link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxpPDP82Q8Y

All I can say is holy titties.

They’ll be coming here May 8th at the Majestic Theatre.

With Phoenix and Atlanta as the two top cities looking to leave the NHL, the city of the olde Winnipeg Jets could return to the NHL as early as next season. This explains how.

On Saturday, March 5 we will be having a GIT at bdubs.  Not sure exactly what time yet but I’ll let everyone know.

Also, I released a soundtrack for another short film by Thaad.  You can check it out here.

Last night Jon Stewart had former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld on The Daily Show. Most of the 30 minute interview did not end up on the show because of time restraints, but it can be found on The Daily Show’s website. I highly recommend watching the interview for anyone even mildly interested in the Iraq war. Stewart does a good job of defending why he believes invading Iraq was wrong, while Rumsfeld sincerely explains his perspective from inside the White House. I really think an interview like this is something special because it is rare that we get two people so divided having an open, honest, and respectful discussion about their points of view. The interview may get slow at parts, but it’s worth watching all the way through.

“Cella Energy” claims they’ve made a synthetic fuel that burns clean, and should be able to run in current cars. If this actually works out it would lower carbon emissions in a previously unforeseeable way, and completely destroy OPEC’s control of the fuel industry.

I remember hearing about this a few months ago and just thinking what the fuck? I just remembered about it and decided to post it because I was unsure if anyone else had heard about it. Apparently injecting syphilis into prisoners’ spines is cool as long as you apologize 60 years later.

Happy New Year RB!  2010 has ended and it has brought another million Omar albums, and I’m sure many of you don’t feel like taking the time to check them all out.  To recap everything for those interested/wondering what is worth checking out, Ciencia de los Inútiles was the first release of the year and was a literal acoustic album, also featuring upright bass and Ximena singing.  After that came two albums featuring John Frusciante, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez & John Frusciante, a pretty short, mostly guitar based collaboration that was recorded years ago, and Sepulcros de Miel, a 30 minute one song album that is extremely reminiscent of the Frances era.  Then came Tychozorente, the first ever all electronica album Omar has done and features Ximena singing (and Omar doing some spoken word parts) and absolutely zero guitar.  It is probably the farthest Omar has ever strayed from his normal style and is definitely worth checking out.  Next came Cizaña de los Amores, an album that features both Lisa Papineau and Ximena singing and is pretty similar in style to last year’s Solar Gambling.  Some great funky/jazzy tracks on that one, and the first track is basically a piano version of Agadez.  Mantra Hiroshima and どういたしまして were released in two days, the former being a pretty jammy album featuring Zach Hill who also drummed on Cryptomnesia, and the latter being an amazing live album featuring recordings from Omar’s solo tour this year.

The album I really wanted to talk about though is Un Escorpión Perfumado, the last release of the year.  This album features Omar on vocals (like Xenophanes), guitar, and bass (like in De Facto), Deantoni Parks (who is also going to be the new TMV drummer) on drums, and Marcel on synths, and simply blew me away.  It’s like a fusion of dub, progressive rock, and electronic music, and it’s probably one of my personal favorite things he’s ever done.  You can check out a music video (shot and edited by my friend) for one of the tracks here.

As far as TMV news, LP6 was supposedly finished up recently and will most likely be announced soon.  A track was leaked not too long ago that was originally believed to be a track from the new album but was revealed to actually be a track they made for a Mark Ruffalo film.  It is still pretty awesome, and features Deantoni on drums.

In other music news, Nick and I have been working a lot on the new Metempsychosis album so hopefully we’ll be able to post some of that stuff soon.  I think you guys will dig it; it has huge range of styles and is engineered much better than any of the old stuff we’ve done.  You can check out some new stuff we’ve been working on here.  I’ve also been busy doing soundtrack work for Thaad and just released the first one I’ve done, for his short film Cardiac.  You can stream it or download it for free here.

When I was a little kid I used to think about robots doing everything for society in the future. Jetson’s style. The kind of stuff you see on “How it’s made.” When I got older I came to the realization that this actually hurts our society. Unions fight against technology being added to the work place because it destroys jobs. Thinking about this idea is a really perplexing thing. Somehow us as a society producing things more efficiently hurts us. It really is backwards.

This idea hasn’t really crossed my mind in years until just now. Albert Einstein wrote a paper called “Why Socialism?” in which he discusses why it is a better option than our current system. In this paper he brings up the idea I just talked about. That in our current capitalistic system technological progress actually hurts society. The only winner is the owner of the business who now has lower operating costs. Einstein suggests that in a system where businesses are owned by everyone then everyone wins. As technology advances all of us have to work a little less. And everyone is always guaranteed a job. Somehow people think this is a bad thing. There certainly are specifics about managing things that would need to solved, but it really seems like the better option for moving society forward. In our current system full/perfect unemployment is considered to be 4-4.5%. Obviously we are way above that. Isn’t that odd though? We as a society are shooting for 4-4.5% unemployment? That means millions of people still would not have jobs (this of course ignores people not looking for work who aren’t included in the official unemployment number). Really, though, stop and think about that. As a society we are shooting to always leave millions of us without work, and therefore struggling to take care of ourselves and families.

That brings me to my next point which is my problem with unemployment insurance, or unemployment pay etc. Money that is paid to a person laid of from their job. When I hear about people angry with unemployment insurance, and calling those receiving it lazy it boggles my mind. First, you pay for unemployment insurance. It comes out of your check (well actually your employer pays it to the government but that’s just a technicality). Second, you can not receive unemployment pay unless you prove that you are currently seeking work. You have to apply to X amount of jobs a week to receive it. Yet, we have a deadline on unemployment pay. You stop receiving it after a certain point. After considering all of the previous information how is that okay? In a society that is aiming for 4-4.5% unemployment, where you pay for your unemployment insurance, and you have to prove you are looking for work to receive unemployment pay, we somehow as a society are okay with eventually saying fuck you, tough shit, no more money for you. I don’t understand how this is okay to do to a human being who is proving that they are trying. In Germany you never run out of unemployment pay as long as you prove you are trying to find a job. I’m sure some other countries are similar. It seems to me to be both the ethical, and logical thing to do.

Anyway, that is all. If anyone actually read all of this then awesome. I was just thinking about it and felt like typing it out. Tell me what you disagree with.