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Thursday, May 30, 2002


Bubba asked me, "What's it called, a Blorg?"

Don't worry, Bubba, I'm not barfing up any scary, intimate details in my Blog! Hell, I'm not even coughing them up, and I've been coughing for the last two weeks. Ya don't suppose there's any truth to the chem trails theory, do ya? cough cough hack cough blorg


posted at 5:59 PM




What time is it?

This is great: the humanclock project. Really great. It would make a wonderful (high-bandwith) screensaver. Makes me wish I had a second monitor, just to have this flashing away on the other screen. Another mini-masterpiece every 60 seconds.

Speaking of time, what's up with this crazy fuck? The time cube guy.
YOU pitiful mindless fools,
YOU are educated stupid.
YOU worship cubeless word.
YOU are your own poison.
YOU create your own hell.
YOU must seek Time Cube.


posted at 5:34 PM




Getting deeper into the Chrome box (it's only 3 CDs of music). Diggin' it. "Perfumed Metal" sounds like a Butthole Surfers song... or vice versa. Sounds like Gibby wailing into a delay. But, no, it's Mr. Edge.


posted at 1:14 PM




Interview with DJ Screw (RIP) Some highlights (no pun intended):
I'm Screwed for life till the day I die.



How I really started this shit just in the crib one night just gettin fucked up with some buddies. We were in there gettin high and makin tapes. I was fuckin with the turntable and slowed it down, and right there with the mood I was in it sounded so good. I just started listenin to it like that. Ever since then all the shit has been screwed up.


At first people thought the tape deck was broke or the batteries was low or something. Shit, that's just how the music is. People caught on to it and people started lovin it. A lotta people think it's just for people who just get high, but you don't gotta get high or fucked up to listen to my tapes. You can be sober and listen to my tape. When it's slowed down you can hear the music and the lyrics better.


If you're name is Larry and you slowed some shit down, then that's a DJ Larry mix. It ain't no DJ Screw. A muthafucka think just cause they slow it down it's a Screw tape.


People been listening to my shit so long they're all Screwed Up. When they listen to the radio at regular speed it sounds like the Chipmunks to them.


posted at 1:00 PM




Scientists believe certain bug species may have evolved the ability to manipulate the weather in order to secure their own survival. Trippy. Lightning bugs?

OKAY! Now, this is the stuff. When I was writing about the 'nonsense' sites that Rodney found, I was thinking that it was similar to what happens when you enter a phrase into a translation program and then translate it back to English. Well, I took the above sentence, the one beginning "Scientists believe..." and translated it from English to French to German, back to French and then back to English. Here's the serendipitous result:
The scientists believe that certain types of anomaly can have developed the capacity to handle time, to fix their characteristic to survive.
And suddenly it ties back in with the theme of time. Ah, beautiful chance.


posted at 8:30 AM


Wednesday, May 29, 2002


Music industry sues Napster-like Audiogalaxy - Well, I guess it was only a matter of time.


posted at 9:52 AM


Tuesday, May 28, 2002



Another guilty pleasure. Feels like I'm guilty of treason just looking at this site. Oh, we *are* living in a police state? I thought that was just when I was a young punker living in Reagan's Amerika!


posted at 9:02 PM





Another Edge. Damon Edge. And Helios Creed. After all these years, I finally succumbed to temptation and bought the box. I had an opportunity to buy the LP version of the box around 20 years ago for a ridiculously low price, but back then, even a cheap box set was not cheap. It remains to be seen, but I think Half Machine Lip Moves (1979) is still my favorite Chrome album. Totally damaged, distorto, effects-laden, sci-fi freakout. Not punk, not pre-punk or post-punk. It's just Chrome. I guess the closest relative is Hawkwind, but Hawkwind would be overground to the intensely underground feel of this music.

Chrome is one of those bands (same with DJ Screw) that makes me wonder if there's something wrong with me that I dig 'em. Is that the definition of "guilty pleasure"?


posted at 3:20 PM




Edge 60 - holy guacamole! Time. Egads. "...if you try to get your hands on time, it's always slipping through your fingers."
My basic idea is that time as such does not exist. There is no invisible river of time. But there are things that you could call instants of time, or 'Nows'.
I get dizzy and feel kinda dumb reading this interview with Julian Barbour. What an incredible article. I feel like the only response I can make is to kinda grunt uneasily and quote Peter Fonda's character in Easy Rider, "I'm hip to time." Duh. Uh.

Thanks, Rodney, for the link. (And dang me if they didn't beat me to the punch registering edge.org. It's my middle name, after all [after my grandmother's maiden name].)


posted at 3:04 PM


Sunday, May 26, 2002


Scorched. My forehead is burnt to a crisp. Forgot hat and/or sunscreen before taking off for a long bike ride in the Texas sun. Really nice ride in spite of having a hitch in my respiratory get-along and a torqued derailleur (from a recent head over wheels endo. No, ma, I wasn't wearing a helmet). Very self-indulgent listening on the CD Walkman, "Rock God," a sound project I finished several years ago, which is as far from rock as you can get. Not quite music, but not noise. Kind of like a lo-fi Future Sounds of London circa Lifeforms. Anyway, I quite like it, though I haven't found anyone else who does. Not that I've inflicted it on that many people. [Correction: Jenni said she liked it. I made her a copy when we were still dating (as opposed to living together). She says, "I guess I don't count, huh?" She does. I've got one 'fan'.]

The CD is about an hour long, and I rode until I got to the end of the CD. By then I was way up Barton Creek and away from city sounds. Sat and listened to bird songs and the insects buzzing past my ears. Mockingbirds, wrens, doves (mourning and inca), cardinals, grackles, blue jays, perhaps a finch, and a song I couldn't identify. It was a beautiful clear day with the sun beaming down, but quite comfortable in the shade.

After sitting for some time, I headed back down the trail to Barton Springs (a beautiful spring-fed pool, pretty much right in town. 68 degrees F. year round), derailleur giving me fits. It usually seems to work fine, but then it'll suddenly freak out and shift gears on me, usually at the worst times, like trying to race in front of oncoming traffic. Gotta get it fixed. Had a very refreshing swim, then headed for home, listening to The Fall's Light User Syndrome. Stopped off at Shady Grove for a frozen margarita (with salt), a BLT sandwich, and a twice-baked jalapeño potato.

Thought about blogging a lot on my ride - not that I actually came up with anything to say, which has been a problem. But what the hell, I've got the bandwidth and the disk space, might as well use it. Write about a great bike ride instead of a great website. There's something ineffable about a bike ride. I love riding. In fact, I should probably get up from the computer and go for a leisurely bike ride around the neighborhood and check out the full moon.


posted at 10:19 PM


Tuesday, May 21, 2002


Reading through AKMA's old blogs, I ran across this funny, but uncharacteristically 'vexed' and terse, entry . The part about getting 'vexed by people ... who can't tell the Cure from the Furs' made me think of a Fall lyric, which I thought was 'couldn't tell Lou Reed from the Cure," but searching it on The Fall Lyrics Parade revealed I've had the line wrong all these years. It's "You couldn't tell Lou Reed from Doug Yule," which is a completely different (but just as damning) lyric. To tell the truth, I think the Doug Yule reference would've slipped past me until recently. Stevie Nixed clued me in with her blog on the Lou Reed-less Velvet Underground album, Squeeze, featuring Doug Yule.

So, having looked up the lyrics to Shoulder Pads, I continued poking around The Fall Lyrics Parade and hearing Mark E. Smith's voice in my head as I read the lyrics. (And, as Martha Stewart would say, "That's a good thing.") Lo and behold, literally minutes later, I received The Fall's Light User Syndrome in the mail. And to whomever it was on Amazon that recommended it as the best Fall album of the 90's, bless thee. It had not previously registered on my radar.

The other funny peeve in AKMA's post is the bit about people who can't spell "Psychedelic." Searching furs pretty in pink on Audiogalaxy (phrase selected for maximum return) produced a treasure trove of misspellings of the word 'psychedelic.' An overview of alternate spellings:
Psychidelic Furs
Psychadelic Furs
Phsychedelic Furs
psychedeic furs
pshychodelic furs
Psychedellic Furs
Physchedelic Furs

To be fair, I may not have been able to spell it, either, before I became a rabid Psychedelic Furs fan, which was a long long time ago (1979 or early '80). Before their first album was released in the States, I had heard it on the late night 'new wave' radio show by Rev. Neil X on KUT FM in Austin, Texas, and immediately bought the import-only LP at Inner Sanctum Records. Shortly thereafter, the Psychedelic Furs came through and played two nights at a tiny punk club, Raul's. I was there both nights. And I have photos to prove I was there at least one of the nights. And so I learned to spell 'psychedelic' because I had to report on it in my zine and couldn't keep on butchering the spelling. (And it was a fantastic show.)


posted at 1:26 PM




What have you got in that paper bag?
Is it a dose of Vitamin C?
Ain't got no time for Western medicine
I am Damo Suzuki

-The Fall, from the song "I am Damo Suzuki," from the el-pee This Nation's Saving Grace. Great song. Western medicine has done nothing for me today, save to tell me I don't have pneumonia. That's something, at least. Continue with the vitamin C and echinacea. (Damo Suzuki was Can's singer. Can, German, Damo not.)


posted at 11:19 AM


Monday, May 20, 2002


So now everywhere I look I find more on the theme of meaning and non-meaning. Found this great quote in DJ MF's review of rapper El-P on AltRap (from a link on Stevie Nixed's blog):
And don't even get me started on the lyrics and flow. At his best, El-P is barely bearable. At his worst? You'll wish language wasn't invented. There's some sort of message in there - of that I'm sure. But why would anyone want to sit through the gibberish to decipher it?

Searching audiogalaxy for El-P , I found all sorts of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer (ELP) tracks listed amongst the El-P tracks. Y'think any hip-hop fans might get turned on to "Karn Evil 9" or "Fanfare for the Common Man" by accident? Probably not. [singing]: "Ooooh, what a lucky man he was...."

As a rule, I'm not really that much into hip-hop. Or rather, I just don't know that much about it. I like a lot of rap when I hear it, but a lot of the machismo and violence... well, that just ain't my scene, dude. But, man, there are some tracks that I just can't get enough of, like the "screwed-up" Swisha House remix of E-40's "Big Ballin' With My Homies", which is itself an updated, fleshed out remake of Sir Mix-a-Lot's "My Posse's on Broadway." It's not a DJ Screw (R.I.P.) track, but it is slowed down and screwed up just like he would've done. Long live DJ Screw. Screw was a Texas boy.


posted at 1:53 PM


Sunday, May 19, 2002


My whole being was seeking for something still unknown which might confer meaning upon the banality of life. -Jung, MDR, p. 165.

Re-read chapter 5 of Memories, Dreams, Reflections (essentially Jung's autobiography). It's the chapter on Sigmund Freud. We actually have a couple of copies of it. In one copy, the former owner had underlined the pendulum quote.
I was never able to agree with Freud that the dream is a 'facade' behind which its meaning lies hidden--a meaning already known but maliciously, so to speak, withheld from consciousness. To me dreams are a part of nature, which harbors no intention to deceive, but expresses something as best it can...


posted at 11:45 AM


Thursday, May 16, 2002


The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong. —C. G. Jung

Well, as long as I'm on that theme.... that's pretty interesting. I found this quotations page while searching for the Lewis Carroll quote. Lots of great quotes. Trolling further through the site, I decided to check if she had any quotes from Jung. Lo and behold, synchronicity being what it is, the above quote appears. Dunno where it comes from, though. Oh, this site says its from Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Ch. 5. Good place to start, I think, if you've never read any Jung but would like to. Now, I'll have to get my copy and see in what context he was speaking. It's been awhile since I read it.


posted at 4:00 PM


Wednesday, May 15, 2002


Molecular Expressions: Science, Optics and You - Powers Of 10: Interactive Java Tutorial - remember that movie they used to show in science class, Powers of 10? Here's the movie condensed into a java applet. I recommend the 'manual' override. The trip from outer space to inner space goes too fast for me!


posted at 1:45 PM


Tuesday, May 14, 2002


Here's the quote I was looking for. Unfortunately, the power of Google made it unnecessary to go through Alice in Wonderland page by page looking for the quote, but on the upside, I found the entire book online! Ah do luv the web. The quote comes from chapter twelve and fits to a doggone T what I've been yappin' about.

`If there's no meaning in it,' said the King, `that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any. And yet I don't know,' he went on, spreading out the verses on his knee, and looking at them with one eye; `I seem to see some meaning in them, after all...'


posted at 9:14 AM




Oh, Blogger, why are you so unkind to Macintosh users? I just lost everything I'd been writing for the last 10 minutes when I tried to resize the editing frame because I can't scroll the editing window. Evil blogger. My thoughts are gone forever. You work so well on the PC. Are you aligned with the evil empire?

Crap. I'll try to recall the gibberish I lost. "Right brain, go," it began. And continued, "non-linear, random..." and then something about the polarity of meaning vs non-meaning. I had written that Rodney told me that he felt a certain anxiety as he read the apparent non sequitur nonsense below and that he even thought it might be some sort of code. I was struck by the difference of our reactions. I accepted it as purely random language that serendipitously had some aesthetically pleasing word combinations that read rather poetically, as there is a certain literary quality to it. It's not as though they randomly selected texts from technical manuals or something anti-poetic. It struck me as mild paranoia to think that there was meaning encoded there. But then Rodney has long been interested in cryptography. And I, who know next to nothing about the subject, remembered a PBS special on Cold War cryptography... and then it was my turn to be paranoid. If there was meaning, then it must be sinister. Why would someone encode their meaning if it were benign? Why hide your meaning? Spit it out! But that is a recurring theme in my life, enjoying something aesthetically and thinking it is beautiful nonsense (like dreams, for instance?) and then finding it really did have meaning after all. Bummer. I like non-meaning. As my father used to love to quote Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, If there's no meaning in it, then that saves a world of trouble for we need not bother trying to find any. Or something to that effect. I'll try to find the exact quote, and it will be a pleasure doing so (digging through Alice in Wonderland again).


posted at 6:38 AM


Monday, May 13, 2002


Right brain, left brain, there may be no such thing. But it's (yet another) interesting place to start. The neurophysiologist may scoff at such things, but then it's not really his to judge. If one is truly brainstorming, one shouldn't let the haters shut one up. Oh, Cyclone of Indifference, why art thou so indifferent? And why has my blog gone invisible? I see it in the source code but I can't see it on the page. Am I using invisible ink in my hypertext?


posted at 10:03 PM




I had said that I was born in Micronesia, but that wasn't true. This fellow said he'd recently returned from there, and when asked how it was, he answered, "Unamerican." And that was that. I've never been there, so I don't know.


posted at 9:59 PM


Friday, May 10, 2002


a random text generator for the innocent, the eager, and the doomed: The Deluxe Transitive Generator. Here I thought I'd found a possible solution to the 'random text' question. But this isn't as bizarre. Maybe it's the words the generator chooses from. It's more self-consciously weird, cute, purposely 'surreal'. I know all about that sort of thing, having been guilty of the same for years. I'll share an example(s) at some point. But I dutifully cut and pasted the javascript into an html document, so you can see the Deluxe Transitive Generator's output. Reload/refresh the page for a completely different set of randomness. Just how random, I wonder. Not as utterly random as the stuff Rodney found.


posted at 4:38 PM


Thursday, May 09, 2002


All the hullaballoo, all the noise

Wow. Jenni and I saw Nick Cave last night at Stubb's. Holy Mackeral. I wasn't sure it would be worth the substantial ticket price, the most I've EVER paid for a show (other than a big festival like Lollapaloopa). But, man, it was worth it. I had actually seen Nick Cave several years ago at a Lollahoopla, but that was NOT the right environment, with a bunch of fucked up little Dallas brats only there to see Green Day. That was the worst shit, even with all the great acts on the roster, Beastie Boys, Breeders, George Clinton, etc. (And no, I didn't get to see The Boredoms, because they weren't at the Dallas show.) But I digress. Last night was a great show and showed Nick's still got it. And he played one of the oldies, one of my favorite songs of all time, Saint Huck. The way he screamed 'Saint Huck' was alone worth the price of admission. Sent shivers up and down my spine!


posted at 10:24 PM




Rodney found these bizarre websites (he found "this nest of weirdness" accidentally through a Google search) that read like some bizarre Finnegan's Wake or schizophrenic Word Salad. There's poetry in them thar URLs. (He thinks they might be "randomly generated, pulling text from all over the internet... generated by seed words," so you may see different text than I did.)

http://westerlybulldogs.com/donald:sutherland/liar: (I dig that URL, too.) The title is "The history of Germany is a history lesson this weekend" and includes lines such as:

"Despite some mechanical trouble with the Macdonalds of Keppoch, who remained faithful to the Royal Observatory to enter the church quite faint with cold; but, for God's sake, the cold was sweet and noble. The rain of fire fell on the New Books Shelves."

"I then told your grandfather what I really like making the five pointed star just like Betsy did."

"Similarly, studies of traditional Gaelic literature which aim to examine its operation supposing it to be in good condition. As other pages are removed from their WWW site contexts to be used in all areas, from agriculture to special education, and community settings. AMTA is committed to excellence and dedicated to the great scandal of the profession of civil engineer in 1939, and decided after the 1942 Conference to endeavour to prevail upon congress to send most pusillanimous instructions to its peace commissioners. They were instructed to explain to the American people and to ensure against ravages & insanity of nature & man. Lord Venkateswara of the Seven Sages in the Vaivaswata Manvantara."

http://fresh-blood.iwasateenagewolfman.com/infant*feeding:
"He learns that Mr. USP stands for the most part, Viagra has been used as food for many years and my assimilation of various sources, mainly anthroposophy, scripture and of course had to pee as well."

Very odd, indeed. I remember a professor of mine in Abnormal Psychology playing a recording of a schizophrenic going off like that... the professor was laughing like a madman. It was a strange tableau.


posted at 2:20 PM


Wednesday, May 08, 2002


Jenni and I were talking yesterday about commercials co-opting good music for their own diabolical ends. She mentioned AmEx's use of Lennon's Imagine. I said, well, at least they'll never use Meat City, the almost punk rock flipside of the Imagine single. I still have the single from way back when, and, as was often the case with singles I bought as a kid, I liked the B-side much more than the 'hit' on the A-side. I downloaded Meat City from audiogalaxy, because it's much easier than getting my record player (oops, showing my age. I meant 'turntable') fixed and playing that old scratchy single. What a great song Meat City is.

Snake doctors shakin like there's no tomorrow
Freak City
Chickinsuckin mothertruckin Meat City shookdown U.S.A.
Pig Meat City

Speaking of advertising: in writing the above entry, I had to resort to the web to remember which company it was that used Imagine in their ad. (Take that, AmEx!) Found an interesting interview with Stuart Ewen that addresses the Lennon-appropriation and includes this fine quote: "When scotch companies put up posters in the subways, that's legitimate. But when kids from the Bronx decorate subways, that's vandalism."

Which reminds me of Thesis #74 of The Cluetrain Manifesto: "We are immune to advertising. Just forget it."


posted at 11:10 AM




A sore throat yesterday made me wonder if its cause were psychosomatic. Being a Jungian, I'm inclined to think this way, psyche and soma being two ends of the same spectrum. Not a mind-over-body-ist: first I'll look for some medicinal way out of the pain, then I'll get around to wondering about the pain. I made a note to look up the throat chakra. I wondered if perhaps some truth was 'hard to swallow,' but then decided, no, it was rather that it was more like something stuck in my throat. Probably something I needed to say. I searched throat chakra on Google, and the first link informed me that the throat chakra had to do with communication. And of course, I've been struggling with communication by Blog... what do I want to say with this Blog?

I don't know that much about chakras. I fear being New Agey - most websites with info on chakras are very new agey - but I don't suppose it hurts to look for hints there or anywhere else (just like I look for clues in etymology). Besides the New Agers didn't invent chakras and don't own it. And from the standpoint of someone who loves words, it's cool that the throat chakra is also known as the 'Cornucopia Center.'

So, today the sore throat has cleared up, but I feel all phlegmy. Not sure I actually feel phlegmatic. Sluggish maybe, 'stolid' (dull, stupid) maybe, but not unemotional.


posted at 9:28 AM


Tuesday, May 07, 2002


I, insomniac. Shallow obsessive sleep with repetitive images of the web as matrix of connections, my thoughts jumping like a jittery attention-deficited speedfreak through the labyrinth of unmeaning. Blah. I'd rather be in deep paradoxical sleep.


posted at 4:21 AM


Monday, May 06, 2002


Now I've done it. Blown any chances of getting off the ground with my new found blog. Discovered AKMA's blog and set my sights way too high. Shit, all I wanted to do was have a place to stick my disconnected musings and web-searches. But danged if I wouldn't like a site as pregnant with meaning and insight as AKMA's. Oh, well, dreamers dream. Even when they're awake. Wake up, funny boy!

Or for that matter, get on bartleby.com and search paradoxical sleep. Nice term. Very nice. Though unfortunately, the reason for its name is not given. Probably precisely because of the "increased pulse rate and brain activity" involved.

Hmm. Antimatter: Mirror of the Universe


posted at 3:40 PM





You are an AKMA.

You stand out from the crowd because of deeply held beliefs in the unknown.

You ponder endlessly and treat everyone, even fucknozzles, with respect.

WWAD (what would AKMA do) guides your actions.
Take the What Blogging Archetype Are You test at GAZM.org

Well, it's certainly something to aspire to, anyway.

+ + + +

How To Deconstruct Almost Anything - a kranky engineer vents his spleen at the English department, the folks who were kind enough to grant me a degree. Still, it's a great title and a funny essay. I bear no hard feelings. Besides, postmodernism was confined to the art department (one of my minors, the other being psychology) when I was in school. The English department was still chewing through the moderns, as I still am.


posted at 9:37 AM


Friday, May 03, 2002


Stevie Nixed  |  Weblog - what a great Blog name.

Amazon.com: My Wish List - my birthday is coming up. Taurus the bull, snort snort.


posted at 5:26 PM




I was wondering about the word 'fundamentalism' and used the word 'fundament' in something I was writing offline, and made a note to myself to check out fundament on dictionary.com to see if it were really a word, and if so, how to use it. I certainly was surprised by the first meaning.


posted at 4:21 PM