orbis quintus

I’m so unsurprised to find that Bobby Jindal is the one who introduced last night’s inky finger stunt in the State of the Union event.

Iraqis who participated in Sunday’s elections had a finger stained with purple ink to prove they had voted.

In a letter to be circulated Wednesday among fellow lawmakers, Jindal, R-Louisiana, said he would have ink available for anyone attending the speech who wanted to make a gesture of support for Iraqis and “people throughout the world who seek freedom.”

He’s ambitious, if nothing else. I’d even be impressed, if he wasn’t a brownnosing scumbag. I’d be even more impressed if Jindal insisted that American elections were run more like the one in Iraq Sunday, with no electronic voting. I’d glad dip my finger in the inkwell then.

It may be an abomination to some purists, but i finally have had a chance to read Bone, not the massive collection, but the first paperback volume the colorized nine part serial that’s being put out for kids, Out from Boneville. The Bones look like Pogo characters, which oddly enough i’m quite familiar with (as back when Bloom County first came out with Loose Tails, my parents bought me a collection of Pogo cartoons,) but there’s something odder about them, more like the Carl Barks’ Uncle Scrooge adventures. There’s a darker undertone to Bone that i’m certain will come to surface later in the series, but i cannot wait to push this on some kids to see what happens.

and that’s a good thing. i keep looping tyme by pressing play every time stark reality’s now cd finds closure. this record is so fucking psychadelac i can’t spell the word. i hate jazz, but this shit cracks the skull. it’s a cuckoo that lays cosmic eggs. it’s god’s bong. this record rocks tectonic plates. fry up some bacon. drink some gin. and autumn in.

with the help of, folk guru, mister unbroken circle mark coyle a new bruton town group has been created, click here to join.

this one has four moderators.

Damn it. I forgot whose blog i snagged the new Electric Six mp3s from. Thank you. (It turns out to have been Teaching The Indie Kids to Dance Again. Almost too obvious now.)

I still don’t know whether this is great music or not, but it’s amusing me to no end this afternoon. One moment it’s over-the-top protest music (well, mostly “Rock And Roll Evacuation”,) and the next moment is sarcastic doggerel… fuck it. It’s all sarcastic doggerel. Well, except for the part about playing one’s guitar is not going to change the world. (I think that’s a crying robot after that. Robots do cry.) It’s a damned sight better than Europe’s “The Final Countdown”.

“Jimmy Carter” has to be one of the highlights. It grated against me at first because i realized that he sounds like that bighead Crash Test Dummies guy going on about Campbell’s Soup. It’s delivered so po-faced, without a wink or smirk, that it’s beginning to feel that if i deliver in a monotone, Backstreet’s back, all right that those in the know will nod gravely and usher me to a safehouse.

I’m beginning to believe that there never really was such a decade as the ’90s. It was a rumor, a myth, a hoax. We are still in the ’80s apocalypse.

Although i’ve already seen plenty of links to this Fortean Times article (and Lou owns the magazine it originally appeared in,) i’d be remiss if i didn’t include this article on archæoacoustics, as it’s what triggered me paying attention to the acoustic analysis of the temple of El Castillo at Chichén Itzá in the first place. The sites in Ontario are more recent, between 600 to 1,100 years ago. It must have been a relatively widespread technology in the Americas. It’s interesting that the FT article references a site in Southern Deccan, India, and previously a temple in Sri Lanka was used in comparison.

Here’s a link to the Bellary District Archæological Project that the FT article referenced, but i could find no mention whatsoever of musical boulders, although there’s plenty of mention of petroglyphs.

While i’m more sympathetic to the Bookslut post on the new book devoted to the death penalty in Louisiana, Desire Street: A True Story of Death and Deliverance in New Orleans, the sad fact is that at the bookstore i work in, one of the hottest titles we have is Killer with a Badge. The prison (not Angola,) that this woman is kept in is not far from the bookstore. I never realized how many of our customers are connected to the prison system in some way, as many of the people who are buying this book have firsthand experience with this woman (a cop who killed another cop and is now on Death Row.) I know a lot of these customer’s faces as regulars. I’m not making any comment on her innocence or guilt, although i think that i am against the death penalty, but just how much of the local economy depends on the incarceration of its prisoners is surprising.

I’m not into the true crime genre, but if i have the time, i’ll give Desire Street a browse.

One little bit of family history is that allegedly one of my cousins, back in the ’20s or ’30s (need to check up on that,) actually escaped Angola during a flood, jumping onto a passing log to float down the Mississippi. He found his way down the river (presumably not riding on a log the whole way,) to become a cop in New Orleans.

John Adolfi is offering $10,000 for the Pedro Mountain Mummy, to conduct DNA tests, X-rays, and magnetic resonance imaging. The mummy, which is only 7 inches tall (17 inches tall if it was standing up,) disappeared in 1950. It was found in 1932, 60 miles southwest of Casper, Wyoming. The remains were x-rayed by Dr. Harry Shapiro of the American Museum of Natural History, and he speculated that it was a human of 65 years of age at its time of death. In 1979, Dr. George Gill, professor of anthropology at the University of Wyoming, (and on the side of science in the Kennewick Man case,) examined photos of the x-rays, to conclude that the Pedro Mountain Mummy was a human infant with anencephaly.

The Bibleland folks seem to be fairly fringe, hellbent on proving creationism ‘scientifically,’ but they seem to be well-intentioned… even though when they were pranked by a fossil of a dinosaur eating a human, they claimed that they knew it was a fake all along, and just wanted to get their fellow creationists to be more scientifically minded and objective. Ehhh… sure…

Anyway, i’m rooting for them to locate the Pedro Mountain Mummy. Even though i find creationism laughable, i’m all for the existence of freaky critters that challenge the mainstream, even if the Pedro Mountain Mummy is probably just a human infant with anencephaly. Just because i like science doesn’t mean that i don’t want it to be weirder.

Wow! This is freaking me out. I finally got a couple of R. Stevie Moore albums from Stanislav. I’m very much into this stuff. Not only does he prefigure Ariel Pink, but Guided by Voices and every other indie band that aped ’70s AM radio hooks with shoestring production, either deliberately cultivated facsimile or true product of circumstances like Moore. (yes, i know he predates the ’70s, but i hear some of those bands in him anyway.) It makes perfect sense as i read more, as he fills a missing niche in the evolution of the indie ghetto. I cannot see why he doesn’t get namechecked more often, but it warms my heart to see that Ariel Pink plays shows and records with him.

R. Stevie Moore “California Rhythm” It’s as if Moore distilled all of Big Star’s Radio City into a single song, and decided, “Sorrow? Doom? To hell with all that.”

R. Stevie Moore “Goodbye Piano” Yup. Daft. Twee. All of that nonsense. I went through a few years where i had managed to incorporate Frank Zappa into my music listening as more than a tangent from Captain Beefheart, embracing the psychedelia of the first few Mothers of Invention albums. He fell back out of favor as he just gets on my nerves with his smugness. I might get annoyed with the shrillness of this song, but there’s nothing smug about this loopiness. It’s probably more Bonzo Dog Band anyway.

R. Stevie Moore” “Showing Shadows” Heh. This actually reminds me of a nerdier Damien when he’s reinventing the idyllic memories AM pop of his youth.

It’s easy for me sometimes to think about bands that record a few good or great songs, and quite whiel they are ahead, but there’s something even more special about someone who never stops recording, regardless of critical attention. To know that he’s recording music that’s sonically interesting and fun for so damned long (over 37 years, over 400 LPs) is mindblowing.

In trying to puzzle out what the hell these Mirrors mp3s i found, i wound up understanding the Gris Gris better. I knew that there was no way that this was the Mirrors out of Cleveland, as i have that stuff, and these songs sounded nothing like these. (If i can dig up my old Mirrors, i’ll post them later.) Then i found that these Mirrors, who released an album called A Green Dream, is a relatively recent band out of Texas. They nearly fooled me though. It made me go back to reexamine the Gris Gris, the new band of Greg Ashley of the Mirrors. (I liked this band well enough, but in the mood i was in when i first listened to it, it reminded me of the Coral and the Zutons, an unlikely connection i’d make now, and i’m not so keen on either of those bands right now.) The Gris Gris is the distillation of every Texas psychedelic band i can think of, the 13th Floor Elevators, the Red Krayola, the Moving Sidewalks, and a vast thicket of stomping garage bands. I think that they are doing best when the Gris Gris is following the more psychedelic bands, but what do i know?

The Gris Gris “Raygun” A Red Krayola epic with oddball 13th Floor Elevators instrumentation.

The Gris Gris “Everytime” a paranoid rumble.

The Gris Gris “Necessary Separation” an uncharacteristic traditional stomper, with a by-the-numbers chord progression, but it’s highly unlikely that i would have figured out that this is a recent recording.