Hi. I used to use this blog a lot more than i do now. I don't agree with much of what i've posted here, but such is the nature of time. :) My instagram & facebook are likely to be more up to date.
"Runners from the Northern and Southern routes of the Peace and Dignity Journey, a sacred journey starting in Tierra del Fuego and Alaska and traveling on foot thousands of kilometers through hundreds of indigenous communities, met Friday on a bridge crossing the Panama Canal in the Kuna Nation.
The goals of the journey, which has taken place every four years (starting in 1992), include strengthening and sharing indigenous culture, bringing peace to all Nations, and uniting indigenous peoples -- thereby fulfilling the Prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor. This year's run honored indigenous Sacred Sites, many of which are threatened by resource extraction or development."
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.
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)...
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.
the mokobé track is hot and beautiful. according to (early internet holdover) babelfish translation, the lyrics are:
"Barrels of petrol barrels of blood C' is us the puppets with the eyes of the powerful ones One repeats that with the children looks at and learns Blows of machetes in the camps d' innocent Démocrathie of the black a band with costumes One is artisants between the hammer and l' anvil Exile without house in l' north coming from the south and considering qu' the hunger is stronger qu' the pigeons qu' one plucks policy aims at bleuf in your mouth your model c' political bulge is bush you speak in l' wind you spit on people you us ments knowingly you n' ace aucuns politicking feelings aya refrain! Politics means blood Politics means shout Politics means human being Politics means fools That' S why my friend is year obviousness Politics means violence Why my friend is year obviousness Politics means violence J' m' does not address to the d' chiefs; state But to the fathers who you are We let us be your children for qu' l' humanity thrives Are honest the world of tomorrow With each one of us l' must; to build owes l' to undergo to include/understand people hello d' access your neighbor l' future In a world or the balls have more d' influence qu' a bulletin d' vote Qu' is not necessary; one s' vautre have Politique kill' S One dreams all d' a peace One dreams all of peace 2007 We want only things clear and clear Mokobé, sick Fu, Tinder and Mariam, Tiken Jah Fakoli Manu Chao We want that peace, for everyone!"
UPDATED BELOW!!!...there are a ton more gospel dancing/christian freakout video footage mashed with techstep. HILARIOUS... thank you to the airloaf.
here's my other fave:
as laura said, i'd love to find the original footage for these to hear the audio. unfortunately it's probably more often like this or even this than glossalia type shit...
UPDATE:elder mason, who founded the church of god in christ is seen in this video praise dancing. apparently it's a pentecostal thing. appalachian pentecostal dancing (complete with falling backward!) can be found in this video. it seems related to gospel dancing and more carribean and african stles of dance worship like these haitians. none of the videos i've found are as full-out wild as the baptazia videos. some christians HATE this dancing...(as in, "PSA 150:4 Praising God in a fully clothed personal dance to give thanks for spiritual freedom is acceptable, but the sexes must be separated in different rooms.") some just worry about the influence of the so-called "charismatic movement"on their worship services. anyway, here's a video... it's not drum and bass this time, but same idea...
if you still haven't had enough (specifically christian) weirdness, click here for some small town delights...
František Kupka... my favorite painter that i barely know anything about. i've been seeing snippets of images from him here and there for years. this is a recent batch i scared up. matthu stull showed me a book of his in 2001. he's definitely on to something (for the early part of last century, anyway...) he was part of the section d'or (golden section), as was marcel duchamp.
he started in a realistic style, although in a fairly fantastic "art nouveau" style a la alphonse mucha, displayed hear by "view from inside a carraige" (or something like that.)
he's more well known for his abstract work, however. i'm not a big fan of these chunks of black, blue and red paintings, although he did a bunch of them.
i find the more luxurious use of color he was prone to more inspiring. so did the synchromists.
he also had a morose side to his forms and color palette. i love the bleak light in this one. i hope it's HUGE... like ten feet tall!
this is from my favorite section of his work. it's from "the discs of newton" and gets into his color theory a bit. i love the use of multiple versions of a color in the same painting, like using crimson and cadmium. try it sometime, it's tough to organize! he was interested in the relationship between music and painting, hoped to "free colors of their descriptive associations" and was kind of anti-surrealist.
welcome this fine friday! here is a picture of my 17-month old son, river...
MP3, MUSIC: so, in honor of the riaa ending it's policy of lawsuits against music sharing, let's start with some tracks... just some heat i've been scorched by recently all .zip'ped up on mediafire...
note: i've noticed some of my links to mediafire were dead, even if the files are still there, so feel free to hassle me about fixing broken links... it doesn't take long once i know about it. i just fixed the links on "8 songs, 1 spirit" for instance.
NATURE, WEIRD: a lot of attention has been paid to the thailand tiger temple monks, but you should watch out for their dubious conservation claims. if you want heart-warming animal-human friendships stories you should stick with (warning: youtube link with cheesy music)christian the lion. more on christian here.
MOVER: great post on the passing of studs terkel with information on oral histories. alton ellis just died in october. his political reggae like "arise black man"(torrent) was classic, but equally so we're tracks like "dance crasher" and "girl i've got a date" from his lover side... i'm also a little sad it took me this long to learn about superbarrio.
"I simply wish to underline the extremely complex interplay between the local and the foreign in the non-space that is the internet. English-speaking Spanish folks tipped off to the situation in the Western Sahara, adolescent racists with shitty spelling, French and Spanish kids of Arab descent, stereotyping hip-hop fans, a French speaker from Marrakech, all participating in the politics of a music video with a political bent of its own. YouTube as a behavioral economist's nightmare: a true Tower of Babel in which transient avatars are speaking in different languages, exchanging imperfect information with no shortage of subjectively invisible linguistic violence, slicing through a vast majority made up of Arabic-language commenters."
also, getting good press is as easy as paying people, revenge of the nerds filmaker makes something for the homeless, expensive but awesome log bowls and a (useful?) start page.
VIDEO: as wayne (from whose great digest format i based this post) would call it, videyoga (via):
absolutely breath taking, especially the circulatory system, the fetuses and the brain slices. if you don't know about body worlds, and the plastination process, start here. i saw it at the leonardo in salt lake. they have a brief video on the exhibition site.
building on the crimethinc post i just made, i figured i would post about my initial connection to that organization. for those not familiar with this project it's easily one of the coolest things i've ever been involved with. in the summer of 2001 i had a lot of free time (and a bad haircut) and i emailed my favorite artists, promising my talents to their efforts. after learning i could edit video, loved music and could tinker, mark dixon invited me to be locked in a room for two weeks with a car for the purpose of turning it into musical instruments. we we're joined by eric nugent, etta cetera and steven tesh, food, water and tools and we made a ton of awesome instruments.
the original website (hat tip to the wayback machine) is here. eric's got a little site on it here. mark's new band is here.
anyway here's the video of the project... it's almost a half hour and it's in three parts. very entertaining, i'm told.
laura and i were loosely affiliated with some of the folks who began the crimethinc "ex-workers collective" for many years and still promote some of their early works.
i had long ago written off the web presence of crimethinc due to some seriously stupid web forums, and to a certain extent grown indifferent to their continuing literary and artistic output.
however, i found the blog compelling and refreshing. i was unaware of their new biannual journal, rolling thunder and it looks a positive venture. i'll read someofthe pdfs soon, and maybe buy one.
they had their own take on the obama debate... it focused more directly to an anarchist audience than their less-confrontational 2004 effort, but similarly posed some good ideas.
among them was the notion of side-stepping the pro or anti obama debate altogether to focus on the direct economic and environmental threats facing us regardless.
one commenter brought up the notion of very localized efforts, promoting debtor's cartels in response to the economic mess. i've always found local action more appealing.
overall i am honored to debate the issue with such bright folks, and i think everyone is making good points. it may be a distraction from rioting, but debate is healthy.
the real stuff will always be autonomy, food, shelter, clothing, healthcare and the sacredness of the environment. i'll detail how i pick which tactics when i write my response.
"Runners from the Northern and Southern routes of the Peace and Dignity Journey, a sacred journey starting in Tierra del Fuego and Alaska and traveling on foot thousands of kilometers through hundreds of indigenous communities, met Friday on a bridge crossing the Panama Canal in the Kuna Nation. 
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