Aqueducts are all over the place in Rome. Most are in fragments and seem pretty out of sync with what is actually taking place in the city at this moment. They are beautiful, decaying, and completely non functional. This is interesting for an American because we just don’t have any man made non functional objects laying around. Indeed, America prefers everything to be highly functional and in (or close to) good working order. Especially in the urban centers. That, in theory at least, seems like a good idea. It certainly helps with career advancement and acquisition of goods and services.
Why is it that when someone like this dies it never feels quite real?
I remember being frightened of “Thriller” when I was a kid. I had to turn the song down every time it came on. And, of course, there was the video. The “cat eyes” thing still gives me the creeps.
Hey funster(s)! Click here to get a random sound. Then do it over and over again.
This Is The Sound Of Dogs
freesound.com is a great Creative Commons resource for random sounds. Some are interesting and some, sadly, are not particularly fun. Some are electronic loops and some are little girls saying “I like peanut butter.” I know I’ll be using this next time I make a SEEDEE of original songs. Will you?
Today I’m going to Bir and Fud here in Rome to have some Italian beer and pizza. Beer has suddenly become very cool in Italia for some strange reason. Last time I was there, after someone asked for wine, the waiter said (in a very cool voice): “solo birra, ragazzi. solo birra.”
Did you know that Cirrus clouds are entirely composed of ice? Cool.
I really like Nina Levy’s sculpture. Insert something intelligent here about our perceptions of the human body contrasted with the actual body. Then mention a nineteenth century French philosopher and quote some obscure missive in “Popular Science” magazine. But only in 1983, when faculty from The Sorbonne secretly wrote articles, under pseudonyms like “Jack Lemmon” and “John Bigbooty,” about only static electricity and pink noise.
What was most shocking about it was the fact that no one noticed. At least, not until September. Indeed, the magazine’s staff was quite surprised when Timothy R. Grandfield, 11, of Tom’s River, New Jersey noticed some eerie comparisons of a certain writer’s descriptions of pink noise to the theory of metanarrative. He immediately went to Bob Faubion, lead anchor of the local news, with his findings. She was his mother in law. That following Friday, Local news WBAC-TV broke the story and sent the shamed philosphers back to their Academic enclave in Paris.
She gets her kid to pose for her stuff. I see investment banking in his future.
I really like old audio recordings, but mostly for the scratching and the ‘popclicks’ and other associated funstuff. What is actually being recorded is secondary. Take this recorded to VCR video of America’s “You Can Do Magic”. It sounds like it has a layer of goop on it.
Click on the picture to go there…
You Will Record Us On VCR
Below are some interesting recordings made TWENTY years before Edison invented the photograph. Someone, a (probably pissed off) Frenchman named Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, did not get the deserved credit. Stop stealing shit, Edison. It’s gone too far.
Kim-Jong Il kidnapped the South Korean director Shing-Sang Ok (of “Three Ninjas” fame) to aid him in producing this masterpiece of propaganda. I like the musical score.
Supposedly the film is a metaphor for capitalism. The little guy probably does not represent capitalism. Just my guess.
We were invited to do this in Trevi a few weeks ago. Trevi is a small town about an hour or so outside of Rome. It was a rare back to nature moment for us as we don’t get out of the cities very often. I think there were about 30 olive trees on the property and we spent about 8 hours or so helping. We worked on about 8 trees or so. So not much help.
Picking olives is fairly easy. You lay some netting under the tree and then (using your hand or a scraper) pull the olives off. It’s quite gratifying : you can pull off 10-20 olives off at a time with one pass of your hand. I heartily suggest all depressed people with interminable writing projects try this sometime.
As night fell we were treated to the gentle sounds of some guy in a neighboring house practicing the opening to “Sweet Home Alabama” on his electric guitar. Italia…
And yes. He was using distortion.
Anyway. Every town has a small olive press. You get your goods pressed down and you take home your oil and you put it on a salad or whatever. Not a bad deal. We pick up our oil tomorrow.
The rainbows don’t last long sometimes. They are here for a few seconds and then they’re gone. It’s good when you can walk outside, see a rainbow, and capture it. It’s especially dandy when that rainbow is a double rainbow.
