http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:lpowell&section=today deviantART RSS for by:lpowell en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Sun, 27 Dec 2009 20:52:57 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/29051706/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/29051706/ Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:13:36 PST
I also saw it in 3D, which was really cool. Actually this is the first time I've seen any movie in 3D, so it was a fun new experience. 3D is recommended.

Not really that much of a spoiler, but warning anyway:




I liked the film's take on Earth-spirit-type mysticism, especially how the film hinted at a biological explanation of what happens without killing it with detail. The film struck a nice balance between granting the curious viewer an explanation and just allowing it to be transcendental and mysterious. It was also interesting to see that the film portrayed the scientist characters as humane and morally diligent, instead of going for the tired "cold rationalist" stereotype. It sometimes bugs me how some films and books portray scientific rationalism as somehow in conflict with emotional moral impulses, as if a scientific worldview necessarily excludes those. Avatar, happily, did not make that mistake. Hooray for not mistaking scientists for amoral automatons.

Sigourney Weaver is badass, but you already know that. Her characters was easily my favorite. It also appears that James Cameron has a thing for Hispanic marine chicks, because he includes one in like every movie he makes. Not that I'm complaining.

[link]
[link]

Hoo-rah.

]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/28453913/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/28453913/ Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:01:01 PST
I don't care about monkey social behavior. I like monkeys, but not that much.



I'm on last.fm way more than I'm on here.

]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/27478233/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/27478233/ Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:48:10 PDT
Here's some articles I found interesting:
Joy in the Merely Real
The Fallacy of Gray
Absolute Authority
An Alien God
Are Your Enemies Innately Evil?

Reading this blog is a lot like reading Wikipedia. Every other word is hyperlinked to a previous blog entry discussing a related subject, and by the time you're finished with one you've got seven others open in tabs. I just spend the last hour or so reading stuff from this blog, and actually I don't feel like I wasted that hour or so, as I usually do when I spend that much time sitting in front of the computer. It was like I was reading a book or something.

Good stuff.

]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/27418294/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/27418294/ Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:23:28 PDT
I don't know if you've already seen this guy's work, but ~FrodoK is a genius. He got well-deserved a DD recently, and although I had seen and liked his work much earlier, it wasn't until that moment when I saw that DD that it finally clicked. I was struck by the strong sense of wonder and complex but almost childish beauty in his work. That seems like a vague, perhaps incomprehensible description to me, but that's how it feels in the best way I can describe it. I've been in an unusually reflective and self-absorbed mood lately, thinking of growing up and of lost childhood—and all the strange senses of beauty and sadness that entails. I moved into my dorm at UC Davis last week, and started classes yesterday. I've been uprooted, and it feels like everything that kept me physically and emotionally stable is behind me, in another place. But that's an exaggeration—I'm adjusting to the move and the new environment, it's just it's put me in an emotional state that I'm not accustomed to—I usually don't dwell on the past. But now it's like—I dunno. And on that note I'm thinking, screw high literature, I just wanna be a children's fantasy author. (As if the two categories are mutually exclusive anyway.)

Anyway, here's some cool paintings of his:

[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]

Here's what I posted on the guy's page—I'm reposting it here because it's relevant:

Hey. Your work is beautiful. It seems fragile and almost childish, but when I take it in it has a great depth and maturity of feeling, at least for me. When I look at your paintings I feel a sense nostalgia that makes me happy, but also strangely sad for the small sense of loss that comes with that nostalgia. Looking at your paintings is like thinking of the old cartoons I used to watch on Saturday mornings as a kid, and how entertained and happy I was, only I can't remember their names anymore and I'll probably never watch them again. The emotion just has so many layers. If the members of Boards of Canada formed a psychedelic rock band, their music would be the perfect complement to your work.

I don't know if any of that means anything to you, or if that is what you're going for, but there it is.

That's that. I brought a copy of The Wind in the Willows from home because I never read it when I was younger, although I did watch and rewatch a 1995 animated film adaption. I also want to read Le Guin's Earthsea series. Is it as good as advertised?

And finally, you should listen to Boards of Canada. Music Has the Right to Children is currently my favorite album of the 90s, maybe of all time. And given my mood, it's very relevant to my life.

]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/27085303/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/27085303/ Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:25:14 PDT not breaking the law.

If there was a sport called "surviving low-speed vehicle collisions without injury," I'd be really good at it.

]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/26798517/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/26798517/ Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:50:55 PDT Encyclopedia Dramatica article (NSFW) and was immediately embarrassed for liking it.

]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/26483119/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/26483119/ Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:09:01 PDT [link] (I'm LordRama, the troll.)

I didn't think anyone would possibly take some guy posting stupid shit like "Classic rock is a myth invented by white people in the mid-90s" seriously, but I was wrong.

]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/26172625/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/26172625/ Sat, 25 Jul 2009 14:42:20 PDT [link]

]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/25909579/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/25909579/ Sun, 12 Jul 2009 22:39:46 PDT
]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/25597303/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/25597303/ Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:49:55 PDT
This is bullshit. I am not going to buy five different copies of the same piece of music just so I can compare them. That is a waste of time and of money. I propose a solution: build a perfect robot orchestra, a perfect robot choir, and a perfect robot conductor. Fuck individual talent and musicianship. That shit just makes things too complicated for people like me, who care about classical music, but not that much.

]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/25352123/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/25352123/ Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:45:32 PDT
]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/25264367/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/25264367/ Thu, 11 Jun 2009 23:07:39 PDT
I've obtained albums by Leonard Cohen and The Velvet Underground. I really likes The Velvet Underground and Nico when I borrowed it from a friend a while ago, so this will be good.

I've also been watching the late Arrested Development















and I'm really glad George Michael isn't actually related to Maeby. She's hot and he should totally go for it.



That is all.

]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/25207815/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/25207815/ Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:50:40 PDT this song. It was excellent.

]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/25092809/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/25092809/ Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:43:39 PDT last.fm library, only three artists on the first page (sorted by play count) started recording before the nineties (counting the three Richard D. James aliases—Aphex Twin, AFX, and Polygon Window—as one artist). The Beatles are pretty much obligatory, Tom Waits fits my bizarre sensibilities, and I'm pretty sure only about two hundred people in the United States besides me have heard of Nurse With Wound.

So I need "old music" (for lack of a better term) recommendations from anyone who reads this. Note I prefer interesting music, what I say is interesting is pretty much arbitrary. E.g. Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple aren't very "interesting" to me, Creedence Clearwater Revival has one or two "interesting" songs, while Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash fall into the rare category of "very interesting." If that's at all a helpful criteria to work with.

Forgive me if what a lot of what people call "classic rock" goes over my head.

]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/25054421/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/25054421/ Sun, 31 May 2009 15:49:17 PDT
- Finish Gödel, Escher, Bach.

- Wade my way through the half-dozen or so short story collections I've accumulated.

- Wade my way through the dozen or so un-listened-to gigs of music on my hard drive. Learn to prioritize in this regard (e.g. depressed white dudes who do too much ecstasy are on the whole less entertaining than angry black dudes who sell too much ecstasy).

- Avoid getting a job for as long as possible.

]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/24743871/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/24743871/ Wed, 13 May 2009 19:06:19 PDT aim for depth even if they don't hit the mark. But in short there are far better, more artful kinds of music out there that actually achieve their stated goal. (Why listen to MCR or the Dashboard Bitches when you could listen to Radiohead?) Mainstream rap is good because there is a degree of talent involved (except in crunk, I hate that shit) as the rappers are generally expected to come up with their own material and be able to freestyle. Freestyling isn't easy. One might point out that pop angst bands also write their own material, but I reply that mainstream rap lacks the pretensions of pop angst: no one claims that they are doing anything other than making fun music. Although someone like, say, Lady Sovereign doesn't achieve the existential grandness of "real" rappers like Biggie or Eminem (in his more thoughtful moments), it is unnecessary for her to do so in the first place. She raps about how drunk and lazy she is and that's all we want her to do.

Now, pop: the idea behind it is simple. Get a bunch of talented, anonymous songwriters to write material for some chick who's pretty to look at and pretty to listen to. This should not have failed. Who doesn't like pretty girls? Who doesn't like pretty girls with pretty voices? Who doesn't like clever, bouncy songwriting to top it off?

But, somehow, failure was inevitable. Somewhere along the line (probably the minute the line got started) someone realized it would be cheaper to hire mediocre songwriters to write for girls with unmemorable looks and voices that, come the development of the necessary technology, would require computer assistance to achieve something perhaps vaguely resembling pleasance. Of course, what was a failure for us was a victory for the record companies: people bought it anyway!

In essence: Pop music was far better in concept than in execution. This depresses me.


(Related note: I have decided that I do not have guilty pleasures. If I take pleasure in something, I take pleasure in something; calling it "guilty" is just pretentious.)

]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/24523286/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/24523286/ Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:46:04 PDT
]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/24454304/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/24454304/ Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:34:03 PDT [link]

durn kids and their crazy music

]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/24410017/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/24410017/ Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:21:23 PDT
]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/24219431/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/24219431/ Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:06:51 PDT
]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/24180444/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/24180444/ Sat, 11 Apr 2009 10:37:05 PDT Lap tag is the greatest game invented by man. Lap tag being one of those party games whose sole unspoken purpose is to get friends into awkward sexual positions.

2. Lap tag is more fun than both writing and deviantART. Why the hell am I not playing lap tag right now.

]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/23764702/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/23764702/ Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:34:32 PDT
EDIT: The essay has been fucked.

]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/23565500/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/23565500/ Fri, 06 Mar 2009 22:08:34 PST
]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/23532251/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/23532251/ Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:09:01 PST
My ego is unbendable. Back then I thought, wrongly, that I was a good writer. Now I think, with whatever degree of correct perception, that I am a bad writer cum good writer. I even pinpoint my reading of J.G. Ballard's Crash and then Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian as the turning point in my skill.

I've noticed that most of what I've written since I began reading Borges' short stories has been, basically, Borges' short stories. Five pieces, exactly. As of now, one of which I've posted.

Well lah dee dah.

My recommendations for shit.

]]> ~lpowell http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/22925989/ http://lpowell.deviantart.com/journal/22925989/ Sat, 31 Jan 2009 15:33:28 PST Look at this:
Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan by Ilya Repin

Read these:
- Achewood
- Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- A Canticle For Leibowitz (Walter M. Miller, Jr.)
- The Dharma Bums (Jack Kerouac)
- Flowers For Algernon (Daniel Keyes)
- The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien)
- The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (Philip K. Dick)
- Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)
- Notes from Underground (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
- The Stranger (Albert Camus)
- The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clarke)
- 1984 (George Orwell)
- The Sprawl Trilogy (William Gibson)
- The Best of H.P. Lovecraft

Watch these:
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
- No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen)
- Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky)
- Inland Empire (David Lynch)
- Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky)
- Ran (Akira Kurosawa)
- Alien (Ridley Scott)

Listen to these:
- Vrioon, Insen, and Revep (Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto)
- My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (Brian Eno and David Byrne)
- A Perfect Pain (Merzbow and Genesis P-Orridge)
- Thought for Food (The Books)
- Rain Dogs (Tom Waits)
- Third (Portishead)
- Mezzanine (Massive Attack)
- Heresy (Lustmord)
- Kind of Blue (Miles Davis)
- Music for 18 Musicians (Steve Reich)

]]> ~lpowell