Steven Simon

More tangential references to Friday afternoon blog-reading.

2009-07-10T18:15:00.000-07:00

This is an article about how the McCain campaign dreamed up Sara Palin's line about Obama palling around with terrorists. (Shocking? Wait, but wasn't she on the campaign? At least sort of?)

But more important: the article references a book by a gentleman named Dan Balz.

DAN BALZ!

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This just in from the Department of Stretching Metaphors Way Too Far

2009-07-10T18:03:00.001-07:00

Way too far.

Obama and Hitler have a great deal in common in my view. Obama and Hitler use the "blitzkrieg" method to overwhelm their enemies. FAST, CARPET BOMBING intent on destruction. Hitler’s blitzkrieg bombing destroyed many European cities - quickly and effectively. Obama is systematically destroying the American economy and with it AMERICA.

To whit: Obama's steady stream of 'post-partisan" denial and mediocre policy non-stances is leading us to national socialism and, well, genocide?

As to the link itself, if you follow it: is the Baltimore Sun not the most bootleg-looking website you've ever seen? It is as bootleg as the Orioles mid-80's uniform, which I always thought was a gorilla holding a baseball bat.

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bad haircut

2009-07-09T20:19:00.000-07:00

I have a job interview tomorrow, so I decided I needed to get a haircut. I head over to some spot on Beverly after work, and the guy is like, "Regular sideburns?" Yes. Regular sideburns please.

"I'm here for my job interview."

I want to take this moment to send a shout out to Gracie. Not that she reads this. But no one but Gracie has really cut my hair for about three years or so. Except once or twice, my ex-girlfriend did. And last winter, I cut my own, which was a disaster of its own, resulting ultimately in a complete shave of the head. Hence my reluctant trip to the barber shop today.

But now I have learned my lesson and I will never see a professional hair cutter again. I will only have Gracie cut my hair.

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Shock. Disgust. Horror.

2009-07-09T19:09:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here eating, reading an article, and I look over to the windowsill, and there is Rakim just very purposefully licking Eric B.'s ass for like, a minute and a half.

I felt like someone dropped me in the middle of a Nas album.

Fellow cat-parents: how to deal with this? Normal? Not normal? Creepy? Creepier still because as a result of MJ's death, I've realized that Eric B. has his eyes from "Thriller."

WHOA WHOA WHOA: While trying to find a link for the Nas reference above (and only finding pornography), I found out that Nas and Kelis are getting divorced.

Kelis, if you are out there, my phone number is 213 210 4683.

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Hating on someone else's President for once.

2009-06-29T19:00:00.000-07:00

Via Feministing, I thought this was a good article on Sarkozy's desire to ban the burqa in France.

Excerpt:

So now we have a bigger picture: Muslims as a "misbehaving" minority group, an ongoing war on terror and related distaste for all things Muslim, wide-spread discrimination against Muslims (1 in 3 Muslims in Europe have reported discrimination), desire to maintain a culturally homogeneous society, and, finally, a fascination with another man's progress. Put together, the something else is revealed: by highlighting the oppression of Muslim women Sarkozy is giving people in France more reasons to do what France is already doing pretty well - marginalizing its large Muslim minority.

Anyway, I should admit that I find the burqa a bit unsettling by sight, but I also find this sort of religious censorship suspect, and wrong-headed.

Two other quick notes: If the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in modern history is tied in part to forced secularization in the Middle East and forced secularization mixed with underclass status in European Muslim immigrant communities, then this sort of move seems counterintuitive even if you can get around it being racist. (Obviously it goes without saying that the greatest contributing factor to the rise in Islamic fundamentalism is a hatred of our freedoms that God made for the United States of America on the Sixth Day of Creation, but I guess there are also other factors.)

Second, check out those staggering numbers on Muslim incarceration in France. They looked at our numbers on African American men and started feeling competitive. Truly appalling.

Also, the "sartorial hijab" page on Wikipedia is interesting to look at if you're interested in being able to distinguish between, say the burqa and the niqab.

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this is a non sequitir.

2009-06-12T13:13:00.001-07:00

Works great as motor oil!

2009-06-12T13:02:00.001-07:00

Tastes sort of like bread-paste, if memory serves.

Indeed, angry urinating man.

2009-06-12T12:58:00.001-07:00

Ever just be in the port-a-potty at the Louisiana State Penitentiary Angola Prison Farm and just need to get something off your chest so bad that you write it in #2 pencil?

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This is what Louisiana is like.

2009-06-12T12:55:00.001-07:00

Of course it's a watering bucket for the tree.

2009-06-12T12:52:00.000-07:00

That makes perfect sense. A garbage bag-lined watering bucket for a tree.

Props to brother-in-law Matt for clueing me in to this one.

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I remember Halloween.

2009-06-12T12:49:00.001-07:00

I guess a lot of Halloween costumes have to do with wearing boxes.

Joe Pulido: Gangster of Love

2009-06-12T12:44:00.000-07:00

Anonymous Cayman Photo

2009-06-12T12:42:00.000-07:00

Anybody else come across this on the Internet and download it back in 2005?

Leonard has seen better days.

2009-06-12T12:32:00.000-07:00

And so has Fresno in some ways. In some ways not, I guess.

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Thinking of ways to appear really cool.

2009-06-12T12:11:00.000-07:00

My ten year high school reunion is next weekend. While I don't typically get excited about expensive nostalgia trips handed down by the ages as compulsory, I gotta say this one brings out the joiner in me. High school was of course miserable at times, but after Catholic school for nine years it felt liberating every day to be around 2,000 people who weren't keeping track of how many times I wore the same shirt on free dress day. I miss a lot of those people, and why not say hi to who I can after ten years, right? After all, the event promises "heavy hors d'oeuvres," which sounds excessive and weird.

I've spent weeks lobbying for Joe Pulido to come with me and he has finally agreed to do so. And it occurred to me for the first time: maybe I should dress up like King Diamond just to mess with people who haven't seen me in forever. What happened to the thirteen year old kid who only listened to Eazy-E and Green Day and Nirvana? Oh, Melissa.

Too many words devoted to Robert Smith.

2009-06-12T09:36:00.000-07:00

Been listening to Pandora Radio at work. I never really got into Pandora Radio before: you say you like the Misfits, you're stuck listening to the post-Danzig schlock that Jerry Only put together; you say you like Bob Dylan, eventually you're listening to way too much Mason Jennings; you say you like Eric B. and Rakim and suddenly every third song is from The 18th Letter album, which could technically be quite good, but are you prepared to make that assessment when all you want is to be passively entertained while typing a memo? But anyway, it's there on the Internet, it works for the temporary-ness of a job where I'm not going to load CDs onto my computer.

The other day it came up with "Mint Car" from the Cure's 1996 album Wild Mood Swings. I imagine this is the record that most once-fans associate with the end of their career, but there was a time when you couldn't escape "Mint Car," a short eight weeks after which radio play petered out, the song disappearing altogether after a year or so, never to be a part of the culture again. I really liked this song, I even remember where I was the last time I heard it: Coelee's old house, in the little space between the living room and kitchen, must've been about 1998. I've thought about the song off and on since then, and I have to say hearing it after all this time made me really happy.

So happy, in fact, that on my way out of town to Phoenix, I swung by Amoeba and picked up the album for five bucks. Trudged west to Hollywood in rush hour traffic, trudged back east through the hour-and-a-half of idling that you must do to get out of the LA area in the early evening. It felt triumphant, the sort of inconvenient and not-worth-it detour that still reminds me that I am an adult, I can waste two hours if I want to thank you very much.

I'm embarrassed by how much I like the somewhat maligned "Mint Car." I don't understand what a mid-period Cure fan can find missing in this track. It's a great example of the manically happy Cure songs ("The sun is up! I'm so happy I could scream!") where you think Robert Smith should feel guilty about writing songs that remind people how they never ever feel this way. It's got the rest too: the guitar sounds bright, the music during the chorus picks itself right up, his voice disappears into a wheeze when he hit the vowels mid-word. He makes the kind of sounds those Sesame Street nose-honker muppets made. It's close-to-perfect if you like this version of Robert Smith, and if you can accommodate the occasional lyric about vanilla smiles and strawberry kisses.

The video is something else too. An old-West high stakes poker game, and Robert Smith wearing a sheet underneath Magic Johnson's getup from the Michael Jackson "Remember the Time" video.

As for the rest of the album, well, it's a lesser version of Wish. There's the longwinded and dirge-y opening track. There's half of a lyric in "Round & Round & Round" that seems taken directly from "Doing the Unstuck," and "Mint Car" itself ends in a rush during the last two seconds of the song, this being lifted straight out of "Friday I'm in Love." There are a bunch of songs with one-word titles. He even does that from-the-throat "I'm absolutely mad" thing where he sounds like a bootleg Louis Armstrong and/or a bootleg Moz.

There are also more singles. "The 13th" falls a little flat and sounds too deliberately Latin. I think that was the follow-up to "Mint Car," and I like it too despite its flaws. "Strange Attraction" was yet another single, but I don't remember this one as well. It's growing on me, but it sounds like a mid-tempo Paula Abdul song. Something in the drums does it. "Gone!" was a single too, but the best thing about that song is that it has an exclamation point in the title.

This post sounds really album review-ish, and I don't like that. I think I just have a lot to say about the Cure, and when is there ever occasion to talk about the Cure in 2009? Sorry Lauren.

This blog is turning into an apologies-to-Lauren blog. Because Lauren is a the faithful reader.

So, for your trouble, here are photos of Robert Smith looking like a fat and confused Alice Cooper. The last one is priceless - he looks more like a Bob than a Robert. I think he's starting to disintegrate. Get it?

How are you? Fine thank you. See you later.

2009-06-10T20:16:00.000-07:00

So I saw Le Tigre perform once and oddly, this is exactly how it felt at the time.

A few thoughts:

1. Does she really say "More crackers please?" "Linoleum floor?"

2. My sister Lisa liked Jem. I remember those earrings. The bad guys (girls) were called the Misfits if I recall. Is it a problem that my favorite Misfits songs are the misogynist ones? How appropriate is it that those were the ones that sounded extra-Phil Spector-y?

3. I love the parasol at 1:29 and 1:52.

4. That song from this album, "Les and Ray." I love that song.

5. Also, if I knew how to play any musical instruments, I would play them like these ladies.

6. If you play the video in two separate tabs, and start them 1/2 second apart, the drums sound all death metal.

7. Altogether this is the best thing I have seen in recent memory. This is like the best thing since Election Night.

Via Feministing.

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Joe Lieberman still sucks.

2009-06-05T18:41:00.000-07:00

I liked Prez. B's comment on hijab in Cairo, but this article is worth reading anyway. Why? Because it points out things that Obama glaringly left out of his speech regarding women's rights, and because it pokes at Joe Lieberman, and we must not forget that he sucks.

This is also relevant to the Abu Ghraib photos question.

What kind of a country passes a law that has no purpose other than to empower its leader to suppress evidence of the torture it inflicted on people? Read the language of the bill; it doesn't even hide the fact that its only objective is to empower the President to conceal evidence of war crimes.

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"credible based on supporting evidence provided by other witnesses"

2009-06-04T19:26:00.000-07:00

I initially was down on Obama about not releasing the Abu Ghraib photos - it's easy for me to be down on Obama after all: he's the president of a shitty shitty government during a time when our moral failings as a nation are painfully obvious pretty much across the board, and so his hands are tied I guess, in terms of exercising his much lauded shiny shiny goodness. For example, not prosecuting criminals in a nation of laws simply because to do so would be a huge pain in the ass and might, um, spend too much "political capital" or whatever.

Or maybe I'm an asshole, and I digress either way.

So here is a relevant article in the NYT. It's by Philip Gourevitch, who wrote We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, which is a book about the Rwandan genocide, as necessary as reading gets. He's a smart and thoughtful guy. If Obama's position will inevitably require him to compromise his decency (and let us keep killing innocent Afghani people with drones, and lie about his position on gay marriage, and so on) then Gourevitch is a person whose decency is not compromised, and he agrees with Obama on this one. And he's seen the pictures in question, and he doesn't think they need to be released.

Via Cogitamus, here's an article that talks about the "potential street consequences," that "Baghdad will burn" if the photos are released. That means more dead Iraqis, which is a bad thing, so this is the most convincing argument I've heard in favor of Obama's reversal on the issue.

I'm still not sure I actually agree with Obama. I'm not in favor of painting all American soldiers as criminals - it's not productive, it's overly simplistic, and it's not true. However, I do bet that there are a ton of My Lai Massacres hiding behind our little disaster over there, things that would cause some needed soul-searching if we found out about them. Maybe it's a good time to be reminded of how badly we should hate ourselves for what we've visited on that country.

Case in point: the photos in question apparently show evidence of "every indecency," including rape committed by American soldiers against female and male prisoners:

"Allegations of rape and abuse were included in [Maj. Gen. Taguba's] 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph."

So I have to say: if the pictures have to be released to teach us - if nothing else - that rape is an inseparable part of war and so we shouldn't allow ourselves to be deceived into war, then I still disagree with Obama on this decision.

Sorry for the downer post, Teresa and Lauren and whatever third person visits this blog. Not in love with the world today. I should add that I basically still like Obama, just that now that he's Prez we occasionally need to take more of an adversarial position, just to be consistent and, well, correct.

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got my mind made up

2009-06-02T22:00:00.000-07:00

I'm applying for a job tonight, I've applied for so many jobs that I realize this is in itself my basic vocation in life these days. It's hard to figure out an artful but not redundant way to say that you shower every day and people like you and you know how to type several dozen words a minute, especially when this is all I would want to know about myself: "I like David Bowie and half a dozen Bad Brains songs, and pictures of 2Pac wearing awkward leather outfits. The older I get the more I hate the zoo. I am fanatical about maintaining proper grammar when confronted by obscure plurals such as 'data' and 'criteria'."

Based on those things, I would hire me. But no one else would. So this is why I will never be in charge of hiring anyone for anything, and more importantly for the present, why no one will hire me.

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In which a rock band makes fun of Bakersfield.

2009-06-01T00:32:00.000-07:00

Just got back from the LA Propagandhi show, which surprised me because it was actually a better show than the Pomona show. Usually big-city rock crowds are all self-aware scowling, but people seemed really excited to be at this show. I internalized the first wave of Propagandhi records without really sharing my enthusiasm with anybody, so it was cool to be around a bunch of people who were listening to the same things I was in 1996.

Highlight of the evening: "So, this isn't as daring to say here as it was in 1993 in Bakersfield, California, but we're a gay-positive band." I still love it when people talk bad about Bakersfield. I don't care if Danny is from there, it still makes me laugh.

Lowlight of the evening: the inevitable segue from Bakersfield-bashing into Proposition 8 - somehow it never occurred to me that people from other countries know about this and are thinking about it, and it made me more ashamed to be from post-Prop 8 California. The whole thing seemed like such a flip of the coin, I'm hopeful it will be overturned next year. Cross your fingers, I guess.

Other highlights: "Back to the Motor League," "Dear Coach's Corner," "Rio de San Atlanta, Manitoba," "A Speculative Fiction," and a rad version of "Fuck the Border" sung by a member of the opening band, the unfortunately named Bridge and Tunnel. (Despite the name, they are also pretty good. They play Hot Water Music-era hardcore-ish stuff, and the lead guitar player is cool because she plays like Eddie Van Halen.)

As a teenager this band was so intimidating, a mountain of radical politics I would never live up to. But what struck me seeing them Friday and tonight was that they are really just hicks with no pretensions. There's dignity to what they do because they do it as well as you'll ever seen it done, but they don't seem to think very much of themselves. They obviously love it - Todd Kowalksi in particular is a giddy, fist-pumping teenager up there - and you can tell they grew up doing it together. It left me feeling sort of sad that I've never really found something that I love doing like that.

Check them out when they come back in four years. They are still getting better after more than fifteen years, almost unheard of among the 90's punk bands that are still around.

Related: despite being from Bakersfield, Danny is also pro-gay. He sent out the following video today, which makes fun of Prop 8 and Pat Robertson, and looks oddly like a fake rap video if you watch it without the sound on.

One-half of this duo played at the same show as Jessica's new band, Old Lumps, yesterday. That show was also great, and I like Jessica's new band even though the name makes me uncomfortable, and this duck-video lady is obviously also talented and funny.

Three-rock show weekend gets a thumbs up.

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Abortion Doctor Killed at Church

2009-05-31T15:16:00.000-07:00

Today we hear that Dr. George Tiller, who survived a shooting (1993) and a bombing (1985), was shot dead at church in front of his wife.

It seems to me that there are two ways to think about this from a cultural perspective: one, that periodic waves of violence against abortion doctors reflect very little about how pro- or anti-choice our society is. Two, on the not-so-bright-side, that you have to consider the role of the Creeps with Airtime in raising the negative profile of Dr. Tiller and others to the point where they are targets of violence carried out by maniacs.

Maniacs of a less violent nature applaud Tiller's death all around the Internets. See, for example, "Why is the death of a satan worshipper tragic?"

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Where are these green shoots they are talking about?

2009-05-29T18:54:00.001-07:00

Check out this on the continuing depressing state of the world: Paul Krugman gives some other famous schmoe what-for, Bill Bradley sounds like he should take Geithner's job up from under him, and George Soros shows up because if you're that rich apparently you are de facto. A good read, but where are the ladies on the panel? Not sure if you've noticed, but Obama's been talking a lot about how he wants to encourage men to go into professions like nursing . . . from the looks of it we could maybe use some women in the profession of explaining why and how the world is falling apart too.

Really, Bill Bradley is quite impressive here.

Anyway, off to Pomona right now to see Propagandhi. I'm not even going to bother going into how excited I am because I've been wanting to see this show since I was thirteen years old. And I love going to Pomona, it scares me, and I haven't been there in several years. Big night all around. Again, I know it isn't fashionable to say this, but it's hard to think of a better punk band around these days.

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Souter intends to retire, sort of looks like he'd be good in a Western

2009-04-30T20:31:00.000-07:00

Justice Souter today announced that he's moving on to greener pastures, wants to "return to his native New Hampshire." This on the heels of the NH General Assembly legalizing gay marriage (possible veto pending) this morning.

Maybe it's not a coincidence, maybe he too has been waiting to gay marry?

Anyway, this is sort of ambivalent news I guess, since we're still a few retirements from changing the composition of the stupid stupid Supreme Court. However, I am really excited about the Republican circus that could result from this week's newly filibuster-proof Democratic majority. Assuming that Barack gets through his first choice, I think it's obvious that soon all marriages will be at least 65% gay by law.

Have you seen Souter recently, by the way? I'm used to this photo, which makes him look sort of sprightly, if a bit gray.
Well, apparently this photo is circa 1990, because today he looks like he has been partially reconstructed from pieces of an old baseball mitt.

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Awkard Internet transaction follow-up

2009-04-28T14:25:00.000-07:00

Being completely broke, I am cancelling my subscription to eMusic. Looking back, I guess I've never gotten much out of it anyway. So I'm downloading my last 40 songs, and I decided to download Ma Rainey's Black Bottom because it has "Shave 'Em Dry Blues" and I like that song.

Three days later, I get an email in my inbox: "How did you like Ma Rainey's Black Bottom?" Um, just fine, thanks?

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What's the 211?

2009-04-28T14:22:00.001-07:00

For my own odd reasons I am calling LA County's 211 service today . . . and the first thing you get on the menu is, "For information regarding Swine Flu, press . . . "

Is it just me, or is the constant stream of pandemics both completely boring and sort of suspect? I mean, I know people have died, but people die of all sorts of things all the time. Including communicable diseases. You know? I may be proven wrong: I felt the same way about natural disasters until the huge typhoon, followed by Hurricane K. Felt like a real creep back then.

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Arlen Specter Specter leaves Republican Party

2009-04-28T13:59:00.000-07:00

Arlen Specter just made the switch from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party. How does this read? The Republican Party has gone so far outside of the mainstream that their fogeys are starting to abandon ship? Or the Democrats, by virtue of the two party system and the Republican Party's insanity, is forced to cast such a wide net that it will never actually manage to come up with any sort of real political philosophy?

Also does this mean Specter will change his mind on the Employee Free Choice Act? Or will he still oppose it and use EFCA to demonstrate his continued independence from party politics?

Arlen Specter is really really old.

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No Way Miss USA

2009-04-25T09:14:00.000-07:00

So, in the year 2009, why is it even acceptable to parade young women around in an extra-fancy dog show on television? Right?

Anyway, in case anyone didn't see this, Miss California weighed in on the gay marriage debate during the Miss America pageant. As the various Misses always seem to do, Miss Golden State began her answer by indicating her own fundamental misunderstanding of the way the world works: she says that she is happy to live in a country where people can choose gay marriage or "opposite marriage." So either Miss California lives in Vermont or Miss California is technically quite stupid.

She follows up that gem with the assertion that, "In my country, in my family" marriage is between a man and a woman. No disrespect obviously, that's just the way we do things in my country/family.

Miss California is from San Diego. And this is what happens when you let people from San Diego out in public. I've said it for years, folks: Fresno-by-the-Sea.

One other thing: the person who asked the question was Perez Hilton. Props go to the guy for forcing a salient and important question onto the Annual Vapid Bullshit Parade, but honestly I had no idea he actually counted as a TV-worthy celebrity. I thought he was a mid-level Internet celebrity, somewhere between the Goatse guy (don't worry, no photo) and the Obama Girl. You know, way down in the lower echelons of fame, next to Malt-o-Meal in the cereal aisle.

So here's an important question about the United States circa 2009: how do we feel about Perez Hilton being a national pop culture figure? Keep in mind that this man is notable for only one reason - his website posts photos of drunk celebrities who have accidentally flashed their vaginas on the way out of the limo.

Apparently Perez Hilton later called Ms. Killer Cali a "bitch," and here she responds on MSNBC. The whole thing has the catty, gossipy feel of late high-school. Miss California is praying for Perez Hilton, Perez Hilton unapologizes to Miss California about calling her a bitch, only to up the ante by dropping a c-bomb on her startled ass. Then, Miss California is all like, "Well I have 4,000 friend requests on Facebook!" I am not joking. We later learn that an authority figure in the form of some higher-up at the Miss USA Ranch steps in and chastises Miss Blue Eyeshadow for being, you know, a prejudiced ass.

It bears mentioning that Miss Meth-Hub of Southern California looks like a freeze-dried weirdo throughout both clips.

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David Simon of The Wire on print journalism

2009-04-24T12:47:00.000-07:00

David Simon was on Bill Moyers for an entire hour last week. I was listening to the podcast of it this morning while doing some tidying up around the house. I've heard David Simon twice before on NPR, and these interviews convinced me to check out The Wire after everyone told me "it's the perfect show for you" for two years. The man is smart - I'm not sure how the popular culture shitfunnel turned out someone quite this good. Maybe the popularity of serialized TV on HBO in the last decade incrementally improved the format to the point where it could accomodate such an intellect? Just a guess, I know nothing of these things.

But check out what he had to say on Moyers about the fate of print journalism. I think his perspective as a former journalist really rounds out the conventional wisdom, particularly in noting the pre-Internet shortcomings of the major newspapers' approach.

And this is not all the Internet . . . the general tone in journalism right now is that of martyrology: "We were doing our job making the world safe for democracy and all of the sudden terra firma shifted, new technology, who knew that the Internet was going to overwhelm us?"

I would buy that if I wasn't in journalism for the years that immediately preceeded the Internet. Because I took the third buyout from the Baltimore Sun. I was about reporter number 80 or 90 who left - in 1995, long before the Internet had its impact . . . . Those buyouts happened when the Baltimore Sun was earning 37% profits. We now know this because it's in bankruptcy and the books are open. Thirty-seven percent profits, and all that R&D money that was supposed to go into making newspapers more essential, more viable, more able to explain the complexities of the world, it went to shareholders in the Tribune Company, or the LA Times-Mirror Company before that.

And ultimately when the Internet did hit, they had an inferior product that was not essential enough that they could charge online for it. I mean, the guys who were running newspapers for the last 20 or 30 years have to be singular in the manner in which they destroyed their own industry. I mean, it's even more profound than Detroit making Chevy Vegas and Pacers and Gremlins and believing that no self-respecting American would buy a Japanese car in 1973. It's analagous up to a point, but it's not analagous in that a Nissan is a pretty good car and a Toyota is a pretty good car. The Internet, while it's great for commentary and froth, doesn't do much first generation reporting at all . . . The economic model doesn’t sustain that kind of reporting.
And to lose to that . . . they had contempt for their own product, these people, I mean how do you give it away for free? Listen, for twenty years . . . the ads were the God. And then all of a sudden the ads weren’t there and the copy they’d had contempt for, they’d actually marginalized themselves by the time the Internet had its way.

Here's an interesting series on the future of urban journalism, from a urban problems blog called Where: "Notes on the Future of Urban Journalism," Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Anyway, Jessica and I are making our way through the entire The Wire series, courtesy of Netflix. We're in the first third of Season 2, so if anyone wants to coordinate watching it with us, head on down to the 730.

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If you're cast on thin ice you may as well dance.

2009-04-22T13:47:00.000-07:00

If any of the four people who still read this have any interest, I wanted to say that the new Propagandhi record, "Supporting Caste," completely destroys, as expected.

No one out there on the Internet will tell you, so I thought I'd mention it. Punk music too earnest to be even noted by the Pitchfork crowd, music made my metalheads who were metalheads long before it was ironically cool to wear a token Venom t-shirt around Williamsburg/Humboldt Park/Echo Park/(insert your favorite "urban frontier" here).

It's an extension of their last two records for sure, and at times it sounds like straight-up crossover thrash. Also, even though Todd Kowalski joined the band more than ten years ago, this is only their third record since then, so his contributions to the band are still becoming clear. Not totally sure, but I think his songs are the compassionate ones about refugees and immigrants and junkies and middle-school outcasts, and you sort of get the sense that this band would have ended years ago without his enthusiasm.

Also, they've added a second guitar. Second guitar!!!

And finally, they're playing Pomona and Los Angeles in late-May. Who's coming with me? I've been wanting to see this band for literally 14 years, and I don't think they've come anywhere near me, geographically, during that time.

The last thing I will say to this album's credit: my cats spend a lot of time with loud music of different types, and nothing really phases them at all. But when the big huge riffs come in on this record, it totally startles Rakim, who is sitting in the window next to me right now.

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I'm An Elvis Impersonator . . . Get Me Out Of Here

2009-04-15T13:44:00.000-07:00

So originally I was really excited when not one but two people told me that Rod Blago is going to have his own reality TV show. Then I found out that he's just playing some bit part in a bootleg Survivor ripoff called, "I'm a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here." The court has to give him permission to go to Costa Rica for filming. Failing some sort of confrontation with Flavor Flav, I don't see how this could be remotely compelling television, but either way Blago isn't going anywhere soon. If MC Serch shows up, I'm plugging in the HDTV conversion adapter box thingy.

Does anyone else find the "let's come up with a plan to battle the pirates" thing really lame? It just seems sort of like we got caught unawares and are pretending to be on the ball now. Hillary has a "four-point plan" three days after the attack is over? That seems a bit rushed, no? I mean, they've been slapping new names on the Bush/Paulsen bank bailout for three months now - we might as well just be going into the Treasury and setting new bills on fire at this point. But less than a week after some broke down Somali pirates take over an oceanliner, we have a comprehensive plan? Not a good look.

Seems like the original plan was pretty effective: wait until some pirates take a vessel, then kill them all and have warm and fuzzy press events since no Americans died. Doesn't make me very comfortable ethically but I have a sinking suspicion that this could be the end result of Hillary's plan too. Or am I totally off on this one?

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Immigrant Services Hostage Situation; Gay Marriage Everywhere But California

2009-04-03T14:11:00.000-07:00

Woke up today to this frightening news: Over a dozen dead in a hostage situation at an immigrant services center in NY state. They don't seem to know anything yet on the news, motive included, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is proof that The Ass Holes are dangerous.

In sunnier news: while we Californians will forever be shamed by our anti-gay marriage amendment and the state Supreme Court that looks set to uphold it, Iowa's Supreme Court today legalized gay marriage. They cited, you know, basic human rights: "The supreme court justices drew explicit parallels to civil rights struggles by blacks and women, holding that the state's ban on same-sex marriage was a violation of the equality promised in the Iowa constitution."

I assume this is the sort of thing a journalist would ask the President about at a press conference, no? Would love to hear him try again to recapitulate his totally incoherent stance on gay marriage.

Vermont also took steps yesterday, passing a bill that sent gay marriage to the Governor's desk. The Gov plans to veto it, and I don't know anything about the politics of the vote, so who knows if the General Assembly will override the veto.

Still, it calls into question California's inane system of amendment passing: whip everyone up into a frenzy of lies and confusion, then get us to pass something we probably don't even really agree with. The old-fashioned branches of representative government seem to have won out this week in VT and IA, Californian "direct democracy" just sort of an embarrassment again.

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Dear Lauren: I am sorry.

2009-04-01T13:31:00.001-07:00

I would like to officially apologize to Lauren Ahkiam for insulting her favorite Joni Mitchell songs. If it makes you feel any better, me and Eric listened to "A Case of You" yesterday afternoon and I like that song.

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Gitmo: "Soooo beautiful!"

2009-04-01T13:24:00.000-07:00

Apparently Miss Universe toured Guantanamo Bay last week and just did not have enough good things to say about the place. Creepiest quote: "We also met the Military dogs, and they did a very nice demonstration of their skills." Geez. Someone please kill us all.

Related: it has come to my attention recently that many people have not seen Miss Teen USA 2007's rambling discussion of why we Americans don't technically know anything about where anything is in the whole entire world. Please watch this. Special guest appearance by AC Slater.

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Stakes Is Weird

2009-03-31T11:42:00.000-07:00

Went to Fresno this past weekend to visit the family. Sold a million CD's I never listen to anymore, and armed with a princely sum in store credit, I went on an Elton John binge. I also bought the Dead Kennedys Frankenchrist album because I have not heard "MTV Get Off the Air" since I was a fifteen year-old of much smaller physical frame and much larger optical frames. Frankenchrist is still really good and the intro to "Soup Is Good Food" still sounds weird and great. And as every last person in this country loses his/her job and finds no safety net, the words are disappointingly relevant again. It's officially the '80's, but worse. We're dying again folks.

But on to more important things. Brother-in-law Matt stumbled across something strange at the used record store: an LFO record. You know, "I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch." The Lyte Funky Ones. Those guys.

Or rather, these guys:

They had another album, post-Abercrombie & Fitch. Three high-profile cameos. Sit down for this. The following all actually did verses on an LFO album.

De La Soul

Kelis, "the loud screaming chick with the hair."

And the ever-scary M.O.P. Huh? (This means they went into the studio with LFO right around they went into the studio with Pharaohe Monche for Internal Affairs. Simon says think about it.)

The weirdness crown obviously goes to the MOP appearance, but these are all sufficiently horrifying to ruin your day one by one. I remember this period of time well, from about 1997 to 2002, where everything in the entire world went insane. Does it surprise anyone that a country that could produce such an unsettling musical collaboration would be sending innocent men to Syria to be tortured indefinitely within a year?

P.S. I just put tags on this post, and it earns six: photos, hilarious, politics, celebrities, hippy, music. This is probably two or three more tags than any other post I've done, and I think only a musical-collaborative-nightmare of this scale could cast such a wide net.

P.P.S. I just reread this post and I think only Eric will be even remotely interested, and he's probably not aware that I'm still updating this here weblog. Apologies, but it's already done.

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Only welcome for our drink and smoke.

2009-03-27T12:22:00.000-07:00

Related to the last post.

Turns out that Neil Young plays harmonica on Joni Mitchell's Hejira, "Furry Sings the Blues." I find this strange. Why try to coax a perpetually messy and unpleasant circa-1976 Neil Young out of his puddle of vomit and down the hill from Topanga, just to play his shakey-at-best harmonica? Seems like it'd be easier to just learn the harmonica part yourself.

The lesson here is that 1960's and 1970's LA scene rock acts were essentially rappers: "Hey, let's find an excuse to get all our friends in the studio to phone-in some completely unnecessary cameos. Then we'll get high."

Tangent: Brother-in-law Matt and I went to the Hollywood Cemetary in Memphis last summer to find Furry Lewis' grave. We walked around in the mid-southern hot-ick for over an hour looking for the tombstone, while a man with a hole in his throat did general weed-whacking. He had no idea where Furry Lewis' grave was, but assured us that his brother would know. His brother was off fixing a punctured tractor-tire, but "should be back soon," which in the South means, "eventually, or not at all, or we'll see, or let's have a beer." The man sounded like he was speaking a foreign language, but he was in fact speaking English.

We gave up and got back in the car and turned on the air-conditioner. Worried that the unpaved and rocky cemetary roads would puncture my tires, we drove slow. For reasons I don't actually remember, we soon rolled to a stop . . . right in front of the final resting place of "Walter 'Furry' Lewis: Blues Man."

I think the story is that Furry Lewis hated Joni Mitchell's song and maybe even sued her. To be memorialized in song is to be treated like a dead man, of course, but presumably Furry's beef was less that and more the fact that "Furry Sings the Blues" is an incredibly boring Joni Mitchell song. Not being about California and all.

Here are some other gravestones from the Hollywood Cemetary. Cemetaries down there remind you that in some ways, the American South remains a developing nation even today.

And the prize for most depressing tombstone ever:

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Couldn't let go of L.A.

2009-03-27T11:50:00.000-07:00

This is the was the coolest person I met when I was at Lago Atitlan.

S/he was obviously completely uninterested in hanging out.

This dog wanted so badly to sleep with me the next night that I had to go find another bed.

This is Linda, she was my host-sister-bird for three weeks. She is a cotorro, not a parrot, but she does do some mimicry. I wanted to teach her Neil Young songs because I thought it would be funny, but soon I learned that she really only mimics the chickens. Which is boring.

Auri, the lady who ran the hotel across the street from the school in Xela, has an actual parrot. She took me and Joel, another student, to her house one day to meet the bird, and dogs, and two guinea pigs, and other things too.

It was a big hateful bird. It called me a whore and then laughed like a man.

Listening to Joni Mitchell this morning. I always like Joni Mitchell in theory but get bored with her very quickly. Really I only love her California songs where she talks about missing LA and stuff. But some of the other songs clicked this time, too.

Here's something though: did you know that Cheech and Chong did background vocals on Court and Spark? Picture Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Robbie Robertson, and Cheech and Chong all in the studio together making mediocre half-jazz. OMG. The song Cheech and Chong are on, "Twisted," is actually the worst song on the album. They do sort of faux-scat: "Man the chick is twisted . . . crazy boop shoobee hip flip city." That's actually Cheech's line. It's horrible, the stuff of nightmares.

Jose Feliciano sings too. Weird. I really like living in LA, but I would've preferred to live here thirty or forty years ago. Or twenty. Or whatever.

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"totally uncivilized"

2009-03-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

I don't know who made this flyer, but it was something of a constant companion while I was at the language school. In Xela, the school had at least three identical signs up around the building, and there were more at the mountain school. This is a reference the Iraqi journalist-hero who threw an oxford at a phoning-it-in-at-this-farcical-press-conference George Bush. "Another for Guatemala!"

It's funny the first time, less funny the second time, and eventually a lesson in the difference between "por" and "para," those tricky word-cousins that discourage all spanish-learners for, I imagine, their entire lives. Before this sign, I would have said "Otro para Guatemala," and whenever I'm trying to think of which of the two words to use, I think first of this sentence to see if it tells me anything.

Related: Here's a picture of the departing asshole moving to suburban Dallas in an airplane.

The dying LA Times brought news this week that prosecutors in the Phil Spector trial closed their arguments by calling Spector a "demonic maniac." I would love to see this phrase enter into everyday use for people like Bush, or that crazy Sheriff from Arizona, or, yes, I guess Spector too. "Demonic maniac" is a near-perfect phrase, both descriptive and fun to say. Who is with me?

Listening to Mecca Normal this morning. Is it acceptable to consider the following a song-lyric, let alone a fitting album-closer? "It's a truly uncivilized nation that treats medical care as a commodity to be sold; take it, it's yours." If so, I guess that is one part of punk's legacy, which is neat neat neat.

Clearly I'm all over the place today. I'm putting photos from my trip on Flickr over the next couple weeks, so I'll probably still post some to this here weblog with my half-formed thoughts about them.

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18th Street Gang, Los Angeles, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala

2009-03-21T11:27:00.000-07:00

No, really, there's a Los Angeles in Guatemala too.

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"Everyone there is a terrorist."

2009-03-21T11:17:00.001-07:00

Haaretz started publishing testimonials from IDF soldiers involved in the Gaza attack last month. They say they will be publishing accounts for the next few days. It's worth reading.

The squad leader said: "You do not get the impression from the officers that there is any logic to it, but they won't say anything. To write 'death to the Arabs' on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing: To understand how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics, really. It's what I'll remember the most."

You can catch some of it in the LA Times today also.

At first the specified action was to go into a house . . . with an armored personnel carrier . . . and start shooting inside. . . . I call this murder. . . . We were supposed to go up floor by floor, and any person we identified, we were supposed to shoot. I initially asked myself, "Where is the logic?"

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Help me make a new turntable housing?

2009-03-20T10:08:00.001-07:00

Once I get an income rolling in again, I think I'm going to make a new housing/plinth for my old record-changer turntable. (I also need to fix the return on it, but whatever.) Anybody out there secretly work with wood and want to help me? We get to take a field trip to a gunshop in the San Gabriel Valley to buy lead shot.

"There may be a kennel somewhere, or the dogs may be coyotes."

2009-03-19T15:52:00.000-07:00

Back in LA, still dreaming Spanish lessons. Doing some Southern California reading - the first story in Joan Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem is called "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream." In it she has this to say about San Bernardino County: "This is the California where it is possible to live and die without ever eating an artichoke, without ever meeting a Catholic or a Jew."

Elsewhere, "It is the trail of an intention gone haywire."

While nowadays you can't walk too far over there without stumbing over a Catholic of some sort, I think the latter part is still such a perfect and accurate description.

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If You Ain't Got the Do-Re-Mi

2009-03-12T08:33:00.000-07:00

I'm flying into LAX tonight from Guatemala City.

I return speaking obnoxious Spanglish, having dreamed about the subjunctive tense three nights in a row. Addicted to mineral water in returnable glass bottles, more for the ritual than anything. Magically fifteen pounds lighter and according to one source, a little bit taller. Basically jobless. Missing my cats. Wanting to listen to hear the Minutemen Paranoid Time EP, excited to revisit that old Juvenile album with his huge single, Depeche Mode for some reason. Accustomed, once again, to upwards of eight cups of coffee a day. Perfect.

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"Rara y apestosa."

2009-03-07T13:34:00.000-08:00

Here's what I've been up to the last week and a half or so.

Caught a production of the Vagina Monologues in teeny-tiny-town-Colomba . . . second and final presentation today in Xela. More on that later. It was really cool and I'm looking forward to it tonight.

A hard rain a-fell.

I went back to the mountain school for my last week here, since I like it so much that I want to die there. We all sang on the porch. This is "Lover Lover Lover" by Leonard Cohen, which nobody but me was really into at first, but this guy with the guitar, Kavour, made it singable. Kavour dresses like a Flying Burrito Brother and he lives in Lake Tahoe and he's just about as cool of a person as you'd want to meet.

Here we are during his 45 minute long ghost story with no point.

My spanish is at the point where there's not really much more grammar for me to learn, and it's more of a question of practice. I have shoved the four subjunctive tenses into the little remaining room left inside my head, and as a result, I have actually started having trouble with tenses I've known well for ten years. I consider this progress.

I'll be back in LA on Friday.

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Part 2: Pescador de Hombres, San Andres Xecul

2009-02-20T14:49:00.000-08:00

On the way back down the hill from the chapel, we caught San Simon. San Simon is not a saint in the Catholic sense . . . but people are very enthused. I believe his more famous shrine is in a nearby town called Zunil, and another version named Maximon at Lago Atitlan.

Best I can understand from what people have told me, San Simon was an English doctor a few hundred years ago who helped a lot of people out. So for this, he is now venerated as something of a Catholic saint/Mayan deity. I forget the specific Mayan deity, and again, he's not an actual Catholic saint, but in San Andres the Virgin of Guadalupe appears to be quite comfortable up on the wall next to him. People bring candles . . . different colors for different things. I was told that red is love, black is for some variety of ill wishes, and purple is for prostitutes who want more work. Green and yellow were the most popular candles but no one said what they were for.

There were actually two San Simons in the same room at the spot in San Andres. This might sound weird until you consider how many crucifixes you'll see in any given Catholic church, or how many Steely Dan records I own. (All of them, thanks.)

Here he is:

Here's the more traditional and more important figure of San Simon. People bring him cigarettes and aguardiente and whisky. He has a permanent cigarette holder on a chain around his neck, so you can give him a lit cigarette if you like, and you can actually pour the whisky right down his throat as well.

Anyway, it feels dirty to take pictures of and make jokes about something that people really believe in, so I hope none of this lightheartedness comes of as disrespect. It's just that it seemed sort of surreal to me. When we got there, there was a family there. Dad/granddad was bringing each kid up to San Simon one at a time and twirling a cane around the kid's head several times. I really wanted to know what the significance of it all was, and I thought about asking. But then I thought maybe it would've been disrespectful to force someone to respond to my robotic "how's my subjunctive coming along" childspeak at that moment.

San Simon moves to a new house every year. At first I thought this made a lot of sense from a social welfare standpoint: at 5Q per visitor for 365 days, San Simon rakes it in for whichever family hosts him. If everyone in town got San Simon once in a lifetime, it could be a big help and sort of an economic bedrock of the local community. But ours is not that kind of world, and it turns out San Simon is basically owned by a group of rich people, and if you pay them enough money they will let you keep him around for a year.

There's nothing much to say about the actual church except that it's great. It's a pretty run-of-the-mill Catholic church for the most part, except that about 50 years ago someone decided it would be a good idea to coat it in primary colors. It's repainted every three years.

Again with the mix of religious tradtions: the jaguar is a Mayan deity (someone told me the sun deity), and there are jaguars hanging out near the cross at the top.

Inside they have really gone all out with neon, including Christmas lights on the various saints' halos. The neon banner above Jesus reminds me of the one at St. Sabina's in Chicago.

More Leonard Cohen: Check out this old PBS video of him and Judy Collins singing "Suzanne". There's also a good version of them doing "That's No Way to Say Goodbye," but I like "Suzanne" better because Judy Collins mispronounces the word "drowning" at the 1:50 mark. Supposedly there's a performance of "Famous Blue Raincoat" as well, but I can't find it. Incidentally, this non-sequitir YouTube link is actually relevant to the post, thanks, because Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water.

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Part 1: Pescador de Hombres, San Andres Xecul

2009-02-20T14:20:00.000-08:00

Went yesterday to San Andres Xecul, which is maybe 30 minutes from Xela, and famous for its colorful church. "Famous for its colorful church" is maybe not a phrase that promises to impress, but I would have to say that this church had me absolutely floored by virtue of its yellowness. This is one of my favorite things I have ever seen in my life. This is not an exaggeration. This is a shaping up to be a very direct blog post.

We first climbed the hill up to an equally colorful but apparently less-of-a-big-deal chapel. It sits next to a small piece of land with three crosses, Calvary-style, the place constantly on fire for reasons having to do with worship: here's a kind of syncretism going on here, Catholic rituals mixing with Mayan. I took some shots and then felt voyeuristic and obnoxious when I realized what was going on. Such is life, such is my every day here.

The cross on the left gets sort of lost in this shot, but it's there in real life.

I almost like the chapel better than the church, for the ghosts dancing underneath the pineapples up top.

I loved the view of the church from the top.

For the record, I just listened to a Bob Dylan version of "Hallelujah" and it sucked. Not a song to be performed by someone who's arguably been phoning everthing in since his late-twenties.

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Give Us Your Best Sid Vicious

2009-02-20T14:08:00.000-08:00

In which Cristian looks like a character from Mike Tyson's Punchout, and Steven looks eerily, embarrassingly like Bam Bam Bigelow.

Jessica and Cristian are from Germany, and they are so nice that they are perhaps reason enough to one day visit that country. Though I'd also like to see Berlin at some point in my life.

Later on in this evening I looked down only to find that I was bleeding.

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A Charlie Horse, Of Course

2009-02-20T14:00:00.000-08:00

Unrelated: Pulled up YouTube to satiate a minor Leonard Cohen fixation . . . does anyone have strong feelings one way or the other about Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah?"

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"Negocios as Usual"

2009-02-20T13:49:00.000-08:00

Shouts go out to Eric for the post-title idea. This is our EPMD shot, and given the apparent size of my face I fear that I may have to be the Eric to his Parrish. Who's booty?

Anyway, Eric rolled through town like ball lightning with his very cool friends Kat and Nick, charmed everyone with his salsa-dancing abilities and general social uterus-ness, and by morning was Copan-bound, via Mazatenango.

Eric, please tell me how long the ride to Mazate was, because I'm supposed to go visit someone there before I leave. Hello to Nick and Kat.

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Can't Stop Won't Stop Sellin' Mad Izm

2009-02-19T15:14:00.000-08:00

Good to see that Junior Senator Burris is getting the complete cold shoulder from everyone now that it appears that he perjured himself in Blago's impeachment proceedings. However, in entertainment value this is a far cry from the rad stuff His Royal Bardness Blago was pulling last month. I'm hoping that he gets a TV show in some weird twist of pop-culture weirdness.

In the meantime, is it a sign of creepy hokeyness that I found this funny?

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Two random music thoughts from Guatemala, followed by a question and a Manu Chao reference.

2009-02-19T12:26:00.000-08:00

The other day Eric and his fine amig -o and -a swung through Xela, from El Salvador, on the way to Panama (???). We had a fine time at a gringo-fied spot near Parque Central, watching karaoke and awaiting our never-to-be-had opportunity to absolutely slay "Back in the USSR" for the good people of Xela. Pictures to be posted. On our way out the door, after karaoke was over, we heard two tracks from Portishead's Dummy.

I would just like to go on record as saying that I really really like that record, and that I will be burning the more recent record from Jessica when I get home. Incidentally, I heard the same two tracks ("Biscuit," and I forget the name of the other) before a panel discussion about the recent insanity in Gaza, and while I'm losing any thread of a coherent thought at this point in this post, I will just say again that that was a really good album.

Then I grabbed a hot chocolate with a couple friends Tuesday night, and heard Black Sabbath's "Iron Man," which is a song I dismissed when I was in high school as music for motocross fans. Ten years removed from that oppressive culture (not of high school, but rather of motocross fans), I have to say that the doomy, bendy guitar part at the beginning sounds really cool. (It also sounds like you are about to die.)

We also caught a live version of Descendents' "I'm Not a Loser," and even though I think it was Sublime performing it, I was still into it. Which reminds me: Anyone out there hear the Descendents album that came out last year, and if so, was it good?

Clearly I'm missing some of the music that sits on my shelves, even though I really have come to enjoy a lot of the music I hear here as well.

Yesterday at the end of the Spanish lesson, Saul was like, "Do you like music, what kind of music do you like?" I often avoid answering this question in the U.S., and a person sounds like even more of a goon answering it in a language they are not good at using. And on top of that, the endless genre-slicing and splicing that goes on these days poses a problem: how to reassemble all the feigned-obscurity into a reasonably meaningful response to a fair and simple question? I gave up at "varios tipos."

Saul's response was simple: "Do you like Manu Chao?" Manu Chao sort of makes me depressed for whatever reasons, but his songs also account for something like 25% of the spanish I knew before I got to Guatemala, so: "Of course." Saul pulled out a guitar and gave me a lyric sheet and made me sing "Clandestino" with him. "Can you play the guitar?" No. "Then we will have a lesson tomorrow." Thanks, Saul.

Too much pointless text requires a few pointless photos:

Saw some rad stuff today and am excited to share colorful photos of a colorful church in a colorful place.

Miranda Rights Too?

2009-02-19T08:39:00.000-08:00

Via Jessica, found out the North Dakota House passed a bill to give fertilized eggs the same rights as people. Presumably this means that they still don't have the right to health care . . . which is maybe a kind of loophole? I guess we'll leave that to the legal minds. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this the Roe v. Wade powderkeg that the antichoice folks have been trying to pass for three years?

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Our Lady of the Leaking Overpass, Chicago, 2006

2009-02-17T15:08:00.000-08:00

Chicago folks, remember when the Blessed Mother stopped by the Kennedy Expressway?

Shouts go out to Gil, caught taking a photo in this very photo. Meta.

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Random LA Shot, 2006

2009-02-17T15:05:00.000-08:00

Sitting around on Important Business (waiting to pay the school) and ran across this. Shortly after I moved to LA I decided I liked it because I kept seeing things like this:

~~Sorry about image size and quality.~~ Thanks to Danny for the heads up on changing photo size.

Oddly Romantic Non-Sequitir Spanish Lesson

2009-02-17T14:00:00.000-08:00

Today I was with my teacher Saul and I heard this song that I recognized floating in from from the other room. I asked why I recognized the song and we went into the other room to listen. Saul immediately recognized the song and said with a laugh, "Perhaps you were in love with a woman."

????

Not sure what that meant but it did not qualify as a reason to remember the song. I recognized the song because it was Vicente Fernandez.

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Dinner Hour, Fatima

2009-02-16T13:46:00.000-08:00

This is Juanito. Juanito is the youngest son in the family that fed me for a week at the mountain school that I went to in late-January. Juanito has a six-month old niece who sometimes sends him into fits of jealousy, but otherwise he is always charmed and always wants to know everyone's name, even though he never remembers. "Como te llama, vos?"

This kid on the left in the green shirt: I don't know his name but I'm partial to him, in part because all the other kids his age make fun of him and try to force him out of the pictures, and he weathers it with a certain quiet dignity. On this particular day he and his friend/brother asked me to take their photo, and when I agreed they very quickly moved together and adjusted for the shot. Check out the subtle pinky hand-hold. I love that the little kid in the red shirt, all of three or four years old, looks like an old man. He's dressed for retirement.

The girl on the left asked for a photo, and the girl on the right was certain that she was out of the frame. Check out lefty's identical pose in every photo.

Juanito is everywhere you turn in Fatima.

Not sure who this other kid is.

Kevin is Juanito's older brother, and he showed up with what appears to be a box of cigarettes, wanting to be in all the photos.

More than anything, Kevin wanted to be in his own photo.

These kids wanted bike shots.

Once again they didn't want to let dignified pinky kid (orange shirt) in the photo.

When he finally got in, he also got bunny ears.

One of the kids wanted to take a photo, and when he did he accidentally cut off dignified orange shirt pinky kid's head.

This was a nice sunset in real life, Santo Domingo

2009-02-15T12:40:00.000-08:00

All of these Santo Domingo photos are from two or three weeks ago. Santo Domingo is a tiny place east of Xela, next to a bigger tiny place called Colomba.

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Non-Violent Bottle Opener, Santo Domingo

2009-02-15T12:35:00.000-08:00

I can't say enough good things about this bottle opener. More fitting still that he stands in front of a liter of Brahva - I'm told that in Brazil this beer goes by the name Brahma. What.

Chinta, Santo Domingo

2009-02-14T09:25:00.000-08:00

This cat sat in my lap every day while I ate.

In the wrong hands, the saxophone is an instrument of pure evil.

2009-02-13T10:23:00.000-08:00

For some reasn I really loved this shirt. "Genesis," and a big gas pump. This shirt is a metaphor. Not sure what for.

Related to this, translated Phil Collins songs are huge here, sometimes with a techno beat, sometimes with extra saxophone solos. Hurl hurl hurl.

Also, I went to a place the other night to study with a friend, and there was a band that played what I recognized to be Coldplay songs, including saxophone lead-ins and solos.

Saxophoned Coldplay songs sound a lot like Disintegration-era Cure, and at some point before I realized what it was, I got sort of excited because I thought it was a weird version of "Plainsong."

It was not.

I'm working on the subjunctive this week.

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This is a fruit that exists in Guatemala.

2009-02-13T10:16:00.000-08:00

It's called Sapote, and it looks really pretty on a green plate. I've heard it grows in some parts of Florida too - anyone know? It looks like a leathery potato on the outside, it's the texture of an avocado inside, it tastes like sweet potato pie, and it has a big beautiful seed that looks like a fossil of some sort.

The whole experience of eating this is sort of alarming on the first go-around, because it sort of doesn't make sense. I'm not a huge fan actually, due to the avocado-factor, but I'm bringing seeds home and I'm going to make a very humid environment for them in old soda bottles, and then I am going to try my best to grow a tree.

Jessica, if they still make Shasta bottles in the 3 liter with a wide-mouth, please get to drinking some so they're ready when I get back to LA.

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Two-Volcano Sunrise

2009-02-13T09:56:00.000-08:00

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Heaven Is A Place Where Nothing Ever Happens

2009-02-13T09:31:00.001-08:00

I am going to go back to PLQ's Escuela de la Montana in a week. This is why:

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Post-Apocalyptic Guatemala Scenario

2009-02-13T09:21:00.000-08:00

Went out a couple weeks ago to Nuevo Amanecer, which is a community of returned refugees who lived in Chiapas until the peace accords here were signed in 1996. It was an interesting trip: got to see rubber trees being bled for rubber, saw a honey-making business. Also toured a tortilleria where I had a revelation about machine-made tortillas. The reason that they are thin, limp, dry cardboard compared to handmade tortillas is the tortilla-making machine. The whole apparatus is a series of conveyors, and one conveyor is also a heating element. If the tortillas are paper thing, the machine can cook them in literally two seconds. And when they're still warm, they are really really good.

Anyway, on the way up we headed past the trash dump, which is maybe informal, maybe formal, not sure. All I know is that you can smell it coming, and it's a creepy half mile stretch of burning plastic and rusty mattress springs. Everything's on fire, to dispose of the burnable stuff, and the poorest people in the area pick through the rest for glass and other things of marginal value. Many of them are kids, and at any given time there seems to be maybe 20 people picking through it, all day.

And dozens of vultures circle, and it makes you feel bad about life.

I realize there are no people in the pictures, but really, I'm not exaggerating. It's just that it's incredibly tacky to take pictures of children picking through garbage.

Thanks again to Gil

2009-02-13T09:05:00.001-08:00

You guys have to check this out:

THIS IS MY NEW INDENTING HTML. THANKS A MINT, GIL. HI BIANCA.

I'm really stepping up my blogger game now.

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Pete Seeger and Blake from Jawbreaker, Santo Domingo

2009-02-13T08:51:00.000-08:00

In other Pete Seeger news, via my father: "Nearly 50 years after the San Diego school district demanded that Pete Seeger sign an anti-Communism oath before performing in a high school auditorium, the school board has apologized to Mr. Seeger, The Associated Press reported."

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Question for LA People, Plus a Photo of a Tablecloth

2009-02-12T10:58:00.000-08:00

Does anyone in the LA area know of any group that is trying to get left-liberal people elected to obscure regional offices, like water boards and crap like that? I know these groups exist in some places, like suburban Chicago, so I'm thinking that it should probably be around LA somewhere. Any thoughts?

Extra points if I don't have to go to Santa Monica or interact with people from Santa Monica.

(Harsh joke, only half true.)

Here's a photo to show my gratitude:

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Rad Cemetary, Los Angeles (not that Los Angeles)

2009-02-12T10:01:00.000-08:00

My New Best Friend, Santo Domingo

2009-02-12T09:59:00.000-08:00

This summer Jesus mentioned to me that pineapple is way better in Mexico, and well, it's also way better in Guatemala.

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These People Fed Me in Santo Domingo

2009-02-12T09:52:00.000-08:00

Dog Party, Santo Domingo

2009-02-10T14:41:00.000-08:00

My Battered Ego, Fatima

2009-02-10T11:08:00.000-08:00

El Gato Negro, Zona 1, Xelaju

2009-02-10T11:06:00.000-08:00

I think this is the cat from Master and Margarita.
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Otto Perez Molina, Fascist, Santa Cruz la Laguna

2009-02-10T11:03:00.000-08:00

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Nirvana Rock Cafe, San Pedro la Laguna

2009-02-10T11:01:00.000-08:00

This was always my favorite Nirvana logo, or maybe it was the only one and I just really liked it, but either way I was really excited to stumble across the Nirvana Rock-Cafe.

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18th Street Gang, Minerva Terminal, Xelaju

2009-02-10T10:59:00.000-08:00

I've also seen something that looks like Vicelords graffiti, but I think that might be a stretch, though there are many Guatemalan folks living around Chicago and I'm sure there's some cultural exchange going on.

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Thanks Gil.

2009-02-09T08:21:00.000-08:00

< /blockquote >
Here is a long quotation here is a long quotation here is a long quotation here is a long quotation here is a long quotation HERE IS MY NEW INDENTING HTML here is a long quotation here is a long quotation here is a long quotation. < /blockquote >

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"Each Brooks Brothers suit costs about $1,000."

2009-02-09T07:55:00.000-08:00

Did anybody else see this article in the NYT, and does anyone else find it extremely aggravating?

You Try to Live on 500K in This Town

"The total costs here, which do not include a lot of things, like kennels for the dog when the family is away, summer camp, spas and other grooming for the human members of the family, donations to charity, and frozen hot chocolates at Serendipity, are $790,750, which would require about a $1.6-million salary to compensate for taxes. Give or take a few score thousand of dollars."

I understand it's jokey, but one of the students here pointed out that it displays an insider's wink/nod that really does beg sympathy. So . . . now we are to pity the people who ran the world economy into the ground because Obama says they have to trade their 3/4 of a million dollar lifestyle for a 1/2 million dollar lifestyle? Most of the people I meet these days still work for under $12 per hour.

UNRELATED: Anyone out there know a simple HTML trick for indenting lines in Blogger?

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Back in Xela

2009-02-09T07:11:00.000-08:00

Not posting until I can get ahold of my photos, but I thought I'd post something because I think my mom thinks I died. Hi Mom.

Krugman's latest on the stimulus. Not looking pretty.

"Mr. Obama’s postpartisan yearnings may also explain why he didn’t do something crucially important: speak forcefully about how government spending can help support the economy. Instead, he let conservatives define the debate, waiting until late last week before finally saying what needed to be said — that increasing spending is the whole point of the plan."

The basic point of the article is that Obama went too soft, which allowed Senate Republicans to take ahold of the bill and remove the immediately effective measures, replacing them with permanent tax cuts that pass money right back up to the top. I smell the rotten '90's coming back around.

During the campaign a lot of far-lefty doom/gloom types were recasting the tired doom/gloom mantra that X Democratic candidate is "just a Republican in disguise." What Krugman seems to be saying instead is that Obama has been chilling in the Dem doghouse for far too long, where he has maybe learned to be completely ineffective at taking control of a debate?

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Molly is the singer in a band.

2009-02-01T12:13:00.000-08:00

The majority of folks here are Catholic, and that's especially true of the rural areas like Fatima, where I'm staying right now. However, being less centralized and maybe a bit more varied in personal style, the Evangelicals have far more churches. Within a few hundred yards of the school, there are three Evangelical churches for one much larger Catholic Church.

And they are enthusiastic. Every couple of days we can hear the same song being played for hours, mostly just the bass line, coming from the Evangelical church across a small river. I gather that much of this time is practice time, but by about mid-evening it's quite clear that there is a worship service going on, a rather tortured one. We'll keep hearing this song for another two or three hours, without end . . . a chorus with no verses, notes abandoned at the highest part, over and over again, and it just floats across the valley to where we study after dinner. Everything drops away eventually except the woman's voice, at which point it's quite clear that she's no longer singing, but actually sobbing into the microphone. This lasts for about half an hour, and then the preacher takes over from there, and then it's over.

And here's the thing: it's the bass line from "Obladi, Oblada," and we all hum it to ourselves when it's over, without even thinking about it. No joke. "Obladi, Oblada," of course, is Exhibit A in the case against Paul as a force for unbridled evil in this world. The fact that his voice alone makes some of the Beatles' finer moments does not change this.

Also, thanks to Christy for sending along these great shots of IDOT removing Governor Jogging Pants' name from the tollway. I wish they would do the same to Daley's name at the airport, though this is one area where Fitzgerald went home with his tail between his legs.

And I got word today from Jessica that the Clif bars she bought me before I left have been recalled, since Chocolate Peanut Butter Salmonella is, apparently, a dangerous flavor. I've been sneaking a Clif Bar every week since I got here, especially when I was in Guatemala City and the hotel would not allow me to leave to get dinner. And so, maybe I will have salmonella, American salmonella in a country where all the gringos talk about how scared we are to brush our teeth for fear of amoebas. (Tooth-brushing with tap water actually appears to be quite safe, as I have been doing this for a month with no trouble, on the theory that an amoeba is actually more convenient than having to go find agua pura every time I feel the need to brush my teeth. However, this is not to understate the public health crisis that the water system here represents, as anyone can tell you that drinking untreated water is the number one cause of death among kids in the rural areas here.)

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Ain't Nothin' Nice

2009-02-01T11:52:00.001-08:00

I haven't heard so much snap music since the mid-aughties. It sounds weird here just like, let's be honest, it sounds a little weird in the U.S. The Internet cafe was just playing some Ying Yang Twins-sounding song with a Too Short guest-spot unceremoniously crammed into the last 45 seconds, and it sounded great. Number two Guatemalan rap-music moment right behind the time I heard "Rough Riders Anthem" at a club, which immediately brought me back to a time (ten years ago) when all I did was hang out in the back of Joe Pulido's truck, and DMX had apparently yet to go completely insane. ("What the fuck is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?")

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Blago vs. Whoopi

2009-01-28T12:31:00.000-08:00

Ken informs me via email that Governor Testicular Virility was on The View recently. I won't be able to check it out since the reputed-to-be-fast satellite is giving us 1996-ish webbing speeds in Colomba today, but if anyone who reads this happens to have seen it, please do tell. Who would ever have dreamed of such a thing back when Ghost was the Titanic of 1980-whatever?

Big thanks to Mike Sweitzer-Beckman for sending me the above picture, the best picture to ever grace the occasionally-esteemed pages of the Chicago Tribune.

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Turns out there are no saints.

2009-01-28T11:57:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty much completely out of the loop for the next week and a half because I am at the school's mountain location just outside of a small town called Colomba. Being here is a sad reminder to me that back in my real life, I never actually relax. Jessica: when I get back we have to talk to Robyn about setting up hammocks.

Spent the last half of last week not actually attending school because there wasn't room for me in Xela and I gave my mountain spot away. This is why I went to the lake. Lago Atitlan is beautiful, but here's a secret: just as San Pedro is way more horrible than people tell you, Panajachel didn't seem nearly as bad as people say during the brief time that I waited for a bus there. Ended up getting to Xela via a transfer in Los Encuentros, which I got to via transfer in Solola. I've heard San Marcos is "creepy," but since I saw a bunch of hippies juggling at the boat launch, I didn't stop there to find out. Santa Cruz is very nice, and there is a very cool little women's co-op restaurant up in the actual town where the actual people live.

I think I mentioned that I kayaked out on the lake from San Pedro. Kayaking is a lot of work, and I don't think I ever realized that it's actually a lot slower than walking. It was sort of a bad weather day, so I was literally the only person on the lake, and the water was warmer than the air, and it was wonderful. I went swimming for the first time in forever when I was there. Two days ago after class I took the first nap I can remember in months. I'm never coming home.

I took a pickup truck from my bus to San Pedro last week. The state of California robbed me of my sovereign right to ride in the back of pickup trucks sometime in the 1980's, and now I am taking every opportunity to right this wrong. Riding in the back of a pickup truck is the finest method of transportation in this or probably any country. Our truck driver from the mountain school into Colomba is a drug dealer here. I think it is so bizarre that I left Los Angeles only to be trucked around the mountains in an F150 by a member of the 18th Street Gang.

Rick James is playing in the Internet cafe.

In other news, I'm reading a book called Bitter Fruit about the American-staged coup that plunged this country into a 40 year war and genocide and what have you. If you have interest you should check it out, not because the story is surprising but because it's interesting to find out just how horrid the Dulles brothers were. I was distressed to find out that the much-lauded, super awesome Senator Bob LaFollette was involved in convincing Eisenhower to give the ok to the coup. It's weird because as far as I know, the Progressive Party really was progressive. I don't know why I would be so bothered since he died before I was born, but I am bothered.

In other news, the mountain school has a huge, heavy "non violent bottle opener" in the shape of Gandhi's face. It's the best thing I've seen ever.

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Blago Reportedly Considering Hiring Hitler's Barber

2009-01-24T16:48:00.000-08:00

Okay, so we already know Governor Blagtastrophe has retained R. Kelly's lawyers, raising questions as to whether Fitzgerald caught Blagojevich on tape while peeing on a 14 year old girl. Now he has hired Drew Peterson's PR firm.

For those of you who don't recall this story or never heard it, Drew Peterson is your average suburban Chicago cop. "Average" in a region where suburban cops randomly pull over teenagers in love and force them at gunpoint to strip naked in a ditch. Carrying on the proud tradition, Drew Peterson killed two of his wives during the last few years. Unable to quite explain his actions, Peterson got Publicity Agency to represent him to the media. (Then he promptly landed himself a new fiance, which is weird and creepy.)

And now Blagojevich has hired the same company, probably because he wants the opportunity to recite Walt Whitman to the nation on Larry King Live, thus launching his 2009 campaign for President of the United States.

Thanks to Persky for the heads up, and to everyone who emails me Blagonews or indulges my interest in this greatest of soap operas.

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I'm very sorry that I used the F word when I tried to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat to Jesse Jackson Jr.

2009-01-23T10:54:00.000-08:00

Rishi sent along this summary of a recent interview with The Poet Laureate of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich.

I really hope this guy stays in the news for awhile longer, or forever. You couldn't write this stuff.

Appears as well that Pat Quinn is actually a deft hand in the realpolitik game. According to Governor Coif, "This is about raising taxes. Pat Quinn has cut a deal with Democratic leaders....It's all about getting rid of me to raise taxes on people."

And to the end, you get the sense that Blagojevich believes this nonsense even though he most certainly needed some help in coming up with it.

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"Ultimo dia del monstruoso"

2009-01-21T11:32:00.001-08:00

The folks that run the school (and the folks that drive the taxis, and work in the restaurants, and walk through the park) have all been counting down the final Bush days for the last two weeks.

Went last night with fellow student Emily for a celebratory dinner, along with her teacher, her host family, and their son's friend. Wonderful people. The father, Saul, (who is also a teacher) gave a nice toast about how the rest of the world is also happy "to see Obama realize the dream of Martin Luther King."

Later on I asked if Guatemalans really felt any sort of hope about Obama, and they all assured me that people are really hopeful and excited. I asked if they had reservations, because I am a skeptic and I never trust the things people tell me. Saul said, of course. We are hopeful about Obama but we know this economic system is a problem.

Anyway, related, something promising about trade policy by Laura Carlsen of Mexico City's Americas Program. I know nothing about her or her organization, but it was an interesting read about the likelihood of a NAFTA renegotiation under Obama. Carlsen recognizes that we're all guessing at this point, but notes right away that Obama recently told President Calderon that we need to revise labor and environmental standards in the agreement. I thought this part was super interesting:

The industrial policy that Obama outlined clashes ideologically and legally with NAFTA and other free trade agreements. It hasn't been lost on the rest of the world that the U.S. government is adopting measures such as massive subsidies and bailouts that it has sought to deny developing countries under free-trade rules. Robert Kuttner at The American Prospect refers to this as "the sin of committing industrial policy" and warns that it's only a matter of time before a trade partner registers a suit against Obama's anti-crisis measures. This would be an excellent opportunity to expose the hypocrisy of our trade policies and chart a new course.

Anyway, a Canadian student here tells me that Canadian companies have been suing the US for years over timber duties illegal under NAFTA, so maybe that snippet is not that interesting after all. But it's worth a read if you've got a few minutes.

I think we can all agree . . .

2009-01-20T08:06:00.000-08:00

. . . that each of the last eight years was even shittier than the one before it. Whoever Obama ends up being, I'm looking forward to watching the entire world ridicule the outgoing creep for at least a good twenty years.

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Copavic Glass Factory

2009-01-19T16:25:00.000-08:00

One thing I've learned on this trip is that I have a knack for taking fuzzy and generally bad photos. I think the main reason is that I'm always rushing i, since I find the act of taking a photo sort of embarrassing and shameful for some reason. I don't get it, it just is. Regardless, this trip to the glass factory was really interesting.

At a block party beggin' for drama.

2009-01-19T14:59:00.000-08:00

Jomil and Corin at a goodbye party for two people who by all appearances never actually said goodbye. These two spent forty-five minutes dancing with these small iPod speakers in hand, improvising new lyrics (mostly about Tequila) into Nelly and Missy Elliot songs.

When no one was paying attention I grabbed the iPod and with a few quick desperate scrolls of the wheel, tried to find something I’d wanted to hear for the previous two weeks. The selection was the typical sort of mix of music that you find in the iPod Age. No complete albums, but you know, a mix. Three Patsy Cline songs here, a half dozen bluegrass tunes there, selections from two of the wankier Taj Mahal albums, 30-ish rap singles from the early 2000’s, a bunch of NPR podcasts. I like this because there’s always a good chance you’ll find something you like. I found “Me and My Girlfriend” by Tupac, but I found no one to share my enthusiasm, so I listened to it on the couch alone. People: that is a really good song.

I spent a few days agonizing over whether to bring my iPod with me to Guatemala, and I ultimately decided not to for a variety of reasons. This means that for the first time since maybe 11 or 12 years old I’m going two months without having any real decision in the music I hear every day – it’s a noticeable change but I think I made the right decision. I’ll go days without hearing any songs all the way through, unless I’m on a longer bus trip when I hear the reggaeton jams with AutoTune. I don’t usually miss music, but in my downtime, when I’m not studying, I’m surprised to find the songs that my brain coughs up – sometimes songs I haven’t thought of since I was 14 years old. It’s really weird. Also weird is the mix of songs that I get stuck in my head: Born Against, the Beatles, that “Hey there Little Red Riding Hood” song from the ‘60’s, topped off by George Jones and Joanna Newsom, all in about 45 minutes.

Yesterday I went to a restaurant for dinner for the first time in over a week, and sat through innumerable songs that sounded familiar and American and generically “heavy” with that rap-rock “rapping” over them, and then suddenly “Yesterday” by the Beatles. It seemed really special and weird. I was having a little moment with myself in spite of myself, as I pretty much hate Paul McCartney. You know you’re in trouble when you’re ecstatic to hear “Yesterday.”

Depressing Spanish Lesson

2009-01-19T14:43:00.000-08:00

Last week I finished up with the review of all the various things I studied but never learned in high school and college: present tense, preterite, imperfect, and future.

We moved into the conditional tense and my teacher said, "This is the most important tense in Guatemala because everything in Guatemala is conditional."

As in, "The new president would improve security and social services in Guatemala, but he remembers how the military shot his uncle 36 times back in '79." Or, "Guatemala would have potable water, but that isn't the sort of project the IMF will fund here." (I don't know that for a fact, I'm just guessing.)

So anyway, in a nutshell, the conditional tense.

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This Totally Blew My Mind

2009-01-18T17:57:00.000-08:00

Found out last week that this here lady was on Wild 'n' Crazy Kids, Pensacola. Think about that. Then think about all the Saturday afternoons you wasted in 1994 watching Wild 'n' Crazy Kids.

In coincidences of interest only to people who once lived in Uptown in Chicago: This guy right here knows Frankie J. Frankie J of "This is the FBI - we're here to close down your comedy club because you're using it as a front to traffic cocaine" fame.

Will we ever enjoy celery again?

2009-01-17T15:01:00.000-08:00

So apparently the FDA is advising people to not eat peanut butter, lest they die? Didn't the Bush Administration do away with the FDA and send all of the bureaucrats to Gitmo back around '0 3?

Anyway, I wouldn't take it too seriously, as we all know that the shell that remains of the FDA is heavily tied to the multinational Nutella Corporation, and the apple butter industry.

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Breaking News: Illinois Still Hilarious.

2009-01-16T16:48:00.000-08:00

Kudos to Mike Sweitzer-Beckman for sending this little bit of news along to me.

Governor Milorad Blagojevich has lost his lawyers for the Senate impeachment trial.

"We cannot and will not degrade our client, ourselves, our oaths and our profession, as well as the office of the governor, by participating in a Potemkin-like lynching proceeding, thus making it appear that the governor is represented by competent counsel when in fact he is not," the statement said."

Potemkin-like lynching proceedings!!!

I'm hoping for more awesome poetry quotes from the Gov. I think someone should step in and tell Rod that he and his cronies are not helping themselves by using the word "lynching" whenever the public opportunity presents itself.

Presumably Genson at least stays on for the eventual legal trial. Or maybe he could actually just get R. Kelly to defend him, and cut out the middle man. Because this stuff is even better than the "Trapped In the Closet" series, which is actually saying quite a lot.

Sk8 or Die

2009-01-16T11:16:00.000-08:00

It seems lame to sit in front of a computer while in another country, to the point where you're writing many blog posts in one morning. My excuse is that I'm waiting for a phone so that I can make a phone call about Important Business.

I got some photo access. This cat hates me.

Caught this shot of a rad carnival ride on a trip to check out the (Bootleg) Black Jesus of Esquipula, not actually in Esuipula, but rather in Chiquilaja. The (Original) Black Jesus of Esquipula, in Esquipula, was sculpted by a Portuguese traveler hundreds of years ago. Syncretism in full effect: it was built on the spot where a Mayan deity was then still worshipped.

They built another one in Chiquilaja, so people wouldn't have to travel so far for the veneration. Went to Mass, tried to shoot a little metal star with a bb gun, failed, lost Q5 in the deal.

I love these skate-rat catchphrases graffitied all over the city of Xela.

These are wonderful people.

In America most urban twenty-somethings will refuse to eat Domino's pizza on some feigned moral grounds, but here the stuff is like gold. People even say that it's "better here," which is not true. It's almost identical here. Absolutely serviceable pizza if you are in a bind.

Staples Center/LA Live Article from LA Times

2009-01-16T09:54:00.000-08:00

I don't really have super strong opinions about the Staples Center, having only ventured into that general area once to check out Steely Dan. I don't feel like much of a real Angeleno, and the complex falls outside of the six block radius where I spend most of my time. But I ran across this LA Times opinion piece from last month, and thought this was the best quote I've maybe ever heard about it:

When you get right down to it, their architecture is fundamentally not really architecture at all but an extensive series of armatures on which the developer and its tenants can hang logos, video screens and a sophisticated range of lighting effects.

It's an interesting read for the Angelenos out there.

The problem . . . is that it actively discourages any of the activities we traditionally associate with the use of collective space in a city: talking, reading, sitting under a tree, even pausing with a friend for a cup of coffee.

"The first Borking season of the new century."

2009-01-16T08:18:00.000-08:00

Check out this short post about John Ashcroft/Robert Bork, if you are so inclined. It's by Sam McPheeters, who is like a musician/artist/concert reviewer in Orange County. I just started using Google Reader and put this blog in my subscriptions, only to find that he's on hiatus and reposting old articles. I used to love reading his articles in Punk Planet, and for some reason this is one of my favorites from that era. (It was actually not published in PP.) This was written on the eve of Bush's inauguration in '01, and it's a weird kind of trip back into a time when none of us could guess just how bad it would get over the coming eight years:

But Borking has deeper, cultural overtones, and on this front much ground has been lost by conservatives. The country is a far ruder place than the one the Bushes last controlled. In 1990, 2 Live Crew was the most controversial band on a major label. Barbara Bush's complaints about the incivility of "The Simpsons" only ten years ago stands out as the baroque prattle of a former century. Last week the highbrow New York Times forum on "Borking Ashcroft" received postings about "Borking" Brittney Spears. The publisher of the New York Times recently attended a Halloween party in a "penis nose" disguise. America has become a giant Spencer's Gifts. Who could have imagined, at the start of the 90's, that Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole would end the decade as a boner pill salesman?

The scariest thing about this article is the brief discussion of Ashcroft - "Ashcroft's from the old school of leathery, hardbitten sons of bitches and is himself expected to tack Borkward." Who would have imagined then that the leathery son of a bitch would emerge as a sort of marginalized victim of the Bush Administration? Remember those dramatic stories of soon-to-be Creepo General Alberto Gonzalez visiting Ashcroft at his hospital bed and forcing him to reauthorize domestic wiretapping? Oh dear.

Joseph Stiglitz: You're a vegetable and they hate you.

2009-01-16T07:18:00.000-08:00

The other day I was talking with my instructor Milton, and I think we were talking about CAFTA and the trade and agricultural land situation in Guatemala. We love repeating our statistics about the concentration of wealth in the U.S., and of course these statistics are interesting and important to know, but I feel like the Guatemalan people would laugh at us. Something like 80% of arable land here is on 8% of the fincas (plantations). The Guatemalan people are forced to migrate on two fronts: the first is actually internal - to get by, it's necessary for many people to move place-to-place chasing crops in season. The second is more well-known to us: emigration to the U.S. A speaker here yesterday said that 2/10 Guatemalan people live in the U.S., and that Los Angeles is the only city in the world with more Guatemalans than Guatemala City.

This being the backdrop of the conversation, Milton was saying that he thinks socialism is a much preferable economic system. When you look around Guatemala there is no argument against this. There is a saying here that 12 families own Guatemala (or 7 depending on who you talk to), and people mean this quite literally. Among average folks, even those who are doing okay are doing, um, not so well. Honestly an economic system that handed out money based solely on winning games of blackjack would probably put more actual money in the hands of people here.

But in the middle of the conversation, Milton kept mentioning how he has heard a lot of criticisms of free trade agreements from an American economist, "an American economist from the left." He searched for the name for a few seconds . . . Joseph Stiglitz! All of a sudden we're talking about Joseph Stiglitz, and how he got the boot from the World Bank, and Milton was saying that "leftist capitalism" like that espoused by Joseph Stiglitz would be acceptable to him.

Anyway, I was really excited about this conversation, but for some reason I just steered it right off the tracks and crashed. "Joseph Stiglitz! He's from Gary, Indiana. He was born in the same city as Michael Jackson! They're both from Gary! Joseph Stiglitz and Michael Jackson!" And . . . back to the imperfect form.

I really like the roof.

2009-01-16T07:05:00.000-08:00

The USB cable I bought doesn't seem to work, so I'm dredging back through a photo CD I made at an Internet cafe, rather than posting more antisocial ranting about tinctures. (Lauren pointed out that tinctures do have benefits, so I would just like to state that I'm open to that idea, for the record. She also pointed out that tinctures don't really kill bacteria very well, and this is why she and I are friends.)

More pictures taken by Milagro:

These are Mili's Barbies. Mili makes me play Barbies with her. Usually the game consists of pretending the Barbies are models, and then putting gel in their hair. Gel made for human hair, not Barbie hair. We're talking 1/4 of a tube of gel per sitting.

Several days ago Mili took five or six Barbies out on the town in her backpack, and they promptly fell victim to the old snatch and grab. Later on her Barbie hair dryer fell and broke. Tears were shed, but more out of duty than actual trauma. Still, all in all a rough day for Mili.

There is no drain on natural resources or unwanted side effects.

2009-01-14T06:24:00.000-08:00

Just to give you an idea of the kind of inane shit the Americans here are into, this link about "radionics" was saved in a tab when I opened Firefox at the school today.

Met a college-age person yesterday who's been sick for three weeks after drinking tap water somewhere along her travels. I asked her if she'd maybe gone to see a doctor, and her response was, "No, I'm thinking maybe I should but I've been using a tincture for my intestines." For those of you who don't know much about tinctures, like me, I'd suggest checking out the wikipedia page, where you can read how a tincture is fermenting rotten organic mass made from bark and other detritus - yes, she's basically taking angostura bitters.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the amoeba that's been camping out in her intestines for a month fears no tincture.

There are actually people at this school who look to tarot readers for advice about their day.

There are also, of course, wonderful rational people here. They are from Guatemala, Denmark, Germany, and other places where middle class people don't pretend that we all have invisible force fields keeping us healthy, and that to manipulate this force field is a "developing science."

I really do believe that the left in the US may do more damage to science than the right has in the long run.

Really, you gotta read that link on radionics. I just browsed a little further - check it out, it's a seance!

It is not necessary for a patient to be present for the practitioner to 'tune in' to him/her. Something unique to the patient such as a signature or hair sample may be used as a proxy, or ‘witness’. This can happen, we believe, because part of the mind of each of us is linked via a universal mind. The universal mind seems to function outside the familiar space-time framework of our day-to-day lives and that is why it does not matter where the patient and practitioner are geographically located. They can be together or many miles apart.

This sounds like KRS-ONE on a particularly crazy day.