therobots.org - select * from robots

Check out my friend Sarah's band Poradova. She also has some audio samples up on her myspace page.

-ick!

I stumbled across this link while searching for creative gift ideas. A Buy Nothing Christmas. This initiative was started by Canadian Mennonites and the website is tied in with Adbusters (just be sure that you don't go to buynothingchristmas.com because that will take you to a crappy online webstore that sells gifts). Too bad my friends and family don't participate in this.

-ick!

I wonder if wikihow knew about my Zombie Houseswarming party last year because today's How to of the Day is "How to Look Like a Zombie".

-ick!

Here's a link to an awesome collection of photos of professionally-done graffiti murals in Kansas City. This guy also has some other cool pictures from around the city.

-ick!

Slow Fade - The afterlife of an indie band:

Then the album, "Spiderland," appeared. On its cover was a black-and-white photograph of the musicians swimming in an abandoned quarry, their smiling faces hovering above the water. But the record was not the product of feckless youths; it was a foray, both brave and frightened, into adulthood. Just six songs and thirty-nine minutes long, "Spiderland" was sui generis, a series of compositions so studiously arranged that they sound as though they might have been notated, like classical music,though they retain the rawness and intimacy of improvisation.

That's a show I'd like to see.

It's something I never thought I'd see - a memorial service for a bulletin board.

China's cracked down on public discussion sites, as they did before with some of the blogging providers.

Jeremy Goldkorn at Danwei describes the latest update:

Some arm of the sour and corrupt Nanny authority has resticted access to Internet bulletin boards (BBS) hosted on servers at Tsinghua University, Peking University and Nanjing University to students and people with university Internet accounts. These BBS were formerly available to the public.

Furthermore, all students who still have access to the BBS will apparently have to register with their real names if they want to continue posting to the BBS. The above-mentioned BBS were previously sources of lively debate about social, economic and cultural issues.

Way to go Nanny!

This may not seem like much; after all, it's just a BBS, and the students can still post. But by blocking outside IP addresses, it will effectively kill the culture of the BBS. And without any hope of anonymity, there won't be much left for the students.

On Saturday Qinghua students gathered to mourn the BBS. One student took a lot of pictures, and posted them on flickr with the name "smth dying". Check it out.

Walter, the man who said, "Screw you Rolla, I'm never coming back," now has a blog (It's on Blogspot, which is blocked by the Great Celestial Nanny. Here's a link you can use from inside China).

It looks like he's infatuated with blogging. Here are some recent posts:

• It's Simple Alegbra, Really:
  

  I came pretty late to the blogging game. But yesterday I realized the secret of the A-list bloggers, and I was thinking all day about how to apply this new knowledge. I'm pleased to announce that I've discovered the solution!
  

• Are you friendly?
  

  or: In which I present a brief and highly unscientific analysis of blog rankings
  

It's good to hear from you, Walter. What's been going on in your life?

Hunter S. Thompson's dead.

On Nixon:

Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man--evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him--except maybe the Stalinist Chinese, and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship.

On Presidential Elections:

The genetically vicious nature of presidential campaigns in America is too obvious to argue with, but some people call it fun, and I am one of them. Election Day -- especially a presidential election -- is always a wild and terrifying time for politics junkies, and I am one of those, too. We look forward to major election days like sex addicts look forward to orgies. We are slaves to it.

Which is not a bad thing, all in all, for the winners. They are not the ones who bitch and whine about slavery when the votes are finally counted and the losers are forced to get down on their knees. No. The slaves who emerge victorious from these drastic public decisions go crazy with joy and plunge each other into deep tubs of chilled Cristal champagne with naked strangers who want to be close to a winner.

That is how it works in the victory business. You see it every time. The Weak will suck up to the Strong, for fear of losing their jobs and their money and all the fickle power they wielded only twenty-four hours ago. It is like suddenly losing your wife and your home in a vagrant poker game, then having to go on the road with whoremongers and beg for your dinner in public.

Talking with George McGovern before the election:

"What do you think is going to happen on Tuesday?"

"I think Kerry will win," I answered.

"Yes, I think so, too. He is about the greatest thing since God created you and me," he laughed.

His voice became serious then, and he said, "I think he is a good guy."

"Yes, I think he will be a good president," I said.

"So do I," he answered.

"By the way," I said, "Tell Eleanor that I still have a crush on her."

"That's good. I'll tell her that on Sunday, which is our 61st wedding anniversary. We got married on Halloween."

On his recent invention, Shotgun Golf:

Genius round the world stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.

Herman Melville said that in the winter of 1914, and Murray is keenly aware of it. Only a madman would call a legend of Bill Murray's stature at 3:33 a.m. for no good reason at all. It would be a career-ending move, and also profoundly rude.

But my reason was better than good ...

HST: "I'm working on a profoundly goofy story here. It's wonderful. I've invented a new sport. It's called Shotgun Golf. We will rule the world with this thing."

BILL [Murray]: "Mmhmm."

HST: "I've called you for some consulting advice on how to launch it. We've actually already launched it. Last spring, the Sheriff and I played a game outside in the yard here. He had my Ping Beryllium 9-iron, and I had his shotgun, and about 100 yards away, we had a linoleum green and a flag set up. He was pitching toward the green. And I was standing about 10 feet away from him, with the alley-sweeper. And my objective was to blow his ball off course, like a clay pigeon."

On the Republicans:

So what took place during this past election?

I believe the Republicans have seen what they've believed all along, which is that this democracy stuff is bull, and that people don't want to be burdened by political affairs. That people would rather just be taken care of. The oligarchy doesn't need an educated public. And maybe the nation does prefer tyranny. I think that's what worries me. It goes back to Fourth Amendment issues. How much do you value your freedom? Would you trade your freedom for some illusion of security? Freedom is something that dies unless it's used.

This is coming from someone who's described himself as "an elderly dope fiend who lives out in the wilderness" and also as a "drunken screwball."

A dangerous drunken screwball.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr., on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Excerpt from A Political Disease, Vonnegut's review of Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72

Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire rainbow of
legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better than he does.

As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about it. I
am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily sane. But we
will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we consider his exterior
a sort of Dorian Gray facade. Inwardly, he is being eaten alive by tinhorn
politicians.

The disease is fatal. There is no known cure. The most we can do
for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his honor.
From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can be as easily
led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public relations, to joy as to
bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter Thompson's disease. I don't
have it this morning. It comes and goes. This morning I don't have Hunter
Thompson's disease.

Seriously, this is the best idea ever:

Basically, you're a razor, and you have to run through a number of increasingly weird 3D levels, chasing cats, and shaving their balls. The cats get increasingly hard to find, and there are an amazing number of them. There are tabbies, tortoise-shells, Siamese, and cougars. As you complete levels the razor gets more powerful and you have to be careful not to hurt the cats or neuter them. When you succeed in shaving a cat's balls, it spits up a diamond that you can collect.

As seen at Crooked Timber.