THE JO-TEL … illegal blog downfield

it was strange and geeky of Doogie to write his thoughts on his computer, instead of in a journal? Flash forward to now: When is the last time any of you wrote something long-hand on paper that was more than two pages? Also, now Doogie’s gay.

-Shark

I know it’s Friday, and this is more of a screen capture than a “picture”, but this headline from the CNN.com homepage totally belongs on this blog:

You don’t say! Get right outta town, Time magazine!

- Thrill

I went looking through my first journal c. 2001 for info concerning another, more interesting post that I will probably never write, and I found this.  This one’s for you, Shark:

2-18-01  17:30
Worst day of studying ever.  Got nearly nothing done.  wanted to do laundry but the machines were full.  tried to study but first we watched Nosferatu.  Suddenly got really tired.  Went to study anyway.  First I went down & got money.  Then up to I-house.  Full.  Then down to Strada, bought an au lait.  Then to unit 1 A.C. [academic center] ~ closed.  Then down to Bancroft, no where to sit anywhere, so I walked all the way down to Shattuck to Bar & Billiards Hall that Miklos & I found the other day.  Too dark inside.  went outside, pulled out reader - WRONG READER.  Coffee wearing off.  Tried to read EE100 but I was not feeling the phasors, so now I’m at the bus stop headed home

Every once in awhile I remember how fortunate it was that I ever graduated from college.

-Hip E.

OK, I know I was on the fence about the whole BlackBerry kerfuffle, but I'm 100% behind the Dems for calling out McCain for this Spain/Zapatero fuck-up.

Look, I didn't know who the fuck Zapatero was yesterday, either. But considering the chick who asked about him mentioned his name in the context of his being the leader of Spain (yeah, she said President and he's Prime Minister, but that's honestly beside the point), McCain should've been able to not fuck this one up.

I also love that people are calling out McCain advisor and erstwhile Georgia lobbyist Randy Scheunemann for his absurd statement that McCain hadn't misheard her but was just saying he'd take a hard line against Spain, our NATO ally. Uhhh….. dude, make sure you tell Sarah Palin.

McCain is having the worst week ever… I just hope he can keep up this buffoonery all the way through October.

-Thrill

Props to TPM for compiling this hilarious video of Gretta Van Susteren’s interview with Todd Palin, husband of lunatic GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin. Watch the entire thing… it’s well worth it.

We were talking on The Network this afternoon about the brouhaha being made out of McCain economic advisor [and all-around idiot] Douglas Holtz-Eakin’s comment regarding McCain vis-a-vis [FN1] the BlackBerry. The media have picked up on this and run with it as though Holtz-Eakin said McCain invented the BlackBerry. In fact, that’s what they’re saying he said. [Note: that’s two separate links; sadly I can’t link to the email I got from the DNC this evening…]

No one among us was disputing the fact that Holtz-Eakin was clearly not saying that, but rather holding up his BlackBerry as a symbol of the US telecom infrastructure that we now all enjoy on our BlackBerrys and iPhones and MacBooks - and all sorts of other products with capital letters thrown in the middle of their names [FN2]. To wit: here is H-E’s exact quote:

“He did this. Telecommunications of the United States, the premiere innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create,” Holtz-Eakin said. “And that’s what he did. He both regulated and deregulated the industry.”

Not sure what the fuck he means with that last sentence - and I can guarantee you McCain didn’t actually do shit for telecom, considering he has no clue how to use a computer - but the quote as a whole is self-evident, especially when you don’t see him holding up a BlackBerry when he says “He did this.”

Anyway, we weren’t disputing what he said; the sides we took were: taking this non-story out of context and distorting it to make McCain look ridiculous is not OK; and taking this non-story out of context and distorting it to make McCain look ridiculous is OK. I’m on the “not OK” side of the fence on this one; while I don’t discourage the use of GOP tactics against the GOP, per se, it annoys me that the DNC has stooped to the same level as the GOP d’bags in 2000 who peddled the “Gore said he invented the Internet” myth. On the other hand, I can’t tell you how badly I want McCain to lose the election. Moral equivocation: it’s a rough mistress.

There’s an acronym that’s pretty popular on liberal blogs: IOKIYAR, meaning “It’s OK if you’re a Republican”; it’s used derisively to describe the way the GOP uses tactics it publicly decries. [Perfect example: Dana Perino and all of the right-wing bobbleheads shitting on Obama’s suggestion that it’s a good idea to hold diplomatic talks with Syria and then sending Condi Rice to do exactly that less than a month later.] This strikes me as a case of IOKIYAD, as it were: eight years ago (and, I might add, today) people were (and are) pissed that the whole Gore-Internet shit was pushed so hard that he eventually lost the election as a [admittedly partial] result. But now that it’s being done in the Dems’ favor: no problem.

So: spinning this comment to the Dems’ advantage: OK or not OK?

- Thrill

FN1: Sorry about that; I hate “vis-a-vis” as much as you do, but there’s nothing else I could’ve used there; I’d already used “regarding” like two words earlier.
FN2: For you English dorks out there, this is called CamelCase. [pushes glasses up nose with forefinger…]

Meghan McCain on “Larry King Live”, discussing her new children’s book, My Dad, John McCain. Keep in mind: this is a CHILDREN’S book:

King: What’s the toughest part about writing a children’s book?
McCain: The illustrations were the hardest for me. How do you illustrate your father being tortured?

[Quote via CNN.com.]

"Every thousand years, this metal sphere
Ten times the size of Jupiter,
Floats just a few yards past the earth.
You climb on your roof and take a swipe at it
With a single feather,
Hit it once every thousand years."

-from "Randy Described Eternity"

As part of a trend of bands playing albums in the entirety live, Built to Spill is on tour right playing Perfect from Now On, their eight-song 1997 classic that was their first for the major label Warner Bros. On September 9th, accompanied by The Deepa, Johnny D, and Ed, I saw said performance of said album at Slim's, the worst venue in San Francisco.

As an album, Perfect is much stranger than it seems on paper. It balances with jaded precariousness between all-out rockers and introspective drone epics, the listener not being allowed to shift into either listening mode. The result is an album that sounds delicious when you're resting or taking a walk, an album whose coursely inspirational lyrics somehow make sense. It is not album that translates ideally to the live stage. Credit to BTS for making it work at all. Songs like "Made Up Dreams" and "Kicked In in the Sun" would probably work better live as accomplished bridges between rawkus number like "The Plan" or "Strange". But PFNO is their best "album", the lengthy songs sound like interlocking suites; a symphonic whole that is unusual in the indie rock genre. So it was probably their best choice for an all-album show. But I found myself, at times, longing for a mix. Maybe this was hindsight though, because Doug shifted into another gear when he lauched into "Goin' Against My Mind" right after the wonderful but meandering PFNO closer "Unstrustable Pt. 2 (About Someone Else)". Then for the encore, "Car" from That's What Love Songs Often Do rocked the house, obviously.

Leaving the theatre, we plied Johnny D with money and dropped him off at the bus and, walking home, noticed some very dangerous support stakes next to a tree on Van Ness. So we uprooted them and, in an attempt to describe eternity, shattered them against a parking meter.

-Shark

I transcribed the quote below yesterday and was waiting until today to post it in order to not Thrill myself. As it happens, though, Rick Wright died this morning from cancer at 65, so it puts this in a slightly different light.

At any rate, here’s the quote - which I still like - and here’s a link to an obit on Wright.

“Accusations of ‘dinosaur rock’…were being thrown at bands like Led Zeppelin…and ourselves. We were all aware of the arrival of punk - even anyone who didn’t listen to the music could not have failed to notice the Sex Pistols’ explosion into the media spotlight. Just in case we had missed this, locked in our Brittania Row bunker, Johnny Rotten kindly sported a particularly fetching ‘I hate Pink Floyd’ t-shirt.”

- Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd

- Thrill

Dear Apple,

You know I love you, but sometimes you do stuff that I can’t get behind. The recessed headphone jack on the first generation iPhone; the ill-fated G4 Cube, as cool a concept as it was; discontinuing the 160GB iPod the week before I was planning to buy one - which happened to be the same week Toshiba announced a 240GB drive that would’ve fit inside that very same iPod shell; the fact that your shit is mostly out of my price range and absolutely not something I need but I hella want all of it anyway because you have an amazing marketing department (you’re like the GOP of computer companies, as BMK12000 put it).

And now you’ve done it again with that kind-of-totally-stupid Genius feature in iTunes 8.

Like a good little zombie, I duly upgraded to 8 Tuesday when it was released [FN1]. And I admit: I like the new Grid View. But I decided to give Genius a whirl just now while I was listening to “Misty Mountain Hop“, and here are a few of the songs you thought, “Oh, hey, y’know what else in your iTunes library goes well with ‘Misty Mountain Hop’? These songs!”:

Yellow Ledbetter (Pearl Jam)
The Needle And The Damage Done (Neil Young)
Play With Fire (Rolling Stones)
Heart of Gold (Neil Young)
Watching The Wheels [Home Recording] (John Lennon)
Behind Blue Eyes (The Who)
Going To California (Led Zeppelin, yeah, but come on…)

Here’s the thing, Apple: those are all songs I like, and that’s great, but figuring that out isn’t rocket science: they’re on my computer [FN2]. But even though I like them, they’re NOTHING LIKE MISTY MOUNTAIN HOP!

MMH is a fucking JAM, Apple! You hear that shit and you’re like, “FUCK yeah…” You can’t HELP but tap your foot, nod your head, and play the motherfucking AIR drum, Apple! (I mean… not ME, but y’know… probably SOME people… … … *ahem*).

Anyway, I’m supposed to believe that after jamming the fuck out for five minutes to one of the best songs on IV I’m gonna want to listen to Eddie Vedder warble a song about a friend’s brother dying in the Gulf War? Are you fucking serious?! Not a chance in hell. I’d rather watch a full season of According to Jim than have my mellow harshed like that again.

Watch yourself, Apple. You’re starting to piss me off with this garbage. I’m not saying I’m gonna go back to PCs any time soon, but have you seen those Microsoft commercials with Gates and Seinfeld?

I’m just sayin’….

- Thrill

FN1: Somewhat ironically, I still run Tiger, but gimme a break: this is a work computer and I have to deal with compatibility issues… also, I don’t own this badboy.
FN2: I mean, maybe it is: I’ve got like 11k songs on my computer and I’ve probably heard maybe 6k of them, maybe.
FN3: Fuck Count on this post: five, not counting this fucking foot note.