Que es?
The Weblog of Brett Singer. Bringing the world what it needs most - a blog.
Note: Sorry about all of the 'hot deals' entries (someone referred to this blog as
CorporateShill.com).
The deals and things are being fed into Multineedia.com. We will
soon move the deals category over to Multineedia so you don't have to read it, and we apologize for any inconvenience.
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Tue, 06 Sep 2005
Ken Weaver Interview: The Fugs
Original drummer of The Fugs, a great old hippie band that played really offensive songs songs like "River of Shit".
Thu, 11 Aug 2005From DefenseTech:
"OPEN SOURCE" INSURGENTS RISE
It used to be that a small group of ideological-driven guerilla
leaders would spread information, tactics, training, and cash to their
followers. No more. Internet-enabled insurgents with only the loosest
of real-world connections can now share all of that freely online.
John Robb -- who's doing some of the smartest thinking and writing
around on the subject -- calls it "Open Source warfare."
Link.
Tue, 09 Aug 2005
Gilbert Gottfried interview at The Onion AV Club
From the New Yorker. Silly, but kinda funny.
Thu, 28 Jul 2005Three good posts from BoingBoing:
Huh? What's that, officer? Hang on, there's someone at my door, I'll be right ba...
Wed, 13 Jul 2005This looks interesting. Wow, I really don't use much of my brain anymore. I can't remember the last time I read something this academic in nature.
Mon, 27 Jun 2005You can get the real thing here, for free, courtesy of Project Gutenberg. They have an audio version as well.
Ten years later, the story of Suck.com, the first great website - ah yes, ten years ago. Who knew this whole Web thing would take off?
From that article, a link to video of those AT&T ads from the mid 90's, from back when anyone gave a shit about AT&T.
Link via Blogdex which was via BoingBoing. I have no time to read all of this.
Fri, 22 Apr 2005
Superboy Comics
Funny story about Superboy "going ape". I always preferred Marvel, although I'm reading Crisis on Infinite Earths at the moment and it's quite fun. This can't possibly be legal, scanning comics like that and posting them online, although no one should care since reading the pages on the web is nothing like reading them on paper, and it would probably inspire more sales anyway. Also via BoingBoing, who took one of my suggestions yesterday.
Bring the Noise
Bring the Noise is a photo essay of portable audio. How many do you still have?
There's been lots of Pope coverage (he died, have you heard?) but this piece in the New Yorker by David Remnick is the most interesting that I've read. All of the long pieces (at least in my local papers) talking about his faith and how many people came to the funeral (those people left several tons - TONS - of trash in the streets, according to some reports) are far less interesting than this essay which reminds us the effect that the Pope had on real events, specifically the fall of Communism in Poland. Maybe in the States we don't want to talk about that, since we credit Reagan with bringing down commies everywhere. If nothing else, it's a more intelligent perspective on the man.
Tue, 29 Mar 2005
Ridiculous Accessories
From CNET, an article about dopey PC accessories, many of the USB variety. I still kind of want a Griffin PowerMate, although the glowing would likely get on my nerves. I prefer changing volume with a knob, though.
MIT Classics Archive
So much to read, so little time.
Whole Lotta Chomsky Goin' On
Audio and Video here. Articles here.
Two good articles worth taking the time to read:
Re: the second article - apparently Dizzee Rascal is a grime artist. Never heard of grime before. The article makes it sound interesting. Of course, a good writer can make polka sound fascinating.
Via Sasha's blog.
Sun, 13 Mar 2005
Posner Memorial Collection
Electronic versions of the collection of Henry Posner Sr. and his wife Ida M. Posner were the collectors of the books and art in the Posner Memorial Collection. The collection was established by Helen and Henry Posner at Carnegie Mellon University in 1978. Read more here. Link found here.
The End is Nigh, Can I Borrow Ten Bucks?
The Beast of Revelation: Myth, Metaphor or Soon-Coming Reality? This was actually from a Google ad. So weird. That means somebody REALLY wants us to see this. The keyword was apocalypse. I've always been intrigued by Revelations, which apparently is more full of disaster and explosive action than a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. There's a series of books (the LEFT BEHIND series) about it that sells more than John Grisham, and there was a movie with Kirk Cameron based on the book (actually there were two of them). There's more, I'm sure. The amount of blood and doom in Christianity (and I guess in this case, Catholicism, although I freely admit to a large amount of ignorance in these matters) has always been amazing to me. Jews, we're not so interested in that sort of thing. Food, that we like. Also, there's no pulp-evangelical literature for the Chosen Hairy People. Sure, we've got Philip Roth, but that's not exactly the same thing. Maybe I'll write a low-brow Jewish novel of some kind. The TorahKnockers. Mackin' With The Macabees. Something like that.
From "Picking Up the Shattered Pieces by samantha", a blog on Opera.com; they call them "journals". I call this one "depressing". I mean, wow. So sad.
Mon, 07 Feb 2005
Advantage Band Interview
Video game music rules.
Free Marvel Dotcomics
Lots of free funnybook reading here, including the first appearance of Spider-Man. Considering it goes for over two thousand dollars on eBay, reading it online via Flash is a better deal. Oh, if only I still had my old comics...
Rick Rubin Interview from the Onion AV Club
While still a college student, Rubin co-founded future rap powerhouse Def Jam with Simmons, offering a rugged, street-level alternative to pop-friendly labels like Sugar Hill. As Def Jam's reigning in-house producer, Rubin cranked out a remarkable string of masterpieces—including Beastie Boys' Licensed To Ill, LL Cool J's Radio, and Run DMC's Raising Hell—while releasing work from artists like Slick Rick and Public Enemy. Rick's been around awhile. If you listen to Jay-Z's 99 Problems, you can tell it's him cuz it sounds like a track from a Run-DMC record. That's not a bad thing, just an observation.
Onion AV Club interview with Art Spiegelman:
"If you write, there is a reward. If you draw, there is a reward. Until very recently, if you write and draw together, you're assumed to be some kind of weirdly talented idiot savant at best."
Tue, 14 Dec 2004
The Year In Swag
FRomThe Onion AV Club, The Year in Swag. Swag is a very important, and under-discussed, part of our culture.
Rock N Roll Is The Devil's Music!
So sayeth the Daily News (well, not really). Another good article in their Big Town series. They also have the decency to keep the articles posted online, unlike certain other papers I could mention.
bs
http://www.dimar.org/lostwaters/LWTOC.HTM
is it any good? i dunno. it is, however, free, and easily downloadable. what the heck? the artwork is nice.
the author also sells it (why? i guess so you can get a printed copy?) through these people:
http://www.booksurge.com/publishers.php3
i remember a time magazine article that came out around the time napster was first getting big, and stephen king did that thing where he sold one chapter of a book at a time for a dollar, on the honor system. that was supposed to be the future of publishing, no big companies involved, just individuals giving stuff away, or selling it, but in a way that essentially allowed for copying. king never finished the book, i don't think (he might have eventually, but he definitely stopped putting up new chapters after the first few, which pissed people off) and napster is long gone.
speaking of nap:
http://www.napster.com/
what exactly did roxio buy? a (big ass) list of names? maybe it's all a government plot - everyone who had a napster account will have their computers hacked by the cia, i mean the riaa.
back to where we started: it is easier to self-publish, if you really want to do something like that. and there are definitely examples of people who do it and go on to some measure of success; there are even books that get picked up by "real" publishing houses and sold in (horrors!) actual bookstores. this is the tree falling in the forest question, though: okay, you published it. anybody buy it?
but maybe that isn't the point. i don't really think that anyone reads this page. but somebody might. i know that at least one person does (jim nachlin, http://www.nachlin.com/, http://www.daysofleisure.com/blog/), but that's just because he gave me the code to set it up. with google and others around, it's likely that eventually the site will turn up in a search engine.
that isn't the point, however - to be read. if i wanted to do that, i would do something other than this page. what i'm getting at (in theory) is that the writing (typing) is it's own reward, although how much of a reward it is depends on how you feel about it. this page serves as remote bookmark storage (take that, blink.com!) for stuff i stumble onto during the day and don't have time to read. i probably still won't read it now that it's here, but at least it doesn't clutter up my bookmarks file.
aside: windows notepad sucks, have i mentioned that?
see? see what just happened there? i wrote as if there were an audience. why do i care? is it more satisfying to believe that there is in fact someone reading what you write? this must be the case; if not, why use punctuation? (unless you're just kind of uptight about such things, as i am).
this is too meta. i'll stop now.
bs
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/11/nyregion/11PROF.html
theater ticket prices are too high. the solution? make 'em higher!
bs
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/09/opinion/09WED1.html
and this:
Vengeance
and Tea
some title. slideshow:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2003/04/08/international/20030409_war_slideshow_1.html
bs
http://www.theonion.com/onion3701/bush_nightmare.html
this is from jan. 2001 - a little bit too prescient.
bs
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/fortune500/articles/0,15114,438802,00.html
i haven't read this yet, but i wonder if it mentions 'fast food nation'.
bs
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/03/31/iraq_offline/
3:04 PM 4/3/2003
my war reading:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15368-2003Apr2.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/03/international/worldspecial/03EXIL.html
not that i have any time or stomach to go through all of this stuff.
this is very creepy:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/04/03/sprj.irq.woolsey.world.war/index.html