TViva

The new TV On The Radio album Return To Cookie Mountain and Viva Voce‘s Get Yr Blood Sucked Out are both very good.

[tags]tv on the radio, return to cookie mountain, viva voce, get yr blood sucked out[/tags]

Four things that grabbed my attention today

1. A documentary called The Bridge. It’s about the Golden Gate Bridge, and specifically about all the suicides that happen there. The documentary consists mostly of footage from cameras set up to record the bridge continually for a year. It sounds morbid and voyeuristic, but if you watch the trailer I don’t think it comes across that way. It sounds like a fascinating look at a part of human behaviour that I just can’t get my head around. [via The Movie Blog]

2. A polemic from Christopher Hume against the NIMBY Toronto masses who light their torches and form a mob every time a building over 20 stories is proposed, lest it create shade in their neighbourhood. [via Spacing]

3. A new word: depletist. Invented (apparently) by some students at the Ontario College of Art & Design, it’s definition is as follows: “1) An individual or group showing apparent, negligent, or reckless disregard for the environmental consequences of their actions. 2) An individual or group that exhausts non-renewable resources and rejects positive environmental strategies.” I like it. Very much. Well done, OCADets. [via Reading Toronto]

4. A cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “The Ghost Of Tom Joad” by Jose Gonzalez (well, by Junip, which is Jose’s new band). Check it out if you can.

[tags]bridge documentary, suicide, golden gate bridge, christopher hume, toronto architecture, depletist, reading toronto, ocad, jose gonzalez, junip, ghost of tom joad[/tags]

So Divided

The first half of the new …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead disc So Divided is excellent. Not as good as Source Tags And Codes, mind you, but almost nothing is. Better than Worlds Apart, even. But the second half falls off badly. I’ll probably still buy it when it’s released in November, but I wish I could buy the first five songs and just pretend it was an EP. I guess if I download it from eMusic I can do exactly that…

.:.

I dislike stats. Actually, that’s not true; I dislike stats assignments that take forever.

[tags]trail of dead, so divided, stats[/tags]

I like that fucking Black Darjeeling

Ah, Deadwood. If it doesn’t have the best one-liners ever, I don’t know what does. Another favourite: “He likes to berate the gimp mornings.”

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Scarlett Johansson, avec Dita Von Teese (Marilyn Manson’s wife) poses for some S&M photos. You’re welcome. [via Buddha Canvas]

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Speaking of Scarlett, she’s recording a Tom Waits cover album. That should…wait, what?

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Shoot. The Catholic bishops have wandered into the lawmaking again. Where’s my broom?

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Lunenberg might be getting a strip club. Question: would it be part of the UNESCO site?

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What a coincidence that a 10,000-year-old meteorite should be dug out of the ground in Kansas. No doubt they’ll have trouble convincing some of the locals who think the earth is younger than that.

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Still on the topic of idiots, a garbage disposal manufacturer is suing NBC because of a scene in last week’s Heroes depicting an indestructible girl’s hand getting mangled (and then healing, natch) when she sticks her hand in one of their products. Of course, you couldn’t really read the brand name. And even the simplest of the simple would know that sticking your hand in an operating garbage disposal would cause it harm. But yeah, sue those fuckers. Twice.

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More idiots: George W. Bush and the Congress he rode in on. The bill he’s just signed into law means that anyone suspected of terrorism isn’t guilty until proven innocent, they’re in purgatory. You know it’s gotta be a peach when the executive director of the ACLU calls it “one of the worst civil-liberties measures ever enacted in American history.”

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The recording industry has launched 8,000 more file-sharing lawsuits. Now where’s my buggy whip?

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OK, back to the Catholic bishops: some of the quotes from Winnipeg Archbishop James Weisgerber are just knee-slappers. Gob-smackers, even. Check it:

“As leaders, we are guardians of long traditions of wisdom”

Really? ‘Cause I was 17 when your church admitted you were wrong about the whole “We condemned Galileo ’cause he said the earth revolves around the sun” thing. Also, as I pointed out to someone recently, you still officially have it on the books that communion wafers become the body of Christ somewhere between the beak and the gizzard. You may not really admit it in public anymore, but…yeah. No need to go on, but you’ll pardon me if your promised knowledge of “long traditions of wisdom” don’t set me all a-twitter.

“People don’t really have a sense of personal sin or reflection. We are becoming a more selfish and hedonistic society.”

Catholicism (or any other religion) does not equal morality. In some cases it’s quite the opposite. Anyway, that’s the same tune that church officials have been whistling for centuries and we’ve somehow managed to avoid Armageddon.

[On the issue of gay marriage] “We really need in Canada to support families.”

Now you’re pissing me off, padre. Once again, let me help you with the math: marriage != straight-and-child-bearing-only club. Besides, if you let gay people get married, wouldn’t that just create more family units? Or would you just like Canada to support a certain type of family?

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I find this whole religion thing difficult. About 80% of Canadians practice some kind of religion, including many of my family and friends and other people I respect. I couldn’t care less if they’re religious, or about the particulars of what they believe. But when religious people try to impose their beliefs on the public, and especially on the law, I get annoyed. I hope some of them do as well.

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By the way, sorry for the brain dump; I was sick yesterday and this stuff just built up. OK, off to eat and watch some Friday Night Lights.
[tags]deadwood, scarlett johansson, tom waits, catholic bishops, gay marriage, lunenberg, garbage disposal, heroes, nbc, dubya, file-sharing, buggy whip[/tags]

Brain –> page

The Onion’s A.V. Blog reports that two of the TIFF films that I’m most anticipating might have trouble getting on screens south of the border. I suspect no such issues here in Canada, but it’s a sad state of affairs. As the article states,

“In both cases, films are being shut out of theaters for their ideas, not for any explicit or offensive content on the surface. These gatekeepers have basically decided that adults need to be shielded from ideas that they deem inappropriate. They’ve creating a special rating and it’s called GFY (Go Fuck Yourself).”

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I might be in the minority, but I’m all for Hockey Night In Canada moving from CBC to TSN/CTV. Why? Because I, like most of the rest of the country, can’t stand watching the prime time game being called by a pair of Leafs homers who’re on the down slope of their careers. Bob Cole and Harry Neale may be nice guys, but you may as well go watch the game in your Toronto-fan grandpa’s rec room. Gord Miller’s a better play-by-play man, Pierre Maguire’s better at colour (and actually knows the names of some non-Leaf NHLers), and they have guys like Bob McKenzie, Glenn Healy, James Duthie and Chris Cuthbert to boot.

The best part: no more Don Cherry. I’d like it if they could salvage MacLean somehow, but if he has to be sacrificed in order to distract Cherry while they pack up the HNIC set, then so be it.

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Because all my music is encoded at 128kbps (it’s the only way it’ll all fit on my Nomad) I’m thinking this would be a good investment.

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Hey, WOXY’s back.

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Slides in a museum; bitchin’. My brother’s already mentioned it, but this exhibit at London’s Tate Modern looks very cool. When I was there that hall was filled with a giant (and I do mean giant; it was about a hundred feet tall) double-ended red horn.

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If I have time tonight I’ll try to post more pictures from our trip. Day 3 was the motherload (400+ pics) so it could take me a while to slog through them.

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I’ve finally had to pick up my next textbook. However, it’s a statistics course, and I find stats kind of interesting. Sick puppy, I know.

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New TV: Heroes has me hooked. Studio 60 is, apparently, in trouble, proving once again that Aaron Sorkin is too smart to write for television. I haven’t watched Friday Night Lights yet, but if it’s as good as the movie I’ll stick around for the ride.
[tags]d.o.a.p., deliver us from evil, hockey night in canada, creative xmod, woxy, tate modern, statistics, heroes, studio 60, friday night lights[/tags]

The twain just met

Here’s an interesting confluence of personal interest and scholarly pursuit: the Russian music downloading site AllOfMP3.com, which provides extremely cheap downloads with no copyright protection, is apparently one of the — perhaps the onlymajor barrier to Russia joining the World Trade Organization. A site like AllOfMP3 would surely violate the TRIPs agreement on international recognition of intellectual property rules, and TRIPs is what I just wrote a whole paper on (though I focused on generic medication for poor countries, not music copyright).

This book learnin’ might come in handy after all…

[tags]allofmp3, wto, trips agreement, russia[/tags]

Well hello there, Google Reader

Colin told me about the new & improved Google news reader last night. I tried it out and after five minutes I was in lurve. I grabbed my OPML file and, one quick import later, I have a new home. I didn’t like the first incarnation of the Google reader, and kept going back to the FeedDemon/NewsGator combo. Recently, I had to ditch FeedDemon because of sync problems I couldn’t resolve, though I kept using NewsGator. However, NewsGator’s web reader is clunky and Google reader actually feels as fluid as a desktop app, so I’m sold.

For now.

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It’s time to catch up on the random MP3s I’ve been throwing onto my Nomad in the last few months. Here’s today’s lineup:

  • be your own pet . “thresher’s flail”
  • be your own pet . “we will vacation, you can be my parasol”
  • belafea . “tara”
  • bob dylan . “someday baby”
  • bob dylan . “the levee’s gonna break”
  • bob dylan . “thunder on the mountain”
  • bonnie prince billy . “the seedling”
  • califone . “the orchids”
  • cold war kids . “hang me out to dry”
  • cold war kids . “hospital beds”
  • cold war kids . “saint john”
  • darker my love . “what’s a man’s paris”
  • dears . “ticket to immortality”
  • editors . “munich”
  • jennifer o’connor . “exeter”
  • jennifer o’connor . “exeter, rhode island”
  • jesu . “dead eyes”
  • jesu . “silver”
  • john frusciante . “communique”
  • john frusciante . “sphere”
  • john frusciante . “walls”
  • johnny cash . “god’s gonna cut you down”
  • ladyhawk . “long ’til the morning”
  • ladyhawk . “sad eyes, blue eyes”
  • ladyhawk . “the dugout”
  • ladyhawk . “war”
  • long winters . “ultimatum”
  • mendoza line . “catch a collapsing star”
  • mike doughty . “i hear the bells”
  • mike doughty . “tremendous brunettes”
  • mischa . “cubicle”
  • mission of burma . “2wice”
  • murder by death . “boy decide”
  • my latest novel . “sister sneaker sister soul”
  • ox . “1913”
  • polyphonic spree . “lithium”
  • primal scream . “country girl”
  • primal scream . “dolls”
  • primal scream . “the 99th floor”
  • richard buckner . “town”
  • sissy . “so long”
  • spangle call lilli line . “b”
  • spangle call lilli line . “piano”
  • spoon . “idiot driver”
  • spoon . “mountain to sound”
  • sunset rubdown . “stadiums and shrines ii”
  • swan lake . “all fires”
  • yo la tengo . “pass the hatchet”
  • yo la tengo . “the room got heavy”
  • zero 7 . “this fine social scene”

[tags]google reader, newsgator, newsgator[/tags]

Oil, fat and hyacinth

At lunch today I finished watching another Werner Herzog documentary: Lessons Of Darkness (imdb | rotten tomatoes). Essentially 50 minutes of aerial film from Kuwait, taken just after the first gulf war, set to a Wagner score or to Herzog himself reading passages from Revelations, it’s enough to boggle the mind and drop the jaw. Fountains of fire spewing from sand, rivers and lakes of oil stretching for miles, racks of crude torture paraphenalia, burned & rusted skeletons of old vehicles, blackened men trying desperately to regain control over the exploding landscape…it’s just incredible stuff.

Herzog’s a freaking genius.

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It’s natural that a conservative government would cut social programs. That’s what they do; it’s the basis for conservative politics: you lessen the role (and spending) of government, thereby reducing the short-term tax burden on the public. So it comes as no surprise that the Tory government is cutting $1 billion from human rights lawyers, students, museum-goers, etc.

What does surprise me is that they cut the programs on the same day they announced a $13 billion surplus.

While I agree with their decision to use the surplus to pay down the debt, couldn’t they have paid down $12 billion and left the social programs intact? It would’ve been a good PR move, certainly, and it would have been a non-dickish thing to do.

Weighing in with their (predictably opposing) viewpoints: the Toronto Star and National Post.

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While piddling about on my computer tonight I put ye olde Windows Media Player on random. These were the first ten songs served up. Apparently my PC likes the instrumental post-rock; I didn’t hear a single word for about 22 minutes starting at song #6…

  • radiohead . “backdrifts”
  • blink 182 . “i miss you”
  • hank williams iii . “atlantic city”
  • flogging molly . “light of a fading star”
  • bjork . “army of me”
  • mono . “the flames beyond the cold mountain”
  • mogwai . “you don’t know jesus”
  • explosions in the sky . “first breath after coma”
  • constantines . “hyacinth”
  • ani difranco . “willing to fight”

I should have kept writing them down. It just played The Cooper Temple Clause, Sleater-Kinney and Iggy Pop all in a row.

[tags]werner herzog, lessons of darkness, conservative spending cuts, budget surplus, random music[/tags]

You snooze, you lose; well I have snost and lost.

You know, it’s all fun and games ’til someone…umm…ooh. Yikes.

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Sports Illustrated thinks the Canadiens might be a dark horse this year. I hope so, but their 0-4 preseason record isn’t a great sign.

Ooh…but they’re leading the Senators 4-2 in the 3rd.

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We watched episode one of the fourth season of The Wire, and I’m hooked already. Sooooooo hooked. I love that show.

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By the way, that line up there in the subject is from “I Hear The Bells” by Mike Doughty, known to my wife as the song playing at the alternaprom in the last season of Veronica Mars. I just love the lyric.
[tags]sports illustrated, canadiens, senators, the wire[/tags]

66.15%

I have my ride-home playlist all set up and ready to go. There’s just no better feeling than climbing into that cab and falling into an exhausted stupor for the ride home, while the perfect music blares in my ears. Here’s the lineup this time around:

  • cat power . “sweedeedee”
  • mike doughty . “i hear the bells”
  • jose gonzalez . “heartbeats”
  • regina spektor . “better”
  • cold war kids . “don’t let your love grow away from me”
  • band of horses . “monsters”

That oughta do it. If I run out of time I’ll skip the Mike Doughty song.

OK. Must go finish off a deck, read the material for tomorrow and review some class notes.

[tags]cat power, mike doughty, jose gonzalez, regina spektor, cold war kids, band of horses[/tags]