land’s end…………. 22 May 2008
Posted by marisacat in California / Pacific Coast, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.trackback
San Joaquin Delta.. downloaded years ago, and I neglected to note much other info about the photograph…
A couple of years ago I thought i might try to do something about our cyclical torment, water, rain, lack of rain, diversion of water resources (and subsequent loss of natural populations of fish and shellfish) for sprawl/habitation and farming/ag business…falling water tables, then the fire and devastation, mudslide, landslide, desert winds …. all of this up against the Pacific Ocean, the land pock marked with millions of little trapped bodies of water, home pools. Now one in 200 of those homes in foreclosure, an enforced death of the outer suburbs… and those little bodies of water stagnant, breeding mosquitos, madly, speedily…
But it was too big… I gathered the photos and images.. and let it go. It comes around every year……… right as rain.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
UPDATE, 5:07 am Friday….
Wanted to pull up this comment by lucid
Have you guys ever restrung a 36 year old guitar? The strings slide into the saddles on the bridge – and there are so many ridges in the saddles, that you have to pick the ridge – the sweet one – the one that won’t break a string at a show, and the one where the string width is just right. And the nut, well, it’s all worn to shit, and despite the hours you’ve spent adjusting the height of the saddles to accommodate, you’ve still got fret buzz… but because this instrument is so beautiful and plays so well, you stick a piece of paper in the nut to make it play better, despite the fact that it will dampen the sustain on an open chord. And the neck – well hell, some frets on the high E don’t bend as well as you’d like…
It sounds like time for a new guitar. And I have better guitars than that, in every way…
But I don’t have another guitar that feels like that. I don’t have another guitar that is so true.
I know I’m all about the losing of the sentimentality, but there is something converse I’m saying in this.
The blood sweat and tears are not nothing.
The new world is exemplified by the care of a luthier for the instrument that can still feel true 36 years later, or more.
The new world is exemplified by people who see history not as the past, but as the idea that 40 years from now, something they did will inspire someone to do something else.
And it will be something just or beautiful.
It could be sitting in a redwood like Julia Butterfly Hill, or picketing Fort Benning like Father Berrigan. It could be discovering the cure to cancer in the face of a medical establishment bound to silence you, or it could be a song that brings one individual, at one moment in their life, to a place too beautiful for words.
And whenever I string that guitar, with the care, the concentration, the love, I think of that possibility. I think of the ‘new world’, a world I hope I could maybe inspire 40 years down the road from some song I play on my newly strung 36 year old guitar.
From land’s end…………., 2008/05/23 at 1:28 AM
[Tulare County Sequoia grove, Sequoia National Park]
Marisacat 
Damn & I just posted a long semi-coherent thought at the end of the last. 😉
Mcat, it is amazing to me how little people recognize the big picture. I know this is a bizarre refelction, but I was at Whole Foods tonight & they’ve started using recycled paper bags exclusively [no plastic], and I’m sure all the little faux greenies are so happy… Funny thing is, when I was in high school in the late ’80’s and worked as a supermarket bag boy, I refused to give customers plastic bags. I got fired over it & because I waged a campaign in my [union free] supermarket to only use recycled paper bags. They thought I was just a 16 year old lunatic… And now, 20 years later, ‘paper bags’ are the sheik Manhattanite way of expressing environmental activism…
112 – and one more thing, you come in here acting like none of us has ever even read or studied the bible
Exactly catnip.
I’ve read it thru a couple of times. I’ve tried to argue the Sermon of the Mount, compassion and “judge not lest you be judged” … I did it for years. When I was a young philosophy student I had a good old time arguing w/ theology majors.
It’s a waste of time to show that I had read it and knew much of it, and often resulted in the trope that “even Satan quoted Scriptures when he tempted Jesus.”
re: the photo and thoughts above.
One building can affect the weather around it. Cities and mass agriculture even more. Why don’t we understand that? A complex system is going to try to find a new equalibrium, and the massive amounts of energy and dislocated natural processes are going to result in some kind of blowback.
Every year, though, people act surprised.
2
I burst out laughing about 20 + years ago when I was reading a better than average look at the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system, that essentially delivers East Bay workers to the City. It has other short haul uses and runs just late enough that if you have dinner and drinks in the city you can still use it to get home to Berkeley to the outer reaches… and finally after 25+ years they ran it ot the airport.. and so on…
but I laughed out loud when I read that never in its expected life could it save the energy expended to build it. I think it was somthing like 5 years late too.
the “answers” are lot more complicated… but, you know, we are almost ready to ban water (and only water) in plastic bottles here.
Go for it. LOL If it floats your boat.
I never stopped saving water after the shortages in the 70s. And people who always saved water are wondering how to cut back from 10 – 19%… but those who were profligate cna save easily….
4
yes I was so fascinated in the late 70s and 80s when visiting TX, and the mirrored high rise buildings, which my friend called “native stone of Texas”… they instantly raised the temperature around them. Several degrees too.
Might as well laugh…
I’ve read it thru a couple of times. I’ve tried to argue the Sermon of the Mount, compassion and “judge not lest you be judged” … I did it for years. When I was a young philosophy student I had a good old time arguing w/ theology majors.
Bruised egos aside, I was addressing why I thought McCain’s repudiation of Hagee isn’t going to mean very much in the long run.
Hagees ideas are mainstream (not something I think anybody here would dispute).
What is interesting about it is how the media doesn’t seem willing to call them for what they are, the same ideas most fundamentalist Christians and Jews believe, how this big elephant in the room is left uncommented on by Jack Tapper (for example).
That’ll really save the Michigan aquifer!!!
[Humorous aside, the previous governor of Michigan sold the aquifer to Perrier. Michigan, as some of you may or may not know, is one of the more important fruit growing states in the country & is so due to its tremendous aquifer. When current governor Granholm was running her tough fought re-election campaign against DeVos [of Amway fame] in 2006 & posted a diary on Dkos, I asked her, early on in the comments, point blank, what she was doing to dismantle the deal with Perrier the previous governor had made on the state aquifer. While she politely responded to all sorts of questions around mine, she didn’t deign to even lather some ‘go dem’ pablum on a really legit environmental question.]
Bruised egos aside, I was addressing why I thought McCain’s repudiation of Hagee isn’t going to mean very much in the long run.
I don’t think anyone thought it did. I never saw the endorse as important, NOR as some useful Dem mud throw (or LOL “distraction”] related to Wright.
Everyone knows that the R make hard deals for votes delivered. They barely genuflect.
Scam.
in other land and water news, china will not rebuild the city of beichuan, ground zero for the sichuan quake, because it’s in too unstable an area, and because those landslide dammed rivers are threatening to burst through and flood the area.
wonder if we’d abandon berkeley or los angeles. there are actually less people there than in that part of sichuan, they’re saying about 12 million people displaced.
oh – and she’s Canadian… thanks catnip. 😉
wu – and I heard at least 80,000 dead on the radio this morning. Horrible. Though I have yet to hear the UN suggest we should invade China.
I don’t think anyone thought it did. I never saw the endorse as important, NOR as some useful Dem mud throw (or LOL “distraction”] related to Wright.
But the main difference between the two is that the attacks on Hagee’s endorsement were coming from the outside, from liberals. The attacks on Wright were coming from inside the party, well, at least partly.
What’s more, Wright wasn’t being attacked for his religious views. He was being attacked for his political views, which aren’t very different from a lot of secular leftists.
So, in the end, McCain will say something nasty about Hagee and fundi Xtians and Jews will merely shrug and chaulk it up to what McCain has to do to get elected. They’ll vote for him anyway.
But the attacks on Wright not only split any emerging liberal coalition that may have been developing, they fundamentally move the dialog to the right, not a good thing IMHO.
I didn’t mean that to be flippant.
NOR as some useful Dem mud throw (or LOL “distraction”]
And I guess this means we agree.
well frankly I think there was Catholic hierarchy push back agaisnt Hagee.
LOL I’d still love the sign in sheet from the meeting with Catholic leaders in DC, late last week. I ve not had time to look around on that tid bit at all.
13. But the main difference between the two is that the attacks on Hagee’s endorsement were coming from the outside, from liberals.
Wrong. I heard more than one winger pundit going after McCain about Hagee.
they fundamentally move the dialog to the right
Where have you been? The left has been written off by the other so-called left as “radicals” and members of the “fringe”. The dialogue is already on the right. You can thank Obama for that too.
Weren’t Donohue and Hagee scrapping over the “whore” comment? And Donohue is no lefty, that’s for sure.
Donohue is a nutter…
Weren’t Donohue and Hagee scrapping over the “whore” comment? And Donohue is no lefty, that’s for sure.
Yeah. I guess that’s true. But the coming split between Catholics and Protestant fundis never seems to emerge for some reason.
They agree on too many fundamental issues, the fetus, the ghey, and the Mohammaden menace.
With the current occupent of the Vatican having an all but Daniel Pipes view of Islam, I wouldn’t count on any split over Zionism either.
Not to worry, based on carrying the book (an old Bush dodge) Fareed Zakaria now sits at the right hand of Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesus. And we may presume to know what elites think and want.
Toss the wee wanker libs a book, they get excited.
Or, as IOZ puts it, how Obama brought me to orgasm.
who expects them to split?
And the Catholics are very pleased these days with the SC make up.
???
I’ve seen a lot of previously politically univolved white kids who for the most part would fall somewhere right of Nixon on the economic scale. I’ve seen a lot of older conservatives who voted for Reagan, but think that the current Republican party has gone too far. I’ve seen some, but far from a majority, of disaffected African Americans come back to electoral politics because there is an African American that has a legit chance of winning. I’ve seen a lot of desperation among people who don’t have a liberal bone in their body about the current administration, seeing ‘hope’. I’ve seen a lot of ‘Jesusy’ people think he’s a man of the cloth. I’ve seen a lot of Wall Street, etc. bundling money through their law firms. I’ve seen a lot of international financial interests who don’t want the US to go belly up lining up to support.
I really don’t see a ‘liberal coalition’ here. I see a mishmash of ‘feel good’ politics completely ignorant of the financial interests driving it. Hell, I wouldn’t even support it if it was ‘liberal’.
What have ‘liberals’ ever done for anyone? The only tangible gains in the world have been made by radicals. Suffrage? Not NAWSA [liberal] NWP [radical]. New Deal? Not liberals, CPA. Civial Rights? Again, not liberals, but a combination of CPA, black nationalism, SNCC, and radical evangelicalism. Peace movement? Sorry, radicals again – liberals won’t even touch it.
And why did the idea of equality at the root of all these movements die far short of what they fought for?
Liberals took them over.
22. who expects them to split?
My reaction was who cares if they split?
I’ve seen some, but far from a majority, of disaffected African Americans come back to electoral politics because there is an African American that has a legit chance of winning.
I wonder what would happen in the (probably unlikely) event that Hillary becomes the nominee this fall, if a racially divisive campaign against the first mainstream African American candidate for president finally drives African Americans away from the Democrats for good.
Personally I doubt it. There’s too much money and institutional power tied up in the Democratic party by the African American elite. Rangell and Conyers will just grit their teeth and soldier on.
So it will probably have the worst possible effect. It wouldn’t lead to the development of any meaningful political movement from most black people but it would keep them away from the polls. Disgust and alienation is a much better tool for voter suppression than a mandatory photo ID check.
12 –
when it happened, i heard a geologist predict that it would get as high as 250,000 dead. in a place as dense as that part of sichuan, it’s not impossible, even as it’s unthinkable.
Among so many other examples.. (Kaus was just handy)
MICKEY KAUS:
“Please tell me that Obama has not picked Jim Johnson, Walter Mondale’s campaign manager and an an architect of the multi-billion dollar Fannie Mae debacle, to lead his vice-presidential selection process. . . . Obama’s rhetoric about avoiding the old Washington players always seemed to me the phoniest part of his message. Now we know just how phony.”
Hillary will not be the nominee in the fall.
& there are far more AA’s that are still absent from politics despite the Obamarama phenomenon.
You want to bring AA’s to the polls & vote for you? End the drug war. Give the vote back to ‘felons’. Address the overt racism in this country head on.
You might find a lot more whites voting for you too.
25
LOL
Well it is not as if Rangell, Conyers and let’s toss in Clyburn as well… and hell ALL the others..
Not as if they CARE…
They are well ensconced on th gravy train. Which is all that they care about. And the odd show to convince the passing parade.
23. That depends on how you define “liberal”. After all, there are radical “liberals” so those 2 terms aren’t mutually exclusive.
End the drug war. Give the vote back to ‘felons’.
I’d be all for Ron Paul as Obama’s running mate.
FWIW, the issue of felons voting varies from state to state. Ex felons do have the vote in some places. In others, no.
I;d be excited about so many AAs coming out for Obamalama if I thought he was actually going to do something about their concerns without lumping them in with everybody elses’. Telling them to turn off the teevee and video games and read books to their children (rather Cosbyesque, don’t you think?) isn’t exactly the way to solve the conditions they still face due to racism.
33. I’d be all for Ron Paul as Obama’s running mate.
That’s just madness.
That’s just madness.
Well Gravel then. Not too many politicians are talking about ending the drug war these days.
But 48 states prohibit felons from voting while in prison.
The only reason why Paul is against the drug war is because it’s a federal mandate. He’d be quite happy if, say Alabama, put stoners to death by hanging.
fucked up the html
Obama would commit political suicide if he chose someone like Gravel or Kucinich – too “radical” – and the party just can’t have that (and he would never do it anyway). Nope, He’ll choose some mainstream, go with the flow, bland centrist who won’t take the spotlight away from him.
Nope, He’ll choose some mainstream, go with the flow, bland centrist who won’t take the spotlight away from him.
Does anybody have any idea if there are any mainstream/centrist Democrats or Republicans who have a dissenting view on the drug war?
Poor Booboo is tired again.
Maybe Obama can take him along the next time he goes to the Virgin Islands.
The point, HC, is justice. We need to build a just world if we are to survive as a species. [Maybe we shouldn’t]
What purpose would be served by electing a Jesusy AA guy whose policies might proffer happy-faced corporate imperialism? And what purpose would be served by electing a racist backwater Texan who is opposed to many things I am, but is so because he wants to go back to a time when putting petty thieves stealing bread to feed their family in the gallows is A-OK!
I’d like to think that we should survive as a species. I’d like to think that we are better than our history. I see moments, and ideas, and movements in our history that are unconditionally good. So I’d rather work for that, than be roped into the same politics, the same clever deceptions, the same defense of aristocracy that the vaunted ‘last best hope of the world’ is in its fundamental being.
I am not an American if accepting our shit is required for membership. I am a human being first. And I will always be a human being first.
Thanks Mcat.
38. Does anybody have any idea if there are any mainstream/centrist Democrats or Republicans who have a dissenting view on the drug war?
Are you assuming that one of Obama’s priorities is to end the so-called drug war? Has he ever said that?
None – at least on public record… remember, just think of the children.
What purpose would be served by electing a Jesusy AA guy whose policies might proffer happy-faced corporate imperialism?
Not much. I’m not so much arguing for Obama than I am arguing against what Hillary’s done over the past few months.
You can argue that I dislike Hillary because of some kind of misogny on my part but I think by allying herself with the right, Hillary’s hurt feminism as much as she’s hurt African Americans.
Hillary didn’t run as a feminist criticizing Obama’s Jesusyness. She let her surrogates spread rumors that he DIDN’T believe in Jesus, that he was a Muslim. Had Hillary run a campaign about smashing the glass ceiling politics has for women, defending abortion rights, criticizing theocracy, I would have been all with her.
But even the most ultra left Trotskyist or anarchist has to acknowledge what’s gone on this spring. African Americans and feminists have been pitted against each other. And the right is laughing its ass off.
Oh, and blacks and Jews are once again fighting each other in Crown Heights.
http://www.ontheissues.org/Drugs.htm
ng Obama’s Jesusyness. She let her surrogates spread rumors that he DIDN’T believe in Jesus, that he was a Muslim. Had Hillary run a campaign about smashing the glass ceiling politics has for women, defending abortion rights, criticizing theocracy,
Oh get a grip. Jesus guy did not run on his pancake flip version of that EITHER. Nor will he.
When the damned fucking field was 9 we only two who diverged at all from the godawful gibberish. And I throw Edwards on the fucked pile. He has NEVER believed that Bonior and EE concocted shit (and Axelrod in 03/4 for Two Americas) he ran on he is still a PI atty… and a good deal of that business is a lot more predatory than Dem shit kicker politics will ever admit.
She let her surrogates spread rumors that he DIDN’T believe in Jesus, that he was a Muslim.
Why are you so obsessed with that secret Muslim crap? Sheesh. You bring it up in every conversation you have about Obama.
After all of this time, Obama and his camp still complain that people “don’t know him”. Well, ffs, with all of the money at their disposal and the endless media coverage, you really need to start laying some of the blame at their feet for not managing his campaign better if they’re truly concerned about his image. (And are they? He said he preferred to be that “blank screen” anyway). And it takes more than ridiculous mailers like that one they sent out in KY of him standing at a pulpit in front of a gigantic cross to fix that.
Charlie Rose tonite: Kevin Spacey, Jeffrey Toobin, and David Booies about the movie Recount. I guess I’ll have to wait to see that one since I don’t get HBO.
Argh…now Gary Wills is on Rose’s show talking about religion. My head’s going to splode.
I don’t think Hillary has ‘hurt’ anyone in the way you state. If you hadn’t noticed, the whole idea of equality in this country was pretty much squelched in the ’70’s. Hillary is certainly not a feminist, nor is Obama a civil rights advocate. They’re both machine politicians, vying for power in an election. Just because Bill and Hillary decided to go around drumming up the racist vote & Obama did his best, in a guarded way, to drum up the misogynist vote has nothing to do with feminism or AA civil rights.
I really don’t understand how you can construe the rich & deep history of equality movements as remotely involved in this pony trot.
…unless, of course, your convinced by the MSM, that somehow, because we have a woman and AA vying for the Democratic party nod, it’s historic.
It’ll be historic when we have a vulcan descend to earth that actually runs on a just platform and wins.
50. It’ll be historic when we have a vulcan descend to earth that actually runs on a just platform and wins.
He’d be deported as an illegal alien.
Obama did his best, in a guarded way, to drum up the misogynist vote
I’m sorry but I just don’t see this.
I guess you could say that Donny McLurkin or that framing some of his politics in terms of religion constitutes appeals to misogyny but I just don’t see the same kind of effort to build a coalition of the homophobic or misogynist the way I’m seeing Hillary actually build a coalition of racists.
Obama’s acted with a certain amount of restraint, at least in my opinion.
And Michelle Obama’s been the focus of as much or more misogyny than Hillary’s been.
Ron Paul on drugs:
War on drugs is out of control; revert control to states.
Exactly what I said.
Kurt Leege on drugs:
Legalize it all at a federal level. End all state and federal drug interdiction. Offer full pardons to all non-violent felons convicted under drug laws at both state and federal levels, and give them reparations for imprisonment. Regulate ‘drugs’ similarly to alcohol, with purchase available for adults. Put as much as is needed into real education and treatment programs, so that everyone knows what they are getting into and those that go overboard can get whatever help they need. Spend the rest of the huge windfall of cash on every level – local, state, federal – on education, health care, civic rebuilding, job development…
Sit back and see a society start to rebuild itself.
Do the same with the military industrial, pharmaceutical/medical industrial, energy industrial and ag industrial complexes, and we might just see a better world.
I’m waiting.
Sorry, I meant – regulate the military industrial, pharmaceutical/medical industrial, energy industrial and ag industrial complexes.
In the same way, and we might just see a better world.
52. And Michelle Obama’s been the focus of as much or more misogyny than Hillary’s been.
pffft
Do you have facts to back that up?
I guess you’ve missed the missives sent by the ‘liberal’ blogsphere the last 10 months… including pff. Are you so naive that you think that was innocent?
And of course, lest I forget, Tweety and friends – Obama foamers all.
U.S. military ‘regrets’ killing 2 children in Iraq operation. Screw them and their “regrets”.
Fact Check: Obama’s outreach to foes questionable
He’s a bigger flip-flopper than Kerry ever was.
Have you guys ever restrung a 36 year old guitar? The strings slide into the saddles on the bridge – and there are so many ridges in the saddles, that you have to pick the ridge – the sweet one – the one that won’t break a string at a show, and the one where the string width is just right. And the nut, well, it’s all worn to shit, and despite the hours you’ve spent adjusting the height of the saddles to accommodate, you’ve still got fret buzz… but because this instrument is so beautiful and plays so well, you stick a piece of paper in the nut to make it play better, despite the fact that it will dampen the sustain on an open chord. And the neck – well hell, some frets on the high E don’t bend as well as you’d like…
It sounds like time for a new guitar. And I have better guitars than that, in every way…
But I don’t have another guitar that feels like that. I don’t have another guitar that is so true.
I know I’m all about the losing of the sentimentality, but there is something converse I’m saying in this.
The blood sweat and tears are not nothing.
The new world is exemplified by the care of a luthier for the instrument that can still feel true 36 years later, or more.
The new world is exemplified by people who see history not as the past, but as the idea that 40 years from now, something they did will inspire someone to do something else.
And it will be something just or beautiful.
It could be sitting in a redwood like Julia Butterfly Hill, or picketing Fort Benning like Father Berrigan. It could be discovering the cure to cancer in the face of a medical establishment bound to silence you, or it could be a song that brings one individual, at one moment in their life, to a place too beautiful for words.
And whenever I string that guitar, with the care, the concentration, the love, I think of that possibility. I think of the ‘new world’, a world I hope I could maybe inspire 40 years down the road from some song I play on my newly strung 36 year old guitar.
The dialogue is already on the right.
Yup
And now, 20 years later, ‘paper bags’ are the sheik Manhattanite way of expressing environmental activism…
My grocery chain (Wegmans) has reusable cotton bags (I think they’re cotton, anyway). They offer them for $1 and encourage shoppers to bring them with them to the store, but I just don’t understand why they don’t establish some process to circulate the bags from home back to store, to make them truly reusable.
I have a few, but they tend to do duty at home (they’re great bags) and I keep forgetting to bring them back with me the next I go grocery shopping.
60 – I always wonder how Willie Nelson keeps Trigger sounding so good.
Off to work. Have a good day.
#60
Lucid – have you considered replacing the bridge & the nut on the guitar? You shouldn’t lose the sweetness of the guitar by doing that. Know you feel about such a treasure.
Could someone please tell me what BAR stands for?
sorry penlan…
BAR stands for Black Agenda Report.
BAR
And it is over on the blogroll, too… they appeared to break away from Black Commentator around August of 2006. Glen Ford and Bruce Dixon are based in Chicago, long time activists (Dixon is a former Black Panther iirc) and they write often on Obama and other issues.
Margaret Kimberley is also very good at the site…
This whole religion thing is cracking me up.
A couple of weeks ago at SMBIVA, I was arguing with mjosef about the Wright business and saying that I didn’t just dismiss religiously-motivated activists out of hand the way he seemed to. I do believe that there’s such a thing as liberation theology. I wouldn’t have a problem working in a campaign with people of faith, so long as the campaign did not become about their religion and some obnoxious effort on their part to convert me. You want me to work on what I already believed to be a worthy cause with a person of faith ? No problem. But there damn well better be some boundaries or I’m out the door. I don’t want theology classes mixed in with my organizing. And it’s a two-way street. I won’t lecture a person of faith about how I think their religion is nonsense. Some of this reticence on my part probably hearkens back to the tradition in my youth of learning to repel –politely– the efforts of Christian missionaries if they came to the door, but to otherwise restrict passionate debates about faith to one’s own religious group. So be it.
Perhaps mjosef mistook my POV for HC’s, which would explain his frustration. Perhaps he believed that I was jumping onto Wright’s bandwagon rather than simply stating that SOME of Wright’s views –not all– echoed my own. Oh, well. The above-stated is as much a concession to the religious masses in this country (and let’s not kid ourselves: 99% of the time that still means “Christians,” which I was not –ever– and am not) as I will make for any cause.
If HC or the rest of the born-again DP crowd doesn’t like that, fuck them.
Smithee had HC’s number, and kraant’s number on PFF months ago. I shoulda’ followed his lead.
Hopeless.
I’m very fond of Kimberly. She’s one of those writers with a knack for getting straight to the point, yet she manages not to talk down to her audience. It’s a rare skill in Blogland and IRL as well.
8)
fwiw, via Mike Allen politico:
borrrrrrrrring….
LOL all sorts of names being tossed like salad…but apparently Warner of VA confirms he has been asked to submit information to the ObamaRama camp.
Fwiw. 😉
67
I agree, she is great…
I worry tht there are few contributions anymore from Leutischa Stills, who had the ”CBC Monitor”, kept tabs on the ever more DLC, ever more sold out, Congressional Black Caucus…
Yeah, that Bloomberg. I waited tables for him once at the Catskills. A good tipper. Called me a shayne madelah and patted my head. Handsome, too. I’d vote for him.
Unrelated:
lucid, will you come over and write all my blog posts for a month ? 😉
#65
ty Marisa. 🙂
Burma ‘to let in all aid workers’ – kind of, sort of.
I see Obamalama is trying to woo Cuban-Americans in FL today. Should be interesting.
ms_x sorry – been tasked with blogging for the band… too busy. That guitar comment above started out as some weird reply to HC, then morphed into something I threw up on myspace at 5am.
yes! my project guitar. the bridge is one of the cast, lightning bar bridges, so old the intonation is fixed for a wound G string. i replaced it with a newer one and will probably try and relic that sometime in the near future. its 42 years old. nothing collectable though, some unknown soldier “upgraded” it long before it came to me, but i’ve just completed collecting the correct period parts for it, some are vintage some i’ll have aged, and am about at the stage to have it refinished (some previous owner stripped that!). structurally its solid, neck still adjusts easily either way, mahogany that should be criminal to possess in new production, and the headstock isn’t cracked either, which is a thing often seen on this particular model.
now thats what i hope for. after the refinish and a professional setup and some fret work and a new nut, it’ll be like phoenix rising from the ashes. i’v spent two years learning about the model, collecting the parts when a few dollars free up, it’s going to be beautiful!
i’d probably bag the saddles on yours for posterity with some that are relic’d. but since you probably put many of those years on it maybe you just want to leave it the way it is, retune as needed, and enjoy.
Penlan – yeah I have considered replacing the nut and the bridge saddles, but they just don’t make ’em like they used to. Callaham Guitars actually does make vintage strat saddles that rival the originals which I’ll probably buy eventually [I have another strat with a Callahm Bridge & that one plays like a champ], but replacing the nut will make the guitar play completely differently. Most nuts today are extremely tight. And there’s nothing I can do about the neck. I’ve refretted it and had folks look at it – there’s a weird tweak in it around the 7th fret that no truss rod adjustment or even press could fix. Still love that guitar though.
Good news for Omar Khadr’s defense team: Ottawa ordered to give Khadr interrogation documents. Our supremes, in a unanimous decision, have ordered the Canadian gov’t to turn over transcripts from Gitmo interrogations with our security service.
Damn Lucid. Nope, I’m wrong… that deserves a goddamn. Very nice.
Penlan, no offense but sometimes it ain’t about tryin’ to force/remake things to give you what you want/need. Sometimes it’s about finding the magic in what you have.
#77
aemd
Everything has it’s special quirks/talents – including us. 😉
Know exactly what you mean.
lucid – had a beautiful old Gibson J50 many years ago. Had Grover gears put on it & some other work done. It was the “perfect fit” & I was able to do things with that guitar I haven’t been able to do with any other one. It was like it played me. It was approx. 30 -35 years old when I got it & if I still had it it’d be 60 yrs. old at least now, more I think. Still miss the damn thing. Had the richest sound I’ve ever heard. And it was always “true”.
penlan
and
catnip out of moderation….
sorry for the delay…..
International Center of Photography founder (and younger brother of Robert) Cornell Capa died today.
Magnum Photos slide show of Capa’s work.
Ioz goes all Foodie with spaghetti and meatballs.
He keeps this up and I’m gonna have to retaliate with a Mennonite strawberry pie recipe that will take the wind outta that fuckers sails. 😀
Norman Finkelstein arrested in Israel
http://www.politicalfleshfeast.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3388
This Week: Rove, Obama strategist Axelrod
Meet the Press: Roundtable with CBN’s Brody, NYT’s Dowd, presidential historian Goodwin, NPR’s Norris, WashPost’s Marcus, Newsweek’s Meacham
Face the Nation: Clinton spokesman Wolfson, Sens. Graham, Durbin
Fox News Sunday: Clinton chair McAuliffe, NRCC chair Cole, DCCC chair Van Hollen
Late Edition: Major Gen. Mark Hertling, Reps. Harman, Dreier, former Labor Sec. Robert Reich, Clinton economic adviser Sperling, McCain economic adviser Holtz-Eakin
*****
While I was at The Page I saw that TIME has a profile of MO. Likely their pro forma, I have not read it yet……….
Jeebus H Christ. I come home, flip on the teevee, see Tweety and his band of pundits talking about Hillary’s reference to the timing of Bill’s nomination and RFK’s assassination – both in June – and now Rachel Maddow is calling that “ghoulish” and KO is going to have a special comment about it tonite? I’m sorry but this has all jumped the shark. Who, in their right mind, would think she was saying that if she hangs in there long enough Obama would be assassinated. Holy crap. Have people really become that stupid?
well TIME noted that she said it before. … For some reason, firestorm this time.
heh.
Maddow said she had made “repeated references” to his death. Mon dieu. Drink the kool-aid much?
Time‘s MO piece is pretty much content-free. Looks like a filler piece reserving the right to exploit any future “controversy,” as needed.
lc – are you kidding? Pundits will be busy with this shitstorm all weekend.
Not to mention the rankled and filed. 1766 comments and counting.
well I think that it has to be said, the Obama camp, later joined by the half of the known Kennedys camp.. have USED IT TO DEATH.
TO FUCKING DEATH.
I can just imagine the drooling outrage going on at the Big O without even reading the comments (which I won’t look at now since I already have a headache.)
Pundits will be busy with this shitstorm all weekend.
Because this race is a complete farce – the whole shebang. If they want to talk about death, they could fill all of these wasted hours with the reality on the ground in Iraq & Afghanistan. That’s where the real outrage ought to be directed. And what about the tens of thousands dead in Burma and China? And US involvement in Africa?
Silly me for expecting actual substance from those jokers.
Hit the highlights for us, IB. I just can’t bear the thought of it.
Cold pitcher of white peach sangria in it for ya’.
Brooks said she is not guilty.. Shields says she is HEINIOUSLY guilty. that the great unspoken secret of this campaing is the death threats against obama, they are whispered about spoken in secret.. On and on. Count me out.
Well again they WANTED to connect him over and over to the shot, the assassinated, the dead.. It was distasteful and frankly morbid, grave robbing at the get go.
Kill the witch. Be sure and do that. Then vote for the black guy, feel better. then look away. As nothing the fuck changes.
New post:
LINK
you’ve got to learn to love america winston smith style. for what it is, not what it should be. football is the perect metaphor. its a combat yet still a game.
hillary’s made a tactless faux pas deep in her own backfield and accidently mentioned in an offhand remark to a friggin editorial board exactly what she thinks.
oopsie.
AND OBAMATEAM RETRIEVES THE FUMBLE AND IS GOING TO SCORE!!!!!
once it’s out there its anyone’s ball, just something that can be taken advantage of, in an equally tactless manner. points are all that matter.
ms_x – I didn’t wade into the comments, either, but the main entry includes a round-up of blogger outrage (many leading lights are appalled), youtube footage of the offending remark, and now a clip of Rachel Maddow denouncing.
I think bayprairie wins the first splash of sangria, but here are a couple of snippets, in case your crystal pitcher allows:
Josh Orton at MYDD: No context can save her. She must go.
Poll results:
I doubt it matters but the Argus has a comment out on the Event. To. End. All. Events.
via Ambinder:
CBS News’s Ryan Corsaro obtained the following statement from the Sioux Falls Argus Leader:
“The context of the question and answer with Sen. Clinton was why there was so much pressure on her to quit her race against Sen. Obama. Her reference to the Mr. Kennedy’s assassination appeared to focus on the timeline of his primary candidacy, not the assassination itself.” — Randall Beck, Executive Editor of The Argus Leader
Hillary was pretty quick with the mop-up, even throwing some soft soap (and no doubt prayers) for Teddy into the sluice bucket.
From AP:
IOZ forgot the fennel seeds, and a bit of oregano and basil in the sauce…
Just quickly touchin bases, hope everyone had at least a half way decent week…
Know someone in Santa Cruz CA who informed that a number of evacuated homes had doors kicked in and looted…..hmmm…thieves in the woods…on foot…kicking in doors versus simply breaking a window?
I know there are some good cops (I hope, because many I’ve come across were real assholes), even more good firefighters etc….but the fuckers running things have deliberately placed goons in positions of authority..my first instinct…could be wrong…some “protective forces” who felt the populace owed them for that protection, kicked some doors in and took what they would….Are they in the habit of giving “criminal waivers” now to local protective services…