Obamaubergine

A man gave me an eggplant yesterday. I was walking home from the grocery along Eager St when a man stopped me and asked if I had fifty cents. I said I did, and I gave it to him.

I like when people ask you for specific amounts of money. If its change I usually give it to them. After I gave him the money I started to walk away. He stopped me and asked if I wanted an eggplant. I said ok, and he gave me one. It was his only eggplant. He then told me that it tastes best fried, "bread fried" to be specific.

I will eat it tomorrow, and let you know how it was.


President Obama (still not in spellchecker) gave his school speech yesterday. It was widely reported before the speech that many parents did not want their children to see the speech. Today, the day after the speech, I did not read any follow up articles or hear any follow up stories about people who rejected the speech before it was aired and how they felt after it was aired.

I guess they feel exactly the same, racist. I think that is a feeling, right? Maybe I am being unfair, but I did not hear very good reasons for prohibiting your children from seeing the President of the United States give a speech that asked them to stay in school and pay attention to their teachers, etc. In that et cetera, there is no mention of socialism, liberalism, or gun-taking-awayism.

So where was the follow up? I guess that would have been a "gotcha question" that the media is always accused of asking, but really they never do.

C-SPAN did get blamed by the Baltimore Sun for not airing the event correctly. Line one of paragraph two, we take the blame. How many teachers have you seen operate a VCR in play mode incorrectly? Right. So suddenly they can operate a live webstream without a hitch. I am perhaps a bit sensitive since I work for C-SPAN.

I will have some health care stuff tomorrow after the presidents speech.

My What A Lovely Home

The photo-blog site of the week.





http://lovelylisting.com/

Just For You

You can add Sno-Balls or Sno-Cones to the list of things uniquely Baltimore if you have not already. The coarse crushed ice flavored by a variety of syrups are apparently unknown to people beyond the Baltimore Metro. I share fond memories of this summer treat with most of my friends, and I have enjoyed them many times; it was a surprise for me to learn how local they really were.

I came to this discovery this afternoon when just after lunch my mind turned to dessert. A hot and humid day in Washington DC, and so I thought immediately of the crushed ice heat reliever, the Sno-Cone. I asked my work mates and was shocked to receive quizzical looks and strange responses.

I described the Sno-Cone to them but most thought instead of Italian Ice or Shaved Ice or even Water Ice. None of which are a Sno-Cone. The deeper I dug the more I realised my work mates had no clue what I was talking about, but to be fair I was dealing with a Nevadian and a New Yorker. The Pennsylvanian, from Lebanon, PA just North of Baltimore, knew what I was talking about, but had not had any since moving south.

I decided I needed a local to help me. I contacted three native DCians and Northern Virginians. Of these, one had no idea what I was talking about while the other two could not name a stand anywhere in the area.

I then called my ace in DC. A man who, while not a native, has been ensconced in the city for many years. He is a man of fine urbane taste and great urban knowledge. If anyone knew of and knew where to obtain a Sno-Cone it was he. His response to my query was typical of the persons I have met in Washington DC. He said to me, "I don't know about any Sno-Balls, but what you should have is an Argentinian Gelato."

I will one day have an Argentinian Gelato, hopefully one day soon. I am sure they are delicious, but they are still not a Sno-Cone.

Stop the Hate

Is it time to stop the hipster hate? For the last five or six years there has been some big time hate on the youth of today. Hipsters are much maligned all over for lots of reason. They are unoriginal, overly ironic, or just plain dumb. Some of these complaints are not without merit.

Kids today are wearing fashions from the '80's its true. And you probably wore some bell bottoms and a tie dye in your day, or a Sex Pistols concert shirt or something similar. So what.

The irony attitude? I can't really speak against. Kids are always full of questions for authority. Add that to modern technology that makes you wonder if every slightly extordinary feat captured on film or video is a photoshop and you might become skeptical about the whole world too. This isn't just post-Watergate/Viet-Nam distrust, this is post Clinton blow-job/Gulf War 1 & 2 ditrust. I can't say I blame them too much here either.

As for being dumb, I doubt it. They are however mostly under thirty so if it is so hard for you to remember let me remind you. You did some really stupid shit when you were a that age. Like the time you...whatever you did some dumb stuff you learned that doing that stuff has consequneces and you do it less now or not at all. The point is you had to do it yourself. No amount of parenting, older sibling or peer warning was going to stop you from doing it. You had to do it yourself, so you did, and so do they.

So get over the hipster hate. Yes they move into your neighborhood and it gets fancy. Yes they drink PBR and wear bandanas and scarves. Get over it. You pissed off the hippies and punks and disco dnacers too. You were just to sefl-absorbed at the time to notice.

Still hating hipsters like it is 2004? Then this is the site for you.

http://lookatthisfuckinghipster.tumblr.com

That is Baltimore's own Dan Deacon on the April 29th pic.

AIR RAID!

The air raid sirens are being tested in Baltimore right now. Well maybe not air raid sirens, but at least loud sirens to alert the people that things ain't going to be copacetic for the next little bit and you might want to get it together and find a hole to crawl into.

I am pretty sure that there is no emergency, but since I don't have cable, and the radio is turned off I am not 100% sure. I am however on the internet, but it ain't telling me nothin'. I think it is high time that it did.

I think the Emergency Broadcast System should link up with the internet and broadcast alerts to people who are online.

Whose #*$@ Did Anthony Kiedes Suck?

I'm not saying Anthony Kiedes is gay, or that when he was addicted to heroin he may have done nasty things to get a fix. I am wondering though who did Anthony Kiedes and the Red Hot Chili Peppers blow to get their songs in constant rotation on the radio. Every time I put on the radio I hear a Red Hot Chili Peppers song sometime in the rotation of my listening. Its damn ridiculous.

My local station WTMD 89.7 FM Towson Univeristy Radio is doing a countdown promotion of the 897 best artists of all time. I was checking off the list in my head and in surely in the top ten I came to RHCP. Since 1985's Freaky Stylee (or 1983 if you want to be a music douche and talk about some first time preforming under a different name bullshit) the Chili Peppers have been making excellent music, but after the band shake ups, break ups, and hair cuts they reformed and released Californication in mid 1999. At this point it seems the dick sucking must have begun in earnest, because I only hear RCHP songs from this and subsequent albums. Basically the first 14 years of music is ignored and the last 10 years of less and less relevant slow ballads about California can be pooped at me in heavy rotation.

I seriously like the Chili Peppers. I would not hesitate to go see them in concert, and they are definately one of the best artists of all time, but the over playing of basically three songs, Californication, By The Way, and Dani California are ruining them for me. I wish the radio would play some of their older songs, which would be perfectly acceptable since they have not produced a new single in 3 years, but apparently every program director in the country was well fellated and we are left listening to the same three songs all the damn time.

America Has Reached It's WWI

American has never had an real aristocracy. There is no generational passing of land and wealth that could be called aristocratic by European standards. Inheritance taxes and division of property laws ensured that no such caste could or would arise in this country, at least one that would last for more then a few generations. There is however a broader aristocracy in this country. This aristocracy is more porous then others in the world. People enter and leave it more fluidly, but the resultant decadence and inevitable inbreeding and decay that form in other aristocracies are just as present in America's version.

America's aristocrats are it's corporate executives. This elite group of people who shuffle from company to company taking with them more wealth each time, but often not leaving their fiefdoms any better off once they leave. These dukes and duchesses of industry lead one company or non-profit or investment firm then whether the company does well or not they shuffle off to another corporation or bank and due whatever it is they do. This incestuous practice has given birth to a corporate structure that is as mentally retarded as if a real life brother and sister had born children.

The phenomena parallels Europe's officer corps at the beginning of World War One. Years of promoting based on the social standing of a solider resulted in an absence of real military strategy. The result was the bogging down of WWI to a stalemate. Both sides in the war did come up with new ideas, such as machine guns, and poison gas, but neither side could turn them into significant gains. American CEOs have managed to concoct a variety of moneymaking machinations but have failed to implement them for any long term growth. In both cases the elite fail to make any headway, bog down their own growth, and begin to lose ground while their power ebbs away they need to be saved by a previously untried and underestimated ally.

In WWI that ally was the United States, in the current economic crisis that ally has not yet arrived, but it will probably be China or India. Whoever that savior turns out to be, I hope that the American people will see the problems that promotion that is not based on merit causes. For the sake of the CEOs out there I hope their fate does not mirror the fate of the Russian aristocracy during WWI.

First Impressions II

I've been back to downloading new music, even though I haven't listened to everything I have now. I try and find bands I have not heard about on the radio or in a magazine, instead I just scroll down the list of the new adds for the site and if the band name, or album, or art grabs my attention I write it down.

Later I search them out on-line and I write down the first thing I think of when I hear them. I try and not judge them based on their web page, and I hope I'm not too harsh on them. I list the album name, the band name, and my first impression of them.

Don't take my word for it, the link goes to the bands site. Click it and you can give them a listen yourself.


3 Rounds & A Sound
Blind Pilot
West Coast Alt.Country

Fields & Floods
Joshua James
Another Folk Singer

African Trip
Leeroy
Reinventing The Reinvented
I really liked this guys stuff as I listened to more of it especially after I saw this video.

The Mysterious Production Of Eggs
Andrew Bird
Happy Music For Sad Times

We Play Endlessly
Sigur Ros
Beautiful Ambiance

How To Fake Like Your Nice And Caring
Cargo City
Happy Germans Do American Pop

Green Magic
El-Thule
Metal Mas Macho

The Great Shakes
Swingset
Not Bad

Serve or Suffer
Esoteric
Rolling Metal

Sun Moon & Stars
A Band Called Quinn
Squeaky Girl Makes Pop Pops

Burn Piano Island, Burn
The Blood Brothers
Screaming Thrashing Awesome

This Is Why We Don't Have Nice Things
Every Avenue
Your Radio Station Loves Them

Dirty Urine
The BadSeed
Buy Your Own Beats & Some New Rhymes

Since the band above was not listed as The Bad Seed, I did not find them at first. Instead I found this Bad Seed who is The Anger Of Wilkes-Barre. I thought this Bad Seed was more likely to have an album called Dirty Urine, but I was missing the clever entendre that the Brooklyn Bad Seed was going for, alas. Based on Brooklyn Bad Seed's myspace I hope he doesn't dedicate a beef to these kids, cause I think they would kick his ass. Speaking of Wilkes-Barre...

Leave Ruin
Strand of Oaks
The Love of Wilkes-Barre

Rock and Roll
The New Standards
On Vibes....

Fade to Bright
Squirtgun
America Does Rock Best :P

Truck Off
Goober Patrol
Brit New Punk

Handshakes, Hello & Goodbye
The Prisoners Dilemma
Its Just Soooooooo Sad :..(

The Spell
Ivan
Men Without Hats Goes Solo, Electronique

Wall Of Sound
Natural 7
Roomful of Beatbox

Vibrate You
King Adora
Boring Rocker

When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence
Harmonic 313
Aussies Dig Rap

Hope you enjoyed the list or even better found it useful or best found a band you liked, but before now you had never heard.

Fall of The Empire

Its old news now, but the Republican Party is collapsing. You didn't need to be a soothsayer to see it coming, the writing has been on the wall since August of 2005 and the New Orleans fiasco. An ever lengthening war, a growing budget deficit, an economic collapse, a crumbling infrastructure, and lack of public oversight all overseen by a Republican President, Congress, and Supreme Court, it is no surprise that the American people voted overwhelmingly Democratic in the 2008 elections.

While all of these things represent enormous problems for Americans the problem facing the Republican Party is larger still. The Republican Party has ignored Americans and the result is they are becoming, not just a minority party, but a regional party.

The Republican Party turned its back on there enemies in the "Liberal East" much to their own detriment. America changed and what was once a rural country is now an urban one. By the 2000 census 76% of the population lived in urban areas. The largest density of people in the country is along the Atlantic coast between Boston and Washington DC. The most people live in the area that the Republicans have most ignored, no that is not true. The most people live in the area of the country that the Republicans have most slandered and maligned.

Basing their public policy around corporate rights and farm subsidies left a large population of Americans wondering what the fuck Republicans represent. This resulted in the 2004 "Red State v Blue State" election map. East, North, and West went solidly Democratic while the South and Center of the country went Republican. While G.W. was patting himself on the back and cramming more privatization down the Americans throats the real story went largely unnoticed. The Democratic base was growing. Bush rode his 3% (about 3mil ppl) and called it a mandate. By contrast, Obama, a racial minority candidate who until 40 years ago was de facto disenfranchised in a large chunk of the country (durr, did you forget yet), won a 6% majority (about 6mil ppl).

The election map spread Democratic victories to Ohio, Nevada, and even Colorado. These states went "blue" because the densely populated urban areas cast votes for Democratic candidates. The chickens had come home to roost. Republicans had blamed the Elite East, and Wacky West, claiming their urban blight was the cause of America's woes. Meanwhile the rest of the country started to look like the coasts, the spiteful elimination of projects and programs that would have helped New York or California were now being missed in Cleveland and Denver.

The Republicans look forward to this gigantic problem, and they look ahead cluelessly. I had the good fortune to attend the RNC Winter Meeting in DC a few weeks ago, and as luck would have it, I walked into the room just as the Chairman of the Washington DC Republican Party asked a panel of Republican strategist THE question. "Having ignored and thereby lost a base in the Northeast cities, how do we get back a presence there?"

The answer was sadder still. The experts confessed that the problem was bigger then the Northeast, and had spread to Central, Western, and some Southern cities. After another expert chimed in that the Republican Party was losing ground in such stalwart states as Indiana and Iowa, they went on to offer absolutely NO solution, none, zero, nothing. They had no idea how to get themselves back. They admitted that supporting the desires of this group of people would mean a desertion of values that they feel are so core to the party that they can't give them up.

When you reach a point in your evolution that the landscape has changes, your food source becomes scarce and you habitat dwindles, you have two choices: change or die. From the look of things, the Republicans are choosing die.