Have you read this yet?

No? Why not? Read it now.

Scrubs- The Movie

Ok, not really, but Zach Braff (aka JD from "Scrubs") done made hisself a movie. He wrote and directed "Garden State," and it opens this weekend in the big cities, next weekend everywhere else. I watched the trailer, and it looks pretty cool. Its got robots and a bit of fire, and Natalie Portman, and the soundtrack looks ok, too.
Oh yeah, and he's got a blog about his experiences with the movie and its kind of interesting.

More great photo(shop)s

Here, here, here, and especially here.

Campain photo(shop) of the year

Right here.

More convention blather

As reported by Lileks:

As Teddy Kennedy said in his convention speech: “The only thing we have to fear is four more years of George Bush.” It’s really quite simple, isn’t it? We live in a manufactured climate of fear ginned up by war-crazed neocon overlords. There is no threat. The only thing we have to fear is Bush, who sits as we speak in the Oval Office sucking the marrow from Whoopi’s shin-bones.

If so, I wonder why anyone agreed to the stringent security policies that characterize this year’s conventions. Why the bomb-sniffing dogs? Why the snipers? Why the metal detectors, the invasive inspection of bags? Is it all an elaborate defense against Bush crashing the party and setting off a bomb belt, shouting God is Great, y’all!

No, they’re fearful of something else.

Damned if I know what, though. Damned if I know.

Yeah, I know...

...the formatting's jacked up. I'm working on it.

How can anyone take this asshat seriously?

Ann Althouse highlights bluster from the increasingly fucking crazy Howard Dean.

10 Truths about trade

If you've watched any of the Democratic National Convention this week, read this piece in order to counteract some of the more outlandish claims about the economy made by some of the speakers.

A war of ideologies, Pt. DEUCE

University of Chicago professor Dan Drezner makes my point so much more eloquently:

The popularity of Islamic fundamentalism fades very quickly in an open society. It's the job of the United States to promote the virtues of such a society, and consolidate the regimes in the region receptive to such a message.

We need to start utilizing the things we do best (music, movies, TV) "to promote the virtues" of a free society. If we're serious about winning, the American public needs to shun those things that don't. This is not to say, of course, that there's no room for criticism. But responsible criticism is the key here, not red-faced solipsistic rants.

False, I think, but funny

Matthew Yglesias made a funny:

Mark Shields, via David Gergen: "During the Bush years we've created more gay marriages than manufacturing jobs." When will conservatives stop pushing their leftwing social agenda and start looking out for the working class?

It's the new penguin game!!!

It's sweeping the office spaces of America as we speak, kids. It's colorful, it's got a hip Euro-techno soundtrack, and it's got snappy comebacks like...well, like, "Oh, snap!"
IT'S THE NEW PENGUIN GAME.

Post high scores and/or plane catching tips in the comments. I've got 3120 so far.

A final indulgence

Since I threw up nothing but pap yesterday, all ketchup and Seventeen magazine-style quizzes, today is a thinking day. Especially for all you goddamn hippies. Read the whole thing. A tasty taste:

"Religion and science are separate and mutually exclusive realms of human thought." Case closed.
And now reopened. In recent years, Allan Sandage, one of the world's leading astronomers, has declared that the big bang can be understood only as a "miracle." Charles Townes, a Nobel-winning physicist and coinventor of the laser, has said that discoveries of physics "seem to reflect intelligence at work in natural law." Biologist Christian de Duve, also a Nobel winner, points out that science argues neither for nor against the existence of a deity: "There is no sense in which atheism is enforced or established by science."

And Brent, if you make even one "Michael Moore is God" joke I'm'na beat ya in ya ass.

A war of ideologies

New York Times columnist David Brooks sensibly asserts, echoing the report of the 9/11 commission, that more important than military might in our battle with Al Qaeda is cultural and ideological might.

When you see that our enemies are primarily an intellectual movement, not a terrorist army, you see why they are in no hurry. With their extensive indoctrination infrastructure of madrassas and mosques, they're still building strength, laying the groundwork for decades of struggle. Their time horizon can be totally different from our own.
As an ideological movement rather than a national or military one, they can play by different rules. There is no territory they must protect. They never have to win a battle but can instead profit in the realm of public opinion from the glorious martyrdom entailed in their defeats. We think the struggle is fought on the ground, but they know the struggle is really fought on satellite TV, and they are far more sophisticated than we are in using it.

I disagree that "they" are more sophisticated in using technologies like satellite TV than "we" are. Who invented it? Who can use it to buy clothes or movies on demand? But I understand his point: that Al Qaeda has been more effective in using that particular medium to recruit for their cause. Would Al Qaeda programming work in America? No, and namely because Americans are more sophisticated media consumers. "I'm not watching this!" we'd cry in disgust. "I don't pay 50 bucks a month to watch some hairy asshole blabber on in a language I don't understand. And look at the video quality! Where're the tits?!?!"
But let's grant him his point: that Al Qaeda is winning the media wars. That they are communicating their message of killing Americans, Jews and insufficiently pious Muslims better than we are communicating our message of freedom, democracy, and human rights. If it is a media war, and if it is a battle to be fought on screens big and small, who does a movie like Fahrenheit 9/11 help? Who does it hurt? Who, to use Brooks' phrase, "profits in the realm of public opinion?" Does a slickly produced movie that appeals more to the gut than to the mind, and that promulgates conspiracy theories about wars for oil, racist imperialism and heartless targeting of civilians help Al Qaeda or America? Does it help oppressed Muslims understand the rule of law, freedom of speech, a volunteer military, Elvis, gay marriage, free markets, or voting? Or does it help oppressing Muslims spin lies to their fiefs about bloodthirsty Jews, wars of familial revenge, crony capitalism, raping and pillaging, stolen elections, and crushed dissent in a hypocritical Amerikkka?

But before everyone who saw F9/11 pitches a fit, telling me that I'm saying they're helping Al Qaeda by supporting Michael Moore...I'm not saying that. Indeed, for his film to be helpful to Al Qaeda, potential Muslim recruits would have to see it, wouldn't they?
What I am saying is that this kind of film should have no shelf space in the marketplace of ideas, where good ideas sell and bad ideas fall to rest in history's 99-cent bin. That this movie has sucked nearly $100 million out of our economy proves that the damage it does is to our own citizens. Because we are better at tv, music and movies, we've become more sophisticated consumers of them. We can doubt and dismiss. We are more sophisticated, but we are not immune to it.
The movie uses lies, half- and quarter-truths to disparage our country and our President. One can almost hear Michael nasally and snearlingly quoting James Ellroy: "A whore cut to look like a movie star is still a whore." To which I'd reply: "A movie star cut to look like a whore is still a movie star."
If we're serious about winning the war on terrorism, and if we think that might does not always make right, than it's time to embrace the opposite side of the coin, and start communicating what America has to offer, not what it's come to take away.

Kerry speaks!

"I will stand up and struggle, as others have, to try to get that right balance between violence, and sex, and things." Democratic nominee for President John F. Kerry*

This time I really mean it...

...last iPod related post. I won't say a lot about this article, except "wireless headphones!!!!!!!!!"

Photo caption contest

Whoever comes up with the best caption for this photo (second one), will win a prize. What prize, you ask? Probably nothing. But if it's something, it'll be hottt.

The ketchup for right-thinking Americans

Really, when I started this thing, I didn't think I'd be writing about ketchup so frequently. But for those who love it enough to care, here's yet another alternative to Heinz/Kerry ketchup.

But my license plate still says "State Of Mind"

I took the "Which state are you?" quiz...It's short, and as a bonus, told me what kind of berry I'd be. If I were a berry, that is. Which I'm not. And I don't think a marionberry is a real berry. But I get the joke. 


You're the District of Columbia!

While you really like to believe you're in control of everything around
you, there is more than meets the eye. In spite of your attendance in several parades
and your almost unending ability to vote, you actually are getting taxed without being
represented! In spite of this shameful double-standard, you are still unendingly loyal
to your country and your flag. You love monuments, memorials, and museums. If you were
a type of berry, you would be a marionberry.


Take the State Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

UPDATE: Washington, D.C. isn't even a state. This test is fuckin' rigged.

9/11 Commission report

This was emailed to me last week from the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR, the survey research and public opinion professional organization):

On page 341 of the report, it states "As best we can determine, neither in 2000 nor in the first eight months of 2001 did any polling organization in the United States think the subject of terrorism sufficiently on the minds of the public to warrant asking a question about it in a major national survey." This is completely incorrect. The IPOLL database of the Roper Center includes over 40 questions asked by 14 different organizations, including NORC, Gallup, CBS, NBC, and the Pew Center to name just a few. An example of what was asked and an item that shows that terrorism was on the "minds of the public" is the following question from the 2000 General Social Survey of the National Opinion Research Center (2-5/2000):
Are the following threats to the United States greater, about the same, or less today than they were 10 years ago?
                        % Greater Threat
     A. Spying by US citizens for foreign governments 30.7
     B. Spying by foreign agents 34.6
     C. Terrorism by US citizens 49.8
     D. Terrorism by foreigners 64.6
     E. Stealing US advanced technology and trade secrets by foreigners 51.9
     F. Nuclear war 30.5
          N=1403
Thus, we see that in early 2000 the public thought that foreign terrorism was the threat that had grown the most since 1990.

This, I think, is just more support for the assertion that the media was much less concerned with the threat of terrorism before September 11, 2001 than was the American public. The media's immediate dismissal of the war in Iraq and of Bush's handling of the larger war on terror could make the case that they still underestimate the threat.

Is the New York Times a liberal newspaper?

Of course it is.

See? Murder!

In shoulda-seen-that-coming news, rapper C-Murder has been indicted on two counts of second-degree murder.

Sunday song lyric

A different kind of song today. "Bird Stealing Bread" by Iron and Wine is much more poetic, although no less evocative, than last week's "Thank U." Since nearly all of the lyrics on this album are great, I had a hard time picking one song in particular, but I think I like this one the best. As a point of coincidence, Sam Beam, the man behind Iron and Wine is mentioned in that horrible article about Wilco I commented on last week.

Tell me, baby, tell me
are you still on the stoop
watching the windows close?
I've not seen you lately
on the street by the beach
or places we used to go.

I've a picture of you
on our favorite day
by the seaside.
There's a bird stealing bread
that i brought
out from under my nose.

Tell me, baby, tell me
does his company make
light of a rainy day?
How i've missed you lately
and the way we would speak
and all that we wouldn't say.

Do his hands in your hair
feel a lot like a thing
you believe in?
Or a bit like a bird
stealing bread
out from under your nose?

Tell me, baby, tell me
do you carry the words
around like a key or change?
I've been thinking lately
of a night on the stoop
and all that we wouldn't say.

If i see you again
on the street by the beach
in the evening
will you fly like a bird stealing bread
out from under my nose?

Halle Berry learns a new word

In this interview promoting the certainly crap-tastic "Catwoman," Halle Berry shows off her vocabulary. Can you guess the new word she learned for this movie?

"[The costume was] A little daunting, but the movie is a visual spectacle, and I had to wear the suit, I had to fit into it and really try to become lean and sinewy and very catlike...I thought because it was cut out, you got to see more of the muscles and sort of the spine and the sinewiness of a cat, so in my mind, it made sense," Berry said.

I'm pretty sure "sinewiness" is not even a real word.

An arbitrary question

Does anyone know what "value-added" means? What part of speech is it? I've seen and heard it used as both a noun and an adjective. Can someone demonstrate proper usage in a sentence? If it's just corporate nonsense (e.g. "core competencies," "goal-orientation"), please at least let me know that. This isn't a quiz, I kinda really need to know.

Flight 93

Once the hijackers were in control, they knew that passengers were using cell phones and seat-back phones to call the ground "but did not seem to care," according to the report. Yet clearly what the passengers learned in those phone calls inspired their counterattack on the cockpit. . . .
"It might not have occurred to him that they were certain to learn what had happened in New York, thereby defeating his attempts at deception," the report said. . . .
The report does not clarify whether the hijackers' goal for Flight 93 was the White House or the Capitol, but indicates that the hijackers tuned a cockpit radio to the frequency of a navigation beacon at National Airport, just across the Potomac River from the capital, erasing any doubt about the region of their intended destination.
At three seconds after 10 a.m., Mr. Jarrah is heard on the cockpit voice recorder saying: "Is that it? Shall we finish it off?"
But another hijacker responds: "No. Not yet. When they all come, we finish it off."
The voice recorder captured sounds of continued fighting, and Mr. Jarrah pitched the plane up and then down. A passenger is heard to say, "In the cockpit. If we don't we'll die!"
Then a passenger yelled "Roll it!" Some aviation experts have speculated that this was a reference to a food cart, being used as a battering ram.
Mr. Jarrah "stopped the violent maneuvers" at 10:01:00, according to the report, and said, "Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!"
"He then asked another hijacker in the cockpit, `Is that it? I mean, shall we put it down?' to which the other replied, `Yes, put it in it, and pull it down.' "
Eighty seconds later, a hijacker is heard to say, "Pull it down! Pull it down!"
"The hijackers remained at the controls but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them," according to the report, which seems to indicate that the hijackers themselves crashed the plane. "With the sounds of the passenger counterattack continuing, the aircraft plowed into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 580 miles per hour, about 20 minutes' flying time from Washington, D.C," according to the report.

A media strategery

A short section in the report from the comission investigating the 9/11 attacks singled out the media for a bit of criticism.

"It is hard now to recapture the conventional wisdom before 9/11. For example, a New York Times article in April 1999 sought to debunk claims that Bin Laden was a terrorist leader, with the headline 'U.S. Hard Put to Find Proof Bin Laden Directed Attacks.'"

Basically, the section criticizes the media for not calling attention to terrorism concerns in the months before 9/11. Of course, these concerns are much better publicised now, due in no small part to the efforts of the Department of Homeland Security to keep the public informed.
I hear a lot of crap from people about how all the announcements from DHS about possible upcoming attacks are part of a "strategy of fear" used by the Bush administration to keep Americans cowed and therefore eager to vote Republican. Would they prefer another surprise attack? If terrorism concerns were not sufficiently publicised, as they weren't before 9/11, how long would it be before we were reading another report like this? Would we even be around to read it next time?
"What, then, are we supposed to do when we hear such an annoucement?" they often follow-up with. I don't know what to do either. But do you think the people on board the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania knew what to do? No, but they shouted, "let's roll" and did something anyway, saving countless lives, and perhaps the lives of a majority of our elected officials, in the process. Annie Jacobsen didn't know what to do, but we know that there is still a very real threat. We're given the comparative luxury of contemplating in advance what actions we could conceivably take, and I think the administration deserves credit for giving us that.

Last iPod-related post for awhile....probably

Apple sent me an email today letting me know that the new iPods are out. On their website was this little bit that I thought was really cool:

It’s amazing to think you can hold 10,000 songs in your pocket. Before iPod came along, you needed a forklift to carry around that much music. Here’s why:

– Vinyl Records = 562 lbs.

– Compact Disks = 87 lbs.

– Cassettes = 28 lbs.

– 40GB iPod = 6.2 ounces

They've lowered the prices, too.

I agree

An Instapundit reader declares that "The Joe Wilson Implosion" would be a good name for a band.

A bomb regardless

Some douchenozzle called Stephen Metcalf craps out an atrocious piece of hate-speech in Slate about one of the only bands that matters today, Wilco. You should read the whole thing, if only to give yerself an excuse to get angry-drunk tonight. He begins:

Great. Along with God, flag, and country, you now have to love the rock band Wilco, or be forced to account for yourself.

Uh, really? Who's going to force you to account for yourself (besides me, I mean)? He goes on to sneer out a brief recap of the band's career arc to this point, taking particular care to point out Wilco's refusal to compromise to major label demands to make Yankee Hotel Foxtrot more commercial sounding. At one point, he actually compares Wilco to Hootie and the Blowfish. I'll admit that I haven't heard the last few Hootie albums, but I'm pretty sure there's not a track consisting of 15 minutes of ear-splitting, droning white noise on any of them. Idiot. But here's where it gets extry stupid:

Wilco isn't the product of Jeff Tweedy's unswerving artistic conviction. Wilco is the product of Tweedy's epic insecurity. Ironically, it's Tweedy's peculiarly tractable sense of artistic self that has allowed Wilco to become the band of the moment. 

I just don't understand this. How does buying back your own album from the record company after refusing to change a note of your album, then consistently working to get a distribution deal that allows for maximum creative flexibility become known as a "tractable sense of artistic self?" As "evidence," he trots out a flimsy claim that Jeff Tweedy holed up with a Warner Bros. A&R man to try to bang out a single from the album SummerTeeth. But he fails to acknowledge, almost certainly because it would underline his thesis, that Wilco pissed off their record company for burying the single versions the record company pushed for to the ass-end of the album. They are uncredited, "hidden" tracks. Maybe the record company did force them to put them on the album, but by relegating the tracks to b-side obscurity, even to the point that a potential buyer wouldn't even know they existed, Wilco was able to salvage a little dignity. And I think they should get some credit for the effort. They didn't just roll over like this dickweed asserts.

He let them tinker with his sound, making it too big and too poppy for college radio, while keeping it too clever and too complex for J. Lo radio.

Hmm...not so much, no. Pitchfork gave the album an almost unheard of 9.4 rating (out of 10), Rolling Stone gave it 3.5 stars, and the acclaim across the rest of critic-dom was nearly universal. What this buttstain doesn't realize is that even if Nelly or R. Kelly paired up with Wilco, they would never get played on "J. Lo radio." Oh, wait, he goes on to take it all back in the next sentence:

The problem, however, was never really with Wilco's sound.

He blames their "failure" on the changing landscape of pop music:

In pop music, albums still triumph commercially, and albums still triumph artistically. But they're almost never the same albums.

Again, no, not so much. I find that a bit hard to accept when cd sales have declined for like a billion years in a row, and iTunes just sold it's 1,000,000 track online.

Accordingly, Warner Brothers never knew whether to go big or go small with Wilco; as a result, they created a confusing hybrid instead. This confusion is everywhere echoed in Kot's narrative. He breathlessly compares Being There, Wilco's 1996 double album, to Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde, the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street, and the Clash's London Calling. Setting aside the basic "Um, hello ..." factor at work here, Being There is not a cultural landmark of the same order. No one could argue that Being There "spoke to a generation." Eight years later, it has not even gone gold.

Dipshit! That's not the point! 400,000 albums sold is damn revelation for a band like Wilco! This guy completely fails to take into account that there never will be another Exile On Main Street in terms of commercial success matching artistic success, mostly because there's like 20 billion bands out there right now. The proliferation and democritization of pop music, when combined with near universal and instantaneous distribution via the Internet, means that people can choose to completely ignore albums that would, in another time, be cultural landmarks. If you dug music in the '60s, you had no choice but to like Dylan, or the Beatles. Now, you can not even have heard of Wilco and still be considered to have taste.

It's the story of rock 'n' roll rebranding itself as a niche product, sold to a smaller and smaller subset of the record-buying public, and the identity crisis this has engendered—at the major labels, among record buyers, and in the sound of the music itself.

Close, but not quite. Somebody needs to break it to this guy that record labels don't control jack shit anymore. Remember Napster?
He goes on to try to pigeonhole Wilco as a "deconstructionist" band (never mind the fact that he confused "deconstruction" with "destruction"), but doesn't bother to define why he thinks it's a bad thing.  Metcalf degenerates from there into personal attacks on Tweedy:

The best and most original rock musicians of the '90s embraced this marginalization by cheerfully casting off all of rock's old pretense to grandiosity. I'm thinking now of Stephin Merrit, Elliott Smith, Sam Beam, Chan Marshall, and Stuart Murdoch, all of whom hide behind aliases or their fellow band-mates, or record out of their own bedrooms. Each one generally strikes an extremely dignified, vaguely anti-rock star profile. But Tweedy doesn't know what pose to strike—nice guy or demonic rocker?

Let's see...Elliott Smith stabbed himself in the heart, Chan Marshall can barely get people to pay attention to her onstage, and Stuart Murdoch (of Belle and Sebastian) has only recently reformed the stage presence of the band that could barely perform their own songs on stage (e.g. the disastrous "Sessions at West 54th"). So, to gain Metcalf's respect, Tweedy should either kill himself or become a horrible stage presence? WTF, dude? Wilco (and Tweedy in particular) is deeply in love with rock 'n' roll, as anyone who has listened to Being There could tell you. Tweedy, in his years with Uncle Tupelo, lived the rock life. He slept on bar floors, dodged flying bottles, and played punk and country music. He grew and matured as a songwriter and as a performer. He recognizes that his favorite bands pushed the envelope of rock, incorporating new influences, finding new sounds, and persuing their own visions without alienating their fans. Never mind that this is nearly impossible to do with today's increasingly fickle music audience, Tweedy continues to do this again and again, with each successive album. To begrudge Tweedy his utterly unique success in keeping rock's best traditions while exploring its boundaries is simple-minded and dishonest. Do us all a favor, asswipe, and stick to Hootie.

Bigots v. "bigots"

University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor Ann Althouse takes the hometown paper, the Capital Times, to task for it's bullshit editorial today calling President George W. Bush a "bigot" for his stance on a proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. A snippet:

What a shabby, ridiculous way to write an editorial! Do the proponents of gay marriage hope to win their cause by intimidating the opposition with name-calling? The argument for gay marriage is completely sound and reasonable. Why abandon the high ground in the debate as if you think that reason is not on your side? Bush isn't lying and he isn't a bigot, he's just pandering--and that's bad enough. 

Read the whole thing, though.
Compare that to these remarks from an actual bigot:

It's a real conflict for me when I go to a concert and find out somebody in the audience is a Republican or fundamental Christian. It can cloud my enjoyment. I'd rather not know.

If you think I'm exaggerating when I call her a bigot, replace "Republican" and/or "fundamental Christian" with "homosexual" or "black person," and then think about it again.

iPod nation, Pts. 2 & 3

The University of New Jersey at Durham...ahem, I mean, Duke University will start handing out iPods to incoming freshmen this year, ostensibly for "course content," like recorded lectures and foreign language recordings. Whatever.

It might seem an extravagant back-to-school item, but remember, students pay a premium to study at Duke -- $39,240 a year for tuition, fees, room and board.

And they can't spend another $200 for an iPod? That's busted.
They're gonna get the new ones, too. Not that I'm jealous or anything. When I was a freshman, I got a plastic cup with some shaving cream, a sticker, and some gum in it.

Hey ya, Charlie Brown!

The Peanuts gang give props to OutKast.

I need new headphones

Can someone recommend a new pair of headphones? I prefer earbuds, and as I've mentioned, the ones that come with the iPod are uncomfortable. I've bought two pairs of these Koss earbuds that have foam that you jam into yer ears to block out outside noise, and they sound great, but suffer from the same problem nearly all affordable headphones do. Namely, the sound has started to drop out of one or both channels cos the wire by the plug is loose or whatever. You know what I'm talking about. If you have an idea, post a link in the comments or send me an email.

Axis of whatnow?

In "no shit, Sherlock" news, we learned yesterday that Iran may possibly be involved in terrorism. Some folks have been using this news to argue that we invaded the wrong country, but that strikes me as a bit disingenuous, because I have a hard time believing that the same folks making this argument would support preventative (excuse me, "pre-emptive") military action in Iran.
John Kerry, however, says that he supports most of Bush's pre-emption doctrine.

"Am I prepared as president to go get them before they get us if we locate them and have the sufficient intelligence? You bet I am," he said at a news conference at his Washington headquarters.

So, this leads one to ask, would Kerry, if elected, take us into Iran? Or Syria? There are those who suggested, during the year-long "rush to war" that going into Iraq would be a distraction from the real war, the war on terrorism, with the states sponsoring terrorism being Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and possibly Pakistan. But take a look at this, and tell me if the Bush strategery was really a "distraction?" It looks like we're doing a pretty good job of surrounding or isolating hostile countries with either our forces or those that are generally regarded as being friendly to the US. So if Kerry supports the strategy, and it appears to be working, what exactly is his opposition all about? Respect? Do we really need this guy's respect?

What's the French word for "vacation?"

Drudge smacks John "F-Bomb" Kerry around a bit.

iPod nation

There's a pretty good, if typically shallow, article in Newsweek about iPods. The writer makes a pretty big deal about the headphones, and how you supposedly can identify an iPod user by the white cords dangling from their ears. To me, though, the headphones are the worst part of the iPod. They sound good, sure, but they're so uncomfortable that I've only used them a handful of times. And the cord is too short.

Harry Potter, capitalist pig

Apparently, Harry Potter has caused quite a stir among French literary critics for subtly advancing capitalist and individualist ideas in its text. An excerpt from an article in today's New York Times:

Harry Potter, probably unintentionally, thus appears as a summary of the social and educational aims of neoliberal capitalism. Like Orwellian totalitarianism, this capitalism tries to fashion not only the real world, but also the imagination of consumer-citizens. The underlying message to young fans is this: You can imagine as many fictional worlds, parallel universes or educational systems as you want, they will still all be regulated by the laws of the market. Given the success of the Harry Potter series, several generations of young people will be indelibly marked by this lesson.

Meanwhile, you French assholes, in news that actually matters, some shit is about to go down.

Sunday song lyric

I want to start posting song lyrics I like each week. I'm doing this for several reasons, not the least of which is that while I have the most time on Sundays to post stuff, there's usually not a whole lot of new stuff I feel like I should point out on Sundays. Second, part of this site is about music, and part of pop music is lyrics. Admittedly, I don't pay as much attention to lyrics as I probably should, and (as a third reason) I think having an obligation each week to post lyrics I like will force me to listen more closely. That's the theory, anyway.
That said, the title of the post should not be construed as to be having anything to do with Sunday, or music traditionally associated with it. And here I'm thinking of stupid jazzy or shitty folk music that yuppies salivate into their lattes over on Sunday mornings at the coffee shop. I will probably never post any Norah Jones or Joni Mitchell lyrics. And while some lyrics will inevitably touch on such universal themes as God and spirituality, again, the fact that it's Sunday is purely coincidental.
That being said, I totally ripped off this idea from the Volokh Conspiracy. Deal.
 
All of that being said, today's lyrics are for a song I've always secretly liked.  "Thank U," from Alanis Morissette's second album, which I rather like, is rare among pop songs in that it's so honest about acknowledging the less desirable experiences and parts of one's personality that contribute to being a more whole person. Although we've come to expect nothing less than naked honesty from her, it's refreshing to hear someone being so self-aware as to realize that the bad things you've said, done, and experienced are just a big a part of you as the sunnier parts. Or something.
 

How 'bout getting off of these antibiotics?
How 'bout stopping eating when I'm full up?
How 'bout them transparent dangling carrots?
How 'bout that ever elusive kudo?
 
Thank you India
Thank you terror
Thank you disillusionment
Thank you frailty
Thank you consequence
Thank you thank you silence
 
How 'bout me not blaming you for everything?
How 'bout me enjoying the moment for once?
How 'bout how good it feels to finally forgive you?
How 'bout grieving it all one at a time?
 
The moment I let go of it
was the moment I got more than I could handle
The moment I jumped off of it
was the moment I touched down
 
How 'bout no longer being masochistic?
How 'bout remembering your divinity?
How 'bout unabashedly bawling your eyes out?
How 'bout not equating death with stopping?
 
Thank you India
Thank you Providence
Thank you disillusionment
Thank you nothingness
Thank you clarity
Thank you thank you silence

My next t-shirt

Obviously, the one on the right is my favorite.

Clinton was right?

Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard is probably the most knowledgeable person around about the connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. His latest piece focuses on what Clinton administration officials said about the connection. Peep what was in their indictment of Osama bin Laden:

Al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq.

 
He concludes the piece thusly:

So the Clinton administration, based on the evidence it had, was right to express concerns about an Iraq-al Qaeda connection. We now know more. And given the vast number of documents from the former Iraqi regime that sit untranslated, we are certain to learn more still. It's an odd time for the former president and his old advisers to be backing away from what they once so confidently told us.

 
He's referring to Bill Clinton, somewhat dishonestly, talking to Katie Couric on the Today show.  She asked, "What do you think about this connection that Cheney, that Vice President Cheney continues to assert between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda?" Clinton pleaded total ignorance. "All I can tell you is I never saw it, I never believed it based on the evidence I had."
Read the whole thing.

I gotta have more cowbell!

This is amazingly cool.
 
(If you don't get it, watch this.)

Popsicle stick joke

Why did the book join the police?
 
So he could work undercover.

Kerry's base

Evan Thomas, an associate editor at Newsweek, had this to say about the upcoming election:

MR. THOMAS: There's one other base here, the media. Let's talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win and I think they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards I'm talking about the establishment media, not Fox. They're going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and there's going to be this glow about them, collective glow, the two of them, that's going to be worth maybe 15 points.

Oh, that liberal media.

UPDATE: Apparently, he can see the future, too.

Bumpers

Fox and, to a lesser extent, Major League Baseball are nearly back on my good side, after they featured no less than three songs by the Old 97's for their bumpers during last night's All-Star game. "West Texas Teardrops," "Great Barrier Reef," and "Too Far To Care," are all from their uniformly excellent album "Too Far to Care." They may have used more songs than that, but I fell asleep during the 8th inning.

One for Leno

I can't believe they got away with this headline.

Senate intelligence committee report

Dan Darling at Windsofchange.net actually read all 500+ pages of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report about pre-war intelligence. His review is very, very long, so here are the conclusions he comes to:

The Additional Views

I'll be quite honest and say that most of these strike me as rather polemical in nature and seems more or less designed to set up the next phase of Washington politicking, with both Republican and Democratic senators making claims that, truth be told, are not supported or are in certain cases directly contradicted by the actual text of the document in question. I'll be quite honest and say that if one reads simply the additional views but not the body of the report that they're going to be left with an extremely skewed view as far as what the report actually says or the conclusions that were reached within it on a number of key points.

The bottom line

Everything Powell said at the UN regarding Iraqi ties to al-Qaeda (which is pretty much the same as what President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and others said going into the war) appears to have reflected the consensus of the broader intelligence community.

Joe Wilson's claims (along with, I suspect, his reputation within Democratic circles) have more or less gone down in flames, as have claims that intelligence analysts were pressured into making certain conclusions.

...

In general, this document is a lot better than that Staff Statement No. 15 that was churned out by the 9/11 commission. One other thing to be mentioned, incidentally, is that this report specifically undercuts some of the 9/11 Commission's key findings with respect to Iraq and al-Qaeda. It cites post-1999 contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda, which the 9/11 commission claims to possess no information on. Perhaps someone should hand the commission members a copy of the Senate Intelligence Committee report?

Also, this demolishes 2 of Richard Clarke's key claims with respect to Iraq: that there was no Iraqi involvement in terrorism post-1993, and that there is no evidence whatsoever of Iraqi support for al-Qaeda. Both of these claims, to put it quite simply, can now be shown to be factually untrue.

So, let's review, shall we?
* Joe Wilson lied, and the British and American governments both have said that Iraq did indeed try to buy (and may have succeeded in buying) uranium for use in nuclear weapons from Niger.
* Shells containing mustard and sarin gas (aka WMD) have been found in Iraq on more than one occasion.
* Neither Dick Cheney nor anyone else pressured CIA analysts to come to any specific conclusions about WMD or Al-Qaeda connections.
* The evidence of an Iraq- Al-Qaeda tie is contested at worst, and there is evidence that those making definitive statements in both directions (there was/wasn't a tie) have not seen all the evidence.

And I'm still seeing bumper stickers saying "Bush lied." Sheesh.

Conservative=bigoted?

Evan at BrainTerminal comes across a case of potential thesaurus bias. Even if he is seeing something that isn't there, namely a concerted political bias against conservatives, one does have to wonder how this got in there in the first place. Never mind the number of people that actually think it's true.

A very important post about....Lindsay Lohan

OMG!!!
Lindsay Lohan has apparently just inked a long-term recording contract with Tommy Mottola's record label. Her debut will probably be sandwiched somewhere between Hillary Duff and Aaron Carter...On the charts, people! Get yer minds out of the gutter.

Amination!

A very funny parody featuring John Kerry, George W. Bush, and lots of swearing, name calling and funny costumes.

America's Ketchup!

For all of us who wished that we could enjoy delicious ketchup without the drag of knowing that a portion of the proceeds would almost certainly go to the campain of John "These Aren't the Droids You're Looking For" Kerry, comes W Ketchup. It's America's ketchup!

Sixteen words, part 2

The Boston Globe takes another look at Bush's infamous 16 words.

Piss off, Major League Baseball

This really doesn't have anything to do with music, politics, or hippies, but I sat down to watch the last half of the Cubs-Cardinals game on Fox yesterday, a game I was very much looking forward to seeing, and ended up very pissed off. The game was Fox's game of the week, which means that it was being broadcast nationally and I could watch it even here in the OCNC. So the Cubs are down by 3 heading into the 8th, when Fox cuts away from the game and goes back to the studio for scores and highlights of other games. And that's it. They're not showing us anymore of the Cubs game. The hell? The only morsel of information Fox deigns to toss our way is, "Due to contractual obligations, we'll not be able to show the rest of this game." No explanation, no apology, nothing. Just some only marginally attractive woman and some jag with a moustache talking about other games that I don't care about.
You may be asking, "Why aren't you pissed off at Fox, then?" Because the contract she referred to could only be with Major League Baseball, and MLB was already on my shit list for not allowing WGN radio (Chicago) to broadcast Cubs games over the internet. MLB and that ass-hat Bud Selig have proven that the fans are the very last thing on their minds when structuring broadcast contracts, and that we come in a distant third to money and money.
MLB, like the record industry, is actively pushing away its customers and those who are interested in its "product." I'm not naive enough to think that there's going to be any major renovation in either the broadcast rights or ticket prices anytime soon, and I'm by no means a superfan who pretends to know everything about the business of baseball. But it is the only sport whose current policies actively discourage new or casual fans from taking an increased interest in the game.

Sumpin' for da fellaz

I don't know about you guys, but Wonder Woman was a pretty big deal for my in my younger years. The TV show, starring Linda Carter, was an unvarnished highlight of my youth. Just for kicks, here's a photo gallery of particularly saucy Wonder Woman photos. Why is Wonder Woman eating a popsicle? Because super heroines love popsicles, just like you.

Nice backpack

For the story behind this, go here.

Seriously? Make time.

Just for Jennifer

"Winston-Salem!!! Are you ready to soft-rock?!?!?"

Bowie hospitalized

David Bowie, who has no less than six albums in my iPod, was admitted to the hospital for emergency heart surgery. The prognosis seems to be good.

Not that there's anything wrong with that...

"I've been covering Washington and politics for 30 years. I can say I've never seen this much touching between two men, publicly," e-mailed one wire photographer.

Sure, I'll have one more...

As I had a few too many adult beverages at too late an hour last night, I'm a bit too foggy-headed yet to throw up (pun intended) anything terribly interesting this morning. That said, here's something to marinate on until the mocha kicks in:

I am somewhat disheartened that many people believe our entire foreign policy post-9.11 can be explained with murky conspiracy scenarios about oil and Saudis and oil and Saudi oil and Texans and oil and Saudis, but refuse to accept that the actual avowed enemies of the United States might have made common cause over the years.

I'm a cherry ghost

MTV2.com has an interview with a surprisingly chipper Jeff Tweedy (Wilco).

Songbook

I checked out Nick Hornby's "Songbook" from the library yesterday (and nearly finished the damn thing last night). So far, it's very funny, and it comes with a cd so you can listen to some of the songs he writes about. He mentions, though, that he wanted his book About A Boy to have a tone similar to REM's "E-bow the Letter." (That's an iTunes link.)
I just thought that was a cool way to describe the book.
Also, on the cd is a song ("You Had Time") by Ani DiFranco. I never really liked her, but it's a very nice song. I think that makes up for my shooting the militant lesbian in that game (below).

comments fixed

Some of you have mentioned that you couldn't leave a comment without registering for the site. This has been fixed, so comment away.
My one rule is: no anonymous comments! Just a first name is enough, but no fakes. And keep in mind that while I've no intent to "crush" anyone's "dissent," I do have the ability to delete your comment(s) and/or ban you from commenting again. If you don't want it to happen to you, don't make me do it. If you think it's too far or otherwise inappropriate, it probably is.
Get to it then, hippies.