I am in Virginia working on a defense contract, being driven back to my airport hotel in a friend’s luxury sports car. On the steps of a boarded-up church, a Mennonite girl in a white bonnet cries into her hands. She looks up as we pass, although not at us.

In a store in Beverly Hills, a man in a tailored suit puts on cotton gloves and lays out an assortment of pens for me. One of them has a fingerprint on its resin barrel. He apologizes the way I would if I hit someone with my car.

I shovel the first measure of earth onto our cat, who is lying in her grave.

I am backstage at a television studio, talking to an old man who appeared on one of my favorite sitcoms. I met the star of that show once, I say. He cordially changes the subject.

Wake up before my girlfriend for the first time and stare at her profile. Her breathing is inaudible. Alabaster, I think, pleased, and go back to sleep.

Wake up in agony. Run inside and start vomiting. Incredible pain in my lower left flank. Being born is a misfortune, I think. Later recant.

haaaaapy new year

Blood Ceremony – My Demon Brother: Great album.
Uncle Acid and The Deadbeats – Ritual Knife: Also a great album, came out on CD-R. Copies of the subsequent limited-to-150 vinyl have sold for >$500!
Red Fang – Into The Eye: Hopefully these guys show up on Portlandia season 2.
Mastodon – Stargasm: The tightest metal band of late?
Wolvhammer – Shadowhorn: Nasty.
Dark Castle – Seeing Through Time: I thought their first record was meh, but they’ve improved a LOT.
Tombs – Silent World: Lots of heat for Tombs. I hear echoes of Fugazi.
Hammers of Misfortune – The Grain: Beautiful song. Melodic metal from SF.
Nine Inch Nails – Theme For Tetsuo The Bullet Man: Okay, so NIN isn’t really metal. Still great though.
Blood Stain Child – Stargazer: Out of nowhere Japanese metal/techno fusion band internet peeps are going crazy for. Heavy J-Pop component. RIYL Spawn OST.
Wolves In The Throne Room – Permanent Changes In Consciousness: The album is as good as Pitchfork says.
Alcest – Percées De Lumière: Epic French band, new album due out in 2012.
Moonsorrow – Huuto: Possibly even more epic Finnish band, their new record is their best.

The Morlocks
Your cousin has a book of poetry, a guy whose blog you read wrote a YA novel. No advances, no promotion, no editing, Kindle sales, physical copies printed on demand. But: why wouldn’t Amazon “publish” them? There’s food at the bottom of the pond, ask a catfish.

The Mid-List
Authors previously published through the old model, promising newcomers. No advances, targeted promotion within Amazon.com (which is where people who buy books are looking for books anyway), editing, physical copies printed on demand. In the past, you could maybe make a living at this tier just writing and touring books. Now you probably can’t.

Stars
Steven King, Tim Ferriss. Strawberries dipped in caviar, big advances, broad promotion, favorite editors hired by Amazon, big piles of printed books waiting to ship.

The Atlantic piece ends:

When one company holds the keys to the kingdom for what content consumers can see on its device, it has a lot of power as to what kind of information reaches people. [...] If Amazon consolidates its power in the publishing industry, what would become of a book criticizing Amazon? The value of the publishing industry is at least in part in the competition among ouses, which means that if one place passes over a manuscript, someone else might see value in it. As Amazon’s power grows, we better hope that it doesn’t become the only show in town.

I think Amazon would publish a book criticizing Amazon because they’d carry one, viz. their Content Guidelines. Which doesn’t distinguish between publishers and vendors – much like Amazon itself. And if they were to get too restrictive on content, an opportunity for disruption would arise, probably in the form of books-as-apps vs. the sale of files that require a reader. It’s not like you need to buy a printing press.

Anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying I found a bunch of pristine WDRE tags and ‘DJ’ed’ a block of cheesy modern rock songs I love, complete with vintage commercials and concert announcements for local bands (Love Seed Momma Jump, holla). The conceit is I’m filling in for another night shift DJ at 2am in 1997. My girlfriend’s in law school, what can I tell you.

DOWNLOAD (MediaFire, 95mb)

01 Bush – Greedy Fly
02 Cop Shoot Cop – $10 Bill
03 The The – Dogs of Lust
04 Ned’s Atomic Dustbin – Grey Cell Green
05 Screaming Trees – Nearly Lost You
06 Dinosaur Jr. – Start Choppin’
07 Salt – Bluster
08 Soundgarden – Pretty Noose
09 Alice In Chains – Again
10 Stone Temple Pilots – Tumble in the Rough
11 The Posies – Dream All Day
12 Pearl Jam – Hail, Hail
13 Toadies – Possum Kingdom
14 Queens Of The Stone Age – If Only
15 Nine Inch Nails – Physical
16 Catherine Wheel – Black Metallic (KROQ edit)

If you need more 90s, go dl Nick Catchdubs and Mr. Ducker’s crazy rad and aforementioned Radio Friendly Unit Shifter series.

The short-term future of personal computing is a plurality of displays that accept a variety of input and provide contiguous service. The march of display technology is increased resolution and proximity to our eyes. As for input, humans throw off a ton of data and our devices only capture some of it; touch and voice are two values in a spectrum that includes spatial position, facial expression, emotional tone and so forth. These modalities are complimentary, not sequential, and will accumulate as time wears on and processor dies shrink.

But what about the service? I was listening to Horace Dediu’s commentary on Apple’s iPhone 4S announcement and he said

The Siri story, coupled with the iCloud story, is [...] a tectonic shift away from the device alone and more toward the device plus an infrastructure behind it which we call sometimes “cloud” [...] a meta-platform, something that is beyond any one of those [...] individually, something that is greater than the sum of those two parts. (1:23:07-1:23:40)

Our mobile devices are increasingly interfaces to these meta-platforms, which are collections of extraordinarily useful services that run on huge server installations. To my mind, a meta-platform with a billion physical interfaces is the embryonic form of a true computer. Within five years we’ll have two or three of them. Let’s call them Computers, big C.

What we need from these Computers and what they provide is the story of our future. One provision will be a release from autonomy, choice, ambiguity. You can see the germ of this idea in Siri. As anyone who’s been woken up by a stray text at 4 AM knows, where the growth rate of cognitive demands intersects the arc of human evolution, the result is disfunction. If Computers can understand the topography our lives and help us without needing to be told how, sometimes we’ll let them steer.

WTC Pause Tape 3 by litwack
(hit the little down-pointing arrow on the right to download)

1: Meth, Ghostface & Rae – Mef Vs. Chef 2 from Wu-Massacre
2: Rae, Meth and Redman – Troublemakers from Apollo Kids
3: Ghost, Roc Marciano and Killa Sin – The Black Diamonds from Legendary Weapons
4: RZA, ODB, Masta Killah and Killah Priest – Snakes from The Mastermind
5: Bronze Nazareth & Rae – The Bronzeman 2 from School For The Blindman
6: Meth, Ghost, Ica da Don & Inspectah Deck – All Flowers from Return of the Wu and Friends
7: Streetlife and Killa Sin – Face Down from The Swarm pt. 3
8: ODB & GZA – Take It Back To Brooklyn (demo)
9: Meth – Freestyle on Tim Westwood
10: Inspectah Deck – Thundercats freestyle on Stretch Armstrong
11: Cappadonna – Cuban Link Kings from The Pilgrimage (forthcoming)
12: Rae and Twin Sister – Wu Daydream mashup by The Hood Internet
13: The Wu-Tang Clan and Fuzagi – Sleep Rules Everything Around Me mashup by Doom-tree
14: Ghostface – Save Me My Dear (The Dirty Sample remix)
15: Rae, Ghost and The LOX – Wu-Block from Wu-Block (forthcoming)
16: Cappadonna, U-God, Ghost, Masta Killa – Winter Warz from Ironman
17: Rae, GZA and Killah Priest – Wu Crime from Shaolin Vs. Wu-Tang
18: Masta Killa – Loyalty from Loyalty is Royalty (forthcoming)
19: RZA – 1, 2, Here’s What We Gonna Do from Meta-Historical

I loved the results. I’m getting interested in analytics for prose – can you imagine a word processor that incorporates on-tap aggregate human feedback for drafts? I’m notttttt saying books should be written by committee but I do think more sophisticated services and metrics than we have now should be available if you want them.

Female, 24, USA
“I did generally enjoy the chapter, and would probably read more if I had the chance.”
“The narrator seemed to be male until the name “”Hilary”" was given, but then again seemed to be male for the rest of the chapter. I’ve always known that to be a name given to females. Also, the intentionally quirky syntax detracts a bit from the actual story in parts, and the dialogue could be improved. Also, little things like there being cigarettes but the character noting the fact that the “”inessential”" things wouldn’t be around sort of bothered me. I can see lots of edits being done, though I generally liked it (as I said).”
“The idea behind the story, as far as I can understand it, seems very interesting. I can imagine that the addiction theme would bring a very intriguing element to the story of a university experience on the moon.”

Male, 29, USA
Yes this was really interesting. The descriptions at the beginning really caught my attention. I would like to find out what happens next.
One thing I didn’t understand was the sex of the narrator. I thought at first he was boy but then he said his name was Hilary so I thought he was a girl but then he said he was straight so he is a boy? Another thing was I didn’t understand why they were stripped naked at first and sprayed with orange mist? Then I realized this is all fantasy and they are in Moon college.
I liked the vivid descriptions and metaphors at the beginning of the chapter. It really put me in the narrator shoes and I could sense how scared he was of the whole experience. I also liked the writing style of this novel. It something I think anyone can read and relate to. It’s not complicated but it has tons of vivid imagery that you can really imagine what is happening.

Male, 30, USA
“It was all right. There doesn’t seem to be a ton of a hook. There isn’t any sort of questions raised in the beginning that would make me want to read, read, read.”
“It may be petty, but I still am not clear on the gender of the narrator. The language could be a little more visually oriented as well.”
A university on the moon sounds like an interesting idea. I enjoyed the descriptions of Cassius.

Female,30,USA
Actually the first chapter kept my attention which is good and I would continue to read so I can see how the book progressed.
“The beginning was confusing for me, it toke me quite some reading to understand what was going on especially about the young guy taking the medicine. Then I understood out what it was about.
I did not understand he was going to moon school for a while I knew he was going away to college but not a fantasy college but the 37 hour flight made me wonder.”
I liked the creative ability in this book. It’s not a book you have read with a storyline before. It keeps you guessing about his adventure next not to mention with the cousin he has just connected with.

Male, 23, Greece
I did not particularly enjoy the chapter. I found it hard to read and lacking detail in various aspects. I would not like to read more.
“I did not like the common use of phrases such as ‘brthere’; I believe they made the piece unnecessarily hard to read. I found the descriptions to be inconsistent. There are detail descriptions of what others are doing at the airport but there’s barely any info about the travel or the people on the Moon. While I enjoyed the surprise of the trip being to the moon I later found myself wanting more generic information and less talk about the main character wanting a cigarette. If I were to compare it to another work, I would say it caused me the same annoyance as Percy’s constant complaining about him wanting burgers in Percy Jackson and the Lighting Thief. By focusing too much on the side effects of smoking you alienate non smokers that are not familiar with the experience. I myself do not smoke so this simply passes by as annoying. I would have found it much better if you gave us some information about the Moon base, when/how it was created and the condition of the world at the time. Are there alien species going around or are we still alone in the world and simply built a city on the Moon? Since this is the first chapter, try to give us some info about the main character, his destination and plans instead of jumping right into describing his immediate thoughts. Don’t forget: This is the first chapter of a novel, not a short story.”
“The ‘surprise’ about the main character going to the moon was rather pleasant and unexpected. The Moon base seems like an interesting place the way you described it but it lacked depth. At the start you get the impression that it’s a university city for the elite, but then you reveal that it’s more of a we-take-everyone-in school which kind of ruins the mood.”

Female, 26, USA
“I did enjoy it, but it was not my favorite. I would read more if I had nothing else to do.”
I really disliked the lack of punctuation and run on sentences. It made the first 5 pages very difficult to understand. I had to re-read quite a few of the sentences to understand what they were talking about.
“I liked the idea of headed to school on the moon, it intrigued me. I also really liked cousin Vladimir, he seemed like a believable character, except for him stabbing someone in the armpit. Really?”

Female, 24, USA
I found the chapter pretty interesting but I honestly can’t say I would want to read more. I don’t like reading fantasy type books.
“Some of the word usage I thought was kinda off. I did not like how the word “”piss”" was used and instead of clearly stating a word the word “”thingy”" was used in it’s place. I know this story was about a college kid but I found that kind’ve annoying.I did not like the opening of the book because it did not give me a clear picture of what was going on. Maybe that was the intention of the author.”
“I like the uniqueness of the story. I mean a college in space, how cool! Like I said before, I never really read fantasy books so I don’t know if this is an original idea. I also found the personality of the character to be interesting. It seems like he has issues that will be discovered throughout the book.”

Female, 24, USA
“It got my interest. It would depend on the overall plot, but from what I read I’d like to read more.”
“I didn’t like some of the dialogue. The conversation between the main character and Cassius felt awkward – and not in a realistic way. The one little bit of conversation that was just this romantic infodump felt forced.
I don’t get what’s going on with the main character. The chapter gave me the impression that there’s something wrong with him but not enough information to know whether there’s really something wrong with him or if he’s just an overly angsty teenager. I guess this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as this was only the first chapter. But since the first chapter is all I had to read, it just kind of annoyed me.
Some of the sentences toward the beginning seemed to run on unnecessarily. Lots of semi colons. They just seem uninviting at the beginning of a story like that. I’m already going in blind. I’m unfamiliar with the universe. Long, complicated sentences with semicolons don’t exactly help me get my barrings any easier.”,”I liked some of the descriptions a lot. It painted a really clear picture in my head of taking this commercial flight to the moon. Likewise, there were some really nice descriptions on the moon too.
I liked the dialogue with the main character’s cousin a lot. I’m not sure I necessarily like the character, but the dialogue felt really fluid and genuine there.”

Female, 51, USA
Yes and no. I would probably give it another chapter or two.
There were several words I did not understand. Some of the descriptions of inanimate objects seemed to be trying too hard. I’m a fan of setting a scene but some of this is just too much.
“Really liked all the feelings in the airport prior to boarding. Sounded like an anxiety attack, nicotine withdrawal and crippling fear of flying all coming together at once.”

Male, 26, USA
It was okay. I wouldn’t really want to read any more.
“The main character seemed kind of whiny.
I don’t know where the story is going yet, but it seems kind of boring so far.”
“At first I thought he was just going to a normal college, but then I realized they were going to the moon, which was kind of a surprise. The cousin seemed interesting.”