Something About a Hacksaw, in Shanghai Friday, May 8 2009

I recently had the pleasure of helping out with this, for the awesome Shanghai based music site Layabozi. The site has been one of the links in my sidebar for a while. The variety of articles on Layabozi is great – it’s eclectic, open-minded, rich in mental and visual stimulation,  has no genre boundaries and is written by true music lovers, who take music seriously but still have a sense of humour.  They describe it better:

“Layabozi is a web magazine about music in Shanghai today, with a sprinkle of the extra-mural and a tart sassiness—without ever being cloying. We take our inspiration from the snack which is both exotic (to us) and down home, and from which we take our name: Spicy Duck Necks. We are led by an exuberant, but discerning, Chilean amateur flautist with a strikingly handsome, yet humble, American bass player in support. We strive to provide writing that nourishes while piquing the intellect, and knowledge of music all over Shanghai, from Classical to Nouveau, from the Shanghai Grand to the neighborhood Chinese Opera house.”

And there’s a cool article on there right now, by ed, about funky Afro-Peruvian Music! You don’t even know what that is, do you? so go find out!

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Santa Fe Ghosts Wednesday, Mar 18 2009

The Santa Fe courthouse ghost was a purported ghost sighted on a video captured by a security camera at a courthouse in Santa Fe, New Mexico on June 15, 2007. The “ghost video” was uploaded onto YouTube and quickly attracted widespread attention, especially within the community of ghost believers.

The mysterious object

On June 15, 2007, a mysterious star-shaped object floating around the First Judicial District courthouse was recorded by a surveillance camera. The image, starting at 7:27:11 a.m., shows a bright spot of light that comes from either the roof or near the courthouse’s back door on Catron Street.^[1] Quickly thereafter, reports on the event were posted on various news web sites such as courttv.com, abcnews.com, cbsnews.com, foxnews.com and Yahoo!, and promptly became a topic of discussion all over the country. Soon after videos and images were released to public, a large number of e-mail messages were sent to a New Mexico Magazine reporter, proposing various theories on what the object was.^[2] Thousands of hits for the video were recorded on The New Mexican site. The video was later uploaded to YouTube and has been viewed more than 80,000 times,^[3] drawing hundreds of e-mail comments.^[4]

Many predictions were made about the real identity of the mysterious object. Some people supposed that it was the ghost of Andy Lopez, who took nine hostages at the courthouse in February 1985 after killing the wife of his original victim 20 years ago.^[1] Other predictions included a person walking, a male’s face and a spirit. However, common theories were that it might be just an insect (later found to be true), a spider, or a reflection, as well as some kinds of light phenomenon. Vanessa Pacheco, supervisor of the court security for the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office, said people’s opinions on the video depended on whether they believe in ghosts.^[2]

1/22/2008 –

County staff responding to a water leak at the former Blue Monkey salon and cosmetology school Tuesday morning found the interior trashed, covered in vulgar graffiti and reeking of hair dye that had been splattered over the walls and floors.

“The county hates tattooed freaks and their daughters, I gave them bad highlights on purpose,” and “We put a voodoo hex on this property” were among the phrases written across the walls of the former salon. Others contained expletives and sexually explicit remarks directed at County Commissioner Harry Montoya. Crumpled beer cans, shards of broken mirrors and beauty-supplies littered the floor.

Source: Wikipedia, Santa Fe New Mexican (Article: Phaedra Haywood, Photo:  Luis Sanchez-Saturno)

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Epilogue of the Rabbit’s Tongue Wednesday, Nov 12 2008

Picture: Miroslav Sasek

Some things warrant ignoring. Please be aware that what follows may be one such thing. In this long, rambling and tedious post, we concern ourselves with an event that never happened, like the moon landings, or the assisination of the Loch Ness Monster. However, it was my great pleasure to take this opporunity to thank some of the many people who have helped make Peter and The Hare who they are, the blog they are, when they are, if they are.

Thanks for listening.

P.S. Is your computer Y2K compliant?

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If Your Space is MySpace, I’ll Sleep in the Wardrobe. Thursday, Sep 25 2008

This is an old Surrealist game that might be as informative as surrealism can be:

SCOREBOARD
Rate the following:

(+20 = unreserved approval, 0 = utter indifference, -20 = total abomination)

Irrationality +14
Humour +20
Civilisation +17
Desire +19
Honesty +20
Religion +0
Madness -16
Logic -10
Happiness +20
Weakness-6

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C.S., Not Carroll – A Hare Speaks Monday, Aug 25 2008

Source: Mad Hare

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On The Occasion of My Birthday Monday, Jul 28 2008

A selecton of imported beers

and the autobiography of Peter Falk.

I ask you,

who’s arguing with that?

Of course that is not a proper poem (or is it? no.) but every birthday has it’s colours, waves its own flags, the flagpoles dug into sand and, around them, sand castles with their own moats, bridges and sophisticated pulley systems

and little rocks, which we’ll call milestones.  

“Gee”, he said, “I never expected a milestone to be so small. I can hardly see it.”

“well, son, thats a pebble you’re holding.”

“Oh.”

The Moral of The Story Is (Not) – some things that have made my birthday and by extension my life:  

 

1.

28th of July, 1866 is Beatrix Potter’s birthday. Beatrix Potter created Peter Rabbit, whom the hare must surely owe some alegience to somehow – yet another of his mystical kinships of which I am not am not fully aware.

2.

The Dark Knight 

A fine lesson in the archetecture of nightmares. It is unleashed, it has broke free and now we can all see it, and should.  humanity’s Mr. Hyde is unmasked and stripped bare, and we left the cinema speechless and in awe. Heath Ledger’s performance seems to emmerge from some deep, dark well of the uncanny. Almost from nowhere, or somewhere too evil to contemplate.

3.

“Just One More Thing” by Peter Falk (aforementioned)

He is a wanderer, who follows every whim, with wisdom and stupidity/naivity. To me, he’s not “Columbo”, I don’t really have that point of reference so much as others might. he’s a wiseman, who writes with great energy and carpe diem . In this book is life, lest we forget we’re living it. Not just a life, it’s that too, but the energy of life. Peter Falk crossed over to Yugoslavia, which was then behind the iron curtain, purely out of curiosity, and wound up helping to build a railroad.

4.

music, music, music.

reggae, very cheesy and commercial, but great to get a party started, from a budget compilation from the supermarket.

and 1950s rock n’ roll songs and songs of a similar texture,

found a dark, subversive veign that i had not noticed in that music. cos it’s not all elvis, is it? Bo Diddley is finally getting his dues.

And Link Wray’s sound terrorism. “Jack The Ripper”. Jackson Pollock.

 

And I’m out,

I would say ”Over and out” but nothing infuriates CB radio enthusiasts more apparantly.

Over — I have finished talking and I am listening for your reply. Short for “Over to you.”
Out or Clear — I have finished talking to you and do not expect a reply.

And so, “Over and Out” does not exist, you see.

Over and Out!

Peter

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Two Cynical Poems Wednesday, Jul 2 2008

“The iPod” and “Exotica”

1.
I must confess, Franz Kafka,
that I’ve never read your books,

I once saw a
made-for-TV movie
of The Trial.

It was snowing outside,
and nothing was on.

I was thinking about
how much I like
the sensation of undressing.

Before the snow,
and things that blind us,
we turn the wheel
so many degrees.

Being long dead,
you may not understand this.
This is the iPod.

Listen to it closely.

It’s a European knowledge of clockwork.
It’s a Zen-styled American milkman.

a smooth menu of everything;
castrati singers,
on early sound.

In the white-walled
city of ghosts.

 

2.
In the white-walled
city of ghosts,

the inventor of the
marvellous Theremin,

slips out in disguise
leaving his wife and child,

infants sleep silently under their pillows.

Peasants -
every one -
will meet briefly and part,
under vague and complicated
clouds of unreason.

Kafka will contemplate an old joke about Pac-Man.

A man with crutches has
more legs than he wants.

 

 

iConch

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Schools. Saturday, Jun 28 2008

water takes the shape of the container in which it is poured. it is not a gas.

we learnt these obvious things in school.

I swore that I could hear the soft hum of electricity passing through the wire, if you listen hard enough. I was told not to be silly.

I was no good at algebra, because there didn’t seem to be much sense in adding numbers to letters, if they did not result in words.

On one occasion, I deliberatly misheard the rules of the task, so that I could write a poem.

When I was a fan of Micheal Jackson, I became enraged with Jarvis Cocker’s stunt:

Jarvis Cocker’s Stage Invasion (1996)

“In 1996, Michael Jackson was given a special “Artist of a Generation” award. At the ceremony he accompanied his single “Earth Song” with a stage show, with Jackson as a Christ-like figure surrounded by children. Jarvis Cocker, of the band Pulp, mounted the stage in protest of the performance. Cocker ran across the stage, lifting his shirt and pointing his (clothed) bottom in Jackson’s direction. Cocker was subsequently questioned by the police on suspicion of causing injury towards three of the children in Jackson’s performance, although no criminal proceedings followed. “Earth Song” became Jackson’s biggest hit in the UK, spending six weeks at the top of the chart.” – Brit Awards

I rallied some of my little schoolfriends around to produce posters denouncing the actions of the lead singer of Pulp.

So that’s how I missed the point of Britpop, while Rich was at his happiest when discussing Sonic The Hedgehog.

 

 

 

A Patch of Life 

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Not Particularly. Saturday, May 17 2008

The dust always settles,
as they say,
upon the floor.

when it does,
an underpowered speaker
plays Syd Barrett.

Cricket noises and chirps
cause the room to vibrate under us,

and as softly as we talk,
my ears grind to a shell.

My favourite song has ruined them -
I finish off the crumbs
of a necessary pie,
because there is less time for madness.

We play with titles;
you call me “Monsignor”.

We throw our cards about,
like the others.

My Queen reads Edward Lear’s limericks aloud.
“To laugh or to cry?”
is a question,
when she asks it.

I remember the blue light
before my bad dreams
as a child.

I could play another with ease,
but today I pull no tricks.

Suppose that cricket underneath us
turns a wheel?

While painters of a certain school
pack up their things
in satisfaction -

the half-stolen silverware
from each other’s apartments
is silver-tongued;
and it discusses

the tree branch outside.
A lizard greets the ground.

The lizard forgets
the branch that…

it slipped again,
and slipped once more.

In the afterlife,
there’s plenty of china.

A cat meets him at the station,
with a parasol.

It must have been a rainy night
in the garden.

The glow of home,
its invisible friends
call the creature.

The chameleon
makes like a new barometer
for the snowflakes and swirls
that distract it from
the telephone.

Showers. Good. -
The shipping broadcast
gets it right every time
because there is no wind
in space.

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