Map It!

I love the wayfaring website...
An old friend I once worked with at Tower Books whiled away his hours at the front counter drawing maps freehand. Within a matter of minutes he could transform a slip of scrap paper into a tiny masterpiece of cartography.

New Beck Song

You know when there is something in life totally removed from yourself that seems to grow and change at some kind of parallel rate? Beck has always been like that for me. After being a grudging listener to "Loser" on the radio and thinking, like so many naybobs, that here was a one-hit wunderkind, it wasn't until a friend played the bluesy, melancholy sounds of One Foot in the Grave on a clunky tape player for me that the spark of interest really ignited. About a year later Odelay was like spontaneous combustion and I've anxiously awaited every new release since. The latest album from Beck is coming soon, but he has posted a new song that is dynamite, called "Chemtrails". When you link to the page, wave over the discobox and the track will start...

Z-Day

The other night Katy&Adam hosted "Z-Day" -an evening of watching zombie movies! Now, there's question you always have to ask on nights like this: why are zombie movies so much fun to watch? The subject matter is grim, the antics are disgusting, and at the end there is very little hope for humanity beyond a slow descent into the chomping jaws of the undead.

What's the appeal?

During our post-Z discussion, we might have stumbled upon a unifying factor. There is a post-apocalyptic quality to zombie movies. Though it is arguable that zombies are an ongoing apocalypse, there are other factors to consider; namely, a landscape devoid of humanity, technology and progress rendered useless, and a scattered few on the run from inexorable forces of destruction. Most importantly, the cities that are viewed even briefly in these films are always empty of life and cluttered with the debris of civilization that was.

Could it be that we enjoy dreams of an empty planet? or is it a morbid fascination with self-inflicted predators, hunters of our species inflicted upon us by our own misguided attempts at science and war? Ponderous questions, certainly. I don't have any answers.

Maybe I need to watch more zombie movies!