I need to write about my feelings on the new Dirty Projector's record, Swing Lo Magellan.

I listened once straight through on the NYTimes site.  In my first impression, it's spectacular.  Music is a gift that provides strength during hard work.

I needed to change the colors

I need to just remind you that orange is beyond awful to me. I know, I know, the new backback has some orange, but it's functional so I can tolerate. I was getting stressed out looking at this blog and it was influenced by the orange selection.

Bowie got out of glam rock just before it became cheesy.

Yes, this has been complained about but I'm seething right now. Consumption is the American ideology. How do we solve environmental problems? Consume appropriate things? How do we wage political battles? Consume bumper stickers, or give our money so that we can provide ourselves with more consumption opportunities.

Specifically, I'm stoked about the drive to donate to the California Prop 8 political thing:
http://www.noonprop8.com/
http://www.protectmarriage.com/

Either one, the first thing you are instructed to do is contribute. Such an extreme amount of money has been dumped into every political thing this season that blah blah blah problems could be solved with the money, I won't waste your time with describing that. I just need to share that it is sickening.

Ok, I have nothing inteligent to complain about regarding this issue. Stop giving money to everything and invest in an efficient heating system in your house, get new windows.

Oh crap, I totally just suggested directing consumption from one direction to the next.

David Bowie can sing about this stuff real nice.

I think the worst thing is that there is no ability to check this push. Next presidential election new records will be set for how much we can contribute towards one person, because the our botched system does not have safeguards against extreme campaigning. Much like the olympics will keep on having people attempting to flip FOUR times in the air instead of three. Of course, if enough athletes die in their flipping attempts, they might have to regulate that. Similarly, if people start donating their plasma to raise money for the FIGHT against anything, the system might recognize the unsustainability.

Sustainabilty has taken precedence for the word Precedent. Remeber last year when everything was without precedent? Perhaps collectively we're recognizing that most things do actually have some kind of precedent occurance.

Stop reading this blog. Vote for supreme court justices as president. Scalia/Bader Ginsburg 08!

who knows where their tatoos are?

We really like world leaders, don't we?

Have we met any yet? If we watch Putin's Judo video, will we feel more connected to his soul (------>I'm referencing pop politics here!!<--------)?

I think if either of us were more committed internet people with less to do we could make mash-up videos of random love affairs between world leaders?

Angela Merkel and Robert Mugabe?
Hu Jin Tao and Steven Harper?
Angela Merkel and Benazir Bhutto?
Putin and Lula da Silva?
Ohhhh imagine Tony Blair and Zapatero? That'd be so cute and vanilla.
For all the straight people out there reading this: Sarah Palin and Sarah Palin?
Oooo once Tzipi Livni comes on the scene there'll be all sorts of sexual tension between her and the next US pres. Obama and Livni? McCain and Livni?

Both fit well into ultimate female Jewish fantasies.

Please, avid internet creators, make these mash-ups now.

For my next bar mitzvah I'm going to invite every world leader. There's sort of a serious point behind this post. Trivializing all the world's elected officials in the action figure sorta way does provide me some sense of agency.

mmm....Angela............

blame

So my Dad, in that slightly joking, slightly maniacal way, told me he is anxiously awaiting the moment that people start blaming the Jews for the money problems. He prefaced this with an oft-repeated "Anti-Semitism is on the Rise, you know."

I recognize of course that indeed, exurban Colorado and suburban Ohio might have a strong undercurrent of blaming the Jews, but in general I think the public has a clear grasp on who we think we should direct our anger towards - the banks that did the lending and the credit manipulating. Politicians are trying to dumb it on the other party, but I don't know if that's really sticking with either side. Speaking for myself, I see both sides playing damaging roles.

A point of interest is the bad attitudes the blame game fosters. My dad also sent me this link/article talking about the easing of credit lending at FM & FM. -- I am really bored with all the catch phrases of this time period including Fannie and Freddie, financial crisis, meltdown, and maverick --. Those two housing lenders were somewhat motivated by the ethic of housing as a right. What's going to happen to this belief if we crawl our way out of the problems? I fear the ease with which this could slide into a group blame thrust towards the poor, and validate the ideology of poverty as a necessary component of society.

Blame is the worst, and politics seems to be so satisfied by it. George W. this is not your fault. Poor people with no ability to pay your loans, it's not your fault either. Jewish homies, it's not your fault. Corporations, it pains me to say this but it's not your fault either - for plenty of reasons. A collective sense of responsibility would be so lovely. Maybe in a month or so that can start to happen. I DO honestly look at my own capacity to learn lessons from mistakes as a beacon of possibility for the same phenomenon to occur in the American culture. I do.

Aspects of the American culture created this crisis, widespread throughout every group, ideology, village, company, nonprofit, whatever. It is the same thing that affects my age groups resistance to forming community, the same thing that ferments the political culture cleavage, example, example, example, I'm done.

Shush.

the best we can do, that I can do.

Well now is as good a time as any.

The group I watched the debates with, they were ironic without empathy. Essentially, the worst of America - as you and I discussed the other night when we disagreed.

The bubbles. Perhaps it's an effect of this especially sports focused city, but they may as well have given a big crowd wave every time Biden opened his mouth, and heckled the umpire whenever Palin responded.

One woman could not stop exclaiming how bad a moderator Gwen Ifil seemed to be for refusing to chastise the Governor any time she veered away from the question in her response. Perhaps she has never seen a politician do their thing. I did not have a chance to ask.

We know that a first step towards empathy is active listening, but there was none of that in this liberalest, Jewy crowd.

Two things of special interest to me was the group's body jerk reaction to the Israel questions. I have no clue what the Governor said, all I know is that the group disagreed with her and grumbled during the Senator's response. Liberal Jews are obliged to disagree friends of Israel, and agree at the same time, for conveniences' sake.

The other thing (notice the identity politics trend) was the crowd's discomfort with the same-sex relationship question. All in attendance were shocked at her mention of the word tolerance and appalled that she would admit to supporting equitable treatment for adults who chose their partners regardless of sex. And then, noble Joe took the same position - with apparent greater discomfort and cumbersome language than the pretty lady - and it seemed to resonate far better with the -clearly- beyond tolerant audience.

---- I hope that these examples help to substantiate my argument that the bubble cleavage is far wider than the rhetoric of repair presumes. City and suburbs, Democrat and Republican, they're not listening to each other.

Of course, as I write I reflect on some possible absolving factors. The buildup of last night was obviously pressing and emotion boiling - and I certainly value the glasses of wine I consumed during the talky thing.
The party was organized by a friend who is working under the auspice of Righteous Indignation, and while RI is 501 c3 non partisan, the crowd was just living up to the title.
Maybe they all are content actually hating America.
And maybe it's just cause she was prettier than everyone in the audience.

That Governor, she sure would make a pretty VP.

Seriously?

David Remnick's internview on HuffPo: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/13/david-remnick-on-emnew-yo_n_112456.html

For those of you who don't know, this week's New Yorker cover features possible Muslim Terrorist and US Democratic presidential nominee Barack Hussein Obama and his wife portrayed as Taliban-style insurgents. And of course they're fist bumping, which is actually how terrorists start their foreplay.

And people, including the Obama campaign, are freaking out.

The title of the cover is "The Politics of Fear," and I'd say it was pretty obvious to me that this cartoon, expertly drawn, is meant to poke fun at the RIDICULOUS AND BIGOTED notion that Barack Obama is a terrorist.

I'm pretty disappointed, even more so because I am also not surprised at everyone's outrage. As Cher says in Moonstruck - Snap out of it! Not talking about the scary parts does not make them go away. This cover is clearly satire, and it's satirizing an effective strategy of the Right's to portray ANYONE, but especially Barack Obama, who disagrees with them as unpatriotic and therefore a terrorist.

And, I'm sorry, but anyone trying to place David Remnick and the New Yorker to the right of center is just plain ignorant SLASH in desperate, obvious need to improve their progressive image.

Excuse me, I have to go to my not-for-profit arts job and talk about how I blogged about this now.