goddesscafe

Friday, January 25, 2002 :::

No, if you were in the Bay Area tomorrow night you would be attending Rodrigo's party in honor of his new goth roommate. :p Tonight, sly squiggle and I are attending this. Lest one think I've suddenly developed a political consciousness about Bangladesh (a place I know absolutely nothing about), I'm really going to see my fave DJ. But hey, better my money go towards a humanitarian cause than simply to the bar.

btw, everyone, Rodrigo. Rodrigo, everyone. *hands shaken all around* Now you've all met. He's Valerie's squeeze, and Valerie knows Mark, and Mark knows Kevin, and I know Kevin, so that's how I know Mr. Diaz and that's why he's here. Heh. He works quite close to me and comes and rescues me sometimes, occasionally for motorcycle rides, more often for him to get a coffee fix.

::: posted by alura allumeuse at 4:58 PM

rodrigo, it's me, kevin, who replied. the name should be listed below the message, in light blue. i believe it would/should apply to the marin taliban as well. the world court, that is.

you can be part of the solution, part of the problem, or... part of the perpetuation (or would status quo be part of the problem?)... or removed from the problem/solution entirely (very difficult, though; if you're a hermit who uses no resources and grows his own food, perhaps).

btw, if i were in the bay area on saturday night, i'd do this. it's at 1320 Potrero St. (at 25th). just a suggestion.

::: posted by kevin seal at 4:18 PM

World court, huh, interesting point. Is there much of a president for this? In addition, would this apply to the "Marin Taliban"?

How does a moral person live in an immoral world? As it there more than just the dichotomous western perspective of " if you are not part pf the solution you are part of the problem"?

alura and kurt: remember that cock e.s.p. show we went to six days ago? remember how we were having trouble breathing? we thought it was the cherry bombs. we were wrong. the eugenics council tear-gassed us.

on another side note... a side note ancillary to the other side note: one-quarter of the nasoftware team believes that the world will end by 2012. kurt, if you and i start believing this stuff, then we can start saying that half the office thinks armageddon is a decade away.

two words, rodrigo: world court. guantanamo bay should not be a U.S. military tribunal. if we're going to follow the historical precedent of nuremberg and geneva, then we should open it up to a multilateral decision. just my opinion, though.

::: posted by kevin seal at 3:03 PM

Enron vice-chair shoots himself

::: posted by stuart l. at 10:13 AM

I am new to this blogg thing so I apologize in advance for my plebian errors, terrible spelling and inkhorn terminology from this theory addict. That said several questions to pose:

How far do we consider people responsibility, During the Nuremberg trials they said they were just following orders. Of the new residents in Cuba, which their position is even doubtful (should they not be returned to Afghanistan to face a jury of their piers? If they only shot at US soldiers and not civilians, are not simply prisoners of war-as oppose to atrocities committed against humanity by the definition of the Geneva Convention; as in, we returned captured Japanese soldiers?) Who should share in the responsibilities of the atrocities committed by the Taliban against women, and who should decide that?

That’s just one consideration. I am very interested in "the Marin Taliban" and what will become of him. What are internationals laws regarding this? Who does he represent in the psyche of the American public?

Finally: " Soon everything will be a simulacra of false authenticity and validation will come only from the deepest and most personal self confession combined with the most extravagant display of that divulging rodomontade "-Find the source

Sex definitely contributed to stick-figure extinction, but so did kung-fu.

::: posted by kevin seal at 9:09 AM

Thursday, January 24, 2002 :::

The First Lady's advice for worthless Enron stock? Decoupage. ;)

This site, while big on the anti-Israeli viewpoint in other pages (and blaming the media for complicity that frankly I think they're too ignorant to have...it goes much higher than that), does have this good page with links to surprising mainstream news articles, all put together in classic hypertext writing style. (like, paragraphs 1 and 11 were especially interesting to me)

Someone joined the blog today. He is not, however, El Cid. (nor is he El Seed, come to think of it)

::: posted by alura allumeuse at 9:03 PM

The answer is, yes. I have many designs you havn't seen - however designs that are worth sharing are harder to come by. (Boring clients - not much creative control on my end, etc...) My current web design baby is the ever improving Vox site*. I also have a slew of print projects, but nothing I want to show yet. :)

On another note - I found my old Polaroid SX-70 (those of you who grew up in the late 70's and eighties will remember these Charles Eames designed, finger damaging - beautiful aluminum and leather folding wonders). Walked over to the local Helix, and have been having a grand time with Time-Zero film and image modification*.

::: posted by Rogue Designer at 12:01 PM

Wednesday, January 23, 2002 :::

yeah, our good friend mcgrew* (the drummer from griddle) returned on monday from a month in brazil. i'm waiting for the full story; all i've heard so far (via xifer) is that he got laid like crazy. 'tis a good thing... the boy needed it.

speaking of web design... rogue, do you have any hidden designs that we haven't seen yet?

::: posted by kevin seal at 5:17 PM

All my friends make me feel the same way. (i.e. underachieving) Especially you, darling musician/journalist/software company director. That's why I keep you around, you see. To kick my ass into its proper creative state.

The twins were cool, though. Even if they did make chili with tofu and play a strange card game called asshole. :p

Got my first e-mail from Guinevere, my favorite Collins girl that Elissa's friend randomly ran into at a hostel recently. She works for Public Citizen and is headed to Brazil next week for the World Social Forum. What a life.

The lefty writings of Monty Python's Terry Jones have been in the papers...in Dec he said that grammar was the first casualty of war. Now he's making more pointed comments about the futility of a war that seems to have only resulted in Osama looking "haggard." And he wrote on the prisoners that Alex blogged about.

::: posted by alura allumeuse at 4:35 PM

alura met the giddens twins -- curran and mike -- this past weekend. kurt's known them for years. turns out that both of them are badass web designers. i had no idea (humble guys that they are). mike designed the just-relaunched homunculus site in DHTML.

curran went through the flash tutorial last year, spent a few months on it (only got about a quarter through the tutorial), and he made some crazy-cool shit. (btw, he recommends flashkit.com for those of us wanting to learn it.) he designed globe, his homunculus animation, and this flash dj toy... the main entrance to his site is here.

oh, and spencer yeh wrote a novel in one month, this past november. i'm starting to feel like an underachiever.

::: posted by kevin seal at 3:49 PM

Same company - different anim. Eva Breaks In.

::: posted by Rogue Designer at 12:26 PM

run lothar run* and the much-talked-about metallica drummer parts 1 and 2. and, the brand spanking new (although i don't think daniel or kristen believe in spanking) liam cardozo.

in answer to elissarita's question. should we be looking harder at saudi arabia and pakistan? i don't know. i wish i understood more. i'm not sure what to believe anymore, honestly. i don't feel that i can form a solid opinion based on what we've been told. that's the effect of a media blackout -- given the choice between uninformed support and uninformed dissent, uninformed support is the safe option.

i enjoyed martin sherman's letter, but i think it's dangerous to romanticize blacklisting. (it's satire, i know. but i wish it was more over the top -- if it committed to a full-on swiftian notion, it would sit more comfortably with me.)

::: posted by kevin seal at 12:15 PM

* The rolling blackouts, which occurred on generally low-demand days, were not caused by a shortage of power plants, but by energy companies looking to maximize their prices and profits.
* Throughout late 2000 and 2001, when prices skyrocketed, California used less electricity than prior years, in which prices were stable and there were no blackouts.
* Californians overpaid $8.5 billion for electricity between January and October of 2001 alone - and will overpay at least another $20.5 billion over the next decade.
* While the U.S. entered a recession during the first half of 2001, power companies, such as Enron, Duke and Reliant, reaped unprecedented windfalls.
* The crisis suddenly ended – without the predicted summer blackouts – not because of Californians' conservation, mild weather or new power plants, but because the energy industry had achieved its goals, and was facing investigations and legislation that threatened to "kill the goose that laid the golden egg": deregulation."

Elissa, beware, by posting to the blog you're tattling on yourself. ;) (reference to ACTA, which I blogged about in Nov)

::: posted by alura allumeuse at 10:54 AM

Tuesday, January 22, 2002 :::

boot, i think the one-sided view we’re seeing in US media is due to the fact that any newspaper or news station that questions the US attacks is going to get hit hard by those claiming that the US has every right to bomb the hell out of a people most americans think plotted to kill 3,000 innocents. advertisers will pull, stating that they are doing so to show “solidarity”, to show that any media condemning or questioning US actions against terrorist harboring nations is unpatriotic, thus getting themselves publicity (and dollars). it’s political bullshit, but predictable. i’m happy that we have access to foreign views through the web, but very few americans are looking for anything but flags these days.

a few months ago, my boss went around our office giving out american flag stickers, telling us to put them on our computers. she put me in an awkward situation, watching as i waited for her to leave so i could ditch the sticker while i sorted out my views in my head. but she didn’t leave, so i wrote on a post-it note what barbara lee said before the house (quoted from her priest, i believe): “As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.” and stuck my flag onto the quote and the whole thing onto my computer. maybe people are thinking and afraid to speak up, maybe they think i'm nuts, who knows..

i tried offering a dissenting view of the treatment of the so-called POWs at a party and got clobbered (i am, of course, in the burbs, but for real - these are intelligent people being led by anger that has no discernable target - they wanted no part of my “anti-american, be-nice-to-the-murderers” opinion.)

it seems we’re all expected to comply with this mandatory “patriotism” for fear of appearing un-american, for fear of someone yelling, “I DON’T CARE WHO THEY ARE, THEY KILLED AMERICANS!”

personally, i think we should be looking harder at saudi arabia and pakistan instead of “sealing caves” in afghanistan by bombing them and thereby destroying nearby villages. but maybe bush has a point in that the terrorists may regroup there...

The Fairmount Girls are playing this Friday at the Comet! I'm excited. I liked their "les filles du fairmount" fliers, too.

Boot may be curious to see that Josh Johnson is exhibiting his artwork around Indianapolis. To bring everyone else up to speed: Josh and Alex played in a band together briefly, back in the Read dorm days. Josh played drums. Alex wanted to name the band "Christfuck," and suggested this name without realizing that Josh was a devout Xian, or that Josh was considering entering the seminary. The musical partnership was short-lived.

::: posted by kevin seal at 10:34 AM

Monday, January 21, 2002 :::

Yo Kev, I found out I know (sorta, she was a bartender at the Comet) one of the Fairmount Girls. Turns out they're playing at CBGB.

::: posted by Kurt Kistler at 10:45 PM

This came out in yesterday's European newscycle. I haven't seen these pictures yet in the US. I did a search on the Times website and they mentioned on the 17th that the red cross was bound to Guantanamo, but nothing about these pictures and the sensory deprivation thing, and no mention since.

Okay, so (have I mentioned this before?) on the day before Christmas I was looking at an Italian newspaper (a very mainstream, center-left newspapers - not at all communist) and I read the story about the discovery of weapons grade uranium in the caves. The same story surfaced on NPR and the US newscycle last week. I sent out an e-mail to Jason who is British and he says that the story came out in the UK just before Christmas too.

Okay, so what I'm saying, guys, is, like, the media is manipulating shit. (Big surprise, right?) They seem to be holding back on certain stories. BUT WHY?

Anyway, my point: if you're not reading a european news source, you're not reading all of the news. I recommend: The Guardian at http://guardian.co.uk

Sunday, January 20, 2002 :::

OK, so today we snuck out of the nightmare that is the Seal household and got a hotel room (and went to see a little exhibit on music, where we got to play a theremin! I was thrilled to finally see one). Now we're at the office and he's 15 ft away doing accounting (at least I think so...he's probably downloading mp3s). I've seen everything I wanted to in Cincy, except that the Contemporary Arts Center was closed for installation. For my dose of contemporary art, Kevin and Kurt tortured me with some performance art last night. (scroll to bottom, 1/19) Their friend Spencer* does NOISE. Like, not music, just noise. So they had 4 noise, uh, bands?groups? and we caught the last two. The first involved a girl screaming into a microphone with all kinds of screeching sounds coming from who knows what, shit porn playing on the wall (that is something I NEVER EVER want to see again) and some guy with a spinning handsaw spraying sparks into the audience and throwing cherry bombs around. (FYI, earplugs do not prevent heart from stopping when that happens) The last group was people in silver, screaming and screaming and writhing around, with more screeching noises. Indescribable. Kevin was wildly amused, he says it's all a joke, that they don't take themselves seriously, that it's just all to fuck with people's heads. I dunno. I'm suffering a big case of not getting it.

Kevin was making me look at that maple music site he blogged a while back, and I saw that one of my fave bands, Sully*, switched to their label and has a new album.* So yay, I rarely get new music.

My profound thought for the week is that love is a state of your body and mind feeling as it's supposed to. A healthy stasis. I can't articulate it better than that. It's just some limbic chemical thing, I'm sure. I just feel more normal right now than I have in a while, despite the fact that this situation blows. Which goes to show the influence of heart over brain.

::: posted by alura allumeuse at 8:27 PM

You like Ministry? Well, if you have to do this to yourself, I imagine you've heard of ole' standbys? Like Revolting Cocks? KMFDM? Pigface? Front 242? Meat Beat Manifesto (I think this was industrial)? Front Line Assembly? The Thrill Kill Kult? These are old bands... Also, listen to Kraftwerk real old school, lots of whirring gears and chomping and cutting like snap, whir, boom, grind, snap, whir, boom, grind.. you get the picture... But that's not really pop like Jurgenson was into before he went totally insane. Don't waste your time with Skinny Puppy.. what a fucking joke. Anyway, I speak from serious personal embarassment being a High School Industrial freak myself. Also, ever heard old Ministry? 12' singles or just the shit that Wax Trax put out? They were the uber-industrial label in the early early 90s late 80s... And Einsturzende Neubauten, check them out... ugh.. Industrial became noise anyway died out. But KMFDM kind of predicted hard electronica and had a danceable, hard beat.. Not sure if I'm covering old ground here. I read that someone wanted to know more about "bands like Ministry" so this is my 2 cents...

I just came back from a concert headlining Drunk Horse at Bottom of the Hill, they totally rock.. No relation to Industrial at all.. Also, I really liked The Cherry Valence, a Raleigh, SC band with serious hardcore roots. Head bangers unite. The singer has a voice with a nice AC/DC squeal so cool, but they have a chick in the band.. Anyway, need to sleep.. Hope everyone is happy and content on this planet. It's whirring around a bit too fast for me right now. Need to get it to stop. STOP GOD damn it!! Thank god...

Oh by the way, you'll like this Kevin. I'm teaching a class at Media Alliance on fact checking this wednesday!!! That's scary on a number of levels...

::: posted by stuart l. at 2:49 AM