O, R They?

The Telling Compulsion

2008-04-30T22:49:00.001-07:00

GO HERE NOW!!!

The Telling Compulsion, my new web log / microblog / Tumblog / place I post things from the intarwebs.
http://the.tellingcompulsion.com/

Season's Beatings

2007-12-24T20:10:00.000-08:00

A very, very special Christmas greetings from Kitler to you. Here's hoping you and yours are enjoying this year's winter solstice holiday (whatever you call it) in fine style!

Merry Winter Solstice

2007-12-23T10:13:00.001-08:00

JB's Academy of Funk

2007-11-09T12:11:00.000-08:00

Goulet.

2007-10-30T20:39:00.001-07:00

Who knows only his own generation remains always a child.

2007-09-22T21:39:00.000-07:00

Beat Electric is a new group blog produced by some of San Francisco's finest musical/clubland luminaries. The same gentlemen who bring you Thursday nights' Boombox at Double Dutch, in fact.

Link through to Beat Electric and have knowledge dropped; you too will know the roots and influences of boogie, disco, and soul (along with some choice tracks of the same.) [Best tracked with Songbird.]

It's said that those who are unaware of history are destined to repeat it. We may be destined to repeat ours (at least pop culturally,) but at least we can do so consciously with the help of the Beat Electric poets.

Girls. On Bikes. In København.

2007-09-20T23:12:00.000-07:00

These two bastards, Mikael and Aaron, ride around in Copenhagen where 35% of the population are daily bicycle commuters. By sheer force of numbers, they enjoy a great deal of gorgeous women whose beauty is accentuated by their mounts, and vice versa. Mikael and Aaron share their good fortune by taking the occasional snap of said lovelies and posting it to their blog, Cycle Chic - Copenhagen Girls on Bikes (what else?!)

It's a rich vein of real gold, and I couldn't be forced to choose favorites, but if you're the type that skips to the end to see if Harry dies, try this or this or this.

Fuck pigeons, redux.

2007-09-08T13:17:00.000-07:00

One time my erstwhile gf got mad at me for calmly saying something to a guy who was feeding pigeons in front of my house. Said guy proceeded to go ape shit, but that was actually my fault because I'd risked ruffling his feathers by speaking to him at all.

For him and her, BoFs and BFFs, I proudly present Pigeon Lover Theatre...

Why don't you marry them?!?!?!?!

I like turtles.

2007-09-08T11:56:00.000-07:00

I do. I like turtles. And free music. Free as in puppies. And Diplo. Puppies and turtles and dinosaurs! This post has set the record for 0 to Awesome.

And now we blow the lid off with aforementioned free music, shamelessly lifted from Bpitchfork. Namely, the second installment in their mix series, this one helmed by Diplo. A good 1h 48m mix from the Hollertronix empresario, with some gems like a Belgian girls choir sixty-upping Jose Gonzales' cover of The Knife, a remix of MIA's new Boyz that uses a BATTLES sample(!), and plenty of sideband jibber jabber that you'd probably have missed otherwise. It's worth your while to head over to their site and read the interview/running commentary with Diplo. BIM!

>> Pointlessly zipped MP3 of Diplo megamix <<

Tracklist:
01. I Like Turtles
02. Mr. Vegas: "Lean Wit It"
03. M.I.A. [ft. Bun B and Rich Boy]: "Paper Planes"
04. Schooly D: "Gucci Time"
05. Yeah Yeah Yeahs: "Rockers to Swallow"
06. Jellybean: "Sidewalk Talk"
07. Belle Stars: "Iko Iko"
08. Scala & Kolacny Brothers: "Heartbeats"
09. Diplo & Switch [ft. Elephant Man]: "East, West (Remix)"
10. Nirvana: Drain You / Huey: "Pop, Lock & Drop It"
11. Marc Houle: "Bay of Figs (Ward 21 Mix)"
12. DJ Tamiel: "Bump Like This"
13. Queen [ft. David Bowie]: "Under Pressure"
14. Eddie Money: "Take Me Home Tonight"
15. Soulja Boy: "Crank Dat Superman"
16. Bat for Lashes: "What's a Girl to Do (Break)"
17. DJ Shadow: "Organ Donor (Sandrinho Remix)"
18. Diplo & Switch [ft. Beenie Man]: "Solta Frango"
19. Mr. Vegas: "Hot Fuk (Diplo Mix)"
20. Enur [ft. Natasja]: "Calabria (2007 mix)"
21. Spoon: "Paper Tiger"
22. Circle Children: "Zulu"
23. M.I.A. [ft Akon]: "Boyz Remix (Hi Powered Boyz Get Down)"
24. Boy 8 Bit: "Suspense Is Killing Me"
25. KW Griff: "Tony's Back"
26. Diplo: "Work Is Never Over"
27. M.I.A: "Bamboo Banger"
28. Sizzla: "Bamboo Banger (Dubplate)"
29. Blaqstarr: "Supastarr"
30. Shai: "If I Ever Fall in Love Again (Dub)"
31. Orbital: "Halcyon"
32. LA Priest: "Engine (Erol Alkan Remix)"
33. Petter: "Some Polyphony"
34. Rihanna: "Umbrella (Vandalism Mix)"
35. Justice: "Phantom Pt. II (Soulwax Mix)"
36. The White Stripes: "Little Cream Soda"
37. ZZT: "Lower State of Consciousness"
38. Kia Shine: "Crispy"
39. Bart Simpson: "Bartman (So Kripsy Mix)"

Gambling in this establishment?!

2007-09-07T22:49:00.000-07:00

Dueling. Tasers.

2007-09-03T13:36:00.001-07:00

All blogging efforts have been suspended due to state holidays and bitchin' weather. Posts destined to remain unread will resume following San Francisco summer...

Do not mistake me for a conjurer of cheap tricks

2007-08-27T09:01:00.000-07:00

Total lunar eclipse tonight. Take this as your opportunity to finally convince that tribe of hunter-gathers of your terrible powers and rightful place in their pantheon. (Creationists and peaking trippers at Burning Man also eligible.)

Fuck pigeons.

2007-08-23T01:06:00.000-07:00

Fuck pigeons (and their fucking holes, on principle.)

Allow me to explicate for you, pendejo.

2007-08-22T23:59:00.000-07:00

I am clearly a better commenter than blagueur. I don't know precisely what that indicates about me, but it is self-evident.

There are approximately 1,000,000 things going on in this world and universe and I find interesting and yet I've not managed to have just one of them rise to the level of needing to write about it a non-trivial time. Of course, this is the bane of my attempts at bloggery. Always with the strong start (relatively speaking,) always with the sputtering and the tailing off.

Hey, some German dudes BROKE THE SPEED OF LIGHT. That makes me happy. Why? Because even though I viscerally believe that there is still abundant mystery in our world, it's nice to have an occasional, tangible challenge to the fundamental beliefs that don't involve watching barely tolerable one-word title dramas on NBC and suspension of disbelief. Innit? For serious, in college I was so deeply discouraged by the notion that all that was left in human pursuit of scientific knowledge was gradual, slght erosion of the unknown that I bailed on my major 3+ years into it in favor of making beer and smoking the jimmy for a year. I was so totally wrong, and am incredibly relieved for that.

Oh, PS, we're still going to fucking war with Iran.

Fuck it dude. Let's go bowling.

Witness the fitness

2007-08-16T23:56:00.000-07:00

"I like to do this classic rendition my own way."

This is how we roll

2007-08-15T02:06:00.000-07:00

I have no idea who this band is, but the video is rad, especially from ~0m40s and the song seems pretty decent if not especially original. That plus I haven't posted for ages so here's da fluff.

Never be alone again

2007-08-08T22:34:00.000-07:00

It's my birthday. Again. Funny how that works.

It's been a remarkable year. (Is saying something's remarkable when I blog about it redundant?) I've had some hypoxic highs and some really deep lows. The most consistent element throughout has been my wonderful friends. No, I'm the wonderful one; I'm FULL of WONDER at my good fortune to have such excellent people to share the good stuff and back me up when things go dark. Indeed the good bits are largely good for having been shared with y'alls. You know who you are. The lows, well there's nothing to put the exclamation point on the value of true loyalty and friendship than being betrayed. But that don't make no nevermind. Thanks to every one of you: new, old, near, far, supportive, debaucherous, thoughtful, and hilarious. Much love. One love. Love will keep us together. Love abides. Lovin' in an elevator.

I just want you all to know that after Cheney nukes LA and the crackdown comes, I've got your back. Until then, though, friendship continues unsullied by overseriousness. You'll never be alone again...

Amish Paradise 2: Electric Cloggeroo

2007-08-08T01:02:00.000-07:00

Zach Galifianakis makes any video better. Will Oldham is a straight freak. Kanye needs other people (or robots) to spice his shizz up, making him the tofu of hip hop.

Secrecy

2007-08-07T20:26:00.000-07:00

The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.

President John F. Kennedy
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
New York City, April 27, 1961
(mp3) (transcript)

How'd that work out for Jack?

How'd that work out for US?

Standing waves

2007-08-07T20:13:00.000-07:00

From the Up is Down Desk

2007-08-07T00:12:00.000-07:00

POP QUIZ

Is Chris Goodall:

a) high,
b) an idiot,
c) a concern troll,
d) a publicity hound, or
e) some magically delicious combination thereof?

Our question is sparked by the UK's Times decision to run this piece:

Walking to the shops ‘damages planet more than going by car’
Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.
The sums were done by Chris Goodall, campaigning author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, based on the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef production. “Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles adds about 0.9 kg of CO2 to the atmosphere,” he said, a calculation based on the Government’s official fuel emission figures. “If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.

AAAARGH, what codswallop! Who will do the sums on what has the greater environmental impact: for Goodall to have this tripe printed on dead trees or the carbon cost of his apparent fortnightly consumption of a bag of dicks?

Sorry. Reason...

Goodall is wrong. Foremost of the reasons Goodall is wrong is that he bases his numbers on this hypothetical person using beef and only beef for his or her nutrition source. Nevermind that beef is approximately the least efficient source of food energy possible.

Second: walking doesn't really burn that much more energy than driving, so the driver isn't saving many calories by getting in the car. Moreover, for what meager savings there are, Goodall presumes that the driver won't eat any more food than he or she absolutely needs, which is not a reasonable assumption at all. More likely, that person eats more than they need and either packs on the extra inches or burns it via non-productive exercise (i.e. for its own sake.)

Finally, carry it to its logical extreme, as the Times does at the opening. "The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes." So we should all strive to lay about and breathe shallowly? Isn't there some presumption of minimal worthwhile livelihood?

If he wants a real result, Goodall would compare a vegetarian who most often walks or bikes against a meat eater with a car-centric lifestyle, and do so over a real-life week or month. Unfortunately, I suspect Goodall is not a total idiot, and so he must not be after an honest result. So treat this and the inevitable email forwards from your head-in-the-sand relatives (you have them too, right?) accordingly.

[The answer is e.]

Boo.

2007-08-06T23:31:00.000-07:00

So the Real Fake Steve Jobs has been outed by the NYT, as everybody and their brother and their Chinese cousin have read by now. And I must admit to being disappointed to learn that the RFSJ is a fucking senior editor at FORBES. Eeeew.

You know, fine, just because he's part of the Cool Kids Club and a card carrying member of the monied elite doesn't automatically mean that he sucks. It just takes some of the fun out of the whole thing. It was better reading the posts and thinking that the writer had gotten inside the head of that strain of human rather than just put a little SiliValley spin on his own thoughts. In retrospect, douchey posts like "Benz sedans make me feel funny down there" and "you kids get out of my $100k stereo system yard" should have clued me in. That and the fact that it had so long of a run.

What I would have liked to have discovered was that it was some salacious lady music editor at iTunes with copious spare fuck-you attitude and business sense coupled with dwindling patience for the douchers behind the curtain. But I suppose if that were the case, FSJ would have been shot down loooooooong ago.

Cozy

2007-08-06T23:24:00.000-07:00

Joshua Dalsimer
otherwise unremarkable?

Multiple Arulpragasams

2007-08-03T22:37:00.001-07:00

My love for Mathangi Arulpragasam continues unabated by her mainstreaming. She got political kapital with Arular and she intended to spend it. That's her style. Sophomore effort Kala is more adventurous yet still an embarrassment of bangin' riches.

Plus how fscking cute is this little right-back-atcha YouTubeaoke to Paper Planes by Maya and Diplo?

Plus she's unconscionably hot.

Some people are just nice

2007-08-01T22:07:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite things of 2007 to date, so even though it's a few months old, I feel it still merits a repost here. I thought for sure it would explode Mssrs. Pip & Le Sac onto the scene. It was meant to be the next I'm Losing My Edge. I guess I'm not the tastemaker I thought I was.

Scratch that.

Essential viewing.

Watch it or fade into irrelevance...

You got Apatowed

2007-08-01T20:07:00.000-07:00

Judd Apatow is a stud. The fact that he even got Freaks and Geeks produced as a TV series with what the licensing* for its soundtrack must have cost is reason enough. I mean, Richard Linklater had to sign away his % of the soundtrack royalties to get just one essential track on Dazed and Confused and that was a feature film for flying flout floud. It's Señor Apatow's way of telling stories that are familiar, true-to-life, and therefore hilarious that makes me love his work. Rather that making them heavier, his stories are all the more hilarious for being unglossed and untidy. F&G was FULL of cringeworthy moments that were readily identifiable from just about anybody's happily buried memories from jr. high and high school. (Lamentably, that sets it apart from the other, plastic representations of childhood on TV. Those feed a vicious cycle, deepening the chasm between expectation and reality, and make things even rougher for kids today.) Apatow's wayback was painfully dead-on, and his films seem to carry on the same sincerity, humor, and insight. 40 Year Old Virgin was a bit more of a cartoon, but the elements were there. Knocked Up has exactly what I'm talking about, not the least example of which is the awesome quick-cut birth scenes.

Anyway, if we didn't already know that he's a badass, this exchange between Apatow and Mark Brazill, creator of That 70's Show, would cement it. I am dying for the right opportunity to serve up "Never doubt how much they hate you," to a deserving recipient. Go read it. Now.

You're not reading it yet! Go!

* I believed that to be an original thought, but I clearly lifted it from here. The author, something tells me, doesn't give a shit.

Please rule

2007-07-31T23:24:00.000-07:00

Wes Anderson has a new film coming out in 2 months: The Darjeeling Limited. Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and Angelica Houston are unsurprising. Adrian Brody...nice. Oh man I want this to be as sweet as it should be but I can't psyche myself up for it; not after Life Aquatic.

C'mon Wes. Rebound, buddy.

Track from the trailer (which the poster links to) (mp3):
The Kinks This Time Tomorrow

The war on terror

2007-07-30T23:39:00.000-07:00

My poor dog seems to be on a downward spiral of fear. Yes, yes; any dog living with someone who chooses to identify as a cat version of Hitler should be scared, I know. This is serious people.

Neuroses are the hip displasia of BCs, and my girl is no exception. She's always been neurotic and easily frightened by certain things: loud sounds, of course, but particularly pops and clicks (thus making clicker training a comedy of errors.) Most things were managable. For example, the baseboard heaters in my bedroom terrified her when the metal popped while expanding or contracting. So I got a space heater. That smelled similar to the clicky baseboard heaters, so she was very wary of it, but after ohh about a year, she accepted it as mostly harmless.

That last bit is key; when she gets spooked, she creates a strong association with just about anything else semi-unusual going on concurrent to the scariness. Used to be that mainly meant her being extra wary. Lately, as she's started to show signs of age, it's been getting more intense.

My shoes squeeked on the floors the other morning and it sent her into a panic. I clicked the clasps on my messenger bag closed for the billionth time another morning, and that was too much for her; she forgot all about walkies and bolted upstairs. Forget about recall; I had to go up and talk her down to go out for a walk. I mean, come on! Usually walkie time elicits the kind of enthusiasm reserved for a 10 year old departing for Space Camp.

I used to joke that eventually everything would scare her or remind her of something scary, but I never thought it would be true. Recently, I've had trouble getting her to eat or drink because--I think--she's afraid of something in the kitchen. No idea what, in spite of plenty of observation. I've starting feeding her in another room, but now she's becoming afraid of the entire downstairs. Today, when I got home from work, I called her repeatedly (happily and encouragingly) before she came out; when she finally crept down from the bedroom, she was quaking. From what? Something I missed? The door shutting hard? My bag clips? ME?

I try to avoid the things that will scare her, but that's becoming impossible. It is as if she's continually on a precipice of fear and any little spike in stimuli pushes her over. Used to be I could usually figure out what it was that bothered her; now it happens so easily it could be anything.

I'm doing the best I can to get her past her fears. Reduce the bad stimuli, console her a little but not too much, and praise the simple moves that now qualify as bravery. But as I said, it's just getting worse. Now I'm afraid that this will eat her up.

The sound of tomorrow, the music of today

2007-07-28T12:54:00.000-07:00

Daft Punk at the Greek was a lovely, if not sufficiently sordid affair. My compañeros were strangely sedate, but I danced like a villain and did not tumble to my doom so mission accomplished. The performance was great; some nice additions since Coachella 2006, like the Tron glo-piping. I don't want to get all this show vs. that show, but for me personally the Coachella experience was better. I suppose because it was all new to me. I don't think they had done that stage show before, and every time you thought it couldn't go up another notch, it did. Plus something about dancing with abandon in a huge mob, in 100F heat, in the desert makes for a special experience.

As silly as it sounds, BART home was the fucking best. I had this genius idea to take a Richmond train up to N. Berkeley so we could get on our real train before the crush. It turned out to be not 100% genius because there weren't any more direct SF trains so we lost our sweet seats in the transfer, but it was still awesome because of:

1) After getting on at N. Berkeley, this couple that clearly had been at the show and was pulling the same trick as us sat down against the back wall, opposite some nutter asshole who proceeded to harass them and try to start some shit. You could just see the tension on their faces, the frustration with going from a high with happy people to having it robbed and wondering if something truly fucked is going to go down. The guy seemed to be giving them grief like it was his train and they were invading his space and they'd better take care. I'm watching closely, because of course I'm a level 16 ninja and will disarm the ruffian and sort shit out straight away if need be, but soon enough we're back at Berkeley station.

The reinforcements sont arrivés. This was one of the greatest moments ever. This poor couple, feeling isolated and threated (I imagine) look up and there's 1,000,000 crazed Daft Punkers jockeying for position and when the doors open every fucking nook & cranny gets filled in an instant by howling punters, presumably including all that space Bizarro Fisher King believes to be rightfully his and the smiles and mirth and music and laughter just flood right in with the bodies.

2) After transfering to the SF train, which had more room, we encountered one Cray Lady Cray: girl in pink rollergirl outfit, doing gymnastics on the handles, giving a lap dance to some stranger while he gave a play-by-play on his cell then grabbing his 40 and pounding it until he reclaimed it. Finally she made the night of some middle aged dude who was on his way home from work and caught in the mess by firmly grabbing his ass and wishing him a good night as he exited the train.

The only thing that would have made that BARTy better is if Gold Chains had shown up with his turntable boombox.

Go ask the Archbishop of Ibiza

2007-07-27T15:23:00.000-07:00

Speaking of serotonin surges, the pope has been doing E or maybe mushrooms:

"obedience to the voice of the Earth is more important for our future happiness ... than the desires of the moment. Our Earth is talking to us and we must listen to it and decipher its message if we want to survive,"

Mmmm hmm!

Daft Punk is Playing in Our House

2007-07-27T15:11:00.000-07:00

This is me, tonight...

Jeebus, I love these magnificent bastards.

See also this brilliant survey of all their sample sources.

I don't know whether to brave the crush on the ground floor of the Greek or risk tumbling down terraced concrete when I am inevitably overcome by a huge explosion of sonically/rhythmically induced euphoria. Joy!

Identity in the blogosphere

2007-07-27T14:00:00.000-07:00

There, I said it. I went from Zero to Blogosphere in like 4 days. I guess I sort of hit Godwin right out the gate, so why not just get it out of the way, right?

So I have this anon/pseudonymous identity on this blog. Mostly I just think it's fun. I suspect that in the unlikely event anybody ever reads it, if I know them they will know I am behind it. That's because the chances of them stumbling on it or linking here from boingboing or 3QD rapidly approach zero the closer one comes to reality.

So then there's the people whose blogs I comment on. It seems in most blog comment spaces, there isn't really an expectation of real identity. Not always so, it turns out. See, I adopted this pseudonym to comment on a new, favorite blog. It in fact inspired me to start a blog for the 1,274th time and use that identity; just run with it. But now my unidentified commentary is making the denizens of said new fave wary or annoyed, it seems. Which is totally the opposite of my intent, and sort of suprising to me given the nature of...wait for it...the blogosphere.

When somebody you don't really know asks you "Who are you?" on the interweb, what do you say? I'm Barard Dunfyre*. Here's Myspace link. (In Soviet Russia, space owns YOU.) Here's my AIM, chat me up some time. Here's my LinkedIn. Here's my vCard. Here's a capsule biography. Here's my Facebook. Here's my email address. Call me at the office, it's 415 391 3991. Where's the line? What's too much, too little?

Danah Boyd has written very brainful things on all this. Viz. "While [individuals] are quite adept at negotiating the complexities of contextual feedback in the physical world, the digital realm challenges their expectations by providing an entirely different set of rules."

* not really

Le All-drug Tour?

2007-07-27T12:55:00.000-07:00

This shizz on le tour is getting a little ridiculous. I think it's great that the teams and organizers have gotten serious about enforcing doping bans and doing real testing. That's probably why there's been such a surge of busts in the last couple years. I think the only hope is that these events will make the riders realize that they're not going to get away with it. More likely it's just a phase in an arms race where the testers have temporarily taken the lead.

Perhaps the answer is to create a parallel event: Le Tout-drogue Tour de France. In the Tout-drogue Tour, all doping is allowed. If you ever test positive in the regular tour or any of the other events governed by the same orgs, you're permanently forced to compete in the all-drug events only. Cheating in the clean events might mean getting forced into the doped arena, wherein you're at a disadvantage vs. the monsters who have been at it full bore for years. Docs will be able to participate in the lucrative all-drug market only if they've not been caught helping cheaters in the clean events. And the best part? The all-drug events will finally make cycling a premiere sport in the US. We loves us some freaks, innit?

Somebody please open this club

2007-07-27T01:01:00.000-07:00

This post shall not be construed as an endorsement of plushies or the plushie lifestyle nor do I have any association with let alone express written consent of Major League Plushophilia.

Frist Pots

2007-07-24T18:55:00.000-07:00

Right, so a blog. My seemingly millionth attempt to start a blog, all previously more or less abortive. Fact is, I seem to be inherently a consumer or aggregator of information rather than creator or generator thereof. I'm not sure why that is. I have strong opinions, and it makes sense to have a centralized way to share them with people that care. I've spent untold hours reading other's blogs, and I believe that there's a community aspect to it so why not participate beyond commenting?

I guess the fact that I read a lot of other blogs may explain part of why I haven't written my own consistently: it just seems like there are a lot of other people already doing a better job than I could. I also think I'm wary of the idea that if I actually collected a fair number of readers, then I'd feel locked into some particular persona I'd cultivated (inadvertently or not.) Or that having readers across different parts of my life (family, different circles of friends, and colleagues) would force me into some least common denominator of persona. Personimator, if you will.

But hey, if I get to make up my own words, like "personimator" or say, "jeopardous", then why the hell not.