M.I.A. Can Hit That

I'm feeling kinda crappy today but the fantastic Discobelle.net posted the new M.I.A. track and suddenly I'm feeling a lot better. You should feel good too so here it is via Z-share.

M.I.A.-Hit That

The Gossip Column

I was reading the UK Guardian today, and noticed that they signed on Beth Ditto, of one of my fave bands, The Gossip, to do an advice column. Her introductory statement is pretty damn cool (and also confirms that Arkansas is indeed almost entirely interrelated), and the first column, published last Fri, has some sound advice for coming out of the closet at work. What I can't get over is that a major metropolitan newspaper (I think the Guardian publishes out of London) tapped someone like Beth Ditto to do this, and how it would never in a million years happen here in the US. There she's the frontwoman of a massively popular band and voted the Coolest Woman in Rock by NME. Here, The Gossip is mostly an indie band with a fat lesbian from the wrong side of Arkansas on vocals. The difference in culture and attitude really amazes me, and I wish something like that would happen here.

I have just started reading this fantastic book called PopCo by Scarlett Thomas. It is awesome, definitely a book to which I forsee sacrificing several hours of sleep. There is a lot of mathematics involved in it, especially codebreaking, and I feel sort of odd about that, as math has been taunting me unmercifully ever since second grade, when I had the first of many traumatic breakdowns directly caused by numbers. In this case, there was a test and I believe it involved double-number addition. I was toast and I knew it. Ever since, math has been a sorority that'd I'd like to join because they know how to do some cool things with binary, their alumni list is kicking, and they throw comfortably geeky parties where people earnestly debate the merits of nanotechnology. Plus there's no dress code. But I haven't ever been able to make it past rush week. And not the fun part of rush week, at the end, where you've made it through and there's a party and cake and matching sweatshirts. No, I am firmly stuck in the hazing part of rush week, and the harder I try to do everything right, the more Alegbra II (social chair and head of new recruits) hates it and makes me recite the Pythagorean theorem and the quadratic formula while wearing a diaper and scrubbing her convertible with a toothbrush. It's really painful, actually. That's why I decided to join the bookish writers sorority instead, but they told me I overextend my metaphors and maybe I'd be better off the with the art history people, who mainly watch paint dry and then write manifestos about it. Anyway. PopCo is really fascinating. Read it. And then I will write another post in which I say what I had intended to talk about here, but the sorority metaphor took on a life of its own and inadvertently gave my Math Rage some more fuel and thus I need to end this.

Lil Mama - Lip Gloss Video

I heard this a while and couldn't get into it. This weekend I see this video and now I can't get enough. What I love is that lip gloss is now powerful enough to turn boys into girls, nerds into street dancers, and hallways into dance floors.

I am busy working on stuff, most specifically some sort of mix to post on here in the real near future. In the meanwhile you should check out Chazology for the DJ CASIO mixtape cause that is definitely poppin'.

AWKWARD

I was not one of the cool kids at school. I wore mildly unfashionable clothes, read too much and said too little. Popularity wise, I existed in a weird bubble all my own, flitting between the band dorks, the Christians, the athletes, and one or two popular girls. This may be because I was one of the most ridiculously awkward people I knew, perhaps second only in epic awkwardness to the guy with whom I was voted “Tallest” in my senior class. Luckily, however, through the magical power of the blahgosphere, I have found someone whose awkward exploits are just as cringe-inducing and much better written. That person is Justin, whose blog Awkward Things I Say to Girls has left me speechless with thrilling and inspired nuggets like “You Have Really Good Proportions” and “I’d Like More of You in My Lifestyle” and most especially, the classic “Why Geeks Make Good Lovers.” This last is a wickedly logical point by point version of the one I embarrassingly, but determindly, tried to impress upon a group of eighth grade girls during a project presentation in high school. Sadly, my zealous argument that Geeks Are Hot was completely derailed by my partner, the Acknowledged Cute, Mysterious Yet Athletic Guy of my year. Everytime I attempted to guide these girls towards the truth about the untapped potential of geek love, he would smile shyly and winningly and I knew they were a Lost Cause to the irresistible scent of Eau du Jocque. Sigh.

Lists!

I like lists. I make a lot of them. Usually I never actually get to crossing things off of the list, because the best part is just writing things down in columns. I could care less if I actually accomplish anything, and I'm always finding half-finished lists lying around. ANYWAY this list was going to be a guide to "A Random Selection of Interesting Sites I Found While Bored on the Internet" but then I was reminded that I promised Colin a list of new music he might enjoy. He has a problem with wormholes and lives physically in the present day but makes frequent trips to the mid-eighties and the late nineties. While this is not a bad thing, and is especially useful for Halloween and theme parties, Def Leppard could use a rest on his iTunes. So I will attempt to pull his musical taste, at least, into the late 00's. (oughts? oo's? did anyone figure that out yet?) Below is the list of bands organized loosely by category. Unfortunately I did not have time make handy reference Venn diagrams, so you are going to have to imagine the overlapping categories yourself.


3 Word Name Bands
Usually all dudes. A marked tendency towards rocking.
Dirty Pretty Things
Cold War Kids
We Are Scientists
Les Savy Fav
Broken Social Scene
Neutral Milk Hotel
New York Dolls
Rock Kills Kid


Tousle-Haired Singer Songwriters
Frequently found in coffeehouses. Like to sing pretty songs on acoustic guitars about their feelings. Mostly harmless, but may make you cry.
Willy Mason
Andrew Bird
Sparrow House
Ryan Adams
The Shivers


Our Neighbors to the North
O, Canada! Why must your bands always be so large? Are you trying to make up for something?
Arcade Fire
New Pornographers
Malajube (bonus: Quebecois!)
Broken Social Scene


Drainpipe
Refers to the skinny jeans members of the band are usually wearing. Since they are mostly European, it works on them. Most communicate ironically and through electronic bleeps.
Dirty Pretty Things
LCD Soundsystem
Maximo Park
Klaxons (but only “Golden Skans”)
The Maccabees
The Subways
Los Campesinos
Of Montreal
Phoenix
Postal Service
Beirut
The Rosebuds


The Outcasts
The other categories kicked them out, so they got their own.
Sleater-Kinney (“The Woods”)
Midlake
Spoon
Calexico
The Format
Guster
Oh No! Oh My!
The Bens
Erasure (“Stop!” Warning - Eighties playlist only!)

Robot Pigeons

Just saw this article in Londonist about Chinese scientists and their remote-controlled pigeons. Realized that those same Chinese scientists submitted a manuscript about the same topic in early January and it came across my desk. At the time I thought it was completely ridiculous and possibly one of those crazy people manuscripts we occasionally get but then I watched the short movies that accompanied the paper. Utterly insane and scary at the same time. You could see the scientists operating remotes and making the birds fly along a predetermined path in a large room. The birds were definitely the most freaky looking things ever. Imagine a pigeon, staring in that stupid sort of way they do, but now with part of the top of their head cut off and (apparently) exposing a tiny brain which had a small electrode helment sort of strapped on, blinking with different colored lights. (The illustration is much more sanitized than it really was. The brain was sticking pretty far out.) My first reaction was one of horror, as it’s just a short paranoid hop from manipulating pigeons to manipulating humans, interlaced with the sort of fascination a car crash provokes. Then it just turned into, wtf? And why? Too bad I tossed the movies when the paper got rejected.

Here's the article from Reuter's. It appears they had the same reaction as I did.