drat fink

candygram

FRI 8/2 - SUMMERSQUASH MEADE PRESENTS THE ISLE OF DOGS FESTIVAL #1 Including Reservoir, The Naysayer, Kendall Meade (Mascott) Dave Derby, Phoebe Summersquash, Jud Ehrbar and Rainy Orteca.
8:00 RESEVOIR
9:00 THE NAYSAYER
10:00 SUMMERSQUASH MEADE"

made in the shade

"This is record number three for Greg Weeks, and the one that's really finally gotten our attention. His previous disc on Ba Da Bing! was a stripped down, boy-and-his-guitar folky singer-songwriter kinda record, and while he is still essentially playing folk music, on "Awake Like Sleep" he has begun to experiment with electronics and synthesizers resulting in a sound completely alien but warm and familiar at the same time: a sort of lilting chamber folk with electro-baroque flourishes, reminiscent of sixties and seventies folk-rock bands from England."

magnum force

"Finally in stock, the long awaited solo acoustic live set by Neutral Milk Hotel's beloved Jeff Mangum, about whom I simply cannot be objective -- the two NMH records *still* make me cry everytime I listen to them, they're that lovely and touching and brilliant. This 1997 concert was performed in an Xmas-light-filled room with an occasional baby enthusiastically chiming in alongside Mangum's super earnest vocal delivery. If you've ever seen Neutral Milk Hotel in concert, you already know that Jeff will deviate often from the recorded versions of his music, sometimes stretching out a multi-note wail for much longer, sometimes speeding up or changing a rhythm. That's what makes this live disc worth it -- for the variations he introduces, super sweet but just different enough to keep it fresh for those of us who have listened to the two NMH records hundreds of times already."

deer droppings

"Gosh. What can I say? This is absolutely the finest moment of Deerhoof's recorded output. At 34 minutes, there is absolutely no filler on Reveille: it is an astonishingly precise and accomplished half hour of some of the most challenging, interesting avant-rock we've heard in a long long time. Jeff loves this album so much he almost started a record label just to put it out! The local trio of Satomi Matsuzaki, John Dieterich and Greg Saunier are old school; you can hear in their music the lessons they learned from vintage Bay Area weirdos like the late great Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 and Caroliner, and from the famously avant garde Mills College music program -- all of which have resulted in a great, eccentric band whose aesthetic is fully formed, mature and confident. Satomi's light, singsong vocal delivery (similar to Boredoms' Yoshimi, Blonde Redhead, Yoko Ono) careens from stereo left to stereo right, a dose of melody and almost j-pop sweetness that plays perfectly against the macabre repeating guitar lines and the great, unpredictable, muscular drumming. Sudden stops and starts punctuate eight minute songs against one minute collages of noisy audio squiggles. Much like the Thinking Fellers did, Deerhoof juxtaposes melodic passages against weighty, distorted guitar a la Sonic Youth; they rarely descend to all-too-easy verse/chorus/verse trad songwriting, yet amazingly enough the album is quite accessible. Experimental music that everyone can enjoy. Wonderful. This record is perfection."

rip it up

hero worship

"The amazing, beautiful, anarchic, DIY psych-folk-pop of Tony, Caro & John's terribly rare "All On The First Day" LP (originally privately released in an edition of just 100 copies) has now been revived on CD for, hopefully, a larger audience! This comes to us from the label that's been responsible for bringing us those fab "Love, Peace & Poetry" psychedelic rock compilations (y'know, the Latin American one, the Asian one, the Japanese one, etc.). Among the most recent installments in that series was a disc devoted to British psychedelic obscurities. One of that comp's highlights, we all agreed, was a cut by this trio. That track, the amazingly Neutral Milk Hotel-ish "There Are No Greater Heroes" appears here as well, on Shadoks' reissue of Tony, Caro & John's entire sole album, from 1972."

sunstroke

"The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band is one of those groups whose status in the collectorskum underground means that I once spent $75 on one of their LPs. Ouch. Thankfully most of their recorded output has finally been put out on cd by the excellent reissue label Sundazed. This band never quite made it big, never had a hit record, but god were they good. They were stalwarts on the LA pop scene in the late '60s and released six albums (I think). The music is arty and psychedelic but also totally appealing and approachable, like a weird mix of Capt Beefheart and the Association or the Byrds. Very fun and very "of its time" -- with several anti-Vietnam War songs, the requisite sitars, Fifth Dimension-style vocals, lyrics invoking fairies and dwarves, etc. Their sound was alternately sweet and silly, epic and serious... and you must hear it!"

juicy nug

john's children - desdemona

u r

"RJD2's debut album is nothing less than amazing. The Columbus, OH producer mixes vintage soul samples over cut and paste beats and includes appearances from guest rappers like Jakki da Motamouth and Copywrite. Like DJ Shadow's "Entroducing," these hip hop soundscapes will blow your mind!"

millennium falcon

"Here's an apparently much sought-after rarity now reissued (thanks again to the fine folks at Sundazed), that we have to confess we'd never heard of until now. But that's one of the great things about reissues, isn't it? And as reissues go, this one's a doozy: three discs of sugary, sunshiney psychedelic pop dating from 1965-1968, produced by the interrelated studio groups The Millennium, The Ballroom, Sagittarius, Summer's Children, and others (all creations of, among others, songwriter/producer Curt Boettcher, a man whose work we're told Brian Wilson was stunned by). Demos, singles, instrumentals, unreleased alternate takes, plus the full albums (Ballroom's "s/t" and The Millennium's "Begin") from these guys: it's all here. And it's all pretty great -- magical, even. Often dreamy. Well, sometimes goofy too (unfortunately reminding us of that "Drugsachusetts" Kroft Super Show parody sketch from Mr. Show!). Ok, if you're not in the mood, it'll make you vomit, but if song titles like "Dancing Dandelion", "Sunshine Today", "Milk And Honey", and "Karmic Dream Sequence" make you smile, then you'll want to have this for those special moments when today's Elephant 6 output just doesn't cut it. (And by that we mean to suggest that if you're a fan of Olivia Tremor Control or Apples in Stereo, you'll find so much to love here -- the music is as sweet as the Olivias but with a really good grit to it too.) "

kennelmus

"Another fine reissue from fine reissue label Sundazed (who put this out in '99 -- so we're slow, sorry) of late sixties era psych rock. Kennelmus were from the Arizona desert and played a sunbaked style of almost surfy psychedelia, as documented on this, their sole LP release from 1971. Influenced by the Beach Boys, early Alice Cooper, and we'd have to assume some mind-expanding drugs, this is gorgeous stuff that's also weirdly unhinged as you'll discover as the album progresses. 'Indonesian instrumental '60s guitar pop band The Steps doing Morricone Western soundtrack music' (cool!) is the first thing we thought after hearing the initial three or four songs, but then as the tracks advance, more and more songs feature vocals, often silly, nasal ones...partially because of this, at times this reminds us of another strange band originally from Arizona, the Sun City Girls! "

grease monkey

"It's going to be hard to do this one justice... We just got a few copies in of this actually out-of-print double cd. Cheap, too! The Hampton Grease Band released this, their debut and only album, in 1971, to almost universal disinterest and, even, active dislike. It was, famously, the second worst selling album in Columbia history. It might not have helped that Columbia's marketers, doubtless confused by the dadaistic hippy rock weirdness of the Hampton Grease Band, pitched it to stores as a comedy album. It certainly is funny -- funny ha ha and otherwise -- but it's as an avant-garde rock record that we recommend it. Imagine Zappa, Beefheart and a southern rock band all rolled into one absurd, palpitating, guitar-totin' ball. The end result: gorgeous, dissonant, textural guitar-based instrumentals that wouldn't sound out of place on the best Polvo record you've heard, plus the raving loony vocal 'stylings' of one Bruce Hampton (who has kept up his antics as the leader of Col. Hampton's Aquarium Rescue Unit, which we definitely aren't recommending). He's untrained and maniacal and his screechy voice makes this sound at times like Sam Kinison fronting the Allman Brothers. An acquired taste, perhaps, we'll warn you -- it even took a few listens for Allan (the biggest, and maybe only, Hampton Grease Band fan here) to get into this originally. And he doesn't like Zappa, either. But annoyance soon gave way to enjoyment. There's definitely some stoopid stuff on here, but then there's the several extended (around 20 minutes long, three of 'em are) compositions/improvs in complex, interlocking time signatures and whatnot. Not normal rock, not jazz, certainly not jazzrock. Instrumentally, amazing. Lyrically, certainly odd -- Hampton often sang "found lyrics" from whatever text was at hand, like an encyclopedia entry about Halifax or the back of a can of spray paint. As it says in the cd booklet liner notes, the HGB were "an intensely musical group with an intensely non-musical singer"."

dream on

"This long-awaited legit reissue of the lost classic by one man band the Dreamies will easily provide hours of crypto-analytic fun in response to the question "Who else besides the Beatles have the Olivia Tremor Control blatantly copied/paid homage to?" Kidding aside, we promise you could totally mistake this for an OTC record...a *great* OTC record! From 1973, it is an outstanding if bizarre psychedelic album with spartanly bleak arrangements for acoustic guitar and hauntingly Donovanesque vocal melodies, injected with trippy sonic squiggles and snippets from 70s newscasts to paint a disillusioned picture of the failure of 60s ideologies. Mesmerisingly beautiful and faithfully reissued from the original masters. Recommended!! "

babar sings!

"First it was Frogs of North America invading our record bins, then it was Antarctic Seals and Penguins, followed by Insects in Stored Foodstuffs... now it's Elephants from Thailand! Brilliant recordings by non-human, um, sound-artists that we just can't get enough of here at Aquarius. In this case, the elephants are not just making their natural noises, they are indeed playing instruments! You may have read about this project in the New York Times -- when we found out about it we immediately contacted the label and ordered a whole bunch (based also on the on-line sample we heard at www.mulatta.org) and now here they are. These are elephants from a elephant preseve in Thailand who have been trained to play specially-built instruments (many marimba-like instruments similar to the traditional Thai renat, as well as such things as harmonicas, drums, and even a stringed "electric bass"), but they haven't been trained *what* to play, it's all improvised with minimal human guidance! Yet it's definitely music. It was kind of an experiment to find out how the creatures might express themselves, and we'd say it was very successful indeed. If we didn't know these were elephants, we'd think this was a strange No Neck Blues Band recording or something. Imagine a stumbling, primitive hippy folk jam on gamelan instruments, but not one that's random or erratic. The elephants play steady beats, the struck gongs or chimes interspersed with their vocalizations as well. With no overdubs and few edits this is certainly a very impressive recording!"

le meow

"Francoiz Breut is the modern Brigitte Fontaine, with a healthy dose of Cat Power thrown in. Acoustic loops, soaring strings and skittering drums all frame absolutely beautiful songs, full of emotion and intensity. Breut's voice is husky and deep, the lyrics all in French, making the songs dark and dreamy and romantic."

newport news

"Next Saturday, Dylan, now 61, will return to the Newport Folk Festival for the first time since that evening. It would be easy to read too much into the occasion. If there is a general remark that might be true about a figure like Dylan, it is that general remarks are almost always distortions. The opposites contained in any real artist prepare an ambush for generalizations."

chimichanga

"At approximately 2 a.m., Rosenblatt was finishing a particularly difficult course-pack reading on the impact of feminism, post-feminism, and current 'queer' theory on received notions of gender and sexual preference/identity. Realizing he hadn't eaten since lunch, the Ph.D candidate picked up the Burrito Bandito menu. Before he could decide on an order, he instinctively reduced the flyer to a set of shifting, mutable interpretations informed by the set of ideological biases—cultural, racial, economic, and political—that infect all ethnographic and commercial "histories.""

take me home

"The Department of Homeland Security: An Alternative That Will Work"

rush to judgement

"When AOL bought Time Warner, the New York Times asked me to write a comment piece. "What does it all mean?" my assigning editor asked."

"What I wrote was that AOL's purchase of Time Warner heralded the end of the dotcom bubble. AOL was cashing in its casino chips. And just like the gambler who trades in his coloured plastic disks for real cash, AOL's Steve Case understood that his run was over and that it was time to trade in his stock certificates for those of a company that had genuine assets."

"The New York Times refused to run the piece. They told me I was misreading the landscape to such an extent that for them to publish such a view would be irresponsible. See, all the experts - at least all the experts the Times was listening to - believed that the AOL purchase of Time Warner indicated "new" media's domination of "old" media. Interactivity would take over. Time Warner's only hope of getting in the game was to be absorbed by a new media company."

imperfect storm

"Dahl's main points form an argument that goes roughly like this. Wise and great though the framers were, their vision was circumscribed by what they knew, what they mistakenly thought they knew, and what they lived too soon to have any way of knowing. Even within those limits, they were hobbled by the political necessities of a particular moment, which forced them to swallow provisions to which the most eminent among them were strongly (and rightly) opposed."

golden statement

"In a move toward making San Francisco the first city to defy openly the federal ban on growing marijuana for any reason, the Board of Supervisors approved a ballot measure on Monday that would explore growing marijuana on public property as a way around the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration's continual closing of medical marijuana clubs."

rib roast

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly. -- Woody Allen"

pop tarts

"Needless to say, the flavor of the Fanta ads is more about borderless fun than the gritty details of the global commerce machine. But in a funny way it was the ads themselves that reminded me, indirectly, of Fanta's origins: The commercials are basically a clever repackaging of almost every youth-marketing trope in recent memory—their leavings, if you will—with plenty of pop culture scraps besides. In the jargon of a pitch meeting, it's a post-ethnic, multinational, transracial, global village, lip-syncing girl band meets prefab boy band, retro-swinger, Austin Powers/Ocean's 11 semi-camp, quasi-kitsch, virtual nostalgia, club remix, neo-urban, alterna-brand, anti-Cola … vibe. Oh, and any of these ingredients may contain some irony—but it's the all-natural kind."

safety first

"The U.S.'s nonlethal-weapons programs are drawing their own fire, mostly from human-rights activists who contend that the technologies being developed will be deployed to suppress dissent and that they defy international weapons treaties. Through public websites, interviews with defense researchers and data obtained in a series of Freedom of Information Act requests filed by watchdog groups, TIME has managed to peer into the Pentagon's multimillion-dollar program and piece together this glimpse of the gentler, though not necessarily kinder, arsenal of tomorrow."

da do run run

"Remember when Blair, Tootie, Natalie and Jo got into a paint fight? Or how about when Danny Partridge had his tonsils taken out and the family had to replace him for a few gigs? You may not remember all the episodes of your favorite TV shows, but The Rerun Show does - and will reenact them using a talented ensemble cast! Following in the success of The Real Life Brady Bunch stage show, The Rerun Show will steal unforgettable moments from nostalgic shows such as The Facts of Life, The Partridge Family, Differ’nt Strokes, One Day at A Time and more! On "The Rerun Show," classic TV moments come alive again - with a live action twist -- as a talented ensemble cast reenacts episodes from America’s favorite TV shows such as "The Partridge Family," "The Facts of Life" or "Diff’rent Strokes." Much like the popular stage show "The Real Life Brady Bunch," this comedic, half-hour alternative series re-visits the vintage scenes with a new and outrageous slant."

managed economy

"This "talent mind-set" is the new orthodoxy of American management. It is the intellectual justification for why such a high premium is placed on degrees from first-tier business schools, and why the compensation packages for top executives have become so lavish. In the modern corporation, the system is considered only as strong as its stars, and, in the past few years, this message has been preached by consultants and management gurus all over the world. None, however, have spread the word quite so ardently as McKinsey, and, of all its clients, one firm took the talent mind-set closest to heart. It was a company where McKinsey conducted twenty separate projects, where McKinsey's billings topped ten million dollars a year, where a McKinsey director regularly attended board meetings, and where the C.E.O. himself was a former McKinsey partner. The company, of course, was Enron."

ear rink

gandalf (clip)
fischerspooner
the polyphonic spree
pepito

gene genie

francis fukayama and robert wright debate the future of cloning at Slate.

fresh breath

starlight mints
the sunshine fix
of montreal

freedom rings

open democracy: thinking for our time

just corking

"Proust not only made introspection and its attendant solitude the cornerstone of a new aesthetic; he built an epic around them. After he sought out the very rich and was coddled by them, or after he found love—which rarely happened—Proust, like the narrator of À la recherche du temps perdu, returned to his solitude, to his private world, as to a coming home. At the end of the novel, when Marcel finally has his artistic vocation revealed to him in three successive flashes, he discovers that the very solitude he had sought out and lived with all of his life, and which followed him like a shadow, was perhaps the most authentic and enduring thing about him."

stated department

"Colin Powell, the beleaguered Secretary of State, has delivered an angry riposte to the Pentagon hardliners responsible for his recent string of policy defeats - insisting to allies that he "won't let those bastards drive me out."

cross to bear

have to say i was a little put off yesterday as i rode by the large i-beam cross that lords above the ground zero wreckage. i could appreciate it to an extent and what it might mean to others but it still creeps me out.

heres another photo of the cross.

turnout the lights

"The Center for Voting and Democracy is dedicated to fair elections where every vote counts and all voters are represented."

hearsay

aural delight: an eclectic guide to internet radio

strip search

"Earth's population will be forced to colonise two planets within 50 years if natural resources continue to be exploited at the current rate, according to a report out this week."

"A study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), to be released on Tuesday, warns that the human race is plundering the planet at a pace that outstrips its capacity to support life."

"In a damning condemnation of Western society's high consumption levels, it adds that the extra planets (the equivalent size of Earth) will be required by the year 2050 as existing resources are exhausted."

whitewash

plodded through The Trust: The Family Behind The New York Times. interesting account of the Ochs-Sulzberger clan but hardly an indictment of The Times as i had hoped it would be.

on to alexander cockburns Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press. sure to muck it up there.

eye spy

"VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) - If you're a criminal, a runaway or a terrorist, a day at the beach here may soon be anything but that."

"The city will become the second in the nation — Tampa, Fla., is the other — to employ facial-recognition software to assist police in identifying and catching criminals and missing persons.

"The system is to be tested along the city's oceanfront resort strip this holiday weekend, and police hope to have it fully operational in two to three weeks."

seeing double

"Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II " by William Blum

take your medicine

"FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., July 3 — The unsolicited Prozac arrived in a hand-addressed manila envelope. It came from a Walgreens drugstore not far from here, and there was a "Dear Patient" form letter inside."

"Enclosed you will find a free one month trial of Prozac Weekly," it said. "Congratulations on being one step to full recovery."

swing kids

i was a terrible student
a miscreant learner
alone germane in youth
still mostly drang and a little sturmer

tensegrity

i fear the center will not hold
and it will all come crashing in

put a finger in the whole (and glisten)
as you hear the crackling skin

the dinner bell rang out
but there was nothing left to eat

the mynabird sangfroid
if it could only keep a beat

miss american piebald

it was a terrible blow
to my psychic connection

blue out a fuse
in my sleep
awoke to convection

arose with conviction
to make a correction

not a clue
what to do
sold short on conception

in a saccharine daze
yet i longed for confection

thought i was through
off ascent
and misdirected ascension

he was a civil warrior true
but a revolting insurrection

lugubrioche

bred and vicious
the staph of strife
fleche and blood pudding
on which side am i buttred
a half loafer
biting the hand
crusted liberty
give him not a stone
the breadth of idleness
beauty and sweetmeats
do i fret?

splendid splintered

"What a title ... Greatest Hitter of All Time. It is more of a distinction than World's Fastest Human or Heavyweight Champion of the World because those designations are temporary. This one covers 150 years; it covers Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth and Rogers Hornsby. Hitting a baseball is indeed the hardest skill in sports, a skill that, unlike those in other major sports, is largely unchanged from the early 1900's. No one was ever better at hitting a baseball than Ted Williams. If he were playing today, he would be the best hitter today."

chic of araby

"The barrier to better Arab performance is not a lack of resources, concludes the report, but the lamentable shortage of three essentials: freedom, knowledge and womanpower. Not having enough of these amounts to what the authors call the region's three “deficits”. It is these deficits, they argue, that hold the frustrated Arabs back from reaching their potential—and allow the rest of the world both to despise and to fear a deadly combination of wealth and backwardness."

ciaegis

"Afridi is probably the only person capable of gathering the Pashtun commanders and tribal chiefs together to broker their interests to get them to agree on one leadership - which could be either former monarch Zahir Shah or any of his nominees - to initially form an interim set-up leading to the formation of a constitutional framework to establish an elected government in Afghanistan."

"Without fanfare, Afridi was freed from prison in Karachi last Thursday after serving just a few weeks of a seven-year sentence for the export of 6.5 tons of hashish, seized at Antwerp, Belgium, in the 1980s. (He had been in custody for over two years). He had also been fined 5 million rupees (US$82,000). No reasons were given for Afridi's release, or under which legislation he was allowed to return to his home town in Khyber Agency in North Western Frontier Province."

urinetown

"The holding in Board of Education of Pottawatomie County v. Earls shouldn't just enrage students and parents unwilling to see their kids shamed just for joining the band. It should terrify any of us who fear that in promoting a War on Something, the court might be prepared to suspend all rules of constitutional interpretation based on the preposterous legal theory that "Heck, we oughtta try something." The majority opinion in Earls reflects some of the worst results-based decision-making we've seen since Bush v. Gore. And like Bush v. Gore, it is rooted in panic, expediency, and a twisting of prior precedent to fit the facts."

a leg up

"The unique fossil is around 345 million years old and has been dubbed Pederpes, meaning rock crawler. "It's by far the earliest leg that looks like it could have been used on land," says Jennifer Clack of the University Museum of Zoology in Cambridge UK, who reports the discovery Nature. Previously, only a few fragments of tetrapod legs and shoulders had been found in Canada from this time gap. Before the gap, tetrapods had evolved limbs for paddling, but not walking. Immediately after the gap, they were running all over the land." also the natl geo report

balms away

"The team, which is based at the Applied Research Laboratory of Pennsylvania State University, is assessing weaponization of a number of psychiatric and anesthetic pharmaceuticals as well as "club drugs" (such as the "date rape drug" GHB). According to the report, "the choice administration route, whether application to drinking water, topical administration to the skin, an aerosol spray inhalation route, or a drug filled rubber bullet, among others, will depend on the environment." The environments identified are specific military and civil situations, including "hungry refugees that are excited over the distribution of food", "a prison setting", an "agitated population" and "hostage situations". At times, the JNLWD team's report veers very close to defining dissent as a psychological disorder." via amsa

running numbers

"But there is a problem here. If greed and corruption and the glamorization of corporate executives have been riding high since the Reagan administration, there came a time when the Democrats showed themselves as part of the problem. Money is fungible (and necessary), and the Democrats have been in on it. Numbers collected by the Center for Responsive Politics on the political contributions of 17 big companies now under scrutiny and investigation show that in the past 18 months, those companies have been giving the Democrats almost as much money as they have been giving Republicans."

virtual hell

"A virtual reality environment that conjures up the terrifying sounds and sights of a patient's own hallucinations has been designed to help treat people with schizophrenia."

sally fourth

damn. and i thought they were all coming back looking for more self indulgent poetry. turns out they just want more besmirkment.

some value added linkage via cursor.

cocaine blues

"And now the "war on drugs" is merging with the "war on terror," with a corresponding growth in scale and firepower, offering excellent potential for long-term profits for the "defense"-related industries that hold such a disproportionate sway in international politics. This merging also accelerates the moral corrosion that flourishes under the acidic metaphor of "war"--as we can see in Bolivia."

monetary fun

"Brazil, the Workers' Party and the FT
Casino Real: Brazil's Other Challenge"

state of the nation

nothing says independence day like surveillance cameras and metal detectors.

noteworthy

semi-daily journal
ezrael
sassafrass

greedy little devils

"The corporate world is now embroiled in two controversies. There's the fraud at Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, and elsewhere; and there's the payment of absurd sums to CEOs. Both developments threaten the free-market system--you're kidding yourself if you don't think that big firms deliberately duping investors, or CEOs awarding themselves hundreds of millions of dollars that should have gone to stockholders, does anything other than erode the reputation of market economics. Both practices also trample important principles of conservative economics, as we'll see in a moment."

honor society

i used to joke about running for mayor of providence back when i was mainlining caffe lattes and choking down cigarettes on the deck outside of The Coffee Exchange. had i just lasted another decade in Providence my time would have finally arrived.

dyn-o-mite

k-tel's Music Express was the first album i ever bought. i think at the time i thought all albums were singles compilations. seeing this midi rendition of Run Joey Run reminded me of it.

i was only suggesting

had a strange moment just now. got out of a disheartenly lukewarm shower after an odd dream with cameo appearences by andrew mccarthy and alan ruck (second fiddle in ferris buellers day off) wherein i was called a traitor for smoking Drum tobacco. meanwhile, im half trying to figure out a line from paul simons Slip Slidin' Away when i stumble entoweled to my computer only to read the page i had loaded earlier this morning that was still on my screen. the headline was Slip Slidin' Away. i would have to call that suggested reading.

and here are the songs lyrics.

underclassmen

"RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - The unexpectedly strong showing of radical Indian agitator Evo Morales in Bolivian elections promises to deal a serious blow to the Andean nation's successful U.S.-backed efforts to halt cocaine production."

i hear footsteps

"But long before that ruling — though only a few weeks before bad news that could not be concealed caused Harken's shares to tumble — Mr. Bush sold off two-thirds of his stake, for $848,000. Just for the record, that's about four times bigger than the sale that has Martha Stewart in hot water. Oddly, though the law requires prompt disclosure of insider sales, he neglected to inform the S.E.C. about this transaction until 34 weeks had passed. An internal S.E.C. memorandum concluded that he had broken the law, but no charges were filed. This, everyone insists, had nothing to do with the fact that his father was president."

our kind of guy

"Almost everyone who has encountered the F.B.I. anthrax investigation is aghast at the bureau's lethargy. Some in the biodefense community think they know a likely culprit, whom I'll call Mr. Z. Although the bureau has polygraphed Mr. Z, searched his home twice and interviewed him four times, it has not placed him under surveillance or asked its outside handwriting expert to compare his writing to that on the anthrax letters."

best damn advertisement ever

"In the latest example of how television programming and advertising are becoming increasingly indistinguishable, Levi Strauss & Company paid for an actor featured in a commercial for its Dockers pants brand to appear on the show on Fox Sports Net, a cable TV channel owned by the News Corporation and Cablevision Systems."

second citizen

"Vice-President Dick Cheney, having briefly assumed President Bush’s duties while the President underwent a routine colon procedure on Saturday, told reporters today that he “enjoyed the downtime immensely.”"

striker

ronaldo to refinance brazilian debt. says better than sex and world cup referees.

width knell

"Members of the Toledo police computer crimes task force and FBI agents served search warrants at 13 residences, including an apartment, a condominium, and single-family houses. Investigators believe cable modems that connect Buckeye Express customers to the Internet were altered, allowing computer users unauthorized access to excessive amounts of bandwidth."

copywrongs

"Berman's proposed legislation calls for a myriad of measures including stronger digital rights management laws, lawsuits by copyright owners, and prosecutions against the most gregarious infringers. Additionally he calls for "technological self-help measures" including redirection, decoys, spoofing and file blocking."

take a flyer

"Checkpoint screeners at 32 of the nation's largest airports failed to detect fake weapons — guns, dynamite or bombs — in almost a quarter of undercover tests by the Transportation Security Administration last month, documents obtained by USA TODAY show."

just being neighborly

"The US Ambassador to Bolivia has told the Bolivian people not to vote for the indigenous Indian candidate for the Movement for Socialism (MAS), Evo Morales Ayma. If he is elected next Sunday, the USA will suspend economic aid and will review its agreements."

aztlandia

"It is, of course, true that some of the Bush administration's policies regarding our southern border are dictated by a desire to woo the Hispanic vote. However, there is a deeper and even more insidious motivation. The administration, building upon the work of its predecessor, is seeking to erase our border with Mexico as a prelude to consolidating the Western Hemisphere into a single political bloc modeled after the European Union."

redd stripe bier

redd cross member adds bass to white stripes song and posts online as installation piece.

lip service

this is a good idea. the flaming lips are streaming their entire upcoming album on their website. id be more inclined to buy something if i could decide if i liked it first.

smoke signals

i dont even smoke cigarettes anymore and im outraged. seven bucks a pack!