I’ve been waking up recently and turning on All Things Considered before falling back asleep for half an hour or so. I drift in and out of sleep during this time, catching some of the news when awake. And, it seems, while I’m asleep.
This morning I had a vivid dream that I was looking at a wide-format, wall-sized photograph of Kenya, with a bombed-out hotel on one side and a low-flying jetliner on the other side. Someone was pointing out to me the missiles that were captured in this photo, just missing the jetliner. I was very angry. And then, still in the dream, the room and the photograph dissolved into reality, and I was seeing the events in real time.
When I woke up, an NPR reporter in Mombasa was describing the current situation in Kenya, and the reaction to the terrorist attacks.
Month: November 2002
Music For Prison
I had iTunes on random last night; it was trolling the entire collection for tunes (with the exception of songs from my generously-defined trance genre—jumping from Billie Holiday to club music? I don’t think so).
I don’t normally listen to music this way in iTunes. If I had the newer, OSX version, with its Smart Playlists feature, I’d do random more often (although it wouldn’t really be truly random with the Smart Playlists, would it?).
I brought about 4,000 songs along with me to Japan—that’s where my 30GB hard drive max’d out. This allows for a fairly large library from which to pluck random songs. And it’s amazing the things I’ve forgotten I had. Barbra Streisand singing The Love Theme from “The Main Event”? That obviously came from those glory days of the Napster smorgasbord.
Ah… What a time. And what perfect timing—getting laid off from a dot-com, with a small severance package and unemployment benefits inflated from the ridiculous salary I’d been getting from said dot-com, and an endless library of songs to be downloaded. Free time, free music. Oink, oink.
I was obviously delirious when I decided I needed to build a Barbra library. Most of my time was spent looking for MP3 versions of the hundreds of cassette albums I was carrying around from the 80s. Am I really supposed to pay for the same music again just to upgrade hardware? Yes, I know… I am.
Anyway, laying in bed last night listening to random music from a large song library, I wondered which music I’d choose to take with me if I were carted off to jail for stealing so much of it. The RIAA, generous souls that they are, would allow me to take a handful of albums (good old fashioned CDs, of course—and I’d have to pay the $21.99 retail price for each) to help me spend those lonely hours in the clink.
My “handful” would include twenty albums, and this is the list I came up with last night. I did this in about ten minutes, so I’m sure this list is going to need revisions in the future. But these are some of the albums I’ve enjoyed over and over, and which stick out in my mind as “must have” if had to get rid of all the rest.
Chameleons UK – Strange Times
Blade Runner Soundtrack
Kid Loco – DJ Kicks
Miles Davis – In A Silent Way
DJ Phil B – Music For Clubs
Brian Eno – Music For Airports
Everything But The Girl – Walking Wounded
Dusty Springfield – Dusty In Memphis
The The – Mind Bomb
Dolly Parton – Little Sparrow
Massive Attack vs. The Mad Professor – No Protection
Peter Gabriel – Passion
Nick Drake – Pink Moon
Talvin Singh – Soundz Of The Asian Underground
Personal ABBA mix
American Beauty Soundtrack
Beck – Sea Change
Roxy Music – Avalon
Emmylou Harris – Wrecking Ball
Ella Fitzgerald – The Intimate Ella
Note: I paid for every one of these albums except for the Nick Drake one.
Google Live Query
Interesting article in the New York Times on Google’s Live Query, which displays real-time search requests from around the world. The result is a worldwide stream of collective consciousness.
Postcards From Planet Google
Buried on the second page of the article is this mention of the darker side of Google—it knows who you are:
Searches are logged by time of day, originating I.P. address (information that can be used to link searches to a specific computer), and the sites on which the user clicked. People tell things to search engines that they would never talk about publicly – Viagra, pregnancy scares, fraud, face lifts. What is interesting in the aggregate can be seem an invasion of privacy if narrowed to an individual.
The Fox Is Back In The Henhouse
Bush has appointed Henry Kissenger to investigate alleged U.S. intelligence failures leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks. Appointing Kissenger to uncover “the facts” is a cruel, sick joke. The only facts Kissenger has respect for are the ones he manufactures or manipulates.
The Latest Kissinger Outrage
Kissinger’s Back
The Case Against Henry Kissinger
Such a clumsy, transparent attempt to rig the outcome of this investigation is a sign that the Bush administration is confident enough in its powers to disregard the need for subtlety. Notice, also, the timing of the appointment—the day before Thanksgiving, when interest in news is at a low point.
If the Democratic Party doesn’t forcefully challenge this, they aren’t merely asleep at the wheel, they’re dead.
Beck
On heavy rotation in my aural world these days is Beck‘s new album, Sea Change. Exceptional, and highly recommended.
Silent Running & Solaris
Images from the just-released film, Solaris remind me of Silent Running, one of the first sci-fi movies I ever saw. I must have been around 10 years old, and was enthralled despite the fact that it’s a fairly boring movie.
Judging from reviews for Solaris, the two movies sound similar in their spare aesthetic. Neither of these movies are from the Star Wars or Starship Troopers branch of science fiction.
Silent Running, for those who don’t remember this gem from the 70s, starred Bruce Dern as a botanist aboard an enormous spaceship filled with plants. The ship, one of series a botanical “Noah’s Arks,” contains remnants of the last surviving forest from Earth. Conflict among the small crew leaves Dern the only human aboard.
To say that not much happens during the movie is being generous. But something about it stuck in my head and has never left. As a child, being lost in space with robot friends and lush gardens seemed a lot more romantic than it does today. These days, I know I’d get lonely fairly quickly. I’d still want to go for the ride, but couldn’t I bring some friends? Ones that won’t go insane, preferably.
This Is Not Progress
Adam Greenfield of v-2.org offers his observations on the state of Japanese design and aesthetic:
The Japan That Should Say No
Where Japanese culture used to be expert at finding the one element in a situation that bore psychological meaning, at manipulating the tension between what is made explicit and what is left unsaid, it now contents itself with wallowing in the banal.
This is as true of technology (and associated domains like information design) as it is of, say, J-pop. As recently as the 1960s, Japan produced as a matter of course train schedules, tourist maps, and newspaper weather reports so carefully devised that master information designer Edward Tufte chose them as particularly exquisite examples of the use of line and color to carry data.
Similarly, up until the 1980s, Japanese technology led the world in simplification, miniaturization – refinement. More recently, manufacturers seem engaged in a race to bombard the user with the most extraneous features. It’s trumpeted as innovative when the new model keitai comes with interchangeable faceplates.
Like I say: banal.
During my brief time in Japan, I haven’t seen a lot to dispute his observations. Take my mobile phone, for example…
Short Films
Hollywood movies generally show up in Japan three to six months after they are released in the States. And then they are shown at expensive theaters where your ticket doesn’t even guarantee you a seat. If you happen to live, as I do, in a slightly sleepy city in the mountains, that expensive ticket doesn’t even get you a decent venue. All this helps explain why I’ve only seen one film in a theater in the six months I’ve been here.
If I can’t see the movies, though, I’m not going to miss the trailers. Every once in a while, I’ll spend a good chunk of time on Apple’s “Trailers” site, perusing the movies I won’t be seeing at a theatre near me soon.
I watched a batch of trailers last night, and…
I hate it that I’ll be missing Almodovar’s new movie, Talk to Her. Even if it’s released here in Japan during my stay, the subtitles will be in Japanese rather than in English.
There’s an art to making a good trailer, though the talentless advertising hacks in charge usually screw it up. Case in point: The Hours. Watch this trailer and tell me that, towards the end, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be one of those bad Michael Douglas suspense movies. Please, please, please let the movie be better than this trailer makes it out to be.
Ben Affleck as Daredevil? They’ll have to change the tag line from “The man without fear” to “The man without charisma.” Click below to see a real superhero.
Full-Body Scans
A Kyoto company offered full-body scans at the Tokyo Game Show recently. This site collects the results.
I want one. Looks well worth the approximately US $18.
Scroll all the way through; there are some great scans at the end, including one of a woman who doesn’t need a push-up bra.
Ebisuko Fireworks
There was a huge fireworks display last night in Nagano. It lasted for two hours. Two hours!
This is something of an anomaly in Japan, where most fireworks displays are held in the summer or autumn. This annual, late-November display has developed into something of a showcase for fireworks artisans, allowing them to preview next season’s displays and new techniques.
Crowds of people huddled in the cold near the large river that runs through Nagano, watching the fireworks and enjoying food and warm sake provided by the scores of vendors.