doomandgloomfromthetomb:

RIP Nat Hentoff

Farewell to the great writer/critic/producer/hero Nat Hentoff, who passed away at the age of 91 last weekend. I highly suggest you spend some time digging into the PDFs of The Jazz Review, the short-lived magazine Hentoff founded with Martin Williams and Hsio Wen Shih in 1958. Amazing stuff on every page. 

heroes-get-made:

Some interesting reading for a rainy day.

• Ambrose Bierce - A famous Civil War-era writer decides to leave his cushy life to go to Mexico, only to disappear forever.
• Agent 335 - One of the first U.S. spies was a woman, but who?
• The Axeman of New Orleans - This guy won’t stop coming after people with an axe until everybody plays jazz music.
• The Baychimo - When winter strikes, a ship sheds its crew–and then decides to take off without them.
• The Black Dahlia Murder (NEW!) - Who murdered and maimed this woman, and is she the only victim? [suggested by several people]
• Blair Adams (NEW!) - What is this Canadian man running from and did it find him?
  
• Cahokia  - A gigantic ancient civilization along the Mississippi is abandoned, but why? [suggested by luminescent-wanderings]
  
• The Canneto di Caronia Fires - Mysterious fires keep popping up in this small Sicilian town.
• Çatalhöyük - A 9,500-year-old city in Turkey had everything going for it, and yet it was abandoned.
  
• The Chicago Tylenol Murders - Someone laces Tylenol with poison and descends an entire city into chaos.
• The Dancing Plague - People are stricken with the need to dance, some to their deaths.
  
• D. B. Cooper - An unknown man hijacked a plane, extorted hundreds of thousands, and then parachuted to freedom.
  
• The Dyatlov Pass Incident (tw: photo of a dead body) - Several experienced mountain hikers go into a mountain range in Russia and die of unknown causes. [see also]
• Ebola in Rome  - Did an outbreak of ebola strike ancient Athens long before it ever tormented Africa?
  
• Elisa Lam - A woman, seemingly pursued by an unseen foe, disappears, only to be found inside her hotel’s water tower two weeks later.
  
• Erdstall - There are thousands of still-standing, ancient tunnels beneath central Europe, but no one knows what they’re for. [see also]
  
• Genghis Khan’s Tomb - One of the greatest and most successful rulers of all time, but no one can find his final resting place.
  
• The Hinterkaifeck Murders - Unexplained noises, missing house keys, and an entire family found dead in rural Germany.
• The Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum Theft - Some hacks in police uniforms steal a bunch of priceless art, including a Rembrandt.
• The Isdal Woman - What happened to this woman in Norway, who was she, and why were so many steps taken to conceal her identity? [suggested by whalesguts]
  
• Japan’s Ghost Ship Problem - Ships from North Korea keep showing up on Japan’s shores… filled with mutilated corpses.
  
• The Jian Seng - A giant ship is found floating with no crew and no one knows where it came from.
  
• Jimmy Hoffa - A teamster with mob ties disappears, theories abound.
• Joseph Newton Chandler III  - Is this dead identity thief the Zodiac Killer? And if so, what is his real name?
  
• The Joyita - Crew members abandon a real unsinkable ship, but why?
  
• The Lighthouse Mystery - Several Scottish lighthouse keepers disappear abruptly.
• The Lost Colony (on Roanoke Island) - A bunch of white people decide to try and colonize an island and it doesn’t go well.
• The Lost Dutchman Mine - In unforgiving territory lies a lost treasure just waiting to be found–if you don’t die first.
• The Lost Nazi Plunder - The nazis stole hoards of important items, including art and cultural artifacts. Where are they now? [see also]
  
• The Mary Celeste - A sailing ship in working order is found, still at sea, without a crew.
  
• Monsieur Chouchani - Who was this mysterious Jewish teacher and mentor of Elie Weisel who dressed like a vagabond?
  
• The Oakville Blobs - Gelatinous blobs of an unknown substance rain from the sky.
  
• The Paris Catacombs - A seemingly infinite series of tunnels filled with bones, artwork, and missing explorers. [see also]
• The Phaistos Disc - A mysterious disc, thousands of years old and covered in strange symbols, is found in Crete.
  
• Rongorongo - An undecifered set of glyphs from Easter Island, possibly a completely independent language.
  
• The Tamam Shud Case (tw: photo of a dead body) - A body shows up on a beach in Australia, and how it got there is wrapped in mystery and lies.
• Tarrare - A man who couldn’t stop eating, anything and everything.
• UVB-76 - A strange radio station in Russia broadcasts a constant buzz, broken only by strange readings of names and numbers.
  
• The Voynich Manuscript - An unbreakable code in an ancient manuscript full of strange drawings–what’s not to like?
• The Woman in the Tree (aka Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?) - A body turns up stuffed into a tree trunk, becomes a local rallying cry.
  
• The Wow! Signal - A strong radio signal from space still has researchers stunned and baffled.
• The Zodiac Killer (NEW!) - Who is the cryptic killer behind a rash of murders? (Other than Ted Cruz.) [suggested by several people]
  

(These are the most reliable unsolved stories I could find. There are many others that require more sources to be believed or already have very plausible answers.)

Know a good one that isn’t listed? Let me know!

great stories, but the “canneto di caronia fires” it’s not a mistery now, the italian police found the arsonists a couple of years ago…

letture di dicembre /december reads:
jon wiederhorn & katherine turman - louder than hell
china mieville - la città e la città 
jeff vandermeer - annientamento
james baldwin - nessuno sa il mio nome
emanuel carnevali - voglio disturbare l’america
william burroughs - blade runner 
william burroughs - è arrivato ah pook
zachary lazar - sway
marco lodoli & silvia bre - snack bar budapest
luciano bianciardi - il lavoro culturale
pierre mac orlan - piccolo manuale del perfetto avventuriero

pdlcomics:

Srahaaaj’s New Year

unvinilealgiorno:

the charlatans - weirdo 12″ promo (beggars banquet 1992)

now playing

letture di novembre /november reads:
aldo nove - woobinda
william burroughs - la morbida macchina (the soft machine)
william burroughs - il biglietto che esplose (the ticket that exploded)
william burroughs - nova express
pamela des barres - let’s spend the night togheter

dollar-bin-jazz:

Send me recommendations for electronic music that doesn’t suck.

try some old warp record productions: aphex twin (the two “selected ambient works” are still incredible), autechre (try “chiastic slide” or “draft 7.30″), old andrew weatherall projects (like sabres of paradise’s “sabresonic II” or two lone swordsmen’s “tiny reminders”: if you loved “screamedelica” you won’t be disappointed…and speaking of “screamedelica”, one dove’s “morning dove white” is another weatherall production worth listening), lfo (”frequencies” is a classic), plaid, boards of canada, ecc..  
 jeff mills’ “purposemaker” and drexciya’s “neptune’s lair” are my favourite detroit techno records (and also some singles from underground resistence), and other records i still listen after all this years are gusgus’s “polydistortion”, bandulu’s “antimatter”, 808 state’s “ex:el” (featuring bjork -her first electronic songs: she was still with sugarcubes at the time- and bernard sumner!), slam’s “alien radio”, ultramarine’s “every man and woman is a star”, psychick warriors ov gaia’s “ov biospheres and sacred grooves”, orb’s “u.f.orb”…

r.i.p. (da “cuore - settimanale di resistenza umana”)