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Creepy as he is, Karl Rove is politically gifted. WIthin days of the White House's media black eye in New Orleans he was circulating two memes--"blame game" and "we had to deliberate carefully on sending US troops in because of the Posse Comitatus laws." Both utter bullshit, but they sound plausible and the media is biting.
Today in the New York area it's just as beautiful outside as it was September 11 four years ago, which should give us a worried feeling. It's especially troublesome that the people who were in power on that horrible, sad day are still in power, thanks to 59 million incredibly stupid American voters. Thanks, guys!
Added to the links at left: Thorrific. When I lived in Dallas I used to say the city was "a great source of negative inspiration, ha ha" while slowly rotting inside. Eventually fled screaming ten years ago but Thorrific (aka Thor Johnson) stays there and makes good art, music and video, while also documenting with his camera what former prisoner Randall Adams, framed by the Dallas DA's office and freed in the '80s by Errol Morris, called the "hell on earth that is Dallas County." Recommended is the animated vid "Adventures of the Christian Pirate Pussies," based on the beliefs of certain idiot wackos in freeway churches and, sadly, at the highest levels of the US government, that a "red heifer" must be born and sacrificed in Jerusalem before Jay-sus can come again. In the video, the eponymous vaginas transport such a beast, genetically engineered in a lab in Texas, to the holy land by pirate ship, while a talking, flying bible explains the superstitious beliefs surrounding it. Thorrific's photographs likewise excel; think William Eggleston not just as a chronicler of the quirky beauty of the South but someone burning up with hatred for the epidemic obesity and preacher-promulgated ignorance so abundant in that part of the world. (Start with the Texas State Fair photos, but they're all pretty powerful.) Lastly, check out the site's streaming files of spacy, dubbed-out atmospheric tunes, layering Thorrific's guttural didgeridoo-playing with jangly, ominous electronics. A web-place well worth your time: oppositional culture at its finest.
Chris Ashley presents greatest hits from two years of posting daily html drawings. Not to take away from any others, but this one's a beaut, fusing golden section neoplatonism, designer paint swatches, and what I can only see as a pictogram of a hand (Four, July 28, 2005, HTML, 404 x 344 pixels).
The participation of Chris, jimpunk, Linkoln, and me in the empyre listserv forum in June, as "artists who blog," seems to have thrown a spanner in everyone's works. As explained here earlier, it went badly, with the moderators allowing a bunch of faux-academic boors to bash blogs and bloggers. I bailed after two weeks and still wake up in a cold sweat. Shortly thereafter, Ashley went on hiatus from daily html drawing posting (since resumed with added photo-imagery), jimpunk disappeared from Screenfull, followed by Linkoln, after posting a "searching for jimpunk" drawing. Maybe "artists blogging" is a fragile thing, even if the artists aren't fragile people, a pursuit to be cherished and supported as opposed to acting all threatened about.
Steve Gilliard on Republican racial "inclusiveness" post-Katrina:
The unhappiest man with a home today is Ken Mehlman, [Republican National Comittee] chair. All his dreams of cutting into the Democratic base went up in smoke as the [National Review Online] lit their verbal cross and Bush failed like he has always failed. Bush could charm himself into a job, but once he did, the shitty decisions started and kept on coming. Mehlman would be laughed out of the room if he said the GOP was a party of inclusion. Please. You had the President's mother speaking like a Kenyan colonist in a village.If you're feeling glum, the video of the guy (off camera) saying "Go Fuck Yourself, Mr. Cheney" will really lift your spirits. I watched it with a group and we all laughed really hard. Cheney is giving a serious speech--being his usual Mr. In-Control self, even though he failed in Iraq and the only thing he's good at is lining his pockets--and the heckler (a doctor, apparently), who has a very clear voice and sounds like he's about 10 feet away from the VP--completely breaks the flow. He says "Go Fuck Yourself, Mr. Cheney" twice! The reporter comments on it and Cheney attempts to make a lame joke. Cheney likes to pretend he's the only adult in the room, but if you'll you'll recall, "Go fuck yourself" is what he snarled at Patrick Leahy on the Senate floor. It's great to see that when he goes out in public he's not so insulated as to escape hearing that people out there are mad and specifically hate him--him, personally--as the architect of a failed war and failed economic policies.