New Radiohead Album

Radiohead are the best band in the world, ever, and have formally announced the release of their new album, In Rainbows. They've decided to go it alone and not sign a to a record label, instead, they're going to package the music themselves. Go to their website now if you haven't already done so and order whatever you can immediately. More info tomorrow as it happens. Let the Radiohead subcult emerge once again...

Sex and Breasts

It's probably quite telling that the two most read articles in today's Times Online are to do with sex and sexual desire. Perhaps it's our increasingly fetishised society that motivates us to read up on the topic itself. Perhaps it's our conscious feeling of sexual inadequacy that forces us into learning more about what we supposedly don't understand. It could be a number of things. This article about breasts realises the mundane side to our cultural obsession with the dimensions of the opposite sex. While this article provides a voice for all those who refrain from attending all night gangbangs and have no apparent need to fulfil expectations of debauchery and alpha-sexuality. The articles speak for themselves; they even go someway to explaining why they're the two most read articles today.

The time has come

Ok, enough's enough. The time has come for me to post about Radiohead. Since their tour in 2006, mainly to test new songs and attain cohesion as a band again, they have remained relatively dormant. However, they did revamp there website design, and started posting regularly to their blog, Dead Air Space, roughly six months ago. That stopped in July. This week, regular updates have returned, and speculation about their upcoming seventh album is commonplace on fansites and message boards. Today for instance they posted a coded message that, when translated, read "MARCH WA X". (Decode messages with this). Needless to say, every fan, myself included, jumped on March as a possible release date. Then, by decoding the "WA X" (speculatively, of course; they could represent numbers correspondng to their position in the alphabet), March 23rd appears general consensus. I, like many others, are drooling at the prospect of finally having a definite release date to look forward to. If you, like many others, are not drooling, you damn well shoud be. Let's hope the time has come.

African American Experience

The US is notorious for its spurious conspiracies which leads the neutral bystander to automatically call into question any shifty news articles that crop up. The "Jena 6" incident is one of those news items. The Jena 6 is the local name of a group of 6 individuals who were prosecuted to the full power of the law after supposedly attempting to murder a fellow, white, schoolmate. The case is documented in this video (take this with a pinch of salt - the hard facts are found here). With regard to this case, alongside my week's readings from African American authors, such as Lisa Delpit, Nathan McCall, and Shani Damila, I commented on the class discussion board: "[concerning airport security] Whether a white person or black person was wearing clothing commonly attributed to crime and violence, it would not make any difference (there is no suggestion of racial discrimination here - the girl who put her hand up in class today should have thought about this possibility). As we know, stereotypes are founded on fact, however absurd and extremetised. It is natural for people to make subconscious assumptions concerning people's dress for their own safety; if we associate a thick gold necklace with violence, we'll be afraid around that person. [...] With regard to this weeks readings, I felt the personal accounts were more concerned with endearing themselves to the sympathies of the reader, employing deliberately evocative examples, than portraying faithful accounts of their past experiences. Delpit encapsulated this feeling with her self-pitying, almost tearful, repetition of unique anomalies that were unidentifiable to the reader. I felt that this sense was further undercut by the suggestion that her experiences were exasperated and partially fabricated." I am continually being force-fed overblown, fantasised, exaggerated perspectives; so much so that I can no longer pick the relevant from the stupid. This is wholly depressing. I seem to use this blog as a vehicle for my angst. In related news, the Guardian online has some stereotype-dispelling facts for us.

HaHaHaHa

Say that again President Anagram...

The Informers again

Following on from my previous post regarding various celebrities signing up to this film, rumour has it that Winona Ryder has commited. I've liked Ryder as an actress after her poignant performance in Hollywood's adaptation of Arthur Miller's superb The Crucible alongside Daniel Day Lewis. The potential grows...

YouTube Thursday

My YouTube post this week comes inevitably from the comic cleverness (I'm very reluctant to use 'genius' at this moment in time), Limmy. This video is called Requiem, and this video is called Right-ta. That's all that need be said about these videos. Enjoy.

Round-update

Just as I thought there was nothing going on in the news this week (the McCann case has gone full circle), a few things have happened at once. Firstly, our beloved Mourinho has quit. It is a great loss to the eccentricities and humorous nuances of British Football. Having said that, no-one minds watching Chelsea lose, which seems a likely occurrence now that a joker has been appointed as full replacement. Another of my passions is music, specifically Radiohead - Thom Yorke has been nominated for an mtvU award for being a good guy with his climate opinions and stuff; their blog has restarted its daily updates, "Houdiau Direkton"; and council workers have been sacked for trawling eBay more frequently than not. Although this seems unrelated to Radiohead, it reminded me of the leagues of people who collect Radiohead releases. I got suckered in at one point and spent a healthy amount of time browsing eBay, with all its greatness, for mispressed CDs, Japanese releases, promo editions, etc. It is addictive, and there are websites dedicated to it. This is another example of the internet creating sub-communities and bringing people together in a way that disregards anonymous identities and faceless profiles. Hats off to it.

Race and Racism 3 - Native Americans

My race class this week pointed me towards stereotypes, false depictions, and misrepresentations throughout America regarding the Native American culture and history. Due to my education, I feel that I have developed an ability to analyse and criticize information laid before me. In the case of Native American representation, I believe we have a collective responsibility to teach and respect the history of the USA as it happened, rather than as we would want it to have happened. "As an author I try to correct the misconceptions and tell the truth about American Indians" - Marijo Moore. This statement encapsulates the psyche we should promote and support. We must appreciate that our levels of consciousness have risen and we no longer accept the history that was taught in schools; historians, philosophers and opinion leaders should hereby feel obliged to combat the archetypes wrongly instilled in our accumulative mindset. As Ralph and Natasha Friar claimed in ‘The Only Good Indian’: "Hollywood has continued to be a co-conspirator in committing cultural genocide by subverting the Native Americans' various ethnic identities". In my opinion, this claim cannot be wholly supported; rather, it is grounded on unique movie genres that portray Native Americans in a particular light, Western films, for example. (Your thoughts?) However, the overall presentation of Native Americans is unacceptable. We owe it not to the Native American people, but we owe it to ourselves to teach, and be taught, the accurate history of the United States.

Limmy

Taking inspiration from the highly successful Podcasts distributed by Ricky Gervais and co., Limmy (Brian Limond) has spawned an internet phenomenon. No-one thought it possible, but YouTube has finally brought us a genuinely funny nobody-come-icon. Shamelessly, it took a Guardian Unlimited article for me to come across this guy, but I'm sure glad I delved a little deeper. Browse his website yourself, particularly his video and blog sections. It does take a certain sense of humour, but it's not too much of a far cry to declare this man very funny indeed.