Month: December 2009

Jogging Past Boni Vino Pizza

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Jogging Past Boni Vino Pizza
Jogging Past Boni Vino Pizza, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Van Buren, I believe

View On Black

supposed to have pretty good pizza, actually, but I’ve never stuck my head in to check it out, or to try their fine Italian cocktails1

Footnotes:
  1. whatever that may mean [↩]

Sunday Song Survey

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Today’s edition of Songs That Played During My Meditation Time1

  1. The Besnard Lakes– Disaster


    The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse

    Like this pulsing bass line a lot, and actually this song is really growing on me. The band has a new album coming out early next year, I’ll probably pick up a copy.

  2. Destroyer– European Oils
    2006 Pitchfork Music Festival Sampler
    I went to the Pitchfork Music fest this year2, I think, but I don’t remember seeing Destroyer. Probably would have been fun, as I like the album this song is taken from.
  3. Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five– You Will Always Have A Friend
    Disc E: 1949-1950
    you will always have a friend, as long as you have money to spend. True, cynical, but true. Recently picked up a 5 disc box set of Louis Jordan: a slightly forgotten, R&B jump blues jokester from the 1940s and 1950s. Highly enjoyable. This is a danceable calypso-esque song, with horns, drums, piano and percussion.
  4. Beastie Boys– Get It Together


    Ill Communication

    With Q-Tip providing additional vocal contributions, one of the better tracks on Ill Communication, the last great album the Beastie Boys released, so far anyway. Ma Bell got the Ill Communication. Indeed.

  5. Stone Roses, The– Made Of Stone


    The Stone Roses

    from one of the many golden eras of British pop, now reissued and remastered.

  6. Marley, Bob & The Wailers– Duppy Conqueror


    Burnin

    speaking of ululation, this track from one of my Desert Island discs3 has some funky background vocal effects. I suspect Peter Tosh is making sounds with his mouth emulating a cat purring, but who knows. Lovely track, not my favorite on this album, but every song by the classic edition of the Wailers4 is excellent in my estimation.

  7. O’connor, Sinead– All Apologies
    Universal Mother
    and speaking of trills and spills, love how O’Connor’s Irish brogue is noticeable on words like marriage, buried. Also imagine she sings in the son I feel as one, instead of the Kurt Cobainin the sun I feel as one, but I could be wrong.
  8. Callahan, Bill– Diamond Dancer


    Woke On A Whaleheart

    Bill Callahan’s5 decent, observational song about a girl who danced by herself so hard she became a diamond, gave the world her light. His baritone is so emotionless, he probably irritates you or enthralls you, depending upon your mood.

  9. We The People– You Burn Me Up And Down


    Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era, Vol. 4
    Florida based garage rockers, a favorite song from my favorite compilations of garage rock, the Nuggets series.

  10. Butthole Surfers– Mexican Caravan


    Psychic … Powerless … Another Mans Sac

    I came of age in Austin during the Butthole’s heyday, so of course I love this song and this band. Not everyone loves psychedelic punk rock songs about scoring Mexican heroin, that is their loss.

  11. The Black Keys– Stack Shot Billy


    Rubber Factory

    Modern garage rock, slightly derivative6 but still quite fun. One could compile an eclectic mix of Stagger Lee songs, ranging from the original recorded versions of bluesmen from the 1920s and 1930s, to the R&B versions in the 1950s to the 1960s British blues-rockers to The Clash to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds to The Black Keys. That Stagger Lee is a bad motherfucker.

all in all, a pretty good meditative soundtrack

Footnotes:
  1. no playlist today, just a shuffle [↩]
  2. 2006 [↩]
  3. an album I would theoretically take with me if I had foreknowledge I was going to be stranded on a desert island [↩]
  4. before Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh left [↩]
  5. aka Smog aka (Smog) for some reason [↩]
  6. but then what rock music isn’t? [↩]

C. G. Jung – Creation of a New Cosmology

Seth Anderson0 comment

More on Carl Jung’s so-called Red Book, previously discussed, but still unread, at least around these parts

He wrote it out himself, using a runic Latin and German calligraphy. Its opening portion, which begins with quotations from Isaiah and the Gospel according to John, is inked onto parchment, each section beginning with an initial illuminated as if by a medieval scribe with a taste for eyes, castles and scarabs.

The book’s accounts of Jung’s visions, fantasies and dreams are also punctuated with his paintings (some of which are on display in the exhibition), images executed during the years of World War I and the decade after that now appear as uncanny anticipations of New Age folk art of the late 20th century. They display abstract, symmetrical floral designs Jung came to identify as mandalas, along with almost childlike renderings of flames, trees, dragons and snakes, all in striking, bold colors.

But what is particularly strange about this book is not its pretense or pomposity but its talismanic power. It was stashed away in a cabinet for decades by the family, then jealously withheld from scholarly view because of its supposedly revealing nature. Since being brought into the open, partly through the efforts of the historian and Jung scholar Sonu Shamdasani (who is also curator of this exhibition), it has become a sensation.

A meticulously reproduced facsimile, published in October by W. W. Norton & Company, with detailed footnotes and commentary by Mr. Shamdasani (who also contributed to the volume’s accompanying translation), “The Red Book,” costing $195, is in its fifth printing.

[Click to continue reading Exhibition Review – ‘The Red Book of C. G. Jung – Creation of a New Cosmology’ – At the Rubin Museum, a Psychoanalyst’s Inner Universe – NYTimes.com]

Eight photo slide show, here.

Amazon has the book listed for sale, but is continuously temporarily out of stock. Didn’t the publisher realize that this would be a big selling book? We’ve all heard about it for years and years.

Reading Around on December 11th through December 12th

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A few interesting links collected December 11th through December 12th:

  • No Moods, Ads or Cutesy Fucking Icons (Re-reloaded) » Squidgate. Update. – I have three comments about the allegations therein. Firstly, the story claims that I was entering the US, not leaving it: this is empirically false. Secondly, I find it interesting that these guys characterise “pulling away” as “aggressive” behavior; I myself would regard it as a retreat. And thirdly, I did not “choke” anyone. I state this categorically. And having been told that cameras were in fact on site, I look forward to seeing the footage they provide.

  • Chicago Eats | Travel | Smithsonian Magazine – In 1951, author Nelson Algren wrote of Chicago streets “where the shadow of the tavern and the shadow of the church form a single dark and double-walled dead end.” Yet President Barack Obama’s hometown is also a city of hope. Visionaries, reformers, poets and writers, from Theodore Dreiser and Carl Sandburg to Richard Wright, Saul Bellow and Stuart Dybek, have found inspiration here, and Chicago has beckoned to an extraordinary range of peoples—German, Irish, Greek, Swedish, Chinese, Arab, Korean and East African, among many, many others. For each, food is a powerful vessel of shared traditions, a direct pipeline into the soul of a community. Choosing just a few to sample is an exercise in random discovery.


  • Butchers trimming pork bellies for bacon at Swift meat packing Packington Plant -1930

  • Earth’s Atmosphere May Have Alien Origin | Wired Science | Wired.com – krypton and xenon now present in the air — and many other atmospheric components as well — may be remnants of gas clouds swept up by the newly forming Earth. Or, they suggest, the gases may have been delivered to Earth by comets, in which the proportions of light isotopes for xenon and krypton are relatively higher.

Saturday Song Solipsism

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Another edition of Songs That Randomly1 Played While I Was In My Meditation Pod. I’m not good with “Best Of” lists, as my taste are too mercurial to lock down, so these meditations will have to suffice…

  1. Calexico– Corona


    Convict Pool

    One of my favorite new(ish) discoveries, and not just because Calexico were chosen to be the house band for the Bob Dylan soundtrack album, I’m Not Here. This is a cover of a great Minutemen song, from their best album,


    Double Nickles on the Dime

    and just not any cover, but a conjunto-esque mariachi version with fiddle, horns, etc. that swings. Highly enjoyable.

  2. The Dillards– Lemon Chimes
    Where The Action Is!: Los Angeles Nuggets 1965-1968
    I love garage rock, love these Rhino compilations, though this song has more of a bluegrass vibe. Written by Dewey Martin, later of Buffalo Springfield. 2:37 seconds only – must have been released as a 45 single.
  3. Johann Sebastian Bach – Bach Edition, Vol. 4 – Cantatas, Vol. 1 [Disc 3]
    Bach: Cantata #72, BWV 72, “Alles Nur Nach Gottes Willen” – Alles Nur Nach Gottes Willen- Ruth Holton, Sytse Buwalda, Etc.; Piet Jan Leusink: Netherlands Bach Collegium, Holland Boys Choir
    I bought a lot of new-to-me classical music last year, not least of which was the set this piece came from, The Complete Bach2- 155 CDs worth. Still haven’t finished playing the entire thing, much less converting all the discs to MP3.
  4. Green Day– Last Of The American Girls
    21st Century Breakdown
    Don’t understand why this band is so celebrated. Singer’s voice is irritatingly thin3, and the music seems very paint-by-numbers. Boring, in other words.
  5. Nelson, Willie– Laying My Burdens Down


    Naked Willie

    One of my favorite purchases in 2009 is this Willie Nelson album. Naked is not quite accurate description, Willie Nelson and long-time harmonica player Mickey Raphael just removed the schmaltzy strings and slick backup vocalists, and left vocal, bass, drum, and slinky jazzy guitar, remixing from the original multitrack tapes. Awesome in fact. Get a copy if you don’t have one.

  6. John Barry– Boom
    Boom! Soundtrack
    As much as I love Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, haven’t yet managed to sit through this film.
  7. Jerry Jeff Walker– North Cumberland Blues
    Vanguard Visionaries – Jerry Jeff Walker
    Surprisingly good, funky blues-rock with a nicely insistent bass line. Let’s have another round…
  8. Terry Hall & Mushtaq– Ten Eleven
    Music is your Radar
    part of an Uncut Magazine sampler put together by Damon Albarn celebrating Honest Jon’s Records. Terry Hall4 sings the chorus in English, Mushtaq5 sings the verse in Arabic6. Quite good in any case. I just ordered a copy of the album it came from, The Hour of Two Lights.
  9. Johann Sebastian Bach – Toccata and Fugue in D Minor for Organ, BWV 565- Klemens Scnorr
    The 99 Most Essential Pieces of Classical Music
    thought this was the Ozzy Osbourne song, Mr. Crowley7at first, probably because I think it is nearly the same opening riff, plus lots of trills / triplets / whatever-they-are-called.
  10. 13th Floor Elevators– The Kingdom Of Heaven (Is Within You) (stereo edition)


    The Psychedelic Sound of the 13th Floor Elevators

    My birthday splurge was the limited edition remastered version of all extant 13th Floor Elevators songs in a beautiful box set. Austin garage rock legends,8 this song has, as most do, some weird stuff going on in the background, and ends with a patented Roky Erickson scream.

  11. K’naan– 15 Minutes Away


    Troubadour

    one of the weaker tracks on a pretty good album (blogged about here). Something about being broke, and getting money from Western Union, 15 minutes away. I prefer the more political-oriented songs, this song sounds like filler.

Footnotes:
  1. again using the iTunes smartplaylist, This Years Models; criteria – added to library this year, more than 4 plays, not played in last 19 days [↩]
  2. blogged about it here [↩]
  3. hey, I own every Bob Dylan album, and his voice is, shall we say, unique. So it isn’t just musicality that matters [↩]
  4. of The Specials, et al [↩]
  5. of Fun-Da-Mental [↩]
  6. I think: album blurb says: In 2003, Hall collaborated with Mushtaq of Fun-Da-Mental on the album The Hour of Two Lights which contains contributions from a twelve-year-old Lebanese girl singer, a blind Algerian rapper, a Syrian flautist, Hebrew vocalists, a group of Polish gypsies and Damon Albarn. [↩]
  7. a song about English occultist Aleister Crowley from Blizzard of Oz [↩]
  8. influences include: LSD, Gurdjieff, the General Semantics of Alfred Korzybski, the psychedelic philosophy of Timothy Leary, Tantric meditation, you get the idea [↩]

Reading Around on December 10th through December 11th

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A few interesting links collected December 10th through December 11th:

    • Dr Peter Watts, Canadian science fiction writer, beaten and arrested at US border– “Along some other timeline, I did not get out of the car to ask what was going on. I did not repeat that question when refused an answer and told to get back into the vehicle. In that other timeline I was not punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, shit-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three fucking hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.). Nor was I finally dumped across the border in shirtsleeves: computer seized, flash drive confiscated, even my fucking paper notepad withheld until they could find someone among their number literate enough to distinguish between handwritten notes on story ideas and, I suppose, nefarious terrorist plots. I was not left without my jacket in the face of Ontario’s first winter storm, after all buses and intercity shuttles had shut down for the night.”In some other universe I am warm and content and not looking at spending two years in jail for the crime of having been punched in the face.”

  • The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs : A not-so-brief chat with Randall Stephenson of AT&T – By April, twelve weeks after that album came out, the Beatles had the top five spots on the Billboard chart.Now there was a lot of demand for that record — so much that the plant that printed the records could not keep up. Now here’s the lesson. Do you think the guys who were running Capitol Records said, Gee whiz, the kids are buying up this record at such a crazy pace that our printing plant can’t keep up — we’d better find a way to slow things down. Maybe we can create an incentive that would discourage people from buying the record. Do you think they said that? No, they did not. What they did was, they went out and found another printing plant. And another one and another one, until they could make as many records as people wanted. … Randall, baby. we’ve got a hit on our hands. We’ve got the smartphone equivalent of Meet the Beatles.
  • ‘Editor & Publisher’ to Cease Publication After 125 Years– Editor & Publisher, the bible of the newspaper industry and a journalism institution that traces its origins back to 1884, is ceasing publication.An announcement, made by parent company The Nielsen Co., was made Thursday morning as staffers were informed that E&P, in both print and online, was shutting down.

Pope ensconced in purple

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Pope ensconced in purple
Pope ensconced in purple, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Office cat living the highlife, modified with CameraBag, using the Helga setting1

decluttr

I don’t really know much about Holga cameras, other than they seem popular in the digital age, probably because they introduce an element of unpredictability into a photo. I’ve heard musicians add a bit of static (or vinyl record static, more precisely) into their digital music files for the same reason. A bit of analog signal in a digital world.

I’ve never used a Holga, but several iPhone applications emulate the process, as do some Photoshop filters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holga

The Holga is an inexpensive, medium format 120 film toy camera, made in China, appreciated for its low-fidelity aesthetic. The Holga’s cheap construction and simple meniscus lens often yields pictures that display vignetting, blur, light leaks, and other distortions. The camera’s quality problems have become a virtue among some photographers, with Holga photos winning awards and competitions in art and news photography.

The Holga camera was designed by T. M. Lee, and first appeared in 1982 in Hong Kong. At the time, 120 rollfilm in black-and-white was the most widely available film in mainland China. The Holga was intended to provide an inexpensive mass-market camera for working-class Chinese in order to record family portraits and events. After the cameras began to be distributed in the West, some photographers took to using the Holga for its surrealistic, impressionistic scenes for landscape, still life, portrait, and especially, street photography. In this respect, the Holga became the successor to the Diana and other toy cameras previously used in such work. A Holga photograph by David Burnett of former vice-president Al Gore during a campaign appearance earned a top prize in a 2001 White House News Photographers’ Association Eyes of History award ceremony.

Recently the Holga has experienced a revival due to the gaining popularity of toy cameras.

Footnotes:
  1. Helga not Holga, probably due to copyright reasons [↩]

Reading Around on December 9th through December 10th

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A few interesting links collected December 9th through December 10th:

  • From the Desk of David Pogue – Free Speech (Recognition) – NYTimes.com – Remember the Gmail brouhaha? … At the time, everyone was hysterical about the supposed privacy violation: Google will be reading my e-mail! Of course, no humans were looking at your e-mail. It was just a bunch of servers analyzing keywords. Today, everybody’s forgotten all about it. But now the issue rises again with Dragon Dictation.

    As for the names in your Contacts: they’re sent to Nuance so that the app will recognize the names when you dictate them. No other information (phone numbers, e-mail, addresses, etc.) is transmitted.

    What I don’t understand is: Why don’t these same people worry that Verizon or AT&T is listening in to their cellphone calls every single day? Why don’t they worry that MasterCard is peeking into their buying habits? How do they know Microsoft and Apple aren’t slurping down private documents off the hard drive and laughing their heads off?

    I mean, if you’re gonna be paranoid, at least be rational about it.

  • Jon22 » today’s grammar lesson: rob enderle – Rob Enderle is the Sarah Palin of the technology world, minus all the fun jokes about the front-door view of Russia.

  • Facebook’s New Privacy Changes: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly | Electronic Frontier Foundation – privacy option telling Facebook to “not share any information about me through the Facebook API.”

    That option has disappeared, and now apps can get all of your “publicly available information” whenever a friend of yours adds an app.

    Facebook defends this change by arguing that very few users actually ever selected that option — in the same breath that they talk about how complicated and hard to find the previous privacy settings were. Rather than eliminating the option, Facebook should have made it more prominent and done a better job of publicizing it. Instead, the company has sent a clear message: if you don’t want to share your personal data with hundreds or even thousands of nameless, faceless Facebook app developers — some of whom are obviously far from honest — then you shouldn’t use Facebook.

Ready for a scotch

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Ready for a scotch
Ready for a scotch, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Or something. Jeez, brutal out there.

view larger:
decluttr

from the National Weather Service forecast for Cook County:

Tonight…Mostly cloudy. A few flurries. Very cold. Lows 2 to 6 above…except 8 to 12 above downtown. Wind chills as low as 5 below to 15 below zero. West winds 10 to 20 mph with gusts up to 35 mph at times.

Thursday…Windy. Partly sunny. Very cold. Highs 12 to 16. Wind chills as low as 10 below to 20 below zero. West winds 20 to 30 mph. Gusts up to 35 mph.

Thursday Night…Partly cloudy. Blustery. Lows 5 to 9 above… Except 9 to 13 above downtown. Wind chills as low as 5 below to 15 below zero. Southwest winds 15 to 25 mph. Gusts up to 30 mph early in the evening.

[Click to continue reading 7-Day Zone Forecast for Cook County]

Don’t get me wrong, I actually like winter, at least in December and January. By February, the thrill of winter usually starts to fade, and March and April should be spring already damn it!1

Footnotes:
  1. though rarely does Chicago actually have spring until mid-April or early May [↩]

Wednesday Musical Meditation

Seth Anderson0 comment

Another installment of the music that plays during my evening meditation session1

  1. Felice Brothers– The Big Surprise


    Yonder Is The Clock

    are they really brothers? More alt-country, but this album and band has really grown on me.

  2. Joni Mitchell– Coin In The Pocket Mingus
    Charles Mingus talking about always having a little coin in his pocket. Not rich, but enough.
  3. Psycho Acoustic Sounds– Covered Wagon
    Godzilla vs. Ralph Records
    just like it says. Quick, full of energy, fun, but not music to play during family dinners.
  4. Ludwig van Beethoven – Symphony No. 4 in B-Flat Major, Op. 60: II. Adagio- London Symphony Orchestra

    I don’t know all that much about classical music, still, even after listening to it for more than half my life, but love this symphony. Also, in part because of my lack of musical training, I often visualize playing electric guitar in accompaniment – mostly on the sustained notes – whatever they are, oboe? French horn?

  5. Les Boukakes– Kallouha
    Marra


    “Marra” (Les Boukakes)

    Raï, with linky funk-esque verse, and heavy rock choruses. Not sure of the language, sounds Arabic, North African, or similar. Awesome. Get this if you can find a copy2.

  6. Joni Mitchell– A Chair In The Sky

    “Mingus” (Joni Mitchell)

    a very jazzy number, with fretless bass, slightly amorphous melody, some scat-singing by Joni Mitchell, an organ or vibes player that I could do without. All in all, an interesting song, but not a toe-tapper.

  7. Cluster– Rosa


    Zuckerzeit

    German instrumental electronica from 1974, always want to astral-project over meadows when listening to it.

  8. Andrew Jenkins– Alabama Flood
    People Take Warning (2 of 3) Man Vs. Nature

    “People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs 1913-1938” (Various Artists)

    tale of an Alabama flood, accompanied by guitar, fiddle and back-up vocal. How do they all fit into the can?

  9. They Might Be Giants– Withered Hope
    The Else
    meh. Not TMBGs best work, imo, lyrics are not sparkling. The Dust Brothers drum loops are ok.
Footnotes:
  1. generated from a iTunes smart playlist called This Years Models. Criteria is: added to iTunes library this year, more than four plays [↩]
  2. seems out of print [↩]