Remi's Bloglet - Saturday 10 January 2004

Wow, uh, that's so totally wrong. I think he's as good a candidate we're gonna get, but I just can't see the Howard Dean/Aragorn connection. _
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09:15:30 PM, Saturday 10 January 2004

Hey, Martin, have you seen this contest for Day of the Triffids fanfic? Prizes up to Ł750! _
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03:39:19 AM, Friday 9 January 2004

This mural was one of the my favorite things in Austin. It's right in the middle of downtown, and was on the side of Sound Exchange (a record store where I bought many, many used Robyn Hitchcock CD's and spent waaaay too much for the Guided by Voices Box). Luckily, through the work of a bunch of livejournallers, it's being saved.

For anyone who has seen the movie Slacker, I believe the Madonna pap-smear conversation takes place under this mural. _
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03:15:00 AM, Friday 9 January 2004

Okay, all the hoopla over the overpriced iPod minis aside, Garage Band seems like a neat adition to the 'iLife' family. I mean, I'm all for an easy-to-use recording/looping/sampling system for the Mac! ProTools is a pain in the ass, and too clunky for quick-n-dirty recording projects. _
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06:25:07 PM, Tuesday 6 January 2004

A very cool tribute video to Johnny Cash using his cover of the Eagles 'Desperado' (it doesn't suck anymore!) and lots and lots of animated monkeys in cowboy hats.
[via a whole lotta nothing] _
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06:17:33 PM, Tuesday 6 January 2004

Trip to Arkansas was good. Stayed in a castle, which was a fun, odd, and exhilirating experience I will probably never have again. Hung out with my parents a lot, probably more talk-time that I've had with them in a while. Now I'm sick. Yeah.

Hey! An entire MC Frontalot live show. _
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04:31:46 PM, Tuesday 6 January 2004

A cool-looking, quick-n-dirty Harry Potter RPG. Free! (Oh, and here's a nice pdf of the rules) _
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10:40:46 PM, Tuesday 23 December 2003

A cute christmas/holiday story from PvP is up for I-don't-know-how-long. Anyway, it made me laugh quite a few times, and unlike most PvP stories, this one actually has something resembling a beginning, middle, and end. _
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02:55:37 PM, Tuesday 23 December 2003

If you haven't seen it already, Ask Metafilter is awesome. People pose questions and mefi members answer. Seems like a good place to go for . . . well, just about anything. _
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02:46:41 PM, Monday 22 December 2003

Ray's Place returns! _
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10:56:27 AM, Monday 22 December 2003

Here's a little comic strip I threw together, it might lead to something, it might not. It's called Wage. _
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02:42:27 AM, Saturday 20 December 2003

This whole excercise is intellectually bankrupt! _
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11:02:23 AM, Friday 19 December 2003

This essay by Clay Shirky on Norway's famous dish, lutefisk, made me laugh out loud several times.

If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk. Return to step one. _
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09:18:30 PM, Thursday 18 December 2003

That's a great fucking cover for a comic. What the hell is that thing? A hurricane spaceship? _
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11:45:36 PM, Wednesday 17 December 2003

Instead of going out and doing Christmas shopping, I got sucked into this stupid little game. Globulos is a very simple two-player-over-the-internet collection of games. In all the games you have three Globulos and you're trying to knock other people's Globulos in holes or get yours through a series of hoops first. The graphics are cute and the interface is simple. My handle is 'mondango', but you don't need to register to play. _
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03:42:54 PM, Tuesday 16 December 2003

I was listening to PF's most excellent blogswap CD and when the King Crimson song came on I said, "That sounds an awful lot like 'I Zimbra', hmmmm, I know that Adrian Belew joined King Crimson after working with Talking Heads for a number of years, I wonder if that's when this song was recorded?" And, indeed, it was the first album Belew recorded with King Crimson. Is that a hint of David Byrne inflection (but not lyrical style) I hear? _
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10:53:47 AM, Tuesday 16 December 2003

Animated Dr. Who, serialized on the web. _
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11:21:37 PM, Saturday 13 December 2003

My pal from the keenspace days of Too Fat, Tim Broderick, is blogging. (UPDATE 12/13: I fixed the link, sorry about that) _
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11:05:40 PM, Wednesday 10 December 2003

There is a pile of Firefly and Buffy Season 5 on the couch. _
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12:52:34 PM, Wednesday 10 December 2003

Orisinal, which I'm sure has been linked on the 'mass before, is a pretty amusing collection of mostly arcade-style flash games. Always pretty, but sometimes of limited play value, the archive of games is huge and varied. _
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09:02:54 AM, Wednesday 10 December 2003

Mastication is Normal, a really interesting blog/zine/webthing ~~dealing exclusively~~ with a monthly feature (1, 2, 3, 4) reviewing the designs of book covers. Well-written, informative, and fun to read. It gets lightly technical at times, but almost always with some sort of easily-understood, and occasionally illustrated, explanation. The explanation of how to not destroy letter shape through stroke use toward the middle of this batch of reviews of recent political book covers is quite good.
[via kottke] _
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08:47:21 AM, Wednesday 10 December 2003

A neat article about Amy Smith, a woman who runs an MIT invention class that creates simple technologies for use in 3rd world nations. Fascinating stuff, and quite inspiring.

[via mefi] _
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10:15:35 PM, Wednesday 3 December 2003

Dean Clean of the Dead Milkmen is posting 18 years of Dead Milkmen tour diaries as a blog. It seems that other members of the band are commenting on the blog, as well. Pretty amusing stuff, and annotated, too! _
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02:36:59 PM, Tuesday 2 December 2003

Happy anniversary, love. _
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03:10:50 PM, Monday 1 December 2003

I quite like Daily Kos, because he does elections. Kos talks about other things, but elections, polling, how things break down, and trends are his milieu. He sees that no one is polling in North Dakota about the Democrat primary. North Dakota has a fairly early Feb 3 primary, which could influence who becomes the eventual nominee. Kos wants this data, so what does he do? He looks into hiring a cheap, automated, but fairly accurate polling firm to do a DKos poll of North Dakota. This sort of activism is so exciting, because on one side it shows how an interested base of people can accomplish something that's being ignored, while simultaneously fulfilling an election geek's desire for more information. _
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09:17:39 PM, Sunday 30 November 2003

So I'm considering giving this blog a proper name (Remi's blog feels so . . .three years ago). I've got an idea for a name, but I'm throwing open the door to the blogmasses and begging my friends for suggestions. Please, excite me, insult me, make me laugh, have fun.

(Moss, will it be a terrific pain in the ass to change the name of the blog on BLT?) _
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09:18:52 AM, Tuesday 25 November 2003

Qwantz is about as minimalist as a comic strip can get. The same sequence of bad dinosaur clipart posted on into the sunset, but the dialog makes me laugh. It's so strange, so perfect.

[via Retaliatory Vandalism] _
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06:59:32 AM, Tuesday 25 November 2003

I think it may be time to read some more Borges. _
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04:22:34 PM, Monday 24 November 2003

Pitchfork did a list at the end of the '90's chronicling their 'Top 100 Albums of the 1990s.' It looks like they're trying to rewrite their history with a list that's got a lot more early techno and rap (at least in the back half of the list that's posted as I write this). I can't honestly say it's an improvement. The 100 of the 90's list was a snapshot of what felt like an important time, and that made it interesting. It wasn't complete, it wasn't even all that good, but you could see people looking back on their immediate past and reminiscing fondly. The current list feels like music snobs sniffing, "I could do better than that in my sleep." Yeah, yeah it's just a list blah blah they don't mean anything smackety blah should make up your own mind blah blah, but I don't have the energy or the finances to look into indie music as hard as the 'fork folks do, and so I depend on them somewhat to guide me in my music purchases. Massively rewriting a piece of their critical history just seems cowardly, like they're tired of getting shit for putting 'Loveless' as their best album of the 90's. _
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01:33:51 PM, Monday 24 November 2003

Sort've diagonal to a metafilter post, I discovered the absolutely charming Flip Flop Flyin' (check out the most recent 11.16 post about the Radiohead concert and the coat check). The author does some cute, simple cartoons, but the centerpiece seems to be the Minipops. Most major rock/indie bands are represented, including They Might Be Giants, Flaming Lips, Super Furry Animals, Guided By Voices, Cibo Matto, and more. Just looking through the vast archive is a hoot, and the little pixellated figures do often bear a striking (if iconic) resemblance to the people they represent. _
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09:45:35 PM, Sunday 23 November 2003

"I want to take his face . . . off."
"You want to take his face . . . off?"
"I want to take his face . . . off!"
"NO MORE DRUGS. FOR THIS MAN!"

Well, okay, maybe just a little face changey, those crazy Brits. _
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09:29:28 PM, Saturday 22 November 2003

An absolutely beautiful true color photograph of Jupiter taken by the Cassinni space craft. It's like a painting, almost. _
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10:04:01 AM, Wednesday 19 November 2003

The perfect gift for the Pink Floydling that has everything. The Wall toys! _
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09:10:36 AM, Wednesday 19 November 2003

Think about it, if you was there standing looking at me
What would you do, if I hit your face with dog doodoo?
Smear purple flies on your forehead
Spit in your salad, vomit on your brother's breakfast
Take your ass outside, burn your mother's house
Bring pet mice, and scare your sister with my gray mouse
Then drop him under the bed, and leave him there dead
Take out your parakeet, with scissors, clip his head
Then get the charcoal, whassup, burn your dog's legs
Walk by the barbershop, and hit the glass with eggs
Then go in the club and dance, mix the alcohol
Great with roach spray, here's a drink, have a ball
Dance to the music, watch it party pooper
Yeah, you know...
I'm destructive (4X)

Because I'm in that kind of mood. _
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04:42:25 PM, Monday 17 November 2003

Larry Niven's revoltingly misogynist, but incredibly hilarious, Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex is up on the web. Legally, even! _
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08:45:45 PM, Friday 14 November 2003

Declarations aside, how come I love The Decemberists so? Because they write a pirate song with lines like this:
We set sail on a clipper that's bound for South Australia
The water's warm there, the natives dark and nubile
But if you listen, quiet, you can hear the footsteps on the cross-trees
The ghosts of sailors passsed, their spectral bodies clinging to the shrouds

so goodnight, boys, goodnight
Say goodnight, boys, goodnight

and a song about cruel lovers:
Some had crawled their their way into your heart
to rend its ventricles apart

Isn't that great? The metaphor becomes literal and a terrible image unfolds in your mind.

Describing the lyrics does the songs a disservice. It doesn't even touch on the fact that these songs are gorgeous. Their melodies are sharp and unfold the harder you listen, the music is dense, but not to the point of being impenetrable. The Wrens can occasionally have so many keyboard whizzes, bass counterpoint lines, and duelling guitars it can be easy to lose sight of the song itself and just listen to the ornaments, but the Decemberists never fall into this type of songwriting. All sounds are towards the construction of a perfect pop song, a pop song that sounds like it's from another era, and completely of today. Which isn't to say this is a weakness of The Wrens 'Meadowlands', it's still a great fucking album, just a different approach to pop music.

I also love Colin Meloy's Robin-Hitchcock-by-way-of-the-Microphones vocal stylings. His pronunciation and his tone always fit the songs perfectly. From longing, to madness, to love, and back, he covers the entire spectrum and makes it sound right. This is like They Might Be Giants, but the sense of whimsy has a purpose, the words are so carefully crafted, as are the tunes, that they lose some of TMBG's anarchic spirit. This craft gives the Decemberists songs a gravity and beauty that dares you to call them 'quirky'. Much as I like them, TMBG, even at its darkest and most demented, deserve this label, and the childish connotations that come with it. The Decemberists don't, and reap the rewards of whimsical songs that don't leave you with that slightly overcaffeinated feeling. _
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09:21:59 PM, Sunday 9 November 2003

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