Plato’s Beard

Standing in line marking time– Waiting for the welfare dime cause they cant buy a job The man in the silk suit hurries by As he catches the poor old ladies eyes Just for fun he says get a job

Thats just the way it is Some things will never change Thats just the way it is But dont you believe them

They say hey little boy you cant go Where the others go cause you dont look like they do Said hey old man how can you stand To think that way Did you really think about it Before you made the rules He said, son

Well they passed a law in 64 To give those who aint got a little more But it only goes so far Because the law don’t change another’s mind When all it sees at the hiring time Is the line on the color bar

The new Geico caveman ad ad made me go hunt up the techno sounding song. It’s by Royksopp and called Remind Me, and here’s the music video from YouTube:

The video is bloody awesome, but then I am a sucker for this stuff ;-).

Have you listened to the Avalanches? Below is a YouTube video of Since I Left You, which for some reason I have watched over 7 times now and I think I can watch another 10 times or so without getting bored:

Malian “bluesman” Ali Farka Touré died last night. The story goes that he fell in love with [African-]American blues music and adapted his own native music to that style. The picture to the left is the cover of his collaborative album with Ry Cooder. If you have not heard Touré before, find a site (perhaps last.fm or Amazon) which will let you listen to snippets of “Ai Du”. Its a great song.

The other day while driving home I was amused to hear the Gotan Project on NPRs slick economics and capitalism news program “Marketplace”. I have been listening to Gotan Project for a few months and found the music very interesting, at least to write code to, but what amused me in this instance was that the song they were playing (just a short bit of) is titled El Capitalismo Foraneo.

Plato’s Beard » Music

Plato’s Beard » Music

Currently playing on my iTunes: Staralfur by Sigur Rós. Its a nice, haunting song (Epitonic will even let you legally download it), though the more uppity types might find it (as always) pandering or trite. One way to identify the uppity types ;-) is by their unfaltering admiration of Springsteen — I think the thing for this crowd is the Woody Allen trick of mixing the trivial (baseball) with the allegedly profound. Anyway this is not one my pet rants, though it sort of turned out this way. Just wanted to point you to the song.

And also a very interesting movie (which falls into the same classification as the song) called The Girl in the Cafe which I picked up quite by change because of the dratted free coupons that Blockbuster wastes my time with (because of my erstwhile DVD subscription). The movie in short: idealistic, simple, young girl meets nice, old, shy bureacrat resulting in trip to G8 summit and question of poverty, hunger, etc. Includes statutory Bono (One!) blurb at end, and all in all leaves one feeling empty and disgusted about oneself and the world (factoid from the movie: a child dies every 3 seconds due to entirely avoidable causes), except of course one is one of those sophisticated, uppity types described above! The movie ends with Staralfur in the background.