Category: Creativity

The WIRED CD: Rip. Sample. Mash. Share. | Creative Commons

The WIRED CD: Rip. Sample. Mash. Share. | Creative Commons

There’s a lot of noise about this on the net already, but let me add my personal witness that this is the best CD full of music that you can legally acquire for $5.

And it’s the only place you can get that many tracks which are legally licensed for sampling, remix, mashup, and transformation. (Loops CDs for that purpose cost a mint, and licensing professional CDs for sampling is so expensive only record companies can afford it.)

And after Nov 9 you’ll be able to download it for free.

Schweeeeet.

up way too late composing Latin

cause some guy on ISCA bbs asked how to render into Latin the sentence “to truly live is to stare defiantly into the face of death.”

I started working on it and noticed that my sentence was about half hexameter, so I labored and obsessed until I put the whole thing into dactylic hexameter, or something close enough for government work. I had to ditch the “defiance” but I thought the epic meter made up for it:

intueri in vultum mortis, id vivere vere est.

Then I realized I had totally jumbled around the sense of his words to get that. It should be more like:

Vere vivere, id est fortiter intueri in vultum mortis.

No epic meter there, nor any easy way to cast it that way.

But “fortiter intueri in vultum…” — that’s a lovely little chunk of hexameter in the middle of it. Makes me sad not to be able to render it all that way.

Ah, Latin. What fun.

Here’s an awesome page giving English verses composed in Classical meters.

Thinkin Bout Fallujah

Cause MC Frontalot’s Special Delivery just came up on the iTunes.

“Uh, yeah, I got a delivery for Iraq here; can Iraq sign for it? It’s a large box of freedom. Thanks. Sorry, I meant explosions. The freedom is backordered.”

And I wish that I could afford the ear of Bush the Second.
I’d ask is it your favorite philosopher who recommended
Invading and exterminating all who defy us,
Crying out “Justice!” but seeking out triumphs.
Was it your Christ, unbeloved of empires?
One nailed his ass to a post, he expired!
A terrorist, as Roman evidence showed,
Put down like a retard on the Death Row
In Texas, I guess, tough luck, right George?
Aint’ that how every war gets scored?
Big gun wins, winner gets a free turn?
Enemy after enemy burns?

A lot of killing going on there now, our men and women dying and killing.

A lot of killing.