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1. 'The world is everything that is the case.'
7. 'Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.'
When heavyweights get together for a relaxed evening of recording, you know something memorable is about to occur. Such was the case a year ago when Tom Carter was in Philadelphia staying with Bardo Pond. I've seen many one-off collaborations turn out disastrous, but sometimes things really click; sometimes a group of artists are just completely on the same wave length. In those instances, a truly memorable experience is created. On their own, Carter and Bardo Pond are each amazing sonic wizards. Their lush creations are full of atmosphere and life. When I heard they had collaborated, I was unprepared for the resulting compositions.(c) all rights reserved, Brad Rose and Foxy Digitalis
Sprawling over 65 minutes of complex, densely populated landscapes, "4/23/03" is a minor masterpiece. It is an adventure through the depths of the collective imagination of Carter and Bardo Pond. These pieces are long, but they are open and inviting. They ease the listener into their womb before allowing him/her to be fully engulfed. This record is truly massive. Rarely does one hear long drones like these that carry so much weigh on their shoulders. Each track is a struggle within itself; it's like this sound is trying to set itself, and the listener, free.
There are five total tracks here, all of which are over 10 minutes except the short "4:15." You can probably guess how long that one is. The length of the tracks gives them plenty of time to develop. It takes a lot of patience to let the music dictate where it's going and when it's going to get there, but Carter and Bardo Pond do just that. Nothing here is rushed. The aforementioned "4:15" is the most melodic track. It may be short, but it leaves a lasting impression. Carter skirts over the top of a thick river of molasses laid down by BP. A massive glob of low-end, bass drones hum along underneath everything; it's the foundation and gives Carter a shifting environment to explore with his guitar. Midway through, it sounds as if there is a UFO taking off and landing in their living room. It's fitting, though, as these recordings expand toward space. There's no way a living room in Philadelphia could contain these beasts.
On the fantastic closing track, "19:43" (it's also the longest piece here), things unfold slowly, but the overall effect of this piece climbs mountains. It's huge. Isobel Sollenberger's beautiful voice is the key to this piece, and are the only vocals on this album. Her voice hovers like a guardian angel watching over the proceedings, making sure nothing goes awry. This is also the only track in which she employs her flute. It acts as a guide, leading everyone else out of the fog and into the light. As they travel over mountains and through valleys of ambient sound, the final destination appears before them. Like an apple in their eye, they take it, devour it, and throw away the core. This is music that leaves everything on the table. The intensity of the session is audible on every strained note.
Throughout "4/23/03," the most impressive aspect is how Carter's guitar playing mixes with Bardo Pond's music. While obvious similarities exist, they seem to have very different approaches. Bardo Pond's albums are usually filled with a boat-load of effects that thicken their sound. Carter chooses a no-nonsense approach of stripped-down, clean guitar. Because of this, it is easy to distinguish his playing on this record. It's this clash of approaches that makes this record so great, though. Neither artist is willing to give an inch, and in that battle they produce some startling sounds. There's this sense that Carter is Bardo Pond's conscience, keeping them firmly grounded in reality. On certain moments, without his clean, crisp guitar, these tracks would lose it and just drift into nothingness.
In a year that has been full of amazing music, it only gets better. "4/23/03" is easily one of the most amazing documents I've heard so far. This is music with a soul. It may be buried under a mountain of space rock, but at its core, this album is warm and alive. In a world where many collaborations produce less-than-desirable results, Tom Carter and Bardo Pond avoid any pitfalls with grace. These five tracks are spellbinding. Anyone with a fleeting interest in improvised music would be well advised to add this to their collection. Magnificent.
This Blog will bring you news from the East on a week to week basis. Launch estimated around 29 of September, from Banglamphu area..So all the very very best from this strip of land, dear Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven! Believe in the holy contour of life and try to blow as deep as you want to blow!
5000 Fingers Of Dr. T
Attack of the 50 Ft Woman
Babes In Toyland
Double Indemnity
Description
dick is a killer is a satirical take on the george bush's proposed constitutional amendment regarding marriage. the track is a cut up of the president's 2004 state of the union address, over a classic rock progression and simple break beat. i guess i just don't think it's right for the president of the united states to propose an amendment that codifies discrimination against, depending on which estimates you believe, 5-10% of the population.
Credits
vocals: george bush
all alse: rx
*except organ: josh honigstock
Lyrics
mr. speaker, the president of the united states...
mr. speaker...
mr. speaker, members of congress, mom and dad, last month a girl in lincoln, rhode island sent me a letter.
It began, "dear george w. bush, if there's anything you know, please send me a letter.
ps. kiss my ass.
dick dick dick dick dick is a killer.
it began at the end of june, in the casa blanca.
vice president cheney, you showed the way.
terrified and innocent, the desire growing stronger, submitting to the whim of one brutal man.
i feel free. i feel free. i feel free. i feel free. dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick is a killer.
i feel free.
last august 11, on the deck of a carrier in the pacific, i gave to you my complete commitment, and it is right.
i love you and i do not want to lose you.
my purposes are just, and true.
activity is increasing, and dick is on the rise.
by executive order we're on the manhunt, aboard the star ship enterprise.
the once all powerful ruler of iraq was found in a hole, and president clinton fucked it.
true.
president clinton fucked it.
ow! and farmers felt the sorrow.
yeah, farmers felt the sorrow.
i feel free.
farmers felt the sorrow, and one reason is clear...
dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick is a killer...
(...my ass)...fuck yourself, kiss my ass.
and i want you.
it's difficult to talk about.
and i want, 'cos you set me free.
and i want you, and i want you, and i want you, just as surely as dick is a killer...
(...my ass)....suck fuck my ass suck fuck my ass suck my dick fuck my ass
suck fuck my ass suck fuck my ass suck fuck my ass suck my dick fuck my ass suck my dick fuck my ass dick is a killer...
(...kiss my ass) fuck yourself kiss my ass.
i believe that god made me a woman.
i feel it in my heart, and this bitch's voice must be heard.
a sex change is the only certain way to preserve, the sanctity of marriage. we a living in historic times.
we are living in a time of great change.
our leadership a...
If you want wild living FAST!
And if you want to end up giving your all,
Let's...because, pussycat she's living
Reckless pussycat she's riding high,
If you think that you can tame her,
Well just you try!
Yeah! Just you try-y!
1. "Graphic novel" is a disagreeable term, but we will use it anyway on the understanding that graphic does not mean anything to do with graphics and that novel does not mean anything to do with novels. (In the same way that "Impressionism" is not really an applicable term; in fact it was first used as an insult and then adopted in a spirit of defiance.)
2. Since we are not in any way referring to the traditional literary novel, we do not hold that the graphic novel should be of the supposed same dimensions or physical weight. Thus subsidiary terms such as "novella" and "novelette" are of no use here and will only serve to confuse onlookers as to our goal (see below), causing them to think we are creating an illustrated version of standard literature when in fact we have bigger fish to fry; that is, we are forging a whole new art which will not be bound by the arbitrary rules of an old one.
3. "Graphic novel" signifies a movement rather than a form. Thus we may refer to "antecedents" of the graphic novel, such as Lynd Ward's woodcut novels but we are not interested in applying the name retroactively.
4. While the graphic novelist regards his various antecedents as geniuses and prophets without whose work he could not have envisioned his own, he does not want to be obliged to stand in line behind William Hogarth's Rake's Progress every time he obtains a piece of publicity for himself or the art in general.
5. Since the term signifies a movement, or an ongoing event, rather than a form, there is nothing to be gained by defining it or "measuring" it. It is approximately thirty years old, though the concept and name had been bandied about for at least ten years earlier. As it is still growing it will in all probability have changed its nature by this time next year.
6. The goal of the graphic novelist is to take the form of the comic book, which has become an embarrassment, and raise it to a more ambitious and meaningful level. This normally involves expanding its size, but we should avoid getting into arguments about permissible size. If an artist offers a set of short stories as his new graphic novel, (as Eisner did with A Contract with God) we should not descend to quibbling. We should only ask whether his new graphic novel is a good or bad set of short stories. If he or she uses characters that appear in another place, such as Jimmy Corrigan's various appearances outside of the core book, or Gilbert Hernandez' etc. or even characters that we do not want to allow into our "secret society," we shall not dismiss them on this account. If his book no longer looks anything like comic books we should not quibble as to that either. We should only ask whether it increases the sum total of human wisdom.
7. The term graphic novel shall not be taken to indicate a trade format (such as "trade paperback" or "hardcover" or "prestige format"). It can be in unpublished manuscript form, or serialized in parts. The important thing is the intent, even if the intent arrives after the original publication.
8. The graphic novelists' subject is all of existence, including their own life. He or she disdains "genre fiction" and all its ugly clichés, though they try to keep an open mind. They are particularly resentful of the notion, still prevalent in many places, and not without reason, that the comic book is a sub-genre of science fiction or heroic fantasy.
9. Graphic novelists would never think of using the term graphic novel when speaking among their fellows. They would normally just refer to their "latest book" or their "work in progress" or "that old potboiler" or even "comic" etc. The term is to be used as an emblem or an old flag that is brought out for the call to battle or when mumbling an enquiry as to the location of a certain section in an unfamiliar bookstore. Publishers may use the term over and over until it means even less than the nothing it means already.
Furthermore, graphic novelists are well aware that the next wave of cartoonists will choose to work in the smallest possible forms and will ridicule us all for our pomposity.
10. The graphic novelist reserves the right to deny any or all of the above if it means a quick sale.
sept 16, 2004So the new swedish wonder in music, Jens Lekman, writes that he's finally getting some recognition! Way to go mr. Lekman, all the best from Belgium, not bad for a man who prefers to be a dog.
good evening,
it has come to my attention that i've been voted the 15th sexiest man in Sweden in magazine Elle. how and why this happened i'm not sure but i've already started working on my new sexy lifestyle so that i can live up to this title. it's hard work...
Method
Remove the crusts from the ciabatta and tear up into rough 2.5cm/
1 inch pieces. Throw into a bowl with the bacon and lemon zest. Divide each mozzarella into 8 similar-sized pieces and add to the bowl. Keeping the leaf tips on the rosemary sticks, remove the lower leaves and then smash these up in a pestle and mortar with the garlic. Stir in 8 tablespoons of olive oil, then pour this mixture over the bread, cheese and bacon. Marinate for anything from 15 minutes to an hour.
Thread your mozzarella and bread on to your rosemary sticks, weaving the bacon in and around. Line up the kebabs on a wire rack and place under the grill on a very high heat until the bread and bacon are golden and crisp and the mozzarella is nice and gooey. While this is grilling make sure you keep an eye on it, as it can turn into a charred kebab very quickly. To make the dressing, chop up the olives and mix with the chilli, 5 tablespoons of the lemon juice and the same of olive oil. Season to taste.
To serve the kebabs, dress the herbs with half of the olive dressing right at the last minute so the leaves stay nice and fresh, then use the other half of the dressing drizzled over the kebabs.
Try this: Do exactly the same as above but swap the mozzarella for cubes of fresh white fish such as haddock, cod or monkfish.
While Stipe and Mills have developed other interests in their adult life beyond the band and music, Buck hasn't. He recently filled up the iPods of everyone who worked on REM's new album with songs that he thought they might like - and considering iPods can take up to 10,000 songs, this was a Herculean feat of downloading. "He's become obsessed with it," says Stipe. "He has done this for everyone who worked on our new record, including the engineers, who he had only known for a couple of weeks. What's interesting is to discover what he thinks we should be listening to. Mike got entire albums by Miles Davis, for example, while I only got the greatest hits. It must have taken him weeks, but he really isn't interested in anything apart from his family and music," adds Mills. "He reads books, and plays music, and hangs out with his family. That's it. So he loves the iPod because it gives him a chance to go through thousands of records that he hasn't played for the last 20 years."
This film is delightful in the way it finds its own way to tell its own story. There was no model to draw on, but Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, who wrote and directed it, have made a great film by trusting to Pekar's artistic credo, which amounts to: What you see it what you get. The casting of Giamatti and Davis is perfect, but of course it had to be, or the whole enterprise would have collapsed. Giamatti is not a million miles away from other characters he has played, in movies such as "Storytelling," "Private Parts" and "Man on the Moon," but Davis achieves an uncanny transformation. I saw her again recently in "The Secret Lives of Dentists," playing a dentist, wife and mother with no points in common with Joyce Brabner--not in look, not in style, not in identity. Now here she is as Joyce. I've met Joyce Brabner, and she's Joyce Brabner.
Movies like this seem to come out of nowhere, like free-standing miracles. But "American Splendor" does have a source, and its source is Harvey Pekar himself--his life, and what he has made of it. The guy is the real thing. He found Joyce, who is also the real thing, and Danielle found them, and as I talked with her I could see she was the real thing, too. She wants to go into showbiz, she told me, but she doesn't want to be an actress, because then she might be unemployable after 40. She said she wants to work behind the scenes. More longevity that way. Harvey nodded approvingly. Go for the pension.
SheffieldAnd then there also seems to be OneSixty, "the world's first SMS text message literary magazine" as their banner suggests. Check out their first three issues on their website which contain several 'poems that can be delivered as text messages'. Mike Hession describes it like this:
Sun on maisonette windows
sends speed-camera flashes tinting through tram cables
startling drivers
dragging rain-waterfalls in their wheels
I drive on
Gentlemen.So a new revolution in poetry seems to be born. Soon you'll probably be able to give out your mobile number and start receiving your daily poems. And when will the first real well known sms poet stand up?
We are here today
in order to witness
the single most amazing
phenomenon of the
twentieth century.
May I present to you
the one,
the only
when u called earlier,
I don't know whether u said
u'd call back or not,
so thought I'd let u know
I'll b leaving by 7.00pm,
& back by 5.00am ur time.
Tke care!
An excerpt:
January 15, 1953
Hotel Colon, Panama
Dear Allen,
I stopped off here to have my piles out. Wouldn't do to go back among the Indians with piles I figured...I checked into the hospital junk sick and spent four days there. They would only give me three shots of morphine and I couldn't sleep from pain and heat and deprivation besides which there was a Panamanian hernia case in the same room with me and his friends came and stayed all day and half the night - one of them did in fact stay until midnight.
Recall walking by some American women in the corridor who looked like officers' wives. One of them was saying, "I don't know why, but I just can't eat sweets."
"You've got diabetes, lady," I said. They all whirled around and gave me an outraged stare.
After checking out of the hospital I stopped off at the U.S. Embassy. In front of the Embassy is a vacant lot with weeds and trees where boys undress to swim in the polluted waters of the bay home of a small venomous sea snake. Smell of excrement and sea water and young male lust. No letters. I stopped again to buy two ounces of paregoric. Same old Panama, whores and pimps and hustlers.
"Want nice girl?"
"Naked lady dance?"
"See me fuck my sister?"
No wonder food prices are high. They can't keep them down on the farm. They all want to come in the big city and be pimps.
I had a magazine article with me describing a joint outside Panama City called The Blue Goose. "This is anything goes joint. Dope peddlers lurk in the men's room with a hypo loaded and ready to go. Sometimes they dart out of a toilet and stick it in your arm without waiting for consent. Homosexuals run riot."
The Blue Goose looks like a Prohibition era roadhouse. A long one story building run down and covered with vines, I could hear frogs croaking in the woods and swamps around it. I remembered a prohibition era roadhouse of my adolescence, and the taste of gin rickey's in the mid west summer. (Oh my God! And the August moon in a violet sky and Billy Bradshinkel's cock. How sloppy can you get?)
Immediately, two old whores sat down at my table without being asked and ordered drinks. The bill for one round was $6.90. The only thing lurking in the men's room was an insolent demanding lavatory attendant. I may add that far from running riot in Panama I never scored for one boy there. I wonder what a Panamanian boy would be like. Probably cut. When they say anything goes, they are referring to the joint, not the customers.
Here's a great review from The Broken Face:
Pelt's music is fascinating not only for what's first visible, but also for what unfolds after numerous listenings. In the past, the visible has been dominated by meandering overtones, caught up in a gravitational swirl rotating around its own center until you've completely lost all traces with the real world, but the real world has been here all along. The dense clusters of sound dust have always had an ethnicity to them that's somehow created a secret line from peripheral territories among massive and energetic stars in the outer galaxy to the most rural part of the Appalachians. The double CD Ayahuasca was the first album where Pelt fully displayed the acoustic and folkish part of their repertoire. It's interesting to listen as one of the strangest wonders of contemporary music continues to slowly progress, and the results are even more striking than when we last heard from the trio.
The magically resonating opener "True Vine" sets the mind in the right place from the very start. It's a detailed close-up on the earth witnessed from a glowing star high in the wide-open sky. The anxious beauty of isolation and doubt has rarely been as evident in any drone music ever before. But what makes Ayahuasca the best album I've heard all year is that these kind of mind-cleansing visceral drones stand right next to traditional Appalachian folk numbers like the wonderful "The Cuckoo" and the banjo/Tibetan bowl masterpiece of "Deep Sunny South." The first disc ends with "Raga Called John, Pt 1" which possibly is the strongest track on the record. Raw Fahey-esque guitar work meshes with ethnic drone bliss created from hurdy gurdy and concertina into a hallucinatory daydream that you can and will get lost in.
The second disc starts on a similar note as the first with a long piece of dramatic bowed electronics, presumably not sculpted by human beings but by the winds and the radiation from a distant star. As with a few of the other more abstract pieces on the record it is a bit less haunting (but by no means less contemplative) than the last few outings. That doesn't apply for the manic "Bear Head Apparition" though which sounds like small drops of molten rock slowly uniting with tumultuous blocks of sound. The closing numbers are the last two parts of "Raga Called John" and what a fabulous cerebral monument of metallic scrapings and folkish drones both of them proves to be. Wherever you were at when you jumped on this journey "Pt. 2" will take you to a wholly other place over the course of its 26 minutes of mystic playing and ghostly transporting sounds. And "Pt. 3" is just as overwhelming, again combining the love for classic acoustic guitar picking with experimental yet timeless drones with an eclectic variety of instrumentation.
Ayahuasca simply has to be Pelt's ultimate achievement. How can one possibly improve after this? I don't know about that, but I'll be sure to stick around and see where they might be heading in the future. As far as this one goes, it doesn’t get any better, folks.
If I have been feeling worried or sad during the day, I have a habit of recalling scenes from childhood to calm me. So it was this evening.
Your Kid's Piggy Bank Is Empty Day!
This is warning sign number two that he's addicted to the pot. Warning sign number one was when he was rude to his mother the other night. And warning sign number three is on its way. That's when he'll run through the living room naked, tearing at his own flesh, screaming "GET EM OFF ME! GET EM OFF ME!"
Just so's you can kept an eye out, here are all of the warning signs that your kid's addicted to the pot:
4) You find him in his little sister's room, forcing the barrel of a semi-automatic weapon in between her teeth (she's 9).
5) Large black people on the front step.
6) Unraked leaves.
7) He can levitate.
8) He is dead and there's nothing you can do about it now because you didn't heed the warning signs.
9) He is fathering children left and right.
10) He talks endlessly about how awesome the pot is and how it's the best thing ever.
11) When you ask him if he wants to go play mini golf with you on the weekends he just doesn't seem all that interested.
12) He has withdrawn roughly $78,000 from your bank account.
13) Snot pours out of his nose like water from a spigot.
If your kid exhibits any or all, or hell, even none, of these signs, he's probably addicted to the pot and you should beat him with a ring of keys until he's better.
Happy Your Kid's Piggy Bank Is Empty Day!
Miser as the Subject of Desire
by Slavoj Zizek
According to Lacan, thrift offers the key to what human desire is. What, then, is the status of thrift as a vice? In the Aristotelian frame of mind, it would be simple to locate thrift at the opposite extreme from prodigality, and then, of course, to construct some middle term - say, prudence, the art of moderate expenditure, avoiding both extremes - as the true virtue. However, the paradox of the miser is that he makes an excess out of moderation itself. That is to say, the standard qualification of desire focuses on its transgressive character: ethics (in the premodern sense of the 'art of living') is ultimately the ethics of moderation, of resisting the urge to go beyond certain limits, a resistance against desire which is by definition transgressive - sexual passion which consumes me totally, gluttony, destructive passion which doesn't stop even at murder... In contrast to this transgressive notion of desire, the Miser invests with desire (and thus with an excessive quality) moderation itself: do not spend, economize, retain instead of letting go - all the proverbial 'anal' qualities. And it is only THIS desire, the very anti-desire, that is desire par excellence.
So, if we want to discern the mystery of desire, we should not focus on the lover or murderer in the thrall of their passion, ready to put at stake anything and everything for it, but on the miser's attitude towards his chest, the secret place where he keeps and gathers his possessions. The mystery, of course, is that, in the figure of the miser, excess coincides with lack, power with impotence, avaricious hoarding with the elevation of the object into the prohibited/untouchable thing one can only observe, never fully enjoy. Is not the ultimate miser's aria Bartolo's A un dottor della mia sorte from Act I of Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia? Its obsessive madness perfectly renders the fact that he is totally indifferent towards the prospect of having sex with the young Rosina - he wants to marry her in order to possess and guard her in the same way a miser possesses his strongbox. In more philosophical terms, the paradox of the miser is that he unites the two incompatible ethical traditions: the Aristotelian ethics of moderation and the Kantian ethics of an unconditional demand that derails the 'pleasure principle' - the miser elevates the maxim of moderation itself into a Kantian unconditional demand. The very sticking to the rule of moderation, the very avoiding of the excess, thus generates an excess - a surplus-enjoyment - of its own.
Capitalism, however, introduces a twist into this logic: the capitalist is no longer the lone miser who sticks to his hidden treasure, taking a secret peek at it when he is alone, behind the safely locked doors, but the subject who accepts the basic paradox that the only way to preserve and multiply one's treasure is to spend it - Juliet's formula of love from the balcony scene ('the more I give, the more I have') undergoes here a perverse twist - is this formula not also the very formula of the capitalist venture? The more the capitalist invests (and borrows money in order to invest), the more he has, so that, at the end of the line, we get a purely virtual capitalist a la Donald Trump whose cash 'net worth' is practically zero or even negative, yet who passes for 'wealthy' on account of the prospect of future profits.
This basic paradox enables us to generate even phenomena like the most elementary marketing strategy, which is to appeal to the consumer's thrift: is the ultimate message of the publicity clips not 'Buy this, spend more, and you will economize, you will get a surplus for free!'? Recall the proverbial male-chauvinist image of the wife who comes home from a shopping spree and informs her husband: 'I've just spared us $200! Although I wanted to buy only one jacket, I bought three, and thus got a $200 discount!' The embodiment of this surplus is the toothpaste tube whose last third is differently colored, with the large letters: 'YOU GET 30% FREE!' - I am always tempted to say in such a situation: 'OK, then give me only this free 30% of the paste!' In capitalism, the definition of the 'proper price' is a DISCOUNT price. The worn-out designation 'society of consumption' thus holds only if one conceives of consumption as the mode of appearance of its very opposite, thrift.
"From my window, the deep solemn massive street. Cellar-shops where the lamps burn all day, under the shadow of top-heavy balconied facades, dirty plaster frontages embossed with scrollwork and heraldic devices. The whole city is like this: street leading into street of houses like shabby monumental safes crammed with the tarnished valuables and second-hand furniture of a bankrupt middle class.
I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all of this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed."
(Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin)
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