Monthly Archives: July 2009

I would love your company

Hi WordPress crowd and longtime friends.

I’m probably spending too much time at Tumblr and I need questions answers with things such as image IDs.

Please come and see my lifestream there, I would love your company.

Latest post from Tumblr:

RIP Phyllis Gotlieb, need image cover-ID
image via members.cox.net

RIP Phyllis Gotlieb, 83, Canadian science fiction author, best-known for her novel Sunburst, a post-acopalyptic novel. A strong element in contemporary Canadian culture is rich, diverse, thoughtful and witty science fiction. Its best-known exponents are William Gibson (Neuromancer), David Cronenberg (The Fly) and Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale).

Jahsonic is the number one Tumblr in Belgium.

Jahsonic is the number one Tumblr in Belgium. It took me three days of intensive posting. I met a lot of great people and was literally barraged with good imagery. The quality of images is quite high and no other platform can compare in quantity. Tumblr is a blogging platform that allows users to post text, images, video, links, quotes, and audio to their tumblelog, a micro-blog. Users can “follow” other users and see their posts together on their dashboard. Micro-blogging is a form of multimedia blogging that allows users to send brief text updates or micromedia such as photos or audio clips and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, digital audio or the web. Leading social networking websites Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and XING also have their own micro-blogging feature, better known as status updates. On May the 3d I compared Tumbr with some other blogging platforms:  Last November I introduced At Her Discretion[1], my first exposure to the phenomeneon of micro-blogging. Today I took the Tumblr service for a test drive[2][3] and I was quite pleased with it. Tumblr is a web 2.0 micro-blogging platform that allows users to post text, images, video, links, quotes, and audio to their tumblelog, a short-form blog. Users can “follow” other users and see their posts together on their dashboard. Compared to other web 2.0 social internet services: Compared to Del.icio.us[4]: Tumbler has no social bookmarking. Compared to Facebook[5]: Tumblr is public so it lets you reach a ider audience, but its ease of use is worse that that of Facebook. Compared to Twitter[6]: Tumblr may be a future competitor to Twitter, Twitter does not allow image previews. Compared to WordPress: Tumblr excells at creating little visual interesting posts fast, WordPress is better for the longer more pensive posts.  What with the proliferation of these social media and social networking sites, what we need is social network aggregation or lifestreaming.

Jahsonic is the number one Tumblr in Belgium.

It took me three days of intensive posting. I met a lot of great people and was literally barraged with good imagery. The quality of images is very high and no other platform can compare in quantity.

It reminded me of the old days when I used to blog at a maddening tempo over at Jahsonic.com from 2001 Nov until 2006 Aug.

I then switched to WordPress where I’ve had a very good time and my first availability in RSS format. I posted about 3,400 posts from August 2006 until today, an avarage of three posts per day.

RIP Simon Vinkenoog (1928 – 2009)

RIP Simon Vinkenoog, 80, Dutch poet and writer.

Vinkenoog with Spinvis in a totally Fela Kuti-esque track

Simon Vinkenoog (1928 – 2009) was a Dutch poet and writer. He was instrumental in launching the Dutch “Fifties Movement“.

In the Anglosphere Vinkenoog’s name is associated with the Albert Hall poetry event (and the film Wholly Communion) and his connection with IT magazine.

He was one of the Néerlandophone beat writers. The same cultural climate that begot the beat writers in the United States engendered European counterparts.

These countercultures must be looked for in two spheres, the sphere of European counterculture and the sphere of European avant-garde.

In France this was the Letterist International, in Germany perhaps Gruppe 47; visually and on a European scale there was COBRA.

Vinkenoog was born in the same year as Andy Warhol, Serge Gainsbourg, Jeanne Moreau, Nicolas Roeg, Guy Bourdin, Luigi Colani, Stanley Kubrick, Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, William Klein, Roger Vadim, Yves Klein, Jacques Rivette, Alvin Toffler, Ennio Morricone and Oswalt Kolle.

“Disco Sucks” @30

On this day 30 years ago in 1979, Disco Demolition Night heralded the last days of disco.

Disco started in small nightclubs in American urban centers in the early seventies with imported records such as “Soul Makossa.” During the 1970s disco steadily increased in popularity reaching a high point with Saturday Night Fever in 1977.

This was followed with a homophobic, racist backlash two years later when rock music fans started to consider disco culture — with its perceived drug-fuelled sexual promiscuitysilly and effeminate, and objected to the idea of centering music around an electronic drum beat and synthesizers instead of live performers.

Another (more masculine) subculture, punk music, arrived on the scene.

Parodies of disco music became common. The backlash was epitomized in Chicago by the riotous Disco Demolition Night.

Nile Rodgers, guitarist for the popular disco era group Chic said “It felt to us like Nazi book-burning, This is America, the home of jazz and rock and people were now afraid even to say the word ‘disco’.”

There was never a focused backlash against disco in Europe.

Now, for the first time on this blog: local news coverage of this Dionysian moment.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpQfCcsqQ0E]

What does it mean to be a revolutionary today? by Slavoj Zizek’s @ Marxism 2009

Via Belgian blogger Martin Pulaski comes What does it mean to be a revolutionary today?, Slavoj Zizek‘s response[1] to Alex Callinicos at Marxism 2009.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GD69Cc20rw]

At exactly 21:55 comes a hilarious joke on the self-inflatibility of futile resistance.

In the good old days — now comes the dirty conclusion, I’ve warned you, it’s really dirty — in the good old days of really existing socialism a joke was popular among dissidents. A joke used to illustrate the futility of their progresses. In 15th century Russia, occupied by Mongols, that’s the joke, a farmer and his wife walked along a dusty country road, a mongol warrior on a horse stops at their side and tells the farmer that he will now rape his wife. He then adds, but since their is a lot of dust on the ground, you should hold my testicles, while I am raping your wife so that they do not get dusty — dirty. After the Mongol finishes his job and rides away, the farmer starts to laugh and jump with joy. The surprised wife asks him: “How can you be jumping with joy when I just brutally raped?” The farmer answers: “But I got him! His balls were full of dust.”

This sad joke tells of the predicament of dissidents. They thought they were dealing serious blows to the party nomenclatura. But all they were doing was getting a little bit of dust on the nomenclatura’s testicles.

What is so brilliant in this piece of “toilet philosophy[2] (I am more inclined while writing these words of nobrow philosophy, of which Zizek and Sloterdijk are the greatest contemporary examples in this category) is that Zizek returns to this joke for closing his arguments. In the same vein in the same speech he has the embodied metaphor of “cutting of the balls of capitalism” and how to proceed for capitalism’s castration. Brilliant.

Other outstanding episodes include Victor Kravchenko I Chose Freedom/I Chose Justice case.

John Calvin @500

John Calvin @500

Calvinism has been known at times for its simple, spartan and unadorned churches and lifestyles, as depicted in this painting by Emmanuel de Witte. Belgium, where I live, is on the Protestant-Catholic border between Northern and Southern Europe. The South is known for its joie de vivre, haute cuisine and exuberance, the North for its antithesis: frugality, meager food and general restraint.

John Calvin Jean Cauvin (10 July 1509 – 27 May 1564) was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he suddenly broke from the Roman Catholic Church in the 1520s. After religious tensions provoked a violent uprising against Protestants in France, Calvin fled to Basel, Switzerland, where in 1536 he published the first edition of his seminal work Institutes of the Christian Religion.

In the 1540s the Frenchman John Calvin founded a church in Geneva which forbade alcohol and dancing, and which taught God had selected those destined to be saved from the beginning of time. His Calvinist Church gained about half of Switzerland and churches based on his teachings became dominant in the Netherlands (the Dutch Reformed Church) and Scotland (the Presbyterian Church).

Anyone against him was called a Libertine, providing the origins of a well-loved term of this blog. The group of Libertines was led by Ami Perrin and argued against Calvin’s “insistence that church discipline should be enforced uniformly against all members of Genevan society”. By 1555, Calvinists were firmly in place on the Genevan town council, so the Libertines, led by Perrin, responded with an “attempted coup against the government and called for the massacre of the French … This was the last great political challenge Calvin had to face in Geneva.

Engraving of the Iconoclasm from G. Bouttat (1640-1703)

Many Protestant reformers including John Calvin were against religious art by invoking the Decalogue’s prohibition of idolatry and the manufacture of graven images of God. As a result, statues and images were damaged in spontaneous individual attacks as well as unauthorised iconoclastic riots. In my part of the world, this started in 1566, two years after Calvin’s death and resulted in the Beeldenstorm.

Calvin’s legacy in modern times has produced a variety of opinions. Certainly the execution of Servetus has left a negative view of Calvin. Voltaire mentions the event in his Poème sur la loi naturelle (Poem on Natural Law, 1756) and Dialogues chrétiens (Christian Dialogues, 1760). For Voltaire, Calvin’s philosophy had not produced any improvement over the intolerance presented in previous revealed religions. Calvin is discussed in Max Weber’s classic work on the The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in which he argues that Calvin’s teachings provided ideological impetus for the development of capitalism. Political historians have recognised his contributions to the development of representative democracy in general and the American system of government in particular.

In find Calvin only mildly interesting, more radical Reformation info can be found under the headings of Thomas Müntzer, Jan Hus, the anabaptists and the Peasants’ War.

As was to be expected, John Calvin‘s writing was put on one of the more interesting compendiums of Western literature, The Index.

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) – James Hogg [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Illustration by William Blake.

If you’d like to know more about religious fanaticism and the intricacies of Protestantism, I can recommend James Hogg‘s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (by way of Lichanos).

see also Calvinism, 16th century Europe, Northern Renaissance, Protestant work ethic, iconoclasm

RIP Tom Wilkes (1939 – 2009)

RIP Tom Wilkes (1939 – 2009)

via www.munciefreepress.com RIP Tom Wilkes (1939 - 2009) He won a Grammy Award for the Who’s “Tommy”[1]. He was also known for designing the cover art for hit albums by artists like Neil Young (Harvest[2]), George Harrison and the Rolling Stones (Flowers[3], Beggars Banquet[4]) and many more. In 1967 Wilkes was the art director of the Monterey International Pop Festival. He created all graphics and printed materials for Monterey Pop, including festival’s psychedelic poster[5].

Rare poster to the Monterey International Pop Festival

Tom Wilkes (born July 30, 1939 – June 28, 2009) was an American art director, designer, photographer, illustrator, writer and producer-director.

He won a Grammy Award for the Who’s “Tommy[1]. He was also known for designing the cover art for hit albums by artists like Neil Young (Harvest[2]), George Harrison and the Rolling Stones (Flowers[3], Beggars Banquet[4]) and many more.

In 1967 Wilkes was the art director of the Monterey International Pop Festival. He created all graphics and printed materials for Monterey Pop, including festival’s psychedelic poster[5].

tip of the hat to http://themusicsover.wordpress.com.

RIP Drake Levin (1946 – 2009)

RIP Drake Levin (1946 – 2009), 62, American guitarist (Paul Revere & the Raiders), cancer.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDfWePGe9E4&]

(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone

Drake Levin (August 17, 1946 – July 4, 2009) was an American musician who performed under the stage name Drake Levin. He was best known as the guitarist for Paul Revere & the Raiders.

Paul Revere and the Raiders is an American rock band that saw enormous mainstream success in the second half of the 1960s and earlier 1970s, best-known for hits like “Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian)[1] (1971), “Steppin’ Out”[2] & “Just Like Me”[3] (1965), “Kicks”[4] (1966) (ranked #400 on the Rolling Stone magazine’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time) , “Let Me”[5] (1969), and “Hungry[6](1966).

see also(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone, garage rock, Nuggets

I know that it is probably sacrilege to some of you but here is a blasphemous version of “Indian Reservation” by German disco band Orlando Riva Sound:

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tNe5EKfK44]

Indian Reservation

RIP Allen Klein (1931 – 2009)

RIP Allen Klein, 77, American businessman, Beatles and Rolling Stones manager, Alzheimer’s disease.

Allen Klein poses with Yoko Ono, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr at a fictitious “contract signing”, 1969.

Allen Klein (December 18, 1931 – July 4, 2009) was an American businessman and record label executive. His career highlights included having such celebrated clients as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Many of his famous clients eventually turned against him, however, and he became involved in acrimonious legal battles with them. At one time he owned the rights to Chilean director Jodorowsky‘s films El Topo and The Holy Mountain and as a form of retribution refused to show them during 30 years.

Allen Klein also produced a trilogy of spaghetti westerns starring and written by Tony Anthony copying Clint Eastwood’s The Man With No Name persona. A Stranger In Town and The Stranger Returns and The Silent Stranger. Klein and Anthony also collaborated on the film Blindman featuring Ringo Starr as a Mexican bandito.

A second reminder: I’m having fun at my Tumblr account. I draft these posts there and post anything I find which hasn’t (or not extensively) been blogged about by others.