Using Bees To Effect Vengeance |
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I get to be as self-indulgent as I want without wasting anyone's time. Guilt-free solipsism -- excellent!
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Sunday, August 31, 2003
Joe Lieberman sounds like the dad on ALF. Go on, try it next time you see him on the news: "No, ALF, not the cat...." | Friday, August 29, 2003
MTV's spontaneous night of crazy fun. Fellow Austinite Neal Pollack says it better than I, of course. | Jeff pointed me to a recent NY Times Magazine article about the sickeningly talented Jon Brion. Well, Jeff and everyone else ought to read this fan review of Brion's most recent show at Largo, in which he ran through the history of 20th Century pop music. All Or Nothing At All, Words Of Love, and Lithium? And did I mention he hops from instrument to instrument recording and looping each part of each song so that it takes form before your ears? If someone has a bootleg, please forward it to the Smithsonian for posterity forthwith. | Music for the Masses This is a great idea -- assembling personal reminiscences sparked by particular songs. I especially liked the entry about The Connells song "Stone Cold Yesterday", a great tune I haven't heard in years. Reading these stories after having consumed the blogverse's response to the MTV VMA Awards (yes I watched; yes I felt icky except for when Beyonce was on) makes it clearer than ever that there's Music and there's the Music Business and that one has absolutely nothing to do with the other. Any overlap is purely accidental. | Baghdad Burning -- another remarkable weblog written by an Iraqi who writes better English than I do. Her entry from yesterday on the costs of reconstruction is an eye opener. | Thursday, August 28, 2003
Niceupofteaandasitdown.com. Yes. Yes. Yes. Finally a reason for my grandmother to get online. I especially like their Mission Statement: Our Mission Statement Well I think we should all sit down and have a nice cup of tea, and some biscuits, nice ones mind you. Oh and some cake would be nice as well. Lovely. | Tuesday, August 26, 2003
As your #1 source for Martin Amis furor news, I bring you: For a British Novelist, Tornadoes in August | Monday, August 25, 2003
Dyke to open up BBC archive: "Greg Dyke, director general of the BBC, has announced plans to give the public full access to all the corporation's programme archives. Mr Dyke said on Sunday that everyone would in future be able to download BBC radio and TV programmes from the internet. The service, the BBC Creative Archive, would be free and available to everyone, as long as they were not intending to use the material for commercial purposes, Mr Dyke added." Wow. [via boing boing] | Sunday, August 24, 2003
"Dickens with a snarl": Yellow Dog by Martin Amis Let's hope this review from The Observer is more indicative of the novel's quality. "Your first reaction on reading a novel as mind-tinglingly good as Yellow Dog is not so much admiration as a kind of grateful despair. Mostly this is because, like all great writers, he seems to have guessed what you thought about the world, and then expressed it far better than you ever could." And while the novel is not about the post-Atta era, Amis unsurprisingly appears to engage with some of the fallout of 9/11: "What motivates all these stories is the itch of vengeance: the 'circular arguments' of reprisal, and 'the misery of recurrence' that threatens to reverse personal and cultural development. What knits them together is the way that vengeance emerges as a pathological version of the ordinary human need for reciprocity and exchange...." "The itch of vengeance" is certainly manifest in the events of September 11th, and many of the the subsequent personal, political and cultural reactions to it from people and institutions around the world threaten to join it in "reversing personal and cultural development". That itch is presently being scratched by parties operating in Baghdad, Jerusalem, Monrovia, Kandahar, Austin, Sacramento, and Washington D.C. I'm looking forward to Amis's explorations of the phenomenon. | Friday, August 22, 2003
George W. Bush just raised $1 million from 500 donors during a campaign stop in Portland. The Howard Dean campaign is attempting to match that total this weekend, but by raising it online from thousands of ordinary contributors. The graphic below will update hourly or so to chart their progress. 
For what it's worth, Dean has opened up a 7 point lead in the New Hampshire Democratic primary. | Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Monday, August 11, 2003
Friday, August 08, 2003
So Tibor Fischer doesn't like Martin Amis's new novel, Yellow Dog. Why not? I don't know -- his "review" in the Telegraph neglects to articulate any reasons. Instead he rambles on about his bad experiences with Amis's agent, devotes much of the piece to slagging of Amis's memoir Experience, muses on why Amis is friends with Christopher Hitchens, devises ever more juvenile ways to describe how much he hates the new book -- but never actually explains why he hates it, what's wrong with it, where Amis fails. Fischer gives the reader absolutely nothing to go on. It doesn't help that Fischer's piece reads like a transcription of an underachieving second-grader's book report. Perhaps Yellow Dog shows that Amis's touch has deserted him -- I don't know, I haven't read it. But on this evidence, it's Fischer's skillz that have atrophied, not Marty's. | Thursday, August 07, 2003
A perceptive roundtable about the genius that is The Office from new webzine High Hat. For my fellow Americans who don't have BBC America, The Office will be out on DVD shortly. A Using Bees Must-Own. [via TimO] | Tuesday, August 05, 2003
I can't imagine that this means anything to most of you but I have to acknowledge the sadness I feel on the day that West Ham sells Joe Cole -- England's great hope, heart and soul of the club, the player more than any other who battled valiantly to keep us in the Premiership -- to rivals Chelsea FC.  It's been known for a while that he was unlikely to sign a new contract, but because he so clearly loved West Ham, there was always the hope.... The last few weeks have seen the nucleus of the club's future sold off to Chelsea. Glen Johnson and Joe Cole -- two young kids under 22 who bucked the cynical money-grubbing trend and evidenced real love and passion for West Ham, two kids who are guaranteed to be England regulars for the next 10-12 years, two kids who represented the hopes of long-suffering West Ham supporters -- forced to move because the board failed to invest enough to keep the club in the Premiership. After relegation, they assured the fans there was no need to sell the core of the team, but now they have done just that. I feel sick seeing the headline, I will feel sick seeing Joe in Chelsea blue, I will feel sick hearing those lucky Chelsea fans* singing about Joey Cole, but I will follow his exploits with pride. Best of luck, Joe -- you did everything you could. You'll always have a warm reception at Upton Park. The only silver lining is that he didn't go to Man U. *A few weeks ago, out of the blue, Chelsea was purchased by a Russian billionaire who has proceeded to spend 43 million pounds ($69,000,000) to bring in some of the best players in the world -- and there are more to come. By definition, things like that do not happen to West Ham United. | Monday, August 04, 2003
This month's Howard Dean Meetup is on Wednesday at 7pm in cities around the country and around the world. I'd encourage all Using Bees readers to check it out. If you're leaning towards Dean, this is a great way to experience the infectious optimism and empowerment of a real grass-roots campaign. If you support someone else -- Democrat or otherwise -- you should come along to see the future of political campaigning. If your guy or gal isn't taking advantage of Meetups this time around, they will next time. There will be no pressure to participate -- you can just observe. As far as the Austin Meetups are concerned, I gather that the Scholz Garden Meetup will be more action-oriented and the Central Market North one will be more socializing/educational. | |
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