Baboon Palace

Why are bloggers like rappers?

[R]appers’ and bloggers’ self-importance also has something to do with the supremely annoying righteousness that rides along with those who believe they’re overturned the archaic forms of expression favored by The Man—that is, whitey and/or the mainstream media.Ninety percent of rap lyrics are self-congratulatory rhymes about how great the rapper is at rapping, the towering difficulties of succeeding in the rap game, or the lameness of wanksta rivals.

This guy sounds like a douche. I can’t believe he seriously wrote “whitey.” (Also, notice how the sentence doesn’t make any sense at all. Is “whitey” one of the forms of expression favoured by The Man?)

Aesop Rock - Commencement at the Obedience School

The harvest appeared less plentiful than last season
I imagine sloppy seed handling avoke the stroke of tardy planting
And the crops we’d have harnessed in mid November
It only brushed the blossom bracket then soon sacrificed
Lives to icicle jackets when the frost hit
I sunk to find the walk beneath the mosses
Where the planted tunnel pass after the rains have run their courses
But alas the portraits of these frosted corpses tortured in the grass
Off of distorts or pour the one tall glass and nauseous
And I’m asking you, why’s this spy supply hiding in strangers
When they know atop the food chains I could spot biters for acres
Now be gracious, these minstools turn a bully’s psycho civil
By dissolving the candy coated image down to the pixels
Yelp bringing the self-stop freedom brigade investors
And the studies connecting one hit wonders with dust collectors
Puts it down, and it’s down beneath your sappy sing alongs
So stick it further down, we’ll let Dante decide which ring I’m on
Nova, the elders took positions and advance march
Parts playing a scheme parking the rain in my canteen now I’m like
Point: I guess I could spare a splash for a couple of heads
Counterpoint: During my famine I never got broke your bread
Well equation of intrigue, yes, yes, let me fed sit for a bit
These ‘tensils need soaking before I hand out token
“Shut the fuck up” drama like Kabuki with a heart of dirt
Skull fucked cross bones hence my birth it hurts

The Beatles - Love me do

Love, love me do.
You know I love you,
I’ll always be true,
So please, love me do.
Whoa, love me do.

Love, love me do.
You know I love you,
I’ll always be true,
So please, love me do.
Whoa, love me do.

Someone to love,
Somebody new.
Someone to love,
Someone like you.

Love, love me do.
You know I love you,
I’ll always be true,
So please, love me do.
Whoa, love me do.

Love, love me do.
You know I love you,
I’ll always be true,
So please, love me do.
Whoa, love me do.
Yeah, love me do.
Whoa, oh, love me do.

Well so what, we all know that 90% of everything is crap, especially when it’s taken out of context and you have no sense of humour. But how does this insightful characterization of raps, and the rapping rappers who rap them, relate to blogging? Josh Levin brings the analogy home:

Blogging is a circle jerk that never stops circling: links to posts by other bloggers, following links to newspaper stories about bloggers, following wonderment at the corruptions and complacency of old-fashioned, credentialed journalism.

More importantly: will it stop jerking? (I’m guessing no.)

Wait, how is that like rap? Who cares, that line is golden.

“We simply cannot understand why Canada would in effect give up its sovereignty – its seat at the table – to decide what to do about a missile that might be coming towards Canada.” So says Ambassador Paul Cellucci, in response to the announcement that Canada will not participate in the Mythical Defense Shield.

So our seat at the table is contingent on giving the U.S. military to free run of the continent? Usually discussion takes place at a table, but this table seems to be one where everyone must already agree. I dare say, this table sucks.

Regardless, if I had seat at the table where people decide what to do about an ICBM heading towards North America, my decision will be to go completely fucking bonkers, just like everyone else sitting around this worthless table, all of whom will be deeply involved in their own personal psychotic breakdowns.

A successful nuclear strike against a North American city = instant fascism; no recognizable context for discussion exists on the other side of this event. It’s meaningless to talk about “making a decision” in a scenario in which a big American or Canadian city gets vapourized. The undisguised rule of force is the only conceivable outcome.

And make no mistake, even under the most favorable conditions imaginable — no clouds, foreknowledge of the exact launch time, complete technical schematics for all objects involved — missle defense has failed every test. If it actually were a matter of deciding whether to shoot down a nuke or not, I would vote: yes, please. But that’s not really a live option, now or in the forseeable future.

You guys are dicks. :(

As a child I found spirograph disappointing. I liked the pictures on the box, (produced by highly skilled artists, no doubt), but I’d always mess it up by slipping off the little wheely gears. The round ones weren’t too bad, but I had to stick close to the center. Those long tongue-depressor shaped gears were fucking impossible! There is no way you can make that thing go around without slipping off the wheel, making a jagged pencil gash across the paper, totally ruining everying. So the only spirographs I could produce were boring wavy circles. I knew from an early age I would never be a spirograph artist.

Maybe it’s my lack of coordination. I still remember in kindergarten we had to trace these squiggly maze patterns, and I couldn’t follow the lines properly. I got in trouble because the teacher thought I wasn’t taking it seriously, but I was. That’s right: I flunked tracing.

All these painful spirograph memories came rushing back to me after visiting Kinetoh (courtesy of Rhizome). Kinetoh is a generative art project. Generative art just means that instead of making images yourself, you’re building mechanisms and rules, analogous to spirograph gears, which are used to produce images. You don’t even have to hold the pencil in the little holes!

Kinetoh is a contemporary update to this activity, using a computer, (a Mac, no doubt), to simulate the plasic gears, assigning them chaotic properties which transcend the physical, modernist periodicity of spirograph. Or something.

Perhaps Manik of Rhizome can explain it better:

Kinetoh dismantles the models of the last avant-garde by creating the simulacrum of such from software programs capable of imitating, nearly perfectly, those materials that belong to classic art, like pencil, charcoal, and watercolor. These images stand as the mimesis of art that is inherently non-mimetic.

What sort of a crazy kaleidoscope of avant-avant-garde boundary-interrogation have we stumbled into?! I feel dizzy!

Or, also, the virtual reconstruction of the end of high Modernity. Instead of targeting a movement well-established and recognizable, like Abstract Expressionism or Conceptualism, Kinetoh’s strategy is to examine the second line and not so well-explored spaces in Modern Art.

Can I get a “subversive”?

Just because of this, they maintain subversive potential.

HEYO!

I believe that genetic programming will someday allow us (rich people) to create a custom-designed servant race to perform all the remaining unmechanized menial labour that we (rich people) currently have to pay poor people to do.

The genetically-designed servant of the future will have a humanoid body and the head of a dog. It will have opposable thumbs and be slightly more intelligent than the higher primates. It will be capable of understanding small subsets of a language, but incapable of producing it.

The canine appearance will be settled on after significant market research, focus-grouping and analysis of fMRI data. Early prototypes with more human-like facial features will be found to raise unsettling ethical questions in the mind of the potential buyer, while feline variations will be judged to be too “feral” and threatening. Cats, apparently, don’t scale very well.

The “Canine Humanoid Intelligent Assistant” (CHIA) will score highly on averaged consumer emotional-response metrics like “familiarity” and “trustworthiness,” while remaining comfortably, undeniably sub-human. CHIA pets average about four feet in height; they stand upright and have a noble, dignified posture with no ape-like slouching. Their bodies will be covered in dog-hair, but they will wear clothes anyway.

In the future, there will be a CHIA pet in every home.

Oh, and everyone will be freakishly deformed.

This is a glimpse into the future.

(photo by Miss E)

Scortt: i never look at a camera when i’m having my picture taken
Scortt: never
Scortt: that way it doesn’t steal your soul
Miss E: good idea
Miss E: that should be in your blog
Miss E: helpful hints for not letting things steal your sould
Miss E: like don’t put your penise in the vacumm cleaner
Miss E: it will steal you soul AND your seed
Scortt: hahaaha penise
Scortt: je suis une penise
Miss E: je le sais
Scortt: hahwesjhsjf