New Year · 232 days ago by mastorna
This is going away.
tagged in: music
The Truly Me Club · 232 days ago by mastorna
When you ride north tonight,
Can I tag along and charm you back into my life?
When we get to where yer goin’,
Will you marry me,
Right down on the dusty ground?
Because that’s where I wanna be all the time.
That’s where I’m gonna be from now on.
from the song ‘Marry Me, The Cowboy’.
tagged in: music
White · 234 days ago by mastorna
Behind a sign, behind a
script, the blank, before.
A long Antarctica of hotel sheets.
Away, I could be anyone.
But closer, the cloud bank’s light-bloom,
the snowfield’s drone.
The empty-never-empty.
A whiteout, a swarm.
The freeway we no longer hear, the sound
no story rises from.
The underlying: breakfast over, dishes done,
and put away, and you
are here, and here
you are. The underlying: I’ve touched
you again, before knowing
I wanted to touch you.
tagged in: poetry
The Passion of Paul Gonzenbach · 236 days ago by mastorna
I knew today would be awful from the moment I awoke. I would be made to suffer in a quiet, desperate way. It’s as if the wind was out of me, left to catch my breath, with everything unsettled, rendered open and raw, shaken ajar. It could all slip away. It could all drift away.
You, restless reader, probably don’t feel the same. Not yet, not quite right now. Sometime, someday, you just might. In this harrowed moment, the songs of Paul Gozenbach are warmth, a steady ship, a little lighthouse of hope. His songs are there when you need them.
“A Man Without Qualities” – off of JYPU’s self-titled EP 1999.
-unspeakable records [new, seattle based!]
Jim Yoshii Pile Up [RIP]
tagged in: music
Apple Patent's Ordering with iPhone · 237 days ago by mastorna
News of an Apple patent for wireless ordering has spread rather quickly. The gist of this patent is that Apple will allow iPhones and the iPod Touch to connect to a brick-and-mortar retail location for pre-advanced ordering of an item. The idea isn’t new by any stretch of the imagination and frankly Apple tends to patent just about every idea that they can possibly drum-up.
The rub in the initial reports was that they hypothetically positioned the experience at a major coffee retailer whom they’ve already got a digital experience with. [who could that be? -ed] Now, those initial reports were all well and fine when you consider that its just a few name drops as to the overall possibilities of a technology architecture such as this, but what was lacking was the basic facts: its just an simple idea. The above report carried the possibility a little bit too far. Laying next to this rather forwarding thinking idea is the hardened fact that a Point of Service system (the cash register) is an extremely locked down network making implementing such an idea for suggested retailers a networking nightmare. How Apple solves for this is the true genius but still, admittedly, a little bit unknown.
The trick, if Apple were to do something more with this idea, is to allow for network agnostic ordering to take place that allows a POS to allow orders to fall directly into the queue in a seamless manner. I wouldn’t tie this “web ordering” to a POS or any pre-existing digital infrastructure in a store but perhaps use bluetooth, bonjour, or something akin to
a) notify you if you’re within a networked range
b) allow for the user to select a pre-defined set of functionality based on this service location
c) user interaction would broadcast to a management system in store \ over the web?
d) somehow get the front of house or POS system to recognize that there is a new order in the cue.
Starbucks and Apple did something quite original in the Wi-Fi Music Store at Starbucks in that you’ve got digital goods available instantly at a physical location. Within the purely digital realm, handling and managing of data is a breeze. Bringing the digital to the physical, however, is much more complicated.
In the end, I think we’ve got a blueprint for the future: a store that has digital features but is still a face-to-face customer interaction location. Despite my overall depression when speaking with most people, despite a service agent constantly smiling and trying to make the experience a delightful one, you cannot remove this relationship from any physical store. People demand face-to-face customer interaction. They always will.
tagged in: business
If You Can't Make It · 237 days ago by mastorna
Fake It – Northern England: a middle-aged bumbling man and his 80 year old parents created one of the most successful art forgery studios in recent memory. The best part…what did they do it for… the money: no, the fame: not really, but to thumb up the art world. Brilliant!
tagged in: art
Unheard of Records of 2007 · 240 days ago by mastorna
A simple list of records that I’d love to hear.
1. Slow Dance Society – The Slow and Steady Winter
I love quiet, sad, stately music, the kind of which sends you spinning in the remembrance of a dream long forgotten. And apparently this Spokane, Wa band delivers on this ridiculous sentiment.
2. Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago
On many of the best of lists this year was this unknown. The story is old in the tradition of literature. A writer sequesters himself in an icy, secluded Wisconsin cabin last winter for three months and begins to write songs that are designed to move your soul.
3. Pale Young Gentlemen – Pale Young Gentlemen
This record, on paper, gets lots of favor from those that have heard it. It’s not rare to hear that this records reminds them of how great a broken heart could feel.
4. The National – Boxer
Yes, I’ve not heard it yet. Yes, its apparently the sort of 3am broken hearted aging record that I have written my life over.
5. Iretsu – The Moon and Starts Remain in the Morning Sky
I love the pull of a cello and squeeze box and the first track is laden with the sound of a cafe in paris. Or it reminds me of the circus, not that I ever went to the circus, but in my imagination there is a childlike version of me fascinated with the sound of a circle from the 1970’s.
6. Dr. Dog – We All Belong
Not a rap album so I’m told. I’m not sure why but everyone loves this record of lo-fi 60’s indiepop. I’ll have to find out for myself.
tagged in: music
Romeo oh Romeo · 240 days ago by mastorna
When in Verona, they say that if you touch the breast of Juliet that you’ll have good luck in love. I need as much luck as one could get.
tagged in: photography
Trajan: The Movie Font · 240 days ago by mastorna
Movie poster designers only use one font and one font only. Required by Hollowood law: Trajan.
tagged in: design film
Nusch · 242 days ago by mastorna
On the side of evil:
Nusch I miss you it is sudden
As if the tree could miss the forest
I have never written a poem without you
I am in a cold bath
Of solitude and misery
Words have the weight of rags on wounds
The images sparing and stubborn
All of what I say reflects an absence
I receive the present like a treasure the pickaxe
My pleasure now is to kill time
Masking itself with smoke the young wood burned
The leaves and flames were not visible
O you my great black star you become distant
Your circle is only a point in my vicinity
You my vision changed into an insensitive and blind thing
Do away with reflections echoes of deceit
Do away with my remorse for life
Take back the kisses I receive in vain.
On the side of good:
My love we were sleeping together
And we laughed in the morning
Together all the time we needed to live
An entire eternity
And the more I saw you living by my side
The more I mistook you for the dawn and the summer
Sleeping deeply dreaming higher
Awakening one for the other
Such is the law of innocence
And to live higher than our dreams
To be identical through trust
That was our pleasure
In a world always an instant too young
Could we foresee winter or our death
Considering ourselves fossils before the end of the long spring
Reason we were both embodying you gentle
Like a cheek under the blush of the first fire
Reason we were free we triumphed.
_-PAUL ÉLUARD
translated from the French by Lisa Lubasch_
tagged in: poetry
