Thursday, June 30, 2005

The Blues Label is another great site for articles on 20's blues recordings
Nice article on the high-strung characters who collect early Blues and race records. (bluesworld)
In his absolute negation of postwar American mass culture, Bussard is very much in line with his fellow 78 collectors. This rabid brotherhood is almost invariably made up of eccentrics who came of age in the '50s and '60s, rejecting everything around them. More than just hippie-haters, though, these men loathe the very idea of popular music, right back to the time of fox trots and Al Jolson, the Jazz Age clichés often mistaken for the soundtrack for their beloved era. They've got their own names for such million sellers as Vernon Dalhart: Vermin Dogshit and Vernon Stalefart. These are the enemies, the pop crooners on the crapola 78s that they've had to muck through to find the gems that never made it in mainstream America. Their Jazz Age is strictly the music of poor whites and blacks: wild-ass jazz and string-band hillbilly, surreal yodels and king-snake moans, lightning-bolt blues and whorehouse romps and orgasmic gospel.
Extra credit, Texas style.
It looks like NY is getting saddled with another sucky, ugly design.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Norway is giving up on proprietary formats (cough, Microsoft!, cough). Let's hope it goes well and sets the stage for future slopware abandonment elsewhere.
Republican hate-politics are infiltrating Major League Baseball as Bush non-fan George Soros takes ownership of the new Washington Nationals team.

(prospect.org, blog-snipped from the subscriber only Roll-Call)
“I think Major League Baseball understands the stakes,” said Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis (R), the Northern Virginia lawmaker who recently convened high-profile steroid hearings. “I don’t think they want to get involved in a political fight.”
Davis, whose panel also oversees District of Columbia issues, said that if a Soros sale went through, “I don’t think it’s the Nats that get hurt. I think it’s Major League Baseball that gets hurt. They enjoy all sorts of exemptions” from anti-trust laws.
Indeed, Hill Republicans could potentially make life difficult for MLB in a variety of ways. ... The Nats, meanwhile, hope to have a publicly-funded stadium built soon, though money for that venture is expected to come through the sale of bonds rather than a federal outlay.
Still, Rep. John Sweeney (R-N.Y.), vice chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that covers the District of Columbia budget, said if Soros buys the team and seeks public funding for the new stadium or anything else, the GOP attitude would be, “Let him pay for it.”

Monday, June 27, 2005

Supreme Court won't hear Reporters Appeal (NYTimes)
Bad day for journalism.
Nike vs. Dischord: Here's to hoping that Ian sues these sweatshop-driving clowns into oblivion.

Just to make sure Dischord hadn't truly gone back on everything they've ever stood for, we asked a representative from the label if Nike had asked to borrow the image. They said the following: "No, they stole it and we're not happy about it. Nike is a giant corporation which is attempting to manipulate the alternative skate culture to create an even wider demand for their already ubiquitous brand. Nike represents just about the antithesis of what Dischord stands for and it makes me sick to my stomach to think they are using this explicit imagery to fool kids into thinking that the general ethos of this label, and Minor Threat in particular, can somehow be linked to Nike's mission. It's disgusting."

HELL YEAH, Dischord!

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

A grab-bag of odd mp3s from Houseplantstudio, the noisiest page on the web.
"My android robot head told me to do it" is now a valid defense: Build a computerized android robot head for $600. Steep for what you get.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Some interesting shots of Beijing work bicycles, where loose chains are apparently no big deal.
A parody of Tom Cruise's love/marketing diatribe.

Monday, June 20, 2005

When is assault not assault? When a petulant Hollywood man-brat gets squirted with water. Obligatory tantrum and lecture follow. Video of the squirting.

Sunday, June 19, 2005

Very curious curiosities
We have something to thank the French for other than the fries, the horn, the toast, and the kiss: gigantic crane-operated marrionettes.

Saturday, June 18, 2005

The journalists at the Jive have covered potato weaponry in the past (too lazy to look up old links -ed), and we've editorialized at length on the dangers of such flagrant vegatable abuse.
Since we broke these stories, potato arms escalations have spun to unforseen levels (vid link). We must work together to stop potato weapon makers and the supermarkets who supply them.
Disney's x-treme food mods for kids (via boingboing)
my $Nemester = ($Friendster * -1);
"Super-size Me" but with a more restricted diet. More specifically, with just Guinness.
Mburt1 has been inspired (if that is the right word) by our recent Guinness-based experiments. Contending that the sinister stout is a 'meal in a glass', he vowed to live on a diet soley consisting of Guinness, water, pint of milk and a vitamin C tablet a day, for a whole week. See how he does with it on his blog.

Friday, June 17, 2005

The Johnny Cash & Bob Dylan 1969 sessions download at Ethel The Blog (scroll to bottom).

Thursday, June 16, 2005

NPR show on the Makers of Make (magazine) about the gadget-making/tinkering/tech recycling ethic.
That Big Tobacco has the Bush administration in its back pocket is no surprise. That it has the prosecuting legal team of the Justice Department - the guys responsible for setting penaltie - is staggering. (NYTimes)

At the close of a major trial that dozens of Justice Department lawyers spent more than five years preparing, the department stunned a federal courtroom last week by reducing the penalties sought against the industry, from $130 billion to $10 billion, over accusations of fraud and racketeering.

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Old radio shows @ RadioMemories
Catch the "Frontier Gentleman" today!

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

McSweeneys reviews new foods
OnionAVClub interview with Matt Maiellaro & Dave Willis, creators of Aqua Teen Hunger Force
McSpotlight: A small anti-McDonalds voice in a McDonalds world
Who takes important calls on a corn-phone? It's not SuperFarmer or the crazy guy on the corner who argues with mailboxes! It's the nutty Japanese! (engadget)
Corporate greed vs. Free Speech: Microsoft will do anything for Chinese money, rights be damned. Shameful and low.

Weblog entries on some parts of Microsoft's MSN site in China using words such as "freedom", "democracy" and "demonstration" are being blocked.
Chinese bloggers already face strict controls and must register their online journal with Chinese authorities.
Microsoft said the company abided by the laws, regulations and norms of each country in which it operates.
iPod sock/cozy knit pattern

Monday, June 13, 2005

There's an interesting discussion going on over at DailyKos regarding establishing a list of core values common to the Democratic party, the argument being that its appearance of rudderlessness helped the neoCon victory last year. It all looks pretty pie-in-the-sky, but its the first crack at a concrete agenda I've seen, and probably something the party itself should have already thought about.

There are also more than a few landmines in the field. For example, if they list "Freedom from religion" as a core value, their fear that "everyone who goes to church will automatically vote GOP" will almost certainly come true.

I'd like to see them focus on hard policy, policy, policy and how the neoCon agenda betrays citizens in favor of the special interests, and give up on nebulous items such as "responsive government" (responsive to who? what responsibility? They're already a little too responsive to Haliburton's needs)

Seet Parts I and II for background.

Friday, June 10, 2005

Ultimate head-mounted watergun
More Republican greed based policy
A bill just introduced in Congress would take away the right of cities and towns across the country to provide citizens with universal, low-cost Internet access. Giant cable and telephone companies don’t want any competition -- which might actually force them to offer lower prices, higher speeds and service to rural and urban areas.
U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) -- a former telephone company executive -- has introduced a bill (HR 2726) that would let cable and telecom companies shut down municipal and community efforts to offer broadband services.

It goes without saying that Pete Sessions is on the take from telecoms. Surprise.

Write a letter to your congressman denouncing this outright violation of public trust in http://www.freepress.net/action/sessionsbill
And the survey says... Bush is lousy.
Losing Our Country (NYTimes)
But the wealthy have done very well indeed. Since 1973 the average income of the top 1 percent of Americans has doubled, and the income of the top 0.1 percent has tripled.
Why is this happening? I'll have more to say on that another day, but for now let me just point out that middle-class America didn't emerge by accident. It was created by what has been called the Great Compression of incomes that took place during World War II, and sustained for a generation by social norms that favored equality, strong labor unions and progressive taxation. Since the 1970's, all of those sustaining forces have lost their power.
Since 1980 in particular, U.S. government policies have consistently favored the wealthy at the expense of working families - and under the current administration, that favoritism has become extreme and relentless. From tax cuts that favor the rich to bankruptcy "reform" that punishes the unlucky, almost every domestic policy seems intended to accelerate our march back to the robber baron era.
Question Authorities: Why it's smart to disobey officials in emergencies (Wired)

Thursday, June 09, 2005

wastepaper basket b-ball: cyrkam airtos
Crappy Bootleg DVD Art "scraped from the bottom of the black-market barrel" via BoingBoing
Propaganda art of the Bush regime Prior to 2000, something like this would have been considered ironic comedy. Now it's just scary.

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

I had my doubts about its bold eponymous claim when I stumbled across The Best Page in the Universe, but after reading a few of his rants, I don't think he's so far off.
Another good album cover page from vinyl orphanage
Audio books for free!
100 songs, 1 disc
Construct juggling robots (mov) Brilliant!
Octopus robots.
BBC3 will be performing Beethoven's symphonies this week then making the mp3s available online for free download. (Symphonies 1-5, plus a little-known single he penned called "Get in the Carriage, Bitch" are currently available. Ok, I'm lying about the single, but the rest is true.)

All the symphonies are performed by BBC Philharmonic, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda.
This is not right.
A 57 year old middle school principal is now a suspected terrorist for unwittingly carrying a peanut butter knife in her carryon luggage during a school plane trip.

She says screeners refused to give her paperwork or documentation of her violation, documentation of the pending fine, or a copy of the photograph of the knife.
"They said 'no' and they said it's a national security issue. And I said what about my constitutional rights? And they said 'not at this point ... you don't have any'."


What good are constitutional rights if a part-time drone at an airport can capriciously revoke them? Which other of my rights are on the short list for summary suspension by some lunatic federal mandate to "fight terrorism"?
World's biggest hacker caught. Caused a billion worth of damage trying to look for evidence of UFO coverups in U.S. gov't computers. Guardian link of same.
Filthy, corrupt, lying creeps creepily lie and court corruption in their deadly crusade against all humankind. (the NYTimes puts it more mildly as "Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming").

"Each administration has a policy position on climate change," Mr. Piltz wrote. "But I have not seen a situation like the one that has developed under this administration during the past four years, in which politicization by the White House has fed back directly into the science program in such a way as to undermine the credibility and integrity of the program."

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Sign up to get a free copy of Facade, an interactive AI-driven "drama", profiled in today's NYTimes
How to bind your own book
Scientists tell G8 to do something about climate change.
"President Bush has an opportunity at Gleneagles to signal that his administration will no longer ignore the scientific evidence and act to cut emissions," he said. "It is clear that world leaders, including the G8, can no longer use uncertainty about aspects of climate change as an excuse for not taking urgent action to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Monday, June 06, 2005

This album cover will haunt my dreams for weeks to come. Geraldine and Ricky's "Trees Talk Too" Includes mp3s of both album sides. From Houseplant Picture Studios, where there's enough strange stuff to keep you busy for hours, like this visual disection of a found photograph. Crazy.
Beer, Cola, Shoe, and Car coffins.

Sunday, June 05, 2005

Earthcore: the world's first podcast novel.
Ever watchful of all things Hamburglar related, Jive reader Will brings us an ebay auction for a rare hamburlar Jazz bass. The criminal element is still criminally underrepresented in fast food mascotry.
Hey-O. The Jive is back from a short break. We're loaded up with ape repellant, spray-on moxie enhancer, fake meatballs, and everything else we need to get through the summer. Bring it on, suckers.