Amanda Palmer - "Billy Jean"

for the record, I hate live recordings of the iPhone variety.

This deserves an exception.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTaI7pu-6ps

Ayize Jama-Everett - "The Liminal People"

It felt like a badly written X-Men novel. The prose just couldn't grab me and at times it was way too explicit. Not in a sexual sense, but the horrible reverse of "show, don't tell"

Finished it quickly and couldn't care much for the characters.

William S. Burroughs - quotes

(from Break Through in Grey Room and other audio recordings)

Of course you have peace of mind. Your mind is a mental cemetary.

If you cut up the present, the future leaks out.

U.N.K.L.E. - "Beautiful Burnout"

I keep forgetting how much I love this song.

Road trip music in a long long night.

U2 - "The Joshua Tree"

This tape has been running circles in Ursula for quite some time now. Amazing roadtrip music. "Outside is America... outside is America...!"

(this is obviously not "The Unforgettable Fire"... geez)

Arcade Fire - "Suburbs"

Never really listened to their album "Suburbs".

It's not as impressive as "Funeral", but has for sure some interesting songs. Must listen again.

* Sprawl I (Flatland) - sad... let's take a drive.. through the sprawl...

Boy Robot - "Live In Vanilla" (Rotten Cocktails)

Long spinned electronic scapes, not the slow atmospheric kind but faster, tingy-er.

RJD2 - "Weather People" (In Rare Form)

moody, with a distinct "Tubular Bells" feeling to it. (am I now pissing people of?)

classical complexity

Aristoteles used peplegmenos for complexity: "interwoven"

Urbs - "The Incident" (Toujours Le Meme Film)

instrumental, on station "Air", repetitive small loops of running-away tones

Arthur C. Clarke - The Colours of Infinity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gKOB6spCb8
(part 2)

Fun series about Mandelbrot and fractals.

First fractal by a Frenchman named Julia, in 1917. He never saw the Julia sets themselves.

Joanna Newson - "Svetlana" and other songs

Plays harp. Voice a bit like Björk, bit like Emiliana Torrini.

Ok song.

Supposedly her album "Easy" ("Ez" ?) is beautiful, produced by Jim O'Rourke and other famous guys... Oh wait, "Ys".

• "Monkey & Bear" - wait, I know this one! Came by on Pandora and confused the hell out of me.

It's an interesting album. Though her voice can sometimes start to grate on your nerves a bit.

Julee Cruise - "The Voice of Love"

Saw her on my 2listen list. This is the first album that she put out after Angelo Badalamenti discovered her.

Released about 3 years after Blue Velvet.

Very much as expected.

• Kool Kat Walk - dark swingy. Nice.
• Questions in a World of Blue - very slow, definitely not good every day or night, but at times wonderful to drift off

Charlie Rose interviews David Foster Wallace

Intriguing. Makes you think about writing again, about more reading and endless writing.

Even though it costs so much time and energy.

Tritone - diabolus in musica

From Oliver Sacks' "Musicology"

The tritone - an augmented fourth (or, in jazz parlance, a flatted fifth)- is a difficult interval to sing and has often been regarded as having an ugly, uncanny, or even diabolical quality. Its use was forbidden in early ecclesiastical music, and early theorists called it diabolus in musica ("the devil in music"). But Tartini used it, for this very reason, in his Devil's Trill Sonata for violin.
Though the raw tritone sounds so harsh, it is easily filled out with another tritone to form a diminished seventh. And this, the Oxford Companion to Music notes, "has a luscious effect... The chord is indeed the most Protean in all harmony. In England the nickname has been given it of 'The Clapham Junction of Harmony' - from a railway station in London where so many lines join that once arrived there one can take a train for almost anywhere else."

Visualization of unusual words - Project Twin

Wonderful selection of strange words with visualization.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/07/02/project-twins-unusual-words/

Classics

• Krang - "Kraaien"
• Thé Lau - "Rivier"
• Lange Frans & Baas B. - "Het Land Van"
• Tom Barman & Guy van Nueten - "Nothing Really Ends"

Sir Thomas Urquhart - Wonderfully crazy words

http://sixdegreesofsirthomas.blogspot.co.uk/

It grew from a theory that every word in English is within six degrees of a word invented or used by Sir Thomas Urquhart, a logofascinated spirit if ever there was one. 

love love love love love this.

Cut "Oz" scene - "Somewhere over the rainbow"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAI40Md7Wfk

in which Judy Garland breaks down and cries.

chilling.

Kory Stamper - English is a little bit like a child

via: http://korystamper.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/no-logic-in-etymological-a-response-i-actually-sent/

Kory Stamper

English is a little bit like a child. We love and nurture it into being, and once it gains gross motor skills, it starts going exactly where we don’t want it to go: it heads right for the goddamned light sockets. We put it in nice clothes and tell it to make friends, and it comes home covered in mud, with its underwear on its head and someone else’s socks on its feet. We ask it to clean up or to take out the garbage, and instead it hollers at us that we don’t run its life, man. Then it stomps off to its room to listen to The Smiths in the dark.

Everything we’ve done to and for English is for its own good, we tell it (angrily, as it slouches in its chair and writes “irregardless” all over itself in ballpoint pen). This is to help you grow into a language people will respect! Are you listening to me? Why aren’t you listening to me??

Like well-adjusted children eventually do, English lives its own life. We can tell it to clean itself up and act more like one of the Classical languages (I bet Latin doesn’t sneak German in through its bedroom window, does it?). We can threaten, cajole, wheedle, beg, yell, throw tantrums, and start learning French instead. But no matter what we do, we will never really be the boss of it. And that, frankly, is what makes it so beautiful.

trying to define English as a pure language

via http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002579.html
source: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/rec.arts.sf-lovers/5tQFnNbvN80/1pfKcGbEYckJ

James Nicoll

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

Sylvia Plath - "Birthday Present"

A Birthday Present

What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?
It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges?

I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want.
When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking

‘Is this the one I am too appear for,
Is this the elect one, the one with black eye-pits and a scar?

Measuring the flour, cutting off the surplus,
Adhering to rules, to rules, to rules.

Is this the one for the annunciation?
My god, what a laugh!’

But it shimmers, it does not stop, and I think it wants me.
I would not mind if it were bones, or a pearl button.

I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year.
After all I am alive only by accident.

I would have killed myself gladly that time any possible way.
Now there are these veils, shimmering like curtains,

The diaphanous satins of a January window
White as babies’ bedding and glittering with dead breath. O ivory!

It must be a tusk there, a ghost column.
Can you not see I do not mind what it is.

Can you not give it to me?
Do not be ashamed–I do not mind if it is small.

Do not be mean, I am ready for enormity.
Let us sit down to it, one on either side, admiring the gleam,

The glaze, the mirrory variety of it.
Let us eat our last supper at it, like a hospital plate.

I know why you will not give it to me,
You are terrified

The world will go up in a shriek, and your head with it,
Bossed, brazen, an antique shield,

A marvel to your great-grandchildren.
Do not be afraid, it is not so.

I will only take it and go aside quietly.
You will not even hear me opening it, no paper crackle,

No falling ribbons, no scream at the end.
I do not think you credit me with this discretion.

If you only knew how the veils were killing my days.
To you they are only transparencies, clear air.

But my god, the clouds are like cotton.
Armies of them. They are carbon monoxide.

Sweetly, sweetly I breathe in,
Filling my veins with invisibles, with the million

Probable motes that tick the years off my life.
You are silver-suited for the occasion. O adding machine—–

Is it impossible for you to let something go and have it go whole?
Must you stamp each piece purple,

Must you kill what you can?
There is one thing I want today, and only you can give it to me.

It stands at my window, big as the sky.
It breathes from my sheets, the cold dead center

Where split lives congeal and stiffen to history.
Let it not come by the mail, finger by finger.

Let it not come by word of mouth, I should be sixty
By the time the whole of it was delivered, and to numb to use it.

Only let down the veil, the veil, the veil.
If it were death

I would admire the deep gravity of it, its timeless eyes.
I would know you were serious.

There would be a nobility then, there would be a birthday.
And the knife not carve, but enter

Pure and clean as the cry of a baby,
And the universe slide from my side.


(here you might find an audio recording: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/10/29/sylvia-plath-reads-a-birthday-present-1962 )

Tin Cup Prophette - "Going Numb" (Liar and the Thief)

Catchy, tinkle-tonk, somehow singer-song writer, yet not. It's on Pandora's DAAU channel.

Flaming Lips - "Funeral In My Head" (Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots)

But if I go mad
No one will know it.

[...]

But if I go mad
No one will know it.

[...]

But if I go mad
No one will know it.
Because I don't want you to be sad for me



Listening to the album in preparation of the musical at La Jolla Playhouse. It's gripping.

Anvil! The story of Anvil

Nice documentary on Anvil, the metal group who never made it, but is still cited by the big ones (Mötorhead, Metallica, Slash) as having an incredible impact.

Particularly "Lips" is just this amazingly friendly guy.

Searching for Sugar Man

Wonderful documentary on how to find "Sixto Rodriguez", a singer-songwriter from Detroit who got no notice in the USA but became incredibly big in South Africa.

Mixel Pixel - misc

Selected some songs because grooveshark suggested they were like the Flaming Lips.

Didn't really care for it.

Bat For Lashes - "The Haunted Man"

New album, I assume, since it's on NPR's "First Listen".

Bit Kate Bush-y, in singing as well as melody. Nice enough.

the Flaming Lips - "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots"

I am sure I have blogged this album before (it seems I haven't, or I forgot to tag it properly) but it's one of those albums I never "got" when it came out. No, that's wrong. Not-getting implies listening to it, getting it on your radar, or whatever.

I was simply most oblivious to it.

Of course, I've heard of the Flaming Lips, and the title sticks, but did I ever consciently listen to it? No.

Wonderful to discover it now. Time is relative.

Quine, or: recursing zip

http://research.swtch.com/zip

where zip files are created out of themselves.

Charles Bukowski - "So you want to be a writer"

so you want to be a writer

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.

don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

Amazon review Tuscan Milk by "Edgar"

I have no idea how to file this, but an amazing Amazon review on Tuscan Whole Milk


Customer Reviews
Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz

Once upon a mid-day sunny, while I savored Nuts 'N Honey,
With my Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 gal, 128 fl. oz., I swore
As I went on with my lapping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at the icebox door.
'Bad condensor, that,' I muttered, 'vibrating the icebox door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Not to sound like a complainer, but, in an inept half-gainer,
I provoked my bowl to tip and spill its contents on the floor.
Stupefied, I came to muddle over that increasing puddle,
Burgeoning deluge of that which I at present do adore -
Snowy Tuscan wholesomeness exclusively produced offshore -
Purg'ed here for evermore.

And the pool so white and silky, filled me with a sense of milky
Ardor of the type fantastic of a loss not known before,
So that now, to still the throbbing of my heart, while gently sobbing,
I retreated, heading straightway for the tempting icebox door -
Heedless of that pitter-patter tapping at the icebox door -
I resolved to have some more.

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
'This,' said I, 'requires an extra dram of milk, my favorite pour.'
To the icebox I aspired, motivated to admire
How its avocado pigment complemented my decor.
Then I grasped its woodgrain handle - here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams of Tuscans I had known before
But the light inside was broken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only words there spoken were my whispered words, 'No more!'
Coke and beer, some ketchup I set eyes on, and an apple core -
Merely this and nothing more.

Back toward the table turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
'Surely,' said I, 'surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the wind and nothing more!'

From the window came a stirring, then, with an incessant purring,
Inside stepped a kitten; mannerlessly did she me ignore.
Not the least obeisance made she; not a minute stopped or stayed she;
But, with mien of lord or lady, withdrew to my dining floor -
Pounced upon the pool of Tuscan spreading o'er my dining floor -
Licked, and lapped, and supped some more.

Then this tiny cat beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grand enthusiasm of the countenance she wore,
Toward the mess she showed no pity, 'til I said, 'Well, hello, kitty!'
Sought she me with pretty eyes that seemed to open some rapport.
So I pleaded, 'Tell me, tell me what it is that you implore!'
Quoth the kitten, 'Get some more.'

Ween - "Spiral Miningitis (Got Me Down)" (Chocolate and Cheese)

Ween weirdness with scary girl's voice.

Oh thank God for weirdness.

Bucketlist

Many people said I *had* to watch this.

It's okay. It's funny, and nice, and does everything you expect from such a film and such actors.

But give me "As Good As It Gets" any time.

Cabin In The Woods

Loved it. In hindsight, since I knew about the scifi/mystical side, I wasn't too surprised, and it might have worked even slightly better without knowing anything about it. Still, quite enjoyable.

Good pace!

Morphine - "Whisper" (Best Of..)

Though I didn't realize it straight away, a typical Morphine sound. Low and dark, the belly allies of the music city.

The Tiny - "Second Time Around" (Close Enough)

girly, evocative, curious.

Sinéad O'Connor - "Queen of Denmark"

Yup, cover. From her 2012 album "How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?"

Pretty good.

John Cheever - "The Swimmer"

Incredible story of a man "swimming the county", by hopping from swimming pool to swimming pool.

A story that makes you close the book afterwards and just think about it. A story that leaves you with more questions than answers, a beautiful inbalance that you mentally try to fix by adding explanations in your mind, but the scale is too sensitive and you never get it right.

T.C. Boyle - misc short stories

• "Balto" - a daughter must appear in court to testify whether she or her father was driving. Wonderful soft suspense.

Sky Ferreira - "Red Lips"

co-written by Shirley Manson, and there's a familiar sound.
Raw video.

Shirley Manson misc

• "In the snow" - a demo from 2009 and pretty beautiful. slow.
• "Lighten Up" - another demo, doesn't do that much for me.
• "Pretty Horses" - contemplative, darker, good. Organ!
• "Samson & Delilah" - featured in the Sarah Connor Chronicles, not bad
• She was in the band "Angelfish" before joining Garbage
• reads "Forgiveness and Exile, Pt.3" on Chris Connelly's album "Forgiveness and Exile (2008)"
• vocals on Serj Tankian on "The Hunger" (Amnesty International Version) from his rock musical "Prometheus Bound". Pretty cool. 

Charlie Rose interviewing Garbage

On youtube, wonderful interview of Charlie Rose interviewing Garbage.

Chris Ware

writer, cartoonist, considered by many to be a genius.

Must look into this.

Stephen Fry Kinetic Typography - on language

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY

Wonderful.

Giant Robot Test Drive!

too happy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVhr8FrtmOo

Muse - "2nd Law"

• "Madness" : ugh. damn. horrible. hated to admit I realized who it was.
• "The 2nd Law: Isolated System" : instrumental, slow buildup
• "The 2nd Law: Unsustainable" : eh, Skrillex?? With orchestra?! Okay.
• "Save Me" : instrumental. So-so. Bit boring.
• "Big Freeze" : same same.
• "Animals" : same same
• "Follow Me" : Skrillex-y again
• "Panic Station" : instrumental rock
• "Supremacy" : James Bond influence

Operation Chariot

Operation Chariot (1958)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chariot

Project Chariot was a 1958 US Atomic Energy Commission proposal to construct an artificial harbor at Cape Thompson on the North Slope of the U.S. state of Alaska by burying and detonating a string of nuclear devices.


crazyweird.

Daniele Luppi & Danger Mouse - "Rome"

with Norah Jones and Jack White.

"American producer Danger Mouse and the Italian film composer Daniele Luppi released in 2011 a spaghetti western-inspired album titled Rome with vocals by Jack White and Norah Jones. It was recorded during sporadic sessions over a five-year period at Rome’s Forum Studios and was inspired by the film soundtrack work of Ennio Morricone. The instrumentation was done mainly by musicians who played on the original Ennio Morricone scores."

It's already amazing!

The instrumental parts are indeed very Morricone-ish. Love "The Rose with the Broken Neck" with Jack White on vocals. Less interested in Norah Jones' "Black"

Procrastinators

Sander en Lernert

procrastinators, melting chocolate rabbit, 't Schaap

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=ARFjRbpIKkk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy2169jWJ6k

http://www.sanderplug.com/index.php?/projects/the-procrastinators/

Jorge Luis Borges - "You Learn"

After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,

And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises,

And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,

And you learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

After a while you learn…
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.

So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure…

That you really are strong

And you really do have worth…

And you learn and learn…

With every good-bye you learn.

Melanie - "Look what they've done to my song, ma!"

I keep "discovering" this song over the years. Heart breaking.

Louie

Amazingly funny show. His jokes, though about common subjects, are often original, deadpan and intensily recognizable.

• moving the black kids to the window seats when their schoolbus gets stuck in Harlem
• his niece from the country side is visiting New York and sees a bum: "don't touch him. Don't touch him! Yes he needs your help, he needs your help desperately. Don't touch him!"
• The way you say "Jesus Christ" can put you in hell. "And what did they say when they were crucifying him? Eh? What did they say?! '*mumble mumble* that's really bananas'!"

(reminder: this post is not supposed to be funny. It is a reminder to myself, nothing more.)

Ezra Pound on poetry writing

excerpt from "A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste"


Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work.

He then moves on to specific prescriptions for the use of language:

Don’t use such an expression as ‘dim lands of peace.’ It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer’s not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol. Go in fear of abstractions. Don’t retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose. Don’t think any intelligent person is going to be deceived when you try to shirk all the difficulties of the unspeakably difficult art of good prose by chopping your composition into line lengths. What the expert is tired of today the public will be tired of tomorrow. Don’t imagine that the art of poetry is any simpler than the art of music, or that you can please the expert before you have spent at least as much effort on the art of verse as the average piano teacher spends on the art of music. Be influenced by as many great artists as you can, but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt outright, or to try to conceal it. Don’t allow ‘influence’ to mean merely that you mop up the particular decorative vocabulary of some one or two poets whom you happen to admire. A Turkish war correspondent was recently caught red-handed babbling in his dispatches of ‘dove-gray’ hills, or else it was ‘pearl-pale,’ I can not remember. Use either no ornament or good ornament.

Next, he examines rhythm and rhyme:

Let the neophyte know assonance and alliteration, rhyme immediate and delayed, simple and polyphonic, as a musician would expect to know harmony and counter-point and all the minutiae of his craft. No time is too great to give to these matters or to any one of them, even if the artist seldom have need of them. Don’t imagine that a thing will ‘go’ in verse just because it’s too dull to go in prose. Don’t be ‘viewy’ — leave that to the writers of pretty little philosophic essays. Don’t be descriptive; remember that the painter can describe a landscape much better than you can, and that he has to know a deal more about it. When Shakespeare talks of the ‘Dawn in russet mantle clad’ he presents something which the painter does not present. There is in this line of his nothing that one can call description; he presents. Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap.

The scientist does not expect to be acclaimed as a great scientist until he has discovered something. He begins by learning what has been discovered already. He goes from that point onward. He does not bank on being a charming fellow personally. He does not expect his friends to applaud the results of his freshman class work. Freshmen in poetry are unfortunately not confined to a definite and recognizable class room. They are ‘all over the shop.’ Is it any wonder ‘the public is indifferent to poetry?’

Don’t chop your stuff into separate iambs. Don’t make each line stop dead at the end, and then begin every next line with a heave. Let the beginning of the next line catch the rise of the rhythm wave, unless you want a definite longish pause. In short, behave as a musician, a good musician, when dealing with that phase of your art which has exact parallels in music. The same laws govern, and you are bound by no others. Naturally, your rhythmic structure should not destroy the shape of your words, or their natural sound, or their meaning. It is improbable that, at the start, you will be able to get a rhythm-structure strong enough to affect them very much, though you may fall a victim to all sorts of false stopping due to line ends and caesurae. The musician can rely on pitch and the volume of the orchestra. You can not. The term harmony is misapplied to poetry; it refers to simultaneous sounds of different pitch. There is, however, in the best verse a sort of residue of sound which remains in the ear of the hearer and acts more or less as an organ-base. A rhyme must have in it some slight element of surprise if it is to give pleasure; it need not be bizarre or curious, but it must be well used if used at all.

Bukowski - If you try it...

If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery — isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.

Marianne Faithfull - "Summer Nights"

Nice old song, to be played on a warm dusky evening, reminiscing.

Moonrise Kingdom

Lovely film by Wes Anderson about a very young teenage love story... or rather, what can happen when children and parents switch roles.

For the adults in this film seem as simpleminded (focused) as children, as dificult to see through more complex situations as a teenager might... Yet the young kids behave like adults; wise, smart, computing...

Small island, small community. A scout runs away, with a "very troubled" girl from a local family.

Bill Muray, Tilda Swanson, Bruce Willis, Edwart Norton.

Breaking Bad (series, season 1)

Interesting, though not every episode is as strong.

Only 7. Sometimes there are scenes that make you wonder why they took the trouble.

Particularly the first episode, with the van driving off like crazy into the dessert, is pretty impressive.

Probably gonna watch this in season-split installments.

Underworld - "Beautiful Burnout" (Oblivion With Bells)

still amazing, must be breathtaking during roadtrip.

the Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Christopher Nolan, Christian Bale

Last of the trilogy. Good fun, though a few things bugged me: the "bat"... it looked more like a Terminator. Batman is known for his sleek stuff. Not this weird thing.

The fact that he lived after all... okay, but at least don't show him anymore. Show only Michael Caine nodding.

But catwoman is sexy, and all in all it was fun.

Dire Straits - "El Macho"

slow, good.

Difficult books

These I'll probably never read:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/tip-sheet/article/53409-the-top-10-most-difficult-books.html

How long is a good idea?

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/08/09/several-short-sentences-about-writing-klinkenborg/

“You can say smart, interesting, complicated things using short sentences. How long is a good idea?”

“If there is a magic in story writing,” admonished Henry Miller, “and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.” And yet, famous advice on writing abounds.

In Several Short Sentences About Writing (public library), author and New York Times editorial board member Verlyn Klinkenborg does away with much of the traditional wisdom on writing and dissects the sentence — its structure, its intention, its semantic craftsmanship — to deliver a new, useful, and direct guide to the art of storytelling.

Klinkenborg writes in the introduction:

Like most received wisdom, what people think they know about writing works in subtle, subterranean ways. for some reason, we seem to believe most strongly in the stuff that gets into our heads without our knowing or remembering how it got there. What we think we know bout writing sounds plausible. It confirms our generally false ideas about creativity and genius. But none of this means it’s true.

[…]

Unlearning what I learned in college — teaching myself to write well — is the basis of what I know. So is a lifetime of reading and a love of language.

[…]

This is a book full of starting points. Perhaps they’ll help you find enough clarity in your own mind and your own writing to disvoer what it means to write. I don’t mean ‘write the way I do’ or ‘write the way they do.’ I mean ‘write the way you do.’

A short sampling of advice:

Know what each sentence says,
What it doesn’t say,
And what it implies.
Of these, the hardest is knowing what each sentence actually says.

There are innumerable ways to write badly.
The usual way is making sentences that don’t say what you think they do.

The only link between you and the reader is the sentence you’re making.

You can’t revise or discard what you don’t consciously recognize.

These assumptions are prohibitions and obligations are the imprint of your education and the culture you live in.
Distrust them.

Speaking to the power of ignorance and the negative space of knowledge:

What you don’t know about writing is also a form of knowledge, though much harder to grasp.
Try to discern the shape of what you don’t know and why you don’t know it,
Whenever you get a glimpse of your ignorance.
Don’t fear it or be embarrassed by it.
Acknowledge it.
What you don’t know and why you don’t know it are information too.

Complementing E. B. White’s case against absolutism when it comes to brevity and length:

You can say smart, interesting, complicated things using short sentences.
How long is a good idea?
Does it become less good if it’s expressed in two sentences instead of one?

[…]

There’s nothing wrong with well-made, strongly constructed, purposeful long sentences.
But long sentences often tend to collapse or break down or become opaque or trip over their awkwardness.
They’re pasted together with false syntax.
And rely on words like ‘with’ and ‘as’ to lengthen the sentence.
They’re short on verbs, weak in syntactic vigor,
Full of floating, unattached phrases, often out of position.
And worse — the end of the sentence commonly forgets its beginning,
As if the sentence were a long, weary road to the wrong place.

[…]

Writing short sentences will help you write strong, balanced sentences of any length.
Strong, lengthy sentences are really just strong, short sentences joined in various ways.

Klinkenborg synthesizes our arsenal of writing thusly:

What you’ve been taught.
What you assume is true because you’ve heard it repeated by others.
What you feel, no matter how subtle.
What you don’t know.
What you learn from your own experience.

These are the ways we know nearly everything about the world around us.

Unusual and unusually useful, Several Short Sentences About Writing comes as a fine addition to these essential books on how to write better.

Food Inc.

Impressive, as dark as you think it will be, documentary about the food industry. The meat, the corn, the soybeans, the Big Corporations, the involvement with politics.

Not happy. Not at all. Gripping.

Werner Herzog - "Grizzly Man" (2005)

Intriguing documentary about "Grizzly Man", who lived with grizzlies for 13 summers until he and his girlfriend / partner got eaten by them.

Not so much the nature side of things, but the human take on nature was intriguing.

• his overwhelming love for the animals, to the point of fake
• the practical "well, you could wait until he got eaten" viewpoint
• the adolation of all he did for them
• the Inuits (?? no, others, from Alaska), who basically saw his involvement with the bears as infringement. Plus, it might make the bears trust people. Utterly wrong.

Raising Arizona

crazy early film by the Coen brothers (their 2nd film?) in which Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter steal a baby.

Amazing scene where John Goodman emerges from the mud in sweeping rain when escaping from prison.

Running gag; leaving the baby behind.

the Glad Version - "Under the Pines" (Make Islands)

started off with a Muse-like sound.

Interesting.

2012-08-24 - update:
Listening to the whole album now. Not that inspiring.

Man Man - "Black Mission Goggles" (Six Demon Bag)

La-la-la-esque circus cabaretesque a la Gogol Bordello.

Jump with me!

the Residents - "How To Get A Head.Road" (Roadworms)

Crazy song, half sung and shouted by a lost girl, haunting lyrics and a mental sound.

Wonderfully insane scientific headlines

It is well known within organic chemistry circles that there is a very strong bias toward L rather than D homochirality in the structure of earth's organic compounds. A recent paper offered a speculation about a possible explanation of the bias:

If there was … right circularly polarized light with energy in the uv or higher irradiating the asteroid belt when the amino acids were present on a particle that later came to Earth, this could account for the small excesses of the L anantiomers seen in the α-methyl amino acids.

And what did the PR/media machine do to make news out of this finding? It ultimately mutated into headlines such as:

Claim: Advanced dinosaurs may rule other planets

The paper was entitled "Evidence for the Likely Origin of Homochirality in Amino Acids, Sugars, and Nucleosides on Prebiotic Earth." It did not exactly make a claim that advanced dinosaurs may rule other planets. What it talked about was the possible existence of right circularly polarized light irradiating the asteroids before there was life on earth. (It is thought that the amino acids forming the basis for life on our planet could well have come from the asteroid belt via meteors, and their structure might be affected by light polarization. Some meteors found in Australia contain materials that have a bias in the direction that earth compounds favor.)

Robert McHenry provides an interesting and perceptive analysis of the way in which the science reporting got from possible light polarization biases to smart velociraptor civilizations on other planets. And as he notes, to be fair to the media we have to acknowledge that the absurd metamorphosis was considerably aided by an ill-considered (indeed, frankly silly) throwaway remark at the end of the serious organic chemistry paper by Ronald Breslow that is being reported on. Wrapping up his paper, Breslow said:

An implication from this work is that elsewhere in the universe there could be life forms based on D amino acids and L sugars, depending on the chirality of circular polarized light in that sector of the universe or whatever other process operated to favor the L α-methyl amino acids acids in the meteorites that have landed on Earth.

And then he overreached and added this:

Such life forms could well be advanced versions of dinosaurs, if mammals did not have the good fortune to have the dinosaurs wiped out by an asteroidal collision, as on Earth. We would be better off not meeting them.

McHenry wonders "what imp of the perverse induced him to add" those two extra sentences. Handing those sentences to the university PR men can only be compared to give a bottle of Coke a good two-minute shake before handing it to a thirsty person.

This Discovery News analysis by Ian O'Neill re-examines the story, though in the process it makes things still worse with the headline "DO INTELLIGENT DINOSAURS REALLY RULE ALIEN WORLDS?", and a link to the idea of dinosaurs developing a space program, and an insanely inappropriate picture that clearly shows the silhouette of a large sauropodal herbivore, rather than the sort of smart predator that might have signed up for the dinosaurian space program had there been one. (Come on. An apatosaurus is not going to pass the physical.)

We're still a long way from sensible science reporting industry. Faced with a choice between trying to give an accurate sense of what has been done and writing a sexy piece with an utterly insane eye-catching header and lede, they'll take the sexy insane eye-catching line every time.

Language Log frequently deconstructs some of the nonsense that gets published about linguistics and cognitive science. For a typical example, take a look at Mark Liberman's analysis of results about baboons (Papio papio). What the research shows is that baboons may perhaps be able to become subconsciously aware of letter frequency in orthographic stimuli that they have been exposed to (stimuli of which they do not understand one single word, of course). Where the headlines went with it is well illustrated by this random example:

Reading time at the zoo: the baboons that excel at English.

You could hardly make this stuff up. Except that science reporters do, every single day.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4105

Senna (2010)

fast-paced (d'oh!) documentary about Formula 1 legend Senna.

Impressive doc.

"Senna. You are three times World Champion. You are the fastest man on earth, and you love fishing. Why don't you go fishing"

Good editing to switch from the tears of people during his funeral to their happy moments years before.

M.G. Vassanji - "The Book of Secrets"

A nice read... yet.

Ehrgh. It took me too long to finish this. Reading too many books at the same time, over too long a period. I think that ruined part of it, made me miss out on the overall story.

The first part, the diary of ADC Corbin, was intriguing. It reminded me of "The Pianotuner", but whether it was the writing or the mood, I cannot say. I think the latter.

Then the story continues with people finding the diary, wondering about it. Using it as a shrine for their beloved, murdered, wife...

To a lesser degree, this seemed a bit like mr Bolaño and his South American friends: descriptions of what happens, but in a distant voice. There is seldom real emotions running bare on the page. Am I too insensitive to "get" this kind of writing? Perhaps.

I liked the story; its settings are wonderful. It isn't boring, yet at the same time, it did not pull me along. I made myself finish the second half in less than two weeks, but that was largely to "be done with it".

VAST - "Tattoo of your name" (April)

Swinging song from one-man (Jon Crosby) band VAST.

Hard to describe. Singer-songwriter. Minor chords.

Metronomy - "The Bay" (The English Riviera)

Strange. Starting off with minimalistic plink-y-plonk.

Then singing... it reminds me of something that escapes me.

Close harmony vocals at times. Very synthetic.

Other songs : "The Look", "She Wants", "Corinne"... okay. Sometimes the synthy 8bit sound reminds me of Castlevania. Or any Nintendo game.

"Trouble Underlined" has a wonderfully wet burbling to it.

Chris Rea - "Steel River Blues" (The Blue Jukebox)

A sax, a slow voice, whispered hihats.

Soothing in its melancholy.

Gregory Page - "La Valse De Virginie" (Love Made Me Drunk)

First thought: Yann Tiersen.

Second thought: Yann Tiersen.

Third: this is *so* Yann Tiersen.

Mr Page probably has to deal often with this reaction...

(Oh? I've blogger about him before? There is  "Gregory David Page" in my labels. Assuming it is him.)

the Paris Review - all interviews

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews

amazing stuff.


update 2019-07-23 - reading "The Paris Review - Interviews vol. 1"


Dorothy Parker

    There's a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.

Coldcut - "Philosophy" (album)

I like their "Re:volution" album a lot... or do I like the Ninja remix of those songs?

Their "Philosophy" album... it really doesn't do anything for me. Silly '90's songs.

Rock 'n Roll junkie

Neerlands knuffeljunk... have I seen this documentary?

Sweet and friendly, in a rough, shoot-it-up-your-vein way.

Also, it proves I do not like his (former) manager. Not honest:
- "you fired some of them"
- him: "well.." (ramble ramble nonsense nonsense difference-of-opinion, had-to...)

If you had to fire them, you had to fire them. Have the balls to admit it. Don't try to pretend it was "just one of those situations where there was no other way out of it." Bullshit. Grow a testicle, please.

Kinks - "Alcohol"

wonderful song. Was this Debra Cowan's source?

Debra Cowan - "Alcohol" (Fond Desire Farewell)

slow carnavalesque, alcoholic, a waltz for the slow self-side of society.

Madeleine Peyroux - "Between the bars" (Careless Love)

so sad, so beautiful, so lonely in the night
(supposedly a cover from an Elliot Smith song with the same name?)
("You won't but you might"... ouch....)

Drink up, baby
Stay up all night
Things you could do
You won't but you might

The potential you'll be
You'll never see
Promises you'll only make
Drink up with me now
And forget all about
Pressure of days
Do what I say
And I'll make you okay
And drive them away
Images stuck in your head

People you've been before
That you don't want around anymore
That push and shove and won't bend to your will
I'll keep them still

Drink up, baby
Look at the stars.
And I'll kiss you again
Between the bars
Where I'm seeing you there
With your hands in the air
Waiting to finally be caught

Drink up one more time
And I'll make you mine
And keep you apart
Deep in my heart
Separate from the rest
Where I like you the best
Keep the things you forgot

The people you've been before
That you don't want around anymore
That push and shove and won't bend to your will
I'll keep them still

Stephen Colbert and Neil deGrasse Tyson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXh9RQCvxmg

Amazing interview.

John Cleese on creativity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VShmtsLhkQg

Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

"The Carpet Weavers"

A story spanning centuries and generations. The plot intrigues enough to pull you along but most of all, the writer shows an amazing ability to jump back and forth between times, places and protagonists, reveiling enough to tell the story yet keeping most of it hidden, the absence of details hidden at an incredibly large universe and history. Though a few people are paramount to the story (because they played key positions in the plot) none is *the* protagonist, thereby telling a vast tale that transcends normal humans, weaving ("ahem") a pattern literally larger than the universe.

words

• gorgonize - to have a paralyzing or mesmerizing effect on: Stupefy or petrify
• dactylion - an anatomical landmark located at the tip of the middle finger.
• enantiodromia - the changing of something into its opposite.
• hamartia - the character flaw or error of a tragic hero that leads to his downfall.
• ktenology - the science of putting people to death.
• montivagant - wandering over hills and mountains.
• ostentiferous - bringing omens or unnatural or supernatural manifestations.
• ultracrepidarian - a person who gives opinions and advice on matters outside of one's knowledge.
• yonderly - mentally or emotionally distant; absent-minded.

source (with illustrations of the words)
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/07/02/project-twins-unusual-words/

Darrin James Band - "Had Enough Of Me" (Thrones Of Gold)

"a dose of imperfection"

Jazzy, swingy, plinkyponk piano! Wonderful!

Homage to vowels

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/04/02/vowels-temujin-doran/

Fun - "We Are Young"

Very '80's, very familiar sound, particularly the single-syllable low-high glide. (on fiii-iiiire)

But the name doesn't ring a bell at all.

Katzenjammer - "Lady Marlene" (A Kiss Before You Go)

oh it is my current mental state, I know this, but the sadness of this song eats away at my thoughts.

Velvet and satin and puppets on strings
Everyone's dancing with Lady Marlene
Fear is the color of all that they wear
Mother of pearl palace cold like her heart of stone

Silently soldiers dance till they fall
Icicle chandelier shining so cold
They are draped in red in her masquerade
Lady Marlene takes your hand and commands the...

Wind to blow
Ghosts to the sky above
Deep in despair they cry
Where is the love?

Oh the north wind blows
Ghosts to the sky above
Deep in despair they cry
Where is the love?

Murk is her grip on the world
Calamity rules when a flag is unfurled
Turn your backs on Marlene and let there be love
Pallid and pale, you all fall asleep

As the north wind blows
Ghosts to the sky above
Deep in despair they cry
Where is the love?

Oh the north wind blows,
Ghosts to the sky above
Deep in despair they cry
Where is the love?

(Oh the north wind blows)
(Ghosts to the sky above)
(Deep in despair they cry)
(Where is the love?)

(Oh the north wind blows)
(Ghosts to the sky above)
(Deep in despair they cry)
(Where is the love?)

Calexico - "Old Man Waltz" (The Black Light)

instrumental, accordeon and a hint of sadness.

Firewater - "Diamonds And Gold" (Songs We Should Have Written)

Slow, slightly cabaretesque, gypsy hints.

Slightly sad.

Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter - "The Long Earth"

Wonderful book. Clear traces of Pratchett, yet muted, which is not a bad thing.

Intriguing thought about an endless amount of worlds, and people discovering how to Step through them.

Good read, though the end seems rather sudden, and it doesn't answer a whole lot of questions.

"irrealis mood" in English language

("irrealis mood"... awesome!)

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4049

Consider how were is normally used in the 1st person singular and 3rd person singular. When I say I wish I were with you right now, I'm talking about the situation in an alternative unreal world. (Hence the term "irrealis mood" in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language; we'll come back to that.) The were in such cases is not a past tense form. What I'm saying is that I wish the actual world could be modified to an alternative one, mostly the same as here, except that in the alternative one I'm with you right now. The verb were is talking about the present time in an alternate universe that realizes my wish.
How could we put the statement, I wish I were with you into the past? How to describe that same wish as experienced way back when? There isn't a suitable past tense form corresponding to the irrealis. (Intuitively that's because its uses tend to be future-oriented: what's in the past is already fixed and the wishes either came true or they didn't. Wishes are mostly about possible futures.) There is a long tradition of incorrectly calling irrealis were the "past subjunctive", but it is nothing of the kind.

This does not mean it is impossible to talk about wishes you once had that came true (or failed to come true) at a later point in the past. It seems to me that you could say When I was a child I wished I was a bird, and slightly better (because it expresses the habitual character of having a wish at an earlier age) would be When I was a child I used to wish I was a bird). For a slightly different meaning, where you are looking back to an early wishing period about an even earlier longed-for birdhood, you could say When I was a child I wished (or used to wish) I had been a bird.

What does not sound like idiomatic English to me (in fact I think it might actually be grammatically impermissible, so I'll prefix it with "?*") is: ?*When I was a child I wished I were a bird (or ?*When I was a child I used to wish I were a bird).

I think someone, either Tomczek or his editors at the Huffington Post, had a little moment of panic about was and were, a moment of nervous cluelessness, and plumped for the wrong one. He means to talk about the things he wishes now that people had told him back then.

Nervous cluelessness of this sort is a strange phenomenon: what could make someone uncertain about how to say things in their own language, the one that they think in, the one they have been using fluently and effortlessly for decades? I think I can go some way to explaining what triggered it.

It is only the verb with the basic stem be that has a special form for the irrealis. Other verbs use the preterite form in the relevant contexts (the one that also serves to express the simple past). And even be only has a distinct irrealis form in the 1st and 3rd singular, because in all other person and number combinations the irrealis and the preterite have the same shape.

Moreover, in less formal styles, and for some people all styles, that's true even for be. Some people never say I wish I were a bird or I could make the meeting if it were tomorrow; instead, they say I wish I was a bird or I could make the meeting if it was tomorrow. They don't have a special irrealis form for any verb, not even be in the 1st and 3rd singular. They just have a special use of the preterite, which can do either the past time reference job or the irrealis job.
Now, it is a tradition among very bad English teachers to teach something completely false about informal style: they teach (though they don't put it this way) that everything informal is ipso facto incorrect and you should never use it at all. This is the sort of idiocy that leads to Americans believing that you mustn't ever put a preposition at the end of a clause. Who did you talk to? is informal, and sounds like an ordinary person talking; To whom did you talk? is very formal, and sounds like a stuffy prig talking. It is a tradition among very bad English teachers to regard sentences with stranded prepositions as simply bad. (Serious usage books never actually say this; but apparently, somewhere out there, a lot of teachers do.)

Such prejudice against ordinary less-formal English leads to similar banning of the preterite as substitute for the irrealis. Because if I was the president is more informal than if I were the president, the former is tagged as "wrong".
Somehow, I conjecture, the feeling that was is sometimes "wrong" led to either Tomczek or a subeditor looking at "wish I was told" and changing it to "wish I were told". That's my guess. I can't prove it. (And of course, it's still a puzzle why anyone was considering "wish I was told" when "wish I had been told" would make more sense.)

I'd love to know the sequence of events (email me, Huffington Post editors: Gmail, surname as username). But I do know that the headline as it was published is not grammatical in Standard English as I know it, and we need an explanation of why competent native speakers write things that are not grammatical in their own language, because that's what I think must have happened here.

Kyteman Orchestra - "Mushroom Cloud"

Have I never heard this before? It's amazing.

• "Preaching to the Choir" is impressive.
• "Angry At the World"
• 7/8 is crazy and wonderful

Tangerine Dream

where do I know Tangerine Dream of? Aren't they Dead Can Dance ish?
Ok, way more electronic. Think Alan Parsons Project.

• Tyger - bit flakey, slick 80's
• Ricochet, pt 1 - long, electronic, okay
• Purple Haze - woah, guitars!

Dubstep dispute

very short, 4 robots disputing the way only dubstep robots can.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbIEamupKLw

Inga Liljestrom - "Bullet" (Elk)

Very eerie, vague, dreamlike singing and music.

Definitely not for every moment of the day (or night), but intriguing.

idiocy vs lunacy

... the word "idiot" comes from a Greek root meaning private person. Idiocy is the female defect: intent on their private lives, women follow their fate through a darkness deep as that cast by malformed cells in the brain. It is no worse than the male defect, which is lunacy: they are so obsessed by public affairs that they see the world as by moonlight, which shows the outlines of every object but not
the details indicative of their nature.

http://www.bookslut.com/blog/archives/2012_06.php#019141

Screamin' Jay Hawkins - misc

Amazing. I must have vinyl of him to play on random picnics.

• Little Demon
  he took the Fourth of July / and put it in May
• I Am the Cool
• You put a spell on me
• Ice Cream man
• Constipation blues
• Frenzy
• I Hear Voices
  I so much want to be / where I was before I was me
• Strange
  how many chews in a gum / how many blanks in a blanket
• Portrait of a Man
• I Love Paris (old fashioned, swinging)  
• Life Goes On (truly crazy, dialogue-voiced)
• Shut Your Mouth and Shit (amazingly crazy)