The twenty favourite albums of musical genius Tom Waits. (Yes, I’m a sycophant.) The albums range from the brilliant but hard to listen to (like “Solo Monk” by Thelonious Monk, and “The Yellow Shark” by Frank Zappa) to the sublime and timeless (“Trout Mask Replica” by Captain Beefheart, and “Rum Sodomy and the Lash” by The Pogues). Grab any of these you have in your record collection, and have yourself a fine old time.
Archive for March, 2005
From the site: “Pap Art
is the collaborative expression of ex-paparazzi photographer David
Koppel and figurative painter John Kiki.” So stir together two
brilliantly expressive artist with experience in widely differing
media, and you get a fantastically colourful result. In fact, I
wouldn’t mind this work on my living room wall at all—who needs furniture?
The comic as type of narrative has matured a lot over the course of the last twenty or thirty years. The Columbia Journalism Review investigates the medium’s graduation to a type of journalism.
What does your computer say about who you are: classic and refined, or modern and edgy?
Fore-edge painting. Books that, according to Metafilter, reveal
paintings on their edges when fanned. Oodles of links to fantastic
examples of the art.
The Oxford English Dictionary Science Fiction project has been
redesigned and relaunched. The project aims to collect and trace words
used in science fiction, including criticism and fanfiction.
An excerpt from Richard Feynman’s excellent book, “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”
Finalists for the Flash Film Festival over at FlashForward2005 in San
Francisco. The Flash artists involved have done some incredible things
in this relatively restrictive medium.
Tim McSweeney rewrites the classic Abbot and Costello sketch for a bit of updated insanity.
Lloyd Axworthy, former Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs and
International Trade, has a thing or two to tell U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice. In an open letter on missile defence, budget deficits and priorities, mister Axworthy lets rip with a passion many of us would envy.
To save you the time and effort of getting your collection of old vinyl
albums out of storage, the Museum of Bad Album Covers has compiled a
list of the worst covers imaginable. Spot your favourites, marvel at
the ones you never knew could exist. And recoil at the terrible
realisation of how many of these you actually listened to…
Cool Flash game—play George Bush and his trusty side-kick Condie and shoot it out with… wel, everyone.
For the fans of Japanese cinema, Brussels has a real treat in store. From 12 to 15 April 2005 the Elephant Independent Film Festival will feature films by young Japanese directors, spanning animation, documentary, drama, and comedy. The festival will be held at the Cultural and Information Center of the Embassy of Japan in Belgium, and admission is free.
For those with an extreme dedication to the science of biology or an
unnatural interest in B-movie monsters, we present: The Biology of
B-Movie Monsters.
From a press release issued by NoSoftwarePatents.com, a non-profit rallying European tech workers against software patents in the EU:
The European Commission has reportedly declined the European Parliament’s request for a restart of the legislative process on the controversial software patent directive. The EP had taken a three-tiered decision to ask the Commission to begin the process from scratch: On 2 February, the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) of the European Parliament near-unanimously decided to make this request. On 17 February, the EP’s Conference of Presidents (i.e., the group chairs) unanimously backed that decision. A week later, on 24 February, the plenary of the EP reinforced this by unanimously “inviting” the Commission to review its proposal for a software patent directive although there was no more formal requirement for the plenary to vote on this subject.
Florian Mueller, the manager of the pan-European NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign, condemned the Commission’s decision in the strongest terms: “A wannabe Napoleon who heads the Commission and a Microsoft puppet that runs the DG (directorate general) in charge have decided to negate democracy. Now we call on the EU Council to demonstrate a more democratic attitude and to reopen negotiations of its Common Position at the forthcoming meeting of the Competitiveness Council on Monday (7 March).”
