sound, fury, etc.
Okay, this page is funny for so many reasons. Let me tell you some of them:
But I’m sorry… This Wired puff-piece on G5 designer Johnathan Ive is just so… lame! They start off by describing him as “accessible and friendly, almost egoless.” and then he spends the rest of the article bitching and moaning about how nobody will ever appreciate all the “effort” and “hard work” that went into his minimalist design! He then closes with a tirade against “plastic faÁades” (Uh, hello… Anyone remember the G4? That mofo had a plastic faÁade so big they had to jury-rig it so that industry-standard CD-ROM drives would fit inside!) And besides, the thing looks like a 2-year-old Dell Server anyway.
Looks like Wired is hopping on the hot, new (neo-)fascist FUD-a-thon we’ve got cookin’ here in the “home of the brave.” They just published a handy guide to planetary extinction (Titled, alarmingly enough, “We’re All Gonna Die!” =). It’s a pretty entertaining read, but nowhere near as enlightening as Discover Magazine’s identically themed article from a few years back (This one’s called, much more soberly, “20 Ways the World Could End”). Aside from the fact that the Discover article has better hard science scenarios, they have better “left-field” scenarios too! For instance, Wired makes no allowance for Mass Insanity (my current fave, especially considering the recent antics of the US Medical Industry (cough) Pharmaceutical Companies (cough) Legal Drug dealers… =), Robot Takeover or the possibility that existence is just a dream inside, like… a giant trans-galactic Gaian mind, dude!
RIAA President Cary Sherman
“Any individual computer user who continues to steal music will face the very real risk of having to face the music.“
All joking aside. It looks like the RIAA has finally completely lost their collective mind. They’re suing the consumers of their products. It’s kind of like if people sued Phillip Morris because smoking gave them cancer, and then Phillip Morris sued the cancer victims for legal costs of the lawsuits because they were aware that smoking causes cancer in spite of Phillip Morris’ best efforts to conceal that fact. Or something. At any rate it’s getting to be re-god-damn-diculous…
A generous scanner-owner has seen fit to post the entire contents of a 1970s-era Scientology brochure! My favorite pages? As follows:
Remember back in the ’80s when it was so awesome to go to the computer lab, because it was the one room in the school with air conditioning? Those computers had to be kept cool and all us computer geeks were the silent beneficiaries of the delicate and expensive machines’ demands. Of course, it turned out not to be true necessarily… Computers without vacuum tubes at their core didn’t really need to be kept on ice, but it was a nice friggin’ scam while it lasted, dammit! So, today I’m wondering, as I sit in my sweltering hot-box of an office; Who sold us out?! Who went to management and let them in on our geeky little secret?! Oh sure, I guess I could go get a job where temperature really is important, but I shouldn’t have to… that’s my point! =)
Electric Six’s latest single, “Gay Bar,” has been the subject of a recent discussion on Metafilter.com. The song has been the subject of a flash-mash-up by Joel from Rathergood.com for awhile now, but a recent re-flashification of the song has helped expose some heretofore un-appreciated political subtext in the song (or not, I mean… You can make up your own mind =) At any rate, the song’s politics have already been compromised at least once when, due to the “situation” (not a war! =) in Iraq, the line “Let’s start a nuclear war” was excised from the lyrics. This was allegedly done with the band’s permission and everything, but the idea of “tiptoeing” around a “delicate subject” kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It also brings to mind a similar situation from a year or so ago when a much more overtly political band (Primal Scream) made an edit to their song “Bomb the Pentagon.” (Retitling it “Rise”) Okay, so this was a bit more specific and possibly offensive given the fact that some ass-hats actually did bomb the pentagon, killing plenty of unsuspecting civilians (?) inside. The song, however, was (obviously) written before the events of September 11, 2001, and was intended to metaphorically through the use of hyperbole remind listeners that a society that bases it’s legitimacy on military supremacy is by definition a target and blah, blah, blah, etc… whatever. Or at least, that’s the way I read it. Check some of the lyrics:
A life of work, is a life of crime
You pay your taxes, you serve your time
All that money, where does it go?
Schools, prisons, hospitals, roads
Government funding of military science
…
Hey wage slave where’s your profit share?
They got ya down they’re gonna keep you there
Get on up, protest riot
Are you collateral damage or a legitimate target?
Bomb, Bomb, Bomb the Pentagon!
And etc. So anyway, this song was also changed by the artists themselves, so the issue here is not censorship, but I guess the point is that these artists are willing to self-censor for whatever reasons, and that’s some BS. Did Neil Young censor “Ohio?” Did Dylan censor “Masters of War?” Fuck, no! Anyway, it’s not my business I guess, but I just kinda think it blows… =P
Damien Hirst:
I remember once having an idea where I was going to have a pig in a freezer covered in vibrators so it looked like a hedgehog. And it was going to be called Pork-U-Pine. And I was thinking there was some great idea there - I never made it, thank God. But some things like that do get made,
I’ve been playing with this thing called Friendster for the last day or so; the buzz surrounding it having reached sufficient volume to distract me from my usual online pursuits. It’s pretty neet, actually. You enter your name and ZIP code and you can start adding people to your circle of “friends.” (Theoretically, I could “invite” people to join my circle, but I’m a bit leery of subjecting them to possible spam, so I’ll just let you know that I registered under the email address “disposable at antinomian dot com” and you can find me yourself, if you so choose…) Anyway, once you’ve registered your friends, you will be able to see all of _their_ friends and _their_ friends, all up in a six-degrees-of-seperation stylee. (Interestingly, there used to be a website called sixdegrees.com, that worked very much like Friendster, but they’ve apparently gone out of business. Anyway, I’m apparently not the only one to find this whole application of technology really cool and interesting, as I’ve found several good articles on the topic in the last few weeks. Here they are:
So… Check it out, if you’re so inclined, and I’ll see you on-line… Best Friends Forever!!! =P
Well, Bobby. Today’s army needs all sorts of different folks to help win the war. We’ve got physicists developing new ways of blowing people up, and chemists making drugs to keep our pilots awake while they’re flying. Writers and advertising agencies are pitching in by helping us convince High School graduates that infantry combat is “Rad.” I’m sure there’s something you and your avant-garde friends can think of to help!
(Thanks to Cult of the Dead Cow weblog!)
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