Taking a break from the grim and the grime.

This may seem odd to some of you, but when I get stressed out from essay writing, studying, reading (when and if those htings ever actually take place), I promised myself just a few hundred more words, then I can take a break and turn to reading a little Mark Steyn.

If you know Mark Steyn you probably already dislike him. A political writer (primarily), Steyn is one of the foremost commentators on politics in the Anglosphere, and well-recognized as one of the most influencial...ahem...conservative writers at the moment.

Yes yes, I read right-wing politics. The Right is generally where my political interests tend to lie (as though most of you didn't know that already). This certainly isn't by choice; God knows nobody wants to be labelled a right-winger when you're a university student studying a humanities course. "The Right" just happens to be the title that best suits how I've developed in terms of my morals.

But Steyn's witing holds a special attraction for me in that it is so damn GOOD. And once in a while, he writes a scathing, perfectly articulated film review, Broadway critique, or, as he does every week, the history behind an old musical standard (by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sintra, Comden and Green, Rogers and Hammerstein, etc etc). These articles are such a joy to read that they are usually my break from my own sad attempts at eloquence in prose.

So, if one is able to put aside that Steyn is constantly labelled a Canadian Warmonger (a title he loves, actually) then you may enjoy as few of his articles on music. Look for his film reviews too. And should you be so inclined, his political insight is almost painfully sharp.

Cheers. (here's this week's)

Brief, and in Technicolor

You guys will love this. I'll spare you the chatter (Le Morte D'Arthur essays don't write themselves), but check these websites out if you're a pretentious music geek who loves owning things that other people will not. I weep for my lack of liquid cash, for I could easily drop $200 on these kickass rock posters.

Dan Stiles (click Rock Posters at the left)
Todd Slater
The Heads of State

Cheers all.

Like Britain in the early sixites...

Things are beginning to come, once again, full circle. Just like the 50s and 60s, when pop music was just coming out of its infancy and "single" records determined the breadth of your dominion over your peers, the emphasis these days is no longer on the full-length album.

Album sales are falling and the completion of any kind of album, in the classic album mentality, is rapidly going out of style. YouTube and the ever popular forms of music downloading only continue to foster the music industry into a singles market. Anybody know T.I. King? His album was titled the 3rd best of 2006 by PitchforkMedia, yet what do we all know him for? His one popular song, "What You Know About That?"

Don't even get me started on Gnarl's Barkley's "Crazy". If anybody has heard the entirety of St. Elsewhere, please review it for me. Let me know if it was worth the pain of watching Cee-Lo belt out "Crazy" in every eclectic style he can muster.

What of the concept album then? Think of all the recent concept albums that have made it big (and I mean REALLY been a hit). I don't think there are that many. Sufjan Stevens' Illinoise got good reviews, but it was something of an underground indie-darling.

Anyway, the NY Times sums it up better than I can. This is hardly new news anyway.

Lost in Romanian Translations

Francis Ford Coppolla, who has been missing from the silver screen since '97, is set to release a new film within the year, starring none other than Mr. Orange himself (or was it Mr. Blonde...there were so many of them). The film has an interesting plot, so I won't spoil it for you, I'll let you read.

Fantastic make-up department too. You'll know what I mean when you see it.
Cheers. Nap Time.

Q would never have allowed this

(A huge thanks to Guarav for this one!)

It's like a horrible, fun-house mirror image of that scene from Goldfinger, where Bond is driving through the Swiss countryside, tracking his nemesis with a little in-dash radar screen that eerily beeps the entire time.

Only now, as with so much of the Bond gadgetry, the eternal pursuit of the future has gotten into the hands of children, and the hands of those who prey on them. According to a new article from the Associated Press, AOL plans to release a downloadable new feature for their AIM chatting, the ominously-titled Skyhook. The feature enables chatters to locate their conversation partner physically via an online mapping system.

"So what," you say. Shouldn't people already know where their friends are? After all, this is the age of WiFi, crime-deterrant street cameras, and 12 year-olds with cellphones. This is hardly a Jetson's leap.

Yet, as Guarav correctly pointed out, this seemingly innocuous little widget only allows those same little 12 year olds to make themselves an even faster victim of online predators. These disgusting people already have a tendency to spend too much time in front of computers, so I don't imagine it's a stretch of the imagination to suppose that one or two of them have the computer know-how to hack into a Skyhook signal and find out where their target is located. Not to mention that fact that young children are often all too willing to give up personal information anyway. Adding an undesirable as a friend on AIM, or whatever they're using, might not be given a second thought.

It's a scary world.

I'm not sure what else to say, besides that science today fascinates me. We've found species we thought to be extinct, recently realized that the chicken pox vaccine will not last the average human into old age, and how this...the beginnings of human morality (a feature of humanity long thought to have been exclusively our) might be found in primates.

Have a look, this from the NY Times.

Cheers

Bonus of Sunshine!

A quick bonus for all my missed days!
Eternal Sunshine rains upon all of us in time for spring!
Cheers.