Restraint

Riots in Reykjavik

January 22, 2009 – 1:31 am

For the first time in 60 years, police in Iceland have had to use tear gas as protesters riot over the handing of the financial crisis:

(Photos by -alp, hauxon, and vhallgrimsson.)

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se7en th1ngs

January 20, 2009 – 10:18 am

Thanks to Mr. Dangerously, I am honour-bound to make this post.

The rules:

  1. Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
  2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
  3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
  4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

The things:

  1. Through little-to-no fault of my own, I spent a number of years under 24/7 police surveillance while growing up. To this day, I still expect to see unmarked vans when I look out the window, and to hear the telltale double-click when I pick up my phone. I imagine I always will.
  2. I think Walt Disney and Shigeru Miyamoto are two of the greatest surrealists who have ever worked, and should be spoken of in the same hushed and reverant tones reserved for Dalí and Ernst.
  3. I prefer A Silver Mt. Zion to Godspeed You Black Emperor. You want to fight about it?
  4. The first time (that I remember) seeing both my parents in the same room together, I was sixteen, and in a courtroom surrounded by a gauntlet of cameras and reporters.
  5. I got into rap before I got into electronic music, or any other music at all, and I’ve been trying to figure out what the first rap album I ever owned (and knew all the lyrics to) was. I think it was Walking with a Panther, Let’s Get It Started, or Banned in the USA.
  6. I emailed Douglas Adams out of the blue for girl advice when I was nineteen. In addition to being very friendly and extremely incisive, he is actually funnier when he’s not working than when he is.
  7. Musicians I have consciously attempted to rip off include (but are not limited to): Michael Gira, Trent Reznor, Nobuo Uematsu, STR, Paul Frankland, Nick Thériault, and Johann Sebastian Bach.

I am passing this albatross on to: 0utre, albedo_lens, unacquiesce, divine, essinem, mr_horse, and and last but not least, liquidab (who probably won’t do it anyway).

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A quiet moment.

January 19, 2009 – 1:41 pm

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Superior ability breeds superior ambition

January 14, 2009 – 5:46 pm

Today is a sad day at the Haus ov Khan.

Ricardo Montalban, 1920 - 2009

Ricardo Montalban: 1920 - 2009

Posted in Geekdom, Khan | Comments (0)

The Waking

January 12, 2009 – 10:50 pm

The Waking:

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

– Theodore Roethke

Posted in Dreams | Tagged | Comments (4)

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Fucking Evening

January 8, 2009 – 2:57 pm

I’ve been trying to find my centre. Winter is under my fingernails and on my lips, and I need to shake it loose before it gets to the bone.

More than anything else, what the season brings me is isolation. I end up so lost that simple things like touch, sharing a meal, or holding up my end of a conversation become overwhelmingly complicated, and leave me feeling sensitive and nervous.

I don’t know where I need to go to find what I used to have; all the signs are in another language, and all the maps are made of dust.

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To Protect and Serve

January 8, 2009 – 9:06 am

There were riots in Oakland last night over the New Years Day homicide of Oscar Grant, who was shot by BART transit police at point-blank range in the back while being restrained by officers.

Amnesty International:

When an unarmed man is shot in the back after police put him face down on the ground, it is the time for authorities to demand action, not patience. Days after the incident, the officer still has not been interviewed. The delay in this critical part of the investigation hints at the callousness to the worth of human life to a public that is all too familiar with racial profiling, police brutality and cover-ups. Whatever the final investigation reveals, the bottom line is that there is never justification to shoot an unarmed person, especially one who is restrained. It is an obvious violation of the most basic human rights standards, and a clear cut abuse of power.

(Photos by Thomas Hawk and The Inadvertent Gardener.)

Posted in Politics | Tagged | Comments (10)

…and by ‘late’, I mean ‘Satan’.

January 4, 2009 – 11:50 pm

I missed this piece by Powazek when it came out, but better late than never:

Imagine that suddenly everyone around you begins to act funny. First your coworkers start to ask you what you’ve got planned for the Dark Days. Then you notice that storefronts are putting up decorations of burgundy and black, 10 foot-tall spikes festooned with bones. When you walk into stores, they’re all playing the same strange songs.

“Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful, and since we’ve no place to go, let it bleed from your head to your toes.”

When you buy your groceries, the person behind the counter says, “Hail Satan!” Total strangers on the street say it, too. And every one of them looks at you, waiting for you to say it back.

Then you realize that every house on your street is decorated with what looks like glowing entrails. Every window has that bony spike in the living room window. You go home and turn on the TV and every show has a Satan-themed episode. Characters spreading the festive entrails on the customary spike. All the special movies feature a sad non-believer who ultimately finds joy in the Dark Lord.

Distant family members, old friends, and your coworkers send you cards that say “Hail Satan” and “Praise the Dark Lord” and “Wishing You A Grisly Death in the New Year.” And then, towards the end of the month, people actually roam the streets, chanting in unison about their Great Dark Lord.

And then suddenly everything goes back to normal. The boney spikes are left on the sidewalks to be hauled away, all the magenta and black merchandise is put on sale, and no one talks about it for eleven months, when it all happens again.

This is what it’s like to not celebrate Christmas.

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We’ll all float on, ok?

January 4, 2009 – 9:04 pm

From a new Genesis P-Orridge interview:

Just recently some young students moved in to the apartment downstairs from us, so we went down and said “Hi welcome, we’re your neighbors,” and they gave us a cocktail because we’re all sitting there trying to make friends, and one of them said, of course, “What do you do?” So we said rather shyly, “well we kinda make music, do some art and stuff.” And one of the guys goes, “Oh what kinda music man?” And we said, “well the first band that we were in played music and we called it Industrial Music.” And he looks at me and he goes, “Yeah!” and he pulls up his T-shirt and he’s got a big Nine Inch Nails tattoo on his arm, and we went, “well, not really like that.” (laughs) And he went, “what do you mean?” “Well it was quite a few years before they were Nine Inch Nails.” and he went, “What? What do you mean? I thought Nine Inch Nails was Industrial” and so we thought, it’s not worth trying to explain this, and then the girl said, “Oh like Modest Mouse!”

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Promises, promises.

January 3, 2009 – 3:17 am

Spent a lot of today lost in my own head. Tried to shake it off and went down to the grand re-opening of the Mayfair Theatre, where the restored 35mm print of Metropolis was playing, with live music for the score.

The lineup was already at the end of the block by the time I got there, and after an hour in the cold we were told that no one else was getting in, they had been at capacity since 6PM or so.

Then everyone else in line left and we got in. (Standing room only, 124 minutes running time.)

Balcony at the Mayfair Theatre

Took a few photos on the way home, none of them really turned out well, sadly.

Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons

Would like to write more, but don’t have the words tonight.

Soon.

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