I was never great at love poems, but this is probably my best. Happy Valentine’s Day. ______________ Gravity: Summer Solstice, 1992 Go tell it to the sea, how he should let go his moonstruck, his shameless high tides – climbing each day, each night kissing at her cloudless indifference.
Read moreAnn called it, “juxtaposting,” I believe. So this morning, when I encountered a host of inspirational refrigerator magnets in my local bookstore, it occurred to me that I might test one of the theories in the circular rack before me. First, the theory: Next, the test: [Warning – the following may be disturbing.]
Read moreIf you pay attention to my music entries, you may have noticed a recurrent theme. It seems a lot of the bands I hear these days, many of which I really like, remind me of bands from the past. Like The Mary Onettes: I recently tripped across one such example, Sweden’s The Mary Onettes. They can’t seem to make up
Read moreVerily, we have arrived at the end of all culture. Perhaps predictably, the culprit is technology. Or, to be a bit more specific, the culprit is Microsoft, which has now infused the art of songwriting with the same kind of magic and warmth you’ve come to expect from Excel. Microsoft is pitching software designed for you, no musical training required.
Read moreI’ve recently discovered Wordle. Which is what, you ask? Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however
Read moreTo truly love some silly little piece of music, or some band, so much that it hurts…. – Sapphire On June 9, 1992, Fontana Records released an album called Ferment from a new band called Catherine Wheel. The disc managed to be as noisy and distortion-riddled as Jesus & Mary Chain without sacrificing an ounce in the way of melodicism.
Read moreWe went to see The Killers at DU last night. A few stray thoughts, in no particular order of importance. 1: There are air raid shelters with better acoustics than Magness Arena. I’m guessing it makes for a suitably noisy hockey barn, but let’s just say that it’s sub-optimal for a concert. Still, the crew managed to make the band
Read moreWhen we created the new WordsDay graphic above a few weeks back we challenged everybody to name all the authors. Some of you took a shot, and I think the best set of guesses got about 10 of 15 right. So, for those of you who have been dying of curiosity, here are the answers. Left to right: William Butler
Read moreIt has been alleged that Scholars & Rogues is not, strictly speaking, a political blog. Sure, we write about overtly political issues and devote our share of time to things like media policy, energy and the environment, business and the economy, and international dynamics. Yes, we were credentialed to cover the DNC, but we don’t really do hard, insider, by
Read moreAbout three weeks ago, Jim Moss over at The Seminal laid the 2008 electoral results map over maps of poverty and income inequality. The visual comparison was illuminating, and Jim’s post got me to thinking – what if you did the same thing with a wider range of measures and rankings? What kind of picture would emerge? (Jim has himself
Read moreIn case you missed it, Colbert had an unusually literary moment the other night. The festivities commence at the 1:41 mark. This post is dedicated to all Scrogues who did their MA theses on Austen. *cough* Booth *cough*
Read moreWe have a new WordsDay graphic because somebody *cough* Mackowski *cough* insisted that we needed one. So here it is. Now, a little fun. The first S&R reader to accurately identify the 15 authors shown, in order from left to right, wins … well, our enduring admiration. It ain’t much, but what do you want for nothing? Submit your answers
Read moreTrusting is one thing I don’t know When it comes to the campaigning men But I’ll meet you at the election When I vote for the hope of this land – Sean Kelly You may have noticed, if you’ve been paying attention, that the music industry has gone to hell of late. It isn’t that nobody is making good music
Read moreFreewriting, then, around some keywords: [sigh] The fusion juice contusion slams it together in song and inclusion we join our hands in stark confusion Reusing the poverty-stricken vows of howitzers and butterflies freebasing the verse reverse like bass guitars with wings (the bassist is racist? What the hell does that mean?)
Read more“I’m interested in what motivates you, and how you understand the world.” He glanced sideways at her. “Rausch tells me you’ve written about music.” “Sixties garage bands. I started writing about them when I was still in the Curfew.””Were they an inspiration?” She was watching a fourteen-inch display on the Maybach’s dash, the red cursor that was the car proceeding
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lullaby pit 