Fabulous Debris

Hello; Musicians With Cats Here.
I understand you're the photographer of the John Darnielle & Gretzky photo (lovely pic btw!)
Would you like me to add obvious photo credit on the photo's caption?
I can understand that blatant disregard for your work can get frustrating and I'm more than happy to do anything that I can to try and rectify this.
I can also take it down if you'd like.

As you noticed, the photo has a click-through link, but I am more than happy to credit you in the caption, as I've stated.

- Echo

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:03:00 -0400

Aw, thanks! Really though, it’s cool — I was more using the post as a jumping off point to talk about those other things that I’d noticed lately — how microblogging maybe is eroding the idea of crediting since it allows us to post stuff so easily, and that the prevailing style generally omits it, and how some people freak out a little about having their photos posted on Tumblr w/o their name. I really don’t have a problem with just using the click-through link, since the people who are really interested have a way to me if they want it.

musicianswithcats: John Darnielle & Gretzky. Looking...

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:45:00 -0400

musicianswithcats:

John Darnielle & Gretzky.

Looking through my Flickr stats just now, I see that JD and Gretzky got a little Tumblr love yesterday. Look Gretzky, you’re famous!

Musicians With Cats posted this photo two days ago, and it was reblogged a bunch of times. What’s interesting, and I’ve noticed this before, is that people tend not to click through to Flickr from popular Tumblr photos for some reason. Probably because many of those people already have gotten what they wanted out of it — to see it, click ‘like’ or ‘reblog’, and move on with their lives (and that’s just fine).

It’s doesn’t really bother me that people post my Flickr photos without clear attribution, as long as they keep the link back to my Flickr page intact. But it really bothers some people, and looking at how low the click-through rate is, maybe I can see where they are coming from just a little bit? It’s not like it’s difficult — the Tumblr bookmarklet even elegantly provides the “[photo title] by [Flickr name]” credit if you use it on a Flickr photo page. But ultimately it seems like in the era of microblogging and the popularity of the photo-without-any-text Tumblr post, we have to basically be happy with attribution-by-link, or start watermarking (yuck).

Side thought that just occurred to me: I wonder how long until Flickr either adds a Like button or changes “Favorites” to “Likes”?

Falls Lake

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:23:54 -0400

Falls Lake

Photo

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:50:54 -0400

Actual dream I had:

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 22:16:00 -0400

I know it’s not very interesting to read about other people’s dreams unless you’re featured in them, but this one makes me laugh and so maybe it’ll be worth your while.

The cat was meowing at the bedroom door, and his meowing invaded my dream. I dreamed that I was sleeping on the roof, and the cat was walking around my feet, meowing. [Dialogue was possibly spoken or possibly just thought, as it often is in dreams, I’m not sure which.] - “What does the cat want?” - “Oh, he wants to know the Superchunk tour dates” - “[dismissively] Oh, well, he can look them up on the internet”. And then I woke up for real and got up to feed the cat.

austinkleon: Martin Wilson’s Contact Sheets These are quite...

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:24:07 -0400

austinkleon:

Martin Wilson’s Contact Sheets

These are quite amazing — Wilson shoots each photo on film with the contact sheet in mind, the end result is a kind of comic “strip”, or image made up of the smaller images.

My pictures are painstakingly created frame by frame on 35mm film. I get the whole film developed, scan it, then piece the final image together on the computer, making a large contact sheet. It’s only when the completed film strips are laid out side by side in the contact sheets that the final image appear.

Each work usually takes months to complete, as each frame is obsessively taken in sequence. No pasting together after the event, no cheating in Photoshop!

If I make a mistake or take a frame out of place I start the film again from the beginning.

The works are all records of real journeys, the visual remnants of hours walking or cycling round town, bringing to life the unheard voices of the city.

This is fantastic, I love it.

"This time around, the North Carolina indie band the Mountain Goats’ “Wizard Buys a..."

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:59:00 -0400

““This time around, the North Carolina indie band the Mountain Goats’ “Wizard Buys a Hat” is the opening set-piece theme song for the third volume…””

- Matt Fraction hopes second time’s the charm for ‘Casanova’ - USATODAY.com

…but don’t just buy it (or shun it) because of that — dude’s quite a storyteller. I’m not much into comics, but I’ve been reading these and they’re great.

Back of Brindy (by Lalitree) Happy Trails, Rod!

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:11:10 -0400

Back of Brindy (by Lalitree)

Happy Trails, Rod!

Credit

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 12:53:31 -0400

Correction: that photo is by Steve Pyke, just for the record.

fuckyeahthemountaingoats:

lostinallthelights:

i’m just gonna put this here. look how awesome it is.

(photo credit: i believe this was a kathryn yu photo. she’s awesome).

ittookseconds: What would your 4’14” track be? “The Letter” by Arthur...

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 20:01:26 -0400

ittookseconds:

What would your 4’14” track be?

“The Letter” by Arthur Russell, from Love Is Overtaking Me. What a simple, light, yet evocative little song.

Hey, there’s a letter for you
Downstairs, can I read it too?
Hey, there’s a letter for you
Downstairs on the table

Honorable mentions for 4’14”: “Sluttering (May 4th)” by Jawbreaker, “Anti-Socialist II” by My Dad Is Dead.

Oh, and also

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 21:05:02 -0400

two Tall Dwarfs drawings (self-portraits) done by Chris Knox when he was here last, and signed by he & Alec

Partial list of things found while cleaning out a car we're getting rid of:

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 20:46:55 -0400

a MacBook adapter
a protractor
two copies of Last Plane To Jakarta #6
one dollar
cassette tapes (Cameo, Word Up; Nick Cave, Henry’s Dream; others)
a loyalty card for a defunct coffee shop
a filled loyalty card for a extant coffee shop
a check for $100 (February 2010)
a check for $750 (August 2009)
a Nader/LaDuke button

'74-'75

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 11:06:08 -0400

We saw the Connells last night! They sounded really great, listen:

abbyladybug:

74-75Boo

Fuzzy memory for today

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 16:48:00 -0400

This morning when I was blow-drying my hair, I was thinking about making music — about how I have some ideas about what I want certain songs to sound like, but don’t necessarily know how to make that sound on my own. I’ll have to describe the effect, rather than the technique, to the people I’m playing with.

Standing there in the bathroom thinking about this, I remembered back to when I was a kid — probably not much more than 14 or so. I had gotten my rural-Midwestern hands on an issue of Option magazine; it had Elvis Costello on the cover. I pored over every page of it. One of the one-pagers was a little vignette on Marc Ribot, who I’d never heard of back then, and in the course of telling a story about him in the studio, he’s quoted as telling a musician to “Play it like a midget’s bar mitzvah”. There was a picture of him in profile, making like a monster motion with his arms. For some reason, I’ve always remembered that.

Four or five short years later, when I was in college, I’d find myself riding around downtown Grinnell, Iowa with Marc Ribot in the backseat of my friend Aaron’s Volvo stationwagon, along with another member or two of the John Zorn Cobra ensemble, who had just played on campus. We heard a band rehearsing in an upstairs apartment on one of the desolate streets. “That sounds live” someone said, and we stopped and went up to check it out. The band seemed baffled that we were there, so we left. I can’t quite remember what else we did that night, or why we were even driving around in the first place. Probably we just gave up and dropped them off at their hotel. I guess I didn’t think to ask him what a midget’s bar mitzvah sounds like.

The froggiest frog pond in all of Durham town. Recorded on my...

Sun, 30 May 2010 22:08:57 -0400

The froggiest frog pond in all of Durham town. Recorded on my iPhone last night.

Birthday dreams

Wed, 19 May 2010 10:41:00 -0400

I had an odd dream last night that Nick Cave covered a song that I wrote. In the dream it was not really a huge deal, it was like “oh, the new Nick Cave record is out, I forgot that they had asked me if he could cover my song”. On the record it was like a bonus track. I think it was called “The Road Song”, which is not the name of any songs I’ve written (but maybe I should write one now), and the dream gets a little murky here but at some point I think it morphed into the actual Nick Cave song “The Train Song”.

Later in the dream I was at a friend’s house (that I’ve never been to), and we were singing along to Mission of Burma — “When two worlds collide, they stick together…”. This morning, when I came to write this down, I thought “hmm, I wonder what that MoB song is called, I really like that line”. Looking it up, I was a little surprised to find that it’s called ‘Birthday’, because yesterday was my birthday.

I don't get it.

Tue, 11 May 2010 10:18:30 -0400

Ever since I posted this Twitter update about the John Green/TMG/Bieber thing, I’ve gotten a bunch of weird new followers. All of the accounts have these things in common:

usernames consisting of seemingly random letters, like “rytpawulefic”
Sort of similar-sounding status updates of rather mundane personal stuff, like “Don’t want to go to class today”, the weather, or the Jonas Bros.
Listing locations like Ukraine, Indonesia, etc. but posting exclusively in English
never posting any @-replies at all
no website listed in their profiles and they never post links

These are Bieber bots or something, right? But why?

jcks: mrslady: Still images from The Monkey and the Mermaid, a...

Mon, 10 May 2010 22:41:08 -0400

jcks:

mrslady:

Still images from The Monkey and the Mermaid, a new interdisciplinary performance collaboration between Christine Fellows, visual artist Shary Boyle and multi-instrumentalist Jason Tait (with a lot of help from some great pals), which premiered at Images Festival in Toronto, April 2010.

Will there be a recording available? Or, ooh! is this act going on the road?

agrammar: This is being found ugly (click through), which is...

Thu, 06 May 2010 16:04:50 -0400

agrammar:

This is being found ugly (click through), which is understandable, but I can imagine it working okay, on a thick enough hardcover, in the kinds of massive bookstore piles a new Mitchell book will obviously get. Especially versus the kind of stark/monolithic hardcover look that says HEY THIS IS A THING, an event — put those in piles and they seem way more assertive than a book by someone like Mitchell needs to be. Designs like this one, to me, always seem completely different when they’re actually wrapped around a clothbound spine, instead of edged off and flat and condensed (look at it larger); they can seem really inviting, like they’re trying to communicate that what’s inside is deep and textured and full of stuff, a place you can explore and sink into. It also seems like the kind of cover you start getting attached to during the actual reading of the book, which is a kind of cover I like.

(via housingworksbookstore)

I have seen it in person (a friend had an advance copy) and it was not ugly at all. I recall the colors being a little less saturated and contrast-y than this pic suggests, and perhaps printed on some kind of textured and ‘natural’-colored stock. But I could be remembering wrong, and it could be that the actual release will look different from the advance (which was a paperback). But the version I saw certainly worked (though, the more I look at that drop shadow, the less I like it).

"All night, out in the great fjord, they heard the ice, they woke, they dozed again, the voices of..."

Tue, 04 May 2010 15:15:48 -0400

“All night, out in the great fjord, they heard the ice, they woke, they dozed again, the voices of the ice entered their dreams, dictated what they would see, what would happen to each dreaming eye as, helpless, it gazed.”

- Thomas Pynchon, Against The Day, p. 129.

It’s been nearly two years since I picked up this book, and for some reason, I still think about this passage (and this one as well). When TRP gets his comma on, it’s magic.