Archives for October 2011
Song of the week
There is no way “Timothy” will ever be topped as the greatest song of the week evah, but JPK will try (also too, I am more of a Candy Apple Grey person)….
Hüsker Dü, “Pink Turns to Blue” (1984)
I suspect I’m in the minority on this now, but I still count the best Hüsker Dü (and hey, I went to a lot of trouble to get those umlauts right) as the big double-LP concept album this comes from (Zen Arcade) and the two EPs that preceded it (“Everything Falls Apart” and “Metal Circus”). Something alchemical was going on during that period of approximately 1982-1984. I was living in Minneapolis at the time and fortunate enough to watch it happen. The shows transformed virtually overnight from exhausting abrasive assaults to exhausting abrasive assaults with grace. I haven’t seen much else like it ever. And as if it weren’t enough to sweeten the hardcore attack with pop melody (Grant Hart managed it slightly better than Bob Mould, hence this pick), they went ahead and included a 14-minute workout. Dare I say, hippie style? Good grief, is nothing sacred?
Stretching out: “Reoccurring Dreams”
More stuff at Can’t Explain.
Huntsman Calls Romney a “Perfectly Lubricated Weather Vane”
America throws up in its mouth a little
Jon Huntsman (he’s one of the dudes running for the Republican nomination, ‘member?) went on the attack against Romney on CNN today:
The former Utah governor called Mitt Romney a “perfectly lubricated weather vane” and Herman Cain “the flavor of the week,” in an interview with Wolf Blitzer.
Gross.
Just throw a little Santorum in there and what do we have? A frothy mess, that’s what.
Does anyone else get the sense that Huntsman is just phoning in his candidacy? Does he really think the GOP is going to forgive him for his close association to the Usurper-in-Chief? He was President Obama’s ambassador to China for crying out loud. If there’s two things that Republicans hate, it’s President Obama and China.
Actually, I don’t really know if Republicans hate China, but I had to end this post somehow.
Ta da!
[cross-posted at Angry Black Lady Chronicles]Huntsman Calls Romney a “Perfectly Lubricated Weather Vane”Post + Comments (74)
Cute overload
Max the doberman takes on a four month old Aussie pup.
Your treat for surviving another work week.
Open Thread
Just spent five hours on the road to my undisclosed location in Dick Cheney’s secret lair, and if traffic near you is anything like it was for me, stay off the road. Unparalleled levels of road douchebaggery today. Felt like deathrace 2011.
A specific shout-out to the Black SUV with tinted windows who decided me doing 75 up a hill in the passing lane to pass two trucks was not fast enough, and tailgated so close I thought he was attempting to mate vehicles. That was bad enough, but when I passed the trucks, turned on my turn signal to get back in the slow lane (again, doing 75 in a 65), the way you decided I was not getting over fast enough and decided to shoot the 4 foot gap between me and the truck and pass me on the right was particularly awesome. Fortunately, I always look to my blind spot after turning on my turn signal, and saw your reckless assholery, or we would both be dead. I hope you get herpes.
And why is it that everyone driving like a fucking maniac is either in a giant vehicle penis SUV or, invevitably, in a 20 year old Honda Prelude that is 90% Bondo, with a loose hood being held in place with a coat hanger and a rear window made out of a frayed and flapping garbage bag and duct tape and confederate flag stickers? Assholes and morons, all of you.
To the groundhog I flattened, my apologies. I tried to slow down, but the hillbilly in the pick-em up truck behind me was tailgating and the blue hairs in a minivan from Ontario kept me from swerving. I’ll have nightmares about the sickening thump. First animal I’ve ever killed, and it made me sick to my stomach.
New Chuck and World Series game 7 tonight. I have open threads scheduled.
Occupy Defiance
I went out to a county political event last night and saw my friend Dolores. She told me that she was involved in an Occupy group in a city east of here, so I went out there to see how it was going. Defiance is the name of the city. You can read about that name here.
General Wayne surveyed the land and declared to General Scott, “I defy the English, Indians, and all the devils of hell to take it.”
I saw this sign on the way into the small city:
Dolores wasn’t there, but I met these people when I arrived:
This is their statement:
Occupy Defiance is a group dedicated to eliminating corporate and financial influence on our government and to promoting positive community action at a grassroots level.
I did my usual disclosure, where I showed them Balloon Juice on my phone and told them I’d be posting pictures. I don’t want to get anyone fired. They were really welcoming and willing to talk.
They got a permit to set up in the location pictured, which is a grassy area right in front of the county courthouse. They had invited two state senators to speak with them, both Republicans (it’s a conservative area). One was a no-show and they didn’t know if the second was coming. He was scheduled at 3:30.
The two negative things they had heard was one outraged citizen complaint that they are located close to a veterans memorial and a local business owner who came out of his store to tell them to “get a job”. Most of them have jobs. Like a lot of lower-wage workers, they don’t have a regular, predictable work schedule.
It’s amusing that there are people in this country who still cling stubbornly to the belief that everyone who works has a forty-hour 9 to 5 job, with weekends off. That hasn’t been true for a very long time.
One of the main complaints I hear from lower wage service workers is that they don’t know from one month to the next when they’re working, because their schedules change constantly. That makes it very difficult to have a less than chaotic family or personal life outside work, let alone scheduling time for a movement, like these folks are doing. Of course lower-tier workers aren’t compensated for erratic or impossible-to-predict work schedules the way Paul Ryan’s makers are. They’re not makers, they’re takers, and they have to take whatever random 32 hours in a 7 day period they’re given by the makers.
Maybe the “get a job” guy thinks all those people he sees working Sundays and nights (when he’s off) are volunteers.
Public radio fires another employee for associating with OWS
Another one bites the dust (h/t several readers who sent this to me):
I thought all of this (a sign she held up at an OWS rally) could be fodder for an interesting segment on The Takeaway—a morning news program co-produced by WNYC Radio and Public Radio International—for which I had been working as a freelance web producer roughly 20 hours per week for the past seven months. I pitched the idea to producers on the show, in an e-mail.
The next day, The Takeaway’s director fired me over the phone, effective immediately. He was inconsolably angry, and said that I had violated every ethic of journalism, and that this should be a “teaching moment” for me in my career as a journalist. The segment I had pitched, of course, would not happen. Ironically, the following day Marketplace did pretty much the exact segment I thought would have been great on The Takeaway, with Kai Ryssdal discussing the sign and the Goldman Sachs deal it alluded to in terms that were far from neutral.
James O’Keefe rules our world.
Update. NPR changed to “public radio”.
Public radio fires another employee for associating with OWSPost + Comments (83)