it is widely held that art is the manifestation of creative expression.
we agree that the motive power behind art is creative expression.

we assert that to express oneself, creatively or otherwise, is an attempt to communicate.
to express oneself in a vacuum, creatively or otherwise, would be futile and a waste of motive power.
thus, we assert that it is widely held that art is a form of communication.

however, we also assert that it is widely held
- that because the motive power of the artist cannot be known to the audience,
- that because the author's intent cannot be completely in the mind of the audience,
a full and complete communication between artist and audience is impossible.
an author can put out before an audience their manifestation of expression
but they are impotent to ensure that their intent is known
and thus unable to ensure that which they intend to communicate will be heard.
conversely, an audience can experience a work of art and know it as a manifestation of expression
but they are impotent to know the intent of that expression
and thus are unable to ensure that they hear the intent of the communication.

we assert that if this second widely held view is true, then the first widely held view is, in fact, impossible.
that if this is true then it stands as the complete impediment to expression of any kind.
art offered into the world with the assumption that it cannot properly communicate itself
is, in fact, not art,
because it is, in fact, not communication -- not creative expression.
it is rubbish.

we are two beings -- separate beings with separate motive powers and intentions.
through our combined efforts to express ourselves completely and to hear one another completely,
through the collaborative creation of this work we have discovered that it is, in fact, possible to communicate completely.
we assert therefore, that if we two beings can know each other's motive power, than our audience can also know it.
we assert that there is no distinction between the communication of two beings to create expression and between an expresser and an audience.
we assert therefore, that art is possible -- that art exists.
we assert therefore, that this work of ours is art.
we assert therefore, that our audience can hear this work as completely as we hear it.

therefore we must also assert that the widely held conclusion that an audience cannot completely know art is the enemy of art.
we must identify the root of this conclusion and we must engage in the appropriate therapy to relieve it.
we must attack this impediment.
this impediment to communication.
this speech impediment.
this lisp.

~~~

if { then } else { do } is now available for your listening pleasure in part at facebook and myspace and in whole via last.fm.
we are waiting to make tracks available for download until we have exhausted all avenues for getting CD's pressed.
in the event that we are unable to secure a means of pressing CD's
we will then make both mp3's and non-compressed audio files available to download.
if you know of organizations willing to take a stand
against the big corporations that demand licensing fees for samples
that will press CD's that contain uncleared samples,
please let us know how to get in touch with them to supply them with a demo.

thank you for listening.


click here to access links to the music

if you know me,
or have known me,
in real life,
please read this (short) blog post

http://www.jhimm.net/wabi_sabi/?p=161

LJ seems to have disabled the URL mechanism
that i have been using for several years now
as the means by which i convert my filtered friends view
into an RSS feed which i can then view as a cohesive whole.
their FAQ no longer contains links to the technique i was utilizing
and now simply recommends subscribing to each user's LJ page through a reader individually.
the problem with this, of course, is protected entries,
not to mention RSS subscription bloat.

so,
at this point,
i guess i am done with LJ.

if you say something i need to know, be sure to write to me directly.

otherwise,
i'll be posting day to day life on Twitter
(which i believe will get re-posted here en mass)
and my spiritual blog will still be at Wabi Sabi.

bye.

twitter and all the blogs are ablaze with the "scandal"
that the McCain campaign spent $150,000 to dress the Palin family.

so?
do you people not think that all campaigns spend money on wardrobe?
there are,
what,
about eight of them,
including the poor schmuck about to get shot-gunned into marrying in?
considering how -often- they appear in public,
this isn't like they all got one outfit worth $18grand each.

i'd love to see comparable numbers for Obama, Hilary, &c.
i doubt they are much different,
when you consider that they're dressing far fewer people
and you look at the numbers on a per person basis.

campaigns are money sinks.
we knew this, right?

shortly after 9/11/01 it was hip (thankfully briefly) to be pretty anti-muslim.
i suspect with some aspects of our society (thankfully fringe) that's still the case.

but now,
society has swung too far the other way.

file this under
"Christians simply boycotted 'Passion of the Christ', so boycott the game".

for that matter,
Christians find -most- video games offensive for one reason or another.
i don't see anyone jumping to appease them.
in fact,
it is becoming increasingly hip to be actively anti-Christian in pop culture.
(which, while disturbing and personally annoying, i at least understand.
the whole anti-muslim thing never made -any- sense to me.)

if the game developers think that musical artist had value when they hired them
(or licensed their music)
why not demonstrate your convictions by standing behind the artist
as someone with a valid form of artistic expression (which you -paid for-),
and refuse to back down,
and release the game as is?

cops get M4's, i get... nothing

so,
apparently it makes perfect sense for Chicago to violate my 2nd amendment rights
and not permit me to own any gun of any kind,
but in spite of this,
it still necessary for the police to have M4 assault rifles.
great.

i cannot WAIT to move out of this clown car of a city.

why do so many people think that Google Earth violates their privacy?
Google doesn't take the pictures.
Google doesn't pay to have the pictures taken.
Google pays for the use of existing pictures
which were already being taken prior to Google Earth.
you already had no privacy before Google came along.
why are so many people so obsessed with demonizing Google?
i don't think they're saving the world or anything,
but i don't get this bizarre, knee-jerk reaction to data-mining as a business model.
IT stands for Information Technology.
everything is about information.
but information has no value all by itself.
you have to -do- something with it,
and so far Google's doing that better than most people.
so how is this a bad thing?

if i have dozens of email conversations about midi-controllers,
i'm -thrilled- that gmail tells me where to buy them cheaper than i do now.
and since their ad serving system is completely automated,
no one at Google -knows- i want to buy midi-controllers.
no one's looked at the content of my email, no one cares!
they have better things to do.
like driving around -public- streets taking pictures
so that when i want directions to a new restaurant,
i can -see- where i'm going to go!
and this -also- doesn't violate anyone's privacy
because they're -public- roads,
and if you're on them when they snap the pictures,
you're -in public- and -have no privacy- anyway.

i just don't get it.

spent the day driving from mystic, ct
to narragansett, ri (and point judith)
and back again
just to prove to myself i'm not crazy
that the lakefront in Chicago is nothing like a real coastline.
i was right.

my lips taste like salt.
my skin is tight and dry.
the sand in my shoes is not pure, white silica.
i saw shells and rocks,
seagulls the size of shepherds,
fishing trawlers
and coastal bungalows stretching on for miles.

i ate smoked scallops.

if i wasn't so lonely i'd be ecstatic.

if i see one more
"i wasn't going to get into politics this time but..." post
so help me.

why is it that every four years
i have to be so brutally reminded
that even people i know well,
hold near and dear,
know to be well educated and thoughtful
all turn into knee-jerking,
bile spewing,
opinion-and-soundbite over fact shouting
hate machines.

i have friends on both sides.
if you paint "the other" as Evil,
you insult my friends
and you insult me for having them as friends.

you're all wrong,
and it gets proven every four years
when the fruits of your ideas and ideals prove to be hatred.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/technology/21comcast.html


not only are providers now deliberately (checking) and then dropping certain kinds of packets
but now if you actually -use- what you -pay for- expect to get throttled.

i love how everyone's ads are for how shockingly fast their service is
and just how shockingly much crap you can download/upload -constantly-
but in actuality what they're going to do is re-route the bandwidth you paid for
to someone else who ... isn't using it as much?!

WOW.

Left: Demi Lovato's new album cover.

Right: No Doubt's Rock Steady album cover from years and years ago.

this is really starting to get completely out of hand.

oh,
and have you heard?
hip hop MC's are starting to slip product slogans[1] into their rhymes
and rather than having to pay to use the trademarked phrases
they're being paid
because companies are treating it as advertising.


someone remind me again why my album is illegal art?



[1] such as 'double your pleasure, double your fun'

so,
my fancy, expensive new brush
is shedding bristles at a disturbing rate.
this worries me.

also,
better brush and working for a better lather
means that instead of getting a long two years out of this soap round,
it is looking like i'll be lucky to get 9-12 months out of this one,
and i'm now barely shaving more than once a week.
i need to re-watch some of the videos on this,
as i think i may be mis-using the brush and soap
both wearing out the brush and using up too much soap.
but this job blocks videos so i have to do it at home and keep forgetting.

i'm anxiously awaiting some heirloom pieces from my mother's father
who passed back in the spring.
a shaving bowl and possibly some safety razors.
i like using a proper shaving cream for doing touch-ups mid-week
and this will be much simpler if i have a bowl to work a lather in
(i have a sample of shaving cream that i pull dabs out of for now).
right now i just wet my face and use the whiskers like brush bristles
and create the lather right on my face.
not ideal,
but its working.

the Taylor of Old Bond Street bay rum is like magic.
no razor burn, no itching, burning, or stinging.
and it smells great.

if the music industry wants a clue as to why CD sales are off 25%
here's a quick clue:

Katy Perry's big hit "I Kissed a Girl"
gives me at least two kinds of deja vue --

1) the drum line is, i believe, straight out of Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Part 2". if it isn't from that song, it is from other glam rock hit for which i am mistaking one for the other. if it isn't a direct sample, it ought to be copyright infringement because it's mimicked right down the echo effect. who wants to bet apples to gold bricks they aren't paying licensing?

2) didn't we hear these lyrics in 1995 from someone named Jill Sobule?! has our culture progressed so little in terms of defetishizing lesbianism that we've taken this story from an amusing folk romp and turned it into yet another dance floor grinder?


but this song is going to earn someone millions of dollars and i can't get 50 copies of "if { then } else { do }" pressed to sell (or give away) to my friends because somehow i'd be robbing Phil Collins, John Bonham and Peter O'Toole blind.


GO LISTEN TO METRIC INSTEAD!!!

many, many years ago, during the days of Mtv's "Liquid Television"
there was a marvelously animated series called Aeon Flux.

during one of the more bizarre and chilling episodes,
a character has her legs removed by a laser security system
and then automated robots rush out and sew up the wounds so that she doesn't die,
thus dooming the failed escapee to a life as a cripple.

Trevor Goodchild is heard to say
"That which does not kill us, makes us Stranger."

apparently a nearly identical line is spoken by The Joker in "Dark Knight".


i sure hope the screenplay author payed a licensing fee for that "sample".

anyone who is offended by the New Yorker cover of candidate Obama and his wife
is an idiot who needs to get a hobby aside from hand wringing.

the cult of personality and false hope clearly for sale all over the south side of Chicago
and the gross profiteering which is riding that false hope is far, far more offensive.
"change" is a lie.


here's the deal:

stereotypes are offensive,
so it is said,
because they reduce complex individuals down
into a handful of easily identifiable ear marks,
which may in fact be based on prejudice rather than fact.
they minimalize people.

by that definition,
no one is a stereotype.
the image that a stereotype depicts doesn't exist.

but if no one is a stereotype,
then any humor which pokes fun at stereotypes
actually pokes fun at no one
and so cannot actually be offensive.

humor that pokes directly at an individual,
a real individual,
and belittles aspects of that person which make them who they are
either out of ignorance, hatred or fear,
that's offensive.


but the people on the cover of that magazine don't exist.
and so the image makes fun of no one.
and thus cannot be offensive to anyone.

if something actually -is- offensive,
because it actually pokes directly at an individual,
then only that individual can take offensive.
anyone who steps in to take offensive on their behalf is grand standing
and just wants undeserved attention.

today's tasty tweets

• 08:59 facebook needs to sort itself out. i can only drink so much tea staring at a dead screen. why have i written more perl in 2008 than java? #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

today's tasty tweets

• 14:37 the only thing i seem to enjoy about living in Chicago is using the phrase "back East" (which i like) in a condescending way with locals. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

today's tasty tweets

• 10:12 btw, i'm not dead. just boring. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

just heard a story on NPR
about a man in California
who installed solar panels.
he then discovered that his neighbor's redwood trees often shaded the panels.
apparently CA has a law that it is illegal for anything you own to shade someone's panels.
so he sued.
seven years later the courts found in his favor
and his neighbor had to significantly trim back the trees.


idiots in California: saving the world's natural resources -- no matter what.

so i'm headed east on Roosevelt coming from Home Depot
about to cross State to head back to Lake Shore Drive.
there's a left turn lane which is beginning to emerge on my immediate left
and i'm stopped at a traffic signal, about eight cars deep.
i can't pull any more forward,
and several cars are just squeezing past me to get into the new lane.

*bump*

a f** g***** b**** p******* in her boyfriend's Excursion
having seen the various sensibly sized city cars fitting past me
has attempted to follow suit and plowed right into the back left corner of my car.
i look back in extreme agitation.
i _REALLY_ don't want to deal with a fender bender in -this- intersection
at 10am on a Saturday morning.
the ripple effect into other people's days will be insane.

apparently she didn't want to deal with it either.
because instead of waiting for the light and then pulling through after i moved
she -PUT HER FOOT DOWN- and -DROVE THROUGH- the corner of my car
sped off, made her left turn,
never to be seen again.
because i'd pulled up as flush to the cab in front of me as i could
in an effort to help the previous cars get into that lane,
i couldn't swing left and give chase.


among other reasons to hate Chicago,
this city is also turning me into a racist.
it isn't that people from certain demographics -can't- drive,
but that they chose to use their minority status as a weapon
and -deliberately- drive as recklessly and aggressively as possible
because they know no one can say boo about it
without it becoming a race issue which they know they'll win.