This sounds just like a Bama fan

Worst losers ever.

Are you on fire?

I saw American Splendor and Dirty Pretty Things last night in a rare Georgia Theatre doubleheader. Both were fantastic. I might write more about these later.

There's a guy playing acoustic guitar on the steps of the library. If it was 1991, and he knew "Closer To Fine," he'd get all the chicks.

The Organic Compound

Tonight I'm filling in for the Organic Compound DJ, Adam, who's off doing...something. I can't remember. It's the techno/electronic/etc. show here at WUOG and he was nice enough to make a mix CD for me to play instead of having to fumble my way through a show playing music I don't know that much about. We're doing the BMI logs right now, though, which is an absolute pain, as many of you former DJs out there know. Maybe I'll put myself down, so I can get paid 30 cents or something. Here's what I played:

Prefuse 73--"Radio Attack"
RJD2--"Final Frontier"
Boom Bip--"Roads Must Roll"
MC Honky--"The Object"
Dabrye--"Won"
Pepe Deluxe--"Just Let Go"
Aesop Rock--"Train Buffer"
Cinematic Orchestra--"Channel 1 Suite"
DJ Shadow--"High Noon"
Madlib--"Distant Land"
Mr. Scruff--"Here We Go"
RJD2--"Mos Def Diverse Prefuse 72-W"
The Automator--"A Better Tomorrow (DJ Z-Trip Remix)
Manitoba--"Bijoux" (this song is amazing)
Soft Pink Truth--"Promofunk"
The Avalanches--"Avalanche Rock"
The Avalanches--"Flight Tonight"
Four Tet--"Split Fingers"
The Bowling Green--"The Road Is A Grey Ribbon"
Dust Brothers--"Try Your Luck"
Tricky--"Broken Homes"
Amon Tobin--"Bridge"
Propellerheads--"Take California"
Meat Beat Manifesto--"She's Unreal"
DJ Cam--"Twilight Zone"
Schooly D--"Who's Schoolin' Who?"

Blast from the past...

Eddie Deezen has a web presence! Unfortunately, Gabe Kaplan is not so web savvy.

Did anybody else out there have a crush on Lucy Deakins?

Some notes from the legal dept. and other esoterica

Do they have a law against speed traps in Mississippi like they do in Georgia? Mississippi was the speed trap state, man. There was this city called Okolona that was particularly crazy where you had to pay for your ticket on the spot!

This is kind of worrisome. It's sort of cliched, I know, but you expect policemen to stop rapes and catch rapists, not commit them.

Pacific UV got a 4 star review over at the All Music Guide. That's pretty exciting! Too bad the guy talks about another record of ours, "Longplay One," which, technically, does not exist. It's what the record was originally called before it was self-titled. He's pretty much lying if he thinks it sounds different or is a different record. How pathetic. He even calls the current (and only) record our "self-titled debut." So what the hell is the deal with this "Longplay One" crap?

Here's another good Pacific UV review.

...and the hits just keep on comin'...

...but do the Democrats have the balls to take on Cheney and Sons? I doubt it. They always seem to pull back right when they have something good. The "liberal" media doesn't help things.

The South is a weird place to live.

Let me get this straight: a Ku Klux Klansman has invited a predominantly black nutjob church (cult?) to protest the removal of the Ten Commandments hanging in a courthouse in Barrow County, right down the road? These are strange times we live in...

My candidate in the California recall...

...is Georgy Russell. She's funny, smart, and gave a thong to Arianna Huffington. Plus, she's a fellow blogger! Check out the endorsements!

Things I heard on the walk to work today

"Nigga, throw me the goddamn hammer!"

"That sumbitch makes six hundred dollars a week. Shit!"

"I'm not talking about you, you paranoid fuck!"

Fun Factory

Does anybody else remember the oh-so-innocent-but-oh-so-perverse Playdoh Fun Factory commercials where the boy sticks his Playdoh tube in a girl's grated Playdoh? She utters my favorite line in anything of all time: "Your snake's in my spaghetti." Haha!

One of the charges against that airman who was just arrested at Guantanamo Bay was for "illegally bringing baklava to the prisoners."

What's your excuse now, Nintendo haters?

The Gamecube is now $99. Some places are selling it with the awesome Game Boy Player. Pick one up and support the only hardware maker concerned with making games.

It's been a while...

...and I really don't feel like I have that much to say these days. Here are some random thoughts/concerns:

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for the GBA consumes all of my thoughts. Some of you will know what this means.

This weekend, Mame, Aaron, Phoebe, and I celebrated Aaron's secret birthday at Inoko (a hibachi steakhouse kind of place). It was delicious. Then we went to a high school football game. Poor LHS. They got spanked and my man, #22, didn't get much of a chance to shine. An extremely drunk guy at Flicker kept waving his ass at us.

Things got kind of weird at the Engine Room patio on Saturday night. Everywhere I looked someone was tossing something around or throwing something on the ground. A girl at our table stormed off in a huff. I didn't know her. Some guy from outside the patio tried to throw one of those big-ass trash cans (you know, the one's with the wheels) over the wrought iron fence. He was really drunk. Some other fellas slung a broken plastic table around for a while in a bizarre variant of jai alai.

This is a funny story. The bomb squad blew up Jolly Ranchers.

I got the most interesting email today...

It was from Arlene Curtis and it said that I could "increase the size of my member!" Wow! What great news! However, I was a little disappointed when I read the body of the email, which contained only this mysterious passage:


------=_NextPart_nuu_frlk_axtehdib.xfatlyhi
Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

PGE+IDxpbWcgc3JjPWh0dHA6Ly85Ni43NC4xOTQuMTcxLWtyZHkuaHRtQHd3dy
5qdXN0ZnJlZWhvc3RpbmcuY29tL2FjL2Vzcz9yZWRpcmVjdD0ld3d3LnEubmV0LyVlZmJ
oLmh0bT48L2E+

Can someone help me decipher this? Is it some kind of code? I really need to do something about my under-sized member! Arlene wouldn't lie to me...would she?

Funniest thing I've heard in a while...

"I didn't get laid at DragonCon this year."

New Big Gray song!

I haven't put it up on my "website" yet, but you can download it here. It's called "The Nixon Shocks" and it's based upon some lyrics I wrote for the awesome "Japanese" noise band Tog (featuring Roddy Schrock and Robert Duckworth). I hope they don't mind that I used the lyrics, too. It's probably the most straightforward song I've recorded in a while. Tell me what you think!

Here are the lyrics for those interested:

It felt reliable
But selfish suppliers cut them off
Keiretsu's liable
But sawmills on the ships took off
And if the whaling stops...

I'll go back and rehash last year
I'll go back and rehash last year
Oh, no...I feel it coming: The Nixon Shocks

Ba ba ba doo doo doo da da da x2

The ancient capital
The one by the Inland Sea
It sounds impossible
But I think I heard it speaking to me
If the depression stops...

I'll go back and rehash last year x2
Oh, no...I feel it coming: The Nixon Shocks

Ba ba ba doo doo doo da da da, etc.

We'll give the slip at night
And rearrange priorities
Silent, knowing looks
Might spin us back to '83
If the lying stops

I'll come back and rehash last year x8
Oh, no...I feel it calling: The Nixon Shocks

Ba ba ba doo doo doo da da da (ad infinitum)


I recorded everything really overdriven, so it's supposed to sound sorta raw.

Franco would be proud

Some joker has been spraypainting "Towing will be enforced" signs around town, replacing "Towing" with "Fascism." I think that's a bit of a stretch, equating parking enforcement with fascism. Maybe I'm naive.

Beaver County

Here's the link that was missing from the Beaver County story I posted earlier. Sorry.

Haha!

This is so right on.

And to think that it all "went down" in Beaver County!

Man, none of my bus trips were like this. Here's the money shot (haha...I'm full of puns like this. My transformation into Howard Stern is complete):

"The mother appealed the June 12 expulsion to county court. She alleged the district violated her daughter's constitutional rights and was not clear in its written policies that oral sex on a bus was unacceptable behavior."

Are you kidding me? I think that it's probably pretty clear to anybody with half a brain that oral sex on a schoolbus is unacceptable behavior...at least as far as schools are concerned. Do they need to spell it out? "There will be no blow jobs, hand jobs, rim jobs, eating out, or 'snowballs' on school buses." I can't wait to be a teacher, when I'll get to deal with well-meaning parents like this. Sigh...

Avril Lavigne is a little bitch

What the fuck is she doing going off on her fans for stealing her tank top and ties "look?" Who the fuck does she think she is? Her fans adore her and want to look like her and buy her fucking CDs and gave her the opportunity to go on award shows and mispronounce David Bowie's name and she repays them with arrogance and bitterness! I have no time for "artists" like that, especially not those of questionable talent whose audiences are comprised of pre-teens and teenagers who don't know any better and don't deserve this kind of treatment. And you know what else? One could argue that she needs to "get a life" because all she does is ape her various punk and pop forebears. It's not like she's Miss Original. Fuck her.

I'm glad Hillary Duff went off on her. You go, girl!

Did I just say "You go, girl!"?!?! Who am I? Oprah? Am I really going on a tirade against Avril Lavigne? My head hurts...

Sleazy!

"Playboy.com wants Wal-Mart's sexiest assets to roll back their clothes and pose nude." This could mark a new high or low point for Playboy. You decide!

Crisis! Playlist--WUOG, 90.5FM 9/14/03-9/15/03

A fun, aggressive show tonight...lots of noise. Here's what I played (in some semblance of an order):

The Residents
Best Loved French Folk Songs
Loren Mazzacane-Connors
Merzbow
Flux Information Sciences
Fred Longerg-Holm
Kitchen Table Ensemble
Negativland
Nobakazu Takemura
Mouse on Mars (Merzbow remix)
Solomonoff & Von Hoffmanstahl
Philip Perkins
Nau-Zee-Aun
Abstinence

Thanks for playing!

Some links.

Leonard Nimoy should eat more salsa.

GI Joe overdubbed. Here are some more.

Uh, okay.

Thank God. Someone good got the part.

I'm sure you've all seen this, but it never fails to make me laugh.

Hell, I'll put this one up again for old time's sake.

Whoa.

Every journalist's worst nightmare: Jacksonville Beach, FL.

Fuck. Johnny Cash died.

To be honest, I think we all saw this coming. His wife passed away, and he was in increasingly bad health. I don't usually say stuff like "it was his time," but, you know what? It was his time, I guess. God, I fucking love Johnny Cash. One time, when I was much younger, my grandpa, Elise, and I went to some tourist-y "pioneer village" in Minnesota, and Johnny Cash was playing there. I really didn't know who he was, except maybe "A Boy Named Sue" or something, but there were tons of people there for the concert. I said something along the lines of "Johnny Cash is stupid" when my grandpa begrudgingly asked if I wanted to go to the show. What an idiot! That was the closest I ever came to seeing him.

Wait...John Ritter, too?! What the hell?

The Slime and...Ms. Coulter!

Here are two interesting transcripts I got from last night's Paula Zahn show. The first one is from Zahn and Ari "The Slime" Fleischer:

ZAHN: We want you to look back on some of your days in your official capacities at the White House. I want you to be honest with us now. On how many occasions did you give less than complete answers that, in some way, might have ended up misleading the public or not giving them the total picture?

FLEISCHER: Never misleading, but, often, I didn't give complete answers. And that's part of my job, frankly.


Haha! Part of his job! This next one is long, but interesting. Amaze at how Joe Conason talks circles around Ann Coulter! Dazzle at her incoherent thoughts! Delight at her inability to make an argument! Seriously, she is fucking pathetic in this "debate." Check it out:

ZAHN: After the September 11 attacks, the headlines in the French newspaper "Le Monde" famously proclaimed, "We are all Americans now." It was just part of a worldwide outpouring of sympathy and pro- U.S. solidarity. Times have changed. Just about anywhere in the world you go on this eve of September 11, 2003, it is much easier to find an anti-U.S. demonstration. Did the U.S. squander a true opportunity to enlist the world's support in a noble cause?

We have enlisted columnists Joe Conason and Ann Coulter to debate it. Welcome to both of you. You want to take a stab at that question tonight? Did the U.S. squander any good will it had coming out of September 11, 2001?

ANN COULTER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: No, I don't think so. I mean, right after September 11, even liberals were pretending to love America. But you know what happened next...

ZAHN: Look at Joe rolling his eyes on that one!

JOE CONASON, "NEW YORK OBSERVER" COLUMNIST: I've heard this before.

COULTER: I think the question of, you know, whether they like us or don't like us really -- really doesn't matter. I mean, even little children are taught the point isn't to be popular, the point is to be right. And the question is whether or not we're right, not what the French think of us.

ZAHN: Joe?

CONASON: Actually, the point is to be strong and to protect your security and to protect the American people's security, and we need allies to do that, as the Bush administration has acknowledged last week, when they went back to the United Nations. And the fact they had misled those other countries, treated them poorly during the run- up to the war and alienated our traditional allies, has proved to be a big problem for them now, when they realize we need help in Iraq. We've always had help in Afghanistan. We're going to need more. And in order to protect our security -- it's not a question of whether we like them or they like us, it's a question of whether we can maintain alliances that help us.

ZAHN: So are you suggesting, then, that the United States shouldn't even have gone back to the U.N. last week to ask for any kind of help in this rebuilding effort?

COULTER: No, I don't know why we need that. I mean, contrary. I would disagree with -- with Joe. Our traditional allies are very much with us, Britain and Israel, the two allies liberals loathe and are constantly knocking. I suppose you could call Germany and France allies, but it's a theory that's never really been tested. CONASON: Ask the British whether they think we should go back to the United Nations -- our really strongest, oldest allies, yes, the British. They are strongly in favor of getting a new U.N. resolution to support what we're doing in Iraq.

ZAHN: Well, Tony Blair was in favor of that, but...

(CROSSTALK)

CONASON: He was pretty much in favor of it before he convinced Bush to try to go to the U.N. in the first place. I think they flubbed it, the way they did it. And the fact that there are no weapons of mass destruction kind of proves that now.

But certainly, we need traditional allies and new allies, like Russia. Germany certainly is a traditional ally and has been -- was throughout the cold war, as I'm sure Ann actually knows, although she pretends not to. And France has been a long-term ally of the United States, both in and out of NATO. And we need their help, and they're helping us now.

You know, if you went to Afghanistan or asked reporters who've been there or ask Senator Warner, a Republican who went there -- he went to Afghanistan and found, Oh, there are French troops, you know, on patrol, helping our guys and women there, protecting Americans. There are German troops there. There are troops from other European nations there. And they were there in Afghanistan, working with us before Iraq and through Iraq, despite the disagreements. Those are the kind of allies you need.

ZAHN: Is that proof enough that France and Germany are friends, Ann?

COULTER: No, there are a lot of countries -- or reasons countries don't like other countries. Like I say, I think that isn't important. I don't think popularity is important. I think whether we're doing the right thing is important.

ZAHN: No, but would you acknowledge that France and Germany are making any contribution at all, in Afghanistan or...

COULTER: Well, it was the U.N....

ZAHN: ... the war on terror?

COULTER: Germany has sent some troops to Afghanistan, and Schroeder, by the way...

CONASON: So has France.

COULTER: ... has said that he absolutely will not send troops to Iraq. It's politically absurd that France would send troops to Iraq. So I don't really see what the point of going to the U.N. is. And Tony Blair...

CONASON: There are a few other countries there. COULTER: Hang on! You had quite a long run!

CONASON: OK. There are quite a few...

COULTER: A really long run!

CONASON: ... other countries there.

COULTER: As I was saying, Tony Blair may think we should go to the U.N., but I don't even know why it's so important that we should be a member of an organization that appoints Syria the head of the human rights commission. I mean, the idea that we need the U.N. or some world corps to determine when America acts in its own self- interest -- I don't think we were very popular in Germany in 1943, and I don't think we should care more about it now than we did then.

ZAHN: You get the last word. You only get 10 seconds.

CONASON: Well, this is an isolationist point of view that isn't shared almost anywhere in the American political spectrum now. I mean, the White House has made a decision about this after five months of debate over precisely these points, and they decided to go back to help our allies and to seek our allies' help.

ZAHN: Ann Coulter, Joe Conason, dueling here and dueling on the best-seller lists there, both out there with two brand-new books. Thank you for joining us tonight.

CONASON: Thank you.

Though Joe Conason did seem to monopolize the time, did it seem like Ann Coulter was even in the "debate" at all? I'd like to see video of this.

I'll trade you a couple of Michelin HydroEdges for a hand job.

Boy! I can't believe that this idea didn't work!

So much to say...so much to do

Where to start:

--I saw Capturing the Friedmans and it was pretty amazing. Engaging, but extremely morally ambiguous, it dropped a new bombshell on you about every twenty minutes or so. Wow.
--I ate some "fakin' bacon" this morning. I love that shit. I also ate some Special K. I'm not sure if I'm ready to take the Special K Challenge just yet, but I do love a tasty bowl of Special K.
--I went to the Pacific UV/Phosphorescent CD release party last night. Seemed like a good crowd. I missed Phosphorescent because of the movie, but everyone reading this needs to check out the record. It's pretty great! Pacific UV are getting tighter and tighter which makes their shows that much more bittersweet for me because, when I was in the band, I think I was the one who wanted to play live the most, and now they're doing it and sound great. That could've been us two years ago.
--On Monday, my car got "booted" (my fault) and I left my bookbag at Transmetropolitan (again, my fault). I am an idiot.
--Mame made an excellent meal this weekend...she made her own tomato sauce and put roasted eggplant in it, and it was the taste sensation of the year! As the Agent would say, "Yum's the word!"
--I am completely over school. Done. Finito. I am soooo ready to get out of here and start teaching. In another school. Sigh. My San Francisco excursion was too much fun for me to handle this early in the semester. Here's a little nugget of wisdom: never take vacations at the beginning of the school year! You'll only be cued into the drudgery of academia earlier than usual.
--I want to start a blog dedicated to "The OC" with Ms. Comrade. This may happen sooner than later.
--San Francisco is the most beautiful city in America. It's astounding. If it wasn't ridiculously expensive, I'd be there in a heartbeat. Except if it wasn't ridiculously expensive, everyone would move there, and then it would become ridiculously expensive, so I guess SF is fated to be ridiculously expensive. On my first day there, I walked from my hotel to the Presidio to the Palace of Fine Arts to Crissy Field and then walked along the bay on the most beautiful day I've encountered in recent memory. Golden Gate to my left...Alcatraz to my right. God, it was phenomenal. It may be one of the greatest walks of my life. I walked to Fisherman's Wharf, stopped in on a Marc Chagall/Picasso exhibit at a cha-cha gallery (the cheapest Chagall was $4000 and it was some pencil-line-drawing thing), talked to numerous street performers (including a guy who played an, um, interesting version of Pink Floyd's "Breathe" on his acoustic guitar and pre-programmed keyboard...three times in a row!), saw a shit-ton of sea lions, ate mini-donuts, trudged up Telegraph Hill to the Coit Tower, admired the view, walked through North Beach, went in a few Italian delis for the hell of it, walked to Chinatown, ate all-you-can-eat Dim Sum (only half of the things I got this time had shrimp in them...last time I did Dim Sum, EVERYTHING had fucking shrimp in it), met up with Hud and Chris Fogle, admired the view from his kitchen, walked through Russian Hill, stopping at bars here and there (the best was the 7-person capacity Black Horse), getting "crunk," and stumbling back to the hotel, where I dry-heaved for a bit. What a day!

More to come when my CTS calms down.

Why I love my radio station

Written on a picture of Chris Carrabba of Dashboard Confessional in the WUOG DJ booth:

"I smell like ass pickles."

Crisis! WUOG 90.5FM 9/7-9/8, 2003

In the spirit of our administration going back to the UN, hat in hand, I decided to play a bunch of German, French, and Scottish folk songs at the end. Aaah, it brings back fond memories of National Lampoon's European Vacation. I also played a bunch of noise and early electronica. In the spirit of coalition-building and international cooperation and in no particular order:

Microstoria
Blackcowboy
Charles Dodge
Bernard Parmegiani
Laurie Spiegel
Paul Lansky
David Behrman
John Chowning
Maryanne Amacher
Best Loved French Folk Songs
The Vienna Male Choir with the Horn Quartet of the Vienna Symphony and the Hamburg Singing Society
The 9th Regiment Pipe Band

Prosit!

Josh Marshall says it best

"We went into Iraq to eliminate Saddam's stock of weapons of mass destruction, to depose a reckless strongman at the heart of a vital region, and to overawe unfriendly regimes on the country's borders. Agree or not, those were the prime stated reasons. Now we've got a deteriorating security situation and a palpably botched plan for reconstruction. And our effort to recover from our ill-conceived and poorly-executed policy is now the 'central front' in the war on terror, which is among other things extremely convenient.

The president has turned 9/11 into a sort of foreign policy perpetual motion machine in which the problems ginned up by policy failures become the rationale for intensifying those policies. The consequences of screw-ups become examples of the power of 'the terrorists'.

We're not on the offensive. We're on the defensive. A bunch of mumbo-jumbo and flim-flam doesn't change that."

I'm back....!

It's been a wild and crazy week! Um, actually it hasn't. But I've enjoyed my V+-style (take that!) blog vacation. I have lots to talk about re: San Francisco, but let me address Bush's speech tonight. Here's how I see it: history will vindicate us on the WMD issue, but just in case it doesn't, well, um, Saddam Hussein was a bad guy and we went to war for humanitarian reasons even though we don't do that anywhere else and the world is a safer place even though it doesn't seem like it is and for the world to be a safer place we actually have to find WMD or evidence of a program which we haven't but...did I mention Saddam was a really bad guy?

I'm fucking sick of ends-justifies-the-means arguments from this administration. I'm through. It's horseshit. The humanitarian argument (arguably the strongest part of the equation) was a last minute addition and NEVER the main focus of the war effort. Fuck George W. fucking Bush and fuck his selective amnesia counterparts and fuck those who would deign to defend his pathetic policies. Seriously. Name one good thing the administration has done! Name one! And don't give me any fucking Clinton-sucked-too bullshit because, hey!, I don't like Clinton either...we're talking about two different people and administrations here. I want to hear it. I want to hear that W. is a good president. I want to hear Thing 1 that has helped this country and the world. Defend your indefensible positions! I'm waiting, motherfuckers.