Ideas anyone?

A new full-time state job and a lingering embarassment for my blog design deficiency has made me a neglectful blogger recently, but this is only temporary. IN FACT, I'm working on a complete blog reformat, so please send me any ideas about what content or new features would ROCK OUT the blog... the more creative the better! Some ideas include an easily accessible and searchable archive, guest blogger voices, downloadable music videos for iPods, enhanced Wisconsin coverage, and more art! Send ideas to imjustsayinisall@gmail.com or LEAVE A COMMENT here!

Niobe - Give All To Love (mp3)

Musical Innovations

My new computing situation is being troubleshooted, so please forgive the formatting.

If you're not regularly using The Hype Machine to create music blog-curated playlists rooted in thought instead of advertising dollars, then you're already behind. But take a short break from the routine searching of Elbo.ws, perusing of LA's Little Radio, streaming of Pandora, and browsing of live shows and music videos on YouTube to check out some new musical innovations. In this fast-paced online music scene, increasing digital architechture is populating the skyline. And hopefully the cheap, intellectual, ecofriendly development continues.

Band Site Live - Apparently if myspace hurts your eyes, there are people willing to sell you slightly pimped out features for a monthly rate ($20!). Dumbed-down web development tools like these are the new Geocities.

Zune Beaming - What's do you call an iPod ripoff backed by huge corporate budget? The new "Zume" promises to threaten Apple marketshare of the mobile music device by introducing new features like "beaming". You know how much you hate Apple Store download restrictions because you don't feel like you own the music? Well now the songs just self-destruct and delete themselves after three days... and your beloved Joni Mitchell songs will be disappearing faster than the one hit wonders. And, Microsoft has "no plans to the conversion of protected/DRM iTunes songs" sticking to the Godless strategy of making compatibility harder for all of us in order to beat the strategy of innovation. Bloggers were even lavishly rewarded to write about it.

Bishop Allen's monthly EP technique that provides alternative ways to digest music, Our Lady of the Highway is offering subscriptions to their band. For a meager $15 paypal transaction, subscribers are promised full access to the material that the band outputs... including a copy of the CD, online mp3s, b-sides, album artwork, acoustic versions of songs, remixes, and a copy of the next CD. It is a reasonable way for fans to support artists' directly without relying on selling a produced "product" as necessary to the creative process.

Our Lady of the Highway - I Get The Sense (mp3)

Bishop Allen - Click Click Click Click (mp3)

Bishop Allen - The Same Fire (mp3)

There's an Elephant in the Room

"There's an elephant in the room. There's a problem that we never talk about. The fact is that life isn't getting any fairer:

- 1.7 biliion people don't have access to clean drinking water.
- 20 billion people live below the poverty line
- Every day hundreds of people are made to feel physically sick by morons at art shows telling them how bad the world is, but never doing anything about it

Anybody want a free glass of wine?"

Banksy, Los Angeles (2006)

Mike Borgia - Issues to Egos (mp3)

The Decemberists - Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect (mp3)

Bright Eyes - Take It Easy (Love Nothing) (mp3)

Counter Strike

Counter-Strike Screenshots (courtesy of We Make Money Not Art)

Supposedly, there are Banksy murals in Counter-Strike, a popular first-person shooter videogame. Which is awesome. So while you're fighting online terrorists, make a point to stop and browse the virtual artwork. And let me know if you find them! Velvet Strike has more information about installing your own graffiti art in the game.

Spank Rock's crude stank is refreshingly polluting the new office routine right now. When I close my eyes I can see a bumpin' office party held in a dirty basement filled with raunchy hip-hop music and awkward middle-aged white men in striped ties. Between faxes, a large woman picks up and chugs a coffee pot full of vodka... spilling it suggestively all over her mauve polyester blazer. The janitorial staff is called on a razor flip phone and told to bring more beer. Sound fun? Update your playlist with Spank Rock and Girl Talk and start getting down with your bad self. Or at least calculate and plot a trend of how far you'd be able to get down to each song in an Excel spreadsheet.

Spank Rock - Bump (mp3)

Spank Rock - Put Than Pussy On Me [DraculaZombieUSA and JAMF Remix] (mp3)

And Girl Talk is coming to Madison on November 3rd! In case you missed the tracks...

Girl Talk - Bounce That (mp3)

Girl Talk - Hold Up (mp3)

Bunnies and Teddybears

Eduardo Kac - GFP Bunny (2000)
Her real name is "Alba", and she is a transgenic rabbit that glows with green fluorescent protein.

I haven't fully gotten into the Teddybears, but I feel like I'm missing something because the constant buzz is making them hard to ignore. Much like the GFP Bunny, they sit in the distance and there is something appealing, but questionably strange about them. I know the bunny has a synthetic genenetic mutation, but can you identify the Teddybears' defect? Or maybe mine?

Teddybears - Yours to Keep [Annie Remix] (mp3)

Teddybears - Cobrastyle [Diplo Remix] (mp3)

Teddybears - Punkrocker [Squeak E Clean Remix] (mp3)

B-Day

Robert Indiana - Three [from One Through Zero] (1980-2001)

So, it's my birthday today... and I share my birthday week with the beautiful Beyonce Knowles. To celebrate our birth this year, she is releasing an album entitled "B-Day". One of the awfully catchy songs is devoted exclusively to something that is always high on my birthday wish list, a Suga Mama. Applicants can apply within.

Beyonce Knowles - Suga Mama (mp3)

Beyonce Knowles - Deja Vu (mp3)

Sweetness Overdose

Will Cotton - Candy Curls (2005)

The music in this post is inspired by a dreamy, misplaced San-Franscician who is digging the love exports of one sweet hollerer called Josh Rouse. And by the disgustingly Carrie Bradshawesque question: How does one prevent and/or treat a sweetness overdose? If that question doesn't wrap itself into a sufficiently neat thematic TV package, we've all experienced simple examples in the tangy rumble of one-too-many skittles or the lactic acid exhaustion of a cotton candy mountain. But what about the of a grating morning following a champagned night pairing or compulsive dosages of unhealthy social outreaching? The pains of too many fruitless and delusional expressions of love can be felt just as strong in the empty stomach. When piggy bank savings and moms are in the past, how does one develop the self-control to avoid boarding the tragic "Sweet Ship" and drowning in the shallow of associated lovely excessiveness?

Josh Rouse - Givin It Up (mp3)

Josh Rouse - Why Won't You Tell Me What (mp3)

Reasons Why Jenny is Better Than Cocaine.

1) Cocaine makes you say things like "I'd pick cocaine over you". Jenny makes you say things like "why you gotta be all high falootin" and "triflin" and "like you do".
2) Cocaine makes you feel like shit after you feel great. Jenny makes you feel great after you feel like shit.
3) Cocaine gets stuck in your nose. Jenny gets stuck in your mind and heart.
4) Cocaine is always white, but sometimes Jenny has her hair and nails did.
5) Cocaine makes you feel as cool as 50 cent and Kurt Cobain. Jenny makes you feel as cool as Owen and Joanna Newsom.
6) Cocaine can be snorted, injected, smoked. Jenny can be held.
7) Sigmund Freud wrote that cocaine could be enjoyed without any unpleasant side-effects. Sigmund Freud wrote that Jenny wants to have sex with her father.
8) Cocaine dirties the cover of a book. Jenny can recommend a good book.
9) Cocaine comes from Peru. Jenny comes from Watertown, WI.
10) Cocaine is made of the leaves of a plant. Jenny is made of compassion and integrity.
11) Cocaine can kill you. So can Jenny, but only if you deserve it.

Bright Eyes - A Line Allows Progress, A Circle Does Not (mp3)

Weeks pass and they'll be here on the weekend, weekends pass and there is always next week.

Damien Loeb - Rear Window (2005)

So, it's RUSH week and the sorority across the parking lot has started accepting third graders. This morning I rubbed my eyes to 9AM renditions of Michael Jackson songs adapted into Greek shrill. Apparently their literally catered lives are worth shouting about and as easy as 1-2-3, do-re-mi, alpha-beta-chi, baby you and me girl. But, much like the welcome jolt of a knock on the door, I'm enjoying the refreshing company of the lives being led exuberantly outside my widow. Not that I haven't been busy checking off a full itinerary of dry British Comedies, PBS documentaries, and 6-week workout infomercials; but Hyacinth and Richrad Bucket's bickering was a little too much for me yesterday. More entertaining was the drunken frat boy trying to break into his fraternity late last night, breaking a window, and nearly his leg in the process.

Teenage Fanclub - It's All In My Mind (mp3)

Photo Album of Complex Relationships

Matthew Barney - Drawing Restraint 9 [film still] (2005)

A life of complex relationships hardens in layers of disguised ritualistic pourings of moods over warmed expectations. Stop for a simple lunchhour tea between pseudonym phone calls and you find yourself severed in an ocean of regret. At least your store-bought emotion is real; with profitable obligations, papertrail tails, and drunken alarms to keep you awake and on time.

Trentalange - Lonley Land (mp3)