Unhelpful

Faust, one of the seminal bands in the so-called Krautrock movement played a show at the MOCAD in Detroit. There was a workshop on the previous night which I did not recall early enough in the evening to attend. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m familiar enough with Faust to adequately describe them to anyone not familiar with them, nor to describe the concert in enough detail to satisfy fans more familiar with them than I am. For the former, there’s Wikipedia, and for the latter, there are recent live albums. The show was extremely entertaining, and I did get a few shots I like of some power tool moments. This may be a bit misleading, lest one assume an aural similarity to Einstürzende Neubauten. The power tools showed up during a few ballad-style performances, in fact.

Faust was preceded by Indian Jewelry, a Houston band that played a heady combination of droning electronic noise, pounding rhythms, and chanting vocals. There were definite pop sensibilities in their mix, and the fluidity with which the members swapped roles between songs was notable. If Faust are an important band that everyone should already know, Indian Jewelry are a new band I would recommend getting to know. I only have a few shots of Indian Jewelry, and most didn’t go the way I wanted, as I was not using my own camera, but one with a better low-light lens than I have. The photo of their performance is one that I find attractive, but is almost impressionistic. The more straightforward shots I tried weren’t satisfying.

Without further adieu, photos of Indian Jewelry and Faust. Read more »

…all different.

When I was in the sixth grade, about 1983, I was given a board game; whether it was for my birthday, or Christmas, or some other occasion, I can’t recall. To be fair, it wasn’t actually a board game, but I didn’t quite understand that at the time. In fact, I didn’t understand much about the game at the time. Read more »

Spleenshine is a high-quality, high-test product hailing from the deepest bowels of the internet. While it is stealthily packaged in a Voss spring water bottle, I personally assure you that what is inside bears little resemblance to its former inhabitant. The one common thread between what was in this bottle and what is now in this bottle is purity.

At 185-190 proof, Spleenshine is for all intents a pure slice of alcohol. Whether that makes it homemade gin, homemade vodka, or homemade rum is really more about the process rather than the product.

The scene of the crime.

I listen to a fair amount of noise music every now and then. I like “isolationist” (Lull, JK Broadrick), some of the early noise-based industrial (Throbbing Gristle), minimalist textural music (Pan Sonic being the best example), and of course, so-called power electronics of Merzbow and Whitehouse.

Having said that, Sunn O))) was new to me. I was aware of them, their legendary status and their very vocal fanbase, but after seeing that they were coming to Pontiac at the Crowfoot, I decided to listen to a couple of the better clips on YouTube of their live performances. What I heard, even considering YouTube limitations, was amazing ambient drone metal at a devastatingly slow tempo and crushing volume. Read more »

While in IRC, our friend Grogan linked a site I’d read a little of in the past, but a video I hadn’t seen or at least hadn’t remembered. God is imaginary is one of a few sites devoted to atheism and rational thought that rejects metaphysics, but also concentrates on talking to Christians rather than at or about them. It spends most of its energy making intelligent, rational arguments about the logical inconsistencies of faith generally, and Christianity specifically.

The technique the site uses is to take some basic precepts and to see where they lead if rationally and logically applied in the form of thought experiments. This reminded me of a thought experiment I’ve thought about for a long time. It’s original to me in the sense that I didn’t read it anywhere, but I have absolute certainty that other people have independently come up with it, and have probably written it down better than I have.

The subject is not religion, but rather, a different area of metaphysics.

I have a friend, whom I will refer to as Steve, who is very “open-minded” to concepts such as ghost hauntings, alien visitations, government coverups of alien crashes, and other issues which can fairly be described as pseudoscience. Read more »

If internet memes are for anything, it’s for dragging them around the block until they’re bloody. While watching boxxybabee with a mixture of fascination and horror, I was reminded of an extremely interesting video technique I first saw applied a year or so ago. I can no longer find the original (which, by the way, used better source material than mine), so I can’t properly credit the person who came up with it. However, I remembered it well enough to re-create it.

A week or so ago, I was thinking about a particularly amusing XKCD strip about Google search results in relation to a rather silly story about the Vatican suggesting that people consider give up text messaging for Lent.  This made me curious as to what the best hit for the phrase “Gave up x for Lent” where x is some traditional Lenten sacrifice, or an ironic statement about Lent, or just some terribly random thing.  I aimed for the funny, but actually ended up surprising myself.  Just a note, I searched for “gave up x for Lent” rather than “give up x for Lent” because I figured out of the two phrasings, the former was more likely to be a real (if funny) circumstance, or at least an honest observation, where as the latter would be slightly more likely to be someone trying to make a funny suggestion.

We’ll skip the lecture on the scientific approach to irony here.

Starting with the classics here, without much surprise.
Read more »

Sabrina, 2008

I’m not terribly fond of tacky, morose pet memorial websites, so I’ll keep this upbeat and relate a few funny moments.

When my (now ex-) wife Cindy and I first saw Sabrina, she was a tiny blur of a kitten living outdoors.  She was pretty skittish, and tended to retreat to a drainage ditch when approached.  One winter, the night the temperature was supposed to get to -10° F, which is very cold for Maryland, where I then lived.  Neither of us, nor the neighbor who had often seen her, thought she had much of a chance if things got that bad, so we increased our efforts to catch her.  We managed to lure her into the apartment entryway, where her escape routes were cut off.  Her ears were already wind burned, and would remain so for a few months, so I’m glad we got her when we did.  Her coloring was a tabby tortoiseshell, cats of which are female 99.67% of the time. Read more »

Everything has been moved to a competent CMS.  I’ve got a large writing project that I’m starting, I’ll want to get a few finished before I begin publishing them.  I’ve been preparing this project since early 2006 and now have a CMS that can handle it without making me furious.  I have to admit that ultimately, the biggest motivations for getting the site in a useful format was the fact that my host did some upgrades which broke my postnuke install (thank god), and that I found that stupidly awesome font I used for the header.

Enjoy the previous placeholder.