Category Archives: Uncategorized

Oh holy crap. And you thought Jane Eyre the Musical was a bad idea…

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Yes. A brilliant speech. Probably the smartest, most honest speech I’ve heard a politician make in my lifetime.

Three thoughts:

1. I’m not saying that Obama doesn’t take politics and spin into account, but the fact that he would not disown Rev. Wright is a shockingly brave position to take. He rightly denounced his comments but wouldn’t toss the press the fresh meat they wanted.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Hillary wouldn’t have hesitated to sell out anyone who threatened her campaign. The same goes for McCain, and pretty much any other politican I can think of. Obama is tactful as well as moral though. He knows that transparent disowning of a close friend would only poke holes in his image as an honest, moral politician.

2. I’ve come to realize that the main thing that appeals to me about Obama is his intellect and eloquence. This is hardly surprising after enduring over 7 goddamn years of Bush. I want a president I look up to, a president I respect. I think this is his broad appeal. America wants to have a president they can be proud of again. His “lack of experience” doesn’t really bother me. Not to ya know, tow the line, but experience in Washington isn’t exactly something I look up to…

3. A criticism: Obama needs to ignore the conservative pundits. He mentioned them a couple times in the speech with a degree of bitterness. He cannot allow their insanity to affect him in the slightest. Responding to them and reacting to them will only encourage them. Everyone knows: do not feed the trolls.

5 years in Iraq…

I remember the beginning of the war very clearly. Back then I was much more of a lefty than I am now, so I was pretty active in the anti-war protests. I was also living in London at the time. It was strange to be an American in Europe during the build-up to war. Not a lot of love…

I watched the bombing of Baghdad (aka. Shock and Awe) on Al Jazeera while at a hookah bar I use to frequent. It was a pretty surreal experience. I was with a few friends who were also American and we spent the evening smoking strawberry flavored tobacco and watching the night sky over Baghdad light up with explosions. There was a oddly casual sense of, well, that we were fucked.

The odd idea I had to grapple with, and I still grapple with, is that even though I believed the war to be a horrendous decision, it was something that we as Americans bought, and we had to pay for it. Even though I thought it was a terrible idea, I had to hope that it went well. And actually, one of the things that disenchanted me with the left is that I came to believe that many writers and commentators actually didn’t want the war to go well. There seemed to be almost a delight in reporting the escalating death toll, as if each successive death was further justification for their position.

I simply cannot understand why so many on the left and so many libertarians demand an immediate withdrawal. The fact that our troops are dying is a terrible thing, but we made the horrific decision to go to war, we can’t just quit when our stupid decision yields less-than-appealing results.

Yes, yes, I know… The Republicans have been using the same rhetoric: “we can’t cut and run”, “we gotta stay until the job is finished”, etc. They are largely full of shit and always have been. But it doesn’t mean that they are wrong. As much as I hate to say it, I respect McCain’s position on the war more than Hillary’s. Hillary was for the war when it was popular and is against it now that it is unpopular. It is a profoundly cowardly position, the worst kind of opinion-poll-politics. McCain was for it when it was popular and is still against it now that it is very unpopular. Even though I couldn’t have disagreed more with his position, I have a certain respect for it.

What people need to realize is this: we as a country started this war. Bush didn’t start it. He may have lied, been unbelievably deceptive, but come on. It was pretty obvious that he was full of shit. The majority of the country was for the war. The majority of the people who voted, voted to reelect Bush. The war is killing our young people; the war is taking money from schools; the war is ya know, generally fucking up our country? Tough fucking shit America. This is a democracy. When we make a major decision like, say… blowing up a country and killing a bunch of people, there tends to be consequences.

It kills me that Americans and Iraqis are dying. I would much rather have the money and resources used to build our own country. But it would be incredibly hypocritical and destructive of us to renege on our decision to rebuild Iraq, no matter how fucking retarded a decision it was.

Woman Goes for Leg Operation, Gets New Anus Instead

It’s official. The G train will be extended to Church Ave. in Brooklyn! It should happen in November of this year, which will make getting to North Brooklyn and Queens a hell of a lot easier, as well as possibly offering us a way to catch missed trains if it goes express to Smith and 9th. Yippee!

Unfortunately, it will be accompanied with some major work on the F line. So there may be some tough roads ahead, but still it’s getting better!

I’ve resolved to start listening to more music on Myspace. Quite a resolution huh? No, but actually there are a ton of fantastic musicians on Myspace and I’m always kicking myself for not spending more time on the site, just listening to music from my friends and strangers.

I thought I’d put up a few finds from my recent listening excursions. I don’t know any of these people. Here we go:

Michele Zayla–
Her Myspace says Boulder, but her website says Brooklyn, so who knows. Alls I know is that her voice and music are ridiculous. She has an effortless silky strong jazz voice, but she adapts it to several styles: folk, soul, standards, etc. Here’s a song from her website. It’s real good, and I think the ones on her Myspace are even better:

By the sea – mp3

Vincent Bergeron–
I don’t really know how to describe Vincent Bergeron’s music. Yeah, ok… eyes roll. You’ve heard it before. I’ll attempt. It’s sounds kind of like Zappa meets The Books meets The Shaggs. Does that make sense? Bergeron is a proudly unphotogenic geek who writes vivacious music, mostly in French (he’s from Quebec), and the rhythm seems to follow the rhythm of speech more than that of a metronome. He needs to hook up with Florent Ghys.

Child Traumatismes – mp3

Henri Fabergé & the Adorables–
I’m a sucker for mixed male and female vocals. Especially vocals consisting of one male and several females. Hmmm… what does that say about me? Anyway, this is a fun-sounding band from Toronto. It would be cool to see them live. I dig the name too.

O Ella – mp3

Early Songs–
Early Songs is the pseudonym for David Scott, who writes and plays all the instruments on his album. It’s nice instrumental folk that can border on the sentimental, but I still dig it. It kind of sounds like a less self-conscious Iron and Wine, sans voice. It’s end-of-the-day chill out music.

Raining – mp3

Here is one person’s description of my neighborhood of Kensington, Brooklyn:

A very weird community in Brooklyn, has many ethnical backrounds ranging from Italians, Russians, Jews, Muslims, Irish, Albanians and others. Everyone always seems busy in this area and it’s usually all overpriced victorian houses. Kids all know each other but never really socialize and bring kids from other neighborhoods over. Very weird place but home to only two types of kids : extremely smart or extremely dumb. The smart kids usually go to Stuy, Brooklyn Tech, Midwood and other well rep’d school meanwhile the other kids go to F.D.R, Erasmus or some really fuked up school. The nerds usually never go out or are major pot heads/drunks who chill in other neighborhoods, the other kids usually hang around the corner. Adults have different jobs ranging from doctors, public health directors to taxi cab drivers. If you live around or in Ocean Parkway your used to the noises the russians make when its 2 am and they’re drunk as hell

Billy: I live in Kensington
Bob: Oh that deserted place?

Ha.. Leave it to Urban Dictionary.

Whoa. The demo isn’t exactly stunning, but a year or two from now, this could change everything.

I found this harder to watch than 2 Girls 1 Cup…