Pied Beauty.

All things counter, original, spáre, strange;
Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows how?)
With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change:
Práise hím.

—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

Tumblr is sucking.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Tumblr. But whenever I post something that is dubious, such as having a song with the title “Peasant in the Big Sh!tty,” it will not upload, or if it is a video, it gets ornery. It has lost many a post for me in the past. I don’t let it get me down. Minus the sound file, here is the post that Tumblr is failing at right now:

[The soundfile can be played directly from http://anonymous-infinity.com/temp-music/medleymuddle.mp3.]

© 1977 The Stranglers, © 2006 Belle & Sebastian. This is just totally ridiculous, but I can occasionally hear my name in songs. Statistically that is normal of course, not meaning I’m some kind of statistic, but the way consonants form, and formant frequencies for vowels are everywhere—an orchestra of 100 detuned (retuned) electric guitars can produce in their wash of tight harmonics, too tight perhaps, accidental formants of any vowel of any voice or of any instrument. I have written about this on my http://anonymous-infinity.com website, but the link has been intentionally broken by me until I bring some ideas up-to-date.

The first example is Belle & Sebastian, “The Blues are Still Blue” (The Life Pursuit). I hear my last name (“Whincop”) sung in the main vocals, then by the backing vocals. Totally stupid of me.

The second example is twofold: the first is the live version of The Stranglers’ “Peasant in the Big Sh!tty” (Rattus Norvegicus, CD version only; it wasn’t on the original 1977 LP, and I do not know when the live recording was made), where I can very clearly hear my name, almost overdubbed, to be honest, listen, it is very odd; followed by the No More Heroes studio version, also 1977, in which my name hasn’t been “overdubbed”! Yes, silly.

But I have my ears open in a world of misplaced phonemes as my nose seemed to be in a world of overly-placed pheromones. I will try to find my soundfiles of various machines and various clanking things, which just for a few months made my name. Why not? Well, I’m always in the same place. They tried to deliver me backwards, and then they treated me as the most [regular expressions back reference] person I know. More of that paranoid malady kicking me there and here and back again, more of that psychotic backlash, I think. I’ll sign the I-94 next time and skip my green card: within a three-month waiver, goodbye to my real woe for good. Yesterday here, and a future gone today.

Oh, here’s a thought, what really does “Make my day” mean, and why? And, as they say, don’t wait for it, because it is already here. It is T. Time. Make my day, court some pride, dip in your right toe as hokey as it is, “but”s are not there to be “if”fed, a Time as good as any will be 3/14/2011 at the Enormous Room. Think about the name of that place. And why the elephant. Was B a weight off my chest in his grayness as a special chest T the color of an E? Fur shure. Just like the masters of microphony. Just like Für Elise, by Ludwig van. For release, for real ease. I am dulled; I am only part sui generis. But I only partly coincide with anyone else, ipso facto.

It’s a pity Beat Research Experimental Party Music* won’t be on the Tuesday of that week. But the difference there is one of frequency. Here is the blurb. Apparently I will be there doing something with Prof. Stefan Helmreich from MIT’s Anthropology Department, who is somehow connected to Negativland Research Label, and I have discovered that I am a “deconvolution expert” though that is fairly crap as I preach the unlikeness of deconvolution to my classes every semester and only recently on a film that Verena Paravel made, a Skype of her interviewing both Stefan and me, I explain that very fact. It may have been circumcised, as two hours of footage became 20 mins, and somehow it has become Stefan interviewing me in a film by Verena, ostensibly on “What Separates Us.” I am confused.

Well. I’d like to get my lingualobia around that title, and olfactolobia around the change of roles, which, as with rolls of films, will probably just be editing blah (I think Stefan and Verena are doing it, I wish the lusion had been an inkling and not an eyeballing or merely a clue. I wonder what the lingualobia interpretation of “deconvolution expert” (from Harvard and MIT, apparently!) is. If Beat Research had not existed longer than the last few years, I would say that...

... it is better said elsewhere, lest I court bad feelings from my friend and occasional collaborator, sgh2, as I call him. I am lucky, but not by being lucky.

I can’t stand it that my internet port monitor shows oh so very surprisingly regular attacks/seeks/even connections on my laptop, how it has no functioning airport card but still transmits, according to the monitor application—i.e., I am avoiding inventing things when saying things like this since they can be misconstrued as overly paranoid, but with log files, that is safe. Like when I was mugged, I lost my disks, all of them, a Drobo system. I lost my laptop, all my IDs including NZ passport and US green card. My SIM card for my iPhone (but not my iPhone; it was an odd thing that night that I very distinctly separated out the two). I lost a lot.

Three days later, the front panel of my Drobo appeared in my office (which has very limited access, although RFID readers can be fooled; I didn’t lose my MIT ID or my real school ID). Magic. Wow. But no Drobo itself. No disks. Just a scrap of paper indicating—which I stupidly discarded in anger—that someone has been “stealing my music”! Hence my obsession earlier in the blog. Know I know how metonymic that theft was (and it was real, losers all of them, using a file extraction technique known in forensics as disk siphoning or sucking, also thermal coupling, and in tension-bluffing some magnetic field of disk thing, attraction/repulsion, where the “pro-magnet” lies beside the passive device, well, the lying is relative to the angle of the passive device, and the activest one, not the passivest one, draws on the others (I don’t know even the basics, it can be done without me noticing, as it was over, god, I don’t know, I composed so much, the over-bit seek would have needed, including remixing data chunks, I dunno. In any case, I imagine, facing this head on, even using a two-faced twin seek-head and many write-heads, this still would have taken time, so as to identify what would be taken, or inserted, yes, inserted. I thought it was a frat prank, and if that is even remotely suggested in earlier posts, I retract those suggestions, the older frat idea is long on its way to the giant refuse tip in the sea or sky of suspicion. Apparently, just once, I might have been confident enough to assert such things, but, whatever, yeah, another whatev. Meh.

My poor iPhone, it would say, “no SIM card installed!” I could do some things in a wireless network, and write notes, etc. Then I answered a call from NZ, and we usually chat for 30 minutes or so. I hung up. Holy SIMulated exclamation, Batman! Not only had my SIM card been returned, but it had been put back in the iPhone that I had (over the week following the mugging) lost, only for a couple of hours at a time, three times—returned to my classroom each time! I was lucky.

I have only lost my iPhone one other time, $600 permanently, and I unfortunately worked out who it was months after a close friend and I lost touch, so couldn’t ask her help in the matter. Yet another phone (or telephone?) goes nowhere; I only get enraged, really angry... ugh. Over you. Every aspect resonates so awfully with this incident.

Really and truly. The Material Dialectic (Marxist term) has its way.

So my SIM card reappearing was pretty much a relief. My backpack wasn’t returned but my laptop was! (Of course the disks are history.) Someone apparently found the backpack and laptop soon after the mugging, like well under an hour, surveillance video shows. I asked for this not to be followed up on, though I did need a police report for insurance reasons. Due to the way the night unfolded, I made sure I was walking in a commercial area at 3–6a that July night in Allston (but why was I there at all? Wait for the 2hr film, which I swear I will make one day, over my dead body only will that not happen).

Banks, trucking yards, etc. (Good for the film.) But as pursued as I was, I didn’t want to pursue things except on my own. The laptop was brought to the local precinct around three hours after it was found; the backpack—bright creamsicle orange—was hung on a fence. That was somewhat a relief. Interestingly, I know that that three hour window exists. How? I checked the /var/log, and all the other logs, including those of browser caches last-access timestamps. The computer had been turned on, logged into successfully the first time (and it was off at the time, plus it is never in a state of not being password locked, e.g., by the screensaver), and absolutely rifled through, and basically copied, and many files swapped, though with unaltered timestamps. That requires some Unix know-how. But not enough not to cover tracks. Or... on purpose? Or... not the cunning control-center squad, just the hit-and-run with a little assault-and-battery squad. Battery, cell phone, get it, get it? I real funny.

So when I see connections that I have deemed somewhat safe—I have a decent firewall as well as a port/socket monitor and I never use wireless (hard to do with a broken airport card, broken only after I took it in to be fixed at a “genius bar”)—come knocking my laptop’s door. Some from within the LAN I suppose, not that I have enabled that kind of searching or permission—one can be picky on a Mac, and I was. Naturally I do not need to be worried about the Music Department’s computers actually connecting with mine, I am not sure how, but they do somehow. I am in a music department classroom. D’uh. And the liquid battery computers, and a/vcomputers, which are in the same sub-infinite corridor as me, naturally stray. Who knows where mine shows up.
I hope nowhere since under “Sharing” in my System Preferences I have nothing checked. I am unsure why, in the connections that can be made, something from Comcast in New Jersey (or nj.comcast.net) can appear.

I have run out of steam. I had so many photos to put up, and my new piano piece is begging to be written and to be distributed freely—I find it quite beautiful (can I say that?), a little disturbing, but calming; it breathes slowly and slightly. I always think I will stop this wretched blog and just post the addresses to a very odd place, let’s say Facebook and a million book and CD reviews I will spam! Get real, that’s not style. Not mine, anyway. These are linked to from my web pages—two portals I suppose aside from Tumblr and Blogspot—and actually from BeBo, and Scribd, and the rest. But I will retire soon as there are more important things to do.

I had something to say about the rebuilding of ChCh in NZ—at least the article seemed to be about that. Apparently New Zealand is, across the world, the most heavily insured nation. Insurance is not only fiscal and property. It is a very very complicated thing, and that is why actuaries spend years training after getting their very difficult math degrees. Nothing should be taken for granted; there are so many exigencies, so many possibilities. Not all bases can be covered, but it is a game theory, a game of theory. It is patience, it is time, it is past failure, it is probably future failure; it is not winning or losing; it is safeguarding exactly that which you think MUST be safeguarded, even if the flames and the thieves know the vulnerabilities. It is about others, and looking after them. It is taking care of things, it is a lifetime of good habits and planning (with glitches, yeah, they happen, hence the predicament, exploited by those very far from me. Or, actually, such people don’t know me). There are one or two extremely good policies to take out (in addition to an ongoing not-overdone “bubble”).

Not so secret, fairly mind-numbingly boring (such is insurance and my previous paragraphs), yes, ...

Someone made a mistake! Oops!—I’m saying that on their behalf. Big boo-boo. You needed to light a candle the old fashioned way, as a beacon of some kind of hope, I imagine. You couldn’t find your arsenal of things to strike. Your clip. Your magazine. Your, I forget the word for getting the kettle boiling in England, tinder? But the candle started burning (and is flickering). You met your match. Groan. Game (theory), set (theory), and

*Oh, the full Beat Research blurb:–

March 14th
SETI-X and
A Stack of Dusty Records
w/ visuals by
VJ Dziga and TDOGG

A special Beat Research session devoted to cosmic sounds, this week brings representatives of SETI-X, an exiled offshoot of the Search for Extraterrestrial Life, to present their stunning discovery: Scrambles of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record, as remixed by extraterrestrials. Audio and video de/convolutions of the Voyager Golden Record, launched into space in 1977.

To round things out, Tim, aka A Stack of Dusty Records, the co-owner of Mystery Train Records in Gloucester, MA, will be digging into his deep space crates and offering some thematic accompaniment, while VJ Dziga mixes and mashes rare NASA footage and other alien sights on the big screen and TDOGG explores further levels of photon manipulation.

 

it’s A SIgN. OF the TIMes.

Like adding a codicil, make what you will of this. There is too much everywhere. Philosophers do not observe, they preach. Drop the PR, it’s not like they need it, be refined, take some T and 1day so many books are written with misleading titles—or a little miss-leading titles, yes. Unglabrously in pursuit of some chair, academic-high digging or reaching for the dominant cover, they piss in each other’s pockets. Even holy, even holy water, even to get rid of the hiccups, drink a glass of jatem, I used to say when it was upside-down, or retaw just plain backwards. Causes very controlled breathing which is key to losing the hiccups, shutting out the diaphragmentary contusion. Inhale, slowly as if forever. As if underwater under a sheet of ice which is where you may as well be, in the sea, in the holy see slipping through electron holes which I am told have an ontological status as that of electrons themselves. It’s all about happiness, in pursuit thereof.

It is, it is frightening, it is attractive too, it attracts. How will I be? 1day?

(street—editorial amendation townhouses bow
lingering
ally the color red
or patch gated
instruction
i trashed
but retrieved a little miss steak
too blasé because by then
bygones were not
and you were history
in oh so many senselesses
an egret
“ardea alba”
is but one that comes back
sonic boomerang
is not a regret
because the egress was
do not have
i never turn back
do not hope to turn again
which is the most arduous thing
the toilest
the poet of the lines just above
spelled backward.)

One day, wonda why.

Oh, the little picture is a tiny detail from the wizard between the legs. Rumor has it (okay, no one is talking) that it is writing on the wall.

Great pick-up line: I have a Wizard between my legs.

(Oh dear. I have only ten fingers. So I need to borrow before suicide-entists in order to count the sites and sights and sleights of hands and paints and hands-in-pants and panting in anticipation and anti-fascination and that is one small view of the world or of a painting but otherwise a scarily wide and long and wholly unchoded view of the world which is unrealistic only in the sense I know about nothing but there goes intelligence like that center named after bush, or dissenter of sex, a deserted piecemeal unwise function. YOU’RE A FCUKING IDIOT (thief).)

Byron, the poet of note Albabian national costume fetish fame, wrote a poem that cuts across many of our lives. And abuse it or peruse it, there is a layer to skim for all. Mine starts out obviously enough, then embroiders that needle(ss) work. But it has a darker vision than that, one requiring those military green night eyes. And a certain type of fortune telling, perhaps most like “O Fortuna!” So, the poem:–

Darkness

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum’d
And men were gather’d round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other’s face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain’d;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguish’d with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil’d;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look’d up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash’d their teeth and howl’d: the wild birds shriek’d
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl’d
And twin’d themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour’d,
Even dogs assail’d their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish’d men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur’d their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer’d not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famish’d by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap’d a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak’d up,
And shivering scrap’d with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects—saw, and shriek’d, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr’d within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp’d
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir’d before;
The winds were wither’d in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

Noted in the http://www.2020site.org/lord_byron/darkness.html site I grabbed this from, though I saw it on a friend’s blog but it seemed so pertinent that I had to check for other sources (not disbelief, just raising the odds, etc.). Wasn’t 20-20 the name, coincidentally, of that librarian movement to have 20% of all libraries in New Hampshire vote for free membership, or something? I recall this from some biblically named movement of people quite a number of years ago.

Commented on the site, which goes into L.B. a fair amount: “In the spring of 1822 a heavy and unlooked-for sorrow befell Byron. Allegra, his natural daughter by Claire Clairmont, died at the convent of Bagna Cavallo on the 20th of April 1822.” Let me see. That year Jean-Philippe Rameau wrote his Traité de L’Harmonie except a hundred years earlier, worth making a hullabaloo about; and Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled on St Helena and died there on my birthday (Karl Marx’s) except a year earlier; and my friend Reuben was born on the 20th of April but something more like 1966, which is a hundred years after Erik Satie was born (except on the 17th of May, and he was born as Eric) and he himself just a year after Claude Debussy NO he was born in 1862 but 1865 was when the KKK was born, and my brother David too but a century later, and back to the 20th of April, something Nostradamus predicted ha! Not. How many words, how many possibilisillities. Like, 2005 came and goed. And the end of the world is nigh—’tis a trope to trip upon. Like a skipping trope, kind of not so much a fetish as faddish? Like hopscotch or knucklebones, kind of universal.

Well, I found my path. A lot of forks, and I might stumble, but I found my path and its temporary destruction might have been caused by dark clouds or by a mantra said wrong, but that is well-passed and well-tumbled down a muddy avalanche of [reminds me of someone in the Christchurch earthquake being from Bury St. Edmunds, who was obviously singled out by the press], and liars or truthtellers at these forks, WE HAVE LOGIC.

More people should weight-lift. In 2003 I saw a picture and imagined that there were instructions to fly a small one-person plane into Dunster House at Harvard University. That is about as stupid as I have been. Other than telling someone mildly important about it. But at least he was a specialist in lies, so I was somewhat off the insane hook. But, as to the phony hook, they are going as spare as the ribs that might be on them (well, tenterhooks). I was dumber than actually possible, with a strange IQ or HQ whatever they call it striptease days, worse, so musical a near-CD. But I saw a lot of things and read even fewer. It was all in preparation of what was to come: my arts and real writings. I let s(l)eep into what I do my sweating neurons, sweating from doing double jeopardy: my thoughts and someone else’s, since I am possessed of the notion that a little something in my life has got to go. And that little something is:

Jury is still out. Verdict out, in, whichever, very very soon, and that weight-lifting will no longer be wait-listing, nor will I suffer the osmosis of fretting sans recherche liking a badly strung-out lutte. Speaking of La fête de Lutte Ouvrière and ouvres which definitely travails, Arvo Pärt’s Fratres means “brothers” in Latin. The Wikipedia article on that specific work is informative in general. Not in what it says, but more a deconstruction of that, quite strictly: “A performance by the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra conducted by Tamás Benedek, recorded in 1997, was used in the six-part BBC documentary Auschwitz: The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’ produced by Laurence Rees in 2005.” Pretty good for a barely existing article! When reading Wikipedia, we are reminded that what is terrible in the world can be turned good: the abundance of references, stated or implied, to things facsimile or fast scimitar or scatological, can be made good; remind us, lest we forget. Forge it. Or forgive. Or even for an ogive (Satie wrote some pieces with that name, presumably because he used to play the organ in his spare time in a Gothic church in Paris no less—d’uh, said in French, he barely left the city other than to be born in Honfleur). Or better yet, a spherically-blunted tangent ogive. Why, that sounds to me like a typical shape of the nose of a rocket or other missile! Thank god that latter term is not called a hit-ile, for a few reasons. I am not drawing your attention to rocket design, er, I am at MIT currently, so that would be somewhat redundant, or I might be, but I got to thinking today about a conference I attended part of today (I left so I could eat cheesecake! And why not?). On a Brain Jukebox. Beats other BJs NOT, especially not BJ and the Bear. Cover the head with EEG electrodes (for their negligible latency) to localize over FAST time (FAST was the conference) something that will make music out of our brain patterns as we imagine music—tht connection was not made clear; nor was the whole phase-locking issue.

Here is a picture of sphericallybluntedtangentogivegeometry, to end this spiel. I have many photos and musics to put up tonight. I slept 22hrs last night and, well, I got time to burn. A perfect match.

They are not what I will be saying on the ,,mr foch ideas.’’

And I thought I was alone. I mean up in the penthouse. A gram here and there, or a star of David for one more love triangle. Anyway, I <3 Fever Ray <3 <3 <3. I am listening to a song with the following lines. “Raeppear in a flash/ There is more I’d like to know. A comment on someone’s page said just what I thought I come up with: “Reappear in a FLASH/ Cheers.” That is AWESOME. Because as I heard that I was doing this: Okay first another of many genius songs.

Keep the Streets Empty for Me

Memory comes when memory’s old
I am never the first to know
Following this stream up north
Where do people like us float?

There is room in my lap
For bruises, asses, handclaps
I will never disappear
For forever, I’ll be here

Whispering
Morning keep the streets empty for me
Morning keep the streets empty for me

I learned to not eat the snow
My fur is hot, my tongue is cold
On a bed of spider web
I think about to change myself

A lot of hope in one man tent
There’s no room for innocence
So take me home before the storm
Velvet mites will keep us warm

Whispering
Morning keep the streets empty for me
Morning keep the streets empty for me
x2

Uncover our heads and reveal our souls
We were hungry before we were born
x4

To which was commented: “... my streets are always empty...” which makes me want to love the world for a mo.

So this movie, my little gift. It is of a portion of the printable characters using quickview or (or TextEdit would be the same) the Flash file listed (possibly not .txt but that is just a way of lazily forcing the easy viewing of it). And this is just the localized strings (though there looks like a lot more than the localized strings, if you know what they are.) Let me say: nothing. Why? Just a matter of custom. What custom? One that I don’t know. Is it spoken? No. Does anyone learn it explicitly? No. How is it learned by anyone? By perpetual hint. One hint is many, or one word is many: In “Stairway to Heaven” we learn there are two paths we can by go by. That sounds, yeah, make choices. YES in many ways. But two paths, left and right. Very often we explicitly hear “right” as in “I’m trying to make things right around here” or Loquat, from “Need Air”: “If this was a race, who’d win or lose?/ It’s time we start, the letter part./ If you go left, then I guess, I’ll go right./ We’ll see what we come up with when we meet tonight.” (I won’t both to see if “letter” should be “latter.” I thought it was the latter. But it is irrelevant, because the letter works in any case, and, moreover, things are pronounced so as to impart this or that apart from that which is written, so cunning you could pin a tail on it and call it foxy or even inkorrekt. As for race. A specious word.) Or my spiel about I am David and rights of passage. Colonizing thought. What is left in this world, or should I say, who? Where are my peeps, my bros, or “bruhs” as they seem to say downunder these days.

Oh, and the following video is just a resource file. It is intentional blurred; with a Mac, you can reckon for yourself this one. You ought to see an actual FLV file. NO DIFFERENT! Or an MP3 of AIFF: why are there “phrases” in common between the two, outside of tags? Hmmmm. And with GIFs and JPGs, and even C programs in Unix or at least Darwin or Mach-O or OS X whatever they call it these days. It’s, like, random, or my biography, or yours, or more, or more-more, or perhaps on stereo files byte order has to be swapped (as demonstrated by the file name at the ends of mp3s). Or perhaps there are hash or cipher tables (d’uh) or enough staring to figure out it is layers, or is there a echo at ten characters (wild assertion time) because they might be the spectrographic text to be printed. Stereoscopic? Some misleading layers. Very hard to leave/learn. For a while—I have some of one of my compositions in spectro form from iZotope RX Advanced printed out after careful parametric settings taped to my bedroom floor (because there is much floor due to our bed being non-existent. I had a few stabs really hard practicing into the wall and backs of chairs, like, I mean writing ideas like stabs at solving a problem, and I read about my favorite parts of New Zealand only two people know about, and recently. And, true to my narcissism, which my second-to-last knock-out (technically speaking) of a girlfriend accused me very much of as I was suffering from a bad break-preposition, how touching, it helped a lot being held, accountable I was for s much of my own difficulteries it is very true, so I read about my implant (cf. Efterklang, not just cloning, ha) which is a strange looking thing and not some mystical MIT or government way of controlling thoughts (see appropriate YouTubes yourself or come to our show—a colleague/collaborator and I—at the Enormous Room Of Restless Rebuttal—are doing, just to beat some research and outdo ourselves in who-really-knows but if my nephew/niece—is there are collective term?—have bunks, and were I to sleep in that spare room of several at my parents’ house in Napier, I’d have to debed that messy lisp of a room), true to my narcissism not just the implant but a message among many about the military putting something in my head, perhaps just magnetic RELAY (she’d be so lucky) devices perhaps thin film magazinetism, which is developed as would films be near my temporary pseudo-office in all its debasing mention FORESKIN! Time for BrisFect of -Fess BUT BUT BUT (I am now listening to Azure Ray after Fever Ray, next it will be “Over the Ray nbow” sung by Barbra Streisand with some TV show host at the same time as “Chasing Rainbows” which is on a tune from Chopin). True to form I forget what I am writing about (true?) about what response I/it would have to loud sounds. Perhaps it feeds off certain frequencies. Perhaps all this, well, get this: at a concert last night, of Mantra and Marteau, the musical director at NEC of the C group for new music said, there is all that codedaphonic row like totally serial stuff (nod to Al Gore of the forever-hint) to talk about—and we are music theorist including Uncle_Monty—but he won’t/can’t because it is music and that is all he is interested in. Well, at least he pointed out loud and clear with suitable pauses that there are those things to investigate, which many of us would have, as contemporary composers/theorists—how else was the modern North American discipline of Music Theory invented, as a breakaway from the Musicology as practiced in the old German tradition, though perhaps headed more toward notationless stuff now, and perhaps not because of John Cage’s Notations (I bought my copy for $6 of something and it is worth hundreds now, not that I could do without it—I am stealing someone’s blog post taken from Notations as the copy of the book was mine; extremely pertinent as I am impertinent)—as approaches to the pre-composition of serial works, reminds me of trifid...-ciphers. But the music was beamed in from Saturn, we were told. I BET it was said for my benefit to lead me astray (I don’t even smoke) once again about the whole Saturnalia rag. But I am Scott Jopling. Who do vodou. (No inslut to vodou, but to pretenders to it and abusers of it, same for Wiccan faiths and practices: I truly believe these things should NOT be insulted. Just like using an obituary for some secret message or doing cocaine from a church altar.) So. My new piano piece. No, back to Charlier and Shinier matters more Guarded than most. EVERY entry is covered my modesty beads, Rubik, D, man, Saturn, Brain, I will not go on because I will be reproducing the article and comments (it is a CIF—comment is free or foment is creem or fascist suck anything strapped on to intelligence like the C-extension to the E-string of a contrabass) so no comment and sue the pants off me please because I will have to do my laundry because I am terrible at showering and doing the laundry and sleeping and get me arrested or naked-ish in the laundromat so I can clean my act up or I had an ex-girlfriend who got naked a lot semi-pubically but once in a high rise (yeah, personal geometry is none of your bidness) the modesty beads came out, or clothes, don’t want the Scientologists, our neighbors, or employers across the river in 5-4-5(to the-)4 to know or see the task at hand. But that was years ago. Here is the movie, if I can get it on Youtube. Read on! Pretend it is yours, write a cunning application to the American Academy in Rome (where I spent a lot of time with Cammy and other friends and colleagues—some of who went on to Villa I Tatti and Dumb-art-on Oaks) and be an artist, sleep with an old poet or two, whatever, we all bossa [some description of novelty or explosion].



Yup yip yip Open Sesame RADIO! Just visible, but an invitation to your own computer. I don’t know what PCs are like, but this is either open source-ish from sourceFORGE-ish or academic agent-006 because -007 is HOT and I am straight, and Macs are kind of more lectrocratic than PCs.

With one leg missing and she having far to run.

[Probably a zillion errors, this was pumped out, like an everted tire.]

This is a Quake I™ (yes “I” am trademarked up) map designed by history. It is the weapon of choice for some people, the grenade pin remover, which is required after a vodou attack. It is the insertion of the funny annoying thing that probably clicks found in E1M1, the Slipgate Complex and those are for real, for clever stupid real, real chic. My friend “Uncle_Monty” and I have spend many loving hours gulping down slime and riding each others’ rockets—Uncle Monty of course is the sleazy fat old geezer from Withnail and I (1987).

And my friend, Jonno, is indeed from Montreal, as his name would suggest. More still, of course, to come, but such complexities and complacencies and complaints and replacemencies and relationshipwrecksinseas and complicities and who is your friend, girlfriend, father, these days, as a Professor Jeanne Bamberger used to say when we were neighbors at MIT, “amorphous boundaries.” Or my voice leading ideas on voice misleading or missed-voice leading. I was briefly just called “Snake,” for lack of something witty, but Jonno can barely be outdone and was brieftly “Uncle_Mongoose.” Ach, we creatures, great ones, small ones, edible and gullible and bury my head in the sand, sinking of course, or at least scuppering.

Okay, on a different note, I wonder about about people I know, what they really were in my life. I have concluded is that Twin Peaks nailed it: “The owls are not what they seem.” And every day I lose connection further with what I though my various types of relationship were. I cannot get myself to talk to some people I was close to; that includes a number of people fake in my life, and people who have told the big lies to me. Jonno is not one. Sorry to name names. Like, it’s his real name.... I will mention my most recent ex-girlfriend in that fake context. No one knows of this brief relationship.

Yuck. The National’s “Apartment Story” from Boxer reminds me of earthquake drill in Napier New Zealand, or boyscout camp. Why not just pass me a post-apoplectic instruction manual? Or, for that matter (plasma even), I am beconfusedandincediary (is like when you expose yourself naked?—immolate) because I am understand everything as a commentary on now and plans and not ?weightlifting and on ?conservation family valleys and warm tactile feelings and I do like it that the want everything to be right, because wrong is bad, right? And what’s left when all is said and done? Naturally I cannot believe anyone with eyes, ears, brains, and who has lived in a few countries and enjoyed them thoroughly could not be Marxist to some decent orthodox extent, and hate the political far-right and anything of privilege. I should have smelt that rat like it was made of aluminum when I heard these “lefties” being encouraged to get more bourgeois jibs because the “organization,” which I thought was a small leftist propaganda group, needed money money money not really that funny. Conservative, yeah, fear enough. Honest. The most honed, perhaps. (I had a flashback to Rotorua in a our funny little hotel and I am left sad, lonely, angry, and whatever. Her major loss.) But I am very very tired; teaching composition to 33 students and running an electronic music studio is a harder job than it sounds. Ha. (But fun, of course.) Very very draining, especially as I have mammoth projects to do, not in the least this scoobydooing what I is doing, and that is swimming the Baring Sea because the Ice Age cometh. The blogs and videos and visual art are my main thing, though I am writing a four-part-chord non-repeating Vexation of sorts. It is algorithmic, but in a very careful aesthetic sense. Tonight a few of us—including some students, which was awesome because it would have been an ear-opener, and they are just very very excellent students, it sort of made it seem more worthwhile that the few who could make it did, braving the cold of Boston tonight—Boulez’s golden hammer and Stockhausen’s downloadable mantric ringtones.

So that was a real pleasure in this world I absolutely hate. No, I do remain alive of course and just mentally throw up (on fools and their highness and immature partial edification, wear Borges categorical analog passive filters in which trying to change the things bandpassing not the inductor/capacitor f and Q determinants is plain futile. I have a strange a video found on my computer during the “bad” times when someone was tormenting my life to craziness, I jest not, I’d almost like to be arrested for some weird trumped-up charge so I can write more than a blog. I’m patient, so very patient; and were I committed as one as I am a Veronica Mars (she knows how to dress so excellently). In a single old-fashioned ewer of milk (especially pronounced the Belfast way, ”milik“), in how many wheys can your thoughts be curdled? Not just skimming the surface, but not taking it to a lab? Since love and war and dreaming and nonsense and reading and getting lost ack, I have gone over this crying-over-spoilt-milk with its white impure, which is like s-impure (pronounced Italianishly since it is an Italian thing) when an initial s is followed by a consonant, so lo would be the masculine definite article of that very singular variety. My mind is awash with too many ideas trying to account for a bad break-up and strange media files appearing on my computer, and where am I? Salvaged from my second madness which are self-consistent, and this time I can say for sure, REAl absolutely revoltingly true. Mythology surrounding the first was a little whacky, but that is hardly the point: I was accounting for a weirdness in a limited capacity to be Velma. But this time, it all accords with my instruction manuals and with my Psychotic Scrawls—I must put them all up; there is a copyright issue with iii as I used the singing bells of Benjamnin Iobst and I haven’t successfully sought permission—tried with no response but I will try hard. ii is up here or on Tumblr already (all these blogs and other sites are accessible from http://anonymous-infinity.com because they all spell Amf.’s name differently, as she is both real and unreal, plus it is time for major mirroring and distribution and caching has been happening all the time by my including very attractive keywords all along, in every post, just to make sure, and so much is told already in one of only a couple of ways of getting this screenplay past the censors, and that one way mentioned is the best way of all, which is to have something dense in information, in some fairly unique style and not some kind of common, say, acrostic. That is like the Magic Eye image you can find. But the clever-ish thing is the very subjects, or exact quotes/angles chosen. Who would spot that in such randomness, and it is not something I really need to think about a whole lot, since my mind has kept a journal of randomness, perhaps scrapbooks, since I was a kid. It is like the repeated pattern of a Magic Eye Image, the thing you can actually see, but not think is significant as it is medium for communicating something else deeper. Oh well. I feel silly. Oh, that’s right, I don’t feel silly. The censorial supressor-wannabes must. “Asleep on a Sunbeam,” so happy by B&S from Dear Catastrophe Waitress. Is there a turn of that phrase “Catastrophe Student”?

So that map is also something dental, ocular, aural, all insertion like an earring or earwig or ringing ear or ringworm or wormhole or holier-than-thou, or thousands of wholes turning into parts, or in this map, whares (M&amacron;aori meeting houses) and ramparts, in one of the battles of the great Totikowaru, one of the greatest M&amacron;ori warriors ever, which means one of the greatest warriors of the world ever. His fifty men could keep at bay over a thousand Pakeha goons. He himself was amazing. This map is either in the Taranaki Province of New Zealand where his final battles took place, or in the Hudson River, with Lincoln Logs (or Napier Bones?) and stumps and Well-Tempered Clavier partly cleared ground-basses (more passacaglie) and Trenton trench warfare in Taranaki with parapet palisades despite being on the TASman, and Major Hunter killed (like, that was a name, like, say, Henry Hudson, or is it, like, someone who hunted who was important, and so EVERYTHING IN THIS SICK FASCIST-BECOMING WORLD IS AND I DO NOT MEAN CURRENT REGIMES. I AM SICK SICK SICK OF WHAT FEELS LIKE A CULT OF SELF-ASSUREDNESS WITH NO EXPERIENCE—HENCE A CULT REPLETE WITH REWARD PROMISE AND EXTREME REJECTION—HI PETER HOW DOES IT FEEL BEING SQUASHED—JUST FINE THANK YOU BECAUSE I AM ALREADY A FAIRLY MARROW PERSON, PHYSICALLY, BUT I DON’T PUMPKIN OR ANYTHING ELSE ODDLY SELECTIVELY IN THAT BREAD-RAISING YEAST INVECTIVE WHEY—AND THE GUARDIAN SURE TOOK THE SHEEN OFF ALL SEMBLANCE OF INTELLIGENCE AND APPRECIATION FOR ENGLISH HUMOR—FOR IT WAS STACKED BY LONDONERS I KNEW AND GORMLESS FOOLS HERE OF UTTER PREDICTABILITY WHERE ABILITY IS A HIGHLY EXAGGERATED SUFFIX. BUT SHOULD I GO THROUGH THAT SHEENLESS CIF AND ANALYZE REFERENCES, AND HAVE A DEEP STAB AT EVERY NAME BECAUSE, AS WITH UNCLES—KIN AND FRIEND, ADAPT IT, YOU DISIN-GENIUS FOOLS LYING IN THE GENTLE BREEZE—A GENTLE BREEZE SAY AT TE MATA OR FLAT ROCK I LOVED MORE THAN ANYTHING UNTIL I THOUGHT IT WAS RAPED FROM ME BY AN INFERIOR LITTLE ALWAYS-TARDY-TO-SCHOOL-THEREFORE-LATE BEASTIE OR WORSE YET

oh this screenplay is boring me to tears, boring me to death which (1) suggests potential necrophilia, and (2) more broadly, a sad end to humankind due to the arrogance of pretenders to the heir to throne of unselfishness whereas they should be thrown to the air of their complete unexpressed selfishness (for it is ineffable, but I’ve done what I have been able to, to f it over. And what a bad fit).

Yeah, forget this screenplay, I’ll go for the one where girlfriends and friends and the other f words are for real, honest or at least with no malice by intention or by willing misguidance accompanied by smugness with sacred official oh-so-turned-away righteousness of headiness of hanging ten, even one in ten would decimate or at least tithe if it were income. Yeah, I‘ll switch my screenplay completely around, to something happy. Like I will post

ugh. Went to Tumblr instead. Bye bye, sasasasasasasasa.

Oh! What a Lovely War!

“And fornicate my bleeding life away.”

I have been coding some crude MaxMSP patches, both for algorithmic piano composition, and for pedagogical purposes (for my advanced students). I have also been thumbing through many of my books, which is way more fun that looking at a computer screen with decent pr0ns. Some such books: one concerning Μάχη τῶν Θερμοπυλῶν, http://www.amazon.com/Fathers-Daughters-Their-Own-Words/dp/0811806197, Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear (Technologies of Lived Abstraction) with the following review:–

“FANTASTIC BOOK” (5 Stars)

This book was published under the name of Steve Goodman (a lecturer in Music Culture at the School of Sciences, Media, and Cultural Studies at the University of East London), not of Kode9. So it is not a tutorial on how to make wobbly bass in Massive. True, because of its subject matter it can be at times heavy on the SAT phraseology, but I seriously doubt the usefulness of writing a vibrational ontology for kindergarteners, especially if that ontology is explicitly developed in the context of Leibniz, Deleuze and Guattari.

If you are looking for a fresh perspective on sonic weaponry, piracy, pop music as torture, sound systems, earworms, crowd control, and the Big Bang then this is the book for you.

If you are looking for “a pretty interesting philosophical read,” try Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. Wait, maybe that too is “over-written,” “quickly filling and hard to digest,” so better try Martha Stewart’s Encyclopedia of Crafts: An A-to-Z Guide with Detailed Instructions and Endless Inspiration.

And if you are looking to practice your reviewing skills without having to read anything, go to Youtube and join the pissing contest coming up with the next lackluster metaphor for face-metling griminess when commenting on the latest Datsik track.

PS. Read the editorial reviews. If you feel like you don't understand them, save your money and buy instead Kode9’s Memories of the Future.

(The review is evidently responding to a troll.) At least the title of the book is honest, and the material too, though I am so dumb it is probably about how to eat recently killed game with delicacy (but no relish), on polishing Rolls Royce engines while they are running, on contradancing. I have bought 100 or so new books in the past six months, such is the intrigue I have with fonts of wisdom, the smell of paper, nice layout, always from major presses. I love books and paper and manuscripts; I used to have a part-time summer job (1998) at Houghton Library at Harvard University. That’s where the rare books and manuscripts are kept, real white glove and glass rod material.

And speaking of iDance Contra’s “canned hell”: am I, trying not to disturb nature by opening that “can of hell” by breeching Pauli’s exclusion principle, and instead being more inclusive, reading about dancing, ... censored, though, lightbulb! Something just clicked! It is popular at places like Harvard and BU because the patterns resemble predictable flow in fluid dynamics! And that is all about lovin’. Here are some pictures, and this ain’t the 1/10th of it:–

And here are some excerpts. It really must be about fluid negotiating bends and changes of diameter of pipe, kind of a Bernoulli thing. Here is part of the derivation of the Bernoulli equation for incompressible fluids:

I get a hint, looking at that, that someone likes their sativa, but seriously, like, with gravity.

http://www.cdss.org/elibrary/dart/appendix_a.htm
http://www.cdss.org/elibrary/dart/appendix_b.htm

And some incredible information about flow in contradance:–

[Retrieved from http://www.cdss.org/elibrary/dart/aesthetics_1.htm on 20110227-1914.]

AN AESTHETIC OF CONTRA DANCING

The responses given by my informants in answer to the question “What makes a good dance?” can be divided into a number of clusters of criteria, each of which I would like to discuss in some detail. These clusters include the “flow” of the dance, the choice of figures and formations used in the choreography, the complexity of the dance, the social interaction that takes place within the dance, the degree to which the dance moves conform to the expectations of the dancers, the fit of the dance to the music, the physical activity level of the dance, and the quality of specialness or uniqueness exhibited by a dance.

FLOW

The most common short response to the question, “What makes a good dance?” was “good flow.” The concept of “flow” seems to refer predominantly to the transitions between the dance figures rather than to the figures themselves, and it relates to how smooth these transitions feel to the dancers. Here are two summary statements from my informants that give an idea of what is meant by this term, “flow”:

Good flow means that each transition is easily maneuvered and rewardingly maneuvered. (Jennings 1990b)

If the dance is smooth, it means that the transition from one figure to the next is easy to achieve. You do not ever have to turn the hard way. You don’t ever have to stop, literally stop in your tracks, and backtrack to do something else. Everything flows into the next thing, so you are eternally walking forward. (Park 1990)

The term “flow,” as used by my informants, has both physical qualities which have to do with the laws of physics, and nonphysical qualities which have to do with the expectations of the dancers and the degree to which they perceive the dance as “making sense.”

The physical component of “flow” concerns the motion of the body. In a dance with good flow the dance sequence avoids transitions where the dancer must change his or her momentum suddenly through either a change of direction or a change of dancing speed. (“Suddenly” is an important qualification, since many dances have either a full stop, or an assisted change of direction through an “allemande” or other strongly connected figure performed with another dancer.) If such a change of momentum is easily anticipated and can be done comfortably, it may not disrupt the flow of a dance. An example of a comfortable change of momentum might be the change from a “circle left” to a “circle right,” a transition which is common and anticipated and for which dancers have learned to adjust their footwork to make it smooth. An example of an uncomfortable change of momentum might be an “allemande left” followed by a “circle left,” in which the dancers must change from a forward counterclockwise motion to a sideways clockwise motion, requiring both a change of body position and a change of direction. Bad flow may also result from movements that are difficult because the hand that is needed is not free. Steve Zakon gives an example:

We just finished a “swing,” now the men allemande right. Well where’s your hand at the end of the “swing?” It’s behind the lady. You can’t get there. (Zakon 1990)

...

It is possible to have too much flow in a dance, especially when the choreographic sequence includes a lot of circular motion. A dance with too much flow can leave the dancers either disoriented or dizzy. Ted Sannella comments on this phenomenon:

...

In the composing of contra dances with good flow, conservation of momentum is an important principle. The movements work better when one takes advantage of the momentum already established in a previous figure, because the dancers do not have to work as hard to perform the dance. In particular, when rotating figures move into other rotating figures, the direction of rotation should not be reversed. Gene Hubert elaborates:

If you’re going to have a circle on either side of an “allemande right,” it should be a clockwise circle, which means “circle left”.... And “allemande left” means that you’re going around the other direction, which is basically “circle right” direction. So “allemandes” and “circles” work together that way.... And “swings” to “circles” and “circles” to “swings” are the same deal. A “left circle” is a basically clockwise movement, and a “swing” is a clockwise movement. They go together real naturally. (Hubert 1990b)

The conservation of angular momentum may produce acceleration and deceleration within the dance. For example, going from a “circle” into a “swing” involves an acceleration of movement, because as two dancers pull closer together for the “swing,” the conservation of momentum results in their going faster, an exciting and pleasing effect.

One way for the dancers to change directions without disrupting the flow of the dance is to use assisted changes of direction, as noted above. An “allemande,” for example, can be used to send two dancers in the opposite directions from which they came, without their having to stop or turn around. Dan Pearl gives an example:

”Anniversary Reel” by Ted Sannella has a deal where the actives go down the center while the inactives come up the center, and you allemande with your next neighbor by the handy hand, and you immediately return to your original neighbor. So it’s like you’re using the next one in line like a pole.... It’s an assisted change of direction, and that kind of muscle tension in contra dancing is fun. (Pearl 1990)

The dance composer must be careful in the use of the directions “right” and “left” if the dance is to flow well. If many dancers are doing a movement together it is not likely to be confusing, but if a single dancer must make a split-second decision between right and left, some dancers will be confused, and the flow of the dance will be disrupted by their hesitation. John Krumm has noticed this problem:

I find there’s a lot of right and left anxiety on the dance floor, a lot more than anybody imagines there is.... Thirty percent of the dance floor will be confused by simple right and left hand things. They’ll have to think. If you put right and left together a few times in one sentence, you can confuse fifty percent of the floor. Or if you have different things doing right and left, like put your left hand on your right shoulder and face left, then you confuse almost everybody. (Krumm 1990)

Another guideline offered for the composing of dances with good flow is that the last move of a dance must flow well into the first move. This is because when the dance is actually performed by the dancers, the dance is repeated perhaps fifteen times, and the transition from the last move to the first one becomes just as important as any of the other transitions. Ted Sannella emphasizes this point:

People, when they’re writing a dance, sometimes they start at the top and they go to the end. And they don’t think about what happens when you go from the end to the beginning again. You may have a dance that flows beautifully all the way through until you get to the end, and then the last figure doesn’t flow into the beginning again for the next repeat. (Sannella 1990a)

The last principle of flow discussed by my informants comes out of the problem of too much flow discussed above. In order to avoid a dance being disorienting or dizzy, the dance composer needs to insert moves which do not revolve, to break up the circular flow of a dance which contains a lot of “swings” and “circles.” Straight line movements such as the “forward and back” figure or a “down the center and back” figure will serve to break up a dizzying circular flow, as will any kind of “balance” figure.

[Retrieved from http://www.cdss.org/elibrary/dart/changes.htm on 20110227-1907.]

TABLE 2. CHANGES IN CONTRA DANCE CHOREOGRAPHY

FORMATIONS:

1. The triple formation and the proper formation are used less frequently.
2. The improper formation and the Becket formation are most commonly used.

SYMMETRICAL ROLES:

1. There is less distinction between the roles of the active and inactive couples.
2. Terminology has been altered to reflect this change.

FIGURES:

1. The use of the “swing” has increased.
2. Fractional figures are common.
3. Figures danced on the diagonal are being used.
4. Borrowed and invented figures have been added to the repertoire.
5. “No hands” figures have become more popular.
6. Strongly connected figures are used to facilitate good flow.
7. The use of figures requiring unequal roles has declined.

TRANSITIONS:

1. The sequence “down the center and back” and “cast off” has declined in use.
2. Figures that cross the set and return are now used more often in their half form.
3. Transitions are designed to build momentum for vigorous dancing.

COMPLEXITY:

1. Sequences are more complex.
2. Figures of shorter duration are common.
3. Dance movements are faster and use closer timing.

MULTIPLE PROGRESSIONS AND END EFFECTS:

1. Dances have been composed that progress the dancers more than one place in a single round of the dance.
2. Both single and multiple progression dances may require dancers to dance outside their minor set of two couples.
3. More complicated choreography has resulted in more complex adjustments that must be made at the ends of the set.

NUMBERS OF DANCES:

There are many more dances in circulation now.

******

I have so many books to write about, and interests, now that I made a major breakthrough. It might just be a TP in my ~life. I talked about TP in this blog or the other. And, especially pertinent....

I see the Coen brothers have a new cinematic experience awaiting me. Yes, just for me. No Country for Old Men was quite something. From Wikipedia (yawn):–

Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh, a hitman hired to recover the missing money. The character was a recurrence of the “Unstoppable Evil” archetype found in the Coen brothers’ work, though the brothers wanted to avoid one-dimensionality, particularly a comparison to The Terminator.[7] The Coen brothers sought to cast someone “who could have come from Mars” to avoid a sense of identification. The brothers introduced the character in the beginning of the film in a manner similar to the opening of the 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth.[8] Chigurh has been perceived as a “modern equivalent of Death from Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film The Seventh Seal.”[9] Chigurh's distinctive look was derived from a 1979 photo from a book supplied by Jones which featured photos of brothel patrons on the Texas-Mexico border.[10] After seeing himself with the new hairdo for the first time, Bardem reportedly said, “I’m not going to be laid for three months.” Bardem signed on because he had been a Coens’ fan ever since he saw their debut, Blood Simple.[11]

The latter film is one of my favorite films ever, and I think while watching (it for the tenth time) that I received my first success handjob. Quite startling. Closely behind Blood Simple is the candid O Brother, Where Art Thou?. I would certainly not label it a comedy. And, yes, the parallels with Homer’s Odyssey are in plain sight. I am sure many people say that. I bet many of them haven’t read Homer’s Odyssey, even in translation. They might just know about Circe, the Sirens, Calypso, and Trojan Horses. No, that’s the Iliad.

On my other blog I am singing of song, about