Das Tagebuch Murnaus

Note to anyone who might be wondering: my ex is about 700 miles away from the happenings in northern Japan, and about 250 miles away from the volcano that erupted the other day, so she's in probably the safest part of Japan right now, at least until Godzilla emerges from the waves...
(cue: http://www.godzilla.stopklatka.pl/dzwieki/godz1.wav)
Uh oh....

There's so much more ignorance than usual on TV and the Net these days in connection with the damaged nuclear reactors in Japan. Yesterday I saw Elliot Spitzer on CNN tell another reporter that he did not understand how wind could spread radiation, since he thought it went in all directions at once! Plainly he did not pay attention in Grade 10 science class, he was probably peeking down his neighbour's blouse. (The reporter said he didn't understand it either, until he asked a physicist.)

Anyway, the son of a friend of mine is a maintenance supervisor at a nuclear power plant in Ontario, and he posted this very clear explanation of how the Fukushima reactors work, what has happened there, and that there is a lot less danger than people think. He posted these.

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/15/fukushima-15-march-summary/

Quote from the last entry, from a nuclear researcher:

"The lesson so far: Japan suffered an earthquake and tsunami of
unprecedented proportion that has caused unbelievable damage to every
part of their infrastructure, and death of very large numbers of
people. The media have chosen to report the damage to a nuclear plant
which was, and still is, unlikely to harm anyone. We won’t know for
sure, of course, until the last measure to assure cooling is put in
place, but that’s the likely outcome. You’d never know it from the
parade of interested anti-nuclear activists identified as “nuclear
experts” on TV.

From the early morning Saturday nuclear activists were on TV labelling
this ‘the third worst nuclear accident ever’. This was no accident,
this was damage caused by truly one of the worst of earthquakes and
tsunamis ever. (The reported sweeping away of four entire trains,
including a bullet train which apparently disappeared without a trace,
was not labelled “the third worst train accident ever.”) An example of
the reporting: A fellow from one of the universities, and I didn’t
note which one, obviously an engineer and a knowledgeable one, was
asked a question and began to explain quite sensibly what was likely.
He was cut off after about a minute, maybe less, and an anti-nuke,
very glib, and very poorly informed, was brought on. With ponderous
solemnity, he then made one outrageous and incorrect statement after
another. He was so good at it they held him over for another segment

The second lesson is to the engineers: We all know that the water
reactor has one principal characteristic when it shuts down that has
to be looked after. It must have water to flow around the fuel rods
and be able to inject it into the reactor if some is lost by a
sticking relief valve or from any other cause – for this, it must have
backup power to power the pumps and injection systems.

The designers apparently could not imagine a tsunami of these
proportions and the backup power — remember, the plants themselves
produce power, power is brought in by multiple outside power lines,
there are banks of diesels to produce backup power, and finally, banks
of batteries to back that up, all were disabled. There’s still a lot
the operators can do, did and are doing. But reactors were damaged and
may not have needed to be even by this unthinkable earthquake if they
had designed the backup power systems to be impregnable, not an
impossible thing for an engineer to do. So we have damage that
probably could have been avoided, and reporting of almost stunning
inaccuracy and ignorance. Still, the odds are that no one will be hurt
from radioactivity — a few workers from falling or in the hydrogen
explosions, but tiny on the scale of the damage and killing around it.”


Last Sunday night was Circuit Breaker again, and I had fun! Here's my set list:

Einsturzende Neubauten - NNNAAAAMMMM
DHI - Machine Altar Transmission
Chris and Cosey - Arcade (Extended Mix)
Kitchen and the Plastic Spoons - Filmen
Dead Musician - Nightmare (Leather Strip mix)
Pankow - Warm Leatherette
Master Program - Central Europe
Laibach - Achtung!
Einsturzende Neubauten - Fleisch "Blut/Hauth" Knochen
Front Line Assembly - Mindphaser (single remix)
Test Department - 51st State of America
Numb - Blood

Mostly suitably stompy, I thought. Though as usual I took the first shift so no one was dancing until the very end.

Got a new dishwasher and boy is it quiet. But I'm still paranoid about water and the house. Plumbing and electricity are my two least favourite things to deal with and they come together in a dishwasher. I wasn't too proud to let someone who knew what he was doing install it.

Poland 1939 game will be coming out at the end of March. Yahoo!

I'll be on holidays next week. About time. I'd like a bit of rest.

Meanwhile,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUKku3MhCPs&feature=player_detailpage

News from the Hermit Kingdom:

***
Guidelines for Juche-based Dancing Art

Pyongyang, November 30 (KCNA) -- Twenty years has elapsed since General Secretary Kim Jong Il published a famous work, "Theory of Dancing Art", on November 30, Juche 79 (1990).

The work formulates the distinctive character and basic mission of the dancing art and the orientation of its development newly elucidated by the Juche idea. It also gives principles and ways of applying them to dance creation and performance and expounds all theoretical and practical issues arising in perfecting and fully introducing Korean-style dance notation.

Since the work was published, the originality and validity of Kim Jong Il's idea and theory on the Juche-based dancing art have been fully demonstrated, many famous dance pieces created and the dance notation brought to perfection.

Grand gymnastic and artistic performances "Ever-victorious Workers' Party of Korea" and "Arirang" were created as masterpieces and the folk dance suites "Song of the Seasons" and "People in the Walled City of Pyongyang", dance suite "Army and People United in One Mind around the Leader", dances "I Can Still See Victory in the Revolution!" and "We Will Never Give up Even an Inch of Our Land" and many other dance works of various themes and forms produced on the basis of national customs, grandiose current of the times and the heroic struggle of the Korean people.

The dance notation has become smaller in number of notes and easier to understand the composition and combination of dance movements in a theoretical way and note them.

Thanks to Kim Jong Il's outstanding idea and theory, the dancing art of Korea has developed into a Juche-based, revolutionary one based on national dance style and the people's life.

***

But what they meant was really this:



Yeah!

In honour of Easter Sunday I wrote this hymn (tune of "O God Our Help In Ages Past"):

Oh Zombie Jesus Don't Bite Me

On the third day did Jesus rise
Of this we all are sure
But still one question we must ask,
Is, "Were His motives pure?"

The rock rolled back and He came forth
Into the light of day
Parts of Him had gone light green
And others were quite gray

His steady stare and shambling gait
Did not the crowd dismay
Until he seized an Apostle
And tore his arm away

Dear Jesus broke up Simon's skull
And ate the goo inside
His followers ran for the hills
And scattered far and wide

But still He did catch one or two
And gave them each a bite
They died and rose to be undead
And carry on the fight

O Zombie Jesus don't bite me
Please leave me with my brains
And save me from your followers
Their pamphlets and refrains


Aaaa-menn....

Surely I am going to Hell, now....

I took a couple of days off to go to Seattle and see DEVO. It was Reading Break, so Lianne was happy to go too! This time we went on the Victoria Clipper - usually this is far too expensive but in the off-season they have some deals. We got transport there and back and two nights in the Ramada downtown (not great, but close to everything we needed) for about $320. Saved going on the Coho ferry, driving almost three hours to get to Seattle, and then parking at a hotel. The only problem is that the Clipper's schedule is very inconvenient if you are going to Seattle - it only leaves Victoria at 1700, and only leaves Seattle at 0800, so a day trip is impossible, and an overnighter just silly.

Anyway, we left on Sunday, and came back on Tuesday. Monday we shopped around for a bit - we went to the surplus place on 1st Avenue where I got Aki a birthday present (Russian gas mask in its original container, filter still in its wrapping paper) and Lianne bought me a black M-65 field jacket (Chinese Alpha Industries copy fo the real article, but well enough made). Then we looked around in the Pike Place Market and went to Left Bank Books, my favourite lefty bookstore down there (http://www.leftbankbooks.com/) and got a few things (wishing I had gotten that Dori Seda biography after all), then lunch and out to Wallingford to Archie McPhee (http://www.mcphee.com/), where we always go but seems to disappoint just a bit each visit because there are so few weird old items left - the first time I went, in the late 80s, the store was full of bizarre old ephemera and surplus weird stuff, which I liked. But I did get an East German M43-feldmutze style cap and a Lenin all-day sucker. Then Lianne wanted to look for some clothes at Nordstrom's etc. so I went down to the Barnes and Noble and got a copy of US Army FM 3-07, Field Manual for Stability Operations, and looked around for some other things. Every second book in their "Current Affairs" shelf was something by some foaming right-wing moonbat, including four different titles by Glenn Beck.

Then it was time to go back and change for the concert - DEVO at the Moore Theatre, which I think is where we saw Kraftwerk in 2005 [check - no, it was the Paramount, in 2004]. They were playing two nights in each city: the first night they would play the entirety of their first album (Are we Not Men?) and the second night the third (Freedom of Choice). I like that album better, so this was the night we went. First we met our friends Lissa, Angie and Susan and had a drink and some izakaya snacks beforehand.

We were up in the gallery but not too nosebleedy, not a bad view. I had made two molds for casting Devo energy-dome style pins, like this



but 2-D, an inch wide and in tin. I made two models, one plain and one with "DEVO" marked on it. I made about 20 of these, painted them up with spray paint or nail polish, and gave them all away, to our friends and to people I saw wearing energy dome hats at the concert.

The show was great. I have been listening to Devo continuously for almost thirty years, was even in the Official Fan Club and this was the first time I had ever seen them live. For a bunch of pudgy nerds pushing sixty, they have still definitely got it! They had some character wearing only underwear and the Goofy Face rubber mask they called "Spudsie Pud" who came out with show cards to announce each track. Mark Mothersbaugh flung a few Energy Domes into the crowd, and after the album was done vanished from the stage for a few minutes and then came back as Booji Boy. They played a few more pieces but nothing from the new album, the last piece was a long version of "Beautiful World" and at the end of it Mark started digging out handfuls of little Superballs and beaming them into the crowd. One made it all the way up to the balcony, where it bopped Lianne above her left eye, then vanished!

As we were saying goodbye outside the theatre, someone with a digital camera and microphone setup came up to me and asked my opinion about the show and what I thought about Devo. Apparently they were making some kind of documentary or tour film, as I signed a model release later. But I bet I end up on the cutting room floor, AGAIN (http://ltmurnau.livejournal.com/60416.html, http://ltmurnau.livejournal.com/139044.html). Why, oh why did I tell them I liked "Mr. B's Ballroom"?

Going home was uneventful - we had left Akito on his own for two days and the house was in fine shape when we got back, just some dirty cooking pots and TV dinner shells. He got himself to school and all. He seems to be growing up well - yesterday, after we got home from the Remembrance Day parade, I went out with him on his first day of doing his paper route, which is also his first paid job!

So, not a bad time.

Yep, been a few days but the days are rolling right along, and not a lot of time to post. Guess that's better than the opposite.

The other night I went over to shadesofwinter's place for, of all things, a jam session. He has a sort-of experimental band called Idoru (after the William Gibson book) and wanted to see how some of my homemade faux-Mongolian instruments sounded. [Guess I haven't written much about these: a while ago I made up several homemade instruments out of junk I had lying around the workshop. They outwardly resemble and function like musical instruments in the same way as the traveller who was hiking in Nepal stopped in a guesthouse for the night, saw "pizza" on the menu, ordered it and was served a chapati covered with ketchup and melted yak cheese. One day I'll take some pictures.] I brought over the Small One-String Tin Can Fiddle, even found an old lump of rosin after a brief search (I still don't have my workshop area squared away).

Anyway, we laid some of this over some guitar improvisation by John and some keyboard stuff by shadesofwinter, and it sounds really eerie. If my effort ever makes it onto the CD, I will be credited with playing the Cambodian Death Fiddle. It was a lot of fun and I'd like to do it again some day, who wouldn't?

They're making a movie at my place of work all this week - some kind of driect-to-cable thing called "Sorority Wars", at title like that could be good but instead it's Faith Ford trying to get her daughter to sign up for the same sorority. The front of the building is done up as one of the buildings of "Tate University", which includes the Medical Ethics Department, and later they are clearing out our best boardroom to do it over as a dorm. Sheesh. The halls are full of extras made up as students (well, maybe some of them are, but as the movie takes place in summer in a warmer place they sure look cold as the weather has done little else but strew wind and rain about) and grotty-looking technicians with little radios growing out of them.

Off to the Lewis Black show tonight at the Royal Theatre! Expensive but this should be good.

From the altfriday5:

1. Do you like to have music playing while you work? Why or why not? If yes, what is your favourite music or type of music to hear then?
I don't like to have music on while I am working on something that requires heavy thinking, like writing. I used to like to have music on while I was studying (unobtrusive stuff like Philip Glass) but I can't multi-track like that anymore. However, if I am doing something that doesn't require thinking about language, like carving a printing block, casting, cooking, or doing something else arty or practical, music is fine.

2. Do you like to have music playing while you travel (walk, drive, ride, etc.)? Why or why not? If yes, what is your favourite music or type of music to hear then?
Like many other people, I like to listen to music on the bus (except I use a cassette walkman; I have no MP3 player). I always carry 4 or 5 tapes with me so I can change them according to my mood. I usually like to listen to high-energy stuff on the way to work as a way to wake up, e.g. right now I have The Clash and the Ramones in my pack. For longer bus trips, I like quieter music like Huun-Huur-Tu. Though the best driving-and-singing music in the world is The Pixies!

3. Do you like to have music playing while you have sex? Why or why not? If yes, what is your favourite music or type of music to hear then?
Uh no, not really. I think it would be distracting. Funny thing though, many of the Japanese hotels I stayed in had a radio built into the headboard of the bed with a switch labelled "BGM". You flipped it over to that and vaguely sleazy muzak came out. That was all right, and I guess that's what it was for.

4. Do you like to have music playing while you're relaxing or having fun? Why or why not? If yes, what is your favourite music or type of music to hear then?
Sure, though I find it difficult to have a conversation when the music's obtrusive (this is why I usually don't go to bars or pubs). I think I have a pretty wide range of tastes (though most of it could be classed as Difficult Listening) so almost anything could be on.

5. In general, what role does music play in your daily life?
35 of my 150 listed interests are bands, and that's just the beginning of my collection. I like music a lot, have done since I was 16. Never used to listen to it at all before, but as soon as I got interested I got right into weird stuff like Devo (well, in 1980 Devo was weird), Kraftwerk and the Residents, and never looked back.

From the Guardian:

'Adults are idiots'
The spiky-haired queen of avant-garde pop has some new targets: advertising, the war on terror - and her own stage sets. Laurie Anderson tells all to John O'Mahony

John O'Mahony
Monday April 7, 2008

During a recent Boston performance of Laurie Anderson's new show, Homeland, a rather extraordinary thing happened. Anderson had just launched into a catchy little number about the recruitment practices of the US army and their gory consequences on the battlefields of the Middle East. "Let me blow up your churches, let me blow up your mosques," she intoned sweetly, against a surging electronic backdrop. "All your government buildings, 'cause I'm a bad guy."

( Read more... )

Simon Reynolds wrote Rip It Up And Start Again, the best book I've ever read on my favourite period of pop music: the post-punk era, 1978-84. I've been meaning to post something about the book but haven't gotten around to re-reading it, which I would like to do.

Meanwhile, here is an interview with the author, on the connection with one of my favourite writers:

"MAGISTERIAL, PRECISE, UNSETTLING"
Simon Reynolds on the Ballard Connection

Interview by Simon Sellars for the website Ballardian.

Simon Reynolds is one of the most recognisable music critics around — or at least his style is, not least for its willingness to tackle pop music as an art form worthy of sustained intellectual discourse rather than as a fleeting moment of adolescent flash. Reynolds breaks new ground, melding unbridled enthusiasm with a robust theoretical framework in a body of work that is thrilling for its eclecticism alone: he’s never less than compelling writing about hip hop, Britney or rave, as he is about grunge, prog or grime.

Reynolds reached a peak of sorts with the publication of Rip It Up and Start Again, a deliriously good excavation of the postpunk era, the generation of musicians that broke immediately after punk: Cabaret Voltaire, PiL, Magazine and so on. What’s more, J.G. Ballard was a thread throughout the book, as Reynolds charted the influence of JGB — and The Atrocity Exhibition, especially — on this particular era.

( Read more... )
Original site with pictures: http://www.ballardian.com/simon-reynolds-on-the-ballard-connection/

I listen to tapes on my Walkman when riding the bus to and from work. The other day I picked up a thrift-store WEA mix-tape called "retro night", featuring stuff from the 80s.

First cut, side A: "Relax" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. I kind of liked the durga-durga-durga at the time but figured I need to listen to this only once a decade. Next, "A Little Respect" by Erasure. I didn't remember this from the first time I went through the 80s, and FFed right through it. Then, "Situation" by Yaz and "Every Day is Halloween" by Ministry. Didn't like the first and zipped past the second, having heard it so many times.

And then, a real 80s moment!

"How Soon is Now?"? by The Smiths.

1983, and a fine soundtrack to any late-adolescent's misery.

The intro is instantly recognizable, establishing the wagga-wagga-wagga line that runs through the whole song, and then the WHEEE-Yooong that marks every 6-8 bars or so. Cri de coeur of the inconsolable youngun! This song was/is the perfect drinking-cheap-beer-alone-and-feeling-sorry-for-yourself-so-play-this-over-and-over-again anthem, and in fact Labatt's used this theme in the 90s in several ads to advertise their "Black Ice" strong beer.

Then the lyrics - oh, the lyrics! Oh, that Morrissey!

There are seven verses in the song, but the first four are the first two repeated, then two new ones, then a final chorus.

I am the son
and the heir
of a shyness that is criminally vulgar
I am the son and heir
of nothing in particular

You shut your mouth
how can you say
I go about things the wrong way
I am human and I need to be loved
just like everybody else does

(moan these two verses into your crooked arm again)

There's a club if you'd like to go
you could meet somebody who really loves you
so you go, and you stand on your own
and you leave on your own
and you go home, and you cry
and you want to die

Aiiiee the misery! The loneliness! No one likes you and you have zits and it will always always always be like this! This is the climax. Who the hell didn't pick this aural scab over and over again? (at any rate, who the hell around my age - I know I did)

When you say it's gonna happen "now"
well, when exactly do you mean?
see I've already waited too long
and all my hope is gone

You shut your mouth
how can you say
I go about things the wrong way
I am human and I need to be loved
just like everybody else does

After this the song tails off into the wagga-wagga-wagga again, and a slow fade with one last WHEEE-yoooong.... If you're not going to play it again, it's time to relieve yourself of that Extra Old Stock you've drunk, or think about making some ramen. (It was at this point that the tape went all wibbley for a moment, as if it wanted to strangle itself in knots rather than keep on playing this song.)