dylan--you rock more than even granite rocks... But, you know, you metaphorically "rock;" it's not like you're a naturally occurring aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids.
Other people: Dylan recommended that I check out Paul Collins' The Trouble With Tom, which I did. I now heartily endorse it as new Required Reading.]
Anyway, more about those nasty censorship gremlins in Thailand and Turkey to be found below...
I have no idea who started it, but newly started blog Elbow of Justice is totally biting on our style, and fully cops to it.
From their link to our site:
Another bunch of Ex-Bennington students... we totally ripped off their idea for this blog.
We're so fucking elite that people have started to imitate us.
Wait'll they find out how much we've made in ad revenue this year.
As mentioned below, there is some talk circulating around the interwebs regarding a blogger code of conduct co-authored by Jimmy Wales and Tim O'Reilly.
I got started on this little tirade after reading a quote from Mr. O'Reilly in the New York Times:
Mr. O’Reilly said the guidelines were not about censorship. “That is one of the mistakes a lot of people make — believing that uncensored speech is the most free, when in fact, managed civil dialogue is actually the freer speech,†he said. “Free speech is enhanced by civility.â€
This sounds like some crazy Orwellian shit to me. 'Censorship enhances free speech' requires the kind of logical jump necessary to believe that ignorance is strength. I asked him, via his blog, to make further comment on it. If I get a further comment, I'll post it here.
Some on Tim's blog have suggested that the code of conduct should be adopted because "Do you know how many people are afraid to post or comment fearing the vitriol. [sic] Their voices are not heard."
Anyone who doesn't speak because they're afraid they'll be contradicted - or worse, insulted - has no place in a conversation.
Only individual blog owners have any business regulating civility.
I've already made it my policy to delete (or edit) comments that I find annoying or spammy. (LIAM!)
Those who agree with this code of conduct don't need it, and those who need it won't adopt it. It's a pointless conversation, a pointless exercise. A conversation starter, and a weak one at that for precisely the same reasons that the code of conduct is worthless.
The only possible application for the above code of conduct is so that a blog owner challenged on their decision to censor their readers can cite a source instead of (gasp) using their own words to convey the strength of their convictions.
And, I say again, people who won't speak because they're scared of someone disagreeing with them, even abusively and inappropriately, doesn't really have a place in a serious conversation.
We should thank our lucky stars we only have to worry about idiots photoshopping our heads into gross or disturbing pictures, unlike so many in the world who actually have something real to be concerned about should they exercise their right to free speech.
And, as Dylan often says, Americans tend to be awful, really just terrible, at risk assessment.
There is a serious dereliction of sense involved in the fear of internet death threats. Does anyone have statistics for the number of people murdered last year over something they wrote on the internet?
How about car accidents?
If we're going to start really acting on our fears, let's do it with some sense.
Kathy Sierra, you can start going to speaking engagements again, but I reckon you'd better walk to them.
Oh boy.
So today the New York Times reported on a new blogger code of ethics written by Tim O'Reilly and Jimmy Wales. They constructed the code of ethics partially in response to death threats sent to Kathy Sierra by the usual lineup of angry, overweight internet yahoos that shoot their mouths off and go to wild dialectic lengths including, but not limited to, saying things like 'shitcock.'
Never mind that this sort of rude behavior is not new (or news.) What makes it news is that this poor widdle baybee got a boo-boo on the parts of her brain that worry about aforementioned internet yahoos chopping her to bits.
I guess she didn't consider how easy it would be to outrun the kind of lumbering, 400lb man-strosity that has the time or desire to pick fights on the interweb. And that's if, and only if, the bearded land whale in question had the energy to get out of his computer chair or if his mom would let him borrow the money to fly out to wherever Ms. Sierra was.
From her blog:
"I have cancelled all speaking engagements.
I am afraid to leave my yard.
I will never feel the same. I will never be the same. "
She got so scared that the bad, mean internet man was going to commit murder in response to some blog entries she wrote that she actually cancelled all her public speaking appearances, demonstrating both a wild overestimation of the value of her life to even the craziest of internerds and a lack of understanding of the internet so staggering as to disqualify her from blogging permanently.
Which, apparently, kind of works out for her:
"I do not want to be part of a culture--the Blogosphere--where this is considered acceptable."
Unfortunately for Ms. Sierra, acting and talking like an idiot isn't exclusive to the internet or the parts of it often referred to as 'the Blogosphere'. So she might have a long way to run until she finally feels safe. Somewhere in northern Canada on a Safe Haven For Feelings commune, perhaps?
Anyway, I don't condone abusive speech or photoshopping (apparently there were some internet classics she posted on her site, but they're gone now), but I absolutely believe in the right to scream 'shitcock' in a crowded intertube.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Department of Homeland Security has made it safe to wear your VR headsets and mirrorshades again.
From their faq:
What is the National Cyber Alert System?
...
The National Cyber Alert System provides valuable cyber security information in the form of Technical Cyber Security Alerts, Cyber Security Alerts, Cyber Security Tips, and Cyber Security Bulletins. You can subscribe to receive any or all of the documents through email.
They've got Cyber Security Tips in a variety of Cyber Flavors such as Dealing With Cyberbullies, Cybersecurity for Electronic Devices (I couldn't find their page on Cybersecurity for Mechanical Devices - sorry!), even a page for Cyber Security Alerts.
This is really Cyberexciting for Cyberme. (That is, my Cyberrepresentation on the Cybernet, or my 'avatar.')
I'll see you- safe and sound- on the full motion video multimedia virtual reality information superhighway!
Your counter can come down now... Bastard!
If you're anything like me, you hate our president. But you can sympathize with the ol' Dubya on one subject.
It is so hard to tell all them ay-rabs apart! Sunni? Shia? What's the difference!?
The New York Times has come to the rescue through their online edition on this conundrum and many other brain-burning toughies.
If you're not sure about the meaning of a word, or need more information about a topic, just double click on the word in the story! A new window will pop up (so as not to browse you away from the article you're reading) giving you that extra brain boost you need to understand just exactly why all those crazy guys overseas can't stop killing each other long enough to get a functional government in place.
(For the curious, Sunni Arabs believe that succession from Muhammad is not necessarily based on heredity, while the Shia believe that succession of Islamic leaders should descend from Ali, son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad.)
Glad that's cleared up. No wonder they want to kill each other so bad! That's quite an important issue!
(Tested on Firefox 2.0.0.3 and Safari 2.0.4. Works on Firefox, doesn't on Safari.)
Boarding two helicopters, they left for their base in Devon, where they are to be debriefed and to undergo medical and psychological checkups, said Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the chief of the defense staff.
The above taken from today's NYTimes article about the 15 Britons returned to their native Albion by those scallywag Persians (who not only don't torture their captives, but feed them three meals a day, give them cigarettes to smoke and beds to sleep on, and even provide pajamas to sleep in--what terrorist rascals they be!).
Okay, but seriously, I know we have more guns, bandwidth, secret prisons, instant foods, and other benchmarks d'civilization, however... America will never, ever be half the nation England is until we start naming people [first name] "Jock," [last name] "Stirrup." Huzzah, sirrahs!
So I was in MT for almost two weeks. My 22 year old brother had the flu, and it became strep, and then became pneumonia, the bad, kill-jim-henson-christian-science kind. He was put into a medical coma and his vitals slipped, and my mom, myself and my uncle made it out to Bozeman, MT.
We arrived and it looked like he was getting better and would be off the respirator in a few days. My uncle left. My brother slipped. The doctor said he'd be dead within the day. His vitals climbed a bit, but now his kidneys and liver were failing, building up dangerous levels of potassium. But with the stronger vitals, we decided to airlift him in a small jet to Billings, where he could recieve dialisis for his kidneys.
He's now been in billings for two weeks. I'm back in LA. He's still in a coma, but they turn down the sedatives and paralytic once in awhile and his wriggles his eyebrows. My moms still with him. He's inching towards health, but then he'll get a new infection. His respirator balloon is deterioating and he needs to get a tracheotomy on friday.
He has no health insurance. The jet plane was 10k.
I'm not particularly close with my brother, but goddamnit, I've known him his entire life.
And that's why I haven't been blogging much lately.
Steve posted a while back about the hope-inspiring/scary/very new study that, at least in Africa, circumcision can play a significant role in the reduction of AIDS transmission through sex.
Today's NYTimes brings that study and its results much closer to home:
New York City... is planning a campaign to encourage men at high risk of AIDS to get circumcised in light of the World Health Organization’s endorsement of the procedure as an effective way to prevent the disease.
What y'all think about that? [Damn, I love any conflict in which the word's "penis" and "foreskin" play a central role...] Full text follows...
by Ted Hughes
The Thought-Fox
I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.
Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:
Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come
Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business
Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.
by D. Nurkse:
Separation at Burnt Island
Brothers and sisters, who live after us,
don't be afraid of our loneliness,
our dented wiffle ball, the little kerf
the dog chewed in the orange frisbee.
Don't grieve for our kite; not the frayed string
that clings to your ankle, not the collapsed wing.
We lived on earth, we married, we touched each other
with our hands, with our hair that cannot feel
but that we felt luxuriously, and with promises.
We made these bike tracks in the sand
—don't follow them—and this calcined match head
is the last statue of our King.
We lived between Cygnus and Orion,
resenting the blurriness of the Pleiades,
in a house identical to its neighbors—
stepwise windows, ants never to be repelled,
TV like a window into the mind
that can't stop talking, redwood deck
facing the gulf.
Everything was covered with sand: the seams
of the white lace dress, the child's hinged cup,
the watch (even under the crystal), the legal papers.
We were like you, or tried to be. We divided our treasures
(a marble with no inside, a brooch from Siena),
signed our names with all our strength, and went home
in two directions, while the marriage continued
without us in the whirling voice of gulls.
Seems like a strange way to go, but Red Octane announced that they are working with Devendra Banhart and the Animal Collective dudes on a new folk version of the game. Contributors will include Will Oldham, Akron/Family, Angels of Light and the high priestess Joanna Newsome. Its hard to imagine ripping through tracks off Ys, but I'm pretty excited.
Read the press release and full artist list here.
