journal and news

ugh, sorry to write this, but here's a little bit of gross politics...

moby — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:59:06 -0800

ugh, sorry to write this, but here's a little bit of gross politics...
the founder of home depot, bernie marcus, said yesterday that people
'should be shot' for not supporting republicans.
maybe he's a crazy old man who's off his meds, i don't know. but i do know
that democrats and sane people probably shouldn't be buying anything at home depot until someone at home depot explains why 'shooting people who don't support republicans' is part of their corporate policy.
seems like with the economy in the toilet now might not be the best time for a company
like home depot to alienate 53% of their consumers.
moby

Moby to present an award at the MTV Woodies

tomdef — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:26:26 -0800

Check out the nominee's and find out where you can watch the award here:

http://woodies.mtvu.com

am i safe in assuming that everyone knows about puppycam?

moby — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:15:34 -0800

am i safe in assuming that everyone knows about puppycam?

http://cdn1.ustream.tv/swf/4/viewer.45.swf?cid=317016

what i love about puppycam:

1-the puppies. i love that they have 2 states of being: chewing and sleeping. sometimes they even sort of combine the two, as in when they're 1/2 asleep but still chewing on the stuffed pumpkin toy. or when one puppy is asleep but one of his brothers/sisters is chewing on his leg. i don't know what kind of puppies these are, but they're my new role models.

2-i also love that in a world of web 2.0 and flash web sites and high-tech etc this web sit is a lo-res non-moving camera mounted in the corner of a homemade puppy kennel. there's no plot, there are no graphics, there are just a bunch of yelping, chewing, sleeping little puppies.

3-back to the puppies. i love that the puppies are utterly careless. well, maybe that's not true. they seem to care a lot about chewing on things. but they don't really care if they're falling down or being fallen on, even when they're sleeping. how is it that puppies can fall so heavily and effortlessly? are their little puppy bones made out of bouncy lead?

puppycam is like a perfect little utopia(which is probably why every person i know checks it a few times a day). they eat. they sleep. they chew. they fall down. and that's about it. so for every stressed office worker or graphic designer there exists this puppy utopia, representing the life that everyone kind of wishes they had.

i have a feeling that a few million people are going to need ptsd therapy when/if some of the puppies end up being sold/adopted, or even when they grow up. dogs are great, but they're not puppies, and they do a lot less adorable stuff. for now there are the puppies. as i write this: some of the puppies are sleeping. some of the puppies are chewing on each other. and one puppy is alternating between chewing on the stuffed pumpkin toy and another puppies leg. i mean, these puppies are never going to invent a segway or write a hilarious sitcom, but they seem to be as perfectly happy as any creature could ever hope to be.

moby

recently i was in san francisco and i went to visit some friends of mine who live in a houseboat

moby — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 02:47:26 -0800

recently i was in san francisco and i went to visit some friends of mine who live in a houseboat in sausalito. sausalito?

just over the golden gate bridge. we were walking around the other house boats and i saw the following:

is this the 4th little pig? the one who lives in a houseboat with an atrium?

i imagine the big, bad wolf would have to pretend to be a local bringing free-trade coffee and medicinal marijuana to get inside the 4th little pigs atrium-topped houseboat.

oh, and while visiting the land of houseboats we also took a boat trip around the bay and got up close to about 50 harbor seals. or, if you're in the uk, harbour seals. the seals are painfully adorable, but best seen from a distance. see, up-close the seals are still adorable but they smell like a bag of dead lobsters that someone kept in the sun for a week. i honestly never knew that harbor seals were so unbelievably stinky. cute as a fistful of buttons, what with their little doe eyes and their cute little whiskers. but that smell...maybe it's a natural defense they've developed? i can imagine a shark in the wild pacific getting close to a harbor seal and thinking 'wow, that seal looks tasty, but it smells like a bag of dead lobsters. maybe i'll go eat a fisherman instead.'

in other news, i just watched the newest 30 rock episode. ah boy, the writing on 30 rock is so good. if tina fey were single i'd lie down in front of her apartment until she agreed to marry me just so i'd stop bothering her. maybe that's called 'stalking'. ah well, what's semantics where true love is involved? she is perfect.

moby

oh, here are some pictures from the issue project space fundraiser the other night.

moby — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 02:36:39 -0800

oh, here are some pictures from the issue project space fundraiser the other night.
it was a really interesting event.
in particular i love looking at all the different ways in which people make experimental electronic music.

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2008/11/moby_tony_conra.html

and in other shameless self-promoting news, i think that 'last night: remixed' is out now on i-tunes and in stores.
have a good weekend.

moby

has anyone else noticed that obama and his family actually seem to really like and love each other?

moby — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:09:40 -0800

has anyone else noticed that obama and his family actually seem to really like and love each other? it's really heart-warming. i'm happy that obama is president-elect, but i'm also thrilled that this is our first family:

they are probably the most charming and endearing first family that the united states has ever had. and i love that last week obama took time off from his meetings to go to his daughters school for parent-teacher conferences. and i was reading in his memoirs that when he was a freshman at college in l.a in 1979 he hung out with:

"the foreign students. the chicanos. the marxist professors and the structural feminists and the punk rock performance poets. we smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. at night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, franz fanon, eurocentrism, and patriarchy. we set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake." (from 'the audacity of hope').

we have a smart and moderate president elect who's african-american and has a beautiful family and who hung out with punk rockers when he was in college? it's like waking up and finding out that every crappy top-40 station in america is now playing tv on the radio and the bad brains. moby

Moby DJ mix on Pulse FM NYC on Sunday night

tomdef — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:16:59 -0800

Moby’s mix will air on Beatport's Pulse 87.7 FM show this Sunday night in New York at 12am EST

The show is also streamed live via the web at pulse87.com

i've lived in the lower east side for almost 20 years now

moby — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:49:01 -0800

i've lived in the lower east side for almost 20 years now, but recently i moved to the depths of chinatown in manhattan.

i love it there, it's without question my favorite part of new york city. not necessarily the part of chinatown for tourists, but the deeper, murkier parts of chinatown where i'm invariably the only person on the street who doesn't speak mandarin or cantonese. the only downsides to living in chinatown are:

1-the smell of the garbage on sunday night, which is bad enough to make you want to stuff handgrenades in your nose and blow your face off just so you don't have to smell the putrefying bags of whatever it is they're throwing away.

2-the abundance of dead and almost dead animals in the windows of the restaurants. i do have to say that living in chinatown makes me even more solid in my veganism (i've been a vegan now for 21 years or so).

i love my neighborhood, but seeing a plate of food like:

makes it pretty easy to remain vegan. i don't even know what type of fish this is, or was. some prehistoric fish made out of moldy concrete? the missing link? the first fish to venture out of the primordial stew? some people might be concerned that i'm giving away my address by saying that i'm living in chinatown. that clearly means that you haven't spent a whole lot of time in chinatown, as it's a byzantine maze that even i get lost in.

see, this is what happens when political campaigns end, i write blogs about primordial fish and garbage bags filled with effluvia. regarding politics, though, i do find it funny that some people in the gop are still acting as if the campaign was on-going. sarah palin recently was talking about bill ayers, for instance. do you think some well-intentioned person in her family or close circle of friends could let her know that the campaign is actually over?

oh, and thanks to the people who came down to santos the other night to support the issue fundraiser.

moby

the issue project room

moby — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 06:28:44 -0800

for a while now i've been involved in the issue project room.
issue is a remarkable place, providing a stage and a home for experimental music in new york.
on november 11th(this tuesday) i'll be dj'ing at a fund-raising event for issue at santos' party house.
it's hosted by tony conrad, and features a really interesting and eclectic line-up of musicians and dj's.

DAVID LINTON
CHARLES COHEN
ALEX WATERMAN
BUBBLYFISH
TALIBAM
LUKE DUBOIS
CHIKA
CASPAR STRACKE

tickets are available here:

http://www.issueprojectroom.org/tickets.html

i hope you can come out and support issue.
thanks!
moby

p.s-oh, justy fyi, the dj set i'll be doing will be much more ambient and experimental than the normal dj sets that i do.

now that barack steve obama is president-elect

moby — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 06:20:21 -0800

for the last, oh, 8 years or so i've been primarily writing about weighty issues, like politics and economics and national security.
but now that barack steve obama is president-elect and the united states has re-joined the world community i can write about decidedly light-weight stuff, like toast.
i recently discovered this website:

http://toastalicious.com

it's a celebration of all things toast. which might seem mundane, but, well, who doesn't appreciate toast?
and who doesn't appreciate that people devote time, love, and energy to making websites about their niche obsessions?
like toast.
or toasters.
to wit, there's the:

http://www.toastermuseum.com/

this is actually pretty amazing, as the collection of old toasters is comprehensive and ingenious.
we've spent the last 8 years enduring the bush administration and we've spent the last 2 years slogging through the presidential nominations and then the election.
so let's take a break and breathe deep and take a few minutes to look at pictures of toasters or perhaps learn about the etymology of 'toast'.
and in lighthearted political news it was revealed today that the obama's will be getting a non-allergenic dog from the dog pound to accompany them on their move to the white house.
i guess this was part of the deal that president elect obama made with his daughters.
that if he was elected president they'd get a puppy.
see, even though the world is still falling apart we can take a couple of minutes to think about non-allergenic puppies and the history of the toaster.
there's nothing wrong with pound puppies and websites about toast.
we've all earned a brief respite, i think.
moby