Dag Hammarskjöld on Growing up

“Is life so wretched? Isn’t it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddied? You are the one who must grow up.”

– Dag Hammarskjöld

Quote seen at The Happiness Project

Speaking of Happiness Projects, I’m listening to an album of the same name by Charles Spearin of Broken Social Scene and Do Make Say Think. He invited his neighbours into his house to record their thoughts on happiness, then turned their words into music. Lovely.

Christmas mix 2008

Without further delay I present my Christmas Mix for 2008. There are a few Christmas Mix 2008 CDs floating around and hopefully reaching some mailboxes before the 25th but if one doesn’t reach your mailbox in time you can download the whole thing here (using the very nifty drop.io):

Track listing:

1. Vivaldi: Gloria in D, Rv 589 – Negri Vittorio
2. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) – Death Cab for Cutie
3. It’s Christmas! Let’s be Glad! – Sufjan Stevens
   
4. Every Christmas – Destroyer
5. Angels We Have Heard on High – Sufjan Stevens
6. Blue Christmas – Bright Eyes
7. I Love N.Y.E – Badly Drawn Boy
8. Chestnuts Roasting on – Arcade Fire
9. I Saw Three Ships – Sufjan Stevens
10. Christmas Reindeer – The Knife
11. Ding! Dong! – Sufjan Stevens
12. White Christmas – Mark Kozelek
13. Donna and Blitzen – Badly Drawn Boy
14. Christmas Blues – Canned Heat
15. Christmas Song – Mogwai
16. O Come, O Come Emmanuel – Sufjan Stevens
17. Happy Christmas (War is Over) – Polyphonic Spree
18. Jesus the Mexican Boy – Iron & Wine
19. Holy, Holy, Holy – Sufjan Stevens
20. Fairytale of New York – Stars

Bonus Track for download only: Christmas Must be Tonight – The Band (Can’t be found on any of the CDs. Special huh?)

****

P.S.  I’ve lifted giant chunks from other compilations. Links to the original albums:

A Very Indie Christmas

Songs for Christmas

About a Boy

Shine

The Sea & the Rhythm

Another thing I want to do in Melbourne

Perfect timing on my part, the Melbourne International Arts Festival is on while I’m home!

I’m scanning the catalogue now and there seems to be a lot of very cool stuff on, including Patti Smith collaborating with just about everyone to tribute just about everyone else in every possible art form. I hope to see her at least once. Unfortunately some events are already sold out. Let me know if you have your eye on anything in particular.

Patti Smith and Philip Glass (image taken from the festival website)

1, 2, 3, 4 monsters walking cross the floor

Have you seen this yet?

Finding lost accounts

Work is not happening at the rate it needs to today. Internet has been particularly unreliable this week and it’s been an internet-using kind of week. Just about to send out an e-newsletter that would have gone out days ago if it weren’t for a stream of unexpected technical glitches. The funny thing is, looking back, the greatest sense of achievement I’ve had in this job has been when some technical issue has turned up and I’ve figured out how to fix it.

Yesterday’s surprise issue was realising that when the server computer had died it took the general office email account with it. No one had checked the inbox of the email address splashed all over our materials and business cards in months. But how does one ‘find’ an email account? I had dealt with problems with this account once before so I wasn’t starting from scratch, but it did keep me in the office until very late and took up an unexpected three hours. But, as I said, this kind of thing is oddly satisfying…too bad it isn’t my actual job, maybe I’ve missed my calling as the I.T. guy (“are you sure it’s plugged in?” “Switch it off, wait 10 mins and switch it back on…if that doesn’t work call me back”).

I’m sure the fact that it isn’t my regular job is part of why it’s satisfying…using your brain in another way, or maybe just feeling righteous and a bit like a renaissance woman.

Now I am plowing through the kind of thing I do everyday, a summary of one of our projects…fortunately iTunes has just thrown up a party shuffle of 30% Tom Waits, 30% Joe Jackson and 40% other great stuff which is totally pushing me through the last hours of Friday! How does iTunes know better than me what I need to hear?

Rock n Roll Sharia style

A few weeks ago there was a concert in Banda Aceh. Two of Indonesia’s biggest bands, Nidji and Peterpan performed at the stadium to a crowd of millions!

But there was a problem. Some of the millions were boys and some of them were girls. Whatever could the authorities do to keep this event free from inappropriate mingling of the sexes?

Put up a fence of course:

Girls on one side, boys on the other please.

But there will always be bad eggs. And they do things like this:

Blatantly ignoring the spirit of the fence, this couple stood next to each other.

But it would only get worse. Next time they should build the fence out of bricks. Surely it was the sight of sexually promiscuous women that led this otherwise good man to behave so poorly:

(to clarify, this is my friend Michael jumping the fence, but he wasn’t the first to do it, and was by no means the last. There were many compromised men in attendance that day).

It seems that no matter how much you try to steer people to the path of righteousness, they are too evil or stupid to know better:

This couple knew that holding hands was wrong, so they covered their heads in shame.

But seriously, many more awesome things happened that day. By the end of the concert there were more boys than girls on the girls’ side of the fence, and there was a lot of evil dancing, girls taking off hijabs, boys taking off shirts, and lots of people getting very silly. This was youth rebellion Aceh style….and all over by evening prayer (6.30pm).