Guy Chadwick repeats one line about twenty times in this song:

And I always have the impression that he sings this line 3/4 of the time and once in a while he sings

Is this me or Guy?

By the way House of Love were one of the greatest British bands which came after The Smiths. They never had the success they merited. Life is unjust. But they are back, Guy Chadwick and Terry Bickers are playing kind of secret shows in tiny London clubs with balconies obscuring the vision of the stage. Check their unofficial home page by a Swedish fan. Just ignore and/or close the shitty pop-up. What did you expect of a fan page of a loser band like that?

P.S. Yes, I am really disappointed that you never ever commented on my blog, Andrew.

Is that a malady you can die of? Apparently when the mathematician Paul Erdös said that a person had "left" he really meant that the person had died. When Erdös said someone had "died" he meant he/she had finished doing mathematics. If you take weblogging instead of maths there is a good chance that I will "die" soon if the feedback continues to recede.

I am seriously thinking of writing an uninhibited stream-of-consciousness private journal for nobody except me.

Pacific from Hem, sung by Sally Ellison. There is no better way to end the day. Lyrics here. Infos on the NY band at the All Music Guide.

From Jonathan Rée's intro to the first part of Journeys in Thought, a BBC Radio 3 series on philosophy in collaboration with Open University which will be broadcast tomorrow at 9:30 UK time and will be available on the web site for one week.

The next two philosophers which Rée will talk about are Hannah Arendt and Soren Kierkegaard. In March three features on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche and Karl Marx will follow. For each philosopher the series will focus on one location where the philosopher spend some time. The places are Berlin, Ireland, the Peaks in England, Turin, Jerusalem and Paris. For you to join them with the thinkers.

Link credit: the wonderful Splinters from the UK, a culture weblog.

P.S. By the way I have never understood how anyone could ever think of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as a logical treatise. For me it has always been about the insufficiency of logic (with language being a special case of logic). Simply spoken that there is much more to life than maths. Though maths is the most beautiful and exciting of all sciences. At least for the human mind.

The cover story of the German news magazine Der Spiegel from three weeks ago (God, why am I always so much behind) is online. Unfortunately only in English, only German reading Germans have to pay €0.85. It's on the confessions (probably forced by torture) of two leading characters behind the 9/11 attacks (code word Porsche 911): Operation Holy Tuesday. It's a long article, you'd need at least thirty minutes to read it all. But it's worth it.

Link credit: the discussion-wise up to now pretty uninspired Metafilter thread where I got this from.

Wir nähern uns dem Ende des 2. Teils. Die Diskussionen faden so langsam in Monologe aus (stimmt nicht ganz, es gibt da noch eine treue Mitstreiterin und gelegentliche smarte Zwischenrufe von dritten). Aber bevor wir dann ab Aphorismus 101 mit frischer Kraft ins letzte Drittel gehen, hier noch einige Stücke, die bis jetzt noch völlig undiskutiert sind, was unmöglich so bleiben kann (Adorno und Unberührtheit, das passt einfach nicht zusammen). Also schnell lesen, denken und kommentieren, so groß wird die Auswahl an Aphorismen mit einwandfreiem Hymen nie wieder sein.

• 98 Vermächtnis (ganz aktuell)
• 96 Januspalast
• 95 Dämpfer und Trommel
• 87 Ringverein
• 77 Auktion
• 76 Galadiner

P.S. Wer noch nicht angemeldet ist, kann hier in den Kommentaren weiterhin sein Interesse am Mitlesen und -diskutieren kundtun. Ich kümmer mich dann um die Formalitäten.

Old Rumsfeld suffers from Alzheimer's disease in an advanced stage

P.S. Rummy seems to have been inspired by Tom Tomorrow's cartoon (from September, 30th). What a great opinion of the intelligence and memory of the Americans he must have that he thinks he can get away with this?

Did you know that there is a band which has put more than 300 of their songs online? I didn't up till two hours ago.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre were founded in San Francisco in 1990 by Anton Newcombe and mates (apparently more than forty members passed through the band). Their name is a composition of the name of the short-lived Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones and the Jonestown Massacre in French Guyana which was a mass suicide of 913 members of a sect led by Jim Jones in 1978.

The BJM make droneful psychedelic music heavily influenced by the Stones/Beatles/Pink Floyd circa 67/68, Roky Erickson & the 13th Floor Elevators, The Velvet Underground, Love, Spacemen 3, Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, Ride and many others. I have just been listening to 14 (of 17) tracks from their brand new album And This Is Our Music which are on their site. A nice appetizer for newcomers to the band is the aptly titled addictive ambientish instrumental You Look Great When I'm High.

Unfortunately the links to the tracks of their shoegazer album Methodrone from 1995 don't work but their Stones tribute Their Satanic Majesties Second Request is fully downloadable. On Give It Back Newcombe's voice sounds pretty much like Syd Barrett's to my ears. Somewhere I read that he sang a little bit like Robert Smith from The Cure on later albums.

In the ILM thread taking sides: brian jonestown massacre vs. dandy warhols the BJM fans were much more active than the Dandies' aficionados.

With most of their œuvre in the public domain BJM seem like the Linus Torvalds of rock music. Is this the future of music? Somehow I doubt it, seeing that their commercial success has been very limited up till now. But they definitely must love music a lot to share it with the world.