Archive for 2010
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Trolling For Dollars: Topics For Impolite Conversation
[ Comments Off ]Posted on September 18, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Saturday, September 18th, 2010I miss the rules of polite conversation, wherein one avoids religion and other sensitive topics as a social grace. But I’ll gladly utilize their absence to generate page views or filter out people I won’t enjoy talking to.
  Yeah, I’m A Troll. Throw Me A Line Here, Will Ya? |
I miss the good old days, when polite people had a silent agreement that there were certain things you just didn’t talk about except amongst close friends. The lists vary, but amongst the affluent, it was generally religion, income, and personal health. For hairdressers, it was religion and politics. For British friends of mine, the rule was no jokes about the Queen, the Pope, or Jesus. Well, ever since someone opened that whole can, I’ve given up and been gleefully pulling out more worms whenever I’m able, in the hope that the conversations will burn themselves up so we can get back to talking about fun stuff, like sports and movies and food and books. Or advanced lovemaking techniques. Or whatever. So prepare to be offended here. But a little preface, lest you think you have any insight into the details of my stance on various topics as a result of reading my capricious trolling. I love science, and I believe in a consciousness greater than the individual mind. And those frameworks are compatible in my world. But in spite of my confidence in science, I feel we should add it to the “off-limits” list, should we ever return to old-school conversational etiquette, because thanks to rabid creationists, a lot of atheist scientists were goaded outside their legitimate territory, and into trying to apply science to topics it knows nothing about. Like the origin of the universe. Or lots of other things that are more like philosophy than science. So. On with the trolling! First up: religion. I had a belly laugh yesterday when I read that the Pope said that religion was being marginalized around the world. Yes, Mr God’s Representative on Earth, it is. Maybe it would help if the cost of one of your papal robes weren’t equal to the GDP of many starving countries, or if you’d be a little more proactive about addressing that whole pedophile priest business. Apologies are nice, but many think that maybe you should look into your own church’s history for a more fitting punishment for your errant and perverted clerics. Because you really should have your terrestrial affairs in order before you start baptizing aliens, right? And Islam? Although I find myself defending you a lot lately, I’m not too fond of the bits where you stone people (this article blames the practice on the Torah), subjugate women in a nearly neanderthal fashion, and generally let your heavily paternal secular culture poison any hope of popular spiritual enlightenment. I hesitate to mention Judaism, because there’s danger of talking about Palestine, and to discuss this topic in certain circles will certainly lead down a really bad rabbit hole. Oops. I just did it. But did I leave anybody out? Of course I did, the “big three” are Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. I’m too ignorant to talk about Hinduism, I only mentioned Judaism because in spite of comprising less than 1% of the world’s population, it gets a tremendous amount of press, and Buddhists not only by nature aren’t an organization, but their estimated number varies from 100 million to 1 billion, largely because political oppression in the countries that might be most Buddhist prevents accurate information gathering. So we don’t even know who the big three really are. I imagine if there were more oil where there are people of other faiths, we’d know all about them, so we could irrationally fear them. But there isn’t, so we don’t. So, on to science. I’ve been amused for a while about about the whole “Intelligent Design” debate. Somehow, modern people have taken one of the central mysteries of our existence – one that has little hope of being explained with absolute certainty with any system – and decided that one side or the other (i.e.: atheist scientists or religious creationists) has the answer. Which is why I’ve decided I’m a little at odds with both when it comes to the creation of the universe and evolution. I mean, face it. No one can say with certainty what was going on in the universe in early human history (say, ten thousand years ago), let alone FOURTEEN BILLION YEARS AGO. And all the fun and usefulness of Darwinian thought is shot to hell as soon as it becomes DOGMA. So for some real fun in these areas, one of my favorite points of view to toss into casual philosophical conversation is Geocentrism. Because in the anthropocentric universe in which we live, how could the Earth be anything BUT the center of the universe, right? Read some interesting (if a bit carelessly assembled) points of view here. One of my faves is the one in which astrophysicist George F. R. Ellis points out that science relies on philosophical criteria to select its models for astrophysics, which makes the arguments intrinsically undisprovable. Just ignore the vintage web design if you can. And Darwin? That’s like shootin’ fish in a barrel. Just start with the simple factual statement that IT’S ONLY A THEORY. That gives the creationists fodder, and puts the hardcore science types immediately on the defensive. If things get off to a slow start, just mention nuts who write stuff like The Origin of Specious Nonsense. My apologies in advance for that site if you visit it, but the guy’s material is excellent fodder. Just watch him talk about sperm for 5 minutes in the clip below if you have any doubts. So “what”, you may ask, “is the purpose of this trolling?” I find that in most social settings, this is the easiest way to ferret out the know-it-alls and extremists so I can have a good time with the normal people. Plus, it generates page views. Any suggestions of your own for trolling topics? Read the rest of this entry »
The Audio Version Of David Byrne’s Bicycle Diaries Is Destined For A Mashup
[ Comments Off ]Posted on September 17, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Friday, September 17th, 2010David Byrne’s got to find a city to live in. And he’s doing it by bicycle. Check out Byrne’s clever marketing and creative production of the audio version of his book “Bicycle Diaries”.
I’ve always felt a funny connection with David Byrne’s work. I have this mild delusion that I’m an alien anthropologist, sent here to observe the strange behavior of humans. It makes it easier to accept all the killing, abuse and neglect they engage in with each other. And as a musician, I’ve always leaned on technology and tend to “talk sing” because my voice has a rich timbre but I have no real skill musical or singing skill. If you’re at all familiar with Byrne’s music, alien-like demeanor, disturbing gaze, and unusual speech patterns, I think you can understand why I feel a certain simpatico. Which is why I’m looking forward to the release of the audio version of his book Bicycle Diaries
Some People Will Do Anything To Get High
[ Comments Off ]Posted on September 16, 2010 by admin in Health & Wellness
Thursday, September 16th, 2010You never really notice how many people around you are getting high until YOU’RE NOT. And I bet you didn’t know that there’s research that shows that the color of the paint you huff affects the high.
 These days I get most of my kicks from photoshopping my friends’ faces into paint huffer mug shots. Hi Eric! |
What’s so bad about reality? I mean, do you find it somehow telling that more than 60% of Americans drink, but only 29% have college degrees? Don’t get me wrong, I started my personal war on drugs (they eventually won) at the age of eleven, with an accidental acid trip, and managed to try just about every drug available in the Western hemisphere over the next few decades. So oddly, the longest stretch of sobriety I can claim myself is just over ten years. I started thinking about how many people are getting high the other day when I was buying a chocolate bar at a local liquor store, and the kid in front of me paid over 50 bucks for 3 grams of something called “Dragon Spice” that looked like Marijuana. He should’ve tried Amazon, they have it for $39.99
Great Singers Who Can’t Sing
[ 4 Comments ]Posted on September 15, 2010 by admin in Music
Wednesday, September 15th, 2010How a video of a seven year-old started an hour-long debate about great singers who can’t sing. Who would YOU put on that list?
  Why Does Tom Waits always end up on lists like this? |
If you want to get a friendly but heated argument started, just start naming singers that can’t sing. I did this by accident the other day when a friend played me the clip of then 7-year-old Connie Talbot singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on “Britain’s Got Talent” (also below). There are a few points where she wobbles and eviscerates any concept of accurate pitch, but immediately follows with gut-wrenching feeling and a dynamic vibrato for her age. Overall, she “puts it across” with incredible impact, and you’d have to be pretty damn jaded (or maybe just hate kids) to not get at least a little bit of a teary eye. So the debate started when I said pretty much what I just said here, but elaborated by saying something like “but there are plenty of singers who can’t sing that we love to listen to, people like Tom Waits, or Frank Sinatra, or Fiona Apple“. That was an unfortunate choice for a short list, because if you want to get jumped by an angry mob that’s foaming at the mouth wanting to kick your ribs in with steel-toed boots, just be sure to pick at artists that have a rabid cult following that’s based more on an emotional connection to the artist than a well-considered analysis of their singing skills and gifts. Like Tom Waits. Or Barbra Streisand. Before I go on to share the expanded list that resulted from the ensuing debate, I should provide some background on how my opinions are guided. I grew up in a music store with well-tuned concert-pitch instruments around all the time, so on the one hand have an impeccable sense of pitch. On the other hand, I also love music from all over the world with all its non-western tunings and scales, and the first instrument I played with passion was the electric guitar, an instrument that can be horrifying in its lack of proper intonation. And as a singer, I have great pitch, but resort to odd styling and diction to mask my feeble or non-existent vibrato. Imagine a weird amalgam of Bing Crosby and Richard Butler of The Psychedelic Furs. So understand that this is mostly about taste, and is meant to be more about analysis and opinion than “criticism”. Feel free to chime in with your own picks, I’d like to do a followup with video clips as examples. Oh. One more thing. Bob Dylan sucks. Read the rest of this entry »
New Google Technology Makes Humans Superfluous
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on September 14, 2010 by admin in Technology
Tuesday, September 14th, 2010Google’s search technology has become so good at predicting what you want to search that they’ll soon be doing away with you altogether.
Words could never begin to express the sense of relief I felt today when I read on the Google Blog that they’ve finally developed technology to do away with the human element altogether. After more than two years of generating original content every day, I run out of juice occasionally, and I was starting to worry that I would become one of the millions of user-generated content generators that fails to generate, and ends up apologizing for why I haven’t posted recently. By the way, if you need to filter the 111,000,000 results from that link, there’s a blog for that. And although I have some regrets that this new Google technology will render my existence unnecessary, in a way I’m looking forward to doing whatever it was that I did before the Internet came along. If only I can remember what it was without Googling it. In any case, until Google activates this new, completely human-free web, you may be interested to know that that as a user-generated content generator, you can already build an entire web site without even resorting to the content farms I was making fun of a few weeks ago. That’s right. Primal Pages lets you enter a phrase, and then assembles existing content from around the web for you. After you answer the question “What are you thinking about?”, you really don’t have to make any more conscious decisions except whether or not to click the “publish” button. As their tagline says: “If the website you need doesn’t exist, let Primal Pages build it for you in seconds.” I for one welcome this human elementless web, although I didn’t go down without a struggle. I thought that if I made a YouTube clip of a letter to Google using Google Scribe, that the Internet search deity might lend an ear. Clip below. Read the rest of this entry »