My sister and I have "viral song wars" wherein we try to get a catchy tune stuck in each other's head. Today I was telling her that the song stuck in my head intermittently for the past few days has been Dream Academy's Life in Northern Town.

We both agreed that it isn't really catchy but that we liked the song and that the video sticks in our minds after all these years. We talked about how depressing it seemed. The lyrics (about a father who comes to visit his children rarely maybe because the town is economically in the dumps so he has to find work elsewhere - that's the story I made up from the lyrics years ago) and the video (rainy English village) make it one of those songs that, for me, remind me of the sweetness of youth tinged with adult melancoly (we want to go back even if it wasn't the greatest time in our lives).

Or was I just putting more into a crappy video and song that I had forgotten about for two decades?

I came home and did a search for the video and, lo, yahoo has it. I click on the 'view video' only to get an error and message that if I want to view on a Macintosh I have to use Netscape 4.7!! Netscape 4.7 for the Macintosh running OS X, for those of you on PCs, requires that I run Classic (old school operating system emulation). So, I do this, download 4.7 and try to view the video again. Next it tells to download Windows media player. Well, to find the media player that will work on 4.7 is like going on an archeological dig.

At the end of this, my computer gets hung up during installation. The result is that my time machine only goes so far back and I am stuck in the mid-90s.

The song and the video then settle back into the recesses of my mind until three months from now when I am brushing my teeth.

BTW (by the way not bind torture weedwack), I am very disappointed that all 2 1/2 of you that read this blog haven't commented on the ugliest dog in the world. Can he (or she or it) not get any respect from you lot? So, it looks like something that the gates of hell opened up and burped out. Can't you find it in your cold, wicked hearts to look past its faults, its blemishes, its terrible dental hygiene to make...yeah, you're right it is disgusting. Sorry, about that.

The internet has always been a communal space. Even in the heady days of the dot.com bubble it was all about us - the general users not the corporate entities. This is continually reinforced through web applications such as Flickr, a site that allows people to upload and share their photographs with one another (and even specify that how they can be used by others).

Flickr is home to a lot of interesting stuff as people use it for a number of reasons: sketchbook storage, portfolios, family photo share, documentation....

In fact Flickr has arguable become the Wikipedia of social anthropology by capturing the visual culture of a global group of users. It fills the niche left by blogs and websites and often cuts through the crap that people use to puff themselves up on those types of sites.

What I find fascinating is the things people choose to document and how useful they can be without seeming to be useful at all. To explain visit this site. It is in essence a teeny visual narrative of one person's brain tumor removal surgery. The narrative ends happily and the way that it is presented, for instance the surgery pictures almost seem as though the operation was performed in this couple's bathroom or the smiling faces throughout the story allow us to read it as, I guess, a generally positive experience. This is a refreshing counterpoint to the sterility of most medical discourses.

If I had tumor and scared shitless of surgery, I think this set of photos would go a long way to alleviating my fears.

The first time that I saw Born Magazine I felt that we had reached milestone in the development of new media. To the uninitiated, Born Magazine features Flash and Quicktime movies used to give visual form to poetry. The results are often challenging, entertaining, thoughful, and, I might add, beautiful.

There have been a number of other similar magazines but not none really have the reputation or the quality of Born. Although Born has been around for a while the site is updated quarterly and always fresh.

Another online magazine that covers similar ground is Splotch. It is a beautifully constructed with well design visuals accompanying very interesting writing.

Hillary vs. the Xbox

Japanese Condom Packaging reveals how embedded the culture of cute is in all facets of Japanese society.

Note: I don't think I will ever be able to eat a Kit Kat again.

I kind of like him. Kind of...

It has been difficult to think of something to say about the London bombings. One thing that sticks in my mind is the fact that London is under constant super surveillance. What results, then, is not the elimination of terrorists acts or any violence for that matter but instead an exposure of a sort of wicked dialectic of normalcy (even mundanity) and, well, death.

The image above is supposedly of the suicide bombers. There is nothing there to indicate that they will kill themselves and others. It is that fact alone that makes it an interesting image. We can look at it and say at that moment nothing had happened and life was going on as usual.

Terrorism works on this priniciple: take that ordinariness and shatter it. The irrational act then eliminates the ordinary.

Ok, but what about the death of the Brazilian electrician? With our definition could it not be argued that he experienced (at the hand of London Metro Police - who were in plain clothes, I might add) a similar sort of terror?

The dialectic then becomes one more about the illusion of order and the fragility of life when we start believing in the irrationality instilled by fear.

CNN's current cover story (10 am pst July 26, 2005) is the launch of the space shuttle Discovery.

By now videos of shuttle launches are sort of ho hum. I remember as kid being herded into the gym at school to watch the shuttle launch and landing. It has become so routine (Mom used to say, "Did you clean your room? Brush your teeth? Watch the shuttle launch?") that the only thing to remind us of the spacecraft is something like its disintegration over Texas two years ago.

Well, for no apparent reason, I watched the launch online and noticed something different. Nasa now has something like over 120 cameras trained on the shuttle (some literally attached to the rocket boosters) to watch for any leaks, cracks, missing ceramic tiles, explosions, stowaways, whatever.

If you happen to get the NASA channel then I am sure they had even more spectacular coverage.

Update: NASA's launch video on their website is the same as CNN's. But you can view the NASA channel with live feed of astronauts doing exciting things like brushing their teeth here

Today, in Gregland, this is now officially the best website ever in the history of humankind.

(I love the losingest kittens.)

In the past three or four months we've had cable and have become, basically, HGTV zombies. Barring the Daily Show we've found nothing worth watching except the 'your home is ugly and we'll redecorate it'™® channel. We have redecorated everything it seems and the only thing left to do is add window treatments to the cat. So, we've decided it is time to say good bye to our cable.

In its place we've finally installed broadband.

It is not that I hope to replace TV with passive, mind-numbing TV-ish internet entertainment. But the thought did cross my mind. My efforts to see what video is available has turned up this gem: TV4All

It provides links to hundreds of video streams from all over the world. This is a great resource especially for those of you out there that have missed those Belarussian Cooking Programs!

update: hey, european music video channels actually play music videos!

Last Sunday's NYTimes magazine ran an article about the battle to control language in political discussions.

The article focuses on the cognitive linguistic work of George Lakoff. Some democrats are focusing on Lakoff's notion of Framing that simplifies concepts as keywords or metaphorical mental imagery as a better way of getting their ideas across to broader public.

It is an interesting discussion - one that merits reading the whole article - as it highlights two salient points:

- people are not really all that rational
- mental imagery is important when trying to get your point across

So, here is my attempt at framing: Read the article or your brain will shrivel up and blow away!

Take a stroll through this book. I like page 26 of the 1971 edition. note about illustration: I think the woman is planning the man's demise.

It is a fun bit of 'biblioarcheology'.

Check it out.

I don't often go out to the movies. Part of the reason is that I have wiggly kids. Also, to take the whole brood means putting my home in escrow (and if we buy treats, it means holding up the bank next to the theater). And in all honesty the experience really isn't that great. At home, we can really take our time, rewind the film, and, most importantly, we can watch foreign films that never, ever come to this dinky town.

Another reason for the sagging moviegoing numbers, I contend, is that we are quickly becoming a production-savvy society. We not only like good stories and captivating imagery but also we also look how the movie is made. All those DVD special features and our own experimentation with dv cameras and sophisticated imagemaking software has made us very picky consumers.

There are a gazillon reasons as to why we hate going to the movies. Here is a rant I found today.

One last idea: maybe when we deck ourselves out in gadgets (Ipods, in particular) and carry so much media around with us, we start to see our lives as movies.

INT. CAFE - DAY.

MED. SHOT of GREG as he sits at his laptop. He sighs and sits back looking off into space. He sips his coffee.

C.U. as he stares blankly.

FADE OUT.

I found this today and think that, for a short time anyway, it could be the best blog ever:

toby's monitor

(note: hope you enjoy this one, Amy)

I love this because it is so over the top: Le Building

There is a lot of really good stuff coming out of France. It's probably that Jesus-blood thing....

(Note: I am in a cafe that is playing their 'worst of the 80s' cd so I apologize for any errors. My brain is melting!)

I am in a cafe because I need caffeine. I was up late watching a show on the History Channel called something like 'Beyond the Da Vinci Code' or 'Tantalizing enough to keep you awake until 2am'. Anyway, the show systematically debunked the interesting little stories and clues in the book (soon to be movie) The Da Vinci Code.

For those of you that don't know the premise of the book, the mystery centers around a search for the holy grail. The 'san graal' or holy grail, as author Dan Brown tells us, is actually 'sang raal' (royal blood) and the book provides a complex story about how the templar knights and a secret sect called the Priory of Scion (to which Leonardo Da Vinci, in the book, belongs) protect the secret that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalen and that they had a child (a girl named Sarah). Supposedly, Mary stole away to France where the holy blood line continued with the Merovingian royal family. The decendents of Jesus, following logic, went on to produce such rich cultural treasures as the Sophie Marceau teen flick 'La Boum' and the Citroen Deux Cheveaux.

Regardless, historians believe that Jesus could've been married to Mary as it was not unusual, at the time, for Jewish men to have arranged marriages in their 20s. And there is evidence that Mary did indeed escape to Egypt then to the south of France.

While this is all interesting in itself, I find a metareading of the Da Vinci phenomenon fascinating especially in light of several recent books: Everything Bad is Good for You and The Goddess and the Alphabet.

Let me explain: All these text, Da Vinci Code included, toy with the idea that there are fundamental ways of viewing the world (through Patriarchical and Matriarchical lenses is the most facile description of these viewpoints). Leonard Shlain's Goddess follows an argument that has more holes in it than a Fallujah Islamists' hideout but the central tenet that we privilege the written word and rationality to the point that disables the feminine in much of our lives. In The Da Vinci Code the Priory of Scion also believes that the story of Jesus and Mary is one more egalitarian than the church wanted. Da Vinci's symbology, Brown asserts, reaffirms the feminine in religious texts.

What does this have to do with Everything Bad, you ask? We often equate visual media as emotional (read not rational) and author Steven Johnson makes the argument that all sorts of visual media is not mindless but that is actually quite complex thus making us smarter. To me, I see this argument as part of the broader acceptance of the visual and, possible, a move from patriarchy-enabling rationalization toward more emotive egalitarian modes of thought. (note: insert tongue in cheek)

Then again my whole argument could just be result of my emotional state after be subjected to Kenny Logins' 'Footloose'.

It is not all fun and games when race is involved.

(BTW, visit Moveon.org to give your support to NPR and PBS).

I am currently sitting in the Seattle room of the Seattle public library. Yes, this is Rem Koolhas' baby.

I find it a fascinating place. A bit cold and awfully open but I think that also gives it charm oddly enough. It is never loud (like I thought it would be) and I have found many spaces that quite comfortable (with squishy furniture).

As a library, I don't think the building will age gracefully. The first thing to go will be the spongy furniture, I am sure. Then the low stack will be need to be replaced with taller shelving and that alone will alter the visual experience. Public libraries show a lot of wear and tear very quickly and this space is not immune from that fate.

But that's just spongy furniture and shelving. The details are what makes the space unique. The windows (and the building's facade is essentially one giant window broken by a diagonal grid of metal beams) sandwich an aluminium (?) mesh that is both seemingly transparent and very effective at deflecting the light.

The carpet near an info desk takes it cues from a garden space directly outside the building and brings it indoors. The effect is a very funky, very contemporary space.

I can't help but think about a discussion I had with an architect friend of mine. He remarked that this building has very little to do with books, reading, and the normal functions of a library. In many ways, I have to agree. I can forsee a time in the future when this space serves another purpose. It would do it quite well (and perhaps age gracefully in this new function).