progress progress pleasant myth

One of the great perks of academic peonage is the ability to take free classes and keep the brain from atrophying, though what good it does for my cortices might be cancelled out by the blood pressure, released only by doing my best to not laugh or start talking too much.

I love that we have these discussions and I'm sure people wonder what planet I'm from too with some of the things I think and say but sometimes these perspectives are either so bizarre I can't even parse them out or they're so caricatureistic that I just kind of shake my head and wait until the end of class to vent with Randal about the Ayn Rand acolyte, the Che-obsessed undergrad who can't believe that Stalin would ever do anything bad, the older gentleman who still believes in some archaic concept of law and order and neoconnery, the other who believes that the world is getting better and someday we'll all hold hands and kumbayah and brings EVERYTHING back to the KKK.

As a country, yes, we're not as institutionally racist and that's a really good thing, but is it any better in the rest of the world? Sub-Saharan Africans in post-Gaddafi Libya are getting massacred, the Bhutanese who say they're the happiest country in the world are uprooting their Nepali kindred, the Bantu Somali were enslaved by the ethnic Somali up through the 1930s and still endure discrimination there, and when they immigrate elsewhere.

You really think it's better? Same shit, different place no matter what book you read or statistics you throw my way. How do you live this long and travel the world and be so educated and yet be so constrained by the narrowness of your personal experience? I just don't understand.

And I speak up and say we've all got dirty hands here, that all this talk of rights and universalities is semantics, and that no one treats everyone justly.



Classroom lessons World War Two
Atrocities against the Jews
Never again our solemn vow
That's why we all share Cambodia
Isn't it great how far we've come since then?

And I can't help but bow my head and cry
It took so long to finally realize
That all our hopes are based on such gross lies

Dialectic's shit
Evolution's crap
Time and time again the masquerade is
Shown for what it really is:
Progress, progress it's a pleasant myth
Progress, progress it's a pleasant myth

Progress, progress
Pleasant myth
That makes my life worthwhile

the facts we hate

So much said by others so much better, I'm in the same place I was at this time last year more or less. If I think about it all too much I get depressed, for good reason one could say. I remember thinking that things were going to get messed up really soon but I don't think I realized to what extent and to what extent these kind of things had been going on for years. Ignorance is bliss, and that becomes the pursuit of happiness. Disorder and war machinery that keeps turning.

Arguments in class over the semantics of genocide. Who cares what some historian thinks? Who cares what conference this paper was presented at? Who cares? A million dead and the argument is over linguistics rather than truth? People want to hear themselves talk and sound intellectual. If your side screwed up you should own up to it. I can't whitewash the things done in my God's name, and neither should you about whatever ideology or credo you hold to whatever that is.

You're so negative, someone once told me, stressing positivity over reality. Sometimes this is what's real.



the facts we hate
we'll never meet walking down the road
everybody yelling "hurry up, hurry up!"
but I'm waiting for you, I must go slow
I must not think bad thoughts

what is this world coming to?
both sides are right but both sides are murdered
I give up, why can't they?
I must not think bad thoughts

the civil wars and the uncivilized wars
conflagrations leap out of every poor furnace
the food cooks poorly and everyone goes hungry
from then on it's
dog eat dog, dog eat body, and body eat dog
I can't go down there, I can't understand it
I'm a no good coward
and an american too, a north american that is
not a south or a central or a native american
oh, I must not think bad thoughts

I'm guilty of murder of
innocent men, innocent women, innocent children
thousands of them
my planes, my guns, my money, my soul
my blood on my hands
it's all my fault
I must not think bad thoughts

posts from last night

So last night I was sitting at a kitchen table at a friend's house letting the dog get some fresh air and compiling tuneage for the show this morning, thinking about the transpiring of the past few days, of revolutions borne out of hope and frustration only to see more of the same, of self-styled holy warriors who kill children and blow things up, of nations too busy bickering over partisan lines than actually dealing with actual problems, preferring to snipe about the mannerisms of one's spouse or what someone's wearing.

Sometimes the fuckedupness of it all gets a bit overwhelming and I find myself returning to Job and the Psalms to use the words of others to simultaneously express wonder at the Divine and the beauty of the world and to be furious at the grievous and incomprehensible wrongs that we inflict upon each other.

I don't believe that everyone who professes what I believe is going to end up where they think they're going, or that they're right or justified. Since Glenn Beck is an adherent of a religion that bears as much resemblance to my Christianity as Farrakhan's does to classical Islam, I don't take him seriously but to imply that it's somehow their fault they got shot makes me sick. So does Pat Buchanan who's always been afraid of the coming days when the world won't be so crackertastic. You know what, all these other people have souls too. God made them just as much as he made you.

Buchanan applauds the guy's grasp of history, but being a bit of a history geek, I also don't understand this conflation of Christianity and xenophobia evident here, and also stateside, especially considering that a substantial amount of early converts were not of Nordic, or even European stock and came from areas that we now lump into the general category of "the Arab World." Augustine, Perpetua, Simon of Cyrene hailed from Roman Africa, which is now modern-day Tunisia, Algeria, Libya... most of the churches in the book of Revelation are in modern-day Turkey. So, yeah, I know nobody cares about stuff like that except for me, but I somehow feel like it's relevant to point out that while the pre-Islamic world was converting to various forms of Christianity, my ancestors to the north (Celtic and Slav) were still doing that whole human sacrifice thing. Norway was still pagan for about a thousand years after. Just sayin'.

And yeah, European thought and religion have dominated the world through colonization, globalization, and mass media, so for a lot of people the West is equated with at least a cultural framework that has some basis in Judeo-Christian thought. And talk about bloody political conflicts. It wasn't all peace and love under Ferdinand and Isabella, or in the Balkans where everyone's been doing nasty things to each other for centuries, or the Crusades, or England and Ireland. It was brutal and barbaric too and like now I'd guess that the fanaticism was more of a bloodlust and lust for power wrapped up in a moralistic guise rather than any deep religious faith or understanding.

And I don't know if there's anyone who makes my blood boil than those who kill in the name of whatever religion or ideology they espouse because they have it out for whoever. I don't care what it is. It's sick and wrong. And just because someone else did something bad doesn't mean you have to do it worse. The Neo-Nazi types who think they're somehow superior because they're more likely to get sunburned are some of the hardest people for me to even try to understand or interact with, and the ones who'd say that the Hitleristas are reprehensible but more or less espouse the same garbage.

I've heard people talk about the perceived menace of Islam and can't help but think that it seems there seems to be this hard-wired human need to have an enemy, an abstract group of people to fight against. In my parents' years, it was the communists, and Hitler before that, and before that, whatever interethnic conflict which led to people immigrating here in the first place. For my lefty friends, it's those damn wingnuts, for the righties, it's the secular humanists or the perceived elite.

And sure there's wackjobs with violent tendencies in every camp who like to blow shit up and put their ideology over whatever human collateral stands in their way. And it seems more and more like we as a country focus on the talking heads and what their acolytes might do while our tax dollars are used to blow the heck out of othfer places halfway around the world and do all sorts of shady stuff and don't even pretend it's not happening anymore. I was born halfway through the Reagan years and can't remember when we weren't blowing something up halfway around the world... arming shady dictators in Latin America, going into the Balkans, Sudan, Granada, Somalia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan. But those last ones, it's not really war, just some sophisticated technology that kills people from far away, so you don't have to look in that person's eyes.

I don't buy this whole "oh they're ruthless and can't be dealt with like normal human beings" because it's not like Al-Qaeda was the first or only group to use suicide bombers or there weren't people brainwashed with ideology.

But maybe it's just my own weird perspective of God-so-loved-the-world and not God-loves-my-country-best-because-I'm-cracker. I just don't understand hating someone else's guts because they practice a different religion or don't look like you or do the same things. And there are things that other cultures do that I'm really glad I don't have to deal with, especially being female. I like being able to get an education, live on my own and hang out with whoever and not have to deal with the lady parts getting cut off because heaven forbid that I experience pleasure during intercourse. I don't hate other people because they do those things even if I think it's messed up. We do things in our country that are horrible too but it's always easy to point the finger at someone else.



I should note here that I almost didn't post this, in part because I found myself so angry and frustrated at my lack of powerlessness but upon hearing the tonedeafness of the punditry, I felt like I had to tip the balance the other way somehow.

I should also note here that the above song was playing during the penning of said rant, and said song is awesome in that totally apocalyptic way.

swallow my pride

In the space of four days, from art-making, to art show for most excellent viewing and people-watching with the partner in crime, from slacker softball, to real baseball with my dad, watching the Indians win but skipping out on the 70's rock with synchronized fireworks, hanging out with one of my near and dear former roomies who's getting married in a few weeks, making epic plans for Ashtabula County absurdity, plotting road trips to Buffalo, uprooting fragrant mint roots from the back yard, planting basil and oregano in its place.

I'm numb about Bin Laden, a bit cynical, feeling like it's 9/11 all over again with all the jingoism and self-righteousness going down. We're still at war, Gitmo is still doing its thing, all sorts of shadiness is still going on, but oh look we can be distracted and it seems like they got rid of the body awfully fast but who cares and oh by the way security is heightened downtown which means more DHS and TSA on the RTA because oh man maybe someone will bomb Cleveland but who the hell would want to?

I keep on living and trying to figure out this whole loving God and doing the right thing thing and I find it amazing how we try to justify our motivations like they're oh so pure and I understand more and more why people seek oblivion in drink and drugs and Desperate Housewives, because the world is a nasty icky place that upon further inquiry is even more nasty and icky than previously thought.

So I go back to putting my hands in clay, in paint, in dirt, on metal strings and steering wheel, finding ways to laugh and trying to process all this through.

delusions of artistic greatness.

There are some people I've met who say that if artists ran the world it would be a better and more beautiful place, but I beg to differ. We creative folk also have our delusions of grandeur but are mercifully too poor and unconnected to wreak havoc on the globe. What always amazes me is how so many world leaders were not only power-mad but also considered themselves creative aesthetes.

Art has always driven and been co-opted by ideology because of its potential for beauty and power. I think about people I used to play in bands with who wouldn't take any creative input because that would mess with their all supreme vision, and when people have a supreme vision and some degree of firepower, bad things tend to happen.

Hitler was a vegetarian painter who clearly understood the power of aesthetic and the use of visuals and pageantry to manipulate the masses when he wasn't painting bucolic pastoral landscapes.



Stalin also had a thing for the pastoral and wrote lots of nationalistic poetry about flowers.

The pinkish bud has opened,
Rushing to the pale-blue violet
And, stirred by a light breeze,
The lily of the valley has bent over the grass.


Gaddafi wrote short stories along with his Green Book which contains revelations about the difference between men and women being that women menstruate and men don't. He could use a serious editor with his writings, but those who tend to question despots don't tend to live well for long and who wants to mess with suicidal astronauts, ranting about the awfulness of the city, prose like this:

Is death male or female? God only knows...What good does it do to determine weather death is male or female? Death, after all, is death. However, it is our duty to specify its sex, and find out whether it is male or female...



Speaking of humble tractor drivers, Albania's Enver Hoxha, who built 750,000 bunkers in the event of invasion, wrote loads of memoirs, some of which detailed his serious man-crush on Stalin. Before Pooty and Berlusconi, there was Enver and Josef watching musicals on the couch together about tractor drivers. Bros before hoes indeed, unless those hoes are collectively farming in the workers' paradise.



So much for the Doomsday Device. Even Kubrick can't make up stuff like this.

space monkeys, storms of the yeti, and major players if all the world's a stage...

The morning ritual of snark and caffeine consumption via homemade coffee mug of madness and access to the internets is the opiate for we peons of all credos or lack thereof. Where else can we make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn, especially with impending Vortexes of Doom and Iranian Flying Saucers shooting monkeys and worms into outer space that can also fly indoors? I know what I want for Christmas now.



As this is a by default Charlie Sheen-free zone, that doesn't stop me from being amused by other candidates for celebrity rehab, especially party-animal second stringers for a band that I never got into but that others dig. My brother in the struggle and slack has Won the Near Future by rebranding such alien abductions as Sammy Hagar Weekends because he's funnier than me. As said not-DLR-Van Halen dude contributed quite a bit to the previous version of the Evil Empire, someone might want to check his brain.





Meanwhile in world news, Muammar says there's something rotten in the state of Denmark though there's a whole lot of rotten going on in his neck of the woods and it makes me wonder what would have happened if he saved his massive egomania for community theater/made for teevee productions of Hamlet like this one with a pretty glamtastic ghost of Hamlet's dad.



Because we need a little faux intellectual-ness added to this discourse, no?

don't wait for the bang...

With the crazy that I saw yesterday, of angry drunks in large groups in a dying city, the machinations of many kinder gentler machine gun hands, our predator drones flying around south of the border, Denny K tried to get us out of Afghanistan and actually gives a damn about Bradley Manning and though we don't agree on other things I've got to give him mad props for being my congressman and not totally sucking, potential nuclear meltdown in Japan, nastiness as usual on the part of the usual trigger happy suspects, the Damoclean Sword of Austerity has spared me and my fellow peons for now but not most of the other things that make life in Ohio bearable, and now we're going into Libya as if we haven't learned our lesson from every single other stupid military excursion we've gone on.

Meanwhile, I look at the streets where the brick from who knows when is exposed from the potholes, watching innumerable deals going down on my way home, trying to avoid the drunks, knowing as the temperatures get warmer, the tempers get hotter and it's not that I live in fear, because I've hung out in every part of this city, but I'm always watching and I don't like what I see going on around the corner and around the world.

mummies and madness

So we've been massively entertained by the absurdity of English Pravda, with its lurid reports of Yeti femme fatales seducing "Caucasian Men," the space aliens ritually sacrificing our cattle in the great Intergalactic Slaughterhouse In the Sky, and this item which would be worthy of many world leaders right now who are in the hot seat but doubtless still want immortality.

Our favorite commie tabloid with tells us that mummification is the new cryogenics, so I hope Hosni Moobie, Pooty Poot, Silvio, and Mr. Muammar, are paying attention.

incoherence

I had all good intentions of staying up late last night to get my creative juices flowing since I go late in the next day, but Slowdive left me passed out on the couch next to a cup of herbal tea. Shoegaze was my first musical foray into the realms of non-corporate radio, thanks to older and cooler friends who used to be into the goth scene and introduced me to the likes of My Bloody Valentine and other Brits who preferred making glorious noise to having charismatic stage presence.

If I ever start playing in a band again, I want to do that too.

The sun coming through the windows and the faded green of the front lawn has me restoring order to my domain, talking on the phone with my mom, plotting gardening options, what can I grow on my balcony in containers (all that southern exposure), and will the next people downstairs be bothered if I get adventurous on the side of the house or the front yard.

And despite giving myself a self-imposed deadline for art/writing pursuits, I've been an even worse slacker than my creative partners. Too much L7 and giggling at the absurdity of post-Gorbachev Pravda. At least I can write better than these people, with the heady combination of Putinista propaganda and Weekly World News-worthy items that remind me of Calvin's show and tells and book reports in the greatest comic strip of all time.

It's an "Epic in Emergencies" when people dial 911 for frivolous reasons, three giant spaceships are evidently heading for Planet Earth, while the comments are full of weirdos talking about vengeful Greek deities, the usual conspiracy theory cabals, and general strangeness.

Meanwhile on the homefront, the brave Russians are struggling against Killer Icicles, the Olympic Bear of Discord is causing all sorts of drama, Moscow lavatories are a real test for Western tourists. Not only that, but the defense industry is revealing "striking novelties," and the Kremlin considers the space program "childish."

Any chance of a revolution here anytime soon? Nyet.

I know it's a matter of time before the inspiration hits again, and it'll come, it always does.

and I say to myself...

I miss reading the headlines of the Weekly World News while buying my groceries, but since truth is generally stranger than fiction and we live in strange times, at least the world has stayed interesting in its messed-up-ness.



Despite not believing in said religion, the Powers That Be in China have now banned the Tibetans from reincarnating, while in Burma, Than Shwe & Co. are letting out their inner J. Edgar Hoover on state television. Meanwhile in Belgium, (won't be winning any Gratuitous Use in a Serious Screenplay awards anytime soon I'm afraid), people are weirded out by not having a real government and are protesting in a manner that's half Lysistrata, half Full Monty.

Vogue is profiling the fashion and jet-setting lifestyle of another First Lady with a shady tyrannical husband (but she looks so good in her understated Chanel jewelry!) the Kids are crashing their parents' cars in Dubai, and while the logo below looks more like a deconstructed swastika to me, Iran thinks it looks like some kind of subliminal Zionist plot.



Gaddafi's nurse is heading home, while Muammar's homies in the western hemisphere seem oblivious to revolution when it happens against their friends. Cuba gets austerity, while the sultanates are magically creating 50,000 public employee jobs to keep the masses from revolting. No unions there, I'm assuming.

In these United States, Louis Farrakhan is still bffs with our man Muammar and thinks Scientology is a totally groovy thing for us crackers. Damn, those motherships are not friendly funky places staffed by (George)Clintonistas, and probably look more like this:



Sick, sad world indeed, my friends.

caffeine dreams

My day ended better than it started, with making art and then dinner, tea, late night conversations that I thrive on. It's rare to find other souls with whom I can angst, ponder, and laugh, and getting to do that is one of those things that keeps me alive. We know we can't figure out the meaning to life, the universe, and everything, but there's enough moments of clarity and sudden illumination that come from sorting through all the cultural clutter and intellectual junk that's piled up over our last two decades to make the process seem worthwhile.

And I'm back at the place of employment, plotting out future creative directions, maintaining a steady intake of caffeine, learning the hard way that finely ground Yemeni coffee does not work in the coffeepot, but that's probably just as well, because our favorite-would-be-funny-if-people-weren't-dying-rogue-leader thinks that Bin Laden's come out of his mancave to drug the Nescafe.

Those crazy kids and their Nescafe and bath salts and Four Loko and whatnot. Serious Delirium.

another unread open letter

Dear Mr. President,

Haven't we had enough with this "At least he's our s.o.b." business? To send a billion dollars to a repressive regime because it's 'not as bad' as others? To send lots of guns and such to this guy in Yemen to boot? To champion democracy yet prop up leaders who know how to say the right thing to us to get the money? We've already enabled the existence of Pinochet, Stalin, Somoza, Trujillo, Batista, Pahlavi, Niyazov, pre-1991 Saddam, and yet we still do the same with the likes of Mubarak.

For all your high-minded words, Mr. President, you're suggesting that the new ruler of the country be our CIA spook who's done a lot of nasty torturing business, some of it in our name?

The more I see of you, the more I'm glad I voted third party and didn't buy into all these platitudes of high-minded bullshit and hope and change. How are you any better than your predecessor or anyone else before him?

cowabungabunga

We all have our news cycle crack, and juicy gossip and drama draw us mere mortals like moths to flames or flies to honey.

For some of us, it's Justin Bieber or Kim Kardashian, and for others of us, it's our favorite World Leaders Fo' Real, as opposed to Stipe & Co's World Leader Pretends. I'm glad I'm not the only one gets immense entertainment from the antics of men with golden guns, scams involving black magic in Dubai, awkwardly gangsta heads of state, geopolitical bros before hos, and rantings about The Kleenex, The Facebook, and The Twitter from a former Reagan-era bad boy who's entered more into Crazy Uncle status, with his night nurse, fabulous fashion sense, and musings on the state of the world.

Thanks to Warner Brothers being lametastic, there is no accompanying music for those of us who reserve our Western Imperialistic Stooge ambition upon the Risk! board or the fantasy realms of D&D to the accompaniment of said college-rockers extraordinaire. Instead, I give you Michael Stipe wearing more eyeshadow than I've ever applied on my face in my life.



REM was awesome around the time that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hit the cartoon circuit, captivating the hearts and minds of many an aged Millenial. While my cousins and I never thought to tie decorative pillows on our backs to approximate the carapaces of our heroes, we did tie scarves around our heads and run around our dark basements fighting theoretical crime in the sewers.



I never found April as exciting because her yellow jumpsuit was way dorky and it seemed like she was always getting kidnapped and that's not as fun as being a pizza-eating ninja turtle. Google-imaging her is a perilous task because she seems to have quite a hentai fanboy following.

Though, with the exception of hair color, it turns out we're more similar than previously thought. She's supposedly working on a Great American Novel too.

TMNT did, however, introduce the word "Cowabunga!" into our vocabulary and also the existence of Italian Renaissance artists, who ultimately became much more interesting over time. Now, "bunga" conjures up a different kind of party that involves something other than pizza, though there is still an Italian component and a megalomaniacal bad guy with Mafia connections and a media empire who likes to hang out with other evil dudes.

Also, I can't help but notice a similiar complexion between Mr. Boehner and Mr. Bunga-Bunga.





Forget the Red-Headed League of Holmes & Watson, who else is going to be joining the Brotherhood of the Orange Skin?

In other news, the rest of the world needs to review their geography so they know where the Middle East is and what countries it encompasses.

war pigs

Something about this guy and his entire enterprise is downright chilling. This is the face of pure evil right here and another reason why I don't trust men in suits. The fact that he somehow claims to share similar spiritual beliefs as myself makes my blood boil.



To think about the way that some people exist to make a profit out of misery and get some kind of thrill out of blowing things up and killing people in absolutely terrible parts of the world.

And I'm sure people in Afghanistan love that we used 25 TONS of bombs to obliterate their village. Oh, we'll rebuild it supposedly, but damn.

I don't even know what else to say but let the music do the talking. These two cuts from disparate musical genres, but the sentiment is the same. I get impatient with a lot of where-have-all-the-flowers-gone protest music from the 60's and 70's because it's so lightweight and optimistic, but Sabbath will probably continue to be timeless.





This Fela release resulted in riots across western Africa that led to him getting kicked out of Ghana, the destruction of his home and master tapes, the rape of his wives, and murder of his mother. He went on to release albums with titles like "Coffin for Head of State," "Sorrow Tears and Blood," and "International Thief Thief" and more before dying of AIDS in 1997.

so I'm probably totally on a watchlist now...

... based on my Internet consumption.

We've been having a lot of fun with the newest batch of Wikileaks files due to our amusement regarding the antics of grown men and women with lots of money and power talking smack about each other.

For someone like me who prefers to follow the antics of Hugo Chavez, Silvio Berlusconi and his "bunga bunga parties", Muammar Gaddafi's fabulous wardrobe choices and long speeches, and Vladimir Putin's PR campaign of manly manliness, this stuff is pure comedy gold in a gossipy "did you hear what so-and-so said?" kind of way. And headlines like this are awesome.

It's like a gigantic geopolitical high school notebook passed around in class where everyone's dishing dirt on the cool kids and the weirdos and no one's holding anything back and there's much more at stake and Hillary Clinton evidently types in capital letters ALL THE TIME. As regional as this little outpost on the Internets is, I love reading about places that I really don't know much about especially since I don't know if I'll ever get the chance to travel to Kazakhstan.

For all this hope and change talk we get from our Kindler Gentler Machine Gun Hand, the same shit different day approach to foreign policy and national security makes me really glad I voted third party in 2008, what with the TSA molestations and new checkpoints and Gitmo and the School of the Americas (renamed the very reassuring Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) being still open and us being in Afghanistan even longer than the Russians.

Besides, U.S. Government, you're depriving me of some damn good reading material here about Central Asian weddings involving men with golden guns and "jet-skiing under the influence."

It's infinitely more interesting than celebrities who are dying digitally by quitting Facebook and Twitter to tell us that AIDS kills people. No duh. Also, Janelle Monae, you are way too awesome to be a part of this ridiculousness. And L7 beat you all to it anyway.



It must be nice to feel like you've really given up a part of your life for a cause by just not being on the Internet for a few days. Way to really sacrifice. Aung San Suu Kyi would be so proud of you.

i can't stand it, i know you planned it...

One of our regulars at my place of employment has some paranoid tendencies, and is constantly trying to uncover proof of conspiracies and such everywhere even though it's obvious to anyone that rich, mostly white, people run the world. It's not that much of a secret. And of course, these people have one agenda or another and the means by which to propagate it, whether it's Koch or Soros or Bin Laden or whoever.

Some unclaimed printouts that we found when we came in a few weeks ago had a list of a whole lot of militias in the United States, articles about the Hutaree, and a place that sold HGH and other steroids online but suggested that you should "Buy Now!" because they might get banned soon and supplies won't last.

Some of the names of these groups who love freedom, the American Way, and guns, were pretty much to be expected, though others sounded like the products of some 10-year-olds playing with GI Joes and Playmobils(Fort Eagle) or someone who's watched way too much old TV (Roger's Rangers, which is actually named after a group of colonial fighters who fought with the British, so I don't even get where the patriotism thing comes in here). Another group described themselves as "All the Innocent Americans the Government Hasn't Thrown in Prison," which would presumably be a lot of people.

Another website told its adherents not to boycott their French's mustard along with the freedom fries, because it wasn't actually made in France. For the record, most of these people still had Geocities and Angelfire pages, which made me think of being in high school and those annoying banner ads that seemed to be EVERYWHERE.

Good times.

But lest we think that the righties of the US of A are the only ones susceptible to this, these are just a few of the Greek anarchist groups that were active in the last year. Unlike the anarchists I knew when I was at Kent, who seemed to spend more time eating vegan food, stealing copies of "Fight Club" from Borders and pens from the Cashier's Office to "throw a wrench in the system," and not bathing because hygiene is "fascist," these people actually blow things up.

Summer Entropy Commandos
Summer Tranquility Disturbance
Non-Patriot Saboteurs - Cores for the Spreading Insecurity
Fire Shadows
Comandos Husscheyn Zhachyndhoul Jhachanghir / Revolutionary Intelligence Agency
Antisexist Group
Immediate Intervention Hood-wearers
Wild Wolves
Conspiracists for the realization of insecurity
Immoral City De-Structuralists
Revolutionary Cores Alliance - Speedy Arsonist Agency
Fire Cores Conspiracy / Nihilist Commandos
Destroyers of whatever is left of social peace
Consciousness Gangs
Happy Sleep's Apostates
Arsonists' Millennium Cooperation
Organizers of Night Entertainment
CHAOS: Chaotic Groups of Sabotage
Carnivalists in the tune
Nikola Tesla Commandos



Maybe some of these sound more awesome in Greek or whatever, but having been around people on both loony ends on the political spectrum, I find it interesting as anything to see how people define themselves and their enemies.

Friday silliness

It's always weird doing the late night and then coming in early in the morning, most of the late night being watching the clock move and me and the grad student's continual fascination with the foibles of world leaders, who've been disappointing us as of late with a lack of unintentionally hilarious manly man propaganda, bizarre UN speeches, or absurd proclamations.

I feel bad inflicting bad music on you all, especially since I got this song stuck in my compadre's head this morning

However, this awesome song and sweet video let to this band getting banned in Zimbabwe for portraying Mugabe turning into a chicken. By the way, the puppets are stars of a South African webtv satire show that includes skits where Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela discuss Twitter. I don't get all the humor and had to look up who half the people were that they were making fun of, but it's good stuff.



And pandas in Egypt intimidate you into eating their cheese.



And I had no idea that Mikhail Gorbachev made a Pizza Hut commercial.

headlong into the irresistible

Me and the roommate said goodbye yesterday to some friends of hers from English class who were over here studying from Palestine. They left early this morning and told us that whenever we wanted to, we can come to Gaza to visit them.

Life had gotten so crazy this past year that we didn't see them as much as we wanted to. I'd see Abed when I was at work, and my roommate and his wife would chat on Facebook and practice their Arabic and English. They had us over for dinner last year and let us borrow their car when ours got locked in, even though they hardly knew us, and we'd play with the kids while some terrible late night sitcoms chattered in the background and we cringed to think that their perception of us would have anything to do with this show.

We took pictures and the kids were dancing around, we got to see the new baby, and met Dawoud a sweet kidwho's having surgery after his home got shelled.

And I think about how messed up the world is, how those in power on both sides do terrible things and then there's so many people caught in the middle just trying to live life. Both sides seem to do a great job of making it worse and of vilifying the other.

And then, since it was a lovely night, I drove out to the Beachland thinking about all this and got there almost in time for the Jeremy Lyons/everyone but Sandman Morphine show, which was even more than I expected.

I was too young to see them back in their heyday, and the combination of smoky sax-driven alt-rock and spooky blues was perfect for a hot sticky night, and of course everyone was about a decade older than me and Frank. And I got those shivers you get when the music hits you perfectly... "Let's Take a Trip Together" never sounded so perfect.

"somewhere there's no distractive
breeze of information
leaking through the windows
dripping from the trees
somewhere there's no earthquakes
no other people's anxious questions
no nervous wrecks
going down
no nervous wrecks
going down..."

the Bestest Party: or Iceland vs Cleveland

In Cleveland, we make videos where grown men grovel before a 25-year-old athlete to save our city.



In Iceland, the standards are a little bit higher. They want the Bestest Party. And a Disneyland.



Seriously, you need to watch this. Subtitles are awesome.