Fri 28 Jul 2006 5:25 PM
Quote of the Week:
None. Just watch V for Vendetta. It’s an ok movie, at the end they play Street Fighting Man, that has some good quotes.
Maybe guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Watch the following:
And then this:
Maybe control of large groups of people isn’t such a bad thing in and of itself.
Mon 24 Jul 2006 12:00 PM
One night not too long ago I was in a fine drinking establishment – I honestly can’t remember which one – when 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” came on. Shocking, I know. If you’ve been semi-lucid and in the proximity of any alcohol in the past four years, this situation has happened to you. Indeed, on the racetrack of possibilities where hearing this song is the course marker, I can’t even guess at what lap this commemorated. But I’m pretty sure I’m losing.
At previous listenings, this song has triggered the conditioning I underwent at the hands of high school dances where dark lights, bouncing girls, and driving bass boost heart rates and erode taste, causing me to get up and shake my thang. This masterpiece is in every DJs ‘break in case of emergency’ tool box.
On this occasion, however, my Pavlovian response was on vacation and what I heard was not a man in control of his situation – a Caesar of debauchery and violence sent to lead us into a Golden Age of intoxication, ecstacy, and patriarchal absolutes – but a poser who insists on the claims he’s making all the more emphatically because deep down he’s terrified they’re not true.
Not that I thought 50 was an icon of truthiness before, but the slick-yet-dirty production and intensity of the song suspended my disbelief under circumstances that could best be described as ‘spinny.’
Instead of a universal rallying cry for all things booty, the song became the introductory monologue of a character that you know is going to realize the hollowness of his efforts at the end of the play, unseated by a more virtuous and humble upstart; a call of desperation by someone so deep in the carrion of excess that they saw no way out. In this ironic light, the following lyrics took on a whole new meaning:
You can find me in the club, bottle full of Bud
Mama, I got that X, if you into takin’ drugs
I’m into having sex, I ain’t into making love
So come give me a hug if you into getting rubbed……And you should love it, way more then you hate it
Nigga you mad? I thought that you’d be happy I made it
I’m that cat by the bar toasting to the good life
You that faggot ass nigga trying to pull me back right?
In my mind, 50 Cent went from the most indictable proponent of fratboy narcissism to one of the most brilliant critics of the same behavior. If you can hear the words in this way, it’s like one of those 3D computer generated images where you have to cross your eyes a certain way: Everything in the song takes on new meaning.
Other mind games you can play with yourself to make life more interesting:
Thu 6 Jul 2006 6:43 PM
I know I’m a latecomer to this party, but it bears repeating. Nugent is quoted in a recent New Yorker article as proclaiming:
To show you how radical I am, I want carjackers dead…I want rapists dead. I want burglars dead. I want child molesters dead. No court case. No parole. No early release. I want ‘em dead. Get a gun, and when they attack you shoot ‘em.
at the 2005 NRA convention in Houston while he hosted the seminar ‘God, Guns and Rock ‘n’ Roll.’
I know he purposefully baits sensitve egalitarians such as myself with these inciting ejaculations that spew from his squirrel cheeks while he’s not performing hits from his 1984 album Penetrator (“Thunder Thighs” is my favorite). When hungrily eyeing the governorship of Michigan like the small, meaty animals that populate his extravegant compound, he had this to say about the current governor, Jennifer Granholm: “[She] is not doing an ugly job, but as the perfect woman, she is scrotumless.”
The first time I saw a live Nuge — that is to say, not on an album cover, which themselves are difficult to describe as ‘not live’ — was when he was on MTV cribs. He seemed like a nice enough guy — he was endlessly entertaining, and I’d probably get a kick out of drinking cream fizzes (he’s straight edge) with him and having him (almost?) kill me while showing me how to shoot a bow. And I’m sure he makes people really excited and stuff when they blast his music out of their trucks or see him at a show.
Wed 28 Jun 2006 2:59 PM
Someone said they would love to see me working at Tower, the joke being that I would never find a place of employment in such a corporate environ. It landed flat, the offhanded comment, since I’m currently working at the biggest fucking place I’ve ever spent any real amount of time (save my ‘by my rules’ tenure at the since defunct corporate law office of Broebeck, Phleger & Harrison) and I figured aloud that it couldn’t be that much different. This was greeted with a resounding “hah!” and assurance that, yes, it’s quite different. My employment history was apparantly scarred enough since passing through the hallowed (hollow?) grounds of Epicenter in my wild and wreckless years. This didn’t make too much sense to me as I knew two people who worked Epicenter who were paid to work at Tower Records down on Market. They weren’t living in paradise but they couldn’t have been any less fucked-up or misanthropic than me.
One thing I knew about Tower was that they would have huge inventory days where everyone had to come in and stay late moving product around and counting shit and wishing they were elsewhere watching television. One of my long-time ambitions when at Epicenter was to have a functioning inventory of used product to have more consistant used pricing (and so that the myriad of volunteers felt more comfortable buying used records instead of freaking out and telling me about it later) but the only finished inventory that took place was when we closed the place down and had to tally everything up for liquidation. The records racks went to, I think, Axis Records and Howling Bull which is dead and maybe a couple even ended up at Mission Records, also dead. Amoeba bought the leftover stock and I dropped off Epicenter’s keys (of which there are a million copies) and picked up the deposit from the building’s landlord.
There’s an obvious difference between the place where I drank 40oz, smoked cigarettes, blasted The Meatmen to piss off lesbians and counted moths and buttons in the till at the end of the day and the place I walk to four times a week and dutifully work and drink coffee. There’s a lot more money in the tills and I don’t even have to count it. But there’s not as much money as there used to be and so I guess management decided to call a store meeting to discuss matters with whoever answered the call for a couple extra hours on the clock and some free pizza. I just work anyways so there you are.
Wasn’t sure what to expect but I was pretty disappointed when I learned from the state elders around me that this wasn’t such the unprecedented event as I’d hoped– they’ve just never bothered to have one while I’ve worked there. Even so I was eager to hear about bleak sales and hard times and cut-backs and maybe some group hugs in the same way it warms my heart when the Dow Jones takes a dive. I don’t have much of an understanding when it comes to business and economics but I know a good time when I see one. It turned out to be a lot of nothing, a flow chart about who you’re supposed to ask for time off and a chat about how no one can do anything about how scummy Haight Street is so stop blaming the junkies and the bums for life’s ailments. Talk on how to improve the cash flow centered on pushing used product which has the profit margin which seems to have been the idea for as long as I’ve been around.
Epicenter had little group chats once a month, if only because it was required by law for out not for profit tax status. My ideas were generally outlandish, rude, loud and fueled by the coffee/malt liqour cocktails I used to live on and, as such, were immediately discounted and forgotten. But certainly the lack of stock was a deciding factor in the continued demise of the store, made all the more obvious when, behold, Amoeba moved in and had three copies of every record we should have had with people selling pot outside instead of heroin. We never had pizza but we did sit on the floor.
Okay, I didn’t sit on the floor last night but I did pace around close to the pizza boxes and listened intently without making any suggestions, accusations or invitations to violence– at no point did I call anyone a “balding fuck” so vehemently that spit flew across the room. Push used product, be personable, make suggestions. Blah, blah, blah but I got a couple hours time and a half for my attention. The meeting ended and everyone chit chatted finishing their sodas and slices and trickled off in ones and twos and while I stumbled on home thinking about how I shouldn’t have eaten so much it didn’t really seem any different than what they probably do at Tower or probably even Target or, possibly, even places like Broebeck, Phleger & Harrison.
My longest running office job was for one of those doomed from the start online money pits called nextmonet.com and they had little group meetings too with crackers and brie and beer and once even scotch. Having been there from before they wen’t online to after they started laying off half their staff I had hundreds of opportunities to sit at the big table and feel apart of the team which seemed to revolve mostly around eating and listening to the CEO or CFO talk about something or, for kicks, listening in as their 401k manager broke down the future riches. I was asked, invited and encouraged to sit in. I usually went and smoked while they had their meetings and chuckled about it to myself afterwards when I scooped in on leftovers. They did make me attend my department meetings which were just as useful to me and, I’m sure, just as grateful for my presence as every other meeting I’ve ever attended except if I spilled my cup of noodles all over the place.
I’ve been trying to loop this all into some greater truth or revelation but it’s not really working. Maybe if I’d bothered with writing classes instead of chopping onions and bellpeppers but I didn’t now you’re stuck with it. Meanwhile it’s been a pretty lonely excursion every week and the less and less that gets posted just makes these random little musings all that more noticeable to anyone who might accidentally happen by and God, what are they gonna think? C’mon people, if you can’t make me look good at least make me look less obvious.
-B
…who really ought to think about this before he shows up at the library…
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Wed 21 Jun 2006 3:59 PM
Events continue to interrupt my attempts at an ostrich-like existence sitting inside and reading or listening to records. Maybe I should just stick to the book when I decide my stomach hurts because it requires a sandwich, not because I’ve been drinking coffee for several hours and not burning any of it off, but the usual practice is to watch a little television for the ten minutes or so I dedicate towards nourishment.
Now, I’ve been off the grid and out of the loop for a good while now which causes a strange sense of deprivation to descend during these five minute intervals of cultural barrage. I’ve usually been the one that was up on the news, read the paper, watched the reports and even if I didn’t have anything insightful or interesting to add I could at least keep up with the conversation. Now I feel pretty lucky when I catch Jeopardy and pretty stupid when I get things wrong. I still try and catch my English broadcasts of DW-TV and earlier I was even around for the News Hour on PBS but typically these only serve to show the extant of my ignorance as to what the fuck is going on around here.
I’d heard somehow about the NSA data-mining a while back and it didn’t really strike much of a chord emotionally or anything. I mean, what else did you expect, free ice-cream? It helps, of course, that I’m hardly anyone’s idea of a terrorist and if my scant phone conversations warrant any attention by way of keywords it’s only me and my friend down in Phoenix talking about how he works for the Taliban which really just means the coffee shop run by a couple Egyptian guys. I’m not prone to long distance calls, let alone international ones, so the Taliban thing probably just floats around in a tank full of ones and zeros.
That’s not the point– I’m supposed to care about things even when they’ve got fuck all to do with me. Racial profiling? Bad shit, even if it’s never going to be an issue for me personally because I’m as white looking as an Alabama Protestant. Immigration reform? I’m not immigrating anywhere but I’ve still my little opinions about the matter. So when the US government is collecting phone conversations (indescriminantly or not) I’m supposed to be incensed and I am when I remember that I’m supposed to be incensed.
That’s all well and good and now a bunch of middle-class college kids are fighting the man and eventually the spooks can go back to spying on people without it being a topic of discussion just like it’s always been. What irritates me more than the fact that people have to file suits against the government to have the matter out in the open is that I learned of that while reading MRR on the pot.
So I sit and eat this rissoto I’ve just spent an hour and then some making flavorless on the stove and the news has a newzbite about ATT, the company paired with the NSA in the data-mining lunacy, selling actual phone calls to major companies like my bank to have the data, eh, mined for (I assume) marketing purposes. Let’s imagine that ATT is a single entity as is the NSA and big bad Mr. NSA comes and asks a favor. ATT’s a little nervous about it because ATT knows full well this is not gonna make ATT a very popular kid on the block. Big bad Mr. NSA could probably beat the shit out of ATT and get whatever he wants but being a class act who happens to wish to remain nameless instead introduces ATT to some other single entities like BofA, Merril-Lynch or whoever the fuck and suggests everyone make a deal.
Did that make sense? I don’t have time to edit or check facts or even really thing at the library here but it makes me a little suspicious that the NSA coerced ATT by promising that the collected data could be sold to other companies for more American activities like calling me about my fucking mortgage. I suppose Safeway kinda does the same thing when I use my mom’s club card to get fifteen sense off that brick of cheese and that jar of pickles but they’ve never bothered calling about anything.
Some people don’t trust the government and invest their faith in free market business while others don’t trust free market business and invest faith in the government while most people, I would hope, can’t really tell the difference and spend their days reading and listening to records in hopes of avoiding having to deal with either.
So my little head has had its normally scheduled programming interrupted for a contextually raw news item and when I try to lock the world out by watching a movie I land in The China Syndrome which is a cute little chick-flick about a nuclear power plant, a nearly catastrophic event and how big money attempts to usher in shit under the noses of the feds and make bigger money at the risk of making Southern California even more uninhabitable than it already is. Despite some poorly made choices pandering to the action oriented appeal of such movies it was pretty good and I would recommend it if you ever wonder what it must have been like when Three Mile Island had a little melt-down imediately after theatrical release.
Which also made me think about the book “Toxic Sludge is Good for You“, specifically the chapter about infiltration into anti-nuke groups by industry spies. The point I recall is that the government has to subsidize the insurance at plants because no one else will and that’s tax money. Then you pay for power and pray you don’t die, I guess.
-Q&D