From HG Wells’ ‘The Shape Of Things To come’ :
[The air-dollar] was not a metallic coin at all; it was a series of paper notes, which represented distance, weight, bulk, and speed. Each note was good for so many kilograms in so much space, for so many kilometres at such a pace. The value of an air-dollar had settled down roughly to a cubic metre weighing ten kilograms and travelling two hundred kilometres at a hundred kilometres an hour.’
Slightly delayed…
[EDIT: no files any more]
Methodology.
OK, here’s what I did: I went to my last.fm page and got the one year rolling chart for ‘tracks’. Then I chose my favourite track by each artist appearing in the chart more than once till I had 10 tracks. Then I gave the tracks a confusing numbering scheme and found some pictures on the internet. Here they are in the traditional order…
My worrying penchant for incredibly cheesy pop music in full effect here. This is extremely catchy, kind of in the same retro/musical theatre vain as Madonna’s Dick Tracy soundtrack. In case the previous sentence didn’t tip you off, this is possibly the gayest song ever.
09. Marit Larsen - Don’t Save Me
Also pop, albeit an altogether more tasteful Scandinavian variety, more cardigans, pine and in bed by 11 with a mug of ovaltine. This song has the most obscenely optimistic sounding chorus and the whole thing just sparkles and glimmers with shiny popness. Why it’s not been released in this country is a total mystery.
08. The Eternals - This Beat Is To Original
I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that The Eternals seem to be custom designed to appeal to me; just the right proportions of dub, soul and punk mixed together and garnished with a generous sprinkling of analogue synthesizers and weird quasi-mystical lyrics.
07. The Gossip - Standing In The Way Of Control
Some librarians think that Beth Ditto’s voice is over the top and has too much warbling, not sure about that (though the inclusion of la Aguilera above suggests that it takes quite a bit to over stimulate my warbling receptors). What I am sure about is that the music, brimming with attitude, sexiness and general fuck-you-ness, is exactly what the world needs in the face of the limp and regressive white boy rock that infests the indie/alternative world.
06. Mobb Deep - G.O.D. Part III
Along with an Organized Konfusion album that I picked up cheap the other day this is all about nostalgia for me. I can tell I’ve started to get old as I’m finding myself agreeing with people who think hip hop isn’t as good as it used to be.
05. Missy Elliot - 4 My People
Missy Elliot’s greatest hits album is one of the best greatest hits record ever made (alongside Queen I & II, Prince - The Hits, and Introducing the Minutemen). This is one of the tracks that I’d not heard before. A glitchy paean to ecstasy. More rappers should take ecstasy.
04. Andrew W.K. - She Is Beautiful
It’s the only Andrew W.K. track I can listen to, I really just can’t stand anything else he’s done, but maybe that’s because he’s rendered his continued existence kind of pointless by producing this so early in his career (like 4/5 years ago now?).
03. The Knife - We Share Out Mothers Health
The Knife album, Silent Shout, is easily my favourite record released last year and this is the track that first got its shiny black hooks into me. Folk tales about communism and incest forced through digital filters.
02. Hot Chip - No Fit State
(In all the photos I could find these guys look either dull or infuriatingly kooky, like Voice of the fucking Beehive or something, so they don’t get to have a picture. Nothing personal, I’m sure they’re lovely guys)
Not much to say about this, euphoric melodic dance music. Another band I came late to. No longer can I claim to be down with the kids, or even the mid to late twenty-somethings, who I suspect constitute this bands main audience.
01. Black Mountain - Don’t Run Our Hearts Around
If you haven’t heard this yet, I’m sure the picture tells you quite a bit about what these guys sound like.
From the slow opening, phased guitar filled with grim portent, to the pounding conclusion six minutes later this is pure hairy music. It demands to be listened to at full volume, head banging and jaw clenched, twice as many times as anything else I listened to last year.
BONUS! Bonde Do Role - Ma’quina De Ricota
I also listened to a lot of Reggaton and Rio Baille Funk last year but they don’t show up in the Last FM charts as I tend to consume these genres in the form of hour long mixes (check out Wayne and Wax’s “El Mix Dembow” if you can find it). So this is a bonus track, I don’t know what it’s all about but the presence of the word ‘Ricota’ in the title combined with a prominent “Final Countdown” sample makes me think that it’s something to do with cheese. The years best reinvention of the Bond franchise.
Don’t bother looking at this I’m about to tell you about it. So basically everyone’s like “ooo look it’s a waterfall that says jeep on it. Lets send the link to everyone” ink jet printers do the same thing at about a billion times the speed* and a billion times the accuracy* and you don’t get people sending videos of them ’round do you? No, they just ignore these minor miracles of modern science until someone sends them a video of a big dumb version advertising a big dumb car.
Also, cell phones dirtier than the bottom of your shoe. It’s your desk has more bacteria than a toilet all over again. I don’t care what some stupid piece of media science says I’m not going to start eating my lunch in the toilet and I’m not going to start using my shoe for a phone (or vice-versa). I haven’t been ill for years (except when i ate some sushi and threw up in a hairdressers, long story, ok it’s not, you pretty much know it all already, but that’s what you say isn’t it after you say something else: “I drunk too much and I’m really hung over”, long story no it’s not you just gave me the salient facts now please leave me to read my book, I knew I shouldn’t have acknowledged that I’d seen you on the platform and now I’m trapped with your boring stories for the next 5 stops, remember, head down concentrate on the page)
*may not be a billion, I’m no expert.
Continuing my obsession with futuristic military hardware…
I love that the video seems to have been based on those spoof ads that appear in Starship Troopers and Robocop.
Incidentally, if you’re into sci-fi you should probably read Joe Haldeman’s ‘The Forever War’, a kind of response to Heinlein’s jingoistic ‘Starship Troopers’ book (one of the things I like so much about Verhoven’s film is the way it thoroughly subverts the intention of its source material). I finished it on the tube this morning.
Basically it’s a take on the authors experience in Vietnam and particularly the alienation that veterans of that war often felt upon returning to civilian life, a theme which is stretched to its limit by the relativistic effects of interstellar flight. Every time the characters return from a tour of duty, tens or hundreds of years have a passed on earth. The whole thing is told with wonderful economy and a professionals eye for military hardware, successfully nailing both the glamour and horror of war without being heavy handed or preachy.
The system repeatedly refused to acknowledge that pictures of Neil contained any faces.
According to a computer these are the people I look like…
But… which readers of these very words (probably, i.e. people we know and who read this blog and have commented in the past) does the computer deem to look like the following celebrities:
Who?
“The pervert’s pervert”
Answers in the comments please.
The truth will be revealed maybe at five o’clock maybe on monday. (or probably sooner for people who know or can guess where to look)
Bonus question: Which reader has a face which the system simply couldn’t process returning an enigmatic shadow with a question mark in it instead?
“Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms. The machine world reciprocates man’s love by expediting his wishes and desires.” Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media
They’re not out for a year, no doubt the BBC Tech news page will be running a couple of stories a day on it until then though. Someone suggested that the ultimate BBC Tech story would be about someone making an iPhone in Second Life, they could probably just close that section of the site once that happened.
PS. Yes the post title is a reference to They Live, basically the rule ’round here is: If in doubt it’s a reference to They Live.
PPS. 
So recently I’ve been working on a website with Abbie about the Middle East.
I’ve been writing a trading game in Perl for a bit of light relief.
And I’ve been re-reading all my Kurt Vonnegut books (and re buying the ones I’ve given away over the years).
Things i’ve been thinking about include, evolution, how surreal broken 3d graphics looks, all jagged vertices and so on breaking the photo realistic surface, computer games as the first true industrial art form.
Mostly though I’ve been playing Zelda on the Wii: It’s so insanely polished, it feels like a relic but in the sense that games like this seem to be a dying art. Basically it’s flawless and the Ice Dungeon (Snow Mansion, whatever) is a serious contender for best Zelda dungeon EVER.