Blue's News

This Just In: the Pope Is Still Dead [W. Post]

Nothing else is going on in the world, really. It's about as exciting as the Cherry Blossom Cam.

44 U.S. Troops Injured In Attack on Iraqi Jail [from DN! headlines]

At Abu Ghraib? Well, you reap what you sow.

Telescopes see 'distant planet' [BBC]

Because it is in a young system, the planet is relatively hot.

Young? Hot? I'm totally moving there.

Japan's virgin wives turn to sex volunteers [Guardian]

"The women who come to see me love their husbands and aren't looking for a divorce," [Kim] told the Guardian. "The problem is that their husbands lose interest in sex or don't want sex from the start. Many men think of their wives as substitute mothers, not as women with emotional and sexual needs."

Just when I think Japan is pretty weird, it always gets weirder. I understand losing interest in sex, but never having it ever? Where's the honeymoon period? Man, those people are advanced.

The Best 90 Minutes of My Life [Wired]

Thurston Moore discusses the art of the mixtape and offers a few words on home taping: “Trying to control music sharing - by shutting down P2P sites or MP3 blogs or BitTorrent or whatever other technology comes along - is like trying to control an affair of the heart. Nothing will stop it.”

Dark Green of My Soul

1. Never be disappointed: expect nothing.

I've been cleaning my room. It's all dust and pennies and unmarked CD-Rs. It feels good to do something productive on otherwise lazy weekend. I didn't get out on Friday, due to the bad weather and my usual end-of-the-week collapse. Saturday's highlight was a good Thai meal with Jonathan and his friend Brent. I've decided that Pad Pik King is a simple yet delicious dish. I wish I had leftovers.

I worked a little on these button designs I've been thinking about for a while. Allison has a button maker thing and will hopefully hook me up after I've printed them. I'll post those when I feel like it. In other semi-creative news, I did some precursory recording of this song I've been fucking around with lately. It's not really a song yet, just a couple different bass parts and basic drums. I really like the bassline I came up with, so hopefully I can take it somewhere.

2. Movies are photographs, twenty-four times a second.

I watched the Criterion Collection edition of Slacker today, a most fitting title for my weekend. Despite being nearly fifteen years-old, I think it's aged pretty well. Speaking of Linklater, I'm really looking forward to A Scanner Darkly this summer. [Trailer here.] I've been reading the novel recently, on loan from Tim.

3. Music is for chumps.

Last night I discovered this little section of reviews on Tiny Mix Tapes where they recommend older records and review them. I love that. You're bound to find out about something cool that you missed the first time or rediscover something you already have but haven't listened to in a while. Give 'er a try.

I found the latest Four Tet album, Everything Ecstatic, on SoulSeek last night (also thanks to TMT). I haven't listened enough to get a good impression, but it sounds at least decent so far. Looks like legal copies will be out May 23rd on Domino.

Coming this week on my little ol' site: recently acquired records I've been enjoying, site updates to the oft-neglected photos and music sections, and The End of Days.

PS: Fuck daylight savings.

Metropolitan

If you're in the DC area and looking for something to do tonight, you should consider checking out my friend John's band, Metropolitan, at the Black Cat. It's a CD release show for their new album, The Lines They Get Broken. They're a good live band and it should be a fun time. Check out some songs on the iTunes Music Store or take a look at the band profile on Myspace. There's also a brief review in the Washington Post here.

Terri

Terri Schiavo dies [Guardian, W. Post]

I guess the Bible nuts will have to save their sanctity of life bullshit for some other ridiculous battle. I hope it's over, anyway, if only for now. I'm tired of reading about it.

I'm not sure why this kind of thing gets to me so much. I guess what bothers me most of all is the spectacle of public and government involvement in such a private issue. I can't imagine what it must be like to have to make such a decision, to have to decide that your wife——or at least someone who was once your wife——should pass away, to finally let go. And then to have the government and a bunch of weak-minded fools try to tell you that you're wrong, that she must live! For what? For God and Jesus and because we're humans and we're so fucking great that we can't bear to see the lives of other humans come to an end? Not through some horrible act of violence, not through some great tragedy, but from nature. No, they'd rather hold on as long as possible, even to lives devoid of what makes life worth anything at all.

Oh, her poor parents. They didn't want to lose their little girl. I can understand that and I don't blame them. They could still talk to her and look at her and pretend that she was still Terri from before. It's sad to think about and I feel for them, but it also kind of shows you how selfish people can be. They weren't keeping Terri alive for Terri's sake, fighting for her “right to life” as they say; they were keeping her alive because they weren't ready or able to let her go.

And so what if she looked like she was smiling? Maybe she was showing you how unafraid she was to move on. Maybe she was trying to tell you that it's ok to let go sometimes.

River's Edge

I finished watching River's Edge last night. Holy shit, what a great movie. I'd never seen it before, despite hearing about it over the years. For instance, I it was mentioned a lot in reviews of Bully when that movie came out. Guess I just kept forgetting about it.

Crispin Glover's over-the-top performance as Layne is just amazing. He has so many awesome lines, I can't even begin to pick one out. Besides, you won't appreciate them without context and Glover's delivery. It sort of reminds me of Jack Nicholson in The Shining. While they're two very different characters, each of them have this awesome overblown delivery. Speaking of freakshows, Dennis Hopper as Feck is pretty good, too, with his sex doll girlfriend and his prosthetic leg. He has a few great/awful lines himself (e.g. “I used get so much pussy, my mustache looked like a glazed donut.”).

So now I'm obsessed with seeing Crispin Glover movies. At the top of my list is 2003's Willard, a remake where he plays some guy into rats. Then there are these: Dead Man, Bartleby, Racing With The Moon (from 1984, w/Sean Penn and Nicholas Cage), and High School USA—a TV movie from 1983 starring Michael J. Fox and Todd Bridges.

Sadly, there a few very interesting Crispin-related titles which are not available. Does anyone know where I can find a bootleg of either of these:

The Orkly Kid
The Beaver Trilogy

Back to Grinding

Last week was the flu, this week it's a cold. Next week, I hope to have only a headache.

Anyway, I tried posting this earlier but Blogger was being shitty today. Item!

Surprise!—Tom DeLay is an opportunistic hypocrite:
DeLay and Schiavo's Dad Supported Their Own Parent's Right to Die [DN!]

I'll still take him over Michael:
Ex-US Diplomats Ask Congress to Block John Bolton [BBC]

Give it up, assholes:
Protesters at Capitol Hill as Schiavo has last rites [Guardian]

Because it still looks cool:
Why Are People Still Smoking? [W. Post]

All the Herb Alpert you could ever want:
Thrift Store Album Covers [via WMMNA]

Why such a large bitrate?:
David Byrne's Internet Radio Station [via Boing Boing]

Outfox Right-wing Propaganda:
Block Fox News Channel [via Gizmodo]

Chicago

I posted some pictures from my trip to Chicago. No titles, captions or anything yet, but click through to get there.

The trip was pretty good. Chicago is awesome, of course, and blows DC out of the water on so many counts, it's almost funny. [Which then becomes the exact opposite of funny when I think about where I live.] Neighborhood bars, cool little 24 hr restaurants, multiple indie record stores, and an amazing roster of upcoming shows, are just a few of the things that Chicago (or pretty much any city worth a damn) has but which DC fails to provide. It's things like these that make a city feel like a city. Like a visit to NYC, being there really highlighted what I'm missing by living in a second rate town.

I had fun, though. We went record shopping, ate great food, and saw a large amount of the city. Leigh and Paul were great hosts. On the less than amazing side, Slint on Friday were a bit underwhelming and the weather could have been a bit better. It was either cloudy or raining and cold nearly the whole time, so we didn't get to walk around as much as I'd have liked. And I didn't get to take many photos as a result.

I'll have to go back for another visit when the weather is nice. The lake looked amazing as I was flying in, and I bet it would be cool to ride bikes around town. I don't think we have another addition to my short list of permanent destinations, though. As cool as Chicago was to visit, I still can't picture myself living in the Midwest. And despite Leigh's insistence that Seattle is just as cold as Chicago (huh?), I don't think I could take the Chicago winters.

Existension

I'd like to alert you to a new addition to my list of links. My friend Shhh has put together a neat little site of her photography, called existention.org. I encourage you to check it out. It's quite lovely. And it makes me wanna throw my camera in the Potomac.

Why Burn Your Bridges

Why burn your bridges when you can blow your bridges up?

I've been enjoying M. Ward's Transistor Radio, his fourth album, recently thanks to a friend's recommendation. I'm not sure I've heard anything that pulls off old-timey American as successfully as this since another Merge Records release, Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over the Sea. Like that record, Transistor Radio sounds like summertime and is practically dripping with a classic sound. I find it hard not to like. See here and here for real reviews.

Listen to “Fuel For Fire”

Side note: This record also happens to represent another filesharing success story for my pals the at the RIAA. As I mentioned, a friend brought it up while we were talking music recently. The name stuck in my mind and I eventually downloaded the MP3s. I listened to the album for about a week before I decided I should get a hold of it. I found that Merge was offering a bundle of both Transistor Radio and M. Ward's previous album, Transfiguration of Vincent, for a discounted price. What the hell, I thought, and decided to add a copy of The Clientele's Lost Weekend EP. Merge threw in a sharp little album poster as well.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that M. Ward is currently on tour but is (of course) not playing here in DC. He is however playing in Philadelphia on Saturday, April 9th. So, if any of yous feels like driving me up there, you know, I wouldn't be opposed or anything.

Old House

All the doorknobs in my house are broken. They are purely for decorative purposes. The front door doesn't even have a knob or anything—just a deadbolt. It's funny to watch people try to open it. My bedroom door has an old shirt attached to it to keep it closed and my closet door doesn't shut properly at all. I guess the door frames are bit warped.

I've been sick with the flu for the past few days. I tried going to work yesterday instead of calling in since my bosses are out of town and we're short staffed. I only made it through about half the day before I threw up in my trashcan. I'm feeling much better now, thank you. Whatever it was, I mostly sweated it out this morning. Tim was kind enough to bring me some stuff (apple juice, cheerios) and offer me some drugs. Thanks, pal.

I'm just glad this didn't happen a few days later. Hopefully, I'll be completely back to normal when I leave for Chicago on Thursday.