Rachel Maddow on ACORN: pt. 1 of 2

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

We at the OG are longtime critics of ACORN's critics (Dave3544 RIP), who never fail to betray their class agenda with weird, 2009-specific proportions of McCarthyite and Goldwaterist anti-anti-capitalist moralism (and jokes).

We at the OG know all this, but have neither the vocal cords, nor the GE sponsorship, nor the horse-sense of Rachel Maddow. I invite everybody -from the OGs to the aesthetes who read this blog- to consider Rachel's very unsung hero-ish, very sticking-neck-out-ish oppo research into the money-stakes and culture-frames underpinning the discourse known as ACORN. In this installment, we learn about the Rove/Justice Dept. -related tributaries from David Iglesias, a former US Attorney fired by DOJ in 2006 who has been outspoken early and often about the hatefuck/GOP tactic of marginalizing/indicting ACORN and stymieing their successes with voter registration/living wage campaigns.

Essential viewing, this anti-anti-Acorn stuff. Stick around for installment #2! It's coming as soon as GE gets it up on the interweb....

What's that, you ask? "Whither l'OG?!?!?!" Well, if my distinguished co-contributors don't get around to (distinctively) contributing, you can count on nothing more (/less) than ballot initiative emo, health care discussion pilfered from Ezra Klein, and sycophantic MSNBC plugs. ('Arts & [sic] culture' programming continues on pslllffpt.)

beyond academic emo: prisonship inventory of sentiments/commodities

one of the things that stinks about giving advice is how platitudinous, catch-all and relatively hollow our hard-earned lessons sound when churned out in sentence-form. thus, you'll understand how i half-grimaced, half-mewed long ago when a certain family member told me earnestly how

things seem like they're going great guns for you, Pat. and that's really great. I'm proud. and you need to really make sure you enjoy these times, Pat. cuz it's sure as shooting that there'll be times when the world rains cats and dogs upon you. enjoy these times, Pat, cuz eventually times'll suck eggs, and, by extension, you'll suck, too.

"sure," i'd thought at the time. sounds reasonable enough - like a paraphrase of a parable from a Randy Newman song, or something. and it is reasonable - shit, it's probably even "true," (i'd thunk.) but that was all before the current conjuncture, when oddly enough, graduate school got hard again. (i know, who'd've thunk it? you could knock me over with a feather.)

now, i have a lot of uncomfortable things in my life, like everybody else: some things - by no means all - that are much more uncomfortable than grad school's sudden difficulty. but grad school is something tuff that is both "personal" and "general" enough as to be appropriate for weblogs (aka, "blogs.") so here we go with a thoroughoing personal inventory in light of this recent, panic-attack-ish element to "school," which once was a padded cell for holding-forth, but which is now a caged structure reminiscent of "Hell in a Cell."
Part 1. Problem Areas

1. Health and welfare? Oh no. I've had some sort of walking plague since I boarded that aeroplane last Weds. Clammy hands, cough, headache, shakes, sniffles, snot, phlegm, etc. All the rest (upset tummy, too!)
   
2. Social Encounters? Nope. Does Election Night count? I barfed.
   
3. Eating Right? More like, "eating out." 'Can't afford it, but also can't seem to stop, or, can't seem to take the time to cook.
   
4. Body/Mind, Work/Life Balance? Oh, p'shaw. My body is a two-legged sack of balloons. My skin is the consistency of a paper shopping bag, but it looks like a potato sack because there are tuffs of hair pasted on to the bag (, which holds balloons of various sizes).

But that's just the downside. See me, I gotta lotta upside in my life. Part 2. Upsides

1. Herself: But that's obvious. We're like the Footprints Prayer over here in the Brown House. Or Smith and Jones, in that Silver Jews number.
   
2. SonicYouth/SonVolt/Slint(/Springsteen?!?): update post soon.
3. Shoegaze: It matches the weather. In particular I've listened to the magnetic morning full-length thrice since I e-music'd it yesterday (even notwithstanding the american apparel-ish alb cover). Do you guys do the emusic? I'd like to, uh, monitor yr playlists and share recommendations with you.
   
4. Over-the-counter cold medicines: this has to stop. Not sure they help at all. I just like the plop-plop, fizz-fizz aesthetic. (Honorable mention: cough drops [not lozenges.] "Honey-lemon" and "eucolyptus," specifically.)
   
5. It's sweater weather: what? This post has 'emo' in its title. Do you need a road map?
6. Cardinology vinyl pack: 'love the t-shirt, 'haven't rocked the bonus 7" yet...comic book is awesome. Lengthy alb review coming soon. Commenter David, among others, received a warped 12". 'Mine has a surface scratch but no audible flaws.
   
7. Crime Novels: crime novels in particular, Ross MacDonald and Lawrence Block in particular. I'm going back to the well, even opting to crack the seal on what may be the last (?!?) of the Matt Scudder novels, certainly the last one I haven't yet read.
8. "Organizing Grievances" and organizing grievances: top-shelf!
   
9. The return of implicitly (not explicitly) lewd texts/emails/voice messages/ground mailings from evil r+b: how long until I start posting poems again, at this rate?
   
10. Chris Matthews: much to a lotta peoples' chagrin(s), including, sometimes, mine.
    
11. French fries: yeah, there's this place just a block away from the Brown House that makes, I think, the best french fries in Eugene. (Better yet, they come with a special "french fry dipping sauce" that features horseradish, but nonetheless reminds me of the famous white sauce" that accompanied the mozzarella sticks back at Shenanigans', where cool kids like evil r + b once glommed underage frat sodas.) Eugenians, which restaurant do you think has the best fries? I'm prepared to get exploratory about starch this Rainy Season.
    

so anyway, there's the nov 2008 catalog. what works for you when "times" are "tuff"?

Our thunder. Stolen.

First they rip off the name of our beloved GTFF newsletter.

Then they post content which, in a just world, would first appear on our blog.

Jerks.

New Poll - Best Album of 1984

Public Enemy once famously asked "Who gives a fuck about a goddamn Grammy?" Well, I'd venture to reckon that the nominees for 1984 Album of the Year did.

At the side you'll find a poll asking you to choose the best album of 1984 as nominated by Grammy voters and the purchasers of record albums that fine year.

I don't want to influence your votes, but it will be interesting to see if any Culture Clubbers are reading the OG these days.

Also, because we have so many choices, definitely feel free to vote early and often.

OG Gathering

Speaking of drinking Wob's beer, I am more than happy to announce the first of what I assume will be many gatherings of OG readers and writers this November in the Raleigh-area of North Carolina.

Further details will be released as they become known, but the meeting will occur sometime between the 9th and 14th of November at a location TBA.

The buzz is already palpable. Mark your calendars.

BREAKING! Wobs to suspend blogging to address urgent beer crisis

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

My fellow OGians. Ours is a desperate time. It has come to my attention that there is a half-rack of Rogue Dead Guy Ale in my refrigerator that must be consumed. Should this consumption not occur, further half-racks of beer will not be able to fit inside the refrigerator, causing a cascade effect which may prevent countless hundreds of beers from residing on the shelf next to last night's leftovers.

The situation is grave.

In light of this crisis, I am hereby suspending my blogging to focus all of my attention on these pressing matters. As OGians, we can all agree that when there is an urgent need to drink beer, it is no time to blog. I further call upon my fellow bloggers to suspend their writing so that they may rush over to my house in order to help resolve this crisis. It is time to put the needs of my refrigerator above our need to pander to the feckless whims of our readership.

God bless you, and god bless the OG.

I'm back!

So, what'd I miss? Any good sporting competitions? Surely it's been quiet politically...

What's that?

Oh.

I'm outta here

The dog days are here, with the hot, sticky air enveloping Monument City like a mohair sweater. So I'm escaping to the cooler climes of coastal Maine for a few weeks. Stay away from my liquor - I know all about the trick of filling the bottle back up with water. See y'all in a few!

Be yourself!

Seeing as how at least 60% of the OG bloggers and an indeterminate number of our readers find themselves as some part of the "older women and the younger men who love them" duality, I'm sure you will all be pleased to know that our (apparently growing) demographic has been targeted by the relationship anxiety industry for the next iteration of their stale relationship advice.

Speaking for the fellas, I'm sure it never occurred to us that maybe older women would appreciate our attentiveness and good personal hygiene.

Day Late, Dollar Short, Much Funnier

This is pretty much what I said. Only with writers. And video. And coherence.

Since EZ Refuses to Be Baited

Maybe we all would do well to remember that it was the right that created the fiction that Obama the biggest leftist since Che. Obama is largely "backing away" from positions that the right invented for him. Obama never ran as a leftist. He was never the progressive dream.

I am not a fan of Obama's vote on FISA, but it was going to pass. I wish I lived in a United States where the government was not routinely allowed to break the law. I wish that I lived in an America where large corporations were not allowed to routinely break the law. I wish that Obama was the kind of candidate that would rise to the challenge, make a principled stand and be respected for it.

Instead I live in an America where the government and large corporations routinely break the law and where, if Obama had cast a meaningless "no" vote on FISA or had joined the doomed filibuster, he would have been accused of making it easier for terrorists to attack the United States. Repeatedly. For months. Come the predictable October "surprise" foiling of a "terrorist" "plot" through intercepted phone conversations, Obama's opposition to FISA would have been yet another example of why it would be too dangerous to let a man as inexperienced as Obama sit in the big boy chair.

That said, Obama is rapidly alienating the left. This is the natural outcome of the fact that he's no longer standing next to Hillary. Let's face it, the biggest point in his favor has always been that his last name is not Clinton.

That About Sums It Up

Noted blog hater Buzz Bissinger on the Founding Fathers and the blogosphere:

You have blogs that proudly parade around saying, ‘We don’t need no stinking credibility or stinking information — it doesn’t matter what you say or do if you know how to write.’ They cover themselves under the mantle of the First Amendment. But if John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had any idea what the First Amendment would have wrought, they would have canceled it.

I pray to Jeebus that this blog can live up to the high standard Buzz has set for us all.

Shine This!

I'm from Oregon, so I love the rain. An overcast summer day in the low 70s is my idea of a perfect day. Even so...it is now June 2nd and the temperature in Eugene has hit above seventy twice all year so far (maybe thrice). The high for the day is scheduled to be 68. The high for Friday is supposed to be 58 degrees. Fahrenheit!

I could use some warmth. Not only am I tired of being cold, wearing jeans, and seeing my breath while I am grilling, this cold weather is ruining my diet. It is supposed to be warm and I am supposed to be happy with salads, breads, and more salads for dinner. Instead, I want something warm and filling.

Blogging about the weather. It has come to this. EZ, Ash, Lex! Give us something to talk about.

I'm sure you're all wondering why I've gathered you here today

I suppose that it's inevitable that these questions would come up: why us? Why now? All of us have individually cultivated little plots of the blogosphere to varying degrees of satisfaction. Why slough off the comforts of our own little blogs for the wild and wooly world of group blogging?

First and foremost, we're doing it because we're Good Americans, and Good Americans know how important it is to be productive. And trying to keep up a blog solo every week is a lot of work. But keeping up a blog among four or five people? Easy street, and we're able to split the time savings of our efficiency up so that each of us can catch up on Hogan's Heroes re-runs (and if I might further digress, why hasn't this little bit of television history received the Hollywood blockbuster treatment yet, eh?). So we're Good socialists secularists feminists leftists Americans! Yeah! Fuck yeah!

On top of that, we're all friends who have been reading each others' blogs for years, and so we finally got the good sense and realized it would be fun to start a group blog - plus, we could read all of our writings in one place, rather than having to refresh four different pages, thus circling us back around to point #1 and further establishing our credibility as Good Americans.

So what's in it for you, dear reader? A couple decades of fancy book learning; small insights on big events; scatological humor; rants, rants, rants!; sober analysis; a therapeutic laugh; 5 parts idealism, 3 parts pragmatism, 2 parts cynicism; culture vultures; mountains out of molehills; and copious Simpsons and Star Wars references.

At the very least, you can tell all of us to go fuck ourselves in one place (ref. point #1). And if that's not what's Good about America, I don't know what is.