AnimaMundi

Longtemps or Where The Runoff Goes

For those 7,845 unique readers who look at my blog each and everyday, I would like to tell you that I am still standing. As for blogging, I have turned to micro-blogging. Is that what they call it nowadays? I might still post here occasionally, but for the most part I can be found over at Marco's Loose Ends, Tumblr-ing away. This format is more suited to our ADS digital life support system, non? Quick, precise, succinct, image-driven.

Soundcloud (everything is going up to the cloud now or will be soon, including ourselves) is a music hosting service where all kinds of music is shared. Everything is being connected on the Interwebs. Social networks link to blogs, blogs connect to forums et al. Fairly soon, one will not able to whisper in one's own bedroom without the whole world knowing it. But who cares? I like my privacy, but I'm not hiding anything. Back to the music. At Soundcloud I can post 120 minutes of mixed music. That mix will change every now and then. It's like having my own mini-radio station. The neat thing is that Soundcloud and Tumblr are automatically linked up. Well, you have to check a box and this happens. Some connections on the Interwebs are better than others.

So, see you there, all 7,845 of you. You know who are.  

How to Use MIDI to Make an iPad More Musically Connected, Productive: Video, Resources

via createdigitalmusic.com

I wish I could understand more of this stuff. Great music making powers lie within. Thanks to Rob Walker (@notrobwalker on Twitter) http://journal.robwalker.net/ for the link.

(Com)passionate Mercy

It was the poet, Kenneth Patchen, I believe, who said that the above is all that really matters. The rest is bullshit or close. It doesn't matter that there is a blizzard raging and that i-bloated-Tunes is not allowing me to stream one my favorite radio stations and I can't insert a link to said station because OS-X and Safari doesn't like the way I am going about it. 

With Explorer, highlighting text and inserting a link was as easy as dumping on Rachel "Gatemouth" Ray. Not today. At least I am not on hold with SONY.

Update: Using Firefox I have no problema with link insertion.

I have been reading more about writing lately, mostly because of Maud Newton and Mark Folse writing about writing. These people are writers. So is David Oliver. So is my friend Alfonso, on the wine trail in Italia. So is Regina Schrambling and The Gurgling "Cranky" Cod. And how could I forget Jesse Kornbluth, Head Butler of culture and humanity? I am not one of the fluent ones. I have always had difficulty writing. Logos has never been my forte. Maybe it has something to do with my education or my temperament. My English teachers were not founts of inspiration for me. My high school English teacher was nicknamed "Tiger" Lowry. He had halitosis and did not instill any passion for reading great literature. He spoke in a monotone and we all fidgeted in our seats waiting for the next class. There were a few dorks who licked up to him, but for the most part he earned the nickname. He was not a tiger. He was fucking boring. I did have a college professor who was passionate about poetry. He at least lit a small fire under me about literature. I appreciated him more after I left college. He instilled some curiosity in me about great poets and writers.

Anxiety about writing, anxiety about not writing, writer's block, writer's blockade, feeling, cold intellect, depression, curiosity, spigots, arcs, cascading cadences, succinctness, grammar, imagination, obsession, fear, self-loathing, reflection, narcissism, self-reference, meta this, meta that, irony, wit, humor, literalism, monotheism, monoculture, dumbing down, elitism, discerning audience, mediocrity... Oy, I could go on but what's the point? There is no point. There is only what is and what is becoming. Don't forget the histrionics and history.  And if it does not contain a milligram of compassionate mercy, what's it worth? 

I am three score plus and am just learning this. There is no on-off switch.

SONY, Full of Baloney / Bologna

On December 11, 2010, I bought a SONY all-in-one pc directly from SONY's website. For the model I bought, SONY offered a $200 rebate. Just so you know, SONY's website sucks. This is not good for a technology corporation looking to recover from its fall from the number one consumer electronics giant that it once was. The pc arrived on December 17th. I unpacked it, plugged it and powered it up. I waited and waited. A faint windows set up screen appeared briefly and then faded into the ether net. I tried several more times and the SONY was very consistent. It did the same thing, fade out without a sound. I called SONY tech support who instructed me to boot up using a few different F keys. Nothing. Tech support told me that that they would immediately contact a local technician. After over a week+, I had heard nothing. I called SONY again and they said that they would contact locally subcontracted tech support to respond as asap. A local service tech person called on December 30 and said that he would try to make it to my home on the 31st. On the morning of December 31st, the tech person called and said that he was at a gas station repairing their satellite and would not be able to come to my home until January 3rd. The tech guy showed up on January 3rd. In this room, he opened the parts that SONY had sent him for the repair of my PC. SONY had sent him plenty of RAM sticks, but nothing that he could use to repair my pc. He left and told me that he would call when SONY sent him the right components to make my pc functional. On January 7th I was contacted by another local technician who came to our home on January 8th. He also could not repair my pc because SONY had not provided him with the correct components. He was courteous and apologized, explaining that the giant corporation was revamping its system (aren't they always?) and he was waiting for parts ordered in October of 2010. Not good SONY, not good at all. Gino, the technician, left.

In the interim, I had emailed SONY three times and received no response. I then called SONY customer care and demanded a refund. I told them that I wanted a customer return number and they directed me how to obtain one. They also made sure that I understood that I was responsible for return shipping, insurance and a possible restocking fee. I packed up the lame device this morning and shipped it back to SONY. It cost me $71.36 to do so. I am planning to dispute the charge on my credit card. So much for SONY. Buyer beware. 

Update: SONY refuses to refund the cost of shipping and insurance ($71.36). However, they did this today while informing me that when I first called them to request a refund, the rep could have offered me free shipping! So, SONY is not only technologically and organzationally challenged, they are also duplicitous.

Capital One, another corporate bloodsucker, does not allow disputed charges of shipping costs. 

The Summer of Death Or Who Died Today?

A few days ago, I had written a short draft about the deaths of so many celebrities this summer, but then deleted it. It wasn't going anywhere and I was hot & humid-blitzed and still am.

Ironically, our current culture is one of a denial of death at all costs. Yet the media that we have created only serve to heighten our awareness of the deaths of many more people around the planet on any given day or month. The ghost in the machine seems to reflect another opposite facet of the obsessive cult of immortality and the puer aeternus.

It was when I saw this "Abundance of Death" post on Kottke that I started to think about the big D again, as I am wont to do every now and then. Coincidentally, this past winter was pretty deadly for friends and relatives, one of the more plentiful crops for the grim reaper in recent memory. Last February, I remember looking at my cousin's obit photograph in The Westerly Sun. I couldn't have seen that picture on the web say 10-15 years ago.

On August 20, 2009, I heard on NPR that the average life expectancy in the USA has risen to 78 or so. Men clock in at 75+. Women at 80+. Women have always and still rule. According to NPR's 2007 stats, we are still 3rd on the planet in terms of life expectancy. But the ever reliable Wikipedia, ranks us as #50. The figures are from the 2009 World Fact Book. Big discrepancy. I'll try to look into this slight gap.

The Daily Death highlights an increasing awareness of the deaths of celebrities and micro-celebrities due to the convergence of 24-7 news, gossip web sites, Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds et al.

Kottke wrote about the future obituary glut in 2005: 

"Frankly, I don't know how we're all going to handle this. Chances are in 15-20 years, someone famous whose work you enjoyed or whom you admired or who had a huge influence on who you are as a person will die each day...and probably even more than one a day. And that's just you...many other famous people will have died that day who mean something to other people. Will we all just be in a constant state of mourning? Will the NY Times national obituary section swell to 30 pages a day? As members of the human species, we're used to dealing with the death of people we "know" in amounts in the low hundreds over the course of a lifetime. With higher life expectancies and the increased number of people known to each of us (particularly in the hypernetworked part of the world), how are we going to handle it when several thousand people we know die over the course of our lifetime?"

On my Google home page I have the NY Times obituaries in a side bar. Sometimes I find out about a death otherwise, e.g. Manny Oquendo who died on March 25, 2009, and wondered why his obit didn't get into the NY Times until April 12th. Here is one of the premier Latino bandleaders and timbaleros of all time and it took over two weeks for his obituary to show up in the NY Times! He was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, not that far from West 43rd St. in Manhattan, as the crow flies. But when a pioneer of the study ulcers dies it takes less than a week for his death to make the obituary hit list. WTF? I mean come on. I wonder how long it would take for Joey Shithead's death to make it into the NY Times obits?

In today's NY Times obit, there's a entry for Larry Knectel. Who the hell is he? He was part of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound group, The Wrecking Crew. How would I have know this unless I was a knowledgeable fanatic? I vaguely remember his name on the credits to some albums. The web makes us aware of the deaths of people we would never had known shit about. I have bought cd's as a result of the NY Times obit of a musician that I had heard of but did not own any of his/her work.

Lots of Death ahead. But the one death of the summer of 2009 that keeps on giving will never die, really. His death is the only one to bring down the mighty Twitter. Not many or any will do that again. Wait, it's Michael Jackson's birthday. On which day he was supposedly buried.

P.S. If it wasn't for the web, I think the death of Ellie Greenwich would have gone largely unnoticed. I didn't know who she was, but the music that she wrote, ah...

And Eunice Shriver and Ted Kennedy, the 3rd longest serving member of the US Senate? Who were the other two who served longer? One of whom is still a senator.

It's telling that when one mentions celebrity deaths, people take notice. During 2009, many people anonymous to the internet have died while struggling to make a life. Most of these deaths go unchronicled and unnoticed. Some of these people have created a life of service to humanity. They don't receive headlines and would shun it if they did. These people are the ones who pass the cup to the next generation.

On MSM, at the end of the year they show the faces of the people who died during 2009. It will be something else this year.  

 

P.S. I know that this is choppy and doesn't flow very well. That's because I had a very stolid boring high school English teacher. His nickname was "Tiger Lowry" and he had halitosis.

Update: The Awl is upset about coinage of the phrase "Summer of Death."

Was it NY Magazine?

I believe it was The Awl.

Update: The summer of death ain't over, yet. Ismael Valenzuela died yesterday.

Update: Mr. D has about a week left to the summer of 2009. In the interim Larry Helbert, Patrick Swayze, Sheila Lukins and Norma Rae.

Omission: Reverend Ike died on July 28, 2009.

Update: The Grim Reaper's swath of the summer of 2009 isn't over yet. RIP Mary Travers and Henry Gibson.

Update: Kottke spots Kurt Anderson quoting David Kipen on Twitter.

The Awl on the NY Times getting in on the act too.

I forgot about James Luther Dickinson and David Carradine.

The autumnal equinox is at 5:18 pm September 22, 2009.

The 2009 Summer of Death is now officially over.

 

A Book Is A Book Is A Book...

I read print in hardbound and trade paperback books, rarely in newspapers and magazines, cd liner notes (almost impossible even with magnifiers), ingredients on food packaging, wine bottle labels and mostly nowadays on a computer monitor. I do most of my reading now online. I do not see myself ever buying a Kindle. When I read a novel, short stories or a book about mythology or whatever, I prefer a hardbound copy or a trade paperback. Quality trade paperbacks are my choice since they are more easily held, lighter, cheaper and more flexible. I love the smell of a new book. I usually open a new book or like new book and smell the spine. Is this a fetish?  I would miss that quirk. Mass market paperbacks are flimsy and usually the print is miniscule, so I avoid them. I have read about the pros and cons of Kindle, but remain unconvinced. If I was a commuter or stuck in a God-forsaken cubicle, I might reconsider. They are light, portable, the contrast seems to be good and they are easily hidden. I don't travel for extended periods of time so I need only one book, if that. If and when I go to Sicily or Calabria again, the book is written on every stone I would fortunately step on.

Maud Newton has written a timely freely-associated (the entry is really for her upcoming moderation of a panel on Literature and The Digital Age) post on the various forms of books in the digital age:

"As Toni Morrison observed in her endorsement for the Kindle, reading novels means entering another world. When I’m fully immersed, I don’t focus on the pages, or how I move between them, but on the story itself."

As usual, Maud gets to the heart of the matter in her own succinct way.

Here's the rub for me. I know that my fictional novel reading has suffered due to my online reading. By online reading, I mean reading articles, or blogposts of fairly limited length. Oh, yes and YouTube. ADS and eyestrain, I know, but when I see an online article that is, say, 10-15 LONG pages, I balk. I do read them, but rarely and only when I get swept into the narrative of another world. Lately, I find myself unable to read a sustained print novel of say 400-600 pages. Under 400 or so, I'm still good if the narrative flow or author's style grabs my attention somehow and the story's rhythm(s) begins to resonate, transporting me to landscapes, villages, cities, other worlds, mindscapes, emotionally treacherous terrain and times out of time. Yes, also to short stories and essays. Thank you, Eudora Welty. "Love Is A Four Letter Word" took a few days, but that's only because I didn't want to finish it too quickly.
But my attention span is variable and seasonal, and yes, I know ADS again. Is this something that is digitally induced or is it just old age? Or a combination of the two?  I have unread books on my shelf that have been there for 20+ years. They keep me company. They tell me that I have much more to discover. Maybe I should wait until I open that one book and it will look like the ones on my shelf and "will be whatever book I desire when I open it".
 

  

BUYDIG.COM---BEACH CAMERA

We just bought a 40" Samsung HDTV from Buydig.com. It arrived Monday. Before the delivery men left, I opened the box up and plugged the set in. The delivery men did not tell me to do this. There were instructions inside the box to examine the unit for damage or irregularities in the display. Everything appeared to be fine in the daylight.After the sun set, we turned the unit back on and noticed some distortion on the left edge of the screen plus a vertical line from the top to the bottom of the screen. From the web, I learned that this vertical line is know as dead pixels. They must have died enroute. When I called the vendor Buydig.com (pronounced "dige " as in digital), one rep told me to speak to the manager, one rep told me to contact Samsung and the other told me that Buydig.com will satisfy me with either a repaired set or a new unit if Samsung doesn't. As of now, they will not take the set back. If the screen had been cracked or I noticed the dead pixel line in the light of day, I could have refused delivery and Buydig.com would have taken the set back. As of now the jury is out. Samsung has not yet replied to my complaint. Buydig.com is waiting on Samsung. Buydig.com is in some unspecified way connected to Beach Camera, although the rep could not tell me exactly how. Their prices are some of the lowest on the web or brick and mortar. There is some discussion on web forums that they are gray market, although I received a warranty notice (not card) with my TV. I will post after this is resolved in one way or another.

Update: After calling Buydig.com numerous times, I was reassured that if Samsung did not repair or replace the unit, they would in fact replace the unit themselves. I found out through a request I made from Samsung on the web that a local repair person via Samsung is scheduled to come to our home on December 3rd to see if a repair or replacement is in order. So I am little more reassured. Buydig.com has been frustrating since they are mainly interested in selling massive amounts of TV's and other electronics at this time of year. Their customer service has to be tightened up some since I was getting conflicting information that did not provide any definitive answers.

Update 1: The local repair technician called tonight to determine what parts (the display/screen?) should be replaced after a call to Samsung central. Someone has taken notice. This is good so far.

Update 2: The designated repair facility has the parts on order and will phone when they arrive to arrange a service date.

Update 3: Repair person came and replaced all the boards in the unit and the dead pixel line did not budge. They ordered a new display and installed it today. Samsung stands behind their products and sub-contracts with people who know what they are doing.

"Sound Unbound"

I have only read a few of the 36 pieces about media in all forms in this enlightening take on the remix and sampling. Assembled by DJ Spooky, the contributors take vastly different angles on pop media culture as recombinant mixes of what nature and man have created out of chaos. I'll try to post about some of the pieces in the book. I recommend it to those interested in music, sampling, plagiarism, remixing culture, media etc. 

 "Sound Unbound"

The Record Industry and The Filesharing Endgame

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction writer and a regular contributor at Boing Boing. He is the author of Little Brother, that is on my wish list. In this article in the Guardian UK, he sounds the death knell for the record industry's desperate ploy to prosecute file sharing of music. For God's sake get over it, work with its inevitable perpetuity. Who are these suits? Are they in a bubble tucked up in suites alongside hottie hedge fund Ariels?

Blogger

Blogger is free and Blogger is notoriously unreliable and shifty.

Meg Hourihan was one of the co-founders of Pyra Labs who developed Blogger and is married to the blogger extraordinaire Jason Kottye. They have recently had a child. I wish them the best in this arduous endeavor. After Meg left Pyra Labs, Blogger was sold to Google in 2003 for next to nothing. Blogger shifts like the sands on a a Saharan dune. When I comment on blogger I am not sure what will pop up when the ID is asked for. After the word recognition, the choices of identity are: blogger/google, open ID, name/url, anonymous. I am a googler and have a username & password. I can also post my name and optional url. Sometimes blogger will recognize me. I am pleased when this happens. Other times and on other sites, it will not. Sometimes the word verification is indecipherable, sometimes it is very clear. This is what I like about Blogger. Blogger keeps the user awake and ready for another change when the user comments on another Blogger blog. Sort of like a child's game. This is a fascinating use of are you conscious enough to make the distinction of now versus 10 minutes ago. Some one with some common sense has to set this straight once and for all. Come on, I only want to drop a simple comment, not an exegis on the state of the American novel.