deathtokoalas
kramer = nato.
newman = putin.
ukrainian = protesters.

in the end, kramer and newman will make a deal to trick the big oaf into servitude. but, for right now, this is a perfect analogy to explain what's happening in the region.

Tonite
silly witch... Everyone knows that Russia could walk over Ukraine in 24h. if they really wanted to.

deathtokoalas
ukraine by itself, sure. it's not that easy, though. you'll note that ukraine is really just watching the game, as it's being played by external forces.

Kuripo Hirusama
you = the chick from the Shining.

deathtokoalas
you know, i'm not entirely sure what that means.

Rottooth
I think he's saying you look like Shelley Duvall, who starred in the movie, The Shining.

deathtokoalas
i could see it a tad in the shot (which was picked for obvious effect), but overall, not really. i'm an unusually mixed up mutt, so i look startlingly different depending on things like hair colour. i can look very norse with blond hair, very italian with a tan or very finnish if you get my eyes right. on an average day, it's probably closer to kristen stewart. she's actually sort of androgynous looking...

i'm suspecting it has something to do with the shower scene, though, and still not quite sure i get the crux of it.

Kuripo Hirusama
Was she related to Robert Duvall?

El Perro Loco
Brillant take on this man.

Robert Freid (ComradeDimitri101)
Everyone should read this article then-heh:
http://godfatherpolitics.com/14764/putin-get-idea-invade-ukraine-seinfeld-episode/

continuing the discussion with sennheiser

jessica
hi.

sorry to bring up a ghost thread, but i'm a little concerned about the cord that got here. it arrived when it did back in december, and i've been ecstatic about it since. but i've been noticing for the last several weeks that the left side of the cord again comes in and out.

i've swapped the inputs on the phones a few times and am convinced it's the cord, rather than the phones. the red/right in is flawless regardless of which phone it's plugged into, but the black/left one slowly fades over long periods regardless of which phone it's plugged into. often, merely touching it is enough to reset it.

i ultimately think it's a contact issue. that is to say that i think that the metal on the cord is sort of falling out. maybe it's a hundredth of a mm smaller in diameter. and i'd actually be willing to believe it's a production thing if you told me that. it's very obvious that there's not a short in the cord. but it's also obvious that if i keep messing with it one will develop.

i'm just wondering if you have any information that might be of interest. would you be able to verify that there is a small difference in the size of the metal plug going into the phones, over all these decades? is it possible i got a mild defect that's a tad small?

phones:
sennheiser 440-II (ireland)

cord:
069427
Cable steel 3m jack3.5/jack6.3

sennheiser
Hi Jessica,

No problems, please don't apologise!

I am rather surprised that a cable so new could be defective, but it's not unheard of. That's why you've got a 3 month warranty. Before we get into the whole rigomorol  surrounding replacement, I'm bound to ask if the cable polarity has always been respected, you'll notice one pin is fatter than the other. If the cable has been forced in backwards, then the problem may not actually be the cable!

Just asking!

Please let me know about that, and we'll proceed from there!

Cheers,

jessica
i've definitely been careful about polarity - letters always on the outside. i'm certain it's not that. and, as mentioned, it does it with both phones on the black side, and only on the black side.

the entire idea of a warranty completely slipped my mind. it's getting to the end of the three months. so, how does that process work?

(pause)

i'm just a little concerned because you were always previously quick to apply.

i have to say that i don't want to send this cord back. it seems like there's something wrong, but it's a minor adjustment and i know now i can replace the cord when i need to.

but if it is under warranty, i kind of feel entitled to it.

again: if i have to send it back, then forget it. it's not worth the trouble.

also, do you have any information about possible manufacturing mismatches?

sennheiser
Hi Jessica,

My apologies for the delay in response! I was out on holidays.

If you'd be so kind, please provide your address (to save time trying to find it in the computer...) and parts will send you out a new one. No need to return the other, just toss it.

i am so remarkably bad with my hands. it makes me laugh to think i wanted to be a brain surgeon when i was a kid, although to be fair to myself what i *meant* was a mad scientist that hooks up brains to computers rather than somebody that goes in and physically carves up the mind.

there's currently crazy glue *everywhere*.

and i feel kinda funny. aha. ahahaha. ahahahahahahahahah...\

i've been suspicious of this for years, ever since i read a report about how the chinese government pays psychological experts to hang out in forums and use jedi mind tricks to brow beat dissenters back into orthodoxy. what i thought was "well, our government is probably doing it, too, then".

they said i was crazy to believe that...we don't live in china. we live in a free country! we have democracy.

*snicker*

the only thing i've ever been involved with is occupy, and it was actually pretty obvious who the cops were. they didn't hang around at the edges. they tried to take active leadership roles, which is a tip-off in a theoretically non-hierarchical group. but what i found was that most of the activists only rejected hierarchy up to a point and allowed for these positions of quasi-authority. that put me in a position where i was arguing with cops.

you don't throw accusations around. you might be wrong, and then that's a problem. rather, you operate with the assumption that your comrades are cops until you can prove otherwise without a doubt. in most cases, that never really happens.

for me, one of the things that meant was ensuring that the right information got into their notes. i've had a file for a long time. it's an expansion of my large high school file. i'm fully cognizant of that. it's purely a question of what i want the file to say, which is "highly eccentric" and "not a violent threat", rather than "thinks she's che guevara".

there were actually times when i spun it around a little: i went out of my way to mine information about people i'm sure were cops. that meant getting a little closer. one on ones.

i'm legitimately not fearful because i know that i'd have to be completely set up and i know i don't necessitate the motive. they tried a few times, though.

here's an example: i pretended to talk an obvious cop out of smashing up a bar by suggesting she smash up the owner's car instead, fully aware that no cop would ever actually do that. she claimed she had an issue with the bar owner. it was heresay; i never looked into it. logically, smashing up the car would be better if the problem is personally with the owner, right? but, the cop couldn't go with that. smashing a window is a minor annoyance. smashing a car is serious property damage. but, more to the point, i was careful to make the precise argument that the cops would go after the business-smashing anarchist for ideological reasons, but wouldn't have time to prosecute the petty crime. so, the smart thing for anarchists to do would be to carry out petty crimes targeted at particular assholes - not political action with a public message. i watched something click in her brain that night: she knew i was right, and she realized the injustice and absurdity of it. no cars were smashed, but the topic did drop, and the focus shifted to trying to alienate me.

at this point, i feel confident that i could peg a cop pretty easily. i think that's a useful skill.

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/2/25/exclusive_inside_the_army_spy_ring

adrian belew - twang bar king

should have been an ep

this is the first in a string of pop-oriented belew discs that contain some hidden gems but are largely full of filler and watered down bowie and talking heads tunes. throughout this phase in his career, belew demonstrates that he has something unique to add to the genre but doesn't do so nearly often enough to fill up an entire record.

stringing all the hidden gems together creates something pretty solid, though, so that suggests that a compilation of the best tracks would be worthwhile. when island took his first three records out of print, they actually did create a compilation out of them. the compilation is called desire of the rhino king, which is a combination of titles from those discs. frustratingly, the disc throws away some of the best material and keeps some of the worst. rather than solve the problem, it compounds it. what that means is that there's no way to get the best stuff on this record except to download it.

there's a certain bipolar nature to this that falls flat on it's face. belew seems to want to do raw rock and roll, progressive jazz and dramatic pop all on the same record but never all at the same time. the result is that few of the ideas are fully explored. it comes off sounding overly generic and entirely half-assed.

regarding the raw rock tracks, the introductory beatles cover is as bad as the title track. taking it a step further, fish head sounds like bowie fronting the pixies at their most generic. while that may sound sort of visionary considering the date this was released (1983), the track is actually pretty boring - as one really ought to expect from the description of bowie fronting the pixies at their most generic. the ideal woman features spoken word samples and drum loops in that peculiarly byrne-eno way. this in itself would be much less of an error if the topic wasn't so trivial. paint the road is a simplistic horn jam that shouldn't even have been considered as filler. it sounds like a sound check, really. the rail song is a horrific trivialization of heroes, which was no doubt already approaching the status of a classic at the time. we can ride the trains for just one day? singing f#-a# forever, maybe?

see, it's the unrealized potential that's as annoying as anything else about it. the remaining tracks literally sound like king crimson outtakes, but they comprise the best part of the disc - ironically. the second and third tracks sound like they're good enough to be crimson to me, but i have to suspect that they were pieces that fripp couldn't quite work with. perhaps he didn't like the lyrical subject matter of them. the twelfth is all frippertronics. it's not the most developed example of the technique, but it functions as a realization of it's description. the ninth has more of a george harrison vibe. it really excels in it's layered vocal melodies, which seem to strongly foreshadow bjork.

what the record really needed was just a bit more love. it's easy to speculate that belew had his hands full, but the natural question is "why bother?". why not put it aside and wait until there's enough time to work on it? we think of runaway egos as the scourge of young men, but the truth is that they often follow those young men well into middle age. i can imagine a slightly bruised adrian taking his rejected songs and going home with them. which is fine, a couple of them are actually really good, but he really ought to have polished them up rather than releasing them in a near demo state out of pure spite at his master. that extra care would have probably reintroduced the playful, zappaesque aesthetic that the first disc showcases and this one sorely lacks.

so, the assessment of this is that the completed tracks (2,3,9,12) comprise what could have been a very good ep, or the core of a very strong record. however, it's just hopelessly bogged down with painfully bad, unoriginal and half-assed filler. it's years out of print anyways.

stream:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0D_kZ-o484Pbjt81N5OVRZgPqu0v-kaa

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/music/artists/AdrianBelew/1983-TwangBarKing/index.html

so, he's suggesting the "liberal success story" - redistributive processes create a middle class, which pushes for further reforms. interesting that the activist sounds like the upper class liberal, and the profs sound like the working class marxists. maybe those class associations are more real than may be immediately obvious.

i'll admit that the narrative works well as a synthesis of the competing media stories, but that doesn't suddenly make hegelianism scientific. and i've never really been one to actually buy that liberal narrative.

it's interesting to hear a different perspective, though. all these perspectives have aspcts of truth. but i'm not quite convinced by this one.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11500

the "liberal success story" is today most often trotted out to provide projections for future chinese revolts.

the chinese government pioneered this. imported tactics.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/