the hardest working blogger: whole albums

chocoreve.


wow.

this person has put a lot of effort into putting a lot of albums on the web.

a ton of four disc (some ten disc!) sets, live shows by artists you know, and re-issue compilations.

i've gotten most of the ethiopiques series (highly recommended!), brian eno, philip glass, obscure velvet underground shows, beautiful folk records, turkish psychedelia, sitar beat, doo-wop, can, and album afer album of old psych/garage/pre-british invasion rock comps. but there is TONS more. some electronic stuff, avant garde, motown, rolling stones, james brown...

just browse through the archives at the bottom of the blog. some of the really old stuff isn't up anymore, but some still is (like the "perfumed garden" compilation from december 2005 i'm downloading now). a lot of the older posts use rapidshare (which only lets you download 100 megs every hour or so) but the new ones tend to have stuff in several locations to make it easier to download faster. if you need help figuring out how to unpack his archives, comment, and i'll help.

a brief order of operations i would suggest to get the albums is:

make sure you have unrarx (for mac) or winrar (for windows)
download all the parts
extract the .rar files by opening the first one
the password for all of them is: posted_first_at_chocoreve
enjoy!

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wrong season, but...

these maple leaf roses are beautiful... here's the how-to. presumably, you could do this with other leaves/materials... they could be finished with (natural and archival!) rice paste (link to recipe, but you don't need the sugar or oil) or shellac (which i found out recently isn't made from the lac bug itself, just secretions from the females... so it's sustainable as far as i know).

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looks like friendly crustpunks

they get a lot of flack, but traveler kids have beautiful aspects to their culture (which, like most cultures is hardly homogeneous). this collection of photographs shares some joy (roadkill cookout at the very bottom, watch out...)

update: that's our friend amber in the 12th picture down (in the back)... didn't recognize her at first, but laura picked her out... same chest tattoo and everything. that makes two traveler friends in two major collections, amber in this one and lizzie the whiz kid in this one.

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no armed guitarist

via wordsoup

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arizona junior high school students stage hug-a-thon

they tried to stop the kids from hugging... so they rebelled... where's the solidarity action, people?


via boingboing
via making light

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welcome again...

so what in all creation is a "veiled gazelle"?

well, a (translation of a) poem by ibn arabi says...

"and among the wondrous things is a veiled gazelle:
a divine subtlety, veiled by a state of the self,
referring to the states of those who know.
unable to explain their perceptions to others,
they can only indicate them symbolically
to those who have begun to experience the like ..."

so it could be said that a "veiled gazelle" is
an intuitive non-thing, basically inexpressible...
yet can maybe be indicated to another through
symbolic gesture, but only with common "ground."

why is this blog called "that veiled gazelle..."?

well, my first post (february 11th 2008) says:

"...i hope to provide the best of what i find on
the internets and the interworlds here,
to aid you all in wasting less time,
both on- and off-line.
i get really inspired from a real stretch of content,
so i won't pigeon-hole this blog
one way or another.
enjoy!!!"

so, the "non-pigeon-holed" content of this blog,
at first appearing merely scattered and unrelated,
collectively gestures towards "that veiled gazelle..."
if reality is a1000-faceted diamond, these are faces...

so what makes your facets any better than mine?

nothing. the internet's diversity should increase.
if even one post affects you, that is beautiful.
feel free to comment, good or bad, and i'll change.
i've begun to court other authors too...

i'm convinced that we all share a love supreme,
but even i get elitist and skeptical of others.
this effort is as much for me to be changed by
public opinion as my efforts to shape the like.

and what is that image at the top of this post?

that is a piece of digital calligraphy by laura gyre
superimposed over an ancient pattern i copied.
the calligraphy is arabic/farsi, it says "ghzl"
here follows a nice piece of synchronicity:

during a shamanic trance i saw a horned animal
i knew it was a beneficial vision, there to aid me.
i was uncertain of the species until reading arabi...

i told laura i was sure the animal was a gazelle.

sufis often use a weird word in poetry because
it shares a linguistic root with other concepts,
so laura suggested we look up gazelle in arabic
and see what other words have the root, "ghzl"

they were aligned with our work (and our name):

spinner of yarn (we spread tales, sufi means wool)
spinning (we named ourselves "gyre" for a reason)
love (the greatest force in the universe, bonding us)

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culture jammed surveillance posters

in honor of the recent federal money for video surveillance in my hometown of three rivers: (read: pittsburgh, pa) here is a story of remixes of the ridiculous recent british fear campaign against photography...

the cat one is really great (if you follow web humor), but here is the best overall...


via boingboing

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erykah badu and alex grey?

but it's real!


erykah badu premiered her new album at the chapel of sacred mirrors, the entheocentric psychospiritual museum in chelsea, nyc of alex grey (and features some sweet works by allison grey too!) she's sitting above in front of "theologue", a huge painting on meditation by alex. i never would have guessed these two were aware of each other, but i am thrilled to find out they do... it seemed to be a good mix...

from the cosm blog:

"...she played the album to a packed house at cosm, then took questions of all kinds. one person asked her what her philosophy was and she stated that she considers herself "first a spiritual being, then a human being, then a woman, then a color, in that order." she spoke on how the kah and the ba in her name are specifically related to ancient egyptian words for the soul. the album is awesome..."

and it is... "new amerykah pt. 1 - 4th world war" highly recommended... i dug her early stuff, thought her next work fell off for a bit, liked a few things on the last album, but this one is solid. buy this one!

a track from it:

(mp3) erykah badu - "the healer" - it's a beautiful song, and a tribute to the late j dilla, too...

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triple dose - older stuff

a video of young kids rippin' some flamenco (via muddup!):



a track of slim whitman, and underappreciated american "countrypolitan" singer who can damn sure make pretty sounds come out his mouth. i was introduced to this through the andy kaufman show... i guess people know it because it "saved the world" in "mars attacks!":


(mp3) slim whitman - indian love song (from "20 greatest hits")

a painting - "the beguilling of merlin" by edward coley burne-jones (1833-1898) i love the background, and how merlin is treated as a normal-ish looking human:

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the greatest ripoff in animation

when it came out i loved disney's alladin.

that was because i didn't know how it stole SO MUCH from richard williams' "the thief and the cobbler," which in the best available form, "the re-cobbled cut" is way excellent.

there are hundreds of direct pieces of theft, including at least four identical characters (the sultan, princess yum-yum/jasmine, zig-zag the grand vizier/jafar the grand vizier each with a bird pet fido/iago... shown below is zig-zag and fido over jafar and iago:


there are scenes stolen (like a thief falling through laundry), stolen shots, gags and styles.

it's important to say here that the original movie as richard williams intended was never completed, but was released in butchered form by miramax as "arabian knight." the original original was a movie about nasruddin developed with idries shah & family, but after a falling out between williams and the shahs it became a thirty year odyssey of making "the thief & the cobbler." richard williams during the rift stated, "the many years work spent on painstaking research into the beauty of Oriental art has been retained." also, apparently, a lot of the original footage without nasrudin was re-used, including the character grand vizier.

the art in it is incredible. bear in mind that williams did the animation for roger rabbit, including the slapstick classic of the opening cartoon. "the thief & the cobbler" reads like a mix of silent movie (the two main characters don't have lines), monty python animations by terry gilliam, "oriental" art (particularly the style of persian miniatures) and psychedelic patterns all thrown together with incredible hand-drawn animation and 4-dimensional movement.

wonder - pure, visual, wonder.

here is a trailer for the re-cobbled cut:



the re-cobbled cut is available for purchase somewhere, a lot of it (if not all) is on youtube, and there is a legit free download through torrent discussed here.

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triple dose - new stuff

a video:

this short video discusses how animals can be trained to eat weeds and leave crops untouched. eliminates the need for herbicides and pastures, and encourages a more permacultural approach.



a bloglink:

bittbox, a graphic design blog with freebies. i got this vector of trees which i quickly made into the illustrator doodle below.

a track:

i've been getting too much goodness from this track from santogold produced by the venerable switch and freq nasty. she doesn't seem to have a full length yet, but i'm a listen when it drops...


(mp3) santogold feat. switch & freq nasty - creator

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