Thursday, September 25, 2008

Led Zeppelin

This video should be called Flight of the RILFs (rockers I'd like to fuck).

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Buy my shit pile dot com

Add to the pile! Browse the pile! Purchase a pile!

Favorites:

My liberal arts degree, $3 million
John McCain's honor and integrity, $5.00
Erik Estrada, $5.00
Slightly used American intellectual, $0.95
My lost hope, $92K

Monday, September 22, 2008

Fuck the stock market

And all the fair weather capitalists who oppose living wages, health insurance, workers compensation, overtime pay, and unions, but are willing to stand in line for a government handout to protect their oligarchy.

For all those whose retirement funds just took a hit, you won't see even a fraction of all the money that's going to be flowing out of the U.S. Treasury. It's one more example of the "shock doctrine" in action. Shock & Awe, people. Or as the Bushies say to each other, carpe diem.

UPDATE: There's evidence that they've been sitting on this plan for awhile, waiting for the right "9/11" moment to ram it through.

The racism of white independents

Obama is right on most of the issues in the presidential election. He should win. I think it's become conventional wisdom, on the left if not also the right, that Obama will only lose the election because of racial attitudes. This is the racism, interestingly, of white "independents," who seem even more biased than white republicans. Frankly, I didn't think that Obama would get this far because of racism in this country, so all things considered this country's racial attitudes are probably better than I would have thought. But there are two countries in the U.S., call them red/blue, racist/post-racial, progressive/scared, christianist/christian, whatever. Their worlds, in my opinion, are further and further apart. Maybe the north should have let the south secede.

See the results of a study of racial attitudes here.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Police State 2.0

Check out a Naomi Klein article from back in May on China's surveillance apparatus. It's Stalinist-Capitalism, which isn't looking that unfamiliar these days. Best quote:

Remember how we've always been told that free markets and free people go hand in hand? That was a lie. It turns out that the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state, fortressed with American "homeland security" technologies, pumped up with "war on terror" rhetoric. And the global corporations currently earning superprofits from this social experiment are unlikely to be content if the lucrative new market remains confined to cities such as Shenzhen. Like everything else assembled in China with American parts, Police State 2.0 is ready for export to a neighborhood near you.

Dave Alvin

Friday, September 19, 2008

DFW on the kiss

He's talking about the effects of language and images, but his remarkably simple, soft touch on one of the paradoxes of modern life is really admirable.

St. Vincent (aka Annie Clark)

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Washington Consensus dies

Yglesias:
Who knew the “Washington Consensus” would die in Washington, DC under a Republican President in a mad fit of bailouts and nationalizations?


Eschaton:
And who imagined it that when it would die, its death would be confronted with deafening silence. Oh I miss the good old days when lecturing Latin American countries for their bad economic policies was what all the cool kids did
.

White Stripes

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Margaret Cho lets loose

From her blog entry, "I'm a Christian, you fuckers."

Don’t fucking question my Christianity you fucking idiot assholes. If you continue to have a problem, then talk to God about it, not me, you fucking racist homophobic misogynist fake Christian shitheads. God thinks it is funny that I swear so much. He said I could use his name in vain or whatever. He just wants me to use it. He loves me. So fuck you. And I guess he loves you too. Even though you are fake Christian assholes. If you were truly Christians, you would let gays get married, and send them fucking presents from Bed Bath and Beyond!

If you truly believed in Jesus, you would try to be like him and love us, fags and dykes and feminists all. God bless you, even you. You fucking fuckers.

Magnetic Fields

A literal homemade video. Good song, but couldn't find my favorite, "Acoustic Guitar."

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

You're so white . . .

What up, RNC!

(cheers)

You white motherfuckers!

(laughter)

This conference so white, Helen Mirren tried to snort it!

(laughter)

Y’all the whitest white people in the history of white people. Even Barbara Bush sitting here right now going: ‘These are some white motherfuckers.’

(laughter)

You’re so white, your vice presidential nominee got the word ‘pale’ in her name!

(laughter, applause)

Look at this place. I can’t believe this shit! Y’all couldn’t find one single brother?

(shouting)

There is? Where?

(shouting)

Yo, what up, brother! Looks like you the only chocolate chip in the cookie.

(laughter)

You look like a fly in a glass of milk, yo. Swim! Swim for your life!

(laughter)

Alaska in the house!

(Cheers)

Where the baby daddy at? Where he at?

(crowd noise)

Read the rest here.

Gallows Pole

Monday, September 15, 2008

Frijid Pink

Robot art


Eric Joyner paints robots. See more here.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Friday, September 12, 2008

Andrew Marvell

Saw someone give a virtuoso performance leading a class discussion on the poem "To His Coy Mistress." The final lines are worth quoting today.

Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.


"Tear our pleasures" indeed. What is interesting is that a number of students wanted to endorse the suggestion that Marvell is talking about procreation here, "one ball" being a fetus I guess. All boys, oddly. The girls pretty much thought that he's talking about the nasty.

Black Sabbath - 1970

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Camper van Beethoven

"Pictures of Matchstick Men"

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Best slogan of the day

Obama and not the Drama

Bill Withers

"Lonely Town, Lonely Street"

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Monday, September 8, 2008

Marlena Shaw

"Woman of the Ghetto"

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Nina Simone

"Feeling Good." A cool video too.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Beware

In case you don't make it to the bottom of this morning's comment, the writer signs off with the chilling words, "be safe, be well, beware."

Okaay.

Sarah Palin's rapture

One interesting tidbit in Palin's hockey-mom world is the belief that Alaska will be a "refuge" in the "last days." I'm not unfamiliar with the concept. Indeed, in the mid seventies my parents moved us to Northern Idaho for exactly the same reason. The move was brief (the rapture didn't come, after all), but clearly others still harbor this frontier ideal. The YouTube video of Palin and her pastor is here.

What would have been worse? The elite establishment mormon, Mitt Romney, or the backwoods pentacostalist, Palin. Romney probably would have been more benign.

Cake

Covering Black Sabbath's "War Pigs." Cake is from Sacramento (my birthplace), where their studio is apparently powered by rooftop solar panels.

Friday, September 5, 2008

I can't believe I stayed up to watch McCain's speech

John "maverick is just another word for being a dick" McCain's POW experience has all the ingredients of a redemptive tale, but instead it struck me as so much false humility. As Ezra Klein puts it at American Prospect, "Such public declarations of patriotism are not about why John McCain loves this country. They are about why this country should love John McCain."

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Republican convention

Firedoglake captures my feeling best. The Republicans are again running a divide and conquer campaign, but one "based on an ideal. That Americans are stupid, base, resentful and bigoted."

Warren Zevon

Monday, September 1, 2008

Literature-space vs. cyberspace

Kevin Kelly's conclusion:

I think literature-space is orthogonal to cyberspace and to reading-space. You can get deep into a book online as well as in paper, and you can skip across ideas on paper as well as online. It is true the medium is a message itself, but what we are now inhabiting is an Intermedia, the media of medias, where one medium flows into another making it hard to define boundaries. The book can be found in cyberspace and in literature space. The book may be bigger than we think. Or smaller than we think. For sure we are in the process of redefining it.