updates from the non-tusk internet

* this simple yet mind-blowing program displays your RSS feed headlines as LOLcats, via WayneReader, I highly recommend dragging the bookmarklet onto your toolbar and trying this out on pretty much any page with a RSS feed. just when I thought the whole LOLcat thing was getting stupid and self-referential and boring, this really reconnects the meme to its fundamental, chaotic, random roots - almost any RSS feed will yield some weirdly hilarious, strangely profound juxtapositions. here is the green lodge as a lolfeed for example.

* umeancompetitor has become unstuck from the internets

* my sister is blogging! it is called 'scarves & chapstick' but could be called 'adventures in substitute teaching and wedding planning'

* e. reeds is also semi-active again on the blog-front, bringing you interesting recipes, professional insights on menswear, charmingly absurd complaints, and raw hypochondria

* this New Yorker piece on Lenny Dysktra's amazing post-baseball career is easily the most hilarious and mind-blowing piece of literature to hit the internet in years, via Jayanthi, mandatory reading for anybody interested in sports or lifestyles but especially for those with even the vaguest understanding of who and how awesome Lenny Dysktra is

meanwhile, in real life -

* tonight rupture and shadetek @ glasslands, see you there

* tomorrow bboyz @ swiss institute, see you there

first

but first, pictures of emilio, my cutest friend and closest confidant. jeff & caitlin brought this friendly yet serious, insanely loveable little guy into the collective life of 502 about a year ago, iirc, and it is fucked up that I haven't shared him with you before now. *

readers, I present to you: emilio in wicker tunnel. you can click to make them bigger, higher res versions available upon request.



* obligatory link to ethan zuckerman lecture on how the internet is mostly for pictures of cute cats. cute cats: web 2.0 = lulz: web 3.0. tho I gotta admit I am feeling a bit of a weird internetty thrill posting these...

you're a rare collector's item

NEW BLOGWORTHY BLOG: B.J. Rube, of the iconic avant-lounge act Puttin on the Ritz, whose fucking wedding we played in October and I never blogged (need to do a wedding mega-post ASAP), who is probably at least slightly responsible for my 'etc' tic due to his online 'voice' which is as distinctive as his real life baritone, has an awesome new blog "Pukekos" (named for a typically rare and awesome New Zealand bird - appropriately since B.J. himself is married to an awesome New Zealand 'bird'). it is chock full of painstakingly encoded MP3s from dude's extensive collection of compelling-sounding and unfailingly obscure indie rock vinyl. this is one of those super-focused and content-rich blogs, a non-hidden treasure of hidden treasures for those interested in such things

COMING SOON TO THIS BLOG:

- photos from the studio
- one week of nothing but posts about songs from "Tusk"

the girl with the most cake

speaking of internet pleas - Andrea, author of what is shaping up to be one of the greatest blogs of all time, cake-time, needs your help finding a recording of a piece called "Three Dances" by John Cage. art-music loving bros, I know you are out there, anyone have this?

I also have a plea, which is for you to read Andrea's blog on the regs if you are interested in valuable and totally approachable personal finance tips, mouth-watering descriptions and great photos (courtesy of Grace natch) of amazing-sounding restaurants like this Korean fried chicken place, delicious-sounding recipes that even I might be able to cook, kittens in the bathtub, kittens getting adopted, etcccc - as those of you that know Andrea know she a great person to know, one of my very favorites, and it is awesome that she now has such a robust and true-to-life internet presence to know - do not miss!

first viral president first rasta president

btw here's yr perfect soundtrack to vibing out on the increasingly funny viral life of the Obama candidacy - check out the indispensable True Panther blog's MP3 of a new jam from Ghanian uh dude Blakk Rasta, called BARACK OBAMA (CRUNK MIX). it is crunk indeed, with a generous side of trance-hop, an addictive, fun-to-sing hook as well as an intriguingly heterodox ideology from the US perspective - look out for the racists, end poverty in Africa, also America burn in hell for legalizing abortion!* as discussed with link-sender Steev, it'll be interesting to see if this kind of intensely international, rainbow-colored support freaks out whitey if dude makes it to the general. as Steev said, rastafarianism has no concept of 'tacking to the center' -

also of random note - Obama doesn't have a 'campaign theme song', he just randomly picks an appropriate song from his iPod before each campaign event! this is what I was talking about before - the reason the internet has adopted him as its own is because it actually seems like the guy knows how to use computers and internets and iPods etc. that's kind of the secret slogan of the Obama campaign - Barack Obama is the only candidate that is not your parents! with all due respect to my respectably internet savvy mom and dad (read: they know how to find this blog!), natch. it's a generational thing - he's one of 'us', loosely speaking.

* actually not so heterodox at all - as we were reminded this week, Bush has probably done more than any US president to help healthcare poverty etc in Africa, aaand while abortion (and homosexuality, while we're discussing the rastagenda) are obv still legal I feel like Bush probably made a pretty decent effort to curtail them or whatever, or at least they I'm pretty sure he pandered a bit to the anti- groups when he could/had to. first rastafarian prez, anyone?

lulz

it's what you do things for aka the ultimate currency

resurfaced

luckily for us, alexis, easily one of the most astute users of the internet I know, has resurrected teen jeoparty, now blogcasting from maggie's philly-phasion site and featuring a new pro-looking layout -

- in addition to reminding me as always that there is this awesome thing called dancing that I never do enough of, the site has already clued me into the amazing slice of web reality that is Jorge Garcia's blog. I don't think the LOST power hour is gonna get done in time for season 3 folks, which I feel is kind of incredibly tragic, but I definitely gotta at least make time to rewatch some eps in the weeks ahead -

change

"Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal." - Schopenhauer

(via the Gmail 'web clips' robots that constantly, unobtrusively bring me nuggets of wisdom/news/etc that so often kill me with their appropriateness, it's mind-blowing and kind of intensely futuristic and just really fucking real to see what bubbles up from the unholy, 3.5 GB monstrosity that is my inbox)

lil wayne

thanks to the magical secret blogosphere of Google Reader's 'shared items' feature (Nate, Chris, Sean, Vern, and Wayne, I'm right there reading with you), I just read what I'm pretty sure is the best and truest essay on politics in all of human history, via Wayne's reader and written by Timothy Burke, that is going to be absolutely mandatory reading for everybody - but right now I can't get a web link to work? more on that later. UPDATE: it's here

more importantly, did you know that Wayne, with significant collaboration from his wife Becca, is going to be a daddy vvvv soon? and that in his compulsive musicological nerdery he's already analyzed, sampled, and remixed little Nico's currently enwombed heartbeat? yeah Wayne is awesome and parenthood is really fucking adorable, and considering her impressively brainy lineage and the awesome and well-rounded playlist he's working on for the little lady I'd say the odds are close to even that she'll be using fruity loops before she learns to walk. congratssss!

new flows

you know, I had a birthday recently and got asked a few times the requisite 'do you feel any different/have you changed' etc type questions, and I was like, "what do you mean, like, have I changed the way I use the internet? yes! it's really exciting. but have I changed 'inside', emotionally or otherwise? not for like at least 10 years or so. obv!" kind of a flip answer but really, enhancing those internet flows is just as important, and more importantly way more achievable, than trying to deal with our obscure, hopelessly stunted inner worlds, gnah mean?

so, in the spirit of a new year and new beginnings and all that, I've recently made a couple of significant changes to my work as well as my music flows, the results of will undoubtedly be reflected in the content of this blog in more as well as less obvious ways:

1- as I mentioned recently on the old blog, I've been mainlining energy-related news for work from a carefully managed Google Reader account, and filing away anything worthwhile on my rapidly growing del.icio.us page. instead of trying to read and remember things, which is impossible already and only gets more impossible the more you read, I just skim, tag, and let the knowledge accumulate until I need it, at which point I can easily call up the crumb trail of links I've been scattering.

as you've noticed if you're reading this on the actual page and not hiding like a coward behind yr RSS reader, I've taken the opportunity presented by my blog-move to add some new 'functionality' to this page, namely a continually updated list of my latest del.icio.us links as well as a tag cloud which you can use to explore my growing information nugget from various entry points. these will undoubtedly be tweaked a bit in the days/weeks to come but I encourage you to avail yourself of these resources if you're interested - as kind of my virtual filing cabinet for work stuff, I'll be keeping it at least as up-to-date as the blog and continually working to enhance its usability etc. comments welcome.

2 - after resisting for awhile, I 'finally' got around to getting an ipod, snagging one of those little new super small clip-on 1 GB nano-shuffle-jawns. we'll see how often I actually use it considering how rarely I leave the house these days, but I'm optimistic that it could offer a kind of solution to the repetitive/obsessive/limiting listening habits I've fallen into over the past year or so of not having a car. one of the best things about driving a car is getting a nice, relatively distraction-free (well, hah etc) environment to listen to music out in the world etc. I feel like 90% of the time I spend listening to music is in front of my computer, and at least 70% or so of that time involves me being more actively focused on work or other internet stuff. definitely not good for my ears or taste in the long run

so, am now working off of a system where I've cut my 'recently played' list to cover just the past week or so and every week I shovel a random selection of these into my iPod with the handy autofill feature, and then shuffle through subway and train rides etc, walking occasz. I kind of like not having any display to tell me what I'm listening to, makes it easy to listen w/o prejudice even if I can usually kind of figure it out, definitely one of those bugs that is totally a feature. for instance, the past few days I've been traveling with a great mix of Nate's Best of 2007 (lots of dreamy, vibe-suffused global prog-folk etc), the Twin Peaks Season 2 soundtrack (yess!), the recent Beanie Siegel and Joell Ortiz albums (rappp!), Black Dice's Load Blown (maybe not as genius as I hoped?), the Durty Goodz Axiom EP, David Lynch's audiobook (creepy, more on this for sure later), and, uhh, Urge Overkill's forgotten masterpiece Exit the Dragon (definitely more on this later too).

much like when I had the car and I just had CD mixes of whatever I'd downloaded from the interweb that week, it's pleasing to see how many connections there end up being between music that doesn't have any particular relation to each other other than the fact that I sought them out and/or stumbled across them at this particular time, in this particular state of mind - connections that would probably be harder to see if I was skipping around tracks based on who they were by, what I thought I wanted to hear, my generally highly orthodox feelings about what kind of music vibes are appropriate pairings with a given environmental vibe, etc