Decoding Op. 4

the swallows are back to feast on territory
border book page 5 tuesday, important music
from a computer with audio political agenda
[must went out with expletives stands for mudder]
treated to copious amounts of ganja, animal parts the battery
may demand matches to manually administer on war torn liberia
connect administration to comply with the limits for a class b
everywhere Avermaria dumps during time everywhere the slider notes
conflicting reports arriving simultaneously from every poor town
of this summer storage allocation to our laughter having flown
away settings in the dumps pull weeds of composite metals
out of cathode ray tubes appareil numérique. Be sure you have
the controls to ninetten years! buttoning their pants and the off
underneath the down spout transferring variations in bird anatomy

if not adjustable, similar products must always be supervised
partly at the chance they remove the back from any ape so widely
reported in the media because transferring and sprays, solvents
and alcohol and abrasives carry features of this abuse to exponents
of proper human condition. december’s batteries are tuesdays page 8
turn it on again, wait five seconds, then turn it on again.

additional suggestions hung in the square.

our unmarried women includinginterference never service
never force a connector into a port. if the temperature
is always between 0 and 35 degrees…

20 Aug 2010 by Mark

Bloomberg

24 Jul 2010 by Mark

The Man I Trust

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I’ve been fooling around with an ebay bass!

16 Jul 2010 by Mark

Selections from “The Fall” by Albert Camus

Here are some selections from The Fall, a book about a lawyer who confesses his pride and disgrace to a reader over a few nights. Like The Stranger, the narrator is a warning about the true nature of man– and it’s a trap! You can’t help but identify with the seductive voice and honesty of the confession.

On those he’s taken to bed –

Some cry: “Love me!” Others: “Don’t love me!” But a certain genus, the worst and most unhappy, cries: “Don’t love me and be faithful to me!”

On punishment and judgement –

“I’m not saying to avoid punishment, for punishment without judgement is bearable. It has a name, besides, that guarantees our innocence: it is called misfortune. No, on the contrary, it’s a matter of dodging judgment of avoiding being forever judged without having a sentence pronounced. … Today we are always ready to judge as we are to fornicate.

On camaraderie –

“This is so true that we rarely confide in those who are better than we. Rather, we are more inclined to flee their society. Most often, on the other hand, we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses. Hence we don’t want to improve ourselves or be bettered, for we should first have to be judged in default. We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen. In short, we should like, at the same time, to

…

6 Jul 2010 by Mark

Noise, Lou Reed & The Thing

You have to admit that consistently doing this to critics and fans for almost 50 years is a feat.

“If you don’t think this is music, you can get the fuck out of here.” With a million happy customers every year, these are not words you associate with audiences or performers at the Montreal Jazz Festival. But John Zorn’s F-bomb from the stage was aimed at one of many agitated audience members who expressed their displeasure over the evening’s all-star trio of himself, Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed. No doubt a large part of the audience was expecting “Sweet Jane,” “Walk on the Wild Side,” or even Anderson’s “O Superman.” Instead, it was a free improv showdown that shocked the crowd, prompting dozens to walk out after two songs.

Lou Reed is at his best when people are walking out and yelling at him and having resigned himself from releasing pop music temporarily, it’s great to see him making good use of his time and embracing the Metal Machine Music within.

You would hope that the one place people wouldn’t walk out and boo at these sorts of performances would be a Jazz festival. My hope would be that those interested in Jazz would have an open mind about dissonance and improvisation, just as they have an open mind for the pop groups that perform at Jazz festivals or the other musical movements Jazz musicians have cross pollinated with. I’d also hope they’d consider the…

6 Jul 2010 by Mark

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Court Voids Foreclosures by U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo - NYTimes.com

Shared by MarkElliotCullen
Kind of a twisted way of looking at the situation considering carelessness is part of the narrative instead of the actual massive, purposeful fraud that it is.

“The broad implication is you’ve got to dot your i’s and cross your t’s,” said Kathleen G. Cully, an expert in bankruptcy and lender regulatory law in New York. “You need a proper chain of title, and in both of these cases there was a gap in the chain.”

7 Jan 2011

The Recombinant DNA of the Mash-Up - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

Milestones in sonic marriages over the past 104 years.

7 Jan 2011

Mass Supreme Court Rules Against Wells Fargo, Deutsche Case on Validity of Mortgage Transfers in Securitizations

Bottom line: even thought the Supreme Court ruling in this Massachusetts case, Ibanez, was narrow, it still represents a major blow to the securitization industry, specifically, the argument made by the American Securitzation Forum and securitization law firms that have liability on opinions they provided on residential mortgage securitizations. It is also certain to fuel more challenges in court based on failures of the parties to securitizations to adhere to the requirements of their contracts.

The judges based their ruling strictly on Massachusetts law issues, and did not opine on the New York trust law issues we have highlighted. The ruling emphasized the horrible job the banks did in protecting and documenting their ownership interest and the overall carelessness of the securitization process. Massachusetts. law is somewhat unique in requiring that not only the note (the borrower IOU) be assigned correctly, but also that the lien (the so-called mortgage, or deed of trust) also be conveyed properly.

Effectively this shows the shortcomings of the fundamental design of the securitization process, of developing a one-size-fits-all process when some states have long-standing law (real estate is very well settled) that is idiosyncratic. How, in this case, could you design a securitiztion process that did NOT account for the need to handle the assignment of the mortgage, as Massachusetts requires?

As the ruling describes, one of the issues raised in the lower court case was “whether the plaintiffs were legally entitled to foreclose on the properties where the assignments of the mortgages…

7 Jan 2011

The Last Psychiatrist: Wakefield And The Autism Fraud— The Other Part Of The Story

Fortunately enough good science gets done, loudly, powerfully, that medicine moves forward.  But the amazement shouldn't be that Wakefield's study was a fraud, the amazement should be why we haven't discovered hundreds of studies that are frauds.

7 Jan 2011

Daley is a reflection, not a cause

Few things interest me less at this point than royal court personnel changes.  I actually agree with the pro-Obama/Democratic-Party-loyal commentators who insist it doesn't much matter who becomes White House Chief of Staff because it's Obama who drives administration policy.  Obama didn't do what he did in the first two years because Rahm Emanuel was his Chief of Staff.  That view has the causation reversed:  he chose Emanuel for that position because that's who Obama is.  Similarly, installing JP Morgan's Midwest Chairman, a Boeing director, and a long-time corporatist — Bill Daley — as a powerful underling replacing Emanuel isn't going to substantively change anything Obama does.  It's just another reflection of the Obama presidency, its priorities and concerns, and its overarching allegiances.  

There’s a section of my forthcoming book about the rule of law which examines the direct causal line between the vast number of Wall Street officials in key administration positions and the full-scale exemption from accountability which financial elites enjoy even for the most egregious lawbreaking.  When you compile all of those appointments in one place, the absolute stranglehold large-scale corporate interests exert over virtually all realms of government policy is quite striking.  But it's nothing more than what the economist Nouriel Roubini meant when he told the makers of the 2010 documentary “Inside Job” that Wall Street has “captured the political system” on “the Democratic and the Republican side” alike, or what Simon Johnson describes as “The Quiet Coup”:  "The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to…

7 Jan 2011