One night in Brooklyn

Tattoos, skinny jeans and garbage bag dresses worn with boots. Some guy carves the wrong way up Bedford Avenue on a human powered trike. A girl walks by in 12-inch platforms and short shorts that show about 2 miles of leg. An overweight redhead in a turn-of-the-century nurse uniform dyed light magenta. Strange mullet-mohawks on androgynous people, uncombed. One guy has a digital camera, which seems like a good idea, but he's taking pictures of buildings.

A flyer haphazardly attached to a light pole, seemingly within the past hour, indicates a free party starts at 6 some 10 blocks away. It is 6:30, despite the promise of an "art show" with "new friends" I decide to continue heading north. There is a bar that serves 32 ounces of beer in Styrofoam cups. The bar has been around longer than most of its patrons have been alive. Bikes are everywhere, and its difficult to find a free place to lock mine. Fortunately my dirty white shoes and stripped-down single-speed bike allow me to pass through undisturbed, as if I belong there. Maybe I do.

Later at The Trash Bar we watch a questionably talented band make up for their questionable talent with an array of costumes and wigs. One band member informs us that we should come to their show next week because "they will have dancing girls." Sinclair is there in his natural state, which is drunk and weird. He dances for the entirety of the set. It is like jumping jacks by an epileptic. Later his friend tries to make out with a shelving unit stacked with books in the corner. After the set, we retire to the many seats that appear to have been removed from late-model minivans and SUVs.

Over cigarettes outside we are "invited" to an after party at the band's apartment/warehouse. It is a huge room with other small rooms constructed therein. The large room could have housed manufacturing equipment, which it probably did in some earlier incarnation. Now it contains the smaller rooms, most of which are raised above the floor -- high enough for anyone who is not freakishly tall to walk underneath comfortably. The rooms are constructed of plywood and two-by-fours, but seem sturdy anyway. There is a white cat that is willing to be petted for a time by strange hands, but eventually jumps and claws, like it has an internal timer.

At one point a bearded man takes a saxophone off the wall and attempts to play it. The valves do not work correctly and no one seems to know how long it has been hanging there. Sinclair takes over the DJ station to our chagrin. He doesn't see the world like a normal person, at least partially because he is colorblind. His drunk has worsened to the point where he can only make sense of music if he plays two songs at the same time. After several minutes or hours of this, we force him to leave with us. He is abandoned when we are sure he cannot find his way back to the party.

Favre > Vick

I haven't posted here in a really long time, which is probably fine as thope's more entertaining anyway. Lack of time derailed my own attempt to maintain a blog, however I am now free of the shackles of medical school clinical rotations for 10 months. I've got 6 weeks of studying for step 2 of the boards and then I'm moving to Kampala, Uganda (Oct. 1st). Some time will be spent in Amsterdam as well. I imagine I'll see some interesting things, so I'll keep people updated periodically through the goats. But I'll have another blog for the boring stuff. Gotta keep the family happy...

So for my return, a video...

From the makers of Napolean Dynamite, although this looks much better in my opinion.

Three years isn't that long a time

A few meta-ish house-cleaning type items to wrap up the week ...

Firstly, that rant I wrote last week about commenters and Cracker Barrel got quoted and linked on Philebrity, which meant more people looked at that than a normal post, like 20 times more. Which is good, even if was under the false pretense that I am a philly.com comment moderator. I'm not.

As much as I enjoyed that huge traffic spike I still will not pimp this thing, ever. Not in my nature to self-promote, unfortunately for my career I guess. Although it was suggested I get an "agent," which I have no idea how to do but sounds appealing. That is my way of saying I will never pursue it.

I finished Anathem, and there may be something about that in the future, but maybe only in a different worldtrack where I am actually paid a living wage. A man can dream. Up next is "Jesus Son" by Denis Johnson, and "White Noise" by Don DeLillo because Jesus Son is really short and I will probably finish it on the Chinatown bus this weekend. Yes TMoney, I do occasionally listen to your suggestions.

And finally, this blog turns 3 today. Holy shit, I can't believe I've been doing this since 2006. This blog was started right after I logged off MySpace while wearing Crocs. Over 750 posts on everything from presidential primaries to whales. And filler, with lots and lots of videos. I went back through the archives and tried to find a post that could sum it all up. It was a brutal failure, but this one about making up sins gave me a chuckle.

Good

Well this happened some 12 hours ago, so if you are like me and spend your mornings on the Internet, its already old hat. In case you don't, some guy threw a beer on Victorino yesterday at Wrigley Field. There are predicable responses from the peanut gallery: All cubs fans are dicks; Not all Cubs fans are dicks just cause this one guy is; Phillies fans are worse cause they beat people to death; or some joke about Bartman. We've heard it all before, sometimes twice. I say fuck you and your cliche comments. Take your righteous indignation and shove it up your ass. Or better yet, put it in a cup and throw it at an all-star centerfielder. Real all-stars make the catch.

Maybe its "classless" or whatever, but I think more fans should throw beers on players while they are trying to make catches against the fence. It adds an air of unpredictability and uncertainty to what is already one of the more exciting parts of baseball (Will the ball go out for a home run? Will the player injure himself running into the wall? Is there something I can flip to on another channel?) The fact is baseball can be boring to watch on television to the average layperson. There just isn't a lot of action; I say more, not less, flying beverages are a possible solution.

Some "baseball purists" might say that fan interference ruins the sport, that the players on the field should determine the result. Pffft, gay. The real problem with this idea is that some might hesitate to part with their $7 beers. But in reality, isn't $7 a small price to pay for the respect of your peers and the broadcast television audience? If there's any genuine truth in this world, it's that everyone loves someone who disrupts a sporting event. Also if you drink half the beer first it mitigates some of the cost, without significant lessening of the projectiles soaking ability.

No shit

On TV, conflict builds ratings. "Balance" often means equating reasonable views with fantastical lies. Ordinary viewers too often can't tell the difference. Short of an opportunity to chronicle the exploits of the risen Michael Jackson, that's not going to stop.

-Gene Lyons, Lunacy goes mainstream

News you can use: Alcoholic version

This could just be the "beer can slipperooni" technology could just be the development needed to finally put a dent the brown paper bag monopoly. Which has been a goal of mine for some time. Up next? Something encouraging the use of lunch boxes.

Go read this now

My 60-year-old coworker is looking at me funny cause I keep giggling. Too bad she'll never get Snacks and shit.

Visceral explosions

These days I am much more selective with my movie-going dollar. Tough economic times and all that mean that if a picture doesn't get above 80% on Rotten Tomatoes, I'm waiting for the DVD. But if a film does catch my eye, I will go to great lengths, traveling as long as two hours by bus to see it at one of the Ritz theaters in Philadelphia. A example of this was The Wrestler, which I saw the day after I got mugged. Going to see it with a broken nose is also an example of a participatory viewing experience, somewhat like wearing a gorilla suit to the remake of Planet of The Apes.

The nut is that I saw The Hurt Locker over the weekend. It was the most intense thrill-ride of the weekend until getting caught in some sort of thunder-typhoon on my bike yesterday. It was avoidable when I checked the radar before leaving for the supermarket and the enormous purple blotches seemed to be a safe distance away. I realized my "highly scientific" calculations may have been wrong when I exited the store with my cargo of blueberries and lunchmeat and there were pitch-dark clouds nearly overhead. So I just cold started hauling ass on the single speed. About a half-mile from home it opened up, Cats and Dogs living together, the whole bit. I imagine that some porch monkeys probably got a kick out of the dude going full tilt on a bicycle screaming FUUUUCK with a huge backpack on. But the cursing kept the lightning bolts away.

Jesus, completely off track. This was supposed to be about The Hurt Locker, best movie you've seen this year. Focus on that you jackass. It was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who previously helmed Point Break. Surprising or not, The Hurt Locker is way better. It is about a bomb disposal unit in Iraq in 2004. The story unfolds through a series of set pieces, where they try to diffuse improvised bombs that look like trash, or bodies. Some work out better than others. There's also a sniper shootout involving Ralph Fiennes and a kind of weird segment where the main character goes out into the city to track down some kid and the guy he finds starts babbling about the CIA.

Most of the conflict, besides the obvious Man v. Bomb and Soldier v. Iraqi, is between the by-the-book Sergeant Sanborne (played by Anthony Mackie, who you may remember as Papa Doc, Eminem's rival in 8 mile) and his adrenaline junkie, fly by the seat of his pants commanding officer, Staff Sergeant William James (played by Jeremy Renner). James is a bit of an echo of Patrick Swayze's character from Point Break, minus the surfing and mysticism. He is addicted to war, and is the most obvious target of the opening card which states "war is a drug." Although you could argue that the other characters just react to the "war as drug" theme differently, i.e. not embracing it, or freaking the fuck out.

edit: This isn't over?

Everything old is dumb again

You ever have one of those days where everything seems stupid and wrongheaded, on the Internet? It seems to be happening more and more. Maybe it's because the drinking, and thus the hangovers, are getting heavy. Damn you $5 six-packs of Miller High Life pounders! Why can't I resist you?

First lets take a minor example: the first two sentences from this boilerplate monthly economy story from the Associated Press. I quote it despite potential ramifications.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Consumers opened their wallets and pocketbooks a bit more in June, increasing their spending for the second straight month while saving less, even as incomes fell sharply.
Consumer spending is closely watched because it accounts for about 70 percent of total economic activity.

Spending more, while saving less and making less money? That's a recipe for sustainable economic recovery if I've ever heard one. Also a cornerstone (or keystone?) of Freedom.

Image via

Or how about the ongoing annoyance that is "moderating" the comment section of a local newspaper Web site. And by moderating I mean deleting all comments that people report to me, and wrathfully banning people for little to no reason on Fridays. Hey, today's Friday! Well at least there's that. See ya guy, your particular brand of unhinged wingnuttery has worn thin. I can't wait to get a call from you telling me I am oppressing your first amendment rights, while doing abortions. Don't worry though, there are still plenty of places online where you can talk about fake birth certificates and how terms like "unhinged wingnuttery" are racist.

I would provide an example, but frankly we are all better off without it. In all seriousness: Comments on local newspaper sites are clear indicatives of how terrible most discourse is, in America. As recently as the 1990s these conversations were confined to people's private homes, and street corners. Maybe you would overhear something at a Cracker Barrel about "negroes" or "liberals" but you could always just move to another table, or chew your Country Dinner Plate louder. Not to mention you got what you deserved for going to a Cracker Barrel.

Well, that's about it ... for now. I have been hearing rumors about some shit rolling downhill from my corporate masters that's sure to incite rage when it lands on my head. So you can look forward to that rant. In the meantime, there's paintings of Obama naked with Unicorns (uhhh, NSFW?).

Geto ... Puppies?

Could you imagine if these puppies somehow teamed up with Gutta Turtles? The world of pet videos set to hardcore rap would never be the same.

Livin' the dream

Don't let that video dissuade you though, because signing up for Phillies Fantasy Camp (or "Phantasy Camp" to use the parlance of our region) is still possible. Who wouldn't want to have the opportunity to participate in a "Bull Session" with Greg "The Bull" Luzenski, hit grounders to Mariano Duncan, or get tax tips from Lenny Dykstra. Besides complete losers of course.

Telling story

Thousands of years ago, the work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same everyday, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been written out of their lives. That was how it had to be; how you got a productive economy. But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who'd made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story. If their employees came home at days end with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing. The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake and had been made up to motivate them. People who couldn't live without story had been driven into the concents or into jobs like Yul's. All others had to look somewhere outside of work for a feeling that they were part of a story, which I guess was why they were so concerned with sports, and with religion. How else could you see yourself as part of an adventure? Something with a beginning, middle, and end in which you played a significant part?

-Neal Stephenson, Anathem

Beast bees bead lords

Dan Deacon (pictured above) shows rate somewhere between a wedding reception and kicking out a car windshield, on the fun scale. I'm not super-huge into his music -- Crystal Cat and Wham City are great, no doubt, but the squirrel-vocoder can get grating or old depending on hipness. But his live shows are something to behold, especially when the crowd, primed by swimming in an airplane-shaped pool, is into his directions for making human boogie tunnels and interpretive dances led by a cromagnon-looking hipster with a homemade "sassy" T-shirt.

The show consisted of three separate set-ups for a round robin style concert, Deacon plus LA-based ultra-kinetic two-man noise-pop band No Age (highlight: guitarist crowd-surfing while playing, then getting tossed into the pool guitar and all), and weirdo indie faves Deerhunter to calm things down. Each played a couple songs, then sent it over to the next group who played a couple songs, and so on. Of course Dan Deacon had the tree house.



I submit that there are few things more enjoyably weird than dancing your face off in a mass of humanity, then looking to your left to see small airplanes take off and land. Overheard at one point, "I think I've touched half the people at this show."

Oh right, and the venue was fucking awesome, despite being in Jersey. The Flying W Airport and Resort. Lots of hipsters (obvs). The beard ratio was around 40%, including women.

Sorry, random person

Watching the lone Phillies victory against the Giants on Friday night, I decided to take the opportunity to taunt my one Giants fan friend and reader of this blog, via text message. It didn't go particularly well, because apparently I have the wrong number. Also the person obviously knows nothing about Jayson Werth. Here's a transcript, all times eastern:

Me (12:05 am): Haw Haw
Person (12:07 am): Excuse me?
Me (12:08 am): Don't make me repeat myself
Person (12:10 am): Who is this?
Me (12:11 am): is this [redacted]?
Me (12:14 am): If not i apologize
Person (12:22 am): No. Wrong number

There you have it. Not as good as the stuff on textsfromlastnight, but still indicative of communications problems in the information age. In conclusion, is it 5682 or 5862? Because for some reason both are saved in my phone.

I've neglected this long enough

That picture is from this thing I saw on the Internet. A blog, about bikes, even. It's written by some guy who calls himself the bike snob. Cynicism and bikes, which is right up my alley. Of course if you don't participate in "bike culture" that might not be as funny. But it does have lots of pictures of absurd hipster bikes.

Speaking of culture, we have this video of some guy beating a pedestrian about the face and neck with a U-Lock. It's made the rounds, and actually its not so much a reflection of "bike culture" so much as a culture of violence and overreaction. There is a big difference between imagining retribution and acting it out.


Anyway, that's about it for now, maybe more later if I get bored/find something interesting. Signing off from Canada. Apparently I'm no Dave Barry, which is a relief.

Is there any nihilism worse than french nihilism?

"It's like Transformers 2 for people who like fucked up movies."
-Sinclair

That statement is strangely accurate. Irreversible is the kind of movie that will haunt your gut. Fermenting worry about the nature of humanity. I had gotten it from Netflix a month or so ago, and only just gathered the courage to watch it. Even though I recently saw Oldboy and Mulholland Drive -- two films that have their fair share of weird misanthropy in its Korean and Lynchean forms, respectively -- I resisted. And rightly so. Spoilers and abhorrence ho!

It was all I could do not to turn this off after the first 10 minutes. It starts with an act of horrifically violent vengeance, with a loopy spinning camera and sounds meant to cause nausea. As if the guy getting his head bashed in with a fire extinguisher in the felching club wasn't enough. The narrative progresses backwards -- ie each seen precedes the one before it, in the timeline. Fortunately the loopy camera stops, for the most part. But just when you think that first scene was the pinnacle of depravity possible thing ever filmed, there's 9 minutes of Monica Belluci getting raped, all in a single take. Be glad I didn't post the poster of that up top.

After that everything seems tame, even the assault of a tranny hooker. Yet, I can't say this movie was not worth watching. It has something to say about the nature of violence and vengeance -- pointless. Like the old naked dude says at the beginning, "Time destroys all." Depressing, yes. But untrue? It's no stretch to say this has more in common with Funny Games than Clockwork Orange.

The filmmaker manipulates the audience to feel the worst of all things. View it at the risk of your mental health and faith in humanity. The only way I can imagine the experience being worse is if you watched it while recovering from a cocaine hangover. I'm going to try and put it out of my mind as quickly as possible through repeated viewings of Ratatouille and, uh, Speed Racer.

Returns

Well, well, well. Wellity, wellity, wellity. I trust all went well in my absence? No major crimes of violence during the week of electronic solitude? When the only media I consumed were box scores, 400 pages of Anathem, and half an episode of Planet Earth on DVD? What's that? Some dude got beaten to death in the parking lot of the Phillies stadium? Jesus Christ. It's good to be back?

Audi 5000

Yo kids - you won't have me to kick around next week. I'm taking a much-anticipated vacation from all things electronic, in Maine. But if someone could feed my fish that would be great.

Today in penguin news

1) Snipers are protecting them in Australia.

2) Gay couple at NY zoo broken up apparently, thanks to some slut named Scrappy.

That's it, no jokes to be had, carry on.

I blame Seymour Hersh

So, if "news reports" are to be believed Cheney's secret assassination squads were scuttled by the chief of the CIA. Even in this age of global terrorism, clandestine paramilitary operations without the knowledge or permission of pretty much any other arm of government is frowned upon. Military officials would rather bomb the shit out of suspected cave-dwelling muslims with high-tech flying robots, collateral damage be damned. It's a shame really, because if there is one thing we can learn from watching fictional movies, its that groups of mercenary assassins are damn near the most effective evil-doer thwarting mechanism available to the Western world, outside of pair of mis-matched cop-like people, one or both of whom were recently suspended from the force.

Here are examples, because how better for the goats to shit all over this important news, all the while adding little to no new ideas and little context. Blog-style! Yu might say my whole life has been leading up to this point. In fact, you could literally say that and be accurate, because of the nature of time.

Its unclear now and likely forever how these "surgical" operatives were assembled, if they were at all. But the most important thing would be to make sure they have a leader who would never flinch or hesitate, and be willing to spend years away from his wife and newborn child. Especially as the group slowly confronts the moral dilemma of being the agent of a somewhat shadowy government cabal bent on revenge against Arabs.

Of course, come conspiracy theorists might think that revenge on the Arabs is unnecessary, because they say initial attack was in fact an "inside job" perpetrated by these elite government agents in the first place. Fortunately, even if this is the case, these people are cut from the same cloth as anarchists and other dregs, so their opinions don't hold much sway, crudely produced documentaries notwithstanding.

But obviously the training of these elite squads is paramount. Super soldiers don't just reanimate themselves in a secret government bases on their own. It's not exactly clear what kind of training would be necessary -- Interrogation and interrogation resistance, explosives and weapons training, whatever. That shit is boring, and best confined to a montage.

It all pays off when to take out a Central American jungle base, just cook up a story and drop your elite squad of potential governors armed with absurd guns into the meat grinder. They'll take out the base so fast they won't have time to bleed, one-liners pending. Of course, if there is some sort of alien "predator" also in the jungle hunting humans, the team's survival is not guaranteed, or even likely.

But death is not the worst option because there is always a chance that a well-funded killing machine/person will "flip" and hijack a warship with the intention of stealing the nuclear weapons found therein. It would probably be embarassing to have to sit down and explain how this nut-case (let's call him "Stranex") could take over a battleship, and how you lost control of him. Chances are you will not be able to rely on a former Navy Seal turned chef to bail you out. Maybe they would try to wipe his memory or something, but I doubt that would work. Seems outlandish.

On the other hand

This video: Superior in every conceivable way to that jokey Oakland one I posted yesterday. There is no argument.

Needs more Ice Cube references

As far as comedy videos go, this one rates a strong "meh" for references no one on the east coast will get, and which are probably lame anyway.

On the other hand, according to anecdotal evidence in the form of a text message I got one time, Carl Weathers frequents diners in Oakland.

Rekindled

This was one of the more of productive weeks that you will find here, I suppose. Something to build on, as I attempt to start writing a book. That's right, a book. That will likely never be published. But shit, if this can get published, I think it means the standards are officially low. What's this book about you say? That's a good question, one which I trust will answer itself in time, in theory. Throwing glass bottles against the wall will be involved either in the creative process or as a narrative element.

Rambling. My dead bike has been revived somehow and converted to a single-speed. Which is extremely fun to ride. Perhaps turning it into a fixed-gear is next on the agenda. Either that or new brake pads. If only my digital camera could also come back to life, I would upload pics of the sweet frame weld job. It can be nice having a retired handyman for a father.

That's it, my boss just handed me a VIP pass to the local bike race tomorrow, so I have to go weigh my prank options: Either a smoke bomb left over from 4th of July, or dressing in the gorilla suit and riding my bike around the course a few times. Or both.

Book club: A bit of Neal Stephenson

I just started reading Anathem by Neal Stephenson, which will probably take me most of the summer. He's been one of my favorite authors for a few years, since I started reading Quicksilver, the first book in his historical fiction series The Baroque Cycle. That probably wasn't the best place to start, being that it is somewhere around 1000 pages long.

I think either of his earlier works Snow Crash or Zodiac would be a better place to dive in, because they have his trademark clever ideas and humor in a much more straight-forward narrative. All his books have technical elements, and these are no exception. For example, Zodiac has a lot of bioengineering, which makes sense in its context of the main character trying to clean up/prevent illegal dumping in the Boston harbor. And Snow Crash has a ton of stuff on linguistics, information flow and ancient Sumerian texts.

Although at the local bookstore the other day I noticed that each volume The Baroque Cycle had been broken down into its separate parts (each novel has 3 parts, as I recall). So conceivably one could start with what got me hooked on Stephenson in the first place, that is the second part "King of the Vagabonds." It details one Jack Shaftoe, a kind of accidental hero of the underclass, as he rescues an astute prostitute from a Turkish harem during the fall of Constantinople and then travels back across Europe, all the while slowing going mad from syphilis. I don't want to spoil it, but his uninvited appearance at a royal ball in Paris is one of the funniest scenes I've ever read.

It's hard to classify Stephenson's books, being as that they are made up of so many disparate elements, and they have gotten progressively bigger and more ambitious. I think the number one thing that links them is the amazingly inventive ideas that they all contain. With that in mind, here's just some of the myraid from a few of his books that I have read. That I can remember off the top of my head.

Zodiac: The main character gets around primarily by the motorized inflatable boat that also constitutes the books title. He bikes around Boston at night wearing all black with a philosophy that all cars are trying to hit him. Also he is a big proponent of nitrous oxide, because it is a simple molecule and thus cannot do much damage.

Snow Crash: Set in a future where the US government has completely disintegrated as private industry has taken over and even living space has been franchised. Hyper-inflation has completely destroyed the value of the dollar so much so that the quadrillion-dollar-note (The Gipper) is the the standard small bill. Also the pizza delivery system is one of the most efficient organizations in the world, as it is run by the mafia.

Cryptonomicon: This is the first time Stephenson started writing historical figures into his narrative. For example, in an early chapter one of the main characters goes on a bike ride with a young Albert Einstein and Alan Turing through the pine barrens in New Jersey, and they see the Hindenburg explode. Later there is some hilarity involving a morphine-addicted Marine slapping "I shall return" bumper stickers on Japanese trucks at the behest of Douglass MacArthur.

dear lord, make it stop

I don't know what is going on here, and I'm not sure I want to know. Severed limbs jumping around and possibly dancing? Two dimensional cats spitting blood? Seems like a good way to pass a Wednesday.

Learn you good

Now that summer is in full swing, I find myself in minor confrontations with cars on a regular basis. Such is the nature of bicycling everywhere, especially when not baselessly yielding to cars' superior horsepower. Last summer I dealt with these inevitable fleeting skirmishes by yelling "Josh!" It was an absurd and confusing thing to scream at drivers who were already kind of flustered by a fellow traveler flouting automotive conventions.

But alas "Josh!" has somehow lost its appeal, and I need to develop a new pavlovian response to on-road confrontations. Ideally it would be be quick and to the point, but not agitating the driver's apoplexy. The ideal would provide me with satisfaction while instilling a kind of bewilderment followed by regret in the driver. So cursing and flipping the bird are probably out. Here's a few ideas I've come up with, if you have any thoughts or suggestions please hit up the comments.

Flash a Thumbs Up
I've been doing this in lieu of anything better. I like it because it is open to interpretation. Am I being sarcastic, or no? Was it an indication of tacit approval, or condescensing gesticulation? Who knows, and now the car is a quarter-mile away. With any luck the driver will ruin their day thinking about the nature of intent in a fast-paced society.

"Learn to read!"
This one was inspired by some guy who yelled "Learn to bike!" at me while I was riding down the double-yellow, waiting for a break in opposing traffic so I could turn left. It's got the necessary absurdity, and it also implies stupidity in the driver. Also, a large portion of our society is losing its ability to read for comprehension, so maybe the suggestion will inspire them to improve their skills and better their life.

"Sorry, for your life!"
Here's a bait-and-switch. The "Sorry" shows deference, agreeing that obviously because my vehicle is small and human-powered, I was in the wrong. But then the "for your life" takes it all back, with vindictiveness. It's probably to much to assume, but I would hope this conveys a message of "Hurry up and get to that job you hate!" to old Larry Leadfoot.

That's all I've come up with -- although "Eat shit, Fuckhole!" does have a certain appeal, if it wasn't too inflammatory. But if things did escalate to the point where the car stops moving to argue, picking up my bike running at them while swinging it like a club, or throwing it at the driver-side window are options that would probably cause some alarm, and property damage. Worth considering.

dude, intense

Our fans are braver than I to let that song penetrate them, or maybe they don't realise what they're listening to. They don't realise that Street Spirit is about staring the fucking devil right in the eyes, and knowing, no matter what the hell you do, he'll get the last laugh. And it's real, and true. The devil really will get the last laugh in all cases without exception, and if I let myself think about that too long, I'd crack.

I can't believe we have fans that can deal emotionally with that song. That's why I'm convinced that they don't know what it's about. It's why we play it towards the end of our sets. It drains me, and it shakes me, and hurts like hell every time I play it, looking out at thousands of people cheering and smiling, oblivious to the tragedy of its meaning, like when you're going to have your dog put down and it's wagging its tail on the way there. That's what they all look like, and it breaks my heart. I wish that song hadn't picked us as its catalysts, and so I don't claim it. It asks too much. I didn't write that song.

-Thom Yorke on "Street Spirit(Fade Out)"

Lessons learned

Thanks to a sterling start on Sunday from Joe "Fat Joe" Blanton, the Phillies are coming off a much-needed sweep of the hated, depleted Mets. Of course there were two other games won, one of which was attended by yours truly. No better way celebrating the Fourth of July with the American pastime. Except maybe by sitting alone on your front porch with a single sparkler.

But that is neither here nor there. While at the game on Saturday I conducted what in restrospect I'll call a "social experiment" in heckling. This is to say I learned the player you can't criticize at a Phillies game without facing the collective shunning of everyone within earshot. This is not unlike learning that Michael Jackson is one person whose death would force MTV to play music videos again. A sacrifice that proves worthy.

"You suck, Chase!"

Those were the uncouth words that drew the piercing glares of some 75 fans in the vicinity of section 142. The situation was that he missed a ground ball. It was not an error, sure, but Jimmy Rollins drew mordant shouts just innings earlier on a similar play. Granted, Chase is having a vastly superior season to Jimmy, statistics-wise. Also I suppose it was easier to see Jimmy's play unfold from our left-field vantage point. I'm going to avoid any racial connotations.

The reaction was akin to shouting "Hail Satan" at a genuine colored lady wearing her best church crown at a Baptist Church on a Sunday morning. And I suppose that Religion fervor can make for a good comparison to die-hard sports fandom, especially considering the crowd on Fourth of July. These fans ditched a presumable cornucopia of holiday and family options to support their team (not me of course, I had nothing else to occupy my holiday besides that lone sparkler).

So what, if any, conclusions can be drawn from this little episode? That Chase "Fucking" Utley is well on his way to becoming the most celebrated athlete in Philadelphia sports history. And one insults him at your own peril, especially when surrounded by thousands of the most orthodox baseball fans in the Delaware Valley.

Consider the possibilities

This is a short work week, thanks to Canada Day, Everybody is losing their jobs day, the 4th of July. And I ain't got shit else to do, so here's a bunch of Internet crap.

If this sounds like a ridiculous use of everyone's time, that's only because it is.

I spent a bunch of time checking out the various quirky baseball infographics at Flip Flop Flyball. They kind of remind me a bit of the macrophenomenal basketball almanac. One highlight is a fantasy baseball game between Wu Tang Clan and The E Street band, but there is a ton of other goodies. Obviously Clarence Clemons is a power hitter.

Ever at a loss at what to say during sex? Here's a guide that could come in handy. Although its unclear what kind of reaction "I just pooped ... a lot ... on your dog" would get. Probably good right?

Transformers 2 is out in theaters. As difficult as it is to resist the ostensible lure of giant robots (with balls!), explosions, and Megan Fox running in slow motion, the lack of coherent plot may just keep me away. Plus the fake Michael Bay twitter is probably more entertaining. And this is coming from someone who owns Snakes on a Plane on DVD.

That's about all I can muster for now. I'll leave you with a music video via this list of 100 from Pitchfork in 2006. Because why not?

Gotta pick up my game

Seriously, this is what I would produce if I had access to the video production technology. Oh wait, I do? Hmmm, perhaps its time to start working on my fake animal cutouts. Although I did make a video one time about winter weather that prominently featured a coworker sliding down the hill outside our building on a snow shovel.

I apologize in advance!

Before you ask/demand answers: I have no clue what the hell that is, yet somehow the giant falling snowflakes and spikey-haired pudgy dutch kid are entrancing, no? Although, I've never made it past the minute mark ... can you do better? It's a challenge, for the eyes and ears.

In me-related news, I somehow broke the frame on my old-ass bike last week, which was exciting, and dangerous. I was mourning that shit more than Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett combined. But! It gave me the motivation to go out a get a brand-new bike -- this guy! It's pretty great, possibly the best thing to happen to me since I did some (really fun, yet unidentified) drugs on Easter. That last part about the drugs was a lie. I knew exactly what they were.

What wasn't a lie was that thing I mentioned in the post from last week about the Capture the Flag game on the streets of our town. In fact it even has a facebook group, which you could potentially join! It even has a shitty photoshopped poster that I threw together while I was supposed to be working. Just like now!

Who's next?

In Memoriam
But seriously, I'm asking, because it seems like these celebrities are dropping like flies.

My main man

And now he's dead. Too soon?

A fun thing to do

So last week, I was putting the finishing touches on my dragon-flavored canoe (which I was planning on using to commute to work, but then it finally stopped raining. I'll post photos later when I figure out how to make my dreams reality.) I thought to myself -- what the heck, its wet out but you gotta get out and do something tomorrow, being that it will be Saturday and all. But what? Clearly it had to involve hipsters. Just look at those fucking hipsters. The tattoos alone justify your stares.



So I quickly narrowed my options down to two: Go to some sort of street festival in the Northern Liberties section of Philadelphia, or play capture the flag at a farm-like place in the suburban paradise of Newtown Square. Both had their pros and cons, which I will not get into. Suffice it to say I ended up playing capture the flag, which was the correct choice. I knew it was right when I showed up and there was an Asian guy with a wispy moustache wearing a greek fisherman cap sitting on the porch. But then that's not really surprising if you think about it, because is there ever a time when the answer to the question "Should I play capture the flag?" is no? I submit that there is not, unless maybe you are in a wheelchair.

The only negative to the day was when I got bit by some sort of weird animal or insect and now my leg is turning slightly gangrenous. A small price to pay, considering that in addition to the flag-capturing, the dudes at the farm had the greatest potato gun (or "spud gun" if you are a hick) I have ever seen. Surely you are familiar with the typical design of a potato cannon, with a fire chamber attached to a long tube? These use flammable gas, which when ignited propels the potato at high speed. They had one of those, but they also had a dual-chambered cannon that was powered by compressed air, and could probably shoot a potato through a garden hose, or a person. I'm not going to try to describe it further, as its best left to the imagination.

The day was rounded out by a viewing of Iron Man on a giant television, cooking stuff on a grill, and songs around the campfire, including an acoustic version of "Saw Your Head Off" which was just lovely. ("Saw Your Head Off" is a song written by a little-known independent musician whose other works include "The Robot Song" and "Swine Flu").

The final upshot is that my telling of a less nonsensical version of this story at Taco Tuesday inspired other bar patrons to try and organize some sort of "urban" CTF game in West Chester, which will hopefully result in arrests and/or crippling injuries.

I thought autotune was dead?

That was unexpected

I don't know how many of you are following the "Confederations Cup" soccer tournament that's going on over in South Africa, but its worth noting that the U.S. team improbably made it out of the group stage. I'm not going to get into specifics, because who wants to read about goal differentials? Mexicans? The bottom line is everything had to go right, and for some reason it did.

And for those of you who care less about the kicking of balls and more about nationalistic jingoism, heres a paraphrased quote from the Wire's Deputy Police Commissioner Rawls, to possibly get you amped up for their mid-week semi-final matchup with Spain. "American Soccer -- Let's show those third world fucks how it's done."

Yeah, I know Spain isn't technically the third world, but screw you. They torture bulls.

Friday's for a video with David Bowie

Oh that's clever

There are pranks, and there are epic pranks -- like this sign posted on SEPTA trains all around Philadelphia. SEPTA is certainly the worst public transit systems in any city I've ever been to/lived in. Even Denver's bus system puts it to shame. That said, here's the text from the sign, which I will try steal if I ever see one:

SEPTA
Notice to the Public

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) is committed to providing non-discriminatory transportation services to all of its passengers, including schizophrenics, drug addicts, Irish Catholics, hipsters, homos, prostitutes, gentrifying transplants, raging maniacs, tourists, obnoxious Penn students, corner boys, pimps, drunk rich kids who still think Old City is cool, and terrified suburbanites who tremble with unease at the sight of everyone.

Any person who is or seeks to be a patron of any SEPTA public vehicle shall be entitled to the same depressing experience of loud cell phones, obese people eating McDonalds, parents telling their toddlers to “Shut the Fuck Up!,” and a constant inch-deep layer of urine-soaked trash and debris.

No person or group of persons shall be discriminated against on any grounds with regard to routing, scheduling, or quality of transportation service furnished by SEPTA, with the following exceptions — race, color, socioeconomic status, and proximity to the suburbs.

Any person who has experienced a cleaner, more efficient, more extensive and better managed public transportation system in the U.S. (e.g. most if not all) can feel free to notify SEPTA about potential improvements, which shall promptly be ignored.

via Philebrity

'He will rape them with his mouth'

I refuse to believe these people are serious.

A voicemail message

Do you ever wake up at 3 a.m. because someone is calling you after they have had a bit too much fun? It's usually wise not to pick up, because the conversations are slurry and painful. Plus, the sleeping.

Here is one such message from a friends phone. Consider it edited for accuracy.

Hey it's me
I'm trashing my apartment
(pause)
(screaming)BECAUSE OF YOU
(Crashing sounds)
Also I'm naked while I'm doing this.
(More crashing sounds)
So fucking naked. Oh god everyone can see me.
(anguished cries) It's terrible.
Aughhhh! Aghhhh!
(click)

So there you go.

The Onion strikes again

Researchers were able to identify nearly 30 varieties of glowing rectangles that play some role throughout the course of each day. Among them: handheld rectangles, music-playing rectangles, mobile communication rectangles, personal work rectangles, and bright alarm cubes, which emit a high-pitched reminder that it's time to rise from one's bed and move toward the rectangles in one's kitchen.
"We discovered in almost all cases that Americans find it enjoyable and rewarding to put their faces in front of glowing rectangles for hours on end," said Howard West, a prominent sociologist on the Stanford team. "Furthermore, when citizens are not staring slack-jawed at these mesmerizing shapes, many appear to become lost, confused, and unsure of what they should be doing to occupy themselves."

Report: 90% of waking hours spent staring at glowing rectangles

Scaring babies

That quote is by Nietzsche you hipster fucks. Still, kudos to this video for shifting tone at 4:20.

Crimes against nature

Image from this SA thread

Here's a couple items about how fucked we are, on the planet.

1) Remember when I sounded the alarm bells about the growing menace of wind power? Well you all should have listened, because now scientists have come forward with potential evidence that wind speeds are diminishing. Sure they say its "too early" to "draw definitive conclusions" but still this means all wind generating turbines should be torn down and sold for scrap, or made into giant bongs. It's the environmentally friendly thing to do.

2)In giant garbage patch news, you may have seen something about plastic collection the size of Texas, or possibly France, floating in the pacific. I may have linked to something about it before. In honor of World Ocean's Day, which exists for some reason and was on Monday, here's a story about one guy sailing through it. It's a terrific downer, plastic. Yet so cheap and strong!

Anyway, your kids or grandkids are screwed, and that's assuming birds don't grow arms.

Now there's three more wolves in the wolfpack*

This movie works and is funny. It's also got a hard R rating. Probably not as quotable as Old School, but close. I feel like I should offer some more here, but meh. The presumably gay Asian mob boss character played by the guy who was the LARP king in Role Models is pretty epic. Tootleloo motherfuckers.

*paraphrased from a speech prepared and given by Zach "Fat Jesus" Galaifanakis's(sp) weirdo brother-in-law character on the rooftop of a Las Vegas casino. Before he slips the whole group a roofie.

This is a good reason not to fly commercial

Also - has this scenario been considered by those investigating the mysterious Air France crash? Best to keep all options open.

Nice people take drugs

The situation where people have to deny, hide or, if found out, regret their drug taking is simply absurd. The public is tired of the artificial representation of drugs in society, which is not truthful about the fact that all sorts of people use drugs. If we are to have a fair and effective drug policy, it must be premised on this reality.

It is time for the public to challenge the mantra adhered to by politicians and much of the media that society must continue to fight a war on drugs, as if they are an enemy worth fighting and ones that can be defeated. The implication that drugs are evil and that users of them ought to be made to feel ashamed suits this status quo, but in fact does not reflect most people's experience of drugs.

-Guardian

Building goodwill

Talking about yourself is inherent in nature of blogs, and to a lesser extent, all narrative writing. I guess that newswriting in the purest sense lacks all self -- in J-school they teach you its all about the who, what, when, where and why. Inverted pyramid structure, with the most important facts at the beginning and slowly getting less important it goes on.

But the gaping maw of the Internet requires constant updates if you want to maintain any kind of readership. The problem is, there just isn't enough quality material to fill the void. But if you post intimate details of your life, people will probably read it. Thus you have "oversharing," in which internet writers post so much information about their lives reading it crosses the line from voyeurism into the kind of shared-living-space banality. Thus you learn the most interesting part of a person you vaguely knew in high school's life is the color of their latest bowel movement.

I don't like to overshare, it is an exercise in narcissism. A desperate cry to be heard, to maintain a sense of self-importance among a million voices. And its probably true that this blog suffers because of my tendency to err on the side of the meek. Putting every aspect of your life online is just grating, and can be a recipe for a train wreck.

All that said: I spent last weekend just cold helping folks move their shit to new locations. First I helped Sinclair move for the third time in nine months. But that doesn't even really count because as a "move" per say: He has like 9 items to his name, two of which are giant speakers. So that was the warm up move for the main event -- helping the sister move 2 miles in Brooklyn. Which was ... fun?


No, it was good. As I said, I don't like posting personal details of my life on the internet, so let's just say there there was a lot of biking and some drinking. Also we went to some place called Hot Diggity Dogs. But a big reason I enjoyed myself, and what I think is the point of this rambling nonsense, is the altruism. Shocking, really, I know some of you like to think of this blogger as an angry asshole, but in fact I do actually enjoy helping others. Usually.

There is a certain sense of satisfaction to be gained by a job done well with no tangible benefit to oneself. That feeling is reimbursement, I suppose, but you can't actually touch contentment, it's not a physical thing. Plus if you aren't getting paid the person you are helping can't really complain when you accidentally put a hole in their wall with a box-spring mattress (surprisingly easy). And with that, I'm unceremoniously ending this rambling mess of a post.

Some sort of new space odyssey?

Only this time ... IT'S ON THE MOON

What is wrong with you

"When I am king, you will be first against the wall"
-Radiohead, Paranoid Android

OK. So this is embarrassing, but I watched that show I'm a Celebrity: Get me out of here last night. In my defense my roommate had it programmed to record on the DVR, and I was too lazy to go upstairs. With any luck I'll never see it again and all memories of it will fade to black. The only reason I watched this episode in its entirety was this torture tank thing that looked like it might be a mass-waterboarding device, for the last segment of the show. As it turns out they just dumped some bugs in it. Also: The Phillies are on the West Coast.

Another thing that got me through this terrible terrible show was imagining what it would be like if Richard Dawson was the host. The idea of Schwarzenegger killing that jerkoff from the Hills (pictured above, with some rapper) is appealing. At one point the hills guy calls up some studio exec to whine about how being on a show with VH1 personalities and Lou Diamond Phillips is "devaluing his fame." Lou Diamond Phillips was in Young Guns, you fucking ingrate. And now my blissful ignorance to these Hills people's existence has been destroyed. Thanks, NBC.

Why the hostility

In the interest of killing off a Friday morning -- a post of filler! It's gotta be more productive than columns written about Keyboard Cat. Another step forward in trying to get the most absurd content possible in print. Still, it's doubtful I'll ever top this one.

The big "news" around here this week was about a woman who called 911 to report being rear-ended by "black men" who then stuffed her and her daughter in the trunk of a car. The woman being blond and photogenic meant the cable news stations picked up on the story, making the reality of the situation somewhat hilarious. Because, ho ho, they were actually at Disney World!

My political leanings are best described as daddy-slappingly liberal. Disgusting.

Speaking of politics, you have undoubtedly heard about this Hispanic woman (or Latina, in parlance of our times) who was nominated for the supreme court, which I really don't care about. Far more entertaining are the photos of a "Roman Catholic priestess" who was forcibly removed from Air Force One.

I don't care to read the article, but the headline certainly lends itself to some sort of classy joke-making in regards to Hitler. Swine Flu does what Nazi's couldn't.

Or for something a little different, how about this one: Man uses live swan to beat up victim.

Running empty, that's just about it. I'll leave you with this collection of photography. Highly recommend scrolling down to the 20th century stuff, you could kill hours looking through it.

News you can use

I know I've been slacking here lately, what are you gonna do? Post more? The hell you say.

Death to the cubicle

A good job requires a field of action where you can put your best capacities to work and see an effect in the world. Academic credentials do not guarantee this.

Nor can big business or big government — those idols of the right and the left — reliably secure such work for us. Everyone is rightly concerned about economic growth on the one hand or unemployment and wages on the other, but the character of work doesn’t figure much in political debate. Labor unions address important concerns like workplace safety and family leave, and management looks for greater efficiency, but on the nature of the job itself, the dominant political and economic paradigms are mute. Yet work forms us, and deforms us, with broad public consequences.
The visceral experience of failure seems to have been edited out of the career trajectories of gifted students. It stands to reason, then, that those who end up making big decisions that affect all of us don’t seem to have much sense of their own fallibility, and of how badly things can go wrong even with the best of intentions (like when I dropped that feeler gauge down into the Ninja). In the boardrooms of Wall Street and the corridors of Pennsylvania Avenue, I don’t think you’ll see a yellow sign that says “Think Safety!” as you do on job sites and in many repair shops, no doubt because those who sit on the swivel chairs tend to live remote from the consequences of the decisions they make. Why not encourage gifted students to learn a trade, if only in the summers, so that their fingers will be crushed once or twice before they go on to run the country?

This NYTimes magazine article "The Case for Working With Your Hands" is just a great read from start to finish.

'And eating all of our sand'

The best part about this is it would theoretically combine the talents of McG and Michael Bay. Two great tastes that go great together. And by best I mean worst.

An anniversary of sorts

Well its memorial day weekend, which means I'll be celebrating one year of carlessness. Let's break out some bike and bus-related highlights. Transport!

-I don't want to turn this into a car bashing extravaganza(although I could, easily). So here's the nut -- a lack of driving will quickly turn thoughts of automobiles as a necessity into to a mix of disgust and fear, especially of luxury SUVs and sports cars. Also, drivers? It's kind of unnecessary to excessively speed up you pass a bicycle. Although it probably is vital to make up those few seconds you were inconveniently stuck behind someone pedaling their hardest. Dicks.

-One time I missed the bus coming back from Philly, so I found myself with an hour to kill in Upper Darby. (For those familiar with Chicago, think Howard Street El station/Rogers Park). So I went to some extremely ghetto bar/lunch counter. And I lived!

-Going over the handlebars on a bicycle can be fun and educational for the whole family.

-Sometimes its better to just leave your bike locked up in town rather than try to bring it back to your place when you are fall down drunk, because you might get mugged/pistol-whipped after the front wheel falls off.

-Yelling quotes from There Will Be Blood at passing motorists can draw some interesting looks. Examples: "DRAINAGE!" or "Give me the blood, and let me get away."

-Nasty weather has a lot more influence on one's day to day when you do not have the ability to travel fast without getting wet or cold. Thank god its summer now.

That's about all I can think of at this point. I'm off to recreate the video posted above on the Schuylkill Expressway.

An elected official ladies and gentlemen

Hey did you know that there was some sort of election yesterday? Don't worry if you didn't vote though, it was one of those stupid primary elections where no one actually takes office. Unless! They are running unopposed in the November general, and securing the party nomination essentially secures the seat. See: Big cities where there are no Republican candidates.

Oh and to the pig-faced Congressman above, let's dust off an old chestnut: What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Is it bad that the best possible response to a member of the United States Congress is a quote from an Adam Sandler movie? Probably, but how else can one counterpoint arguments that compare global warming to the smooth fizzy taste of Dr. Pepper. Still, that video is almost genius in its downward spiral of mixed metaphors and sheer lunacy. How does this man manage to make each progessive sentence increasingly idiotic? I don't know, but it's probably why the good people of the Texas' 6th District voted for him.

That's just crazy enough to work

The other day I discovered that my cable has an on-demand option, and that some episodes of the The Wire are available. Specifically, the last half of Season 3. To refresh your memory, its the one with Maj. Bunny Colvin's Hamsterdam enforcement strategy. For those who haven't watched this show -- what are you, racist?

Anyway, here's the plot. Desperate to make some impact in his final months as a cop, Colvin instructs his police to push all the outdoor drug trade in his district into specific, particularly-dilapidated "free" zones. He introduces the concept with an apt paper bag analogy.


The plan has predicable results. Minus the drug-element, West Baltimore enjoys an all too brief renaissance. Meanwhile the addicts flock to the free zones or "hamsterdam," which one deacon describes as hell. The word of drug-legalization travels up the chain to the police commissioner and mayor. And it all goes to shit, when the the TV news people show up. In the end Rawls orders the free zones taken down Western District-style, to Flight of the Valkyries.

I think my point is that although Bunny Colvin is a relatively minor character on this show, he still has a lot to offer. It takes a strong person to see the worst terribleness of man on daily basis and not become jaded. Not to mention the talk he has with Carver is a fantastic indictment of the drug war. He clings to his idealism, even after some 30 years as a police officer in the inner city. And he's also a tragic figure, when his plan falls apart, he falls on his sword to protect those he led.

So here's to Bunny Colvin, a fictional man who did everything he could to make the world a better place in the face of futility, incompetence, apathy, and an overall lack of viable options. Truly an inspiration for our time.

Sweet nourishing gruel

This picture best represents my feeling now that my laptop is back and badder than ever. Even though the "h" key still only works sometimes. Today? Yes.

Image stolen from heyokay.

Those rich f*cks

"Naturally, when you try and take the bone away, even if they didn’t deserve that bone in the first place..."

I found that quote buried deep in a New Yorker article in which Wall Streeters bemoan their loss of status amid the current financial downturn. It's all "very" disturbing stuff, about how terrible it is when 8-figure salaries are somehow looked down upon by members of the public, on the subway. The selfarrogance here is simply amazing -- that they deserve to have a GDP bigger than that of Haiti because they manage markets. Oh yes, and create wealth. Sweet sweet wealth, the one thing you can never get enough of, much like coke.

But now thanks to some good old-fashioned populist rage its no longer cool to be a banker. As it should be: Bankers are inherently nerds. It's what makes the late gangster accountant Herbert Kornfeld funny. But somewhere along the line that idea was lost and number crunching became a "prestige" profession, desired by Ivy League popped collar types. I think this occurred sometime in the 80s. Greed is good, Reagan and all that. But when financiers has carte blanche and runs amok for 30-odd years, it's going to be particularly heart-wrenching for them when the lights finally get turned out. Not to mention the hangover.

And it does seem those lights are getting turned out, or at least dimmed. The crazy bender of deregulation is mercifully coming to an end. Shit, the government is actually talking about maybe regulating the derivatives market, a little. Curbing profits to cover losses, will wonders never cease. Multi-millionaires have enough power to get what they want -- they don't need Washington's help to get what they want. I assume these people have butlers.


The problem with class warfare is the rich are much better at it. Its common sense -- money and influence makes it easier to push your ideology. Setting aside lobbyists and the moneys that actually change the rule of law: The country has long embraced idea that anyone can get rich, buy a house, make their way. And do not get me wrong: I agree with this. There are few things better than life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (maybe the golden rule). But again, somewhere along the line that American Dream (for lack of a better term) got twisted up in the desire to buy more and more stuff, just to keep up with the Joneses.

But what can be done? Populism is always appealing, and one would think it could be an important tool in evening the playing field, or at least bringing those rich fucks down a peg. Power of the mob. But it tends to be right-wingers like Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck who best stoke the fires of poor morons, in pursuit of profit and ratings. Screaming nonsense about kenyan socialism and lighting people on fire draws in more eyeballs than a reasoned analysis of, well, anything else. So populism is out, and that's just about as much wrong-headed analysis I can manage at this point.

Strength in Numbers

Gotta put a plug for my cousin's band up in here. I went down to the WXPN's World Cafe Live to see them on Monday night. Called Strength in Numbers, they are a 9-piece band, based out of Burlington, Vt. The sound is a kind of a hip-hop, jazz, funk fusion. Not something I would listen to at home, but quality live.

And they put on good show, won over the crowd -- who besides myself and my pops was probably there to see the next act Philadelphia Slick and Akil the MC (from Jurassic 5). Possible future post topic: Going to see a hip-hop show with your near 60-year-old father.

Anyway, here is the only video I could find of them on Youtube. Gives you an idea, but I think the show on Monday was better.

Testify!

But opinions, however insightful or provocative and whether expressed online or in print or in prime time, are cheap. Reporting the news can be expensive. Some of it — monitoring the local school board, say — can and is being done by voluntary “citizen journalists” with time on their hands, integrity and a Web site. But we can’t have serious opinions about America’s role in combating the Taliban in Pakistan unless brave and knowledgeable correspondents (with security to protect them) tell us in real time what is actually going on there. We can’t know what is happening behind closed doors at corrupt, hard-to-penetrate institutions in Washington or Wall Street unless teams of reporters armed with the appropriate technical expertise and assiduously developed contacts are digging night and day. Those reporters have to eat and pay rent, whether they work for print, a TV network, a Web operation or some new bottom-up news organism we can’t yet imagine.

-Frank Rich

Needs more Schwarzenegger

Informational update: My laptop has some sort of terrible virus, possibly swine flu-related. But seriously, there were over 1000 infected files. The point is it may be a while before I get back to posting normally, because I need mind-altering substances to come up with ideas, which cannot be done at work. In theory.

What a sh**hole