music review!

it's been too long!  (maybe not for you, but absolutely for me).

so i was in a conversation the other day with a veritable walking musical encyclopedia, (a friend of mine with exceptionally broad, deep and awesome tastes, no less), and i had the exceptionally rare experience of telling him about a recording of which i knew that had escaped his previous attention.  kudos perhaps to me, but i had to admit in that moment of otherwise satisfaction that i hadn't myself really had a chance to listen to it, either.

tell me amazon dot com isn't awesome.

within moments i had the order placed:  mr blue sky:  the very best of electric light orchestra.

(for those of you who are interested in the details of the purchase, i am not quite as committed to jeff lynne and ELO as i am, say, martha davis and the motels, so i skipped the $40 limited edition vinyl.  i, however, as is my absolute preference if not vinyl, opted for the physical disc itself rather than just the mp3's, cuz CD quality audio beats mp3's every day of the week).

anyway, as those of you who may have been around to remember will remember, ELO has one of those historic sounds that is both iconic and everlasting.  and though some may remember, as i do, the names of the other players from "the move", roy wood and bev bevan, who went with jeff lynne from the move to form the original electric light orchestra, everybody who knows anything about the group, their sound, or any and all of their recordings, has always known it's always been jeff lynne's band, sound, and music all the way.

even so, it was a curious choice by the icon himself to re-record EVERYTHING to re-create a new greatest hits record of all the best ELO classic tunes this past year, and release this particular biscuit:  mr blue sky:  the very best of electric light orchestra.

what a remarkable record.

i've heard a lot of bands remake and recreate a lot of albums and songs in my time, but never yet before have any of them dared to reconstruct almost note-for-note homages to the originals in a way that makes them both so absolutely and uncannily THE SONGS themselves, and, yet, alive and breathing separate beings, perhaps most analogous to monozygotic twins nevertheless having their own unique fingerprints, as monozygotic twins will always do, and being both identical, and unique at the same time.

the first and most emotional and overwhelming impression is that the songs are indeed magical, as their progenitors were indeed as well all those years ago.  (has it been over 3 decades?!)  magical.  the sound is, as it ever was, lush and enveloping, and lyrical and melodic, and both complex as well as simply accessible.  and then you realize the first hint of the difference in your ear:  every note, EVERY note, and every sound, EVERY sound, has its own space in the mix in a way that the originals, precise and so-close-to-perfect as they were, never quite achieved, though you never realized it until this very moment.  and, remarkably, the precision and perfection of the remade songs is not sterile in the least.  the sound is still warm, and full.  it's remarkable.  the harmonies are MORE without being any different, note for note.  the entwined lines amidst the orchestration are MORE without being any different, note for note.  magical.

and, yet, as instantly in love as one might be (and i am) with every one of these songs in their new incarnations, there are also those moments where recollection trumps present experience, and the memory of a love displaces the lush sweetness of the lover who is right there in your bed, and you hear the difference where the exact sound of the original lead line or orchestration or what have you wasn't rightly duplicated.  there's a lead line in there (you'll know it when you hear it) that perhaps illustrates it as well as any other moment.  the song has you in its thrall.  you are waiting for that lead line to take you all the way there.  that sound.  that SOUND.  you want that sound.  you need that sound.  that perfect and eidetically memorable sound that defined the song for you all those years ago...  and then with it you realize that for all jeff lynne's genius, and for his being both creator and mother to it all, that the exact sound and its memory can and will never be repeated in that same magical way ever again, no matter how hard its wished and tried.  the only place that magic really lives is in your memory of 1978 and her body--her body softly swaying oh so slowly to the music--your senses all wrapped up in her and it because they are all the same thing.

i am thoroughly enjoying this record.

it's a remarkable record.  it's not something new at all, and, perhaps, for that, it will be dismissed by some as unnecessary.  who can argue against that.  the originals were what they were, and stand second to no version, however new and even however "improved".  (my jet black '70 chevy malibu couldn't keep up with my jet black '02 passat, but i'd still trade for it back in a heartbeat if i could).  but if you loved those songs, you'll hear them again in a completely new way, and for that alone, anyone who loved this music ought to find a way to hear these new versions on a good stereo, and see if it doesn't move them the way they have moved me.  (i cannot wait to pop this disc into my car system!)

thumbs up.

ogden nash

i ran the google on it--i have not yet, in all the years i've been writing, given adequate props to ogden nash.  (you see one of my favorites of his to the right here:  "people who have what they want are fond of telling people who haven't what they want that the don't really want it", and shame on you for not noticing before if you haven't ;-)

one of my earliest posts here (2006!) was recounting the priorities while rescuing "my" books from the communal marital bookshelf.  (shakespeare made the cut, as mrs ross would be relieved to know, as did edgar allen poe, which would have also pleased my grandmother whose book it was that i was rescuing).  the other two priorities (not least among the four by any means or stretch of the imagination) were walt kelly, (himself extolled here in this one from around the same time frame, complete with images that i'm sad to say i've grown to lazy to include for years now), and ogden nash.

"selected poetry of ogden nash:  650 rhymes, verses, lyrics, and poems" [sic on the comma trailing the word "lyrics", which eloquently proves that the title was either penned by edgar allen poe, or it's tough to find competent editors these days] is possibly the single book i've read more than any other.  it carries the advantage of being comprised of shorter pieces which can be sampled like bon bons from the proverbial box of chocolates, but that's to understate the pleasure in reading them one after another after another until the entire box is consumed.  (kids hopping via youtube suggested links could scarcely enjoy a more eclectic and rewarding entertainment journey, though i'm suspicious that youtube has no discernible end, much like the electronic definition of infinity, but lets not digress).

i found one today i had wholly forgotten on the subject of fading eyesight (no comments, please) entitled "and how keen was the vision of sir launfal?"  (which google tells me was a 1045-line breton lay by thomas chestre from around the year thirteen hundred and something, but i guess mrs ross didn't have me long enough to complete my familiarity with the full canon of middle english literature).  "my kaleidoscope, my cornucopia / my own philosopher's stone, myopia".  and there's more classic nash to it, and no moment better than when he rhymes "gypsies" with "mississipsies", but that's such a minor piece among the lot that any mention upsets proper proportion.

his pieces range from the shortest of fully brilliant cultural touchstones, (e.g. the piece entitled "reflections on ice-breaking", which, in its entirety reads "candy / is dandy / but liquor / is quicker.", and props to taj mahal for getting and making the most of it), to simple statements that ought to be in wider circulation, but, unfathomably, are not.  (e.g. "too clever is dumb").

he riffed on joyce kilmer.  ("i think that i shall never see / a billboard lovely as a tree / indeed unless the billboards fall / i'll never see a tree at all").  he riffed on himself riffing on joyce kilmer.  ("i've never seen an abominable snowman / i'm hoping not to see one / i'm also hoping, if i do / that it will be a wee one").  he riffed on dorothy parker.  ("a girl who is bespectacled / she may not get her nectacled").  he riffed on the nonsense of politics and politicians.  ("progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long").

i thought of ogden during this past presidential election, when the question of culpability for the state of our economy came up, and the excuses from the obamaniacs about so many people being out of work:

mini-jabberwocky

most people would find rising unemployment
a source of unenjoyment.
not so the anonymous presidential advisor
whose comment might have been wiser.
he has informed the nation
that rising unemployment is merely a statistical aberration.
i don't want to argue or squabble,
but that gook i won't gobble

i miss ogden nash.  i've missed him since i was 11 years old.

genius

calvin trillan, worthiest of successors to the genius that was and forever will be ogden nash, is an american treasure.  on last night's daily show he relayed the title of one of the pieces in his new book:

"calista gingrich, aware that her husband has cheated on and then left two women with serious illnesses, tries to make light of a bad cough".

genius.

you can't manage what you can't measure

the title aphorism is cited frequently by germans and others who are seeking a better way to do everything that they do.  and it's not wrong.  indeed, you can't manage what you can't measure.

so if you want to manage something, what do you do?

i'll tell you what the germans do:  they manage what they can measure.

(yes, i'm still on about yesterday's clusterfuck, and i'll likely be on it until January when the cadaver is exhumed...)

trouble is, what you can measure is often (i might go so far as to say rarely) what you actually need to manage.  for example, a close friend of mine had a heart attack, (far too early at age 50), and he's become a walking medical report of hdl, ldl, triglyceride and all sorts of other levels, not to mention hectored to scrupulously avoid trans fat and saturated fat and all sorts of other things that you and i would feel like we might perish to have to live without.  it's all intended to keep him "healthy"...  (have you ever wondered why so many important medical texts were originally written in german?)

so today i see in a list of "heart unhealthy" saturated fats the would-be scourge, coconut oil.  except my friend's doctors now also tout such exact same as GOOD for people with coronary artery disease, because though palmitic and myristic acids are bad, lauric acid and stearic acid are now supposed to be thought of as good, and, if we would believe we finally have a final answer, and apparently, not all saturated fats are created equal, or, indeed, saturated equally.

want to know what i think?  (of course you don't--i'm wholly unqualified to be talking about heart disease, but there's a point unrelated to heart disease, if you can bear with things a bit).

none of these things, not hdl's, not ldl's not triglycerides, not saturated fats, not unsaturated fats, poly or mono, not trans fats, nor anything else in the library of dietary substances, is there one single thing that if you eat, you are guaranteed to have a heart attack.  (my father just passed away at age 90 and he would eat butter right off the stick if my mother didn't catch him doing it, and he never had anything even remotely resembling a heart attack).  neither is there one single thing that if you eat you are guaranteed never to have a heart attack.  NOTHING in this litany of things that can be measured is there anything with a direct causative relation to heart disease.  it's all statistics and probabilities and "oops, did we say saturated fats?  we meant to say only THESE saturated fats..."  which is not to say that there might not be something in there, but what i do mean to say is that while we are busy measuring things to manage, the REAL cause of heart disease is still lurking out there unmeasured and unmanaged, and all we're really doing is chasing the tail of correlation and not causation, and the one thing that i can absolutely promise you that i can measure that to mean is LOTS more heart attacks.

(one of my favorite ever dilbert cartoons:  the pointy-haired boss walks up behind dilbert and says "someone sent me another anonymous email with a link to an article about the world's worst bosses".  he continues in the next frame to say "i get one of those emails every time i leave your cubicle.  did you think i wouldn't notice the correlation?"  and in the last frame, in addition to seeing the PHB walking away, we can also see wally standing behind the cubicle wall pressing "send" on his smartphone, with a thought balloon the reads: "correlation does not imply causation").

exactly.

so it is that i'm trapped on yet another interminable conference call this morning discussing all the ways in which little green status markers can be applied to what we are doing in order to measure the "success" of our little project.  it's going to be like congratulating jim fixx, as he's dropping dead of a heart attack at age 52 after his daily run, that his little running regimen will have surely saved him from any risk of having a heart attack.

being german

the massive multinational software concern via which i make my living is rife with germans.  this, in many instances, is good for me, as i understand and get along very well with my people.  (anyone with a german grandmother, whether right there in der vaterland, or several generations removed to some other far flung place like eastern pennsylvania, knows from which i speak).  of course, in many other instances, this is not so good for me, let alone anybody else, and the world still bears many scars from the wrong kind of germans going all-in.

to wit:  today, as with any tuesday these days, i am submersed in a 90 minute mandatory project conference call to cover a massive effort to revamp the very core of what we do and how we communicate that to the world.  i'm sure when this all got started there were sugarplum fairy dreams of fleets of promptly-timed trains in the minds of those who entrusted the stewardship of the whole nine yard to den deutschen, but the last 30 minutes have proved to me that the trains so eagerly expected at the stations, as timely as they will most definitely be, (i do not believe it is cosmically possible for a german to be late with our about anything), will become an unfortunate surprise to those who called for their original dispatch.

for the last 30 minutes we have covered a series of powerpoint slides (you know how they say never to feed gremlins after midnight or get them wet?  well, to that they should add the admonition to never give a german access to powerpoint) that carefully lay out the processes and procedures by which the project team will assign green, yellow and red status markers to other processes and procedures.

i would not kid about this.

in business school, and, yeah, you may have told you about this one before, but not only am i old and inclined to repeat myself, it prima facie bears incessant repeating, i learned of an historic quality effort aimed to improve the output of one particular lawn implement manufacturer many many decades ago.  the reason for this effort was the perceived need to change the way things were done at a fundamental level (echoes reverberating throughout the aforementioned project today) in order to create a bright new and perfectly engineered future.  i cannot say whether there were germans involved or no, but i can say that the organizers of this historic massive effort created a beautiful scheme of quality checks that would be a perfect analogy to today's green/yellow/red schema, and before you point out the obvious difference, that green/yellow/red is more nuanced than the defect/not defect distinctions within the manufacturers initiative, let me inform you that a major portion of today's 30 minute exposition on green/yellow/red was on how the project managers would interpret the disposition of the yellow conditions so as to be able to designate them as either green or red depending on their characteristics.  (like i said, i would not kid about this).

so the lawn mower people tracked their productions lines with a precise count of the number of machines rolling off the lines with "defects", and incented their entire workforce on the basis of reducing the number of such defects so as to increase the number of perfect products.  sounds good, right?

have you ever worked with germans?

turns out a good number of those "defective" lawnmowers that the project was initiated to eradicate had defects in various things like their paint jobs.  and let me tell you, in short order, rolling off those lines were the best painted lawnmowers in the business.  unfortunately, also equivalent in the counting were other defects like insecure blade bolts that would otherwise keep the rotating blades from helicoptering their way out from under the mowers across the exposed shins of their soon-to-be crippled operators.  and because lawnmower paint is so much easier to spray around like so much rouge on proverbial pigs, the perverse incentive thus created was to cheerfully indulge a lethal projectile here and there so long as the appearance of the death machine was flawless beforehand.

and you know all those plant managers pocketed their bonuses regardless.

so i will predict for you right here and right now a beautifully lea green sea of green-boxed spreadsheets by this time next month when all of this is scheduled to have been delivered, and i'm willing to put a big fat paycheck on it.  and while we're fiddling over our rainbow of statuses the rome of our actual output is burning in an inferno of unrealized potential.

because to do the right thing would risk a yellow marker to be converted to red according to the algorithm.  (the algorithm, by the way, i can recite for you in excruciating detail having had it drummed into my head for the past half hour).

i'd explain for you the next half hour of the call, but it's even more painful to admit we are wasting our time with it.  110 people (the conference call widget counts them for me--i'm german but i'm not that german) consumed for 1.5 hours each, for a total of about one person month of work for no discernible productive purpose.  and this happens each and every week.  we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars of salaries for the project calls alone, not to mention the millions being wasted on the project overall.

situation normal, as my fifteen year old daughter will tell you, and all fucked up.

merry christmas, competitors.

being right for (not) the right reasons

in the preceding (or following if you're reading in reverse blog order) i refer to a friend calling me an asshole under one particular set of circumstances, and giving him credit for being right about that even while i would suggest to you he is wrong about all the rest of it, and it occurs to me there is some possible parallel in this to a situation about which i know more than perhaps i should regarding a particular hospitality establishment in downtown lowell.  the difficulty here is in speaking abstractly about one fish in a pond sufficiently small enough to offer little plausible identify deniability, so please forgive me if i am extremely light on the details.

so, suffice it, please, to say that i enter into some disagreements with some here as to what might constitute a worthwhile way to run a hospitality business (say, perhaps, offering real beer) that might otherwise benefit those apparently incapable of making a go of it serving nothing but bud and bud light.  (oh, and i almost forgot bud light lime...)  the suggestion on my part is that a worthwhile number of people actually LIKE good beer, and will tend to patronize places that can offer it at fair prices which are not just the cheapest prices as seems to benefit the surfeit of bud and bud light, served as it can be via lowest-cost-producers.  the further suggestion on my part being that more customers paying more money for beer is what one would otherwise want to think of as the proverbial good thing for most bar owners, but let's not digress too far here...

anyway, the ultimate "proof" in any how-to-run-a-bar argument is always in the longevity pudding, so a fair amount of offering of examples sneaks into the discussion, and me and my commenters (detractors) here have thrown about a fair number of local watering holes.  so, back to my knowing perhaps a bit too much about one particular situation, i can predict for you here and now the coming demise (and/or fundamental restructuring) of one particular outfit pouring things other than bud and bud light downtown, and tell you that i know for beyond a fact that such has little (nothing, actually) to do with the flavors or prices of the beers offered.

in fact, this might neatly parallel this year's demise of other businesses whose business might have been more to the classic house-that-bud-built kind of place, and the (i'm sure) frustration of the folks disagreeing with me that, many times, if not most times, the reasons bars, restaurants and other hospitality businesses go under are predominantly predominated by 1) bad management, 2) bad management, and 3) bad management.

actually, "bad" covers a multitude of sins that include words like "lax", "absent", etc., but the end result is all the same.  if you don't know how to run a bar, it doesn't matter if your concept is the best one ever in the history of the bar business, be that bud, no bud, or anything in between, you WILL be out of business soon enough.

i like to think one of the factors playing in favor of the new major's pub across the street from my place is that its success might be improved by its being able to "buy low" on all the new renovations wasted like folly on the failed aspirations of the last ownership of the dub.  yeah, it's really too bad the old ownership couldn't make a go of it.  but, see, here's the great news for arguments on all sides:  not only does major's offer still the same lineup of cheap bud and bud light beers they always did in their old space, the increased number of taps available for relative free in their new location is helping them to offer REAL beer, too.  i'd like to think it's working for everybody, and that the place is going to continue to be successful at least in some small part because of it.  i know i'm going to be spending a LOT more time there than i ever did at the old place because of it.  (if you like to play chess, or cards, or just hang out around people who do, come on down tonight after 8pm and join me for a real beer, or whatever it is you might like).

so, to those tempted to conclude that some bar having to backtrack on real beer might suggest the problem was with the beer, i will whisper to you the real reasons after the fact.  (i won't be party to spreading rumors before).  if you predicted failure, yes, you would have been right, but for not the right reasons.

on a tangent, the brian's ivy hall folks who pour bud and bud light upstairs in their club have put in an awesome array of taps slated to include lots and lots of the good stuff in finn's pub downstairs, and it'll be great to see good management succeed both ways.  then we can all meet there to agree to disagree. and, seriously, come on down to major's tonight and enjoy a game and whatever your preference in beer, or otherwise, and tell me all about it.

sabotage

considering the almost six and a half years i have been typing in semi-public, i've known for some time that i've gradually graduated from the introspective fumblings of a semi-self-obsessed navel-gazer (it's a medically documented divorce side-effect, and if you don't believe me, grab a copy of the apa's dsm-iv and look me up) to the outward ramblings of a semi-self-satisfied know-it-all.  neither are very pretty, though i suppose the good news is that nobody has to read it, so there will always be that excuse upon which to fall back at my trial...

so, letting the ever-fascinating world of sports, bars, music and politics go for just a little bit, let me tell me how much i'm blown away this holiday season by the simple and supreme human truth, that we are, indeed, our own single and worst enemies.  there is nothing so clear to me this morning than the ubiquity of human self-sabotage.  (i was gonna be snarky and use one of any number of names from current headlines to illustrate the point, but that's hardly necessary, now is it).

ok, i lied--just a little bar and music talk for a sec:  i was out the other night (quelle surprise) and a friend of mine who is ALWAYS cranky and complaining about the forces of the universe arrayed and having open season against him, tried to, with a straight face no less, tell me and those assembled around how much that he's a very positive person.  (he was at the time complaining about the quality of the music which was causing literally the entire room to get up and dance which, to his eye, means it's got to be crap, but let's not digress too much).  you may know the type--someone who may have a surfeit of tattoos and piercings but still rails at the friction such causes among the un-tatted-or-pierced, or someone whose car may be literally falling apart on the street with expired stickers and all sorts of etc. while they nevertheless rail at the friction such causes among the local constabulary when they accidentally run a stop sign or whatnot, or everyone whose exes are ALL crazy, (common denominator???), or the ones whose facebook status updates read like a litany of everything that's inconvenient in the world to them.  (no joke, on my list this morning is one from a friend who is ALWAYS grousing at the appearance of their neighbor on the one side's yard now complaining that a fleet of arborists have descended on the neighbor on the other side's yard to clean it up).

back to our original story, i tried to suggest perhaps less than perfect positivity on his part, and, i kid you not, he called me an asshole.  (the fact that he's right does not invalidate the irony).  mr sunshine upon a little grit in his gears went straight to personal insults and an argument.  i am gonna have to start carrying a pocket mirror for sharing.

we are all our own worst enemies.  we are all phd's in the science of self-sabotage.

chance in any moment to be happy?  conclude the music insufferable (though don't leave by any means) and your conversation mates to all be jerks.

i could go on...

addictions, of course, are easy targets in this discussion.  i joke a lot about "high functioning" about myself, and i know there but for the proverbial grace go i, but, seriously, there but for the proverbial grace go we all.  except, like all exes being crazy, at some point it's fair to think that reasonable people might take some notice of the pattern of their lives, and some distinction might be fair to make why some folks seem to find ways to have the rent or the mortgage or the car insurance or the tax money or the you-name-it in time and on time to keep life's many wolves at bay, while so many others never seem to quite, and if you have time to linger over a drink, they'll tell you ALL about all the reasons why not that don't have to do with them drinking.  (or dropping their paycheck on the lotto, or fill in your obsessive compulsion here).

and i hope you know when i say this i say it in all compassion for those against whom life surely does throw thunderbolts and curve balls, and who find themselves crushed beneath the weight of the world with few options to get out from under.

but at some point, for at least some, the time arrives when it can't all be explained away as karmic arbitrage, and you know the real reason has got to be none other than persistent and consistent self-sabotage.

you can't make 'em put down their next drink any more than you can make 'em put down their next cigarette, keno slip or cupcake.  (blackly funniest of all, you can't even make 'em stop ridiculing others about their favored forms of self-sabotage, either--if i only had a nickel for every barely making it person focused on criticizing the not making it people i could retire today...)  to these folks, everyone else is the problem, and, ultimately, the reason they can't and won't be happy.

the light has been slowly going on for me for years, but today it's on full force.

i am happy.  i've worked hard to be.  it's not easy, right up until it is.  but nobody can hear it when the trick is explained.  (even the dalai lama hasn't solved that one yet).

so all i can think about this morning is how the first thing they teach you in red cross lifeguard training is to avoid becoming drowned by the person or persons you are hoping to save.

i'm still not sure i have the answer to that koan yet, but i'm thinking hard on it...  that part isn't ever easy.

to all my non-libertarian lefty nay-saying friends

i got into a bit of a discussion the other day following a few logical bread crumbs from the patrick leahy thing, and one of my best-intended lefty friends wound up, as so many often do, pissing on any potential libertarian parade by pulling out the "almighty market forces run amok" argument, and decrying the dire threat of "social darwinism" against our most vulnerable.

this is the ignorant stuff that profoundly pisses me off.  do people not think beyond their own in-the-air noses???

i am a libertarian in philosophy, AND I AM FOR EFFECTIVE GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT.

i am a libertarian in philosophy, AND I AM FOR EFFECTIVE GOVERNMENT SOCIAL PROGRAMS AND PROTECTIONS.

the effective word above is "effective", and this is where the lefties stop listening, and the logical tragedy occurs.

take the EPA.  we are all better off for it cracking down on corporate polluters.  in fact, we'd all be better better off for it if they cracked down HARDER on corporate polluters.  i live RIGHT NEXT to a superfund site for which not one single finger has been lifted to address the known carcinogenic poisons permeating the ground.  i am ALL FOR doing more about it.

want to know what the EPA is on about these days while they're not doing enough to address these environmental scofflaws?  they're regulating gas can lids--you know, the little screw-top caps that sit on all those red plastic gas cans people use to ferry fuel back to their lawnmowers and hedge trimmers? yeah, those things. well, here's a bit overlong but extremely thorough analysis of the new EPA-mandated gas can lids that your and my tax dollars have paid to require:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhOCC2-R8fo.  and i'm willing to bet you a paycheck right here and right now that this is exactly why a 6 gallon plastic container lists at more than $20 at kmart.

yup, we pay millions in taxes so that our gas cans can cost double what they should AND SPILL MORE GAS THAN EVER.  (oh, and don't forget, EPA enforcement agents have just been issued hundreds of thousands of hollow point bullets, which are forbidden by the geneva convention, by the way, even for use in a war for chrissakes, just in case the police can't control the lid scofflaws).

it's all stupid.

but my lefty friends are all for more government because the environment isn't clean enough.  and they insist that a streamlined EPA will only allow "almighty market forces run amok".  and they refuse to read a newspaper or read a magazine to learn exactly what the EPA is actually up to.

"social darwinism"?

my good god, it even gets worse.

the department of housing and urban development, or HUD, is intended to protect our most vulnerable from the scourge of "social darwinism". let's stipulate here and now that there are too many people in this country lacking adequate shelter, and we need to house MORE of them, not live with the status quo.  so want to guess what HUD has been up to for the last 30 years?  have a quick read through this summary and educate yourself.  while you, all the lefties, and me have been sleeping, HUD has been spending YOUR TAX DOLLARS doing things like converting aircraft carriers into museums, and stealing vast sums from assistance budgets to reimburse executive travel.  (when andy cuomo was ASSISTANT secretary, one year his travel costs alone topped more than one million dollars).

you want a clean environment?  you want to house those most in need?

smarten up.  that same bureaucracy that's bankrupted us is working AGAINST your intentions.

we need to do better.  we ALL do.

why democrats suck part next

my previous (or next if you're reading in reverse blog order) post likely could have been entitled why republicans suck, presuming as i do that the hedge fund vultures killing our twinkies are all children of the mittster, but this one is absolutely on the democrats, and i'm pulling no punches about it.  all democrats are welcome to reply here and tell me where i have this one wrong.  (though i'll warn such democrats in advance not to say anything at all, since everything they say can and will be held against them, and we'll get to why straight away).

but first, a minor digression to point out the irony that the great green state of vermont has only one senator belonging to the supposedly "liberal", "green", and all those other bullshit modifiers, democrat party.  bernie sanders, bless his honest and sincere heart, is an independent.  patrick leahy, on the other hand, is a card carrying blue state blue blood blue baron of the left.  (or so he would have you and all potential voters believe).  AND, not only that, but the sunufabitch is chairman of the senate judiciary committee, where he finds it his place to try to craft "protections" for citizens on this brave new digital frontier.

yeah, right, and if you buy that, i'll sell you a bridge.


patrick leahy's version of "protections" is a wholesale capitulation to federal "law enforcement" any and just about all of our online data for just the asking.  no warrant required.

details of his recently submitted bill here:  http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57552225-38/senate-bill-rewrite-lets-feds-read-your-e-mail-without-warrants/

that's right.  if any one of 22 federal agencies (even the mine enforcement safety and health review commission) has a hard on for you, they can rifle off a subpoena and warrant-less-ly access all your online data (emails, photos, etc.) even if they are otherwise locked on private systems (e.g. university networks), and do it all without even that (or any subsequent court review) for just saying the magic words, "emergency situation".  they can even forbid whoever was running the system from which your private emails were rifled to tell you that they did it for a year.

merry christmas, america.

what i want to know is, where is the democrat outrage at this borderline fascist pissing on our constitution?  where is the party aggrieved by watergate and champion of the civil rights movement?

i'll tell you where they are--they're in the museum of national history, and long gone at that.

democrats today are indistinguishable from republicans.

my new aggregate term is "donkeyphant", as in, that donkeyphant, leahy, just sold you, me, and everyone else not interested in having their private lives perused at whim by the federal government, down the potomac river.

edited to add my confusion as to whether leahy is a gutless punk, a two-faced snake in the grass, or just a panderer, observing not even a full 24 hours after the cnet article was published, he recanted fully and now claims he won't support it.  http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57552687-38/leahy-scuttles-his-warrantless-e-mail-surveillance-bill/

dirty, dirty, dirty.

all the union's fault? really???

imagine you have the twinkie franchise in the united states.  imagine, even so, you can't figure out how to make money.  imagine you file for bankruptcy, get a free pass on $450 million in secured debt, (fully half of it forgiven, and the other half given back in a payment-in-kind loan), pocket a fresh $360 million in new secured loans, and, on top of all that, get over $100 million in annual wage concessions from your workers.

now imagine you're still too inept to make any money, and you are cornered into declaring bankruptcy again.

so this is somehow all the union's fault???

if a business can't be made to be viable, it can't be made to be viable.  people who work for their livings cannot be blamed for tiring of earning less so that somebody else can run off with hundreds of millions of capital and profits.

i'm calling bullshit on all the union-bashing rhetoric that refuses to account for the actual numbers of pennies on the dollar that silver point and monarch hedge funds paid for the debt that they finally tired of holding in favor of cashing out.  (not to mention the absence of detail on the capital profits and tax credits enjoyed for having their interest bought out in the refinancing).  i'm calling bullshit on the implication that business ineptitude is somehow the responsibility of workers to finance on the backs of ever-diminishing wages.

twinkies are dead, and likely finished by the shift in american dietary preferences.  someone, of course, will buy the recipe and brand out of the liquidation, and we'll still be able to eat them if we want.  but i wouldn't have wanted to go down with that ship as an employee any more than i would have wanted to go down with that ship as a lender.  so spare me the sanctimony that somehow pulling the plug on the debt is innocent, and refusing to give back additional hundreds of millions in wages is guilty.

monkey see monkey do

the us military tactic/strategy/policy of targeted assassination dates right back to the american revolutionary war, and timothy murphy's brilliant shot that felled british general simon fraser at the behest of american general daniel morgan during the battle of saratoga.  (murphy, with an 18th century piece and no scope whatsoever, could reliably hit a 7" target at 250 yards).  the english, of course, rather characterized it as an affront to "civilized" warfare, but it would seem that we're quite often on the cutting edge of these things and used to regularly pissing off the martial status quo.

trench warfare that was so deadly to both sides during the first world war?  the first large-scale development and deployment of the tactic was at petersburg, va during the american civil war.  (featuring 9 months of carnage across over 30 miles of entrenchments).  yeah, the maori's may have invented the tactic a few years before to hold off the english' superior firepower (and inflicted 45% casualty rates in the process--these were some bad-ass aboriginals) but, like we didn't invent the rifle, we sure knew what to do with one when an opportunistic military advantage was on offer.

these days we hardly rest on our victory laurels of having been the only nation on earth to have dropped an atomic weapon in anger (just to make sure we could compare and contrast gun-type fission weapons with implosion-type nuclear weapons we were actually compelled to drop two) so we are further perfecting various ways to rain hellfire from above.  (yes, that's a pun).  predator drones and targeted assassination have reached new pinnacles of perfection under our current military administration, (we don't even have to bother to determine if they're american citizens or even on american soil before taking them out as long as the commander in chief says that they're "terrorists", whatever that means), to the point where our acolytes and proteges around the world, to wit, the israelis these days, have taken advantage of the example to use our tech to take out their own little irritants as it pleases them.

watch the news unfold out of gaza.  palestinians are being assassinated at israeli will, and the recent murder of three israeli civilians by the woefully out-gunned hamas resistance will only hasten the witless carnage.  generally speaking, by historical measures, thousands of palestinian civilians are murdered for every dozen or so israelis, so given the further advantages of the latest weapon systems enjoyed by the one side, i'd put my money on much much more of the same before things quiet down again.

this while europe becomes engulfed in public protests over "austerity measures", which are really sops to bankers collected at the point of a gun by governments against their own people.  there will, of course, be craven spinning of this to imply it's "responsible" government against the lazy and shiftless, (did you catch mitt romney's continued whinging about the 47% the other day?), but that's not going to stop the rising tide.  (oh, did i mention melting glaciers have recently been determined to have caused 8" in ocean-level rise over the past few years, and likely to contribute another couple of feet in the next?)

my advice?

thank providence, your founding fathers, and the nra that your gun rights have been preserved to whatever extent they remain these days, and patronize your local gun shop at your earliest opportunity.  (after gaining the proper certifications of course).  hard times are ahead.

are so am not round i lost count...

the nhl and the nhlpa have each left the ny negotiation bunker in a huff, and it's all ended up just another failed round of he said she said, "are so" "am not" nonsense, and i can't even count the number of times now we've gone through this charade.  a friend of mine was talking yesterday about rumors heard lately that as early as december 1st they'd be skating again, and i had to stifle a grim guffaw at the naivete and pollyannaism of otherwise grown human being hockey fans.

nope, no date in sight on even when the two sides might talk to each other about talking to each other next.

i said it back in october, and i'll say it again.  i'm out for 2012/2013, and there is no negotiating with me on it.  i'm as dug in as gary bettman and donald fehr, and, unlike the two of them, actually in a position to be financially better off for sticking to my position than either of them or their constituencies.  (it's actually laugh out loud funny how stupid these owners sound saying that they can't afford to play a game that takes in billions and has returned them record profits over the course of the last collective bargaining agreement).

the riverhawks play unh at the tsongas on friday.  i can't wait.

reo pleadwagon

the begging for attention--any kind of attention--for the reo speedwagon show at the lowell memorial auditorium tonight has gone long past farce and is approaching pure comedic proportions.  this here is a musical (a term used loosely) nostalgia trip for the lamest of the musically lame, and my only question is whether to place it just slightly above or below that which was the collective summer yawn that was dennis deyoung (not even styx) at boardinghouse park.

have we really gone that far 'round the bend?

yeah, yeah, i know, 40 million records, a dozen or more songs in the top 40, and all that seventies hair, but, seriously?  that stuff was a pop pabulum joke even back in the day.  and, like the hair, it's really not nearly what even it used to be these days.

the punchline though, has to be the trivia question as to which act toured with styx and reo speedwagon this past summer, putting premonitive exclamation point to the electoral irrelevance of republicanism these days.  (the answer being ted nugent, and, yeah, i almost peed myself laughing when i saw the bill advertised earlier this year).

lowell is often the butt of unfortunate and unflattering jokes and other otherwise unfair commentary from all over eastern massachusetts.  we're backwards and anachronistic and clueless up here, dontcha know.  well, it's shows like these that prove it.  speedwagon?  seriously???

a few months back i went to see pat benatar at the lynn auditorium.  she rocked.  but the crowd was, shall we say, a bit long in the tooth for their own antics, and at many points completely unaware of just how far past cliche and caricature it had gone.  shamefully for pat, she did tour with speedwagon awhile back, and i'm guessing that was the first and last time she'll ever consider it.  there's talent, and then there's pabulum.  pat's got the former.  reo speedwagon is the epitome of the latter.

and now lowell's got the stain, too.

please, make it stop!

fight the power

has it really been 23 years since public enemy smashed the last walls of my own fear and misunderstanding?  (and if you watch this video and do not see kindred spirits that are with you and not against you, then you need to listen more closely to the break:  don't believe the hype).

cranking as i have been on party polemics i mean politics, i got distracted this morning by a friend's proud acquisition of some particularly coveted concert tickets via a livenation iphone app once it became clear that none were available via more traditional (i.e. ticketmaster) channels.

fight the power.

livenation is evil.  they and clearchannel (all one and the same beast) dodged the judge's gavel on their monopoly on the ironically paradoxical legal dodge that leverages the sheer impossibility to successfully define music by any single genre.  (the plaintiffs had no idea that calling it "rock music" was going to be their undoing in the end).  they have legally-confirmed license to steal from all of us, and they have been exploiting that advantage with a vengeance ever since.

if you are an artist, and you want to play in a reasonably lucrative venue, you have to sign on with livenation because they have a monopoly on them.  if you are a venue, and you want to stage reasonably popular i.e. lucrative artists, you have to sign on with livenation because they have a monopoly on them.  if you are a music fan who doesn't like it, you are legally constrained from seeing any such artists within hundreds of miles of those livenation venues, (draw the circles sometime--there is hardly anywhere in this country with actual people in it where you can escape being beneath the black cone of legally-enforced livenation music silence), and your only other option is paying service fees and ticketing fees and venue fees and artist fees on top of the price of your ticket, and liking it.  if you are a musician who doesn't like it, you are legally constrained from performing anywhere with a decent stage and sound system because livenation and their media monopoly, clearchannel, controls the vast majority of them, and don't think you can for even an instant promote yourself over any media, from radio to tv to billboards, because clearchannel owns almost all of those, too.

which together with the politics has me marveling that, unlike all the other old people i know, i'm getting MORE extreme in my beliefs and my ways rather than less as i get older, but the good news is that i feel great about this because it proves to me that i'm alive, and that it's just the falling away of fear that otherwise grips everyone else as they accumulate "stuff" and then cower in terror that it's all being taken away.  (you should read the "buying guns and gold" stuff some of my republican friends are putting out there these days).

fight the power.

rock and roll will never die.

haley jane and the primates are playing at ward 8 this weekend.

life is good.

childishness

being the parent of three now nearly-grown children, i have had ample opportunity to attempt to legislate morality.  my experience-learned rule of thumb whenever dealing with children is that if any one of them is happy with an outcome of an adjudicated dispute, then the fault can only possibly be with the adjudication.  (if i could send all three of them away disappointed, i knew i had achieved the proper solomon-esque levels of judgment).

so it is that i find the squabbles between alternate ends of the donkeyphant highly amusing.  like kids fighting over the last piece of halloween candy, the only time they can ever agree is when insisting that they and only they are the ones entitled to have it all to themselves.  however, since handing that last indivisible piece (for they will insist to you that milky ways are NOT bifurcate-able) to either one cannot possibly resolve the disagreement, (leaving as it will one child smugly and braggadiocially delighted, and the other bitterly resentful of the entire world and everything in it), the only fair thing left to do is to confiscate.

at which point, the wailing cries of unfairness go up in unison.

i know my children hate me for it, and will hate me for it forever, but i could never keep myself from laughing once it got to that point.

so it is that i find the bipartisan teeth-gnashing about the "naivete" of libertarianism to be so highly amusing.  setting aside for a moment how profoundly disturbing it is that both sides might be so adamantly disrespectful and opposed to--gasp--citizens rights being actually respected, the bottom line is that when the candy of a person's vote no longer appears possible to be coerced, possessed and exploited, the caster of that vote can only be conceived by the major party apparatchiks to be as a child themselves, too out of touch with political reality to be respected in the least, and only to be berated, ridiculed and cast out from the inner circle of political savants.

republicans all seem to be asking themselves why they lost this week, and to a man and a woman they are pathologically unable to conceive that it might be because they were childishly insistent on the candy of legislated morality.  ("ban all abortions, even when mothers die bearing their rapists' children!!!".  "gays are subhuman and should feel lucky not to be arrested for their crime of loving another human being not on the party accepted list".  etc.)  democrats, on the other hand, and no less cluelessly, are congratulating themselves for a 50.2% "landslide" thus "proving" to themselves that rejection and repudiation of the values of 49.8% of the electorate is their highest calling.  ("if i pull a living human being only halfway out of a woman's vagina and kill it, that's not murder, that's 'choice'!  "i don't care what you believe, i need to confiscate your money to pay for everything you abhor", etc.)

yet, suggest you accept neither, and you're immediately beset by both children as "naive" and "childish" and unfit to decide the future of this once-great nation.

i know it's ok, because i'm laughing at all of them.  nope, my candidate didn't have the proverbial snowball's chance.  nearly 100% of the electorate (all but 1% by the latest tally) believes adamantly that personal liberty is anathema to good government, and limiting that government only aids terrorists and criminals.

sad, really.

oh well.  my nra sticker and my aclu stickers still get along on my ukulele case.  at least there's that...

curious

i know two extreme partisans, one for the democrats, and the other for the republicans.  they both ridicule libertarianism as childish in almost EXACTLY the same words.

must be something more to it than i realized.

anti

i've been accused of being "anti-christian" in some comments elsewhere, so i've decided to stir the pot (no, not a question 3 pun) a bit.

this is either "exibit A" for my thus accused anti-christian bias, or one of the funnier things that's been distributed on the internet in a long time.  you can tell me.  i can take it.

i'm not sure if the city apartment dwellers will get the joke as easily, but anyone living in or who has lived in a nice suburban enclave anytime in their lives has undoubtedly been visited in their time by a pair of white guys in dark, conservatively cut suits wishing to carry on a conversation exactly similar to the above, with just the dogma names changed to implicate the guilty.  religious zealots will, of course, think i'm poking fun at their religion when i'm really only attempting to poke fun at them and a bunch of other people.  (the fact that i'm also poking fun at the bizarre fervor of "science" zealots at the same time will, of course, be lost on the religious folk, since, of course, it IS always about "faith", isn't it...)

but i ask you:  what, really, is the dogmatic distinction between "faiths" of any kind--scientific or otherwise?  is there any difference between newton's principia and "the watchtower"?  really?

back in the 18th century, because newton's gravity could not be seen, and there was no "contact" between objects to impel motion, his principia was regarded as a wholly philosophical, and, hence, religious text.  (or anti-religious, for the thin-skinned and paranoid).  simply put, those disinclined to "believe" it felt entirely free to not do so, and were not castigated or stigmatized for such.  and, not so ironically, given einstein's subsequent update to our understanding, those disinclined disbelievers were actually RIGHT--though for entirely wrong reasons, but let's not quibble.

newton turned galileo's "uniform" gravity on its ear, not by disproving it, but by showing it to be a limit case of a broader understanding of inverse-square newtonian gravity.  such understanding, in turn, was shown to be absent of a broader understanding of relativity, and since einstein's heyday we've learned that his theory, too, is short of a full explanation.  in fact, each and every "scientific" explanation of natural laws (not natural law--we can save the REAL religious discussion for another time) has been successively and decisively proved to be bogus.

does this deter "science"?  NO!  it encourages them.  each and every scientist wants to be the next one to discover the data that "proves" an improved understanding.  and nobody makes fun of or disrespects those who went before and did the best they could with the materials they had on hand.

so why is this any different than the way religious zealots cling to their "holy" books?

many would say, and they would be wrong, that the entire problem with "religion" is that it does not allow for progressive update to its tenets, and that "science" somehow is thus superior.  (hence the cartooning and lampooning).  yet, i'll tell you when i cited "revised standard version" when bible quoting the other day, i was doing so in full respect that my other grandfather's king james was quite different in many important respects, and both of such are unique from translations both before and since.  religion is no less fluid and evolutionary as "science", and people who mistake that fact are making a huge one.  maybe it appears to move more slowly, but glaciers get where they are going as sure as photons, and what, in the end, really, matters about the speed of progress, as long as progress is being made?

dogmatists will swear that *their* book is infallible.  yet they also ignore that their book might have been written in dead languages long since forgotten, translated to other foreign languages via historical idioms that neither survive to this day nor make any modern sense at all, translated yet again to "english", again via historical idioms that neither survive to this day nor make any modern sense at all, and remain as a testament (ok, that was a pun) to the bizarre devotion humans have to "truth" regardless of complete evidence to the contrary, and the inexorable march of everything to the sea of enlightenment.

and, YES, this is as applicable to "science" as any other religion.

the bible tells me the way to calculate the price i should recieve for my daughter should i prefer to sell her rather than endure any more of her disrespect.  (randy newman said it best:  i even love my teenage daughter--there's no accounting for it).  for tradition's sake such passages are not redacted or deleted, but everyone these days, religiously zealous or not, knows to ignore them except perhaps to use in reminder to the religiously zealous that their "good book" is FULL of all sorts of extremely bad bullshit, and citing one passage to insist on something proves only that the citer is full of such bullshit.

i guess this all makes me a bad christian, huh.

except i really do buy into marvin gaye's better example:  only love can conquer hate.  turning the other cheek is really the right way.  (it's not only brilliant, but it's a brilliant example to follow in leading one's life).  i happily ignore the admonition to fight fire with fire and take eyes for eyes, and i feel no contradiction in my life to do so.  because i know the "good book" is as flawed as anything else written by man (for it was indeed written by men, for one primary reason it's got a bullshit problem, but let's not digress) and i don't care.

but i do care that some people believe both that their shit don't stink, and that they're entitled to rub it in the faces of everybody on the planet who disagrees.

that ain't love.  that ain't even christian by my belief in the concept.  (render unto caesar and all that).

"the" truth won't ever set anyone free, whether it's "truth" from an anachronistic and proved-wrong piece of "science" or  an anachronistic and proved-wrong pice of "religious" writing.  we're all here to do the best we can for our selves and our world.  we were endowed with a wonderful sense of right and wrong, (it's a stunning piece of either A) evolutionary or B) god-endowed brain wiring, and i think at least upon that we whould all be able to agree), and we are now sentenced to a lifetime of compromising our own personal and private understandings of such with the corresponding sense contained in each and every one of our fellow human beings.  (the only thing i will insist that is wrong with any opinion is when it is "believed" on the sole basis that somebody else told them to believe so).

my country, to change the subject, is founded on the notion that i'm free to pursue happiness and my own thoughts according to my own beliefs.  it's also, coincidentally, under attack by those on both sides who will insist that "their" book be the one to rewrite the rules--both religious and scientific.

both would be wrong.  both ARE wrong.

we are people of faith, and we are people of science, which is really just being people of faith of a different kind, and and we are people of so many more things that it would be impossible to list them all.

but too many of us will tell the rest that "we only need fifteen minutes of your time" and the ideological wrestling match to the death begins...

LOL

(i laugh because it is both funny, and true, which is, as we all know, why things are funny).

lighten up, people.  live.  let live.  defend others' right to live as they choose, so that you will be guaranteed your own.  remember niemoller.  and never, EVER, put your faith in something somebody else wrote.  even if that somebody else is yourself.  there's a better, broader and more complete truth out there, and some day we'll all be closer to it than we are today, you included.  and that'll be good for all of us.

edited to add attribution to http://abstrusegoose.com/ and attempt to link it via the photo.  they're funny.  you should check 'em out from time to time.

irony

you folks all know my disgust and frustration (i decided this week to cancel my sun subscription because of it and things like it) with the loco-emotive's ceaseless, tiresome, monotonous, dog-with-a-rag bullshit negativity about all things 1) patrick, 2) obama and 3) democrat, in that order.  if you were to do a statistical analysis, i'm willing to be there isn't one column in 10 that doesn't take a stupid and pointless swipe at one or all three.  sayonara, sun.

but, i have to say, the irony is not lost on me that some of the sun's most frustrated detractors over at dick howe's site are just as ceaseless, tiresome, monotonous and dog-with-a-rag and bullshit-ly positivite about all things kennedy.  (today's post is a great case in point).

yeah, i get it.  johnny was a pretty important guy, and a local hero.  but, seriously, we can no longer ever say "we hardly knew ye", because we're being fed a constant diet of "this day in kennedy history", and though there may be kids growing up that might benefit from some perspective. there's absolutely no point in beating that dead president like a rented mule or an april rug.

enough?

(good news being that the blog thing is for free, and far more worthwhile in other posts than the sun ever these days achieves in its dearth of local coverage among the AP re-prints).

sorry, bad week.  just had to rant about something.

carry on.

if you can't say anything nice...

i called this one the moment the mittster put his foot in it with ryan as his running mate.  turning the election into a referendum on social issues sure got people excited, but it entrenched the clearly-drawn battle lines of a losing campaign, (mccain's), and really left the election nowhere to go but barry.  (the yahoo blog, the signal, correctly called 50 out of 50 results LAST FEBRUARY, and if florida tips romney, they'll be a perfect 51 for 51).  most americans want true freedom, (note the states legalizing gay marriage, recreational marijuana, etc.), not just the jingoistic and mean-spirited kind, and they don't want economic prescriptions that leave all our money offshore in guys like the mittster's bank accounts.  even a good number of the folks who hate obama with a passion (you saw them everywhere) aren't so far away on many of those issues, so much as sick and tired and fed up with the way power gets misused around here.  the rest?  well, they like fascism so long as it's THEIR flavor of fascism, and there's no pleasing them short of locking the rest of us up for believing in that "pursuit of happiness" thing our founders so whimsically and brilliantly put at the top of our Declaration of Independence.

so what i want to know is, observing the veritable flood of unseemly electoral end zone celebrations being so unsportsmanlikely made in the vanquished's faces--do any of the unfoundedly self-congratulatorial lefties out there remember 2004???

in 2004, dubya squeaked one out and immediately crowed about a "mandate" that was nowhere in the election results.  surely, the bedrock foundation of barry's victory yesterday was just as solid then as it remains now, but dubya nevertheless went patriot act on our asses, and furthering that bill of rights insult to warring injury, created the spending architecture that barry has left unchanged that has bankrupted us in that process.

so now it is in 2012 that barry has taken his 50.2% of the electorate and his supporters are just as confident in a "mandate" to run roughshod over the feelings and resolutely held sensibilities of the other side.  the lefties are even further emboldened by their marijuana and gay marriage victories to feel like their 0.2% somehow means more than it ever possibly can.

it's a mistake.

the bedrock foundation of the conservative backlash is oh so clearly in place, and you know you know tons of romney supporters (even here in massachusetts they are everywhere) who cannot wait to rub a reverse pendulum swing right back into your faces.  THINK ABOUT IT.  that pending backlash is so strong that these people who make up a hair's breadth short of a majority even convinced themselves they could support MITT ROMNEY, one of the most flip-flopping, panderingly opportunistic and crass politicians who have ever run for any office anywhere, let alone our highest office in the land.  the guy CAME RIGHT OUT AND SAID he didn't give a shit about 47% of america.  HE SAID IT.

if there's one thing you know mitt meant this entire campaign of contradicting himself at every turn, it was that.  "just get me elected".  that's all mitt really wanted to say to us.

but back to the point:  this is NOT a mandate.  this is a highly predictable (go read the signal's rationale from last february) outcome of firmly-entrenched battle lines that are no less in place this morning as they were last night.  our democrat and republican politicians are locked in an endless struggle to remain our only two choices so that nothing of substance is ever easily (if ever) accomplished.

gay rights?  we get "don't ask don't tell".  civil liberties?  we get rulings like the one the other day that police need no warrant to place hidden cameras ON PRIVATE PROPERTY.  budget sensibility?  we get headlines like "smallest government spender since eisenhower" to describe an administration that has actually spent the most in national history--only the rate of increase is smallest since eisenhower.  in short, NOBODY is getting what they want, let alone what is right.  not the lefties, and certainly not the righties.

and so we remain divided.

please.  PLEASE.  if you are a lefty with the urge to feel vindicated, take a real long hard look at the numbers over the past 12 years.  there are some extremely thoughtful and heart-sick americans who aren't comfortable with things this way.  they didn't get "convinced" or their minds changed last night.  if anything, they became just that much more bitter and resentful and motivated to push things back the other way.

it's not a mandate.

it's just the next few bars of taps.

the only way out of this mess is to reach back across the divide, and to ask the person wearing the other color political badge what you can do to better understand their feelings and their position, and find some common ground on which to build consensus, not bulldoze their morality.  because just as surely as you may feel that marriage is something for everyone, they feel that it's something in need of better respect.  WE ALL AGREE ON THAT PART.  respect is good.

so lets find a way to build a country on the parts of everything that we share in common.  let's find a way to tell barry to shut up anytime that M word (mandate) tempts him.  it's not a mandate.

it's just the next few bars of taps.  and you can ask the dubya supporters how that feels when the pendulum swings back.  because you know it always does.

hate isn't the only thing only love can conquer

first of all, as is never often enough, props to marvin gaye for paraphrasing a better example:  only love can conquer hate.

second of all, it seems worthwhile to me today to reflect that hate isn't the only thing only love can conquer.

a bit of a discussion (more like a couple of posts and my usual inability to remain silent) is going on over at the right side of lowell on the subject of massachusetts' ballot question 3, and the larger subject of what should, if anything, be done about drug abuse in our society.  as is often the case, arguments devolve to center around the subject of illegality (and via consequence incarceration), and our ballot question is no improvement.  (it is, after all, aimed squarely at the legality of certain quantities of certain drugs for certain uses).  cliff cites some other learned opinions in his posts which, likewise, center around the subject of illegality (and via consequence incarceration).

is this the best we can come up with???  (apologies to churchill and everyone else about the trailing preposition).

folks a bit younger than i may not recall a time as i can so clearly recall when drunk driving was no big deal.  (and even i am given to understand that it was even less of a deal in generations before mine).  i am not proud to tell you that i have driven while drunk in my lifetime many many years ago, but i will offer by way of an explanation that, though it was technically illegal then as it is now, there really was little stigma attached to it at the time.  (it's truly frightening to consider how many people were freely doing it).  folks cracked up their cars and killed people just as they do today.  but nobody thought much of it.

today, drunk driving is still a problem.  it's still illegal, and the penalties are even far stiffer.  but the "last mile" against this scourge is not to be won by illegality, as frequent stories in the lowell sun would attest, covering as they do offenders caught for the 6th, 7th, 8th and further times driving while intoxicated.  the reason drunk driving has turned 180 degrees in my lifetime, from something so many people did without thinking, to something that far fewer people do, is that we've focused on the reasons why you shouldn't, not on the consequences.

my kids can tell you how alcohol impairs both your judgment and your reaction times, and they will, because they are actively against drunk driving in a way i was never at their age.  they naturally get the concept of "designated drivers" and simply staying sober in a way i never did at their age.  and they intuitively understand that chasing drunk people after they are drunk is the proverbial lock on the barn door after the horse is running free.

i think about this when people tell me how important it is that all drugs remain illegal.  i think to myself how "illegal" doesn't stop drunk drivers, and i think out loud whenever and to whomever i can that the real way to reduce drug use, just as it is that the real way to reduce drunk driving, is to educate people and then treat those who have the biggest trouble with it.  imagine how much money would be available for education and treatment programs if we stopped going to "war" against this problem, and started respecting it for what it is, and those who are afflicted by it for who they are--kindly, and with compassion.

people don't want to be drug addicts.  let's help them not be.  let's not be so stupid and small-minded that arresting them and incarcerating them and pretending that does one damn bit of good does one damn bit of good.  let's teach our children well.  let's embrace those who have problems.  let's help them solve those problems.

let's not throw a higher percentage of our fellow americans into prison for no better reason than we're too lazy and small-minded to figure out how to actually solve this problem, instead of punting it into our prison system which we, by the way, cannot afford.

please.

YHGTBFKM

or, as people in lower manhattan and elsewhere around the ny and jersey coastlines might be overheard to be saying today as they were yesterday:  you have got to be fucking kidding me.

the organizers of the nyc marathon have been testy and defensive about the continued employment of their two massive power generators in central park (the third backup unit, to add insult to injury, isn't even being bothered to be run right now) to keep their PR tent running smoothly, but they have their heads shoved so far up their entitled and prodigious ass holes that there is no getting them back to listen to reason.  listen to mary wittenburg, head of the marathon organization:  "this isn’t about running. this is about helping the city. we’re dedicating this race to the lives that were lost and helping the city recover. we want to raise money and awareness.”

yeah?  so the generators that could be providing power to as many as 400 flood ravaged homes on staten island or elsewhere (the generators in question have a combined capacity of over 800KW) NEED to be reserved for race PR days before the damn thing is even set to start?

so that the 8000 race volunteers can be handing out water bottles to out-of-town dilettantes taking a quick jogging tour of the area instead of those RIGHT THERE IN LOWER MANHATTAN that have no water to live on whatsoever?

i like the idea that runners could be employed jogging up and down the stairs of those highrise apartments in lower manhattan without water or power so that elderly residents with no way to provide for themselves might be resupplied.  (some are as high as 80 stories).  in fact, i like ALL the ideas that repurpose resources and manpower from entertainment to relief:  move those generators.  mobilize those volunteers.  do something to "dedicate this race to the lives that were lost and helping the city recover".  don't be a putz.  don't be a colossal asshole.  don't be the jerk that you are working so hard to be, and stain the race forever with the shame of association.

(if you're interested in more background, here's something from the ny post, and here's something from the huffington post on the subject).

but not all is lost as far as humanity is concerned.  the green mountain power company in vermont spent their first 48 hours restoring power to each and every one of their 48,000 customers who lost it during the storm, and then every moment since mustering and mobilizing their resources to send to CT and beyond to help those less fortunate.   one of my favorite images of the effort:

 
at least some people still get it.   vermont has always rocked.  they still do.