A Guide to World Revolutions

A Guide to World Revolutions, Part 1

Name: Russian Revolution

Year: 1917

Winners: Lenin, Stalin, Joe McCarthy

Losers: czars, tsars, tzars, csars

Causes: Beet shortages

Weapons: Misery, snow, remaining beets

Catchphrase: I am now and will always be a card-carrying member of the Communist Party.

Political commentary, 2006

If “pro” is the opposite of “con”, does that mean that “Congress” is the opposite of “progress”?

Shine on you crazy wino

Proving once again that the comedy value of Bob “No Child in Poverty” “Tiananmen Square Weepies” Hawke is very likely to outlast him, Hawkie has weighed in with the one of most prescient pieces of political commentary seen in this country for a good while:

Former prime minister Bob Hawke predicts the Australian Democrats will soon lose all its power.

Clearly the man isn’t quite as sharp as he once was, but he’s probably still more on the ball than say, an ibis pulling a used sanitary pad from a bin in Victoria Park. Even the Party’s own revolving leadersip have clearly realised the Democrats’ days are numbered. And not that I’m one to drone on about sincerity and tact, but Don Chipp isn’t even in the cold cold yet, but Hawkie – presumably in a last ditch attempt to demonstrate that he is less irrelevant than the Democrats – has still jumped in with a call that pretty much everyone worked out weeks ago:

“I don’t think it’s anything too much to say that there is a coincidental timing almost between the passing of Don Chipp and what I think is the death throes of the Democrats,” he said.

Frida Hyvönen

I got a hold of Frida Hyvönen’s album “Until Death Comes” a few weeks ago and it has been pretty much on constant rotation since then. Part manic piano, part intellectual lyrics, part what Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’ album might sound like if it was recorded by a Finnish Swede in 2006, it’s one of my favourite albums so far this year.

Pitchfork (whom I don’t like quite so much) have done their review-a-song thing with one the tracks from the album, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to partake in some blatant plagiarism and mp3-leaping:

Her sprightly keys seem a direct translation of the faltering epiphany that colors her lyrics and inflections, so this song moves from uncertainty to strength with symmetrically trebled force. Hyvönen’s piano trips over increasingly insistent phrases; hesitating, it swings back in with thunderous conviction. Her voice, like something recently uncaged, describes the same dogged ascent. Tumbling recklessly through dizzy passages of blue, it sweeps up, tenderly flayed, and vanishes into sunburst vowels. The same flailing motion toward self-reclamation plays out over the lyrics. Hyvönen’s address to a cold-fish ex who said that her love was “just aesthetic” begins as self-castigation tinged with indignant rebuke, then gradually inverts as she realizes some things about transference, culminating in the final stanza’s triumphant light bulb. “You never got me right,” she concludes, and then she’s gone.

Download [mp3] Frida Hyvönen – You Never Got Me Right

Download [video] Frida Hyvönen – The Modern

Download [video] Frida Hyvönen – I Drive My Friend

Re:location

So, I got bored with the mundanity of livejournal and now I’ve discovered wordpress. It’s like blog 2.0, or some other nerdtastic buzzword.

Or something.