Heurism

Yeah, so it’s been awhile. So what. Get ready for some smoking how newness. Soon.

I do not tweet, nor do I normally consume tweets. I’ve assiduously avoided Twitter for a variety of reasons, but a little snippet about the company caught my eye this morning. The folks that run the service had a scheduled service outage for maintenance tonight. Seeing how this might affect the ongoing struggle in Iran, which is being orchestrated in many ways by social media, they have moved the service outage until tomorrow…during the DAY in the US (middle of the night in Iran). Bold. Bold and cool and thoughtful. Big props.

I gave up on the whole DJ as a line of work thing in ’89. Perhaps ’90. I saw behind the curtain. I saw where it was headed. And now, here we are, with Clear Channel cutting one “djs” voice up into little generic bits to be used in a dozen different stations. It’s been years since a DJ picked the music. Years since they actually touched a turntable or CD player, or cart machine. It disgusts me.

And yet, oddly, the following article gives me a jolt of joy. La Hora Mixteca is a show out of a tiny station in Fresno. It’s run bilingually in Spanish and several Mixtec languages. The DJ is a DJ. He plays music that his listeners want to hear. He broadcasts advice, community news, and is a sign of life for the lowest rung of the Immigrant Laborer pool in California: the Mixtec Indians. The article and the work being done make me want to cry. In the best of all possible ways.

Link

eMusic continues to be my source for delicious, DRM-free digital music. Now and then I’ll pick up an actual CD, or something from Amazon, but most of my needs are met by eMusic. Here is the stuff I’ve downloaded lately.

The Monks – Black Monk Time: The Monks were all GIs stationed in Germany in the early to mid 60′s. They began playing together in ’64 and by ’65 had been discharged. Black Monk Time is the only album they ever produced and it is a stone cold classic. Garage, underground, frighteningly original and ahead of it’s time, this won’t appeal to just anyone. Recently re-released this is pretty dang wonderful.

Wild Rumpus/Wild Rumpus feat. Beardyman – Purple Summersault and Rock the Joint: Juke joint swing re-mixed into funk electro? Sure. Dig that beat, baby.

The Mooney Suzuki – The Maximum Black EP: Good ol’ American Garage Rock. Check out Love Is A Gentle Whip.

The Dirtbombs – Ultraglide In Black: Detroit’s renowned punk/r&b live act.

The Oholics – Baby Blue Eyes: A delightful EP by some very very drunk Swedes. Delightful.

King Khan & The Shrines – The Supreme Genius of King Khan & the Shrines: A Berlin based garage/psych band. I listen to this all the dang time.

I’m something of a fan of Google. I adore gmail, their calendar, and the vibe of the whole company. They /are/ an empire, to be sure, they have WAY too much leverage and hardware and buy-in not to be. But they are an Empire filled with geeks, dorks, and users of their own products. Yesterday the Google Empire showed off Wave. Wave is what Google is pushing as the mediated communication of the future. It’s email, IM, collaboration, sharing and more all wrapped up in one place. It’s not a startling leap forward, but it is a leap. The video is epic. Well over an hour, but for mediated communication dorks like me, it’s like candy.