January 2011
1 post
New Tango School
Not since 1915 the Post says of the “Mighty Nine” new House Democrats. Well at least they’re mighty.
December 2010
23 posts
Craig Newmark Visits Treasury
Interesting… as they say on House
The Van Gogh Of Mathematicians
Just an amazing story of Benoit Mandelbrot
Is Facebook on Timewave Zero?
Weird moment here. Just reading this quote puts me back some 12 years to the original series finale of Neon Genesis Evangvelion. “Zuckerberg loves being around people. He didn’t build Facebook so he could have a social life like the rest of us. He built it because he wanted the rest of us to have his.” This line just pushes the wrong buttons and so very much sounds like Human...
Bob Dylan Made To Snipe By Guardian
“I miss you Nettie Moore”.
Long Day Ahead Of Me And Still
Wanted to be watching something demanding like Deadwood, but no such luck ‘twould seem.
"I Know What It Takes To Move On, I Know How It...
Still on the NPR interview of Greil Marcus from last post. “The courage to go out West”, idealism as a geographical choice. Amazing!
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A Little NPR Love For Greil Marcus
And Greil Marcus love for Bob Dylan. In response to a caller with a dissenting opinion, Marcus uses that old familiar Lone Rangerism, “Who was that masked man?”. Using the phrase to describe the song as a Moment that seems to begin with the song’s beginning, and arc through the song’s meandering triumphs, Marcus offers a radical new interpretation of the Lone Ranger. Who...
1 tag
Every single day...
I am reminded of just how much I hate the Beatles. Popularizers of faux good music that they were. Every. Single. Day.
Already, It's Beginning To Feel A Whole Lot Like...
Post Xmas Dinner and I’m in a weird psychic space. It’s that kind of place where the lethargy of it all will set in soon enough, but not yet. Where the idea of the world waking up (remember the end of Pynchon’s Against The Day?), is just the vaguest notion of something. Not quite yet, but the idea of it will be solid soon enough. Right now the mood feels exactly like forcing my...
"If Anything Should Happen To Me, They'll Eat You...
“I feel like my soul is starting to expand”, as Bob Dylan put it.
Ok I'm Up Now...
For realsies [Steven Johnson on the origin of good ideas; spoiler alert, it’s coffee shops].
Doesn't This Remind You Of One Of Those Props From...
How can Amazon be out of the Swisher E4-U3005 Shindaiwa E4 Power Multi-Tool Power Broom Attachment? Christmas just won’t be the same.
Ireland's Toughest Lawn Mower
Like it says…
Maestro, Drumroll Please...
Holiday treat for you
A Theory Of Justice
Glad that’s been settled, the direction for the coming few years. Gives me a bat and ball for what’s still ahead. James Ellroy was right, I reckon. Victimhood isn’t simply overturned by enduring. It’s neutralized by acts of greatness. The rescue of Ellroy’s life isn’t chronicled in My Dark Places. It’s the act of writing My Dark Places that produces that...
Single Origin
With the interview period about to wrap, and me just about on my way to Xmas Dinner half a country away, I’ve finally got a little time to myself this trip. Right now, that means catching up on some reading, which might well be the basis for the next edition of ‘Hushmoney’. The book of choice at the moment is After Blair, the 2007 update. In particular, conservatives, who by and...
Iconographic Symbols: Putting The Band Back...
Blues Brothers 2000 has aged so well, but even this belongs to the past now. Maybe in 2018 we’ll be ready for the closing act of the trilogy.
Nope...I Was Wrong
Turns out its not Cyndi on loop in the iPod of my mind, right now…oh no, it’s old Muddy. ‘Mannish Boy’ keeps morphing into ‘Young Fashioned Ways’ and back again. But I can’t seem to trace the turning points. Would be interesting if I could. ‘
Joni...
Caught up with Mrs. Harpersen again, who I first met on Sunday. Why does she seem so invested in making feel comfortable here. I’ll hardly be here another day, my interview periods nearly up. So why would she bother? …must be this Southern Hospitality thing. I honestly thought that was a myth. Weird, but something about the mood’s got me plugged into Joni, right now. ‘All I...
Running Silent
‘I’m Coming Home’, the new Diddy music video which I’ve finally seen, is a wonderful vehicle pretty ordinary song. As far as the song goes, there’s a pretty strong pull towards the personal for Diddy. But artistically, the song is nothing near a piece like M.I.A.’s ‘Space’. To be perfectly honest, this song makes me doubt that the vision of...
You're In The Village Now...
Meeta used to say to me, she loves to travel because wherever you go pretty much becomes a village. Hop in a cab, catch a train, but mostly you’d be staying near your hotel. You’d be in walking distance of the things you want (or maybe you’d learn to want what’s closest in reach, I’m not sure how villages work, but motoring journalist Jeremy Clrakson does). I do seem...
'Is All The World Jails And Churches...'
Lines from a song, this time, Rage Against The Machine’s vietnow.
But right now, having just seen a very small child, behind the wheel of an incredibly adult, super pimped-out pickup truck, I’m put in the mind of an entirely different genre of song. To be honest, it’s every song Bruce Springsteen’s ever sung. About needing to get out of this town alive, but never making...
The Conference Call
I’ve a conference call scheduled for later, Alex Segura, erstwhile of DC Marketing, now of Archie Comics.
Alex is a great promoter of comics, and I’m looking forward to continuing our relationship, in this new arena. And Archie is probably more comics for the cultural mainstream.
It is weird though, that we’re picking up on the Winter solstice, 2 years to the day, before...
February 2010
4 posts
1 tag
What Happened to DoshDosh?
Maki hasn’t posted in a while. Since December. I wonder what’s up with that.
“Libraries raised me. I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in...”
– Ray Bradbury (via mrgan)
'Safe As Housewives'
Niall Ferguson’s idea, ‘Safe as housewives’ speaks directly to how women seem to be better credit risks than men. Hence micro lending targets women not men. WSJ talks about microlending in India as causing economic growth. But this might be one of those ‘false green shoots’ that fiscal conservatives warn about.
Around the World in 80 Trades
Just think about the barter system and travel during antiquity… you’ll get back to that thought you had about Eric Beinhocker’s book.
October 2009
15 posts
Re: PopMatters @ 10
10 > years in the fertile dirt, and look at what we’ve become. Just to say ‘thank you’ to everyone who contributed. This is who we are, now.
Man I could really use some Szechaun Beef right...
No lie. I’m jonesing for good SB while I’m writing up this Commentary on the Chaykin/Tischman/Laming American Century. The interesting twist in the piece is that it correlates the DC Vertigo comicbook from 2001 with current events around The Pirate Bay fiasco. [link courtesy of wired (dot) com]
http://www.popmatters.com/images/blog_art/v/vengean... →
1 tag
Too Famous To Live Long
It’s 2004/2005, but it seems older, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace does. It seems like it should slot in neatly with an antepartum cynicism around the time hype around the Millennium began to build up. Of course it doesn’t appear until half a decade later, and even later still in the US. It’s also incredibly hard to watch as a comedy. It so skillfully applies the 80s formulas...
Taking The Edge Off
It’s a little known fact, but I really hate sleeping on Sunday evenings. That means I’ve got a little more time to play with. Getting out of this Inhumanly Resourceful Funk might prove easier than I imagined. A simple, but elegant medicine: Mick Wall’s excellent biography Led Zeppelin: When Giants Walked The Earth with the Mike Carey/Leonardo Manco Hellblazer-fest All His Engines...
you know if i really wanted to hurt myself I’d read Ellis’ Black Summer, but my mood ain’t nowhere near that dark yet.
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Plugging Back In On Sunday Evening
I’ve spent a day in this profound state of dither.
A day of being unplugged and just letting The Waters? The Flow? Life? The Pancreas?, I’m not sure what but something just was over me. I was enjoying it. It felt like ima, it felt like living in the Moment of Living Midnight. But that’s at an end now. That’s over. I’m wading back into the waters, rolling into...
1 tag
Seeing Blood, The Last Vampire
actually it was worth watching, even the bisexual bi-century love story was credibly handled
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Watching Blood, The Last Vampire
set design on the movies amazing
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admittedly, thinking about how to write up a blog post linking Comics Culture and that BBC post is easier than making coffee right now… Comics
The Mosque on Lesbos
From BBC World Service: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7529252.stm Looking at that map it’s really tempting to think of Greece and Turkey as one culture. I suppose this is what Europe is now, wave after wave breaking on the firmament of populist culture. Europe is Islam and Catullus. Europe is any classical and neocolonial forces, contending for physical geography in the popular imagination....
1 tag
gonna go watch BLOOD: THE MOVIE later today
Really don’t know what to expect. Remember watching the original anime about a decade back now. Remember liking the animation more than the story.
head’s all fuzzy after METALOCALYPSE now, but heading on to VENTURE BROS.
Hitting command+Q
soaking up the end of metalocalypse season 2