friday night owl post

a mysterious owl flew through my window this afternoon and delivered this unbelievable little capsule of reeking horseshit:

Wednesday, August 25, 2004
8:30 am - 1:45 pm
Grand Hyatt Hotel
Park Avenue at Grand Central Station
New York City
[ed. note: observe the flawless piece of picklerism these plankton just couldn't help but include...]
While the media focuses on the illogic of hosting a Republican convention in New York City where elected officials and registered voters are overwhelmingly Democrats, it fails to recognize that compassionate conservative policies--enacted by Republicans--have transformed the city, and made the streets safe and the economy prosper. In fact, New York is the perfect place for Republicans to convene. Our panels on Accountability and Raising Standards, Quality of Life, and President Bush’s Tax Policies will show how this happened.

follow the link to see the veritable rogue's gallery of pinheaded punditry speaking at the conference, including the frabjous nooner and the crapulent pudwhoretz.

i think atrios should write a piece about this "manhattan institute" - i'm afraid i'm a little busy doing more important things, like watching lara croft, tomb raider on tbs.

parse amongst yourselves.

p.s. - the stupid fucking owl keeps delivering gimmes from the heritage foundation, too - i simply tear them up and send them back in the postage-paid envelope.

pet picture friday

since everybody seems to be posting pictures of their cats and dogs and stuff today, i figured i'd join in the fun and post a picture of my little bundle of joy, who i like to call mookie.

feeding him's kind of difficult, but my neighbor likes to leave his dog outside at night...

ain't he cute?

other people died too

i am two days late for the funeral, it seems.

three americans dead in najaf thursday; whooole lot of "them other guys" since then. [it's okay pardner - them there fellers was hoss thieves, an' they wore black hats, so they muss've been the bad guys. so killen'em's a good thing. damn it - then why the hell am i not enjoying it?]

what a brutal week.

here's something from the late C-B to ameliorate the sadness...

for some of us, this
was a miraculous picture of
something we thought existed
only inside our heads.

rick james, r.i.p.

prometheus 6 informs us that pioneer of punk funk rick james is dead.

for today at least, this will be a sad song in my head.

to some, a point of controversy

i have some things to say that have nothing to do with the news cycle, somebody else's post, or anything other than what's inside my own head. i just thought it was time to revisit some things i think are important to say out loud. it's nothing particularly new or timely, but unfortunately it's a place that must be revisited again and again, for good or ill.

a lert is a bort who lives in a bush

via kalilily, this delectation. i think your friend needs a blog, K.

because you expect it of me

from george, this interview with an old poetry teacher of mine. [yes, i did touch the hem of his robe, and yes, it did heal me.]

the ex-lion tamer's predictable post-democon post

my conscience forces me to link, predictably, to this.

executive summary:

Remember, comrades, I'm only asking questions, here. I'm sorry if the answers make you uncomfortable about your favorite rich guy.

I know what you're going to say. "Isn't Bush worse?"

By a long shot. Asking if Kerry is as bad as Bush is like asking if a slap in the face is as painful as a brick to the skull.

But don't you get tired of being slapped around by privileged politicos on hypocrisy hyper-drive -- then having to applaud? It can't be pleasant, no matter how many pretty balloons they drop on your head.

transcript of MM speech at democon

available here courtesy of Democracy Now!

just as rousing, in its way, as any of the other speeches, and maybe a little more credible.

people who call MM the "lefty limbaugh" haven't really listened to either one.

the politics of go fuck yourself

i love it when people in politics - and sadly, it's never just the Repugnantans - finally let slip and show their hand.

by way of atrios by way of balta, we have this tasty tidbit of truculent, treasonous tripe:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A campaign worker for President Bush said on Thursday American workers unhappy with low-quality jobs should find new ones -- or pop a Prozac to make themselves feel better.

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?" said Susan Sheybani, an assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt.

The comment was apparently directed to a colleague who was transferring a phone call from a reporter asking about job quality, and who overheard the remark.

When told the Prozac comment had been overheard, Sheybani said: "Oh, I was just kidding."

whoops! will you still have insurance?

also of note:

While recent employment growth has buoyed Bush's economic record, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has argued the new jobs are not as good as those lost due to outsourcing in recent years.

Nearly 1.1 million jobs have been lost since Bush took office in January 2001 [emphasis added].

what a bunch of fucking maroons. i've got some haldol decks for them right here...riiiiight heeeere... [nurse ratched, where are you??]

it's not just that they're going to lose...it's not just that they deserve to lose...it's that they deserve to have their fucking noses rubbed in it for all eternity.

code pink busted at democon

interesting...

funny to see this bit of news, having just got off of the picket line w/ my union sisters and brothers [i'm hard on them, but i still stand with them] protesting about the health care crisis, part of which is how badly paid those of us on the front line are. it doesn't help to pay the people at the top six figures while the people actually providing the health care can't even afford health care themselves!

you can't take care of sick people and support the health of the nation if health care is run like a for-profit corporation, which exists for one reason and one reason only: to make the maximum amount of profit possible for the people at the top with the least amount of expenditure at the bottom, or at the consumer end.

are all the dems' promises going to be just talk, or are we going to see some real action? my union has endorsed JK & JE, but that doesn't mean the fight is going to be over when and if they win - not by a long shot.

well, back to work, nursing a sunburn...at least i didn't get hauled off in handcuffs.

kerry's theme song

my stomach is still clenching and unclenching furiously from "don't...stop... thinkin' about tomooorroooow" over and over and over again back in 1992. and i don't even dislike fleetwood mac.

if john kerry has to choose a theme song for his campaign, let it be something people can really rally around....

my fellow americans...i give you...
armagideon time by the clash

FOIA

so while we're on the subject - any of you guys [i mean my civilian readers] ever put in an FOIA request to see your file?

i've been thinking of doing that.

the paradox is that doing that is sort of a red flag, isn't it?

does it even matter? maybe some infantile part of me craves the attention, as if it would make me more important than i really am.

i think i'm going through one of my "crazy" phases again. maybe you all should just come back in a couple of weeks and see then whether i've snapped out of it yet.

peace - "r"

an open letter to the friendly ghosts

embarrassed by my own apparent eccentricity, i have rewritten this note in lemon juice on the next page. if i were you i'd skip it and move on - it demonstrates little in the way of erudition or articulateness.

it CAN happen here? it already DID!

as is typical of common dreams dot org, this post, while informative, i'm afraid simply does not go far enough.

here we are, a small group of kids who realize our government's fucked...but what are we gonna do?

more very important things

where the f?!k is my coffee!!!

i think i'm going to sue the onion for interfering with my work and thus preventing me from being a fully functioning, productive member of society.

transcript of obama speech

made for interesting reading.

damn those democrats...they keep sucking me in with guys like this.

i hope there will be more where he came from in the future...

the neverending story

once upon a time, a small group of kids realized their government's fucked, but what're they gonna do? so they got together during band rehearsal and a couple of beers and said, 'it's not enough to write songs about fucked up ronnie - we've got to do something.'

now, these were good kids, albeit short-haired and unfashionable when all around them was the supercuts and the l. l. bean. they knew that in england where all the cool music came from people threw bricks and molotovs at the bobbies, but they didn't want to do that - one of them had an uncle who used to be a cop, and one of them bought some really excellent weed from another cop. the problem seemed to be cops but yet not to be the cops...it was a conundrum. there was something complicated going on...it was 'the system'...but what was 'the system'?

so they read them up some books from the library. they decided, first, to read all the books that their teachers, coaches, ministers, parents, army recruiters and school counselors told them were bad books. so they read marx, engels, the marquis de sade, emma goldman, nietzsche, camus, baudelaire, rimbaud, abby hoffman, amiri baraka, stanislofsky, solzhenitzen, what have you. anything that the other kids in school said their parents said was bad or lefty-loony or eggheaded, they went the other way and read about.

some of it, they figured out, was either (1) boring (2) bullshit or (3) both.

a lot of the great stuff they read said 'give up now, there's no fucking point, they'll just shoot you, it'll never change. go get high.' so they went and got high. but, bright and young and energetic kids they were, they still felt bad about what the bad cops were doing, and they wanted to fuck some shit up. ah, youth.

so they talked to The Old Yippie Who Lived Down The Street.

Toy, as we'll call him, could barely see or hear, he was so old, and he peed in the coffee can he dumped his cigaret butts and roaches. he stank and was raddled with disease. but he had some great fucking weed so they smoked up with him and asked him, "Toy, what was it like Back In The Day?"

Toy picked a big ball of wax out of his ear and said, "Back In The Day, we used to demonstrate."

so the bright young kids staged a direct action on a bank that was known to invest in the apartheid regime. this wasn't some shocking revelation as it had been on the evening news the night before. they showed up in front of the bank dressed all in torn up pegged battledress fatigue pants with lots of safety pins, cool Augusto Sandino t-shirts, and ski masks. they threw balloons full of cheap perfume at the bank and shouted through bullhorns, "APARTHEID STINKS! DIVEST NOW!"

after the cops beat the living fucking crap out of them and sent them home, the kids watched the TV and saw not a single thing about their protest. they hung their heads in discouragement.

then, they heard the next day in their favorite coffeehouse that Toy and his elderly friends from the Bicycle Repairman's Union were going to join about twenty other groups with names made out of letters, in order to march on city hall protesting something or other. the young punks crowed with excitement, and got their homemade "RONALD WILSON REAGAN 666" t-shirts out.

the kids went to the big march that saturday and got bored out of their fucking minds by the old people droning on and on and on, and the snide yuppies who jeered that they should "move to iran". so they hung around until everybody else went home, and set some newspaper vending machines on fire and chanted "LIES LIES LIES YEAH!"

after the cops beat the living fucking shit out of them again, they limped home and watched the tv. what did they see?

the tv news ignored the big protest, but then they saw the announcer say [in a hurry because it was almost time for the commercial] "and in other news, some shiftless good-for-nothing punks blew up some newspaper vending machines this evening, before being dispersed by law enforcement officers."

the ancient Yippies, by this time, were already fast asleep with their CPAP machines turned on; but the young punks, who hardly ever slept, crowed and celebrated with many a splashing rolling rock and spliff. because for a brief moment, although no one important seemed to care and nothing important seemed to have been accomplished, for a brief moment they had somehow broken through the stultifying, suffocating plastic shield that seemed to cover everything in the world.

on monday, those that weren't arrested and run out of town took showers, got jobs, and stole time from their bosses with whining blogs about how punk rock used to be.

and the fucking capitalist pigs lived happily ever after.

very important things

in reference to amardeep's cultural index: my way is the third way.

1. The internet or Jon Stewart?
H. P. Lovecraft
2. Pavement or Wilco?
Death Cab For Cutie
3. Sonic Youth or Unwound?
Boredoms
Fugazi or Nirvana?
Meat Puppets
5. Bikini Kill or Sleater-Kinney?
Violent Green
6. Bad Brains or Living Colour?
Lee "Scratch" Perry
7. Fatboy Slim or Moby?
Lee "Scratch" Perry
8. Le Tigre or Peaches?
X-Ray Spex
9. Grandmaster Flash or Run DMC?
Rick James
10. The Nation of Ulysses or The Make-Up?
Refused
11. Adrian Tomine (Optic Nerve) or Alan Moore (The Watchmen)?
Grant Morrison (the Invisibles)
12. Mos Def or Talib Kweli?
The Roots
13. Public Enemy or Dead Prez?
NWA
14. Nas or Jay-Z?
Missy Elliot
15. Bands with "mouse" in the title or bands with "cat" in the title?
Bands with "Fucking' in the title, a la "The Fucking Champs"
16. The Cable Guy or The Matrix?
Army Of Darkness
17. Repo Man or Slacker?
Quadrophenia
18. Juliette Binoche or Audrey Tatou?
Isabella Rosellini
19. Dude, Where's My Car? or Friday?
Flirting With Disaster
20. Afrika Bambaataa or Kraftwerk?
The Egyptian Lover
21. Adult or Fischerspooner?
Cobra Verde
22. Andy Warhol or Keith Haring?
Andres Serrano
23. Actual graffiti or Jean-Michel Basquiat?
Lee Quinones
24. Andre the Giant or Hulk Hogan?
El Santo
25. "Vogue" era Madonna or Marilyn Monroe?
Patti LaBelle
26. The Sopranos or The Simpsons?
Six Feet Under
27. Mac or PC?
Hotwheels Lunchbox Casemod
28. Jill Scott or Alicia Keys?
Macy Gray
29. Aimee Mann or Liz Phair?
Chan Marshall
30. Deep house or drum n bass?
Jajouka
31. Ambient or trip-hop?
Erik Satie
A live band or a great DJ?
iPod
33. Vegetarian or meat?
Chocolate
34. Juice or soda?
Coffee
35. On a date: Sushi, yes or no?
Depends on what you mean
36. On your own: Taco Bell, no or yes?
Actual Mexican taco stand
37. Organic vegetables or regular veggies?
Neighborhood farmer's market
38. Backpack or sling?
Pockets of cool jacket
39. Dead Kennedys or Bad Religion?
Millions of Dead Cops
40. A little sublime or a lot of beautiful?
Everything Zen
41. Reggae or ska?
Dub
42. CDs or MP3s?
Vinyl
43. Atmosphere or Aesop Rock?
Source of Labor
44. 1969 or 1979?
1977
45. 1981 or 1991?
1984
46. The Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin?
Jimi Hendrix [snide in-joke answer: the Yardbirds]
47. Tolkein or Rowling?
H. P. Lovecraft
48. In New York: Brooklyn or the Lower East Side?
Queens
49. In the Bay Area: San Francisco or Berkeley?
El Cerrito [alternative answer: West Seattle]
50. On a mountain or on a beach?
In the woods

answers are, of course, subject to whim/mood swing.

when confronted by any artificial duality, i really tend toward the jim steranko/ sherman's havana ovals/ san pellegrino/ david lynch/ portished/ motorhead/ summer in umbria/ panang beef/ croquet/ fred perry sportwear end of things.

and why on earth would i go out and buy CD's by bands trying to slavishly imitate 80's bands when i can listen to the music of those bands instead?

except, of course, if it's interpol or the yeah yeah yeahs. i like them.

some thoughts

since the other, better voices have weighed in, i guess i should say something.

although i have some grudging respect for clinton as a charismatic and consummately machiavellian politician [people who revere bush claim he's smarter than he sounds, but i believe it to be infinitely more true of clinton], and for carter as a statesman [his successes post-presidency with groups such as habitat for humanity are inarguable, if his foreign policy as president were considerably less laudable], i read in both of their speeches an enduring meme among liberals that i think is probably being decried at the various blogs of my fellow anarcho-hotheads, and though i have nothing particularly original to say i might as well chime in for my audience of five or six.

there's this thing in people's minds, it seems, telling them that up until 2001 we were revered around the world as a bastion of truth and justice, that everyone respected us until bush squandered that respect, and that if only gore had been president no one would have been oppressed or murdered under u.s. foreign policy.

i wish to remind you, who scarcely need reminding, that our history is replete with genocide, slavery, foreign adventurism, environmental rapine, capitalist exploitation, and the support of despots. this has occurred under presidents of every party affiliation, some of which nominally no longer exist [some would argue there is only one party, the corporatist party, but that's a whole 'nuther discussion]. all we need to do is go back half a century to reexamine a list that is too overwhelming for many of us to read - and this nation was founded more than four times that long ago.

so enjoy, if you are able to, the mild euphoria that comes from somewhat well-spoken statesmen spouting the all-too-easy aphorisms of american democracy from a platform of alleged liberalism, whatever in the holy hell that means. people are freaked out by stories of mercenaries in iraq, but to tell you the truth, my ancestors fought gladly as mercenaries in many wars, and i'm as much an ideological mercenary soldier now, in that i fight where it profits me today. it's why i don't run around in black crusty-punk fatigues smashing starbucks windows, even though i wish i had the balls. it doesn't profit me...today.

but like others of my stripe, my eye is on tomorrow. and on the other side of a putative kerry presidency, i am ready to go to the barricades then as well. and i doubt any of us will hang up our slingshots for him merely because he moves his lips to the music of the pseudo-left.

maybe the day kerry is elected president, i'll celebrate by smashing some fucking starbucks windows. [we've already driven most of the macdonald's out to the suburbs...] i say that in a metaphorical, poetic sense, of course.

i hope the freeway blogger, david rees, and the rest of the relentless bush-bashing crew don't let up the pressure after january 1 2005. hold kerry's feet to the fire? i hope they fucking roast him on a stick like a hot dog.

file under: ROTFLMFAO

remember the good old days of people standing on soapboxes in community spaces, preaching and teaching directly to the people?
well, my friends, it seems at last those happy days are here again.

[link courtesy of goss anatomy ]

i feel so much safer now, part III

courtesy of the much-maligned but in my mind fabulous ACLU, this funny/scary little animation [link offered by prime cog].

ROTFLMFAOUICCVAPO

[that's, rolling on the floor laughing my fucking ass off until i cried, choked, vomited, and passed out.]

i feel so much safer now, part II

praise jeebus we have foiled the dastardly goa'uld terrorist plot to wormhole us to distant world to build their pyramids, or something.

i believe the fark category would be asinine for this one.

now if they'd only go after those goddamned trekkers.....

i feel so much safer now

brave homeland security officer defends niagra falls from tourist... oh...wait a second....tourist? i thought you said terrorist. my bad...

well, it's not his fault, after all the suspected terrorist guy...sorry, woman...looked somehow vaguely middle eastern...what? she was chinese? oh...well, they all look the same to me...anyway she was supected of carrying expl--oh, wait a second. sorry. she was suspected of carrying pot. that highly dangerous and terroristic plant, that grows out of the ground...oh, wait a second. she was suspected of being somehow involved with a nearby person suspected of carrying pot. except i guess she turned out to just happen to be standing nearby, like probably hundreds of other people.

but, but, she looked foreign and might have been helping to smuggle a plant that grows out of the ground! that's, why, that's....agricultural terrorism!

so let's backtrack:

a tourist who happens to be a chinese woman is standing around, maybe hoping to take a picture of niagra falls, and gets her head banged on the ground by a homeland security officer because she was standing sort of near another guy who was being detained on suspicion of smuggling pot.

boy, talk about a 'wish you were here', postcard moment, huh?

moran, excuse me, more on the "L" word

jeff nails one straight out of the ballpark. this one had me ROTFLMFAO, or would have if i haven't been trembling with rage and disgust all morning due to the...well...the usual Monday morning catch up with the usual foetid crapola bouncing around the whateverosphere.

a tasty excerpt:

The trap: "Senator X, the right wing smear machine has called you a commie rat bastard, which I will now uncritically, puppet-like pose to you. Is it true that you are, in fact, a commie rat bastard, or are you rather a liar who tells his base he's a rat bastard commie only to appease them while you secretly support the sober and judicious policies of the patriotic fundamentalist far right? Which is it?"

The response: "Well [good-looking vacuous reporter's name here], I don't think you can reduce it to labels. Those are the politics of division, and I am an optimistic candidate who looks for solutions, not divisions."

The follow-up: "But you do oppose God and support ripping infants from their mother's wombs and also special rights for buggerers, isn't that correct?"

The second response: "Well [good-looking vacuous reporter's name here], I do support a woman's right to choose, and I think writing bigotry into the Constitution is a drastic and unnecessary step."

The final word: "So you are a rat bastard godless commie, as the patriotic right assert." [read the rest of the post here]

this is the sort of writing that keeps jeff in my top 5.

if you followed the trackback

welcome and thanks for visiting. sorry comments are disabled. but, since i'm a loony leftist, you can send your insults or praise via crystals and crap like that.

or like chakras or whatever.

because i'm a loony leftist and all.

god bless america.

hey michelle malkin: fuck you

UPDATE:
edited to clear up some confusion about which bourgeois suburban enclave in the san juans was mistaken for "seattle" by someone who claims to have actually lived here before, which still boggles my mind. apologies for the error.

UPDATE II:
according to her "about" page, she only lived here for three years - and that makes this her "old hometown"? what a maroon.

* * *

according to the delightfully photogenic journaliste du blog michelle malkin, "seattle hates america".

hm, michelle - i find it interesting that because a handful of mentally challenged yahoos shouted ill-informed noise at returning soldiers, you surmise that my town "hates america". let's set aside for a moment, first of all, that anybody who can't tell the difference between bainbridge island and seattle has little right to speak thereof in such accusatory language.

let me ask you something, michelle. when bush cut veterans' benefits and funding to VA hospitals - something that greatly affects this town greatly populated by military families, among them relatives of mine - does that mean that bush hates america? when seattle's military families wonder when their children will come home from iraq, and want an explanation for why they are there - does that mean they hate america?

when the INS detained dozens of United States citizens [or immigrants holding certifed green cards] of north african, arab and iranian descent in my city without charging them and without allowing their families to speak to them - does that mean the INS hates america?

when thugs in san francisco beat up the owner of an art gallery that hung paintings of the photos from abu ghraib - did that indicate that san francisco hates america?

both berkeley and seattle, which you lump together in a popularly held fantasy that they are bastions of the "loony left", hold something very real in common, obvious to those who live there if not to you - far from being the furry, freaky hippy capitols of yesteryear, they are extremely successful [for a few] epicenters of pure capitalism where extremely wealthy [mostly white] people enjoy congregating and congratulating themselves on being "liberal", whatever the hell that means. bainbridge island is home to many such people, and many of them happily bought the version of world affairs that "journalists" such as yourself have been selling them the past four years.

now that these pathetically uninformed people had abu ghraib rammed down their throats by the reality your "cheers and flowers" reporting sought to supress, they are reacting the way that people do when they discover that the wool has been pulled over their eyes - with rage. ignorance is the most violent force in society, and those who willfully contribute to that ignorance have only themselves to blame when the chickens come home to roost.

so fuck you, michelle malkin. seattle doesn't hate america. as sir mixalot would probably say: seattle hates bullshit. and you are full of it.

i think that the people who booed the returning soldiers were ignorant, uninformed people who, like the majority of americans, reacted with their emotions before engaging their minds. but when the only information people are fed is lies, it's a bit much to expect them to react in what you might call a "fair and balanced" manner.

i for one feel great sympathy and concern for most of the young people returning from that hellish tour of duty. i save my rage and disgust for the people who sent them there in the first place - not in the interests of defending or liberating, but out of a cynical geopolitical maneuver to manipulate the oil economy.

so let me reiterate: a hearty welcome home and thank god you made it back alive to puget sound armed forces personnel. and a hearty fuck you to people like michelle malkin, who don't really give a fuck about those personnel or about seattle enough to find us on a map or know what the fuck she's talking about until it serves her pathetic RNC talking points agenda. fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you. god bless america.

and fuck you.

ALSO OF NOTE:

a shout out to my right wing homies posting comments under her post wishing we would be nuked by korea. you've got to love that level of self-hatred! "nuke me, i've got liberal neighbors!" god bless america.

all about george

george has a cool new matrix-esque layout up.

damn i'm good - i finally recogized a font value by sight, i must be a design student. one look and i was like "that's trebuchet, isn't it?" a quick snatch of the stylesheet confirms it. 2 great minds i guess, i've been obsessed with trebuchet lately.

but i am also obsessed with originality, so i'm going to have to think of a different font to pitch my new work-related blog in. dammit!

i'm surprised i am digging the green-on-black scheme so much too, but it's pretty easy on the eyes.

okay, enough blogstalking for today.

whaddaya gotta do ta get arrestid in this town

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) releases flight manifest of the Bin Laden Express:

One passenger, Omar Awad bin Laden, a nephew of the al Qaeda leader, had been investigated by the FBI because he had lived with Abdullah bin Laden, a leader of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, which the FBI suspected of being a terrorist organization.

now...i'm not one to promote guilt by association by any means, but...come on. just how stupid do they think we are? if they can "scrub" these folks in the space of an hour or two, what are all of the uncharged people in our various gulags doing, waiting for months for the opportunity to be tortured?

whether or not these people are damned to some nefarious purpose by their last name, this again demonstrates that who you know gets you to the head of the line. even if the line is the thin one between americans and their national security.

earth to bushtapo: stop giving us tinfoil! if you don't want conspiracy theories, give the people an explanation. otherwise, people fill in the blanks based on fear, misinformation, disinformation, lies, distortions, half-truths, rumors, gossip, innuendo, and the overpowering stench that is the american media.

give me a reason to believe you're not all a pack of mendacious, scheming liars. please. because i'm just not seeing it now.