The excellent @FoxAmoore is running a post-Christmas sale on digital downloads of his albums — I splurged, and they’re marvelous. Check out Heathen Coty on the first FA Collection!
Source: foxamoore.bandcamp.com
Tim Minchin’s new song “Magic Woody Allen Superman Komodo Dragon Jesus” reminds me of a commission I got from VahnFox once…
This chick is a Cylon. Don’t ask me how I know, I just do.
Thierry Mugler, 1989
Photographer- Dominique Issermann
Source: spaceageplanet
My favorite song by Too Small The Limelight, re-done with a full studio backing. God it’s beautiful.
The cover features a photo from my own humble portfolio, with superb typography by my buddy Edge!
Victorian Star Wars.
Some say that ‘steampunk’ means gluing random wheels and cogs onto something. I’d like more of this, plz.
Source: jazjaz.net
A photo of Kim Jong-Il looking at a door. From my new favorite blog: “Kim Jong-Il looking at things.”
Whatever you do, don’t miss “Kim Jong-Il looking at jam.”
Source: kimjongillookingatthings
For those of you who are still having a rough day, here’s an adventurous doggy in a space suit exploring the universe.
Source: carudamon119
From Ariel Rámirez’ gorgeous Missa Criolla, as performed by José Carreras.
My boyfriend turned me on to this beautiful album in the early years of our courtship. His dad was a bigwig at Philips, bringing home one of the first CD players and high-end digital recordings like this one.
If I correctly remember the story, a producer was on holiday in Spain and had his mind blown when he heard a small-town choir and orchestra performing in the local church. All the performers were locals — butchers, barbers, bakers, but they came together in that church to make music of a rare and furtive power.
This producer called in José Carreras (who would shortly thereafter be treated for leukemia) as well as some additional session musicians, including the composer of the Misa Criolla himself as pianist. It was a bunch as eclectic as the music they’d make together; unequal parts South American, Spanish and Latin, with roots in diverse, but unified traditions.
Lastly, they sought out some beardy nerds from my home country, as Philips boasted the finest sound engineers in the world. They wanted to record on-site, in that little old church, to capture the magical resonance the producer had heard that first time.
My boyfriend’s mother had an old VHS tape of a documentary about the engineering prowess that went into capturing a live performance in such a space, for digital mixing no less. The long-haired Dutchmen would carefully place corrugated sound baffling sheets just here, and then aim the microphone just there to catch just that reflection…
There was a really funny bit, too: an exhausting siku panflute solo that had the (bearded) panflautist red in the face was to be followed by Carreras bellowing “Balthazar!” except he kept mangling it to “Balzathar!”. While Carreras kept his good humor at his repeated flubs, you could see the panflautist very rapidly reaching the point of explosion.
While I prefer the version on the album, I know that’s mostly because I’ve listened to it so often. This version is very good too. I especially love how the guy in the green is so moved by the spirits when he plucks the strings of his little charango.
"Reëlection" - does English use the diaeresis?
In the linked-to article on the New Yorker, Richard Socarides uses the spelling “reëlection”. This is the first time I’ve seen the diaeresis, the two points over the e, used in this fashion.
Germans call it Umlaut, but use it primarily to modify the sound of vowels. In Dutch we call it a ‘trema’ and use it exclusively to separate two adjoining monopthong vowels, preventing them from being parsed as a dipthong.
Concretely, that means exactly what’s happening here: the diaeresis over the second e notifies the reader that the word is re/e/lec/tion, not reel/ec/tion.
Since Dutch borrows the German habit of combining related words, we need this diacritic pretty badly, though it’s not such a huge problem since the late-’90s spelling reform.
A classic example is the word ‘reeëëer’, a bizarre word even by Dutch standards. A ‘ree’ is a deer, ‘eer’ is honor, and they’re joined by another e to make the word flow. “Honor of deer / a deer”. The result is that the connecting e needs a trema to separate it, and the first e in ‘eer’ also needs separating. The spelling reform chilled it out somewhat and now it’s ’ reeëneer’, which is obviously miles better.
Anyway: I’ve never seen this diacritic used like this in English.
Socarides, who penned the author, was an adviser to Clinton, so I can only assume he enjoyed a robust education.
So, to my American friends, the question: what’s up with this? Is this use of the diaeresis old-fashioned, or restricted to certain educational institutions?
Is it still a King Cheetah when it’s a girl?
by JanKihle on DA:
The sun started to settle in front of me when this cheetah came running and halted some 10 m in front of me. For a blink of an eye she (a Queen Cheetah from Shingwedzi) stared right into my eyes, in a highly agitated maner (note the rising fur on her back). One of those memorable moments in time! Jan K
Source: jackdanielle
Clever short film settles the Canon vs Nikon argument. Looks a fair bit slicker than the one I linked in May!
(by GerardHenninger)
Source: youtube.com
