Other voices, other rooms.

Blah blah blah. No excuses, no whining, etc.
Go read some stuff (both new and old) written by friends (both imaginary and real):

• There's no doubt that this LA Times story is compelling-- but did it warrant the front page? Regardless, stories about trying to communicate with Earth dwellers in the year 11991 appeals to my inner-nerd me. Try to deny this:
  

  "You'd think it would be easier to communicate with humans" than extraterrestrials, he said. [snip] "All we can guess about the future inhabitants of the area near WIPP is that they are human — unless they are cyborgs…. Once you have people with augmented brains or genetically engineered minds with enhanced perceptions, you can't be sure how human they will be."

  
  Admit it, that's hella interesting. And no, I do not own Deep Space Nine on DVD. (Not that there's anything wrong with that. Well, there is. But I'm saying there isn't to be nice and not step on any toes.)
  
  
• As much as I preach pop-tolerance and acceptance, I just can't get on the "the latest Mariah album is excellent" bandwagon. Sorry. That doesn't mean I can't appreciate S/FJ's New Yorker piece on Mimi, especially when it contains passages like this:
  

  ["Vision of Love"] begins with several bars of lovely, wordless melisma, as if Carey were warming up, and it ends with two very loud passages of melisma, one of them an a-cappella expansion on the word “all” that can be roughly transcribed as: “ah-ha-uh-uh-oh-oo-oh-ooah-ha-uh-uh-oh-oo-oh-oo-ah-oh.”

  
  
• I love the lucidity in girish's essay on Drawing Restraint 9. I missed its mini-Los Angeles engagement, can't wait for the DVD.
  
  
• News flash: Armond White hearts Morrissey. "Because Morrissey has few champions among those mainstream American pop critics preoccupied with business-as-usual routines by Pink, T.I., Beth Orton, and the Arctic Monkeys, the millennial vision and excitement—the progress—of Ringleader has been overlooked. Here's a pop album that helps one get a handle on how we live today... Having moved past the bed-sit miserabilism of the Smiths, he now shows a wider social consciousness in his unsatisfied yearnings."
  
  
• Joshua published his latest PopMatters essay, this time evaluating the status of queer cinema by looking at Mysterious Skin and Brokeback Mountain. Well-written and unfailingly smart (obvs) and insistent that marriage is the worst thing ever (sigh). Oh and his Seed of Chucky riff is great.
  
  
• Matthew Fluxblog's new column for the AP, Hit Refresh, debuted today.