jeblog

rhythm and rhyme

I spent the weekend at a rhythm and poetry retreat in a used book store and warehouse in New Market, Virginia. So not only was I able to do rhythm support for a great group of spoken-word poetry/rappers, but I was also able to wander around in the warehouse looking through stacks of books.

The bookstore/warehouse is called Paper Treasures.

It was a bibliophile's dream, even though there was no heat (except for a few space heaters) and the books in the warehouse, though many, were not really organized in any fashion (did I mention that the bookstore owners were un-reconstructed hippies?). Like most bibliophiles, I suppose, there are times when I want my books in some kind of order, and other times when I just want to get lost in a wilderness of books. On this occasion, I had no choice but to wander in the wilderness

The bookstore, proper, was quite organized--perhaps over-organized (they had a whole section of books on dolphins). Besides the usual sections (fiction, drama, etc.), there was also a section of decorated books (books with tooled covers, frontispieces, decorated paratext, etc.), a section of illustrated books, with sub-sections by artist, and quite a few racks of vintage pages and magazine advertisements (harvested from old books and magazines) for sale individually.

So it was more an antique book shop, if that is what you're jonesing for bibliographically. They would probably be good at tracking down books or being on the look-out for antique books, if asked. I spent a little bit of time looking for early-19th century books but didn't find any; the best I could find were mid-century. I bet they have some first-edition Romantics squirred away somewhere, if I would have only asked.

Paper Treasures is at 9595 Congress St. (Rt. 11), New Market, Virginia, not far from the exit off Interstate 81, about a two-hour drive from DC.

existential game 28: packaging temples

More game weirdness from jeb.

What you need for this game is packaging from an Apple product, preferably an iPod.

What you do is, as an expression of the religious experience that Apple products evoke, take the packaging from your product and build temples. Such as:

And:

Then you must take pictures of your temples and send them to me and I will post them.

I was actually going to tell you to send them to the Church of Macintosh website, thinking such a website did not exist. Then I googled it and found quite a few entries. Check out this one:

http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2003/05/13/l_ron_jobs_and_the_church_of_macintosh

If you Google "Church of Macintosh" you'll also find the 10 Mac Commandments. Check it out.

iPod debauch

My techno-debauch is long since over. The glow has faded. Now my iPod is just a little machine that plays music.

But the night I opened my iPod was out of control. A friend told me that it was almost a religious experience opening his iPod. So I was expecting something sublime. And it was indeed, an apotheosis of sorts.

Since this is more or less a review of my iPod set-up, I can say that I found the packaging design to be quite astounding. Yes, Apple does packaging very well (this is probably not news to Mac-heads). It's obvious someone thought about it long and hard. There isn't too much plastic; there is a lot of recycled paperboard parts (see "Packaging Game" above). All of it was intuitive and practical. I had little trouble figuring things out.

I anticipated problems hooking the iPod up to my PC, since my machine objects to just about any additional tasks at this point and spends a lot of time sulking if I do install something new. But there were no problems. Not even my PC complained. So someone at Apple obviously thought long and hard about how PCs would feel about iPod as well. On behalf of my PC, I thank you, Apple.

It only took moments (and little prodding from me) for the iPod to download the music from off my hard-drive. I was amazed to see that all it added up to 3 gig, leaving me 17 more to play with! It was only later that I noticed that not all my music on my hard-drive made the transition. In fact, as much as half was left un-downloaded. It's because much of my music, when I copied it to my hard-drive the first time, was encoded "Protected Content." I don't remember any such setting in the Real Audio program that I used, but I wouldn't put it past them to mess with my music in this way. But it's more likely that the record companies encoded the music this way (am I right? I'm such an innocent when it comes to such things. I've never downloaded free music from the internet--that's how innocent I am).

Within minutes I had an iPod that worked. Maybe it's good that I always expect a hassle when it comes to technology; that way, when things go smoothly (as with my iPod), I consider it a form of sanctifying grace.

I ended my evening by putting the ear-plugs in and giving my iPod a good listen, accompanied by the psychedelic visualizer. Amazing. A friend showed me the visualizer a couple weeks back and it was one of the reasons why I decided to get the iPod. The iPod visualizer is almost worth the price of admission in itself. It's light-years ahead of the Real Audio visualizer. Maybe there are better visualizers out there, but I don't know of them. I look forward to the next iteration. Truly a trippy experience, a techno-apocalypse. And the best way to conclude your iPod installation liturgy.

no more fear and loathing

Couple minutes before midnight. Enough time to raise my (tea) glass to Hunter S. Thompson, who (it was reported today) recently checked himself out of this life.

Hunter, I hardly knew ye (though I liked you as portrayed by Johnny Depp in Terry Gilliam's version of your book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas). I wish you a peaceful after-life. I hope its better than any drug you ever had.

Thanks for gonzo journalism and a gonzo life. May I in my own quiet way continue the best part of your passionate engagement with life.

Peace.

graffito 6

I found this stencil/graffito on the sidewalk a block away from the College Park metro station.

To explain: it's an old-fashioned dance map, showing the foot positions for the dance, across three sidewalk squares. There is a word associated with each sidewalk square, three words in all. They say "DANCE . . . AGAINST . . . EMPIRE."

So some kind of activist sidewalk rhetoric. But cleverly done, something that gets you to stop and look and read (though the letters are hard to read now, after a recent snow storm). And who wouldn't want empires to fall, and in just such a way? By dancing?

Thinking it might have been intended as part of the game, I went ahead and danced the steps. It felt a little bit like playing hopscotch; I didn't recognize the dance from the steps (there are not many ballroom dances I do know).

My only critique is that such street art should not be wasted. There should have been a URL as part of the stencil. Help people follow up rhetoric (clever though it is) with action. Show me where I can dance away empire. Give me a URL...

money games

A few weeks ago I found that one of my dollar bills given back in change had been hand-stamped. On the stamp was a URL , and an inscription telling me to go to the site and register the bill I had in my hand.

I was intrigued, so when I got to my computer, I went to the site and entered the serial number for the bill. The form returned the information that someone registered the same bill 110 days before, on October 5, 2004.

I admit I was disappointed. I was expecting a better game, maybe. Something critical of the rat race for the almighty dollar, something Abbie Hoffman might have perpetrated if he had stuck it out to the digital age. Not a fan club for money anyway.

That's what faq page says. The site had been created for fun, to be entertaining, a way to network--through dollar bills. Sort of a Friendster for people obsessed with money.

Then again, if some accountant in Cleveland can find love by registering a dollar bill online, I'm all for it--especially if its a lonely economist in Cambridge.

I hesitated blogging about this site because I didn't want to be pushing people towards Ayn Rand, or some Moonie or LaRouche outfit, unawares. And it doesn't help that the "about us" page is nothing but ads, and there are ads everywhere.

So I don't know if I'd recommend you go to the site.

But the main thing is that it had the potential to be a much more interesting, online, multi-player game. So maybe I should just propose my own money game. Here it is. How about creating a stamp that has "Burn this Dollar for Good Luck" and a URL on it (more on that below). Then stamping lots of dollar bills. Then feeding them into the local economy. Either that or handing them out, the dollars coming from donations.

A web site would be a key part of this game. It would be a slickly-designed site with bogus testimonials from people who have burned a dollar and had some huge, lucky break which made them rich. It might even have the semblance of an online community, a list-serv or something.

Of course, some folks might burn their dollar before writing the URL of the web site down. But more likely is that people will take the dollar bill home and mull it over (or spend it without even noticing), and only burn the bill after visiting the web site.

What's the purpose of the game? To destroy money. A madness of luck-lust will grip the nation, and first all the single dollar bills will go and then mysteriously an invisible hand will start stamping five dollar bills, until all those are burned up, and then ten dollar bills, etc.

And then when all our money is gone, our European overlords, with their invincible Euro, will march in and enslave us.

No, we'll revert to a barter economy and everyone will live on a commune in the woods and worship the Goddess.

Or who knows what will happen? It's all part of the game. Who wants to play?

Afrocelts

I've wanted to do a digital "shout out" to one of my favorite music groups, the Afrocelts (previously known as "The Afro Celt Sound System"), for a long time now. This is a group of Irish and African musicians that has put out five albums on the Real World label, which was founded by Peter Gabriel, coming out of the WOMAD (World Music Arts and Dance) festivals.

The Afrocelts have achieved a wonderful balance between machine-generated beats and live instrumentation. I think of them as one of the premier "world music" bands, but that might just be because Irish music and African rhythms have become a vital part of my life, being a fan and practitioner of Celtic music and, recently, since joing the Rhythm Workers Union, learning African drumming and chanting.

Their web site is definitely worth visiting, just to see the site design (which is quite good) and the streaming videos on offer.

While you're at it, you might want to visit Real World Records to see what they have on offer (lots West Africa and India, including nine from the late, great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan). I've only bought one new version of a Real World Records disc, but have bought many more used. I have yet to be even remotely disappointed.

Gates of Paradise: Plate 12

Plate 12

Though this is one of the more stark and depressing images in the book so far, I actually enjoyed having this image as my computer wallpaper for a week or so.

I find this image quite well executed--especially compared with the previous plate, which features stick figures drawn in a slppy, seemingly child-like hand.

The central image of the drowning man (?) is visually compelling, and the action it narrates viscerally affective.

I mention, as I do on almost every plate, that this seems too terrifying a scene in which to include in an emblem book for children, which was the original intention for this plate, before being re-cast in the "For Adults" version. I suppose it's high time I asked: was a child audience really the one Blake was aiming for? If so, his sense of an audience was almost delusional. This would explain of course why Blake labored in obscurity, why he never sold many books, in his lifetime. He had a terrible grasp of the market. Which Blake, of course, may have considered his only honorable course as a "prophet-bard."

As a spiritual statement, this image is unflinching, to the point of despair. It might even be characterized as proto-existential. A man drowns while a heedless, stony sky rages in storm. As in Plate 5, the sky seems more like a terrestial force, a huge weight of crushing stone. The sea itself, fairly calm, is no ally of the drowning man either. LIke a python, it quietly consumes its victim.

This drowning figure might very well be Icarus, particularly as W.H. Auden (and Brueghel) depict him. The man is dying but neither the sky nor the sea care. And there are no human figures to witness the scene, and if there were, they would probably look away.

This is an emblem of the individual alone in the world. He/she cries "Help! Help!" but there is no one to help. Even God looks away, leaving the clouds unparted, allowing the criminally calm sea to swallow up a human life.

I suppose it is its poignancy that attracts me in this image, and the thought that here, in the simplest terms, Blake may have depicted his own crisis of faith, his own dark night of the soul, perhaps in the wake of the revelations of the increasingly mindless and vindictive actions of the French revolutionaries, in which he had placed so much hope.

I now, per Blake's intentions perhaps, have to turn away, the last witness is gone, leaving the drowning figure to finally slip beneath the waves, lost to the world, his/her fate unrecorded, disappeared without a trace.

phoku.20

graffito 5

I really like this graffito, currently found in the Adams Morgan neighborhood, on 18th St., in Washington DC, near Kalorama St. It might be better described as a street stencil that celebrates renegade street artists. I think it's a very interesting image, composed and placed with skill and artistry. I especially like its ironic humor and reflexivity: its a stencil that shows the very act (of the very graffiti/stencil artist) of painting it on the wall.

Though it is a gross violation of any sort of "no tolerance" policing schema, I think more stencils like this one would make for a more vital (though not necessarily safer) city. Especially in Adams Morgan, which is quickly turning into a bland yuppie desert.

existential game 27: fingernail quest

This is what I would call a hygiene game. You might call it a "too-much-information" game. This game calls for the player to cut his/her fingernails over a dark, patterned carpet.

1. The first thing is to try to make sure each fingernail cut is a complete piece; that is, there should be only ten fingernail clips in total. That is the first challenge.

2. The second challenge is to find all ten fingernails in the carpet.

You have one minute to find all ten (turning on a super bright light is cheating). 100 points for each one found.

My score for my first game: 1000. Of course, I would only invent a game I could win.

Gates of Paradise: Plate 11

Plate 11

I've been staring at this Blake plate/computer wall paper for a couple weeks now. I think it's his least impressive plate in the Gates of Paradise; in fact, I would say it's sloppily executed. The figures within the image are barely more than stick figures. This looks like it may have been engraved by a child.

Which is oddly appropriate since its sentiment is definitely childish. The caption reads "I WANT! I WANT!", which almost iconically defines childish selfishness and, at the same time, whimsy. The child says, "I WANT the moon!" and a ladder appears to climb to the moon. What the child wants the child must have. And yet would we want a world where children did not want the moon? Where childish whimsy was dead?

This is one of the rare images in this series that fits into the original conception of "For the Children." It seems to be for children (though it should be noted that only a few years before Blake did his satire "Island in the Moon," which is definitely a critique on adult, not childish, preoccupations). It is also one of the rare images that Blake did not alter in bringing it into the newer "For the Sexes" format.

Though, looking at the figure climbing the ladder, if anyone has ever put forward a theory that Blake had been visited by aliens from outer space (surely someone has), this figure would make an interesting case, since he (she?) seems to be wearing a space helmet.

I have to confess I'm glad to get this one off my computer as wallpaper. There's just not enough here, visually or textually, to feed the viewer used to the rich fare of Blake's other works.

kill the classical radio dj

I'm pissed that the last non-all-talk public radio station in DC (Pacifica WPFW excluded), WETA, has decided to join the ranks of 24-7 blabbing and jettison its classical format. It's all about the bottom line, and the new execs at NPR are not reticent about saying so.

So much for the public ownership of the airwaves. So much for representing minority groups unrepresented by commercial radio. Though I can't blame it all on the NPR suits. It was really Newt Gingrich, with his first Contract On America, in advocating cutting public funding of public radio, which pushed NPR towards the market. And, mea culpa, its been awhile since I gave money to WETA. But that's because they started sending me lots of mailings inviting me to join one sweepstakes or another, which turned me off big-time.

Now the only other classical radio station in the area is a commercial station, and I for one cannot stomach commercials sandwiching Mozart, Ralph Vaughn Williams, etc.

I think it's online subscription services for me. Yes, I am willing to pay top dollar NOT to have my music polluted by commercials.

old new old media

There were three different stories in today's (Sunday's) Washington Post dealing with new media.

On page one was a story on the future of recorded music formats, predicting that ten years from now most folks will just download files from the internet (using services such as iTunes), rather than buy it on disc (and cassette tapes? they'll be long gone). You'll be able to arrange (or search) the music how you like. Being able to find a particular song when the mood strikes me sounds cool; losing album cover art (the inevitable side effect of format-less music) however would be a definite loss. Even with CDs, there's so pretty amazing cover art being done.

On the metro page, where technical or digital stuff rarely appears, there is a story about how the internet breeds a culture of lowered inhibitions leading to a loss of civility online, with folks "flaming" people that, in person, they would treat with the utmost of civility. At the same time, by providing a paper (or Google) trail, folks are increasingly held accountable for their statements. This was the case of Joseph Steffan, the hatchet-man for Maryland Republican governor Robert Ehrlich, who spread rumors about Baltimore mayor Martin O'Malley having an extramarital affair. Steffan is now out of a job, thanks to that paper trail.

Then in the Style section there is a story on bloggers, who helped a couple of other people lose their jobs in the past week. Eason Jordan, CNN's chief news executive, stepped down after suggesting that U.S. military personnel in Iraq were targeting contrary journalists (the number of journalists killed in Iraq by coalition forces is disturbingly high; nevertheless, Jordan did a dumb thing). Meanwhile, on the lefty side of the blogosphere, a conservative blogger, code-named Jeff Gannon, who attacked the Senate Democratic leadership was "outed" as a hypocritical homophobe by liberal bloggers (he owned the domain name "hotmilitarystuds.com") who had gained special privileges from the Bush White House. The story hear seemed to be one we've been hearing in the past year: how bloggers are breaking more and more stories, and how old news media is following their lead.

And I forgot to mention the few articles in the business page (apparently the new Napster blows), and the usual reviews of video games and such in the Sunday Source. I bet if I looked in the Sports section I could find a new media connection.

The story for me is not just the prevalence of bloggers but all new media in the old media of newspapers. I'm glad newspapers are covering new media because, frankly, I'm still quite fond of newspapers and would rather read about a lot of new media than to "do" new media at this point.

Then again, it seems every day something comes along that chips away at my incipient luddism. For instance, I just ordered an iPod online, when such a thing would have been unthinkable a year ago. I am ever closer to being assimilated...

i'm blogging this

Just got back from my weekly meditation at the Washington Buddhist Vihara. There was a young black woman, sitting on her cushion in the half-lotus, wearing a t-shirt that said "I'm blogging this." I watched her for a while to see if she was imputing something into a hand-held during meditation, but she wasn't. Then I had a glimpse of the future when all of us are part human, part android, and you might have a chip implanted in your brain so that you can immediately imput your thoughts to a blog.

Still, I'd like to think that even in such a future you would be able to turn the damn machine off in your head when you need to meditate. Because we'll need to meditate, then more than ever.

synergy with steely dan

Here's a little digimedia synergy thing.

The other day I was listening to Steely Dan (something I do a lot). The album was "everything must go" and the song was "Godwhacker." (I just got even more synergistic on your a-s by actually putting the song in question to play on my computer). I heard what I thought was a reference to William Blake's "The Tyger," his most popular poem and, I'm told, the most anthologized poem in the English language (there it is! I just heard my reference on the song. Now I'm going to re-wind to quote it).

Here is the reference: "Sniff your big tiger in the forest of the night." This refers to the first two lines of the poem: "Tyger Tyger, burning bright, / In the forest of the night;". I thought that was really cool, even though I'm officially sick of Blake this semester.

So I did what any digi-head would do: I Googled the song.

The first two entries were commercial entries (the very first a broken link). Not surprising. Then there was a page that was part of some discussion thread from June 2003. Some interesting stuff there.

Then I came to the official Steely Dan site, where I found the lyrics. In fact, to be honest, that's when I first sussed out the lyrics: I listened to the song about five times before and couldn't get anything except "tiger" and "forest of the night" which was enough for me.

They also had a sample of the song. Though I was listening to it on my computer, I clicked on the link. Real Audio replaced the one on my hard drive with the one streamed from the site. Of course, it was only an excerpt. When it was done, I went back to the full version on my hard drive.

And then to make the synergy complete, I decided then that all this would make an interesting blog entry. And voila!

If I must review the album (it appears I must), I'll say it's grown on me a lot. I didn't like at first, but now I do. Steely Dan does that to me. Which is why I listen to them a few times a week. Donald Fagen is one of the best lyricists out there (still--he's pretty ancient by now) and Walter Becker's jazz licks are groovy too. One is tempted to call this some of the best geezer rock out there, but since it's more pop-jazz, that would be mis-labeling. I think pop-jazz has a much longer shelf-life than rock. That's certainly true of Steely Dan.

And why doesn't Tony Soprano ever listen to Steely Dan? They do cheap-hood-with-artistic-aspirations-in-Jersey pretty well.

P.S. OK, I don't like Walter Becker's song stylings on "Slang of Ages." Walter, you need to know: I'm thinking seriously of deleting your song from my hard-drive. Sorry.

existential game 26: why the headache?

This game, as the title to this blog entry suggests, is trying to find out why I have a headache. It's either a puzzle game, or a science game (setting up an experiment) or both.

1. Is it because I've been staring into a computer screen all day? No, actually, because I haven't.

2. Is it because I haven't had my coffee today (the same reason I had to take a nap, which I don't usually do on coffee days), thus signifying that I am truly a java drug addict, after avoiding that particular addiction for 40 years of my 41-year-old life?

3. Is it--and I shouldn't even write this, but I'm weird--because I have a massive brain tumor?

4. Is it because I'm tense because I'm blogging about things I didn't plan on blogging on, which means the pile of things I wanted to blog on remains vertiginously high?

5. Is it because I spent five minutes trying to decide if I really wanted to write "plan on blogging on" in the sentence above?

existential game 25: find the edit

This is a game for my SECRET CORRESPONDENT.

You have to find the minor edit I made to one of my last ten entries. You have 5 minutes to find it. If you don't find it in five minutes, I will be forced to reveal your TRUE NAME.

Have fun.

Hi ho.

more on the taste loss epidemic

I've just been informed by a SECRET CORRESPONDENT (who may be reading this at this very moment) that the reason you need to put your birth date into the web page form for the Miller beer Taste Loss site (see entry below) is so that non-minors may be excluded from the fun and games. My SECRET CORRESPONDENT actually put in a fake date (he does such things all day long; apparently he doesn't have a REAL JOB) and was not allowed access.

I suppose all that is fine. We don't want minors seeing beer made more desirable with humor (though this may encourage them to hack the site. We all know minors are more clever computer-users than ad campaign designers).

But then I wonder if they'll develop technology (or data bases) that will enable them to discover that I don't drink beer, that in fact I hate the stuff. And then what will I do? I'll be forced to find my entertainment at websites that DON'T peddle dangerous drugs by using clever humor and design. Woe is me.

Let's face it (and I know I'm being opinionated today), the best advertisements (at least during sporting events, which is why I'm usually watching TV) are for beer and gas-guzzling cars. Both of which are toxic in their own way.

OK, now I'll get off my soap-box. Or rather my keg. And get back to the previously scheduled blogging.

now blogging in weirdville

The street lights just came on. I can now blog.

Why am I so vampiric about it? I mean, why does it have to be dark for me to blog? I don't know. Just don't send me any garlic. Ginger I'll accept.

I guess that dark is just one more thing that helps me feel like I'm entering virtual space, and that's part of the appeal of blogging.

Or maybe, like the good employee I am, I don't want blogging to creep into my workaday life, and so make myself wait until the work day--associated with daylight--is over before blogging.

Or maybe when it gets dark my resistance is lower and my cyborg self can emerge and do his little digital dance.

Or maybe it's just that I need darkness to be weird, and I want my blog to skew weird.

In that note, see above to the entry I am now going to blog.