Mr. Show - John Baptiste Philouza

Here it be, Jer e my

Remember to pay your taxes!

America Is Not #1

Next country to invade?

American people talking about geography...and killing people.

Dateline Hy-Vee: Special You-Guess-The-Song Edition, or Disco Flute Ascendant!

So, in Hy-Vee this morning I was there long enough to hear three songs, and it occurred to me that you, dear Readers, should guess which three songs they were! A couple hints: all the songs are obviously from the Seventies, and all have achieved some level of iconic status. They aren't songs I love, necessarily, just iconic. And here's why: all three feature flute licks that just burrow down into the base of your brain and inform all of your life decisions from that point on.

Okay, enough hints. What three iconic Seventies unforgettable flute-lick songs did I hear, in a row, at Hy-Vee? Put your answers in the comments...

I'll take recently-discovered parts of the brain for five-hundred, Alex...

This article is very interesting and very encouraging, I think.

It appears that a stroke survivor simply forgot about his two-pack-a-day cigarette habit. No cravings, not even an awareness that he had quit. Part of his brain had been damaged from the stroke, and from this lucky strike (I know, I know) researchers have identified a silver-dollar-sized portion of the brain called the insula that appears to hold very promising advancements for fighting addiction.

Now, they don't know this with certainty, not yet. The testing and development of medicine will take years, and that's only if further targeted research confirms that the insula acts as a sort-of "craving headquarters."

I have friends and family members who smoke. I go back and forth on this issue. I want people to be happy, and I want them to pursue happiness, as long as that pursuit doesn't harm others. For many, smoking adds a lot to their happiness. But smoking around me might shorten my life, whether I smoke or not. That's why I go back and forth on the issue. Unlike other addictive substances, smoking appears to be quite toxic to people in the general vicinity.

I just watched an episode of Northern Exposure from season five, the one where DJ Chris Stevens discovers he has high blood pressure and that simply by taking prescription medication for it, he might live a very long time. The Stevens clan is accustomed to dying young, and DJ Chris is unprepared for this new lease on life. He hasn't taken care of his body, hasn't paid taxes; he's let a lot of things go unchecked because he assumed he would be checking out before those issues would require too much attention. He goes into quite a bout of depression.

Surprisingly (to me), in the end he chooses the medication and the longer, safer life. I wouldn't presume to know enough to tell anybody else what to do, but if I make it to seventy, it would sure be nice not to have outlived my brothers or friends.

On how Life imitates Art, or more specifically, how Life imitates Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan

As I retrieved my cash from the ATM early this afternoon, I started to roll up the car window and I felt it! A bug had flown into my ear! Fortunately, I was able to get it out before it crawled into my brain and turned me over to the Dark Side...

Was the Dark Side in Star Trek? I can't remember...

Who wants to play two-out-of-three?

The parents of Shawn Hornbeck, the boy who days ago was found alive after going missing in October of 2002, were quite dogged in their pursuit of information from psychics. Four months after the disappearance, mom and dad showed up on Montel's TV show to learn from "psychic" Sylvia Browne what might have happened to their boy.

Sylvia told them Shawn was dead and that they would probably find his body in a "wooded area." She described the abductor as a "dark-skinned man, he wasn't black -- more like hispanic (with long black hair that he wore in dreadlocks"; she described the abductor's car as "an older model blue sedan, a car with fins like in late 1950's and early 1960's Chevrolets."

Of course, Shawn and another boy were found alive in a neighboring Missouri town, being held by a white man with particularly white, pasty skin, a man who drove a rusty Nissan pickup truck.

I have to agree with skeptico, who argues that a real psychic would have given them information like this:

"He's alive and he's living nearby. His abductor is a white man with a beard. He drives an old pickup truck and he works as a manager of a restaurant."

That would have been actual psychic activity, seeing something that you had no empirical reason to know. Of course, psychics are only believed by people desperate enough to fill in and reconcile all of the immense gaps on their own. Even in the Hornbecks' anguished state, something didn't seem right to Shawn's dad: "I don't know what to think any more. The information from different psychics doesn't match up."

No, no it doesn't match up. Seriously, if there was ever a case of an actual psychic, predicting accurate details of a crime about which he or she had no empirical information, that would be a very big deal.

And you really should go read these lame Sylvia excuses.

If you can't beat 'em, take off your shirt and pick up a strange wooden flute...

Sometimes it helps to explain a post right up front, maybe to warn people about what they're about to watch, or to make them aware of something wonderful that you've come across on the worldWIDE web...

This is not one of those times.



Hank Harris sent me this video. ¡Viva la resolucion!

The Jazz Diversity Project: A Synopsis, In Essay Form, By Sixth-Graders From Huron, South Dakota

Yesterday The Jazz Diversity Project performed at a middle-school assembly in Huron. The Project is the brainchild of the folks at the Sioux Falls Jazz & Blues Society and is designed to teach kids about the threads that tie together jazz, American history, and diversity. There's a narrative, live tunes and excerpts played by a jazz quintet, and a slide show.

I now present actual letters, in short essay form, written by sixth-graders in the short period of time between when we finished our program and when we left the school after packing up--

"Dear Jazz Dudes

this presentation made me feel like I dont want to go to a another consert be cous it was to loud. thanks for getting me out of class the piano dude looked weird moving his head. Hi! I like Reese's"

Okay, at this point I should probably explain that the very first slide we start off the program with is a shot of a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. It's a light-hearted metaphor, sure, but it serves to explain how wonderful results can come from very different, unexpected ingredients. While it felt like I was almost going overboard in stressing the metaphor, the musical melting pot, the mixing of African and European elements, cooked up in the same pot, several of the essays simply iterated the writer's preference for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. If any of the sixth-graders were informed by the Reese's metaphor, none of them found it necessary to include it in the essays they wrote.

(deep breath) Moving on...

This is from a sixth-grade "celloist" and tenor "saxaphonist."

"I thought that is was very, very, very boring. I don't like jazz music, Im sorry. No offence or anything but yeah I don't. I think the best part was when we talked about Reese's [ed. note: sigh...]. Thanks for getting me out of class. I have to addmit the African music was almost pimed out but pimping. I much perfur 50 cent & other today music.

Bye, ? (yup)"

Yes, she actually played coy with her essay by going anonymous in her letter to five adults she's never seen before and she'll never see again...

The following comes from a sixth-grade violin player--

"I HATE JAZZ I figured out I hate jazz more than I thought I did before. Even though I HATE jazz I think it was good for blacks + whites to come together lik that"

Two things about this one: the first three words, "I HATE JAZZ," are written in huge capital letters stretching across the entire width of the paper. Secondly, this is from a violin player, which makes me curious; I mean, you always expect certain types of rebellion, especially when kids aren't being graded, but generally not from the violin section.

Also, this writer appears to have an accomplice, since another essay used the same word-for-word approach (albeit with smaller letters).

On the other hand, here's a warm note from another violinist:

"Hi, I LOVED your presentation. I loved jazz already, but y'all made it SO much more interesting! The thought that blacks and whites couldn't be in a band together, amazing! Jazz is very important, we wouldn't have techo, haha, I couldn't live without techno.

Y'all are amazing! I could never play that great. How do you fit in practice and your normal lives? Amazing."

Here's another nice letter with a couple of fun quirks near the end:

"I loved the presentation it was so cool. You guys are real good at playing jazz. Before I heard you play I thought jazz was boring but now that I heard you I think it rocks. I especially liked the last song [ed. note: "Cantaloupe Island" by Herbie Hancock]. I think that it was a great concert. I loved the drums I wanted to play the drums but my mom said no so orchestra is nice to. I hope you prosepore"

Do you hear how it spins into regret and a lashing out at his or her mother for saying no to the drums? Also, I think the last word is "prosper," but it could also be a new compound word that I've not yet considered."

Some snippets from some of the rest of the letters:

"If you wanted to make it more intresting try to add some really funny jokes."

"Jazz is fun to listen to. It sounds like a story when you play."

"I have some questions for you. Does Jazz play in elevators? Will you come back?"

"Starting piano this summer is one of my goals."

I'll be taking applicants for a new pilot program, the Grammar Diversity Project. We need all the help we can get...

The French found it "first," I guess

All right, ladies and gentlemen, I'm off to Pierre. I'll try not to get any goose droppings on me, and you all try not to get any goose droppings on you. That goes for you too, Plywood!

Spooncat:blog FLASHBACK!

On 30 April, 2004, Jeremy wrote the following in this very blog:

• The halcyon days of April 2000, part I.

  On a Friday night at Phil's Pub, we closed the show with "How To Run The World." We asked the crowd for a subject for when we get to the alphabet part near the end. One of the dancers suggested world leaders. Here are the world leaders we came up during the song:
  
  H--Vaclav Havel
  I--Indira Gandhi
  J--Jack Palance
  K--Martin Luther King, Jr.
  L--Lech Walesa
  M--Mahatma Gandhi
  N--Neville Chamberlain
  O--Orville Redenbacher
  P--none (too much laughter)
  Q--Moammar Qaddafi (courtesy of Bronko)
  R--none (Naps was busy congratulating Bronko for coming up with Qaddafi for 'Q')
  S--Sneaky Bill Clinton
  T--none (laughter)
  U--U Thant
  V--Vladimir Nabokov
  W--General William Westmoreland
  
  That's a pretty damn good list. I will say, in our defense, it's hard to think of world leaders when you've got all the instruments blaring away all around you. For instance, there seemed to be some confusion as to whether the letter should be used for the first name or the last name.
  
  And I've always been sort of irrational in my love for the name U Thant.

Four square bad

...two square four!

29 April, 2000 @ Phil's Pub

I should stop and mention that Jonathon Edward has placed wonderfully re-mastered board tapes from a Phil's Pub show on Spooncat.com. This performance was right after spending time (and too much money) at a big-time Minneapolis recording studio, in persuit of our pop-gloss effort, The American Jiggler.

Working for a record producer cleaned up our playing quite a bit. Not that the producer would say, "You've got to clean up your playing," or anything, just that thinking about arranging a final version of a song keeps a band mindful of staying away from the free-for-all mindset. One reason is that it's actually expensive-for-all, at studio rates.

At any rate, we were feeling our chops in this show, and Phil's Pub never disappointed, except for the time when we switched the stage setup to have the guitars stage right, and nothing seemed to ever get in tune. That sucked.

Two legs bad...

four legs good!

Levine Retribution

Here, courtesy of TV writer Ken Levine's blog, is an excerpt from an imagined Aaron Sorkin show about baseball...

http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/


"This is how I imagine a typical scene would go.

EXT. KAUFFMAN STADIUM -- NIGHT

THE MANAGER, LEO, TROTS OUT TO THE MOUND TO TALK TO BELEAGURED PITCHER, DANNY (THERE’S ALWAYS A DANNY). THE BASES ARE LOADED. THE CROWD IS GOING NUTS. IT’S GAME SEVEN OF THE WORLD SERIES.

LEO
You can’t get a good lobster in this town.

DANNY
Last I checked we were in Kansas City.

LEO
4.6 billion pork ribs sold every year and 18.9 tons of beef consumed annually since 1997 –

DANNY
They like their beef, what can I tell ya?

LEO
But you’d think just for variety’s sake.

DANNY
I can still throw my curve.

LEO
For strikes?

DANNY
I’m not throwing enough?

LEO
I’ve seen more lobsters.

DANNY WALKS TO THE ROSIN SACK, GIVES IT A SQUEEZE, DECIDES TO KEEP WALKING. HE AND LEO NOW WALK OUT INTO CENTER FIELD.

DANNY
It’s just that…

LEO
What? Kathy?

DANNY
No. Cabs. There’s no cohesiveness on this team. After road games, 25 cabs for 25 players. There used to be a thing called “the greater good”, forgoing your needs for the betterment of the team and community who looks to us for their identity and self worth. When I’m trying to save a game I’m really trying to save a factory. If baseball is a metaphor for life, then responsibility is its first cousin simile. And Kathy.

LEO
That’s a “1” on your back and not a “2”.

DANNY
I can’t help it. She knocks my sanitary socks off.

THEY CROSS THE CENTER FIELDER, HECTOR.

HECTOR
(in thick accent) Hey, Skip. You know where we could get a lobster around here?

LEO
Order a steak with butter sauce.

THEY REACH THE WALL AND BEGIN WALKING AROUND THE WARNING TRACK.

DANNY
I only became a pitcher because of her.

LEO
Does she know that?

DANNY
She knows that a human arm is not supposed to throw a baseball 100 miles per hour. And she knows that Jesus Christ could strike out Babe Ruth every at bat for ten years without so much as a rotator tear. But to answer your question – what was your question again?

LEO
Can you still throw your curve ball for strikes?

DANNY
No. The other one.

LEO
Does Kathy know you became a pitcher for her?

THEY REACH THE RIGHT FIELDER, AN AFRO-AMERICAN NAMED CHET.

CHET
Look up in the stands, guys. Not four black faces. Would Jackie Robinson even want to break into this game now? If this sport speaks to minorities now it speaks in Spanish. Afro-Americans make up less than 5% of the major leagues. Compare that to basketball, football, or even golf. Satchel Paige said, “don’t look back, something might be gaining on ya.” I just did. It’s now hockey.

LEO
Play a little closer to the line.

THEY CONTINUE WALKING AROUND THE WARNING TRACK.

DANNY
I think she knows.

LEO
But do you really know if she knows?

DANNY
No.

LEO
Then you know what you’ve got to do.

DANNY
Yeah.

LEO
Throw strikes.

DANNY
Right. Thanks.

LEO
And when you get home –

DANNY
Yeah?

LEO
Tell her.

DANNY
I’ll take her out for a lobster.

LEO
What do you mean, 25 cabs for 25 players?

AS THEY START AROUND THE WARNING TRACK FOR ANOTHER LAP, WE:

FADE OUT.

Apache!

MiLKing it...

Here's a story from the New York Times, July 14, 1902...

Negro Driven Away
The Last One Leaves Decatur, Ind., Owing to Threats Made

The last Negro has left Decatur, Ind. His departure was caused by the anti-Negro feeling. About a month ago a mob of 50 men drove out all the Negroes who were then making that city their home. Since that time the feeling against the Negro has been intense, so much so that an Anti-Negro Society was organized.

The colored man who has just left came about three weeks, and since that time received many threatening letters. When he appeared on the streets he was insulted and jeered at. An attack was threatened ...

The anti-negroites declare that as Decatur is now cleared of Negroes they will keep it so, and the importation of any more will undoubtedly result in serious trouble.

Here's an excerpt from a book by James Loewen called "Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism":

"... Beginning in about 1890 and continuing until 1968, white Americans established thousands of towns across the United States for whites only. Many towns drove out their black populations, then posted sundown signs. ... Other towns passed ordinances barring African Americans after dark or prohibiting them from owning or renting property; still others established such policies by informal means, harassing and even killing those who violated the rule. Some sundown towns similarly kept out Jews, Chinese, Mexicans, Native Americans, or other groups.

Independent sundown towns range from tiny hamlets such as DeLand, Illinois (population 500) to substantial cities such as Appleton, Wisconsin (57,000 in 1970). Sometimes entire counties went sundown, usually when their county seat did. Independent sundown towns were soon joined by "sundown suburbs," which could be even larger: Levittown, on Long Island, had 82,000 residents in 1970, while Livonia, Michigan, and Parma, Ohio, had more than 100,000. Warren, a suburb of Detroit, had a population of 180,000 including just 28 minority families, most of whom lived on a U.S. Army facility.

Outside the traditional South ... probably a majority of all incorporated places kept out African Americans."

Notice that even proud homes to hip liberal arts colleges like Appleton, Wisconsin make the list. These towns came about in two ways; they were either ethnically cleansed in a manner not unlike Serbia or Kosovo in the 1990's (for a relatively tame example, see the aforementioned Decatur story), or these communities were planned as all-white communities. That last sentence of the previous excerpt is staggering: "Outside the traditional South... probably a majority of all incorporated places kept out African Americans." Staggering.

These "sundown towns" should be a stark reminder when we white folk are busy patting ourselves on the back today for all the progress we've made in race relations. It is easy, in the wake of the 2006 elections and the ridiculous comments by right-wing talk-radio types, to dismiss this type of discrimination as nothing more than a wacko fringe in today's society. And sure, in some ways, generally speaking, the South deserves some of the scorn they get. In the 1870's, when the Klan first got big, it was centered in the South. Then, the Klan sort of got ignored into irrelevance. The nation made great strides toward righting some of the institutional wrongs of slavery and segregation. Until 1890.

For many reasons, the next forty years were really terrible for blacks. Sociologists call this period The Great Retreat. Blacks ended up shut out of Congress and, after Plessy v. Ferguson, newly-signed segregation laws found their way into almost every state, Union and Confederacy alike. And race-motivated hate crimes exploded, especially EVERYWHERE BUT THE SOUTH. An excerpt from the Ku Klux Klan Wikipedia page:

"The second Ku Klux Klan rose to great prominence and spread from the South into the Midwest and Northern states and even into Canada. At its peak, most of the membership resided in Midwestern states. Through sympathetic elected officials, the KKK controlled the governments of Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Oregon in addition to those of the Southern Democratic legislatures. It even claimed to have inducted Republican President Warren Harding at the White House. Klan delegates played a significant role at the 1924 Democratic National Convention in New York City, often called the "Klanbake Convention" as a result. The convention initially pitted Klan-backed candidate William McAdoo against New York Governor Al Smith, who drew the opposition of the group because of his Catholic faith. After days of stalemates and rioting, both candidates withdrew in favor of a compromise. Klan delegates defeated a Democratic Party platform plank that would have condemned their organization. On July 4, 1924 thousands of Klansmen converged on a nearby field in New Jersey where they participated in cross burnings, burned effigies of Smith, and celebrated their defeat of the platform plank."

It appears that Nixon's cynical Southern Strategy, the subtle recipe for many (not all) of the Republican's considerable electoral triumphs during my lifetime, is not so Southern. It's still cynical, though. There were a lot of names for the voters that were scared that blacks and their music would invade their neighborhoods. "Reagan Democrats." "Soccer Moms." "Security Dads." I know, I know, there were and are a bunch of reasons to vote for one party over another, and there are certainly a bunch of reasons to become disaffected with anybody with a 'D' by their name. Sometimes, however, the simplest explanation is the best explanation. There's plenty of blame to go around.

I think I win the Obvious Award for that last sentence. What trenchant analysis of our country's social ills!

Aaron McGruder, who is a very smart satirist, writes the Boondocks comic strip, and the following clip comes from his animated Boondocks episode from 2006's MLK holiday. The premise involves how Martin Luther King's activism would play today had he lived to old age. Even though Aaron McGruder, if he was my grandfather's age, wouldn't have been allowed into my grandfather's hometown of Austin, Minnesota, don't let that dissuade you, good white folk, from watching the clip...

Big show tonight!!

Faulty Premises and Simple Constructs™

It is very tempting to just dismiss George W. Bush as a commander-in-chief who simply lacks critical thinking skills. The lack of rational thought has poisoned many of his decisions; in fact, when one starts from a faulty premise, all resulting decisions based on that premise can be wrong (and they often ARE all wrong). For those that prefer the simplicity of cliche, let's say "two wrongs don't make a right." Or "you know a tree by its trunk."

Bush certainly is a True Believer™, somebody who appears so convinced of a course of action that no amount of contrary information or collisions with reality can change his convictions. Because a True Believer™ is the president of Iran, our media take short snippets of his comments and portray him as a dangerous lunatic. Even though Ahmadinejad has spewed myriad ridiculous comments over the past eighteen months, our media still insist on quoting him out of context or just plain misquoting him. This is a hare-brained deceit, since Ahmadinejad could be judged harshly based on what he actually says. But the media's laziness and perniciousness are not relevant to this point: the True Believer™ that leads Iran is held up as a danger and a menace and an imminent threat, BECAUSE OF HIS IRRATIONAL REMARKS. In large part, the smoking gun is Ahmadinejad's lack of critical thinking.

Now, the president of Iran doesn't have any real power, thankfully. He is generally a mouthpiece (albeit a disposable one) for the archconservative clerics that run Iran's Supreme Council. The True Believer™ in charge of our country, however, appears to be unbound by those same restraints. As Keith Olbermann indicated last night before the President's speech, Bush is able to pursue a course opposed by generals, a majority of servicemen and servicewomen, the U. S.'s allies, former presidents and secretaries of state, Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate, the voters last November, and a wicked-big majority of Americans right now. So, although Bush the True Believer™ looked wan and uncomfortable last night, sputtering his way through a greatest-misses speech on Iraq without even the customary swagger and smirk, he is still able, as President, to continue largely unabated on this doomed path.

In fact, the path seems to have gotten much bigger (and doom-ier?) last night, at least the acknowledged size and scope of the path. Here's a quick exchange between Bush and one of his faithful mouthpieces, Sean Hannity, from an interview on Fox late last year:

Hannity: Is this a struggle literally between good and evil?

Bush: I think it is.

Hannity: This is what it is? Do you think most people understand that? I mean, when you see the vacillating poll numbers, does it discourage you in that sense?

Bush: Well, first of all, you can't make decisions on polls, Sean. You've got to do what you think is right. The reason I say it's good versus evil is that evil people kill innocent life to achieve political objectives. And that's what Al Qaeda and people like Al Qaeda do.


And here's something I wrote almost a year ago on this blog, wrapping up a long post about the folly of military confrontation with Iran:

"Well, anyway, Iran isn't a threat. They can't invade us. They can't bomb us from where they live. And they don't want to. In normal times, that might be the end of the worry..."

Here's why it isn't normal times, and here's why our situation is probably much more dire than simply having an uncurious hack president who is convinced is terrible decisions are actually wise and his infantile instincts are actually profound: we are now led by a guy who is mixing the worst elements of his "I'm the decider" foreign policy with the worst elements of the "everything-is-politics" methods that Karl Rove and his party have been using for years. Here are two Simple Constructs™ (believe me, they haven't gotten any more complex than this in the Oval Office):

1) This is a good-and-evil battle. "We" are good, of course, which means that whoever we're fighting is evil.

2) It is politically impossible for this president to admit defeat and pull out of Iraq, even though most everyday people in this country want him to do that. It's also politically impossible to appear to be "staying the course." So, the only political option is to escalate.

Now, "escalate" might be too strong a word. We're only sending 21,500 more troops, and, although the president singled out Iran and Syria for ominous threats again, none of the troops are going to the Iranian or Syrian border areas. We ARE sending 4,000 of those troops to Al-Anbar province, which is between Baghdad and JORDAN, but we didn't mention Jordan as a threat, because our True Believer™ and his too-clever-by-half advisors don't want to blow up Jordan. And the "clear-and-hold" strategy being touted as a bold new direction for Iraq is wrong on two counts: it was previously used as a name for what we tried last time we attempted to pacify Baghdad (and failed), and to do it right, according to military commanders, it would take a quarter of a million troops. In Baghdad alone. Never mind that when the insurgency started to really wreak havoc, there were more U. S. troops in Iraq than there will be AFTER the 21,500 troops are added to the number currently in Iraq. Never mind that nobody thinks it will work except Bush and some of his advisors and press lapdogs. Never mind that the decision was almost exclusively political and contains an almost sublime lack of military insight.

See, what I was doing there was applying some critical thought to Simple Construct No. 2™. And because I wasn't starting from the same faulty premise as Bush, I wasn't going to find a way to make any sense out of it. Similarly, Simple Construct No. 1™ is a strange nut to crack. Who are we fighting? Really, who are we fighting? The president says al-Qaeda, which is silly. They aren't in Iraq, not Osama's al-Qaeda. Zarqawi was the head of the small and generally ineffectual Iraq component of al-Qaeda. Did his capture and death rein in the violence? Either the president knows how small the actual "terrorist" component in Iraq is and he's lying about it, or he honestly doesn't know. I'm not sure which option is worse.

So who are we fighting? Is it Sunnis? The Shia, with our backing, run the government (or what passes for a government) and make up the majority of the Iraqi troops we are training. Other than Iran and part of Yemen, the Shia have no major influence... anywhere. Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, Oman, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, the rest of Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc., all prefer Sunni Islam. By executing Saddam on a Sunni holy day, for Herod-like crimes in a Dawa (radical Shia) village in 1982, makes it look like we're fighting the Sunnis. The fact that al-Maliki, who as prime minister was presumably heading the Iraqi government's execution of Saddam, is the leader of the Dawa party, doesn't dissuade those BILLION or so Muslims from finding a new and totally avoidable reason for despising U. S. foreign policy.

But I don't think we're fighting the Sunnis, which is a bummer since we've made them all quite angry. I think we're fighting the Shia. And because our Pentagon thinkers are hopelessly stuck in 20th-century conventional warfare models, we need a state to represent the "evil" George Bush is so sure and True Believin'™ about. That's where Iran comes in. Iran must surely be a threat, because they have nuclear weapons and they invaded the neighboring country and are forcing religious rule and fomenting sectarian violence that hasn't been seen in Iraq in a century. And they've caused the conditions that have led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and world opinion is so solidly against them...

...actually, all that last stuff is about the U. S. But if you start from a faulty enough premise, it's not a stretch to attribute all of your undesirable characteristics to your next enemy. "He hit me first," claims the bully.

Lastly, concerning the president's Declam assignment last night. A commenter on Glenn Greenwald's blog rightly points out that there were two glaring mistakes in the first twenty lines of the speech. One, the president claimed that in 2005, twelve million Iraqis voted for "a unified and democratic nation." In fact, they voted for almost the opposite. It was a sectarian vote, straight down religious and ethnic lines, and the resulting Constitution looked more like Iran's rules than anything Jeffersonian. The vote's divides neatly predicted all the sectarian strife that followed in 2006. The only thing unifying these groups is a willingness to get the U. S. and its troops out of there. Two, the president again dipped into the well, like the creep at the party that keeps hitting on women using the one dirty joke he remembers, by referring yet again to September 11, and the need to fight them there so they don't fight us here. If he means Iraqis (he must; it was a speech about the very unpopular war in Iraq), he is really deluded. And of course, al-Qaeda is about as extreme a Sunni cult as can be imagined, so lumping them in with Iran and Syria boggles the mind. The critically-thinking mind, anyway. In the Simple Construct™ world, good-vs.-evil and all that, everything can be fixed by wearing a flag pin on your lapel.

"Weekend At Bernie's" is a good example of the Faulty Premise genre, where bad decision follows bad decision in an attempt to fix the original faulty premise WITHOUT admitting the fault. At least "Weekend At Bernie's" is sorta funny. And it didn't cost half a trillion dollars to make.

Speaking of Party Up...

Over the years we have piled up an impressive amount of board tapes (mainly from the first five years). Well, in keeping with our New Year's resolution to give our fans as much material to listen to as they can, we're transferring all the analog cassettes to digital so that they may be added to our website.

And there are a lot of tapes.

The band will listen to results and pick which ones will make it, filling up 250 spots on our website. In the meantime, check in there often and see if a gig or two have been posted for the fun of it.

I have to type crnia to make this work.

Partyup

new year

I wish you all a splendid new year. I hope you figure out how to get everything you want from the world.