Ouch. That’s Hot.

After scandalizing the sensible citizens of the Seine, Michel Houellebecq’s novel of the days to come has reached translation to our American shores to burn my eyes with its sex and its death and its frustrated attempts to jerk a little more life out of the last days of mankind.

That being said, I don’t think that this novel has an ax to grind.  Conservatives on both sides of the pond hated it’s porno-licious portrayals of various turpitudinous attempts at transcendence.  (Fucking to forget, as it were.)  Liberals were outraged that Michel would implicate a sensible Continental love-the-one-you’re-with modernity with all that is crass and despairing and destructive and — heaven forbid! — American.

But it seemed he was just stating facts.  The book is riddled with science:  Biology, Evolution, Chemistry, Physics — all forces just a wee bit bigger than any one man or even one ideology.  These forces march on and have their own mysterious ends, we are merely swept along for the ride.  As a man lives and dies, so does a culture, so does an epoch, so does an era.  In the first pages, Houellebecq makes the sweeping statement that just as the Roman Empire was undone by the Christian era, so the Christian era — and it’s moral code — is now being undone by the rise of Modern Science, the latest “metaphysical mutation.”

His characters have been born at the wrong time:  Now.  Plagued by Anxiety, Depression, Dissatisfaction, Suicide Slow, Suicide Quick, they float about like Elementary Particles, unable to latch on and bond in a necessary order to build a future, a family, a community.  Without purpose they are indeed unbearably light in their being.

However, the book is more than a pocket-sized pulp soap opera.  It’s also got a sci-fi twist!  (Fear not, its more Margret Atwood then H.G. Wells.)

Yes, the Brave New World is at hand.  Huxley is proven right.  He saw the future, and now we see that it was not birthed out of fear, but by our own desires. Our desire to divorce sex from reproduction.  Our desire to find happiness in a pill.  The schema of Organized Religion made life bearable for two millennia.  But now the comforting chains have started to crack thanks to the Darwins and the Curries and the Freuds and the Fords of this world.  Now we are selfishly working towards the next big thing, and shattered lives and shredded psyches are the price.

A doctor I met last summer echoed some of these thoughts.  I was freaking out and went in for some meds, something I had always considered weak, cowardly, shameful, and downright anti-Christian up to that moment.  I asked him why so many of my friends — mostly college educated, middle class, i-pod owning types - are on the pills. He said that he’s pretty sure we’re not equipped to handle things the way they are:  Cars, constant media, etc.  Too Much, Too Fast.  He said either we’re heading for an apocalypse or a great leap forward in our evolution.  But that’s just his professional opinion.  He was sticking to the comfort of his hard-working, latin-loving, Cleveland Catholicism and seemed to be doing ok.  But wasn’t as sure about his grandkids.

Will the Houellebecq prophecy come true?  Will it all work out for the rest of us in some grand New World Order?  We shall see, but I guarantee that Pfizer has a Soma division down some dark hall.   Eventually it will be time to turn the lights on.

To lead a life more lovely, to live a life more divine, one must find inspiration from greater men, sip enlightenment from a deeper well.  Perhaps he’s not the guiding light for every dark night of the soul, but this self-penned timeline of Tony Visconti’s good times is a fascinating read if you agree with me that the best tracks ever put to tape happened somewhere in the 70s.

If you don’t know the name, you will know the sounds.  Certain inescapable moments of pop history were captured while Tony manned the helm of the great ship H.M.S. Rock ‘n Roll.  He midwifed the birth of Bowie, helped McCartney find his Wings, and made sure that all of us were Blinded By The Light.

Though his many wives may agree that he wasn’t much of a saint outside of the studio, he lived a life worthy of an introduction by Morrissey.  And that’s gotta count for something.

Do you have any Kahlua?

After reading a little about the similarities between Soviet iconography and the Obama pop-art posters which would encourage us to Obey Giant, this one really pulled the campaign together:

thanks to mr. whitman

I’m still enjoying the recording toys and popped this together last night.

Why record it? To try out two things:  1) drum loops  & 2) midi keys.  Why post it to the internet?  Well, if an mp3 falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it…  What’s it all about?  Interstate 29 runs through Sioux Falls and takes you South.   Need I say more?

As you may have noticed, Christmas came again this year. Every time jolly old St. Nick makes his rounds, I feel the urge to justify a little strummable splurge.  But it’s getting harder. Not that I have any sort of exceptional collection of equipment, but I’ve got the bases covered with a stack of useful, if b-level, gear.  Any more and moth and rust will corrupt it all faster than I can.  So this year it came down to this little 20-dollar wonder:  The Cut-Capo.

So far I’ve found it useful for two things:  Opening up alternate (and somewhat simplified) fingerings to give the old folk-chord voicings a new flair.  And for rolling picking patterns up-and-down the neck, which sonically nicks Mr. Drake and makes me want to grow my hair long a take a ride on the free love freeway, preferably in the UK, in an Aston Martin.

Here’s a half-written experiment of the above. It started sort of Nick Drake, took a lyrical turn south, but came back around with a little Eno-y electric.  I haven’t attempted to put notes and words together for the better part of 10 years, so I consider anything at all to be a success.  Just give me a chorus and a dose of the auto-tune and soon we’ll soon be making rock-and-roll history!

It’s a classic!  So I’m told.   The boy in me likes to climb up out from under the covers once a year or so to nix another seminal sci-fi classic off the list of Things To Read Before I Die.  Usually - I’m being honest here - I’m a little disappointed.  But dagnabbit! this one seemed to have potential.

First of all, there’s the movie. I rather enjoyed Paul Verhoeven’s cheese-ball-o-fun from 1997.  Lit up with the sparky charisma of thespian Denise “Wildthing” Richards, this little romp through the bug-infested universe proved to be worthy of every one of it’s direct-to-dvd sequels.

Secondly, there’s that 5-syllable word plastered all over every pulpy paperback reprint of the thing: Controversial!  That’s it!  Money on the barrel, baby!  I’m sold!

And now I know what the fuss was all about: It seems that  Mr. Heinlein decided to write in the Randian tradition, heavy-handedly dictating the tenets of the ideal republic while fantasizing about what he’d a-done if he was lucky enough to storm the South Pacific with the doughboys of the big one.

Fine by me.  It’s his book after all, and if he has a few grudges to grind against the axe of postwar America he should feel free.  And so it was that the man was branded a fascist for his futuristic fancy of a benevolent military-led limited democracy and it’s get-your-ass-in-gear final solution to all of the 20th century’s ills.

However, I’m intrigued enough by Heinlein to dig out a copy of Stranger In A Strange Land.  Turns out that his depiction of a do-as-you-please Martian civilization spawned not only a cult following but an actual cult of free-lovin’ longhairs in the 1960s.

I have a feeling people take this guy way too seriously.