Holiday Card

So starting last year, L. and I started coming up with unique holiday card ideas. This year? Robot Manger scene! We spent the better part of a Sunday morning designing the set, and photographing it went on all day. Evening shooting worked best.

We have two:

One with full view and lighting.

The other messing with the lighting a bit to create a more dramatic piece.

Both are great, thus on the blog.

Anyway, enjoy the holiday and Happy New Year!

Listening: Tsushimamire Pregnant Fantasy & Vivian Boys A Girl in the Wind. Excellent stuff!

Reading: The Killer's Tears by Anne-Laure Bondoux & Boogiepop and others by Kouhei Kadono

Build it

I like robots. Build one here:


American Visionary Art Museum

Cool diversion, minutes of fun.

Doom Generation

So right now, this moment in time, I surf the public channels. I have no cable so I'm limited (and FREE) in choice. There are a bunch of shaggy haired kids trying to run a town and arguing over who's gonna masterbate the chicken or some such fiddle faddle. The tension is high, another flashing quick shot is a girl crying, and another of a some clueless 7 year old wondering just what the hell is going on. The show?

Kid Nation

What the fuck is wrong with this? Tons. What kind of kid exploitative, emotionally scarring, bullshit is this? Creating a town of William Golding nightmares for entertainment purposes only? Let's get REAL you twits. Let's go to Latin America or some half ass country in Asia and show real exploitation! I wanna see starving bone showing scabby foreign kids making my Christmas toys for pennies a day, not a bunch of snot nosed brats on CBS trying to act like some character from their favorite R rated movie their parents dragged them to see because Mom & Dad couldn't get a babysitter. Shoot, if we're taking a king-asshole-country-of-the-world stance, let's do it right.

I digress...oh, they just had a choice of reward for their "town" that they are building; a library filled with books (comics too) OR free video games....


Reading: Ghost in the Shell : Human Error processor
Listening: Titan Go Kings

Friday, Tune in to my show!

I am making some themed attempt of anti-capitalism on my Breakfast Blend this Friday on WRIR, 97.3 6-8am. I took a photo from the web and had some photo editing fun with what you see now above. Neat?

Buy Nothing Day

I'm not talking groceries, but please don't go trample some old lady over a 20 dollar DVD Player at a box store, okay? If you suck tit to that kind of thinking then just flail yourself into the corporate pit like a mindless lemming already!

Happy Thanksgiving by the way!

Listening to a lot a great stuff lately:
Megababe, Hang the Box, One Eleven Archer.

Saw Paprika at Univeristy of Richmond's International Film Series last Sunday.
Awesome movie!

Wish What Would Jesus Buy? would come here!

Happy Halloween!

What am I?

Reading: H.P. Lovecraft
Listening: New Polysics!

Worship the gourd!

Getting to be that time of year again folks:



http://extremepumpkins.com/



Best website of pumpkin carvings around. I am gonna dress up like a video game for Halloween. Pong, using this shirt.



Don't go stealing my idea now damnit!

Donate to WRIR 97.3!

Hey all you public radio listeners, how about supporting the local independent radio station WRIR 97.3 .

WRIR is a non-profit organization and needs funds in order to bring quality independent news and music to Richmond's airwaves. We couldn’t do it without supporters of independent radio, so now is your chance!

It would be even more appreciated if you donated during my show, which is Friday 6AM – 8AM (Breakfast Blend).

Here are some phone numbers: 804-622-9747 OR 649-9737 (studio #). So call in this Friday!
Fundraiser is Oct 3rd – Oct 11th.


Prize info on Website, lots of great stuff again this year!
Website: http://www.wrir.org/

I get married in 3 days! WHOOOO!!!

Watching: Serial Experiments: Lain
Blue Seed

Music recommendations...

So I've recently realized that I have become one of the many who order a lot online. I gotta say there is some serious bennies in it. One website for music that has never failed me is CD Baby. They give a larger percentage to the musicians and are damn good, and the shipping FAST!

Recent purchases, ordered Thursday-received Monday, shipped across the country:

Suphala "Blueprint", a tabla artist with her stunning follow-up to The Now CD also features vocals of Edie Brickell, etc. Just a great moody CD. She was the first female artist to perform in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban.

Peelander-Z Happee Mania, crazy ass Japanese punk touring this Fall in the States! Damnit and OF COURSE no one cool that I wanna see every comes to Richmond. Loserville.

Another most excellent and probably will be one of my picks of the year on my Breakfast Blend show on Fridays will be Tinariwen. Just check out the link and new CD and you will see why. Beautiful music, also touring the US in the Fall.

Just finished reading the first two Flight graphic novels. Good stuff.

Getting married in 12 days! YAY!

Cohorts in the wee hours

This is the Breakfast Blend / All-Nighter crew for 97.3 WRIR. They are good people who do butt shifts to provide local radio programming for the rest of us.

Local vibes for local times. Proud to be one of 'em!

Nerdin'

Not to get caught up in some marketing ploy for a movie, but the Golden Compass has a thing where you answer a few questions to find our your Daemon.

Here: http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/

Me? Mine is Antigone:
A flippin' raccoon! So if ya see me routin' through your trash one night, just leave me be!

Listening: The Fall has a new one and is not that bad actually!

Reading: 1491 by Charles C. Mann

Less than a month till we're wed! YAY!!!

Litter this!

So while driving home from work one day, well to the grocery store, this big ole SUV pulls out in front of me. Yeah, expected, I know. Then, from the passenger side window flies out an empty cigarette pack of Newports. Just like that, like it was nothing. Like all people who get enfuriated at these litterbastards, I wanted to stop my car, pick up the trash and remind them at the next stoplight that they dropped this. Well, maybe throw it at him and cuss, and then probably get shot. Anyway, I have NO RESPECT for fuckers like that. I want them to die. Plain and simple, and YES I know that is drastic but put it like this: since most humans in this day and age know that littering is a bad thing, then why are people still doing it? Because they don't care. And when someone doesn't have sense enough to care about the environment which they live in, do you think that they care enough about you or me? Certainly not. I mean really, WHO litters with such intention and disregard like that? Not anyone I want to give a crap about. So, yes, I wish ill will upon them, but what they really get from me is a lack of sympathy for anything bad that may happen in their lives; bad girlfriend, jail, sickness, etc. --aw, that's TOO BAD. Harsh I know, but times like these call for drastic passive aggressive measures! Ha!

Listening: To a few Japanese compilations I found at Plan 9 for a buck each at the Watermelon Festival last weekend.

Reading: Kathe Koje's Extremities

Getting interested in: Kayaking. No way....really? Well, we'll see...

The revolution will be wind-ups....

My robots will one day take over the world!!!!

Well, probably some serious shelf space....

Listening to Gogol Bordello to review for the magazine.

I think I know what is wrong...

Okay, so for a few weeks now I haven't been able to really figure out WHY I enjoy watching the insipid show, America's Got Talent. It's act after act of bad, terrible, acts (I know I like it for that trash aspect, but wait), followed every so often by what the "judges" call stars, I call same old hat of hack singers or magicians, etc (some actually not bad though). The 'judges" being some Brit dirtbag that I think has been fired from many a newspaper, the wife of a drunken washed up metalman, Sharon Osborne (and the most likable of the 3), and then David Hasselhoof er hoff.

[Hasselhoff is an inept talent judge theory: a) he can't act, b) he can't sing, c) germans like him]

Okay, so anyway, the other night I figure out why I like it. Being that I like fringe culture - b-movie, b-music, b-books- the bad acts that flow through are the ones I totally dig. So the the other night, they let this one crazy dude on, wearing a Native American outfit with bells on his legs, playing the violin while he yodels songs created from his own language. His name: Thoth. I knew this before they even said his name. See, in the Outsider music arena, he is fairly well known, featured on the Songs of the Key of Z book and CD written/compiled byIrwin Chusid. Ah, this is why I like it, I KNOW some of these acts. Not KNOW in the literal sense, but know what other music is about, as well as the other freak acts, that have been piping through.

It's like the goddamn Gong Show except a little more controlled and without the talent of Chuck Barris. We do, however, get Jerry Springer being the backstage mom, which is almost as hilariously disturbing. Naturally in the progression of these braincell slaughter programs, they start taking the "talent" they let through WAY too seriously and it gets all fakey drama and then EVERYONE starts taking it way too seriously. Puke.


I should digress and I can't believe I have written this much about this subject.

You know what is cool? Tin Robots.

Just got my Carbon 14 magazine package for review, so listening and listening and listening and listening, liking so far: The Final Solutions

Good link to a good afternoon.

Check out my buddy Allan's rendition of our filming and having on the radio the strange dealing with "Cotton" Dick Clinton.




Reading: Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross.

Listening: Shellac's new one, it's OK.

Another Picture

CDC:

On the Air

Saturday June 9th, starting around 5 Pm or so, last about an hour or so. Please tune in webstream or the old fashioned way; fiddle that dial!

Reading: "Nemesis: the last days of the American Republic" by Chalmers Johnson till I get too angry then "Falling Man" by Don Delillo!

Listening: New Balkan Beat Box , also Chumbawamba's "A Singsong and a Scrap"

Misson Demolished.

Consider this:

400 years ago, the whole Jamestown thing...
...400 years later, we learn that the fable that was created with Pocahontas & John Smith is a lie.
...we don't care, hell it was 400 years ago.

Today, the President has repeatedly mislead the American people about the war in Iraq thing...
...today, we learn that the fable of WMD, etc etc etc is a lie.
...we don't care, hell it was....oh wait, practically yesterday.

Imagine our apathy in the future....

Mission Accomplished.

Remember he was off the coast of California when that happened too.

If we have to be addicted, at least make your money go to a better cause with Citgo, rather than hungry oil barons with Exxon. So all you idiots out there who hate arabs and are glad we're in Iraq shooting brown people, just remember who you are helping when your stupid selves fuel up at the Exxon.

Oh yeah, and Walmart sucks.

Watching: Inuyasha, seasons 1 & 2
Venture Brothers season 2.

WRIR 97.3 Donate!

I love this station. I work for this station.
Why don't ya keep this station alive and DONATE some money to it?

Different levels gets you different stuff and you have till April 25th to get that stuff!

WRIR 97.3

I'm still doing my Breakfast Blend show every Friday 6-8AM.

This Saturday I am doing the local River City Limits show and Liza Kate will be playing live in the studio. Listen!


Thanks if ya help.

Monkey See, Monkey Doo

As if violence at home isn't enough, get ready to armchair quarterback the next big event in the Middle East.

We need drastic, progressive change. Open your mind now people, we are running out of options and sides to be on in this mess.

Don't want to dress in school colors: donate.

Silence.

Virginia Tech is a terrible, awful, tragedy, yes.
But instead of wearing school colors this Friday, I would rather donate to make a difference in law dealing with Gun Control. Particularly since our state is barely passing the grade.
Maybe more on this subject later, but now is not the time. Thoughts are with the families of the slain, anger goes to our system and way of life that is lost in a void of violent distraction overseas.

Reading : "Out" by Natsuo Kirino

Listening: "War on 45" by D.O.A.