I Have no time but I must Blog & the GIG is TOMORROW!

Old Harlan Ellison story had the title “I have no mouth but I must scream” I read a lot of his stuff when I was younger – now, well I don’t remember his name being tossed about much – he might even be dead. I remember as I got older he seemed to be more full of himself than anything else – granted he was good but just not that good.

Sorry went totally off topic – sidetracks rule my life – I think my grave stone should read “here lies Bob Muir Born 7/24/56 Died …just to side track for a moment did you know…”

Anyway the post has a story that the democratic superdelgates (do these people get capes with their status? It’d make the easier to spot at the convention) are not listening to Hilary and her latest spins. And probably not answering her phone calls when they see it’s her on the caller id

I’d like to snark but I just feel bad – not only has she lost the nomination, she’s losing just about everything else like respect, dignity, a sense of civic service in this long slow tedious death throes her campaign has been going through – latest news is that the Clinton folks are trying to get some Texas delegates unseated over some kind of rules thing and all the while trying to seat Florida and MI delegations despite what the rules say, it’s a mind scruntiching moment.

Gig is tomorrow. Can’t seem to get it in my head – it’s tomorrow – come on down and see the clowns and the jugglers as we all do our tricks for you.

On another note – I haven’t seen the right wing take after a guy like they have after little Scotty McClellen – at least not since John Dean. Granted McClellen is a probably just a cya self serving little prick – but still he’s done a lot of damage to both W and the inbred Washington Media – like I say all the right people just hate him.

Mets seem to want to spin winning three games in row as turning things around – call me in two weeks – then we’ll talk.

Peace love see you tomorrow.

Flying solo at an open mike

It’s been a while since I did an open mike all by my lonesome but due to circumstances – the time the date whatever along with Insect Girl and the Enemy Below having their baby – I was sitting alone in Bar 4 in Brooklyn drinking – slowly – some kind of wheat beer while waiting for my 10 minutes in the spotlight.

Not as gripping as “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.” but it will have to do.

A few side notes come to mind – the wheat beer I was drinking was something called Orange top or shock or something – this was an Budweiser (I can’t spell the company’s real name and am too pressed for time to Google the bastard so just deal) product I assume developed to counteract the surprising popularity of Coor’s Blue Moon brand – (yes I know it’s supposed to be a little hand crafted beer place but that’s more marketing than anything else).

The bud product didn’t quite have the same hash to it but it wasn’t bad. Hell even Budweiser isn’t bad – bad beers are things like the late unlamented Peal’s or Utica Club – where you start to get a headache even before you finish your first can.

Another side note is that I’ve been seeing news reports about the inertest that a huge ass Belgium consortium – maker of among other things Beck’s beer – is making noise about buying Budweiser – in the various comments on the news sites I visit this has brought out the no-nothings in force, mostly screaming about foreigners. I swear the idea that America’s Port security was going to be run by a company from Dubai wasn’t viewed with as much alarm.

But what a lot of the folks lamenting dirty foreigners getting their fingers on America’s suds (and just what is it about beer and booze companies that make they wave the flag so much? this last weekend judging by the ads you’d think getting so tanked up on Jack Daniels and Coke that you fall face first into the barbeque grill was a patriotic requirement – it’s just weird that’s all)

Anyway what the folks with their panties in a twist don’t remember is that dollar has tanked in value in comparison to the Euro indeed it’s gone down quite a bit – to the point were a company can buy an American company for a lot less than it could before the dollar went down. The dollar going down for a number of reasons – Iraq, the banking crisis, we owe china money to name a few factors – you combine that with typical Bush Administration effeminacy at Monetary Policy and you’re really surprised the dollar has any value at all.

Anyway back at the open mike –

It went pretty well as most go – no really painful performances – there were a couple of stand up comics and I always feel for them – it’s just do damn hard to do that t- you can sing a sad song and even if it’s not the saddest song in the world – it’ll still work but a joke is either funny/not funny there isn’t as much of a target to shoot at.

This comes unbidden to my head:” Q: why did chicken cross the road A: He was under the influence of Zotar the goat caster. Zotar was on his lunch and wanted to practice.”

I do worry about my head from time to tine – it doesn’t always work the way I’d like it too – sometimes I get song sometimes this gibberish.

Anyway it went well – at the mike – I was a little rusty on Rat Dog but Someone Else killed – got a cheer and the sound man shared a shot with me. This was pretty good. I’m not sure if we’ll get anyone to come Saturday but if we keep coming and keep getting a good response maybe.

There was one odd performance – I’ll steal what I wrote in an e-mail cause I’m running out of time “Strangest part of the evening was this guy from Oregon – whose looks said “I smoke an awful lot of dope” – he had one of those stoner beards – this state trouper looking fir hat (in May well okay) and he was using a tie – as in neck tie – as a guitar strap – which broke – he was accompanied on piano by a young lady who played a lot of arty sounding chords – (they have a piano so maybe in the summer S-Dog can come along) – and well he sang like Syd Barrett on Crystal Meth – the songs had no real lyric coherence (which I can tell you a little of that goes a long way) other than a kind of stoned bummers and they went on forever dashing from one direction to another to another (his last song really could have ended about 7 times by the time he ended it ) while his vocals would go from mubble to shrieking and back to mumble - -it was very very odd (which I do like) but it wasn’t very good.”

Peace, Love, Syd Barrett’s on the outside

Cloudy Morning, Superhero Fashion and Audrey Rose

A cloudy Monday on a Tuesday has me a bit down. Also going to work after sleeping late for three days has something to do with it as well.

Meantime – spent the weekend not doing chores – yeah the place is a mess but it was a series of beautiful days and the mess isn’t going away soon so the heck with it.

Went to the Metropolitan Museum of art on Sunday – and saw the weird superhero thing they have – it’s a very odd exhibit with no real damn sense to it other than looking a) some costumes used in various super hero movies – The original superman, Batman Returns (not praise Jesus the Batman and Robin Batman suit which had nipples- I remember a making of feature that had the director and the art guy giggling and noting with pride because they had put nipples on the bat suit. True a small thing in the utter crapfest that was that film but indicative of the mindset of the director).

Anyway – along with the various suits – the exhibit featured version and comments on the suits by noted and not so noted haute couture fashion designers – which were probably very expensive to secure for the exhibit and were of vast interest to – well I don’t know, surely not the folks there to see the exhibit most of whom sprinted to the end once they saw the movie costumes – while us geeks were brought up short at the end of the exhibit which had – behind glass – copies of things like Detective Comics 23 (1st Batman) The First Superman, the First Hulk, issue 51 of the Fantastic Four – which I remember reading as a child (Ben turns back into the thing to save Reed Richards from the Negative Zone – Reed smart in so many ways really needed a childlock on the entrance to the Negative zone – he kept getting in trouble) and the like – there were also and these days I begin to suspect this is the reason for these exhibits – special books, pictures and junk to buy.

Don’t bother.

Something else not to bother with is the move – shown on Monstervison for reasons unknown – Audrey Rose. The film’s story is that a little girl, the child of an very upscale Manhattan couple (the film was shot in 1977 so Yuppie isn’t the right word) starts to have nightmares – and then an unbald Anthony Hopkins shows up and claims that this child (name of Ivy) is having nightmares because she is really the reincarnation of his daughter Audrey Rose.

Fortunately I didn’t see the whole film – we cut in when Hopkins had taken the girl and was then arrested for kidnapping. The reason I say fortunate was that given the level of stupid found in the last part of the film, I’d might have broken the Enemy Bellow’s very expensive TV because I was throwing things at the screen.

The last 1/3 or so of the film has the trial of the Hopkins character for kidnapping. His defense (and boy would he have to search for a lawyer to do this) is to claim that Audrey Rose’s soul has reincarted into the body of Ivy and therefore he is her father and from that somehow it was not a kidnapping.

While granted it was Hollywood – shot like a made for TV movie by the way – even so there are some huge gaping flaws in the logic here – allow me to explain:

1) The law does not give a damn what the motives of the person doing the kidnapping are. The law never gives a shit because motives are not, in the end, important. You don’t have to prove motive in a murder case – granted it can help, but you don’t have to and here it’s even less necessary – a person could actually believe that a small child is the son of the devil and take it away from its parents because he’s trying to save the world that won’t make him any less guilty of kidnapping .

The law is not in the business of proving the existence or non existence of reincarnation either.

Actually one of the silliest parts of the film was where a Hindu holy man testifies about reincarnation during the trial – the look on the judge’s face as he does so is pricelessly funny (I’m not sure if the actor was holding the testimony in contempt or was musing on ways to kill his agent). Also our Hindi guy goes on and on about how for the west death is the end and is hated and feared for it while in the east it’s just a part of the soul’s journey done without pointing out that the major religion of the west Christianity in its various forms promises a much better life after death.

The last scene consists of a regression hypnosis and then what felt like 15 minutes of the damn child shrieking at a pitch that could shatter glass (the same pitch Steven Spielberg uses in his films when a girl is in trouble it’s one of the 3 or 4 most annoying sounds ever) and then dying as the hypnotist brings her back to the time of the accident. And this is portrayed as a happy ending. “she is at peace” Hopkins says as her mother looks on.

Right. Guys you just went through 2 hours of talking about reincarnation - which if you believe in such things – the kids soul is currently looking for a new home. Right? Or do only special souls who are cut off in , well that would work here as well. The film is brain wise hopelessly muddled.

Speaking of hopelessly muddled – I’m not looking forward to the remake of The Andromeda Strain. Chrition has a lot of faults as a writer – and as person to read these days but at least he did not go about burdening the Andromeda Stain with the kind of gibberish – including a love story that the A&E version is going to give us. The movie of the Andromeda Strain is one of the few films you will ever see where scientists are actually acting like scientists and doing science – including f mind numbing tedium.

Well that’s all for now

Peace Love Objection your honor!

Hil WTF? and Thumbs

I absolutely utterly completely don’t get it.

Not a bit.

After the Indiana and the North Carolina primaries – people who like doing things like this did the math and they all came up the with the same answer – Barack’s got the nod wrapped up. It was a moment where the pundits and indeed people who I normally respect suggested that Hilary would probably wait until after the morale boosting win in West Virginia and the quietly bow out.

At first it looked that way – but now – Hil has pretty much jumped the rails and is publicly saying she is going to carry on the fight until August and well it’s just mind boggling.

Currently she is banging about Florida trying to convince people, and I think, herself that the Florida Delegates should be seated and the struggle to is akin to the one to abolish slavery, woman’s suffrage, Apartide and the struggle with Men’s stores that have only pleated pants.

We interrupt this rant with some breaking news:

“Gordon Ramsay eats thumb of Hell's Kitchen contestant
Food – Celebrity chef and foodie firebrand Gordon Ramsay has reportedly eaten the thumb of a contestant on his reality tv show. British tabloid The Sun reports Hell's Kitchen contestant Matt, 35, accidentally cut off the tip of his thumb while preparing pancetta stuffing for a quail.”

I don’t know but I think it you could work that into a show.

“Cooking with Hannibal the Cannibal – it starts with 20 contestants and as each lose they leave the show and Hannibal eats a body part.”

Return to rant.

Anyway with Hil – I don’t get it. She can’t win this fight. As best I can understand it is that once the MI and FL delegations are seated – this combined with the new math attempt to give Hill the majority of the popular vote is supposed to cause the super delegates to sweep to Hillary’s said and make her the candidate.

Again the bitterness that this scenario would generate would tear the party apart and leave long term damage and as I have written more than once – Hillary would have to spend the rest of the campaign trying to heal the wounds in the party rather than campaigning for president – ensuring a McCain win.

The other idea passed about on the web is that Hillary is trying to destroy Obama’s ability to win the election – ensuring a McCain win – and then in 2012 when McCain is too old to run again.

Right like she’ll get the nod in 2012 after torpedoing Obama? I think they would rather nominate John Kerry again.

So is she trying to get the VP slot? If so this is heck of a way to go about it. Threaten to destroy the party?

I just don’t get it.

Meantime – this news might put a crimp in your weekend plans – the Mexican Army just seized a metric ton and a half of grass – in one truck. Yeesh.

Anyway I’m looking to get out of here. Have a good memorial day.
Peace Love don’t eat anybody’s thumb

It's a Boy Mrs Walker and Ant Man!

Things have been hectic as hell with work and the band and mostly with the Enemy Below and Insect Girl – They’ve been expecting for a while and their son was born on Tuesday – pictures to follow once I have time to down load them. Work is mad mad I tell you.

Mother, Father and son are all – the parents look very happy – he was 6 pd’s 15 oz when born and about 54.1 centimeters long (or 20 or so inches - if my notes are accurate if not – well then he wasn’t). He’s not doing much but heck he’s had a long day and he’s got a lot ahead of him – like learning his parents are in this band – so he gets a bit of slack cut.

They’re braver than me I’ll tell you. I find the idea of having someone that is going to call me dad for the rest of my life to be deeply frightening mostly due to my own rampart insecurities taking their exercise outdoors.

With all this still haven’t gotten to see Iron Man and now The New Indiana Jones film is almost upon us. I’m not sure just how good this is going to be but it’ll be nice to see Karen Allen in a film again – she was going to be a big star and just walked away from the whole thing – to do theater and some small films. She seemed to be one of the last non-cookie cutter look actress to make it big – before they started using models as the talent pool for actresses – which isn’t always a great idea – Models are best being living hangers and showing no or one emotion – which isn’t really what you want from an actress.

Anyway she didn’t have the standard look that actresses have today – and actors to truth be told – it’s like they all go to the same plastic surgeon.

Anyway I also notice with some sadness that the Ant Man movie seems to be in limbo – although the success of Iron Man might bring it forward – Ant Man, aka Hank Pym was one of the Original Avengers – Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk, Ant Man and the Wasp (also called the Winsome Wasp by Stan Lee who liked this kind of wooden word play) The Hunk left after the first issue and Captain America showed up in issue #4.

Originally Hank was able to shrink to the size of an ant while retaining the strength of a normal human being. The best response to that came from John Buleshi as the Hulk in the classic Saturday Night Live superhero sketch – He, upon being told by Ant Man (Garret Morris) what Ant Man’s powers where says “that’s great” and went for a beer.

Fortunately he didn’t also say he can control insects/ants with his mind a power they would use in the early days whenever they remembered/needed it.

I would postulate that one of the signs that your superhero is lame is that his or her powers include communicating and controlling animals – I mean look Aquaman – talks to fish, Hawkman talked to birds (this is especially cringe inducing reading this years later, Hawkman actually goes “tweep! Tweep!” – yeah comics were for kids but did they have to read as if they were written for stupid children?) and Hank Pym (Ant Man) control insects –and looking at them you know the Blue Beetle could mop the floor with all three of them.

Anyway Hank is also Giant Man who - well gets big and strong – “great”

Anyway more rumination on such stuff later.

Peace love a son, a son, a son.

Mets, Judging and what not.

It was a very busy weekend – Saw three good bands, got rained on, saw my sister get her PHD and learned a little something about myself (not a comfortable lesson I must admit) watched the Mets beat the Yankees twice – which I have to say did provide some satisfactions – proving what an interesting game baseball is and how little in the end you really know – I would have been large sums of cash on the Yankees taking the series and even on them sweeping given the uninspired everybody’s on depressants style of baseball they had played against the Nationals just before.

I don’t know if this is a permanent change – they played well against the Diamondbacks and then started mailing games in – so one must wait and see. And remind oneself one doesn’t know everything.

Of course I managed not to get to Iron Man but by the time Sunday rolled around all I wanted to do was do chores and stay home – that it kept starting to rain every time I stuck my head out the door didn’t help much. it happened so often this weekend I was developing a complex – like there were little rain gods hiding in the clouds holding their version of the super soaker waiting for my emergence

“There he is! Get him!”

I know that isn’t true (and frankly if it is the universe is a lot more messed up than I really want to know. I can handle an indifferent universe, or a universe run by a god who’s plan I can not know but a universe where god is an adolescent prick? That would be very very hard to deal with.

Anyway my sister got her PHD from NJIT and it felt very good to be there even though listening to each and every name being read out did prepare me for the after life waiting room. Note next time bring a good book. But it was good to be there.

And this is where I learned something – My sister and I haven’t always had the best of relationships – lot of boring reasons none of which are necessary to go into. Anyway the thing that kept with me and made me uncomfortable was I had a sense on some level she disapproved of me, how I live my choices and what not – that I wasn’t well something – like someone with an advanced degree or some such.

But what I realized as I watcher her get robed – it’s a ceremony dating from the middle ages – graduation robes are actually descendents of what folks wore in those days, universities being very reluctant to make any sort of changes – except tuition that they seem to have no problem raising.

Anyway as I watched, her face beaming, I realized that she hadn’t been doing the judging. I had been doing it. The same part of me that judges everything I do harshly. And of course finding myself wanting as things will me being me. However since I didn’t like the feelings I was just casting them onto someone else.
It was more than a bit humbling to realize it, but to be a full human being you have to at least acknowledge that there are parts of you that are not only not perfect but actually flawed. Like this bit.

It was an uncomfortable lesson but still a) I learned something about myself and b) I was able to fully enjoy My Sister’s accomplishment without any sort of latent jealousy or feelings of inadequacy butting in – and quite a nice lunch as well.

Well that’s enough inner angst for the moment – I have beast with a million eyes to watch and work to do.

I notice now that Obama has pretty much wrapped the nomination up the right wing is trying to come up with a way of saying ‘we don’t want a black man as president’ without sounding like a lunatic racist pig. They are starting out by talking about “American DNA” and blood lines (this is not about race of course but well you know) and other nonsense which is just an attempt to put a rational sheen over their knuckle dragging bigotry. We’ll see more of this as the election gets closer.

As I said things are getting rushed as the holiday week end is coming up.

Peace Love Let’s go Mets!

Appeasement, Tapes and Iron Man

Somebody must be messing with Chris Matthews meds – just last week he jumped all over the picture of Barrack Obama playing pool – saying that only the elites play pool these days. (Harking back to the poor showing he had bowling)

Ah Chris? In the back of just about every dive bar – and some not dive bars are one or maybe more – pool tables. A Game costs about oh about a buck or maybe more these days –haven’t played in a while myself.

Now yes a pool table in your home is a little more money but lots of folks play pool – probably more than bowl – so casting pool as some kind of elitist thing is pretty weird.

That said something floating about the net is an exchange between Chris and some right wing radio blowhard/nitwit who was happy that W used his speech in the Israel to imply Obama was dangerous.

Then in what seemed to a bit of an off tangent question Chris asked the Nitwit who Neville Chamberland was and what he did that was so bad back in 1938 – 39. Other than say he was an appeaser – well duh – the nitwit couldn’t give any details – like oh he forced the Czechs to cede the Sudetenland to Hitler thereby enabling the complete takeover of Czechoslovakia later that year – an event that led the outbreak of the Second World War the very result that Chamberlain was trying to avoid with his policies. It’s wasn’t a good idea but even Winton Churchill spoke well of the man at his funeral (he died in 1940) a gesture other folks might take a lesson from. Churchill had many many flaws and was not quite the shining hero he’s been presented but he was not a petty man.

Anyway the upshot was that the right wing blowhard didn’t have the vaguest clue who Neville Chamberland was or what he had done other than being an appeaser (a word he said louder and louder as it became more and more apparent that he didn’t have the vaguest idea what he was talking about. He really could have been saying kumquat or Ferret over and over again for all the sense he was making).

While entertaining – along the lines of finding out the White House Press Secretary didn’t know what the Cuban missile crisis was - you wonder why this was broadcast – I mean chopping an idiot off at the knees while entertaining isn’t really a useful thing – sure it shows he’s an idiot but in the end what of that? He knows he’s an idiot but he keeps on yelling – and finally you just toss you hands up and move on.

It just seemed odd to me.

Meantime – Arlen Specter – who really needs a new hobby - has announced that the investigation of the secret taping by the New England Patriots of other teams signals by the NFL wasn’t enough and he wants a MLB steroid style investigation of the taping. I have to wonder at this – considering what else is going on right now this should be about ohhhhh number 3,532 on congress’s list of things to do – right after renaming the post office in the Empire State Building after Fay Wray. (King Kong, he climbed the building with her…oh never mind).

Seeing as the tapes that have surfaced show things like the other teams cheerleaders – it’s highly doubtful that what ever tapes the hustler who’s been shopping them all over the media shows anything else that damning.

You know – thinking here – in some ways getting beaten by the Giants was probably a good thing for the Pats as per this nonsense – if they had won, well the resentment level would be much much higher all over the NFL world (Belicheck is not a graceful man either in victory or defeat – that does rub nerves the wrong way) as it is now there is a real sense of hell they lost the super bowl what’s the point.

I’m not a fan of the Yankees but I think Young Hank Steinbrenner needs to shut up – if for no other reason that the picture of him everybody uses looks god awful. Frankly it looks like they did a wax model of a hypothetical human basset hound hybrid and then left the finished model under a heat lamp too long where it began to melt. It’s that hideous.

Hank’s problem – like his dad’s is he doesn’t really know shit about baseball - he races horses and well that’s a sport where if you want the horse to go faster you whack it with a whip. Baseball doesn’t work like that.

That said – The Mets are not doing well – and hell they haven’t been doing well for months going back to last year’s all star break. I think something needs to be done – the team has too much talent to be floating around at .500 but there are real weaknesses as well and well let’s just say I know I don’t know enough about baseball to really know what needs to be done. I have some opinions – like personnel changes but I could be wrong.

Need to see Iron Man this weekend – other wise I’ll have to cut my Fan Boy membership card in two and mail it back.

As best I can tell John McCain’s plan for Iraq consists of 1. Get Elected 2. Keep doing the same thing 3. Say ferret very loudly frightening the insurgents 4 Victory! 5. Bring the troops home. 6. Ponies for everybody! On to gas prices.

It’s doesn’t make much sense but the the idea of a ‘victory’ in a civil war torn wreck like Iraq is a little hard to get your mind about. It reminds me a little of Nixon’s secret plan to get out of Viet Nam – which boiled down to take the terms offered 3 years after they were offered.

The World is mad really.

Peace Love Repulsor Rays.

The President's Golf games and other horrors

I’m not sure who coined the phrase ‘the banality of evil’ – while it’s more about how horrible things in history have been carried out by just average normal people who were just going along with the way things were – the phrase came to mind as we were treated to the surreal mind boggling madness of W saying that he had given up Golf because of the war and then it coming out that he had lied about it.

I don’t have words to express how appalling this is. It’s a horrifying glimpse into the mindless shallow self involved narcisstic center of the man-child that lives in the White House. The reason he gave for giving up golf was that ‘it wouldn’t look right” for him to be playing golf while people were getting killed – this from the same man who urged us to go shopping after 9/11. The story he gave was that back in August of 2003 he was pulled from the golf course by some bad news so he said that he realized it wouldn’t look right for him to be playing golf during war time.

War time. right. It’s not war time, not for us, not for him. The only people it’s really war time for are the poor bastards who are getting shot at over there or who are waiting their turn to go back and get shot at. For them it’s war time – for the rest of us, not so much.

Anyway it turned out to be an utter lie as several diligent folks did some Google stuff and found he was playing golf in October of 2003 – he has since stopped but the reason could be the tears in his ligaments which made him give up running and take up bicycle riding (which he’s rather poor at).

It’s pathetic and infuriating to watch him try and puff up the notion that he gives a damn about anybody else except himself with this junk – those of us with memories can also recall that he was loudly trumpeting that he was giving up sweets as the troops invaded Iraq – only to be sucking down butterscotch candies a few weeks later while on Air Force One.

This is what a 7 year old imagines sacrifice to be; not a damn grown person, but he isn’t a grown person. He’s s bloody nightmare.

Meantime – today over in Israel he gave a speech where is compared Iran to Nazi Germany and the folks who want to maybe not bomb Iran on gut instinct as appeasers.

As someone noted for some people it’s always 1938 and each new threat is the rebirth of Hitler. Frankly if a nation of 71 million that spends 1% of what we do on defense is that great a threat we probably should surrender now before they spend say 3% of what we spend on defense and get the best terms we can.

Meantime the Pentagon has released – dumped really – a huge amounts of documents regarding their packing the air waves with their tame claps prior to and after the invasion of Iraq. The dump includes some chilling e-mails and transcripts of discussions of how (after 2006) they felt another terrorist attack on the US would be GOOD thing.


Meantime – meantime meantime – the – ah the hell with it, the madness just flows on an on with now some folks trying to float the idea that not liking Obama because of the color of his skin isn’t really racist – it leaves what is racist rather undefined but so what. As long as they can manage to say I won’t vote for a black man because he is a black man and not feel like a bigot that’s the important thing.

I’m going to stop now – my head hurts. I’m going to play loud music for a while that might help some.

Peace Love Stick your damn golf club where the sun doesn’t shine.

Polar Bears and Mad Cows

Sometimes you just have to give up.

You can’t keep on being outraged you can’t keep on being shocked – your nervous system won’t be able to take it and you’ll burn yourself out and find yourself staring at the City Cable Channel that shows the traffic at various spots and wondering ‘what are all these people doing out on the road at this time of night? Don’t they have homes and things to do?” while of course they are thinking – “ah the lure of the open road the middle of the night – what freedom I have compared to the brain dead who are sitting on their couches watching the traffic on the TV. This, this is what it’s all about.”

Or something like that.

Anyway a couple of news stories that caught my eye have me deeply depressed – one there is furious debate on putting Polar Bears on the endangered list. There is of course the stated reason for this and the real reason. The stated reason not to put Polar Bears on the endangered list is that there are lots of bears – the real reason is that bears being on the engendered list will interfere with the oil companies raping the Alaskan Wildlife Reserve and then making money – which god knows is the only good reason to do anything. Never mind that the amount of oil in the AWR won’t really have an impact on prices not only anytime soon but ever.

And you have to wonder why the oil companies are so hot to drill AWR. Is the AWR the only place left in the Entire world where there is oil that isn’t being drilled? If it is we are dealing with a problem a lot larger than $4.00 a gallon gas. Or is it just there the oil companies know (once they dispose of those pesky environmental regulations and what not they will be able to buy the land from the Federal Government for pennies an acre ensuring very large profits compared to other sites where they’ll have to pay market value for the oil rights, and maybe even gasp share the money with others.

And you know money is more important than anything.

This brings us to another strange case where the federal government is trying to prevent a meat plant from inspecting the spines of the dead cows for evidence of Mad Cow Disease.

Let’s run through that again – the Feds are suing – in court to prevent a meat packer from inspecting for Mad Cow Disease.

And why is that? Well money of course. This time the larger meat packing companies are urging their servants – sorry the federal government to not allow this firm to inspect every cow carcass they process for Mad Cow Disease instead of the one percent that the regulations now require. The reason that this firm is doing this is that they sell beef overseas and regulations are tighter so they decided to do the inspections on their own.

The larger firms are of course freaking because they are afraid that US consumers will demand this and they will have to shell out their precious money as well. So rather than a) supplying consumer demand (and by the by isn’t that what capitalism is supposed to do? Better than socialism – of course it doesn’t explain why when you go into a men’s store you see ¾ of the pants have pleats or are in colors no human would wear but that’s another rant) or b) educating the customer on the very small chance that pions from contaminated beer will eat their brain, they try and get the government to stop the smaller company.

Only in America.

It kind of bothers me that this stuff bothers me so much – it happens all the time, the world has always been run by and for self interested scoundrels and greed heads. But this kind of thing makes me crazy.

And then there is the news that the current Iraq government is hopelessly corrupt and unable to do anything. Gee who the hell didn’t see that coming?

Peace Love Mooooo.

Cold Monday Thoughts.

It’s a gloomy rainy damn cold day in May – you can kind of deal a bit with this weather when it’s in November – you think about thanksgiving and turkey and fireplaces and hot toddy’s and what not - however – it’s freaking May – Dominos’ free iced coffee day is this week – the stores are filled with mannequins wearing bathing suits – it’s just not the right ambiance to deal with wind blowing cold rain straight into your face.

Meantime – Hillary is not conceding a thing – like reality and she vows to continue on. while I do worry about the long term effects of this and I dead the upcoming floor fight that will happen if Hilary still doesn’t quit before then I’m somewhat mollified by the notion that McCain really is batshit crazy (bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran, stay in Iraq 100 years) and has vowed to follow each and every one of W’s polices if he is elected. Despite the media’s vigorous burnishing of McCain’s Maverick image (wax on, wax off) and of course their ongoing attempt to paint Obama as the scary negro full of resentment the current situation (war, the economy, the vast sense we are utterly off the track) makes votes (who be remarkably shrewd when their own interests are at stake) less vulnerable to this kind of beltway media gibberish.

However I’d like to say that can we stop painting folks in states like West Virginia as just ignorant hicks? There was one quote from one nimrod in West Virginia about how Obama is really a Muslim bad guy – and this gets turned into the conventional wisdom about every single person in West Virginia – which of course isn’t bloody true. Of course there are bigots in West Virginia but I could go into a bar in New York I would hear the same bs. (You just need to find the right –or wrong – bar).

Anyway the band is getting psyched for the CD release – in my case getting psyched means losing my mind a bit – I’ll get it back but in the interim I’m presented with one of those stupid problems that neurotic people get – how to deal with good things. I can handle disasters with little sweat but give me good things and I start looking for lightning bolts to shoot out of the sky.

I remember listening years and years and years ago to side Three of Roxy and Elsewhere by Frank Zappa and the Napoleon Murphy Brock era Mothers of Invention on that side they seamlessly went from Cheepnis to Son of Orange county to More trouble everyday (some of it was editing but not much the band was that tight) and thinking one day I’ll like to be in a bad that good – well right now I think I am and of course part of me is petrified that things are therefore going to go massively massively wrong – any second now.

Just how exactly isn’t clear since this isn’t a rational result of examining the situation – it’s some kind of yammering imprint left over from younger days – actually not necessarily from my parents – there lots of folks in my youth trying to pour this kind of garbage into my head – if memory served it pretty much stretched around the block.

Anyway while I have tickets to the Mets tonight I am pretty sure I’m blowing this off – it’s going to be 45 with a 30 mph wind and if we’re really lucky a cold cold rain as well. Now I’d be there if it was against say Atlanta or Philly but to watch the Mets #5 starter against the last palace team in the division – and freeze to death. No thanks.

Peace Love waiting for warm summer nights

Short post on nothing much except maybe soccer

Well it’s raining – it’s chilly – a damp chill that I personally hate – the Speed Racer film is getting bad reviews –which you had to expect – what the hell were they thinking here? Who was waiting for this film – look I was a freaking Kid like in grade school when the original cartoon – which featured pretty damn cheap animation even by Japanese kid television standards – and I remember hating the kid and the ape in a ‘I want them to die horribly way’ even then. Really it’s just weird that’s all. What’s next a gigantor movie?

This is going to be very short because I’ve stuff on my plate right now to deal with at work and well – it’s gloomy day and I don’t feel much like writing much.

Good rehearsal last night – it was funny our drummer the dude got the first taste of just how things work at the creative end of the band as I took one line someone said and off I went. – we had been noting all our songs are about indoor activities really and Trafalgar suggested maybe we do a soccer ballad.

That was it and off I went – jabbering on about wearing the wrong kit in the wrong place – we’ll see if it manages to be a real song – the interesting thing was the dude after I came to an end (joke about Boca Jr.s and River Plate) he asked when I had written that.

“he just made it up.” The Enemy Below said.

“well write it down.” The Dude said.

Which I did – kind of – I have a pretty much illegible high speed scribble that I do when I’m trying to get something down – I’ve given up on getting it word for word and just try and get memory aides on the paper.

It’s a weird thing doing that – it just kinda comes out really with out any real conscious thought on my part – indeed any attempt to control makes the flow dry up pretty quick.

The thing that always strikes me is just how egoless the process is. The “I” that orders lunch works, even writes in the blog is not really present at these moments. It’s hard to really describe this accurately.

Well I said this would be short – things to do – good weekend everyone.

Peace Love Soccer Ballads

Venue Follies, The Madness of HRC and Sexless Trout

The Follies are complete

In case you were wondering – yes we did change venues for the CD Release party. We didn’t do this lightly; we did this for a very very good reason, actually several reasons.

The Board of Health closed the Luna Lounge at the end of April.

And then a while after that we got a notice that our show was going to be canceled because the Luna has no plans to open in the near future.

Eep. To quote some cartoon character. Insect Girl and the Enemy Below spent four days on the phone after that trying to a) find out what the hell was going on and b) get a new venue to play with as much of the other bands coming along - and absolute utter mad props and everything for them for doing this.

Well all’s well that ends well as we did get a venue to play on the same day – Southpaw – the website is http://www.spsounds.com/ – do check it out – the club looks very cool.

So on with the show.

Meantime – I’m not sure when the point was passed but at some point I think HRC just simply lost touch – her recent pictures are a little scary the eyes are just not focusing in a human way – it’s like she’s just downed a fist full of happy pills and topped it off with a shot of crown royal – hint for future presidential candidates there is a brand of hard liquor called Jack Daniels which is pretty popular with what the national news media insultingly call ‘the bubba voter’ so order that when you do a shot and beer – it’ll look more authentic. (You could get style points for Wild Turkey or Jim Beam but let’s not make this complex.).

Actually I think the whole Bubba voter thing is just a mask so that the chattering heads in Washington can pretend that they aren’t racist-sexist no nothing bigots, it’s those sad sad little paroles who don’t know better poor dears.

Anyway getting back to HRC – she at this point isn’t quitting – but short of a Gov Spritzer style disaster happening to Obama it ain’t gonna happen – actually the Democratic Party in Oregon is hoping that she stays on for a couple of weeks because their votes haven’t ever counted before – so maybe it’ll do some good for them – and the rest of us can just wait until HRC wakes up.

It’s rather sad – here she was the first woman in the history of the US with a realistic chance at being president of the United States and now her memory is going to be of someone who in desperation starting saying ‘You know Obama’s a negro – bubbas won’t vote for Negros” or some such vairiaton on the fear of a black planet in order to win.

This is not a good way to be remembered.

As a final side note – the British have developed a type of trout that is not interested in sex – which fits so many stereotypes I can’t even being to think about them. (There was a play entitled “no sex please we’re British”.) What they have done to the poor fish is mess with their hormone levels so they never have the urge to breed. As a side effect this makes the fish easier to catch by fisherman because they keep on eating (a fish getting ready to breed stops eating). While I’m sure British anglers are please it seems cruel to do that to fish so they wander about depressed “I don’t know, life just doesn’t have a lot of meaning anymore…yeah I’ll have some more chips” eating out of habit.

And of course if the Anglers eat the fish won’t it also suppress the Angler’s sex drive? Of course in the case of the English there isn’t that much to suppress in the first place yes?

Peace Love Trout

Being on the Charts in Bolivia isn’t as big a deal as you think, the evil effect of Women's bare legs and Hurbis 101

Let me explain

Friday I was at a friend’s birthday party – she’s from Equator originally and she invited us all to a place that she knows – located on the next to last block on spring street before you fall into the Hudson River – it is a little place – really about the size and width of a subway car – probably bigger but it felt like that – they server Tapas and pitchers of Sangria and then about 11 they took the tables out and a started playing various Spanish style pop, salsa and what seemed like 35 other styles of music – each of which folks could instantly identify and each of which apparently has it’s own dance - several people tried to show me how to dance to this

It was quite a nice time actually – I didn’t get the sense of low level menace that you can get in some clubs (the ones where they pat you down for weapons for one – those make me nervous as hell) or the sullen bitter hostility to all things living you can get in some old folks dive bars – you didn’t feel like you make the wrong move or bump into the wrong person you were going to have a fight on your hand.

Anyway our group was at the far end of the place – after eating and what not we started hanging out - and trying (poorly) to dance to the music with the good natured help of my friends there – “no no you can’t just move one limb and your hips your hips” (which is more attention I’ve given to my hips in a long long time I have to say).

So the place was filling up people where having a good time the music while loud wasn’t so loud you couldn’t talk and it was just a nice time – one of my friends was taking pictures of everybody – he does that and yes there were a few embarrassing shots of me – I’m waiting to see them.

So after a bit it was time for another beer – I excused myself and started heading for the bar – not that simple a task as there were a lot of dancing people between me and the bar – and suddenly this guy grabs my arm.

“Yes?” I asked.

He said something I couldn’t quite make out but he was holding a camera so I figured he need someone to take a picture of his whole group – we’ve hat that problem at Met games and what not – there is always someone who isn’t in the picture because he or she is taking the picture.

But no – he wanted a picture taken we me.

“The hell?” I said.

One of his friends explained “He thinks you’re a singer from Bolivia”

“Did you tell him I’m not?”

“He’s drunk” his friend said – “he won’t listen”

So I got my picture taken – in the process of saying “I’m not him.” But to no avail – and to top it off it happened twice more as I went to the bar. I don’t know what he thought when he sobered up and you know you kind of rely on your buds to keep you from doing absurd things when you are under the influence – not this time.

Listen I’ve heard of Beer Goggles – but I’ve never heard of celebrity beer goggles.

And to top it off I surfed the net this weekend looking for Bolivian pop stars and singers and I’ll be damned if I can find a single that bears even the slightest resemblance to me.

Just weird.

And speaking of weird a Russian Psychologist has come out saying: Men become impotent because of women's low-cut dresses and bare legs.

It’s a bit hard to follow the logic here but his argument is that women by exposing these parts to men other than the ones they are going to sleep with make those other guys feel frustration and this frustration leads to impotence and prostate cancer. And other bad things.

Right.

I blame the long Russian Winters – there isn’t a lot to do really – so people either write long long novels or read them or just go barking mad like this guy has. I mean are legs with stockings okay?

And I’ve always wondered about the argument (he makes it here too) that masturbation will lead to impotence – which has always seemed to me like arguing that not lifting weights is the way to build up biceps.

Other notes – well another primary where Hilary afterwards will say the show must go on. I’m sorry but I’ve just about lost all respect for the woman – I’ve always judged a politician by the issues they are willing to lose elections for – alas I have to say for Hilary there are no issues she’s willing to take a loss over and there is nothing she isn’t willing to do to win. Good luck living with that.

In other insane news – an English newspaper has revealed details of a planned golf course, shopping center and amusement park – that in as of itself isn’t that insane – if not very wise idea right now with money tight and what not – the insane bit is that these projects are planned for the Green Zone in Baghdad.

They are planning on spending something like Five billion dollars (some of it our money yes) on this madness.

I think the plans should be made part of a permanent exhibit on Hubris in the Smithsonian.

Well work calls

that's Anne Francis from Frobidden Planet. If you're gonna have bare legs do it right. Robby the Robot is a bounus.

Peace Love bare legs

This and that and a busy guy

It comes down to these things:

We have to get the fuck out of Iraq.

We have to do something about our consumption of fossil fuel the high cost of with is partially due to our being Iraq and partially due to outside factors

The economy, which as based on credit given to people to buy hones so that they can – as the price of their home increases – take a loan out on that – is chugging to a halt with some pretty indicators that this time it’s going to be more serious than a one year 18 month slowdown and we really don’t know just how weak the financial system is.

We have a health care system so utterly out of whack that now the insurance companies (remember the ones who helped set this mess up) are losing money as people just opt out of coverage and pray that their health stays good – the ultimate in faith based care.

Long term the change to the global climate is going to bring massive changes to how we live and where – it’s an enormously complex problem that no matter what we do it will have huge impacts on the future.

And there also Osama Ben Laden who did some bad stuff a while ago he’s still out and about.

So of course let’s focus on stuff like the Revered Wright that’s what’s important – excuse me I have to bang my head for a bit. Be right back.

At least until the Next missing blonde.

It’s this kind of thing that makes me want to spend a weekend banging my head against a desk. Hard.

Meantime W has stood in front of the cameras and said there is no recession and the economy is robust – of course meaning neither is true – not just because the man lies the way normal people breathe it’s the iron law of public reassurance – if we weren’t in a recession and the economy was actually robust it would be a self evident truth – you don’t have to say sunny days are nice an warm – normal human beings can see and feel that – it’s when it’s dark and pouring rain that you have to explain that this is an illusion and if you go out you’ll need your sun screen.

Amway –before I do that I’m looking forward to trying to see Iron Man this weekend – I’m told there is a stinger at the end of the credits – amazing how common that bit has become. Probably because the credits are so long now (especially when dealing special effect heavy films like Iron Man) you have to reward folks for sticking around yes?

Listening to Trout Mask Replica – Captain Beefheart and his magic band – yep about as bizarre as you would imagine – the Captain I find is best in small doses – over time the music starts to meld together and then the verbal wildness loses its sting.

Looking at the news – per AP a Japanese government employee was demoted for logging 780,000 hits on porn sites – while at work – in one month July he had 170,000 hits – that’s pretty crazy – let’s just say July has 4 working weeks of 5 days each – 20 days – that’s. 8,500 hits a DAY – assuming an 8 hour day – that’s over a 1,000 hits an hour. What he did at home is not reported.

That’s Shakria figured take a break from Diana Rigg yes?

Peace love chapped hands