The U.S. presidential campaign is starting to get serious. Just a few candidates on each side, all looking relatively good, spending millions on ads before the election is even started.

For you to chew on (via. onegoodmove) :
Edwards discussing his low results in Nevada. Humble and confident that sanity will prevail. LINK
Obama and Clinton bickering about who’s got better rhetoric and who loves Reagan more (as if anyone is confused that either of them is a Reagan supporter), followed by Edwards pointing out how stupid they are being and giving concrete examples of tax reforms he wants to implement. LINK

My pick so far has got to be John Edwards. Obama and the Clint are okay, but when they talk there’s this buzzing in the back of my head. It might be my speakers are too loud - though they are truly crappy speakers - or it might be the sensor in your brain that buzzes when someone is shovelling shit down your throat.

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(via. icanhascheezburger, see Sisyphus@wikipedia)

Shawna Nelles, a friend and former officemate of mine, is in Rwanda right now travelling and learning. Her thoughts and photos of this memorial to the masacred thousands from the town of Murabi are thoughful and heartbreaking. A shocking reminder of the nightmarish normalcy of such situations. Link to the post.

Animal Collective - On a Plain (nirvana cover). You can hear the song at that link.

I’m not very familiar with the original nirvana track, but this cover just blows me away every time I hear it. Something about the thrumming guitar mixed with the random shouting just brings it home like crazy.

Found with the amazing Hype Machine service, which aggregates temporary mp3 uploads posted to this big weird network of blogs where people are constantly posting music for each other. The result is a huge searchable database of songs that you can play in a ton of different ways (popup a player and play everything on the page, or just play one track).

If the song is fresh enough (posted to a blog in the last couple of days) you can also go to the blog and download it for keeps, but the whole thing seems to stay legal because the tracks can’t be downloaded after a certain amount of time has passed, so a lot of them can only be listened to and not downloded (hint: use the ‘latest tracks’ on the front page and you’ll be able to download anything you like). It’s not the best filesharing network in the world for stealing music, but it’s an amazing way to find new songs and it beats the hell out of the radio for surprising you with what you end up liking.

I’ve known about the site for awhile (it’s my first stop when I want to play something for someone and don’t have the mp3 on my computer, way faster than booting up Limewire or the like), hopefully it sticks around for a long time (and doesn’t get sued /woodknock)

[Animal Collective portrait from their myspace page.]

[Note: No spoilers ahead, feel safe]

Just came out of a Mix96 (ugh, FM-Radio. I boo’ed at the announcer) free screening of Cloverfield, a kind of Blair Witch Project v. Godzilla handheld video camera mashup featuring all our favorite shots from the only good disaster movie we’ve seen lately, 9-11 (it takes place in New York and involves several buildings falling down or being struck by things).

The marketing behind the movie involved trailers that gave away that there was a disaster but not what, and posters with the intensely cheezy slogan ‘What is Cloverfield?’.

Well I’ve seen it now, and I can tell you what Cloverfield is: it’s the revolting, nauseating feeling you get in your stomach while watching all the maddeningly shaky handheld shots that compose the entire film. It makes Blair Witch look like it was shot with a steadycam. They must have given the actors direction like “good shot, but try shaking it more, we want the audience to feel distressed!”. Dozens of people left the theatre as the movie went on, which was good, because my friends and I needed to get farther from the screen to avoid vomiting in our free cloverfield branded gas-station mugs.

Some other things that Cloverfield is:

• The feeling you get after 5 hours in a dirty school bus on a sunny day.
• Too many kinds of alcohol in one night.
• Some milk that didn’t smell that bad…

Anyway, you get the idea.

The plot, acting and special effects were all amazing by the way. You really feel like the situation is believable if only because the characters have no idea what’s going on, which is how real life works in my experience. But if you’re going to see it, find the smallest screen available and get as far as possible from it before hitting play. (IMPORTANT: DO NO SIT AT THE FRONT OF THE THEATRE! GET A REFUND AND SEE SOMETHING ELSE IF THERES NO GOOD SEATS! 3/4 OF US COULDN’T HANDLE IT, AND WE’RE BADASS!).

Sometimes I feel like the cute animals with poorly spelled captions meme is running out of steam, but
ICanHasCheezburger continues to blow my mind regularly by expressing things in a way that just doesn’t work without cute animals. It’s weird that they can be so sad and heartbreaking sometimes, while still being so cute and funny. Anyway, I wanted to share this one, truly a nightmare scenario.

If you’re looking for more consistently serious fare, LolSecretz uses the same kinds of photos as ICHC, but with captions reminiscent of the whole Post Secret thing. Sometimes they suck but there are some real gems in there.

And while I’m at it, the newest A Softer World really slapped me in the face, which is what I want from my webcomics.