keep cool, babylon...

when sept 11th happened, i had just completed my junior year in art school at cmu, the automobile revision project & my first group art show (in holland with many other talented artists). i was taking a year off from school to re-assess and re-align... to figure out how to best use my last year of classes.

i was at my girlfriend's ancestral home when we saw the news... i was to fly to vermont to build a music studio with some friends the next day, and like many people, had to wait a few days until the planes started flying again. not much changed in those initial days, but the event certainly helped to define that year.

which brings me to reggae. i had just discovered reggae (beyond bob marley) through Suzie Silver recommending me Alton Ellis (and rocksteady in general) and listening to Lee Perry's Arkology. i had made a couple mixes, nothing special, but collecting my favorite songs i had been able to score off of napster (lol) or my friend Jim's palatial collection of dub & roots. i was (and still am) very fond of the Twinkle Brothers' album "Rasta Pon Top" with it's luscious harmonies and rock-of-gibraltar-solid rhythm section. i loved "Festival Wise", with it's imagery of people dancing outside evoking the outdoor raves and hippie festivals that had been so influential to me in the previous years.

but reggae became something much more to us after 9/11. to a young radical's mind, the patriot act, the violence & wars, the opportunistic business dealings, the utter perversion of justice... done in our name... brought us to a state of artistic, political and spiritual fervor. reggae embodied all of this. with it's soul fire, reggae was rife with referents we enjoyed identifying with. there was little questioning our appropriation of this black rebel music... it felt as if it was speaking to our very being... we let it educate us on the ills of babylon, political rhetoric & the wisdom of the spirit... that hot & cool play of the heart.

in reggae we saw the events of 9/11 connected to a historical context... the valentine's "blam blam fever" and not only spoke to the violence inherent in poverty, but offered a condemnation of our military reaction in afghanistan & iraq... "the gun fever is bad", indeed. the heptones (utterly, heart-breakingly beautiful) "country boy" offered a similar critique of gun violence (in a jamaican context), but also was an excellent diss to GW... "country boy, you shootin' up the place". despite feeling the immense pressure... the gravity of the situation, reggae taught us we could help... we could resist with righteousness & love... borrowed, though it was.

along with great books & greater people and experience... our resistance eventually took on an essence of it's own... artistically, politically & spiritually, we became more than the privileged caricatures we were that year in vermont. but everyone starts somewhere, and i'll always be thankful to reggae for being the kick in the pants that helped myself and my peers to have the courage to resist, the wisdom to connect our struggles with others' and the respect for the rhythms of the spirit... the time to go to battle, and the time to chill the fuck out and let things pass.

speaking of chilling the fuck out, we made a lot of reggae mixes that year, and sent them to our friends around the country. it was our little act of peace in the midst of all that war. they were in constant rotation. they we're our discipline, our meditation. "resistance reggae" vol. 3 and vol. 4 are below. enjoy them. light a fire. keep cool.


01. dave & ansel collins - double barrel
02. niney - blood & fire
03. the maytals - pressure drop
04. stranger cole & lester sterling - bangarang
05. justin hines & the dominoes - carry go bring come
06. lee perry - soul fire
07. yabby you - conquering lion
08. the upsetters & dillenger - rastaman shuffle
09. the heptones - coutry boy
10. ras michael - keep cool babylon
11. the melodians - rivers of babylon
12. lee perry & the upsetters - dread lion
13. johnny clarke - african people
14. alton ellis - arise black man
15. the congos - at the feast
16. desmond dekker - (007) shanty town
17. bob marley - bus dem shut (pyaka)
18. little roy - hurt not the earth
19. abyssinians - mark of the dub
20. black uhuru - guess who's coming to dinner
21. rhythm & sound w/ tikiman - spend some time

DOWNLOAD VOL. 3


01 - lee perry - good will dub
02 - the congos - education of brainwashing
03 - the valentines - blam blam fever
04 - johnny "dizzy" moore
05 - alton ellis & the flames - blessings of love
06 - herman marquis - tom's version
07 - u roy - festival wise
08 - cornell cambell - jah jah me no born yah
09 - prince far i - commandment of drugs
10 - honey boy martin - dreader than dread
11 - lee perry - perry's jump up
12 - lee perry - rub & squeeze
13 - the congos - youth man
14 - the ethiopians - train to skaville
15 - derrick morgan - blazing fire
16 - don drummond - don d lion
17 - blake boy - cambodia
18 - the maytals - take me home country road
19 - the heptones - cool rasta
20 - lee perry - city too hot
21 - ras michael - rise jah jah children
22 - lee perry - the upsetter
23 - heaven sisters - rasta dreadlocks

DOWNLOAD VOL. 4

note: jim mulhearn is at least equally to credit for these mixes. i couldn't find the version of the original artwork that properly titled. also... the struggle continues, modern reggae keeps moving.

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the pittsburgh grassroots examiner

a photo of our hero from my archive of early 20th century anarchists...

all you need to know
about the upcoming g20 in pittsburgh
and the accompanying bullshit, lies and state terrorism
can be found in the erudite, funny, subjective, personal and ultimately
triumphant column of the pittsburgh grassroots examiner,
which is penned by mike boda (formerly the town crier for
the yinsurrectionary times)...

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that veiled gazette #369

blogging is hard...

it's been a long time since the last digest... a lot of current events have passed, scandals, debates, triumphs, miseries... i'm not going to touch on most of them... but only share with you the fragments i collected in the meantime... just things i dragged into the ever-over-flowing folder of "blog ideas" on the bookmark bar... blogging has been a weird fit for my current efforts, and there has been much talk and some action on quitting the internet around me... BUT, i feel the flame hasn't died quite yet... and we'll see where this shrouded deer leads us next.

quality performance art...

ART, FASHION : fascinating article about faking a vermeer... old pal's art on boing boing video... dj ripley has been posting a lot of great jamaican fashion from her trip there. here, here, here, here, and here. flower mandalas and other decent new-agey art. speaking of new-agey (old-agey?) this celtic talismanic jewelry reminded me of calder's contour drawings of animals. this guys design is supercolorcleanskillz. subway mind fuck art. did you know that motorcycles used to look WAY cooler? here's good billboard mod. and more book sculpture.. this time a face. the results of this camera art are boring, but the idea is good. more pretty art on basic sounds... also, van gogh didn't cut off his ear... it was gauguin!

MUSIC: flute-boxing. daichi-boxing. woman-boxing. competition-boxing. music of colombia via geko jones. love this guy's tabla style. blue daisy sounds like flying lotus, burial and a nice hum. great new mellowish dubstep artists here, here, and here. afro punk interview. LOVED this 10 essential wiley tunes article. poppy music blog. lovin' this old school jam. wendy carlos interview (if you don't know about her, you need to read up...) a bonus for those who actually read these digests, i picked my favorite brian eno tracks off his first four pop albums and put them here. old buddy from college's remix site, remixin. skweee... get hip. oh, and can someone please toss me khalid's secret eq chart?... yeah, thanks.

90 degree angles get old quick...

ARCHITECTURE, ECO, DIY: holy shit, dangerous tea house! splendid, extensive collection of beautiful and bizarre houses... including the one above... great inspiration there for designing or remodeling buildings (both of which i've been doing recently)... i've posted before about art made with books, including shelves, but here's a cool upside-down book shelf design... LED lights can now do pretty much every color... some interesting eco work... saw it on the colbert report... ceiling porn. bottles and cob. laundry water greywater system. other bizarre houses and furnishings chronicled in dornob magazine.

one of many real angels...

SEX: i continue to be interested in finding a way to fit sex into this blog. i enjoy it being mostly family friendly... but there's something to the eroticism of brian's blog that helps counterpoint the brutal truths and mystic bliss. apparently obsession with sex goes back some ways. anyway, as erotica goes, mod fetish tends to be more artful and interesting than most, but is mostly just photos of naked women... i guess there's just a big part of me that would rather be naked at burning man... and that's about all the sexual openness i can muster for the moment.

ALEXANDRIA IS OPEN, GREATSITE, TECHNOLOGY : the pirate bay just got sold, but that's o.k. because google is the new pirate bay. it's a silly issue, because pirates buy more music than non-pirates. this is a nice collection of rainbow design tutorials, (including how to make lines like in the picture above). good source of high res photojournalism is the boston globe's big picture and the wall street journals photo journal. I always enjoy looking up words on the online etymological dictionary (try magic!), but the urban dictionary is indispensable for slang (try hyphy!) dig the voting process. yeah, yeah, change the internet forever... and phones. i'm up in the air about internet privacy issues, but this tool seems to make it simple to stalk. oh, and if you're going to waste time playing video games, this one helps map proteins...

BABYLON, POLITICS : the g20 is in pittsburgh soon, and that fucks with me... mostly because i have some outspoken anarchist youth using my first floor to feed people and have meetings, and cops love to fuck with innocents. grr. obama - he releases some important secrets, blocks other important secrets. i could do a whole post just on how complex my feelings are about obama and the new senate... among the issues are the "two" wars... the cronyism going on that he campaigned against, and the fact that the soldiers are still being told to "hunt people for jesus". (of course the bush era version of this was far weirder... really, really weird.) after 5 years, portugal's drug decriminalization has produced some seriously positive results. did you know that as many people are making their living from blogging as are from being lawyers? old bomb scars. face transplant successful (warning, graphic images) here. old castes in newly revealed maps... constant police brutality. how will the newspapers survive? there's no huffington post without the new york times, so can the grey lady stay alive by being a non-profit? REX84... yuck. and google beware.

WEIRD, SUFI: plants can recognize genetically identical cuttings... i'm a big fan of rumi... and never heard him weigh in on hallaj until reading this poem. great zen motivational poster from the great mojo1000. weird water properties. weirder other substances, including the ferro-fluids in the video above. earliest bible online for free. gurdjieff's long gone, but a movement technique not unlike his exists(youtube)... tap the wisdom of the crowd. it appears having religion is good for your health... remote viewing experiment - hey, you don't have to convince me. mentalist whoops master chess players(youtube). remember, death is milliseconds away.

seriously...

HUMOR: stephen colbert in iraq... i had profoundly mixed feelings about the whole thing, partially because apparently conservatives don't realize stephen colbert is joking (seriously!) laura and i were hurting from laughter watching this old snl thing. this may not be funny to some, but a lot of people got weirded out when amazon dropped all of it's search results for gay and lesbian books, but it may have just been one lone hacker making a "point" facial hair contestants. mark twain motivational posters. funny silhouettes. married to the sea.

VIDEO: parkour (first 7 seconds AMAZINGZOMGWTFAWESOMESOX)... free running... speed stacking... psychedelic yoooooouuuutube... and now witness a baby give a fiery sermon. it's not what you say, but how you say it, apparently:

PERSONAL, POINTSOFPROCESS: mixing dirty was named as a tie for mix of the year. I've got a brand new deejay night, which i'm gonna call "The Garden of Earthly Delights". Way more details (and previews of the gorgeous flyers i made) coming. as i've been blogging less, i've mostly been tossing little tidbits on facebook. i post compelling images in an album called "incarnations", and some art in an album called "art i like" Some links that probably aren't here are here on facebook. maybe i'd have more time to blog if i had a monkey babysitter. but seriously... kids are awesome. i love my son... he's such a joy... and we're having another in february. but then that's enough. two will do... i'm travelling now to take him to see his 6 grandparents... which is why i have the leisure to blog. pittsburgh too hot! i-man haffi cool out, up on the mountain top...

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the bird of babylon

i've been working on a sculpture with laurie trok for the visionary arts festival i call the "bird of babylon". it's made entirely out of discarded materials... the bulk of which comes from a disgusting landfill in the allegheny cemetary... wire flower tripods for armature, fake flower stem wire for connective tissues, sun-bleached fake flower petals for feathers... an old boot, crushed lighters and other plastic crap for beak and other anatomical details. just two days ago we finished the under-structure...

...and designed the method we'll use to feather the bird... they're glued down for now on strips of fabric, but we'll sew them in strips and lay them over each other to create the illusion of wings... it's a lousy photo and only covers two strips, but we've got lots of colors of leaves and petals to repurpose...

we've done a prototype for the head which will likely be dis- and re- assembled with less junk... and a terrifying beak!

there are several esoteric aspects of this piece that aren't visible here and i won't reveal yet... but it's more than trash into treasure!

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the love of Kjersti Andvig & Carlton A. Turner...

When Norwegian artist Kjersti Andvig initiated a collaboration with someone called Carlton A. Turner, who at the time was on death row in Texas, she aimed to expose a system which she perceived as a unjust mix-up of right wing politics, strange religious beliefs and cruelty. After their artistic work had ended, they fell in love.

"State-administered death is always a greater horror than any other by virtue of the methodical reasoning that precedes it. French philosopher Albert Camus wrote that "capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated, can be compared. "For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date on which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not to be encountered in private life."

read on...

via

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don't buy rockstar energy drinks!

don't buy rockstar energy drinks if you care about gay rights...

"Whenever you buy a can of Rockstar Energy Drink you're putting money in the pocket of a man who says this about gays: "When you hear "human rights," think only one thing: someone who wants to rape your son. And you'll get it just right. OK, you got it, right? When you hear "human rights," think only someone who wants to molest your son, and send you to jail if you defend him."... these words (are) from ultraconservative shock jock Michael Savage, whose real name is Michael Weiner. (It's easy to see why he adopted a pseudonym.) Back in 2003, the Savage Weiner was fired from a blessedly brief gig at MSNBC when he told a caller to "get AIDS and die."... ...Savage/Weiner is co-founder and part-owner of Rockstar Energy Drink."

via my buddy poe via: The Progressive Puppy: Rockstar Energy Drink: Hate in a Can

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that veiled gazette #349

editor's note: sorry for the delay getting out this issue. i've been super busy, so blogging has been hard to get to, but admittedly i've also been a little geeked out on using facebook for the first time. finding old friends, writing letters, posting little things for them, becoming a "fan" of hummus, etc... for real though, it has been fascinating watching people from completely different periods of my life talking with each other. not that that doesn't ever happen here, but, well, it's a different audience. i love you both, and that veiled gazelle isn't going anywhere...

painter in bangladesh, via wall street journal's picture of the day

ART: the delicate special works of rachel sumpter. the composite (time not space!) photography of peter funch. the (street art blog) wooster collective truly continues to put out great stuff. check out sally's blue wall or this colorful wheatpaste. my old friend fran (thank you, facebook) documented a cool piece that involves ink drawing on walls and an air compressor. design is fun, but "hyperbolic bronnerism" is even more fun. it's a little hard to navigate, but the site neocha is a collection of independent chinese culture. also, check the vibrant, subtley pagan, mucha-like (mostly) nudes of svetlana valueva. also, while he's a bit miffed about watchmen (his work, originally...) that's o.k., because alan moore is a super-genius. witness video (direct link here):

MUSIC: wizards are better posts some good bassline & dubstep stuff (and some hipster crap). are you annoyed that pirating music takes so much time? take the wait out with skipscreen. blackdown makes a mind map on the origin of scenes. promotion services for world musicians. frieze article by dj rupture on the "decline" of digging. also, i hadn't heard about soul singer phyllis hyman, but she's got a nice voice (video) (and is from pittsburgh!) three more youtube music links here: kinsmen (indian jazz ensemble), carl craig classical remix, and some ethiopian heat. anyway, i've been posting A LOT of DUBSTEP. so here are seven songs that aren't:

(mp3) atom™ - "wellen und felder II" - bizarre, yet entrancing ambience from uwe!

(mp3) dinosaur l -"go bang" (walter gibbons mix) - classic arthur russell material

(mp3) amon tobin - "twelvses" - throwback gorgeousness, not two fingers style

(mp3) morteza - "morteza"? - weird iranian pop i was given for my nouruz gig

(mp3) isoleé - "a nightingale" (original mix) - abstract & beautiful tech-house

(mp3) hermutt lobby - "play" - twisted, wonky, slow glitch-hop type shiznit

(mp3) jakes - "swerve" - fun drum n bass track... with an mc! ~1996 style?

your's truly spinning at global beats march 2009. photo by carla.

TECHNOLOGY, SCIENCE, DIY: great rhyme writing resource in writerhymes. inflatable hood for sleepy travelers. do dumb shit to photographs with pikipimp. laura's always been a proponent for local currency... learn about algebra (i forgot all mine in art school...) create large wall posters with little printers. nice home-made picture frames out of jars. and for the record, artificial life could be created within 5 years, whatever that means...

ECO: meditate on the size of the earth and how lucky we are. 25 reasons why you should consider earth-sheltered technology. paris is grey, and sarkozy has a plan. another weird plan on the table for global warming issues. or is global warming all a hoax? i dunno, i'm not a scientist... something tells me that it's not a bad idea to act like it's real, if only because we might help with the bio-diversity problem. good soy milk recipe. candle-powered heat? i don't live in these cities, but: space in detroit. space in baltimore. i found some nice eco stuff on chelsea green, including this article on the case for "small" hydro-electric power.

british kid in thailand, via wall street journal's picture of the day

BABYLON, SCANDAL, POLITICS: you know about Carnivore and ECHELON, right? their giant spy networks that troll everyone's communications for these words, among others... well there is at least one more ghost-net recently discovered, this time in china. here's what you might look like to your government. there are some sneaky shenanigans in the obama copyright treaty... france is ready for rebirth of the "violent left"... that's a hilarious article, but to be fair, they have had some history of awesome riots (which in turn left us a lot of slogans.) there's been a tiny crack made in the travel restrictions to cuba, but then there's the wholeembargo thing. why? chomsky has some ideas on that... also an OLD scandal may be getting some light shed on it.

SUFI, WEIRD: perfect memory, anyone? bahauddin's book sounds pretty great. my friend found one of the (super rare) copies ofthis book in a junk shop... still haven't seen it yet. for free, an archive of female sacred poets. amazing horse dancing in pakistan (video... jump ahead for the fast parts.) the thousands of inscriptions are getting translated, finally. i'm starting to think i ought to learn a bit more about ramon llull. creationist science fairs... first prize in the high school division actually sounds pretty interesting... top ten secret scientologists. get your daily weird at the daily grail. finally, the sisters of perpetual indulgence celebrate 30 years.

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that veiled gazette issue #325

photograph of tinfoil i shot recently...

MUSIC, MP3, ALEXANDRIA IS OPEN: bolachas grátis is back! beat does it better (albums up for three days only). local (to pittsburgh) hip hop dj archives his tape collection... recently i've been downloading great stuff from torrentech... it's invite-only, but if you love electronic music and are cool with uploading to stay on (need to upload 30% of what you download...) email me for an invite. great research into some dubstep sample sources here (and right on time, apparently). and MUZAK FILED FOR BANKRUPTCY!!! anyway, here are this issues mp3s, all .zipped up on mediafire like usual...

(mp3) atom™ - "insulting the dj" - cheeky minimal banger
(mp3) lv - "takeover (dub)" feat. dandelion? - beautiful epic dub reggae
(mp3) dj mujava - "township funk" (radioclit remix) - funky hipster shit
(mp3) alarm will sound - "4" - 20-piece orchestra covering aphex twin

ANARCHY, BABYLON, POLITICS: i definitely believed some of these 5 myths about U.S. prison growth. pentagon hiding torture information from obama. speaking of obama, you can track how he's doing on his promises here at the obamameter. at least he's bringing back the FOIA. given that 8 in 10 corporations use off-shore tax havens, it's pretty cool that swiss bank accounts may not work so well anymore. iran's people are A LOT more moderate than their overlords. this article about french radicals is both hilarious and disturbing. confrontational graffiti on headless fuck-object advertisements. other people are pissed off at virgin mary fashion spreads and pron spreads. and did you know you are being lied to about pirates?

ART, ARCHITECTURE: the architecture of takis zenetos is profiled in bldgblog... fragile, desert dwellings and nice canyon turbine design there... i recently touted the art on basic_sounds, but if you haven't seen it check it out (albums there, too...) this art is sure to piss some people off, but the event that inspired it was one of the best performances of 2008. following the election... a group of people turned bush street in SF into obama street. incredible, colorful graffiti from guatemala. the designer's republic is dead, sort of. if you aren't familiar with their (mostly awesome design) work, you can see some here.


ECO, TECHNOLOGY: riding a bike is great for the planet, but it's a lot safer with a laser bike lane (pictured above). google's powermeter seems cool. this person seems to think it's better than wind and solar energy combined. also, 7 "green" daily show moments. the first video is classic, if infuriating. i've blogged about living buildings, but this may be easier to implement: living walls. i met solar cooking designer bart orlando at the oregon county fair... watched him boil water with the sun. there is a very non-eco side of me that loves insane research vehicles like the maximog and the unibox. btw, bush actually did something cool before he left office.

WEIRD, HUMOR: one of my favorite headfucks is telling people about the pagan origin of the days of the week. rufus is awesome at slingshot. far out lindy hop. terry pratchett becomes a knight. this woman clearly isn't afraid of scorpions. cracked occasionally has awesome content, like this "6 insane discoveries science can't explain". finally some potential justice for this weird tale of geronimo's bones. and of course, drunk pigs.

VIDEO: steal video off youtube with pwnyoutube. and here is great darbouka playing, great mouth playing and great editing... triple great!

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sound karma dot com?

"more than 10 million of the 13 million music tracks
available on the internet failed to find a single buyer last year.
(On the other hand, for every paid for song there where 20 pirated.)"

via (update: also, is this wrong?)

image: christian marclay

there is a really good idea at the bottom of this post, but first, some backstory:

i pay for music very infrequently... in the last two years, the music i bought we're some records in berlin, some thrift store 45s, some yard sale 45s, l.v. & dandelion's "cctv/dream cargo" & dj ruptures "uproot" mix... that's it. i've been broke, cheap, and flooded by the ocean of sounds.

i steal/i'm given/whatever on average 8 albums a day... easily. the other day i downloaded over 100 archives marked [dbstp] off emule... it's truly post scarcity. i toss most of it, but keep the singles i like and occaisonally the whole release. on the one hand it's great. i love the try-before-you buy possibility, but on the other hand, who ends up buying even when they like it?

that being said, i had a lovely experience recently where i contacted barry lynn (boxcutter) on his myspace page, told him i really loved his music, but had stolen it and wanted to give him some money. he complained that his labels barely pay him (except for planet µ), and happily gave me his paypal account and i sent him $30... which is way more than he would have gotten had i spent that $30 at a record shop, or even at an mp3 site...

*really good idea*

"sound karma dot com"

decentralized patronage in action. make a website that is simply a vehicle to pay artists (and labels) whatever you want. you could give $20 to benga, $1 to lil wayne, $5 to the heirs of miles davis and $6 to dutty artz... etc... no product sold, no frills, just a way to give back to the artists... so now, the challenges...

1. verifying the artist's identity could be tough. someone could pose as richard d. james to snag the money sent by fans of richard d. james... my solution to this is to have it built on artist referalls. i have boxcutter's paypal, he could verify label-mates' paypal, etc...

2. severs/bandwidth cost money. you could take a small cut or sell some ad space so this isn't a big problem, but commercialization could taint the spirit of this endeavor. you could also sell mp3s, etc, but that could invite more problems than it solves....

3. labels might be pissed. i appreciate the role of (especially small) labels as taste arbiters and talent scouts, but even if we don't act to appease the labels, we wouldn't be selling any of their product, just giving venture capital to their employees...

4. legal issues might arise. i'm not that concerned with this because i feel like if it's done in a spirit of service to the musicians no one will really be able to complain, it's not against the law to give people money, and it may just help a lot...

i have people who can build this, and i may, but i invite your wise criticism and input first.

thoughts?

also, any repping/spreading of this idea would be greatly appreciated. i think that the sooner something like this is implemented the better. i guess i'd like credit, but i'd rather have "a centralized site where users can reward their favorite musicians."

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that veiled gazelle digest issue #306

well, despite the atrocity in gaza (and the ufo-believer's sex orgy being canceled!) 2008 ended up pretty well, all things considered. the greek riots gave hope to anarchists everywhere (and made me obsessed with no-go laws...) 2009 looks to be quit exciting. it's the international year of astronomy, for instance, and international year of natural fibres... most importantly though, it's the year of conflict resolution... i hope your year is filled with beauty (and underwater bliss-scapes!)


ALEXANDRIA IS OPEN, GREATSITE, MUSIC: there have been a couple of HUGE music archives found recently... pretty much all the trojan reggae box sets are available on this site. props to rupture for locating that. the boxes are great, especially if you need help learning about the various forms of reggae. a ton of (pre-2008) grime hip hop albums can be found here. in thanks for uploading a request of mine on extra music new, i uploaded the entire ernst catalog here. they are some of the first records i bought (1999!) and i love them. a deep minimal tech/house series by thomas brinkmann. you can really hear the evolution of his sound. fun stuff. a couple other music blogs i've been digging recently are disturbed beats, which is full of fidget house and bassy dance stuff (thanks conway!), blog to the old school, which is a spectacular service that uploads vinyl rips of old jungle and hardcore records (run by devnull!) and the elephant's child is loaded with videos of mostly modern african & middle eastern music. in the too much music category... i plan on posting my 7 reggae mixes from 2001 soon... i gave them to my local pizza shop and they bump 'em all day some times.

MOVER, MUSIC: 2008 saw the passing of odetta... brief eulogy and 1963 folk songs album here. also, miriam makeba passed away... brief eulogy and her debut album is here. others (like teo macero) passed, but those two i had just learned about...

MUSIC, MP3: alright, here's some track i've been diggin on. some really different stuff here, this time. some chunky, faltering house, an old illbient track, 1 serious epic pounding dustep tune, more, all .zipped up on mediafire again.

(mp3)passion pit - sleepyhead (streetlab mix)
(mp3)mokobé feat. mohammed lamine & mory kante - africa tonik
(mp3)babylon system & noah d - examination of time (VIP mix)
(mp3)qaballah steppers - the conqueror and the mute sea
(mp3)mwamway & radioclit feat m.i.a. - rain dance
(mp3)a made up sound - sunday

ART: if you are unfamiliar with swoon, (and even if you are) you might want to check out these videos of her work... sort of like a paper-cut-out banksy with a lot less myopic view... these snow sculptures (sort of bas reliefs, really are amazing. i found the image on this guys front page cool, but the rest is fairly boring (and very NSFW). yulia brodskaya's paper work is unique. i like the text ones mostly. demakersvan made an awesome lace fence. make your own fractalized photos with this plugin (windows only, :( ) also, i never saw this olympic water cube... gorgeous (as was the opening ceremony, which i finally saw)...

BABYLON, POLITICS, SCANDAL : even if you escape to a beautiful monastery, world politics will surely find you. it's hard to be surprised any more by popular newscasters slinging bullshit, government contractors exposing military people to toxins, or google unnecessarily disrupting music bloggers (ripley covered this too). but what about people with intimate knowledge of rove, bush & cheney dying mysteriously? also, on a brighter note, this is an idea whose time should come.

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, WEIRD: clump together rat's neurons and they can learn to fly an airplane. seriously. cool, but i'm much more impressed by scientists making matter out of pure light. or if they pull off MAKING a fucking STAR.

NATURE: the world's oldest cat, mischief, the world's weirdest animal, adorable miniature creatures, natural aphrodisiacs and potential ARMAGGEDEON (probably not?).

ECO: only thing that crossed my radar was an improvement in passive;y heated homes that allows the heat to be captured during ventilation so that you can be warm and breathe at the same time (with super low fuel costs). article.

LEFTOVERS: top five visualisation methods of 2008. top ten astronomy photos of 2008. how to travel the world for free (basic, but good stuff if you don't know it already...) woddy harrelson and co blog. poem/video thing from said blog (it's good!). oh, HUGE machines.

VIDEO: dj fly dmc winner 2008 (anyone see any dubstep at the dmc? seems like jungle took over after craze... anyway, he's fly!

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fuck war

above: wounded palestinian girl taken to hospital in gaza.

below: palestinian children hide from israeli airstrikes

photos via.

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a smattering of stuffs

image above by limkis

so it's been really cold here in pittsburgh. we've been really busy, and really cold. but things are good overall and i now have moment to blog:

of the many sites i read to keep up with the election, the huffington post remains the most relevant. apparently, i'm not the only one who thinks so. for the record, fivethirtyeight.com ended up being pretty much exactly right about the election, though (head poll analyst and founder) nate silver may have under-shot the democrats majority in congress (looking close to 60, folks!!!), i'll definitely be checking back with nate in two years.

well, bush definitely is trying some dirty tricks on the way out, and we haven't even gotten to the pardons yet... luckily obama has had a team of lawyers researching which of bushes executive orders can be overturned by the incoming president rapidly, including some environmental laws, stem-cell research policy and reproductive rights. for those (like me) not turned off by obama's religion, this is a fascinating interview with him on the subject from 2004... good interview with obama's "brain trust" here. many of them have recently recieved cabinet positions. if you only read one thing related to the election, read the yinsurgent's brilliant "joe the plumber and the american pipe dream" analysis you won't find anywhere else, gaurunteed.

a few new amazing technologies caught my eye: a new windpipe grown from stem-cells was successfully transplanted into a mother of two. a new software can make duplicate keys from photos, even satellite photos... hide your keys! mulitcolr allows you to search for images by up to ten colors at once... a related nice site is this one from google and life magazine, featuring milions of archived photos from life. writerhymes has built-in rhyme suggestion for aspiring emcees. oh, and i want to make one of these shrink-plastic rings.

rob simpson broke down the cost of the iraq war to intelligable units, like "we could buy every human on the planet a 4gb ipod!". speaking of war, james brett thinks the war in afghanistan can be won with pomegranates.

in green news, there is always upcycling... also check out this fridge without electricity. if you need more green news you can always check treehugger.

in music, i've been digging the watcha clan, some of the latin stuff off this lomaximo site, and someone pointed me to infinite livez, but i haven't heard much yet. i've been playing with this 30-piece band recently. i owe some uploads related to that. also, this seems like a good resource for mastering information, courtesy of the dutty bredren.

in art, i've been math obsessed (save for my new black and white painting matthu stull has been bugging me to do for five years!)... i really like these impossible fractals. the site is stupid but i'm interested in illusionary motion like this counter-rotational spiral.

in news of the weird, this gentleman insists he's not a douchebag, this 6,000,000 pound mansion has fallen to artist squatters, "sticks" entered into toy hall of fame, and this is a really weird outfit.

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