June 2011
6 posts
“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic...”
– Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
An interview with Mark Pilgrim →
One day your writing will get featured on a site like Reddit and you’ll go from 5 readers to 5000 in a matter of hours, and they’ll all tell you how much your writing sucks. And most of them will be right! Learn how to respond to constructive criticism and filter out the trolls, and you can write the next great American novel in edlin.
Watch“Slightly darkened streets of Tokyo” by darwinfish105
After the nuclear power plant accident, Tokyo continues to voluntarily conserve power. Tokyo night was darkened slightly. But the streets are still filled with people and cars.
April 2011
5 posts
“This gives us an intimation why the artist is—each within his own...”
– T.S. Eliot
I suddenly realize that I’m feeling a little bit tipsy. It is this moment that you must understand, this moment that you do not understand, because you have lived this moment in your own way but never in the way that I have lived this moment, the way that I always live this moment. This is the moment that sets us apart, you and me, husband and wife, alcoholic and not. This is the moment where...
Everything popular is wrong →
Stefan Goldmann on the state of the industry for techno artists.
Being a “musician” is increasingly becoming a profession for those coming from inherited wealth or being mercantily exceptionally clever. It’s less then ever a question of the intrinsic quality of the music. What used to be done by professional enthusiasts now becomes the domain of the artists — turning them into designer, PR...
March 2011
6 posts
Watch“Too much perfection is a mistake.”
El Topo
“It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a...”
– Charles Bukowski
I am Charles Mingus
I am Charles Mingus, a famed jazz musician but not famed enough to make a living in society, that is in America, my home. I cannot even support my family, honestly that is, from the fame that I gain to the right of being a negro musician.
I am a human being born in Indian territory, conquered by white skins, or invisible skins, transparent skins, people who killed and robbed to inherit the earth...
“The ugly fact is books are made out of books. The novel depends for its life on...”
– Cormac McCarthy
December 2010
6 posts
“Many of us try to justify our privileges by pretending that our superb tastes...”
– Mark Greif
“Taste is the most expensive thing there is.”
– Adam Lisagor
WatchFrom Jazz: A Film By Ken Burns, Episode 7: “Dedicated to Chaos”.
Transcript:
Charlie Parker stretched the limits of human contradiction beyond belief. He was lovable and hateful, considerate and callous. He stole from friends and benefactors, and borrowed without conscience, and yet was generous to absurdity. He could be most kind to younger musicians or utterly crushing in his...
“Sincere Jazz musicians aim at excellence and apparently nothing else. They are...”
– John Steinbeck
November 2010
14 posts
Addiction is... →
Addiction is keeping track of who knows what.
Addiction is a lot of lying to a lot of people.
Addiction is not being able to account for all my time.
Mark Pilgrim battles his demons.
“By the powers vested in me, I digested MCs.”
– Aceyalone
“Blondes make the best victims. They’re like virgin snow that shows up the...”
– Alfred Hitchcock (Via style rookie.)
BetweenTheBars.org : Human Stories from Prison →
A project that offers a blogging platform to the 1% of the United States population that is currently incarcerated. The way it works is pretty simple: prisoners send letters through the postal mail. We scan them and put them up on the web.
9eyes →
david:
Gorgeous/Fascinating photos from Google Street View.
Justin Bieber's "U Smile", 800% slower. Listen. →
(Via the inimitable Philip Sherburne.)
“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”
– T. S. Eliot
The Glanton Gang
They saw one day a pack of viciouslooking humans mounted on unshod indian ponies riding half drunk through the streets, bearded, barbarous, clad in the skins of animals stitched up with thews and armed with weapons of every description, revolvers of enormous weight and bowieknives the size of claymores and short twobarreled rifles with bores you could stick your thumbs in and the trappings of...
“The audience is my enemy. My job is to destroy them.”
– Derrick May
Battle of the Business Card →
—New card. What do you think?
— Whoa. Very nice.
—Look at that.
Joe Clark transcribes, with visual aids, the business card scene in American Psycho.
October 2010
0 posts
September 2010
6 posts
"Every day the same dream", a Flash game →
Watch“Open Letter to the Youth of Our Nation”, Hunter S. Thompson, 1955
August 2010
9 posts
“It’s normal to select our music with one ear tuned to its utility.”
– Philip Sherburne
Ultima Ratio Regum →
Louis XIV of France had Ultima Ratio Regum (“last argument of kings”) engraved on the cannons of his armies. From here it names the French sniper rifle PGM Ultima Ratio, the fictional Reason weapon system and is the motto of the 1st Battalion 11th Marines (with the incorrect Regnum).
Alleged diabolical pacts in history on Wikipedia →
The idea of “selling your soul for instrumental mastery/fame” has occurred several times within music usually in guitar dominated genres and more specifically in pre-World War II rural Blues. Bluesmans’ crossroads, located in Tchula Junction, Mississippi, is said to be the universal meeting grounds for such exchange. It was said that in your twenty-seventh year the devil would...