odyssey

"Can opener to top of beer can makes a great ashtray!" - kyle m'ccaterbear.

we will now begin our odyssey, jetting to Jersey and then training to the capitol of our united nation of fifty states and countless territories and bona fide bombing areas.

we will be encountering Wobs. sunday i will hold in my hands the tickets that will take the Wobs family and I to see Barry Obama inaugurated as top guy.

alarms

this is the way a world could end.
so help me cripes. if one more shoe drops, i'm moving to Birmingham faster n' you can say 'emo kid.'

Headline: Heavy coffee drinkers 'more likely to hallucinate

Drinking my morning cup a joe, I was perusing the star trib, looking for new tidbits on the Franken/Coleman contest, and I saw this article:

Heavy coffee drinkers are more likely to have hallucinations or feel "the presence of dead people," according to new research.

A UK-based study quizzed 200 students on their caffeine intake and found those with the highest consumption were also more prone to report seeing, or hearing, things that were not there.

I didn't find anything new on Franken...but I am fairly confident that he has won and will be seated, but I could be hallucinating...

Hilary Hearing (not very live) Comment Zone...

I am not able to live blog the hearing, but watching the hearing so far... it has been a snoozer...

Did hear some serious crap re: defense of Israel's recent war crimes....not surprised...

anyone else have a comment that must be voiced? Have at it...will check in periodically to update...

BHO from Pres-Elect to Pres

John Nichols has a darling piece for the Progressive that joins works by Adolph Reed and Doug Henwood in the canon of the left-Obama-critics. Nichols falls out with the latter two - if only as a matter of tone - with his insistence that Obama is at heart - if not in deed - "a progressive.*" Due to the ideological vagaries of American political culture, and the slings and arrows of electoral politics, Nichols believes Obama will gravitate towards centrism (maybe re-frame it as "post-political" or plain "pragmatism") and carry out what some have called "compensatory neoliberalism," or a plodding, market-based liberal reformism. But, but...Nichols contends that Obama, thinking as he does (progressively) and being who he is (a progressive), could be leveraged into behaving "progressively" by the Left - were the Left to mobilize, enunciate, get its shit together, etc.

Does this sound like an obvious point, one that you've made in your own heads 1,000 times? Absolutely. But sometimes it's nice to see your thoughts grafted onto someone else's voice. Well, it is for me at least. Great artcl, but given its 'self-evident' nature there's no blurb I can find that doesn't seem almost redundant, given the OG demographic. Anyway, it's bigger than the sum of its pieces and joints.

*In light of this blurbless link and my blurb about it, a question?

1) Does the term "progressive" denote a discrete set of ideologies/practices/texts in Barack Obama's USA 2009? If so, can we isolate some of those keystones?

2) Bonus question: how does the socialist wing of the Democratic Party feel about the Progressive Democrats of America? Do we get into Trot-style# ideologiko-rumbles? Or are we chums just like Lucy and Ethel? Obviously we know where the Trots for Romney come down on this one.

# Let me apologize. That link is horrid. 'Looks like a Maoist critique of les Trots, but it feels like an anthropological curiosity if you're me, which you aren't, so that link is unfair. Avoid it.

Hillary

Too bad I'm not in a place where I can live-blog tomorrow's Clinton confirmation hearings. Le politico reminds us to pay particular attention to the Kerry/Clinton interface:

While unlikely to be acrimonious, this exchange – tinged with the awkwardness most familiar to the high school prom court – is on the list for reasons of pure spectacle.

To wit: Kerry wanted to be president. Then Clinton wanted to be president. Then Kerry wanted Obama to be president. Then Obama became president. Then Kerry wanted to be secretary of state. But Obama wanted Clinton to be secretary of state. This all sets the stage for Tuesday’s confirmation hearing, where the back-and-forth will be finely parsed for any evidence of recriminations.

Or maybe Kerry will eliminate the need for such parsing by asking, “Why you and not me?”

More Solis

More reason for optimism that "greening"/stimulus/EFCA might could be integrated into a whole, big, New Deal 2-ish package: green Jobs jedi (and Ginger endorsee) Van Jones says, Hilda Solis = "not crap."

I'll See Yr Right-Wing HateJob and Raise You a Gay Whiskeypalian

Ezra Klein on the president-elect's decision to include the openly gay Rev. Gene Robinson in the Rick Warren-laced inaugural pageant:

This is, incidentally, why it's useful for progressives to criticize the president. Politicians respond to incentives. To noise. To anger. Warren, on some level, was a response to the loud protestations of evangelicals who believed the Democratic Party had no place for them. It's hard to see Robinson is anything but a response to progressive activists who sense that Obama was more willing to risk cross those who supported him than those who opposed him. Erase the anger from either side and it's not worth Obama -- or any president -- taking the risk to placate them. But this is a step in the right direction. This is genuinely inclusive. If it was the plan all along, the Obama administration sure did a good job keeping the secret. And if it wasn't, then equality activists have something to be proud of this morning. They changed the incentives.

Overheard on Twitter

Fantasy Island had that crap right: "careful what you wish for" is the ultimate frame for the Revenge Movie that is this life.

[micro-blogging is like blog-bonsai. and twitter is off the chain if you know the right people.]

Hilda Sollis Confirmation Hearing Re-Run Live Blog

That's right. It is Friday night. What's your point?

The meme that they deserve

Via dave, if this is the zombie frame that a kleptocratic GOP wants to keep running with for the forseeable future...

Bush’s grand achievement on the domestic side was the most recent turn of a triple play of tax cuts — John F. Kennedy’s, Ronald Reagan’s and his own — all of which prove the incredible economic wisdom of allowing people to keep more of the money they make [emphasis added]. It is unfortunately a lesson that is as quickly unlearned as it is productive when relearned. We are watching its unlearning now.

... then I says, "Let's talk about it, shall we?"





You were saying?

we now resume politico-theoretico-wonk programming!/around the horn, 2009!

I know, you missed the horn, didn't you? 'Always thought the old el Horn-0 was too disorganized, too acentric, huh? Until it was taken away from you, that is. Well, lemme tell you something. You cannot escape 'Around the Horn.'

[ And nobody should think I'm abandoning this here OG just because there's some signs of life over at the Prisonship. 'Seeing how writing is pretty much the only activity that doesn't make me want to fire myself out of a fucking cannon, lately, I think I can handle two blogs. Let alone twitter, which really and truly is the bonsai of the blog-realm.]

Anywho....

In Which Bowl Games Deliver Me Into the Hands of the Far Left - The Plank
"Sadly, all the Marxists are in academia rather than broadcast sports. That's the problem with Marxists. They're everywhere you don't want them to be and nowhere you really need them." I don't agree with this sentiment, necessarily, but I do think this here article is hilarious. And it's always satisfying to hear somebody voice an anthropological interest in the "Far Left." Somebody that isn't me, that is. [PS - Postmodernist grad unionists will be happy to hear that I kicked off 2009 decrying dialectical materialism - in front of a buncha sociologists, no less - in the name of my appropriation of the "slobs vs. snobs" rubric put forth in Caddyshack and by Tom Scharpling. That's right. It was over a champagne/bourbon toast. Slobs vs. snobs! ]

NW Republican: Oregon Public Employee Unions and "Pay to Play"
That's right. Blago from Chicago and our little ramshackle "influence" in Salem? Same fuckin' thing, dude. 'Just wanted to remind everybody that NW Republican is out there.

Caroline Kennedy Wins Friends with Salad: The New Yorker Blog: Online Only: The New Yorker
And now we arrive at the "you've gotta be bleeping kidding me?" entry. Oh wait, it's the New Yorker. Sy Hersch aside, it seems like this sort of thing is all these kids are capable of. Oh, and unfunny cartoons for snobs. Did I mention I'm wearing a denim workshirt right now (if I didn't, it's because I'm not.)? Anyway, what are we thinking about this Caroline Kennedy 'candidacy?'

1. I'm sure she'd vote my way most of the time, but
2. It is incorrigble and distasteful for the Dems to participate in the dynastic bullshit and the hero-worship bullshit and the all-powerful popular fascination with rich whites that this appointment would have to be based on.
   
3. More careerist: if I were a career pol in NY who'd worked my way up the system only to lose this appointment to an amateur...well, if I were a career pol from NY I'd probably expect no less (I'm not, and I still don't).

There's yr politico-wonk-horn for the Sabbath night, titans. Have at it.

2009 Hints for Living

1. Sure there's no god, but there actually are demons. Night demons, day demons, dog-demons, rake-demons. Visible or invisible, looking like The Thing or a phone or a kid. Demons.
2. Sure there are demons, but there are definitely not any faeries. This can be particularly hard to swallow in Eugene, where it seems like there are lavender scarves and jingling bells everywhere. But those aren't faeries, they're just graduates of some kind of outdoor leadership school who decided that "enchantment" is the only viable compliment to their newfound capacity for "survival." (This is reason #671 to leave town. There are still 800+ reasons to stay.)
   
3. Life is not like a blog. It's not a steady, collaborative, dialogical medium that rewards honest effort. Au contraire, life is more like a message board, on which you need to post 100 times before a new set of topics/features is revealed to you, and you're starting from scratch again. What are the new features, you ask? Demons.
   
4. Sure, the personal is the political or whatever, but personhood ain't reducible to politics. We can recklessly conflate our bodies and our lives with causes, but we cannot evaporate into these causes. Doing so just tangles up "me" with "the struggle" in pretentious and ineffective ways, such that you cannot separate your, say, libertarianism from your stocking fetish. And then you're not helping anybody or "taking your desire for reality because you believe in the reality of desires." [special note - French theory, let alone the anarchic whatevering of the Situationist International, is of no help whatsoever when it comes to boxing gate-demons]
   
5. Your friends (probably) don't secretly hate you. They (probably) want you to ask them to use their laundry machine or whatever. They (probably) aren't looking at you and thinking, "this guy looks like a bag of balloons and his entire being is smoldering beneath a foul, acrid, pus-like silence." You should try to convince them to cook for you or go to the movies. You shouldn't let them think you somehow are benefiting from being alone.
   
6. There is no such thing as 'being alone.' It's not that hell is other people or whatever. Purgatory (read: earth) is the place where you feel too sick or too embarrassed to seek out the people who can help, thus trading good company (friends) for bad company (raft-demons, turntable-demons).
   
7. Don't sit in a dive bar reading a book. You look like an asshole.
   

What I did for NYE

Man, sure are a lot of cobwebs in here....

We saw two very excellent shows in SF for the new year. Phil and Bobby put on a nice set of shows at the Bill Graham civic center. They alternated sets between ratdog and phil and phriends with phil and bobby doing a 5-7 song semi-acoustic jam in between the two. Also they dropped a third set NYE...it was a very nice time...

and upon returning home...

The "Dead" just announced a spring tour. the lineup will be Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, joined by guitar monster Warren Haynes and RatDog keyboard ace Jeff Chimenti
Only 2 shows on the west coast...may 9 LA forum and may 10 SF shoreline

I hope everyone (anyone?) had a nice NYE and extend happy vibes for your new year...

and for the audiophiles, here is the Dark star jam from the first night mid set it was more jazzy than the second night mid set Dark star (not a bad audience rec., but only 3 min):

I believe this riff might have actually been responsible for the destruction of a small city

Back when I thought "rock star" was a plausible career option, I'm fairly certain that White Denim is the band I would've applied to be in.

PRM

It's been awhile, so let's see if I remember how to do this. Live clips of some band, right? Of Montreal qualifies as a band, no? Okay then! Your last PRM of 2008!

"Bunny Ain't No Kind of Rider"


"Lysergic Bliss"


"Gronlandic Edit"

Merry Xmas, it's a distasteful collaboration

Okay, so Dave already beat me to name-checking the Onion's very funny list of obscene, absurd albs ("least essentials") from 2008. But I'm left with a question from the otherwise-semi-all-knowing women and men in the a/v control room: how in the motherfudge did Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis' Two Men with the Blues get omitted?

Listen. I am not wet behind the ears when it comes to the business of Willie albs. I know this guy'll pretty much roll tape with whoever the bleep can put together a few thousand clams and a session band [ed. note - wait, it's a live collection! live from the ever-bluesy Lincoln Center, baby!]. But nonetheless... this is the sort of thing that deserves at least some perfunctory remarks from the peanut gallery, non? Did everybody else decide just to bow their heads and zip their lips about it while I was out getting a Sun Drop?

See, here's an example of the New Me I was talking about previously. Old Me would say, "who knows what the future holds?" But New Me is not afraid to see the future, to know the future. There are three things I know for sure about 2009:

1. This alb cannot not be terrible, but will enjoy strong sales in Lane County, OR .
   
2. I will have to hear it at some point(s). I will eventually seek it out. In particular I will eventually need to know what "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It" sounds like avec trumpet (blues trumpet!)
   
3. Only the recession conditions will keep me from buying it for our friend Robes. (That and the fact that I still feel kinda bad about a live Bobby McFerrin slab I bought for him. If yr ever over at Robes' house, please ask him to play said slab for you.)

Oh, and if the prospects for this alb excite you, be sure to check out the Amazon customer reviews (here.) Hell, I think I'll chuck a few choice quotations in the damned comments section. It's Christmas, you know? Blues Christmas.

Year-End Self-Horn/Holiday Horn

While my role models Wobs and EZ patiently await their Xmas Phish albs, yours truly's present to himself is a blog spree. For starters, the first of three long, grand, bestuv 2008 music posts is up on le prisonship! Get to it, if yr the sort that "gets to" that sort of thing.

Aye, this's what passes for thrilling on my holiday eve, but don't take that as a complaint. The loved ones I love are safe and hopefully warm and that's enough, and it's so much gravy on the ice-cake if I get to write to "you," too. Maybe I'll write to U2 while I'm at it. ("Dear Bono, what the eff happened, mahn? And when did it dawn on you to appropriate Mark Arm's style of sunglasses...?)

2008 was a great year for politics and a tough year internally. But here's one thing I've noticed that's blog-worthy and un-maudlin: 2008 seems to be the year I've put down the gtr and picked up the pen (again.) Writing hasn't seemed so important or so fulfilling since Sewanee. I don't know what it means, and I don't know where it'll go, but web-blogging is not going to be enough for 2009, and I'm not sure a dissertation will be either... So what does that mean? Do I re-visit the faux-Beckett, semi-autobio-roman? Do I turn back to churning out poems - actual poems, the kind I actually revise/edit/try to publish? Or mebbe the world needs a mystery novel featuring socialist-stoner-art-sleuths? You think? I don't know, but it's time for something, and that passes for a "positive" in my mind.
Another thing, this one a rare ur-resolution from somebody who mostly cannot distinguish between resolve and Palmolive: I'm going to back off on the lex-as-insufferable-agnostic meme. It already goes without saying, you know? If you know me, you know (and I already know) what I do and don't doubt and what I do and don't believe. Like no less a mind then Tom Scharpling, I figure that we've got a grown-up president coming, and if Tom takes it to mean that 30+-year-olds should stop shopping for Star Wars memorabilia, I take it to mean that there's gotta be something else worth grumbling about then the godheads and politics-s that I already know are nowhere to be found. There are other "known knowns" and "known unknowns," the seeds of which are way more under-sewn. God - (not) the one whose existence I question - knows I'll revert to my Bergman and Beckett and much-ballyhooed practice of negative dialectical doubt. But I've seen that movie, and I've cut that solo alb. It's about time to stick dandelions and daisies in the eye-holes of my Converse.... (Another ur-resolution, natch, is to do something about the oft-evoked bag of balloons north of my midriff.)

That's it, friends. I'll soon bury this unsolicited-but-necessary bit of solipsism/sentiment beneath a far more characteristic bit of non sequitur whatever... but I needed to perpetrate this exact spew just exactly now. And as always, froonds, there's nobody to whom I'm better fit to spew than "you."

Finally, OG regulars: Merry Holidays. I love you jerks!

Holiday traditions

You know my favorite thing about the holidays? The carols. Who doesn't have memories of gathering around the tree with family and loved ones and singing this chestnut?



God, I fucking love Christmas! What's your family's twisted tradition (aside from your uncle getting drunk and ruining the holiday)?

SoCal in the House!

I love this article from market watch:

Worker Advocate: Solis Nomination Slap in the Face to America's Independent Minded Workers

Last update: 6:21 p.m. EST Dec. 18, 2008
WASHINGTON, Dec 18, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ --
Mark Mix, President of the 2.2 million member National Right to Work Committee, has released the following statement about President-elect Barack Obama's selection of Congresswoman Hilda Solis (D-CA) as the next Secretary of Labor:
"Obama's appointment of Hilda Solis is very disturbing news for America's independent-minded workers.
"Congresswoman Solis is a die-hard forced unionism activist who apparently believes that all workers should be gathered into union collectives -- whether they like it or not. Throughout her political career, she has unfailingly carried water for Big Labor and voted in favor of every forced unionism power grab that has come before her. In fact, she had a 100% voting record from the AFL-CIO, in support of their radical forced unionism agenda.

how much can an independent minded worker in a forced union collective expect to bring home?