Reading List: December

Fiction: 

Sarah Waters: The Night Watch.
William Gibson: Virtual Light.
William Gibson: Idoru.
William Gibson: All Tomorrow's Parties.
Daniel Woodrell: Winter's Bone.

Films: 

Sometimes in April (2005, Raoul Peck) ****. 
Vera Drake (2004, Mike Leigh) ****. 
Cherrybomb (2009, Lisa Barros D'Sa, Glenn Leyburn) ***. 
Never Let Me Go (2010, Mark Romanek) ***. 
Soeur Sourire (2009, Stijn Coninx) ****.
Black Swan (2010, Darren Aronofsky) ****.
Splendor (1999, Gregg Araki) ***. But five stars for Kelly Macdonald.
Kynodontas (2009, Giorgos Lanthimos) *****.
Last Night (1999, Don McKellar) ***.
Transsiberian (2008, Brad Anderson) ***/**.
Byôsoku 5 senchimêtoru (2007, Makoto Shinkai) *****.
MirrorMask (2005, Dave McKean) *****.
Somewhere (2010, Sofia Coppola) ****.
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010, Oliver Stone) **/***.
Please Give (2010, Nicole Holofcener) ****.
The Ghost Writer (2010, Roman Polanski) ****/**. Oh but Olivia Williams.
The Queen (2006, Stephen Frears) ****.

Series: 

Battlestar Galactica. Yes. Yes. I watched the entire series in one month.
The Middleman.

Polity and Politics

"Den Glauben an den Reformwillen der Koalition hat sie nicht verloren. „Ich will und muss an Reformen glauben.“ Die wahlfreie Zeit müsse genutzt werden. Sie fordert von SPÖ und ÖVP eine „große Kraftanstrengung“ mit den Kernpunkten Verwaltungsreform, Staatsreform, Aufgabenreform und Wahlrechtsreform. Zum letzten Punkt erklärt die Nationalratspräsidentin gegenüber der TT: „Ich denke hier an einen Superwahlsonntag.“ Gleichzeitig will sie eine „Nicht-Auflösbarkeit der Parlamente während der Legislaturperiode“ einführen. Eine Reform nach norwegischem Vorbild."

Tiroler Tageszeitung: Barbara Prammer über Kreisky, Koalitionen und „Superwahltage“, 27. Dezember 2010

DerStandard: Nationalratspräsidentin Prammer will vorgezogene Neuwahlen abschaffen, 28. Dezember 2010

DiePresse: Vorgezogene Wahlen abschaffen? Geteilte Reaktionen, 28. Dezember 2010

Things that make my day

Der MDR sendete vor ein paar Jahren eine Hörspielversion von Juli Zehs Spieltrieb (das ist nicht das leicht verfügbare Hörbuch, von Anna Thalbach gelesen) in der Julia Hummer die Rolle der Jessie spricht.

Happy "it's the thought that counts" day everyone!

Charlie McDonnell from charlieissocoollike gives presents to the lovely cast of Doctor Who. 

Das Video zum (Freitag)

Bag Raiders - Sunlight


Bag Raiders - Sunlight
Hochgeladen von modularpeople. -

Linkliste unbehandelter Themen

This thing is just all over the place (kind of like the Christmas presents my family picks out for me every year - which is absolutely part of the reason why I love each and every one of them so much), so there's a CUT. 

Holy Frak Exclamation Point Exclamation Point

Next time someone questions my love for Lili Taylor, I'll just point them towards this.

Politikmetaphern

Donnerstags, Südtirolerplatz, etwa 23:00. 

Strecke A: Von der U-Bahn zur Schnellbahn. Hindernis: Rolltreppe, die nicht funktioniert. Außerdem eine Sperre, die beinahe bis zum Ende des Bahnsteigs geht, aber eben nur fast: konsequenterweise balanciert Person B, so wie alle Personen vor ihr, die bereits auf dem Bahnsteig auf den nächsten Zug warten (überraschend viele Pensionisten für die Uhrzeit, mehr dazu später), in Todesgefahr an der Absperrung vorbei, halb über dem Abgrund hängend. 

Dann: aus einer Entfernung von geschätzten fünfzig Metern zu schätzen versuchen, wann der nächste Zug kommt, was funktionieren würde, wenn es nur um die relativ groß angezeigte Uhrzeit ginge: stattdessen lässt eine gelegentlich durchlaufende Textzeile vermuten, dass der Zug Verspätung hat. 

20 Minuten später und etwa 50 beobachtete über dem Abgrund balancierende potentielle Fahrgäste später taucht die kollektive Vermutung auf, dass ein gröberes Problem aufgetreten sein könnte. Alternative Strecken werden überlegt, aber die Sorge, dass genau in dem Moment, in dem man den (immer noch einzig offensichtlichen) Weg zurück zur U-Bahn zurückgelegt hat, doch noch eine Schnellbahn kommen wird., überwiegt Deswegen: Ausharren. Eine nicht informative und nicht auf die persönliche Situation zugeschnittene Stimme erzählt von einem Polizeieinsatz weit genug entfert, um eine direkte Verbindung zur eigenen Lage (kalt; müde; frustriert) nicht erkennen zu lassen. Stattdessen bietet der gegenüberliegende Bahnsteig Unterhaltung, weil dort ein Reinigungsteam von sieben Leuten damit beschäftigt ist, eine Tür zu reinigen, die Person B (ohne entsprechende Berufserfahrung zu haben) im Geiste alleine in circa einem Viertel der Zeit säubert. Aber Hauptsache Unterhaltung. 

Weitere gebrechliche Menschen balancieren an der Barriere vorbei. Der Umstand, dass es weder weitere Durchsagen noch korrekte Informationen zum Ankommen des nächsten Zuges gibt, lässt Sorge über ihr Wohlbefinden aufkommen. Erkenntnis des Abends: Menschen, die alleine kommen, werfen einen Blick auf die wartende Menge von der falschen Seite der Absperrung und kehren mit der Vermutung, irgendwo einen Wegweiser übersehen zu haben, um, und werden nie wieder gesehen. Gruppen wagen gemeinsam den Übertritt. 

20 Minuten später kommt der Zug. Das Reinigungsteam ist immer noch beschäftigt.

Welcome to the list that doesn't include Iran, North Korea and Uganda

"The Senate on Saturday struck down the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military, bringing to a close a 17-year struggle over a policy that forced thousands of Americans from the ranks and caused others to keep secret their sexual orientation.
By a vote of 65 to 31, with eight Republicans joining Democrats, the Senate approved and sent to President Obama a repeal of the Clinton-era law, known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a policy critics said amounted to government-sanctioned discrimination that treated gay and lesbian troops as second-class citizens."

 

NY Times: Senate Repeals ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, December 18, 2010

Walled City is not anywhere

"Walled City is of the net, but not on it. There are no laws here, only agreements."
William Gibson: Idoru, p 209

So I've been re-reading the Bridge Trilogy, as I do every other year or so, and a week after finishing the second novel which "explains" the concept of the Walled City, io9 pointed me towards this German documentary on the actual Kowloon Walled City in Hongkong that was destroyed in 1994.

[part two, three, four]

Two sides of the same coin

"Thesis 7 - WikiLeaks raises the question as to what hackers have in common with secret services, since an elective affinity between the two is unmistakable. The love-hate relationship goes back to the very beginning of computing. One does not have to be a fan of German media theorist Friedrich Kittler or, for that matter, conspiracy theories, to acknowledge that the computer was born out of the military-industrial complex. From Alan Turing's deciphering of the Nazi Enigma code up to the role played by the first computers in the invention of the atomic bomb, from the cybernetics movement up to the Pentagon's involvement in the creation of the Internet – the articulation between computational information and the military-industrial complex is well established. Computer scientists and programmers have shaped the information revolution and the culture of openness; but at the same time they have also developed encryption ("crypto"), closing access to data for the non-initiated. What some see as "citizen journalism" others call "info war".

Eurozine: Twelve theses on WikiLeaks

random mixtape - no life at all in the house of dolls

 

[tumblr]

gorillaz (the xx cover). CRYSTALISED. john grant feat. midlake. I WANNA GO TO MARZ. buke & gass. PAGE BREAK. suuns. PVC. portland cello project feat. thao. TALLYMARKS. forest swords. RATTLING CAGE. louise attaque. ARRACHE-MOI. wire. LOWDOWN (live). nirvana. BREED (live). joy division. NO LOVE LOST.

While I love lists, the most useful thing in terms of finding music I hadn't heard before this year turned out to be All Things Considered's The Year in Music, featuring Carrie Brownstein.

...

I believe that I've just had my first conversation about "not being technologically compatible". What a curious and strange century we live in.

I am not a cylon.

Two years ago, I wouldn't have understood this, but now...

"One of my greatest fears is that I will lose my passion, my hunger, my fever for new music. That I will no longer feel the burning desire for the alchemy of holy noise as I did in my youth. That I will “lose my religion”. These days, like some accurs’d Vampire clinging to immortality, I gotta drink deep or die. But each time I threaten to fall into dust something brings me back. Crystal Castles give me that fire again. Daylight in the dark. The possibilities, the glamour, the romance, the danger, the underdog ambition, the lifeblood. So much depended on this second record being everything I needed it to be. I needed it to keep me alive. It is all this and more. From frenzied feral ferociousness (“Doe Deer”) to fragile poetry (“Celestica”) to contorted freakshow oddities (“I Am Made Of Chalk”) it rages triumphantly against the dying of the light. I still believe in magic, I still believe in Crystal Castles." 

Matt James on Crystal Castles by Crystal Castles, PopMatters: The Best 70 Albums of 2010

Das (Video) zum Sonntag

The Dø - Slippery Slope

Slippery Slope from The Dø on Vimeo.

[via IM//UR]

Tapes as the signifier for the past

The Roots - How I Got Over


"First thing they teach us: Not to give a fuck / That type of thinking can’t get you nowhere / Someone has to care."

"A return to more archaic forms of communication."

"But let’s turn to the more profound significance of what has occurred. Formerly, back in the days of Orwell, every power could be conceived of as a Big Brother watching over its subjects’ every move. The Orwellian prophecy came completely true once the powers that be could monitor every phone call made by the citizen, every hotel he stayed in, every toll road he took and so on and so forth. The citizen became the total victim of the watchful eye of the state. But when it transpires, as it has now, that even the crypts of state secrets are not beyond the hacker’s grasp, the surveillance ceases to work only one-way and becomes circular. The state has its eye on every citizen, but every citizen, or at least every hacker – the citizens’ self-appointed avenger – can pry into the state’s every secret."

Umberto Eco: Not Such Wicked Leaks, December 2, 2010

Foreign Policy is documenting the process of finding stories in the huge heap of information

The futile efforts to try and make known information unknown vaguely reminds me of how collecting societies try to fight piracy.

[title was redacted for pretentiousness]

So, music videos. It used to be that one could turn on a music channel of their choice and, in the course of a day, get a pretty good idea about trends in music videos. Nowadays, it't more likely to catch you favourite television show or a bad case of "everything used to be so much better ten years ago" (the latter is more likely) from said music channels, and the avantgarde of music videos has moved elsewhere. Pitchfork put up a collection of The Best Videos in 2010, of which I had seen a stunning number of two - and here's my favourites from that list. The underlying theme seems to be DISTURBING THINGS.

The Hundred in the Hands - Pigeons

directed by Daniels

Disturbing thing: She breathes fire.

Guten Morgen

Welcome, children of the millennium, to my childhood memories of winter.