body modification

Soldiers and their immediate families are eligible for free cosmetic surgery, according to The New Yorker.

Franz Ferdinand

This band rocks.

Music

A few recordings I came upon recently and would enthusiastically recommend:

Jane Birkin, Arabesque (Narada World)
Lester Young, The Complete Aladdin Sessions (Definitive Records)
Stanley Turrentine, Never Let Me Go (Blue Note)
Magnetic Fields, i (Nonesuch)
Alfred Brendel and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Franz Schubert/Winterreise (Philips)
Vienna Art Orchestra, The Minimalism of Erik Satie (hatART)
Irshad Khan, The Magic of Twilight (Naxos World)

And five, among many, I need to hear:
m83, Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts (Mute)
Mr. Lif, I Phantom (Definitive Jux)
Asian American Jazz Orchestra with Steve Lacy, Monk's Moods (EMusic)
Jackie-O Mofo, Fig. 5 (Road Cone)
Miles Davis, The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions (Columbia)

24

The last of the season is tomorrow. My interest has waned somewhat, especially since the writers made the arch-terrorist a cartoon anti-imperialist, and a petulant one at that.

Against Love

Been reading the above-named polemic by Laura Kipnis, admiring how she smuggles marxist and post-structuralist thinking into a certain kind of public sphere. I do wonder, though, who would want to be "caught" displaying the cover (man on bed, empty chair, woman in underwear) on the subway during rush hour.