YouTube - GG Allin - Die when you die !!

YouTube - GG Allin - Die when you die !!

Don't worry none, it's censored for those who don't actually wanna see grainy excrement footage.

Perfectly Pedestrian Oatmeal Stout

8# LME
.75# GW Crystal
.5# British Chocolate
.33# Roasted Barley
.33# Black Malt
2 oz Willamette
.5 oz Cascade
Wyeast Irish Ale 1084

Steeped grains at 155-175°F for 30 minutes. Boiled wort for 20 minutes before adding .5 oz Willamette hops. Added the rest of the Willamette hops after 15 minutes. Boiled for 45 more minutes for a total of 80 minutes. Added the Cascade hops when I killed the boil and moved the wort to cool in an ice bath.

OG of 1.070 @ 60°F

Notes: Not happy with the preliminary color. It is definitely brown. I should have ignored the guy in the homebrew store and added more black malt. Only added .5 oz hops at 20 minute mark as an error. Thought I'd put half the package in, but obviously had not. Got wort to too low of a temp in the ice bath, now have to wait for it to come up before I pitch the yeast. Forgetting to mark the carboy before I brewed was a mistake, now I have no idea how many gallons I am brewing.

This is my first brew in about 10 years, so I am sure there are things I am missing. This is will be the first time I won't be putting my beer in a secondary. Plan on going 4 weeks in the primary and bottling. Whether or not one needs to use a secondary fermentor seems to be a matter of great controversy, but may lack of secondary compels me to side with the primary-only crowd.

Wish me luck. Will keep you posted.

In Unfolding War on Public Employees, State Lawmakers and Media Likely to Do the Work Themselves | FDL News Desk

In Unfolding War on Public Employees, State Lawmakers and Media Likely to Do the Work Themselves | FDL News Desk

But I don’t think states or municipalities need much help from the federal government in their desire to rewrite public employee union contracts. There has been a concerted effort for years to demonize and delegitimize public employee unions, from both Republican pols and the media in general. This has left a distorted impression about greedy union contracts and well-paid government functionaries. So the new class of Republican governors would certainly want to capitalize on that by pleasing the public, who now favor things like wage freezes (which Obama just instituted at the federal level) and furloughs and bigger pension contributions, punishing those workers. And they are animated by a general hatred of unions, which have maintained their strength in the public sector while fading away in the private sector.

Somebody Bet on the Bay

Ah, Good Ol' 1208

1208 Kelly Blvd., Springfield, OR, the house I grew up in, is for sale.

This 759 square foot beauty features two bedrooms and one bath. It has an "open floor plan" which, in this particular case, means that it would be crazy to waste the space between the living room and the kitchen with a wall.

As can see in this photo gallery, petty bourgeois indulgences like dining tables and/or space will not be a temptation. And check out that sweet gate (can I get a close up of that ironwork?) which is wide enough to allow you to park a vehicle in the back yard, should the garage, driveway, street, and tire-rutted side yard not be enough capacity for all your vehicles.

The immediate area features several unpaved streets, so male youngins can partake in the neighborhood tradition of rock fighting and making long skid marks with their bicycles. (I have no idea what a girl might do in this neighborhood. Not sure there were any when I grew up. Well, not at the rock fights.)

Can a family of four, two dogs, and two birds live comfortably in such space? No. No, they cannot.

How much would you pay for this fine house and piece of solidcitizen history? An astounding $165,000. I shit you not.

The Day After Christmas

And a man's thoughts inevitably turn toward tires.

N'Oubliez Pas La Raison

What I Miss About Maryland

Hate, Hate, Hate, You're a Fucking Hater

Matthew Franck is a hater. I was listening to this wanker on NPR yesterday, while I was on my way to get some delicious Taco Time brand tacos and had one of my what I like to call "yelling at the radio" fits.

His basic premise is that we gay marriage supporters call the haters "haters" because we have no real arguments to support gay marriage. Let's have an honest debate, he says. Honestly, I've been listening to the "debate" about gay marriage for some time, so by default I am thinking that this hater is filled with the hate, so he better start off bringing some serious non-hate arguments to justify his anti-gay equality stance.

Instead, he starts from the premise of gay marriage is just wrong, wrong, wrong. To back this up, he points to the wisdom of the American people. They think gay marriage is wrong, so it pretty much must be wrong, so therefore those opposed to gay marriage cannot be haters. This is when I start shouting at the radio as I drive down the Interstate designated 5.

Matt then bolsters his "wisdom of the American people" argument with the "since the beginning of time" argument. At this point, I begin wondering if I have been so caught up in my own hate that I have missed the fact that I was somehow teleported to Eastern Washington and I am listening to some yokel with four tin cans and a transmitter give me a little God's country education. But no, I am still on 5 and headed to Springfield for those delicious tacos. And listening to the National People's Radio which for some reason decided to give this fuckwit 15 minutes of airtime to spew his wildly ahistorical bullshit.

So, in a short span of time we have the "'Mericans don't like it, so it's can't be good" argument and the "this is how God has always wanted it" argument. My favorite bit came when he had to the answer the dreaded "If marriage is only for the purpose of having men and women fuck so they can make Jesus babies to be raised safely by a mother AND! a father [as God intended. I will give Matt this, he didn't resort to any biological determinist crap, which must be tough, because it's sitting right there] then why do we let old farts and the barren get hitched?" question.

Tears of rage turned to tears of laughter as I took the new Beltline flyway exit to my hometown [former Eugenians would not recognize the Gateway exit anymore. Seriously, when you come back out here you will find yourself paraphrasing Burne with a little "My God, what have they done?"], as Matt combined America and God to come up with the argument that marriage, since the beginning of civilization itself, has been for the purpose of hot man on woman action and, while it might be true that old folk can't produce babies, their sweaty old-person fucking is in line with the "principles" on which marriage is based, so it's okay, but the gay fucking can never produce children, not even in "principle," so cannot be legally sanctioned with society's highest honor. This is the way Americans want it.

This line of argumentation forces me to picture a young girl uptalking her way through this argument.

"Um, like marriage is for, like um, making babies? And, like, my grandma can't have babies? But she should be allowed the legal protections and benefits of marriage because her and Mel, they like, have sex like you would if you were going to make a baby? Or could do it that way? So, like, it's the same principle as baby-making sex? So it's cool. But the gays? They can't make babies? So they shouldn't get be allowed to get married or anything."

So yes, society has decided that the only people who have the right to marriage are those that fuck in the heterosexual style. This is not hate. This is, well, ummm...you see, more than 66% of Americans are opposed to gay marriage, and since the beginning of time...

The tacos were delicious. I had three.

Hot Stove

Who cares if old J.B.
Is monarch of the sea?
I'm not afraid if his Free Trade scoops all my biz from me.
I seek a greater fame,
And get there all the same.
I knock creation to all tarnation at the Glorious National Game!

Pigeon Shit

1. (At least) 3 examinations yesterday.
   That night I dreamed of buying sneakers.
   
2. Wishing for a real War on Xmas.
3. OG-ing again again.
4. Unrequited blogger.
   
5. Maybe gonna turn on the amplifier, now.
   

Prisonshift

1. Box Elders, Alice and Friends. If this, and not Crooked Rain, 'd followed Slanted and Enchanted, it'd've been less surprising. Gtrs, bs, drum and organ. Songwriting born punk but trending rock, sad stories for lyrics.
   
2. Dental hygenist/shrink/nutritionist, all dancing with me today before Jesus lets me set down.
   
3. Writing on this blog - and not the regular one - in hopes nobody/somebody's reading. A familiar, but embellished, speechlessness and/or gagging has m'befallen.
   
4. I thought I'd known depression by December 2008, but that was numpin. Wait til you actually get the things you want from your life; then you'll know the unhappiness, seasickness and slow dying that come with vivre sa vie.
5. Your gut expands and distends, your chest sours and waking approximates a bloody sneeze. You make a list of people you love the most and become progressively horrified for them and their proximity to you.
6. Spirits and demons take on a rhetorical utility.
7. Reading Blood Meridian, which is a hoot and big time life-affirmer.
   
8. Aqua aerobics also this AM! Damned if we won't have an aggressive internal monologue amidst all the me time therein.
   

Prisonship Twi-ddle-dye-dees

1. Elevated liver enzymes.
   
2. Julie Klausner on TBSOWFMU
3. My 2nd-or3rd red Stax cup from the Soul Museum, filled with sub-room temperature coffee and expired 1/2+1/2 dregs.
   
4. Having seen Thee Oh Sees, the Gories, Teenage Fanclub, Superchunk, Nobunny and Bob Mould in the last coupla months.
   
5. The Poulantzas Reader.
6. Cheaply Priced Blue Note lp reissues, such as Hank Mobley's Workout.
7. Poulantzas: "I was able to avoid conceiving of the different instances (in particular the political, the state) as being by nature and pre-existing, in essence, their meeting together within a precise mode if production." This is what he calls the "regional theory," his elaboration on Althusser's idea of "relative autonomy."
   
8. my first ever for-real toilet punk-ish, killed by desk-ish sounding song for my imaginary punk band, Thee White Vote. Lyrically the inspirations are from The Exorcist and Paul Muldoon. It's entitled, "Captain Howdy Has a Shack."
   

Weigel : Tea Party Patriots Against the Tax Cut Deal [UPDATE: and RedState!]

Weigel : Tea Party Patriots Against the Tax Cut Deal [UPDATE: and RedState!]

And so Charles Krauthammer and Grover Norquist have company in opposition, albeit much more muted than opposition to, say, cap-and-trade.

This is the first "tell" we've gotten yet re: how the tea party will take to compromise-y, everybody's dirty-y life in governance. But note that last bit about how their oppo towards cap-and-trade is much more do-or-die, apparently.

Bottom line? Only tiny ideological minorites really care about deficits and spending enough to choke on tax cuts and/or constituent services. It's just that vast majorities appreciate the discourse of deficits cuz it allows 'em to talk about 1,000 other t(h)ings and s(t)uff and p(e)ople.

Pawlenty: Public unions 'exploiters' - Jennifer Epstein - POLITICO.com

Pawlenty: Public unions 'exploiters' - Jennifer Epstein - POLITICO.com

“Unionized public employees are making more money, receiving more generous benefits and enjoying greater job security than the working families forced to pay for it with ever-higher taxes, deficits and debt,” Pawlenty wrote in an opinion piece.

Working families' wages have been systematically pushed down by whom since the 1980s (- aka, shucks, circa PATCO)???? By you and yours, dick. You think public employee unions are the reason working families suffer under neoliberal tax policy? You dolt.

On the Relative Autonomy of the Capitalist State

Poulantzas

“[attributes] to the capitalist state a precise role as political organizer and unifier, and as a factor for the establishment of the “unstable equilibrium of compromises,” which role is constitutively connected with its relative autonomy. Two directions that are nothing more than two aspects of a single approach. The separation of the economic and the political provides the general framework, depending upon the different states of capitalism (this separation is itself liable to transformation) for an examination of the relative autonomy of the capitalist state – with the concrete form taken by this autonomy depending upon the precise conjuncture of the class struggle at any one time. For this separation of the economic and the political is itself nothing more than the form taken by the constitution of the classes and hence it too is a consequence of their struggles under capitalism.

Pwismship Tin-vin-toddies

1. Stationed at home in Michigan, snow day.
   
2. Crass agit-prop framed on the office wall.
   
3. Blacktop Ikea utilito-desk speckled with paper clips and stems.
   
4. Wedding pics.
5. Zwan memorabilia.
   
6. Dillion Jaguar copy > EH Small Clone > Fender Deluxe tubes
7. File cabinet on wheels
8. Paper-covered dissertation journal/sketchbook. Prominence of Poulantzas therein. WFMU, Goner, In the Red stickers.
   
9. Rob Smith's recent show at Ditch.
10. Superchunk, Majesty Shredding.
11. A deep, wide pile of New York Review of Books ' to further examine -- though their writing about the tea parties and le Right en general has been kinda weak, truth told.
    

Any Socialism Cannot Go Around, But Must Go Through, this Precept

Like a three-hole-puncher. We need to help bind this kind of thinking up.

Q&A With Shipping News’ Jason Noble

Q&A With Shipping News’ Jason Noble

We have to be advocates for art and music, and despite the myth, very few bands or record stores make much money. They just want to work with music they love. So it’s really up to us. That goes for small labels, book stores, publishers, printers and anyone working to keep independent thought alive. The environment in the U.S. is very hostile and short-sighted right now. We need to speak up for “the other” and question anyone that is embracing corporate/pseudo-religious conservative extremism. Once again, it’s a scary time. We just had an entire election cycle where no one even mentioned that we’re fighting two wars! It was all about assigning blame and attacking people, for being an immigrant or “socialist” or anyone requesting decent treatment. I understand why people get duped by these outrageous claims and shoddy promises by the right wing. (And to be fair, the liberals have their share of inconsistencies and foul-ups.) Local culture, when it is active and engaged, makes us more tolerant, more informed and less likely to be filled with irrational fear. And records sound better than mp3 files.

Laclau, "Universalism, Particularism and the Question of Identity"

If democracy is possible, it is because the universal has no necessary body and no necessary content; different groups, instead, compete between themselves to temporarily give to their particularisms a function of universal representation. Society generates a whole vocabulary of empty signifiers whose temporary signifieds are the result of a political competition. It is this final failure off society to constitute itself as society - which is the same thing as the failure of constituting difference as difference - which makes the distance between the universal and the particular unbridgeable and, as a result, burdens concrete social agents with the impossible task of making democratic interaction achievable.