Song 21

Song 20

Crap budget video, great song.


Broken Bells - The Ghost Inside OFFICIAL VIDEO (Protein Exclusive) from Protein® on Vimeo.

Midterms

I for one am quite glad that the US is returning to normalcy and a split house and more equally-divided senate. It will make for less hysterical politics, I hope.

Still, the thing that continually annoys me is how ideologically non-sensical the two parties are. It's become about identity politics, but as such, it's become the worst kind - representing the kinds of hypocrises that usually colour one's outlook, but this time trying to pretend that that identity actually means something. The American voter is confused, and it is largely to do with the fact that the old terms of what is left and what is right are completely redundant. In this sense, I can completely see why the Tea Party is so amorphous and cannot be truly representative of a world-view as such - it is tradition-based in as much as it harks back to a less complicated era where the government couldn't encroach on your life because it was fundamentally your client (and not the other way around as it is now), but also where corporations couldn't act institutionally because their profits were the result of actual hard work and ingenuity that was seemingly tangible and understandable.

Everything has changed though - from morality that needn't be prescribed to morality that should be defended as a bare minimum, to economics that should still be formulated in common sense values. I mean, who cares about human rights when they're overblown to cover someone with an idiotic position; who should care abut aggregate supply and demand when they don't correspond to the reality of a balanced family budget?

From this confusion comes a mix of things that don't make sense - conservatives, posing as libertarians, posing as moralists, telling people that government should keep out of their lives; liberals, posing as socialists, telling people that they'd like to see efficient markets so that the corporations have less sway over their lives.

Seriously, it's at times like these that you do want to just scream: I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more! but then you realise that we're in an age when protest is redundant, when security is all-encompassing and where your rights are a pure function of the morality of others. Back in the das when those slogans were dreamt up, they meant something. Now, ideology has the stench of unknowable dogma and thus all current dogma is interchangeable - "Want more government? Vote for me?/ Want less government? Vote for me two years later!" The stupidity of it all is that no-one is actually going after the things that matter, which you really have to hand it to the Tea Party for noticing, in part.

I mean, Barack Obama is a great President of the United States. He really is, given his circumstances. However, he needs to stop playing the confused game of right and left politics, because neither make sense any more.

Great website

I love these illustrations http://poolga.com/

Art monday

This is strangely mesmerising.

TROIKA_SHOAL from Troika on Vimeo.

Poor old Rove

I despair at the future of the Republican party if it decides to turn on all of its star performers. There is something in this that reminds me of the whole "revolutions eat their children" phenomenon, where Rove's brilliance in organising grass-roots support for the Republicans leading up to the 2000 elections is ultimately what undoes him. It's a shame, because, for all his supposed Manichean traits, Rove does know what he's doing and he's very good at it. By becoming apostate, he could in turn become a much more powerful enemy of the Tea Partiers than the Dems ever will be. Ok, I'm overloading the analogies here. Still, this whole thing has a terrible quality of purges on a holier-than-thou basis going on in the GOP and te Tea Party believing its own hype. What is especially troubling is that this means that the moderate bastions of the Democrats will have to be counted as the the only right-wingers in the house, because the Tea Party GOP, for all its talk, seems skewed to the left. Or I don't know if it's left, but it's a strange hybrid of left-and-nutty-right, where the state is built up and maintained, but taxes are lowered. It's a paradox of such colossal proportions that I wonder how any serious person could in turn take it seriously. I realise that it's the prerogative of the party not in power to present contrary positions to the one governing rather than workable alternatives, but there is a limit.
The whole problem is of Rove's own making - he made the GOP run as a machine where everyone was always on-message, the Dems have had more heterogeny and therefore seem the healthier party, despite the outcome of the November elections. Once, you make a party truly cadre-fied you have to either lead the masses or you will be led by them because they will want loyalty above all.
The scary thing is that the phoenix that rises from this mess is Sarah Palin, the leader of a movement at the height of its anger. It's a scary world we live in.

Song 19

Mnhherr.

Dancing Pigeons - Ritalin from Blink on Vimeo.

Song 18

I like fighting.



There is no greater point. Aside from the fact that it just goes to show though that people really have weird hobbies.

Song 17

I know, two posts in one day. It must be the summer.

Song 16

So freakin hot right now.

A politician I could get behind

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/world/europe/26iceland.html?src=tptw

I just wish coalitions would be formed on whether their members had seen all five seasons of 'The Wire'. I would also want the Prime Minister to prove he had a Bunkenian philosophy.

Paul McCartney - C-Moon

Brilliant song.
Almost makes me like Paul McCartney.

McChrystal

I've been especially interested in the blow-out from the McChrystal/Rolling Stone brouhaha and I am especially interested to see how much quality analysis as well as sober navel-gazing it has generated from the press. This particular David Brooks article is a great case in point, but there have been many others that I shared through my reader feed (another is the great Ezra Klein collumn on the greatness of the military as an institution).

My take on the whole situation is that it was a mistake by McChrystal, and added to his past transgressions (London speech et al), Obama had no other choice, and I thought handled it very well. His closing sentiments were again testament to his wonderful oratory and Petraeus was an inspired choice.

However, it highlights one thing in modern political discourse (or in discourse in general) - this monumental fuck-up generated some of the most sensible, moderate, balanced analysis of anything on the modern world. Even people who I would have thought usually would have taken the opportunity to score political points, rallied around the issue and produced some thoughtful contributions to the collection of modern thought.

I don't want us to be hippies and all get along, but it makes for quality reading when hyperbole isn't a default option.

Song 14

Great song, I just wish I found a slightly better video to this.

Song 13

Love this song.

Grizz-nix

This is a brilliant little idea, and strangely does seem to work amazingly well...

http://wearephoenix.com/grizzly_bear_remix/

Song 12

Wax Tailor feat. Charlie Winston " I Own You" from SoLab on Vimeo.

I really like this director. The singer looks like a twat. I thought hats were out?

Song 11

Ok, so sometimes, you come across something visually arresting, usually from some director that's kind of known for being a little bit out-of-left-field, and you just think: "Why could you not use those production values on something that doesn't scream 'I'm so out of left-field and visually arresting!' but rather uses a more intelligent and less obvious way to explore emotions so visceral?" And then you realise it's because no idiot on the web is going to put it up on his insignificant little blog unless the material is both 'WTF' and 'NSFW' and he can claim some clever insight into works of art and culture.

Not one for family-viewing, I'll warn you.

HEALTH "We are Water" from Eric Wareheim on Vimeo.

Oh how I used to love maths

For precisely these reasons:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/take-it-to-the-limit/?src=me&ref=homepage

The problem is with age, is that you completely forget the things that you used to find exciting and fascinating when you were younger, because you just assume that you know them. And even if you now have an imperfect knowledge of them, you just assume that it is because you can't really remember them properly. But because it seems like a step backwards to go and relearn them again, you're happy with your imperfect memory of them, mainly because the bulk of your learning is set, your philosophies and priorities are somehow set, and you don't really want to go back and rethink everything. Mainly because it's a massive drag and has no practical application to your life - just as you expected most of school was when you were there.
I don't think I really miss those days when I was young and ignorant of learning, I just wish that I wasn't constantly reminded of how in the world I have no complete knowledge of, and especially how it's a constant Sisyphean task trying to know everything about the world. Even if most of that knowledge may be abstract and wholly impractical, it's real in some way, and it's a shame that with every avenue I venture through and recognise, there is a new, wider avenue that opens up at its end.
I remember once being told that Beethoven, on his deathbed, said something in the sense of the fact that he feels as only he has only begun to understand the world and there is still so much he hasn't yet mastered. And then there are the rest of us, who have to live in the knowledge that if Ludwig so moaned, we really aren't trying hard enough or seem to be content with too little.

Song 10

Note: Never get the singer to direct the video.
Great song though.


Beach House "Silver Soul" from Sub Pop Records on Vimeo.

Song 9

Really pretty video, nice song.


Fleet Foxes "Mykonos" from Sub Pop Records on Vimeo.

Talking of horrible things going mainstream...

I meant to post this yesterday, but didn't for some reason. In any case, here is yesterday's bile:
In the WSJ today, another conservative seemingly comes out in favour of Sarah Palin as a valid candidate. I fear this may be some kind of trend, as a party devoid of any sensible leadership begins to grasp at straws.  What seriously annoys me, however, is that Republicans still have interesting candidates and a compelling ideology, but they are destroying it by listening to their increasingly socialist-resembling rabble. Urgh. It makes my blood boil that people are so inept at seeing the complexity of governing that they would prefer waste over some kind of attempt at streamlining as Obama has tried to do with healthcare. The US has one of the most inefficient markets for healthcare, it's deeply troubling and needs sorting out, and people are calling some kind of attempt at removing market inefficiencies socialism?
I have serious issues with the healthcare bill that has been passed (namely the cynical pandering to the left by Obama on some issues), but my main issue has been with the nature of opposition which was and is completely undignified. The counter-arguments that I've heard by the Republican party have been some of the most shocking examples of a party which is so mixed up between what is a truly socialist and what is a populist agenda that the sum of all its parts does not constitute any kind of reply. The continuation of that fact is the seeming embrace of people like Sarah Palin, who have no coherent world-view either and it all makes for a scathing slap in the face to serious conservatism, which should be about tempering society to responsibly embrace new realities and not a soulless opposition to debate. They both go against what Protestantism was all about in the first place, and their opposition to the idea of a more streamlined government, flies in the face of supposed support for capitalism.

Image 3

There are some other great ones on this site also, but this has to be the most shocking.
However, I see that paedophilia is seemingly going mainstream, so maybe, in a few years...

Song 8

Ok, four things here:
1. Why did they remix it when the previous version was superior?
2. While this video does look good, it feels like it's an idea for another completely different song and I don't think it captures the playful spirit of the song at all.
3. I'm glad they re-released it, but why not wait another month until the summer really hits?
4. I'm getting really tired of the 1st person perspective in filmmaking these days. I get why it's seemingly so popular, but it just seems wrong to be so overused in a media which works best in objective mode.

That is all. Also, this was my favourite song of last summer, so a) I'm like so ahead of the times, b) I'm a douche (cf. point (a)), c) I wish I could have directed the video.

Ugly as f*ck

This must be a truly horrible place to work. I mean, sure, you can say that you can't really do much with cubicles and boardrooms, but still, colour is not always the answer. I don't know what it is, but it seriously is reminiscent of McDonald's to me.

Ahmadinejad

Just very quickly about this:
I love the outrage people feel when Ahmadinejad does it, but the fact that people in the western world actually buy into these conspiracies seems to leave most people pretty cold.
One day, I would like to meet the dark overlords of our world and tell them what a horrible job they are doing at being subtle about their operations - seemingly every moderately-educated teenager has uncovered their plans.

Song 7: I frickin love this song at the moment

And I love the shot of the salami at the beginning. Salami always makes a great party.

Great re-imagined posters for films

Brilliant posters - just came across this today.

From www.ollymoss.com

Song 6

Same with this, but it's either a rip off of the dirty projectors vid, or by the same director

Song 5

It's a good video. The song, a bit meh.


We Have Band "Divisive" from SoLab on Vimeo.

Song 4

Great little video, great little band.


POOM - ROLLERCOASTER from POOM on Vimeo.

Song 3

Great video.


Yeasayer - Ambling Alp from Spy Films on Vimeo.

Mia Doi Todd "Open Your Heart" - directed by Michel Gondry

I love the sequence at the end.

Song 1

DJ shuffle put this on for me when I woke up this morning. It was awesome.

Poem 1

Toilet bowl,
I missed you today.
I did not miss my shoe.

Image 2

From: Bluetramontana Style

And one for tomorrow, since I'll forget.

Image 1

From:  fuckyouverymuch

I like this today.

Lolita

I watched the film version of Lolita last night, and it struck me that one thing the film does very well is convey the banality, and at most instances the relative improbability plot of the film.

Ok, I do realise that it's not really the point of either of them to really concentrate on the plot, which is secondary to the context in the novel and subtext in the film (is that too wanky to say?), but it's one thing that does get glossed over.
Similarly, both the film and book seem to portray the weaknesses of each of their creators - I find Nabokov to only really be interested in drawing one strong character through which he tells his story, leaving the characterisations of his supporting players appear relatively arbitrary. I suppose this is due to the three books of Nabokov's that I have now read - Pnin, Lolita and Pale Fire, all of which deal, to some extent with the monomania of a sensitive and brilliant man (though I suppose in Pale Fire this is yet more complicated). This is not some kind of serious critique of Nabokov, but I do find that he tries to confound the reader with excess information so as not to concentrate on the basic buildings blocks of the story, which, when you're dealing with multiple interesting characters, I appreciate, gets extremely complicated.

Kubrick, meanwhile, I find has a real interest in the gradual monomania of brilliant men (or self-annointed brilliant men, and/or thought-enabled machines), but he does have a knack of making their character progressions rather matter-of-fact and linear, which to me make them seem predestined in their telling, and thus sometimes they more seem abstractions than real. In some films, he gets away with it through a fantasy element, however. I haven't really thought about the failings of Kubrick, so that thought is pretty much unfinished and probably not entirely correct either.
I do love both the film and book, though. The book more.