Saturday, November 19, 2005
Friday, November 18, 2005
FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS, WHATEVER ELSE YOU DO, YOU GOTTA WATCH THE PANDA CAM!
http://animal.discovery.com/cams/pandavidr.html
The secret word is Butterstick
http://animal.discovery.com/cams/pandavidr.html
The secret word is Butterstick
Thursday, November 17, 2005
SINGULARITY
So it’s Thursday in what is proving to be a long and anxious week, with the Santa Annas blowing out from the canyons, where pachuco demons hawk starmaps to Gehenna, with maybe a thirty degree temperature difference between night and day, and the very air feeling somehow eerie and estranged. And I guess it was in an early phase of this state of mind when I took a look at The Singularity for LA CityBeat...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2881&IssueNum=128
I also discovered that The Pasadena Weekly had reprinted the crystal meth story that I wrote a couple of months ago. If you didn’t read it then, here’s another chance. Speed, Nazis, JFK, Mods, the Mexican Mafia, drag queens and much, more. Loads o’ fun.
http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/feature.html
IDIOT AMERICA
Some girl sent over a truly excellent piece from Esquire by Charles P. Pierce on Intelligent Design and Idiot America. Here’s a sample (although its reproduced on a weird deviantArt message board, but don't let the trolls deter you)...
Let's take a tour, shall we? For the sake of time, we'll just cover the last year or so. A federally funded abstinence program suggests that HIV can be transmitted through tears. An Alabama legislator proposes a bill to ban all books by gay authors. The Texas House passes a bill banning suggestive cheerleading. And nobody laughs at any of it, or even points out that, in the latter case, having Texas ban suggestive cheerleading is like having Nebraska ban corn. James Dobson, a prominent conservative Christian spokesman, compares the Supreme Court to the Ku Klux Klan. Pat Robertson, another prominent conservative preacher, says that federal judges are a more serious threat to the country than is Al Qaeda and, apparently taking his text from the Book of Gambino, later sermonizes that the United States should get with it and snuff the democratically elected president of Venezuela.
http://forum.deviantart.com/community/politics/525981/
The secret word is Phosphorus
So it’s Thursday in what is proving to be a long and anxious week, with the Santa Annas blowing out from the canyons, where pachuco demons hawk starmaps to Gehenna, with maybe a thirty degree temperature difference between night and day, and the very air feeling somehow eerie and estranged. And I guess it was in an early phase of this state of mind when I took a look at The Singularity for LA CityBeat...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2881&IssueNum=128
I also discovered that The Pasadena Weekly had reprinted the crystal meth story that I wrote a couple of months ago. If you didn’t read it then, here’s another chance. Speed, Nazis, JFK, Mods, the Mexican Mafia, drag queens and much, more. Loads o’ fun.
http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/feature.html
IDIOT AMERICA
Some girl sent over a truly excellent piece from Esquire by Charles P. Pierce on Intelligent Design and Idiot America. Here’s a sample (although its reproduced on a weird deviantArt message board, but don't let the trolls deter you)...
Let's take a tour, shall we? For the sake of time, we'll just cover the last year or so. A federally funded abstinence program suggests that HIV can be transmitted through tears. An Alabama legislator proposes a bill to ban all books by gay authors. The Texas House passes a bill banning suggestive cheerleading. And nobody laughs at any of it, or even points out that, in the latter case, having Texas ban suggestive cheerleading is like having Nebraska ban corn. James Dobson, a prominent conservative Christian spokesman, compares the Supreme Court to the Ku Klux Klan. Pat Robertson, another prominent conservative preacher, says that federal judges are a more serious threat to the country than is Al Qaeda and, apparently taking his text from the Book of Gambino, later sermonizes that the United States should get with it and snuff the democratically elected president of Venezuela.
http://forum.deviantart.com/community/politics/525981/
The secret word is Phosphorus
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
BILL O’REILLY
has started an enemies list and I sooooo want to be on it!
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/11/14/oreilly-mccarthyism/
has started an enemies list and I sooooo want to be on it!
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/11/14/oreilly-mccarthyism/
WHILE SONY MURDERS YOUR COMPUTER...
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/computing/20051115-1407-sony-copyprotection.html
(Class action suit?)
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/computing/20051115-1407-sony-copyprotection.html
(Class action suit?)
MY BRANE STILL HURTS
No time today to continue yesterday’s mental stumblings, but, fear not, I will return to them. Maybe another part of the explanation for my confusion is that I have been lately working on a summation of The Singularity, both the hot new sub-genre of science fiction and the event apex in about thirty years when the human race will be overtaken by machines. But, for that, you’ll have to wait until Thursday when LA CityBeat will be published and, of course, a link posted here.
THE NOVELIST’S SKETCHBOOK
When I was in art school they encouraged us to keep a sketch book. I didn’t do much drawing in mine, tending rather to make small written notes and past in newspaper clips, which wasn’t exactly what was required, but you could get away with just about anything in a British art school in the early 1960s. The habit kinda continued and even today and I save found objects like the clip below on the computer. The image is remarkably vivid.
SHIZUOKA — A teenage girl arrested for allegedly attempting to poison her mother had been carrying with her tiny bottles containing poison as her amulets, investigative sources said Sunday. According to investigations, the 16-year-old high school student, whose name is being withheld because she is a minor, bought a total of 50 grams of thallium — banned for sale to those under 18 — at a drugstore near her home in the city of Izunokuni in August and September. She has since carried with her tiny bottles containing thallium in the forms of powder and water solution as amulets, the sources said, adding the bottles measure about 2 centimeters in diameter and 15 cm in length.
IT’S AMAZING WHAT YOU FIND
I come across a lot of stuff on my webwalks, but an18 minute radio interview from four or five years ago was about as unexpected as parts of it are tedious. (Although others are quite amusing.)
http://musicsojourn.com/AR/Prog/page/f/FarrenMick.htm
The secret word is Marconi
No time today to continue yesterday’s mental stumblings, but, fear not, I will return to them. Maybe another part of the explanation for my confusion is that I have been lately working on a summation of The Singularity, both the hot new sub-genre of science fiction and the event apex in about thirty years when the human race will be overtaken by machines. But, for that, you’ll have to wait until Thursday when LA CityBeat will be published and, of course, a link posted here.
THE NOVELIST’S SKETCHBOOK
When I was in art school they encouraged us to keep a sketch book. I didn’t do much drawing in mine, tending rather to make small written notes and past in newspaper clips, which wasn’t exactly what was required, but you could get away with just about anything in a British art school in the early 1960s. The habit kinda continued and even today and I save found objects like the clip below on the computer. The image is remarkably vivid.
SHIZUOKA — A teenage girl arrested for allegedly attempting to poison her mother had been carrying with her tiny bottles containing poison as her amulets, investigative sources said Sunday. According to investigations, the 16-year-old high school student, whose name is being withheld because she is a minor, bought a total of 50 grams of thallium — banned for sale to those under 18 — at a drugstore near her home in the city of Izunokuni in August and September. She has since carried with her tiny bottles containing thallium in the forms of powder and water solution as amulets, the sources said, adding the bottles measure about 2 centimeters in diameter and 15 cm in length.
IT’S AMAZING WHAT YOU FIND
I come across a lot of stuff on my webwalks, but an18 minute radio interview from four or five years ago was about as unexpected as parts of it are tedious. (Although others are quite amusing.)
http://musicsojourn.com/AR/Prog/page/f/FarrenMick.htm
The secret word is Marconi
Sunday, November 13, 2005
MY BRAIN HURTS
(When in crisis look to the old Python)
MY BRANE HURTS
(When in crisis look to string)
Unless you have the fortune to become a tediously predictable mega-star -- like Bono or the equivalent -- the artist-outlaw is essentially a scavenger, a semi-domesticated coyote, an opportunist wolf, a carrion bird, skulking on perimeters and peripheries of the massive and infinitely sluggish mainstream, living off the roadkill-debris and subverted medications of the culture, although, at certain other times, when pride dictates what might be another man’s folly, using his or her mobility to lope short ways up the untrod trail, all up ahead, and return with word – handed down whether they want it or not – that beyond the mountains we can expect the dawn. Or not.
The metaphor is of a vast nomadic Mongol encampment – patched yurts, walled-eyes ponies and no plumbing, but a TV in every pot – over-bloated so far beyond its functional capacity that it founders into the Phase of Lemming Transfixion , a Golden Horde now peeling gilt and verdigris, with no more world to conquer, pointlessly hoarding garbage for chicken comfort, and hardly covering a honest mile in a sweating day. Aimless fellaheen, sullen and lumpen trudge behind leaders from an exhausted gene pool, too numb for coupe or insurrection, too numb to cope, save to spread disease and rumors of disease, to feed on fear and craven recoil as, in the flash undirected feral fury, fights break out around the swampland gin mills and the temples of insanity – neglecting, of course, to educate the children in anything but the art of Molotov cocktail. (Is Paris burning?)
But more importantly, whole areas of prime cultural real estate wink out and reappear elsewhere in different form and shimmering guise by processes of complex phantomization. The Royal Library of Alexandra mutates to an electron stream, but who can haunt its stacks without, by necessity, becoming a phantom?
(This train was kinda set in motion by the following story in today’s New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/business/yourmoney/13frenzy.html?th&emc=th
Just the very idea that (say) the intro to the Kinks "You Really Got Me Should" be the ringtone on some asshole’s cell phone -- braying out in the movieshow or on line at bank, instead of calling us to arms or at least sexy drunken mayhem -- began building a head of steam on a Sunday when I would have been very happy to hide under the blankets humming "Make The World Go Away.")
More (probably much more) to...
The secret word is Come
CRYPTIQUE – Like TIE fighters* round the Millennium Falcon.
* http://www.starwars.com/databank/starship/tiefighter/
(When in crisis look to the old Python)
MY BRANE HURTS
(When in crisis look to string)
Unless you have the fortune to become a tediously predictable mega-star -- like Bono or the equivalent -- the artist-outlaw is essentially a scavenger, a semi-domesticated coyote, an opportunist wolf, a carrion bird, skulking on perimeters and peripheries of the massive and infinitely sluggish mainstream, living off the roadkill-debris and subverted medications of the culture, although, at certain other times, when pride dictates what might be another man’s folly, using his or her mobility to lope short ways up the untrod trail, all up ahead, and return with word – handed down whether they want it or not – that beyond the mountains we can expect the dawn. Or not.
The metaphor is of a vast nomadic Mongol encampment – patched yurts, walled-eyes ponies and no plumbing, but a TV in every pot – over-bloated so far beyond its functional capacity that it founders into the Phase of Lemming Transfixion , a Golden Horde now peeling gilt and verdigris, with no more world to conquer, pointlessly hoarding garbage for chicken comfort, and hardly covering a honest mile in a sweating day. Aimless fellaheen, sullen and lumpen trudge behind leaders from an exhausted gene pool, too numb for coupe or insurrection, too numb to cope, save to spread disease and rumors of disease, to feed on fear and craven recoil as, in the flash undirected feral fury, fights break out around the swampland gin mills and the temples of insanity – neglecting, of course, to educate the children in anything but the art of Molotov cocktail. (Is Paris burning?)
But more importantly, whole areas of prime cultural real estate wink out and reappear elsewhere in different form and shimmering guise by processes of complex phantomization. The Royal Library of Alexandra mutates to an electron stream, but who can haunt its stacks without, by necessity, becoming a phantom?
(This train was kinda set in motion by the following story in today’s New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/business/yourmoney/13frenzy.html?th&emc=th
Just the very idea that (say) the intro to the Kinks "You Really Got Me Should" be the ringtone on some asshole’s cell phone -- braying out in the movieshow or on line at bank, instead of calling us to arms or at least sexy drunken mayhem -- began building a head of steam on a Sunday when I would have been very happy to hide under the blankets humming "Make The World Go Away.")
More (probably much more) to...
The secret word is Come
CRYPTIQUE – Like TIE fighters* round the Millennium Falcon.
* http://www.starwars.com/databank/starship/tiefighter/