You touch my hands for stupid reasons

Miike Snow

Really digging this song from Miike Snow. Yes there are two i's.

Cobra

In my journey to be twice as dorky every year, I have recently procured 3 helmets (2x East German, 1x 1918 Swedish Civil Defence Helmet) and painted them Cobra Blue in preperation for DragonCon. The rest of my costume is in a bit of a mess but we shall see if it all comes together in time. I just found out that Leonard Nemoy, William Shatner, AND Patrick Stewart are going to be there. Holy fucking shit.

Batmoves

Just played the first bit of the new Arkham Asylum, pretty amazing. It's like Metal Gear Solid but with Batman, who as it turns out is pretty much Solid Snake with a grapplin' hook.

Leo Laporte is smart guy with a voice like ambrosia. His podcast, This Week In Tech or TWIT for short is giving me flashbacks to high school and TechTV. What a great weird thing that was way ahead of it's time. Great to be hanging out again Leo.

Kabuki / The Alchemy / David Mack

Art is the clothing of revelation. If you don't like the story your culture is writing, it's not enough to rail against it or say you don't subscribe to it. You have the obligation of writing your own story- To be a contributing author of your own culture. You must accept the your role in the energy exchange by passing on your truth or story to those willing to unlock..and open..and unfold that in themselves...
---From kabuki (the alchemy) #8

Got the opportunity to meet David Mack at DragonCon a few monthes back. Genius stuff with amazing insights into post-modern life. The Alchemy is the newest series in the Kabuki saga and is practically transcended the more traditional ultra violent manga style of the previous series. The art itself oscillates between deconstructions of fundamental printing materials to photorealistic grunge compositions from the artists desk. Very experimental and well worth your time. Oxford Comics and the Book Nook both have issues on hand. And maybe he'll be at DragonCon again this year?

New Management

"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it."

Quote by Jack Handy. T-Shirt by Print Liberation. What a couple of brilliant little notions. I finished reading the good part of 10,000 Dreams Interpreted last night, that is the introduction. The dream interpretations were pretty wack and simplistic but the whole logic behind the Jungian archetypes that shape your personality are pretty incredible. More on that real soon. I will also be starting a free CD club pretty soon, mainly to aid my culturally underdeveloped peeps down in the center of the state. They don't want it, they just need it.

Sleepyhead pt II

Awesome vid from passion pit. wonder what the process was for this?

Sleepyhead

On the look out for new things...aren't we all? ALWAYS? All I know is that it's a great time to be a gamer. Fallout 3? pants-shitting. But aligning the archetypes is more important so maybe we should focus on that for the time being. Is poetry such a bad thing? Or just poets?


Sleepyhead by Passion Pit, currently one of my fav songs. Has some amazing remixes. Sometimes you end up liking the most surprising things, no? Makes me feel the same way Stella*Starr did back in the day. Too bad they had a shitty name. 

Architecture Inspires

Bip Computers Office, Architect Alberto Mozo

Schumacher on Labor, Google

Schumacher's (see prev. post) ideas on labor are fascinating to consider as well (from Wikipedia):

It is unemployment, defined by Schumacher as the degrading saving of manpower through the inappropriate use of advanced machinery, which is the prohibitive cost which no society can afford to pay in the long run. Furthermore the unemployment caused by excessive technological progress will inevitably lead to the revolt of the unemployed.

My position has always been that labor-eliminating machinary will inevitably propel us towards a socialist welfare state. This is not something I advocate, as meaningful labor is an important and fullfilling part of any human being's life. Schumacher points out the obvious flaw in the "degrading saving of manpower".

Which brings me to something that is really bugging me. Schumacher's belief in Homo Viator ("The Human Pilgrim") asserts that humanity as a group is on a journey to discover it's ultimate aim and purpose. While this is mainly a religious question, it also points out that:

if one believes “that there are no higher obligations”, it becomes impossible to resist the appeal of Machiavellianism—“politics as the art of gaining and maintaining power so that you and your friends can order the world as they like it”

Which troubles me greatly. If humanity is truly on a journey to discover it's aim and purpose in the universe, i am very distressed that by far the largest and most prevelant organizer of human efforts is wealth. If this simple reasoning is sound, as it would seem to be, the journey of humanity towards it's true purpose is more than slightly off-track..it's been completely hijacked. So what does this have to do do with Google?

I would ask Google (if he was a person) "What higher power do you believe in? What do you see as man's destiny and purpose within creation? What are you going to do with all of this knowledge..not just about us as individuals but as humanity as a whole?" I would ask Google this because I think it's something everyone should be asked and ask of themselves.

Especially someone who happens to want to know everything about everyone for their own monetary gain.

Non-Consenual Internet

Have you ever unplugged your network cable to install illegal software? Turned off airport whilst you do something inappropriate at work? Unplugged your xBox so no one would bug you to play games with them? What if you couldn't?

In the next decade we will see total blanket coverage of most of the planet with some form of wireless internet access. Corporations & governments love for people to be online. It's more than a two way street, you know. The small amount of visibility it grants is totally negated by the full exposure you are opening yourself up to. You can screen share with another user on iChat. Where do you think that technology came from? The war on terror has already funded massive government overwatch of all forms of web traffic. No amount of encryption can truly hide what you are doing over the internet from somebody who truly wants to know. So when do we get to the point where the "Turn AIRPORT Off" button vanishes all together? And what the fuck does that mean for us?

Hopefully, surely, there will always be someway to be "off-network". However I forsee application authentication as a probable justification for insuring that practically everyone has to be online to make use of their software. Under the auspices of copyright protection we will live in a permeneant state of online-ness- this will give government and corporate systems an unprecedented level of tracking and visibility into the private lives of everyone who is chained to this machination that is ever encroaching into our lives.

The Three Culprits- E.F. Schumacher

An interesting disquisition by the inventor of Buddhist Economics, E.F. Schumacher:

For Schumacher there were three main culprits, that had all been corrosive agents in a world which had lost sight of individual responsibility and a world bound to the parameters of realism and science. These were Freud, Marx and Einstein. Freud had made perception subjective through his teaching that perception was subject to the complex interplay of the ego and the id, literally rendering it self-centered. This led inevitably to a change of attitude in human relations where self-fulfillment took precedence over the needs of others. Marx, by seeking a scapegoat in the bourgeoisie, had replaced personal responsibility with a hatred for others. His fault lay in his blaming of others for problems with society. Einstein had undermined belief in absolutes with his insistence on the relativity of everything. The application of 'relativity' in all other fields including morality, led to rejection of moral codes and responsibility.

eMusic free tracks

If you aren't an eMusic member you should check it out. I today discovered the wealth of free albums available for download. Many of them are Label Samplers (which are great for finding new bands) but there are also some classic Smithsonian folkways albums that are free. Here are the the 4 albums i've downloaded today.

Noise POP 2008
Achoo! An Asthmatic Kitty Sampler 2
Kaleidoscope Room 2
60 Years of Folkways

A great way to get some high quality music for free and another good reason to join eMusic. It's very cheap and all of your downloads are strat DRM free Mp3's. There aren't many major label bands in their library but all kinds of obscure indie can be found.

Of Montreal

Working on completing my Of Montreal discography. I am still missing "If He's Protecting Our Nation, Then Who Will Protect Big Oil, Our Children" but it sounds political so maybe it's worth skpping? Saw OM last week at Variety Playhouse, twas dope. Played a bunch off Satanic Panic in the Attic which is the first album of their's that I listened to. Took me back to days of Me and Donny cruisine Milledgeville smoking the Opium travDizzle brought back from Bonnaroo. I think even the weather was the same.

SPANK ROCK

Whoa, it's been a hot minute but when I saw this sexy ass blog sitting so neglected I realized I had to get my priorities straight. SPANK ROCK is coming to the ATL soon so get your dancing shoes on. You may be hearing some of their fine music as we speak. MJQ October 13th. Also be on the lookout for Aesop Rock on November 22nd.

hoodFace & friends

Linky link dumpage: HoodFace awesome. Stankiewicz pretty good. Vandal Creative sexy.

Also someone introduced me to Woot today. They only have one product for sale each day but it's usually a crazy bargain or something.

loopLife (2.5,1000 );

Life can come at you quickly. What have you got to show? Some short stories? Your drawings of classic cars? If you're lucky you have that much. If you aren't lucky, all you might have is a diaper full stinky and an arcade token from when you went to six-flags 10 years ago.

afterEffects Expression Controls

This will be a new living document, mainly so I can keep up with my AE expression controls. I'm no coder but these expressions are extremely handy.

Opacity: x + time Opacity scales w/timeline, x being starting opacity between 1-100
Wiggle: Wiggle(.5,100) Randomizes any property (rate per sec, max unit of change)
Loop: loopOut("cycle",1); Loops a subcomp or footage file, great for BG builds
Noise: NoiseMaker; good tutorial on making grid patterns with random behaviors

Your Magic Touched Me Nights

Popcorn farts and puddledicks. Your Magic Touched Me Nights has made my life 7% better. I went to all of this trouble making a picture for it so respect and watch. Watch for Dick Titty and Shuzuki Thornburg.

CocoaRosie

Found a really good band. Cocoarosie, a sister-sister style musical group, are making splashes on both sides of the pond. Their new album The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn is very very awesome. I downloaded it from eMusic and I think you would enjoy it too. I'll post a link from iMeem soon.