A monkey caught stealing's Journal

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WM3
Just watched a crime drama that had a fairly heavy satanic panic motif, which got me wondering as to the status of the West Memphis Three. Turns out that a large amount of forensic and DNA evidence which could very well help exonerate the three has come up and will be presented in court starting in September. In short, if you've heard about the case off and on since the three were convicted (fourteen years ago, Christ) but, like me, never got around to donating some cash towards their defense fund, it sounds as though now might be the time to change that.
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"Iron Man" was great fun - too bad the Ghostface cameo got cut. Will have to wait for DVD. Also, stick around 'til the end of the credits.
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Fresh pot o' coffee on the go, time to dance with the theory chapter of the thesis again.

Current Music: NIN, "The Slip"

moving on
METAL: It gets things done! A blizzard of blackened death metal prompted some serious Derrida and Descartes drillin'. Still behind on the theoretical framework end of the thesis, but I'm feeling up to the task.
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Two kwik kweries for non-thesis projects that occasionally dot the hazy horizon of future work:

-Can anyone recommend an affordable, well-annotated edition of the King James bible? Preferably historical/literary annotation, maybe with some notes on variant texts if we're lucky? Hell, maybe with the apocrypha in the appendix? I don't have anything resembling an edition suitable for critical work.

-Anyone remember the specific text/section where Descartes goes on his mechanist rant about how advanced Cartesian plotting could map the totality of the clockwork universe?
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The Tommy Ramone business, by request: M and I were walking down the road to a local gallery show to which she'd donated some pieces for auction. On the way we noticed a flyer for a band called Uncle Monk, heavily accentuating Tommy Ramone's presence in said band. The gig was that night, and just around the corner from the gallery. A friend whom we met at the gallery had heard that it was a country type deal, but that was about all she knew.

We nipped down to the space where the show was just getting started - the basement space beneath a larger pub. Standing next to a 30-something woman with an acoustic guitar was little old Tamas, bearded and ponytailed as he's been for quite some time, holding...a mandolin. Yep. While a cheesy pub rock band churned out thud-dumb covers above us, sending wads of bass into the basement, Uncle Monk played an hour's worth of sweet, simple, traditional bluegrass. They were very quiet and unassuming, and between the noise from upstairs and the chatter of soused middle-aged couples who'd wandered in randomly it was far from an ideal environment, but as a rule the crowd was made up of folks like us: kids there for the sheer novelty of seeing the only surviving original Ramone (Christ, that's still so depressing to type), but who were won over by the plain beauty of the music.

I bought a copy of the CD from Tommy afterwards and had it signed by him and the guitarist, Claudia Tienan. He was impressed with the rapid-fire method of CD case unwrapping I learned from Alex a few years back. "Could you hear okay?" he asked. We told him that we'd just moved closer to the stage as the show went on. Loads of people were getting him to sign Ramones ephemera and getting their pictures taken with him, so we took our leave - although if I'd thought of it I wouldn't have minded telling how much I loved "Tim" by The Replacements which he produced. We grabbed the poster that had first alerted us to the show off the phonebooth it was taped to on the walk home. The show was a completely random occurrence and not at all what we'd expected, but it felt perfect for the quiet, sentimental mood we were in that night.

*vomit*
What's that, right-wingers? Yr recent attempt to legislate what gets taught in academia in the interest of "intellectual parity" was a total bust? Well, this time you won't have to worry about having to muck up yr hands by having to engage in tiresome "dialogue" with those who disagree with you (and to be perfectly honest, it was never yr strong suit) - now you can just bribe schools to put the propaganda of yr choice onto curricula! And what better opus with which to celebrate this joyous new penetration of virgin land by the free market than that paean to the glorious flexing of industrialist muscle, "Atlas Shrugged"!

As if Channel One News wasn't disgusting enough...

the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated
I'm not sure if it was my goofy tribute to Heston that prompted this, but it occurs to me that there are loads of people who have been kicking ass for decades, but who have been forgotten by the public at large and remain so until their inevitable kicking of the bucket. I'm getting a bit sick of posthumous shout-outs (recent ones include Baudrillard and Vonnegut), so I'm raising a glass to the following folk who are still doing what they've always done and are doing it well:

Fredric Jameson
JG Ballard
JD Salinger (not that he's been anything of a public figure for decades)
Thomas Pynchon (not that he ever was a public figure)
Pete Seeger
Chuck Berry
Jerry Lee Lewis
Brian Wilson (the youngest on this list if I'm not mistaken)

Feel free to contribute yr own. I was tempted to toss Bowie on the list, but eulogizing a 61 year-old (yes, I remember that big "Bowie's 50th" bash like it was yesterday) seemed a tad premature, so let's call 62 the youngest one can be to earn a spot.

"Where's your messiah now?"

(insert 'cold dead hands' joke here)

silvergreen

source
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All post-metal albums can be derived from the function (Filth^x)(Just For A Day) where x is the amount of dex consumed during the recording sessions. This is the truth. I challenge you to find fault with this.
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New York reigned over me. The only experience that's come within striking distance of my two months in Praha. Detailed entries and photos to follow.
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$> cd /pub/
$> cd more beer

Current Mood: goofy
Current Music: jesu

More Wire goodness
What Do Real Thugs Think of The Wire? NYT columnist watches and chews the fat about Season 5 with slangers past and present. First installment here.

Current Music: Iron Maiden

"ain't no nostalgia to this shit here"
In honour of the passing of one of the greatest works of art to ever grace the small screen...

( A few of my favourite scenes from The Wire )

In reality, though, there are far too many moments - moments that have slowly built over the course of immaculately constructed arcs. Some have criticized the show's documentary style, which precludes some of the more stylistically out-there moves made by shows like The Sopranos. But as the newspaper arc showed, the devil's in the details, which sometimes is only revealed when the camera's on more than just our convoluted, grandiose protagonists. There's a moment in the Sopranos that I've always loved - a distraught Tony arrives at Melfi's office, only to find it empty. A passing janitor with a floor polisher explains that she's gone on vacation. A storm knocks out the electricity, and Tony is left in the dark. The janitor, howeever, stays in the frame, briefly looks around, and walks away, leaving the polisher where it sits making no attempt to move it or turn it off. Something about that scene always struck me, and I guess we might take from it that there's more to the scenes we live out than our own egos. The Wire never let us forget this. No matter how mythic a character's journey might become, everyone's a heartbeat away from being edged out of the shot by someone or something in the background. The devil's in the details, like a child tormenting a cat.

Current Music: Method Man, "Is It Me"

nyc is all i see
I'm heading to New York for the first time in about a month. I'll be there for about four full days, and so I'm looking for "you've gotta check out" recommendations. I know that a sizable chunk of you folk have lived there/do live there/have stayed for extended periods of time/have played shows in NY, so lend a wide-eyed, fresh-off-the-plane Canadian kid the wisdom of yr experience. I'm thinking off avoiding most of the big usual tourist spots (unless there are a lot of votes for the Empire State or whatnot), and of course I'll be checking concert listings for those "holy shit, I didn't think they ever toured outside of Europe" acts, but if you know of something you think I'd go for, speak up!

Current Music: check the icon

wok up a storm
Random experimentation in the kitchen tonight yielded a nice n' savory tofu stir fry that went well with some "Angel" binging:

Dice one onion and two cloves garlic. Cook in canola oil til slightly softened. Dice and add one package medium firmness tofu, as well as 3/4 cup crushed peanuts. Add curry powder to taste, stir to somewhat mash tofu. Increase heat incrementally to cook off liquid, eventually allowing tofu to sear.

Reduce heat and add three diced zucchini. Add two tablespoons curry paste, two tablespoons mustard, and four tablespoons soy sauce. Leave on low/medium heat, cover, and cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Serve on rice.

Methinks it's the mustard and peanuts that make this work.
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In flashier vegan news, this attempt to get into a dust-up with Roger Clemens perfectly sums up why I wish PETA would grow up. Not content with bombarding the public with the tits and grizzed jawlines of every celeb veg*n they can talk into a photoshoot, they'll use an (admittedly odd) media non sequitur in an attempt to be typically self-righteous. As usual, they fail to see that the animal-consuming portion of the public won't see anything witty in their cheap jabs at Clemens (leave that to Leno, guys), and will, as usual, instead be put off by their sanctimonious holier-than-thou posturing, further alienating them from the AR message PETA claims to be furthering.

A girl handed me a PETA flier on the street the other day. It laid out the case against fur in plain image and text which never stooped to insult the reader. Were I a person who'd never given much thought to fur, I'm guessing it would've provoked some thought. I really wish that PETA would spend more of their (enormous) resource pool on ground-level advocacy like this and no-kill shelter/adoption programs (Christ knows there are enough that could desperately use some of PETA's cash), rather than tacky tabloid-level celeb courting and baiting. There's a reason why most people's perception of PETA are of Pam Anderson and the like, rather than people like that girl trying to get a message out in a forthright and honest manner.

Current Music: Rosetta Stone, "Deeper"/The Horatii, "That's My Girl"

checks and balances
A lot of Canucks less interested in the US primaries than myself have asked me who I preferred out of the initial crop of delegates. When I said "Chris Dodd", blank stares were about all I got. Fair enough - the guy was never a front runner and I never expected that he'd get much traction. For context: here's Dodd speaking yesterday for a lost cause - attempting to remove immunity for telecoms from a bill which would effectively permanently sweep any chances of any parties facing prosecution in the warrantless wiretapping scandal under the rug. The Dodd/Feingold (here's hoping Russ runs in '12) amendment was soundly defeated, with no less than 18 Democratic senators voting against it. Neither Obama nor Hillary were in that group of 18, but I can't help but worry that rolling over in the face of the systematic dismantling of the supposedly cherished "checks and balances" is part of the bipartisan "healing" we've been hearing so much about this primary season.

Current Music: Love, "Alone Again Or"

errata
Two quick queries for P'boro folk:

-Would anyone with a GameCube be willing to lend me a controller for about a month? Failed to bring mine back with me and I want to run through "Killer 7".
-Anyone (non-veggie) want some Thai red curry paste? My folks gave it to me without any of us noticing it has anchovy paste.

Current Music: Clipse

reorderings
"Everybody knows what terrifying and intolerable pictures a realist painting could give to the industrial, mechanical, chemical, hormonal, and genetic violence to which man has been submitting animal life for the past two centuries. Everybody knows what the production, breeding, transport, and slaughter of these animals has become. Instead of thrusting these images in your faces or awakening them in your memory, something that would be both too easy and endless, let me simply say a word about this "pathos." If these images are "pathetic," if they evoke sympathy, it is also because they "pathetically" open the immense question of pathos and the pathological, precisely, that is, of suffering, pity, and compassion; and the place that has to be accorded to the interpretation of this compassion, to the sharing of this suffering among the living, to the law, ethics, and politics that must be brought to bear upon this experience of compassion. For what has been happening now for two centuries involves a new experience of this compassion. In response to the irresistible but unacknowledged unleashing and the organized disavowal of this torture, voices are raised-minority, weak, marginal voices, little assured of their discourse, of their right to discourse and of the enactment of their discourse within the law, as a declaration of rights - in order to protest, in order to appeal...to what is still presented in such a problematic way as animal rights, in order to awaken us to our responsibilities and our obligations with respect to the living in general, and precisely to this fundamental compassion that, were we to take it seriously, would have to change even the very basis...of the philosophical problematic of the animal."
-Jacques Derrida, "The Animal That Therefore I Am (More To Follow)"

...And while it's that "philosophical problematic" that's at hand in my thesis work, I'm still enough of an empiricist to get a kick out of furriers going tits-up:

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On unrelated notes, shout-outs to:

-"Cypher", the second film from "Cube" director Vincenzo Natali (who's now working on a film about animal/human hybrids) that was dumped straight to video a few years back. It's a corporate espionage thriller which, while slightly petering out with a vaguely pat closing, maintains an atmosphere as evocatively creepy as "Cube", and has just a bit in common with PKD's classic, "Ubik".
-Hypocrisy, whom Cyril recc'd yonks back. Death metal that uses the ubiquitous "melodic" tag sparingly and effectively.
-Super Mario Galaxy. The vindication that us Nintendo fan boys knew would come. The ingenuity and beauty in the level design makes one weep in much the same manner that one did years back upon first experiencing Super Mario World. May the Flying Spaghetti Monster keep Miyamoto snug and secure in his tender and starchy embrace.

Current Music: Hypocrisy, "Into The Abyss"

i are serious fremen. this are serious galactic trade war.

Current Mood: blackcurrant tea
Current Music: Donovan, "Hurdy Gurdy Man"

your pulmonary trembles in your outstretched arm
RIP VAMPIRA

She plays her mouth into a smile
And offers that he stay a while
Two hearts that beat as one
And eyes that hardly ever saw the sun
Hollywood babbles on
She lays a wreath of lilies on his grave
His flame gone along with the love he never gave
Not to be seduced by those red lips
Two dimensional comic clips
Hollywood babbles on
on and on and on and on and...

disruptor
I'm bringing it smooth n' crafty to Skank tonight, slinkin' up yr spine like a kitten's paws 'til yr central nervous system gets disconnected all strych-nine style. No Slayer or gettin' 'faced and stopping Collide mid-track. I promise.
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Student loan comin' though like a pinch hitter. I get to keep eating curry 'til summer!
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Wu-Tang was epic and hoarse-throat awesome (and a suprisingly smooth road trip/border/car rental experience to boot). I'll just link to R-Lex's thoughts and say "what he said".
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Finally got around to listening to the new Jesu album after much haranguing by well-meaning folks of good taste. Very, VERY tasty: exactly the sort of thing I'm in the mood for. Also got around to peeping DJ Shadow's sophomore outing from a few years back. Up next: Tangerine Dream marathon.
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Reject the demagoguery of revelation and embrace the hopeful monsters of emergent forms, a'ight?

Current Mood: good

no trivia
Heading out the door to see the immortal Wu-Tang. This is nuts.

"Kill Doug Szathkey!"

r_lex Luthor, that

cheekydevil and I blow out the oh-three-plus-two-plus-two tonight at the Lotus: CD decks set to maximum annihilation, all power from main deflector dish diverted to liver support. Come out n' say hola if you've been studiously avoiding me thus far (*coughbenjosh*).
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I have been making a right pig of myself over at the folks'. I've put on four or five pounds of holiday gut via baking, pasta, chips n' guac, beer, and all other manner of X-Mas gorging. We'll see if I can double that before heading back to P'boro and losing it all thru the patented ramen n' scotch/no sleep diet.
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Two days 'til Wu-Tang. TIGER STYLE!

silliness
Argh. I just caved and did something so 2002. No, I didn't join Facebook, I contributed to something more insidious. Curious about who Lemmy & co. are supporting in the '08 US presidential election? Then click here...

Full credit for the idea has to go to Maddy, who pretended to mishear the lyrics while I was having my morning coffee n' Motorhead today.

Cultural sludge from Thee Olde ThouTobe
-As if poor old Immortal hadn't received enough razzing for their two appearances in the infamous "10 Most Ridiculous Black Metal Pics" list, here's what has to be THE Most Ridiculous Black Metal Video of all time.

-Gackt trounces Puffy Amiyumi at the crazy-fun "Fighting Mania" Fist of the North Star Video game. Gackt, apparently a seasoned pro, fights without gloves and uses only one hand. If I'm not mistaken, he also seems to be mocking Puffy's dress sense at the beginning.

-Randy "The Macho Man" Savage no longer resides on planet Earth. Not content with releasing quite possibly the worst hip hop diss track ever, he's now, well...just click.

Current Music: Cocteau Twins, "Pearly Dewdrops' Drops"