Had a crap christmas, at home by myself for several reasons (sickness mainly) so got bored, wrote a song about it:
Christmas Joke Song. Download & have a beautiful one for yourself-
m@
[UPDATE: new version of Christmas joke song - now with happy new year]
Here's my Xmas present to you-
If you ever come into a situation where you:
Merry Christmas All-
m@
I found this amusing, and this disturbing.
No, not 'everquest'... ever been up a mountain? Ever been up the MFer to F all MFer's of the Waikato's essential (basic) mountain tracks- namely- Te aroha mountain?
I have. Twice. When I was well.
This time I did it - not through force of leg, but through sheer strength of willpower...
If physical abundance of energy was the keypoint, I would've stopped after the first 20 minutes- but I kept on- and on - and on - despite a complete lack of stamina, and through the 4-hour climb. Normally it should take three, but by the last quarter stage of the journey
(when the only thing keeping me going was (a) threat of potential sickness or death if I got stranded in the middle of the bush as the sun was going down, and (b) the fact that if I didn't keep moving I would have to walk down via the same oft-nigh vertical path that I'd just tramped up, which -was not an option-, as opposed to the much longer but smoother road-path) I was resting about every two-four minutes, for about 3-10 minutes at a time.
That is how f'ed this mountain is to climb with CFS (even late-stage CFS in such as myself). From about halfway up my muscles hurt after every five minutes, and my heartrate sped up to overload in just under ten. It was mental. It was pretty damn full on. It was one f'er of a f'ing hike.
When, at long last, (having left friends Richard and Simon to carry on without me about halfway) I reached the pinnacle of the summit, touched the trig point,
I dropped down and slept for about an hour before I had the strength or stamina to stand up. With the kaimai fog wafting down droplets of cold-to-humid water particles on my body, it wasn't the kind of place you stay in for too long, nevertheless, continuing to walk, down this time, down the long winding sojourn of the tv-transmitter maintenance vehicle access rd,
is not the easiest thing on earth when the most you've had to eat is is two pieces of toast and an apple. I stopped and slept every fifteen minutes or thereabouts, and eventually the guys (having - to put my CFS-affected-brain-and-body into sharp contrast - done an extra hour & half additional bushwalk down to some mines) caught up with me. They -were- surprised to see me,
given that they themselves had had problems finishing the final half-hour heist of te aroha proper. But when I explained the hike to the top, they were reasonably impressed - Richard even asked me if I was proud of it. I realised I was - not at overcoming physical limitations, as my body's had those for half this decade so far, but more for the tenacity and mental force-of-willpower to stick it through, despite constant physical limitations.
M@ out. I have some dying and groaning in bed for the next two weeks, to complete.
From the gearslutz forum:
"Have you toured with a low to mid level band?
Touring expenses are pretty much the same wherever you go. In fact they may be cheaper in the US as they are a bigger market, accommodation is cheaper as is petrol etc.
Even if your claim were true, I'm sure most of those artists would be losing money in other areas of the world. It ain't no gravy train, except for the long established, super successful touring bands perhaps.
I've had 30+ years experience touring with major acts, indie/alt and low budget bands. Everyone bar the top level (Police, Madonna, Stones etc) are breaking even at best. I've done quite a few shows recently with lower level acts that lost significantly.
The artists in question paid the shortfall out of their publishing royalties.
I'm earning much less on the road now than I was twenty years ago for doing the same amount of work.
Selling CD's and t-shirts at the show caqn bump up your income, but touring is still expensive, and as yet unproven as a way to earn a decent living, except for major, major artists.
To sum up my thoughts......
Everytime the free music debate comes up, several people post about musos making 'shit loads of money'. I just haven't seen it, except for the upper end of the market.
There is a huge divide between the earnings of the drummer in Coldplay and the drummer with Nick Cave.
Dont forget also that a pop musicians best earning years can be anything from 2 to 10 years!"
Important points to remember for anyone claiming that lack of music sales are being more than made up for by concert, t-shirt and merchandise sales, from someone who's actually 'on the front lines'.
Incidentally, talked to Blink at the aforementioned suckfest further down page - his best advice for a touring band was to spend next-to-nothing on food- now, take into account that we're talking 'as opposed to just getting takeaways', and the numbers for what people actually earn from touring as a small band become a little more transperent.
... the music industry. Hooray for corporate and consumer greed and the victims of both - actual musicians. W00t
I come across so many poorly setup, badly-run PC's, unsurprisingly, as that is the norm for Windows PC's- unfortunately.
If ever Microsoft decided to put out an OS which integrated with the much better free services available on the web, I'd be shocked.
That aside, five & a half ways to take the suck out of your web experience:
In my home town, no less. Creepy.
m@
The basis of business is opportunism - the basis of buddhism is non-grasping and moral ethics. This puts me in a bit of a bind :)
Should've gone to buddhist temple tonight- instead went to a muso gathering at the polytech and felt like a bit of shill - passed some of my music on to some people who have gotten somewhere in their careers.
From a buddhist point-of-view, that's wrong because my motivation wasn't correct - I would've had to have had nothing to gain from the exchange if the motivation was correct. Not in the sense of not advancing the number of people who know my music, potentially advancing my 'career', or whatnot- but more in the sense of not viewing that as a gain in itself.
Once again from a buddhist point-of-view, either boom or bust, it's all good. Both have their share of problems, and neither makes a person fundamentally happier beyond a superficial level of comfort. So, the point being, I shouldn't be grasping after material happiness or business success, even if I end up getting it anyway..
In retrospect there's no harm to handing on my music to a few people, and the experience clarified for me where I do not want to go, in terms of my music, or pushing it for example.
There's no point to being a grasping sell-out - specifically with music, where the rewards of doing so are non-existant.
I thought William Shatner's cover of 'Mr tambourine man' was as far as ironic cringeworthiness would take me but I have found a new candidate:
Bill Cosby's cover of St Peppers. Just when you thought things were bad enough -
Brilliance-
m@
Sincerely, I did not need to know this stuff - although it is quite funny. Clownfish can change sex at will? Tell Pixar!!!
In other news, which is currently making the online music forums happy, and the online computer communities unhappy, the new french anti-piracy laws kick ass. One more reason for me to want to move to france (besides hot women and croissants) ;).
Also, I think this UV wireframing of someone's house is a pretty idea.
Look Out
m@
The coolest game of 2006, Psychonauts is now free to play through Gametap till the end of the year.
Now, Giant prehistoric scorpions!!
Everybody has - or should fave - a favourite album, or albums - ones that stand above the rest, that speak to them in the way good albums do -
a direct communication with the listener. Style doesn't matter - soul doesn't matter. Tripped out on IDM? Raging with Metal? Calming the f*ck down with Classical? Whatever your bent, it's there - that's the magic of music.
I'm not going to tell you what mine are - if you're a cynic, you'll find them too heartfelt - if you're not all that intelligent, you'll possibly find them too 'highbrow'. Even if you've got a good heart and a strong mind, chances are you don't share my taste in music - it's that simple. It's such a personal thing that the smallest event - the kid you picked on/who picked on you in high school, the dead animal you found on your front lawn one morning - can have an effect on what affects you, musically speaking.
There's also the issue of taste - there's no accounting for it. Where you grew up, what kind of music your neighbours had, whether your dad was a musician, or a politician.
You'll either find rapture in the Backstreet Boys or you won't (and I don't). I seriously see people who look like they're on drugs, from listening to the Backstreet Boys. It's kinda sad (well, to my eyes), but that's just the way music is - it's like a palm reading. It's full of intepretation and fine lines, and no two people've got the same one.
A good album should make you feel like you've been broken down into infinite parts and are slowly being reassembled, in some strange way. It should make you feel like you want to destroy or be destroyed.
Not that I reach for those infinite heights, mind you - I just try to make music that I like.
Enjoy.
m@
The Czech republic orchestral recordings of the Brandenburg concerto's are both finely-recorded and excellent in terms of performance. Flac format recommended (as always) -
it's a shame wavpack didn't get the foothold that flac has - it's the better format, by far. Still, when the majority of people can't tell the difference between a 128kbps mp3 and a cd, it's all reasonably irrelevant.
m@
Essentially a vocabulary tester via synynomic association, but each correct answer donates 10 grains of rice to
third world countries. Seems silly, but they've amassed a lot of rice so far: freerice.com.
I went into some kind of trance-state playing it & listening to Massive Attack's one-hundredth window album at the same time...
m@t
Oh, man, this is just cool- Psychonauts is awesome, this looks even better - and with Jack Black doing the voice - alright! Tim Schafer on censorship:
"Oh I'm not worried about them at all. They're going to hate it. I mean, mostly we're just making it to our own personal tastes. I mean, I feel, personally, that you can't make a game with a broad axe in it and not have a decapitation. I feel almost like, that would be a bug. Technically speaking."
m@t
Inasmuch as I believe prostate cancer probably needs more attention than breast cancer gets (but, hey - let's face it - prostates are no way near as cool as breasts!), this free donation site (click to donate, sponsors do the rest) for free breast cancer exams to underprivileged women is a neat idea. You can click once per day - all you get presented with afterwards, is a page with the sponsors on it. That's it. No complicated signups or anything - just click. Enable some poor shmuck to get her breasts fondled by some nameless doctor in the interests of long-term prevention today!
In an auspicious coincidence, the Indian festival of lights happened to be on the same day I turned up in Auckland for the Crowded House, Supergroove and Pluto concert. I've never seen or heard anything like it before. I've been to some Indian shindigs before, had an indian flatmate, but nothing prepared me for the offerings of culture- Indian culture is far more communal (and fun) than western culture, which shows in the way we celebrate our artists (from a distance, behind barriers). In Indian celebrations it's like one large family. Plus their music is better. I tried 8 indian foodstuffs I hadn't seen before and enjoyed myself immensely.
Vector Arena's first mistake: putting on one of the support bands one hour before the ticket start time - and as a result of this idiotic mishap, barely anyone got to see Pluto, winner of several of last year's NZ music awards and a great band to boot. I maybe caught fifteen minutes of them before they disappeared offstage. Despite all this, they were great - it was at this point, however, that I noticed that the arranged seating left a lot to be desired.
Vector Arena's second mistake: in an move that would've made even a more staid event manager swoon, and despite the protests of all those standing or dancing, we were told to return to our seats and sit down by Vector Arena's boys in green jackets.
Yeah, you heard me right - a Supergroove concert with prohibited dancing... people were not even allowed to stand at the very edge of the rows they had paid $90 a ticket to be seated in, blocking noone's view of the performance. That's right - no standing during Supergroove, either. Now, for those of you who don't know Supergroove, they are (recently reformed) one of the most electric, dynamic, energetic stage acts in NZ history- and sitting in those seats, not being able to reciprocate- to give back to the band what they were giving us- felt like torture, and it totally ruined what was an otherwise flawless performance by the guys themselves.
Che fu & the gang were in top form, showing no drop in energy from their split in the 1990's, and if some of the routines seemed even slightly less spontaneous than their in earlier days, it was drowned out by the sheer wall of sonic mayhem that descended with accurate delivery from the boys in black. But no dancing. At least 50 people were told to sit down, at least, just in the small 20 metre radius I could see. Some of the crowd was angry and a backlash came during Crowded house...
They returned home in style - I can't think of a better concert I've seen in years - they dragged up Tim Finn & Don Mcglashon as well at various points throughout the concert, which lasted, in part due to the crowd's good energy, for a decent 1.5-2 hours. They were amazing - Neil showed none of his age and sang much like an angel, while Nick Seymour was perhaps even more enthusiastic during the show than the rest of the band combined! The new drummer is -excellent-. And every song rang true- which is good, because they, either knowingly or unknowingly managed to placate the large portion of the crowd which had clustered around the front of the stage - who, super-pissed at being told to sit down before, -would not- f*ing sit down and return to their seats, despite the Security guard's invocations. I was among them, spitting distance from Nick Seymour - as far as I could tell, the attitude was more or less one of unbridled hatred splashed with disbelief towards the security guards (I do feel sorry for the folk in the first two rows who got their line of sight blocked in this small backlash, however).
And yet the sweetness of Crowded House's performance managed to dull or take the edge out of that anger, and returned it triumphant, back into the performance. I think security knew there would be hell to pay at that point, and avoided an incident.
With almost every second song being sung along to by the crowd - to the extent that at points Nick & Neil just stopped & conducted, unrehearsed- it was very obvious that something in Crowded House's unique melancholic pop appeal still holds to this day - oh, and their new songs are fantastic too.
Buy the album. I'm not even a big fan, and I probably will-
I never knew the luxury of seeing them in their earlier days, but if last night's performance was anything to go by, they are one of the unignorable live acts in the southern hemisphere today. And good luck to them.
Vector Arena's third mistake: hosting the event at all. The atrocious acoustics of Vector Arena (I felt pity for people in the back and side seats who get only reflection & noise washback) notwithstanding, they obviously do not know how to host a Rock concert; personally I wouldn't go there again on any grounds. Do join me in avoiding Vector Arena on the grounds of lousy event management. But, if you get the chance, go see Supergroove & Crowded House as they tour the country - but avoid stadiums with numbered seating, as it = a terrible experience for live rock bands. Also, catch a diwali festival next year - you'll be surprised.
"Opinions are like a***oles - everyone's got one."
"SACD, DVD-audio.. like the 12-yr old girl singing into her comb really gives a sh*t."
"Average teen: I think that not only should all music be free but the record companies should be greatful that we even want to listen to their sh*tty music anyway!"
"A recording studio's essentially a financial black hole with powerful acoustics."
Birthday was brilliant, so much fun - old films & new 3d anima, lots of charteause & good times. A good time had by all-
m@
Re-painting the car, must be fucking with my brain, I've had the weirdest dreams the past night or two-
latest was- wait, do you wanna know? You do? Well thank god, cause I have no way of knowing, really:
Anyway, there's this stuff falling from the sky, and it's not rain or snow, it's almost hail but it's not, it's like white cotton candy, stickier and thicker and clingy-
and just as I'm about to tell someone about it the rain turns into an absolute downpour - so I run inside the house, and it's pouring through everything, it's like a tidal wave of this cotton shit, clinging to everything, swamping everything...
so I rush to the bedroom, desperately reach around the back of my computer and unplug it and put it in the cupboard as fast as I can, wrap my arms around it, because it's the only thing that matters, it's where all my music is, all the stuff I've created over my lifetime-
Paranoid? Not really. I have backups in place, I don't know what the cotton is- fear of death? Unlikely? Fear of cotton? Quite possibly.
Next dream - some weird alchemical thing - running through old school buildings, chased by something, then it's a mirror, and there's me, I come out of the mirror and reach inside my own chest - then a woman comes out of the mirror too - gets a bit hazy there....
In other news, I have to say, all sound quality issues aside, new radiohead album is not too bad. Takes a long time to get used to though- and it's no way near as challenging as some of their earlier stuff - still good though.
[edit: Man, even on a subconscious level, the second dream is kinda lame. Could I be any more obviously symbolic? Hmmm.]
Love,
m@
I realised tonight, the main reason I have some small aversion to maori culture is precisely the same reason I have some small aversion to linux -
both are great things IMHO. Yet it's not the subject, that I find distasteful - it's the attitudes of some of the people who expouse it, who tend to lean towards talking down on other people's cultures/OS's.
For both I think, a greater amount of mainstream acceptance and proliferation may placate the more insecure proponents of either. Agree? Disagree? Good.
Mostly working on music at the moment - that and the car's getting re-done.
M@
Help oppose the violence perpetrated by the Burmese government on innocent civilians by influencing China to cease support of the military dictatorship in Burma:
Sign the Avaaz petition.
And while you're at it, oppose China's own dictatorship by not buying chinese-made products.
m@
Well, I asked for it - when Ross said the game was called 'Asian Wheel of Death', I wasn't as astute as I could've been, in believing him, I mean. For reference, the game involved spinning a wheel and eating randomly-assigned packaged asian foods of various descriptions. One of these, namely the lemony-ginger, was so foul I actually started punching wooden walls to take my mind off of what was happening in my mouth, as well as the immenent warnings of my gastro-intestinal pathways. It helped. That has to be the foulest, most vile thing I have or will ever consume. I breathed at Phillip after finishing a mouthful of it and he almost dry retched for about five minutes.
Unsurprisingly, given that it was for sale for consumption, my immenent demise did not in fact eventuate, but instead left me with a fundamental appreciation for the simple wholesomeness of western snack foods, like Grainwaves and drinks that don't have 'Muskmelon' in their description. Still, if you're looking at ending your life, I can think of a surprising number of more appreciable ways to go, than to eat asian food shop 'lemony ginger'. A more accurate desciption would be the flavour of someone vomiting razorblades directly into your tongue.
It's death - only nastier. For masochists alone.
m@
It's alien's I tell ya. Locals complain of huge sickness outbreak after meteorite strikes earth, spreads fetid odours.
You might want to cross these off your potential vacation spots. No surprise, 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world exist in china. 3-4 of the most polluted -areas- are in the former soviet republic. Hooray for communism!
My thoughts on where the recent NZ cyber attacks came from have been confirmed (well, what other country would NZ have such strong economic interests in as to not want to reveal the source of the hacking immediately??):
China tries to hack several government's internal databases
Well, I didn't want to believe it, but it's actually true - all that rubbish about Starforce copy-protected computer games screwing up DVD burners that I silently thought was just crackers getting some anti-anti-piracy vibe going, turns out to be, well, completely true.
I installed, played and uninstalled Peter Jackson's King Kong - a brilliant game, by the way - and afterwards found that nothing I could do would get my DVD drive to burn any DVDs. I tried everything - settings, cables, ASPI layers, you name it. Didn't work - all that came up was a 'power calibration error' - in any program. Finally I uninstalled windows (well, wiped the partition) and reinstalled a ghost of that partition that I'd made as a backup two months prior (july). Surprise, surprise, DVD's burnt perfectly. So it just goes to show, sometimes you can trust crackers.
Particularly when it comes to almost losing a DVD writer to poorly written invasive copy-protection software.
Good on them for trying, but come on, surely you tested this stuff before you installed it on games?
For the record, avoid starforce-protected games.
Goodbooks is an online not-for-profit bookstore in New Zealand which donates it's proceeds to Oxfam to work against poverty and social injustice throughout the world. There's tons of stuff there, including Footrot Flats stuff! (doesn't mean anything to anyone overseas, but it is (or was) a popular comic here, for a time)
More cool independent (and mostly free) games
The clouds were amazing today.
m@t.
Vista - requires twice the amount of CPU power, RAM, HD space, has all these 'performance' features like 'Superfetch' & 'Readyboost', yet it -still- manages to run slower than a half-speced XP comp.
Well done, I say! Well done Microsoft for managing to con people into buying new redundant hardware- as well as slower
software packages (Office, and the rest)- and to get them to pay for the privilege!
That's one hell of a marketing department...
m@
p.s And that's not to mention this article - written by a New Zealander no less ;)
A lot of people didn't understand the focus of O - which was mostly external - some people thought it was just pulling together disparate fragments of stock footage in an attempt to make something recognisable- which was not the case - I genuinely love the old-style films that you find on archive.org, and other early footage archives, as the pace and the mentality of film-making was so different back then- and in some small way, I wanted to draw attention to that- to the beauty of the material itself. Of course, other folks might not see it that way and I won't force them to. But the point remains that films such as 'Look to the land' (probably one of the few first americana films with environmentalist sentiments), 'Knife Throwing' (an american mother practices knife-throwing with her two daughters) and 'Our Enemy' (probably the worst/best war propaganda film to date) reveal not just a different era, but a different focus - and I like that. Of course, they're all available for download for free, as well, which increases their value in a way. I encourage everyone to check them out.
This article demonstrates how ultrasonic harmonics (captured in analogue, but not in 44k digital) make a difference on the average listener (works subconsciously), why upsampled/up-scaled signals can sound better and why it's possibly better to be recording and working at 96k...
For the audio nerds out there (like me!)-
m@t
If you're in a New Zealand business, nothrow.co.nz (the Waste Exchange, by any other name) is a great way to get your company's waste reused or recycled, by other folk in the same (or nearby) location. Cheers.
Use the black version of google! Save the planet and be stylish!
Impress your friends!!!
Seriously though, it works out-
here's the reasons why...
The more I think about it, the internet has it's own distinct culture to it- to some this is pretty obvious, to some, not-
for example you'd would think, when a site or forum is an extension of a particular individual or individuals in a particular location at a particular point in time, it would have it's own original, distinct flavour- but no, it doesn't tend to.
More and more the web is being used as a tool for transnational communication, in the sense that it should transcend nationalities- even though most of the content on the web is english, painstaking attempts are made, by and large, to accomodate non-english, and non-western viewers and cultures-
anybody who posts on a forum can attest to the fact that people just won't 'get' you if you begin using local expressions. In a way, it's bringing the world a little closer together, by reducing the sum total of what you can communicate to standard english, without colloquialism and dialect. On the other hand, the net has introduced it's own dialects and communal colloquialisms to compensate for the lack of shared language. ROTFL, smileys- you get the picture...
What I don't get, though, is that some people just don't understand that the default culture of the web is globalised. Some sites want you to adapt to their localised slang or speak in a way that has nothing to do with overall net-culture, or accomodate their little net-tribe's ways of thinking, and they think this is quite normal. It ain't- the net is, by default, a globalised culture, not localised, non-exclusive, and generally pretty darn independent.
Sources such as wikipedia and the like show the kinds of virtues this can embody, the things it can create, and how.
The standards for what occurs, what's expected and what's not-expected, on the net en generale, while being works-in-progress, are standardised to a large degree now - most websites have a specific layout which conforms to a known type, most bulletin boards and forums operate in much the same way and expect the same kind of netiquette, etc etc...
If a particular world culture suddenly vanished tomorrow (bar the US), the general structure of the internet ensures that via redundancy the current net-culture would still persist and probably function in much the same way, though any cultural change registers on the net in various forms.
The point, though, is the basic principles of what can be expected and what can not be expected on various parts of the net are already defaulted, to a large degree, and expecting users to suddenly adapt to one website's fantastic-but-wildly-different layout, or one tiny net-tribe's ernest pretences, is not possible.
Everybody likes variation, for sure - but you get enough of that with standardisation- let alone without it. Hell, even I'm guilty of that. I just can't be bothered redesigning the damn site.
Because at the end of the day, it's about communication, not delineation, when it comes to the internet.
So what does this mean for local culture?
People think cultural localisation is great - as opposed to economic localisation, which is becoming less and less feasible. I see the value in cultural localisation, but typically when I see localisation, I see it in negative forms: people ernestly trying to defend their cultural bigotries, arrogances and 'we don't like yur kind around here' mentalities. As opposed to people genuinely attempting to embrace the more positive aspects of their culture, and retain that culture, in an overall climate of inter-religious and intercultural tolerance.
The world needs more standardisation, or cultural globalisation, as most cultural conflicts can be resolved with communication, and that isn't possible without understanding, which is made far less likely without forms of standardisation. I believe the net is a great sandbox to play in, even if it doesn't reflect the world as accurately as it would like to, and I think people can learn to be more tolerant through using it and experiencing the wild variety of viewpoints that one encounters. But until people stop expecting that the net should adapt to them- or in the case of some localised sites, using the net to reflect the intolerances of their local environments- there's sometimes little point in bothering to communicate at all...
Damn this is interesting - some of it- purely speculative- but rather interesting nonetheless.
m@
Dear God.
Everybody should own the following funk-house retro album by Crazy Penis: "a nice hot bath with..."
It's hard to describe this album - if I ever get marooned on a desert island with disco stars, Billie Holiday, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, and a pack of rat-waiters like they had on the Muppets - this is the soundtrack I will need. It's splendiferous in the best way possible. Other references could be: The Junior Boys (though their first album postdates this by 8 years) and... well, nothing actually. It's unique, a jewel of a record in a dried-up sea of inspiration, that is, the wasted musical landscape we habitat. I love it with all my body and mind, including even some of my toes.
m@
The power of Nightmares, another thought-provoking, analytical BBC documentary, reveals interesting, well-researched and extremely well-documented information on:
There are interviews with neo-conservatives, members of islamic extremist groups, former neo-conservatives,
political philosophers, experts in islamic history, american political history experts and lawyers from cases that ended up relating to the 'Al Queda' (a term the US invented, later co-opted by Bin Laden) "network" (which, incidentally- never existed).
What's interesting is that the two opposing factions (Islamic extremism and neo-conservatives) are both a reaction to the increasing individualism of western society as documented in another BBC documentary, 'The Century of the Self' (wrote about this one earlier on this year)- but both reactions are extreme and polarising- and thus lead to no positive change.
Another point to mention is that my friend Rob asked me a question regarding Zen earlier this month- specifically to do with whether it's a philosophy or a religion- I'll include my response here:
[While the underlying assumptions of Zen are that there is (a) Reincarnation, (b) karma and (c) the buddha and boddhisatvas existing in some metaphysical form to help practitioners and the world (the third is inconsistent across zen centers around the world - and most likely, western centers would be less likely to manifest said beliefs), these are not the focus of the religion- that being, the introspective goal of enlightenment, or simply 'being' in an unselfconscious sense.
Buddha never gets 'worshipped' as such in zen centers (to my knowledge) but there's usually thanks given to the buddha and boddhisatvas at some point in ceremonies - whether they are explicitly defined as being the living creatures when they were alive, or as some kind of continuously-existing metaphysical beings, possibly depends on the center. There is a tradition of lineage, that is that before a zen student becomes a master they must undergo a ceremony whereby the essential understanding of zen is "transmitted" from master to student, in a way of connecting the current practitioner to the historical buddha - but it is also believed that there is some kind of 'essense of zen', per se, that is transmitted, and could probably be regarded as a semi-metaphysical belief.
Certainly the buddha is never referred to, in any buddhist religion, as a god-figure i.e creator, but often he is treated as highly as one would be in a creation-driven religion. Hence the (reasonable, but somewhat mistaken) assumption by some christians that a man simply replaces god in buddhism.
To me it's almost like these three things are underlying societal assumptions in the same sense that reincarnation was the underlying hindu assumption in the buddha's time, and rebirth in heaven was in Jesus'. But they don't play a great role in the religion. However it is still quite accurate to refer to Zen as a religious sect, because of these beliefs.
As you know, ancient zen masters (I say ancient, I mean before 1700CE) would distract their students from thoughts of enlightenment and buddhism by calling out 'buddha is a shit-stick!', however the purpose of this was not specifically to deny the valuableness of the buddha and his teachings, but moreso to snap the student out of pointless intellectual conjecture and get them focused on productive non-activity (ie. just 'being'). Similar is the zen saying of 'if you meet buddha on the path, kill him', referring to buddhism or the belief in buddha becoming an obstacle to enlightenment-
most buddhist traditions have some version of this, but as a training for advanced students - in zen it's a little pronounced, comparitively. The Tibetan monk I meet with regards it, as a highly-advanced technique, to be applied in specific cases where the student is becoming infatuated with the idea of enlightenment and the buddha, but not a treatment that would always be applied to an advanced student, in all cases. This is where Zen can sometimes differ, depending on the particular school or history.
I have heard of zen centers in japan where the turning of a great wheel is said to dispel countless years of bad karma, and that is clearly dogma. Further, the zen centers in Japan have been corrupt since the 1960's (I have no idea on their current state) so it's best to reference non-japanese sources when talking of modern zen.
There is a strong case, in my mind as well as many others I have read, for agnostic buddhism, or zen, in the sense that the core teachings of either neither require belief in the certainty of reincarnation or other unprovable effects such as karma. I prefer this- though I am not sure that such a case can be made for aetheistic zen, as it requires a level of certainty that would possibly be at odds with the general philosophy of zen. One of the great traditions of zen asks us to 'swallow a huge burning iron ball of doubt' - that is, to question everything, and let that permeate your self.
There are others who would disagree with me (probably most of them!) - I attend a local buddhist group, and there's a tibetan monk who comes down from auckland every once in a while - I don't particularly like the tibetan tradition, it's the catholicism of buddhism, it really is. However, they've got some excellent techniques, so that's a reasonable contribution to the general tapestry that is buddhism, even if they do get a little full of their own sect, every once and a while. Anyway, according to the tibetan tradition (and, I think, most mahayana traditions - where zen stems and splits from) a total belief in the top three are required as otherwise the incentive and motivation for dedicating oneself to the pursuit of enlightenment is not there - this is where zen splits, I think. For while there was a strong tradition of intellectual debate and needing to back up your beliefs with ontological arguments (however full of swiss cheese holes) in tibet- yet, in zen, again the emphasis is on 'just sitting' or 'just being'- this is possible without debate, without intellectual machinations, and so is free of the necessity of justification. Justification would be seen as hindrance.
So to answer your question, no, Zen is not without it's share of irrational beliefs- however, out of the many forms of buddhism, it is the most conducive - I think - to a more real-world, aetheistic intepretation, and one which doesn't require the top three- and in fact there are several western developments (metacognitive therapy, mindfulness training) which take the core principles of zen and vipassana and apply them in a secular context - however, these lose a lot of the useful cultural motifs and core values in their headlong rush to introduce more easily-frightened people to them.
I hope this has been of some use.]
This is interesting to me, as it shows that I have, actually, learned something during the past six-odd years of zen/buddhist non-linear study, from a more intellectual point-of-view at least. Whether or not I can apply it- well, perhaps in part. Getting better at it, but by no means enlightened (ha!) ;)
The wellington trip was curious- thanks to Richard for sharing the trip plus thanks to the following pharmaceuticals for keeping me alive and well:
Thompsons Super C
Q-gel coQ10
Thyroid support tablets
My homemake glyconutrient powder.
The weather forecast said fine, we got hell. 45 degree winds and rain, top of Wright's Hill on the thursday, Wilton bush, dark, Makara spooky, in the dusk. Yummy curry, always good.
Next day did Skyline walk & various friends...
Sat was the screening, did well, got a few interested people, plus did some covert marketing/freebie-drive (the recipients of which are probably reading this), cuba st. View from Mount Vic was spectacular.
Abrakababra very good, finally started to shut down health-wise that night.
Did the King Kong (what a name) exhibition in the Hutt on Sunday, then back home on a ten-hour drive that nearly cost us our mental health - in a strange but good way.
Wind turbines outside of Palmerston north are spooky and strange. They look artificial in the landscape, and horrifically alien, and Huge, like gigantic food blender triblades. Not like the soft, curved one at Brooklyn in Wellington at all. Reminded me of the Tripods Tv series (remember that, child of the eighties??). I understand why some folk are so adverse to them, now.
Cool, but frightening.
Bom Shankar,
Matt
"The time has come, my shellfish friends, to do some other things:
like business crap, and income tax, and buy some extra strings.
Although the sound industry's all rot,
this pig still might have wings...
Kaloo, koolay, make my work pay, and buy some of my things."
- (not quite) Lewis Carroll
There comes a time in every man's life, when he looks at himself, and thinks "Is that hair, all the way down there?".
Later on, you realise that you need to make money too.
So without further ado, it's time to call life's bluff, lay the chips on the table, pull out the tomato sauce, and present to you three intriguing items:
1. Soul Studios up - and running
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I've been operating under this name for some years now, but only this january got the space to do work properly.
Recently I've been doing some work for a small-time US games developer called Matrix games, working on some fun-ishpirate voiceovers.
The (pretty) website is up and running at:
www.soulstudios.co.nz
The song clip you'll hear looping on the main page (if you wait long enough to let it load - about a minute for people on dialup modems, 5 seconds on broadband) is from my new 15-minute EP, called...
2. "Songs to go to sleep by..."
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... which is available from amplifier.co.nz for purchase & download, as mp3s (for the technologically-l33t), or CD format, for those of us (myself included) who prefer to stay in what we in the computer industry call 'the plastic age' (incidentally, this is also known to folks in the music industry as 'before everything went horribly horribly wrong for folks in the music industry').
Purchase here:
metamorphosis's (Matt's) amplifier site
Here's the tracklisting:
1. Nameless, senseless - Neo-classical folk pop instrumental.
2. A day in the life of a month - Semi-gothic folk (vocal).
3. Roses - Pop-folk (vocals).
4. It's in my life (newly-redone version) - Rock-pop-folk (vocals).
and some other things between.
The artwork is neat - drawn via combination of pencil and MSPaint by my ninja (but weird) friend Thomas (it's alright, he knows it's true).
3. o2
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You can find more details on this short film here:
http://mattbentley.muzic.net.nz/o2/
but a short summary follows:
A short 15 minute music film, of the experimental/algorithmic variant:
"It's the sequel to "O", and also a video for my 2005 EP, "I want to listen to it" and a short film, in it's own right.
This time I made my own visualisations, which were developed in C++ using simple algorithms to generate moving graphics.
These were gradually mutated over a couple of months, with some of the more interesting variations being defined as their own separate "species".
The end result is a 15-minute music film which explores two existentialist polar extremes: abstract nothingness and definitive chaos."
Have entered it into so many festivals I've lost count (about 23 I think) - occasionally I receive emails from festivals I swear I've never heard of before, and then I find out that I entered them. Mostly international, including the interestingly-named Austrian 'Prix Ars Electronica' festival and the Tehran International Film Festival (gonna freak me out a few iranian fundies!).
Most of the festivals occur late in this year, so details on acceptance are hard to come by at this stage. So far it's been accepted into:
Prix Ars Electronica (finished - nothin')
Johnston Food & Wine Festival (July 12-14, 2007, Johnstown Flood Museum, 304 Washington Street, Johnston, Philadelphia, USA)
Animax animation film festival in Christchurch, New Zealand (July)
Wellington Fringe Film Festival, New Zealand (July)
As far as I know it should be showing in the Show Me Shorts festival in November, in Auckland, Dunedin, Christchurch, and Wellington. More details here.
Should be showing at the Wellington Fringe Festival on July 14th, 3:30pm, which I will be heading down to (if everything goes according to plan).
I will email people in international locations should an entry get confirmed in your locale.
In the meantime, feel free to download the snippet of film and check out the screenshots from the website, or purchase a copy (details on website) should you feel inclined that way.
Of course, what am I doing, going into an industry that was doomed from the inception of the first punchcard?
I'm talking of course about folks downloading stuff for free online - and why shouldn't they?
After all, it's not like there's any artists getting hurt, right? Right?
It's just "the man"- and those 7 other men that he employs to talk about 'man stuff' to other 'men'.
Well, rest assured, there's no men here. Not one. Except for me. I'm a man. Or I used to be before life (in it's inesteemable wisdom) rid me of my dignity. Or was that an ex-girlfriend?
No, no that was definitely life.
At any rate, if you really want to "stick 'it'" to "the man" (and what exactly is "it", at any rate? Plastic? Wet towels?), go out (well, stay in actually) and buy my DVD.
Go on- don't think about it - just Buy It!
There's no middlemen here. No men, or middlemen. Not even small, pigmy-like men. Just me. I used to be a man.
Go on.
I swear- I slaved over a hot computer case replete with soldering gun and tinfoil hat, waiting (and crispening) just
solely so that I could pass this culinary delight of the digital media onto YOU, my unwittingly favoured customer! YOU!!! Yes, YOU!!
And all of your friends - yes, ALL OF them!
Now.
...
Have I sold you on this?... are you sold? You are?
Can you get your money back? Now? What? No.
But you can download a portion of this fantastic culineary masterpiece of the digital domain for free.
It's encoded in Xvid (AVI) format, and in Quicktime-
If you don't like that, chances are you probably won't like the rest of the DVD either-
By the way, this film may cause problems in people with Photosensitive Epilepsy. I kid you not. No kidding you, I.
Even might *make* a few of you epileptic- yes it's that freakin' cool.
A few of you, may ask, would I be getting this as a present from you, at some point??? No- you might get other cool things- but not things as totally cool as this is- this is very, very cool.
How cool is it, you ask? Well, it is so darn cool that when a polar bear woke up to find a copy of this film next to him, it said "Hey wow did it suddenly become really cool in here, all of a sudden, cause I am freaking FREEZING!!"
Ice rings on saturn are jealous.
That's because this film is so damn cool that when it is measured in centigrade they can't figure out how cold it was because the thermometer implodes!!! But judging by the speed at which it implodes, all scientists in the natural known world have agreed that it is somewhere in the vicinity of "wow, cool".
Buy now!!! Buy now, while stocks last (...I can always make more though).
Ehem. No, seriously, download the demo and see whether you like it- if you don't- I won't be offended. I might shake my
bare fists and knuckles at the sky screaming "WHYYYY!!!" but I won't really mind :) Really I won't mind. Really.
m@
All bullshit opinions & writings (c) Copyright 2007 Matt Bentley except when quoting others
