the defeatists!

This, more than anything else, is why

I thank Tiffany that there will always be an England...

Poor old soldier, poor old soldier...

And the First Tits on a Wheelbarrow award goes to....The Birthers

Lou Dobbs is pretty useless, unless you're a xenophobic racist channeling Huey Long while trying to sound magisterial. However, as Jon Stewart, aka Walter Cronkite points out in this, Dobbs has shown that he's so into his tinfoil hat that he has crawled into it and doesn't even listen to his own network or his own show. Stewart's precis is hilarious and damning; certainly, reasonable people will be attracted to a Cabal consisting of the crazy "he's an arab" lady who forced John McCain to remember his honor; the Cheney girls; Alan Keyes and his lawyer, a "lost Gabor sister" who practices law, fixes teeth and sells real estate. What could possibly be wrong with this trainwreck? And so, the first periodic "Useless-as-Tits-on-a-Wheelbarrow Award is presented to the Barrack is a Kenyan" spouting movement, jointly accepted by Lou Dobbs, Alan Keyes and Homey the Clown...

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"Too cunning to be labeled stupid...to ignorant to be labeled intelligent..."

If fame is a bus, well....Get under the fucking wheels, please!

Cary Grant had a theory. A career is like a crowded bus. When your ride is up, you get off and someone else gets on, taking your place. Not another you, necessarily but a younger, fresher someone who fills a similar space...I think there's a lot of truth to what we'll call The Cary Grant Theorem and it's borne out by the two biggest cable news cycle events of the last 30 days:  Michael Jackson got off the bus. And Sarah Palin grabbed his seat, probably knocking a few old ladies like Ann Coulter and Newt Gingrich out of the way. Because like Michael Jackson, Sarah Palin, more than anything else, is a weirdo..

Well shit. Err, well said. The Huff-Post makes it clear...we're never going to get rid of her. She's going to be the new Harold Strassen, only with less class. Maybe she could replace Billy Bigmouth and Vince as a shill for the new generations of Pocket Fisherman and Vegematics? Picture her doing this in that Palin Waty, by golly...

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Seriously, you people are crazy...or tonedeaf! (or, I don't know what a great frontman is, but I know it when I see it!)

The Independent (UK) published a list recently of the Top Ten Rock Frontmen. Amazing insight into rock and roll criticism and probably solipsism. Liam Gallagher? Really? Johnny Rotten beating out Jagger for number 1? You think so? Seriously, I have no idea of their criteria but how they got these confused me as well as the inimitable, insightful and actually kind of modest  Andrew Loog Oldham on Little Steven's Underground Garage. I got into his reading of the countdown late, and was dumbfounded when Jagger came in number 2. But, Johnny Rotten? What were they shooting up over there?

This is about taste, I guess. But still, epic rock Frontmen, and Women, are a helluva lot more interesting than Oasis or The Sex Pistols. Listing Hendrix at 3 as a "frontman" is absurd. Although the Jimi Hendrix experience was an honest to goodness band, there was only Hendrix's vision. Joplin and Grace Slick were actual fronts; Joplin left too early and Slick stayed around too long, but Hendrix was clearly something else than a front. Why list women with Hendrix...no good reason, except he probably slept with both. I did see Hendrix and Joplin perform the same weekend in Syracuse back in 1969, so who knows? How about Lou Reed? He's done a lot of interesting stuff since, but the Velvet Underground defined New York Rock and Roll.

Mark Bolan of T-REX? Why? Maybe they were infinitely more influential or interesting than I thought, but that's actually kind of creepy. Shane McGowan of the Pogues comes to mind here, as does the fellow who led Dexies Midnight Runners, Kevin somebody. If they have to be well-dressed, well, "Suggs" McKenzie of Madness should qualify. Or, how about Elvis Costello? Going back a bit further, why not Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere and the Raiders? Or, a bit later, Adam Ant? I'd tie Bolan with Ant...

They threw Iggy Pop up next. Or, threw up Iggy Pop next. Ok, he does some interesting, proto-punk garage rock, but shit. Southside Johnny. I can understand skipping over Springsteen, since he's infinitely more than just the frontman, but really? Peter Wolf maybe? How about Rober McGuinn? Burton Cummings? Sheesh...Iggy really is sort of a water carrier for David Bowie; hell, in my experience with his music, I can't think of anything really interesting, exciting or memorable. Who would you rather go see at the top of their game -- J.GeilsThe J. Geils band 4.25.09
Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes? The Byrds? The Guess Who? Or, Iggy and the Stooges? Well, process of elimination probably eliminates Iggy and the Gang pretty quickly.

Bono is number 8. Interesting...especially since before him are Freddie Mercury and the aforementioned Liam Gallagher. Gallagher is easily dismissable with two words -- Chrissie Hynde.They describe Mercury as " another who aped Mick Jagger, although Mercury's performance was more outlandish in almost every way. His untrained voice was one of a kind, rolling from heavy rock baritone to soaring falsetto with ease, while image wise Liza Minnelli-inspired flamboyance was key." Ok, I can kind of see Queen as a self-mocking, gayer version of the Stones, except that Jagger can sing, the band has always been ready to play as well as anyone else and they're interesting. Queen? Yeah...which would you rather see, Jagger doing Letter to Turner or Freddie's Metropolis? As for Gallagher, Tiffany loves Oasis. These twits don't -- the Independent Twits, that is...."Liam Gallagher is nothing but a frontman. His own songs are awful and his personality vacuous but when Liam Gallagher takes the stage something very silly and slightly magical happens." Silly and magical, huh? Ever see the U2 Red Rocks video of "Bloody Sunday?" That's a little silly, and Bono's stage movements are less wearying in some respects than Jagger's, but damnnit, that rocks. His religiosity and self-righteousness get in the way, but he has to be in the top five. Numbers 9 and 10 are Kurt Cobain and Joe Strummer. Shit. If you have to put somebody from Grunge in this list, Eddie Vedder is far more interesting, and Pearl Jam does things Nirvana never thought about doing. As for Strummer, the Clash was a real band. The frontman was indistinguishable. Strummer was the leader, but the collective was the thing. I see his role in the Clash as similar to Henley's and Joe Walsh's in The Eagles, even though they aren't at all similar. You want a sorta contemporary to bump Mercury?-- Ric Ocasek of the Cars. Or, Debbie Harry of Blondie. Want an over the top Brit type? Well, from 1968 through the early 80s, there was always Ian Anderson fronting Jethro Tull. I'd have to compare him to Mercury, but he's a far superior musician.

Jethro Tull - Nothing is easy, Live at the Isle of~ sélectionné dans Rock / Pop

Let's take a look at some of the most influential. I can't agree with Jagger as number 2, and I have no argument with Bono, except he should be higher. And, there's been so much great music that any list is going to be problematic. Still, how do you leave out people like Carlos Santanna? How about Eric Burden? Ray Davies? Graham Parsons? Steven Stills in Buffalo Springfield and Mannasas? John Mayall has been not so quietly but ever so influentially fronting a band since 1960. Stevie Winwood in Traffic? While he did great stuff with Spencer Davis, and his work in bands like Blind Faith as well as his independent work has been wonderful, how do you not chart him and Traffic?

Obviously, I think these guys are deranged BritTwits. They probably are like flaming queen designers of clothing for women who really don't like women. Or, not. However, that's the joy of talking about rock and roll. No safe place for us; we're all deranged Twits...

But seriously: How, how does a Britlist forget Robert Plant? Led Zepplein? Remember them?

Neither Catholic nor Calvinist but something else entirely...

Crusader AXE often wonders if he should have been a Jesuit...couldn't get around the whole God-Obedience-Chastity-Poverty thing, but still...interestingly enough, my favorite piece of the Murdoch empire has stolen a quiz from a Dutch Newspaper that has been translated into English as opposed to the guttural-globular-bark of Flemish. Not that there's anything wrong with that...it's just that the Dutch language is fairly annoying, even when spoken to you by people you like. Anyway, it tests your tendency toward Calvinism. My scores looked something like this...

Test your C-Factor          44%

You are somewhat of a Calvinist. Some of your points of view make you look like a Calvinist. However, you live your life in a lighter way than Calvinists do, which allows you to enjoy it more.

Category ScoreComment

Work 57%You sure have a Calvinistic working ethos. You never work hard enough; work for you is your bounden duty. You are the type of employee any company desires, but the balance between your work and private life may get disturbed.

 Strictness 60%You are rather strict and straight, as are more Calvinists. The advantage is that people can count on you, but your disadvantage is you find it difficult to have fun. Relax a little. Things without purpose make life more enjoyable.

Sobriety 0%You were not born to be a Calvinist. Catholicism suits you better � slightly hedonistic, loose and emotional.

 Relationships100%  You are a reliable partner, though you could be more enchanted. Don't be afraid of emotions!

Beliefs  0%        You are an unconcerned believer, who doesn't worry too much.

Uhhh, people? We really need to start paying attention to these assholes!

Gail Collins  just succeeded in scaring me. It appears that a significant number of congressman and senators are in the grip of something like Scientology, only more deranged! How, you wonder? Well, take her quiz about the Hard Dicks of the family that WE KNOW ABOUT and be afraid, very afraid... I think I stay pretty current on the nexus of cults, money and power that makes up 60% or so of American politics, but the circlejerks on C-Street really makes my jaw twitch if not drop. Scientology is a whole other country from Christianity; this is supposedly Christianity. No Christianity that I'm familiar with...although they appear to have taken the Jesus as CEO one step beyond. Madness...take the Quiz and if you happen to not know the answer and hazard a guess, take the one farthest out from any reasonable answer, and you'll probably be right. Speaking of madness ...

Exiled to Manitoba...say wha?

Mennonites rose to political power and fell to womanizing and corruption (one of them, a celebrated Mennonite race car driver, was exiled to Manitoba, so grave were his perversions).
(AXE comment: What sort of horror would you have to create to be exiled from pestilential and oozey Paraguay to Manitoba? Take showers? Brush your teeth? Not marry your cousin?)

Well, ok....when you decide to muse on Paraguay, Nazi paradise and garden spot across the Rio Plata from Buenos Aires, we gotta smile here at Defeatist Central. I have never had any desire to visit the place...but, there appears to be a couple of strong trends there. Graeme Wood's piece in The Atlantic makes me wonder if it's worth considering as a place where trends go to die...For some reason he compares it to Australia, and cites one of the Utopian movements that tried to take off there -- New Australia.

A few years later, renegade Australians arrived just outside Asuncion and settled a commune known as New Australia. They founded their settlement on strict separation of races, sharing of property, teetotalism, and family values. They quickly erupted in conflict over just about everything, and within a few years New Australia disbanded. Utopian principle: Teetotalism, marriage. Reason for failure: An Australian colony founded on teetotalism?

However, the concept of  Mennonite race driver Orlando Penner exiled to Manitoba really needs explanation...and would be a fuck of a Randy Newman album concept. Or the Three Tenors, except there's only one left, and he isn't looking all that great. Still, it's a thought. And a tourism concept -- Paraguay, where hope comes to become not hope! Paraguay, like Uraguay with pee! Paraguay, gateway to Beggary and Ruin!

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...if Australia's magic was to take bonded criminal dross and transmute it into civilization, Paraguay's was to take freely-settled cultural and religious aristocrats and reduce them to beggary and ruin. It is where pretenses to civilization came to die...

WE MUST GET AGI in this CAR!!! For the sake of the Blogosphere...

Some of you may recall that my brothers have had an on-going sabotage campaign against Shakesville, a small-minded blog for small-minded, big-butted androgynous hobbits who propose all sorts of fearless stuff in a closed-minded society. AGI's spouse recently announced that she was pregnant; since he made a comment this week that he couldn't wait for the next four months to pass, I'm guessing he's kinda oblivious around the house, or his wife is so petite that were he to meet the Shakesville crew, they'd figure he kidnapped here from the Hobbit-House Saloon in Tinytown and try to liberate her from his clutches. Probably both...

Anyway, AGI has decided to get a new car. Money is an object, of course, but so is a surprising amount of political correctness...Dude, You're killing me, get a Hummer if you want space and safety for the little one! Or, and as the designated Hunter S. Thompson of the collective, I have got to advise you, the best thing to get is a Corvette. Ok, AGI has always shown some common sense, and far too much to fall for the "Dude, do what you shouldn't do, and that will make you happy..."And, did I mention his wife coaches girl's lacrosse? 

So, here's suggestion. The Volkswagen Jetta Sports Wagon TDI...The main reason for this is that the reviews all indicate that it's a helluva good car and checks all his metaphysical boxes . They do have horrid commercials, although replacing the Techo-dude and dudette in their first run at this market with a talking Bettle is a sign that they are slightly less tonedeaf than we might have thought. It gets 40MPG and sounds like a car.

Da Da Dogs | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

And, as indicated in the link, it's the number one Lesbian Car in the US. I mean, shit...how about a way to make peace now?? The testicularlly challenged and gender-confused might even let him express himself again in the comments. No matter how pointed his remarks, how could they turn on a guy who drives one of their own? 

Stuff that works...

Crusader AXE of the Lost Causes is 58 years, 2 months and 4 days old. Odd feeling to suddenly realize that there's a lot of things you're not going to do again, or probably ever. Odder feeling is to realize how little there is that works, that holds up, that you can depend on.

Thought occurred to me this morning, when I was reading this month's Atlantic Monthly. Was reading an article about Geo-engineering, a relatively new field concerned with, for lack of a better word, "Terra-forming " Terra in the face of Global Warming and Climate Change. Interesting article, as was the rest of the issue. This article struck me though because it was a primer on really weird ideas. "If this idea sounds unlikely, consider that President Obama's science adviser, John Holdern, said in April that he thought the administration would consider it "if we get desperate enough." Well, shit...anyway, the article discusses using genetically altered trees to suck up the carbon, plankton seas around the Arctic and Antarctic to suck up the carbon, and a network of Zeppleins sucking up a mixture of carbon dioxide and sulphur and spewing it out at 65000 feet. Remember the sky in Blade Runner? It could work, it's cheap, and if it ever gets interrupted, things could go south very, very fast. Same with the Plankton...when Plankton dies, it gives off methane...geo-engineer plankton carpets and things could get very screwy, as methane is "worse" than carbon for climate. There's an interview with Nouriel "Dr. Doom"Roubini by James Fallows who's been writing for the Atlantic almost as long as I've been reading it; I've been reading it regularly for over 40 years. Fallows writes well and on a lot of things, although economics, computers, aviation and Asia are favorite things. It's interesting that he interviewed Roubini at the end of a flight for the good doctor to Malayasia...

But someday, the emergency will be over. Then the side effects of today’s deficits-be-damned efforts to spend money and loosen credit will become “the problem you are facing.” Roubini has been tart about the things public officials should have known and the dangers they should have foreseen three or four years ago. What, I asked him, are the decisions of 2009 that we will be regretting in 2012? For the only time in our conversation, he sat without responding for a measurable interval. “The regrets could be many,” he began. Uh-oh , I thought. “Even the best policies sometimes have unintended consequences.” He then itemized three...“The question is, can the U.S. grow in a non-bubble way?” He asked the question rhetorically, so I turned it back on him. Can it? “I think we have to …” He paused. “You know, the potential for our future growth is going to be lower, because of the excesses we’ve had. Sustainable growth may mean investing slowly in infrastructures for the future, and rebuilding our human capital. Renewable resources. Maybe nanotechnology? We don’t know what it’s going to be. There are parts of the economy we can expect to lead to a more sustainable and less bubble-like growth. But it’s going to be a challenge to find a new growth model. It’s not going to be simple.” I took this not as pessimism but as realism.

Garry Wills has a piece on his friendship with William F. Buckley. It's interesting reading as a lot of Wills' stuff tends to be. But I found Christopher Hitchens review of Michael Burlingame's Abraham Lincoln: A Life more interesting still. When Chris isn't drunkenly picking fights with Hezbollah in Beirut or babbling in an undisciplined fashion about his current hobby-horse, he's an excellent critic and analyst. As a recently sworn-in citizen, he displays all the zeal of the convert for the American ideal; at the same time, the contrarian and analytic part of the whole thing that is Hitchens who is both older and fatter than "Madcow" and who allowed himself to be waterboarded by people who knew what they were doing as opposed to someone who'd read about it to see if it's torture and lasted about 12 seconds to Madcow's five makes him an tough critic. Oh, Hitchens may have been waterboarded twice, because he felt that he had been a coward the first time. Ouch...Anyway, Hitchens sees Lincoln as the first President who could only have been an American. And, he appreciates being treated by the author as an adult! Well, so do most well-read people.

As for the social background, here is a sentence that conveys a great deal of misery in a very few words. It is Burlingame’s summary of the area in which Sinking Spring farm, Kentucky, young Abraham’s birthplace, was situated. “The neighborhood was thinly settled; the 36-square-mile tax district where the Lincoln farm was located contained 85 taxpayers, 44 slaves, and 392 horses.” Lincoln himself said that his early life could be “condensed into a single sentence” from Gray’s “Elegy”: “The short and simple annals of the poor.” But this would be to euphemize his true boyhood situation, which was much more like that of a serf or a domestic animal than of Gray’s lowly but sturdy peasantry. To read of the unrelenting coarseness and brutality of the boy’s father is lowering to the spirit, as is the shame he felt at his mother’s reputation for unchastity. The wretchedness of these surroundings made Lincoln tell a later acquaintance in Illinois: “I have seen a good deal of the back side of this world..." From this, and from the many groans and sighs that are reported of the boy (who still struggled to keep reading, an activity feared and despised by his father, as it was by the owner of Frederick Douglass), we receive a prefiguration of the politician who declared in 1856, “I used to be a slave.” In Lincoln’s unconcealed resentment toward his male parent, we get an additional glimpse of the man who also declared, in 1858, “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.”

So, the Atlantic works. James Fallows works. Chris Hitchens works. What else?

Well, Kettle Bells work. This is a Russian piece of weight-lifting equipment that has given rise to a whole school of training. However, the way the bell is designed allows the weight to use the muscular skeletal system differently than classic free weights. They are simple, and the routines work the core as well as the area targeted in a particular exercise. Kettle bells work.   You know what else works? CrossFit works like a motherfucker.

Our program delivers a fitness that is, by design, broad, general, and inclusive. Our specialty is not specializing. Combat, survival, many sports, and life reward this kind of fitness and, on average, punish the specialist. The CrossFit program is designed for universal scalability making it the perfect application for any committed individual regardless of experience. We’ve used our same routines for elderly individuals with heart disease and cage fighters one month out from televised bouts. We scale load and intensity; we don’t change programs. The needs of Olympic athletes and our grandparents differ by degree not kind. Our terrorist hunters, skiers, mountain bike riders and housewives have found their best fitness from the same regimen. 

Gibson Guitars work. Now, so do lots of guitars, but Crusader AXE is addicted to Gibsons for their exceptional playability, beauty and sound. They are iconic as very few instruments can be...everybody plays Fenders, but the Les Paul is the Rock and Roll Guitar...unless it's an SG...or, and my own favorite, the ES 335. As for acoustic axes, the AXE is still in love with the Gibson Songwriter Deluxe he got used a couple of years ago...but, I regret selling my Bluesman and I still wince to realize I traded my LG1 over fifteen years ago for a Washburn. Hey the guitar was old; I'd had it since 1966, and I bought it used then. But, it was mine ...earned the money for it, and played it for a helluva long time. Not as well as these guys, but...

You know, there are a lot of things that work. Government, business, the Auto Industry, and on and on and on,don't work. But some things do, and they are kind of the things that make life worth it all.