Throb

Tricks of the Trade

"For every occupation, there is a catalog of secrets only its employees are aware of—such as how waiters with heavy platters know to look straight ahead, and never down. Armed with a bag of reader mail, Matthew Baldwin unfurls a whole lot more true insider knowledge."

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/how_to/tricks_of_the_trade.php

In other news...

Hot off the wire:

CNN is reporting that Lance Armstrong may be stripped of his 6th Tour
de France title.

In a random check for banned substances, 3 were found in Armstrong's
hotel room.

The 3 substances banned by the French, that were found in his hotel
room were as follows:

(1) Toothpaste
(2) Deodorant
(3) Soap

UdaDJ

meta (music) programming
udadj = multiple custom radio stations + an adaptable (via interface) rule-set
a feeling for the room controls
a feeling for My Auditory Information-Space
repetition is not quite possible
resolution
and the distribution of it
yeah

GIFted

You see what I have to deal with?

All hell has broken loose.

The Conmen

I discovered a cool new concept in the underground of filesharing and creativity: Apparently there's a record store in Capitol Hill that sells burned CDs of mashed up soul music, DJ beats, etc. for around $6. These are not artist-cleared, they are the equivelent of super-excellent mixed tapes. They are absolutely fucking wonderfully awesome and also totally illegal, just like many of the things I do on weekends.

One of the CDs I was listening to is put together by some folks called The Conmen, it's a great example of the cool stuff we could be doing legally if The Sonny Bono Act and its legal kin didn't exist. These CDs consist mostly of soul songs from the 70's remixed with beats and chunks of other songs. I love it and am going to spend my next play money on a ton of this stuff.

I do believe creative work is extremely valuable, but the idea that you should have to pay some long gone artist royalties on 30 year old work - just to use a sample in your not-going-to-make-money anyway music project - is absolutely ridiculous. We have over-regulated creative use to the point where we are retarding the progress of art. Post-modernism and self-reflection in our time are shackled by the gross protectionism of pop culture by the moneyed interests who generate the media content we consume. We are free only to create from scratch. Our culture's shoulders are illegal to stand on.

I'm a little morally distressed about this whole thing. I regularly use pirated software. I love fileshared music. But... I am a creative professional. I make and record music, I do art and Commercial Art and actually sell some of it. The Creative Commons is part of the ultimate answer, but what I'd really like to see is a universal system extended to be more like an eBay of All Things Made. Everything in the world would be up for use, and its value would be determined by some kind of free market. The only problem I see is that this whole idea is based on a money-symbol-type economy, which I think is just unsustainable, but that's a topic for another day.

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Oh, forget it

Just for the record...

extraLEGAL DISCLAIMER:

I never meant to hurt your feelings.

The world isn't fair. Believe me, it comes around both ways.

I've thought about it.. I would kill any one American to save the lives of 10,000 poor third world-type people. I just would.

I wish I could hang out with you more.

Yes, I think about you. At least generally.

All of my ex-girlfriends are fucking awesome.

I probably owe you something in some karmic sense or another.

Mentally disabled people are sometimes even cuter and more worthwhile than your precious pets.

And vice versa.

Photoshoppin'

Here is a blueprint of a time machine.

Note: Apparently Typepad won't let me post pictures without spilling them over into the broader world. I have to put some text here to keep the kids in line. I will refrain from making broad metaphors.

Actually, I won't. If I post a picture without enough text around it, it spills over my date-posted stuff (see the babes pic in a previous post). Is a picture worth a thousand words? Why then the couple dozen associated with every painting in modern galleries? Here's a fun experiment: take a Rothko, stick a random noun on it in 720 point Garamond. The word becomes an emissary from some other language and implies meaning by correlation. Take it away and all of a sudden the image is as naked as a jaybird.

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Pop into your gmail account using a POP3 email client and other cool gmail tricks!