No Squirrels were harmed in the creating of this picture

At least by me

I found it like this

Walk like an Egyptian

Last night I worked at the midnight madness sale at the bookstore. That was sort of fun. After a while I realized that the customers all had something crazy in their eyes. They bought books about gardening, fantastic sex and the worlds most famous serial killers. It was 2 o'clock in the morning. The situation became sort of unsettling. The last few customers that we found drunk and ranting in the history department were gently led out into the snow at about 2:30.

Hedvig, Aida and I are going to Egypt tomorrow. But first we have to go to a seminar at school, and talk about books and say smart things about the artwork of children. (It's just really bad, isn't it? I mean what else is there to say? )And also somehow hide the fact that we didn't read some of the books at all. After that we finally leave. I hope Hedvigs dad won't mind us playing this song all the way to the airport. Because we will.

the Bangles- Walk like an Egyptian

I will return with stories and music. And trinkets.

Hip-Hop is DEAD

There is a great PBS Independent lens special called Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Ryhmes. (Follow the link to watch three previews of the documentary) The filmaker Byron Hurt is a long time hip-hop lover who now in his activist days isn't afraid to ask hardcore reality questions to current hip-hop fans, produders, and Mc's, (famous or wannabe.) The documentary has him interview Busta rhymes, Jadakiss and many other famous rappers. Industry moguls, and a group of mc's waiting outside a record studio trying to become famous as well as 3 drag-queen hip-hop heads, also provide an unusual percpective on the culture.

I have to admit I feel that the "bling," Misogyny, and glorification of violence is not only killing Hip-hop, but may also be helping to destroy black culture. Why BET is banning a Little Brother video for being "too inteligent," yet the Nas single "Hip-Hop is dead" is sandwiched in between two homogonous gangster rap songs that Nas is gunning on? Nas is too famous and too well-loved for his video to be banned, the same reason that Kanye West can speak out for tolerance of homosexuality. These men are trying to save Hip-hop.



One might ask if there is a conspiracy to keep violence in popular rap to execute population control, Maybe not but is it truly what people want to hear? without a doubt it is, but why? is it a ruthless cycle of social cohersion and then corporate capitalists using that excuse to keep it because it makes them money. As if there's not a market for "Hardcore reality in Hip-Hop" to quote Immortal Technique, or even just good hip-hop. the reality of the situation is that the ultra-violence in Hip-hop isn't helping the situation of violence on the streets, and the rich white dudes that are getting rich from producing this so called quality product are indifferent to this epidemic.

The only thing I know for sure is underground Hip-hop has better flow, better beats (and in the few cases they don't have better beats is simply cuz they don't have billions of dollars to spend on production) and is lyrically superior to commercial hip-hop.

Ty Featuring Eska - Sophisticated & Coarse (Everyday Thoughts)

Brit hop from Gilles Peterson

Gotan Project - Mi Confession

New Gotan; Rapper on this track is Koxmoz (Apolo Novax & Chili Parker)

Speak the Hungarian Rapper

More Songs About Bus Shelters and Chinese Food

Scene Of The Crime - The Stooges

After a two day road trip at 55mps down I-80 with a uhaul trailer full of crap, and a week of moving in and job hunting/whoring around downtown Madison, I have finally returned to my midwestern roots after 5 years in Boulder, CO. Now armed with two college degrees, a signed lease for a place downtown, and a full time job at a chinese restaurant, I’m stumbling ass-backward into semi-permament postgraduate life. Selling chow mein.

Now with all the hassles out of the way, I am free to enjoy adult(?)hood by spending the cash I make under the table for selling General Tso’s chicken to drunk college kids and derelict people waiting at the bus stop in front of the restaurant, on essentials like pot(s and pans) and cds. I am sad to announce though that Transmissions From Wintermute is no longer a trifecta of geographical awesomeness, covering, in absolute entirety, all the political, pop-cultural and artistic ground between Madison, Stockholm, and Boulder. Rather, it is now an extremely lopsided diode. But on the plus side (for me), I am very happy to be back in Madison which I think is one of the coolest little cities in the nation. All those Austin-Seattle-Portland hypesters can go slam a cock (to steal a phrase from Rob Corddry).

Despite my complete lack of ambition, and total contentment in hanging out listening to records and going out to shows, I think it’s very interesting that I live with 6 people my age who all have college degrees and all work in restaurants or bars making under $10 hour. There’s something pretty interesting about an economy in which over 2 billion is spend monthly in the bloody sands of Iraq (and soon Iran), and employers are free to sit around and wait for the most overqualified person to work at their shitty store (“well, you have a bachelor of arts degree, but I’m really looking for someone with an engineering background to work in my pizza place...”). I thought war was suppose to be good for the economy? Maybe someone who understands math can explain it to me.

To completely change the subject to hope for the future of independent media, I arrived back here just in time to help out on W.O.R.T. 89.9’s (Madison’s extremely eclectic and progressive community radio station) yearly pledge drive. Me and Laz spent last summer as regular volunteer’s for this bitchin’ station (she as a full fledged intern, and me as a lowly receptionist), so I thought I should mention their drive in this completely insubstatial corner of cyberspace (after all, these words did somehow wind up on the intra-net, so they must matter, right?). Anyway, if you're reading this, go HERE to W.O.R.T.’s WEBSITE where you can stream their entire 24 hours of programing and make a donation to help keep media free.

Early next week I'm gonna upload the first installment of the Official Transmissions From Wintermute Roadtrip Mixtape but in honor of ezarchive which seems to be working fine again, HERE is a rare Stooges track, from the previously unreleased original sessions for Raw Power. All the songs except one were rejected by the label, and the remaining outtakes weren’t released until years later in 1981 when BOMP Records randomly acquired the master tape and released it independently as I'm Sick Of You. Here’s one of my favorites from the EP. Iggy nailed it when he said you “Can’t go back a second time.” Belted out by a man who truly didn’t think he would outlive the decade. Luckily for us, somehow he did.

Horse

So since ezarchive still isn't working I guess I'm forced to post this clip of a horse that we met the other day. Trust me I would rather write intelligent things and post great music, but now this is all I can give you.




Translation for the non-swedes:

-Have some snow...Not wood.
-What are you doing here?
-Can't we make little animations?

-He's sweeping!
-I'm filming him now.
-He's licking it. But hey, hey you, honey, I don't think you should be eating... wood. I mean look at him,
(- What are you doing?)
-He's eating the board! You will get a splinter in your mouth.
(- OMG OMG)
-Heeeeeeey, Ezarchive sucks!
- (WOOOOAH!!!!)
- Why do you guys want to eat everything that you can't eat? Like fabric and wood?
- Fabric and Wood!

Not too far from where I live Volume II

Due to an EZ Archive malfunction we have been technologically unable to post music for a couple of days. This will resume as soon as we fix the problem with some kick ass music.

To tide y'all over here is a follow up to Not too far from where I live Volume I

In Waukesha Wisconsin (I once biked to this city from my home in Madison) a heroic man hears through his neighbors door the screams of a helpless virgin girl on the verge of having her hymen penetrated. With no time to spare to save the poor girls chastity he grabs his samarai sword and runs towards the noise, kicking in the door and backing the brutal rapist into a closet demanding to see the girl with her wellbeing foremost on his mind. Find out what fiendish lie the rapist came up with to admonish his guilt by reading The Article.

Note - This post is written from the perspective of the heroic hymen saver (except the part where I mention I biked there.)

Sad Books

I have always tried to avoid sad books (and movies) about war and death. I'm too impressionable, I think about them for weeks, about the world being a horrible place. The sadness seeps out into my life, and I've been too much of a wuss to handle that. I think I get that from my dad who can't handle death in movies. If he even so much as suspects that the pretty girl ( Arwen) in the Lord of the Rings might die at some point, he will pause the movie and make me tell him what fate has in store for her or he will get up and leave and furiously smoke a cigarette in his room.

I do make myself read sad books from time to time though, they just sort of slip in there somehow when I'm not paying attention. Last fall it was Paul Auster's the Book of Illusions, and after reading a few pages, I flipped it over and read " Six months after losing his wife and two young sons in a plane crash, Vermont professor David Zimmer spends his waking hours mired in alcoholic grief and self-pity.....". Oh man. Yeah. But I still read it, and it turned out to be a really great book about a man who lost everything and found a way to live on by writing a biography of the underestimated silent comedian Hector Mann.

When I heard that Dave Eggers was coming out with a new book with the strange name What is the What, I was really excited, but when I heard that it was not like his other books, and about some guy in Sudan, I was not so thrilled. BUT I could never, ever, resist a brand new book by Dave Eggers, so I eventually mustered up the courage to read the story of Valentino Achak Deng.

As a young boy, he managed to escape from his village in Southern Sudan, where inexplicable violence took place when army forces accused them of helping the rebels. He ran off into the night and eventually joined the thousands of boys ( also called the Lost Boys) who walked all the way to the relatively safe Ethiopia. On their journey they got bombed by airplanes, shot at by soldiers, eaten by lions. Crossing the desert many boys died of thirst and hunger. From Ethiopia we follow him to the refugee camp Kakuma, in Kenya, where he lived for 10 years before getting to move to the US.

Reading this book makes me feel guilty for many reasons. One of them is for knowing so little about Sudan or Africa in general. Another is that it makes me so incredibly thankful for not being able to even begin to understand what he's been through, and that that in turn makes me happy. Reading this book is a very humbling experience, which might be just what you need when you think that you know what sadness is.




PS. Oh yeah, you will be happy to know, Ohmygodimmike, that I finally started reading The Kite Runner.

Glad to Live in a Free Society

I was watching Fox news the other day with my co-blogger Mazur and they were saying that Washington State is introducing legislation to annul marriages if the couple does not have a baby within the first 3 years of the marriage.

We were shocked to see this and immediately assumed it was introduced by some Pat Robertson/Pat Buchanan type, maniacally serious about overpopulating the country with as many non-foreigners as possible. Mazur was so disgusted that he immediately changed the channel before we were engulfed in rage.

It turns out that this ammendment was introduced by proponents of same-sex marriage. WOW!
The catch is that they don't actually want the ammendment to pass into law. They just want to point out the hypocricy of those who think that gay people shouldn't get married because they can't procreate, the sole purpose for humans to exist.

So if this passes, straight people will be forced to procreate or they are just as much sinners as gay people. Which according to fundamentalist Christain values is true, since condoms are evil and everytime anyone has sex it should be for the intention of procreation.

For the first time in the history of logic, legislation is being introduced that those who are promoting it, in this case the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance, don't want it to become law. The only problem is, what if it does become law.

Animal Sounds

From when Animal Collective made their unlikely rise to popularity in the indie world certain ripple effects have appeared, at least to my two ears. Whether some preexisting bands had a similar sound before hand and were allowed to rise the ranks because of AC breaking down the doorway, if it was just a flagbearer for things and sounds to come, or if it is just people straight up copping the style, theres something to be said for the longevity of the style with so many people doing similar things. Among those groups, who seem to be taking the sound closer to the main stream, are Grizzly Bear and The Annuals. I am sure there are others, but nothing comes to mind and I probably just haven't heard of more of these instances.

Panda Bear - Bro's(edit)

Core member of the collective, Panda Bear's 12" is a great example of this sound moving towards gentler pop accessible grounds within AC, along with their last album Feels. First released early December in the "rest of the world" and due in North America on Feb 20th, the original Bro's has been floating around the net for a while. This version, the edit, is on Panda Bears upcoming album Person Pitch which actually wont be arriving this side of the pond until March 20th. Damn. Listening to the two gives the perfect illustration of the transitions AC has been going through. The 12 minute original wanders, and drags its feet in shimmery reverbed acoustic guitar strums, while the edit is all Good Vibrations-esque hooks and concise spaciousness. All goodness is filtered down to five minutes, because somewhere in the groups more psychedelic panderings is always a heart of pure pop gold.

Dr. Dog - My Old Ways

I wont deny it, I first heard Dr. Dog on MTV when they played the video to the track My Old Ways. ADD channel surfing can take you to strange places. My first impression was that it just sounded like the Beatles, nothing more, and maybe something less. Slowly, before my three minute attension span ran up I began to pick up on the subtle twists and even, yes, and Animal Collective leaning. The quality is best summarized by the chorus which gets a little longer, and a little better each time.

The Toes are Webbed

To make this perfectly clear, I thought I'd use this picture of my foot with the webbed toes right next to this giant foot, with non-webbed toes, belonging to my friend Elias.

I didn't know much about webbed toes, and I didn't really care much about it. I mean, obviously I thought it was awesome when I was a kid because I thought it made me a fantastic swimmer. Jumped right into the deep end of the pool without being able to swim, completely relying on the power of my toes.
It wasn't until a few years ago, when me and my friends sat by the water down town, that I was first called a mutant freak.

On the internet, this birth defect, Syndactyly, is sometimes referred to as a mutation, yes. Which is cool, because the Teen Age Mutant Ninja ( or "Hero" as they were called in Sweden, because "Ninja" is just so violent) Turtles are cool. Once I found some page with a big discussion about whether the webbed toes were actually the next step in evolution. Which totally makes sense, just think of what happened in Water World. THINK ABOUT IT. The best web page I've found on about this rare and interesting condition has to be World Wide Webbed Toes though. Wow, that was a complete shock to me, because there were like 587 comments on his post about webbed toes. I just sat there for hours reading about people who felt awful about their toes, successful and unsuccessful toe-surgery, one girl used draw a line with a marker on her web to mask it (aww). But of course also, super proud mutants with web-piercings and webbed-toe-fetishist lovers, who refer to normal toes as "non-webbed". Oh right I guess I did that too haha. But yeah, everything is relative. Because when you think about it, everybody else's toes look weird as hell and only your own look normal.

I was going to post some really good music to go with the webbed toes, but ezarchive seems to be acting up again. If anyone of my fellow blogmates would find it in their hearts to see what's up with that, I would appreciate it immensely.

Randomest Post Ever!

It's 6 o'clock in the morning and I have been playing internet poker for hours...no better time for my scattered mind to write my random post.

There is also no better time to put all the poker money I won on the Indianapolis Colts to win the superbowl. It is my lock of the week. If everyone follows my advice and puts there life savings on the Colts to cover a touchdown against the Bears everyone will get rich and it will turn the world upside down as well as put a lot of bookies out of business. And since we have so many wonderful readers and everyone knows I'm always right this surely will happen.

You can also bet on how long Billy Joel will take to sing the national anthem here.

We'll start out by entertaining our glorious readership with some Choose your own adventures for adults.

I will also provide a few random links to allow everyone hours of pleasure on the internet.


The Sex life of Ellen DeGeneres

Michelle Kwan participates in Special Olympics

One more reason to make fun of Mormons

Allright that was pretty lame so lets get to the randomly selected music

Blackalicious - Powers

This song from there most recent album The Craft, is one of their less hip-hop more soulful songs.

El Guapo - Justin Destroyer

nothing to say about this song. Here's a link.

Albert Kuvezin & Yat-Kha - In A Gadda Da Vida

Covered by a Tuvan throat singer

Scream Club - Internationale

Lesbian Hip-hop by Cindy Wonderful and Sarah Adorable.