Podbop

Okay, this site is pretty cool. Its called Podbop.

Let it sink in and please, try to move past the Hansons references. Seriously.

This site is awesome for three reasons:

1) It lets you look up bands coming to your home city (note the use of the word "city". . . towns, notsomuch) or any city, for that matter, and then hear their music in the form of downloadable mp3s.

2) There are links to artists (though only recently added ones) and, more substantially, their labels - potentially a goldmine for seekers of the obscure (a la me).

3) There is a groovy "Recent U.S. Cities Searched" map that is constantly being dotted with florescent green madness - spy on mp3 seekers just like the DoJ!

The Onion A.V. Club

Sure, sure, we all read The Onion. It's the at-work equivalent of Jon Stewart, which is awesome. Submit.

That said, do we all read A.V. Club on The Onion's website. Sadly, the answer is a resounding: nope.

I just found a little book at a local used bookstore, say two weeks ago, entitled The Tenacity of the Cockroach. Sure, you're saying, it sounds gross, but is it really awesome? The answer is, yes. It is. Tenacity is the kind of book that is perfect for either a living room coffee table or a bathroom magazine rack - intelligent, full of brief, approachable interviews, and generally good for a chuckle or two. Don't miss the Henry Rollins, Ralph Bakshi, Berkeley Breathed, George Romero, Gene Simmons, Merle Haggard, Chuck Jones, Douglas Adams, Conan O'Brian, John Kricfalusi, Ray Bradbury, Elvira, Mr. T, Andrew W.K., Rick James, David Lee Roth, or Weird Al interviews (its like a who's who of people under the crux of "HAWG WYLD JONXISTAS").

And, if you're cheap, yeah, you can find all these interviews at the A.V. website. But then you'll have to deal with building your computer into the toilet. Sigh.

The Invisible Man

I'm not gonna' lie. Last night I wasn't sleepy. I was going to try to take advantage of that, and I sat down to try to work on a paper I am thinking of writing, comparing early American and contemporary Chinese foreign policy - I had the diaries of George Washington at hand - and I couldn't bring myself to be productive. So I picked up one of the many works I have been meaning to read for, well, my entire life. I read H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man in a single sitting, from cover to cover.

Good book, well written, fascinating even, and to say it hammers home its allegory is an understatement. This is a work about the gollum gone mad, science unleashing powers it cannot control. You know the tale - its what drives religious fundamentalists, Luddites, and Mimaws to fear technology everywhere.

That said, if you're looking for a life-lesson that is fully original, this may not be the book for you, at least if you've already partaken of the heavy draughts that are Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (two of my favorite books) . If course, if want to revisit the theme, or if you just want a truly compelling read (I found myself breathing fast when the pace of the plot quickened), read it. You won't be disappointed.

Marianas Trench

Just below this entry, you'll notice that I have had a very bad week. Tuesday, as I drove back from Nashville and Sarah tried to sleep while Leslie listened to the iPod in the backseat, I switched from news to music on the XM, looking for something to comfort me in that painful way that only music can - perhaps Johnny Cash or 1980s U2. I found something different.

Their name is Marianas Trench.

Let me fill in some of the blank spots. They're a Canadian band, specifically hailing from Vancouver in BC. Their sound, well, take a little hard rock and a little punk, then emphasize lyrics and vocals. I am reminded, when I listen to them, of any number of alt rock bands from the late 1990s and early XXIst (don't ask me why, but Matchbox 20, Foo Fighters, Spacehog, early Everclear, and most significantly Alien Ant Farm come to mind, but only in snippets - don't be looking for another band's sound) but not to the point of thinking they're cookie cutter.

If, in college, you ever walked into the painting studio after 10Pm, when I was the only man working, covered in paint and yelling at the canvas, moshing with the walls, and pouring high-caffeine drinks down my throat, well, this is the kind of music you would have heard me listening to. You know, the kind of music you'd want to be listening to while reading a book about Anselm Kiefer or looking at the darker works of Keith Haring or Theodore Geisel (and yes, Haring and Geisel did do dark work).

There are two ways you can hear'm. First, you can hit their official site, where you'll not only get data on the band, but further you can download some 30-odd second clips in MP3 format. Not quite enough for me, I kept searching and found they'd loaded some such-have-yous on myspace.com, which is a cool site browse, needless to say (Echols had mentioned it to me the other day, and he was right on). Link straight to their myspace account here.

All of their work is pretty good, but I won't like, I keep listening to "Say Anything." I think you will too.

Michelle Denise Pfeffer

Tuesday morning I walked into my office after teaching class at about 9:15. I picked up my cell phone and saw that my fiance, Sarah, had called me six times. My roommate (who had moved out in mid-November) and both and Sarah and my friend, Michelle Pfeffer, had just had a stroke, related to her treatments for cancer. I won't go into the details, because they are not as important as the person. Michelle passed away late that afternoon, surrounded by her family and friends.

I just want to say that Michelle was a truly decent person. Her ability to do what she felt needed to be done and further, what was right, was only matched by her incomparable positiveness. You could not frown around Michelle - god knows I tried. I know that whatever fate awaits the finest of our species, whatever awaits the resting souls of the most kind, the most loving, the most gentle, the most compassionate, that is to say the most (to use the most overused word in the lexicon) good human beings, I know that she is nestled there.

We all miss you very, very much Michelle.

Kt Tunstall

I just wanted to shoot out an entry on this artist - Kt Tunstall (No, that's not a typo) - I found her work while, not surprisingly, playing around on the NPR website, looking for someone or something to listen to while I typed up a justification for studying Paraguay. Fun, but besides the point.

Kt Tunstall is a Scottish solo artist who plays every imaginable instrument simultaneously while singing. Yes. I said it. And its true. What would have been an impossible act prior to the invention/discovery/harnassing-for-pop-culture-purposes of electricity now allows awesome people to expand their awesomeness to a rocktastic level. You're gonna' want to check out the NPR story first (here) - it'll give you some background that'll you appreciate later - I specifically like her interest in eliminating overly Baroque complexity, while still being able to use and appreciate complex instrumentality. Awesome. Double-awesome, there are four songs there - sorry though, they're streamers, so you'll have to be online to hear 'm. No MP3 magic.

Secondly, check out her website (here). There's more music, though its highly abbreviated for the most part. Her current American tour, by the by, has her in Nashvegas on the 12th of March. A Sunday. Dammit and diggit.

Oh, and the sound, hmm . . . its lyrically complex and stylistically unique, her enunciation is absolutely beautiful, and her riffs are off the charts. Hell, ignore me, but check her out.

The United States of Appalachia

The first words after Jeff Biggers' dedication were the first snippets of non-dinosaurian Latin I ever learned.

Montani semper liberi.

Mountaineers are always free.

You had me at hello, Mr. Biggers.

A man named Jeff Biggers, a man who is not from Our Mountains (though some of his folk were), has written a book which, if you are from Appalachia, you must read. Let me tell you why.

Its not because of the history Mr. Biggers showers his readers with, though he does that. It is not because of Mr. Biggers' truly fantastic prose, though his prose is truly fantastic. And its not because his work is like a master bibliography, a guide to paths by which every Appalachian might know him- or herself, though it is that too.

No. If you are Appalachian you need to read Mr. Biggers' The United States of Appalachia because it will give you back a dignity that you never even knew you'd lost. You need to read this book, you need to tell your friends to read this book. You'll feel happy and sad, angry and proud. You'll find yourself cursing your "history" and "civics" books (damn all colonizers who convince the colonized they are responsible for their discontent) . You won't lie and say you're from Richmond if you're from Roanoke, Charlotte if you're from Asheville, Cincinnati if you're from anywhere in Kentucky, and anywhere else if you're, like me, from West Virginia. Its only equal I've read along these lines, though in a radically different medium, is Denise Giardina's Storming Heaven.

I feel obliged to give some sort of critique, to balance the record. I have only two. One, if you edit your work, Mr. Biggers, please tell the world about Bluefield - I know its not all that important anymore, but its not a bad place, and we do have a Nobel Prize winner. Two, if you edit your work, Mr. Biggers, please tell the world about the Melungeons - their story is as Appalachian as anyone's and they need a storyteller very, very badly.

Delightful.

Fiona Apple

I’m going to start this party quickly – with a self-deprecating jab. I am a music snob. No, no, not as much as Trevor is, but a music snob nonetheless. So, when Fiona Apple came large on her first album, I wasn’t convinced. When I saw what she did in her infamous “crack party” music video, I was less convinced then ever, and when I heard rumors (I haven’t substantiated them) that she throws hizzies and refuses to perform live gigs frequently, well, my degree of convincification dropped to an all-time low. Then, one morning, while randomly searching through the depths of NPR’s on-line chest-o-delights, I found numerous commentaries on Apple's new album, Extraordinary Machine. This is the best one.

I am humbled.

I will never, ever, be able to do as good a job describing this album as it warrents - but I can say that if you took a professional opera star of the highest caliber, taught her to sing and write the blues, big-band, and jazz, gave her a 21st Century mentality, and then produced an album with her that had a distinct hip-hop flavor running along all its exquisite edges, twists, and turns, well, that's Extraordinary Machine. Check out the tunes they've thrown up on NPR (the whole nine yards are available for each piece). You'll download them to your desktop. You'll find yourself trying to learn the lyrics almost instantaneously. And then, well, if you're like me (and by golly I hope you are) you'll make for your nearest record shop, buy the album, and start asking about nearby concert dates. Because Fiona Apple does not warrent underestimation.

House of Tartan

If you know me, and by now you surely do (or don't), you know I am a freak for all things Scottish. That said, I wanted to share with you one of the pimp-doobiest sites I have ever found. It's the House of Tartan, a joint to buy, well, tartan-products. That, in and of itself, is unremarkable. What is remarkable, however, is the "Interactive Weaver". It lets you design you're own tartans. I designed this one with my old high school in mind. Go G-Men.

An additional note: House of Tartan has tons of other information, on official clan tartans, for instance, as well as on how to register a tartan officially. The site is definitely worth a solid look-see. Ahhh, nothing like a little Gaelification.

The Cartoon War of 2006

First, I have to say, I believe that the best name for a war ever was the Soccer War. Seriously, a war started by a soccer match? C'mon! That is awesome! There hasn't been a contender for such a title since. Until now.

Increasingly I hear people talking about the "Cartoon War." Boycotts against quasi-pacificist, wholly humanist Denmark, Austria, and Norway; embassies being burnt in Syria and Iran; riots and protest marches all over the Islamic world. People are seriously angry. Over, yes, a cartoon.

Okay, let me tell you my thoughts. Am I, was I, and will I continue to be aware of the simple fact that drawing Muhammad is offensive in almost any context to many if not most people of the Islamic faith? Yes. I study other cultures for a living, I have friends who are Muslim, heck, after 9-11 I went on an ape-$#@! letter writing campaign against some jerks at a local bookstore who called the cops on a Turkish gentleman who made the mistake of getting coffee and looking terrorist-esque. Whatever that means. Would I draw Muhammad, nope - heck, theologically I have problems with drawing any religious figure (one of the few theological tenets I feel very strongly about). Does this whole episode indicate that Western history and culture classrooms shouldn't just study European and American history and thought? Doy.

Thought number 2: freedom of speech, assembly, religion, and so forth are essential. The competition of ideas and beliefs is the only way we can guarantee freedom will survive and that politics, economics, and society can evolve, not to mention the only way to guarantee the rights of minorities and individuals. READ THE FEDERALIST PAPERS. Seriously. Its not a moral thing with me, its not even about rights, its about the practical preservation of an adaptive, democratic, free society.

Here is the part where I sound insensitive. I apologize beforehand.

No one, anywhere, has a right not to be offended. Sure sure, we all have a right to turn off, close, or walk away from offensive expressions of speech. And no, we don't have a right to slander, nor to incite violence (RULE-BASED BEHAVIOR). But anyone and everyone has a right to say what they want, so long as it obeys those rules. The implication is A) no one has a right to try and edit prior-to-the-expression freedom of speech and B) no government has the right to apologize for its people expressing their speech. Deal with it.

Okay, here is the part where I point out the obvious.

All this violence, you know, it ain't just about cartoons. Its about the fact that most Muslims live under oppressive governments, governments which are either supported by the Western powers or which the Western powers, in their attempts to villanize and punish, actually lend creedence to. Most Muslims see the West's interests in their countries as explicitly exploitive, which it is, in that Westerners wouldn't give a high hell about those states if it weren't for their markets, their cheap labor, and here's the biggie, their natural resources. Furthermore, Muslims living in the developed world, in particular in Europe, but sadly in the US and Canada as well, are the frequent subjects of laws which limit their freedom of movement, their freedom of religious expression, and their privacy. [Of course, these Muslims, though, as we are constantly reminded, not all Muslims advocate violence or terrorism. That said, most terrorists since the decline of the Cold War are Muslim, and Muslims do participate in warfare more often than non-Muslims.] Regardless, the point is this: Muslims feel, and in many ways quite rightly, that the West has only taken from them and given them nothing of real consequence back. Westerners broke the great Islamic empires, colonized every Islamic state, allowed the creation of Israel and disposition of the Palestinians, and have retained effective control over most of them through neo-colonial means since World War II. Heck, of the around 1 billion Muslims in the world today, some 56 million of them, about 1 in 20, are currently living in states occupied by the United States.

So everybody is ticked, and this cartoon, an offense not against a corrupt regime or party, but against a man almost universally appreciated in the Muslim community, was the spark necessary to light that discontent into a flame. Because it was something millions could agree on. There it is. Nothing fancy, nothing ludicrous. Just people who feel angry, lost, insulted, deprived, and so forth, people who are angry at themselves, their governments, and our governments, who just need to fight back - the problem is, instead of using this energy to fight poverty, to develop infrastructure, to overthrow tyrannies, or even to involve themselves in peaceful demonstrations, boycotts, speechs, and debates, some (but definitely not all) people are wasting it on violence.

All I can say is this: I am amazed every single damn day at how little the West and Islam understand each other, and until we do so, developing a sense of tolerance (which is not the same as acceptance, that comes later), this sort of snafu will distract us from far greater issues over and over again.

Free Literacy

If you've been watching for the last couple of months, you'll have noted that I tend to support open-source literacy every occasion possible. Two biggies are, were, and hopefully will be the already named Google Booksearch and Scholar (scholarly journal search). Yet two others definitely warrent note: Project Gutenberg and Read Print. Both deal primarily in works for which the copyright has expired. The former, which is the oldest open-source literary body on the web (circa 1971, back before fire was invented), is truly enormous - think 17,000 volumes (give or take) at the time I'm writing this. Its astounding in scope. . . one of the greatest contributions of political liberalism and free competition of ideas in human history, quite frankly. Read Print, on the other hand, may not be for-profit, but it is affiliated with advertisers, notably Amazon. That said, its a crisp, clean site, a nice contrast to Project Gutenberg's far more utilitarian structure. Of course, its holdings are far less universal.

I've got a couple other sites worth checking. Specifically, the good ol' US of A's Library of Congress and the National Archives. The LoC has tons of information, most significally a link to THOMAS, the official repository of most congressional documents. The Archives, on the other hand, are particularly awesome because of the access they provide to the Federal Register, historically significant documents and presidential libraries.

You also might want to check out ibiblo, which is affiliated with Project Gutenberg. This site has historic archives, journals, and more ebooks.

Read.

LogoTypes

Leave it to the Russians to take copyright evasion and make it into a tribute page. That's just what the folks over at LogoTypes are doing. It is so worth an hour of your time. I mean, hey, I downloaded this:

I am big on the Pig.

Sarah M. Surak, Minor Deity of Tennesseean Recycling

Dig: my fiance loves the Earth. I mean, wow. To the point where sometimes I get agitated at the Earth and have to go outside and like, punch it. Okay. I don't do that. But regardless, Sarah is the "recycling coordinator" for the University of Tennessee - Knoxville, and I decided to send some traffic her way. Check our her home page here and, most importantly, the difference her work has made here. 600 tons. @#$%.

Super Bowl Commercials

I'm not gonna' add a whole lot of commentary on this one: we all know that the only real reason to watch the Super Bowl is the commercial blitz. That said, here's a link to the all of 'm. Definitely check out the Ford hybrid commerical (Sarah's favorite), the Emerald Nuts commercial, the Bud Light commericals (Hidden and Secret Bud Light), the Budweiser "Clydesdale American Dream" commercial (I cried a little - though the tears were big, manly tears), and the absolutely amazing United Airlines "Dragon" commerical. Enjoy.

http://ian-albert.com/

I was trawling the net yesterday, just goofing off, etc., and I found one of those websites with distinctly addictive qualitites. Its the home page of a guy named Ian Albert. Mr. Albert, who designs websites and does some programing, has put together something moderately insane, which is what I like about it. His site has four sections, which I'll discuss in order of increasing rock solid-ness. First, there is his collection of artwork, good stuff, but nothing revolutionary. Secondly, he provides a really useful tutorial on graphics, color theory, and typography. Equally rocking is Mr. Albert's collection of hugelicious images, mainly maps, but a grandiose unicode character chart as well. Moving on, Mr. Albert also provides us with something I would have killed a man for in the 1990s, a collection of detailed maps of video game worlds. All I can say is, yes, yes, yes. Finally, and yes, my favorite (if you ever came to my dorm room in college you'll know why), Ian Albert has put together a collection of easily downloadable Haz-Mat signs. You'll love it or you'll hate it, but I think you'll find yourself compelled to check it out.
Seriously.

Liger

So, I'm in Abingdon, visiting my brother, and his roommate and my ol' pal Clayman says, "I have to return some videos, you want to roll into town with me?" So we do. Outside of the video store I see what is, arguably, the greatest automobile ever. Clayman squealed like an 11-year old girl when we saw it, saying only, "IT'S A LIGER, IT'S A LIGER!!!!" Good times.