bopuc/weblog

Hexstatic - "Apache"

Worst... music video... evaaar... hehehehee

La Blogothèque:

We have a long compilation tradition here. And we wanted to celebrate the site's second month. So here is a mix CD called Point d'écoute (Part. 1 + Part. 2 ) (Listening Post) that we made to sum up our discoveries in this period of time. Some of these bands have been produced, some don't have an EP yet. But all of them propose some free mp3s on their site¬†: that's where we collected them.

Not only is this a truly great idea, but so far I am 5 tracks into it and can already heartily recommend it as a worthwhile music download. Hell, I'd BUY this.

Joey... I think you have some serious competition...

McRorie One Man Live

Matt posted a rant about the upcoming ETech:

It's just that the topics on offer: y'know - the copyfight, social software, bloody blogs, web services etc. might still be worthy topics for discussion, but I feel like I've been around those blocks quite a few times now, and I want some genuine outbreaks of the future.

We chatted briefly about it and I totally agree. In fact, and not to be too jaded about it, my one foray to ETech (and two to SxSW, self funded those were), though loads of fun and at times very interesting, were mostly just schmoozefests, a chance to meet many like-minded new friends. But by no means was I overwhelmed by genuine outbreaks of the future.

Put another way, what Matt, and I, agree upon is that while it is definitely necessary, important and interesting to consider "today", some of us who are already quite knowledgeable and comfortable with what is already going on really want to think more about what WILL be going on.

Geo-politcal/economic factors aside (we should all have signed up for mandarin chinese classes by now), I really want to explore the developments in, again as Matt suggests, things like bioinformatics, neuroscience, cognitive sciences - i want us to look at trends in art and culture, the weathervanes^[1] of change - the development of architectures for interfaces as we emigrate our minds from our heads to our screens... The needs and effects of being, simultaneously, in ourselves, in the world and in cyberspace.

Did I mention I am lacking sleep thanks to reading too much Derrick De Kerckhove again? ;)

Perhaps a smaller event, perhaps similar to Design Engaged in structure, a symposium type-o-deal... presentation / conversation. Oye, I feel a rant coming on...

In any case, the only way I get to ETech this year is if someone gives me a good reason (flight, hotel, entrance fee being perfectly good reasons... ;) , and SxSW depends on how much work I take on between now and New Years. But show me an event which is truly about emerging, forward looking thoughts and technology, and I'll seriously consider getting excited and pulling out the (overused) plastic.

It's not that hard to get me excited, by the way.

[1] Q: What does the wind look like?
      A: The wind looks like what ever it moves...

It is 4:30am, again. I am exhausted. Barely slept last night; late night partying and early start this morning playing tech support. The most relaxing part of my day today was playing ambulance for Karl when the call, er.. Instant Message, came in that he'd cut himself badly and needed to visit the Emergency room...

Anyways, so i already know not to drink coffee after the sun goes down, which is like 4pm nowadays (aaaaaaaargh), but I pulled an even bigger bonehead move when trying to hit the sack earlier tonight: I read.

BIG mistake. Reading doesn't put me to sleep, reading puts me in hyper overdrive. (I should try reading some innocuous fiction instead of rabble rousing theories of interconnected intelligence... fneh.)

So I leapt out of bed at 3:30am, head abuzz with all sorts of zany ideas in need of being put down, but by the time I had my tea ready and the notebook out on the couch... it was all gone. Cause I am just too damn tired... not to mention my memory and concentration are shot generally anyways.

I'm too tired to be disappointed with myself. :p
Good night.

In the spirit of Turkey Day, here is "A thanksgiving Prayer" by William S. Burroughs

Thanks for the wild turkey and
the passenger pigeons, destined
to be shit out through wholesome
American guts.

Thanks for a continent to despoil
and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and
danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves
and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK.

For nigger-killin' lawmen,
feelin' their notches.

For decent church-goin' women,
with their mean, pinched, bitter,
evil faces.

Thanks for "Kill a Queer for
Christ" stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for Prohibition and the
war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where
nobody's allowed to mind their
own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the
memories-- all right let's see
your arms!

You always were a headache and
you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last and greatest
betrayal of the last and greatest
of human dreams.

And more generally, the words of Howard Beale ("Network", written by Paddy Chayefsky)

Get Mad

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.

We know things are bad -- worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."

Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot -- I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. (shouting) You've got to say, "I'm a human being, god-dammit! My life has value!" So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out, and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad! ... You've got to say, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

The Tube

You people and sixty-two million other Americans are listening to me right now. Because less than three percent of you people read books. Because less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers. Because the only truth you know is what you get over this tube. Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube. This tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation. This tube can make or break Presidents, Popes, Prime Ministers. This tube is the most awesome, god-damned force in the whole godless world. And woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people and that's why woe is us that Edward George Ruddy died. Because this company is now in the hands of CCA, the Communication Corporation of America. There's a new chairman of the board, a man called Frank Hackett sitting in Mr. Ruddy's office on the 20th floor. And when the twelfth largest company in the world controls the most awesome, god-damned propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what s--t will be peddled for truth on this network.

So, you listen to me! Listen to me! Television is not the truth. Television is a god-damned amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, story tellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers and football players. We're in the boredom-killing business. So if you want the truth, go to your God, go to your gurus, go to yourselves because that's the only place you're ever gonna find any real truth. But man, you're never gonna get any truth from us. We'll tell you anything you want to hear. We like like hell! We'll tell you that Kojack always gets the killer, and nobody ever gets cancer in Archie Bunker's house. And no matter how much trouble the hero is in, don't worry. Just look at your watch - at the end of the hour, he's gonna win. We'll tell you any s--t you want to hear. We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds - we're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube.

This is mass madness. You maniacs. In God's name, you people are the real thing. We are the illusion. So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off. Turn them off right in the middle of this sentence I am speaking to you now. Turn them off!

I attended the "Devices of Design" symposium, hosted by the CCA (Canadian Center for Architecture) and the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology (Daniel Langlois was the founder of Softimage).

Devices of Design, a collaboration between the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) and the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology, was initiated in response to the increasingly widespread use of digital media and software technologies in architectural design as well as in the domain of construction. A colloquium and a subsequent roundtable discussion will address both the consequences that this shift implies for contemporary architectural theory and practice, and the urgent need for better understanding of the archival and conservation issues that such new media and technology raise for research institutions worldwide.

The general question I gather they were tackling was "now that our work, the endeavors of architecture, is virtually totally digital, what do we archive for posterity?". This got sidetracked almost immediately to "what is virtual? what is a document, as opposed to a scribble? what is memory?".

[This event was VERY densely packed with great presentations and thought provoking materials. Therefore, not only am I having a heck of time writing it all down here, time wise, but also it makes for a VERY long entry... one which I will have to come back to and add to for a little while yet...]

I just tried pushing the screen of my PowerBook back... using the cursor...

The greater your fear of losing me
the tighter you hold on to me
the more forcefully I will implore you
to let go.

Hold me as if we are never to be apart
so that we may never be.

Gah! My apologies to the world for posting such malformed tripe.

Following a post by Nika, I thought it'd be cool to start a "thing", a "meme" perhaps... whatever. Use the TrackBacks, Luke!
To find your first Sony Walkman, check out Pocket Calculator's Vintage Walkman Museum: Sony

So, "I'll never forget my first Sony Walkman".

It was 1981 (read on for how I "remembered" that), and my parents had won a door prize at some charity ball, and since my father couldn't go, my mother dragged me off on a Caribbean cruise for two weeks. The cruise ship was anchored in New Orleans and just before embarking, my mother jumped into an electronics shop and bought [cue dramatic music] "our first Sony Walkman".

It was the WM-3 (again, interesting story on how I "remembered" that below). She also bought 3 cassettes:
- a greatest hits of Cat Stevens ("Ooooh baby baby, it's a wiiild world, a-do-do-do-do-dooo, and I'll always remember you, as a child, girl"),
- a sort of "addon/plugin" for the Walkman which gave it AM/FM capabilities,
- and, crucially for my remembering, Leo Sayer's "Living in a Fantasy" ("Oooohhohhhhohhhhh Jessee... I love you more than I can saaaay-e... I'll love you twice as much tomorrooow, oooh-ohhhh, I love you more than I can saaaay").

It was a memorable trip in and of itself: flying fish seen from the porthole window of our cabin, playing with the retractable lightsaber in the arm of my Luke Skywalker action figure, getting seasick and throwing up the water I had drank earlier...

My mom, being the indomitable soul she is and having enough of being couped up on a cruise ship with her semi-autistic son and a bunch of old people, decided we should jump ship in Porta Vaillarta, Mexico. We stayed in a nice hotel where I saw my first asian girl (it started young) and from which we still have the table set my mother stole from someone else's room service (a beautiful set of plates and bowls, simply yet beautifully decorated in lush deep blue) which had been abandoned, she said, in the stairwell. Kleptomania was a "thing" with us. She eventually got over that, as did I, after her second misdemeanor conviction: filet mignons from the grocery store. Sheesh. I digress.

After a few days there, we hopped a Cessna to Cancun where she had some friends working as G.O.s at the Club Med there. They let us stay at the club for a few days before hoping a flight back home.

Now, the story of how I "remembered" that.

It has to do with the web acting as "external memory". ;D

Two "keys":
The Sony Walkman itself and the two cassettes mom bought for us in New Orleans.

Searchinbg Google, I found a museum of "antique" Sony Walkmans, which allowed me to visually narrow it down between two models, one issued in 1979 (the TPS-L2) and the other 1981 (the WM-3).

One of the cassettes she bought was by Leo Sayer, which contained the song "More than I can say".
Searching Amazon I discover that the first Leo Sayer album to contain that song was "Living in a fantasy". Further Googling reveals a page talking about Leo Sayer's career, where it is stated "Leo had a new hit in 1981 with "More than I can say"".

Et voila.
I use the web the same way I use my own memory.
This is what I have become. ;)

NOW, how about YOU? Remember YOUR first Sony Walkman?
(This is interesting on several levels! Thank you Nika!)

For some unknown reason, my system is hosed. I am going to go eat, come back and reinstall the OS.

JUST what I needed. REALLY.

Just came back from a fun Dim Sum lunch organised bySébastien Paquet, where I met, amongst others, the co-founders, Evan & Michele, of Wikitravel, the Wikipedia of travel.

I don't need to explain the concept do I? ;)

"Release early, release often."

(disclaimer: many of the facts - names of cultures, places, people and dates - are not terribly known to me. I am not a scholar, I'm a hobbyist.)

There exists a fantastic Open Source project that has been under active development for well over five thousand years. I shall refer to it here as "The::WoRd", a cleverly played acronym for "Theologism - Western Religions".

Though there is disagreement over where and when the project exactly started, it is generally understood that various groups of people in various regions of the area we currently refer to as "The Middle East" started it. Each started with the basic goal of somehow explaining "The Great Mystery of what is Life and Death all about". (One would assume that prior to the beginning of the project, this involved a lot of gesturing, humming-and-ahhing, and head scratching... as is still very much the case today...)

In the initial Alpha stages, each group just sorta started from scratch, using their own language, and built up terribly buggy frameworks. Some quit, some crashed, others got picked up by local governments seeking to streamline their processes (as that whole project was also just beginning...).

Over time, developers from many of these efforts would sometimes meet, presumably at Bird-of-a-feather sessions or Foo Siege Camps. They'd swap ideas, what worked, what didn't, "how did you fix that problem?", etc. Every now and then some intrepid soul would come by and talk about standardizing and everybody would blink and take another sip of their coffee. Or whig out and kill him. Depended.

Some of these projects had neat codenames like "Zoroastrianism"! Still in use today even. Sumerians, the Ebla culture, the Mitannians, the Hittites, indus civ... a few amongst a seeming plethora.

Trade was booming thanks to the development of city states (hellooo government!), and one group seemed to move around quite a bit back then. Babylon, Egypt... all over really. It was during one of their mass migrations, or rather Exodus, that one of these aforementioned standardizers, fellow by the name of Moses, had a blazing vision and declared: "Enough of this Golden Bullsh!t."

Behold The::WoRd version 1.0. Codename: Judaism. Ten rules, two stone tablets and One God.

And thus begins a long process of unifying codebases, standardizing language (more or less... this whole project is amazingly language agnostic...), calculations, revisions, revisions, revisions, annotations, etc.

Every good Open Source project eventually branches. New needs, new features, new bugs. Heh. A brash young hell-raiser, Jesus, raised as a carpenter and so a real practical, hands on kinda guy, figures he wants to simplify it all. Things had gotten out of control, feature creep and whatnot. He felt the original power was hidden in too many doodads. (He wasn't to be the last.)

At this cross-roads, we are introduced to The::WoRd version 2.0., Codename: Christianity. What a killer app, w00t!

The rest of the story is fraught with many many more branches, revisions and all the holy wars and bloodshed such things normally entail. Not long after 2.0, one Mohammed shows up and declares he's got an even better idea and releases 3.0: Islam. Lean, mean and even more flexible than it's ideological inheritance, Islam is a smash hit with all the hip kids who are into this "new" thing called "open communication" and spreads like wildfire, or, if you prefer, like fresh hummus on a pita. (Mohammed's words, unlike his predecessor's, were immediately written down and copied and distributed. A bunch of northerners from Europe swiped the whole Christian codebase, bolted on a fancy, if bloated, GUI, limiting what one could do with it and enforced a monopoly known as the Christian Dark Ages of Silence. Meanwhile, the Middle East became the center of learning and culture; the processing and storage needed to saturate the lines of communication...)

The funny thing is, as a dear friend likes to put it, right around the same time all this started, a couple of chinese figured it all out, smiled and farted.

Just received the above in a group email with the subject "Best night of your life". Amazingly it made it past my spam filters. Not that it is spam - I know the senders - just... you know...

The best part is this note:

To be removed from this mailing list, please come to the green room on wednesday and tell us in person.
Love,
Sabrina and Sefi

Yeah right. Sabrina and Sefi are two astonishingly beautiful girls. If you can actually look them in the eyes and ask them to be removed from their mailing list... well... you know...

Few people have ever asked me what "levendis" means. Fewer still ever asked why I chose it for, amongst other things, my main Internet domain name.

I came across the word Levendis in a short story by one Harlan Ellison, published in Omni magazine back in 1992. It is a short story in 3 parts, written in a journal entry format. Ellison is an apparently well known science fiction writer of sorts. I was never really into sci-fi, but this story somehow spoke to me at the time.

It continues to revisit me regularly, on many levels and in many ways. The word and it's etymology and possible meanings. The story, it's format, what it says.

This evening, over ten years after first reading it, on a lark, I googled for it... and low an behold... the integral text.

It is cryptic, it is strange. There are parts that are not so good... but it will give you an insight into my world. I have much to say about Levendis.

My favorite "interpretation" of the ancient greek word "levendis" is "one who loves life".

"The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore"
Harlan Ellison

I can't seem to get Firefox to work on my machine.

Immediately after launch, the only item in the top Menu is "Firefox" (no "File, Edit etc...") and essentially the keyboard is disabled (I can't type a URL into the Address box, or into any form elements).

I poked around a bit yesterday and at seemingly totally random, unreproducable times, the menu bar reappears and the keyboard is reactivated, though sporadically. This "reawakening" would happen after sometimes opening a new window, opening a link in a new tab, closing a tab, closing all windows and clicking on Firefox in the Dock to force it to open a new window...

This is not new to me though. I haven't been able to run Firefox on this machine for months. Yes, I have deleted all Preferences and caches and anything and everything related to Firefox (or any of it's myriad previous codenames).

Believe it or not I have even wiped my hard drive and reinstalled a clean OS, just to get Firefox to work. To. No. Avail.

Frustrating because I know I am missing out on something good. In my poking around yesterday I installed a bunch of very very interesting extensions and tools and such. But the bloody thing only works for me 20% of the time, so it's a no-go.

On a tangentially related note, the DNS issues I have been experiencing lately with all webbroswers, where the browser times out saying "Address not found" only to find it as soon I refresh, seems to be fixed by running the built-in system cleanup CRON jobs (daily, weekly, monthly). These scripts run on their own IF your machine is on and awake at the time they are set to run (early morning apparently). This means many many people never, or very very rarely have them run.

For you fine folks, here is some info on how to do this.

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even tacitly take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop, and you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.

Steinski - Mass Media - Television, It's up to you - Culture Remix
(temporary, 4.6M MP3)

Update:
Better late than never, DJ Shadow puts in a political effort.
"Would you buy a war fromt his man?" (temporary, 9.9M MP3)

I finally got down to doing some work I've been putting off for weeks.
I haven't received an e-mail or IM request in about two hours. Perfect.

I decided to quit Mail, then iChat, then Proteus.
Ok, I can DO this.

Then I quit NetNewsWire.

All of a sudden, I felt very, VERY alone. Anxious even.
"But... but... what if..."

I'll just start iChat back up... just in case, you know...

New environments inflict considerable pain on the perceiver

The biologist Otto Lowenstein, is his book on The Senses (Penguin Books,Ltd.), has some most helpful observations on the problems that arise upon any change in sensory mode, such as a result from a technological creation of a new environment:

... patients, blind from childhood, on whom normal vision has been bestowed by an operation. Previous to this "opening of the eyes," they had been living in a world of tactile experience, of sound and scent, full of objects familiar to them in terms of their restricted range of sensory experience. How they shrink at first from the welter of additional stimulation, longing at times to return to the relative seclusion of their former world!

In order to avoid ambiguity, over- or false- interpretation, it is crucial that one properly contextualize every element, in relation to every other element in it's environment.
Meaning can only be found in the relationship of each object with each other object in it's environment.
Each relationship, symbiotically influences the being of each object, connecting each into the whole.
This applies to everything: concepts, objects, individuals... humans.

Without you, I am less me. Or, conversely, with you, I am more me.

By easing communication, we enhance, strengthen the relationships, binding all elements tighter to the one.
By externalizing, reaching out, we draw in, collectively. Osmosis.

It is fascinating to me how many instances of evidence of these concepts are to be found in our cultures.

Obviously not fixing their SpellChecker...

IM from mom this morning:

Boris, this morning while [ your sister ] was washing dishes, [ your nephew ] got hold of a lighter and playingly put the matrasse on fire, everything went up very fast, she only could grab him and a coat for both and went out!

Everyone's safe.
Call me evil, but I'm chuckling cause I can see the little brat's face as he's doing it: "Ooooo, this is how this works!"

;)

This afternoon an acquaintance sic'ed a local journalist on me for my opinion on digital/satellite radio. She also mentioned Internet radio and how I currently use it.

My first thought went to those silly "Internet stations" listen in iTunes and other desktop MP3 players. "Hrm, never use those."

Oh wait! I DO use last.fm though. And recently I have been listing to their Profile radio streams ALOT. It's great cause the selection is basically made based on what I listen to and what people like me listen to. I also can listen to individual friends' "playlist radio broadcasts" (called "Personal Radio" on last.fm). The real value-add here is that the selection is contextualized: "This is what you friend so-and-so is listening to", or "this is what people who seem to share your tastes are listening to".

Anyways, the journalist's focus was really on "would you buy one of these XM radio boxes so you can listen to satellite radio in your car?" To which I essentially answered "hell no! why would I? To listen more of the same commercial crap programmed by some unknown DJ somewhere who is more than likely on the record company payroll?!"

Or, more to the point, "No, why would I? I can use my mobile device here to listen to my friend's radio streams via the Internet!"

Wishful thinking. While the Opera browser happily downloaded the M3U stream file, my P900 had no idea what to do with it. I.e.: I have no music player on my Symbian phone that can play M3U.

So, there are a few opportunities here:

1. 3rd party software developer builds in M3U (streaming MP3) support into a Symbian (or other mobile platform) application.
2. Last.fm whips up such a client, which would be great cause they could also build a whole API and the client could also interact with their network, not just play the songs.
3. Somone like Nokia comes in and does both, and markets it as "built in mobile internet radio" (hint hint)

I have some ideas tangential to this to further contextualize/editorialize the selections. But that is for select ears only...

Absolutely brilliant article by Nick Currie (Momus) regarding the U.S. after the Bush re-election: The US becomes 'situated'.

A postmodern national identity happens when you see yourself as The Other. Before it saw itself as The Other, the US saw itself as The Universal. The Universal is invisible, the Other is visible. The Universal claims to be impartial, the Other admits its self-interest. The Universal is adult, the Other is childish. The Universal is level-headed, the Other impetuous, prone to tantrums and whining.

There are SO many good bits in here, I didn't know what to quote. Read it read it!

I call this 'moronic authenticity', because after decades or centuries attempting to embody mature, universal values (what else is the US constitution than a document of the liberal enlightenment, an attempt to assert universal human rights?) the US has decided to become a pastiche of something very local, limited and specific. And so cowboys and capitalists and every-man-for-himself gets paraded. But it's 'fake folk', and it's moronic. Bush can't even remember what people in Texas are supposed to say. When he reaches for a proverb, he peters out half way through. His American authenticity is as fake as a theme restaurant out on the highway.

Yes! Yes! One more:

Being 'The Other' is great for tourism. Ah, exotic America, so American! As a tourist destination, you can be as folksy as you like and as fake as you like, and families come back next year to the theme park. But being The Other is rotten for imperialism. When you run an empire you have to pose as a benign universal and paternalistic force, otherwise everybody will fight you and tell you to go home. You will have no legitimacy. This is what we're seeing now in Iraq. The Americans really thought they would have legitimacy in Iraq. They don't. As a result everything is going pear-shaped. It's not military force that allows empires to be maintained, it's legitimacy -- people's sense that you might really have their best interests at heart, and that your civilisation is an exportable model for everyone. The US used to seem like that, but it no longer does. Moronic authenticity and fake folk may be a great basis for tourism, but they're useless when it comes to running an empire.

Brilliant.

Dehors, il fait noir et il commence à pleuvoir.

"Où sont mes amis?" je me dis.
Je me rattrape aussit√¥t: "Non, plut√¥t, où en suis-je?"

Je n'ai pas d'amis.
Je n'ai rien.
Il y a, sûr que bien,
      des gens autour moi,
      qui me sont des amis.

Mais je ne les ai pas.
Et ils ne m'ont pas.

Parfois je ne les trouve pas et
parfois ils ne me trouvent pas.

Dehors, dans l'obscurité,
le ciel se dévase.

Style is the answer to everything.
Fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous day.
To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without style.
To do a dangerous thing with style, is what I call art.
Bullfighting can be an art.
Boxing can be an art.
Loving can be an art.
Opening a can of sardines can be an art.
Not many have style.
Not many can keep style.
I have seen dogs with more style than men.
Although not many dogs have style.
Cats have it with abundance.

When Hemingway put his brains to the wall with a shotgun, that was style.
For sometimes people give you style.
Joan of Arc had style.
John the Baptist.
Jesus.
Socrates.
Caesar.
Garc??a Lorca.
I have met men in jail with style.
I have met more men in jail with style than men out of jail.
Style is a difference, a way of doing, a way of being done.
Six herons standing quietly in a pool of water, or you, walking naked
out of the bathroom without seeing me.

- Charles Bukowski See comment below.

La liberté est un fardeau énorme. Une énorme responabilité, envers non juste soi-m√™me, mais autrui, requierant une discipline puisée au fond de son √™tre.

Je ne commence qu'à vraiment voir cela.

La liberté est une chose terrible à prendre pour aquis, et une arme dangereuse qui trop facilement, et trop souvent, est mal maniée.

J'ai beaucoup à apprendre. J'en suis content.

K-Os: Joyful Rebellion

Love Song

This is not a lovesong
It's a sonnett
Damn if feels good to have people up on it but
I'm just a fool playing with the masters tools
Learning how to break the rules of this record company pool
Hallucination - I see with my eyes
But my heart's telling me lies
Why do I fantisize?
Why am I telling lies to the people from the stage
Pretending it's all good when inside it's fire and rage
Cuz I can't understand how a man lives off the life of another man
Tryin to pimp the universe - that's a joke
I stay rockin the boat down on my last note
It's murder she wrote
Assassination vocabulary
I see your termination is heavily necessary
I should have known - they do it for funds alone
I do it to break the walls if I fell off then let me know people

CHORUS
It's funny how life can go
First you ride high then you might lay low
Don't get high off your own supply
Someone said first before a four comes five
This is my message to the world
Just tryin to reach every boy and girl
Not tryin to say if it's right or wrong
This is not a love song

/.../

It's easy not to care what people say
It's harder to pretend and try
Cuz they can only love you from yesterday
I'm looking at the now they pose high
I'm just a man who's walking
They stand around and keep talking
They tried to clip my wings
But wisdom fills so many things
Say it again
I'm just a man who's walking
They stand around and keep talking
They tried to clip my wings
But wisdom fills so many things

Emcee murdah

[Intro]
We've just landed
Alright send a search party out
Duh, don't get caught up on this planet man
These humans are crazy
Just don't even show them your micrpphone
Cause then you know what?
They wanna give you a record deal and then
You end up dead you know what I mean?
It's like body snatchers
But you know what?
We love hip hop
Stop, please stop please
Okay here we go

[Verse 1]
Holding my raps
Olden is golden and black
Extolling virtues of rap
With monkeys riding my back
I see them falling
Doing commercials and balling
I'm not a hater but she's closing the gate
And we stalling
Woke up in the early morning
I heard a voice that showed me the things to come
And told me I had a choice
To build it 300 cubits by 50 cubits
Driking thinking I'm stupid but deep in my heart I knew it
Money and fame could lead to emcee murder
You think you can escape but you can't take it any further
You call it writer's block
But you stop cause the vine is empty
Hip hop's not dead, it's really the mind of the emcee

[Hook]
It's all around me
It's emcee murder
Though God has found me
I thought I heard the
Sound of a thousand angels
It's the sound of danger
Know myself but I'm still a stranger
Emcee murder, emcee murder (oh)

[Verse 2]
I'll be damned if I do
And damned if I don't
My soul won't allow me to fake on the phone
Rocking the chrome
Another seed gets sown
Anonymous, I'm hailin from parts that's unknown
I looked to the heavens above to spread love
But emcees keep faking hoping to make the bacon
Matters mistaken, cause who we are is not physical
Bury mystical with the mind non typical
But, they want the cash flow
They steady scheming for the number one spot
These emcees they won't last though
I really feel somebody's watching me
From the third the star and telling us who we are
In this universe we like a speck of dust
You can't expect to trust man is living for the lust
Everbody wants the eye in the sky to come and save us
But maybe, the planet itself will terminate us

I hadn't visited we make money not art in a while and dropped in only to see that Régine has beaten me to it.

I am speaking of course of the "I'm using categories as tags" and displaying them in varying sizes (ostensibly according to entry count), à la Flickr.

I hear you gagging, Karl & Aaron. :p~

Anyways, I want to make it clear that I FULLY intend to do this as well. Why? Because it is awesome UI for this application. IMHO.

Next I need to find a way to relate tags to each other, or, far easier, concatenate tag groups. I.e.: Show me entries tagged as "a" and "b".

I want ten Montreal-area webloggers to join me in making up our local Metroblog.

English and french posts that somehow have something to do with Montreal, and share whatever bits of this great city. :)

Here are some of the other cities in the Metroblog network, to give you an idea:

• Vienna


• Toronto


• Tokyo


• San Francisco


• New York City

Email me or comment here if you are interested! No contracts, no pressure! All fun. ;)

Every single american who voted republican yesterday falls into one of two categories:

Those who know exactly what is going on and support it, vociferously.
Those who haven't got a clue, are picking their bellybuttons and do as they are told.

I truly do not know which is more frightening.

Further, it's as if the democratic party doesn't even exist. It barely even matters. What we see is the two classic codependents of any young fundamentalist right-wing society; the few supremely rich upper-class misanthropists and the many lower-class poor, exploited brainwash victims who supply them with funding (acceleration) and bodies (momentum). The intellectual class, the "liberals", have been marginalized, ridiculed and now finally, shoved out.

The American Dream, turned Nightmare.

There are SO many ways this can turn. Change will come from inside or outside, and it will come. Any american who doesn't see that is deeply deluded, i.e. a republican of lower class.

I wasn't going to say anything about all this, but I just saw something that made my jaw drop...

Not the numbers or stats or anything like that... look closely... juuuust beneath the face-off box... First line after it.

"Election Night Blog"

Mind blowing, I say.