worthy of crime

Sao Paolo graffiti artists decorate a Scottish Castle: The Graffiti Project.

Barista provides context.

Richard Wilbur

Then

Advice To A Prophet

Transit

August Kleinzahler

Ruined Histories

four poems

A Baroque Scot's Excess

photography

Chopped Liver: Photographs by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin.

Wacky and weird

Prince to do 21 concerts in London, then study the Bible.

At some point I'll write my definitive Prince music review... Most fans probably look to 1999 and Purple Rain as his best work. However, his best, most musically creative period was 1992-1995, beginning when he shed his name to become "the artist formally known as..." and extending to Gold Experience. Emancipation had its moments, but essentially marked the swan song of a blessed period.

All that said, I haven't heard 3121... although Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic sucked and sucked hard.

Jack Gilbert

Links from wood s lot.

A profile of Jack Gilbert at Slate.

Three poems.

The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart and Rain.

More Banksy

Earlier I recommded Banksy's latest book, Wall and Peace. Curiously enough, he's profiled, in a way*, in the latest New Yorker. You can read the article online.

*Inasmuch as someone who is famous yet wants to remain completely anonymous can be profiled that is.

You can also see more of Banksy's work on Flickr.

Gordon Coale recommends...

two important books of American color photography. Read his recommendation here.

babel

Joseph Duemer's poem Power stirs with brutality.

Four poems by Huang Xiang.

Two poems by J. D. Smith.

There is more interesting stuff at babel, an online magazine (that could use a redesign).

poems

One Art and Filling Station, by Elizabeth Bishop.

Spaces We Leave Empty by Cathy Song.

Alec Soth's Niagara

Alec Soth's Niagara. (A few more from the project, put aside as being too nihilistic.)

Peter Ciccariello's two photo-blogs: Uncommon Vision and Invisible Notes (via wood s lot)

more poetry

Today's poem at Verse Daily, Joy by Donald Platt, is quite good.

In the tradition of the music being talked about...

Jeff Sharlet discusses and reinterprets Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor's Faking It: the quest for authenticity in popular music (via Cursor). My favorite bit, because it is so telling of the times:

... Leadbelly, a favourite of folk aficionados who to this day perceive him as a giant of "black music", even though the vast majority of his fans were white. (When white producers brought Leadbelly to New York City in 1935 to play "traditional" music, Life magazine declared in a headline: "Bad Nigger Makes Good Minstrel".)

Cultural phenomena

Welcome The Zimmers. (via Gordon Coale)

Hipper and cooler than Somebody Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin.

What Type of Cheater Are You?

What Type of Game Cheater Are You?

Mia Consalvo, a game academic at Ohio State University, interviewed dozens of players about their attitudes -- which she'll publish in the book, Cheating, this summer -- and found that we cluster into a couple of loose groups, each with a different ethical vision.

A small hardcore group are die-hard purists, like my friend. They don't use any cheats or guides, because they consider it "cheating yourself" of the subtle pleasure of getting stuck in a game -- then suddenly spying the way out.

The next group is the walkthrough folks, like me. We regard guides as a form of travel literature; I'd never have located all the cool, secret areas in Final Fantasy XII without a FAQ. (In contrast, the hardcore crowd seems to relish the idea that they'll miss out on stuff, because it's part of the mystery of game.) But I almost never use cheats or manipulations of code to grant myself "unearned" power. I like the idea that if I'm born into this virtual world, I'll abide by the fictions that govern its reality.

Then there's the final group of gamers -- the "by any means necessary" crowd, as it were. Like the ancient gnostics, or like Morpheus in The Matrix, they know the world around them is just code -- and the fun is not in obeying it but mucking with it. Single-player worlds are toys, to be hacked with any available Easter eggs, exploits or hardware mods; you can't have the truly l33t experiences if you're not tricked out with sick amounts of weaponry and skillz.

From this view, cheating a single-player game isn't possible because, as one interviewee told Consalvo, "you can't cheat a Gamecube -- you can only cheat another player." If part of the goal in a narrative game is to finish the story, what's wrong with using any tool at hand to do so?

For me, it depends on the game and what it is about the game that I enjoy most. If I enjoy mucking about and discovering things on my own, I won't consult a guide. If I want to get onto the next bit and don't particularly enjoy this bit, I will consult a guide. If I enjoy a particular aspect of the game and its possible to enhance that with a hack, then I might use the hack.

There you go.

Is Rap racist?

I found this roundtable of perspectives amazing.

Re Imus and rap: Ultimately Imus' professional mistake was in not being as media-savvy as your average hip-hop MCs, who only target each other by name for personal insults and, generally speaking, don't identify their bitches, hos and pussies by race or name and sometimes not even by feminine gender, since by inference we've come to understand that other men can be bitches, hos and pussies too.

Regardless of your wording, I know Salon means to ask, "Does the hip-hop industry promote sexism, racism and greed?" Absolutely. "Now just who owns the hip-hop industry?" would of course be Salon's follow-up question. Obviously, as we all know, the same captains of the American consumer products and media industries who decided Imus had to go -- and not because his decrepit comedic tongue flagrantly, unconsciously and unconscionably conflated racism and sexism in ways that hadn't been heard flowing so trippingly in public off a well-established and feared white man's tongue since Thomas Jefferson, but because he had suddenly become a very bad investment. Thank God for laissez-faire capitalism, the self-correcting invisible hand of the market, and all that other good doo-doo kaka.

The MSM BS that flew in the wake of the Imus affair has stopped flying in the wake of the VT affair--that is one advantage of a 24-hour media cycle, a permanent ADD syndrome. However, someone will resurrect Imus as an example of a rich white guy who was victimized by the system. Just watch. Just wait. It will happen.

Amazing

Animations set to poetry by Billy Collins. The poetry is generally good. The animations are amazing.

Grace and gracelessness

Today's poem at Poetry Daily is quite good despite having what I consider the death knell for many many poems: an awkward first line.

How in the bowl the collards steamed,

I sincerely think the first two verses need refining--but somehow, like a dancer who stumbles gracefully, the final verse transcends with a great deal of thought.

Just an impression.

An interview with Lewis Black

At the Progressive... hmmm something else to add to my link list. (via Daily Kos)