This page contains all entries posted to Manufactured Environments in May 2005.

George W. Bush in Song

[Steve] Martin says, “What Nixon really needed was a banjo.” Then he illustrated Nixon and a press conference holding his banjo. A reporter shouts out, “What about Watergate?” and Nixon looks taken aback for a moment. Then another voice hollers, “Play Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” and he grins broadly and breaks into FMB while the crowd cheers wildly.

-Nick Kennedy describing Steve Martin’s “Nixon really needed a Banjo” bit

I think George W. Bush would win over many of his critics if he simply hired The George W. Bush Singers to reiterate his words in song. The Bush 43 administration has utilized many sophisticated (and a few not so sophisticated) Madison Avenue techniques for selling its agenda to the American people. It has consulted with focus group after focus group, distilled complicated policies to ten words or less, carefully crafted the president’s image/brand, and demonstrated the value of staying strictly on message. But where are the jingles? Where are the songs that get stuck in our heads and become an ingrinable part of the American consciousness?

They are right here:

You can listen to samples from this album of our commander in chief’s words put to music by listening to:

• clips via Amazon.com
• clips via The George W. Bush Singers’s site
• full songs as played on WFMU in a RealAudio format [I’d pick this one since I put together this RealAudio playlist from the WFMU archives just for you.]

You might recall that Dan and I played ‘4,000 Hours’ during our freeform madness a few weeks back.

Bonus tracks

If you would like to hear music actually “sung” in our president’s voice, a nice collection of MP3s and streams are available from the party party. I’ve played ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ on my show. Even more remixes of rather mixed quality can be found at DIYmedia.net.

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What ‘Bistro’ Means to Me

During my naïve youth, the suburbs of Chicago experienced an explosion of pricey little restaurants which called themselves ‘bistros’. I remember asking what a bistro was and being told that it is a place I couldn’t afford to eat. Not satisfied with this answer, I looked up ‘bistro’ in a dictionary and learned that it is a word of French origin for a small, unpretentious restaurant which serves wine. From this I determined these establishments must not be bistros. For while they ranged from small to moderate in size and served wine, not only did I find their milieu quite pretentious, but using a French word to claim a lack of pretension seemed pretty ostentatious to me.

If my parents had invested in a better dictionary, such as the Oxford English Dictionary or even Chambers Dictionary, I might have had a richer etymological experience. There is a popular theory that claims the French word’s roots might be from the Russian ‘bystro’, which means ‘quickly’ or ‘rapidly’. The story goes that during the Russian occupation of France after Napoleon’s defeat, soldiers who thought a cafe’s service too slow would pound their fists and shout “Bystro! Bystro!”. Many specifically reference the rowdy Cossacks who occupied Paris around 1814. Yet, since the earliest recorded attestation of bistro(t) is from 1884, the Russian connection is difficult to make. Anyway, it’s a good story and one which La Mère Catherine doesn’t seem to remind repeating, at least for the tourists.

For more information on the Franco-Russian Connection connection see:

David L. Gold, 1991, “More on the Alleged Russian Origin of French bistro/bistrot”, Romance Philology 44(4), 425-428.

For a fantastic French lexicography resource, see Trésor de la langue française informatisé (TLF).

Fun Game

Test your etymological knowledge at Etymologic. I usually only get about half of them right.

Notes

Use Google to translate La Mère Catherine’s page to find a hilarious example of “All your base are belong to us”. Danton’s “Buvons et mangeons car demain nous mourrons” is almost unrecognizably rendered as “and bus tomorrow we eat Drink will die” instead of something like “Eat, drink, for tomorrow we die”.

I do not speak French.

Extra Credit Question

If ‘bistro’ really was just a pretentious way of saying “unpretentious”, is there a technical term for such a thing? It wouldn’t be an oxymoron. An oxymoron requires at least two terms to be combined in an incongruous or contradictory manner. I suppose it could just be an example of irony. What do you think?

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Roger Ebert reviews F.W. Murnau’s Faust (1926)

Roger Ebert recently reviewed F.W. Murnau’s Faust (1926). I was surpised to learn that Faust is currently number 4 on among the Internet Movie Database list of best horror films and number 10 on their list of best fantasy films of all time.

While not one of my all time favorite films, Faust holds a special place in my heart. The strength of those mesmerizing stills in Lotte Eisner’s Haunted Screen and Siegfried Kracauer’s From Caligari to Hitler (two books I think I must have had checked out from the Arlington Heights Memorial Library my entire Junior High School career) not only got me very interested in film, but made me aware of the strange German tale which eventually became my name.

BTW… Cul de Sac, a fine band whose roster includes my old pal Jon LaMaster on bass and violin, have spent the past month providing musical accompaniment to screenings of Faust across Europe.

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The Many Face Transformations of Lee Marvin

Child	Teenage	Young Adult	Adult
Afro Caribbean	West Asian	East Asian	Apeman
Magna Cartoon	Botticelli	El Greco	Modigliani

These face transformations were generated by the St. Andrews’ Perception Laboratory’s Face Transformer, a java applet which runs in the browser and applies age, feminine/masculine, ethnic, animal, and artistic transformations to uploaded images. Above are some highlights from my experiments. I used a black and white publicity shot of Lee Marvin and his image from the cover of The Dirty Dozen DVD.

While playing with the face transformer was definitely fun, I wish the site were more educational. The cool stuff peaked my interest, but the site’s deplorable paucity of information did nothing to gratify it. It doesn’t even say, “To learn more about the science of face perception, you can read about it in these many fine books available at your local library.” So, instead of thinking that St Andrews must be making valuable contributions to the field, I am left wondering if I should be uncomfortable with caricature like nature of the ethnic transformations. For the purpose of this post, I’ll ignore my concerns, simply point at the screen, and, like Beavis and Butthead, repeatedly utter “Hehe hehe hehe… That’s cool!”. Dude, those artistic transformations are way cool!

If the face transformations leave you desiring more “cool” face stuff, take a look at Eric Myer’s Stereotypes.

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Julian Manduca, RIP

I was saddened to read on Wired Temples that Julian Manduca died Tuesday in Valletta of a heart attack at the age of 46. I remember Julian as being one of the most interesting people I met during the year I was living in Malta (an island nation in the Mediterranean). He was what we Americans would call a non-traditional student at the time, which simply means he was attending university as an older student. I remember many conversations with him talking about film and culture and the environment.

Julian was very welcoming to us foreigners and made us feel comfortable in our new surroundings. I remember going to parties at his flat and the interesting, literate people who were his friends.

Julian is the last person I remember saying goodbye to before I left Malta and returned to the States, and I still remember his last words to me, which were “We’ll run into each other again on the streets of some city somewhere in the world.” Julian was very much Maltese, but he was also a man who had a distinctly broad worldview. As I plan a return trip to Malta, I’m stung by the loss of this exemplary person. He will surely be missed by those of us abroad, as I’m sure his loss will be distinctly felt in Malta.

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The future of television: Clark’s NYC Video Blog

If blogs are the future of journalism, then certainly video blogs are the future of television. We want to give a shout out to our pal Clark ov Saturn who is hosting his own show over on his NYC video blog that goes by the catchy title ZipZapZop. We here at Manufactured Environments definitely prefer the Clark-in-a-sports-coat look (5-18 entry) to the Hairy-Chest-ov-Clark (5-17 entry).

We’ve subscribed to Clark’s RSS feed and look forward to more Simon and Garfunkel impersonations. We’re canceling our cable tv right now!

We offer up this video as inspiration for future video blog posts.

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Get back, RIAA! You don’t know me like that.

If you follow online music, then I’m sure you’ve heard about Yahoo’s entry into the music subscription fray with Yahoo! Music Unlimited. It’s a deal where you pay $5 a month and get unlimited access to music online and for yr portable device.

Barry Ritholtz drops some logic in an interesting direction, namely this: if unlimited access to music is worth $5 a month, why is the RIAA suing people who share music files for thousands of dollars? If you do the math, the music would be worth $60 a year or $600 over ten years. So how can the RIAA claim damages in excess of the going market price for unlimited music access?

In other news, if you’ve ever wanted to see a blog mashup, check this out.

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What is your world view?

I sent this quiz to Faust a couple of weeks ago, and I hope he’ll chime in with his results. At any rate, here is how I rated on the latest meme du jour: a quiz that asks “What is your world view?” I see that Sam posted his results today.

Without further ado, here is how I scored:

You, Daniel R Stout, scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.

What is Your World View? (corrected…hopefully)

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Faust reads Edmund Burke live on KWLC

Faust reads Edmund Burke live on KWLC, originally uploaded by dstout.

As you may have surmised from Faust’s posts about our radio show on KWLC yesterday, it was a huge success. We had an hour of Sun Ra and then Freeform Madness for 90 minutes. Requests were coming in from our coastal friends, and we even had some call-in guests on the air to plug their recent book (more on this later). At any rate, enjoy this photo of Faust reading, by request, from the writings of Edmund Burke (1729-97).

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Free Form Madness with Mr. Daniel R Stout Playlist for May 14, 2005

Notes

If you remember the production of our old shows being a little smoother, that is because Mr. Stout used to run the board back in the day.

Amongst the best of Steve Lindstrom’s blogs are The Poutine Diaries and The Shameless Antagonist. He and his wife live in Goderich, which is sort of a Canadian version of Decorah, located on the eastern shore of Lake Huron. Queen Elizabeth once referred to it as “the prettiest little town in Canada”—a fact duly noted in all tourist brochures. Every Saturday in the summer, bagpipers ‘pipe down the sun’ at the Lakeside park, paying tribute to the town’s Scottish heritage.

Thanks to Sam Teigen for using the secret e-mail address announced during the show to request another Bloc Party song.

Thanks to Eric Paulson for requesting and selecting the Edmund Burke passage.

Special thank you to Mr. Daniel R Stout for joining me in the studio and selecting almost all of the rocking music for the show. This long over due reunion was a thrill for me and I am sure that it was great for our listeners as too.

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Sun Ra Radio Playlist for May 14, 2005

Announcements

Sun Ra arrived on this planet on May 22, 1914 and left it on May 30, 1993.

Steve Lindstrom, a former KWLC DJ, said he might listen. So here is a digital shout out to the Stever.

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A Very Special Saturday on KWLC (featuring Mr. Daniel R Stout)

Tune into KWLC this Saturday (May 14th, 2005) for an out of this world experience when Manufactured Environments’ very own Mr. Daniel R Stout and I, Faust W.H.B. Gertz, bring you a full two and a half hours of commercial-free delectation. This radio reunion will be our first time on the air together in well over a decade. Martin and Lewis; Sonny and Cher; and Sacco and Vanzetti have nothing on this historic duo.

Sun Ra Radio (3:00—4:00pm CST)

Calling all members of the angel race! Sun Ra Radio is making one last stop for earthbound airwaves before a summer hiatus spent traveling the spaceways. Who knows when and if it will return? Mr. Daniel R Stout will be in the studio to help celebrate Mr. Ra’s 91st birthday and the 12th anniversary of his departure from this planet. If you find earth boring, don’t miss what might be your last chance to sign up for Outer Spaceways Incorporated.

Free Form Madness with Mr. Daniel R Stout (4:00—5:30pm CST)

Kraig Schroth is generously, though perhaps unwisely, letting us take over his world music show and turn it into an amorphous free form maelstrom. That’s right, Mr. Stout and I are going to be gettin’ jiggy wit it just like we did back in the day. There will be flip-folders filled with the usual 80’s/90’s alternarock and big beats. But, since it’s free form, there is no telling what will happen. Perhaps we will just read weather reports from around the globe over my nearly hour long (59 minutes and 59 seconds to be exact) Bamboo Rainsticks CD. Then again, maybe not, though you never can tell.

Once again, please gather your friends and neighbors and listen to KWLC (1240AM in Decorah, IA) this Saturday, May 14th, 2005, from 3:00-5:30pm CST. You don’t want to miss what happens when Stout and Faust take to the air waves.

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The Truth About Mac OS X Tiger: You Heard It Here First!

Maybe you’ve heard the news: a little over a week ago, Apple Computer released a new version of their operating system, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. A lot of people were quick to weigh in about it—from the idiotic to the thoughtful to the amazingly in depth and technical.

I installed Mac OS X 10.4 on my PowerBook on Friday, and on my iMac G5 today. With my thorough testing of the operating system over the past three days, it is clear that there are only two features that truly matter in this upgrade. Two features that are so awesome they blow everything else out of the water. Spotlight? Fuck no. Y’all don’t need Spotlight, y’all just need to organize your folders. Okay. What else? Active Directory integration? The new flat blue Apple icon? No. No. No. The only two features to watch are this: desktop … yes, desktop patterns and dictionary. Okay, I’m going to stop for a moment and let that sink in.

[pause…]

First, desktop patterns. Apple really outdid themselves this time. I mean, they’ve gone toward some really trippy abstract desktop wallpapers in recent years, but this time they did some fantastic work. Boot up into Tiger and check out the Plants folder in the Wallpapers System Preferences. These are INCREDIBLE! I’m telling you, wo/man! No, really, check them out. Also check out the Black & White folder. Whew. Eye candy extreme. The wallpapers are worth the price of Tiger alone. Upgrade now damn it. Do it!

After I installed Tiger, my PowerBook looked like this, but before you look at that photo I’m telling you it’s a thousand times more cool than in this photo okay, so here’s the shot:

As promised there is one other super cool feature in Mac OS X 10.4. It’s the new Dictionary. Let me just say Dictionary rocks! The typography is crisp and fresh. It’s like looking at a book on the screen. But more importantly there are LOADS of dirty words. I don’t know what Apple was thinking, but it’s a little crazy all the words they have in that Dictionary. All the 5th grade boys with Macs are gonna go WILD with Dictionary. Wow. And we’re not talking pansy-assed definitions here. There is some serious etymology going on. First here’s a shot of the definiton for FUNKY:

That is so impressive! I mean these etymologists are fantastic people. The other word I wanted to highlight is another F-word. Err…but believe me there are far worse words I could be showing you. But I’m totally impressed by their definition for FUCK. I’ve never seen such a complete definition. I won’t show you the whole thing. In fact, I’ll just show you a little bit to illustrate how complete this definition is. And just in case it wasn’t clear by this point, Dictionary rocks!

So, anyway. Tiger. Yes, you must have it. If you don’t have a Mac, you are seriously missing out!

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Wearing your thoughts on your face

To celebrate the demise of the illness that had pervaded my life the past couple of weeks, I went out Thursday night with some folks. At some point in the evening, the subject of age came up. Ben asked Rick to guess his age. Rick was correct. Because I’m becoming fascinated by this question, I asked Rick to guess my age. Rick is one year younger than myself, but he fully underestimated my age by five years.

This in itself would not be interesting except for the fact that it happens all the time to me. People who, for whatever reason, try to guess my age are routinely four, five, or more years below the mark.

Because it has happened so consistently I’ve thought about reasons why this is. I’d be interested to hear what you have to say on the matter, but my theories run to one destination: The Buddha’s Smile. The face of the Buddha is one of contentment and well being. Simply put, we wear our thoughts on our face. One of my favorite books—a book about thought—has a meditation in one chapter on this fact.

At the heart of the matter, I am basically a happy and, more importantly, an optimistic person. Optimism is in my character. And so my belief is that my inner happiness is worn on my face like a badge. I haven’t accrued the lines of age because, at the end of the day, I am a person at peace.

So I attribute my youthful looks to my Buddha nature. What do you think?

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Amazon.com redesign rollout

Amazon.com is doing a limited rollout of a new design for their website. I noticed recently that when I view their site from my broadband ISP at home that it still has the old look, like so:

but if I view Amazon.com from on campus, it has the new style. I like the new style a lot, although I’m not fond of the dense 31 category drop-down menu that shows when you hover over the tab. The typography is cleaner, and there is less clutter—the ads in the top corners are gone and there are only 3 tabs, like so:

What do you think of the new style? Have you already seen it?

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When Communism invades a community

Seen elsewhere:

When Communism invades a community, it destroys free enterprise by monopolizing goods, services, and employment. It destroys free enterprise by creating a monopoly which provides food, clothing and other goods once supplied by privately-owned small businesses. The people in turn are forced to work for that monopoly at a wage at or near poverty. Their choices are limited to the cheaply-made goods provided by other Communist manufacturers through their employer. These products are purchased by their low wage earnings thereby giving the people no chance to succeed. The only ones who profit are the few lucky leaders who apply a miniscule fraction of their earnings to their propaganda machine, which encourages people that submitting to their system is the Patriotic thing to do.

Wait, did I say Communism? I meant Walmart.

Thanks, Steve!

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Hanging out with Robi & Friends

I’m hanging tonight with Robitussin-DM and The Portable Nietzsche. Spent the ENTIRE day sleeping, which if I hadn’t been miserable would have felt really good. So tonight we’re to bed early, and hopefully early to rise. I have to go back to childhood to remember a time I’ve been this sick. Oh Dear. Thanks to everyone who has sent along encouraging words. As a thank you, here is a Rainer Maria track in MP3 called Sickbed (8.1 MB) [removed] from the album Past Worn Searching. The drummer for Rainer Maria is from my hometown.

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Channeling Proust

We’ve been doing our best to channel the spirit of Proust this week. As this wretched thrashing of the spirit continues, we spend much contemplative time in bed, writing notes and letters into our laptop, to be printed at a later date when we’re all well enough to ask someone to go to the post office and buy stamps for us, for our supply has run quite dry. In between bouts of coughing and sips of medicinal bourbon, we have found time to craft 3—THREE!—new music mixes. In lieu of our usual repartee, we offer up the track listing on this song cycle, and if you scroll all the way down, perhaps a little surprise. [Private note to Abs: Forget the Pet Shop Boys! They obviously have a lock on their “Spanish.” Observe a subtle change to #2.]

Mix 1: A night in the city

1. Miss.Q.In Zap Mama
2. Hear The Music Paul Johnson
3. Plug It In (Featuring JC Chasez) Basement Jaxx
4. Good Luck (Featuring Lisa Kekaula) Basement Jaxx
5. The Rooster Outkast
6. Madame Hollywood Felix Da Housecat
7. Intergalactic The Beastie Boys
8. It’s Getting Hectic (Feat. Gang Starr) The Brand New Heavies
9. Jaw Gymnastics (Featuring Casual) Del The Funky Homosapien
10. Encore DJ Danger Mouse
11. 99 Problems DJ Danger Mouse
12. Smells Like Booty (Soulwax Remix) Nirvana vs. Destiny’s Child
13. Where Is The Line Björk
14. Blueberry Hill Fats Domino
15. Things Is About To Change KRS-One
16. It Takes Two Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock
17. Mustt Mustt Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
18. Dream Come True The Brand New Heavies
19. Circles Adam F

Mix 2: From club to club

1. Moving Supergrass
2. Bucci Bag Andrea Doria
3. Children Of The Revolution Baby Ford
4. Jus 1 Kiss Basement Jaxx
5. Up, Up And Away (Happy Sexy Mix) The Beloved
6. Feeling for you Cassius
7. Under Influence Cassius
8. Push It Like A Dog (Soulwax Remix) The Stooges vs. Salt n’ Pepa
9. Steven’s Last Night in Town Ben Folds Five
10. Typical Male Consolidated
11. Hot Hot Hot !!! The Cure
12. Superheroes Daft Punk
13. Take Me Out Franz Ferdinand
14. Bet She’s Not Your Girlfriend Pet Shop Boys
15. The Mexican Jellybean
16. Nothing (Headcleanr Rock Mix) Depeche Mode
17. Where’s Your Head At Basement Jaxx

Mix 3: The 5 a.m. chill out

1. Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect The Decemberists
2. Shiny The Decemberists
3. Joga Björk
4. Under The Milky Way The Church
5. blue bell knoll Cocteau Twins
6. Rowena’s Theme The Edge
7. American Dreaming Dead Can Dance
8. Leif Erikson Interpol
9. Bluebeard Cocteau Twins
10. Drive The Cars
11. Cloudbusting Kate Bush
12. ‘Cept You & Me Babe Greg Brown
13. Autosleeper Chapterhouse
14. Drive That Fast Kitchens Of Distinction
15. Rollercoaster Red House Painters
16. Ballad of Sister Sue Slowdive
17. Souvlaki Space Station Slowdive

Oh, since you made it all the way down here, here’s a little iTunes goody…it’s Smells Like Booty [removed], a fine mash-up of Nirvana and Destiny’s Child.

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