Glass Candy - "Shell Game" (Lost River Original Motion Picture Score)

Pretty much instrumental, low beats and the kind of synths that burn through subwoofers. Nice enough. Check out either album or artist?

Johnny Jewel - *misc*

Very David Lynch-y.

H.U.V.A. Network - "Orientations (Above Towns Edit)"

Electronic, slow beats, good for coding

Creed

Another Rocky. 95% and 89% on rotten tomatoes? Well for once I couldn't disagree more. OK film, but nothing special. More fun for me because of the actual boxing than because of the storyline or film.

Get Out

Fun horror where a black guy is lured to an old family's mansion by his girlfriend "to meet her parents" but in reality to get his mind swapped with one of the family members.

Top of the Lake - China Girl

Thrilling and horrible. The soundtrack reminded me of The Returned, but it seems to have been different people.

Shocking story about surrogate mothers in the sex industry and Elizabeth Moss - "Robin" - who has to rescue her mother.

Ska Vengers

From India, with radically political lyrics. To which I'm in all honesty not listening too much, but ska wise, it sounds amazing.

Haruki Murakami - "1Q84" (book 1, 2, 3)

Book one is too long. Took me ages and I lost interest. In book two, things speed up. Tengo and Aomame finally start to do something. The Little People, the air chrysalis, "real life" maza and its "mirror" dohta, the strange Eri-Fuka... finally things started to happen.

I'm definitely no fan anymore of Murakami's main characters. Always the same introvert guys. The same silent girls. Cooking. Jazz and classical musical. Merf.

What struck me: in book 2 or 3 he for once suddenly switches to omniscient storyteller, instead of the usual limited third person. He does it once, for a few paragraphs, a page at most. Curious.

All in all enjoyable, but way too long.

Michael Haag - "The Durrells of Corfu"

A biography of the fantastical family of the Durrells. Famous writer(s)??
Fun enough since the trip to Corfu, but nothing special.

Twin Peaks: the Return

Crazy so far. But I still enjoy it. Even the really slow sequences. Great music!

• Au Revoir Simone - "Lark" (the Bird of Music (Bonus Track))
  typical David Lynch music, electronic, softly sung
• Trouble - "Snake Eyes" (Snake Eyes)
  Great southern rock with saxophone!! must look into this.
• Cigarettes After Sex - "Nothing's Gonna Hurt You Baby" (I.)
  again, very David Lynch-y
• Johnny Jewel - "Windswept" (Windswept)
  Saxophone, instrumental, nice, look into?

Session 9

Run-off-the-mill 90's horror film about a asbestos cleaning crew suffering from weird illusions in an abandoned madhouse. It was probably my own state of mind why this film actually got to me. It wasn't that good but there was a shift in my perception for a little while.

Logan (2016)

Amazing film that kept me in its grip from beginning to end. Not in the least because of its amazing soundtrack.

Maceo Plex - "Polygon Pulse"

slow, electronic, female vocals, good stuff

The Keys - "From Tense To Loose To Slack"

Great surfy-twangy music, very melodic.

Swans - "Lunacy" (The Seer)

Lunacy! Lunacy! Lunacy!

Aine Cahill - "Black Dahlia"

Very Florence & the Machine ish. Hints of Marina and the Diamon. No full album yet, it seems.

Love in the Circus - "Trust me"

female vocals, lost saxophone, 3am stuff, Vaya Con Dios but less swing.

Robert Gitelman - "As You Wish"

Good for coding?

The Beat - "Mirror in the bathroom"

Nice ska.

Capsula - "I know that I know"

Very Shpongle like. With weird lyrics.

Hooded Fang - Den Of Love (6 Music Session, 13 Feb 2012)

Nice twangy, then rock song.

Nice as well, though completely different: Nick Nicely - Ghostdream. Electronic.

Postrock! Phoenician Drive - "Two Coins"

Slade - Get Down and Get With It - Live in Paris 1972

Bad Parents - "You Can't Date A model"

Female vocals, rock in a light way.

Fader - "Laundrette" (First Let)

Very soft spoken, near-parlando, like Japan's "Nightporter"

Unavailable everywhere, heard on bbc6. Awesome stuff.

Moderat - "Sick With It' (Moderat) ft Dellé Aka Eased

catchy

The Lobster

Absurd and poignant film in a near future where people have to find a mate within 45 days or they will be turned into an animal. They hunt "loners", people who don't subscribe to that lifestyle and live in the woods, but who create just as strict and harsh rules for themselves. The need to find a common defect as a must for relationships is beautiful and painful.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Nice and at times quite funny story of a young orphan who treks through the bush after his guardian mom died and his gruffy guardian father has to put up with him. A bit over the top at the very end, the car chase, but thinking back to it, it basically showed the boy's point of view - he admitted getting carried away living the stux life, yo - of everything.

Sicario

Harsh story about the realities of anti drug agencies operating around (and across) the USA-Mexico border. Not just violence and action - although a fair amount - but some hard personal moments.

Martin Seay - "The Mirror Thief"

I felt there was more to this book than I found. Three timelines, three generations of sorts. Strange motions in language and story. I wasn't enraptured, but kept curious, excepting magic realism, not really finding it. But there was a strange book that one of the characters does not understand, and as such keeps reading it, over and over again, until it makes sense.

Part of the settings, L.A. in the 60's, sounded very familiar.

Cixin Liu - "The Three-Body Problem"

Interesting enough by itself, about aliens who can for sure take over the earth, and communicate this, to a strange satellite post in the north of China.

Yet it failed to capture me. Too long ago to remember why, though.

Lisa McInerny - "The Glorious Heresies"

Amazing sentences, on every single page, time and again, and an impressive speed, but after reading it for a while, noticed I'm still not too taken with any of the characters to care too much for them.


    He left the boy outside its own front door. Farewell to it, and good luck to it. He wasn't going to feed it anymore; from here on in it would be squared shoulders and jaws, and strong arms and best feet forward. He left the boy a pile of mangled, skinny limbs and stepped through the door a newborn man, stinging a little in the sights of the sprite guiding his metamorphosis. Karine D'Arcy was her name. She was fifteen and a bit and had been in his class for the past three years. Outside of school she consistently outclassed him, and yet here she was, standing in his hall on a Monday lunchtime. And so the boy had to go, what was left of him, what hadn't been flayed away by her hands and kisses.


    They had gone to the pictures, they had eaten ice cream, they had meandered at the end of each meeting back to her road, holding hands. And lest they laid foundations too wholesome, they had found quiet spaces and dark corners in which to crumble that friendship, his palms recording the difference between the skin on her waist and on her breasts, his body pushing against hers so he could remember how her every hollow fit him.


    Deirde Allen was as stubborn as she was tough, which may have sounded like an admirable mix, but as far as Jimmy could tell it simply meant she was too stupid to know when she was wrong and too slow to notice the consequences.


    - but then it pissed him off that he couldn't approach her on his own two feet. That he was no more upright now than his father. That uselessness was hereditary.


    Ellie looked worse than her exertions sounded. She frowned all the way through the piece and then turned and faced her audience like she'd been instructed to do so by a voice in her head which intended later to encourage her to burn down an orphanage.

Michelle Gurevich - "Lovers Are Strangers" (Party Girl)

Found this a long time ago. Low throated late jazzy sad songs. Hints of Marianne Faithful.

Joseph Heller - "Catch 22"

Amazingly crazy characters! You can see the true war's madness through the lines. But what - so far - has been missing is any real narrative that will make you care a lot about its characters.


    'They're trying to kill me,' Yossarian told him calmly.
    'No one's trying to kill you,' Clevinger cried.
    'Then why are they shooting at me?' Yossarian asked.
    'They're shooting at everyone,' Clevinger answered. 'They're trying to kill everyone.'
    'And what difference does that make?'
    Clevinger was already on the way, half out of his chair with emotion, his eyes moist and his lips quivering and pale. As always occurred when he quarreled over principles in which he believed passionately, he would end up gasping furiously for air and blinking back bitter tears of conviction. There were many principles in which Clevinger believed passionately. He was crazy.
    'Who's they?' he wanted to know. 'Who, specifically, do you think is trying to murder you?'
    'Every one of them,' Yossarian told him.
    'Every one of whom?'
    'Every one of who do you think?'
    'I haven't any idea.'
    'Then how do you know they aren't?'
    'Because...' Clevinger sputtered, and turned speechless with frustration.
    Clevinger really thought he was right, but Yossarian had proof, because strangers he didn't know shot at him with cannons every time he flew up into the air to drop bombs om them, and it wasn't funny at all. And if that wasn't funny, there were lots of things that weren't even funnier. There was nothing funny about living like a bum in a tent in Pianosa between fat mountains behind him and a placid blue sea in front that could gulp down a person with a cramp in the twinkling of an eye and ship him back to shore three days later, all charges paid, bloated, blue and putrescent, water draining out through both cold nostrils.


    Orr sniggered as he shook his head. 'I did it to protect my good reputation in case anyone ever caught me walking around with crab apples in my cheeks. with rubber balls in my hands I could deny there were crab apples in my cheeks. Every time someone asked me why I was walking around with crab apples in my cheeks, I'd just open my hands and show them it was rubber balls I was walking around with, not crab apples, and that they were in my hands, not my cheeks. It was a good story. But I never knew if it got across or not, since it's pretty tough to make people understand you when you're talking to them with two crab apples in your cheeks.'


    The nightmares appeared to Hungry Joe with celestial punctuality every single night he spent in the squadron throughout the whole harrowing ordeal when he was not flying combat missions and was waiting once again for the orders sending him home that never came. Impressionable men in the squadron like Dobbs and Captain Flume were so deeply disturbed by Hungry Joe's shrieking nightmares that they would begin to have shrieking nightmares of their won, and the piercing obscenities they flung into the air every night from the separate places in the squadron rang against each other in the darkness romantically like the mating calls of songbirds with filthy minds.

The Invitation

Enjoyable enough AFFF-ish film about friends coming together more than two years after tragedy of a dying child of main character and his ex. Quite predictable and some scenes were repetitive. Also, the "shocking end" was, well, mehhhh. But good for a late Friday evening.

45 Years

Charlotte Rampling stars in this amazing film about a long slowly unraveling marriage. Amazingly subdued story with strong emotional currents without ever needing strong visual or audio cues.

Trentemöller - "Spinning" (Fixion)

Hypnotic electronics, female voice, slow impending beat, wheezing synths. Quite good.

values of β will give rise to dom!

The very first use of Unix in the "real business" of Bell Labs was to type and produce patent applications, and for a while in the early 1970s we had three typists busily typing away in the grotty lab on the sixth floor. One day someone came in and observed on the paper sticking out of one of the Teletypes, displayed in magnificent isolation, this ominous phrase:

 values of β will give rise to dom!

It was of course obvious that the typist had interrupted a printout (generating the "!" from the ed editor) and moved up the paper, and that the context must have been something like "varying values of beta will give rise to domain wall movement" or some other fragment of a physically plausible patent application.
But the phrase itself was just so striking! Utterly meaningless, but it looks like what... a warning? What is "dom?"
At the same time, we were experimenting with text-to-voice software by Doug McIlroy and others, and of course the phrase was tried out with it. For whatever reason, its rendition of "give rise to dom!" accented the last word in a way that emphasized the phonetic similarity between "doom" and the first syllable of "dominance." It pronounced "beta" in the British style, "beeta." The entire occurrence became a small, shared treasure.


https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/odd.html

CAN - "Vitamin C" (2004 remastered version)

A bit burlesque / carvanalesque. Drum stuff.

the Head and the Heart - "Dreamer"

Not even sure why I like it... because of its 70's vibe?
Nice 'n catchy.

Terry Pratchett - discworld quotation

Technically, the city of Ankh-Morpork is a Tyranny, which is not always the same thing as a monarchy, and in fact even the post of Tyrant has been somewhat redefined by the incumbent, Lord Vetinari, as the only form of democracy that works. Everyone is entitled to vote, unless disqualified by reason of age or not being Lord Vetinari. And yet it does work. This has annoyed a number of people who feel, somehow, that it should not, and who want a monarch instead, thus replacing a man who has achieved his position by cunning, a deep understanding of the realities of the human psyche, breathtaking diplomacy, a certain prowess with the stiletto dagger, and, all agree, a mind like a perfectly balanced circular saw, with a man who has got there by being born… A third proposition, that the city be governed by a choice of respectable members of the community who would promise not to give themselves airs or betray the public trust at every turn, was instantly the subject of music-hall jokes all over the city.

Inna de Yard - "Signs of the times" (ft Steve Newland)

Nightmanager

Series with Hugh Laurie and Tom... something. That Thor guy.

Amazing series. Sorta James Bond-ish. And the Night manager part was let go off a bit too much at some point. Great story telling. Great mood and music.

Gerrit Komrij - "Verzonken Boeken"

    "... Heel het leger van de nijveren ook, van de denkers en dichters, van de windmolenbouwers, ballonvaarders en liefdeszangers, het ligt onder de grond en hun kennis, hoge kluchten en verzen zijn in de wonderlijke omhulsels die boeken heten achtergebleven, omhulsels die nooit dezelfde zijn en toch altijd weer op elkaar lijken, die oneindig kunnen variëren in papiersoort, letter, band, versiering, kleur, of maat, maar toch altijd onmiddelijk te onderscheiden zijn als Boek. Onder de grond ligen miljoenen stoffelijke resten, maar een ander groot leger van doodkisten huist in bibiliotheken boven de grond, als de geest die boven die knekels zweeft. Dat is het kerkhof van ons verleden, het mortuarium van kennis, beschaving en dwaasheid waartoe iedereen vrij toegang heeft die over de toverstaf beschikt waarmee men de doden daar tot leven wekt: de toverstaf van het alfabetisme."

"Onder de grond het nameloze, boven de grond de naam. Boven de grond de rechtvaardiging van de vergane gruwel in het slijk. De verstilde, aristocratische bibliotheek geeft zin aan het zoevende, zinloze slagersmes van de wereldgeschiedenis. Kreten verstomden en werden letters en letters sloegen weer kreten los. De Ilias kwam na de Trojaanse oorlog en de Tweede Wereldoorlog kwam na Mein Kampf."

    "Een van de onoplosbare raadsels die het zoogdier mens, toch al niet arm aan loose ends, aankleven is zijn drang tot reizen. Wat beweegt die behaagzieke tweevoeter, in de loop van de evolutie uitgegroeid tot de ideal partner van fauteuil and crapaud, ja in donzen kussens passend als een schroef in een moer, zijn comfortabele milieu vaarwel te zeggen en zich bloot te stellen aan te veel hitte, te veel kou, aan het gezelschap van te veel mensen, aan autopech en denderende ruzies, aan de samenzwering tussen luchtvaartmaatschappijen en verzekeringsgiganten, aan stof en hoofdpijn, aan heimwee en de mondiale monotonie van de souvenirwinkel? Wat beweegt hem zijn natuurlijke staat te verlaten en zich in een nachtmerrie van ongemakken en onaangepast gedrag te storten?
    Ziedaar het best bewaarde geheim van de schepping."

    "'... schrijft alleen zoals jíj het leven voelt. Dat wil zeggen: als je een onderwerp behandelt waarmee je niet vertrouwd bent - bijvoorbeeld de zee - vermoei je dan niet met het naspeuren van allerlei technische aspecten van, zeg maar, de navigatie, maar schrijf over schepen en wat dies meer zij zoals ze indruk op je hebben gemaakt en - het allerbelangrijkste - alleen wanneer ze indruk op je hebben gemaakt. Als ik een tui vol mooie bloemen zie, als die aanblik iets in me heeft losgemaakt (is het mogelijk dat ik geen van de bloemen bij naam ken), dan is het mijn enige zorg hoe ik mijn particuliere emotie aan de lezer overdraag, en alleen indirect hoe het visuele effect van het geheel zal zijn. Hoewel...'
    Dit hoewel is typerend voor Gerhardie. Eén standpunt zou te benauwend zijn. Daarom werd hij door de literaire magazijnbedienden ongeschikt verklaard, denk ik, voor een constellatie. Hij kon geen vaste plaats vinden - tussen aanverwante artikelen - op een van hun literaire schappen. De liefde, de schoonheid, de onschuld portretteren - dat wilde Gerhardie - doe je niet vanuit één standpunt; je kan ze alleen attaqueren door om beurten, of tegelijkertijd, lyrisch, cynisch, poëtisch, nuchter, dolkomisch, melig, melancholiek, bevlogen, aards en satirisch te zijn. De wisselingen van stemmingen in The Polyglots is enorm, maar staat in dienst van één doel: de eenvoud."

    "Schaars is het aantal boeken dat je een lamme hand bezorgt, oneindig groot daarentegen het leger dat je tot niet één uitroeptekentje, niet één miezerig sicje of kruisje weet op te wekken. Toch heeft het lezen geen ander doel dan dit blijven haken aan memorabilia: zeg mij wat u in uw leven heeft aangekruist en ik zeg u wie u bent."

    "De bibliofiel wordt door velen beschouwd als een fijnproever, een liefhebben van mooie dingen die met zorg een uitgelezen verzameling bijeenbrengt. Niets is minder waar. De bibliofiel is een veelvraat, een slokop, een ordinaire opstapelaar. Boeken zijn voor hem geen doel, maar een middel. Een middel om zich, in een mantel van beschaving, te gedragen als een wilde die met pijl en boog door het oerwoud rent om hitsig alles neer te leggen wat hem voor de voeten loopt. Zodra zijn prooi terneerligt steekt hij alweer, met atavistische drift, zijn neusvleugels uit in de richting van ander wild. De bibliofiel staat nog 't dichtst bij Tarzan van de apen.
    Als de bibliofiel na lang speuren een vurig gewenst boek heeft gevonden en bijgezet in zijn trofeeënkast, verliest hij er prompt alle interesse in. Hij is al op zoek naar een ander boek. Zolang de bibliofiel leeft blijft zijn buit dood liggen, als een gehoorzame hond. Pas na de dood van de jager zelf komt de hond weer tot leven. Wee het boek dat in de handen van een bibliofiel valt! Het blijft dood zolang zijn baas leeft. Alleen bij het overlijden van bibliofielen vinden boeken baat."

    "Nog even in de sfeer van de artsen. Voor verzamelaars die hem om een handtekening of een staaltje van zijn handschrift vroegen had Mark Twain een gedrukt briefje klaar: 'Luistert u eens. Ik schrijf om aan de kost te komen. Mijn schrijven is handel. U vraagt toch ook niet aan een dokter of hij u als souvenir een van zijn lijken toestuurt?'"

    "Karl Marx ontving tijdens zijn aan research gewijd verblijf in Londen de volgende brief van zijn uitgever: 'Geachte Herr Doctor. U bent al achttien maanden over de inleveringstermijn van het manuscript van Das Kapital heen wat u beloofd hebt voor ons te schrijven. indien wij thans het manuscript niet binnen zes maanden ontvangen zullen wij ons helaas genoodzaakt zien het werk aan een andere auteur uit te besteden.'"

    "Als ik zulke flapteksten lees schiet me steevast de eigenaar van een winkel in huishoudelijke artikelen, die bij mij op de hoek woont, te binnen. Jaren geleden bood hij in de uitverkoop muizevallen voor één gulden aan. Dat was geen geld, toegegeven, maar het waren dan ook wel héél scharminkelige muizevallen. Een stukje waaibomenhout met een paperclip, meer niet. 'Daar zul je ook geen muis mee vangen,' zei ik. 'Wél als je er voor een tientje kaas op legt,' antwoordde hij."

    "Bloed valt er te verbergen, en de jammerklacht van tallozen. In de Eerste Wereldoorlog werd wel eens een voetbal in de richting van de vijandelijke linies getrapt om de aanval inspiratie te verlenen, om de slachtpartij het gezellige aanzien van een klaverjaswedstrijd te geven. Een zeker Captain Nevill nam - het staat te lezen in Fussells The Great War and Modern Memory - tijdens het offensief aan de Somme vier voetballen mee, voor elk peloton één, en loofde een prijs uit voor het peloton dat als eerste zijn voetbal achter de Duitse frontlinie had getrapt. Achteneenhalf miljoen mensen kwamen in deze oorlog om. Alleen aan de Somme: één miljoen. Ze zijn verdwenen. Maar twee van de vier voetballen staan nog in Engelse musea te pronk. Mensen vergaan, symbolen blijven."

    "Toch - wie een beschavgin echt wil kennen hoort geen onderscheid te maken tussen de orakelspreuk en de rebus, tussen het Wilhelmus en het bargoens, tussen een aria en een scheet. Hij brengt niet ongestraft een hiërarchie aan in de zintuigen van de mens - of hij groeit zelf net zo scheef als het beeld dat hij zich van anderen schiep."

    "Echte kinderhanepoten zijn het, met verbeteringen, spetters, intkvlekken en al. De tekeningen komen je vertrouwd voor; kindertekeningen hebben iets tijdloos; ze zijn blijkbaar niet aan stijlen of ontwikkelingen onderhevig, nagenoeg als kattengemiauw en het gedrag van politici."

    "Ik ril als ik aan al die miljarden letters denk die, als je ze ook maar even door elkaar zou schudden, niet de miste betekenis meer opleveren. Ik huiver bij de gedachte aan die miljoenen stoffige, grauwe vellen die ze tussen hun platten torsen en die, als het ook maar lichtjes door het plafond zou gaan lekken, niets meer voorstellen dan een papperige, zwakzinnige brij. Wat heb ik aan hun vage boodschappen, hun oude nieuws, hun kreten en gejengel uit een voorgoed voorbij verleden? Het zijn jaloerse vrijsters die zich tegen me hebben gekeerd omdat ik niet langer met ze flirt. Ik wil me bevrijden van hun juk en een nieuw, fris leven beginnen. Ik verlang naar een lichte wereld, zonder hun ballast.
    Wat moet ik met dat eczeem dat neerschilferde van al die inmiddels fossiel geworden generaties en dat als ongevraagd geschenk voor mij achterbleef? Het is een warboel, en het verwart me. Weg er mee - totaal, absoluut.
    Maar hoe ik mijn best doe, het lukt me niet. Nooit zal het me lukken, besef ik pijnlijk. Het zou zijn of ik mij darmen, toch ook een walgelijk labyrint van verbindingen die enkel in mijn buik, en enkel daar, op zonderlinge wijze functioneren, er uitrukte en opvrat. Het zou zijn of ik mijn hersens, die zinloze pap van kleffe cellen en anders niet, uit mijn kop schoot. Het zou mijn dood zijn."

Marja Pruis - "Genoeg nu over mij"

1. De spiegels in mijn huis. Over schrijvers en hun reflectie

Martinus Nijhoff - "Het kind en ik"

Ik zou een dag uit vissen,
ik voelde mij moedeloos.
Ik maakte tussen de lissen
met de hand een wak in het kroos.

Er steeg licht op van beneden
uit de zwarte spiegelgrond.
Ik zag een tuin onbetreden
en een kind dat daar stond.

Het stond aan zijn schrijftafel
te schrijven op een lei.
Het woord onder de griffel
herkende ik, was van mij.

Maar toen heeft het geschreven,
zonder haast en zonder schroom,
al wat ik van mijn leven
nog ooit te schrijven droom.

En telkens als ik even
knikte dat ik het wist,
liet hij het water beven
en het werd uitgewist.


Sylvia Plath - "Mirror"

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful ‚
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.


 Gilian Wearing - Self portrait as a 17 year old
http://www.we-find-wildness.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/gillian-wearing-self-portrait-at-17-years-old-2003.jpeg


    Tas had me verteld dat schaamte de emotionele reactie is op de angst voor afwijzing. Een uitspraak van zijn oom over de zwijgzaamheid van Duitse Joden die in 1938 naar Nederland vluchtten, was hem altijd bijgebleven. 'Ze schamen zich omdat ze slecht zijn behandeld.' Het besef te behoren tot een groep die straffeloos kon worden vernederd en mishandeld, was schaamteverwekkend. 'Wanneer je je schaamt,' zei Tas, 'heul je met de vijand. De haat richt zich tegen jezelf. Schaamte kan tot zelfmoord leiden.


    Schillen moeten we: razendsnel
    uit de partjes kruipen
    voor een nieuwe schil ons vangt.

Barolo Solo - "Alifib"

Very strange. Polyvocal. Is "sad circus" a genre? Well know it is.

David Lynch music

the slow-dancing-soft-girl songs

Beach House - "Wishes" (though skimming the other songs on this album, not that amazing)

Lay Low - "I Forget It's There" (Farewell Good Night's Sleep)
Haven't heard anything else of her / them. Good.

Emily Haines - "Doctor Blind" (Knives Don't Have Your Back)
Same here, hints of "Huit Femmes", haven't heard the rest.

Legion

Started off pretty awesome, but by episode four things had started to lose their logic. And why, when Sydney can switch minds, do the bodies suddenly, some time later, switch as well?

Music reminded me of Utopia. Actually, the whole style was reminiscent of that series.

Ez3kiel - "Lux"

Drone rock, or simply postrock. Quite nice when you need to drown out the world.

Album "Handle with care" on the other hand, has almost ska-like influences, Death Can Dance vocals...

And "Barb4ry" reminded me a lot of DAAU... which makes sense since they actually played together on the Versus Tour.

Whiplash

Quite an intense film about a drummer and his mentor. He is driven, but his mentor is beyond driven, treating his students like shit because, Charlie Parker only became bird after his mentor threw a cymbal at his head. Semi-happy ending. But who won.

Kazuo Ishiguro - "The Buried Giant"

There is a lot about this story that I might actually miss, but as far as I get it, it is absolutely beautiful. The post-Arthur landscape, the language of the people, archaic and careful, particularly careful, sketch an impression of a forgetful world that captures you from the beginning. The ending is, overwhelming in its subdued tones. I wish I knew how to describe it better. I fear I need to read up on ancient Britain lore and customs.



    "Do you remember the strange woman in dark rags you watched me talking to up by the old thorn that day? She may have looked a mad wanderer, but the story she told had much in common with the old woman's just now. Her husband too had been taken by a hoatman and she left behind on the shore. And when she was coming back from teh cove, weeping for loneliness, she found herself crossing the edge of a high valley, and she could see the path a long way before and a long way behind, and all along it people weeping just like her. When I heard this I was only partly afraid, saying to myself it was nothing to do with us, Axl. But she went on speaking, about how this land had become cursed with a mist of forgetfulness, a thing we've remarked on often enough ourselves. And then she asked me: 'How will you and your husband prove your love for each other when you can't remember the past you've shared?' And I've been thinking about it ever since. Sometimes I think of it and it makes me so afraid."
    "But what's to fear, princess? We've no plans to go to any such island or any desire to do so."
    "Even so, Axl. What if our love withers before we've a chance even to think of going to such a place?"
    What are you saying, princess? How can our love wither? Isn't it stronger now than we we were foolish young lovers?"
    "But Axl, we can't even remember those days. Or any of the years between. We don't remember our fierce quarrels or the small moments we enjoyed and treasured. We don't remember our son or why he's away from us."
    "We can make all those memories come back, princess. Besides, the feeling in my heart for you will be there just the same, no matter what I remember or forget. Don't you feel the same, princess?"
    "I do, Axl. But then again I wonder if what we feel in our hearts today isn't like these raindrops still falling on us from the soaked leaves above, even though the sky itself long stopped raining. I'm wondering if without our memories, there's nothing for it but for our love to fade and die."
    "God wouldn't allow such a thing, princess." Axl said this quietly, almost under his breath, for he had himself felt an unnamed fear welling up within him.



    "... Ladies, let us remember them as ladies, Horace, now we are finally beyond them, for are they not to be pitied? We will not call them hags, even if their manners tempt us to. Let us remember that once, some among them at least possessed grace and beauty."

Youn Sun Nah - "Jockey full of bourbon" (Voyage)

Nice slow-evening-swinging (Calypso-ish?) version.

Not all songs from this album are as enjoyable. "The Linden" is ok.

Quotations in an article on the "discovery" of the Pacific by the Spaniard Balboa

"How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge," said Victor Frankenstein, "nad how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow."
[Mary Shelly]

"Here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness."
[Herman Melville on the Pacific Ocean]

Peru - misc

* Out of Time [1981]
* Continents [1983]

Very nice synths. Not on spotify alas. Very 80s wow-y reverbs and basic beats.

the Shadow Band - "Endless Night"

Hints of surf, very 60s.

the Adjustment Bureau

Should have realized this is based on a short Philip K. Dick story (same name). Matt Daemon and Emily Blunt in an enjoyable but not extremely deep scifi flic, where the plan of "the chairman" keeps them apart. Until the plan gets changed. Didn't see that coming.

Martin Scorcese on catharsis

That’s why we like to read a book, or listen to music, or see a really interesting film, where you feel a catharsis: it is play-acting, in a way, for us. But in life, there is none of that. The moment you try to grasp the moment, it’s gone.

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/interview-martin-scorsese

Ten hours of ship stuck in ice ambient

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpW7iYfuGDU

I'm not sure about the tags here...

the Hubschrauber - "Kepler - 186f"

Described as "lo-fi", reminds me a lot of Belgian bands like Soulwax, dEUS... Nice sound.

Etienne Jaumet (Eglise Saint Eustache)

Because I never tagged this and it is amazing.

Yom - "On the Endless Road" (Songs for the Old Man, 2015)

Sad meandering saxophone. Reminded me a bit of Etienne Jaumet, though it lacks those energetic speedups. Which is not a bad thing, just different.

Just listened to the whole album. Pretty nice.


Le Silence de l'exode
This though has a lot more energy, follows a flow of building fast notes, only then to slow down to the twanging of a jazzy contrabass. 

Benjamin Franklin - writing exercises

Step One:  Find writing you would like to emulate.
Step Two: Make short notes about the view or opinion of each sentence.
Step Three: Wait a few days, and then write a piece only using your notes on each sentence.
Step Four: Go back and read the original writing selection you chose and compare it to the writing you did.
Step Five: Find any faults, and correct them.

He started by taking one of the essays and jotting down a note for each sentence indicating the sentiment it contained. He then put his notes aside for a few days and then by using his notes recreated the essay in his own words. Then he compared his version to the original and made corrections. Essay by essay he could see his approach improving his skills and in some small ways he felt his expression might even be better than the original. These glimmers of erudition gave him hope.

Despite the progress Ben felt he needed more. He wanted to expand his vocabulary. What better way then than to rewrite an essay’s prose in verse. Again he would start with notes expressing the sentiment of each sentence but this time he wrote his version in verse. It forced him to add variety and creativity. After a few days he’d forget the original prose and so would then take his verse and use it to rewrite the essay. Again he made a comparison, made corrections and learned by doing.

I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and compleat the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language.

HAPPYish

Too short series with Steve Coogan as sad, depressed advertisement guy. It has great quotes and amazing humour. Must watch again.

N. K. Jemisin - "The Fifth Season"

Amazing book about an Earth gone rogue and humanity try to survive whenever a Season, brought about by volcanos, tectonic activity, ... occurs. Three timelines of the same person, a rogga, who can sess (feel and influence) such activity, necessary in that volatile world, but feared by all the 'stills', the "normal" people who cannot feel anything.

Her trip in search of her husband (to kill him, for out of fear he killed their child), her own childhood, her trip to a sort of freedom with a ten-ringer from the Fulcrum...

Amazing story, well written. A fantasy page turner of the best kind.


"Let's start with the end of the world, why don't we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.
    First, a personal ending. There is a thing she will think over and over in the days to come, as she imagines how her son died and tries to make sense of something so innately senseless. She will cover Uche's broken little body with a blanket - except his face, because he is afraid of the dark - and she will sit beside it numb, and she will pay no attention to the world that is ending outside. The world has already ended within her, and neither ending is for the first time. She's old hat at this by now.
    What she thinks then, and thereafter, is: But he was free.
    And it is her bitter, weary self that answers this almost question every time her bewildered, shocked self manages to produce it:
    He wasn't. Not really. But now he will be."

The Naked Sweat Drips - "Psycho Sister"

organ, guitars, grungy, psychodelicious.... good if you don't mind something bit more rough.

Balkan Beat Box - "Dancing With the Moon" (Blue Eyed Black Boy)

Soooo much reggae swunggggg.

Charlie Megire and the Bet She'an Vally Hillbillies - "The End of Teenage"

Great surf songs!

Hava Nargila
and of course "The Death Dance of the Busty Hot Lifeguard Instructor Babe"

Night Beats - "Bad Love"

Heard "Bad Love" on BBC6, now listening to their 2016 album "Who Sold My Generation". Old swamp sound.

Gidge - "LNLNN" (2016)

Kinda nice electro. "Elegy, Part II" has some cool theremin stuff.

Forgotten letters of the English alphabet

 Eth (ð)
The y in ye actually comes from the letter eth, which slowly merged with y over time. In its purest form, eth was pronounced like the th sound in words like this, that or the. Linguistically, ye is meant to sound the same as the but the incorrect spelling and rampant mispronunciation live on.

https://omgfacts.com/we-used-to-have-6-more-letters-in-our-alphabet-a7e1a165853d#.a0pwtcyq5

Haruki Murakami - "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle"

Ugh, this seems to become a regular thing... but I could not get into the story, delayed it, chose other things to read, turned back to it, had a hard time enjoying it...

It's not bad but, like other Murakami novels (with the notable exception of the "Egg... Wonderland..." one) I seem to miss the deeper philosophical or emotional meaning or layer and I simply Do. Not. Care. So. Much.

There were good pieces, and I was - obviously - quite interested in the strange things happening when he's in the well, passing into that other reality with the room 208 in the hotel, the woman talking to him in different voices, the dark anger trying to attack him...

But did the story grasp me? No.

Iggy Pop - "Post Pop Depression" (2016)

How could I have forgotten to log this one? Amazing album. Bring it on, Iggy, bring it on.

Nocturnal Animals (2016)

Enjoyable enough. The beginning was really David Lynch-ish. The inner story, of the book he wrote, was cool. But the outer story was thin. Things unexplained. Things shown that - in my opinion - did not seem to matter. Both Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhal did a great job. And the music was interesting, done by Abel Korzeniowski. Its theme reminded me of another movie but I could not think of what it was for the life of me. "Neon Demon" by Nicolas Winding Refn?
This one directed by Tom Ford by the way.

Willie Nelson - "Texas"

Has that minor key twanging guitar sound I like so much, although part of the song is quite major key country.

BBC - The Trap, What Happened to Our Dreams of Freedom

part 1

John Nash - devised the Prisoner's Dilemma, equations showing that self interest always trumps helping others. Got Nobel Prize. Later diagnosed as schizophrenic. The idea: there's no grant unifying theory of "the people" since everybody has only self-interest at heart: the Impossibility Theory. (oh, he's the one portrayed in "A Beautiful Mind". How amazing that Disney left out the fact he was notorious for his cruel games, above all his "Fuck you buddy" where you could only win through betrayal.)

Cold War, resulting from game theory: ends in an equilibrium where you made sure "the other" had no interest in attacking you - in this case by keeping squadrons in the air 24/7, by having enough missiles to destroy them -. Both sides lowering the amount of weapons will never work: you cannot trust the other, then you'd give him an advantage.

Game theory: the idea you can incorporate your enemy into your own thinking.

Tests carried out in relationships: people constantly battle to "win".

Government wants control for a "perfect" society. The result, for some, is the dictatorship of the USSR.

A test: distinguish between madness and sanity? 8 people including David Rosenhan went to different mental hospitals, hearing voice in their head that said the word "Thud". That was the only lie. Otherwise they were to behave as normal as possible. None of them had a history of mental illness.
It took some of them two months to get out. Doctors didn't believe them. Only by pretending to be sick and then getting better, they got out.

Tests were made, hundreds of thousands of people were questioned. A computer "computed" who was sane. Half of the American people had a form of mental disorder.

The tests changed. Became checklists. Tell us what to do / how to be if we are not insane. If you don't have this-and-this, you are sane. A new form of control by the government.

Thatcher claimed a new freedom. But knew she needed a new way to control the people. Again, numbers. Public servants were encouraged to follow their self interest.

"Zealots are less interested in incentives and self-motivation like money. You don't want too many of them in a group."

Computations were made by some guy: how many megatons needed to be dropped on the USSR, how many people killed and how much of its industry destroyed, to win. When applied to the Vietnam War, it showed its horrible face. "body count" had been considered a rationele for success: kill enough enemies and we know we are doing fine. So troops started to shoot civilians to get to their targets...
A year later he resigned. And was later asked by Thatcher to oversee the reform of the NHS in Britain. "Give incentives to do a better job." Shedding all incentives to work for the public good.

All of this based on the kind of people John Nash created in the 50s to make his game theory work.

The idea of freedom in the West is deeply rooted in the paranoia and the suspicion of the Cold War.


part 2

John Mayor tried to mimic the self interested drive of free market. Public servants got performance targets --> can achieve them in any way. They become entrepeneurs.

Clinton made a "smaller" government. Couldn't pay for his plans with the existing deficit. Listened to Alan Greenspan and Citycorp guy: let the markets do their work. Thus, dismantled most of the safety nets put in place in the 30s.

Freedom redefined: the ability of individuals to get whatever they want.

"Liberation management", a real thing. Tom Peters is an ass.

"You can never win when you deal with the public" a very sour politician?

This would start to undermine the very ideas of democratic freedom.

James Buchanan: politicians, like public servants do not server the public. This is a fiction. They too followed their self interest.

John Nash idea, about people always just following their self interest. Philip Morowski: People are little information processors. The market is the ultimate information processor. Voting - or a democracy - is a weak information processor, inefficient.

"You think of yourself as trying to create more of yourself when you procreate. Instead, you are just a vehicle for your genes. They are using you to ensure their survival." And then of course Richard Dawkins comes looking around the corner.

During the cold war, people were reduced to mathematical equations, simple desires that could be modelled - using game theory - because they lived in a scary era full of unknown dangers. In the 90s, the Cold War was over, but the theory persisted and claimed to fully describe man, his desires, goals and aims. A machine model of human beings. Ready to be adjusted. Not through politics, but by how well every single machine performed. Doctors and psychiatrists are now in control, by defining and quantizing all mental illness, by defining who is healthy and who needs adjustment. "Generlized Anxiety Disorder". Everybody suffered from it. "Panic Disorder". Checklists with only objective symptoms, deliberately not listing WHY these were experienced.

Drug companies started to manufacture "rssi"'s, such as prozac, adjusting the amount of seratonine flowing through the brain. The checklist became a powerful, seemingly objective guideline to people what should be considered normal. A static society was created of "normal people", defined by the checklist. "They imagine living in a world where there's never grief"

They deliberately excluded any understanding of the patient's life. And guess what? "it confused genuine psychological disorder with normal human feelings, like sadness and anxiety. This was happening on a wide scale." All done by Robert Spitzer. "So you effectively medicalized ordinary human feelings like sadness, fear, ordinary experiences.."
RS: "I think, to some extend. I don't know what the percentage is. 20 or 30% That's considerable. But we don't know. Whether it's 20 or 30%"

"Those drugs made them happier human beings. But they also made them simpler, more ordinary. Easier to predict and manage. Closer to the machine-like creatures at the heart of the economic models. [...] More efficient. Less human."
"A medicalized illusion of an epidemic."

In the UK, Tony Blair, new Labour, followed Clinton, selling government organizations to the banks.

The treasury, under Gordon Brown: they invented ways to assign numbers to things that previously no one thought could be measured. Hunger in Africa was to be reduced below 48%. And all the villages in England were to be measured for their Community Vibrancy Index.  Even the life in the country side was broken down into a series of indices, one of them measuring how much bird song there should be."

Almost immediately, New Labour began to discover human beings were more complex than the simple model allowed for.

In hospitals, wheels of "trolleys" were removed so they were no longer trolleys. People were scheduled for meetings during their holidays, so they couldn't come... but targets were met. Polic reclassified many crimes (including assault) as mere "suspect behaviour"... so targets were met.

Government response? Even more levels of target management. A more rigid society emerged. At its heart: education. Government tallied best and worst schools: this would entice schools to do better, all of education would improve. The opposite happened. Rich parents moved into neighbourhoods of the best schools, driving up the house price, driving away poorer people. All schools started teaching their pupils only what they needed to know to pass the exam, in order to meet the criteria, thereby hiding the wider education from them that they needed to rise above their poverty.

The inequalities not only determine how you will live, but also when you will die.

Politicians see things spiralling out of control.

And now, the simplified equation of human beings being simple automatons, programmed by our DNA millions of years ago, begins to erode. In the 90's, scientists discover that cells choose which part of DNA to copy.

And now, John Nash, who once championed the idea of humans solely fighting for their own best interest, starts to doubt his own theories, starts to realize the human being is more complex than that.

part 3

Alan Enthoven: Recommending missiles under ground, missiles in submarines, and all that, was a way to make it all more stable. We're trying very hard to reduce the likelyhood of nuclear war by creating powerful incentives for the Russians not to start a nuclear war because we're trying to give them incentives not to attack, either a nuclear attack or a convential attack. Yeah, so, incentives are important to them.

Jungle Book (2016)

Nice enough but nothing really exciting. I wasn't miffed by the talking animals (which were exceptionally realistic) but couldn't say I cared a lot.

Philomena

with Steve Coogan (good actor here, I knew him previously just from "funny" stuff) and Judy Dench.

Quite moving story about an elderly Irish lady trying to find her son who was sold while she was a nun. Very effective "true" story telling. Both the journalist (Steve Coogan) and Philomena (Dench) go through an arc, but no muffy Hollywood way, yet very, very moving. He turns from cynic to angry, she finds peace. Beautiful.

Paul Robeson (vinyl)

"Me Curley Headed Baby" very old, but quiet for a Sunday afternoon.

"The World is Yours"

Heard "The world is yours" from "Scarface" for - I think - the very first time.

Eerily reminiscent of "Exit Music (For a film)" by Radiohead. Wondered if they were inspired by it.

SidiRum - "LUNA EP"

Electro, slow beats, spacey sounds.

Remo-Con - "Streams" (Nhato Remix)

Catchy, good house rhythm.

Mono - "The Last Down"

Quite amazing album. Same postrock soundscapes, but amazing melodies. "Cyclone" for example.

The beginning of "The Land Between Tide & Glory" is sad and lost.

Designated Survivor

Kiefer Sutherland as hapless president. I just want him to be Jack Bauer.

Westworld (season 1, 2016)

Enjoyed it despite the plot/logic gaps. I wonder where they will take it in season 2.

The western styled rendering of songs like "Paint it Black" and "No Surprises" was quite amazing. Must look into Ramin Djawadi.

Refused - "Refused are fucking dead"

Punk, screaming, fast riffs. Nice nice nice.

"Tannhäuser / Derivè" - violin with postrock guitar!?

Pyramidal

nice electro, floating, whispering.

Haruki Murakami - "The Wind-up Bird Chronicles"

    ... It was a narrow world, a world that was standing still. But the narrower it became, and the more it betook of stillness, the more this world that enveloped me seemed to overflow with things and people that could only be called strange. They had been there all the while, it seemed, waiting in the shadows for me to stop moving. And every time the wind-up bird came to my yard to win its spring, the world descended more deeply into chaos.
    I rinsed my mouth and went on looking at my face for a time.
    I can't find the image, I said to myself. I'm thirty, I'm standing still, and I can't find the image.

Meaningful misery

Acknowledge negative emotions:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/negative-emotions-key-well-being/

Edge of Tomorrow

Remember seeing the posters and not thinking much of it. But it's a cool sci-fi time-travelling story. Almost not too Hollywood-ish.

Midnight Special

Boy shoots light from his eyes and moves to a higher / other plane at the end, while followed by FBI and whatnot.

"A cult classic in the making", the airline's description read. My bad for hoping that might even be slightly true.

Nightcrawler (2011)

With Jake Gyllenhaal.

Not bad. Lots of LA driving shots, him the dirty reporter that would do anything, including staging a shootout between mobsters and police, and getting his "partner" killed in the process, but it didn't really hit me. Good mood though.

Amy Hempel - "New Stories from the South"

Emily Quinlan - "The Green Belt"

    It was hard to be a triplet! You couldn't blame anything on anybody. Always you were there, sitting right across from two copies of yourself who were doing correctly what you had just done wrong.

    He didn't know what they were communicating to each other. He used to be better at that, that knowing. These days he brought Pamela coffee when she wanted to sleep, tried to kiss her when she was dreaming of salad.


Marjorie Kemper - "Discovered America"

this story blew me away completely

    When we'd pulled up, Dr. Grueber had been working on a GM van in his driveway. He was middle-aged - I couldn't help thinking he was the right age to have worn a German uniform during World War II. He washed his hands at the sink with Borax. He dried them on a towel hanging off the kitchen stove.
    "So! Poison ivy!"
    "Right," John whispered. John's head had eaten his neck; John was the color of Paul's fire truck, he was in no condition to question his new doctor's credentials, his diagnosis, or his living arrangements.
    "Cortisone," the doctor said briskly. "Some pinephrine for good measure, I think," he added, eyeing John.
    Dr. Grueber opened the fridge and batted around in it. A family-size bottle of ketchup fell out on the floor. The doctor kicked at it, and it lodged beneath a baseboard that had never seen a scrube brush. He called to the woman in German.
    She was leaning against a counter and answered him in English. Hefound was he was looking for in the door. Where she'd said it was.

    Abortionists don't, as a rule, have green thumbs.

    I knew from the start I couldn't take a chance on having John's baby. To have it was to be stuck with John forever because that's the way I am. And by then I believed that a woman had a right to a life not patched together from mistakes she'd made when she was too young or too dumb to know any better - like marrying a Yankee who talked too loud and didn't like her mother; a man who got midnight hang-up-calls and wanted it every night. (I never bothered hunting for her underwear.)

    The bathroom was tiny. You couldn't have swung a cat.

    With your automatics, I found driving a car is not that big of a deal. D is for drive. That's pretty much it. I had no need of reverse. The worst part is you can't close your eyes crossing bridges. I drove to Dallas.

    But we'd none of us listened, and now it was too late. Death was on television like a beauty pageant; it was in my grandfather's familiar cigarette cough; it was enthroned trumphant in my empty womb; it was depicted on the front page of every newspaper, morning and afternoon, which each new day hit the porch with sickening thuds.


Elizabeth Spencer - "Return Trip"

    Patricia got up from the porch and walked in th dark down to the New River. She kicked off her shoes, sat on the boat pier and put her feet in the cool, silky water. It was then she heard the Mississippi voices for the first time. She knew each one for who it was, though they had died years ago or hand't been seen for ages. Sometimes they mentioned Edward and sometimes herself. They talked on and on about unimportant things and she knew them all, each one. She sat and listened, and let the water curl round her feet.


Tim Gautreaux - "IDOLS"
 
    "Take you back?" Julian gave him a startled look. "Didn't you tell me that woman beat you with a broom?"
   Obie looked down at his plate and smiled a faraway smile. "Aw, she's just a woman. Can't hurt a man unless she buys a gun."

Greg Egan - "Permutation City"

   'But ... if the pattern that is me could pick itself out from all the other events taking place on this planet ... why shouldn't the pattern we think of as "the universe" assemble itself, in exactly the same way? If I can piece together my own coherent space and time from data scattered so widely that it might as well be part of some giant cloud of random numbers ...  then what makes you think that you're not doing the very same thing?'
    The djinn's expression hovered between alarm and irritation.
    Squeek. 'Paul ... what's the point of all this "Space-time is a construct; the universe is really nothing but a sea of disconnected events ..." Assertions like that are meaningless. You can believe it if you want to ... but what difference would it make?'
    'What difference? We perceive - we inhabit - one arrangement of the set of events. But why should that arrangement be unique? There's no reason to believe that the pattern we've found is the only coherent way of ordering the dust. There must be billions of other universes coexisting with us, made of the very same stuff - just differently arranged. If I can perceive events thousands of kilometres and hundreds of seconds apart to be side by side and simultaneous, there could be worlds, and creatures, built up from twhat we'd think of as points in space-time scattered all over the galaxy, all over the universe. We're one possible solution to a giant cosmic anagram ... but it would be ludicrous to believe that we're the only one.'


    'We haven't structured the whole thing. The universe is random, at the quantum level. Macroscopically, the pattern seems to be perfect; microscopically, it decays into uncertainty. We've swept the residue of randomness down to the lowest level.'


    The most that could be said, at anymoment, was that someone existed who knew - or believed - that they'd once been David Hawthorne.


    Peer seemed to be making love ith Kate, but he had his doubts.


    'A universe with conscious beings either finds itself in the dust ... or it doesn't. It either makes sense of itself on its own terms, as a self-contained whole ... or not at all. There never can, and never will be, Gods.'
 


Intriguing philosophical ideas about id and personality, spreading scans of people's minds over thousands of processors (where is the person), slowing them down (where are they in between thoughts).
As a story, not the best. No characters you truly care a lot about. Perhaps I read it too fast. I never got the part of the dust and its patterns well enough to appreciate it enough.

Kelly Link - "Pretty Monsters"

The monster stood and looked down adn grinned. "You," it said. It had a voice like a dead tree full of bees: sweet and dripping and buzzing.

She still has that magic touch of estrangeness in her shorts, but I felt like I knew the trick by now. I stopped reading them for some time, because they felt too much the same in voice and eeriness. Still, great writer.

The Martian

The film, this time. Enjoyable and a good watch.

127 hours

Good film, though the hallucination sequences seemed a bit much and piled up at some point.

7JK - "Star seed" (Ride the Solar Tide)

Its vocals, mixed with the synths, reminded me of that "uullaahh" track on War of the Worlds.

Ursula Le Guin - "The Dispossessed"

     There was something lacking - in him, he thought, not in the place. He was not up to it. He was not strong enough to take what was so generously offered. He felt himself dry and arid, like a desert plant, in this beautiful oasis. Life on Anarres had sealed him, closed off his soul; the waters of life welled all around him, and yet he could not drink.
    He forced himself to work, but even there he found no certainty. He seemed to have lost the flair which, in his own estimation of himself, he counted as his main advantage over most other physicists, the sense for where the really important problem lay, the clue that led inward to the centre. Here, he seemed to have no sense of direction. He worked at the Light Research Laboraties, read a great deal, and wrote three papers that summer and autumn: a productive half year, by normal standards. But he knew that in fact he had done nothing real.

Enjoyable but in a cold, theoretical sense. Seldom was I moved even a little bit by the characters or what happened to them. In retrospect, I wonder how I felt about Earthsea, whether it was the idea of the story that appealed more to me than its characters.

the ALGOR!THM - "AutoRUN" ("Octopus4", 2014)

techno-ish. Good beat.

SomaFM - Secret Agent

• Midi Brotherhood - "Violin Bliss"
  Instrumental, slow sweeping. Nice enough.
• Harmonic 33 - |Bossa Nova Supernova"
  Never a big fan of the bossa nova rhythm but this instrumental song swings yet meanders

instrumental, creepy

http://8tracks.com/igniparous/dreadful-darling

• Caroline Campbell & William Joseph (feat. Tina Guo)
  Miserlou

Infected Mushroom - "Becoming Insane" (Vicious Delicious)

Fast. On the Sphongle spotify radio thing. More intense beat.