Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
Michael Hanscom Trying to read 700+ weblog posts from the last few days, import CDs, and delete upwards of 100 spam comments one by one all at the same time results in getting less done, not more.
Funny, that.
iTunes: “Come On In Out of the Rain” by 12 Rounds from the album My Big Hero (1998, 4:25).
Just under a year ago, I mentioned an article going into the history behind the song ‘Wimoweh’ — which most people now know as ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight‘. Now comes word that Disney is being sued by the heirs of the author of ‘Wimoweh’ over its use in The Lion King.
The lilting song, initially called “Mbube,” earned an estimated $15 million in royalties since it was written by Zulu migrant worker Solomon Linda in 1939, and featured in Walt Disney’s “Lion King” movies.
However, Linda’s impoverished family have only received about $15,000, the lawyers said.
[…] Linda sold the worldwide copyright for “Mbube” to a local firm, but under British laws in effect at the time, those rights should have reverted to his heirs 25 years after his death in 1962, copyright lawyer Owen Dean said.
This means Linda’s surviving three daughters and 10 grandchildren were entitled to a share of royalties from the song, which has since been recorded by at least 150 musicians.
“We are claiming ten million rand ($1.6 million) in damages from Disney at the moment,” Dean told reporters. “The court attached use of Disney trademarks in South Africa to the case last week. We believe our legal position is very sound.”
(via Boing Boing)
iTunes: “Lion Sleeps Tonight, The (Wimoweh)” by Tokens, The from the album Wimoweh – The Best of the Tokens (1994, 2:41).
Last month, I linked to the Metroblogging project: a series of city-specific weblogs. At the time, Seattle was in the “coming soon” list…well, folks, Seattle.Metroblogging is now live.
And what do you know — there’s a familiar name in the contributing authors list.
Mine, in fact.
So far I’ve just tossed one post up, but more will come in the future. Feel free to stop by and check in every so often!
iTunes: “Sit Down” by James from the album Alterno-Daze: 90’s Natural Selection (1995, 4:07).
Even after having seen it almost every year since I’ve been down here, it always amazes me just how many people can fit into Gas Works Park for the annual July 4th fireworks show over Lake Union.
While in past years I’ve headed down to the park just a few hours before the show was scheduled to begin, this year Prairie and I decided to make a day of it. We packed up books, munchies, and lots of sunscreen, and headed out to Gas Works Park just about the time they opened the gates at noon. We managed to find a parking spot relatively close, only about six blocks away from the entrance, wandered our way in, and started the process of staking out a spot for the day.
Initially we set ourselves up on the side of the hill overlooking the lake, but I took a moment to go explore, remembering where I’d been the year before. Sure enough, the lawn on the other side of the old gas works looked far more inviting — less people, quieter, and still with a perfect view of the barge that the fireworks are launched from — and we soon moved over there.
The rest of the day was very pleasant. Reading, napping, enjoying the sun, and a lot of people watching. I’d occasionally wander around the park with my camera, snapping random pictures of the families out enjoying the day, then find my way back to our spot to flop back down again. We’d hit Twice Sold Tales on Broadway the day before, so we were both set with reading material for the day — Prairie with a few Stephen King novels and Roald Dahl books, and myself with The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles, a fantasy series I’d enjoyed as a kid and have wanted to re-read for a while.
Prairie had also brought along a couple bottles of bubble fluid, which soon caught the attention of a couple little boys seated near us on the lawn. Initially happy to run along and pop all the bubbles they could, soon they decided that they wanted to blow bubbles too, and I suddenly had the younger of the two standing next to me, declaring that it was his turn to blow. I let him blow some bubbles while his brother popped them, then they switched…but it wasn’t long before each of them had appropriated one of our bottles of bubbles and were quite happily wandering around, sending bubbles floating across the sky.
Kites, of course, are always a popular summertime activity, and Gas Works Park generally has the perfect amount of wind for perfect kite flying. While most people lined up on the side of the hill to fly their kites, you could easily find them popping up from among the crowds throughout the park, and we had one little girl just in front of us who spent a good portion of the day flying her kite — or running back and forth trying to get it back up into the air when the breeze died down for a few moments.
Eventually the sun started to set, and the open spots on the ground started to fill as all the people wandering around the park grounds filtered in to find seats to watch the fireworks. The one slight down side to the day was that now that I’m using a fancier camera than my old point-and-shoot, I had to guess at the correct settings to use for catching pictures of the fireworks…and as I found out when I got home, I didn’t guess quite correctly. A slight disappointment, as it was a good display, and I’ve gotten some rather surprisingly good fireworks shots in the past, but not a terribly big deal all told.
Once the show was over, Prairie and I just stuck around in our spot for as long as we could to let the first major crush of people leave. Getting home took a while, of course, with post-show traffic backed up all over the place, but it didn’t seem to be nearly as bad as we’d feared (I’d never driven to and from the show before, always either taking the bus or walking with friends), and we made it home right about midnight, almost twelve hours to the dot after we’d left that morning.
(Interestingly enough, Prairie and I both noticed that while there were Kerry supporters out in full force, there were no Bush/Cheney signs, campaigners, or anything of the like at all that we could see. Not that I’m complaining in the least, I was just somewhat pleasantly surprised by that.)
All in all, a very good day. Hopefully all of you had an equally enjoyable Fourth (for those of you that celebrate it — otherwise, I hope you at least had a good day). And for those of you who get today off of work — I’m jealous!
iTunes: “Magnificat” by Industrial Monk from the album Magnificat (1998, 8:55).
Have a happy and safe 4th of July, everyone.
iTunes: “Battle Hymn of the Republic” by Mormon Tabernacle Choir from the album Sony Classical: Great Performances 1903-1998 (1958, 4:44).
At this point, writing up much of a review is more or less pointless. If you’re of a mind to see this film, you’re quite likely to already, and if you’re not planning on seeing it — well, you should.
Most of what was in Fahrenheit 9/11 I knew about already, of course, having been trolling the various political sites regularly for a while now. The single biggest bit that I didn’t know much about beforehand was shots of the protests in DC during Bush’s inauguration. I’m not in the least surprised that there were protests, I just wasn’t paying as much attention to the news back then, and hadn’t heard much about what happened.
I was also very impressed by how Moore handled the day of the attacks. Rather than show us the same footage of the airplanes hitting the towers that we’ve seen time and time again, he stayed with footage of the reactions of people in the street as they gazed up at the towers, and later, as they moved through the streets, ash and papers floating down around them out of the sky. Far more effective and powerful than if he’d stuck to footage that we’d already seen enough times to become at least somewhat inured to the horror.
I was also a little surprised at some of the things that weren’t mentioned in the film. At one point, Moore mentions some of the member nations that joined the US in the “Coalition of the Willing” for the attack against Iraq, calling out a few that didn’t actually have any military forces to contribute. What he didn’t choose to mention, though, was something that I looked into at one point — the human rights records of the member nations. Rather disturbing to see what some of our partners in “fighting for democracy” are doing on their own turf.
My one real worry about the film is that it’s going to be preaching to the choir for most of its run. At least now, in its initial theatrical run, it’s far more likely that the majority of the people seeing it are people like me, who don’t need to be convinced that Bush needs to go. If Moore and Lion’s Gate/Miramax can get Fahrenheit 9/11 into the video market by mid-to late September or early October, though, the increased exposure of rentals might end up reaching a far wider range of people who aren’t as likely to bother seeing it in the theatre.
One can hope, at least.
iTunes: “Instruments of Darkness” by Art of Noise, The from the album Best of Rave, The Vol. 1 (1991, 3:40).
Any perfume connoisseurs out there?
Taste and scent specialists International Flavors and Fragrances have partnered with fashion and art magazine Visionaire to produce a special fragrance capturing the scent of computers — specifically, “the headspace in the Apple computer store in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood.”
Should you want to sample this paragon of computing and olfactory perfection, you can order the “Scent” issue of Visionaire, which comes with not just the Gigabyte perfume, but twenty other specially commissioned scents (Cold, Noise, Heat, Hunger, 2AM, Sadness, Success, Violence, Softness, Electricity, Mother, Wasteland, Fear, Fetish, Strange, Drunk, Wet, Space, Broken Glass, and Instinct) from the company’s website for the low, low price of…\$175 (plus \$25 for shipping).
Y’know, if it weren’t so far out of my budget, I’d pick one up just to find out what all these things smell like. \$200 is a bit rich for my blood, though.
(via As the Apple Turns)
iTunes: “Girl Trouble” by Violent Femmes from the album Why Do Birds Sing? (1991, 2:58).
Designs on the White House has been running a t-shirt design contest, and they’ve just announced the winners. Some good shirts in there, I’m hard pressed to find a favorite.
This just might be it, though:
iTunes: “New Jersey Turnpike” by Anderson, Laurie from the album United States Live (1984, 11:19).
In the midst of a Seattle P-I article about trying to convince more young women to vote comes this little tidbit of information:
This week, Cavendish said, the falling piece of sky was Bush’s reappointment of “Hagar the Horrible” — W. David Hagar — to the influential Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee of the FDA.
…there were the 25,000 pro-choice activists who pleaded with Bush not to make this move.
Hagar, Time magazine reports, refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women. And in his book, “Stress and the Woman’s Body,” (co-written with his wife, Linda) he recommends reading Scripture as treatment for premenstrual pain.
More urgent to young women is the fact that Hagar used his position on the reproductive health committee to oppose the otherwise overwhelmingly approved vote to recommend over-the-counter sale of the morning-after contraceptive Plan B. The vote to approve the sale of Plan B was then overruled by the Bush administration.
Old white men using religion to dictate what young women can and can’t do with their bodies. And people say that there’s no reason to vote?
I read something earlier this week — unfortunately, I don’t remember where — that gave me pause to think. One of the tactics that the right has used to counter the “Pro-Choice” designation of abortion rights activists has been to deem themselves “Pro-Life”, implying that Pro-Choice equates to “Anti-Life” or “Pro-Death”.
Given Bush’s track record of sending more people to their executions while he was Governor of Texas, plus his railroading America into sending almost 1000 soldiers to their deaths in an unjust war, can he really campaign on a “Pro-Life” platform?
iTunes: “Hypocrisy is the Greatest Luxury” by Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, The from the album Hypocrisy is the Greatest Luxury (1992, 3:47).
To be entirely honest, I’m torn between being disgusted by this latest video from the Bush campaign, and outright laughing at how spectacularly it could — and should — backfire on them.
Six months ago, MoveOn.org held a contest to find the best amateur ad against President Bush. The group invited people to make ads and submit them to its Web site. Some idiot spliced images of Bush together with images of Adolf Hitler, evidently trying to make Bush look like a warmonger. His submissions, which arrived with 1,500 others—too many to be screened quickly—were posted on the contest Web site. As soon as MoveOn.org leaders realized what was in the ad, they removed and denounced it.
The Bush campaign, outraged by the mixture of Nazi images with images of an American politician, has decided that the best response to this offense is to repeat it.
[…]
How does the Bush camp identify the Hitler footage? “Sponsored by Moveon.Org” says a label on the first Hitler clip, evidently put there by the miscreants who submitted the ad. “Images from Moveon.Org ad” says the Bush campaign’s label on the second Hitler clip. The only organization that doesn’t identify the clips as a “Moveon.org ad” is MoveOn.org, which denounced the ad and never “sponsored” it. But never mind. Instead of apologizing for this implicit misrepresentation of sponsorship, the Bush campaign has made the misrepresentation explicit. “The following video contains remarks made by and images from ads sponsored by Kerry Supporters,” says a graphic appended to the beginning of the video.
The Bush campaign’s claim that the amateur Hitler ads represent “John Kerry’s Democratic Party” is laughable. Kerry didn’t control MoveOn.org, and MoveOn.org didn’t make the ads. When the ads were submitted, the membership of MoveOn.org largely supported Dean, the candidate who had nearly wiped Kerry off the map. Kerry had just mortgaged his house to get the cash Democrats were refusing to give him. The suggestion that he controlled the party is preposterous—but only slightly more preposterous than the suggestion that Kerry is responsible what Dean and Gephardt said while running against him, or what Gore and Moore said while supporting candidates who were running against him. Not to mention that the question Gore poses in the ad—“How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein’s torture prison?”—is well warranted.
I really can’t see this clip doing any good for Bush’s campaign — and hence, I think it should be broadcast round-the-clock, during every commercial break of every major news broadcast, television show, and sporting event.
But that’s just me.
(via Len)
iTunes: “Thoughts and Words” by Supersoul from the album Secret Broadcast – Pirate Radio USA (1998, 4:48).