Them Crooked Vultures - "s/t"

This was so much better than I ever could have expected. I was initially worried that Them Crooked Vultures was going to be some Dead Weather-like crock of throwing names onto an album pumped to the roof with insanely skeletal and psychedelic youtube promo videos and viral concert clips that would utterly and miserably disappoint but effectively steal your money. Thankfully, this album is not even close to such a farce. Dave Grohl, Josh Homme, and John Paul Jones didn't screw us over. Them Crooked Vultures is definitely the real deal in terms of rock albums this year (and on a side note, I was shocked, absolutely and incomprehensibly shocked when I saw that Pitchfork, who without hesitation or justification wet their pants over mainstream artists forming supergroups like this, gave this album a 6.2; shocked) and probably one of my favorites.

I think the main reason this album earns my proclivity--aside from the closing (and punishing) triade of "Caligulove," "Gunman," and "Spinning in Daffodils"--is that it is, for all intents and purposes, a Queens of the Stone Age album. The first sounds you hear on "No One Loves Me and Neither Do I" are the syncopated snare and cymbal ride of Dave Grohl's drums, but after about six seconds, it's obvious that Homme is in charge. Grohl just pounds the skins hard, in a bone-rattling way; he supplies drums in a way that ordinary drummers could supply drums to an album that is primarily a fist-fight of instrumentation (and to be honest, Grohl hasn't done it for me on drums since this group). The fact that the bassist of Led Zeppelin is on bass is almost irrelevant and unnoticeable, because Homme's presence is that of the lead, central character. His raunchy guitar hooks and specter-ish vocals are what drive and consume every song here. To the uninitiated, Them Crooked Vultures would be indiscernible from say, R or Songs for the Deaf. This is without a doubt the most preferable and desirable outcome, because any resemblance to Grohl's present day Foo Fighters would have sank the hard-ass edge this trio was looking for.

Phish - 11/29/09 (Cumberland County Civic Center)

Set I: Possum, Down with Disease, Nellie Kane, Weigh, When the Circus Comes, Kill Devil Falls, Water in the Sky, Stash, Meat, Undermind, Mike's Song, I am Hydrogen, Weekapaug Groove

Set II: The Moma Dance, Rock and Roll, Light, Crimes of the Mind, Pebbles and Marbles, 2001, Golgi Apparatus, Cavern, Run Like An Antelope

Encore: Free Bird, Carini, Waste

The death of uncool

In a recent article, Brian Eno discusses the death of uncool (via):

We’re living in a stylistic tropics. There’s a whole generation of people able to access almost anything from almost anywhere, and they don’t have the same localised stylistic sense that my generation grew up with. It’s all alive, all “now,” in an ever-expanding present, be it Hildegard of Bingen or a Bollywood soundtrack. The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.

I think this is good news. As people become increasingly comfortable with drawing their culture from a rich range of sources—cherry-picking whatever makes sense to them—it becomes more natural to do the same thing with their social, political and other cultural ideas. The sharing of art is a precursor to the sharing of other human experiences, for what is pleasurable in art becomes thinkable in life.

To an extent, I agree with Eno--the networked sharing of everything these days is spurring a creative culture unlike anything we've ever seen. However, I often worry that with this new found culture of omniscient awesomeness we are losing skills of critical analysis. Through all the bits and pieces of information, we still need to be able to decide on what's "uncool." Not in the sense of what's undesirable, but in the sense of what's more valuable and important in certain contexts and periods of time. When we lose the ability to distinguish value--for example, in writing--we lose the ability connect and interpret the mounds of data that are coming at us. Writers and communicators that learn to harness and sift through information critically will be most successful, but those who simply think that everything is cool will be in trouble.

Phish - 11/28/09 (Times Union Center)

Set I: Party Time, Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan, Uncle Pen, Sanity, Foam, Walkaway, NICU, Alaska, Split Open and Melt, Joy, Vultures, Backwards Down the Number Line

Set II: Seven Below, Ghost, Cool It Down, Gotta Jibboo, Let Me Lie, Wolfman's Brother, Julius

Encore: You Enjoy Myself

Black Friday

Phish - 11/27/09 (Times Union Center)

Set I: AC/DC Bag, Maze, Driver, My Mind's Got a Mind of Its Own, Gumbo, Bouncing Around the Room, It's Ice, Two Versions of Me, Timber, Limb by Limb, Cavern, Light

Set II: My Friend, My Friend, Golden Age, On Your Way Down, Fluffhead, Piper, Tomorrow's Song, Prince Caspian, Harry Hood, Suzy Greenberg, The Squirming Coil, I Been Around

Encore: Fire

Dirt Dress - "Perdido en la Suciedad 2"

As a band, Dirt Dress exhibit some seriously bizarre behavior. First, they give you the option of downloading their EPs for free, or paying $5 for a cassette tape. (???) I suppose this is some sort of retro-purist marketing move--and to an extent, I can see the hiss of tape and the squelch of rewind lending itself well to what this band sounds like--but how can a band hoping to be taken seriously operate under such antiquated self-promotion? Maybe they don't want to be taken seriously. Maybe they're just targeting an ultra-niche audience of people who live in dark living rooms and actually own cassette players.

Second, Dirt Dress doesn't really seem to be interested in playing songs as much as they are interested in scrapping blues and indie rock genres from the bathroom floors of bars and combining them with snippets of scattered radio frequencies and other non-music sounds. Somehow, this combination results in extremely catchy "tunes." I don't know if the short stature of EP release is some sort of strange and unorthodox journey to a much larger masterwork (apparently, there's a third Perdido en la Suciedad EP coming out yet this year, so we're getting more of this) or if Dirt Dress are simply setting their goals extremely low (and blowing my mind while doing it). These are the two things that intrigue me most about Dirt Dress. But mostly the thing about the cassettes and the tape deck dwellers.

MahaNakhon

A new skyscraper inspired by pixelation is going up in Bangkok (via):

Phish - 11/25/09 (Wachovia Center)

Set I: Kill Devil Falls, 46 Days, Sugar Shack, Halley's Comet, Divided Sky, Sleep Again, Ocelot, Train Song, Wilson, Run Like an Antelope

Set II: Birds of a Feather, Farmhouse, Tweezer, You Enjoy Myself, Esther, Time Turns Elastic, Tweezer Reprise

Encore: Oh Sweet Nuthin'

"Bohemian Rhapsody"

I was waiting for cameos by Beeker and Miss Piggy--my two all-time favortie Mupppets--and oh yes, they're there:

Phish - 11/24/09 (Wachovia Center)

Set I: Chalkdust Torture, Bathtub Gin, Cities, Camel Walk, The Curtain With, The Wedge, Moma Dance, Reba, Golgi Apparatus, Stealing Time from the Faulty Plan

Set II: Possum, Down with Disease, Twenty Years Later, Harry Hood, The Mango Song, Mike's Song, Simple, Slave to the Traffic Light, Weekapaug Groove

Encore: A Day in the Life

"Fall Be Kind"

Out today.

The social self in writing

Navneet Alang compares the sense of self and social we get from blogging to a monk who has written words on a scroll for the first time:

Perhaps it’s my typical hyperbole, but I like to think of people who write on the web as new versions of that monk, suddenly struck by the fact that the page and its markings have done things to their self and their sense of it. And I dunno’, something about that fills me with hope. Perhaps it isn’t that the web has frayed the threads of the social; maybe it’s that it has projected the entire mess onto a screen we can all see. And for all the disconnection that has engendered, by taking the social and putting it somewhere, perhaps it will also help us confirm that we exist to others and ourselves.

I don't necessarily feel that we need the web to confirm that we exist to others and ourselves, but Alang hits on a very important point here: it's not just the public permanence of web writing--should you choose that your web writings be permanently public--that integrates the self into the social; it's the social pushing back as well. By putting it all out there, you automatically invite a secondary sense of self into your writing. And it's fun to try and find that secondary "you" to see what he's thinking.

Phish - 11/22/09 (Oncenter Complex)

Set I: David Bowie, Julius, Sparkle, Kill Devil Falls, Lawn Boy, Heavy Things, Funky Bitch, Sample in a Jar, Boogie on Reggae Woman, Let Me Lie, Beauty of a Broken Heart, Stash

Set II: Drowned, Twist, Piper, Big Black Furry Creature from Mars, Tube, Theme from the Bottom, Maze, The Horse, Silent in the Morning, Character Zero, First Tube

Encore: Good Times Bad Times

"Stranger Than Kindness"

Fever Ray's music video output has been prolific in 2009, and this visual ride of Nick Cave's "Stranger Than Kindness" may be the best one yet:

Phish - 11/21/09 (US Bank Arena)

Set I: Wilson, NICU, Wolfman's Brother, Ocelot, Torn and Frayed, Strange Design, Ginseng Sullivan, Albuquerque, Split Open and Melt, Dirt, Limb by Limb, Run Like an Antelope

Set II: Rock and Roll, Ghost, If I Could, Backwards Down the Number Line, Prince Caspian, Suzy Greenberg, 2001, The Squirming Coil

Encore: Sleeping Monkey, Axilla I

Don't smoke near your Mac

In 2008, Apple voided the Applecare warranties on at least two peoples' laptops because of the risk of second-hand smoke exposure it posed to their technicians (the computers were used in smokers' homes). An excerpt from a letter from Derek in Iowa:

"I took my mid 2007 apple macbook (black) into the Jordan Creek Apple Store in West Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday, April 25th, because I had been experiencing some issues with it overheating, and figured the fan was bad. After some initial testing, they took the computer in for work under my Applecare plan, which has over a year remaining on it.

Today, April, 28, 2008, the Apple store called and informed me that due to the computer having been used in a house where there was smoking, that has voided the warranty and they refuse to work on the machine, due to "health risks of second hand smoke."

A few months later, a woman named Ruth cited a similar situation, claiming that Apple refused to service her computer after labeling it a "biohazard."

Last time I checked, you can't be harmed touching a nicotine-stained surface (which I can hardly believe was the case with the interior of these laptops unless there were thousands upon thousands of cigarettes being smoked in these homes on a daily basis), so unless there were still-smoldering butts jammed into the disc drive while the computer was being serviced, I can't imagine a single reason for this. Shocked.

Phish - 11/20/09 (US Bank Arena)

Set I: Chalkdust Torture, Moma Dance, Divided Sky, Alaska, Water in the Sky, Fast Enough for You, Time Turns Elastic, Gotta Jibboo, Fluffhead

Set II: Punch You in the Eye, Tweezer, Light, Back on the Train, Possum, Slave to the Traffic Light, You Enjoy Myself

Encore: Joy, Golgi Apparatus, Tweezer Reprise

"Hey Jude" flowchart

"Synecdoche, New York"

There was a stretch during Synedoche, New York where I thought I wasn't going to quite make it through, and it was probably only my admiration for Phillip Seymour-Hoffman as an actor that kept me watching for the last hour. But, even though the Lynchian reality-tearing and the constant punishing blows of human sadness and gloom were challenging to withstand, when I realized what Caden Cotard's "project" was shaping out to be, everything became much more interesting. Stick this one out and you will be rewarded.

Squirrel Massage

(via)

Phish - 11/18/09 (Cobo Arena)

Set I: AC/DC Bag, Foam, Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan, Bouncing Around the Room, Sample in a Jar, Kill Devil Falls, It's Ice, Horn, Mountains in the Mist, Poor Heart, 46 Days, David Bowie

Set II: Runaway Jim, Down with Disease, Free, Waste, Taste, Bug, Wading in the Velvet Sea, Mike's Song, I am Hydrogen, Weekapaug Groove

Encore: Character Zero

Retweet

I wonder how far Twitter will push new features before the simplicity of Twitter gets lost. This automatic "Retweet" function seems like it is significantly changing the real-time purposes that Twitter initially offered. It's like an impersonation that fuzzes over the line between tweet and retweet. Sure, there's an easy way to trace back to the Retweeter, but the Tweeter and the Retweeter shouldn't be separated in the first place.

(I want someone who has never heard of Twitter to read this post.)

J. Tillman - "Year in the Kingdom"

J. Tillman--one of the vocal vectors of Fleet Foxes--is a subtle force of musical nature. Much like Sam Beam and other artists who arm themselves primarily with acoustic guitars, soft-spoken tenors, and for some reason, loads of facial hair, Tillman enters the epic arena of "the chill," and propagates seemingly endless series' of songs that all sound the same and yet all sound original at the same time. You know the kinds of songs I'm talking about: the kind that make women swoon because they (the songs) are so passionate and emotional and handsome-sounding; the kind that men listen to while they drink beer and roast marshmallows and campfire hot dogs; the kind music critics initially describe as Dylan-esque, and then later on reprimand themselves for being so foolish. Year in the Kingdom is an album that is filled with such music, and it's really nice to listen to from time to time.

That's really all you can say about it. For as neat as the sounds-the-same-but-is-different phenomenon is, it is also the downfall of the genre: pretty soon we can't tell who is who or who is writing good songs. "Age of Man" is a great tune, but the more it blends into its bookends ("Though I Have Wronged You" and "There is No Good in Me"), it loses its uniqueness with the original context. But hey, whatever. I like the concept of spending a year in a kingdom; it sounds 18th century woodsman-y. And if I can straggle out some visual concept of being at total peace in the woods while birds nest in my beard, then "the chill" has done its job once again.

Album cover collages

Album cover collages by Christian Marclay (via):

"Must Be Santa"

I have Bob Dylan's new Christmas album, but have been putting off listening to it because it's November. However, after watching this ultra-bizarre video for "Must Be Santa," I'm going to have to give in and listen now.

Significant Objects

I like the idea behind Significant Objects: buy a piece of crap from a rummage sale, write a fictional story about it, and then sell the item and story on eBay. I'm not sure how seriously the actual bidders are taking this--although the Missouri shot glass is already up to $76 at the time of this post--but it's an interesting way of attempting to add value to a physical object through text and creativity. After all, we value books, not because of the materials they are constructed of, but because of the imagination and learning they inspire. Why couldn't objects that have an imaginative story behind them give us the same value and joy? Are you paying for the story or the shot glass? Or something else?

Honestly, this whole gimmick is probably worthless, but the means of thinking behind it have real value. In the end, there are people writing and creating, and harnessing physical and textual environments to bring the two together. That's always a good thing no matter which way you slice it.

Jennings scores 55

"Just After Sunset"

I can honestly say that for the first time, I was bored reading Stephen King's short stories. Normally, his little fiction is reserved for his most acutely provocative work, the kind of stuff you race through, wondering how the next story could be any more bizarre or creepy or fascinating than the last. I've always thought of these stories as glimpses of his inner-workings that built the framework for his larger novels. But King mellowed--both stylistically and creatively--on Just After Sunset, and registered very little imagination for his readers to grab onto.

Splotchy and wet

Paintings by Leonid Afremov:

The Druids would be proud

A panoramic view of Stonehenge...unfortunately, this is closer than you can get in real life (via).

Fuck Buttons - "Tarot Sport"

What the fuck, Fuck Buttons? What happened to all the fuzzed-over maniacal screaming? Or the tribal-drum cannibal festivals that led us to a place the wrong side of Apocalypse Now? None of these elements that made Street Horrsing (2008) such a fascinating and mind-trip-of-a-listen are present on Tarot Sport, and yet you've managed to somehow improve on this? Wait...maybe "improve" is not the right word here--alter is probably more appropriate. You've altered the music you make synthetically in a different dimensional direction, right? Instead of exploring Predator-esque jungles, now you've decided that space is the place; space is the new jungle. Cool.

Anyway, I've been listening to your new album a lot when I work-out and go running. I can pretty much shift in and out of focus whenever I please, because, as I'm sure you're aware, there's little depth here, and these compositions you've composed rely solely on one thing: climactic layering. But that's OK, because I really like how "Surf Solar" starts out like a swarm of metallic bees, and by the end you feel like you're in the middle of some Terminator Armageddon where John Connor is (finally) winning. Ditto with "Space Mountain," which feels like the repeated loop of a nuclear cruise missile burning across the horizon again and again. Somehow you've taken these simple measures and have made them epic, and for that I give you props. Most electronic artists are much, much more talented than you, but you will continue to hold a special place in my music-loving heart because you are a couple of odd-balls who have found an odd-ball niche to succeed in.

"Phish" at Festival 8

(via)

"Watching the Planets"

The Flaming Lips' video for "Watching the Planets," featuring tons of naked people running around and riding bikes in a forest. Probably NSFW...

Rock music quality vs oil production

Mark Lee has found an interesting correlation between the quality of rock music and the level of US oil production over the last 50 years:

The future is stopping the Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider has been under electrical repair since September 2008, but recent published research is suggesting a different theory for why the world's largest particle accelerator can't return to functionality:

Another fringe theory holds that the LHC will never function properly because it is under "influence from the future," according to physicists Holger Bech Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya. They suggest in recent papers that no supercolliders that could produce the Higgs boson, an as-yet-unseen particle that would help answer fundamental questions about matter in the universe, will work because something in the future stops them.

Something from the future has been sent to stop the Collider? My God, it's really happening...

Come to me, jungle friends

Jim Carrey is the greatest comedic actor of my generation, and his new website perfectly encapsulates all the ridiculous (and inimitable) characters, facial expressions, and body gyrations that he has brought into our world.

A Day at the Office

"Man on Wire"

Let's face it, you really don't need to see this documentary to know what it's all about. You've seen the trailer and the photos, you know the magnitude of what Philippe Petit is attempting to do and the details surrounding his plan, and you've heard the praise on the Internet saying this is a documentary-turned-heist movie and it's awesome, but in the end, what you get is the singular event, the man on the wire.

But what I thought was most compelling about the film was the footage of the World Trade Center being built. The only footage we see of the Towers today is of them coming down in a pile of smoldering rubble, and it was refreshing, if not powerful, to see those magnificent structures being built by ordinary men, and then conquered in a way that didn't involve hijacked airplanes. In fact, I don't think the film was about Philippe Petit at all.

Google gives gift of Wi-Fi

From now until January 15, 2010, Google will be providing free Wi-Fi services at 47 airports--including Milwaukee!--across the United States:

The upcoming Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's holiday is one of the heaviest travel seasons of the year, and according to FAA estimates, over 100 million people will pass through the participating airports between now and January 15, 2010. Due to bad weather and other extenuating circumstances, travelers often have extra time on their hands in the airport after they pass through security - 70 minutes, on average. Not surprisingly, having an Internet connection during this time can make a difference. A recent study conducted by the Wi-Fi Alliance reported that 50% of business travelers take red-eye flights in order to be "reachable" during business hours, and an overwhelming 82% said that being connected through Wi-Fi would help solve that problem.

Thank you, Google. Now, if you will just turn "January 15" into "indefinitely" and "airports" into "everywhere on the planet," we'll really have something to cheer about this holiday season.

Exercising baby

Tall Man's Chili

To celebrate my last week at my current job, I'm entering the department's apocalyptic chili contest. You're probably wondering how awesome my chili is, so look no further:

2 1/2 lbs. ground beef
10 oz. spaghetti
1 medium onion chopped
1 large green pepper chopped
Four 14.5 oz. cans of diced tomatoes w/green chilies
12 oz. tomato paste
15 oz. garbanzo beans
5-6 jalapeno peppers
2 serrano peppers
1 cup water
2 cloves garlic minced
1/2 Tbs. chili powder
1/2 Tbs. crushed red pepper flakes
1 Tbs. sugar
1/2 Tsp. ground cumin
1/2 Tsp. dried oregano
1/4 Tsp. pepper
Liberal ground cayenne pepper

Brown the beef and set aside; saute the veggies and red pepper flakes; add beef and remaining ingredients and bring to a boil; simmer for three hours using cayenne pepper as a heat barometer.

"Ready, Able"

Grizzly Bear obviously have a thing for clay in their videos:

Virtual thinking

More cool stuff from the recent Society for Neuroscience conference:

Brain scans of avid players of the hugely popular online fantasy world World of Warcraft reveal that areas of the brain involved in self-reflection and judgement seem to behave similarly when someone is thinking about their virtual self as when they think about their real one.

A graduate school colleague of mine built his thesis project around the idea of creating virtual meeting rooms for grant writers and technical communicators with the goal of overcoming some of the obstacles (different geographical areas, time zones, etc.) that occur in collaborative writing. Obviously, one of the main questions that arises from such a project is how the use of a virtual avatar--instead of using conference calls or emails--could improve the quality of work and collaboration. How would people react to each other? How would they communicate? Would dealing with virtual colleagues disrupt the logic, structure, and creativity that collaborative writing has thrived on for so long?

It will likely be a while before we can answer those questions, but from this recent research, it seems like we already have a biological mechanism in place as a first step and that we are at least capable of activating the same lines of thinking and regard that we do in real life when it comes to virtual selves. I think that's both fascinating and important. The human brain as been around a lot longer than World of Warcraft or Second Life or any other type of virtual meeting place, and yet, the biological and the virtual seem synched-up. That speaks volumes about the plasticity of our neurons, and is another exciting way of pushing our biology onto new technologies and learning to harness the dynamic that occurs.

Wi-Fry

"Drag Me to Hell"

Wait...was this a horror movie or a comedy? Because most of the "scary" scenes--including the one where the creepy old woman is hiding in the back seat of the car and her dentures fall out after her head hits the dashboard so she tries to gum the poor girl to death while said girl is hitting the old woman in the face with a stapler--were funny as hell.

Internet as exercise for brain

Researchers have found that browsing the Internet can improve cognitive function in the elderly:

"You can teach an old brain new technology tricks," said Dr. Gary Small, a psychiatry professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of iBrain. With people who had little Internet experience, "we found that after just a week of practice, there was a much greater extent of activity particularly in the areas of the brain that make decisions, the thinking brain -- which makes sense because, when you're searching online, you're making a lot of decisions," he said. "It's interactive."

This data was presented at the recent Society for Neuroscience conference, and honestly, I'm surprised this type of study wasn't explored years ago. After all, isn't surfing the Internet sort of like doing a giant digital crossword puzzle (seems like we're always encouraging the elderly to do crossword puzzles), with all the clicking and navigating and interpreting and searching? I would argue that the manual dexterity typing and pointing a mouse cursor requires would also be physically and mentally beneficial for the elderly.

"Foam" Pilsner

Brewed specifically for Phish's Festival 8:

"Objectified"

There's a scene in Objectified where a father is playing around with an iPhone in an Apple Store while his young child is sitting upon his shoulders with her hands over his eyes. Normally, you would think that someone who is experimenting with--and presumably, thinking of purchasing--a sleek piece of (expensive) technology would not want the distraction of a two year-old mounted on their face playing playing peek-a-boo. But strangely, the father looks content and confident operating the iPhone with one hand while steadying the rambunctious youth with the other. No big deal; this is 2009. One hand is performing one task, and the other is performing potentially thousands of tasks.

This scene is a prime example of the affordances of good design: daily life dissolves into the use of the product. We can all operate a cell phone while sitting in a chair or walking down the street, but what about situations where we don't want to acknowledge a product but yet still expect it to perform its function seamlessly? These are the questions that Objectified tackles from a variety of angles and from a number of different expert perspectives. It's highly worth watching if you're interested in how every single object in your living room is reacting to you, or how every device you put into your pockets and briefcases in the morning is shaping the way you live.

The Blue Sun

Twitter lists

When I first started using Twitter, my biggest gripe was the lack of a personal directory. There was no way to organize the people you were following, and often times users who didn't update often got drowned out in the timeline by all the Twitter-powerhouses whose frequency of tweeting knew no scope or bounds. To circumvent this problem, I created a "directory" of "favorites," which was basically a crude, shot-gun way of organization that didn't have the real-time update of each user. In other words, it provided organization, but added an extra middleman of clicking to the equation. But with Twitter lists, this problem now seems to be solved, and I can compulsively and anally organize and categorize my Twitter followers like I do the files on my computer or the clothes in my closet or pretty much anything else in my life that can be compulsively organized.

But what's most interesting about these lists is how they are reorganizing the entire Twitter community from a rhetorical standpoint. Suddenly, you start appearing on random lists that people have created, and you begin to get a more detailed sense of why they follow you and what their perceptions are of you in terms of the world of Twitter. For example, I've noticed that I appear on a "Want to Meet in Real Life" list, which is flattering, and at the same time a bit strange. There is also a "Knew Before Twitter" list, which seems to be a fascinating way of confirming the existence of a person. Others, like "Milwaukee People," are a little less interesting, but nonetheless are an indication that a bunch of people who probably don't know each other are collectively trying to figure out where everyone is located and what they are doing at that very moment. Twitter users were probably always building perceptions of other people in this network long before lists, but now there's a way to flaunt it through digital text and organization.

Junk food is like heroin

Data presented at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference showed that bacon, cheesecake, and Ho Hos activated rat brain pleasure centers in similar ways to that of addictive drugs:

To see how strong the drive to eat junk food was, the researchers exposed the rats to a foot shock when they ate the high-fat food. Rats that had not been constantly exposed to the junk food quickly stopped eating. But the foot shock didn’t faze rats accustomed to the junk food — they continued to eat, even though they knew the shock was coming.

What's perhaps most disturbing about this research--other than force-feeding rats Ho Hos like John Doe fed spaghetti to the glutton sinner in Seven--is the long duration of time it took to break the addictive cycle after the junk food-feeding ceased. There's some hard-wiring going on that is really tough to shift back to normal. These findings could really point to some interesting research that focuses on synaptic circuitry and sugar/LDL intake at various points in development, particularly in the first two years of life when neuronal development is most massive.

"Ante Up"

Reason #5,476,258 why the Internet was created: to bring together Yip Yip Muppets and gangster rap (via):

The Flaming Lips - "Embryonic"

There are points during "Virgo Self-Esteem Broadcast"--somewhere in between the majestically swelling choir and the cryptic repeating vocals and the frightening blasts of some futuristic light wand--where you cannot tell whether the honks from the flocks of geese are coming from your headphones or if there are literally flying geese in your living room. This is one of a gallimaufry of strange moments throughout Embryonic, an album that is less a collection of Flaming Lips' songs than it is an exploratory measure of conceptual weirdness and conflict. Gone are the hopeful and optimistic tendencies of "yeah yeah yeah" songs and races for cures; they have been replaced by brooding marches and scaling interludes that look for answers in a world(s) ravished by the struggle of good and evil. But, like the location of the geese, we don't know where these answers lie. All we seem to know is that our hope rests in the hands of the child on the album cover, the one who appears to have a beard and is being pushed into a realm of conflict and piercing light that was not meant for ordinary humans to experience. Yes, it is a truly bizarre mission, and one of the most fantastic albums of the year.

The Flaming Lips have pulled this stunt before--conflict in interplanetary worlds looms heavy in just about every album they have released over the last ten years. But never before have they explored it in this scope. Embryonic sprawls over clashing egos ("The Ego's Last Stand"), decisions about being evil or gentle ("If") or about being frogs or bats ("I Can Be a Frog"), or entire solar systems trying to turn back on ("See the Leaves") with the incongruous brevity of a hallucinogenic attention-span. You wouldn't dare listen to individual tracks, because plucking any one of the 18 songs out of context would send you running for the hills. Embryonic demands a front-to-end finish at each and every listen for the sake of your very sanity. But these complete listens are rewarding, because 1) The Flaming Lips are still The Flaming Lips, and their instrumentation and Wayne Coyne's chanting eventually soothe, and 2) the mysteries they have so intensely placed in front of us do have a chance to be unraveled with guarded and careful attention. But (thankfully), probably not any time soon.

Tell her I have a rapist's wit

Phish - 11/1/09 (Festival 8)

Set I*: Water in the Sky, Back On the Train, Brian and Robert, Invisible, Strange Design, Mountains in the Mist, The Curtain With, Army of One, Sleep Again, My Sweet One, Let Me Lie, Bouncing Around the Room, Train Song, Wilson, McGrupp and the Watchful Hosemasters, Driver, Talk, Secret Smile

Set II: AC/DC Bag, Rift, Gotta Jibboo, Heavy Things, Reba, The Wedge, Guelah Papyrus, Undermind, Sparkle, Split Open and Melt

Set III: Tweezer, Maze, Free, Sugar Shack, Limb by Limb, Theme from the Bottom, Mike's Song, 2001, Light, Slave to the Traffic Light

Encore: Grind, Esther, Tweezer Reprise

*Acoustic

Festival 8 video montage

Shown just before they took the stage for the second set, this video montage features clips from all the artists Phish were potentially going to cover for their musical costume (which turned out to be The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street):

Phish - 10/31/09 (Festival 8)

Set I: Sample in a Jar, Divided Sky, Lawn Boy, Kill Devil Falls, Bathtub Gin, Squirming Coil, Runaway Jim, Possum, Run Like an Antelope

Set II: Rocks Off, Rip This Joint, Shake Your Hips, Casino Boogie, Tumbling Dice, Sweet Virginia, Torn and Frayed, Sweet Black Angel, Loving Cup, Happy, Turd on the Run, Ventilator Blues, I Just Want to See His Face, Let it Loose, All Down the Line, Stop Breaking Down, Shine a Light, Soul Survivor

Set III: Backwards Down the Number Line, Fluffhead, Ghost, When the Circus Comes to Town, You Enjoy Myself

Encore: Suzy Greenberg