Introduction....It's Not About The Music!

Hello all. My name is Steve and for some reason that remains unclear to me Arjuna has asked me to contribute to this blog, so here I am. I live in Arcata where I do absolutely nothing, and I am trying to migrate south to the bay area so I can do nothing there. I prefer to write about odd things and have a tendency to sound too much like Hunter S. Thompson when I write, which people tend to get a kick out of because they don't read much HST and are thus tricked into thinking I am being original. I am absolutely obsessed with music, I am not politically correct, I look at birds for a living, I drink too much and I attempt to stay vaguely in touch with Amerika's sociopolitical climate. And that is all ye need to know. I copied what is written below from my myspace blog, it has almost nothing to do with music, but its good enough for me. Enjoy, or wince in disgust....you do what you think is best.
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As you know, I like girls. I know this for sure because my good friend Jake has repeatedly tried to make out with me when I'm drunk, and it always sounds like a very bad idea to me. Not that there is anything wrong with that. So, for the time being, lets say that I am a big fan of girls.

What kind of girls do I like? Well, there is a wide variety to be sure, but I definitely hone in on girls with strange haircuts (i.e. "fast hair"), short hair, colorful hair (or just black), piercings, tattoos, a drinking problem, some kind of common interest with me in their selection of music, and especially if they know lots of inane things about the music we both like. Oh yeah, they are usually white, which may have something to deal with problems in my childhood.....but that is for another time. Anyways, the girls that possess several of these sought-after qualities are generally referred to as "hipsters" or "scenesters", and I love them.
So let's say that I know one of these "girls" who happen to possess many of these above traits. How do I impress her? How do I get her to think about me the way I think about her? Do I research the bands she likes? Do I try to get her drunk? Do I tell her I'm in a band? Do I discuss worldly affairs? Do I act charming? Do I just be myself?

No! Fuck no! Its not about any of those things......the answer, my friends, is how I dress. I have to look like an adult male with successful breeding experience, in full breeding plumage in the prime of his life. So let's take a look at what, exactly, needs to be done in order to faintly resemble a breeding male in the so-called prime of his life.

1) Hats. There are three acceptable types of hats I can wear.....the "cadet cap" (aka commie hat), the knit cap (or "beanie"), or the "newsie hat" (you know, the hat that you would wear if golfing or selling papers on a street corner in 1926). There are no other options. I own all of these......check.

2) Hair. It must be long, black and greasy looking. Check.

3) Glasses. Thick, dark rims usually. Check.

4) Tattoos. I have none. Shit.

5) Piercings. Napes. Fuck!

6) Outerwear. Zip-up black hoodies, preferably black and from bands that are going to be/currently are/have been around for so long that they are still "in" at the time. I have this covered, but I think I need more hoodies.

7) Shirts. This is the only area that allows much flexibility. You can go the nerdy thrift store route, the weird arty emo/hardcore route, or the band shirt route. Button-ups are hit or miss. The same band rule for hoodies applies to shirts.

8) Pants. Dickies or tight jeans, preferably expensive. Dickies check, jeans.....not so much.

9) Belt. Studded, or a normal belt with a big, obnoxious, ironic buckle. I just got a studded belt, so Im working on this.

10) Shoes. Also room for flexibility here. Expensive skate shoes, Chucks, Aasics, Adidas, etc. Check.

It seems like I'm batting 8 out of 10 on these, so why arent I diving through a pile of beautiful scenester girls in my bed every night? I don't understand! Maybe I have to tell them I'm in a band after all.

well lookie here...

(via mssr klein via the rude one)

striking houston janitors trampled by police horses, no coverage in houston chronicle.

rude pundit gets it right re: tased student and trampled strikers -- when those with authority do this shit in broad daylight, with no fear of reprisal, it's a sure sign that we as a society have forgotten our role as responsible citizens. these are our cops. we pay them. we decide what's law and what's not. when they feel that it's a-ok to abuse and punish and harm it's because we let them.

so. write to the houston chronicle editors with shock and horror. same with the la times. call the houston and ucla police departments and express your rage. let them know that this shit ain't cool. it's the least you can do.

on a more personal note...

i'm down in san luis obispo for the weekend for work. the last time i was in this town was 11 years ago, halloween weekend, and on a shit-ton of acid. the second-to-last-time i tripped, with only slightly less traumatizing and frightening results...

anyhow, i'm here again, for work. i am, as a friend so eloquently put it, herding the homeless. i gather a small group of down-and-outters, hand them each a sign exclaiming "GOING OUT OF BUSINESS!" or "30% OFF!!!" or "EVERYTHING MUST GO!" and set them out at pre-determined street-corners like little chess pieces in this grand game of overconsumption.

and the reason that i do this is because it pays well. the more class-conscious among us are probably at least a little disgusted. i know that i am. but i also know that without this little side gig (and the catering one, all thanks be to derek) i'd never get out of the city. i realized this morning when i was driving to the beach (nice directions, gretch... not!) that i hadn't left the bay area for months. i think i made it to oakland for a tool show a while back with the laura's, but that's really it.

and also, the guys working with me: they're great. they like that they're getting a little cash for sitting around holding a sign. one of the old timers said yesterday that he'd be sitting downtown anyway, and the fact that he's getting paid to do it pretty much blows his mind. one of the guys is actually trying to get his shit together again, and dropping forty bucks in his lap for a few hours of work helps him get a shower and a new shirt for an interview.

i recognize that if it weren't for capitalism's requirement of about 5% unemployment i wouldn't be able to get these guys at all. i see that the consolidation of ownership in all sectors of the economy is what is leading to the going-out-of-business sales that give me something to do. i'm well aware that the company i'm working for is a carrion-eating parasite, leeching it's subsistence from the dead and dying life-long efforts of the mom-and-pops. but shit, motherfucker's gotta get paid, ya' hurrd!

seriously though, this is a bit of a dilemna for me.

any suggestions?

i got your civil liberties right here...

(via americablog, and the rude pundit, and boingboing, and many others)

what.

the.

fuck.

did you watch the whole thing? it's almost seven minutes. and the guy gets tasered like six times.

apparently, it starts because he refuses to show id to the cops. as he's leaving, they stop him. read some more of the background at boingboing (cory doctorow is a prof at ucla). i'm outraged and disgusted and saddened and everything else. i can't even imagine what the proper response is.

did you catch the guy at the end being threatened with a tasering of his own if he doesn't walk away? yeah. that's my favorite part.

fucking cops. and campus cops are worse. almost as bad as the guards at county.

what is to be done? what can we do to make this an impossibility in the future? do we all bum rush ucla pd and taser the cops? do we write polite letters to the editor of the la times? rise up, here in our own little enclave of tolerance?

fuck. look at it again. and share it with others.

fuck.

and i got nothing...

fucking les editeurs... it's another one of those god damned keyboard kommando komics that always make me cry with joy.

to see how it all began, click here for the first episode.

or go to the bottom of this page and work your way up.

and fuck you, the editors.

fuck you.

mr. positivity makes a prediction

richard haass, president of the council on foreign relations, on the middle east:

Visions of a new Middle East that is peaceful, prosperous and democratic will not be realized. Much more likely is the emergence of a new Middle East that will cause great harm to itself and the world. Iran will be a powerful state in the region, a classical imperial power. No viable peace process between Israel and the Palestinians is likely for the foreseeable future. Militias will emerge throughout the region, terrorism will grow in sophistication, tensions between Sunni and Shia will increase, causing problems in countries with divided societies, such as Bahrain, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. Islam will fill the political and intellectual vacuum. Iraq at best will remain messy for years to come, with a weak central government, a divided society and sectarian violence. At worst, it will become a failed state racked by all-out civil war that will draw in its neighbors.

slightly more positive (and i do mean slightly): dr. james zogby, president of the arab american institute in washington d.c. and senior analyst at the polling firm zogby international. here's what he has to say:

The problem is that what the administration’s tactics and the Democrat’s proposals all have in common is that they are as unilateral, presumptive, and ignorant of Iraq’s realities, as was the war itself. What is required is a more regional and internationalized approach - but that is not being actively discussed.

Over a year-and-a-half ago, a rather sound proposal along these lines was offered, in different forms, by Senators Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and John Kerry (D-MA). Among other points, they called for drawing Iraq’s neighbors into the creation of a standing regional security entity under the auspices of the UN or NATO (thus removing the US as the principal actor).

yo... got me some tunes, bitches.

just got my new ninety:

ox - dust bowl revival. i heard these guys on the CBC Radio 3 podcast. they killed it.

josh ritter - the animal years. i'd heard of him from way back, and then emusic made one track from this album the track of the day (windows/explorer users should download the emusic toolbar; it gives you a free track picked by emusic's editors every day!) and now he's back up in my top.

heartless bastards - all this time. another freebee from emusic, i feel in love from the start. kind of country-rock, but better.

the national - sad songs for dirty lovers. i've had their alligator for a while, and really enjoy it. figured i'd check out another one of their albums, and how could i pass up an album with a name like that?

angela desveaux - wandering eyes. another CBC3 find. i don't even remember what she sounds like, but it was good enough for me to immediately add her to my save-for-later list on emusic.

the camaromance - empty picture frames. CBC3... again... damned canadians with their good taste and good manners and good music...

au revoir simone - verses of comfort, assurance & salvation. lame album name, but good music. yet another emusic freebee. interesting mix of natural and manufactured sounds layed down behind beautiful vox. i like me sad stuff.

erin mckeown - distillation. great mix of old-timey jazzy stuff and country/hillbilly and rock. at least, what i already had was like that. i'm hoping for more of the same...

the blow - paper television (not the whole album). i had four tracks left... it's in the editors' heavy rotation list. figured i'd check it out.

meet the new boss, same as the old boss

mother jones has an excellent write-up on bush's nominee to replace outgoing secretary of defense donald rumsfeld. i guess it was to be expected that robert gates would be cut from the same cloth as everyone else W. has kept counsel with these last six years. hopefully the democrats will put a stop to this, but i doubt they will want to spend the political capital.

earlier this month reports surfaced that the republican-controlled government had made into law a provision which would shut down the office of the special inspector general for iraq reconstruction. as an independent government agency charged with charting the progress of the united states' rebuilding efforts in iraq as well as exposing inefficiency and corruption, it has (obviously) not always painted the rosiest of pictures. the attempt to end this particularly important form of oversight while reconstruction contracts are still in effect stinks of corruption. what is that... do i hear the sound of someone covering their ass? thankfully democrats don't plan on letting that happen.

oh, and for all you halliburton fans (from the same article):

Mr. Bowen’s investigations of Halliburton have uncovered tens of millions of dollars of charges for work that achieved little in the way of results, but apparently met the letter of the company’s contract with the United States to repair oil facilities. Mr. Bowen has also found that Halliburton has been using federal loopholes to impede investigations of its work by declaring nearly all information about company activities in Iraq to be proprietary, or sensitive because it could aid the company’s competitors.

one last thing. i like this guy a lot. he was thinking of running a long-shot bid for president in 2008. now he's not. bummer.

musical happennings in the city this week

who knew? the onion actually has a pretty good breakdown of what's going in the city each week... for example: tuesday at twelve galaxies (for twelve bucks) is vetiver ("freak folk" in the flavor of joanna newsom and devendra banhart, but more accessible) with women and children opening. also on tuesday, at the hemlock, is beach house (for six smackers) with over the atlantic and the parish. at mezzanine on tuesday (for ten clams) you can find lady sovereign (think m.i.a., but younger and faster) with mickey avalon and young blood opening. all of the headliners are in our emusic repetoir (lady sovereign on laura's, the other two on mine) and should be explored.

sometimes i fucking love this city... looks like tuesday night will be one of those times!

(also looks like emusic lost its distribution with vetiver's publisher. that sucks.)

Woodsy is Safe and Sound...For now

Among various victories for Democrats on election day, which we hope will translate to victories for the rest of us as well, one stands out as critical for the preservation of our old friend Woodsy the Owl. I don't know about anyone else, but growing up, I gave a hoot and didn't pollute. I went to the forest a whole lot to camp and hike and fish with my dad, a Republican who doesn't know he's a Democrat.

So it was with particular glee, that I saw incumbent Republican Congressman Richard Pompo (CA-11) go down in flames to Jerry McNerney on Tuesday. Why, you ask, should Pombo's defeat be any more momentous an occasion for me and Woodsy than any of the rest of the Republicans who will be leaving Capitol Hill en masse in January? Well, hear it is:

Farmers in California's mid-central valley have enjoyed enormous water subsidies for almost a century. So huge, in fact, that in certain arid districts they were able to secure enough water cheap enough to grow rice. Fuckin growing rice in a desert, or what has essentially become one, but I digress... The federal government spent a significant amount of time researching the effects of water diversion away from the San Joaquin delta, the San Francisco Bay, and other connected rivers and streams (which span the entire central portion of the state) and decided to fix the attendant problems by dedicating vast quantities of water to flow as it once did naturally through estuaries, the delta, the bay, and out to the sea in order to protect two endagered species: the winter run chinook salmon and the delta smelt.

After loosing in litigation over the loss of water rights due to the diversion, many of the farmers turned to Richard Pombo, whose district (until January, that is, after which it will be McNerney's district. Ha ha!) covers some of the farmland affected by the CVPIA (the legislation which diverted the water. Pombo's response: Gut the Endangered Species Act by removing all references to critical habitat from the act. If successful, Pombo's proposal would have gutted the most powerful piece of environmental legislation in the United States. Where the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act and others leave enough discretion in the hands of the executive that they can essentially be enforced or not at the will of the president, the Endangered Species Act allows no such exceptions. It forces the appropriate cabinet members to set asside areas as critical habitat once an endangered or threatened species has been listed (the listing is very strict and also allows no discretion), therefore subjecting them to heavy regulatory protection, in order to protect Woodsy, you, and me.

So good riddance Pombo, you fuck, and a big middle feather from Woodsy too!

the sky and the ocean

this one courtesy of arjuna. just discovered these kids from detroit. the volebeats :: the sky and the ocean. sweet country melodies, reverb-drenched desert rock, 60s-infected pop and rockabilly thrown into the mix and simmered until all the flavors run together. its got a loose, garagey feel... raw, sad, and oh so sweet. highly recommended.

(image courtesy of emusic.com. come join the fun.)

new friends!

fellow emusicers: we have another friend among us. SeTh (also the latest to join our blogging ranks) has joined emusic. i'm still waiting on his codes, but i know his tastes are refined and intelligent. as soon as he passes them my way, they'll get to you...

and yeah, where's all this musical musing that's supposed to be up in this piece?

goddam! why's he always gotta do that?

that fuckin' rude bastard always says what i want to say, and always says it better than i ever could. makes me wonder why i even pretend to want to write.

i agree that rummy's actions are criminal. i agree that he should be held accountable. his rudeness, though, implies that we should inflict pain up to that which is comparable to, but not exceeding, what is experienced during organ failure to acquire information from the disgraced secretary of defense. not really my cuppa, you know?

but we've come to a point where we can actually bring some sort of justice about. first, though, is to impeach the president. that way he can't pardon any of these fuckers. then impeach dick. once pelosi is pres, then we try them all for crimes against humanity.

ahhh... what a dream that would be. and we're all allowed to dream still, right?
(photo via pbs's nova online.)

UPDATE 1: from the comments, "causal" says that pelosi will start as soon as we tell her to. click on the link in causal's comment and follow the instructions (thanks causal!)

good luck, bad luck, who the fuck knows?

it's completely clear that we got the house (wait... who is this "we" of whom i speak? what i meant is that they've lost lost the house... or... fuck. you know what i mean!). the senate is still up for grabs, which means it's still up for manipulation. south dakota shot down an incredibly restrictive anti-abortion bill (good news) but seven new states passed laws banning gay marriage (fucking nitwits). the terminator gets another round to play the role of governor of cali (sure, angiledes was no saint, but wtf?), and the army times (and navy times, and air force times and marine corps times) has called for rummy's resignation (wow. didn't see that one coming).

so where do we stand? how much better off are we today than yesterday. did it make any difference at all that we took back the house (there's that "we" again... i don't know where it comes from, i swear)? we're still mired in iraq, most of the fuckers that voted us into that clusterfuck are still in office, and there's still no coherent exit strategy.

we're still addicted to oil. we're still a fundamentally racist, sexist, classist and homophobic nation. we still (as californians) have abysmal public education (k-12 and higher ed), and nationally we are completely uncompetitive with pretty much all the other industrialized nations. our debt is soaring (in no small part due to our bloated "defense" budget), our reputation as both citizens and as a nation internationally is in the shitter and i don't think anyone outside of america is going to be fooled by a slight shift in the name of the majority party of the lower house.

now what? what can we do to really fix this mess? this is not a rhetorical question. i want to hear your ideas. bring it on!

UPDATE 1:oh yeah. almost forgot. this and this and this (via boinboing)

UPDATE 2: looky here... rummy resigns. how sweet it is.(via the rude one)

UPDATE 3: and now this. so when do we start the impeachment hearing? (thanks, junkfarm)

election night blues

its hard for me to get excited about this one. even if the democrats do win the house (likely) and the senate (… less likely), i don’t believe they will be the opposition party that progressives want them to be. i might be wrong. i HOPE i am wrong. but they will still have to compromise with an imperial presidency that they helped create through their own inaction.

it takes no backbone whatsoever to take a stand on an issue (specifically, iraq) only after the majority of Americans have finally decided the situation there is royally f***ed. it doesn’t leave me brimming with confidence when all the opposition can say is “look how bad they messed up. we need to change direction.” well, what direction do we need to go in, fellas? seriously.

it will take leaders of vision and intelligence to get us out of this mess without letting that country (or worse, the whole region) dissolve into a never ending firefight on top of a spilled can of gas. to my eyes no democrat (or republican, or anyone really) has demonstrated they are up to the task. i guess that's what good politics is all about.

that being said, at least there will be a few less bible-thumping right-wing crazies walking the halls in D.C.

i guess we’ll see…

ARJUNA ADDS: i just heard an interview this morning (11/8/06) on npr with jack murtha. they asked him point blank (as cnn did to howard dean last night)what the new iraq direction is. he had nothing concrete. just sound bites. the fucker couldn't even say anything stronger than that iraq qasn't going so well and things ought to change. when are the dems going to finally stand up?

but yes, junky, at least there's a little less churchy in the house (and the senate, too).

this savage season

the rude one has always been one of my favorites, and today he captures my skepticism, pessimism and fear as well as he has ever done. i'm off to moveon's san francisco office (1366 mission, between 9th and 10th, if you're up for it) to do some more volunteering at three today. i hope you all go out and vote today. somebody smart said something to the effect that the most important political office is that of the private citizen performing a citizen's duty: voting. i'm not currently a full citizen (thanks to my own stupidity, negligence and laziness, i admit), so the volunteering is the best i can do. you all, on the other hand, can exercise your right to exorcise these demons.

get to it.

for fear of what tomorrow may bring

in an attempt to preemptively start this blog on a good note, and for fear of what tomorrow's elections may bring, i want to say:

welcome!

this here is an attempt to get old friends talking about two of my favorite subjects (and any tangents that these might birth): music and politics.

comments are open, and if you know one of the "authors" and want in on this as an author rather than just a commenter, send that person an email and we'll set you up.

i'm gonna get going with a note to my fellow emusic members. i just got a shit ton of new stuff.

the be good tanyas

the diableros

aimee mann

kathryn ni donovan

the innocence mission

mojave 3 (though you shouldn't bother with the one i just got...)

various artists - badman records

go! let me know what you think! i'm especially liking the be good tanyas and the two aimee mann albums. seriously. lemme know!