Ray Charles

1930-2004

After a long hiatus I got back into the e-strip swing in a big way with my boob shirt. It is after all, all about da boobies, whether you're gay or straight. We got a lot of attention with our hand-made tee-shirts at the festival, so word out to any new homies who may be online. After we felt proud enough we came home and now we're gonna throw some shrimp on the barby. mmmmm.... summer...

Detailed Report Seymour M. Hersh originally from the New Yorker, here on Muslim American Society page:

Report Summary MSNBC:

"The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation."
Stanley Milgram, Obedience and Individual Responsibility, 1974

Vacations in a box
The lost book series
Novelty Tee shirts
more obsolete words

Hey! I've disappeared but now I've reappeared. I have much to say that has happened since my last post almost a month ago but I just wanted to let everyone know that I have in the last several days updated my personal website and now it has just about everything I've ever made on it that is any good. There are some crappy things still laying around in my house, but give me time... Anyways, please check it out and let me know if you have any suggestions. It's still at my UB address, but soon it will be cartagraphy.com...

When I win the lottery, even my goats will be dripping in dia-monds...

ChurchofJulie? Can I marry myself? It seems inevitable anyway. Talk I about arranged marriages. I'll change my (our) last name to Mrs. and Mrs. Narcissa!!

Yesterday morning I woke up with only one line from my dream in my head: "Don't bury your talents in the ground!"

For anyone who knows the story, then maybe you think like I do, that it's about having faith in yourself, and being true to yourself and "your calling". If you are, then your talents will multiply, and build on themselves. But if you bury your talents in the ground, even what you had will be lost, taken away from you by your faithlessness and lack of purpose.

Easier said than done, eh? We all have something we can do that no one else can do, but do we have the courage to do it? Do be do be do, as Sinatra would say. I feel like I keep getting diverted from my purpose by either neccessity or plain old fear. But as the zen masters say, you don't "find" your way, the way is always there, you just have to merge with it.

This morning I woke up from my dream with only one line in my head, "She likes Marvin Gaye, Luther Vandross, a little Anita..." You know the rest. It seemed like regualr old dream dross. Only I was picturing myself writing the words in this little update window. So here I am...

In other news, Jennifer Lopez's mother just won $2 million dollars at a casino in Vegas. It broke a record. Have the Lopezes made a pact with the devil, cause that's just too much luck for one family. If you spent only about $30,000 a year you could live for over sixty years on that money, for me that would be well into my nineties. I could write some books, paint some paintings, travel the world, start that goat farm I've always dreamed of. That's it! I'm gonna start playing the lottery, even though my sister has always called it a "tax for the gullible..."

don't bogart that photo by dulce pinzon!


while i'm sad i missed lilho's (e:peeps) party, which sounds like it was a blast, saturday night i had an awesome time in toronto with moriah (the mysterious m) seeing this band pictured above, called ANTIBALAS AFROBEAT BAND . Antibalas means "bulletproof" in Spanish. this picture is not from the show I saw but it gives a good idea of what it looked/felt/smelt like. the band rocked and torontonians really know how to jam. plus oh! canada is just so darn cool. the more i go there the more i want to emigrate. more on that later...

so here's how it happened, which is kinda a funny story. i was listening to my favorite radio station online, KEXP seattle, you really should check it out-- it's simply indy heaven and i heard this song playing what i thought was the grand Fela Anikulapo ("one who carries death in his pouch") Kuti (in my links www.felaproject.net) so i was like whoa cool, fela, and i looked on kexp's site and it wasn't him but antibalas so i was like whoa cool *living* afrobeat legends so i went to *their* site and low and behold they were playing in toronto at the worl' famous horseshoe tavern in just five days. how's that for happy fate! or maybe just a really good coincidence.

but! all good things demand a struggle! moriah drove, god bless her, and we got into town about 9:30, haggled with the parking attendant, okay, the show was supposed to start at 10:30. it was listed as 10:30 & 12:00, so we thought, cool, 2 shows, we'll catch one, drive home, be cozy in bed by 3 at the latest. so we go get some canadian-mexican food (NAFTA fusion cusine?) and then walk across the street to the show which is... you guessed it, sold out. now don't we look dumb. and here on the way up we had been saying how people are always nice to moriah and me when we go out cause we look like happy librarians but this bouncer was like, typical: "no tickets, come back at 12, can't promise much, don't know anything."

so it’s drizzling. and cold. but luckily we're on Queen Street, the only street I ever really go to in toronto, so we ask someone where a good bar is and he recommends a dive called the cameron which turns out not to be dive-y at all (like our dear ole pink) but funky coolicious and when we tell the bartender our dilemma he says "quel drag" which i thought was too funny. even urbane! so we had a five dollar drink to think and decided we would hold out til 12. "at least we're not at the (dear ole) pink" was our mantra, since our watery hole we know and love is becoming a bit too known and loved after 10 consecutive weekends. the bartender also said there were "twenty acts" behind the red velvet curtain in the back but moriah went to explore and reported the much feared folksy strummer atop a stool surrounded by long suffering but supportive friends. we ran away.

back to the horseshoe. the bouncer was sending us major mixed messages. bouncers! it was almost 12 by now, but he explained that the 10:30 and 12 thing was not 2 shows, but the break *in between* one show, and maybe at 12 they would let in 10 more people. maybe. and then it was also clear that we could go in at least to the front bar part, which we could have done all along and at least listened to the first set sitting at the bar. but i wasn't about to complain to the dude since he held our fates in his clammy paws. so in we went.

oh, the bar was cool! people were so cool but not terminally, i'm-trying-like-reallah-hard, cool, you know, but just naturally cool. like indigenous city folk are. and they were smoking! YOU CAN SMOKE! inside! everywhere! well almost. and not just cigarettes. more on that later... so we sat at the bar and had two more five dollar drinks and waited until 12 when the kafkaesque bouncer might admit us into
t
he
tower. we watched hockey, which by national law must be on the television in every public place in canada, which i hadn't realized. i even got chatted up by the most beautiful shaved headed boy which was flattering but flabbergasting. it turns out i'm not ugly and stupid I JUST LIVE IN BUFFALO! what a relief! but, beauty though the boy was, it was 12:05 and moriah had tried to ask at 11:55 so now it was my turn. i deserted the hottie and went to beg the doorman, explain that kizmet had brought us here, well, actually moriah had brought us here, but still it took two hours and the planets somewhat aligning! so i begged and sighed, and he shook his head, and i had just given up and was going back in when, like a rock falling from the sky, the squatty senior senor bouncer said wait, what, how many people and I said "only 2! WOMEN!" which sometimes helps (i was feeling high on femininty after the chatting) and he said "show me" (??) so I dragged him into the bar to prove that Moriah also exists and also is female and he said "The thing is I only have one ticket" and I pointed to Moriah and said "look how skinny she is she hardly takes up any room!" which while writing it makes me realize that that was maybe not the most generous thing to say to moriah, although i envy her willowyness, but it somehow convinced the square-shaped bouncer and he nodded and let us in! wee hoo! at the full ticket price, of course.

so we missed half the show, but the second set didn't give any indication that they band was playing at half-steam. to the contrary, they were warmed up and rearin' to go. there were like twelve+ musicians crammed close together under the pink and green lights: all kindsa brass, percussion, keyboards, cowbells, you name it. every time i looked up on stage i saw a new person! i was like, what's that dude playing, oh yeah, the bead covered gourd of course. the crowd was a groovy mix of jam band hippies, glorious dreadlocked ladies, and generally lovely multi-ethnic booty shakers. the air was a pleasant aroma of vegan sweat, smoke shop oils, and smoke shop smoke, if you get my wiff. since antibalas really models itself off of fela the music was pretty politically critical, "what is this america" and "si se puede" were two of the more biting but uplifting songs. antibalas is based in brooklyn so i ate up their righteous indignation. (if they were canadian i would have been offended, but that's my paranoid patriotism for you, by my rules *we* get to criticize us but when anyone else does i bristle.) one thing to know about fela was that he tried to seced from nigeria and start his own nation and he had so many followers that they really did form an autonomous zone for a time, kalakuta, until of course, they got raided and gun-butt beaten and thrown out of windows (fela's mother included.) like fela, the lead singer of antibalas, amayo, has just about enough charisma to start a movement. i know i would follow him fer sure. but maybe more in an un-ironic deadhead fashion than an ends-in-my-defenestration sense.

so for the rest of the night everyone was too nice. we shook our booties in excellent company. i was able to buy two cd's for $20 american dollars rather than $30 since the guy didn't have change. we had an "i’m american" moment but you should have seen how he scrunched his nose when I said i lived in Buffalo. it was almost like he felt sorry for me, and i didn't exactly defend my choice of hometowns. but he did say their drummer was from buffalo. also, the bartender in the back bar gave me a drink for thirty cents less 'cause that's all the money i had, a small human gesture, but the kinda thing that sometimes gets overlooked in less humane joints. then when i lit a cigarette in what turned out to be the one part of the bar where you couldn't smoke he stopped me by saying "I hate to be a killjoy but..." which was the nicest possible admonition. I'm so sick of NY bartenders treating me like a junior h
ighsch
ooler
caught puffing in the bathroom in between periods, with their smarmy "you should know better" rebukes.

when it was all over, we got chatted up again by some boys who were impressed that girls could roll their own cigarettes and listen to fela kuti. gasp! quel drag, to use a well-worn phrase. but it was 2AM and we still had a two hour drive ahead of us. again, moriah is the most stalwart superwoman in the history of ever. if i had been driving i surely would have killed us. on the way home i mostly just tried to babble senselessly to try to keep her awake, which worked pretty well until *I* fell asleep! it was one of those narcoleptic hypnotist sleeps like "and now you close your ten-ton eyelids and instantly begin dreaming!" when i woke up we were just outside of fort erie, not the way we had come or the way i knew and i was like "where are we" and a little grouchy. we both just really wanted to get home. so we ended up going over the peace bridge, all good, but we went through the truck entrance and of course the storm troopers didn't like that and reproofed us and i was thinking "come on, can't you see were exhausted, but happy, librarians just coming home!" then of course we seemed to have no choice but to get on 190 south and i was like "eeps! get off before we end up in springville" so i said take the 5 which is duh, the skyway, so detour under the skyway, (my planned rendezvous spot with self-inflicted death) back onto the 5, the 190 north, and finally home sweaty home. I can't believe we made it alive! But all good things end with near-death exhaustion.

all day the next day i suffered from post-party depression. i looked online to see how you can move to canada. there's a point system. extra points for higher degrees, yippee. but also you have to prove you can support yourself for sixth months, which for one person is just under $8,000. which you can't borrow. considering that I already owe the federal government my first born (book or baby)... well, i don't see saving money anywhere on my near horizon. so for now i will just have to be content with more mad midnight drives to the horseshoe. anyone up for tobin sprout with elf power 4/19 or sebadoh 4/23?

Don't be depressed about the sorry nature of our democracy! In so many ways we are better informed and more engaged than any generation before us. And the fact that we can even have these conversations, or demand accountability from our leaders, is what makes America so awesome. Try to say this stuff in Saudi Arabia for example. Other countries are cool, especially when they are more culturally liberal, or secular, than ours, but they all they their own issues too. France has to deal with its Muslim communities, for example, instead of just pushing them to the margins. And talk about political control of the media! How 'bout Berlusconi baby! Honestly I believe that America, while by no means perfect, has the best chance to become the most diverse, open, free society in history-- but we have a long way to go and a lot of work to do, which we are trying to do. It's hard but not impossible. The only reason I rant with such fervor is my ultimate faith and optimism that all of us can work together to make our ideals real!

As for the tattoo discussions, I too am considering getting one. sb, your scarab beetle chest design is awesome! maybe throw some blue birds in on either side? (kidding!) I'm thinking I want this deer/goat/horse thing that was found on the mummified shoulder of a scythian warrior princess. It's one of the oldest tattoos in the world:



mmmmmm.... ancient beauty...