A b o u t
C O N N E C T
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M e t a
(via topherchris)
I sense a new meme in the making.
"
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are “The Advertisers” and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
"—
Banksy (via pantherhooves)(via missundead) (via redguard) (via brandileeeeee) (via thedeathoftruespirit) (via clintisiceman) (via oldtobegin)
The only difference between vandalism and advertising is a budget.
(via samhumphries)
Went to the Royal/T’s Hello Kitty ’80s Goth party last night. It was like Comic-Con except populated only by cute girls and cosplayers. More info and pix at http://www.andykhouri.com/
Insomnia Mix I
Click here to download (125MB MP3)
Insomnia has been a big deal in my life for nearly fifteen years. I’ve seen doctors about it and I’ve taken medication for it, but it never really goes away.
Sometimes insomnia is just annoying. Other times it can be kind of dangerous. But there’s a medium level of insomnia that I’ve found can be pretty cool. It’s that state where you’re dead tired but still wide awake and your brain has dried up in just such a way that certain things seem quite a lot more significant than perhaps they would otherwise. It’s in this mode that I think insomniacs start to feel creative.
I’ve learned the Internet is home to quite a lot of us. I like the idea of a small community of friends and strangers who all suffer from the same problem, so I occasionally share via Twitter and Facebook a download link to what I think is a special nighttime song, just for my fellow insomniacs. I delete the links when I wake up, just to make the whole thing a little more exclusive.
The songs I choose are ones I think insomniacs will respond to. They’re often somber as melancholy is the typical experience for an insomniac, but sometimes they’re more upbeat. Really, I try to reach out with my mind and psychically gauge the spirit of the Internet and the people I think might be awake and choose a song accordingly, like I’m DJ’ing somebody’s bad mood without knowing who they are or what kind of music they like.
That last sentence is the sort of thing you could only believe in - even for one second - if you’ve been awake too long.
I’ve made several dance mixes and DJ’d a few gigs over the years but never a quiet or ambient mix, so it seemed like a good idea to take the first batch of insomnia songs — which are largely atmospheric and electronic but not strictly instrumental either — and create a continuous mix for both insomniacs and regular humans to enjoy, and then do it again when I pile up some more songs on Twitter.
You can download this mix and save it for when you can’t sleep, or you can listen to it now if you happen to be reading this in the middle of the night, or whatever. I hope you like it.
Heaven.
January 2005.
Dating advice.
A guy I don’t know met some girl I don’t know at a show for some band I’ve never heard of and they hit it off and she gave him her email address. He proceeded to detail the interaction in the dating advice thread of a social message board owned by a friend of mine, using about a dozen paragraphs to explain every moment of the brief encounter.
It took this guy two emails to finally ask the girl out, and he did so in a really bad, wimpish way, and she of course blew him off. He’s presently considering schemes to get mutual friends to arrange for him and the girl to find themselves in the same place again, possibly at some kind of board games party.
I was moved to share some dating advice that I thought some of you might be interested in reading.
First, forget any third party-related schemes to run into this girl again. For all intents and purposes, you’ve blown it. Time to move on.
Second, your emails were too equivocal. When a girl gives you her contact info, it is explicitly because she wants you to ask her out. You didn’t properly do that until the second email, which demonstrates to her that you are weak and/or not really that interested.
Emails of this nature should be no more than three sentences. Sentence 1 (required): Nice meeting you. Sentence 2 (optional): Some kind of relevant joke. Sentence 3 (required): Do you want to go out with me?
Do not use words like “maybe” or “possibly” or “wondering” or any wishy-washy language like that. You’re an adult, be direct. If she writes back and says no, she’s a flake because why did she give you her email if she wasn’t interested? If she says she can’t make it on the day you want, it’s up to her to suggest an alternative. If she does not, you just write back and say “Okay well maybe I’ll see you around.” You do not chase.
Third, you are your own worst enemy here. The initial interaction you described is of the simplest, most casual of natures, yet it took you paragraphs to explain. After you hit “send”, you must stop thinking about it and get back to your business. It’s a fact that overthinking things is a terrible jinx, especially after the first encounter, and I have no doubt that this girl smelled that desperation all over you even through the internet.
Dating becomes a lot easier and less stressful when you just let yourself go. Think of it like walking waist-deep against a current and then just lifting your legs up and letting the water take you where it will. Sometimes you will bang your head against a rock but on the whole it’s a less aggravating exercise.
Along those lines, your report back to this forum should have been: “Met a cute girl at a show. We chatted a bit and she asked me to email her, so I did and I’m waiting to hear back.”
Good luck next time.
Relaxing day at home. (Can you see the spy?)
I was working on a compilation of my favorite songs of the decade when the esteemed and annoying Lou O’Bedlam challenged me to rank them in order of preference. I thought it was nuts, but I found myself with some free time and I think I’ve managed to do it. The process was surprisingly enlightening and loads of fun, so I’m putting the challenge to the universe.
This isn’t meant to be a boring, critical look at the “best” songs of the last ten years, but just the tracks you love most from this decade that used to be the future.
Remixes are cool, as are remixes and covers of old songs as long as the remix or cover was released in 2000-2009, i.e. Johnny Cash’s 2003 cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” or any of the remixes from The Beatles’ Let It Be… Naked. No live versions of old songs! Everybody’s top 13 tracks would be the entirety of Daft Punk’s Alive 2007.
This sounds daunting but it’s not that hard. If you use iTunes, for example, you can create a Smart Playlist that will compile only songs with a “Year” setting greater than 1999. You should also inspect your physical collection to make sure you didn’t forget anything.
When you’ve got the Master List, pick your favorite songs and dump them into another playlist and just listen to that playlist all the fucking time. You’ll find yourself eliminating the chaff and beginning to sort your Final List. I finished mine in just a couple of weeks. Megan Harris finished hers in just a few minutes.
Upon completion of your Final List, blog it before New Year’s Eve. Embellish in any way you like. I intend to offer close friends an enormous download of all 100 songs re-metatagged into a new album sorted in order from 100-1 with unique artwork so they can play my compilation on any software player or mobile device.
Trust me, it’s fun.
(And I know what you’re thinking, but everyone on the planet thinks the oughties started in 2000 so that’s what we’re working with.)
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