No Depression Depresses Me

Okay, I want to subscribe to the RSS feed for No Depression, but when I add it to my feed reader, the feed I get is Lift Off News.  What the fuck?  I am virus free, supposedly.  Is it me?  Is it not working?  What?

Anyway, Barry Mazor, who is perhaps the most brilliant writer ever to grace Nashville*, is writing about the ongoing trend of folks doing albums of covers.  I, personally, love a good interpretation of a song.  I like to hear what sounds have influenced artists and hear how they rework them.  Let me hear with fresh ears the songs I love, I say.

It brings up Pierre Menard questions, though, doesn’t it?  Does originality equal authenticity?  Can a reproduction be faithful?  How faithful?  Is it more meaningful or less?

I don’t know.  It’s fun to think about though, and I am a girl, and we all know that girls just want to have fun.

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*Or not.  I have my opinion, but you’re welcome to yours.  Of course, I’ll punch you if you disagree with me, but don’t let that stop you.

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Questions I Have

1.  If McCain taxes our healthcare benefits, but gives us a $5,000 tax credit, what does that mean?  Is he going to tax the whole value of our benefits or just what we pay per month or what our employer puts in per month or what?  And how will giving everyone a $5,000 tax credit help us get healthcare when it costs more than that?  I mean, please, if everyone could get healthcare for $5,000 a year, many of us wouldn’t be in the jam we’re in.  Both parties seem to believe that people are uninsured out of petulance, it seems.

2.  I don’t understand Middle East Politics at all so I don’t know.  But would Iran really attack Isreal with a nuclear bomb?  In 1945, a nuclear bomb caused destruction in a 4 mile radius of where the bomb dropped.  Modern nuclear weapons might reach 2-5 times that distance (anywhere from 8 to 20 miles).  So, where exactly would Iran bomb Isreal?  I mean, I don’t mean to be an idiot here, but, if your goal is to “wipe Isreal off the map,” it doesn’t seem to me like you’re going to bomb small towns and villages, right?  Why would you waste a nuclear bomb on an insignificant target?

So, you’re going to pick a significant target, right?  Okay, so what’s that target?

It’s not that big a country and the cities seem pretty close together.  Where do you bomb that doesn’t risk damaging the Dome of the Rock and the other religious sites in your target area?

Is there really a chance that Iran would drop nuclear bombs on a country within which are some of the holiest sites of Islam?  Or are we just being told that as some kind of boogy man crap to try to scare us into thinking that we have to deal with Iran right now and swiftly?

I mean, it’s clear to me that Iran is problematic, as far as countries go, but I just can’t get a read on whether this nuclear bomb thing is a real problem or just something I’m supposed to take as truth.

A Head’s Up for Nashville Dog Owners

I just got an email from a friend of mine reporting that her friend’s Husky had its tail cut off by some jackass with something probably like hedge trimmers and left to bleed to death in its own fenced in back yard.

Luckily the dog did not die, but it is now sitting in the hospital where the vet is monitoring it for infection.

I’m finding it very hard to write coherently about this, so here’s the meat of the email:

Last Saturday around 7, S. received a frantic call from C.  Something had happened to Blue, C.’s rescued Siberian husky.  He said she was bleeding all over and her tail was gone.  We jumped in the car, picked up Blue and C and rushed them to the emergency vet on 12^th avenue.  C wasn’t exaggerating: Blue’s tail was gone.  It was completely severed and nowhere to be found.  We all wracked our brains on how this could have possibly happened.  C has a fenced in yard, so it seemed unlikely that another dog would have been able to get into the yard and attack Blue.  We asked the vet what he thought happened, and he said that when they sedated her they’d be able to get a better look at the wound.  Blue went into surgery to get stitched up and we waited.  When Blue was finally out of surgery and ready to come home, C learned the devastating news: Blue’s wound was a clean cut.  In other words someone had cut off her tail, probably with hedge trimmers. Someone walked up to this beautiful sweet dog, taking advantage of her kind and trusting nature, cut off her tail and left her there to bleed to death.

Please keep an eye on your dogs, folks.  Clearly there are some sick fucks out there.

All This Fresh Air

It’s raining here, finally, after weeks of no rain.  I was standing at the kitchen window wondering “What is that fabulous smell?” when I realized it’s the air here.

Yesterday in Politics

–Well, actually, I want to start with this weekend.  This weekend, we could have lost the election.

Imagine this scenario.  Say that either McCain or Palin had not just paused after shouts of “terrorist” or “kill him” but stopped and said, “Hold on.  That’s no an appropriate comment.  Accusing someone of treason or advocating for his death is unacceptable.  It’s inhumane.  And I’m not going to stand for it.”

I think that would have swayed right there a bunch of undecideds.  Shoot, it would have made me feel good about them, like it wouldn’t be too terrible if they won.

But as it is now, it’s a weird thing hanging out there.  Every decent person knows that, no matter how much you personally dislike someone, you don’t stand by and let people accuse them of executionable crimes or shout for their deaths if you are in a position to stop them.

And here’s what I think, just from a symbolic position, is wrong with not saying anything.  You are, in essense, auditioning for leader of the free world.  And you’re unable to control your own crowd, address your own people and keep them in line in public?  The trick is to have the crowd eating out of your hand, not to be at the mercy of it.  Those pauses were a problem.

It made both of them look weak–like they knew they should say something but decided it’d be easier not to.

Standing up to the hecklers could have been a game-changer and I’m both relieved and disappointed that it didn’t happen.

—Note to Campfield: Yes, please keep harping on the “sex ed to 5 year olds” line, so that we can keep saying “You know that’s ‘stranger danger’ right?  Obama wants to teach kids how to protect themselves from child molesters.  You don’t think teaching kids that no one should touch their bathing suit areas is a problem do you?”

Again, it’s one of those attacks that probably works well broadly, but when people learn the specifics, they’re baffled as to why it’s an issue.

How unwinning an issue is it?  Neither Lee nor Exador has bothered to try to make it here.

–The Debate: At this point, I think the election is Obama’s to lose.  McCain did just fine, I thought.  Shoot, I don’t even think it’s worth arguing abot whether he won or not.  His problem really was that he did just fine.  I suspect that many undecideds came away thinking “Well, he’d be fine if this Obama thing doesn’t work out.”  You cannot win if people think you’d be a fine second choice.

Unless, of course, that first choice is somehow no longer available.

Which brings us back to my first point.

I am no political genius.  And if I can figure out that Obama’s going to win unless he does something to not win (which is looking less and less likely) or he becomes unavailable for winning (because, let’s face it, no one is clamoring for a Joe Biden presidency), McCain is probably not going to be president, so have a lot of other people.

I say this in all seriousness, if John McCain truly loves America, he owes it to America to continue to campaign for a win while at the same time preparing the way for a fair loss. Which menas he owes it to all of us to squash out any talk of Obama deserving to die.

I’ve heard what a great patriot John McCain is.  Now’s the time to start seeing it in action.