Virtuosos Becoming a Dime a Dozen

An article in the NYT covered the breathtaking technical and interpretative skills of the current crop of concert pianists and young classical musicians in general (Virtuosos Becoming a Dime a Dozen). I submitted the following response:

Sir:

Interesting article. Indeed, when I studied clarinet in the early 60s, it was unusual to encounter a fellow 16-year-old playing the Nielsen concerto, much less the Francaix. As I approach my mid-sixties, I find the solo piano works of Liszt, the entire output of Paganini, and arrangements of Flight of the Bumblebee for inappropriate instruments (contra bass, theremin, etc) to be simply irritating. Musicians push the envelope to pay the bills. The results may stink to the ear.

Can You Detect A Difference?

NYT,tonight:

President Obama acknowledged the challenge in his Saturday radio and Internet address, saying the country’s “urgent mission” now was to grow the economy and create jobs.

“Our job right now has to be doing whatever we can to help folks find work,” he said, “to help create the climate where a business can put up that job listing; where incomes are rising again for people. We’ve got to rebuild this economy and the sense of security that middle-class families have felt slipping away for years.”


Roosevelt 1st Inaugural Address:

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power- to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.

Old, old school...(pre KAPD!)

Krugman, NYT today

In the long run, however, Democrats won’t be the only losers. What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question. After all, how can American democracy work if whichever party is most prepared to be ruthless, to threaten the nation’s economic security, gets to dictate policy? And the answer is, maybe it can’t.
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I give up. Last time America reached this point, the South seceded and we had a civil war. Time to fly my true colors... remember Rosa Luxemburg!

Vote Communists

KPD Spartakusbund

The Legislative Process

NYT, today

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said she was pleased with what she had heard about the contours of the potential agreement.

“This provides an opening to a very broad sweep of changes,” Mrs. Feinstein said. Referring to the tortuous legislative process, she said: “Sausage making is not pretty. But the sausage we have, I think, is a very different sausage from when we started.”

Wobbly

This comment appeared on a NYT discussion board today:

Republicans stand firm.
Pass the "Cut, Cap, and Balance" bill again with one change.
Separate the bill into two parts and have the Balanced Spending as another bill.
Keep passing the same bill and sending it to Reid and remind everyone of his "intransigence" in not passing the bill in the Senate.
As a great conservative once said to a RINO, "This is no time to go wobbly"

Hiuh??

NYT, today:

Members of the House Republican caucus said after a morning meeting that Mr. Boehner opened by urging the rank and file to “get your ass in line,” but then listened as many of them voiced lingering concerns.
---------------------------------------------

I've never been a fan of capitalism...now, I'm wondering about democracacy.

Goodbye Bill, goodbye

We Consider Death

Welcome to the fourth "Give the Fiddler a Dram" podcasts.

"All things pass; all that lives must die. All that we prize is but lent to us, and the time comes when we must surrender it. We are travelers on the same road that leads to the same end."

Podcast 4

BROOKS USES HEAD - WINS PULLITZER PRIZE!!

NYT, today: Brooks Quits Amid Scandal as Murdoch Empire Reels

Until the scandal erupted, Ms. Brooks, 43, had been a star within News International, the British newspaper subsidiary of Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation, editing two influential tabloids and rising rapidly to head the division. British analysts described her as enjoying the status of a favored daughter, with close ties not only to the Murdoch family but also to leading politicians.

American Democracy: The New Normal

NYT, today

Recounting how the 1995 government shutdown helped President Bill Clinton win re-election the next year, Mr. McConnell said any impasse that hurt the nation’s credit and led to government checks being delayed could have the same result for President Obama.

“He will say Republicans are making the economy worse,” Mr. McConnell, who is recognized as one of his party’s top political strategists, said in an interview with the radio host Laura Ingraham.

“It is an argument that he could have a good chance of winning and all of the sudden we have co-ownership of the economy. That is a very bad position going into the election.”

Meanwhile, one Republican presidential hopeful, Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, was drawing a hard line against voting to raise the debt ceiling and disputing the idea that the government’s credit standing would be jeopardized by the impasse.

“I’m a ‘no’ on raising the debt ceiling right now because I have been here long enough that I have seen a lot of smoke and mirrors in the time I have been here,” Ms. Bachman said.

Prairie In The Sky

About 20 years ago, I was in Bozeman, MT attending a scientific conference. I explored Yellowstone, the Gallatin Valley, took a ski lift to the top of a mountain, bought a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots, got hammered on local beer in a bar where the band played Ian Tyson covers, and went to the rodeo.

It was touch-and-go at the airport. At the very last minute, I got on board for Philadelphia. Decision? Fear?

I ride an old blue roan, I carry all I own
In the pouches of my saddle bags with my bedroll tied behind

There's a prairie in the sky, I'll find it by and by
Hues of brown and yellow to make a soul unwind

Let the music take me home to where my heart may roam
I'll fly across the meadows, and touch the tall grass as I go.

Let the gentle western wind stay with me 'til the end
Beside me 'til the day is done and the sun has settled low.

Leave the ponies to run free, far as the eye can see
I'd ride the range forever just to see them once again.

Let the wild, flying things soar above me on their wings
The stars fill up the night sky and the moon light up the plains.

I ride an old blue roan, I carry all I own
In the pouches of my saddle bags with my bedroll tied behind.

-Mary McCaslin

All due respect...

NYT tonight

Opinion
The Good Short Life
By DUDLEY CLENDINEN
Published: July 9, 2011

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BALTIMORE
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Sorry, Dudley. I've been doing this since the mid 90s. I won't take anyone with me, but I'm fuckin' going down fighting. No vent, either.

Cream of the Crop

NYT today:

“Rupert Murdoch adores her — he’s just very, very attached to her,” said a person who knows them both socially. “To be frank, the most sensible thing that News Corp. could do would be to dump Rebekah Brooks, but he won’t.”

Ms. Brooks’s rise has been steady, and quick. She began her career in the Murdoch media stable as a secretary at The News of the World, rising to become editor of the paper just 11 years later. In 2003, she became editor of the tabloid The Sun, Britain’s best-selling daily newspaper, before being promoted to her current job two years ago.

From early on, she was known for her creative flair in getting articles and her lack of compunction in how she got them. In 1994, she prepared for The News of the World’s interview with James Hewitt, a paramour of Princess Diana, by reserving a hotel suite and hiring a team to “kit it out with secret tape devices in various flowerpots and cupboards,” Piers Morgan, her former boss and now a CNN talk show host, writes in his memoir “The Insider.”

On another occasion in her early days, furious that the paper was about to be scooped by The Sunday Times’s serialization of a biography of Prince Charles, Ms. Brooks disguised herself as a Times cleaning lady and hid for two hours in the paper’s bathroom, according to Mr. Morgan. When the presses started rolling, she ran over, grabbed a newly printed copy of The Sunday Times, and brought it back to The News of the World — which proceeded to use the material, verbatim, in its own paper the next day.
---------------------------------------------

hhhmmmmmmmm....

sopranos, altos, please accent that c#-d# slur...again: Bbblllooooooowwwwwww---JOB!

seriously, Brooks, Murdoch, et al. are beneath contempt...

That's what happens when you think too much...

from: Ideas 2011 July/August 2011 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Recently, I noticed that one of my patients had, after a couple of sessions of therapy, started to seem uncomfortable. When I probed a bit, he admitted that he felt ambivalent about being in treatment. I asked why.

“My parents would feel like failures if they knew I was here,” he explained. “At the same time, maybe they’d be glad I’m here, because they just want me to be happy. So I’m not sure if they’d be relieved that I’ve come here to be happier, or disappointed that I’m not already happy.”

He paused and then asked, “Do you know what I mean?”

I nodded like a therapist, and then I answered like a parent who can imagine her son grappling with that very same question one day. “Yes,” I said to my patient. “I know exactly what you mean.”

----
Lori Gottlieb is the author, most recently, of Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough.

________________________________________________

One of the things I love about being a musician in a tightly-knit musical community [ed. note: google "Old Time Herald"] ls that the response to the above nonsense and angst would be "Shut up and play yer banjo".

Political Discourse

MSNBC’s suspension of Mark Halperin is way over the top
By Greg Sargent Washington Post)

MSNBC just announced that they have “indefintely” suspended Mark Halperin for claiming that Obama was “kind of a dick” at his presser yesterday. Here’s MSNBC’s statement:

Mark Halperin’s comments this morning were completely inappropriate and unacceptable. We apologize to the President, The White House and all of our viewers. We strive for a high level of discourse and comments like these have no place on our air. Therefore, Mark will be suspended indefinitely from his role as an analyst.

--------------------------
Would they've tortured him if he said "dickhead"?

Does political discourse above the level of junior high school student council exist in amerika?

Uplifting Music

After 9 years, over 200 different bands representing over 20 countries, and several venue changes, the Maryland Deathfest (or "MDF" for short) has developed into the premier metal festival in the United States, and one of the most talked about festivals internationally.

Past Featured Acts:

2005

Immolation, Cryptopsy, General Surgery, Regurgitate, Abscess, Impaled, Birdflesh, Rotten Sound, Wormed, Gronibard, Aborted, Pig Destroyer, Misery Index, Leng Tch'e, Ghoul, Lord Gore, Bodies Lay Broken, Splatterhouse, XXX Maniak, Despised Icon, Kill the Client, Ion Dissonance, Guttural Secrete, Magrudergrind, Warscars, Prophecy, Amoebic Dysentery, Screaming Afterbith


2003

Suffocation, Necrophagist, Devourment, Sublime Cadaveric Decomposition, Aborted, Abuse, Severed Savior, Soils of Fate, Dying Fetus, Brodequin, Foetopsy, Drogheda, Saprogenic, Pyrexia, Retch, Circle of Dead Children, Malignancy, Mortal Decay, Commit Suicide, Skinless, Goratory, Internal Bleeding, Incinerate, Nemo, Lust of Decay, Putrid Pile, Wasteform, Psychotogen, Suture, Anoxia, Malamor, Scumbitch, Severed Head, Spinefed, Artery Eruption

"...but most importantly, he made everyone laugh and be happy...we should all try to follow his example... "

Local ‘Jackass’ star Ryan Dunn dies in wreck

By Jeremy Roebuck and Kathleen Brady Shea

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

"Jackass" star Ryan Dunn, known for his gross-out, daredevil stunts on the MTV reality show, was killed in a car crash along Route 322 early Monday, West Goshen Township police said.

Perhaps his most famous stunt, in 2002's "Jackass: The Movie," involved inserting a toy car into his rectum and going to an emergency room, where he made up a story that he was in mysterious pain after passing out at a fraternity party. Dunn's X-ray from the hospital became a popular T-shirt with "Jackass" fans.

In a 2000 stunt, he dived into a tank at a raw sewage plant wearing flippers, a mask and a snorkel.

A few hours before the 3 a.m. crash, Dunn tweeted a picture of himself drinking with two friends. The photo has since been removed.

Live Blogging the G.O.P. Debate in New Hampshire

I swear on a stack of JACS issues this was in the Times tonight...

----------------------------------
The moderator John King is doing something he calls "This or That," asking each candidate an either/or question as they go to and come back from commercial breaks.

Here are the questions and answers so far:

Mr. Santorum: Leno or Conan? "Probably Leno, but I don't watch either, sorry."
Ms. Bachmann: Elvis or Johnny Cash? "That's really tough. Both. I've got "Christmas with Elvis" on my iPod."
Mr. Gingrich: "Dancing with the Stars" or "American Idol"? "American Idol."
Mr. Paul: BlackBerry or iPhone? "BlackBerry."

Old Dreams/Old Nightmares

click here first

I have Lou Gehrig's disease. it's a rare variant, because I'm still alive, 12 years after diagnosis!

I spend a lot of time in the past.

One of the beauties of this disease is that no one can do anything to you anymore.

I think I will share some old dreams that never came true.

When I was a kid, I wanted to pursue a BM/MM at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY.

I wanted to study clarinet with Stanley Hasty.

I wanted to study theory and composition with Howard Hanson.

I wanted to study conducting with Frederick Fennell and Donald Hunsberger.

I wanted to play in the Eastman Wind Ensemble.

Never let other people take away your dreams. It's like getting murdered.

I finally got to The University of Rochester, the home of the Eastman School of Music, in 1981. I was a newly-minted Organic Chemistry Ph. D.

I was doing a post-doc, a stopover on the way to burial in Big Pharma. I was also an alcoholic. Classical Music was in the fuzzy distant past.

I worked for this guy. He's a highly respected academician. He thought I was a hack. I thought he was a jerk. I taught myself what I needed to learn. Deja-vu all over again.

I never saw the EWE in the Eastman Theater. No time or desire.

I bought a Vega banjo, and disappeared into the mythical world of Old Time Music, maintaining a limited real world presence for money and paid-for insurance.

Don't try this at home.

Visiting Pastor Baboon, Which side should I be on?

This is a comment and response from a NYT discussion of recent deficit reduction machinations. I believe it may be used by historians and sociologists as primary source material to illustrate nearly 60 years of societal dysfunction. Sort of like the way paleontologists use fossilized dinosaur shit.
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It's time for the Baby Boomers to take to the streets again. Our new motto should be "Never Trust Anyone Under 55." The focus of our demonstrations has shifted from Southeast Asia ( where our jobs have been outsourced by the Robber Barons) to every state capital in Middle America where meanspirited miserly Republican governors are determined to neuter the civil service and reduce what's left of the Middle Class to groveling servititude. We Baby Boomers are going to stick it to the Man again, just like the good old days.Only this time around we're goingto circle the wagons to defend our Social Security benefits, including Medicaid and Medicare.

Peace folks! *********


Thanks, but I think the less baby boomers we have the better. These problems began on YOUR watch, as you sat idly by through decades of Republican tax cuts and military expansion. Wish you'd saved a little more along the way while you were at it. Moreover, Boomers are proving to be the most selfish lot, and therefore the least likely to be able to forge a solution for the common good. You basically demonstrate this in your comment, which focuses on YOUR social security and medicare.

Feel free to march in the streets if it will keep you busy, but the "untrustworthy" under 55 (I guess that makes about 95% of senators trustworthy?!) would rather you spent some more time saving so we don't have to support you for the next 70 years as you do everything possible under the sun to extend your life in retirement.

Assistant Provost Baboon, I Need at least a C-minus...

This comment was posted at the NYT as part of a discussion of college costs, student loans, and the worth of a college education. I wonder if he's serious...

It's the same as healthcare or insurance - "free" money increases the price. Few can afford a 2k a night hospital bed or 50k a year college - without loans. Costs continue to go up b/c someone else paying for it (insurance, scholarships) or a loan is provided. Get rid of gov backed student loans and health insurance and you'll truly have a free market. Hospitals won't be charging 200k for a surgery, b/c no one can pay that. Same with colleges. Sure, we'd go through a very painful period and improvements in healthcare and drugs would come to a halt, but it'd be worth it in the long run.

Associate Mayor Baboon, I OBJECT!!

nyt clips, today

For 9/11 Museum, Dispute Over Victims’ Remains
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS 3 minutes ago

Some of the victims’ families are appalled by a plan to place the remains in the new museum behind a wall with a quotation from Virgil about never forgetting.


Afghans Angry Over Florida Koran Burning Kill U.N. Staff
By ENAYAT NAJAFIZADA and ROD NORDLAND 5 minutes ago

Stirred up by a trio of angry mullahs, thousands of protesters overran the compound of the United Nations in Mazar-i-Sharif, killing at least 12 people, Afghan and United Nations officials said.


Calorie-Counting Rule to Leave Out Movie Theaters
By WILLIAM NEUMAN 3:22 PM ET

After opposition, theaters were exempted from a proposed rule that would require them to post calorie counts.


April 1, 2011 4:15 PM ET
'Idol' Attracts 22 Million Viewers

Two finalists were eliminated from "American Idol" on Thursday, Naima Adedapo and Thia Megia, as a results episode of the Fox reality show attracted an impressive 22 million viewers.


Video Game Review
Defending America, the Underdog
By SETH SCHIESEL

It is 2027, and Korea is a superpower that invades the United States. You play as an American resistance fighter.


Video Game Review
Space Zombies, Prepare to Meet Your Mower
By SETH SCHIESEL

Dismemberment, dementia, wails of anguish, pustulant aliens: if that’s your sort of thing, Dead Space 2 is fabulous.


March 31, 2011 6:31 PM ET
GoDaddy Chief Draws Criticism for Elephant Hunting Video

Bob Parsons, founder and chief executive of GoDaddy.com, kicked off a wave of online criticism with a video in which he shoots and kills an elephant in Zimbabwe.
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makes you proud to be human...wanna be another species?

click here

Colonel Baboon, this needs your signature...

NYT today

WASHINGTON (AP) — Consumer advocate Ralph Nader is calling for the elimination of college athletic scholarships, saying the move is necessary to "de-professionalize" college athletes.

Nader's League of Fans, a group aimed at reforming sports, proposes that the scholarships be replaced with need-based financial aid. He says that would help restore academic integrity to college sports.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of the proposal Thursday, ahead of its official release.

Nader, a former presidential candidate (ed. note: his candidacy siphoned off enough votes to allow Bush to steal the election and destroy amerika...remember?), argues that his plan would also help reduce the "win-at-all-costs" mentality in high schools, by reducing the incentive of college scholarships.

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yeah, OK, Nader's right, but Huxley showed what happens when you screw up the soma distribution....can't anyone get Nader interested in windmills?

sheik-condom-tin-dated-1931

NYT,today

MANAMA, Bahrain — Bahrain on Friday tore down the protest movement’s defining monument, the pearl at the center of Pearl Square, a symbolic strike that carried a sense of finality. The official news agency described the razing as a facelift.

“We did it to remove a bad memory,” Bahrain’s foreign minister, Sheik Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, said at a news conference. “The whole thing caused our society to be polarized. We don’t want a monument to a bad memory.”
------------

Fuck sheiks. Fuck 'em. al-Kings, too.

We Consider Birds

Welcome to the third "Give the Fiddler a Dram" podcasts.

Birds have been around long before humans wandered onto the scene. Back then, they were dinosaurs. They survived several planet-wide extinction events, and evolved. Bird imagery occurs universally in all human endeavor throughout all human history. It's like people wanted to be birds...humans wore their feathers (and killed them), slept on their down (and killed them), ate them (and killed them), wanted to eat like them (invented pesticides and killed them), wanted to live in nests (invented suburbs), wanted to fly (invented flying machines that dropped nuclear weapons on other people)...do you detect a pattern? At least people realized birds were earth's original musicians, and tried to emulate them (imperfectly, which explains national anthems and the song "Duke of Earl").

Podcast Nr 3

This Ain't Hollywood

NYT, tonite:

As the scale of Japan’s nuclear crisis begins to come to light, experts in Japan and the United States say the country is now facing a cascade of accumulating problems that suggest that radioactive releases of steam from the crippled plants could go on for weeks or even months.

The emergency flooding of two stricken reactors with seawater and the resulting steam releases are a desperate step intended to avoid a much bigger problem: a full meltdown of the nuclear cores in two reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
------------------
I've worked with large amounts of radioactive materials all my adult life. Positron emitters, hard and soft gamma emitters, hard and soft beta emitters, alpha emitters...everything. What's going on in Japan at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station is a worse case scenario - an MOX-fueled BWR reactor/spent fuel storage facility damaged by a 9.0 earthquake. Over the next few days, it's going to get scary. Two secondary containment structures have been blown out by hydrogen-oxygen explosions, and gamma ray spectroscopy has confirmed the release of I-131 and Cs-137 into the immediate environment. Taken together, this suggests that partial core (fuel) melting has occurred in the damaged reactors. Last ditch core cooling procedures now involve flooding the reactor vessels with seawater spiked with borate salts (pumped in by firetrucks!) and venting radioactive steam to the environment when you hit critical overpressure. Not good.

-I believe you exist...-You're gullible enough...

 

"The topic for today is:  What is reality?"

NYT, today

Just two months shy of his fourth birthday, Colton Burpo, the son of an evangelical pastor in Imperial, Neb., was rushed into emergency surgery with a burst appendix.

He woke up with an astonishing story: He had died and gone to heaven, where he met his great-grandfather; the biblical figure Samson; John the Baptist; and Jesus, who had eyes that “were just sort of a sea-blue and they seemed to sparkle,” Colton, now 11 years old, recalled.

Colton’s father, Todd, has turned the boy’s experience into a 163-page book, “Heaven Is for Real,” which has become a sleeper paperback hit of the winter, dominating best-seller lists and selling hundreds of thousands of copies.

Todd Burpo wrote the book with Lynn Vincent, who collaborated with Sarah Palin on “Going Rogue.” Mr. Burpo, the pastor of Crossroads Wesleyan Church in Imperial, a farming community in southwest Nebraska, said in an interview that he had shouldered some criticism over it.

“People say we just did this to make money, and it’s not the truth,” Mr. Burpo said, referring to anonymous online comments about the book. “We were expecting nothing. We were just hoping the publisher would break even.” (He said he planned to give away much of the royalty income and spend some of it on home improvements.)
----------------

I read a lot of the recommendations for this book on Amazon. Much discussion concerned the "reality" of the story. [ed. note: I haven't read the book]

There is belief, which may be elaborated into faith. Reality does not figure into the process.

There are facts (imperfectly perceived), which may be elaborated into truth (incompletely realized). Disbelief is the basis of this process.

Many people confuse these pathways, unintentionally or intentionally. It may be argued that this confusion has lead to countless deaths since homo sapiens emerged as a species. The 20th century wasn't a walk in the park. Things aren't looking so good a decade into the 21st.

Watch Out: This is an Allen Ginsberg-style "Eyeball Kick"!

The Associated Press
Friday, March 4, 2011; 10:06 AM

PHOENIX -- Blair River, the 575-pound spokesman for the Heart Attack Grill, an Arizona restaurant that serves shamelessly high-calorie burgers and fries, died Tuesday at the age of 29, following a bout of the flu.

Restaurant founder Jon Basso tells The Arizona Republic that River was more than the larger-than-life caricature he portrayed in promoting the restaurant in Chandler, which includes huge hamburgers, milkshakes and fries cooked in lard on its menu.

Basso says River was a creative genius who had been planning to take part in the shooting of a promotional spot called, "Heart Attack Grill: The Musical."

The 6-foot-8 River was an Arizona [high school] state heavyweight wrestling champion in 1999. River garnered celebrity as the grill's "Gentle Giant" when he became the face and advertising star of the medically themed restaurant -- famous for its triple-bypass burgers, flatliner lard fries and server "nurses" donning uniforms fit for adult films.

[Owner Jon] Basso is very open about the controversial position he puts himself in by marketing unhealthy food "worth dying for," as the restaurant slogan goes.

"I hired him to promote my food. We are absolutely guilty of glorifying obesity. That's what I do for a living: I make a mockery of heart-related issues in order to sell hamburgers," says Basso.

But nothing will change in the Heart Attack Grill's approach now that River has died, Basso says.

Before owning the grill, Basso owned a Jenny Craig franchise and a fitness center, and says that despite pouring "his heart and soul into the diet and exercise industry," he didn't feel like he was reaching anyone. "I'm making more inroads now into people's consciousness by working the other side," he says.
-------------------

I doubt Mr Basso has a heart or soul. Yeah, this story is funny in a black humored way. Yeah, it deals with what statisticians describe as outliers; a 600 pound pitchman, toxic "all American" food-porn, an event that will be lucky to last one news cycle...but consider this before you ignore this story and ignore my rant: this is a reductio-ad-absurbdum of everything expressed in contemporary American economic and popular culture, basically "eating" all you can or want, as opposed to need.

To celebrate (is there a Russian or Yiddish expression for "celebrate with contempt"?), this event and all its participants, from Mr River to the Associated Press, and sadly, myself, I am going to post what is generally considered the most offensive underground comix panel ever published; a "Captain Pissgums" episode by S. Clay Wilson. You are what you eat.

please click here first

Will Bare-Knuckles Capitalism Turn Urban America into a Shithole?

Here are excerpts from NYT stories published a couple of days apart...

---------------
VERNON, Calif. — Vernon is a bleak, 5.2-square-mile sprawl of warehouses, factories, toxic chemical plants and meat processors that looks like the backdrop for “Eraserhead,” the David Lynch movie set in an industrial wasteland. It has a population of 95 — and 1,800 businesses, drawn by low taxes, lax regulations and cheap municipal power.

Willets Point, in Queens, is a 61-acre expanse of junkyards and auto-repair shops so squalid that local business owners compare it to Iraq. City officials estimate that Willets Point is home to 255 businesses, which employ about 1,700 people, some in sheds made of tin or cinder blocks. On a recent afternoon, as garbage cans burned, Mexican norteño music wailed from boom boxes on the hoods of cars. Large pools of swirling dirty water overwhelmed unpaved roads. Locals complained that the police handed out tickets for parking cars on the sidewalk, even though there were no sidewalks. “I don’t want to leave,” Mr. Nicolescue said, “but I have nowhere to go. This may look like the third world, but it is my world.”

mommy blog

I ran across a five page article in the NYT about what may be a parallel universe; a parallel universe that is an exact enantiomer of our own:

der ,,mommy-blog'' welt.

Let me explain.

Carbon is tetravalent, that is to say, the maximum number of bonds the atom can make to other atoms is four. Carbon can also form what are called "multiple bonds", examples are double bonds (H2C=N-H), triple bonds (H-C=C-H), but we will consider good ol' single bonds, like we find in methane, CH4. At this point, just remember the bond count for carbon is four.

When a carbon atom has four single bonds to other atoms, like methane, the shape of the molecule is a tetrahedron, one of the platonic solids.

Let's not get into why, MO theory is boring. But consider this: if the four substituents bound to the central atom are all chemically or structurally distinct, we get a tetrahedron with a special, unique topology. You get what's called a chiral molecule. A chiral molecule is a type of molecule that lacks an internal plane of symmetry and has a non-superposable mirror image, that is to say, it comes in right and left-handed (enantiomeric, see above) forms!

Now here is the mind blowing thing; all life as we know it is chiral! In fact, because all of the natural amino acids (except one) are left-handed chiral, this is a sure signature of life (think proteins)!

In the "mommy blog" universe, however, everything must be different at a very fundamental, mind-blowingly enantiomeric level.

This is from the mother of all mommy blogs, http://www.dooce.com/

One of a few diet tips my trainer shared with me when I started working with her over a year ago was to snack on canned tuna (diet here does not refer to losing weight, but instead to eating healthy), and before you go and make that gagging noise that [husband] Jon does every time I even mention it, just hear me out. Or maybe you can't hear me over Jon's gagging. That's fine. Sometimes he can't hear his geek podcasts because of the sound of my eyes rolling. Today I got home from spin class and headed straight for the cabinet where I keep the tuna. I hadn't even opened the can of tuna and [daughter] Marlo was tugging on my pants while saying, "Up! Up!" This should be interesting, I thought, especially since I was opening up a new exotic mustard I found online. You guys, this combination is awesome, and it gets even more awesome if you add in a whole wheat tortilla, some shredded cabbage and a blow job!

This entry was dated 8 Feb 2011. You wouldn't know that anything, FUCKING ANYTHING ELSE was going on in the world outside of this mommy universe.

And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talking coming in.

-Ray Bradbury

me me me

NYT, Bahrain

“I don’t want a democracy,” said Rayyah Mohammed, 32, an art project director and strong supporter of King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa. “I want a monarchy. I like how things are. I have a job. I have a house. I have free health care.”

And this is the essence. Rayyah has his stuff, and doesn't give a-flying-fuck-at-a-rolling-doughnut about anything or anybody else. This thinking produced pretty lampshades at Belsen. Out of human skin.

Addenda: NYT 18 Feb

The coffins were carried on the roofs of two cars as a man with a loudspeaker led the crowd in its chants from the bed of a pickup truck, alternating between calls to the faithful — “There is no God but God” — with political messages such as “We need constitutional reform for freedom.”
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good luck...

more "uncertainty"...

headline, nyt

U.S. Raises Value of a Life, and Businesses Fear Impact

You too may be a weiner

The following is a "fleshed-out" press release compiled from Reuters, AP, NYT, .gov websites, and my personal experience. It concerns Obama's proposed FY 2012 budget.

please click here before reading

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It puts a five-year spending freeze on non-security discretionary spending, which the White House says would save $400 billion over 10 years and "bring government spending to its lowest level since President Dwight Eisenhower was in power in the 1950s and early 1960s". [ed note: July 1, 1952 US population was 157,552,740;  July 1, 2010 US population was 309,050,816; this means the US population is greater by a factor of 1.962 today than at the start of the Ike & Dick Show. The current rate of change of the US population is ca. +1%/yr]

The freeze would cover the agencies and programs for which Congress allocates specific budgets each year, including air traffic control, farm subsidies, education, nutrition and national parks. [ed note: and Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs, a small, but high impact R&D program in which I was involved. The program funds research into terrifying, fatal, incurable, fairly common diseases]

It proposes spending $671 billion on the U.S. military next year, including $118 billion for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Total spending on national defense in the proposed budget would be $702 billion, a figure that includes spending on nuclear weapons and health care and retirement, down from $721.3 billion in fiscal 2010.

It cuts Community Development Block Grants by $300 million; $2.5 billion from a program, known as LIHEAP, that provides heating assistance to poor people; more than $1 billion in grants to large airports; $950 million for U.S. states' "revolving funds" for water treatment and other infrastructure.

The payoff in budget savings would be small relative to the deficit: The estimated $250 billion [ed note: from AP, $400 billion from Reuters, White House estimates 1.1 trillion] in savings over 10 years would be less than 3 percent of the roughly $9 trillion in additional deficits [ed note: from AP, White House estimates $7.2  trillion additional deficits]  the government is expected to accumulate over that time [ed note: savings is 3-15.3% of additional accumulated deficit, depending upon the numerical data source].

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Get it?

Which side are you on...
      -Florence Reese

Can Bristol Palin save America?

I usually don't quote PopEater (I prefer Hecklerspray's ongoing coverage of Lindsay Lohan's "Boobs Embargo"), but sometimes....
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Bristol Palin, 20, is already plotting her future career in-- you guessed it-- politics! In an interview with E! News, Bristol admits that she'll "probably" run for office sometime "further down the road."

But sources claim Bristol's foray into politics is going to happen a lot sooner than she lets on. "Bristol has a new sense of confidence since she did 'Dancing with the Stars,'" the source said. "She has seen her mother (Sarah Palin's) success and believes Washington should have more regular people like her in office making decisions for the country, rather than the elite that currently run DC."

The abstinence speaker and soon-to-be author "doesn't have a strong political resume" but the source claims "that's what will make her a great congresswoman or even President!" Who knows? Maybe Bristol will be vying for the White House in 2012 instead of Mama Grizzly!