Month: September 2007

music

Stronger in Many Ways

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Mr. “I’ve got a permanent beef with MTV” Kayne West is super hot and winning his album selling contest against 50 Cent because he took the beat from Daft Punk’s Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger and created a monster hit called “Stronger.” This song is my current favorite hip-hop tune by very wide margin. If you haven’t heard it yet, you are living in a cave.
For instance, it’s so popular that 30 Seconds to Mars covered “Stronger” in a really decent way on BBC Radio 1’s Jo Whiley show. You have to listen to some other music from the program but its worth it. You can skip ahead – the song is played about 25 minutes into the program.
Aside from the awesome opening of “Let’s get lost tonight – You can be my black Kate Moss tonight,” the start of the chorus is what I truly love about the song. The lyrics are, “N-now th-th-that that don’t kill me – Can only make me stronger” which paraphrases an ultra famous Nietzsche quote – “Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger” – which also happened to be my high school year book quote.
The idea that as long as you are alive, you can rise above and get past whatever life throws at you has been a guiding principal in my life. It has helped me get over and get past a lot of bad shit over the years. Not only are the words powerful on their own, but with the added bumping bass and catchy Kayne lyrics, I see listening to this song as the aural equivalent of slamming down two freshly brewed cups of espresso.

music

Trent Says "Steal It"

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Trent Reznor is still pretty pissed off at his record label for price gouging on his latest CD, Year Zero. At a recent concert, he said:

“Has anyone seen the price come down? Okay, well, you know what that means – STEAL IT. Steal away. Steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin’. Because one way or another these motherfuckers will get it through their head that they’re ripping people off and that that’s not right.”

NIN’s contract with Universal is almost up. It should be interesting to see what he’s going to do as an independent artist.
Feel free to watch the clip below.

Via K-Rock

politics

Thou Shalt Prove A Point?

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Straight from the “you can’t make this stuff up” department is this bit of news about how Nebraskan State Senator Ernie Chambers is suing God. While Ernie says he is trying to point out how frivolous lawsuits can be, I pray that he does not believe in a vengeful God after reading the suit’s language.  If God exists, he, she or it might very well be pretty pissed after reading it.
First off, the lawsuit accuses God “of making and continuing to make terroristic threats of grave harm to innumerable persons, including constituents of Plaintiff who Plaintiff has the duty to represent.”Second, it says God has caused “fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects and the like.”
Third, it also says God has caused “calamitous catastrophes resulting in the wide-spread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants including innocent babes, infants, children, the aged and infirm without mercy or distinction.”
I wonder who will win..

space

Moon 2.0

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The next race to the moon has begun! The X PRIZE Foundation and Google Inc. today announced the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon. The press release boldly states: “Moon 2.0, the second era of lunar exploration, will not be a quest for “flags and footprints.” This time we will go to the Moon to stay.”
To win the Grand Prize – worth $20 million dollars – a team must successfully:

  • Soft land a privately funded spacecraft on the Moon
  • Rove on the lunar surface for a minimum of 500 meters
  • Transmit a specific set of video, images and data, called a “Mooncast,” back to Earth

The Mooncast consists of digital data that must be collected and transmitted to the Earth composed of the following:

  • High resolution 360º panoramic photographs taken on the surface of the Moon
  • Self portraits of the rover taken on the surface of the Moon
  • Near-real time videos showing the craft’s journey along the lunar surface
  • High Definition (HD) video
  • Transmission of a cached set of data, loaded on the craft before launch (e.g. first email from the Moon).

Just as the Ansari X Prize led Burt Rutan to build Spaceship One, hopefully someone in the near future will actually be able to pull this off. That would be, in the words of my inner 12 year old, totally sweet.
Via Adam

music

One Last Swan Song

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Break out the air raid sirens and stop the presses or whatever you say in this digital age: Led Zeppelin will perform together for the first time in 19 years on Nov. 26, at London’s The O2 venue, on the banks of the River Thames to raise money for Ahmet Ertegun’s Education Fund. Run on sentence be damned: Led Zep is back!
The lineup is what it should be: singer Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist John Paul Jones and drummer Jason Bonham (John’s son). The Who’s Pete Townshend, Bill Wyman, Foreigner and young Scottish singer Paolo Nutini — the last British act Ertegun signed — will also play at the tribute concert.
I am not hording this info due to the fact that tickets are only available via a random selection process involving ballots. You can enter by going to the concert’s site. I pray that fate smiles upon me and I somehow am selected with a golden ticket, or ballot in this case, because there is no stopping me from going if that happens. After I get my ballot, I hope that ka’s wheel rolls in your direction as well.

Uncategorized

Life from a Mainframe

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There was a joke about how soon a computer will boot up a web browser, not a desktop, and it was noted that my yearly internet access costs more then what I spent on my whole computer.
A co-worker then said, “And to get even more tangential, this makes me think of a computing model based on leasing vs. owning. Will I soon be able to get a free laptop after I sign a two year internet contract with T-Mobile? A connectionless computer seems pretty useless to most people nowadays.”
As more software moves online – see Adobe’s announcement its online Photoshop Express product, we are definitely moving towards a day, joke or no joke, when the only thing we may need is in fact a browser.

Uncategorized

How To Redo 1978

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I just received an email which could be considered one of the greatest ways that Microsoft products have ever been utilized in daily life. The simple and complete email, minus signature, is as follows:
nyygoal0907.gif
‘Nuff said.
Via Herzy

politics

6 Years Later

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In everlasting remembrance of those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001:

Today is the sixth anniversary of when two planes flew into the Twin Towers, bringing with them destruction and death on a quiet and sunny almost Fall morning in the Big Apple. This is the first time that the anniversary has happened on the same day of the week [Tues] on which the disaster took place so I’ve had a bit of deja vu, maybe self imposed. While I have keenly been emotional today, I felt like I was the only one who knew what the day was as in my office, everyone that I came in contact with acted like nothing ever happened.
No one was especially somber, though no one discussed anything related to 9/11 so I don’t know who else but me was actually a tad down today. Time does and should move on but when unions do not have parades on Labor Day, its too much for me and this is similar because I went to the office today expecting a lot of things but dying in the office was not one of them.
I was living and working in NYC six years ago today as well and wasn’t expecting to die that day either but some people, people just like me, actually did. I sit in front of a window on the 8th floor that looks out over Houston Street towards Broadway. I look out my window frequently throughout the day but never expect to see a plane flying directly towards me, yet that is exactly what happened for hundreds of people that fateful day. I do no think I will never forget what I felt, saw, heard and smelt, not just that day but in the days and weeks after. Anytime I hear a plane that I feel is too loud, I still look up. Anytime I smell burnt rubber, I think of the stench that emanated north from downtown for weeks on end.
That being said, six years later “ground zero” is still a construction site, just like last year when the NYT wrote:

“Five years after Sept. 11, 2001, ground zero remains a 16-acre, 70-foot-deep hole in the heart of Lower Manhattan. High above it, a scaffolded bank building, contaminated during the attack, hulks like a metal skeleton, waiting endlessly to be razed.”

Since last year, little progress has been made and the bank building mentioned above caught on fire which lead to another 2 firefighters losing their lives – I know, when I heard it too for the first time I said, “Are you fucking kidding me?!”. This is beyond asinine at this point: for the love of all that is holy, rebuild the site!
While others may simply go about their business today, I just laid some flowers down in front of my local firehouse tonight to honor the 9 guys they lost 6 years ago today. While my wife and I were there placing the flowers in a plastic bucket vase already brimming and overfull next to many others just like it, we were next to a father who had two little kids with him, a boy and girl, and the girl looked younger than six, so she wasn’t even alive when this event first happened. Time marches on. Never forget.

literature

Jonathan Selwood: Who he is and why I interviewed him

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Mr. Selwood is an author who I had the pleasure of interviewing via email after I read his debut novel The Pinball Theory of the Apocalypse. One Amazon review said, “In short, this isn’t just a satire: it’s a portrait of a world in constant flux” and I would tend to agree. His work is humorous and slightly bizarre. The book itself is a very quick read – it is under 200 pages and it features a mid-sized font and margins one could consider generous so you should be able to read it in a few trips to and from work on the subway. Maybe you’ll want to pick it up after you read the 10 questions that I asked him along with his answers:
JL: Since you are a male, did you find it difficult to write the novel considering it has a female protagonist and the story is told from her point of view?
JS: Oddly enough, no. At the time I started writing the book, all the artists I knew personally were women, so it just seemed natural to have a female protagonist. It wasn’t until after I finished the first draft that it even occurred to me that it’s considered odd for a man to write in the first person as a woman. But by then, it was too late.
JL: Why does Isabel’s father’s Pinball Theory of the Apocalypse play such a small role in the story considering it is the title of the book?
JS: It might only be referred to a few times in the novel, but I think it does play a big (if less obvious) role in showing the absurdity of thinking that art—or anything else, for that matter—can be “timeless.” Of course, for anyone who wants more, the whole theory is explained at his website, pinballapocalypse.com.
JL: What type of statement are you trying to make about modern society, especially as it relates to the arts and the artist?
JS: Basically, I’m trying to show that we’ve moved as a society way beyond the simple concept of “selling out.” How do you maintain your integrity as an artist in a world where everything has already been “sold?”
JL: How much of the book mirrors your ascent as a full-time artist, especially as it relates to the support Isabel’s family provides and the questions her father asks her and she asks herself?
JS: My parents have been very supportive of my choice to be a writer, but Isabel really isn’t my mirror. You can draw a few parallels, but the art world and the literary world are pretty distinct.
JL: If you were to describe your writing style, what three word term would you use? For instance, I have termed my friend’s paintings to be “Chunky Abstract Realism.”
JS: Lapsed Evangelical Absurdism.
JL: Are there future Isabel Raven novels planned? This one seemed to end abruptly and it wasn’t just due to the story’s length – she entered the gallery I could just hear the director somewhere yelling “scene.”
JS: With a Hollywood novel, there’s always room for a sequel (or even a prequel). Haven’t planned one yet, though.
JL: Having grown up in Southern California, are you looking forward to raising a family there?
JS: Right now I’m really loving Oregon, but I do tend to get footloose, so you never know. I had a lot of fun down there on my book tour.
JL: Turning our focus back East to your time in New York City, what do you most fondly remember about New York? What do you miss the most now that you live in Portland? What do you miss the least?
JS: I think the thing I loved the most about living in NYC was the energy. Whenever I felt creatively exhausted, I’d just walk around for an hour or so, and feel recharged. I miss that. I don’t miss the heat and malt liquor piss stench of a subway station in the summer.
JL: What are your future plans over the next five years? What projects are in the works? What other books / stories do you have on the way?
JS: I have another novel I’m working on, but I’m also working on some personal essays. I sorta switch back and forth depending on my mood. Every time I make a five year plan, it goes all to hell. Writing is not the most predictable profession.
JL: Since you are a writer, what would you like to be written as your epitaph?
JS: Good riddance to bad rubbish.