Barney Frank use pot legalization analogy...

and then refuses to accept a single metaphor from Stephen Colbert.

(No, he didn't use this one.)

But before that, Colbert was pressing Frank on why the recently-created Consumer Protection Agency was needed, saying it's just another "nanny-state" measure by the Dem's. Frank then asserted that if Colbert was concerned about the nanny state he should consider ending marijuana prohibition. At which point Colbert started using obtuse metaphors about trying to make banks (tigers) change their thieving ways (stripes).

Also, watch the interview with (almost indistinguishable from that other tall, thin scary-looking blond, right-wing-moron chick, except her voice is less raspy--but not completely unraspy, as that's no doubt part of the appeal, being on the radio and their, achem, older male dmographic) Laura Ingraham. He fillets her and her stupid new NY Times best-seller quite nicely; it went well with my mac & cheese entree.

(No, this is MIA. She's like the opposite of Ingraham, but I wanted to post her spitting on a camera guy. Classy.)

Not Ike's Military Industrial Complex

So says one of the authors of "Top Secret America," The Washington Post series about the sprawling defense apparatus that has mushroomed since 9/11.

Kafka could have only dreamed of such bureaucratic inefficiency. Of course, that's absolutely false: he wrote about it. (Actually, just re-reading The Castle; a translation put out in the past decade that is much closer to what he left behind than what was originally published, and finished, after his death by his friend.)

[Lovin' that -do.]

Finally, perhaps, the always-expanding defense complex, which includes the military and all the intelligence agencies, will become part of the deficit debate. It will be interesting to see how the deficit-hawks, typically some of the strongest supporters of defense spending (of course, this crosses the aisle), will react to this indictment of the community, which includes the Congressional role of funding of the whole thing.

This was the thread picked up most by the former head of the 9/11 Commission that recommended the creation of the DNI position, the ostensible head of this ungainly beast, in the first place. On PBS News Hour, he said that no matter how well coordinated the agencies are, redundancies and inefficiencies will remain, if the funding process in Congress remains fragmented. Uh, great.

Gopnik takes Evolutionary Bio to task (and: Pinker decries tech-phobia)

This sums up well the argument against there being different human races. And it's a 150 yo, so obviously it'll be widely accepted in no time.

Hopefully, eventually, because he's not now, Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker editor and author, will be seen as a greater thinker/writer (he writes about a much wider range of subjects) than Steve Pinker--not that I dislike him, just disagree more.


Except here, where I totally agree with him about all the tech-is-rotting-our-brains shit.

The most recent iteration, which began at least fifteen years ago (reading a book of essays about tech and lit and language from '95; and while only half of them are doomsday predictions, it's interesting to read the same urgency, hasting toward the precipice, we hear so much of today), goes: print is dying, we're stopping reading, our brains are turning to mush. Bullshit. Language, as it always has, will mutate and be mutated by the mediums and environments we humans find or put ourselves in. I'm starting to think that language is the height of human accomplishment, the greatest technology, and all subsequent developments are similarly oriented towards encouraging mutually-beneficial bonds within the species, possibly with other species, by way of expanding empathy and compassion. (This is a combination of thoughts taken from the one of the essays mentioned above and Pinker's evo-bio concept of the purpose of empathy.)

Holy shit, I've turned Buddhist and linguist in one paragraph--Jesus.

"Birds have been seen covered in oil..."

"Saw photos of the brown pelican, Louisiana's state bird." --just texted from my Bushwick housemate.

My response text: "Had awesome NOLA (New Orleans, LA) BBQ shrimp last night."

Just in time, I guess. Unfortunately, I've been saying this same line about NOLA since I managed to get there just before Katrina changed it dramatically, from what I gather. Here they go again.

[Currently listening: http://flavorwire.com/89885/daily-dose-pick-unkle]

(only figuratively, of course)

Might as well share here too: High Violet, yeah!

The National's new one is freaking killing me--in the totally best way: tears moved to, joy filled with.

Yeah, this pretty much says it all--epsecially the thing about ocean people. See M.?

Flavorpill: What’s your idea of happiness?

Perry Farrell: Being around music in a relaxed way; making it, listening to it, and all the things that magnetize to that moment.

FP: What’s your idea of misery?

PF: Misery is being inland, without an ocean around, and without the people that live by the ocean around. Also, having to pay attention a lot harder than I’m used to — being serious. Immaturity has its virtues. Not wearing the suit and tie, it keeps you youthful.

(Andrew Wyeth: Wind from the Sea)

No wonder we're all neurotic,

with our mega-OCD-founding father, Thomas Jefferson:

'Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much can be done if we are always doing.'

Yeah, whatever, bro.

That's Thomas Jefferson, born in Albemarle County, Virginia (1743). And he certainly lived by those words. He wrote the Declaration of Independence for the fledging United States and then served as its minister of France, secretary of state, vice president, and president. But he was also--among other things--an inventor, philosopher, farmer, naturalist, astronomer, food and wine connoisseur, and musician. An early biographer, James Parton, described the young Jefferson a year before he helped write the Declaration of Independence: 'A gentleman of 32 who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, dance a minuet, and play the violin.'

Jefferson was an important force in American architecture. He was inspired by Andrea Palladio's The Four Books of Architecture, which drew from classical Roman principles,and he determined to improve Virginia's architecture, which he disliked. He designed his great estate, Monticello, as well as the University of Virginia, the Virginia State Capitol, and a number of federal buildings in Washington, D.C.--he is responsible for the neoclassical look of our Capitol. He read widely in architecture throughout his life, and he observed buildings as he traveled and brought back new ideas to incorporate into his designs.

He loved to read about much more than architecture--he said, 'I cannot live without books.' He wrote to John Adams, 'I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much the happier.'

Jefferson said, 'Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight.' Even as a scientist his interests varied widely. He knew physics, anatomy, botany, and geology. He was a talented astronomer who accurately predicted an eclipse in 1778. When he founded the University of Virginia in 1819, one of his main plans for its curriculum was astronomy, and he wanted to build the first planetarium and observatory in the country. He was also an enthusiastic naturalist and paleontologist. At one point, he had the East Room of the White House covered with potential mastodon bones.

His talent for botany was evident in his Monticello gardens and farm. In the gardens, he grew 170 varieties of fruit, 330 varieties of vegetables, and ornamental plants and flowers. He grew Mexican varieties of peppers, beans collected by Lewis and Clark, broccoli from Italy. The English pea was his favorite vegetable, and he had a Garden Book in which he kept exhaustive notes on the states of his turnips, lettuces, artichokes, tomatoes, eggplants, and squash--when each variety was sown, when it was mulched and how, when the first leaves or fruits appeared, which varieties were tastiest. His household ate from the garden, and he said that he ate meat and animal products 'as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet.' Some of the varieties that Jefferson cultivated at Monticello have been passed down as heirloom vegetables, and people still plant them in their backyard gardens. Overall, he had about 5,000 acres of farmland, planted mostly in wheat and other grains. The man who wrote 'All men are created equal' defended the institution of slavery, and he was dependent on the labor of hundreds of slaves to keep his farms running. He spent a large part of his days supervising them; he wrote, 'From breakfast, or noon at the latest, to dinner, I am mostly on horseback, Attending to My Farm or other concerns, which I find healthful to my body, mind, and affairs.'

Jefferson loved music. He wrote to an Italian friend: 'If there is a gratification which I envy any people in this world it is to your country its music. This is the favorite passion of my soul, and fortune has cast my lot in a country where it is in a state of deplorable barbarism.' He played the violin, and sometimes the cello and harpsichord, and sang. He walked around Monticello singing and humming to himself.

Jefferson died on July 4,1826, exactly 50 years after his Declaration of Independence had been adopted. He was 83 years old and wrote his own epitaph before he died. It didn't mention anything about being president. It said: 'Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.'

Was he ashamed of us?

He said: 'In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.'

I think I have it backwards: my style is forever stuck in mid-90s slacker mud, while I've come to distrust those of unbending principle--life is rarely simplistic enough to allow for such idealism.

A reminder to my anti-South inclination of Southern worth.

The Writer's Almanac:

It's the birthday of Flannery O'Connor, born 85 years ago today in Savannah, Georgia (1925), who wrote two novels and 32 short stories and who said: 'I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.' When she was six, she and a chicken that she taught to walk backward appeared on the news. She later said: 'I was just there to assist the chicken but it was the high point in my life. Everything since has been anticlimax.'

After college, she went to the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and then spent time at the Yaddo Writers' Colony. At the age of 26, she was diagnosed with lupus, the disease that had killed her father when she was a teenager. At the time, doctors told her she would live for another five years, but she survived for nearly 14 years. She moved back to Georgia so that her mom could take care of her, to a 500-acre family farm in Milledgeville where she raised chickens, ducks, hens, geese, and peacocks, her favorite. She arose every morning when the chickens first cackled, went to 7:00 a.m. Mass in town at Sacred Heart, returned home and wrote for a couple of hours each day, until she felt too weak or tired.

As she herself put it, she wrote about 'freaks and folks.' She said, 'Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.'

In her sickly 14 years on the farm with her mother, O'Connor wrote two dozen short stories and two novels filled with her freakish, obsessive characters, crazy preachers, murderers, outcasts.

Her most famous stories include 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find,' about a silly, annoying old woman whose entire family gets murdered by a man called The Misfit, and 'Good Country People,' about a pretentious young woman whose wooden leg is stolen by a Bible salesman.

Many of Flannery O'Connor's letters are collected in a volume called The Habit of Being (1979), edited by her friend Sally Fitzgerald. And despite O'Connor's premonition that 'there won't be any biographies of me, because lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy,' a new book about her life came out just last year, written by Brad Gooch and entitled Flannery (2009).

Flannery O'Connor said, 'The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.'

(Faulkner quote)

Breaking Silence - For My Son by Patricia Fargnoli

The night you were conceived
your father drove up Avon Mountain
and into the roadside rest
that looked over the little city,
its handful of scattered sparks.
I was eighteen and thin then
but the front seat of the 1956 Dodge
seemed cramped and dark,
the new diamond, I hadn't known
how to refuse, trapping flecks of light.
Even then the blackness was thick
as a muck you could swim through.
Your father pushed me down
on the scratchy seat, not roughly
but as if staking a claim,
and his face rose like
a thing-shadowed moon above me.
My legs ached in those peculiar angles,
my head bumped against the door.
I know you want me to say I loved him
but I wanted only to belong--to anyone.
So I let it happen,
the way I let all of it happen--
the marriage, his drinking, the rage.
This is not to say I loved you any less--
only I was young and didn't know yet
we can choose our lives.
It was dark in the car.
Such weight and pressure,
the wet earthy smell of night,
a slickness like glue.
And in a distant inviolate place,
as though it had nothing at all
to do with him, you were a spark
in silence catching.

from Necessary Light. (c) Utah State University Press, 1999.



Lest we forget all the Baptists. Even the NE doesn't look too good. At least there's more diversity of kookiness. Still, the West is looking better and better: down w/ God, up with Pot.

"RNC Embraces Restraint, But Not the Fiscal Kind"

From The Nation:

"This week, an RNC spokesperson confirmed that the committee is looking into a report that thousands of dollars from the committee's account was spent at a Los Angeles club called Voyeur West Hollywood, which offers discerning customers a chance to sample simulated bondage scenes and nudity. The ambience of this club, one web site promises, "transports you to a world of risque sexuality and eroticism."

I'm certainly not going to criticize the RNC for reaching out to the country's more sexually-adventurous communities. Presumably, the GOP's spin doctors considered making the case that recent developments should be seen as a measure of progress for which Steele could claim credit.

Ultimately, however, the chairman proved to be a tad shy about the Voyeur connection."

(Hannah Giles of fake-hooker ACORN sting fame.)

The kids are alright: Twin Sister plays Coco66

Despite unavoidably being reminded of my significant age advantage during their show, almost two weeks ago, at Coco66 in Greenpoint, Twin Sister (download a free four song EP also) are indeed something to experience live. Here's my FlipVideo of one of my current fave songs: "I Want a House".




Another video clip, this one not my own, is worth a look, too. Thank heavens, The National are finally putting out a new album this year. Here is the first song, "The Terrible," I've heard/saw. And we have (unfortunately, because, as I've previously made clear, I hate him) Jimmy Fallon to thank. And BrooklynVegan, for that matter.

Capital punishment proponents and opponents agree: Isn't it ironic?

Don't you think? So says NPR, anyway.

Ohio is about to execute a man who, last week, was brought to a hospital to be revived after attempting suicide. Why bother? you ask. Good question.

Ethics aside, lawmakers in some states are reconsidering the efficiency of the death penalty. It costs less to try and convict someone of murder who might get a life sentence, rather than going for capital punishment.

(I realize this pic alludes to the electric chair, which as far as I know isn't used anymore, though still legal in some states if the prisoner chooses it--yeah right, like that will happen--but I had no gurney photos.)

I grew up reading The Washington Post

And I grew up listening to my father rant, while religiously reading the thing, that the Post was just another liberal rag, on par with the holiest of holies, The New York Times.

Well, apparently nothing lasts for ever--if it ever happened in the first place. Like most candy-colored "things that used to be so great" nostalgia--you know, when America was America for Americans, capitalism was "free" and government was "small"--that never were (not the way people that use them mean them), this never existed.



Anyway, now they've run afoul of the rightist-watching Media Matters:

"The Washington Post just hired Marc Thiessen, who now becomes the second former George W. Bush speechwriter-turned-columnist at the paper. Thiessen isn't just any right-wing shill: He's an unapologetic advocate for torture. And he isn't alone. Charles Krauthammer, Michael Scheuer, and Richard Cohen have all used the editorial pages of the Post to defend torture.

"In his book and even on the pages of the Post, Thiessen has repeatedly made dishonest and dubious statements in support of torture. For example:

1. He falsely claimed in his most recent book that, since CIA interrogation of terror suspects began after 9-11, there were no attacks by Al Qaeda on U.S. interests at home or abroad.
2. He also claimed, falsely, in a Post op-ed that Bush oversaw "2,688 days without a terrorist attack on [American] soil," ignoring the anthrax mail attacks, the El Al shooting in Los Angeles and other domestic terrorist attacks.
3. In a Post op-ed, he called President Obama's decision to release Bush administration torture memos "irresponsible" and claimed that "Americans may die as a result.""