Since Latif Learned is me and I'm Latif Learned, I'm going to be posting his songs here. I often make songs for people to send them in the email when I'm thinking about them, but why not post them here, too?
for sara - 09242006
Latiflearned.com has more
... asked me "why not just delete your account?", if I have such a problem with Friendster's message. Well, I thought of that, but it doesn't really send any message back. In fact, it's exactly what I did with my MySpace account, and immediately regretted it. I want to be able to send a message to the world at large about the way I feel about Friendster, and there's no way you can convince somebody of the way you feel by being absent from a place where presence is voluntary. Once I deleted my profile from MySpace, the fact that I had a problem with MySpace was lost, because I just became, from the eyes of the internet, another person without a MySpace account.
And so on. Have a nice weekend.
Latiflearned.com is far less preachy than this site. Well, a little less preachy.
I've talked about this before, so I won't belabor the point, but I'm accumulating problems with the social networking sites (friendster/myspace/blah blah blah) at an alarming rate. First, I was just worried that advertisers would see my friendster profile, and use my favorite bands against me by putting them in a Volkswagen commercial. This has been done, granted, but it doesn't stop there. Now we can all safely assume that if you're applying for a job, you're going to get Google searched, which means that anything posted online about you (with your real name attached to it) is going to be found. So your MySpace profile that professes your love for 311 and has naked ladies in a y-repeat pattern in the background? That's going to keep things from happening for you.
So I've deleted all pertinent information from my friendster profile, and left in its stead a message to the future... I reccomend that you all do the same.
Latiflearned.com is less paranoid.
I'm a big fan of public transit. I think that we should all use it. We should have rail! More trains! More buses! Fewer cars! More personal interaction. I think that the car/highway system is arguably one of the worst things to happen to American culture. That combined with our culture of rugged individualism turned us into the bunch of fuck-you cowboys that we are today.
Boston is trying to kill my love for public transit. The MBTA hates people. Take, for example, when I tried to go to work on Friday. To get on a bus at Forest Hills, you need one of two things: cash, or a weekly pass. Lacking cash due to an oversight, I simply figured that I'd get some cash out of the ATM, break it up by buying a bottle of water or something, then get on my bus with time to spare.
Unfortunately, the ATM at Forest Hills doesn't work. Bummer. I'm staring at my bus, which is going to leave in about two minutes, a bus that if missed will mean that I get to work half an hour late, and I can't find any way to get cash. So I go to the "Charlie Card" terminals, thinking that there *must* be some option there to allow me to get a pass so that I can ride the bus. I even go so far as to consider purchasing a weekly pass, just so that I can ride the bus on Friday. Unfortunately, the machine doesn't let you buy this week's pass, you can only buy next week's.
There is literally no way that I could get on that bus legitimately.
To rub some salt in the wound, I have a Charlie Card that'll work fine on the subway. So I tried to feign innocence and get on the bus with that. The driver says "those don't work on this bus." So I'll have to get cash? Yep. But the ATM doesn't work, how am I supposed to get cash? I dunno, what do you want me to do? All I'm saying is that I would love to pay you to get on this bus, but I have no way of doing that.
So she let me ride the bus for free, after I swore that I'd try to remember to bring cash from now on.
I'm just going to ride my bike from here on out. Seriously, folks. You can't even pay the MBTA to ride their buses.
Latiflearned.com doesn't talk about buses at all.
You might think that your high school mascot was pretty cool. Well, I've got news for you. The Cougars, Wildcats, Oscelots, etc. of the world have nothing on my high school mascot: the Sandstoners.
Now, being the Sandstoners would be unremarkable, except that that's not what we call ourselves. We call ourselves the Stoners. Parents call us the Stoners. Newspapers call us the Stoners. It's official. Think you can top that?
Latiflearned.com is basically the bomb.
Today at lunch, my coworker Dave came in and asked me if I'd be down
for some free indoor skydiving in a wind tunnel. The only catch is
that I have to leave work a couple of hours early to do it. I paused
for about one second and said
"Okay!"
It turns out that a former coworker of mine (or rather, a former
employee of my organization) is a champion skydiver, and his team
gets free shots at the new indoor skydiving center they're building
in Nashua, NH, a mere hour from Boston. The organization is
called SkyVentures, and I'd link their web site if I was writing this
post with internet access. Alas! I'm writing from my new apartment,
and there's no internet here.
So I and a coworker left work early, hopped in the truck, and drove
to Nashua, NH. The people there were all like, "Are you ready to pay
us a ton of money?" and we dropped the name of our coworker, and they
were like, " Oh, go right in for free."
It turns out that a camera crew was coming that day to do some shots,
so our class and subsequent "jump" was me and my coworker, some lady,
and a TV anchorwoman for a local news channel in New Hampshire, with
her cameraman. We did a brief class in the basics, suited up in the
incredibly flattering newby air gear, and headed into the chamber.
The entire building is built around this massive chamber, that can
reach vertical air speeds of up to 190MPH. When it gets that fast,
the whole place starts to shake, and if you're sitting in the benches
inside, you kind of bounce around. When they started the air up, we
bumbled around in the air for a while, with our instructor pointing
out cryptic hand gestures like "relax" and "bend your knees" at us
while we caromed off of the walls for a while. At one point, I gained
enough balance that he let go of me, and I flew about ten feet in the
air. When I got back inside, I realized that I'd been drooling over
my face the entire time. Classy.
There was a fellow there who was a veteran of the Orlando wind
tunnel, up to teach everybody the special wind tunnel tricks. He gave
us a show of the crazy shit you can do in a wind tunnel, and suffice
it to say, the guy is an air ninja. He can walk on walls. He can
levitate. He can disappear. It was the most amazing thing I've ever
seen in real life.
So the point of my story is that if you want to drop $50 on half an
hour, several minutes of which are in a wind tunnel, you should drive
to Nashua, NH. I'd recommend skipping work to do it if you can.
sometimes everything breaks at once. that's the way it's been at work recently; inevitably, the moment you really want to use everything you've got, it's flaws become apparent. we've never taxed our shit quite like this, and it's always a bit disheartening when it doesn't quite stand up.
all of that work-related heartbreak got me feeling really tense, like i have a knot right in the middle of my chest. now, the knot's a new feeling to me, and new bad feelings are typically scary, so i consulted a couple of friends. "yeah, that'll happen." they all tell me, like this was something to be expected, and as though it were miraculous that i'd never felt this way until now.
which got me thinking: why haven't i felt this way until now? my brother calls it the pain of being human. in what way am i more "human" now than i used to be? what's effecting the transition? the positive side benefit is that these feelings create in me a greater sense of empathy for my fellow people, which is probably useful in a time of such generally low empathy.
when you always make promises or resolutions that you can't keep, does that mean that you're a bad person, a failure? or might it mean that you should just stop making promises? or stop resolving. it's a good thing that new year's is so far off, so we don't have to really think about any of that right now. just keep 'er in the back of your mind.
latiflearned.com is pretty nice.
In light of this article, I've decided to pull out entirely from MySpace. The bit about MySpace owning my music rankles. I hope that there's nothing in there about them retroactively owning shit that's been uploaded in the past. I like the songs that I have posted there.
Here's what I said:
"I'm cancelling my MySpace account because i don't want MySpace's essentially evil policy of owning anything i upload to interfere with the openness that I believe the internet should strive to maintain. I don't think that corporate greed should play into my personal/social/musical life. The original idea was good, but since the acquisition, MySpace has really gone politically downhill, and I can't get behind that. Thanks but no thanks; I think I'll stick it out on my own."
I'll probably come back and write a more thorough rant about how I think systems of control shouldn't apply to music and intellectual property in general. I see the need to be able to track who's listening (royalties - artist compensation, etc.), but I don't think that somebody else should be telling you when you can or can't listen to music you purchased. And I don't think that policies like MySpace owning any and everything you upload without telling you as much right on the front page are good for the health of the internet, for people, and for society. It's time to culturally wise up to the fact that information is infinitely reproducible, but human interaction is consistently unique and valuable. We need to start treating people like people, not potential targets. And so on.
Of course, you can always find my music at Latiflearned.com, where at least I am the one who has control.
By now most of you have heard of Stephen Colbert (which is pronounced Col-Bear, as though it were some sort of French cheese) and his insulting the president's horrible job on national tv. That link provides you a way to say thanks to Stephen. Also, there's this:
Awesome. If you want a bigger version, you can find it here.
Latiflearned.com - Go Listen
It's funny that I titled the previous post "oozing substances," because that related to a bit of the dream journal that I didn't end up posting. Here it is:
10.15.2004
my dream last night involved kevin smith, and a big tree that plunged a hole into the ground through a person, and out of that hole oozed a substance that turned a hatchback sedan into a fancy sports car.
I gotta get me some of that stuff!
Latiflearned.com - Go Listen
It turns out that at some point, I kept a dream journal. Here's an excerpt:
01.29.2005
I dreamt that I was in New Haven, at Yale again, only this time the quad that Explo was in (the same quad as before) was much larger, and the buildings were much bigger. It had a much more urban, and less closed-off feel. On one side there was this hall that was for the arts, a big two-story building with spiral staircases on either side that lead up to the second floor.
I started climbing one of the spiral staircases, and discovered that the steps were as high as my chest. On top of this, the part of the step that should be level was at a steep angle, so climbing this staircase was more like climbing a mountain. There were lots of people casually walking down the steps, but nobody going the same direction as me. Difficult climbing.
As I got closer to the top, there was a groove in the stairway that looked like it would offer better leverage for climbing, so I kept trying to get in it, but there were all of these people on bicycles going down the groove at breakneck speed and almost running into me. I narrowly averted being run over by bicycles a few times before giving up the groove and settling for climbing the hard way to the top.
When I got to the top, instead of being on the second floor of the building, I was just outside, on a road, with town to the left of me and the quad from which I came down a level on the right. Like I was on the second floor of the town, or something.
There was a fenced-in lot at the end of the road, and I just jumped over it, floating through the air until I landed softly at the other side. This happens to me a lot in dreams, this jumping extraordinarily high and then just floating to the ground, not flying exactly, just gliding.
The path goes into the woods, and there's a cat inside another fence. Like a mountain lion or something. It talks to me, talking about how it had more food and space to live before we developed the whole forest, then jumps over the fence to attack me. I jump into the air.
So I find myself in the air battling this cat, swatting it whenever it comes too close, only now it's not a cat, it's a stuffed animal on a string, waving around in the air like it was tied to the ceiling, only we're outside in the forest. And instead of a normal stuffed cat doll face, it's got this stuffed doll version of a bloody mess of a clawed-out, shredded-to-pieces face. Like it had been attacked in the face, but a stuffed animal. Like somebody had designed a stuffed cat to look like it had had it's face chewed off. Then the dream ends.
What do you think that means?
I watched that movie Art School Confidential last night. I watched it so you don't have to. Let's just leave it at that. You don't want to watch it. At least, you don't want to watch it if you like artists, or art school, or people, or art. If you don't like any of those things, you'll identify with Terry Zwigoff, who made the whole movie seem like he had a grudge against artists, or maybe just people. I've never seen so many vapid, unmoving characters all on the same screen vying for my attention. I don't normally scoff out loud at movies, but there was some scoffage. Maybe Boston's getting to me. Steve Buscemi was allright, though. I guess.
Latiflearned.com - Go Listen
I'd like to take a moment to give a shout-out to Lindsay for being my one and only friend to link me on her blog, and be both my friendster and my space friend.
Awesome, Lindsay, awesome.
In other news, it's always a bit sad to find out that the media institutions you love exist not to sell you news, but to sell you to advertisers. Click on a "media kit", such as The Weekly Dig's Media Kit sometime, if you want it proven to you that, no matter how totally independent it may seem, if it's got advertising, it's all about selling, not telling. Yo, gotta make those dollars somehow, and it's not like they can just sell it on the street. Unless they're homeless, in which case, they can try.
I love you, Dig, but I sometimes get the feeling that you don't love me the same way.
Visit The Advertising Age if you want more proof that you're so much catlle to be prodded.
Moo!
Latiflearned.com - Go Listen
UPDATE (05.09.2006) If you were so curious as to want to know what Pinback sounds like live, it looks like Bradley from Bradley's Almanac was at the same show I attended, and even made a recording. Good for you, Bradley.
I went to see Pinback last night at the Paradise Rock Club last night. Pinback is officially the only band that I've seen more than once, and with good reason. Not so many bands rock as solidly as Pinback. They have layers, man. Layers! Their bass player is an entire band unto himself. If you're used to their studio stuff, the live show will come as a bit of a surprise, because they play everything double-time and up an octave from the albums. What that means is harder, faster, louder. It's a great show.
The Boston show was a bit different from the last time I saw them, which was in Minneapolis (which is the city. Minnesota is the state. Minneapolis, MN.). The main difference between last night and the Minneapolis show was that in Minnesota, nobody felt inclined to try to fight their way onto stage, hijack the mic, sing so loudly and poorly that the band has to quit playing, stage-dive into.... nobody... then get carried outside by the bouncer. Somebody did feel like doing that last night, though. I'll say this: don't try to fight a bouncer. They want to hit you. It's their job.
Latiflearned.com - Go Listen
I got a new phone number. If you didn't get the email, then woops! Send me an email, and I'll give you my new number, if you so desire.
There was a gigantic Jamaica Plain party today about five minutes from my house. Three stages. All sorts of sweet bands. Activism. Puppetry. Good food. Jamaica Plain is truly the best part of Boston. Maybe later I'll feel like saying more about it. It's just that I didn't want this post to be entirely about my phone. Lest you think I was obsessed or something.
Latiflearned.com - Go Listen
As I mentioned before, I've been pretty pissed off with my cell phone plan. It's Cingular, by the way. I don't like them. Let me say that again: I don't like Cingular. They suck. They are not raising any bars. Their rate plans are from the 19th century. Why do we pay to receive text messages? Why do we pay roaming charges? Boo. And by "we," I'm naturally referring to the royal "we." That's me. I'm the royal we.
So I'm shopping around, on the Nextel site, you know, because I see people on the bus with their walkie-talkie phones and I think, "That could be me. Here I am stuck in the last century with a phone that only I can hear, paying through the nose, when I could have a ruggedized bright yellow conversation that let the whole bus hear my weekend plans."
Aaaaaaaanywhoozlebees, I'm shopping around on the Nextel site, and this chat window pops up. "Jessica" asks me if I'd like any assistance. As it turns out, I did need assistance, because the chat window popped up right over the information at which I was trying to look. It's like if you were in a real store, and a sales rep tried to stand between you and the rack. "Would you like some help viewing the MP3 player that I'm blocking with my body?" So I asked her my couple of questions, and she responded pretty quickly. I was, like, all won over. It only took a couple of seconds for me to be totally impressed with Nextel's web site. I mean, there's personal service, right there on top of the page I'm trying to view. Personal service in bed with my browser!
Of course, it wasn't meant to last. Within two minutes of getting me in the chat window (during which time I'd already told her my life story), "she" (by which I mean Jessica) started getting really antsy about me having not purchased anything yet. "Which cell phone plan would you like to purchase today?" Whoa, Jessica, I mean, we're just getting to know each other. Don't you want to chat for a while first, establish some emotional boundaries. No. Jessica wants hot capitalist action, and she wants it now. Not to sound prudish, but that kind of aggressiveness kind of turns me off. So I decided that I'm just going to go to a store and talk to a real human. At least there, I can give subtle visual cues (like snorting in disgust) when salespeople try to get in my wallet before I'm good and ready.
Latiflearned.com - Go Listen
Here's some more, from a friend in St. Paul:
All-Twin Cities edition: The Hang Ups vs. The Busy Signals.
No Neck Blues Band vs. The Stranglers
Super Furry Animals vs. Echo and the Bunnymen
Hum vs. The Static (experimental noise rock from the early 80s or so, I've never actually heard them)
Heads and Bodies vs. The Dismemberment Plan
Cypress Hill vs. Julius Hemphill (Cypress Hill might as well be Hemp-hill... they like weed)
X vs. The Ex (winner plays XTC)
Very nice, Sam.
Also, there's a couple of bands that I've run into on MySpace that are fantastic. Kawaii is Norwegian, and they have a nice happy group-oriented sort of sing-along style. Marching Band (formerly known as Second Language) are Swedish. They're nice guys. They're kind of Kings of Convenience meets American Analog Set. Only not so American. Because they're not from America. They're from Sweden.
Annnnd, I'm spent.
Latiflearned.com - Go Listen
Explosions in the Sky vs. I Am the World Trade Center
Randy Newman vs. Will Oldham
The Channels vs. TV on the Radio
Animal Collective vs. Super Furry Animals
and so on...
Latiflearned.com - Go Listen
I've posted a new track over at latiflearned.com. The alert among you may note that the band name contained in the MP3 is the Undertones, not Latif Learned. That's because this song just isn't so very Latif Learned. But I hope that you like it anyway. It's an awful lot more pop-song-like than my other stuff. New influences and all. I'd like to say that it's Elvis Costello-influenced, so I will. Sort of like how Stephen Merritt says that he writes a song a day. That may or may not be true, but he said it so we believe him.
It's also available at Seasac Records. Also for free. Because that's how we rock it, folks. You can't turn down free music. But you can turn up your nose. But you can't pick your friend's nose.
Or can you?
On another note, I've discovered that, in addition to the narcissists out there, there are decent people to be found on Friendster. The word is still out on MySpace
