What the hell, how has it been a month since I've posted to Undismayed?

Mostly I have been working my ass off on researching on the book, since I had proclaimed my intention of having a chapter drafted by this point and am still wandering in thickets. None of which is really conducive to blogging--or to learning fiddle tunes, or even going to the beach. And if you don't go to the beach here you are stuck sitting on the back deck listening to the gunfire, as we did last evening. (The shooting didn't start until 11 pm. My wife asked: how far away was that one? I reassured her it was blocks and blocks away...)

A week or so ago I did spend a long time trying here at Undismayed trying to load some video I had shot of Mexican and Columbian bands at the National Folklife festival. For whatever reason it wouldn't load and I fled in frustration. It still won't load for some reason I can only blame on secret policies shielded from Congress by Dick Cheney. I even cut the things down from 10 minutes each to a few seconds just to give a sense of the music, but that didn't seem to do the trick. I could always load them into youtube but that is just a whole other level of complexity.

Here is an example of what else I have been dealing with in my limited free time—attempting to unsnarl this terrifying pile of frames for my bees.





Coming back here a year ago I returned to a good 15 dead hives, which meant hundreds of frames to clean and refit for the new hives this year. It has been a huge task but I am essentially there.

A friend of mine visiting on the 4th looked into the garage, say this pile as well as the other stuff in there, and said "dude, you are insane." I've been hearing some variant of that remark a lot recently. Por que?

The other thing that mirrors my return here last year is, as usual, dealing with the got-damn rats. I saw a truly gargantuan rat come out of the compost pile the other night. This freaking rat was not much smaller than Wee Oscar. It makes me wonder what the swamps around here have wrought. I have found some kind of animal dropping in the garage which had better not be coming from a rat since it is so big, I am hoping maybe a raccoon.

Anyway, I set a bunch of fearsome traps in and around the compost to kill this fucking thing. I obviously didn't want to use poison on the compost heap, though that is my weapon of choice in the garage.

The traps have instead steadily killed a bird or two a day. Why these damn birds are messing with the traps I can't imagine. The first one I think was a mistake, since I think it triggered the trap accidentally with its tail and the trap ended up snapping and cutting the ass end of the bird clean off. Not a pretty way to die. The other birds though have died in the traditional way. So far no rats.

I did manage to have the trap snap closed on my finger when I was reloading it without snapping it first. I had actually just thought of the need to be careful when the crushing bird-ass-removing force of the trap came down upon my finger. It would help, perhaps, to pay attention.

One of the traps was sprung and empty today and the other was missing entirely. This portends a rat big enough to crawl away dragging a trap. A .22 is sounding much more reasonable as a control measure at this point.

We're going to have a meeting in the air



I didn't think I'd be able to turn up much on a half assed search for A.P. Carter's "Bible Questions and Answers" and I didn't. Someone out there has a copy, it will eventually emerge. All will be revealed.

It didn't take me long to see that ever motherlovin' fool out there seems to have put out there own "Bible Questions and Answers". There is, of course, even a webpage called biblequestions.org.

But those questions aren't the right ones. And who are these people to be answering their own (misguided) questions?

We are decided. We are going to create Unsullied and Undismayed's Bible Questions and Answers. Not imminently, since Undismayed has to come up with the questions and the answers. But soon.

And, of course, Unsullied and Undismayed's Bible Questions and Answers will be freely available both online and inconvenient carry-it-with-you on the doorposts of your house style. And on your gates. The Truth Knows no Jurisdiction, or something.

The beautiful thing about Bible Questions and Answers as a genre is that you get to ask them and you get to answer them. That is a hell of a format. It is, perhaps, the best format for any religious discussion.

While we compile our questions, and answer them, Undismayed will also entertain your questions, please send them in.

Incidentally, have you ever read Howard Dorgan's study of six Appalachian Baptist sub-denominations? Really a fascinating book if you are into that sort of thing. One of the interesting things to glean from the book is that certain sub-denominations base their entire theology around finely grained readings of specific translations of the bible. Usually it is the King James. Other English translations change the meaning of specific phrases and render the entire sub-denomination directionless or even non-existent. So the articles of faith of the sub-denominations list the translation that they proceed to take as the literal word of God. I'd give the precise example but I don't have that book here with me to dig it up.

I am thinking of this because it occurred to me that, in the interests of scriptural purity, in our Q&A Undismayed is only going to ask questions of, and provide answers from, whatever Bible translation it is that tells people to handle poisonous serpents. That is, the actually true one.

And, helpfully, I see that Dorgan has an excellent essay online about this exact question in the serpent handling faith, which faced annihilation when the Revised Standard Version of the Bible was published without the key line in Mark 16 telling people to handle serpents.

Dorgan tells us (it is worth reading it all):

"Articles of Faith

I. A faith practice with a weak scriptural validation, having a biblical reference that must be labeled at least "questionable," perhaps "apocryphal."

A. Identified by biblical scholars as the "Marcan Appendix," Mark 16:9-20 was deleted when the Revised Standard Version of the Bible's translation of this gospel was published (1951), just as this "long version" of Mark has been deleted in a number of translations.

B. The reason for this deletion: these verses were not included in the earliest versions of Mark, and when included were occasionally listed as having questionable legitimacy.

1. The assumption being that these verses were not written by the original author of Mark.

a. Textual evidence (vocabulary and style) suggests-to what appears to be a judgment of the majority of biblical scholars-that these verses do not match the rest of Mark.

b. The argument has been made that this segment (called the "long version") was added by a third century AD scribe to make Mark's narrative conform more with Matthew and Luke by including Christ's appearances to Mary Magdalene and the disciples; however, what motivated the inclusion of the "signs" segment?

2. Also, these verses still appear to be out of parallel, narrative-wise, with the particular ascension stories provided in the other two synoptic gospels, Matthew and Luke, and particularly in Christ's mentioning of the five signs: casting out of demons, speaking in new tongues, the taking up of serpents, the drinking of deadly things, the laying on of hands to heal.

C. The most ancient versions of Mark end with 16:8 and do not include any reference to Christ's risen appearance to Mary Magdalene and to the disciples, thus also deleting the evangelical mandate "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature" and all that follows relative to the "five signs," Mark 16:17-18. Cordex Sinaiticus is the only ancient Greek manuscript that contains the entire New Testament, and it does not include the Marcan Appendix.

D. In addition to the five signs passage not being included in the other two synoptic gospels, John's gospel doesn't include it either; however, in John, Acts, Corinthians I and II, and elsewhere there are statements about Apostolic actions being supported by "signs," referenced in a general way, but not by the specific five signs mentioned in Mark 16.

E. "And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs," Mark 16:20. Such a testimony for the validity of the "five signs" is not provided in other gospels or elsewhere in the New Testament.

F. When the New Revised Standard Version was published in 1989, the scholars/editors placed Mark 16:9-20 back into the main flow of Mark, but only after clearly indicating that the "Shorter Ending of Mark" closed with Mark 16:8, and after also providing a lengthy footnote noting the questionable character of Mark 16:9-20.

1. This return of the Marcan appendix may have been in response to the loud outcry that in 1951 arose from Pentecostals and other "practicing the signs" groups, condemning the Mark omissions, both of the "five signs" passage and the "Go into all the world . . ." mandate, which can be found elsewhere in the Gospels.

2. However, the act of bringing this passage back to the main flow of Mark 16 was not a great deal different from what was done in the Original Revised Standard Version, since in that rendering the full passage was included in a footnote, with all of the information about the short version there also."

I finally got around to looking at the photos from this book drawn from the Leon Kagarise Archive. I recommend it. He was the dude who took pictures of all the country and bluegrass greats at Sunset Park in Rising Sun, Maryland during the early 60s.

He also recorded 4000 hours of these shows too, which are supposed to have great sound and which must be utterly unbelievable to hear. Why they haven't been released yet I don't know.

Sunset Park was one of the little country music parks that had the biggest stars there playing on a tiny little stage about the size of a flatbed truck. I've been fortunate enough to see all the original bluegrass greats in exactly this kind of setting many times, which means I can die with a satisfied soul, but to have seen Roy Acuff, George Jones, Porter Wagoner, Johnny Cash and all the others--yeah man.

The pictures are all great and a lot of fun to see. There are a lot of photos of the Stonemans, I guess Kagarise was kind of obsessed with them. The color stock from that era makes them even better.

The only flaw I can find in the book is that Carter Stanley is identified as Ralph Stanley, which is weird since the author apparently wrote a book with Ralph (which isn't out yet --but definitely is going to be a must read. I've been wanting to read more about Carter's final days. Was it Traveling the High Way Home that has the story of him vomiting buckets of blood?).

Kagarise went and visited Sara Carter once and she gave him a pamphlet written by A.P. called "Bible Questions and Answers". I personally cannot think of a single better thing in this world than A.P. Carter's "Bible Questions and Answers".

The company that published this book is called Daniel 13. I checked out there webpage, and see they also have a book of photographs of sex machines which looks like something worth a perusal.

(Kagarise was a pious dude, I wonder how he would feel to know his photos are in this company.)

Yesterday I had an experience right out of the "hold the chicken between your knees" scene in "Five Easy Pieces." (yes, of course it is on youtube)

We were at Dairy Queen trying to buy two small cones. They were running a special deal that you could buy two small dipped cones for three bucks. (the dip, if you aren't up on DQ, is some substance the cones are dipped into that hardens into a chocolate-like shell). The counter person rang up two small cones for regular price, which came to $3.99. Expecting that the special would have been rung up by any sensible person, I mentioned that the special was two cones for three bucks. She said, those are for the dipped cones, two regular cones are $3.99. That is the price for two small plain cones.

You see where this is going.

We didn't want the dip, just the cones. The counter person could not understand the apparently quite complicated concept (My long suffering wife later called it 'abstract thinking') that the dipped cones were exactly like the regular cones only with the additional step of the dipping process. It follows also that the dipped cones were simply the plain cones that had been dipped. She didn't understand this complicated fact, nor could she be made to understand this complicated fact. She stared at me blankly and said 'I don't understand what you are saying" (This is a translation from the indigenous language of the 757).

Meanwhile, the cones had been made and the guy who made them stood there, breathing on them. He said, "do you want these plain cones?" I asked him to pretend to dip them. He refused.

Another employee did seem to grasp the small cone-to-dipped cone continuum but couldn't ring it up without voiding the original cones. The manager came over.

In an irrelevant but interesting detail, he wore an eye patch.

He refused to ring up the special. "The special is only for the dipped cones" he told me, with something approximating hatred in his voice. I tried reasoning with them that the regular cones and the dipped cones were actually the same thing, the only difference being that the dipped cones were dipped. No dice.

The phrase "the customer is always right" (learned when I myself worked at two separate ice cream stores as a 16-17 year old) blended with the reality of "discretionary spending during the worst downturn since the Great Depression" to produce a crystal vision in my brain that I would indeed be sassified. No.

Reasoning that not dipping the cones actually saved him both materials and labor costs got nowhere. The manager became belligerent. He said one substitution would mean everybody would demand substitutions. I pointed out that technically this was not a substitution but a subtraction. This didn't persuade him. I mentioned that he would have to discard the cones now thoroughly staturated by the open-mouth breathing of the cone maker. This argument equally had no weight.

I was left with no option other than to walk out. We had frozen custard instead around the corner with zero hassle.

My wife was not surprised at the exchange but she was surprised at my surprise (not to mention my need to discourse on it at great length while eating the custard). Her take is that I was asking far too much of the DQ employees to think abstractly.

I ask you, dear reader, if it is indeed abstract thought to differentiate a dipped from an undipped cone? If this is abstract thinking beyond the power of even DQ workers, can you please tell me where I sign up for the slow boat to China?

This case is interesting in all sorts of ways, not least is that it is a pioneering case under the Alien Torts Statute.

If the criminality and stupidity of mountaintop removal weren't enough here in the good ole U.S. of A, a new suit claims an Alabama coal company has employed a longstanding US policy of funneling money to third world murderers and is using your monthly electricity payment to fund death squads in Columbia.

Undismayed is shocked that anyone would think a coal company would employ thugs and murderers to terrorize union leaders in Columbia. In West Virginia-- sure, but in a bastion of safety and legality like Columbia?

"Relatives of dozens of slain Colombians sued an Alabama-based coal company in federal court Thursday, accusing it of making millions of dollars in payments to a paramilitary group that sowed terror in the South American country.

The suit filed in Birmingham said 67 victims of the The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, also known as AUC, included unionists, farmworkers and others. It claimed the rightwing group received payments from operatives for Drummond allegedly to assassinate top union leaders and protect the company's large coal mine and railroad in Colombia.

The lawsuit is much broader than one filed in March by the children of three slain Colombian union leaders against Drummond Co. Inc.

A similar lawsuit ended in 2007 with a verdict for Drummond, which has repeatedly denied any connection with the Colombian violence. The verdict was upheld by a federal appeals court in December.

The plaintiffs in the latest lawsuit include hundreds of parents, children and siblings of people allegedly killed by AUC, mostly in Colombia's Cesar and Magdalena provinces.

A spokesman for Drummond, Bruce Windham, was out of its Birmingham headquarters Thursday and not immediately available to return a call for comment.

Attorney Terry Collingsworth, who represents the plaintiffs, said the latest lawsuit was filed because of new information alleging that Drummond made payments to the paramilitary group, which he said "terrorized people up and down Drummond's railroad corridor."

The suit lists both the victims and their relatives with pseudonyms such as "Jane Doe" or "Peter Doe," followed by a sequence of numbers. A motion is pending seeking to allow the suit to go forward while keeping the plaintiffs anonymous.

"Many of the AUC leaders are now speaking freely about their relationship with the elites of the Colombian business community, and their direct collaboration with the Colombian military," the suit said.

The suit, like the earlier ones, was filed under the more than 200-year-old Alien Torts Claims Act, which allows foreigners to file suit in U.S. courts for alleged wrongdoing overseas.

The initial suit was the first filed against a U.S. corporation under the law to ever make it to trial."

I haven't trimmed down my own great Ruben Vela footage since some fancy new software is on the near horizon for the Wayne's film and I figured it can wait, but of course someone else has loaded some onto youtube already. Ruebn Vela is playing this on the night of his 72nd birthday.




and here is some great footage from 1988 when Vela and band were definitely sounding great. Not bad to sound the same (in the best way) for 21 years. My sources tell me that in this footage its Ruben Garza on bajo, now of Los Dos Gilbertos, which is probably the other greatest older traditional conjunto out there nowadays.

Worth noting the Ruben Vela shirts the band is wearing: "PURO PARTY"

For some reason the Sullivan Family never sounds as good on their records as they do live, but this clip captures some of their greatness. The song is not the most compelling one, but Marge's voice sounds great and Brother Enoch's fiddling is a pure thing. Really you have to see them live, outside at a bluegrass festival when Brother Enoch is unrestrained. These seemed filmed in a church.



I have a theory that Marge Sullivan was partly a model for Marge Simpson. The voice is close. The hair a dead ringer. Any takers?

Marge just recently had a five-way bypass after a huge heart attack. You can send her a get-well card here:

Margie Sullivan
c/o The Sullivan Family
P.O. Box 69
St. Stephens, AL 36569

she starts singing at 2:40 in this one:



I've been putting our 50+ hours of Wayne's footage on a harddrive and so have been saturated with this song of late.

I opened a gmail account and, as you know, google reads the emails and pitches ads based on them. As all the privacy experts say, email has no expectation of privacy anyway, so if google's machines read my emails I guess it is little different than the government sniffers reading them or whatever Russian spybot has installed itself on my computer. I have two blogs for f's sake, so I am not exactly off the grid. I am far more concerned that when you embed a youtube video in a blog it provides tracking information to google forever.

A friend of mine wrote me to tell me that gmail trolls for information. Google helpfully put an ad up about troll candles. Who knew there was a market for such a thing?

speaking of setting up today's tracking:

I don't usually link to this kind of shit since there are so many places on the web that already do (and there are so few sites that instead reward you with Mexican music, as is one of Undismayed's charges) but this collection of bad unicorn tattoos (found via Andrew Sullivan) is so fucked up it is worth looking at.

I found that it is kind of amusing but rapidly brings on a feeling akin to clinical depression.

The Nazi unicorn is perhaps the most notable in terms of gauging the state of affairs in America today, but this one caught my eye because it is just so damn true:

I haven't been posting because I've been too busy, but things have been good.

The Conjunto Festival en San Antonio was, as expected and as usual, a great damn time in all ways. The music was phenomenal, this year had some particularly good bands. All I missed was the opportunity to dance since my lovely wife was not there. The music was made for dancing.

I have some great long clips I need to figure out how to shorten so I can post some parts of them. I thought there was an editing function for the videos but haven't discovered it yet. I have one incredible 17 minute clip of Ruben Vela playing without pause when he turned 72 on Saturday night, which I think was the highlight of the festival. He was, quite simply, kicking ass. I am really stoked the sound came out because of course it was superhumanly loud. But I have this new little HD camera and it works incredibly well.

Here is a brief polka played by Los Badd Boyz del Valle at the very start of the festival, I think the 2nd band (hence the light crowd). I have never seen them before. Turns out that despite the name they were a great band. After they played this they played a medly of all of the major styles in the Valley which was a tour de force. I liked this little bit because it was an old timey sound without the full conjunto. I was standing really far back in this instance, but the sound is good.



Good times were helped by the fact that we figured out the San Antonio bus system, which allowed for greater cold beer consumption at the festival. Also capitalized on the suggestions of some locals for food on the west side. So if you are talking nonstop conjunto music, cold beer, and dozens of firstrate tamales for breakfast, what else, exactly, does one need?

know what I'm saying?






The Conjunto festival will be starting off right.

It's too simplistic to call him the Jimi Hendrix of the accordion. He's as brooding and brilliant as Miles Davis, as distrustful and temperamental as Chuck Berry and flamboyant, hedonistic and mystical as Keith Richards.

Only Jordan would have dared tell Carlos Santana how to play guitar. Flaco Jimenez poses for pictures with fans; Jordan won't.

He's not a museum piece, either. “It doesn't mean anything,” said Jordan about the tribute. “I just want to play. I'm ready to go. I'm going to do what I do and then get the hell out of there.”

He has a standing gig in San Antonio on Friday nights too, after the festival ends.

I happened on Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper's LP "Sacred Songs" at a garage sale and a great melancholy welled up in me ("so sad, the birds stopped their singing") to find that on this otherwise quite good record (with, for example, the great "Too much sinning, not enough praying" on it) they re-recorded "Walking My Lord Up Calvary's Hill sans-recitation call and response (where that "so sad..." line comes from).

Now that I write that it occurs to me that I am not sure if it counts as a full recitation actually, given the response, but definitely it exists on the same plane.

There might be better records, but there are few better fully realized records than this one, with the real version:



The spring is the season when morons dump their record collections. I picked up more than I could carry for 20 bucks for the lot of them from some guy selling off his father-in-laws possessions. Being selective from that stack (in technical terms, a shitload) I ended up with 79 keepers (George Jones, Ernest Tubb, much Merle Haggard, Buck Owens of course, and speaking of the all-time recitation king, quite a few Porter Wagoners, Cash, etc), and an equal amount of shit in good shape to sell on ebay. Plus perhaps the largest stack of Charlie Pride I have ever seen (saying a lot, since back when I packed up things to go to Korea I got of an equally large stack of Charlie Pride plus a five LP set, he is like a boomerang, refusing to leave you be. There was a goodly pile of true shit as well, of course, but this is in the nature of things.

Those of you who know me know that I tend toward voracious acquisition of music. So I was pretty sure I could not be surprised when my wife said she was getting me some Cajun solo record by a famous player that she thinks I never heard of. I rattled off a bunch of great and fairly obscure things I thought she might have come across (Varise Connor's essential and kind of rare disc, or maybe Octa Clark's fairly obscure home recordings) but she kept saying no, no.

My wife, being a genius, had managed to find a cd of solo cajun triangle by Christina Balfa. The cd is done with a good sense of humor and nails the genre (down to the faux self-serious overwritten liner notes by Dirk Powell). The playing is seriously done, which makes the whole thing even better realized. 45 minutes of solo Cajun triangle. It is listenable... but I am not sure I would say so for everyone. But next time I am in a jam I definitely will play the tunes off the album, in order.

This is off the swine flu topic, but I did come across this signature line in one of the accordion posts:

"Phil 4:13 I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
Including play the accordion!"

News You can Use:

For swine flu information Undismayed turns, of course, to the conjunto music discussion lists. There we learn the following:

"In this case I say let er' ride! Thanx for the concern. I JUST HOPE THE SWINE FLU IS NOT IN BEER 12 OZ!!"

and

" QUE SWINE FLU NI NADA CON UNAS CARNITAS, y TACOS
DE CHICHARRON CON FRIJOLES Y UNA DOZENA DE TAMALES CON CHILE PICOSO Y SE LE QUITA TODO

RECETA DEL DR. GONZALEZ."

I just learned that Brother Claude Ely has a website, made by his great nephew Macel Ely II.

If you are not familiar with Brother Claude, you must become so. He was a Pentecostal preacher and recording star for King records and I would argue he is the missing link between old time music and rock and roll (He obviously had wide influence on Elvis and others, as you can hear in the playing and singing and becauxe they covered his songs). Brother Claude wrote many magnificent songs. He was a pluperfect genius.

See for yourself, there are some clips on the page or be wise and go buy his essential cd. "Aint No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down" is the most well known, and rightly so. If nothing else, this song would have given Brother Claude his meeting in the air.

I heard back in the fall from the head of Dust to Digital records that there exists many more unreleased recordings of Brother Claude, a treasure trove he was trying to get to release. It is good to be alive.

Macel II is apparently writing a book about Brother Claude, which is forthcoming.

I really like his calendar of places he will be signing the book, with unknown dates, but all perfectly in order. It might not be a bad idea to begin assembling such calendars of events at time TBA and date TBA.

Hard times around here, shore nuff:

Here is an email I received from a student just now:

"I am sending this email to let you know that I will probably not be in class today. I received car damage this morning around 11am. and I am currently at the BMW Dealer getting my car sorted for them to fix it"

I just heard that old time fiddler Lee Stripling died.

Sometimes I am not sure why I listen to anything other than the Stanley Brothers. I mean, why bother? Why do I stray?

I've really been focusing on those King recordings, Sacred Songs from the Hills, and the Mercury years.

As Carter says: "this country music, folk music, bluegrass music, -- or whatever you like"






You know what I like about this is the cadence to it--still a driving tune but actually pretty damn slow. That sense has gotten lost I think.

(I'm glad to see that Ralph's webpage sucks, it shouldn't be any other way).


I can't seem to find any Roy Lee Centers footage on youtube, can that really be?

I finally got my plans squared away for the Conjunto festival in San Antonio in a month. I am very happy to be getting back to San Antonio after a couple of years away.

Here are the great Los Dos Gilbertos sounding good at the festival in 2007, the last time I was there. I always like the guy on the far right -- not a Gilberto -- who exists only to announce "LOS DOS GILBERTOS--CONJUNTO MUSIC AT ITS VERY BEST!" throughout the entire set.




The distorted quality of the sound on this video is pretty true to life. The sound at the TCF is louder than any metal show I have seen. It is kind of nuts, actually.

I'm a bit behind posting about this interesting little article and have had the window sitting open on my computer for a few days waiting to post and now that open window is threatening to destabilize world peace around here so I am posting it to liberate myself.

All a long winded way of introducing the article about the centrality of cell phone ring tones for the regional Mexican music market.

"Sensing the rising power of regional Mexican music’s fan base and keeping an eye on general Latin consumer trends (Latinos were twice as likely as non-Latinos to purchase ring tones in 2008), every major phone company has made deals with regional Mexican acts: sponsoring concert tours, offering “mobile tickets” to shows, bundling song downloads and ring tones with phone subscriptions and selling phone cards emblazoned with the faces of popular bands like Los Temerarios everywhere from Wal-Mart to weekend swap meets. (Call to collect your minutes, and a member of the band greets you.) While AT&T began sponsoring tours in 2004, only now is there unanimous agreement among phone companies that regional Mexican is central to the future of mobile music."

And inevitably, as you might expect, the Mexican fans are being gouged by the cellphone companies:

"Because fans of regional Mexican music tend to be working-class immigrants and their United States-born children, they don’t fit the typical musical consumption patterns of the digital age. They most likely don’t own a home computer, don’t use a credit card and don’t have broadband at home, all prerequisites for an iTunes account. Instead they buy prepaid phone cards with cash and use their cellphones as mobile, personal jukeboxes, often downloading ring tones from their cellular providers for about $3 each, three times the price from iTunes or Zune.

“This audience has adopted the mobile phone as their primary means of communication,” said Oliver Buckwell of the marketing agency Tribal Brands, which has set up deals between Verizon and regional Mexican acts. “It is also now their primary means of getting music.”"

You probably have noticed that all Mariachis have cellphones hanging off of their tight pants. This almost seems like part of the Mariachi uniform in the globalized era.

I will confess to having been tempted to put a Los Razos de Sacramento or Ramon Ayala ringtone on my phone, though the idea of paying for a ringtone is actually something I could never consider. Thus I dangle between these powerful opposing forces, betwixt and between.

Josh Kun, the writer of this article, wrote a book that, in a moment of watertightness, I just started reading recently and which I recommend to you, friend: Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America.

First they came for the chickens...

...next they'll come for any one who "has had drugs introduced...from Mexico in their veins" which by conservative estimates is 85% of American teenagers.

"LAS CRUCES — In all, 618 chicks, hens and roosters were euthanized following a cockfighting raid in Doña Ana County over the weekend, an official said Monday.

The birds were euthanized to eliminate cockfighting breeding lines and because many likely had been given medications from Mexico, said Curtis Childress, animal control supervisor for Doña Ana County.

"The laws on drugs in Mexico are different from the laws in the United States, so the (U.S. Department of Agriculture) is not going to allow us to put a bird back into the population that has had drugs introduced to it from Mexico and then that bird ends up back in the food chain," he said. "Those birds we'd never turn over to the shelter and allow them to adopt them out.""

It sounds like they shelter, utilizing a Nazi-era innovation, gassed the birds with a truck's exhaust:

"Beth Vesco-Mock, animal shelter director, said she received an order from the sheriff's department to euthanize all the birds. She said shelter staff euthanized them in two waves — one group of 358 animals Saturday night and a second group of 47 Sunday morning.

Childress said additional euthanasias were conducted on the properties using the emergency rescue vehicle, including all of the birds taken at the Koogle Road site.

Owners of the animals first relinquished ownership to county authorities, which is why the county had authority to kill the birds, Childress said. Once they were in county's control, as with other species of animals, it was up to officials' to decide their fate, he said.

Childress said some owners opted not to give all of their birds to authorities.

Childress said his department isn't singling out cockfighting but is simply enforcing animal abuse laws on the books.

"Our job is to deal with any issue that involves a violation of law," he said. "We work many hoarding cases. We work cockfighting cases, dog fighting cases and cruelty cases.""

I'm a gentleman, as you no doubt understand. So my delicate sensibilities were a bit disturbed this morning when I sat down to eat breakfast, opened the paper, and read there on page 2 that Farrah Fawcett has anal cancer. That freaking phrase just really gnawed into my brain in a way the constant parade of violence and shooting in the local paper generally does not.

Just what the fuck is "anal cancer"? Isn't there a polite term for this? Is anal cancer the new colon cancer? Why not "rectal cancer"? Aren't rectums and anuses the same thing? (Similar in the way that Mitch McConnell and George Allen are similar?)

And why drag poor Farrah through the mud? Doesn't she deserve to expire with some dignity and not to get fucked up the ass by the media in this way (choice of phrase deliberate, if a bit obvious...)

Newsweek, the anal cancer of weekly newsmagazines, informs us that anal cancer is on the rise:

"But on Sept. 29, less than a month after the emotional reunion, Fawcett received devastating news: she had anal cancer. The diagnosis reunited her with on-and-off boyfriend, actor Ryan O'Neal, the father of her 22-year-old son, Redmond. He was Fawcett's constant companion as she went through chemotherapy treatments and radiation in late 2006. She was declared cancer-free in February; but, after a routine checkup this May, the 60-year-old learned the cancer had returned.

Anal cancer is relatively rare: the American Cancer Society estimates that 4,650 cases will be diagnosed this year. But the organization says the number is rising. Fawcett falls into the demographic most affected by the disease: she's in her early 60s and female. (Women are slightly more susceptible to anal cancer than men.)

The cancer develops in the tissues of the anus, either in the anal canal or opening. It can cause bleeding, itching, pain or discharge."

Heartwarming that Ryan and Farrah reunited over anal cancer, isn't it? But I just realized that that Newsweek story is 2 years old. Where have I been during the past two years of Farrah's anal cancer?

Deborah Kotz in U.S. News helpfully tells us today that we will be able to watch the film version of Farrah's battle with anal cancer:

"I hope Farrah Fawcett will recover fully from this latest complication. I'm eager to see the documentary she's working on about her treatment experience. The fact that she has documented and shared her fight with cancer suggests that she, too, recognizes the importance of the teaching moment."

"eager"?

This seems like it is too perfect a story to be true, especially the quotes, but it is from the Detroit News, and that is a "newspaper".
I think the fact that his house is referred to as an "urban Appalachia" is what gives it the true ring.

"When selecting the best raccoon carcass for the special holiday roast, both the connoisseur and the curious should remember this simple guideline: Look for the paw.

"The paw is old school," says Glemie Dean Beasley, a Detroit raccoon hunter and meat salesman. "It lets the customers know it's not a cat or dog."

Beasley, a 69-year-old retired truck driver who modestly refers to himself as the Coon Man, supplements his Social Security check with the sale of raccoon carcasses that go for as much $12 and can serve up to four. The pelts, too, are good for coats and hats and fetch up to $10 a hide.
While economic times are tough across Michigan as its people slog through a difficult and protracted deindustrialization, Beasley remains upbeat.

Where one man sees a vacant lot, Beasley sees a buffet.

"Starvation is cheap," he says as he prepares an afternoon lunch of barbecue coon and red pop at his west side home.

His little Cape Cod is an urban Appalachia of coon dogs and funny smells. The interior paint has the faded sepia tones of an old man's teeth; the wallpaper is as flaky and dry as an old woman's hand.

Beasley peers out his living room window. A sushi cooking show plays on the television. The neighborhood outside is a wreck of ruined houses and weedy lots.

"Today people got no skill and things is getting worse," he laments. "What people gonna do? They gonna eat each other up is what they gonna do."

A licensed hunter and furrier, Beasley says he hunts coons and rabbit and squirrel for a clientele who hail mainly from the South, where the wild critters are considered something of a delicacy.

Though the flesh is not USDA inspected, if it is thoroughly cooked, there is small chance of contracting rabies from the meat, and distemper and Parvo cannot be passed onto humans, experts say.

Doing for yourself, eating what's natural, that was Creation's intention, Beasley believes. He says he learned that growing up in Three Creeks, Ark.

"Coon or rabbit. God put them there to eat. When men get hold of animals he blows them up and then he blows up. Fill 'em so full of chemicals and steroids it ruins the people. It makes them sick. Like the pigs on the farm. They's 3 months old and weighing 400 pounds. They's all blowed up. And the chil'ren who eat it, they's all blowed up. Don't make no sense."

I came across this announcement. I'll be in Chicago the day after this so I will, unfortunately, miss the chance to hear the musical clay pot. For free.

The Carnatica Brothers will perform Wednesday April 8, 7 pm at Preston Bradley Hall in Chicago. K.N. Shashikiran, who plays ghatam (a South Indian musical clay pot) and C.P. Ganesh, who plays Chitravina (a twenty-one stringed fretless Indian lute) are cousins who perform as a vocal duo under the name the Carnatica Brothers.

They have become leading figures of South Indian classical (Carnatic) vocal music over their young career. They will be accompanied by percussionist Tanjore Murugabhoopathi on Mridangam (a barrel shaped traditional South Indian drum) and child prodigy musician Sandeep N. Bharadwaj on violin.

Chicago Cultural Center, 78 East Washington Street. Admission is free.

Undismayed has not died, but has been coiled in the shadows waiting to strike, or something like that.

I know some people headed to England and they are staying at a hotel called The Spread Eagle Hotel. Seems like a nice place... though I would have guessed it only rented by the hour. Badabum!

I like the contact email for the hotel: spreadeagle@hshotels.co.uk.

Boy, you travel abroad and it is high hi-larity the way those foreigners misuse English, isn't it?

On the home today I gassed up in the hood because I was almost on empty and the gas was just too cheap to pass up. Technically I was on the edge of the hood (dividing line train tracks in sight), as to stop at the gas station in the heart of the hood is literally to take your life if you hands (though there has been only one actual murder there, we did hear several shots on Monday evening as we sat quietly at home). The edge of the hood, on the hood side, is still the hood, but I figured it was safer.

Anyway, there is a (small) point to this story. I was standing there at the pump thinking vaguely of what I would do if I got car jacked (which has happened just across the street) especially since my child was there in the back seat. The makings of a Denzel Washington film. D.

So, these thoughts are running through my mind when a guy comes striding up to me with great vigor yelling "hey, hey." My heart leaped, as you might imagine. He was tugging at something in his waistband. I was thinking oh fuck, this can't actually be happening, how can this be happening?

Turns out he was a harmless dude with some porn dvds to sell me, stuck in his underwear waistband, whipped out with a flourish.

Curious on several levels-- perhaps first and foremost, why would I want to touch these things? And why sneak around and peddle porn at gas stations when it is sold all over the place, all the time?

There weren't any other takers at the station.

That shooting in Alabama is obviously screwed up, 10 dead. Terrible it is when some crazy goes crazy.

Then there is this quote:

"“It is truly one of the most horrific things that anyone in law enforcement can remember in Alabama,” said Col. J. Christopher Murphy, the director of the state’s Public Safety Department. “We’re still getting victims coming in.”"

it may seem mean spirited to ask, but don't you just have this feeling that there are more horrific things in Alabama to be remembered than some lone nut gunman's shooting spree? Terrorist racist violence directed by the highest state authorities? Church bombings?

Every time one of these old timers passes on I start thinking about how I need to see the ones still living. I can remember writing almost the same thing a year and a half ago when Porter Wagoner died.

So as I was pondering the demise of Hank Locklin (who I never saw play) it occured to me that I had better go see Conway Twitty. I have been listening to a lot of Conway Twitty. He seemed to have recorded something like a hundred thousand records (plus the duets). I even have been sporting a Conway Twitty hairstyle many of these days, especially before I get around to cutting my hair back a bit (not by choice, I was given the hair of Conway Twitty and I wear it proudly).

But now I look him up and find that he has actually been dead for 16 years. Maybe this is something I should have known. Oh cruel world! Now I will never see him.

(You never miss your mother until she's gone!)

And now the terrible truth--Conway was called home and in his stead the forces of darkness have made CONWAY TWITTY: THE MAN, THE MUSIC, THE LEGEND, THE MUSICAL.

This is it, friends, End Times. Trials, Troubles, Tribulations.

His early rockabilly stuff is great, but hard to beat the classics. His voice is sounding a bit raw here:


or this, from 1971

I was sad to hear that Hank Locklin died today. 91 years old.

Of course, I thought he was long since dead, as much as I thought about such things, so to find out that he was actually alive and still making music, and that he has tragically died, well, that is sad-making.

Hank Locklin's webpage has this friendly reminder on the bottom: "Remember: It is a mark of distinction to have a Hank Locklin record in your home!"

(It is interesting to note that his webpage is marginally less crappy than most people of his generation. Many of the old greats have been saddled with terrible webpages that have layers of useless animation before you can get to the aborted core of the thing, I must think it all results from incompetent management agencies.)

I've always really liked Locklin's music. Solid country, good songs, and a certain tone to his voice which was good. He was no ET, of course, but there was and is only one ET.

That said, Locklin's hit "Send me the pillow that you dream on" is surely a great song, and his version of "Fifty Miles of Elbow Room" was also very fine.

But is seems to me that Hank Locklin was put here on God's Green Earth to sing "Rio Grande Waltz." I love that song. Sing it all the time, in fact.

One thing I particularly love is that throughout the song Locklin always calls the river "River Rio Grande."

Another dude I have been listening to recently is Wally Gonzalez

I don't know what it is, but LP pickings in thrift stores of late have been superb, particularly of late 50s through early 70s country and bluegrass (with mid-60s being the best represented). Since this is great music it is hard to complain. It helps too that I am a big fan of both Conway Twitty and Porter Wagoner, since both of those dudes seem to have recorded 100s of albums. But maybe the stuff that has been most interesting to me are some early Hank Williams, Jr. records like "I've got a right to cry" and "Eleven Roses." I think his later stuff is pure shite, but these are really good.

I'm happy the pickings have been good because CHKD, which has dozens on thrift stores around here, has jacked prices up to $1.98. Maybe a buck is relative 'jacking' considering the total cost, but it seems like an outrage to me to charge more than a buck at a thrift store.

I have a couple theories why there are suddenly a ton of good picks across the region in all 7 cities. One, I think that a certain era of country listener is starting to die off and their kids just dump wholesale record collections in the thrift stores (they have tended to come in big clumps). My other theory is that the foreclosure crisis is forcing people to quickly dump their stuff that might otherwise be sold.

Or perhaps there are many good records around because End Times are nigh, that is my other theory.

Also, the Conjunto Festival in San Antonio has released its schedule. As usual, it promises to be an ideal weekend.

GUADALUPE CULTURAL ARTS CENTER
28TH ANNUAL
TEJANO CONJUNTO FESTIVAL EN SAN ANTONIO 2009
TENTATIVE SCHEDULE


Tuesday, May 5/Guadalupe Theatre/9-11am/Free Admission for Senior Citizens

Seniors Conjunto Dance

Featuring Conjunto Music Hall of Famers
El Pavo Grande Salvador García and
Eddie “Lalo” Torres y Anita Paíz y su Conjunto


Wednesday, May 6/Guadalupe Theatre/7-9pm/Free Admission

Best of the Tejano Conjunto Festival CD Release Party

20th Anniversary of
The Best of the 8th Annual Tejano Conjunto Festival 1989

The Best of the 27th Annual Tejano Conjunto Festival 2008


Thursday, May 7/Rosedale Park/6-11pm/$12 per person*

6:00 Los Hermanos De León
7:00 Los Badd Boyz del Valle
8:00 Sunny Sauceda
9:00 Joel Guzmán & Sarah Fox
Special Tribute to Esteban Jordán
10:00 Esteban Jordán y su Rio Jordán


Friday, May 8/Rosedale Park/7pm-12am/$13 per person*

Puro Conjunto Pesado

7:00 Bene Medina y el Conjunto Águila
8:00 Los Monarcas de Pete y Mario Díaz
9:00 Ricky Naranjo y Los Gamblers
10:00 Cuatro Rosas
11:00 Los Dos Gilbertos


Saturday, May 9/Rosedale Park/2pm-12am/$15 per person*

Puro Conjunto Pesado

2:00 Conjunto Heritage Taller/Conjunto Palo Alto
3:00 Chano Cadena y su Conjunto
4:00 Ricardo Guzmán y Los Tres Aces
5:00 Conjunto Borrego de Jesse Borrego Sr. y Jr.
6:00 Johnny “El Brujo” Cruz and the Texas Chain Gang
7:00 Los Cuatro Vientos de Jimmy Bejarano
8:00 Eva Ybarra y su Conjunto
9:00 Oscar Hernández and the Tuff Band
10:00 Rubén Vela y su Conjunto
11:00 Mingo Saldívar y sus Tremendos Cuatro Espadas



* 3-Day Pass Pre-Sale: $25 for GCAC Members, $30 for Non-GCAC Members
At the door: $30 GCAC Members, $35 Non-Members



Workshops in the Button Accordion and Bajo Sexto, with a special session
On Accordion Tuning, Maintenance & Repair, will be offered on May 7-9
(Thursday-Saturday) at the Guadalupe Theatre. These workshops will be
conducted by conjunto greats Oscar Hernández and Jesús “Chucho” Perales.
For registration information (days, times, prices, etc.), call 210.271.3151 or visit
www.guadalupeculturalarts.org

I haven't been posting recently, but I have been listening to a lot of Gilberto Perez polkas:

This is a bizarre story. It seems made up to give bloggers something to say:

Apparently a chimp made crazed by Lyme disease just ripped the face off of a woman in Conneticut . That is an unusual sequence of things in a single sentence, surely a winner. "Lyme disease" "ripped the face off" no making things up.

"Travis’s owner, Sandra Herold, 70, had raised him almost as one of her own children, but found herself lunging at him with a butcher knife on Monday to protect Ms. Nash, said Capt. Conklin, who gave the following account."

The owner's attack with a butcher knife is also kind of insane.

Why do fools keep chimps and why are they allowed to keep chimps (except Michael Jackson). Now, someone with a sense of humor must be able to make this into a joke about Michael Jackson and his chimp, and his face coming off,... you see where I'm going with this? The stuff of comedy, the bright side of this woman losing her face.

from the AP story we get these further details:

"In recordings of calls to 911 dispatchers released Tuesday, Travis' grunts can be heard as a frantic Herold cries that her pet is "eating" Nash and must be killed. The attack lasted about 12 minutes.

"The chimp killed my friend!" says a sobbing Herold, who was hiding in her vehicle. "Send the police with a gun. With a gun!"

The dispatcher later asks, "Who's killing your friend?"

"My chimpanzee!" she cries. "He ripped her apart! Shoot him, shoot him!"

After police arrive, one officer radios back: "There's a man down. He doesn't look good," he says, referring to Nash. "We've got to get this guy out of here. He's got no face.""

If you have a chimp, shouldn't you own a gun? That seems like common sense. This exchange clearly shows the owner to be both an idiot and a lunatic.

"Don Mecca, a family friend from Colchester, N.Y., said Herold, whose daughter died several years ago in a car accident, fed the chimp steak, lobster, ice cream and Italian food."

It seems only fair that the state of Conneticut sees to it that her face be ripped off in retribution.

"Police said that Travis was agitated earlier Monday and that Herold had given him the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in some tea. Police said the drug had not been prescribed for the 14-year-old chimp.

In humans, Xanax can cause memory loss, lack of coordination, reduced sex drive and other side effects. It can also lead to aggression in people who were unstable to begin with, said Dr. Emil Coccaro, chief of psychiatry at the University of Chicago Medical Center."

"Xanax could have made him worse," if human studies are any indication, Coccaro said.

Stephen Rene Tello, executive director of Primarily Primates, a sanctuary for chimps in Texas, said it is difficult to say what effect Xanax would have on a chimp, but he noted that chimps and humans have similar physiology.

Investigators said they were also told that Travis had Lyme disease, a tick-borne illness with flu-like symptoms that can lead to arthritis and meningitis in humans."

The idea that Lyme disease is the culprit is pretty frigging rich. Methinks the NYTimes ran with that idea to cover up the clear reality that Xanax will make you rip somebody's face off.

This whole sordid business all brings to mind that story from years ago (that for whatever reason I remember clearly) when a pet chimp ripped off a man's foot and his scrotom at the chimp's own birthday party.

" A man was critically injured and two animals shot dead at a chimps' tea party in California.

St James Davis, 62, had his nose ripped off, and his testicles and foot severed, after he took a chimp out of its cage at an animal refuge so it could eat a piece of birthday cake.

Mr Davis and his wife, LaDonna, 64, had visited the Animal Haven Ranch in Caliente on Thursday to celebrate the birthday of Moe, a chimp they had kept as a pet before he was removed for biting a woman's finger.

As the couple stood outside Moe's enclosure, Buddy and Ollie, two male chimps from an adjoining cage, jumped on Mr Davis. After Buddy was shot, Ollie dragged Mr Davis down the road. Doctors said most of Mr Davis's face had been chewed off. His wife was bitten on the hand.

Workers at the refuge shot and killed the two chimps and recaptured two others who broke out of their cages."

It is told with a bit more wit here.

The testicles and the foot. Those are the details that you will remember. Until they come for you, too.

I don't know if you have spent much time listening to Indian or Hindustani slide guitar music, but it is pretty cool. Actually, you'd have no idea just from hearing it that it's played on a guitar rather than a veena.

I always thought it was the sole province of Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, since he invented the instrument, but I gather that there are some others out there. If you go to that Bhatt website (or directly here) you can see a picture of his "Mohan Veena".

I just started to think about this music again because somehow I stumbled on this Mohna Veena for sale on ebay. I actually have no idea how I got to that particular page, call it the hand of destiny. A bit out of my range, to say the least, but cool that it is available.

Someday I'd like to get serious about Indian music, what incredible stuff it is. For now I have a sitar gathering dust. I did practice it for a time but the extensive tuning required at any one session ususally drove me back to the banjo. You don't even need to tune one of those damn things.

Surrounded by Ascension Technologists, teaching of the Mystery Schools

I have had enough of dumbfucks today. Good reason to have a blog, to air these feelings...only reason to have a blog...or two...

One variant of dumbfuck is really common around here in the 757--the white gangbanger. Perhaps more pathetic than anything else. Is there anything stupider than some pasty white dude holding up his hugely baggy pants with one hand with a stiff brimmed baseball hat directed to the 3 o'clock position? And no, it is not just that I am old, this is an uniquely fucking idiotic look.

The second breed of dumbfuck I am dwelling on at the moment is the first time ebay buyer. These time consuming shitstains almost invariably pay too much for something, have a hard time figuring out how to pay, email questions constantly, need reassurance and handpatting, and then want a freaking refund. Always a hassle. And, worse yet, there is almost certainly a guarantee that I myself have already spent their goddamn illspent money! What flows in must flow out. The wind blows forward and the dust blows back. One red bean stuck in the bottom of a tin can.

And finally, (feeling better now) is there a dumberfuck than a yoga instructor? Or at least, a yoga instructor who feels compelled to write a description of her "practice". To wit~ (I've highlighted particular inanities)

"Breathwork/Bio-energy Facilitator & Creative Spiritual Life Coach Yoga & Meditation Teacher XXXX has studied and continues to study with a variety of teachers of Yoga, Alchemy, and the teaching of the Mystery Schools. She has been studying and teaching yoga since 1993. She has degree in Liberal Arts with focus on Philosophy, Religion, and Spiritual Studies. She has a strong private practice and teaches within the community. XXXX’s approach to teaching and guiding comes from her exploration and personal practice. She has a unique, playful and articulate way of guiding people into the understanding of the process of transforming from the inside out. XXXX teaches by example as she understands that we can not take anyone into places we have not personally gone. She began her studies of yoga, breath, and meditation in the early 1990’s with Kathleen Barratt at the Subtle Energy Institute in Virginia Beach, VA. She is recognized as an advanced teacher in facilitating and teaching Breathwork and meditation with groups and individuals, and she continues her studies through the Subtle Energy Institute. She has completed her training in Basics through Level One in Bio-energy as taught by Margaret and Mietek Wirkus. She is a certified teacher of the KaliRayTriYoga Method of Hatha Yoga. Basics through Level 2. She started studying with TriYoga in 1996. ..... spiritual mentoring, creative life coaching and she is an Ascension Technologist. Her certifications are with.... Bio-energy - Mystery School Studies, Personal Process and Spiritual Counseling : Conscious Living: Healing the Mind, Empowering the Spirit ` chakra series for the Soul BluePrint. Suzanna Kennedy ~ Certified in Divine Human Upgrades. Ascension Technologist. Anchor your Soul And Divine BluePrint On A Personal Note: It is a passion for me to support others in seeking what they desire to create in life and to discover what attitudes and beliefs are not in alignment with that desire. It is a creative and exploratory process that allows us to align ourselves with the soul’s purpose. I have explored the concept of living from intention, and I know its importance in supporting, shaping, and transforming consciousness. I teach what I practice, and I realize that my life is a work in progress. I continue to study, explore and share with other teachers and truth-seeking beings. I am a student of life, continually striving to obtain spiritual awareness through relationships and through my intense personal desire for happiness, health, wellness, wellbeing, freedom and joy. I am heart-fully dedicated to providing a warm and inviting environment for students to discover consciousness through the body. We honor the union of body, mind and spirit as a sanctuary to which we turn for peace and equanimity and a deeper connection to the authentic Self."

p.s. Undismayed provides that much needed deeper connection to the authentic Self.

I was having my mind blown listening to Mingus at Antibes tonight, which I haven't listened to in at least a decade and which is an unbelievably kick ass piece of work that you should direct yourself to stat. (take a break from the norteño polkas for a day).

Poking around about Mingus I come across that his papers are now at the Library of Congress (since 2005, but I haven't been paying attention) so that is a tempting thing to go wade into sometime. Here's the finding aid for it.

I had some qualms about the stimulus bill, but now that I hear what Huckabee has to say I think we need two of these damn things:

Huckabee: Stimulus is 'anti-religious'
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee warned supporters Tuesday that the $828 billion stimulus package is “anti-religious.”

In an e-mail that was also posted on his blog ahead of the Senate’s passage, Huckabee wrote: “The dust is settling on the ‘bipartisan’ stimulus bill and one thing is clear: It is anti-religious.”

The former Republican presidential candidate pointed to a provision in both the House and Senate versions banning higher education funds in the bill from being used on a “school or department of divinity.”

Huckabee's incredible powers of insight do not fail him:

“You would think the ACLU drafted this bill,” Huckabee said. “For all of the talk about bipartisanship, this Congress is blatantly liberal.”

One note and one question to the rightwing twits in this country.

The Note: the Party of God lost the last election. Got its ass handed to it. Totally and utterly got the stiff-arm re-j. This means the commie libs are in control, like it or not Turns out real Americans didn't want the Taliban using federal tax money to set up Baptist madrassas.

The question: why the fuck should the people who won the election be bipartisan with the rump extremist element left behind in Congress? Bipartisanship is just another word for getting cornholed. There was zero talk of bipartisanship when the Party of God was dismantling the rule of law in America and all of the various other legacies of the Bush years. I am not alone in noting that suddenly these craven piles of shit are demanding (yes, actually demanding) bipartisan consideration. Obama is too "articulate" to say it straight, but here it is: go fuck yourselves!

Then Huckabee rounds it out with a howler:

'“This is the opening round of the Democrats’ campaign for big government,” he wrote. “We cannot afford to sit round one out, because if we do, they will only become more emboldened and their grab for power more audacious and damaging to our country and our freedoms.”"

I of course get most of my essential Mexican news via Burro Hall, but I see he is off chasing butterflies.

For some reason, this story and photo appeared in the Virginian Pilot. The picture really captures it:

Yup, that is Hijo de Santo, the son of Lucha Libre great El Santo, receiving communion on the 25th anniversary of his father's death. 25 years and not one mask shall fall.

That is a great picture. There is a majesty to wearing the mask at all venues.

In Mexico City there was a display we saw in a subway station of incredible photographs by Lourdes Grobet of the masked ones in all manner of settings, with particularly saturated colors, also made into a book. I see he has one coming out of Lucha Libre family photographs, an essential one I am sure.

The Catholic Church really earns the 'catholic' label since there is room enough for all from the masked wrestlers as well as the Holocaust-denying reinstated priests.

Migra Corridos

A friend of mine just told me about this secret project of the US border patrol to produce corridos to warn Mexican migrants about the dangers of the crossing.

You can read some of the lyrics here.

This type of hamfisted propaganda planting is in keeping with the Bush-era federal government paying for stories in the media. These songs are intended for the Mexican market so it is outward directed propaganda, which is allowed under the law. But that doesn't make it good.

I actually think that government sponsorship of music as a form of propaganda is not inherently bad if two conditions were met.

One, that the support for the music was not kept secret.

And two, that the music didn't suck. This music sucks.

The El Paso Times has an article about it that includes links to MP3s of the songs. Go give them a listen and see what you think.

(Something like Woody Guthrie's songs in support of salmon-killing dam building in the Pacific Northwest, that was a legit expenditure of federal propaganda funds. "E-lect-tri-ci-i-tee")

As you know, Undismayed loves norteño music and we listen to this shit all the time. So we know good norteño and this ain't it. It doesn't quite make you want to wander into the desert to have yourself cooked, but it does not even make the grade as good low grade norteño music.

To begin with, they sound like midi versions of songs. The accordion playing is terrible. I wonder why the Border Patrol couldn't find some decent musicians to record? There are innumerable good musicians on the US side of the line, for f'sake. Shake a stick on either side of the border and you'll find a good musician. And over there, over in Mexico, how about offering a free ride north in exchange for a decent song or two?

(At least this might be a good sign that we aren't yet fully in 1984. Remember in that book the machine produced songs were always a huge hit with the proles.)

Jimminy Christmas, does anybody that Obama knows pay taxes?

here is the latest.

Where is the change we can we believe, Mr President Barry, sir?

Since Killefer was the head of McKinsey in DC, doesn't this mean we should nationalize that entity and use its money to feed the pandas in the national zoo?

Though I have to say that the Daschle tax evasion is particularly disgusting just because of the size of it. He should be made an example through public disgrace. This case is yet another example that only the chumps out here in Real America pay taxes.

This makes me want to cling to my gun.

What good is it to throw out the lapdogs of corporate tax cheats to bring in actual tax cheats? Can we expect a political tax cheat to raise the taxes on windfall profits and to punish general corporate malfeasance?

We need some fucking heads to roll in this sinking pathetic corrupt country and instead we are stonewalled in Congress by the party that got freaking trounced in the election, and we are concurrently getting a parade of fucking criminals lining up to send more of our tax money to the banks. It is demoralizing, isn't it, to live in the Third World?

Thinking of the coming of the End Time, I thought I would post this picture of an important book in the genre that I treasure:



I love that cover font, which was dated by a good decade at minimum by the time this came out.

You might notice that I only own volume 2. I do see a nice copy of Vol 1 for sale, all 511 pages of it, even signed by the author Raymond Ouellette. My birthday is indeed coming up very soon...

Did you read the New Yorker piece about doomsayers and apocalypse seekers and semi-survivalists? A topic close to my heart, of course.

It fulfilled its assigned task, which was to make them all look like clowns. But it felt stitched together. The connections drawn between those forecasting/anticipating/seeking the apocalypse and the Vermont free staters didn't make much sense to me and this article definitely misses the boat on the looming end times.

Part of me thinks that some or most of the secular end time people just hate what they perceive the general tawdriness and tackiness of modern American life and so wish for its destruction to prove they have superior taste. Jim Kunstler seems to fall into this category a bit, as a reading of his blog Clusterfuck Nation telegraphs.

He does get up a good head of steam, but is given to the "air quotes" a "lot", which I "think" is the updated version OF ALL CAPITALS, WHICH ONLY CRAZY ASSHOLES USED TO USE* BUT WHICH HAVE BEEN RETIRED BECAUSE THE "WEB" AND IT MAKES IT SEEM LIKE YOU ARE SHOUTING or something of that nature.

I will read Kunstler's novel about the post-apocalypse and report back.

Kunstler, a man so-assured-of-the-end, doesn't even own a decent gun (he has a 16 gauge, which which will be very effective in killing pigeons in the New Days, and he is "applying for a handgun permit.") If nothing else, this shows the man to be on the clueless end of things. Since he thinks end times are nigh, he might consider moving to Virginia to stock up. Here, my brother, you are only limited to a handgun a month.

Since the times are indeed in the shitter, and likely to decline for a bit, perhaps we should shelve the longing for Mad Max and maybe return to Murray Bookchin?




------
*this is true--one way to judge someones decline is to track when their published works began to rely heavily on all caps. Tom Watson was most assuredly one, Watterson was too, though to a lesser extent

I may be missing something, but I was struck by the bootlicking interviews that Nicholson Baker gave about the genius of John Updike since he died. I always thought Baker despised Updike, and that his book U and I was an archly ironic and deapan deconstruction of Updike. But I read it over 10 years ago so maybe I misremembered or was wrong in the first place. Or maybe I just hate Baker these days. His books have gotten progressively worse and unforgivably stupid. He is tracking along with Philip Roth in terms of rather a sordid decline to irrelevance, but Roth has far further to fall and Baker is moving quicker. He'll hit bottom sooner, unless he is already there.

As if a webpage and two blogs and a baker's dozen of email addresses I can't remember the passwords for aren't enough, I've started a myspace page: Mare's Nest.

(No, this doesn't mean that I am suddenly 15. In fact, I am headed rather alarmingly into no-looking-back-now-for-fucking-real old age in just a week or so.)

It is a long story why it was time for this, but it boils down to the need to post a couple of tunes because I was invited to be part of a music project that I will name only when and if it all goes through, and/or if you buy a cold drink and ask politely. Anyway, you can freely listen...

LOS DONNENOSpolka(UNA TARDE EN GARZA AYALA )

seriously, how is anyone supposed to get anything done in this world?

Change we can believe in


I remember when I forgot to pay $34,000 in taxes.

It was when I took a job, with a PhD, that didn't pay that as the annual salary.

WASHINGTON — Timothy F. Geithner, President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for Treasury secretary, failed to pay more than $34,000 in federal taxes over several years early this decade, and also faces questions about the employment papers of a former household employee, suddenly complicating what had seemed to be an easy confirmation process in the Senate.

And this motherfucker is going to fix up the mess made by the other motherfuckers he fucks mothers with?

Combine this with Obama trotting religious zealots Christian fanatics around his Big Day and it is starting to look like Washington.

But really Geithner is not to blame. See, the Obama people point out that people who work in international organizations just plumb fergit to pay taxes. Thankfully the IRS waives the fees.

"Mr. Geithner fully paid his state and federal income taxes. In failing to pay his payroll taxes, he in effect kept the money the I.M.F. had contributed toward his liability. However, Mr. Geithner’s accountant told him he was exempt from self-employment taxes, according to Obama transition officials.

As Obama officials pointed out, and I.R.S. documents attest, the failure to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes is common among Americans who work for international organizations, including foreign embassies. A 2007 I.R.S. notice reported that up to half of such employees incorrectly file their tax returns.

The I.R.S. waived penalties for Mr. Geithner in 2006, according to an account provided by the transition office and the Senate committee. A three-year statute of limitations had precluded the agency from auditing the 2001 and 2002 tax returns, a committee aide said."

Like the times the IRS waives your fees when you are late paying taxes. Or when you just just plumb fergit to pay taxes. Everybody does it!

But it gets better after the jump. This dude, like all rich motherfuckers, just doesn't want to pay taxes at all. That is for little people.

"Mr. Geithner volunteered to amend the earlier returns and pay the taxes and interest, a total of $25,970, after Mr. Obama indicated that he wanted to nominate him for the Treasury job, according to the account. Mr. Obama announced the nomination in Chicago on Nov. 24, three days after the issue had come to Mr. Geithner’s attention.

That chronology raises the question, however, of why Mr. Geithner did not voluntarily correct the earlier nonpayment of self-employment taxes after the 2006 I.R.S. audit identified the problem for 2003 and 2004.

Late Tuesday, Republican and Democratic sources were still predicting that Mr. Geithner would be confirmed. Before the tax disclosures, the toughest questions he was expected to face were over his role in the government’s bailout program for financial institutions.

The Senate Finance Committee has known about the tax matters since Dec. 5, and staff members have reviewed Mr. Geithner’s tax records and interviewed three of his accountants and an I.M.F. representative.

Mr. Geithner met with committee staff members on Dec. 19 to answer questions about the taxes on his I.M.F. income and about other relatively minor issues the staff had found. Those issues, for which Mr. Geithner recently paid $4,334 in back taxes and $1,232 in interest, include his mistaken claim of the dependent care credit on his income taxes for the costs of sleep-away camps in three years. The Geithners have two teenage children."

I love that last bit. I mean, who wouldn't think sleep away camp for teenagers was day care?

"Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, called the matter “a lot to do about nothing.” '

Will the same be said of you in April 15?

Vernon Oxford

the sync is a bit off -- but holy shit his voice sounds good.

Gone but not forgotten

It has been a good year for Richmond and for Norfolk in terms of murders. Fewer people are being killed in each city, even though if you read the paper the deaths do seem really common. But in fact there are only about 2-3 per month in each city... (rates for the Hampton Roads cities are here).

Style Weekly, the free reader in Richmond (which is actually a decent rag, compared with the free reader in Norfolk called Portfolio, which fellates the equine family, as the saying goes) has published a list of the 32 killed people It is a terrible thing to read, this list of the mostly young dead.

I don't think it dishonors the dead to list a couple of notable names:
LaMoan Hart, 20 years old, killed Sept 26

and my favorite:
Marijuana Thompson, age 31, killed Nov. 6.

Still, he (she?) had 31 good years with the name Marijuana.

I am wondering why there are not more people calling for massive crushing reaction against the cheats and swindlers (that is, the rich elites and their lapdogs in the Republican party) who have so thoroughly fucked things up for us all.

I am thinking this because today I received my current retirement statement and, whoa now, 40-fucking% of it is flat out gone.

I was prepared for some decline, maybe even upwards of 25-30%, no problem (and saw one last quarter) but 40% actually pisses me off. That's a lot of scratch. 40% seems more than unreasonable. It is f'ing insane.

Why is no one calling for actual retribution? Fucking payback? Revenge is sweet, and all of that? Let's get something for our 40%. let's at least be given the pleasure of seeing the rich suffer!

Why are Americans such sheep that we accept this recession and losses when they are largely manmade by poor decisions? And meanwhile the "deciders" from Bush on down are prancing about without a care (ok, except that German billionaire dude who stepped in front of the train).

Let's at least feel better by impoverishing some of these thieves. And let's spread the wealth around with a bit of vigor.

Obama's $1000 tax break? Fuck you. I elected you to destroy capitalism in this country and redistribute wealth, like you promised Joe the Plumber. Start redistributing now. Keep the campaign promise.

What we need now are Huey Long style Share Our Wealth clubs.

One way I will feel better is to see some investment bank CEO marched out his house at gunpoint while crack mothers smear their shit all over his possessions. That seems sensible, and kind of amusing in a 40% kind of way.

(note: perhaps largely of interest to an academic. i.e. not to you)

an amusing rant

In Need of a Bailout

In case you were wondering how truly fucking pathetic the historian's job market is, check out this report about the "very good indeed" numbers coming out of the American Historical Association:

"The total number of positions listed with the AHA (which includes all full-time positions and fellowships paying $28,000 or more per year) rose a modest 2.8 percent, to 1,057 openings. This is the largest number of positions ever advertised with the AHA in a single year, and marks a 24 percent increase in openings since the last economic contraction between 2001 and 2003. The largest growth in job openings occurred in the public history section of our job listings, which grew by 27.9 percent over the prior year. But there was also modest growth in advertisements from most regions of the country. Admittedly, the numbers are fairly small—an increase of seven positions in both New England and the Mid-Atlantic regions, and four new jobs in the states around the Great Lakes. But given that they were growing from the highest numbers on record, any growth seems very good indeed. "

That is 28 grand for positions that require a PhD in history.

That is a full $20,000 below the median U.S. income, though it is higher than minimum wage.

The average time to get a History PhD is 8.5 years.

By any reasonable calculation, a historian would be better off in virtually any unskilled or semi-skilled position that requires no education whatsoever and save the eight years for doing whatever it is all other Americans do for 8.5 years of their rapidly fleeting lives.

Since at least half of the people in this country eat sand (when there is no crawdad) in order to stay alive, this cannot be a promising sign for the pale-skinned, stoop shouldered academics bringing home half the bacon.

A young wanna-be historian would be better advised to become a drug mule for the Mexican cartel than to go to graduate school. A few trips of swallowed condoms and presto, $28,000!

I think Freakonomics established that even low level crack dealers earn at least minimum wage

Prior to the collapse of the American economy, there were Wall Street cheats who used 28 grand merely to wipe their asses after particularly spectacular blowouts.

Since academics are supposed to be smart (I won't even claim they are common sensical) shouldn't somebody perk up and, like, occupy a building, or write a very stern memo or even an article in an unread specialist journal, or ignite themselves Vietnamese Buddhist style in the quad to stop the madness?

LOS DONNENOS LAS TRES MUJERES

another great

LOS DONNENOS (ABRAZA MIS PENAS)

Kind of sad I haven't posted here in a month, but a couple of Donneños videos surely makes up for it?

Great song. Better camera angle.

On Cornhole

these are actual for-sale classifieds in the local paper:



"Cornhole" is the local name for a game where you throw bean bags filled with corn into a board with a hole on it. (This is basically Bozo Buckets, for those of you who grew up with Bozo the Clown. (Maybe that was only in the WGN viewing area?))

Charming regionalism, no? Apparently, the rocket scientists who live here decided that "Cornhole" was a good name for this favorite childhood game. And why not? After all, what else would 'cornhole' possibly refer to?

But CORNHOLE CHRISTMAS! for pete's sake? There are places where they just might shoot you for saying that.

The Reason for the Season

Like any reasonable person, I hate Christmas for a wide variety of reasons, but mostly for the perfectly rational reason that I always want to mail a letter on Christmas day but never can because of the Taliban-like stranglehold that the organized fundamentalist Christmas interest has on our once proud, freedom loving, mail sending nation.

One thing I do like about Christmas though is Christmas music. I can't really explain it, since so much of it sucks so utterly, but a big part of it is definitely because all the country greats (everyone from Ray Price to Ferlin Husky) has felt compelled to record Christmas records that have some really fine music on them.

Some of these are quite great (Buck Owens deserves special note). And, it helps that Christmas records have virtually no value. People dump them all the time and nobody seems to buy them. The flea market guy I sell records to refuses to consider anything with Christmas in it (except for Elvis). The records are easy to find in thrift stores (in the South particularly) for a buck. Consequently, over the years I have amassed a stupidly large number of these records, a couple of linear feet of them actually. I have to start listening to them in early December just to get through them. I am going to weed aggressively this year.

(I'll also be getting rid of about 25 Jimmy Swaggart records, let me know if you are interested, you get an instant Golden Gospel Piano collection!).

Rarely does a day go by that I don't consider thanking the Prince of Peace himself for putting Ernest Tubb here on God's green earth to sing "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer." Or at least thank the lucky stars. That is one song that is yearly rotation around here, not just in the season.

So I dusted off the Christmas collection to start putting it through its paces and thought that there are a couple of other gems in there worth mentioning. To anticipate your question, there is one conjunto christmas recording I know of, I have a tape of it but can't find it and actually have no way to play tapes anymore since I sold my truck over a year ago). "Christmas in Zitherland," Steel Guitar Christmas" and "Christmas Vibes" (as in vibaphone) all of their cherished place.

I did have a thought of perfect clarity: The Star Wars Christmas LP from 1980 should have been grounds for George Lucas to lose his American citizenship:



It has a song with this chorus: 'R2D2 we wish you a Merry christmas. R2D2 we love, it's true. R2D2 we wish you a Merry christmas. R2D2 We hope our little message gets to you.'

My understanding of christmas theology is a bit dimmer than my knowledge of Star Wars theology, but I am glad that both can converge on the view of R2D2 as cyberchrist.

For some reason that only Lucas' swiss bankers can explain, as soon as this record came on my child, who has never heard of R2D2 or Star Wars, immediately went into whirling dervish mode.

Christmas comes but once a year, but that other Colonel, Colonel Sanders, has out at least two records.

I can't imagine why anyone would break into a house around here.

I have a new next door neighbor. He is in the Navy and works at the Navy brig (the same one where they held Hamdan). One of the first things he said to me is that he would definitely shoot to kill any intruder.

(He also said they still have "the cage" they built for Hamdan, which makes me wonder).

My neighbor on the other side, who moved in in August and who is also in the Navy, had said essentially the same thing about shooting intruders during my first conversation with him.

Neither of these guys was particularly being a tough guy either, it was all rather matter of fact.

I don't mind. The more intruders that get shot, the fewer will bother me.

My neighbor two houses over was mugged at gun point a couple of days ago, and had his nose broken by by being hit with the gun. Two blocks away, walking to the 7-Eleven. 757!

I have been sick as a dog for the past week, so I haven't been able to post anything. I had intended to mark Thanksgiving by putting up the cover of this fine LP from Conjunto Michoacan:

This story in the Washington Post about the killing of journalists in Ciudad Juarez has this fine if caustic observation:

""No longer do they just threaten us," Torres said. "Now they act."

Torres said he does not know who killed his ace reporter. "Many people assume he was killed by the narcos, but I am not so sure," he said. "He was killed by organized crime, I will say that. In Mexico, organized crime can mean the traffickers, the police, the government, or the people in the office buildings."

The story describes the death this way:

"Rodríguez, 40, was killed Nov. 13 in front of his home by a single gunman. He was shot 10 times while warming up his car, directly in front of his 8-year-old daughter, as he was about to drive her to school in the morning."

Now, please understand that I am not speaking ill of the dead when I ask this, but I do have to wonder: who warms up their car in Mexico? Even if it was an engine with a carburetor? (from the picture it looked like some piece of shite little Nissan) This is on the border, not the top of Popocatepetl.

This fine Hitchens piece speaking squarely about what a terrible choice Hillary Clinton is a typically great column. I have never liked the Clintons, and Hitchens reminds me of so many aspects of their totalizing sleaze that I had forgotten. There really was nothing to low for the Clintons, who had to take illegal money from the Red Chinese because they didn't inspire quite the way Barry did/does.

I do wish he had made another choice, this election was (rhetorically anyway) supposed to be about eliminating this m'fer* from sitting on America's face.



*family friendly blogging

Sometimes when I want to be reminded that there is a bright spot in the universe, I take a look to see what is happening in San Antonio. Try to comprehend that this is simply the next week


(...then try to figure out why the old lady, unsurpassingly lovely as she is, is unconvinced of the wisdom of relocating to San Antonio:

Arturo's Sports Bar & Grill 3310 S. Zarzamora St., (210) 923-0177

Los Humildes, La Mission Colombiana de Florencio Cuellar, 8 Fri.

Benny Medina, Lupito Saenz/Conjunto Sabinal, 6 Sun.

Eddie "Lalo" Torres, Larry Garcia/Experiencia, 8 Wed.

Back Canteen 650 VFW Blvd., (210) 534-5022

Los Camaroneros de Fred Saldaña, 8 Fri.

Benny Medina, Conjunto Aguila, 8 Sat.

Cattleman Square Tavern 904 W. Houston St., (210) 227-9616

Los Tovares, 9:30 Sat.

Cool Arrows 1025 Nogalitos St., (210) 227-5130

Los Dos Gilbertos, 8 Sat.

El Ojo de Agua 2908 Mission Road, (210) 921-4930

Los Alegres de Ruben Tellez, 8 Sat.

Gil's Tejano Bar & Grill 1228 E. Durango Blvd., (210) 534-4141

Los Tovares, 7:30 Fri.

Lerma's1602 N. Zarzamora St., (210) 884-8810

Santos Sosa, Flavio Longoria, El Pavo Real, 8 Sat.

Henry Zimmerle, Hermanos DeLeon, El Pavo Real, 6:30 Sun.

Maria's Café 1105 Nogalitos St., (210) 227-7005

Santos Soza/Sus Estrellas, 4 Fri.

Pan Am Plaza 1419 Commercial Ave., (210) 922-6968

Grupo Instante, noon, Los Enmascarados, 9 Sat.

Los Escorpiones, Los Tamalipecos, noon Sun.

Reptilez Sports Bar 5418 Old Hwy. 90, (210) 433-5552

Los Camaroneros de Fred Saldaña, 5 Sun.

Royal Palace Ballroom 3506 S.W. Military Drive, (210) 924-5651

Santiago Jimenez Jr., 1 Fri.

Conjunto 5X, 1 Sun.

Henry Zimmerle, Juan Ramos, noon Mon.

Los Robles, 1 Tues.

Martin Pesina, 2, Henry Zimmerle, 8 Wed.

VFW Post 4700 2219 Frio City Road, (210) 923-7007

Los Alegres de Ruben Tellez, 6:30 Fri.

Solucion de Mike Villanueva, 5 Sun.

VFW Post 9186 650 VFW Blvd., (210) 532-9191

Conjunto Solucion, 4 Sun.

This is something quite essential, I've never heard this stuff: a page of duets of Bob Dylan-Johnny Cash from 1969, all free. Some great songs on here too. The 'Careless Love" is great, and the Jimmie Rodgers song. Nice to be alive.

On the suggestion of a friend I looked up this incredible label called Sublime Frequencies and about all I can say is 'holy shit'. These look like some amazing collections of music, most of it from the outer limits of Asia. This isn't traditional stuff for ethnomusicologists, but instead a bunch of insane pop relics fractured through Asian sensibilities.

I have one LP of Tawainese surf rock my parents once brought back from Asia for some reason I never quite understood. I knew there had to be a lot more out there.

Too bad I am so woefully underpaid. But I do have two kidneys.

I am trying to get my head wrapped around the figure of 50,000 people losing their jobs at Citibank. Isn't that, like, a whole shitload of people? And this is the bank that was going to buy Wachovia a couple of weeks ago. Are any of these bastards solvent?

I also have been wondering why nobody has been talking about the price gouging and oil futures speculation that had us all bent over the oil barrel just a couple of months ago. It is like everybody instantly forgets how wrongly screwed we were all getting for a time. People who blamed speculators were called kooks, but obviously something unseemly was afoot. Now gas is so damn cheap I just leave my truck running all the time. Gas is as cheap as I can remember, I paid $1.82 a gallon yesterday and have heard of $1.50 gas around, which is wild. How is possible that prices were almost three bucks a gallon more and it was just market fluctuations? I don't believe it at all.

If I was really paranoid I would see it as a last gasp to run up prices by financiers and other shitbags who knew the extent of the rottenness at the core of the system, all before the whole system finally hit the skids and toppled down.

Oh wait, I am really paranoid.

As soon as I wrote "heroic" in that last post, I started to think back about the myriad ways the Bush administrations have taken the term "hero" crammed it up the rectum of the body politic.

One reason (of so many) I am happy the Republicans were swept out of office is that it might just stem the tide toward fascistic hero worship that has been so omnipresent in the U.S. since 2001, and perhaps a bit more balance will be restored.

The one thing that really chaps my sack (as Barbara Bush as been heard to say) has been when the airlines have made such a show of recognizing the "heroes" who are on the plane flying in uniform. I am sure you have seen this as well. It has not been uncommon at all for enlisted dudes flying in uniform to be invited to first class and given free drinks. I have seen this many times. I was on a flight two weeks ago and the stewardess got on the horn so the plane could recognize the heroes. Everybody clapped. At the end of the summer, I was waiting to board a plan in Baltimore when they handed out flags to everyone and asked people to stand and clap as the soldiers walked off the plane. I overheard the inevitable exchange "why are we clapping?" "They're heroes".

I of course appreciate the sacrifice of the people going to fucking Iraq and to Afghanistan, and am a believer in service and so on. But does this make every m'fer in uniform into a hero who deserves applause? Must we collectively worship volunteer soldiers, or can we just appreciate what they do and not get so carried away? It seems almost too obvious to note, but yet everybody sheepishly follows.

I won't even bother to dwell on the fact that when these heroes return to the U.S. they are all treated shabbily and nobody does a goddamn thing for them.

What about the old timer sitting there quietly who has performed open heart surgery on X number of people, saving their lives by using a great skill? On any average plan there must be a bunch of people who deserve a free drink. Geez, what about the fire fighters and all the others who the nation was so impressed by for five minutes before re-consigning them to the forgetten service personnel roster?

And, of course, heroes who preserve music from oblivion.

I happened on the website of this guy Alec Dempster, who is a hell of a visual artist and also a recorder of traditional music in Veracruz (where he lives). Hard to beat that combination.

I bought one of the cds he produced when I was down in Veracruz a couple of years ago, it is a superb collection of music from Santiago Tuxtla and San Andrés Tuxtla. I just discovered that there are a bunch more recordings he has done and even a cd of his own playing. You should go order all of them, like this one of Son Jarocho fiddling of rare tunes on a traditional cedar fiddle. (you can get them all from cd.baby so you might as well just get them all).

Check out his artwork on his webpage. Needless to say this guy gets it, at least to these eyes. And saving this music and making it available is a heroic task. I'd like to buy him a beer.

Undismayed has been a bit remiss. The election soaked up a lot of focus, to be sure, and then so did everything else.

And November is the start of the cockfighting season in Virginia.
(it is true, cockfighting has its own season. Even though it's a felony now in the Commonwealth.) I've been so busy around here that I failed even to consider that law enforcement in Virginia is figuring out ways to sidestep this silly new felony crime.

Even though the election is over I am still obsessed with Sarah Palin. Or, perhaps a better description is that I am filled with astonishment of her renewable stupidity and I continue to fear the danger she represents to us all. She isn't going away, and she is young, so we are gonna be a-stuck with her for a long, long time. I wish she was a John Edwards type, tainted forever because of the loss, but the difference is nobody liked that philandering fuckwit to begin with, and Palin has much of the idiot vote passionately in love with her.

Maybe enough of them will stick their heads in the ovens in the Great Depression II, but I doubt it.

The Washington Post has a discussion of Michelle Obama's dress at the Grant Park rally, which was striking and bizarre, and a reader posted this great line:
"I thought that the dress was an appropriate piece of end-of-the-election symbolism. After a long campaign full of high-flying idealism, the First Lady-elect showed that it was finally time to come down to Earth. In her case, it looked like she was re-entering the Earth's atmosphere pelvis-first."

Wow, this is even a better sign that there is hope alive:

There is this new and incredible Hank Williams collection of never-before released recordings from the Mother's Best Flour sessions of 1951. This is an excellent collection you should definitely get. I can't stop listening to it.

Hank sings some songs you've heard before on this set, which sound clear and flawless. Even better there are also a bunch he never recorded before. A cool version of "On Top of Old Smokey" (yes really, it is great) and his "When the Saints go Marching In" show that Hank could make any song better than any song has ever been. This is not a excessive statement, this is true.

And he sings here a bunch of songs better known from the early bluegrass era: such a fine song as "Gathering Flowers for the Master's Bouquet, which I think of as pure Stanley Brothers, though others did record it. "Lonely Tombs". "When the Fire Comes Down". Songs you can never hear too much like "Where the Soul Never Dies" Hank definitely was hearing the good stuff around him. I was especially stoked to see that he sings a bunch of superb Bailes Brothers songs. Oh yes, just perfect. His voice sounds as good as it ever has.

It is hard to stress sufficiently just how great this music is.

The end of the election is good in all ways.

Undismayed relishes the return of the rule of law, for one.

But even more importantly, it's a strong signal that this country just possibly might not limp along angry, declining, and pathetic if not actually fail. It is possible to think that things might actually improve and even be good.


Longtime readers of Undismayed know that we had some questions about choosing Obama among all other possible contenders, but we came around, and time has proven that he is a man of fine character and he has earned his respect over the past several months. His election is a huge win for the country at large in all of the ways that all commentators are talking about, of course, so I won't exercise them here.

We were helped around by the obvious sign that the Republican party needed to experience (at least one) crushing and total loss. I see this as the long awaited revenge for the incompetence that has brought us the failure to prevent the September 11 attacks and every fucking thing since. That total Republican crushing alone is reason to rejoice in Obama's win.

Also completely joy-making is anything that can be done to eliminate Sarah Palin from public life, to extirpate her brand of faux populism, to restrain the authoritarian mindset she appeals to, and to wipe that shit gobbling stupidity off of our collective shoes. This is just the first stage in the relentless campaign to keep her and all of the other neo-fascists out of the public domain, and to pummel them into senselessness if they dare to venture forth to take power. Leave Alaska and other marginal places for these motherfuckers and teach them to stay out of the rest of the country. Do you think if Palin/McCain won that they would have given a speech like Obama signaling that they were sensitive to the needs of their opponents?

Finally, at long last, we are rid of baby boomer leaders. That generation, obsessed over the divides of decades ago, have contributed almost nothing but bullshit to our political culture. The divides brought by the reactionary wing of the Republican party had too many easy targets among the self-righteous and power worshipping Clintonies. it's nice to see them all shown to be vacuous and useless in the face of a politician from the Colonel's generation. Finally we can stop arguing about fucking Vietnam as the flashpoint and maybe focus on the crisis we are actually in. The fact that Johnny Mac's attempt to run on his record and his attempt to ressurect boogieman Ayers failed is a clear sign that the country is finally moving beyond it.

That Obama emerged at this moment is critical--not just educated, but smart, savvy, technologically aware, and comfortable not bowing down before the goddamned religious nuts who are trying to make this fine secular country into Taliban Afghanistan.

Obama has plenty of flaws and much to learn, but he has the capacity to learn at least and my guess is that he will lead as deftly as he campaigned. And if he doesn't, well, we'll happy to rant about it...

I just discovered the Los Tucanes de Tijuana URL is expired, here is your chance to squat on it...and potentially make make tens or even dozens of dollars

here they are with a classic

Looking for something to do? Why not hang some of these posters in your town?

This is a great site, well made, right spirit, good graphics, generally seem to get it.

yet another huge digital collection of music:

Black Gospel Music Restoration Project

A friend of mine who reads the Italian paper La Repubblica came across this video of Eddie Adcock getting brain surgery and playing banjo while he is doing it:


Maybe if I get brain surgery I'll be able to play bluegrass.

Via Burro Hall, we come across this incredible collection of Mexican exvotos, which are religious paintings created as thanks to a saint. You may have seen them before probably in some fashion since they are often peddled as folk art, but not like this. The octopus ones are among the best, though the crucified borderlands Christ is hard to beat.

Apparently Clayton McMichen owned a bar in Louisville after he stopped playing music. The bar had a speakeasy in the basement with paintings on the wall of big breasted women and a martini glass, (perhaps) by McMichen. You can read about it here. This is an old time listserv, you might have to register to read it but I am not sure.

The guy who figured this all out is a painter who concentrates on old time themes, he has a blog with some of them.

Am I utterly alone in wondering who gives a fuck that they found "millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett's" plane? The news is all over the place, and nobody has paused to ask "who the fuck cares?" Who additionally gives a fuck about any aspect of the life of "millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett" in the first place? Or his death? Come to think of it, who gives a fuck about "millionaire adventurers"? Who cares if some rich commodities trader decides to squander his fortune in hotair balloons and fancy sailboats and planes? This isn't even glamorous stuff anyway. We need a break from that Virgin Atlantic guy and from Ted Turner and from all of these bastards. Doesn't the fact that you are loaded kind of mitigate the significance of your adventure? How hard is it to undertake an adventure when you just buy it?

(Pretty hard for Fossett, I guess, since he bought an adventure into the side of the mountains)

A well meaning person I know sent out a group email last week with his opinions on the bailout of Wall Street and a suggestion that this group of his friends and acquaintances start a dialog about their feelings.

What ensued was the expected spiral downward into chaos and madness as the emails between this group of people--all of which I unfortunately had to receive-- became progressively nastier. It was like a joke, really, to watch the exchange move from jocular to heated to violent. Sweeping political statements soon became directed personal attacks. I wouldn't be surprised if one of these people drove to the each others' houses and beat themselves senseless.

Finally, after several days, enough people started to say just "please take me off of this list" anfd hopefully the whole fucking thing will die. What compels people to hit "reply all"?

Suffice to say, I have no intention of speaking to my friend ever again...

I actually haven't watched any footage of Palin thus far (didn't watch the RNC, why did you?) but having done so today I am a bit stunned. Did McCain talk to her before he proposed?

Ok, ok, maybe you are sick of hearing about what a danger to the future Palin represents, but why not let the woman herself reveal what an incompetent stooge she is in this interview:




The way she pauses uncomfortably long and then simply repeats the talking point she made in the beginning in the same exact wording as she fails to explain McCain employing a Fannie Mae stooge, does indicate that she can memorize at least 250 words. Like a border collie.

What I found really disturbing was the way she indicates Obama holds a wet finger tot he wind followed by her mocking of his position while using her hand like a puppet and speaking in a sing-songy voice. What voices will she use for the world leaders she met today?

The fumble at the end as she is asked for a single instance of John McCain calling for regulation is also noteworthy.

Sarah Palin is ready to be our nation's vice-Dear Leader because she has met with mass murderer Henry Kissinger and has stood next to some world leaders. She even shook hands with some of them.

The news accounts even had the gall to call it "shuttle diplomacy," which makes Sarah Palin's photo-op in NYC the same as Kissinger flying around the Middle East in 1973 trying to prevent a nuclear war erupting out of the Arab-Israeli war (the origin of that term).

This makes me think. These are core qualifications for high office. It is the handshake that seals the deal. All knowledge is transferred that way. I've seen Thundercats, I know these things.

I myself have shaken hands with great conjunto accordionist Santiago Jimenez, Jr. This photo has been cropped to protect the identity but it is fer real.



This must mean I am ready to be installed in the conjunto hall of fame. Finally. Thanks for setting a standard, Gov. Palin.

"May no ruthless innovator remodel your simple abodes! no insatiate gringo invade and despoil your sacred domain! But throughout all time, may you and your honest people continue to live out your lives, undismayed and undisturbed by any progressive, distracting or contaminating influence! In primitive blissful ignorance and innocence may your children live out their allotement of three-score-and-ten years, bare-footed, bare-headed, and unsullied by contact with modern galvinized institutions!"

Fanny Chambers Gooch Igelhart, Face to Face with the Mexicans, 1887

No holds will be barred so the Republicans stay in power. It would be fascinating to watch if we weren't the victims in the whole deal.

Bush and pals have decided to capitalize on the failing economy produced by greed by forcing an artificial crisis. The real crisis is, of course, a Constitutional one.

Bush calling Obama to Washington is pure bullshit political theatre designed to blunt Obama's rise in the polls and to screw up the campaign. McCain's taunt and head fake earlier today didn't work, so now Bush has to use his authority as lame duck head honcho to straighten it out. What's Obama going to do when the Boss Man calls him to the big house? What could he do really, tell Bush to W himself?

The debates have been scrubbed to further confuse the issue and prevent everyone from seeing that McCain for what he is, in fact, is. McCain is so confident he is going to win hell or high water, votes be damned--he won't even be bothered to debate Obama this weekend because it doesn't matter. The push is to cancel the VP debate next week so we can only hear about the campaign refracted through ads.

Things are bad in the economy, of course, but the Republicans have pushed things to the point of saying, as Bush did tonight, that the entire economy is in danger of collapse and panic. Why are so many saying otherwise?

We know Bush is a liar, and we know his party lies as a matter of policy. So why believe this?

Grasshopper and the ant and the boy who cried wolf and all of that shit.

Such a crisis demands the kind of blanket handover of power and money without oversight that Paulson asked for. Over the weekend we were all supposed to freak out and make safe rooms in our foreclosed houses with duct tape and plastic, but instead people seemed to get actual backbones.

But Congress will fulminate, it will gnash its teeth and shake its fist, and eventually it will pass a bill not-too-terribly different from the Bush power grab because this is a crisis. "We don't want the next market fall to be a mushroom cloud." We have heard this before. We are hearing it again because it works.

Then we get the Reichstag fire. Pick your pleasure--it could come in any number of forms.

The easiest is that the bailout doesn't work and shit really happens. People on Wall Street lose their second homes in the Hamptons, you and me and everybody gets squeezed even more. Emergency measures, some construed from the overly broad bill and some newly created for the moment are passed, and of course the Republicans stay in power. Real power this time, since the opposition is reduced to a little debating club. Obama is forgotten, maybe he is getting W's cleaning.

McCain is Hindenburg. Palin is the Fuhrer in waiting. She is utterly insulated from scrutiny so the public won't really know her until her icy fingers are squeezing our collective testicles, and she is smiling that bewitching smile.

How exactly can this fuckwit say seriously that he wants a multiple billion dollar bailout but that it is "not appropriate" that the government not allow the pigs to feed?

“We support the bill, but we are opposed to provisions on executive pay,” said Scott Talbott, senior vice president for government affairs at the Financial Services Roundtable, a trade group. “It is not appropriate for government to be setting the salaries of executives.”

In point of fact, we will own you, bitch

Shit floats, merrily.

Why, oh sweet Jesus, why do people think I give a shit about Tom Lehrer? Do I really look this fucking stupid? I would say that his shit is one of the commonest things floated my way by the clueless people I work with. Next they are going to be handing me Capitol Steps routines.

Tom Lehrer's music is followed by a close second by other music people are sure I will love: the "Pickin' on _______" series-- shitty bluegrass versions of the worlds worst music. If you can think of a terrible band, there has been a "Pickin" album created for it. These are, simply, musical abortions.

Do you know the kind of restraint it takes to thank someone who has handed you a copy of "Pickin' on the Eagles"? Christ-like restraint.

Fortunately, as those of you who know me already have sensed, I radiate that Christ-like calm and forbearance. "Just look at the nail scars in my hand."*


* here quoting a Ralph Stanley song. The nail scars I have are actually in my feet.

My dogs sojourned in the great state of Illinois while we were overseas last year, during which time Mother Maybelle killed and ate a great many rabbits. It made a mess, my dad had to clean it up regularly and was not especially pleased.

But I am pleased to clean up the dead rats Maybelle has been killing of late (the rabbits of Norfolk). She doesn't eat them, thankfully, but rather neatly kills them and leaves them for me like a cat. I caught her midkill this morning (she was making quite a ruckus) and so did the final dispatch with a shovel. Nice way to start the day.

Alaskan Fettle Poet in the small concrete

This is an actual 100 word response from the student in a friend of mine's class. The event referred to was a show by Alaska's Fiddling Poet, who came to campus for a show. No spelling has been corrected or words changed, and the "Professor Martin" indicated there is me. At least there was a syllable correct.*

This should give you a sense of the caliber of our freshmen this year, or at least one of them:

After attending the small concrete of the Alaskan Fettle Poet I can say I found myself drifting into thoughts of home, back in the northern tip of Virginia. Hearing the fettle and the banjo played by our own Professor Martin was in toon with the stories and poems of the Alaskan Fettle Poet. The life stories he told of traveling and small towns reminded me of my own adventures in the wilderness, and living in a small town. The most important thing I got out of the music was being able to relax and think about my life and dreams.

* "a sylla-what now?" as the student might ask

Oh, to have lived long enough to be able to see Octa Clark play with just the touch of a button. For this we must be thankful:

This is Mary C. Mann singing "Finger Ring," recorded in Darien, Georgia, April 12, 1926. I was just listening to it and was struck by its magnificence. The lyrics are below.

The Library of Congress page says

"This song, like Mann's first, shares the non-stanzaic construction noted by Gordon for rowing songs. The contrast between strophic construction found in European folksong and the litany form found in Africa supports Gordon's argument that these songs in Mann's repertoire represent an early stage in the progress from African to Afro-American folksong traditions. Gordon collected several other rowing songs from Mann; he also collected another version of "Finger Ring" from a Darien informant (A285, GA75). Mann's statement at the end refers to Mrs. (Roberta Paul) Gordon, whom Mann had known since childhood."

I lost mama's finger ring, finger ring, the finger ring,
I lost mama finger ring, finger ring, the finger ring,
I lost my mama finger ring, finger ring, the finger ring.
I lost my mama finger ring, finger ring, the finger ring.

I know how, I know how to row the boat,
I know how, I know how to row the boat,
I know how to row the boat, I can row the boat just so, finger ring, the finger ring.
I can row the boat just so, finger ring, the finger ring.

I can row, I can row the Bumble Bee,
I can how, I know how to row the Bee,
I know how to row the Bee, Bumble Bee, the Bumble Bee.

I know how to row the Bee, the Bumble Bee, the Bumble Bee.
I know how to row the boat, the Bumble Bee, the Bumble Bee.
I know how to row the boat, the Bumble Bee, the Bumble Bee.

I lost mama, I lost mama finger ring,
I lost mama, I lost my mama finger ring, finger ring, the finger ring, finger ring, the finger ring.
I know how to row the boat, Bumble Bee, Bumble Bee.

Finger Ring.mp3

here are a couple of questions that just popped in my head:

Is anything in this country not run by fucking lying cheats? If the government is going to take over 79% of AIG, shouldn't we all get free insurance? How about health insurance? More generally, what the fuck? Are we living in the Soviet Union or something?*

"The Federal Reserve has tentatively agreed to provide $85 billion in emergency lending to insurance giant AIG in hope of preventing a bankruptcy that could send tremors through the U.S. and global financial markets, according to two sources familiar with the plan.

In exchange, the Fed would get rights to 79.9 percent of AIG's stock, a source said. One source said the government would replace the company's management while the other source said the government gained the right to replace the chief executive and board and appeared likely to do so.

The company would be put up as collateral. The insurance subsidiaries of AIG, which are regulated by state authorities, would be excluded from the arrangement, a source said. The proceeds of any asset sales would be used to pay down the federal loan.
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The plan must still be approved by the governors of the Federal Reserve.

The rescue represents a stunning turnaround for federal officials, who this weekend stressed they would not provide taxpayer money to bail out private companies. Without such a federal backstop, investment bank Lehman Brothers failed to find a buyer and was forced to file for bankruptcy earlier this week. "

*...and if we are, can we send some people to Siberia, please.

p.s. you can see Siberia from Alaska.

I agree---> Undismayed has gotten excessively political of late when it should be concentrating on Mexican music.

And after all, we had better listen to the good stuff as much as possible, when Palin gets in she is going to smoke all of the immigrants out of their spider holes and drive them back over the border. In her panties. I read this on her webpage.


A friend of mine just sent me this great Los Tigres del Norte clip from Youtube. This is a song from 1970 called "Juana la Traicionera" which is on a long out of print album I have never been able to find (not a lot of used ones floating around here, that is for sure). You listen to this and can hear why they got so huge, it is great and has a classic sound and I think more and better use of the accordion than they use nowadays. There most recent stuff has a different tone and I don't think musically it is as good, even if the songwriting is such a big reason they are so popular. Anyway, good song, (and nice video of a 45 playing it):



The person posting this has a blog, she is clearly nuts.

You might not read Richard Cohen's columns generally, but this one is worth a read. He reverses years of rightwing floggery in a stridently and quite persuasively anti-McCain screed. A hell of a column, and maybe a sign that people with brains aren't really snookered by all of this bullshit (true--vanished wealth does tend to tighten people's tolerance):

"McCain has soiled all that. His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir -- the person in whose hands he would leave the country -- is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not.

At a forum last week at Columbia University, McCain said, "But right now we have to restore trust and confidence in government." This was always the promise of John McCain, the single best reason to vote for him. America has been cheated on too many times -- the lies of Vietnam and Watergate and Iraq. So many lies. Who believes that in Afghanistan last month, only five civilians were killed by the American military in an airstrike, instead of the approximately 90 claimed by the Afghan government? Not me. I first gave up on the military during Vietnam and then again when it covered up the death of Pat Tillman, the Army Ranger and former NFL player who was killed in 2004 by friendly fire.

McCain was going to fix all that. He was going to look the American people in the eyes and say, not me. I will not lie to you. I am John McCain, son and grandson of admirals. I tell the truth.

But Joy Behar knew better. And so McCain lied about his lying and maybe thinks that if he wins the election, he can -- as he did in South Carolina -- renounce who he was and what he did and resume his old persona. It won't work. Karl Marx got one thing right -- what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both."

Since there are elements in the media who have begun noticing that the Straight Talk McCain/Palin campaign has tended to lie in speeches and ads in order to win the election, Undismayed has decided to inject some truth telling into the campaign in order to balance things a bit. And one vital question:

It is TRUE that John McCain supports the Bush administration's embrace of torture as official government policy despite he himself having been tortured.

It is TRUE that John McCain has swallowed Karl Rove's load (at least metaphorically).

It is TRUE that Sarah Palin does not believe in the fundamentals of modern society, including such liberal things as "science," "biology" or "evolution," but does believe in God's Eternal and Unstained Christian Truth and that your son is in Iraq fighting for Jesus Fucking Christ Himself.

It is TRUE that Sarah Palin is a total failure as a parent and that her Christian morality should actually be in question in the campaign. This has been declared off limits by the Straight Talk Express, but let's be entirely truthful here--if you are a fundamentalist Christian and your teenage daughter gets knocked up by a teenager outside of the bounds of holy matrimony, does this not telegraph clearly that she is to blame, that she is a failure, and that God hates this family?


Do we want a tortured liar swallowing loads and the Whore of Babylon hated by the very Christian God who guards this country to be in Washington? Decision 2008!

I had been loosely planning to attend the Narciso Martinez Conjunto festival in San Benito, Texas but bailed in the end because getting there was a bit involved (and quite a bit more expensive). The line-up of conjunto music greats looked very tempting. It was also $2 a day to attend, which seemed reasonable. Can you think of anything that is two bucks a day?

Anyway, it has been cancelled because of the hurricane.

Here is some Narciso in top form on a polka "Muchachos Alegres":

I am a big fan of this Mexican music store, Discos RyN.

One part of their page I particularly like is this site dedicated to great band Los Donneños which allows you to listen to some of their music, see pictures, read about them, and so on. Worth a stop, if only for the music.

This is the 2001st post on Undismayed, which is kind of weird, though entirely a result of happenstance and with no meaning (even my feverishly conspiratorial brain can't conjure a specific reason). This blog was started at the time of the one year anniversary of September 11.

It is, as we are sure you have noted, Water Tight.

I hate when September 11 rolls around.

This year I might only hate the date a bit less because I am spending the day with my lovely daughter and am reminded about the things in life that matter. Clichéd, but true. Having a focus of unalloyed and unlimited love doesn't change my sharp memory of the day or of the aftermath, or its impact on me in numerous ways, but it does mitigate it.

The near-total failure of the political response to the attacks over the last 7 years, the ongoing failure of the military response, the increasing examples of corruption and incompetence in government and business that were allowed in the shadow of 9-11, the useless war launched, the obvious reality that our country is adrift and flailing if not actually failing, also has transformed my feelings about the day's meaning.

What, in the end, did the day reveal other than that there is nothing that occurs here that can't be fed into the machine of ambition, deceit, and stupidity, and exploitation that lords heavily over this country? The current lack of discussion of actually new directions in this presidential campaign is a sign that no, nothing changes.

Sure, the stories of personal heroism and sacrifice and loss are there, are real, and are tragic. But we've heard them repeatedly, memorialized them, celebrated them. Isn't it time that that we actually tried to respond in ways that at least honored such sacrifice and loss?

What the fuck is going on?

Both candidates came through the Commonwealth, and the local paper dutifully reported on their visits. Obama had a few things to say at a high school in Norfolk, inspirational words, etc.

I believe Palin publicly got on all fours, applied lipstick, and squealed like a pig before eating a small, steaming turd out of John McCain's hand, But that specific act might just have been partisan rumor mongering. She just have nibbled at the turd and not actually consumed it with relish, as most news outlets we consult have reported.

There were a couple of quotes in the paper that show that this fucking country is filled with morons who will help bring us all down the road to ruin.

Someone named Lynette Long of Maryland (who was supposedly a Clinton supporter who has been swept off her feet by Palin, another lie) introduced Palin in Fairfax and said (as quoted in the paper) "Mr. Obama, calling girls names is something fifth grade boys do, and I don't want a fifth grader running my country."

Is there actually a dumber comment that could have been made than this? I am trying to think of one but can't. Is Palin a "girl" or is she a candidate for the vice presidency? Leaving aside the fact that Obama didn't actually call Palin a name (as the quote clearly shows, he wasn't even talking about her) how can a party that pursues this line be treated with any respect whatsoever?

Anyway. what is politics without name calling? Is Palin above reproach or questioning because she's a broad?

At this same rally, McCain called Democrats "earmakers" and promised to smoke these "earmarkers" out of their caves. He said this standing next to Palin. The Alaska Governor was unavailable for comment because she was still busy chowing away on the piece of shit helpfully fed to her by Straight Talk McCain.


On the other hand, the Democrats are proving themselves to be as completely and superhumanly useless, as this blog has long opined it is. It is somewhat dismaying to be proven correct in this regard. Republicans must be punished for incompetence and mismanagement, and a feckless Democrat party means that no punishment will be meted out. Bummer.

Why isn't Hillary Clinton out there attacking Palin? Couldn't she do it from the standpoint of a fucking "girl"? is it fifth grade if a "girl" kicks another "girl's" ass, at least metaphorically? Could it be that Clinton wants Obama to lose--to a woman, essentially--so she can run again in 2012? Maybe Clinton should remind herself that if the Republicans can win this year than they will win forever. Any party that can bring the country to the lowest economic point since the Great Depression, lose-or-not-win two wars AND violate cherished American rights and values without any repercussions is most assuredly going to give Hillary Clinton her second swirly in only four short years.

Another case in point of Dem uselessness is the well coordinated series of attacks on Obama that have been met with silence or a weirdly weak response. Clearly the Republicans have thought this very carefully out, and clearly they have no shame in perpetuating a constant stream of attacks to keep the pressure on Obama. It works, so it doesn't matter what they say. Where is the Demo counterattack? Isn't there somewhere a Democrat minded individual with a camera who can wheel out an ad?

Somehow Republicans have produced the idea that Palin can't be criticized because she is a woman. Criticism, or even mention of her name, produces cynical howls of sexism. This has been noted in the media, but only in the context of keeping this storyline alive. I won't even bother to comment on the irony if not outright stupidity of the Republicans charging the Dems with sexism, or in the Republicans pretending to be offended. They are, frankly, just a whole lot better at aggressively pushing the Big Lie.

But I do have a modest proposal for the problem facing the Dems, which allow them to respond to the attacks without stooping to the level of the Republicans and further allow them to criticize Palin without it looking like bullying or somehow being unfair or sexist or calling a "girl" hurtful names that will damage her fragile and developing sense of girlhood.

I think the solution is to refer to the vice presidential candidate only as "cunt" or "that cunt". Or, playfully, "cunny".

This way, there is no confusion about the status and respect and "deference" (to quote FoxNews) that should be afforded to her.

Plus, at one syllable instead of two, this will make for much more efficient speech giving, always a bonus.

A couple of alarmed comments that reflect my mood (from folks I only occasionally agree with). Of course part of the problem is that nobody actually listens to these guys unless they already agree with them:

From Andrew Sullivan:

"For me, this surreal moment - like the entire surrealism of the past ten days - is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama or pigs or fish or lipstick. It's about John McCain. The one thing I always thought I knew about him is that he is a decent and honest person. When he knows, as every sane person must, that Obama did not in any conceivable sense mean that Sarah Palin is a pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say so and end this charade? Or did he acquiesce in and thereby enable the mindless Rovianism that is now the core feature of his campaign?

So far, he has let us all down. My guess is he will continue to do so. And that decision, for my part, ends whatever respect I once had for him. On core moral issues, where this man knew what the right thing was, and had to pick between good and evil, he chose evil. When he knew that George W. Bush's war in Iraq was a fiasco and catastrophe, and before Donald Rumsfeld quit, McCain endorsed George W. Bush against his fellow Vietnam vet, John Kerry in 2004. By that decision, McCain lost any credibility that he can ever put country first. He put party first and his own career first ahead of what he knew was best for the country.

And when the Senate and House voted overwhelmingly to condemn and end the torture regime of Bush and Cheney in 2006, McCain again had a clear choice between good and evil, and chose evil.

He capitulated and enshrined torture as the policy of the United States, by allowing the CIA to use techniques as bad as and worse than the torture inflicted on him in Vietnam. He gave the war criminals in the White House retroactive immunity against the prosecution they so richly deserve. The enormity of this moral betrayal, this betrayal of his country's honor, has yet to sink in. But for my part, it now makes much more sense. He is not the man I thought he was.

And when he had the chance to engage in a real and substantive debate against the most talented politician of the next generation in a fall campaign where vital issues are at stake, what did McCain do? He began his general campaign with a series of grotesque, trivial and absurd MTV-style attacks on Obama's virtues and implied disgusting things about his opponent's patriotism.

And then, because he could see he was going to lose, ten days ago, he threw caution to the wind and with no vetting whatsoever, picked a woman who, by her decision to endure her own eight-month pregnancy of a Down Syndrome child in public, that he was going to reignite the culture war as a last stand against Obama. That's all that is happening right now: a massive bump in the enthusiasm of the Christianist base. This is pure Rove.

Yes, McCain made a decision that revealed many appalling things about him. In the end, his final concern is not national security. No one who cares about national security would pick as vice-president someone who knows nothing about it as his replacement. No one who cares about this country's safety would gamble the security of the world on a total unknown because she polled well with the Christianist base. No person who truly believed that the surge was integral to this country's national security would pick as his veep candidate a woman who, so far as we can tell anything, opposed it at the time.

McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not have the character to be president of the United States. And that is why it is more important than ever to ensure that Barack Obama is the next president. The alternative is now unthinkable. And McCain - no one else - has proved it."

From Talking Points Memo:

"Unfit for High Office

One of the interesting aspects of this campaign is watching the scales fall from the eyes of many of John McCain's closest admirers among the veteran DC press corps. I'm not talking about the freaks on Fox News or any of the sycophants at the AP. I'm talking about, let's say, the better sort of reporters and commentators in the 45 to 65 age bracket. To the extent that the press was McCain's base (and in many though now sillier respects it still is) this was the base of the base. And talking to a number of them I can understand why that was, at least in the sense of the person he was then presenting himself as.

But over the last ... maybe six weeks, in various conversations with these folks, the change is palpable. Whether it will make any difference in the tone of coverage in the dominant media I do not know. But it is sinking in.

All politicians stretch the truth, massage it into the best fit with their message. But, let's face it, John McCain is running a campaign almost entirely based on straight up lies....

And let's be frank. He might win it. This is clearly a testing time for Obama supporters. But I want to return to a point I made a few years ago during the Social Security battle with President Bush. Winning and losing is never fully in one's control -- not in politics or in life. What is always within our control is how we fight and bear up under pressure. It's easy to get twisted up in your head about strategy and message and optics. But what is already apparent is that John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest and race-baiting campaign of our lifetimes. "

It turns out that the "lipstick on the pig" line is not the sure sign of the end of the world that Straight Talk McCain has claimed because, as Slate has shown, McCain used it himself when referring to Hillary Clinton's policies:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid271557392/bctid1784628752

We are shocked.

But no evidence either candidate has yet uttered the line (now gaining strength around the country): "Hockey Moms Put Lipstick on Eskimo Poles". First here, friends, only here.

I just started reading this book called The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan. I am not sure why I an reading it, or even why I have it, since I've never heard of it and just happened across it. But I figured I'd blaze through it. Judging from its cover, often considered the best way to evaluate literature, I thought it might be a needed diversion from everything else I read all the time (movies not really being an option with baby-makes-three in the picture).

(having just looked at the webpage for the book, I am surprised to find that it has its own trailer....?

Anyway, the first page is worth noting:

"Jesus, who wanted love to such an extent, was clearly a madman, and had no choice when confronted with the failure of love but to seek his own death. In his understanding that love was not enough, in his acceptance of the necessity of the sacrfice of his own life to enable the future of those around him, Jesus is history's first, but not last, example of a suicide bomber."

This morning I was researching some images in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs division, which is always worthwhile and interesting to wander through. I came across this unusual 1895 image which, for some reason, is called "Me and Jim"



which one is Jim and which one is me?

Those who smelt it, dealt it. Those who supplied it, denied it.

Surely you have noticed how coverage from the supposedly liberal media has been producing constant and really rather impressive propaganda for the McCain/Palin campaign for the past week+? Can this really be happening? Are we really to be manipulated into electing these motherfuckers by a media that slavishly lavishes attention on each of their fluff statements as if there was substance to it? That doesn't make a bigger deal out of the fact that the VP candidate is essentially refusing to kowtow to the US public (her putative boss) unless she controls all aspects of the interaction? is this 'straight talk'? Is this what we want?

It is almost as if the corporate masters of the supposedly liberal media have decided not to let this election slip away from them just because the country has been run into the ground by a bunch of incompetent clowns who just so happen to be Republicans out of touch with the miserable little shits that sometimes are otherwise referred to as "the American people."

There definitely has been a shift in coverage, in language, and in the treatment of Jesus H. Obama, who is apparently not quite the Christ the old storyline had it. The real news is just how fucking fresh McCain is. What a blast of fresh reform he brings! What verve, dash, and vim!

It is all quite familiar from 2000, when G.W. Bush suddenly rolled out the phrase "a reformer with results" after the New Hampshire primary. Suddenly, the media started reporting that Bush was a reformer and that scrappy little underdog McCain was spanked and sent to ponder how quickly he would decide to swallow the load of party regularity. It took only four years for Ol' Straight Talk McCain to get on his knees and publicly lick the boots of GW Bush, liar, incompetent, knave, thief of elections and starter of wars.

Keep in mind that in this same time, a Republican like Jim Web decided that he would not even shake the hand of Bush, incompentent, immoral, and criminally irresponsible leader he has been.

It is with a straight face and a grave demeanor that the McCain/Palin Big Lie of representing change from the very party they are advance agents for has been inserted quick snugly into the rectum of the American public by a fully witting and useless press.

Thus can Republicans have it all ways--they have policies that don't work or affirmatively fuck things up, and then they claim that they are the only ones who can save the country from themselves. This is the political equivalent of sniffing your own farts.

John McCain sniffs his, of that we are certain. Sarah Palin doesn't fart because, well, everybody knows that girls don't fart. She may sniff McCain's, but we are waiting to hear she says in her interviews with People Magazine.

Yes, of course there are commie libs in the usual media outlets and out in the blogosphere, but the message is clearly not getting through. The pursuit of the non-controversy about the pig wearing lipstick line is but one example. Thus again does an important presidential election get bogged down in bullshit precisely at the time that we see the total failure of federal policy (apparent most recently in the takeover of Fannie and Freddie). Our system is collapsing and we are being snookered. We'll get what we deserve.

I have a friend I see at old time music festivals who recently tattooed a map of Virginia on his shoulder for some reason. He used a blank map he downloaded from the internet. The map was from something that had a few Virginia cities marked on the map with dots, with a star for Richmond. The genius of the tattoo (and I guess the broader genius of this guy) is that he kept these dots in when he got the tattoo:



No way he will regret that decision.

Take note! here is what I hear are the most collectible conjunto button accordions these days:

"Most collectable at the moment: Mint 1970's or 80's Gabbanelli 3 switch with old lettering, grille and engraving.. ( Los Cadetes style ); Black 60's Corona II in mint condition ( raised grille with flat buttons and white bellows with brown corners ); Corona IIIR in metalflake or odd keys; Hohner Erica in black or blue marble. . . the list goes on."

I have a friend of mine in town, a wanderer of this tribe. We will be heading off to Buena Vista, VA this weekend to play some old time music at a festival.

Buena Vista is pronounced "Buuu-na Vista to rhyme with "Moon-na". I did say the town is in Virginia, after all.

Blogging will return Sunday. (Or thereabouts, given the way things are going so slowly are here I am starting to sound as full as shit as a Republican explaining why he was tapping his foot in a Minneapolis crapper stall.)

I didn't listen to Palin or McCain's speech I will confess, but I did hear tell of Palin's stupid joke about the difference between her soon-to-be-even-more-grating name of "hockey mom" and a pitbull. Her punchline was "lipstick." Awwyeah, give it to the commie libs, Palin!!

But I have another idea--I think the punchline should actually be: "Hockey Moms leave lipstick on an Eskimo's pole".

I think this would pretty catchy on a bumpersticker. Drop me a line if you are interested in one.

One other question, -- where in sweet Jesus' name does John Keating Five McCain get off with this line ""Let me just offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first-country-second, Washington crowd: Change is coming,"".

Does 'shit-gurgling liar' mean anything to you? It doesn't to the "Maverick".

He has been in Washington ever since the North Koreans or whoever rewired him for this mission, and surely he has recognized that W. has been the biggest spender of biggest spenders and that he and his party have down fuck-all except shit the bed and roll around in it for eight years.

Or is this too damned obvious to point out? I know we are all busy having our panties charmed off by Palin, but losing your head at cheap flattery is not advisable--that is just the sort of thing that got little Missy Palin up creek.