the defeatists!

From the Moscow CBGB, it's Pussy Riot...

Asked if she understood the charges levied against her – hooliganism motivated by religious hatred – Alyokhina was defiant."I don't understand the ideological side of the question," she said, pausing for dramatic effect as she stared down the judge from behind the glass. "I don't understand on what basis you're making statements about my motivations." Another dramatic pause. "And I don't understand why I'm not allowed to explain this."

Miriam Elder, The Guardian

I haven't written about Pussy Riot for a couple of reasons. First of all, musically they make the Sex Pistols seem accomplished. Secondly, there isn't that much to say -- they're musicians, poets, students, intellectuals who did something that was perhaps in poor taste. In response, the Putin regime, channeling the Moscow of Ivan the Terrible, did a show trial and they were sentenced to prison. The church even admitted it was stupid to do so; Medvedev said they shouldn't be punished; Putin said they should be punished lightly. Now, two years in Camp Cupcake, the Martha Stewart alma mater, isn't exactly the gulag; two years in a Russian women's prison is in fact the gulag. Appeal is coming up this coming week, and Amnesty International among others has been collecting funds and signatures world wide. This is a stupid PR hit for the Russians...or is it? The Russians have never cared all that much about what anybody else thinks of them; they are less concerned with it now than they were during the Soviet Years, since they were actually committed to the cause of International Communism, and things like Stalin's Purges, the Katyn Forest Massacre and all the rest probably wer not really helpful in their quest for world domination. Today, not so much...they have oil, a semi-benign dictator and relative internal piece. The intelligentsia is unhappy with the government -- shrugs the Security Forces and Putin agrees, saying What else is new? This is a way of thumbing their noses at the world and reassuring/scaring their own people that the nonsense years are over, with the KGB alumni association in charge, nothing but good times ahead. [caption id="attachment_224231" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Pussy Riot performing at the Moscow venue of CBGB[/caption] If this offends you, as it does me, consider a donation to Amnesty International for the defense of Pussy Riot. I have a FREE Pussy Riot t-shirt that is at least as good if not better than most of the band crap that I have, and cost about as much. And then, there's this... Maria Alyokhina,one of the group in jail is a poet and a new book of some of her poems is due to be released in October. Given how well poetry sells in the US, we're not looking at 51 Shades of Grey here. But, I could easily imagine these sung by Joan Baez or Shannon McNally or Neko Case. And, I could easily picture them with an accompaniment similar to the ballads of the Afghansi...which they should be. What Follows Fear Oh, what are we? Fear is what follows in conclusion. And what does it make us? After we’d smashed into drops, into walls Whose eyes found us? Just yours, good God, yours alone. Guide my hand When I throw a fistful of words and I betray you right away Wait for me. On the seashore On the quay I will escape them I will run away In Light of Current Events Bad things aren’t scary to do; everyone does them. It’s not hard to hide in a crowd, no one will notice. One piece of trash more, one piece less. What’s there to be said—it’s the times we live in, they’re like that. We got unlucky. But, no. You cannot be afraid or ashamed to do good. You cannot. There’s so frighteningly little of that around these days. Cynicism’s in fashion. Ironic smiles and dull melancholy. Know this: if you don’t do it, possibly, no one will. A lot of them just don’t have the time to look at what they’re doing, let alone the time to take stock. They have time to look at others, they have time to assign blame. If you choose to do good, if you choose to help come what may, know this: you have lost. You have most certainly lost. But this doesn’t mean that you mustn’t do it. It is important to remember who we are. It is important to know that your conscience is what matters. It is important to follow your conscience. It is important not so much to change things, but to know that you are changing them. In Snows Over Bridges I change into things: I hang like a convict I’m dining with kings. My broken-down carriage Careens down your street And under the snow I’ll lie down for a bit. I’m dining with freaks, I change as I go, I stand like a king Under bridges in snow. When my child sleeps, the night, Time altogether, seems to stop, and turn to water, Into a sea that unites all with all; even, possibly, Me with you. And the greatest treasure would be safe in it, Afloat on a simple raft. I’ll attach every tree to a place Where people will find it, recognize it and remember. They say that home is where you are always missed. When I hear things like this I feel like twisting the speaker’s neck Into a tight tourniquet, and then, steadily, Making him look At the rocking of the baby’s cradle. Then I want to take his hand and say: see How the lilac’s blooming, can you feel the scent? Not a thing will be left of us, but this will go on. Will go on.   Death to Prison, Freedom to Protest by Pussy Riot The joyful science of occupying squares The will to everyone’s power, without damn leaders Direct action—the future of mankind! LGBT, feminists, defend the nation! Death to prison, freedom to protest! Make the cops serve freedom, Protests bring on good weather Occupy the square, do a peaceful takeover Take the guns from all the cops Death to prison, freedom to protest! Fill the city, all the squares and streets, There are many in Russia, beat it, Open all the doors, take off the epaulettes Come taste freedom together with us Death to prison, freedom to protest! Maria, or Masha as she's called, has been a pain in the ass to authorities throughout. She's pretended that this is a fair process and that she is a free citizen in a free country. While it may not change the results of the trial or influence the decision of the appeals course (I'm no Kremlinologist but I'd say release with time served is the most likely result -- odds being 60-40 against, to paraphrase Wilson Minzer) buying a copy of the book might not be a bad way to help her. I'd be hard pressed to recommend buying Pussy Riot recordings because they are frankly awful...but, a cover akbum of Masha's poems might be a lot of value. In lots of ways...

Beck Bitchslapped by a Brit--err, British American

I've been reading Christopher Hitchens more often of late, making the time because I accept that he may not be around much longer, and is still saying things worth saying. I just finished his discussion of Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man and am about to begin his book on Jefferson. In some ways, Hitchens is a spiritual descendent of Paine, Burke and the other 18th century pamphlet writers. His books are generally short, and really pretty topical. Yet, like Paine and Burke, I suspect his stuff will be read for some time to come.

This week, in Slate, Hitchens decides to take the Tea Party apart. He sees it as a racial and religious thing -- as the nation becomes even more diverse, and as the WHITE MAJORITY is faced with demographic demise, they become worried about things that aren't there, missing the things that are.

In a rather curious and confused way, some white people are starting almost to think like a minority, even like a persecuted one. What does it take to believe that Christianity is an endangered religion in America or that the name of Jesus is insufficiently spoken or appreciated? Who wakes up believing that there is no appreciation for our veterans and our armed forces and that without a noisy speech from Sarah Palin, their sacrifice would be scorned? It's not unfair to say that such grievances are purely and simply imaginary, which in turn leads one to ask what the real ones can be.

What indeed? It's 160 years since the Know Nothings burned a Ursuline Convent and Orphanage in Boston out of ignorance and fear of the 1840s Muslims, the Irish Catholics. They had rallies and speeches and things too -- so, I suspect in 100 years people will trace the lineage of the Tea Party to the Know Nothings, the Klan, the America-Firsters, the Birch Society, the YAF and so on and so on. My neice's and nephew's grandchildren, Kwame and Shoiboan Cowmeadow will look back and wonder what all the fuss was about. And, go off to the neighborhood YMCA/Mosque/CYO to play basketball. And, hopefully, to read some Hitchens at some point in their education.

MERSA SPREAD BY COWS AND SEX AND SEX WITH COWS...

Sometimes, you just want to know more...FAIL says that the headline is too long but if the purpose of the headline is to make you want to read the rest of the story, well, shitfuck...

Oh, the humanity...oh ring out Solstace Bells...ring them bells!!!

I had to drive into the installation from the Crossroads of Opportunity this morning. Doctor wanted to yell at me and I was overdue for that; was also going to meet a friend for coffee to try and comfort her in an un-comfort-able situation, and pick up my mail. Only thing of interest was Texas Monthly with Dancin' Tom Delay on the cover celebrating his award as Dick of the Year doing a full Saturday Night Fever thing...the doctor had fun poking and prodding, then we wandered through the clinic looking for a scale that worked because the defense funding bill hasn't filtered down to the Army hospitals yet, and it's been a choice between batteries for the scales or medicine. They have gone with medicine. Smart choice. I went over to meet my friend, and found Starbucks closed, and people doing the walk up, read the sign, try the door, read the sign and walk away despairingly. She never showed, the wind was howling like a hammer (poetry anyone?) and after a while I hit the road. While driving in there was a great Steve Earle tune played on The Underground Garage; while driving home, there was a bit where Steven Van Zandt was talking about Edie, one of Andy Warhol's Circus who had something of an influence on Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone...Dylan tried successfully to woe her away from Warhol to his manager, Albert Grossman, largely because Dylan hated Warhol. Warhol reciprocated. Supposedly, Like a Rolling Stone was inspired by Edie and her relationship with Warhol...with the talentless hack inspiring the lines "used to ride on your chrome horse with your diplomat/who carried on his shoulder a Siamese Cat/ain't it hard to discover that/he really wasn't where it's at/after he took from you everything, he could steal? How does it feel..." Horrid, I suspect. And then, Steven announced that Dylan had the coolest song of the week...which got me thinking about Christmas.

Well, the Steve Earle song was Hard Core Troubadour, which was kind of about Townes Van Zandt and kind of about him and probably a bit about Dylan. However, Mr. Earle has written a pretty amazing and still relevant song about Christmas.

I can think of no one who embodies the sadness of Christmas for the outsider so much as Bob Dylan. I know that Christmas is not so sad for most, but for many, it is tragic. For example, my friend just lost her infant grand daughter three weeks before Christmas. The child's first Christmas...and knowing Consuela, she was locked and loaded to imprint good things on the child,as I believe she already had done. How do you comfort grieving parents and grandmothers just before Christmas?

I've lost relationships, friends, jobs, and hope around Christmas. It helps to remember that Christmas probably took place if it did in fact happen, in March in 7AD or so. And, that the alternatives for Mary had Joseph not taken her in were stoning...actually that was the only alternative. Joseph showed real defeatist tendencies here and a similarity to AXE's First Rule...Don't be a Jerk.

However, even someone as jaded, cynical and misanthropic as Crusader AXE of the Lost Causes has Christmas complexities. They haven't all been horrible. I recall going to Midnight Mass in a 11th century church in Berchtesgaden, and realizing that I understood the German better than I might the English...hearing Silent Night played on zither, autoharp and guitar was amazing. I recall waking up one Christmas morning incredibly hung over after me and the gang had linked up on Christmas Eve to celebrate surviving that first year in college...Daddy AXE took one look and told my sister to get me a beer. It had gotten below zero overnight, and she brought me in a 16 OZ Bud from the unheated garage...which I opened, instantly redecorating the kitchen and myself...I believe that Dad set me up...

Tiffany has not made herself manifest to us in a Solstace myth, thank god. We already watch a society flounder on it...I think her feast is Black Friday, and if people are not trampled and killed in at least one Walmart, she will gain vengence throughout the year; although, a cop pulling a gun in a snowball fight probably makes up for it. If not, it probably amused Biff, on whom we have been silent for a long time, and intend to remain so for a longer time. And, if Dylan seems more Krampus than Gary Busey in full demon-drag could ever think of being, he continues to astound by not being what we think he must.

This should be understood as a bit of a round; the camera pans around, and the lyrics keep coming back. The use of an accordion and drums as the instruments strikes me as perfect although there's a bass in the background somewhere as well as a piano. I initially thought he was collaborating with Flanco Jiminez on this one. It reminds me a beer hall polka somewhere in Texas -- up around Fredricksberg or Neu Braunfels. I keep wondering if the accordion player isn't really Tom Waits, and is that Little Steven dancing in the doorway at one point? The Dylan in this picture looks healthier and like he's having fun -- that only happens normally when he's playing with a really great band.

Speaking of which, I had trouble finding this one, but we used it earlier, and for some reason Dylan's Santa made me think of it...so here's Mr. Steve again...

Pork Bellies and Dwarfian View of Australia, Tom Friedman and Valerie Bertinelli's Ass

I am constitutionally unable to read Tom Friedman, listen to him on TV or even discuss him rationally. When the significant other proposed that we read "The World is Flat" together outloud while cuddling, I accused her of being on acid. I wasn't sure why, but whenever I started to read anything, or listen to anything, my brain would shut off and go to a happy place where Hendrix, Johnny Cash and Socrates are jamming. On kazoos. Anything is better than Friedman.

Well, Matt Taibbi has explained my reaction. Freidman is a hyprocritical idiot. The Times needs to Taibbi and put Freidman to work on the Obiturary Page or possibly the social news; maybe Murdoch would be interested in adding him to the editorial page of the Examiner. Or the Journal. Taibbi has a no bullshit, "what the fuck are you saying!" approach that resembles Hunter Thompson only without all the drama and drugs references...to his own use. I started reading the review, smiling slightly, but then started to laugh. It takes a lot to make the AXE laugh like this. It wasn't Lenny Bruce, "Come on down, Christ and Moses laughing:" it wasn't "Coke (the cola, not the other stuff; I'm clean and sober although lately I'm wondering why?) out your nose laughing..." It was the snarky glee of first reading Twain's discussion of Fenimore Cooper.

"In addition to these large rules, there are some little ones. These require that the author shall:

12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it. 13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.14. Eschew surplusage.15. Not omit necessary details.16. Avoid slovenliness of form.17. Use good grammar.18. Employ a simple and straightforward style.

"Even these seven are coldly and persistently violated in the "Deerslayer" tale."

Twain wrote fiction, Cooper wrote fiction; Taibbi is a journalist/pundit, Freidman is a pundit/journalist. Twain didn't take Cooper personally; the guy was long dead. Taibbi takes Freidman personally, because he opposes muddied thinking, bad writing and inconsistency.  His take on Friedman's writing is vicious...

"The first rule of holes is when you’re in one, stop digging.When you’re in three, bring a lot of shovels.” (AXE Comment and snark. I remember this and thought at the time that Randy Travis should have received credit for the line. Still do. Travis writes better.) First of all, how can any single person be in three holes at once? (AXE Comment -- Friedman has the Targis, he's going ot be the next Doctor Who!) Secondly, what the fuck is he talking about? If you’re supposed to stop digging when you’re in one hole, why should you dig more in three? How does that even begin to make sense? It’s stuff like this that makes me wonder if the editors over at the New York Times editorial page spend their afternoons dropping acid or drinking rubbing alcohol. (AXE Comment -- My bet is on the rubbing alcohol, or since this is the Times, aged Absinthe...) Sending a line like that into print is the journalism equivalent of a security guard at a nuke plant waving a pair of mullahs in explosive vests through the front gate. It should never, ever happen.

But, Taibbi really makes my problem with Freidman obvious. I can establish a correlation between any two, three or ten things, but the correlation doesn't mean anything. Sure, cause and effect since Hume has been an assumption, but mere correlation is NOT PROOF! Taibbi dissects one of Friedman's more famous pieces of bullshit, the correlation between "freedom" and the price of oil.

Friedman plots exactly four points on the graph over the course of those 30 years. In 1989, as oil prices are falling, Friedman writes, “Berlin Wall Torn Down.” In 1993, again as oil prices are low, he writes, “Nigeria Privatizes First Oil Field.” 1997, oil prices still low, “Iran Calls for Dialogue of Civilizations.” Then, finally, 2005, a year of high oil prices: “Iran calls for Israel’s destruction.”Take a look for yourself: I looked at this and thought: “Gosh, what a neat trick!” Then I sat down and drew up my own graph, called SIZE OF VALERIE BERTINELLI’S ASS, 1985-2008, vs. HAP- PINESS. It turns out that there is an almost exact correlation! Note the four points on the graph:

1990: Release of Miller’s Crossing

1996-97: Crabs

2001: Ate bad tuna fish sandwich at Times Square Blimpie; felt sick 2008: Barack Obama elected

Sometimes a writer gets it and all we can do is stand in awe...at the awful and the awesome. Read the column. Enjoy. Then trash a mall...you'll understand after reading the column. I'm headed to B&N to order his book, The Great Derangement. Taibbi could be the American Zola...

Throw the damn dice! Not sure where, not sure when, but here we go again!!

Been a long time since the AXE has done much speculating about Rome.  Well, somehow this morning, wandering between pieces and places on the web, I found myself in the NY Review of Books, looking at three reviews of three books about Caesar -- a life, a study of his impact on culture and history, and a study of his calendar. I'll probably read the first two if I get a chance -- I'll skip the Julian Calendar story, even though it probably was the greatest of his accomplishments. Not unlike King James and his bible...although Caesar had a lot more going for him than we can say for the squirelly uniter, not divider, of England and Scotland. In both cases, the guy named is not the guy who did the work. 

Anyway, before I piss off the Anglican communion and the Presbyterians -- James I was a dickhead who combined horrible personal habits with the idiocy-savantism that ultimately devolved in his dynasty to plan idiocy; he makes me think that Elizabeth was unsure of her place in history, and decided to use an AXE rule for her place -- if you want to be a hero, being a hero is hard. So, if you can follow and be succeeded in turn by idiots and assholes, hey, adequate is doable!

So, back to Caesar. The reviewer, Mary Beard, has landed some blows that tell us how little we really   know. She's having some fun with this one, and she should. Historians of the classical era have a tendency to disguise speculation as to everything as fact. If they didn't, of course, history would be unreadable, unbearable, insanely boring...as many of us find it. Speculation is the way to impart meaning, but... in reality, the cavalry mask from Kalkriese reveals as much about the wearer as the documents reveal about the man. It's largely all specualtion, deduction, myth and fantasy. Not just Caesar of course, and not just the ancients...

Modern historians generally agree that various public relations stunts were staged in Rome by Caesar and his associates to prepare the way for whatever he planned. On one notorious occasion in 44 BCE, recreated by Shakespeare at the beginning of his Julius Caesar, Mark Antony was taking part in the religious festival of the Lupercalia, which involved—among a number of other now scarcely comprehensible rituals—young men racing around the city naked. In the middle of these proceedings the naked Antony approached Caesar, who was watching the festival from a dais, and offered him a symbol of monarchy in the shape of a diadem. Caesar refused it three times before Antony withdrew. Each time the cheer of the crowd which greeted the offer was drowned by the cheer which greeted the refusal. It is easy enough to see that there was a message intended here, but hard to be certain what exactly that message was. (AXE emphasis and comment -- Perhaps it was an early gay pride event? Or, they were all drunk. Caesar was known for throwing goddamned bodacious parties for the plebs...) 

(By the way, the Typepad Hobbits are acting up again; this time, they've decided to make it complicated in the new, improved version to copy text. I hate them; we're here because we're here, but there are times when I wish we were elsewhere...which describes most of being, I guess.)

Beard goes on to have an interesting discussion of the Rubicon...

Typical is the opening of the book, which focuses on the turning point of Caesar's career, the crossing of the river Rubicon in 49 BCE. This was the boundary between the province of Gaul, where Caesar had been engaged in years of fighting, and Italy itself. To cross it as Caesar did, with his army, amounted to the invasion of his homeland and the declaration of civil war....(AXE bitch...now the Hobbits are letting me just control-V again without having to go the fucking HTML editor. Seriously, let's kill them.)...What Freeman does not mention is that the river in question has never been firmly identified . We do not know where it was, or how substantial a barrier. It might have been a "rushing stream," but it could equally well have been a trickling creek. What is more, of course, neither here nor on any of those other occasions where Freeman uses speculation about the weather as a substitute for information ("On a bright summer morning in the year 46 BC") do we have any idea whether the sun was shining or the rain pouring. In fact, given the disorganization of the Roman calendar in the years before Caesar's own reform, the early January date that the calendar gave for the crossing of the Rubicon probably "really" fell somewhere around late October. A balmy autumn would give a rather different color to the event than the icy winter of Freeman's account.

Just a point. Nobody in those days began a campaign in the dead of winter. Seriously, infantry and cavalry need a few things like food and potable water and some degree of warmth to function. You got the food and water and forage and grass from the land. In winter, that shit wasn't there to get. One of the things that has convinced many historians and soldiers alike that neither Napoleon nor Hitler was all that connected to reality has been the decision to mount major operations like a withdrawl or an invasion in the late summer or fall, guaranteeing operations in the Russian Winter.

During Augustus' tenure, Varus led his legions  across the Rhine into utterly unsuitable country for legions in the autumn...when it starts raining and gets foggy in that part of Europe.  Once it starts raining in the swamps and forests of the Rhineland-Palatinate, wandering along in formation on a narrow route that is basically an unpaved, churned up goat path is one of the more miserable experiences you could have, and it set the stage for an incredible massacre. Kalkriese wasn't the worst defeat Rome ever suffered, but it was probably the most unneccessary.

Caesar had his faults, but as a general, he was pretty innovative and very grounded. Even he screwed up, of course...but, in the end, he found solutions. We're just not able to sure exactly what solutions, to exactly what problems, exactly where and when...and, of course, why.

 

The Flintstones was a documentary...

Breaking NEWS! The Religious-Right-Neo-Con-Reactionary version of  Shakesville and related sites has done us all an amazing favor. Bishop Ussher's account of the beginning of ancient history from the Creation on October 4, 4004 BCE is finally available in English, ...for homeschoolers and pastors and similarly enlightened folk everywhere. Or, should I use VOLK? You can get it by mail, or at any creation, Dinosaurs and Us-type Museum, right next to the Triceratops Petting Zoo.

"Using the Bible as his timeline, Ussher began with the death of Nebuchadnezzar as a reliable date and worked backward through the genealogies of the Old Testament to arrive at the date of creation — 4004 B.C. Integrating biblical history (around 15% of the text is from the Bible) with secular (around 85% of the material is from non-biblical sources), Ussher wrote this masterpiece. ( AXE snark: I'm confused...how is the date of old Nebuchanezzar's death reliable? On what sort of specious logic did JU base that? Carbondating? Hardly...and, this period of "research" predated modern geology, palenthology, and things like the discovery of the Rosetta Stone or the Dead Sea Scrolls. Ussher was working from the King James Bible to prove the authenticity of the King James Bible. As a work of history it ranks right up there with...fuck, I don't know, the Aeneid.)

"Considered not only a literary classic, but also an accurate reference,(AXE Snark: By whom? Bob Jones? Sarah Palin? William Jennings Bryan? ) "The Annals of the World" was so highly regarded for its preciseness that the timeline from it was included in the margins of many King James Version Bibles throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, calling to mind the fact that the earth is only around 6,000 years old. The fact that Ussher’s chronology has been deleted from Bibles is evidence of the Church’s backsliding into the deceptive ideas of evolution. (AXE Snark: Once again, circular logic and just irritation. There's no more reason to cite Ussher as an authoritative reference in a published edition of the bible than to cite Mallory in a history of England. By the early  20th century, there had been over 150 years of biblical criticism including advanced linguistic and historical theology. Ussher was no more relevant than Mallory, and no where near as fun as Mallory.)

"The Annals of the World" is a necessary addition to any church library, pastor’s library, or any library — public or personal. The entire text has been updated from 17th-century English to present-day vernacular( AXE Snark -- The King James Version of the Bible is a marvelous piece of poetry and literature; one of the abominations of the 20th Century was applying contemporary "vernancular" to it. Frankly, if you get the translation right -- and translating from 18th Century Latin can be as tricky as translating from the 2nd Century Greek if not more so! Particularly since the majority of folks writing and thinking and speaking in Latin from the 18th Century onwards were Catholic and largely Jesuit! who have problems with bullshit, unless they're writing it themselves.) in a five-year project commissioned by Master Books. Containing many human-interest stories from the original historical documents collected by Ussher, this is more than just a history book — it’s a work of history."(AXE Snark: Yes it is. But, it's like reading Ptolemy for astronomy or Galen for medicine -- it's an interesting part of the history of ideas, but that's all it is. It tells more about the enlightenment and the effort to understand things and put them in context as opposed to blind belief. )

Thanks to Ed Brayton and Dispatches  from the Culture Wars for this one. As one of his commentators put it,

"Ed's afternoon routine:

1) Scan Wingnut Daily."

He sacrifices himself so the rest of us don't have to actually go over there ourselves. Just like everything you really need to know about Fox News you can get from The Daily Show.

Philosophical Indifference, ennui and feeling like vomit

I've been having a lousy week. On Saturday, we threw a picnic to celebrate "Safety" over the last year; I was stunned to find that given our Darwin near miss entries we had the gall to ask the government for money to pay for it, and then that they did! Since one of our big charities is Toys for Tots, any money raised will go to the little bastards of Barstow, Hinckley and so on...so, we had a dunking booth, and all the "big bosses" signed up. Well, not really...a lot took passes. But, of those that did sign up, I agreed to go first. Normally in the Crossroads of Opportunity, this would have been nothing...however, by noon on Saturday it was 58 and the wind was down to 12 knots. So, I got wet, and while I guaged the way to dress for my 25 minute stint correctly, I was stunned by how little the water evaporated before I had to flee to the house to a hot shower, coffee and a rethinking of the situation.

On Sunday, I spent entirely too much money on food and a new computer that I planned to set up with various electonic pieces of magic and start recording. On Monday, the holiday, I was feeling misplaced and lousy in general, so I got a flu shot. By Monday night, I felt sick. By Tuesday morning, I felt really sick...fortunately, I'm on a week's vacation. Now, I'm starting to feel human. Went out for dinner to Chilis, and tasted hot, cold, and garlic. I feel like crap. And, reality keeps intruding...And, the 4 track live recorder I bought with the loop function to work on riffs was sent to my PO Box...by UPS. Not sure how that is going to work...

Ok, first thing. Without Robert Plant, there is no Led Zepplin. It's not Van Halen, for Christ sake, and exactly who are they going to get to sing? Eddie Vedder? Might be interesting, but would not be Led Zepplin? Rod Stewart? How about one of those Irish tenor guys that litter the landscape of PBS? You know who would be cool to do the gig? Rod Stewart. You could call it a Jeff Beck Group/Led Zepplin Reunion Tour. Actually, have Page sit it out, and then call it Unleded Zepplein!

Next, I've been struggling through Bernard Henri-Levy's Sartre. Please, Tiffany, shoot me before I philosophize again. Levy is probably the best known Satre-ian running around today, and the book can be summed up as this: Sartre, while generally an asshole and probably useless after 1960 wrote some penetrating stuff in the 40s and 50s, and the other Existentialist figures thought his was the coolest guy in the pool. The end. Help me...Rhonda. It could be the cold, headache, and eye issues, but Jesus wept, what a pain. For some reason, Sartre decided to approach the problem of being by writing about French writers that nobody really cares about. Flaubert. Gide. So, Sartre makes a start on getting it right, goes poltiical which pisses off the a-political, supports the most totalitarian of the totalitarians (Mao) and then decides to write literary criticism of Madame Bovary and whatever the hell Gide wrote. It's as if John Wayne made The Conquerer and decided to start doing romantic comedies. Gay romantic comedies.

Madonna and Guy Richie are getting a divorce? It is Richie, isn't it? I keep confusing him with the guy who left the Commodores. Paris' ex-BFF who has the whole anorexia-vicodin thing going on. Her dad. That guy...who cares? Madonna was marginally talented and had a marvelous sense of self-promotion. Frankly, if she wanted to be British, she should probably have gone after, oh, Simon Crowell or one of the "Stars in a Reasonably Priced Car," or maybe one of the blokes from Last of the Summer Wine.

Browsers. I'm fighting with a bunch of them. I decided that I was going to stick with PCs because I'm a working class kind of guy. And, I'm too lazy to learn another operating system...note to self, I haven't bothered to learn any operating system in 13 years...anyway, I'm vacillating between Firefox, Chrome and Opera. The one thing that makes me less likely to stick with Chrome is the lack of an autofill function. I am enjoying the the Opera Speedial, especially when I want to blog. I still like Firefox but I have found the updates to be less than the original.

Final debate. Slipped all but a very little, and watched next to none of the commentary. Turned the station to the ballgame, and since my wife is Philly fan (I had to walk through the damn Philadelphia airport in uniform once, lugging a damn Philly Phanatic doll that was almost as big as she is years ago) that kept her quiet. Anyway, thank god our longish national nightmare is nearly over, and we can have a center-left governing majority drive us right over the brink. Frankly, the cavalry is supposed to arrive before the settlers are overwhelmed and massacred. McCain probably really pissed off women; hell, his line dismissing the woman's health reason for abortion with the "quotes" pissed me off. I don't have a dog in the abortion fight anymore, but I am concerned about healthcare and healthcare issues in this country...it's not exactly easy in some areas for a woman to get an abortion even if her life depends on it. Poor pre-natal care, child abuse, child neglect, hatred and self-hatred -- does this guy realize that life is not Ozzie and Harriet for most people? I guess not -- a few more tax cuts for the Joe the Plumbers making over $250K net and the rollback of some consumer professions, and little Rickey will be up there playing away, again.

Speaking of Little Rickey, Tom Petty has only nice things to say about his lead guitar player, James Burton. Go figure...the guy is an excellent guitar player. And, some of the less orchestrated Rick Nelson stuff predating the whole Garden Party thing are fairly cool classic rock and roll. Here's a bit with Burton and Roger Daltry...

Well, the ash draped chubby English immigrant sings...

Although there are good reasons to the contrary, as a contrarian, Crusader AXE remains fond of Christopher Hitchens. He's so far to the contrarian side of things that he willingly takes himself. Ok, he's been erratic, somewhat crazed, and goes off on some fairly odd tangents but the guy writes well, says what he thinks and isn't afraid to make a point. "You can almost hear his melodious English grumble as he fusses with his morning oatmeal and coffee, and finds the wine-stained post-it note stuck haphazardly on his laptop screen: “OBAMA ENDORSE, SLATE.” Well, then, let’s get on with it — before some clumsy mental midget like Jonah Goldberg beats you to it, old salt. Christ knows all the big names have already done so …."

I go back to my belief that Dick Cheney should volunteer to be waterboarded if it's not so bad...Hitchens had the balls to see what it wasand the grace to feel like he wasn't really able to be a man about it. Note: when the reptillian brain kicks in at times like, oh, when you're fucking drowning, you're not a man so much as a thing trying to survive. He describes it better and more eloquently than I..." myself to remember what it had been like last time, and to learn from the previous panic attack, I fought down the first, and some of the second, wave of nausea and terror but soon found that I was an abject prisoner of my gag reflex. The interrogators would hardly have had time to ask me any questions, and I knew that I would quite readily have agreed to supply any answer. I still feel ashamed when I think about it. Also, in case it’s of interest, I have since woken up trying to push the bedcovers off my face, and if I do anything that makes me short of breath I find myself clawing at the air with a horrible sensation of smothering and claustrophobia. No doubt this will pass."Probably not, brother, probably not.

Speaking of a thing trying to survive, we have the phenomonon of the McCain devolution. When you're drowning, you're not a man so much as a thing trying to survive. So, Hitchens gets tired of drowning... "Last week's so-called town-hall event showed Sen. John McCain to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical. And the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience. McCain occasionally remembers to stress matters like honor and to disown innuendoes and slanders, but this only makes him look both more senile and more cynical, since it cannot (can it?) be other than his wish and design that he has engaged a deputy who does the innuendoes and slanders for him."

So, given the guy's basic integrity, I'm not surprised that he has endorsed Barrack Obama for Overlord Mayor of Wassila and all parts evenly vaguely related and and Sarah Palin for Moosecatcher. I think he sums up well the frustration of the reality based, we have to live here in this fucking country, faction with this comment:

"One only wishes that the election could be over now and a proper and dignified verdict rendered, so as to spare democracy and civility the degradation to which they look like being subjected in the remaining days of a low, dishonest campaign."

Nailed it.

Odd thoughts for a day off...

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."

I have decided that unless that prodigious prestidigitator and pudit, Crispin Dimebox Sartwell writes it, I am through with music criticism. There have been a lot of signs that the people writing that level of journalism are tonedeaf, and probably didn't listen to the stuff or read anything but each other's crap in a masturbatory orgy of self congratualtion. I think the end for me was a review in Slate describing T-Boone Burnette's influence on Robert Plant as bringing out his darker side. Darker side? Really? Owlsley, satanism, withcraft and kabbala aren't dark enough for you?   Exactly where is the sunlight in The Immigrant Song? What's so optimistic about Over the Hill and Far Away? Ramble On? Kashmir? Evermore?I love "Raising Sand," largely because of the contrast between personnas. If all you know of Allison Krause is the stuff that occasionally gets on to country radio, it's possible to think she's just a sweet little fiddle player. Plant, the rake and rambling boy who has experimented with a lot of stuff including types of music as well as other types or recreational things, seems like what Mick Jagger could have been had he a better and more interesting voice and hadn't wanted to be accepted by polite society. In fact, Plant's pretty reflective, well read and visionary, and Allison is talented and introspective talent who has that high lonesome thing going on -- which includes a lot of darkness, tragedy, and despair. I always get the feeling listening to Led Zepplin, the Plant-Page collaborations and some of his other stuff, that Plant is always on the verge of trying to break through to some other side musically and existentially. Allison Krause is similar -- there's always the feeling with her work both in collaboration with her own band, with others or the odd occasional thing she's done, the feeling is one of yearning and grasping and not quite getting there.