Wednesday, October 29, 2003
Over at Rock on a Spring, Brooke is worried that alternative colleges are being portrayed as accomplices to terrorist acts. Well, Rutgers and CUNY have also taken some shit. But yeah, the point still stands.
You want to listen to MC Frontalot if you haven’t already, because he sounds like MC 900 Foot Jesus and Dr. Octagon channeling old-school Fresh Prince tracks. Socially he’s covering the same subjects — computing, gaming, and other nerd-core pastimes — as Barcelona. Like Negativland, he has the politics of sampling on the brain. He samples Simpsons quotes and They Might Be Giants’s “Shoehorn with Teeth.” This is good, good stuff, and I suggest you begin with “Which MC Was That?”
Saturday, October 25, 2003
Normally I don’t read spam, but this one with a headline suggesting it could “make the government return your tax money” caught my eye and made me wonder what flavor of rhetoric I would find within, what appeal to the secret anti-government sentiments of my fellow Americans it would employ. Instead I found it contained the kind of actual nonsense which spammers seem to be employing to foil filters lately. The semipoetic garble is sort of haunting, as if some other, deeper voice is trying to break through the noisy static in my inbox:
T o : r r @ p r o t e s t . n e t
S u b j e c t : M a k e t h´´ G o v e r n m e n t r´´ t´´ r n y o´´ r t´´ x - m o n e y k v x z e q
Q u a l i f y i n g f o r a f r e e c a s h g r a n t i s e a s y !
a s f i f t e e n t o t w e n t y . M a y I b e e x c u s e d f o r s a y i n g t h a t I w a s
$ 1 0 , 0 0 0 t o o v e r $ 5 0 0 , 0 0 0 A v a i l a b l e N O W !
N e v e r R e p a y A g a i n t h e r e i s a s o u n d a s o f a h u m a n v o i c e , b u t h o a r s e r ; i t
c o m e s
N o C r e d i t C h e c k s
N o I n t e r e s t C h a r g e a s t h e e f f e c t s o f d e l i r i u m .
S e e i f y o u m e e t t h e r e q u i r e m e n t s h e r e
Saturday, October 25, 2003
My dear old friend Janice Yeung has made the US Wushu Team! She will be representing us at the 7th World Wushu Championships in November. Congratulations, Janice! This is awesome! And I find it highly noteable from a personal historical standpoint: Most of our friends were considered unathletic in high school (with the exception of EriQ and Catherine, who played soccer) and were generally ignored by coaches as a result. We did play some badminton, but the badminton opportunities were generally limited, and there was not much energy put into helping badminton players develop. It flies in the face of the traditional assumptions of high school gym teachers for cerebral folks like Janice to make it on this level, and to some extent it shows up what a sick model for physical development your traditional rah-rah, glory-in-your-athletic-youth high school PE department is. Yay! Go geeks! P.S. I think it is worth noting this combination wushu/b-boy competition…
Thursday, October 23, 2003
“Because art is notoriously difficult to talk about ([Clifford] Geertz, [Local Knowledge,] 1983), much art talk is really craft talk.” From a Firstmonday article on children learning photography. What do you think? Discuss.
Thursday, October 23, 2003
Welcome back, Goldie. The poli-artblog is great.
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
and looked up something I already knew a little about: the Tigerlillies’ production of Edward Gorey works. OMG, match made in heaven. I wish like hell I could see it, but as far as I can tell it’s only playing in LA, and when they come to NYC November 1st they will be doing other things. (Now TELL me NYC is more cultured than LA. Liar, liar, liar.) I would love to see the work the following is excerpted from, in particular:
Not everything worked: a surreal poem called The Eggplant Frog (girl becomes infatuated with frogs, girl despises aubergines, girl thinks she sees God in aubergines, or perhaps in frogs) left Stout and drummer Adrian Hughes bemused.
Droooool.
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Everybody focus your benevolent energies on Estrellita. She is very, very, very sick. In addition to a nasty head cold of some sort she has been lethargic since she came home with me, and now the hip she has been favoring the whole time has a nasty swelling to it. Thank god for Petfinder insurance, but I can’t stand to see her so unhappy. Think good thoughts about the pussycat.
Have you checked out Mashimaro lately? There’s not much that’s new from everyone’s favorite flatulence-obsessed Korean kleptorabbit if you’ve seen the origin series and the robot episode already, but there are some little widgets which are kind of cute, among other things, like the usual ridiculous translations.
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
Um, unless I’m mistaken, Evan’s getting married.