An American I-Matang in Kiribati

Suddenly while I sit here reading through mp3 blogs and listening to music in my air conditioned apartment, I feel thankful that I was not born in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. At least this is how I feel now that I have finished reading a book by J. Maarten Troost. For the last month or so I had been meaning to do some reading. I kept thinking to myself that I was really going to sit down and read a fine work of literature, something like Walden or Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But somehow everytime I started to read one of these books, I wouldn't get that far before I would end up getting sidetracked and putting them aside. I attributed this to my being pretty busy with everything else in my life right now. That is until my sister told me about this book by Troost. And so I shelved The Unbearable Lightness of Being for a while and began reading what I feel is an equally important work in the literary world. That book was called The Sex Lives of Cannibals. I just finished it, and as I said, it has made me very grateful to be living in a place where I have access to the wealth of recorded music that is so important to me, and not limited to, say, La Macerana and Ice Ice Baby. This was the unfortunate fate of the author, who spent two years of his life on the small island country of Kiribati, smack dab in the middle of the Equatorial Pacific. Now it's not that the other books I tried to read weren't good, they were just a bit more serious that I'm really interested in at the moment. That said, I would have to recommend The Sex Lives of Cannibals, if for no other reason that to read about the Poet Laureate of Tarawa, a young, drunk British man whose poetry is... let's say lacking. It's a good read and it will make you grateful for, among other things, any meal you've ever had without fish in it.

Music today comes courtesy of Bubblecore Recordings. Two tracks by electronic influenced indie jam band, The Dylan Group. The first is a cover of Aphex Twin's We Are the Music Makers, and then a remix by We. If you like the tracks, Bubblecore's web site has the entire album (and the remix album) available as a free download. They do ask for a donation through PayPal if you're feeling generous, but you're not obligated.

Dylan Group - We Are The Music Makers

Dylan Group - Bittersweet (Hot & Sour Mix by We)

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