] I was 23-24 years old when I wrote these diaries. I
] certainly wasn't planning on publishing them when I wrote
] them; so reading them now either makes me laugh, cry or
] cringe. I will not make any claims to being a gifted
] writer or diarist, but the aim here is to give the reader
] some sense of what it was like to tour across the USA in
] a van with a punk rock band in the mid to late 1980's.
] Some say this was the heyday of independent rock music
] and the college radio scene. I would bet we worked harder
] and played many more shows than many of today's
] 'alternative' rock bands will play in their short-lived
] careers.

Dean Clean has put up a Moveable Type blog, and is posting commented entries from his journal covering the Milkmen's first tour. Other members of the band are also adding comments. You can follow the band on their tour, 18 years lagged.

Also, they have a number of music videos available for download from their main website.

The Dead Milkmen are required listening. Don't trust anyone who says they do not like The Dead Milkmen.

The Dead Milkmen: 18 years ago

Most cool family tree of electronic music. Includes sound clips representative of each genre.

This is most cool.

Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music

Rather funny.. :)

Crash Different

I have my one fully automatic Pentax MZ5 and I love it. It's light, it's fast, and it has a decent, if a bit on the slow side, lens. It's nice for doing action shots - shot that D.O.A mini-concert and I'm pretty happy with the results. My little $400 full auto Pentax gives me 15 megapixel resolution if I scan the negatives in my 3600 dpi transparency scanner. In conjunction with good film shot in a fashion I've been able to nail down through experimentation, I get some incredible shots. Buy a 15 megapixel digital camera? No.

Photography and Why Digital Cameras Suck

] Like the babbling psychics who predict future crimes in
] Minority Report, Dick was a precog. Lurking within his
] amphetamine-fueled fictions are truths that have only to
] be found and decoded. In a 1978 essay he wrote: "We live
] in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured
] by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by
] religious groups, political groups. I ask, in my writing,
] What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with
] pseudorealities manufactured by very sophisticated people
] using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not
] distrust their motives. I distrust their power. It is an
] astonishing power: that of creating whole universes,
] universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same
] thing."

An interesting article about the proliferation of Dickian tales in modern society. I'm amazed at how he was so right (mood organ anyone?) and other sci-fi greats such as Clark and Bradbury were so wrong (ahem... 2010...). Proof positive that you can see the future. Which makes me feel much better in some ways and much worse in others.

The Second Coming of Philip K. Dick