Will I Ever Get Tired of Showing You Pictures? Probably Not

When You Call Malia Obama a Whore…

I know people have the “Sweet Jesus what a bunch of racist fucks” angle of this story covered.

But I would just like to point out one small thing. Malia Obama is eleven. When you describe an eleven year old child as a “whore…” Well, let’s just remind you of how it works in the real world. In the real world, the rest of us don’t look at an eleven year old child and see a see a sexual person. We see a child.

When you look at an eleven year old and the insult that springs to mind is “whore,” you, at the very least, reveal yourself as a person who should never be left around children unsupervised.

Seriously.

The fact that that could come out of your mouth or spring from your keyboard says something very terrible about you, not that little girl.

Hoping for Good Scary Movies On-Demand

It’s rainy and muggy out and the pictures I tried to take of my lavendar didn’t turn out because the camera fogged up.  But I’m convinced that, even though all four plants had the same label, I think they’re actually two different varieties.  The one kind is kind of starting to bloom and the blooms appear to be white.  I will try to get pictures later.

The thing about living out here that never fails to amaze me is how isolated you can feel out here when it rains.  The hills seem to close in and the fog rises off it and it’s so quiet.  And we’re not even tucked away in a real hollow.

It’s just funny to me to know that we’re surrounded by people and we’re right by a major American city and when it rains, we might as well be nowhere.

Tiny Three Minute Commercials for your Music

Coble talks about the stunning ASCAP proposal to go after bloggers who embed YouTube videos containing ASCAP songs in their blogs.

I honestly don’t understand how setting yourself up as the enemy of people who love your art form helps you preserve and promote that art form.  I just don’t.  Youtube videos can be set so that they can’t be embedded.  And if people are using your music without understanding copyright law, you can have Youtube strip the sound.

Suing on top of that?

Because of free publicity?

Frankly, if I were an artist and I saw that, I’d be angry because most people don’t understand about ASCAP.  That stuff is going to blow back on the artist and make him look like a giant douche.

Ask a Mexican

I’m picking fights over at Pith that I really have no business picking. But, god damn it, they half-assedly brought me in and now I feel half-assedly loyal to them.

And I’m broken-hearted for the people who have lost their jobs at The Tennessean.

Basically, anything business that puts out a product that is words is in dire shape. It’d be bad enough if it were just a shitty economy. But the whole business model is shifting completely from something that is first print-based but maybe archived digitally to something that is first digital and maybe archived in paper.  No one yet knows how to make money doing that.  And there are a lot of people who need to make money if they’re going to do the kind of work that needs to get done if you want a functioning democracy.

But none of these problems just erupted out of the ether two years ago, either.

And I still believe that there is an important and prominent place for local news and reporting in a community and I don’t believe that it can be done well by hobby-bloggers (and I don’t mean that term derisively, and I would include myself in those numbers) alone.

But I would put the emphasis on local.

Which brings me to “Ask a Mexican.”

Why is “Ask a Mexican” in any local paper in this city?

Because it’s cheaper to pay for a syndicated column than it is to find someone local.

But what does “Ask a Mexican” tell me about what it means to be Mexican in Nashville?

Nothing.

Again, I’m not trying to pick on anyone. The media industry in this town is filled with people I dearly love.

I’m just saying that, when I want to hear stories about real Nashvillians, to know what’s going on in the lives of the people in my city, my first thought is not to pick up any of the local papers. It’s to turn on my computer.

I don’t think I’m alone.

And that’s the new reality.

Because It’s Hot? Really?

So, I was going to write about Claire Suddath’s article in Time about why Southerners are so fat over at Pith, but Hargrove beat me to it, so I’m posting it here, where we can talk frankly, if we have to, about cooters.

I have a few objections to the whole “The South is fat because it’s hot and there’s no public transportation” line of thinking.  The first being that it’s not even clear how the folks who declare us fat are determining fat. Notice how, at both Time and Pith, the picture used to illustrate the story is of someone who is quite fat. But the definition of “obese” when determined by BMI is so problematic that people who are muscular fall into the “obese” range.

Think of it like this.  Say, for the sake of ease, that everyone in the state is the same height, and say that a person at that height is considered “obese” if they weigh 151 or greater. We could have a whole state full of people who weight 155 and our state would be among the “fattest,” because we had 100% obesity, but Kentucky (also the same height as us), could have 15% of the population who weighs 600 and be less fat than us, because they only have 15% obesity.

But using the bodies they do to illustrate the story makes it seem like we’re talking about states full of very fat people.

And we all know that’s a problem because…

Um…

Why again?

Oh, yes, because being fat is associated with all kinds of health risks.

Which brings me to my next point (which, okay, frankly, I probably would not have talked about at Pith). I’m fat, as you all know. And my whole life I have been told that I would lose weight if only I ate less and were more active and still I gained and gained and gained and what do you know? Finally, I find a doctor who’s like “Wow, that’s really weird. Let’s run some tests. Holy shit. There’s something wrong with you. Here’s some medication. Take it and let’s at least see if we can’t make your body work right.”

So, my fat was a symptom of something being wrong with me, which was instead read as a personal failing on my part.  And, until I found the right doctor, neither me nor my doctors saw it as anything other than a personal failing.

We live in a very poor state where a lot of people don’t have access to proper healthcare.  How many of them have something medically wrong with them that is being dismissed by themselves and their doctors as just poor impulse control?  If they even have doctors, of course.

We are also, frankly, constantly being poisoned. Tomorrow people are being encouraged not to drive in Nashville because the air quality is so bad. We talked about Cato Road, and that is not an unusual occurance in this state, toxic dumps that leak into the ground water.  And look at the little present the TVA left us.

Even if we were to accept a model of fat being unusual, unhealthy, and abnormal (which I reject, but let’s just go with it a second), to act as if we live in a completely neutral environment that has no adverse effects on us and it’s all just a matter of eating right and exercising is stunningly stupid.

I don’t know.  I think the other reason I don’t like stories like this is that, in overlooking the health and environmental issues, it just feeds into this whole notion of the South as this ignorant place that the rest of the nation needs to alternately fear and feel great pity for.

And I’m kind of tired of that narrative, because much like “they’re fat because it’s hot,” it just seems too easy.

The Bathroom Monster

This is what I believe to be an accurate representation of how the tiny cat spent last night, head in the toilet, front paws on the seat.  I’m sure that, at some point, it ended up with her on the seat.

But when I went into the bathroom this morning, the floor was covered in water, there were muddy paw prints everywhere–on the sink, on the toilet seat, on the edge of the tub, in the tub.

When we were little, JR and I used to sneak into the bathroom and make all kinds of concoctions from perfume, water, baby powder, lotion, whatever we could get our hands on.  And the bathroom would look like holy hell when we were done.

I now suspect that the tiny cat is somehow conspiring with my mother to get even with me for that.

Wanting “Young People” to Participate

I’m going to be as vague about this as possible, both because my point is not to gossip and because I have certainly heard people complain about this in other organizations.

But let’s say there’s this liberal bakery.  And their specialty is baking a large amount of chocolate cakes, which they then sell to raise money for their liberal causes. And they have been doing this since the 60s.  Now, in this case, the bakery looks around and sees that everyone who is actively baking is in his or her late 40s or older or college age students who are responsible not for the baking but for the distribution of the baked goods.  So, they start talking about how they need to include more young people.

This ends up being people in their 30s.  But, okay, fine.

Now, say that the traditional chocolate cake that this group makes requires that you hand fold in some chocolate chips at the last minute.  And, since this last step requires hand-folding chocolate chips in, these liberal cake bakers have been hand-stirring the cake through the whole process.

So say these people in their 30s are like, wow, that takes a long time, means only a very few people can make cakes (since there are only so many bowls and stirring spoons to go around), and we have very few cakes to sell.  What if we just used a mixer until the last step and then hand-stirred in the chocolate chips?  That would be easier and faster and require less time commitment.

What do you think happens next?

A. These quasi-young people are thanked for their good idea and everyone smiles and marvels at how awesome it is to have a fresh take on the good work they’ve been doing and cake making procedes in an easier manner and they all live happily ever after.

B. There is a long, serious discussion about how the “young people” don’t understand that we simply cannot allow the chocolate chips to be stirred in in any way but by hand while the “young people” try to explain that, yes, duh, they get it and, in fact, have not been advocating for changing how the chocolate chips are added.

C. There’s a long, serious discussion about how important it is for the bakery’s history to be appreciated and while the young people might have a good idea, we remember back in 1975, when Russell tried to use a mixer back at the old building and it blew a fuse and they all were stuck in the dark, stumbling around.  Never mind that we’re not in the old building, that it’s not 1975, and that both fuses and mixers have improved since then, the bakery has taken a lesson from this historical moment.

D. Well, sure, maybe the bakery could use mixers, but it would have to get the okay from the State and from various organizations who’ve come to depend on the cakes and there might be rules or it might make folks uncomfortable, so I’ll look into it, but…

E. The “young people” start to feel like the bakery isn’t actually preparing for what will happen when the current crop of chefs leave and are confused.  After all, a bakery that only existed for the span of interest and ability of its core bakers is not unheard of. The bakers could have decided that they would see this thing through until their end and then it would be over and someone else who wanted to start a bakery could do so on their own terms. But the bakery approached the “young people” about finding a way to keep the bakery current and passing it on to the next generation of people who would come to care about it and feel invested in its well-being.

I will give you a hint, only A. did not happen.

And I quite honestly don’t get it. I mean, yes, I see that it happens all the time. I’ve seen churches kill themselves in this very way.  But I’m still stunned by it.  If you want people to care about what you’re doing and feel invested in it, you’ve got to give them some stake in it.  Bringing them on-board in hopes that they will help you preserve things just as they are now with museum-like quality is really no way to keep your organization living and thriving.

Wait, Regular People are Allowed to Marry the Irish Now?

When did that happen?

Ha.

This clip from Fox & Friends could not be any more funny and yet mind-bogglingly appalling.  You know when a dude starts talking about the wonderful purity of the Swedes that it’s going to be a trainwreck, but listen closely for the contemp in the “If I only had a brain” whistle in the background. (Jeff Fecke is pretty hilarious about it here.)

The really sad part is that we’re at 10% unemployment in this country and yet this joker still has a job. Like there’s not some pretty person who can get on Fox and who is at least aware that the Irish are not a separate species from the rest of America.

Unsquare Dance

I sat in the back seat while my dad watched with delight as the Butcher tried to figure out the time signature to this song as we were driving along.  I wish I had a picture to show you how carefully they were listening and how the way their necks arched to give their ears the best position said something to me about love and music I don’t know quite how to explain to you.  I love how, at one point, the drum sticks sound like a clacking computer keyboard.

News Flash: David Fowler Makes Stuff Up Because His Cause is More Important than the Truth

Chris Sanders writes a very thoughtful post today about how David “You might remember me, I make shit up about abortions because I hate them” Fowler is now rallying against Nashville passing a non-discrimination ordinance.

I have lost all capacity to be thoughtful about the man.

Anyway, just what the fuck is going on in men’s bathrooms at work? Because, I have to tell you, in the women’s bathroom, we’re making some small talk by the sink and then we each go into our own locked stall and we do our business by ourselves.  If a transgender woman uses the women’s bathroom, it literally makes no difference to how I use the bathroom, since there is no womanly requirement that we stick our noses in each others’ genitals. I would have to adjust nothing about my day to accommodate her.

You could have feathers instead of pubic hair. You could have a tiny puppy grafted onto your cooter.  You could be walking around with a six inch wide butt plug and I would never know.

If men wanted to use the women’s bathroom, sure, yes, it would take a little getting used to (a girl raised by Protestant Midwesterners doesn’t get over that shit over night), but I would get used to it and then soon, we’d all be either peeing together as one or we’d establish a “one person in the bathroom at a time” rule.

So, I never know what to make of this fear of a confusing bathroom experience.

Is it customary for the David Fowlers of the world to push their eyes up to the space between the stall door and the frame?  Some requirement?  Because, otherwise, I just don’t see how this is a problem.

Shoot, if it’s a one-seater and there’s a line for the women’s and not for the men’s? I’ve been known to use the men’s.

Is Fowler going to rally against me next?

Distracted

Ugh, sorry. I’m distracted. Something strange is going on with me. The past two days I’ve been feeling terrible after lunch, I mean, crazy depressed and down. Emotionally terrible, not physically.  And then right about 3:30 it starts to clear up and I feel like myself again.  I’m trying to decide if it’s the beef. I haven’t been eating a lot of it and then I had for lunch yesterday and today and I don’t know if it’s doing something funky or what, but god damn.  I think it’s got to be something I can do something about, though because it seems to be triggered by lunch (I feel fine before I eat) and then seems to clear up as lunch digests.

I’m going to try to go vegetarian for lunch tomorrow and see if there’s a difference.

And I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what I want to blog about over at Feministe. The guest bloggers they’ve had so far have been so damn good and I just don’t want to get on there and not rise to the occassion.

We have a tiny watermelon in our garden, though, so that’s happy. It’s like the size of a jawbreaker.  I know I’m thinking too far ahead, but how will I know when it’s ripe?

And the Butcher was all alarmed because he thought our pumpkins were growning a giant zucchini and so I went out there and realized he didn’t know pumpkins were green before they ripen.  Ha, poor Butcher. We’re going to have a shit-ton of pumpkins, though, I think. I hope the neighbors feel like celebrating Halloween this year, because we will have plenty to share.

I’m always taken aback by how quickly stuff appears. The Professor and I were just out there on Friday, weeding and examining things and moving them around and there were no watermelons and certainly not as many pumpkins.  And we are so close to having a shit-ton of tomatoes.

I don’t know.  The thing I was thinking about today when I was feeling all depressed is that most of the stuff I do every day doesn’t matter. It’s not important to anyone. I love blogging, but really, that’s a very small portion of my day.  But it makes me feel good, and connected.

But I also like growing things and being outside in the dirt. And I’m not sure you could get any more mundane or non-matter-y than that.  We don’t need the garden to live. It doesn’t have to feed us.  Anything that comes out of it is just a bonus.  And yet, it’s something I love.

I keep thinking my problem is that things I do don’t matter, but maybe the truth is that I enjoy frivilous pursuits. It’s actually the stuff that doesn’t matter that makes life worth living.

Lunch Things

1. I think I’m making this cat the unoffical mascot of Tiny Cat Pants.

2.  Great post about Jimmie Rodgers by Nathan Rabin over at the Onion A.V. Club. which mentions Barry Mazor’s book and reminds me I need to ask Mazor if he’d submit to another interview now that I’ve finished the book.

3.  Sorry to subject you all to this, but I’m trying to see how it works on a website.  Let me know if you can see and use it and I will owe you one.

Powered by Ingram Digital

One More on McNair

Shoot, I guess I’m going to have to write about Steve McNair one more time, because Kleinheider keeps writing about him. Here’s the thing, as far as I’m concerned. People do stupid shit. It was stupid of McNair to mess around with a twenty-year old girl.  It was stupid of Jenny Kazemi to believe that a married father of four who was almost twice her age was actually going to leave his wife for her.

But such stupidity shouldn’t end in death. No one deserves to die because they’re stupid.

It also seems to me that some folks want to see people publicly denounce McNair because he was immoral and drawing a line between him and Sanford or him and Goforth.

But this is ridiculous. Steve McNair was just a public figure. He was just some guy who you knew who he was. He wasn’t in a position to make public policy based on his belief that his moral foundation gave him the right to deny some people in love basic human rights, like Sanford (for whom being exposed as a cheater should cause him to never speak against anyone in love again).  He wasn’t really in a position to make people who didn’t agree with what he was doing feel unsafe or unwelcome having their jobs, as with Goforth.

He was just a guy royally fucking up.

And here’s the thing. Most grownups know that.  Sure, there may be a lot of immature jackasses out there who think that McNair was living the dream–with a loyal wife and kids at home and a hot young girlfriend to play with in town–but the vast majority of us know he was royally fucking up, that a person at the very least owes his loved ones honesty about what he’s doing so that they can make decisions for their own lives based on the truth and should feel obligated to them to keep his vows.  I don’t need his friends, who are grieving at the loss of their friend, to have to recite all the ways that a man they miss was a shitty person in order to escape criticism, to appease some public need to make sure everyone knows McNair was really a bad man.

And I think there’s something gross about demands that they do.

We can know he did shitty things and still allow the people who loved him to grieve.

Passing judgement on why or how people grieve is troubling to me, to say the least.

(Also, don’t miss GoldnI’s take.)

Sharing the Funny

1. This post over at Jezebel, about the Michael Jackson ghost video and how many of the YouTube commenters are ready to believe that the most logical explaination is that it’s a demon, is not to be missed.

2. I’m arguing for Lawler for Mayor and for The Scene to endorse him.

Love Stinks?

So, Kleinheider is all “Blah blah blah. Sanford wasn’t in love and anyone who thinks he was doesn’t understand love.”

Love is not easy, it takes work. And, although I admit I am no expert, it almost certainly does not come during jaunts to Buenos Aires.

Come on, folks. If ever there was evidence that we need to take up a collection and send Tiny Pasture and his sweetie to Buenos Aires, this is it.

Because I’m sorry, but love is easy and love does to come during jaunts to Buenos Aires. Love is messy and it will take you by surprise and it will make you its fool. Love, as the song says, is a powerful thing.

Is the stuff that goes with love easy?  No.  Relationships take work.  Keeping families together and cared for takes work. Getting up every morning and going to a job you hate for the sake of the people you love takes work.  And it’s not fun.  And it can even seem manly and ordinary and under control.

But that’s not love.  That’s just the stuff that comes with love.

Love is inexplicable and stupid and it breaks you open and when it has you in its thrall you do dumbass shit.

And love goes on, even when its no good for you.  Even when you wish with your whole heart you could turn it off.  Even when the thought of ever having to see the person you love again makes you sick.

Love does not make sense.  And it is always too much and not enough.

We tell ourselves this little story about love, like it’s one more thing on a checklist of things good Americans do.  Grow up, fall in love, get married, have kids, grow old, die.  It nestles in there very nicely between “go to college” and “get a job.”  And, like going to college or getting a job, we like to pretend like love is something that requires work and effort.

But love makes fools of even gods, turns the King of the Universe into a rutting bull in spite of himself.

It breaks you open, love does.  Leaves you gasping in its wake.

You can pretend like it’s ordinary, but pretending like it’s ordinary is what leads to trouble.  Pretending its ordinary means settling for a friend you feel great fondness for and then, when love comes along to make you its fool, hurting your friend you feel great fondness for.

It often sucks to affirm love.

But it will fuck you up worse in the long run to deny it.

Mildred Shute and Steve McNair

Yesterday, I drove down Mildred Shute and I came home wondering who the hell she was.  All I could discover on my own about her was that she also had a park named after her.  After asking around, I learned that she was a community activist, who did a lot of good for the projects there off Murfreesboro Road (or is it still Lafayette there?).

But you can’t tell that from searching the city’s site.  Or from searching the internet.  Someone who knows has to tell you.

As I’m sure everyone now knows, Steve McNair was killed this weekend. I don’t have anything to say directly to that, except that it is a horrible tragedy and my heart goes out to his family and friends.  If you’re not from Nashville, I’ll just also point out that McNair was always around town (shoot, even I saw him out a couple of times and I’m anti-social) and he did a tremendous amount for our community.  A tremendous amount.

And I don’t want to downplay that.

But I keep seeing this idea popping up about how important Steve McNair was for the black community here in Nashville. Now, if black people want to talk about how important Steve McNair was, fine. I will shut up and listen.

But when I hear white people going on about how people who aren’t from Nashville just don’t understand how black kids in our city just don’t have any role models and McNair was the first person they could really look up to?

I want to just ask this: how the hell would you know?

Maybe McNair was the first black person who was on your radar, but the first black person?

I say this as a white person, but this to me is the real ongoing problem with whiteness as a social construct–if something is not real to us, unknown to us, it is unknown, not real.  No matter how many non-white people may know something, until it permeates white consciousness, it’s somehow unreal in our society.

On top of that, I think the problem of Mildred Shute illustrates something more. Here’s a woman who clearly meant something to this city (once we view Nashville as a place where everybody who lives here actually lives and has history and culture and community), enough so that she had a street named for her and a park.

And yet, somehow, she was unimportant enough for the city to bother to make sure that it was clear on its own website who she was and why she has a city park named after her.  Not even a sentence or two giving you a little hint about who she was.

If we consider history to be a large blank canvas and each of us is throwing mud at it, hoping to make a big enough contribution to be noticed by those who come after us, in order to shape their decisions about where they throw their mud, I’d hope we might see how some folks’ mud clumps get hosed off the canvas at a much higher rate than others.  We loose sight of those contributions.

That white folks can talk about Steve McNair’s contribution to our city as if it is unique is only evidence of how much of our own history has been hidden from us and we don’t even notice.

———

I didn’t even bother to bring up the Civil Rights stuff because I hope it’s self-evident that there are a lot of people in Nashville right now who did a lot for Nashville in that regard.

What?! No True Blood?

Since there’s no creepy TV on this evening, I’ve decided to share with y’all a very rough version of a ghost story I’ve been working on.

I should just say up front that though many of the people in this story are actual people who lived in Nashville, I have taken great liberties with them to the point where the only thing the characters have in common with the people they’re based on are names. Please don’t try to summon my dead neighbor.  She can’t do the trick I’ve ascribed to her and I don’t need her to be unhappy with me.

Ha, okay, now that we’ve had the disclaimer, I call this one, “The Widow Ledbetter.”

Some Things I Saw

I know a cool ghost story about this monuement, but it’s not true.

The question you always should ask yourself is if you are walking into a working cemetery.  I keep my eyes open for signs. And I am for sure wondering about those white marks that look like crosses.

Here’s the front.

Somewhere in there Dr. Jack Macon is buried.  Anyway, dang, the city cemetery is looking nice lately

The new Dickerson Pike Bison are not that pretty.

But the landscaping is nice.

One of the Young Cemeteries

There are two Young family cemeteries in my neck of the woods. I found them both, but only went to one, since the other is on private land and they say no trespassing.

I feel like I live in the land of cool cemeteries.  No, I doubt anything will ever top the Barnes cemetery, with its marble-decorated headstones and graves full of trinkets and figurines.  But the Young cemetery, with its one wooden headstone, was pretty damn awesome.  I don’t know how many places you can still see a wooden grave market, since they obviously don’t stand up to the elements well, but there’s one in my neck of the woods.

And the Pattersons? Outside of the fence?

It’s hard to know–there are two fenced cemeteries right in a row, with the Pattersons between them–why aren’t they just considered one cemetery?  All fenced in together?  There’s a story there, and it may be an easy one or it may be a difficult one, but I wish I knew it.

I want to learn to see this as an old place.  And I feel cheated that I do not.

But I’m trying to slowly learn it.

This place is really crowded.  That ends up being the thing I can’t get over.  There have always been so many people here.

Gifting and Gardening

So, one thing that my ancestors spent a lot of time worrying about was how to rightly distribute things.  Stealing was no good. We see from the stories that stealing has negative consequences for the person being stolen from (stealing Idunn’s apples resulted in the gods growing old) and negative consequences for the thief (as evidence by the problems resulting from old what’s their faces stealing from the dragon and getting cursed stuff).

Now don’t get me wrong, many of the gods’ exploits are fun because they are about tricking, about walking right up to the line of thievery and then finding some loophole that makes it okay.

But there’s also a lot of concern about giving things. Some of the giving of things makes sense, even to my modern mind. I give you sex, you give me the fabulous Brisingamen. I give you jewelry, you tell me about the end of the world.  Trading, in other words.

But other times, it’s just the proper thing for a host to do.  And the more powerful you are, the more necessity is placed on giving things away.

I feel like having a garden is helping me to understand why it’s good fortune to give things away–because a lot of stuff only has a short shelf life. Someone needs to use it or it starts to go bad.

See?  Someone needs to use it or it starts to go bad.

And I suspect this is true on all levels. When you steal from the dragon, the thing you steal doesn’t necessarily have bad luck because it’s stolen. It has bad luck because it’s been horded and gone unused. It’s spoiled.

Having much means you have much you have a responsibility to make sure remains in use.

This, I think, is why there’s such stress put on kings giving things away–this constant reminder that, for the luck of the community to remain good, things have to remain in use.

If I thought about this too much when I didn’t have a garden, I’d think of it as a type of frugality.  But I can give everything we picked from my garden away because I have the garden. I can go back out there today and get more. It doesn’t feel frugal at all. It feels like a luxury.

Which, again, is I’m sure why being able to give things away is a sign of status.

I’ve got more coming.

Things to See

Fireworks

We live nestled between three large stands of hills, the row out the front door, the row over back, and the cluster to the north. In effect, we live in a little bowl.

When I got home last night, the across the street neighbors were setting off fireworks.

The dog didn’t like it, but I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever heard.  The sound would pop up and then you could hear it bouncing around over heard off of the hills, the noise lingering on until the next firework went up.

America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.

Me and Mary

This is just a reminder that I’m going to be yakking with Mary on Liberadio this morning at 9.

In the meantime, I will be nervously peeing and trying to figure out where I can plug my phone in and talk so that I don’t run out of juice in the middle of things.

Listen at 9 or listen later!

Or don’t listen at all, but it will be your loss!

Edited to add: If you missed it, but you want to hear it, here you go.

Feel Good Friday–the Just Listen to Kathy Tyson Edition

Folks, if Kathy tells you to listen to a song, just listen to it, and then buy the album. I did that with Hombre Lobo by Eels and I am not regretting it.  I hope these will embed, but if they don’t, you should still click through and watch.

First, “Prizefighter,” which, if you don’t wiggle around to just a little bit, I’ve got to assume your wiggle doesn’t work.

And then tell me that this song doesn’t have you setting the seat in your car back and rolling around town very slowly with your windows down?