Drinks After Work

It’s good to be an alien

2008-07-04T18:20:00.004+12:00

Rudy Rucker has a blog!

Yep.. Rucker, mathematician and the greatest living Sci-Fi (science fiction/speculative fiction/cyber-punk) author (and 2nd greatest all-time behind Philip K Dick) has his own blog. It's a super-fun read.

Rucker is probably best-known for his -Ware tetralogy:

Cobb Anderson created the "boppers," sentient robots that overthrew their human overlords. But now Cobb is just an aging alcoholic waiting to die, and the big boppers are threatening to absorb all of the little boppers--and eventually every human--into a giant, melded consciousness. Some of the little boppers aren't too keen on the idea, and a full-scale robot revolt is underway on the moon (where the boppers live). Meanwhile, bopper Ralph Numbers wants to give Cobb immortality by letting a big bopper slice up his brain and tape his "software." It seems like a good idea to Cobb.

"Delightfully irreverant. . . This is science fiction as it should be." (reviews via Amazon.com)

Humans created the sentient robot "boppers," but now it's the boppers who have started creating humans. Clones and DNA-splicing have spawned the meatbop, a human body infused with the software (the mind and personality) of a bopper. The meatbops are interested in propagating down on Earth, but that might not be so good for humanity (the boppers have a nasty habit of enslaving humans, actually). When a couple of (reasonably) innocent humans get tangled up in the bopper's machinations on the moon, it's time to drag out the stored mind of bopper-creator Cobb Anderson and see if he can help.

"A genius. . .A cult hero among discriminating cyberpunkers" (reviews via Amazon.com)

In Wetware the chip mold virus destroyed the sentient robots called boppers. But the virus itself has spawned a new life form called moldies. The moldies are beings made out of a sort of malleable plastic called imoplex. Humans and moldies live in an almost-amicable truce, but radicals (and not-so-radicals) on each side wouldn't hesitate to use--or destroy--those on the other. When a moldie called Monique becomes ensnared in a grand plot that seems to be either the work of anti-moldie humans or anti-human moldies, everyone becomes involved in an effort to either save or destroy the Earth.

In hip, staccato language, the master of cyberpunk (e.g., The Hacker and the Ants, Avon, 1994) merges California surfer culture with a tale of 21st-century artificial plastic and mold lifeforms. The intertwined lives of Heritagist fanatic anti-Moldies, the Moldies' inventors, human "cheeseballs" who have sex with Moldies, and isolationist Moldies on the Moon enliven this fast-paced tale of kidnapping and alien takeover. (reviews via Amazon.com)

Philip K. Dick Award-winner Rucker concludes his satirical SF "Ware" tetralogy with Phil Gottner's discovery that his father has apparently been swallowed whole by a "wowo," a multidimensional holographic toy. This is the first event in a series that will change his life, and Earth, forever. Phil breaks up with his girlfriend to follow exotic Moon-born Yoke Star-Mydol to Tonga, where she meets a group of aliensDMetamartians from MetamarsDliving deep underwater in the Tonga Trench. It turns out that Yoke's mother, Darla, and a woman named Tempest Plenty were also swallowed by a multidimensional creature on the Moon several months ago. The Metamartians explain that the hungry entity is really their god, Om, who reaches into three-dimensional space to capture humans for study. The gift of an "alla" from Om and the aliens allows Yoke to create anything she can visualize using "realware," based on the advanced science of direct matter control. Soon enough, the secret of the alla spreads to others on Earth and predictable problems ensue. Meanwhile, Phil is captured by Om and reunited with his father, as well as with Darla and Tempest Plenty, somewhere in the fourth dimension. Rucker's cheerful ingenuity with biotech gadgetry and applied mathematics is in direct contrast to the book's [endearingly] simplistic plot and resolution. (reviews via Amazon.com)

I love these books so much; I'll recommend them to anyone.

Also: Rudy Rucker's home page.

Eyes without a face update

2008-07-03T16:15:00.003+12:00

Yesterday I posted about the face-less people:

Turns out it is a viral marketing campaign for a fucken car or something. Yawn. Like dlisted sez,

They're lucky that they haven't creeped up on the wrong crazy bitch who would take that faceless mask and shove it up their faceless ass.

Yerp.

Blues, hollers and hellos

2008-07-03T14:11:00.003+12:00

Update on the painting (stink photo again, goddammit). It's called Never had a name. (I know this because I found this scrawled on the back of it in pencil.) I started it in 2002. It'll be good to get it finished and out of the way.

o o o

This is a track from an album by a band called Tinariwen. They're Touareg minstrels from the desert in North Africa. I'm in the middle of reviewing their most recent album Aman Iman (Water is Life) for Foxy Digitalis.

Tinariwen - Tourmast (3.04 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

Steal a car and go to Las Vegas oh, the gigolo pool

2008-07-02T16:18:00.005+12:00

Oh, creepy. People with no faces.

From dlisted (thanks to Kathy). Possibly something to do with Anonymous (I'm apathetic); possibly something to do with hating on Scientologists (now you're talking).

Billy Idol - Eyes Without A Face (3.38 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

You know, I REALLY don't remember that middle eight -- crafty Mr. Broad, huh. Or perhaps I just remember the single/radio edit too well. It's pretty awful either way and I'm glad when it finishes and gets back to the main song bit.

Who cares. Great tune. God bless Billy Idol -- at least he managed to do one thing right, once.

I'm one of these monsters numb with grace

2008-07-01T12:43:00.013+12:00

Yeah, whoops.. sorry about that. I've not been paying much attention to the blog for a few days; been spending a lot of mental energy on getting working on a new series of paintings.

To that end I've begun to finish-off a painting (left) which is a gift for a friend. The photo is a but washed-out and blurry sorry -- that's down to the poor light*. Also, don't worry -- I haven't gone mental. All that scratchy-scrawly stuff around the cactus is just under-painting. More on this one soon, I feel.

So to get underway on the new series I gotta clear the decks a bit. In addition to finishing this painting, I gotta:

Find my bloody gun stapler. I'm stumped by the disappearance of this -- I have all the staples, just not the stapler.
Remember who I lent my DVD of My Best Fiend to and get it back off them and watch it again to remind myself of some of the visual themes I wanted to develop but never went anywhere with or even jotted down or sketched last time I watched it.

*Note: I support the environmentally-concious rationale behind stopping the sale of incandescent bulbs, but it's going to suck for painting at night. Really, really suck.

Philip Guston would possibly agree:

Philip Guston Studio, 1969 (via Arthistoryarchive.com)

Philip Guston Bad Habits, 1970 (via National Gallery of Australia)

Philip Guston Painting, Smoking, Eating, 1973 (via Arthistoryarchive.com)

Philip Guston Pantheon, 1973 (via Arthistoryarchive.com)

Philip Guston Head and Bottle, 1975 (via Arthistoryarchive.com)

Philip Guston Story, 1978 (via Artnet.com)

All images are sourced from other sites; please click on the links to further investigate these valuable online resources.

Fuck he's good, aye?

Here's my contribution fwiw:

Stephen Clover Are You Digital?, 2003

Every kayaker needs a compass

2008-06-26T18:10:00.006+12:00

Tonight there was quite definitely the sound of a cicada coming from the bush under the sign by the carpark outside the Newtown Sportsbar and liquor store.

I shit you not.

One solitary cicada, months out of season, rubbing his little noisemakers and exhibiting a longevity that would do a centennarian proud.

I really wanted to stop and say something to the plucky little blighter. "Look, what are you DOING? It's the middle of winter. GET BACK TO BED!"

Instead I played him some Glen Brown out of my headphones.

Glen Brown and King Tubby - Father For The Living Dubwise (1.86 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

Didn't shut him up, though.

Date Leg Amputees In Your Area

2008-06-24T17:31:00.003+12:00

Poking around on a friend's blog today, I kept getting targeted advertising for an amputee dating site.

Date Leg Amputees In Your Area

it said.

So after seeing the advert several times, I thought "fuck this, I'm signing up right now" and clicked the link.

AmputeeDate is a dating site for amputees, ex-wannabes, need-to-bes, devotees, wannabes, pretenders and admirers looking for true love, friendship or any kind of relationship with amputees.

Rightaway I was struck that I had been had by obviously-false advertising. Jane (pictured) has her two original legs, but a prosthetic-arm.

But between you and I, I'm not that upset about it. Who knew that I would find a dating site devoted to my fetish? I'm gonna register as a devotee, a pretender, an admirer, and a need-to-be -- and I'm expecting to find a love-match within days.

Woke up this morning, first thing I saw was the devil

2008-06-24T16:54:00.007+12:00

The other day I was listening to the Pressure Sounds website -- you can do that -- listen to the Pressure Sounds site, I mean -- when you go there it starts streaming a hand-picked selection of choice reggae and dub cuts right to your desktop -- and normally I hate that sort of thing, but the tracks coming off of the Pressure Sounds site are so damn good that you have to smile and love it -- and so anyway I was browsing around and the sun was streaming through the window and warming my back and and I'd actually finished surfing their site and I was lying on my bed in the sun like a torpid cat and the tunes were washing over me and then I heard something that quite literally made my jaw drop.

Keith Hudson -- aka the "Dark Prince of Reggae" -- has long, long, long time been one of my favourite reggae/dub music producers, and I've got -- or at least heard -- most of his recorded output.

However.

I ain't never heard this one:

Keith Hudson and the Soul Syndicate - Ire Ire (4.68 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

The track is from his album Nuh Skin Up Dub, from 1982. A huge, spacious production along with sparse snippets of Keith's brooding, darkside vocals and some fresh instrumental approaches give this music a unique aura. Like I said, my jaw dropped. This is an essential disc for lovers of the deep.

And good news: Pressure Sounds have reissued the album on vinyl and CD. They're selling it for an almost-ludicrously low price, too.

The Audio Foundation (again)

2008-06-23T20:06:00.004+12:00

Four years ago I posted about the fledgling Audio Foundation website.

Four years on and they're still going strong, true to their mission to "support, promote and preserve innovative audio culture in NZ". What's even better is that they've recently relaunched with a new a vastly superior website.

Check out the seht page; there's audio and everything. I am committed to regularly uploading new tunes and sketches on an ongoing basis. Sweet.

Music, Martinis And Misanthropy

2008-06-23T16:15:00.004+12:00

I was fairly chuffed to discover, via a search from Poland, that Drinks-After-Work is the third-ranked Google result for "music martinis misanthropy download blog".

My suspicion however is that the searcher was looking for a download for the 2001 album Music, Martinis And Misanthropy by American musician and possibly all-round dodgy-bastard Boyd Rice (right).

Oh well.

Gonna hunt you like an, uh, uh, animal

2008-06-19T12:07:00.002+12:00

It's pretty awesome that Def Leppard are still touring. Fuck, it's pretty awesome that they're still taking their shirts off, too.

Check out all the action at the contemporary Def Leppard concert photos blog.

So take off your hard hats boys, in a moment of silence

2008-06-19T11:36:00.002+12:00

The night after the fog, everything was back to normal. Five second exposures at f2.8, looking west:

... and north:

The green light looks great on these long burns.. of course it's not green to the naked eye, but you can only really successfully "white balance" for one kind of white light at a time, right? Unless you wanna go "automatic", which I didn't.

Iggy Pop - How Do Ya Fix A Broken Part (1.96 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

Another track off New Values, which I seem to keep on coming back to.

No more leaky holes in your brain, and no false starts

2008-06-17T18:01:00.004+12:00

At the bus station, they have powerful spotlights set into the ground and which point upwards, illuminating things with their powerful powerfulness. When it's late at night and you're waiting for a bus and you're very bored, you can play about with them; for example, you can block them partially with your feet and pull faces:

You can also photograph yourself doing this, to the loud amusement of the attendant deros.

o o o

Thom Yorke out of Radiohead put out an album a couple of years ago. It's called Eraser. I really really like it, although -- notoriously (want a better link? Try Google) -- not all Radiohead fans feel as I do. Atoms For Peace is one of my favourite tracks from the album.

Thom Yorke - Atoms For Peace (3.58 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

Excuse me, but I have VERY IMPORTANT BUSINESS

2008-06-17T14:49:00.002+12:00

I thought this was funny:

... but possibly only because it's fun to make your cat talk to you when they are waiting for you to open the door for them and they are very very very hungry.

"LEMME IN YOU BASTARD!!1!1@!one" etc.

How come the sun's too bright to live

2008-06-17T12:24:00.005+12:00

Last night I was walking home across Newtown about 1am and boy, it was foggy. Not exactly a pea-souper or anything -- I could quite easily see where I was going and whatnot -- but it was doing that weird and neat acoustical thing where the slightest sounds are amplified out of all proportion. Was having a lot of fun strolling down Lawrence Street while sounding like the BFG or something tromping along.

The cell-phone camera really didn't do the business, though -- it's really quite shit in the dark:

When I got home I set about taking some photos with my digital camera -- improvised tripod (stack of books on the window-ledge, anyone?) and all. This is looking west with a 5-second exposure at f2.8:

It's not a completely accurate representation of the scene, but it's as close as I could get. I tried to stop the shutter down but the field depth was too great and the resultant image not as effective.

One thing which alarmed me somewhat was that the flashing red lights on the cranes at the new hospital building site were completely invisible in the fog -- to the naked eye, anyway. "So," I thought, "let's try burning-in a loooooooong exposure to see if the camera can pick them up". This is a 30 second exposure looking north, using f2.8 again -- this time to get as much light as possible:

"Hells bells," thinks I -- "not a smidgeon of a trace of the warning lights. What happens if a plane comes flying down the valley and smacks right into the cranes, or worse still -- one of the hospital buildings!? It'd be like a re-enactment of the bloody Erebus disaster in my back yard!"

I zoomed in to 3x optical (Carl Zeiss lens, thanks for asking) and tried another 30 second exposure:

Wait a minute... did you see that?

Ho ho ho etc. Actually, of course the reason that the warning lights on the cranes were not visible is that construction of the super-structure of the new hospital is complete and the cranes were taken down some weeks ago.

Phew.

yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars

2008-06-14T15:29:00.005+12:00

I'm getting kinda tired of the whole killer-guy-from-Twin Peaks-look schtick. It's been a number of months since my project reached fruition and I've done nothing about it and I'm now thinking of something new. In fact, after a comment from a friend a few weeks ago likening me to Allen Ginsberg (R.I.P.) and then seeing the brilliant fantasy scene featuring Ginsberg and Bob Dylan in I'm Not There, I think I will look in that direction.

Of course that's David Cross playing Ginsberg in the film, not the man himself. I probably can't manage that degree of hirsuteness; I may have to go for a more senior Ginsberg a la his 1985 self-portrait (right, via the Village Voice).

I feel I will also have to lose a bit of weight to get there.

o o o

It's Saturday today. Last night at a Mexican restaurant I realised that there is still a lot of very nice tequila about that I haven't yet had the pleasure of drinking. I immediately resolved to rectify this situation. Hopefully this pursuit does not turn out to be mutually exclusive with the Ginsberg project. More soon...

o o o

New album out recently from Wiley. It's called Grime Wave.

Wiley - Local Lad (1.84 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

The sound is STRONG, yo.

I understand that you now are surprised

2008-06-13T12:49:00.007+12:00

I quite like the idea of karaoke, but the reality never quiet matches up to the glory of the fantasy. One of the main problems I have is finding something that I actually would like to sing.

If it were up to me, I would have a karaoke room painted in the blackest black, with a rock-band lighting rig, and blacklights, and minimalist black vinyl and chrome accoutrements, and a karaoke machine stuffed full of my best and favourite music. Like Iggy's The Endless Sea, which I have been walking around singing at the top of my lungs for days now.

Iggy Pop - The Endless Sea (3.29 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

The Endless Sea is off New Values, which I wrote about the other day. What a song. Sometimes I even sing the backing vocals as well as Iggy's main part. And what is up with that keyboard part? Not the tweetily-synths (which are super-awesome in their own right), but the comping: it sounds like a Fender Rhodes run through a laptop running some sort of glitchtronica granulation software -- none of which AFAIK was available in 1979 (aside from the Rhodes). And who would ever have thought that baritone saxes doing an "oompah" part in the bridge would be so powerful.

I'll let you know if I ever get my karaoke room built, 'k?

o o o

I keep finding graffiti around Newtown that I myself must -- but without any recollection of doing so -- have executed.

That is the only feasible explanation, right? No two people can actually come up with the same ideas at the same time completely independently, can they?
Can they really?
Hmm....

Nope, didn't think so ;)

Logo WTF x 2

2008-06-12T17:14:00.005+12:00

This morning I got all testy on The Wellingtonista about a shitty logo and some awful copy which got up my nose. About 20 minutes earlier I had also noticed this:

Yup, that's the logo for the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind. Cute, I guess, that it's in the shape of an eye and depicts impediments to seeing clearly; awful awful awful that the impediment looks like... a blind. WTF, RNZFB?

Awful, awful, awful. Hence today was Logo WTF x 2 day.

Above us is a dirty sky full of youths and liquors

2008-06-11T15:33:00.013+12:00

I spotted another pair of Love Field Deviations; these ones are notable because they appear to have been infected by an alien virus:

This raises the issue of whether or not the infected vexed local Love Field Deviations should've been administered with inoculations and vaccinations against said virus -- or an alien so viral... living spaceapes creatures covered smothered in writhing tentacles stimulate your audio nerve directly... no-one conflicts with me... hallucinating senses individually insiduously or in any combination rhythmically shifting gears focusing intensity... no-one conflicts with me... mind starts slipping from familiar tracks bending warping interfering with the facts sensory language leaves us with no habit for lying... we are hostile aliens immune from dying...

Kode9 - Victims (feat. The Spaceape) (2.63 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

Victims is another track from Kode9 and the Spaceape's amazing Memories of the Future album.

Happy birthday Prince (the purple one), for the other day

2008-06-10T14:43:00.003+12:00

Prince at 49 years of age:

Now 50, just as sweet as...

He loved him madly

2008-06-10T12:02:00.004+12:00

In Nelson, my favourite tree is the persimmon tree in the back yard:

It looks a lot less lovely when it is covered in big green leaves, and the air is not perfectly still, crisp and there's still a surprising amount of warmth in the sunlight even though there's snow on the mountains just over there. And the lure of the persimmon is so great that it turns the eighty-yr old woman next door into a kleptomaniac; under cover of darkness, their number is regularly diminished. The only trace of human activity is a set of mobility-scooter tracks leading up the neighbour's driveway.

Some luv for Dead Bees

2008-06-07T14:54:00.004+12:00

My new seht CD dead bees ((the((quiet)earth))suite) has been out for a couple of months, and I've finally scared up a review! Gayle Brogan, a Scot of note and who runs the Boa Melody Bar music shop/distribution, said:

It's a while since we've had anything from Stephen Clover and this new album delivers with an opening monolithic drone masterpiece. It begins with an ebbing and flowing synth drone with ominous undertow; as the piece progressed the undertow starts to win out and it feels like the dark waves are overwhelming you. The second track is not quite drone-based but is a utterly focussed repetition of some jerky cinema-organ notes until they are submerged in an icy hiss. No-one else does this quite like Seht.

Yeah, yeah I know, one review and a small one at that -- whoop-de-shit. But that's just the way that it goes sometimes. I always enjoy reading what Gayle thinks of my stuff, though. In time, this page is where you'll be able to read other stuff about the album. And, you can still hear a sample from the album here.

Want a copy, anyone? Drop me a line..

o o o

I'm out of town for a few days, and normal activity here may not resume until my return.

No I won't be bored I won't be there

2008-06-05T23:01:00.003+12:00

I've never made a secret of my abundant, absolute and all-consuming love for Iggy Pop. If you're gonna call The Idiot number one and then Lust For Life number two, then 1979's New Values is the third part of a divine trilogy of albums, which -- appropriately -- rivals Bowie's Berlin trilogy in seminality; it's not until the fifth track Don't Look Down, however, that anything* verging on the timeless greatness** of those first two records is approached.

Iggy Pop - Don't Look Down (3.3 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

[*] That's not to in any way diminish the excellence of Tell Me A Story, Girls, I'm Bored and the title track; it's just that they're in a different league.

[**] Is it weird that there's no word which means "the good quality of the song-writing" in the same way that 'lyricism' somehow means "the good quality of the words of the song"? Or is this just Vocabulary FAIL.

Expansionism FAIL

2008-06-05T10:24:00.005+12:00

Once you were there, but now you are gone:

Evidently the Strathmore 44 aren't aware of at least one of the two World's Worst FAILblunders -- never get involved in a turf war in South Wellington [citation required].

o o o

Notice the real estate sign on top of Leo's "Superb Seafood"? I wonder if that means the building is being sold/scheduled for demolition/otherwise gonna disappear? Hope so. That way I won't have to write a really nasty post about how fucken awful their fare is.

Something to go to in Wellington

2008-06-04T16:59:00.002+12:00

My friend John Lake is having an exhibition:

He's an ace photographer and it's going to be really really good, I reckon.