Fractionals

Chills, man. Chills

Not one, but two new reviews, as good as always, up at And You Call Yourself A Scientist!

Nice idea, but getting the festering pool of undifferentiated spite and snobbishness known as Chris Ott to write it wasn't the best idea ever. Better luck next time, Pitchfork.

It's been an extraordinarily bad time for deaths in the arts recently, and although I don't think most people had heard of Matthew Jay, he was at the least promising ('Let Your Shoulder Fall' and 'Four Minute Rebellion' in particular are truly lovely song), and given that he was so young and that the death was likely an accident this is pretty shocking. R.I.P.

I know, I know... more info on the Plame thing may or may not be to your taste. But this guy is doing good, reasoned thinking on the whole thing.

Really good and interesting article on the old, futile nature versus nurture argument.

If you're only going to read one of my many posts about the Plame affair today, make it this one. Even the comments are worthwhile.

I'm not an American, but if I was, I'd be all over this petition.

Guess what's the top story on BBC right now?

Ooh, look, McInnes is a big fucking pussy as well as everything else. Well surprise, surprise.

I never liked Hipsters anyway, and that definitely included Vice. Since I don't actually have time to read the Antic Muse, as good as it is, link comes via, of course, TMFTML.

Couldn't resist - this is the most thrilling and important story out there right now. From ABC:

"Schumer, D-N.Y., said matter should be investigated from someone outside the Bush administration.

"If there was ever a case that demanded a special counsel, this is it," he said. "This is a very serious national security matter where there is a clear conflict of interest for the attorney general because it could involve high-level White House officials.""

Damn straight. If they can get one for fucking adultry, I'd think felonious violation of national security would warrent it. And, to quote a post from Atrois again, "And of course, pundits will know that this special counsel should be a lifelong insider Democrat. Scribes made this a point of principle at the time of Ken Starr’s appointment. We’re sure that they’ll yell loudly now."

'Love Will Freak Us Apart', by Joy Division and Missy Elliot, is great.

Atrios and all of Left Blogistan is absolutely killing on the whole Wilson thing. I can't begin to express my (a) rage that someone that high up in the adminstration would do something so stupid and so capable of getting that government's own agents and sources possibly killed (b) glee that they did something much definably worse than Clinton ever did. How there can not be serious reprecussions for this is beyond me. To quote Mark Kleiman quoting MSNBC (not exactly 'liberal media'):

"CIA lawyers followed up the notification this month by answering 11 questions from the Justice Department, affirming that the woman’s identity was classified, that whoever released it was not authorized to do so and that the news media would not have been able to guess her identity without the leak, the senior officials said. The CIA response to the questions, which is itself classified, said there were grounds for a criminal investigation, the sources said."

And is the fucking CIA; not traditionally a bunch of bleeding hearts.

More fire from Atrios. The post he's responding to is also interesting, although I'm more likely to compare this to Watergate than to Lewinsky.

Good ol' Popey finally gives us Canucks a new cardinal.

Smaller bands can be demanding too. British band Mogwai once asked for a framed picture of Star Wars' Princess Leia.

The Church Of Me seems to be coming to an end. I'd be sad, but it's better this way, and Carlin says he'll still write. Good enough for me.

Atrios is just going nuts keeping track of all the ways the whole Wilson thing is big news (or at least should be/would be if this were, say, Clinton) and also highly, highly illegal. Looking at the list of who the actual suspects for the leak could be is pretty chilling as well. As is knowing that members of the media know who leaked it and know who turned around and revealed the leaks - but isn't telling.

Ah jeeze Nick, say it ain't so.

Say what you will about TMFTML (and god knows, he's probably said worse about himself), but he's using one of my all time favorite quotes as his tagline right now. Good on him.

Oh, I forgot to mention that there's a new entry up at the journal, link on the right.

Surprise, Surprise

The more that gets out about how Nietszche's sister misrepresented him, the better.

News flash: yetis may not exist. It's an interesting story, actually, but the jokes are just way too easy.

Okay, links are back up and new and improved.

Josh spells 'sauce' wrong. Sucker.

Today on the mighty pepysdiary: Ol' Sam actually uses the phrase 'in a most sad pickle', circa 1660.

(oh, and cheers to Warren Ellis for passing along that last one)

The whole 'human bomb' thing was creepy enough already, and now it's even more soon. I just know they'll make a movie out of it, sadly.

I grew up during the 80s, so of course I loved 'Addicted To Love'. I even loved the Weird Al version, 'Addicted To Spuds'. And he did seem like a genuinely nice guy in interviews. This seems to have been a bad few weeks for unexpected deaths.

A gay Doctor Who? Sadly, no.

Looks fine for now. I'm sure there's a way to add in links later, and Tony will help me with that. Back to your irregularly unscheduled entertainment.

I like it, but I wonder if there's any place to put links? Next couple of posts will probably just be testing stuff.

I think I'm trying out a new template.

So this week we printed a letter in the paper which accuses us editors of being "bitter neo-leftists". I, personally, am neither bitter nor neo, but whatever. After that, though, it was nice to stumble onto the mighty Atrios. He makes my poltical bits tingle with joy.

Can YOU solve The Case Of Encyclopedia Brown's Mangled Corpse?

Girls Are Pretty has been slightly less disturbing recently, but being beautiful makes up for it, I guess.

Rabbits have a social structure just like anyone else.

I've heard from Jeff Mitscherling that the World Congress of Philosophy isn't quite as good as it could be, but this makes it seem like, at the least, a worthwhile project.

Just ran into this on a comment string on diepunyhumans (link to the left), and it so perfectly encapsulates something I believe I must steal it.

"Back in lifeguard training they told us a drowning person will hold a potential rescuer underwater to keep afloat.

You cannot love and need someone at the same time."

Not my best work, but new review up at Stylus nevertheless.

What the hell more do I have to do, here? I've republished, I've resaved, I've refreshed, and so on...

And now the title thingy isn't showing up in the last post. Maybe I need to post again...

I've decided to try the whole title thing for posts; why not? On a more important note, it seems that the archives for about the last month are inaccessible. What the hell is up with that? I don't know if that's because it takes that long to be properly archived because I don't pay blogspot or what, but I'm very, very annoyed. I'll have to look into it, I guess, but I seem to recall blogspot's help system sucking if you're a freeloader.

RIP, Mr. Carlson.

Bit of a bizarre tracklisting for REM's best-of, but I guess that's because it's only their Warner stuff. Still looks good. And 'Nightswiming' is the final track, as it should be.

I KRUG U PEEPLE ARE NOT

Assorted readers of TMFTML (including myself, sadly) try to figure out Pepperidge Farms. The comments are priceless, especially the first one.

I'm not mistaking the whole 'bright' thing for an arrogant adjective as Dawkins is claiming, I just think it's a stupid, pretentious idea. Pity Penn & Teller are among the involved.

E.T. and God

Check out 10 of 11 - beautiful shot.

Interesting piece on the pros and cons of postmodernism. I mostly agree.

Best article on Radiohead ever.

Rather than being so hasty about canonizing Mother Theresa, maybe we should take a closer look at what she did first.

I think I forgot the mention this last time (although it was just a small one), but there's a new journal entry up, in the usual place.

I've never seen TiVo, myself.

I am so proud of this article; easily the best thing my section has printed this year so far.

Also: Giant fucking Guinea Pigs.

Yeah, so after just getting in after the longest Ontarion board meeting I've ever been to, I'm saying 'fuck it' and just waiting until next week. I'm sure you're crushed.

Fuck, it's Wednesday, isn't it? I completely forgot, due to some crap going down at work. A slightly belated WES will follow tomorrow. Sorry about that.

Ahh, fuck it: I have to start reading Bunsen. And so do you.

Interesting article on the closing of a swanky NYC French restaurant (some of the history is particularly intriguing), but really - did he have to use 'dickey' twice?

Mr. Southall analyses his name.

"Harper said the Liberals' plan to legalize gay marriage would eventually force religious groups that oppose gay marriages to perform them."

For the last fucking time, you stupid bigot, no it won't. Religious institutions can marry or not marry anyone they want, and the state is not going to try to force them to do otherwise. That's not the point of the legislation.

The right side won the latest vote on gay marriage, but that was too fucking close.

I don't know if I linked to the article mentioned here when I first read it, but this is a fine annendum in any case.

This whole name analysis thing has gotten some play from some of my friends, but let's put this to rest:

"Your first name of Ian creates a serious, thoughtful nature, shrewd, efficient, and business-minded. You are one to make your own decisions, and not be influenced by others. You desire independence and freedom from the authority and interference of others. You are not overly ambitious, preferring instead just to seek stable, settled conditions which are adequate to meet your responsibilities. In your personal relations with others, you are inclined to be rather serious, and not to see the humour others see, or to respond spontaneously. Your positive manner and outlook can make others feel that you are imposing your will on them and even interfering in their affairs."

I am not particularly serious or thoughtful most of the time, nor am I efficient or business minded. Everyone desires independance and freedom, or at least thinks they do. I've got ambition up the wazoo. Not see the humour others see? More like the other way around. Although, yes, I can come across as domineering. There, now we've all done it (I think).

The Worst Jobs In Science. Thank goodness I'm a humanities major.

It's come to my attention that my favorite current comic book is not getting as many readers as it should be. Stormwatch: Team Achilles is so much better than it had to be, than it should have been, than the concept (Stormwatch reformed as covert anti-SPB operatives) would lead you to think. Micah Ian Wright is an amazing writer, and it's pretty much the only military type book that skews this far left, and with as much humour. If you read comics, pick it up.

Well, I'm not American, but might as well get the word out on how JetBlue is a bunch of snivelling, immoral fucks.

Yes! New review up at And You Call Yourself A Scientist.

Almost forgot: The most remarkable thing in Stylus today is not my second published review (Glee!), but rather Sam Bloch's customarily excellent interview with Colin fucking Newman. Which reminds me that I may not have linked to his equally excellent review of Chairs Missing.

It's funny 'cuz it's true.

Articles like this depress me, as I'm pretty sure neither the film nor the article itself is the whole story, but there will be plenty of people running around who only believe one of them. Both of those groups are misguided.

New journal entry up. Rejoice!

Well, what do you know; one of my favorite bands, Hefner, is apparantly for the foreseeable future no more.

NME has partially redeemed the recent sorry state of its website with it's tribute to Cash; particularly accurate and affecting, to me, is the end:

"It’s fitting that ‘Hurt’, honoured with a Grammy and at the MTV Video Music Awards, will be remembered as his swansong. He took Nine Inch Nails' confused paean to drug addiction and made it a King Lear-like rage at the dying of the light.

It takes a heart of stone not to cry big wet tears watching it and thinking about Cash, the legend now gone. He will never be bettered. "

RIP

Well, fuck me sideways.

Pretty much.

Largely inconclusive, but still interesting, article on book reviewing. The same sort of thing they discuss can broadly be applied to music criticism.

"Condon was a cynic of the upbeat type, not unlike Tom Wolfe: his belief that everything is basically shit did not get in the way of his pleasure in making fun of it."

Good look at the Manchurian Candidate over at The New Yorker.

For once, when I said a new journal post would be following the same day I actually did it.

Wednesday's Emotional Setup: Try Honesty

Just a short one today, kids, as I need some sleep badly (still ache from Andrew WK, had some bad pizza, and K. and I are tired) and I'm going to do another actual journal entry tomorrow.

I don't, as a rule, like emo. The reason why is somewhat related to the reason I don't like, for example, Linkin Park. When I was visiting Shane in London whenever we would go somewhere I would usually ride in our old friend Jim's car, and he had Meteora on repeat. The actual music was pretty bland nu-metal stuff ('Nobody's Listening' aside, which is notable and likeable for nothing more than the minimalism and the fact that Chester Bennington sounds like he's just another sample they're using), but the depressing monotony of the lyrics and the pessimism therein really got to me.

I also hate the way Billy Talent's new single 'Try Honesty' starts. It's got some okay stop-start stuff going on, but then the singer (and I first saw this on TV, so the video was in effect as well), who is goofily intense and twitchy, sings in his whiny voice I tripped/Fell down/Naked, and I'm already half changing the channel. Sure, the guitarist has a neat haircut but this is more of that A Simple Plan For Taking Back Sunday With Three Days Grace stuff, right?

And then it is redeemed by something I had feared top 40 rock (as opposed to pop) had lost: the absolutely killer chorus. The singer's voice starts sounding like my good friend Jon's does when he sings, and he zips out a quick line and then the other two non-drummers start screaming Try honesty/Try honesty! with the guitars in full force in that fast riffing mode that is one of the few things modern 'punk' does well. And it rocks. It rocks like something very hard and rocky. And the first time at least, the band goes from nothing to everything very, very quickly, another underutilized skill these days.

It's notable both for the fact that the lead singer lets the other two get the money shot of the song (as it were), and also for the fact that the chorus is nice and long; after the first couplet there are three more with different lyrics and even a different refrain, and so most of the song is this awesome chorus. What are the lyrical sentiments? I don't care. Do they have any other good songs? I don't care. There's a middle eight and stuff, but I tend to forget it, and there's this completely awesome part right at the end where the chorus is going on repeat and the guitars stop just doing the whole clipped riff thing and go right off into a more extended bit. I don't know the terms for this stuff, but it hits the sectors of my brain that grew up with all sorts of awesome grunge/punk singles that were dumb as rocks but were also big and loud and great for pogoing on the couch and playing Mario Cart with friends. This song makes my head twitch back and forth involuntarily as if I want to headbang but my hindbrain can't quite engage the muscles fully.

So I'm just going to go play air guitar for another four minutes, if that's okay with you.

-----

Man, this new Andrew WK album is going to be awesome.

Hey, I used to work for that guy!

Awesome! Harry Knowles, who I've never liked, does commit the horrible fallacy of ranking "Far Side" with the Holy Duo of "Calvin And Hobbes" and "Bloom County". I like "Far Side" and all, but it's not even close. It's just funny, it's not significant.

Ugh. Yuck. Gasp. Cough. Choke. Wheeze. She's not quite bad enough to make me want to leave the country, but Leah McLaren is awful enough to make it a close-run thing.

Soon we'll vaccinate everything!

"Dom: And metal is shit.

Dom: It ’s just goblins and feedback "

This, my friends, is why I'm glad I'm working with Stylus. And also, cheers to Nick for the kind word.

Historicity vs. revisionism in classical music. Only it's a funny, well-written article. Go figure. [Edit: The fact I think it's well-written, however, doesn't mean I agree with it 100% - I think the problem isn't that classical music is trying to emulate rock, but rather pop music. That's not a knock against pop, nor am I trying to say that pop is part of "increasing disconnect between music and meaning" (I don't think that's happening at all, actually). But I think even the most rabid pop music would agree that classical should no more be trying to be something it's not than pop should, and that seems to be what the trends Swafford bemoans are about.]

Yay! Evangelical RPGs for everyone!

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!

I can't seem to link the individual post, but go to Pete's blog and go to what is currently three down, the entry for 2:10 am on Sept. 8th. That sums up the experience pretty well. There was a lot of love in that sweaty, cramped room.

Interesting article on France and the US, although your mileage may vary.

The American school system scares the shit out of me.

The Andrew WK concert, by the way, was amazing. Got kicked in the teeth and in the face a few times, but not hard, and not intentionally. And it was worth it.

The best nickname I've ever heard of for female genetalia is 'panty hamster'.

I'm glad Shane is updating more often, but inquiring minds want to know why he needs to get ready for 'tonight'. Some sort of Satanic ritual, I'd wager.

Ted Koppel fucking rocks.

New journal entry, at long last, in the usual place.

Girls Are Pretty gets back to the real meat and potatos stuff. You know, stuff that's disturbing and depressing. Yay!

So it took a little while for to link to the new, fine review over at And You Call Yourself A Scientist!, big deal; it took Liz a long time to put anything up.

I don't know the candidates, but this is still funny.

I like Dave Queen's writing a lot.

I hate Larry Groznic.

Wednesday's Emotional Setup: Stylus

The whole transition to a new job and school life again has fucked up my sense of time, and so this is a bit late. But here it is nonetheless: the pieces that won me admission to the Stylus roster. Nick Southall wanted to see two pieces each on two albums, in order to see different takes on them. I like the two more impressionistic pieces better, but Nick said any of the four were of publishable quality.

An actual journal is to follow whenever I find the damn time.

Teenage Fanclub - Songs From Northern Britain

(Take One)

Coincidence is always around us. A blog entry by a talented young man about the yearning possibility of all the things you think while you're writing, that you can't quite get down (that surge, that rush of feeling and potency and possibility, pressing against your skull from the inside). One of my favorite blogs changing its tag to 'KNOCK THAT MAGIC THROUGH MY VEINS'. It's been a beautiful day. Running into an old friend from high school while I was back home (she looks great). And, of course,

Even though it's complicated
We've got time to start again

the music I listen to. I first picked up Teenage Fanclub against the advice of an old acquaintance of mine who worked in the HMV I went to, a man who I trusted implicitly based on previous recommendations. The album was only $5, and he had said that although he had never gotten into them, he knew that those who liked them liked them a lot. So I bought it, but only barely.

That close. That close to never hearing this music, this

You've been an inspirational figure to me

sound, this impossible to describe surge of joy. I know plenty of bands who sound superficially like Teenage Fanclub, but no one sounds like them. 'I Don't Want Control Of You', 'Your Love Is The Place Where I Come From', 'Start Again' - you can feel the good will rolling off these songs even from a distance. Hope and possibility

Only you and me add up

and this love, this big love, that turns 'I Don't Care' into a love song, 'It's A Bad World' into a hymn of protection, 'Ain't That Enough' into the warm blanket you give the Other so they're not cold. Who else can elevate do what you gotta do from a resignation into a clear, pure belief that you'll do the right thing? The redemptive thing about Teenage Fanclub, about Raymond McGinley, Gerard Love and Norman Blake is their belief, expressed through music, that we really are good people. That

Sometimes you underline destinations
Sometimes you try to find inspiration

yes, you both really do feel that way, that things will be okay, eventually. That things are okay, when you look at it right, that they'll always be okay. It's a sunny day out, the guitars are chiming, the voices are in harmony, and all is right with the world. All you need is information/Everything is there to know, they sing. And it is.

(Take Two)

I wonder about the faith of the members of Teenage Fanclub. I'm not concerned, the way a priest would be, about it; it doesn't matter to me whether they are atheist, Christian, Muslim, agnostic, pagan, Hindu, or what have you. But the love songs of Teenage Fanclub (and most, if not all, of their songs are love songs) are strangely chaste and impersonal, hinting at some great Absolute that they stretch towards like the music of a sphere (I feel the planets surround me Blake sings).

I'm not accusing them of fanaticism or any of the other myriad possible negative consequences of dogmatism. But especially in Raymond McGinley's songs here ('I Can't Feel My Soul' stands out) there is the feeling of a helpless supplicant at the feet of someone, something, bigger and (importantly) better than yourself, better than Self. What is the image on the back of Songs From Northern Britain? It is a clear vista of healthy green forest beneath a beautiful blue sky, untainted by not only human presence but by presence of any kind, existing only in and for itself.

If pop music is, as a wiser man than I once theorised, about melody, than Teenage Fanclub represent one possible Platonic Ideal of the form, all elements both sonic and lyrical and thematic mustered into a great harmonic whole, all playing the same melody, as it were. Love, McGinley and Blake are consummate craftsmen when it comes to the chorus, of course, and so Teenage Fanclub boast stellar harmonies for lying about on a summer day, for hot drinks on a winter afternoon, for rainy days inside or out, and for driving. Especially for driving, when that endless harmonic drive is sublimated into the engine thrumming beneath your feet, and the road ends past your field of view.

There is a humility in Teenage Fanclub despite the transporting melodies, a belief in the power of what's around them (Seasons change everything Blake sings) and what runs through them and what they are, what we all are, that does not rely on a particular religious faith, or indeed any religious faith at all. But it feels holy, it feels sacred, and yet not unapproachable (as all truly holy things are). Teenage Fanclub do not require your belief in a mystical soul, in an afterlife, or in anything we would recognize as God (they are very similar to Spinoza in this respect), but they do evoke something more, something bigger, than us. This does not somehow elevate them 'beyond' pop music; this is one of the things pop music can aspire to.

Readymade - The Dramatic Balanced By

(Take One)

I'm at the end
I've broken the trend
Of being alone
Of hiding the phone
'Wayfinding'

This record exudes calm in the middle of the storm. Just as Arch's dry, quiet vocals are often surrounded with a tsunami of fuzz guitar, drum machine and keyboards, there is at the heart of this record a peace that comes out of acceptance, or resignation; hopelessness, or confidence. It's hard to tell, most of the time.

You have to understand, this sounds like pop to me. 'Bloomsbury Boxcutter', with its refrain of the Lamplighters are dead again, the heavenly 'Hamburg', even 'Head Falls To Shoulder''s lengthy coda. I wasn't exactly raised on what this band sounds like, but I was raised on the Clash and electric Neil Young, and so volume and distortion do not necessarily equal difficulty. Readymade may be neo-shoegazers or dream pop or noise pop or whatever you want to call it, but they are at their best as catchy as any other band more well known for that trait, even when it's just Arch murmuring And I wish that I would breathe on the four-track hymnal 'Following A Typewriter To Sleep'.

It is a difficult thing to truly explicate in words how an album comes together, how the best ones become more than just a collection of songs, and it is no easier in the case of The Dramatic Balanced By. Part of it is a sense of place, inescapable to my ears, that means I cannot listen to this record without thinking of a cramped, grey apartment somewhere in Vancouver during a rainy night, the city pressing down on your head, latent violence and heat and passion all locked down by cold and wet and muted fog. (and this can be nothing other than a city album - witness the mirroring of the poster and box art for Scorsese's Mean Streets that adorns the front of the album) This too is a type of calm, but not a pleasant one. A couplet from 'The Gloaming' by Radiohead summons up the feeling perfectly: When the walls bend/With your breathing.

It is this feeling, this sense of place and personality, that renders The Dramatic Balanced By more than the sum of its (amazing) parts. Normally I hate little meandering pieces placed between songs to connect them, but here they sound like part of the environment, like the brief 'Moten' is just as important as 'Head Falls To Shoulder' to the album. Even the lengthy, abstract closer 'The Lamplighters Are Dead' feels like it belongs, like it tells the end of the story.

What that story is, of course, I couldn't tell you even if I knew. You cannot transmit experience like that. It must be felt, and felt in total. Like all great albums, The Dramatic Balanced By is ultimately a personal experience.

(Take Two)

Most of these stories, however, were written after midnight, when the world was quiet and there was no one left to talk to.
Neil Gaiman

Cityscape driveby, buzz and hum of life, click track/drum machine/public transit, pavement and sky, no birds, no animals but us, no green. We make soundtracks for this; this one is fashioned out of static and hum and anthemic drive and the sound of the sky, and the rain storm wrapping itself around our building, the sky is never blue, never black, always grey, always cloudy.

Hear the joy in 'Lasting Real', in that endless highway drive, just looping the onramps and not going anywhere - joyrides for 'adults', no mischief, just escape from jobs, from rent, from responsibility. From politics. 'Bloomsbury Boxcutter' - again that feeling of setting out, a great journey, but always within the cities, the City, people and steel and cement and sky and wood all wrapped together tight so tight.

The City, the world, it's such an awful place. But not all the time. It's filled with people, and people can go either way. You can go either way. And right now they want to go up, to fill us all with sound and melody and fuzz and raise us up.

Endless uplift, always trapped back into the city. An effort to rise (to rise always, to go upwards and away forever) balanced by the vitality of the surroundings, by the fact that the effort itself is fashioned out of that which keeps itself down. You can't see the stars from your window, but you can dream them with your guitar and a drum machine and some sympathetic friends.

Finding your way. Suffocating under the layers of the city, taking speed in Germany, occasionally bursting out in exuberance for a night, but the next morning it's you're asking for it/the closer I get and it always gets closer, it always impinges, it gets closer and closer and closer and you just have to escape, to flee, to ascend...

And the soaring, pulsing heart of it all, head falling to shoulder, spirit lifting to city's grey sky... Uplift on uplift, those keyboards bearing you and your heart and your sickness, and your weariness, your terrible burden of fatigue, away from it. What are they singing? What are they saying? It doesn't matter, nothing matters, but the sound, that sound, that repeat, that cycle, that endless up up up up...

But not away from it. Never away from it. It's too much a part of it all. 'Dreamt I Fled'. You can walk. You can't fly. But maybe if you just play that chord again, that one, the one that feels good, maybe you can escape.

But why would you want to?

-----

Runner up in the segue stakes: Kid606's 'Dodgy' into the immortal 'Windowlicker'.

"Baby, you know there's one thing a weiner dog does better than any other kind of dog... Wearin' sunglasses!"

Best Winamp segue of the month, at least: low/Dirty Three's cover of 'Down By The River' directly into Johnny Cash's 'Get Rhythm'.

The Celebrity Cunt Database: Get thee behind me, Sting.

TMFTML is back and cranking out the sermonettes. I love that word. The first entry back is a gem, and it gets better from there.

Actually, they've got a ton of cool stuff up right now, I won't blog it all, but I want this bike.

BoingBoing does the decent thing and links to some long lost proto mashups. Coolness.

Oh, don't worry about Afghanistan, bombing it into submission was all the US needed to do to make it perfect.

I'm hopefully going to finally update the journal again tonight, but for now, here's an interesting article on Las Vegas.

Yep, published. Also check out the comments on the Stylus blog entry about the new Basement Jaxx for me taunting local crackpot Chris Ott.

Johnny Cash inches closer to death. This sucks.

God, please don't let the new Basement Jaxx be another Manitoba for me.

Sadly enough, this pretty much sums up my LAN experience as well. Although the reign of Game & Watch shall last for a housand years!

(Aside to Josh: I didn't realise he's so light. I guess I'm better with him than I thought. Also note that they agree that I should hate Link)

Cool. Pity I've never registered at the NYT.

Christopher Hitchens, on the other hand, looks to be about one step away from wearing all black and ranting about Nietzsche as incorrectly as a high school student with a grudge. I mean, some of his points are well taken, but he's both preaching to the choir (ha.) and beating the proverbial dead horse.

Part of me feels pity, but as for the rest of me there's a monotone voice in my head saying "Ha. Ha. Ha."

Slate has the best piece on the new Lester Bangs book I've seen so far.

Interesting bit in the Economicist about prospect theory and the 'endowment effect'.