Insect light patterns

156 long-exposure photos of insects buzzing around a street light strung together in a video (via kottke):

"The Haunting in Conneticut"

I recently had an experience similar to the events in The Haunting in Conneticut. No, I didn't experience the demonic hauntings of a ghost-ridden mortuary. What happened was I bit into a rotten apple, just like the girl in the movie. It was disgusting and I was horrified. Although looking back on it, it was probably just because I had dropped it while putting it into the fridge, and not because of any demonic hauntings.

"Here to Fall"

Trippy skywriting from I Have It; I love how the strings seem to follow the plane's celestial movements...

"Infinite" snippets

Excerpts from Infinite Jest (p. 291-292):

The destiny-grade event that happened to Orin Incandenza at this point was that just as he was passing glumly under the Home goalposts and entering the shadow of the south exit-tunnel's adit a loud and ominously orthopedic cracking sound, plus then shrieking, issued from somewhere on the field behind him. What happened was that B.U.'s best defensive tackle--a 180-kilo future pro who had no teeth and liked to color--practicing Special Teams punt-rushes, not only blocked B.U.'s varsity punter's kick but committed a serious mental error and kept coming and crashed into the padless little guy while the punter's cleated foot was still up over his head, falling on him in a beefy heap and snapping everything from femur to tarsus in the punter's leg with a high-caliber snap. Two Pep majorettes and a waterboy fainted from the sound of the punter's screams alone. The blocked punt's ball caromed hard off the defensive tackle's helmet and bounced crazily and rolled unattended all the way back to the shadow of the south tunnel, where Orin had turned to watch the punter writhe and the lineman rise with a finger in his mouth and a guilty expression.

"Treat Me Like Your Mother"

It makes me very tense the way neither of them die...

Death of the music mag

Jonah Weiner has a good article on the slow, creeping death of the music magazine over at Slate. He brings up some good points--especially (and obviously) the fact that many people simply do not need music magazines anymore because the information and creativity is available more readily from online outlets--but I think one additional underlying reason is the very way that readers read.

As we get more in the habit of reading online, we become spoiled with how quickly we can filter our information. If a review or feature article sucks or is too long, we can quickly hit 'back' and find something else of interest. Of course, we can turn the page of a magazine as well, but I think we're getting to the point where we can't stand that annoying physicality. I still enjoy that aspect when reading books, but when it comes to Relix, Paste, or when I'm at the teetering edge of boredom and insanity waiting in the doctor's office, Rolling Stone (gasp), I prefer to seek out that information through my usual routes of blogs and Websites. Reading online provides a certain freedom that the physical chains of a magazine doesn't. It's almost as if we prefer mapping out an online feed because that's how our eyes are being trained to read, jumping all over links and images and soundclips with the attention span of nano-seconds.

Madmen Yourself

Madmen yourself here (that's me on the left). After catching a few episodes, this one is on the rent-entire-seasons-and-watch-them-in-a-matter-of-days-list.

"Horsemen"

Horsemen was an extremely poverty-stricken-man's Seven: some sicko making Biblical doomsday references while inexplicably leading a Dennis Quaid-led group of cops on a bloody (and toothy) chase. Unfortunately, Horsemen was about as predictable as a Detroit Lion's loss in the 2008-09 NFL season. It was like the writers just gave up after 10 minutes, replaced Kevin Spacey with a creepy Asian girl, and thought they could get by with just lots and lots of large fishing hooks and wire.

Twittering doctors

Article on the integration of Twitter into the health care profession:

Twitter's adoption in the health care field demonstrates how it is evolving from entirely frivolous postings, or tweets, to some serious content.

What's the fun in that?

"Infinite" snippets

Excerpts from Infinite Jest (p. 206):

Then there are the more numerous (and older) second types, who'll show you their tattoos with the sort of stoic regret (albeit tinged with a bit of self-conscious pride about their stoicism) that a Purple-Hearted veteran displays towards his old wounds' scars. Resident Wade McDade has a complex nest of blue and red serpents running down the insides of both his arms, and is required to wear long-sleeved shirts every day to his menial job at Store 24, even though the store's heat always loses its mind early in the A.M. and it's always wicked motherfucking hot in there, because the store's Pakistani manager believes his customers will not wish to purchase Marlboro Lights and Mass. Gigabucks lottery cards from someone with vascular-colored snakes writhing all over his arms.

Finding the center

Ray Bans for fog lamp

Last night at the Brewers game, a group tailgaters set up a serious bag/washer toss game in front of my Jeep. They seemed like pretty nice people, and even offered us a couple of beers before we headed out to meet the rest of our group. As we were leaving, their last words were "Don't worry, we won't hit your Jeep." I wasn't too worried; like I said, they seemed nice enough.

Upon returning to my Jeep after the game I noticed that my front fog lamp was broken off and dangling there like a loose vehicular tooth. What was even more interesting was that there was a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses resting on my hood directly above the broken lamp.

Now, there are obviously multiple, mysterious scenarios possible here. The fog lamp could have only been broken with a kick or human body falling into it, so the random drunk asshole theory probably takes the lead. If that's the case, then I'm glad he forgot his nice pair of sunglasses (which are now mine, asshole). But why would they put them there in the first place? On the other hand, if it was an accidental fall by one of the seemingly nice neighbors, then they sure have an interesting way of making amends: instead of a note and contact number, they decided to leave a pair of designer sunglasses. In either case, the mystery and inadvertent/deliberate exchange of value dampens my anger a little.

Deer Tick - "Born on Flag Day"

When War Elephant broke in 2007, it represented both a slice of Americana that had not yet emerged from a discarded, dirty bottle of whiskey, and the last remnants of a grunge movement that only existed because the '90s are just not far away enough yet for some people. It was these two leftover pieces that homogeneously made up this album, and it was John McCauley III that delivered it. It was a phenomenal, human piece of music that had me pretty excited for the future of Deer Tick and it's hybrid of defunct and/or irrelevant genres.

Born on Flag Day is the follow-up to War Elephant, but at the same time it's not. There's a regular, full-time band now behind McCauley's decrepit, beautiful voice, so the solo-man-walking-the-tracks-feel is all but gone. Though War Elephant featured full-band arrangements, it was meant to be the work of a singular musical outcast who carved a niche in American music and was guarding the fox hole with double barrels pointing outward. Flag Day feels like the guard has been let down, in a way, because now there's that unfortunate air of knowing exactly how this band will function and sound.

However, that doesn't mean that I wouldn't enjoy "Straight into a Storm" or "Smith Hill" while putting quite a few back on a barstool. Though a little more polished and predictable, Deer Tick are still for the common man, the one enjoys his alcohol and isn't afraid to release himself from a more critical mode that expects too much.

Awful handwriting

Recently I posed a question to the Twitter community: Do you hate your own handwriting? I got some fairly enthusiastic responses, most of which were geared towards hating thine own's written script (one user even used the term "loathsome horror" as a preferred descriptor). I asked the question, because, as you might have guessed, I hate my own handwriting, and there's nothing I can do to change it. If I hated my hair, I could cut it differently or dye it. But with handwriting, you have this unalterable genetic manifestion of the physical. My little 'Rs' always look like palsied 'Ts,' my 'Us' and 'Vs' are indistiguishable, and without the aid of notebook lines or other already-in-place barriers, my text gradually floats up and to the right, as if it were trying to leave the page because it's just so awful.

I found it interesting (and strangely, comforting) that many people have similar feelings towards their own handwriting. Aside from typing--which may end up being the Zoloft of this inexplicable self-hatred--it's our one way of commicating through written text. It's like a fingerprint that defines our "voice," whether on Post-It notes, letters, or checks. You would think that we would embrace those unique, distinguishable characters, because there are few other ways to get the job done. But, it seems, most of us don't.

Festival 8

After an arduous and not-surprising-to-anyone marketing campaign, Phish announced "Festival 8" today, and it's slated for Indio, California. I'm pretty excited that they've melded Halloween with "the festival," but what's with the name (if it's not obvious, Festival 8 is the eighth Phish festival)? These festivals are momentous and historical events during Phish tour, so I'm wondering what has sapped the creative juices? This is a Halloween festival, Phish, and all you could come up with is Festival 8? Likewise, 2004's Coventry farewell, and 2000's Big Cypress millennium celebration simply toted the name of the location as a moniker. What happened to the days of the Clifford Ball or the Lemonwheel?

Anyway, The Basement Tapes is still my front-runner for musical costume, with (What's the Story) Morning Glory? being secrety desired.

Tiny Tim and the Apocalypse

Truly one of the most bizzare things I have ever seen (via cyn-c):

"Infinite" snippets

Excerpts from Infinite Jest (p.178-179):

'Sorry if I'm bothering you about something that isn't a straightforward treatment interface thing. I'm up there trying to do my Chore. I've got the men's upstairs bathroom. There's something...Pat there's something in the toilet up there. That won't flush. The thing. It won't go away. It keeps reappearing. Flush after flush. I'm only here for instructions. Possibly also protective equipment. I couldn't even describe the thing in the toilet. All I can say is if it was produced by anything human then I have to say I'm really worried. Don't even ask me to describe it. If you want to go up and have a look, I'm 100% confident it's still there. It's made it real clear it's not going anywhere.'

"White Winter Hymnal"

A skilled Internet lunatic covers Fleet Foxes...

The Walkmen - Turner Hall (7/21/09)

My one question coming out of the Walkmen show at Turner Hall was this: What does lead singer Hamilton Leithauser do to keep his head from exploding? And yes, that's a serious question, because Leithauser--whose vocal intensity I have never seen matched; no one even comes close--seems to be able to harness infinite amounts of strain and giant-falcon-in-the-sky volume in nearly every song. Had I not been enjoying the show so much, I would have felt uncomfortable watching his face and neck turn red, again and again, as he belted out lyrics. If I were him, I would be concerned about the longevity of my singing career, because every time he puts the microphone to his lips, he risks near carotid-catastrophe.

Concerns about the well-being of the arteries in his neck aside, this guy is the show. I was most interested in what he would sound like live, and to say he didn't disappoint would be an understatement of macro-proportions. Not only did he kill every diving and screeching range of tongue, but his serpentine approach and uncoiling of mannerisms before he attacked the microphone elevated him to true stage art. I'd probably pay to see Leithauser gyrate and yell by himself on an empty stage; he was that captivating of a sound-generating movement. It didn't even matter that the band behind this graceful maniac merely and steadily played the music that he sings to. They are his super ordinary backing band, fading away as the performer delivers.

"Supernova"

"I don't want to be human; I want to see gamma rays." This is awesome (via t&t):

"New Liberal Arts"

Robin Sloan on "Iteration ":

Iteration is difficult when you are working with stone or steel. It's easy when you're working with words or web pages. But, this is more important: More things are becoming like words and web pages in the twenty-first century. Even solid, material things. Even stone and steel. Iteration applies to more domains than it ever did before, and its reach is growing.

Very true, especially when you consider the access to information that is possible today. However, I would add one thing: One of the most important iteration tactics is to know when to stop iterating. In terms of writing, especially. We can edit and seek feedback infinitely, but choosing the moment of maximun value, or that precise point in time in the context of a deadline when the creative juices must stop is a valuable skill that not only complements, but at the very essence, qualifies iteration.

"Moon"

Throughout the first 20 minutes of Moon, I was hoping that we were going to get something beyond the isolationist's tale of man and machine in space, that proto-typical scenario that has been beaten to death time and time again. Pleasantly, we did, as Moon turned, slowly but surely, into smart-thinking science fiction, rather than the aforementioned bleak psychological thriller. To be sure, it was bleak, but only in the sense that a futuristic science could render the value of humanity to that of simple production costs. However, the power of human logic and emotion is still held high on a pedastal that even a robotic Kevin Spacey can't tip.

"Infinite" snippets

Excerpts from Infinite Jest (p. 176-177):

'But there's this way he drums his fingers on the table. Not even like real drumming. More like in-way between drumming and like this scratching, picking, the way you see somebody picking at dead skin. And without any kind of rhythm, see, constant and never-stopping but with no kind of rhythm you could grab onto and follow and stand. Totally like whacked, insane. Like the sounds you imagine a girl hears in her head right before she kills her whole family because somebody took the last bit of peanut butter or something. You know what I'm saying? The sound of a fucking mind coming apart'...

...'So I'm sitting there waiting for my meatloaf to cool and suddenly there's a simply sphincter-loosening shriek and here's Nell in the air with a steak-fork, positively aloft, leaping across the table, in flight, horizontal, I mean Pat the girl's body is literally parallel to the surface of the table, hurling herself at me, with this upraised fork, shrieking something about the sound of peanut butter. I mean God. Gately and Diehl had to pull the fork out of my hand and the tabletop both.'

Stop consuming

"New Liberal Arts"

Gavin Craig on "Brevity":

Anything important is worth saying quickly. By the time it has been said, it is already the past, and so saying must become a moment of its own. Brevity is urgency and modesty and once. Attention is the scarcest resource. Millions are dying and we have only seconds.

I think brevity equals permanence, or maybe permanence equals brevity. Either way, it works, and it's shaping the way we talk, read, and think. Due to the permanence of digital text, we can say with much more certainty now that what we say quickly, or even haphazardly, will still be there thousands of years from now. We don't have to create epic works of communicative value, because there's less pressure to polish and preserve for posterity's sake. Now, we can spout out permanent thoughts quickly, with the confidence that they will always be there to build off of later.

Get Bassed

Mike Gordon, on tour this September.

Headless

(thx, glu)

iPod as visual text

I love my iPod Touch, and lately I've been thinking about how different it is, persuasively, from my old vintage G4 iPod. The G4 was, of course, black and white, and offered little operating variety other than 'scroll up' or 'scroll down.' With the Touch, the principle is the same, but the way you view the "text" of the iPod is much different.

Now, you can scroll through actual album covers, and let colors, art, and pictures influence your listening mood. I've found that one of the most pleasant features of the Touch is adding a new album, and suddenly having it stand out when you scroll past the usual suspects. You didn't get these types of visual cues with the older iPods, and I think it really affects the way we choose music (if only out of sheer contextual difference). Even when you are browsing "upright" with the actual title and artist text, the slot-machine roll and indexed letter categories create something more than a simple list of text; it's text that engages your eyes and stands out as an interactive opportunity, especially when you really don't know what you want to listen to.

So sorry I missed you

(via)

iLevel app

My boss and I were doing some work on the air table for our electrophysiology rig this afternoon, when we realized our level was missing from the tool kit. We thought, "there must be an app for that," and soon we both had levels downloaded onto our iPod touches and confirmed our suspicions that the table was just not straight. Useful.

"Orphans"

Beck is releasing acoustic versions of songs from last year's Modern Guilt, available in weekly doses at his new Videotheque site.

"Infinite" snippets

Excerpts from Infinite Jest (p. 44-45):

And no matter how many times he had the Terminex people out, there are still the enormous roaches that come out of the bathroom drains. Sewer roaches, according to Terminex. Blattaria implacablus or something. Really huge roaches. Armored-vehicle-type bugs. Totally black, with Kevlar-type cases, the works. And fearless, raised in the Hobbesian sewers down there. Boston's and New Orleans's little brown roaches were bad enough, but you could at least come in and turn on a light and they'd run for their lives. These Southwest roaches you turn on the light and they just look up at you from the tile like: "You got a problem?" Orin stomped on one of them, only once, that had come hellishly up out of the drain in the shower when he was in there, showering, going out naked and putting shoes on and coming in and trying to conventionally squash it, and the result was explosive. There's still material from that one time in the tile-grouting. It seems unremovable. Roach-innards. Sickening. Throwing the shoes away was preferable to looking at the sole to clean it.

Fielder wins HR Derby

With the Brewers' season going south in a hurry, it was nice to at least have this...

Veiled media

What happens when we can't show off what books we're reading or what music we have in our collection, as this article by James Wolcott so worrisomely asks? According to Wolcott, it makes us less cool when a Kindle veils our reading selection in a coffee shop, or when our iPod consolidates a shelf of records into a white, non-descript cube. This seems like a trivial, self-image-related concern, but it's actually very interesting to think about (good points here and here).

What this really boils down to is the disintegration and rebirth of media. We're slowing emerging from the disintegration phase, and are learning new ways to position our gadgets in the context of personal image and sharing. Individually, we catch up to this phenomenom quickly, because at our individual core, we are reading/listening for ourselves. It's the curiosity of the human being that needs some time to catch up and adjust. If you're like me, you're interested to know what the strange looking man on the bus is reading on his Kindle. But maybe that's the kind of information we are no longer privy to. Or, maybe we have to start asking. Maybe this whole technological wave could lead to something more human after all.

Varning

It's alarming that this situation could happen enough to warrant the creation of this warning (via cynical-c):

Dark Side of the Sub

I walked into Subway on Brady Street last night and Dark Side of the Moon was blaring. When I hear this album in public--especially at this volume--I always have this natural reaction to synch it up to whatever is going on around me. In this case, it was to the Subway Artist making my sub. It didn't really work as well as the infamous Wizard of Oz synch-up, and she definitely missed the "Us and Them"-->"Any Color You Like" transition when she put on the pickles.

The Mars Volta - "Octahedron"

So it seems, at least for the time being, that the Mars Volta have stopped masturbating out the self-indulgent, ultra-glam-rock songs that have ruined their last two albums (Amputechture, 2006; The Bedlam in Goliath, 2008) and have re-focused and come back to reality enough to record the half-way pleasing Octahedron. When I put the album in, I was ready to cringe, scream, maybe even vomit, but that heinous moment never came. It was like being at the doctor and finding out you don't have crabs after a worrisome weekend in Vegas (although there is a crab on the cover; once again, they never fail with the stellar cover art).

With all this apprehension, you might ask why I even bothered purchasing this album. Well, for me, the Mars Volta are like a musical train-wreck that I just can't look away from. I will buy their albums, because there's enough good stuff in the bank (De-Loused in the Comatorium, 2003; Frances the Mute, 2005) to forgive the previously mentioned atrocities. Octahedron gives them some more points back, although I will still be vaguely skeptical the next time the Mars Volta season of madness (i.e, record release) descends. As I mentioned before, Octahedron is a half-way pleasing album, one that I simply don't hate with all my being.

In fact, the whole thing would probably work pretty well for a soundtrack if Rob Zombie ever decided to produce a romance flick. You probably wouldn't expect anything pretty from these guys as it is, but they really channel that "softer side" that peeked out again and again in the past. "Teflon"--the album's best track--is wickedly foreboding, and although "Cotopaxi" and "Desperate Graves" reminisce over that needless fury that defines the Volta, things never get spastically out of control. You feel underwhelmed throughout--especially the opening track, which is 1 minute and 37 seconds of silence--but strangely suspicious of what could be next.

More 1968 footage

I wonder if you could get away with a headline like "Ships Scalp Chiefs" these days...

"Infinite" snippets

Excerpts from Infinite Jest (p. 101):

Hal is sleek, sort of radiantly dark, almost otterish, only slightly tall, eyes blue but darkly so, and unburnable even w/o sunscreen, his untanned feet the color of weak tea, his nose ever unpeeling but slightly shiny. His sleekness isn't oily so much as moist; milky; Hal worries secretly that he looks half-feminine. His parents' pregnancies must have been all-out chromosomatic war: Hal's eldest brother Orin had got the Moms's Anglo-Nordo-Canadian phenotype, the deep-socketed and lighter-blue eyes, the faultless posture and incredible flexibility (Orin was the only male anybody at E.T.A.'d ever heard of who could do a fully splayed cheerleader-type split), the rounder and more protrusive zygomatics.

"Black River Killer"

I love songs that tell a well-paced story, Dylan being the ultimate example of this craft. Blitzen Trapper excel in this area as well, especially with video added...

Storming the Bastille

I watched the Bastille run from the comfy confines of the Wicked Hop patio last night, and as much as a running turn-off as eating a Reuben and drinking Horny Goat beer is to the desire to run, it looked like a lot of fun; I'm on board for next year.

What's especially interesting about watching people run, though, is how they transform when engaged in the act of running. While walking, it's much more difficult to notice the differences in gait and posture (for the most part). But when people start to run, and break out of that casual, slow moving comfort-zone, it's amazing how everyone's coordination reacts differently. Some are lean, fast, and graceful as antelopes. Others are awkward and disjointed, and look as if they could collapse at any moment (almost zombie-like). Some don't move their arms (at all), and some people's legs move faster than their bodies and look as if they will fall backwards. No two runners seem to have the same running style, which is odd considering the physical demands of the sport; you would think there would be a universal and "efficient" way to run.

Neurosecurity

This article--published in the Journal of Neurosurgery--is so wildly out there that at first I felt like I was reading science fiction:

We hypothesize that future prosthetic limb systems will allow physicians to connect wirelessly to a neural implant to adjust settings. These future systems must guard against a hacker trying to hijack these signals to take control of the robotic limb or give erroneous movement feedback to the patient (integrity). The attacker does not need to be near the patient—the attacker only needs to have attack hardware placed near the patient. The attacker could also infect the patient's biotech components with a digital virus. The patient can also be the attacker and try to modify the settings on his or her own prosthetic limb—perhaps with the intention of overriding mechanical safety settings to gain extra strength or interfering with limb feedback to eliminate the ability to sense pain.

The basic premise of the paper is that, like the early days of the Internet, very little is known about how hackers and how they could potentially infiltrate wireless communication systems. They claim that now is the time to research and develop these "neurosecurity" devices, so when the day comes that these devices are commonplace, we are ready to defend against the inevitable onslaught of hackers trying to take control of our limbs and brains. Again, this was published in a medical journal (albeit, one with a measely impact factor of about 2).

"The Burrowers"

I always like taking a chance on the no-name horror movies that you only hear about during a long-winded series of previews, or the ones that Blockbuster only has one copy of, shoved way down on the bottom shelf. Most of the time, they're awful, and provide nothing more than mindless entertainment. But that's the inevitable price you pay when searching for horror movies in this manner. The Burrowers falls into this category. Dances with Wolves meets The Descent. Make of that what you will. And yes, there are Tatanka.

Misadventure

Reminds me of Poltergeist...

Reissues

The Beastie Boys announced today that they will be reissuing Ill Communication on July 14. This is the third album they have reissued this year (Paul's Boutique and Check Your Head being the other two). I'm wondering, aside from monetary purposes, what's the point? If you have all these b-sides and unreleased tracks to share with the world, then just release them as an EP and don't make us buy an album that we, in all likelihood, already own.

Typically, reissuing is reserved for albums that have reached "classic" status, a phenomenom that in itself, defies the logic of album restoration. The time period and technological context in which an album was recorded, in my opinion, is a very important piece of the album's orignal influence and sound. When you tinker with the recording, and add things that weren't there in the first place, you've already diminished that classic quality. Plus, younger generations that are buying Ill Communciation for the first time are being cheated out of that contextual value. They'll listen to a 32-track double disc that's been all glossed over by the latest recording technology, and not the crackling 20-track masterpiece that I grew up with.

Google Chrome OS

Last night, Google announced a new hybrid Operating System/browser:

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

I love the simplicity of that last sentence. It should just work. Seems to be pretty lax verbiage for describing something that will eventually compete with Windows and Mac OS. But such is the rhetoric of Google, and to say that it hasn't worked in the past would be a vast understatement.

New Liberal Arts

I just ordered Snarkmarket's new book--New Liberal Arts:

It's 2009. A generation of digital natives is careening towards college. The economy is rebooting itself weekly. We have new responsibilities now—as employees, citizens, and friends—and we have new capabilities, too. The new liberal arts equip us for a world like this. But... what are they?

I've been following along with the development of this book on Snarkmarket for several months and am pretty excited to see/read the finished product. If some of these ideas end up taking off and are recognized culturally as the new wave of liberal arts, it'll also be nice to own a physical piece of that collaborative and intellectual genesis (only 200 copies were produced; subsequent copies will be PDF only). So if you love books and hate PDFs, buy now!

Melvin strikes back

I'm enjoying the recent war of words between Ryan Braun and Brewers' GM Doug Melvin. It's adding that necessary spark to what could be a season-floundering moment of struggle for the team. The Brewers need a brash, border-line arrogant superstar to make the franchise a little less wholesome and a lot more fiercely competitive. I have no problem with Braun calling out the GM to make moves; he's certainly done his part thus far.

Pharaoh, submerged

Love this photo--taken around miniature models--by Didier Massard:

Photo albums

There are three photo albums on my bookshelf in my living room, which contain pictures from approximately 2000-2004. These were my college years, but it is probably more important to say, contextually, that these were the last four years I owned a non-digital camera. It's odd to think that those albums are the last non-digital remnants of that technology, and will probably be the last physical photo albums that will ever grace my shelves. Digital camera technology now makes them feel more like clutter. I almost wish digital cameras would have been this popular four years earlier, because then I would have some extra space on my shelves.

"Friday the 13th"

An absolutely unnecessary remake: Jason simply comes to life again and kills one person in each scene with whatever convenient sharp, pointy object available to his mindless, but somehow now much faster, self. I wish they would leave the classics alone.

Mister Furry

This has something to do with MTV's international brand refresh, but I don't know exactly what...(via today & tomorrow):

Future of the Left - "Travels With Myself and Another"

Travels With Myself and Another is thus far the primal rock record of 2009. I don't know how many other records would fall into that category--or if that category even exists--but for me, this is the hammer that pounds the proverbial nail. There is no use for this album other than to play it loud and to allow it to work as audio-adrenaline. Think At the Drive-In, only Welsh and more aqueous. Or Queens of the Stone Age with a sharper wit. But however you might relate, you need to recognize that Future of the Left is a different beast when you break down the raw material into the even less distinguishable mass of gray matter and gristle. And with this album, they have solidified themselves in my personal pantheon of terribly outstanding hard rock bands.

I certainly wasn't expecting Travels to come anywhere near the savageness of 2007's Curses, but surprisingly, the overall visceral effects that are triggered here warrant less a comparison than an evaluation of intensity. In those terms, Travels is like a strange twin that is only slightly less menacing than his freakish counterpart. The jagged, cutting guitar of opener "Arming Eritrea," for instance, alternates with screaming flurries of guitar. There are moments where the guitar bounces ("The Hope that House Built"), moments where it flashes quickly into stop-on-a-dime chords ("I am Civil Service"), and moments where it straight-up pummels ("Land of My Formers"). Obviously, guitar is a theme, and Future of the Left stick with it in every track like it was mapped out on a butcher block.

Walkman for iPod

Past-meets-present experiment: give a 13-year old a Walkman and take away his iPod for one week and ask him what he thought:

Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn't is "shuffle", where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down "rewind" and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured.

This really brought me back to the days of my Walkman. Those days came at the tail-end of the Walkman-era, so my cassette collection never really grew, but I do remember laboriously rewinding Eric Clapton's Unplugged quite a few times.