Live ladies: Cibelle performs Punk da Periferia, Camille (on whom I’ve the worst crush) gives us La Demeure D’un Ciel using only her voice and a sampler, My Brightest Diamond tears down the house with Feeling Good.

— 2010.02.05

We lost the amazing Lhasa de Sela on New Year’s Day. Blogotheque has posted a goodbye in the form of a collection of live performances in Montreal, including this smoldering performance of Con Todo Palabras.

— 2010.01.02

Welcome to the Future, everyone.

— 2010.01.01

I’ve been working up some old jazz tunes with a downtown combo. Here’s a quick read of Singin’ the Blues by the reed player and myself.

— 2009.12.16

David Rumsey has put up a fantastic collection of historical maps overlaid on Google Maps.

— 2009.12.08

For Pierce: ten candid videos from the current St Vincent tour.

— 2009.12.01

Awesome Tapes From Africa is one of my favorite music blogs. This tape by Malian wizard Issa Bagayogo is an especially awesome example.

— 2009.11.23

Kurt Vonnegut writes home after getting out of the prison camp.

— 2009.11.20

“Sanjida O’Connell is the only woman to make the Bad Sex shortlist, selected for The Naked Name of Love, about a young Jesuit priest who is taught how to love by a gifted shaman woman on the eastern steppes of Mongolia.”

— 2009.11.19

Arcade Fire meets Sergio Leone in the best mashup I’ve seen in awhile.

— 2009.11.13

Henry Story had a bad week in America, the Fortress State.

— 2009.11.10

“The EOG can be fed almost any petroleum-based waste plastic and will convert it into synthetic light to medium oil for less than USD$10 per barrel.” We move one step closer to armies of indigents mining rubbish pits for recyclables.

— 2009.10.28

Ray Concepcion presents the Mountain Man quintet singing Appalachian loveliness at CMJ. (Magic starts at 1:25).

— 2009.10.28

“Greeks founded the city of Massalia, or modern-day Marseilles, and soon began to mingle and trade with friendly local tribes of Ligurian Celts, turning the settlement into a bustling entrepôt.” Thus introducing wine to Western Europe.

— 2009.10.26

What it looks like inside my mind. (Via Burstoid).

— 2009.10.22

Graham Robb’s The Discovery of France is a delightful book, as others have noted.

— 2009.10.21

Appealing daintiness is assured.

— 2009.10.20

The Wright Brothers built beautiful bicycles.

— 2009.10.20

“I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” — Albert Einstein

— 2009.10.16

Tom Waits interview in the Guardian: “We’re all insects crawling on the shiny hood of a Cadillac.”

— 2009.10.13

I can’t stop watching this video mashup of Wax Tailor’s Que Sera and Metropolis.

— 2009.10.09

A bit of gooseflesh courtesy of Camille, Dominique and Piers.

— 2009.10.07

“I shall watch the stars and think of happier days roaming the garden with Ruairí.”

— 2009.10.07

Department of Homeland Hostility officials at JFK held me for an hour before instructing customs to search my every possession. Delightful work, gentlemen.

— 2009.10.05

I am off for a cycling holiday in the South of France. Updates will resume the second week of October.

— 2009.09.17

I met a man who wore an invisible mask. He told me he still loves you, and that you’ll probably enjoy these music videos of Copenhagen-based band Slaraffenland.

— 2009.09.16

“Within 20 years, Knott’s plot had been rendered a period piece by multi-phone homes; after a further 30, mobiles had made the plot absurd.” Mark Lawson notices the tension between Modernity and Posterity over at the Guardian.

— 2009.09.15

Fondation Cartier has commissioned Evan Roth to produce an exhibit on the calligraphic style of graffiti tags, the interactive online version of which is entitled Grafitti Taxonomy: Paris 2009. The accompanying video presentation is also quite worthwhile.

— 2009.09.11

“We need to read Dickens’s novels,” she wrote, “because they tell us, in the grandest way possible, why we are what we are.” Ex ore infantium.

— 2009.09.09

京にても / 京なつかしや / 時鳥
Kyou nitemo / kyou natsukashi ya / hototogisu
Even in Kyôto / hearing the cuckoo’s cry / I long for Kyôto
— Matsuo Bashô

— 2009.09.08

Ben Fry has put up a fine visualization of the changes made to Darwin’s On the Origin of Species over the course of thirteen years and six editions.

— 2009.09.07

Dear subscribers: please point your feed readers to the new feed, as the old one will vanish this weekend. Also, discussion threads are now supported for articles via Disqus.

— 2009.09.04

Spoons, the opening track from Mali Music, sounds like Tricky and St-Germain in a ménage à trois with Golden Brown while camping in the Bush of Ghosts.

— 2009.09.04

“I’ll let you into a Secret: I am Captain of this Ship now.”

— 2009.09.03

Wikipedia maintains a list of inventors killed by their own inventions.

— 2009.09.02

Nicanor Parra offers you a ride on his Roller Coaster.

— 2009.09.02

Gustav Mahler, concerning his Symphony No. 8 in E♭Major: “it is all an allegory to convey something that, no matter what form it is given, can never be adequately expressed.”

— 2009.09.01

“There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.” — Mark Twain

— 2009.08.29

Apologies to subscribers, the feed’s likely to be a bit bumpy until some technical issues are set right.

— 2009.08.27

Behold! Rhetorical Device has been re-built from scratch, shedding most of the archives in the process.

— 2009.08.24

The Believer interviews David Simon to great effect.

— 2009.08.13

(Field) looks quite promising as a generative art platform.

— 2009.08.06

The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary.

— 2009.08.05

Alvvino’s collage art is lovely.

— 2009.07.26

Swedish teens cover Fleet Foxes. Lovely.

— 2009.07.25

Cardo is a large Unicode font specifically designed for the needs of classicists, Biblical scholars, medievalists, and linguists.

— 2009.07.22

Beck interviews Tom Waits.

— 2009.07.16

Infinite Summer — too much Wallace, not enough Gromit.

— 2009.07.02

Bloomsday is here again, remember to eat some organ meats.

— 2009.06.16

How the world ended once, many years ago.

— 2009.05.17

A Lion in a Sidecar. I love this photo.

— 2009.03.16

Time is the effect of our ignorance, or so it has been said.

— 2009.03.05

Civilisation’s greatest single invention is the sentence.

— 2009.03.04

The sound of Apollinaire reading his own poetry in 1913.

— 2009.01.07

The Argo sails again.

— 2008.07.06

It should be possible for any resident to walk within ten minutes to the places that are the real reason for his living among strangers.

— 2008.06.11

Self-expression without craft is for toddlers.

— 2008.05.23

Opium Magazine has published my prose poem Togetherness.

— 2008.04.21

“Her eyes are homes of silent prayer.” — Alfred Tennyson

— 2008.01.06

“What a disgrace it is for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.” — Socrates

— 2007.08.01

“The poet is a liar who always tells the truth.” — Jean Cocteau

— 2006.01.06

I was just shaken down in Amsterdam Schipol for trying to smuggling a bottle of absinthe back to New York.

— 2003.11.15

I moved to New York just in time for the biggest blackout in decades.

— 2003.08.14