Witness the day that Babylon shall fall...

Still think all jungle sounds the same, but that doesn't mean it isn't wicked. Case in point: this track, that I remember dancing to at Angels.

Have an argument about a frying pan...

When lovely, Jamaica-bound Larissa and equally lovely Matt came to stay a few weeks ago, they showed me a hilarious and brilliant thing by Lev Yilmaz. I've now gone through all of this fellow's videos and I think he's all the more hilarious and brilliant. Take the following, for example.

Ahh, the "quirky best friend"

I've been a little obsessed with Louis Theroux for quite some time. Thing is, I never really was too interested in the "Off Off Broadway" episode of Weird Weekends. Taking a break from proposal writing, I decided I'd watch it this evening. I am still laughing. I know it's old, but this is possibly the best thing Mr. Theroux has ever done.

I miss being an English Lit grad sutdent sometimes...

Bakhtin came up in conversation the other day. I realized, at the time, that I miss talking about literature. The next day, however, in one of my classes, I got to bring my favourite Russian literary theorist in through the back door. One of my students asked whether his interpretation of "Mr. Tambourine Man" was wrong, since it was different from the one I'd just finished presenting.

Recalling Bakhtin's famous statement that "Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction”, I explained this notion to the class--in prolly too many words. It was terribly fun and, when another student exclaimed, ten minutes later,"Yeah, but poetry is still useless", I didn't have to argue with him, because the class jumped on him. "Maybe it's the discussion of the poem that's important, rather than the poem itself," another said. I almost cheered.

Tunes.

This is amazing. I've been stuck in a weird nostalgia phase for a while now, and this is therefore perhaps the best thing ever.

Oh, so true.

So true. But only a Yank or a Canuck would ever say it. And then you're just ridiculed and called a puritan. The fact that it comes from the fear-mongering paper doesn't really help my case though.

I got this from the one blog I read that makes me feel like it's the year 2000 and I'm eavesdropping in on someone else's life rather than the obsessive downloading of new tunes/political punditry that passes for my blog reading these days.

From my Aunt Arlene...

Real human beings? Really?

So yes, I went and exercised my right to vote this morning. For some reason voting always gets me a little choked up--the fact that we don't have to wait for much longer than 15 minutes, it's so easy, and I can vote freely...

Anyhow, before I went to the polling station, I checked online to see what kind of info I had to drag along with me. On the Elections Canada website, it lists a bunch of ways to get in touch with them, including the following:

Telephone:
* Automated services are available 24 hours a day. Actual human beings are available from 7:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. (Eastern Time).

Good to know.

T-E-R-R-O-R-I-S-T

Wicked mix--especially the DJ Vadim drop. I used to love that tune. Well done.

Funny.

Sure, it's from the UK, but you could change party names and make it relevant to Canada:

Switching from Labour to the Tories is like saying: “Ooh, I’ve always had my hair done at the barber’s in the high street but I'm bored with them now, so this time I think I’ll set my hair on fire." - Jeremy Hardy

I hate talking about myself...

...but for grant applications, that's what you have to do. I also get worried about what folks I admire will say about what I'm saying about myself. In light of this, allow me to talk about something completely different.

On Blogariddims 49, the penultimate edition of my favourite ongoing dj-mixed tape podcast, the idea is to draw the lines of connection between dubstep and electronica. Incidentally, in my review of Burial's Untrue, I did exactly that and heard from some folks that I was making a bit of a stretch. Having used episode 49 as writing music for the past week or so, I think I was right on. My ish, about eight years ago or so, was all electronic--IDM, if I may be so boldly pretentious to say. But I always liked the slightly more melodically driven stuff. It's this stuff that seems to inch into the dubstep I like the most. I don't like when pure melody is dropped into dubstep (see the absolute fun-suck that is Digital Mystikz's "Earth a run red" version for evidence).

As droid (who is much more schooled in the tunes and touchstones of UK music than I ever will be) says on his blog: I see dubstep as part of the rich tradition of Electronica and 140bpm UK dance music, not a direct ancestor, but rather as a scene that draws on the same foundations…

Well, gosh darn it, I do too.