Tetris was invented exactly when and where you would expect — in a Soviet computer lab in 1984 — and its game play reflects this origin. The enemy in Tetris is not some identifiable villain (Donkey Kong, Mike Tyson, Carmen Sandiego) but a faceless, ceaseless, reasonless force that threatens constantly to overwhelm you, a churning production of blocks against which your only defense is a repetitive, meaningless sorting. It is bureaucracy in pure form, busywork with no aim or end, impossible to avoid or escape. And the game’s final insult is that it annihilates free will. Despite its obvious futility, somehow we can’t make ourselves stop rotating blocks. Tetris, like all the stupid games it spawned, forces us to choose to punish ourselves.
npr:
The amazing jumping robot.
Built by a company called Boston Dynamics, who according to their website has also built robots capable of scaling walls and running fast. Really cool stuff.
Source: bostondynamics.com
‘It’s as if the great advances of human civilization, in everything from animal husbandry to mathematics to architecture to manufacturing to information technology, have all crescendoed with the Crunchwrap Supreme, delivered via the pick-up window.
Seems so smart but also I’m scared etc. etc.
Numero Group and Record Store Day
this interview with numero group co-founder rob sevier is a great read, and i’m not the least bit surprised that one of the guys behind the most exciting archival label going is opinionated, articulate, and has a razor-sharp wit. i have to wonder though, whether speaking out so publicly and forcefully denouncing record store day is a good idea. my sense is that it’s not in his best interest. now, it may be that he’s got too much integrity and self-confidence to worry too much about what might be best for his wallet—clearly, a person that starts an archival record label isn’t primarily concerned with money—but a gimmick (and it is a gimmick) that has an actual quantifiable track record of getting people into record stores and getting them to buy actual records seems like it might be a really good thing for numero (especially considering what they have on offer this year!).
then again, by distinguishing numero’s record store day offering from the rest of the pile (“This isn’t just some slap-dash, let’s-rape-the-customer job, we’ve spent as much time making this as we do every Numero album. There may be more colored vinyl in the field that day, but we highly doubt there will be anything that stacks up to Pressed At Boddie.”) perhaps it’s a smart move bashing the day—in so far as he sells out his limited run (only 2300 copies!).
or maybe he just doesn’t care either way and he’s just calling it like he sees it, as someone who purchases 10-15 records per week, he says. (when does he listen to them?)
Music Diary Project for Sunday April 10
so this was supposed to be the last day of this project and i’m afraid i didn’t do a very good job of being vigilant about keeping track of everything i listened to. in fact, i really have no idea, save for one moment— we were doing our taxes that evening and i was getting extremely irritated by the whole business and we were also eating dinner— pasta— and i could hear our chewing and it was really bugging me out. i hated it. chewing noise is terrible. and so i just grabbed the CD that was nearest to me and asked the wife to put it on and it was the weight is a gift by nada surf and that was what we listened to in order not to hear ourselves chewing and in order to sort of mitigate the whole stress of taxes and i think it would up being a pretty good choice, even though it wasn’t a choice, because it was just the nearest most convenient option, but i think that those kind of moments are often the best where music is concerned because you don’t often plan to be listening to something when a big moment comes along, you just are, and then you associate that song that just happened to be on with some moment in your life that you get to relive in a small way every time you hear that song, at least sometimes, if things line up the right way. not that i want to relive doing my taxes. although, luckily, i get to, because they tend to come up fairly regularly.
Music Diary Project for Saturday April 9
not a music-heavy day. had an early brunch with the family and some friends—no music playing at the restaurant, oddly. i quite enjoyed that—the lack of music.
afterwards, we came back to the apartment and i put on murmur by r.e.m., and then the king of limbs while we were sitting and talking and watching the boy romp around.
later went for a jog on the brooklyn waterfront and listened to the eponymous franz ferdinand album, which is a good one for jogging—almost all the tracks are mid to up tempo and they wind up matching my stride pretty nicely.
visited some other friends in the late afternoon, and O. put on something called cartegena, which was apparently a collection of columbian music. i didn’t catch the years it collected, and i wasn’t paying particularly close attention, but i liked what i heard.
and that’s really it for the day—we made dinner (had NY1 on in the background) and then watched a movie (repulsion, roman polanski’s english language debut). repulsion actually had a really interesting sound design. i believe it was made in 1965. all the scenes that featured catherine deneuve walking through the streets of london featured some compelling free-style jazz. i’m sure there may have been other music playing throughout the film, but i didn’t note it as much as i noted—again—the lack thereof. and also ticking of clocks and ringing of phones and clanging of bells from the convent across the street from the protagonist’s apartment. a quick internet search reveals that a “soundtrack” is available for the curious.
one addendum to the post for friday— i realized the idea of being embarrassed about listening to neil young is silly, and i was bullied into having that emotion, not because of anything specific about young or harvest moon (i happen to really like it, which i’m fine with), but just due to a long standing dynamic with my brother, and i thought i would just clarify that and say that i’m going to sit down and listen to harvest moon tonight and i’m going to love it and it doesn’t make me any less of a man, which i think was the basic thrust of my brother’s sort-of argument that temporarily made me embarrassed. so there’s that. even in my mid-thirties.
Music Diary Project for Friday April 8
took a personal day from work today. wrote the observations post (immediately below this one) this morning, and then spent the rest of the day hanging with the family. we walked over to the brooklyn public library at grand army plaza, which wound up being more of a walk then we were anticipating, and then walked back, stopping long enough to pick up the best smoked meat sandwich ever from mile end (“a montreal jewish delicatessen in brooklyn”). now i understand why there is a line out the door every time i walk past this place. but so, no music to speak of until we got back home this afternoon. we ate our smoked meat, and the boy ate apples and yogurt, and then we put him down for a nap. no music during any of this time, and i wonder if that’s because i was trying not to put something on that i couldn’t devote my undivided attention to. (the boy listened to the creek drank the cradle by iron and wine during/leading up to his nap).
the first music i put on today was the vinyl of sly and the family stone’s fresh, which is one of my favorites at the moment (and has been off and on for about fifteen years now). there’s just such a great mood going on with this record—it opens the door for you, invites you in, shows you a comfortable chair—it could be my history with the album that makes it feel like home to me, but i get the sense that i’m not alone in this.
