The Pros and Cons of Hitchhikers

Last night Jimmy Downtown and I went to see Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I went into the theater with great anticipation as I'm a fan of Hitchhiker's in all its guises - the radio series, the books, the video game, and the mini-series. And I like to think that I entered the theater with an open mind, willing to judge the film on its own merits and in its own medium. I'm not sure if I was or not.

This film was terrible - I hated it. It committed the cardinal sin for comedies by not being funny. Look, here's my humor breakdown:

Made me smile: 2 or 3 times
Made me go "heh": 2 or 3 times
Gave me a semi-half-chortle: 1 time

I wanted to like this film, honestly I did. And there was a whole filmic foundation laid down for me to like it. I liked the costumes, the sets/scenery, and the aliens. Things just seemed to be in place for an enjoyable cinematic experience. The problem is that I have a laundry list of things I didn't like about the film. While each one individually wasn't enough to make it a bad film, taken together they formed a gestalt of poor cinema.

As hard-core fans know, the story is called "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" because the story is about the book itself. The radio series says this explicitly. The Guide gives Ford a reason to be on earth, it links scenes, and explains things in funny ways. The film had a paucity of The Guide, in my estimation, and the look of it was too 1950s pastely. Curiously enough, it was an entry from The Guide that provided my lone semi-half-chortle - the entry explaining the Ponit of View gun. Another element given short shrift was the poking fun at corporations. The Sirius Cybernetics Corporations was barely mentioned and gags relating to it seemed to have been thrown out there and left hanging. For instance, the doors sigh but don't talk like they should. Marvin briefly gives a spiel about Genuine People Personalities but the doors have none. They were just personified slightly. The humorous "intellectual" asides in The Guide and most of the jokes which showed that Douglas Adams had a great love of science were all but absent too. Everything was brought down to the lowest common denominator . There were a few scenes in which a computer display shows that normality had been reached but this was never explained, to my recollection. I don't recall that the Improbability Drive was ever elucidated upon. While I, as someone who's hard-core fan, found it fairly humorous that Ford and Arthur should have been turned into couches when being resuced from the vacuum of space, I can't imagine a non-fan having the slightest idea why that should have happened. While it is a reference to the radio series, a simple explanation of the Improbability Drive was all that was needed.

More bitches:

Zaphod was played too much as a stupid, hyper-Elvis. I prefer the egomaniacal version. And he had no humorous witticisms like, "I'm so cool you could keep a side of beef in me for a year". Too much physical Jim Carrey/Jerry Lewis kind of humor and not enough funny dialogue. The love story. The romance between Arthur and Trillian held no interest for me and came across as a purely superfluous Hollywood addition. What purpose did the detour to Vogosphere to rescue Trillian serve? Cut out the romance and keep to the story of them going to find the Question. And why put Deep Thought on Magrathea? It really didn't bother me that much but I didn't understand why the change was made. While Deep Thought looked cool, Helen Miren didn't sound snotty enough for my taste. Either that or make her sound completely disinterested. The Vogons. Not that giving them such a large role was necessarily bad, I got the impression that it was just so they could put shootouts into it. The acting was good for the most part, but I thought that Mos Def's lines in the beginning of the film were delievered flatly. I think he had a great face for the part of Ford, though as he had some great Ford expressions that mixed confusion and omniscience perfectly. Shit, my complaints could go on forever. Instead, let me list the two funny scenes:

1) The scene with Arthur and Ford in the Vogon airlock about to be cast into space. We all think that the door behind them is going to open but instead the floor does. Good bit of misdirection.

2) The Guide's explanation of the Point of View gun. About how it was invented by angry housewives - that was classic DNA material.

I just didn't find the rest of the film to be funny. Although I did appreciate the appearance of the version of Marvin from the BBC mini-series of the story. He's queuing on Vogosphere. Honestly, I was so disappointed that I went home an immediately put on part 7 of the radio series so that I wouldn't be contaminated. Oh, but Zooey Deschanel was hot.

A Journey Into a Wondrous Land Whose Boundaries Are That of the Imagination

There is a dimension beyond that which is known to men. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between the uterus and the vaginal wall and it lies between the bladder and the colon. This is the dimension of pleasure. It is an area which we call...The T-Zone...

Yesterday evening I did an abbreviated tutoring session with Paul before heading over to A Woman's Touch for a class on stimulating the G-Spot, T-Zone, and prostate gland.

Walking up to the mall entrance, I spied a familiar face. It was one of the baristas from Ancora that I hadn't seen in quite some time. She remembered me, however, and we chatted briefly. It was long enough for her to admit to being the bitch of the joint. Aha! The truth finally comes out! I wandered inside to find that I was a bit early so I persued a copy of the Chicago Reader to see if there were any concerts, theater performances, etc. that I'd like to take in. (Of course there were several.) Finally, we were told that the classroom was ready for us.

I took a seat on a futon mattress which sat on the floor and the rest of the class filed in. Not surprisingly, I was the only lone male. There were a couple others with the XY combo but they were with their significant XXers. The instructor, whose name I forget, started by handing out sheets demonstrating the anatomy of our naughty bits and then putting the illustrations up on the wall via an overhead projector. Unlike the last couple classes I've been to at AWT, my classmates were rather sedate. The instructor went through the basics of our naughty bits beginning with the womyn's. I didn't know that the clitoris was so large and that I get to lick only the tiniest portion of it. She proceeded to pull out a vulva puppet. Plush labia here and there, a green clitoral hood up top, etc. It even had a bit of ribbon inside to imitate the G-spot. It sounded all so wonderful. G-spots, T-zones, clitori - so many nerves to stimulate! Then she got to the male anatomy.

It began alright. Penis, testes - so far so good. Then she got to the prostate gland and described how it is more difficult to get to than the G-spot. I thought this would be made up for with the male T-zone, which I didn't even know we had, but no. The male T-zone is virtually unreachable and the best we can hope for is the prostate gland rubbing up against it. The teacher showed us a few video clips which mostly featured womyn having their naughty bits stimulated, having orgasms, and even female ejaculating. We men only got a couple clips of guys masturbating as they anally massaged themselves. No wonder Tiresias said of sexual pleasure, "Of ten parts a man enjoys one only, but a woman enjoys the full ten parts in her heart."

We also saw a clip of a womyn's G-spot engorging as she became aroused. Tricky bit of plumbing you frauleins have. It is located about 3 inches in and up towards the belly button. Several dildos and vibrators were passed around and we were told to look for models with a curved tip to get up there. We were also shown these large beads and various dildos that weren't curved at an angle but had bulged tips which would stimulate the G-spot. The T-zone is a little further back in womyn but relatively accessible. As I said above we watched a womyn ejaculate on video. Given enough G-spot stimulation I guess fraus can really let it rip. We men can't even have ejaculation to ourselves. One young womyn in our group was quite curious about female ejacuation while another older womyn knew something about it and referred the younger one to a couple books. Oddly enough, the same student who asked about ejacuation in the female also asked about male ejaculation and prostate fluid. I remember thinking that she'd be fun to explore all of this with. I asked a couple questions about various naughty bits that were more anatomically inclined as opposed to "how do I?" kinds of questions and my fellow classmates got a good laugh in at my expense.Hey, I'm the curious type.

Here's our instructor holding the vulva puppet and surrounded by instruments of pleasure:



Next week I get to learn about all things anal...

For anyone in need of employment, they are hiring:

"A Woman's Touch is seeking a retail clerk/pleasure specialist for a permanent full-time opening. The ideal candidate will have good retail skills and comfort with helping a wide range of people learn more about sexual health and pleasure. Training will be provided, excellent benefits included. Send a resume, references and a hand signed letter describing why you want to work at A Woman's Touch and what skills you have to offer us. To: A Woman's Touch, 600 Williamson St., Madison, WI 53703. Deadline is Monday, May 16th, by 6 p.m. No email applications please."

Bill Gates: Prognosticator

Bill Gates recently laid a shot across the bow of Apple by saying, "I don't think the success of the iPod can continue in the long term, however good Apple may be." Ah yes, this from the man who said, "We will never make a 32-bit operating system, but I'll always love IBM" and "Microsoft has not changed any of its plans for Windows. It is obvious that we will not include things like threads and preemptive multitasking in Windows. By the time we added that, you would have OS/2." Go here to read about the 64-bit version of Windows XP and, if you use Windows NT, 2000, or XP, go to the Performance tab in Task Manager. There you can see the number of threads your CPU is putzing with currently. Come on! The guy can't even make credible predictions about his own products. If Apple doesn't fuck up, I think the iPod will continue to do well.

Miller Time Is Over

Dennis Miller's show on CNBC has had its plug pulled. This, I think, is a good thing. Perhaps he'll be able to do something that's funny. I like Dennis Miller and I still like him despite his having become a flaming Bushite. I mean, how often do you see someone on television imitate Peter Gabriel doing "Watcher of the Skies" back in his days with Genesis? Unlike many people, I got his opaque literary allusions and just enjoyed his sense of humor. I don't wanna go off on a rant here but his CNBC show was just not funny. I only watched it a handful of times and found myself with a paucity of laughter. The audience obviously did too as the set, aside from Miller, was usually quiet as a morgue. And just because you've become ruled by fear doesn't mean you can't poke fun at the President. Maybe I just didn't watch the show enough, but I don't recall him ever once making fun of Dubya. This is perhaps why his show was so horrible.

Tommy Thompson Devises the 11th Commandment

I was told the following story about our former governor, Tommy Thompson, by my co-worker, Ed...

Ed used to work with the Division of Public Health. Five or six years ago, Disney offered to put on parades in towns that showed that hyper-Disney spirit. Somehow Platteville persuaded Disney to let them host one of these Mickey Mouse events. The local pubilc health officer contacted Ed about the event and what needed to be done to ensure the safety of the public. An estimated 300,000 - 500,000 people were to attend. So Ed takes these figures and plugs them into equations which yielded results about how many public toilets would have to be available (thousands). He also informed the local authorities that street vendors who sold food would need licenses, corn fields could be turned into makeshift campgrounds only if a restroom facilities were provided, et al. His report also had some language that referenced Department of Commerce codes though DPH could not and did not enforce them. Ed also pledged DPH's support and manpower. So he sends his report off and gets back to his normal duties.

A day or two later, he gets an e-mail telling him to report to DHFS headquarters here on Wilson Street ASAP. He heads over and meets with the Secretary of the Department. There's also a conference call on speakerphone which features Attorney General Jimmy Doyle and Governor Tommy Thompson. Doyle was present as DOC codes were referenced. Then Thompson starts yelling, "Who do you think you are?!" Ed couldn't tell whether he was sober or not. Then in the loudest, most booming voice, "THOU SHALT NOT HINDER COMMERCE IN THIS STATE!!!"

There ya go. The 11th Commandment, for Wisconsin, at least. And Tommy became Secretary of Health & Human Services for the whole country!

Bad Mouth on a Prayer Day, Hope No One's Listening

From Siva & Company comes a video of Pat Robertson from the Larry King show. (You'll need Winders Media Player.) You can witness Pat deride homosexuals and get coached by his spin meister. (Reminds me of Feed.) How does he qualify as a guest on talk shows? Must be that liberal media. Besides homophobia, what does he add to a discussion? Lots of bullshit about a guy who died 2000 years ago coming back, I guess. Where are the reasonable conservatives when Robertson comes a-spillin' his trape for all to hear? Where's the opprobrium from the right?

If you want to learn about Robertson and his view on avarice, go here.

The Merry Month of May

Some folks have deemed May to be National Masturbation Month. Not surprisingly, these people are in San Francisco. Truth be known, every month is masturbation month for me and for most people, I'd venture to say. Still, nothing wrong with a little coordination for our daily routine. There will be a masturbate-a-thon on May 14th. That's only 2 days away so buy your lube now!

I also see that some have complained that the whole affair has become too commercialized.

The Republic Was Such A Wholesome Place

Now, we all know that Emperor Palpatine is evil. I mean, just look at him:



And we all know that, in addition to being evil, he's a Barney Bad Ass. I mean, just look! He can shoot bolts of blue energy from his fingertips:



Now, here's Old Man Standiford's take on him:

" I saw another trailer last night and read some stuff today that Palpatine has some great scenes and more of a part in this part. And I read that he is really evil -- maybe not Cruella DeVille evil, but evil nevertheless." Well, there you have it. Disney 1, George Lucas 0.

If You Think Being An Ape Descendant Is Bad

I work at the Department of Health and Family Services. Doing so, I encounter various people at work everyday who are very different than me. On a quotidian basis I encounter mentally retarded people being led around by a social worker, people with Down Syndrome, and people whose extremities are malformed. There's a womyn here whose job it is to run carts full of shredded documents to a room for disposal. She's looks to be in her late 40s, though I can't be certain. Her facial features are more...more...more scrunched together than on most people. And she cannot speak a language but rather in loud (sometimes very loud) grunts and groans. Upstairs is another womyn who is not mentally impaired in any way but rather physically impaired. Her left hand looks like it's from The Simpsons - she has only three fingers – while her right forearm is dramatically shorter than the left. She could have been a Thalidomide baby but I don't know. What I do know is that, however crappy my life may seem at any given moment, I have a normal morphology and a (fairly) sound mind in comparison to these folks. While I don't claim to be superior to them, I do recognize that I conform to certain norms whereas these people do not. I also recognize that the reason these people and I differ in some very tangible ways is that they got different results from the genetic lottery than I did. In fact, very different results than most people, for that matter.

I have also noticed from speaking with people on the left and the right that many, if not most, people have this nebulous concept of genes and what they do and don't do. For example, I've encountered many people who speak of genes in an almost completely deterministic way and often done in a degrading manner. And they almost always talk this way about race and gender. The concept of "White Man's Burden" is still alive and kicking. We've all heard someone say that Mexicans are lazy or that blacks are stupid so that's why they play sports, etc. Womyn are thought by some to have certain innate characteristics that make them unsuitable for various occupations. Being a wife and a mother are often thought to be the roles that womyn are best suited to. There are people who find the concept of genetic determinism to be so awful that they instead posit that each human being must be the exact opposite - a tabla rasa or blank slate. The minute you argue that a particular element of our disposition or psychology has a genetic component, these people accuse you of being a Nazi and sarcastically say something like, "Oh, so there's a gene for XXXXX - yeah, right."

What both of these positions show is extreme ignorance of genetics, among other things. Various people fail to take environment into account while others mistakenly see every case as one gene directing one trait. They fail to understand that it's not nature or nurture but rather nature via nurture. I probably reserve most of my ire for folks on the left as I am a lefty and most of my arguments relating to this topic have been with fellow lefties. One argument I had with a womyn from the East Coast a few years ago is rather typical. We were talking about gender. She subscribed to the blank slate whereas I do not. I made a comment about men generally being more aggressive than womyn and pointed out that this is a cross-cultural phenomenon and not one just of the West. Snidely she retorted, "So you think there's actually an aggressive gene - how stupid." There is problem #1. She assumed that it is a single gene that correlates to a single trait. She also assumed that I was pushing a position which insisted that genes were the sole explanation. Nowhere in my statement did I exclude environment and nowhere did I cite any evidence to say that aggressiveness is "caused" by a lone gene. She read so much in my statement that was not there. Problem #2. She also remarked something to the effect of "Wouldn't it be nice to not have discrimination based on gender and we could have unisex toilets?" (I fecal matter thee not.) It was obvious that she built her argument to support a personal preference. She wanted equality so thusly she turned to the blank slate as it was the only view, in her mind, that accommodated it. I tried to politely tell her that I wasn't trying to engage her in an argument about fairness or the worth of gender but rather about gender itself. This is a big problem with many of my fellow lefties. They abhor genetics and they do so because they believe the false premises that 1) If a trait has a genetic component, then the trait is immutable and they subscribe to the fallacy that A) Natural always equals good ergo, if a trait has a genetic component then it is "natural".

While I am certainly no geneticist, I do know better than the people I've described above. Still, my knowledge is far outweighed by my ignorance as reading Matt Ridley's Genome has proven. It's a fascinating book! He writes in a manner easily understood by the layman and he has a good sense of humor. In the book, he tackles genetics chromosome by chromosome and uses each one as a starting point to talk about our genes as well as to give brief history lessons and talk about science generally.

One of the more disturbing parts is when he talks about chromosome 4. There's a gene on it that has a very deterministic role. If you don't have this gene, you get Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome and die young. If you have it, you may be alright. It depends on how many sequences of cystosine-adenine-gunaine there are on the gene. If you have 35 or less of them, you're in the clear. But 39 or more means you're fucked as you will develop Huntington's chorea - that's what killed Woody Guthrie. (Not sure what happens if you have 36-38 of those.) There's no cure and you're doomed to a slow degradation of your mind and then your movement. An example of genetic determinism, to be sure. But wait! There's more!

Ridley looks at asthma in one chapter. It is certain that it has a genetic component as it runs in families. But he delves into the complexities of it all. For instance, multiple genes are involved and that the role of genes has changed over time along with the environment. For example, he says, "Back in the Stone Age, before feather pillows, an immune system that fired off at dust mites was no handicap, because dust mites were not a pressing problem in a temporary hunting camp on the savannah." And then as dust mites became more common as our lifestyle changed, the genes that gave rise to an immune system trying to fight them became more important. Multiple genes. The role of the environment in getting genes to express themselves. Asthma is a good example of "nature via nurture".

Then there's the section on intelligence in which he writes:

"The conclusion that all these studies converge upon is that about half of your IQ was inherited, and less than a fifth was due to the environment you shared with your siblings - the family. The rest came from the womb, the school and outside influences such as peer groups. But even this is misleading. Not only does your IQ change with age, but so does its heritability. As you grow up and accumulate experiences, the influence of your genes increases...As you grow up, you gradually express your own innate intelligence and leave behind the influences stamped on you by others. You select the environments that suit your innate tendencies, rather than adjusting your innate tendencies to the environments you find yourself in. This proves two vital things: that genetic influences are not frozen at conception and that environmental influences are not inexorably cumulative."

I haven't finished the book yet so there's a lot more where that came from. But the section on language was very interesting as well. We may have circuitry built-in to acquire language but we need our environment to actually do so. How about sexual attractiveness? Many genes go to determine how your body looks but the environment also has a say - clothes, hair style, etc. Blank slate adherents need to stop thinking of genetics as being about social Darwinism. To say that we have a human nature that doesn't always paint a rosy picture is not an argument for eugenics. There are some people on the right that need to stop projecting the less savory elements of our humanity onto non-white races and weakness onto womyn. The worst that humanity has to offer is present in people of every skin color and can be drawn out given the right circumstances just as the best can be. To be sure, there are many differences between men and womyn. But none of them indicate womyn are weak nor justify discrimination, rape, etc.

Did you know that 97% of our genome consists of "Junk DNA"? This Junk DNA is never transcribed into proteins. Ridley gives as an example the gene for the protein called "reverse transcriptase". This gene has absolutely no purpose whatsoever for human beings yet we have tons of them. Why? Well, reverse transcriptase is very handy for viruses such as AIDS. It allows the AIDS virus to take a copy of its genome and conceal it within ours. Thusly, various retroviruses have been depositing their genes in us for ages. As Ridley says, "If you think being descended from apes is bad for your self-esteem, then get used to the idea that you are also descended from viruses."

High-Low Culture

What do you get when you combine Sophocles and Deliverance? Why Hillbilly Antigone, of course!

"The Flicks and the Wallers have been feuding on Badd Mountain for as long as anyone can remember. Antigone Flick and Harmon Waller have created a place in their hearts where the feud can’t touch. But when County Judge and Preacher Creon Waller, espousing a flammable potion of religion and law, declares the body of Antigone’s brother Amos is to be strung up as an example of the wages of sin, she is forced to take a stand."

Fun Via Chicago

This past weekend was a good time. I got to see Wilco, hoard some Indian sweets & savories, and hit a sex shop in the big city. You see, The Dulcinea and I went down to Chicago for the weekend. We arrived Saturday afternoon and headed on over to Ambala on Devon to get some tasty treats. I ended up buying countless Pera, bars of Barfi, balls of Motichoor and Besan Ladoo, and various types of Halwa. The Dulcinea too bought way more than she could possibly eat alone. At least she can give some to her kids and make sure they have good early culinary experiences so they don't grow up to eat an endless parade of fast food shit. From there it was off to my brother's place to chill before heading down to the Vic for Wilco. Carl was engaged in an APBA baseball game so we didn't get to see him much. And I completely forgot to get my necklace and shirt back from him. At about quarter to 7, we headed down to The Vic. In hindsight, we should have left earlier as the line to get into the theater already stretched more than a block. Parking was ridiculous as to be expected but I did get some good parallel parking practice in over the course of the weekend. The show was general admission and we ended up top. Good view, though. I don't think I'd ever been to The Vic before, at least not as an adult. I reminded me of the Barrymore here in Madison. It wasn't all sparkling pretty but it had character. The show started off with a fairly sedate "Misunderstood" - with horms. This was cool as it's one of my favorite Wilco tunes and the last time I saw them live (1996 at Summerfest), I was pretty drunk. Here's the setlist:

Misunderstood (w/horns--Jeff dubbed them "The Beards" though only one actually had a beard)
Company in My Back
The Late Greats
Hummingbird
At Least That's What You Said
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
A Shot in the Arm
Muzzle of Bees
Via Chicago
(at this point Jeff introduced the band while Frankie was switching out his pedal)
Handshake Drugs (we had to imagine swirling feedback b/c Jeff's guitar amp started to fail)
Jesus, etc.
Say You Miss Me
Theologians
I'm the Man Who Loves You (w/horns but Jeff's guitar dropped out)
---------amp-fixing break 1------------
I'm The Man Who Loves You (again with horns, and Jeff's guitar dropped out again and he played the solo on Nels' '59 Fender while Nels redeemed himself from Friday night by doing a little dance on his amp and successfully jumping down and landing on his feet)
Poor Places>Wishful Thinking
Spiders (Kidsmoke) (Jeff went over to Pat's amp and plugged in)
Sunken Treasure (no harmonica)
---------amp-fixing break 2 (Jeff was getting shocked during ST) -----------------
Political Science
Be Not So Fearful
Passenger Side
Heavy Metal Drummer
Comment (Jeff kissed Kris and crowd surfed for a while)
The Lonely 1
(fake encore--i.e. they pretended to walk off stage but just stayed on)
New Madrid
I Shall Be Released
Someday Soon
Far, Far Away
California Stars (w/horns)
A Magazine Called Sunset
Promising (first time ever with a full band?)
Candyfloss (by request of Ms. O-Rama)
She's A Jar
Hoodoo Voodoo
Something in the Air

As you can see, Jeff Tweedy had lots of guitar problems. They were recording the show on audio and committing it to film for a DVD release so this was quite unfortunate. Tweedy was frustrated but made the best of it. At one point, he annouced that they'd just play a couple more songs for the cameras and then do acoustic songs since he couldn't play electric any longer and and do some requests. It was rather cool to hear the old Uncle Tupelo tune "New Madrid". Someone requested "Gun" but no one remembered how to play it. I want to say that new boy Nels Cline on guitar was absolutely great. He made some of the most harmonious noise I've ever heard. Most of the songs included and ended with lots of loud, fuzzy bits of feedback and distortion and Cline really went apeshit during these parts. Even though Tweedy couldn't be heard during "Handshake Drugs", he made enough noise on his own for 4 people. Pat Sansone played keyboards and occasional guitar (until Tweedy coopted his amp) and was great as well. Banging out all those weird noises on his synthesizers - "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" being a great example - fit perfectly somehow. It was just a lot of fun despite technical problems. The aforementioned "IATTBYH" is a killer song and live it was even better. That harmony from chaos thing rooted in Glenn Kotche's percussion playing. "The Late Greats" actually sent a shiver down my spine. It's one of the most catchy songs ever. The whole crowd sang along on "Passenger Side" and cheered loudly when Chicago was mentioned/referenced during "Via Chicago" and "Far, Far Away".

Afterwards, we headed over to Kings Gyros for some greasy early morning food. Then it was off to bed at my mom's place. She was out of town for the weekend and we had the place to ourselves...In the morning, we went to Tre Kronor for a Swedish breakfast which was delicious. The Dulcinea had Swedish pancakes while I had an omelette with caraway seeded Havarti and a type of Swedish sausage. And we shared a hazelnut danish. Mmm...Looking through the Chicago Reader, I noticed something that The Dulcinea would enjoy: a sex toy shop. So we headed down to Broadway and hit The Pleasure Chest. She bought herself a vibrator and plenty of lube. We wandered up the street to Clark for a bit before heading back towards the Kennedy. Before we left, we spent a long time at the American Science and Surplus store on Milwaukee. The Dulcinea bought a bunch of bric-a-brac for her kids while I snagged a Harry Potter Troll Booger Potion kit. I'll keep you updated on my booger potion making.

After our stop there, we headed home. It was a good time. Next time we go down, we're definitely taking more time to wander about. We want to go to Lincoln Square on any day but a Sunday when the Merz Apotheke is closed. There's just so much to do and see that you have to take your time and not be hurried by a schedule.

Torte of Sort Is My Cohort

I made a Tort Czekoladowy (that's a chocolate torte for all you non-Polish speakers) last week with The Dulcinea. Being a novice baker, I was pleased with it. And so was The Dulcinea. And the folks at work who flocked to it like flies to shit. Here are some highlights.

Step #1. Have booze on hand.



The bourbon replaced the brandy in the frosting while the beer was for consumption by the bakers.

Step #2. Grate way more highly expensive chocolate than you need for the batter and lick the leftovers from a pan.



Step #3. stir really, really quickly.



Step #4. Cut the torte in half and spread filling.



Step #5. Slap that top bit back on and apply bourbon-laced frosting.



Voila! Tort Czekoladowy!

Oh Pope, My Pope

I came across a woman's blog yesterday that I can't for the life of me find. The blogger is a Catholic and, in a few of her posts, heaped praise upon praise onto Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II. I thought to myself, "These Popes - the same people who have steadfastly refused to excommunicate Adolph Hitler? They are worthy of undying obedience and adoration?" She lamented John Paul's passing. The same John Paul who remarked, "Don't you think that the irresponsible behavior of men is caused by women?"

Like The Woodcutter, I don't understand. I just don't understand.

The Necronomicon in Madison?

The Dulcinea sent me this this link to a little Flash game inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. It's an amusing way to spend a few minutes of a boring day. It reminded me that I never posted anything about my time spent at Cthulhu One a couple weekends ago. I missed most of Friday because of work and much of Saturday due to Elaine Pagels' speech. What Marv and I did end up doing was watching a few horror flicks, persusing merchandise, and having some cocktails with Ann Koi. While I'm sure that I would have found the speakers interesting, what I'm most disappointed about is that I never got a chance to game. I would have loved to have gotten in a Call of Cthulhu game or the CoC CCG. I've never played the CCG (in fact, I've never played any CCG, such as Magic: The Gathering) and I thought it would be interesting to give it a go. Compared to most of the people there, Marv and I were positively normal. I mean, there were some serious hard-core geeks there who were waaay more into Lovecraftian terror than either he or I.



Much of the merch was Cthulhu-related but there was also just a country ton of sci-fi/fantasy stuff as well horror. Books, magazine, videos, et al. One of the things that caught my eye was all the anime. Despite my rather high dork score (17, at least), I've never gotten into anime. Ann was kind enough to give us a very brief lesson in the subject but all I can remember was her advice to avoid watching Neon Genesis Evangelion first. Not the stuff for neophytes, I guess. Anyway, I really didn't buy much. I bought some postcards which featured details of Botticelli's "Madonna and Child with Five Angels". Towards the bottom of the stack of cards was a picture that looked familiar.



It was Roger Dean's painting which ended up as the cover art for Gentle Giant's Octopus. I made some remark about progressive rock and Ann chimed in saying something about how she hid a secret desire for some prog. How cool was that? She confessed to having a love for Genesis. (I would later learn that Nursey Cryme and Abacab were her favorites.) Marv and I went out for cocktails with her on Friday night. The conversation veered from tales of GenCon to how Ann found a robot that had been left behind when she bought her house. She was a really fun person to hang out with. Not only was she creative, geeky, and beautiful, she also eyed up chick's asses at Mickey's when they bent over while shooting pool. I'm thinking that she is, how to you say, broadminded. Here she is all decked out:



Among the highlights of goodies were free issues of Cthulhu Sex and Book of Dark Wisdom. I found out that there's a Lovecraftian MUD hoolie called Lovecraft Country. It is "A text-based multiplayer online role playing game set at Miskatonic University". Kinda like Zork but scarier and with more people. And, as I mentioned above, there were lots of horror flicks. In the Mouth of Madness is always fun but the real gems were the independently made videos. A couple of them obviously had some $$$ sunk into them. I wish I could remember the names because I'd love to get my hands on some of them.

There was a wedding reception across the hall from us on Saturday night. The convention's organizer, Darrick, said that someone had asked what was going on - all these weird-looking people dressed in black with pictures of eldritch creatures everywhere. He replied that we were a satanic cult having its annual convention. The reveler quickly moved away...Darrick was really nice. He seems to be heavily in the occult as he performed a Walpurgisnacht ceremony Saturday night. I, unfortunately, was dead tired and headed home before it transpired. Next year, hopefully. Oh, here a picture of Marv reading The Necronomicon:

666-50 (It's Only Numbers)

It was revealed a few days ago that 666 is not, in fact, the number of the beast. Apparently technology has advanced to such an extent as to be able to read writing from some very degraded papyrus vintage c. 500 C.E. The passage from the Book of Revelation here is the oldest known copy and it reads 616 instead of 666. This means that Bruce Dickinson has some lyrics to rewrite.

Has Hell Frozen Over?

I got up a bit early this morning and thumbed through some magazines while drinking coffee. I first went through this week's Time but soon grew bored of people laying adulation upon Ann Coulter so I switched to Entertainment Weekly. If memory serves, Stevie accepted a free subscription from Best Buy. Anyway, I casually thumbed through it from back to front, as is my wont. It wasn't too bad of an issue. Instead of pages and pages devoted to Paris Hilton, I found some bits that interested me. For instance, there were reviews of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Kingdom of Heaven. Plus there was a brief interview with Pearcy. As I turned the pages, I began seeing pictures of and references to The Mars Volta. Then there's a side blurb entitled, "Pavement Was Prog?" Turning the page once more revealed the kicker: a picture of Rick Wakeman with his long blonde hair and his wizard outfit sitting in a wicker chair out in the garden of some country home. "What the fuck is going on here?" I asked myself. "There's progressive rock in a mainstream publication!" I flipped again to the beginning of the article and was taken by surprise as it was not trashing the genre. How blatantly odd. I began reading in earnest.

Towards the beginning of the piece, Lee Abrams, the senior VP/chief creative officer of XM Satellite Radio, which went, "Younger musicians are discovering the magic of Pink Floyd, Yes, and early Genesis records." I was flabbergasted. Who are these younger musicians? Well, the author mentions The Mars Volta, System of a Down, Coheed and Cambria, Lightning Bolt, and The Dillinger Escape Plan. There was also a timeline highlighting the major events in prog history such as the construction of Stonehenge and the invention of the Moog synthesizer. Not only that, but Marillion was even mentioned for the release of their first album, Script for a Jester's Tear!

There's a sidebar featuring the "Essential Classic-Prog Albums". They are:

Brain Salad Surgery by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer

Moving Pictures by Rush

Close to the Edge by Yes

The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis

Yeti by Amon Düül II

The article generally focused on the newer bands mentioned above which is how is should be. But it was really nice to see Holger Czukay from Krautrock pioneers Can quoted. Honestly, I expected the article to trash 70s prog a lot more than it did. Still, most positive comments were filtered through a kitsch lense and the author submitted to stereotypes. There were also a few errors. Regarding the former, classic prog is constantly associated with unicorns and the works of Tolkien. While many a band took this route, to be sure, there are numerous that didn't go near those topics with a 10-foot pole. King Crimson, for instance. And all the RIO (Rock In Opposition) bands like Henry Cow plus Krautrock bands such as Can, Faust, and Neu! If anyone actually reads the article and is not a prog fan, please note that Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is NOT about "a street urchin's misadventures in the New York underworld". It is about a punk kid from New York with schizophrenia.

Perhaps the greatest triumph of the article is that it lends a sympathetic ear to one of the members of The Dillinger Escape Plan who opines, "Punk isn't just writing punk music, it's being against what's mainstream. And that's what King Crimson and all those bands were doing. They were writing the music that they want to write, and that's punk rock." It was quite refreshing to read that. People like Dave Marsh and Simon Frith have spent decades desparaging prog, complaining that, as a genre, it is divorced from the blues. Allan Moore and others have done a great job sticking it to them on this but the popular music press still loathes prog so this article was a breath of fresh air.

My last complaint is that Porcupine Tree wasn't mentioned. Bastards!

Birth of a Nation

While at The Dulcinea's on Saturday I saw that she had checked out a copy of Birth of a Nation, a self-described comic novel. I didn't get much of a chance to look at it but I think that it involves East St. Louis seceding from the Union.



Just click on the cover for more info. You can print out money from Blackland there!

We Have a New Museum

From the UW:

"UW-Madison and Elvehjem Museum of Art today announced a $20 million gift from alumni Simona and Jerome A. Chazen to fund a major expansion of the museum.

To commemorate the gift, the university said that effective immediately, the name of the museum will become the Chazen Museum of Art. The Elvehjem name, however, will live on: the present facility will retain its dedication and will be called the Conrad A. Elvehjem Building."

To read the rest of the article, click here.

A Geek Pimps His Ride

That Avant Garde Accordian Again

If you're up for adding something new to your musical diet, go check out the Russian songstress Evelyn Petrova. She's not your average singer and she plays a mean accordian. Evelyn played "Mother Goose" with Jethro Tull during their concert appearance in St. Petersburg and impressed the lads. Here's what Ian Anderson has to say about her:

" Frank Zappa meets Valkyrie Handmaiden-on-testosterone. Banshee wailing over complex chording and lightening melodic ripples. Big, powerful, yet often delicate and feminine...She will assault your ears, heart and soul in short order and redefine your perception of stark femininity at its most primitive level." Heady stuff.

Your Next Headache

Head on over to Paul Thurrott's site and check in on the progress of Longhorn, the next iteration of Windows that will cause you endless amounts of frustration. From the screenshots, it's looking more like Mac OSX with each build. By the looks of that fancy GUI, you'll need a Barney Bad Ass 3D video card just to run the OS.

The Great Salt & Sour Debate

Whether it's me having gotten older and my taste buds more mature or the fact that I have so much German & Slavic blood in me, I don't know. What I do know is that, in the potato chip world, my favorite province is that of Salt & Sour, a.k.a – Salt & Vinegar. That intense rush of NaCl and CH3COOH is tongue-numbing and leaves me puckering for quite some time after indulging myself. I'm not sure when I first started riding the Salt & Sour Horse, but it was probably several years ago, just after I got out of college. I quickly found a favorite brand and stuck to it for a few years. But, starting just after the turn of the millennium, I found myself trying other brands looking for that rush. During travels down South in 2002, I eagerly grabbed a bag of an unknown brand at each gas station we stopped at to fuel up. My general conclusion was that the salt & sour chips outside of the Upper Midwest sucked. And they got worse the further south we drove. For me, a good salt & sour chip should be very salty and very sour. A dash of salt and a drop of vinegar just doesn't cut it. Before my first review, let's dig into the history of the venerable potato chip or "crisp", if you're across The Pond. (I glean my history from Atlas of Popular Culture in the Northeastern United States and answers.com.)

The potato chip was invented sometime in the summer of 1853 (August 24th, in some accounts) by the man below.



This is George Crum. Crum was a chef at the Moon Lake Lodge in Saratoga Springs, New York. A customer (Cornelius Vanderbilt in some surely apocryphal versions of the story), kept sending his fried potatoes back to the kitchen because they were too thick and soggy. Fed up with the customer, Crum sliced his potatoes super-thin and fried them up. Much to his surprise, the man loved them. They soon became a regular item on the lodge's menu as "Saratoga Chips". Almost unbelievably, it took another hundred years for technology and ingenuity to produce the first seasoned potato chips. This was done by Tayto, an Irish snack maker. In 1954, it produced Onion & Cheese and Salt & Vinegar potato chips. The rest is, as they say, history. So, onto the first review.



Today's entry is the Malt Vinegar & Sea Salt chip from the Boulder Natural Foods company. I picked up a 5 oz. bag at the Co-op. I'd give the price but it's not on the receipt so I got it at the 100% discount. The bag blurts out at me, "INTENSE POTATO CHIPS!" and "Thick Sliced". They were right on the second count. The chips are about 50% thicker than your regular Frito Lay variety. I'm not sure from what kind of potatoes they're made from but the chip size is on the small side which means taking some from the bag was followed by more spillage than I care to see. The nuggets of potato are fried in sunflower or safflower oil.

Biting into one, I find a great texture. Nice and crunchy but not like some brands where you feel like you're biting into a piece of dried wood. And they taste good. I love malt vinegar and you can definitely taste the malty goodness. They also throw in some apple cider vinegar for good measure and there's a hint of it to be had towards the back of your tongue. Salt comes ahead of vinegar in the ingredients list but it's not particularly prominent, allowing the vinegar to take center stage. I wish the flavors were a bit more balanced but, overall, they taste good. One thing that these chips are not is intense. I had to eat about half the bag before my tongue started to become useless as a tasting instrument and puckering was never even a thought.

These chips get high marks for their taste with the combination of malt and apple cider vinegars as well as for their texture which is near-perfect crunchiness. However, they're intensity level is quite low. I've had blander but these just don't have much oomph.

Conor Oberst Is A Hero

I'm really not sure where this is from but I think it could have its genesis over at AlterNet.

"When the president talks to God/Are the conversations brief or long?/Does he ask to rape our women's' rights/And send poor farm kids off to die?/Does God suggest an oil hike/When the president talks to God?" He may not be Dylan but Conor Oberst ("Bright Eyes") may be the best we've got.

Those are the opening lyrics of a song he did on the Tonight Show earlier this week (thanks Marc). Whether Jay Leno's doing his best to compensate for his excellent job stumping for the Guvernator or whether Oberst just pulled the switcheroo and submitted a different song remains to be seen.

Still, if you're a Bright Eyes fan you may want to buy tickets to a show -- since I doubt he'll be on the tube anytime soon. Watch a Bright Eyes video here and find out more about him here. The rest of the lyrics courtesy of Pitviper at Daily Kos:

"When the President Talks to God"

When the president talks to God
Are the conversations brief or long?
Does he ask to rape our women's' rights
And send poor farm kids off to die?
Does God suggest an oil hike
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
Are the consonants all hard or soft?
Is he resolute all down the line?
Is every issue black or white?
Does what God say ever change his mind
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
Does he fake that drawl or merely nod?
Agree which convicts should be killed?
Where prisons should be built and filled?
Which voter fraud must be concealed
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
I wonder which one plays the better cop
We should find some jobs. the ghetto's broke
No, they're lazy, George, I say we don't
Just give 'em more liquor stores and dirty coke
That's what God recommends

When the president talks to God
Do they drink near beer and go play golf
While they pick which countries to invade
Which Muslim souls still can be saved?
I guess god just calls a spade a spade
When the president talks to God

When the president talks to God
Does he ever think that maybe he's not?
That that voice is just inside his head
When he kneels next to the presidential bed
Does he ever smell his own bullshit
When the president talks to God?

I doubt it
I doubt it

What's the Matter With Kansas?

Here we go again. Stephen Jay Gould is dead and the Xtian nutcases are at it again, trying to push Creationism on the youth of Kansas.

"Scientific claims must be testable; we must, in principal, be able to envision a set of observations that would render them false. Miracles cannot be judged by this criterion, as Whitcomb and Morris have admitted. But is all creationists writing merely about untestable singularities? Are arguments never made in proper scientific form? Creationists do offer some testable statements, and these are amenable to scientific analysis. Why, then, do I continue to claim that creationism isn't science? Simply because these relatively few statements have been tested and conclusively refuted."

SJG in "Genesis vs. Geology" In Ashley Montagu, ed., Science and Creationism, New York: Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 130-131.

Sayonara Broadcast Flags

A Federal appeals courts has struck down F.C.C. regulations requiring hardware manufacturers to include technology which would foil us consumers from recording television broadcasts. Go here for more info. There's also a link to the text of the decision itself. Oh man, those guys at Viacom are gonna be pissed! Look for rental prices at Blockbuster to go up.

RIP David Hackworth

David Hackworth has died.

EDIT:

Here's a little expose on the man.

Defacing a Stain = Fine

How am I supposed to take the beliefs of Catholics seriously when they worship a stain on a concrete wall? And how am I supposed to take the media seriously when they use headlines like "Man charged with defacing Virgin Mary image"? OK, Mr. & Ms. Media. If you walk into a Catholic Church, you'll see images of the Virgin Mary. If you went to that underpass in Chicago before it got painted over, you'd have seen a stain on a wall. It's not an image, it's a stain. And for you Catholics that went there to worship and pray that a stain (a fucking stain!) would cure you of cancer, try a little experiment: find a waify womyn. Have her stand in front of you.



Now compare what she looks like to that stain. Can you see the differences? Now, look at the stain. Then look at a painting - an artistic representation of your Mary.



How can you in all honesty say they look the same? The stain looks like these representations because you want them to! How hard is it to understand this? This stain did not look like a person. It did not come close to conforming to human morphology. Is is stupidity? Desperation? What is it? I ask because I'm curious how your minds got so debased as to think that divinity makes itself known to you via salt stains on underpasses in Chicago. Why not manifest yourself in, say, The Vatican? I mean, that Pope guy is Christ's Vicar on Earth, after all. Right? One would think that The Vatican would be hyperwelcoming and an ultra-safe place for Mary to go. No cardinal is gonna deface her with shoe polish there. Why not be a marinara sauce stain on a papal tablecloth, for example?

And why do these people only see divinity in banal, stupid shit? Is Mary up in the Firmament Blue saying, "Ya know, I'd like to see my face on toast today"? Why do these people never go over to a sugar maple. "Hi Mister Sugar Maple. You too are one of God's glorious creations. You give us sap so we can make syrup for our pancakes, you give us shade in the summer, you take the carbon dioxide out of air that my car which gets 10 miles to the gallon put in there, and, to top things off, you made nice coffee tables. Being so useful, you are truly proof of God's great power and wisdom!" But no. They light candles and pray to pieces of toast and salt stains on walls.

If anything, the stain most closely resembles a vulva.



Praying to stains on walls does not cure cancer. Your body does this, normally in conjunction with a doctor and his/her treatments. And as for that chucklehead who defaced it, Bubba, why did you put a swastika there? Are you a moron? We don't need Nazi symbols on walls. This is not about Nazism or genocide or war. Try to be a little more selective in how you deface walls next time and leave the stupidity at home. Otherwise you're just like the people who venerate the stains you deface.

ELP DVD

Emerson, Lake & Palmer have a new DVD coming out next month. It'll have their full performance from the California Jam in 1974, so that'll be fun to watch. You can see Keith Emerson stand on his Hammand organ, play a piano solo in mid-air while his piano spins around, and I'm sure there will be footage of him stabbing his organ (ahem) as well. No performance of "Rondo" or "America" would be complete without it.

New Pink Floyd Album...?

According to the Polish newspaper, Rzeczpospolita, David Gilmour has been working on some tunes:

"Zbigniew Preisner was aked to co-produce and to do orchestral arrangements on David Gilmour's new solo album. Leszek Mozdzer is involved too. Preisner said that they had already recorded some music in Gilmour's own studio in London.

"Probably it will be David's solo album, but it is not out of the question that it could be a new Pink Floyd album. They will be deciding together later - Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright" said Preisner.

"It was so amazing to meet this great master. It's a great honour to share a table with Gilmour, not to mention working with him in the studio" said Mozdzer. Another Polish engineer, Rafal Paczkowski, will be involved in orchestral session recording for the project.

So perhaps there will be another Pink Floyd album before the world ends in 2012 or everyone receives total consciousness or whatever the fuck Newage people think this date signifies on the Mayan calendar. I think seeing the Floyd at Camp Randall in 1994 was the last time I saw a concert there. Personally, I prefer A Momentary Lapse of Reason over The Division Bell but that's me. MLoR just sounded less like Dark Side of the Moon, less like the Waters-led Floyd. It had just enough of the classic Floyd sound for me to take comfort in the familiar but it was different too. Different enough to be interesting and a satisfying listening experience. Plus the cover was really cool. A new Floyd album would probably be pretty blah. Personally, I'm more keen on hearing a new Roger Waters album. I think Amused to Death is a great album. While he may not be particularly relevant to today's music scene, he sure stays current. Check out the tunes up at his webpage. He pulls no punches. "To Kill the Child" features the names of many a corporation while "Leaving Beirut" has the first name of a certain president in it. Musically, he's treading old ground but, lyrically, he's completely in touch with the present.

VdGG

It has come to my attention that Van der Graaf Generator has reunited. They have an album of new material out now called Present. I'll have to check this out as I'm curious to know what Peter Hammill sings about these days and if he has mellowed out at all. Is it possible for him to have taken a, perhaps, lighter view on life? Listening to "Man-Erg" or "Killer" is not exactly a happy experience.

First It Was Cheerleading, Now It's "Louie Louie"

They are trying to ban sexually suggestive cheerleading manoeuvres down in Texas. But a high school marching band in Michigan has been forbidden to play "Louie Louie" because of its naughty lyrics. Shit, does anyone really know what the hell The Kingsmen were singing? The FBI spent a couple years investigating the song for obscenity and found nothing. (Here's more on that story.) If the best audio engineers at the FBI couldn't make heads nor tails of the lyrics, what the fuck is wrong with these people in Michigan? Pretty soon the only way kids will learn about evolution is if they go to a Catholic school and now they wanna sterilize the schools so that any hint of sexuality is gone. Yes, the blossoming sexuality of nubile teenage girls...

Heads Up Fellow East Siders

Our new neighbor is a registered sex offender.

H2G2, et al

Amidst all the hoopla surrounding the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film, let's not forget that the latest installment of the radio series is now playing.

While we're on the subject of English comedy, Terry Jones has a new book coming out next month entitled Barbarian Lives. It also appears that it will be a TV series as well on BBC2.

Mel & Floyd

In preparation for tomorrow's episode, you can find last week's Mel & Floyd show here.

Syttende Mai

While today may be Cinco de Mayo, let's not forget something a little closer to home. Syttende Mai will be here next weekend. To prepare, nibble on some lefse and ludefisk as you read some Jostein Gaarder. For my part, I'm going to listen to the more Norwegian-laced tunes by Tempest (such as "Bonden og Kraka") and some Flukt while reading what I have of Prost Gotvins Geometri by Gert Nygårdshaug.

Impeach?

Greg Palast is at it again. He claims to have the smoking gun that would prove that Dubya engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors. To wit:

Here it is. The smoking gun. The memo that has "IMPEACH HIM" written all over it.

The top-level government memo marked "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL," dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Read that again: "The intelligence and facts were being fixed...."

For years, after each damning report on BBC TV, viewers inevitably ask me, "Isn't this grounds for impeachment?" -- vote rigging, a blind eye to terror and the bin Ladens before 9-11, and so on. Evil, stupidity and self-dealing are shameful but not impeachable. What's needed is a "high crime or misdemeanor."

And if this ain't it, nothing is.

The memo, uncovered this week by the Times, goes on to describe an elaborate plan by George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to hoodwink the planet into supporting an attack on Iraq knowing full well the evidence for war was a phony.

A conspiracy to commit serial fraud is, under federal law, racketeering. However, the Mob's schemes never cost so many lives.

Here's more. "Bush had made up his mind to take military action. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

Really? But Mr. Bush told us, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

A month ago, the Silberman-Robb Commission issued its report on WMD intelligence before the war, dismissing claims that Bush fixed the facts with this snooty, condescending conclusion written directly to the President, "After a thorough review, the Commission found no indication that the Intelligence Community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons."

We now know the report was a bogus 618 pages of thick whitewash aimed to let Bush off the hook for his murderous mendacity.

Read on: The invasion build-up was then set, says the memo, "beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections." Mission accomplished.

You should parse the entire memo -- posted on my website -- and see if you can make it through its three pages without losing your lunch.

Now sharp readers may note they didn't see this memo, in fact, printed in the New York Times. It wasn't. Rather, it was splashed across the front pages of the Times of LONDON on Monday.

It has effectively finished the last, sorry remnants of Tony Blair's political career. (While his Labor Party will most assuredly win the elections Thursday, Prime Minister Blair is expected, possibly within months, to be shoved overboard in favor of his Chancellor of the Exchequer, a political execution which requires only a vote of the Labour party's members in Parliament.)

But in the US, barely a word. The New York Times covers this hard evidence of Bush's fabrication of a casus belli as some "British" elections story. Apparently, our President's fraud isn't "news fit to print."

My colleagues in the UK press have skewered Blair, digging out more incriminating memos, challenging the official government factoids and fibs. But in the US press nada, bubkes, zilch. Bush fixed the facts and somehow that's a story for "over there."

The Republicans impeached Bill Clinton over his cigar and Monica's affections. And the US media could print nothing else.

Now, we have the stone, cold evidence of bending intelligence to sell us on death by the thousands, and neither a Republican Congress nor what is laughably called US journalism thought it worth a second look.

My friend Daniel Ellsberg once said that what's good about the American people is that you have to lie to them. What's bad about Americans is that it's so easy to do.

Palast's website is here.

Faces of Evil

Marv and I went to see Downfall last night. It was amazing! Bruno Ganz's performance as Hitler was just incredible. Actually, all the performances were great. The film portrays the final few days of Hitler's life in April of 1945 as he's hunkered down in his bunker in Berlin. With him are military leaders, government officers, and their families and staffs. Among the latter is Traudl Junge, Hitler's stenographer and the movie is based on her memoirs. Since the film mostly takes place in the bunker, there's a palpable feeling of claustrophobia that is occasionally lost as the scenes wander out into the streets of Berlin as ragtag German troops (with children among them) try to fend off the advancing Soviets.



As I said above, Ganz gives a killer performance here. There were scenes when Hitler was in a room with his generals and he'd tell them to have a commander in the field come to the aid of Berlin. Then a general would inform him that there are not enough soldiers or that the unit's flank would be exposed or something similar. Hitler would erupt in anger, yelling that he was in command and how dare he disobey a direct order. Spittle flying out of his mouth, his head flailing - it was just very, very intense. I think it was the first film I've seen to be about Hitler as a man as opposed to a monster. The film didn't concentrate on Hitler as he plotted a war and a genocide, it portrayed him as a man decaying - his sanity, his grasp on reality leaving him. Marv and I talked about the film on the ride home and he commented that it was the first film about Hitler that he'd seen that actually tries to give you a sense of his humanity, however twisted or depleted. One film that comes to mind as being similar in certain ways and in great contrast in others is Nixon. Both films portray powerful men. (Not that I'm trying to make the case that Richard Nixon was an Adolph Hitler, mind you. But they were both very powerful men who fell from power and who were disgraced.) Stone's film showed Nixon at most points in his life, as a boy growing up through the various stages of his political career. Stone was interested in showing Nixon in a larger picture so, not only do we get an overview of Nixon's life, but we also see him put into the context of the larger power structure of Washington D.C. as Stone sees it. Downfall, on the other hand portrays only the last few days of Hitler's life and confines him to a bunker. Both films have a figurehead in the center with other people like moons in orbit around him. Whereas Nixon shows that there are other figureheads and that they compete, Downfall has only one. Aside from the film as a brief character sketch of Hitler, it is also about the relation of his subordinates to him. The loyalty to him of various people - from generals to children - is central. They want to go down with the ship and its captain. A boy fights to the death for the Reich outside on the streets of Berlin amidst the rubble. There's a scene where Magda Goebbels poisons her daughters so that they don't get captured. To say it was disturbing is an understatement. A couple generals protest plans that would leave civilians - innocent women and children - to starve and Hitler remarks that there are no civilians in this war. Various people commit suicide rather than surrender to the Soviets. Even after Hitler kills himself, others do so rather than abandon him.

It was neat how, as the film, progresses, Hitler's physical appearance degrades. His hair gets a bit greyer, his face seemes more wrinkled, and his hand shakes ever more violently from Parkinson's disease. These are potent reminders that, however monstrous Hitler was, he was still just a man. He was kind to Junge but the personification of evil to Jews, for example. He is shown petting his dog in one scene and then flying off into a raging fit in another. Evil has a very human face. And the loyalty of his minions goes to show that evil isn't just for dictators.

Look For Me on a DVD Near You

Porcupine Tree's Deadwing has entered the US album charts around #135 with 7000 some odd sales. Not bad, I guess. It will, of course fall off the charts by next week and there's little doubt in my mind that Atlantic Records will drop the band after this album. I've discovered a fellow Tree fan here in Madison and we're hashing out details to meet up before the show in Milwaukee later this month.

It doesn't look like there'll be a new Jethro Tull album for a while. As per Ian Anderson:

"People often ask when there will be a new Tull album recorded. Well, there are no plans for anything definite due to the location and plans of various band members. It costs a lot of time and money to make a new album these days and the three months, or so, of time required for me in writing, arranging, recording, mixing and mastering has to be weighed against the lost opportunities to perform live in the various places around the world which would like to see us.

I won’t be able to play live for ever and anyway, rather like the chance to explore more touring options as well as to play solo and with other people. I like to divide my time these days between touring on a regular basis both solo and with Tull, recording with other artists, occasional live performances with others and spending some time with family and pussy cat friends.

I'll be going to see Wilco this weekend down in Chicago under the following restrictions:

PLEASE NOTE: FOR THIS WEEK'S VIC SHOWS MAY 3-7 THERE IS NO SMOKING ALLOWED IN THE THEATRE. ALSO, PHOTOGRAPHY, VIDEO AND/OR AUDIO RECORDING ARE NOT ALLOWED. SO LEAVE THE CAMERAS AND MICROPHONES AND SMOKES AT HOME. THANKS...AND SEE YOU THERE.

D'oh! Apparently they are taping the shows at the Vic for a future DVD release. I could end up on a DVD!

CGT Coming to Milwaukee

I see that the California Guitar Trio will be playing at Shank Hall on July 21st. And they'll be dragging Tony Levin along with them.

Fuck the "Day of Prayer"! Gimme a Freethought Day!

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is protesting "Day of Prayer" proclomations. They've also gone off on Guvna Doyle's mandate for lowering the flag so we can "grieve" over the Pope's death. You can read about that here.

Give the Brutha a Hand

Greg Palast is soliciting donations so he can keep doing his investigative reporting thing and providing fodder for bad Michael Moore movies. Ergo, if you want to lend him a hand, go here.

He's also posted his lastest screed. For anyone too lazy to click on the link, here ya go:

Mark my words: Tony Blair won't be re-elected Thursday. However, he will remain in office.

That's because Brits don't vote for their Prime Minister. They've got a "parliamentary" system there in the Mother Country. And the difference between democracy and parliamentary rule makes all the difference. It is the only reason why Blair will keep his job -- at least for a few months.

Let me explain. The British vote only for their local Member of Parliament. The MPs, in turn, pick the PM. If a carpenter in Nottingham doesn't like Prime Minister Blair (not all dislike him, some detest him), the only darn thing they can do about it is vote against their local MP, in this case, the lovely Alan Simpson, a Labour Party stalwart who himself would rather kiss a toad than cuddle with Tony.

Therefore, the majority of the Queen's subjects -- deathly afraid of the return of Margaret Thatcher's vampirical Tory spawn -- holds their noses, vote for their local Labour MP and pray that an act of God will save their happy isle. A recent poll showed the British evenly divided: forty percent want Blair to encounter a speeding double-decker bus and forty percent want him stretched, scalded and quartered in the Tower of London (within a sampling margin of four percent).

Why? Well, to begin with, Blair lies. A secret memo from inside Blair's coven discovered this week made clear that Britain's Prime Minister knew damn well, eight months before we invaded Iraq, that George Bush was cooking the intelligence info on "WDM," but Blair agreed to tag along with his master.

The Prime Minister's coterie sold his nation on the re-conquest of their old colony, Iraq, by making up this cockamamie story about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction that could take out London in 45 minutes. But Brits knew that was 'bollocks' (no translation available) long before this week's shock-horror memo story.

A greater blight on the Prime Minister's reputation: Blair likes American presidents. While his habit of keeping his nose snug against Bill Clinton's derriere was a bit off-putting, his application to George Bush's behind makes Blair's countrymen retch.

I watched the machinery called Tony Blair up close as a Yankee in King Blair's court (first as an advisor on the inside, then as a journalist also on the inside, but with a hidden tape recorder).

And it was eerie. Because what I saw was a man who, while Britain's erstwhile leader, scorns his own country. That is, he scorns the union workers that wanted to keep filthy coal mines open; he scorns the nostalgic blue-haired ladies who wanted to keep the Queen's snout on their nation's currency; he scorns his nation of maddeningly inefficient little shops on the high street, of subjects snoozy with welfare state comforts and fearful of the wonders of cheap labor available in far-off locales.

Blair looks longingly at America, land of the hard-charging capitalist cowboy, of entrepreneurs with big-box retail discount stores, Silicon Valley start-ups and Asian out-sourcing.

Blair doesn't want to be Prime Minister. He wants to be governor in London of America's 51st state.

Britons know this. They feel deeply that their main man doesn't like the Britain he has. And that is why the average punter in the pub longs to be led by that most English of British politicians -- who is not English at all -- Gordon Brown, the Scotland-born Chancellor of the Exchequer.

And so they vote for their local Labour MP on that party's quietly whispered promise that, shortly after the election, Gordon Brown, defender of the old welfare state, union rights, and a gentleman unlikely to invade forgotten remnants of the empire, will, on a vote of his parliamentary confreres, take the reins of government in his benign and prudent hands.

As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says, Tony Blair is a man of principle. So was the Ayatolla Khomeini. Both were willing to have others pay any price for their beliefs.

Luckily for Britain, Chancellor Brown won't let Blair put his fanatic hands on the kingdom's cash or coinage. And herein is another difference betwixt the US and UK. In America, the Treasury Secretary is little more than the President's factotum. In Britain, the Chancellor holds the nation's purse. Brown brilliantly controls Britain's spending, taxing and currency. For example, despite Tony's pleas, Brown presciently nixed England dumping the pound coin for the euro.

And thus Brown, not Blair, has earned his nation's gratitude for the island's steady recovery from Thatcherite punishments while, across The Pond, real wages in Bush's America are falling.

Blair will hold onto office - for now - due only to a sly campaign that relies on the public's accepting on faith that, sooner rather than later after the vote on Thursday, Blair will do the honorable thing and end his own political life, leaving the British-to-the-bone Brown to inherit the parliamentary throne. Tony's political corpse can then be mailed to Texas - wrapped in an American flag.

Hearing the Gospel

This past weekend I was lucky enough to catch a lecture by Elaine Pagels. Her most recent book, Beyond Belief, formed the basis of her talk. It is about the Gospel of Thomas, rejected long ago for the canon. The First United Methodist church was a packed house so I got there early so I could get a front row seat. Pagels' specialty is early Christianity and Gnosticism.

It basically goes without saying that I found her speech to be utterly fascinating. She is a fantastic speaker. She spoke with enthusiasm and injected a lot more humor into her lecture than I thought she would. Plus she roamed the stage so she could speak facing everyone in the room. I really appreciated this as I was sitting at a 90 degree angle to the front of the podium.

She began by explaining that it was found written in Greek and that she thinks that it was probably written in the early part of the second century C.E. The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of sayings that are attributed to Jesus. (If you want to read it, go here.) She went on to talk about how it was not given canonical status yet shares a lot of passages with those that were made so. Pagels covered a lot of territory and, since this isn't a topic about which I'm intimately familiar, I won't be able to summarize her very well, unfortunately. I can relate, however, the parts that intrigued me the most.



One idea she laid down was the view of The Gospel of Thomas and that of John as being in opposition. They have radically different approaches with Thomas being rather more egalitarian than John. Thomas also seemed to me to portray the divine a bit more as pagans do, namely, as being immanent, being around us on this earth and now. I was fascinated with how she brought in the concept of light from Genesis. Instead of it being light as in a stream of photons emanating from the Sun, it was divinity. Entering the Kingdom of God here is not about moving from this life into another but rather about seeing the light which is divine everywhere right now – by returning to the time before the fall of man. Yeah, I know I'm butchering it.

(50) Jesus said, "If they say to you (plur.), 'Where are you from?' say to them, 'It is from light that we have come - from the place where light, of its own accord alone, came into existence and [stood at rest]. And it has been shown forth in their image.' If they say to you, 'Is it you?' say 'We are its offspring, and we are the chosen of the living father.' If they ask you, 'What is the sign of your father within you?' say to them, 'It is movement and repose.'"

I really enjoyed how Pagels was able to be scholarly while sounding more like she's giving a sermon. She made it very easy to see the beauty in Thomas and, to a lesser extent, in Christianity. I mean, I'm no friend of religion but it's not hard to see the appeal of the transcendentalism (would that be the right word?) of it. In fact, Thomas sounds a lot like what little I know of Buddhism as well as paganism. I like how she tied that elliptical knot and brought it all back to Genesis.

After her speech, there was a break during which she signed books and chatted with folks. I ended up way towards the back of the line and didn't get the chance to meet Pagels owing to time constraints. However, I did end up chatting with the guy behind me. He was really nice. At one point he asked if I went to church there. I was a bit nervous to tell him that I am an atheist, but when I did so, he was very accepting and we just continued our conversation.



With the break over, a small panel discussion ensued with Pagels joined by a professor of religious studies here at the university and a man from the church who deals with community outreach. Most of the questions were directed at Pagels, unsurprisingly, but the prof got dragged in a lot. Unfortunately, the church representative didn't have much room to speak but what he said spoke a lot. I was impressed with his introduction in which he was very critical of evangelicals generally and the Christian Right specifically. One audience member asked about traditions and types of knowledge. I think it was inspired by something Pagels said during her lecture about Jesus potentially having had one set of knowledge for the masses and another for his intimate disciples that was "secret". I forget what the woman from the audience asked specifically but recall the responses. Pagels contrasted a bar mitzvah with an Episcopalian confirmation. At the bar mitzvah, she explained, the boy would choose a passage from the Torah and do a little exegesis on it. For the confirmation, on the other hand, the young person would just recite a Biblical passage assigned to him. The church rep spoke up at this point and related a telling story. He had been attending meetings of a campus evangelical group, presumably attempting to build bridges with its members. He attended several of them and noticed that there was a table with literature on it about feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and just helping the poor in general. He also noticed that at none of the meetings were these issues ever discussed so he asked why it was that the material was there but it never got mentioned. Whoever it was that led the group told him that such activities were "advanced stuff" and that they only went over the "basics" in the group's meetings. I think most of us in the audience were rather surprised/shocked to hear that proselytizing should take precedence over being good to one's neighbor for them.

For more on Elaine Pagels and her ideas, go here.

This was the second David P. Lyons Lectureship in Theology seminar that the church has held. Next year Karen Armstrong is coming to town.

Dear Dad

Hey Old Man,

Presumably it's a bit warmer where you are than it is here. It actually snowed this morning for a bit. No accumulation, grant you, but it is May. But it is also Wisconsin, I guess. You know how it goes.

Well, it's been a while. How are things in Purgatory or the First Circle or wherever it is you are? One reason I am writing is to let you know that you've finally been laid to rest. Or, rather, your ashes have. I went down to Fairfield last week. You see, Gene had your ashes for a while and he decided to have your remains buried down in Fairfield with Edna and Dorinda. And so, finally, last week the deed was done. Your cousin Lewie spends about half the year in Florida near Gene & Sally so he brought back the ashes with him last month and set things up at the cemetery. It was a bit weird as I found myself really wanting to go. I was very anxious the two days prior to the burial. I just wanted to get down there, meet Lewie and Mary Jane, and just discover what was to be had. Ever since your death, talking with people who knew you has been a treat, in a certain way, because I got to hear stories which helped put the puzzle of you & your life together for me. And this trip was no exception.

Meeting Lewie and Mary Jane was an absolute pleasure as they were so friendly. For a moment, I had to wonder if Lewie was really related to you as he had none of your misanthropic tendencies. I showed him some pictures that I found at your house and he was able to identify one of them – it was your grandmother. Not surprisingly, he launched into many a story about Edna and you in your youth. It was really fascinating for me. For instance, I never knew that you were so close to your grandmother and basically lived with her for a summer. Lewie also told me how he "accidentally" gave your grandfather the nickname of "Dad" and your grandmother "Mama's Dad" and how they stuck. They gave me a tour around town and showed me where your grandparents lived and where Ed worked. And I got the story of how Ed died there from an aneurysm back in the 1940s. Work will do that to you, I guess. I also got to meet Lewie and Mary Jane's son, Kent. I had no idea that they had a family business and that Kent was the fifth generation.


Another thing that I didn't know was that you went down there to visit a couple years after Joni's death. With more than a hint of regret, Lewie said that you and he basically lost touch after you and mom married. He told me a funny story about your wedding reception. He said that he was chatting with (my) grandma – mom's mom – as the band was playing a polka. He asked her if she danced the polka and she replied that she did when she was younger but, since her knees had started giving her trouble, she'd stopped. Then someone came up to her and said, "Pearl, let's dance!" She was led away and shook her booty!

The actual ceremony for your burial was brief. (Oddly enough, it had rained the day before and it held off until it was done.) There were only four of us but I'm sure you'd still bitch that it was too crowded for your liking. It was a bit odd to have a Methodist minister (or whatever they have) do his spiel as you were an atheist and I am as well. No biggie. As he spoke, I just stared at the box that contained your ashes. As the ministered babbled on about Jesus and the mystery of death, my thoughts wandered to the fact that you no longer had life. There's no mystery for me about death. Your heart stopped – where's the mystery in that? Tears welled in my eyes as I thought about how only 4 people were there. I guess I wasn't expecting it to match the last funeral I was at – my great Uncle Harry last year – but it saddened me. What really hurt me was that you died alone. Even more than a year after your death, I still cry when I think about it. The image of you lying there on that sidewalk…it's one that's hard to get out of my mind once I put it there. That image…it stood in such stark contrast to how I felt after having finally met some family that I never knew about and having been made to feel so incredibly welcome by them. How they talked about all these family members that I barely knew or never even met. Lewie and Mary Jane made me, both by their openness and the stories they told made me feel something I don't feel very often – like I'm a part of a family. It's nice to feel those kindred feelings, to know that I'm part of something bigger than I am on my own. Towards the end of the ceremony, I made some remarks. Basically just random, unrehearsed bits about how it saddened me that you died alone but how thankful I was that there was an upside to it all. I got to meet some new family.


Afterwards, we went cruising the area. We ate lunch at Bonaparte Retreat and then stopped in at an Amish general store in Cantril. The area around there is really nice. I was expecting it to be more like the center part of the state, namely, very flat and lots of corn fields so it was a pleasant surprise to see all the gently rolling hills and trees. I really didn't want to have to leave, to be honest. It was a long drive home and work was beckoning for my return. Plus I just felt like hanging around and absorbing the spirit of the place. As I passed out of the city limits, I remember saying to myself out loud, "Well, old man, I got a chance to check out your old stomping ground."

So what else is new, you ask. Well, not really too much. I'm still gainfully employed at the state fixing their PCs. And, since the last time I wrote, I'm still waiting for spring. If it ever warms up, we're gonna go cruising the lakes on our pontoon. I can't recall the last time I wrote but I'm now officially single again. I broke up with my girlfriend in December only to start dating her again in January and broke up with her again in March. A real soap opera, I tell ya. Somehow we've remained friends – the first time I've been able to do that with an ex. It's funny because I think I've pretty much resigned myself to a life of perpetual bachelorhood. I know how you couldn't stand not having a woman in your life. I guess I didn't inherit that gene. You know, there's never a day that goes by that I don't think of you for some reason. Often times I catch myself doing or saying something that came right out of your playbook. It's a funny feeling to see so much of you in myself. I think I've gotten to the point where I understand and accept that you're gone. But, when I think of you, when I picture your face in my mind, it still doesn't register. That part of my brain hasn't yet caught up, I suppose. The lines on your face are so clear in my mind's eye and I expect to see you again, to see that those lines are deeper and that some new ones have appeared. I still expect to watch as you grow old even though I know perfectly well that that will not happen. On the plus side, I no longer expect you to call or to be able to dial your phone number and hear your voice on the other end. It's odd how the brain deals with loss, isn't it? Anyway, I'm playing the field again, though not particularly seriously. There's a (very) small group of women that I flirt with on a regular basis and I don't stand a chance with any of them. One is way out of my league. She is stunningly gorgeous and knows it. Thusly some goofball PC tech is not going to even get a chance to bat. She tolerates me because I frequent the joint where she works. Another is a co-worker who finds me amusing so she leads me on in exchange for entertaining her at work. You and mom, heck, Carl too, are so normal so how did I get to be so odd? We'll never know, I suppose.

Ever since I committed you back to the earth, I've been feeling a bit depressed. Perhaps "depressed" really isn't the right work. Very pensive. No flirting and just keeping to myself at work. I've been going out and doing stuff as well as hanging with friends, though. When I'm not with them, I prefer to just be with my thoughts. This will blow over eventually. But it feels very frustrating. It's spring, right? I should be going out hitting on every pretty woman I see but, instead, I shy away from them. I guess I'm not in the mood for rejection right now. A friend and I went out for drinks with this gorgeous woman the other night. She and I had much in common and she was just really fun to be with. What did I do? I barely spoke a word. There was just this intense feeling of her being way out of my league. I wouldn't even step up to the plate. Striking out sucks but, when you do so, you bat again. That's the way of the world. But I just prefer to sit on the bench for a while, I guess. Sometimes I think that there's a part inside me that thrives on loneliness. It serves as a focal point for self-inquiry as if I need it to gain understanding of myself. It's as if I can see some kernel of me more clearly than when there are other people around. Being alone sort of exposes something, brings it into the light so I can look at it, turn it about, and study it. Not really sure what that something is, admittedly. I think your death did something similar. When you were alive, our relationship seemed to stand in the way of seeing something about myself and how I want to be. With you gone, I think that something has been thrown into sharper relief. I can stand back and see how you lived your life as opposed how you are living your life. It is easier to connect the dots because the dots aren't shifting anymore. At least not shifting as much. I think I understand my shortcomings much better than I ever did while you were alive and I've changed or am trying to change some of them while accepting others as immutable. I feel that I've learned how to be a better friend, son, co-worker, roommate, etc. (And I'm learning how to be a good honorary uncle too.) I have also learned that my abilities for being a good boyfriend/lover over the long haul are, for the most part, lacking. There's no doubt in my mind that some of these can be improved, that I can change them for the better. On the flip side, though, I feel that my intense desire for companionship is sort of countered by an equally intense desire for solitude. Not perpetual solitude but, when you're in a relationship, you can't really pick and choose when to be alone, if you can be alone at all. It's difficult to describe but there are times when saying that being responsible for the happiness of a girlfriend/wife is anathema to my journey of self-discovery doesn't seem to be too far off the mark. There are times when crawling into bed alone seems interminably sad and times when it feels like the perfect fit. So much ambivalence. I wonder why I choose to err on the side of being alone…? Who knows how I'll feel in a few years. Or even tomorrow.

Well Old Man, I feel exhausted now so I'll close here. I shall try to write you again soon. In closing, I've included a picture of you that you'll recognize. You took it – what? – a day or two before you died? I found it on your computer when I got to your house. I tend to think of your toothless grin here as being the last time I saw you. Granted that it wasn't but I like this picture better than our last real-life encounter in the antelucan hours as you dropped me off at the bus station. You're smiling here – you look happier than I'd seen you since 1998. It makes me feel as if there was hope for you. For us, maybe.

See you on the other side,
Skip

Screed

Greg Palast's new screed is online now so check it out.

All the World's a Stage or a Movie Screen

Uncle Ridley's new flick, Kingdom of Heaven, got a good review. I'm looking forward to seeing Orlando Bloom getting all medieval on some Muslim ass.

Roger Waters has finally completed his opera. It only took a decade but, hey, he hasn't released a rock album in 13 years though he's been trying.

In other opera news, Orwell's 1984 is also to hit the stage.

The Hitchhiker's flick did well at the box office this past weekend. I wonder if all the fans like myself rushed out to see it or if new fans made up the bulk of the moviegoers. I'm thinking the former. Pete saw it over the weekend and said yesterday that it was pretty bad. He then proceeded to give a laundry list of funny parts which went on and on so I have a suspicion that it's really not that bad. His complaints focused on the film's derivation from the radio drama and books and it seems like he really didn't try to view it in its own context. I'll see for myself soon.

Finally, a new Revenge of the Sith trailer/music video hoolie.