these are the same guys that did that mario twins flash animation (shiggity), with their take on the end of the world.

-calpundit found this deal about the DOJ’s workforce diversity report, with a bunch of stuff redactded, but the unredacted stuff has been unearthed because some people are just plain dumb. the unredacted stuff highlighted in yellow over at the memory hole.

basically everything negative about the DOJ was blacked out, including the consulting firm’s summaries that DOJ has a significant discrepancy in minority hiring, promotion, and attrition. other redacted statements include the impression of the DOJ amongst minorities is that this discrepancy IS noticeable and IS the DOJ’s fault because they make are responsible for their own work environment. it sounds obvious and is, but is so stupid and insulting at the same time. it’s a 186 page report and is really interesting to read about the DOJ’s inefficiency.

-there’s a long memorial article about elliott smith over at magnet. it’s very good, and personal, and kinda made me sad all over again. via chromewaves.

-this corner shooting gun looks hilarious and stupid. seems to me the military’s just trying to make everything like mcdonald’s, dumb down everything so even idiots can kill people. good job, guy!

-i’m giving out my own prizes for the costume party, and IT homie gets it for having a white tiger hanging off his chest and bleeding from the neck. which guy was it? he’s not dead, is he? otherwise, i’d feel kinda bad.

-anyone else wondering here boingboing is? me too, and it is right here for now, until the dns propogates. server issues, they always get the good ones.

-another picture of the fires in socal, it’s a high res. picture but it’s crazy. my house is right under all that smoke, but i guess i can’t complain, at least i still have one.

-crazy movie about riaa home invasions but i think the ending needs…um…something. i know: MORE COWBELL!

-word on the street: wolverine as the new james bond. weird.

-there’s an interview with donnie darko director richard kelley over at about.com, lots of stuff about his new projects and things. muthafucka’s nuts.

-i think everyone needs to start calling anyone named dave, devastating dave the turntable slave. worst. album. covers. ever. (zip! zap! ZOOM!)

-it rained this morning, which put quite a damper on my couch. but i liked it. the weather is getting cooler and hopefully will help those fires to go out. the sky is pretty blue, and it’s reminding me a lot of seattle….

happy halloween, suckas.

damn, i wish i had seen this earlier, so at least i could let people in seattle know that the stella guys performed at scarecrow last saturday. for free, no less. masterful!

-didn’t everyone say that computerized voting booths were a bad idea? and it looks like they are, since everyone keeps leaving their shit exposed. some companies are just so stupid.

-well, since you all missed the stella thing, maybe you can go check out slo mo rabbit kick at the crocodile on november 5th. say hello to robbie skrocki and chris for me. there’s a family tree up at their website which is hilarious in its convolutions.

-the world’s official dodgeball site is pretty cool, the opening flash animation made me laugh. anyway, they had a few words about ben stiller’s new dodgeball movie, which is called underdog. i guess they use a bunch of the official dodgeballs that you can buy from the dodge-ball.com site.

-matt groening’s drawings are so recognizable, it’s great to see him draw things you don’t usually see, like the logo of hipsters dancing over at the atp festival website. tickets are in pound currency, anyone know the conversion offhand? i’m too lazy to look it up.

-there’s an mp3 up over at suicide squeeze of a six parts seven song that sam beam (of iron and wine) recorded.

that record sounds pretty intriguing, along with sam beam, a bunch of their other songs are re-done by isaac brock, david bazan , pall jenkins (The Black Heart Procession), john atkins (the magic magicians, 764-hero), Katie Eastburn (Young People), and Will Johnson (Centro-matic).

here’s iron and wine’s six parts seven song, sleeping diagonally.

-a lot of nice black and white prints at stanford arts. check it out.

-lots of work to do, but then i get links like this. games galore. i have a hole in my pants, i’m going home.

we’re carving pumpkins tonight, and i have big plans, because i’m like that. i checked out some things for those that don’t know how to carve pumpkins, including the morning news’ excellent how to carve a pumpkin.
and for those that can’t draw worth a lick, try these stencils, some of which are cheesy (a hershey kiss? come on.) but some might look kinda cool.

-did anyone see that episode of south park where they did the queer eye thing? kinda funny, but anyway, i guess howard dean called himself a metrosexual. way to appeal to the kids, howie.

-the CIA is having their 40th anniversary and are showing off a bunch of their crazy robot spy shit, but aren’t letting the public in. so who are they letting in, and why can’t i see any pictures of that crazy ass dragonfly eavesdropper?

-got an extra ibook lying around? that’s what i thought, instead of just letting it sit around and collect dust, make an icar like this guy!

-i got almost all the tracks up from A century of Linguistics over on the music page. the only two that are still missing are “casual inaccuracy” and the end of “goodnight, goodbye”. check them out and enjoy! i’m going to upload some old analog recording of the same songs, i think, and you’ll tell me which you like better, eh?

-i’ve been listening to this mp3 over and over again. shouldn’t you be? off the new lucksmiths EP until i actually have some cash again, this is all i get: after the after party.

so, my question is, was gnome stealing popular before amelie? or is it a result of the film? i just saw he loves me, he loves me not where audrey tatou plays some crazy person, and it totally skewed my view of amelie. still, the funniest thing about this story is the straight faced delivery.

-what are ya’ll suckas gonna be for halloween? man, this whole halloween wicca lifestyle thing is balls. really though, the only thing i know about wicca is that there was one in blair witch 2 (which was stupid), but i can’t diss on the wicca, because i’m afraid of being cursed.

still though, i thought today it would be pretty dope be bender for halloween, and even thought about making a costume for it. they make a mask for him already, but shit’s out of stock. i’m down with the zapp brannigan space gun, but not with the sergeant pepper outfit.

besides, shit don’t shoot like this “paintball sim” pistol.

-i’ve been mildly excited and all up on this clone wars/tartakovsky goods, but this new site has got me feeling like a giddy child. there’s character profiles, vehicles, a game, and lots and lots of animation. for the suckas without cable but with a broadband connection, you’ll be able to watch the shorts online after they’ve been showed on the idiot box.

first one hits november 7th.

-i started uploading more CotS songs last night, but my dumb ass closed my laptop and thus terminated the connection. i’ll get them in tonight, hopefully. also, my desktop is on the fritz (again), hopefully i won’t need another motherboard like i did last time. keep your fingers crossed.

Whenever I talk to someone about this, I ask the inevitable question: Which side do you like better? I usually don’t get an answer, but I’ve heard most of the indie kids gravitate towards The Love Below, doubtless because of its innovation and genre-busting tracks.

I like it too, with its Prince-esque lyricism and phrasing, especially on tracks like “Roses” and “Behold a Lady”. “Roses” in itself is amazing, not just because he can make lines like, “I know you like think yo shit don’t stink, just lean a little bit closer see your roses really smell like boo-boo.” I originally thought it was poo-ooh-ooh, but the lyrics say otherwise, regardless, lines like that are hilarious but sound spectacular. In the same song, fitting “I hope she’s speeding on the way to the club
Trying to hurry up to get to some baller or singer or somebody like that and try to put on her makeup in the mirror and crash, crash, crash.. into a ditch!” is like magic.

“Spread” while being lyrically equivalent to a porno, never aspires to be anything more than that. Josh kept listening to it and singing it whilst admitting that it was making him randy. We stopped listening to that track.

That brings us to the uber-single, “Hey Ya”, which is so fuckin’ danceable shaking it like a polaroid picture isn’t a suggestion or a command, but a mantra gilded onto everyone’s shaking asses. It doesn’t immediately make sense to some people, but it sounds so good.

Mad hooks though, everywhere on this album– Both sides. I have to say though, I’m with Big Boi on this one.

A little lighter on the skits (though not by much) the first seven tracks are gold, “Ghettomusick” bumps to a beat so solid that the G-H-E-T-T-O-M-U-S-I-C-K feed off it like kittens on milk.

“War” shines with so much forward motion it’s sickening, when you take into account what Big Boi’s saying here: “Basically, America, you got fucked.” The track starts off in one place and ends in another with a loop reversed and placed as a separation between the two parts of the song.

But my favorite track off either side is “Flip Flop Rock”, feat. Young Hov and Big Boi with the rhymes so quick the beat struggles to catch him. Jay-Z’s hook is simple, understated, and catchy as hell, and his verse makes me think, shit yeah, he’s right, this VERSE is why: “Why that, why this, niggaz wanna hijack the flyness, I’m on a whole ‘nother plane, a whole different lane, a whole ‘nother game that I’m playin, understand what I’m sayin’?”

I’d recommend this album, but shit, everyone I know already has this. And of course it’s a fucking bandwagon, I won’t bother denying it, every indie kid loves this, and I ain’t afraid of admitting. I do, too.

there was a special show on elliott smith this weekend on npr. i haven’t been able to listen to it yet, but there’s a few interviews and many a kind word said, i’m sure. ted leo also had some nice words to say. both via chromewaves.

-this kid, erik demaine is doing crazy shit with something called computational origami, which doesn’t sound impressive to most in and of itself, but pair that with the fact that demaine was home schooled, went to college at 12, became an associate professor at MIT at 20, and is now doing research for MIT at 22, and you get a pretty good idea that computational origami is more than just paper folding. there’s an interview with him at the newscientist.com.

-MIT is also doing a campus network file-sharing system that just kicked in this week, the story was on morning edition this morning. i tried to check a little more into that, but instead found this thing called waste.

popular science has an article about this closed network that you can run so that up to 50 users can share files with each other without having to set up a server to do so. windows is going to come out with something soon that does the same thing but doesn’t allow network participants to copy songs but stream them. it’d be an interesting thing to try out, maybe i’ll download and try to set it up and report back.

-the fires down here are out of control, man. shit’s crazy, i woke up on saturday and the air was full of ash and it stunk to high heaven outside. visibility was awful in hollywood, and the santa ana winds made everything worse. i snagged this picture from drudge, but it gives a good perspective on how enormous these fires are:

-bbq’d last night at my sister’s, ate mad food, and josh, owl and i cleaned up something fierce in trivial pursuit. i threw down some chuck barris, anne robinson, brazil, and star trek tng as answers, showed those sony punks where the brains were. EAT IT!

so he isn’t even president anymore and he’s doing better work for other countries than our own is. clinton brokered a landmark deal for aids drugs. this makes me think of the whole “evil” argument in politics that i heard a few months back. all the conservatives were obsessed with this whole adultery/sinning thing that clinton had going on, yet paid little attention to his policies and his results. these days, the liberals tend to push the whole with “bush is just evil” thing and that tends to cloud arguments. damn, that’s not a great example, and i just spent too much time trying to find the radio show archive i heard it on, but couldn’t. i’m pretty sure it was politics of culture though. oh, well, it’s moot now.

-so the yankees lost last night, and i’m starting to think that the whole thing about liking the yankees is so unfashionable, in fact, it’s unfashionable not to hate them. it may be my unwillingness to ever agree with people, but i’m starting to not hate them, though i still don’t really care who wins the series.
i mean, giambi and soriano are awesome (despite their current struggles), but i hate david wells and jeter. i really can’t stand pudge, kinda like dontrelle, think juan pierre’s badass. other than that, i could give two shits. hm, i wonder what the mariners are doing right now….

-solar storms are pretty cool. i was hoping everyone would go crazy or something when their cell phones all crapped out, but i don’t think it’s going to happen.

-disposable brain’s discovered the fundamental flaw in communism.

-this was a damn long work week, and i blame the month long hiatus for that. still, got to work on a newsradio episode this week, which although is little compared to how much i could have been working on them, it made me pretty happy. i thought how much better work would be if i just worked on newsradio the whole time. i know what you’re thinking, that i’d get bored, but i don’t know, i don’t think i would.

anyway, it’s finally the weekend, and i’m still updating this thing and i’m not even at work anymore. that’s love for you. have a good weekend and enjoy some of these pictures.

p.s. post title donated by bmp. peace.

tour dates, mad tour dates. first, damien jurado:

11/02 Sun – Salt Lake City UT @ Kilby Court

11/03 Mon – Denver CO @ Larimer Lounge

11/05 Wed – Omaha NE @ Sokol Underground

11/06 Thu – Minneapolis MN @ 7th Street Entry

11/07 Fri – Madison WI @ Catacombs Coffee House

11/08 Sat – Chicago IL @ Schubas

11/09 Sun – Chicago IL @ Schubas

11/10 Mon – Upland IN @ Taylor University

11/11 Tue – Bloomington IN @ TBA

11/12 Wed – Grand Rapids MI @ Calvin College

11/13 Thu – Detroit MI @ Young Soul Rebels

11/14 Fri – Toronto ON @ TBA

11/15 Sat – Montreal PQ @ Casa del Popolo

11/17 Mon – Buffalo NY @ Mohawk Place

11/18 Tue – Cambridge MA @ T.T. the Bear’s

11/19 Wed – Northampton MA @ Iron Horse Music Hall

11/20 Thu – Brooklyn NY @ Southpaw

11/21 Fri – Grantham PA @ Messiah College

11/22 Sat – Hoboken NJ @ Maxwell’s

11/23 Sun – Philadelphia PA @ TBA

11/24 Mon – Vienna VA @ Jammin’ Java

11/25 Tue – Atlanta GA @ Echo Lounge

11/28 Fri – St Augustine FL @ Café Eleven

11/29 Sat – Orlando FL @ Will’s Pub

12/01 Mon – Houston TX @ TBA

12/02 Tue – Austin TX @ TBA

12/03 Wed – Denton TX @ TBA

12/05 Fri – Phoenix AZ @ Modified

12/06 Sat – Los Angeles CA @ TBA

12/07 Sun – Los Angeles CA @ TBA

12/08 Mon – San Diego CA @ TBA

12/09 Tue – San Francisco CA @ TBA

12/10 Wed – Sacramento CA @ TBA

12/11 Thu – Portland OR @ TBA

12/12 Fri – Seattle WA @ The Crocodile Café

next, dear nora:

dear nora (solo):

10/29 @ hampshire college, northhampton, ma, w/ the sophie drinker

10/30 @ tba, providence, ri, w/ the sophie drinker, mirah, haldals

10/31 @ tba, boston, ma, w/ katy = bruce springsteen

11/01 @ the chopping block, boston, ma, w/ the sophie drinker, the operators

11/02 @ uvm billings lounge, burlington, vt, w/ the sophie drinker, mirah, emily zeitlyn, smittens

11/05 @ shanghai bistro and den, brooklyn, ny, w/ the sophie drinker, the last year band

11/06 @ doc, philadelphia, pa, w/ the sophie drinker

11/07 @ the common grounds, arlington, va, w/ the sophie drinker, the last year band

-the schwarz has already settled lawsuits with the electricity bandits that put california in the red in the first place, and there’s little to no uproar about it. this state is so fucking stupid. via broken lull.

but at least the coug is stepping up. too bad that’s about as effective as gary coleman’s bid for the governor.

-we went out to dinner last night because of owl’s birthday (yay, birfday!) and saw this tiny hole of a record store which turned out to be even tinier than i though on pier called scooter’s records. it’s looks like it’s someone’s apartment, but is basically like a 20×30 room. they had good selection though, but high prices, which is a drag but a necessity for a place like that, i’m thinking. they didn’t have what i been craving though, that latest ted leo ep.

-i think it’s kinda funny that dressy bessy played carson daly last night, but that’s just me. didn’t nada surf play that show recently? i guess it’s nice to be on national tv, even if it is on a shitty show. and carson is trying hard to show that he’s an idiot, knows it, and he doesn’t care how shitty his show is.

-the owls were signed to magic marker records, and at first i was confused, until i realized it wasn’t the owls that was basically cap’n jazz sans davey von bohlen. no, of course not, it’s actually a pretty dope twee band. check the mp3 at the site.

-i don’t know when the latest pete krebs album came out, but you can hear about half of it in mp3 form on the discography page. i listened to most of them and wasn’t immediately impressed by any, though the bittersweet valentines ep will always hold a special place in my heart. check out powder keg and told you so.

-found an article on recording drums from tapeop, check it out, if you’re into that.

-time to go home.

everyone’s hanging their head for elliott smith today, i’ll be no different. it’s a sad day.

so thomas pynchon is going to be on the simpsons. expect a joke or two that no one gets.

-wired did a story on a new font called read regular, which is supposed to help people with dyslexia by increasing the difference in typefaces for letters that use the same forms– b and d, p and q. because fonts are so easily interchangeable on the web, i hope it’ll be distributed and utilized pretty quickly, but print media is a different story.

-another wired story on the wachowskis. basically it’s a faq, and all that stuff about larry’s cross-dressing is funny and confusing.

-over at the adult swim page, they’ve come out with a new set of halloween greeting cards which are strange and funny. if you haven’t been watching aqua teen, get up on it, because they have been killing. “total re-carl” featured carl’s body being mangled by a nuclear powered toilet, which caused frylocke and gang to engineer him a new one. one of his bodies was made of all eye balls, and every time he moved, he was in excruciating pain. good stuff.

-just when we’re getting into the shit with the strikes down here (and disposable’s got a few choice words about that), the the marysville school district strike just ended, because it was declared unlawful. yet again, the little man loses out though, because ain’t shit happening with the supe or the board. so much for owning the means of production and the proletariat revolution. look at me, i’m talking like a commie!

-booyakasha! the bathroom has been updated!

foodies pay attention, dining guide for you. i started reading it thinking that this stuff would be good to know, then i realized that i don’t really want to know any of that stuff, because there’s no way in hell i’m paying 85 bucks for a bottle of wine in the next year.

-greg pointed out this hilarious interview with bill o’reilly on fresh air. that dude is so fucking crazy. i was talking to james once about him, back when we would just argue about stuff regardless of what we were talking about, and he was defending o’reilly and it was impossible for him to continue. i punched him in the nose and made him eat canned tuna for a week.

-this is mildly amusing, but only once: drinkometer.

-here’s a preview of the oscars, but wait, here’s the kicker: all the predictions are done without seeing the movies! i think that’s a pretty good way to do things, because it can probably be pretty accurate and easier to remain objective.

-we’re entering our script into this fade in contest, which is due halloween. cross your fingers.

-brandon and i were going to write a song called “whatever happened to benji cossa”, but then i googled him and found out he’s on the soundtrack for this movie called zero day. the song he did is volcano and it is great. i love that guy’s voice, man.

-i just watched the best of los angeles on the food network and saw the inside of the place in westwood where all the rich people hang and eat. it’s all white in there and they make the waiters dress like glasses of milk. oh yeah, it’s called euro chow. how’s that for a stupid name?

-have a good weekend, suckas.

the life and times of you | anyplace is like everyplace else/everyplace is like anyplace else

my little brother | MLB

go cu–! oh. go bost–! ah, shit. go marlins? i admit, it was heartbreaking but that’s the way it was expected to go. looks like steinbrenner’s move for boone wasn’t just a block for the mariners. it was a clutch hit, but fuck man, i wish the underdog would win every now and then.

strike that, the ultimate underdog here is the florida marlins, overshadowed by all the cubs/red sox mythology. i’ve been wrong about the nlcs, alcs, pedro vs. rocket, and saying the marlins are going to take it all is just another bad prediction waiting to happen. so, um, go yankees?

there’s an
interview with genndy tartakovsky at toonzone regarding clone wars and his work with lucasfilm. lucas is so fucking stingy with his work, he originally wanted one minute movies from tartakovsky. it’s more like three minutes now, which is still damn short, but better than 60 seconds.

-the aquatic life with steve zissou is supposed to wrap up filming in january. i didn’t actually read it since i hear there’s spoilers, but a script review was posted over at wesanderson.org, check it out, if you want.

-not being at work for the past month has been nice, but all the traveling causes me to miss some of my favorite npr shows, including the treatment. thankfully, all the stuff is archived, here’s the interview with sofia coppola, who talks about the tokyo train pop soundtrack of lost in translation. the interview gets kind of boring, but it’s always nice to hear elvis be more insightful about people’s films than they are themselves. and he knows his shit.

-i don’t usually link stories on pitchfork since anyone that reads this probably stops by there, too, and actually, i mentioned this a long time ago, but the dear you re-release is official and should be coming soon, though there’s no release date yet. anyway, i got the original out of print disc when it came out, so eat that johnny-come-latelys. no, but seriously, five extra tracks some on etc., and a re-hash of “boxcar” that sounds like they added twenty guitars and some organ on the track.

-here’s pictures of the z600 i want. it’s getting harder and harder though to wait until that comes out. the z200 is pretty dope, too.

-i’m back from the nw, with josh and less one mariners hat (i think i left it at jason’s). we took 101 back and it was a nice drive from san jose, much better than taking i-5. i go back to work monday, so expect more regular posts starting next week. i just took out that old etc. album to check what tracks were going to be duplicated on the reissue, and those extra tracks are hot. there’s a psychedlic furs cover, too. i hear that morton salt girl t-shirt has been nixed by morton’s cease and desist. my old one is getting kinda wasted, so brandon hooked me up with a brand-new one.

getting over my cold i got from playing baseball in the rain in bellingham, watched willard at jason’s the night before we headed to eugene. i can’t believe the fuckin’ cubs lost. game 7 pedro vs. rocket tonight, history in the making. glued to the tv.

the psx comes out in the US late 2004 and looks sick with tons of additions including a 160 (!) gig hard drive and personal video recorder capabilities.

also, there’s a ton of videos, screenshots, and an in-depth look at trick making for tony hawk’s underground over at ign.

-i’m going back to the northwest today for a week. if it doesn’t seem real now, wait until you get back.

back in the day, scott introspekt posted this song at the end of summer and after he decided to take his website down. i haven’t talked to him since then, but that was a hell of a cap to put on the season.

did i tell you that the night before we left last week we tried to get into the weakerthans show by buying tickets at the door? yeah, sold out, they sold the last four tickets to some FUCK in front of us. i walked up to him before the tickets were out to ask if it was the ticket-holders line we were standing in, he gave me a dirty look and said no. some dude popped out of the front of the line and asked if anyone wanted to buy tickets, he rushed down there and got the last four. i punched him in the nose and pantsed him and pushed him into oncoming traffic on santa monica boulevard. seriously though, dude was a total ass.

-skrocki records is in business! the first release is the full-length from slo mo rabbit kick and they’re playing the crocodile in seattle tonight. check it out and get the record for dirt cheap. i hear robbie’s releasing the album on 180 gram vinyl, too.

-now i’m not a registered california voter (sh.) and i just got a new washington state license, but i know people that are, and they better be voting no on the recall. regardless of what i think about schwarz, i’m more worried about some sort of watershed of events where republicans try to control the world. i realize this may be a slippery slope, but it’s worrisome nonetheless.

-go cubbies!