Memory Hole

A character in Cryptonomicon (435 pages down, 918 minus 435 more to go!) referred to a “peace dividend”. It took about 10 seconds for me to remember what that was and where I’d learnt about that from (preparing a case on disarmament for the World Schools Debating Championships in ’98). In a Dublin cafe Alec described Singapore as “monetarist” (amongst other things) to a friend of his and for at least a few seconds I couldn’t remember what that meant either.

Passing thought: how much have I forgotten and don’t even remember ever knowing? Facts, ideas, people?

Cease To Resist, Giving My Goodbye

When walking down the street feeling grand because it’s a beautiful day and feeling an irresistable urge to burst into song, do not give into said urge if the last song you’ve been listening to was Wave Of Mutilation. Even if it is a perfect sunny day song which should be blasted from the rooftops, in your humble opinion.

Actually, strange looks and their perpetrators be damned. It’s still in my head. Gower Street, prepare thyself!

One Liners + Poetry Jumble

Newsmax.com’s daily updated archive of one-liners from late night American talk show monologues is an invaluable service to the Lenoless and Conancraving worldwide. Continuing in the vein of shallow low-brow things that I unashamedly enjoy, I watch these on cable in Singapore, and was sorely missing them last night when I lost ten minutes of my life to Jonathan Ross and his mission of boredom.

  • The U.S. military says that even though Osama bin Laden may have left Afghanistan, they will continue to bomb as long as Geraldo is there. – Leno
  • If you don’t laugh, that means the terrorists have won. – Leno
  • The Olympic Torch completed its 13,000-mile journey tonight in Utah. Unfortunately, local Mormons thought the torch was a cigarette butt and stomped it out. – Conan
  • Next week on Sesame Street they are going to air a series of shows to explain the war on terrorism to kids. That’s a good idea. This also explains why Oscar The Grouch is being held in a trash can on Guantanamo Bay. – Conan
  • Happy New Year! If you’re watching this at home, you are having one lame party! – Conan
  • Osama bin Laden is planning a televised suicide. I call that hosting the Academy Awards. – Letterman

Rather less low-brow is plagiarist.com, which has a pretty damn fantastic range of poetry available, including many favourites I haven’t put up here [my old site] yet.

Try some e.e. cummings if you never have, and even if you have make sure you’ve read these:

Variation On The Word Sleep and Postcards are Margaret Atwood discoveries which remind me I really must go buy some of her poetry, despite not always being keen on her prose (loved A Handmaid’s Tale, abandoned Alias Grace, am somehow completely uninterested in A Robber Bride).

No Simile Intended

From Cryptonomicon:

“The taxi stops. The driver turns and looks at him expectantly. Randy thinks for a moment that the driver has gotten lost and is looking to Randy for instructions. The road terminates here, in a parking lot mysteriously placed in the middle of the cloud forest. Randy sees half a dozen big air-conditioned trailers bearing the logos of various Nipponese, German and American firms; a couple of dozen cars; as many buses. All the accoutrements of a major construction site are here, plus a few extras, like two monkeys with giant stiff penises fighting over some booty from a Dumpster, but there is no construction site. Just a wall of green at the end of the road, green so dark it’s almost black.”

I reread this paragraph a couple of times, struggling to figure out the simile. Then I finally realized there wasn’t any. He meant real monkeys.

Seeking Xen Calm

You know you’ve reached a low point in stress management when you wish it was time to start studying for the exams just so you could start eking out that simple existence of 2 am nights and 8 am mornings, and deeply boring but satisfyingly routine and sedentary days.

I refer to “low point” because I hate that existence, but it’s a hell of a lot better than this week’s frenetic staggering between exponentially increasing numbers of To Do List items – write research project (yo, if anyone’s an expert on the public international law aspects of Internet regulation, please talk to me), decipher Jeremy Bentham for jurisprudence dissertation, magically produce completely organized intervarsity debating tournament (this Friday and Saturday) out of arse…

But enough whinging. After writing a similar diatribe last Thursday I then allowed Russ to persuade me that I really needed to be at Cargo that night for our monthlyish Xen worship session, and although I then managed to miss 3 hours of lectures the next day and generally descend into self-hatred, it was well worth it just for the half hour of mind-boggling virtuosity that was Killa Kela’s mouth. There was also the unique cultural experience of being in a room full of white Brits who seemed to know every word of Roots Manuva’s Witness and joined in especially enthusiastically for the “cheese on toast” line, the sweat-soaked live exuberance of New Flesh (new album Understanding, currently stickered all over London), and DJ Vadim, endearingly Russian and generally loved by all.

Other causes for joy: long overdue ejection of dishwater-dull Darius from Pop Idol, which I, er, accidentally stumbled upon on a lazy Saturday evening in late December and have been, er, accidentally watching ever since. Grin. Go on then, pour forth your ridicule. I’M NOT ASHAMED! VOTE FOR WILL!

But moving on swiftly… :)

More glimmerings in the gloom include recent arrivals from Django (Sparklehorse: It’s A Wonderful Life, Marine Research: Sounds From The Gulf Stream, Sonic Youth: Goodbye 20th Century, stuff by Pavement, 20 Minute Loop and Silver Jews also on the way), a rather lovely boyfriend carrying pancake batter in a plastic jug on the tube in order to come over and cook me dinner, and actually understanding the maths in Cryptonomicon, which reassures me that two and a half years of law hasn’t cottonwooled my brain yet. Yet.

All Tomorrow’s Parties Are Elsewhere

GUESS WHAT??? All Tomorrow’s Parties!!! Has been rescheduled!!! To March 14-17!!! In UCL….A.

Sigh. So near, yet so far.

Would’ve made a great birthday present. Sigh.

Is anyone out there very rich, very generous and very foolish? Anyone at all?

I didn’t think so. Sigh.

Pitchfork 1, Sonic Youth 0

Ha. Pitchfork may poke fun at my favourite band a little too gleefully, and I really don’t think NYC Ghosts and Flowers was quite as dire as the 0.0 Brent DiCrescenzo gave it, but at least they’re funny, and often spot-on.

The NYC Ghosts review has this exceptionally penetrating insight about Kim Gordon’s vocal contributions to the album (hey, in my opinion, every album. I’ve written about it before.):
“Elsewhere, it’s straight spoken word, or in Gordon’s case, “grunted word”– the quality of which brings to mind freshman poetry classes where that one Doors worshiper recites beat prose to the general embarrassment of the entire class.”

From a recent news update:
“In Sonic Youth side project news, keep an eye out for the Supreme Indifference on Kill Rock Stars. The trio consists of Jim O’Rourke, Alan Licht, and Kim Gordon. The first track has been titled “Male in-Communication.” We suspect it is hideously experimental.”

Blur Moron

Is it just me being overly harsh, or is someone who calls up Xfm voting for Blur as the ultimate epitome of Britpop and then says the one song from their entire repertoire that represents this is Song 2 just a complete moron?

On days like this I want to wear this T-shirt.

Excuse this grumpiness. I have spent the day trying to absorb the subtleties of English Conflict of Laws rules on jurisdictional clauses. In practice this means I have spent the day falling asleep at my desk, and have the pen stain on my cheek to prove it.

Very Occasionally A Lyrics Person

I’m not really much of a lyrics person. It doesn’t really matter what Sonic Youth or Fugazi are singing to me as long as it sounds good with the guitars. Other Tori Amos fans gape at me in disbelief when I confess that I don’t really bother reading her lyrics. Apparently they’re deeply meaningful. I’m generally indifferent to the sort of music review where the reviewer quotes extensively from lyrics and concludes that the album is about redemption or tortured love or dark nights of the soul or whatever. I tend to home in on descriptions of how it all sounds and ignore analysis of meaning and themes.

I’ve always felt a bit guilty about this – sort of shallow and non-indie. Most people I’ve mentioned this indifference to lyrics to have certainly reacted with surprise and a little bemusement, and I suppose I’d get raised eyebrows from the A-list music bloggers as well if any of them read this blog (ha, I think not). I can’t really figure out why this is either – I love words intensely in every other context, but the pleasure I derive from most of the music I listen to is overwhelmingly sensory rather than emotional or intellectual.

This doesn’t mean that music lyrics are completely meaningless to me; they do affect my appreciation of music but in a limited and asymmetric way. If I already find a song musically appealing, lyrics I like make me like it more, but bad lyrics have negligible effect.

Which is why it’s unusual that I love Silver Jews’ American Water. There are lines throughout it that jump out at me and elevate what would otherwise feel like exceedingly pleasant but humdrum alt-country to an album of moods and stories and places. Random Rules has In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching perfection; I know that a lot of what I have to say has been lifted off of men’s room walls; and But before I go I gotta ask you dear about that tan line on your ring finger, which are all quite amusing, but something in the ending gives it a similar sort of poignance as Papa Was A Rodeo (Magnetic Fields) except perhaps not as sharp. Wild Kindness closes the album saying I’m going to shine out in the wild silence and spurn the sin of giving in, later I’m going to shine out in the wild kindness and hold the world to its word, and I don’t even really know what this means, but it feels good to hear him sing that.

This happens elsewhere too. I’ve written about Papa Was A Rodeo before. Lyrics are more important to me in rap, and are the absolute essence of why I love 8pt Agenda (Herbaliser featuring Latyrx) madly, and rather enjoy Eminem. Lyrics (and okay, I admit, my secret hopeless romanticism. Stop laughing.) are big reasons why Somebody (Depeche Mode), Sometimes When We Touch (Dan Hill) and Annie’s Song (John Denver) render me weak-kneed, sappy-smiled and mushy-hearted. My enjoyment of Hefner’s The Fidelity Wars is equal parts funny lyrics and appealing melodies.

But most of the time lyrics don’t mean that much to me, which is why I went hmmmm while listening to American Water last night. Funny how these rambles of mine get triggered.

Always Your Way

Today there seemed to be an exhilaration in My Vitriol’s Always Your Way that I never quite noticed before. Walls of sound that shimmer and ripple and whirl themselves round you rather than remain static. Amazing energy in the guitars. I’ve been meaning to listen to the album for a while – this was a timely reminder.

Maybe it’s just that I was at my wits’ end trying to write the damn moot arguments (see previous post), but it reached out and grabbed me in a way nothing else on Xfm managed to the whole day, and yes, they did play The Strokes’ Last Night, which I remain completely underwhelmed by.