Yuk Bon

Warren Ellis (author of Transmetropolitan and Freakangels amongst other great and freaky shit,) has a podcast of mostly ambient stuff called The 4am. He included “ennui” (aka “that i would find you” aka “sinister chemical wisdom”) in the latest podcast.

Warren Ellis » The 4am: 21 – Sleep Department.

So last night I hit Grand Central in downtown Miami w/ Cira, met Bunny and Eden for ODDSAC, the Animal Collective/Danny Perez visual album. Ran into Prem and Yasmin on the way in, but they didn’t get in until later. Bunny and Ed introduced us to Emily (not Public Emily #1, Bunny’s Mrs., but another one; electronic musician. Seemed nice, but quiet and disappeared when we got inside.) The merch table had shirts and a poster (that Deakin apologetically said was for display purposes only, as they’d run out.) Producer comes on, says welcome, here’s Danny the director, he says how much he digs MIA and he’s got fam from here and it’s a weird place and here’s a movie to take you to another weird place. (I am paraphrasing.)

It’s probably slightly impossible to classify the damn thing. It’s not a video set to AC music, and it’s not a movie w/ an AC soundtrack. The music’s really bass-heavy in parts, heavy atmospheric and trance bits, acoustic guitar and sudden dynamic shifts, vocals etc. So great. The visuals are chaotic and have a vague series of “stories” or “sections” — they’re more like video vignettes to accompany these soundscapes. The addition of the visuals makes the music less vague and more defined “dark”, imo. A lot of AC’s latter stuff has dark overtones but this makes it more explicit. There were a few things I could have done without — the “water static” scene about 10 minutes in went on too long, I found it kind of grating and boring, but that’s probably my only real complaint. The opening piece, bass-heavy and vocal, sort of like a trance-y meditation

During the Q&A period afterwards someone asks the question I am wanting to ask: “What does ODDSAC mean?” and Danny says “you’ll find out in the morning when the subliminal effects have had time to sink in”, everyone laughs and someone else asks about the equipment (DVX100, final cut pro, after effects,) and someone asks the most insipid question: “how much fun was this to make?” (which is maybe another way to say “I have nothing to ask but would like you to acknowledge that I spoke to you”) — unsurprisingly, it was apparently a lot of fun to make. I’m going to posit that the title is way to conflate the ideas of a jumble of oddness and a sort of nascent strange egg (cf Coil’s “Strange Birds” — “One day your eggs are going to hatch and some very strange birds are going to emerge”, although I don’t think that’s what they were referring or alluding to, I mean that it’s in the similar idea.) Other bits: the Guggenheim installation was apparently much, much harder to do than this (Danny Perez also did that w/ AC), although the dude asking also wanted to know if they had plans to do more work like this (or the Guggenheim thing) in the future, that was left sort of open — Deakin said that Guggenheim thing was a sudden thing they didn’t know about until it was possible; no word on whether they’d do another visual album like this.

At any rate, Danny’s joke aside, I did have a horrible nightmare this morning. Personally very frightening and woke heart pounding and angry and confused, woozy and headache.

Here’s the trailer, doesn’t do it any justice:

If you get a chance, go, it’s fucking brilliant. It’ll be on DVD in June, no non-DVD CD release.

Strong storms to usher in another frigid week – South Florida – MiamiHerald.com.

IT’S MARCH, WINTER SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE IN JANUARY OR DECEMBER OR EVEN FUCKING NOVEMBER.

could anything be more perfect than this?

William Shatner to say shit as star of Shit My Dad Says pilot | TV | Newswire | The A.V. Club.

Pink Mania on Vimeo on Vimeo

via Pink Mania on Vimeo.

So. Phlebotomy came back: drink more water. Otherwise I am healthy as a horse.

Been listening to lots of Jeff Buckley lately and playing some on guitar or at least I was until….

The daddy thing. It’s still something I’m having a hard time believing. I mean it’s like the polar opposite of when a bad sudden thing happens — like when there’s a car crash or someone dies or your true love breaks your heart and you cannot believe it — I’m still having a hard time wrapping my head around it. Today the Mrs needed a bit of a break so I took her side of the bed next to the crib and let her rest and I still look over and play with his nose and the forehead while he sleeps and coos and twitters and it’s slowly sinking in that I am the cause of and responsible for a tiny little life. It is awesome and brutal.

First things first: the new Decemberists’ single is fucking awesome. Go click that, they will give you the mp3 for free. Which is good, because rakes are broke.

Second things second: this pregnancy thing is harrowing. I’ve gone from stone sleep to dressed and going WHAT in 2 seconds flat. So far no baby yet.

3rd things next: so I’m at the hospital at like fucking ungodly-a.m. or whatever, and the world turns so daylight happens and here comes the inaugural and holy fuck we have a black president. and fucking hell, he’s smart, and capable, and maybe, just maybe, the whole country isn’t going into ruin right this fucking second. Cleolinda Jones said something about holding your breath and being horrified that the last 8 years have been something that the people of the country actually wanted and how horrifyingly terrible the idea of that has been, and honestly I’ve still been holding my breath, worried that it might not happen, that something would fuck up before President-elect Obama became President Obama. My standards are not high: anyone who won’t be a craven whore, intent on just using the flag to whip his flaccid dick all over the constitution and the ideals of what this country should be would be a great improvement.

CLME over at ye olde penismightier independently confirms that I am a bad person. 

Cory Doctorow’s got a story over at Tor.com which is pretty cool. It includes a sly little reference to The Cuckoo’s Egg by Cliff Stoll (the 0.75$ error leading to a spy-ring thing). That book was the first thing I ever read about hacking, in probably ’89 or ’90; the first time I heard of telnet or unix. It’s dated as hell now — fuck, it was dated as hell in ’90, I bet, but it’s got humourous little flourishes that make it entertaining even now: