From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V16 #713 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Thursday, September 18 2008 Volume 16 : Number 713 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Science alert ["m swedene" ] Re: Science alert [Carrie Galbraith ] 0%RH - Soundtracks - we needed a little Buffy discussion [Carrie Galbrait] itunes frustrates me too but what is air port? [Poem Lover ] Re: 0%RH - Soundtracks - we needed a little Buffy discussion ["kevin stud] Re: 0%RH - Soundtracks - we needed a little Buffy discussion [Christopher] Reap [Jeff Dwarf ] Re: david wallace ["(0% rh)" ] Re: itunes frustrates me too but what is air port? [Poem Lover ] Re: david wallace ["kevin studyvin" ] Re: david wallace ["Jeremy Osner" ] Re: david wallace ["(0% rh)" ] Re: david wallace [2fs ] More 'mats [Tom Clark ] Re: More 'mats [Jeff Dwarf ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:18:12 -0400 From: "m swedene" Subject: Re: Science alert is it a gigolo ant? 2008/9/17 kevin studyvin > http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSLG53732420080916 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:40:19 -0700 From: Carrie Galbraith Subject: Re: Science alert On Sep 17, 2008, at 1:12 PM, kevin studyvin wrote: > http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSLG53732420080916 I saw this in my inbox and thought it read "Silence Alert" for some reason. Ugh - ants! - - c "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. " - - Thomas Jefferson ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:48:36 -0700 From: Carrie Galbraith Subject: 0%RH - Soundtracks - we needed a little Buffy discussion Can I just say I finally splurged for the Buffy and Angel soundtracks - - and my, what a joy they both are. Buffy due to the bands but Angel due to the soundtrack. So fine. I am waiting to receive another Btvs soundtrack published only in the UK (from a friend there). And while I'm at it, I can say you can't lose with the Firefly soundtrack either. Just my thoughts this eve... - - c "The great thing about being a Slayer is kicking ass is comfort food." - - Buffy ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:54:26 -0700 (PDT) From: Poem Lover Subject: itunes frustrates me too but what is air port? The problem I have is that it will randomly delete songs from itself, songs that are downloaded onto my laptop. I can put them back on, but it's completely random. Example: I put some MC Frontalot songs into itunes. I've listened to them at various times over the past few months. Today, I got the exclamation point and message that three of songs could not be found and do I want itunes to locate the file? itunes is never able to locate any files and I had to reload from My Music. I hear this problem doesn't happen on Macs but it's not unheard of on PCs. What causes this??? Marcy ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:15:49 +0200 From: Sebastian Hagedorn Subject: Re: itunes frustrates me too but what is air port? - --On 17. September 2008 18:54:26 -0700 Poem Lover wrote: > The problem I have is that it will randomly delete songs from itself, > songs that are downloaded onto my laptop. I can put them back on, but it's > completely random. Example: I put some MC Frontalot songs into itunes. > I've listened to them at various times over the past few months. Today, > I got the exclamation point and message that three of songs could not be > found and do I want itunes to locate the file? itunes is never able to > locate any files and I had to reload from My Music. I hear this problem > doesn't happen on Macs but it's not unheard of on PCs. What causes > this??? Hard to say, but the "My Music" folder does not "belong" to iTunes, so it might me modified by other applications. I suggest activating these two preferences: - - Keep iTunes Music folder organized - - Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library That way your music is in a place that only iTunes itself should access. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 06:39:39 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: itunes frustrates me too but what is air port? On 9/17/08, Poem Lover wrote: > > The problem I have is that it will randomly delete songs from itself, songs > that are downloaded onto my laptop. I can put them back on, but it's > completely random. Example: I put some MC Frontalot songs into itunes. > I've > listened to them at various times over the past few months. Today, I got > the > exclamation point and message that three of songs could not be found and do > I > want itunes to locate the file? itunes is never able to locate any files > and > I had to reload from My Music. I hear this problem doesn't happen on Macs > but > it's not unheard of on PCs. Not sure - but I think Sebastian's advice is good. As to your subject line question: - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:02:52 -0400 From: "Jeremy Osner" Subject: Novelty So listen, I'm trying to figure out how to describe the difference between "Mexican God" and "Cheese Alarm" -- my impulse is to categorize them, one as a serious, thoughtful song about feelings and the other as a silly flight of fancy (I'll leave it to you to figure which song I'd put in which bucket), but somehow that isn't seeming like a useful approach. I respond to the two songs in what seem like fundamentally different ways -- similar to the difference between crying and laughing, although that's not exactly it. What's knocking me for a loop is that when I listen to the two songs, side by side in the track order, the way Robyn is performing them suggests they are equally weighty -- when I look at the lyrics I think one is just a silly break from thinking about Time and Death and Memory, but when I listen to his voice that's not really the impression I get. J - -- READIN 2.0 http://www.readin.com/blog/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 07:35:16 -0700 From: "kevin studyvin" Subject: Re: 0%RH - Soundtracks - we needed a little Buffy discussion Angel did have great theme music. All I can really think to say at the moment is, I miss Seth the werewolf. (And Vampire Willow.) Bored now... On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 8:48 PM, Carrie Galbraith wrote: > Can I just say I finally splurged for the Buffy and Angel soundtracks > - and my, what a joy they both are. Buffy due to the bands but Angel > due to the soundtrack. So fine. I am waiting to receive another Btvs > soundtrack published only in the UK (from a friend there). And while > I'm at it, I can say you can't lose with the Firefly soundtrack either. > Just my thoughts this eve... > - c > > > "The great thing about being a Slayer is kicking ass is comfort food." > - Buffy ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:04:01 -0400 (EDT) From: Christopher Gross Subject: Re: 0%RH - Soundtracks - we needed a little Buffy discussion I'm in continuous meetings for several hours starting in two minutes, but real quick: There are actually several Buffy soundtrack CDs. There's the original, just called Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Album, featuring Guided by Voices, Garbage and Rasputina among others. There's Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Radio Sunnydale, featuring Joey Ramone, Aimee Mann and Blur, among others. There's the Once More with Feeling CD. And there's the newly released Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Score, featuring Christophe Beck's compositions from seasons 2 through 5. I've just bought that one but haven't listened to it yet. Now, to work. - --Chris ______________________________________________________________________ Christopher Gross On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog. chrisg@gwu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 08:49:09 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Reap Norman Whitfield http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/145683-rip-motown-producer-songwriter-norman-whitfield ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:20:53 -0400 From: "(0% rh)" Subject: Re: david wallace re: wallace's depression, i know he had trouble after "the broom of the system" came out, but i think out of the many (, many) interviews i've read over the years, it was mentioned only a handful of times (specifically what i'm referring to is that he had checked himself into a hospital for suicide watch.) he could describe anything. and when he described sadness, which he did so very well, i knew that he understood it on a personal level. but still he was always the observer. i didn't know that it came from the inside. i really missed that one. an article from NYT has several statements about wallace's depression from his father: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/books/15wallace.html (if you aren't registered to NYT site, below is the text of the article.) i hate the thought that it was that wonderful mind of wallace's that did him in. i want to believe that genius and insanity don't come from the same place. and i know he's just one person, but, still, it feels, for me, that wallace has just put the issue to bed. as ever, lauren << September 15, 2008 David Foster Wallace, Influential Writer, Dies at 46 By BRUCE WEBER David Foster Wallace, whose prodigiously observant, exuberantly plotted, grammatically and etymologically challenging, philosophically probing and culturally hyper-contemporary novels, stories and essays made him an heir to modern virtuosos like Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo, an experimental contemporary of William T. Vollmann, Mark Leyner and Nicholson Baker and a clear influence on younger tour-de-force stylists like Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer, died on Friday at his home in Claremont, Calif. He was 46. Mr. Wallace was an apparent suicide. A spokeswoman for the Claremont police said Mr. Wallace's wife, Karen Green, returned home to find that her husband had hanged himself. Mr. Wallace's father, James Donald Wallace, said in an interview on Sunday that his son had been severely depressed for a number of months. A versatile writer of seemingly bottomless energy, Mr. Wallace was a maximalist, exhibiting in his work a huge, even manic curiosity  about the physical world, about the much larger universe of human feelings and about the complexity of living in America at the end of the 20th century. He wrote long books, complete with reflective and often hilariously self-conscious footnotes, and he wrote long sentences, with the playfulness of a master punctuater and the inventiveness of a genius grammarian. Critics often noted that he was not only an experimenter and a showoff, but also a God-fearing moralist with a fierce honesty in confronting the existence of contradiction. "David Foster Wallace can do practically anything if he puts his mind to it," Michiko Kakutani, chief book critic of The New York Times, who was not a consistent praiser of Mr. Wallace's work, wrote in 2006. "He can do sad, funny, silly, heartbreaking and absurd with equal ease; he can even do them all at once." Mr. Wallace, who had taught creative writing at Pomona College in Southern California since 2001 and before that had taught at Illinois State University, came to prominence in 1986 with a broadly comic first novel, "The Broom of the System" (Viking), published when he was just 24. It used the narrative frame of a young woman's search for identity to draw a loopy portrait of America on a comic and dangerous spiral into the Disneyesque confusion of reality and artifice. Mr. Wallace was best known for his mammoth 1996 novel, "Infinite Jest" (Little, Brown), a 1,079-page monster that perceives American society as self-obsessed, pleasure-obsessed and entertainment-obsessed. (The president, Johnny Gentle, is a former singer.) The title refers to an elusive film that terrorists are trying to get their hands on because to watch it is to be debilitated, even killed, or so it's said, by enjoyment. The main characters are a stressed-out tennis prodigy and a former thief and drug addict, and they give rise to harrowing passages about panic attacks and detox freak-outs. The book attracted a cult of fans (and critics too) for its subversive writing, which was by turns hallucinogenically stream of consciousness, jubilantly anecdotal, winkingly sardonic and self-consciously literary. The following year Mr. Wallace received a MacArthur Foundation grant, the so-called genius award. In contrast to the lively spirit of his writing, Mr. Wallace was a temperamentally unassuming man, long-haired, unhappy in front of a camera, consumed with his work and its worth, perpetually at odds with himself. Journalists who interviewed him invariably commented on his discomfort with celebrity and his self-questioning. And those who knew him best concurred that Mr. Wallace was a titanically gifted writer with an equally troubled soul. "He was a huge talent, our strongest rhetorical writer," Jonathan Franzen, a friend of Mr. Wallace and the author of "The Corrections," said in an interview on Sunday, adding later, "He was also as sweet a person as I've ever known and as tormented a person as I've ever known." Mr. Wallace was born in Ithaca, N.Y., where his father was a graduate student in philosophy. When David was 6 months old, his father got a job at the University of Illinois, and the family moved to Champaign, Ill., where David became a locally prominent junior tennis player. At Amherst College, he studied philosophy and English, graduating summa cum laude in 1985. It was also at Amherst, said his mother, Sally Foster Wallace, an English teacher who specialized in grammar, that he began to write. One of his two senior theses became "The Broom of the System"; the other was about Aristotle and whether statements about the future can be true. Mr. Wallace received a master's degree in fine arts from the University of Arizona in 1987 and began sending out his short stories, many of them collected in the volumes "Girl With Curious Hair," "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men" and "Oblivion." He also wrote essays and reported pieces on an astonishing array of topics, from lobsters to Roger Federer, the pornography industry to John McCain, collected in several volumes, the latest being "Consider the Lobster and Other Essays" (Little, Brown, 2006). In addition to his wife, whom he married in 2004, and his parents, who live in Urbana, Ill., Mr. Wallace is survived by a sister, Amy Wallace Havens of Tucson. His father said Sunday that Mr. Wallace had been taking medication for depression for 20 years and that it had allowed his son to be productive. It was something the writer didn't discuss, though in interviews he gave a hint of his haunting angst. In response to a question about what being an American was like for him at the end of the 20th century, he told the online magazine Salon in 1996 that there was something sad about it, but not as a reaction to the news or current events. "It's more like a stomach-level sadness," he said. "I see it in myself and my friends in different ways. It manifests itself as a kind of lostness." James Wallace said that last year his son had begun suffering side effects from the drugs and, at a doctor's suggestion, had gone off the medication in June 2007. The depression returned, however, and no other treatment was successful. The elder Wallaces had seen their son in August, he said. "He was being very heavily medicated," he said. "He'd been in the hospital a couple of times over the summer and had undergone electro-convulsive therapy. Everything had been tried, and he just couldn't stand it anymore." >> - -- "people with opinions just go around bothering one another." -- the buddha ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:07:27 -0700 (PDT) From: Poem Lover Subject: Re: itunes frustrates me too but what is air port? Ahhh...thanks, that makes sense. Doesn't explain the deletion thing but I don't automatically copy to the folder so will do. Danke!! - --- On Thu, 9/18/08, Sebastian Hagedorn wrote: From: Sebastian Hagedorn Subject: Re: itunes frustrates me too but what is air port? To: "Poem Lover" Cc: fegmaniax@smoe.org Date: Thursday, September 18, 2008, 9:15 AM - --On 17. September 2008 18:54:26 -0700 Poem Lover wrote: > The problem I have is that it will randomly delete songs from itself, > songs that are downloaded onto my laptop. I can put them back on, but it's > completely random. Example: I put some MC Frontalot songs into itunes. > I've listened to them at various times over the past few months. Today, > I got the exclamation point and message that three of songs could not be > found and do I want itunes to locate the file? itunes is never able to > locate any files and I had to reload from My Music. I hear this problem > doesn't happen on Macs but it's not unheard of on PCs. What causes > this??? Hard to say, but the "My Music" folder does not "belong" to iTunes, so it might me modified by other applications. I suggest activating these two preferences: - - Keep iTunes Music folder organized - - Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library That way your music is in a place that only iTunes itself should access. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:58:11 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: david wallace on 9/18/08, (0% rh) wrote: > > re: wallace's depression > > i hate the thought that it was that wonderful mind of wallace's that > did him in. i want to believe that genius and insanity don't come > from the same place. and i know he's just one person, but, still, it > feels, for me, that wallace has just put the issue to bed. I don't think that's a reasonable conclusion at all. The place "insanity" (or, in this case, clinical depression) comes from is a chemical imbalance. The place "genius" comes from is a complex topography of genetics, capability, situation, influence, and expression, and would seem to have little to do with depression. It may be reasonable to conclude that a genius at expressing emotional states might be more capable of doing so if s/he's able to plumb emotional depths and scale emotional heights more readily than the average bear...but situational depression (indeed, situational glee) is not at all the same thing as clinical depression which is, in terms of worldly comings-and-goings of events, essentially causeless. I suppose you could argue that a writer, or a songwriter, who's constantly experiencing struggle thereby generates more interesting material to work with than a well-adjusted person in a happy marriage and a good job in the suburbs or whatever - but one could equally argue that being able to express that material requires (to crib from V. Woolf) a room of one's own, some psychological space distinct from that emotional hubbub. Sure, many artists have suffered and perhaps their work is deeper for that - but how many more people never could express their artistic impulses because their pain and depression were so debilitating? If IODOT is Robyn's classic release (and arguably it is), and it came from a long period of depression, it's worth noting that for two-three years before that he was essentially silent. I don't that much about his depression (I believe he has described it as that) but if he hadn't emerged from it and had instead pulled a Cobain, we probably wouldn't be here talking about it nearly 25 years later. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:28:11 -0700 From: "kevin studyvin" Subject: Re: david wallace > i hate the thought that it was that wonderful mind of wallace's that > did him in. i want to believe that genius and insanity don't come > from the same place. and i know he's just one person, but, still, it > feels, for me, that wallace has just put the issue to bed. > > as ever, > lauren > My condolences to all you out there in fegland missing DFW. It sucks to lose an artist who really speaks to you personally. I've been particularly missing the terrible Texans, Donald Barthelme and Terry Southern, just recently. Looked into Infinite Jest a while back but I couldn't really get a handle on it, though I do have a mental note to give it another shot when the time is right. (Note to Lauren: I did read More, Now, Again a couple weeks ago and was alternately laughing my ass off and recoiling in horror, which is all I really ask of any text.) In re: the whole genius/insanity thing, I'm increasingly inclined to regard the vaunted "intelligence" of H. sapiens sapiens as an evolutionary dead end - - as ultimately futile a specialization as the monster fangs of the late saber-tooth and likely to have the same net effect as sending a four-year-old in roller skates out to play on the freeway with a loaded gun. It seems inevitable that the more creative torque a given mind generates, the worse the consequences are likely to be when the brakes go out. In sum, as the late Michael O'Donoghue said, "There's no moral, Uncle Remus, only random acts of meaningless violence." np Invisible Hitchcock by what's-is-name ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:40:52 -0400 From: "Jeremy Osner" Subject: Re: david wallace On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 3:28 PM, kevin studyvin wrote: > I've been particularly > missing the terrible Texans, Donald Barthelme and Terry Southern, Possibly interesting in this regard, I was just reading an interview with DFW where he claims that the first time he ever got "the click" from reading literature, was from Barthelme's "The Balloon." J - -- READIN 2.0 http://www.readin.com/blog/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:43:56 -0400 From: "(0% rh)" Subject: Re: david wallace 2fs says: > I've yet to read _The Broome of the System_ (oops - feg misspelling!), and > which book is it that's all mathy? Don't think I've done that one either. my two suggestions to people have been IJ (except for boyfriends, in which case it's a requirement ;) ) and the book of essays "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." IJ is a difficult book, and i can understand why many people never got to the end of it: you have to really, really want to read it. "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" is a lot of fun. in particular, i'd recommend the title essay (i don't know that i've ever enjoyed a piece of writing more.) but the other essays are all excellent, as well. there's about 6 or 7 essays in the book - the most interesting one is about the influence of television on literature. and get this: there's (count 'em) two essays on tennis. (one of the highest praises i can give wallace is that i read both of them.) and, lastly, it's the book with the david lynch article. i loved "broom of the system" but it was the first book of his that i read, and my guess is that if you've read IJ, the bar's already been set too high. not that i would recommend reading it at some point. but as fun and as good as "broom of the system" is, his writing hadn't matured yet. and i wouldn't have guessed it could get much better, but, it did. i'm not much for short stories, but i do love many of his. my favourite is probably "oblivion" from the book of the same title. it left me dumbstruck. as ever, lauren - -- "people with opinions just go around bothering one another." -- the buddha ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:43:23 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: david wallace On 9/18/08, (0% rh) wrote: > > 2fs says: > > I've yet to read _The Broome of the System_ (oops - feg misspelling!), > and > > which book is it that's all mathy? Don't think I've done that one either. > > > my two suggestions to people have been IJ (except for boyfriends, in > which case it's a requirement ;) ) and the book of essays "A > Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." IJ is a difficult book, > and i can understand why many people never got to the end of it: you > have to really, really want to read it. I meant to imply that I'd read most of his stuff except the two listed above - - guess that wasn't clear. I kinda wish I lived in a world where I had time to reread, and more than once, immersive 1000-page novels. I'm considering rereading every fifth page to save time. If I do it systematically, and then next year reread the *next* set of every fifth pages, and the year after that and so on, eventually I'll have reread the entire book (IJ, several Pynchon tomes, _Underworld_, etc.). Uh, that'll work, won't it? - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:57:18 -0700 From: Tom Clark Subject: More 'mats Rhino is set to release the rest of the Replacements reissues. "Tim" and "Pleased To Meet Me" are definitely in, but the completist in me is fighting with me over blowing off "Don't Tell A Soul" and "All Shook Down". - -tc ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:59:28 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: More 'mats Tom Clark wrote: > Rhino is set to release the rest of the Replacements reissues. "Tim" > and "Pleased To Meet Me" are definitely in, but the completist in me > is fighting with me over blowing off "Don't Tell A Soul" and "All > Shook Down". If you wait a few months, those two will probably show up used at your finer Bay Area used record marts. I figure I'll probably wait until mid-2009 to bother on those two. The other two, I'm grabbing Tuesday, and then taking behind the middle school to impregnate. "I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirize George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporize them." -- Tom Lehrer "The eyes are the groin of the head." -- Dwight Schrute ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V16 #713 ********************************