Parkway Drive

Posted by on August 4, 2009 No comments

This is an Aus­tralian met­al­core band that sticks to con­ven­tion. It’s in the same vein as Pan­tera or Slay­er, with noth­ing to sug­gest that they are record­ing in this decade. Might be fun at a live venue, but not like­ly to be played repeat­ed­ly at home. They’ll be com­ing to Toron­to next month, and I might check them out if I’m in a nos­tal­gic mood for ‘core. I have two albums: Killing with a Smile(2005) and Hori­zons(2007), with dif­fer­ent bass play­ers. I like the drum­mer, who does some nice machine-gunning.

17962. (Jane Jacobs) The Nature of Economies

Posted by on August 2, 2009 No comments

This, the sec­ond-last of Jane Jacobs books, con­tin­ues the “dia­logue” ini­ti­at­ed in Sys­tems of Sur­vival. The start­ing point of the con­ver­sa­tion is this prof­fered axiom: “human beings exist whol­ly with­in nature as part of the nat­ur­al order in every respect”. From here, Jacobs argues that ecosys­tems and economies should be con­cep­tu­al­ized in rough­ly the same way, and that the same prin­ci­ples of co-ordi­na­tion, inter­de­pen­dence, com­bi­na­tion, and re-com­bi­na­tion under­lie them. It is good, sol­id stuff — vin­tage Jacobs. Plen­ty of con­crete exam­ples are used to bring the abstract argu­ments down to earth.

I rec­om­mend that any­one engaged in any of the dis­ci­plines of the human­i­ties — his­to­ry, eco­nom­ics, pol­i­tics, archae­ol­o­gy, urbanol­o­gy, anthro­pol­o­gy, soci­ol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy — should famil­iar­ize them­self with this remark­able wom­an’s work. She made major con­tri­bu­tions to all of these fields, and cre­at­ed a body of thought that tran­scends their boundaries.

Image of the month:

Posted by on August 1, 2009 No comments

09-08-01 BLOG Image of the month

First-time listening for July, 2009

Posted by on July 31, 2009 No comments

20090. (Juno Reac­tor) Mas­ters of the Uni­verse CDM
20091. (Juno Reac­tor) Con­ga Fury EP
20092. (Juno Reac­tor) God is God CDM
20093. (Front 242 & Juno Reac­tor) God is God Front 242 Remix­es [sin­gle]
20094. (Juno Reac­tor) Guardian Angel EP Read more »

READING — JULY 2009

Posted by on July 31, 2009 No comments

(Fritz Leiber) The Ghost Light ― Mas­ter­works of Sci­ence Fic­tion and Fan­ta­sy [Byron Preiss Visu­al Book,
. designed by Alex Jay; ill. John Jude Palen­car, Bri­an Humphrey, JoEllen Trilling, Pat Orte­ga, Thomas
. Canty, David Wis­ner, Robert Gould, Steve Leialo­ha, Paul Rivoche, Ben Asen]:
. . . . 17775. (Fritz Leiber) Intro­duc­tion [pref­ace]
. . . . 17776. (Fritz Leiber) The Ghost Light [sto­ry]
. . . . 17777. [5] (Fritz Leiber) Com­ing Attrac­tions [sto­ry]
. . . . 17778. [3] (Fritz Leiber) A Desk­ful of Girls [sto­ry]
. . . . 17779. [3] (Fritz Leiber) Space-Time for Springers [sto­ry]
. . . . 17780. (Fritz Leiber) Four Ghosts in Ham­let [sto­ry]
. . . . 17781. [4] (Fritz Leiber) Gonna Roll the Bones [sto­ry]
. . . . 17782. (Fritz Leiber) Bazaar of the Bizarre [sto­ry]
. . . . 17783. (Fritz Leiber) Mid­night by the Mor­phy Watch [sto­ry]
. . . . 17784. (Fritz Leiber) Black Glass [sto­ry]
. . . . 17785. (Fritz Leiber) Not Much Dis­or­der and Not So Ear­ly Sex: An Auto­bi­o­graph­ic
. . . . . . . . Essay [arti­cle]
17775. (Steve Muhlberg­er) [in blog Muhlberg­er’s Ear­ly His­to­ry] Review of A His­to­ry of Mod­ern Iran
. . . . . by Arvand Abra­hami­an [review]
Read more »

Fredrik Pacius’ opera, “The Hunt of King Charles”

Posted by on July 28, 2009 No comments

Fin­land is one of those coun­tries where the “nation­al anthem” isn’t the nation­al anthem. “Waltz­ing Matil­da” is Aus­trali­a’s real anthem, as every­one knows, while the offi­cial one is some for­get­table piece of music called “March On Aus­tralia Fair Sis Boom Bah Rah Rah Rah”, or some­thing to that effect. Sim­i­lar­ly with Fin­land. Every­one out­side that coun­try assumes that Sibelius’ “Fin­lan­dia” is the nation­al anthem. It isn’t. An immi­grant Ger­man named Fredrik Pacius com­posed the offi­cial one ― “Maamme”. Read more »

Thursday, July 16, 2009 — Correspondence with MP Bob Rae

Posted by on July 16, 2009 No comments

Canada’s cur­rent, grotesque­ly incom­pe­tent Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment has embar­rassed and degrad­ed us again, by impos­ing sud­den visa restric­tions on vis­i­tors from Mex­i­co and the Czech Repub­lic. They claim that cit­i­zens of those coun­tries are “clog­ging” our sys­tem with “pho­ny” refugee claims. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the gov­ern­ments of both Mex­i­co and the Euro­pean Union have protest­ed this stu­pid action. In the case of the Czech Repub­lic, the fuss is about eth­nic Roma (Gyp­sies), who face vio­lence and social dis­crim­i­na­tion all over Europe, but espe­cial­ly in that coun­try. Their case may be dif­fi­cult to judge, since it does not quite fit our cus­tom­ary stan­dards for giv­ing polit­i­cal refugee sta­tus, but it is by no means “pho­ny”. I wrote to my Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, Bob Rae, who hap­pens to be the oppo­si­tion for­eign affairs crit­ic. Read more »

Empire of the Sun: Walking on a Dream

Posted by on July 15, 2009 No comments

09-07-15 LISTN Empire of the Sun - Walking on a DreamThis pleas­ant mix­ture of elec­tron­ic-psy­che­delia and pop is the prod­uct of Aus­tralians Luke Steele and Nick Lit­tle­more. There are so many eclec­tic influ­ences in this album that it would be exhaust­ing to iden­ti­fy them. Three songs, “Walk­ing on a Dream”, “We Are the Peo­ple” and “Stand­ing on the Shore”, have been chart hits in Anzac/UK ter­ri­to­ry, but I don’t think they’ve had much impact here in Cana­da. The biggest chart suc­cess, “Walk­ing on a Dream”, was the track that least appealed to me. There’s a retro-late-sev­en­ties/ear­ly-eight­ies feel, though the thick lay­er­ing is more con­tem­po­rary. Def­i­nite­ly worth check­ing out, espe­cial­ly if you have some ground­ing in eight­ies pop, Adam Ant, or Bowie, but not so much if you instinc­tive­ly eschewed these for hard-core, punk, or met­al dur­ing that tran­si­tion­al decade. Some of the orches­tral pas­sages, which drift away from the sev­en­ties-eight­ies ambiance, are quite charm­ing. Yes, the band is named after the J. G. Bal­lard nov­el. Released in Aus­tralia some­time last fall.

(Leth 1967) The Perfect Human [Det perfekte menneske] (Leth & von Trier 2003) Five Obstructions, The [De fem benspænd]

Posted by on July 9, 2009 No comments

My friend Skye Sepp brought over this enter­tain­ing Dan­ish doc­u­men­tary, a bit of truf­fle for film buffs. Back in 1967, young direc­tor Jør­gen Leth made a short film called “The Per­fect Human”. It was the kind of clever, enig­mat­ic, “arty” thing that appealed to the sen­si­bil­i­ty of the time, then became a chest­nut of short film fes­ti­vals and film schools, much like Nor­man MacLaren’s films, here in Cana­da. Looked at now, you can see that it has an ele­gance to it, most­ly because of the superb per­for­mances of the only two actors, Claus Nis­sen and Majken Algren Nielsen. Nis­sen, appar­ent­ly, impro­vised most of his most effec­tive moments. Watch it online here.

Fast for­ward to 2003. Leth is in semi-retire­ment in Haiti, and his friend/colleague Lars von Tri­er dares him to make five “remakes” of the influ­en­tial short film. In each case, he will demand “obstruc­tions” — absurd restric­tions and demands meant to chal­lenge the direc­tor’s inge­nu­ity. The film cuts between von Tri­er pre­sent­ing his obstruc­tions [“No sets”; “You have to film it in some­place dis­gust­ing­ly hor­ri­ble”; “You have to remake it as a car­toon”; “You have to act in it your­self”…], the result­ing remakes, and frag­ments of the orig­i­nal film. The result is a fas­ci­nat­ing look into how a cre­ative film-mak­er works, with numer­ous moments of spon­ta­neous humour.

(Fritz Leiber) The Ghost Light ― Masterworks of Science Fiction and Fantasy

Posted by on July 4, 2009 No comments

Fritz Leiber, over the years, wrote some of the finest fan­ta­sy fic­tion there is, and some pret­ty decent sci­ence fic­tion, as well. This col­lec­tion, enlivened by illus­tra­tions by sev­er­al artists, is a good intro­duc­tion. It con­tains some of his most famous sto­ries — “Com­ing Attrac­tions”, “Gonna Roll the Bones” and the deligh­tul “Space-Time for Springers”, but it also has the unusu­al semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal “Four Ghosts in Ham­let”, based on his expe­ri­ences in his father’s Shake­speare­an com­pa­ny. One well-known sto­ry that I’d missed until now is “Mid­night by the Mor­phy Watch”, which involves the miss­ing pock­et watch of the 19th cen­tu­ry chess mas­ter, Paul Mor­phy. Sto­ries like this make you want to buy an over­stuffed arm­chair and take up pipe smok­ing. Read more »