Introducing RD Burst

A couple days ago, I came to realization that I haven't blogged in, like, forever. Then I remembered I had intended to write some crap on the blog on multiple occasions during the last couple months, but I decided not to 'cause it would too much time (and stuff).

Hence, I decided to try a different format of writing, a format that is a lot less formal, thus significantly less time consuming, than Radio Diatribe. What do I mean by "less formal"? I mean more spelling/grammar errors, less coherent (by at least 80%), and considerably smaller post sizes.

So, without further retardedly incoherent blabbering, I present to you RD Burst, a brand new blog with less than 20% coherence compared to the original Radio Diatribe.

So, you did a lot of drugs

From Life of a UW Math Student:
"It's a video of him at a park just filming stuff interspliced with footage from Fire Birds. I don't really know how to describe it, it's creepy as hell. Like he kept zooming in on people and then zooming out to the scenary."

I wish I had thought of this.

Back in Waterloo, started co-op job, voted in B.C. election

I voted in B.C. provincial election by absentee ballot.

It was the most enjoyable vote so far as I was actually able to vote for the party I want to vote for, not the Liberals for the fear of the Conservatives, as I had in every other election that I cast vote in (2003 Ontario provincial and 2004 federal). See, there's no chance that anyone other than the B.C. Liberal (read B.C. Neo/Social-Con Alliance - it's not affiliated with the federal Liberals at all) candidate is going to get elected in my hillbilly inland B.C. riding, so there's no point wasting my vote for NDP, which I don't really trust anyways.

I should also mention that B.C. is having a referendum on whether to replace with the completely retarded "first past the post" system with "single transferable vote" system. There has been a lot of bitching about the new system, but I voted yes as I found most of them pretty unconvincing.

For example, some have claimed that Ireland, which use the STV system, have very few women and minorities in its parliament and the same thing's going to happen in B.C. WTF? It's like that in Ireland because it's a ultra-conservative, hyper-religious country that was ruled by the Catholic Church until just a few decades ago. More popular is the one that goes like "oh my fucking god, B.C. Liberals are going to be in power for ever and ever because STV will stop people from voting strategically and the left vote (which NDP currently gets most of) will be split between NDP, Greens, Marijuana, and Sex Party." Considering that the two major factions (Jesus-freaks vs. secular neo-cons) in the B.C. Liberal Party are always out to get each other, and that the party's made up mostly of ruthless opportunists, with a electoral system that allows candidates from small parties to get elected (such as STV), it's quite possible that the right will be split into even smaller pieces than the left.

Well, at least that's what I think.

I have to work tomorrow; I should sleep.

Just two more days

I'll be flying home on Tuesday, just in time for the birch pollen alergy season. Pus will be oozing from my eyes the moment the plane starts descending.

This is bad

I made a startling discovery a few weeks ago.

Three songs on Discovery (yes, the album from Daft Punk) are ripoffs.

(I didn't intend to make that horrible pun; it just happened. Speaking of pun, I couldn't help but notice that every other review for Daft Punk's latest album, Human After All, contained the same pun - something along the line of "This album kinda so so. I guess Daft Punk's human after all. OMG LOL!!!" I didn't realize that there were so many Peggy Hill clones walking among us.)


Other news:
LCD Soundsystem (a.k.a. Jame Murphy, everyone's favourite lumberjack) and M.I.A. are performing at the Opera House in Toronto on May 21. I am going. (I've never been to the place; I hope the atmosphere there isn't too Queen-St.-scary/skanky.)

Gondry at MIT

Michel Gondry is at MIT, like, right now. Had I the time (and a roundtrip plane ticket, and a camouflage kit, and money, and ...), I would be in Cambridge, MA stalking him right now. Argh!

Throwing $42.54 into the Church of Beck collection basket, pt. 4

Guero Deluxe 2-Disc Edition: $36.99 * 1.15 = $42.54 (at HMV).


Outside. 


Inside. 

I can't stop obsessing about Beck, pt. 3

A quote from a post on Lightning Struck Itself, a blog by Clem Bastow:

Somebody once said, in relation to Beck's eclecticism, that 'no one in real life likes country and hip hop' ... It is his tenth album and his second made having returned wholeheartedly to the arms of a certain celebrity church/cult, the one that actively encourages its members not to seek inspiration, friendship or collaboration from 'no-case-gains' ... Guero led me to something of a revelation: could it be that this 'faith's' cultural isolationism is at the root of Beck's legendary eclecticism? If you're raised within a vacuum, it's pretty hard to worry about liking country and hip hop - and samba and jazz and metal and rock and, and...

This made me remember something I read a couple months ago.

"The revolution that failed", Salon.com:

Spike Jonze, while not as cantankerous as those three, comes off as an immature, insecure skate-punk prankster with little intellectual curiosity and a blissful ignorance of pre-"Star Wars" culture. This may be why his movies, "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation," seem so original -- he isn't imitating classic films of the past because he's never even seen them. Waxman reports that one day on the set of the former film Jonze took Malkovich aside to tell him he was overacting a scene. "I was getting a little Blanche there, wasn't I?" the star agreed. Jonze looked puzzled. "Blanche Dubois," responded Malkovich. "Tennessee Williams? 'A Streetcar Named Desire'? Blanche Dubois?" Jonze could only shrug; he had no idea what Malkovich was talking about. "What did you get me into?" Malkovich moaned to producer Steve Golin, who could only respond, "At least it won't be derivative."

Obsessing about Beck, pt. 2

Oh my fucking god, Beck is a Scientologist (thank you for the info, Dave).

1. The Guardian says Beck is a Scientologist.


2. The liner notes in Guero thanks Jenna Elfman who is well, uhh... Here's a link.


3. Beck showed up at a party with a known Scientologist.


4. This: The Secret Life of Beck Hansen - A Guide for the Professional Journalist


5. In the interview published by the Planet magazine, Beck sounds very uncomfortable when George W. Bush and Jesus come up as a subject. (Read The Secret Life of Beck Hansen.)


6. Beck recently performed at a Scientology gala.


7. His mom (Bibbe Hansen), dad (David Campbell), wife (Marissa Ribisi), brother-in-law (Giovanni Ribisi), and mother-in-law (Gay Ribisi) are all Scientologists.

I wonder if Sofia Coppola is a Scientologist too. (That would be just terrible).

Only 4 days to go 'til Beck's new album

With Beck's newest album, Guero, set to drop in four days, I am feeling strangely compelled to disseminate irrelevant and trivial information about Beck (damn you, obsessive-compulsive tendencies that run in the family). So here it is:

• Beck is married to Marissa Ribisi, the twin sister of Giovanni Ribisi. Giovanni is a close friend of Sofia Coppola. (God, I love Sofia.)


• Issue 9 of Planet magazine (which I bought today at KW Book Store) has Beck on the front cover and an advertisement for Sofia, the alcopop-in-can from from the Niebaum-Coppola Winery, on the back.


• Beck's grandfather, Al Hansen, who was a founder of the Fluxus movement, discovered Yoko Ono.


• Beck's mother, Bibbe Hansen, was part of Andy Warhol's Factory scene (here's a link to a very interesting interview of Bibbe Hansen by Vaginal Davis for index magazine).


• Smokey, who plays bass guitar for Beck, was a member of Cibo Matto, whose drummer was Sean Lennon, John and Yoko's son.


• The video for "E-Pro", first single off Guero, was done by Shynola, a British design team. They are represented in U.S. by The Directors Bureau, which was founded by Sofia Coppola, Roman Coppola (her brother), and Mike Mills.


• Guero was produced by The Dust Brothers. Beck and the Brothers (who are not actually brothers) also collaborated on Odelay.


• The Dust Brothers also produced Paul's Boutique, the album that established Beastie Boys as hip-hop gods. Sean Lennon, who played drums for Cibo Matto, which included Smokey, who plays bass for Beck, was signed to Beastie Boys' label, Grand Royale. That is, before the label/magazine went kaput in 2001.

I think that should do for today.

Yahoo acquires Flickr

God, oh, no.

One more reason to like Haruki Murakami

An excerpt from The Paris Review, No. 170

Interviewer: Did you think that book [Norwegian Wood] as an exercise in style, or did you have a specific story to tell that was best told realistically?

[Haruki] Murakami: I could have been a cult writer if I'd kept writing surrealistic novels. But I wanted to break into the mainstream, so I had to prove that I coulde write a realistic book. That's why I wrote that book. It was a bestseller in Japan, and I expected that result.

Interview: So it was actually a strategic choice.

Murakami: That's right. Norwegian Wood is very easy to read and easy to understand. Many people liked that book. They might then be interested in my other work; so it helps a lot.

Daft Punk, fuck yeah!

Fuck yeah! 

Soon, we'll be assualted by furious storms of poo

The geese are back
Originally uploaded by gloom.

They are back.

How to get your own Audioscrobbler sidebar running

After contemplating Dave's rather bizarre offer of forgiveness, I have decided to release the code I used to generate the Audioscrobbler sidebar.

So here it is:



The above piece of code will generate JavaScript file that you can link from your blog by putting the following lines of HTML in your Blogger template.




The PHP script uses Magpie RSS Parser, which you should be able to get from here. You should read the Magpie FAQ on caching. (For this, all you need to do is create a directory named 'cache' in the directory where you put the PHP script.)

U of W's Computer Science, Mathematics, and Engineering undergraduate web servers are PHP-enabled, so you should be able to run the script from your web space. As for Artsies, ESers, and AHSers, I don't know if you can run PHP scripts.

"What I am listening to now" sidebar

As you might have already noticed, I now have the "What I am listening to now" sidebar.

For those of you who are technically inclined, it's powered by Audioscrobbler RSS feed and Magpie RSS Parser.

If you aren't already using Audioscrobbler, you really should. I mean, how else would you find out you have 50% musical taste match with a really skanky Finnish man?

Thanks to Dave, from whose blog entry I discovered Audioscrobbler.

Beck LP release date announced

Beck's new LP, titled Guero, will finally hit stores on March 29!

The first single, E-Pro, will be released next month (that's February).

Yay!

Another year

Another year, another term, a shit load of homework.

Gah, it's only the second week of lecture!