Gecko Bloggle

Just in case this field is blank, it’s a player for the new (FREE!) Saul Williams album.

Radiohead might be on to something… I’m a check out the album, and THEN pay for it. What a concept.

My Dearest Friends and Fans,

It is my greatest honor to present to you The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!,
my new album produced by Trent Reznor and mixed by Alan Moulder. The wall of sound that we’ve created is tagged with such graffiti that a passerby would seek out doors and ways to ENTER. Once inside a world defined by dreams come true they’d find aligned with the simplest act of sharing what we treasure. Most people aren’t aware of the world of art and commerce where exploitation strips each artist down to nigger. Each label, like apartheid, multiplies us by our divide and whips us ’til we conform to lesser figures. What falls between the cracks is a pile of records stacked to the heights of talents hidden from the sun. Yet the energy they put into popularizing smut makes a star of a shiny polished gun. The ballot or the bullet for Mohawk or the mullet is a choice between new times and dying days. And the only way to choose is to jump ship from old truths and trust dolphins as we swim through changing ways. The ways of middlemen proves to be just a passing trend. We need no priests to talk to God. No phone to call her. And when you click the link below, i think it fair that you should know that your purchase will make middlemen much poorer…

NiggyTardust!

love,

Saul

Go here to check it out.

Just in case you’re joining us late, there’s been 12 (or is it 13?) shows done, and the next’ll be up in a bit.

Honest. Any moment now.

Here’s the full list in one shot, just in case you were missing any.

Show #1 – Playlist (April 06)
Show #2 – Playlist (Sept 06)
Show #3 – Playlist (Nov 06)
Show #4 – Playlist (Jan 07)
Show #5 – Playlist (Feb 07)
Show #6 – Playlist (Mar 06)
Show #7 – Playlist (Apr 07)
Show #8 – Playlist (May 07)
Show #9 – Playlist (Jun 07)
Show #10 – Playlist (Jul 07)
Show #11 – Playlist (Sep 07)
Show #12 – Playlist (Sep 07)

As always, the Podcast Category will list all shows (or notes ABOUT shows).

If you’d like to automatically download shows to your iPod add the following into iTunes as a Podcast RSS url:
http://www.geckotemple.com/blog/?feed=rss2

So we’ve been living in a hotel for a week, while our hardwood floors are ripped up & replaced.

There’s only been one phone call to delay (thus far), so it looks like we’ll be back in on Saturday afternoon.

New podcast coming as soon as I’m back in the house to put the file back online (maybe Sunday?) and fun stuff like that there.

November is going to be better than Febtober was, since there’s just been WAY too much stress for all involved on almost all fronts.

I’m good.  Arwen’s good.  Kids are good.  My mom’s home & healing.  Work’s good.  Two weeks off was good.

Facebook’s new Blackberry application is pure eeeeeevil.

Be good to yourselves, and failing that, do a workshare swap with someone else.

I’m wondering if anyone remembers either of the following documentaries:

1) Man with 15-minute memory (not the name, but what I’m calling it).
I saw this while I was in Cambridge with mom & Roger, and don’t remember the name of the guy. He had a *total* memory of about 15 minutes. He could play piano, but didn’t know he could until he started. He didn’t remember anyone or anything that had happened more than 15 minutes ago, and would spend most of the documentary in this seemingly endless mantra of “I’ve never seen anything before, never touched anything before, never existed before this moment…” etc. It was heartbreaking, but not because of the man (he’d had an accident of some sort, or perhaps a disease, and lost his ability to recall anything, or to create new memories. What broke my heart was his wife.

She would leave the room for a few minutes to go do something, laundry, whatever, and when she came back, he would burst into tears, and throw his arm around her, sobbing that he was so happy to see her. When she was gone, he wouldn’t mention her, or anyone else, but when she came back, it was like the arrivals gate at the airport. Every ten minutes or so. Guh.

I seem to recall that it was part of a much larger documentary about people who had no discernable brain matter. Like, literally. Nothing in their heads, and yet most of them were normal (or gifted) even though they didn’t show up on a standard MRI as having anything upstairs but some connective tissue.

Wow, huh? This is why I wanna see it again. To see if my 13-yo brain was just making stuff up.

2) The guy who was looking for the piece of land for himself & his wife, and once he found it, went about defying the bejeesus out of all known laws of architecture and physics.

Sorry for the run-on name of this one, but that’s the fastest way I can think of to describe it. This drifter wanders into a smallish town somewhere in the States, and does odd jobs for folks to make money/food/shelter and would spend part of each day wandering around looking for “the right piece of land.” One day, he comes back to wherever it is he’s staying, and is freaking out that he found “the spot” and that he needs to buy it so he can start building. The folks in town help put together a collection or whatever, and he buys the land. Empty, and then starts building fencing around it. High fencing, like 8′ kinda stuff.

Folks from time to time would drop by to see if they could help (and what he was up to back there, and he would chase them off in a friendly way, and go back to his work. He disappeared at some point, and when the folks went to check up on him, he was gone. What was cool though, was that they were looking around his house, and there was all this totally weird furniture and stuff in there that he’d made from solid stone, but they couldn’t figure out how he’d done it with the tools they knew he had access to (or how he would’ve moved the stuff he’d made once he’d carved it). Notebooks were found, and they contained math that seemed like gibberish, but the results were right there in front of them. Furniture they couldn’t reassemble once taken apart, and odd things like stairways that went up into nowhere (or into walls).

Now, maybe I’m making some of that last bit up, but I seem to recall weirdness beyond the standard “and then one day he was gone,” variety.

Anyone?

Hullo?

Another show?  In LESS than 45 days?  What up with THAT?

Duncan was nice enough to join us for another one, and we were a little more wired (read: we’ve had a few) this time around.

Covers show.  Check it.

Via this link right here.
{Or put our RSS feed address into iTunes, and let it download automatically for ya. }

1 – Talkybit 1

2 – Toxic – Mark Ronson F. Tiggers

3 – Three Is A Magic Number – Blind Melon

4 – Love For Sale – Fine Young Cannibals

5 – Talkybit 2

6 – Heartbeats – Jose Gonzalez

7 – Hallelujah – Jeff Buckley

8 – Don’t Fear The Reaper – Jenny Pinkertone And The Bluetones

9 – Talkybit 3

10 – Happiness Is A Warm Gun – Breeders

11 – I Will Survive – Cake

12 – Love Will Tear Us Apart – Mainsqueeze Accordion Orchestra

13 – Talkybit 4

14 – Rhinestone Cowboy – Radiohead

15 – Crazy – A Random Find On Seeqpod

16 – Stairway To Heaven – Dread Zeppelin

17 – Talkybit 5

18 – Human Behaviour – Decemberists

19 – Kiss – Age Of Chance

20 – Mission Impossible Theme – The Meatmen

Here ya go.

1 – Meet Me – Nora Smith-Hisler

2 – Talkybit 1

3 – Oh My God – Mark Ronson F. Lily Allen

4 – California – Marlena Shaw

5 – Track 24 Off Duncan’s Cousins Hip Hop Compilation – Guy of the Hip Hop Genre

6 – Talkybit 2

7 – Ultimate – Gogol Bordello

8 – Purple – King Kooba Meets DJ P-Trix

9 – Can’t Stop Talking – Betty Hutton

10 – Talkybit 3

11 – Nature Of The Experiment – Tokyo Police Club

12 – Goldrush – Yello

13 – Track 4 Off Duncans Cousins Hip Hop Compilation – A Series of Samples from Other Songs That Have Been Strung Together to Make One Song in It’s Own Right

14 – Talkybit 4

15 – Kinetic Stereo Kids – Barefoot In The Rain

16 – How You Sell Soul to A Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul – Public Enemy

17 – Fantastic Plastic Machine – Theme Of Luxury

18 – PiAno – Richard T. Hatch Says Round Evry Corner

19 – Talkybit 5

20 – Dead from the Waist Down – Catatonia

21 – Strma A Uzka – Susuma Yokota

22 – Once in a Lifetime – Wolfsheim

So… life’s been a little weird lately, and I stopped posting my “Everything I bookmarked todays” lists, but I’m still here.

Here’s some things I’m not writing about.

• My mom’s health.  Happy thoughts towards speedy recovery, mmmmkay dear readers?  KayThanks.
• Our firstborn son going to school in a week (didn’t we give him to someone as payment for something, already?)
• June’s 2nd Podcast (was going to do August’s Cover/Prince double-barrel show, but mom went back into surgery again, ’cause she seems to really enjoy DOING THAT, and so I drove out to the ‘wack to go see her afterwards.  I sang my guts out while driving out there, does that count?
• Itty bitty motherboards.
• James Brown WISHES he could jam with these guys. (unplugged, too)
• Sharing your wifi (without giving away your WEP/WPA keys), and getting same from others.
• Why I was using a computer to play Adventur when I was SIX on the mainframe at Queen’s (bonus points: why I heart encrypted communication so very very much).  Mom must’ve been singing me to sleep with this stuff…
• Some weird band from Holland I might like, if I heard more.
• I should have watched more of those load screens and DEMOES on my C64, I might’ve become an artist instead of a techie…
• How would I say it?  How would YOU say it?  How would they say it?
• Yummy, yummy Steampunk.  (Oh, and Arwen and I are going to see William Gibson talk ’bout his new book at CBC Radio 1.  How Canadian/Nerdy can we GET?)
• Videos that’re just a bunch of people dancing aren’t new…  neither’s choppy editing to make up for visual narrative.
• Bears – Beets – Battlestar Galactica: Top 10 Scenes from the Office
• Straw + Ink + Drawing in Monster Bits = Good.
• Slipping Firefox past people who prefer Vista’s black glass looks.
• Tie someone to a tree with their own feet.
• Lipogram: Story of over 50,000 words without using the letter “E” (etc)
• Pretty.  Weird.  Pretty/weird.
• Photography, and eco stuff, with nerdiness and alsoplus – can Burning Man Go Green?
• The guy who droplifted the fake Parrots Hilt’n cds with titles like “Why am I famous” and “What have I done?” does all SORTS of other art.
• Future Sound of London has come full-circle, and is doing what Kraftwerk used to: Breaking stuff, rebuilding it, and making it make noise.
• Korea:Breakdance:Beatboxing:Turntablism… Kickin’ the Pachebel Cannon OLD SCHOOL.

Oh, and Ripley and I are gonna go see K-OS.

WORD.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Well, it happened again. We hung out for about 3 hours and ended up making show that’s about an hour and a half long. Hoo-boy do we like to hear ourselves talk. If you listen very closely though, there’s ALSO some music in there…

Click HERE to start listening, or download it with your favourite podcast/rss download thingie.

Oh, and you might wanna throw on some headphones, ’cause both the lyrics and the hosts resort to some swearing from time to time.

• Talkybit 1
• Can U Dig It – Pop Will Eat Itself
• Protection (Breaks Mix) – Massive Attack
• Yin And Yang (The Flowerpot Man) – Love And Rockets
• Talkybit 2
• I Turn My Camera On – Spoon (and the video we’re talking about is here)
• Fed Up And Low Down* – Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
• City Of Angels – The Distillers
• Talkybit 3
• We Share Our Mother’s Health – The Knife
• Music Selector In The Soul Reflector – Deee-Lite
• Das Spiegel – Chemical Brothers
• Talkybit 4
• Can U Keep A Secret – De La Soul
• Read A Book* – Bomani “D’Mite” Armah
• Watch Ya Mouth* – Busta Rhymes
• Talkybit 5
• Such Great Heights – The Postal Service
• Legs – The Art Of Noise
• Talkbit Bonus: SoundCheck Goofiness
  Total Time: 1:26:49
  

* Parental Guidance Suggested (Oh, and when we’re talking? Assume we’re swearing a bit from time to time).
(Background audio during talkybits provided by UNKLE‘s upcoming War Stories album, which drops in North America July 24th)

Did I mention? With the swearing? I did? Okay.

I’m the administrator (and one-seventh of the membership) of the John Burton League on Facebook.  The only rule (and single requirement) is that all members be named John Burton.   Caitlin wanted to join, ’cause that’s how she rolls, and I rejected her, and here’s what happens:

Allow me to plead my case:

Raised in the swinging 60’s by a pack of wild dingoes in the remote northwest of Queensland, I learnt early on the importance of self-sufficiency and also that, really, dingoes don’t taste THAT bad.

It was some point in my early teens that I noticed I was ‘different’. Firstly, I had a distinct lack of fur. Secondly, I felt quite comfortable spending long periods of time on my hind legs. Thirdly, I possessed what can now only be described as an ‘amoebic’ quality. And alas I can only describe it as such because my vocabulary is distinctly (some might even say devastatingly) lacking.

Please, a few moments more – I shall expound. This characteristic seemed unique to me. It was difficult to explain even to our family’s patriarch and my mentor, Papa Dingo. The poor fellow was mono-syllabic at best. His only real conversational pieces involved the prospect of ‘tucker’ and to a lesser extent, his unbelievably debilitating paw rash.

But back to my…uniqueness. What I’m talking of is the ability to change form constantly. And not only in the sense of the present world – I mean across time, space, etc. I possess the remarkable ability to become any type of entity, both living and…inanimate, I suppose? It sounds interesting and perhaps even a desirable gift to possess but at such a young age, John. Never knowing who you truly are. Your name. Your background. Your true self!

Such a burden upon such young and fur-less shoulders! A young lass forced to traipse the outback, vainly attempting to hide her depression at being misunderstood behind the face of a clown, John. (No, really. I found a clown mask on a dead man’s body that my good friend Willomina Dingo had savagely torn apart, and the mask became a part of me. So much so, that when I was shot in the face by a vacationing Dick Cheney several months later, Mr Cheney actually shot me in the face again, and then in the heart, because he was convinced I was ‘It’ from the Stephen King movie of the same name…Don’t worry, I publicly apologised afterwards for causing Mr Cheney so much pain and heartache…After I’d mastered the English language, of course.)

It was a tough time – and it still is. I get by with the help of my friends, and a chronic heroin addiction. I am telling you all of this (and leaving big, conspicuous blank spots) so as to let you know that I am worthy of your exclusive club.

Spike Lee, Moll Flanders, Spartacus, Jupiter – I’ve been them all. (I also spent a brief period as Che Guevara, although only in screenprint form – it made me feel terribly anarchic, and hackneyed also).

Am I making sense, John? I AM John Burton. That is to say, I have been before, and will be again.

Let me in please, sir. Or may God have mercy on your soul.

The *only* thing that’s stopping me from letting her in is the danger of her NOT sending more things like this.