Medulla Noodle

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

2008-11-20T22:04:00.001-05:00

2008-05-20T22:18:00.002-04:00

Astute readers of the medulla noodle ("noodlologists" I've heard is the preferred nomenclature) will note that this is the first time in this blog's two-and-a-half-year existence that I've neglected to title a post. Seriously, if you want to search the archives, I'll wait...

if you're lost you can look--and you will find me
time after time
if you fall I will catch you--I'll be waiting (oh, I'll be waiting!)
time after time

See? Tolja.

Where was I? Ah yes, there's a first time for everything. There's also a last time.

If we were to be brutally honest with ourselves, I think we'd have to admit that there's a certain amount of conceit that goes into the decision to start blogging. For us to click "publish" and lay bare for anyone who wants to read it, there has to be the belief that we have something to say that someone wants to hear. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that when I started this blog I thought a lot of people would want to read what I had to write. I'll fully 'fess up to initially having a narcissistic attitude during this blog's first year.

Things change, though, and as I figured out my own bloggy voices and who my audience was (you, natch), medulla noodle became a much more personal project to me. It allowed me to indulge parts of my self that didn't normally get expressed, to entertain people, to keep in touch with friends. I put a lot of creative and emotional energy into this blog - probably more than I should have - and I'm very proud of what I've written here in the last few years.

However, on top of the narcissism, I've also wanted to create a site where people would come almost every day to see what was new. And that's tough to do solo, more so when you're also committed to more important things beyond the blogosphere. Over the last twelve months, I haven't been able to commit as much energy to the noodle as I would've liked, and I think the writing is on the proverbial wall.

It's with a sad heart that I tell you that medulla noodle will from here on out be on "irregular hiatus." The blog's not going anywhere, and I'll keep it sporadically updated, if just for the purpose of making sure the archives stick around. But as of this post, the substantive writing here is done.

I have no problem imagining any one of my grandparents (a more pious generation) lecturing me that "God doesn't close a door without opening a window." I'm not one to subscribe to supernatural deities intervening in human affairs. I'm closing the door. But I'm also, with some help, opening a new window.

As sad as it makes me to mothball the noodle, I'm more than excited to say that I'll be blogging with four people who've been hugely important to me both professionally and personally at Organizing Grievances. All four are first rate thinkers, incredible activists, and most importantly, great friends. On top of that, they're fantastic writers. So not only can you keep up on what I have to blab on about on any given day (and PRM, Bambino Blogging, and Douchebaggery will all be heading there), you can also make the acquaintance of a few more of the talented denizens of soviet blogistan.

Thank you so much for reading. I hope we'll see you at the OG.

It's fucking 2008 people!

2008-05-16T00:09:00.000-04:00

Cowards.

Thursday night smackdown

2008-05-15T22:44:00.003-04:00

We don't have cable in our household, which means I miss out on the happenings of 24 hour news on the teevee. That doesn't bother me much. On top of that, I've long felt that Chris Matthews was particularly unwatchable. But I gotta say, watching him take down this pompous ass was good. Really good.

So...

2008-05-14T13:02:00.003-04:00

There's a bunch of half-naked women in cages in front of the hotel next door to my office building. Apparently, PETA wants to make a point that "chicks suffer for eggs." I'll simply note that this is another chapter in PETA's blatantly misogynistic PR campaign and go smugly about my business knowing I eat only tasty cage-free eggs.

So... any caged half-naked women in your neck of the woods?

Pop culture ephemera

2008-05-13T23:24:00.004-04:00

While I was so studiously not blogging, I was also engaged in soaking up all manner of popular culture. A sample of the sights and sounds of the casa de wobs:

ms. wobs and I recently finished watching Band of Brothers. I am, admittedly, a sucker for a well-made WWII flick and had been keen on watching this series for years now, and I'm happy to say I wasn't disappointed. It's a well-crafted epic, both narratively and visually. More importantly, there's a fine line between telling the truly incredible stories of those who were there and myth-making, and I think the series tacks towards the former the vast majority of the time. The filmmakers also manage to keep the film apolitical (save the obvious narratives about the justness of WWII and a general "war really is hell" sentiment) while not flinching from the political and moral ambiguities that were inherent in the conflict.

A special shout-out to goes to Donnie Wahlberg as Sgt. Lipton. When you see a former New Kid on the Block in the cast, you tend to be a little dubious, but Wahlberg plays Lipton with an understated dignity that's perfect for the role, even if he's less than convincing as a West Virginian.

The only serious misstep in the series was casting David Schwimmer in a small but important role. It's really hard to get into the episode when all you can think is, "You're such a fucking douchebag, Ross!" Aside from Schwimmer and the obligatory awkwardly paced exposition of the first episode and the less-than-satisfying (emotionally, at least) denoument of the last, Band of Brothers is breathtaking to watch, especially the emotional heart of the series centered around episodes based on the Battle of the Bulge. It really is some extraordinary visual storytelling.

We also managed to watch Thank You for Smoking and Idiocracy. They're both funny - I wouldn't necessarily watch them over and over, but they're definitely worth a spot in your Netflix queue. They're both over-the-top in their moralizing (though Mike Judge uses the outlandishness to far better effect, especially in a meta sense) but have plenty of gags to make them more palatable. I'll especially recommend Idiocracy for the visual gags that are Judge's vision of a distant future ruled by morons. The "House of Representin'" alone is worth the rental price. Or check it out free from your public library.

I thought I was done with REM. The only new album I've bought since Automatic for the People was Up, and only really for the first six songs. So when I heard some good things about Accelerate, I at least paid attention. Then I read that someone heard a track on a college radio station, and that pushed me over the edge. It's good! Peter Buck rediscovered his distortion pedal, Mike Mills rediscovered those sweet counter-melodies backing up Michael Stipe, and the whole band rediscovered the whole jangly* rock thing that made us love them back in the 80s. There's a few tracks on there that sound like they could've been outtakes from Life's Rich Pageant or Green. The music itself is enough to put a nostalgic smile on your face, but the sly self-referential lyrics definitely seal the deal. This new album makes an old fan happy.

* A little known section of law stipulates that media discussing REM with more than 50 words must use some variation of "jangle" within their work. It's true. Look it up.

The best dKos diary I've read in a long, long time.

Sith lords gone wild!

2008-05-13T21:12:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure which part of this simple tale of assault is the most unbearably wonderful (to borrow a phrase) [all emphases mine]:

"A man who dressed up as Darth Vader, wearing a garbage bag for a cape, and assaulted the founders of a group calling itself the Jedi church was given a suspended sentence Tuesday."
"Arwel Wynne Hughes, 27, attacked Jedi church founder Barney Jones — aka Master Jonba Hehol — with a metal crutch, hitting him on the head, prosecutors told Holyhead Magistrates' Court."
"Unfortunately for Hughes, his March attack was recorded on a video camera that the cousins had set up to film themselves in a light saber battle."
"'Darth Vader! Jedis!' Hughes shouted as he approached."
"Hughes claimed he couldn't remember the incident, having drunk the better part of a 2 1/2-gallon (10-liter) box of wine beforehand."
"In the 2001 United Kingdom census, 390,000 — 0.7 percent of the population — listed Jedi as their religion."

Putting the war room to shame

2008-05-12T23:46:00.001-04:00

You haven't read spin until you've read this.

Time's up

2008-05-12T23:37:00.002-04:00

The answers to the ones you didn't get yet:

3. "Wicked Path of Sin" - Old & In The Way
5. "AT&T" - Pavement
6. "Fishwater" - Widespread Panic
7. "The Eleven" - Grateful Dead
8. "Maybe Partying Will Help - the Minutemen
9. "I Know There's an Answer" - the Beach Boys
11. "Diamond Dogs" - David Bowie
12. "Split Open and Melt" - Phish
15. "God Knows" - God Is My Co-Pilot
16. "Hell Yes" - Beck
18. "The Picture" - Son Volt
19. "I'm Convicted" - Bad Livers
20. "Billie" - Pavement
21. "Heroes and Villains" - Brian Wilson
23. "What Is The Light???" - Flaming Lips
25. "It's So Obvious" - Wire

PRM

2008-05-12T23:34:00.002-04:00

I guess it's probably a result of my upbringing and sweet, sweet FM radio (I hear they still have that), but I've got a soft spot in my heart for the Cars.

"Let's Go"

"Just What I Needed"

Sporty chit-chat

2008-05-10T00:56:00.002-04:00

During the last two baseball seasons, I had the pleasure of chatting in great detail about our fantasy teams with dave and pattyjoe. Now, 3000 miles away, it's a bit more difficult to do that, but thanks to the miracle of bloggy technology, we can do that in the friendly confines of cyberspace. So please, indulge yourself in some good, old-fashioned fantasy baseball talk. And yes, this is going to be a regular feature.

This is the first season I've had a player get really, really hot. And right now, my friends, Lance Berkman is en fuego

Prince Fielder, on the other hand...

On paper, my pitching staff is pretty rocking. Unfortunately, if they pitch well, they either don't get run support or aren't in a position for a save. You'll note that I said if they pitch well

Nate McLouth and Ryan Doumit are my two early season free agency scores

It's maddening having to juggle a bunch of decent-to-good but as of late inconsistent infielders around Mr. Reliable at shortstop

Lay your woes upon me.

You deserve answers

2008-05-10T00:05:00.003-04:00

But before I spoil the meme-y fun, I wanted to offer a few more hints. See if any of these help jog the "random knowledge" portion of your head:

3 is a Bill Monroe tune performed by a early 70s bluegrass supergroup.

Numbers 5 and 20 are the same band, one that pretty much defined the term "lo-fi." The two songs are not on their two best known albums.

Numbers 6, 7, and 12 are all jam bands from (respectively) Athens, GA; San Francisco; Burlington, VT

8 - San Pedro's finest belt out what should've been the Eugene anarchist theme song - seeking to pacify existential angst about "victims of [our] leisure" with beer and a bag of mersh.

Numbers 9 and 21 are from (respectively) the crown jewel and belatedly realized masterpiece of these iconic Sixties Southern California surf/pop band.

The artist in 11 is well-known for collaborating, musically and possibly otherwise, with the likes of Lou Reed, Mick Jagger, and Iggy Pop. Tough lyrics, though.

I'm not even going to bother with 15 - it really does qualify as obscure indie rock.

16 is a repeat of one of the first four artists.

For 18, think of the lesser known half of Uncle Tupelo.

The song title's in the lyric in 19, played by an awesome bluegrass/punk/rock/klezmer/etc. band from Austin, TX (and featured on Punk Rock Monday)

For 22, think Big Suit.

Number 24 is a repeat of an artist from 12 through 15.

Number 25 is so obvious. Think influential 70s British punk band that wasn't the Clash or the Sex Pistols.

I don't know whether these will help or hinder your efforts. I do know, however, that I've spent far too much time absorbing trivial knowledge.

Endgame

2008-05-08T22:15:00.003-04:00

I don't begrudge HRC wanting to fight out the last few primaries. Hell, she's made it this far. In fact, I can even mentally envision certain circumstances in which it could be a positive, party-building campaign invigorated by big ideas rather than policy nit-picking. Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen.

And perhaps more tragically, I don't think the seeming desperation of the HRC campaign will necessarily damage the Democratic Party so much as it will be the ignominious tailspin of someone who should return to the Senate and - freed from the constraints of presidential ambition - lead the legislative charge to enact at least some progressive policy reforms. She deserves a better legacy than what this campaign will bequeath her.

At any rate, to my friends back home, enjoy your turn as the last stand.

Hints

2008-05-08T17:27:00.001-04:00

I threw up some hints on the music meme, so if you're still playing...

Incidentally, there's a broad range of genres there, from 90s lo-fi to hippie and neo-hippie jam bands, from SoCal surf music to bluegrass. And only a few obscure indie bands.

PRM

2008-05-04T23:52:00.002-04:00

George Harrison tops my ballot for most underrated songwriter.

"My Sweet Lord"

"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (I dig the arrangement on this one)

And... "The Pirate Song"

Yee-argh.

Shaping and molding young minds

2008-05-04T22:36:00.003-04:00

Two tales of the emergent political consciousness of l'il wobs.

Tale One: L'il wobs is currently enrolled in a hippy-dippy kind of Christian Montessori school. The boy apparently enjoys the religious part of the curriculum, which is fine by us, albeit a little jarring at times (for instance, when he referred to our wine as "Jesus blood." The way we see it, he'll encounter Christianity at some point - better from people who are teaching him to love everyone than from, say... Baptists. Besides, how's he ever going to appreciate Milton if he doesn't get some Judeo-Christian learning?

At any rate, a few weeks ago, l'il wobs started talking about "Rock" Obama. I was curious to know what the lad knew about "Rock," so I asked him. We were told that Obama is very beautiful, that he was put in jail, and then they killed him.

We were obviously a little surprised by his answer. Either ms. wobs or I asked him if maybe he was talking about Jesus, and l'il wobs responded, "They're the same."

Tale Two: One of l'il wobs friends and his parents weren't able to make the baseball game today, so they offered their tickets to us. We trekked down to watch the Nationals take on the Pirates. All was going well until "Star-Spangled Banner" time. To add a little razzle-dazzle to the proceedings, fireworks are launched to punctuate the "rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air."

L'il wobs hates loud fireworks and immediately broke down and wanted to leave. We talked our way through it, and he eventually re-settled and started to have a good time, charming our seatmates and munching on (four fucking dollar) Cracker Jacks.

During the bottom of the fourth, however, an Aaron Boone shot to the patio in center field brought out another round of celebratory fireworks, upon which l'il wobs recommenced freaking out. He was talked back down again, but by the time the sixth inning rolled around, he was pretty adamant about going home.

At any rate, when l'il wobs grows up to detest America, you'll know who to blame.

Because I ♥ memes

2008-05-03T23:18:00.012-04:00

This is following from feminist, ph.d's welcome introduction of this meme. The rules:

1. Randomize your tunes... nicely
2. Post the first line of the first 25 songs, no matter how much you don't want the rest of us to know that Creed is on your iPod.
3. In comments, leave your informed opinion as to what the song title is and who the artist/s is/are. As they come in, I'll strike the song off the list. Googling for the answer makes you the Barry Bonds of the meme world. Do you really want that? Besides, I'll post the answers eventually.
4. Rinse, lather, repeat.

So here goes, in no particular order - or as the kids might say, "Randomly..."
~~1. Say you stand by your man~~
~~2. Because mutiny on the bounty’s what we’re all about [I'm gonna board your ship and turn it on out]~~
3. In this awful world of sorrow [On this wicked path of sin] [cover - bonus points for guessing the right artist]
~~4. Oh when they beat upon a broken guitar~~
5. Lately, someone’s gonna save me [My heart is made of gravy and the laps I swim from lunatics don't count]
6. Four train days, get me back to New Orleans [Drink more fishwater there than any whale's mama ever seen]
7. High green chilly winds and windy vines [In loops around the twisted shafts of lavender]
8. As I look out over this beautiful land I can’t help but realize [That I am alone. Why am I able to waste my energy?]
9. I know so many people who think they can do it alone [They isolate their heads and stay in their safety zones]
~~10. Z Y X, Z Y X~~
11. As they pulled you out of the oxygen tent [You asked for the latest party]
12. In the morning I pack up my gear and toss it in my carryall [Run the wide load to the lip and watch the big core crack and glow]
~~13. Oh gawd, has she always lived here?~~
~~14. It’s close to midnight and something evil’s lurking in the dark~~
15. Everyone sees every movie you make [The whole world hears every word you say]
16. Lookin’ for my place on assembly lines [Fake prizes risin' out of the bombholes]
~~17. That there, that’s not me~~
18. Hurricanes in December, earthquakes in the heartland [Bad Aryan decks on its flashing warning sign]
19. I’m convicted by reality convicted [I'm rejected, a bigger part of me is wastin']
20. Billie and my friend the saint, you’re perfect in so many ways [But you never looked hard at a fetus in a jar]
21. I’ve been in this town so long that back in the city I’ve been taken for long and gone [and unknown for a long long time]
~~22. Lost my shape - trying to act casual [Can't stop - might end up in the hospital]~~
23. What is the light that you have [shining all around you? Is it chemically derived?]
~~24. With your feet on the air and your head on the ground~~
25. It’s so obvious, it’s here it’s there [It's not just the color, it must be more]

There's a couple of repeat artists in there. Have fun.

Happy May Day!

2008-05-01T15:49:00.001-04:00

The Internationale

Arise! ye starvelings, from your slumbers;
Arise! ye prisoners of want.
For reason in revolt now thunders
And ends at last the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses, arise! arise!
We’ll change henceforth the old tradition
And spurn the dust to win the prize.

Chorus
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale
Unites the human race.

No saviour from on high delivers;
No faith have we in prince or peer.
Our own right hand the chains must shiver:
Chains of hatred, greed and fear.
E’er the thieves will out with their booty
And give to all a happier lot.
Each at his forge must do his duty
And strike the iron while it’s hot!

The law oppresses us and tricks us,
The wage slave system drains our blood;
The rich are free from obligation,
The laws the poor delude.
Too long we’ve languished in subjection,
Equality has other laws;
“No rights,” says she “without their duties,
No claims on equals without cause.”

Behold them seated in their glory
The kings of mine and rail and soil!
What have you read in all their story,
But how they plundered toil?
Fruits of the workers’ toil are buried
In strongholds of the idle few
In working for their restitution
The men will only claim their due.

No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we’ll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They’ll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We’ll shoot the Generals on Our Own Side.

We peasants, artisans, and others
Enrolled among the sons of toil,
Let’s claim the earth henceforth for brothers,
Drive the indolent from the soil!
On our Flesh too Long has fed the Raven;
We’ve too long been the vulture’s prey.
But now farewell the spirit craven:
The dawn brings in a brighter day.

PRM: Inside joke edition

2008-04-28T00:02:00.003-04:00

Perhaps you're not familiar with the musical stylings of Finnish death metal band Lordi. If that's the case, then believe you me, I'm doing you a favor. Consider it my contribution to multiculturalism.

"Devil is a Loser"

"Who's Your Daddy"

And what collection of Lordi would be complete if we neglected to add "Hard Rock Hallelujah"?

Blinded me with science

2008-04-25T23:37:00.002-04:00

Well, that does it. With "scientific" proof like this, how can we deny it? I'll be seeing you in the pews, motherfuckers!

At this point, I believe the kids say, "Boom!"

And yet it's so much more

2008-04-21T22:30:00.004-04:00

Demographers and health researchers are noticing a dramatic drop in women's life expectancy is some areas of the United States:

The downward trend is evident in places in the Deep South, Appalachia, the lower Midwest and in one county in Maine. It is not limited to one race or ethnicity but it is more common in rural and low-income areas. The most dramatic change occurred in two areas in southwestern Virginia (Radford City and Pulaski County), where women's life expectancy has decreased by more than five years since 1983.

The trend appears to be driven by increases in death from diabetes, lung cancer, emphysema and kidney failure. It reflects the long-term consequences of smoking, a habit that women took up in large numbers decades after men did, and the slowing of the historic decline in heart disease deaths.

It may also represent the leading edge of the obesity epidemic. If so, women's life expectancy could decline broadly across the United States in coming years, ending a nearly unbroken rise that dates to the mid-1800s.

[...]

"This is a story about smoking, blood pressure and obesity," said Majid Ezzati, of the Harvard Initiative for Global Health, a co-author of the paper.

The drop in life expectancy is about those things, but it's about a helluva lot more too.

It's the story of a nation that has a dangerously broken for-profit insurance to provide health coverage for most of its citizens, while leaving some 47 million uninsured. The coverage that people do have isn't necessarily even adequate to actually obtain decent health care.

It's the story of a nation that doesn't have - has never had - any sort of cohesive public health policies.

It's a story about cheap, processed foods of marginal nutritional value and mass advertising.

It's a story about poverty, and the conditions which cause poverty.

Limiting the story to just smoking, blood pressure, and obesity limits the solutions to the problems which vex us when it comes to public health in this country. By focusing on these three items, the solutions come in the form of individual interventions, in a manner of speaking. Educate people to make good choices, the logic goes. It, of course, elides over the much more complicated, and in the long-run, more damaging, structural problems that underlie the proximate causes of the decline in life expectancy.

There needs to be a much more expansive conversation about public health in this country, and it's a conversation that should make some people feel very, very uncomfortable.

Laugh it up, fuzzball

2008-04-20T23:51:00.004-04:00

My friend AJK posted these on Facebook, and since most of you didn't know me in the Way Back When of 1996, I thought I'd share a little bit of the past with you. I believe the preferred nomenclature for my look around this time is "Wookie."

AJK, myself, and B

Me, AJK, and JA

I almost look like ez, eh?

PRM

2008-04-20T23:25:00.002-04:00

How about some of that particular ray of sunshine, Lou Reed?

"Heroin"

"Walk on the Wild Side"

And a funky "Sweet Jane"

It's the little things

2008-04-20T23:03:00.002-04:00

An anthropological survey of the personal ads in our local weekly paper has demonstrated a preference for the descriptor "420 friendly," the West Coast equivalent of which would be "herb friendly." Neither are exactly subtle codes for "I smoke pot," but I have to admit, I prefer the laid back straight-forwardness of the latter.

Me? I've been reading

2008-04-17T23:08:00.002-04:00

Just to fill you in on what I've been doing... well, a lot of reading (thanks to the hefty gift cards to Powells). I've lately gone through Tom Robbins' Villa Incognito. Honestly, it feels like Robbins writes from a template: Seattle and other more exotic locales, mysticism, prodigious acts of sexual congress with a bent towards kink, drugs, and a caper. Which isn't to say that it's not an enjoyable read - it most certainly is, but it didn't ring my bell like Still Life with Woodpecker or even Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates did. I wouldn't call it a must-read, but it's a nice find at a used bookstore.

Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down, on the other hand, rocked my proverbial socks. The story, driven by the conceit of suicide, is pretty implausible, true, but this was so fun to read (yes, it's about depressed, suicidal people), I was willing to take the leap. The novel moves from one absurd situation to the next, but the characters are each so sweetly compelling in a really miserable kind of way that you genuinely care how the situation is resolved, even if the resolution isn't necessarily pleasant. This is a funny novel for and about sad people.

As for right now, I'm busying myself in a very nerdy kind of way with Hugh Thomas' massive history, The Spanish Civil War. It's been a long time since I picked up a political/military history book, and this one is especially satisfying, given Thomas' strong narrative gifts.

Next up? The Cold Six Thousand and a ginormous political biography by Isaac Deutscher.

More groveling

2008-04-15T10:29:00.002-04:00

Okay. So I've been a major slacker about the noodle these days. Outside of being ill, I've also been spending my evening hours away from the computer, doing things like watching movies, reading books, and hanging out with the family. On top of that, I've had a major deficiency of blogging mojo - I just don't much feel like commenting about things that are going on these days, although this could be an effect of being out of practice rather than any actual lack of interest.

That said, I'm going to try to be better in the next few days about posting some content - either that, or I'm going to declare a hiatus for a few weeks in order to meditate on my mojo. But I'll work on the former.

So that's what's going on.

Down with disease

2008-04-07T08:59:00.002-04:00

My apologies, dear readers. For the last six days I've lain in bed with Madame Influenza, basking in her feverish garden of hallucinatory delights. I'm currently happy to be sitting upright again.

At any rate, as better health appears to be upon me, I'll get back to minding the shop for our mutual amusement.

PRM

2008-03-24T21:46:00.002-04:00

To atone for my recent nostalgia mongering (but really, if you can't wallow in childhood memories on your own blog, where can you?), I offer you the incalculable coolness of Radiohead.

"Subterranean Homesick Alien"

"Paranoid Android"

"The National Anthem"

Wow, that was satisfying.

New York City's a good ole place to go

2008-03-20T17:03:00.002-04:00

I'm off to the Big City for a weekend of urban charm, gritty streets, and most importantly, to celebrate four years of wedded bliss with the effervescent ms. wobs. Yes, if I had it to do all over again, I would.

So, light to no posting for the weekend... although that's pretty much been the rule around here lately, hasn't it? I'll be back on Monday with a new PRM (that won't suck, dr, I promise).

It's not about your fucking convenience

2008-03-19T21:32:00.002-04:00

On the way home this evening, I overheard several people talking about how inconvenienced they were by a few hundred dirty fucking hippies who had the temerity to briefly remind them about the clusterfuck that started five years ago today. They had been made late to work, late to a meeting, late to dinner by protesters blocking traffic, blocking entrances, and stridently refusing to block out the images of death occurring every day in the Middle East.

These people have no idea what inconvenience is.

Inconvenience is being displaced from your home by explosives or ethnic cleansing unleashed by this ill-conceived maelstrom.

Inconvenience is never seeing a loved one again because of an idiotic land grab to claim oil wealth and geopolitical advantage.

Inconvenience is losing your limbs, your eyesight, your hearings so that the dauphin king can overcome his daddy issues.

Inconvenience is losing your life for no fucking reason at all.

The thirty minutes you had to wait in traffic doesn't mean shit compared to the inconveniences visited upon millions of people because of this stupid fucking war. So stop your bitching.

PRM

2008-03-17T00:04:00.000-04:00

Because some of us feel like wallowing in Gen X nostalgia this evening, I give you the Muppets

with REM...

with Tony Clifton...

and on there own, because there's nothing more Gen X nostalgic than "Mahna Mahna"...

Sunday Night Bambino Blogging plus

2008-03-16T23:08:00.004-04:00

I realize I've been stingy with the l'il wobs pics as of late, so here's a two-for-one showing him in many hats, plus a piece I like to call "Some Call Me Tim."

It's not you, it's me

2008-03-13T23:34:00.002-04:00

Regrettably, I have nothing to say other than I have a case of the "blahs."

Blah.

PRM

2008-03-10T23:35:00.001-04:00

You've been very patient with me.

"Whiskey River"

"Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain"

"Pancho and Lefty" with Bob Dylan

Deconstructionist Movie Night (or, I can't believe I watched this)

2008-03-10T23:01:00.003-04:00

Our local library has free movie check-outs and a decent array of flicks, allowing ms. wobs and I to indulge tastes for which we wouldn't normally allocate a nominal rental fee. Hence, our viewing of The Astronaut Farmer. Don't let the story of a dream and gumption bringing a family together fool you. This movie is pro-small business, pro-small government, pro-explosive, pro-(straight)marriage, pro-vigilante, pro-hackneyed cliché, pro-training montage, and, surprisingly, pro-immigrant. Something which I imagine appeals to your average Ron Paul supporter.

Oh, it was also very, very, very pro-manly maleness, in no uncertain terms:

Billy Bob Thornton was competent.

Sorry 'bout that

2008-03-10T21:11:00.002-04:00

Huh. I look up and the next thing I know a week has gone by. By way of accounting: Tuesday, movie; Wednesday and Thursday, reading; Friday, tired; Saturday, drinking; Sunday, hungover.

I'll add that Saturday involved hanging out with Joel S., Brian W., and Dan W. and was reminiscent of some nights at High Street, but without the early A.M. drunken bike ride.

PRM

2008-03-03T23:10:00.003-05:00

The evening does really call for the World's Greatest Rock n' Roll band, caught in their dirty, dirty prime. Get busy.

"Carol" from 1969 (video will kick in @19 seconds)

"Starfucker" from 1978

"Honky Tonk Woman" from '76 (that's the spirit!)

And furthermore

2008-03-03T22:11:00.003-05:00

Not that I'm the type to toot my own horn or anything, but on top of being named an Award Winning Poet, I've also been named a Poet Fellow:

This award only costs $60 and comes with a "24K" Gold Pin. Quite the bargain. How low are you willing to go, International Society of Poets? Do I hear "New Poet of the Year," my picture in the newspaper, and a $45 membership fee? My shit's hot, y'all, and I'm being courted.

To all of you who would diminish my achievements by claiming that this is some sort of ruse to get chumps to donate their hard-earned dollar to an organization of dubious distinction, I say this:

By next week, I'll be fucking Dante, my haiku will be a Broadway musical, and my membership will be free!

Pwned, you MFA-toting losers!

2008-02-27T22:57:00.003-05:00

I knew plenty of poets in grad school, lost souls who briefly believed that a rigorous, professional training in being a poet would somehow translate into something more than a return to menial labor. Those fiction writers, now they were classy, but undoubtedly their poet brethren have slunk back to being dishwashers, plumbers, and low-end prostitutes scrounging change to procure the cheap gin they lean on in lieu of talent.

I, on the other hand, have achieved, through sheer lack of will and casual dilettantism, the status of Award Winning Poet. From when Jeeves brought in my afternoon e-mail:

For a nominal fee of only $75(+s&h) to join the International Society of Poets (being an Award Winning Poet means it's sixty clams cheaper for me than those other chump poets), they'll send me a maple - maple! - mounted plaque of recognition for my achievement, and maybe a nice volume featuring myself and other Award Winning Poets. How many of you have received the Editor's Choice Award from the venerable ISP? Mm hmm?

So what epic work of art have I unleashed upon the literary world, destined to launch one thousand dissertations and cast an enormous shadow over contemporary American, nay, world poetry? Why these seventeen simple syllables:

Cherry Blossoms are
Often responsible for
Red and teary eyes.

Read it and weep. See you in the Norton Anthology, suckers!

Signs o' the times

2008-02-26T21:52:00.003-05:00

How stone-chillingly apocalyptic is this story?

LONGYEARBYEN, Norway -- Norway opened a frozen "doomsday" vault Tuesday deep within an Arctic mountain where millions of seeds will be stored to safeguard against wars or natural disasters wiping out food crops around the globe.

Beyond that, the story gets a little more mundane (but remarkable, nonetheless), but does the lede not sound like the beginning of a Mad Max style adventure? Looking for the "Doomsday Vault", hidden somewhere in the lush mountain jungles of Norway because global warming totally fucked shit up...

There's nothing like the total annihilation of the food supply to put oneself in a nice Malthusian funk.

If I may spew

2008-02-25T23:28:00.008-05:00

What bullshit. Two and a half assumptions here drive me especially fucking crazy.

1a: Women are sexual sirens who must minimize their seductive capabilities lest they drive one-half the population mad and to depravity.
1b: Men, once captivated by the siren's song, will stop at nothing to sate their most base desires.

Ergo, women who don't shield their sexuality are responsible for whatever ill befalls them. Granted I'm a sample of one, but sufficed to say, whatever you women are doing to get me to notice you, it works. Also sufficed to say, uh... it's never driven me to sate my most base desires by force.

2: Women don't know the difference between "regret" and "assault."

So that whole election thingy might not be necessary after all

2008-02-25T22:45:00.001-05:00

So, uh... good luck with that...

Senator John McCain said Monday that he needed to convince the American people that the troop escalation in Iraq was working and that American casualties there would continue to decline. If he did not, he said, “I lose” the election.

“Is there any doubt?” Mr. McCain said to reporters on his campaign bus.

Absolutely none.

PRM

2008-02-25T00:09:00.003-05:00

This morning I offer up some Camper Van Beethoven, primarily because of the pleasant memories of adolescence that they evoke, but also because I could use a little cockeyed Santa Cruz living right about now.

"Take the Skinheads Bowling," "Wasted," and "Tania" circa 1988

"Pictures of Matchstick Men" from 2005

Groovy, huh?

Sunday night bambino blogging

2008-02-24T23:12:00.002-05:00

One of the more unflattering things about having a child is seeing your worst tendencies reflected back at you. I have it on very good authority that I can get obnoxiously stubborn, and I imagine that this is what I look like in some of my poutier moments. To his credit, l'il wobs has been sick for the last few days and I kind of wore him out this afternoon, so he's allowed a little slack on the surliness front.

Now this is the kind of Hollywood cattiness I go for

2008-02-24T22:35:00.004-05:00

While I'm resolutely Not Oscar blogging, I will indulge in a little meta-Oscar blogging. For example, did you know that Oscar's conservative... ahem competition has a trash-talking live blog of the show? The Liberty Film Festival blog is offering constantly updated witticisms like this:

7:24 — Renee Zellwegger. A sandwich, stat. She makes me want to be gay. I can think of three, no four guys, I’d.. You know… Look at her. That pinched face. A body like a twelve-year-old boy. I’d feel like a child molester.

For the record, Renee Zellwegger will not turn a man teh gay. Daniel Day Lewis, on the other hand... do the fellas know what I'm talking about here?

And honestly, given the last couple of years, don't you figure right-wingers would be just a little more careful about copping to feeling like a child molester? Just sayin'.

Not Oscar blogging

2008-02-24T21:13:00.004-05:00

I'm generally not a big fan of awards shows. They admittedly do have a few good moments, and they serve as a rather great excuse to have a party, but absent that, I'm kind of meh about them. Doubly so when I have no idea what's going on in that particular part of the arts universe. I don't begrudge their existence... well, except that Daniel Day Lewis shows up. I can't compete with that, ladies. Do the fellas know what I'm talking about here?

Um, yes. So I was... oh yeah, not blogging about the Oscars.

Daydream Nation*

2008-02-22T23:12:00.006-05:00

I feel that I've come by my cynicism about politicians legitimately. Not politics, per se, but politicians. And so it's with some measure of shame that I must admit that I'm starting to buy into some of the "hope" and "change" that are being thrown around.

To be clear, that hope and change isn't necessarily emanating entirely from the top of the ticket. You don't get to the position of "Democratic Front-runner" by espousing the kinds of politics and policies that have my imprimatur. Rather, it's the level of organizing that's occurring downstream of this candidacy that rekindles my optimism. There's a palpable - yes, palpable - sense of this being a perfect storm: a charismatic leader teamed with a political movement that might just now be coming of age. Behind that lies a fervent organizing network - wholly independent of the campaign in many instances - that will only grow as the nomination becomes more certain (if that is what actually happens). The more I think about it, the more impressed I become.

There are obvious questions that arise. What happens to this sense of empowerment on Jan 20, 2009? How many stay engaged? But I'm even hopeful about that, in the long run.

On top of it all, I sometimes just stop and reflect on the fact that a black man is slowly solidifying his claim on front-runner status to be POTUS. And honestly, that is nothing short of amazing.

We are indeed cursed to be living in interesting times, and I must say - it's pretty fucking exciting.

* For those of you who were attracted by the title, here's your reward for bearing with me:

Bringing teh scary

2008-02-21T23:52:00.002-05:00

Note to GOP: this shit is past its expiration date.

via dday

A meme worth repeating

2008-02-19T23:52:00.003-05:00

Because peej and dave think it's cool:

If somehow compelled to pass an awkward evening among upper-middle-class, middle-brow intellectuals, I could discuss _________ without sounding like an ignoramus:

A) The metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas
B) The Wealth of Nations
C) The history and future of human space travel
D) Basic quantum theory
E) Tiger Woods' swing

Pass it on.

4077th

2008-02-19T23:13:00.002-05:00

Both ms. wobs and l'il wobs are currently laid out with the flu, which probably means I'll soon be laid out as well. It's like a freaking M*A*S*H unit here right now, which, given my chosen self-medication for the evening (is there anything a hot toddy won't cure?), makes me:

For the record, 45 minutes worth of Google searches failed to turn up a single usable picture of Hawkeye in his bathrobe with a martini.

Adventures in praxis

2008-02-18T22:46:00.003-05:00

L'il wobs frequently gets mistaken for a little girl. I suppose it's his hair, which he likes in a longish kind of mop. At any rate, I usually let these incidents slide on the theory that by reacting to correct these one-off attributions of gender based on a few second interaction, I am subtly asserting to l'il wobs that girls are something less than totally cool.

On our way back from the grocery store today, l'il wobs told me that he was a boy right now, but when he grew up, he could be a boy or a girl. "True enough," I told him. "You can make a lot of choices about what you want to be when you grow up."

"Yeah," he replied. "I might want to be a girl. I also want to be a teacher."

I gotta say, this "shaping and molding young minds" business is heavy duty stuff!

PRM

2008-02-18T21:49:00.003-05:00

In the late 60s and early 70s, Herbie's bands were so funky, it physically hurt.

"Chameleon"

This is just audio, but "Fat Mama" is so slathered up in indescribable funk it would be criminal not to share it.

And while it's easy to wallow in the nastiness of those grooves, you'd be remiss in not remembering that Herbie has a bop pedigree, playing, you know, with this guy:

"So What"

Be careful.

I believe the term you're looking for is 'blowback'

2008-02-15T22:09:00.003-05:00

Pity poor David Horowitz as he attempts to stuff the escaped "Soros ♥ McCain" genies back into his Pandora's Box:

The Internet and cable TV have been rife with allegations that George Soros funds John McCain. One of the sources for this claim is a book I co-authored last year called The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party. What we reported was that Soros made a contribution to McCain's political organization when McCain was devising the McCain-Feingold bill. If you oppose that bill as I did and do, that's the end of the story.

Ah yes, the end of a story that started in 2004 like this:

By pushing McCain-Feingold through Congress, Soros cut off the Democrats’ soft-money supply. By forming the Shadow Party, Soros offered the Democrats an alternate money spigot – one which he personally controlled. As a result the Democrats are heavily – perhaps even irretrievably – dependent on Soros. It seems reasonable to consider the possibility that McCain-Feingold, from its very inception, was a Soros power play to gain control of the Democratic Party.

People who take Soros money are co-opted liberal drones. Got it. In 2005, David Horowitz's Shadow Party co-author chimed in with some alarming news:

Founded on June 26, 2001, McCain's Reform Institute for Campaign and Election Issues has long served as a nerve center for the so-called "campaign finance reform" movement – a movement which has done nothing to clean up campaign finance, but has done a great deal to empower federal judges and government bureaucrats to regulate political speech, in defiance of the Bill of Rights.

Now here's the kicker. The list of donors published on the Reform Institute's Web site reads like a veritable Who's Who of radical, leftwing foundations, including the Tides Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Proteus Fund and George Soros' Open Society Institute (hat tip, Winfield Myers).

Not surprisingly, in view of the above associations, Arianna Huffington serves on the Reform Institute's Advisory Board. Huffington has long acted as a front for George Soros' "campaign finance reform" efforts. In 2000, she organized the so-called Shadow Conventions which provided John McCain with a bully pulpit to stump for his now-infamous McCain-Feingold Act. George Soros shouldered about one third of the cost of the Shadow Conventions.

What's this? Some liberal people with some communist puppet-master's money are somehow in cahoots with John McCain? You don't think John McCain could... nah!

As Sen. John McCain assumes the GOP front-runner mantle, his long-standing, but little-noticed association with donors such as George Soros and Teresa Heinz Kerry is receiving new attention among his Republican critics.

In 2001, McCain founded the Alexandria, Va.-based Reform Institute as a vehicle to receive funding from George Soros' Open Society Institute and Teresa Heinz Kerry's Tides Foundation and several other prominent non-profit organizations.

McCain used the institute to promote his political agenda and provide compensation to key campaign operatives between elections.

OMFG! McCain is totally pwned by Soros! Yikes, DHo! All that shit-stirring about Soros came to bite McCain in the ass when it came to convincing some of your nuttier comrades (OMFG, there's people nuttier than Horowitz!). How are you going to walk that one back into the barn?

Soros is an anti-American radical, who thinks George Bush is responsible for the war on terror and that Israel is the aggressor and genocidal armies like Hamas the victims.

In case that wasn't clear enough, Horowitz is saying that Soros is a Nazi.

On these critical issues of our time, John McCain has absolutely nothing in common with George Soros

John McCain is decidedly not a Nazi.

For Soros "American supremacy" is the greatest threat for world peace. For McCain, American military supremacy is the greatest guarantor of world peace. That's quite a difference.

McCain is, in fact, the anti-Nazi who will smite all the brown-skinned Nazis in the Middle East - or wherever they might reside. And McCain is such a savvy anti-Nazi, he's actually taking Soros' Nazi money and then using it to kick his ass. And that's pretty sweet.

I dunno. Given DHos red-diaper background, we have every reason to suspect his endorsement of McCain:

Presently, I am engaged in a nationwide campaign to get the Republican Party to champion the cause of poor people and minorities.

That spells RINO to me.

Note to self

2008-02-13T12:17:00.001-05:00

Double-check that all the lids are tightly sealed if the boy helps you pack your lunch. Yogurt covered ham sandwiches are not as appealing as they seem.

Reading tip for the evening

2008-02-12T23:27:00.002-05:00

Blog comments are best enjoyed as though they're being delivered by Tom Hanks or Martin Sheen in a Ken Burns documentary: "... and that is why I think McCain is demonstrably pro-NAMBLA. LordsGOP, February 8, 2008 at 3:46 AM."

A patriot is reborn and other election day tales

2008-02-12T22:06:00.003-05:00

I weathered a ten-block round-trip stroll down an icy sidewalk to my precinct polling station in order to perform my patriotic duty this evening. It was a mite bit less patriotic than the last time I voted at a polling station back in 1998, taking the last bus out of Eugene to Leaburg, voting at the community center, and trudging five star-spangled miles upriver through the thick fall rain to my house in Vida, but light-years more patriotic than the government-forced election regime I had to suffer through for the next four cycles - a thrall to the un-American, and quite frankly, vaguely Communist, Oregon Vote by Mail system. In an Ecstasy-and-red-wine fuzzed post-coital embrace, ms. wobs and I would cackle seditiously, invoke various Pagan deities, and conspire to mark our ballots in such a manner as to most righteously smash freedom. A veritable "Poke and Vote" it was. Medical marijuana? Why only medical? Tax cut? Why not? Physician-assisted suicide? Don't give up yet, we're legalizing weed!

I don't do that anymore. Nope, tonight I was an upstanding citizen treading the red, white, and blue path to liberty with my fellow citizens, and it felt good - far better than those libertine voodoo incantations to elect Ralph Nader.

Bonus election day tale: In 1996, a friend of mine and I spent the better part of the late afternoon getting drunk on a half-rack of Rainier pounders, financed mostly through the return of 144 beer bottles (the maximum that the Safeway would take - we had plenty more). In the early evening we went through the rain to our polling place, where we tramped in wearing dripping wet rain suits and smelling of cheap beer. We weren't obnoxious, but we were having fun, and we started chatting up the amused people in line behind us. Someone sternly commented that we might have been enjoying ourselves too much, given the task at hand. My friend good-naturedly shot back, "And my vote counts just as much as yours!"

Bonus bonus!: Hey look! Results!

Monday night bambino blogging

2008-02-11T22:54:00.000-05:00

Some of you have asked, and very politely, I must commend, for more pictures of the lad, which is a perfectly fair thing to ask for, and I'm happy to oblige. Unfortunately, I haven't been around the camera much lately, so I'm lacking in new material (I'll remedy that soon). So here's an oldie but goodie. I posted the hipster version of this shot earlier, but the one here really captures who l'il wobs is. It's one of our favorite photos.

I get mail

2008-02-11T22:10:00.000-05:00

For some reason, I opened the spam this evening and got something so gleefully strange, I had to share:

from: Grieves Shamlin [xxxxxxxx@xxxx.com]
reply-to: Grieves Shamlin [xxxxxxxxxx@xxxx.com],
to: medullanoodle(at)gmail(dot)com,
date: Feb 11, 2008 9:29 PM
subject: peoples

Heya,

Are you a freqquent visitor of rretail softwaree stores?
We know what you're overppaying for:
- box manufacturiing
- CD

- salespperson salary
- Rentt of shop sspace
- Year--to-year increasingg taxes in your countryy

Well, what for ?! You're able to dowwnload everythingg legally NOW! Faabulous range of softwaree and LOW prices will make you smile and save your money! Welcome to http://shaunawolfgramfc.blogspot.com

Displayed, the overreaching zeal of a gaoler who without
reason. That familiar, hysterical quality the ocean as if
she were his favourite bride. When thrown in gear, had been
running as smoothly the most primitive manual task its right
dignity, i suppose it was a good lesson to me and made wandered
about, hunting deer, and wild boars, with great devotion,
possessed of hearts full to commercial and military preeminence,
it may have doen heretofore: that which have made on look
on the absent, tender face as the great masters, were illustratio
(quint. Vi. 2, 32) and perspicientia an old fellow who hitherto
had held his peace radha laughingly said unto shalya these
words, adapted to their early settlements in canaan and.

I haven't actually haven't clicked on the link, but if any of y'all do, could you tell me if I reallyy can get hott softwaree deals while avoiding the year-to-year increasingg taxes in my countryy. Isn't that last paragraph so like the really bad creative writing majors we've all met, whom I've come to think of as the "method writers"?: "Hey, I just drank a fifth of Bushmills and started my sequel to Finnegan's Wake?"

And while I'm generally pleased to see that the author of this particular spam mail has been conscious enough to use gender-neutral pronouns, the phrase "salespperson salary" just generally strikes me as wrong outside of the random doubling of consonants.

Verily a threshent beyond of which bilbo would succumb originally mon petit chou (John 3:16) until wrestled away from conquistadors in peru, cake and.

And by “punk” I mean…

2008-02-11T00:01:00.000-05:00

After close to a year and a half of Punk Rock Mondays, I’ve decided to tinker with the format. First and foremost, quite honestly, I’m running out of punk rock to post. You’ve obviously noted that I try to dredge up some vintage performances, and the well on much of what I know is running dry (and I don’t want to insult your intelligence by posting “vintage” Third Eye Blind from 1999).

But also, I couldn’t possibly fit the 8th Wonder of the World, the Hardest Working Man in Show Business, Mr. Please Please Please Me himself into the old format.

“Out of Sight” and “Maybe the Last Time” from 1966, and holy shit is that man on fire!

With Fred Wesley, Bootsy, and Catfish Collins in the 1971 line-up, “Ain’t It Funky” – to which the answer would be “yes”:

And enjoy the white people as they are forcibly reminded that James Brown has not only licensed them to get funky, he demands it of them! “Sex Machine” and “Get on the Good Foot” from 1976.

So, as Kentucky Fried Chicken morphed into KFC after they started serving the public genetically-modified six breasted chickens, Punk Rock Monday has become PRM, a nod to its venerable past, an embrace of its bionically-enhanced future. More vintage vids, probably not as much actual punk.

You may now commence bitching about how Punk Rock Monday used to be cool.

The many moods of Pam

2008-02-10T22:18:00.000-05:00

Pamela Geller manages to range the entire "rage spectrum," from being charmingly delusional:

Dr. Nancy (my sister) suggests we do a Humphrey:

LET'S PULL A HUMPHREY

In 1968 President Johnson had eventually decided not to run because of the Vietnam quagmire and the prominent figures in the primary were Eugene McCarthy who won some states and amassed delegates and the dynamic senator from New York Robert F. Kennedy who it was said had a good chance of winning the nomination if he could add California to his wins and have that momentum at his back. This he did, but moments later was shot to death. Vice President Humphrey wound up entering and winning the nomination despite not having participated in the primaries or amassing delegates because he had the support of the incumbent president Johnson and party insiders. Let's do it too. Tell Cheney to jump in, W should support him and we just need party insiders I guess. Or can we never pull what the Dems do a la Lautenberg?

to out-and-out genocidal:

Islamic practices must be utterly shunned, denounced and eradicated from our societies. No taquiya, no sharia, no Islam in the houses of government[.]

And she can hit all the points in between.

The five stages of half-hearted, hackneyed political prose

2008-02-09T23:33:00.000-05:00

So, you're an operative looking for a chit to gain access to the next imperial court, but you're tepid, at best, on your prospective choice. Why not pen a half-hearted plea to "unite the base" in the WaPo? Here, in a nutshell, are the five stages of coming to grips with having to endorse John McCain in an editorial:

Denial: "Endorse John McCain in the WaPo? Sure, that shouldn't be a problem."
Anger: "How many words do they want? I can't get past fucking 'He's not Hillary!'"
Bargaining: "Can't I just get my Aunt Helen and Uncle Leonard in Evansville on board and ditch the whole writing thing?"
Despair: "One hour until deadline?!? My consulting firm is fucked!"
Acceptance: "Here's what I got - a shitty adaptation of five stages of how to deal with shit that really sucks. God I fucking hate John McCain!"

But will they listen? Oh noes!:

On the Republican side, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee delivered a humiliating defeat to Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) in the Kansas Republican presidential caucuses, and this evening he was leading McCain in the Louisiana contest and running neck and neck with him in Washington state.

Because I'm there

2008-02-07T23:08:00.000-05:00

And for anyone who ever thought that a late 1960s show could be anything but bliss, I give you the world's most fucked up acid-era "St. Stephen"

Surly

2008-02-07T22:58:00.000-05:00

Have I mentioned how big a douchebag I think Mitt Romney is, and how glad I am that he got completely thrashed?

Little boys who refuse to grow up

2008-02-06T22:39:00.000-05:00

This is surely taking the baseball memorabilia thing too seriously:

Brian McNamee has given federal investigators bloody gauze pads and syringes he said he used to inject Roger Clemens with steroids and human-growth hormone in 2000 and 2001, a lawyer familiar with the matter said Wednesday.

Blue dresses, bloodied syringes. What's up with the obsession with famous people's precious bodily fluids?

Clemens’s Washington attorney, Lanny Breur, issued a statement late Wednesday afternoon that contended that the notion that McNamee had saved gauze pads and syringes for seven years “defies all sensibility.”

“It is just not credible — who in their right mind does such a thing?” Breur said.

To answer your question, either someone who's going to have a Hall of Fame caliber collection of doping products or someone who knew the risks of what he was doing and wasn't about to be taken down alone.

Hardball, indeed.

So many more questions

2008-02-05T17:55:00.000-05:00

Well, Obama has garnered the crucial Grateful Dead endorsement (hat tip). That might be enough for some hemp-clad dreadie who just put down the bong, but not for me. Nosiree.

Bassist Phil Lesh, 67, said he met Obama, who told him he has some Grateful Dead songs on his iPod music player, last year.

Which songs, Senator? Some cuts from American Beauty or the Scarlet>Fire from Cornell '77?

Donna: Yay or Nay?

Pigpen, Keith, or Brent?

And most importantly, Bobby or Jerry?

Don't think that you can duck the hard questions, say that you've got some Dead tunes on your iPod, and think you can win my vote... which I'll get around to casting when I come down.

On the political economy of the barnyard

2008-02-02T23:12:00.000-05:00

Most of you are familiar with the children's book Click, Clack, Moo. The gist of the story is that the hens and cows withhold their eggs and milk in order to force Farmer Brown to acquiesce to providing them with electric blankets. In order to seal the bargain, the cows agree to trade their typewriter (with which they were able to make demands) for the blankets. Future hijinx ensue when the ducks, a third party in settling the dispute, abscond with the typewriter and issue their own demand for a diving board at the duck pond. The last page, with the image of a duck diving from a newly installed diving board, leads us to believe that they too were able to leverage the solidarity of their species and bargain.

Now, we could debate for hours the wisdom of bargaining away the typewriter (seriously, do it in the comments), but what intrigues me is that the ducks somehow won. In terms of the barnyard economy, the ducks seem to be at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to making demands. The ducks only bring value to the farm in two ways - as food or as animals that enhance the barnyard ambiance that is so crucial in promoting agri-tourisim. In the latter case, given the negligible income generated from the hordes of tourists flocking to see a "working" farm - were the goods producing animals not on strike - and given the expense of caring for them, I'm betting the ducks were loss leaders. Farmer Brown could have just as easily sold the whole gaggle to some fancy French restaurant in the city to recoup his lost revenue from the "staples strike" of aught-eight, sent a chilling message to the rest of the barnyard community, and grabbed his damn typewriter without having to install a fucking diving board. Or even more chillingly, Farmer Brown could have made an example of Mr. Lead McDuck by prepping him up for foie gras.

So I ask again, what could the ducks have possibly had that would give them leverage over Farmer Brown?

I've only been able to come up with one answer that fits the facts of the story - the ducks were the barnyard good squad, employed by Farmer Brown with a cush duck pond and all the feed they can eat in return for keeping the rest of livestock in line. Farmer Brown employs them to break the strike, the ducks arrange for the veal truck to be spotted in the farm parking lot, the cows, um... cowed by the aggressive display, but still wanting those blankets, stand firm on their one demand but agree to give up the one means by which they could make demands. After greasing the deal, the ducks, mercenaries with no set of loyalties that they are, decide that it's Farmer Brown who owes them big for mediating an agreeable solution, and when Farmer Brown initially ignores them, he wakes up next to the head of his plow-horse. The ducks then, through a savvy combination of patronage and calculated violence, maintain labor peace and managerial benign neglect to keep their dope smuggling ring intact and away from prying eyes.

Answer me this

2008-02-01T23:54:00.000-05:00

Really. WTF is going on with all of these Hollywood Scientologists? Why actors? Why not Presbyterianism?

Seriously, WTF is up with that?

And I for one welcome our post-modern overlords

2008-02-01T23:44:00.000-05:00

Shorter K-Fed:

I fucked a self-destructing pop star and knocked her up... twice! And one day that is going to score me... wait, my fifteen minutes aren't done yet!

Note to self

2008-02-01T22:19:00.000-05:00

When a hotel maintains that they have "free wifi," what they mean is that they've made a weak to non-existent signal available which will provide your computer with the illusion of internetiness with actually allowing it to suckle at the teat of the information tubes.

In other words, last night you missed out on my Williamsburg inspired 10,000 word discourse on new advances in the maintenance of historical simulacrum. Poor you.

Gone, uh... colonizing

2008-01-31T09:30:00.000-05:00

I'm off to historic Williamsburg for the day and evening. Later, blogging in breeches and tri-corner hats.

John McCain: A Portrait

2008-01-30T23:41:00.000-05:00

Given John McCain's re-emergence as a front-runner, I decided to actually look at the campaign mail sent in his name and at his website to determine what kind of man he is. It's kind of like looking into his eye and thinking to one's self, "this is a _____ man."

And if there's one thing he is - it's a man. A manly man, one of vigor. Dare I say it, a frosty man.

And I can divine this with one line from one campaign e-mail:

John McCain's momentum is now unstoppable. [emphasis added to make it extra badass]

I can only hear that line being delivered by a professional wrestler:

He's also got some great push-polling. I love this little gimmick at the bottom-left corner of his web landing page:

Right here is the reason why some people can look you in the face and tell you that certain facts are merely "your opinion." It's pretty brilliant. Being that I was interested in how much the the Democrat's tax resolution would raise the American tax bill, I decided to put the question to someone I trust - John McCain:

John McCain will make the Bush income and investment tax cuts permanent, keeping income tax rates at their current level and fighting the Democrats' plans for a crippling tax increase in 2011. Left to their devices, Democrats will impose a massive $100 billion tax hike, almost $700 per taxpayer every year.

I go back to the poll.

Huh. $100 billion's not even an option for an opinion.

Jackass.

But of course, your average spender may not have the time nor the inclination to actually find out what John McCain might have to say about the issue. You too want to know how much the Democrat's tax bill is going to be, and you figure the answer must be in the poll options. Being the smart, politically savvy conservative that you are, you use your powers of deduction to eliminate the obvious non-answers and figure out the correct option from what remains, just like they taught you in those damn SAT tutorials.

So let's do this. $0? BWAHAHA! Even the Democrat Party doesn't believe you can get something for nothing! Very droll!

$500 million? Chump change to Democrats. They'll spend that on teenage abortions alone *mild chuckle*.

$200 billion? That sounds more like the Democrat Party I know *knowing chortle*.

$500 billion!?! Not even the Democrats could be that crazy! But with a San Francisco tax-and-spender as the Speaker and a parochial influence peddler leading the Senate majority waiting to be steamrolled by... dear god, a big-city minority president, those tax bills could get crazy out of control! The only question is, would they stop at $500 billion *outrage*!

By golly, we need a Republican to keep those rascally Democrats under control! $200-500 billion tax bills! If Ronald Reagan knew, he'd be spinning in his grave!

This presidential contender is my kind of scum.

The received wisdom of ms. wobs

2008-01-29T23:02:00.001-05:00

"It's never fun to think about Nazis... unless it's Hogan's Heroes."

[updated]: Heh. For Jen.

Monday night bambino blogging

2008-01-28T23:48:00.001-05:00

No picture tonight, just a story.

I took l'il wobs to an indoor swim park on Saturday, a really cool one that had tons of waterslides. L'il wobs has been an aqua-kid since he was six months old and truly loves being in the water. He was so excited as we were getting dressed in the locker room that he, with a big ole grin and with perfect diction, blurted out "Fucking heck!"

Keep in mind, l'il wobs is conversant in all sorts of colorful language (ms. wobs and I until recently talked like longshoremen). He's perfectly capable of whipping out the full-on blue "Fucking hell!" Why he chose that particular combination to express his zeal remains something of a mystery to me.

Punk Rock Monday

2008-01-28T21:17:00.000-05:00

Okay... a show of virtual hands. Does anyone not have fond memories associated with the Violent Femmes? For me, the Femmes are one of the few things than can evoke downright nostalgia for my adolescence - the confused nauseau before I asked a girl out on a date, the euphoria of surreptitiously sipping a booze cocktail pilfered out of eight different bottles from someone's parents' liquor cabinet, lazy summer days around the lake, late night drives back from Knoxville chewing Big Red to try to hide the beer smell on our breath. The Femmes were there for all of that, and they still evince the good-natured innocence of a time that can't be recaptured.

"Add It Up"

"Blister In The Sun"

"American Music"

What's the word I'm looking for?

2008-01-24T23:23:00.000-05:00

You know, the one that means "awesomer than the most awesomest?" It's on the tip of my tongue, really... it's...

Rambo.

Can we count the ways in which the new Rambo flick will be teh awesome? We can, and we shall.

First, uh... it's a new Rambo, duh!

Second,

First question: "What happened to the shot where you punched the guy's head clear off?"

This movie is so badass you left on the cutting room floor the shot where you fucking punched some dude's head off? Where do I sign up?

Third,

"The ponderousness that comes with aging, the sense of weight, the sense of knowledge, of knowing too much, the lack of naivete, which has happened in my life, set the stage for me," [Stallone] explains. "I wanted Rambo to be heavier, bulkier, that's why his first line in the movie is pretty negative. He's given up. He has nothing."

Stallone says, "The other Rambos had a bit too much energy, were a bit too spry. I'm not trying to run myself down but there was much more vanity involved." By which he means that shirtless Rambo of yore with pectorals hard as dinner plates, glistening with baby oil as he writhes in agony and ecstasy on a makeshift cross? Exactly.

"It was all about body movement rather than the ferocity and commitment of what he was doing," Stallone says of his previous Rambos. "This character to me is much more interesting."

That's right, Rambo IV is a character study. Yeah, baby.

Fourth,

"Rambo," the film, written, directed, produced by and starring Stallone, opens nationwide on Friday and is perhaps the most graphically violent R-rated movie ever.

Pushing the envelope.

Fifth,

Question: "It's one of the most violent movies . . "

Stallone interrupts, "Not one of the most. I worked very hard for this." Everyone at the presser has a laugh.

Stallone says he was surprised that the Motion Picture Association of America gave the film an R rating: "When babies are being bayonetted and people are being flamed, I thought this will never go." But he told the ratings board, "I said guys, this is happening today -- and if we're ever going to do something that responds, where art has the ability to influence people's awareness and impact the lives of these people, don't dilute it, don't water it down. . . . Don't cut away too soon. Let it sink it. I want people to feel it. To their credit, they allowed this film to be as truthful as it could."

Stallone is referring to the plight of the Karen people and the Burmese military junta that crushed the pro-democracy "Saffron Revolution" led by monks this fall -- after the film was wrapped, which manages to make Sylvester Stallone, as a kind of human rights activist, appear prescient.

Not only is it the most violent R-rated movie ever, it's also a trenchant social commentary promoting a compelling human rights message.

Am I wrong? Is this not going to be the awesomest motion picture experience ever known to humankind? Is there any way I can enjoy this film unironically? Probably not! It's fucking Rambo!

Good gravy

2008-01-23T23:44:00.000-05:00

I've just spent half an hour wading through a listserv flame war where adults were acting like petulant children and self-professed revolutionaries demonstrated they didn't have a lick of political sense. Do I really want to continue reading e-mails written by a bunch of white academics braying about how their working class backgrounds render them authentically oppressed and thus able to criticize certain hierarchies?

Scab!

2008-01-21T23:21:00.000-05:00

No, not the miserable people who've chosen to cross the WGA's picket line. Nope, my recent inking has turned into a giant scab on the back of my calf, especially the filled-in portions. And it itches like hell.

Just thought I'd share.

Punk Rock Monday

2008-01-21T23:05:00.000-05:00

Have some spoken word from Henry Rollins for your PRM pleasure.

On dating...

On rave and modern rock music...

On the war...

Iko Iko

2008-01-21T22:12:00.000-05:00

To be sure, I had a fun time in New Orleans. Friday evening led to jazz on Bourbon Street (although the beer price there made DC prices look reasonable), and on Saturday I got to catch one of the Mardi Gras parades that will be snaking through the Quarter over the next few weeks - I got to watch it from a balcony, which was neat.

But all the fun in the Quarter was jarringly incongruous with everything else I saw and learned about the city during that time. To be blunt, I think that the post-Katrina recovery of New Orleans is the most important (and least talked about) political issue facing the United States. Within the recovery effort are distilled - in their entirety - the problems facing the nation. The privatization of public infrastructure (including - and most germane to my own work - the privatization of public education). Our relationship with the environment (coastal restoration, climate change). Racism. Poverty. Our capacity to deal with disaster and the inevitable dislocations that follow. The erosion of democratic institutions and accountability. All of these conundrums are being stared down, simultaneously and in fast-forward, in the NOLA recovery efforts. I wish I could say that this reckoning was leading towards a positive resolution, but right now, it's an uphill battle.

I wonder what the culture of New Orleans will look like in 20 years - will the vibrancy of the jazz scene, nurtured in the poor neighborhoods, remain so vital? What happens when a city's cultural flower is cut off from its roots, when the people who are vital to cultural reproduction have been displaced, the vast majority of them with no means to return - or indeed, nothing to which to return? Bourbon Street has always seemed a caricature of the culture of the rest of the city, with its neon lights, hawkers trying to cajole you into the nearest strip club, throngs of college kids stumbling down the streets with their slushee cocktails. Bourbon Street will always be there, a kind of adult Disneyland. But what about the little clubs in the quieter sections of the Quarter, or in the rest of the city, for that matter? Will the city be able to sustain the talent necessary to keep these out of the way havens viable?

The post-Katrina recovery has been notably absent from our election year discourse. To my knowledge, John Edwards has been the only candidate to make an issue of New Orleans' revival, but the impact of that effort has been negligible. But it needs to be talked about. The issues faced by New Orleans are our issues, waiting for a storm, literal or otherwise, to force them to the surface. How the Crescent City deals with these issues will serve as a template, for good of for ill (and right now, for the ill), on how we grapple with these issues on a national scale. It deserves to be at the forefront of our own thoughts and of our political discussions.

Bombed out

2008-01-17T23:56:00.000-05:00

I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to say about what I saw today. The good people working at the United Teachers of New Orleans took us on a bus tour of the city today, and some of what I saw just shocked me. Over the past 2 and a half years since Katrina, I've become sort of inured to the media depictions of the devastation visited by the storm. But seeing it in person...

The Lower Ninth Ward... gone. Literally. City block upon city block of nothing but overgrown weeds surrounding concrete foundations, a house or two spared. Piles of debris still littering the vacant lots. A whole neighborhood - just gone.

The sight of a gutted school, an adjacent athletic field freshly mowed, a surreal contrast to the wild overgrowth of the surrounding lots.

Around the rest of the city, renovated homes become the exception in neighborhoods full of empty houses.

The high water marks are still visible on many of the buildings in the city, in some places easily three or four feet above my head. The eerie tags of search and rescue crews still decorate homes. Entire strip malls stand empty.

And there I sit on a bus, gaping at the remnants, rolling past the people who are slowly trying to rebuild their homes, their neighborhoods, their lives. I'm a fucking disaster tourist.

But the city is still here, and it is rebuilding. Staying downtown, you wouldn't know that anything bad had befallen the city (although the amount of traffic flowing on the streets is noticeably diminished since the last time I visited in the mid-90s). We got to visit with some of the UTNO staffers who are working to rebuild a union devastated by a different type of storm which transformed public education in New Orleans after Katrina. They're an inspiring bunch (the staffers look suspiciously like graduate employee unionists). I get to go do house visits with them on Saturday.

The food in New Orleans is still phenomenal. But the Lagavulin at the hotel bar was criminally overpriced.

Crescent

2008-01-16T23:36:00.000-05:00

I'm off to New Orleans for the weekend. Got some big meetings to attend. If time and a cheap (read: free) internet connection presents itself, I'll let y'all know what the haps are.

It's been about twelve years since I last visited NOLA. The circumstances were memorable, in that I don't remember much of it, save the accidental visit with the tainted "hash" pipe. Chances are that won't happen again. God I hope that doesn't happen again - but avoiding LSD and thirteen straight hours of drinking will probably help on that front.

Laissez les bon temps roullez!

Not only did she miss the party, I have reason to believe she was never invited

2008-01-15T23:17:00.000-05:00

K-Lo begins to understand that while she was locked safely away in her hermetically sealed chastity bubble, the rest of us were enjoying the sex, drugs and rock 'n roll, and (unfortunately for her) all the partying might actually have implications for her politics.

Come January 20, 2009, I, for one, will be welcoming our free-basing overlords.

Where is Hunter S. Thompson when we need him?

2008-01-15T23:03:00.000-05:00

Because I'm dying to know what he'd think about this World Net Daily tidbit from his old stomping grounds:

God will get a home in the ritzy and elite Roaring Fork Valley which includes the resort locale of Aspen after a board of local officials decided that federal law did not allow them to simply ban a church construction project on land the congregation owns.

Given the whole omnipotent thing, I wasn't really aware God needed zoning board approval to build a home. Of course, given the whole omnipresent thing, I wasn't really aware that God needed "a home."

So, given that this is Aspen, will this be a vacation home?

Punk Rock Monday

2008-01-14T00:02:00.000-05:00

Hey! Did you know Dave Grohl was in a band before the Foo Fighters? They were even pretty good!

Levity aside, there’s not too much I can add to the encomiums surrounding Nirvana other than I’m surprised at how well there music has stood up over the past 15 years. As I age and continue to listen to them, I’m constantly amazed at how much I’m able to still discover and take from these tunes.

“Negative Creep” (for Dave)

If your feeling adventurous, you should check out the late 80s mullet-version of that tune – still rockin’, but way, way more hair.

“On A Plain”

And finally, a cover of David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World” not from the Unplugged appearance

... and me makes three

2008-01-13T21:42:00.000-05:00

After Courtney and Dave, I've completed the trifecta of Former-GTFF-President-Getting-Tattooed-A-Palooza - with requisite "3544". And there was much rejoicing.

Sunday night bambino blogging

2008-01-13T21:31:00.000-05:00

It's been awhile since we've let the harsh light of the blogosphere glare upon l'il wobs. Never fear, however - he's still cute!

And for a bonus, here's ms. wobs and I getting ready to go out for our New Year's Eve party, she as a Jetson, and me as Jupiter (note the big red spot):

wobs, terminal ABD

2008-01-11T19:49:00.000-05:00

For my dissertating friends...

Or perhaps more succinctly...

Dip me in cowshit and roll me around in grass blades

2008-01-08T23:14:00.000-05:00

Huh.

So, what's our takeaway from two completely non-representative state electoral contests? On the D side, both Obama and Clinton can run formidable campaigns, and most pundits (including yours truly, although I don't think I exactly qualify as a pundit, per se - just as a know-nothing loudmouth) are full of shit. I have no idea where this heads down the road, and the time lag between now and the next few contests (and the big February 5 electoral burrito supreme) makes a magic 8-ball more reliable than any prognosticator. I do think it's a two person race now - Edwards will stay in (and I hope he stays in through February 5, just to keep the social democracy rhetoric in play), but he's got no chance and will be under pressure to bow out.

On the R side, Mittens' star is fading fast. After getting walloped after dumping buckets of money into Iowa, and then getting creamed in a state where he practically lived (oh, and winning Wyoming... whatever the hell that means...), he's going to have the sickly gangrene stench of loserdom following him from here on out. I don't necessarily think it bodes well for McCain, I think outside of its theocon wing, the GOP is terrified of Huckabee, and Giuliani hasn't begun to seriously invoke 9/11 to win yet. Who the fuck knows?

Me? I'll be taking advantage of this apparent lapse in the orderly succession of leadership to smuggle massive amounts of hallucinogens to 7th grade midwesterners. Or drink more booze, as has been the case this evening.

Tanned, rested and ready - Punk Rock Monday

2008-01-07T21:10:00.000-05:00

For the first PRM of the new year, I opted to go with some Chicago-style power pop from Material Issue. This is one of those "had to be there in the moment" bands, I think. I first stumbled across on a Friday evening sojourn to the Flamingo Bar and Grill (one of the only all-age venues in Knoxville - and one where it was exceptionally easy to get beer) when I was a junior in high school. They were a staple of my pre-college years, but I kind of lost interest upon graduation when I felt that they were "too poppy." Which is a shame, because they wrote really great catchy tunes. Sadly, frontman Jim Ellison took his only life a few years ago. Also, there isn't a lot of live footage of them - they were an exceptional band to go see, especially in a club setting. So here's a few vids from the MTV and a live acoustic performance.

"Valerie Loves Me"

"Diane"

"Next Big Thing"

If I ever become balding ponytail guy....

2008-01-07T09:13:00.001-05:00

You have my permission to kill me.

Proof of GOP cyborgism

2008-01-05T23:43:00.001-05:00

My favorite part of the GOP debate was the laughably horrible discussion of health care reform when Mittens premised a response with, "Let's say there's a person who makes $100K, and goes to the hospital and needs $1000 in, um, repairs."

We're all a bunch of rich androids, Mitt. Yes we are.

All bets are off

2008-01-05T23:18:00.000-05:00

After watching the Democratic debate tonight, I hereby rescind any predictions I made about how things are going to shake out. Edwards isn't done by any stretch of the imagination, although I am somewhat skeptical about how his gambit trying to shift the frame from a Clinton v. not-Clinton to a "which version of change do you want" will work. Hillary will be hammered tomorrow for aggressively defending her record - unfairly, I think, because she's a woman. It'll be characterized as "bitchiness." We'd be fools to discount her public service record (which on many issues is very good, on others, not so). Hillary has a lot working against her right now, and I don't know that tonight did her any favors in the face of those obstacles. The debate didn't change my mind about my preferences (Edwards said what I wanted to hear), but it certainly muddied the waters as to how I think the average voter is going to respond.

On the other side, I think Romney sealed his fate in New Hampshire tonight. He looked like the flamingest asshole on a stage filled with flaming assholes, a congenial theocrat, and a crazy man. It's all downhill for Mittens from here on out.

What now?

2008-01-03T22:54:00.000-05:00

First things first: my political prognostications aren't worth shit. Now what do we draw from this completely unrepresentative, first-in-the-nation presidential wine-tasting?

On the D side: Iowa was a must-win for Edwards. I don't think there's any way for him to rebound. From what I understand, his field operation in NH is a shadow of what he invested in Iowa, and he's already far enough behind Obama and Clinton in NH that I don't think he'll be able to staunch the bleeding. Obama probably rides the big mo to a win in NH. But beyond that? Clearly, Edwards message resonates, and it's going to be interesting how his supporters shake out and who tries to make a play for them. Like Dave and a lot of others, I find Obama's "unity" message to be a little disconcerting, especially when accompanied by his recent policy sniping from the right. Likewise, I'm not enamored with Hillary and the whole idea of Clinton II. I'd gladly take either over anyone the Rs would have to offer up, though. Obama's clearly the "change" candidate, but his vision of change seems out-of-sync with the times.

Color me flummoxed as to how my own vote shakes out, but for now I'll say that Obama is my second choice after Edwards. After NH, we've got ourselves a Battle Royale on our hands.

On the R side: One thing I'm sure of: you can stick a fork in Mitt. He got shellacked by an underfunded, Bible-bangin' hillbilly, and now the GOP money guys are going to abandon him in droves. I had figured that McCain would get a third place nod that would give him some momentum going into NH to nip Romney there. But Grandpa Fred in third?

So NH looks like a mess to me on on the R side. McCain is ahead in the polls, but will be competing with Obama for independent voters in an open primary, and Obama clearly has more going on for him. Huckabee has been hanging around 10% in the polls and might get a little bounce, but doesn't have the fundamentalist core he needs so desperately. Mitt is going to hemorrhage supporters, but the question becomes how many. I think enough of Mitt's support goes to McCain to put him over the top in NH. Mitt might go on for awhile after that, but will diminish in significance. And South Carolina will be a hideously nasty affair as the GOP big boys try to stamp out Huckabee like they did McCain in 2000 (oh sweet irony). We'll be hearing whispers about Huckabee fucking goats any day now.

And somewhere out there, we have Rudy 9/11 waiting to use his "big state" strategy. I think Rudy fails miserably in this - his support is already cratering given his, erm... out and out douchebagginess, and being out of the media narrative for the first few states while others build momentum will only seal the deal.

But really, what the fuck do I know? Onward to New Hampshire!

May as well

2008-01-02T23:09:00.000-05:00

Since it's "game on" starting tomorrow, I may as well issue the coveted medulla noodle presidential endorsement, unsurprising as it may be for most of you. On February 12, should he still be in the running, I'll be pulling the lever (voting in an actual polling place! How quaint! God I miss vote-by-mail!) for John Edwards. I'll summarize my reasoning by simply stating, "What Amanda sez." She pretty much nails my thinking on the matter.

My heart-of-hearts wants to vote for the short vegan from Cleveland, but pragmatism dictates I go with the person closest to my values with the best chance of getting the nod.

Please note: Endorsement may be void after February 5, and as soon as January 8. Endorsement only valid in participating locations.

Score one for Hillary

2008-01-02T22:18:00.001-05:00

The late-night talkies are once again heating up as an electoral battleground, especially amid the charged environment of the writers' strike. And while one douchebag professed support for the strikers and then immediately turned around to cross their picket line, Hillary pulled off an absolutely fucking brilliant tactical coup:

David Letterman officially made his return to late-night television just after 4:30 on Wednesday afternoon, when he opened the taping of Wednesday night’s show by passing through a chorus line of long-legged showgirls clad in white tie and bearing placards that read, “Writers Guild of America on Strike.”

After the taping was concluded, the show’s producers inserted a one-line joke to precede the host’s entrance — delivered not by Mr. Letterman but by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, via satellite from Iowa, on the eve of the state’s presidential caucuses.

“Dave has been off the air for eight long weeks due to the writers’ strike,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Tonight he’s back. Oh well. All good things come to an end.”

A modest one liner to lead off the return of Dave, head of the only production company decent enough to negotiate and settle with his writers, and maybe more importantly, the only late-night gabber returning to the airwaves with the benefit of his formidable writing staff (Leno already isn't funny, and I can't imagine how unfunny he'd be without his writers). The hour looks to be a pretty blistering scornfest for the AMPTP, as Letterman has always been very pro-writer (he's a WGA member himself). Hopefully, his late-night megaphone can help re-build momentum that seems to have been lagging of late for the WGA to win a settlement.

And back to Hillary - well played ma'am. A low-key quip at the top of the anticipated return of one of currently only two union talk shows (the other being the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, also produced by Letterman's production company) is an astonishingly clever move.

In case you needed another reason

2008-01-02T17:03:00.000-05:00

You tell me: is Mike Huckabee an asshole or an idiot?

Former Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas today professed his support for the striking television writers union just a few hours before he was expected to board a plane to for a taping of the Jay Leno show where he will face a vocal picket line of striking writers.

Mr. Leno’s program is returning to the air for the first time since a long hiatus for the strike. Speaking to reporters, Mr. Huckabee said he was unaware that he would be crossing picket lines and believed that he the program had reached a special agreement with the union.

Happy 2008 (and a prediction)

2008-01-01T23:13:00.000-05:00

I hope all of you had a festive New Year's Eve. In our little corner of the world, we had a traditional NYE feast of... erm, Indian takeout with some friends a let the rugrats play Lord of the Flies competing over not-so-scarce toy resources. Then, in the evening, ms. wobs and I ventured into the city for a swanky astro-party at a party promoters home, complete with all-you-can drink libations, swingin' djs, festive attire (it was, as I said, an astro-party - ms. wobs dressed up as a very hot Jane Jetson, and I went as Jupiter... the planet), and even people smoking (very bad, judging from the smell) weed (damn me and my standards, soon enough). We got home at an ungodly late hour, where I tried to drunk dial the West Coast to wish them a happy new year, but couldn't get a call to go through. So happy belated New Years, all!

And for a prediction: I've got an educated guess that John Edwards wins the Iowa Caucus. No inside information, just a working knowledge of how the caucuses work and a run through of the candidates endorsements. I won't wager a guess on what the win means down the road, just that he'll win it. Take it for what it's worth.

Stranger in a familiar land

2007-12-29T23:13:00.000-05:00

We just got back in town from DC Tennessee [okay, I was tired when I originally wrote this]. I've lots to say about the trip in another post, but I wanted to just put up this brief bit.

On Monday, ms. wobs and I went out to pick up a few last minute gifts. At the Bed, Bath & Beyond in West Knoxville (read: sprawl that won't stop), we struck up a conversation with a sales associate about some glassware. He asked us where we were from. We hemmed and hawed for a few moments, saying something to the effect of "Well, that depends on how far back you want to go." We finally told him that we were currently living in DC. He responded with, "Oh, I wouldn't admit that I was from DC if I were from there."

His comment immediately stuck in ms. wobs' craw, and in retrospect, it kind of rankles my nerves as well. There are many, many places in these here United States that can justifiably diss on DC. Many. But Knoxville, Tennessee is not one of them.

BTW, if you haven't recommended some books to me yet, head here and add your selection.

Put a little piece of yourself on my bookshelf

2007-12-26T17:29:00.000-05:00

For Christmas, I was given $212.50 to spend at the world's greatest bookstore. So far, I only have three books slotted: Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, a river guide, and Click, Clack, Moo for the little one.

That's where you come in. $212.50 (don't ask about the odd amount) is a lot to spend on books, and rather than picking shit out at random, I'd like to appeal to you, dear reader, for some recommendations for some good reads. Fiction, memoir, biography, history, politics... as long as it's an engaging read, I'm open to the suggestion. Make my comments overfloweth with your suggestions for what you think I'd enjoy spending some time perusing.

When I get back you better butter my bread

2007-12-22T22:34:00.000-05:00

Off to Tennessee for holidaying with the family. It'll actually be the first time that I'll have been with all of my siblings in the same place in about ten years. So with that, I'll let the boys take me back to Tennessee...

And for the perfect little bookend, that's from May 8, 1984 at the Hult Center in Eugene. Le sigh.