I keep coming back to Yeats, and The Second Coming: "The best lack all conviction/While the worst are filled with a passionate intensity...". Of course "best " and "worst" depend on where you stand--my "best" may be your "worst," and vice versa. I see what I'm doing in these posts as an attempt to keep my best passionately intense; others just see my posts as angry, ranting polemics. What to do, what to do?--it's the liberal dilemma.
Now that Isaac has safely blown past Fla., Mitt Romney tonight will realize his long-held dream and officially receive the Republican nomination to become The POTUS (that always sounds somehow vaguely dirty to me). While--shocking revelation coming up--I've lately found myself becoming more receptive to spirituality in some form, organized religion still makes me squirm, as I think that far more bad than good has come from it over the centuries. And while pretty much all religions have weird origination stories, it sure seems that Mormonism is front and center in the weirdness department. Angels in America (Tony Kushner took his title at least partly from the Mormon story); golden tablets buried in upstate New York which an angel named Moroni (a feeble-minded Italian, evidently) led Joseph Smith to; angelic writing on said tablets which only Smith was able to decipher; and the disappearance of those tablets before anyone else saw them. Oh yeah--and the revelation that the ancestors of Native Americans were the Lost Tribes of Israel (of which Isaac was one of the three patriarchs; cue spooky sound effects) who Somehow found their way to these shores in pre-history; and, finally for this rendering, a visit to America by Jesus, sometime between the Resurrection and the Ascension, which apparently no one else knew about. Or maybe the media were just kinder back then and didn't want to get all up in his grill about what he was doing and where he was going. Why couldn't they have done the same for Mark Sanford and John Edwards and on and on?
So we're gonna entrust our country to a guy, all of his other strengths and faults aside, who can give credence to that story. There's probably something to be said for unquestioning belief, but sheesh! Then again, I guess when the only alternative is a Kenyan-born Muslim intellectual who's going to use UN troops to take our guns and land, even that choice looks reasonable. Anyway, in honor of Moroni and all of the other angels in America, merrily dancing on pinheads, I'm playing a show of "Angel" songs, of which there are an enormous number in my collection. Hope you can join me today, noon till two on 100.1 FM or www.wool.fm on the webs.
Wonder what Pat Robertson and his ilk would have said if a hurricane had forced postponement of the Democrats' convention?
...come Angels with guns."
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Monday, August 20, 2012
"America, Where Are You Now...?
So yeah, it's another week, and thus nominally the self-appointed time for a nearly 60 year old pretty privileged and insular white guy in the wilds of New Hampshire to fulminate against the evils and fucked-upednesses he sees in the world, and, apparently this week, to do so in the third person. But really, it's all just "blah, blah, blah" or "obla-di, obla-da," isn't it? To wit:
115 degree rain fell in the Mojave Desert this week. Hot tubs are kept at around 104 F. It was the hottest July in recorded human history. Even The Wall Street Journal is suggesting that it might be time to start taking this shit seriously. Repug Govs. Chris Christie of NJ and John Kasich of Ohio are also saying the climate is getting "hotter and wilder." Guess they're dead to the Right now, huh?
An African-American couple was prevented from marrying in a mostly-white Baptist church in Crystal Springs, Miss. because they were told by their pastor that the congregation had decided that "no blacks should marry in this church." In 2012. That's one man, one woman; that's a "normal couple" attempting to start a "normal" family, the sacrosanct unit to the Religious Right (which, again, proves that they are neither). Yeah, I think that Jesus said "One man, one woman--except for niggers," right?
Todd Akin, Republican Senatorial candidate from Missouri (the "Show Me" state) and currently a member of the House SCIENCE COMMITTEE said that cases of "legitimate rape" (think about that one for about a nanosecond before your head explodes) don't usually result in pregnancy "because the female body has ways to shut that whole thing down." Yeah, and they can spin their heads 720 degrees on their necks and projectile-spew green bile at will, too. If we didn't need 'em to breed with us--white women, that is--we'd be better off just bein' with other guys, ya know? As the Reverend Haggard said,--oh, never mind. So Akin's in the House, now, and on the science committee (Earth's only 6,000 years old, y'know); at the whim of ignorant voters maybe soon a US Senator.
Paul Ryan, the current golden boy of the Right, Willard's choice for VP, wants to cut taxes on the rich and fruitlessly attempt to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. Again, just the way Jesus spelled it out on those golden tablets he left behind when he visited America. "Mitt gliberty, und justice for some."
Some guy in Nevada, wearing a legal concealed weapon at a movie theater (what's up with guns and theaters anyway, Mrs. Lincoln?) shot himself in the ass as he attempted to adjust his seat.
Why isn't everyone walking around either laughing maniacally or wailing bitterly?
So this week, on my radio show, for no reason whatsoever, songs with women's names in the title. I'm serious. Why the hell not? I'm going alphabetically through the alphabet (not really a redundancy). It can be fun, although, admittedly, "U" and "X" are one-shot deals, and sketchy at best even then. Tuesday, noon till two on 100.1 FM, www.wool.fm on the webs.
"Why did you leave, America?"
115 degree rain fell in the Mojave Desert this week. Hot tubs are kept at around 104 F. It was the hottest July in recorded human history. Even The Wall Street Journal is suggesting that it might be time to start taking this shit seriously. Repug Govs. Chris Christie of NJ and John Kasich of Ohio are also saying the climate is getting "hotter and wilder." Guess they're dead to the Right now, huh?
An African-American couple was prevented from marrying in a mostly-white Baptist church in Crystal Springs, Miss. because they were told by their pastor that the congregation had decided that "no blacks should marry in this church." In 2012. That's one man, one woman; that's a "normal couple" attempting to start a "normal" family, the sacrosanct unit to the Religious Right (which, again, proves that they are neither). Yeah, I think that Jesus said "One man, one woman--except for niggers," right?
Todd Akin, Republican Senatorial candidate from Missouri (the "Show Me" state) and currently a member of the House SCIENCE COMMITTEE said that cases of "legitimate rape" (think about that one for about a nanosecond before your head explodes) don't usually result in pregnancy "because the female body has ways to shut that whole thing down." Yeah, and they can spin their heads 720 degrees on their necks and projectile-spew green bile at will, too. If we didn't need 'em to breed with us--white women, that is--we'd be better off just bein' with other guys, ya know? As the Reverend Haggard said,--oh, never mind. So Akin's in the House, now, and on the science committee (Earth's only 6,000 years old, y'know); at the whim of ignorant voters maybe soon a US Senator.
Paul Ryan, the current golden boy of the Right, Willard's choice for VP, wants to cut taxes on the rich and fruitlessly attempt to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. Again, just the way Jesus spelled it out on those golden tablets he left behind when he visited America. "Mitt gliberty, und justice for some."
Some guy in Nevada, wearing a legal concealed weapon at a movie theater (what's up with guns and theaters anyway, Mrs. Lincoln?) shot himself in the ass as he attempted to adjust his seat.
Why isn't everyone walking around either laughing maniacally or wailing bitterly?
So this week, on my radio show, for no reason whatsoever, songs with women's names in the title. I'm serious. Why the hell not? I'm going alphabetically through the alphabet (not really a redundancy). It can be fun, although, admittedly, "U" and "X" are one-shot deals, and sketchy at best even then. Tuesday, noon till two on 100.1 FM, www.wool.fm on the webs.
"Why did you leave, America?"
Monday, August 13, 2012
"...The Disappear(ed) Railroad Blues."
I-86 in New York state, the so-called "Southern Tier Expressway" is our favorite route to Chautauqua, much nicer and more scenic than I-88, which cuts across the middle of the state making a beeline to Buffalo(!). And while it's a nicer drive, it's still a helluva long time to be steering a car and basically staring at the macadam in front of you while the fortunate few passengers get to find other things to look at and ways to amuse themselves.
About an hour east of Jamestown sits the Seneca reservation, replete with the now de rigueur (for our displaced indigenous peoples) casino. In addition to the casino, three things about the Rez stand out for me. One is the fact that many of the highway signs are in both English and, one assumes, Senecan, or some tribal language, at any rate. That's pretty cool to see. The second thing is that the 20 or so miles you spend on the interstate driving through the Rez are probably the worst-maintained miles I've ever driven on our interstate system, and have been unchanged and unimproved in the dozen or so years we've been driving that way. Sure seems like we're still stickin' it to those savages.
The third thing, the most amazing thing to me, is a sign at one of the exits proclaiming the points of interest to be found there. The top of the sign promotes a railroad museum, the bottom advertises the Seneca/Iroquois museum. Don't know if they're at the same location, but, top billing aside, wouldn't it seem that the only two possible exhibits that could be more offensive to Native Americans than a railroad museum are, perhaps, a tall-ships celebration or a smallpox-blanket diorama? It's pretty hard for me to think of anything that contributed more to the demise of the native population here than the Iron Horse. Really? Both museums together? Yikes!
Genocide aside (and we've done a damn good job of keeping it at least aside, if not totally hidden, haven't we?), the railroad system is arguably humans' greatest transportation achievement. For moving the most goods and people most efficiently, it can't be beat. And, if we'd advanced the technology involved rather than dismantling the whole system, it would almost certainly be the greenest form of transport, too.
Conversely, the interstate highway system, President Eisenhower's baby, of course, is arguably--or maybe it's not even arguable--the most inefficient, wasteful and environmentally-destructive system ever devised. It's possible that it's the single biggest contributor to the horrible change humans have wrought to our very planet. Yep, Ike had one brilliant and fabulous idea, a warning, actually, to beware the Military-Industrial Complex and the havoc it could wreak morally, financially and psychologically to our country and the world, an idea we have emphatically ignored and rejected. And he had one horrible and horribly destructive idea, the interstate highway system, which we have embraced wholeheartedly. Yay, us.
The long drives I've taken in the last few weeks have made me long to be on a train, staring out at the scenery whizzing by, lulled by the "clack, clack, clack" of steel-on-steel, partaking of a much more enjoyable journey. That, coupled with the fact that Bellows Falls and North Walpole, where I spent my formative years (dasn't say "grew up," as there are too many who would dispute that) were railroad towns has made me nostalgic. Amtrak still runs right under the square in BF; if you're sitting on the deck at Popolo at the right time, you can watch it run right beneath the restaurant, whose beer and soda lines were laboriously fished over the top of the tunnel. And, as some of you who have listened to my show have heard, the Montrealer blows its horn as it heads into that tunnel at around noon every day.
So I'm honoring all of that this week with "train" and "railroad" songs; I'm sure that with only a few minutes' rather cursory thought you too can come up with a very long list of songs on topic. I hope you can tune in tomorrow from noon till 2 (ish)--I have a lot of 'em--to hear my list. 100.1 FM, www.wool.fm on the webs.
And, although none of you were in attendance, I'm sure you'll be excited to know that our Block Party on Saturday night (held in part of the old train yard, as a matter of fact) raised enough to pay our bills for the next 3 months. You should still become members, though, if you haven't yet. We wicked deserve it.
About an hour east of Jamestown sits the Seneca reservation, replete with the now de rigueur (for our displaced indigenous peoples) casino. In addition to the casino, three things about the Rez stand out for me. One is the fact that many of the highway signs are in both English and, one assumes, Senecan, or some tribal language, at any rate. That's pretty cool to see. The second thing is that the 20 or so miles you spend on the interstate driving through the Rez are probably the worst-maintained miles I've ever driven on our interstate system, and have been unchanged and unimproved in the dozen or so years we've been driving that way. Sure seems like we're still stickin' it to those savages.
The third thing, the most amazing thing to me, is a sign at one of the exits proclaiming the points of interest to be found there. The top of the sign promotes a railroad museum, the bottom advertises the Seneca/Iroquois museum. Don't know if they're at the same location, but, top billing aside, wouldn't it seem that the only two possible exhibits that could be more offensive to Native Americans than a railroad museum are, perhaps, a tall-ships celebration or a smallpox-blanket diorama? It's pretty hard for me to think of anything that contributed more to the demise of the native population here than the Iron Horse. Really? Both museums together? Yikes!
Genocide aside (and we've done a damn good job of keeping it at least aside, if not totally hidden, haven't we?), the railroad system is arguably humans' greatest transportation achievement. For moving the most goods and people most efficiently, it can't be beat. And, if we'd advanced the technology involved rather than dismantling the whole system, it would almost certainly be the greenest form of transport, too.
Conversely, the interstate highway system, President Eisenhower's baby, of course, is arguably--or maybe it's not even arguable--the most inefficient, wasteful and environmentally-destructive system ever devised. It's possible that it's the single biggest contributor to the horrible change humans have wrought to our very planet. Yep, Ike had one brilliant and fabulous idea, a warning, actually, to beware the Military-Industrial Complex and the havoc it could wreak morally, financially and psychologically to our country and the world, an idea we have emphatically ignored and rejected. And he had one horrible and horribly destructive idea, the interstate highway system, which we have embraced wholeheartedly. Yay, us.
The long drives I've taken in the last few weeks have made me long to be on a train, staring out at the scenery whizzing by, lulled by the "clack, clack, clack" of steel-on-steel, partaking of a much more enjoyable journey. That, coupled with the fact that Bellows Falls and North Walpole, where I spent my formative years (dasn't say "grew up," as there are too many who would dispute that) were railroad towns has made me nostalgic. Amtrak still runs right under the square in BF; if you're sitting on the deck at Popolo at the right time, you can watch it run right beneath the restaurant, whose beer and soda lines were laboriously fished over the top of the tunnel. And, as some of you who have listened to my show have heard, the Montrealer blows its horn as it heads into that tunnel at around noon every day.
So I'm honoring all of that this week with "train" and "railroad" songs; I'm sure that with only a few minutes' rather cursory thought you too can come up with a very long list of songs on topic. I hope you can tune in tomorrow from noon till 2 (ish)--I have a lot of 'em--to hear my list. 100.1 FM, www.wool.fm on the webs.
And, although none of you were in attendance, I'm sure you'll be excited to know that our Block Party on Saturday night (held in part of the old train yard, as a matter of fact) raised enough to pay our bills for the next 3 months. You should still become members, though, if you haven't yet. We wicked deserve it.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
"He Maketh Me to Lie in Green Pastures...."
Dateline:Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, New York
Good morning Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea. This is your intrepid reporter, Germ Hammerin' Sleazy on the front lines for this week's theme here at Chautauqua, The Ethics of Cheating. Flash: Turns out we are all liars to varying degrees, and we all can rationalize that lying so that we still think we're good and moral people. Who knew?
Yesterday's main speaker was Dan Ariely, eminent professor, author, and researcher into this whole cheating/lying thing. Among many fascinating facts and research statistics, he also told a great joke: Man goes to his Rabbi (hey, Ariely's from Israel, don't blame me) and says "Rabbi, something terrible has happened. Last week at Synagogue, someone stole my bicycle." Rabbi says, "At Synagogue? That's awful. Here's what we'll do: This week you sit in the front row; we'll talk about the Ten Commandments. You turn toward the congregation and look them in the eyes. When we get to 'Thou Shalt Not Steal,' whoever took your bike will avoid your gaze and you'll know who did it."
After the next week's service, the Rabbi approached the man and asked how it went. "It worked great!," enthused the guy. "When you got to 'Adultery'"--and here the entire audience of 3,000-plus bursts into knowing laughter, having figured that NO ONE in the congregation could meet his eye--"when you got to 'Adultery,' I remembered where I had left my bike." Oy vey.
Today's speaker: Julia Heiman (not making that up), Director of the Kinsey Institute. At this beautiful place that started as a Methodist retreat! Woo hoo!
Next week's post and show theme: trains and railroads (really). Hope to see lots of you at the WOOL Block Party this Saturday, 7-11 PM at the Waypoint Center in BF: Music, food, me tending bar, everyone helping out WOOL. It's a winner all-around.
Good morning Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea. This is your intrepid reporter, Germ Hammerin' Sleazy on the front lines for this week's theme here at Chautauqua, The Ethics of Cheating. Flash: Turns out we are all liars to varying degrees, and we all can rationalize that lying so that we still think we're good and moral people. Who knew?
Yesterday's main speaker was Dan Ariely, eminent professor, author, and researcher into this whole cheating/lying thing. Among many fascinating facts and research statistics, he also told a great joke: Man goes to his Rabbi (hey, Ariely's from Israel, don't blame me) and says "Rabbi, something terrible has happened. Last week at Synagogue, someone stole my bicycle." Rabbi says, "At Synagogue? That's awful. Here's what we'll do: This week you sit in the front row; we'll talk about the Ten Commandments. You turn toward the congregation and look them in the eyes. When we get to 'Thou Shalt Not Steal,' whoever took your bike will avoid your gaze and you'll know who did it."
After the next week's service, the Rabbi approached the man and asked how it went. "It worked great!," enthused the guy. "When you got to 'Adultery'"--and here the entire audience of 3,000-plus bursts into knowing laughter, having figured that NO ONE in the congregation could meet his eye--"when you got to 'Adultery,' I remembered where I had left my bike." Oy vey.
Today's speaker: Julia Heiman (not making that up), Director of the Kinsey Institute. At this beautiful place that started as a Methodist retreat! Woo hoo!
Next week's post and show theme: trains and railroads (really). Hope to see lots of you at the WOOL Block Party this Saturday, 7-11 PM at the Waypoint Center in BF: Music, food, me tending bar, everyone helping out WOOL. It's a winner all-around.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
...Drone Know What It Is*
Two stories that caught my eye in recent weeks, one about drones, one about mosquitoes. See what I did there? Aaanyway....
There was an article in the first week of July in The Paper Of Record about training military drone pilots, which seems like quite a misnomer: "operators" or "controllers" seem more to the point. Please correct me if I misunderstood, Col. K ( a recently-added fanatical reader and my advisor on all things military), but the droners who are killing insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and Sudan and wherever else our peace-prize-winning Pres. is selectively having people killed are not actually in those countries. They're in Mitt Ronmey's Amercia, the good ol' SUA, as Stephen Colbert had it. Essentially they're commuters playing lethal video games. They might have a mission in Iraq in the morning, break for lunch, then "go" to Afghanistan or (shhh) Pakistan in the afternoon, then commute home to spend the evening in front of the TV or at a Little League baseball or soccer game. Landing the things sounds fairly difficult: the signal from the on-board computer camera (Skypeing with drones!) has to bounce off a satellite on its way to Cali or wherever the operator is, so there's a several second delay. Things don't happen in inhuman human real-time. That also makes it difficult to hit moving targets, as you might expect; one rebel leader said that, as soon as they hear a drone, they start moving around as quickly and erratically as possible. At least, like those bad guys in Westerns, we're makin' 'em dance.
"Researchers estimate that mosquitoes have been responsible for half the deaths in human history," according to an article in The New Yorker for July 9&16 of this year. That statement stunned me, but seems not implausible (how's that for straight-shootin' syntax?) when you think about it. The prime culprit is Aedes aegypti, which transmits malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, West Nile virus, and several types of encephalitis, among other things. That species is not native to the Americas; it most likely arrived on slave ships in the 17th century, which I find cosmically hilarious and maybe the best modern example of Dante's contrapasso.
So scientists, particularly from the British firm Oxitec, have been experimenting with genetically-altered mosquitoes, and have already released millions into the wild. They are implanting two genes into laboratory mosquitoes; one of them is just a marker to identify altered bugs. The other, though, is an instruction to manufacture a certain protein at a level far too high to maintain healthy new cells. Sounds sorta like cancer, no? They implant these things into creatures, breed them, kill all the females, since only females bite ("Only women bleed us"), and release the males into the world. The males die after mating (life span is 10 days) as do any eggs that may result from this mixed breeding. Pretty ingenious, huh? Except that, since the only way to differentiate between genders is by size--females are significantly larger, and how would you get their little legs apart, anyway--scientists estimate that, for every 3,000 males released into the wild, one female looking for blood goes out, too.
Now on the face of it, both of these things sound pretty good, right? I mean, if our military can kill whatever group we currently deem the enemy while being on a whole 'nother continent, that's great. They'll be out of harm's way, the bad guys get offed, we win. And mosquitoes undeniably cause untold human suffering (Google "dengue fever," for instance) and death, so why not get rid of them? It's pretty well-accepted by biologists that they're not at all an important part of the food chain, especially since, evolutionarily speaking, they just moved into our neighborhood yesterday.
Morally, though...? Is it really okay to kill another human from half a world away while risking nothing more than thumb sprains ourselves, regardless of how "evil" that person is? Who's gonna decide who's evil, anyway? We might generally agree here in the US of A that those Al Quaeda leaders oughta go, but how long before we target neighborhood drug dealers, or people with opposing political points of view? Bill O'reilly or Roger Ailes with drones to fly drones...!? And no human has been bitten yet by a Frankensquito; we have NO IDEA what the ramifications of such an occurrence would be. What if one of them bit a drone? Holy shit!
Ah, the perils of Mordant Science and Technology. But 'twas ever thus: at Los Alamos, for instance, there was some question among that group of genius physicists that splitting the atom would set off an uncontrollable chain reaction that would destroy the planet. A small chance, but a chance, nonetheless. Thank Shiva the weenies were overridden, 'cause that whole nuclear thing has worked out pretty damn well, doncha think?
No shows this week or next, I'm afraid; work this week, vaca at Chautauqua next week. But on Saturday, Aug. 11, from 7-11 in the PM the WOOL Block Party will be happening at the Waypoint Center in beautiful downtown Bellows Falls, VT. There'll be several bands, lots of food, and a cash bar tended by yours truly. I'd love to have you stop by, and it's for a very worthy cause: helping to keep WOOL FM on the air. Hope you can make it.
* It's from a Van song, sort of. Called "Enlightenment."
There was an article in the first week of July in The Paper Of Record about training military drone pilots, which seems like quite a misnomer: "operators" or "controllers" seem more to the point. Please correct me if I misunderstood, Col. K ( a recently-added fanatical reader and my advisor on all things military), but the droners who are killing insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and Sudan and wherever else our peace-prize-winning Pres. is selectively having people killed are not actually in those countries. They're in Mitt Ronmey's Amercia, the good ol' SUA, as Stephen Colbert had it. Essentially they're commuters playing lethal video games. They might have a mission in Iraq in the morning, break for lunch, then "go" to Afghanistan or (shhh) Pakistan in the afternoon, then commute home to spend the evening in front of the TV or at a Little League baseball or soccer game. Landing the things sounds fairly difficult: the signal from the on-board computer camera (Skypeing with drones!) has to bounce off a satellite on its way to Cali or wherever the operator is, so there's a several second delay. Things don't happen in inhuman human real-time. That also makes it difficult to hit moving targets, as you might expect; one rebel leader said that, as soon as they hear a drone, they start moving around as quickly and erratically as possible. At least, like those bad guys in Westerns, we're makin' 'em dance.
"Researchers estimate that mosquitoes have been responsible for half the deaths in human history," according to an article in The New Yorker for July 9&16 of this year. That statement stunned me, but seems not implausible (how's that for straight-shootin' syntax?) when you think about it. The prime culprit is Aedes aegypti, which transmits malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, West Nile virus, and several types of encephalitis, among other things. That species is not native to the Americas; it most likely arrived on slave ships in the 17th century, which I find cosmically hilarious and maybe the best modern example of Dante's contrapasso.
So scientists, particularly from the British firm Oxitec, have been experimenting with genetically-altered mosquitoes, and have already released millions into the wild. They are implanting two genes into laboratory mosquitoes; one of them is just a marker to identify altered bugs. The other, though, is an instruction to manufacture a certain protein at a level far too high to maintain healthy new cells. Sounds sorta like cancer, no? They implant these things into creatures, breed them, kill all the females, since only females bite ("Only women bleed us"), and release the males into the world. The males die after mating (life span is 10 days) as do any eggs that may result from this mixed breeding. Pretty ingenious, huh? Except that, since the only way to differentiate between genders is by size--females are significantly larger, and how would you get their little legs apart, anyway--scientists estimate that, for every 3,000 males released into the wild, one female looking for blood goes out, too.
Now on the face of it, both of these things sound pretty good, right? I mean, if our military can kill whatever group we currently deem the enemy while being on a whole 'nother continent, that's great. They'll be out of harm's way, the bad guys get offed, we win. And mosquitoes undeniably cause untold human suffering (Google "dengue fever," for instance) and death, so why not get rid of them? It's pretty well-accepted by biologists that they're not at all an important part of the food chain, especially since, evolutionarily speaking, they just moved into our neighborhood yesterday.
Morally, though...? Is it really okay to kill another human from half a world away while risking nothing more than thumb sprains ourselves, regardless of how "evil" that person is? Who's gonna decide who's evil, anyway? We might generally agree here in the US of A that those Al Quaeda leaders oughta go, but how long before we target neighborhood drug dealers, or people with opposing political points of view? Bill O'reilly or Roger Ailes with drones to fly drones...!? And no human has been bitten yet by a Frankensquito; we have NO IDEA what the ramifications of such an occurrence would be. What if one of them bit a drone? Holy shit!
Ah, the perils of Mordant Science and Technology. But 'twas ever thus: at Los Alamos, for instance, there was some question among that group of genius physicists that splitting the atom would set off an uncontrollable chain reaction that would destroy the planet. A small chance, but a chance, nonetheless. Thank Shiva the weenies were overridden, 'cause that whole nuclear thing has worked out pretty damn well, doncha think?
No shows this week or next, I'm afraid; work this week, vaca at Chautauqua next week. But on Saturday, Aug. 11, from 7-11 in the PM the WOOL Block Party will be happening at the Waypoint Center in beautiful downtown Bellows Falls, VT. There'll be several bands, lots of food, and a cash bar tended by yours truly. I'd love to have you stop by, and it's for a very worthy cause: helping to keep WOOL FM on the air. Hope you can make it.
* It's from a Van song, sort of. Called "Enlightenment."
Monday, July 23, 2012
Myopiate For The Masses
On March 25 I wrote a post ("Pander...") lamenting the fact that our grownups aren't grown and our leaders don't lead. Well, from the THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD department: miraculously, that's all changed. They heard this one lonely voice and all is well in the world. Hallefreakinlujah!
Naw, I'm just goofin' around. Not a fuckin' thing has changed, except maybe to get worse. Imagine that.
The climate has undeniably changed. In this country the first six months of this year were 4.5 degrees F. hotter than the 20th century average--the hottest ever recorded. Nearly 60% of the country is suffering drought conditions; some foods will likely become scarce and prices on many, many items will increase. The Week, in the July 20 issue, whence those facts came, had a great cartoon, from the Chattanooga Times Free Press of an ostrich, head buried firmly in the sand, "global warming denial" written on its neck, and its body looking like a cooked turkey just out of the oven, heat waves radiating from it.
The gun murder rate in the US is almost 20 times higher than the next 22 richest and most populous nations combined.
The unemployment rate creeps back toward 9%, homes still aren't selling, Europe teeters still on the edge of bankruptcy and financial chaos, student-loan debt is going to come crashing down on all of our heads like the housing bubble did. And what do we talk about in this election year? Birth certificates, tax returns, treatment of family pets.
Quick study that I am, it's finally dawning even on me: We don't want grownups or leaders. We don't want to focus on or even really look at the life-and death issues facing us, issues which are HERE NOW. We want HEROES: we want Superman to swoop in, or Bruce Willis or Harrison Ford to step up and do something dramatic and wonderful and instantaneous and just fix things, goddammit, so we can keep on with our normal, upwardly-mobile, progress-and-profit American lives, the way it's supposed to be, the way God planned it when he led white people to these shores. If the Hadron Collider is here, can Deus ex machina really be far behind?
Well, can it? Can it really be fair that we--us, you and me--have to pay some sort of price for the way we've lived? Us? C'mon.
So this week, on my radio show (I have a radio show, remember? Tuesday, noon till two on 100.1 FM, wool.fm on the webs) I'm gonna celebrate Superman, and heroes in general. Maybe they'll hear it and show up and do what they're meant to do. I'm'a go play golf.
"Are you out there, can you hear me...?"
Naw, I'm just goofin' around. Not a fuckin' thing has changed, except maybe to get worse. Imagine that.
The climate has undeniably changed. In this country the first six months of this year were 4.5 degrees F. hotter than the 20th century average--the hottest ever recorded. Nearly 60% of the country is suffering drought conditions; some foods will likely become scarce and prices on many, many items will increase. The Week, in the July 20 issue, whence those facts came, had a great cartoon, from the Chattanooga Times Free Press of an ostrich, head buried firmly in the sand, "global warming denial" written on its neck, and its body looking like a cooked turkey just out of the oven, heat waves radiating from it.
The gun murder rate in the US is almost 20 times higher than the next 22 richest and most populous nations combined.
The unemployment rate creeps back toward 9%, homes still aren't selling, Europe teeters still on the edge of bankruptcy and financial chaos, student-loan debt is going to come crashing down on all of our heads like the housing bubble did. And what do we talk about in this election year? Birth certificates, tax returns, treatment of family pets.
Quick study that I am, it's finally dawning even on me: We don't want grownups or leaders. We don't want to focus on or even really look at the life-and death issues facing us, issues which are HERE NOW. We want HEROES: we want Superman to swoop in, or Bruce Willis or Harrison Ford to step up and do something dramatic and wonderful and instantaneous and just fix things, goddammit, so we can keep on with our normal, upwardly-mobile, progress-and-profit American lives, the way it's supposed to be, the way God planned it when he led white people to these shores. If the Hadron Collider is here, can Deus ex machina really be far behind?
Well, can it? Can it really be fair that we--us, you and me--have to pay some sort of price for the way we've lived? Us? C'mon.
So this week, on my radio show (I have a radio show, remember? Tuesday, noon till two on 100.1 FM, wool.fm on the webs) I'm gonna celebrate Superman, and heroes in general. Maybe they'll hear it and show up and do what they're meant to do. I'm'a go play golf.
"Are you out there, can you hear me...?"
Monday, July 9, 2012
Big Tent, Little Tent, Intent: Portent?
Well, you might have to bear with me even more than usual on this one, kids. See, I've been reading an article in The New Yorker about this radioevangelist in Tupelo, Miss. by way of Wyoming by way of Stanford(!) by way of Oklahoma City, named Bryan Fischer. As you'd probably expect, he's to the right of Attila politically, and his primary crusade is against homosexuals. He has said, among a deluge of crazy things, that homosexuality was at the heart of Nazism. To wit(less): "Hitler recruited around him homosexuals to make up his Storm Troopers...(he) discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough" and that "homosexuality gave us Adolf Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine, and six million dead Jews." I tried Google to find a list of well-known evangelical homophobes who are later outed themselves, a la Ted Haggard, but what's out there for vicious, violent, sick, twisted videos and rhetoric from these men and their acolytes is too disturbing for me to explore, much less recount. It is truly shocking and sickening.
Sorry--I really am shaken by what I just saw and read. But anyway, I intended to talk about how much Saint Ronald of Reagan's "Big Tent" in the Republican Party has shrunk, if in fact it ever really was larger than it is now. That tent is all-inclusive so long as you're not gay, non-white, a member of a labor union, a proponent of contraception (in 2012, for chrissakes) or a woman's right to have some say in her reproductive (at the very least) destiny, a believer in climate change, a Judicial activist (Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas, Kennedy excepted, of course), a believer in evolution, one who believes we need to raise revenue as well as cut spending, low-income, etc., etc. ad nauseum. A very large segment of the Republican Party is attempting to turn the calendar back to 1958, to a world which didn't even really exist then.
Maybe they have "Big Tent" confused with "Red Tent," the place which, in many cultures back in the day when women were fully-recognized, actual people, was used to segregate women when they were thought to be at their most powerful, during menstruation or childbirth. "Because of the power a woman has during this time, it is best that, out of respect for her men and their medicinal trinkets and beliefs, she stay away from them." Now, again and still, it's because of her lack of power that she needs to stay away. At any rate, tents are places, it seems, of apartness, not inclusion. Is that really how we want to live? Perhaps the upcoming election will give us an answer, for better or for worse.
As usual, this is the long way 'round to the theme for this week's show (hey, it's not easy, connecting the disparate parts for those who only read and those who only listen; you're probably best off in the majority, those who do neither). Turns out I have zero songs about "tents," but lots, in this season, about circuses, which seems apropos to our current governance, and carnivals. So that's what'll happen tomorrow, noon till two on 100.1 FM, www.wool.fm on the webs. Hope you can join me (and join the station, for a nominal tax-deductible charge, if you like this stuff).
"They're selling postcards of the hanging/
They're painting the passports brown/
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors/
The circus is in town...."
Sorry--I really am shaken by what I just saw and read. But anyway, I intended to talk about how much Saint Ronald of Reagan's "Big Tent" in the Republican Party has shrunk, if in fact it ever really was larger than it is now. That tent is all-inclusive so long as you're not gay, non-white, a member of a labor union, a proponent of contraception (in 2012, for chrissakes) or a woman's right to have some say in her reproductive (at the very least) destiny, a believer in climate change, a Judicial activist (Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas, Kennedy excepted, of course), a believer in evolution, one who believes we need to raise revenue as well as cut spending, low-income, etc., etc. ad nauseum. A very large segment of the Republican Party is attempting to turn the calendar back to 1958, to a world which didn't even really exist then.
Maybe they have "Big Tent" confused with "Red Tent," the place which, in many cultures back in the day when women were fully-recognized, actual people, was used to segregate women when they were thought to be at their most powerful, during menstruation or childbirth. "Because of the power a woman has during this time, it is best that, out of respect for her men and their medicinal trinkets and beliefs, she stay away from them." Now, again and still, it's because of her lack of power that she needs to stay away. At any rate, tents are places, it seems, of apartness, not inclusion. Is that really how we want to live? Perhaps the upcoming election will give us an answer, for better or for worse.
As usual, this is the long way 'round to the theme for this week's show (hey, it's not easy, connecting the disparate parts for those who only read and those who only listen; you're probably best off in the majority, those who do neither). Turns out I have zero songs about "tents," but lots, in this season, about circuses, which seems apropos to our current governance, and carnivals. So that's what'll happen tomorrow, noon till two on 100.1 FM, www.wool.fm on the webs. Hope you can join me (and join the station, for a nominal tax-deductible charge, if you like this stuff).
"They're selling postcards of the hanging/
They're painting the passports brown/
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors/
The circus is in town...."
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