We Have To Touch People

One of my all-time favorite quotes...Jacob Bronowski captures in just a few minutes what I could take a lifetime to explain.

From the Knowledge or Certainty episode of The Ascent of Man.

Updating the List

You may recall that way back in February (my how time flies) I posted a list of 27 albums (I said 28 at the time, but miscounted) I had purchased because I had previously downloaded them from the Internet.

Here's 15 more albums I've purchased since then:

A.C Newman - The Slow Wonder
Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out of This Country
The Decemberists - The Tain
Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms
The Flaming Lips - At War With the Mystics
Mission of Burma - The Obliterati
Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings The Flood
Neko Case - Blacklisted
Neko Case - The Tigers Have Spoken
The New Pornographers - Mass Romantic
The New Pornographers - Electric Version
The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
Rilo Kiley - The Execution of All Things
Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche
TV On The Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain

That brings the grand total to 42 albums I've legitimately purchased (i.e. bought the disc from a real store; no AllofMP3 nonsense here) simply because I downloaded them first and liked what I heard.  Oh the horrors of file sharing.

I have a suspicion that within a few weeks I'll be adding The Crane Wife, Knives Don't Have Your Back, one or more Laura Veirs albums (Carbon Glacier and Year of Meteors), and perhaps that old classic Tarkus to this list.

Studio 60

Sorkin is back.

Television is saved.

That is all.

9/11/01 and 3/19/03

Today, the fifth anniversary of 9/11, was for me, a very confusing, conflicted day of reflection.  Part of that was watching Keith Olberman.  He played clips of Cheney lying on Meet the Press and Russert catching him.  He played Matt Lauer confronting the President this morning on the torture issue...In the Oval Office.

The press is beginning to wake up from the slumber it's been in for all of these years.

Then I watched the conclusion of The Path to 9/11 on ABC. 

I will say this about the movie:  There were undeniably parts of it that were pure bullshit.  There was clearly an attempt to make the Clinton Administration look more at fault than the Bush Administration.  But, with that said, it was riveting television and was very well filmed. 

In the middle of the 2+ hour Part 2, ABC stopped the movie for the President's 9/11 anniversary speech.  He spent 20 minutes turning a speech about 9/11 into a speech on his failed War in Iraq.

Then, the last section of movie played.  I watched as our government's helplessness on that day was resurrected in vivid docudrama.

At the end, the movie quoted the 9/11 Commission Report's finding that we have done little to make this country less vulnerable to terrorist attack today than it was on 9/11/01.

By this time, I needed some nice, soft music.

9/11/01 is the date this country's path irrevocably changed.  But we, as a nation and as a people did not change that day.  When we woke up on Sept 12th, we were not different people.  We were the same people trying to make sense of a horrific tragedy.

The date we changed was 3/9/03.  The date we invaded Iraq.  The date we lost our soul.  We cheered our troops on as if we were watching a football game.  We accepted our President's explanations as if they made sense.  We did not ask questions.  We did not require proof.  We became the aggressors.

Now, we are not a nation wounded by a cowardly attack.  We are a nation wounded by a foolish war we could have avoided.  We have shown that we are no better than the ones we call our enemies.

The anniversary of 9/11/01 lays in the shadow of 3/9/03.  These events have been forever intertwined.  We cannot mourn the one without experiencing the frustration and pain of the other. 

Best Year In Music?

So I was thinking about 2006 in music...It's been a good year with Rabbit Fur Coat, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, At War With the Mystics, Return to Cookie Mountain, The Avalanche and sheer awesomeness like The Crane Wife and Emily Haines's solo album yet to come.

But compare that to some of the music years of the past.  For example, here are the highlights of 1971:

• All Things Must Pass
• Aqualung
• Blue
• Electric Warrior
• Hunky Dory
• Imagine
• L.A. Woman
• Led Zeppelin IV
• Meddle
• Pearl
• Sticky Fingers
• Tarkus
• What's Goin On
• Who's Next (which, if you ask me, is the best rock album of all time)

WOW.  It's hard to imagine a year that huge today, even with the current upswing in great music from the indie scene.

Windows Live Writer

Blogger is one of the slicker things I've seen on the Internet, but lately I've been getting fed up with it's rich text editor.  It seems like unless you write things in a certain order (like quoting and italics), it's too easy to have things screw up.  I'm not sure if this is a problem with Blogger and Firefox or just Blogger in general, but it happens.

So, it's very cool that Microsoft has released the Windows Live Writer (which I'm using to write this now).  Basically, it's a normal Windows desktop app with an Office-like look that lets you post (despite the name) to basically every popular type of blog.

Kudos to Microsoft for coming up with something this cool and making it broadly compatible.

And It's Not Even From Pitchfork

I've stumbled upon what may be the most pretentious music review ever written. This is truly shocking in it's self-importance and pomposity...

PopMatters review of The New Ponorgraphers' 2005 album Twin Cinema (which is an excellent album, by the way):

Regardless of the fact that he works in an entirely different medium, Newman appears to be settling into the parameters set forth by Sarris's 1962 "auteur theory". Sarris's thesis (itself an extension of François Truffaut's politiques des auteurs, published in a 1954 edition of Cahiers du Cinéma) argues "over a group of films a director must exhibit certain recurrent characteristics of style, which serve as his signature". Later, in his book The American Cinema, Sarris would offer further clarification: "Ultimately, the auteur theory is not so much a theory as an attitude, a table of values that converts film history into directorial autobiography. The auteur critic is obsessed with the wholeness of art and the artist. The parts, however entertaining individually, must cohere meaningfully."

Like Alfred Hitchcock's storyboarded mise en scène or John Ford's pitting of solitary figures against the expansive backdrop of Monument Valley, Newman's giddy music, drunk on its own effervescence, is such a stylized idealization of pop's possibilities that it can't be anything but auteurism.

Keep in mind this is about an album. Apparently, because it's called Twin Cinema, that's a license to go wandering into French cinema.

Quote of the Day

In keeping with today's theme of webcomics-related posts...Here's the QotD:

"Is chintzy one of those racist code words, like "gyp"? I await the terse communiques from Lower Chintzia."

-Penny Arcade's Tycho Brahe

By the way, the first Penny Arcade book, Attack of the Bacon Robots, is worth every penny (heh). It's a funny thing shelling out $13 for something that you can get for free, but the book is really the ideal way to read any comic. It feels more fluid to read; easier to consume some how. Now I'm thinking about buying the first Starslip Crisis book and the new Wigu book...Should Questionable Content ever be available in book form, I may swoon--or something.

Woah...

They're not kidding when they call it infinite canvas...

Thanks For Sharing

What's better than someone walking down a hallway having a speakerphone conversation on their cell?...Someone walking down the hallways having a speakerphone argument on their cell.

Nena was right, everyone is a Captain Kirk.

Fortune Cookie

I just opened a fortune cookie from last night that says: "Stop searching forever. Happiness is just next to you."

On my left is a PC and a laser printer, on my right is a box of cookies. Happiness?

I hope not.

BGNews Thing #2: The Horrors of File Sharing

Oh the horror, the horror of file sharing!

Today, the BGNews featured a front-page news story abount some national student group's quest to make sure we all "Download Legal", as well as a staff editorial defending their claims.

The news story was kind enough to allow campus music-guru-type Alex Merced to give the opposing side of the story; that the labels are actively screwing us, and that's why we download.

Allow me to go further...

Here is a list of albums I have purchased in the past year or two:

Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine
Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - Rabbit Fur Coat
Metric - Live It Out
Metric - Old World Underground, Where Are You Know?
Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene
Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It In People
The Arcade Fire - Funeral
Cat Power - The Greatest
Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
Stars - Set Yourself On Fire
Feist - Let It Die
Green Day - American Idiot
Modest Mouse - Good News For People Who Love Bad News
Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antarctica
Spiritualized - Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots 5.1
The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
The Postal Service - Give Up
The Decemberists - Picaresque
Rilo Kiley - More Adventurous
The Shins - Oh, Inverted World
Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
Cake - Fashion Nugget
Cake - Comfort Eagle

That's 28 legitimate, legal CD purchases that would not have happened were it not for the fact that I had already heard (and loved) these albums through file sharing.

Were it not for file sharing, I probably would not have ever heard of half of those albums. I'm totally sure I would have never heard Feist, Stars, Cat Power, Broken Social Scene, Spiritualized, Jenny Lewis, and Sufjan Stevens (which is sad because that's some of the best music I've ever heard). I'm totally sure I would have dismissed American Idiot and Extraordinary Machine had I not heard the whole albums first.

And that's the point. File sharing is the best advertisement for music that's ever been invented. With file sharing you can listen to a greater variety of music than 99% of radio stations out there will ever provide you with. You can't explore music with traditional options. It simply isn't possible. Even with something like iTunes, you're limited to 30 second clips...I'm sorry, that's not good enough. How many people would have bought Dark Side of the Moon if they had just heard 30 second chunks of it? It's the brilliance of the whole package that matters.

The problem here is that I am not an idiot. I will not buy an album because I heard one good song on the radio or saw an artist on TV. I want brilliant albums with brilliant songs, and the only way to find things like that is to listen to whole albums (especially considering the assinine state of music reviews).

At the same time, consider the technical side of "Download Legal". They want you to buy DRMed garbage. I refuse to buy a whole album on a medium that has been purposely broken. Music is a shared social experience. If I can't send something I love to a friend, than there's no point in buying it. If I'm limited were I put it (such as what brand digital audio player I chose to buy), there's no point in buying it.

BGNews Thing #1: President's Day Hillarity

Right-Wing BGNews columnist Alan Calcaterra writes some hillarious shit, I must say. Today, he wrote what starts out being a perfectly innocuous column about President's Day facts:

President's Day is today, and most people think this is a meaningless holiday.

It actually does have a lot of meaning because it was created for the celebration of all the presidents of the United States.

Originally, George Washington's birthday and Abraham Lincoln's birthday were two separate federal holidays in February until 1968, when Congress passed the Uniform Holidays Bill.

The bill, however, didn't become effective until 1971, combining Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays into one day called President's Day. It exists to honor all presidents and it is celebrated on the third Monday of February.

See?...Good wholesome President's Day fun. But, Alan is a right-wing blowhard, and that means that on President's Day, he has an irresistable temptation to start worshipping Ronald Reagan. It's like a moth drawn to a flame. So, lets go to the next page...

TBN, which is the most-watched religious network according to the Neilson ratings, is airing the award-winning documentary "In the Face of Evil: Reagan's War in Word and Deed," which is about Ronald Reagan and the 40-year campaign against the Soviet Union and communism.

Oh, there it goes...This is actually a triple word score for Alan, because he mentions TBN, Reagan, and communism in the same sentence. It's like a reactionary shish kabob.

The film has been getting great reviews and broke box office records in multiple cities when it was released in 2004.

It is considered one of the best documentaries on Reagan and the Cold War, and TBN is expecting high ratings for this President's Day feature.

The documentary is based on Peter Schweizer s best-selling novel "Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism." This book is best known for saying that Reagan achieved the final victory over the Soviet Union through direct confrontation.

So, in honor of all of the presidents, go see a right-wing propaganda film today!...

I consider him to be the greatest president of the 20th century. His contribution to ending the Cold War and fighting communism was one of the biggest victories ever in U.S. history because it was the first time the U.S. fought against a superpower with nuclear weapons.

O RLY? FDR says hi.

Message Board Post of the Day

Bless you, GAF:

In the last couple days my PC has shut off a few times out of nowhere. It is usually preceeding by a message that my video card isn't getting enough power and that the settings are being turned down.

I havent changed anything with my PC's setup in months. Is this just a problem of my PC not getting enough power?

On the back of the Power Supply there is a red switch. I have it on 110. Do you think turning it to 240 would help?

I'm really clueless here. Thanks GAF.

It Never Fails

It's after 2AM, and I have found yet another cool thing...

uBrowser is an experimental Mozilla based browser that renders everything through OpenGL. Want to see cnn.com waving like a flag? Slashdot mapped on a sphere? Digg on a cube? Digg scrolling by like the intro to a Star Wars movie? This is the browser for you.

Quote of the Day

Today's QotD comes from a poster named Axolotl on Fark:

I'm old enough to remember when we were the good guys.

The US did not invade without prior attack.

The US did not torture.

The US believed in the right to public trial.

The US did not spy on its own citizens.

The US had legitimate popular elections.

The US was a role model for other nations.

The Most Merciful Thing

Once again, it's the wee hours of the morning and I stumbled upon something incredibly cool. Behold the 128k mp3 internet stream of MIT's campus radio station, and their 1-2AM program on Mondays called "The Most Merciful Thing". Basically, imagine three nerds with microphones talking about odd science and politics while Holst's "The Planets" plays softly in the background.

Still A Unique Problem

I have noted in the past how I tend to find the coolest things on the Internet after 2:00AM. This explains why I was watching Abbott and Costello's "Who's On First" routine at 6:00AM.

What's In A Name?

For those of us who can't afford real Nixie Clocks, there's now a Konfa...err...Yahoo Widget Engine widget that simulates the experience.

See, this is the problem with them calling it Yahoo Widget Engine...Saying something is a "Yahoo Widget Engine widget" uses four words, one of them twice, where saying Konfabulator widget is rather more concise. You can't just say "widget" for simplicity, since there are something like a half-dozen incompatible ways of putting widgets on one's desktop.

Really, calling it Yahoo Widget Engine screams "we're marketing droids with no creativity". It screams "we're bundling all kinds of useless shit with this neat thing". It screams "turn off the lights, the party's over".

The whole point of the word Konfabulator was that while it was literally nonsense, it sounded exactly like a word that described what the thing did would sound like. "Konfab" gives one a sense of infinite possibility and "-ulator" sounds like machine. It's a machine that does lots of stuff, which is exactly what it was. It's a platform for making little doohickies.

The whole point of the word Konfabulator is that it sounds exactly like "widget engine" without saying somehting as needlessly dry as "widget engine". It sounds like something that Willy Wonka would be selling. It was the perfect way to position the product. "We're the slightly silly guys," it says. "We're the one's with the imagination". These are the people who use something called Spidermonkey. These are the people who offer a Werewolf Monitor. Konfabulator is Willy Wonka rolling down a carpet.

Yahoo Widget Engine sounds like something you try to sell a CIO. Willy Wonka becomes a PR flack. If they had the slightest bit of talent over there, they would have called it "Yahoo Konfabulator" or even better, "Konfabulator, by Yahoo".

"But, but, but..." the no-talent marketing hacks go, "Konfabulator doesn't really tell people what the thing does. Yahoo Widget Engine makes more sense". Does it? Ever actually seen anything in real life called a widget?

The whole problem is that what hese little desktop programs are too hard to concisely describe. Apple's Dashboard name tries to make an analogy to all of the meters on one's car dashboard with their widgets. It's not a bad idea, to a point. They're both small instruments designed to tell people things they want to know. You're current speed is a lot like the outside temperature in that regard. These widgets work well for "at a glance" information.

But the angle that the name Dashboard misses that the name Konfabulator attempts to hint at is that the information your receive is infinitely customizable. You can have a widget telling you where the ISS is right now. You can have a widget tell you where earthquakes are occuring. The possibilites are endless. It's crucial that the name of the product express those possibilites. That's why you need a creative name like Konfabulator, because the name Yahoo Widget Engine sounds like "we take a dump on your desktop".

Kristofer Straub Is Fully Responsible. He Is Sorry.

This Checkerboard Nightmare "Blamination" is hillarious. "I'm in prison" is the new "It's such the don't".