September 2013

An Italian journalist recently freed as a hostage of Syrian opposition groups certainly minces no words about them. From the BBC:

"Our captors were from a group that professed itself to be Islamist but that in reality is made up of mixed-up young men who have joined the revolution because the revolution now belongs to these groups that are midway between banditry and fanaticism," he said.

"They follow whoever promises them a future, gives them weapons, gives them money to buy cell phones, computers, clothes."

Such groups, he said, were trusted by the West but were in truth profiting from the revolution to "take over territory, hold the population to ransom, kidnap people and fill their pockets".

Mr Quirico said he and his fellow captive were kept "like animals, locked in small rooms with windows closed despite the great heat, thrown on straw mattresses, [given] the scraps from their meals to eat".

He said his guards seemed to take no interest in anything other [than] money and weapons - spending entire days lounging on mattresses, smoking and watching old black-and-white Egyptian movies or American wrestling shows on television.

He said he felt these men took satisfaction from seeing what they would regard as two rich Westerners reduced to the status of beggars.

Once, Mr Quirico said he had borrowed a mobile phone from a wounded rebel fighter to call home. "It was the only gesture of pity I received in 152 days of captivity," he said.

"Even children and old people tried to hurt us. Maybe I am putting this in overly ethical terms but in Syria I really found a country of evil," he said.

These are the folks Saint John McCain, Mother Teresa Samantha Power, Florence Nightingale Kerry, and Father Obama want to help by bombing Syria -- just a few light punitive pinpricks, you understand, it wouldn't really be war.

A commenter/screenshotter yesterday inadvertently pointed out the inherent pathos of a music blog with mp3 links removed. Sorry, it does look kind of silly. Have been gradually pruning sound files, oldest first, for reasons of storage/bandwidth/spam, and 2002-2005 posts are pretty much empty of active sound links. I reposted the blog in question mostly as a slice of obscure history. It's also a collection of ideas for how music can be represented through peripherals: text description, photos, diagrams, notation, artwork -- without direct access to the thing itself.
A later, very successful model for how to generate a scene/life/activity around contingent, waiting-to-be-clicked sound files has been Soundcloud.
I just kind of hate the simple-minded reduction of watching a cursor scroll through a wave file, as the inscription alternates between loud (exciting!) and soft (dull!) moments. Apparently we need this visual trick to make the dead data of 1s and 0s come alive and stay alive for 3 plus minutes. And then the highly artificial, intrusive, hypnosis-breaking device of having people post their faces and "Yo! Really tight groove, mate" smack in the middle of the timeline.
There's got to be a better way but apparently there isn't. Another alternative is YouTube style streams with everything from full-blown music videos to static LP covers positioned above the moving cursor.
All this assumes you need to do something with your eyes while your ears are working. And underscores that the web and blogging are visual media, despite the amount of music content online.

Ongoing edits.