urban drift

good girls bad girls -- can anybody bring it like marc j?

stephen beal

beautiful paintings AND he's the president of cca?!

love etc. there's my valentines song

from yew tube comments: Pet Shop Boys saved my world a thousand times.
from me: Me too!

funny cuz i feel soooo human

Ballard’s genius lies in his metaphoric use of scientific jargon and an antiseptic tone, somewhere between the dissecting table and the psychopathic ward, to psychoanalyze postmodernity. Long before deconstructionists like Jacques Derrida were slinging around references to the “decentered” self, Ballard is talking, in his trenchant introduction to Crash (1973), about “the most terrifying casualty of the century: the death of affect” and about “the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods.” Before postmodernists like Jean Baudrillard were announcing the Death of the Real and its unsettling replacement by uncannily convincing media simulations, Ballard is claiming that “we live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind” — advertising, “politics conducted as a branch of advertising,” P.R. “pseudo-events,” et al. — where “Freud’s classic distinction between the latent and manifest content of a dream, between the apparent and the real, now needs to be applied to the external world of so-called reality.” And before neo-Marxists like Fredric Jameson and Mike Davis were pondering the deeper meanings of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel and Frank Gehry’s Hollywood library, Ballard is pondering the psycho-spatial effects of the built environment: the experience of swooping around a freeway cloverleaf; of walking through a cavernous, empty multistory parking garage; of waiting, alone, in an airport departure lounge; of walking the privately policed streets of an obsessively manicured exurban community. How, Ballard wonders, is our sense of our selves as social beings and moral actors — our very understanding of what it means to be a self — being transformed (deformed?) by the whip-lashing hyperacceleration of technology and the media, the blurring of the distinction between real and fake? Ballard was the first to ask how we became posthuman.

invitation to mr david gandy

From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.
In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,
please come flying,
to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums
descending out of the mackerel sky
over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water,
please come flying.

Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing. The ships
are signaling cordially with multitudes of flags
rising and falling like birds all over the harbor.
Enter: two rivers, gracefully bearing
countless little pellucid jellies
in cut-glass epergnes dragging with silver chains.
The flight is safe; the weather is all arranged.
The waves are running in verses this fine morning.

Please come flying.
Come with the pointed toe of each black shoe
trailing a sapphire highlight,
with a black capeful of butterfly wings and bon-mots,
with heaven knows how many angels all riding
on the broad black brim of your hat,
please come flying.
Bearing a musical inaudible abacus,
a slight censorious frown, and blue ribbons,
please come flying.

Facts and skyscrapers glint in the tide; Manhattan
is all awash with morals this fine morning,
so please come flying.
Mounting the sky with natural heroism,
above the accidents, above the malignant movies,
the taxicabs and injustices at large,
while horns are resounding in your beautiful ears
that simultaneously listen to
a soft uninvented music, fit for the musk deer,
please come flying.

For whom the grim museums will behave
like courteous male bower-birds,
for whom the agreeable lions lie in wait
on the steps of the Public Library,
eager to rise and follow through the doors
up into the reading rooms,
please come flying.

We can sit down and weep; we can go shopping,
or play at a game of constantly being wrong
with a priceless set of vocabularies,
or we can bravely deplore, but please
please come flying.

With dynasties of negative constructions
darkening and dying around you,
with grammar that suddenly turns and shines
like flocks of sandpipers flying,
please come flying.
Come like a light in the white mackerel sky,
come like a daytime comet
with a long unnebulous train of words,
from Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.

cordy ryman

no no no...lux

armory show

Some interesting stuff from the Armory show site. Lots more good stuff. These are just a few that caught my eye...

monkeyland chameleons

I shake my head and shiver
They smile and they stab my back
As they shake my hand
Send out an S.O.S. please
I'm marooned in monkeyland.
I'm idly staring at the sky
Did anybody hear me cry
A billion stars are a moving sight
To all you out there reading this tonight
It's just a trick of the light
I have to know what is real and what is illusion
Tell me how does it feel beyond this confusion?
Is there anyone there?
Do I dismiss this with a sigh?
And let the answers pass me by?
Is my creator God or a man?
Does someone somewhere care and understand?
It's just a trick of the light.
I have to know what is real and what is illusion
(Rest of chorus)
Is there anyone there?
Life's an optical illusion like other optical illusions
Beware

sunday morning coming down

Dangerous Dan is a person of extreme musical intelligence. I try to listen to him every sunday. yes, it's war and football today.

Sunday - 1 February 2009 - 9:00am to 12:00pm

ARTIST--TITLE --ALBUM
Cash, Johnny--Sunday Morning Coming Down--Essential Johnny Cash - Disc 2
Sciflyer--Never Come Down--Age of Lovely, Intimate Things
Gysin, Brion--Stop Smoking--Self-Portrait Jumping
Sixteens--Baby's Carriage--Glacier, The
Kills, the--The Good Ones--No Wow
Spit Muffins, The--End of The World--You're Soaking In It
Thunders, Johnny--Green Onions--Panic on Sunset Strip
Crazy Dreams Band--Nightcrawler--Crazy Dreams Band
Deadbolt--Voodoo Doll--Shrunken Head
Electrocute--Sugar Buzz--A Tribute to Your Taste
Fire on Fire--Heavy D--Orchard, The
Fireparty--Engine--Fireparty
Obsessors, The--War & Football--Double Scoop
Guttersluts--Crazy Cart--Something Doesn't Smell Right
White Zombie--I Am Legend--La Sexorcisto: Devil Music 1
Monster Zero--Walking Off a Fury--Wreck
Nurse With Wound--Thrill of Romance...? (Burgo Partridge Mix)--Bacteria Magnet
Cold Sun--Here In The Year--Dark Shadows
Davis, Guy--Slow Motion Daddy--Sweetheart Like You
Kaukonen, Jorma--Cracks In The Finish--River of Time
Millionaire At Midnight--Coit Tower--Titan! It's All Pop! Sampler
Tiny Concept--Drinking Wine Song--For Tiny Bullshits...
Unit Breed, The--Sand--Hello Sweet Nothings
Chameleons, the--Monkeyland--Radio One Evening Sessions
Raccoo-oo-oo--Untitled 1--Raccoo-oo-oon
Love of Diagrams--Cool (live)--Love of Diagrams
Knitting By Twilight--Jaunt to Dreamland--an Evening Out of Town
Muslimgauze--Green Is the Colour of ...--Coup D'etat
Faun Fables--Dark Solas/Hela--Songs From "Mother Twilight'

make your own show

I made my own show out of the 3:

Morrissey

Paul Weller

Antony and the Johnsons

Bob Mould Band

Girl Talk

Amy Winehouse/Leonard Cohen

The Kills

Sebastien Tellier

Junior Boys

TV on the Radio

X

Black Keys

Brian Jonestown Massacre

Throbbing Gristle

No Age

My Bloody Valentine

The Cure
Blitzen Trapper

Beirut

Franz Ferdinand

Thievery Corp.

Mstrkrft

happy birthday mr. burns

TO A MOUSE
ON TURNING HER UP IN HER NEST WITH THE PLOUGH
NOVEMBER, 1785

EE, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
Oh, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I was be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion
An' fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
And never miss't!

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
Its silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's winds ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld!

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still thou art blest, compared wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I cannot see,
I guess an' fear!

bay area exhales

SAY GOODBYE To Bush
What: Score 50 percent off Brazilian, bikini, and eyebrow waxing at Lisa Bradbury Skincare Salon.
Why: Should make for a smooth transition.
When: Thru Jan. 31.
Where: 1756 Fillmore St., at Sutter St. (415-441-7470).

the stranglers

this is why i can never get over the 80s. dont let anyone tell you it was about bon jovi.this would be a good song for the old deathbed. i'll have to write that down.

pablo neruda

Keeping Quiet
Pablo Neruda
(trans. Alastair Reid)

And now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth
let's not speak in any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about, I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive.
Now I'll count up to twelve,
and you keep quiet and I will go.

walk this way

helen verhoven

fred sandback

Something is very gently,

invisibly, silently,

pulling at me-a thread

or net of threads

finer than cobweb and as

elastic. I haven't tried

the strength of it. No barbed hook

pierced and tore me. Was it

not long ago this thread

began to draw me? Or

way back? Was I

born with its knot about my

neck, a bridle? Not fear

but a stirring

of wonder makes me

catch my breath when I feel

the tug of it when I thought

it had loosened itself and gone.

--Denise Levertov

assassins...lynette squeaky fromme

Fromme was born in Santa Monica, California, to Helen Benziger Fromme, a homemaker, and William Millar Fromme, an aeronautical engineer. In 1963, the family moved to Redondo Beach, a suburb of Los Angeles, and Fromme began drinking and taking drugs. Her grades in high school dropped, but she managed to graduate with her in 1966. She moved out of her parents' house for a few months before her father convinced her to consider El Camino Junior College. Her attendance there only lasted about two months, however, before an argument with her father rendered her homeless. In 1967, Fromme went to Venice beach, suffering from depression. Charles Manson, who had been recently released from federal prison at Terminal Island near Long Beach, saw her and struck up a conversation with her. Fromme found Manson's philosophies and attitudes appealing, and the two became friends, travelling together and with other young people such as Mary Brunner and Susan Atkins. She lived in southern California at Spahn Ranch, and in the desert near Death Valley. After Manson and some of his followers were arrested for committing what would become known as the Tate-LaBianca murders in 1969, Fromme and the remaining "Manson family" camped outside of the trial. When Manson and his fellow defendants, Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten and Atkins carved Xs into their foreheads, so did Fromme and her compatriots. They proclaimed Manson's innocence and preached his apocalyptic philosophy to the news media, as well as to anyone else who would listen. She was never charged with involvement in the murders, but was convicted of attempting to prevent Manson's imprisoned followers from testifying, as well as contempt of court when she herself refused to testify. She was given short jail sentences for both offenses. On the morning of September 5, 1975, Fromme went to Sacramento's Capitol Park (reportedly to plead with President Gerald Ford about the plight of the California redwoods) dressed in a nun-like red robe and armed with a .45 Colt automatic pistol, that she pointed at Ford. The pistol's magazine was loaded with four rounds, but none were in the firing chamber. She was immediately restrained by Secret Service agents, and while she was being further restrained and handcuffed, managed to say a few sentences to the on-scene cameras, emphasizing that the gun did not "go off. Fromme subsequently told The Sacramento Bee that she had deliberately ejected the cartridge in her weapon's chamber before leaving home that morning, and investigators later found a .45 ACP cartridge in her bathroom.