Dana Spiotta - "Jelly and Jack"

A woman uses the telephone to call semi strangers (friends of her friends) and, slowly connecting more and more to them, or rather, making them connect more and more to her, feels herself beautiful while on the phone, forgets her middle aged, overweight body, feels loved and wanted without every really lying (too much).

Amazing story telling. The mix of her thoughts, her wishes and desires, and the actual conversations, is amazing.

GRUB2 0-day attack explained

Great explanation with full details on the assembly code and things like IVT

http://hmarco.org/bugs/CVE-2015-8370-Grub2-authentication-bypass.html

the Soft Moon

Very X-Rated ish music. Almost industrial at points.

Extra points: "Being"

skeuomorphism

Skeuomorphism is a concept in technological design that describes our tendency to retain tactile aspects of the physical world as we move more of our lives onto screens. At Apple, for example, skeuomorphic design was thought to ease the transition from the real to the virtual. Turning a page on your Mac or iPhone would closely resemble turning a page in a real notebook, paper sounds included. If you can recreate the physical aspects of a very familiar, tactile world in the flat, virtual reality of an operating system, designers have long believed, maybe more people will feel comfortable using the product.

http://fusion.net/story/164975/sex-toy-vibrator-shape-design-no-penis/?mod=e2this

the Comsat Angels - "I Come from the Sun"

Another interesting song from a J.G. Ballard inspired playlist.

http://8tracks.com/bynar/he-thought-of-cars-part-2

the National - "Conversation 16"

Good enough, although not as industrial as the rest of the playlist.
http://8tracks.com/sowegotbusiness/tamer-animals-a-high-rise-playlist

Pocket Knife Army - "This Time I'll Come Out Unharmed"

Beginning of "Grow Up" has strong Portishead "P3" overtones (that "terminator song")

Sneaker Pimps

• "Half Life" - ok song
• "Strike me down" - a very Rob Zombie "Clubbed to Death" remix-y song

Korn - "Paranoid and Aroused"

Well, it's a fitting title for many moments.

clocksources and all things ticking

Though very Intel specific, a good and fairly in-depth read on Linux kernel and clocksources. Woei!

https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2013/06/20/eliminate-the-dreaded-clocksource-is-unstable-message-switch-to-tsc-for-a-stable

Sevdaliza - "Children of Silk" (2015)

EP, triphop. Intriguing.

Go March - "Go March" (2015)

Kraut, elektro, Belgian, debut. Instrumental. Quite good.

• "Slow Horse" - bit of a Spanish guitar influence

tty magic, intricacies, and amazing details

http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/tty/index.php

Basically I just want to copy the whole article. It is an amazing read.

Tears, or MY EYES BLEED CHEMICALS

Crying is a more complicated process than you'd think. First of all, there are really three different types of tears. Basal tears keep our eyes lubricated constantly. Reflex tears are produced when our eyes get irritated, like with onions or when something gets into our eyes. The third kind of tear is produced when the body reacts emotionally to something. Each type of tear contains different amounts of chemical proteins and hormones. Scientists have discovered that the emotional tears contain higher levels of manganese and the hormone prolactin, and this contributes in a reduction of both of these in the body; thus helping to keep depression away. Many people have found that crying actually calms them after being upset, and this is in part due to the chemicals and hormones that are released in the tears.

Daft Punk - "Technologic"

The music itself isn't the best, but the quiet parlando part at the beginning, with the empty revved electrolized voice just listing words, would be an awesome start of a film or clip. Imagine, just a black screen, cinema in darkness, those words, for thirty seconds or more, then either very slowly or very fast images of people consumed by technology.

(perhaps I'm describing the clip?)

Siouxie and the Banshees - "Strange Fruit" (Through the Looking Glass)

Almost carnavalesque song, slowing down, waltzing...

Gloomy Synthesizer Sundays - part 2.

So... post-punk came from punk, borrowed its DIY attitude, its love for modern art (symbolism, Dadaïsm), applied that to rock music, to look beyond the usual rock music boundaries (using dubstep, synths, etc), but not necessarily limiting itself to the sonic resonances of punk...

And from there came, end of the 70's, crashing into the 80's, among others, cold wave. Primarily French music style, though it was Kraftwerk and Siouxie and the Banshees who first provoked that description.

http://8tracks.com/aboynamedpalle/gloomy-synthesizer-sundays-part-2

Nancy Nova - "no no no" : funny song

NTD - Start Over

Drieluik waarin vooral de eerste twee delen fantastisch absurd en surreëel waren.

Deel drie, "puur dans", was minder makkelijk te volgen (minder gevoel voor een verhaal?) maar nog steeds indrukwekkend. Muziek deed sterk denken aan Clint Mansell maar was van Max Richter.

Calexico - Edge of the Sun (2015)

Not the whole album is great but:

• Coyoacán - pretty nice
• Roll Tango (bonus track) - nice
• Volviendo (bonus track) - great Spanish parlando song. I don't know what he says and I do not care, it sounds amazing.

Orange Blossom / Hend Ahmed - "Mexico" (Under the shade of violets)

Great mexican-guitar song with female French vocals.

Interesting album as well... powerful, nearly gothic with its untranslatable female voice and power rock riffs.

Fuzz - "II" (2015)

Curious rock album full of old 70's scree rock sounds, yet also a curious violin or something on "Silent Sits The Dust Bowl", while "Say Hello" has a distinct The Doors feeling to it.

Clare Bowen and Sam Palladio - "If I Didn't Know Better"

Slow sad country. Beuatiful.

Delta Rae - "I Will Never Die"

Powerful female singer song. Hints of rhythm & blues.

Found via nice 8tracks: http://8tracks.com/missfit2/payday

short stories

Writers and readers: If you could give someone who has never read a short story one short story to start with, with the aim of getting her to fall in love with the form, what would you give her?

http://www.rachellyon.work/blog/

Arbeid Adelt! - "Slik"

Belgische electropop? "electrobelpopensemble" blaft 3voor12 zelfs. Bizarre teksten. Intrigerend.

"Wat het zoal doet / dat weet ik niet / wat het nu weer doet / dat deert me niet"

Meteor Musik - "Asteriu"

Belgium, it says, but Russian voices... real ones?

Nice enough synth scapes, woooeeeeeewyyyy 80s sounds, instrumental.

Michael Sandel - Justice - What is the right thing to do

http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sandel_what_s_the_right_thing_to_do

Great talk (only watched 15 min or so) about justice and the moral / right thing to do.

Consequential morality: locates morality in the consequences of an act
Categorical morality: locates morality in certain duties and rights

"Philosophy teaches us, and unsettles us, by confronting us with what we already know."

"Philosophy estranges us from the familiar, not by supplying new information, but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing. ... Once familiar things estrange, nothing will ever be the same again."


Part 2
John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism, says there is a distinction between higher and lower pleasures (important when attaching a value to them) : "Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, then that is the more desirable pleasure."

Another one by Mill: "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their side of the question."

Flying Horseman - "Night is Long" (2015)

Particularly the long, last, eponymous song is beautiful and haunting.

This reminds me of both Dead Can Dance as well as Japan's "Nightporter".

Albert Camus - "The Rebel" (an essay on the man in revolt)

"Once crime was as solitary as a cry of protest; now it is as universal as science. Yesterday it was put on trial; today it determines the law."

p4. "But slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or by a taste for the superhuman, in one sense cripple judgment. On the day when crime dons the apparel of innocence - through a curious transposition peculiar to our times - it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself."

p5. "Each day at dawn, assassins in judges' robes slip into some cell: murder is the problem today."

p6. "The final conclusion of absurdist reasoning is, in fact, the repudiation of suicide and the acceptance of the desperate encounter between human inquiry and the silence of the universe."

p10. "The first and only evidence that is supplied me, within the terms of the absurdist experience, is rebellion. Deprived of all knowledge, incited to murder or to consent to murder, all I have at my disposal is this single piece of evidence, which is only reaffirmed by the anguish I suffer. Rebellion is born of the spectacle of irrationality, confronted with an unjust and incomprehensible condition. [...] Rebellion engenders exactly the actions it is asked to legitimate. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that rebellion finds its reasons within itself, since it cannot find them elsewhere."

p15. "The part of himself that he wanted to be respected he proceeds to place above everything else and proclaims it preferable to everything, even to life itself. It becomes for him the supreme good. Having up to now been willing to compromise, the slave suddenly adopts ("because this is how it must be . . .") an attitude of All or Nothing. With rebellion, awareness is born."

p17. "... the rebel's aim is to defined what he is. He does not merely claim some good that he does not possess or of which he was deprived. His aim is to claim recognition for something which he has and which has already been recognized by him, in almost every case, as more important than anything of which he could be envious."

p18. "The rebel, [...] refuses to allow anyone to touch what he is. He is fighting for the integrity of one part of his being. He does not try, primarily, to conquer, but simply to impose."

p19. "We insist that the part of man which cannot be reduced to mere ideas should be taken into consideration - the passionate side of his nature that serves no other purpose than to be part of the act of living."

p20. "...the spirit of rebellion finds few means of expression in societies where inequalities are very great (the Hindu caste system) or, again, in those where there is absolute equality (certain primitive societies). The spirit of rebellion can exist only in a society where a theoretical equality conceals great factual inequalities."

Albert Camus - "The Fall"

• choice of words: Dutch are "primates"
• hearing a Frenchman describe my country
• how talking about de Zuiderzee puts it in a very specific period for me

p27. "To achieve notoriety it is enough, after all to kill one's concierge. Unhappily, this is usually an ephemeral reputation, so many concierges are there who deserve and receive the knife."

p31. "Friendship is less simple. It is long and hard to obtain, but when one has it there's no getting rid of it; one simply has to cope with it."

p33. "A woman who used to chase after me, and in vain, had the good sense to die young. What room in my heart at once! And when, in addition, it's a suicide! Lord, what a delightful commotion! One's telephone rings, one's heart overflows, and the intentionally short sentences yet heavy with implications, one's restrained suffering and even, yes, a bit of self-accusation!"

p48. "I could never talk without boasting, especially if I did so with that shattering discretion that was my specialty."

p50. "This I progressed on the surface of life, in the realm of words as it were, never in reality."

p55. "What does it matter, after all, if by humiliating one's mind one succeeds in dominating everyone? I discovered in myself sweet dreams of oppression."

p57. "My relationship with women was natural, free, easy, as the saying goes. No guile in it except that obvious guile which they look upon as a homage. I loved them, according to the hallowed expression, which amounts to saying that I never loved any of them. I always considered misogyny vulgar and stupid, and almost all the women I have known seemed to me better than I. Nevertheless, setting them so high, I made use of them more often than I served them. How can one make it out?"

p63. "Believe me, for certain men at least, not taking what one doesn't desire is the hardest thing in the world."

p66. "I couldn't deceive myself as to the truth of my nature. No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures - have I read that or did I think it myself, mon cher compatriote?"

p67. "Be it said, moreover, that as soon as I had rewon that affection I became aware of its weight. In my moments of irritation I told myself that the ideal solution would have been the death of the person I was interested in. Her death would, on the one hand, have definitely fixed our relationship and, on the other, removed its compulsion. But one cannot long for the death of everyone or, in the extreme, depopulate the planet in order to enjoy a freedom that cannot be imagined otherwise. My sensibility was opposed to this, and my love of mankind."

p72. "We are reaching the dike. We'll have to follow it to get as far as possible from these too charming houses. Please, let's sit down. Well, what do you think of it? Isn't it the most beautiful negative landscape? Just see on the left that pile of ashes they call a dune here, the gray dike on the right, the livid beach at our feet, and in front of us, the sea the color of a weak lye-solution with the vast sky reflecting the colorless waters. A soggy hell, indeed! Everything horizontal, no relief; space is colorless, and life dead."

p76. "Martyrs, cher ami, must choose between being forgottne, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood - never!"

p83. "A liking for truth at any cost is a passion that spares nothing and that nothing resists. It's a vice, at times a comfort, or a selfishness. Therefore, if you are in that situation, don't hesitate: promise to tell the truth and then lie as best you can. You will satisfy their hidden desire and doubly prove your affection."

p120. "I have ceased to like anything but confessions, and authors of confessions write especially to avoid confessing, to tell nothing of what they know. When they claim to get to the painful admissions, you have to watch out, for they are about to dress the corpse."

Lera Lynn - "Least Favorite Life"

Amazingly haunting. Heard on the first episode of True Detective.

Swans - "Mona Lisa, Mother Earth"

Voice-heavy 80s sounding song. Intriguing. Second in playlist
http://8tracks.com/silent-alarmm/indie-classics

Marbert Rocel - "With Your Love" (In The Beginning, 2015)

Sounds very familiar but isn't. Nice enough.

Aesthetic Perfection - "Under Your Skin" (All Beauty Destroyed, 2011)

A slow Marilyn Manson, in the way he sings. Hints of industrial, but very slow.

via http://8tracks.com/themarauderbandit/wanna-play

random songs from random playlists (was: crazy songs)

• Scissor Sisters - "I Can't Decide"
  whether to let you live or die. Very 80s and plonkywonkers.
  via http://8tracks.com/witchboy/that-joke-isn-t-funny-anymore
• Plain White T's - "Killer"
  via http://8tracks.com/babydollspice/sweetie-go-get-mommy-s-bazooka
• Harley Quinn - "Say That We're Sweethearts Again"
  put down that acid and say that we're sweethearts again
• the Dresden Dolls - "Missed Me"
  MISSED ME... KISSED ME.... SIMPLE. AS. CAN. BE.
• Ida Maria - "I Eat Boys Like You For Breakfast"
  trumpets!
• various songs by Emilie Autumn
  very gothic, bit tiresome after a while

DATAStream - "Found In The Attic"

http://8tracks.com/volpestarks/blade-runner-a-future-noir-mixtape-1

Very clunky off-key piano ditty of 30 sec or so, of the scary old film variety.

Metric - "Pagans in Vegas" (2015)

Happy girly electropop

• Lie Lie Lie - starts with something about lobotomy

Samuel Johnson on marriage

"a second marriage represents the triumph of hope over experience."

We think it's a sort of cynical wisecrack - you couldn't get along with A but you're sure you'll get along great with B. We think it's about divorce. In Johnson' time there was hardly any diverce. But there was a lot of early death. The way you parted from your spouse was, she died. Johnson's did. So that was the experience, love somebody and she dies. The hope was the new one wouldn't die.

[from John Crowley, "Dæmonomania"]

Les Amours Imaginaires

Slow love-triangle drama. At some point, three quarter into the film, it was becoming quite slow, even for such a film. Though the end looped everything nicely.

Melou - "Bound"

Noir, indie, female voice. Not Vaya Con Dios, and yet. The way of singing, yes. Not the style of the songs.

• Ribbon and a Crown

post rock playlist

http://8tracks.com/vatsan/the-ultimate-post-rock-study-playlist

• Tunturia - "Sinking"
  cannot find anything on spotify (which is a good thing), but fairly interesting sound scapes

Beans & Fatback - "Heroine Lovestruck"

Surfy.

• "Gilda" : catchy
• "Heroine Lovestruck" : ghostlike

Richard Brautigan - "Your Catfish Friend"

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
   one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
   of my affection
and think "It's beautiful
here by this pond.    I wish
    somebody loved me,"
I'd love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
   at peace,
and ask yourself, "I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond?   It seems like
a perfect place for them."

Diane Coffee - "Everybody's a Good Dog"

Very seventies sound to it. Can't describe it otherwise. Pleasant to have in the background. Very ... melodic.

Low - "Ones and Sixes" (2015)

Songs are ok.

• The Innocents: quite intrigued by the low flarfy "beat"

Loin des Hommes (Far From Men) (2014)

Beautiful quiet film with Viggo Mortensen and Reda Kateb about a schoolteacher and a man in Algeria 1954, who, against the backdrop of rebellion, are thrown together for a lonely journey.

Based on the short story "The Guest" (le visiteur?) by Albert Camus.

Amazing emptiness.

Music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.

Written and directed by David Oelhoffen, somebody to keep looking for.

Nick Cave in ... Russian?? Hungarian?? who cares!

"W moich ramionach" by Przyjaciele

Cave's most famous songs, totally incomprehensible, from a textual point of view. Awesome.

Mark Lanegan - "Houston: Publishing Demos 2002" (2015) and "A Thousand Miles of Midnight - Phantom Radio Remixes" (2015)

• from the demo's: Blind
• from the remixes: The Killing Season (UNKLE remix)

FilosofischeStilte - "I Forgot About it, When I Thought About It" (2015)

Instrumental, electronics. Good sound & beat (not fast). The Hague.

Actually, some songs have voices, but the words are hardly recognizable and do not intrude.

Very nice.

Predestination (2015)

Right up there with Looper in the the ultimate time-travel she/he is his own father/mother loop. Wonderful film. What I loved is how she tells her story in the beginning, taking quite some time to do so. No constant scifi time travel magic. Just true story.

Ane Brun - "My Lover Will Go"

I'm grabbing a bottle of wine over you

I'm craddling a bottle of wine over you


either way... although it's not one of her best songs.

Slow West (2015)

Beautiful western with Michael Fassbender and Kodi Smit-McPhee. Written by John Maclean. Supposedly Fassbender signed up before a single letter of the script was written. Keep an eye on that Maclean guy. Great music, great shots, great pace (yes, slow, as some of the best films are)

Great OST by Jed Kurzel.

As well as "The Minstrel's Song" by Brian Michael Mills.

The film, the story and the music: all are good for writing.

Kongos - "Lunatic" (2014)

Americana + African roots, the Ars Technica dude described them.

Not sure, but they have an accordeon, it is slightly punky and gypsy.

• I'm Only Joking - woooooh
• Come with me Now - nice!

Eddie Vedder - "Long Nights" (Into the Wild, 2007)

Shivers.


Let me feel
I'm falling
I am falling safely to the ground
Ah...

I'll take this soul that's inside me now
Like a brand new friend
I'll forever know
I've got this light
And the will to show 
I will always be better than before

Long nights allow me to feel...
I'm falling...I am falling
The lights go out
Let me feel
I'm falling
I am falling safely to the ground
Ah...

La Femme - "Psycho Tropical Berlin" (2013)

Nice enough songs, though not many of them jump to your attention.

• Antitaxi - instrumental, surfy
• La Femme Ressort - strange, nice

Apparat - "The Soft Voices Die" (The Devil's Walk, 2011)

Intriguing slow song, with a nearly-irritating high weeeeep effect. Soft electronic tingles, violins.

Taylor Swift swallows the world

https://samkriss.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/taylor-swift-swallows-the-world/

They follow her, while Taylor Swift is one of those dangerous rarities: a person that doesn’t look like anything. Not strange-looking, exactly, not amorphous or indistinct, but vast: a trackless and uncharted infinity. Something hungry.

Taylor Swift has always resisted the crude general categories that female recording artists are usually shunted into: never quite succumbing to the coruscatingly coquettish malice of the teen icon, or steatopygous sexual auto-objectification, or modish androgyny.

...

For years now, she’s made a point of never showing her navel, carefully engineering various crop tops and swimsuits to keep it hidden from paparazzi and their slobbering navel-crazed public. Fine: I don’t tend to make a point of parading around my naked umbilicus either. It’s a revolting hole, a foetid salty lint-clogged scar, a gaping absence that’s only a reminder of something irretrievably lost. With only that hole remaining the condition of humanity must always be one of absolute disconnection; we’ve been snipped apart from a primal unity, and it’s not coming back until the day we die. Our genitals tell us that we can bring ourselves together, and even create something new; our navels whisper bitterly that we will always be alone.

acheiropoieta

Acheiropoieta (Byzantine Greek: ἀχειροποίητα, "made without hand"; singular acheiropoieton) — also called Icons Made Without Hands (and variants) — are a particular kind of icon which are said to have come into existence miraculously, not created by a human painter. Invariably these are images of Jesus or the Virgin Mary. The most notable examples that are credited by tradition among the faithful are, in the Eastern church the Image of Edessa or Mandylion (depending on the version of its origin story followed) and the Hodegetria, and in the West, the Veil of Veronica, the Manoppello Image and the Shroud of Turin.

Although the most famous acheiropoieta today are mostly icons in paint on wood panel, they have been in several other types of technique, such as mosaics, painted tile, and cloth. Ernst Kitzinger distinguished two types: "Either they are images believed to have been made by hands other than those of ordinary mortals or else they are claimed to be mechanical, though miraculous, impressions of the original".[1] The belief in such images becomes prominent only in the 6th century, by the end of which both the Mandylion and the Image of Camuliana were well known. The pilgrim Antoninus of Piacenza was shown a relic of the Veil of Veronica type in Memphis, Egypt in the 570s.[2]

the Fifty Dollar Band - "one Hundred Years of Grace"

Wonderful spaghetti western music.

• Where Do You Go (ft Teus Nobel) - trumpet, female voices... 

Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats - "S.O.B."

Funny enough, read about this in a sort of op-ed on Minnesota's "The Current" (MPR) radio station's website, referenced via an Ars Technica article about how/where their editors get their injection of new music.

Knew it already, just not consciously.

Hybrid (ft John Graham) - "Choke"

Dark rock, beats.

coding playlists

breakpoints-on-spacetime
"The speed of light exists because that's the maximum speed this simulation can buffer environments for rendering and collision detection."

nice instrumental playlist
http://8tracks.com/pingfromheaven/breakpoints-on-spacetime


void Focus()
http://8tracks.com/legnus/void-focus

with Saltillo - "A Necessary End" - violins and beats



slowly it moved to more uptempo playlists without my explicit doing

running-life-in-music

• Thomas J. Bergersen & Nick Phoenix - "Heart of Courage"
  uptempo film climax music
• Shaka Ponk - "Palabra Mi Amor"
  near punk song, almost gypsy! Cool!
  

Shirley Jackson - [unknown]

Still on 2read list, better get it out here:


Tell me about your sister, the little boy said. Was she a witch?
   Maybe, the man said.
   The little boy laughed excitedly, and the man leaned back and puffed at his cigar. Once upon a time, he began, I had a little sister, just like yours. The little boy looked up at the man, nodding at every word. My
   little sister, the man went on, was so pretty and so nice that I loved her more than anything else in the world. So shall I tell you what I did?
   The little boy nodded more vehemently, and the mother lifted her eyes from her book and smiled, listening.
   I bought her a rocking-horse and a doll and a million lollipops, the man said, and then I took her and I put my hands around her neck and I pinched her and I pinched her until she was dead.

Neil Gaiman - "The Graveyard Book"

Had this for a few years, never bothered to read it. I noticed I have become a bit... less interested in his writing. It's great writing, don't get me wrong, but... maybe I read too much of it in too short a time. Two books I would reread: "Neverwhere", that one never fails to amaze me, and "American Gods", which I am not sure I understood completely.

The Graveyard Book, besides some wonderful drawings, is nice. Finished it in two days. It bothered me a bit though. it was... too simple. Why is Bod that special one? How does the Honour Guard and the Jacks relate? Jack Frost I got... but are the other Jacks famous Jacks?

But, the writing was well crafted and it was a lovely little story.

Wanderers

short film, words and voice by Carl Sagan. Very well done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6goNzXrmFs

Chrysus ft Solar Scape - "Massive"

On soma.fm's The Trip. Good for coding? Definitely powerful.

In Bruges (2008)

Great fun film with Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson (remember that name) and Ralph Fiennes (small role). Feel good in semi Guy Ritchie style. Good soundtrack, too!

Carter Burwell created the original score: somebody to look out for.

• Carter Burwell - "I Didn't Want To Die"
• Townes Van Zandt - "St John The Gambler" (melancholy)

the King of Kong: a Fistful of Quarters

Documentary about two world's (well, America's) top classic gamers. Mostly focussed around Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell. Didn't like the latter, found the former a bit awkward at times (seriously, his kid screaming "dad! stop playing donkey kooooooooooooong!".... but dad was on a winning streak, ...) it was amazing. Think "Room 237" but for computer game nerds. Classic computer games.

Loneliness, solitude, desolation, alienation, disaffection, estrangement

Loneliness, which refers to a lack of companionship and is often associated with unhappiness, should not be confused with solitude, which is the state of being alone or cut off from all human contact (the solitude of the lighthouse keeper). You can be in the midst of a crowd of people and still experience loneliness, but not solitude, since you are not physically alone. Similarly, if you enjoy being alone, you can have solitude without loneliness. Lonesomeness is more intense than loneliness, suggesting the downheartedness you may experience when a loved one is absent (she experienced lonesomeness following the death of her dog). Desolation is more intense still, referring to a state of being utterly alone or forsaken (the widow's desolation). Desolation can also indicate a state of ruin or barrenness (the desolation of the volcanic islands). Alienation, disaffection, and estrangement have less to do with being or feeling alone and more to do with emotions that change over time. Alienation is a word that suggests a feeling of unrelatedness, especially a feeling of distance from your social or intellectual environment (alienation from society). Disaffection suggests that you now feel indifference or even distaste towards someone of you were once fond of (a wife's growing disaffection for her husband), while estrangement is a voluntary disaffection that can result in complete separation and strong feelings of dislike or hatred (a daughter's estrangement from her parents).

First of all, Concise Oxford American Thesaurus, I love you. I want to have your babies. All of them.

Secondly... I love your long explanations. It's how I came to learn and love (all at once, it was a bang for sure) "sempiternal".

Also... curious how it's "you" here, instead of "one" ("one now feels indifference...") A Thesaurus thing? I wish a Concise Oxford American Thesaurus employee would read this and tell me why the tone is different from the New Oxford American Dictionary.

But, just to drive the point home, I did not have a car at the time of buying this and it was absolutely worth every penny cycling up the hill with these hundred thousand pounds of words in my backpack. As well as the shipping costs when I moved.

La Luz - "Weirdo Shrine"

Surf and psych, and very echoy voices. Not too much though.

the Married Monk

• Brother J - parlando, per usual

Chelsea Wolfe - "Abyss" (2015)

Dark singer-songwriter. Between folk and drones? Should listen to more of her stuff.

• After the Fall
• 
  

James Salter - "Light Years"

"The room was silent, that was what set him thinking; it was suddenly calm. His father and mother were lying beneath the earth, brown as the relics of asints, their funeral clothes rotting. He was thirty-two, alone in the world. Dreams and work."

"A perfect day begins in death, in the semblance of death, in deep surrender. The body is soft, the soul has gone forth, all strength, even breath. There is no power for good or evil, the luminous surface of another world is near, enfolding, the branches of the trees tremble outside. Morning, he wakes slowly, as if touched by sun across the legs. He is alone."

"But knowledge does not protect one. Life is contemptuous of knowledge; it forces it to sit in the anterooms, to wait outside. Passion, energy, lies: these are what life admires. Still, anything can be endured if all humanity is watching. The martyrs prove it. We live in the attention of others. We turn to it as flowers to the sun."

". . . One must be unthinking, like a tortoise. One must be resolute, blind. For whatever we do, even whatever we do not do prevents us from doing the opposite. Acts demolish their alternatives, that is the paradox. So that life is a matter of choices, each one final and of little consequence, like dropping stones into the sea. We had children, he thought; we can never be childless. We were moderate, we will never know what it is to spill out our lives . . ."

"His wife - people found her strange - was in the last years of her youth. She was like a beautiful dinner left out overnight. She was sumptuous, but the guests were gone."

"An artist should live with an uncomplicated woman, a woman like Bonnard's who would pose in only her shoes. The rest of it would follow."

"Well, perhaps Gaudí, who lived to that old age which is sainthood, an ascetic old age, frail, slight, wandering the streets of Barcelona, unknown to its many inhabitants. In the end he was struck by a streetcar and left unattended. In the bareness and odor of the charity ward amid the children and poor relations a single eccentric life was ending, a life that was more clamorous than the sea, an everlasting life, a life which was easy to abandon since it was only a husk; it had already metamorphosed, escaped into buildings, cathedrals, legend."

Carmelo Carone - "Anxur"

On SomaFM's "The Trip"

Hypnotizing house track. Quite minimal. Good for coding.

Richard Brautigan - random poetry

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

...
I like to think
  (it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.


Love Poem

   It's so nice
to wake up in the morning
   all alone
and not have to tell somebody
   you love them
when you don't love them
   any more.


A CandleLion Poem

           For Michael

Turn a candle inside out
and you've got the smallest 
portion of a lion standing
there at the edge of the 
   shadows.



I Live in the Twentieth Century

            For Marcia

I live in the Twentieth Century
and you lie here beside me.  You
were unhappy when you fell asleep.
There was nothing I could do about
it.  I felt helpless.  Your face
is so beautiful that I cannot stop
to describe it, and there's nothing
I can do to make you happy while
   you sleep.



The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster

When you take your pill
it's like a mine disaster.
I think of all the people
   lost inside of you.



The Nature Poem

The moon 
is Hamlet
on a motorcycle
coming down
a dark road.
He is wearing
a black leather
jacket and
boots.
I have 
nowhere 
to go.
I will ride
all night.



It's Raining in Love

I don't know what it is,
but I distrust myself
when I start to like a girl
   a lot.

It makes me nervous.
I don't say the right things
or perhaps I start
   to examine,
             evaluate,
                      compute
   what I am saying.

If I say, "Do you think it's going to rain?"
and she says, "I don't know,"
I start thinking:    Does she really like me?

In other words
I get a little creepy.

A friend of mine once said,
"It's twenty times better to be friends
   with someone
than it is to be in love with them."

I think he's right and besides,
it's raining somewhere, programming flowers
and keeping snails happy.
   That's all taken care of.

         BUT
if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like,
"Do you think it's going to rain?"
and I say, "It beats me,"
and she says, "Oh,"
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky,
I think:   Thank God, it's you, baby, this time
   instead of me.

Moderat - "Seamonkey"

It starts as nothing special, but around minute three the synths start and things get amazing.

Quite different, but a great track as well: "Sick With It"

"A New Error" ...mesmerizing, both in sound and video (two hands, black and white)

The Kyteman Orchestra - "The Jam Sessions"

• "Jonas" : a lone (alt?) violin, only after minutes joined by piano
• "Overpriced": though the rap does not drive me crazy, a great jamming slow down and build up
• "The Page - Part II": parlando, classic piano

Richard Brautigan - "In Watermelon Sugar"

'In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done is watermelon sugar. I'll tell you about it because I am here and you are distant.'

'We walked back to iDEATH, holding hands. Hands are very nice things, especially after they have travelled back from making love.'

'One of the crew turned off the switch and Fred had me come over very close and get down on my hands and knees and crawl under the press until we came to a very dark place and then he lit a match and showe me a bat hanging upside down from a housing.
   "What do you think of that?" Fred said.
   "Yeah," I said, staring at the bat.
   "I found him there a couple of days ago. Doesn't that beat everything?" he said.
   "It's got a head start," I said.'

'Of course we used a lot less tombs when the tigers where in bloom.
    But now we bury them all in glass coffins at the bottoms of rivers and put foxfire in the tombs, so they glow at night and we can appreciate what comes next.'

'The bridge was made from stones gathered at a distance and placed in their proper order.'

'I saw Margaret climbing an apple tree beside her shack. She was crying and had a scarf knotted around her neck. She took the loose end of the scarf and tied it to a branch covered with young apples. She stepped off the branch and then she was standing by herself on the air.'


Liked it a lot. I did not trouble myself finding the underlying images, the thoughts behind the words. He has a nice way of repeating a sentence, usually something that is said, a few lines later, which really works.

8tracks - triphop list

http://8tracks.com/10-korriku/to-a-simple-time

• Doctor Flake - "Only You"

there was more good stuff that I did not log

http://8tracks.com/ziggie-t/electronic-soul-u-need

• Boztown - "God Father"
  hints of the theme

http://8tracks.com/lparufier/welcome-to-the-street

• Boztown - "Candy's Gun"
  intriguing vocals

"Page Eight" and "Turks & Caicos"

First two films from a trilogy (last one: "Salting the Battlefield") about Bill Nighly as Johnny Worricker as an (ex) MI5 agent, doing the right thing.

First one was nice. Second one (with Christopher Walken) was ok.

Spinnerette - "All babes are wolves"

Rock rock rock! arwooooooooooo

Amatorski - "Come Home"

Slow soft, late summer evening music. Strings, humming.

somaFM - covers

• Doveman - "Let's Hear it for the Boy"
  Very slow, piano low-key version of Deniece Williams' "Let's hear it for the boy" (no, do not check the original. Yes, you know it.) It isn't even exactly good. But I liked it.
• Scarling - "Creep"
• Dungeon - "Call Me"
  a screaming Judas Priest / aaaaaaaaaah metal version
• Arno - "Knowing Me, Knowing You"
  Slow, raspy voice
• Honeydippers - "Guns of Brixton"
  swinging
• 
  

Shokuzai

Five hours telling about the murder of a young girl, the curse that her mother puts on the head of her four friends who were there when it happened, and what happened to each of them fifteen years later.

The past in bright colours, the present in faded grey.

Mother turns out not so innocent herself. All is resolved in the last chapter.

The first two episodes were very slow and they made me wonder if I'd enjoy the rest. Hardly any background music. Slow scenes, but different than those of the best anime. The latter had more pace, music and engaged me more.

All in all a good watch.

Tetris

Tetris does not bother to offer its players the mercies of explosions or of dead aliens or of graceful, leaping arcs. Just blocks and more blocks, an unforgiving rain as predictable as the mounting seconds of the petty pace that creeps to our last syllables.

The sharply cornered right angles of the game’s shapes, and the Russian folk music in the game’s typical score, contribute to the atmosphere of cold, mechanical inhumanity (at least to American ears). In the New York Times Magazine a few years ago, Sam Anderson wrote:

Tetris was invented exactly when and where you would expect — in a Soviet computer lab in 1984 — and its game play reflects this origin. The enemy in Tetris is not some identifiable villain (Donkey Kong, Mike Tyson, Carmen Sandiego) but a faceless, ceaseless, reasonless force that threatens constantly to overwhelm you, a churning production of blocks against which your only defense is a repetitive, meaningless sorting. It is bureaucracy in pure form, busywork with no aim or end, impossible to avoid or escape. And the game’s final insult is that it annihilates free will. Despite its obvious futility, somehow we can’t make ourselves stop rotating blocks. Tetris, like all the stupid games it spawned, forces us to choose to punish ourselves.

All of that is true about Tetris, but if it were all that is true about Tetris, we would not find the game so captivating. Tetris might be the purest distillation of what a video game is. Devoid of story, character, navigation, even metaphor, Tetris isolates an interaction among player, machine, and screen and commands our attention with it. Nothing about what is best aboutTetris translates to another medium.

Dutch songs

• Jaap Fischer - "Sprookje"
• André Manuel / Krang - "Kraaien"
• Frans Halsema & Jenny Arean - "Vluchten kan niet meer"
• Wim Sonneveld - "Lieveling"
• Boudewijn de Groot - "Strand"
• Stef Bos - "Wodka"

Ray Bradbury - "We'll Always Have Paris"

The Visit

[about a young man who had a heart transplant, and the mother from the donor]

    She might have cried out, but did not. She might have exclaimed something, but did not. Her eyes were also shut now and she was listening. Her lips moved, saying something, perhaps a name, over and over, almost to the rhythm of the pulse she heard under the shirt, under the flesh, within the body of the patient young man.
   The heart was beating there.
    She listened.
    The heart beat with a steady and regular sound.
    She listened for a long while. Her breath slowly drained out of her, as color came into her cheeks.
    She listened.
    The heart beat.
    Then she raised her head, looked at the young man's face for a final time, and very swiftly touched her lips to his cheek, turned, and hurried across the room, with no thanks, for none was needed.


All in all, not bad stories, but nothing special either. Finished about 75% but did not care enough for them to read them all.

Die Antwoord - misc

• "Strunk" (Donker Mag)
  the closest to a ballad they want to come I guess. Strange and still very much Die Antwoord
• "Girl I Want 2 Eat U" (Donker Mag)
  I never realized but, yes, indeed, sushi rhymes with pussy. Sorta.
• "Happy Go Sucky Fucky" (Donker Mag)
  Oh yes

• Lady Gaga vs Judas Priest - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-ZlRl1_4Ws
• Die Antwoord - "Ugly Boy" and "Happy Go Sucky Fucky"
• David Hasselhoff - "True Survivor" (Kung Fury soundtrack)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTidn2dBYbY

"What we do in the shadows"

Fantastic fun documentary about vampires sharing a flat in New Zealand

Hunter S. Thompson - "The Great Shark Hunt"

Collection of essays. Some better than others. Good read.

Robert Jackson Bennett - "Mr Shivers"

Dustbowl years. A bunch of hobo's chase Mr Shivers, who has taken (killed) somebody dear of each of them. Nice. Not as Carnivalesque as I hoped, but a good good read.

Gone Girl (2015)

Great film about revenge-staged-murder-in-marriage story, with a quick pace from the very beginning and a good narration throughout. Quite enjoyed this.

Ben Affleck does a great story, and the oh-I-pretend-to-get-killed-so-my-husband-goes-to-prison girl (and it is suggested she might actually off herself at some point, making her crazy mind's actions even more poignant) is awesome.

The Fisher King (1991?)

Still an amazing film. Great performances by Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams.

Agiman - "Quantum" ("Toolroom Knights (Unmixed Version)")

Strong electronic bleep beat music. Good for coding.

Hrsta - "Hechicero Del Bosque"

Great soundscape with voices.

Mad Max - Fury Road (2015)

Critics loved it, as did the audience. As did I.

It took me a while to get into it. I missed the estranged madness from the original Mad Max. Yes, it was all crazy and Immortal and his War Boys or whatever he was called, was crazy and weird, and Max being "Bloodbag"... but that was all normal weird scifi madness. Only later did it develop into a more gripping film, with Max' craziness subtly creeping through the cracks of the surface.

WW II from a data set point of view

http://www.fallen.io/ww2/

Amazing how a neutrally told story of numbers can affect you. Chilling and beautiful.

Drs P en Willem Duys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4W-0Fs08Aw

nog beter, een VRT ? belgische uitzending:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbawHUR8f80

"de vorm is een deel van de inhoud"

"als je de taal verarmt, dan verarm je het denkvermogen van de mensen, en daarmee verarm je het hele leven"

Steven Pinker on language

The man is a wonderful genius.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn87EqoBb14

but still, he curses the split infinitive!?! Ok, not curses, but damnit Jim, I'm a wordpress article, not a linguistic professor!

night driving soundtrack

When I'm in a Kazinsky mood, this might be a good one:

http://8tracks.com/aarthii/late-night-drive
hm, maybe not. Soon deteriorates into rapping ugliness.

U.N.K.L.E. and The Heritage Orchestra Presents "Variation Of A Theme" Live At The Union Chapel"

• "Cut Me Loose - Redux" - haunting, slow strings.

Bess Winter - "Helena, Montana"

From the Alaska Quarterly, an amazing story about a baby mailed. "It's a parcel" Its diapers need changing. "But isn't that tampering?"

Wow, fucking wow.

The Coral Sea - "Lake and Ocean" (Volcano And Heart)

reminds me of another song whose name I do not know.

Tom Waits - "How's It Gonna End" (Real Gone)

True Tom Waits style. Awesome. Low, grungy.

Anna Calvi - "The Heart Of You" (OST Insurgent)

Hints of Siouxie Sioux's voice in this magnificent song.

fun tech blog posts

http://www.jasq.org/just-another-scala-quant/

Ty Segall & Mikal Cronin - "Reverse Shark Attack" (Reverse Shark Attack)

10 minute long surf awesomeness.

Firewater - "Strange Life"

Good uptempo guitar song.

Jaakko Eino Kalevi - "Ikuinen Purkautumaton" (2015)

Jännite - soft voice over, slow 80s synths, later speeding up. Quite nice, though I cannot say the rest of the album did do a lot for me.

André Breton - "Manifesto of Surrealism" (1924)

...the absence of any known restrictions allows him the perspective of several lives lived at once; this illusion becomes firmly rooted within him; now he is only interested in the fleeting, the extreme facility of everything.

There remains madness, "the madness that one locks up," ... That madness or another.. We all know, in fact, that the insane owe their incarceration to a tiny number of legally reprehensible acts and that, were it not for these acts their freedom (or what we see as their freedom) would not be threatened. I am willing to admit that they are, to some degree, victims of their imagination, in that it induces them not to pay attention to certain rules - outside of which the species feels threatened - which we are all supposed to know and respect.

... the realistic attitude ... clearly seems to me to be hostile to any intellectual or moral advancement. I loathe it, for it is made up of mediocrity, hate and dull conceit. It is this attitude which today gives birth to these ridiculous books, these insulting plays. It constantly feeds on and derives strength from the newspapers and stultifies both science and art by assiduously flattering the lowest of tastes; clarity bordering on stupidity, a dog's life.

If the depths of our mind contain within it strange forces capable of augmenting those on the surface, or of aging a victorious battle against them, there is every reason to seize them - first to seize them, then, if need be, to submit them to the control of our reason.

Thus the dream finds itself reduced to a mere parenthesis, as is the night.

I am growing old and, more than that reality to which I believe I subject myself, it is perhaps the dream, the difference with which I treat the dream, which makes me grow old.

The mind of hte man who dreams is fully satisfied by what happens to him. The agonizing question of possibility is no longer pertinent. Kill, fly faster, love to your heart's content. And if you should die, are you not certain of reawaking among the dead? Let yourself be carried along, events will not tolerate your interference. You are nameless. The ease of everything is priceless.

I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak. It is in quest of this surreality that I am going, certain not to find it but too unmindful of my death not to calculate to some slight degree the joys of its possession.

At an early age children are weaned on the marvelous, and later on they fail to retain a sufficient virginity of mind ot thoroughly enjoy fairy tales. ... There are fairy tales to be written for adults, fairy tales still almost blue.

Joseph Delteil: "Alas! I believe in the virtue of birds. And a feather is all it takes to make me die laughing."

Desnos... reads himself like an open book, and does nothing to retain the pages, which fly away in the windy wake of his life.

After you have settled yourself in a place as favorable as possible to the concentration of your mind upon itself, have writing materials brought to you. Put yourself in as passive, or receptive, a state of mind as you can. Forget about your genius, your talents, and the talents of everyone else. Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that leads to everything. Write quickly, without any preconceived subject, fast enough so that you will not remember what you're writing and be tempted to reread what you have written. The first sentence will come spontaneously, so compelling is the truth that with every passing second there is a sentence unknown to our consciousness which is only crying out to be heard.

Les Champs magnétiques: the first purely Surrealist work.

Surrealism does not allow those who devote themselves to it to forsake it whenever they like. There is every reason to believe that it acts on the mind very much as drugs do; like drugs, it creates a certain state of need and can push man to frightful revolts. It also is, if you like, an artificial paradise, and the taste one has for it derives from Baudelaire's criticism for the same reason as the others. Thus the analysis of the mysterious effects and special pleasures it can produce - in many respects Surrealism occurs as a new vice which does not necessarily seem to be restricted o the happy few; like hashish, it has the ability to satisfy all manner of tastes - such an analysis has to be included in the present study.

The mind becomes aware of the limitless expanses wherein its desires are made manifest, where the pos and cons are constantly consumed, where its obscurity does not betray it.

This is the most beautiful night of all, the lightning-filled night: day, compared to it, is night.

.. that the mind is ripe for something more than the benign joys it allows itself in general.

I believe in the pure Surrealist joy of the man who, forewarned that all others before him have failed, refuses to admit defeat, sets off from whatever point he chooses, along any other path save a reasonable one, and arrives wherever he can.

Surrealism is the "invisible ray" which will one day enable us to win out over our opponents. "You are no longer trembling, carcass." This summer the roses are blue, the wood is of glass. The earth, draped in its verdant cloak, makes as little impression upon me as a ghost. It is living and ceasing to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere.

The Ex - "Too Many Cowboys"

Started playing automatically after I looked up "Aha Gedawo" by Getatchew Mekuria feat The Ex. That song did not work so well for me anymore (I had heard it in Butchers Tears) but the beginning of this album is promising instrumental soundscapes.

Nescio - "Verzameld proza en nagelaten werk"

prachtteksten, zoals altijd, met vroege versies van "Titaantje", "Dichtertje" en de andere bekende stukken. En daarachteraan, zoveel juweeltjes.


Reactie

... Ik voel me niet meer zoo gerust. De doodsklok heeft geluid over den waan van den dag. 'Waarom zullen we alles deelen?' De jeugd heeft de toekomst, het getij kentert.
    Ik voel me niet meer zoo gerust.

Oosterpark, 8 December 1947, in de mist


'Deze dag bestond uit blauwe lucht'

Deze dag bestond uit blauwe lucht en witte wolken, uit blauw water met de zon er in, uit felle zilveren flikkeringen van auto's.
    Er was een laantje van ijle, dunne boompjes, dat in het licht verdween. Opging in God.

25 Maart 1947

FFS - "FFS"

Franz Ferdinand with (legendary?) sythrockduo Sparks

Fun enough

• Save me from myself
• Collaborations Don't Work - silly fun

Sam Lipsyte - "Time travel - package tour"

Amazing short text, one of the four or five, and by far the best of them, on the idea of time travel. Funny, ironic, and personal in a simple direct way.

The New Yorker, June 8 & 15

Kingsman: the secret service (2015)

Amusing super spy film, based on a comic. Lots of British details, which does beg the comparison with James Bond, but they counter that well.

Unfortunately, the end is pretty common, and not in an ironic sense.

Russel Shorto - "Amsterdam"

Fantastisch boek. Bij toeval gekregen en bijna niet weg kunnen leggen. Toegegeven, er zal was nationalistische trots bij komen, maar 't is hoe dan ook een prachtig historisch boek.

"Dekker [Multatuli] speelde een essentiële, maar excentrieke rol bij vrijwel alle belangrijke strijdpunten van zijn tijd. De ene actiegroep na de andere werd door hem geïnspireerd, om vervolgens door hem te worden bestreden. Dit gold vooral voor de antikoloniale stroming die zich langzamerhand ontwikkelde. Max Havelaar had aan de wieg van deze beweging gestaan, maar zoals gebruikelijk nam Dekker er al snel afstand van. Hij blijk zijn boek namelijk niet te hebben bedoeld als pleidooi voor afschaffing van het kolonialisme. Dekker beschouwde zichzelf juist als een kolonialist. Wat het dwarszat, was het onvermogen van de Nederlandse bestuurders om het systeem volledig door te voeren. Het koloniale bestuur moest de Nederlandse wet handhaven. Volgens de Nederlandse wet was het machtsmisbruik dat hij in de Oost had gezien verboden. Toch hadden de Nederlandse bestuurders toegelaten dat het bleef voortbestaan. Dekker wilde niet van het koloniale systeem af, hij wilde het versterken."

"... dat de strijd tegen de zee op twee schijnbaar tegengestelde factoren berustte: het was een project dat zowel een hechte gemeenschapszin als een sterke mate van individualisme stimuleerde. Stel je voor: een groep mensen die in de middeleeuwen op het strand staat, naar zee kijkt en besluit een deel van die zee in land te veranderen. Dat lukt alleen met keihard werken, en de intensieve samenwerking die dat vereist wordt vanzelf een sterke bindende factor in zo'n gemeenschap. Dat geldt ook voor de langetermijnvisie die vereist is voor het aanleggen en onderhouden van een stelsel van dammen en dijken om het water uit de polder te weren. Daarbij werd het ingepolderde land bovendien niet, zoals elders in Europa het geval zou zijn geweest, eigendom van kerk of koning: het was van de burgers zelf. Zij konden de grond kopen, verkopen of pachten. Die protokapitalistische economische macht kweekte een individualistische mentaliteit. Maar dat was alleen mogelijk dankzij de onderliggende maatschappelijke verbondenheid."

"Die eerste [17e eeuwse] stadsuitbreiding, waar Amsterdam zijn typische grachtenpanden aan te danken heeft, was een soort reactie op de monumentale architectuur van steden als Parijs en Londen: die had uitgestraald dat de grootheid van deze stad niet besloten lag in instituties maar in mensen, hun gezin en hun alledaagse leven."

Jose Padilla - "So Many Colours"

Good while coding. Shpongle without the weird Shpongle part.

Beth Hart and Joe Bonamassa - "I'll Take Care of You" (Don't Explain)

Amazing... I'd say almost Bond song, with long vocal yearning and tearing guitars.

R.E.M. - "Leave (alternate version)" (Complete Warner Bros Rariteis 1988-2011 / soundtrack "A Life Less Ordinary")

Amazing song. Quite different from the original.

Chris Isaak - "Blue Spanish Sky" (best of Chris Isaak)

Chris Isaak's at his best.

Shpongle - "Behind Closed Eyelids" (Are You Shpongled?)

Not a musician I need to mention because I've never mentioned him, but particularly the beginning of this song always makes me nod and swing my head in weird ways.

Labasheeda - "Changing Lights" (2015)

• "Leave of Absence" : great instrumental violin track

Weedeater - "Goliathan" (2015)

First grumbled line of the first song of the album, over a drony synth: "I really hate your face / I hate the things you do / I know you don't like me / I'm coming after you"

Quite like Starsailor's "You really have your daddy's eyes / your daddy was an alcoholic"

The rest is just doom sludge crap.

Robert Herrick - "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" (1600)

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.

The Newsroom (2012-2014)

Great show with awesome dialogues and storyline. True enough, season one was better than two, which kept digressing into love stories a bit too much, but still pretty awesome (the ending of s02e07 (?) where big boss lady is high and delivers one of her finest moments!)

James Joyce, you just can't ignore the bastard

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/james-joyce-you-cant-ignore-the-bastard

Joyce entered your life very differently in rural Ireland in the early 1980s. Back then, he still existed outside the official system. Too difficult, too scandalous for school. It was still possible for teenagers to read Joyce as an act of rebellion against teachers, government, church. You read Joyce the way you listened to late punk, or early rap.

Our generation formed bands, wrote songs and albums, not stories and novels. The Irish heirs to the verbal exuberance of James Joyce are, by and large, not the writers of literary fiction. They are the great, exiled Irish lyricists; Morrissey; early, good Elvis Costello; Johnny Rotten (John Lydon) of the Sex Pistols and PiL; Shane MacGowan of the Pogues (who spent his pre-London childhood on a farm outside Puckane, only a few miles from our house). MacGowan’s “The Old Main Drag” and “Fairytale of New York” are postmodern pop-stories worthy of Joyce; brutal, clear-eyed portraits of hemales and shemales, destroying themselves with drink in London and New York. “How Soon Is Now” and “This Charming Man” by The Smiths ache with youth’s agonies as exquisitely as Joyce’s story “Araby.” I’d say Joyce, as a man who wanted to be a professional tenor himself, would be happy enough with that legacy.

And language was the hero. That, I got from Joyce.

Lakker - "Tundra"

From Ireland, electro and hints of techno? Good stuff to listen to while coding. Even when coding sucks.

When bad behaviour does a good turn

The value of dark traits is a little more nuanced when it comes to humans. While we certainly won’t thrive as a society with rampant rule-breaking, we might have to embrace our dark side from time to time. Perhaps we need not recoil from our own grandiosity or aggression.

http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/when-bad-behaviour-does-a-good-turn/

Reindier - "Porcelain" (2015)

Electropop, the 3voor12 says. Quite right. Curious songs. Nice ones. Some weird.

• "My Man" - it has a Marc Almond feel to it

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

Slow vampire film in Jim Jarmusch style with an amazing soundtrack by Jozef Van Wissem and SQÜRL. Don't be in a hurry to watch it, but if you're in the mood for slow gothic clips and estranged music, this is the film

Gomorra (2008)

The much-hyper well-deserved film about the maffia (Camorra?) and how it works. No soundtrack. No emotional attachments. This film looks, and it, I guess, a documentary. Slightly chilling. The drawback... when you've read enough press releases, you expect the stark cold killing and it would probably be best watched before being exposed to anything..

Inherent Vice (2014)

Amazing drug-fueled hard psychadelic 70's semi-hippie-noir film starring Joaquin Phoenix. By Paul Thomas Anderson. Definitely something to watch again.

CUT_ - "Chapter One"

First chapter of their upcoming album. Bit MIA-ish, on the edge of cute-girl-pop-beat.

On another "album", named Papaoutai, they covered Stromae's song. Nothing special.

Birdman

Film with Michael Keaton as a Hollywood superhero who is trying to make it on Broadway while battling his own demons.

Very long shots. Music almost solely a drum solo. Intriguing film, not an easy one.

Alabama Shakes

Raw songs, quite the Janis Joplin sound in her voice. Must look into.

Broadchurch

Good police drama solving the murder of 12 yo Danny. With David Tennant, wrestling with ghosts from the past.

Yentl & de Boer - "Toen we nog lang en gelukkig leefden"

Mooi leuk liedje. Wonnen ze niet de Annie M.G. Schmidt prijs mee (dat deden ze met "Ik heb een man gekend")

Zion Train - "Ella's Melody" (Original Sounds of the Zion"

Think DAAU but reggae and slower. Multi instrumentalists and a very relaxed rhythm.

Jorodowsky's Dune

amazing documentary about Alejandro Jorodowsky and all the work he did with an amazing group of people, trying to turn "Dune" into a film. Inspiring. And an amazing man.

Paul Oakenfold - "Zoo York"

Amazing mix of Mansell's "Requiem for a dream"

Chromatics - "Just Like You" (After Dark, 2007)

(and most of the other songs and albums as well)

Heard in "Lost River", sounds a lot like the "Drive" soundtrack. Nice, though after a while it might become a bit too repetitive.

Hi-Finesse

Found via the 'Maggie' trailer, the usual trailer music creation company. Fun stuff for an early Thursday morning.

essay "Navigating the absurd: Camus, Hemingway and the sea"

"Cold hard science, Camus suggests, must ultimately concede to poetry, art, and descriptions. We cannot attain all knowledge, and thus we live in a world full of paradoxes and irrationals."

"While logic suggests suicide as escape from a painful existence, the very fact that our existence is painful gives meaning to our lives. To those aware of the absurd, there “is no finer sight than that of the intelligence at grips with a reality that transcends it” (480). Camus esteems this struggle, holding it to be the noblest aspect of being, and suggests that it is the unassailable passion of the heart to defy that helps man achieve greatness feeding on “the wine of the absurd and the bread of indifference”(480)."

"a larger motivation keeps Santiago’s old and pulverized hands on the line – the need to prove “what a man can do and what a man endures”. He recognizes that “the thousand times that he had proved it meant nothing. Now he was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it”

This is a great article (not finished yet) but I do have a problem with the following statement:

Eddins points out that skin cancer is a manifestation of the dual nature of challenges that Santiago must face. The cancerous spot appears “malevolent in their assault upon the well-being of the organism, but are in another sense ‘benevolent’ in what they force the organism to become through overcoming them” (71).

First of all, malevolent/benevolent suggest a *will* to do harm or good. I have not read much of Camus yet – am on page 10 – but I have not seen any indication that he assigns the absurd, the universe, its irrationality and/or our inability to grasp it, as having a will to do harm or good. Secondly: does this mean that every life-threatening situation or phenomon is “in another sense ‘benevolent'” because of what it forces humanity to become through overcoming it? That somehow feels like an easy generalization to me…

J.S. Bach - "Matthäus Passion< BWV 244"

Not every part is as easy to appreciate, but 

• "Erkenne mich, mein Hüte" will always ring a deep sentimental note. Just the catholic upbringing I guess.

Föllakzoid - "III"

Chilees kraut-expedition? Very long soundscapes. Pretty awesome.

Flako - "Natureboy"

Strange instrumental music. Good for coding and writing. Not shpongle-ish, but strange too.

Mary Robison - "Likely Lake"

A short from the Paris Review.

I don't get the title, I realize, but the story is nice and some sentences are spot on. She does not want to be called a minimalist but a "subtractist", I think Sam Lipsyte said in the introduction. Should reread at some point. There is more juxtaposed than I realize.

Onze Man in Teheran

Mooie, veel te korte, vierdelige serie van Thomas Erdbrink over het leven in Iran. De woede, de blijheid, de wetten, de regeltjes... zoveel te leren. Een serie waarvan je wil dat er nog veel meer afleveringen zouden volgen.

AlascA - "Sweet Surrender" (Prospero)

• "Sweet Surrender" - very slow, not exactly melancholy, but nice
• 
  

A Reminiscent Drive - "Smokey Mountains" (Ambrosia)

Amazing instrumental song with a wandering saxophone, strange discordant notes and a slow build up.

Daft Punk - "Giurgio by Moroder" (Random Access Memory)

Listening to some Daft Punk this morning, I realized I'm not a big fan of their biggest hits. At all. Their work on Tron is great, and I did like this song as well. Should try the whole album.

Italo Calvino - "Cosmicomics"

"actually, this was the first opportunity I had had to think something; or I should say: to think something had never been possible, first because there were no things to think about, and second because signs to think of them by were lacking, but from the moment there was that sign, it was possible for something thinking to think of a sign, and therefore that one, in the sense that the sign was the thing you could think about and also the sign of the thing thought, namely, itself."

"Our father's cry 'We're hitting something!' a meaningless expression (since before then nothing had ever hit anything, you can be sure), but one that took on meaning at the very moment it was uttered,"

"to think something had never been possible... and also the sign of the thing though, namely itself"... where a thought of something *is* that very something.

Rurôni Kenshin: Meiji kenkaku roman tan ("Rurouni Kenshin") (2012)

Not anime, this is the first of three life action films of the anime of the same name.

Quite good. The main character is believable, lots of details (his running, his talking, his shy, open nearly silly attitude when not fighting) are copied quite well from the anime. Good fights, too.

The only thing I missed was the analyzing of fighting styles during the fighting. They probably feared it'd put all but the true fans off.

Gary Lutz - "The sentence is a lonely place"

Lecture delivered by the short-story writer Gary Lutz to the students of Columbia University's writing program in New York on September 25, 2008. (From believermag.com)

"... a word is matter, that it exists in tactual materiality, that is has a cubic bulk. Only on the page is it flat and undensified. In the mouth and in the mind it is three-dimensional, and there are parts that shoot out from it or sink into its syntactic surround."

"the sort of sentence that, even when liberated from its receiving context, impresses itself upon the eye and the ear as a totality, an omnitude, unto itself."

"... that the words inside the sentence must behave as if they were destined to belong together - as if their separation from each other would deprive the parent story or novel, as well as the readerly world, of something life-bearing and essential. ... The words in the sentence must bear some physical and sonic resemblance to each other ... The sentence feels filled in from end to end; there are no vacant segments along its length, no pockets of unperforming or underperforming verbal matter."

"You might come to realize that a single vowel already present in the sentence should be released to run through the consonantal frameworks of certain other prominent words in the sentence, or you might realize that the consonantal infrastructure of one word should be duplicated in another word, but with a different vowel impounded in each structure."

[analysis of "acutely felt, clearly flat" of Christine Schutt.]

[analysis of "Here is the house at night, lit up tall and tallowey" by Christine Schutt.]

[analysis of "An accident isn't necessarily ever over." by Diane Williams]


"Make sure that the stressed syllables in a sentence outnumber the unstressed syllables as in Don DeLillo's "He did not direct a remark that was hard and sharp." or Christine Schutt's "None of what kept time once works."

"we need not shy away from composing an occasional sentence entirely of monosyllabic words, as Barry Hannah's "I roam in the past for my best mind" and "He's been long on my list of shits in the world," and as Ben Marcus does in "They were hot there, and cold there, and some had been born there, and most had died."

"Unless you have good reason not to do so, end your sentence with the wham and bang of a stressed syllable."

"Give force to your sentences by stationing the subject at the very beginning instead of delaying the subject until an introductory phrase of a dependend clause has first had its dribbling say."

"Avail yourself of alliteration - as long as it remains ungimmicky, unobtrusive, even subliminal. Such repetition can be soothing and stabilizing, especially in a sentence whose content and emotional gusts are anything but."

"Take advantage of assonance. Keeping a single vowel in circulation through most of the conspicuous words will give a sentence another kind of sonic consummation ... as Sam Lipsyte does with three short u's in 'You could touch for a couple of bucks'"

"You can even divide a sentence into two or more acoustical zones and let a single vowel prevail in each zone. Here is a three-zone sentence by Don DeLillo: 'There were evening streaks in the white of the eye, a sense of blood sun.'"

"Press one part of speech into service as another, as Don DeLillo does in 'She was always maybeing' (and adverb has been recruited for duty as a verb) and as Barry Hannah does in 'Westy is colding off like the planet' (an adjective has been enlisted for verbified purpose as well). A variation is to take an intransitive verb (the sort of verb that can't abide a direct object) and put it in motion as a transitive verb (whose very nature it is to enclasp a direct object). That is what Fiona Maazel is up to with the verb collide, which abandoned all transitive use ages ago, in her sentence 'Often, at the close of a recovery meeting, as we make a circle and join hands, I'll note the odds of these people finding each other in this gropu; our sundry pasts and principles; the entropy that collides addicts like so many molecules.'"

Diff - "Second" (EP)

Wonderful country noir, sometimes reminiscent of The Murder Ballads. Gentlier, more singer-songwriter. Beautiful songs.

• Jealousy - more uptown country
• The Rider of Love: great great

Steven Hendricks - "little is left to tell"

A strange tale with many tales, in which a man with dementia recounts, or rather, still thinks, his son, to whom he told many stories, is home again.. or still? Stories in stories, with many a famous legend glued in.

Hart Crane. Fin. The boat. The airship. Mother Rabbit and her dead son, Eldest. Yasha. The three bears....

It was sometimes difficult to get through; hardly anything is explained and I think I missed many connections and references, but a very unique book and still a good read.

What story / legend is the spider "working away in the eye of the God"? Anansi?

Houses, bodies, physical constructs, morphing into each other. Stones, words, not to keep going, but structure...

"He saw himself ready to walk out the door and walk and walk and carry himself right out of life, but somehow in his rage, his how-dare-he, he saw himself in the days to come, the days that never really came, saw himself watch his weak little son cry and struggle and break down, lose all his anger, lose all his, yes, lose all his independence, and need him, give in. He saw it as the natural centrifugal process of detachment, break nd reattach again and again, until the child spins off into adulthood. If I died, if I went to war, if I left them all, if I never spoke again, if I became a statue, if I refused to hear him, if I emptied his room and throw out his clothes, if I threw out my clothes, if I changed my name, if I told him he wasn't mine. One side of a father's love is absence, the favor of disappearing, not needing and not being needed. And so it is, he thought, we enter the broken world."

"Tired chair, tired flesh, when all the books have been read."

Golem (with Amanda Palmer) - "Warsaw Is Khelm"

Nice klezmer-ish song.

Johnny Dowd - "That's Your Wife On The Back Of My Horse"

Very weird music. Sometimes reminds me a bit of those Crazy Clown songs by David Lynch. Less strange. Less intriguing though.

Ebbo Kraan - "Aletta" (EP)

Mix of electronica, ambient and hiphop. Very different tracks. Cool stuff.

Purity Ring - "Another Eternity"

Electropop, with some modern traits I'm not too fond of, but still, this is an enjoyable album. No specific songs to note.

Strange Weather

First heard David Byrne & Anna Calvi's version on KCRW, found out it is a cover of Keren Ann. And not of Marianne Faithfull's "Strange Weather", which is beautiful too...

David Byrne & Anna Calvi:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylBZmqY0Oag

Marianne Faithfull:
http://grooveshark.com/s/Strange+Weather+Live/3jrLql?src=5

Keren Ann:
http://grooveshark.com/s/Strange+Weather/4MC1o4?src=5

Michael Ondaatje - "Anil's Ghost"

"Coomaraswamy points out that before eyes are painted there is just a lump of metal or stone. But after this act, "it is thenceforward A God." ... There is a ceremony to prepare the arficer during the night before he paints. You realize, he is brought in only to paint the eyes on the Buddha image. The eyes must be painted in the morning, at five. The hour the Budha attained enlightment. The ceremonies therefore begin the night before, with recitations and decorations in the temples.
"Without the eyes there is not just blindness, there is nothing. There is no existence. The artificer brings to life sight and truth and presence. Later he will be honoured with gifts. Lands or oxen. He enters the temple doors. He is dressed like a prince, with jewellery, a sword at his waist, lace over his head. He moves forward accompanied by a second man, who carries brushes, black paint and a metal mirror.
"He climbs a ladder in front of the statue. The man with him climbs too. This has taken place for centrueis, you realize, there are records of this since the ninth century. The painter dips a brush into the paint and turns his back to the statue, so it looks as if he is about to be enfolded in the great arms. The paint is wet on the brush. The other man, facing him, holds up the mirror, and the artificer puts the brush over his shoulder and paints in the eyes without looking directly at the face. He uses just the reflection to guide him - so only the mirror receives the direct image of the glance being created. No human eye can meet the Buddha's during the process of creation. Around him the mantras continue. May thou become possessed of the fruits of deed... May there be an increase on earth and length of days... Hail, eyes!"
"His work can take an hour or less than a minute, depending on the essential state of the artist. He never looks at the eyes directly. He can only see the gaze in the mirror."

Wonderful book. Dream like, at times, though its subject is at times horrifying. High up the general reading list, and definitely high up the reading-for-writing list. The momentum that was lost, was due to my own fault of reading too many things simultaneously.

Into the Wild (2007)

Finally watched it. Very impressive film about a guy following Thoreau's advice.

Groove Armada - "Fogma" (Goodbye Country)

Nice groovy deepbass song.

FilosofischeStilte - "Munch Palace vol. 1"

Wonky plonk electro, some instrumental, some with hiphop-ish voices. The latter less suitable for work. From the Hague.

The Road (2009)

Gripping film about a Man and a Boy trying to survive a post-apocalyptic dying earth. Yes, the ending is slightly Hollywood but I didn't mind that much (only... why is it not explained they were followed but never contacted? And the missing thumbs?)

Dark, desolate.

The Notwist - "Messier Objects"

Great album. Electronics.

Rone - "Creatures"

Good instrumental electronic sounds. Good for closing off.

• "Quitter la ville": with lyrics, sung by François Marry), cool build-up

Stoker (2013)

Great film. Nicole Kidman a killer role as usual. Must look into the soundtrack. Must play piano. Must learn how to tell a story.

Simon Killer

pretentious? not even sure. Just bad. The very closed up sound recordings of him sniffing, sniffing, sniffing...oh gee, was that to symbolize he is bad? Sorry I didn't catch that because the story was too slow, the cast was uninteresting.....

The Crooked Spoke - "The One You Left Behind"

Moody. Not the surf I expected at all. Swampy-ish.

Dave Brubeck, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, Louis Armstrong - "They Say I Look Like God"

Very slow gospel. Definitely not good for any random moment.

Etienne Jaumet - "La Visite"

http://www.dummymag.com/new-music/etienne-jaumet-la-visite-album-stream

• Metallik Cages - the familiar buildup of synths, with Shpongle-like vocals

Shane MacGowan story - If I Should Fall From Grace

Cool documentary about Shane MacGowan and the Pogues. A life drenched in music and liquor.

John Coffey - "The Great News"

Pretty hard rock album. I seem to like the gentlier songs, like

• Jean Trompette - great ... trumpet
• It's Beginning To Change - quite the System of a Down vocals and orchestration

John Carpenter - "Lost Themes"

themes indeed... this feels like a trip down 80s synth computer games. Or films. Strings galore. Not exactly breathtakingly good. Interesting.

He was a cult director as well? (and a soundtrack composer?)

65daysofstatic - "Drove Through Ghosts To Get Here" (One Time For All Time)

Post rock raw buildup, instrumental. Found through a swampy 8tracks playlist that mostly sported the usual. This sounded different though.

Roll the Dice - "Cause and Effect"

Long lasting synth soundscapes. Good for coding?

"Assembly" : a lot more slow and majestic rhythmical build-up into a crescendo of a soundscape.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - "Sins of my youth"

Soft, melancholy song. Have no idea where I heard it first.

Snowpiercer (2013)

In a world frozen over because mankind thought it could fix global warning, one train plows on and on. The tail, the foot, is dirty, dark, the head, light, happy.... Riots ensue.

Yes, its premise reminded me of that other film and yes it is just as amazing and perhaps better (I do have to see the other one again.) Amazing film, amazing story. This is why magic realism is so fucking brilliant.

the Decemberists - "What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World"

Poppy. Ok.

• Philomena: "all I lived for in this world / was to see a naked girl / but I got quickly bored..."
• Carolina Low - more subdued
• Easy Come, Easy Go - a bit Western style

Creature With the Atom Brain - "Transylvania"

Bit post-rock ish. Reminded me of Mogwai, though a lot more poppy than them and less soundscapey.

https://soundcloud.com/creaturewiththeatombrain/sets/creature-with-the-atom-brain

80s epicness with movie quotes

https://soundcloud.com/maddecent/blood-bros-first-blood

Midnight in Paris

Typical Woody Allen film where the scene and the feeling of the moments is more important than the actual characters. It is quite enjoyable, basically a big name dropping of famous writers and people in Paris, and the time travel does lend it a nice magic feeling. Nothing special and it seems a bit repetitive at some point though.

Black Mirror

Amazing mini series of a world with slightly more advanced technology, perfectly showing the creepiness of already existing technology.

Must watch. For everybody.

The Creatures - (misc)

True enough, most songs sound pretty much like Siouxie and the Banshees, if just because of her voice. And many of them are just as amazing.

• "Pluto Drive"
• "Don't go to sleep without me" (almost - but not at all - a Bond song)

Dan Mangan - "Blacksmith"

Though particularly the first couple of songs of this album are not terribly special, I keep returning to this singer-songwriter album (musically more advanced than man-with-guitar.)

Is it just the latter songs (the slow "War Spoils"?) that mean more to me, or is the build-up so good that even while working I pick up the intensifying mood as the album progresses?

Definitely the final "New Skies", full nose-diving trumpets and harrowing vocals.

Tim Minchin - "If I didn't have you"

Even though I am fiscally consistantly pitiable
And considerably less Brad Pitt than Brad Pitiful

...

And if I may conjecture a further objection, love is nothing to do with destined perfectionThe connection is strengthened, the affection simply grows over time
Like a flower
Or a mushroom
Or a guinea pig
Or a vine
Or a sponge
Or bigotry
... or a banana

...

But I'm just saying
I don't think you're special
I-I mean, I think your special
But you fall within a bell curve

Chasmaporthetes

Chasmaporthetes, also known as hunting or running hyena, is an extinct genus of hyenas endemic to North America, Africa, and Asia during the Pliocene-Pleistocene epochs, living from 4.9 million to 780,000 years ago, existing for about 4.12 million years.

Its name means "he who saw the canyon", because it was the only one of its kind to cross the Bering land bridge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chasmaporthetes

Chase Holfelder - "Major to Minor"

He sounds like that guy from Starsailor. The minor version of Star Spangled Banner is quite gripping.

Billy Talent - "The Dead Can't Testify"

Pretty horrible yet happy-go-jumpy rock song, found via http://8tracks.com/toxicconspiracy/zombies

Harlan Ellison - "Dangerous Visions"

• Harlan Ellison - "The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World" : a dark tale of Jack the Killer in a clean, sterile City of the future. The killer in us. Good.

Orphan Black (2013-2014)

First two seasons about cloned sisters. It's okay but nothing special. Completely slept through a few episodes and cannot say I minded much.

Frozen (2013)

Very meh. Ice and crystal animations are nice, but the story is mediocre and the songs sometimes plain boring.