drat fink
Friday, March 23, 2001
banaliteasenever one to make light of others suffering, i couldnt help thinking this headline was culled from the pages of the onion. well?
on the rund
talking todd rundgren last night. this afternoon i had a hankering for the psychedelic furs "pretty in pink" so i downloaded it from napster under "psychodelic furs." then i recalled having a furs album. i thought it was a greatest hits collection but its their 1982 release Forever Now. and who should have produced it but todd rundgren. so that would qualify as the synchronous moment for the day. as for the morning movements, once again simon and garfunkels "america" is held over in the top spot followed by the apples in stereo with "signal in the sky" from the powerpuff soundtrack. well?
Thursday, March 22, 2001
automatonic"A TALKING robot clever enough to heal family rifts may sound like science fiction. But the makers of PaPeRo — Partner-type Personal Robot — claim that it can smooth things out when families are no longer on speaking terms. NEC, the electronics firm, showed the machine’s peacemaking potential yesterday. With its cute, round head and big eyes, PaPeRo stands a mere 15in and weighs 11lb. Yet stuffed into the automaton are two digital cameras, four microphones, five sensors and a motor that lets it move. It can utter 3,000 phrases, recognise 650 expressions and responds depending on the speaker. That would enable it, for example, to act as a go-between for a sulking child and its parents. There are no plans to market the robot and no price set. Ten families are testing it so improvements can be made."well?
eat my shorts
"An older "Mrs Robinson" type will seduce the brat in the first Simpsons movie. Bart, who is supposed to be 10 years old, has not aged since The Simpsons began more than a decade ago. But he will be transformed into an even naughtier teenager when he moves from the small to the big screen. Insiders claim Bart will lose his cherry to an older woman who tempts him into her bed. A show source revealed: "One of Bart's catchphrases is 'Eat my shorts'. But in the movie, he won't be wearing any!" Series executive David Mirkin admitted that the Simpsons would be going Xrated for the movie version. He said: "I see lots of Simpson sex in the movie." But he added that we may have to wait a long time for the film version of the TV hit, screened by the BBC and Sky. He said: "We're waiting for the show to end for the movie to happen." The adventures of couch potato Homer, his wife Marge and their kids in the fictional city of Springfield are a worldwide success. Bart has even enjoyed a chart hit with his rap single Do The Bart Man. But news that he's to have sex may prove a bit of a shock to middle-aged mum-of-two Nancy Cartwright. She provides the voice of Bart for the cartoons."well?
sha-man
The Amazon Conservation Team - Home stolen from mr ethel well?
whip tease
is anybody else angry today because i am pissed and its got nothing to do with the rain? thats not entirely true, ive got some major leakage in my apartment which is annoying me. chinatown water torture again. i need a video game to work out my aggressions or a few pops at everyone who is making me wait. self flagellation cant be far off. well?
road show
Kerouac's 'Road' Scroll Is Going to Auction well?
a picture is worth...
To Store Data, a Hologram 'Picture' Is Worth a Million Bits well?
giving you the beltway
Washingtonian Online - People Who Have An INFLATED Sense Of Their Own Importance -- Top 50 "Journalists" well?
casting off
quite a cast for a movie written and directed by the team of alan cummings and jennifer jason leigh -- Anniversary Party, The (2001) well?
two peas
i watched the clip of o'reilly and kinsley going at it the other day. this was after kinsley, in slate, dared to question the veracity of o'reillys claim to working class roots. obviously the whole debate is stupid. where does "working class" end and "middle class" begin? its all a matter of perspective. oreilly grew up in levittown new york which is ground zero for the middle class. it was conceived as a community to be middle class. his father was not a grunt but a lowly accountant working for some unnamed oil company. ask anyone to look at the evidence devoid of personalities and one would come to the conclusion that the family was middle class. but o'reillys whole schtick is that he is one of you, not some namby-pamby pampered pundit despite the fact that he went to harvard. seems more like the middle class kid who felt ostracized by the elite than the poor kid struggling to make his way. but the debate itself was crap. for all his supposed smarts michael kinsley could use some help getting his thoughts in order because he should have crushed o'reilly but only managed a whimper. define your terms, michael. ask him what his definition of working class is because ive never considered a white collar job to be working class. have you? heres a word on the subject from salon and a link to fox. look in the video archives for the clip. well?
tal-bots
salon ceo discusses changes. dratfink ready to bemoan more annoying pop-ups. well?
follow me here
ruth shalit on the alpha consumers leading the sheep to the bricks and mortar. well?
play for today
hotline streams some latenight fun. it was supposed to be a clip of seinfeld (yawn) on letterman but maybe they didnt set it up because this is from yesterday. well?
digglers revenge
is it really true that paul thomas andersons next project is an adam sandler vehicle based on an old snl skit? must be fiona apples fault. well?
live dead
god only knows why but a will accede to the whims of green plastic and not directly link to the song theyve put up. radioheads "morning bell" rang my bell at dawn and i dutifully awoke. listen up, its the second song down. other questions at dawn have arisen as another generation of leakeys push the envelope of human understanding of our own distant past. just found another cache of live radiohead. well?
Wednesday, March 21, 2001
ionospherepolltroons
these numbers seem to be in the air today. must be the pew in pew research. analyze them for yourself or read the salon accounting. well?
making out
sadly this mornings song was cheddar and not the kind thats has been aged, more like kraft cracker barrel. the song is coldplays "yellow". see if this link takes you to the video. mo better might be the few funky tracks found on The Rare Groove Audio Pages. well?
byte the hand
Robodog Let Off the Leash well?
el pasto
chewbacka
Salon.com News | Survivors turned to cannibalism well?
befowl the city
The Chicken: It Came. It Clucked. It Conquered. well?
Tuesday, March 20, 2001
gaulish behaviorGoût des autres, Le (1999) well?
severance paid
Mercury News publisher quits rather than cut more well?
have you ever been?
minding moguls
Web-Savvy Busboy Allegedly Duped Tycoons well?
free launch
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Who says there's no such thing as a free taco, let alone a free lunch?
The Taco Bell restaurant chain said on Monday it will give a free taco to everyone in the United States if -- and this is important -- the core of the 150-ton Mir space station (news - web sites) hits a floating 40-by-40-foot Taco Bell target placed in the South Pacific.
The space station is supposed to come crashing back to earth sometime this week and Taco Bell says it has created a target, painted with a Bell bull's-eye and bold purple letters stating: ``Free Taco Here.'' The floating target will be placed in the South Pacific Ocean off the coast of Australia in advance of Mir's descent.
Chris Becker, vice president of brand communications for Taco Bell Corp., said ``If Mir rings our bell, we will offer a free taco to everyone in the U.S.''
Actually if it does ring the bell, the Taco Bell Corp. will make coupons for free tacos available but they can only be redeemed at participating Taco Bells. It added that Taco Bell has purchased an insurance policy to cover the anticipated cost of the free taco redemption should the space station's core miraculously hit the target.
Taco Bell Corp., a division of Tricon Global Restaurants Inc., made a stir some years back when on April Fools Day it announced that it was buying the Liberty Bell and renaming it after itself.
well?
salon de refuse
Salon.com Rolls Out Larger Ad Units and Readies Launch Of Premium Subscription Service including an option to subcribe and view the site without ads. well?
democracy inaction
"All regimes pay lip-service to representative government. But can the "people's will" provide the solutions for the 21st century? By Eric Hobsbawm"
well?
he said it
Al-Ahram Weekly | Edward Said | Freud, Zionism, and Vienna
martha nussbaum on said in nyt books. well?
out of luc
author luc sante writes in metropolis about leaving nyc behind as he heads to the hinterlands. the sanitized and monetized city has lost its allure. where have all the lowlifes gone? well?
the mother loader
south by southwest: the music festival has done some excellent work. im scanning their files now. first up i noticed the return of juliana hatfields blake babies. next up, more bubbles from call and response. wfmus laura cantrell looks to be easy on the ears and eyes? speaking of which, what happened to fmus dj trouble? more dressy bessy. chomsky reminded me of joe jackson. how bout the essex greens neo psychedelia pop? i love "Hello, Hello, Hi" from from bubblegum to sky. heres their website at eenie meenie records.
i know you want some more. new to me, portlands the helio sequenzer. kindercore chief goes mondo loungo with i am the world trade center. dont tell them but they are up for sale. current asking price approximately 3.5 bn.
how do you like it? more more more.... two bands with alt rock aspirations, palo alto wants to be radiohead and the love supreme is for bowie. a little bit of britrip hop from spylab. ok, vibrolux is lush alt country and sally timms is the "real" deal. well?
more pork sausages
what to do about this campaign finance reform? i sure dont have all the answers. but i am sure that whatevers done wont be enough. read up on the issues and let yahoo do the heavy listing. did i hear right that they went from a market cap of $140 bn to $10 bn? ill have to find out without burning my eyes on the financial pages. well?
back to the beat
"Daniel and Reuben kicked-off Ladytron in Liverpool in mid 1998. After spending a few years doing dj spots in Japan, connecting with the Parisian underground, and on forays into Scandinavia & Eastern Europe, they were brought together with singers Helena Marnie and Bulgarian Mira Aroyo, the latter meeting up via a day out on the Bulgaria national railway."well?
fob
"LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Indonesian businessman James Riady, a friend of former president Bill Clinton, pleaded guilty on Monday to making illegal campaign contributions and agreed to pay a record $8.6 million in fines. Riady, the former chief of LippoBank, also agreed to serve two years of probation and perform 400 hours of community service as part of a plea bargain with federal prosecutors that spared him any time in prison."well?
profiteers
"The influence that broadcasters exercise in their home markets is reflected in the power their lobbyists wield in Washington. That is the main reason that the major proposals before the Senate--one sponsored by Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold and the other crafted by Sen. Chuck Hagel--have no provisions aimed at reducing the TV charges. Instead, they focus on the high-dollar ``soft money'' contributions to the political parties. McCain and Feingold would eliminate them; Hagel would limit their size."well?
sweet home
"When the economy started to slow down, tax revenues dropped and the Constitution required the governor to cut back funding for education in the middle of the school year. The K-to-12 schools and the colleges and universities are now at each other's throats over who gets the biggest hit. This state, which once led the nation in its ability to pit white workers against black workers in the factories, is now turning third-grade reading teachers against medieval history professors."well?
obey
this is sort of funny. heres a collection of bootleg andre the giant has a posse stickers. well?
cursory glance
op-ed piece about the rise of the use and misuse of laptops during college lectures. i might actually have gone to class if i could have played games all the time. well?
listenear
links for me --
tiny telephone: your open-source high-res mp3 hub and recording studio
ANIME HARDCORE RADIO - 24 hour a day anime
Dressy Bessy Links ...Apples in stereo, Kindercore, spinArt, Freeride Skateboards, International Longboarder, Fanatic Promotion, Power Puff Girls, Aislers Set, Philter, Emperor Norton well?
phillips head
i was worried my internals were stuck on simon and garfunkels america as my first foray into the light seemed no different from yesterday but my second and final approach to reality revealed dressy bessy's "bubbles" from the album inspired by the powerpuff girls. but now papa johns "california dreaming" has taken over. i guess i should listen to that npr thing that steve posted. ok heres todays synchronicity, dressy bessys most recent albums title is The California EP. heres a sample from the kindercore records website. well?
Monday, March 19, 2001
otto von bismarkeyspinnacle
spin magazine has a small archive of live tracks including rainer maria john doe bettie seveert and black beetle. who knew john doe was a dad on the wb show Roswell? well?
drakes aches
cheese louise
one of the better midis ive heard for one of the cheesier songs sweets Love is Like Oxygen. heres the rest of the page for your queasy listening "pleasure". well?
musicamente
two great caches of mp3s, a fab archive of live recordings and a purveyor of fine goods --
chris.kosmos.net - /elmpeethree/ (maybe shite)
Supersphere.com: Powerful alien subverters.
Atrecordings: Discover & Listen to Music. Buy it on CD, Vinyl, MP3 or Custom CD. well?
looks like tomatoes
heres a good one -- am i right? home of song parodies and misheard lyrics. well?
indiefile
i just havent been stealing music, i actually bought some cds recently. my favorite, thus far, has been the new rainer maria. heres a clip called artificial life. guess theyve been around since 95 but i only caught up with them about 2 years ago. i also bought Home XIV for a bit of low fi lo impact listening. very sebadoh. and finally the francofonix of Bertrand with the sssound of mmmusic. une page avec mp3. en anglais. excellent, un album entier. oh yeah, rainer maria have an instore at other music tomorrow. talk about synchronicity. i wonder when it is? (8 pm) actually this is a much better page for clips of them. well?
thundercore
just surfing other musics excellent long clips selection and came across this providence, ri band called lightning bolt. very minimal instrumentation but powerful delivery. reminds me of digital hardcore w/o the digital. i guess that would make it hardcore. heres an mp3 and heres another from their page at load records. meanwhile, i think im getting spammed by the god squad. my email has been full of "jesus freak" shwag. somehow that triggered a memory of something i overhead in the healthfood store. "did you ever have a colonic?"
of the other music cuts today i particularly like the song from the japanese band Puffy (that elo flashback is starting to make sense), the ever twittering Tipsy and wagon christ. and how could you not appreciate this "pretentious bit of artspeak" --
"A groundbreaking release from two youngish Japanese improvisers. Sachiko M plays sample-less sampler, and Nakamura uses the no-input mixing board -- both instruments which conceptually produce no sound, yet these two conjure it out, somehow. Essential."well?
drudge jr
ojr trifecta regarding a teen drudge and freedom of speech issues for high school journalism in the age of the internet --
teenager launches website that irks the establishment
personal/meta povs from ken layne well?
waist not
went shopping for pants today. nothing seems to fit anymore. ive managed to add 3 sizes to my waist in the past four years and i dont feel any exceptional change in girth. im sure i eat more since i quit smoking and working out has added some muscle but its still perturbing. i ended up purchasing slightly large size 36 levis although the timberland jeans fit at 35 while the calvin klein jeans worked at 34 so i guess the brand is an issue. i liked it better when i was stuck on 32, not when it was my age. well?
parsley sage
this mornings trailmix included simon and garfunkels america and homeward bound. always searching w/o ever leaving my enclosure am i. heres a nice page of rare audio clips including the end of a 1968 version of america from the hollywood bowl and a clip of art garfunkel singing homeward bound at ellis island in 1996.
oh yeah, carolina choked bigtime yesterday which is why i dont even want to think about hoops today. well?
Sunday, March 18, 2001
geek gamesSportsGeekMagazine.com - 3/18/01 well?
big W
SatireWire | George W. Bush's Weblog well?
feel the heat
Narco News Solidarity Letter from Gary Webb well?
marginalia
iCulture: FEATURE: Nature abhors a moron: H.L. Mencken and journalism in the Jazz Age well?
the donald
Blog You! Blog You! Blog You! -- the two most hated men in the blogging community well?
inside edition
Will & Grace Creators Sued by Ex-Friend Jack Who Wants Serious Jack for Inspiring Their Jack
Moonves: Stoking Pilot Fever in the House of Letterman
Threat of Scientologists' Legal Wrath Prompts Slashdot to Censor a Posting well?
tape hiss
nbc, as per usual, goes the extra mile to suck. the final round of golf is tape delayed but the results arent. well?
sports bard
boston college took a tumble yesterday. my first final 8 team to go down. guess i should have stuck with the wildcats of kentucky who breezed to a victory yesterday. otherwise im still hitting just above 50% with my depth charges. in other sports news, tiger woods tries to notch that first victory of the season today. he is paired in the final round with sergio garcia who is now tied with woods at 12 under after 5 holes. whoops, sergio must have taken a tumble because after 6 holes hes at 9 under while tiger has move to -13 with phil mickelson three shots back. looks like it could be over before nbc gets to its coverage. msnbc leaderboard. well?
zurich is stained
a live video from the bowery ballroom of former pavement frontman stephen malkmus singing Alien Boy. who sang it originally? other live videos and an mp3 from his recent album are also available. ok, ive found the answer to the Alien Boy question. the son was originally done by The Wipers and i found it at mp3.com. its the 4th song down on the right. well?
blinded by the light
How the C.I.A.'s Judgments Were Distorted by Cold War Catechisms well?
youre no rocknroll fun
finally banished the oldies station in my head. sleater-kinney rule the morning mindwaves although todd rundgrens Hello, Its Me has managed to break loose from last nights infomercial and has been malingering at the edge of consciousness. whats up with rundgren, hes sort of slipped through the cracks of time. is any of his stuff worth a listen or is most of it dated? back to the gurls of s-k. kill rock stars has this mornings song All Hands On The Bad One on mp3. how convenient. heres some more sound and fury from the folks at krs. well?