going, going, gone

According to, The Times of India, The California woman, Natalie Dylan who is auctioning off her virginity, has received a bid of a live Tiger. She has also, reportedly, been offered tens of thousands of bids ranging up to $3.7 million. You've probably heard about this story, how she's doing it to pay for her degree and got the idea after her sister turned tricks for three weeks to pay for her master's degree. When I first heard about this story I had two initial questions 1. Isn't this illegal? Answer: transaction arranged to take place through the Bunny Ranch of Nevada. And Q2: Who wants to f a virgin so bad? It seems like it would just be sick freaks and religious fanatics who get off on virginity. She has said that she's received offers from"wierdos" who are graphic about what they want to do sexually to her and very polite offers from businessmen. Ewwww! But , honestly, what did she expect? It's not that I am inherently opposed to prostitution even. Its just that I'm terrible at forcing myself into things that feel forced. (i know its redundant) A lot of people will say that they would never do that but f***, 3.7 million! Most of us gave it up to some pubescent sickie for nothing. I think a lot of people who say they would never do it are liars! Well, turns out this virgin (and how do you prove that?) has a women's studies degree and isn't necessarily taking the highest bidder. Also, she has been very clear that this is only one night. What do you think? Slutty ho? Ingenious marketer?

Krazy Kanye

From Kanye's Blog entry in response to his latest Vibe magazine cover:

"I DON'T HAVE GREY IN MY BEARD IN REAL LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'M ALL DOWN WITH BEINGS IN MY 30'S BUT DAAAAAAAAMN!!!! THIS IS SOME BENJAMIN BUTTON'S SHIT!"

I hope I get a chance to say that in context at some point this week. "Daaaaamn, that is some benjamin button's shit!" only in caps lock...

Did you ever see this post back in June?

I am sick of negative people who just sit around trying 2 plot my downfall... Why???? I understand if people don't like me because I like me or if people think tight clothes look gay or people say I run my mouth to much, But this Bonnaroo thing is the worst insult I've ever had in my life. This is the most offended I've ever been... this is the maddest I ever will be. I'm typing so fucking hard I might break my fucking Mac book Air!!!!!!!! Call me any name you want.... arrogant, conceited, narcissistic, racist, metro, fag whatever you can think of.... BUT NEVER SAY I DIDN'T GIVE MY ALL! NEVER SAY I DIDN'T GIVE MY ALL! THIS SHOWS NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY TO BE GOOD AT SOMETHING THERE WILL BE PEOPLE THERE TO LIE ABOUT YOU AND BRING YOU DOWN! LIKE WAYNE SAYS PLEASE DON'T SHOOT ME DOWN CAUSE I'M FLYING! I'M FUCKING HURT BY THIS ONE. ALL I CARE ABOUT ARE THE FANS. JUST SAY THIS OUT LOUD IN A ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE, "KANYE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT GIVING A GOOD PERFORMANCE." CAN ANYONE HONESTLY SAY THAT ????????? HAS ANYONE EVEN TAKEN THE TIME TO AT LEAST DO THE MATH??? BONNAROO SHOULD HAVE RELEASED A STATEMENT IN MY DEFENSE BUT SINCE THEY HAVEN'T LET'S BREAK DOWN THE WALLS ON THIS TRUMAN SHOW AND LET YOU KNOW WHAT REALLY OCCURRED!!! FOR OVER A MONTH WE WENT BACK AND FORTH ON WETHER OR NOT WE COULD EVEN FIT MY STAGE AT THE FESTIVAL. ONE DAY THEY WOULD SAY YES... WE'D SEND THEM OUR SPECS THEN THEY THEY'D SAY OK... THEN THEY WOULD SEND SPECS BACK THAT DIDN'T FIT THE STAGE. WE WERE OBVIOUSLY DEALING WITH FUCKING IDIOTS WHO DIDN'T REALLY HAVE THE CAPACITY TO REALLY PUT ON THIS SHOW PROPERLY. THEY TRIED 2 GIVE ME A TIME SLOT WERE IT WAS STILL LIGHT OUTSIDE ... I HAVE A FUCKING LIGHT SHOW DUMB ASS, IT'S NOT CALLED GLOW IN THE DARK FOR NO REASON SQUID BRAINS! MY PEOPLE WORKED OUT A COMPROMISED STAGE PLOT AND A 3AM TIME SLOT AND I AGREED. FAST FOWARD TO THE DAY OF THE SHOW. MY PRODUCTION MANAGER TRIED TO LOAD IN FOR 24 HOURS BEFORE I WENT ON STAGE BUT THE FESTIVAL WOULDN'T ALLOW US TO DO ANYTHING UNTILL PEARL JAM LEFT THE STAGE. PEARL JAM ENDED ONE HOUR
LATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AT THAT POINT WE'RE RACING AGAINST THE SUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AT 4:20AM DON COMES BACK 2 THE BUS AND TELLS ME, " IT WOULD TAKE 45 MORE MINUTES TO PUT ALL YOUR PYRO IN!" I SAY I HAVE TO GET OUT THERE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE . I HIT THE STAGE AND PEOPLE HAD BEEN THROWING SHIT ON THE STAGE AND HAD ACTUALLY HIT THE JANE SCREEN WITH, I GUESS BOTTLES OR SOMETHING AND HAD BROKEN MY FUCKING SCREEN. REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE A SHORTY AND WATER WOULD HIT THE TV?????? WHEN I GOT 2 "THROUGH THE WIRE" I STEPPED ON THE FRONT PART OF MY STAGE AND THERE WAS SO MUCH LIQUID ON THE STAGE I COULDN'T MOVE WITHOUT SLIPPING. I HAD TO ADJUST MY WHOLE PERFORMANCE STYLE BECAUSE OF IT. A FEW MORE SONGS IN AND THE SONG WAS ON IT'S WAY UP.. I CUT A FEW SONGS FROM THE SET BECAUSE I WANTED PEOPLE 2 EXPERIENCE STRONGER WHILE THERE WAS STILL SOME DARKNESS TO PERFORM IT IN. I'VE STRUGGLED WITH STRONGER FROM IT'S CONCEPTION. REMEMBER LAST SUMMER WHEN I CANCELED SOME TV APPEARANCES. IT WAS BECAUSE I DIDN'T WANT TO PERFORM STRONGER IN THE DAYTIME. ANYONE WHO CAME TO THE GLOW TOUR CAN UNDERSTAND WHY I WANTED PEOPLE TO SEE IT PROPERLY. IT BROKE MY HEART THAT I COULDN'T GIVE THESE FANS STRONGER IN IT'S GREATEST FORM... BY THE TIME I GOT TO STRONGER IT WAS DAYTIME AND IT BROKE MY HEART. I'M SORRY TO EVERYONE THAT I DIDN'T HAVE THE ABILITY 2 GIVE THE PERFORMANCE I WANTED TO. I'M SORRY... SOMETIMES I GO 2, 3 DAYS W/O SLEEP WORKING ON MY PERFORMANCE... I HAVE TO ICE MY KNEES AFTER EVERY SHOW AND THEY HURT WHEN I WALK THROUGH THE AIRPORT... HAVING AN EXPENSIVE STAGE CUTS MY PAYDAY IN HALF... CALL ME WHAT YOU WANT BUT NEVER SAY I DIDN'T GIVE MY ALL!!!

Oh Kanye.

Related:
Vibe Magazine's Kanye West's worst 10 songs.

Eve: Oh Lose Shawn

(Please note BritBrit-style title and say it out loud)

Wow! It's been a while since the ole MB blog has gotten any updates, despite the deaths of many great individuals throughout the holiday season (R.I.P. Betty Page, Eartha Kitt, and Freddie Hubbard and more.) We hope everyone had great holidays.

So far in 2009, we have a new war going on in the world. We should hope and act to see that it doesn't last too long before everyone in the Gaza strip is dead. Sadly, I have heard estimates that as many as 25 percent of these people dying are children and as much as twenty five percent women. As for the rest I'm sure most of them are parents or otherwise important people to those children. The media coverage seems very lopsided to me and generally lacking and I find it frustrating. With each year it is depressing that this is STILL the way it goes down between humans. I actually heard an Adam Carolla segment with Pat Buchanan talking about it, and I was quite surprised to hear his views on it. You can listen to it here

I thought this was interesting from Spacelab magazine

"January 06, 2009
Apple Lets iTunes Music Go DRM Free, But Ain't No MP3

The move by iTunes to go DRM (digital rights management) free is a step forward for the Apple/iTunes crowd, but the change from restricted to DRM free doesn't mean that you're buying MP3s. The announcement today about the broad iTunes Plus plan (that now includes all of the music in the iTunes store) is a good step forward in The Evolutionary transition of the music industry, but don't think that you're buying MP3 files.

When you buy music from iTunes, you're still getting the AAC files, which means it will still work on an iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, or in iTunes. What does the DRM-free change mean? It means that now you can copy the file as many times you want, burn as many CDs as you want, use the song in as many iTunes libraries as you want, etc. They're not MP3 files ... yet. You can also use AAC files on other devices that support AAC, like the Sony Walkman, Zune, Wii, Xbox, certain mobile phones and a list of other devices.

Still, there are some good developments here. iTunes Plus music is encoded at 256-Kbps, meaning increased sound quality compared to the old iTunes music. You don't have to rebuy all of the songs in your library, you can just pay the upgrade price of 30¢ per song. Videos are 60¢ per song, and albums are 30% of the album price. Everybody's onboard, no outliers -- that means Universal, Sony BMG, Warner Music, EMI, along and thousands of independent labels are part of the upgrade.

They've also abandoned the 99¢ line, now offering music at 69¢, 99¢, and $1.29. I'll bet that was the trade off. The major labels probably wouldn't give on DRM-free unless Apple caved on variable pricing, a line they stuck to for a very long time."


These apple folks are pretty great at making money. I wonder where the bubble will burst?

Happy New Year everyone!

It is *seventy* degreees and beautiful here and that sure helps ease all pain.

Walter Kitundu

I pretty much like everything about this guy.

Daphne Oram: mother of experimenal music

                               

Daphne Oram was born in 1925 in England.  She was very interested in both songwriting and electronics.  in 1946, while many males were fighting a war abroad, Oram took a job at the BBC as a "junior balancing engineer".  A balancing engineer is similar to a mixing engineer except in that time it was too expensive to record shows so everything was done live.

That all changed in the 50s when the tape machine was implemented at BBC.  Oram was one of the first people to experiment with tape not as a means to record but as a medium for a new kind of music and I would argue art.

Once everybody at her work would leave for the night, she would experiment with the the sounds recorded on the tape.  Speeding the up, slowing them down, splicing tape together, and playing the sounds backwards.  Later on she even developed a interchangeable set of wheels that could change the sounds pitch by changing the speed of the play heads.  This effectively turned the tape machine into the first synthesizer.

It is pretty easy to imagine that the BBC was not very interested in the work that Oram was doing.  It took years for them to even set up a department that dealt with electronic sounds and when they finally did they didn't let her be a part of it.  Also to avoid any problems with musicians unions anything that was made through her system was not allowed to be called music.

Daphne Oram eventually went on to be the first women to make her own recording studio in 1959.  She received a substantial grant initially, but eventually had to take some commercial work such as helping make some sounds for a ballet version of Beauty and the Beast.

Oram experimented with sounds and electronics the rest of her life, but she also wrote compositions.  Most of them have remained unperformed to this day, but she did record a song called "four aspects" which uses all tape machines as the instruments in 1960.  It sounds very sci-fi.  If I knew how to upload music I would put it on this post.

Anyhoot, for how important she was to music both technically and artistically, I can't believe I hadn't heard of her until last week.  She's one special lady.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_Oram

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/aug/01/daphne.oram.remembered

http://web.archive.org/web/20060210194050/http://www.sonicartsnetwork.org/Oram/oram.html

                                         

ELEVATING THE ART

R.I.P. Yma Sumac

Yma Sumac with no doubt is one of the most remarkable voices of our time, with a vocal range which is rarely found once in a century. Her use of voice is also completely her own style, which she developed in a rather autodidactic or at least very individual way. For most of the time she tried to promote legends and folk songs from Peruvian origin, but she also sang mambo amongst other things. Because she stayed in America most of the time, apart from a short while in Russia, in the fifties they preferred to present her music with a big orchestra, where she was presented to the world as an exotica queen, or as a diva with a remarkable voice.- Psychedelic V/H Folk

Yma Suma website
Miracles: The album Yma fans can't stand