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.

Friday Night Fish Fry

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Or, in my case, 16-day weekend. Fuck the Prayer Meeting tonight---arf!



Just closed out the fiscal year in the lab I work for, so I'm seizing an opportunity to take 2 weeks off, end-to-end, for the first time in memory (excluding medical leave for recreational activities such as torn tendons, broken bones, and surgery).

I intend to spend most of my time off in meatspace, my preferred domain, demolishing stuff, feeding birds, pedaling a bike, and taking photos---but there are two blog "initiatives" I want to take. One is trying to get my pathetic keyword (i.e., "label") taxonomy under control---you know it's a mess when you have a couple dozen keywords with only one or two links. Keywords are supposed to help you, my most intelligent and discerning readers, navigate this site. The other effort is less trivial: making a transition to a different interpretive framework for my observation on political economy and mass culture. I have been mulling this for a long time because I've concluded that my ideas and way of expressing them become trite when accepting the default narrative frame maintained by everyone from Drudge to FireDogLake, Fox to PBS, Limbaugh to Scott Simon. Time to get asymmetrical. More soon; if not, please gently remind me. Thank you for your attention in this matter. Now please allow me to finish my homemade electrochemical chili in peace, won't you?

Seven Day Weekend, Jimmy Cliff, Elvis Costello & The Attractions (1986, from "Out Of Our Idiot," Demon Records - Fiend CD 67), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Interesting: Jimmy Cliff gets top billing on this cut. Was he still a bigger star than Elvis Costello in Thatcher-era UK? Also: on this compilation disc we learn that Elvis was the original Napoleon Dynamite (as credited on his 1982 recording of Imperial Bedroom), a full 22 years before that movie was released about the goofy kid using the same monicker, which in my opinion is slightly underrated by IMdb users (I'd give it a solid 7.3).

The "help" these days

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Sometimes I think that Alice couldn't wash steam out of a tea kettle.

The new national currency: stupidity

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I see that liberal bloggers from Balloon Juice to TPM are in high dudgeon because the Tea Party supports a bill to withdraw 1$ bills from circulation and replace them with dollar coins. For some reason they consider this idea to be outrageous. John Cole denounces it as "just weird" and Josh Marshall claims that such a change would be "a huge pain in the butt (perhaps literally) for every American."

The criticism, you see, is that dollar coins are a huge waste of money because nobody uses them, and consequently $1 billion worth are stockpiled in vaults where they do no work but cost tax dollars to store and secure. It must be true: even NPR said so back in June!

Critics of the dollar coin seem to think that eliminating the greenback would force them to carry several pounds of coins in their pockets from now on. Why exactly would that happen? Can you think of any reason why a person would have to carry more than four dollar coins at one time? One, maybe: when the 7-11 cashier or bartender has no fives in the register. Happens every day, doesn't it?

If you've fed a parking meter or vending machine lately, you know that neither provides much of a service or product for less than a dollar. To get a few hours of parking or a plastic bottle of Dr. Pepper you need to have 6 or 8 quarters handy. In my experience, vending machines spit out a used dollar bill about as often as they accept it.

Needless to say, this looks to me like some pointless piling onto the Tea Party by some self-righteous nincompoops. I've often said that liberal ideas are too important to entrust to liberals. Likewise, dumb ideas can easily find a new home in a liberal skull.

Last night I emailed Josh Marshall about his post to ask if he was serious, and to explain what exactly would be the drawback of widely circulating $1 coins. He broke my heart with no reply. Because there isn't a good one, if these ninnies were to think about it for two minutes. So you say a cashier doesn't want to accept 1$ coins? Tell the shift manager you'll shop at Walmart until their policy changes. And if you, the shopper, doesn't want to accept a $1 coin as part of your change, then leave it in the jar for Jerry's Kids! Oh, but your change includes four 1$ coins? If you're not rich enough to leave them in the tip jar, then I guess you'll become an eager adopter of this strange new monetary artifact, just like everyone else.

As an alternative approach, you could ask the cashier for a whole roll of dollar coins, then take it home and fuck yourself to sleep with it! (And by "you," I mean "the indefinite you." Thank you for your attention in this matter.)

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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Here, I think you will agree, is an undeniable kernel of Truth from Louis Jordan.



Of all the many matters in life on which myself, Beer-D, and Big Rock Head concur, I believe that we are most closely at unity on the particular point Jordan makes in this performance. How about you?

Something that always strikes me about Jordan---in addition to his considerable power as a composer-arranger, bandleader, entertainer, vocalist, and alto screecher---is what an authentically good-natured man he must have been. The guy just sounds fun, as if he could radiate pure joy into pretty much any situation. I've wondered if he intended that his lyrics for Fat Sam From Birmingham should serve as a slightly jollified autobiographical portrait of himself.

A Man's Best Friend Is A Bed, Louis Jordan and the Tympany Five (1947, 78 rpm single Decca 28543-B), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Peculiar marketing judgment

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While waiting in line for an Rx at my neighborhood drugstore I found myself studying the early pregnancy test shelf, vaguely musing how new and unreliable that technology was back when I was in fighting form, reproductionwise.

Since then, these devices have evolved beyond merely returning a certain color that correlates positively with pregnancy---I think it was blue in the early '80s---sort of like testing pH with litmus paper. Today the competing vendors use different indicators for pregnancy-positive and -negative results. One test kit uses + and - signs, another uses | and O symbols, and a third uses a pointless and almost illegible LED display that indicates "pregnant" or "not pregnant." Hmm, I thought to myself: consumer choice!

Then I noticed that the CVS house brand test kit illustrated the product on the box as showing a positive (+) result. So I compared it with the three other brands of test kits on the shelves, and discovered that all but one depicted the test wand as displaying a positive pregnancy result. One brand---it has the word "blue" in the trade name, but I can't remember it---showed the display indicators as insets to the main product illustration, but the test wand was simply showing a blank result, as it would when one removes it from its sterile wrapper.

It seems to me that most people who are anxious to get early pregnancy test results---"up to 5 days before period!" as the most serious brand proclaims---are probably looking for a negative result, not a positive one. So it made me wonder what kind of unholy alliance between corporations and the religious right might have cooked up this subtly anxiety-inducing packaging. And then I realized that it was a self-answering question.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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After last night's post I suppose it's incumbent upon me to prove that I'm not just a random, bitterly nostalgic geezer who believes that no one has recorded anything worth listening to since some arbitrary holy moment in my youth. So put this in your pipe and smoke it.



I think it's safe to say that most people my age (high Baby Boom era) would probably consider this selection to be "noise" just as our parents condemned the Stones or the Rascals as "jungle music." Myself, I view of Seattle grunge in general as an antidote to the sterile, vacuous sound of Reagan-era rock and pop that I was lamenting here last evening. These grunge bands used instrumentation and even production values that could be replicated in any working-class garage or basement assuming a few thousand dollars of investment in recording gear and a mixing board. Pure, primitive rock and roll. I remember that there was a certain amount of hype about the Seattle sound in the early 1990s as if grunge were revolutionary and unprecedented. It wasn't; it was a throwback to the '60s and early '70s with which there was nothing wrong other than pretending that one invented it when one actually had not. Grunge lyrics were, of course, uncensored existential despair for jaded kids, but I don't think that was so much a Seattle innovation rather than a generational change in community standards for rock lyrics trafficking in despair.

This track reminds me of early '70s Alice Cooper in some respects. The chord progression, if you can call it that, seems to be variation of the classic I - IV rock chord change, but using a mutated and dissonant variant of the tonic chord. The band pretty much vamps on these chords throughout, using the mutant tonic chord almost like pedal tones. But the harmonic environment creates plenty of elbow room for the musicians to play pretty much any notes they wish at any time. They do it with discipline, though, using scales, modes, and passing tones for harmonic coherence. As far as my ears are concerned, the vocalist can hold his own with any idol of the "classic rock" era. Lyrics? My mind is too literal to understand much poetry, but I reckon they have something to do with addiction and one-upsmanship originating in some sort of personal rivalry or hostility. I don't care---my earbones have historically processed vocals as one instrument among the ensemble. Never could understand the damn things, either in terms of diction or meaning.

Retarded, Afghan Whigs (1990, from "Up In It," reissued 1991 on "The Grunge Years," Sub Pop SP112b), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting [updated]

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This may be a nowhere song for many people my age, but I'm always surprised at my emotional response to it. And this reaction has no specific, schmaltzy boy/girl origin; I had to plumb the shallows of my wee brain to put my finger on it. It's about what happens when you don't notice that you've passed a fork in the road.



As pitiful as this sounds, even to me, the 1970s were the best time of my life. And that's even considering some particularly tough sledding in the '73 - '75 timeframe. I suppose memories may take on a lovely, saturated Kodachrome-type patina because our problems didn't turn out to be impossible after all, while the power and romance of wide-open possibilities turns out, for too many of us, to be a high point that can never be replicated once we start the march toward diminished options.

This pensive Earth Wind & Fire single charted in summer 1979, a time I now consider to have been an indescribable rare sunset diffusing into the crisp twilight of a formative era that was destined to end abruptly. I think I even knew that at the time, meaning I sensed the morning that would emerge east of midnight would for some reason, inexplicable to me, twist itself into a deformed and crippled facsimile of a new day. Morning In America dawned brightly to many, but to me colder than it looked through my window; languid, dank, and low in oxygen. For one thing among many, the general character of rock, soul, and pop music seemed to degenerate almost overnight. Suddenly, human vitality was aggressively being displaced through heavy application of digital production methods and all the romance that Big Business has to offer. To my ears, it all started sounding like music produced to sell instead of music to listen to and dance to. Previously, barely a majority of it had struck me that way; I'd always found plenty to like, ranging from Zappa to horn bands to wimp rock to New Wave and Power Pop. Now, in the stale new dawn of 1980, it seemed that almost nothing of that remained.

Some might complain that this track is little more than a clot of overproduced schlock romanticism. Myself, I think it finds a very sweet spot between intimacy and lushness. The layers of keyboards---there are sounds like a concert grand mic'ed for pop timbres, a classic '70s Fender Rhodes electric piano, an analog synthesizer---are washed in a classy orchestral mist. And in back of it all, those swinging, mellow EW&F horns fingerpainting together in the open spaces. If I make an allowance for poetic license, I can almost hear these poignant lyrics as an elegy for social comity, which was soon to fall ill through a plague that very few people (myself included) knew was starting to creep in from under the baseboards. But then, that's just me projecting my ruminations onto the rest of the world. Enjoy the song; I wonder what memories it might tweak in you.

After The Love Has Gone, Earth Wind & Fire (1979, from "I Am," Columbia 35730), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Update: I've done some editing and rewriting to flesh out the mental shorthand I was dealing out last night.

DSL smashup

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Looks like I had to take the advice of Big Hussein Otis and pitch the old DSL modem/router. The new one appears to be performing according to specs, meaning that when I turn it on it stays on.

After I got back online tonight and came here I decided to "check out Blogger's streamlined new interface." It certainly does look "cleaner" (I'm typing into it now), but it's got me all disoriented now, eyebonewise. I've had enough of computers this week and will come back tomorrow. Now I'm gonna go read some Will Eisner Spirit reprints from 1941.

Meanwhile, please stay tuned for more exciting new content... whenever.

Wise sayings

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I'm starting to think that even the people I totally agree with are idiots.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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Although there are three more weeks of summer, as etched into the DNA of The Creator's very own Firmament, corporations have trained us to call off the season immediately after Labor Day. The drones have to get to work preparing the Xmas retail displays, which need to be set up by the Friday before Columbus Day. So here's something to transition all my fellow drones out of "official summer" on a sweet note.



The "official" Beach Boys song for this time of year is, of course, "All Summer Long." I sort of like that one because of---not in spite of---it's bouncy vapidity and Norman Rockwell-HBO depiction of California teenage glory in the mid-1960s. The truth of that place and era for most kids was probably more about bullying, under-age drunkenness, and finger-fucking in the front seat of a 1951 Plymouth than "miniature golf and hondas in the hills." (Wait... I'm starting to like the song less and less the more I write about it.)

Anyway, the title track of the Pet Sounds album is an instrumental gem that has a sort of valedictory quality that well suits the manufactured occasion of a summer's end. The percussion throughout reminds me of crickets and cicadas like I'm hearing right now through the open screen windows. The beat wafts by like a balmy, early-evening breeze. As progression unfolds toward an ultimate series of formal, brass-driven stock ending-type cadences that have more in common with Sousa than rock and roll, subtle temporary key changes are injected that keep the mood bright. And the closing fade sustains an optimism that your pet sounds will always be around. (Unless you're dumb enough to store them all in "The Cloud," from which some corporation will steal them from you in a coupla years and make you pay for them again.)

Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys (1966, from "Pet Sounds," Capitol D 100513 [1990 CD reissue], via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Editor's note: the Wikipedia article on this album has some interesting information, but I must say that it's also chock full of thinly sliced horseshit. First, Pet Sounds is not "a heralding album in the emerging psychedelic rock style." It's just not. Period. Yes, Brian Wilson was using psychedelic drugs during 1965 and 1966, and an alternate version of "I Know There's An Answer," called "Hang On To Your Ego," has acid-driven lyrics. But just listen to it: what you hear is fairly standard surfer-type rock and pop arranged for a zillion different instruments---brilliantly, in my opinion---and mostly moody lyrics that are more characteristic of youthful depression than psychedelia.

Second, Pet Sounds is not an example of "Baroque pop" because, despite what Wikipedia has to say, there never was any such fucking thing! God help us! Yes, Wikipedia has an entire article on this nonexistent musical genre, and claim that the term has been in use since 1966. Well, maybe some early rock critic looking for attention coined the term, but no regular people ever did. Almost all of the references used to document the existence of this made-up genre were published in the 21st century (the rest are 1990s), possibly written by people who were raised more on rock music magazines than on rock music. You know: poseurs.

Now I'm so worked up I have to go burn some Delhi saffron incense and meditate....

Fifty50 housekeeping notes

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After treating my router to a milkshake made of Fleet's Phospho-Soda and epicac, directly before a nice waterboarding session, it seems to be performing its mission here at Fifty50 Headquarters once again. The previous situation was getting old very fast and cannibalizing the time that I prefer to dedicate to you, my valuable readers. (I'm afraid I may be forced to use the same prescription on a nice lady named Alice who, after six years of working for me as a contractor, still doesn't seem to fully grasp the concept of "washing silverware.")

Also, apropos of nothing, I've changed the setting for the comments page so you no longer have to deal with that irritating popup window. Now we're set up just like the big kids over on the next block.

Finally, I've enabled the blog's settings to load a mobile template, specially designed for "smart" phones, which customizes the display when Fifty50 is viewed on such devices.

Please form an orderly line for purposes of thanking me. I do so hate it when the masses "teem" with spontaneous delight.

Yesterday's doke

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Provided yesterday courtesy of John Cole's brother:

“Fox News. You know what that is? Nickelodeon for people with dementia.”

Please make a note of it.

Today's doke

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The Invisible Army has been ratfucking my DSL router for several weeks. Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Sunday after hours

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There is only one reason I'd ever post such a thing to this blog. See if you can guess what it is.



A Walk In The Black Forest, Horst Jankowski (1965, Mercury Records [catalog information unavailable]), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Editor's note: some wags might consider this tune 1965's answer to Kyu Sakamoto's 1963 hit, "Sukiyaki," and also to the eternal question "Who won World War II, you so smart?"

Friday Evening After Hours

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This balls-heavy power trio track from Frank Zappa's Apostrophe(') album has always been linked in my mind to the approach of a certain monstrous, torrential chain-lightning storm as heralded by gorgeously hideous thunderheads the color of lead and a curiously refreshing 20 mph wind out of the west.



I'm certain that this tune would make a terrific soundtrack for the approach of Hurricane Irene assuming that (1) you and yours are personally safe, (2) all irreplaceable valuables are secured in a watertight fortress, (3) you are fully insured, and (4) you don't live within reach of the storm surge. Lotta ifs, I know. But what else can a Simple Country Editor offer other than best wishes and exciting incidental music?

Seriously, this is one of the most interesting power trio jams I've ever heard, with Jack Bruce strangling a dramatic fuzz-bass fanfare-style solo from his instrument right out of the gate. Then, once Bruce's hyperactive "preliminaries" are concluded, Zappa slips in from rhythm to an aggressive, precision solo that reminds me of a serpent's tongue made out of piano wire. It slashes its way through or around all obstacles popping out of the rhythm bed, where Bruce is still strumming away like Oedipus plucking at his own optic nerves. This is one of those tracks (and albums) that you have to own on high-quality physical media and pump hard through a nice set of real headphones at 11. Even on a simple track like this one, Zappa had a lot of things going on deeper in the mix that are lost in MP3 files and computer headphones.

I hope anyone in the hurricane path who might be listening and reading along comes through it all with nothing worse than a wet bird, as Sinatra used to say.

Apostrophe', Frank Zappa (1974, from "Apostrophe(')," DiscReet DS 2175), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

The wealthy elites "smash and grab," too

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I know we're all supposed to dutifully wind down our attention to the Steve Jobs resignation and join around the national hearth to watch Hurricane Irene lash East Coast homosexuals and liberals with the beastly righteousness only nature can dispense. Also that our Federal Reserve chairman thinks our economy will continue to grow over time even though he sees some "clouds on the horizon" because unemployment is still over 9%.

But the fallout from global austerity economics has not abated just because the Brits have swept up the broken glass from their mid-month wave of rioting. In a comment from an August 13 post, Marginalia of London noted that the looting was a political act despite the fact that the rioters may not have realized it. I agree.

Everybody knows that rioting, looting, and arson are heinous acts that punish the innocent much more than any legitimate object of political opprobrium. Pundits on both sides of the Atlantic responded with scolding in high dudgeon: shame on the nihilistic children; shame on their useless parents; the problem is that nobody knows how good they really have it any more; et cetera.

But most of us are still waiting for celebrity pundits to tut-tut the misbehavior of the elite global financiers who have been "looting with the lights on" for a decade or more:

[England's] riots are not political, or so we keep hearing. They are just about lawless kids taking advantage of a situation to take what isn't theirs. And British society, Cameron tells us, abhors that kind of behaviour.

This is said in all seriousness. As if the massive bank bailouts never happened, followed by the defiant record bonuses. Followed by the emergency G8 and G20 meetings, when the leaders decided, collectively, not to do anything to punish the bankers for any of this, nor to do anything serious to prevent a similar crisis from happening again. Instead they would all go home to their respective countries and force sacrifices on the most vulnerable.

Click through to read the entire Guardian piece by Naomi Klein---it's a pippin. I copped the link from Anne Laurie on Balloon Juice, who also notes that PM David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson were both members of the obscenely wealthy and destructive Bullingdon Club during college years.

Klein's most interesting point, in my opinion, is another one of those truths that are hidden right in front of our noses: that Western media are quick to laud the high political ideals of rioters, looters, and insurrectionists in Bad Countries like Iraq, for example, because

this is what happens when a regime has no legitimacy in the eyes of the people. After watching for so long as Saddam Hussein and his sons helped themselves to whatever and whomever they wanted, many regular Iraqis felt they had earned the right to take a few things for themselves.

As the article says, though, London isn't Baghdad. Maybe not (fewer minarets, for one thing), but maybe turning London into Baghdad is part of Premier Cameron's and Chairman Murdoch's 10-year Great-Leap-Ahead Plan. It's almost as if Western nations are deliberately avoiding the tested, straightforward solutions to depression economics (i.e., stimulus and employment programs) in order to do some social engineering through the magic of Disaster Capitalism. If corporatists love anything more than tax cuts for themselves, it's political crackdowns.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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Nothin' new, sound of breaking glass



A peppy little number about real anarchy, not the Disney version that Libertarians pretend can save the world. Our British cousins had an ugly taste of it last week. The conscious agenda of the rioters was "smash and grab"; nothing overtly political motivating it, and nothing sympathetic to say about it. But both of those remarks are beside the point, I think: riotous anarchy is an emergent phenomenon that explodes forth when a certain set of social, political, and economic conditions is satisfied. It has root causes that can either be mitigated or aggravated. In Western democracies we have sparks that are being fanned into flames by an international nest of motherfuckers. I wouldn't be one bit surprised if I have more to say on the subject sometime. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass, Nick Lowe (1978, from "Pure Pop For Now People," Columbia 35329), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Editor's note:  The UK release of this album was called "Jesus of Cool," but Lowe's US label wouldn't stand for such heretical cheekery in the title, so my original purchase of this music was called Pure Pop. But Lowe reissued "Jesus" on CD a few years ago, which I also own and highly recommend for the bonus tracks.

Meanwhile, under the radar

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I saw this post by David Dayen linked to Heather Digby Parton's Hullaballo blog. It illustrates the other major crime of professional malpractice committed by the corporation-directed media that provide most of what most Americans accept in good faith as news.

The gist of it is that Republican lawmakers are being confronted at their August "town hall meetings" by ordinary people who are firmly demanding to know why legislators (John McCain, for example) believe that reducing taxes on corporations or wealthy people will help the economy in the absence of evidence. But there's not a peep about it on CNN, Fox, or NPR. Dayen's point is that last summer the media were all eyes and ears as "tea partiers" disrupted these town hall meetings last August, even brandishing or carrying concealed weapons in some cases. And why not? I leave this question as an exercise for the reader.

Dayen highlights examples published in the hometown press of conservative strongholds such as North Dakota, Tucson, Wilkes-Barre, PA, and Lincoln, NE. Dayen also claims that someone has compiled more than 100 such stories from around the nation, but unfortunately he doesn't provide a link to document that. But that's what the New York Times and the CNN national news desks are for, I'd think. Not a peep, though.

To me, the interesting thing is that these appear to be examples of everyday people who, without any help from the national media or national political leaders of either party are piecing together the story for themselves... the story being that the conventional wisdom we're being force-fed about deficits, debt ceilings, and "job-creating" rich people may be starting to wear thin.

In front of their own noses, too

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Adding onto yesterday's observations on Krugman's blog post about media malpractice in reporting on the impact of the S&P downgrade, I'll point to another Krugman piece from today. This one addresses the same phenomenon---straightforward lying about the reality right in front of everybody's noses---but pertains to elite economists who lie about their data in very transparent ways.

So this one on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, a guy named "Narayana Kocherlakota," argues that the Fed should tighten the money supply---raise interest rates, that is---because he wants us to believe that taking money out of the economy will reduce unemployment. But, always the good-natured wag, Krugman points out that:

The Fed dissenters are obviously looking for excuses to pursue tight policies; they’re looking at the facts only in search of support for their prejudices. As the old line goes, they’re using evidence the way a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.

Economists do it as much as the media, whether famous neoliberal intellectuals or Federal Reserve policymakers (usually the same guys, anyway). I enjoy reading about Krugman peeing on their lamppost.

In front of our noses

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This Krugman blog post highlights a virtually unreported detail about the past week of financial-world turmoil on the heels of the S&P downgrade of US debt:

A week ago, before the S&P downgrade, the interest rate on US 10-year bonds was 2.56 percent. As I write this, it’s 2.24 percent, with the yield on inflation-protected bonds actually negative.

You would think this would amount to strong evidence that the downgrade totally failed to shake confidence in US debt.

Yet people who listen to radio and TV reporting tell me that most stories attribute the stock plunge to the downgrade, and are telling listeners that the case for immediate spending cuts has gotten even stronger.

Get it? This is how the corporate narrative works. The Situationists figured it out more than 40 years ago:

[They] argued in 1967 that spectacular features like mass media and advertising have a central role in an advanced capitalist society, which is to show a fake reality in order to mask the real capitalist degradation of human life.

Their term for the narrative and its associated creations and fabrications was The Spectacle. Sounds correct to me.

Be that as it may, I call it criminal malpractice by the news media. Ordinary people who consider themselves to be very well informed because they follow the "nice" media CNN, MSNBC, Newsweek, The New York Times, and NPR are being deliberately misled. I call it deliberate deception because I know what a fucking news editor is really supposed to do for a paycheck.

One might think that our very own President North Star would have been hammering this point home for the past day or two, or maybe that he'll get around to it next week. But in order to do that, he would have to be a leader of sorts, with a few guts inside his skin. Where have you gone, Huey Long? Our nation turns its longing eyes to you. Goo goo goo joob.

Lemme ask you this:

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What the fuck am I supposed to do with six cucumbers?!?

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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Hey, whattaya know---we have an actual, bona fide prayer meeting tonight! Hurry: step right up!



Somewhat prescient, eh? The only somewhat false note is Zappa's use of the word "friendly" to describe Jesus Freaks. In my experience at a nominally Presbyterian college during most of the 1970s, that term was rarely applicable (mostly only in the early years of the decade). And today? They long ago joined a club that coheres solely by expressing its collective disapproval of, and superiority to, America's undesirables (i.e., everyone who doesn't belong to the club). This makes them feel so good about themselves, at least until they get home, that they give the preacher bales of money to run lucrative, tax-exempt business enterprises so he can live the lifestyle of a Renaissance-era Cardinal.

And, seriously, we ain't Number 3, either. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing, Frank Zappa (October 1978, Saturday Night Live, NBC), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Won't need to search in Pakistan this time

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So Vice President Biden made news today by telling House Democrats today that the teabaggers have "acted like terrorists" during the debt ceiling standoff. President North Star will probably give him a scolding for saying so, but what he really should be doing is setting up a secure conference call with SEAL Team 6. Maybe a nice black-helicopter tour of the Potomac for a few properly selected chiefs of think tanks and cable news operations would be just the thing to lower the temperature in the glistening swamp on a hill. JK LULZ!!!

Meanwhile,at the bottom of the TPM piece linked above, we learn that Republican National Committee (RNC) chair "Reince Priebus" has "tweeted" that VP Biden has "more than crossed a line today when he called fiscal conservatives 'terrorists'. I demand an apology." Haha! I hope Biden gives "Priebus" an apology by way of his posterior annular ring.

By the way, I never make fun of a person's name, but I'll make an exception here. What the fuck kind of name is "Reince Priebus" supposed to be? I mean, really? And I'll add to that rhetorical question the amusing discovery made awhile back by some unnamed wag: if you remove all the vowels from his name, you're left with RNC PR BS. If that's not evidence that witty time travelers from the future have modified our current timeline, then I'm a monkey's uncle and so are you.

Stockholm, DC

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Paul Krugman, paraphrasing Jonathan Chait in The New Republic (and himself on many other occasions), boils the so-called deficit crisis into its irreducible essence:

As Chait says, the first thing you need to understand is that modern Republicans don’t care about deficits. They only pretend to care when they believe that deficit hawkery can be used to dismantle social programs; as soon as the conversation turns to taxes, or anything else that would require them and their friends to make even the smallest sacrifice, deficits don’t matter at all.

In the Stockholm Syndrome world of Washington, DC, and the corporate media that sustain America's political withdrawal from consensual reality, this kind of talk from a liberal is condemned as "partisan bickering" or "uncivil."

Putting that childish, dishonest perspective aside for later discussion, preferably on someone else's blog, I simply suggest that a skeptical reader simply  at the evidence that has been right in front our our noses from the moment we learned about Grover Norquist's quest to drown the federal government in the bathtub. Use Occam's razor. Is there a simpler, more direct statement that explains the state of our political discourse today?

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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During the so-called Summer of Love, this peculiar composition was "in the tube," chartwise, for The Beach Boys. I never understood the song at the time, but it's grown on me after 40-odd years. I still don't understand it, though. And just to make matters a little more inscrutable, here's an alternate version that didn't make it out of the studio until a few decades later. But it's the one Brian Wilson originally intended for you and me to hear.



This track was supposed to be part of Wilson's "psychedelic" masterpiece album, Smile. But his well documented crackup overtook him before he could get the whole thing right to his ears and ego. The completed pieces---the releasable ones, at least---were issued on a disc called Smiley Smile. Yes, "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes and Villains" were basically salvage material from the Smile project. The version of Smiley Smile that I own, a 1990 reissue that also includes the Wild Honey album, includes the present track.

Wilson, morbidly depressed over the whole matter, claimed to have destroyed all the 1966 - 67 Smile masters. He "reconstructed" the project in 2004, unwisely in my opinion. I've unintentionally heard snips from it, and prefer not to hear any more.

So here's a summer song for you, simmered in vinegar by Brian Wilson 44 years ago, presented to commemorate both our current brain-denaturing heat wave and the slide of much of our populace into a state of desperate mental illness. Brian was far ahead of his time on that score, as well.

Heroes and Villains (Alternate Take), The Beach Boys (issued 1990, Capitol C2 93696), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

The Little Theater Screen

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OK, this is for Saturday morning. But pipe down when you watch it---Dad's still sleeping!



I think this is one of Fleischer Studios' best and most diabolical cartoons ever. I can't think of another with so much nonstop visual invention. The only breaks in the action are there to inject suspense or move the anti-plot in a new direction. And the surreal thread that these scenes are strung upon writhes like something that the coroner might have tweezed out of Edgar Allen Poe's brain through a nostril. Except for the appearance of our special canine guest star and the awesome, fetishistic Radio City Music Hall finale.

Yes, they really did show these cartoons on TV in the 1950s, when there was a scarcity of made-for-TV animation. As I've mentioned before, though, Fleischer cartoons were not produced for Depression-era tots... at least not until Hollywood set up the Hayes censorship office and they put a dumpy housefrock on Betty Boop.

As a point of semi-interest, this short was released to theaters 80 years ago last Sunday (24 July).

Bimbo's Initiation, Dave Fleischer, Director (1931, A Fleischer Studios Talkartoon; Grim Natwick, Animator), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

"The Little Theater Screen" was invented by Frazier Thomas.

Ennui in the 22nd century

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At home in the early 1990s, Star Trek: The Next Generation was a favorite of two of the three men of my house. Big Rock Head sort of pretended to like the show, but he confessed in much later days that it bored shit out of him and made him fall asleep. But Beer-D was fascinated by the bald-headed Shakespearean captain, the animalistic-looking Klingon security chief, the bozoistic first officer, and all the Industrial Light & Magic infrastructure. Over several recent years we revisited all seven seasons over biweekly dinners, episodes in order, as we affectionately decomposed all the instances of internally inconsistent logic, bullshit motivations, bogus technology as judged by 15 years of hindsight, and so on... not diminishing our enjoyment one iota. And since that time, we have also revisited every episode of that show's successor, Deep Space 9.

Despite the undeniable lack of "gravitas" reeking from the entire Star Trek enterprise (LULZORS!!!), as TV adventure fare goes, these shows generally achieved a reasonably high level of production value, attention to detail, and philosophical speculation. Owing to these attractions, I think, Beer-D had to be coaxed a bit to plunge into the original Shatner series, and I myself had not followed it closely as as a youth, and wasn't sure about the ultimate entertainment value.

I hunted down the original DVD release from an Amazon affiliate in order to get the undoctored Star Trek experience, without new special effects or any embellishments other than a clean transfer from the masters to a high-res medium. I did not want any of the "fakiness" sanitized away, both for aesthetic and historical reasons. I hereby declare that my purchase has amounted to a major entertainment score. The show is a true laff riot from bottom to top.

Tonight I won't offer any reviews or critiques of Gene Roddenberry's universe, but will help you dip a toe into the water of Trek context. The catalyst for all this exposition is a Tumblr photo site I saw mentioned on BoingBoing, which you can view directly here. The "Space Trek" site presents the enterprise in the full glory of its 22nd century banality. Behold: the Sick Bay!

Note the clean, modern architectural lines, painted in county-jail green. The rippled medicine cabinet glass elegantly secures the contents of the meds locker. We are viewing a workstation where the curvy space nurse can pose in a vinyl office chair while sterilizing the formica surfaces. Note the highly advanced, Space-Walmart-type sanitation devices. At least there's no danger of running out of Space Lysol on this tub, because our leggy nurse has two backup bottles at the ready... just in case. No need for labels, though. If she forgets what's inside, she can just summon Mr. Spock to logically infer the contents.

The S&P coup

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I want to add a little to my previous post on S&P's implicit threat to blackmail the federal government into adopting a specific piece of legislation (i.e., $4 trillion spending reduction over the next 10 years).

Paul Krugman seems a little skeptical that an S&P downgrade of US debt would be huge deal because, basically, bond traders already know that ratings agencies don't know what they're doing:

The point is that when S&P or Moody’s speaks, that’s not the voice of “the market”. It’s just some guys with an agenda, and a very poor track record. And we have no idea how much effect their actions will have.

I don't doubt that. But to me the important point is not so much what financial traders do with an S&P intervention of this nature, but what the media and politicians will do with it. A ratings agency downgrade of US debt will be presented as something like scientific evidence that we need to finish drowning the federal government in the bathtub now! now! now! It's hard for me to see how our disinformation economy could get any worse---how it could further accelerate America's decline. But my intuition tells me we haven't reached terminal velocity yet. We'll be even closer when the press, the Congress, and the President anoint Wall Street as the new fourth branch of government.

Fourth branch, Third World

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I think that Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, like the few other reports I've seen about the Standard and Poors threat to downgrade US debt to Third World status, just misses the point.

Yes, insane Republican ideology and The Conceder In Chief have done a swell job creating an existential economic threat by tying approval of the debt ceiling to the politics of government spending and taxation. This is the "Worst. Congress. Ever." Blah blah blah.

In journalism lingo, there's a "buried lede" in Klein's piece:

And having upset S&P, appeasing them might not be so simple. Beers repeatedly emphasized that he wasn’t just looking for a number. He was looking for something “credible.” And credible, in his view, was something that both parties had embraced. After all, he argued, deficit-reduction plans have to be continuously implemented over a decade or more, and if there’s not “buy-in from both parties,” there’s no reason to believe that the plan will survive the inevitable changes in political control.

On the one hand, the S&P view is a reasonable analysis. But on the other, sinister hand:

You might ask whether all this matters. S&P got the financial crisis almost entirely wrong — in fact, their analytical errors, alongside those of other agencies, substantially contributed to it — so why should we listen to them now?

But the question isn’t whether S&P should be listened to. It’s whether the market will listen to them.

Yes, that's right. The once-respectable financial rating agency, which is as tarnished by the 2008 economic implosion as any Wall Street investment bank, has made federal legislative politics an evaluative criterion for assessing the full faith and credit of the US government and the debt it issues.

And as a small digression, it's probably worth inserting here that there really is no deficit crisis. The deficit is high-ish in relation to conventional yardsticks, but interest rates are so low (near zero as applicable to government borrowing, in fact), that there is no problem servicing this debt... unless the ceiling isn't raised promptly. The "deficit crisis" is an invention of right-wing politicians, corporate media, and as a johnny-come-lately, President North Star.

But back to the libretto: There is nothing benign whatsoever about what S&P is up to here. They aren't trying to serve as a voice of reason: they're emphatically inserting itself into the political fray with the power of a fourth branch of government, but one outside of federal checks and balances. "You motherfuckers attend to the 'deficit crisis' ," S&P seems to be saying, "or else we'll sic The Market on you." With "you," of course, meaning both politicians and voters. It is an aggressive, unconscionable lobbying assault on behalf of The Corporation---a protection racket that the federal government must now subscribe to with an initial payment of $4 trillion extracted from middle-class taxpayers, the poor, and the elderly. If they pull this off, there will be no end to the racket until we're all living in sheet metal shacks on dirt lots.

The S&P threat gives every politician in Washington enough cover, or terror, to cave in to the demands of the Republican legislative caucus and The Conceder in Chief for "the good of the nation." Once this smelly, syphilitic Wall Street camel has its nose all the way into the tent, S&P might conceivably become as powerful as the Federal Reserve in dictating the grim economic future of America. No accountability; just the perpetual threat to shit everybody else's nest if some warty bankers and corporate chieftains don't like the drift of public policy.

Cavalcade of marsupials

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It turns out I was correct about the massing of the terror prowling the night kitchen here in my private domain, The United State Of Moronica. Not a mouse. And happily, not a rat. Fifty50 reader Carlos Magnus was kind enough to lend me a small steel live trap, which I deployed Monday night somewhat arbitrarily in front of the basement door against the breakfast nook wall. I loaded the bait tray with a nice Japanese rice cracker thinly coated with peanut butter on each side (for good adhesion to the tray).

At about 0330, around the corner from the head of my bed, I heard something fairly large but sluggish rattling around in the cage. Since I hadn't set the catches on the trap correctly, my prey almost worked himself out before I got him out the front door. Not a raccoon, either: a possum that was almost too large for the cage! Since this drill interrupted a sleep cycle I could barely navigate or perceive what was happening, but felt satisfied with my high-level trapping achievement and quickly drifted off as soon as I hit the mattress.

On a whim, "just in case," I reset the trap again the next night. And I'll be a suck-egg mule if I didn't hear the goddam cage rattling around at the crack of 0230! Luckily, this coincided with the conclusion of a sleep cycle, apparently, and I had the presence of mind to grab the Nikon D80 and take a mugshot of this guy.

Not the same prisoner I took the previous night. Significantly smaller. For reference, the baseboard behind him is about 3 inches high. I was pleased that the creature remained calm and also well behaved, elimination-wise. Having set the trap latches correctly this night, I carried the trap onto the porch and gave him early parole. Of course, on the third night, when I caught another motherfucking possum (same trap, same place, at about 0130 this time), it occurred to me that the specimen pictured above might have found his way back into the crib from the staging area of my porch. He seemed a bit smaller than Two of 4, though (that's right---four!), so it may have been another sibling. Anyway, with great cunning I released the latest addition to my collection all of 15 feet away from the porch, and he made a beeline across the street to hopefully break into a neighbor's house.

Last night, I deployed two live traps (one in the basement) and came up with No. 4 at about 0230; possibly even a bit smaller than No 3. This time I let my captive chill in the cage on the porch for the duration and took him into work with me. While tempted to release him in the foyer of Rudy's apartment building or inside of Walmart on Prospect, I found an unkempt field for the release. Understandably, Four of 4 was showing some teeth to reflect his poor attitude after a noisy, bumpy ride in in the back compartment of the station wagon, but still behaved well enough.

So tonight, in a few minutes I'll swallow a handful of pills and wash 'em down with 8 oz of gin in preparation for bedtime. But again with double-barrel traps baited with a succulent midnight snack for the herd of marsupials in the basement.

Saturday After Hours

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About 40 minutes ago I sent the manuscript of the book I'm editing to the author. It's a monster job, and there will be plenty more editorial work to do after author revisions, but it should be much less intensive than what I've just completed. The immediate significance of this milestone should be a big drop in subliminal stress, a possible moderation of blood pressure, and a general boost to my quality of life. Also, slightly less-lazy blogging behavior.

Speaking of monsters, last night while trying to sleep I heard something very ungainly-sounding that was ratfucking the dirty dishes on my kitchen countertop. It sounded more massive than a mouse, and got into things that mice haven't gotten into before. Coming downstairs just now to call it an evening, I heard some more sounds, this time apparently coming from the basement. As I started to descend the stairwell to investigate, I heard some very peculiar sounds that may have been vocalizations---low and suppressed, short impulses mostly, that could have come from a bird (crow, grackle, or starling), a squirrel that is unhappy, or even a raccoon. I shut the basement door and won't think about it any more until the motherfucker has starved to death.

Enough. Nighty night.

Happy Independence Day, Soldier!

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Beer-D is watching Independence Day fireworks tonight in a small town called Mahomet (yes, I agree---it's a much more peculiar name for these parts even than "Podunk" is). It is a Champaign County bedroom community to which affluent people flee from our twin cities for the "good schools" and other mythical quality-of-life perks. Any-hoo, I received a text message from him shortly before the fireworks began, commenting on how well received some patriotic Toby Keith song was by the Proud Americans in attendance. Then, this exchange between him and me:

Beer-D: There's some bugler actually playing Taps right now. The fuck?

RubberCrutch: He must think it's Memorial Day.

Beer-D: Oh my god, they played it for a guy who's ABOUT to be deployed to Afghanistan!

Well, yes, I understand that Taps is played at lights-out on Army installations every night. Likewise, I am familiar with the fact that the sounding of Taps by a bugler is universally recognized by Americans as a musical salute to a deceased soldier at his or her funeral. I am not a military veteran, but I'm pretty sure that Taps is not a song that a soldier wishes to hear immediately before being deployed to a theater of operations. I wonder if this untimely gaffe even registered with anyone other than the soldier and his family.

A Word From Our Alternate Universe Sponsor

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From the land of pines
Lofty balsams



I actually picked up a 6 of Hamm's at the package store this afternoon because they only had a "five pack" of Schlitz (which Leo Durocher used to call "Slits Beer"). I had no idea they still "brewed" this stuff any more. Will report back as to it's purportedly "crisp, clean cut to the taste." Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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Here's Jackie Wilson, singing lead for Billy Ward and His Dominoes.



I really like this performance and arrangement, but it certainly is a noodle-scratcher.

First, consider the most prominent facet of this track: Wilson belting out the lyrics with depression and mania, bundled under tension tighter than a gnat's ass. But he sounds like nothing so much as a freshly minted graduate of the Dudley Do-Right School of Voice.

Then there is the chart, which definitely has the upbeat "fish-fry" feel as a frame for some pretty "prayer-meeting" lyrics. I'd started to post this several times in past months but couldn't figure out which rubric it belonged under. But since it's in a tempo suitable for shagging at a Carolina beach music club with sand on the floor (it's a dance, perv!), here it is on a dog-day Saturday night.

And, as a production artifact---but not one engineered into the original---there's this cheesy post-production reverb hovering conspicuously over the recording like a cloud of corn aphids wanting to get into your ear canals.

Frankie Sinatra recorded this tune the same year as the Dominoes---1955. The lyrics sound like a natural for Sinatra, and with a Nelson Riddle arrangement one might expect his version to be the definitive one. I'm sure most people familiar with it agree with that sentiment, but not me. The way I hear it, Riddle's chart doesn't surpass "OK" and neither does the orchestra performance. And Frank's fiddling with the melody at the margins, which is a key to his interpretive genius, falls flat on this one and actually weakens the line considerably. If you want to compare it with Wilson's interpretation, go look for it on YouTube---Sinatra's version doesn't rise to the level of interest that I need in order to be bothered to embed it and track down the catalog data for you.

But Wilson's peculiar version of this composition totally kicks ass. Not sure why it didn't hit in 1955, but they didn't even try because it was the B side of another Dominoes tune few people have heard of---"May I Never Love Again." I'd guess the studio chumped it as a throwaway track because the lyrics were too mature of a take on getting the bum's rush from a lady to have broken through on the emerging rock charts of the day. That is, it did not reflect the standard teenager-style sentiments about such matters.

Learnin' The Blues, Jackie Wilson with Billy Ward and His Dominoes (1955, King Records 1492), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Rich asshole framed for rape?

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Based on what New York prosecutors have discovered about their client regarding the DSK rape allegation, we may actually have a case here in which a bona fide member of the global elite community may have been falsely accused of something. Sez the New York Times:

Investigators with the Manhattan district attorney’s office learned the call had been recorded and had it translated from a “unique dialect of Fulani,” a language from the woman’s native country, Guinea, according to a well-placed law enforcement official.

When the conversation was translated — a job completed only this Wednesday — investigators were alarmed: “She says words to the effect of, ‘Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I’m doing,’ ” the official said.

But then again, maybe not. Press leaks about an allegedly lying rape victim do not constitute an acquittal of the accused. Outside of the Gucci law office that is a privilege of a gentleman of DSK's standing and the Manhattan District Attorney's office, we  know only a few things for certain. One is that a person is innocent of an accusation until proven guilty. Another is that raping a woman who lies, or may even be a "gold-digger," is a crime nevertheless.

Beyond those things, there is a certain conjecture (for a hypothetical case, naturally) that may not be automatically false; namely, a case in which two nasty, cynical people might simultaneously try to do something horrible to each other at different coordinates of human experience, so to speak. For example, a hardened woman without conscience might be willing to entrap a rich asshole into raping her in return for a huge payday, and a misogynist asshole may follow his dick and the woman's "script" into committing an act of sexual violence. Interesting legal and existential questions follow for the ages, not to mention a zillion insipid talk show interviews, a tell-all book by those "who have knowledge" of the situation, and a Hollywood blockbuster based on a true story.

Many other conjectures are possible, too, so the one put forth above means approximately nothing.

Meanwhile, based on what I heard on NPR this morning, irrespective of what may have happened in that Schrodinger's cathouse of a hotel suite, I think that a majority of French citizens will jump at the chance to greet DSK as if he were a returning war hero and rid themselves of the ridiculous President Nicolas Sarkozy in next year's national election. After all, at least one conspiracy narrative emerged very quickly on the heels of DSK's May arrest. It's feasible that Sarkozy could find himself as an unwilling partner in a metaphorical menage a trois.

Editor's note: I saw this story first at Balloon Juice.

Friday Evening After Hours

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You ain't so well-to-do
Unless you got a little koo-chee-koo



Sad but true. However, most of us weren't endowed at birth with the considerable talent, charm, and other assets of Mr. Bull Moose Jackson. There's a nice, concise Wikipedia bio of him at the other end of this link. He blows melodic lines with a big, smooth classic tenor R&B sound during intermissions from his vocals. His lyrics are always full of good humor, especially when he steps a bit over the line into lewd territory (not here so much as in fan favorites like "Bow Legged Woman" and "Big 10 Inch [Record]"). And he sings in a voice of the people---unremarkable in terms of sonority, maybe, but delivered with punch and excellent phrasing.

Editor's note: to enhance your enjoyment of this song, it is recommended that you close your eyes for the duration. The video is an excruciatingly embarrassing thing to behold and will distract you like the stare of a cobra. Also, the catalog information below may not be correct since the discography typesetting on my Charly (record label) compilation is garbled and misaligned. Thank you for your attention to these matters.

If You Ain't Lovin', Bull Moose Jackson (1955, 78 rpm single King 4775), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.