Demos in the car bring back good memories. Was a Monger in the mix?

Bit late to the Alt-J party, but I'm so happy to be here. Haven't had an album on rotate like this for a while. Do yourself a favor; don't listen to one song, try the whole album instead.

Also. New Vampire Weekend is good. New Phoenix is good.

∆

Not even Kafka could write a story like this.

Pavement - Spit on a Stranger

It was an unusually warm day for this time of year in my city, so I decided to pay a visit to a well known 'clothing optional' beach. It's a bit of a party beach too, where people of all ages and gender bare all indiscriminately. The culture of a beach like this is really a bit overwhelming for me. I couldn't put my finger on it earlier but there was just too much of something at that beach for me to feel right. But it wasn't too much skin - although there was plenty of that.

I loved the line, "a jumbled Picasso of bellybuttons", in the article. And I think it's great that people get out there for some good beach fun, no matter what. It isn't gross. But when ALL the clothes come off, I find there is this weird mental switch that happens. The vibe turns from being one about the body to one about the brain. Without the clothing, our similar humanity becomes so real, that all there is left to share is inside our own mind.

Take Us Alive by Other Lives from their Mind the Gap EP on TBD Records, 2013

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and how did it go for you?

A race to the bottom then? I love those. Email your address.

EDIT: Given that this would be international correspondence, I'm wondering how this might affect the process? I guess just make certain you spell CANADA really really poorly.

Shouldn't the perfect song at least be auto-tuned?

Glass blocks are still hip if you know how to use them...

I often find it difficult to agree with other peoples footprint calculations. To me, the embodied energy of a commodity is nearly impossible to accurately calculate because many different infrastructures are so tighlty linked together, it gets difficult to divide and sort. I mean sure a tomato is shipped into the city in bulk, but the distribution doesn't end there because it still arrives locally on smaller runs which involves a lot of trips by a lot of trucks. It isn't like a train is backing up to your local foodmart and unloading tons of food. Not to mention, these large trucks and distribution centers are often refrigerated which ups their energy consumption plenty.

Regarding specialization, sure some things grow better in some places, but we often end up with a homogenous product that way. There are literally thousands of tomato varietals, but how many end up in the market? Industrial farming is anti-diversity. And we end up with places like Almeria, Spain: Costa del Polythene.

Couldn't agree more with the no phone sentiment. I just saw James Blake this week and there was a sea of little screens floating above the crowd the entire show, filming the stage. Definitely ruins the moment as far as I'm concerned.

But there are some people who are doing interesting things surrounding this issue. I recently saw Dan Deacon in concert. He has an app that you can download which turns your phone into a light show that is coordinated with the music. Everyone's phone glows and pulses in unison. It is emergent and beautiful.

If anyone saw Aziz Ansari's standup special, he does this funny thing at the beginning where he reminds the audience to keep their cell phones off at all times. He then goes on to say that he knows people won't do that because they HAVE to take a photo. So what he does is say Ok, everyone get out your phones right now, it's camera time. Then he proceeds to pose in these funny ways while the entire audience shoots him. It's quite funny and seems to be effective too.

And for anyone following him on instagram. He just posted this image... "Damn. Remember when people would just watch the Coachella webcast without having to film it on their stupid phones??"