It was with great humor, a few months ago, that I received my first official ban from a government. It was for this iPhoto slideshow I made “for” a friend of mine three years ago:
I think I made it as a joke on how ubiquitous his name was on the Internet. It hasn’t kept him from getting any jobs at any rate (that I’m aware of).
Anyway, I noticed earlier this year, via YouTube, that the presence of Tina Turner had gotten the clip banned in Germany— copyright WMG, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Chappell, and Warner Chappell, apparently. The Volcano Syzygy video I put up yesterday had an Aphex Twin clip in the background and it seems they move faster these days; I got an email within an hour letting me know the audio would be muted to the public.
I just re-uploaded it with me whamming on the old CTK-515 instead so, hey, at least the Copyright Cops tricked me into spending my time creatively. Now if only I could keep a beat on my smartphone drum pad…
Devin and I often talk about what our band will be like when the idea finally comes to fruition. Here’s some inspiration I found today:
Ideas I want to steal from this band for our future ensemble include:
Orange costumes
Xylophones
Go-go boots
Cute haircuts
Accordions
Attitude
Here’s a real email I received at 7:56 today, the first day of labs for the quarter.
“(My name),
I made a very bad mistake thinking my lab was thursday and just realized i missed the first day, so I was hoping that you could tell me what I missed and where to go from here, possible even meet sometime to get what i missed. I emailed Dr. (Professor) already, so i could appreciate if there’s anything you could do for me or what i need to do. THank you, (his name)”
And here’s a completely real event I heard about for the first time today.
Later that decade, Davis led a quasi-covert operation that recorded the vaginal contractions of ballerinas with the Boston Ballet and other women, then translated this impetus of human conception into text, music, phonetic speech and ultimately into radio signals, which were beamed from M.I.T.’s Millstone radar to Epsilon Eridani, Tau Ceti and two other nearby star systems… The Air Force soon found out about the million-watt Poetica Vaginal broadcast, as Davis calls it, and shut it down.
..
“The images of humans placed aboard the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft show impeccably groomed men that lack any facial and body hair,” Davis hoots, “and women with no external genitalia.” Poetica Vaginal was in part a response to this curious censorship. “By making this attempt to communicate with the other,” he explains, “we’re really communicating with ourselves.”
Sam and Devin dot com 