If I Cut My Ear Off, Would I Only Love Music Half As Much?

"In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism and skepticism and humbug,

and we shall want to live more musically."

- Vincent Van Gogh

Amoeba tomorrow! (I've been in self-imposed exile due to lack of funds). If you need me, I'll be in the bossa nova section. Also, my verdict on this group Black Kids (fresh, or not fresh?) is still pending. Nobody make any sudden moves until then.

Random Tribute: Scott Joplin

"Keep on, yes my word is bond
Speakin' that knowledge like Farrakhan
Cause it's ragtime."

     - Sadat X





Every day at approximately 5 pm, there's a taco truck that parks on my street and
plays a tinny, carousel-ish song over and over. Repeatedly. Like,
overandoverandover. I'm hearing it as I type this, matter 'fact. It's not an
unpleasant tune; it's just annoying to a degree that I cannot describe because it infiltrates
my brain and I hear it when I'm trying to go to sleep, when I'm at the grocery store, when
I'm at work in front of my computer, when I'm brushing my teeth, and when I'm drinking
tea and reading the newspaper and wearing kneesocks.

I went to my parents' house a couple weekends ago, and I was mindlessly humming the
tune when my dad tells me that it's the "Maple Leaf Rag" and that "ragtime" comes
from the term "ragged time" due to its complicated rhythmic patterns (you don't know
nothing about my pop's 1-2 punch of nerdiness and musical knowledge. Step back,
young'n.). Being my father's daughter, I embark on a quest for information regarding
this piece of music and discover that it's actually "The Entertainer," but pops gets
points anyway because both are Scott Joplin songs. Turns out Scott Joplin was
African-American (I was surprised to learn this but then I remembered that a black
composer not getting his due in American history when he should be a household name
is really something so non-surprising that I should've assumed it to be the case).

I will no longer refer to it as "ice cream truck"/"taco truck" music because that discounts
the history behind it. So now when I hear it I think of not only carne asada, but of
whorehouses and sheet music and Missouri and syncopation. Kids on my sidewalk and me
in my apartment above, we all hear the music and it's an amazing thing to know how it came
to be blasting from the taco truck's speakers. But I'm corny like that. Also, I apologize for the
quotes below including the c-word. 

"A Brief History of Ragtime," by Dr. Mark Birnbaum

One hundred years ago, ragtime was king. Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana were the cradle of ragtime civilization. America bounced and danced to it. It put a smile on everyone's face. (like me!)

Overseas, ragtime was better respected than in the USA. Paris, London, Vienna - they went wild! Here, ragtime could never quite shake its "whorehouse" association. And yes, it was played in whorehouses, saloons (as opposed to European salons), and eventually concert halls. Also, a "rag" was slang for a dance (a jig or a shuffle). And a "ragtime girl" was a babe (or a whore).

Yet, ragtime was so good, it was irresistible. Only snobs and prudes from high society disliked it, as it came from a mixed "black" and "white" background. In short, the rhythm is black (African), the harmony/melody is white (European), and the result is American.*

One man is chiefly responsible for ragtime's popularity and survival: Scott Joplin (1868-1917). He codified it, wrote it down, made it into an art form.

It is amazing this controversial music became popular so quickly - it has never been easy to play. Ragtime is a solo piano affair. The left hand provides the basic rhythm and harmony, the right hand sings the melody (which has its own rhythm). Yet, it was easy to listen to; it still is.

Ragtime didn't exist in a vacuum. Ragtimers were required to play folk, blues, popular tunes of the day. Yet, ragtime piano was unique. The melodies were captivating - but the rhythm was infectious.

Syncopation! Two rhythms at once - a steady beat in the left hand and something happening off the beat in the right hand. The tension between the two gives ragtime its special kick. Ragtime's syncopation grew into the foundations of Jazz, Swing and Rock n' Roll. Whether a rag is fast (like the "Maple Leaf Rag") or slow ("The Entertainer"), you feel the syncopation.

In 1899, the "Maple Leaf Rag" put Scott Joplin on the map. Although Joplin was not a technically great pianist, with his unique compositions he quickly established himself as the king of ragtime composers.

Shortly after the wild success of the Maple Leaf Rag, Tin Pan Alley quickly published hundreds of mostly third-rate song that overshadowed superior works by Scott Joplin, Eubie Blake, Jelly Roll Morton and Co. Yes, Irving Berlin ("Alexander's Ragtime Band") and Zez Confrey ("Kitten on the Keys") wrote first-rate ragtime stuff, but they were the exceptions in a sea of mediocrity.

By 1917, things were changing. Europe was enmeshed in the Great War, Scott Joplin was ill, and ragtime's stepchild, "jass," was coming into its own. As American entered World War I, Scott Joplin died. Yet ragtime never really went away. And the next generation of Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Co. were weaned on it.

Link

Random Wikipedia notes:

The defining characteristic of ragtime music is a specific type of syncopation in which melodic accents occur between metrical beats. This results in a melody that seems to be avoiding some metrical beats of the accompaniment by emphasizing notes that either anticipate or follow the beat. The ultimate (and intended) effect on the listener is actually to accentuate the beat, thereby inducing the listener to move to the music. Scott Joplin, the composer/pianist known as the "King of Ragtime", called the effect "weird and intoxicating" (like me!). He also used the term "swing" in describing how to play ragtime music: "Play slowly until you catch the swing...". The name swing later came to be applied to an early genre of jazz that developed from ragtime. Converting a non-ragtime piece of music into ragtime by changing the time values of melody notes is known as "ragging" the piece.

According to the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz the musical form was originally called "ragged time" which later became corrupted to "ragtime". Ragtime originated in African-American musical communities in the late 19th century, and descended from the jigs and marches played by all-black bands common in all Northern cities with black populations. *A distinctly American musical style, ragime may be considered a synthesis of African-American syncopation and European classical music, though this description is oversimplified (shocking).

Some early piano rags are entitled marches, and "jig" and "rag" were used interchangeably in the mid-1890s and ragtime was also preceded by its close relative the cakewalk. In 1895, Black entertainer Ernest Hogan published two of the earliest sheet music rags, one of which ("All Coons Look Alike to Me") eventually sold a million copies. As fellow Black musician Tom Fletcher said, Hogan was the "first to put on paper the kind of rhythm that was being played by non-reading musicians."While the song's success helped introduce the country to ragtime rhythms, its use of racial slurs created a number of derogatory imitation tunes, known as "coon songs" because of their use of extremely racist and stereotypical images of blacks. In Hogan's later years he admitted shame and a sense of "race betrayal" for the song while also expressing pride in helping bring ragtime to a larger audience.

The heyday of ragtime predated the widespread availability of sound recording. Like classical music, and unlike jazz, classical ragtime was and is primarily a written tradition, being distributed in sheet music rather than through recordings or by imitation of live performances. Ragtime music was also distributed via piano rolls for player pianos. A folk ragtime tradition also existed before and during the period of classical ragtime (a designation largely created by Scott Joplin's publisher publisher John Stark) (not John Starks--that was the dude who played for the Knicks), manifesting itself mostly through string bands, banjo and mandolin clubs (which experienced a burst of popularity during the early 20th Century), and the like.

Carry That Weight

Oh Coachella, I miss you and love you terribly. I'm sick with longing and have been going through my pictures from years past. Pollstar, step your game up and post some confirmed names already for this year's shows. Jesus Christ.


These were just random attention-seeking dudes who donned the classic short-short/tube sock/headband look that I assume was an homage to the 1984 Lakers. Of course everyone wanted their picture taken with them. We all know I'm way too cool for that kind of behavior so I took a secret pic. Once I got home and put it on my computer I realized how Abbey-Road-ish it is and therefore how awesome I am for capturing it.






On a side note--

Look at Paul, whose enormous ego no doubt compelled him to make sure he was the only one out of step with the others. Freaking jackass.

I wish Murs was a bit less preachy sometimes, but hell, he's still pretty great and I still waited in this hot, sweaty crowd to see him. This was from '06 Coachella, nearly 2 years ago, when those stupid band name shirts (Dre & Eazy & Cube & Ren) were on the brink of being lame but hadn't quite reached lame status yet. I got hollered at by a dude in late '07 who wore this exact same sweatshirt when I met him, and it took every ounce of self-control I had not to roll my eyes. (Actually, I might've rolled my eyes and he probably saw it; people tell me I'm not so good at hiding my disdain for something.) Dude, you swagger-jacked Murs and therefore I could not allow you to see me naked. Sorry.

Please Somebody Please, Get This For Me

I'm fully capable of getting it myself but, you know, that's not much of a thrill. LACE ME, someone!

I see you, Ronnie--AKA Mr. Stones Throw. Play your position, soldier!

[PBW doesn't talk to me ever since I made fun of him for his "juice" comment (don't ask), so that right there is a wrap. And I've only had enough courage to approach Madlib once in my entire life, so I'm all tapped out for like the next 5 years. Besides, being in the presence of pure genius renders me helpless and unable to speak, so I wouldn't even be able to get the words "Please Otis please, go to the basement of Wolf's house and swipe one of these for me" out.]

P.S., Mr. Love, you already have my address! Listen, the point is that I need this on my platter and you, sir, have the golden ticket. Thanks in advance.

Your Body Like A Flick/It Got Surprisin' Twists..." - Talib Kweli

From the "Things I've Been Telling You Dummies For Years" File.



Curvy women smarter and give birth to higher-IQ children

Universities of Pittsburgh and California (Santa Barbara) researchers found that women with “hourglass” figures are more intelligent than women with round or straight bodies, and tend to give birth to children who are more intelligent.

The hourglass-shaped woman is defined as one whose shape consists of a smaller waist than hips.

These hourglass-shaped women were found to also produce more intelligent children, which the study concludes is due to having more omega-3 fatty acids stored in their hips, which is not found as much in other shaped women.

Omega-3, which is found in oily fish, is a substance that is necessary for the proper growth of the fetus’ brain during pregnancy.

Women with larger waists, more rounded bodies, have more omega-6 stored in their waists, which was found to be less suited to brain growth, and less omega-3 stored in their hips, which is also less desirable for brain growth. Slender women, with smaller waists and hips, were found to have less omega-3 and omega-6, overall, in both hips and waists. This combination would have less affect on intelligence of the baby.

The eating of omega-3 in such fish as wild salmon, herring, mackerel, anchovies, and sardines, is also linked to a healthier life style for adults. More concentrations of omega-6 over omega-3 in the human body has been thought to produce more diseases, but that connection has not been verified. Omega-6 is found in cereals, nuts, whole-grains, vegetable oils, and eggs and poultry.

The report, which will be published the week of November 11, 2007, in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, states that based on a study of 16,000 women and girls, females with smaller waists and bigger hips are more intelligent then females with other shapes.

Specifically, the study found that the greater difference between the circumference of the waist and the hips, the higher the women performed on intelligence tests.

The paper was made available online on October 29, 2007 at the journal’s website.

The article is entitled “Waist-hip ratio and cognitive ability: is gluteofemoral fat a privileged store of neurodevelopmental resources?”. The two authors are William D. Lassek, from the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), and Steven J.C. Gaulin, from the Department of Anthropology at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

The abstract to the paper states, “Upper-body fat has negative effects and lower-body fat has positive effects on the supply of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids that are essential for neurodevelopment. Thus, waist-hip ratio (WHR), a useful proxy for the ratio of upper-body fat to lower-body fat, should predict cognitive ability in women and their offspring.”

It goes on to say, “Moreover, because teenage mothers and their children compete for these resources, their cognitive development should be compromised, but less so for mothers with lower WHRs. These predictions are supported by data from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Controlling for other correlates of cognitive ability, women with lower WHRs and their children have significantly higher cognitive test scores, and teenage mothers with lower WHRs and their children are protected from cognitive decrements associated with teen births. These findings support the idea that WHR reflects the availability of neurodevelopmental resources and thus offer a new explanation for men's preference for low WHR.”

Link

Courtney Hearts Huckabee (And Jesus & Hunting, Too)

Voters' Views: Courtney Solberg (from BBC News)

As the US gears up for the first presidential election events of 2008 in Iowa and New Hampshire, we asked a panel of six Iowans to tell us who they will be voting for in their state caucus on 3 January, and why.

Courtney Solberg
Researcher | Republican

"I began my support of Governor Huckabee during the summer of 2007 during the Iowa Republican Party straw poll. I went along because of the fair tax rally, supporting a plan which would eliminate all taxes based on income and replace them with a 23% sales tax.

The chief Republican candidate who embraced the fair tax was the governor of Arkansas, who is also a bass guitar player for the classic rock band, Capital Offense - Mike Huckabee. The fair tax would create the largest shift of power from the US government to the people.

Not only did I find myself excited about his fair tax support, I also was very excited that he played in a rock band, a genre I enjoy.

His 10 years as governor of Arkansas have given Mike Huckabee the experience of managing a state. Furthermore, his work as a Baptist minister in Arkansas provided him with a critical role of dealing with common people, as their spiritual and community leader.

His experience with executive business and with the common folk (both in a leadership role) only adds to the breadth of people he can lead.

In addition, he has the ability and record of defeating the Clinton machine in Arkansas, heading toward a more conservative road.

He connects with me in my Christian background, my hunting background, as well as a general conservatism that needs to outlive the Clinton legacy in Arkansas and in the USA."

"Common people." I'm laughing through the tears, you guys. This is not from The Onion. (On a super English-language-nerd note, I must point out to my boy that it's actually "heading down a more conservative road"--you don't head toward the road; you're already on it. Ass.)

My boy reportedly enjoys the rock music, so, what the hell, I'll award him like half a point for that; however, given his support of Jesus-freak homophobic pheasant killers, it's safe to assume I will not be making babies with him--now, in the near future, or when the Apocalypse comes.

Link

On Saturday I Watch Cartoons. I Repeat: I Watch Cartoons.

I said, I repeat: I watch cartoons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpQvuy5v3wg

This Would've Been Even Fresher 5 Years Ago...

but still--I'm no longer a music snob, which is great because otherwise I'd miss stuff like Divide & Kreate's "Illiterate City." Man, I must've been a miserable person 5 years ago.

Also, The Police's Best Album

Japanese art director Jun Tsuzuki has been running Synchronicity since 2005--a very fascinating project that, although suprisingly very basic and simple, has become a very successful campaign. Jun gets people from all over the world and asks them to take a picture of what they are doing at a pre-determined moment in time and builds a lot of anticipation in doing so. These pictures, along with a brief explanation of the time and place they are taken, are then displayed on the Synchronicity website as a portrait of the world at that exact moment.

These moments are significant moments in history (for example the exact second of the first impact on the World Trade Center, 9/11) or mathematically pleasing moments (11:11:11:11:11 for the 11th of November at 11 AM 11 minutes and 11 seconds). To guarantee the pictures are taken at the exact same time, the participants are asked to synchronize their local time with the given GMT time. The next moment marks Synchronicity's third annual celebration of the New Year, occurring at 1 January 2008, 0:00:00 GMT. (That's 31 December 2007, 7:00:00PM New York; 31 December 2007, 4:00:00PM Los Angeles; 1 January 2007, 3:00:00AM Moscow; 1 January 2008, 8:00:00AM Tokyo).

Link

Unnaturally Perfect

The Death of High Fidelity

In the age of MP3s, sound quality is worse than ever

ROBERT LEVINE

Posted Dec 26, 2007 1:27 PM

David Bendeth, a producer who works with rock bands like Hawthorne Heights and Paramore, knows that the albums he makes are often played through tiny computer speakers by fans who are busy surfing the Internet. So he's not surprised when record labels ask the mastering engineers who work on his CDs to crank up the sound levels so high that even the soft parts sound loud.

Over the past decade and a half, a revolution in recording technology has changed the way albums are produced, mixed and mastered — almost always for the worse. "They make it loud to get [listeners'] attention," Bendeth says. Engineers do that by applying dynamic range compression, which reduces the difference between the loudest and softest sounds in a song. Like many of his peers, Bendeth believes that relying too much on this effect can obscure sonic detail, rob music of its emotional power and leave listeners with what engineers call ear fatigue. "I think most everything is mastered a little too loud," Bendeth says. "The industry decided that it's a volume contest."

Producers and engineers call this "the loudness war," and it has changed the way almost every new pop and rock album sounds. But volume isn't the only issue. Computer programs like Pro Tools, which let audio engineers manipulate sound the way a word processor edits text, make musicians sound unnaturally perfect. And today's listeners consume an increasing amount of music on MP3, which eliminates much of the data from the original CD file and can leave music sounding tinny or hollow. "With all the technical innovation, music sounds worse," says Steely Dan's Donald Fagen, who has made what are considered some of the best-sounding records of all time. "God is in the details. But there are no details anymore."

The idea that engineers make albums louder might seem strange: Isn't volume controlled by that knob on the stereo? Yes, but every setting on that dial delivers a range of loudness, from a hushed vocal to a kick drum — and pushing sounds toward the top of that range makes music seem louder. It's the same technique used to make television commercials stand out from shows. And it does grab listeners' attention — but at a price. Last year, Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone that modern albums "have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like — static."

In 2004, Jeff Buckley's mom, Mary Guibert, listened to the original three-quarter-inch tape of her son's recordings as she was preparing the tenth-anniversary reissue of Grace. "We were hearing instruments you've never heard on that album, like finger cymbals and the sound of viola strings being plucked," she remembers. "It blew me away because it was exactly what he heard in the studio."

To Guibert's disappointment, the remastered 2004 version failed to capture these details. So last year, when Guibert assembled the best-of collection So Real: Songs From Jeff Buckley, she insisted on an independent A&R consultant to oversee the reissue process and a mastering engineer who would reproduce the sound Buckley made in the studio. "You can hear the distinct instruments and the sound of the room," she says of the new release. "Compression smudges things together."

Too much compression can be heard as musical clutter; on the Arctic Monkeys' debut, the band never seems to pause to catch its breath. By maintaining constant intensity, the album flattens out the emotional peaks that usually stand out in a song. "You lose the power of the chorus, because it's not louder than the verses," Bendeth says. "You lose emotion."

The inner ear automatically compresses blasts of high volume to protect itself, so we associate compression with loudness, says Daniel Levitin, a professor of music and neuroscience at McGill University and author of This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. Human brains have evolved to pay particular attention to loud noises, so compressed sounds initially seem more exciting. But the effect doesn't last. "The excitement in music comes from variation in rhythm, timbre, pitch and loudness," Levitin says. "If you hold one of those constant, it can seem monotonous." After a few minutes, research shows, constant loudness grows fatiguing to the brain. Though few listeners realize this consciously, many feel an urge to skip to another song.

"If you limit range, it's just an assault on the body," says Tom Coyne, a mastering engineer who has worked with Mary J. Blige and Nas. "When you're fifteen, it's the greatest thing — you're being hammered. But do you want that on a whole album?"

To an average listener, a wide dynamic range creates a sense of spaciousness and makes it easier to pick out individual instruments — as you can hear on recent albums such as Dylan's Modern Times and Norah Jones' Not Too Late. "When people have the courage and the vision to do a record that way, it sets them apart," says Joe Boyd, who produced albums by Richard Thompson and R.E.M.'s Fables of the Reconstruction. "It sounds warm, it sounds three-dimensional, it sounds different. Analog sound to me is more emotionally affecting."

Rock and pop producers have always used compression to balance the sounds of different instruments and to make music sound more exciting, and radio stations apply compression for technical reasons. In the days of vinyl rec- ords, there was a physical limit to how high the bass levels could go before the needle skipped a groove. CDs can handle higher levels of loudness, although they, too, have a limit that engineers call "digital zero dB," above which sounds begin to distort. Pop albums rarely got close to the zero-dB mark until the mid-1990s, when digital compressors and limiters, which cut off the peaks of sound waves, made it easier to manipulate loudness levels. Intensely compressed albums like Oasis' 1995 (What's the Story) Morning Glory? set a new bar for loudness; the songs were well-suited for bars, cars and other noisy environments. "In the Seventies and Eighties, you were expected to pay attention," says Matt Serletic, the former chief executive of Virgin Records USA, who also produced albums by Matchbox Twenty and Collective Soul. "Modern music should be able to get your attention." Adds Rob Cavallo, who produced Green Day's American Idiot and My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade, "It's a style that started post-grunge, to get that intensity. The idea was to slam someone's face against the wall. You can set your CD to stun."

It's not just new music that's too loud. Many remastered recordings suffer the same problem as engineers apply compression to bring them into line with modern tastes. The new Led Zeppelin collection, Mothership, is louder than the band's original albums, and Bendeth, who mixed Elvis Presley's 30 #1 Hits, says that the album was mastered too loud for his taste. "A lot of audiophiles hate that record," he says, "but people can play it in the car and it's competitive with the new Foo Fighters record."

Just as cds supplanted vinyl and cassettes, MP3 and other digital-music formats are quickly replacing CDs as the most popular way to listen to music. That means more convenience but worse sound. To create an MP3, a computer samples the music on a CD and compresses it into a smaller file by excluding the musical information that the human ear is less likely to notice. Much of the information left out is at the very high and low ends, which is why some MP3s sound flat. Cavallo says that MP3s don't reproduce reverb well, and the lack of high-end detail makes them sound brittle. Without enough low end, he says, "you don't get the punch anymore. It decreases the punch of the kick drum and how the speaker gets pushed when the guitarist plays a power chord."

But not all digital-music files are created equal. Levitin says that most people find MP3s ripped at a rate above 224 kbps virtually indistinguishable from CDs. (iTunes sells music as either 128 or 256 kbps AAC files — AAC is slightly superior to MP3 at an equivalent bit rate. Amazon sells MP3s at 256 kbps.) Still, "it's like going to the Louvre and instead of the Mona Lisa there's a 10-megapixel image of it," he says. "I always want to listen to music the way the artists wanted me to hear it. I wouldn't look at a Kandinsky painting with sunglasses on."

Producers also now alter the way they mix albums to compensate for the limitations of MP3 sound. "You have to be aware of how people will hear music, and pretty much everyone is listening to MP3," says producer Butch Vig, a member of Garbage and the producer of Nirvana's Never- mind. "Some of the effects get lost. So you sometimes have to over-exaggerate things." Other producers believe that intensely compressed CDs make for better MP3s, since the loudness of the music will compensate for the flatness of the digital format.

As technological shifts have changed the way sounds are recorded, they have encouraged an artificial perfection in music itself. Analog tape has been replaced in most studios by Pro Tools, making edits that once required splicing tape together easily done with the click of a mouse. Programs like Auto-Tune can make weak singers sound pitch-perfect, and Beat Detective does the same thing for wobbly drummers.

"You can make anyone sound professional," says Mitchell Froom, a producer who's worked with Elvis Costello and Los Lobos, among others. "But the problem is that you have something that's professional, but it's not distinctive. I was talking to a session drummer, and I said, 'When's the last time you could tell who the drummer is?' You can tell Keith Moon or John Bonham, but now they all sound the same."

So is music doomed to keep sounding worse? Awareness of the problem is growing. The South by Southwest music festival recently featured a panel titled "Why Does Today's Music Sound Like Shit?" In August, a group of producers and engineers founded an organization called Turn Me Up!, which proposes to put stickers on CDs that meet high sonic standards.

But even most CD listeners have lost interest in high-end stereos as surround-sound home theater systems have become more popular, and superior-quality disc formats like DVD-Audio and SACD flopped. Bendeth and other producers worry that young listeners have grown so used to dynamically compressed music and the thin sound of MP3s that the battle has already been lost. "CDs sound better, but no one's buying them," he says. "The age of the audiophile is over."

- rollingstone.com

Assholes/Fuck-Ups Of The Year, Beautifully Compiled By Bill Maher

Michael Vick

Stop saying what he did is a cultural thing, just one of those things black folks are known for, like jazz. He's not one of the Scottsboro boys, he electrocuted dogs.









Erik Prince

We used to have rent-a-cops. Now we have rent-a-soldiers. As CEO of Blackwater, the most notorious private-security contractor in Iraq, Prince has his own navy, air force and spy agency. This guy is building nothing short of a parallel national-security apparatus. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but he's a super-Christy Jesus freak who looks on the Crusades the way rednecks pine for the Confederacy.










Sen. Larry Craig

A man who consistently voted against gay interests, but turns out to be not just gay but the kind of gay who likes to get it in public restrooms. Don't people like Larry Craig and Ted Haggard and Mark Foley prove that being gay really is a hard-wired thing — not, as the conservatives always claim, a "lifestyle choice"? If anyone could choose not to have gay sex, it would be these guys, since their whole careers are built on not having gay sex.



Sen. David Vitter

Even more disgusting than Craig. Caught dead to rights as a customer of the D.C. Madam, and explained it away by saying, "Several years ago I received forgiveness from God in confession." Oh, well, all righty then, it's all good, then you're obviously not a disgusting, horrible hypocrite who runs on family values and then fucks whores at home and in Washington.










College Republicans

The place where cutthroat, amoral putzes like Karl Rove cut their teeth. They're all staunchly for the Iraq War, although none have volunteered to go, even though they're the same age as the grunts doing the fighting they say is so important. Doughy losers who, at age twenty, care more about tax cuts than girls. And lately they've been holding these "Catch an Illegal Immigrant" parties around the country where they basically play hide-and-seek with one lucky player posing as the wetback. Usually you have to be older and married before you start hating life so much you try to blame the Mexicans for all your problems, don't you?

The Solid Quarter

That twenty-five percent of America who would not desert George Bush if he ran over Dakota Fanning with his pickup truck on the White House lawn. Is it a coincidence that twenty-five percent is also the number of people who, in an AP poll of predictions for 2007, said they expect Jesus Christ to return this year!? I don't think it is.




Alberto Gonzales

At the Bush White House, a constitutional crisis is when somebody actually reads the Constitution. Gonzales obeyed Karl Rove's orders to decimate the Justice Department by firing the U.S. attorneys who weren't Bush loyalists to the point of corruption, then told Congress, I can't recall who put together the list of which attorneys to fire. But I stand by the decision to fire everyone on the list. Which I never read. Also, nothing improper occurred. And I know, because I can't recall.









George Bush

Come on, no list of assholes and fuck-ups could be complete without the Dipshit in Chief. Who will tell this president what everyone but him already knows? The theory of evolution. And the times tables. And where the sun goes at night. And that Iraq is going to be three different countries. And that everyone hates us and we've run our military into the ground and the Taliban is back and we still haven't caught bin Laden and the economy is tanking and we wasted eight years blowing the oil companies while the Earth is melting. We had a pretty nice house when this Cat in the Hat of presidents came in and made the mess of all time. And who's going to clean it all up — Rudy Giuliani?





Rudy Giuliani

A phenomenon I still don't understand. Rudy says if a Democrat is elected in 2008, we'll be at risk of another 9/11, because . . . he was mayor of New York when they attacked the World Trade Center the first time? His slogan should be "Not on my watch . . . again." And if that's not enough of a reason for him to make this list, try this: The year before he was elected mayor, the NYPD made 720 arrests for marijuana misdemeanors. In the year 2000 under Rudy, that figure was 59,945. That's an increase of . . . a lot, dude. Why am I confident that he'll be on the list again next year?

Worth A Million In Prizes

According to Iggy Pop, Bowie's celebrated riff on "Lust for Life" was inspired by the Morse code opening to the American Forces Network News in Berlin. At various points in the song the melody is doubled by the entire band; in Carlos Alomar's words, "You can’t play a counter-rhythm to that, you just had to follow".

Just wanted to share. Goodnight.

Lust For Life - Iggy Pop

Ah, The Metaphorical Powers of Mr. Asimov

British chemist Joseph Black (1728-1799) was able to show that the mere quantity of heat was not all there was to "hotness," or to temperature, as it is properly called. Suppose you take a piece of iron and a piece of lead, both weighing the same and equally hot. You place each into a separate container of cold water. In each case, the metal loses heat, which flows into the water, so that the metal cools down and the water warms up till, in each case, the transfer of heat is complete. You would expect that the water would be warmed equally in both cases, but that is not so. The water in which the hot iron is immersed is distinctly warmer than the water with the hot lead in it. Both metals were equally hot, and therefore had an equal temperature, but the iron contained more heat.

- Asimov

The Warmth Of Your Love's Like The Warmth Of The Sun

Amoeba today--50-year-old harmless weird dude talked to me about my record choices (of course, this is a regular occurrence), they kept saying "Logan, you have a phone call" over the PA and it threw me off (it's this girl Melissa Logan who's worked there forever; we figured out a while back that she has the inverse of my first and middle names), I got Eric Donaldson ("Cherry Oh Baby") and Os Mutantes on vinyl, and they put on The Zombies like 20 minutes into my shopping experience. That song "This Will Be Our Year" came on, and it's just so ridiculously pretty and melodic; as soon as it began I stopped rifling through the stacks and looked all around at the sea of Amoebic humanity and grinned like I remembered being a teenage girl in 1968. I get this disgusting ability to get filled with an overall sense of well-being upon hearing the opening notes of a song from my parents, two people who have based their lives on Crosby, Stills, & Nash and Joni Mitchell albums. Thanks, anonymous record store employee who put on that album. You, sir or madam, must've sensed how my own warmth got rejected recently and you knew I needed to feel better--warm and cozy, if you will. Now, if you could just keep the 50-year-old weird dudes from commenting on my shopping patterns and making me even more self-conscious than I thought was humanly possible ("I saw you all over the store! You have some eclectic musical tastes!"), you would be a perfect and shining example of a human being.

[Just for the record (punny), I love weird dudes. I just don't like being abruptly made aware that some random dude has been watching me during my shopping time. It's embarrassing and makes me feel like my privacy has been invaded.]

This Will Be Our Year - Zombies

Shut The Fuck Up, Irv Gotti

Get off my TV. Thank you.

- the management

When You Got So Much To Say It's Called Gratitude...

I don't know what it is about today. It's Sunday and I've done nothing but go to the grocery store, change a light bulb, watch the NFL pregame show, and read the newspaper; mundane things them all, but for some reason today I had the recurring thought that I have been blessed so much it's ridiculous, and I have nothing to complain about. (I reserve the right to complain about things/life/politics/ism & schism in future entries, as I deem appropriate). This sense of well-being and pleasant amazement was no doubt compounded by the fact that I witnessed a lot of traffic courtesy (you know what I mean--people letting other people into traffic, then giving that little wave of acknowledgment) when I was driving around. That kind of stuff makes me feel like there's hope yet for humanity. I have a delicate psyche; what can I say. I love my rooftop, the bright sunshiny reflections off the tall buildings in my neighborhood, my mom's reminders of things that really help me out (get quarters for laundry, test out the new iron on a less-valuable article of clothing before using it on work clothes), my dad's encouragement that I keep doing the Sunday crossword puzzle even though he and I don't live in the same house anymore and can't collaborate on it, Prefuse 73 at the Troubadour, my favorite red comfy romper, and home-cooked meals tonight (ribs, green beans, salad). I love drinking tea and reading the newspaper at my kitchen table. Also, I believe the children are our future, and I like puppies and rainbows.

Really though. Thanks and praises.

I Get Nervous In Social Situations, Motherfucker

"Just Victims Of The In-House Drive-By..."

Another Soldier by Mark James

On the 11th November 2007, Remembrance Sunday, the Ministry of Defence stated that 171 British Soldiers had died in Iraq since the beginning of the war in March 2003. A new series of prints by Mark James explores the current attitude towards the war in Iraq focusing on the seemingly irreverent way human lives are being sacrificed and our apparent emotional disengagement from such atrocities.

Another Soldier was originally created as a one off piece for the Action Man 4040 exhibition in May 2006 (www.am4040.com) the original piece sold at auction, but as time has passed the work has become a more potent symbol for the frivolous and disposable way soldiers lives are being used by our government to fight in an unjust war. As the war in Iraq blunders on the stories of horror and tragedy occurring on a daily basis are routinely being glossed over while the latest celebrity tittle-tattle and Big Brother headlines are given front page prominence. The toy soldier lying in his coffin is intended as a stark reminder of our increasingly desensitised attitudes towards the concept of war, its brutal realities and our apparent acceptance of the government and the media's portrayal of war as a game that is played in some far-off land, with soldiers discarded like broken playthings unrelated to the real and significant, needless loss of human life.

Another Soldier will be an edition of 171 screen prints, each representing a soldier. Taken from one original image, each print varies slightly as the ink dries and fills each screen; the image gradually decaying at each stage in the printing process.

The prints will be for sale with 10% of proceeds going to the Royal British Legion. Printed on 250gsm white Keycolour, B2 (700x500mm) Each print will be signed and numbered.

Available from December 3rd through Scrawl Collective.

- slamxhype

Kinda, Shia...Except He's DeNiro & You're Not

Shia LaBeouf Working on Cage Biopic

As the star of '07 summer blockbuster Transformers, Shia LaBeouf has quite a few options when it comes to future projects. Already, he snagged a role in fourth Indiana Jones flick Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull alongside Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett, so what could be next? A movie with Martin Scorsese, George Clooney, or Hilary Swank? Maybe a stint on Broadway? Alas, no. Instead, it seems LaBeouf will travel down the tricky, so often indulgent road of the "pet project." And his pet project is... a Cage biopic.

Yep, you read right. LaBeouf is looking to play Def Jux rapper Cage, aka Chris Palko, in a forthcoming film about the MC's life, according to an article in the December issue of Spin. "I have been listening to Cage since I got into hip-hop when I was 12," LaBeouf said. "I grew up on the West Coast listening to a lot of 2Pac and Eazy-E, so when I found out that Cage was white, it was incredible. I'd never heard anything like that."

After having gained a measure of fame due to his roles in tween hits Holes and Disney Channel show "Even Stevens", LaBeouf contacted Cage about making a documentary about the rapper, and Cage allowed him to film his tour in 2006. (Whoa... could Shia LaBeouf have been at the Pitchfork Music Festival last year?) According to SPIN, at some point along the way, the prospect of drawing from Cage's history of drug abuse and psychiatric problems for a biopic became more enticing than a straight documentary. And thus, the idea was born.

As Tom Breihan wrote in the Pitchfork review of Cage's 2005 album Hell's Winter, "Cage has the kind of life story most aspiring new-schoolers just lie and make up. He was abused by his dishonorably-discharged junky father and his stepfather, kicked out of high school, overmedicated in a mental hospital, became a white-rap wunderkind in the early 90s, almost put out an album on Columbia, kicked around the major label system, got hooked on drugs, had a kid, got dissed on the first Eminem album, and found himself a home in underground rap." Sounds like a promising story arc to us.

Talking to SPIN, LaBeouf made it clear that this will be a chance for him to subvert Hollywood's expectations of him as a squeaky clean boy next door, saying, "It's kind of like how no matter what film De Niro was making, he was always ready to pull Raging Bull out of his back pocket. Cage is my Jake LaMotta." It seems the movie will also allow LaBeouf to explore themes of delusion and overstatement.

Despite all the talk, the movie is still very much in its beginning stages. LaBeouf is producing it (probably under the umbrella of his own Grassy Slope production company), according to a recent Cage interview with LAist.com, but the two are still looking for a writer and a director.

As for the specific content of the movie, Cage claims in the LAist.com interview that "it [covers] from birth to about '98 or so, after I dropped 'Agent Orange'." He also didn't rule out the possibility of making a cameo.

Today, Cage posted the following message on his MySpace page, referring to the SPIN article:

"By the way it's not.... Plus I be disturbed it's Plus happy disturbed in that Agent Orange quote no matter how many websites tell you different.That's right people I was an angry misogynistic angel dust smoking suicidal high school drop out former mental patient lashing out in music and stumbled into everything including the movie being made about it.
We are in development we can't get a writer until the strike is over and that is where we are.
I hope this answers some of your questions."

Cage is currently working on the follow-up to Hell's Winter, which he first talked to us about over a year ago. It's still titled Depart From Me, and it's due out summer 2008 on Def Jux. Daryl Palumbo of Glassjaw/Head Automatica is serving as executive producer, Sean Martin of Hatebreed contributes production, and Phil Caivano of Monster Magnet is recording the album. According to Cage's publicist, "it's a very progressive record that is mostly sample-free and guitar-heavy, with beats ranging from 88 to 200 BPMs-- not a typical rap record by any means."

- pitchfork

Stern Ashcroft Admonishes Whoopers, Hollerers

Ashcroft defends the Patriot Act

By Tillie Fong, Rocky Mountain News

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft on Tuesday night defended the need for the USA Patriot Act, saying that since Sept. 11, 2001, there has been a new "paradigm of peril."

"The old type of systems allowed to happen to us what happened to us on 9/11," he said.

Ashcroft spoke to more than 800 students and community members at Macky Auditorium Tuesday night at the University of Colorado.

Members of Students for Peace and Justice staged a silent protest at Ashcroft's speech, and a number of people heckled Ashcroft, sometimes snorting in derision, at other times shouting challenges. In many cases, the heckler was escorted out of the auditorium by student ushers.

Ashcroft talked about the events that led to the Patriot Act. The day after 9/11, "the president said, 'Do not let this happen again,' " Ashcroft said.

"Let's look at the law and see what we can do that would help us. We need to think differently, think outside the box . . . never think outside the Constitution."

When that comment was met with boos, Ashcroft responded: "Whooping and hollering in an auditorium will not get that done."

Ashcroft said that the Patriot Act "makes perfect sense."

This is the kind of thing that we have lived comfortably with in fighting organized crime and drug dealers. We hadn't understood the need . . . to fight against terror."

Ashcroft also responded to questions from the audience. The first question came from a woman who asked if Ashcroft would be willing to be subjected to waterboarding.

"The things that I can survive, if it were necessary to do them to me, I would do," he said.

Ashcroft was also asked if he knew during his tenure about abuse in Abu Ghraib prison. "How was I to know what was happening in a prison in Iraq?" he said. "The Justice Department does not run prisons in foreign lands."

However, he apologized for what did occur there. "I'm sorry about Abu Ghraib - it was hurting the United States," he said.

Ashcroft also defended the incarceration of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay. "Yes, it's a good place for them," he said. "You detain people you don't want to enter the stream of battle. It's a new kind of battle: They don't wear uniforms; they attack civilians."

His speech was sponsored by the Cultural Events Board.

Your Soul Is Ghost, Ghost, Ghost, Ghost

Societal rules dictate that I am perceived a certain way if I wear this (I am a girl). I'd try to counteract this perception if I had the time and energy, but I simply can't take on another project for my psyche at this time. If you are a cute and nice and well-versed-in-hip-hop boy in my life, however, you might be receiving this from me.

CB4 - Slum Village

An Efficient, Simple Way By Using Sound

New Device Turns Waste Heat into Electricity

By LiveScience Staff

Physicists have developed a way to turn heat into sound and then electricity, suggesting a new way to effectively recycle waste energy.

“We are converting waste heat to electricity in an efficient, simple way by using sound,” said the scientist who led the effort, Orest Symko of the University of Utah. “It is a new source of renewable energy from waste heat.”

Symko’s recycling devices are cylinder-shaped “resonators” that fit in the palm of your hand. Each cylinder contains a stack of material with a large surface area—such as metal or plastic plates, or fibers made of glass, cotton or steel wool—placed between cold and hot heat exchangers.

When heat is applied, the heat builds to a particular threshold where hot, moving air produces sound at a single frequency—like air blown into a flute.

“You have heat, which is so disorderly and chaotic, and all of a sudden you have sound coming out at one frequency,” Symko said.

The sound waves then squeeze what is called a piezoelectric device (“piezo” means pressure or squeezing). The pressure created produces an electric voltage. Symko says it is similar to when you hit your "funnybone" or the nerve on outside of your elbow, thereby generating that weird, painful pinch, which is actually an electrical nerve impulse.

Symko plans to test the devices within a year at a military radar facility and the University of Utah’s hot-water-generating plant. (The U.S. Army funded the study in hopes the technology can be used to create a portable source of energy.)

Symko expects these devices could be used within two years as an alternative to the photovoltaic cells that currently convert sunlight into electricity, and could also provide a new way to cool laptops and other computers, and a to generate electricity from the heat released by nuclear power plant cooling towers.

- livescience.com

Olha que coisa mais linda/Mais cheia de graça

Raica Oliveira, one of my girl crushes. Gorgeous. I can't explain it--just something about her face. No...wait...I can explain it--look at those eyes. She's so pretty and sweet-looking, my favorite kind of foxiness. I love her. She's got some fake breasts like a lot of Cariocas but I still love her. Raica, call me. We don't have to make out; I just want to stare at you.

Your Favorite Rapper Gettin Jacked for More Than His Sick Flows

Coping skills. I hate honking horns and people rushing me and being mean. I'm determined not to let this goddamn city get to me. I need kindness daily in order to function.

Random Tribute: Screamin' Jay Hawkins

Badder than you for many reasons, including:

●Put out an album called Black Music for White People

● Emerged out of coffins on stage

● Had a flaming skull named Henry as his constant companion

● Rocked an Afro-hawk

● Toured with the Clash; appeared in Mystery Train. Black Sabbath boosted his whole stage show.

● When asked what it is that makes him scream he replied, "Being black. Prejudice. Marrying a girl who said she was pregnant after I'd just spent two years in Alaska and was too foolish to know better."