I want to commission artists to make the most beautiful pieces you have ever seen also which also double as scientific demonstrations; I would love for them to make beautiful things which are actually about something – that are not just unmoored phenomena.

Nicholas Gurewitch’s PERRY BIBLE FELLOWSHIP:

Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics:

The advantage the popular arts have is that they are not ideologically proud.

“Performed by more than 200 men seated in tight concentric circles around a small central space reserved for the chief protagonists,” the ketjak (loosely called “Monkey Chant”) was first recorded in Bali by David Lewiston and released by Nonesuch Records in 1969. As a spectacular and alternative performance mode, it has had a germinal influence on western performance and poetics since then…”

Been years since I’d heard it. I’d forgotten just how much of the last (at least) fifteen years of Western music can be heard in it. MP3 or (spit) RealAudio.

Actor Christopher Eccleston has quit as Doctor Who after just one episode of the new series, the BBC has confirmed.

Eccleston, whose first appearance as the Doctor on Saturday attracted around 10 million viewers, is leaving at Christmas as he fears being typecast. Talks are taking place to replace him with Casanova star David Tennant.

The BBC has commissioned a second, 13-part Doctor Who series, which will again be written by Russell T Davies and feature Billie Piper as Rose.

“In 1943, when she was working in Hollywood, Dorothy Parker was one of the pre-eminent figures in the American intelligentsia. Her poems and critical writing in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair had made her a force to be reckoned with in highbrow circles; even if she wasn’t revered in academic circles at that time, she was still a shining example of the liberal, educated mind.

“So a confession she made that year about the uneasy relationship that has always existed between intellectuals and the popular art form known as the comics was both startling and revelatory.

” ‘For a bulky segment of a century, I have been an avid follower of comic strips — all comic strips,’ Parker wrote. ‘This is a statement made with approximately the same amount of pride with which one would say, ‘I’ve been shooting cocaine into my arm for the past 25 years.’ ”

(Found by “Mlle. Glass,” thanks)

Bára:

Avolare.net:

The most comprehensive survey ever into the state of the planet concludes that human activities threaten the Earth’s ability to sustain future generations.

The report says the way society obtains its resources has caused irreversible changes that are degrading the natural processes that support life on Earth. This will compromise efforts to address hunger, poverty and improve healthcare…

(In other news of the STAGGERINGLY FUCKING OBVIOUS, dogs go woof, the sky is blue and WATER IS FUCKING WET)

Lee Adam Harold’s Chopping Block:

R. Stevens’ diesel sweeties: pixelated robot romance web comic

Overcompensating: Actual Things That Happen to Jeffrey Rowland.

Why do we call it “clean air” when birds shit in it?

I have seen the opening episode of the new KOJAK show from America.

Ving Rhames is in it. Ving Rhames is always great, even when he’s in something crap. But here’s the thing.

KOJAK DOESN’T CRY.

Kojak isn’t anyone’s fucking daddy, Kojak makes
women’s cervixes pucker and invert in spontaneous orgasm just by looking at them, Kojak brown-trousers the bad guys with a flick of his lollipop and KOJAK DOESN’T FUCKING CRY.

Do you understand?

KOJAK DOESN’T CRY.

The end. Applause. Whisky. Dancing girls. Exeunt stage left.

– W

Nature is filth. It smells of animal shit and rotting things. Streets can be rinsed by the agency of small vehicles with washing apparatus. Rinsing the world’s wildlife would be incredibly awkward and time-consuming.

Therefore, we are supposed to pave over the world in washable materials and then go and find another one.

Saving the universe from the stench of dogshit one planet at a time.

We are Space Heroes.

And dogs smell bad.

The end. Applause. Send me speed and breasts now.

– W

A review of a performance by Justice Yeldham And The Dynamic Ribbon Device:

“A barefoot Australian in faded jeans and a beer shirt was strapping on a belt of electronic devices. Two wires led from the belt. One was attached to a large set of speakers and the other was attached to a jagged piece of glass. This was Justice Yeldham and the Dynamic Ribbon Device. The sound man turned on the power and the whole contraption started to hum ominously. Meanwhile our shoeless bloke was squeezing half a tube of KY jelly onto his face and into his mouth. The live music performance was about to begin.

He played the device by rubbing his face up against the glass. The sound traveled down the wire and into a set of amplifiers and distortion boxes attached to his waist. This distressing music then came squealing out of the speakers at incredible decibels, instantly deafening all other sounds. Eyes widened in uncertainty and hands covered ears but he played on. He played with agonizing passion, sliding his face against the glass while flecks of KY jelly flew in all directions. The front row of spectators inched backwards out of spray range and some fled altogether. I was transfixed. As he glided his cheek across the glass he played with the switches on his belt. The squealing noise varied in pitch but never in intensity. It was like electrified teeth rubbing on a blackboard. It was like uncontrolled guitar feedback played backwards. It shouted of sorrow. It screamed of pain. It was art.

“Five minutes into the performance and his mouth was cut by the glass as he played the edge. Blood mixed with KY jelly in a red smear. More spectators fled. The sound continued to attack us in volleys of crazed noise until the final spike as he smashed the pane of glass. Then it was over. I didn’t know whether to clap, laugh or pray.”

-Ravi Jeyachandran on 040604 beirut