drat fink

uncertainty

"Why did Ellsberg believe that the publication of the Pentagon Papers would help end the war? People often put this question to Ellsberg when he was shopping the Pentagon Papers around the Senate office buildings. "Isn't it after all only history?" Senator Fulbright asked. For Ellsberg, though, it wasn't only history; it was a case study in the hazards of decision-making under conditions of uncertainty. And that is a subject Daniel Ellsberg has thought about a lot."

sigh cull

my absentmindedness and the heartlessness of others have once again comingled to produce a distainful brew. i was guilty of the sin of forgetting my bike on the street for eight hours, so i was punished by having someone steal my back wheel which is the most expensive part. itll probably cost me $200+ to replace it, on top of which i had just spent $100 to replace the back rim. serves me right, after all, i was asking for it. it makes me angry when i think about it, that and all this other moving bullshit. pisses me the fuck off, did i mention that? that would be my second back tire stolen along with three bikes in the last eight years. people fucking suck.

loop-a-maniacs

open loop at chama

barrett's quotations

"Syd Barrett was the prodigiously talented founder of Pink Floyd, but after just two years at the centre of the 60s psychedelic scene, he suffered a massive breakdown and has lived as a recluse ever since. In this extract from his candid new book, Tim Willis tracks him down and pieces together the story of rock's lost icon."

sanguine affair

the blood group

phairground

"It'd be easy to pin down some songs on Heaven, Hell or Houston as alt-country, and other songs as folk or moody girl-pop. That seems like a grave disservice, though, in the face of Anna Padgett's sheer bloody-minded, willful disregard of anything outside her own weird, beautiful vision of The Naysayer as a wry, traveling storyteller, "searching for the perfect gentleman or lady". Her voice, a twangy contralto, is still sweet enough to sound like a more butch Laura Cantrell, and her songs achieve heights of lap- and pedal-steel-assisted old-fashioned country-and-western sadness that no one seems to aspire to anymore. At the same time, she has a distinct pop sensibility, with a folky moodiness, aided by cellos and flute, that evokes long grey mornings; it sounds like Padgett, as well as collaborators Cynthia Nelson and Tara Jane O'Neil of Retsin, has been listening to the same Nick Drake albums as labelmate Archer Prewitt."

glandular problem

rock athens

longform

longwave -- strokes lite

all fall down

"If you've managed to make it this far in life without discovering The Fall, put off whatever purchases you were planning next and buy, instead, three records: This Nation's Saving Grace, Hex Enduction Hour, and this newly released two-disc set, Totally Wired: The Rough Trade Anthology. The music contained here is nothing short of absolutely essential, epochal rock and roll that sounds like nothing else, including the racks upon racks of albums it eventually inspired."

war saw

pixie sticks

seek and destroy

"Having vanquished the music swapping service Napster in court, the entertainment industry is facing a formidable obstacle in pursuing its major successor, KaZaA: geography.

Sharman Networks, the distributor of the program, is incorporated in the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu and managed from Australia. Its computer servers are in Denmark and the source code for its software was last seen in Estonia."

clementime

my aunt who is involved in battered womens related issues sent me this.

"My name is Marie La Pinta. I am an inmate at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. I am writing to you because I am applying for clemency... "

tone def

"Dialtones is a large-scale concert performance whose sounds are wholly produced through the carefully choreographed dialing and ringing of the audience’s own mobile phones. Because the exact location and tone of each participant’s mobile phone can be known in advance, Dialtones affords a diverse range of unprecedented sonic phenomena and musically interesting structures. Moreover, by directing our attention to the unexplored musical potential of a ubiquitous modern appliance, Dialtones inverts our understandings of private sound, public space, electromagnetic etiquette, and the fabric of the communications network which connects us."

ball buster

ran into our friend woody today at the anti-war rally. hes spent the last year and a half editing michael moores Bowling For Columbine.

ad it up

celebrity ads from japan

makeout session

operation makeout (indiepop) mp3s

electrocliche

"How Electroclash, the festival, went in the course of one year from must-see-event-of-the-millennium for members of the global avant-cool to something the readership of Spin magazine might find kind of passé can almost certainly be attributed to a single factor: hype. The music press has taken to the term "electroclash" with the same sort of cynical delight with which it took to "grunge," using it to neatly compartmentalize a broad swath of artists, as well as making it into a descriptor for the current early-1980s influence on fashion (witness the increasing use of "electroclash" on eBay as a keyword for Members Only jackets, wraparound sunglasses, and the like). Thus, just as in 1992 any band that had so much thought about living in Seattle, or donned flannel onstage was hailed as grunge, so in 2002 any artist who has ever used a vocoder, or sported an ironic haircut is bestowed the title of electroclash. Albums that a year ago were buried in the techno section, amidst Ibiza's Greatest Hits Vol. 104 and This Is Bulgarian Progressive House, are now required listening in urban bohemia, and acts that would have been lucky to register a blip on the radar screens of major labels are being offered enormously lucrative contracts. Hence it is possible that electroclash the genre is now too big for Electroclash the festival. And while nothing bearing the electroclash label has yet to make an appearance on MTV, or grace the cover of Rolling Stone, a number of artists - most notably FischerSpooner, who recently signed to Capitol Records, and Miss Kittin, who is now doing Levi's ads - are prominent enough that they might consider this year's festival not worth their bother. A likely explanation for this year's lackluster lineup then, is simply that the biggest names weren't willing to perform, and so the acts chosen to appear are the most renowned members (or at least those possessing the most clout) of a largely drained talent pool."

murphy's laud

james murphy is a buzz with lcd soundsystem and dfa records. we knew him when he was just buzzing from lots of caffeine around the east village.

get up kids

righteous indignation festival and group ugh in central park tomorrow -- be there or be elsewhere

clash bar

electroclash nyc 2002

no show

what i didnt do last night -- Melt Banana at the knitting factory. what i watched instead.

equatorial waters

drinking a bottle of agua mineral guitig, a mineral water from equator. nice painted glass bottle (whats that process called?) with an image of a polar bear on an ice flow. esta es mucha buena -- su salud en esta botella!

hipstirs

ny rock scene as scene in new york mag

skools out forever

mit open courseware sets off

contain me

"George F. Kennan, the chief architect of the containment and deterrence policies that shaped America foreign policy during the Cold War, said Sunday that Congress, and not President Bush, must decide whether the United States should take military action against Iraq.

In a wide-ranging interview at a Georgetown senior citizens home where he spent the past month, the 98-year-old historian and former top U.S. diplomat repeatedly warned of the unforeseen consequences of waging war."