Check out this angrily passionate editorial by the great Keith Olbermann re: the new, absolutely diabolical Military Commissions Act. (Read up on it and know that this is terrible and insane.)
[youtube]uqxmPjB0WSs[/youtube]Tag: media
You can get The Cocker Spaniels‘ absolutely brilliant (and brilliantly named) album Withstand the Whatnot for free on their website! I urge you to listen and to donate (not only does the artist get 100% of the profits, but it will help him to finance the production of his next CD)! This is one of the greatest albums ever recorded by one of the greatest rock bands ever to come down the pike.
Withstand the Whatnot (lyrics & credits)
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projects
Some projects I am currently involved with/have volunteered for:
- The Chickenfish Speaks: CD reviews
- The Chickenfish Speaks: possible overhaul with a dynamic, storable backend
- volunteered to help with Oregon District.com; haven’t heard anything back lately but it’s still very new
- my good friend Melissa is working on an e-commerce project for school
- MySpace layout for my friend Rob’s band Group W Bench
- my own WordPress theme
- I’m certain I’m forgetting something just now
I’ve asked not to be paid for any of this, although it’s going to be pretty overwhelming to work all this into a rapidly shrinking allotment of free time. Resume fodder is enough for me for now, and I certainly can’t charge friends for services.
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Video: evolution
Dove video, Evolution: “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.”
Cheers to that! Above link is a video of a beautiful but freckled model being made up beyond recognition, then photomanipulated to look like… well, to look like the image that we hold up as the standard for beauty for women. The bar is a little on the high side, don’t we think? I absolutely applaud this campaign. The industry in which I currently find myself laboring within could certainly use a little dose of reality. Ok, a whole hell of a lot.
Every day, I see the signs of a scarred self-image in the clients with whom I do business, and I am unnerved by it by much more than a little bit.
Women! Stop doing this to yourselves! You already ARE beautiful! It is necessary to eat healthy; it is unnecessary to starve and try to uphold yourself to a standard which is literally impossible to meet. Who do you fool but yourselves? Who will love you less, who deserves your love in return?
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Grooves
Here’s one thing that I actually miss about vinyl records: you could actually look at the record itself and know instantly* which tracks were the interludes and which were the opuses. When will files on a computer be able to do that?
* yes, I know you can see it on CD, but you have to look really hard and close and squint a lot. That’s no fun!
Massive props to Karina Garcia, Political Chair of the Chicano Caucus at Columbia University, where she is a senior, for taking on that racist, slimey, pig-fucker Jim Gilchrist (founder of the anti-Mexican Minuteman Project, a vigilante group which patrols the US-Mexican border, taking the law into its own shotgun-carrying hands).
Recently, he was at Columbia University, where his lap dogs kicked a student, who was passing in front of the stage, in the face. The resulting chaos, in which students waved banners and protested peacefully, was labeled by his hatemonger group (and, go figure, by FOXNews) as a “riot” by “thugs”! You can see a clip of this happening at the link below. Hopefully someone will post this to YouTube soon…
Check out the RealPlayer video of Gilchrist on the progressive syndicated program “Democracy Now!” (128k stream, 256k stream) where he abruptly cuts off a barely-begun debate as soon as he is asked a question. What a coward.
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Issues
Having CSS issues with IE (even IE7). Still trying to figure out why. So far, Big Urgent Wish works absolutely perfectly in Firefox and Opera, but in IE7 there’s irrational whitespace to the right (about the width of one of the sidebars), causing a horizontal scrollbar, while IE6 isn’t applying the opacity filter to the center div or footer (a width issue is my first guess on that one).
Once I get these issues ironed out, I’ll upload the thing and see what happens then.
[UPDATE] Just got back from Grog‘s (picking up CDs to review for the Chickenfish Speaks) and groceries. To make a crap day off crappier, on the way there, the “low tire pressure” light came on. Fearing an impending flat, I bolted, stopping at the gas station to pay 50 cents for three minutes of standing in the wind and rain, wishing I had a tire gauge and a flashlight. One tire was missing a stem cap, so that’s probably all it was, since all of the tires seemed reasonably inflated to me.Did anyone see Bush’s press conference today? Scary, creepy, and pathetic. I’ll blog more about that later.
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BAM!!!
Welcome back, The Future of Rock and Roll!
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Brainlessness at Reuters
Joe Maguire lost his job at Reuters for writing a book about Ann Coulter. The book is called Brainless: The Lies and Lunacy of Ann Coulter.
Reuters confirmed that Mr. Maguire was granted conditional approval to write his book on Ms. Coulter… When asked what changed once the book was ready, a company statement pointed to Reuters’ principles of “integrity, independence and freedom from bias.â€
So what is all this talk about Liberal media? And before you point out that Mr. Maguire’s book may or may not be left of the dial, a book is one thing, but news is another thing entirely. By firing a guy for pointing out that Ann Coulter is – duh! – a mindless raving lunatic (and doing so in a perfectly legitimate venue), they are effectively supporting biased journalism of a far worse kind than that which could have ever conceivably come from Mr. Maguire himself.
And anyway, if pointing out that the Emperor* is wearing no clothes** makes you a traitor, then does that make unbiased journalists insurgents?
* 1 Coulter; or, 2 mainstream media in general
** 1 is a blathering idiot; or, 2 has no business presenting a blathering idiot’s foolish, inane lies as the truth
Probably the weirdest, coolest thing ever posted on YouTube: Album Cover War
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Fantastic manuscript
I just got done reading my friend Jackie Corley‘s manuscript. Devastated. Trust me, this will blow you away. When it gets out there onto the shelves, finally, you will need to take a deep breath and plunge right into the raging torrent of a story this is. It’s tragic, moving, and crazy good.
I should also mention that The ChickenFish Speaks has a forum. Register and post! The ChickenFish could easily be the beacon, at least locally, for cultural/A&E news and views, rivalling the Dayton City Paper for absolute, total control over the hearts and minds of hipsters and wannabes in the Miami Valley.
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Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson, extraordinary thinker and writer of such classics as the Illuminatus! Trilogy and Cosmic Trigger, is not doing so well these days. He’s currently under hospice care at home with his family. Unfortunately, he is not as well off as you or I would like to believe. You can PayPal his account at [email protected] to help with his financial burden.
I think I’m getting carpal tunnel syndrome. Nevertheless, I’ve been doing a lot of typing lately. I just submitted my first batch of CD reviews for the Chickenfish Speaks, a terrific local entertainment zine run by Grog, the former bass player for local rock legends the ¡Oxymorons!.
Also, I’m still hard at work on Big Urgent Wish 3.0, my first real WordPress theme. (My current theme is based largely on the Ice theme.) It’s coming along nicely. I’ve completed the first of three subthemes. But first, a To Do: separate stylesheets into color/layout (possibly separating these further), font size, and font type (serif or sans-serif). Then I need to clean up what I’ve got and then I can finally start to work on the other two subthemes.
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Posies live on CJLO radio
The Posies performing live on CJLO in Canada. Includes audio and video clips. Jon and Ken rule.
Syndication is a really cool way to not ever have to actually come here to know what’s going on at this site. Think of it as “set it and forget it” web surfing. Let me explain.
You can use a news reader or other application (such as web-based apps like My Yahoo!) to read content from this and other sites without having to actually go there. The advantage is that you can see what’s going on in the world around you without ever having the leave the application (or site) that you’re looking at. New articles are delivered to you (instead of the other way around), so you don’t ever have to remember to check in.
For instance, I’ve got my Thunderbird set up with a whole slew of news feeds. Instead of actually checking in with BoingBoing, Huffington Post, Ze Frank, and Pitchfork every day, I let them come to me. I get all of the content I want, delivered to me almost as if it were an e-mail.
You can find all sorts of applications out there that will read news feeds for you and put them all in one place for you to check out.
To add a feed, look for the icon, which may vary from site to site, or a link, usually saying something like “RSS”, “XML Feed”, or some suchlike. Copy the link and add it to your client application (follow their instructions).
You can get feed links for this site toward the bottom of the page, in the sidebar (under “syndicate”). There are links to add this site in a variety of ways.
Special tip: you can append “/feed/” to the end of the URL for any category or page on this site. For example, to keep track of updates on the “podcasts » songs” category, you would use: https://transmothra.com/category/podcasts/songs/feed/
Extra special tip: There’s also a comments feed at jeremyjarratt.com/comments/feed/
See also:
I had no idea: the famous Iggy Pop peanut butter incident was provoked by Dayton’s own Rev. Cool (from WYSO)!
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Kirk & Spock get “Closer”
This is quite possibly the greatest thing the internet has come up with: Kirk and Spock: Closer (warning: completely NSFW). It’s a fan-made (T. Jonsey & Killa) slash-fiction remix/mashup of Star Trek: OS moving pictures, set to Nine Inch Nails‘ classic pants-creamin’ body-rocker “Closer”. It’s a music video with a silly, yet wholly erotic theme.
This is the culmination of all that is Great and Good about teh Interwebs! Finally, we can unplug our rigs and live wistfully happy, idyllic lives among nature now. It has happened. Utopia can start now k thx. The Interwebs has fulfilled its function. 42 my ass.
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Good Times Bad Times
Good and Bad news for Cincy music fans. First the bad:
97X WOXY.com is closing. Yet again. This time, probably, for real, and forever. 97X was THE alternative radio station for most of the 80s and all of the 90s; the greatest radio station ever, it was college rock on a pro level, with 100% great (and diverse) alternative, underground, and indie music (and some commercials). It closed down as a physical station a couple of years ago, and has continued its legendary legacy purely online ever since. Good bye, alternative radio.
But… at least the Afghan Whigs are showing signs of life! Nothing to start a new religion over just yet, but four new songs is something.