Andromeda Strain vs. Colour Out Of Space FITE!

I’ve been eyeballs deep in Daniel Yergin’s The Prize: The Epic Quest For Oil, Money, & Power (short review so far: unlike most corporations the oil industry operates on schedules of decades – they’re already way ahead of most critics, power groups, and governments) to pay much attention to recent national debates on men’s restroom symbolic interactions and whether or not the world is round or flat but the Peruvian “mystery illness” meteor is high weirdness chum in the water.

The first thing I thought was that it’s not a meteor or inquisitive Fungi from Yuggoth, but a deorbited spy satellite loaded with radioactive fuel. There’s evidence for this… In 1978, Cosmos 954 crashed into Canada, spewing radioactivity over 600km of the Northwest Territories. More recently there was the crash of Mars 96 which had 200g of plutonium pellets which may (or may not) have landed in Chile and Bolivia.

Then there’s this story from the Oberg article:

After the explosion of a rocket near the Baikonur cosmodrome in 1970, Soviet soldiers found a nuclear battery in the wreckage. Later, investigators looking for the battery discovered that the shivering soldiers had secretly kept it as a hand-warmer in their poorly heated guardhouse. In this case, the unit was spotted by one of the searchers and confiscated immediately.

At least the Peru meteor didn’t crash into anywhere in the Middle East. Cthulhu knows how the itchy trigger fingers would react there.

Rat Attack

Kitchen RecordingLast month I posted this photo of Fredo the Rat sitting on top of one of my amps when we were recording. Fredo’s been sitting on top of one amp or another since finding him at Ikea last year and so, yeah, he’s a cute stuffed rat.

I knew Fredo had some relatives out there in the world, but no clue that Fredo’s Russian brethern were so dang numerous. Ummm… Eeek?

rat_attack9.jpg

[via English Russia]

ExDetectives’ first show at the Echo Curio this Saturday

exdetect_airways_cover.jpgTime to fulfill one of the rules of having a blog: self-promotion!

It’s been awhile since I last played guitar in any kind of public context, but after seven months of work it’s time for this one particular Manhattan Project to finally make an appearance. More to the point we’ve put a hell of a lot of work into this and we’re terrifically happy with the album finally being able to play some shows: starting with our first show this Saturday night at the Echo Curio in Echo Park.

We’ll have some CD-R copies of the album (titled Airways. that’s the cover over there) to hand out to everyone (we don’t quite yet have real CDs done), but the entire album (it’s a full album too: 11 songs) will be available to download shortly. Until then, there’s four tracks up on our MySpace page.

If you’re in town, I hope to see you there!



exdetect_curio_20070915.jpg

How to make money in the stock market

I’ve thought of a sure fire way to make money in a dubious looking stock market. If this ILX thread is any indication, there’s a growing need for stock photos of anxious and desperate stock exchange traders. Imagine an entire disc of photos like these:

worriedbroker1.jpgworriedbroker2.jpgworriedbroker3.jpg

Add in some generically important looking graphics of downturned arrows and shrinking bar graphs, all with liberal amounts of blood red ink, and you’ve got a best seller on your hands! Every news web site would be in your debt.

Of course the “Desperate Brokers” disc would only be the first volume of an entire stock photo series of 21st century desperation. Volume Two, of course, would be “Mortgage Mania!” and have pictures like these:

price_reduced.jpg foreclosure_sign.jpg

I’m calling the entire series FailureFotos. I don’t quite have the time to pursue it, but I encourage any QC readers to run with it. My only price is 10% off the top and a free license to use any of them for album covers.

Ex-Detectives update

Short Ex-Detectives update. We finished up all the recording for the album and we’re on the last go-round of letting the making sure the angles are straight, letting the paint dry, and sweeping up the dust. Some of this will show up on the MySpace page and a new website that is still undisclosed.

In the meantime here’s some overdubbed ambience courtesy of Yours Truly…

When you have to choose between truth and legend… I say choose the legend

tonywilson.jpg
Tony Wilson interviewed by the NME in 1986:

NME: There’s a quote about being misconstrued: ‘Irony is lost on pinheads’. I think Elvis Costello said it about The Clash, when all those, um, anti-violence songs caused the audiences to start slugging each other.

TW: The only way we can have peace in the world is by having lots more riots. There will be riots down the line before we get peace. A good old fashioned rock and roll riot is a movement towards truth; it’s the forward motion of history.

NME: Even if the rioters aren’t freedom fighters, but simply a bunch of assholes?

TW: Oh certainly. The urge to destroy is a creative urge. It’s never static. You only get old when you decree ‘all revolutions are over’, when you say the dialectic is finished. That’s why Russia is an old nation, because it has called a halt to change.

NME: What happens to pop when the rioting stops?

TW: I saw Malcolm McLaren last week in Los Angeles, and his theory at the moment is that it will never happen again. He’s saying that there are now so many avenues open to music that there’s just no chance. I said to him,’Just like fucking Lenin, right? There’s a continuous dialectic going on until you’ve had your bit. As soon as you’re in charge, that’s the end; no more world revolutions’. Speaking of Malcolm, I’ll have to tell you my How Malcolm McLaren Fucked Himself In The Ass Theory.

RIP. Like Ned, Factory has always meant Manchester first and Warhol second. I hope the funeral gets a FAC number.