orbis quintus

The Iraqi Islamic Party has bailed on the elections this January. They refuse to believe that conditions will be secure enough in three weeks to guarantee a fair and representative election. They are fielding a list of candidates anyway to hedge their bets. Even if by some fantastic, near impossible miracle that there is no violence, the results are going to produce much bitterness and claims of disenfranchisement.

With 77% turnout, Yushchenko wins 52.3% to Yanukovych’s 42.9%. It wasn’t even really close.

Gotta check in with Le Sabot Post-Moderne for the victory celebrations.

I played her LCD Soundsystem’s “Too Much Love”, thinking of “Golden Years” and “Fame” but no, no, no…. she pointed out Bowie’s “Fashion” from Scary Monsters & Super Creeps is also a good reference.

David Bowie “Fashion”

I ought to give up and just make her do this. That’s what i get for paying attention only to the vocals.

So while i’ve been patting myself on the back for loving the new LCD Soundsystem album (yes, every single song… ) i’m feeling very jaded and old when listening to Bloc Party. Plenty of bloggers that i respect quite a lot have been giving Bloc Party praise for many months. Every time i download a mp3, i’m left feeling a little bored, confused. The drums are too loud for basslines that are either monotonous or too low in the mix. The lyrics are not grabbing me either, and the vocals seem kinda slick and characterless. The only thing i like are the sharp guitars, but they seem overproduced as well. I’m not asking for raw punk or indie slop. Someone else might be hearing something that has been sharpened to a razor’s edge, but i’ve always hated shiny chrome things.

I’m not happy with myself about this. This music is probably touching someone deeply, moving them to great excitement. I want to love Bloc Party too. The reviews keep trying to push me to things i know and enjoy, but i only hear these elements being introduced into Bloc Party’s music by committee.

It’s another news story going over the local legends about the Ebu Gogo, possibly the last surviving Homo florensius, and it has this odd tale that i haven’t seen before now:

The story of the Ebu Gogo has been known to anthropologists for years. It is rich in detail and has few mythical elements – factors that indicate is has a basis in fact, experts say.

“When I first heard these stories I was a bit sceptical,” said Gert D van den Bergh, a Dutch researcher. “But the difference with the Ebu Gogo is that the local villagers talk about them as if they were an actual part of the fauna and that they have no supernatural powers.”

Another distinguishing element to the story is that it ends with the villagers killing most or all of the Ebu Gogo. In other tales of “little people”, the creatures are normally said to still be alive.

According to local stories it was villagers, not some natural disaster, that provided the catastrophic event that led to the Ebu Gogo’s extinction.

Kua and other village elders said their ancestors – sick of the Ebu Gogo’s constant scavenging – chased the creatures into a cave high on the volcano, then handed them bales of straw, which the creatures thought was a gift to keep them warm.

But the villagers concealed hot coals in the final bale of straw, which caught fire inside the cave, killing all the creatures except one male and one female, Kua said.

The couple, which escaped from the rear of the cave, were last seen heading west – the direction of the cave at Liang Bua where the bones were found.

I put this on my wishlist at the last minute, so i didn’t really think that anyone was going to give me this…

The Megalithic European: The 21st Century Traveller in Prehistoric Europe. It’s Julian Cope’s new book on megaliths. It’s in the same format as the previous tome The Modern Antiquarian (and better bound. That little detail has confounded my casual browsing of the book since day one.) It looks awesome. The photos are clear, the writing is somewhat more direct this time (less talk of Cope’s beloved prehistoric mother goddess culture, which i’ve read that he’s calmly retired,) and it just feels right. Despite my love for crackpot theories, it’s deeply admirably just how sober and well-researched (in my opinion anyway) his writings on these megalithic sites are.

And he wrote his most recent Drudion Address that he finally finished Citizen Cain’d. Whew. How many years has that been?