Night questions
Feb. 1st, 2005 01:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusSometimes, out of the blue (I'm walking through snow, at night, in the countryside in Hokkaido, perhaps, and it's seven below zero) a question comes into my mind. I will discover the answer when I get home, I tell myself, using the internet.
Some typical questions I might be asking:
What is America doing about global warming? Well, when I get home I listen to programme 2 of Climate Wars, a Radio 4 series, which informs me that, although the Bush administration's policy is to reduce 'emissions intensity' by encouraging efficiency, the effect is to allow emissions to grow over the next ten years. But there are coalitions of liberal states on the East and West coasts now forming to devise their own much more responsible emissions standards, apparently.
I'm also asking myself why am I able to live by music and keep releasing records, when someone as brilliant as Howard Devoto has to work a dayjob? According to Paul Morley, in the October 2000 edition of Uncut magazine, '...for the past few years Devoto has worked in a photographic agency organising their systems. "It is only since I've done the job that I have a practical view of the future - and therefore a degree of... well... happiness. It is such a relief not having to rely for my survival on my creativity or lack of it. There is the thing about how - after what I was and what I might have been - I end up doing a job that can be seen as pretty... boring. Well - I could never have worked in the music business. My pride would never have let me. Whatever I feel about not being involved in all that is far outweighed by the relief of not having to perform all the duties you're expected to if you want attention."'
The Magazine website Shot By Both Sides leads me to this beautiful cover by an artist called Forms of Things Unknown of the track Stupid Blood, from Luxuria's great second album 'Beast Box':
'Burn your bridges, burn your boats
Smell the life you never had
That, I'm afraid and I'm not afraid, is that...'
Devoto is the T.S. Eliot of rock lyrics. Perhaps Ministry's mediocre cover of Magazine's 'The Light Pours Out Of Me' will be his 'Cats'.
When I ask myself why people never embraced Mr Devoto, despite the clear superiority of his lyrics, I am never far from asking why 98% of computer users fail to use Apple computers. Farhad Manjoo goes some way towards answering my question in an article in Salon, Hallelujah, the Mac is back:
'[Apple's] share of the world's computer business remains dismal. The company now has about 2 percent of the worldwide computer market; its market share in the United States stands at just above 3 percent, a tenth of the share of the top Windows PC maker, Dell. We won't pause long to chew on the paradox of the Mac -- the mystery over why, so far, the world's best desktop computers are also the world's least popular machines... Windows users don't expect much in the way of quality, beauty or elegance from their machines; if they did, they'd be Mac people. Instead, they expect their PCs to perform a great many tasks, and they've resigned themselves to having to labor over those tasks.'
I sometimes look at myself in the mirror and ask 'Am I Nathan Barley'? Nathan Barley is coming to the UK's Channel 4 on February 11th. Barley is a 90s yuppie fop and 'self-facilitating media node' invented by TV Go Home's Charlie Brooker. Brooker's satirical TV listings made gargoyles of British media formulae. Now, incestuously enough, one of them is about to become real TV. The Nathan Barley series, co-authored by Chris Morris, is based on a recurrent listing called 'Cunt', which proposed that 'Nathan Barley is a worthless, moneyed little shit who deserves to die.' Whenever I used to read about Barley's adventures, back in the 90s, they seemed to match my own. Nathan was listening to drum'n'bass, looking at websites on his Nokia Communicator, or reading an issue of Sleazenation magazine in a Tokyo hotel room. So was I. Brooker observed these foibles with black Nazi bile, though, and condemned Barley to die a thousand ignominious fantasy deaths for them. On the strength of the trailers, the actual TV show looks a lot milder, though funny and promising. Perhaps the sins of the 90s have been exculpated by the much worse excesses of the Naughties.
Finally, I ask myself 'Why does 'Otto Spooky' (the album Nathan Barley never made) look so damn cool, now I've finally got it in my hands?'
Some typical questions I might be asking:
What is America doing about global warming? Well, when I get home I listen to programme 2 of Climate Wars, a Radio 4 series, which informs me that, although the Bush administration's policy is to reduce 'emissions intensity' by encouraging efficiency, the effect is to allow emissions to grow over the next ten years. But there are coalitions of liberal states on the East and West coasts now forming to devise their own much more responsible emissions standards, apparently.
I'm also asking myself why am I able to live by music and keep releasing records, when someone as brilliant as Howard Devoto has to work a dayjob? According to Paul Morley, in the October 2000 edition of Uncut magazine, '...for the past few years Devoto has worked in a photographic agency organising their systems. "It is only since I've done the job that I have a practical view of the future - and therefore a degree of... well... happiness. It is such a relief not having to rely for my survival on my creativity or lack of it. There is the thing about how - after what I was and what I might have been - I end up doing a job that can be seen as pretty... boring. Well - I could never have worked in the music business. My pride would never have let me. Whatever I feel about not being involved in all that is far outweighed by the relief of not having to perform all the duties you're expected to if you want attention."'The Magazine website Shot By Both Sides leads me to this beautiful cover by an artist called Forms of Things Unknown of the track Stupid Blood, from Luxuria's great second album 'Beast Box':
'Burn your bridges, burn your boats
Smell the life you never had
That, I'm afraid and I'm not afraid, is that...'
Devoto is the T.S. Eliot of rock lyrics. Perhaps Ministry's mediocre cover of Magazine's 'The Light Pours Out Of Me' will be his 'Cats'.When I ask myself why people never embraced Mr Devoto, despite the clear superiority of his lyrics, I am never far from asking why 98% of computer users fail to use Apple computers. Farhad Manjoo goes some way towards answering my question in an article in Salon, Hallelujah, the Mac is back:'[Apple's] share of the world's computer business remains dismal. The company now has about 2 percent of the worldwide computer market; its market share in the United States stands at just above 3 percent, a tenth of the share of the top Windows PC maker, Dell. We won't pause long to chew on the paradox of the Mac -- the mystery over why, so far, the world's best desktop computers are also the world's least popular machines... Windows users don't expect much in the way of quality, beauty or elegance from their machines; if they did, they'd be Mac people. Instead, they expect their PCs to perform a great many tasks, and they've resigned themselves to having to labor over those tasks.'
I sometimes look at myself in the mirror and ask 'Am I Nathan Barley'? Nathan Barley is coming to the UK's Channel 4 on February 11th. Barley is a 90s yuppie fop and 'self-facilitating media node' invented by TV Go Home's Charlie Brooker. Brooker's satirical TV listings made gargoyles of British media formulae. Now, incestuously enough, one of them is about to become real TV. The Nathan Barley series, co-authored by Chris Morris, is based on a recurrent listing called 'Cunt', which proposed that 'Nathan Barley is a worthless, moneyed little shit who deserves to die.' Whenever I used to read about Barley's adventures, back in the 90s, they seemed to match my own. Nathan was listening to drum'n'bass, looking at websites on his Nokia Communicator, or reading an issue of Sleazenation magazine in a Tokyo hotel room. So was I. Brooker observed these foibles with black Nazi bile, though, and condemned Barley to die a thousand ignominious fantasy deaths for them. On the strength of the trailers, the actual TV show looks a lot milder, though funny and promising. Perhaps the sins of the 90s have been exculpated by the much worse excesses of the Naughties.
Finally, I ask myself 'Why does 'Otto Spooky' (the album Nathan Barley never made) look so damn cool, now I've finally got it in my hands?'
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 04:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 05:22 am (UTC)also, i can't build my own Mac from spare-and-castoff parts, as said parts are difficult to find.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 05:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 05:44 am (UTC)It's really cold in some countries. We, Americans, believe every man, woman, and child has the GOD GIVEN RIGHT (the Christian God, not one of those artsy fartsy gay-tolerant heathen gods, mind you) to be toasty warm! We're SELFLESSLY pumping precious petrochemicals into the air to help warm those downtrodden, frozen types. And to liberate them also.
(one ticket to Canada, please)
Otto Spooky does look cool. I don't have it yet. I am bitter.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 05:46 am (UTC)no, you are not Nathan Barley...but I suspect we all know someone like him
Date: 2005-02-01 05:55 am (UTC)cheers,
AJ
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 06:09 am (UTC)Didn't you write something about how most design (I think you were talking about Japanese mcdonalds) looks like it's stuck in 1998? The mac is a perfect example of the same outdated looking crap. And why would anyone make a computer in white? The keyboard of my friend's G4 has turned brown and disgusting. By constrast, my thinkpad looks great in a form-function kind of way.
And try doing architecture on a mac. Autocad, one of the oldest computer programs still in existence is still windows only. Don't even think about new, wonderful revit. What's this about macs being for all the creative types?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 09:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 04:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 06:14 am (UTC)Devoto
Date: 2005-02-01 06:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 06:29 am (UTC)You are getting more popular.
=)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 06:33 am (UTC)Wow, big in Siberia! At last!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 07:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 08:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 03:39 pm (UTC)Fantastic red hair! Where did it go?
My red hair is fading fading fading...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 08:23 am (UTC)Devoto is supposed to be getting some sort of line-up of Magazine together for Vincent Gallo's All Tomorrow's Parties in April. Yoko Ono is said to be performing too.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 08:50 am (UTC)1. Barley is socially privileged and high class, with private means.
2. Barley is untalented, unproductive.
3. Barley plays while others around him work.
4. Barley is insensitive to the pain of the exploited and the poor.
5. Barley is an early adopter of fads and gadgets.
6. Barley is inconsiderate in public ('braying', talking during films, etc).
7. Barley is a masturbator, and sexually selfish.
8. Aesthetically and morally repugnant.
9. Believes, quite wrongly, that his actions inspire envy.
10. Enviable.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 09:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 11:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 09:24 am (UTC)Take heart, momus. Apple may have 2% market share, the percentage of computers that are being sold right now, but their installed base (percentage of working computers that are Apples) is higher - I've read estimates of 10 or 15%.
People keep their Macs longer, in part because they don't get clogged up with spyware and discarded as "broken" after a couple of years. Look at the high prices on the second-hand Mac market - the supply from people getting rid of Macs is clearly much lower than the demand. Whereas a second-hand x86 PC is only valued as a doorstop.
And I think worrying that you might be Nathan Barley exempts you from any charge of Barleyism.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 03:39 pm (UTC)"the percentage of computers that are being sold right now" - just after Apple release a raft of new products?
"People keep their Macs longer" - yep, it gets expensive upgrading all the time.
"Look at the high prices on the second-hand Mac market" - as above.
"Whereas a second-hand x86 PC is only valued as a doorstop." - This is a "good" thing.. accessable to the masses, not the clique.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 10:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 10:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 11:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 03:17 pm (UTC)as for suggesting kanji, you do know it learns what kanji you most often use don't you? type in some hiragana and choose an alternate kanji suggestion, and next time you type in that hiragana, it will suggest the one you chose last time.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 04:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 10:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 11:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 12:02 pm (UTC)Check
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 03:44 pm (UTC)If she gave a few pence to a chariteer in the street she would get terrified if they tried to give her a sticker.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 04:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 04:22 pm (UTC)The trick to removing sticker residue is nail polish remover- just dab it on and the stuff comes away clean!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 12:58 pm (UTC)Momus, Otto Spooky is your best work to date. I say that being a fairly new listener; but I have done my homework.
The turn towards experimentation you've taken in the textures of your songs adds so much to your already excellent skeletal songwriting and lyrics. (The packaging is exemplary this time round as well.)
While your philosophies are often debatable -- why bother elucidating them, if not -- your cross-media presentation of the Momus project remains compelling, halfway through this decade.
To think, eventually you may be seen as a relic of the 00s rather than the 80s.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 01:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 03:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 03:54 pm (UTC)I found it terribly disappointing. Almost unlistenable. Horrible production. Luxuria was so great...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 06:47 pm (UTC)Maybe you need to work with Devoto and produce him. That would be a fantastic combo..
Richard
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 11:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 03:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 11:21 pm (UTC)massage sonores
Date: 2005-02-01 04:26 pm (UTC)did you ever had a sound massage? i just had one here at the art centre. your sitting in a chair and behind you your artist/therapist uses all kind of found material to produces tiny noises next to your ear. all crispering and very minimal sounds that are manipulated by thierry madiot a french musician, performer of breath and wind, inventor of intstruments and collector of accessories.
it was really nice. very real-laxing
I now want one every day!
and I can.
erik
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-01 05:15 pm (UTC)Nathan Barleycorn Must Die
Date: 2005-02-01 05:33 pm (UTC)As for the by-now-infamous sticker--that is by no means a dayglo pink (in my American pressing)! A Chanel "Think Pink" at most, a salmon-with-sunstroke pink, an underfed geranium pink, but not dayglo, not fluorescent, nothing to charge your blacklight up for. However, I do like stickers or anything extra you can get with a CD, even if I prefer the uncluttered sticker-less design. (After all, the only place you'll see the word "Momus" anywhere on the cover is on the spine, so how is the casual WalMart browser even to know this CD is courtesy of Momus?)
Ah, Momus, you really bring back memories of my brother waking me late at night to Magazine's "Song from Under the Floorboards," a radical departure from the pop hits he used to pester me with. I'll have to give Luxuria another chance, because I was originally as disappointed in them as you were with Buzzkunst.
"Boulderdash:" my favorite new word of the day. The gibberish granite might spout?
Z.
Me again
Date: 2005-02-02 12:26 am (UTC)Did you check out the new beck remixes exclusive to i-tunes ?: http://www.apple.com/itunes/
8-bit Supermadrigal style !
Richard
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-02 05:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-02 04:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-02 11:48 pm (UTC)