But This One Goes to 11

My blogging is thin. The things I write are silly. That's okay, the things I want to write are being written by others. I accept that for now. It's for a time.

As for the silly-

I listen to music as I read and write. I listen to music on my computer. The music on my computer is rated. That is, I actually use the "My Rating" feature in iTunes. I have a lot of five star songs. That seems fine- I should have a lot of songs that I like. But I wonder of there is a bit of star inflation going on.

I think I have a high bar for determining wether a song will make it to my library. Maybe I do, maybe not. In either case I have songs that have only one star. Still they are songs I enjoy. I have songs that have no stars- even those are songs that I like to hear. (There are songs in my library I don't listen to- or like. I leave those unchecked so I don't have to hear them. Ever.) It would seem because I load only songs that I think are worth hearing, I wouldn't have any one or zero star songs. But that's not the case. I wonder if it should be. Compared to someone else's library, I would say my one star songs may be better than their five star songs. I don't know.

But the five star song- five stars seems like something that should happen only infrequently. How do I have so many five star songs? Is it because I like great music that inevitably so many of my songs deserve five stars? Because I like such great music, should there be an even higher standard? Should a great song be considered only a fraction as great because of its association with other great songs? I don't know that either.

What's more, if I make a five start playlist, I invariably hear a song that stands head and shoulders above the others. Should I reassess my ratings based on those songs? Should they be categorized as unratable? Still not knowing.

Even if it remains unresolved, this song deserves six stars: If There's Such a Thing as Love -The Magnetic Fields. If I were a better blogger I would put it here for you.

Monday's Been Busy Roundup

We wouldn't think of going without the bait-- uhh, that is, the bait-thing beauty. The bathing beauty! Heh heh. I covered that up pretty well
I rolled with some nogoodniks in junior high. Once, at a hotel, one of these jackanapes spit on the head of a gentleman below. When caught and confronted later, the first words out of his mouth were, "I didn't spit on your head." But if you remember back to the beginning of the story- he did spit on his head.

So you quote love unquote me
Someone has called all the chaos, destruction, and real dead people in Iraq a comma in the larger history of DEMOCRACY's unstoppable march. I would bet whoever said that is himself a colon.

I discovered a new band to like
He says they are inevitably compared to Ween and They Might Be Giants. That's cool. I like both Ween and They Might Be Giants. I discovered them, this means I get to do whatever I like with them- up to and including enslave them and give them diseases because I am so filthy.

What a Baby

You may or may not know that Virginia Momzer, Senator George Allen, (R- McGuire Woods, Skoal, Peabody Energy) has considered it an "aspersion" to make reference to his Jewish ancestry. Well, he did. That's too bad.

It's common knowledge in my family that at least 4 streams of ancestors, on both my mom's and dad's sides, were conversos. More than just making it acceptable for me to make jokes about dentists, it gives me good reason to be a pirate for Halloween. Hooray.

I am not trying to create a boot-wearing Good 'Ol Boy persona nor do I want to embrace a Southern Kultur that includes honoring racist holy war, terrorism, and oppression- nor the flag that symbolizes it. So of course I'm okay with my assumed Jewish ancestry- Allen is, so he isn't okay with his.

To be clear, I don't say all of "the South" is what Allen wants it to be, and apparently wants with a convert's zeal- a place where it's okay to point to the one brown person in your lily-white crowd and call him "macaca" (whatever that might mean), a place where you have to make a point of having "ethnic" supporters, a place where you can be a general asshole and confuse that for being a mensch. From what I've seen, as a place, the South is just another place. Sure it's got some things we don't: Cracker Barrels, sleeveless t-shirts, peanut candies, out of control Kudzu, lots of mounted fish- and more of some things we do have: depressing poverty, scary hyper-Calvinism, humidity, Dr. Pepper. But none of those things make George Allen a jerk. He would be, he was, that in California. We have Denny's instead of Bob Evans, but that doesn't mean we are in short supply of racist, thuggish, mean-spirited jerks who would be more than happy to create a California that is as much "the South" as Alabama is assumed to be.

Oh- a funny joke from back in the day-
One night, a preacher from Chicago wakes up with a start. He wakes his wife and tells her God just spoke to him in a dream.
He says, "God spoke to me- as clear as anything has ever been in my life. The Lord told me to go to Birmingham and join the civil rights movement."
"Birmingham?" his wife asks.
"Yes." he answers.
"Well, did He say He'd go with you?"
"He said He'd go as far as Memphis-"

Eh- so what's my point- George Allen is a jerk and wants to foster and live in a culture that makes it easy for him to be so.

But there's more than that. Am I thinking about identity? Am I thinking about communities that thrive on and foster meanness? Am I wondering if we gravitate to communities according to our temperament and therein play a role? I guess so.

I am wondering what my community is and what it says about me. There's a lot that will seem dissociative about this, but I wonder about me and my community- What choices I've made, the assumptions I miss. Whether I fit or don't and if either is a fiction. That it's important we be EFCSW, not Yearly Meeting. That we today could not create a place to represent our collective sense like Quaker Meadow- as was done 60 years ago. How and why I fit into a larger group that can fittingly be described as, and seems to earnestly pursue the identity, shallow and earnestly "product oriented."

It's 'Cos I'm Shallow & Product Oriented
Knives Out -Radiohead
Many Rivers to Cross -Jimmy Cliff
Chubasco -Juan Garcia Esquivel
Misterioso -Tito Puente
Thank You -Descendents
Gordon's Message -Violent Femmes
Achille's Last Stand -Led Zeppelin

The Heyward Foundation

Jam-maker F Duerr & Son has debuted a commemorative £5,000 pot of marmelade made from rare whisky and champagne and decorated with edible flakes of gold.

via BOING

Did you know you can't taste gold?

Talk To Me, Goose

U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold is accepting applications for nominations to the U.S. Military Academy, U.S. Naval Academy, U.S. Air Force Academy and U.S. Merchant Marine Academy.

Interested students should contact Feingold's Middleton office at 608-828-1200 for application materials

WISCONSIN POST-CRESCENT

WAIT A MINUTE!

I thought Russ Feingold hated America as much as I do. What's the big idea in training another generation of stormtroopers? Unless...

Of course! As Bill O'Reilly says... or is it Sean Hannity? I'll say Bill Hannity. As Bill Hannity says, there is no place more liberal than Wisconsin. People in Wisconsin commune with Satan. Who better to subvert the military than horned cheese-heads?

When I was in junior high my dad was big into the idea of me going to a service academy. My dad was all over writing Alan Cranston and getting me a nomination, and when Top Gun came out- boy was I into it too. I mean the snappy uniforms, showers, and oiled-up volley ball- who wouldn't want that?

Then, during my sophomore year of high school I learned trying was for chumps. Oh well.

Ahh... but Feingold can see the big picture...

You know what? I may think I'm real cute with my Frequently Feingolds, I may think I'm making good points about the stupidity of some of the attacks leveled against liberals. I may think I'm cleverly highlighting good things about him. But even if I succeed in any of that, it seems like I'm trying to maintain a certain distance from him so that, should a shoe drop, I can feign detached interest and say something like, "Well I never really liked him anyway- not like all those other suckers."

I'll keep doing the Frequently Feingolds, but know I like him and I will be very sad if he does something untoward. I expect anyone to do something I don't agree with, but I mean if he does something that disturbs me regarding who he is inside- like Mc Cain did with radical cleric Jerry Falwell, it will be a shanda fur die goyim. At least. So, that said, where was I?

Oh yes, Russ Feingold can see the big picture and is looking to destroy the machine from the inside.

And That Which Has Been Done...

Usually my posts seem apropos of something. Why did I mention Augustine and Emergent Hipsters?

Well...

A couple of school chums and I were having a casual conversation about God and such, when in response to something one of them had said, I said, "Oh, pantheism." And in unison they said "No, its panentheism." I never heard of panentheism. Pantheism I knew.

Pantheism is the idea that God and everything are the same. If you take the sum of everything, and put it in a big pile, there's God. Does that seem to glib? Okay, sorry-
Pantheism literally means "everything god." It is used in reference to systems wherein God and Nature, or more clearly, God and the Entirety of the Universe are identical. God is the substance of all creation. So here's a part of God, this is a part of God- I just made another little part of God re-manifest - and again- now part of God is an X, now a J, over there a piece of dog food, there a fly, here some cheese, a piece of tortilla, high fructose corn syrup, a 2x4, tar paper, laminate flooring, the potassium in my brain causing electrical impulses, asbestos, water vapor, poop, some cancer, cat hair, bubbles.

I happen to think the universe is the universe and God is God. I think God's presence is not bound up in matter though God is present in creation. So matter changes but God doesn't ((bleeep blop blorb)) even though God causes the motion and effects we see. ((steam whistle sound, lights blinking)).

Panentheism sounded made up. But everything is made up at some point so I bit.

"What's panentheism?" I asked. (Now that's a pretty bold move on my part- most of the time you don't want to reveal what you don't know to other students- especially students from other programs. It makes it seem like they know more than you.)

Well, what my classmates were trying to explain to me is the presence of God in everything that allows us to seek God apart from dogma, the limits of our traditions, etc... Panentheism means God is in everything. Only they explained it as pantheism. They had just learned about panentheism which is why they could jinx each other with the "No, its panentheism" bit, but not explain it as such.

No thanks to them, I later discovered one Sallie McFague coined the term to say "Everything that is, is in God and God is in all things and yet God is not identical to the universe, for the universe is dependent on God in a way that God is not dependent on the universe."

Well, welcome to the conversation these millennia later. Don't feel bad- I do that all the time. It's cool.

Exene Cervenka Is A Woman
Uncle John's Band -Grateful Dead
La Donna e Mobile -Luciano Pavorotti (irony)
Trouble Is a Man -Sarah Vaughan (more)
Johnny Hit and Run Paulene -X

Outside the Box- Is Another Box

Among Emergent Hipsters it's popular to not appreciate Augustine. I think it comes from the vague obligatory fondness of some reified mystical "East" whose otherness affords it a bit of a free-ride. It seems among disaffected Western Christians there's the hope of finding something refreshing for the soul- something that hasn't been made mechanical and lifeless by familiarity and rote habit- in the Eastern Church. That may be naive but I don't think it's wrong. Though, it does remind me of a Monty Python sketch wherein a poet father refuses to stand by while his son ruins his life chasing his dream of being a coal miner.

Ha ha ha.

Anyway, being a Latin Church Father, Augustine is on the outs with the mystical, broad-minded, free range "East."

Go figure.

That is, figure it's more a function of church politics than anything else. True, there are things you find in Origen that you won't find in Augustine, and things with Augustine that you won't find with Origen- like testicles. (And how). But if you're looking to avoid dogma and take it or leave it tradition, your journey does not lead to the East. Unless by "East" we mean some idea so wrenched from history that it means whatever we want it to mean.

Of course there is a lot to turn you off in the West, as there is in any tradition. I find plenty objectionable in Augustine's writing. But unfortunately, I am tragically unhip (again with the loser talk) so the source of my distaste for some of his work does not come from being a thirty-something disaffected Evangelical searching for refreshment in something outside of what I know and so assuming that I ditch Augustine for that ride. I guess that makes me a bit of a poseur. Oh don't get me wrong, I am a thirty-something disaffected Evangelical, but I think the perennial mistake, or tragedy of our soul's searching, is the mistake Augustine makes when he turns to what I find problematic. It's the outward gaze; it's the move to compare our selves with some external measure of faith rather than seeing and confronting our self as revealed by God's light.

The parts of Augustine's Confessions that might be called devotional (only because we think of theology as building vast unifying systems) are lovely and hopeful, especially in their honest appraisal of who he is as God reveals it to him. He writes that way elsewhere too. But not often enough, and he is prone to thinking in tedious and unfaithful ways. Then again, so am I. Still, he can remind me it's not in what we search or the systems we erect in our limited knowledge. It's in how we are searched and what God makes of us that is meaningful.

Tu autem eras interior intimo meo et superior summo meo.

Latin! Isn't that the language of patriarchy, High Church Stuffiness and the fake Bible?! I know, can you believe it? But there it is.

God is more present to us than we are to our selves; our journey is necessarily, but not naturally, inward. It is not to a tradition from East or West that we imagine is more relevant or to a time in our history imagined as more authentic. It is to a place where we stand before God.

If someone needs to take a step away from the familiar to see this- if that's what it takes to see our home is not in the traditions of an East or West but is in Christ- well then that's a fine move I suppose. Only, I don't know that the step outside of the familiar leads directly home- even as we are stuck feeding the pigs, it is only after we see our own condition that we begin to sense where we belong.

Hey! My iPod Doesn't Glow and Leave Light Streamers!
You and Whose Army? -Radiohead
At Least That's What You Said -Wilco
The Wind -Cat Stevens
Fiddle Riddle -Frank Black
Wild World -Jimmy Cliff
Is This Love -Bob Marley
Elizabeth on The Bathroom Floor- Eels
Sweet Talkin' Woman -E.L.O.
It's The End of The World as We Know It -R.E.M.
Take The A Train -Dizzy Gillespie
We're Going to Be Friends -The White Stripes
Subterranean Homesick Blues -Bob Dylan
Lithium -Nirvana

I Wash My Hands, I Wash My Face, I Wash My Arsenal

Ever the loser, I selected Reading for my team to care about in the English Premier League. Well, I guess if I were really a loser, I'd have picked Sheffield. Or I wouldn't like soccer at all. I suppose picking Reading still makes me a bit of a frontrunner. That was my fear in picking a team, which is why I didn't pick Arsenal. I like Arsenal- but secretly. I like the international make up of the club. I like the weird statistic that they have the most ethnically diverse fan base in England. And it doesn't hurt that they are good. Yikes- Lehmann just took one in the face!

So Reading. It might be self-deceptive to pick a promoted team with an incredible streak as an underdog. They keep winning. They have made me very happy so far. So the charge of frontrunner might still be made. Well, eat it, Swindon pig.

Not Cinco de Mayo

Cinco de Mayo is often just an excuse for late spring parties and a boost in Corona sales. It is not, however Mexican Independence Day. This is, in fact, the weekend for celebrating Mexican Independence.

Perhaps fittingly, this year's commemoration of El Grito in Los Angeles was corporately sponsored by Cingular Wireless.

Your Independence is Sponsored
Cold Sweat -James Brown
Let Down -Radiohead
Rock the House -Gorillaz

Liar, Madman, or Savior

I know it doesn't fit the type, but I really like the America represented by the highest ideals manifested in our founding documents. I know, I know, I'm a liberal. I'm supposed to hate America. I'm supposed to care more about ter'ists than Americans. I'm supposed to want us to be attacked, I'm supposed to want to tie the hands of our leaders so we lose the Ideological Struggle of the 21st Century. I'm supposed to "whatever the strawman du jour" is. I guess I'm a failure as a 'Merican and a hippy.

I know we confuse democracy with capitalism. I know many of the levers and avenues of power opt for an entrenched elite. Blah blah blah. Our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence are not perfect, nor is the Liberalism it represents, but the goal that we continually pursue and express this universal of freedom in concrete ways is quite an admirable model for government. Isn't that cool?

If you watched any of the president's Rose Garden press conference while you were getting ready this morning, you're a nerd. That's what I am. Maybe you're a nerd that was struck by a couple of things.

David Gregory finally asked the question that should have been asked long ago- the gist of it: What if others, Iranians or North Koreans for example, understood their laws to allow- in fact, wrote laws to specifically foster- the torture of captives? How would we like that? MY PRESIDENT gave an answer, but he didn't answer that question.

MY PRESIDENT seems to think freezing people, sexually humiliating them, and bringing them to the brink of drowning are how freedom is born. They are the unfortunate accoutrements of freedom's march- birth pangs indeed. I can understand this being acceptable if we were looking for witches- but bearing freedom? It doesn't seem fruitful.

MY PRESIDENT says he believes freedom is a universal idea. He says that a lot. Maybe being confused about what freedom is or not understanding the concept of a thing being universal is not lying, but it suggests one does not understand what is true.

The "President Lied" horse is dead and stinks. It is not moot because it is not true, but because those who understand it have seen enough evidence and those who don't will keep looking for the pony. His mendacity seems to go deeper than the words that come out of his mouth. As we know, this could only be the case; what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart.

Oh well, if you are a local reader and have time this Fall you should- could- help out with the Pomona Hope Community Center. If you have no other talents beside regularly showing up, there's a place for you. If you are particularly gifted in something like reading, tutoring, basketballing, watching people eat, computering, arts and crafting, there's a place for you there as well. The after school program resumes on September 25 but other things go on there also.

Maybe, if you go, you'll meet me there and see that I'm a lot less complainy in person.

I changed "as well" to "also." -ed.

Angry or Mopey?
Bullet In The Head Rage -Against the Machine
Pictures of You -The Cure
Half a Person -The Smiths
Damaged People -Depeche Mode (I have this in here?!- it kind of sucks)
All Along the Watchtower -Bob Dylan
Dynomite -Rhymefest
Piss on The Youth -The Briefs
Let's See Action -The Who
Mayonaise -Smashing Pumpkins
Son Abajeno -Mexican Mariachi Band
Island In the Sun -Weezer

Oh, He's That Guy

There used to be a bit of conventional wisdom that said so what if Bush wasn't brilliant- he's just a regular dude (who went to an East Coast prep school, Harvard and Yale, came from a bazillionaire family, whose Grandpa was a Senator, and dad was director of the CIA- just like you and me) who you would love to just kick back and have a drink with. I say used to 'cause I bet it's changed to something like: "Okay, so he's not the sharpest tool in the shed. He just seems like someone you'd want to share a drink with...

... and then punch in the face."

Maybe it's the job.

Don't Like The New iTunes
E-Pro Beck
Farewell Ride Beck
Do Ya ELO
War Pigs Black Sabbath

Stick It to The Man

I did some traveling this Summer. I went from one end of this country to the other (top end to bottom) and during that whole time saw only one Hummer. It seems I can't go a day here without seeing 10. I get it, you're rich and don't care about anything but yourself. Move on.

Similarly... kind of, I was in some very conservative parts of the country, I saw very few Bush Cheney stickers on cars. It makes me wonder what's going on with people around here. Why do so many Glendorans need to display their fealty? Are they more loyal, or less loyal so they're compensating? Do they imagine they are protesting something- it's a stick in the eye to anyone who drives too far east on the 210? Is it out of guilt for having a gay Congressman? Are their lives so devoid of meaningful relationships they yearn for even the shallowest connection that comes from knowing glances shared at an intersection? I dunno.

I do know I was in Cape Girardeau, a town on the Mississippi so conservative they're naming a courthouse after Rush Limbaugh... well a Rush Limbaugh- one that didn't take Oxycontin or Viagra while on sex tours in the Dominican Republic- anyway- I don't remember seeing a single Bush Cheney or W'04 sticker while I was there. And I was looking.

I wonder if these prominent external displays of identity are meant to make up for internal confusion. You know- so many teenagers work so hard to identify what they are externally because they are uncertain about who they really are, who they want to be, what they are becoming, etc. They're still learning how to look critically at themselves and fumbling with ways of distinguishing themselves from what they might see as imposed identities. Maybe there's a bit of that going on here.

Or maybe, more like pre-teens, some people see certain stickers as a mark of approval from authority.

Good Job.

Anyway, I returned home on one of the last flights- for who knows how long- that allowed carry on luggage and liquids. I suppose I could go on about the irony of surrendering so many of our freedoms to people whom we are told hate us because of our freedom. I suppose I could write about how it was good old fashioned police work and not an Imperial Crusade or airport screening that caught the alleged would be bomb-makers. (Though how "alleged" and how "would be" seems to be less than crystal clear.) But I'm sure other people have done that... probably a while ago by now. Still, with that I wonder how long before a would be bomber tries to board a plane with a stick of dynamite in his butt. Won't that be nice?

What- Yellow Ribbon Car Magnets Aren't Good Enough For You?

A Senate-passed plan to create a liberal leave program for those taking care of the children of deployed U.S. troops appears to be dying because a key House committee chairman believes it is unneeded...

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., is the chief sponsor of what he calls the Military Family Support Act, which passed the Senate by voice vote and is now being discussed by House and Senate negotiators who are trying to write a compromise version of the defense bill...

The proposal is facing difficulty with House negotiators after Rep. P. “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said he opposed the Feingold plan. Because McKeon’s committee oversees labor law, he has virtual veto power over whether the proposal makes it into the bill because he would have to waive his committee’s legislative jurisdiction for it to be approved.

Steve Forde, communications director for McKeon, said the congressman “absolutely sympathizes with the families of our deployed men and women around the globe” but doesn’t believe the Feingold plan is needed. “The fact is, employers currently have — without congressional action — the ability to allow workers to use leave in this way,” Forde said.

ARMY TIMES

Hey, I remember these- the Frequently Feingolds. Do I remember how to approach them though? Do I pretend to be critical of Russ, writing something about this being a cynical pre-presidential campaign ploy? I mean really- sponsoring a pro military family bill he knows won't make it through the Republican House is so transparent. Have you no shame, Russ?

Or do I write something like: Flex time for babysitters seems a reasonable suggestion if we truly are in the decisive "Ideological Struggle" for the 21st Century- as MY PRESIDENT says we are? After all, I'd hate to finally lose this struggle for hegemony over something as silly as baby-sitting... Since everything else about it seems to be going so well.

I can't quite remember. Maybe I should take a less tactful approach and write something about these family members knowing what they were in for when their loved ones signed up. I mean where would they get the idea that military service was a walk in the park? Baby-sitters indeed!

Well, with practice I should get my stride back soon.

So [I] Must Become Derelict

Really- you have to resort to name-calling... or perhaps apt identification? If you miss me that much you should draw me from my dormancy with affection and flattery. Not that it would work. I am only saying that is what you should do- or have done in this case.

Still- I would only emerge from my sleep when the time was right. Apparently that time is now. I can't say why exactly the time is right. Some convergence of Puto's status change, Steve Irwin's death, Suri's revelation, the commemoration of the World Trade Center attacks overshadowing the celebration of the emergence of Satyagraha, Project Runway's elimination of Vincent, my thriving pepper plants, the lengthening shadows, the cooler evenings and so many other things stewing together and bubbling over into a return to my blog.

And what of me? What was I up to throughout my summer hiatus? You'll have to be satisfied with the broadest strokes.

I grew a beard.
I discovered there is a place called Big Bone Lick.
I learned Brown is a color some of America cannot yet categorize but responds to within a range from bewilderment to fear.
I joined the iPod'd class.
I became big in Japan.
I saw there are at least enough Bible wax museums in the Midwest that one has to distinguish itself as the largest.
I saw that some churches in the South have been designed and decorated by Siegfried and Roy on a cocaine binge.
I learned L' Oreal Paris is made in Northern Arkansas, not far from the Remington ammo factory.
I suspect I know why people with the ambition and wherewithal to escape other parts of the country come to California and don't leave.
I overcame my fear of Cracker Barrels and developed a fondness for Waffle Houses.
I found there is a gap between what I care about and what might be communicated in a dissertation prospectus.
I became a concrete universal to Serrano and Habanero chiles.
And more.

How's that for a pupal stage?