Rotten World Blues

OK, here's a question:

If you had decided that your life had no purpose, that there was no real impediment, or nothing in particular tying you down to a place, a job, that kind of stuff...

what would be the ONE THING that you could and would do in the best interest of the world, or the country, or even one other person??

Empty Glass

When Adorable Girlfriend rags on you for intermittent posting, you know you've been chumped.

Sorry for that. Aside from the holiday, Klark Kent life has (again) been insatiable, and some itinerant cold germs moved into my sinuses and decided to trash the place.
Plus, I've been watching the infestation of Sadly, No by antagonistic trolls intent upon destruction.

I've got a good rant about Newt Gingrich coming up though; I just have to wait for a new shipment of foul language to arrive.


This new iPod shuffle is too cute. It's tiny, and I set it to fill randomly from my iTunes library of 20,000 songs. It's like having a day-long Friday Random Ten. The biggest problem is that I'm gonna lose the little thing. Or the dog might eat it.

Next week, we'll be in Orlando. I'll be bringing back Walt's head. Maybe I'll post from there.

Back after that Timeclock finishes kicking my ass. Until then, enjoy some baby penguins.

Right On Their Case

What Liberal Media, ha.

Digby expounds on the ridiculous, Cooler-Than-Thou high school attitudes of what passes for media representation in This Bright Future. 9 days after an historical election, before the Democratic leadership even takes its positions, the so-called Media Elite are sniggering and pointing fingers like the DC Heathers.

Forget that there's a war, killing Americans by the carload (not to mention Iraqis wholesale). Forget the staggering, unprecedented deficits. Forget the corruption, malfeasance, substance abuse, hypocrisy and jail time at all levels of the Right Wing Machine.

Because -good gosh!- some Democrats disagree on who they want to fill leadership positions below Nancy Pelosi.

Digby rightly reminds that when the Republicans took over in 1994, Tom Delay beat Gingrich's favorite for majority leader, too, and the Republican World did not crumble to ruin.

Digby also rightly reminds that the Clinton Media Rules are now again in effect; For whatever reason, Republicans make the millionaire chattering class feel warm and cozy with their trust funds and stipends; Democrats tend to spend far too much time paying attention to those leftover people outside the Beltway. It's demeaning and dirty to remind the Cogs in the Corporate Media Right Wing Shill Machine that maybe Americans outside of DC count, also, and they hate being brought to task on it.

So,, Democrats, take note of Digby's analysis: The media is NOT on your side, and will savage you for every missed step, every gaffed word, every mismatched sock, and eventually will make up shit just to avoid talking about real issues or progress you might be making, while letting the Republicans slide on EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. OF. THOSE. ISSUES.

Example: Just last week, when Kerry muffed a line clearly intended to be derogatory to the Draft-Evader-In-Chief, the media pretended it couldn't understand, while letting Bush slide on ANY NUMBER of gaffes, missteps, and blunders. Shit, the Monkey Leader can barely talk in public without breaking the speech up into three word statements.

So, on to the Honeymoon's Over (what honeymoon? We're Democrats!!) Friday Random Musical Spew.
19,666 items, 78 gigs of music.

1. Weatherman from the album “Think Tank” by Henry Rollins “Muffy, You're mother's a fuckin' idiot!”
2. Theatre is the Life of You from the album “Double Nickels on the Dime” by Minutemen more legendary punks.
3. In The Middle, In The Middle, In The Middle from the album “No!” by They Might Be Giants my son has an ear worm from these guys, the song Older : 'You're older than you've ever been/ and now you're even older/ and now you're even older, and now you're even older.' This one's nearly as bad.
4. Waitin' On A Train from the album “24 Hours A Day” by The Bottle Rockets
5. Funiculi, Funicula from the album “All Wound Up!” by Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer with Brave Combo more great kid's music.
6. The Fanatic from the album “Just Can't Get Enough: New Wave Hits Of The '80s, Vol. 11” by Felony
7. Fractionalized Reception of a Scrambled Transmission from the album “Eeviac” by Man Or Astro-Man? great alterno-surf prog by the authors of MST3K's theme song.
8. Lolita from the album “Light Music For Dying People” by Sordid Humor One of the greatest lost albums of the last decade, it is harder to locate than Stump's “A Fierce Pancake” (which has even shown up on iTunes)
9. Descent from the album “Join The Dots: B-Sides & Rarities 1978-2001 (Disc 1)” by The Cure Gloomier than usual.
10. The Light From A Cake from the album “Key Lime Pie” by Camper Van Beethoven

11. Freedom for the Stallion from the album “The River In Reverse (Digital Version)” by Allen Toussaint & Elvis Costello
12. The Rustler from the album “The Days Of Our Nights” by Luna
13. Heresy from the album “The Downward Spiral” by Nine Inch Nails
14. Black Flowers from the album “I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your A*s” by Yo La Tengo
15. Normal As The Next Guy from the album “Normal As The Next Guy” by The Knack

UPDATED.
As Always, Glenn Greenwald chime in with an excellently laid out and well-reasoned post about the same thing. One item he mentions is how the attacks on Democrats are coordinated around a particular image. An image that fits the media pundit's narrative of Democrats as feckless and unorganized. Again, it doesn't matter if there is any evidence for this, or even if recent events actually support it, as long as things can be twisted and manipulated to fit into this narrative.

The narrative, as the Daily Howler has documented well over time, is what this particular media machine is most interested in propagating. The narrative that George Bush is manly and competent (as opposed to craven cowardly, and bullying). The narrative that Al Gore is boring and obsequious , rather than knowledgeable and passionate.

That the Republican internal elections, where voting was 24-25 to elect Trent Fuckhat Lott, is a sign of reasoned and informative debate, while the Democratic internals, where Nancy Pelosi was unanimously elected and the Number Two was selected by a 148- 58 vote (approximately) showcases nothing but disarray and disunity.


UPDATE THE TWO.
Glenn Beck is a smug half-bright Right Wing Tweaker.

Southbound Pachyderm

Les Claypool thumps a big strong bass he does
singing fisherman songs
loud and crusty and metallic in fuzz
Fish on, Professor, fish on.

Would you call Primus alternative or prog?
They came into iTunes mostly listed as metal, which seems...off.


IN any case, Giuliani is running. Heh. So is Tommy The Cat. I mean Tommy the Drunk. CanNOT wait for the national spotlight to shine on.

Election season will be good. Will Durst is salivating, I'm sure.

And just in case your day is going all crappy and weird like mine, just Google baby penguins. That's a tip I got from August.

Winning Side

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It's A Beautiful Day

Speaker Pelosi.


Just because it scares Rush Limbaugh so much.

Political Nightmare

Remember when Bush said he would govern as a uniter, not a divider?

Well, hard as it is to admit, it seems he finally has. Encouraging voters of all stripes to band together to bring him and his crony-fueled coup down.

Turnout across the country is the highest it's been in years. In CT, they estimate it may go as high as 70% of registered voters.

For a midterm election. That's far above the last Preznitial farce, when turnout was driven higher by the GOP's vaunted GOTV operation, demonizing gays to drive up the nutbar fundies.

But, you know, that's Georgie all over. Even when he does something good, it's only because he didn't mean to.

And you can be sure they didn't mean to. As a matter of fact, the RNCC has gone to great lengths to depress voter turnout. Clearing Voter rolls (Ohio) Threatening with jail (Pennsylvania), Annoying persistent robo-calls (everywhere), Handing out deceitful and misleading flyers (Maryland), Suppression calls (Virginia), Voter ID issues (SC)

TV pundit-asswipe Laura INgraham even responded to the reports of voting problems being reported by asking her viewers to jam the phone lines with crank calls. Which then, of course, happened. Whassamatter, chunkhead, so scared of losing that you can't see a way to win without cheating? She needs to lose her job for that.

Although the Reps annually scream about Voter Fraud (all the better to disenfranchise you, my dears) they habitually offer little in the way of evidence, and such is the case this year. The voting irregularities being reported are being documented on a widespread scale, and some, like the VA phone intimidation, are already being investigated by the FBI.

It is highly interesting that one of the political parties is always willing to put more and more obstacles to voting in place. They see their futures in having less Americans vote every year; and in fact, when fewer people vote, this party tends to win.

Somehow, that doesn't strike me as ... umm, what's the word I'm looking for?... oh yeah, DEMOCRATIC. It's been six years or so, forgot what it was like.

One good that seems to be coming out is that the electronic voting machine problems seem to be bi-partisan, striking everywhere and seemingly randomly. Even Mean Jean Schmidt had problems with hers (although admittedly her concentrated brand of Evil could have overwhelmed the Dieboldian circuitry). It is possible that this could signal the end this round of electronic voting machines, and usher in a new, more reliable wave. with more oversight and more vendors, hopefully. And in the interest of more secure computing, let's not base them on Windows, hey?

Tomorrow may bring good news.

What We Deserve

One from Will Durst:

...those same plenty smart Americans will be reminded how this administration lied and spied and stole and sold and cheated and tortured and killed and ignored intelligence and promoted incompetence and defied international cooperation and incited religious intolerance and eschewed bipartisanship and exploited the very same troops they pretend to be offended on behalf of. And that, my friends, is no joke. Go vote.

No time. Drawings must be done, or the Bad Man will Bite. Talk to you after we see whether democracy still works.

Vote. We don't need to be killin no married gays.

Never Satisfied

Random Musical Wank Job delayed for database maintenance and expansion. Get some work done and check back later.

Jumping Again

Gramma always said that if you can't say something nice... so, we won't talk about the opening band. Okay, here's something: the drummer wore a tie and looked like quite a nice young man. Until.... nope, won't go there.


The Figgs took the stage at what, 11:30? Pretty late for these old working bones.

As a matter of fact, I'm hanging a bit low here this AM.

There was a pretty nice crowd, quite satisfying to see after a few Figgs giggs where Silent Mike and I were almost the only people there. A quite high percentage of ladies, in fact, along with the odd zombie and,...ummm....Kiss.

The Figgs cranked right into a quartet of new songs, all of which sounded superb. Pete D and Mike were spending more time harmonizing, rather than just trading vocals. Their voices are quite fine complements for each other, similar to Pirner and Murphy from Soul Asylum. After listening to the new CD (not available to you normals until Nov 14th) they are mostly-live takes, with the classic, basic lineup of guitar, bass, drums,... and guitar. Punky power pop with hooks that grab your belly like a meathook.

One of the hardest working bands around. They played an afternoon show at Andy's Basement, then came down to play a nearly unannounced show at Linnemann's. When they tour with Graham Parker, they typically play their own set as an opener, then come out to back up GP. After clearing away the debris of the opening band, they just started playing. No real sound check, plug in and go. It's rock and roll, not art. Even so, their sound is crisp and tight, tight as I've ever seen any band. Even when someone fouls something up, the other members just follow right along, making things right.

Mike Gent had a new guitar, a classic black Les Paul, with a funky new wah-wah pedal that he didn't overuse. In contrast, Pete Donnelley plays the most worn Fender bass in the world. There is essentially no paint left on the back, and a fair amount of wear on the front.

No setlist; like the Femmes, I think they just work from a loose arrangement and play what they feel like as they go. Looking at the recent shows on setlist.com, you can see that other than the new cuts they want to emphasize, they play very nearly random samples of their catalogue, going all the way back to Banda Macho.


At no particular loss for their own material (20 years, 12 albums and 121 songs to their credit, not counting their cassette and single releases) They also threw in a couple of covers; a fiery version of Hang Fire with energy that the Stones only dimly remember, and Love Goes To A Building On Fire that emphasized the early punk roots of Talking Heads. The notable thing about these was that appreciative as the crowd was, the most active response was for the Figgs original stuff, not the covers.

The band has found a way to share the work in the last couple of years. For Hey Mr. Moonman, they sat on the edge of the stage and the drummer took a break, with just gentle guitar strumming and allowing the crowd to take the vocals. They did this a few times; the crowd was perfectly willing to sing every single line. At least I was.

They did any number of encores, even switching instruments around just to add a bit of goof. We were fortunate to have a good number of encores; they only did one in Chicago the night before.

As always, just an excellent show. Do The Bounce; Jumping Again, indeed. I told the band members it had been too long, and it certainly was. A Figgs Fixx is indicated every 10 to 14 months. Too much fun for Zorg.

And some excellent news mined from the Figgs web site: at a 2005 show with Graham Parker in Chicago, the set was recorded and will be released by Bloodshot as 103 degrees in June. One of my favorite bands; my favorite label. All good.