No Country For Old Men
Time interviews Cormac McCarthy and the Coen brothers ahead of the release of their film adaptation of McCarthy's book No Country For Old Men.
I'm fairly geeked that there's also a film version of The Road in production.
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October 31, 2007
Of Haunted Houses and Genocide
I've always been amused at horror film plots that show young urban or suburbanites getting lost in redneck rural America. A rural America that's always devoid of value, but packed to the brim with madness (aka, they don't buy lattes and own lofts, and their cars are old). There's more there going on than just shitty writing, and I think Sam Miller captures some of it in a piece I spotted on Alternet:
"Rich city folks move out into the country and find themselves up against nasty poor locals and a ghost in another recent vengeful-spirit film, Wendigo. The more I thought about this recurrent motif, the more I realized: the modern haunted house film is fundamentally about gentrification. Again and again we see fictional families move into spaces from which others have been violently displaced, and the new arrivals suffer for that violence even if they themselves have done nothing wrong.Given my girlfriend is working on a paper about displacement that she's presenting in Long Beach this weekend, I found this bit of interest as well:This thriving subgenre depends upon the audience believing, on some level, that what "we" have was attained by violence, and the fear that it will be taken by violence. In the process, because mainstream audiences are seen as white, and because gentrification predominantly impacts communities of color, the racial Other becomes literally monstrous.
"Displacement creates a paradox: We acknowledge the wrong that has been done but feel powerless to do anything about it. A sort of collective guilt springs up, a sense that we are insignificant cogs in the machinery of economic and social factors that create gentrification. This is particularly true for the middle class, who are often forced by economic necessity to move to gentrifying neighborhoods or to new suburban developments that have demolished pre-existing space."I think he might be giving American culture more empathic credit than I would, as I doubt most Americans think twice about previous occupants. They're more worried about status, commutes, where the nearest Starbucks is and how much they'd have to pay to install new windows.
Still, I find the premise that our horror films are displacement guilt from gentrification or past collective wrongs (small pox infected blankets, anyone?) to be an interesting idea. Of course everyone knows that zombie films are about consumerism and the capitalist fear of the rise of the working class.... :)
October 30, 2007
Scissor Spider
The Heartless Machine documents the making of a scissor spider.
October 29, 2007
Quit Yer Bellyachin'
Highest Bidder
I guess Ralph Nader needs "sexing up" these days....
October 26, 2007
Public Service Announcement
None of this is important. Go be with the person that loves you.
If there is no such person, that person needs to be you.
Some Nice People Work At The Death Star
As a nice change of pace I feel like I almost accomplished something today, instead of just firing additional white noise into the digital ether. It may not be much, but I helped make sure a California wildfire couple didn't get screwed by their satellite and phone provider.
Maybe AT&T would have done the right thing anyway without the attention. Maybe not. Maybe we just shortened that woman's negotiation process by a month.
Either way, AT&T continues to show me that they've got the best PR guys in the business.
I may not like their political policies and lobbying moves, but their PR guys have been nothing but classy.
Many PR departments I deal with are so paranoid about controlling the message, nothing they say is ever allowed on record, questions are never directly answered, and you often feel like the person you're talking to might not be entirely human.
AT&T on the other hand has always been immediately accessible to me, and they're always quick to respond to criticism or to get our users answers.
FEMA Stocks Press Conference With Fake Reporters
Here's modern America in a nutshell for you. Instead of really improving the way the nation deals with disasters, we've improved the way we PRESENT the way we deal with disasters. FEMA this week held a press conference that they gave on short notice, giving real reporters no time to get there. Questions instead were all softballs lobbed by FEMA employees pretending to be reporters. They included such gems as "Are you happy with FEMA's response so far?"
"Of course, that could be because the questions were asked by FEMA staffers playing reporters. We're told the questions were asked by Cindy Taylor, FEMA's deputy director of external affairs, and by "Mike" Widomski, the deputy director of public affairs. Director of External Affairs John "Pat" Philbin asked a question, and another came, we understand, from someone who sounds like press aide Ali Kirin."Remember kids, you can make it in this country by being utterly incompetent -- you've just got to manage the message.
Patrick Lawler
Deb and I went to dinner with the poet Patrick Lawler last night before his reading at the local University.
I enjoyed talking to the guy, who has a sardonic, wise and environmentally conscious vibe to his work, yet still maintains his sense of humor when it comes to the absurdity of it all. He obviously loves to work and think in abstraction -- a cold drink of water after dealing with the users at my day job -- a world where I'm only allowed to present information in tightly bound packets of zeros and ones, lest the natives get restless.
I'm reminded that I need to spend more time around my kin and kind. I spend too much time online, surrounded by people who think in cages set on imaginary steel foundations.
Lawler tells us that if you Google his name, the second entry in the results is a popular online story about a man with the same name, who accidentally drove a four inch nail into his skull. Instead of constantly telling people "I'm not that Patrick Lawler," he sometimes will say he is -- and has also worked the story into his latest work.
I'm easily amused by artists who intentionally confuse their audience.
We'd lost several of his books when we were hit by the flood last year, and he offered to replace them free of charge.
His books Feeding The Fear Of The Earth, A Drowning Man Is Never Tall Enough, and Reading A Burning Book are all available on Amazon. A brief excerpt from Murray Bookchin and Susan Griffin Buy a House in Love Canal:
I want to buy a home at Love Canal.
I want to live inside the American Dream.
I want a wife out of a lipstick ad
with hair like cotton candy.
I want to drool over her.
I want to sit in the sunny kitchen
with the pink appliances and the microwave
like a coffin for one of those kids
who do their starving on TV for everyone to see.
Evil Little Buggers
Coke Guitar
Smuggling coke inside a Stratacaster while traveling from Costa Rica to Rome didn't work out well for this guy.
October 25, 2007
Robo-Skeeter
I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords.
50's Kids In Space
That kid in the yellow is ready to bust some shit up.
The End of Art
One of my favorite disinformation nuggets spit forth from the record industry (and the lawmakers who love their money) is that if we don't put an end to the menace that is peer to peer music file trading, we're facing the end of art as we know it.
I've seen this point reconstituted several times over the past decade. Here's the latest, from Lord Triesman, the UK parliamentary Under Secretary for Innovation, Universities and Skills:
"We have some simple choices to make. If creative artists can't earn a living as a result of the work they produce, then we will kill off creative artists and that would be a tragedy."Mr. Alfred Brimwold Perrywinkle or whomever the fuck, wants ISPs to filter all pirated material on their network -- a largely impossible task that makes ISPs content gatekeepers and fundamentally causes all kinds of problems down the road. There's a similar push here in the States. NBC wants ISPs to do the same -- but they've gone a step further to insist that piracy filters be embedded in home routers.
But Mister Perrywinkle doesn't care about the artists, Mr. Perrywinkle cares about the stagnant business model built up to take advantage of artists. So not only is he being a jackass, he's also insulting your intelligence. In reality, the artists can always make a living, as the majority of their income (no thanks to labels) comes from touring and merchandising (or music sales, if they find innovative ways of distribution).
Our worse case scenario is that yes, the music industry as we know it collapses, and artists and musicians act as their own labels, in turn spawning new distribution partners who treat them fairly. Yeah, that would be just horrible. God, the horror of art being art first and a commodity second. Can you imagine a world where artists just create what they like, instead of forging generic schlock tailored to appeal to the lowest common denominator? The horror. The horror.
It takes some gigantic brass balls (or a seriously warped perspective) to think that anything could kill art and music.
October 24, 2007
The Shock Doctrine
Naomi Klein's book the Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism has been on my reading list for a while.
Her primary point is that the wealthy use moments of crisis to implement policies that sane, regular citizens would normally oppose. The privatization of their water supply. The elimination of their right to sue for faulty tires. A plan to go to war, let's say, theoretically, against a country that had already been largely pacified -- simply for the benefit of a multitude of business interests.
I'm not sure that the book's premise is a revelation, and in fact as a tech writer with a mean humanism streak I see policies implemented almost daily that screw consumers in one way or another, usually right under their noses. Not only that, via the use of propaganda and PR, it's usually accomplished with the cheering support of said consumers.
So I'm interested to see if she addresses the fact that most of the radical policies being enacted by the nation's corporations aren't done in secret or while we're distracted, but are in fact done in plain sight. They're simply distorted so badly (successfully?) that the public takes them for the opposite of what they actually are.
A no child left behind act that leaves children behind, a clear sky initiative that pollutes, drug reform laws for the elderly that raise drug prices, phone industry franchise reform that limits deployment of services -- the list is endless. And these things weren't passed on 9/12 when I still had burnt wreckage in my nostrils.
They were passed right in front of our faces. They were passed with the public's nodding, disinterested, slack-jawed approval.
And it all stems back to the advent and rise of the "free market" think tank to discredit humanism and consumer advocacy via the use of sophisticated modern propaganda, something that's still seems like an issue that hasn't fully made it on to the radar of even the most politically sentient.
We're soaking in a culture that professes that caring is weakness, that humanism equates to communism, that obtaining wealth is enlightenment and that using tax dollars to help children or improve infrastructure is madness, but using tax dollars for war is wise.
I'm not sure the problem is that people are being tricked during times of crisis, but that they're being tricked constantly, and from a multitude of directions.
As I see it, the problem is that an already confused and apathetic populace is being bombarded with disinformation by the nation's wealthy on all sides (lawmakers, ads, distorted media reports, radio, think tanks), and there's no functional, truth-obsessed media to offer balance. Meanwhile, our education system, which should instill critical thinking capabilities, is quite intentionally left to rot.
The top ranked tech blog is more interested in self-promotion than truth. The top ranked cable news network is more concerned with political allegiance than truth. The top-ranked papers aren't read. And all of them are in absolute and total fealty to advertisers. In such a climate you don't need to implement greed-driven anti-consumer policies on the down low, because no media outlet with any real reach is going to illuminate the bullshit anyway.
There's no money in it.
Chris Gilmour
Chris Gilmour uses cardboard for his lifelike sculptures.
Aphex Twin - Rubber Johnny
Weirdest thing I've seen in a while...
October 23, 2007
Jigsaw Falling Into Place
The first time I heard Radiohead's new album, In Rainbows, I was disappointed. It felt like the soundtrack to an underwater cartoon about a boy and his pet squid. Part of me keeps waiting for the reckless electric dissonance of earlier albums like OK Computer, and they keep trending toward more wispy elf-pop stylings.
But with some time it's doing what all good albums do -- nibbling at the edge of my attention span until I'm singing the tracks during the day. Nude, Reckoner, and Jigsaw Falling Into Place are particular favorites:
"Just as you take my hand Just as you write my number down Just as the drinks arrive Just as they play your favourite song As your blather disappears No longer wound up like a spring Before you've had too much Come back and focus againThe walls abandon shape
You've got a cheshire cat grin
All blurring into one
This place is on a mission
Before the night owl
Before the animal noises
Closed circuit cameras
Before you're comatoseBefore you run away from me
Before you're lost between the notes
The beat goes round and round
The beat goes round and round
I never really got there
I just pretended that I had
What's the point of instruments
Words are a sawed off shotgun
If you didn't know, you can download the album from Radiohead's website and pay as much or as little as you'd like for it.
October 22, 2007
Roman Catholic
A great "what the fuck" moment captured for all time.
Product Pimps
We're headed for a digital future in which there are no journalists unearthing truths (there's no money in it), there are just various levels of public relations.
And of course the future is now....
October 18, 2007
Hello Kitty AK-47
Everyone in my family is getting one of these for Christmas.
You know, because I roll up crazy with hello kitty and shit.
More Of The Same
The six Americans left who care about things like the rule of law, justice, integrity and privacy were really screwed today. What's on TV?
Sugar
October 16, 2007
Slow On The Uptake
I'm endlessly fascinated at how long it takes the mainstream media and many liberals to realize that Ann Coulter is a crazy fucking caricature created to sell shitty books and network cable news ads.
Japi Honoo
" Japi Honoo (1968) is a mother and a wife, and the daughter of two countries: born on the hills of Central Italy, she now lives near charming Venice but her relationship with Japanese culture and aesthetic (the inspiration behind her nom the plume) is outstandingly strong, intimate and genuine. This says a bit about her dualism/antagonism/symbiosis towards materiality and spirituality.She discovers photomanipulation, her personal way of expression, in 2002, while experimenting with photography and digital editing tools. Starting from this sort of creative epiphany Japi Honoo's works have travelled through the world if visual arts and re-interpreted the classics of surrealism by replacing the paintbrush with the mouse.
Blind Wanderer
Blind Wanderer, a collection by user Dholl over at Deviant Art.
October 12, 2007
Trouble
Star Wars Trumpet Solo
If you can make it through half of this, you're more resilient than I am.
October 11, 2007
A Steampunk's Guide To The Apocalypse
Steampunk Magazine is offering its latest collection of short fiction and art as a free download entitled A Steampunk's Guide To The Apocalypse.
Kids' Guide To Dealing With Atheists
From Objective Ministries
October 09, 2007
Wolves
{ Cai Guo-Qiang, Head On, 2006 | installation of a pack of 99 life-sized wolves barreling in a continuous stream towards—and into—a constructed glass wall } (link)
‘Insanity in individuals is something rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.’ — Nietzsche
Troublemaker
October 08, 2007
Audio Illusion
This is the same video each time you play it, but the tones trick your mind into hearing a continually ascending note pattern.
The God Helmet
From Scientific American:
"Nuns answered a call for volunteers “who have had an experience of intense union with God” and agreed to participate in an experiment devised by neuroscientist Mario Beauregard of the University of Montreal. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Beauregard seeks to pinpoint the brain areas that are active while the nuns recall the most powerful religious epiphany of their lives, a time they experienced a profound connection with the divine.In a series of studies conducted over the past several decades, Persinger and his team have trained their device on the temporal lobes of hundreds of people. In doing so, the researchers induced in most of them the experience of a sensed presence—a feeling that someone (or a spirit) is in the room when no one, in fact, is—or of a profound state of cosmic bliss that reveals a universal truth. During the three-minute bursts of stimulation, the affected subjects translated this perception of the divine into their own cultural and religious language—terming it God, Buddha, a benevolent presence or the wonder of the universe."
October 05, 2007
Lessig Tackles Corruption
If there's a guy I'd like to sit down and talk to, I think Stanford professor Larry Lessig is it.
He used to focus his time on resources on copyright reform, but like myself and my dealings with the broadband sector, his work led him to understand just how dysfunctional and corrupt this government has become. While corruption is an old story, individuals don't understand just how far things have gone.
Corporations are in absolute and total control of the United States government. This is not hyperbole. Therefore we can discuss copyright reform and broadband penetration failures until we're blue in the face, but real change can't happen until the government's fealty to contributors is drastically reformed.
He's now dedicating the next decade of his life to tackle corruption in government, creating transparency in order to "shame the system into changing the way they relate to money."
Lessig talks a little bit about his decision in this blog post.
Electric Banjo For The Gods
The Beijing Airport's latest terminal looks like an electric banjo for the gods....
There's a slew of very cool buildings being built in China. It should have the idiots suffering from "we're number one OCD" worked into a lather any minute now.
October 04, 2007
Web 3.0
Someone please make it stop.
This is the kind of stupid shit you need to publish if you want to get on the new Techmeme leaderboard apparently. As if watching the Ann Coulters of technology blogging succeed at generating controversy and ad views via vanilla Techmeme wasn't depressing enough.
My daytime employer (overlooked and profitable since '99) has dropped like a rock on those rankings since announced -- to the point where we're only about as relevant to these folks as the Boston Globe. I'm trying like hell to fellate more startups and pen more egomaniacal Silicon Valley self-referential linkbait, but there's only so many hours in a day.
Whoops
"A state legislator surprised a high school class when the computer he was using projected a photo of a nude woman during a lecture on how a bill becomes a law.
State Rep. Matthew Barrett was giving a civics lesson Tuesday when he inserted a data memory stick into the school computer and the projected image of a topless woman appeared instead of the graphics presentation he had downloaded.
Police interviewed Barrett and school officials and seized the data memory stick and the computer to determine where the image came from, a state highway patrol spokesman said.
Barrett said there were a few snickers from the approximately 20 students in the senior government class at Norwalk High School when the image appeared. He said he immediately pulled the memory stick out of the computer."
October 03, 2007
Mystery Man Leaves Stone Head Warnings
John Stewart For President
Painted Pools
October 01, 2007
Cairo
From here.
Steve Erenberg's "Radio Guy"
Steve Erenberg's Radio Guy website holds a wide variety of curiosities, half of which have made appearances in your nightmares at one point or another.