Sainthood (by Tegan & Sara) – Backstory

Maybe it hasn’t escaped your attention that I’m quite fond of Tegan & Sara, so it should come as no surprise that I pre-ordered their most recent album, Sainthood, on the first day that pre-order was possible in September. I mainly pre-ordered it through Maple Music because they sold a special Limited Edition that comes with three books. They also sold a Deluxe Limited Edition that came with an ink blot, hand-made and signed by the artists, but I’m happy to say I’m past the age where I’d spend that extra money. As a marketing strategy, it’s certainly a fun idea, though.

Tegan (left) and Sara, looking for my first Sainthood order. Tegan is obviously a lot more involved in the search. Sara wants to go home.

Well, after that, my Sainthood experience didn’t start off that well. I decided not to listen to the album on their MySpace page and no t to watch the video to their first single, Hell, either, because I think there’s something special about waiting for the actual album and listening to it in one go from beginning to end. So I waited. And I waited. But when the album was finally released on October 27th, my order didn’t arrive. My friend’s order arrived within two days, but mine just didn’t show. Eventually, I contacted Maple Music and they were kind enough to send out another bundle. That was on a Friday, and the parcel promptly arrived the following Monday.

However, I got charged more than 20 EUR in taxes for it, plus an additional 10 EUR that Purolator wanted for taking the parcel to customs in the first place, which still strikes me as an unfair rip-off. But what can you do. So now I have the CD & 3 books and ended up paying 104,- EUR for them, which means about 155 USD or 162 CAD. Now I’m almost as poor as a church mouse, but at least I have some good music and reading material. For an exhaustive review of both, watch this space. (You know you want to.)

By the way, what are YOU waiting for? Sainthood currently sells for $9,99 at Amazon.com! BARGAIN!

Linkage: Sprite Stitch

I just came across http://www.spritestitch.com – A video game inspired craft weblog. I’m not very good with arts and crafts myself, but some of this stuff makes me want to take up stitching:

Or baking:

Or to pursue knitting more seriously:

Go, check out the site at http://www.spritestitch.com!

November 1998: Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie

I generally feel younger than I am, but sometimes it hits me that I’ve been around for almost three decades already and I feel bad for all the things I didn’t achieve yet, even though mostly I’m not sure what things in particular they are. Maybe you can relate.

At any rate, one of the things that just made me realize that I’m not getting any younger is finding out that the wonderful Alanis Morissette album Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie was released 11 (!) years ago, in November 1998. I remember when I first got it, I was a bit suspicious about it, after having become so acquainted with the songs on Jagged Little Pill (I agree with this reviewer on how good that album was). Nevertheless, Junkie grew on me pretty quickly. My favorite songs on it are the very plugged-in ones (like So Pure and Would Not Come), and most of all I like those that also have a haunting quality to them and narrative lyrics (The Couch and I Was Hoping). The lyrics on the album are deep and Alanis doesn’t usually bother to make them rhyme, which I find rather refreshing.

The Couch and I Was Hoping belong together in my personal interpretation of the album, and I believe the first-person narrator in The Couch and the second-person character in I Was Hoping are very similar, if not the same person. For some reason, I imagine The Couch to be fictitious and I Was Hoping to be taken from Alanis Morissette’s life, but I have no other basis for this assumption than my rampant imagination.

Also in my imagination, the guy she meets up with is older than her. He’s in a troubled marriage (or claims to be) and she likes him, even though it’s also obvious that they are very different people with vastly different beliefs. So she was hoping that they’d be good for each other, maybe get together, but now she realizes it’s pretty hopeless.

The part I remember and like most of the song is this:

“It’s a cycle, really. You think I’m withdrawing and guilt tripping you, I think you’re insensitive and I don’t feel heard. And I said, ‘Do you believe we are fundamentally judgmental? Fundamentally evil?’ And you said ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘I don’t believe in revenge, in right or wrong, good or bad.’ You said: ‘Well, what about that man that I saw handcuffed in the emergency room, bleeding after beating his kid, and she threw a shoe at his head. I think what he did was wrong and I would’ve had a hard time feeling compassion for him.’ I had to watch my tone for fear of having you feel judged.”

Personally, I also believe we are fundamentally judgemental, but I don’t think we’re fundamentally evil. I don’t believe in revenge either, although I sometimes fantasize about it on the spur of the moment. Interesting in this particular song, however, is not only the subject matter, but also that their positions clash the way they do.

Well, I still love the album and the song 11 years after it was released, and so I will let this little article stand as a tribute to one of my favorite albums, and also as a tribute to my advancing age.

Pixar’s Up does NOT get two thumbs up

Fly around the world with a lot of beautiful balloons.

Last weekend I finally got the chance to watch Up in 3D in a cinema near me.

Up, as you may know, is another Pixar movie. I like Pixar ever since I’ve seen Finding Nemo, which is my favorite animated movie of all times. I’ve also really liked Monsters, Inc. and WALL-E, as well as their short films For The Birds, Geri’s Game and Presto, but was disappointed with The Incredibles and Ratatouille.

Still, I’d watch almost anything in 3D because I like the 3D format a lot. I’ve seen Monsters vs Aliens and Ice Age 3 in 3D, and I even watched the really bad movie Beowulf for its 3D effects.

Now, Up is different in that it doesn’t appear to have been made with the 3D effect in mind. At least the 3D effect is subtle most of the time, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I personally think that the 3D format might save the movie industry, as it’s a good reason to go to your local 3D cinema instead of watching the movie at home without that particular special effect. I’d be excited to see more normal movies (dramas, thrillers) in 3D, but maybe that’s just me.

Up tells the story of an old widowed man who is supposed to give up his house and move into an old people’s home. Instead of doing that, he ties a bunch of balloons to his house and flies away with it, accidentally taking a young boy scout with him who therefore joins his adventures.

Judging from the trailers for this movie, you’d think the old man was a grumpy fella with a strangely endearing crankiness about him. He’s much nicer in the actual movie, however, for better or for worse, and while at first the ailments of old age are cause for a number of laughs, Pixar doesn’t really follow through with the theme much. While the senior citizen needs a walker in day-to-day life and a stairlift to move around his house, he later does all sorts of stunts and running around and hard physical labor.

Also disappointing in this movie are the talking dogs. I feel it requires too much suspension of disbelief, even considering this is an animated movie for children. Yes, we had talking fish in Finding Nemo, but they only ever talked to one another, not to humans. And while the talking dogs are explained (“Our smart owner made us a dog collar that enables us to speak”), I couldn’t help but find all of it very silly. I think Pixar did an extraordinary job before in making a quiet robot likeable (WALL-E), in making a mute rabbit likeable (Presto) – heck, they can even made a lamp likeable (Luxo Jr. and their animated logo)! So why resort to talking dogs? I won’t even elaborate on the part where they pilot fighter planes.

The best part of the movie was the backstory that explored the old man’s life, of how he met his wife, married her and grew old with her. Personally, I found that to be the most touching part of the film. I wish the talking dogs hadn’t spoiled the rest of it.

File Organization and Desktop Decluttering

A while ago I decided to try out a new way of organizing my files, which basically consists of having five shortcuts on my desktop where all my stuff goes. This is more of a way to get rid of my Work-In-Progress folder that I never ever looked at, and of exchanging my always cluttered but rarely cared about New Stuff folder.

The system I use now is described at www.lifeclever.com and tells you to have the following folders:

0. Inbox
1. Actions
2. Incubate
3. Current Projects
4. Archive

After a few months now I find that I only ever use 0. Inbox and 4. Archive. The Archive has shortcuts to all the important folders on my hard disk. You know, if I go to D:\, I can see all the other folders, too, that I don’t usually need, like Programs and system folders and stuff. So Archive is convenient, but I’ve been using the simple program Everything a lot lately to find my files, so that’s also why I don’t use Archive as much as you’d think I would.

Actions, Incubate and Current Projects are very similar, so I never know which folder I put something in that I wanted to work on. I suppose this might be a lot more obvious if used at work, while I use this system at home. I don’t really have any real projects at home, except that maybe I want to go through my folders to look for digital photos I should print for backup purposes (is that Actions? Incubate? Current Projects?) or images for a future blog post that I’ve been too lazy to write as of yet (Actions?). I’m considering changing the structure to:

0. Inbox
All the stuff that comes in during a day, so I could empty this every weekend and spread it to my archive folders.
1. TODAY
With another urgent title I’ll never pay attention to. This should be all the actions I want to do really soon, so ideally this would be empty at the end of every day. Well, in a perfect world.
2. Incubate
Projects I’ve had in my head for a while, like a blog post I want to write, or the photo backup project, etc. When this gets too full or I get too bored, I can start doing those things.
3. Archive
This stays the same it is now.

I will report back on how this will work out for me then. Maybe one day there will actually be someone who cares to read about it. :)

Pay-what-you-want marketing experiment

Indie game developer 2D Boy just made an interesting experiment, in which they sold their game World of Goo for whatever price you were willing to pay.

I find this quite interesting from a business standpoint. Considering that most things are freely (if often illegally) available on the internet, I think exploring new marketing strategies is of paramount importance, probably more so for smaller companies than for large companies.

2D Boy wrote an exhaustive blog entry about how the experiment went and they also published an interesting chart on how much people decided to pay:

Click for a larger image.

Many people only paid one cent for the game, (16,852 of them), and 15,797 paid between $1 and $2. They even had a questionnaire later on where they asked people to answer why they paid what they paid, and while many said “That’s all I can afford right now” (which I don’t buy for the 1 cent crowd, as I imagine anyone who can download a video game online could probably do without at least $1), many also said they wanted to support the “pay-what-you-want model”, many said they already had it but wanted it for another platform, too. Some said “I’ve played the game but never paid for it, took this opportunity to get legit”.

They also wrote that their sales of the game on Steam rose 40%, which makes me wonder whether maybe some of those that paid 1 cent for the game decided to buy it for the normal price once they tested and liked it.

I also wonder whether the people that only paid $0.01 would have bought/obtained the game through any other means or whether they wouldn’t have been customers any other way.

It’s also interesting to know that 2d Boy made no money on purchases of around 30 cents and under, as they had to pay PayPal for those purchases, too.

“Since the birthday sale started, about 57 thousand people bought World of Goo off our website. The average price paid for the game was $2.03 a significant percent of which went to PayPal for transaction fees. Normally, they keep about 5% of the revenue, but because PayPal fees are structured in a way that they take a larger percentage for smaller transactions, we ended up paying over 13% in transaction fees. For all purchases of around 30 cents and under, we actually saw no money, PayPal took it all, but they probably ended up losing money on most of those transactions ($0.01) as well, they’re not the bad guy.”
(http://2dboy.com/)

At any rate, I suppose this could be a good way to make some money off of a digital “product” few people are buying anymore.

Music Monday #27: Kiss With A Fist

Is it Monday again? Well, you should be happy, because on this lovely Music Monday, I bring to you a song by Florence and the Machine. The song is called Kiss With A Fist and it’s from their debut album Lungs.

Now when I first saw Florence Welch, the lead singer, I thought to myself that she’s probably 30ish. Turns out she was born in 1987, which makes her 22. I’m shocked and I feel old. In the recent print issue (August 20, 2009) of Rolling Stone Magazine, she actually mentions that she still lives with her parents.

At any rate, so there is this song, Kiss With A Fist, that she said in some interview I can’t find now is NOT about domestic violence and is just a metaphor. Actually, reading about the song is how I learned what a burning bed scenario is. There actually is a burning bed in the video, so her comment seemed weird. So I looked it up on her website, http://florenceandthemachine.net/index, and there it says:

I was 16 or 17 when I wrote this. I’d just fallen in love for the first time, and I’d also started hanging out with an older group of people, watching how their relationships worked. There was this one couple who were so cool, but so visceral and so intense. The guy never hit the girl, but I saw her lamp him a couple of times, and she’d always give as good as she got. But it wasn’t really the physical violence, it was more about the fact that their animal passion for each other was the thing that was attractive for them. It was how joyful destruction can be, and how alluring it is to be in a relationship that was so fiery. There was never a dull moment when they were around. I don’t know how they do it! I’m a conflict avoider. I think I write about such intense things because I’m actually really bad at expressing anger.

Question answered.

The other catchy song on the album is Drumming (see Drumming on YouTube). It’s not as catchy as Kiss With A Fist, and in the video she’s scantily clad and crawling around on a church floor. I don’t know if that passes as art. Still, it’s a catchy song, too.

Anyway, here’s Kiss With A Fist. Enjoy and comment!

Florence and the flower thingy.

(Alternative link)

Kiss With A Fist by Florence and the Machine

You hit me once
I hit you back
You gave a kick
I gave a slap
You smashed a plate
Over my head
Then i set fire to our bed

You hit me once
I hit you back
You gave a kick
I gave a slap
You smashed a plate
Over my head
Then i set fire to our bed

My black eye casts no shadow
Your red eye sees no pain
Your slaps don’t stick
Your kicks don’t hit
So we remain the same
Blood sticks and
Sweat drips
Break the lock if it don’t fit
A kick in the teeth is good for some
A kiss with a fist is better than none
A kiss with a fist is better than none

Broke your jaw once before
Spilt your blood upon the floor
You broke my leg in return
Sit back and watch the bed burn
Well, love sticks sweat drips
Break the lock if it don’t fit
A kick in the teeth is good for some
A kiss with a fist is better than none
A kiss with a fist is better than none

You hit me once
I hit you back
You gave a kick
I gave a slap
You smashed a plate over my head
Then i set fire to our bed

You hit me once
I hit you back
You gave a kick
I gave a slap
You smashed a plate over my head
Then i set fire to our bed

(Lyrics from songmeanings.net)

PS: Go to this Rolling Stone article on Florence and the Machine right now to download two of their songs for free.

Music Monday #26: Running Up That Hill

Today I want to bring you a cover version done by Placebo of the Kate Bush song Running Up That Hill.

Now, Kate Bush was born in England on July 30, 1958. Running Up That Hill is on her album Hounds Of Love, which was released in 1985 (when she was 27). Interestingly enough, the song was supposed to be called A Deal With God, but EMI didn’t want to release it under that name because, according to Wikipedia, “they feared the religious connotations of the title could have prevented radio play”. Wikipedia also quotes Kate Bush saying: “[W]e were told that if we kept this title that it would not be played in any of the religious countries, Italy wouldn’t play it, France wouldn’t play it, and Australia wouldn’t play it! Ireland wouldn’t play it, and that generally we might get it blacked purely because it had God in the title.” I personally find this quite outrageous. It’s like when Sony told Sophie B. Hawkins to get rid of that banjo back then. Come on, it’s art!

At any rate, 21 years later in 2006, when Kate Bush was 48 and Placebo singer Brian Molko was almost 34, Placebo released a cover version of Running Up That Hill on the re-release of their debut album.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like the original by Kate Bush. More than that, I like her song Wuthering Heights. But I find what Placebo did with the song is so much darker and so much more haunting and melancholic that I do prefer it over the original.

Well, judge for yourself:

Kate Bush original with lots of dancing.

(Alternative Link)

The Placebo version. With an upside down video, not sure why.

(Alternative Link)

Kate Bush – Running Up that Hill

It doesn’t hurt me.
You wanna feel how it feels?
You wanna know, know that it doesn’t hurt me?
You wanna hear about the deal I’m making?
You be running up that hill
You and me be running up that hill

And if I only could,
Make a deal with God,
And get him to swap our places,
Be running up that road,
Be running up that hill,
Be running up that building.
If I only could, oh…

You don’t want to hurt me,
But see how deep the bullet lies.
Unaware that I’m tearing you asunder.
There is thunder in our hearts, baby.
So much hate for the ones we love?
Tell me, we both matter, don’t we?

You, be running up that hill
You and me, be running up that hill
You and me won’t be unhappy.

And if I only could,
Make a deal with God,
And get him to swap our places,
Be running up that road,
Be running up that hill,
Be running up that building,
If I only could, oh…

C’mon, baby, c’mon, c’mon, darling,
Let me steal this moment from you now.
C’mon, angel, c’mon, c’mon, darling,
Let’s exchange the experience, oh…

And if I only could,
Make a deal with God,
And get him to swap our places,
Be running up that road,
Be running up that hill,
With no problems

If I only could, be running up that hill

(Lyrics from azlyrics.com.)

For completeness’ sake, there’s also a version of the song by Within Temptation, but it doesn’t do much for me one way or the other.

Comments?

The Biosphere and the Exponential Function

On this Video Saturday I want to share with you two things I came across that both seem somewhat relevant. Well, maybe at first glance the video about Biosphere 2 doesn’t seem that important, but it’s probably easier (and shorter) to watch than the second set of videos.

Biosphere 2 was basically a closed off ecological system built for research purposes. Biosphere 1, in case you’re wondering, is our own biosphere of the Earth. So they sent in eight people to live in Biosphere 2 for two years, which I find to be a very interesting experiment. I’d say one of the most important things learned from it was that (and why) their oxygen kept disappearing, which sound like valuable information in case another biosphere should be built one day, say, on another planet. However, before (or after) watching the video, you might want to read about the criticism of the project.

So here’s a video of the slightly annoying Jane Poynter talking at TED about her time in Biosphere 2:

The second and more interesting video (if you have the time to really listen) is modestly called The Most IMPORTANT Video You’ll Ever See on YouTube, and it’s a lecture given by Dr. Albert A. Bartlett on Arithmetic, Population, and Energy. It’s long, but enlightening and I personally didn’t think it was boring at all. One of the important statements he makes there is this:

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.

Dr. Albert Bartlett

Dr. Albert Bartlett on Arithmetic, Population, and Energy [Part 1 of 8]
[Part 2 of 8]
[Part 3 of 8]
[Part 4 of 8]
[Part 5 of 8]
[Part 6 of 8]
[Part 7 of 8]
[Part 8 of 8]

That’s it for today. Enjoy.

Sleep on the floor! It’s hygienic!

Sometimes I wish I were working for an ad agency. The things they get away with… Consider this ad that was in the ALDI newsletter a little while ago:

Click the image for a larger version.

In case you don’t speak German (hey, why not? Everybody else does!), the ad basically says that you can buy this bedding, and it protects you from bacteria, mites and fungus, presumably by not getting wet when you sweat. Now the question I’m asking myself is: why is that woman lying on the bare floor, naked, asleep next to her dishes? That doesn’t sound very sanitary to me…