April 27 – May 1, 2015

I feel like I’ve written about rioting and looting before, so I won’t rehash all of those arguments again. I’ll just say this: If you were born & raised in a prison, one you were in through no fault or action of your own, one in which the guards could beat & murder the inmates with impunity – when things finally broke & the prisoners revolted, would you not burn the whole fucking thing to the ground?

Tuesday night we saw Ex Machina, a sci-fi movie that is ostensibly about the moment of creation of a true Artificial Intelligence but which somehow still managed to mostly involve a lot of footage of two dudes sparring verbally, and a lot of female [uh, robot] nudity. The gratifyingly violent ending redeems it somewhat, but it still doesn’t pass the Bechdel test.

Nevertheless, it’s an interesting cultural document, especially when read, as suggested by Sasha Geffen, as part of a posthuman feminist trilogy, along with Her and Under the Skin

Wednesday night I trekked to Chapel Hill to see one of my favorite bands, USX, at the Cave. It was a four-band bill because of course, and USX didn’t go on until after midnight. They played a great set, but even though I slept in a bit Thursday morning, I still felt entirely unproductive all day. Well, at least until 3pm when I made a cup of tea. I don’t generally drink any caffeine, so it doesn’t take much to thoroughly wire me.

We’ve been watching the latest season of Girls, but I’m not quite ready to stake out a position on it yet.

Friday night we were just about to settle down & watch a couple of episodes when I was notified that the web stream at WXDU was conveying nothing but a really harsh buzzing noise. So instead I drove over to check it out. Somehow the Aphex Compellor (about which I wrote so glowingly a few weeks ago) was sending garbage down its digital output, instead of digital audio.

The “fix” was as easy as unplugging the cable & plugging it back in (weirdly, this only worked at the Compellor end of the cable), but the root cause diagnosis has thus far stumped me. Lightning? Randomness? 

Or perhaps the fact that some asshole had arbitrarily twisted all the knobs on the front to new positions? Which shouldn’t have caused this particular problem, but had caused our over-the-air sound to be all fucked up for however long it had been since it happened. Why do people do that? What do they hope to accomplish?

April 27 – May 1, 2015