My Goal For 2008

Flying Humans, Hoping to Land With No Chute – New York Times

My goal for 2008 is to lose enough weight and get into enough shape that I can start BASE jumping, learning how to do it, so that I can make a wingsuit jump, in the next five years.

No, I’m not kidding.

Here’s the thing: I don’t need to weight train or anything like that. I’m muscular as fuck. My calves are big around as most people’s thighs. I can dead-lift about 150 pounds without breaking a sweat and about 250 if I really strain. I can leg-press nearly 900 pounds.

It’s just covered with, well, fat. I’m like the Terminator if it was wrapped in marshmallow instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

So I’m gonna lose it. And I’m gonna learn to parachute. And then I’m gonna fly.

links for 2008-01-12

More Random Thoughts Of The Day

  • The more social networks come into being, and the more people talk about what it all means, the more I want to chuck all my fucking computers into a bin and go live in the woods. I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to be your Magic Special Interwubbie Friend, and I don’t give a burning rat’s ass about your pictures from that party where you got drunk and made out with your BFF. I only use the MySpace to stalk ex-girlfriends and see which one of you was dumb enough to let your password get jacked.
  • One of the worst things about the Internet is that it lets us communicate and share. Know what? I didn’t need to know about Cory Doctorow’s Disney fetish. Really. I used to see Cory at parties, he gave me his old Disney business card, it was cute, I thought it was funny. And that’s ALL. The Internet is the best way to realize that other people we thought were fun and sane are, in fact, creepy obsessives. (Apparently, it does nothing to aid the realization that you yourself are a creepy obsessive, otherwise presumably people would stop. And yes, I like synthesizers. And Lovecraft. You see six posts a day on here with synthesizer paper cutouts and Cthulhu furryporn? No. You don’t.)
  • P2P file sharing really only hurts the sales of the most massively popular media. The long tail ain’t properly represented. Wanna see what I mean? Do a search on The Pirate Bay for Kanye West. Then do a search for, say, Daniel Lanois. Go ahead. I’ll wait. [waiting] You see what I mean? Dozens or more hits for Kanye. But Lanois? One or two torrents, no real seeders – this is gonna take a while. If you’re a discerning patron of music who wants to obtain a copy of Lanois’s For The Beauty Of Wynona, you’d be better off looking on iTunes or Amazon or the man’s own site, where you can purchase a high-quality copy of the album, DRM-free, for a reasonable price. This is also why P2P will never be a viable medium for disseminating media. It relies on the tyranny of the majority. And the majority are fucking retards who thought Graduation was a good album. (The best thing about it was Kanye ripping off Daft Punk. Just buy the fuckin’ Daft Punk album. It’s better.)
  • I’m working on this. Really hard. I’ll have something to announce soon, inshallah.

Random Thought Of The Day

I think whatever it is the rest of you are hearing in The Arcade Fire, I’m hearing in The National. The only track off that last AF album I really like is “(Antichrist Television Blues)”, and even that feels too affected, too preciously Springsteen-ish without the naturality of Springsteen. No dynamics. Same problem I had with Sam’s Town, quite frankly: Brandon always sounds like he’s singing to a stadium, even when he ought to be singing like he’s talking quietly to a single person. Born To Run is a highlight, not a default option. Didn’t anybody listen to Nebraska?

I like music best when it’s intimate. And real intimacy isn’t about being as pretty or as fucking, I dunno, meaningful as you can be. It’s about space and silence and the unspoken. It’s whispering together in the dark.

Things I'm Listening To These Days

Music I’m digging on at the moment:

  • My own stuff, of course, since I’m recording my album.
  • Bat For Lashes, Fur And Gold. Superb.
  • Matthew Dear, Asa Breed. Also excellent, and similar to some of what I’m doing.
  • The National, Boxer. I met a couple of these guys at SxSW 2004, and I’m delighted to see their star rising. This album is incredibly good. It’s serious music, which I prefer to the tongue-in-cheek shit. We get it, you don’t really mean it. The National does.
  • Burial, Untrue. Didn’t like it much at first, but now I find myself going around singing the weird stretchy vocals from “Archangel” under my breath.

And not much else, frankly — not out of lack of love, but because I’m so focused on my own work right now.

List of oldest companies – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Did you know that the oldest continually operating company in the world was a Japanese construction firm that was founded in 578 and liquidated in 2006? (The next oldest is a hotel in Komatsu, founded in 717.) Or that Beretta Firearms was founded in 1526, when Mastro Beretta was paid 296 ducats in payment for 185 arquebus barrels by the Arsenal of Venice?

Wikipedia’s list of the oldest continually operating companies in the world is completely fascinating.

(via City Of Sound)