dietsch ::

VU Perdition

Speaking of the Velvets, I bought tonight the just-released deluxe reissue of their first album, The Velvet Underground and Nico. The new disc contains both mono and stereo mixes of the first disc, along with tracks from Nico's CD Chelsea Girl. Although billed as a solo album, Cale, Reed, and Morrison do backing vocals. Extensive liner notes and a reproduction of Andy Warhol's peelable banana cover make this a nice fetish item for the Dietsch to own. Also on tonight's shopping list, a copy of the graphic novel Road to Perdition. You might have noticed, if you pay attention to television and movies, that Road to Perdition has been adapted into a film, directed by Sam "American Beauty" Mendes and starring Tom Hanks. Now, I'm looking forward to the movie, but not for Messrs. Mendes and Hanks. (As an aside, however, I've bitched for years that it's time for Hanks to jettison his nice guy role and play someone who's actually kind of a bastard. Perhaps he's now done that.) No, what really has me going is the cinematography by Conrad L. Hall and, especially, the production design of Dennis Gassner. You might think, oh, who sees movies for the production design? Road to Perdition, my friend, is a period piece, set in 1920's Chicago. Check Gassner's credits: The Man Who Wasn't There; O Brother, Where Art Thou?; The Hudsucker Proxy; Barton Fink; Bugsy; Miller's Crossing; The Grifters. Gassner knows period pieces. I've seen the trailer, and this film is just beautiful.

Silence

Is it possible to copyright silence? Note to self: Hey, dummy, John Cage is not the guy from the Velvet Underground.

Audiogalaxy

cnet has an editorial about the Audiogalaxy closure. Eliot Van Buskirk supports an idea I asserted here--nuking file sharing across the board removes access not only to illegally distributed works, but legitimate files as well. He also looks at reasons behind the shuttering of Audiogalaxy and possible implications for future filesharing. Well worth a read.

Metropolis!

Metropolis! The Fritz Lang classic has been restored and will soon be rereleased on the arthouse circuit. Happily, it opens in New York during my July visit. Oh, but look: It's coming nowhere near Indianapolis or Bloomington. Further proof that it's about damn time I move from where culture isn't to where culture is.

Dirty thoughts under attack

In other legislative news, COPPA (the Child Obscenity and Pornography Prevention Act) has passed the House. If the Senate approves, it will be illegal to create or possess any computer-generated image that appears to depict a minor. In other words, no minor needs to have actually been harmed in the creation of this image. The Supreme Court, earlier this year, struck down a similar law, judging that it punished dirty thoughts.

Peer to peer under attack

Gleaned from Metafilter: There's a bill before Congress that would allow copyright holders to launch denial of service attacks on peer-to-peer networks. Again, we're seeing that the only way that Hollywood and Washington know how to deal with file sharing is with the bluntest instruments possible. Denial of service attacks would block not just illegal uses of file sharing, but legitimate ones as well. I'll go surfing later and try to find the actual text of the bill.

Classic typewriters

Ooooooh.

Blog linguistics

Some comments on blog linguistics, because several people have asked me what the term means or whence it arises: Peter Merholz coined the term in early 1999. Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg defends the use of the word [RealAudio file]. And now there's news that the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary have drafted an entry for the word blog for inclusion in their venerable reference.

Scat

To balance the serious with the scatalogical, here's a link for my beloved friend, Anne Pepper.

Domain name disputes

The New York Times ran an item this morning [registration required] about a new report, looking at the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, an arbitration system set up to resolve domain name disputes. What happens when two people or organizations battle for control of a certain domain name? Domain names are those strings in the address bar of your browser: www.michaeldietsch.com, for example, is a domain name. If a company were to begin doing business as, say, Michael Dietsch Enterprises, Inc., the owners could attempt to prove that my use of michaeldietsch.com infringes on their right to further their business activities. Similar domain name disputes have arisen over nissan.com, madonna.com, and brucespringsteen.com. This report, written by Dr. Milton Mueller, an associate professor in the School of Information at Syracuse University, looks at 3800 such disputes, studying how the current arbitration system addresses and resolves them. The report also recommends improvements to the system. The report is available online in PDF format, along with a database containing information about the first 3800 cases arbitrated by this system. Here you'll find links to the report and to the database. Dr. Mueller has also written Ruling the Root, a new book about Internet governance, available through MIT Press. Given my growing interest in Internet law and policy, the report, its accompanying database, and this book should make for nice, light, summer reading.

Cat and Girl

Cat and Girl. Online comics. Witty and charming, but hard to explain. Just go see. Thanks to Charity for pointing it out.

Surrealist compliments

Madame, your implement is admonishing me! Your fingers are as divine as the pope's nostril hair. Your teeth are as soft as liquid stones poured from an aquamarine vase of solidifying flesh.

Comments enabled

Okay, I have comments enabled now. Let's see whether I'm just pissing in a river....

Purple Crayon

Memory is a funny thing. If you read the thing I posted yesterday about bookstores, you know there's a thread going on over on MLF, wherein people discuss their favorite whatsits. My web-friend Kira has been discussing her favorite books from her childhood. Something in one of her comments called to mind Harold and the Purple Crayon, about a boy who makes his imaginings come true by drawing them with his crayon. Now, I bought that book for my nephew, Jake, a couple years ago, and when I did, I had this half-memory from years ago of a cartoon based on Harold. But something didn't seem quite right. It wasn't exactly Harold I was remembering. I knew I was remembering a short toon with the adventures of a boy like Harold, but for some reason I knew that it wasn't Harold himself. It's bugged me for a couple years, but I've shoved these stirrings of memory back into my subconscious and never pursued them. But then, today, I decided finally to chase it down. Here's what I had: a boy, using some type of crayon or pen to create an imaginary world where he'd have these adventures; the cartoon was a regular short segment in a longer children's program--Mr. Rogers, Captain Kangaroo, or whatever; and there was theme song I used to sing along to, when I was wee. Not much to go on. But some strange neurological process shouted CAPTAIN KANGAROO at my highest centers of reasoning. Armed with that, I Googled "harold purple crayon captain kangaroo," which led me a page about Harold and his creator, Crockett Johnson. Turns out there was a segment on Captain Kangaroo, about a boy similar to Harold, who drew his imaginings in chalk. Simon had a theme song, which began, "Well you know my name is Simon, and the things I draw come true." Oooooohhhhhh. Now that rang a bell. So I Googled "simon captain kangaroo," which led me to a delightful page devoted to Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings, a British cartoon that Bob Keeshan imported to use on his program. Now, scroll down that page. Nearly halfway down, you'll find links to the Simon theme, in WAV and MP3 format. I downloaded an MP3 and played it in WinAmp. I closed my eyes and listened; with remarkable clarity and precision, I was suddenly 25 years younger, sitting cross-legged on the floor, in front of CBS on a weekday morning, watching and hearing Simon on the Captain Kangaroo program. Memory is a funny thing.

Cracked, yellowing

Cracked, yellowing--in which I muse about bookstores I've loved.

Annamojo!

One more, since I'm in the mood to blog like a blogger, which means linking to other blogs: Go visit the groovy kookymojito blog. I met Anna in London back in December. She's very funny and she has a great Web log, with some interesting links. Go check it out. Reading one of her entries, though, brings up a point. She has comments enabled on her blog, which I haven't done. I'm not sure why--I think in part because I don't necessarily want stupid people talking shit here (I do enough of that myself). It might be interesting, though, to see what would happen if I do....

Chair-tee!

Faithful readers of my Web log (which I can't say without smirking, because I don't think there are any) have seen this before. I don't care. Go visit Charity Larrison's art blog. I'm telling you this for three reasons: first, because she's a good artist who draws pretty pictures that you'll enjoy seeing; second, because she's sooper dooper; third, because she sent me a box of neat stuff in the mail. The stuff's not a bribe, 'cuz she doesn't know I'm linking to her, but it made me happy.

NSA propaganda

My love of all things propaganda has a new fetish. AdAge.com reports on a new series of ads from the National Security Agency (NSA), urging military personnel to closely guard military secrets. This is nothing new. A famous poster released during WWI warned that "Loose Lips Might Sink Ships." An entire subgenre of propaganda poster during WWII offered similar warnings. These new posters are definitely pretty, but I'm most intrigued that our new "war" has brought with it a return to iconic imagery and punchy sloganeering. Something else about this intrigues me more, though. Propaganda posters from both world wars are increasingly prominently featured in museums and for sale in boutiques and over the Web. Images from those posters are copied and altered and mimicked by movie posters and book jackets, among other representations. Comparisons between this "war on terrorism" and earlier conflicts have been prominent in political rhetoric since September. These images from NSA seem deliberately designed to recall images of earlier propaganda posters to further cement those connections in our minds. This idea of propaganda as propaganda is not, I suspect, new, but I'm intrigued by this angle of it. Visit the AdAge.com link to view full versions of each poster.

Cattle for 9-11

There's a nice piece in this morning's online edition of The New York Times about a tribe of Masai cattle raisers in Kenya. Although it might be hard to imagine, this remote village lacked electricity until the end of last year, and so none of its residents had seen footage of the 11 September attacks on New York or Washington. The radio reports they'd heard were hard for them to fathom. The tragedies remained distant, indistinct, until a young man from their village, studying in the United States, returned home with stories of the attacks that astonished and deeply saddened the villagers--and moved them to make a great sacrifice to honor the dead. The Times story tells of their response. A free registration with the NYT site is required for you to read the story.