Archive for May, 2007
46 items.
You Can't Do That and Things We Said Today – covers by Catastrophic Audio
May 31st, 2007 |Posted In: Music, The Unauthorized Cover Songs
More messy unauthorized covers, by Catastrophic Audio, of Beatles tunes.
Vocals by me. Instrumentation and engineering by Marty. Co-produced by Marty and me.
The previous Unauthorized Messy Covers are under the “The Unauthorized Cover” category. I’ve been saying they’re from 1997 but that was just careless of me. They’re circa 1995 instead.
I will next post Mean Mister. Mustard-Polythene Pam-She Came in Through the Bathroom Window and You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away. Which will be the last from this batch, I think, though I’ve two more.
Have another set of recordings from earlier, circa 1993, that we’ll perhaps transfer next week.
2Comment
Where’s the picture of the new fucking huge American embassy in Iraq I saw a couple of weeks ago. This isn’t it, or maybe it was. Never mind, the image will have to serve as there seem to be almost no photos of something so big.
Some AP photo
At 104 acres and $592 million dollars, this complex moves a few steps beyond BIG. You’d think they’re trying to outshine y’know, what is it, Iraq’s, what da ya call it, bigness in ancient history, words like monumental come to mind, Mesopotamia, Fertile Crescent, Akkadian, Assyrian, those bad Babylonians. Whatever, I seem to recall reading something about it over the years, a smidgen here and there, and a few pics of the Gate of Ishtar. Anyway, the impression I was given in high school, the few paragraphs we read of it, was that the Fertile Crescent was the seat of ancient civilization out of which the rest of the world poured eventually. Except for American Indians and the Chinese and other people like that, who lived way off the beaten track. But the image I came away with from middle or high school, of the Seat of Civilization (which was quaintly pagan, but big, and gave us farmers and builders and successive empires, but not as big as the Romans ultimately, whom we could better understand as they had a Senate, I think) was that they had big sand colored walls. They liked walls. So did King Arthur, didn’t he? All those castles! Lots of walls. Only those were gray because Europe is misty gray whereas Babylonia was all glaring sun and sandy walls.
Anyway, that’s going to be some addition to the kid’s history books, isn’t it?! Pictured under Wonders of the Modern World Lording It Over Those Ancient Wonders Which We Hope To Assimilate Somehow Someway So That We May Own Them In Our Role of Current Top Dog Empire.
I was only reminded to write of it because of Norwegianity making mention of it. And Cindy Sheehan. He wrote some about Cindy Sheehan who’s been making noises about Democrats who walk and talk like Republicans, except they’re Democrats. Republicans are Republicans and Democrats are Democrats and never the twain shall meet except for Democrats caving on Iraq and Democrats caving on the Bankruptcy Bill and whatever else the Democrats have caved on. The list is long. But Democrats are Democrats and the Republicans are Republicans and they’re out there daily with the gloves on making a show of a boxing match so we’ll know we have voting choices.
When I saw the pic of the embassy a few weeks ago, H.o.p. and I were watching films on The Great Wall of China, which the Chinese hated and saw as a symbol of oppression, all those dead people that went into the making of it, but which the Western World hearted (soooooooooo big) and eventually seemed to convince the Chinese it was something of which to be proud after all.
There’s a famous photograph of a little boy and girl walking into the sublime light and (don’t ask me why) that’s the picture that came to mind as I gazed upon the image of the American Embassy in Iraq while watching films of the Great Wall of China. Hand in hand, off they trot into history.
You can see what my public school eduction did for me.
Empire, empire, empire, empire. Lots of walls. Then Rome. Christ in there somewhere corresponding with 0 A.D., which is how I can locate where I am in the mess because I was born 1957 years after. Then blankets of fog out of which shine some gray castles. Feudal walls. Then pilgrims fighting for our religious rights and some Indians who said “Welcome, Land of the Brave and Free”, then George Washington crossing the Delaware and America, then Indians forgot to be hospitable somewhere along Custer’s way and got pissed about it, though it was all for their own good and was our divine right, carrying the freedom flag and all. The Promised Land. And there was the British Empire, like our misfit older sibling, who used to wield some authority but settled down to gardening. And Europe had a couple of misfit wars and a maniac, but we settled all that, and took care of Japan too.
And now, though the history books weren’t so explicit, WE ARE THE WORLD, with the stars and stripes in one hand, but more importantly Coca-Cola in the other. Lots of it. In fact, forget the stars and stripes. Just send Coke. Which at least had a nice white stripe against a red background. The not-so-new American flag. That immediately recognizable Coca-Cola stripe against that red.
I don’t know what in the hell they’re talking about pulling out of Iraq with that great big new 104 acre embassy there? I can’t make those two pieces of the puzzle fit together in my head. Big 104 acre, half billion dollar embassy. Pulling out of Iraq. No, doesn’t fit.
But I don’t understand POLITICS. I don’t have a clue.
Well, y’know, except maybe it’s enough that someone’s construction business was able to pump a few jobs into someone’s economy and make a few bucks for someone.
Are we really going to pull out and leave that COUNTRY in a COUNTRY to fend for itself?
The Vatican City is 0.2 square miles of Country. That’s about 109 acres. I’m so disappointed! The Vatican is larger than the American Embassy in Iraq. Does that sound right to you? All we needed was another 6 acres and we’d have beat out the Vatican. As far as not being the smallest country in the world. So the Vatican becomes the second smallest Country and the American Embassy is the smallest. Except the American Embassy in Iraq isn’t a Country and wouldn’t ever want to be its own Country since it simply represents us.
A 2006 April AP story said of it:
BAGHDAD, Iraq – The fortress-like compound rising beside the Tigris River here will be the largest of its kind in the world, the size of Vatican City, with the population of a small town, its own defense force, self-contained power and water, and a precarious perch at the heart of Iraq’s turbulent future.
The new U.S. Embassy also seems as cloaked in secrecy as the ministate in Rome.
“We can’t talk about it. Security reasons,” Roberta Rossi, a spokeswoman at the current embassy, said when asked for information about the project.
Story continues below ↓advertisementA British tabloid even told readers the location was being kept secret — news that would surprise Baghdadis who for months have watched the forest of construction cranes at work across the winding Tigris, at the very center of their city and within easy mortar range of anti-U.S. forces in the capital, though fewer explode there these days…
It will have its own water wells, electricity plant and wastewater-treatment facility, “systems to allow 100 percent independence from city utilities,” says the report, the most authoritative open source on the embassy plans.
But they’re WRONG! It’s not the size of the Vatican. It’s smaller.
Embassies are usually about 10 acres in size. But this is a fully self-sufficient one. Kind of.
Except for food. Eventually. Nothing is ever completely self-sufficient. Even if they have vegetable gardens and fruit trees and cows and chickens and pigs stocked in there somewhere, and fields of grain, they’re still going to eventually need computer parts, like rare replacement screws.
I don’t think the US Govt would ever want to cross Sony and manufacture its own replacement screws. If the US Govt has any Sony equipment within the embassy. Which it may not. But if it did, you don’t want to cross Sony. No.
I wonder what’s the official soft drink of the embassy? Coke or Pepsi? Coke? Sure Pepsi tried to usurp Coke as the new flag with its white stripe and the red on one side and the blue on the other. But Coke’s still the one with the white on red.
And they can’t manufacture Coke in there either, because the recipe for Coca-Cola is top secret, so again the American Embassy compound in Iraq is not entirely self-sufficient.
Which is one reason we’re going to have to stay in Iraq. To keep that supply line flowing.
Do you think they’ll paint it? What color? Surely, they’ll do some landscaping. A few flowers. Maybe install a couple of sculptures. If they could pull it off, Gormley’s Event Horizon would be nice.
If we do eventually pull out, how much do you think the new refurbished “Embassy” condos will go for?
I finished the conversions last night of this particular batch of the Unauthorized Messy Covers by Catastrophic Audio (me and Marty) that we did in 1997 and will be putting them up over the next couple of days.
The above is particularly messy.
Vocals by me. All instrumentation by Marty. Engineered by him and co-produced by Marty and me.
“Revolution” I did have up as a ram file and now have up mp3.
The previous Unauthorized Messy Covers from 1997 are under the “The Unauthorized Cover” category and include Baby’s in Black, She Said She Said, Helter Skelter, Gimme Some Truth, and Happiness is a Warm Gun.
In one browser window I have Spain’s Greenhouse Effect, from 2005, telling me all about how farming with plastic and chemicals, no earth, is destroying the Almeria countryside.
In another window I have a teaser from Charles Nelson Reilly’s movie, The Life of Reilly, in which he makes sense to me for the first time and is a movie I’d like to see.
That’s it! Except for my Google homepage sitting back there somewhere, gearing up to run my life (see previous post).
Oh, wait, another browser window I now have open, which I specifically opened so I could mention it. Arvin Hill, generally absent from his “Carnival of Horror” blog these days, is back with two posts, “Blood and Gold” and “Letter to John Walsh”.
I missed the play-by-play of the latest fraudulent vote in which Bush’s Mules (once known as the Democratic Party) gave The Unitary Executive a big thumbs up – and a whole lotta cash – to make sure our ongoing crimes against the people of Iraq don’t sputter to an ignoble end for lack of funding. One wonders how much of that money – my money, your money – finds its way into the velvet pockets of the Bush-Cheney families and their many cronies.
The blogworld always feels a trifle more sane when Arvin Hill is posting.
It’s said that Google now wants to run my life.
Google, the world’s biggest search engine, is setting out to create the most comprehensive database of personal information ever assembled, one with the ability to tell people how to run their lives.
In a mission statement that raises the spectre of an internet Big Brother to rival Orwellian visions of the state, Google has revealed details of how it intends to organize and control the world’s information.
The company’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, said during a visit to Britain this week: “The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’.
I’d say, “Well, isn’t it about damn time?! I’ve always needed a life manager!” But then I think again and imagine tragic disparities, Google telling some people to invest their millions in…Google…and informing others it wouldn’t adversely effect their future if they danced off the nearest high tower.
In the meanwhile, despite the fact that Google has purchased Double-Click and will next be belching all over me ads for everything marginally connected with whatever subject I happen to be Googling, I went ahead and made up a Google homepage for myself and installed Google Chat and with the calendar and gmail and weather and select TV stations (like C-Span 2 which I can only see online as we only have network television) and Wikipedia and maps and gas prices and to-do lists all available right there at one place, and all kinds of crap I don’t need but’s fun, and anticipating more more more, I can see how, especially if I gave Google access to my computer with a desktop search, and if I had a cell it played nice with, it could come reasonably close to believing it could run my life.
I’m mad at Google because they played with rankings again and last Saturday my site began tanking, the Google searches accessing it halved. I went from being the NUMBER ONE GOOGLE SEARCH RESULT FOR MONSTER BREATH to number ten. And that hurt. That REALLY hurt. I would BOYCOTT them for this but I can’t imagine giving up Google search if only for Google book search.
I’m beginning to see how Google is getting ready to rule the world. And I remember when I first saw Google. It was a new little thing. They were BABIES, sucking their thumbs, virtually begging people, “Give us a chance! Help us out!” People who felt themselves internet rebels abandoned Alta Vista and installed Google search on their web pages.
Then Google switched from the breast to regular food, growing teeth, and started crying, “Feed me! Feed me!” Which we did, gladly.
And now it has morphed into GoogleBLOB, consuming every thing it touches, becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. Which is why I didn’t do Gmail or the Google Calendar forever. I didn’t want to give Google too much of me. But here I am plugging into it and consolidating all my home page non-essentials into it, wishing I could integrate Word with its calendar and manage files from it. Next it will be doing our banking for us, and selling us real estate, finding us jobs, mates, and who knows what else?
Now, if only Google could only personalize its advice. It’s one thing to tell you what you should be doing based on tracking every move you make, but another making judgment calls based on those moves. Such as if you didn’t like what Google Personality X-tian Fundamentalist Aunt Jane had to say about how you should be doing THIS instead, then you could always switch to Google Friend Buttercup who is working on her third drink and feeling pretty giggly.
Another Unauthorized Messy Cover Song by Catastrophic Audio – Baby's in Black
May 28th, 2007 |Posted In: Music, The Unauthorized Cover Songs
(Oops. Fixed the url.)
Another Unauthorized Messy Cover by Catastrophic Audio. (Been a while since I’ve posted one of these.)
Vocals by me. All instrumentation by Marty. Engineered by him and co-produced by Marty and me. Recorded 1997.
The previous Unauthorized Messy Covers are under the “The Unauthorized Cover” category and include She Said She Said, Helter Skelter, Gimme Some Truth, Happiness is a Warm Gun and Revolution.
I may as well put them all up. Have several more.
T Rex at Fire Dog Lake describes what it’s been like here in Georgia with these out-of-control wild fires. Incredible that they’re causing problems up here in Atlanta. Playing hell with my allergies, sinuses and lungs all week. Though we’ve no current air alert, I can swear I smell a hint of acrid smoke. Some times it’s just suddenly there. H.o.p. will be doing something and stop, perplexed, and say, “I smell smoke!”
Earlier in the week it was very bad. So bad that on Tuesday evening there was black soot on the windowsill under the air conditioner.
Coming inside, I glanced at the windowsill, which I’d just dusted a few days beforehand. There was black?? Indeed, black gritty soot all over it in front of the window unit.
Wild fires 250 miles away, down in South Georgia, caused by drought, are leaving soot on our windowsills all the way up here.
No, the black, gritty soot covering the windowsill on Tuesday wasn’t my imagination, nor am I exaggerating. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported:
By 6 a.m., soot levels in metro Atlanta had set another record, making 2007 a year to remember in the 20-year history of poor air quality. In Henry County, the soot clogged the filter of an air quality monitor after recording off-the-chart levels, shutting it down for four hours. The haze was so thick across much of the region the sky looked like a dark gray, winter day. Occasionally sunlight would streak through like a bullet.
On an ajc.com blog, KB joked “I might as well have brought a sleeping bag and tent to work, it smells like a campfire in the office in Midtown. I think we may make s’mores in the break room at lunch …”
This apartment isn’t very airtight. We’re talking a real old building with old windows. On Tuesday, though I’d just dusted my Wacom tablet a couple of days before, the bottom of my mouse was suddenly covered with gunk so thick that it stopped working. A byproduct of the smoke?
There is more soot today on the windowsill, but not as bad as earlier this week. Pockets of soot must collect in here. Dust intensifies. I dusted three times this week (at least) and you couldn’t tell it. I vacuumed several times. Friday evening I shook out a blanket that had been resting in front of the window in the bedroom. Immediately, I started coughing and sneezing, nose running, eyes burning and itchy. At first I couldn’t imagine what had caused the reaction, then realized soot must have settled on the blanket.
We cleaned the AC filters last week. We should clean them again. Need to clean the air filters as well, just occurred to me.
I can just imagine what it’s like in South Georgia.
The weather forecast presently reads, “Partly cloudy with areas of smoke…” Memorial Day will be “Mostly sunny. Haze and areas of smoke.”
They forecast this could continue all summer, until we get some nice tropical storms.
For a while the smoke smell went away. Now it’s back. Just a bit of it, and my sinuses slightly burning again. It smells like someone’s having a cook-out, only it’s a heavier, more acrid, almost greasier smell. Marty, asleep, starts coughing. Several seconds later harshness enters my nose and hits the back of my throat, and I start coughing.
H.o.p. had a busy Saturday and Sunday at Atlanta’s Jazz Festival with his dad, seeing Jaspects and Julie Dexter, Airto and Flora Purim, and Bobby Hutcherson. I didn’t go along as I was otherwise occupied, but they had a great time and H.o.p. ran and ran and ran and ran and came home complaining about how sweaty he was.
Later we sat down to attempt to memorize the “To Be or Not To Be” soliloquy. Why? I don’t know why as we’re not Shakespeare nuts here, but the other night H.o.p. announced that he wanted to learn it. Which means teaching him what it means.
And so we got to work.
H.o.p. began, “To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether tis nobler, in the mind, to suffer a series of unfortunate events…”
Yes, yes, much like that, but it’s not quite right, H.o.p. Though that’s a good substitute and I like it very much.
H.o.p. began, “To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether tis nobler, in the mind, to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and the unfortunate egg…”
And he drops a plastic egg on my head, laughing uncontrollably and pleased with his sense of humor.
So was I, to tell the truth. But not after the tenth time.
“To be or not to be. The end!” and he flung himself on the ground, again pleased with his sense of humor.
Eventually, he was able to learn the first several lines.
“It has a lot of exclamation points,” he remarked.
And the occasional, unfortunate egg.
Went ahead and uploaded around 60 pics from NOLA and the Greater New Orleans Area I took last Nov 2006. Not quality pics by any means but I decided I’d put them up anyway. The most striking thing in them all is the lack of humanity for miles and miles on the east side of the city.
What they lack in quality, most of them make up in size. I posted large versions of them all so close up views of the devastation can be had.
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt aren’t in a single one of them. Hear that Google? Not in a single one.
From when he was knee-high, I’ve been telling H.o.p. about ads. What ads want from you. What they want to sell you. I tell him about the relationship between ads and some of the websites he visits. Like Neopets. I ever remind him that those sites want something from him, which is all the time and interest they can get from him, because they’re full of ads waiting for someone to take notice. Especially with Neopets, we used to go round and round on this. “But it’s free!” And I’d say, yes, their games are free to you to use, but they expect to eventually sell you something. He loves Neopets and has a Neopet that he tends to daily, taking care of it. But I wanted him to know that their website also gets something out of his visits, that they wouldn’t be doing this if they weren’t getting something out of him visiting and taking care of his no-subscription-fee Neopet.
So, my little nine-year-old was sitting at his computer making his CLICK charity rounds.
I hear a gasp.
“Mom!” he said. “Why are they advertising gas at the Care2 site? Mom, gas hurts the earth.”
We have a car. We use gas. But he now asks questions about gas. And cars. He likes transport. He worries about gas.
“Hmmm?” I got up and stepped over to take a look. “That’s an ad for a Suzuki XL7 SUV. They’re giving away a $25 gas card to those who go in for a test drive.”
“But mom! What are they doing advertising things that hurt the earth at a place that’s supposed to help the earth?”
Good question, H.o.p. Does a website that exists for the purpose of aiding in protecting the environment have an ethical obligation to not promote such cars as a Suzuki XL7 SUV, which I read gets 18 mpg in town and 22 on the road, ideally and has an EPA air pollution rating of 7 on a scale of 1 to 10 where 0 is screaming, “We hate the earth and all its creatures! We feel evil to the tips of our tippy-toes!” I only know this because H.o.p. asked me a question and I wanted to look up the car’s environmental impact as compared to other cars, so we could talk about whether or not the owners of the website felt with these ads they were promoting a car that was less harmful than others.
But H.o.p. isn’t even talking about car models, he’s gasping over any ads at all for gas and cars being on a website where he makes clicks for saving wetlands and rain forest, among other things.
Anyway, it’s a good question for him to ask.
And I’m glad he is attentive enough to be thinking about things like this. To see an ad come up and say, “Hey, what does this mean in relationship to the website I’m on?”
He’s thinking!
Sure, I know, I know, other kids think as well. But I love to see my child’s brain in action this way. That’s excellent when he’s able to look at a website he trusts and say, “Does this fit in with their mission?”
P.S.
Anyway, so how did I answer his question. I told him I thought it was a great one. I told him what I read about the car. I said that Care2 promotes itself as promoting a Green lifestyle and Green products. I said that, honestly, I couldn’t think of how this particular car and free gas cards fit into that Green mission. Did he think it fit?
I then went to take a look at the shoppers page at Care2, which I’d not done before. Care2 has a broad number of “shopping partners” that one wouldn’t think of as being eco-friendly. Here’s what they have to say about it:
Why do our shopping partners include both eco-friendly and non-eco-friendly stores?
This is a great question – why on earth would we include in our list of affiliate ecommerce sites companies that are not entirely eco-friendly or may even use sweat shops to produce their products? The answer is two fold:* We want our members to visit their sites! Why? Because when Green Thumbs-Up users visit those sites they’ll see a Yellow or Red icon to let them know the poor social and/or environmental policies the company has. If they weren’t in our list, most folks would probably never know. We hope the icons will educate our members so they can make an informed decision whether or not to shop there.
* Sometimes, for whatever reason, some of our members are still going to shop at those companies. If they’re going to do it, they might as well at least generate some donations to help heal the Earth.
“We ought to give them a call and tell them that ad doesn’t fit in with their website,” H.o.p. said.
I told him what they have to say on their website.
We’re still talking.
