Month: March 2009

Guarding Enrico Pallazzo with my bare fists.

Given that I’m both handsome and easily amused, I was handed guard duty at the housewarming party for Hey, it’s Enrico Pallazzo on Saturday. As if by total coincidence that day marked the end of my one month sobriety; It goes without saying that beer improves the quality of life when you’re standing in freezing weather, trying to be friendly to people. What also helps is having a faux earpiece in one ear, and making an occasional pretense at receiving info from inside the party. Not many dared to call me on it, and those who did thought it was fun.

It was interesting to note the ten metre walk of dignity that people felt compelled to put on as soon as I was spotted. The avoidance of eye contact, the miniscule nod of the head so as to indicate friendliness, or alternatively the 1000 yard stare past me so that sheer determination would see them through. Gods know we’ve all been there, and I’m happy to say that a minimal amount of power was abused by me.

Carding 19-year olds was a bit odd, but even they seemed cheerful. I guess it’s because they’ve just barely reached legal age and still revel in being able to show a legit ID and not their older brothers bus pass. Because the housewarming was semi-private, the cost of getting in varied depending on who knew whom and what mood that person was in; The cover charge jumped from “voluntary” to 100 then down to 20, 50 and settled on 40-ish. The age-limit yo-yoed as did the rules of “this drunk or less to get in.” In the end only one guy was turned away; His indignant snarl diminished by his more convincing inability to speak in full sentences.

Hey, it’s Enrico Pallazzo is an ensemble of folks who got bored working for advertising agencies and started up something that nestles between advertisement and art. Adart? Regardless of their ambition, the space they are renting is beyond awesome. It’s beawesome.

Anna and Jan have commandeered a tiled room – imagine a large shower at a mental asylum, refurbished with a wooden floor – and there’s a big pillared hall which can be used for workshops, exhibitions or (like the other day) for parties. A grand space is an excellent catalyst for action; It’s going to be fun to see what comes off it.

“Earth Hour” was celebrated by turning off all the lights for half an hour, issuing glowsticks and lighting candles. Any doubt as to the symbolism of the event was dispelled by the unabated techno. Imagine that you’re Earth and one of the kids kicking you in the face has decided not to wear steel tipped shoes out of consideration for your well-being, but is still aiming for the teeth. Even so, there was an accoustic guitar, which I guess counts as a token of caring and a concession to uplugged entertainment.

Art & tempeh.

After an opening at gallery 54 & Box last weekend, a bunch of us went for food and drinks with the guest curator and her crew. At Lokal I ordered tempeh – curious since when I’ve tried to cook it at home it tasted of cat piss and old sweat – but must say that it was a meh experience. The granular texture and earthy taste make for an odd experience, but I don’t know if that is something that one wants to mask (like the absence of taste of tofu) or just get used to. I suspect it’s the latter, in which case I just have no choice but to buy a couple of kilos and pig out. Technically I don’t have to, but my tofu, gherkin and peanut butter diet is getting the better of me.

Time lapse from Lokal. I really ought to get myself one of those auto-rotating tripods for my IXUS.

Foundlings 2

Of all the 6 and a half billion people in the world, what are the odds that any two people are a real match? Stories from people who know they’ve beat the odds, and the lengths they’ve gone to do it—including an American professor who sings Chinese opera for anyone who’ll listen, to get one step closer to his mate, and two kids who travel halfway around the country to find each other and become best friends.

→ This American Life episode 374: Somewhere Out There.

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Bernie Madoff woke up in jail today, after pleading guilty to 11 charges stemming from an enormous Ponzi scheme. How enormous? The most recent court documents put the figure at $65 billion. In another amazing Planet Money Radio Dramatization, Alex Blumberg, Adam Davidson and David Kestenbaum act out a Ponzi scheme of their own.

→ NPR, Planet Money: A Ponzi Drama.

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And two clips from Weeds. I don’t know if I look forwards to the next season, but It’s prolly worth a look.

[flv:https://www.monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/weeds_song.flv https://www.monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/weeds_song.png 640 266]

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Foundlings.

I know books are supposed to be old media, but there’s something that feels futuristic about holding this one. It’s imperfect, disposable, personal. I can scribble on it and dog-ear it, and read it lying down. It cost around $10 and arrived in less than a week.

→ Emmet Connolly printed the web: Instapaper

In the process of pasteurizing, juice is heated and stripped of oxygen, a process called deaeration, so it doesn’t oxidize. Then it’s put in huge storage tanks where it can be kept for upwards of a year. It gets stripped of flavor-providing chemicals, which are volatile. When it’s ready for packaging, companies such as Tropicana hire flavor companies such as Firmenich to engineer flavor packs to make it taste fresh.

→ You can stop shelling out for that “not from concentrate” juice now. Q&A with Alissa Hamilton.

→ Good use of multiple exposures and merging of images: Peter Funch

→ Designers, photographers and a whole other bunch of neat people: Design Industry News & Discussion.

→ In Swedish: Stipendier från Publicistklubben

→ Also in Swedish: Stipendier från Svenska Fotografers Förbund.

→ Illustrator Daniel Dociu: Futuristic cityscapes.

→ BLDGBLOG interviews Daniel Dociu: Game/Space.

→ Warning Signs of Covert Eavesdropping or Bugging.

Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described. One of these is the sensibility — unmistakably modern, a variant of sophistication but hardly identical with it — that goes by the cult name of “Camp.”

→ Susan Sontag, Notes on Camp.

A couple of hours passed. “Then, after I got a sandwich and came out of the store—da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da! ” Gravy told me later, mimicking the sound of gunfire. “The only thing I remember is falling, and knowing that I’m shot—just don’t know where. It’s not like, when you get shot, ‘Oh, I got shot here.’ Nah. You know you hit, so your mind frame is—you pumped, your adrenaline is going. I reach my hand over, and I see I’m bleeding.

→ The New Yorker: Ben McGrath, Where hip-hop lives.

For those who know, this is the open secret: War is exciting. Sometimes I was in awe of this, and sometimes I felt low and mean for loving it, but I loved it still. Even in its quiet moments, war is brighter, louder, brasher, more fun, more tragic, more wasteful. More. More of everything. And even then I knew I would someday miss it, this life so strange. Today the war has distilled to moments and feelings, and somewhere in these memories is the reason for the wistfulness.

→ Esquire: Brian Mockenhaupt, I miss Iraq. I miss my gun. I miss my war.

That was in the Year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-three. And then, the Years of Our Lord passed. I went to bed every night looking at that shot, I woke up every morning looking at that shot, every single day. For over 10 years.

→ Terry Rosso: Lens Magic.

Crooked little vein – a few thoughts.

Ever since I found Warren Ellis‘ Transmetropolitan in the Reykjavik library, I’ve kept an eye on him. I know I’ve linked his blogs often enough, and he’s long ago reached critical mass when it comes to finding odd things online – I don’t think he has to do any lifting these days, but rather have all the disciples of Whitechapel scouring the web for wrong.

My copies of Transmet were bartered for food a couple of years ago, but I still hit his blog a couple of times a week and follow him on Twitter. The persona he’s built around himself is charming — an alcoholic misanthrope with a heart of gold and a twinkle in his glass eye — and he’s a very prolific writer and blogger and whatnots.

I’ve had it in my mind to buy his novel Crooked little vein since I heard of it. Plodding around Stockholm I found it as a small paperback, and bought it along two other exculpations for illegal downloading. Took less than a day to get through the 260 pages, including the recipe for roasted garlic at the end.

I know exactly who I will give this book to now that I’m done reading it; Someone who hasn’t trolled Ellis webpages for the past couple of years. Because it reads like a very long and rambling blog post, or a bunch of 3AM tweets; The story and the characters are cardboard cutouts on which to hang bizarre phenomena and amusing word combinations. It reads like a Spider Jerusalem rant, and those were fine because they didn’t stretch longer than a spread and ended on a full page panel of someone shitting themselves, which is always good for closure.

Some of the scenes are well written, but they are few. The saline injection bit is one of only two moments where the narrator actually feels present in the moment. The rest is scenery and posturing. There’s never a feeling that anything really matters. I don’t mean this in the bleak oh, nothing matters everything is gray let’s cut ourselves way, but rather that nothing that happens in the novel has any real consequences. There’s one sympathetic character who actually seems to have an internal struggle going on, but Bob Ajax doesn’t show up for more than a couple of pages and is then dispatched by alcohol and cops.

There’s one central idea that I take away with me after reading, and that is how the concept of “mainstream” has changed. It’s how I understand the long tail discussion, but from a cultural point of view rather than an economic: If you bundle together all the disparate “minority views” on any issue, being in a minority then becomes commonplace. It’s the otherness that we have in common, not the quality that make us other. This is a concept that is worth repeating. It’s something that those of us steeped in the postmodern vat might take for granted but that a large number of humanity would shit upon.

The argument for a shifting mainstream is presented nicely enough, although it’s barely made before the novel ends on a romantic note with an action/noir finale. Most of this book reads like a parallel universe story – as if the main character is hallucinating all the time. Actually, imagining that the story is an illusion, that the Mick McGill is merely a fictional character in a deranged storytellers mind, makes it more readable. It would explain the non sequiturs and manic view of the world. Read it as a alt.usenet version of the movie Identity, and you’ll have more fun.

So. This book will be presented to someone who doesn’t know what Bukkakke is. In this day and age it might seem hard to find such people, but I know a few and they will receive a gift.

Re-writing. Development. Skiing + ambitions.

Congratulations to Tobias who finished the cross country competition Vasaloppet in under nine hours. That’s 90 kilometers (56 miles) on skis. And it was done on a dare, so congratulations on being manly about it.

I’m updating the old blog posts to fit in with the 640 pixel style I’m sporting now, and find myself being embarrassed about some of the stuff I wrote. Even more full of myself than I am now, pretentious and whiny. Can’t believe people wanted to hang out with me – I would have been annoyed with me. And I never capitalise any letters! What’s up with that? Some of the old links are dead, but I’m not going to update those for fear of disturbing the fossil record.

It occured to me that I should improve upon myself more actively. Or if not improve per se, then at least try something else on for a while. Not drinking for a month? Draw for half an hour each day? Publish an hour-by-hour record of my day every evening, so as to find out where all those hours disappear?

Like: 13:00-14:00 – Checked email five times, read about mosquitos then malaria then Egypt then pyramids then about DIY stone masonry. If I linked to anything interesting I find, would you like it or does it sound shit? For me it would be sort of a self-exploration type of thing; I don’t use the time of day properly and would like to get more out of it. I go for runs and prepare the school work that me and Ana are doing at Chalmers, but that’s about it. I’m not really being an active agent of my own destiny and could use the extra push of being accountable.

Fuck it, I’m going to try the non-drinking thing. As of Saturday 28th February I’m not drinking booze for a month. I managed to go to a bar and drink nothing but the non-alcoholic beer for an evening. It’s odd how you look at others when when you’re sober and they are not. It goes a long way to explain why straight edge people and Christians can be such obnoxious twats – seeing people getting sloshed and blurry can get tiresome, I imagine.