How incredibly informative

I'm in the midst of doing some research work for a musicology professor at McGill (where I'm now in the first year of a Master's in Musicology program) copying song rating lists from Billboard magazines from 1939 to 1945 and in the process have come across many strange, funny and sometimes rather disturbing exhibits of North American culture of the time. Not wanting to keep them just to myself I thought I'd post them here for others to enjoy.

First one up is from the August 12, 1939 issue of Billboard magazine.


Who would have thought that "cigarets" could be so important?

October already

I haven't posted anything in months yet again and thought I might apologize yet again I might as well accept my own frequency of blogging as the reality that it is. I did want to finish posting the videos I took this summer anyways so here's another one...

Tree planting monologue #3

And another...

Treeplanting monologue #2

More from my time planting trees outside of Hinton, Alberta...

Treeplanting monologue #1

I'm back in Edmonton after most of the last month spent living in a tent in a tree planting camp outside of Hinton, Alberta. I still have one more shift to go, but as it's my father's 80th birthday celebrations tomorrow I'm missing a few days of work. While I was there I recorded some commentaries using the movie option on my Sony digital camera and will be posting them one by one over the next while. Here's the first one. Hope you enjoy.

Last days teaching in Taiwan

This is a compilation of video and still photos that I took during my last week teaching at the elementary school I was working at in Taiwan. Hope you enjoy.

Laos Wedding Dance

Over Chinese New Year I was in SE Asia. One evening while wandering around the town of Muang Sing in northern Laos where I stayed for a few days, I was invited into a wedding aprty that was going on. What an interesting experience. The tables were covered with food (LOTS of sticky rice!), the men were wandering around - if not already passed out in their chairs - trying to get you to drink as much Lao Lao (their traditional liquor - VERY strong!) as possible, while the music (made by a succession of singers along with a guy on a Casio keyboard) blasted out of an enormous PA system at god-awful volume levels: you could here it pretty much all over town. There were a few other foreigners there (a Polish guy, a Japanese couple) who'd also been invited in and so we had some good chats between us, but also with some of the younger people- some of whom spoke surprisingly good English. A good time was certainly had by all. Here's a few video highlights anyways.

Another view of Taiwan

Lasy August I was down in Kaohshiung for a day visiting a friend and while wandering along "The Love Canal" - its actual name - I came across this guy playing the erhu wearing - of all things - a Ramones t-shirt. A rather startling incongruity it was so I recorded a short clip with my camera and posted it on youtube for your enjoyment.

A glimpse into my life

I finally got around to learning how to use iMovie - Apple's movie editing software - and even have something to show for it. This is a compilation of some video and pictures I took a few months ago at a dance competition that was held at the elementary school I work at here in Taichung, Taiwan. Hope you enjoy. My apologies in advance for the sometimes lousy audio/video quality, as well as for the sometimes audible singing along by yours truly...

Taiwanese weirdness

I shot this with my little Sony digital camera last Sunday from my apartment balcony. I think it had something to do with the celebration of the god Matsu, but I'm not at all sure. Strangeness indeed...

Dr. Seuss and Bob Dylan together!

Apparently the original web site has been taken down because of threats of legal action by Dr. Seuss' executors, but two songs can be heard here here. If I didn't know better, I'd swear it was 1965-66 era Bob Dylan...

It's been a long time...

Indeed it has. Far too long in fact, so from now on I'm going to try to post something almost everyday - weekdays at least. My work schedule here in Taiwan is weekday afternoons and evenings, plus all day on Saturday, so I should be using at least some of my morning free time to do what I should have been doing a lot more of these last many months - WRITE! I will do my best...

Many thoughts of late, but then where aren't there? One subject in particular is the total contradiction that exists between economic and social conservatives, and the therefore strangeness of their long-term political collaboration. Let me explain. Economic conservatives want less government regulation - ultimately, perhaps, none - favouring instead the guidance of Adam Smith's (in)famous "invisible hand" metaphor. The virtues of capitalism are therefore exalted and its negative consequences either ignored or explained away as being but the inevitable result of the aggregate of individuals' choices.

Social conservatives, on the other hand, are much more in line with the aristocratic conservatism that saw its final effective demise in World War I; trying to hold onto something deemed as perfect and God-ordained in the face of radical social and cultural transformations.

Of course as Marx put it so well, and so many of today's supposed Marxists seem to have forgotten, capitalism is the most revolutionary economic system in history as the means of production are in constant transformation as the bourgeoisie compete among themselves to avoid falling into the ranks of the proletariat.

It speaks volumes as to the myopia of the social conservatives that so many of them see no contradiction between their wish to uphold traditional ways of life with their generally unquestioned support for an economic system that ruthlessly attacks ALL traditional social arrangements. Suburbanization and big-box retailing, exemplified by Wal-Mart, though symptomatic of larger dilemmas, have brought about massive changes to traditional family life. How easily some people who claim to care about such things lose sight of this.