Mundanely Profound

Tingles (of hope) when I read it

As a rather religious (albeit non-Christian) person, and a slight social conservative (still developing my views on personal things the government should have nothing to do with), I was fascinated and hopeful reading this Prospect online article about the referendum on a state tax increase referendum in Alabama. And it is the devout Christians that are justifying tax increases throught Scripture.

The article is filled with hope that a good many devout Christians could vote and support socially progressive ideas that benefit the poor in the long-term future. If there's one thing about conservatives and Republicans that anger me (and God [used as an expression] there are a lot these days) it's use of the Judeo-Christian God to justify whatever socially damaging, poverty-inducing, poor throwing-in-the-guttering, policy that does nothing but make a few greedy people richer. How much people at the Heritage Foundation go to church every week, and if folks like Tom Delay are religiously active what sort of cognitive dissonance do they have to maintain in their heads to follow Jesus' teachings then go around in their 'secular' lives making it extremely difficult for the less fortunate to have faith in anything?!?

We'll see what happens.

The Play is the thing

I haven't got really into super contemporary drama but via Atrios there's a one act play published called Fair and Balanced but the guy who did Bat Boy the Musical (which played in Des Moines but was to expensive for an underemployed person like me to see whine whine whine) Check it out here . The only frame of reference I have reading through the excerpts provided is the pseudo-plays Frank Zappa wrote about in the liner notes for albums like Thing-Fish and Civilization Phase III where the characters are odd symbols of something. Fair and Balanced looks neat, I could play the quiet but resilient Ampersand in the Des Moines production.

There's no business like showbusiness

This Atrios post excerpting an Eric Alterman entry and some others have commented on the blood the media has on their hands in failing to do their jobs and criticize the Bush war machine before the bombs started falling in March.

How is the public who don't rely on the media for opinions but facts supposed to take it if the prominent line becomes that Bush completely fabricated the case for war? The media is an independent odd entity in this whole war mess. Their motivation for subsuming the legitimate realist criticisms of this war and marginalizing the massive protests was not because the media felt this war was the best way to combat terrorism. They got all stirred up because a war is so cool!

I've got a scenario playing in my mind about how unsensationalized a failure to go to war because of the lack of a UN mandate would be. All the photo montages of Saddam and stuff and then the heart-pounding music slowing down and abrubtly cutting off like a broken record.

"And proper deference was given to the governing body of the world, folks decided it really wasn't necessary to invade Iraq, and I guess we'll keep these sanctions going and kill civilians in a more long-term far less exciting way. Ho hum. Now with an in-depth analysis of the Bush tax cut plan with boring charts and stuffy white guys."

That ain't and was never going to happen! Sure some families somewhere, probably which might not watch much TV, don't have cable, or too busy spending time with eachother or working might have some real in the flesh soldiers that are close to them die, but DAMN what a lame news cycle it would be if we didn't have some awesome war footage.

That's it. I don't rant very well.

Okay! Song of the Day!

Looks like I got the hang of it. I will try to post daily believe it or not. But political commentary wears me out so what I will do instead is post a "Song of the Day". Usually the first one that pops into my head, or one I read special things about. Today it is Radiohead's "I Will" from their latest, greatest, Hail to the Theif album . This song registered in my mind after I picked my very first issue of Blender Magazine (from the the same publisher's of soft core porn mag Maxim and Stuff, I might add). The hipsters of the hot music mag had a box about a theroetical Radiohead's greatest hits album (one hasn't been made yet, come one cha-ching! segue Paranoid Android into Creep then the Hungry Bears song, chop up whole artistic statements into little pieces, make some $$$). And they described I Will as one of the saddest songs Thom Yorke has written. The lyrics are about the mistaken bombing of a bunker in Iraq where civilians were hiding in the first Gulf War. I either don't pay attention to lyrics unless someone points them out to me or after the whole music / lyrics conglomeration as a whole splits apart after months of implanting the song into my mental jukebox. It's a short song and very haunting. Knwoing what the song was in reference too makes you try harder to tackle every word of the lyric, but parts of it are still cryptics. The White elephants, what are they? and even cooler the song segues into the next one, A Punchup at a Wedding. It makes album songs a lot more cinematic that way. So there you go the song of the day!

I wrote an articulate rant about Fugazi's Nightshop a couple months ago when I thought I was going to start blogging regularly then. Stay tuned for that?

Does anyone know how to put your e-mail address up using blogger? jwcatz@earthlink.net

Testing

Looks like blogger changed things around a bit since my last post forever ago. Do I still remember how to link to things ? Then I'm set.