|
Tuesday, November 26, 2002
listening to the white stripes. so good.
let's get married in a big cathedral by a priest
'cause if i'm the man that you love the most
you could say "i do" at least
Sunday, November 24, 2002
objective article on charles barkley as the heart (and soul) of america's contradictions.
Saturday, November 23, 2002
good story on bobby fischer. he's still alive and broadcasting his own anti-semitic, anti-american radio show from the phillippines. apparently he really is nuts. huh. who'da thunk it?
Tuesday, November 19, 2002
if all i ever wanted to do was make money
i'd probably be really poor by now
- brian eno. i'm reading his diary. a year with swollen appendices.
saw the strokes this past sunday night. very high energy. good crowd. proper anti-everything pose. still, somewhat bored. it was all expected.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n
Sunday, November 17, 2002
is there a God?
my personal favorite...
The Onion: Is there a God?
Elmore Leonard: Yeah.
my least favorite...
The Onion: Is there a God?
Neal Pollack: God does not exist, unless you are my mother-in-law and are reading this, in which case I definitely do believe that He exists, and will raise my children accordingly. But if you're not my mother-in-law, and she's not reading this, then He does not exist.
i hate neil pollack. have i mentioned this? he's also one of the judges for the short story contest i entered. i saw him at book people when he was doing a book tour for the neil pollack anthology of american literature. i liked his style and thought the book was pretty damn funny. then i saw him in person and everything was ruined. he was stuffed so full of himself i thought he was going to explode into some sort of gaseous liquid. so smug and shit sure of himself. rob and i both walked away from that experience utterly dejected. nobody had heard of him back then. now he pops up everywhere with his cute little one-liners. aaaaaaargggggghhhh.
i also recently saw douglas rushkoff give a talk at ut. same thing. liked him so-so from reading a few of his books and watching that frontline series, the merchants of cool. then i see him. a smarmy little prick outfitted in gapwear sitting on a stool on a podium trying to tell everyone (in the most hip way possible) how they are all controlled by "them" into thinking and acting out what is cool. "them" being, as best i could tell, some sort of catch-all term for the military-industrial-advertising-hollywood-mafia cabal of older white men. women and young, cool people like himself aren't involved in it. afterwards, kyle's wife (who helped organize the event) told me that he flew 1st class, stayed at the four seasons, asked for a green room, and got paid $10,000 all for a 1 hr. bull session where he simply retreaded marcuse and mcluhan, old white guys who said it a whole heckuva lot better. aaaaaaaaarggggggggghhhhhhhh.
Saturday, November 16, 2002
here it is. thanks to la and rorb for proofing. and nadav and kyle for being kind enough to read it and at least pretend that they liked it.
warning. there is strong language. would you expect any less?
Saturday, November 09, 2002
it's our youngest son's birthday. or it was yesterday. i guess today too. all weekend. william alexander magnuson. 3 years old and kicking.
when did garrison keillor become a slime ball? this is one of the worst smears in a supposedly smear-filled campaign age.
But I don't envy someone who's sold his soul. He's condemned to a life of small arrangements. There will be no passion, no joy, no heroism, for him. He is a hollow man. The next six years are not going to be kind to Norm.
and the crack about his family? i don't think they talk like that in wobegon.
Wednesday, November 06, 2002
a self-described moderate liberal eats some crow and shares some pretty damn good insights about the election.
In 2004, will Republicans be sorry they won in 2002? I don't think so. For one thing, this shallow recession seems unlikely to last. The recession of 1981-82 was worse; Reagan survived it and by 1984 was crowing about "morning in America." If you wanted to punish George W. Bush for a bad economy, whether he deserved it or not, this was the year to do so. By 2004, he's more likely to be riding a recovery and taking credit for it even more loudly than he's now denying blame for the recession of his first two years.
Tuesday, November 05, 2002
so here i am in my 32nd year writing short stories and submitting them (finally) and not liking my job very much, but wanting it, needing it very much and hoping my kids don't turn out like me, at least not in the not doing what you wanted sense and putting up with other people's horseshit sense and then hoping that somehow i can let truly let go. i'm so goddamn tired. the only thing keeping me going is that i'll be dead soon and it won't matter. or it will all matter. that's what keeps me going. that they won't let me write in heaven because every word will be written. that they'll shake their heads and say what happened? you could've been great. you could've written on the inside of our hearts, made more of your time. what if we write to remind them of what it's like. what if we spill our guts so the angels will have songs to sing. i can hear them egging me on. make more of life. grab it by the handlebars and ride it like that first bmx. you remember that don't you mom? dad took off the training wheels and i shot like a rocket down that north crooked creek. then a car came and i swerved right into some old lady's yard, straight into a cactus. the two constants are hope and suffering. most people barely glimpse hope. something happened. i'm swallowing it like a pill. i guess i'm just trying to say that i submitted the short story. bring on the rejection. i've got so much more inside of me.
Monday, November 04, 2002
some thug put a bullet in jam master jay's head last wed. and we're reminded for 10,000th time that somebody can snuff out the light in an instant. and there'll be eulogies. and people taking advantage, saying we've got to stop the violence and the guns. but violence seems to be with us for good. and taking good men before their time is the way of this world.
i remember sitting in michael rodriguez's house 3 doors over listening to raising hell for the first time. it was everything they said and more. i was blown away. i wanted to stay up all night listening to my adidas or the king of rock from an earlier album. goddamn. goddamn. i don't think my wife really understands my love for rap. it started there in 7th grade with a group called run dmc.
i am the king of rock/there ain't no higher
sucka MCs should call me sire.
jam master jay. r.i.p.
Saturday, November 02, 2002
the so-called robin hood law leaving many districts with an empty quiver. could i write headlines or what? this is a ny times article no less.
i have to agree with anonymous idiot on this as well:
It's time to admit that America's experiment in public education, like it's experiment in alcohol and narcotics prohibition, is a dismal failure. Quit blowing that $7-12k per child in Federal and local tax money to to support a corrupt, top-heavy bureaucracy chock full of $120k per year Deputy Assistant Secretaries to the Assistant Deputy Secretary for Self-Esteem Programs. Parents will pay for quality education. And if you can't afford it, how about a $7-12k check towards putting that kid in vocational tech with an eye towards a career in what the kid wants to do?
we wrestled with this one with our oldest son. public or private? it's pretty much common sense that unless you're in a wealthy neighborhood, the public schools suck. overcrowding is just the beginning of the problem. i think it really is the bureaucracy. teachers flock in droves to private schools even though they get paid less just in order to escape the mindless apathetic machinery of today's public school. now that thomas is in a private school, i think it's a no-brainer, but i've heard good arguments in support of working from within public schools to make a difference. i just don't want to sacrifice my son's education for a cause. the sad fact is that all these rich folks are just going to flee the public schools that they were actually supporting. and not just with tax dollars. many of these selfish rich people put a lot of money towards their schools outside of what they are taxed.
lileks has great read on mondale and the whole minnesota election.
"Iraq is dangerous, but going it alone is dangerous, too." [taken from Mondale's speech]
Here he equates a nuke-armed Saddam with the consequences of deposing Saddam without a hall pass from France. They’re both
”Dangerous.” The first part, yes. That’s dangerous. The second part is “Dangerous” in the sense that Michael Jackson was “Bad.”
"We have a United Nations. Let's use it. We have allies. Let's enlist them."
I got some steaks once from a company in Omaha; they were packed in dry ice. It took less than an afternoon to thaw. Mondale made this speech several days after he was unpacked and reanimated by the DFL, so he had the chance to catch up on current events. Surely he knows other nations are on board for Iraq.
top
|
