I became intimately involved with Elvis Costello’s Spike album at a very weird point in my late adolescence. As an album, its themes are based around death and things (perhaps) just beyond. It had a couple of poppy-singles, but it’s a dark record.
This single is just about the brightest thing on the album, but it’s still wrist-slittingly bleak when you consider the Alzheimers’ angle. Enjoy!
Elvis Costello – Veronica
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Core 77 has a interesting piece about the consumer trend toward cheaper versions of existing products (primarily electronics) with reduced feature-sets and how they impact design and innovation. The article covers netbooks and cell phones, of course, but also looks at less-sexy* technologies such as water filtration, power generation, and household appliances. These are considered “disruptive technologies” because they undermine the status quo — as long as the status quo is defined as ‘maximum functionality at premium prices’.
As Christensen pointed out again and again, “disruptive technologies were exactly those that did not appeal to entrenched market leaders because they tended to under-perform existing technologies and served a less-profitable consumer demographic.”
I just searched the entire page for the term “iPad” and discovered it’s not there. I’d swear I had seen it mentioned, but it turns out to only have been strongly implied. The contrast between the article’s subject and the iPad is impossible to miss, especially if you realize that the iPad is not a disruptive technology — while technically underperforming, it fails one of the core criteria necessary to qualify as a “disruptive technology” — its ridiculously inflated price.
Here’s another post about new music that doesn’t suck. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I like Black Moth Super Rainbow. See my previous post on The xx for why I’ve been staying away from new music for a big chunk of my adult life and why I’m surprised to find myself genuinely liking some of the new stuff now. Again, the key appeal is originality. In the case of BMSR, though, I suspect the vocoder would eventually become pretty tedious and gimmicky. And don’t forget, this could be considered hipster music (shudder).
“Tooth Decay”
“Sun Lips”
Here’s some new music I quite like, which is more than a little surprising. I’ve become extremely cynical about music over the past 1.5 decades or so, but it seems as though there may (at last) be some new stuff worth listening to. My biggest complaint about most recent music is that it’s so completely derivative of previous bands’ work that it’s really just a poor reproduction. Right now the trend is towards mining the bands of my adolescence and teen years, which I find particularly galling.
The xx deserve credit for creating a sound which seems genuinely inspired by their predecessors, rather than being just a simplistic rip-off. The following two songs show strong New Order/Joy Division and Jesus and Mary Chain influences, but don’t feel like talentless, hack-job reproductions. Very much the opposite.
“Islands” (studio version)
“VCR”
Via Boing Boing, it’s a video version of xkcd’s version of the Discovery Channel’s “I Love the World” — “I Love the Internet”.
…reinacting the XKCD version with “Neil Gaiman, Wil Wheaton, Cory Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig, Bruce Schneier, Jason Kottke, Google Zurich, Hank Green, MC Frontalot, Patrick & Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Mr. Toast, Miss Cellania, Team Genius, Phil Plait, Allan Amato, Maddy Gaiman, Charissa Gilreath, Belinda Casas, Chuck Martinez, Jeremy James, Joanna Gaunder, Lee Israel & Octavio Coleman Esq. of The Jejune Institute.”
Original comic (click for big):
I’ve worked in offices that were covered with insulting, cliched motivational posters and I’ve always loathed them. This parody, however, I’d proudly hang in my home.
One more cartoon: Stephen Collins depicts the internet after society collapses. Via Coelacanth Diaries and Boing Boing. Click the image for the full comic.
Via Boing Boing by way of Dangerous Minds, the Daily Mail reports that a Pennsylvania woman has been charged with animal cruelty after installing large-gauge barbell piercings in kittens’ ears and necks, then attempting to sell them online for hefty sums. She also docked at least one kitten’s tail by suffocating its blood supply with a rubber band.
I dare you to LOL this. And screw you in advance, 4chan.
Via i09, a WWII-era image of a model demonstrating a plastic safety bra/breastplate designed to protect the female torso in hazardous factory situations. The vintage quality makes the image very compelling, somehow.
Via Boing Boing, here’s fan fiction imagining the last broadcast of Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! due to the inevitable zombie apocalypse. The author did a great job with the dialogue — if you’re familiar with the show you’ll actually hear the panelists’ voices as you read. From “Wait Wait Don’t Eat Me“:
CARL: “I am tired of these m-f’ing zombies in my m-f’ing White House!”
PETER: That was a slightly edited version of a quote from which world leader, in response to the zombie threat?
STEVE: Brains?
PETER: No, I’m sorry, it was Vice-President Joe Biden, who went, and we quote the vice-president again, “all Samuel L. Jackson on their asses.” President Obama, meanwhile, defended the West Wing with a functioning lightsaber that the Pentagon had apparently built for him in secret.
PAULA: Jeez, I wish I’d been able to buy a few of those for my kids.
