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April 30, 2007
Pullhair Rubeye
Avey Tare & Kria Brekkan release an entire album worth of music with all the songs backward.
"A whole album of this one effect, however, the reverse piano and reverse guitar and reverse voices going from decay to attack over and over and over again for 31 minutes... man, it's not just boring, it actually becomes depressing. It all kind of bleeds together into one bland and undifferentiated sonic blob that I never need to hear again."
For reference here's a reversed track, and the track as originally recorded.
AllAboutJazz.com Launches DRM-Free Music Store
AllAboutJazz.com has launched a DRM-free music store. Oh wait, the headline says that already. From their press release:
"Our goal is to build a download store in the spirit of the website: comprehensive, timely, and open,” says All About Jazz founder, Michael Ricci. “AAJ readers will have access to an incredible variety of jazz music, from new releases to reissued and out-of-print offerings. We're also committed to selling premium-quality 320kbps DRM-free music.”I'm a big fan of eMusic of course.
Despite eMusic's success, the major four labels are still denying that killing off copy protection makes economic sense (also see this report in the Economist). Despite all the gleeful reports of a Jobsian-induced paradigm shift, copy protection vendors keep insisting DRM increases consumer value while RIAA execs insist DRM is Pro-Consumer.
Lies and denial are not valid business models.
April 27, 2007
Kris Kuksi
Close up of just one small part of a mixed media sculpture by artist Kris Kuksi.
His other work is absolutely worth checking out.
Maybe while listening to the new White Stripes single if you're feeling frisky.
Bill Moyers: Buying The War
If you watch just one documentary this year, the Bill Moyers special on how the public was sold the Iraq war should be it.
It's available in its entirety at the PBS website.
If you don't watch it, you should be forced to spend eternity here.
Note the punishment doled out for leading the country into a death-trap quagmire: Paul Wolfowitz, the war's architect, gets a posh job at the World bank he manages to fuck up in no time flat. William Kristol, the Harvard talking-head and ex-worker bee for Reagan and Dan Quayle, gets rewarded for his idiotic prognostications and propaganda regurgitation with a full time journalism position at Time magazine.
Don't Buy Anything New for a Year
A group of friends tries simply to spend an entire year without buying anything new (via) (with the exception of food and hygiene products, of course). The result, obviously, is they're able to actually pay their bills. Shocking, I know.
Makes me immediately think of this Saturday Night Live skit.
David Lynch on Product Placement
Well, you can't say he's not succinct.
A more in-depth discussion of art, film and corporations with Crispin Glover is also worth watching. Makes me wonder why he's never worked with Terry Gilliam.
(via)
April 26, 2007
Bill Hicks On Marketing
Yes ok, might as well pull the marketing trifecta today and pay homage to one of my personal heroes, the late Bill Hicks.
"And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don’t you? “What did you do today, honey?” “Oh, we made arsenic a childhood food. Now, good night. Yeah, we just said, you know, is your baby really too loud? You know … yeah, the mums will love it, yeah.” Sleep like fucking children, don’t you? This is your world, isn’t it?"
Humans like Bill Hicks die early. Humans like Dick Cheney live to two-hundred-and-god-damned-eight -- willed to life through incorporeal voodoo -- powered by sheer fucking greed, wired with cybernetic parts and fueled with bunny blood.
Bigger Fake Boobs = Smarter
Doll Face
Doll Face, Andrew Huang
The Most Sophisticated Scam Ever
Yes, people are this dumb.
April 25, 2007
Chernobyl: Prime Real Estate
Radiation reading of bumper cars in Chernobyl: Kidd of Speed.
The risk of survivors of the Chernobyl accident (or those living nearby) dying early is 1%, now says a scientist, which is comperable to your chance of dying in an auto accident, and less than your chance of dying early from second hand smoke, or say from dying from AIDS by attending an orgy while wearing a condom.*
Says a little something for the resiliency of the species, and it makes me want to move to irradiated portions of the Ukraine as fast as humanly possible.
*Word Soup does not advocate smoking, exposing yourself to excessive radation, and/or orgy-riffic animal lust with multiple nubile partners, though all three at once are just fine.
Millionaire Grass Roots Via Press Release
I love how in 2007, a "grass roots movement" is apparently started via corporate press release, "led" by a guy who made millions via IPO after previously being busted for securities fraud. The age of "I have a dream" this is not.
That's not to say I support Verizon in their patent scumbaggery against VoIP provider Vonage, I do not.
But silly Vonage, if you're going to go to war with the best PR and lobbying team in America (Verizon) you're supposed to set up a bogus third party "consumer advocacy" group (aka "astroturf"), obscure your funding, and then have them issue the press release for you.
I mean come on, this is manipulating the public 101 here, Jeff.
Transparency is so 1950's....
Crystal Meth: Not Just For Rednecks Anymore
Apparently crystal meth isn't just a tooth removal strategy for rednecks in rural Pennsylvania anymore. A Denver News outlet profiles high-grade imported crystal meth, otherwise known as "Shabu," and one crazy ass walking pharmacy named "Nick" who makes Hunter Thompson look like an evangelical:
"During their 72-hour run, he and his friends will eat little solid food save fruit, so Nick's fridge and freezer are stocked with the makings for smoothies. Along with yogurt, organic apple juice and frozen blackberries, strawberries and mangoes are five bottles of Moët champagne, a dozen bottles of Italian sparkling water, four cases of microbrew, two bottles of chilled New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and a discount-warehouse carton of 400 Otter Pops."It helps keep people from going werewolf around hour 50," says NIck.Speed-binge supplies of a different nature have been cached in a master-bathroom medicine cabinet -- one bottle holding ninety Valiums and another with forty tablets of ProVigil, the market name for the experimental drug Modafonil, a sleep suppressant the U.S. military tested on fighter and bomber pilots in Afghanistan and Iraq. Modafonil is now prescribed for cancer patients to combat the chronic-fatigue side effects of chemotherapy. Nick has laid in a supply because he claims he's found that combining Modafonil with Shabu takes the edge off the undesirable psychological whammies of sleep deprivation, including auditory hallucinations and paranoid delusions.
April 24, 2007
Enigmarelle
Fantastically creepy writeup a quarter down the page here of a early 1900's sideshow automotom named "Enigmarelle." From a 1908 newspaper report on the invention:
"Thousands who attended the performance at the Bell Theater yesterday were entertained at the special feature provided by Enigmarelle, who walks, rides a bicycle, writes his name, turns corners of his own volition, and performs a number of feats only hitherto attributed to human beings."Ultimately the "the most complicated and delicate mechanism ever invented" appears to be a man in a suit, who enjoyed a far longer career than most vaudevillians."The appearance of this most marvelous sensation was eagerly awaited, and hundreds of mechanics, electricians and other scientifically inclined, who were in the audience, all agreed that is was without question a marvel, the product of a great genius, and an education in itself."
Your Outrage Is My Marketing Department
By tomorrow these Rush Limbaugh comments about the Virginia Tech shooter being a liberal will explode everywhere with indignant hissy-fits galore. As if the shooting wasn't bad enough, we've had to suffer through a week's worth of jackassery where these deaths were used for political or personal gain.
It fascinates me that when people complain about folks like Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh (and in the tech sector John Dvorak for that matter) they fail to observe that your outrage is how these professional trolls market themselves and spread virally.
I can think of no better test of character than one's ability to quickly identify asshats, marginalize them as irrelevant, and move on with your day (be it inhalant abuse or whiffle ball). Of course I'm commenting on this cultural ass dreg, so I've already shown you I completely lack any substantive character.
America's Number One! (At Mindless White Noise)
Perusing the news wires this week I can tell it's going to be one of those weeks that highlights the American obsession with ranking.
Oh no! Toyota is now number one!
A condom company says we're not having enough sex to be number one.
The U.S. must have the most broadband subscribers.
Your blog must have the most feed readers.
You must be the number one answer solver on Yahoo answers.
And everyone knows you must hold the number-one position in worldwide 8-bit microcontroller revenue.
I mean that last one's really fucking important.
I don't think you can truly appreciate the raw volume of mindless god-damn jabbering this culture outputs unless you're in the business of tracking the news. You're ranked number one and the world must know. You're not number one, so you hire a PR department to spin the statstics until you are.
Bloggers and news outlets must then bring out their wisest sages to inform you, the supposed ignoramus, conflicting opinions what exactly all this means. I monitor technologists and pundits out of occupational necessity and am ceaselessly amazed at not only what they deem important, but how they believe said analysis is actually accomplishing something (this applies to all topics, including the "Web 2.0" obsession, which I consider to be an egomaniac circle jerk of oceanic enormity).
On bad days I am ashamed for contributing to the sound wall.
Thanks to inadequacy-pushing marketing departments and the mindless need for quarter-over-quarter improvements this entire country has mutated into a sysiphisian seven-year-old suffering from OCD, trapped in a hamster wheel of productive delusion. But god damnit they're number one!
Or maybe I'm just suffering from technology news burnout and it's time for more coffee.
April 23, 2007
Progress?
Mursi tribeswoman with AK47 and iPod (via Boing Boing)
Cormac McCarthy: The Road
I don't know what it is about post-apocalyptic settings, but when done well, they punch me in the stomach every time. It really doesn't matter which media it's presented in -- even video games like Fallout had me captivated from the introductory movie on. I still think there's a potential movie there if done with the same art style and brains.
My fascination has something to do with how such situations strip away all the pretense that has so saturated modern human interaction. Suddenly humanism matters again -- and things like neon underlighting for your modified Toyota and clothes for pets seem just as vibrantly idiotic as they should. It's pure fucking fantasy of course. This is now Bobby McCEO's world, and the end, when and if it does come, it will be ushered forth glacially and gleefully via press release with the public playing the role of the "boiled frog" in the urban myth.
Anyway, I thought of it because I just finished reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road a few weeks ago and thought it was simple and brilliant. The country's been destroyed, all the animals are gone, but the book never so much as brushes against any political explanation of what went wrong -- it simply tells the tale of a father and son trying to brave their way west in order to survive.
Global War On Terror: The Board Game
April 20, 2007
Kazuhiko Nakamura
Kazuhiko Nakamura. Kanagawa,Japan. More here
Guy Loses Girlfriend Due To Blackberry Outage
The other day I simply deep linked to a Network World story about a guy who lost his girlfriend because he didn't answer her e-mails during a nationwide Blackberry outage. It was just a short blog entry, but for whatever reason it received more attention than weeks worth of more interesting fare. Says the dumped man on his digital constipation:
"We got into a really bad argument earlier in the day," he replies. "She sent me a few e-mails and when I didn't respond right away, she thought I was ignoring her and called it off. I didn't get the e-mail it was over until around 2 a.m. today."Personally I thought the story was kind of stupid. What kind of relationship do you have if the structural foundation disintegrates because of a two-hour fucking e-mail gap? But as a general rule, the dumber I think a story is, the more popular it will usually be.Not knowing what else to say, I suggest that perhaps this situation might be covered by his BlackBerry service-level agreement. His reply: "I'll call RIM and tell them to give me an upgrade on a new girlfriend."
This morning I received an e-mail from a producer on the Ellen DeGeneres show, asking if we could help her get in touch with this person for an entire segment they're planning.
NIN Performs Secret Concert For Year Zero Fans
I already mentioned the interactive viral campaign Nine Inch Nails is using to promote their new album, Year Zero. Whether you like them or not, it's a pretty ingenious way to engage your fans and create general ambience for a concept album.
Interestingly the people who have been following the clues being dropped by the band as a backstory for the album (which includes fake websites, fake companies, phone numbers, etc) were led to an abandoned LA warehouse where the band performed a short concert for just a few dozen people under the guise of an Art is Resistance meeting. Participants signed a waiver that said, "I don't know where I'm going and I don't know what will happen."
Footage here starts with an actor playing a revolutionary, and ends with a fake swat raid.
High Wire Act
A great video.
"There's only three things I've ever been afraid of: electricity, heights, and women. And I'm married, too."
April 19, 2007
Pierre Matter
P2P Users Not Ethical Enough To Spy On Americans Illegally
If you've downloaded "a lot" of illegal material via p2p networks you apparently are unfit to work at the NSA.
I guess if you've downloaded only the occasional illegal copy of "Desperate Housewives" you're morally ok.
Downloading a bunch of albums puts you over some floating moral judgement NSA edge, as does having worked in the peace corp -- peace apparently running afoul of the NSA mission statement, and humanism being a subversive character flaw.
Only the most morally pristine minds are allowed into an organization that illegally monitors the American public with the help of the major phone companies.
The Fox News Kurt Vonnegut Obituary
A direct quote from the obit:
"By the 1970s, he was rich and irrelevant."
RIP Kurt: a suicidal leftist crackpot who contributed little?
Fair and balanced.
April 18, 2007
You'll Laugh, You'll Cry, You'll Nap
My girlfriend and I spent an hour reading poetry at the local nursing home this afternoon as part of national poetry month. Responses were mixed.
Authors Who Offer Free Online Work Are "Webscabs"?
According to this statement (via Techdirt) from the VP of the Science Fiction Writers of America, those who give away content online are "webscabs" who hurt other authors by undercutting the price of their work:
"I'm also opposed to the increasing presence in our organization of webscabs, who post their creations on the net for free. A scab is someone who works for less than union wages or on non-union terms; more broadly, a scab is someone who feathers his own nest and advances his own career by undercutting the efforts of his fellow workers to gain better pay and working conditions for all. Webscabs claim they're just posting their books for free in an attempt to market and publicize them, but to my mind they're undercutting those of us who aren't giving it away for free and are trying to get publishers to pay a better wage for our hard work."As if Cory Doctorow handing out a free pdf is going to cause the roaring cash furnace that is the Sci-Fi publishing business to grind to a halt. In fact as Mike at Techdirt notes, giving away content can increase sales.
I'm so tired of people who try to pretend that "me,me,me" is some sophisticated ethos. Like the guy who whines about government social programs and gives a lecture on the broader implications of efficient government and minority work-ethic when he's just annoyed about taxation. Here we have a guy who doesn't necessarily understand economics turning an unreasonable fear into a treatise on publishing.
A user in his comment section has this to say: "Giving away one's literary work for free is hardly an invention of the Internet, as any poet could have told him."
April 17, 2007
The Death Of Internet Radio
If you like, love or lust Internet radio. Pay attention.
The United States Copyright Royalty Board was recently lobbied by the RIAA (the legal wing of the big four labels) in order to pass a new absurd royalty scheme that will put the majority of small and mid-sized webcasters out of business. The board rejected a myriad of more sane proposals and arguments by webcasters, essentially rubber stamping a proposal by the RIAA's SoundExchange royalty organization. The RIAA's proposal imposes per play charges on webcasters retroactively to 2006, while increasing yearly. It breaks down as follows:
So what's the problem? According to the Radio and Internet Newsletter (RAIN), a typical Internet radio station plays about 16 songs an hour, meaning they now have a retroactive 2006 royalty obligation of roughly 1.28 cents per listener-hour. The group says total revenues per listener-hour for that typical webcaster would only be in the 1.0 to 1.2 cents per listener-hour range. That's before composer royalties.2006: $0.0008 per stream per user
2007: $.0011
2008: $.0014
2009: $.0018
2010: $.0019
In other words, they're fucked unless they can hash out better deals with the labels.
Many Internet stations simply can no longer afford to exist, since royalty obligations will exceed total revenues -- leaving many stations wondering what happens next. RAIN cites the popular Pandora project as one example -- their owed royalties could easily exceed all of their recently acquired rounds of venture capital and all their sales revenues to date. Radio Paradise's Bill Goldsmith runs a small broadcast operation and voices his opinion over at his blog.
"I have watched the medium that I love turn from an essential part of the process of connecting those who love making music with those whose lives are touched by it into a mindless background hum of advertising and disposable musical sludge," he writes. "[The new rates are] a death sentence for all US-based independent webcasters like Radio Paradise, SOMA-FM, Digitally Imported, and many others."
"We’ve done everything right, we’ve paid all of our fees, and they are still coming at us like we’re pirates," says Ram Radio's Pam McClusky to BlogCritics. "As it stands right now, this effectively takes Ram Radio off the air."
Today I noticed that the CRB again dismissed objections by webcasters and NPR to the new fee system. There will be no new hearing.
A good place to start is to avoid buying RIAA label music. You should also contact your representative, your senators, and the twits over at the Copyright Royalty Board. Unless you don't "do" politics, in which case you can stew in the mire your apathy helps create.
Heading To Europe
In late May.
The diabolical (and now published) poet girlfriend of destiny and I are renting a car in Amsterdam and driving down the coast through Belgium toward Paris (where she once lived, so we have that part covered), then upward toward Lyon. We'll then head back through Germany back toward Amsterdam.
A dozen days with an Opel Corsa.
If you've ever taken that route and have any out of the way must-see locations, drop me a line via e-mail (link on splash page) or hit me up in the comment section below. Tips are welcome too.
First suggestion from someone in Belgum who visited one of my work websites (I post these here for the diabolical one and for my own memory):
"Usually, tourists go to Brussels (nice Grand Place, museums, King' castles and other interesting buildings), Gent or Brugge (of Flanders) but don't forget to visit the hilly part of Belgium, Wallonia.
Liege is a nice place where people are joyful ...
You should visit the Eifel natural park near Eupen, called the "Plateau des Hautes Fagnes".
April 16, 2007
Thou Shalt Always Kill
The Bees Knees
Bees are dying because you don't know how to shut up, says scientist.
The Worst Monday Ever
School shootings where dozens die, spring Nor'easters where hundreds get flooded out of their homes....
What do you say on a Monday like that?
April 13, 2007
Cristopher Conte
Absolutely loving some of this stuff.
Stop Screwing For Your Reputation's Sake, Kids
This abstinence website is an instant classic.
The splash page informs us:
The poll tells me they don't get many sinners up their way.
It's a great site, filled with the typical demonization of Myspace and other evils kids face when you let them run around without collars thinking for themselves.
The writing is pretty stellar too: "If you pick the fruit before it’s ripe, you’ll never know how sweet it would have been."
For contrast, this guy gets the shit beat out of him in his comment section for pointing out you have a better chance of getting killed in an auto accident (1%) than catching AIDS at an orgy if you use a condom. He's not advocating the recreation of Caligula's kingdom mind you -- just repeating CDC stats and suggesting there's fear merchants at play (though I think he directs too much ire at AIDS activists and forgets to mention our friends above as a primary source of said anxiety).
April 12, 2007
ToonDoo
ToonDoo is a good bit of fun.
No One Belongs Here More Than You
I hadn't heard of Miranda July until I saw the film Me and You and Everyone We Know, which made me laugh.
That can be hard to do.
Or not.
Apparently all it takes is a poop reference.
She has a collection of stories coming out in May called No One Belongs Here More Than You.
I enjoy the way her brain works.
But it's the website for the new book that makes me laugh.
To Protect And Serve?
April 11, 2007
Animated Soviet Propaganda
The first of a four part series at iFilm on Soviet animated propaganda.
Of course at the same time I can recall as an American child singing along with my sisters to children's Christmas records that warned us that if we didn't resist this dangerous incorporeal evil from afar, that we'd be trading in our legos for food lines by Thursday.
For the record let me say I find that any inference that America is a corrupt corporate-controlled giant pig head to be highly offensive! I mean the very idea that the country be portrayed as a fat, myopic sow with its nose rooting every which direction for the next fiscal fix, -- oblivious to the carnage incurred at every turn -- simply strains the boundaries of credibility.
Thank god propaganda is a dead relic of the old timey times! Phew. I mean imagine if corporations had taken the lessons learned from those early propaganda efforts and turned them against the working class on a global scale, in order to get them to support ideas that were against their own best interests?
O'Reilly: Blog Badges Not Dumb Idea, Just "Framed" Badly By Those Who Didn't Like It
Tim O'Reilly defends the silly blogger code of conduct proposal that suggests blogs should wear badges that say whether they're "nice" or "offensive."
His idea wasn't ridiculous, says Tim, it's just that the press didn't frame it properly, you see. It's not an unnecessary and silly idea that tries to shove an entire washload of diverse humans into absurd categories determined by unelected ivy leaguers -- they just chose the wrong blog logos to use.
If you're not feeling him, your antennas are apparently on the fritz.
Meanwhile, writer Warren Ellis offers his contributiion.
Tek Janson (Stephen Colbert) Vs. Time
Stephen Colbert rips a chrono-rift in the space-time continuum.
Man did I wander late into this intergalactic phenomenon.
There's apparently going to be a comic book released this April.
Interview with Tom Peyer, one of the comic's authors.
April 10, 2007
Warning: This Blog May Offend Your Uptight Sensibilities
Like an inhalant addict, this debate over a blogger code of conduct gets dumber the longer it exists.
More on the ongoing blogger club for nice people (TM) effort over at the BBC. who focus on the idea that blogs that contain "crude language" should be forced to wear special badges.
They're running a poll where more than half of those polled think it's a good idea.
I find it perpetually annoying that there are self-appointed overlords who think speaking your mind is some kind of quilting club that requires a charter. Why are these people not forced to wear logos? Logos that label them as blowhards who want to turn the Internet into a name-tag and bad coffee bible meeting where everyone is a clone of Ned Flanders, and god is replaced by self-promotion and AdSense revenue?
The Violinist's Koan
The Washington Post asks if a great musician plays great music but no one hears -- was he really any good?
How about if you take a violin virtuoso and plunk him in street clothes during rush hour in DC? Would anybody notice the quality?
This experiment must be taken further. Hookers placed in the roles of priests. Meth addicts placed in the role of teachers. Indonesian slave traders put in charge of the Treasury Department.
Let's see just how fucking alert we really are.
April 09, 2007
Newsflash: Some People On Internet Not Nice
I'm all for being nice. I really am.
But this freshly proposed blogger code of ethics is like trying to give a river fashion sense.
I say this as a blogger and moderator for one of the Internet's largest technology communities. I've been called every possible combination of names, with every possible violent proposal put forth by all manner of Internet crazies; waves upon waves of 'em. I don't recall it being a news story (because it isn't). But I digress...
The push for a new code of conduct stems from this instance of a blogger getting death threats. Of course they weren't real death threats (you know, in the KGB circa 1980 sense) -- they were the typical droning psychosis of insecure and troubled human beings who use the Internet as a pseudo-anonymous rage vomitorium and angst ventillation machine after a long day of selling insurance. Once in a great while I suppose on-line conflict turns to actual violence.
In which case I was always under the impression that you try to ignore it. When you can't, you either fight them, run, or trick them into drinking poison egg-nog. Unless of course they unequivocally demonstrate to you that they're going to feed your genitals to their rottweiler -- in which case you call the police. I'm fairly sure that this concept of self-preservation in the face of violence has been established among humans -- regardless of the forum -- for thousands of years.
So imagine my surprise last week when I awoke to a world where unchecked aggression was a new idea for which we apparently have absolutely no defense other than to create clubs where all members promise to be nice. Because someone who writes a blog was threatened by the idiot multitudes, the great blogging minds of the age were forced to palaver ad nauseum.
The mind spawn of several weeks of discussion was essentially a "nice people club" for bloggers. The idea is that you place a star on your website to alert the Internet that you are -- in fact -- nice. The star also lets your readers know you adhere to a preset list of niceness criteria of some fucking sort - pre-selected by some finishing school panel of a-list bloggers well versed in the proper, civil application of digital aggression.
I assume the next step is a special club bib you wear in public? I'm not sure what happens next. I'm trying to understand.
All I know is that it seems like we're forced to re-invent the wheel if somehow "blogs" or "YouTube" are involved. The website I work for has miles of code that form a mecca of anti-asshole protection for our users. We have FAQs, and codes, and guides for behavior, and an army of moderators of the utmost integrity who screen every complaint. All day. Every day. For the better part of the last decade.
And you know what? Statements like "you should have your arms plucked from your perforated corpse, asshat" still get through. Often. Perhaps we needed a logo.
Seriously, not one threat resulted in an actual act of physical violence that I'm aware of, because the people who make these threats usually find bipedal locomotion a challenge -- much less physical confrontation. That's not to say there isn't occasionally web-spawned violence, it's just that in the land of hyperbole and geekdom, in the land of Ajax and VoIP conferences, you need big grains of salt handy where any tale of physical exertion is concerned.
I also understand that sexism and misogyny are everywhere. If a woman tomorrow invented light-speed vehicles powered by farts -- and the news story was accompanied by a photo, the first one-hundred digg user comments would be about the woman's physical attributes. I really do understand the very depths of the human id when under the belief that one is anonymous online -- I am forced to bathe in it every single day as an occupational hazard.
But solving these problems by forming a club for nice people who promise to be nice? Something tells me the guy/girl who is going to drive 400 miles to your home in the middle of the night to stab you in the eye -- because their medication ran out and you insulted their favorite color -- doesn't much care about that.
So these ethics proposals don't really do anything to curb violence. Then the goal is to curb violent talk and misogyny on blogs? Create a new thinking paradigm that results in people being nicer to one another on-line via a logo and a charter? Really?
The very idea makes me want to take out someone's kneecaps with a .....oh....whoops. Shit. There goes my accreditation from kindness corporation. Sorry, let's hug.
April 06, 2007
Sanjaya Attacks Iran!
Says Noam "Gnome" Chomsky about conflict with Iran:
"The most effective barrier to a White House decision to launch a war is the kind of organized popular opposition that frightened the political-military leadership enough in 1968 that they were reluctant to send more troops to Vietnam -- fearing, we learned from the Pentagon Papers, that they might need them for civil-disorder control."
That's great, but unfortunately the closest thing this country has to "organized popular opposition" is against Sanjaya winning American Idol.
I love Chomsky. I saw him speak last fall. But I find there's this persistent chasm that exists between his optimism and the actual mind-space inhabited by the American public. I know that's not a unique opinion, particularly in academic towers.
Chomsky is thrilled by the Democratic processes currently underway in South America. Yet I feel like every shred of humanism oriented progress made in the last twenty years could be wiped out in the blink of an eye by a thirty-second Karl Rove engineered television spot, five grand in bribes and a Delta Force squad at this point.
I am aware that coordinated public opposition to war is the answer. How is that done non-violently? How is awareness nurtured? How is nationalism-driven propaganda defeated? How is political apathy destroyed?
The broadest and most enthusiastic national political debate I witnessed this week among political blogs and the press was over head wear. We're still mired in a debate over whether homosexuals are evil.
Chomsky needs to be opining on how we bridge the gap between skull-rattling apathy and activism. How we make the protection of human lives a cultural priority over the singing career of Sanjaya. Knowing the building is burning is one thing, but someone helpfully telling me where the fucking exits are is quite another.
A Little Reminder
April 05, 2007
Bad Fiction
I'm reading this thoroughly mediocre book.
It would be good, but I'm just not finding some of the plot points believable.
I mean, in the chapter I just finished the President has just assigned the coordinator of one of the decade's most sleaziest political smear campaigns as the U.S. ambassador to Belgium.
This is after the guy placed corporate polluters in all the top environmental spots in previous chapters.
It just doesn't help your novel when you make your primary characters so simple-minded and corrupt that they seem like caricatures. When you're trying to write about evil, you should really try to obfuscate your villain's motives. Make your audience work to decipher whether or not your antagonist is an evil bastard.
Crikey!
April 04, 2007
Everything I Know I Learned From Ultima
In some alternate universe where I'm a shade geekier and considerably more intellectually stunted due to insufficient human contact and limited sexual activity, this space is filled by a clever blog entry. That entry is packed with bulleted allegories comparing real life to the Ultima series of video games. It's also well-linked to and probably the intellectual apex of that other me's year.
Luckily for me we're not in that alternate universe. I lack the enthusiasm.
That's not to say the here and now me didn't love those games to death when I was a kid. They were what kids with thoughts in their heads were playing in the 80's while everyone else was smashing mushroom creatures with a little pixelated plumber.
While the games required thinking and improved puzzle solving skills, the moral lessons learned weren't particularly valuable. In the world of Britannia the tyrants usually were conveniently part of organizations with names such as "the oppression" so you knew who to hate. And as much as I'd like to believe that the acquisition of gold coin and other shit magically increases my chi, I'm afraid that's a delusion reserved for Conservative free-market think tank employees.
All of that said, this guy is still my personal hero. He's playing through every single Ultima game (sans the MMORPG) from start to finish and blogging his progress.
Anyone who slogged through Ultima V and sent in a photo of the finish screen knows that's essentially like climbing Mount Everest wearing only Darth Vader underoos. That's to say it's not impossible, but you're going to see some nasty physical side-effects and sidelong glances during your potentially fatal voyage.
I also noticed that the Ultima series creator Richard Garriot is being launched into space with Stephen Hawking.
Godspeed, Lord British.
Nine Inch Nails: Year Zero Leaked
Looks like the new NIN album (the whole thing) has leaked to torrent trackers weeks before its official April 17 release.
Wonder Woman Battles -- Tape?
Ah, men writing about women in the "golden age" of comics.
More unintentionally funny panels here.
April 03, 2007
I got my violence in high-def ultra-realism
Ok yes: I swayed with teen geek angst to Head Like a Hole in a dingy industrial club when I was a young 'un. The first time I heard the song a guy named "bonehead" was trying to sell me magic mushrooms. I remember that "bonehead" informed us that he had lost track of the suns. Ah, the innocence of youth.
And yes, I rode the Downward Spiral to help me through a romantic existential car crash tinged by a lovely prolonged bout of severe chronic tonsillitis.
"The me that you know is now made up of wiresSo yeah, while my musical tastes have exploded since then I still like me some Nine Inch Nails.
And even when Im right with you Im so far away"
I love the viral campaign for the new concept Album, Year Zero. There's fake websites like art is resistance, bogus phone numbers to call, strange message boards rife with hints at the backstory -- all being processed by an army of OCD fans. While I don't want to participate in the complicated mythos per se -- I've enjoyed paying attention to it.
I've heard some criticism that it's pretentious marketing schlock. Personally I see it as an extension of the ambient noise found in most Pink Floyd concept albums, but across medium. He's doing some interesting things here, which includes doling out free tracks without DRM (something that annoys the RIAA), and even offering the songs broken down so they can be re-mixed by fans with sequencing software.
Then again I've always been a sucker for anything post-apocalyptic.
"I got my propaganda
I got revisionism
I got my violence
In hi-def ultra-realism
All a part of this great nation
I got my fist
I got my plan
I got survivalism"
The Best Laws Pharma Money Can Buy
Crooks and Liars offers video copies of a recent 60 minutes piece on how pharmaceutical industry lobbyists literally wrote the historic Medicare Prescription Drug Bill and got it passed in the middle of the night.
"The pharmaceutical lobbyists wrote the bill," says [Republican Congressman Walter] Jones. "The bill was over 1,000 pages. And it got to the members of the House that morning, and we voted for it at about 3 a.m. in the morning….I've been in politics for 22 years, and it was the ugliest night I have ever seen in 22 years."Flashback to the Presidential speech when the law was signed:
"A lot of this happened -- this bill happened because of grassroots work. A lot of our fellow citizens took it upon themselves to agitate for change, to lobby on behalf of what's right."By "grassroots" and "fellow citizens" he of course means rich pharma douchebags who spent $141 Million in 2003 to buy a bill whose sole purpose was to increase their revenues in exchange for human lives.
April 02, 2007
Social Networking Chatter Bores Me To Tears
Afternoon thoughts as I dig through the news feeds.
I can't decide what bores me more:
Blog popularity politics or tracking the bubbly social networking startup enthusiasm on TechMeme. Not to slight the thousands of bloggers who get digital erections over the sheer fucking genius idea of putting calendars online, mind you.
Marginally more interesting? Ron Jeremy doing technology reviews. And while the idea is pop culture cheese itself, I see more common sense and intelligence in his opinions than I do from most of the blog arena's techno-analyst superstars.
"When I see my friends e-mailing or texting back and forth to each other, I say: "Idiots. Pick up the damn phone and talk to each other." I never understand that. You guys are going backwards in technology. We have voices now. You don't have to telegraph or Morse code each other. Why don't you get up on a mountain top and do Morse code with a flag?"If it wasn't for luddites, nobody would notice we were logging into eighteen social networking sites to take a leak.
What We Call The News
That said, now imagine the news in 2050.