From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V10 #369 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Friday, September 21 2001 Volume 10 : Number 369 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Clear Channel again [Jeff Dwarf ] Re: TMBG Mink Car + [Capuchin ] Bush's speech [Ken Weingold ] Re: Clear Channel again [Ken Weingold ] Re: TMBG Mink Car + [Aaron Mandel ] Re: worldliness ["Stewart C. Russell" ] Re: worldliness ["lucifersam" ] apocryphal no-play list [grutness@surf4nix.com (James Dignan)] relative badness [Rob Gronotte ] Re: relative badness ["noe shalev" ] 5-1! (fwd) [Michael R Godwin ] Re: Clear Channel again ["Maximilian Lang" ] TMBG ["Maximilian Lang" ] Re: Teleological Vexolology [Michael R Godwin ] Re: 5-1! (fwd) ["lucifersam" ] Re: worldliness ["lucifersam" ] a little thought about media response to disaster and of course they might be giants [dmw ] Women and Messiahs ["joe cushley" ] Re: Clear Channel again [Ken Weingold ] Bush's speech II [Ken Weingold ] Re: TMBG Mink Car + [Eleanore Adams ] Re: Teleological Vexolology [strange little woj ] Re: Teleological Vexolology [JH3 ] RE: relative badness ["Bachman, Michael" ] RE: fegmaniax-digest V10 #368 ["Walker, Charles" ] world flag ["Walker, Charles" ] the promised music-related post [Natalie Jane Jacobs ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 22:40:34 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: Clear Channel again Eb wrote: > "The Clear Channel list is apparently not a flat prohibition against > these songs by the nation's largest chain of radio stations. They are > simply recordings whose appropriateness has been questioned by the > individual program directors." > > OK.... another NB on this; one of the owners of Clear Channel is a guy named Tom Hicks, who also owns the Texas Rangers, who inbetween innings Wednesday night played "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" by The Gap Band (which is on the list). ===== "Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul." -- Mark Twain "The divinity of Jesus has been made a convenient cover for every absurdity." -- John Adams "The jury is the last line of defense against corporate misconduct." -- Craig McDonald, Texans for Public Justice __________________________________________________ Terrorist Attacks on U.S. - How can you help? Donate cash, emergency relief information http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/US/Emergency_Information/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 22:55:00 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: TMBG Mink Car + I don't have Mink Car yet, but I've heard most of the songs (from the lists I've seen here) either live or on Long Tall Weekend. (So why did they redo/include Edith Head and Older from Long Tall Weekend and leave out that album's most interesting track -- one of their most LYRICALLY interesting songs EVER -- Dark and Metric?) On Thu, 20 Sep 2001, Eb wrote: > I like the new TMBG album all right, but really, I feel that > everything the group has done in recent years pales next to the first > four albums (self-titled, Lincoln, Flood, Apollo 18). If you tell me > Mink Car is the best TMBG album since John Henry, that's faint praise > to me. I remember the HUGE disappointment I felt when I heard John Henry for the first time. And over time, I got to like some of the songs quite a bit (O Do Not Forsake Me, No One Knows My Plan) but never got much out of the album as a whole. It was mix tape fodder. And I remember when I got Factory Showroom and I was just too overwhelmed by the butcher job they'd done with James K. Polk (the song that made the Istanbul (not Constantinople) single absolutely essential) that I more or less shelved the album for two or three years. When I finally pulled it down again, I don't know if my tastes had broadened or what, but I loved it from beginning to end. I would probably put it above Apollo 18... maybe even Flood. > The mad-scientist arrangements of those two-man records was a > significant chunk of what I found entertaining. I'm saddened only when I realize they'll never do another Absolutely Bill's Mood. Speaking of that, here are my favorite songs as far back as I care to remmeber (I'm not very old): 1986-1989 Stories of Old -- Depeche Mode 1989-1993 Absolutely Bill's Mood -- They Might Be Giants 1993-1999 Freeze -- Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians 1999-present Til My Head Falls Off -- They Might Be Giants If there's a progression there (or even a theme), I can't see it. Now that I think about it, there's a particular mood I associate with all of these songs. There's a turn of phrase in each that, at one point, just turned me inside out and I never heard the song the same way again. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 01:50:35 -0400 From: Ken Weingold Subject: Bush's speech Good speech. I was with some friend's in a bar/restaurant on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. Lots of TVs playing sports shit on ESPN. 9pm came around and the music stopped, TVs went to Fox 5, and the volume went way up. Pretty cool, a whole restaurant full of people watching it. Of course when Bush mentioned Giuliani and Wacky Pataki, everyone cheered. Cool experience. Now I almost feel guilty for having my "Impeach Pataki 95" bumper sticker. - -Ken ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 02:01:27 -0400 From: Ken Weingold Subject: Re: Clear Channel again On Thu, Sep 20, 2001, Jeff Dwarf wrote: > Eb wrote: > > "The Clear Channel list is apparently not a flat prohibition against > > these songs by the nation's largest chain of radio stations. They are > > simply recordings whose appropriateness has been questioned by the > > individual program directors." > > > > OK.... > > another NB on this; one of the owners of Clear Channel is a guy named > Tom Hicks, who also owns the Texas Rangers, who inbetween innings > Wednesday night played "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" by The Gap Band > (which is on the list). Oh shit, this is still being discussed? Sorry, I, as many other NYers, have found it hard to really pay attention to much lately. But check this out: . This "ban" is not true. - -Ken ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 02:48:18 -0400 (EDT) From: Aaron Mandel Subject: Re: TMBG Mink Car + On Thu, 20 Sep 2001, Capuchin wrote: > (So why did they redo/include Edith Head and Older from Long Tall > Weekend and leave out that album's most interesting track -- one of > their most LYRICALLY interesting songs EVER -- Dark and Metric?) and, i would add, why no "On Earth My Nina"? "Edith Head" has gotten so much better over time that i don't mind them including it. (i'd have to listen to the LTW version again to be sure of the differences, but i believe they are many.) > I'm saddened only when I realize they'll never do another Absolutely > Bill's Mood. i'm not sure about that. some of the stuff in the monthly emusic releases is pretty weird, and their newest thing (a "Battle Of The Bands" where they make up bands and then write songs for those fictional bands) has already produced several tracks i liked better than the middle third of Mink Car. i get the feeling that having lots of outlets for their songs ("proper" TMBG records, side projects, dial-a-song, emusic, soundtracks) has brought back some of their willingness to experiment but decreased their desire to put the weirder stuff front and center. it's too bad, because said weirder stuff really needs to be on a record right next to something like "Bangs" for maximum effect. is "Mink Car" (the song) the first time Flansburgh has tackled a Linnell-style lyrical conceit about oblivion? aaron ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 09:11:15 +0100 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: worldliness lucifersam wrote: > > THIS, OF COURSE, DESCRIBES... a country that badly needs to stop living in the past. Get over yourselves. Stewart "We're Shite, And We Know We Are*" Russell yay: New Bob The Angry Flower book in November!! boo: US military type on the radio this morning saying, "We'll listen to voices of restraint if they're in English or French, but we're less likely to if they're in Arabic." *: the Scottish National Football Chant. True. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 09:05:59 +0100 From: "lucifersam" Subject: Re: worldliness Hee Hee...;0) - ----- Original Message ----- From: Jay Lyall > As an English friend of mine relayed after Germany had beaten England in > football a while back : > > The German fan: So we finally beat you in your national past time. > The English fan: Yeah, but we beat you in yours twice. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 20:42:34 +1200 From: grutness@surf4nix.com (James Dignan) Subject: apocryphal no-play list Just realise that apocryphal 'don't play these songs' list had Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge over troubled water" on it, but not "The only living boy in New York"... James James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand. =-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= -=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- You talk to me as if from a distance -.-=-.- And I reply with impressions chosen from another time =-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-. (Brian Eno - "By this River") ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 05:02:51 -0400 (EDT) From: Rob Gronotte Subject: relative badness "Stewart C. Russell" said: > If one innocent Afghani is killed in this proposed action, then we're as > bad as the September 11 perpetrators. So, one dead innocent is as bad as 5000? Sounds very strange to me. I guess we might as well just nuke the whole country, since 50 million or so should also be about just as bad, and then we'd be sure to get the guilty ones, huh? Rob Why don't you come up and surf me sometime? --> http://www.patriot.net/users/rob ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 12:40:25 +0200 From: "noe shalev" Subject: Re: relative badness > So, one dead innocent is as bad as 5000? Sounds very strange to me. > I guess we might as well just nuke the whole country, since 50 million or > so should also be about just as bad, and then we'd be sure to get the > guilty ones, huh? It's not actualy said here, but do you mean you measure guilt and human lives by nombers? if so the US is not in a very good position on the world life taker list. would you kill a person to save anopther 100? or let's make it more provactive and nasty, would you kill me to save anothe 1,000? I don't know how to measure peaple lives. I sure know quantities alone are not the units. which bring me to the Idea that I believe Stewart was aiming at: killing is killing is killing and it's wrong. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 12:47:32 +0100 (BST) From: Michael R Godwin Subject: 5-1! (fwd) Universal Pictures announced today they plan to make a film of the momentous football match that took place on Saturday 2nd September 2001. Five-One is the tentative title of what could be next year's big summer hit, depicting the American national soccer team's stunning victory over Germany. Nicholas Cage heads an all star cast as the captain of the brave US Soccer team haunted by the trauma of losing in the 2000 World Cup final on penalties and the death of his wife in a riot caused by English football hooligans, and finds love in the arms of a female sports journalist played by Julia Roberts. Mel Gibson is the no-nonsense Swedish coach who leads them to glory, with Keanu Reeves, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Will Smith playing some of Cage's heroic team mates. Jeremy Irons is set to star as Sir Nigel Villiers-Smythe, the dastardly Englishman who coaches the German team and forces them to play with poisoned-tipped studs to try and cheat the heroic American team out of victory. Director Steven Spielberg defended the film-makers' decision to focus on the American contribution to the victory over Germany and inaccurate and even imagined events in the story, saying, "Obviously we've had to take some artistic licence to make the story work on film, but I hope that what we produce will be true to the spirit of what happened on that famous night." ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 08:19:09 -0400 From: "Maximilian Lang" Subject: Re: Clear Channel again >From: Ken Weingold >>Oh shit, this is still being discussed? Sorry, I, as many other >NYers, have found it hard to really pay attention to much lately. But >check this out: . >This "ban" is not true. > > >-Ken Actually the original link which was sent to the list said it was a hoax in an introductory statement. Max _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 08:21:14 -0400 From: "Maximilian Lang" Subject: TMBG I used to be into TMBG heavily and stopped with Flood. Which CDs would some of you recommend? Thanks, Max _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 13:21:58 +0100 (BST) From: Michael R Godwin Subject: Re: Teleological Vexolology On Thu, 20 Sep 2001, Viola Rockiss wrote: > Teleos in Greek means goal, completion, perfection or purpose. The Form of > an object is what makes something what it is(and thats a vast > oversimplification but believe me, you dont really want to go there. * My only recollection of the word teleology coming up in actual discussion was to contrast the 'Darwinian' view that evolution is natural selection to fit the environment with the 'teleological' view that creatures evolve _purposefully_ (e.g. the okapi-like proto-giraffe thinks "Mmm, nice leaves at the top of the tree, I must develop a longer neck!)". > Aristotle is one of the most boring writers ever. Ill never forget a > sentence which began "Thus therefore then...")versus its Matter, which > is potentiality which needs to be actualized by Form, in order for > something to have existance, in which case Form is perceived as > Essence. He differed from Plato(in one of many ways) in that he felt > Form had no being independent of Essence. * He was Alexander the Great's tutor. Maybe AtG rushed off to conquer the world in order to skive off lessons like this one ... > Meaning something had to exist in order for it to exist;-). * Very deep, those philosophers. Maybe perhaps possibly it loses something in translation. > The teleology of a thing is part of its Essence. Therefore Aristotle > would explain things by determining their Teleos. * I'm an Aries myself. > I wasnt a philosophy major so Im sure I got some of that wrong. However, > thats my attempt to put it all in a paragraph. And rememebr, we're talking > about 2,500 years ago. * But wasn't Plato voted top philosopher again this year? Immanuel Kant has been bubbling under for a couple of centuries but I don't think he's a real contender for the number one spot. Has Baudrillard got any views on recent events? > Back to flags anyone? * OK. What's special about the Nepalese flag? (James, don't tell anybody until they've had a try). - - Mike "I refute him _thus_" Godwin (kicks rock and hurts toe). ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 13:47:02 +0100 From: "lucifersam" Subject: Re: 5-1! (fwd) I fowarded this to the Veggie Friends list and the Shindig list. Some of our American cousins may need some guidance with interpretation ;0) Ash Ra Rotten.. - ----- Original Message ----- From: Michael R Godwin > Universal Pictures announced today they plan to make a film of the > momentous football match that took place on Saturday 2nd September 2001. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 13:52:18 +0100 From: "lucifersam" Subject: Re: worldliness Ah! But aint it good to have a glorious past to live in.... ;0) - ----- Original Message ----- From: Stewart C. Russell > lucifersam wrote: > > > > THIS, OF COURSE, DESCRIBES... > > a country that badly needs to stop living in the past. Get over > yourselves. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 09:29:25 -0400 (EDT) From: dmw Subject: a little thought about media response to disaster and of course they might be giants last week i got very frustrated with the news media's incessant repetition of disaster footage and images, you know: the towers collapsing, the second impact. it seemed to me that the repetition trivialized the events and dulled their impact -- at some point it stops being NEWS and becomes just a series of images. and at some point it began to have a nasty quality of sensationalism -- when we see explosions like that in movie theaters we cheer, don't we? but now this notion hits me -- maybe to some degree this is part of the grief process. maybe it's important for some people to dull the impact, lose the relevance of the images, in order to go on with their lives. maybe the new media tends to draw people for whom that is helpful. ** so i haven't *really* liked any they might be giants stuff since _lincoln_; _flood_ had some songs i liked a lot, but connected much less on a song-by-song basis. i can't remember anything off of 'apollo' or 'john henry' though i know i heard 'em. you wouldn't still recommend this mink car thing to me, or would you? - -- d. np jay farrar _sebastapol_ okay, i like "barstow" a lot. - ------------------------------------------------- Mayo-Wells Media Workshop dmw@ http://www.mwmw.com mwmw.com Web Development * Multimedia Consulting * Hosting ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 08:39:10 -0500 From: steve Subject: [none] The two Alice volumes with Peake illustrations are out in the US. They are $15.95 each, or $32.00 for the box set. I see that Amazon has them at a hefty discount. - - Steve __________ If anyone has ever benefited from what Bush has called "the bigotry of soft expectations," it's George W. Bush himself. - Mark Crispin Miller ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 14:18:50 +0000 From: "joe cushley" Subject: Women and Messiahs James wrote best retake on a song by giving it to a woman to sing and leaving the lyrics intact is Michelle Shocked's "Lovely Rita meter maid" - sitting on a sofa with a sister or two indeed! Cerys Matthews' version of Ian Dury's If I Was With A Woman from the Brand New Boots & Panties tribute album is pretty wild. And how about this for a song to ban. The Screaming Blue Messiahs' Killer Born Man. Bill Carter tells it like it is... 'Meanwhile back at a Ostend hotel on a colour TV there's a tragedy, of Afghanistan, Iran, Ireland and England...Oh and Vietnam. Kill, kill,kill,kill, kill. You're killing my world. It's my world too. It's mine too. You got anything better to do? I sure have...' This is from their album Gun-Shy (!), other tracks include Smash The Market Place and President Kennedy's Mile... jmbc _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 10:49:15 -0400 From: Ken Weingold Subject: Re: Clear Channel again On Fri, Sep 21, 2001, Maximilian Lang wrote: > >From: Ken Weingold > >>Oh shit, this is still being discussed? Sorry, I, as many other > >NYers, have found it hard to really pay attention to much lately. But > >check this out: . > >This "ban" is not true. > > > > > >-Ken > > Actually the original link which was sent to the list said it was a hoax in > an introductory statement. Cool, then. Sorry. :) - -Ken ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 10:51:05 -0400 From: Ken Weingold Subject: Bush's speech II I cannot believe that I forgot to mention this. Right after the speech was over, some git turns back on the music in the place. What came on? Yup, you guessed it, Born In The USA. I bet Bruce would be appalled.... - -Ken ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 07:59:41 -0700 From: Eleanore Adams Subject: Re: TMBG Mink Car + I completely agree with Eb on this one. I didn't like appolo 18 very much and gave up at that album. But I absolutely loved the first 3 albums, listen to them over and over, saw John2 a million times in concert.... eleanore Eb wrote: > I like the new TMBG album all right, but really, I feel that everything the > group has done in recent years pales next to the first four albums > (self-titled, Lincoln, Flood, Apollo 18). If you tell me Mink Car is the > best TMBG album since John Henry, that's faint praise to me. Even though > I'd agree with you. > > It's not an unusual point of view, but I really wish they had never > switched to the full-band format. The mad-scientist arrangements of those > two-man records was a significant chunk of what I found entertaining. > However, I did see the duo at Club Lingerie in their early days, and was > turned off by the necessary use of backing tapes. I guess they felt the > same way, and took steps to change that format. > > If you care, my own favorite Mink Car tracks are probably "Cyclops Rock," > "Another First Kiss," "Hovering Sombrero," "Yeh Yeh," "Mink Car" and > "Finished With Lies." I don't care for the techno-like background bits on > songs like "Man, It's So Loud in Here," "My Man" and "Wicked Little > Critta." That element's a minus. Sounds really unnatural and phony. > > I did a recent interview with Flansburgh -- he was kind of a headache. > Nice, but a major rambler. He stuck me with about an hour's worth of tape, > and it was a major pain to edit. He didn't say anything which I feel > compelled to pass on. No big surprises. > > Random notes: > > I got the Bjork disc yesterday (finally). Damn, she sure doesn't rest on > her laurels, does she? I'm going to need a couple more listens to figure > out how much I like it. I'm a bit alienated at how restrained her vocals > are throughout the album -- I wanna hear her WAIL! This one isn't going to > grab me as much as Homogenic, but it's certainly impressive and unique. And > by the way, if you want to know who should do an all-covers album...BJORK! > > Did anyone ever buy the Matthew Jay album (Draw) on Capitol? I really think > it might strike a chord with several of you, particularly if you're also a > fan of Nick Drake and/or Elliott Smith. > > I heard the Dylan album debuted at #5 on the Billboard album chart. Not > bad, not bad. Especially since Mariah Carey only debuted at #7. > > Lordy, I grit my teeth through presidential speeches before Congress, with > all those perfunctory, insincere standing ovations. What a charade. > > Discursively, > Eb ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 11:07:05 -0400 From: strange little woj Subject: Re: Teleological Vexolology when we last left our heroes, Michael R Godwin exclaimed: >* OK. What's special about the Nepalese flag? (James, don't tell anybody >until they've had a try). it's not rectangular. +w ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 09:58:17 -0500 From: JH3 Subject: Re: Teleological Vexolology MRG: > * But wasn't Plato voted top philosopher again this year? > Immanuel Kant has been bubbling under for a couple of > centuries but I don't think he's a real contender for the > number one spot. Sure, Plato's off to his usual fast start against a demoralized 19th-century European squad, but I have a funny feeling that new 20th-century backfield recruits Max Stirner and Albert Camus are both going to make really strong showings in the second half... "Faced with the nonhuman, the nonlinguistic, we no longer have the ability to overcome contingency and pain by appropriation and transformation, but only the ability to recognize contingency and pain." ***Score!*** > * OK. What's special about the Nepalese flag? Other than its distinctive two-tiered double-triangle shape, almost Titian red color with gold braiding, and its implicit _la soleil et la lune_ imagery, I can think of nothing unusual about it whatsoever. (Wait a minute, are you thinking of the little picture in the corner of the sumo wrestler carrying a toaster?) John "continuously vexed" Hedges ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 11:15:59 -0400 From: "Bachman, Michael" Subject: RE: relative badness "Stewart C. Russell" said: >> If one innocent Afghani is killed in this proposed action, then we're as >> bad as the September 11 perpetrators. Rob Gronntte wrote: >So, one dead innocent is as bad as 5000? Sounds very strange to me. >I guess we might as well just nuke the whole country, since 50 million or >so should also be about just as bad, and then we'd be sure to get the >guilty ones, huh? Acually the number is closer to 7000 now. 6333 at the WTC, 180 something in DC, plus the people in the 4 hijacked planes, minus the 19 pieces of shit hijackers. Innocents always die in war, but the evil that starts wars, be it Hitler or terrorists, must be eliminated. If we kill innocents, I will feel bad, but the terrorists are evil to the max, and they must be stopped. We will never be as bad as they are and most of the people from 63 nations that lost lives in the WTC would probably agree as well that we will never be as bad. Michael ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 10:21:37 -0500 From: JH3 Subject: Still more inappropriate playlist entries Speaking of TMBG, yesterday I vaguely recalled a song of theirs that mentioned a bunch of NYC landmarks, and sure enough, it's on "Factory Showroom" -- but the song doesn't mention the WTC at all, and it's probably the only major NYC landmark it *doesn't* mention. And just in case anyone is still keeping score: Sun & the Moon, "Arabs & Americans" Baader Meinhof, "Meet Me at the Airport" New York Dolls, "Frankenstein" Peter Blegvad, "First Blow Struck" (luckily for PB, Andy Partridge decided to bury the vocals down in the mix somewhat) The The's Mind Bomb LP has already been mentioned, right? "Good Morning Beautiful" and "Armageddon Days Are Here Again" would actually have to *share* the top spot on the "most potentially inflammatory" list, IMO. Of course, given the massive amount of airplay these songs all received in the months and years prior to the recent tragedy, I think we can all use a little break from them... Also, I doubt we'll be seeing the video for Catherine Wheel's "Waydown" for quite some time. John "despite the name, not a TMBG member" Hedges ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 08:32:49 -0700 From: "Walker, Charles" Subject: RE: fegmaniax-digest V10 #368 But seriously folks, how come pretty colors aren't flag worthy;-? I think the NZ flag -should- have kiwi in it. - -->Chas in LA replies: I believe that most flags originated as battle standards and needed to be recognizable from a long distance so their history is to be 'contrasty.' a subtle blending of kiwi and teal just doesnt stand out through cannon smoke. and those were hard colors to come by long ago and as you know, people rarely enjoy change. change = scary, death related things. http://www.theweeklywalker.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 08:36:13 -0700 From: "Walker, Charles" Subject: world flag yup - there's one which is black with a blue circle and a smaller white circle against a partial yellow circle, representing the Earth and sun and moon (hi, any Midnight oOil fans!). And there's one which just has a view of the Earth from space in the centre of it. - -->Chas in LA replies: just out of curiosity, i wonder which country/continent is prominent on the image of the globe of our fair and dear Mother Earth? any wagering types out there? http://www.theweeklywalker.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 08:59:46 -0700 (PDT) From: Natalie Jane Jacobs Subject: the promised music-related post So I picked up the new Beulah album the other day, "The Coast is Never Clear." I like it quite a bit. The slicker, lusher sound saps their energy a little, but it's not too bad. The lyrics are also far less oblique and often very clever (though the love song to the survivor of a near-fatal car accident kind of creeped me out - I suppose that one'll be banned too). Great tunes, harmonies, and arrangements as usual. They're touring everywhere except here - I wrote a pleading e-mail to them and they promised they would come here in early December. The latest Martin Newell album, "The Spirit Cage," is a little disappointing. He's continuing on with his jangly Kinks-y tunes about everyday life, but he's obviously gotten into a musical rut - many songs are riddled with self-plagiarism. The production feels really sparse and threadbare, which doesn't suit the music very well. I suppose Andy Partridge was too busy with his own stuff to help produce. In other news, I heard "Peace Train" on the radio last night and despite my great love for Cat Stevens, it depressed the hell out of me. Non-musically, I've been curious as to when some pundit is going to come up with some name for the events of September 11. People refer to it as "the tragedy" or "the disaster," but that's very vague; we all know what those phrases refer to, but they could theoretically refer to any catastrophic event. There's no phrase that pins down the events precisely, like "Pearl Harbor" or "Hiroshima." One local paper has used the term "S11," but I haven't seen that anywhere else. Has anyone else noticed a catchphrase popping up? n. ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V10 #369 ********************************