Short note on Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer is a kind of movie that should've just said fuck this shit I'm having fun and brought in Godzilla to wreck shit and spit radiation. But it doesn't because reasons. 

Remember Sunshine? It was this long and pondering hard Sci fi about throwing a bomb into the sun so it could get its shit together and stop being so dull. and it was fine and it even managed to get its points across in articulate manner without getting too pretentious. 

But then it went off the rails and turned into a slasher flick in space starring crazy naked dude with burns all over his body aboard a ship in front of the sun transporting the bomb. Why not? 

I was 16 when it came out and I hated that shift. Because the movie didnt needed it. 16 years later I think it was transcending creative decision because the movie just went fuck that I'm having fun. Gotta respect that.

Thoughts on "Personal poetry"

A couple of days ago I've stumbled upon a Facebook post criticizing the so-called "personal poetry" and its seeming "overabundance" in the literary outlets. 

It was mostly a derogatory post dismissing the concept as some sort of "conspiracy of bland", but it made me thinking - why do some people have such a distaste for this kind of poetry while the others enjoy it?

So here’s what I’ve come up with.

Mark A. Lewis - The Thaw (2009) Review

"The Thaw" is 2009 Canadian horror film directed by Mark A. Lewis and written in collaboration with Michael Lewis. In a nutshell, "The Thaw" is like X-Files episode "Ice" combined with some John Carpenter's "The Thing" vibes.

The film is a representative of an ecological horror niche, so it is less about the thrills and kills and more about constructing a hypothetical situation and exploring themes.

The film tells the story of Canadian Arctic research station on Banks Island that studies the effects of Global Warming. The group is led by renowned environmental activist David Kruipen (played by Val Kilmer), who tries to warn everybody that things are dire and if we don't take any action soon enough - it would be too late. You know - just what global warming guys are usually saying. For the most part - he is not very successful in his quest, but he is respected well enough to maintain his research.

Banks Island is an example of severe effects of climate change. From Kruipen's point of view - it is a middle of a war zone. In the past it was covered in ice and now there is only small patch of it left. The island manages to look both unassuming and horrifyingly devastated at the same time. Desaturated colour scheme also contributes greatly to the overall devastation/desolation feel

The film opens with the team making a breakthrough discovery. While observing a polar bear who for some reason came back to an island - they discover the remains of the woolen mammoth buried in the ice. The thaw brought it back to the surface and polar bear found it. But that's not all.

Then things go off the rails, as the polar bear falls ill and dies. Then members of the team start to succumb to the unknown disease. This leaves Kruipen with some tough choices to make.

In the meantime, the station expects a group of students to arrive for science practice. Kruipen used this as an opportunity to patch things up with his estranged daughter Evelyn. At first he pulls her in thinking that he is going to share with her his greatest scientific triumph. She reluctantly agrees. Then, upon realizing that things are going southward, Kruipen tries to prevent her from coming in. Due to pre-existing conflict between the two, Evelyn disregards the latter attempts and comes in regardless.

When the group arrives, they find an empty station. After some walking around they find a body of dead polar bear. The discovery is suspicious enough for them to try to contact Kruipen's group on the radio. But the radio conversation leaves more questions than answers and the only thing the group is left to do is to wait until Kruipen's party comes back.

Meanwhile strange things start to happen. Students are attacked by strange insects and one of the Kruipen's colleagues arrives to the base alone and severely ill. It appears that she killed Kruipen to escape from something.

To make things worse, for some reason she breaks the helicopter equipment so that no one could get out of there. After a while she succumbs to the unknown illness. It becomes clear that those insects are related to it - they infest the host and breed inside the body slowly consuming it.

This throws the group into a frenzy. Two of the students and a pilot are already  infected and it is a question of time when the rest will follow suit. Paranoia gets better of them and things get bloody. Then Kruipen reappears and it seems like things are going to get under control. However, Evelyn discovers his notes and tapes and finds out her father's real intentions regarding his discovery. And that's where the film stops being just another low-budget horror film and does some high drama.

The story goes. In the past, David Kruipen was an environmental activist. The lack of impact of activism turned him into a radical and it led him to blowing up an oil pipeline.

This made him something of a legendary figure in the community.  After that he moved on from radicalism into more reasonable ways and tried to make difference with facts and research.

However, the more he tried to uncover the effects of global warming and convince people to make changes - the less he accomplished. No one cared. You have to agree that when you are trying to change people's opinion on an important subject matter to no avail over and over again - that might be quite dispiriting. And you what that does to people - it makes them desperate. The thing with desperation is that it makes people go to extremes.

Kruipen was desperate to do something that would have a long-lasting effect. And when he discovered mammoth remains and found out about the parasites inside - he knew he was onto something. His grand plan was to infect himself with parasites, get back on the mainland, start an outbreak that will kill a lot of people and after the outbreak is contain - this will convince everybody that they need to take care of ecology and change their ways of life.

It is quite far-fetched, but seems plausible from the standpoint of a man who has no idea how to prove his point after so many failed attempts.

This character arc elevates the film from standard isolated horror to fall from grace narrative. Kruipen is barely in the film but his shadows lingers over it. We see his plan roll out in a microcosm of the research station. And then we get the big kick - Evelyn finds out her father's real intentions and confronts him about that and he agrees with her but goes on with his plan. Kruipen is aware of how misguided and delusional his plan is - but he proceeds because it might work out this time.

And he fails because things are bleak enough to get some retribution.

Sometimes the film is more than sum of its parts. This happens when the film manages to build enough substance around itself. And it expands the film beyonds its actual scope. This aspect can make you appreciate the film even more despite its apparent flaws. That's pretty much what "The Thaw" manages to do.

Michael Winterbottom - I Want You (1998) Review

Michael Winterbottom is one of the most interesting British filmmakers of the past 30 years, even though he doesn't really get the respect he deserves. Nevertheless, his films are full of the creative invention one can be amazed.

Here are several examples.

• 24 Hour Party People is the pitch-perfect music scene biopic that meticulously mixes fact and fiction to generate the authentic vibe of the times it depicts. 
• On the other hand, A Cock and Bull Story, his adaptation of Lawrence Stern's Tristram Shandy. It adopts the storytelling techniques of the source material to create yet another narrative layer about the film crew making a film adaptation. 
• There are also 9 Songs - a near-abstract exploration of an intimate relationship combined with a bunch of fancam concert recordings that coincidentally provide a contextual commentary over what is going on in-between. 

And then there is I Want You.

Due to a variety of reasons, it is one of the lesser-seen films in Winterbottom's body of work. This film was made right after Winterbottom made his breakthrough with Jude and Welcome to Sarajevo, and yet I Want You suffered from distribution issues, which made the film hard to come by.

I Want You is a brooding, expressionist melodrama built upon the conventions of the neo-noir genre. It is a story of two people trying but unable to move on. A young man Martin is coming back after a stint in jail and trying to get his life back together. He was involved in a horrible crime, but now it is behind him. OR so it seems. And then there is a young woman named Helen. She and Martin were previously in a relationship. But now she seems to have moved on only to be haunted by her past once again. OR so it seems.

On the surface, it seems like a pretty standard kitchen sink melodrama full of pondering and rumination and a little bit of reflection here and there. But it turns out to be something else. For the lack of the better word, the film camouflages itself as a brooding melodrama while there is this dark backward roiling over. Here is where Neo-Noir thing kicks in. Subversion is one of the great things about the Neo-Noir film genre. By design, neo-noir film does things differently, and that allows them to move beyond the conventions and explore different kinds of narratives within a recognizable template.

That what I Want You does. It is a master class in misdirection and subversion. The term that best describes what this film does is "sleight of hand." You have a surface plot going on, and it never seems to be a ruse, because it is not. It is just interpreted differently due to a lack of cohesive context. We get bits and pieces of context along the way, and it fits together well. Except, there is more to it. The dramatic action gradually escalates to the boiling point, and upon reaching the climax, everything comes into place, except it is different. The puzzle that was coming together until then turned out to be something else.

Here's what is going on. Martin is a broken man, riddled with guilt and in search of closure. He doesn't really know where he is going and what he is going to do. All he has left are festering ruins of a relationship he tries to cauterize. On the other hand, Helen is deeply traumatized by her experience with Martin. She is a victim, a survivor. While she is trying to maintain a semblance of a normal life, she is unable to have a proper relationship with other men. So, for the most part, she just tries to trudge along with life from day to day.

The film establishes this narrative and reinforces it each time Martin and Helen bump into each other.

Martin is not supposed to see Helen. That would violate the terms of his parole, and he would go back to jail. But for reasons of unresolved feelings, he still tries to reconnect with her. Every time they meet - it is an awkward and odd dead end. Martin tries to come forward, but Helen rejects his attempts. Time after time, he tries to talk; she doesn't want to. Even after he saves her from being raped. Martin is depicted as an obsessive stalker. But it is more than meets the eye.

It is then revealed that Helen's reaction is such that Martin had killed her father back in the day. So her reactions are reasonable in this context. And Martin seems to acknowledge that. He just wants to get over it and move on. And so things are kind of settled. Eventually, they have sex to get closure, and that's it. Martin is moving away to the other town, Helen seems to move on with the other relationship. The story's done.

That's where the kitchen sink drama would stop. Everything's wrapped up. But it is not. Martin comes back one more time to set things straight.

But if the conflict is exhausted, there is no real tension left - why this whole thing still goes on? If Martin accepts what he had done and moves on if Helen is over it - why the narrative just resets and starts the last beat all over again? Is it going to amp up the melodrama part to wrap things up the hard way? Why bother with such an overwrought ending? It doesn't make much sense at the moment because it is so predictable. But it is more than meets the eye.

And that disorienting disquieting annoyance of obviousness is by design. Martin is unable to move on, and so he comes to sort things out. Because Helen just wants to get rid of Martin once and for all, she seems to act with preventive aggression. Her line of thinking - give him what he wants and get over it. She coerces Martin into forcing himself on her only to be stopped by the boy who also happened to be in the house.

That's where neo-noir subversion kicks into high gear.

Martin reveals that Helen actually killed her father, and Martin took the hit for her only to get a cold shoulder afterward. Helen bludgeons him in retaliation. With the boy's help, she disposes of the body just like she did with Martin years ago.

It is the plot twist that doesn't really function as a plot twist because while it adds new information to the story, it doesn't change anything.

The revelation shifts the dynamics of the story. Martin was the complicit victim all along, and he tried to cope with it. Helen becomes a much more proactive character in retrospect. We don't know who Helen's father was - so there is a question whether Helen's family was dysfunctional. Judging by Helen's tendency to disobey what other men want her to do - we can assume that her father was a controlling one, and she strived for independence. We can assume that murder was probably not premeditated and committed on impulse.

In other words, Helen replaced her supposed victimhood of the dysfunctional family with the other victimhood by committing a murder and feeling the guilt over avoiding retribution. The murder got her a certain level of independence and rendered her unable to enjoy it fully. With that baggage, she naturally wanted to pretend all of that was in the past. Martin threw a wrench in that, and so the story repeated itself.

It is a grand narrative trick. On the one hand, it recontextualizes the story. At the same time, it doesn't discard anything that happened before reveal - it just adds another dimension to the story that significantly expands the characters and their motivations. It shows how destructive such actions can be.

And that's something worth admiring.

Reassessing Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man (2000)

The Invisible Man is a bulletproof concept. On the one hand, it is pure gimmickry. On the other hand, the set-up provides enough room to explore the human condition and psychology of the individual with an unfair advantage over the rest of the world. The 1933 adaptation is just that - if you are going to make a film about an invisible man - this is the way you can do it - it is equally a commercial spectacle and intricate character drama.

The subsequent adaptations didn't exactly cleared the bar at the drama department but offered more of Invisibility Mayhem of all flavors and sometimes with Chevy Chase making Jeff Goldblum impression.

This year is marked by another Invisible Man adaptation directed by modern horror master Leigh Whannell. After a couple of months of casually avoiding watching the new adaptation of H.G. Wells' Invisible Man - I finally did it... and it was ok.

Invisible Man 2020 is not really a movie about The Invisible Man, it is more of an abusive relationship drama with a mystery peppered in, but as a gimmick, the invisible man works for the benefit of the story. It makes it different, which already an accomplishment. At least it is unusual to add all the invisible man shenanigans to the relationship drama. But it doesn't add much to the story. It is a cog in the plot, which is a damn shame because this concept deserves better than this.

So why not revisit the other Invisible Man movie that came twenty years ago and was actually about the Invisible Man?

Revisiting Roger Waters' Radio KAOS

There's new Pink Floyd boxset coming out. One of its selling points is a remix/rerecording of the David Gilmour's 1987 solo album A Momentary Lapse of Reason which exists because audience liked David Bowie's Never Let Me Down reimagining enough. So now AMLOR sounds less 80s bullshit and more sterile 10s shit.

So why not get back and revisit the other 1987 Pink Floyd solo album - Roger Waters' Radio KAOS.

For one reason or another, Roger Waters' solo career never really got much appreciation. Which is a damn shame because his 1984-1992 run was a worthy continuation of latter day Pink Floyd vibe with intrinsic concept albums and biting social commentary.

His official solo debut, 1984 The Pros and Cons of Hitch-Hiking suffered from the comparison with Pink Floyd's The Wall (just like The Final Cut the year prior). The other strike against P&CHH is that it was originally pitched to the band with the Wall and the band passed on it - this fact created a general perception that the album just wasn't good enough. Which is not true.
P&CHH is very different from The Wall and can stand on its own. This album is much more self-aware and tongue-in-cheek affair than its more celebrated relative. It is cheerfully stupid and embracing the camp of its vaudevillian overcomplicated "it is a dream" plot.
The older i get the more i can relate to its haphazard narrative and decidedly glorious lack of coherence.

Then there is 1992 Amused to Death which is Roger Waters blasting out the lost Pink Floyd album he had in himself. The Bravery of Being Out of Range and It's A Miracle stand as all-time greats. It is weirdly prophetic album about media reality warping and information oversaturation that messes the lives of simple men.

In between these two albums is 1987 Radio KAOS. The best way to explain Radio KAOS worth is by comparing it to AMLOR.

Released at the same time as David Gilmour's A Momentary Lapse of Reason, it had a strategic disadvantage of not being labelled a Pink Floyd album (unlike David Gilmour's). This resulted in lower sales, biased reviews and low tour attendance which seriously damaged Waters' career prospects.

The other problematic point of Radio KAOS is its overproduced 80s sound. Just like David Gilmour's 1987 effort, Roger Waters tried to modernize his sound with then-fancy fairlight synth aesthetic. However, Waters leaned too hard on it and instead of augmenting his sound, he made it tacky and dubious at times.

At its worst, the album production sounds like a generic boilerplate synthesizer schlock - far cry from Waters' extravagant soundscapes of The Final Cut or Pros and Cons of Hitch-Hiking. But the production is just one of the facets of the creative work - it is the songs that make the wheel turning.

In contast, the biggest problem with David Gilmour's A Momentary Lapse of Reason (or his other solo efforts) is its abysmal songwriting. The man can play guitar, but songwriting is far from his strengths. He can write a terrific song once in a while, but he can't carry the load all the way through.

Even though the music is mostly fine with some exceptional moments (Yet Another Movie is a great song despite some lyrical hiccups), the lyrics make your ears bleed grey goo. The Dogs of War might have been a great song by the Bad Company ten years prior, but the band called Pink Floyd could have done better any day of the week. Even album highlights like Sorrow or One Slip suffer from being littered with the most generic lyrical cliche imaginable. As if there were no cliche David Gilmour didn't liked.

On the other hand, Roger Waters knows a thing or two about writing songs and making them work on their own terms and within an album context. Radio KAOS shows Roger Waters trying to make an accessible record with a message and for the most part he succeeds.

The album is a great showcase of Waters' narrative skills. He tells a simple story about dealing with global bullshit with some extreme prejudice. Each song explores different aspect of the narrative and progresses the story. It builds to a culmination and concludes with a message of hope with so much cheese and tongue-in-cheek - you can't help but smile in the end.

Story-wise, the album is rather mean dig on The Who's Tommy. Except this time "the shit is real". It also revolves around paralyzed wheelchair-bound protagonist. But this time, his name is Billy and the boy can hear Radio Waves. And he is Welsh. He has a brother Benny, who works as a miner during the Thatcher years, so you know he's screwed into backside netherrealm.

After another pub crawl Benny gets into trouble for dropping a concrete block to an overpass which resulted in a driver's death. Benny's sent to prison while Billy goes to their uncle Dave who lives in California.

Uncle Dave is an interesting fella. Back in the 40s he worked on The Manhattan Project, and this experience made him quite matter-of-fact about life and stuff. Billy is miserable in California (probably because he happened to hear LL Cool J "Going back to Cali". This thing is a serious PTSD generator) and he is generally upset by the state the world is currently in. In other words, Billy's world weary with ennui and nonesuch sehnsucht.

During his stay at the uncle's place, Billy learns how to use a cordless phones and contacts local Radio KAOS DJ Jim Ladd who plays himself. They start to talk and Billy shares his thoughts regarding the modern world and where it is going. He is really upset about happened to Benny and what is going on in Wales. And he is really pissed off at the politicians who just go sweet fuck-all about it.

The accumulation of frustration results in Billy decided to teach a world a lesson in humility. With his new skills in manipulating cordless phones, he orchestrates a simulation of a nuclear attack. At the same time he disables all the retaliation mechanisms of the opposing forces leaving them defenseless helpless chums - so that "this time" it will be one and done waltz. Given the build-up and knowing what is going to happen, everybody shit their pants. Billy's "operation" results in a global blackout which apparently brings the world to senses and creates a semblance of hope.

That's quite a story, right?

On the other hand, the songs work well as a standalone pieces. While the production is deeply rooted in the 80s synth-laced mainstream rock, it benefits the songs with clear-cut structures with punchy rhythms and catchy hooks.

Radio Waves is punchy album opener. The story opens in medias res with Billy meeting with Jim Ladd. The song wastes no time to get to the point and its hook is really infectious. Radio Waves sets the scene and setting of the whole story. On the other hand, its sound shows how Billy perceives radio waves and what kind of excitement it brings to him.

Who needs information slows things down and starts to flesh out the narrative. It is an anthem of a working man cornered by the absence of future prospects. It gives you a sneak peek into the world Billy lives in. Narrative-wise it is a flashback to the inciting incident of the story - Benny's getting into trouble.

Me or Him is about the consequences of Benny's act. At first there is an attempt to justify his actions, then to comprehend what happened and then somber coming to terms with the state of things.

The Powers That Be is another high octane rock piece. Unlike cheeful Radio Waves, it is a rather dark song about those in power and the way they apply it to everybody. Verses of the song are constructed out of generic marketing cliche wrapped into hard boiled twang. It is like an optical illusion. Chorus goes in reverse exposes the absurdity of this mirage.   

Sunset Strip tells about Billy's stay at Uncle Dave's. It combines shiny imagery of the California with the longing for home. Billy does not belong there and he is very uncomfortable. He is trying to get a glimpse of home via radio but it is futile.

Home is an album's centerpiece. This song marks the breakdown of Billy and his decision to take action. He can't take this anymore. It starts off relatively calm mid-tempo but soon enough it starts to unravel until in the end it goes out of control and spuns into the despair of the next song.

Four Minutes depicts Billy's fit of rage and desire to right the wrongs of the world. It is less of a song and more of a happening - it ebbs and flows with the impeding doom getting closer. The highlight of the song is the end part where Claire Torry sings "Goodbye, little spy in the sky". It is really tearjerking despite being an eulogy for spy satellite.

Despite the promise of burning the world down in flames, the story ends with the fake out. The Tide is Turning was born out of Waters' change of heart after he saw the social impact of Live Aid. For a moment even such cynic as him started to believe there is still some good left in the world. In the context of an album this song works a sticking out tongue and saying "nyah nyah".

Radio KAOS is a product of its time. The production values are somewhat detrimental to its perception, but the songwriting is solid and the tunes are catchy to get through the 80s plastic dirge.

If anything, Radio KAOS encapsulates the tone of the 1980s with its fear of nuclear war, fascination with computers, overproduced sound and celebrities trying to save the world while marketing themselves.

Christian Morgenstern - BIM BAM BUM poem

Heavy emphasis on the images is one of the great things symbolist poetry brought back to the spotlight in the latter half of XIX century. After years of being buried in the verbosity of romantic poetry, symbolism cut the fat and tried to get straight to the point. 

Despite that, symbolist approach managed to overstay its welcome and become a passe by the time XX century rolled in. Part of the problem was plain and simple misuse of images, they became nothing more than a mere garnish of the text, an outlet for the flowery language, the one used for furbishing instead of actually serving a thematic or narrative purpose in the text.

But it wasn't necessary a bad thing. Case in point - BIM BAM BUM.

FreddieMeter - Queen + voice recognition bullshit

Here's a little singing contest variation dedicated to one and only Freddie Mercury. It is called "FreddieMeter" because you know - it meters the Freddieness.

Why? Because he was sooooo great, you know? And he had such a great voice, do you know about that? Can you sing like Freddie Mercury? How close is your timbre and melody? Let's find out!

Give me a break.

While Freddie Mercury was great-ish (probably) and stuff (for sure), i don't think this posthumous celebration of his talent is all that necessary. The man has a body of work and it is literally everywhere and if you want to celebrate him - just listen to his music and stop looking for a reason to shove it down the throats under some new pretense via marketing effort. It doesn't add anything substantial to the conversation

Seriously, it is dumb experience marketing gimmick cringe. You take a hyped-up topic like Machine Learning and combine it with mildly promising idea of voice comparison. Then you need to make it broadly available so you regress it to the simplest form. And then you tack your brand on it so that it would "matter" more and generate that special kind of "engagement".

The reality is a bit different. Here's what FreddieMeter really is - it is a throwaway piece used to momentarily spike the interest in the brand and then go away without notice because no one will care about it beyond the inital splash. There is just nothingness all around.

Also - with this service you can compare Freddie's voice with Paul Rodgers via some audio input tweaks. Paul Rodgers is cool too (and he's probably a Chtulhu who got Doug-Quaid'd with some plastic surgery, hypnosis and Revolver Ocelot-level of mindrewiring), and did a Queen album too. It is probably the most useful thing you can do with it.

The other part of the problem is that it was created by the Google aka "the big tech company". Which is a kind of a red flag, you know? The thing about big tech is that they are infovore - they feed on information, and they want their information diverse and they will go a distance to get it. Case in point - this thing. It is a ploy to get more data. And brands go for it because of "whatever works" mentality.

I mean - this service will likely generate some audio-visual data of people singing or lipsyncing. This data will likely go down into some facial and voice recognition and transcription research stuff - and at some point down the line it will be commodified as some service.

The fact that there is a statement "Your audio doesn’t get uploaded to servers to be analyzed, so your vocals stay private" doesn't really mean anything - you need to know what to check in order to find out whether it is really true, and most of the people just don't care and follow the impulse. It is foolproof because it seems harmless.

Then there is a problem of purpose - what kind of endgame this project expects? What is the end goal? Just to have some fun and "celebrate the icon"? So, you can record your voice singing some Queen songs and compare with the way Freddie Mercury sang it. And that's it. This use case is flimsy to say the least.

What kind of insight does it really offer? That your voice is more or less reminiscent of Freddie Mercury's according to some broad criteria and lots of hidden parameters? OK, what is the benefit of having this kind of information? What it is good for? It's not a white elephant artistic technical achievement, so why bother spending resources on that? Because Queen brand paid for it so that they can raise awareness and celebrate? Do you really need to do it that way? There are so many questions left and somebody got paid for this.

The idea itself is fine. But that's not how you can use it and find out something interesting. One of the problems with these kinds of projects is that their mechanics allows much more than the business need requires. Which makes the case for the thing known as "the waste of effort". And this begs the question "why bother?". And the answer is - 'cause it generates data that can be used elsewhere. Period.

But how you can use it more productively?

One of the ways this idea can be applied for the common good is language learning. Speaking practice is one of the integral elements of the process and it is not really available for everyone. This kind of service can bridge gap and help people learn foreign languages in a less complicated way.

On the other hand, this kind of approach can be used to study the chrological changes of the way people speak througout the years and time periods. You can trace the evolution of speech patterns, tone, timbre of the voice of a specific individual or a group or community. And that is going to tell you a lot of things about how the way of verbal communication permutates and adapts to the surrounding world.

You can also singalong with Chuck Shuldiner. He's dead too and deserves to be celebrated.

How OpenAI sells GPT-2 as NLP killer app?

So, the thing we've been waiting for a better half of the year just happened - OpenAI had released a full unabridged version of their infamous Natural Language Processing model GPT-2. 

You know, the one known for being capable of generating texts that look and read just like the ones written by actual human beings. The one OpenAI deemed to be "too dangerous" for the public release. The "Pandora's Box" that, if misused, would probably flood the world with fake news and otherwise manipulative synthetic content. The one that would make regular copywriters and journalists utterly obsolete. The one that birthed AI Weirdness blog, after all. You know, that one. 

Well, it is back again and it is a good reason to talk about one of its lesser-known aspects. 

One of OpenAI's competitive advantages is that it is "capped-profit" limited partnership, which means that OpenAI doesn't have to generate profit per se, but their sponsors (in limited partnership - folks like Microsoft) can use OpenAI's research for their own purposes (products or solutions within products). At the same time, OpenAI's primary performance indicators are more or less spread of their technological solution and maintaining its notoriety. 

Let's talk about the latter. 

The thing you need to know about OpenAI GPT-2 is that its marketing campaign was pitch-perfect. This is how you market the technological product to the unwitting masses. This is how you present a value proposition to those in the know. 

The secret is that you mostly don't really talk about the product itself but instead concentrate on its impending impact, the way it will shake things up, "make a difference," and so on. Hence "too dangerous" narrative. 

This approach creates a mild case of hysteria perpetuated by an eerie mystery, which is mostly based on a bunch of "um"'s and "uh"'s and whole lotta sweet technobabble. The goal is to exemplify what the thing is capable of subtly - leaving enough space for speculation. On the one hand, this approach created a stir in the media, thus guaranteed a higher degree of visibility than competing products. On the other hand, it signaled to the right people that there is a multi-faceted solution waiting for proper implementation.

Just look at the launch sequence and how it establishes the product. It kicked off with the press release that stated, "oh well, we guess we just made some kind of doomsday device. And we are really concerned about it. And we're definitely not going to do anything with it, because it would be ridiculous to put it out in the open just like that. So we are just going to keep under wraps for now". 

What happened next is the tortsunadomi of news pieces that retold the story over and over again and also added a few meandering thoughts full of piss and vinegar to the conversation. It is then quickly incorporated into the "fake news" and "deep fake" narratives and firmly contextualized as something definitely "threatening." As a result, the burning mystery is perpetuated and elaborated. 

The next step was to provide a proper showcase of the model capabilities while avoiding spoiling the big thing. It is a great sleight of hand. The whole thing is out in the open, but you claim it isn't. The showcase is made by an abridged version of the product presented as a technical paper and a tool for researchers. 

It played out perfectly - the presentation of expanded and diversified by multiple points of view on the model. As a result, - more opportunities became apparent.

There were a couple of NLP projects that provided GPT-2 a lot of publicity. For example, Talk to Transformer presented the original use case of GPT-2 - text prediction. The way it was presented neutralized any emerging criticism regarding its clumsiness (for example, it couldn't predict Austin 3:16). It was simply freestyling a bunch of stuff - sometimes it was more coherent, sometimes it wasn't. 

Then there was the Giant Language Testing Room that visualized the text analytics and showed the mechanics behind computer-generated and human-generated texts. And then there was Allen Institute's Grover than was designed to expose deepfake texts and also showcase how easily the model can recreate the text with a couple of settings tweaked (except when you ask it to write an essay on Tawny Kitaen for some reason). 

Also, there were numerous blogs that applied GPT-2 for creative purposes, like writing unicorn fiction or generating incongruous names. Blogs like AI Weirdness that basically celebrated model's bumbling nature.

In a way, this kind of presentation operates on a similar framework to Marvel Comics' built-up the arrival of Galactus back in 1966. First, The Watcher shows up and warns about the coming "doom." And everybody go "ah, we've gotta do something!" Then you get a harbinger in the form of Silver Surfer, who wreaks havoc but at the same time continually reminds us that "the worst is yet to come." The heat is right around the corner now. 

And then we get the main event - Galactus, who was just another supervillain in the long line of "ultimate threats" just ten times bigger and because of that characterized as ten times more imposing and menacing and dangerous because authors of the comic said so. 

And that's what happened. After months of build-up and speculations, in early November, the big 40GB 1,5 billion parameters version of GPT-2 was released to the public. And it was exactly what it said on the tin from the very start, just ten times bigger. However, the momentum generated by the build-up made it seem less apparent. But there is a catch which makes things even more interesting.

The thing is that "ten times bigger" doesn't translate into "ten times better" because the technology doesn't really work that way. What matters is how it manages to accomplish specific use cases and how does it correlate with the solutions for actual practical needs. 

GPT-2 is presented as a tool that generates texts that seem natural as if an actual human being wrote it. It is cool, but you need to understand that the model operates on the finite dataset, and all it really does is derives the text out of probabilities and context approximations. Text generation is not really generation. It is more of regurgitation in sophisticated combinations. GPT-2 output looks and reads just like a real thing in a way that the real thing can be bland and passable and not really saying anything, just like loads and loads of content on the internet, especially, its corporate parts. 

What GPT-2 really does is creating a serviceable text product that serves a specific well-defined function. But you can't really market that because it is not really unappealing beyond those in the know (say hi to BERT). However, that's the absolute peak of practical NLP. 

A perfect example is a conversational interface. You say "hi," and it says, "hello, how are you?" because that how conversations usually go. The other example is a verbal interpretation of data like stats in Mailchimp where you can get reports like "22% opened your newsletter, 5% of which clicked on the link, and 1% gave it a thumbs up", but it is beyond current GPT-2 use case. 

That's why the "fake news" narrative is so beneficial for GPT-2. 

On the surface, fake news seems to be a natural avenue for that kind of thing. That game is all about quantity, not quality, and the NLP generator can help with that. It was hammered over and over again in the press releases and subsequent news pieces. And the use case seems legit. Technically, the goal is to generate derivative content that will reinforce and possibly perpetuate prerequisite beliefs of the target audience. Just what GPT-2 is good at.

Except, that's not really the message of the narrative. The real message all along was, "this thing can be used like that if YOU won't use it." And that leaves an intriguing mystery of what is going to happen next, which in turn engages the target audience more than the product itself.  

Bizarre Wikipedia Edit War on Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a time in Hollywood"

Wikipedia is many things for many people. Some view it as the go-to place to check some basic facts, others view it as a template for the future universal source of all knowledge, a sort of an imperfect start of a the great thing. There are some people who genuily try hard to make it so, and there are other people who fuel the so-called Wiki Wormhole with unexpected and downright weird things found in the far corners of the world and the web (AV Club even runs a column about that).

Finally, there are people who take an advantage of Wikipedia being a massive compendium of seemingly sourced information to intentionally distort and manipulate certain facts in order to orchestrate an instances of confusion and conflict.
The usual victims of such actions are articles on politics, political theory, public figures of all sorts and most of the science-related articles.
The editorial boards and active users try to keep things straight for the benefit of the public. But sometimes the trolls persist and this causes so-called "edit wars" in which the story of changes and attempts to find out the reason why becomes more prominent than the subject itself.

That's what happened this time.

Quentin Tarantino's new film "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" came out into a wide release in late July. The film garnered a positive buzz and made a splash at the box office. As any significant film release - it got a page on Wikipedia. For a while it only had an official plot synopsis and the list of cast.

But around the time the press screenings rolled out and the wide release date was coming up, it was expanded into a full-blown plot description with spoilers, et al. This things happens all the time and usually it is not a big deal.

However, things weren't that simple this time.

The big thing about "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" is that it is a historical fiction that applies a bit of artistic license over a depiction of certain historical events. In this case, it is a murder of Sharon Tate and several of her friends in 1969 by the cult leader Charles Manson and the members of his "family".

In the Tarantino's version of events, the murder never happened due to chain of events that diverted the attention of the "family" members to the film's protagonists Leonardo DiCaprio's Rick Dalton and Brad Pitt's Cliff Booth who quickly dispatched them in a gleefully gruesome fashion. And everyone lived happily ever after, because the film is a fairy tale. It is a spin on the historical event that tries to imagine what could have been if things went a little differently.

However, the Wikipedia description of the concluding section of the plot that appeared in late May after the film's Cannes premiere was drastically different from what actually happened on the screen. It retained the story point of murder plot falling apart, but it took things into much more outlandish direction.

Here's the bit in question:

The fact of that this plot description was fabricated and misleading was repeatedly pointed out by the film critics. As Andrew Woods put it: "Don’t even read it if you don’t want to know what DOESN'T happen." (great statement, by the way). 

Incorrect and downright made-up plot descriptions happen all the time, thats a part of Wikipedia's crowdsourced nature, especially for the anticipated media releases. The difference from this situation is that upon release the information gets corrected and everybody move on with their lives. 

But this time, when users tried correct the plot description, they hit the wall. Why? The thing is - Wikipedia guidelines have a line that says "it is not acceptable to delete information from an article because you think it spoils the plot". 

And so - each time users edited the bit - the fake one turned up again. It happened multiple times going into the release week. The film's "talk" page shows a fascinating story of what was going down behind the scenes. 

The initial discussions were about casting controversies, how much of the film's plot the summary should reveal and whether the editors should respect Tarantino's wishes to avoid spoilers. 

Then things took a turn sideways and started to get weird. It all started when one of the editors claimed that he saw the film at the Cannes premiere and stated that the plot description on Wikipedia was false. However, the other editors started to argue whether Cannes viewers can be considered as a verifiable sources of information. As one of the editors put it "You have once again have not explained how I, as an editor, am able to verify the plot summary". 

Despite that, multiple users requested to fix the section and the things kept rolling back to the made-up bit again and again up. It was a loop. And it went on up until the film's wide release in UK and North America in late July that put a definitive end to the debate and reinstated the real conclusion of the story to the plot description.

To be honest, this particular edit war is a great narrative in of itself. It shows the struggles of sourcing and depicting information on the web and it points out how shaky things are when the sources can't be verified and the public involvement goes out of control. 

But it overshadow the thing that started it all - falsified conclusion of the story in the plot description section. 

***

The made-up ending is interesting thing from the conceptual standpoint.

In essense, this kind of retelling is taking an artistic license on a plot point that itself took an artistic license on an actual story. And as such, it is a showcase of derivative creativity - another spin on an idea, a variation on a variation. It functions in the same context but drives the story in a different direction using the same moving parts of the plot.

If anything, this kind of spinning and slightly making things up is how people do things since the beginning of time. We do it all the time as a kids to impress others just to look cool. The made-up ending is something like that.

Deriving from the existing and experienced things is how the cognition amps up the imagination. After a while things get complicated, the line of sources and the bleedthrough of various elements mix-up more and more to the point the derivative piece becomes a thing of its own with its own distinct themes and identity.

"Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" wikipedia made-up ending is a testament to the dedication of the Tarantino's fanbase. Whether it was mean-spirited or not is beyond the debate. The fact is - it was misleading and it caused something of a fuss. 

But it shows the level of investment into the work of art similar to pro wrestling "fantasy booking". And we all should do it from time to time, just not make that much noise about it.

Allen Institute's Grover and the funeral pyre of text generation

If you are following the technology news for some time, especially the ones related to artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, you can spot this strange tendency that underlines every new project or breakthrough in the field. 

It is not about doing something that goes beyond human comprehension, it is not about making something inspiring or astounding or simply distinct. No, it is mostly about doing the opposite - the generic, blend-in, nothing special, middle of the road, template-based kind of stuff that can pass of as human-made because it is so unassuming or just being like something an average human would do. It is lazy. And we are not even starting to talk about DeepFakeNews shebang. 

This peculiar tendency leaves a strange aftertaste. The one that can be described with word "meh". And it seems like it is really the whole point of it all, because otherwise it must a prolonged episode of mass delusion. 

Case in point - Grover by Allen Institute.

Allen Institute are big guns of Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing Technology. Their AllenNLP is one of the most efficient tools for developing NLP models of all kinds. It is a Swiss Army Knife of NLP that brings the technology to every corner of business or scientific operation.

So - a couple of days ago Allen Institute had presented Grover. It is a natural language generation tool able to create texts that are very much like the ones written by humans. Or, if being exact, human copywriters. Just like regular SEO-enlightened copywriters, Grover creates articles that seem legit. Like you can actually read them and think you've just wasted a five minutes of your life kind of legit. And that's about it. Yey!

Grover is a showcase of how far the NLP technology had went over the last couple of years.

With all the text analysis tools and pattern recognition and recurrent neural networks you can dig deep into the thick of the text and understand its structure and how its elements connect with each other and do your own thing based on the template and it will be mostly comprehensible. To the point that the output is completely indistinguishable from human-made.

Grover shows how easy it is to make this kind of article. It is fascinating how good it is at doing these bland, generic, middle of the road, not really saying anything texts.

I've tried the topic "Why Chael Sonnen is so good at talking and so bad at fighting?" and got exactly what i would write if didn't really cared about the topic and just phoned it in with a thermonuclear impact. It's impressive and concerning.

The availability of tools like Grover poses a serious threat to the mass media and its consumers due to systematic spread of fake news on a huge scale from all possible directions (social media, comment sections, faux new resources, reposts-rewrites, content aggregation). Just think about manipulating public opinion on climate change or abortions with an avalanche of misleading content. But that's political stuff.

There is also another problem - information noise AKA useless stuff.

The name of the perpetrator is SEO. It's not a big secret that search engine optimization downright sodomized the very concept of writing. To the point it was boiled down to wonky guidelines that turned writing into a tossing of the lego blocks to fit the requirements. SEO copywriting made writing boring and generic chore. It is like socialist realist literature with a new coat of paint. It too wholly depended on interchangeable templates and was mindnumbingly unreadable garbage that was just occupying the space.
But it works. Search engines dig it. It is cheaper than actually paying to promote your content.
This spawned innumerable amount of trash content with little to no value, and also birthed the clickbait mindset driven by trends and not actual necessity. Do we really need that many "All you need to know about Cyberpunk 2077?"

Add some AI to the mix and you get flooding of the search engines with an actual spam content that perfectly fits the criteria, is not all that blatantly spammy and it wholly overtakes the narrative leaving no place for anything else. Yey! Kinda like what we have today, except instead of going ten pages down the search results to find anything worthwhile, you will go twenty five or fifty.

But I'm used to dig through garbage, it doesn't really scare me that much. What makes me sad is the waste of talent on such kind of stuff. It seems actual creativity and NLP doesn't like each other these days.

One of the fun things about natural language generation of the past was its problematic relationship with such concept as "sense".
The majority of old-time text generators just could not pull it off clean. There was always something off about their output. Sometimes it was slight, stupid and kinda cute, other times its propensity towards hallowed nonsense was legitimately impressive. There was always something truly unexpected.

Those markov chains text generators you can find on the web - they are capable of running nuclear weapon testing in your head if used "properly". Modern text generators like Grover and their sophisticated algorithms don't do that. They are too smart to have this kind of fun. It is not part of their design - they want to do business, boring things that blend seamlessly into the background. We can do better than that.

James E. Alcock - Tips for better critical thinking

I was going through Skeptical Inquirer recently. This magazine is one of my favorites. It is all about blasting something out of its foundation. With that gleeful cackle that the demolition workers don't really do but you expect them to. While reading about all sorts of stuff that is beyond questions, doubts or other kinds uneasy discontent -

The newest issue (November/December 2018) contained Harriet Hall's review of the book "Belief: What it means to believe and why our convictions are so compelling" by James E. Alcock. Judging from the review - it was nice and sweet exploration of the cognitive processes. Then i went and check it out for myself.

It was really good. I finished it in just a couple of hours.

In the final chapter, Alcock gives eight tips on developing and improving your critical thinking skills. I think these are worth sharing:

1. Remember that we can all be fooled.
2. Be wary of your intuitions.
3. Be wary of the Fundamental Attribution Error: attributing people’s behavior to their characters and intentions while overlooking the power of the situation.
4. Be wary of validation by personal experience.
5. Don’t rely on a single source of information.
6. Don’t over-interpret correlations.
7. Ask “compared to what?”—a wine was rejected because it was found to contain two million asbestos particles per liter, but the concentration of asbestos particles in the city water supply was higher than that.
8. In the face of inadequate evidence, suspend judgment rather than jumping to conclusions

The most important thing he points out is that we should be prepared to disagree with ourselves, which is not the easiest thing.

MFT: Superman Adventures #41 - "Twenty-two stories in a single bound"

"Twenty-two stories in a single bound" is a title of Issue 41 of "Superman Adventures" comic book series. The issue was written by Mark Millar and illustrated by a murderer's row of illustrators including Ty Templeton, Terry Austin, Joe Staton, Neil Vokes, Bret Blevins, Min S. Ku, Cameron Stewart, Mike Manley, Craig Rousseau, Rick Burchett, Darwyn Cooke, Aluir Amancio, Philip Bond. It was released in March 2000 and It was the last comic of Millar's run on the title.

And for a curtain call he decided to do something out of an ordinary.

The issue consists of 22 one-page stories, all self-contained and dedicated to a particular character and specific element of Superman mythos. The narrative is built around "a day in the life" format focusing on key events in their most expressive forms.

For example, there is a story about just another working week of Lois Lane. She is depicted as a damsel in distress for the majority of the panels until the script is flipped and Lois is shown to be capable of standing on her own - you know, it's just she doesn't need to do it all the time.

Or there exploits of Mister Mxysptlk who tries to ramble and scramble and bumble and rumble Superman with his reality warping powers. It doesn't go the way he expects. On the other hand, bumbling backwards Superman adversary Bizarro gets his legitimate hero moment and that is nice.

There is also a page where all the key characters are sleeping and we can see what they are dreaming about. Which is exactly what you can expect - Lois Lain being Superwoman, Jimmy Olsen being The Boss to Perry White, Bibbo (don't ask) dreaming about sleeping (of course), while Lex Luthor dreams about Superman being defeated. The page is capped with Superman doing his job. As usual.

Overall, an issue can be described as a mosaic, a kaleidoscope of moments that seems disjointed but ultimately comes together into a cohesive whole. Every story is drawn by different artist which gives them distinct indentities even though the aesthetic is largely the same.

"Twenty-two stories in a single bound" is an exercise in ultra-minimalist condensed storytelling - one-part newspaper comic strip and one-part constrained comics of the likes of Chris Ware. In a way, it is a great showcase how to tell a story in leaps and bounds that omits everything superfluous and concentrates on the key elements.

MFT: Four stills of Christie Levin in Snakewoman

These are four stills from Jesse Franco's latter "klassik" titled "Snakewoman". It was released in 2005 and stars one and only Christie Levin, who was something of a muse for Mr. Franco at that time.

The stills depict her character at her most perplexed state. It is a turning point for her character. She goes through a lot during that short episode. Her character goes from being dumbfoundead and experiencing utter embafflement in the first still to slight perplexion and solemn thoughtfullness in the second still. The shift is drastic, it is an u-turn. It goes like a "wham". Then Christie takes a deep dive into pleasant musing and also some memories and gets really sentimental for a moment in the third still. And finally, in still number four, she settles down on a vicious dreamy scheming of things to come calculating the possibilities and assessing the opportunities.



It is incredible journey told solely through expressions on the actress' face. The way they morph into one another is astounding. It tells an incredible story of its own - the one about getting knocked off feet by a nondescript foggy notion, going through the things of past, deciding to shrug them off and then gracefully moving on to the unknown of the tomorrow. All in span of just a few seconds. How Christie Levin had managed to pull this off in such masterful manner? It is a mystery. Mostly because it is nothing more than an extreme bout of severe overthinking.

In reality, these are just four random stills from a movie titled "Snakewoman". Which has absolutely nothing to do with the arcane craft of acting. And that is absolutely OK.




The thing is - "Snakewoman" is what you expect from a film titled "Snakewoman" directed by a man with an ouevre ranging from "Vampyros Lesbos",  to reconstruction of Orson Welles unfinished "Don Quixote" - it is uneven in a wild rollercoaster ride manner. In one episode it is going for something mystic and atmospheric. And then, all of a sudden, it is bizarre exploitation of predator woman tropes, and then we get a little bit of latino melodrama, and then comes a moment of horror that is actually funny and then comes a moment of horror from a realization that you are actually watching this demented piece of ferocious atrocity instead doing literally anything else.



In other words, it is a film that brings you a full spectrum of thrills. Overthinking is one of them. These four stills are perfect fodder for such manipulations. Due to actual context of the stills being extremely lacking, it is fun to come up with various explanations for the nature of the content presented in these stills. Which is more than one can ask from such kind of stuff.

MFT: Nothing on the Internet Browser Plugin

"Nothing on the Internet" is a browser plugin designed for Safari and Chrome browsers. It was developed by Joseph Ernst and Jan van Bruggen of Sideline Collective in late 2017. It is one of the conceptual browser plugins that is trying to make an existential statement.

The plugin is all about nothingness or if being exact lack of content. It presents this concept as "the most interesting thing on the internet" which is apparently all about content (insert Daniel Bryan "No! No! No!" chant), but it never goes beyond that. And that diminishes its initial impact to a null and void. There is no punchline in this plugin. It is a gimmick plugin, a mere publicity stunt. It turns an attempt of escape from information into a button mashing jest. But an idea is curious at the very least.

The plugin is very simple. All it does is an elaborate clean-up of a viewed page. It throws out the majority of visual elements seen on the page - the text, visuals (pictures, gifs, videos), ads and so on. and leaves barebones layouts of a page - vast spaces of nil. Just click the button and wipe it all out. With extreme prejudice, apparently.

If you try it on this blog - you will get a hard case of whiteout that will make Ed Brubacker proud. However, if you try it on Google image search or 9gag or Giphy or Tumblr Archive - you will get a fine collection of colourful blocks of various rectangular shapes.

In some way, it can be interpreted as a response to ever growing overconsumption of information without rhyme or reason and continuing overexposure to a warped and twisted reality of internet that seriously affects perception of reality and multiplies confusion and frustration. It is all too much (ta-dah, da), there must be some way out of it. "Nothing on the Internet" serves as a panic button, an AdBlock pushed to extreme, that makes it all go away for a moment. But not really.

Surfing on internet is extremely time-consuming and ultimately critically counterproductive thing. It renders users numb and unfocused, incapable of any substantially beneficial activity. Instead, users are treated like pawns in a grand game of manipulating opinions and perceptions for own good, generating web traffic and turning it into revenue. All while they are watched, dissected and segmented so that they could be presented with personalized packs of advertising content in order to manufacture impressions and clicks.

That wasn't what the Internet was about. As Wyatt said "We blew it".

BSPH: Iggy and the Stooges - Doojiman

"Doojiman" is a jam composition by seminal proto-punk outfit The Stooges. It was recorded in 1972 during the sessions for their third and final album "Raw Power". It was left out because it is more of an idea than an actual song - merely a raw sketch recorded for further development. For years it was gathering dust and then it was finally released in 2010 on a Deluxe reissue of "Raw Power".

"Doojiman" is a glorious example of The Stooges "duking it out". It is incredibly simplistic, even primitive tribal jam that pretends to merely meander but ultimately clumsily wreaks havoc all around and then does that elaborately "wink-wink". In some way - it is an glimpse into what Iggy Pop had envisioned The Stooges to be back in the late 60's - extremely loud, chaotic whiplash tornado of noise with a slight tint of Antonin Artaud's idea of cruelty. It is a blast of sound that goes through the listener, grinds his intestines and leaves him exhausted with a slight feeling of perplexity.

The composition starts with a swinging tribal beat that reminds me of Max Roach's beat on Sonny Rollins' "St. Thomas". It is playful but menacing. It wants listener to get lost in a gentle tender manner because it ain't going to settle into some kind of a pattern. Then comes James Williamson's guitar that churns angular bits of riff over and over again. Curiously - it never really develops into something - it stays a transition break that was misplaced into the spotlight. The riff circles around shell-shocked with a hollow tink. Coupled with the drumbeat it remind something perpetually falling down the stairs.

Iggy Pop goes full caliban on this track. He channels his inner Louis Armstrong, splices him with a Jim Morrison in shaman-mode and imagines a jump into the field of cactuses that turns out to be a swamp of quicksand. In result - he pulls dadaist / lettrist Little Richard and litters the song with wide array of erratic caveman scats. It is brutal. If you overthink it enough - there are lots of things that can be spotted. For example, Iggy Pop:

• hollers,
• shrieks, 
• bellows,
• squeaks, 
• wails, 
• roars,
• howls,
• groans,
• bawls Mediterranean glossolalia,
• evokes squalls of wind,
• imitates blares of ire,
• enacts blubber,
• yowl yodels,
• whoops random phonemes, 
• does Mesopotamic drooling
• cast makeshift spells,
• cackles,
• plays siren, 
• says long "wow" loud and clear with feeling and echo, 
• imitates chinese hysterical rambling that slowly morphs into mongolian, 
• exclaims random snappy words (JAM! All right!), 
• mumbles imaginary words that sounds African (just like Hugo Ball), 
• does some Native American offensive phasing howls, 
• some low Louis Armstrong do be do be do, 
• does some Tibetan drones. 

The whole this is peppered with cascading feedback. It mostly acts like a tickling spook that walks around in a white veil with a nondescript grimace and menacing sound.

I have a soft spot for any song with abracadabragesang. Because it takes a gut and a whim to pull it off. Anyone can scat as a snobby jazz bollocksmeister - it is overused and stripped of its power. But trying to go beyond, leaving behind all preconceptions and ultimately enacting your own "Dawn of Men" moment - is something worthy even if it happened absolutely accidentally.