Self-consciousness

There's such a great feeling about being deeply infatuated with one song that you know completely redeems you.

I refuse to accept that this is a blog. Blogs have message boards. I'm not that self-important. The only people who might be reading this are friends who already know how to get in touch with me. Most likely you're someone I haven't talked to in years, were linked here by my profile, and read this occasionally out of boredom. I'm not offended, I do exactly the same thing.

In an editorial I'm writing, I need to refer to television/TV. In deciding whether to call it "television" or "TV" I'm reminded of a bit from Mr. Show: "I don't even own a television; notice how I called it 'television,' not 'TV,' because 'TV' is a nickname, and nicknames are for friends, and television is no friend of mine." I can't be that guy. I'm forced to use "TV."

The media

The headline in the Boston Herald was LIKE A RAT. What bothers me about this? I mean, of course he's a bad guy who deserves to be punished. But there's no room for emotion in justice, be it love or hate. And I don't like being reminded that the proudest moments in some people's lives involve striking another person in the jaw with the butt of a rifle, laughing and dreaming of their names in the paper.

I found out that Mumia has recorded many more essays than listed on Free Speech Radio News, all available on Prison Radio. It's worth it just to hear him quote Dave Chappelle. And in addition to keeping up with those two websites, Democracy Now! is also really good.

Kind of related to these media outlets is WMBR, MIT's campus radio station. Not only do they air FSRN, but they have such impeccable taste for and are so thoroughly in touch with the current music scene that they might be the only radio station you need. And they stream. Sure beats The fucking Planet.

The Pod, etc.

My faith in humanity has been revived, a little. Last night a guy thanks me for letting him download a Godspeed album on WinMX: an admirable gesture by itself. We get to talking about music, and I happen to mention Ween. He shares my fondness for the band, and goes on to say that The Pod is his favorite album of theirs. I tell him of my woes in trying to download that album over the past few months, hours of effort that have resulted in acquiring a little over half the tracks (not to speak of whether they were incomplete or otherwise flawed). He tells me that he'll rip his copy of the album and share it, so that the next time we're both signed on it'll be ready for me. After a few more minutes of talk he decides to rip it immediately, postponing his across-the-pond bedtime to hasten my long overdue exposure to the album. Long story short, some server problems result in my getting two tracks and being bitter for the rest of the night. I buy the album today to the great delight of the employees at Newbury Comics, only to come home and find this same guy telling me I could now successfully download it from him. Irony costs $15.99.

Chances are you haven't seen this Honda commercial, in which case you're really missing out.

So you like Johnny Depp, but you've been anticipating for years the day you'd get to see him in a purple top hat? That day is not far off, as Tim Burton directs Johnny Depp in Wonka: 2005. The movie Tim Burton was born to direct, finally.

I remember finding this really amusing when I first saw it.

Cultural warfare

There are an elite few of us who remember the movie Can't Buy Me Love, which I think at this point might only be aired on Comedy Central as part of a block of campy movies between 8am and 2pm on Sundays...if at all. This is a retelling of the classic fable about a nerdy lawnmower (...lawnmower operator; this isn't John Hughes' The Brave Little Toaster) who spends the money he has saved for a telescope to replace a ruined dress for the most popular girl in school. In return, she promises to make him cool. Against ALL ODDS: he becomes cool, she begins to fall for him, he gets an inflated ego, she expresses her disgust (thereby revealing her true feelings), he learns the lesson we learned an hour ago, and they ride off into the sunset on his lawnmower arguing over who has to wear the cowboy hat (see above).

Here's why I mention it: the black media has launched a diabolical scheme. After watching us white people continually coopting their culture, they are now fighting back with a twisted caricature of these social crimes. Black people are remaking Can't Buy Me Love. Based on the original screenplay. For real. It's called Love Don't Co$t a Thing, and it stars Smooooove Steve Harvey, among other black people. As you can see, they've replaced the white people with black people and the cowboy hat with an afro. And as it involves Steve Harvey, I'm relieved to report that its moral heart will remain intact, save for an unfathomable increase in saccharinity.

Nissan, Textism, Google bombing

No. No. Nissan is mean. No. If you know why I'm mad at Nissan, you probably are too. If you don't know, you don't want to.

I came across this site, Textism. Mostly it's too esoteric to even think about mining through, but there's this one page where this guy reviews typefaces sold by Adobe for a hundred dollars each. That's a lot of money, but...I seriously find it fascinating that there are letter connoisseurs, and I feel left out for not getting it. Truthfully I just want to be able to look down my nose at your pedestrian Arials and Timeses and say things like, "Regrettably every book published between 1987 and 1991 was set in some bad Palatino or other; this may be why I watched so much television in those years."

In an attempt to figure out why certain things "I'm Feeling Lucky"-submitted to Google reliably return shocking results (try "miserable failure"), I found this interesting article on the technique of "Google bombing," manipulating Google's search results with blogs through a loophole in its algorithms. Clever.

POS is an ambiguous acronym

Inspired by the sudden, straight-faced, relentless snow assault that's given Boston close to 12 inches in the last 24 hours, I did my best to find some webcams of the city, compiled here, to provide a view of our newly towering Siberian powder.

Samuel L. Jackson stars in Formula 51. I don't even know where to begin, how I got sucked into watching it on HBO in the first place, or how it manages to be so sublimely nauseating. Samuel L., as Elmo McElroy ([mackleroy]...I'm serious) wears a kilt, as far as I can tell only to provoke people into teasing him so he can get that Samuel L. Jackson smirk and kick their asses while giving us memorable quotes...quotes such as: "Aw, fuck. Can't a brother just deal some goddamn drugs?"; "Ain't that always the way: elevator music, a nigger in a kilt, and a chick with a nickle-plated nine."; and "Kiss the sun and taste the mother fuckin' rainbow!"

I could try to put into words its suckiness, but that would cheapen it. The last scene involves Meat Loaf exploding...literally exploding all over the walls, while SLJ shields himself with an umbrella, the super drug being dealt is exactly 51 times stronger than every other drug, but it's actually just a placebo effect, there's a castle, soccer hooligans shitting themselves, a sex scene cutaway to a rubber frog...no words. Here's the trailer.

Menomena, Experimental Dental School, etc.

There's this band, Menomena. They're alright, but their website is especially brilliant. There's this other band, Experimental Dental School, and they're really good, not least of all because they offer their entire album for download at their website, as well as interactively bleeding robot insects.

Two albums I'm very happy with having purchased recently: Frog Eyes' The Bloody Hand and The Unicorns' Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?.

I just found out that Circulatory System released a new song, buried in a Wishing Tree Records compilation, and supposedly will unveil a second album at some point. I'd wait forever, I'm just shocked that there's going to be another one at all. And if you're into Elephant 6, you're into Jeff Mangum, and if you're into Jeff Mangum, you might be into viewing/hearing his setlists as a guest DJ on WFMU under the name Jefferson. You'll also enjoy his drug-encumbered interview at some British radio station.

The raging popularity of Dan Acton's squarelakecomics.com has finally led to its exploitation by the porn industry, relegating the preservation of the comic strip's glory, once again, to me: Square Lake.

Manila envelopes from India are lined with printed cloth.

Snow last night. Wind always.