orange orange orange in the mouth again
wearing stone washed denim again
carrying something wrapped in plastic
curled on the blue velveteen again

straighten

- Hyde

Posted in Shutterbug on Fri Jun 26, 08:57 am. Shoutouts.

The new Uniqlo Calendar mixes beautiful time-lapse photography with music from FPM. It’s drop dead gorgeous: I’ve been watching it for an hour, mesmerised. So, who can remember their old postcode?

Posted in Japan on Thu Jun 11, 10:01 pm. Shoutouts [2].

I don’t know what to make of this. The guy has many, many videos on Youtube in which he pulls off a very convincing impersonation of a CGI character impersonating a real person who is pretending to be a mad scientist’s less strange elder brother on an off day. Like I said, I don’t really know what to make of this.

Posted in Vidiot on Thu Jun 4, 11:09 pm. Shoutouts.

This is how you start a party is the best three minutes I’ve spent all day. (via MF)

Posted in Vidiot on Mon Jun 1, 10:31 pm. Shoutouts.

On first listen I wasn’t sure what to make of Röyksopp’s latest effort, Junior. Other than the first track, the stand-out Happy Up Here (which also has a stunning video) the album didn’t seem to have either sense of fun (Eple, Remind Me) or the sheer get-on-the-floor danceability (Only This Moment, Beautiful Day Without You) of Melody or Understanding.

Then there was the feeling that guest vocalists Robyn and The Knife’s Karin Dreijer Andersson were being chronically underused. Witness Dreijer Andersson’s stunning vocals on her Fever Ray release this year and compare it to the nursery school chanting on Tricky Tricky (“six afraid of seven, ‘cause seven ate nine”) and you have to scratch your head and wonder what the grand plan is.

Each of the tracks are great individually, but as a whole there is an underlying sweetness to that left me wanting the downtempo and darker side to Röyksopp that balanced the first two albums so well. Then I read a couple of interviews with the band and discovered that the second part of the album, the more moody and atmospheric Senior is due to drop later this year.

I guess it’s a sum of all parts thing, then. Until then, I guess I’ll just keep listening to This Must Be It on repeat and wait for the remixers to get their hands dirty.

Posted in Flatbeat on Sun May 31, 09:11 pm. Shoutouts.

It’s Finished is John Lanchester’s fascinating essay on just how fucked the British economy is. Reading it makes me glad that as much as the Aussie economy is buggered, it’s only half as buggered as everywhere else:

The RBS corporate report is like that. (So are their slogans: ‘Make it happen.’ Make what happen? A £100 billion tab for the taxpayer?) The section on corporate citizenship at the beginning is particularly good value. The firm is involved in plans to increase general levels of financial education. ‘When people have been educated about money and how to work with financial services firms they are more likely to make the right decisions and to avoid difficulties.’ That’s true, but you can also just rob post offices. ‘RBS is a responsible company. We carry out rigorous research so that we can be confident we know the issues that are most important to our stakeholders and we take practical steps to respond to what they tell us. Then occasionally, we blow all that shit off, fire up some crystal meth, and throw money around with such crazed abandon that it helps destroy the public finances of the world’s fifth biggest economy.’ See if you can guess which of those sentences is not in the report.

So to counteract gloomy financial news, otters.

Posted in General on Fri May 29, 11:26 pm. Shoutouts.

1.

The elevator went to the basement. The doors opened.
A man stepped in and asked if I was going up.
“I’m going down,” I said. “I won’t be going up.”

2.

The elevator went to the basement. The doors opened.
A man stepped in and asked if I was going up.
“I’m going down,” I said. “I won’t be going up.”

- Mark Strand

Posted in Textism on Thu May 28, 09:43 pm. Shoutouts.

Is this guy human? Can humans do that?

Posted in Vidiot on Wed May 27, 11:44 pm. Shoutouts.

Pick One. While the decision between Celery and Cuddling was an easy one (Celery being the clear winner) I will admit I was stumped weighing up the relative merits of Lindsay Lohan and Fascism.

Posted in Linkage on Tue May 26, 11:53 pm. Shoutouts [1].

“Biju looked at him and had to avert his gaze as if from an obscenity. In its own way it was like a prostitute – it showed too much. The book in his hand had a cover of Krishna on the battlefield in lurid colours, the same ones used in movie posters. What was India to these people? How many lived in the fake versions of their countries, in fake versions of other people’s countries. Did their lives feel as unreal to them as his own did to him?”

- Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

I read this passage while perched on the stairs of the Ganesh guest house, listening to the incessant rhythmless drumming of the three French backpackers who’d sprawled across the roof. They’d rolled joints and over the next forty minutes their drumming echoes over the town, as it gets louder and less in time, and drowns out sounds of worship from the temple next door.

That morning, a sixty-plus American draped in loose, coarse fabric had stormed out of the hostel, calling the owner a “blasted fishwife” after being told they had no fresh milk. The guy who clears the tables rolls his eyes and tells another story from his twenty years spent in hostels across India.

He explains that inflation is changing travel for both domestic and international tourists, but that raising prices at any hostel results in torrents of abuse from the granola crowd. “They come at the same time every year. Work five months over there then fly via Dubai. Five, six month a time. That fellow,” and he nods to one of the tangled-headed men on the roof, “Every year. This year four month only. Bad year in France.”

Over the past three years he says the price of a room has increased by 100 rupees. That’s about $2.30 Australian. And they argue, and argue.

Like Biju, I don’t understand what version of this country people are buying into. Where this idea of India came from. They act with complete disrespect toward locals, flaunt local customs and display a general lack of humanity which is shrugged off with a simple, “nah man, these are my people. I feel them” and a gesture toward the tilaka smeared across their forehead by a passing Sadhu looking for change.

I think a lot of travellers would do well to stop consulting these meticulously constructed mental maps as to what country stands for, and actually open their eyes to the people they’re interacting with every day.

I read Inheritance until the buzzing of mosquitoes sent me scurrying under the net and into bed. The next day, I was awoken at dawn by monkeys throwing themselves from the trees onto the electric wires that ran over the balcony outside my room. I stumbled out of bed and climbed to the roof and recorded this. I think it’s beautiful:

Posted in Travel on Mon May 25, 10:32 pm. Shoutouts.