some things i stole from Artopia tonight, and from your bandwidth right now

These are pictures, naturally. In order to conserve bandwidth for those of you who don't yet have broadband -- are any of you still around? -- I've decided to force you to follow the link. It's not really that scary a procedure, unless you really think about it.








Graeme Weir, Untitled






Denis Fafard, Untitled


Brent P , "Leaves"


Judi Burgess, Dawn 1994



Steve Mazza, Untitled


Darren Abbott, Intrusion

and now for something completely different

Joys of precious, precious crude. If there's anything that has proven its use time and time again it's our good buddy crude oil. See there's so many cool things that we can make our little pool of hydrocarbons do. Gasoline, naphtha, kerosene, natural gas, benzine, diesel fuel, and the wonderfully enDOWed family of petrochemicals, including plastics, fertilizers and all things poly-, all spring from oil like Athena from the mind of Zeus. The mind in this case are the minds of our most friendly of oil industry scientists, heroes for all (is this what Ward Churchill meant when he called the World Trade centre employees "Little Eichmanns"?).

Here's the skinny:






What a beautiful world of joy and friendly chemicals! See? All those little poly-carbons are saving the world and civilization as we know it.
Or something.

So what happens as oil becomes increasingly scarce? Will we continue to enjoy the fruits of our civilization as democratically as are the current standards? It seems as though our civilization is on the verge of a new form of depression, wherein all that we have come to accept as a token of modern culture will come into question. Food and clothing will be more expensive. Electricity might become prohibitive if alternative energy sources are not optimized. More than likely, the totality of our living standards will have to be redefined. In other words, it's time to get used to a new industrial process.

Oh, the hurt transition will bring...

Happy Earth Day/Lifetime



oil depletion, The Guardian

Death From Above

MP3: Death From Above - If We Don't Make It, We'll Fake It

The kids are really starting to get into this Toronto duo, with a recent appearance on Conan O'Brien highlighting a quick American jaunt. The band's latest stay at the Underground in Hamilton proved to me yet again why DFA deserves every bit of adoring teeny love.

Their kind of quick hitting rock works best like tequilla shots: quick and absolute. DFA kept the preliminaries and band chatter to a minimum, preferring the low moan of a distorted bass to any "thank you, you're beautiful" gestures typical of bands whose rise seems inevitable.


Jesse F. Keeler rocks sideways


Sebastien Grainger


Which brings me to this: how to shoot a show. Those two pics above, they are "normal" shots, with a flash and its resultant artificialities. I, however, hate flash photography with a passion, and am always seeking natural light. This brings a new problem though, summarized by my idiodic forgetfulness in relation to my tripod.


Sebastien Grainger

See how the blurriness takes over from what was otherwise a cool composition. Also, the crowd is hidden by their lack of stage lighting (part of the whole lack of being in the band phenomenon) and so we get to avoid their hideous, monkey-like faces; just look at those three kids in the second photo above. Hideous.


Jesse F. Keeler on synths

Again, what a nice shot ruined by my stupid incompetence. Bad me. See, no matter how much you prop yourself up on walls, amps, or PAs, the natural light photo in relative darkness requires a tripod. I let the team down, and I feel that turning on my flash to expose those fucking ugly kids is my wholly and karmically justified penance.

Good show. Bad baby.

artopia 2k5

american sense of self

I am continually amazed by the reach and subtle power of propagandistic discourse. It's even more fun to watch how the present state of consumer capitalism has rendered propaganda as a standardized formula, and a means by which such ideologies enter into daily life. Fascist Italy was hindered by the need for monolithic depictions of the leader. In the modern culture of consumption, the god-head of fascism is replaced by the negation of the self among citizens through advertising. Instead of wall-sized murals of Hitler or Mussolini, a carapace of the citizen-subject is rendered in order to be destroyed by inadequacy in relation to the product offered.

This process can have funny consequences. A 1948 Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of Hitchcock's Spellbound was introduced by show producer William Keighley:

"While most people think of motion pictures as typically American, it is nevertheless true that our neighbours overseas have contributed much to their development: new ideas, new technical approaches, and new stars."

"I was talking to [European actress Alida] Valli... and one of the things that impressed her on arriving in this country was the abundance of everything. From motorcars, to good soap flakes. And to millions of people, good soap flakes mean Lux. Which reminds me again how much we take our luxuries for granted. While in many other countries, housewives must rely on any kind of soap that they can get, here they are always sure of the safe and easy care of precious washable fabrics by saying Lux."

No wonder America developed an isolated sense of itself. An insular approach to identity is always-already fostered throughout mass culture. Perhaps this inward gaze was fostered as a reaction to the gesture beyond oneself which lies at the heart of many of the communications technologies that were developed over the course of the 20th century. God only knows what will emerge as computer technologies continue to mature.

why Pat Metheny hates Kenny G

I found an interview with guitarist Pat Metheny in which he takes Kenny G to town. Now, it's not like Metheny is the height of taste himself -- most of his output on Geffen is a little weak, although I myself kind of appreciate 1994's Zero Tolerance for Silence and was probably the only person in Hamilton who actually bought the CD in its initial month of release. Kenny G on the other hand has evidenced a consistency that Metheny only wishes he could achieve: the G-man is shit on every single one of his releases.

Then there's this picture of Metheny from the Sadowsky Guitars page:



Holy. Fucking. Nightmare.

Kenny on the other hand knows what people want to see, and gives it to them every time (unless that something is pinups for failed-op trannies who are into those Vuarnet shorts that child molestors wear at the beach, right Pat?).

See this publicity pic of the Royal G?



Well, when confronted by random fans in a restaurant -- God only knows how excited they got when they learned that the restaurant had a working toilet -- like a pro Kenny knows what to do:



Graceful poise, little smile, and the hand-that-speaks-for-god resting delightfully at the chin, reminding everyone that our man Kenny is both a woodwind musician and a chronic fellator of the big industry dangler.

Now please once again look carefully at the above picture of Pat Metheny. In case you were blinded by its sacred beauty, here it is again:




Naturally, a man who is not so immediately photogenic gets pissed by the success of TeenBeat-bound Kenny G. No dorian mode harmonic triads will be able to compete with those G-tastic dimples. Kenny tells all comers: keep yo' lydian suspended licks at home, sucka! I gots me some bitches that need some sweet Kenny G-spot G.

RUMBLE!



So who would come out on top in a fight to the death? Let's test the preliminary weigh-in.

Pat Metheny: "You suck"
Kenny G: "I so fucking suck"

It seems that Kenny can't either fight or play music, as his preoccupation with all things craptacular keeps his eye off the prize.

So Metheny wins almost by default. Now, Mr. Metheny, can you please donate a copy of your CD with Jim Hall (on Telarc) to your competition? Consider it a trojan horse of sorts, as either Mr. G will get better in his own playing or, more optimistically, his head will explode with that most beautiful noise so familiar to Kenny G: pop.


Some more highlights from Metheny's hatred:

"when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great Louis's tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that I would not have imagined possible. He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician. By disrespecting Louis, his legacy and by default, everyone who has ever tried to do something positive with improvised music and what it can be, Kenny G has created a new low point in modern culture - something that we all should be totally embarrassed about - and afraid of. We ignore this, "let it slide", at our own peril."

"if I ever DO see him anywhere, at any function - he WILL get a piece of my mind and (maybe a guitar wrapped around his head).


You can see the full interview here

Viking Moses + Picastro + Great Lake Swimmers @ the home of Pete + Tim

MP3: Great Lake Swimmers - When It Flows

Hamilton is quickly gaining a reputation for cool shows at unbeknownst venues. We can thank Pete Hall of A Northern Chorus and Tim Lidster for kindly providing space for a few indie upstarts and those of us who like them.

Last minute addition Viking Moses brought a sense of spirituality and pagan mystery to an otherwise bluesy set, played while kneeling on the floor with head upturned Charlie Brown-style. It was immediately clear why neo-folk icons such as Devendra Banhart, Will Oldham, and Little Wings have taken kindly to this Las Vegas drifter. Alone with an acoustic, many ghosts from our American past were invoked. As I was listening from the next hallway so as not to disturb with my entry, I have no photographic evidence of his haunting performance.

Picastro surprised me with a very good sense of tension-through drone. Liz Hysen kept her voice low, yet she provided a degree of melodic juxtaposition that served the music quite well. Most of the songs they played were relatively static, although on occasion they would dip into the Godspeed slow-swell-to-climax formula. I can see them fitting in nicely with the Kranky records crowd, and their upcoming released on Polyvinyl should bring some new fans to the party.


Zak Hanna of Picastro


Liz Hysen of Picastro

Tony Dekker has expanded his solo act into a four-piece for his new release coming this August on Misra records. The new set list has quite the Mark Kozelek/Neil Young feel to it, and the band country-rocked accordingly hard. Dekker's voice is still as pretty as ever, and despite the hushed feel of his debut release, he indeed has the strength to be heard quite readily over the band. After the success of Kozelek's Sun Kil Moon project, is the indie world prepared for another trad-rock release? Based on this performance, Dekker certainly has both the integrity and the attitude to find the audience he deserves.



Great Lake Swimmers



the pretty lights of Tony Dekker

As a side note, at the show I was shown a photoalbum from one British soldier's tour in Afghanistan during and after the first world war. While the context is quite different, it was interesting to note the continual process of colonial imposition made so personal and so immediate (and yet time itself is here mediated by both the physicality of yellowing paper and the monochrome scale of the imagery). Something as simple as the folds in an officer uniform that was worn for a portrait evokes a grand narrative of daily intensities. It's scary how much the colonialized world can be seen as a readymade by some people, and a modifiable entitlement by others.

Lidster, it's time to get this piece of history online.

one room, some gin, a gun, and the beady eyes of a supposed past

I just finished watching Robert Altman’s 1984 film on Nixon called Secret Honor, concerning the final years of his life after the very public disgrace of his resignation. Ten minutes have passed, and already here I am writing a ‘memoir’ (it seems that the ghost of good old Tricky Dick has infiltrated my life as well). It does make me wonder whether I will myself one day be holed up in my apartment dictating manifestoes and testimonies to a practically non-existent audience. Oh wait: this right here that I’m writing is a BLOG, and there ain't nobody listening to me neithers...

Secret Honor
Robert Altman, 1984, USA [Criterion, 2004]



Frankly, I didn’t think that a stage play – and a one-actor play at that – could make an adequate transition to the screen. Typically, the intimate conversational setting that is afforded by live theatre is more conducive to the conventions of the “one-actor play” than the temporal and material distancing of subjectivity that is cinema. And yet, since I consider him to be among the forefront of North American directors of the past few decades, there was no real reason for me to question Altman’s abilities. Three Women and MASH are among my most favourite films, and while Secret Honor does not have quite the impressive scope of either of those films, it serves to elaborate an analysis of modern culture which I feel is very prescient.

At the point of Nixon’s life in which the movie opens, Milhouse has sequestered himself in his house with some gin, a handgun, and some technology to aid in his seclusion. A neo-White House is constructed, with ex-Presidents lining the walls of his office, as well as an apparent secretarial staff as signified (and perhaps solely so) by the technologies with which Nixon has surrounded himself. Philip Baker Hall (the library nazi from Seinfeld, for you pop-co kiddies) gives a brilliantly prolific non-stop monologue of legal defence, confession, historical analysis, and nostalgic reverie. What emerges from this clearly delusional man who seems to have come to the extent of his sanity is a sense of pathos and subtle vulnerability that tears down Nixon’s mystique as Republican Nazi and humanizes him considerably.

This is, however, not my favourite depiction of the man, as there is indeed something sublime about Futurama’s Macross-Plus Nixon.



In narrative terms, the film/play concerns the absolution of this most-hated of ex-Presidents. While his actual rants are clearly the product of a mind pushed to delusion, Nixon quite rightly interrogates the complicity of the American population and the entire political system that is American democracy. Most important in this regard is the typically absurd strategies which emerged from the paranoia of the Cold War. American politics sought to control the population against the invasive tyrannies of communism through guidance, forced or otherwise (the country is after all a republic, and not a true democracy in the technical sense). Nixon felt that he was a scapegoat to this process: an axe-man who was himself martyred. America wanted a suicide for its most important martyr, and Nixon himself was determined not o follow this script.

I myself am more interested in Altman’s portray of Nixon as a prisoner of technology, forced to relate to other people only through a technological medium, which in this case is the magnetic tape which recorded his monologues. His compulsions seem to betray him as an Idoru construction: a psychology of non-existence except as re-presented back by a technological form. Would Nixon have killed himself if he had been denied access to the technology to record his thoughts? This sense of absolution through the transmission of identity to a future generation is a concept Derrida once described as the jouissance of archival inscription, a particular mark which he analogized to circumscription – itself a technology of inscription, medical technology, a means for ensuring continued (non-infected) reproductive health and ultimately the monitoring of such within the public sphere. Quite rightly, Altman focusses quite a bit on this technological archive, with several important sequences which highlight the security cameras which Nixon has aimed away from the outside world and onto himself. These monitors are precisely the “Jury” to which Nixon himself appeals for forgiveness throughout the film. I cannot in this context ignore the practical issue of Altman recording the play in this context. I don’t wish to elaborate too broadly here, yet Altman seems to be indicting himself as a passive observer of not only political action in this instance, but of subjectivity itself; the camera as critique of psychological drives, and more importantly as a compulsion made particular by individuals (filmmaker, viewer, etc).

Altman’s films typically delve into hybrid subjectivities, and yet there remains a dislocation in Secret Honor that I myself find very appealing for biographical art products. Too many bio-pics try to immerse the viewer into a sympathetic collusion with the supposed psychological motives of the subject in question. Altman chose to passionately indict our voyeurism as one and the same as Nixon’s desire to rationally control the irrational, a strategy that was to have dire political consequences for the 20th century.


Note: since Criterion DVDs are ridiculously expensive in Canada (this one lists for around $60) thanks to a distributor who adds too much of a markup, I got my copy of Secret Honor from the Hamilton Public Library. Whoever is purchasing DVDs for the HPL, my hat is off.

defendMarriage.ca - Oh Holy Mercy

There was a small protest in Dundas this morning concerning the issue of marriage equality, which to my casual gaze maintained the relative inefficacy of dialogue in this matter.

The extent of my learned research* into the defendMarriage.ca argument is this:

1. God lives on high, and we mere mortals must accept its divine providence.

2. This God made its wishes most clearly known by means of a literal interpretation of some forms of the Christian bible, which are of course translations of translated texts which themselves had been translated from Latin which in turn had been translated from Ancient Greek. People who believe that the Earth is 6000 years old don’t like hearing this.

3. Homosexuality was the end of many ancient civilizations, most notably the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, who (I guess) had sought a pre-Canada-in-2005 civil union against the rational forces of heterosexual decency and order. For this they were broken by stone and purified by fire.

4. If gay couples can get married, then what it stopping them from entering my home and raping my babies? [note: this is an actual quote from a defendMarriage.ca supporter]

5. Homosexuals (men, in particular) are far too fond of arguing to allow them access to marriage. This would be like giving candy to a baby, or the same baby to a lion to rape it, or something.

6. Gay marriage is to the decline of civilization what lion baiting with Christians was to the decline of popular sports.

7. Talking to superstitious people should be covered by OHIP, as I nearly bottled myself with some random garbage in order to bring a sense of sanity to the proceedings.

8. Christian groups ostensibly use their money to help the poor and suffering. In reality they increase suffering by inflicting these buses on us.



Hideous. You know, these people keep appealing to the sanctity of marriage as a means to preserve the Children who are our Future. Kids don’t fucking like eyesores.

9. Kids don’t fucking like eyesores.

9a. There are vastly fewer young people in these Christian movements than old ones. Just look at the chairman of the American site.



Hideous. If that man doesn't beat his wife and kids into submission with something the size of his thumb, then I'm the Pope's feeding tube.

10. Why are we even listening to these people? If you don't know anything about cars, you can't go to a mechanic and demand that he or she understand why you think cars will forever run on gas excreted by Unicorns. It's called fucking off until you have at least some semblance of an argument that others might come to see as "possible" and not as some latent form of dementia. Maybe that's the reason why people in the anti gay-marriage crowd don't bring up any legal discourse to justify their positions. Verdict: there is none.

11. Nobody should argue with these people, it's better to just let them make fun of themselves like that kid in 3rd grade who would eat the lice from his own head while singing about sparkles.


*Note: research consisted of talking to the defendMarriage.ca supporters who were at the event. This was a mistake for several reasons. One cannot assume superstitious people to be telling the truth; neither can one disallow the possibility that these same devil-believers are under the continual assumption that they are face to face with the devil when they are talking to you. In both instances, the sample data have been tainted by people who live with their hallucinations in a welcome to my tea party kind of way.

(how many) x ppl = ?

One of the most comprehensive reports on climate change has been released by the United Nations, and can be found in its preliminary stages here.

1,300 researchers
from 95 countries
and 22 scientific academies

So, once again I have hope that more people can start to believe in the increasingly powerful manner in which human civilization bears down on the planet. It is true that the economic and industrial progress that occurred in the 20th century allowed many positive trends for a majority of humans in wealthy countries. At the same time we cannot ignore the drastic reduction in our planet’s ability to provide the ecological foundation for that wealth and progress.

It’s time to seriously consider the implications for sustainable economies. This consideration necessarily must scale to the individual. It seems that the leaders of our corporations and many in government wish to take a “wait and see” approach, which of course follows in line with a belief in the infallibility of the free market. Are we to allow the welfare of millions to fall prey to a market which is designed to provide a disparity of income across a population?

More importantly, many scientists continue to warn us that the very foundations of our economy are ecological. Our future prospects depend on the adoption of sustainable development.

Could this be the LAST CHANCE! for MANKIND?!? Stay Tuned...

in like a beggar, out like a light

sighting and marking are both
passive joys and dedicated mysteries
for delighted reflection
locked inside to arrest
all inquiry and ability

it is a ghost for all seasons;
free these little remains
this sepulchral filter of words
for the next sorry person
to click and pass away

sharing is caring

Canada appears poised to introduce legislation to curb file-sharing networks. The amendments would force ISPs to monitor file transmissions and inform police services of copyright infringements. The Canadian Recording Industry Association has been trying for years to get Ottawa to ratify treaties by the World Intellectual Property Organization which would allow a drastically increased surveillance and police jurisdiction over the internet use in regard to filesharing. For example, If you make a copy of a CD or DVD that you own and leave it on your hard drive in a shared directory, then the new law would target you as a pirate.

This seems in direct opposition to the previous ruling on the matter by Judge Konrad von Finckenstein in March 2004. "The mere fact of placing a copy on a shared directory in a computer where that copy can be accessed via a P2P service does not amount to distribution," Finckenstein wrote. "Before it constitutes distribution, there must be a positive act by the owner of the shared directory, such as sending out the copies or advertising that they are available for copying." Important in this regard is the concept of “fair use”, which basically allows people to use copyrighted material for any means, except for the accumulation of money by reselling the product. I myself believe filesharing to fall under fair use provisions for several reasons, principally the creative use of samples within future cultural productions.

The real problem at the heart of filesharing is that the entertainment industry is finding it difficult to translate their business into the digital era. Television has relied on its linear broadcast nature, brought about by the technological limitations of the analog transmission frequencies, to become a more or less fascist means for proliferating singular ideologies to a more a less consenting audience. This hyper-extended yet centralized network could have been used in a variety of ways. And yet, it is hard to ignore the impact of television as a delivery mehanism for the dissimulation of a consistent, and in many ways destructive, impulse. I personally view passive and constant consumers of formulaic network television akin to pigs at the trough, complaining about the consistency of their food while wallowing in the effluent of their own consumption.

We’ve all gotten used to getting television “for free”, and this sense of freedom is what will ultimately undermine corporate strategies. North Americans are used to watching tv without paying for it beyond monthly subscription fees; shows just magically appear on the screen. And yet we must forever remember that shows are driven by their advertisements. Our attentions have been diverted by such entertainments for the purpose of mortgaging part of our mental landscape to advertisements and product knowledge. This “free choice” that we all got used to over the 20th century is in fact the means of controlling us as consumers and manufacturing our consent as citizens. Digital culture allows people to have more power over their consumption habits, and this scares most corporate media producers. Many have responded with fascist controls over their products. Disney is typical in guiding viewers through 5-15 minutes of previews, advertisements, positive self-appraisal, and other “informational” content before getting to what they had actually chosen to rent or buy.

Smart consumers who realized that they no longer have the time to commit to network schedules – and many who do not wish to burden their lives with more advertisements – have fought back with the TiVO evolution or through filesharing networks. Indeed, this process has allowed many shows such as

Futurama Six Feet Under
the Office
Mr. Show
the Newsroom
Twitch Citythe Sopranos -- how many ppl saw VCDs and VHS dubs of this one from the States???
Family Guy
Arrested Development
to reach beyond the intentions of short-sighted network executives and limited cable programming variety. This proliferation of viewership consequently resuscitated creative teams and kept shows in circulation long before any talk emerged of issuing complete seasons on corporate DVDs. Filesharing is about choice, as consumers exercise their right to authentic culture over imposed (corporate) culture. Interestingly enough, this process of judgement and execution is what many political philosophers regard as the fundamental right and responsibility of citizens of democratic states.

Additionally, in ecological terms filesharing makes sense. Traditional media-based products such as CDs and DVDs are proliferating at a hyper-saturated rate, finding themselves on cereal boxes and multiple release editions. Unless an adequate infrastructure for recycling these products is put in place on the consumer side of things, then let the digital revolution continue. Do we need 17 different versions of the Lord of the Rings films, with bonus materials strategically scattered over all the editions so that LOTR fans own multiple copies of the same film? While working at a video store, I actively encouraged people to hold off buying any LOTR DVD until the full extended editions came out. Some listened, others bought five copies of the same damn film, all of which but one will shortly be poisoning our landfills.

Filesharing allows people to try things before they commit to purchasing them. Watch it, then buy it if it's actually worth the effort. And yet the entertainment industry tends not to approve of this loss of the “impulse buy”, frankly because most of the products that they talk about when “losing money to filesharing networks” are the shitty market-friendly pap that serves no purpose other than to make money for its creators. I usually like to bring Stars Wars Episode 2 in this context. I bet most people would have avoided going to see the film if they could see it in advance, not because they saw it “for free”, but because they could see that it was a shitty movie. The film made a fair amount of money at the box office simply because people wanted to see the new Star Wars product, with all the nostalgic excitement that would entail. When the public began to understand how crappy the movie was, it started to tank; DVD sales have been relatively weak for such a huge property. Maybe LucasArts and other film producers would avoid such elements of the traditional marketing scheme as a trite love thread in this film, Phantom Menace's Jar-Jar Binx, and cute but unbelievable child stars and standardized pacing and plotting of both movies. Explosions punctuate every few minutes to keep the audience “interested”, and consequently the narrative seems manufactured “just cuz”.

The entertainment industry teases us all with so many trailers, clips, tv spots, blurbs, and cross-platform placements to the point where such advertisements have of themselves become cultural items. The music industry wants desperately for its products to be heard, with major labels naturally and opulently staging public advertisements, not simply through airtime in other media, but also in people hired to talk about songs and bands in downtown centres, malls, or on the bus. Music companies are “legally allowed” to inundate us with songs from every angle, on every tv show, every film and video game, every bar and sports arena, every urinal, every cellphone, every company phone service, every public place which plays radio stations, and every ad for everything else. It doesn't take long for me to encounter songs that make me want to avenge Satan when I'm in public -- malls, offices, stores, lobbies found everywhere. I never asked for a headache and yet here one is thanks to a radio placed in my doctor's office. And yet, if I were in a fit of abject madness to decide to hear a song on my own without buying the CD, then I have committed an illegal act of piracy. Hey, bullshit record companies peddling bullshit:




Generally speaking people want substance, and they actively seek to downplay their exposure to garbage. The problem is not their desire, it’s the fact that they have no other way to express this desire than through filesharing. Maybe some types of culture will begin to disappear in favour of more authentic (re: not lowest common denominator) art production. Or maybe the typical will keep happening: a generation gets out of popular culture after 40 years of life. Parents stop looking for music to hear because they know that "it all looks and sounds the same". Films and television are naturally a bit more easily sold, but at the same time experimental forms of the same are almost universally rejected whenever they reach popular awareness.

I know for a fact that through filesharing people have been exposed to music which they would simply not hear under the traditional model. This has caused sales of “good” music to increase, while sales of Britney/JLo-type pop fluff has gone down. That fact alone should be regarded as the basis for cultural progression, and may serve to be the first silent revolution of the 21st century.


update 27/03

things to share or search out --

Keith Fullerton Whitman
The Taste of Cherry
Moebius
Twitch City
The End of Suburbia
Terre Thaemlitz
The Story of Menstruation
Trailer Park Boys
Fassbinder
The Corporation
Mego

The Passion According to Terri

For a captivating Where's Waldo adventure, try imagining the picture above with the following captions:

--> War in Iraq, 2003
--> Budget, 2005
--> Iran, Syria, maybe Sudan, 2005
--> Social Security, 2006
-->Our Mothers and Children of the Holy Rescinded 14th (Protection Clause) and 19th Amendments, 2007
-->Nukes for Dead Enemies Trade Pact, 2008


It's interesting how the 24-hour news networks have transformed the debate of Terri Sciavo's removal from life support into a single gesture: gazing, we will watch her die on television. I see it as a form of absolution. For a long time there was talk of putting public executions on television, not only as a potential(ly bullshit) deterrent to aspiring criminals but also as a further revenue stream for the increasingly privatized prison and law enforcement markets.

Perhaps a more humane death would in fact be an important television moment. The White House's refusal to allow the full effect of the war in Iraq to be broadcast in the mass media has created a vacuum of sorts, in which the ever-voracious gaze of the viewing public -- the paying public -- is left unfulfilled while simultaneously docile. Death permeates the breath of many people during times of war. The Rodney King Trial, followed by the LA riots, were a similar antedote to public outcry against media censorship during the 1991 war in Iraq. It seems as though America is ready for its next tributary. If Terri is to die in public, hopefully it is through attentive paliative care and not the give and take farce of life support that has been the norm of late. What has been occuring in the courts over the past few years should have itself been the focus of the news media, but soundbite revenues ensure a lack of concrete analysis.

Hopefully, Sciavo will be allowed to die within the confines of her family, but the media has provided more of a renewal of her life support systems than any governmental policy on the matter. If we aren't careful and this poor woman is allowed to vindicate conservative values by being a televised martyr, she might end up as a Java-enabled video ticker in the corner of many desktops: a CNN new$ presentation of the highest order.

***UPDATE 29/05 *** I've seen footage of an attempt by some children to bring water to Terry in small cups. Oh. Holy. Martyr.

The Christians who are pleading for the renewal of life support might benefit from a little bit of science: SHE CAN'T SWALLOW WATER WHEN SHE IS NOT ON LIFE SUPPORT. That means that the little bit of charity that you are ritualizing for the news cameras is in fact an implicit mockery of her actual condition.

Real nice, you Saints of Misplaced Benefaction.

automotive statistics and other games of symantic barbarism

American auto manufacturers have never been ones to face the reality of the changes required by sustainable economies. Now it seems that they are prepared to "educate" the public about the science that they like to believe. It's not that you can bring any real material evidence against what they are publishing; such an exercise would be merely academic. The point is not even whether Ford or General Motors themselves trust the actual words that are being used.

In case you can't read them, the actual words in the ad are as follows: "Autos manufactured today are virtually emission-free. And that's a dramatic improvement over models from just thirty years ago. So if you want to know what it really means to drive a clean car, look beyond your back seat. [Gosh Uncle-Science Man, you're Uncle-Science right to learn me that all chemical compounds ever in the history of ever are visible to the naked eye. Nothing invisible can ever harm us, right Mr. Federal-Budget-Is-One-Crazy-Fucking-Deficit Man? Wait, Gays can spread their homo aids with invisible perversions! And terrorism: TER-ROR-ISM!] See what's under the hood of every new car and light truck we make."

If the medium is the message, then it becomes clear that what is being sold is not the car, truck, or SUV, but rather safety itself. Car buyers need to be reminded of the assurity of their investment, in terms both financial and self-reflexive. See, I bought a good vehicle. I know what I'm doing, and all major decisions in my life are under control. I can afford this vehicle, but more importantly, I can't afford not to have and use it. The underlying ideology behind this ad -- if not advertising in general -- is that the consumer be made aware that a gesture of affirmation to the status quo is a guarantee for mutual success. Of course your kids will be safe, the Auto Alliance tells us: buy into us and we'll drive them to the future in the fast lane.
Publishers need money to do their work, and the importance of advertising revenue to this process has serious consequences for objective journalism, and by extension to the democratic process as a whole. Where can ideological justice be found in such a closed system of accountability, otherwise known as publishing driven by advertiser revenue? Maybe we should begin to hold publishers accountable for (at least some of) the lies spread by their corporate clients.

After all, defamation laws might be turned upon themselves with the following logic:

1. Company X -- let's just lay the poop on the pudding tray and say it was the Auto Alliance -- publishes an ad which tells people that their product follows certain physical laws as determined by the scientific literature.

2. An actual consultation of the scientific literature demonstrates the opposite.

3. Company X reminds the public that they never made any claims to science in their ad.

4. Public watchdogs cry out that the invocation of statistics like 99%, as well as the car-under-the-microscope animation and all of the technology demonstrations from the company website, seem to demonstrate an appeal, maybe even a dependence, to what most come to understand as "science".

5. Company X reminds the public that it is a leader in innovation, growth, and scientific research.

6. An actual consultation of the scientific literature demonstrates the opposite.

7. Public watchdogs try to get media space to share their "opinions" (a kind of news that's always a tough sell if you don't own a 24-hour news-entertainment network).

8. Company X reminds everyone that

AMERICA'S AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY IS THE ENGINE THAT DRIVES THE ECONOMY.
-- http://autoalliance.org/economic/

by buying up ad spaces when other voices want to buy into the dabate.

9. Constitutional Ally (in some circles, known as Minuteman) gets gagged, hooded, and has his penis laughed at by yokels.

10. The general population is made stupider by the fact that they will almost never follow up on the information that they receive in a day.

Company X shouldn't really make fun of the few conscious people who somehow manage to keep their shit out of the swamp, at least in so obvious a manner as showing us all how dumb we are. It's kind of like telling Iraqis that they are free to vote in an election. Yup, Joe and Jane Iraq can say, we are, as you say in your country, free to vote in an election.


Long story short, my case of defamation rests on the fact that by appealing to intelligence and scientific knowledge, the Auto Alliance has incorrectly and quite negatively slandered the true nature of the general public. Let their lies fall like leaves from the sky.

Pita - Get Off

Pita
Get Off [Hapna, 2004]



music is sometimes as good as food...

I finally got the new Pita CD Get Off from the Swedish label Hapna. Well, not directly from them of course. Always a tough sell, especially to those friends of yours who think laptop music to be Reaktor techno beats. Peter Rehberg once again provides an argument against people who don't consider software manipulation to represent what has traditionally been called "instruments". As I see it, any technological implement that gets used to create sound is an instrument. Some people who are otherwise open minded about music get a little too caught up in the "looks like he's checking his email" visuals provided by laptop performance to get into avantgarde electronic music, and so be it.

Damn them; they will increasingly understand as the decades pass and they get increasingly distant from the technological zeitgeist. It seems to me that the potential of software synthesis and wave manipulation outweighs any sense of "stage" presence which is denied by a musician sitting in front of a computer. Besides, the Japanese were on to something when they started manufacturing digital pop stars to complement studio-made pop music. Maybe Pita could project that fucking awful dancer provided by Micro$oft in Media Centre Edition. Best. Seller.

Whatever, so you don't have to like it. Regardless, music should sometimes be regarded as seperate from performance. I mean, there's plenty that can be accomplished in a studio or computer setting that does not replicate in a live setting.

Gee Dad, wasn't that why records and CDs were invented?
Home listening is a different experience than watching a musician in a live setting. Deal with that fact and move on.

Can one person really make a whole symphony of noise?
Sure can, ask your mother's anorectologist.

So why do we need rock stars who pollute the earth with two transport trucks of gear and questionable sexual ethics?Listen: shutup.

Otherwise, the aesthetic treasures that artists like Pita provide will be lost to you. Get Off, like much of Pita's work, is intended for deep listening, with all of the consequent pretentions: long attention to minute detail, a good listening set-up, and thoughtful analysis and parodic self-reflection. "Ethernal" sits radiant, and one enters slowly into a mesmerizing reverie of sensual associations; music as escapism and a jouissance made decadent by its abiding nature.

Early in track two, Pita then blows all that garbage out your own ass with a glorious burst of hybrid noisebloom. Calm is restored by "More Break After the Terror": the sound of what I like to refer to as sheet-metal ambient. "Babel" brings a quick scan of what seem to be popular broadcasts, gloriously edited to infinitesimal precision. Pita ends with what can be seen as a morning alarm, an oscillating bell tone reflecting a Phil Niblock transfiguration-through-stasis.

I'm still mixed on this one, although that might have everything to do with my adoration of Pita's previous two albums in the series. While certainly not as strong as Get Down, Pita's new full-length doesn't dissapoint so much as become expected.

MP3: Pita - Like Watching Shit on a Shelf

Arthur Tajber - Stable

Arthur Tajber in performance, Transit Gallery, Hamilton.

Starting in darkness, digital video was projected onto the performance space. Tajber then began to manipulate folding chairs and wooden tables in front of the video. Precise movement was emphasized, with particular attention paid to circular patterns walking around the central table. Placing chairs and tables became a percussive motion, and the sound was recorded and manipulated accordingly, bringing the spectator out from their comtemplative nostalgia. Chairs where slammed open and shut, and every object was placed rather violently to emphasize the sound that was made, a continual reminder of the absolute presence of the artist and of course the work itself. The video was a further temporal dynamic. It consisted of several instances of the live performance viewed with a delay, so that it appeared to interact with the live performance.

Is viewer nostalgia the locus of this piece? "I remember when he did that", you might ask yourself upon witnessing video of Tajber's actions as you remember them from a few seconds or minutes prior in the performance. This memory game was quickly interrupted, as some of the video that was projected depicted actions which the "live" Tajber had not performed. Over the course of the performance it became increasingly tough to temporally localize movements and their resultant forms. The projected video played with this ever-so-important component of contemplation, and indeed of ego in relation to the I of thought. Events in the video both foretold and hypothesized events of the "live" performance, rendering all of Tajber's actions to be both portents and ghosts. Linearity was brought into question as the hypereal performance of the video began to suggest a muddy existence for any sense of material causality.

I continually found myself challenged by this piece to justify my own existence against the limitations of representation. By this, I mean to suggest a mutual dependence on representation as fundamental to consciousness itself. Is contemplation an able-ity to create space and form that is both tactile and material, as suggested by Tajber's cross-temporal table manipulations? Tables piled to create space in both material and hypereal planes literally support the weight of the artist himself, as he himself appears to sit in contemplation of the work in situ (although, this pose is not a satirical gesture to philosophical thought itself, nor to the sculpting tradition by referring to that famous thinking statue).

More importantly however, this piece serves to delineate an argument countering the agency of the viewing audience. We must never forget our own inaction when allowing art to be experienced, and perhaps Tajber seeks to indict the fascist tendencies in much of modern screened culture: the ability of the screen to wash over any sense of individual agency, to allow and to not question what is presented or the process by which it is experienced. All television advertisements, after all, are stylized performances which themselves question viewer agency by deconstructing their sense of identity and representing it back to them as frayed wires, exposed for manipulation. By and large, the viewing subject does not question this subjugation -- or seen in a more extreme light, this loss of identity to a beautiful and ever-occurring annihilation. Is it this fascism which stands between the modern subject as interpellated by contemporary culture -- the consumer of all that is visible, and indeed of visibility itself -- and a true post-modernity wherein subjects attempt to counter their inscription as consumers and assume a voice and sense of public agency that is more in line with their own interests rather than those of the (mostly corporate) producers of visual culture?


A final note: please forgive these images as I was without tripod and the light levels required an 8 second exposure; add the very limited amount of audience space, and thus frame content could not really be selected in any more or less controllable manner.

when you declare a state of war you get a war state

when you declare a state of war you get a war state

On Thursday March 10, U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein threw out of court a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of roughly 4 million Vietnamese people who have suffered birth defects, ailing health, and a poisoned rural economy as a result of American use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam war. "There is no basis for any of the claims of plaintiffs under the domestic law of any nation or state or under any form of international law," he wrote in his verdict. Furthermore, he outright dismissed the links between Agent Orange and the health problems of the Vietnamese represented in the lawsuit.

Wait a minute here. Wasn't Agent Orange supposed to poison organic life? It was devised as a means not only to "remove" the dense jungle that the Vietnamese used for cover against an invading army, but also to destroy farmland and otherwise demolish the moral and economic resistence of the Vietnamese population. It was a chemical engineered to destroy organic life. Arguably, it figured in a policy of chemical warfare which has yet to be matched on the planet. Dow Chemical, Monsanto Co., and others knew the effects of dioxin in AO, and indeed engineered these effects. Isn't that alone cause and support for the "claims" of the plaintiffs? Judge Weinstein’s decision argues that these companies were operating in effect under direct orders from the pentagon and other chiefs of staff. That they were operating under orders can no excuse, as the Neuremburg Trials following WWII demonstrated culpability even (and perhaps especially) during times of war.

You might counter that maybe the Vietnamese deserve their suffering for attempting to counter American imperial intentions. How dare they defend their own country and indeed their own health made deleterious as a consequence of this invasion, and then use the international and US courts to further this cause. It was war after all, and therefore wasn't it a time when much of what we, under peace, call human compassion disappeared like so much hot air?

Maybe it’s a given then, that countries will not allow their histories to burden their present budgets, although both Germany and Japan were held accountable for their aggression after the second World War. The American government certainly does not want to pay for the actions of a previous generation, and most certainly does not want to have to side with a group of foreign complainants against the interests of contributing members important to the military-industrial complex. At the very least, the transfer of wealth from American corporations to foreign citizens as represented by this lawsuit is definitely not allowable given the current state of the American economy.

More to the point however, the dismissal of this lawsuit seems aimed more at diverting corporate involvement in possible war crimes violations levelled against American forces that are currently operating in Iraq, Cuba, and Afghanistan. The last thing that many in the Bush government want to see happen is the imposition of a legal framework with which to judge or otherwise curtail their actions. For this reason, America has routinely avoided joining international courts, and rescinded their involvement in international arms control treaties. It seems likely that the Bush “everything’s on the table” strategy for foreign policy will only increase American military involvement in the Middle East, with the obvious consequence of an even higher number of human rights violations occurring.

With the knowledge that the events normally classified as war crimes will only continue, and may indeed escalate beyond all reason in the coming year, then the attempts by the Bush government to move the legal system in their direction seem logical enough. If, for example, Dow and Monsanto were indeed found guilty of war crimes(or even war profiteering, a crime which has become virtually a non-issue since WWII) for their involvement in the Vietnam war, then so too would Haliburton and its subsidiaries, who are building and supplying the ever-so-friendly prisons in Iraq where torture and murder has been normalized and systematized. So too would Lockheed-Martin, one of the principal contractors for the development and manufacture of real weapons of mass destruction, ie: the bombers and their bombs (which have to date killed roughly 120,000 Iraqi civilians), as well as the long-range tactical and ballistic weapons that the US seems poised to deploy in the Middle East.

It seems apparent enough that the American government is trying to legalize the actions that tend to be classified as war crimes. The first shot in this particular battle was the labelling of prisoners of war captured in Afghanistan as "Illegal Combatants", thus ostensibly removing from these POWs their rights as outlined in the Geneva Convention (if one were to follow the Bush train of thought, that is bureaucratic nomenclature supercedes rights to humanity). We might be able to interpret the Patriot Act as a secondary phase, by provisioning state authorities with the tools to control the domestic US population should any coming aggression against foreign populations foment Ukraine-style civil disobedience.

Vice President Dick Cheney used to control Haliburton, and so the circle of accountability seems to close in upon itself. Any rational observer might question a government’s simultaneous involvement in both corporate and military concerns, and wonder whether a corporate autocracy is indeed the way to allow the functioning of a state which calls itself democratic. In previous generations, it took major conflicts to separate those interests and impose restraints on the system; Japan, for example was forced to accept a new constitution to remove the power over government, economic, and military systems from one controlling interest. The Republican Hawks have a similar control over government, much of the legal process, and of course the military; this is course in addition to the corporate interests they either control directly or represent by proxy.

Allowing a legal framework for escalating violence, repression, and inhumanity can be interpreted historically as a prelude to the outbreak of a fairly major conflict. I myself think that the entire Middle East should seriously consider itself as game for the PNAC (www.newamericancentury.org) strategy. That alone should be regarded as the end of modernity as we know it.

like i never even cared

So there is this thing that i like to call progress.

It sits and waits patiently while I encircle its reach,
fumbling lecherously in front and behind.
Unfurled and delectable she brings me to a fold and a eyelash:
I am made humble in this divine presence.
After every look is a bite, at the end of it all.

I look and cannot help myself.

Others see passage where I only see isolation and false depth,
probed to the extent of its necessity.
We put all our hopes and dreams into this preternatural evolutionary path,
wanting a future like the warm, friendly hug of a straightjacket.
We turn together and find pleasure in this, in it all and everything that it is not.
"Does the vulture believe in progress when it finds another carcass?"
-- once this had been asked, there was little comfort
with typical and daily tragedies.

Instead of revolution, I learned absolution to be necessary:
a way to forgive oneself for one's own transgressions,
rather than those of a vocal and sociable past.

We bring ourselves to the height of it all and lie fallow.

Spent, I waited for my income to rise again.
It became quite clear to me that dialog was impossible.
She never felt the same again.

A diner once taught me that after every individual, all of society is a mute point and simultaneously an in situ violation of the self. It took a positive regression for me to fully understand this.

cars should fuck off after spitting in yr face

another consumptive round of innocent behaviour...

Canada finally seems to be getting a little serious about adopting a more Kyoto-friendly environmental strategy in 2005. The federal budget, for example, has $1billion earmarked for “cost-effective initiatives” to reduce carbon emissions in industry. Of course, it seems somewhat likely that this money will be used to buy emission credits from countries which are “cleaner”, rather than actually doing something to make our industries sustainable. So where do us little people fit in? As a matter of fact, everywhere. After all, we shouldn’t think of Kyoto as a “governmental” policy, but rather as one for all energy use.

The reality is this: reducing emissions will require changing energy sources. The vast majority of the North American population has been willfully avoiding changing lifestyles, largely thanks to the efforts of oil lobby groups and reactionary conservatives. Note that neither of these groups represents the scientists who actively study the biosphere or industrial systems, and who have themselves been the principle catalysts for change in the media. Maybe I’m a bit wacky for this, but I’ll trust the biologists who study tree rings, ice cores, and coral formations for climate change rather than politicians and industrialists who have shareholders to address. Britain’s New Scientist magazine had a recent article on climate change which noted that 19 of the 20 warmest years on the scientific record have occurred since 1980: “the bottom line is that we will need to cut CO2 emissions by 70% to 80% simply to stabilise atmospheric CO2 concentrations”.

So, knowing that many shortsighted industries are going to drag their feet on this issue, isn’t it time that citizens became empowered and actually took control of their own negative influence on climate change? Over the next few articles, I’ll outline a few simple ways to – how can I say it – join the 21st century and not ignorantly pollute like all those pricks who lived in the 20th.

One of the more positive changes that you can make for both yourself and the environment would be to adopt cycling into your lifestyle. This alters the energy source that you use for transportation from the oil and gas in your car to the food that you eat daily. It’s really not as impossible as you think. I can speak from experience that once you attain even a marginal level of fitness, then every part of Hamilton is accessible by bike within an hour or two at the most. Those of us who ride regularly can get from Westdale to Stony Creek in about 30 minutes. Granted, it does take a bit of willpower to go riding when the weather’s not the best – winter tends to leave only a few diehards on bikes. But then there’s all that “character” that gets built if you do become a year-rounder. I’ve noticed over the years that most people are impressed by the callous disregard of personal safety in the face of extreme danger, and these same people are easily convinced that heavy rain or a cold wind are terminal challenges.

Naturally I don’t really expect every car off the road and every family on bikes all the time. There are indeed many times when a car is decent option, but I bet that if you are travelling alone in your car, then that moment is not one of them. How often are cars used when they are not required, like most work or school commutes, short trips to the corner store or a friend’s house, vacations along routes where buses or trains are available, or trips to city downtown areas? You can shop for almost everything you need by using a backpack. When you do buy large items, get a cab or use the bus. Hey parents: let your kids walk home with friends. Not to be a grandad or anything, but in my day friends and I either rode a school bus, biked, or walked the 1.5km to our french school almost every day. The few kids who had “nervous” parents would always be driven to school, and picked up immediately afterward so they couldn’t get into “trouble”. These kids grew up to be special people. Those of us who walked or rode never got accosted or abducted, because by and large our cities are safe places during the day.

There’s also the bonus of actually getting to see the scenery while you travel (a gift from rail travel as well, by the way...). Trust me, cycling through the wine country around St. Catherine’s is much nicer than going for a drive there, as you get to smell the grapes in the fields and not the gas in your tank. We are quite lucky to have a pretty extensive network of trails for cyclists in Southern Ontario, and accordingly one can get to any major city in a day trip.

There are two key problems, however, that might keep a lot of people from riding anywhere except in parks and on trails. Cars can pose a fair hazard, especially when you combine their inertia with driver error or arrogance. Many people that I have spoke with cite Hamilton’s manic drivers as the key reason why they themselves drive. It’s too dangerous to cycle on roads they say. I’ve been riding safely in the area for over 10 years now, and will admit that I have had a fair share of “incidents”. Usually these involve cars that don’t see you while turning or changing lanes. As a cyclist, make sure you are visible by getting some lights or reflective tape for your helmet. The easiest way to stay safe is to plan a route which uses as few large streets as possible.

To those drivers who think that bikes should not be on the road and want to make a point by “scaring” us: check the Highway Traffic Act, which hopefully you remember from driving school [aside: why aren’t drivers tested every few years to make sure they are actually fit and capable to drive?]. A bicycle is a vehicle, with the same rights and responsibilities as other users of the road; you may occupy any part of the lane if it is warranted by your safety. So if things are getting ridiculous on the road when you are riding, then slow cars down behind you, and make sure that they have to change lanes or wait to pass. Principally, you need to maintain a sense of calm. Enjoy the ride, but enjoy it by keeping aware of your surroundings. Nothing pisses drivers off more than cyclists who aren’t paying attention to what they are doing.

Sometimes, no matter what, there’s nothing you can do in the face of road rage. The other day, I was assaulted by a random middle age guy whose aggressive driving at the Main + Queen intersection caused me to impulsively throw a snowball at the back of his car (Little Man: that pop can you thought I threw at your car I had picked up to recycle, no more). Endangering other cars, he then spun around to try and teach me a lesson. Little Man: that cum-in-my-face of your spit was classy, and makes me wonder if you kiss your wife with the same lips. I chose to go home instead of fight you because I like challenges, and it was tougher for me to not care about what you did than give you a broken nose and a heart attack.

Problem #2 involves a larger project. Current urban developments are by and large car-specific, or in other words engineered with car traffic in mind to the exclusion of other forms of transport. Cycling is easy in cities that are not suburban track developments. As pointed out in a decent agit-prop documentary called The End of Suburbia, track developments can only exist when every citizen owns several cars and oil stays cheap. As such, for most people in these areas it’s virtually impossible to access public transit or commute with a bike. The only solution is to not purchase a home in these developments, and instead become more socially responsible in an urban setting. Developers aren’t evil men wasting the world’s resources on the most unsustainable communities that they can build. They build what makes them money, and right now a lot of people are buying into the suburban nightmare. If people stop buying, then companies will stop building.

Despite a few obstacles, riding is one of the most positive changes that you can make in your life. Think of it as cheap transportation with a lot of free exercise. Kids learn from example, so getting families riding at young ages is important. They have to get used to daily physical exertion in order not to get accustomed to laziness and obesity, which are arguably the biggest obstacles faced by sustainable transportation. Make a change, and you can feel a bit better that they might have a planet that’s in better shape then when our generation found it.

M. Ward - Transistor Radio

M. Ward
Transistor Radio [Merge, 2005]




Ah, the joy of an unexpected nostalgia...

M. Ward seems to delight in the sense of historical presence that frequently gets evoked in our daily lives. The re-experience of a childhood memory when passing a certain smell, of decades-old adventures cloaked in rhyme and available only with the help of that most abruptly sensual of librarians. Bluegrass, country, and nostalgia-pop sentiments made Ward's last record an indie hit. On his new release Transistor Radio, he continues to sing like a teen sensation from the days of 78s, but his presentation does not attempt the forced sentimentalism typical of pop music.

"One Life Away" invites an image of a wooden console radio sitting at the back of a dusty theatre, a crooner then in his prime singing about hazy September love. "Four Hours In Washington", a neo-jukejoint stomper akin to a Tom Waits parody of the same, invokes the hot summers and political turbulance of the early 60s with a puff of (Cuban) cigar smoke. Each song is executed with a bravado in terms of both instrumentation and performance that saves the record from being a sentimental pastiche.

MP3: M. Ward - Hi-Fi

do the reactions of lobsters rule the fate of mankind?

The Associated Press ran an article this past week which made me question the role of its journalistic practise. Not that skepticism was ever in question, but hey, phrases get turned sometimes. Without doing any research other than this one source, we the readers are supposed to agree with them that lobsters feel no pain. This otherwise important ethical question is now made simple: of course they can’t as their brains are too small. No other opinions are given; neither are other scientific communities consulted. Most other judgements are suppressed by the complete lack of comparative data.

If we are going to make the decision we should at least have a few questions asked. The lobster might express pain in a different manner than we expect. Then again, it might not. We aren’t all vegetarian, but inflicting suffering should not be a decision that is made lightly.

There’s a great book by JM Coetzee called The Lives of Animals. He raises new questions without necessarily providing easily consumable answers. The point is not the absoluteness of such decisions, but rather the impulse to reflection and debate.As the AP likes to frequently point out to us, debate should be HOT!! with a capital !

Just for fun, here's the totality of it:


Section Front • Section Front

E-mail This StoryE-mail This Story Printable VersionPrintable Version

Hot Debate: Do Lobsters Feel Pain?

PORTLAND, Maine, Feb. 14, 2005

Workin' It With Chef Trotter

A lobsterman off the coast of Maine measures his catch. (Photo: AP)

"This is exactly like the tobacco industry claiming that smoking doesn't cause cancer,"
Karin Robertson, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals


(AP) A new study out of Norway concludes that it's unlikely lobsters feel pain, stirring up a long-simmering debate over whether the valuable seafood suffers when it's being cooked.

Animal activists for years have claimed that lobsters feel excruciating agony when they are cooked, and that dropping one in a pot of boiling water is tantamount to torture.

The study, which was funded by the Norwegian government and written by a scientist at the University of Oslo, suggests that lobsters and other invertebrates probably don't suffer even if lobsters do tend to thrash in boiling water.

"Lobsters and crabs have some capacity of learning, but it is unlikely that they can feel pain," the study concluded.

The 39-page report was aimed at determining if invertebrates should be subject to animal welfare legislation as Norway revises its animal welfare law. The report looked at invertebrate groups such as insects, crustaceans, worms and mollusks and summarized the scientific literature dealing with feelings and pain among those creatures without backbones.

It concluded that most invertebrates — including lobsters, crabs, worms, snails, slugs and clams — probably don't have the capacity to feel pain.

Lobster biologists in Maine have maintained for years that the lobster's primitive nervous system and underdeveloped brain are similar to that of an insect. While lobsters react to different stimuli, such as boiling water, the reactions are escape mechanisms, not a conscious response or an indication of pain, they say.

The Norwegian report backs up a study in the early 1990s at the University of Maine and reinforces what people in the lobster industry have always contended, said Bob Bayer, executive director of the Lobster Institute, a research and education organization in Orono.

"We've maintained all along that the lobster doesn't have the ability to process pain," Bayer said.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an animal rights organization based in Norfolk, Va., has made lobster pain part of its Fish Empathy Project, putting out stickers and pamphlets with slogans like, "Being Boiled Hurts. Let Lobsters Live."

PETA regularly demonstrates at the Maine Lobster Festival in Rockland, and 10 years ago placed a full-page ad in a Rockland newspaper featuring an open letter from actress Mary Tyler Moore urging festival-goers to forego lobster.

"If we had to drop live pigs or chickens into scalding water, chances are that few of us would eat them. Why should it be any different for lobsters?" the ad read.

PETA's Karin Robertson called the Norwegian study biased, saying the government doesn't want to hurt the country's fishing industry.

"This is exactly like the tobacco industry claiming that smoking doesn't cause cancer," she said.

Robertson said many scientists believe lobsters do indeed feel pain. For instance, a zoologist with The Humane Society of the United States made a written declaration that lobsters can feel pain after a chef dismembered and sauteed a live lobster to prepare a Lobster Fra Diavolo dish on NBC's "Today" show in 1994.

But Mike Loughlin, who studied the boiling of lobsters when he was a University of Maine graduate student, said lobsters simply lack the brain capacity to feel pain.

"It's a semantic thing: No brain, no pain," said Loughlin, who now works as a biologist at the Maine Atlantic Salmon Commission.

It's debatable whether the debate will ever be resolved.

The Norwegian study, even while saying it's unlikely that crustaceans feel pain, also cautioned that more research is needed because there is a scarcity of scientific knowledge on the subject.

Whether lobsters feel pain or not, many consumers will always hesitate at placing lobsters in boiling pots of water.

New Englanders may feel comfortable cooking their lobsters, but people outside the region often feel uneasy about boiling a live creature, said Kristen Millar, executive director of the Maine Lobster Promotion Council. "Consumers don't generally greet and meet an animal before they eat it," she said.

©MMV, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

when is it time for a change? how about now

Remember all that talk in the 1980s and 90s which surrounded the environmental problems which we would all be facing in the 21st century? You know: rising sea levels thanks to the melting of arctic glacial ice, rapid and extreme shifts from desert to ice-age temperatures, increasing hurricane and high-wind activity? Thinking they were all just cries of lunacy from that weirdo geography teacher from the tenth grade, by and large we ignored climate change (inaccurately called Global Warming back then) in favour of business as usual. No skies are falling, we said as over the 1990s we began to get addicted to SUVs and other equally stupid ways to accelerate climate change. It was the head in the sand approach, and it failed miserably.

Let me make this perfectly clear: WAKE THE FUCK UP AND LOOK AROUND RIGHT NOW. Notice that our seasons have been radically altered from the four traditional ones that we grew up with. You might also notice how animal populations have reacted: birds have altered their migration patterns, fish have moved to different waters, and flying insects which normally stay dormant over the winter now have altered life cycles. I think the problem with the way we were taught environmental issues way back then was that all the discussions involved what was going to happen in the future. In retrospect, this was entirely the wrong tack. It allowed many people to ignore data that was presented to them, disregarding it like the nonsense from a religious pamphleteer.

The new mantra is this: climate change is happening now, not in a few decades, not next year. Right the hell this second. Just as it was happening all throughout our recent history when we were talking about future calamities. If you add to climate change, you are making that difference now, not in the distant future which you might not be alive to experience. This sense of immanence can be seen in fact as the hope of the environmental project, as only by focussing on the now can we stand to make change in the hearts and minds of the world.

So here’s a current example, some data to be reconciled if you like. According to the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, due to glacial melting there has been a rise of 25mm in ocean levels since 1960. 2002 had the highest level of glacial melt ever recorded. Now, I am not a scientist and 25mm might not sound like much, but when you multiply that by the surface area of the oceans involved, you end up with quite a bit of extra water cycling around the planet. Where might that water go, you ask? For starters, you might have noticed that it has been raining a lot these days. Today (January 13th), it is currently 14 degrees and raining steadily. You might also want to look around, as heavy rains have recently washed out massive parts of Costa Rica, Panama, Ohio, and California (re: the famously fatal landslide of a few weeks ago, which occurred after nearly 21 days of continuous rain).

Key to this understanding is the awareness of one’s place in the world. I mean by this the knowledge of how one’s life impacts the globe. I predict the 21st century to be one of absolute self-awareness, as we will increasingly find ourselves without the luxury of the 20th century gameplan of “seemingly unlimited resources causing a comfortable ignorance”. There are a few programs online which can calculate what is known as an “ecological footprint”, which details the amount of emissions leading to climate change that are produced by your lifestyle. The point is not for you to be weighed people down with the doomed news of the inevitable decline of the world. Instead, use this information to begin altering your life to suit the sustainability of the earth. It is not evilness which pollutes the earth, but rather lifestyles to which we have become accustomed and do not seek to challenge on a daily basis.

The public needs to made aware that environmentalism is not a punitive process, for the simple reason that we will all be punished together for our environmental crimes; we are all guilty. Environmentalists are well aware that humans by their very existence will make an impact on the earth. The point of the environmental project is to try to move such impacts from the “negative” column to the “positive” one. Take using public transport as an example. Owning a car today brings an annual cost of ownership of about $5000 to an individual, plus $20,000 on average for the car itself. Buying a yearly Go Transit pass (with HSR included) between Hamilton and Toronto costs $3216. Positives: less cash, less pollution, plus you can read while travelling, and sometimes you get to meet the cast of Train 48. If you work in the city you live, it’s even cheaper to travel (a yearly bus pass is $780 in my city, while bikes cost pennies a day to operate and give you another positive: exercise).

The most obvious positive that consumers can notice is a reduction in their energy bills. By installing energy efficient lightbulbs (low-volt halogen, fluorescent) in all your fixtures, can reduce lighting energy use by 70%. The US Department of Energy estimates that current lighting systems account for 25% of electrical demand, of which 5% represents the electricity required to cool or remove the waste heat generated by those old lights. There’s also a landfill issue here, as energy efficient lights tend to last 10-25 times as long as incandescent bulbs (thus making your $5 bulb even more of a wise purchase over its $1 grandfather). If Canada were serious about Kyoto, it could ban outright the manufacture and sale of old-style lightbulbs and subsidize the purchase of energy efficient ones so that we can get rid of all the shitty technologies that consumers have normalized.

There’s a big reason that many scientists are studying climate change, principally that we will be increasingly unable to cope with the change in ecosystems that we have ourselves fostered. Life is a rather fragile thing when viewed in terms of individual species. Just because the earth can survive without us, we should not begin to think that we can survive without it.

ucsusa.org – Union of Concerned Scientists
safeclimate.net/calculator/ – calculate your ecological footprint
changingtheclimate.org – play a new game, the Big Game SUV Hunt!
arctic.noaa.gov/detect/index.shtml – arctic change, according to the NOAA

go rant! go!!

get these fucking kids off our hands, government

Shuttle358 - Chessa

Shuttle 358
Chessa [12k, 2004]




Dan Abrams has two previous releases on 12k and a couple on Mille Plateaux. Chessa is closer in spirit to the MP releases than the warm, organic melodicism of either Frame or Optimal.lp. While a similar aural strategy is deployed, Chelsea has several tracks which are far less linear than his previous work. "Ash" opens the album with a warm and gradual swell, as the soundfiled begins to open more minute frequencies over several minutes. This track sounds very much like the laptop equivalent of an orchestra practising Debussy in a field full of insect life. "Marche" attempts a sound that is very akin to the Brian Eno / Harold Budd collaborations of the early 1980s.

Most of the pieces are compositionally dependent on variations of drone, but several tracks stand out for their textural beauty and complexity. "Melt" has a vague eastern feel, with a "plucked" melodic line and a Phil Niblock-esque slow-transformation-through-stasis sound field. The liquid yet viscous, almost rubbery, bassline of "Logical" is simultaneously a playfull engagement with a future-pop sensibility as well as a nostalgic harkening to the sounds of 1970s analog futurism. Abrams seems to operate best in such hybrid spaces, where reference and reflection coexist and provide entry to new aesthetic experiences. The album's closer "Scrapbook" is the only track on Chessa which foregrounds a more or less traditional rhythmic pattern, as acoustic guitar, violins, and synth drone all mesh nicely over a slightly distorted synth beat. This remnant of the "clicks n cuts" sound made infamous in 2000 provokes an ironic comment from Abrams: is all musical experience insufferably linked to listener nostalgia? At the very least, a possible answer can be found in the opportunities for personal reflection and sensory immersion that Chessa provides.

MP3: Shuttle358 - Scrapbook