Boring Like A Drill.

Blogger seems reluctant to let me post anything bigger than this right now, so I’ll have to wait until tomorrow (or the day after) to post about how much I like the artist of whom Modern Art Notes has said:

“Has there ever been a more overrated painter? The figurative works are among the ugliest, most visually unpleasant canvases you’ll ever see in a major museum.”

I don’t plan on touching a computer until Wednesday. The subject and name indices will be updated for February next week sometime, along with further momentary diversions.

Like fashionable bars and bistros in Melbourne, this site has just been completely renovated in ways that you probably won’t notice. Unless you use a certain type of browser, in which case the layout is no longer hopelessly broken. I guess that’s what happens when you design a website by nailing together half each from two Blogger templates. Minor tweaks will doubtlessly ensue over the next week or so.

Over there –> on the sidebar. It’s a bit lo-fi for now but it’s a start. The index of names is also there.

Everyone referred to in this blog from inception until 31 December 2005, with links to the posts they appear in. The list may be updated every month.

Not surprisingly, Jeremy Bentham tops the list with ten mentions, closely followed by Peter Phelps on nine. Johnny Farnham and Nick Hornby tie for third at six namedrops apiece, and then Xenakis, Stockhausen, J.K. Rowling and my Dad on five mentions each.

It should be noted that being named on this blog is not necessarily a good thing. Sorry, Dad!

The new address for this blog is finally operational. Hopefully you were redirected here from the old address without much fuss. You can set your bookmarks to www.boringlikeadrill.com – it will send you to the right place.

Told you there were a few technical upgrades going on. I think some pictures from older articles are still missing, but these will be fixed soon.

Happy new year etc – back online in a few days, with a few changes around the place… Hope yr all having a good one – more soon once I’ve sorted the technical details.

While procrastinating over finishing a longer article, I’ve been clearing through some unfinished posts from last year. First, this gem from 10 October 2004:

And anyone who drones on to me about how they’re going to leave the country better be prepared to meet my wager of $100 that they will still be here a year later.

However, I’m not totally useless at prognostication. Also from October last year:

I forsee that this blog will perpetually be caught in a boom-bust cycle of updates.

Finally, here are a couple of pictures from an unfinished third instalment reviewing the contents of the Yooralla Box. First, a closeup of the front cover of the LP Judy Garland on the Radio, showing Judy’s scary Ellen-Foley-cocaine-black-hole nostrils to full effect.

Next, a prize photo of Barry Crocker’s crotch, from his fine LP No Regrets. Note the white jacket, belt buckle, and the two guys in the background doing the “Allen Ginsberg in Subterranean Homesick Blues” schtick. I particularly like the scuffing on the cover around Bazza’s trouser area – one passionate owner.

More intriguing: maybe it’s the magic of long-lost 1970s trouser technology, but Barry does not appear to be a man who has much use for the golden section:

No wonder he looks pensive, but, non, il ne regrette rien.

Update: the piece is now permanently available for download at Cooky La Moo.

It’s short, it’s austere, it’s a strict canon, it’s about 6 Meg and available for download for one week only. The piece was made out of an unfulfilled wish to hear Phill Niblock’s music – despite having heard about it for over ten years I’d never actually managed to hear any of it – so I created an ersatz composition based on descriptions of the original. I knew it typically involved someone playing one note for a long time, over and over again, and then overdubbing all the renditions of said note, resulting in -?- : a mysterious product of all the previously imperceptible fluctuations of intonation from one idealised pitch.

The piece started as a sample of homogenous sound fed through a (virtual) tape delay system, using small variations in filtering to produce gradually shifting overtones on a steady harmonic base. It was long, capricious, and sometimes very loud. Then its nature shifted to a prolonged, almost inaudible performance piece, requiring great concentration and self-control to make a few gestures with little immediately-noticeable effect. Over several incarnations the piece became more and more restrained until it was reduced to this 5-minute composition, a fixed object for contemplation, stripped of added harmonic complexity and overwhelming volume.

This isn’t one note, but it is a single chord played by 240 string quartets with a remarkably uniform sense of intonation, each playing in a very rapidly articulated canon in unison, and each able to expertly imitate the slightest change of nuance in tone colour of its predecessor.

It’s ideally heard at a modest level, where you only notice the changes if you concentrate. Or if you prefer, set it on repeat, crank it up and switch the telly to a report on Third World child labour for the full faux-Niblock concert experience in your own home.

Made with Ross Bencina’s excellent program AudioMulch.

Another six months have passed, so it’s time to update the list of People Or Things I Have Been Mistaken For, Or Allegedly Physically Resemble, In Increasing Order Of Ridiculousness. Two new entries, which have been placed above and below Jim O’Rourke, although it’s a bit of a toss-up which way those three should go.

It’s kind of sad when you notice these kinds of things, but it had struck me that over the last week or so no comments had been added to the blog, while over the same time I had received several emails about it. Worrying about who’s reading or not reading your blog is a sure sign that you’re turning into a dickhead, but the thought popped into my mind: “You know what the next comment will be about? Something really minor that I put up in a few minutes as filler and then forgot about.”

And so today I get four comments posted about my posting about that Kia salesman’s defunct blog. Disturbingly, someone called Cyn complained that there’s not enough violence on this site. More disturbingly, this seems to be proposed as her(?) solution to people not coming to your birthday party. Even more disturbingly, she apparently uses the term “twilight twitterings” as some sort of Clockwork Orange-type dystopian slang for “bloodletting”.

Do I feel mad with power? No. At the moment, even after half a box of pseudoephedrine I can barely summon the will to get out of bed.

At the very least, I can sleep tonight content in the knowledge that there’s one more person besides myself who doesn’t have a copy of the Fluxus Codex.

Blogger’s been down, so no post for you. Presumably the server was accidentally blown up by a stray firework or ten last night. For the past week the bunker has been surrounded by small clumps of locals setting off cheap-arse fireworks with such irritating regularity that I can’t phone aged relatives in Australia without them assuming that I’m calling from Basra or, worse still, France.

Of course, it’s all part of the festivities commemorating the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot and reenacting the misdeeds of Guy Fawkes, who was apparently a Nigerian who went around attacking pets with bottle rockets.

So much of the weekend was spent hiding down the pub. Here’s a picture of my local and, hey, check who’s street it’s on!

Many years ago, I started this blog with the intention of making it the world’s premier forum for analysis and discussion of speedboats, but along the way I lost focus and the emphasis shifted more into the popular pastimes of admiring mediocre pop divas and mocking the dead.

Now I’m back from a tops trip overseas (no Juliette Lewis!) I’m ready to adopt a new tack: long-winded traveller’s tales and enough badly-compressed holiday snaps to bore you rigid. So get ready. There may even be some pictures of kitties. Rejoice!

The main reason I’m so happy is while I was away, the refurbishment of the bunker was all but completed:

So long folks, I’m off to Spain for a week or so. While I’m gone I promise to investigate the whole Juliette Lewis fiasco. In the meantime, enjoy a few new pictures intended to illustrate a longish, serious article about my visit to St-Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe, which I haven’t gotten around to finishing yet. See you next weekend. Squeezes!

I’m still suffering technical issues, albeit of a self-inflicted variety this time. So in the meantime you can amuse yourselves with the photos slowly getting posted to Flickr (over on the links section): there’s some nice relaxing ones of people kite-surfing at the seaside, if you look around a bit.

Apart from that, I think I might get me some religion. I went past the Celestial Church of Christ, Hackney, last Sunday afternoon and found lots of black people dressed in white robes running about on the pavement throwing blocks of styrofoam at each other. That’s the kind of fast-and-loose interpretation of the bible I can get down with. I may even go in for ordination if there’s a bouncy castle involved.