"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."

Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc. (1989)

...just a little late to the party, that's all

motherfucking Sir Tim Berners-Lee has a blog.

When you invented the WWW....do you really need anything else on your resume?

Graffiti from Pompeii

Pompeii graffiti is fucking great.

samples:

I.2.20 (Bar/Brothel of Innulus and Papilio); 3932: Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!

III.5.3 (on the wall in the street); 8898: Theophilus, don’t perform oral sex on girls against the city wall like a dog

VIII.2 (in the basilica); 1820: Chie, I hope your hemorrhoids rub together so much that they hurt worse than when they every have before!

VIII.2 (in the basilica); 1824: Let everyone one in love come and see. I want to break Venus’ ribs with clubs and cripple the goddess’ loins. If she can strike through my soft chest, then why can’t I smash her head with a club?

VIII.2 (in the basilica); 1882: The one who buggers a fire burns his penis

VIII.2 (in the basilica); 1904: O walls, you have held up so much tedious graffiti that I am amazed that you have not already collapsed in ruin.

In defense of atheism

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/11/15/12016/649

You don't understand what's going on, none of this Santa stuff makes any sense and there's zero evidence for it, why can't everyone just admit that? What's the big conspiracy about? Why is everyone pretending there really is a Santa? Then it slowly dawns on you, around age ten or eleven ... the chilling, horrible truth:

They're Not Pretending. They REALLY Do Believe There Is a Santa Claus.

Your tongue is like poison

I hated The Cure. A Lot. But falling in love changes a lot of things, and the sad romantic lyrics and melancholic music struck notes closer to home as I started college, heartbroken and beat down. Every year when the winds kick up and it's temporarily nice weather, it always takes me back to being in school, climbing a hill and singing Cure songs.

Lovesong Probably the first Cure I started liking. I used to be up at all hours. A good friend of mine, who I was in love with at the time, was going to University in North Carolina. In between being a strange bird (I mean, how many Cubans could there possibly be in NC at any given time?) she worked an odd job as a research assistant and had classes all the time. So when it's 3 in the morning and you're bored and trying so hard to stay awake so that you can check which rats have died so that you can go sleep for an hour and then go to class at 730am, what do you do? You call me and I become your alarm clock. Long story short (too late), we fought about something and didn't speak for months. Then one day out of the blue I got a phone call a bit before midnight that consisted of nothing but kissing sounds (from her) and the Cure's "Lovesong" in the background.

We spoke about many things recently while having lunch at a local sushi joint -- notably my slow eating and relationships in general -- and how people change but not really etc and that I hadn't changed and I say "No, I'm actually more confident now than then...." and she laughed her charming laugh and mentioned to me how her impression of me in high school was one of high self confidence.

You could have knocked me over with a feather at that moment.

Mentioned this to the Bee and she just nodded like it was just accepted knowlege; like 'yeah, you're confident...and the sun will come up tomorrow...and water is wet etc'. Goes to show you how the things you see about yourself are not the things that others see in you. I was focusing on my attitudes towards the fairer sex and my nervousness with same, but looking back more analytically, yes, I was very sure of myself in some respects. I can't say I was ever worried or stressed about being wrong -- mostly cos I was accepting of the times I was.

I wonder how many other people saw me like that -- confident, I mean. I apparently give off asshole vibes like nobody's business, which OK, understandable; big fat hairy guy with weird facial hair (more normal now, although I still get comments when I let the ladies' tickler soul patch grow over-long), a scowl and listening to weird music and able to hold a semi-intelligent conversation about a large variety of things. I mean, I can see how that can come off as assholish or intimidating.

There Is No If.... is my favorite of their recent(ish) songs. It's from Bloodflowers, which tour I saw them on (thanks for those tickets Robert,), which is a great album. Tying those feelings when a relationship isn't going the way you want it to together with thoughts about mortality is just genius. "Remember the first time I told you I Love You? / You yawned, and I had to say it over / I said 'I Love You' I said / You didn't say a word". I think everyone has a moment like that in just about every relationship, where someone says something Important or Meaninful and the other person just...misses it. Not necessarily maliciously or whatever. But just because they don't care enough to catch it. Which can be more damning.

The Kiss, with it's pulsing bass, shrieking guitar and Robert Smith moaning "Oh, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me / Your tongue is like poison / So swollen it fills up my mouth" and "Get it out! Get it out! Get your fucking voice out of my head!", always sends me to that weird headspace where you're between pissed off and lust.

Tired of writing, so that's the end.

The Ministry of Unknown Science - Kung-Fu Fuck You - Google Video

Google, how did we get along without you?

Kung Fu Fuck You

Seriously

I love this fucking service: http://pandora.com
...and only half the reason is because of this.

a voice from long ago

So I got a phone call from a good friend that I hadn't spoken to in a long time (well, ok, we just recently-ish started talking again, in like December of last year and then didn't speak all summer but before that we hadn't spoken since like 2000) and reminiscing.

So expect a post about the Cure sometime soonish.

Evolution in the bible, says Vatican - The Other Side - Breaking News 24/7 - NEWS.com.au

Evolution in the bible, says Vatican - The Other Side - Breaking News 24/7

How bad is it when the Vatican is less of a stick in the mud than American religious fundamentalists?

international dark skies

Testing out blogger's post-by-mail feature courtesy of the ongoing blackout and my blackberry from work. Excuse spelling (assuminganyone's reading this blog--there's my ego, stroke it,yes).

Work itself has been hectic but fulfilling. The good thing about the lack of electricity is you see more starts and you feel people more --a lot of politeness at intersections w/o lights, a lot of "hey you need water man?" And personal interaction.

In some ways reminds me of being 19 and hitting the net in my dad's house, alone and learning to be comfortable in my own skin. Weather has been cool, mid to low 60s (hit 54 last monday!). People running generators to watch TV, which I just don't get man. Like, fucking do
something man....watching TV sucks your brains out. Fucking call your friends and play cards, or go fuck, or watch the night skies. As FPL gets their shit together, the light pollution is growing and it's kind of annoying me. I like finding orion.

FEMA gave us ice and snacks. Tax dollars at work, folks. You pay taxes so I can have cold pudding a week after a hurricane. Good thing we have family, canned goods and a gas stove, those fuckers took a week to get here. I can totally sympathize with folks looting food in NOLA. TVs and shoes, not so much.

The 'cane didn't bring much rain, just lots of wind. Busted some of my windows, but I'm still celebrating haloween (pictures of the horns and halo later, mayhap.)

At least we didn't lose phone lines like during katrina (but the cell coverage has been shit).

short and sweet

pending the hurricane's fucked-up-ness to go away, no real updates for the next week or so. But I leave you with pictures of the damage (see photos link in the sidebar) and a link to pandora a nifty music referal thing

WORDS: John Dies At The End

John Dies At The End is a great story. Just FYI.

MP3: Music to fuck to, part two.

I hated Aphex Twin. I heard a bunch of oh-my-god-he's-the-best-ever verbal blowjobbery about his music, and when I heard it, decided it wasn't anything special. At the time I'd just recently gotten into electronic music (it was probably 1997, I'm thinking, and I'd just started to get into Kraftwerk, Skinny Puppy and Orbital). My friend Eden wouldn't shut the fuck up about him though and eventually lent me "Selected Ambient Works, Volume II" when I asked him to recommend something nice, mellow and ambient.


Links from OpenDir
Aphex Twin: "Selected Ambient Works Volume II"
Disc 1
Disc 2

Something about the mostly-beatless waves of sound made it perfect when I snuck the girl into my dad's house; I worked nights then -- 11pm to 7am -- and so it wasn't unusual for me to come home at 730am, play some music and hit the sack. I always kept my hurricane shutters closed for the absolute darkness that they provided (windows faced East then,) and the only the LEDs from my gigantor stereo (oh, how I miss thee,) lit up the room. Something about the way it just subtly implies that it's playing, that the distant light is coming to you from somewhere different, special, somewhere between foreign and familiar is just....it's cold and comforting, clinical and a mess, organic and manufactured. Also, great for sex and/or love.

There's nothing I can tell you about the album that wikipedia won't. But if you do like the album, it's worth pointing you to this particular site that has an overly in-depth explanation of the song titles and album art.

Music to fuck to, part one.

I had probably heard about them through brainwashed. So I hopped on whatever p2p app I was using at the time and downloaded some Acid Mothers Temple. I was blown away by "La Novia" -- a solid fucking hour of the greatest psychedelic acid washed guitar I'd heard that wasn't made in the fucking sixties. Two weeks later, I was married and I was getting it on to a dozen hairy Japanese psychonauts blurring guitars with psychedelics and droning "la novia" over and over before the acid guitar starts building and explodes into everythingness. Not a bad soundtrack. Really.


Yeah, we're just regular old Japanese hippies that like to melt your brain with psychedelic rock and hang out with skulls. Alas poor Yorrick and all that. 

I don't remember much about that day after that. Listening to the song now, I can go "wow, those drums near the end are just pure fucking bombs!" and I can certainly appreciate the beautiful acoustic guitar interlude near the end, but how the music makes me feel is something I can't really put into words. I guess that's why they made music instead of writing a stupid blog entry. In any case, here's Acid Mothers Temple and The Melting Paraiso U.F.O., from

archive.org's Acid Mothers Temple live recordings (warning: far too much stuff to listen to, especially if you're easily addicted to psychedelic guitar)

When I get my hands on some money I'll ask it's dirty face "Where the hell have you been?"

The Swans were an interesting band; they started out as art-noise, just pure fucking chaos for the sake of pure fucking chaos and then turned into this giant miasma of overwhelming sensation that was -- if not more subtle or delicate, at least less hostile. The only other band whose change from what they started out as to what they became is more dramatic is probably Wire (punk to arty electronic-pop, kinda? And always with that skewed way of seeing things that made them brilliant).


"I don't know...do you think 'cop' or 'raping a slave' really work acoustically?" 

The first few Swans albums are just pure fucking punishment (cf. COP/YOUNG GOD/GREED/HOLY MONEY or FILTH/JOB TO JOB, BODY TO BODY, two compilations of their earlier recorded works,) but mid-period Swans went into a weird folk/pop/goth headspace, like Current 93 convinced Joy Division's Ian Curtis to try his hand at some fucking love songs for once, and it came out this weird goth-pop-folk bastard child, not really romantic but not really anything else. Latter-day Swans is reminiscent of Godspeed You Black Emperor! (which is a neat trick, since they predate GYBE!) in the majestic crescendos and pure fucking fill-every-available-space-in-the-air-with-glorious-sound (cf. the entirely magnificent THE GREAT ANNIHILATOR or their final (wait for it....) swansong, SOUNDTRACKS FOR THE BLIND).

The Swans were one of those revolving doors bands that have one or two central figures and then everyone else changes so often that you don't remember their names (unless you're obsessively devoted, in which case you'll know that the roster includes Sonic Youth's Thurston and Ranaldo, Godflesh's last (and Jesu's current) drummer Ted Parsons, Roli Mossiman (who stole the name "Young Gods" for his band,) among lots of others. The first few Swans records were strictly Michael Gira with whoever was in the band at the moment, but somewhere around the GREED/HOLY MONEY era, Jarboe joins and her vocals add both more aggression and a soaring beauty to the quieter moments that puts Gira's violent raging moments into starker contrast.

So. The songs:
"Failure" and the Joy Division cover "Love Will Tear Us Apart (Jarboe Version)" are from their middle period -- there's a version of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" with Gira singing, which is equally good, but I wanted to listen to Jarboe's gorgeous voice. Gira's deep voice makes "Failure" as great as it is, with that cynical, sardonic and mordant tone throughout. "When I get my hands on some money, I'll ask it's dirty face: "Where the hell have you been?'". Fucking great. These were originally on the excellent but not really representative-of-the-swans-in-general albums "Love of Live" and "White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity", both of which Michael Gira disliked very much. So if you want to get them, or more stuff in this vein, you have to go for the stuff he wanted to keep from this era, which is on the "Various Failures:1988-1992" double-CD set.

"I Am The Sun" and "MIND/BODY/LIGHT/SOUND" are both from latter-era Swans, from "The Great Annihilator". An excellent introduction point if you haven't heard them before, since it's brutal and punishing but still melodic and not overwhelming (unless you do what you ought to and crank the record 'til your speakers burst).

Maybe some other stuff like Children of God or really early (FILTH) or late (SWANS ARE DEAD) stuff later. All links are yousendit.com links and will expire in a week. Get it while the gettin's good (and check out their more recent stuff -- Gira's Angels of Light band is GREAT as is Jarboe's work with Neurosis (haven't heard her solo stuff).

Tired of Red Lights?

I-Hacked.com Taking Advantage Of Technology - DIrtY MIRT (Do It Yourself Mobile Infra Red Transmitter)

Red Birds Will Fly Out Of The East And Destroy Paris In A Night

So it was 1999 and I was going to celebrate the new year's eve and new year morning at a ranch in (unbelievably) South Dade -- somewhere in the Redlands, which is like homestead but with less people and further south. I'd gotten into Coil like a week before -- heard some stuff I liked, probably some of the mixes for NIN, and decided to get an album or two. Wound up getting "Musick to play in the dark V1" via mail order even though it wasn't supposed to be available except through the band.

So it's midnight or close enough, I'm at a party that I don't really want to be at, but hey, family's family and you gotta be there. This is so deep in the sticks, there might as well not be a city. I am lying in a quarter-acre yard, staring at the night sky, listening to this song -- except not this version of the song, but the CD mix which is about 5 minutes longer I think. This version comes from the vinyl mix.

Red Birds Will Fly Out Of The East And Destroy Paris In A Night from the vinyl version of Musick To Play In The Dark Volume 1 by Coil

The title comes from one of Nostradamus' prophecies (due for May of 2000, I think -- didn't happen, since Paris is still there.)

Pay your respects to the vultures, for they are your future.

"A Diamond Hidden In The Mouth Of A Corpse"

Ubuweb has some seriously cool shit, not the least of which is this rough little gem. Sonic Youth, Cabaret Voltaire, Diamanda Galas, Coil, Michael Gira (sans SWANS) and good ol' Wild Bill Burroughs. Fucking ROCK.

from xcrusiv

"oh shi..."

that must have been a bad day right there.

I like my town with a little bit of poison

The Poison Apple 

these videos make me kranky

Kranky news

voy alegrando el alma mia

David Hidalgo and César Rosas of Los Lobos and Raul Malo, a cuban from Miami doing country music, got a bug up their asses about some older "latin" songs. The Mavericks, Malo's primary band (up to the point that this record was released, anyway,) did pretty straight-ahead country, and they're one of the only country bands whose music I don't immediately hate. So the Los Lobos guys got a buncha guys together and went and recorded Canto with them and released it as Los Super Seven (I really love that the band name is in spanglish). I have to say that I really dislike most stereotypical "latin" music (notable exceptions: "el la ciudad de la furia" by Soda Stereo y Aterciopelados and Manu Chau's "proxima estacion...esperanza" album). But this album is nice. Really nice. The puns and rock guitar touches on "Compay Gato", the kiss-off of "Me Voy Pa'l Pueblo" (the guajiro (roughly the spanish equivalent of a hick from the sticks,) goes to town and says "L8RZ" to his chick), and the final touch of Caetano Veloso singing his own "Baby" (a big hit for Os Mutantes in Brazil in the 60's -- I like this version more, although the Os Mutantes version does have the bonus of being in english, if you're not into the portuguese singing). They have other albums (which I just found out about,) and all have rave reviews. Must pick them up soonish.

Yousendit.com link to "Baby" by Los Super Seven and Caetano Veloso
Yousendit.com link to "Me Voy Pa'l Pueblo" by Los Super Seven and Raul Malo
Yousendit.com link to "Compay Gato" by Los Super Seven

Los Super Seven website -- streaming audio and some video of the making of the album.
Amazon link (no referrer, just if'n you wanna check it out).

Secondspin.com has 9 copies for about 7 bucks each. Do yourself a favor and pick it up.

Great picture of a bridge. 

Tarbox Ramblers

Tarbox Ramblers are great. More bluesy and less jazzy than Morphine, but kinda in a similar vein. Check 'em out.

Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you.

My last year in high school and first year at uni, I ran into a lot of music that was ....well, obviously not just for me, but I was the only one that I knew that liked it or cared about it. Stuff like Soul Coughing, G. Love and Special Sauce and Jeff Buckley. I forget how I got "Grace" -- Jeff's only real album, since he died while recording the second one -- but everything about it was gorgeous. Complex guitars that I couldn't figure out, rocking really hard one moment, swooning vocals like angels singing just for the hell of it; the melancholy and the air of romance of "Lilac Wine" and "Hallelujah", the two most perfect covers I've heard (originals by Nina Simone and Leonard Cohen, in case you were wondering). Maybe I was just in or just out of love with this one girl, but everything about this one album struck all the right chords with me. "Grace" has recently been reissued with a bonus disc of a _ton_ of great stuff and a DVD of Jeff's vids. The second disc is worth it by itself, if only for the cover of Big Star's "kanga-roo" and the remix of "Dream Brother" -- also included is the one song that I could not believe wasn't on "Grace" when I finally ran across it on a bootleg, "Forget Her". Something about the mournful "I walk the streets to stop my weeping" gets me every time. His estate (viz, his mom,) and record company have been releasing and re-releasing pretty much everything he's ever done but bigger and better, e.g., "Grace" as detailed above, the "Live at the Sin-e" EP that used to be 5 songs and maybe 20 minutes long is now two discs long. Despite what seems like a record company milking what they can out of it, the packages have been done with care and (with the exception of the boxed singles,) don't seem to be made just to milk money out of consumer's wallets, but a real effort to get some of this beautiful music to people who want to hear it.

The video below is from the official site, http://www.jeffbuckley.com and the two mp3s are yousendit.com links and will expire after a week, so get 'em while the getting is good.

Forget Her video
Lilac Wine (Grace Version)
Hallelujah (Grace Version)

Gorillaz "Feel Good, Inc."

this is such a great video and song that I just had to post it. Yeah, windows streaming media -- when you absolutely want to watch it in poor quality.

[music] The Legendary Pink Dots

The Legendary Pink Dots started as a synth-poppy kinda goth-y band in the early 80's in England; a few years later, the LPD's de-facto leader Edward Ka-Spel, got sick and tired of Thatcher's conservative England and packed up and went to the Netherlands, where they are still based. Despite having been Dutch residents (as well as having some Dutch natives in the band for a while) for well over 20 years, the tone of the lyrics and vocals are still very English. Whenever I am asked to describe them, I try to dumb it down to "a jazzy Pink Floyd", but really, they've covered a lot of ground. Their early stuff is very synth-poppy (the best of which is "The Tower", a concept album about Thatcher's conservatism going to it's extreme and England reopening the Tower of London as a prison; check out the wonderful song "Astrid") as mentioned above, their middle stuff is like a bit darker and somewhat more experimental (e.g., "Asylum"), and their latter stuff goes in a more psychedelic/jazzy direction ("9 Lives to Wonder"). They've collaborated often with Skinny Puppy (c.f. The Tear Garden, whose albums are great on their own,) smoothing out some of SP's edges and getting harder themselves. I have seen them live once, and their live shows are a great great thing. If they come near you, make an effort: it'll be cheap and good entertainment.

from Epitonic.com here are some mp3s:
Hellsville '98
Belladona
Spike

and one of my personal favorites, "Siren" from "9 lives to wonder":
Yousendit.com link

Relevant webpages:
legendarypinkdots.org
the live archive, live recordings from all periods of the bands existance
WikiPedia article

Rockin' in Yoda's Dojo

I love this picture. The idea of a storm trooper doing that just makes me giggle like a maniac.

talking about pop music

what I've been listening to recently as reported by my audioscrobbler plugins installed both at home and work. Man, I've been listening to radiohead a lot lately.

first post from the bunker

So let's see how this works out.