" /> Stone Cold Pimpin': August 2003 Archives

« July 2003 | Main | September 2003 »

August 31, 2003

Completely Booty.

Well, ho ho ho! It turns out that Lapdance Island was a sham by some Channel 4 "Candid Camera" knock-off. I got a letter that read in part:

The show promised to take ten hot blooded male contestants to a deserted tropical island and have forty lapdancers gyrate around them 24 hours a day.

The truth is there are no lapdancers. There is no island. There is no show.

We made it up to promote The Pilot Show, a genuine series starting on September 8 at 10.30pm on E4. The Pilot Show hilariously dupes unsuspecting celebrities and members of the public into appearing in bogus TV shows.

Sorry about the lapdancers but, as compensation, you can laugh as other people get taken for a ride on The Pilot Show by watching the special preview clips at http://www.channel4.com/pilotshow.

Oh, very witty, ha ha ha. I think that Channel 4 missed out on making some real gutsy TV here, as I would have loved to have seen grown men having nervous breakdowns while surrounded by equally unstable lapdancers in a Lord of the Thongs scenario.

And to think I sent in my answers to their poll:

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:47 PM | | Comments (0)

Wash away Human Rights with the New War on Terra!ďż˝

Naomi Klein on how the BushJunta have exported the idea of using "fighting terrorism" as an excuse to attack human rights the world over.

Bush's war goes global

By NAOMI KLEIN

The Marriot Hotel in Jakarta was still burning when Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia's Co-ordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs, explained the implications of the day's attack.

"Those who criticize about human rights being breached must understand that all the bombing victims are more important than any human-rights issue."

In a sentence, we got the best summary yet of the philosophy underlying President George W. Bush's so-called war on terrorism. Terrorism doesn't just blow up buildings; it blasts every other issue off the political map. The spectre of terrorism, real and exaggerated, has become a shield of impunity, protecting governments around the world from scrutiny for their human-rights abuses.

Many have argued that the WoTtm is the U.S. government's thinly veiled excuse for constructing a classic empire, in the model of Rome or Britain. Two years into the crusade, it's clear that this is a mistake: The Bush gang doesn't have the stick-to-it-ness to successfully occupy one country, let alone a dozen.

Mr. Bush and the gang do, however, have the hustle of good marketers, and they know how to contract out. What Mr. Bush has created in the war on terrorism is less a doctrine for world domination than an easy-to-assemble tool kit for any mini-empire looking to get rid of the opposition and expand its power.

The war on terrorism was never a war in the traditional sense, it lacked a clear target or a fixed location. It is, instead, a kind of brand, an idea that can be easily franchised by any government in the market for an all-purpose opposition cleanser.

By way of the most excellent Tom Dispatch

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:43 AM | | Comments (0)

August 30, 2003

Error 404, punchcard style

The Earliest Known 404 Error

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:40 PM | | Comments (0)

Drill King Anthology

Holy Moses and the Tournament of Roses! Not many people survive being impaled through the head by an 18-inch long, 1 1/2 inch thick drill bit, but this guy did. (Includes fascinating X-Ray pic).

Splitting Headache: Man survives horrific construction accident

Truckee resident Ron Hunt, who has been dubbed 'Miracle Man' by friends, survived being impaled through the eye with an 18-inch long, 1 1/2-inch diameter chip auger drill bit.
While using a drill above his head on Aug. 15, the six-foot ladder he was standing on started to wobble, Hunt's nephew Ben Hunt said. 'The ladder started to 'walk' on him,' Ben said. 'He lost his balance and threw the drill down - which is normal for us (construction workers).'
Then, he fell off the ladder face-first and onto the drill, which went through his right eye and out his skull, just above his right ear. According to Ben, doctors told him the drill pushed his brain aside, rather than impaling it, which could have caused further - and most likely vastly more extensive - damage."

By way of Metafilter

Posted by Ted Mills at 10:55 PM | | Comments (0)

24 (Season One, Episodes 9-12)

Creator: Robert Cochran, Joel Surnow
2001
Phew, this is gruelling, yet so very exciting. Patience slightly tested with the usual uselessness of Women in Peril, who spend their time speaking loudly of how they're going to get out of their predicament (don't they think somebody is listening?).
24 is definitely a post-Clinton pre-BushJunta thriller, raising issues of realpolitik in both the Bauer and Palmer storylines. Palmer reminds us of the theory that Clinton was named "the first Black president" by some analysists. Yet his Chief of Staff seems to clearly be modeled on Tricky Dick Cheney (the crooked smile, especially).
Palmer is too upright and honest (as far as we know at the moment) to really be a stand in for Clinton, but he certainly does feel your pain. In fact, he just feels pained. The Bosnian angle now coming into the plot also reflects on Clinton's major war, now feeling like years and years ago. Did we ever fear vengeance would be enacted upon us by angry Serbs?
And would 9-11 have ever happened if the CIA and FBI were as hi-tech as such agencies are made to look in the show? As the 9-11 investigations are showing, some of these offices barely began using email a couple of years back.
I also note with some irony that the actress who plays Palmer's wife also plays Condoleeza Rice in some made-for-TV movie about 9-11.

Posted by Ted Mills at 10:05 PM | | Comments (0)

24 (Season One, Episodes 5-8)

Creator: Robert Cochran, Joel Surnow
2001
The night turns into day and Jack Bauer becomes entrapped himself. I don't know if I could really watch more than four episodes in a row of this, but it does remind me that some British cinema nearly did show a run of the first season in one straight 24-hour block. What would the effect be of watching the show in real time? Would it be interesting to have the screen go black during the space allotted for commercials? What about keeping the black screen but overlaying a stopwatch during the space?
Or how about splitting the show into its requisite parts, screening Jack's storyline on one monitor, the kidnapped family on another, the CTA on another, and Palmer on yet one more monitor, switching them on and off when need be? Just a thought.
The themes of 24 are starting to come out: family vs. job, sacrifice (of yourself, of others), upholding the law vs. bending it.
And L.A. looks really, really smoggy.

Posted by Ted Mills at 09:59 PM | | Comments (0)

Nearly Fine and Dandy

Well, I've nearly got all the archives up and running, thanks in part to Blogger themselves, who had to fix their code, which wants to dump all archives outside the folder it needs to be in. This front page may be the last one to be fixed.

I also have added BlogOut comments to all entries. Now you can finally praise or harass me--the choice is yours! I am looking into adding a stats tracker for all pages, but for now, until I can figure out why I can't sign in to my virtual server, that's on hold.

Last job: fixing the CSS so blockquotes don't come in all big 'n' funky.

Posted by Ted Mills at 08:41 PM | | Comments (0)

August 29, 2003

Greg Palast on Bush and his Saudi Sweethearts

Blockbuster interview from Buzzflash in which Greg comes right out and says it: The Bush Junta is conceding to the demands of Osama bin Laden.

Greg Palast answers "Was the Iraq War a Bush Cartel Effort to Divert Attention from Saudi Arabia, the Home and Chief Financier of bin Laden?" - A BuzzFlash Interview

BUZZFLASH: In the lead-up to Iraq, the Bush administration, primarily through spokespeople, went out of its way to divert attention from the Saudi relationship and to project it on Iraq by claiming Iraq had ties to al-Qaeda. The majority of Americans thought and perhaps still think that the majority of hijackers were Iraqi. And on top of that, [Paul] Wolfowitz, about a month ago or so, admitted in an interview that one of the reasons practically for declaring the war with Iraq a success was it would allow the U.S. to move its Air Force stations from Saudi Arabia to Iraq, which was one of the two main requests of--

PALAST: --Mr. bin Laden.

BUZZFLASH: Mr. bin Laden. So Wolfowitz basically conceded that we conducted a war in part to make a concession to Osama bin Laden and take the heat off of the Saudi Arabia.

PALAST: One of the most stunning things is that while our President did his little Top-Gun, Tom-Cruise number, landing on the ship and running around in that flight suit with his parachute clips around his crotch so he looked like the first chimp in space, at the same time he’s announcing we’re pulling our troops out of Saudi Arabia. And this is stunning – - America doesn't pull its troops out of anywhere. The people of Okinawa have been asking us to leave there for a half a century. World War II is over. We never, ever leave a nation.

The only time we have done it in American history is at the request of Osama bin Laden. In other words, our President got down on his knees and said: Oh, dear Osama, we will do whatever the hell you want.

Posted by Ted Mills at 10:07 AM | | Comments (0)

August 27, 2003

24 (Season One, Episodes 1-4)

Creator: Robert Cochran, Joel Surnow
2001
All memories of the pink fuzzball of Legally Blonde were mercilessly crushed once the first episode of this TV series-now-on-DVD was finished. Fans of the show will not be surprised to learn that after a short break, Jessica and I watched Episode 2...then Episode 3...then checking the clock to see if it was that late...Episode 4. Yep, we finished the whole disc.
Being a rental (along with LB) we'll have to go back for 5-8.
More thrilling than any multiplex, megagazillion dollar blockbuster, 24 piles on calamity on top of peril and mixes it all up with heavily carbonated paranoia. And on DVD, where there are no commercials (save the product placement by Ford and Apple), the effect is even more like a series of jolts to the heart.
The gimmick of having each episode play out in real time is a good one, and in a way justifies the contant peril that is going on (though in real life this would probably lead to a nervous breakdown). It also allows us to engage in the characters as we would a novel, and to have minor moments play out as major twists. The chessgame that is the Terrorism Unit's interaction is marvelously detailed, the shifting allegiances dramatically complex.
I don't know how this will all play out (and if you've seen the first season all the way through, keep your mouth shut, please) but Episode 4 showed a bit of slowing down, keeping Jack in a warehouse for most of the episode, and slightly letting things down with a dip into cliche'd dialog: Jack is a "loose cannon" and, the line I love to hate, "You just don't get it, do you?" fortunately said by a minor character. Will the series remain this tense all the way through? Will it show its narrative strategy too early? Will we have heart attacks by the end of it all? Stay tuned, because I think we'll be finished with the whole series by the end of next week. Tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic...

Posted by Ted Mills at 01:55 PM | | Comments (0)

Legally Blonde

Dir. Robert Luketic
2001
On an anthropological mission, Jessica and I watched this last night, my wife wanting to figure out why this was the most popular film around her office (which is not a law office). Reese Witherspoon stars as Elle, a sorority queen who winds up in Harvard Law School and a) learns to believe in herself b) teaches others to believe in herself and c) solves a major case through her knowledge of haircare products.
It's standard Hollywood comedy, with a couple of good lines ("I even had a Coppola direct my admissions video!" she pouts), but making the audience "feel good" is higher on the agenda than making them laugh. What's wrong here is typical of comedies for the last ten years: the film can't decide whether to be a farce, with cartoonish characters and crazy situations, or a realistic comedy drama, with the laughs coming out of the drama of well-rounded characters. Unlike Hong Kong or Bollywood cinema, where all genres are thrown into the blender, here the effect is to diminish the comedy.
The first half continually tells us how outlandish Elle is (everybody gets a dropped-jaw moment), but then the second half works equally hard to show us Elle's innate talent. I would like to think that an older comedy would have just began with the idea of a Barbie lawyer who wins cases through her keen eye for trivial fashion detail, then pitted her against an equally "specialized" lawyer. But as I said, the whole film serves to make us feel good that Elle feels good about herself, that if you "follow your dream" you will succeed, blah blah blah.
I'm curious whether Legally Blonde 2 has a bit more to say about the character...but then again I'm not that curious.
Link: There's an interesting interpretation of the film as a love letter to itself over at Metaphilm, where a writer simply called Kirby sees Elle representing the film itself, trying to ingratiate itself into the minds of the anti-Hollywood intelligentsia. I think the essay falls apart at the end, but I do like the line: "I have stopped making conscious decisions and have become the dreaming mind of the world." Is he quoting somebody?

Posted by Ted Mills at 01:53 PM | | Comments (0)

August 25, 2003

Kahimi Karie - Trapeziste

Victor VICL-61070
2003.02.21
I never thought I'd like another Kahimi Karie album again after the truly awful triple whammy of Once Upon a Time, Journey to the Center of Me, and Tilt, all of which together contained maybe about one decent song. The music was sonically dull, and Kahimi was way up beyond her already whisper thin range. This wasn't singing, this was asphyxiating. So what a surprise that Trapeziste is full of great grooves and a reformed chanteuse who talks and sing-songs her way through songs. Best of all, she often drops out of the song altogether and lets the rhythms do their thing—this album features some lovely arrangements. Kahimi even sings the Habanera from Carmen and doesn't sound out of her range or depth (though a native Frenchman would be able to tell me if her French has improved at all). Momus is, I think, nowhere to be seen this time, but the producing is done by Tomoki Kanda (Chocolat, etc.) and Koki Tokai from Ah! Folly Jet, a very eclectic mix of dub electronics and jazz (free, bebop, and some faux-Django). Some sounds live, but that could just be sound effects. Could it be that her fellow countrymen understand her better than her international suitors? (Which reminds me: I haven't heard the previous "My Suitor," which could either be worse or better.)

Posted by Ted Mills at 02:02 AM | | Comments (1)

Puffy - Nice

Epic/Sony ESCL-2357
2003.01.22
Sometimes you just gotta be in the mood. I think I spun Puffy's new one (well, newish one) about three times—twice at home, once in the car, where things are different—but didn't think much of it. It was like their last album—The Hit Parade—full of the usual Puffy pep, but running in circles. Now, suddenly, when I've thrown it on while I do some work, it has jumped out at me. I keep stopping and thinking, where did this come from? Have I really owned this since May? The secret to any good Puffy album is how well Tamio Okuda and the girls' other producer songwriters are doing, and this time Andy Sturmer producers and brings along some great stuff. The opening track "Red Swing" lifts from Jeff Lynne, but that wouldn't be the first time. By the time you realize the theft, they're onto a bit of Buggles ("Tokyo Nights") and some Madness-style ska ("K2G"), and that banjo-fueled pop folk that occasionally turns up in their music kitchen ("Shiawase"). And that's not to mention their best single in ages, which came out in 2001 and jumped an album to appear here, "Atarashii Hibi," a joyous little romp, full of power chords and a twirling organ-led hook. Nice, indeed.

Posted by Ted Mills at 01:59 AM | | Comments (0)

Vive l'amour

Dir. Tsai Ming-Liang
1994
I had to think if this really was the first Tsai Ming-Liang film I've seen. I don't count the first 10 minutes of The River I caught on The International Channel after I started taping it (I then misplaced the tape, forgetting to label it). And I don't count the numerous articles I've read on him. I think because I've seen many a Hou Hsiao Hsien film and a few Edward Yang films, that I knew in advance how to prepare for Tsai's films. And I was right.
Like Hou and Yang, Tsai believes in long takes, objective views, elliptical storytelling. He gives you just enough info to keep you going, then near the end of the film you realize you've been given so much that you know more than you thought about the characters. (Compare this to many a H'wood film where people blather on and on and by the end of the film we still don't know who these people are).
Vive l'Amour is a film about three alienated characters in a alienating city (Taipei) trying to connect and finding it hard to do so. The film sets up a early dichotomy between sex and death: the lonely Hsiao Kang (Kang-Sheng Lee) sells columbria (spaces in a crematorium) and when we first meet him he tries to commit suicide; May (Kuei-Mei Yang) sells real estate (big boxes for the living) and when we first meet her she meets and shags a night-market salesman, Ah-Jung (Chao-jung Chen). That these three people are all using this empty space (one of her sale properties) as a temporary location (Hsiao-Kang stole a misplaced key to get in) leads to a strange love triangle (Hsiao is gay and unlike May's relationship, engages in conversation with Ah-Jung). The movie is full of empty spaces, one-sided conversations, hidden emotions, and lonely distances. The film ends on a daring long take, which demonstrates Yang's talent as an actress, and how much she trusts the director.
Tsai also has a very subtle sense of humor, and in such a sad and lonely film manages to eak out some laughs (Ah-Jung falling on his ass when he hears somebody coming in the apartment, Ah-Jung later crawling out from under the bed, when the camera placement has us focused on the open doorway).
(Jessica was slightly bored by the film, but perked up in a scene where May eats at a "stinky tofu" stall. We had to stop the film and make some late-night snacks due to it.)
The DVD is by those foul anti-movie brigands Fox Lorber who have been producing careless transfers from many years now. How can one company be so consistently crap, I don't know. No extras, burned in subtitles, less than crisp image, with some murky black and some artifacts. I wonder if an Asian version would be better?
By the way, there's a nice essay on Tsai over at Senses of Cinema from which I nicked the photo.

Posted by Ted Mills at 01:32 AM | | Comments (0)

Jin-Roh - The Wolf Brigade

Dir. Hiroyuki Okiura
1998
"From the makers of Ghost in the Shell!" says the DVD box, but, they don't mention, not from the mind of Masamune Shirow (the manga creator). What looked to be a tech, sci-fi thing, turns out to be a psychological drama between a sort of Special Ops soldier in a fascist future Japan, the memory of the teenage girl terrorist who blows herself up in front of him, and the living sister who looks like her (a la Vertigo) who may or may not be linked to the underground movement. Apart from the alterna-history design to the film (it's set in a Tokyo that stopped evolving its architecture and automobiles around the 1950s, and spent all its money on the police force, what with the Nazis pulling out and the country battling terrorists) there wasn't too much reason for it to be an anime. (My friend Jon says that it's purely the economics of the Japanese film industry).
It's a nicely reserved film, and builds to a satisfactory twist ending that only amplifies the despair throughout. Maybe anime is the medium from which to deal with political issues (my fuzzy memory of Patlabor 2 reminds me of how intelligent that film's politics were, able to deal with sociological issues behind the mask of sci-fi action) and my above statement on shooting in anime is wrong. One thing that lets the film down is its reliance on rotoscoping, which let off the malodorous air of Ralph Bakshi. Tracing the real doesn't make things look real.

Posted by Ted Mills at 01:27 AM | | Comments (0)

August 23, 2003

Well, boo hoo.

Better get out the world's smallest violin for the SUVs destroyed. Can't say I'm very sad to see those things up in flames--today Jessica and I saw a totaled SUV on the other side of the freeway. The people inside were all right, but the gas-guzzler was a write-off. Good, we both said at the same time. (Hey kids, let's try to bring back that word--gas-guzzler--it really helped put the kibosh on wasteful cars the first time around, and can you see anyone 40 years from now waxing lyrical over the Ford Explorer? No. Anyway, we'll all be dead from global warming, so there won't be a chance.)

Radicals Target SUVs in Series of Southland Attacks

Sat Aug 23,11:35 AM ET

By Julie Tamaki, Jia-Rui Chong and Mitchell Landsberg

Vandals acting in the name of radical environmentalism struck four car dealerships and several individual car owners in the San Gabriel Valley early Friday, setting fire to one Chevrolet dealership and destroying or defacing dozens of Hummers and other SUVs, many painted with the word "polluter."

The Earth Liberation Front, a loose association of militant environmentalists, claimed responsibility for the attacks, which it said were intended to "take the profit motive" away from those responsible for pollution.

Posted by Ted Mills at 07:48 PM | | Comments (0)

Vegans, Reloaded

A vegan's response to The Matrix. (The bad guy eats Matrix steak; the good guys eat...what do they eat?)

Animal rights, Ecological Determinism and The Matrix.

As a vegan, I'm often confronted with various versions of this theory nonetheless, and even before the first Matrix movie was made, I used to ask my carnivorous interlocutors if manifestly more intelligent creatures would be justified in eating us. A similar argument is posited on one level by the two opening Matrix films. Presented with a world where humans are controlled by machines that are manifestly more intelligent than us, we are repelled, at least most of us are. It's a film that strives on one level to put us in the position that we put animals in at the moment.

By way of 24fps

Posted by Ted Mills at 03:23 PM | | Comments (0)

The Most Tedious of Things

You may have noticed a few things changing around the blogs on this site. If not, I'll point them out anyway. Each blog will have its appropriate links: Spires will feature political links, Stone Cold Pimpin' will feature links to other blogs of note, including my friends, Recordshelf will have music links, and so on.

I'm also getting all the archives in place, setting up talkbacks and counters for all, and will be throwing out the links page (for obvious reasons). Lastly, I want to get the "writing" page up and running, getting all my writing up online. If only I made enough money from said writing where I could pay someone else to do it!

Stay tuned for changes and possible news of me investigating the white slavery underground, where I may discover some cheap temp workers.

Posted by Ted Mills at 01:34 AM | | Comments (0)

August 22, 2003

Young, Gifted, and Iraq

This is a slightly old (in Internet terms) article, but still to the point, and backed up with examples.

The Soft Bigotry of Loose Adulation By William Saletan

3:55 p.m.: Thursday morning, President Bush greeted the people of Iraq on their TV screens. "You are a good and gifted people," he told them as Arabic script appeared below his face. I don't know Arabic, but I'm sure the translation didn't convey what Bush means by "gifted." He doesn't mean exceptional. He means ethnic.

If you're black, Hispanic, or a member of some other group often stereotyped as incompetent, you may be familiar with this kind of condescension. It's the way polite white people express their surprise that you aren't stupid. They marvel at how "bright" and "articulate" you are. Instead of treating you the way they'd treat an equally competent white person—say, by ignoring you—they fuss over your every accomplishment. When James Baker and Brent Scowcroft do their jobs, it's a non-story. When Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice do the same jobs, it's a newsmagazine cover.

By way of Daily Kos

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:37 AM | | Comments (0)

August 21, 2003

Completely stoopid on several levels

Okay, not as funny as the time I mistook a human head for bacon (though by now I think that particular Denny's should have gone out of business!), but this is one of the few times that art has made a criminal repent.

BBC NEWS: Bacon mistaken for human head

Police have apologised to an artist after raiding his home when an artwork made out of bacon was mistaken for a human head.

Richard Morrison, 37, of Wavertree, Liverpool, returned home to find his door had been kicked in by police with a search warrant.

They had been acting on a tip off from a criminal who had broken into the artist's home just days earlier.

He told officer he had seen a human head in Mr Morrison's house.

But it was in fact a mask made from rashers of bacon, stored in formaldehyde.


By way of Haddock Directory

Posted by Ted Mills at 04:31 PM | | Comments (0)

Lennon vs. Lenin

Oy! Again with the Russians. Here's an interesting look by historian Mikhail Safanov of how the Beatles brought down the Soviet Union.

Guardian Unlimited: Confessions of a Soviet moptop
During a chess match between Anatoly Karpov and Gary Kasparov in the 1980s, the two grandmasters were each asked to name their favourite composer. The orthodox communist Karpov replied: 'Alexander Pakhmutov, Laureate of the Lenin Komsomol award'. The freethinking Kasparov answered: 'John Lennon.'

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:49 PM | | Comments (0)

August 20, 2003

He Thought He Had It All...

By chance, we continue in our Hollywood theme of unsung heroes, with this feature on Don La Fontaine, the most famous voice-over artist you didn't know the name of. Don who? you may ask. Three words, baby: "In a world..."

Golden Voice

The lights dim. The trailer begins. "In a world beyond imagination..." No matter what the film, one man is always featured – only one man – alongside Arnold, Bruce and Sly. You never see him. But you know his voice: breathy, deep, sonorous, ominous. Don La Fontaine is the most successful, most ubiquitous voice-over actor working in show business promotion today. And although his agent, Steve Tisherman, is hesitant to reveal Don's salary, cinema's golden voice reluctantly admits that he is, in fact, "a millionaire...several times over."


By way of Creative Generalist

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:42 PM | | Comments (0)

'It was punishment without trial'

The casual disregard of human rights and the legal system in Iraq complements our further injustices in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. Incompetence? Maybe. Complete disregard for another country and its citizens? Of course.

The Guardian: 'It was punishment without trial':

"It was a warm spring evening in a Baghdad suburb when American troops stopped the car in which 11-year-old Sufian Abd al-Ghani was riding close to his home with his uncle and a neighbour. They were ordered out and told to lie face down on the road. Sufian's father heard the commotion and rushed out to find the soldiers pointing their rifles at his son and the others. Claiming the uncle had fired at them, they started beating the three captives with their rifle butts, according to the father.

A neighbour confirms that a shot had been fired, but it was part of a row between the Ghanis and another family. 'In Iraq this is normal. Almost every household in Baghdad owns a weapon. One man was drunk. The Americans must have heard the shot as they were passing. It was not directed at them,' says the neighbour, who prefers not to be named.

The American soldiers searched the Ghanis' house, but found nothing. For three hours Sufian was kept on the ground with the two adults. Then the Americans put hoods over their heads, tied their hands with tight plastic bracelets, and drove them away. 'Why are you taking my son?' a desperate Abdullah Ghani pleaded. 'Don't worry. As he's a child, we'll send him back in a couple of days,' a Sergeant Stark assured him. "

Am I being too cynical to wonder if this method of incarceration is being worked out in Iraq and Cuba before it's ultimate test in the United States? Will it take just one more crisis like 9-11 and until we are all rounded up?

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:12 AM | | Comments (0)

AAAAAAAAAARGH!

You may think you've never heard the Wilhelm Scream but you have: since 1951, when some Hollywood sound engineer recorded an anonymous actor screaming in three different flavors, the "Wilhelm Scream" has been used in movies ever since as everybody's favorite sound of anonymous death. The Wilhelm Scream site is devoted to cataloging Sir Wilhelm of Scream's numerous appearances. (Most recent: "Dell Computers - PC Dreams" TV Commercial (May 2003): One of the Dell Interns is repeatedly dropped through a trap door in a dream about how Dell computers are tested.")

Once you hear it, you'll keep on hearing it!

By way of J-Walk

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:01 AM | | Comments (0)

August 19, 2003

I don't think you can really have enough RUSSIAN ANTHEMS

Continuing in our Russian theme (check out my post over at the Spires), here's a wonderful collection of Russian Anthems for you to download. This will be a hit at any party or meeting. Or Party Meeting. To quote the site: As you can clearly see, Russian anthem technology is vastly superior to that of any other country.

Posted by Ted Mills at 10:06 PM | | Comments (0)

At least the Russians knew it was propaganda

Brian Eno weighs in and coins a new term: "prop-agenda," controlling what people think about.

Brian Eno: Lessons in how to lie about Iraq

The problem is not propaganda but the relentless control of the kind of things we think about

Brian Eno
Sunday August 17, 2003
The Observer

When I first visited Russia, in 1986, I made friends with a musician whose father had been Brezhnev's personal doctor. One day we were talking about life during 'the period of stagnation' - the Brezhnev era. 'It must have been strange being so completely immersed in propaganda,' I said.

'Ah, but there is the difference. We knew it was propaganda,' replied Sacha.

That is the difference. Russian propaganda was so obvious that most Russians were able to ignore it. They took it for granted that the government operated in its own interests and any message coming from it was probably slanted - and they discounted it.

In the West the calculated manipulation of public opinion to serve political and ideological interests is much more covert and therefore much more effective. Its greatest triumph is that we generally don't notice it - or laugh at the notion it even exists. We watch the democratic process taking place - heated debates in which we feel we could have a voice - and think that, because we have 'free' media, it would be hard for the Government to get away with anything very devious without someone calling them on it.

Posted by Ted Mills at 09:01 PM | | Comments (0)

August 18, 2003

Doctor decapitated by faulty elevator at hospital

So this stuff really does happen. I've often wondered if it could. Now I just run and jump into elevators when they arrive. Or take the stairs.

Doctor decapitated by faulty elevator at hospital
By PEGGY O'HARE
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle

Doctor was driven by compassion for indigent

An aspiring missionary doctor, who was voted by medical school classmates as the epitome of a good physician, was killed Saturday at Christus St. Joseph Hospital when an elevator malfunctioned, decapitating him, authorities said.

Hitoshi Nikaidoh, 35, of Dallas, a surgical resident at the hospital at 1919 La Branch, was stepping onto a second-floor elevator in the main building around 9:30 a.m. when the doors closed, pinning his shoulders, said Harold Jordan, an investigator with the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office. The elevator car then moved upward, severing the doctor's head, Jordan said.

Worse is that his co-worker was inside the elevator when it happened and had to stay in there with the head for an extended period before rescue workers could get her out. Brrrr.

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:51 PM | | Comments (0)

Finally, a Reality Show I Must Apply For!

If only I had rock-hard abs, was ten years younger, and half my IQ, I'd be down for this!

Lapdance Island

By way of Metafilter

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:39 PM | | Comments (0)

Can Anybody Stop This Kangaroo Court?

The illegal detention of prisoners at Camp X-Ray is an international shame and makes the U.S. look like a rogue state. Can any other country do anything about this? And why not?

Chicago Tribune: A chilling double standard turns U.S. into its own enemy
By Doug Cassel. Doug Cassel is director of the Center for International Human Rights of the Northwestern University School of Law
Published August 17, 2003

We would howl -- and rightly so.
Suppose the following American commandos are captured in North Korea. For 18 months they are held in small cages with no access to lawyers or courts, no charges, and denied prisoner-of-war status. Imagine our reaction when, at long last, North Korea announces that they may be put on 'trial' under the following conditions:
They will be tried by panels of North Korean military officers, hand-picked by Kim Jong Il's minister of defense, on whom their careers depend. Only one need be a lawyer.
Their trials may be closed on grounds of North Korean national security.
They will be defended by North Korean military lawyers.
They may request civilian lawyers, but only North Koreans, who must first be granted security clearances by the government.
They cannot be assured of private communications with their civilian lawyers; North Korea's military reserves the right to eavesdrop on their conversations.
Their civilian lawyers may be denied access to secret evidence against them and excluded from closed hearings.
Their civilian lawyers may not make any public statements about the case without military approval.
Their civilian lawyers may not discuss the case with other lawyers or outside consultants, may not leave the base without military permission, and may not request any delay to attend to other professional commitments.
They may be convicted and sentenced to death on the basis of evidence that would not be admitted in a court of law.
They may not ask any court to review the lawfulness of their detention or trial.
If convicted, they may not appeal to any court. They can appeal findings of fact against them only to Kim Jong Il or his minister of defense. They can appeal questions of law only to a second panel of military officers (only one of whom need have experience as a judge), and then, again, to Kim or his minister.
Even if they are found not guilty, North Korea reserves the right to imprison them indefinitely, until it deems America no longer a threat.
None of us would stand for such an outrage. Our State Department would denounce North Korea for violating human rights and minimum international standards for fair trials and due process of law.

Of all the evil to come out of the Bush Junta, this is the worst, but because prisoners on the whole are hard to care about (it requires a large shift in thinking), it goes pretty much without comment. It's easy to hold up a "Bring the Troops Home" sign, but how hard would it be to protest with "Give the Guatanamo Prisoners a Fair Trial" on a placard? Good luck.

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:30 PM | | Comments (0)

August 17, 2003

Server Troubles (briefly)

I experienced a mini-blackout of my own this past weekend, when on Friday evening my email and web page packed up. It was too late to call my provider, so I had to do so Saturday morning. I discovered that I hadn't renewed www.tedmills.com. But why hadn't I been informed? Apparently, my provider had been sending me emails, but at my old domain address. Baka. The mistake was rectified, but I had to wait nearly 24 hours to use email again. Difference: I seem to have been dropped from several mailing lists, I guess because the mailbot kept getting bounced back mails. Crapola.

Posted by Ted Mills at 08:13 PM | | Comments (0)

August 15, 2003

Is the blackout a sign of things to come?

Greg Palast, writing by candlelight, brings us his take on the blackouts

POWER OUTAGE TRACED TO DIM BULB IN WHITE HOUSE --- The Tale of The Brits Who Swiped 800 Jobs From New York, Carted Off $90 Million, Then Tonight, Turned Off Our Lights:

"Is tonight's black-out a surprise? Heck, no, not to us in the field who've watched Bush's buddies flick the switches across the globe. In Brazil, Houston Industries seized ownership of Rio de Janeiro's electric company. The Texans (aided by their French partners) fired workers, raised prices, cut maintenance expenditures and, CLICK! the juice went out so often the locals now call it, 'Rio Dark.'
So too the free-market cowboys of Niagara Mohawk raised prices, slashed staff, cut maintenance and CLICK! -- New York joins Brazil in the Dark Ages.
Californians have found the solution to the deregulation disaster: re-call the only governor in the nation with the cojones to stand up to the electricity price fixers. And unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gov. Gray Davis stood alone against the bad guys without using a body double. Davis called Reliant Corp of Houston a pack of 'pirates' --and now he'll walk the plank for daring to stand up to the Texas marauders.
"

Posted by Ted Mills at 10:44 AM | | Comments (0)

Field recording is the new ambient

I find myself more and more fascinated by those who record, manipulate, and release field recordings. This one site has much to download, links to other artists, and some good essays on doing it yourself.
quiet american
By way of Robot Action Boy

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:15 AM | | Comments (0)

August 14, 2003

The Theft of Your Vote Is Just a Chip Away

This was passed on by a friend, and I've blogged on this before, but this article is long and in-depth. At least they said the California recall will have to be hand-counted (that could change). Anyway, this comes from Thom Hartmann:

AlterNet: The Theft of Your Vote Is Just a Chip Away:
"Are computerized voting machines a wide-open back door to massive voting fraud? The discussion has moved from the Internet to CNN, to UK newspapers, and the pages of The New York Times. People are cautiously beginning to connect the dots, and the picture that seems to be emerging is troubling.


'A defective computer chip in the county's optical scanner misread ballots Tuesday night and incorrectly tallied a landslide victory for Republicans,' announced the Associated Press in a story on Nov. 7, just a few days after the 2002 election. The story added, 'Democrats actually won by wide margins.' "

Posted by Ted Mills at 10:21 PM | | Comments (0)

Did Blaster cause the blackouts?

No evidence, but good theory.

America suffers from power down
If the Blaster worm is anything to do with this outage, we also suspect Microsoft may be asked if it's anything to do with it. Plus the contractors who were not listened to, we understand, told management patches needed to be applied. Some one should lose their job. Michael Bloomberg, perhaps?

Here in Europe, we think too much of the US economy relies on Windows, on Microsoft and PCs. We might be wrong about this. But we wouldn't be surprised if we were right.

So, er, Mr. President, didn't we teach a good lesson to potential terrorists today? Apparently, it's very easy to immobilize major American and Canadian cities. Mr. President?

Posted by Ted Mills at 10:17 PM | | Comments (0)

August 10, 2003

Actual figure may vary slightly from item shown

No, no, no. Wrong, wrong, wrong. On the other hand, I have a feeling that many advance orders are being filled right now by legions of student filmmakers. I just hope Commander Bunnypants winds up taking his orders from an anatomically correct Ken doll.
Elite Force Aviator: George W. Bush

Posted by Ted Mills at 04:53 PM | | Comments (0)

More Happy Tales of Iraqi Freedom

The new, kinder-gentler approach to the Iraqi Oil Occupation is coming along fine, I see.

Family shot dead by panicking US troops
"The story of how Adel abd al-Kerim and three of his children were killed emerged yesterday, exactly 100 days after President George Bush declared the war in Iraq was over. In Washington yesterday, Mr Bush declared in a radio address: 'Life is returning to normal for the Iraqi people ... All Americans can be proud of what our military and provisional authorities have achieved in Iraq.'

But in this city Iraqi civilians still die needlessly almost every day at the hands of nervous, trigger-happy American soldiers.

Doctors said the father and his two daughters would have survived if they had received treatment quicker. Instead, they were left to bleed to death because the Americans refused to allow anyone to take them to hospital.

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:59 AM | | Comments (0)

August 08, 2003

Stop Motion Sense

A simple idea really: a series of still photos from the same location, shot in a minimal time frame, stitched together randomly by Flash. What results is a unnerving display of time eating itself, people's facial and body language coming unstuck from its original meaning and gaining new ones. More, please. (update: there is more.)
Stop Motion Studies - Series 2

From the web site:

All imagery was shot in London, England between October 12 and October 15, 2002. The camera used was a Canon PowerShot A40 -- a consumer grade still camera capable of taking roughly 64 low-resolution images per minute. The photos were then brought into Flash MX to be programmatically sequenced and formatted for the Web. There has been no cropping or retouching applied to the images.
By way of Boing Boing

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:12 AM | | Comments (0)

August 06, 2003

The Other O'Reilly Factor

Well, if you're Larry Flynt and you're running for governor, I guess you come out swingin'. I suppose this is in response to Pat Robertson urging his flock to pray for the deaths of three of the Supreme Court judges. Good image if you follow the link.


NATIONAL PRAYER DAY - PRAY FOR THE DEATH OF BILL O'REILLY

HUSLTER Magazine invites you to join us in prayer.
On Tuesday, August 5th at 12:45pm, we have organized a special gathering to pray to God for Fox News Channel blowhard Bill O'Reilly's death.
The service will be held in Los Angeles at Cornerstone Plaza, 1990 S. Bundy Drive. Located on the corner of Bundy Drive and LaGrange Av e.
DISCLAIMER: This serious gathering will truly take place, however if O'Reilly dies, it must be God's will.


Posted by Ted Mills at 01:07 AM | | Comments (0)

August 05, 2003

Did the U.S. know about the Jakarta bomb beforehand?

Hey, this is curious, and so far there's been only two places that's reported this that I know of: Yahoo Taiwan and Fox 41 in Loiusville (I'm sure more will follow, but maybe not). The whole article tells us things we know already, but then comes to this paragraph:


Johan Labetiubun, reporting to Fox News via phone from Jakarta, said that several hours before the explosion, the U.S. Embassy had canceled three-day reservations for about 20 rooms in the Marriott.
Now, does this mean the bomb was meant for the U.S. Embassy guests (and who were they)? Were the bookings for that day? And if so does that mean that the Embassy got a tip? And if so, why didn't they warn the other guests?
Complete Story Here

Posted by Ted Mills at 09:56 PM | | Comments (0)

August 04, 2003

We Knew All Along

No surprise here. The Bush fascists have been targeting their domestic enemies all along.


U.S. Anti-War Activists Hit by Secret Airport Ban
"After more than a year of complaints by some US anti-war activists that they were being unfairly targeted by airport security, Washington has admitted the existence of a list, possibly hundreds or even thousands of names long, of people it deems worthy of special scrutiny at airports.

The list had been kept secret until its disclosure last week by the new US agency in charge of aviation safety, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). And it is entirely separate from the relatively well-publicised 'no-fly' list, which covers about 1,000 people believed to have criminal or terrorist ties that could endanger the safety of their fellow passengers.

The strong suspicion of such groups as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is suing the government to try to learn more, is that the second list has been used to target political activists who challenge the government in entirely legal ways. The TSA acknowledged the existence of the list in response to a Freedom of Information Act request concerning two anti-war activists from San Francisco who were stopped and briefly detained at the airport last autumn and told they were on an FBI no-fly list.

Posted by Ted Mills at 09:56 PM | | Comments (0)

Men At Work - Cargo

CBS/Columbia CK 38660
1982.10
Men at Work stand as the first band I ever saw live, back when I was a wee lad in 1982. They played the Santa Barbara County Bowl with Mental As Anything opening (how's that for an '80s flashback?). It's probably where I smelled pot the first time. It was certainly my first tour T-shirt (longsleeve baseball-style, as was the fashion). And Cargo has been in my collection since it came out. But I hadn't listened to it for a long time until I got the CD (and not the remastered version, which I'm still looking for).

Far from being Police-copyists and a dated embarrassment, I think the album still holds up well. This was the early '80s, so the drums are not Gotterdamerung-volume. Apart from a few twee synth sounds here and there, the band is tight (they're like a poppy King Crimson on "I Like To,"? an otherwise throwaway song that turns into an angular jam). Best of all is Colin Hay's lyrics and general songwriting. Yes, he wrote a song about a Vegemite sandwich, but most of this album is sunshine-dappled angst. I think there's a total of one song that could be considered a love song"”"Blue For You"?"”and that ends with intimations of suicide ("I could take a big jump!"?). But mostly there's this: "Blood on the pillow on my bed / Explains the pain that's in my head."? ("High Wire"?). Or songs about nuclear war ("It's a Mistake"?), angst-fueled insomnia ("Overkill"? a great song that was always too dark to have been a single), directionlessness ("No Restrictions"?), or post-breakup depression (the also fabulous and justifiably long "No Sign of Yesterday"?). Great guitars solos on all these, and I'm not a guitar solo guy. They're minimal but refined.

The other thing I enjoyed: the air between the instruments. There's been so much muddy production recently that the sound of this album suddenly stood out as enjoyably crisp. I never followed Men at Work after the core group split (and "Two Hearts"? is just a jumble of sequenced noise), but I'd like to believe Colin Hay is still writing some good tunes. (Decide for yourself.)

Posted by Ted Mills at 04:22 PM | | Comments (1)

August 03, 2003

Those crazy, scary teenagers strike again

Eagle-eyed TSA agents stop sarcasm from blowing up plane. After Jessica came back from Mexico last month with a $200 suitcase destroyed by the monkeys at TSA--even after watching her open the case and leave everything unlocked, some shmoe still snapped off our latches--I dislike these guys even more.
Yet, read the language used in the article. Though this teen may be guilty of swearing and some pretty typical anti-authortarian nose-thumbing, there's nothing in his note that's a "bomb threat". In fact, there's no threat made at all. The reporter's language is just as assumptive as the neighbor interviewed at the end of the article ("I always thought he was a good kid." He still is, you dingleberry!)

Teen arrested at Logan for alleged bomb threat in his bag
By Nicole Fuller, Globe Correspondent, 8/2/2003
A Paxton teenager was arraigned on a felony charge yesterday morning after he and his family were removed from a plane bound for Hawaii following the discovery of a profanity-filled note referencing a bomb in his luggage examined at Logan International Airport.
Appearing in court with his navy blue T-shirt pulled up over his face, 17-year-old David Socha pleaded not guilty to one count of making a bomb/hijacking threat in East Boston District Court, as his parents and younger sister looked on.
Ann E. Davis, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration, said the note was discovered by a baggage screener at about 6:20 a.m. when the bag was chosen for a random search. No bomb was found.
Socha was arrested by State Police and his mother, father, and sister, were ordered off United Airlines Flight 171 to Honolulu via San Francisco, which was set to depart at 7:07 a.m.
According to the polic