Rihanna - 'Te Amo'

Hope she's got some Vanish detergent to take out those grass stains.

Riz MC - 'Hundreds + Thousands'

I chatted with Riz MC yesterday about breaking through out-dated labels and the rewards of staying generic-free. Look out for his upcoming LP MICroscope, s'gonna be hella good.

M.I.A tweets Lynn Hirschberg's number in super web beef

It's kinda fun picking over whether Hirschberg's cool shrug quietly scathing take-down of M.I.A is warranted, self-serving, relevant or just plain mean. The cohesive idea of Maya's life and person as a political artist will always be open to dispute, accusation and praise. Personal approval and opinion is obvs a major factor - and always will be for music journalists who have to find the balance between their own subjective assessment and what is generally, all-round fair.

Everyone has their own truths. I heart MIA and her music, but I'm sure there is ego at work, and the moral-political paradox that human beans will always have. That tweet is funny and immature and instant and rude and maybe a little too much and by the same token I'm glad Hirshberg isn't averse to exposing hypocrisy where she sees it. Agitator met agitator and shit kicked off. Pt 2 this weekend when MIA will post what she's calling "the unedited version of the interview". Whether Hirschberg's character assassination is just or nay, it's sure helping the new-album hype generator.

Dessa - 'Alibi'

Theresa May on Question Time

So our part-time Minister For Equality ( HA. HA.) announced on last night's Question Time that she has decided gay adoption is NOT actually a sin. Well gee, thanks for being so fair and all. But before we all start patting her on the back for shedding off trashy, disgusting ideals, it seems prudent to point out that her reason was child-centred rather then parent-centred. The emphasis was on giving care-of-the-state children the best type of home start rather then allowing prospective gay parents the same rights as their heterosexual peers. And as the question she addressed was on adoption, we are still none the wiser on whether she maintains her other homophobic and anti-choice stances against transgender rights, abortion rights and IVF help for lesbian parents. I'd like her to prove me wrong, but I think behind the Elnett coiffure and Ralph Lauren suits, May is just your standard, Conservative bigot-demon.

I think the 69, 395 people who signed this petition feel the same.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8696102.stm

'The Space Between' - How To Destroy Angels

Dan Bull - Changes [an open letter to David Cameron]

AHAHA. The light sabre scene is CLASSIC LOLZ.

The internet, music journalism and How Stuff Works.

I was gonna be all tongue-in-cheek and say "I'm really behind with posting this because Everett True has been praising it for hot minutes" but the sarcasm would be too much even by my standards within the context of Weingarten's so very accurate argument.



Pretty sure a lot of this will go over the heads of non-music-journo types or people who aren't familiar with terms like SEO, but its relevant if you care about hegemony, the awesome sprawling dragon monster of the WWW, what it is doing to music journalism and by extension the wider repercussions (let yr imagination roam).

I agree with Weingarten almost 100%. The problem is that this has been happening for some time, and has the irreversible trend angle of mountain rock landslides. Trying to make a tiny, little independent ship of honest music criticism stay sailing in the gargantuan, click-counting, meta critic ocean is real hard. Possible, but real hard.

Reblog/Share/Repost

Kiana Firouz, 27 years old, is an outspoken Iranian LGBT rights activist, filmmaker, and actress. When clips of her video documentary work featuring the struggle and persecution of gays and lesbians in her country were acquired by Iranian intelligence, agents began to follow Firouz around Tehran, harassing and intimidating her. She fled for England where she could safely continue her work and studies.

She plays a starring role in Cul de Sac, a documentary film produced in the UK about the condition of lesbians in Iran, and based heavily on Firouz’s own life story. Directed by Ramin Goudarzi-Nejad and Mahshad Torkan, the movie will premiere in London in a few days. Since the trailer was posted on YouTube in December 2009, Cul de Sac has attracted global media attention, with thousands of views. Apparently, some of those views included members of Ahmadinejad’s puppet media in Iran. They know who Firouz is and what she stands for. They may want her to come back to the country she was born in to answer for it.

Here is the official Cul de Sac website.

Here is the petition endorsed by Kiana Firouz herself.

And this is her story.

http://coilhouse.net/2010/05/save-the-life-of-kiana-firouz/

ZINES

I realized something ridiculous today. I realized today that I am a writer who has long loved zines but never actually made one. How insanely silly.

This situation clearly needs a remedy.

The type writer is out, the note pad is primed, and I'm nudging the sleepy-head muses awake with promises of fresh, blank pages practically begging for some magic.

Soon come.

Election Depression

Soooooo.

Clegg sold out, Cameron got in, and the part-time Minister For Equality (the sole female member in the cabinet) hates gays, gay adoption, IVF for single women and lesbians, abortion rights and probably herself. The next four years in the UK should be an absolute BARREL of laughs.

''The Conservative party is an eternally irritating force for wrong that appeals exclusively to bigots, toffs, money-minded machine men, faded entertainers and selfish, grasping simpletons who were born with some essential part of their soul missing. None of history's truly
historical figures has been a Tory, apart from the ones that were, and they only did it by mistake. To reach a more advanced stage intellectual evolution, humankind must first eradicate the "Tory instinct" from the brain - which is why mother nature is gradually
making them less sexy with each passing generation. The final Tory is doomed to spend his or her life masturbating alone on a hillside, which, let's face it, is the way things were supposed to be all along.''

Charlie Brooker

On My Stereo Today

Trellion - Dive By Night.

Menacing, dark and fiendishly nice. Click the image for free download linkage. Cover art, cinematic sample use and atmospheric concepts should always be this good.

Paul White - Paul White & The Purple Brain

Sophomore LP from Sarf LDN DJ extraordinaire.

Psychedelic dreams morphed through Eastern trips and hip hop prisms. (This aint the LP artwork, but its of the same LSD-inspired ilk. Get clicky on it for MySpace journey). Drops in June on co-release through One-Handed and Now-Again and I recommend you put some shiny gold coins aside and purchase because this album will do some enjoyably weird things to yr lobes. Interview with Mr White right herrrr.

Saving the orchids

I keep a small family of orchids on the window ledge in my kitchen. One yellow (the exotic snob who sits at the end of the line and faces away from the others), 2 tall fuchsias (exactly the same height, twins), and two pale pinks (the smaller one is my favourite, and was a gift given almost five years ago). For the last month, they have been under attack from a persistent army of gross pests called mealy bugs. I found them one day and had to scope out some serious gardening forums to find out what they were.

These creepy parasites look like small smears of cotton wool, and when you loom over and zoom in - white, hairy wood louse with stinger-like tails. Each Sunday, I fill a small bowl with warm water and washing up liquid and use a mountain of cotton buds to swab these little fuckers off, some kind of strange, night-time plant surgeon in my yellow marigolds. They like to hide between the petals, which makes for fiddly procedures, and frequently laze out snug little homes in the openings of new buds and stems. Ants pass them from plant to plant like a miniature animal tram. They are attracted to the mealy bug's secretion, which is their version of golden syrup but looks to me like the sticky trail of a foul snail impersonator.

It's a slow process. But I think we're winning.

Julie Ruin T Shirt Contest

Get yr crayons/byros/sequins out.




http://kathleenhanna.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/deadline-extended-to-june-1st/

Visual visual.

"Why Don't You Love Me" - Beyoncé from Beyoncé on Vimeo.

What the Tories have done to Hammersmith & Fulham

An in depth look at the damage Tory policy has done to my home borough of Hammersmith & Fulham. If they win this election, we can expect to see this and worse everywhere. What a nightmare scenario.


http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-welcome-to-cameron-land-1962318.html

TONIGHT

A bit of alright.

Angela Rossi has reached into the secret-heart-shaped-padlocked jewellery-box of my heart and come up with the goods. Star wars + retro crockery.

Check out her crazy neat creations here: Angela Rossi.
Tea and a slice of lemon drizzle cake with Chewie? Yeah, think I might.

Butts & Butterfingers - pun city

Productive Saturday net time

So after Free Comic Book Day outings and home-again session with assorted plunder, I stumbled across this site and lost an hour (and a bit):

http://www.dontflop.com/

Some super painful moments, some killer comebacks.