More Facebook - Dodging the Issue

It seems that the growing outcry from unhappy Facebookers finally got Mark Zuckerberg's attention. Or maybe he just read my earlier blog post and felt bad. The former sounds more likely, while the latter is me sometimes thinking that people read my blog. Whatever the reason, there has been more news on Facebook's recent bumblings, because Zuckerberg is intent on keeping us all happy, or just doesn't want to look like a colossal chump.

Zuckerberg published a letter in the Washington Post addressing some of the privacy issues that have people in a real huff right now. While Zuckerberg admits to Facebook making some mistakes and dropping the ball on giving users simple and substantial control over their privacy, he fails to acknowledge that Facebook has indeed been giving advertisers, like Google's DoubleClick and Yahoo!'s Right Media, people's personal information. He notes that people are concerned how their private information is being used, but then just lists "the principles under which Facebook operates." The first three are my favorite:

-- You have control over how your information is shared.

-- We do not share your personal information with people or services you don't want.

-- We do not give advertisers access to your personal information.

Yeah, okay, Mark. These principles must work more like guidelines, since lately all three of these have been conveniently overlooked. That the letter fails to admit that user information has in fact been distributed to advertisers and that control of information is hardly in our hands alone seems a gross oversight. Sure, the privacy settings and usage might be confusing for some, but it is manageable. Users really do have some flexibility and control over their privacy, though improvements can and should always be pursued. But using the privacy settings well, is not my primary concern. I wanna know why our information is being beamed out across the web, without our permission, to people who didn't even ask for that information. What made that okay and how does that gel with these principles? An admission of dishonesty and an apology seems a small thing to ask for, but we didn't even get that. It was just more schmoozing corporate blabber that only went halfway, addressing the less important half.

Once again, we've been served poorly, leaving me rather skeptical about the future privacy improvements. Maybe instead of improving user privacy controls, Facebook should first just adhere to the principles they set for themselves.

"You [don't] have control over what you share"

Some comforting news:

Facebook has decided privacy isn't really that important and has been sharing private information with advertising companies, even if those companies don't ask for the information. The reasoning behind this is partially explained by Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg's statement that "privacy was no longer a 'social norm.'" So that makes dishing everyone's info off to advertisers fine, because none of us care about privacy anymore.

Zuckerberg's claim doesn't seem to gel a recent poll which showed that 60% of Facebook users have considered deleting their accounts due to privacy concerns. Course, the poll notes that the bulk of that 60% have most likely bent over and accepted the privacy policy changes as a tolerable inconvenience, rather actually following through with their complaints and shutting down their accounts. Me and mine certainly haven't given up those precious accounts that keep us connected to all the everything happening in anyone's life. So maybe Zuckerberg is right, "People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people."

Even if we have become more open and less private in our online lives, who wants their info handed out to advertisers? And who is Zuckerberg to claim that EVERYONE is more open with their private info. Sure, we're happy to post private, sometimes humiliating pictures and videos of ourselves (which we have at least some privacy control over), but that's hardly the same as someone else deciding - without telling us or getting our permission - to give personal contact info, user names, and other more sensitive material to advertising companies. (Or maybe it is the same. Something to think about . . .) We are told that, "You should have control over what you share." It sounds nice - sounds like Zuckerberg has our interests at heart. But just because we "should" have control, doesn't mean we do have control, and it certainly doesn't mean that Zuckerberg gives a fig about our private lives.

I think that people might be more open about their lives, but we like to think that that openness is on our own terms. We all start our blogs; our Facebook, MySpace, Twitter accounts; our Flickr and Photobucket picture accounts; even our own websites. All of this supposedly gives us more opportunity to stay connected to people we want to be connected with. Or it gives us a chance to "make our voices heard" about things we feel like talking about - the common person now has a voice. Except that common voice gets swallowed up in the digital, ever-expanding universe. This technological explosion sounds pretty nice, except that it eventually just becomes static. Who can actually stay connected to 900+ Facebook friends?

Our use of the technologies is rather naive and bumbling a lot of the time, and we get sucked into the webosphere without correctly and constructively navigating it. Plenty of people (probably myself included) have some techno-anxiety - be it Facebook (like the Anti-Facebook League of Intelligentsia) or just the internet in general. There's substance behind some of these techno-suspicions; the internet, like anything, is a tool to be utilized by the user. If we don't know how to use it right, it won't work for us as well as it could, and might even work against us. Unfortunately, there isn't a real good set of operating instructions that everyone has and reads. We often just kinda jump in and start clicking, which usually results in viruses, porn ads, and stolen identities.

Facebook is a tool, too. But its use value might be nearing its end.

White Noise

The blogosphere:


Enjoy.

In the Cathedral

The Choir of the Cathedral of the Madeleine put on an exceptional carol service Monday night. Every year my family tries to go up and hear at least one of the carol services. We've often tried to go to the Christmas Eve service, but this year it worked out better to go on Monday, which I have no problem with because it seems that the Madeleine Choir is incredible any time they perform.

The choir entered singing "O Come, O Come Emanuel", which the audience is invited to sing along with during the fourth, fifth, and seventh verses. A couple behind us failed to note this detail and began belting out the first verse at full volume. I felt momentarily annoyed because "O Come, O Come Emanuel" is one of my favorite carols and the choir's performance is always about the most overwhelmingly gorgeous thing in music. But I couldn't be annoyed with this couple, even if they weren't the best singers and certainly couldn't harmonize with each other, because they were so happy to be there and singing and you could tell they loved that song and the opportunity to sing it in the Cathedral of the Madeleine with the choir. So it was still a lovely experience.

This service included several songs I hadn't heard the choir perform before, like the "Coventry Carol", "Myn Lyking", and "Jesus Christ the Apple Tree". Beautiful, all of them. "Jesus Christ the Apple Tree" was particularly wonderful to me and I wanted to share the text with you here.

The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit and always green:
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the apple tree.

His beauty doth all things excel:
By faith I know, but ne'er can tell
The glory which I now can see
In Jesus Christ the apple tree.

For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought:
I missed of all: but now I see
'Tis found in Christ the apple tree.

I'm weary with my former toil,
Here I will sit and rest awhile:
Under the shadow I will be,
Of Jesus Christ the apple tree.

This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive;
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the apple tree.

- poem set to music by Elizabeth Poston (1905-1987)

If you haven't yet been to the Cathedral of the Madeleine, I'd recommend visiting. It's a lovely place; one of my favorite in Salt Lake.

The Hurry of the Spirits, in a Fever and Nervous Disorders

My frame of nature is a ruffled sea,
And my disease the tempest. Nature feels
A strange commotion to her inmost center;
The throne of reason shakes. "Be still, my thoughts;
Peace and be still." In vain my reason gives
The peaceful word, my spirit strives in vain
To calm the tumult and command my thoughts.
This flesh, this circling blood, these brutal powers
Made to obey, turn rebels to the mind,
Nor hear its laws. The engine rules the man.
Unhappy change! When nature's meaner springs,
Fired to impetuous ferments, break all order;
When little restless atoms rise and reign
Tyrants in sovereign uproar, and impose
Ideas on the mind; confused ideas
Of non-existents and impossibilities,
Who can describe them? Fragments of old dreams,
Borrowed from midnight, torn from fairy fields
And fairy skies, and regions of the dead,
Abrupt, ill-sorted. O 'tis all confusion!
If I but close my eyes, strange images
In thousand forms and thousand colors rise,
Stars, rainbows, moons, green dragons, bears and ghosts,
An endless medley rush upon the stage
And dance and riot wild in reason's court
Above control. I'm in a raging storm,
Where seas and skies are blended, while my soul
Like some light worthless chip of floating cork
Is tossed from wave to wave: now overwhelmed
With breaking floods, I drown, and seem to lose
All being; now high-mounted on the ridge
Of tall foaming surge, I'm all at once
Caught up into the storm, and ride the wind,
The whistling wind; unmanageable steed,
And feeble rider! Hurried many a league
Over the rising hills of roaring brine,
Through airy wilds unknown, with dreadful speed
And infinite surprise, till some few minutes
Have spent the blast, and then perhaps I drop
Near to the peaceful coast. Some friendly billow
Lodges me on the beach, and I find rest.
Short rest I find; for the next rolling wave
Snatches me back again; then ebbing far
Sets me adrift, and I am borne off to sea,
Helpless, amidst the bluster of the winds,
Beyond the ken of shore.

Ah, when will these tumultuous scenes be gone?
When shall this weary spirit, tossed with the tempests,
Harassed and broken, reach the ports of rest,
And hold it firm? When shall this wayward flesh
With all th' irregular springs of vital movement
Ungovernable, return to sacred order,
And pay their duties to the ruling mind?

- Isaac Watts

Never Land

"I had this vision. You know in the summer if you lay on the grass and stare at the sky, you can almost see beyond the stars, but cannot quite get a grip on what's there? Well, sometimes it's very difficult to work out exactly what it is that keeps you pressed between the earth and the sky and why you don't whoosh off into oblivion." - Andrew Eldritch

Douglas & Bon

Douglas McCarthy

Song of the Week: 'Worlock' - Skinny Puppy & Rabies Review

As a partial follow up to my earlier post on Skinny Puppy's concert at Salt Lake City's Club Vegas, I have chosen to spotlight their track 'Worlock' from their 1989 release Rabies as this week's Song of the Week. It might seem a cop out since 'Worlock' is overwhelmingly accepted as one of Skinny Puppy's finest moments, leaving little to still be said about why the track matters. All the same, I'm gonna go on about it for a few lines.

'Worlock' still remains my favorite Skinny Puppy song. I've listened to it and loved it since I was nine or ten years old, though at that age I had little idea what the song was about and why it was good. I liked it because my brother liked it and it sounded weird, but intriguing somehow. It still intrigues me and still blows my mind when I listen to it. 'Worlock' shows Skinny Puppy at their best, proving their incredible talent for creating solid pop beats, put to haunting, sad and pained music that is both abrasive and, at times, rather beautiful (just listen to that chorus and the rising finish). Ogre's ragged, raspy, cutting vocals transition for the chorus to a heavily computer-altered delivery that becomes almost overwhelmingly heartbreaking. During that final vocal delivery his voice soars to a flayed agony that suggests tragedy as much as it does horror. The lyrics are tough to follow and understand (this is Skinny Puppy after all), so here they are, so you can read along. In many ways the song is as significant today as it was upon its release - audio sample: "the police used to watch over the people, now they're watching the people", as just one example.

The 'Worlock' video has a long controversial history. It's a compilation of film clips from gore horror films linked together in a long montage. It covers over 20 films and is just one grotesque image after another. The video received an X rating for being pornographic. It is. But the images, combined with shots of slaughterhouse blades and uncooked hamburger suggest that what these images are saying is that the violence we do to each other has created a human slaughterhouse that we all should be disgusted by. We're killing ourselves, committing global suicide. Not a happy message, but one that the modern horror film often adopts and that many in the world at large seem to agree, giving rise to the opinion that it is really within the last century that the world went to hell. In the last century human destruction has accelerated at an alarming rate, with the nightly news is in danger of becoming more and more like the 'Worlock' video, or that we as viewers only see one gratuitous, pornographic image of violence and atrocity after another. Skinny Puppy might just be showing us a rather accurate portrait of the world, or at least how some people are beginning to see the world, and that should deeply trouble us and, like The Cure's blistering track 'Pornography', move us to demand, despite the overwhelming opposition, that we "find a cure".

Yet the problem still stands: even if Skinny Puppy wishes and pushes for change, they are still clearly enamored with their own brutality, creating a paradox that is as messy as their music, or at least as messy as the Rabies album, which has received mixed reviews since it was first released. But people are complicated and the art we make can be equally so. Perceived flaws in behavior don't always count as grounds for condemnation and dismissal, in my mind, both for art and people alike. People, and the art they make, misbehave - we are human after all. Sometimes it's those very flaws, fractures, and incongruencies that make the art or the person so interesting and wonderful.

Rabies is a case in point. This album is very close to my heart - admittedly for nostalgic, childhood reasons, as well as more stuffy critically analytical ones. I'm no music critic and speak here as an enthusiastic, obsessive layperson. Rabies was for a long time my favorite Skinny Puppy album (though Last Rights has since claimed that honor). It was the album that introduced me to the band; it's also one of their most accessible records, which turns some fans off (it always seems that 'accessible' is a big buzz-kill for hardcore fans, because it suggests the band has sold out to aspirations of top 40 radio fodder stardom). But it's also inaccessible because the record is uneven. 'Fascist Jock Itch', placed between 'Two Time Grime' and 'Worlock' seems a bad move. Maybe it is. But the track's spewed speed metal is so frantic and out of control that it actually helps us notice 'Worlock' better, because we're so out of breath and in need of a relaxant that 'Worlock''s soft synth fade-in sounds like the most blessed opener we've ever heard. It might be a stretch to say the uneven shift from the one track to the other is intentionally done to draw our attention to the tone of both tracks, and this tonal juxtaposition improves both songs. But it's an idea worth thinking about.

The album takes another strange shift from 'Rivers' to the end of the record. Here Ogre takes more of a back seat as cEvin Key and D.R. Goettel take over, working their instrumental and sampling magic. 'Rivers' is a strange compilation of audio samples and gentle synths. This atmospheric tone continues with 'Choralone': a bleak, strange track that isn't much of a song at all. It's more just stream of conscious thoughts supported by very effective textures and atmospherics. 'Amputate' follows nicely and seems to round out a trio of songs that don't work as well individually as they do together. But we're ground out of this bizarrely comfortable space that 'Rivers', 'Choralone', and 'Amputate' take us to with the sixteen minute concluding live brap 'Spahn Dirge'. Like 'Fascist Jock Itch', this mammoth ender undermines our position and leaves us feeling rather puzzled and unsure if we'd just heard the most vacuous, bloated waste of music Skinny Puppy ever made. I think they know it's a tough tonal shift and did it anyway to try something bizarre and difficult to test the limits and barriers of music and albums. I don't think it was to please listeners.
Maybe the album fails in what it's trying to do, but the attempt is the attraction for me. Some criticize Skinny Puppy for bringing in Alain Jourgensen to help produce. Some are just upset that Rabies wasn't VIVIsectVI, an attitude that I'm so bored with - they already did the VIVIsectVI album, why would you want them to just rehash it? When you try repeating what you've already done all you get is the likes of Godsmack, where every album sounds like the last; or Moby's 18, which sounds like a pile of forgettable outtakes from Play. If Skinny Puppy has proven anything it is that they are not afraid to push in a different direction and do something new for the sake of trying something yet unexplored - fans and critics be damned.

The album is an intriguing look at a band continuing to experiment and see what they can find and learn. At times they really capture something fantastic: 'Rodent', 'Two Time Grime', 'Worlock', 'Tin Omen'; sometimes they make something hypnotic and otherworldly: 'Rivers', 'Choralone', 'Amputate'. Sometimes it's just kind of perplexing: 'Fascist Jock Itch', 'Rain', 'Spahn Dirge'. But all of it combined makes for a real emotional, conceptual roller-coaster that leaves me still trying to grasp why it is so appealing. In the end, I think it's that the album isn't easy to explain or compartmentalize that makes it such a stand-out and important album.

To conclude, I have this video of 'Worlock' from the Salk Lake show. The quality is as we've come to expect from such raw video recordings. Such low-quality videos are often rather boring for me, but since I was there and saw this performance, it helps preserve that night in my memory. So I'm grateful to the person who shot this video for capturing one of the best moments from that night's show.

Nitzer Ebb at the Urban Lounge, SLC

So, last Tuesday Nitzer Ebb came to Salt Lake's Urban Lounge, the bar specializing in crappy sound and lighting - two things you always want at your concerts. I keep getting sucked back into that place, because superb bands keep playing there, which is frustrating because I hate that place, but love the bands, and know there are better venues they could and should play at. But I have to admit that the shows I've seen there have been really spectacular, showing the incredible power and skill of the bands to overcome the wretched conditions they have to work with. But you still always wonder how it could have been if they'd played somewhere else.

Anyway, I digress.

Nitzer Ebb was tremendous. Douglas McCarthy is one intense dude, with some furious stage presence. I had a heck of a time trying to get a good picture of him, because the man just wouldn't hold still. His movements were decisive, confident, focused, and by no means frantic. He was in control the whole time, heightening the show's intensity level with his theatrics and Corporate Man attire, amping the audience up with his gestures and fervor, giving everyone the show they'd hoped for.

As they performed "Getting Closer", from their album Showtime, I managed to get one picture I was very happy with. This very lucky picture conveys, to me, quite a bit of what the show was and what Nitzer Ebb is all about.


There also happens to be some folks out there who got some video of the show. Here's a nice recording of "Getting Closer", possibly shot by the camera you see bottom center in my picture. The sound is a bit distorted, probably due to proximity to the speakers, but still not bad. The camera position is great for capturing Douglas and Bon, who only stepped out from behind his equipment to sing this song, as they work their performing magic. Notice Bon lose his mic cable and recover it without really breaking stride.

And for those looking for other recordings of that night's "Getting Closer" performance, they are here as follows:

1) The video featuring, frame right, my camera and brief glimpses of myself, grooving away next to the coolest fan I've ever had the privilege to stand by at a show. He's the headbanging cat whose hair I've got in half my pictures.

2) The video behind me, where my hat-clad head is in the bottom of the frame. And we get more of my favorite fan.

3) The video showcasing more audience than band and the Urban Lounge's crappy sound.

After all these years Nitzer Ebb has still got it.