Howdy,

I was looking to expand my blues knowledge a year or so ago when I was reading about Blind Willy Johnson. As a kid his mother rubbed lye in his eyes to get revenge on his father. He did survive childhood and married. But died alone of exposure in a rotten shack he was living in.

Now, one of his songs is on the Voyager spacecraft, reaching further and further distances from the earth. Perhaps intelligent life will find Voyager and they will hear one of the most beautiful expressions of humanity when they do.

Voyager Golden Record has an online copy of what must be the greatest mix tape ever made. In addition to Blind Willy Johnson it has Hindi music, pan pipe recording from the Solomon Islands, Bach, Mozart, Chuck Berry. The recording is immense!

One of my favorite surprises was Javanese Gamelan music. I was familiar with this style from a Japanese performing art group Genioh Yamashirogumi who achieved international fame for doing the soundtrack to the movie Akira. They are also famous for teaching themselves how to program MOOG synthesizers to play notes beyond our 12-tone scale. I thought Gamelan wouldn't sound the same without an armada of crazy MOOGs enhancing the sound only to realize that it was all about the Gamelan. Here is a video of such a Gamelan group.



For a bigger show, this is a children's performance group. It is 9 minutes long, but so freakin good!



But check out that golden record. You will be happy you did.

Mitt Romney is wearing the Emperor's New Cloths.

Like Rudy he is a blue state Republican trying to win over the red state heartland. Doing so his song has changed more times than an ex-boyfriends mix tape.

Though I have to admire his pluck when criticized by Sam Brownback about his pro-choice record he retorted "I am tired of being criticized by people who have been pro-life longer than I have". However, the man is a goon who has been campaigning and fund raising so much he has no idea what the issues are or where he has and will stand on them. It is a sort of incompetence that would make me forget about the guy.

But you can't ignore him. He is beating the crap out of everyone in Iowa and is beating Guiliani by 4 points in New Hampshire. This guy very well might win the nomination. Damn.

The Massachusets Democratic Party has started the site Romney Facts which documents his changes. Not on small issues ether. From all right to gay marriage, to against it. From pro-choice to pro-life. These aren't from documents from Mitt's wild and crazy college days. No, the change happens in the same year, sometimes the same day in the case of gun control. It is an amusing site to look through.

This is nothing to say of the man who believes the use of contraception is tantamount to abortion and that a morning after pill is the very same as abortion. I wonder if he passed high school biology or if he just got the Cliff Notes bible?

On a side note, this video makes me so happy I could cry

Howdy,

This journal has nothing personal in it. It is a single youtube video that I enjoyed briefly while here at work.

enjoy your tuesday, chumps

A school district in Marlton, New Jersey banned a video to help teach diversity.

First, if you don't use your own community to discus diversity and instead look to a video to do it for you... well, you kind of missed the whole point. You might as well be talking about cyborg diversity in Renaissance Flanders.

Well, the video itself was dull enough. It was designed for elementary school kids to teach them about many different sorts of families: bio moms and dads, single parents, step parents, foster parents, and the one that launched a thousand ignorant ships: a same-sex couple.

When I said the video was dull enough, I should have said it was innocuous. It shouldn't have riled anyone up. No single mother took a swig of malt liquor and proclaimed "I am so glad my husband had an affair with a hooker and left me and the kids for dead." No foster parent took precious-moments Christian children and circumcised the girls and threw them into burkas.

"When does Evesham Township or any school have a right to show to my grandchildren something I believe to be morally wrong," asked one woman.

Well, if one considers the fact that same-sex couples merely exist morally wrong... but this is silly. As if the very fact that kids saw a same-sex couple carried with it a seal of approval on homosexuality itself.

Furthermore, what if I find math to be morally wrong? The onus for morality education is thrust on the schools when it serves tawdry little purposes and often flies in the face or reason and research. New Jersey has civil unions and certainly has same-sex parents recognized by law. And yet, they have to go! Abstinence education has never worked and is more dangerous than reasonable education, as documented by decades worth of research. Forget about our children's safety, it has to go!

And surly, when the school district voted to can the video 7-1 it was not out of any real concern that the video would turn New Jersey's youth into drug-addled sodomites, but because of fear of a law suit. One that the district would win but couldn't afford to fight. Our schools are held hostage.

I love my job, I really do.

My boss has a terrible habbit of chatting stream of conscious while giving no context what so ever. And these stories are repeated for months. Eventually you hear them enough that you can piece this fragmented, sloppy narrative together into something cohesive but still absolutely irrelevant.

For example.

She was someplace with some people. She may have been invited, she may have been trespassing. She may have known these people, they could be relatives. I don't know what purpose she had there, or really where that place was. But I do know they had delicious corn and that she put a frog in a plastic container to keep away from a child.


After hearing this a dozen times over the corse of the week I was able to figure out that she infact knew these people and that the corn was taken home as leftovers. But unlocking the mystery of this story yields no wisdom or quirky tale. They are all mundane and unrelated to what ever got her going in the first place. It is enough to wish power tools on your ears so you may never hear ever again.

Thankfully, I am scared of power tools.

But tonight I watched the documentary Grey Gardens and the charecters were just like my boss, two of them. Bat shit crazy, constantly chattering, and damned if you know what it is they are talking about.

Here is a clip.



crazy woman. Anyway, they turned this documentary into a musical. A Tony award winning musical. Here is a clip.



I need a real job.

So,

AP has a story letting us good citizens know that Larry Craig, the foot-tapping, wide-stance, closet case toilet queen senator from Idaho, will be resigning tomorrow. I for one, am underwhelmed.

It is like this. Larry committed a crime. Not a big crime. Lewd Conduct doesn't really call to mind abuses of his senatorial power. This crime does not prevent him from being an effective representative of the people of Idaho. So why have scores of Republicans jumped on his back demanding his resignation?

I mean, this is a fair question at any time, but under the current circumstances it is especially relevant. Senator David Vitter has committed an actual crime: he payed a prostitute to have sex with him. But no one on that side of the isle has demanded he resigned.

At first, it seems like homophobia would be the answer. Het sex with a prostitute < homo sex with anyone. And this would follow GOP logic (sorry to you hip, cool Republicans out there.) But I can't help thinking it is something else, something related to the nature of Larry Craig and this case.

Politicians need to be practical. And this is an issue of power and who retains power. Larry Craig is from Idaho, which has a Republican governor. David Vitter is from Louisiana which has a Democrat governor. When a Senator resigned the governor gets to appoint a replacement until the next election. Which, if both were axed that would leave the Dems up one. hm...

The GOP has waged a continual campaign of wedge politics where homosexuals are reviled and resigned to second class citizen status. But it really isn't because they are god's senators or because they morally have an opinion about homosexuality. It all comes down to power. Gay hate helped them win in 2004. But how many of their own lead double lives. Having the token wife and strong 'family values' conviction but enjoy a firm cock in their mouth? Craig, ultimately, has to go not because he tried to have gay sex (for the umpteenth time) but because his very presence in office taints the whole party. He is a liability and a victim of his parties disingenuous agenda.

To the GOP there is nothing greater than their own power. That is why Craig is a liability, his very existence in the party compromises the whole sham.

And Barbara Boxer, get off your pamper Dem ass and investigate a few people. Would that kill you?

Howdy,

So, I mentioned Larry Craig yesterday and that whole gay sex in public toilets thing. Well, yesterday he had the most hilarious press conference which began with "Thanks to everyone for coming out" HA!

Here are a few clips from the show Little Britain that are eerily close to our own goings on. Enjoy.



and


scary isn't it? One more?

EH,

Since I have been blabbing about Politicians who have gay sex I figured I might as well do this one as well.

Larry Craig has been a vocal opponent of gay marriage. The Idaho Republican was arrested back in June and pled guilty on August 8th to lewd conduct. But the story is sad.

First, he was in an airport bathroom in a stall. In the stall next to him was an undercover cop investigating complaints of lewd conduct in that bathroom. Craig would give signs that he wanted some man loving, reaching under the stall and what not. Click-click, on the cuffs go and somehow the story just hit yesterday.

As much as I love it when closet homosexual Republicans with an anti-gay streak get caught with a sausage in their mouth this story is pathetic. First, he didn't actually do anything lewd. He didn't actually get it on in the bathroom. No scandalous press photos as he is lead into the back of a police car, viscous fluid on his lapel. Just an insinuation.

Second, there have been rumors for decades in Idaho regarding Craig's sexuality. Christ, what a poisonous environment to live in where you have to try to get your rocks off in a public bathroom because you need to pretend. He may not be gay. He may just like a little slice of hot man ass once in a while. But to be so divorced from self that you can go from conservative gay-hating politician to toilet queen.

How long do we have to wait for Trent Lott and Orin Hatch to get caught in each others sticky embrace?

Today was my first day back,

We still have a 1/3 of Summer left but my fall semester has already begun. School should not be in Summer. Summer is for being naked outside, contributing sweaty skin to the Earth's albedo. Instead I will be packed into a tiny room with smelly undergrads, wondering if trapped in that room for days how long it would take for someone to snap. I am sure 50 minute class is something approaching the answer.

I take only three classes during the day and have to graduate classes at night. My first two classes of the day are stupid. I am taking them just because the school tells me I will not be an effective teacher if I don't take "Intro to Microeconomics" or "Geography of Asia". Looking at the syllabus I can already tell I will have no use for the textbook and wont have to take notes to do well. But my third class is a pedagogy class, and one that directly relates to my profession. And of course that is the one I looked like an ass in.

I have four classmates. And we were having some innocent get-to-know-you chatter with the instructor before class began when I get a text message. I take a look and (e:Jim) was kind enough to inform me that Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez has resigned.

Well, upon reading this I let out a huge gasping laugh/snort. Like, an embarrassing sort of laugh where, if the sun is shining at the right angle, you can see a spray discharge from the nose; leaving a little bit of droll at the corner of the mouth. Yes, short of actually peeing my pants it was the most embarrassing and personal laugh possible, and not one meant for a sober 11AM public.

"Is everything ok?" The instructor asks, half curious half concerned she has a psycho in her class.

"Oh ya, I just got a text about Alberto Gonzalez. He resigned!" I say with a giant smile, as if the joy in those words is self-evident. The warm euphoria chills a little and the wide eyed stare I am getting from a room of people kills it. They looked as if I had been telling a funny story for 20 minutes and just now realized none of them spoke English.

"Oh, that is... nice." The instructor says, seeing me hang there off a silly meat-hook.

I felt ridiculous. But seriously, these kids want to teach social studies, shouldn't they know who Fredo is? No? eh.. it is going to be a long semester. Just wait until they find out Michael 'ZOMG KATRINA WTF" Chertoff is a possible nominee to fill the position.

On our way back from the Elmwood art fest the giant plate of clams I had at Merlin's was on my mind. I was playing a game with Jim's cousin's two kids, age 6 and 4, where I described the clams dying thought before being steamed. I play the best game with kids.

But the trip back was determined to take a turn for the religious. And what happier sign of it than (e:Drew) standing out in front of his church handing out lemonade.

But by the time I got to Bidwell park the happy god who loves lemonade turned into another, darker deity.

A man and a woman with disquieting smiles on their face were handing out literature about their little church. I passed the gentleman's but my eyes widened when I saw the woman's. YES! She had a Jack Chick track!

I smiled and asked excitedly "Is that a Chick's tract?!" as I happily grabbed one. "I love him, he is absolutely disgusting!" Jack draws and writes these little comic strips in which Buddhists burn in a pit of fire crying "I thought all paths lead to god!". Or depicts homosexuals as fat hairy dandies who love to fuck toddlers. A favorite of mine concerns a wealthy muslim who is very charitable and leads a very spiritual and moral life. He pays for a hundred people to go on a Haj to Mecca but the plane does down and they all die. Despite being an upstanding guy who goes to hell for rejecting Jesus Christ and worshiping a pagan snake god in disguise as Allah.

Sadly though this was the most boring tract I have ever read. It was filled with 20 pages with my least favorite argument for god. It goes like this. Because you are not currently being raped and murdered there must be a loving god protecting you. It irrationally defines a wide spectrum of human behavior as sin but then shows that god must love you because he will forgive you if you repent for doing this normal bit of behavior.

Ya know, if more godly people would hand out lemonade instead of absurdities the world would be a much finer place. But then, I suppose that is why there were tons of people in front of (e:Drew)'s church and people were avoiding the two on Bidwell like plagued rats.