This is much more like what I expect for Summer, melting hot humidity! Nice!
Look at that high overnight, 12? 12? Lower than the normal low for this time of year (13). Yikes!
#WritingFromIsolationWard
Category: Commentary
Why do you listen to such crappy music all the time?
Music, like the visual arts is a two part relationship. The Performance and The Consumer. If one was to set up a random tone generator that made repetitive patterns over time; there is a chance that even if it was at a tuneless pitch and widly swung through the chromatic and dreadful scales, someone would hear it and appreciate it as music. Witness the sometimes cacophony of modern “art” music such as “Art of Noise” “Atari Teenage Riot” or “Muslimgauze”, I admit these are popular examples, but I am not a fan of conceptual music and have no real exposure. Share in the comments if you have stronger examples of music made through non-traditional or in non-traditional forms.
This appreciation of music is highly subjective; the listener and their experiences shape a great deal of the types of sounds that they would appreciate as music and prize as entertaining or at least provocative on an emotional level. This relationship between experience and musical preference can be highlighted when one looks at popular music as it relates to geographic location, social strata, economic status and cultural norms.
That is a bit aside from what I’m heading towards though. It’s the way that we can’t as individuals appreciate what other people enjoy in music because of the fact that we are individuals. Even the tightest cliques; who dress and apparently think alike are composed of individuals who experience the world through their own lens (if you will) and therefore interpret the world around them differently.
DJ Funktual is the musical Everyman
There will always be someone you know who doesn’t listen to music at all; not for pleasure, not for torture. They don’t listen to music and then may never. This is akin to someone who doesn’t read or watch television or enjoy theatre or movies or any number of passive entertainments. Some people do not appreciate or enjoy some or all passive forms of entertainment. Their views on music (if they are the type who doesn’t listen to music) might be unique among the populace as they don’t bring to it the same prejudices and preferences a life-long or even short-term musical fan may take. They might even make for better mechanical critics of muisc (or art or television, etc) as they can (likely) be counted upon to dissect a piece for it’s pure objective merits. It’s very loud or Why does the singer keep repeating that phrase even outside of the chorus. That isn’t (as I understand it) what critics of “art” should do though (even though I will do it in a review if the mechanics of something are so unappealing as to overwhelm the piece (I’m looking at you show that smells)).
What about the person who likes everything? They owe no allegiance to any one genre or form of art. They are not a dilettante; but they aren’t a “hardcore fan” of anything. Are they better suited to judge the merits of a given piece, can the Musical Everyman (like DJ Funktual) look at a piece and give it the metaphorical Thumbs Down and have it accepted by society at large as canon? I would imagine not. In the end, even a musical polymath like DJF would have his own cultural and social lens in place when viewing a piece and therefore his opinions of any given thing would be altered by his own experience.
The Accepted Authority
When we are talking about musical tastes, especially when debating the merits of music each party is a flawed judge. Having no legal precedent to fall upon and no (if you will) law of music to appeal to; debates about matters of taste are largely unproductive if the parties have no neutral or accepted authority to call upon as meter to measure the relative value of said piece. For it is the relative value of the piece that the two parties are debating. In some cases they can debate the relative value through economic measures (this piece sold X items) or the relative draw of a piece (this many people chose to play or hear ther piece this many times) . In the absence of some form of objective measure, debate about the relative value or quality of a piece can become abstracted from values and therefore insubstantial and unresolvable. In those cases, debates about music and the other arts are moot, because the debaters cannot experience the piece as the other consumer can and any abstract argument about the merits of the piece become moot.
I just caught a little back and forth on the CBC with a Canadian meteorologist. He said across Ontario, July is four degrees (Celsius!) cooler than normal. He also said Nunavut has been warmer, on average, than Toronto lately.
You know Nunavut. On most maps, it’s the perma-white band of northern Canada, next door to Greenland. They recorded three centimeters of snow there over the past 24 hours.
“In B.C., they’ve had too much summer, in the Prairies there are places that haven’t had enough summer, and here we haven’t had any,” said Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips, from his Toronto office.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1837884
WRONG < – Click ME
What is going on with the Summer? When I was up north visiting my Parents this weekend I found it to be tolerably humid and nice, instead of the constantly cool and easy to cold and crappy that is prevalent here in London. So what’s up with the weather?
Number one Son. Number one! Not Really, the post isn’t linked only my blog itself, too bad.
I really don’t have the Google Juice for anything beyond the most trenchant of topics (*cough* Drinking Games *cough*) but while I’ve been testing out Piwik as an open-source replacement for google analytics (that we can more tightly control and use for free internally) I’ve been amused by what search terms constantly show up (horsecock being number one for AGES)
So; thank-you to everyone who saw “Harry Potter is a Dick” on my blog and clicked on it, knowing that indeed Harry IS a dick and why do we keep paying for Harry Potter stuff anyway? Oh yeah, because it is entertaining.
Not only is this Pure Unfiltered Bullcrap, but on it’s face it’s irrefutably false:
1. The Iraqi “mess” was started by the English in the middle years “oh so long ago” after the First World War, one can be forgiven for not knowing basic history, but if it wasn’t for the Interference of the English Monarchy, there would be No Iraq.
2. After the first Iraq War for Kuwati oil (don’t kid yourself that it wasn’t about oil, that’s all Kuwait has) The Baathist regime in Iraq was essentially caged, and caged animals do what they do and start feeding on themselves. Bravo!
3. Then The British PM and George Bush Colluded to create any evidence they could to jsutify simply going into Iraq and “restoring order” You’ll note the nice scare quotes I tossed onto that once since while The Hussein Regime was far from benign the Islamic Regime that is slowly coming in is sure to be much more Benevolent. Right, All those tolerant Tolerant Shia Regimes all over, right?
So Bravo and three cheers for the volunteer armies who found themselves guarding oil derricks and shooting kids in their own neighborhoods. Putting boot to ass for the cause of George Bush’s hubris and restoring the Great Satan to it’s vaunted and and long forgotten role as meddler and occupier in the Middle East! Hip Hip Hooray!
Three Cheers for the Career soldiers who are little more than pawns of politicians who (for the vast majority) wouldn’t stand on the front themselves and say Boo!
Hip Hip Hooray for the Boys and Girls who are getting blown to bits for a few drops of oil and the Right to a nice Theocratic Regime in the former Mesopotamia.
Raise a glass for the very real possibility of a returned Caliphate in the middle east, made possible by the Soldiers of Freedom and the tanks of Liberty!
Then take your Jingoistic bullcrap and stuff it in the coffins with every boy and girl killed by some other boy defending their own country from Oil Hungry losers who treat National Defense like “Gi-Joe”
By the by, only the US omitted over One Hundred thousand troops to Iraq, the UK committed less than 30,000. Hundreds of Thousands? That was an overestimate.
Cheers’ Good job doing the bare minimum to “support the troops” How about, instead of forwarding emails, you take a car ride down to the Veterans Hospital and spend an afternoon volunteering in the Psyche ward, those PTSD kids are a scream.
On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 3:58 PM, Ned Wardrop <> wrote:
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Angela Shaw
— On Wed, 15/7/09, Shaw, Angela <Angela.Shaw@ wrote:
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I take offense at this:
“Or self-indulgent netizens who believe it is their God-given right to get all the music, films etc. they can stuff into their hard disks without paying the creators a single penny”
Caveat Emptor applies in many purchases, but when a product is defective or doesn’t deliver on it’s promised function, consumers can often return the product or at least obtain credit for their purchase. This is true for most physical purchases, perhaps not all.
However, when one buys media (music, movies, games) you end up in a hinterland. Say I’ve bought “Plan 9 from outer space” not knowing that it is camp and expecting a classic space horror (I live in a cave or something) I can’t return it to the store for a full refund. They won’t let me. However, if I watch it online or download it I can know if the investment was worth the money.
You may not agree with this, but at least you can see the sense of it. I think I’ve seen the basic content nearly 90% of the DVDs I own before I even saw the disc. Sometimes in the theatre (I vowed to never purchase the Transformers Movie (the first M bay one after that) and sometimes via other means.
However; in the cases where I went to the theatre I’m out 20-50 dollars depending how many people come along and the theater; I can’t recover that money in any way. It’s not just a foolish investment, it’s robbery. I was promised X amount of entertainment and instead I was bored or offended or even worse disgusted for X amount of time. I charge 60 dollars an hour for my wasted leisure time; where do I collect?
If groups like the RIAA can charge thousands of dollars for individually “stolen” songs, why can’t consumers have similar protections? These protections were invented for the Producers; the Pirate Bay and their ilk are the market reaction to these protections.
What I’m driving at is if consumers had the ability to receive refunds for bad media; it would go a long way to changing the mindset of people who download movies and music and so on.
I’ve said before that Republicans aren’t too good at protests because we are just too polite, but maybe it’s time we stepped up to the plate EACH time anyway. Maybe we can stop this leftwing hate machine.
As a reminder, Governor Palin is a Tea Party supporter; Andrew Breitbart even basically called her the candidate of the Tea Parties. If any of our readers can put us in touch with New York Tea Party organizers, please let us know
So, if you are keeping notes: Republicans don’t get into protesting, because they are so polite. However, in the same post we see a reference to the ongoing and sometimes very impolite Tea Party protests that have sprung up around the USA. Amazing.
Lest you think this is unique; check out this one:
If you want to show your disgust at Pelosi, be there! Now, I’m not one for protests. I’ve been to a few (I think of the Tea Parties more as rallies), and frankly Republicans and conservatives aren’t too good at protest because we are just too well behaved. Take a look at the rest of the protest page:
(emphasis added) http://blogs.chron.com/texassparkle/2009/06/pelosi_protest.html
Why I do declare; it is so beyond us Republicans to mount an effective protest because we are simply to polite:
So Very very Polite.
Yup.
Paragons of Civility and Genteel Discourse.
Never Raising their voices in Protest; except for the most Egregious outrage, just ask the Dixie Chicks.
This weekend looks like another great summer weekend
Published by NiteMayr on August 6, 2009Do you see that Low from yesterday? 10.5 Degrees. Just 8-9 Degrees from wet snow. BRRRRRRR. I’ve went this entire summer with the Air conditioning off at night (when it was left up to me) can you see why? Sunday looks great, but given the rain all around it, I’d it’ll be raining anyway.