ghostwords

Dec
10th

Sat

The New York Times on recent protests in Moscow:

… an estimated 5,000 people materialized, making it the largest anti-Kremlin demonstration in recent memory, and Mr. Navalny was arrested on charges of resisting the police and sentenced to 15 days in prison.

And:

All that night, as temperatures dipped below freezing, Mr. Navalny’s hipster disciples stood vigil outside the precinct where he was being held, their eyes flickering to their Twitter feeds.

Uh, what? “Hipster disciples”?

(Source: The New York Times)

Oct
7th

Fri

Mr. Jobs leaves behind a dominant Apple, fulfilling his original promise to save the company from the brink when he returned in 1997. Because of its enormous strength in both music sales and mobile devices, Apple has more power than at any time in its history, and it is using that power to make the computing experience of its users less free, more locked down and more tightly regulated than ever before. All of Apple’s iDevices — the iPod, iPhone and iPad — use operating systems that deny the user access to their workings. Users cannot install programs themselves; they are downloaded from Apple’s servers, which Apple controls …

… Today there is no tech company that looks more like the Big Brother from Apple’s iconic 1984 commercial than Apple itself, a testament to how quickly power can corrupt.

— Steve Jobs, Enemy of Nostalgia - NYTimes.com

Dec
16th

Wed

Uncle Gabby, drawn from memory. You can tell this isn’t the real thing because the tugboat is missing. That’s one clue.

Nov
9th

Mon

In a way, some of the musicians said, the situation has come full circle. As in the 1980s, they can no longer get their music played on the air, not because of government censors but because their countries are now so fully integrated into the global pop machine that stations prefer to play the same Britney Spears and Beyoncé songs and MTV videos as everyone else.

— Musicians Who Poked at the Iron Curtain

Sep
4th

Fri

Aug
28th

Fri

pgwp:

The idea of willfully putting Radiohead on just for the hell of it elicits a kind of mental groan, like I’m getting ready to sit down and watch a Tarkovsky film. Get ready to experience a Work of Art.

Wallace in “Joseph Frank’s Dostoevsky”:

To make someone an icon is to make him an abstraction, and abstractions are incapable of vital communication with living people.

and

One has only to spend a term trying to teach college literature to realize that the quickest way to kill an author’s vitality for potential readers is to present that author ahead of time as “great” or “classic”. Because then the author becomes for the students like medicine or vegetables, something the authorities have declared “good for them” that they “ought to like”, at which point the students’ nictitating membranes come down, and everyone just goes through the requisite motions of criticism and paper-writing without feeling one real or relevant thing. It’s like removing all oxygen from a room before trying to start a fire.

Aug
7th

Fri

lalitree:

“I say it’s time we take a stand against technologically-enhanced isolation and anomie. It’s time we relearn how to shut our yaps, listen to others and put that pluribus and unum back where they belong. And in the best U.S.A. fashion I say that we do this via expensive gadgets and monetizable web services. Below is a list of modest proposals for Infinite Jest-inspired solutions for life in our present-day techno-dystopia.”

— http://infinitedetox.wordpress.com/2009/08/03/techno-curmudgeonly-solutions-for-life-in-a-wallacian-dystopia/

So many IJ-based blogs! I mean, here is one of a person documenting his/her experience going clean while reading the book.

Jan
18th

Sun

HIPSTER RUNOFF PODCAST

perpetua:

Just when you think Hipster Runoff has hit a peak, or that it has fulfilled its potential, Carles takes it to the next level. This is brilliant.

When will Carles address the HR phenomenon itself? It almost happens in the Meaningful Near-Death Experience intro, but then it goes on to just be the website in audio form. I want HR to explode in a blaze of self-referential glory.

Jan
10th

Sat

“An Eluardian Instance” by Of Montreal (Jesse Ewles on Vimeo)

Dec
18th

Thu

Distorte's Top 5 Albums, 2008

perpetua:

Year-end album lists are so boring and unimaginative. This one, however, is precisely the opposite. (Here is the list from last year. I totally owe him for turning me on to Dog Chorus #17.)