War all the time

Hello

2005-10-03T21:12:00.000-07:00

I'm back. In the coming weeks, there will be tons of great posts and pictures, too.

This just in!

2005-09-25T23:43:00.000-07:00

My friend Graham Stephenson just recorded a cool Bob Dylan cover, "Just like a woman", check it out.

"Everybody's sayin' music is love"

2005-09-25T23:09:00.000-07:00

I'm just going to tell you about my music-listening life right now: First of all, I am really looking forward to downloading the above David Crosby album, which has more guest artists on it than I have ever seen on an album -- I know, usually this sucks, but it's actually a pretty good record. Secondly, I forgot how much I like the Red House Painters, my roommate Greg lent me the Rollercoaster album -- "Katy song" is really good and another version of "New Jersey" than is on the bridge album. It's been really great finally being back in the same place as my record collection, I had a "hardcore records I was into in college" night a few weeks ago with my new roommate Matt, who used to go to hardcore shows in high school at the Tune Inn in New Haven. In high school I thought hardcore was kinda stupid, although ska was just like the greatest thing in the world. Fuck, that is retarded. Anyway, you know, my old Orchid, City of Caterpillar, Off Minor, etc. records got some good play. Also been listening to a lot of the Cure and Elliot Smith, god, why don't i just paint my fingernails black. OK, aside from all that forced nostalgia, I've actually given quite a few records I dismissed before a second chance and have been pleasantly surprised!

Big Star, first of all. I heard them a few years ago and was like WHATS THE BIG DEAL WITH THIS BAND, but jesus christ, that Sister Lovers/Third record is just like unbelievable -- "Holocaust", "My Big Black Car," "Femme Fatale." Also, the fucking Flaming Lips record Soft Bulletin, jesus christ, this has been sleeping on my shelf since maybe sophomore year of college. I remember being pretty into basically track 1 and thinking the rest was blah. It did inspire me to buy a string synth though, so maybe i really liked it a lot more than I remember. Anyway, the only thing i'm going to say about this record is that it made me stumble upon probably one of the top 5 worst music reviews I've ever read (ahem, skimmed) and just the fuckidng apotheosis of everything I CANT STAND about contemporary music writing: Jason Josephes's review in Pitchfork. This is just garbage, to write about shit totally NOT RELATED to the album for almost 700 words and then throw in a miniscule amount of cliched hyperbolic bullshit at the end. "Speaking of death..." PUKE... Easily worse than most Columbia Spectator writing.

Annual blog update!

2005-09-24T21:37:00.000-07:00

My good friend Ezra Koenig just started a blog which he updates far more frequently than I do this one. Ezra's blog is funnier to boot. I am going to gradually let slip a few postings about my summer trip to Mexico, including pictures, and the time I spent in Vermont recording and chilling on good vibrations. You people who demand constant updates on the state of affairs of the material world need to GET OFF THE FUCKING INTERNET. Or head over to some other (less thoughtful) blogs, because this thing is going to get pieced together slow like a good Victorian novel.

Above pictured is a view of Guanajuato, Mexico, which is in the North-central highlands of the Sierra Madres. This was about as far north as we made it on our trip, which was mostly in the South. Guanajuato is a fucking chill place to be, the University there is kind of the center of town, there are tons of students everywhere, many Americans taking foreign language classes over the summer. The city is in this kind of basin and you can ride a tram up the side of the surrounding mountain for a few pesos. There is a statue up there of Pipila, a hero of the Mexican Revolutionary War who maybe burned down this fort the Spaniards had there. Anyway, I kept hearing all this shit about how the light up high in this area was unbelievably clear and perfect for artists toiling away at their paintings. Of course, I paid no mind to this talk because I didn't really understand how it was possible, but believe me, there is something going on up there that is totally crazy! I guess being really high up in the mountains makes it really easy to see everything, maybe it's because the air is really thin? Anyway, Guanajuato was one of the best places in Mexico for hanging out late at night, people are always chilling out on the steps of the Teatro Juarez, and we found a little coffee shop on the outskirts of town that had really good espresso (and wireless internets) and everything! We stayed in a chilled out hostel called Casa Kloster, which was i think $30 a night, but I think there's a cheaper hostel in town too. The coolest thing about G. is the insane architecture of the city. It used to be a mining town so they converted all the old mines into tunnels that the buses and cars go through. There's also the Museo de Momias on the outskirts of town, which has all this exhumed dead bodies that have been totally reintigrated with Earth and look fucking sick. Mexican people are way into dead stuff!

Ok, in other news, my band The Shot Heard Around Thd World will be playing PopFest! New England this coming Friday, Sept. 30, 2005, so if you happen to be around Northampton, MA, POP IN and see us play! I think it's $9 for the show, pretty steep, but we're really fucking good. If you need a ride to the show, send me an email!

Fuck the police

2005-07-14T17:35:00.000-07:00

My blogging has been woefully inadequate as usual! Have been travelling the past 3 weeks in Mexico. The people of Mexico are incredibly friendly and helpful. The only problem is the police are fucking assholes! We got pulled over on our way out of Mexico city for making a wrong turn onto a one way street. Immediately about 5 cops surrounded our car and forced us to the side of the road. The pigs wanted us to pay $450 or take a driver´s test and spend 90 days in jail (yeah right). We only had $5 on us so we tried to bribe them with that but they weren´t having it. I stalled a bit, said we were students and didn´t have any money, etc. Finally a cop gets in the back seat and tells us to drive to an atm so we can take out money. We drove to a couple ATM´s and told the guy they were broken, hah. We ended up taking out $50 and giving it to him right in front of this other cop in front of a bank. He started freaking out and got real nervous, I guess he was embarassed the other cop saw him taking a bribe. Then we let him off on a corner. The weirdest part was that he really wanted to chit chat with me the whole time, he told me all about his family in San Francisco and how he couldn´t visit the U.S. because of visa restrictions. FUCK YOU, what a weird dude.

Anyway, that was the only shitty thing that happened to us so far. Last week we visited the third largest pyramid in the world, the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan. I am going to try to get some fucking pictures up here since a description would be lacking. Aztecs were great human sacrificers and cannibalists.

P.S. It is not hot down here at all, it´s like 60 and sunny every day. I heard it´s like 90 in new york. Eat a dick!

Vision quest

2005-06-22T22:45:00.000-07:00

This will be a short post announcing longer future posts. I will be travelling in Mexico for the next five weeks and will post some stories and photos of my journey. My roommate and I will be starting on the Pacific coast at Puerto Vallarta and heading east to Mexico City, then south to Oaxaca, then up the Gulf coast to Cancun. Merlin has been a vocal critic of this journey from the start, perhaps because it interfered with our doing a radio show this summer -- which I truly regret. In any case, that radio show is a historical inevitability, so think of this as a postponement.

I talked to an acquaintance of my father this afternoon who is a descendent of the Moctezuma family and rumored to be a comrade of subcomandante Marcos. We talked briefly, but he helped me a great deal.
---Is the Yucatan really a must-see?
---Yes, a must-see

I told him I was planning on visiting Catorce de Real, a former silver-mining town in the northern highlands which is now populated by artisans who do psychedelic beadwork on animal skulls. He told me "the only reason to go to Catorce is to do peote, they sell it by the bagful."

I hope I can find a way to get the pictures up on the blog while I am still travelling.

New Features

2005-06-15T17:09:00.000-07:00

The rise of blogs has cluttered the Internet with gaseous commentary from people who write on subjects about which they know little. Because I make it a point only to comment in-depth on things in which I am reasonably versed, this blog will NOT contain regular ill-informed musings on the "hot" topics of the day. Nor will you find indulgent chatter about "my feelings."

Instead, the blog will feature things like what I am about to announce. This summer, I am embarking on a city tour in search of NYC's best hamburger. I come from California, where the hamburgers are superior to basically the entire country. We have places like In-N-Out and Tommy's. I prefer the second, in part because religious fundamentalists don't own it. In NYC, I must say the burger offerings have disappointed me greatly, but hopefully my view will change after this summer.

Second, I am also going to ride extensively the NYC public transportation system into its various neighborhoods. I got this idea from this kid in my hresearch program last summer, who liked riding the subway around to random places. I tried the idea a few months ago, and I liked it a lot. I will post pictures of everything ranging from foods I eat to urinals I use to urinate.

HOT HOT HOT!

2005-06-15T13:41:00.000-07:00

I just returned to NYC yesterday. Alex is right -- it is HOT, though this afternoon did not seem as bad as the morning, when I almost fainted. I may have to get an AC unit.

I took a car trip from Los Angeles to the SF area. Along the way, I snapped 130+ photos, and will post THE BEST ones here soon along with commentaries explaining what the photos show.

Alex is leaving in a week. Too bad, but hopefully he will keep updating this blog. As those who know him can attest, he is the funniest guy in the whole world and always "leaves me in stitches."

Too hot outside

2005-06-13T12:12:00.000-07:00

It's too hot outside -- and inside. It's like 90 degrees. I am wondering whether I have the constitution required to survive 100 degree temperatures in the Mexican jungle. Will report back on this soon.

Last week I was in Massachusetts and got to plug in to the tube for a few hourse. I noticed that the popular television station CNN now incorporates a "blog-watch" into its news broadcasts. They have two young-ish attractive-ish women sitting in front of computer screens reading all the garbage invented that day by the legions of armchair journalists on the internet. I wish they would get it over with and just start vomiting into each others mouths.

Merlin hasn't posted to the blog in some time. I wonder what he's up to.

Cuba

2005-05-08T15:55:00.000-07:00

There's an excellent article in CounterPunch this week which provides a view of Cuba from the perspective of someone who visited recently through a program called Witness For Peace. The article is atypical in that it presents Cuba as neither utopic nor dystopic. Did you know that Cuba has a program where they train doctors from Latin America, Africa, and the US free of charge, then send them back home to work in poor and rural areas?

Having recently considered visiting Cuba (via Mexico or Canada), it was interesting to note that WFP coordinates trips there and also to Nicaragua, Mexico, and Colombia. Seems pretty cool, but costs $100 to apply to travel. Maybe if you're selected you can just coast off the money of all the people who got rejected.

Anyone know any good literature on Cuba? I am going on a road trip in Mexico for a little over a month and have been compiling a list of literature written in or about the country. Maybe I will post that a little later on. Also decided yesterday that in Mexico I will eat a hot pepper every day when I wake up -- will start with the larger ones and work my way down to habanero on July 29.

My allergies feel slightly better since Thursday, but I found some pollen in a glass of wine I was drinking today. Anyway, I am going back to writing a music&language paper now.

Allergies

2005-05-05T23:49:00.000-07:00

Tommorow I will write about the allergies that I, too, have been suffering. I will think about how I will approach this subject as I sleep tonight.

You can check a Pollen report here: http://www.pollen.com/Pollen.com.asp

Type 10027 for NYC. It does not look good.

Fuck. FUCK FUCK. FUCK FUCK FUCK.

Here is picture of just SOME of the allergy products I have used this week. I did not picture the 80294802382302802348234023 snotty tissues or the T-shirt I eventually used in replacement of the 80294802382302802348234023 snotty tissues . I will be posting pictures of my chapping nostrils tommorow.

Picture:

Opening salvo

2005-05-05T22:08:00.000-07:00

As I am a born skeptic, particularly wary of the latest fads, which so regularly vanish into thin air, it is perhaps curious that you should find yourself in this cyber space. "Blogging" seems most useful for spreading hysterical rumors, prolonging an already endless news cycle, and spewing out hopeless amounts of trivia which constantly distract us from more meaningful activities. The result is an ever-worsening culture of impoverishment, in which one finds himself in a dire state of self-loathing, unable to accomplish the most basic goals for fear of "missing something" in the endless stream of mostly useless information. Like the best art, this journal aims to ruthlessly expose the truth of the matter.

To begin with, I must tell you that I have had terrible allergies this week. Today as I taught the little school children, I felt a terrible swelling in my head, as though the space around the skull were filling with liquid and distending the skin. My nose is stuffed, my sinuses make horrible popping sounds, my whole head is on an endless airline trip. I have spoken with several other allergy-sufferers and most agree that this year is particularly bad as pollen goes. Why must this vile substance cause me such grief!?

I promised Merlin I would post a picture:

ME TOO

2005-05-05T22:04:00.000-07:00

I am testing too. Test, test, test. TEST.

The big TEST.

x

2005-05-05T22:01:00.000-07:00

FUCK

2005-05-05T21:59:00.000-07:00

TEST

Test

2005-05-05T21:56:00.000-07:00

Alex Farrill is testing this thing.