1. Apparently I've missed the future.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001Q3KR8A/

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2. This is hilarious.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/30/iraq.shoe.monument/index.html

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Dilbert comic

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But at Webster Hall on Sunday night, where Ms. Tagaq, who is Inuit, performed as part of the world music showcase Globalfest, she made it sound fiercely contemporary, futuristic even. Recalling animal noises and various other nature sounds, she was a dynamo, delivering a sort of gothic sound art while she stalked the small basement stage with feral energy.

This festival, now in its sixth year, presents a casually touristic view of a handful of the world’s musical cultures, though true strangeness is rarely prized. Instead, many of the groups here verged on genre originalism — the night was often a streamlined, somewhat homogenized representation of the world’s music — even if many are themselves carpetbaggers, style revivers and nostalgists.

Watcha Clan, at least, seemed mindful of the past decade’s worth of popular music, highlighting one of the weaknesses of this iteration of Globalfest: it felt like a look backward. More than ever, world music is becoming aggressively hybridized with hip-hop and electronic music — Brazilian baile funk, Angolan kuduro, South African kwaito — but these sounds were nowhere to be found. Even Globalfest’s traditionalism is selective. While many groups wielded accordions, there was no regional Mexican music — banda, Norteño — to be heard. Even in its breadth Globalfest can feel narrow.

from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/arts/music/13fest.html?_r=1

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1. Vancouver Sex Trade, 2010

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1. Well this makes me feel sick.
A cheese from Sardinia, Italy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_Marzu

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1. Bob Dylan, 1997:
In fact, he seems near the edge of his comfort zone talking about why he's not talking about one of his most illegible back pages: that conservative, born-again-Christian phase that blindsided his liberal, secular fan base some 15 years ago. "It's not tangible to me," he says. "I don't think I'm tangible to myself. I mean, I think one thing today and I think another thing tomorrow. I change during the course of a day. I wake and I'm one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I'm somebody else. I don't know who I am most of the time. It doesn't even matter to me." This cracks him up.

""It is a spooky record,'' says Dylan, ""because I feel spooky. I don't feel in tune with anything.'' Yet he's proud of having registered his ambivalence and alienation so nakedly. ""I don't think it eclipses anything from my earlier period. But I think it might be shocking in its bluntness. There isn't any waste. There's no line that has to be there to get to another line. There's no pointless playing with somebody's brain. I think it's going to reach the people it needs to reach, and the ones it doesn't, maybe they'll come along another day.''

Then, in October 1987, playing Locarno, Switzerland, with Tom Petty's band and the female singers he now says he used to hide behind, Dylan had his breakthrough. It was an outdoor show--he remembers the fog and the wind--and as he stepped to the mike, a line came into his head. ""It's almost like I heard it as a voice. It wasn't like it was even me thinking it. I'm determined to stand, whether God will deliver me or not. And all of a sudden everything just exploded. It exploded every which way. And I noticed that all the people out there--I was used to them looking at the girl singers, they were good-looking girls, you know? And like I say, I had them up there so I wouldn't feel so bad. But when that happened, nobody was looking at the girls anymore. They were looking at the main mike. After that is when I sort of knew: I've got to go out and play these songs. That's just what I must do.'' He's been at it ever since.

from http://www.newsweek.com/id/97107/output/print