A potpourri of thoughts based on previous entries and some other readings in between....
First, regarding the "where does Lydon get it" entry, after thinking a bit more about it, I seem to recall that that topic (and many others) are well addressed in Simon Frith's Art into Pop (out of print, apparently). This work of Frith's traces the art school system in the UK's influence (via propogatin and attendence) into pop music, including the Beatles, the Who and others. If I recall correctly the sources for the SI connections in Jamie Reid or Malcolm McLaren, and perhaps Lydon are explored.
Anne writes yesterday about our two (!) new local dailies, the youth-oriented Red Eye and Red Streak. Ill named and - from my brief read of both yesterday - unengagingly written, they're unlikely to alter my reading habits a whit; of course, I'm just outside the demographic, and my media consumption of magazines, newspapers, booksetc doesn't make for a good fit. Though I derive so much information from online media at the same time as I embrace old media forms as well should say something (maybe just that I'm a missing link...).
But I can't predict failure for these (though only one is likely to survive), as you don't go down in flames underestimating american media consumption desires. I give you Jackass.
There's an entertaining interview (realmedia, video, bandwidth intensive) with world's greatest DJ John Peel online now, as part of a promotional series by the BBC in Nottingham.
Finally, as I was writing this, Anarchy for the UK was on the radio again.
So along the lines of the SI / Situ discussion going on in an earlier entry, this morning AZ came into the ktchen to switch the radio for me as I was preparing my lunch. Happily to the Sex Pistols classic "Anarchy in the UK".
Listening to it, a few minor thoughts, probably mundane in their generality....
First, the structure is so far from what we've learned to call punk - the Hardcore years really changed our perceptions of what is "harsh" music. There's a lot of chord interplay, choruses, and structure here.
And secondly, the lyrical structure holds up. But what does Lydon mean when he says
I wanna be anarchy.
(emphasis added).
Is he taking on for himself the formative role of an influencing body? Is he shortcutting the rhyme scheme? What's happening here?
I'm sure Marcus has something to say about all this - maybe I should dig that off the bookshelf.
(and, as an aside, update those reading lists over yonder. Boy are THEY stale!)
Meanwhile, over at Jim Treacher's weblog, he's modifying Doonesbury strips (because, duh, this week's run is about web-logging.
It's not without some humor value, and he does it well. I just don't know that I think of it as detournment, as he seems to believe . Perhaps the more SI-toolset aware (Mike?) can correct me on this, but I think of detourment as the wholesale displacement of an item from one context for purposes of use in another. He's pushing bits around to make a point, but he's not moving away from the context of the work in question.
After some tweakage and exploration, this and AZ's log are up and running again. A combination of some filesystem moves on the host and a silly configuration decision I made when we first set these puppies up appears to have been the core element at fault (but oh do I wish MT had more logging functionality out the back end...
That said, and as they say, we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
And viz that title. If you were MES, wouldn't you know you're likely to have visa problems and apply a =wee= bit early, rather than have to cancel the tour?
From a GS report I receive regularly, a ranking of a stock I don't own (nor intend to):
"Shares are expensive on a relative basis trading at 182x 2003 Earnings"
Oy. Vey.
Mike has done some stuff on web comics (even posts some of his own work (not inherently web) at comix.whybark.com. All that leads in to my re-reading this morning of Cat and Girl which, despite misusing .edu resources (old habits die hard, sorry) is a delightful, near situ, read when I remember to check it.
Also on the comix front, the Seattle P-I carries Rhymes with Orange, cruelly taken from us in the Tribune a number of years ago. It was nice to see it in print again.
A handful of headclearing thoughts before I head away on a quick trip...
First, and this is more diarylike than I'd normally be, a murder in the neighborhood last night was unsettling in so many ways. Not really because it occurred practically outside our door - the circumstances appear to have been such that I wouldn't say there's danger to the neighborhood or our "quality of life" here, it was awfully close to think of such personal violence.
The short version - AZ and I are sitting in the living room, having a late dinner when, as the saying goes, 'shots rang out' four or six, a pause, then one final report.
It came from the alley, where kids have periodically had some fun lighting off firecrackers, but this time it sounded distinctly different. I've never knowingly heard a gun in the city, only on the farm target (or varmint) shooting with my father. Enough to know the noise, the sense, of the sound to be quite different from firecrackers.
I look out the window, see an object that I'm pretty sure I know what it is. Look out the back door (against AZ's better wishes), know even more certainly, and call 911 almost without thinking, struggling to describe the location of the alley.
Say what you will, the cops and paramedics were there in very little time. But given how measured the paramedics were after arrival, it was clear there was nothing for them to do.
And then came the long standing on the back porch and the multiple reactions. How nobody had seen anything substantive, but we all heard the shots. What we'd experienced similarly, and yet so different, in the past. Watching the dozens of cops and detectives as they searched for shells, tried to find someone who could ID the victim, got pulled to other cases in the big city.
How many of the neighbors seemed to wander out, though we never get to see so many of them on the nice days.
How the L stopped in the tracks right after the shooting, the power from the third rail raising that hum, eerily.
How the cops can't move the person until they reach a certain stage in the investigation - they can even roll him over to see if he himself was armed until they have some core information. So the body sat, guarded by a handful of personnel, until after we'd gone to bed.
How someone has become a life truly wasted, when as people we can surely do better.
Congress
AZ has already pointed this out, but the responses coming into the not-your-government-but-a-portal-that-links-to-them site congress.org are largely in opposition to the current activities of the Bush adminiistration (and seem to have more direction than the muddled "we're afraid to disagree. hold us" reaction of many elected Democrats. Not that I have been shaken ever in the last 10 years in my belief that Hussein is an awful, horrible man, but that I haven been moved to support the current rush to attack him this fiscal quarter either.
For more reaction from the floor (and in the way our elected officials want us to get it, for better or worse) consider the current edition of the Congressional Record, housed at the valuable (and the one thing I thank Newt Gingrich for) Thomas. For more on the differences between legislative impressions and actions, consider this Ballot Box piece from William Saletan at Slate.
Gadgetry
Finally, the gadget of the month, about which more later, is the Danger Sidekick. It's almost Dent's OnIt (as I understand the OnIt). Needs the "Third Party Opportunities" (Oh, Apple, how we miss your blown Newton Marketing, really we do) to flesh it out, though.