Saturday, February 25, 2006

Discourse on the Internet experience

I don't know. 40 Euros a month. Is it worth it? With some music file sharing into the bargain I guess it would be.
I like photos, arts, cartoons so I'm quite addicted to flickr, the lambiek comiclopedia and a couple of art sites which have a lot of good downloadable reproductions. Working my way through a couple of links pages. Found a couple of good photoblogs - chromasia and genestho. There must be tons out there though, huh?

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Junk For Code

Now that's a good blog.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Harmony Korine

Was just reading about Korine's unfinished Fight Harm project.
What a loon!

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Words I didn't know from David Mamet's Wilson : The First 12

While reading Mamet's latest I kept a notebook of some of the words I didn't know and have been checking out AskOxford.com for some definitions...

orthography - the conventional spelling system of a language

philology - the study of the structure, historical development, and relationships of a language or languages

chimera - something hoped for but illusory or impossible to achieve

nascent - just coming into existence and beginning to develop

arcane - understood by few; mysterious

abstruse - difficult to understand; obscure

doggerel - comic or badly written verse

acrostic - a poem or puzzle in which certain letters in each line form a word or words

picayune - petty; worthless

bathos - (in literature) an unintentional change in mood from the important and serious to the trivial or ridiculous

analgesic - relieving pain / a pain-relieving drug

apotheosis - the culmination or highest point: science is the apotheosis of the intellect

More to come soon!
Stay tuned!
Tell all your friends!

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Corporation:Blend splits up

Got in touch with an old pal in London where I used to live and he told me another old pal's band had gone their separate ways.
Got me musing (again) about how nice it would be to be in a band, especially one with longevity like REM, RHCP or personal old faves Teenage Fanclub. To hang out with the same dudes for a decade or two, seeing all those changes in your lives and expressing them with music.
And last night, out walking my girlfriend's dog, I heard the sound of some people jamming, an acoustic guitar strumming, a Brazilian vibe. I looked at the lighted window and sighed with that special nostalgia reserved for another's life glimpsed.
As it turned out, the music was coming from a nearby car radio, but you know what I mean.

Friday, February 10, 2006

Jean Baudrillard on television

"It is the screen that is laughing and having a good time. You are simply left alone with your consternation ... Suddenly the TV reveals itself for what it really is: a video of another world, ultimately addressed to no one at all, delivering its messages indifferently, indifferent to its own messages (you can easily imagine it still functioning after humanity has disappeared)," (America 49-50).

Bran Van 3000

I was looking for free music downloads today.
I found a site called epitonic and i've been listening to tunes i downloaded earlier all afternoon.
Astounded by Bran Van 3000 just came up. Pretty good. Singer sounds a lot like Curtis Mayfield. I was reading how the band was formed after a guy walked into a music store with ten thousand dollars he'd just earned shooting a music video. Their big hit I remember was Drinking In LA and it was on a beer advert. This is the problem with devoting all your free time to the consumption of media - you find out about all these people with more fun lives than you.

First post

Just got the Internet in my flat a couple of days ago. Told myself I'd use it to research things and write a novel.
So far this hasn't happened.