katherine st asaph

natepatrin: twiststreet: “$2 Million a Year Buying &...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:59:06 -0400

twiststreet:

“$2 Million a Year Buying & Selling Comic Books.”

How much in writing and/or drawing them?

theredbackpack: The first time I heard “New Slaves” I thought...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:41:06 -0400

The first time I heard “New Slaves” I thought it was a complete jack of this song, stuttering synth line and all.

Yeezus comes with no credits outside of sample credits printed on a sticker on the back of the jewel case that promises full listings on kanyewest.com but I checked and the credits aren’t up on his website yet. I read somewhere Travis Scott is supposed to have been the main producer of “New Slaves” and since he’s ostensibly from Houston it would not be a stretch to say he’s had to have at least heard of B L A C K I E and no doubt channeled that influence in his song (but also throughout essentially everything dude has done).

Scott has an awful reputation of being a shameless biter/theft so it would not be unexpected if Scott straight jacked “My Window“‘s (which is a live staple and probably one of B L A C K I E’s most popular songs) steez.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with Ye taking cues from young dudes, and if you believe this tweet from Hudson Mohawke no one producer fully produced one song or created a beat wholesale. (I only came across that tweet because Scott retweeted it, so maybe he is trying to tell us something there.) But the first time I heard “New Slaves” the feeling of Something’s Not Right Here stuck with me in a weird way, and that it was the song Ye chose to promote his album via projecting his face in shadow (see above) on walls all over the world only “helped” matters.

Don’t let me see anything about Death Grips influencing Yeezus when dude has been out here since 2007 destroying sound systems at Numbers, Mango’s, the KTRU outdoor shows every year, Notsuoh, and essentially every stage in Houston. I enjoy Yeezus and “New Slaves” quite a bit but I think credit should be given where it’s due, and while KTT forum nerds and genuine Kanye fans seem harmless I’m tired of seeing things like “Yeezus sounds like nothing else!” when it’s patently not true. (BTW let’s not open this debate of what other records/artists Yeezus sounds like because that’s not the point of this thought.)

I’m not writing about Yeezus; this is, more or less, my...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:35:00 -0400

I’m not writing about Yeezus; this is, more or less, my reason.

sarahmarian: A little editing humor, via writerly folks on...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:56:36 -0400

sarahmarian:

A little editing humor, via writerly folks on Facebook.

rubyvroom: I just learned that Vin Diesel taught Judi Dench how to play Dungeons and Dragons and...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:35:02 -0400

rubyvroom:

I just learned that Vin Diesel taught Judi Dench how to play Dungeons and Dragons and now she DMs for her grandchildren and I feel better about the world in general.

"Last Words” is a fashion spread featuring models reenacting the suicides of female authors who..."

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:11:00 -0400

““Last Words” is a fashion spread featuring models reenacting the suicides of female authors who tragically ended their own lives. It is part of our 2013 Fiction Issue (link removed), one that is entirely dedicated to female writers, photographers, illustrators, painters, and other contributors.”

- It is impossible to satirize 2013. 2013 satirizes itself.

thesinglesjukebox: TAYLOR SWIFT FT. ED SHEERAN - EVERYTHING HAS...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 11:08:52 -0400

thesinglesjukebox:

TAYLOR SWIFT FT. ED SHEERAN - EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED
[4.36]

It’s “One single too many Tuesday!”

Katherine St Asaph: Maybe you had to be there last year, where every hour brought a new PR missive trying to make Ed Sheeran happen in the States, and you’d hear things like “it’s a shame + is horrible SEO.” (One wonders how Damien Rice would ever get launched today.) But while Taylor Swift’s always been a marketing conduit for drippy, boring singer-songwriters — Boys Like Girls, Snow Patrol, John Mayer — seldom have her duets seemed so obvious as career maneuvers; Taylor sings “I just wanna know you better” and appends, implied, “by downloading ‘The A Team’ on iTunes.” Everything is just that pat. Suppose Taylor wakes up at 7 on the dot, because both persona and frazzled celeb would; that places “eighteen hours ago” around the lunch bell, ideal for teenagers relating and the consciences of anyone who’d quail at the implications of, oh, “seven hours ago.” Producer Butch Walker leaves in the “realness,” the rehearsed studio chatter and guitar scratches. Ed Sheeran gets the good (or at least good-ish) lyrics, Taylor gets the scrapbook lyrics about feeling butterflies and pouring rain and sudden grace. Nobody was trouble when they walk in — in fact, trouble doesn’t even exist in this musical universe; if everything has truly changed, it’s from placid to a lighter shade of placid. It’s valedictorian pop. Which is fine for what it is, but it still baffles me how people hear more in Taylor Swift than that.

[5]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

twitter dot com slash centrist taylor swift

bestofmidi: 000000000254.mid Claude Debussy - Arabesque no. 1...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:14:58 -0400

bestofmidi:

000000000254.mid

Claude Debussy - Arabesque no. 1 (fed through a The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time soundfont)

MIDI

a thing on creepshots, looks and "Beautiful"

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:06:00 -0400

(Content note: Body image stuff beneath the cut.)

***

One of the reasons body image is such a major thing for women is that no matter what you think of your own feminine appearance, it doesn’t erase what others think of it. You can stop thinking you’re unattractive — a huge step in itself — but you can’t stop others. They give you indications: hanging out with people and hearing them say things like “I just got back from a party where everyone was so pretty. I’m glad I’m with you guys instead”; hearing fellow girls complain about being incessantly hit on, which is apparently the plight of all women, and having nothing to add because the plight usually passes over you; being in relationships where your compliments sound like “that dress is very purple,” which elide you entirely. (Benefit of the doubt, perhaps; but most of us have been in the position of having to compliment or dodge complimenting someone without lying. There are go-tos.) They’re little reminders that add up: a lot depends on the ability of your random scatter of phenotypes to give someone a boner. The standard platitude, in response to that, is “guys notice confidence,” which sounds nice until you’re confronted with what guys actually notice.

***

The thing about creepshots, in Tumblr or subreddit or whichever form, is that they’re nothing new. Cameras are smaller and contortions much easier, and there’s more incentive to lure advertisers with people’s prurient clicks or outrage, but otherwise it’s just putting online what men have always thought about women in public.

In the process of reporting the site to Tumblr, as I gathered was my civic duty as a woman, I browsed through a few pages to see what, exactly, I was reporting. I don’t recommend it. Everything looks the same after a while: photos, so close-up as to boggle the mind, of body parts in the opposite of every perceived imperfection, including imperfections I didn’t even know guys cared about. (Thigh gap is apparently a thing with men. I’ve been disqualified since I was 14.)

The overall effect is something like a conveyor belt: very few variations. All the breasts are big, all the butts are prominent, all the legs are tapered, almost all the skin is white. All the bodies are thin; there are tags for fat women, but while obviously it’s difficult to tell from headless assets, most of them are probably thinner than me. You feel bad looking at it, because you’re supposed to; the audience is supposed to get off on the mockery as much as the flesh. Self-confidence has no place in this; only the people on the site are allowed self-confidence, and it’s in the form of statements like “she knew you were looking.” (Generally, here, you’ll find one or two exhibitionist women proclaiming that they do court this sort of thing, to hundreds of Reddit upvotes; which is their prerogative but really doesn’t help.) There’s very little copy other than leering or trolling; most of it is just hashtags. #leg, #ass, #rack, #voyeur, #creep, #hot, #beautiful.

***

That’s the name of a song, presumably the love song of the summer: an objectively good track that I can’t stand, an ostensibly happy song that never fails to make me cry. I’ve written before about how, at the most basic level, I relate to music in terms of where the listener’s positioned: is the listener singing along, or sung at? Usually it’s fixed, like that spinning dancer illusion; I know it’s possible to view it the other way round, but the switch rarely happens and is totally jarring if it does. With “Beautiful,” for me, it’s always “sung at,” and the listener isn’t either duet partner.

The last track where this happened was “Call Your Girlfriend,” which strikes me as much the same song; except there’s no other woman here — or is there? When my mother got divorced after 25 years, she said an entire world opened up. All of a sudden, everyone she knew was divorced, or divorcing, about to divorce, or staving off divorce; they’d always been, it just hadn’t registered before. Then she got a job as a divorce lawyer’s paralegal, where she came across even more of them (the most human misery she’d ever dealt with, she said, at age 60 after 20 years working with sick people.) Patterns emerged. Many of the men cheated. Most of the other women looked of a certain type, most of the ex-wives a different type. Most of the men had things to say about that: “I can’t say it wasn’t because of looks. A man has needs, you know!” It’s so common as to be a cliche: I can’t pretend it don’t mean a thing. “You make me feel undressable,” Mariah sings at one point: as opposed to un-undressable, presumably the fate of women who are not #beautiful, who must never undress. For a lot of people, this is the most touching line; for me, it’s nihilistic.

"Hurry up with my damn croissants"

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:46:08 -0400

“Hurry up with my damn croissants”

- I really hate this line and its impending memeification at the hands of over-entitled dudes yelling at under-paid serving staff and thinking it makes them hilarious. It kind of half-works in song because “I Am A God” is all frustrated little man syndrome impotence but Kanye’s knowingness isn’t enough to stop me either picturing bankers being wankers to baristas or to stop them from doing it. (via alexmacpherson)

Does there ever come a point when losing friends doesn’t weigh on you all the time? Where you...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:33:44 -0400

Does there ever come a point when losing friends doesn’t weigh on you all the time? Where you can think about anything else but the fact that you are a horrible person, and whether you have a right or not to be upset doesn’t matter?

bitrude: shoutout out to all my buddies who have shitty dads or no dads at all this father’s day,...

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 15:08:34 -0400

bitrude:

shoutout out to all my buddies who have shitty dads or no dads at all this father’s day, you turned out just great regardless, you can’t choose your family and you don’t deserve any negativity from them,and you don’t deserve backlash or guilt-tripping for cutting them out of your life if that’s what you need/ed to do and i love you all

sexpigeon: A jumping hole, as required by law.

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 13:24:24 -0400

sexpigeon:

A jumping hole, as required by law.

marathonpacks: douglaswolk: Brian Eno and his cat Eric for...

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 09:20:12 -0400

marathonpacks:

douglaswolk:

Brian Eno and his cat Eric for Purina. …Wow.

Eric was me in a previous life #confession

bestofmidi: When do the Yeezus MIDIs come out?? this is the only Yeezus I want to hear right now.

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 18:09:22 -0400

bestofmidi:

When do the Yeezus MIDIs come out??

this is the only Yeezus I want to hear right now.

mkupperman: N’Sync in “Pirate scum Are We.”

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 18:02:15 -0400

mkupperman:

N’Sync in “Pirate scum Are We.”

actuallygrimes: Emma Shaplin - Angelic (La Notte Etterna) (by...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 01:02:55 -0400

actuallygrimes:

Emma Shaplin - Angelic (La Notte Etterna) (by PrcMarina)

yes

worlds… collide?

"Leakers like Snowden, Manning and Ellsberg don’t merely risk being called narcissists, traitors or..."

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:59:03 -0400

“

Leakers like Snowden, Manning and Ellsberg don’t merely risk being called narcissists, traitors or mental cases for having liberated state secrets for public scrutiny. They absolutely guarantee it. In the last two days, the New York Times’s David Brooks, Politico’s Roger Simon, the Washington Post‘s Richard Cohen and others have vilified Snowden for revealing the government’s aggressive spying on its own citizens, calling him self-indulgent, a loser and a narcissist.

Yet even as the insults pile up and the amateur psychoanalysis intensifies, keep in mind that Snowden’s leak has more in common with the standard Washington leak than should make the likes of Brooks, Simon and Cohen comfortable. Without defending Snowden for breaking his vow to safeguard secrets, he’s only done in the macro what the national security establishment does in the micro every day of the week to manage, manipulate and influence ongoing policy debates. Keeping the policy leak separate from the heretic leak is crucial to understanding how these stories play out in the press.

”

- This is close to a must-read.

maybenotboring: apparently in states where using radar-detectors is illegal cops are equipped with...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 23:51:22 -0400

maybenotboring:

apparently in states where using radar-detectors is illegal cops are equipped with radar-detector-detectors and apparently companies sell radar-detector-detector-detectors and I want to know how deep this goes

Yeah, for a long time one of the best music discovery tools was...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 18:19:24 -0400

Yeah, for a long time one of the best music discovery tools was seeing what other artists bands listed in their Top 8.