Afterposts (03)

Hello, some saturdaynight dance rockin' beats to consider here , the big beats city of dreams gave us DFA and they are behind the success..specially in the UK... of The Rapture, i throw in a Big Fuckin' Beats compilation with plenty of technobreaks..dont''t go crashing your car playing it...


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The Rapture - Echoes ( 03 ^ 99mb)

The Rapture formed in 1998 by keyboardist Chris Relyea, drummer Vito Roccoforte and guitarist/vocalist Luke Jenner. In 1999 the band released its debut 'mini-album', Mirror. Following this release, the band relocated to New York. They were finally joined by Matt Safer having gone through five keyboard players and two bassists in an eighteen-month period. After touring extensively for two years, the band released the six-song EP Out of the Races and Onto the Tracks on the Sub Pop label. The Rapture were forerunners of the post-punk revival of the early 2000s, as they mixed their early post-punk sound with electronic and dance elements via their collaboration with the celebrated New York production team DFA. Multi-instrumentalist Gabriel Andruzzi joined the band in 2002. Their first full-length record, Echoes, it showcases a more sophisticated, restrained, and successful take on the fusion of guitar riffs and electronic beats. The reckless, wounded-heart abandon found in the lyrics, combined with the infectious grooves coursing throughout the album, still lead back to the dancing frenzy fans expect. Echoes was released to critical acclaim in 2003, including album of the year by pitchforkmedia.com.

In 2004, the band released a DVD, Is Live, and Well, in New York City through DFA Records/Mercury Records Limited. They released their second full-length album, Pieces of the People We Love in September 2006. Paul Epworth, Ewan Pearson and Danger Mouse produced the album. The new album displays a more polished and markedly less angular sound to their previous work, receiving a mixed critical reception. The Rapture supported The Killers on the London leg of their tour at the Carling Academy Brixton from 26 November 2006 to 28 November 2006 and Daft Punk on the North American leg of their tour in 2007.

Their song, “Whoo! Alright, Yeah…Uh Huh” is the official anthem for Red Bull New York of Major League Soccer. The same song is used on the EA sports game Madden 2007 under the name "W.A.Y.U.H"



01 - Olio (5:20)
02 - Heaven (3:47)
03 - Open Up Your Heart (5:22)
04 - I Need Your Love (4:39)
05 - The Coming Of Spring (2:42)
06 - House Of Jealous Lovers (5:04)
07 - Echoes (3:17)
08 - Killing (3:37)
09 - Sister Saviour (3:46)
10 - Love Is All (4:15)
11 - Infatuation (5:01)

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VA - Big Fuckin' Beats (00 ^ 181mb)

There are some quite heavy beats to be heard, but mostly not in the ‘big beat’ vein but big beat techno on this compilation (think prodigy) Still a varied and quality compilation. Test your speakers capacity or whats left of your hearing...



01 - Dark Globe - Take Me To The Sound (9:26)
02 - Blake - Doctors, Dentists & Architects (5:37)
03 - MLO - The Garden (4:40)
04 - Biological - Amatory (6:29)
05 - Hookian Mindz - Freshmess (Bandulu Remix) (7:58)
06 - Dylan Rhymes - Lock And Chamber (4:27)
07 - Renegade Soundwave - Blast'em Out (4:08)
08 - Freshmess On Wax - Real Phunk (Ian Pooley Remix) (8:55)
09 - Silicon Valley Def Stars - Believer (7:18)
10 - Soulful Distortion - Dial 911 (6:10)
11 - Kid Unknown - Devastation Beatcreator (Instrumental) (6:55)
12 - Plump DJs - Remember My Name (6:48)

diet verson
VA - Big Fuckin' Beats ( 99mb)

Phillies Take Series 4-1

Amidst some of the worst umpiring in years, and despite rugby weather and a three-day game, the Philadelphia Phillies have won the World Series, 4 games to 1. It's their first World Series win since 1980, and second in their 120 year history. The Most Valuable Player was starting pitcher Cole Hamels.


Philadelphia Phillies' Pedro Feliz singles off Tampa Bay Rays relief pitcher Chad Bradford to drive in Eric Bruntlett during the seventh inning of Game 5 of the baseball World Series in Philadelphia, Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2008. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

The Tampa Bay Rays have the nucleus of a multi-year playoff team, if they're willing to keep these exciting young players on staff. With better, timely hitting, and competent umpires, they could have held their own.

Unfortunately for the Phillies or fortunately for the Rays, hardly anyone watched. The Houston Chronicle points out that viewership was abysmal (an 8.4 rating and 14 share), lower than the dismal 10.1 rating for the Cardinals-Tigers series in 2006 (which the Cardinals won, by the way). Short series are ratings killers, and small market teams (i.e., someone other than the teams based in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, etc.) draw fewer viewers. The weather issues didn't help. Perhaps doubling up on a few more double headers to trim the regular season might be a plan, though it would mean less money in owners' pockets.

I just hope Bud Selig, a font of bad leadership, doesn't decide to follow the NFL's lead and picking AL and NL domed or warm-city stadia might be a good idea for the Series. Could you imagine if the Cubs finally made it to the World Series with a team that looked capable of winning it all, and then their poor fans realized they had to travel to Anaheim or Atlanta or Miami to see them play?

Halloween

Hello, as deletions continue (20 pages thusfar) i've been thinking what to do about it, as the persons responsible remain anonymous and refuse to simple ask to remove the offending item. You'll find more about all this at Transgloballs together with a tip how you can be independent of Google actions against (music)blogs Check it out !.

Halloween has its origins in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain.The festival is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture, and is sometimes regarded as the "Celtic New Year". Traditionally, the festival was a time used by the ancient pagans to take stock of supplies and slaughter livestock for winter stores. The ancient Gaels believed that on October 31, now known as Halloween, the boundary between the alive and the deceased dissolved, and the dead become dangerous for the living by causing problems such as sickness or damaged crops. The festivals would frequently involve bonfires, into which bones of slaughtered livestock were thrown. Costumes and masks were also worn at the festivals in an attempt to mimic the evil spirits or placate them.



Now then, i'm not really into halloween but i had this album on standby for sometime and thought by myself...Edgar Allen Poe the man who wrote gothic horror stories and ended miserably like a true great writer he was. Those were the days..anyway it inspired Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfsun to put his writing to music and even though concept albums had been declared out at the time, managed to convince enough people-like me to buy the album and make it a goldrecord...11 years later after the Alan Parsons prokject had been closed , he got to partially rerecord/remix the album, including a voluntairy contribution by Orson Welles, all for the CD release...both are here now, last year a remasterd double pack of both versions was released. I've added a reading of The Raven by actor Christopher Walken to both versions.


In October 1967, at age 18, Parsons went to work as an assistant engineer at Abbey Road Studios, and first garnered significant industry exposure via his work on the Beatles' 1969 masterpiece, Abbey Road. Parsons subsequently worked with Paul McCartney on several of Wings' earliest albums; he also oversaw recordings from Al Stewart, Cockney Rebel, and Pilot, but solidified his reputation by working on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. He was known for going beyond what would normally be considered the scope of a recording engineer’s duties. He considered himself to be a recording director.

He founded The Alan Parsons Project with producer and songwriter (and occasional singer) Eric Woolfson in 1975. The Project consisted of a revolving group of studio musicians and vocalists, most notably the members of Pilot and (on the first album) the members of American rock band Ambrosia. Unlike most rock groups, the Project rarely performed live, although they did release a number of music videos. After releasing ten albums, the Project dissolved after 1987, and Parsons continues to release work in his own name and in collaboration with other musicians; Parsons and his band now regularly tour many parts of the world.

The Project debuted in 1975 with Tales of Mystery and Imagination, a collection inspired by the work of Edgar Allan Poe; similarly, the science fiction of Isaac Asimov served as the raw material for 1977's follow-up, I Robot. With 1980's The Turn of a Friendly Card, a meditation on gambling, the Alan Parsons Project scored a Top 20 hit, "Games People Play"; 1982's Eye in the Sky was the Project's most successful effort, and notched a Top Three hit with its title track. While 1984's Ammonia Avenue went gold, the Project's subsequent LPs earned little notice, although records like 1985's Vulture Culture, 1987's Gaudi, and 1996's On Air found favor with longtime fans. Time Machine followed in 1999. After taking a five-year hiatus, Parsons returned in 2004 with A Valid Path.

As well as receiving gold and platinum awards from nearly every country in the world, Parsons has received eleven Grammy Award nominations for engineering and production. In 2007 he received a nomination for Best Surround Sound Album for A Valid Path. As of 2007, he tours under a revised name, The Alan Parsons Live Project, presenting world-spanning concerts performing material from his most recent album as well as selections from the original Project.

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Parsons, Alan - Tales Of Mystery And Imagination V (76 ^ 98mb)

The album is an insight into the life of American writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), as seen through the eyes of Parsons and Eric Woolfson, an admirer of Poe's work and at whose instigation the Project (as it was titled during its embryonic stages) was undertaken. The lyric content of the album incorporates many adaptations of Poe's work.

The album's avant-garde soundscapes kept it from being a blockbuster, but the interesting lyrical and musical themes — retellings of horror stories and poetry by Edgar Allan Poe — attracted a small audience. Critical reaction was often mixed.
This album was released in U.K. originally with a different name. Simply called "The Alan Parsons Project" it was successful enough to achieve gold status but later that year the same album was released under the name of "Tales of Mystery and Imagination"



01 - A Dream Within A Dream (3:43)
02 - The Raven (Voc.Leonard Whiting) (3:58)
03 - The Tell-Tale Heart (Voc.Arthur Brown) (4:42)
04 - The Cask Of Amontillado (Voc.John Miles) (4:29)
05 - The System Of Doctor Tarr And Professor Fether (Voc.John Miles) (4:12)
 
The Fall Of The House Of Usher ( 06 -10) (15:13)
06 - Prelude (5:51)
07 - Arrival (2:36)
08 - Intermezzo(1:06)
09 - Pavane (4:44)
10 - Fall (1:07)
11 - The One In Paradise (Voc.Terry Sylvester)(4:21)
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Christopher Walken reads Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven (8:29)



Parsons, Alan - Tales Of Mystery And Imagination (87 ^ 99mb)

In 1987, Parsons completely remixed the album, including additional guitar passages and narration (by Orson Welles) as well as updating the production style to include heavy reverb and the gated drum sound of the 80s. The CD notes that Welles never met Parsons or Collaborator Eric Woolfson, but sent a tape to them of the performance shortly after the orignal album was released in 1976. The original multitrack masters were transferred from a Soundcraft "Saturn" analog machine to a Sony 3324 DASH format 24 track recorder. May and June 1987



01 - A Dream Within A Dream (Instrumental) (4:13)  
02 - The Raven (Voc.Leonard Whiting) (3:57)
03 - The Tell-Tale Heart (Voc.Arthur Brown) (4:38)
04 - The Cask Of Amontillado (Voc.John Miles) (4:33) 
05 - The System Of Doctor Tarr And Professor Fether (Voc.John Miles)(4:20)
  The Fall Of The House Of Usher (Instrumental)
06 - I Prelude (Narrator - Orson Welles) (7:02)
07 - II - Arrival (2:39)
08 - III - Intermezzo (1:00)
09 - IV - Pavane (4:36)
10 - V - Fall (0:51) 
11 - The One In Paradise (Voc.Terry Sylvester) (4:46)
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Christopher Walken reads Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven (8:29)

Tuesday Mulligatawny

This summer before I got sick I'd hoped to catch up with Sarah Schulman (left), a writer whose writings and activism I really admire, and who gave me (and others) some very useful advice years ago up in Vermont. I wasn't able to, but I have been following one of her recent moves, which, according to Patricia Cohen in the New York Times, has been to co-organize a town hall meeting (it took place Monday night) to protest the paucity of female playwrights on Off-Broadway and non-profit New York stages.

The gathering was organized by the playwrights Sarah Schulman and Julia Jordan, who have rallied their colleagues to the cause, contending that their male counterparts in the 2008-9 season are being produced at 14 of the largest Off Broadway institutions at four times the rate that women are. More than 150 playwrights appeared at a meeting last month to discuss the issue, and all 90 seats at New Dramatists, the playwriting center where Monday night’s meeting is scheduled, are already spoken for, and there is a long waiting list.

I'm curious to see what comes out of this and prior meetings. Will there be concrete proposals on the part of theaters' artistic directors and boards to address the disparity? Will female playwrights be given more and equal opportunities to have their works staged and enjoyed? I'm also curious to know if this is a problem elsewhere, and if there have been similar discussions and gatherings in other major cities, like the second theater capital of the US, Chicago.

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It was gone for a little over a year, but now it'll be back: regresará one of New York's finest Spanish-language bookstores. But only online.



As I wrote at the time of its closing last fall, Que nunca se la olvide, que siempre se la recuerde.

Will Macondo return in virtual form as well?

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Who says pro athletes aren't into the arts? Literature? Poetry, to be exact? Yes, that's a leading question and no, I don't just mean the kind that comes wrapped in memorable melodies and beats (i.e., hiphop, r&b, rock, etc.), but the kind that follows in the wake of 20th century Modernism and warms the hearts of so many? Meet New Jersey's own Obama-supporting Fernando Pérez, of the Tampa Bay Rays:

Are you staying away from heavy plots during the playoffs?

Actually, what helps me a great deal right now is poetry, like Robert Creeley and John Ashbery.

But of course! Now, what would get your and your teammates backs swinging again?

(H/t to Reggie H.)

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Perhaps the only thing better than The Wire starting a new season and surprising the hell out of all its fans is seeing its actors together again, for a good cause.



A colleague mentioned that it was somewhat startling to see Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector) and Chris Partlow (Gbenga Akinnagbe), two of the most psychopathic characters not on a reality show to grace recent TV, supporting Obama. I guess I initially saw the actors as themselves, and then I considered that all these characters had some serious ethical and personal flaw--well, the psychopathic duo were really on the outer fringes, to put it mildly--and probably would send Obama running if they were the ones giving their endorsement. I mean, he's not anywhere in the general vicinity of Kwame Kilpatrick, is he?

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Does the global financial crisis demonstrate that Libertarianism as a practical and practiced ideology is dead? (Admit it, you're hoping the answer is yes, even as a struggle rages at the ground zero of its late high priest, Milton Friedman.) Jacob Weisberg thinks so. Ultrarandian Mr. Irrational Exuberance Alan Greenspan appears a mite chastened. And yet, we are on the verge of electing--shhhhh, don't tell the McCainiacs, Palindrones and sad old members of the GOP--a Communist socialist libertarian paternalist, right? I don't think so, and certainly not in light of the mess he'll have to clean up...but Cass Sunstein very well could end up on the federal bench nevertheless.

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And don't say I didn't warn you....

(H/t to Christina Springer)

Quote: Rem Koolhaas

With its first 12 floors accessible only to men, the Downtown Athletic Club appears to be a locker room the size of a Skyscraper, definitive manifestation of those metaphysics--at once spiritual and carnal--that protect the American male against the corrosion of adulthood. But in fact, the club has reached the point where the notion of a "peak" condition transcends the physical realm to become cerebral. It is not a locker room but an incubator for adults, an instrument that permits the members--to impatient too await the outcome of evolution--to reach new strata of maturity by transforming themselves into new beings, this time according to their individual designs. Bastions of the antinatural, Skyscrapers such as the Club announce the imminent segregation of mankind into two tribes: one of Metropolitanites--literally self made---whose used the full potential of the apparatus of Modernity to reach unique levels of perfection, the second simply the remainder of the human race. The only price its locker-room graduates have to pay for their collective narcissism is that of sterility. Their self-induced mutations are not reproducible in future generations.
--from Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, New York, Monacelli Press, 1994, pp. 157-158. Copyright © 1994, all rights reserved.

A P (02) Around the World

Hello, some more around the world, this time around Brittany (France), singer Denez Prigent , well versed in the classic, often tragic, melancholic songs of his region choses for his second album, Me zalc'h ennon ur fulenn aour ( i keep a spark of gold within me) to crossover and incorperate some danceelements giving his bretonfolk a more contemporary feel .

one of the several youtube live vids available, i've chosen E Trouz Ar Gêr (track 6 on the album)



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Denez Prigent - Me' Zalc'h Ennon Ur Fulenn Aour ( 97 ^ 156mb))

Denez Prigent, born 17 Feb , 1966, is a French singer from Santec, in Finistère region of Brittany, he discovers traditional Breton music in the late 60's, and specially the gwerzioù which he learned from his grand-mother. He also learned the kan ha diskan from Alain Leclère and will make his first appearance as a singer in a fest-noz at 14 years old. In 1987, he wins the kan ar bobl award. After a few years work in a local radio, during which he collected a huge amount of gwerzioù and kan ha diskan songs, he finally steps into a professional singer status as he performs during the Transmusicales, a rock festival, in 1992 and prooves that the a-capella breton tradition singing can move all kind of audience. Dressed in black and a hand on the ear, his singing is deeply rooted by his accent. This same year, he records his first album, Ar gouriz koar (the wax belt) primarily made up of songs has cappella, featuring traditional songs and compositions by Bernez Tangi, Denez Abernot or Yvon Gouez.

Denez records his second album Me 'zalc' H ennon ur fulenn Aour (I keep in me a spark gold) in 1997. This album before gardist interfering compositions traditional inspiration and new electronic music (jungle, trip hop, house…) gains national and international success. Today, this album became a classic.Denez keeps on going this way by modernizing the living tradition (and does it very well) but also keeps with his famous a-capella songs or kan ha diskan songs together with Louise Ebrel.

In 2000, sees a new album Irvi (Ways of scum). Electronics is always quite present there, but above all it's an album of duets. Denez Prigent invites Bertrand Cantat the singer of Noir Desire, LISA Gerrard the singer of Dead Can Dance as well as the jazzman Louis Sclavis, the viellist Valentine Clastrier and the bell ringer of uilleann pipe Davy Spillane emblematic figure of the Irish music. The song “ Gortoz has ran ” which opens the album will be integrated in the original soundtrack of the film Black Hawk Down ( Ridley Scott). After a series in concerts, Denez Prigent records a Live with the Festival Interceltique of Lorient in August 2001

In 2003 he released , Sarac' H (into Breton, name given to the rustle which the wind in the foliage makes), his fifth and thusfar last album. One finds again there LISA Gerrard but also Yanka Rupkina the soloist of the Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices, Karen Matheson and sami Mari Boine. Denez Prigent also invites celebrates it player of Bouzouki Donal Lunny, Nabil Khalidi one of the uncontested Masters of the Arab lute and the violonists virtuosos Ronan Pinc and Farhad Bouallagi. This opus gained a strong recognition by the public aswell as the critics.



01 - An Droug-Red (6:29)
02 - An Hentoù Adkavet (5:43)
03 - Copsa Mica (Lodenn 1) (4:03)
04 - Copsa Mica (Lodenn 2) (4:27)
05 - Brall Ar Rodoù (4:35)
06 - E Trouz Ar Gêr (4:35)
07 - Ur Fulenn Aour (4:44)
08 - Kereñvor (5:52)
09 - An Iliz Ruz (4:54)
10 - Al Lagad Foll (4:42)
11 - Ar Wezenn-Dar (7:25)
12 - Ar Rannoù (17:04)

diet version
Denez Prigent - Me' Zalc'h Ennon Ur Fulenn Aour (* 99mb)

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Challenge

You may have noted that more (10)pages have been taken down by blogspot , unfortunately the anonymous persons that complained never took the trouble asking me to taken down the album they claim hurts their wallet...more then the current financial/housing malaise..it is clear to me that the source is the UK , the real pity is that the other unchallenged albums and all the write ups dissappear aswell. So hereby i challenge the deleter to just comment and request the deletion of the contested link..this btw has happened twice in the past two years and i obviously complied. Please, whoever you are stop this cause of action. Rho

Canadia (11)

Hello, after last weeks crash onto a lifeless earth season two sees the crew of canadia in a depressive state but.....

In the year 2056 the US has declared war on the Ipampilashians and has sent the American armada to destroy their planet. Canada has sent its only ship, The Canadia, in support of the American mission but the Canadia is not a warship. It's a maintenance ship (they change light bulbs and plunge toilets). Max Anderson is the first American ever to be stationed on the Canadia. He was put there by the American admiral (his mother) to toughen him up but keep him out of any real danger. The only thing that Max and the crew of the Canadia agree on is that no one wants him there.


Season 2 Canadia: 2056 - Episode 11

Six months after their fateful return to Earth, the Canadian maintenance ship Canadia and her crew lay in ruins. The captain has deserted his post, Anderson and the Robot have gone off seeking answers, Faverau tries to hold on to the past and Lewis is left to try to put it all back together. They have all but given up hope that the human race can survive. Until a sign from above reaffirms their belief in the human spirit... kind of.

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Canadia 2056 11 (20mb)

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Afterposts (Sndz 2)

Hello Sundazers a really mixed bag today, a movie, Zeitgeist Addendum spilt in 4 parts for easy download in the AVI format,last time the aVI had some problems on some platforms but this time i recoded with another offer today Format Factory a very handy tool to convert many different, video and sound formats, together with the tool i used to get the movie, the youtube downloader , furthermore two very nifty converters lame and oggdrop...Finally some meditive music TUU and All Our Ancestors would be proud if we manage to free ourselves from the debt slavery...it wont be easy consideringmany still prostrate themselves for kings and queens and schizo religions..

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Zeitgeist: Addendum, a 2008 documentary film produced by Peter Joseph, is a continuation of the film Zeitgeist, the Movie. The film relates the corruptive nature of the Federal Reserve System in the United States, the CIA henchman for corporate America and others, concluding with the advocating of the Venus Project, created by social engineer Jacque Fresco. The movie premiered at the 5th Annual Artivist Film Festival in Los Angeles, California on October 2, 2008, and was released free online on October 4, 2008.According to director Peter Joseph, the film "attempts to locate the root causes of this pervasive social corruption, while offering a solution". In conclusion, Addendum stresses the need for belief systems to embrace the ideas of emergence and interdependence and outlines concrete steps that can be taken to weaken the monetary system.

In contrast with the first Zeitgeist, The Movie, Addendum caused some stir as the makers lay out a vision to strive for, which is as it should be, only the ideas portrayed didnt go down to well with some smallminded egomaniacs..unsurprisingly i might add. The FACT that there's plenty of renewable (almost free) energy around has been kept from the world for decades, and im not talking about zeropoint energy but solar, wind, geothermic there is plenty but it cant be controlled like energy has been and there lies the opposition..the controllers...Now machines have been getting a bad rap as these have been used in this world to keep the workforce down, but machines have no ego and these can do almost anything in providing humans with food, building shelter provinding healthcare.. The idea being if everyone is provided for the drive to commit crime and corrupt and wage war is taken away...and humans can concentrate on expressing themselves...obviously these ideas sound very dangerous to the ego driven competitors so you'll here them shout communism which it aint, its closer to libertarianism, its about all men have equal rights, it's about money don't matter.



Zeitgeist Addendum I (AVI 81mb)

Zeitgeist: Addendum is separated into four parts. The first part criticizes the practice of the Fractional Reserve Banking system. And in a very simplistic way the film tries to convey how the Federal Reserve creates money, and what each dollar bill represents --that is, debt. The film goes on to present a case for how the Fed loans this newly created "debt money" to the U.S.treasury in exchange for bonds. In sequence, the money received from the Fed ends up as deposits in commercial banks, which through the fractional reserve system is multiplied and turned into interest baring loans. The film comments how "absurd" such a system is, since the interest that must be paid for the bonds can only create a perpetual cycle of debt

Zeitgeist Addendum II (AVI 85mb)

The second part is a documentary style interview with John Perkins, in which he describes his role as a Economic Hitman (EHM). He helped CIA and the ruling political/corporate elites who have worked to undermine legitimate foreign regimes who put the interests of their populations before those of transnational corporations

Zeitgeist Addendum III (AVI 112mb)

The third part describes the Venus Project, a proposal created by Jacque Fresco. The film promotes the Venus Project as a sustainable solution for mankind on earth. Its main goal is to produce a "resource-based economy" using modern technology.


Zeitgeist Addendum IV (AVI 126mb)

Part IV states that everything wrong with the world is "fundamentally the result of a collective ignorance of two of the most basic insights humans can have about reality - the 'emergent' and 'symbiotic' aspects of natural law." The film then suggests actions for "social transformation", such as boycotts of large banks, the mainstream media, the military, and energy companies, rejecting the political structure and "creating critical mass".


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4 Easy and Free Quality Converters (24mb)

Here's some of the software i used to get Zeitgeist to you. First there's the youtube downloader a free and easy tool to get flv videos..not just from you tube..it has transcoding and splitting capabilities aswell..great find i would think

What is YouTube Downloader?

It's software that allows you to download videos from YouTube and many others and convert them to other video formats.
The program is easy to use, just specify the URL for the video you want to download and click the Ok button!
It also allows you to convert downloaded videos for Ipod, Iphone, PSP, Cell Phone, Windows Media, XVid and MP3.
You can use YouTube Downloader to download the videos of your choice from home, at the office or in school.
YouTube Downloader it's easy to use, the interface is intuitive. Simply copy and paste the video URL and press Ok button. The window of download will appear.

-Download videos from YouTube, Google Video, MySpaceTV and many others
-Allows you to access YouTube videos for which you need to be 18+ years of age
-Converts video for Ipod, Iphone, PSP, Cell Phone, Windows Media, XVid and MP3
-Provides the ability to cut and select the output quality of converted videos
-Uses the FFmpeg engine to convert the videos
-Plays videos downloaded in Flash
-Extremely easy to use

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Second here is Format Factory, extremely useful transcoding video and audio files, allthough the high-quality sound settings are not (128)

Whether you haven’t heard of this particular file format that you have on your desktop or you haven’t got the appropriate tools on your system, Format Factory is what we recommend trying out, it’s a freeware and probably the last file conversion tool you will ever need to search for! Format Factory currently handles 12 types of video formats, six audio types, eight image formats and DVD/ISO conversions.

As you can see, it doesn’t look difficult to use, in fact quite simple, although spiked with format-icons and a big banner announcing the program’s name for no reason other than to put lipstick on the pig. The left navigation menu has collapsible links to the various formats you can convert to, based on type: video, audio, image, mobile device, and ROM device. Below the massive title banner, the central pane sports decorative icons until you start the conversion process.Once you’ve selected your files, you can change the output quality to presets or custom settings. Hit Start on the Toolbar of the main window to begin the process, which is surprisingly fast for smaller video files. FormatFactory excels at batch conversion without error. It does, however, eat up much of your processor while it’s running even one conversion, and for some reason considers 128k high quality..which makes it rather unsuitable for me, however my advice convert to wave and from there use the conversion tools and quality you want, my oggdroptool goes to 512k and plenty of lame/mp3 converters around like the lamedrop i include here.

This here is the latest version of Format Factory 1.55



Key features:
· All to MPG/AVI/3GP/FLV/MP4.
· All to MP3/OGG/WMA/M4A/WAV.
· All to JPG/BMP/PNG/TIF/ICO.
· Rip DVD to video file.
· MP4 files support iPod/iPhone/PSP format.
· Support converting all popular video,audio,picture formats to others.
· Repair damaged video and audio file.
· Reducing Multimedia file size.
· Support iphone, ipod multimedia file formats.
· Picture converting supports Zoom,Rotate/Flip,tags.
· DVD Ripper.
- It has multilangual (35) support


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Finally two extremely useful coding progs, and the lame/oggdrop neednt be installed at all these work right away, Lamedrop even recodes my oggfiles directly to MP3..That said you'd be surprised how many MP3 players play Ogg even if its rarely listed....you should try

oggdropXPd

oggdropXPd is a drag-and-drop Ogg Vorbis encoder/decoder/player for the eXPerienced user. Features include compression from lossless files (Monkeys Audio, LPAC, FLAC, WAVPACK and OptimFROG -(check rarewares.org for needed dll's), auto-tagging, renaming of encoded files, setting of advanced encoder parameters, use of VorbisGain tags on decode, playlist (.m3u) creation, and others.

Playback also supports multi-channel in the same way. A further option is added to downmix multi-channel to stereo for decoding to file, or playback. The multi-channel mapping conforms to the Vorbis I Specification.


LameDropXPd

LameDropXPd is a practical frontend for LAME that makes things easier to the user, as there is no need to know about command line usage: most LAME settings are reachable on a graphical interface. Besides encoding WAV files to MP3, it can transcode Ogg Vorbis files, decode MP3 files to WAV, and auto-tag the files it encodes.


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Tuu - All Our Ancesters (94 ^ 99mb)

Deep, ancient atmospheres. A rich combination of the exotic and the electronic. A mystical, magical travelogue exploring old, hidden dimensions. Tuu are Martin Franklin on water drums, clay pots, tibetan bells and gongs, Rebecca Lublinski on flutes, and Mykl O'Dempsey with synths and samples. The result is a music that is dark and strangely unsettling, generally rhythmic but never funky, slow but never heavy. This is a good disc to listen to focus your attention within and reach out to the world around you. It is extremely peaceful, relaxing and not in the least bit boring since the exotic nature of the instruments holds your attention quite well. This music shadows the distant past, the unknown future and the mystery of life. This here is one of the originally released  limited edition of 500 with a hand-made metal and paper slipcase



1 - Shiva Descending (8:56)
2 - All Our Ancestors (7:36)
3 - House Of The Waters (4:42)
4 - Stillpoint In Motion (5:24)
5 - Rainfall (7:56)
6 - Illumination (4:28)
7 - Triple Gem Of Wisdom (8:02)

Afterpost (02)

Hello, something to get you started this weekend . How many socalled micro samples can become more then the sum of it's parts... in fact, the result is rather asthonishing. French Canadian artist Akufen shows his way and his is a path well worth exploring....

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Akufen - My Way (02 ^ 194mb)

Akufen is the musical pseudonym of Montreal, Canada based artist, Marc Leclair. Leclair makes electronic music that is often described as minimal house, minimal techno, glitch, click hop, or microhouse. Leclair's pseudonym comes from the French word for tinnitus (ringing of the ears), acouphène.

Since 1999, Akufen has been amassing a thick stockpile of 12" releases for labels like Perlon, Background, Traum, Oral, Trapez, and Force Inc. With influences ranging from Bootsy to Mancini to Moroder to Reich, Leclair's productions veer from challenging experimental techno to pop-oriented micro-house. For most of the tracks on 2002's My Way, his first full-length album for Force Inc., Leclair employed a technique he referred to as "microsampling." Leclair would spend hours of each morning recording material from AM/FM dials and a shortwave, and he would then use those recordings as fodder for his productions, splicing seconds into minute fragments (consisting of voices, song snips, acoustic guitar flicks, and all sorts of unidentifiable moments) and applying them to danceable, hook-heavy house tracks. 

In 2004 released Blu tribunL a glitch/minimal album together with Freeform and the Rip-Off Artist, each bringing in four tracks, later that year he delivered a well recieved mix album, Fabric 17. In 2005 Marc Leclair returns under its own name with the release of Musique pour 3 femmes enceintes (Mutek) and proves that he had more than one card up in his sleeve. With the skillful integration of instrumental tones and outer-space noises, he built extended and dreamlike pieces that defy time.
Akufen obviously has been on the road quite a lot djing and doing remixes which left working on the new album and developping his label, Musique Risquée (risky music), squeezed by his obligations as a familyman. 



01 - Even White Horizons (5:28)
02 - Installation (8:04)
03 - Skidoos (8:58)
04 - Deck The House (6:05)
05 - Wet Floors (6:18)
06 - Heaven Can Wait (5:05)
07 - In Dog We Trust (7:37)
08 - Jeep Sex (6:06)
09 - My Way (6:29)
Xs
10 - Architxtures I (7:08)
11 - Whore House (6:52)
12 - Little Hop Of Horrors (5:35)

diet version.= without Xs
Akufen - My Way ( * 99mb)

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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here !

Video: Two Artists

A little Alison Saar and Kehinde Wiley for the weekend!


Alison Saar, Interview for Otis College of Art Legacy Project (Saar, Otis '81)


Kehinde Wiley, The World Stage: Lagos-Dakar

No on Prop 8 + Roubini + Polls + Empty Storefronts

It isn't too late: Proposition 8, with alleged heavy support from the Mormon Church, is in danger of becoming California law, ending the brief period of legal same-sex marriage in the Golden State. You can contact friends and family in California to urge them to vote no, and--yes, I know these are very tough economic times and if you have even any extra money someone is asking for it, but--you can donate here to the Vote NO on Prop 8 campaign to prevent the referendum from becoming law.

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There's Krugman, and Summers, and DeLong, and...then there's Nouriel Roubini. A friend of mine who saw him on TV back in the summer but didn't know who he was described him to me in an email as "dour," and "grave" in his affect. She had it right; Roubini rarely appears to smile, though based on what he has to say, what is there to smile about? He's been quite right about the economic crisis for some time (like, going back some years now), and while he was dismissed or ignored for a while, he's now turning up all over the place trying to school folks about what's happening and what's to come. Dour and grave would about encapsulate it, because today he suggests that a "panic" might force a market shutdown. He had previously predicted the collapse of the shadow banking system, the run on hedge funds (which is ongoing), the continued fall in the stock market, the inadequacies of Paulson's original plan, and other horrors that have come to pass. I'm now wondering not whether but when this most recent prediction will come to pass, and have now realize how naive was my belief that the October 1987 crash, which occurred only weeks after I'd begun my first post-collegiate job, in commercial banking no less, was the worst I'd see in my lifetime. Even factoring the possibility of the country electing another George H. W. Bush (who was, circa 1987, soon to bump up an office, start a war in the Middle East, employ a passel of liars and incompetents, and drive the economy in a ditch), and remembering the endlessly colorful and depressing stories my late grandfather (like all my grandparents, and both my parents, for that matter), who'd lived through the Depression, used to tell about the hardships of that era (there were no jobs! people slept on railcars! you had to make a can of beans last a week! etc.), I can't say I ever imagined things would get this bad. And the terrifying thing is, they could very well get even worse before they improve....

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I say I'm not going to look at the polls and then I can't help but look at the polls. Or sites that post the polls. And then I read the comments about the polls. Where people post more polls. And sometimes, as happened today, someone mistypes figures in a poll and I fly off the handle because the polls says that Obama is down 41-51 to McCain in Pennsylvania, Pennsyl-freaking-vania, and my dear friend Sally S. has told me that no Democrat wins the White House when the Phillies take the World Series (Tampa Bay won tonight), which has nothing to do with polling in Pennsylvania or anything else related to politics, at least directly, and though I'm not superstitious I have to go read another poll that confirms that in fact Obama is UP in Philadelphia, followed by 2-3 more polls that say the same thing, including that he's up in all the midwestern states, which means Indiana, which causes almost unreal elation and fear, and then I keep reading the comments section and the mistyper apologizes for reversing the numbers and others who've freaked out as well calm down, and then I realize I probably should get back to what it was I was doing, which is work having nothing to do with polls, but I feel myself wanting to click on a link to yet another site that has more polls....

Larry David offers a similar viewpoint, in his inimitable way.

+++

Gas has fallen somewhat, a good thing, though not enough to make aimlessly sightseeing around the vastness that is Chicago worth it. Nevertheless, I still do take time to tour parts of the city that I'm more and less familiar with, and one of the things I've been noticing increasingly is the large number of unfinished and empty condo buildings, which had begun to sprout like shepherd's purse along the city's eastern spine radiating northward and westward from the Loop. I've also noticed the ubiquitous rent and for sale signs, as well as the unoccupied storefronts, especially on once vibrant commercial strips. This isn't to say that every part of Chicago north from the Loops looks like this, and some streets, like Belmont and Clark in Boystown, or Broadway in Uptown, look as occupied as they ever have. But it does appear that in some areas, things have rapidly accelerated since last June, when I headed back east. I looked online, and this article, in the Milwaukee Business Journal, says Chicago's situation is "fair." According to the Chicago Real Estate Daily, foreclosures in general are rising in Chicago, but are slower than the national average. The empty storefronts are but one cause and symptom of the city's overall financial crunch.

+++

And from the annals of the outrageous, Austrian Naziphile ex-Governor of Carinthia and former Freedom Party leader Jörg Haider had a secret male lover, Stefan Petzner. Haider, in addition to having sung the praises of the Nazis and you-know-who, "voted against a parliamentary motion to lower the age of consent for homosexuals, [and] had presented himself as a family man who drank sparingly." Naturally. Haider engineered his secret lover's ascent in a new right-wing party, Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZO). The 27-year-old lover, who'd met Haider when he was a "beauty correspondent" (?), told the world about the relationship in a tearful, public breakdown. The Alliance, naturally, saw no future for Petzner as the leader of its ranks, and canned him. Supposedly Frau Haider knew about and accepted said secret lover. Sort of but not really. Haider died after leaving a gay bar so drunk he could barely walk, and then drove his car off a mountain road. Despite his extreme politics he was widely mourned. I'm a fiction writer and sure, you can make this stuff up, but really, do you? Do I? Does anyone? (Okay, yes, Thomas Bernhard would have had quite a go at this duo.) Does Hollywood? Another thought: had they been born in the US, these two (Haider und Petzner) would have fit right in with the GOP.

Afterpost (grooves)

Hello, im back for another Afterpost, first i want to thank you all for the kind comments , furthermore i wish to tell you that in case this blog goes off line or goes private (havent decided yet) the place to go is transgloballs where all Rho-Xs data on how to join or get hold of all data i've posted on the blog in RTF format. Might be a good idea to bookmark transglobal, or rip the blog yourselves whatever. As i said posting will be irregular, and today i have a compilation album made by a man who's done some 60 albums since 85, he knows what he's doing and this one wasn't even listed, possibly as it came with Muzik Mag spring 03. Gilles Peterson's focus has always been Modern Jazz music, with a strong emphasis on its use in a club environment, mixed with associated music styles.(anything from dub and reggae through jazz, nu-jazz, funk, soul, neo soul, to drum and bass, house, broken beat, hip-hop, Jazz-funk, latin, bossa nova, samba and beyond.)

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Gilles Peterson'(born 64) attended The John Fisher School, in the mid- and late- 1980s, living among the South London suburban soul scene in the early eighties, Gilles would avidly listen to listening to Level 42, Earth Wind & Fire, Central Line and the heavier, deeper pirate stations such as Radio Invicta. This inspired him to set up his own station - literally an aerial suspended between a tree and a phone box - playing an eclectic mix of jazz, funk, reggae, soul and early electro. By a stroke of luck, Radio Invicta needed a new transmitter, so Gilles swapped his for a regular show on the station.

At the same time, Gilles was a regular shopper at DJ Paul Murphy's Palladin Records. Murphy also DJ'd at Camden's Electric Ballroom, and his knowledge of rare, killer power jazz tunes and rare Afro-Cuban fusion was further inspiration for Gilles, who took over the decks when Paul left. Once ensconced upstairs in the Electric Ballroom, Gilles' understanding and insight into jazz, funk and soul grew exponentially. Gilles soon began to play at Nicky Holloway's Special Branch night at The Royal Oak. 

1985 saw Gilles releasing the Jazz Juice (streetsounds) compilation series, collecting together many of the jazz tracks Gilles had been playing over the past few years. EMI Records soon called on Gilles to put together a series of inspired collections showcasing jazz label Blue Note's best artists resulting in 'Blue Bossa Vols. 1 & 2' and 'Baptist Beat' , which became the motivation for the hugely popular 'Blue' series of Jazz compilations.

During this period, Gilles had also been working on new pirate radio projects before 'going legit' with the BBC Radio London which was the first legal station he worked for, hosting a show called 'Mad On Jazz'. After leaving Radio London in 1986, Gilles started his Sunday sessions - 'Talkin' Loud' & 'Saying Something' - at Camden's Dingwalls. Co-hosted by Patrick Forge, these ran for five years. Coinciding with the emerging acid house scene, the sessions became a natural magnet for post clubbing come-down kids.

Shortly afterwards, Gilles started the Acid Jazz label, but after two years he felt the sound, the music and name was becoming a mod thing, a retro thing.' And so the approach from Phonogram was welcome , and he set up a new label Talkin' Loud records in 1989 . Gilles got the chance to echo his own diverse tastes and the label saw releases from the likes of Brand New Heavies, Jamiroquai, the Galliano. 

Back on air, Gilles' show on London's Jazz FM was axed in 1990 after he played 'inappropriate' music and made statements supporting peace during the Gulf War. Soon after, he joined the newly-legalized Kiss FM. His Sunday evening WorldWide slot proved one of the most popular on the station and he stayed there for eight years until he joined Radio 1 in 1998. From 1998 to the present, through his BBC show Worldwide, Peterson has continued to stretch the musical boundaries. The show has always highlighted both new, but more importantly for the audience it is supposed to serve, older and often very rare records from the late-1950's to 1980's. In fact every three months or so, Gilles dedicates a whole show to older vinyl releases in a special version of his show he subtitles a Brownswood Basement. In August 2004 the show moved from Wednesday (midnight til 2am) to an earlier Sunday slot (11:00 to 01:00) In September 2006, Peterson's show on Radio 1 was moved from Sunday night to Wednesday night (more precisely the early hours of Thursday morning), 02:00 to 04:00 (GMT) where you can pick him up every week and not to worry.

Widely acclaimed as a musical tastemaker, Gilles spreads his influence on music listeners around the world mostly through the Worldwide radio show on BBC Radio 1 and besides he also does another version of the show which gets syndicated to radio stations all over the world. Parallel to this, his frequent DJing gigs around the world also have cemented a worldwide following. In 2006 Gilles and Freshly Cut, a French event production company from Montpellier, collaborated to create the unique Worldwide Festival. This started out as a small intimate festival during the summertime in the coastal town of Sète in France. Meanwhile it hasbeen expanded to three festivals, in London, Shanghai and Sète in 2007. In 2008 it will have expanded to take place in London, Beijing, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Singapore and Sète.


Gilles Peterson's channel @ youtube




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Gilles Peterson - Broken Folk Funk Latin Soul (03 ^ 151mb)





01 - Kuusumun Profeetta - Kovin Lentaen Kotiin Kaipaan (7:05)
02 - Cinematic Orchestra, The - All Things To All Men (feat.Roots Manuva) (10:42)
03 - Dani Siciliano - Come As You Are (5:13)
04 - Mr. Scruff - Come Alive (5:13)
05 - Harmonic 33 - Where Have They Gone? (3:36)
06 - Asheru - Mood Swing (feat.Talib Kweli) (4:47)
07 - Lone Catalysts - Destiny (feat. the 3rd) (4:05)
08 - Two Banks Of Four - Unclaimed (4:41)
09 - Micatone - Sweet Child (4:29)
10 - Underworld - Twist (5:27)
11 - Infekto - Left Hand Jazz (5:46)
12 - Osunlade - Touched My Soul (4:51)

diet verson
Gilles Peterson - Broken Folk Funk Latin Soul ( * 99mb)

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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here !

Poems: The Sixth Dalai Lama

Two short love poems by the Sixth Dalai lama, Tsangyang Gyatso (Tsangs-dbyangs Rgya-mtsho 1683-1705), translated by Nathan Hill with Toby Fee, from the Winter 2008 special translation issue of the Harvard Advocate.

(50)
Our tryst in the dense woods
of the southern valley
a parrot only knows,
all else are ignorant.
O parrot, please do not
repeat our secret words.

(65)
Behind me a demon.
Who cares if he's fearsome?
I saw a sweet apple
and was compelled to pluck.

Copyright © Nathan Hill with Toby Fee, The Harvard Advocate, 2008.

Quote: Abdellah Taïa

I was in my second life. I had just met death. I was gone. Then returned.

I was running. I was running. Quickly, quickly. Quickly, quickly.

Towards where? Why? I didn't know at the time. I don't remember everything. I don't remember anything now, to tell the truth. But it's coming, I know it.

I see words, I hear voices. I see an image, the same red and yellow image again and again. It's blurry. It will eventually clear up. I wait. I'm not writing any more. I'm on my little bed. I try to fill the pages of my private journal. A future book. I concentrate. I force myself to find that moment, that race. That chase. I'm not breathing anymore. I close my eyes. I concentrate even more. I curl up and try to distinguish the voices from another world which reach me in a din and which, with a single blow, stop. I relax. I'm afraid. I look at the sky, then my slightly dirty feet.

It's now returning to my head, my memory, my body. To my fingers. I feel it, I feel it. It's coming, it's coming. I'm happy. I'm excited. My heart's revving. My skin's growing slack. I lift my head, I open an eye and I watch what's falling.

It's me. Me. Little. An adolescent from the 1980s. A huge schoolbag stuck to my stomach, I'm crossing time, seconds, minutes, as quickly as possibly. I'm in a race. I have one idea in my head. An obsession. An Egyptian actress, mythical, beautiful, more than beautiful. Souad Hosni. A reality. My reality. I am pressed into going into my other life, imaginary, true, entering into communion with her, searching in her for my unknown soul.
--From Abdellah Taïa, Une mélancolie arabe, Éditions du Seuil, 2008, pp. 9-10. Translation by John Keene, 2008. Copyright © 2008, Abdellah Taïa, all rights reserved. (Photo © Denis Dailleux)

Looks like the end

Hello, well all my reupdating seems to have attracted the real leeches that live off artists, i suppose you have to expect that this blog will be closed any day now..well i enjoyed sharing and as i said before was winding down Rho-Xs.  Obviously the fact that i stay far away from new titles or the MP3 format technically doesnt matter. You can say goodbye at mail.nu /Rho-Xs if you feel like it...best of luck, Rho

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2008 World Series Contenders + SNL + Late Blooming

Last night, the World Series lineup was set: the Tampa Bay Rays defeated the Boston Red Sox to win the 2008 American League pennant, and will now face the National League's Philadelphia Phillies. The Ray's ascendance is remarkable; they are only a decade old, and only twice have they not finished last in their division: in 2004, and this year. The Phillies have also known futility. Playing in the same division as formerly dominant Atlanta, the always-contending New York Mets, and the ever surprising Florida Marlins, who have managed to win 2 World Series despite constantly being stripped of their best players, the Phillies haven't been to the World Series since 1980, and with some of the most enthusiastic fans in the league, probably feel they have a debt to remit.

It will be an exciting matchup. Both teams have prodigious homerun hitters (the Phillies have the NL's best in St. Louisan Ryan Howard, above right, with Jimmy Rollins (AP Photo/Tom Mihalek), who hit 48 during the regular season and drove in 146 runs; the Rays got hot when the playoffs rolled around, and Carlos Peña (at center above, with Fernando Pérez, biting on the league trophy, and Michel Hernández, Doug Pensinger/Getty Images), Evan Longoria, and the relatively light-hitting B. J. Upton), strong defense, and decent starting pitching, though the Rays have the stronger starting corps and the Phillies have the edge in their closer, Brad Lidge. Because of the All Star game results, the Rays have home field advantage. At the risk of saying the most obvious thing possible, I believe it'll come down to pitching--which team's relievers, in particular, hold up best--and whether the Rays' relative youth and inexperience prove a liability.

William Rhoden talks up one noteworthy angle I broached several posts in a recent piece Bernie sent along. In addition, both teams also have players from Japan and the Dominican Republic, and the Rays also have players from Venezuela and Australia, while there are Phillies natives of Canada and Panama, an indication of the now unremarkable internationalization of the league.

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I caught Governor Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live two nights ago, and it became clear to me what her calling is: a media personality. She appaers to know even less and be far more telegenic that the vast majority of the on-air punditocracy, so if she ever decides that Alaska is too small and remote for her, I can foresee a thoroughly scripted, hour-long show, probably more in the variety vein than a chatfest, with her at the helm. On Fox, of course. (She can keep the beat pretty well, I must say.)

Best non-Tina Fey bit: Kristin Wiig as the crazy McCain supporter, with the hair all over her head, who thought Obama was an "Arab."

They're starting to fall off from the first few episodes of this season, though. And they've got to find a better Obama-impersonator. Fred Armisen, not so good.

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I was recently speaking about the following article with a friend of mine who confessed his own anxieties over, to put it simply, not being a prodigy. We all know how our culture in particular extols and exoticizes them, but it's not just the US. Nevertheless, play Mozart and Chopin before learning to crawl or solve problems in topology at the age of 7, which would admittedly be quite extraordinary, and you'll certainly appearing on 60 Minutes with Morley Safer slobbering his delight with you before millions of equally admiring viewers.

The literary arts also love a quick and prodigious study: the younger and more accomplished the painter, sculptor, and especially author, the more cash and attention she or he can command. As Malcolm Gladwell's recent New Yorker article notes, there's something to be said for the late bloomer, though. It isn't all in her or his hands, he argues, as he goes on to explore the parallel careers of Pablo Picasso and Paul Cézanne on the one hand, and Ben Fountain and--let me suppress a gag--Jonathan Safran Foer. Lots of other things have to fall into place, both within and outside the artist's control. Above all, contingency, persistence, practice and a certain amount of struggle are the begetters of late genius, I guess you could put it. But then this is true of most career pursuits, isn't it, for all but a very few?

(Well, there are some careers, like physics, where youthfulness might be integral to exceptional accomplishment. Hmmm.)

At any rate, here's a quote from Gladwell:

“All these qualities of his inner vision were continually hampered and obstructed by Cézanne’s incapacity to give sufficient verisimilitude to the personae of his drama,” the great English art critic Roger Fry wrote of the early Cézanne. “With all his rare endowments, he happened to lack the comparatively common gift of illustration, the gift that any draughtsman for the illustrated papers learns in a school of commercial art; whereas, to realize such visions as Cézanne’s required this gift in high degree.” In other words, the young Cézanne couldn’t draw. Of “The Banquet,” which Cézanne painted at thirty-one, Fry writes, “It is no use to deny that Cézanne has made a very poor job of it.” Fry goes on, “More happily endowed and more integral personalities have been able to express themselves harmoniously from the very first. But such rich, complex, and conflicting natures as Cézanne’s require a long period of fermentation.” Cézanne was trying something so elusive that he couldn’t master it until he’d spent decades practicing.

Ah yes, those decades....Best not to think of how finite they really are. I do think my friend felt better, though, after reading the article. I certainly did, and I certainly am nobody's Cézanne.

Show Me Rally + Powell's Words + Congrats!

I was incredibly proud of my hometown, and my native state, when I learned that Barack Obama drew an estimated 100,000+ spectators to his speech beneath the Gateway Arch at the St. Louis riverfront (at left, Jae C. Hong/Associated Press) and an estimated additional 75,000 people at his public rally later that day in Kansas City. For Obama to draw so many people (his largest rally to date, I think) in a traditionally conservative, bellwether state so close to the election augured well for his changes in Missouri. Even still, I think the election there will be very close. Curiously, I haven't seen many photos of the Kansas City rally, as if the images from the St. Louis gathering are supposed to serve, by the media's lights, as a metonym not only for both events, but for his current appeal, statistical lead, and likelihood of victory.

After belittling and spinning away the huge May rally in Portland, the immense crowd in Philadelphia, the 200,000 people who stood to hear Obama in Berlin, and Obama's stadium-filling Democratic National Convention acceptance speech in Denver, how will Republicans and their media lapdogs dismiss this unambiguous affirmation in their proverbial, beloved HEARTLAND? Everything I've seen shows that they've decided under the circumstances to pass over the rallies, if not the fundraising, with minimal comment. You can't wish that many people away no matter how hard you try.

One point that I may have missed others noting is a visual and historical one. In the photo below, the cupolaed building in the background is St. Louis's Old Courthouse (c. 1826-1862) The significance of this building in relation to Obama political run, his presence in Missouri and his potential victory can't be understated. As I like other St. Louis schoolchildren learned from my parents, enslaved people were sold on the courthouse's steps. In 1847 and 1850, two of the first trials in the Dred Scott case were held in its courtrooms, and Scott successfully sued for and temporarily gained his and his family's freedom, in 1850, within its walls. And in 1870, suffragette Virginia Minor's case for a woman's right to vote came to trial at the Old Courthouse as well. When I saw the Courthouse's dome rising above the vast see of people, I wondered if somewhere amidst those faces, descendants of Scott (some of whom still live in St. Louis) and Minor, along with their ghosts, weren't also cheering Obama on.

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Alongside the news of Obama's $150 million September fundraising haul, the other big announcement for today is former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State General Colin Powell's hearty endorsement of Barack Obama. It is huge news, and although I cannot ever forget his crucial roles in creating political difficulties for helping to sell the illegal and unwarranted Iraq War, I believe that he still has enough political capital that his critiques of the slanderous direction of John McCain's campaign, the McCarthyite ranting by Representative Michelle Bachmann, and the unanswered racist slurs against Arabs and Muslims will, along with his support of Obama, prove noteworthy. I still don't trust Powell, and am dismayed to learn that Obama is planning to offer him some sort of position--will he replace the now-invisible War Czar, or head the Department of Veteran Affairs?--but I get the politics of the return gesture. Now, when is the incompetent and totally disgraced Dr. Condoleezza Rice going to offer her endorsement of Obama? How many effigies must be hung, canvassers attacked, death threats be lodged vocally, reporters kicked to the ground, and so on before she finds herself so disgusted she has to take a public stand against McCain, Palin, and the politics so eagerly fostered by the man she once labeled her "husband"?

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Among the many moving and heartening get-well notes, cards and encouraging gifts I received, for which I'm forever grateful, I want to show the following, but for reasons other than to do with my own health.

My former student Tai Little, one of the smartest and most talented and inventive writers I've worked with (her graduating class is still one I remember vividly and fondly), sent this CD of Chihei Hatakeyama's music. I wasn't familiar with Hatakeyama or this CD at all, but I've been playing it frequently on my drives around Chicago. I particularly appreciated the title (Tai flourished in the drudgery of my aesthetics theory class years ago), which playfully invokes a certain philosopher I greatly admire, but spares the listener of struggle through his prose. Not only did it help my convalescence, but it has a definitive calming and yet invigorating effect when I encounter Lake Shore Drive's sclerotic traffic on my drives south to my graduate class in Chicago.

This letter is from other than Ronaldo Wilson, of whom I've written on here before. I initially skimmed the letter with gratitude, which as you can see includes an artful insert, drawings, and RW's distinctive calligraphy. Then something told me to reread it, because I've come to realize that careful rereading always pays. And it did, because it was then that I learned that Mr. Wilson is now officially Dr. Wilson--so congratulations, Ronaldo Wilson, Ph.D.! Though as anyone who knows him will attest, he already possessed mastery of areas the rest of us have hardly envisioned.

Canadia (10)

Hello, we continue with the first seasons finale of Canadian 2056, not to worry season two will follow next week.

In the year 2056 the US has declared war on the Ipampilashians and has sent the American armada to destroy their planet. Canada has sent its only ship, The Canadia, in support of the American mission but the Canadia is not a warship. It's a maintenance ship (they change light bulbs and plunge toilets). Max Anderson is the first American ever to be stationed on the Canadia. He was put there by the American admiral (his mother) to toughen him up but keep him out of any real danger. The only thing that Max and the crew of the Canadia agree on is that no one wants him there.

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Episode 10 Season Finale:

An illegal upload adversely affects the computer. The Canadia finally reaches the planet Ipampilash, but Faverau and Pickens can't agree on what to do. Anderson and Lewis take matters into their own hands when the Captain is unable to answer the call of duty. Faverau comes across a Canadian on board the USS Pickens and brings them back to the Canadia.

Canadia 2056-10 (20mb)

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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here !

Le Clézio, le Nobeliste

Several weeks ago, Reggie H. wrote about the newest Nobel Laureate in literature, J.M.G. Le Clézio, who sparked the same question--"WHO?"--that attended his previous French Nobel literature predecessor 23 years ago, the most Faulknerian of the nouveaux romanciers, Claude Simon. (I am not counting 2000 laureate Gao Xiangjin, who lives in France but whose award came for his Chinese-language prose and plays.) In an email exchange, I told Reggie that I'd never read any of Le Clézio's works (unlike Simon's) and had few thoughts about him either way, beyond my immediate criticism of the neo-colonialist and exoticist comments from the Academy and some of the initial commentators. (Not everyone was surprised by the victory, though, and the French thought the award fitting and due.) I added, in agreement with the end of Reggie's post, that there are a number of significant writers across the globe, and in particular outside Europe, some even writing in French, who were and are quite deserving of this top honor.

In the early 1980s it appeared that the biennial Neustadt International Prize for Literature, presented by World Literature Today, was a tip for the Nobel, but successive winners since then, from 2006's Claribel Alegría, backwards through Adam Zagajewski, Álvaro Mútis, David Malouf, Nuruddin Farah, Assia Djebar, Kamau Brathwaite, the late João Cabral de Melo Neto, and so on, have not been Nobelized. The last Neustadt Nobel laureate was 1982's winner, Octavio Paz. All of these writers have been widely acclaimed, and as I noted in a previous post, there are many others for whom you could make a strong case.

Nevertheless, Le Clézio does, as I said, have his champions, and at least one British critic celebrated the backhanded slap at the US's self-regard and American imperialism. He lives in the US part of every year, but he is, it's fair to say, not really on this country's literary radar in the same way that some other French writers, like the highly controversial Michel Houellebecq, for example, are. And he doesn't appear to be well known by our bilingual neighbors to the north, though according to the article you could find his French-language texts in Québec's bookstores. Just after the announcement I informally checked at several bookstores in New York City and Chicago, though at least a handful of US presses, like the University of Chicago Press, University of Nebraska Press, David R. Godine, and others, have published translations of his novels, and not one had a single translated Le Clézio text, though not too long ago, I think I saw a copy of one of his books on the long smorgasbord of remaindered books at one of my haunts, Powell's in Chicago.

Neither the brief, translated New York Times excerpts or the Nobel website's snippet of Le Clézio's work were encouraging (the New Yorker will for the first time be publishing one of his stories this week), so I went to the library and, in lazy fashion, looked at the several of his books that were available in English translation. (Interestingly, I thought, given the number of students and colleagues who read French, almost none of the French ones had been checked out.) His award-winning début novel, The Interrogation (Le procès-verbal), had been checked out, but I did see several large volumes from the early 1970s, War and Giants, which appear to be quite formally experimental in a Nouveau Roman-influenced vein, and, I assume, less likely to draw in casual readers who want to catch up. The latter ones, like 1991's Onitsha, a fictional retelling of his own experiences in Nigeria, seem to fall in the vein of more conventional, contemporary French prose or some destabilizing midway point between fiction and autobiography. (The French in fact have pioneered an entire genre, autofiction, that does this.) This particular volume looked interesting, not least in its blurring of genre, so I've put it on my list of books to read when I have time to do so.

Blogger and critic Guillaume Thoroude sums up Le Clézio's honor and his work this way:

So Le Clézio - why not? He has everything going for him: he's the perfect son-in-law, he still carries the aura of a child genius who conquered both experimental and classical writing, and he's one of the most studied French writers outside France. So the Nobel prize will make a lot of people happy, and frankly, what's the problem with that?

A German critic wasn't so charmed. British critic Mark Lawson suggests, as others have, that the Swedish Academy's political and and aesthetic biases have created a hurdle for contemporary mainstream American fiction. Le Clézio's own thoughts about his work, pre-Nobel, can be found here. One of his own comments, ironic in light of some of the post-Nobel write ups, interests me considerably:

First, I shall say that it doesn’t upset me at all to be unclassifiable. I think that the main characteristic of the novel is that is unclassifiable, in other words that it is a polymorphous genre which is part of an interbreeding, a brew of ideas which is, ultimately, the reflection of our multipolar world.

That said, I think, like you, that the French literary establishment, heir to the so-called universal ideas of the Encyclopédistes, has always had a deplorable tendency to marginalise any ideas from elsewhere by describing them as "exotic". Rimbaud and Segalen paid the price in their time. Even today, writers from Southern countries are only published here if they agree to be categorised in the "exotic" category. The example that comes to mind is the Mauritian writer, Ananda Devi, whose work I championed when I was on Gallimard’s panel of readers. Their response was that her manuscript was not exotic enough!

One other point that Reggie makes it the fate of poets in the last few rounds of Nobel honorees: there have been none, or rather, no writers working primarily in the genre of poetry. Many of the responses to Horace Engdahl's statements focused narrowly on contemporary US fiction, as if the contemporary American poetry landscape didn't exist. Some of the greatest and most original non-US poets of last 100 years have been honored, but David Orr notes that, oddly enough, no American-born poet, other than T.S. Eliot, who moved to the UK quite early, has received the Nobel Prize, despite the widespread consensus that American poetry, especially since Whitman and Dickinson, which is to say, since the late 19th century, has been among the most influential in the world. Gertrude Stein, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Lowell, and on you might do down the list--not a single one of them received the Nobel Prize. (Pound's overtly fascistic leanings completely disqualified him, I imagine.) Orr suggests that Adrienne Rich and John Ashbery, whose influence extends not only throughout the English-speaking world, but also in other literary traditions these days, would be leading candidates, and I would agree, adding that there are about two dozen other American poets quite worthy of the honor.

But as Reggie notes, it's not just American poetry that's been shut out of late, it's poets from across the world. Perhaps with a White House change for the better, one of the US's major poets, and the rich and expansive tradition, especially since Modernism, will be honored.

Ted Gioia serves up an alternative Nobel universe. I think he ignores poetry, drama and most writers from beyond the Euro-American axis, and some of the choices are just silly (Dr. Seuss?* John Le Carré? J.K. Rowling?). What do you think of it?

Anyways, get to your reading!

*I learned to read from Dr. Seuss's books, so I'm not dissing him, just arguing that he might not be the most appropriate candidate for a Nobel Prize in literature.