| User: |  jwz |
| Date: | 2012-05-30 02:13 |
| Subject: | King City |
| Security: | Public |
You should read King City by Brandon Graham. It's the best comic-book-type thing I've read in quite some time. The trade is a huge phonebook-sized thing and it's awesome. It's hard to describe. Well, it's not hard to describe the plot, but it would sound really goofy, which it is, but it's amazing. This dude has a cat who can turn into lock picks or a grappling hook and he has to defeat a tentacle monster. And it's full of puns. But it's not really about that. You see what happens when I try to describe it? That's like saying Scott Pilgrim was about a slacker who punches people. So you should just take my word for it and read it. Mirrored from jwz.org.
The exact day I became a fan of (Two-Tone) ska was April 19, 1980. That was the night the Specials played on Saturday Night Live.* I was enthralled. I went out and found the record the very next day.
When I found it, I actually thought it was a little dull in comparison with the live songs I heard the night before. I learned to love it, but I really do think, unlike a lot of genres, that the live recordings of this short period of time capture it in a way that the vinyl never did. The Specials “Ghost Town”** may be the only song better in the studio, but that’s because it’s a brutal, bitter announcement that not only was the two-tone era dead -- such a short life! -- but so was everything progressive people had worked for, including hope.
I just read Pauline Black’s autobiography “Black by Design” so I’ve been thinking about that era a lot this week. Pauline Black was the singer for The Selecter, probably the most famous woman in that era of music. The book itself is an adoption memoir sandwiched around a musician memoir. Black, adopted at birth, was raised in a white working class English community with very few non-white influences available to her. The provocative title of the book shows her battle with being black, but not being raised black. The surname she grew up with was actually Vickers, but she took on the last name Black as a way of 1. Truly identifying as black and 2. Having a performer name so she wouldn’t get fired from her day job in case the whole band thing didn’t work out.
Here’s the first incarnation of The Selecter so we can all have a clear starting point:
The weird thing about The Selecter -- the blackest band in Two Tone -- was that they were started by the white guy. He had written an instrumental with one of the folks who was in the Specials and The Specials, not having enough money to record a second song for their first single, put that song on the other side of the record. It became a top ten hit and the guy who wrote it figured he better form a band to capitalize on its success. He basically found a Coventry reggae band, added Pauline Black, and The Selecter was born.
Unlike most musician memoirs, “Black by Design” doesn’t have many bad things to say about anyone, including the members who left the band angry when they kind of disintegrated after the first album. About as snide as Black gets is when she – proud of her band – talks about how they were they only band on the label that was truly all working class. At first it was maddening that Black would only hint at the real personalities of the more famous people around her, but I started to respect it after awhile. It may have been unsatisfying, but she must have resisted a lot of pressure from her publisher to not trash her bandmates and more famous Two-Tone artists. A typically understated sentence, (discussing the reunion version of The Selecter) “Neol Davies and I found that some wounds are too difficult to heal and went our separate ways in 1993.” Yes, that is the only sentence about the guy who wrote all the band’s hit songs, and who formed the band originally, deciding to leave.
What is fascinating, and again also maddening, is that it’s a memoir of a small-scale star who never really got rich. She talked about the day – a decade or so after their one big album was released – when she finally had enough money to open a savings account. Her husband of 30 years or so is pretty absent from the narrative except it’s clear that he worked 40 hours a week his whole life at some job. The memoir of a star who isn’t rich: that’s a book I want to read! This could have been that book, but it’s only hinted at, not really explored.
Other things have a way of just being dropped in… Black became an actor after leaving The Selecter and it turns out she’s friends with Vanessa Redgrave because they are in the same Marxist party. Hi! I’d like to know more about that please. In fact that mention was only there at all because she was talking about her working class brothers’ homophobia and inability to interact with her black, queer, or arty friends.
Still, like I said, the book is an adoption memoir sandwich. I am – for obvious reasons – much more fascinated by adoption stories than I used to be and this has a lot of the usual adoptee narrative, with some extra transracial abductee intensity: adoptive mother who didn’t want her to hang out with black people, adoptive mother who views Black’s (also adopted, but white) brother’s search for his birth parents as a betrayal, the search for grounding, community, and place. She almost never mentions her adoptive family and unknown birth family during her fame years (was she not in contact? doing too many drugs? too busy? We don’t know.) but after her adoptive mother’s death (her adoptive dad dies before that, though it is only mentioned after the fact and in passing) she searches for her birth family. It’s the last 60 pages of the book, but it’s – to me – the most gripping –even tearjearking – part.
Still, after thinking about it for a week, I don’t know whether to recommend this book to folks or not. I found the whole thing fascinating, but I was already a big fan of her music and intrigued by her story which I had no idea of before the press for this book came out.
Anyways, here’s a great live version of “Three Minute Hero” to end this post with:
*embedding is unfortunately disabled. But go check it out and try and remember yourself at age 12. Why wouldn’t you love this?
**( further studies )
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Oh, my few remaining readers, remember those halcyon days when I returned from the Dominican Republic feeling stronger, smarter, and more flexible, capable of achieving all things in relation to the aerial circus arts? That was nice, wasn't it? I'd grown comfortable with the idea that, while I will never be as good as my teachers, who can and do devote themselves full-time to training, that I was not too shabby for a girl with a day job. It was this spike of overweening optimism that caused me to sign up for a five-week rope "master class" taught by a visiting aerialist from Australia.
When I came to warm up and I didn't recognize any of the people in the master class, that should have been a warning. When I noticed that all of the other people in the master class were men, that should have been a warning too. Look upon those biceps, ye mighty, and despair. When the instructor, a cheerful blond Australian Ken doll, started us a twisty variation on toe climb that required either much greater toe strength or a far better one-arm hang than I currently posses, I should have prepared myself for a five-week lesson in humility. When women showed up to class and they were teenage former national gymnasts and supernaturally flexible yoga instructors, I probably should have stayed home. Working out with professional aerialists and teenagers that are mostly made of cartilage makes me feel like a clumsy visitor from the Land of the Troll People. I would not subject my fragile self-esteem to this kind of abuse if only is wasn't so effective.
I never did make much progress with the twisty variation on the toe climb, but my regular toe climb is much improved. I now have the callous between my toes that allows me to climb the rope without needing to haul myself up with both hands. I can hipkey climb to the top of the rope--the secret is to start in meathook. I have improved my beats, which has enabled me to do a lot more of the dynamic, swinging rope tricks that have always impressed me, but have never really been my style. I can do a couple of the more spectacular open drops out of back balance, even if I prefer to do them when I'm not too high up in the air because I'm still a little skittish about the possibility of missing the rope. I have landed (deliberately) flat on my back on the crash mat so many times that my neck is sore.
I am humbled by how much more there is to learn, but I am pleased to have made some progress.
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| User: | jwz |
| Date: | 2012-05-27 00:46 |
| Subject: | Pop. 1280 |
| Security: | Public |
What are all these goths doing here? I thought I came to a post-punk show. Mirrored from jwz.org.
 Future Noir:
Turning down the block and ducking into a futuristic newsstand revealed the most humorous touches of layering, for it was here that this author immediately noticed that a number of faux twenty-first-century magazines had been stuffed into racks mounted on the newsstand's walls, and that many of them sported decidedly tongue-in-cheek covers.These publications had been designed by BR art department member Tom Southwell. Periodicals of note include Krotch (going for $29 a copy!), Zord (at $30), Moni, Bash, Creative Evolution, and Droid. Horn, the "skin mag" of the future, had a cover which offered articles such as "The Cosmic Orgasm" and "Hot Lust in Space." Kill (whose logo was "All the News That's Fit to Kill") sported cover stories like "Multiple Murders - Reader's Own Photos." Mirrored from jwz.org.
DNA Lounge update, wherein I think out loud about webcast upgrades. Mirrored from jwz.org.
Mirrored from jwz.org.
Conway's Game of Life, emulated in Conway's Game of Life: The life simulator used is Golly which has a built-in script to generate these metapixel grids (select a pattern, and choose "metafier.py" from the scripts list). 
Outer Totalistic Cellular Automata Meta-Pixel: The metacell uses a period 184 tractor beam, which acts as a clock. It pulls a block downwards by eight cells per impact, releasing a glider in the process. Some of the gliders are utilised; the rest are eaten. When the block reaches the base, it is restored at the top to begin the cycle again. Period 46 and 184 technologies (which are compatible) are used extensively throughout the configuration.The rule is encoded in two columns, each of nine eaters, where one column corresponds to the 'Birth' rule and the other corresponds to 'Survival'. The nine eaters correspond to the nine different quantities of on cells (0 through 8). The presence or absence of the eater indicates whether the cell should be on in the next meta-generation. The state of the eater is read by the collision of two antiparallel LWSSes, which radiates two antiparallel gliders (not unlike an electron-positron reaction in a PET scanner). These gliders then collide into beehives, which are restored by a passing LWSS in Brice's elegant honeybit reaction. If the eater is present, the beehive would remain in its original state, thereby allowing the LWSS to pass unaffected; if the eater is absent, the beehive would be restored, consuming the LWSS in the process. Equivalently, the state of the eater is mapped onto the state of the LWSS. Previously, previously, previously. Mirrored from jwz.org.
Mirrored from jwz.org.
(I'd say they're 3/5th Split-era Lush, 1/5th Belly, and 1/5th that inexplicable country twang you get from Raveonettes and White Stripes.) Mirrored from jwz.org.
| User: | jwz |
| Date: | 2012-05-22 21:45 |
| Subject: | Tamaryn |
| Security: | Public |
(Hi Grimace!) Mirrored from jwz.org.
(These shoes aren't gonna gaze themselves!) Mirrored from jwz.org.
| User: | jwz |
| Date: | 2012-05-22 19:31 |
| Subject: | It's alive |
| Security: | Public |
Today I implemented about two-thirds of the OpenGL 1.3 API in terms of the OpenGLES 1.0 API. Gibbering commences now. Though it's actually been a lot easier than that time when I implemented four-fifths of Xlib in terms of Cocoa.
Here's a gem: look upon my works and despair.
#define WRAP(NAME,SIG) \
void jwzgles_##NAME (ARGS_##SIG) \
{ \
if (state->compiling) { \
void_int vv[4]; \
FILL_##SIG \
list_push (STRINGIFY(NAME), (list_fn_cb) &jwzgles_##NAME, \
PROTO_##SIG, vv); \
} else { \
NAME (VARS_##SIG); \
} \
}
WRAP (glTranslatef, FFF) Previously. Mirrored from jwz.org.
But would we really be able to tell? An amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill.The tweak to the bill would essentially neutralize two previous acts -- the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987 -- that had been passed to protect U.S. audiences from our own government's misinformation campaigns. In a little noticed press release earlier in the week -- buried beneath the other high-profile issues in the $642 billion defense bill, including indefinite detention and a prohibition on gay marriage at military installations -- Thornberry warned that in the Internet age, the current law "ties the hands of America's diplomatic officials, military, and others by inhibiting our ability to effectively communicate in a credible way." The new law would give sweeping powers to the government to push television, radio, newspaper, and social media onto the U.S. public. "It removes the protection for Americans," says a Pentagon official who is concerned about the law. "It removes oversight from the people who want to put out this information. There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false." Um, guys, I think "entirely false" is the whole idea here... Mirrored from jwz.org.
An Introduction to Objectivist-C In Objectivist-C, an object -- every object -- is an end in itself, not a means to the ends of others. It must live for its own sake, neither sacrificing itself to others nor sacrificing others to itself.In Objectivist-C, software engineers have eliminated the need for object-oriented principles like Dependency Inversion, Acyclic Dependencies, and Stable Dependencies. Instead, they strictly adhere to one simple principle: No Dependencies. In Objectivist-C, there are only two numerical data types: rational and real. In Objectivist-C, there are not only properties, but also property rights. Consequently, all properties are @private; there is no @public property. In Objectivist-C, each program is free to acquire as many resources as it can, without interference from the operating system. In Objectivist-C, there are no exceptions. Mirrored from jwz.org.
Carlton Mellick III: When a living corpse climbs out of her during an awkward night of sex, Stacy learns that her vagina is actually a doorway to another world. She persuades Steve to climb inside of her to explore this strange new place. But once inside, Steve finds it difficult to return... especially once he meets an oddly attractive woman named Fig, who lives within the lonely haunted world between Stacy's legs. Not to be confused the previous haunted vagina. Since this guy appears to write 7+ books a year, I'm guessing this is what happens when the underbelly of Usenet meets self-publishing. You should probably just read Kathy Koja's The Cypher instead. Previously, previously, previously, previously. Mirrored from jwz.org.
I never wrote about my vacation because I returned from vacation and was immediately promoted at the Mysterious Workplace. The more I write at work, the less I write here. I only have so much writing in me, and right now it's all going to Skype security problems, Syrian malware, and Pakistan blocking Twitter. I will skip the traditional recitation of the things I have not written about. We will proceed directly to the tropical island.
I have never been to a tropical island, not even on family vacations to Hawaii. I'm not the kind of person who spends their precious PTO sprawled on a beach. I have nothing in particular against the sun or warm weather or clear blue oceans, but when I need to decide how I'm going to spend free days, days when I do not check my email or write blog posts about international freedom of expression, I visit cities. I do not pack a bikini and fly to the Dominican Republic to train aerial circus arts in a little tourist town by the beach for ten days.
All of the cliches about tropical islands are true of the little corner of Hispanola near Puerto Plata that I've seen--impossibly blue skies, lukewarm ocean water, miles of white beaches, the kind of lush vegetation that peels paint, the jungle that strives to reclaim everything. For the first few days it rains. For the first few days, we are eaten alive by mosquitoes. I wake up impossibly early in the morning and train harder than I ever have in my life. At 8:15, there is an exercise class on the beach. Then I try to get something to eat. Then my morning aerials class. Then lunch. Then my afternoon aerials class. Then an hour of stretching. Then a couple of hours of lying in the sun or passed out on my bed until dinner. It hurts to walk because my hamstrings are so sore. I roll my calves around on a tennis ball. I go running on the beach. I go hiking in the jungle, where I cannot look up because it has just rained and I am going to slip on roots and rocks. I see an enormous millipede.
What does the jungle look like? Mud. Rocks. Goat shit. Rocks at the bottom of the river am I wading across. Our guide asks if I'm a dancer. I tell him we're all dancers, but we dance several feet up in the air. On the ground, we're useless. I swim under waterfalls and cut my hands on rocks. Rocks are sharp.
What's the special? my classmate asks the waiter--20 years old, blond, permanently stoned. There are two photos of him surfing an enormous wave on the wall behind the bar.
"It is warm," he says. "The sun is shining. Everything is special."
Our instructors are carved out of marble. They run down the beach in the morning. They do handstands in the afternoon. In between classes, they touch their toes to their heads and do oversplits. After five or six hours of training every day, even they start to ache. I feel a little better, knowing that they're human. My classmates are people whose bodies are their livelihoods--Crossfit trainers and yoga instructors. My classmates are lawyers and architects, engineers and journalists who train until they're exhausted because it's the only time they stop thinking about work. I examine my body for exciting new bruises and strange abrasions. I take a dozen ibuprofen every day. I walk around in a bikini because I am never more than a block away from the beach. By the end of the week, my metabolism is spinning so fast that a shot of rum gets me drunk.
I try to imagine a world in which I am not Carmen San Diego, a world in which it is my job to train full-time. I try to imagine being the kind of person who can only eat very small meals and wakes up very early in the morning to go running. I pretend I could be a person who does not drink and goes to bed early. For a couple of days, when the worst of the pain has subsided, I enjoy the illusion I could do this indefinitely.
And isn't that what a vacation is supposed to do? Isn't it pretty to think so?
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