Key and lock

Key and lock by allaboutgeorge
Key and lock, a photo by allaboutgeorge on Flickr.

A poster may catch your eye in a tax preparer’s office in the city where you work on a day before returns are due. You see what it promises, what it tries to reassure you of about security and safety. That’s a representation of two objects, you think to yourself. It should be a process, a series of actions and choices that are likelier to make one safer. Objects are exactly the wrong thing to present, you think. They over-promise. They leave no room to do anything except under-deliver.

Maybe it’s your mood, the time of day, a cranky feeling about other people and their general level of susceptibility to accept images instead of questioning narratives, to suck down skeumorphic representations like so many easy calories. Maybe you’re just nervous about whether a refund is in the works, of it will be the same size as last year’s. Maybe other people bring more to the table, have more at stake. You are not the target market, after all.

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Goodbye, We Are Hunted

3 wearehunted

3 wearehunted (Photo credit: evansonline)

We Are Hunted

We Are Hunted (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I read about the music service joining Twitter, went to the site and learned users’ accounts will be shut down. But, they said, you can enter your user name or e-mail address and get a list of your favorite songs, with links to iTunes, Spotify or Soundcloud. For what it’s worth, it looks like way more of these songs were still searchable in Soundcloud, but your mileage (and music-finding-ability) may vary. At least, until Twitter actually debuts its music service for public listening and sharing.

Here were mine:

1 Little Boots, “Shake Till Your Heart Breaks”
2 Lana Del Rey, “Video Games”
3 Little Dragon, “Little Man”
4 Beirut, “Santa-Fe”
5 Africa Hitech, “93 Million Miles”
6 Boom Bip, “New Order”
7 Pusha T, “Don’t Fuck Wit Me”
8 Chaz Van Queen, “Do You Like It?”
9 Emeli Sandé, “Heaven”
10 Destroyer, “Kaputt”
11 Yuna, “Coffee”
12 M83, “Midnight City”
13 The Jungle Giants, “Mr Polite”
14 Mikal Cronin, “Is It Alright”
15 Childish Gambino, “Twistclip Loop (Freestyle)”
16 Peace, “Bblood”
17 ColeCo, “Can’t Stop”
18 The Black Keys, “Lonely Boy”
19 Charli XCX, “Nuclear Seasons”
20 Justice, “New Lands”
21 Benjamin Francis Lefwich, “Shine”
22 Purity Ring, “Fineshrine”
23 Poolside, “Slow Down”
24 Machinedrum, “Luster”
25 Grizzly Bear, “Sleeping Ute”
26 Freddie Gibbs, “Shame” (Feat. Madlib)
27 The Hood Internet, “Grown Up Has No Trigger (Danny Brown Vs Dirty Projectors)
28 The xx, “Chained”
29 The Knocks, “The Feeling”
30 dum dum girls, “Lord Knows”
31 The Helio Sequence, “Hall Of Mirrors”
32 Buke and Gase, “Misshaping Introduction”
33 Bondax, “You’re So” (Star Slinger Refix)
34 Why?, “Sod In The Seed”
35 Beacon, “Feeling’s Gone”
36 Capital Cities, “Nothing Compares 2 U”
37 Antony And The Johnsons, “Cut The World”
38 C-Rayz Walz, “LINsanity”
39 Thefft, “Right Here”
40 Conner Youngblood, “The Warpath”
41 The Sea and Cake, “Harps”
42 Saint Lou Lou, “Maybe You”
43 Matmos, “Very Large Green Triangles” (Single Edit) MP3
44 Paul Banks, “The Base”
45 Petite Noir, “Till We Ghosts”
46 Earlimart, “97 Heart Attack”
47 Grizzly Bear, “Yet Again”
48 Stars, “Backlines”
49 Breakbot, “Another Dawn” (Feat. Irfane)
50 King Krule, “Octopus”
51 Tegan and Sara, “Closer”
52 Clubfeet, “Heartbreak” (feat. Chela)
53 Lapalux ft. Kerry Leatham, “Forgetting And Learning Again”
54 AbdeCaf, “Never Know” (Feat. Soft Lighting)
55 AlunaGeorge, “Your Drums, Your Love
56 King Krule, “Rock Bottom”
57 TNGHT, “Higher Ground”
58 The xx, “Angels”
59 Andy Stott, “Numb”
60 Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, “Mature Themes”
61 Paul Carrack, “When My Little Girl Is Smiling”
62 Michael Kiwanuka, “Bones”
63 Twin Shadow, “You Call On Me”
64 Beth Orton, “Magpie”
65 Family of the Year, “St Croix”
66 Electric Guest, “Holiday”
67 Fun Adults, “Acacia”
68 Gypsy and The Cat, “Bloom”
69 The Walkmen Dance With Your Partner & Vermeer ’65″
70 Pretty Lights, “So Bright”
71 Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, “Thrift Shop” feat. Wanz
72 Ra Ra Riot, “When I Dream”
73 Icona Pop, “We Got The World”
74 Disclosure, “Latch”
75 Mystikal, “Hit Me”
76 Katy B, “Aaliyah” [ft. Jessie Ware]
77 Jessie Ware, “Sweet Talk”
78 Plaid Dragon, “Dog Physics”
79 Wild Child, “Day Dreamer”
80 Mattafix, “Angel on My Shoulder”
81 Deer Tick, “Main Street”
82 Fleet Foxes, “Helplessness Blues”

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Thoughts on James Blake’s “Overgrown”

He’s nobody’s Justin Timberlake, I’ll give him that. Sell records? Maybe. Go pop? Not in this universe or timeline. So now what?

We benefit from hearing someone with his growing skill in fusing personal smoke-ring musing with the full range and palette of synthesized colors and textures and electronic and near-life-like rhythms. But do we benefit from someone whose commitment to his muse is unquestioned, but who questions the process that lets us hear him afterward, and, by extension, the people at the end of that process?

“So if that is how it is/I don’t want to be a star,” he says in the title song’s verse, which builds slowly in layers and closes out not unlike Massive Attack’s classic “Blue Lines” opener “Unfinished Sympathy.” The second song’s title? “I Am Sold.” C’mon, now.

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Two kinds of storytelling

Room 389

I woke up and stopped by just long enough to see a co-worker mark a personal anniversary. I told him I’d be back after picking A. up. When I got back, I didn’t see him around. He’d gone across the street to meet up with more folks.

Brunch at Kitchen 388

They make a mean biscuit here. Their bacon’s good too. Best of all, they don’t mind folks passing by menu-mugging or patrons telling stories outside, be they parents juggling babies or ne’er-do-wells listening to tales of movie nights gone awry or East Bay cycling routes taken and not taken.

Jimi and I (ii)

Then I went to pick up some food, and got some nasty news about a former colleague, a storyteller in his own right. It made coming to the panel I live-tweeted all the more poignant. I listened and live-tweeted a little bit of it, but the rest is out there:

21st Century Storytelling - A Filmmakers Salon

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Step by step

I got what I wanted. And then I got more, just by showing up.

I thought I’d missed the goose when I looked in on the camera trained at it’s best and saw it was empty. But arriving at the office at 9:30 meant finding the paper’s pets and animals columnist right outside, watching the goslings and their parents wander around in the losing bay below the nest on the roof.

We figured out how to steer them up the ramp, out into the parking lot and out onto Shadelands Drive. From there, it was just a matter of ignoring the hissing and watching then go once they realized how close they were to the pond.

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S.F. park visitors ignore hour lost to daylight saving

Dolores Park

SAN FRANCISCO — As many as several hundred people were found unable to give fucks Sunday afternoon despite losing an hour to daylight saving time, authorities said.

Predictions of behavior at Mission Dolores Park, a popular setting for weekend free-timers had included forecasts of urban mayhem, despair and localized bouts of ennui. However, those never manifested, yielding instead to vigorous bouts of recreation and leisure, with scattered revelry, sunglasses and drifting wisps of marijuana smoke.

The only down notes came from one observer of a group of musicians beating congas and a cajon to within an inch of their smooth, wooden surfaces. When queried further, the observer, who would not give his name, admitted his fear that once the percussionists stopped, “a bass solo might be next.”

No casualties were reported, authorities added late Sunday.

Dolores Park (i)

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