do you buy it? the spam crisis, via coudal.

bush = bad, saddam = bad, war = bad. via ylgib

i’ve about 100 pages away from finishing you shall know our velocity, with about 4 days to do it, and then my month is up. it’s good, though as i read it, i realize how much the novel i wrote (or started, as the case may be) sounds so much like this book (though no where near as good). i still want to finish it, and i will someday. why all the dave eggers hip-backlash? it’s just like the strokes, only in the literary world. why does everything get too popular to be liked?

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along the same lines, why does every single guitar center have to be full of assholes and idiots? i went there yesterday, though i tried hard not to, but i couldn’t find a shure 57 anywhere else for 70 bucks, including some used stores i went to and a few independent places. i remember when i went to the one in seattle once, and there was a guy with a shirt that was silk or rayon or some other fancy fabric, and the shirt had these designs– patterns that looked like tribal marking, not unlike tyson’s tattoo. i thought the shirt looked funny, but then had to stifle a laugh when i saw on he had the same exact markings from his shirt tattooed on the insides of his forearms. i’ve nothing against tattoos, i’ve thought about getting one for a long time, but getting a shirt/tattoo to match? i thought it too much.

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the spca in los angeles has about 295 rabbits that need homes. i learned this weekend that rabbits are the third most common house pet in america, and tend to have hard times living in the wild should they be unable to burrow. a lot of times, they die from heart attacks because they get scared so easily, so when a predator gets to them, they’re already dead. unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’re going to get some rabbits, they we were seriously thinking about it, but decided against it because it takes so much more work to take care of a rabbit than say, a cat.

i wanted to name one of the rabbits doo-doo lumpkins, but it was vetoed. that’s for the best though, because i forgot that lumpkins would imply that the bunny was related to fuzzy lumpkins.

wow, the weakerthans signed to epitaph. i guess it shouldn’t be much of a surprise, what with the whole fat wreck/epitaph/ g7/propaghandi family.

calling all nerds! or maybe just the wannabe nerds. i’ve tinkered with linux and unix a bit, programming i’ve never gotten very far at, but revolution os was intriguing because of the fact that it highlights not just the open source movement, but the people and ideology behind it. the film itself was done decently, i’ve got no complaints about cinematography, dialogue, as far as a documentary goes. i did like the movie a hell of a lot better than startup.com, which was just a bunch of whiny assholes in suits trying to get their cash on.

i learned a lot about the history of gnu/linux and it was interesting to see the obvious butting of heads between richard stallman and linus torvalds. i’d recommend it if you were, say, looking to learn about the open source movement, but it seems like it would pretty easily either go over people’s heads, or just bore the hell out of them.

i originally intended on making this week’s list on some singer/songwriters that i was listening to at the time, but decided against doing that since there was so much other stuff that didn’t fit together in a certain theme, but i was still excited about. so, this week’s mix isn’t cohesive at all, just a mish-mash of things i’ve been listening to lately and have been enjoying a lot.

i will say that the divorce track i put up is a good song, but the rest of the ep was crap– even if the ep was $2.99 at sonic boom. the propaghandi track was inspired by the discussion over at chris’s about politics in music, and my memory of last summer in long island, driving around the small town after lounging in the water all afternoon in the hot sun and mike (yet again) blasting propaghandi in the car while we waited for josh to get film. and lastly, it’s not that i’ve been listening to conan sing a lot of jay z songs, but i have been watching everyday, and i found that file in my mp3 folder recently, so enjoy.

so that’s it. enjoy the music, i haven’t gotten around to taking down stuff from a while ago, so get it while you can. and damn it, get that ted leo album already. have a good weekend.

ADDENDUM: i added lyrics on the first two songs, and there’s some links on the leo song, since i looked up some of that stuff anyway so i figured i might as well share it with everyone else. in lester bangs’s essay on the clash he talked about no one ever mentioning politics and music together, though he wanted it badly, as indicated by his imaginary conversation with a clash fan named martin:

I asked Martin what he liked about the Clash in particular as opposed to other New Wave bands. His reply: “Their total physical and psychic resistance to the fascist imperialist enemies of the people at all levels, and thei runderstanding of the distinction between art and propaganda. They know that the propaganda has to be palatable to the People” if they’re going to be able to (a) listen to it, (b) understand it, and (c) react to it, rising the the People’s War. They recognize that the form mus be as revolutionary as the content–in Cuba they did it with radio and ice cream and baseball and boxing, with the understanding that sports and music are the most effective vectors for communist ideology. Rock ‘n’ roll as a form is anarchistic, but if we could just figure out some way to make the content as compelling as the form
then we’d be getting somewhere!.

amen.

i tend to think that the government can’t stop things like this happening, and being so cynical, i tend to think that so many more people have tried to sell secrets to “enemies,” so is this just the beginning? are there a lot more rosenbergs slipping by?

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“Everybody knows when they turn up at a cinema there’s going to be some announcements, some trailers and these days some advertising before the main feature starts,” Kearney said.

there’s news of a lawsuit against loews cineplex about those annoying fucking commercials before films at all of their theaters (does this include that terrible, terrible commercial for fandango?). the worst part of it is, not everyone is outraged, and the ad exec (as stated above) just feel the public should just roll over and take it– haven’t been to a film in a while, but landmarks theaters don’t show commercials, and i’m glad of it. i really hate it when people laugh and enjoy the commercials. it annoys me to no end. why? i don’t know, maybe because i hate them, and feel they should, too.

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my parents and aunts left for the philippines today, which worries me a bit, though i know my mom hadn’t been back in a long time and she might enjoy a good vacation. but the news about US special forces going in to help out against the abu sayyaf made me a little queasy. though they’ll be in manila most of the time and my dad will be playing golf. i can’t remember the last time my parents were able to take 3 weeks of vacation. now if only i could’ve gotten them to take me….

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lastly, how the hell did mike tyson get so fucking crazy? and why are they letting him box again? damn, maybe the fame and fortune and blows to the head messed him up real good. i remember reading something about how nintendo was changing the name of mike tyson’s punch out to something else because they didn’t want to be affiliated with an ear-biting, high-talking, dumb-as-dirt adulterer. but hey, who wouldn’t want to be affiliated with that?

you need to read this: 1992 DPG - Defense Planning Guidance, cheney’s bid for world dominance.

this link is to a page in french, but you can check out the trailer for gus van sant’s new movie gerry, here. it touts minimalism and has drawn comparisons to tarkovsky and samuel beckett, will probably be pretty quickly dismissed as boring by most, but the funny thing is, right now, one ben affleck is in daredevil, and this film could quite possibly be the complete antithesis of the film.

gus van sant, however, is probably still recovering from “you’re the man now, dog.” running through his head at night and waking him up in cold, cold sweats. no sean connery in this one, just matt damon and casey affleck. if the trailer is basically the entire film in 3 minutes, then i’ll be disappointed.
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so what do you think of gephardt’s announcement for presidential candidacy? i’ve gotta say he’s probably in the running with kerry for my vote, if not a little ahead.

i took a look at both kerry’s and gephardt’s campaign pages– gephardt’s track record is much more compelling than kerry’s, though the fact that his name is dick, and his wife’s is jane gave a bit of a chuckle.

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i picked up a copy of that ted leo album while i was up in seattle. did you see them on conan? right off the bat i kept hearing bachman turner overdrive on “where have all the rude boys gone?” the rest of the album falls somewhere in between there and throwback rock without the image.

i mean, the lyrics have something invested in them. it’s good, though it took a little getting used to, then i put it away for a while and listened to crooked fingers while i digested it. i came back to it, and then put it away again. i’ll let you know if i drag it out again.

I was 14 years old when O. J. Simpson was charged with murder.
age gauges, thanks for the link, mom.