Quartz City

I have a pretty dim view of suburban SUV drivers and some real disgust for Hummer H2 owners who have symbolically declared war on nature and civilization at 10 miles per gallon. There’s an implied “fuck you” message that H2 drivers are sending so it’s only appropriate that their message gets returned back at them. Enter FUH2.com (short for “Fuck You And Your H2″), which wants your pictures of you flipping off Hummer H2s.

So I’m 180 or so miles away from the epicenter, but even at that distance it was a pretty good shake once you account for being on the third floor of an old apartment building that basically sits on sand. Felt like I was on a boat in the ocean.

The CDRGO! Project has been putting together a series of yearly CDRs, in which the object is to fill up a 700MB CDR with mp3s of songs released in a given year. There’s no other guidelines - some folks went with hits, some with obscurity, some with both. I volunteered to do 1973 and here’s how it went:

1. The Electric Company, “Third Season Theme”
2. Alice Cooper, “Hello Hooray”
3. CKLW radio babble - FM converter ad
4. Queen, “Keep Yourself Alive”
5. Black Sabbath, “Killing Yourself To Live”
6. Blue Oyster Cult, “Hot Rails To Hell”
7. Zior, “Entrance Of The Devil-The Chicago Spine”
8. New York Dolls, “Jet Boy”
9. David Bowie, “Watch That Man”
10. The Stooges, “Gimme Danger”
11. ZZ Top, “Jesus Just Left Chicago”
12. Shocking Blue, “In My Time Of Dying”
13. Joe Walsh, “Rocky Mountain Way”
14. Franco Battiato, “Aria di Rivoluzione”
15. Don Cherry, “Trans-Love Airways”
16. Neu!, “Fur Immer (Forever)”
17. Faust, “Krautrock”
18. Area, “Le Labbra Del Tempo”
19. Magma, “Mekanik Kommandoh”
20. Ocho, “En Tropicana”
21. Rare Earth, “Smiling Faces Sometimes”
22. Jerry Reed, “Lord Mr. Ford”
23. Charlie Daniels Band, “Uneasy Rider”
24. Electric Light Orchestra, “Showdown”
25. Pink Floyd, “Us And Them”
26. Kevin Ayers, “Decadence”
27. Fleetwood Mac, “Hypnotized”
28. Al Kooper, “(Be Yourself) Be Real”
29. Todd Rundgren, “Zen Archer”
30. The Kinks, “Sweet Lady Genevieve”
31. ABBA, “Ring, Ring”
32. Deep Purple, “Woman From Tokyo”
33. The Who, “Sea And Sand”
34. Genesis, “Dancing With The Moonlit Knight”
35. Amon Duul II, “Apocalyptic Bore”
36. Roxy Music, “Mother Of Pearl”
37. King Crimson, “Easy Money”
38. Vicki Lawrence, “The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia”
39. Dolly Parton, “Jolene”
40. Charlie Rich, “Behind Closed Doors”
41. Beach Boys, “Trader”
42. Golden Earring, “Radar Love”
43. Slade, “Cum On Feel The Noize”
44. Little Feat, “On Your Way Down”
45. Roy Harper, “Bank Of The Dead”
46. Serge Gainsbourg, “Des Vents Des Pets Des Poums”
47. Scott Walker, “Any Day Now”
48. Stealers Wheel, “Stuck In The Middle With You”
49. Kris Kristofferson, “From The Bottle To The Bottom”
50. Lee Hazlewood, “Poet, Fool Or Bum”
51. Buffy Sainte-Marie, “Why You Been Gone So Long”
52. Marie Osmond, “Paper Roses”
53. Roberta Flack, “Killing Me Softly With His Song”
54. Lou Reed, “The Bed”
55. John Cale, “The Endless Plain Of Fortune”
56. Sandy Denny, “Solo”
57. “Live And Let Die” movie radio spot
58. Johnny Pate, “Brother On The Run (Opening)”
59. Herbie Hancock, “The Spook Who Sat by the Door”
60. James Brown, “Down And Out In New York City”
61. New York City, “I’m Doin Fine Now”
62. “Willow’s Song” from The Wicker Man soundtrack
63. PFM, “Photos Of Ghosts”
64. Bruce Springsteen, “Incident on 57th Street”
65. Tangerine Dream, “Circulation Of Events”
66. Agitation Free, “Dialogue And Random”
67. Gabriel And Marie Yacoub, “Pierre de Grenoble”
68. Gong, “Other Side Of The Sky”
69. Mike Oldfield, “Tubular Bells Part 1″
70. KFRC radio babble “Mick Jagger car giveaway”
71. The Rolling Stones, “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)”
72. Eloy, “Future City”
73. Neil Young, “L.A.”
74. Steely Dan, “My Old School”
75. Joao Donato, “Chorou, Chorou”
76. TM Productions, Interkey promo spot
77. Nazareth, “Razmanaz”
78. Rory Gallagher, “Walk On Hot Coals”
79. Hawkwind, “Orgone Accumulator”
80. Can, “Future Days”
81. David Essex, “Rock On”
82. Ann Peebles, “I Can’t Stand The Rain”
83. Sly And The Family Stone, “In Time”
84. Betty Davis, “Game Is My Middle Name”
85. Suzi Quatro, “Skin Tight Skin”
86. Sylvia, “Pillow Talk”
87. Jimmy Cliff, “Struggling Man”
88. Stevie Wonder, “Living For The City”
89. Donny Hathaway, “The Slums”
90. 24-Carat Black, “Food Stamps”
91. Fela Kuti, “Alu Jon Jonki Jon”
92. Kraftwerk, “Kristallo”
93. Leny Andrade, “Nao Adianta”
94. Risken Finns, “Barnen Fragar Annu Efter Dig”
95. Lucio Battisti, “Ma E’ Un Canto Brasileiro”
96. The Gimmicks, “Att Fa Resa”
97. Tom Waits, “Martha”
98. Gladys Knight And The Pips, “Midnight Train To Georgia”
99. Sweet, “Little Willy”
100. Brownsville Station, “Let Your Yeah Be Yeah”
101. Johnny Cash, “Oney”
102. Alan Price, “Look Over Your Shoulder”

Threw together a cover too. Hooray for 1970s retrofuture! (and microgramma font)

See what happens when a power station’s 500 KVA switch is thrown. RealMedia link

Stuck with a CD for a present? Don’t worry, here’s what to do! Go to What A Crappy Present.com

The latest Crypto-Gram points out a list of famous unsolved codes and ciphers.

Boing Boing links to cranky architecture critic James Howard Kunstler’s “Eyesore Of The Month“, a monthly case study in design stupidity with hilarious commentary. His May 2003 entry is priceless.

The mother of all Modernist public places: Empire State Plaza, Albany, NY, podium level, completed 1973.

The farther back the 20th century recedes, the more you shake your head and wonder what was going through their minds. Perhaps the imperial impulse is endemic to all societies, whether they are theocratic despotisms or bureaucratic democracies. You acquire enough wealth and power and terrible things happen. Gov. Nelson Rockefeller wasn’t a bad guy. He did it all for the sake of aesthetics, being a “modern” art connoisseur. The architect was Wallace K. Harrison, better known for the UN building in Manhattan. What they came up with was a place that only a Toltec could love.

Considering I took this shot at lunchtime (12:15) on the first nice spring day… and considering that the four towers are full of toiling state workers, the emptiness of the vast plaza is rather remarkable. Conclusion: it totally sucks.

As America (and New York with it) enter the era of political psychosis attending the downside of the global oil curve, this place will surely become a favorite spot for the bloodletters.

Jack Chick, meet H.P. Lovecraft.

Following up my previous post on the licensing issue between DirecTV and Trio, Trio has set up a web page at savetrio.com to automate the letter writing.

Cory describes this a lot better than I can:

The Anti-Terror Line is the reverse of a Fed snitch line — it’s a number you can call when The Man is giving you a hard time in the name of defending the homeland from terrorists — your call (and anything you can get your attacker to utter into the handset) is recorded and published on a webserver where you can annotate it. Natalie Jermijenko, the project’s originator, has used it to record herself being put off an airline for using the first class toilet.

And for the record, the phone numbers for the Anti-Terror Line are:

UK: 0 207 987 0655
USA 1 212 998 3394