Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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What's he building in there?
We have a right to know.



I know I have a few neighbors who ask these questions about me ever since they figured out that my new workbench will easily downcycle into a coffin for Rudy at such time when he finally drives Cindy berserk. This performance makes a nice Halloween composition.

Only Tom Waits could invent a town called Mayor's Income, Tennessee---what a card! I want to post more of his work in the future. I know of almost no other artists who have been as versatile and, at the same time, consistently successful as Waits over the span of a 40-year career. Usually a pop musician is either one or the other, but Waits isn't really a pop musician; he's in a class by himself.

What's He Building? Tom Waits (1999, from "Mule Variations," Anti/Epitaph CD 86547-2), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Occupy Indian Summer

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While running an errand to Lowe's this afternoon I beheld this crew occupying the northeast corner of Prospect Avenue and Market View Drive in Champaign. The afternoon was crystal clear, warm, and bathed in that special gold sunlight that we get in these latitudes during the first month of autumn. I decided to visit them to get a sense of how my conservative university/corn-cob town may or may not have plugged into the national zeitgeist. Two things surprised me about the event.

First, the group's motliness impressed me as an asset, not a liability. This aggregation of 20 souls was pretty much the same demographic cross-section I'd expect to see at the Target two blocks to the north on any given weekend. The oddest guy in the crowd was the one wearing a "World's Greatest Dad" t-shirt and a home-made comparative US income bar chart drawn on poster board. Several demonstrators appeared to have participated in previous Occupy meetings, but most seemed to be first-timers judging from the chats I had. The crowd had a sort of tentative mood, not knowing exactly what they should be doing other than holding their signs and waving at cars. So they pretty much just did that, and in doing so they gave the clear appearance of unified purpose. It struck me as an organic aggregation, not one of those prefab demonstrations of lame, (usually) liberal political theater where people half-heartedly chant trite, pre-rehearsed rhymes. This group did use the "human microphone" technique to read the 29 September 20111 "Declaration of the Occupation of New York City." Their effort in this also seemed tentative---not self-consciously uptight, but sort of iffy... possibly because there was no one to hear the words except themselves (everyone else was in cars) and the Declaration is damn long to read out loud using such an approach. Nevertheless, all of this added up to an oddly touching experience for me: a not-quite-random meetup of individuals with an impulse to connect, getting to know each other on the spot, voting on whether and where to get together again.

The second, and even more interesting surprise, was how many car horns I heard honking in support while standing at that corner---possibly averaging 6 - 8 a minute at one point. The participants I talked with said it had been pretty much like that for the hour-plus they had been standing there, with only two or three rude remarks having been shouted from passing vehicles. (I heard none while I was visiting the scene.)

Is it possible that there really is some sort of self-organizing grassroots phenomenon in its early stages of nationwide formation? As long as the Occupy movement remains positive, cooperative, nonviolent, non-hierarchical, and noncommercial, maybe it has the potential to address a deep need in a society that is becoming exhausted by its alienation from itself and sick of the depravity that corporations have infected it with.

Blind Justice!

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Here's a snap of the first band up today in the Prairie Crossroads Blues Society battle of the bands at Memphis On Main, Champaign, Illinois. The band is named for Mr. Tim Donaldson, center with Fender Strat; and Roger "The Doctor" Prillaman, left with stacked keys. Tim is the owner of The Blind Man, a Champaign window dressing boutique, and Roger is an Urbana attorney. So: Blind Justice!

Tim and Roger are geezers of approximately RubberCrutch vintage. Tim's longtime aggregation, the No Secrets Band (which I think must have been named after Carly Simon's nipples), broke up a few years ago, and he has been playing with his talented sons and one of my talented sons for almost a year. Roger was a mainstay in Captain Rat and the Blind Rivets, which was probably the leading Champaign-Urbana bar/party band through some of the 1970s and much of the '80s (not sure---didn't get out much back then).

On tubs, in background with head bisected diagonally by Roger's mic boom, is Ben Donaldson, a graduate of Champaign Central High School's nationally renown jazz program. The ultra-handsome gentleman plucking bass strings at the right, also an alum of the Central jazz program, is Dave "Rock Head" C****," who officially adopted that stage name as of today. (The crowd seemed to be tickled by it.) The 20-minute set included one original composition by Big Rock Head entitled "Weathered Man."

Winner of the battle gets to compete in a national battle at Memphis at some point.

Would you like some fresh-ground strychnine on your salad, Sir or Madame?

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You probably know that former pizza mogul Herman Cain has a tax-reform plan he calls 9-9-9, a triple-decker version of a federal flat-tax program affecting personal income, purchases, and salaries payed by employers. He claims it will make the administration of taxation dirt simple while reducing everyone's tax burden.

Paul Krugman's blog links to a Tax Policy Center analysis of Cain's 9-9-9 proposal with respect to its impact on US taxpayers. Anyone who learned about regressive taxation in school can correctly guess the results.

A middle income household making between about $64,000 and $110,000 would get hit with an average tax increase of about $4,300, lowering its after-tax income by more than 6 percent and increasing its average federal tax rate (including income, payroll, estate and its share of the corporate income tax) from 18.8 percent to 23.7 percent. By contrast, a taxpayer in the top 0.1% (who makes more than $2.7 million) would enjoy an average tax cut of nearly$1.4 million, increasing his after-tax income by nearly 27 percent. His average effective tax rate would be cut almost in half to 17.9 percent. In Cain’s world, a typical household making more than $2.7 million would pay a smaller share of its income in federal taxes than one making less than $18,000.

So give it up for our GOP executive superhero of the week and his outstanding Plan 9-9-9 From Outer Space! Or at least do that if you wish to carpet-bomb the economy with kryptonite and dull your hunger pangs by eating lead paint chips.

By the way, the Tax Policy Center is no hippie commune; it's a joint project of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute. I don't know anything about the latter, but Brookings is a right-leaning think tank that is about as Establishment as you can get.

Occupy Uganda

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Here's another noodle-scratcher from the Obama administration. Last Wednesday,

the U.S. deployed combat troops to central Africa to serve as advisers to regional forces battling the Lord’s Resistance Army.

[...]

A total of 100 combat-equipped troops will eventually be deployed, with the rest being dispatched in the next month, according to the letter. “However, although the U.S. forces are combat-equipped, they will only be providing information, advice, and assistance to partner nation forces, and they will not themselves engage LRA forces unless necessary for self-defense,” Obama writes.

Yes, advisers only; won't engage the adversary unless absolutely necessary. Check. As Rocket J. Squirrel used to say, "That voice. Where have I heard that voice?"

The announcement was masterfully delayed until Friday afternoon, which is the part of the weekly news cycle where authorities typically bury the release of negative or controversial news. Yet the announcement of other important "foreign policy" news---a positive development in the eyes of most people, I'd think---was also obscured by its timing:

The U.S. is abandoning plans to keep U.S. troops in Iraq past a year-end withdrawal deadline, The Associated Press has learned. The decision to pull out fully by January will effectively end more than eight years of U.S. involvement in the Iraq war, despite ongoing concerns about its security forces and the potential for instability.

Just in time for deployment to... where? Uganda? Iran? Cardassia Prime?

Seriously, has someone just discovered huge new deposits of mineral wealth in Uganda?

Brazen and bizarre, indeed!

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It looks like the movers and shakers may be coming around to the RubberCrutch view of the absurd hype the Justice and State departments applied to the arrest of some Iranian-American guy who allegedly was involved in a cunning plot to exterminate the Saudi ambassador to the land of the free and the home of the brave. Reuters reports via TPM (anonymous sources, admittedly, and possibly Obama opponents with a political axe to grind)  that "officials" have

questioned the wisdom of the White House strategy in using the affair to rapidly push for tougher sanctions on Tehran, increasing regional tensions.

"A lot of people basically feel really suspicious about this," one official said, questioning the White House's motivation "in ratcheting this thing up so quickly."

Exactly my point. That, and the remarkable similarity of the initial journalistic language and perspective on the event, which gave strong evidence that corporate media and blogs were largely working from on set of administration-spoonfed talking points. "Pack journalism" isn't really news in itself, and it was pretty much considered the norm (with disgust) even back when I was studying the trade in the late 1980s. But this particular example seemed unusually blatant given the strikingly uniform vocabulary and attitude about the story.

Again, to be clear and with due respect to nuance, I am not dismissing the probability that there was some kind of plot in the works, nor am I jumping to any conclusions about how serious the plot may have been (even though we have strong indications that the suspects may fall into the category of "bumbling amateurs"). My points are that Obama officials handled the release of this information with noteworthy incompetence given the foreign policy implications of prematurely boiling up a potful of turds with Iran; and that the initial media coverage serves as a clear example of journalistic malpractice.

Brazen administration, bizarre media coverage. But why? I don't buy suggestions that it was intended to be a distraction from the rotten economy or an election-year stunt... because (1) no competent strategist could seriously believe that it could provide a convincing distraction, and (2) it's not an election year! The timing of the thing just makes no sense considering how high of a profile the news was given. Any alternate concepts out there?

The honorary Grandma Reinhart workbench

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Here's a project I've been occupying myself with at a leisurely pace for the past few weeks. This workbench turned out to be quite an edifice, exceeding my expectations for mass and rigidity. The undercarriage is made of select-grade two-by-fours joined with eight Simpson Strong-Tie framing brackets and about a zillion #8 Phillips wafer-head screws. The black composite feet are designed for four-by-four uprights, but they work with the bench legs fine (although the aesthetics are slightly disappointing.

The work surface accounts for the bench being named after late Grandma Reinhart, the grandmother of a coworker who allowed me to salvage some doors and fixtures from her run-down farmhouse before it was demolished a few years ago.

I started with an out-of-square  four-panel interior solid wood door and somehow mated it to a 3/4 in. layer of plywood, struggling a bit with two circular saws to make them nearly the exact same size. They're joined with wood glue and a row of #8 wood screws across the width about 3/5 the distance from the left edge. This rigid, massive assembly (2 in. thick) is joined to the undercarriage using 14 #10 wood screws (4 in.), somewhat carelessly countersunk and then backfilled with good old Plastic Wood (the shit is hard to work with skilfully, at least for me). The edges of the work surface are crudely finished out with 2.5 in. furring strips, mitered at the corners. The right surface overhangs the undercarriage an extra 5 or 6 in. to support clamping and maybe a specialized wood vise.

After sanding reasonably smooth with a succession of abrasives down to 220 grit, I put a coat of urethane on the work surface this afternoon. Also cut a bottom shelf that will drop into the bottom part of the frame after installing half- by three-quarter in. pine stops around the inside perimeter. The last phase will involve soaking the thing in successive coats of sealer to protect against the nasty garage environment.

I think this citadel could easily support the full weight of an 8 cylinder, 6 liter diesel engine or one of Rudy's hams, whichever is greater. Experienced woodworkers and builders would, of course, be amused by my pride in this humble piece of craftwork, but I'm fairly impressed with my accomplishment. I troubled over it so diligently because it's what the engineers call an enabling technology, meaning that it gives me a platform for executing projects that will contribute to the utility and aesthetics of my beloved house. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, if you like.

The Brazen and the Bizarre (Part 2)

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It may be that this alleged perp isn't even "fast and furious," let alone "brazen and bizarre":

"He's no mastermind," David Tomscha, who once owned a used car lot with Arbabsiar, told the Associated Press. "I can't imagine him thinking up a plan like that. I mean, he didn't seem all that political. He was more of a businessman."

"His socks would not match," Tom Hosseini, his former college roommate, told the New York Times. "He was always losing his keys and his cellphone. He was not capable of carrying out this plan."

Friends told the Times that Arbabsiar smoked marijuana and drank alcohol freely and had a string of businesses, "selling horses, ice cream, used cars and gyro sandwiches," leaving a "trail of liens, business-related lawsuits and angry creditors" in his wake.

Gary Sick, a former member of the US National Security Council and an expert on Iran and the Middle East, thinks the story as presented may sound farfetched (as opposed to brazen):

Iran has never conducted — or apparently even attempted — an assassination or a bombing inside the US. And it is difficult to believe that they would rely on a non-Islamic criminal gang to carry out this most sensitive of all possible missions. In this instance, they allegedly relied on at least one amateur and a Mexican criminal drug gang that is known to be riddled with both Mexican and US intelligence agents.

Whatever else may be Iran’s failings, they are not noted for utter disregard of the most basic intelligence tradecraft, e.g. discussing an ultra-covert operation on an open international line between Iran and the US. Yet that is what happened here.

Perhaps this operation is just as it appears. But at a minimum both the public and the Congress should demand more detailed evidence before taking any rash or irreversible action.

Yes: let's have more detailed evidence, please, before we make with the bombs and stuff. Now, I don't really think the government's announcement of the alleged Iranian plot was designed to provide Eric Holder a reprieve from his problems with Darrel Issa's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. (Issa is a troublemaker with plenty of outstanding questions about his own pees and queues, anyway.) But can you blame Republicans if they try to paint the announcement as Obama-administration trickery? If this plot had been announced while the President was still named Bush-Cheney, what would be your gut reaction to it?

It's Little Oscar's birthday!

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Here's a Happy Birthday Doke for Little Oscar, The Prettiest Girl In Candyland.



Those are merely rumblings of mutiny even though they may sound like the feisty chitterlings of my big sister. I always thought it was sort of special that her birthday fell on Columbus Day, until much later when I found out what a shitheel and doofus Columbo reportedly was. Anyway, Terrill Maureen, please enjoy some alternative universe history with your doke tonight.

Columbus Day, Stan Freberg (1961, from "The United States of America: The Early Years," Capitol W/SW-1573), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Smells like somebody is wagging a dog

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If there’s one thing that the poodle media agree on today, it’s that the alleged Iranian/druglord plot to kill a Saudi ambassador in Washington is "brazen." Brazen and bizarre, in fact! Why, did you know that one of the alleged malefactors even showed a gross disregard for innocent human life by dismissing the significance of “collateral damage” resulting from blowing up the ambassador’s favorite DC eatery? Brazen! Even Hillary Clinton thinks so:

"This plot, very fortunately disrupted by the excellent work of our law enforcement and intelligence professionals, was a flagrant violation of international and U.S. law, and a dangerous escalation of the Iranian government's long-standing use of political violence and sponsorship of terrorism.... This kind of reckless act undermines international norms and the international system," she said.

"Iran must be held accountable for its actions....We will work closely with our international partners to increase Iran's isolation and the pressure on its government, and we call upon other nations to join us in condemning this threat to international peace and security." 

As Frazier Thomas used to say, "Hold the phone!" The fact that this episode rises only to the level of an allegation is important aside from any due process considerations for the accused. Here's our Secretary of State making a thinly veiled threat that reasonable people might understand to be the overture to another "coalition of the willing" cattle call. That's what I call brazen and bizarre, actually, over-reactionwise. Does this administration have a "Persian Fall" in mind? Is it an attempt to sow more discord within the fractious Iranian government? A Justice Department dog-and-pony show to distract Republicans and the media from the Fast And Furious cockup?

Holder said the two alleged plotters had not yet acquired explosives but had arranged for nearly $100,000 to be wired to a New York bank account in the name of the hired hit man as a down payment. The proposed hit man was actually an informant working for U.S. law enforcement.

What in the world are "Iranian-backed emissaries," by the way? The US has no diplomatic relations with Iran. Did he mean to say "guys hired by someone in Iran"?

So all day I was reading about and hearing about this brazen and bizarre "terror" plot, with media personalities from BoingBoing to the "mothership" oldies network declaring with pre-rehearsed incredulity that it sounded like something straight out of a "spy thriller." Yes, it does, doesn't it? I wonder where all our media mouthpieces got their talking points this morning.

Just to be clear: good for the FBI and DEA if they stopped a terrorism plot in the early stages. And yes, we should be concerned if Iranian officials were in fact financing a plot of the nature reported. But is it really any more brazen and bizarre than, say, an airline passenger with a smoldering bomb in his underpants? Or that day when a bunch of Saudi nationals hijacked and crashed some passenger jets in America? Or a State Department employee gunning down two men in the streets of Lahore, Pakistan? Just asking (don't want to drone on and on about it).

Saturday Night (After Hours)

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If you're like me---and who isn't?---you'll agree that this tune would be a good soundtrack for demolishing something or someone. First savagely, then with surgical deliberation. Then savagely again, and again. And again.



Not that I would ever do such a thing.

I think this track offers a very rare combination of rhythmic sophistication, meaningful dissonance, electric lyricism, and brute force. I think I'll categorize it as "Lummox Art Rock."

Please conform to the usual routine: earbuds jammed into the tympanum or cans epoxied to the side of your skull, turned up to 11 if your device supports that many megatons. Apologies to anyone who was expecting "Lollipops And Roses" by the Tijuana Brass tonight.

Lark's Tongues In Aspic, Part II, King Crimson (1973, from "Lark's Tongues in Aspic," Atlantic SD 7263), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Wise sayings

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It does no good to measure twice and cut once if you don't start first by thinking three times.

Bank shot to a good line

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In his blog post pointing to Bloomberg's expose of the ultra-right wing Koch brothers (e.g., their breaking the trade embargo with Iran and stuff... allegedly), Paul Krugman acquaints us with the following bon mots from his econ colleague Brad DeLong:

[T]he hard right is worse than you can possibly imagine, even if you take account of the fact that it’s worse than you can possibly imagine.

Nyuk nyuk nyuk BONK! D'OH!

Saturday Night Fish Fry (after hours)

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My favorite version of the two 1970 vinyl releases by Joe Cocker:



Strangely, whenever I hear Cocker's performance of The Letter on my local FM feed of a generic corporate oldies "station," they do not play the one that actually charted on Top 40 AM radio. Instead they play the album cut, taped live on Cocker's 1970 Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, which wasn't part of our collective high-school rock and roll experience. Speaking for myself, one of the relatively few who coughed up the ruinous price of, what? $4.75 ? for the double LP, it was a little depressing to hear the live performance. The horn solos were poorly crafted and sounded distant, and the whole shape of the mix felt wrong in comparison with the single, probably because of the difficulties mic'ing practically 3 dozen musicians out in the field. The performance here, though, was a studio rehearsal recording that was rushed out by A&M records to promote the tour while it was still in progress. The horns have real presence in the studio mix, especially the straightforward, rocking trumpet and tenor solos.

So why does the "mothership" corporate oldies network, which seems to occupy 97.9 on the FM dial no matter what city you drive through, play the album version instead of the hit single? My guess is that it has something to do with bundles of "intellectual property" that they license from the corporate copyright holders and force-feed to listeners until they sicken of it. And so, in the bargain, they colonize our pop music memories just like the East India Company colonized south Asia 400 years ago. Countless original performances and mixes become unknown to younger generations of listeners. Yet there's a backhanded benefit to this trend: lots of goodies that have been stashed in the closets of collectors eventually emerge on places like YouTube, unruined by corporate stress rotation.

The Letter, Joe Cocker with Leon Russell and The Shelter People (1970, 45 rpm single A&M 1174), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Fun fact: Cocker is 40 years older, to the day, than Beer-D. Please make a note of it.

And now, Mr. Crutch

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But first a word from our alternate universe sponsor:



Fuelers and funny cars... SUNDAY!!! I tried to find a nice 1965-era Santa Fe Speedway jingle for you because they were really catchy. No dice on YouTube, though, so here's the next-best of the genre. Often imitated, as the Earl Scheib commercials used to say about their cheap paint jobs, but never duplicated.

After hours

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Apropos of nothing, here's a nice snapshot of Norma Jean Baker looking young and somewhat indisposed, getting fingerprints all over her 10 in. 78 rpm hit parader. I wonder what's going on here: it's a flash photo, but the outdoor light could indicate either twilight or dawn (noting that her makeup looks too fresh for a dawn after a late night). Her face and hair style look similar to her appearance in a 1954 wedding photo alongside Joe DiMaggio; did he take the picture? (Lucky slob.) The room's furnishings look mismatched and ratty, so I'd be surprised if the picture was taken in her own home. Questions, questions flooding the mind after hours.

Image linked from How To Be A Retronaught; original post attributed to Dangerous Minds.