So racist rants by muslim clerics demand a suspension of the normal rules of democracy? Why not pass a law banning incitement to racial hatred like most of the civilised world? Because much of the tory party, BNP, and allied loyalist parties speaches would be similarly viewed by an impartial court perhaps?
It's good to see that at last democracy is reasserting itself in Britain. No Tony, everything has not changed. You are not your master. You cannot make a clean break with human rights. Your hold on your party and the media is too fragile to allow you down the road to totalitarianism. I hope. Shoot to kill policies were unthinkingly approved by the media - or at least they were so frightened by the fruits of dissent in the US after terrorist attacks that they were cowed into silence - but at last after weeks of police lies, disinformation, leaks, and dirty tricks the press is beginning to reassert the normal rights of democracy.
Here's a thought: people in the UK can never have a proper foundation to a democratic state, a proper sense of citizenship, a proper foundation to the defence of human rights, a sensible balancing of the rights and needs of its citizens until they are citizens rather than subjects. Abolish the monarchy in the UK. Get a constitution which legislation will have to be tested against. I know the judges have tended to do this against the unwritten constitution for the last 15 years but this labour government is doing its best to assert the primacy of the executive branch of government at the expence of the other two. Take the conduct of government out of the shadows and let people know what is going on. How else do you expect people to vote and take part?
Later, how exactly the opposite process is taking place in Ireland and the US. We are becoming subjects to our executive branch of government. I went to a football match a while ago and had the indignity of having to listen to the 'Taoiseach's march'. What? When did he become a ceremonial figurehead? And of course in the US they have 'in god we trust' written everywhere, and flags, and pictures of their beloved leader. Quite like a third world dictatorship really. Funny how the most republican of parties in the most republican of countries is forgetting what a republic is and how it differs from an oligarchy. You don't inherit the leadership in a republic. We owe the leader no more respect or reverence than any other public servant dependent on our pleasure. You cannot commit a sacriligious or blasphemous offence in a republic - whether that be to the flag, the institutions or offices of the state, or to some established religion. Republics are the result of the intelligent design of the people: all other foundations for the state are the result of exploitation.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Idyllic
Yesterday
´this is pretty idyllic, we´re sitting on our balcony in a simple hotel outside the village. It´s actually Playa San Augustinillo, we meant to go to Mazunte 1km further on but decided to stop the taxi. We´re the only people in this big hotel, and the previous guests were a week ago. There is a constant stream of butterflies past us, yellowish white with a canary yellow to green one always visible somewhere and the odd orangey red one once in a while. I don´t know how many are visible at one time. 100? How do you count? If you look left and see 30 and in front 30 and to your right 50 but they´re the same ones travelling across in some kind of migration moving from somewhere upwind in an constant flow.
Just left the sea which is unlike any I have ever been in, Brónagh grazed her leg pinfully, dripping blood from being upended on a wave that I was happily bobbing on 10M out. 70M from where we are now sitting in the hotel they look terrifying - big walls of water curving over and crashing - the foam blowing off in doily sheets and a second ghost wave of a diaphanous sheet drifting down after the mighty crash. They look like they would pulverise a person trapped in the tube as it imploded, and in truth even when the subwave crashes closer to shore it can give you a fair battering. Even the waves 20-30M out, 2M higher than the swell they come from are brown from being loaded with exfoliant sand. If you could only tie things down here you could save a lot of hard work with sandpaper.
Coming here was a good idea, I think, there may even be a little nightlife - I saw a sign in Pochutle for a salsa bar with belly dancing. I might have a shower soon, it´s very humid here and I´ve been sweating all day long - in the plastic seat of the taxi, carrying my maleta? in the shade. The room is cool as there is a breeze flowing through it.
There seem to be many more butterflies than there were - if 100 were before me at all times before it must be 200 now. But the tumult of the waves is ceaseless and changeless except for when I try to photograph or video it when it goes tame for a few moments.´
Later we went to eat - fish in a spicy sauce and rice - while the waves crashed in Mazuntle in front of us. A serious and not very sane surfer, and I´ve seen manysurfers on the waves and their bored girlfriends on the shore basting and browning, like a collection of tennis player´s wives and surfers are not normally worth watching - but this guy was awesome, like the films, on a tiny board surfing into the pipes, and when he did fall off it was not because he couldn´t stay on (when he wanted to finish he rode a wave smoothly all the way to the beach) but that he wanted to try the impossible. He glided off the sea past us and I lifted my imaginary hat off for him.
The lightning started way out at sea and it was some time before you could tell the difference between the roar of the waves and that of the thunder, as the thunder drew in and in gaps between the waves their sound became more shrill in comparison. We walked out on the dark road, exotic birds, crickets, and frogs for noise - crabs scuttling away from us - illuminated like very lights with the lightning in the distance and the deep artillary report of the thunder shaking the sky to find some music but ended up escaping the torrential downpour (and I do mean that - nothing in halves here) and sat in a bar with the owner and chatted. He recommended hiking up the hills to see the flowers covered in hummingbirds and butterflies. Apparantly they were brown last week, they´re lush green now. The rains were a month late and they say they´ve had a month of them in the last week.
Today we slept in of course. And when we woke up we couldn´t believe that something unusual wasn´t happening - that tumult couldn´t be constant. But it is. Took a long breakfast and we are just off to see the turtle santuary now. It´s a bit grey (but not that it wasn´t lovely to lark about in the water this morning) so we will leave the hills for another day. And I really wouldn´t mind a bit of dancing later on. We´ll see - the crowd is younger than Puerto Angel but they all seem much as lazy as we are.
´this is pretty idyllic, we´re sitting on our balcony in a simple hotel outside the village. It´s actually Playa San Augustinillo, we meant to go to Mazunte 1km further on but decided to stop the taxi. We´re the only people in this big hotel, and the previous guests were a week ago. There is a constant stream of butterflies past us, yellowish white with a canary yellow to green one always visible somewhere and the odd orangey red one once in a while. I don´t know how many are visible at one time. 100? How do you count? If you look left and see 30 and in front 30 and to your right 50 but they´re the same ones travelling across in some kind of migration moving from somewhere upwind in an constant flow.
Just left the sea which is unlike any I have ever been in, Brónagh grazed her leg pinfully, dripping blood from being upended on a wave that I was happily bobbing on 10M out. 70M from where we are now sitting in the hotel they look terrifying - big walls of water curving over and crashing - the foam blowing off in doily sheets and a second ghost wave of a diaphanous sheet drifting down after the mighty crash. They look like they would pulverise a person trapped in the tube as it imploded, and in truth even when the subwave crashes closer to shore it can give you a fair battering. Even the waves 20-30M out, 2M higher than the swell they come from are brown from being loaded with exfoliant sand. If you could only tie things down here you could save a lot of hard work with sandpaper.
Coming here was a good idea, I think, there may even be a little nightlife - I saw a sign in Pochutle for a salsa bar with belly dancing. I might have a shower soon, it´s very humid here and I´ve been sweating all day long - in the plastic seat of the taxi, carrying my maleta? in the shade. The room is cool as there is a breeze flowing through it.
There seem to be many more butterflies than there were - if 100 were before me at all times before it must be 200 now. But the tumult of the waves is ceaseless and changeless except for when I try to photograph or video it when it goes tame for a few moments.´
Later we went to eat - fish in a spicy sauce and rice - while the waves crashed in Mazuntle in front of us. A serious and not very sane surfer, and I´ve seen manysurfers on the waves and their bored girlfriends on the shore basting and browning, like a collection of tennis player´s wives and surfers are not normally worth watching - but this guy was awesome, like the films, on a tiny board surfing into the pipes, and when he did fall off it was not because he couldn´t stay on (when he wanted to finish he rode a wave smoothly all the way to the beach) but that he wanted to try the impossible. He glided off the sea past us and I lifted my imaginary hat off for him.
The lightning started way out at sea and it was some time before you could tell the difference between the roar of the waves and that of the thunder, as the thunder drew in and in gaps between the waves their sound became more shrill in comparison. We walked out on the dark road, exotic birds, crickets, and frogs for noise - crabs scuttling away from us - illuminated like very lights with the lightning in the distance and the deep artillary report of the thunder shaking the sky to find some music but ended up escaping the torrential downpour (and I do mean that - nothing in halves here) and sat in a bar with the owner and chatted. He recommended hiking up the hills to see the flowers covered in hummingbirds and butterflies. Apparantly they were brown last week, they´re lush green now. The rains were a month late and they say they´ve had a month of them in the last week.
Today we slept in of course. And when we woke up we couldn´t believe that something unusual wasn´t happening - that tumult couldn´t be constant. But it is. Took a long breakfast and we are just off to see the turtle santuary now. It´s a bit grey (but not that it wasn´t lovely to lark about in the water this morning) so we will leave the hills for another day. And I really wouldn´t mind a bit of dancing later on. We´ll see - the crowd is younger than Puerto Angel but they all seem much as lazy as we are.
Monday, June 13, 2005
marcos
... and this man in the same room together? I thought not. Bob was supposed to live in Equador I thought. Must have moved to the Chiapas. The thought popped into my head last night as we were toasting the revolution in a little cafe in Oaxaca. I know, I will burn in hell.
Or wherever it is that naughty subgeniuses go.
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Leave of absence
I might not be writing too frequently in the next month as I am marrying my beloved tomorrow morning and then we are going to Mexico. Can't wait to do both. I'm a very lucky man.
Somebody put a comment on an earlier post and suggested I put some pictures into the next"A Day in the Life Of" on flickr. So I intend to do that and to put some pictures of Mexico up here on the blog.
Better not get to soppy here.
Somebody put a comment on an earlier post and suggested I put some pictures into the next"A Day in the Life Of" on flickr. So I intend to do that and to put some pictures of Mexico up here on the blog.
Better not get to soppy here.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Bookburning: a competitive sport for the noughties?
Maybe we can stop thinking too while we're at it? While some of this list are probably to be expected, like the Communist Manifesto or Mein Kampf I wonder how much relationship they had to do with the crimes they are being blamed for? Surely the urge to ban books has a strong relationship with the evil ideology of Mein Kampf and I imagine the mass media which didn't speak out against the bookburning has more to do with its rise than those that read the book. I think the far right's distrust of books has more to do with their totalitarian similarity to the Khmer Rouge's rejection of 'intellectuals' than it does to history.
Their approach to historicism can be gleaned from a quote on Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money "FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and the U.S. government now has a $2.6-trillion annual budget and an $8-trillion dollar debt." The blind ideology of the far right always makes me laugh. A Keynesian government (to some extend) left power with balanced books - a non-keynesian government took power and spends to death. The difference is that their spending is assumed to be sustainable as it seeks to acquire foreign wealth for America. No source other than imperial pillage will make the federal budget of the US sustainable. Never had that much time for Lenin, but he sure got that one right. Imperialism bolsters unsustainable capitalism. The anti-FDR attacks from the extreme right wing in America (that is, BTW the centre of the Republican party) are also beautifully ahistoric. FDR was a traitor to the world for signing the Yalta agreement? Well sure Yalta kind of sucked for Eastern Europe and we're all sorry about that. But what should he have done? Taken on the Red Army? That fantasy depends on non-examination of the second world war. The Western front was irrelevant, all the people that died there did not bring down the Nazi government. The Soviet Union did it. The sacrifices and battles on the Western front saved some of Europe, no more. If the allies had decided to take on the Red Army it would have rolled on to Calais and taken the whole of Europe with very little resistance. I suspect Stalin regretted not doing it while he had the chance. They had all the oil. They had the troops, airforce, and a frightening battery of artillery. They had many more tanks. Their tanks weren't rubbish (they did receive tanks as aid from the US but used to shoot themselves rather than drive them - the Soviets used rather risky tactics which was fine if you were driving one of their steel mostrosities, but not in one of the US suicide machines - I must do a footnote on US tanks in the second world war, the cynicism of their manufacturers [putting the magazine in the turret to ensure instant death if you got hit] and failure to rectify the design faults on the basis that they could produce more for cheaper without changing the factories, and they could, is markedly similar to car manufacturers. The failure of this economics is that it in cars it doesn't account for those maimed and requiring permanent care or support, in tanks it would have been demonstrated in fighting an economic base you should defeat which would roll over you by having built proper tanks). Western Europe has a lot to thank FDR's US for - they didn't save us from the Nazis; they saved us from the Soviets. And they saved as much of Europe as could have been expected: more than they could militarily have claimed.
Their approach to historicism can be gleaned from a quote on Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money "FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and the U.S. government now has a $2.6-trillion annual budget and an $8-trillion dollar debt." The blind ideology of the far right always makes me laugh. A Keynesian government (to some extend) left power with balanced books - a non-keynesian government took power and spends to death. The difference is that their spending is assumed to be sustainable as it seeks to acquire foreign wealth for America. No source other than imperial pillage will make the federal budget of the US sustainable. Never had that much time for Lenin, but he sure got that one right. Imperialism bolsters unsustainable capitalism. The anti-FDR attacks from the extreme right wing in America (that is, BTW the centre of the Republican party) are also beautifully ahistoric. FDR was a traitor to the world for signing the Yalta agreement? Well sure Yalta kind of sucked for Eastern Europe and we're all sorry about that. But what should he have done? Taken on the Red Army? That fantasy depends on non-examination of the second world war. The Western front was irrelevant, all the people that died there did not bring down the Nazi government. The Soviet Union did it. The sacrifices and battles on the Western front saved some of Europe, no more. If the allies had decided to take on the Red Army it would have rolled on to Calais and taken the whole of Europe with very little resistance. I suspect Stalin regretted not doing it while he had the chance. They had all the oil. They had the troops, airforce, and a frightening battery of artillery. They had many more tanks. Their tanks weren't rubbish (they did receive tanks as aid from the US but used to shoot themselves rather than drive them - the Soviets used rather risky tactics which was fine if you were driving one of their steel mostrosities, but not in one of the US suicide machines - I must do a footnote on US tanks in the second world war, the cynicism of their manufacturers [putting the magazine in the turret to ensure instant death if you got hit] and failure to rectify the design faults on the basis that they could produce more for cheaper without changing the factories, and they could, is markedly similar to car manufacturers. The failure of this economics is that it in cars it doesn't account for those maimed and requiring permanent care or support, in tanks it would have been demonstrated in fighting an economic base you should defeat which would roll over you by having built proper tanks). Western Europe has a lot to thank FDR's US for - they didn't save us from the Nazis; they saved us from the Soviets. And they saved as much of Europe as could have been expected: more than they could militarily have claimed.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Well the Eurovision is more democratic than the European Union...
So I was watching the Eurovision voting on Saturday before going out to meet DarkTeen in a small local pub where people SMOKE CIGARETTES! Not loads of them, the place isn't thick with smoke or anything, and not until after closing time, but they do smoke. And I was hugely enjoying it, things like the sustained bout of booing, it felt like a full minute, when Belarus gave full marks to Russia. It makes you reflect on how Ireland kept winning Eurovisions in the past - bland inoffensiveness - we didn't invade anyone so could not expect to be blackballed by counties with a grudge. I was thinking about Rem Koolhaas's Content, which is well worth the 10 yoyos of your money, it's half way between a magazine and a book. He has these maps of Europe with the EU, Council of Europe, EFTA, Eurovision, and EUEFA marked on it. Which I find funny - the idea of Europe is quite funny; it used to be Christendom, quite recently it was Western bourgeois Europe, and now? Well Rem suggested a new logo for the Euro. This is where I went looking for it on the web and left the post. So, excuse the delay, and well done to... whoever it was that won the Yoyovision.
Reminds me of going to a gay club the night the Israeli transexual won the Eurovision. It was like the gay nation had won the world cup. I was hoping Israel would win on Saturday - it would piss off so many people. So many of the right people. Telling them we love them when they're busy using US money to blow up everything European taxpayers built over there to try and bring a small bit of peace. Beautiful. Well actually it's all blown up already. Utterly destroyed. Such marvellous contempt!
Reminds me of going to a gay club the night the Israeli transexual won the Eurovision. It was like the gay nation had won the world cup. I was hoping Israel would win on Saturday - it would piss off so many people. So many of the right people. Telling them we love them when they're busy using US money to blow up everything European taxpayers built over there to try and bring a small bit of peace. Beautiful. Well actually it's all blown up already. Utterly destroyed. Such marvellous contempt!
Monday, May 23, 2005
Thursday, May 19, 2005
Bullsith
Or ROTS as it is called on the bulletin boards. Several people have mentioned what a twat Lucas was to have an anagram of Shit in his new film's title. That counts as a movement to me so I've been Osubstituting the word Sith for all sorts of excrement the last few days. When I get it imprinted on people I'm going to start saying Sithe. Sithe and onions. The lot of it.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Download live sets
And why not? There's a list on Bootleg Browser and while it is heavily skewed to things I have no interest in, it is long enough that you should find something you like. I'm downloading Calexico as we speak - looking at the setlist I don't think I know most of it.
Oh, most of these aren't bootlegs BTW, they're promo often from people's own websites. Just if you feel you might not be rendering unto Caeser. What old record label used to have a cassette tape skull and crossbones with the legend "home taping is killing music: keep up the good work"?
iRob is committed to play nothing but Spanish language classes on the way to work for the next couple of weeks, so I won't get the pleasure from this.
Oh, most of these aren't bootlegs BTW, they're promo often from people's own websites. Just if you feel you might not be rendering unto Caeser. What old record label used to have a cassette tape skull and crossbones with the legend "home taping is killing music: keep up the good work"?
iRob is committed to play nothing but Spanish language classes on the way to work for the next couple of weeks, so I won't get the pleasure from this.
Friday, May 13, 2005
Route Irish - does it go all the way to fascism?
I had some blog time yesterday but I spent it following up a story. Somebody told me that the main route to the airport from Baghdad is called 'route Irish' by the US military and that, while the term was commonly used by the US media it was being avoided by the Irish. This would be in keeping with the Irish media's craven response to the war. The main, so called 'liberal' media outlets, are in fact dominated by the PDs, who are an extremist right wing party which has added an explicit racist agenda to its previous take on laissez faire, 19th century right wing liberalism. The largest newspaper The Independent, and many others, are owned by a baron somewhat like Murdoch but much less pleasant and interesting. And then there are the English papers transplanted here which are, as in England, racist.
Anyway, I went to check the story out, and there isn't the empirical evidence to back it up. True, the Irish media have avoided any mention, but with the relative numbers of articles there would be no expectation that it would crop up in the Irish media. Really it barely features in the US media too and their focus is much sharper on Iraq. Or at least they write about it a lot more even if their gaze is rather choosy. We also might expect the term more readily there as they fetishise the US military with their 'thunder runs' and coopting of military propaganda terms in an unblinking fashion - a process that really saw the light of day when the US media invented an organisation called the viet cong, which is quite hilarious but another story entirely (see the introduction to Philip Jones Griffiths Vietnam Inc. where he gives the US military propaganda name that they insisted be used by accredited journalists with the alternative name, you can really see how they created a fantasy world where they were loved by the locals, a cosy fantasy that obviously convinced many, long after they were tipping the hueys into the sea and promising to pay a few paltry billions in reparations for the millions of civilians they murdered. Billions they forgot to pay.)
I mention all this as I am avoiding doing a project on blogs in Ireland. There is a cosy consensus in Ireland of quite extreme right wing opinion. This is continually reinforced by the media. A (pro-war) american friend of mine who is leaving here as soon as he can told me shortly after he arrived here that he found it really funny that Irish media sources continually got away with saying that this country was 'anti-business'. He claims you wouldn't get away with that in the US. This country is 'the most globalised in the world', is rapidly heading from a country of have nots and hereditary wealth (those that invaded and those that collaborated) to a country of have-nots and robber barons. Our media is turning the other way. At the same time a movement appears, to me, to be gathering at the fringe of the media. This movement is of independent but mutually supportive groups, lobbying and colinising cyberspace with hate and contempt filled rants. These people bolster each other, and talk of ranters like Kevin Myers as an intellectual and free thinker, rather than an intellectual minnow and bigot. There are people there like the freedom institute and the open republic that need to be monitored. They are pushing a cosy consensus further and further to the right, further towards extremism, racism, and ulitmately facism if they are not checked. I think of leaving here too. Let it fester in its hate filled, racist, kill the poor, culturally backward, weeping wound of a public discourse. Though for evil to prosper... Well, I'm not a good man anyway, but it's time I did something. And as I pointed out at the beginning of this piece, counting and logging what they are saying to check what is really going on is a start, although I really don't look forward to immersing myself in that filth.
Anyway, I went to check the story out, and there isn't the empirical evidence to back it up. True, the Irish media have avoided any mention, but with the relative numbers of articles there would be no expectation that it would crop up in the Irish media. Really it barely features in the US media too and their focus is much sharper on Iraq. Or at least they write about it a lot more even if their gaze is rather choosy. We also might expect the term more readily there as they fetishise the US military with their 'thunder runs' and coopting of military propaganda terms in an unblinking fashion - a process that really saw the light of day when the US media invented an organisation called the viet cong, which is quite hilarious but another story entirely (see the introduction to Philip Jones Griffiths Vietnam Inc. where he gives the US military propaganda name that they insisted be used by accredited journalists with the alternative name, you can really see how they created a fantasy world where they were loved by the locals, a cosy fantasy that obviously convinced many, long after they were tipping the hueys into the sea and promising to pay a few paltry billions in reparations for the millions of civilians they murdered. Billions they forgot to pay.)
I mention all this as I am avoiding doing a project on blogs in Ireland. There is a cosy consensus in Ireland of quite extreme right wing opinion. This is continually reinforced by the media. A (pro-war) american friend of mine who is leaving here as soon as he can told me shortly after he arrived here that he found it really funny that Irish media sources continually got away with saying that this country was 'anti-business'. He claims you wouldn't get away with that in the US. This country is 'the most globalised in the world', is rapidly heading from a country of have nots and hereditary wealth (those that invaded and those that collaborated) to a country of have-nots and robber barons. Our media is turning the other way. At the same time a movement appears, to me, to be gathering at the fringe of the media. This movement is of independent but mutually supportive groups, lobbying and colinising cyberspace with hate and contempt filled rants. These people bolster each other, and talk of ranters like Kevin Myers as an intellectual and free thinker, rather than an intellectual minnow and bigot. There are people there like the freedom institute and the open republic that need to be monitored. They are pushing a cosy consensus further and further to the right, further towards extremism, racism, and ulitmately facism if they are not checked. I think of leaving here too. Let it fester in its hate filled, racist, kill the poor, culturally backward, weeping wound of a public discourse. Though for evil to prosper... Well, I'm not a good man anyway, but it's time I did something. And as I pointed out at the beginning of this piece, counting and logging what they are saying to check what is really going on is a start, although I really don't look forward to immersing myself in that filth.
Monday, May 09, 2005
Acceptable racism
So anyway, I can't have the Sunday Times in the house. It's full of references to French people as 'frogs'. Which apart from being racist is unbelievably crass, peurile, and dimwitted little Englander, . So, while the English papers that have fostered anti-immigrant sentiments in Ireland (does anyone remember 'Rapist refugee rampage' from The Star?) congratulate themselves on the lack of racism in English football compared to the continent (true, monkey chants aren't common any more in Britain - though it isn't that long ago it was, and I wouldn't have spoken in an Irish accent, or seen a black person, on the terraces in 1990) they are rotten to the core with disgusting triumphalist anglo racism.
So, I got a taxi on Saturday night and I was saying to the taxi driver that I was sorry Southampton got a very late equaliser with Palace as I like Iain Dowie, their manager, as he really was a rocket scientist as well as captain of Northern Ireland and the taxi driver goes 'yeah, but he's a total hun you know'. And I was thinking to myself 'I live in a country where racist terms can be used in public' it's just different racisms in different countries.
So, I got a taxi on Saturday night and I was saying to the taxi driver that I was sorry Southampton got a very late equaliser with Palace as I like Iain Dowie, their manager, as he really was a rocket scientist as well as captain of Northern Ireland and the taxi driver goes 'yeah, but he's a total hun you know'. And I was thinking to myself 'I live in a country where racist terms can be used in public' it's just different racisms in different countries.
Friday, May 06, 2005
Vannier
Idly checking ebay for records by Jean Claude Vannier, the producer behind Melody Nelson by Gainsbourg, I saw, among the 50 quid for dodgy one off singles (JohnnyHalliday? Not something you'd take a risk on) I noticed that there were new CDs. Now where there are new CDs like as not there are new records. Sure enough Finders Keepers records launched a couple of months ago with the release of L'enfant assassin des mouches on CD and me pleasing vinyl. The legendary 'follow up' record to Melody Nelson. I've just ordered it (happy birthday me!). Hurry up post. You should go too. Are you any less deserving than me?
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Saul Bass
Funny, I never really considered what Saul Bass was up to after the early '60s. He did those great title sequences and posters for things like Vertigo and Man with the golden arm. It never really occurred to me that he was doing the titles for Scorcese movies like Cape Fear, Goodfellas, and Casino. Must check them out. Sad to see his filmography shrink through the 70s and 80s, where he introduced such greats as Big and That's entertainment part II.
I suppose this links quite strongly to the Barry Adamson post before. He did a cover version of the Man with the golden arm theme, and his album art is influenced by Bass's work.
The Saul Bass web site has flash animations and QuickTIme movies of the title sequences. Well worth going to.
I suppose this links quite strongly to the Barry Adamson post before. He did a cover version of the Man with the golden arm theme, and his album art is influenced by Bass's work.
The Saul Bass web site has flash animations and QuickTIme movies of the title sequences. Well worth going to.
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
psycho
I just got lost on the web, was going to just post a quick link to the great edit of both versions of Psycho played together. I've never heard of Frank Hudec before, but I like this, the Usual Suspects edit on the same page doesn't come close to it. It seems like Gus van Sant's is a mirror image of the original - probably made it handier for copying on set. As an aside, I could never understand the adulation van Sant got - didn't like any of his movies that I saw (I even sat through an early one with William Burroughs in it at the Pompidou centre), but I loved Elephant. I got the link from Bitter Cinema, and followed a link there about the legendary Skidoo. I first came across this picture in the biography of the Marx brothers Groucho, Harpo, Chico and sometimes Zeppo, and have wanted to watch it, intermittently, since. Of course it has never been released on VHS or DVD, of course it is available at this marvellous site with all sorts of non-released and incredibly strange films. I got that link at a fine film site. But of course it's available cheaper on ebay. Plus, you can watch clips from it. Got to get the credit card out.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
But you can find the links here...
At Marco's Weirdomusic site. I don't know about you but I'm looking forward to Mocha Beans' in the moog. In truth it's easy to be let down by moog albums (hey, it's by no means my favourite synthesizer - in fact it's not in the top twenty I think) but you keep hoping. And anyway, lots of them use tape manipulation and all sorts of synths.
Monday, April 25, 2005
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Lots of free music. Go-go Gojira.
Joe Burns over at Gojira 69 has handily collected a bunch of the exotic sharity free downloads available in the extended virtual community. Watch those lovely page transformations and his nice scratchy old film backgrounds. Most of these are up for a week or so only and then changed, from legends of sharing strange and unusual music like weirdomusic, basic hip, Vegas Vic, and Hepcat Willy, . There are also some newcomers, like the soon to be legendary Sabadaba. Sem Sinatra, and Kristof Space Debris.
No need to hurry, as it's been up for years, but you really need to check Mohommed Al-Bakkar for some classy middle eastern music.
No need to hurry, as it's been up for years, but you really need to check Mohommed Al-Bakkar for some classy middle eastern music.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
It's all about the name for me...
Now you can do both!! At the same time! And not feel dirty! It's here yagoohoo!gle. I suppose it's interesting to compare the two (Google has loads of ads) but since their corporate divorce (Google provided the search results for Yahoo until early last year) Google has been working even harder than usual on homogenising their results manually to ensure important searches don't throw up curveballs.
Friday, April 15, 2005
Where's the memes?
Good point. I haven't engaged in any meme transmission. So here's some I got last week and have received again since (which qualifies them as far as I'm concerned).
Dennis Madalone, ex Star Trek stunt coordinator (apparantly) now has joined the fireman loving, soft rock for jesus school of hilarious patriotism. He's not afraid to stand in the sea. I love the green Ceylon eye thing he has going on his wraparound shades in the splash page. I wonder were his web designers undermining him? I'll leave the last words to his own website "Dennis' song wishes to fill your heart and soul full of pride, hope and love for our nation and most importantly each other. He is truly an artist of power, passion and originality".
No I can't let them be the last words. His song is out there wishing things off its own bat. I'm scared. He's got nearly 76K visitors to his site - go on, you know you want to.
At least you can deface the site.
Dennis Madalone, ex Star Trek stunt coordinator (apparantly) now has joined the fireman loving, soft rock for jesus school of hilarious patriotism. He's not afraid to stand in the sea. I love the green Ceylon eye thing he has going on his wraparound shades in the splash page. I wonder were his web designers undermining him? I'll leave the last words to his own website "Dennis' song wishes to fill your heart and soul full of pride, hope and love for our nation and most importantly each other. He is truly an artist of power, passion and originality".
No I can't let them be the last words. His song is out there wishing things off its own bat. I'm scared. He's got nearly 76K visitors to his site - go on, you know you want to.
At least you can deface the site.
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