Inland Empire

Although there's apparently no US distribution as of yet, there's finally some information about Lynch's new film. Sound exciting!

Supermasterpiece

This goes from funny to stupid to funny again in record time...

Loveless Thesis

Apparently, some guy named David R. Fisher wrote a thesis about My Bloody Valentine's Loveless to get his Masters in Music at Florida State University. Here's the abstract:

Throughout the course of history, numerous works of art have stood at the forefront of their respective genres. British indie band My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless is one such work. Their unique sound on the album defined a sub-genre of indie rock known as shoegaze. This thesis is the first major academic study of My Bloody Valentine and their decisive presentation of shoegazer aesthetics: Loveless.
In the first chapter, I trace the origins of shoegaze as a resultant effect of the punk, postpunk, and indie movements that came before it. Later in the chapter, I discuss the music of several important shoegazer bands. Then, deduced from their commonalities, I imply a characterization of shoegaze. During the second chapter, I focus more specifically on My Bloody Valentine. By means of a basic biography, I present My Bloody Valentine’s development and struggles as a band in order to emphasize the profundity of their final album, Loveless, on both musical and interpersonal levels. In the third chapter, I present an analysis of Loveless using both traditional and non-traditional methods. The goal of this process is to gain further insight into the new realm of sound possibilities My Bloody Valentine discovered and thus attain a better understanding of their dream-like art. The chapter stresses the significant innovations presented on the album. The final chapter offers the reception of Loveless. I accomplish this by dissecting several reviews, both official and unofficial, with the intention of highlighting its virtually unanimous positive response.

Throughout the thesis, I have attempted to combine both academic and journalistic writing and research standards so that interested persons from both areas may benefit from its reading. The essential objective of this thesis is to justify My Bloody Valentine as one of the most important bands in music history while also presenting a contemporary model for popular music studies.

The whole thing is also available as a pdf.

Blomkamp to direct Halo movie

It's just been announced this week that incredibly cool indie verite sci-fi director, Neil Blomkamp (about whom I've blogged about before) will be directing the Halo movie. Here's an interview with Blomkamp on Ain't it Cool News. With the combination of him, Peter Jackson executive producing, Weta Workshop doing the effects, and, of course, the Halo team's record of really creative projects like ilovebees, this may actually be a big budget action movie I could get excited about...

"I'm Ready"

The Guardian analyzes the last words of prisoners executed in Texas. Turns out that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice catalogs all of them. Kind of amazing to browse through. Here was one that caught me:

Yeah. Momma, I just want you to know I love you. I want all of you to know I love you all. I am at peace; we know what it is. We know the truth. Stay out of crime; there is no point in it. I am at peace. We know the truth and I know it. I have some peace. I am glad it didn't take that long - no 10 or 20 years. I am at peace. And I want everyone to know I did not walk to this because this is straight up murder. I just want everybody to know I didn't walk to this. The reason is because it's murder. I am not going to play a part in my own murder. No one should have to do that. I love you all. I do not know all of your names. And I don't know how you feel about me. And whether you believe it or not, I did not kill them. I just want you all to have peace; you know what I'm saying. There is no point in that. It is neither here nor there. You have to move past it. It is time to move on. You know what I'm saying. I want each one of my loved ones to move on. I am glad it didn't last long. I am glad it didn't last long. I am at peace. I am at peace to the fullest. The people that did this - they know. I am not here to point fingers. God will let them know. If this is what it takes, just do what you got to do to get past it. What it takes. I am ready, Warden. Love you all. Let my son know I love him.

Mike's Movie

So Mike Campbell finally finished his movie, Duncan 2.0 Beta: The Movie. It is, without a doubt, the finest piece of robot vomit softcore pornography that I have ever seen. In Mike's words, "It has guns, puke, cars, swear words, and a brief artistic portrayal of the female form, so if you have any kids they should leave the room while you watch it." You can download it from here.

Russell Crowe to play Steve Irwin?

According to the more than a little bit sketchy AZ Central, Russell Crowe wants to star in a Steve Irwin biopic.

Ben Folds Acoustic Cover of Such Great Heights

watch on YouTube

SNL Will Soon Suck Again

OK, so I'm quick to admit that the guy has grown on me the last two or so years, but it's still hard for me to be jazzed about the fact that Seth Meyers is taking over the job of SNL's head writer, and will also be Amy Poehler's new Update co-anchor.

Read on and discover that the list of cast members leaving this season (besides Tina Fey) includes Chris Parnell and Horatio Sanz.

This coming season won't be terrible; it'll be just bad enough to make the few really talented people left want to fly the coop next summer, so that the following season will be terrible. This happens about every 10-15 years. It's perfectly natural.

The Little Girl Giant

On the morning of Sunday 7th May the little girl giant woke up at Horseguards Parade in London, took a shower from the time-traveling elephant and wandered off to play in the park...



(the part where she eats the lollipop is especially amazing. . .)

link (via ze)

Update: This turns out to be a project called The Sultan's Elephant by a French art/pupper group called Royal de Luxe . The wikipedia page about the project is very informative.

Gitmo in Disneyland

Artist smuggles Guantanamo Bay Detainee doll onto Thunder Mountain. Creepy.

(Via Crooks and Liars)

Brite Lite Supernova

Supernova via Lite Bright by Slacker Astronomy

I guess Lite Brite can be educational.

(Via Something Positive)

Wii

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH GGGGGGGGGGGGGOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Komaneko: Cute Animated Japanese Bear

My Little Mochi post with links to all the episodes (there are five, the whole thing runs about six minutes).

Keith Olbermann is Pissed

Well shit, Keith. For the first time ever, you have totally rocked my balls.

9/11 Flyover

I'm gonna be flying over the Pentagon tomorrow in trubute of 9/11. I'll be in the far right jet if you want to watch. It should be at exactly 10:15 East Coast time, but it could happen anywhere from 10:00 to 10:30. I've already got some cool pictures from today's practice. We scared the crap out of some poor guy flying right below us!

Hope all is well, and I hope that I don't have a paracidic twin growing inside my belly.

fetus in fetu

One doctor recalled that day in the operating room.

"He just put his hand inside and he said there are a lot of bones inside," she said. "First, one limb came out, then another limb came out. Then some part of genitalia, then some part of hair, some limbs, jaws, limbs, hair."

Inside Bhagat's stomach was a strange, half-formed creature that had feet and hands that were very developed. Its fingernails were quite long.

"We were horrified. We were confused and amazed," Mehta said.

link (via ev)

Extensible, Bayesian Methodologies for the Turing Machine by Reid Burkland, Cary Clarke, Tyson Leuchter, Cameron Hill and Will Hattman

Extensible, Bayesian Methodologies for the Turing Machine by Reid Burkland, Cary Clarke, Tyson Leuchter, Cameron Hill and Will Hattman:

Abstract

Recent advances in ubiquitous modalities and stable archetypes are generally at odds with access points. In fact, few steganographers would disagree with the investigation of XML. in this position paper we probe how linked lists can be applied to the unfortunate unification of Byzantine fault tolerance and redundancy.

or, there's always:

Decoupling Von Neumann Machines from Congestion Control in Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games by Greg Borenstein, Benhard Preusser, Mikey Clark and Meri Dunn:

Abstract

Unified game-theoretic theory have led to many technical advances, including the location-identity split and the lookaside buffer. In fact, few system administrators would disagree with the analysis of systems. We use authenticated technology to disprove that wide-area networks and public-private key pairs are rarely incompatible.

(via SCI Gen)

One Thousand Cars

One Thousand Cars Racing in a video game. . .pretty. swarmlike.