thecages

Bem vendo em Londres!
Estamos aqcui na cidade dos Brits para relaxo.

The weather is frickin cold and wet etc. etc.
etc. etc.

music: AC/DC(obviously), Roots Manuva, Placebo - how very Londonese!

Its been a while since I posted music compilations.
I've put together a few for various reasons but none of them have really rocked.

Here's Opening Doors.

  Opening Doors

  1.  Prince  Raspberry Beret
     (In through the Out door)
  2.  Crowded House Pineapple Head
  3.  Jenny Lewis with Handle With Care
      The Watson Twins
  4.  Supergrass  Late in the Day
  5.  Ryan Adams  This House is not For Sale
  6.  The Mutton Birds Come Around
  7.  Marc Broussard Home
  8.  Gnarles Barkley St. Elsewhere
  9.  Finley Quaye Your Love Gets Sweeter
  10. Antony &   Fistful of Love
      The Johnsons
  11. Sophie Solomon Lazarus
  12. Neil Diamond What's It Gonna Be?
  13. Stephen Duffy The Deal
  14. Eagle Eye Cherry Desireless

I made it for a friend's housewarming which never happened[1].
That's OK since the compilation never really took off.
The idea that I started off with was to use only tracks that were originally released as the opening tracks to the albums they were on.
See? Opening Doors -> new house -> first tracks.
Yup, the idea is kind of lame.

In the end the only track that conforms to this kind of thing is, ironically, the last track (Eagle Eye Cherry) which, even more ironically, is the _last_ track on it's album[2].

Of the line-up the only songs that I really, really think are great(from a compilation point of view) is Jenny Lewis[3] and the terminally underrated The Mutton Birds.
The rest are all good songs, but somehow they don't really contribute much to a compilation desperately in need of contributions.
Correction; there is one other absolutely killer song on it - Neil Diamond, if only for the lyrics:

Move a little closer
Try a little harder
Dancing with a partner
Helps you find the beat

fuck yeah.
Here's Anita's HH Mix - much cooler than Opening Doors.

 Anita's HH Mix 

 01 Max Normal   Stay At Home
 02 A Tribe Called Quest Can I Kick It
 03 Busta Rhymes  Turn it Up
 04 House of Pain  Jump Around
 05 Cypress Hill  I aint goin out like that
 06 KRS One   Sound of Da Police
 07 Kanye West   Diamonds From Sierra Leone
 08 Jurassic 5   Freedom
 09 Blackalicious  A-G
 10 Eminem   My Name is
 11 Beastie Boys  The Negotiation Limerick File
 12 Cashless Society  Hottentothop Bantu 1-2
 13 Roots Manuva  Ticka Tock
 14 The Herbaliser The Blend
      feat. WhatWhat

The story behind it is that Anita's new office[4] is staffed by a bunch of young comic book artists.
Naturally they have _great_ taste in music and Anita felt that she had to do something to retain her street cred in such a competitive environment.
It's a straight forward hip hop collection but it works well.
Apparently the office was suitably impressed and now suspect her of being a bit of a gangsta.

I didn't know what the name of the Roots Manuva track was, so just named it Ticka Tock - the name is actually Clockwork.

[1] the housewarming - not the compilation
[2] also entitled Desireless
[3] a cover of the Roy Orbison classic
[4] the Beat Comics studio is in flight and Mshanna is in production

I, like everyone else, now get a lot of my news from Digg.
It's a good news service, blah blah blah blah.

They now also have a Labs project which is not nearly as fancy as Google's or Yahoo's but still has two cool toys.

Digg Swarm and Stack are two flash-based apps that visualise Digg activity in near real time.

Digg Swarm draws a circle for stories as they're dugg. Diggers swarm around stories, and make them grow. Brightly colored stories have more diggs.

Digg Stack shows diggs occuring in real time on up to 100 stories at once. Diggers fall from above and stack up on popular stories. Brightly colored stories have more diggs.

Not really revolutionary, but cool.

What I find interesting about Internet Visualisation tools like these is how intuitively *right* what they display feels.
The visualisations appear totally random.

That's the point - they present the ongoing random reality of the internet.
Somewhere there is a pattern in there - a very complex organisation.
Information tends to organise itself.

Francis Bacon is my mother's favourite artist. I was always quite disturbed by this.
I still find his best known work (Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X) immensely disturbing.


There's something terrible and brutal about the composition; the cage, the (electric?) chair, the ghostly face. And let's not even mention the hollow scream - brrrr....

But only recently did I read an article that goes into the history of this portrait and the fact that it is actually part of a long-running series of studies.

Diego Velázquez[1] was commissioned to paint a portrait of Pope Innocent X in 1650 in Rome. By varying accounts Innocent was a archetypal emperor-pope of that era:

Innocent X was a lover of justice and his life was blameless; he was, however, often irresolute and suspicious. The great blemish in his pontificate was his dependence on Donna Olimpia Maidalchini, the wife of his deceased brother. For a short time her influence had to yield to that of the youthful Camillo Astalli, a distant relative of the pope, whom Innocent raised to the cardinalate. But the pope seemed to be unable to get along without her, and at her instance Astalli was deprived of the purple and removed from the Vatican. The accusation, made by Gualdus (Leti) in his "Vita di Donna Olimpia Maidalchini" (1666), that Innocent's relation to her was immoral, has been rejected as slanderous by all reputable historians.

INNOCENT X . (Giovanni Battista Pamfili) was born in Rome on the 6th of May 1574, served successively as auditor of the Rota nuncio to
Naples, legate apostolic to Spain, was made cardinal in 1627, and succeeded Urban VIII. as pope on the 15th of September 1644.
Throughout his pontificate Innocent was completely dominated by his sister-in-law, Donna Olimpia Maidalchini, a woman of masculine spirit. There is no reason to credit the scandalous reports of an illicit attachment.
Nevertheless, the influence of Donna Olimpia was baneful; and she made herself thoroughly detested for her inordinate ambition and rapacity. Urban VIII. had been French in his sympathies; but the papacy now shifted to the side of the Habsburgs, and there remained for nearly fifty years.
Evidences of the change were numerous: Innocent promoted pro-Spanish cardinals; attacked the Barberini, proteges of Mazarin, and sequestered their possessions; aided in quieting an insurrection in Naples, fomented by the duke of Guise; and refused to recognize the independence of Portugal, then at war with Spain.
As a reward he obtained from Spain and Naples the recognition of ecclesiastical immunity.
In 1649 Castro, which Urban VIII. had failed to take, was wrested from the Farnese and annexed to the Papal States.

When Velázquez painted his portrait of Innocent was 76 years old and had been pope for 6 years.
It depicts the most powerful man in the world, at ease in his position as God's representative on earth.
But there is nothing innocent about him; he holds a letter in his hand[2] and there is an unmistakable ruthlessness, a deep deceit.



Clearly there is a lot to work with here; power, corruption, sex - hidden facets of a public man.

Francis Bacon painted the first of this long-running series in 1946, though the oldest remaining painting is from 1949.
It captures the central motif of the series; the grotesque, dark mouth.
Something horrendous trapped inside the man[3] is forcing its way out into the world.
He may have been able to contain the monster in his gut for Velazquez's rendering - but Bacon's not having any of that shit.



Several more studies/versions follow. They vary in mood and colour and emphasise different aspects of the original portait; the chair, the dress[4]. All of them are disturbing.












Somehow I find the series of paintings less disturbing than the superstar 1953 portrait on its own.
It's good to see that Bacon maintained a fascination and some sort of personal relationship with Ol' Innocent as he burnt him hell.


[1] a Spanish artist of the Baroque period
[2] some business matter to be attended to
[3] criminal lies? guilt? some terrible truth?
[4] one commentary suggests that Bacon presents the pope in drag - funny

John Jodka is a US Marine who was sentenced yesterday to 18 months in prison for his part in the shooting death (and subsequent cover-up) of an Iraqi civilian.
The details are not that important - war - atrocity - duty - superiors - whatever - fuck.

He joined the US Marines in May 2005, was in Iraq by February 2006 and in detention from 12 May 2006 for this murder.

His dad set up a site to raise funds for his defense at www.innocentmarine.com

My hero, PFC John J. Jodka, SAW Gunner, 1st Squad, 2nd Platoon, Darkhorse 3/5, 1 Marine Division (REIN) — a citizen soldier called to duty in his conscience in the finest mold of the great general Cincinnatus of Rome, and in his small way, as heroic and enduring. John has served his country bravely and selflessly and now he needs help from those whom he has served and protected.

And got a lot of press around the whole thing.

Here’s the interview with John Jodka Sr., father of falsely accused Marine PFC John J. Jodka III. This is from our July 24th show. Tune in to Seeing Red with Kit and Heidi, on Monday/Wednesday/Friday nights from 10pm to midnight Central Time.

According to PFC Jodka's attorney, the young Marine is "100% innocent" and "will not take any deals the government offers." Joseph N. Casas, the attorney on the case, says the Marine looked him eye to eye and didn't flinch. He won't back down, which is not a light statement, because the death penalty could be the punishment.

With a copy of his son's dog tags around his neck, John Jodka sat in his living room talking about how proud he is of his son, who is facing possible charges in connection with the death of a 52-year old civilian in the Iraqi town of Hamandiya.
"Knowing my son as the ultimate marine, I choose to defend him" says Jodka. His son, also named John Jodka, is a 20-year old private first class with the Marine Corps, who was on his first tour in Iraq when he and 7 other servicemen were brought back to the brig at Camp Pendleton.

All of this is standard in the catastrophic insanity that surrounds us.

But here's the hectic part.
He, like every other yahoo on the planet, has a MySpace - hooraay.

It contains three blog entries:


It also links to other MySpacers






Compare absolutekim.net or Alex's blogs to John's.

He answered that most fucked up call of all - the call to duty by some flag, shot an innocent man and has been a bound prisoner for 7 months. Nice way to spend your twentieth year.

Theirs is filled with frat-house partying and brain farts; I luv u babe shoutouts and ramblings about movies.
Its the story of an deadly average person's deadly average life playing out in messy typeface.

His blog entries are the dull horror of someone who should really still be hanging out at those same dollar-fifty bars - puking out the window of some yahoo-ing guy's pickup.

Here's what absolutekim.net wrote the day after Jodka made his confession:

1. i bought a disney princess tv and it is the most AWSOME thing in the world! it is pink and when you change the channle Cinderellla pops up in the corner and when you adjust the volume ariel swims across the screen! it kicks major ass!

2. i have become the most crafty person EVER. and i dont mean crafty as in sneaky, i mean crafty as in i keep making braclets and necklaces and i started knitting a lot. so if you get a crazy creation for christmas, i am sorry. but i have no life.

3. i have been going crazy trying to figure out what to be for halloween, but i think i have figured it out! i am going to be a sexy sherlock holmes! i think it is both funny and ironic (seeing as my last name is sherlock, in case you didnt know that). so yeah...what do you think? if it sounds uber lame, please tell me cause i dont really want to make a fool of myself. but i figure i will wear a plaid skirt, knee highs, mary james, a white button up shirt, and then find a cape and hat thingy, maybe a pipe (like in the movies not like in a smole shop)....so yeah...okay

till the day i die, and the real party begins,

Kim

His blog entries are few and span the time from just before his entering the military service, going to Iraq, experiencing some personal dissapointment and then total, fucking, silence.

Here's Kim again on 31 August 2006.

sometimes i wish i would have stayed home. but then i realize that things would be the same there, just different surroundings. i would probebly live in a tiny apartment all on my own, no family around (they left for nor cal today), no real friends to send time with (they are all away at school or too busy for me) and with a job that will take me no where. Thanks life, thanks for shitting on whats left of my spirit.

john had his article 32 hearing yesterday and i had to read about it on the damn internet. why wasnt i there? oh yeah, cause i listened to rachel and moved my ass half way across the country so i could be alone and curled up on the bed crying. isnt that a great way to spend the next year of my life. alone, depressed and too poor to do anything about it. i cant go to a shrink cause i dont have health insurance and there fore i cannot get on any meds, and i am too poor to buy weed. at least some of the guys at work are nice enough to chill with me, but i dont get enough hours at work so who knows what i am going to do.

i guess all in all i just needed to get out how sucky this all is. i dont really have anyone to talk to now that i dont have a shrink. i dont want to worry my dad with all this stuff, and with the lack of friends, and john in jail i have nothing. not even a cat.

well, my time here is almost up. i guess i should go, plus i kinda ran out of shit to bitch about. untill next time.

I have little sympathy for him.
He chose to go to war, chose to shoot that man and has chosen to remain loyal to a system that has spat him out.

But there is something telling about the brutality of his MySpace in comparison to his friends'.
Its fractured content in some way mirrors his fucked up year.

This is ludicrous.

HP have introduced a new feature to their latest range of digital cameras - slimming.

What it does is to trim the object at the center of the image (i.e. a loved one) to make it appear more slender. WTF?!?!?!

So while the reality of your holiday might have been of a pudgy, blotchy tourist in sandals scratching their bum while wondering whether to have another cocktail in a coconut shell carved to the shape of a monkey's head[1]; at least your memories of it will be a bit more svelt.

They say cameras add ten pounds, but HP digital cameras can help reverse that effect. The slimming feature, available on select HP digital camera models, is a subtle effect that can instantly trim off pounds from the subjects in your photos!

And check out those other features! Retro, Soft Glow, Vintage and Sky Color...


It freaks me out.
More and more we're being encouraged to modify our reality and our memories; to substitute it for something leaner, more soothing - better.
How can anyone be satisfied with a life like this?

[1] They make great souvenirs!

I ran my first half marathon of the season on Saturday morning - the 10th Winelands Half Marathon in Stellenbosch starting at 05:45.
The early start is extreme (waking up at 04:30 sucks) but makes sense as it means that the race is done by 07:30 before the heat and Saturday morning traffic.

The course ran from Stellenbosch along the R44 to Somerset West and then in among the farms of Blaauwklippen Rd before heading back to the start; a tough but fair course which includes a 5Km section of gravel road along vineyards.

It has been my goal to run a silver(sub 90-minute) h/marathon for a long time and the closest I got to it last year was a 92:something run on a relatively flat course in Brackenfell.
Since then I've started training with Celtics(once a week)[1], have become more serious about my energy intake on race day(a mixture of carbohydrates and protein that works for me) and am careful to be very aware of any muscular or ligametary damage that I might sustain during training[2].

So I was feeling confident that somewhere(hopefully early) this season I could drop two minutes:something and get to 89:59.

Imagine my surprise when I ran 87:36 on Saturday, beating my best time of last season by around four minutes[3] and strolling home for an easy silver. Fuckn unbelievable.

I've always run with a plan that breaks the race down into shorter chunks and target times for each section.
My typical plan would be to get to 10Kms in 42-43 minutes and then to push harder for the next 6Kms[5] to be in a position to race the last 5Kms as hard as possible.
Somehow this never worked.

The most crucial part of a race this distance[6] is the third quarter(kilometers 11-16). By this time you've settled down and know exactly what your body is capable of on the day[7] and have done enough work to start thinking about chasing down times in manageable chunks.
You've also burnt all of your carbohydrates[8] and are starting to burn fat and(crucially) muscle. This is the part where your legs start hurting and your cardio-vascular system is straining.
If you lose focus in this section of the race you are unlikely to be able to regain the lost time later - focus, focus.
I've always been clear on this race plan and what I need to do when.

So what made the difference on Saturday?
Simple, I ran with a stopwatch for the first time.
No superhuman effort; no crazy banzai attack.
Just more information on how you're doing against the plan.

Rather than only checking my time[9] at 10Kms and again at 15/16Kms I could check it at each kilometer. This meant that I knew when it was OK to relax a little[10] and when to use an advantageous part of the course[11] to regain time lost on difficult parts. Great.

At 10Km I knew that the time could be fast. At 15Km I knew that I would survive the hard part[12]. At 16Km I knew I could start to accelerate and by 18Km I knew that a sub-90 time was within reach.

So great; fantastic - yes?
Well... somehow despite having finally run a really fast time[13] I wasn't particularly elated or surprised by the result.
The thing is that at 18Km I knew that I would have to kinda screw up the last 3 kilometers to not make a silver and by 19Km I knew that I could basically walk the last two. By the time I entered the sports grounds I knew that I had done it - done.

So something is lost.

When not managing the race so closely you rely a lot more on how you feel to judge what needs to be done.
There's a lot more focus on what your legs are telling you, on guesses about the course to come, and on the runners around you.
Legs fucked along with everyone else around you? Hold back some.
Everyone flying along? Better push a bit harder.

What I did lose in running with the watch is an aspect of the feel of the race - that nebulous assessment that you do based not on a hard empirical quartz tick, but on experience and what your senses are reporting.

Feel. There's something very alive about relying only on your senses and your experience.

I have a horrible suspicion that professional athletes give up the feel in exchange for closely-managed performance.
Actually, I take that back.


Does this mean that I'm not running with a watch again?
Absolutely not - I have goals[14] and they require a serious attitude and planning to achieve.
Refusing to run with a watch ignores this reality.

But here's the deal - running[15] is all about plateau's. You train to breach a specific ceiling; a distance or a time. But once you've breached that ceiling you can quickly reach a plateau where that particular level of performance becomes easy and natural to maintain. A sub 40-minute 10Km? No problem.

So here's the challenge: kick stopwatch-assisted ass on a few races around 90 minutes[16], breach that ceiling for real - do the work.
But then regain the feel, ignore the watch - fire the senses - feel where you are.

I take it back - I bet that really serious athletes face the reality of timing and management during training.
But the real racing is done on feel. And that is the real achievement.

work. to. be. done.

[1] Though I still only train four times a week and a maximum of 15Km's per session.
[2] Especially after the knee injury I sustained around the Two Oceans half in April.
[4] Which is a LOT in racing terms.
[5] Hopefully getting to 16Kms in around 67-68 minutes
[6] For me at least
[7] Sometimes you simply cannot fire and then just have to sit back and enjoy the scenery.
[8] Apparently you run out around between 11 and 15Km
[9] By asking other runners or marshals
[10] We went through 10Km at 41:something - too fast
[11] A gentle downhill
[12] Though I was taking strain
[13] By my standards, at least
[14] I'm convinced that I can get below 85 minutes and the guys in my running club make it clear that sub-80 is not about hyper-talent, all it requires is focus and work.
[15] As I suspect most sports do
[16] Not all courses are gentle enough to allow a fast run

Another week.

George Bush got his ass handed to him.
Donald Rumsfeld got the can.

Reporter: "If you had any do-overs to do in this race..."

GW: "You don't get to do them."

Reporter: "Or if Mr Rove had any do-overs to do in this race..."

GW: "You don't get do-overs."

GW: "As far as do-overs ...." he trailed off, looked down, paused, and gestured to his advisers.
"Talk to them."

"We've been trying to figure out for three years how to improve our Iraq policy. They've been trying to figure out for 12 hours how to respond to the election debacle, Rumsfeld falls into the latter category more than the former category."
-- Michael O'Hanlon

Britney divorces, Federline files for custody.

A day after Britney Spears asked for a divorce, Kevin Federline filed court papers seeking sole custody of the couple's two children.
...
"Kevin is prepared to go the distance in order to do what he feels is necessary to protect and safeguard the children and will not be intimidated or dissuaded from pursuit of those goals," Michael Sands, spokesman for Federline's attorney, Mark Vincent Kaplan, said Wednesday.

Google continues to swallow terabytes of data and Mari-Chan spreads more bizarre Japanese cuteness by the day.



It's all about inevitable accelaration and I get slower every day[1].
It's all about biological survival while hoping for opportunities to keep on opening doors.

The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive.

The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful."

[...]in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive.

Through [...] permanent or temporary by-passes there flows [...] something more than, and above all something different from, the carefully selected utilitarian material which our narrowed, individual minds regard as a complete, or at least sufficient, picture of reality.

The brain needs oxygen.



Music: Dead Can Dance - Toward the Within

[1] Hopefully not tomorrow, though - first half marathon this season. *deep breath*

I had my first real race of the running season on Saturday, taking part in a corporate relay and doing a 14km leg.
Next weekend will be my first half marathon of the season - the Winelands Marathon(and half) in Stellenbosch.


Yesterday was also New York City Marathon day.
Out of 90,000 applicants a record 38,368 runners started this year’s marathon on Staten Island, busted a gut through Brooklyn and Queens, slogged over the Queensboro Bridge into Manhattan and beyond, ending in Central Park.


This year the race was won by Brazil's Marilson Gomes dos Santos, making his NYCM debut, becoming the first South American to do so.
Gomes dos Santos is actually better known as a 5,000/10,000 meter athlete but ran a killer race to finish in 2:09:58 (his personal best is 2:08:something).
South African marathon hero Hendrick Ramaala[1] finished 9th.


Seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong finished his first marathon[2] in 2:59:36.



Let's put some of this into perspective.

I'm quite a badass runner.
I have the fancy little shorts; I look at my watch when I run; and I'll even spit out the side of my mouth when I think it makes me look really cool.
I ran Saturday's 14km leg of the relay in 59:02 - that's about 4:13 per kilometer.
That puts me in a good position to be able to run a silver half marathon(1:30:00) this season.
I'm cool as fuck.

But these guys are insane.
Gomes dos Santos ran three times[3] as far as I did in just over twice as long as it took me to run my distance.
His average speed was around 3:05 per kilometer and he would surely have gone under 3 minutes per kilometer for long stretches.
Let's not even mention Ramaala's 2:06:55 or *urk* the world record of Paul Tergat - 2:04:55.


[1] who won the NYC Marathon in 2004 and has a personal best of 2:06:55.
[2] "That was, without a doubt, the hardest physical thing I've ever done," Armstrong said after the race.
[3] Actually, three times as far as I did and then another 0.2 kilometers - but hey, who's counting.

As a last aside, the CEO of our company, Johann Dreyer, held the South African marathon record for a while with a time or 2:11:42 run in Kuils River on 2 July 1983.

.
.
..
...
.....
.......

And when you loose control,
you'll reap the harvest you have sown
And as the fear grows,
the bad blood slows and turns to stone
And it's too late to loose the weight you used to need to throw around
So have a good drown, as you go down, all alone
Dragged down by the stone.
Dogs

Photos: http://www.texansforpeace.org

PW Botha died yesterday.
Reactions to his death are mixed; the government is politely detached[1], others emphasise the good in his bungling attempts to reform South Africa. Very few reports are openly agressive.

This is the natural reaction to the death of a man who the world has passed by.
He lived the last seventeen years of his life in a country that day-by-day proved how viciously misguided his policies had been.

You know it's going to get harder, and harder, and harder
as you get older
(yeah)
And in the end you'll pack up, fly down south
Hide your head in the sand
Just another sad old man
All alone and dying of cancer.

And when you loose control,
you'll reap the harvest you have sown
And as the fear grows,
the bad blood slows and turns to stone
And it's too late to loose the weight you used to need to throw around
So have a good drown, as you go down, alone
Dragged down by the stone.

In many way he represented, to me, the arch-incarnation of the Apartheid regime. Probably because his imperial rule was at the height of its lunacy when I was just becoming aware of a social/political reality wider than just my family life.
I have a vivid memory of a classmate at school(I must have been about 7) talking about his parents' preference in politicians (Konserwatief) and how weird it seemed to me that there would exist something like this that people would argue over.
Of course now that I'm growing older it's getting harder, harder and harder - fly down south.

My experience of the political distopia of South Africa in the 80's was exclusively white.
Family grumbling about more outjies heading to the grens.
Friends' older brothers passing around third generation copies of banned albums. Evita Bezuidenhout's jestering.
The State of Emergency. The Total Onslaught. Crossing the Rubicon.

While all around us the real war in the townships raged.

And at the center of it all was PW with his wagging finger and raging temper - the years of the iron fist.

I'll leave the last word to the bitter Krokodil himself:
How does he want to be remembered?

“Ek gee nie om wat hulle van my onthou nie. Ek het Suid-Afrika gelei op ’n pad wat rég was. Orde. Vooruitgang. Teëspoed ook. Maar die teëspoed is éfféktiéf aangespreek.”

“I don't care how they remember me. I led South Africa on a road that was right. Order. Progress. Setbacks as well. But the setbacks were addressed effectively.”

[1] As the victor always bahaves towards a forgotten opponent.