//synesthesia

the new jalen rose podcast is not to be missed.

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:19:57 -0500

the new jalen rose podcast is not to be missed.

skinemax is koyaanisqatsi for a generation raised on late night television and b-movie vhs tapes.

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 08:47:00 -0500

skinemax is koyaanisqatsi for a generation raised on late night television and b-movie vhs tapes.

“But they can’t do this,” shrieked Lou Reed. “It’s my song!...

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:58:00 -0400

“But they can’t do this,” shrieked Lou Reed. “It’s my song! They’re just taking my song?”

“Are they really, Lou?” said the Buddha.

“Yes! Listen to it! It’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side.’ It’s just ‘Walk on the Wild Side.’”

“Only here and there,” replied the Buddha.

“What?”

“It’s only ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ here and there. The sample isn’t used everywhere.”

“But at the beginning and the end,” Lou Reed said, “it fills up everything and—”

“It’s not even ‘Walk on the Wild Side,’” the Buddha went on. “It’s the bassline. Did you play the bassline?”

“Herbie played the bassline.”

“So it’s like Herbie’s playing on this song.”

“But he’s not! He didn’t! He played on my song! Why— Why are you putting it on again?”

“Listen Lou,” said the Buddha. “Just listen.”

And they listened for a while.

“Do you hear?”

“Hear what?”

“‘Can I kick it?’”

Lou said nothing.

“‘Can I kick it?’” the Buddha said again. The silence stretched on.

“Yes you can,” Lou said finally.

“Exactly,” said the Buddha. “Exactly.” There was a long pause. “You can. It is not even a question, really. It is a question with an automatic response. ‘Can I kick it?’ ‘Yes you can.’”

“So?” Lou mumbled.

“So this is life, Lou. Live it in the present, in the instant. Hear it, say yes, accept. ‘Can I kick it?’ ‘Yes you can.’ Stop trying to interject yourself between the question and the answer.”

“What does this have to do with sampling?”

The Buddha stared at Lou. He stared at him with a grim stare, the stare he used when his blue children were misbehaving. Then the Buddha licked his lips. He began to dance. He answered Lou Reed with softshoe, one-step, two-step, three, soundless on the carpet.

- said the gramaphone

via.

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:17:54 -0400

via.

richard feynman explains how trains stay on their tracks

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 19:19:44 -0400

richard feynman explains how trains stay on their tracks:

++++

jesse draxler

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 14:45:26 -0400

jesse draxler

"Native Tongue was a thought experiment, with a time limit of ten years. My hypothesis was that if I..."

Sat, 06 Aug 2011 01:03:27 -0400

“

Native Tongue was a thought experiment, with a time limit of ten years. My hypothesis was that if I constructed a language designed specifically to provide a more adequate mechanism for expressing women’s perceptions, women would (a) embrace it and begin using it, or (b) embrace the idea but not the language, say “Elgin, you’ve got it all wrong!” and construct some other “women’s language” to replace it. The ten years went by, and neither of those things happened; Láadan got very little attention, even though SF3 actually published its grammar and dictionary and I published a cassette tape to go with it. Not once did any feminist magazine (or women’s magazine) ask me about the language or write a story about it.

The Klingon language, which is as “masculine” as you could possibly get, has had a tremendous impact on popular culture — there’s an institute, there’s a journal, there were bestselling grammars and cassettes, et cetera, et cetera; nothing like that happened with Láadan. My hypothesis therefore was proved invalid, and the conclusion I draw from that is that in fact women (by which I mean women who are literate in English, French, German, and Spanish, the languages in which Native Tongue appeared) do not find human languages inadequate for communication

”

- suzette haden elgin, on her science fiction novel native tongue. full láadan dictionary here.

it’s kind of messed up but i get more upset about the failures of constructed languages than the death of real ones.

inertia is a property of matter

Sat, 06 Aug 2011 00:40:33 -0400

inertia is a property of matter:

the complete bill nye.

lichtenberg figures are bomb as fuck.

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 00:44:25 -0400

lichtenberg figures are bomb as fuck.

the transition between the president’s address and it’s worth whatttt? was priceless.

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 21:26:50 -0400

the transition between the president’s address and it’s worth whatttt? was priceless.

mercy mercy / extra happy ghost!!! [modern horses] i just...

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 13:08:23 -0400

mercy mercy / extra happy ghost!!! [modern horses]

i just snagged their previous ep, how the beach boys sound to those with no feelings. v.nice.

via. thanks bailey. the can of mello yello is a really nice...

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 13:06:10 -0400

via. thanks bailey. the can of mello yello is a really nice touch.

noir desir / la vent nous portera

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 13:03:24 -0400

noir desir / la vent nous portera:

said the gramaphone:

On 27 July 2003, the man who sings this song murdered his girlfriend. This is not a fiction. Bertrand Cantat attacked Marie Trintignant and three days later she died in hospital. He spent 3 years in prison. In 2010, Krisztina Rády, the mother of Cantat’s two children, the woman he left for Trintignant, committed suicide. Cantat was inside the house. An autopsy found that he was not responsible.

Long before these things, in 2001, Noir Désir released the song “Le vent nous portera”. The wind will carry us. It features guitar by Manu Chao. There is clarinet and vibraphone. The question is this: Can you hear the evil here? And this: Can you hear the despair? I hear a band playing a hypnotic song, playful and solemn. France’s U2, making something intimate and strange. I do not see a death’s-head, I do not see the horror. The wind will carry us. I cannot think of a more terrifying thing.

rush to judgement: trying kids as adults / valerie rush and donna ladd for the jackson free press

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 12:45:46 -0400

rush to judgement: trying kids as adults / valerie rush and donna ladd for the jackson free press

canning&canning&canning&mitch

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 11:10:41 -0400

canning&canning&canning&mitch

flaws / BASTILLE [video]

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 18:32:00 -0400

flaws / BASTILLE [video]

"my next door neighbor was over complaining about someone stealing her clothes off the line. i nearly..."

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:11:53 -0400

“my next door neighbor was over complaining about someone stealing her clothes off the line. i nearly shit in her pants.”

- via

bullshit heaven / jed perl reviews the new book on thomas kinkade over at tnr

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 22:11:37 -0400

bullshit heaven / jed perl reviews the new book on thomas kinkade over at tnr:

compelling piece about the relevance (and relevance of discussing) of motel artist thomas kinkade:

The love affair between the intellectuals and the trashmeisters, now more than a hundred years old, has just overtaken the man who is by some measures the most popular painter in America. Thomas Kinkade: The Artist in the Mall is an essay collection that exudes a creepy fascination. While a number of the contributors manage to provide level-headed assessments of Kinkade’s place in the American imagination, I am not remotely convinced that such attention should be lavished on Kinkade’s sugar-drenched Middle America, with its frosted gingerbread domiciles, dew-kissed old-fashioned small-town Main Streets, and farmlands so fertile they look as if they’re on steroids. Alexis L. Boylan, who edited the book, would no doubt protest that the size of Kinkade’s reputation justifies the attention on sociological or cultural grounds, pure and simple. I know that many intellectuals believe we overlook middlebrow tastes at our own risk. But there is a large dose of reverse snobbery threaded through this collection. More than a generation after Pop Art became holy writ, it is rather tiresome to be announcing yet again that we live in a democracy where one person’s treasure is another person’s trailer trash, and that their masterworks are not necessarily inferior to the Picasso’s and Matisse’s in our museums. Many of the contributors to Boylan’s anthology want to devour every last bite of their middlebrow cake, but only after each tasty morsel has been skewered on a highbrow fork. The problem is not that they respect Kincade anthropologically, it is that they respect him as an artist.

read the whole thing.

wait for me / motopony [motopony]

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:59:17 -0400

wait for me / motopony [motopony]

just watched hbo’s bobby fischer against the world. really...

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:41:30 -0400

just watched hbo’s bobby fischer against the world. really good. going crazy during the cold war sounds kind of romantic but pretty brutal. given the circumstances, at least.

also: had it not been for chess fischer could have had a really nice career acting in jørgen leth movies.