July 2007
Chocolate Rain - A Celebration of Tay Zonday
Maybe you’ve heard of this, maybe you haven’t. You should have, because it can only make your life better:
Really how can you not love that? Carson Daly loves it, and YouTube even had a ZonDay celebration, with every video on the front page being some version of Chocolate Rain.
TayRoll!
Enjoy the works of Tay Zonday.
F.C.C. Hands Google a Partial Victory
What this means: the creation of an open-access wireless network might spell the end for the telecom monopolies (and Google’s entry into the telecom market). I like this little bit at the bottom:
“We don’t really have anything to say about this,” said Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for Verizon.
Translation: We’re screwed.
Republicans Missing the Boat of the Future
The Democrats have been willing to watch videos of Internet losers asking weird questions in poorly produced videos. Meanwhile the Republicans are demanding their questions be asked by grey-haired anchormen in well-produced stage settings. Mitt Romney asserts that answering questions from a snowman would be demeaning for a presidential candidate. No one told Mitt that after Watergate, Iran-Contra, throwing up on the Japanese, Blowjobs, and Pretzel-Choking/Mission-Accomplished, there’s no dignity left in the presidency. Maybe we can elect the snowmen? (Via Wonkette.)
Ronson Remixes Dylan
Listen to the first few seconds of Mark Ronson’s take on the Dylan song “Most Likely You’ll Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine”. For me it was a song that didn’t really stand out on Blonde on Blonde, probably less to do with its merits as a song and more to do with stiff competition from all the other burning tracks on that record. Ronson’s version adds a touch of soul with that great two-note horn riff, without sounding kitsch which is probably the biggest risk you take when you remix a forty year old track. Although I don’t find harmonicas grating, give me brass over harp any day. I’m a fan of this version and will be checking out Ronson’s work in the near future. Is it enough to make me want to drop $50 on yet another Dylan compilation? Well, that’s a different question… (Via Rock Daily.)
“Shine A Light”
Martin Scorcese’s new rockumentary, Shine A Light, is apparently going to be released on September 21 in both regular and IMAX theaters. According to IMDb, the new documentary is a “career-spanning chronicle” of the Rolling Stones, and includes footage from their “A Bigger Bang” tour. This would, I believe, make it his third rockumentary (The Last Waltz and No Direction Home being the other two).
Bancrofts Back Dow Jones Sale to Murdoch
The acquisition of The Journal, along with the planned introduction of the Fox business news channel by the News Corporation in October, makes Mr. Murdoch the most formidable figure in business news in the country.
Yeehaw. (Thanks to Jason.)
Economist Charts: Inventiveness
According to some crappy British rag, the Japanese are the most inventive country in the world. I’m guessing it’s because most of their patents are for robots that do meaningless tasks, like dancing or singing or riding little robot bicycles.
Ingmar Bergman Dies at 89
Ingmar Bergman, the “poet with the camera” who is considered one of the greatest directors in motion picture history, died today on the small island of Faro where he lived on the Baltic coast of Sweden, Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, said. Bergman was 89.
Well, there goes one of my favorite directors. (Via Daring Fireball.)
Rage Against the Machine Process Dues, Kanye Sends a Message
Since Rage Against the Machine reformed this summer, they’ve made one national headline and thrilled fans, but they’ve failed to keep their promise of finishing the Bush Administration once and for all.
Read more on Rage Against the Machine Process Dues, Kanye Sends a Message…
Abe Agonises
I think what’s been proven is that Shinzo Abe will never be as kakkoii (!!!) as Junichiro Koizumi.
Update: Abe’s LDP got owned today.
U.S. Set to Offer Huge Arms Deal to Saudi Arabia
$20 billion in weaponry. Brilliant.
Herzog’s “Rescue Dawn”
I just saw this movie tonight, so I figured I could safely recommend it now. Herzog is one of my favorite directors, and while this film certainly has its flaws and is only mediocre relative to the Herzog cinematic pantheon, I still think it’s worth seeing and mentioning on this blog, as it’s his first big, non-documentary film since Cobra Verde nearly two decades ago. Here’s a trailer for the movie (in case you haven’t seen one yet):
Man Calls 911 To Save Him From Police
Usually I don’t post these sorts of things, but I can’t help but think what someone like Zizek might say about it… (Via 0015.)
YouTube Philosophy: Giorgio Agamben (Part I)
Today’s lecture, titled “State of exception in todays world of affairs (From Guantanamo to Auschwitz),” is about Homo sacer:
Time May Not Exist
Discover Magazine questions the existence of time. Here’s a quote from the article by physicist Carlo Rovelli:
What happens with the Wheeler-DeWitt equation is that we have to stop playing this game. Instead of introducing this fictitious variable—time, which itself is not observable—we should just describe how the variables are related to one another. The question is, Is time a fundamental property of reality or just the macroscopic appearance of things? I would say it’s only a macroscopic effect. It’s something that emerges only for big things.
Greenham’s Hidden Secret
Wonkette’s synopsis of a new BBC Radio 4 documentary:
Prescott Bush was behind Wall Street coup to “implement a fascist dictatorship in the U.S. based around the ideology of Mussolini and Hitler,” which wouldn’t totally happen until his retarded grandson was installed as president seven decades later!
Hopefully this doesn’t turn out to be like Geraldo Rivera’s The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults.
“On The Air”
Despite being a big fan of David Lynch, I was surprised to find out today that he and Mark Frost had another show after Twin Peaks called On The Air. According to LynchNet, there were only 7 episodes, which is really disappointing… Anyway, you can find the first episode on YouTube (though it’s split into four parts). Here’s Part I of Episode 1:
(Via Adam Kotsko’s The Weblog.)
Velvet Howler (Vision of a World) EP
This theme song, loosely based on a glaucoma hymn, is dedicated to all the children in the world.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
And for you completists, you can download the entire two-track EP here.
Brian May’s Getting A Ph.D.
According to Rolling Stone:
While most students are on summer vacation, a few rock stars are completing their higher education. Sixty-year-old guitar icon Brian May, who left school early to form Queen, is in the process of earning a Ph.D. in astrophysics and plans to submit his thesis, “Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud,” to supervisors at Imperial College sometime in the next two weeks.
He should’ve just sent them a copy of “Too Much Love Will Kill You.” Actually, just being a member of Queen seems worthy of an honorary doctorate. I think Freddie had a few… (heh…)
To celebrate, here’s the “It’s A Hard Life” music video:
The Darjeeling Limited
Look, I found (HD) trailers for Wes Anderson’s latest film, The Darjeeling Limited. It looks pretty good, but it’s also only two minutes long. Here’s the synopsis from Apple’s website:
An emotional comedy about three brothers re-forging family bonds. The eldest, played by Wilson, hopes to reconnect with his two younger siblings by taking them on a train trip across the vibrant and sensual landscape of India.
YouTube Blondie: Rapture
Since I can’t seem to find any YouTube Philosophy videos that have English subtitles, here’s Blondie singing Rapture.
Weren’t the ’80s the best decade?
Why German Trains No Longer Run on Time
According to Der Spiegel, the German rail system is being privatized, which many expect will worsen the frequent delays already present:
…German train users fear that the sale of parts of the business to private investors starting next year, under a plan agreed by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government on Tuesday, will result in more delays — and the closure of less profitable regional routes.
But, on the other hand, some companies will make lots of money:
…Deutsche Bahn’s financial results and its global expansion are likely to whet investors’ appetites. Last year its operating profit jumped 80 percent to €2.5 billion, on revenue up 8 percent at €26.9 billion. Its workforce at the end of last year was 229,200, down 50,000 from 10 years ago.
So in the end, everyone wins, at least if you’re a top-level railway executive…
Bring the Funk: Lloyd Price’s “Stagger Lee”
Just as good as the original record, even if Price’s voice is mixed low. Sure, it’s not technically funk, but it’s funky. This band is swinging— listen to that brass!
History Textbooks With Some Varnish Missing
A poorly written, but nevertheless post-worthy article by The Lede about the politicization of history in Israel and Taiwan. I’m surprised they left out Japan, but I think we should avoid the temptation to be outraged at any of this historical revisionism. At the risk sounding incredibly cliché, all history is appropriated for ideological purposes, including the West’s current patronizing multiculturalist discourse. People in all countries should be more willing to admit that history itself is shaped by political battles, not just military ones, so that we can abandon the naive notion that there exists some sort of objective historical framework from which to judge the accuracy of another country’s textbooks.
Of course, I’m not saying that a country like Japan should be allowed to reduce World War II to a paragraph or, even worse, a footnote. We should be outraged, but we shouldn’t claim that it’s because the “natural” narrative of history has been violated. Instead, we must admit that what upsets us is something purely political in nature (ranging from an ever-present anti-Japanese sentiment to attempts to ‘stabilize’ the political climate in East Asia). If we don’t, we run the risk of depoliticizing history, which, in itself, is political par excellence, but omits its inherent malleability, something that I think is far worse than Israel omitting its “founding crime(s).”
Bring the Funk: Bootsy Collins’ “If 6 Was 9”
Since there’s no news, here’s some Bootsy Collins covering Hendrix:
Until the world decides to do something good, I’m going to keep up the funk.
Swedish Woman Gets Superfast Internet
She is a latecomer to the information superhighway, but 75-year-old Sigbritt Lothberg is now cruising the Internet with a dizzying speed. Lothberg’s 40 gigabits-per-second fiber-optic connection in Karlstad is believed to be the fastest residential uplink in the world, Karlstad city officials said.
I bet that little old lady routine is just a ruse. She’s probably the owner of The Pirate Bay.
Lady Zorro: An In-Depth Look
This post from Wonkette about an article in The Seattle Weekly reminded me of something John Waters said, but to get you up to date…
The Martin/Mitchell case has been used as the definitive proof that gays will betray their country given the first opportunity, which is why the NSA purged a bunch of “perverted” employees and “revamped employment-screening and in-house security practices” to ensure that the only queen working for American intelligence and law enforcement would remain J. Edgar Hoover.
White Stripes Play F-Chord
For there last spontaneous public show of their canadian tour (which included buses, boats, daycare centers and a YMCA), the White Stripes decided to play one note.
So we wait another 30-40 minutes while the roadies set up the stage, full drumkit, keyboards, mics, tuned guitar, amps, Stripes colors, complete set. Many people saying, “They have to be playing more than one note…” By 6pm about 300 or more fans had gathered on George Street, when Jack and Meg finally show up and take the stage. Crowd goes wild, Meg sits at the drums, Jack lifts up his guitar, and…….. BAM. One chord on his guitar and a simultaneous strike of Meg’s snare and…. that’s it. Instruments are abandoned, and Jack tells the crowd, laughing, “We have now officially played in every Canadian Province and Territory,” and leaves quickly with Meg in a car. Hundreds of fans left looking at each other. All in all, hilarious time, since it was followed by the Stripes rocking out for 2 hours at Mile One Center about an hour later, the whole thing seemed like an elaborate ruse to make for great viewing on DVD.
…Make that the only time you’ll ever hear a concert end in “One More Note!” chants. The YouTube uploader has a sense of humor, too, noting the setlist as:
1) F
(Via Stereogum)
They really know how to get people to eat out of the palm of their hands. In a good way.
Another Creepy Romney YouTube Video
This is very strange. I don’t think it comes close to the unambiguous horror of Mitt Mitt, though.
(Via Wonkette.)
Homeostatic Extremism: Or, “At least it’s an ethos!”
Since the only other news I’ve found today concerns unimportant issues like ecological disaster, here’s another good post from An und für sich about the “wisdom position”…and a clip:
…an abstract desire for “conviction” as such, without regard for the content, is itself deeply relativistic — and relativistic in a much more dangerous and virulent way than the standard liberal relativism.
On the other hand, in line with what Zizek talks about, I think this is what liberals find refreshing about characters like Buchanan in the U.S. and Le Pen in France: they offer a genuinely political position, however heinous it may be, in contrast to our current post-political discourse. So, while in some cases ‘conviction’ might lack any substantial ideology, I think it still offers a better solution than the modernist, pseudo-Habermasian one.
(And added points for The Big Lebowski reference.)
Nice Haircut
I think one of the big problems of the next ten years is going to be the collision between people’s “internet lives” and their real lives. Besides Jeff Gannon and Mark Foley, here’s another example of internet activity coming back to haunt you… and this time it’s not from a Republican politician! It seems that under anonymity even respected hardened executives (and the writer mentioned below) turn into the equivalent of any other forum boob.
… John Mackey, the chief executive of Whole Foods Market, who used a fictional identity on the Yahoo message boards for nearly eight years to assail competition and promote his supermarket chain’s stock, according to documents released last week by the Federal Trade Commission.
Mr. Mackey used the online handle “Rahodeb” (an anagram of his wife’s name, Deborah). In one Internet posting sure to enter the annals of chief-executive vanity, Mr. Mackey wrote as Rahodeb, “I like Mackey’s haircut. I think he looks cute!”
UPDATE: Here’s another NYTimes story from a while back featuring a New Republic writer who had the same problem:
The user named sprezzatura, an Italian term for studied carelessness, posted comments that were hyperbolic even in the blogging environment. After readers criticized Mr. Siegel for his post about the host of “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart, sprezzatura wrote: “Siegel is brave, brilliant and wittier than Stewart will ever be. Take that, you bunch of immature, abusive sheep.” (A later comment deplored other readers’ “inability to withstand a difference in taste without resorting to personal insult.”)
News That’s Beneath You: Eurotrash Meets LA
England started to catch on that they were really just two incredibly lucky idiots, so the Beckham’s have fled to LA. While the inevitable low-rated reality show hasn’t started yet, you can get a glimpse at the pathetic hilarity by clicking on this link and checking out the slide-show of Posh Spice Fashions.
Hailed as Glamour Magazine’s Woman of the Year (after Mother Teresa and Princess Diana, what better person to fight for the plight of the poor and needy worldwide?) her outfit was a cross between the Rocky Horror show and the chorus line at the Moulin Rouge: Chanel hotpants, lined stockings and a pair of leather fingerless gloves. She was lauded by Karl Lagerfeld while the public was more concerned about how she coped with the toilet breaks.
UPDATE: Scratch that, there is a reality show.
The special does serve another purpose besides propping up Mr. Anschutz’s soccer investment, however. It tests the American market’s seemingly insatiable demand for rich, idiotic It girls, from Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan to Britney Spears and Nicole Richie. Mrs. Beckham comes to the genre armed with an entourage of stylists, huge sunglasses and her own version of Ms. Hilton’s trademark expression, “That’s hot.” Posh deems posh things “major.” But she totters, in the requisite leopard-print high heels — through well-trod territory.
In Battle of Consoles, Nintendo Gains Allies
Inspired by the early success of the Wii, the companies that create and distribute games are beginning to shift resources and personnel toward building more Wii games, in some cases at the expense of the competing systems: the PlayStation 3 from Sony and Xbox 360 from Microsoft.
Because people want a videogame console—not another computer for their living room.
Clip from “I’m Not There”
Check out this clip from I’m Not There with Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan and David Cross as Allen Ginsberg. It looks great, and the casting is cool, but I’m not going to get my hopes up considering this guy also made Velvet Goldmine.
Kucinichland
So right now I’m in Geneva, Ohio, situated on the coast of Lake Erie. Geneva, for those of you that don’t know, is a small suburban (read: white) city adjacent to Cleveland (read: black). It seems like an opportune moment then to post some links and amazing pictures about Dennis Kucinich’s tenure as mayor of Cleveland. Not only was he the youngest mayor (31) of a major city, but he also saved Cleveland’s local public power plant, Muni Light, from being acquired by the bastard CEI.
During his tenure he was also compared with famous pop culture icons of 1950s television, including Dennis the Menace and Adolf Hitler. No mention of any small woodland creatures, however. Now, I don’t know if any of this makes him more electable, but… yeah, that’s pretty much it.
Poetry: “Out in the Arb”
How fanciful the dappled light
gracing chosen leaves.
Like the selective grace of God’s own sight
which old Calvinists believe
I smile at this analogy
My musings have received
‘til I sense a touch of pity
amongst the rustling trees
“Child, have you no dignity?”
The gnarled elm then asked of me
“Must you shelter yourself in endless thought?
Why can’t you simply be?”
“I am man, am I not?
My job is to encode
I must do, therefore, what I ought
for my mind is my abode”
“Your temples are mired in arrogance
for to God you sing your odes
when God is pure existence
he does not reflect like you
and we are of no consequence
nor with meaning are we imbued.
You think your thinking leads to ease
of lives that one day may be true
and though there’s little you cannot seize
Oh, lonely, twisted human
Just listen to the breeze”
YouTube Philosophy: Werner Herzog (Part II)
Today’s lecture is on ‘ecstatic truth.’
Today’s lecture forbids the use of air rifles.
iPhone Battery FUD Corrections
Quoted from Alex Taylor’s linked item, Steve Jobs Is A Battery Fiend, from a few weeks ago:
The lithium polymer battery on the iPhone does not come out and wears out after 300 to 400 charges
YouTube Philosophy: Steven Seagal (Part I)
I saw the movie “Under Siege” this weekend, and let me tell you, it is easily one of the best Steven Seagal movies I’ve ever seen. Not only does it include Gary Busey in drag (which I’m ashamed to say I couldn’t find easily in google image search) but it also features a great performance by Tommy Lee Jones as some sort of Keith Richards/Elvis amalgamation.
It’s also a great philosophy video of the day:
“You and I, we’re puppets in the same sick play. We serve the same master and he’s a lunatic and he’s ungrateful, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
YouTube Philosophy: Werner Herzog (Part I)
While he may not be a philosopher stricto sensu, I think this great clip (which, I should disclose, I originally got from Mark) from Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams (a documentary about the filming of Herzog’s infamous Fitzcarraldo) definitely qualifies as ‘YouTube Philosophy’ material. Today’s lecture is on Nature:
Also, has anyone else noticed the distinct lack of interesting news over the past month?
‘Song Stealing’ Avril Deserves A Break
Perez Hilton is reporting that Avril Lavigne (refered to as “song thief”) ripped off Peaches, of Fuck the Pain Away fame, in one of her latest compositions. Every few years some pop star gets accused of being a song thief, which is a ludicris idea in itself. One recent example is the Ice Ice Baby/Under Pressure riff tiff or accusations that Bob Dylan took lyrics from the poet laureate of the Confederacy. When something like this happens, blogs, fans and news organizations almost always get it wrong.
Battle at Kruger
YouTube is the salvation of mankind:
The battle at Kruger National Park in South Africa. I can’t imagine what those people must have thought.
Wikipedia’s Lamest Edit Wars
This is a great article that I did not know existed. Almost, if not just as interesting, as their list of unusual deaths. As an added incentive to read it, Freddie Mercury and Werner Herzog are both included in the list.
(Via Laughing Squid.)
Economist Charts: Defense Spending
I know this is kind of Bryan’s thing, but this chart basically sums up the state of affairs. No use elaborating.
From “The Hobbled Hegemon”, a recent Economist article which was much more dubious than the bare numbers.
Reflections on Free Agents
Interesting post and discussion over at An und für sich. Here’s an excerpt:
Thus, brain size, etc., is still important to be able to accurately map the world and predict phenomena; but the shift from consciousness to self-consciousness is necessarily a qualitative, not quantitative one. The addition of this reflexive element is purely formal and virtual, adding what appears to be only a quantitative improvement to the mapping faculty, but once it is introduced, it reorganizes the “same” raw materials into a new kind of structure whereby the organism can consciously make itself do stuff, or at least try to, by means of its ability to “perceive” itself.
New Karl Pilkington Book on the Way
If you haven’t heard the Ricky Gervais Show podcasts, you may not know who Karl Pilkington is, but you should as he’s one of the most amazing men on earth. There is no brain like his. His last book, The World According to Karl Pilkington, was basically just transcripts from the podcast with some drawings, and that alone was amazing, so I have high hopes for his next book, which is a travel guide apparently.
Get Your Theme On
This site has every episode of the great program “Theme Time Radio Hour with Bob Dylan”. A fantastic hodgepodge of everything you need to know about American music through the eyes of mamas, food, telephones, guns, leftovers and Tennessee. If you don’t know what you want to listen to, this is probably it.
Me? I like “food” and “New York”.
YouTube Philosophy: Martin Heidegger (Part II)
An English translation is provided below.
No one knows what the fate of thinking will look like. In a lecture in Paris in 1964, which I did not give myself but was presented in a French translation, I spoke under the title: “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking.” I thus make a distinction between philosophy, that is metaphysics, and thinking as I understand it. The thinking that I contrast with philosophy in this lecture—which is principally done by an attempt to clarify the essence of the Greek “aletheia” (unhiddenness) — this thinking is, compared to metaphysical thinking, much simpler than philosophy, but precisely because of its simplicity it is much more difficult to carry out. And it calls for new care with language, not the invention of new terms, as I once thought, but a return to the primordial content of our own language, which is, however, constantly in the process of dying off.
A coming thinker, who will perhaps be faced with the task of really taking over this thinking that I am attempting to prepare, will have to obey a sentence Heinrich von Kleist once wrote, and that reads “I step back before one who is not yet here, and bow, a millennium before him, to his spirit.
Dreams for Hip-Hop
Hip-hop, one of the greatest 20th century innovations in music (and probably the century’s greatest innovation in poetry), is destined to some day expand out of the American ghettos where it started. It’s simply too fresh and too big not to, and it would certainly not be the first genre to start out as an African-American innovation and end as a worldwide phenomenon. Something about this process is definitely nefarious (stealing a form of music that started as a very specific protest and turning it into something completely different), but at the same time, it’ll be nice to hear a more diverse set of ideas put forth by hip-hop. I’m interested in what Russians might want to rap about.
Wired Interviews Brian Eno
Brian Eno is definitely one of my favorite Advanced artists. Here’s a nice excerpt from the beginning of the interview in regards to generative music:
Wired News: What drew you toward working with generative art and generative music?
Brian Eno: Well, part of it is that it’s an extremely good value (laughter) because it was possible to make a lot of work from a very small amount of original material. That was one thing I found very interesting, because once I started working with generative music in the 1970s, I was flirting with ideas of making a kind of endless music — not like a record that you’d put on and which would play for a while and finish. I like the idea of a kind of eternal music, but I didn’t want it to be eternally repetitive, either. I wanted it to be eternally changing. So I developed two ideas in that way. Discreet Music was like that and Music for Airports. What you hear on the recordings is a little part of one of those processes working itself out. Theoretically, the processes were infinite but unfortunately, recordings aren’t of infinite length. So you sort of had a diagram, or really you got a “still” from the piece. That was really the best way of explaining it.
(Via Advanced Theory.)
Soft on Crime
Judging from his decision yesterday to commute the 30-month sentence of I. Lewis Libby Jr. — who was charged with perjury and convicted — untarnished ideals are less of a priority than protecting the secrets of his inner circle and mollifying the tiny slice of right-wing Americans left in his political base.
(Via Daring Fireball.)
Worthwhile Campaigns
Ever since the rise of the conservative “backlash” in the 1980’s, which has brought America such polarizing campaigns against abortion, gay-rights, and the separation of church and state, patriotic Americans have continued to lash out against the moral decay that is corroding the soul of this country. I recently encountered the newest “push” while driving on a highway to a small-town called Norfolk, NE.