Aku Aku

extra action marching band

There's a great new article about my favorite band ever, The Extra Action Marching Band. Look at the picture, then read the article

I went to this year's hippie-laden Mountain Aire Festival mostly because EAMB got added to the show (although I'm glad I caught Ween, they rock) (And remind me to tell you sometime about the dumb hick at the convenience store in the town where that festival was held who wouldn't take a passport for an ID because she thought it didn't look official). Anyhow. EAMB makes me want to break out my clarinet and my flame thrower at the same time. Well I don't actually have a flame thrower ...yet.

They're playing at Burning Man again this year. Which, btw, I leave for tomorrow morning. So this may be my last post until September 2nd.

hail to the chief

From Ozten.com:

Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar. � Julius Caesar

[Link]

aguirre: the wrath of god

Last night I watched Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972) which is something I've been wanting to see ever since I saw the documentary My Best Fiend which is about Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski. Aguirre is a german movie about spanish conquistadors searching in the Amazon jungle for El Dorado (The fabled City of Gold), Kinski stars in the title role as a madman bent on riches and fame. The movie was shot in the Amazon jungle in 1971, and it is a powerful and beautifully rendered story of madness and doom. I watched it on DVD and went back then watched it again with the director commentary on. I highly recommend doing this; the making of the movie is a great story itself.

the future of srl

Somehow while doing a google search on something only tangentially related I stumbled across this write-up of a Survival Research Laboratories event I went to early last summer: Pigdog Journal (Art Fux) -- Fun and Flames at Survival Research Labs. I've got some video of it somewhere, including video of the cops telling me to turn off the camera.

SRL shows are all like you're in The Future and it's full of Bad People. Everyone's all done up in goofy shit, and there's big ass Machines and people in Alien Bug costumes doing Crazy Techno Ambient and there's people in Bullhorns making Cop Noise and it's all just woo woo woo bzzzt frsshhhh zzzzap!

I dig George's Donut Shop (my name for "Yorgo's Greek Bar (I think the real name is Crescent Doughnut Shop or something like that)), wish I could have seen it full of SRL spillover.

haiku fever

The other day I found Haiku the Blog which is a blog where all the posts are in the form of Haiku. Then today Slashdot had a post about spam fighters using trademarked haiku in their efforts (and many of the comments are in the form oh haiku). One comment posted on slashdot gave a good explanation of what haiku really is. Naturally most people have it only partly correct according to his explanation.

5-7-5 is the rule; in addition to be a true haiku it must have a nature theme ... People adapting the haiku form to other languages may well relax the 5-7-5 rule, because it doesn't really make sense in many other languages other than Japanese. Every language has its unique sound which dicttaes its poetic form. However, I'd argue that a true haiku canot be created in any language other Japanese

the hotdog challenge

An article written by a carnivorous journalist: The Hot Dog Challenge, Can a Bloody Cow Head Put Me Off?.

He was challenged to watch the hotdog making process and then down a dog for lunch. Frankly I think a better challenge is to make your own hotdog at the plant and then eat it.

I'm somewhat of a vegetarian, I eat only seafood and plants (can't give up sushi), but I'm not rabid about it; I was a kielbasa and chick-wing loving fool up until 5 years ago. But I think that there should be some sort of Meat License that anyone over 18 needs in order to eat meat. To get one you simply have to kill an animal, prepare it, and eat it. I think eating meat is fine in theory, but people are too far removed from the process these days. If I ever go back to eating meat again I've decided that it will be by hunting and killing the animal myself.

dumbasses

Some dumbasses did an experiment involving a bunch of mice, a bunch of amphetamines and loud mid 90's techno music:BBC NEWS | Health | 'Cruel' mouse music study blasted

The experiments, led by Dr Jenny Morton, involved 238 mice, some of whom were given the drugs and then exposed to music from the dance group The Prodigy at high volume.

Seven died, and some others were left brain damaged. Some others who were exposed to the classical composer Bach instead also died.

Now if they'd given them ecstasy and let them listen to some trance, they'd just be dehydrated and hugging each other.

beer goggles

So they actually did a scientific study proving the beer-goggle effect. I hope they didn't spend a lot of tax dollars on that.

Jones said alcohol apparently stimulates a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, which judges facial attractiveness.

I remember one coyote ugly back in Univeristy, I snuck out the 2nd floor bathroom window. Whew.

Little Danzig

Danzig needs to turn on comments on his blog so I can comment on his blog entries there ...but anyhow...

Danzig reviews Little Nicky and says " Ugh. I suppose it's possible that someone will make a worse movie someday, so I gave it that half-star instead of none. And I guess I sort of chuckled once or twice."

I'd like to see a comparison with Mr Deeds, which I found to be "the least funny comedy in the history of comedies.".

Is Adam Sandler sucking or what? I hope poor little Jimmy Fallon doesn't go this route.

bayesian filter for spam

Here's a couple of papers dealing with using Bayesian Probabilies to filter spam from you inbox:

A layman's article: A Plan for Spam

A scientific paper: Naıve-Bayes vs. Rule-Learning in Classification of Email.

If I get time (ha) I'll try to implement the algorithm in perl.