The Wizard Belt Project

Recent Youtube Faves

2009-06-03T10:05:00.000-07:00

Jethro Tull - Songs from the Wood live
Jethro Tull rock like basically no one else. This is one of their coolest songs. And as is customary, Ian Anderson just completely destroys on the flute. Just look at him flounce about like a crazy pixie man.

Altan Urag - Khokh Tolboton
(Адтан Ураг - Хох Толботон)
Mongolian folk rock. This song is from the soundtrack from Mongol, the bitchin' Genghis Khan movie. I've always wanted to start a metal band with a throat singer as the lead vocalist. These guys are the closest I've heard, not counting bands who use throat sing as a background sound.

Natalie MacMaster at TED
I've only recently become aware of Cape Breton music. It 's a very interesting blend of Celtic and CanAmerican folk styles. A lot of very cool rhythms, and very shredding fiddle styles. I'm interested to hear more.

Mae Pobl yn Gallu Dod i Gasgliadau Twp -- Now in Welsh!

2009-05-29T12:42:00.000-07:00

[I'm getting better at the Welsh thing, I think, so I decided to translate a recent post. If you happen to be more proficient in Welsh than I, let me know how this could be better! Original is here.]

Mae Andrew Stuttaford o Secular Right yn ymarwar y bwnc o pam maen rhieni ynfynych anffyddiol codi blant crefyddol (er mae e dim yn dyfynnu'r dalmau i brofi mor aml mae hwn yn digwydd). Tra mae e'n ymosod dynion gwelltynol rhyddfrydol, maen a'n synied fel mae'r hynt dim ond fel maen pobl dod i grefydd yn trwy arweiniad rheiniol, mae e'n atalnodi'r faith, amlwg i fe, fel mae crefydd yn ein cymysg genynol; fel "mae ei'r hynt datblygodd ein rhywogaeth." Achos, mae pob o ddeutu ni cyn pobl yn o ein cyndadau, a dan pob o ni'n codi cyn meudwyaid, mae sawl yn byw yn ynysoedd neilltuedig yn yr Gefnor yr Arctig.

Mae Stuttaford yn awygrymu fel mae'r hynt i godi blant ynffyddiol yn i godi blant crefyddol (ydy.). Os hoffoch chi'n hynnw, hoffech chi'n FAWR yr fannod nesaf. Mae ei'r fannod pan mae e'n tafodi anffyddiwr llegach, rhyddfrydol, oblegid ei cred fel mae anffyddwyr dylu yn cael dull i apelio i'r eisiau ysbrydol fel mae ein gwahoddwr o "Secular Right" wedi haeru yn barod dan ni dim yn osgoi.

Yn y ddiwedd, mae'r oddau Stuttaford yn anodd taran i ganfod. Mae ei'n amlwg fel mae e'n tybio fel mae crefydd yn gymhelliad anianol ac anochel fel dan ni'n raid yn heddychu, ond mae ei awgrym unig i ddiddyfnu hyn dim yn rhesymol; mae ei'n mwy dull i hyfforddi oddi hi. Ond sut aml ydyymgeisiadau i hyfforddi pobl oddi rhwymau genynol yn lwydiannus? Yna, pan mae e'n cyflwyno â awgrym o ysbrydolrwydd anffyddiwr cyn hynt i ddofi ein tuedd cynhenid am pethau goruwch naturiol - rhywbeth a canlyn yn wir gan hyn honiad chwerthinllyd - mae e'n gwrthod ei yn barod oblegid mae e'n trosodd y raid am ffon fagl nefol. Yn hon enghraifft, synnai neb dim os roedd Stuttaford yn ysgafala o raid i fwyta unwaith neu dwywaith beunydd hefyd.

Mayhem at the Cinema

2009-05-22T08:36:00.000-07:00

There is going to be a movie made about the story of Varg Vikernes and the band Mayhem. It's a story about murder, Satanism, arson, and various forms of insanity in a repressed, depressed, rather cold country (Norway was not always the same-sex-marrying smile factory it is today). It is apparently going to be at least a little based on the totally awesome book, Lords of Chaos, and going to be directed by Sion Sono, who previously made Suicide Club. Not a bad sign.

On the other hand, the film's American producers have determined that it is going to be "a story of youth and youthful energy," and it is going to "fall under the teen film category." One of the most twisted stories in musical history is going to be turned into some American Pie-ed version of Rebel Without a Cause.

And to boot, Varg Vikernes, crazy insane arsonist and murderer, is going to be played by Jackson Rathbone, star of Twilight.

Let me re-emphasize this. The famed neo-nazi neo-pagan erstwhile-Satanist crackpot producer of amazing atmospheric black metal:

is going to be played by the boy who gives the best kisses!

For the record, it's very possible that the film is still salvageable. Sono is clearly a good director and to be fair I have not actually watched Rathbone's acting. That said, I know the story very well, and like many metalheads, I'm sure, I have thought about this as a potential movie. In my head, though, it was always a story about Dead (Per Yngve Ohlin, Mayhem's singer, committed suicide). He seemed to be insane in a much more endearing way than Vikernes. For that matter, it could be a story of comparative insanity. Put the messiah-complex story of Varg next to the tragic, inward, dark soul moping of Dead, throw in the histrionic ambitiousness of Øystein Aarseth (Euronymous, guitarist from Mayhem, killed by Varg), and you've got a movie that not only connects with teens' assorted neuroses, but can still keep the interest of an adult cinemaphile.

I'd like it a lot if they did this well.

International Events

2009-05-19T09:27:00.001-07:00

The civil war in Sri Lanka is supposedly over and done. At least, the LTTE is essentially vanquished, and the Sri Lankan government has declared victory. Given how ugly things got throughout the conflict, but especially in the last couple weeks, with the hospital bombings and things, I wonder at how effectively the Sinhalese government will be able to keep the Tamils from forming another serious rebel movement. That said, the fact that President Rajapaksa gave a victory speech in Tamil might be a good start.

In other international news, it would make me very happy if Obama told Netanyahu that his government is bad and he should feel bad.

Two of the Worst Conventions of Non-Metalheads Writing About Metal

2009-05-13T10:26:00.000-07:00

(1) Referring to any metal that wouldn't get played on an Active Rock station as either "death metal" or "speed metal."

Death metal is a pretty clearly defined subset of metal, but is more useful to the mainstream as an archetype of how ridiculous metal can be. This is helped by its memorably brazen name, and somewhat feeds into the whole metal will kill your teenage children idea. The fact that most of these people don't know about black metal or Varg Vikernes makes this slightly bizarre.

Speed metal is sort of like the word berry: what people think it means and what it actually means are almost completely unrelated. It's also sort of the opposite of berry. Berries are actually a much larger set of things that people are unaware of (which mostly exclude what we commonly call "berries"). Conversely, speed metal, inasmuch as it refers to anything specific at all, is a very narrow grouping of 80s bands like Annihilator and the first couple Helloween recordings. It's basically thrash without any punk elements. But it gets used to refer to just about anything.

(Notably, in the example linked above, the metal referred to as "speed" is actually pretty slow and grooved. And actually it's pretty much numetal.)

Recommended fix: Just call it "metal" and you'll probably be right.

(2) Using Metallica as the canonical and universally accepted paramount of quality metal.

Metallica are a thrash band from the 80s. They put out two good albums, then they put out two great albums, then they put out garbage for about a decade and a half, then they put out another pretty good album. Their first great album was essentially an improvement of the style on their first two good albums, and their second great album was a bit more experimental. It was also mis-produced almost into the grave. They are actually remembered best by most people for their first bad album.

Now, I don't expect mainstream pundits to go around talking about how their favorite metal band of all time is Bathory, or how revolutionary the first couple Celtic Frost albums were. But the thing is, there are several other bands that everyone has heard of who are better than Metallica, and even more agreed-upon both within and without the metal community.

Recommended fix: Black Sabbath or Iron Maiden. Show me one person who likes metal and does not like the first six Sabbath albums, and I'll show you a liar.

Alas, Poor NPR

2009-05-12T06:53:00.000-07:00

Hey, NPR programming directors. Shit is happening in the world. Do we really need to hear the same culturally tone-deaf commentaries about how horrid Twitter and Facebook are, and how they strip our privacy (you know, because they are forced and all), and how Twitter is basically the same as a blog? You guys are now only mildly less annoying than the sound of my alarm buzzing, or the static between used frequencies.

Joe the Plumber: Don't Lay No Pipes

2009-05-06T12:59:00.001-07:00

Samuel "Jose El Fontanero" Whatsaburger, on the subject of gaybuggery:

"People don't understand the dictionary--it's called queer. Queer means strange and unusual. It's not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that."

Despite this mindset, JtP apparently no longer feels that the Republican Party represents his beliefs.

People Can Come to Some Silly Conclusions

2009-05-05T18:22:00.001-07:00

Andrew Stuttaford at Secular Right discusses the question of why nonreligious parents often raise religious children (though of course no numbers are cited here to define what HOW often this happens). While sticking some needles in some "left-liberal" straw men who think that the only way people come to religion is by through parental guidance, he points out the apparently obvious fact that religion is in our genetic makeup, that "[I]t’s the way our species has evolved." After all, everything about us as people is gotten from our progenitors, because we are all raised as hermits living in secluded Arctic Ocean islands.

Stattuford suggests that the best way to raise irreligious children is to raise religious children (yes.). Now, if you liked that, you'll REALLY like the follow up, wherein he berates a namby-pamby "left-liberal" nonbeliever for his belief that secularists should find a way to appeal to the metaphysical impulse which our Secular Right protagonist has already asserted is inborn and inescapable.

In the end, Stuttaford's overall point is actually somewhat difficult to discern. That he thinks religiosity is an inescapable natural urge that must be placated in some way is clear, though his only suggestion as a way to do this makes no real sense; it is more of a suggestion as to how to train people out of it (one is forced to assume the mechanism here is an urge to rebel). But how often are efforts to train people out of genetic imperatives successful? Then, when presented with a suggestion of secular spiritualism as a way to appease our inherited penchant for the supernatural - something which actually follows from this ridiculous assumption - he rejects it out of hand because he is above the need for any sort of ethereal crutch. In this case, one wouldn't be surprised if Stuttaford were also free of the inborn human desire to eat food a couple times a day.

As this was written by Andrew Stuttaford* and quoted by Andrew Sullivan, I'm afraid I'm going to have to start a policy of distrusting any non-religious conservative named Andrew.

*Update - Okay, Andrew Stuttaford is also a National Review Online writer. I suppose that says a lot about him.

English Is Ridiculous, Very Manyth Edition

2009-04-20T09:25:00.000-07:00

At the thought of learning a language like Finnish, or even Latin or German, many English speakers fret at the number of noun cases they would have to learn, fearing that this absurd facet will be impossible to wrap their heads around. But maybe this is a lot simpler than our convoluted way of doing things. In fact, the Finnish declension system, which basically does away with the need for prepositions, provides for much more streamlined phrasing, and cuts down greatly on the amount of vocabulary one needs to learn.

In English (Englantiksi), to express the concept of moving in the direction of a thing, there are numerous possibilities. Let's say I am talking about my home. I could say I am going: "to my home," "at my home," or "toward my home." Not too many things, right? But home is a special case. This provides two more options. I have an inflected/adverbial form, wherein I could go "homeward;" or I have a form where all inflection is assumed and the noun is used as an adverb, and I could just go "home."

In Finnish, among its several locative cases is the allative, which takes care of all of these options. Instead of going to my home, toward my home, or homeward, I go "kotille" (koti + lle)

So:

English
I'm going to my home
I'm going toward my home
I'm going at my home
I'm going homeward
I'm going home

Finnish
Minä menen minun kotille

The English language's lexical richness is a certainly virtue in many ways, but for my money it's hard to beat that Finnish efficiency. Of course, the alliteration helps too.

The Republic of Texas

2009-04-16T10:56:00.000-07:00

The Governor of Texas, while making assorted comments about how much he doesn't like taxes and loves tea or something, hinted that maybe it's time for Texas to secede again. Over at FP Passport they have some observations for what sort of policy implications this might have. Over here at the Wizard Belt, we have some thoughts on cultural implications:

In the name of a more distinct national identity, Texas embraces Hispanic elements of its culture; Spanish will be endorsed as co-national language

Every year, even more hip American kids go to SXSW, basking in the fact that they have attended a music festival in a developing nation

Alternately, there might be an exodus of much of the population of Austin to border states. Possible new locations for SXSW and hipsters in the southern Midwest in general: Roswell, NM; Oklahoma City, OK; Shreveport, LA

By the 2014 World Cup, Texas has a stronger national soccer team than the US (see #1)

George W. Bush becomes first* former US President with dual citizenship with a foreign nation

Joe Mathlete reconsiders a lot of things about his life

Lee Harvey Oswald becomes national folk hero

National seat of government moved to the Alamo

Some of these are admittedly unlikely. I won't say which ones.

*That I know of?

Acceptable: The New Good?

2009-03-21T10:32:00.000-07:00

Bud Light has recently started advertising their beer's remarkable "Drinkability." These assert that the best selling point of Bud Light is that if one tries to drink it, they will likely succeed. It is a liquid with very low toxicity. It's drinkable.

Pizza Hut also has a new slogan: "Now you're eating." Pizza Hut is selling their wares as being distinctly food. When you are shoveling mediocre pizza and pasta into your gullet, what you are doing is indeed eating. It can't be denied and Pizza Hut's marketing department is daring you to try.

See also: Ian's thoughts on the matter.

Emphasis Placement in Greek-Root Words: A Brutal Example

2009-03-21T08:42:00.000-07:00

It is a point of contention between me and most other metal listeners how to pronounce the name of German tech death super stars Necrophagist. The common pronunciation puts primary emphasis on the first syllable and uses a long /o/ in the second syllable and a long /a/ in the third ([nɛ´k-ɹow-fej-ʤIst]). I put primary emphasis on the second syllable, with a short /o/ and schwa-ed /a/ ([nɛk-ɹɔ´-fə-ʤIst]). I believe that standard English pronunciation of Greek-root words supports my pronunciation more than the popular one in this case.

Consider the following examples: psychologist, optometrist, demography, necropolis. All Greek rooted words, all four syllables with emphasis on the second. On the other hand, consider: biological, Necrophagia*. Five syllables, Greek roots, emphasis on the third syllable. The generalizable rule here seems to be in compound Greek-root words, primary emphasis is put on the syllable two before the end.

I think that the confusion here might come from the desire to separate the two root words by emphasis. Evidence in favor of this comes from (a) compound neologisms such as "biorhythm" where emphasis does separate the two roots and (b) the common English rendering of the Greek root for "study" as "-ology" rather than "-logy". That is, words with the root "logos" are conceived of as consisting of (X)+(ology) rather than (X)+(logy). Thus, it is assumed that the emphasis on the "ol" is a consequence of root separation rather than a matter of cadence.

So there, metalheads. That's why I pronounce it that way. Of course, Necrophagist are German, not English, so maybe none of this holds. I'll just leave you with a video of them totally kicking ass so everything is cool.

*Another metal band, though no one cares about these guys too much anymore

West to the East

2009-03-10T10:27:00.001-07:00

Last fall, I applied to four graduate programs in linguistics. I was rejected by three, accepted by one. The one was at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. In July I am moving to Honolulu.

I have never been to Hawaii before. In fact, Hawaii is much further west than I have ever been before. The idea of moving to a place where I've never even visited before is slightly terrifying. I don't know where I'm going to live or how I'm going to afford living there. I will have to take out a student loan, and I've never been more than a few hundred dollars in debt. Reggae and Spam are really popular in Honolulu. And people have planted seeds of fear in my head that I will constantly be beaten senseless by angry Samoans and Guamaniacs.

That said, it is also obviously extremely exciting and good and wonderful and nice. I'll get to study linguistics in a place where the native language isn't English, at a university that studies language preservation and native Esperantists. I will be doing something with my life that I have real interest in, in a place like none I've ever been before.

Anyway, for at least two years you guys will have a place to crash in Honolulu. In the meantime, I guess let's hang out here in Seattle.

JESUS: Just Easy Sounds for Universal Salvation

2009-03-05T08:38:00.000-08:00

Once there was a prog rock keyboardist and vocalist named Neal Morse. He played with Spock's Beard and Transatlantic, and he had a solo career. He had a somewhat gratingly poppy voice, but the music he played was usually very cool. Then one day he met someone new: Jesus. He was, as the kid's say, Born Again. And then he decided writing interesting prog rock is not his scene. He'd rather play aggressively bland adult contemporary about how Jesus loves you come to Jesus Jesus is the one true way O Lord.

Actually, truth told, most of his Post-Jesus stuff is still pretty decent, if less interesting than his previous works, but he put out one song, "Children of the Chosen," that is so very bad, and so very typical of modern Jesusmusic (and played so very often on the prog rock station I listen to), as to prove my point entirely.

My point is: what the hell is it about modern American Protestantism that invites such very shitty music? It's not exactly as if religious devotion never yielded impressive musical works, just ask Bach or Mozart or Ravi Shankar (or King Diamond for that matter).

My belief on the matter is it is a change among religious thinkers as to what the function of music should be in religion. If one looks at a society like Europe in ages past, where membership in a Christian institution (Protestant or Catholic) was assumed, one sees music that was written for purely liturgical purposes; the sole goal was praising God in musical form. The music is a form of prayer, and one cannot glorify God with shitty music*. Thus, we got things like "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring."

Now, however, we live in 21st Century America, and there is a war on. The God Fearing Christians, in particular the Born Again variety, think of music in a different way. It is a recruitment tool in the culture war against the godless heathens.

Of course, this begs the question, if they are using music as a recruiting tool, then why aren't they writing good music? The most likely answer to this seems to me to be that rather than taking the tack of writing Top 40 style pop music, which grabs many ears but can still be very polarizing, they have preferred the strategy of writing bland music, so as to captivate few but offend even fewer. Christianity thus becomes a path of no resistance, so that those who think the least and are the easiest to offend will be the most likely candidates to drift in.

Still doesn't understand how a vibrant prog rocker got suckered in though.

*This is to say nothing of modern Catholic music, for which there can be no earthly explanation, and over which I would imagine God feels extremely smiteful.

A Prog In My Throat

2009-02-09T10:47:00.000-08:00

Okay, that is a horrible pun even by my standards. Whatever.

I have been listening to a lot of prog rock lately. Discovered a lot of new-to-me bands, gotten more familiar with even more. Biggest things for me: Camel and the Canterbury Scene, Adrian Belew-era King Crimson, Gentle Giant, and online prog radio. Thoughts on each below.

Canterbury Prog
I had become aware of Camel as one of the favorite bands of Opeth's Mikael Åkerfelt, but had not given them a proper listen for some time. When I did, I discovered that they were but a part of a fairly big scene of prog musicians, most of whom are not actually from Canterbury (and most of whose influence can be heard in Opeth) with a lot of fantastic band names: Camel, Gong, Egg, Hatfield and the North (in a sense a forerunner to Sleater-Kinney - Click here to see how) to name a few. Aside from influencing a fantastic band a couple decades later, one of the biggest contributions of the scene to music as a whole was Allan Holdsworth, who played early in his career with bands like Gong and Soft Machine.

The Canterbury Scene is pretty loosely defined; but it seems to largely signify exceptionally jazz-fusion influenced prog rock, and there is an apparent continuum within the scene with ends of more-pop-influenced and more-experimental. Camel and Caravan are two examples of the more poppy side of Canterbury prog, with fairly standard song structures and hooky choruses, as well as often very sonorous and accessible lead vocalists like Richard Sinclair (who worked at times with both Camel and Caravan). On the opposite end are very avant-garde bands like National Health and Hatfield and the North. There was, however, a similar tonal sensibility throughout the scene.

Camel - Excerpts from The Snow Goose
Rather in the middle on the Canterbury Continuum

Discipline
Discipline by King Crimson, where KC founder Robert Fripp was joined by Talking Heads and Zappa alum Adrian Belew, Yes batterer Bill Bruford, and now legendary Chapman Stick player Tony Levin, is one of the most fantastic albums of all time. That's basically all I have tos ay on the matter.

King Crimson - Elephant Talk
Gee, I wonder if Les Claypool ever had this record?

Gentle Giant
Gentle Giant are one of the best bands you've never heard of. Also one of the strangest. Also one of the strangest looking, but that's a story for another day. Featuring a cast of multi-instrumentalists and often dressing like they had just come from a Ren Faire, Gentle Giant played a music that was part jazz fusion, part avant-garde, part English folk, but all amazing. The band's sound is similar in many ways to the pop-rock side of jazz fusion (like, say Steely Dan), but rarely quite so accessible. They made a lot of interesting arrangement choices - having a seven-minute song that changed halfway through from being driven by falsetto vocals, fiddle, and recorder to a more poppy song with rock drums and vocals or breaking in the middle of a fairly short song for a three minute acoustic guitar dual with no backing both come to mind. One way in which Gentle Giant can be more comfortably grouped with other prog musicians is by keeping their keyboardist behind stacks and stacks of keyboards on the side of the stage.

Additionally, in this day of YouTube and Wikipedia and things, it's remarkable to me how accidental my discovery of this band was: I saw their cd in a store and, judging it by its cover, decided I had to know all about the band.

Gentle Giant - Funny Ways
Oooh, look at as, we play so many instruments!

Prog Radio Online
Been listening a bit to Morrow - The Prog Radio lately. They play a fairly good mix of old and new prog, but their playlist is not huge. I've enjoyed a lot of the songs on their, but for being ostensibly progressive regarding music the people there (on the forums that is) are somewhat musically closed-minded. There are certainly some contradictions to this, like that the station plays bands like The Mars Volta along with the standard fair like Dream Theater and Genesis. But, they also are fairly limited in what sort of musical progress they are interested in seeing. Mixing prog rock melodies with, say, death metal vocals, is not too cool to them. As such, while they will play song by Opeth, when the issue comes up they will sometimes edit out the portion of the song with the heavy vocals. Now, while I did not approve of this really (not really a terribly progressive move, etc.), I did not stick around arguing it too much as I certainly don't want to end up being the guy on the internet calling people fascists. So that said, it's mostly a good station, but I differ from them philosophically. Maybe it's just their Frenchness.

Develarization of Final Nasals: Going, Goin', Gonna

2009-01-30T11:20:00.000-08:00

(For those of you who do not speak phonetics, velar nasals are the /ng/ sound, IPA [ŋ])

The English language has a strange relationship with velar nasals. Like most languages, we have them, and like most western IE languages, they do not generally appear at the beginnings of words. But we have assigned them a weird social significance. Lower prestige forms of English often change final velar nasals to alveolar nasals (and in writing change the velar nasal digraph /ng/ to /n'/). In addition, if one wanted to sound especially (even pretentiously) correct, one might separately pronounce the terminal /g/. For example, the word "going" could be pronounced three ways: standard [ɡowɪŋ], colloquial/low prestige [ɡowɪn], pretentious/high prestige [ɡoiŋɡ].

What this suggests is a correlation between the rendering of the velar nasal as a digraph and an interpretation of the two graphemes as different parts of the single phoneme. Thus, there appears to be a presumed positive correlation between number of sounds and amount of prestige.

Additionally of note is the specificity of this rule. It is only applied to the ends of present tense verbs and gerunds. So, while a phone might be ringin', in standard colloquial American English it will never rin'.

2009: It's in the MMIX

2009-01-30T08:32:00.001-08:00

Howdy folks! It's another update after something of a break. Just a deficit of inspiration time and a surplus of shit to do.

Things I've been doing include:
-Celebrating Yuletide and New Years and junk
~Getting snowed on a bunch
*Celebrating America 44.0
%Finishing grad school applications and plotting my escape
¡Recording awesome music!
∏Going up Italy

Items - and ~ are pretty self explanatory. It snowed and it Chrismas'd and stuff and we all had a merry and frustrating time.

America 44.0 is off to a pretty good start. 'Bamers and Co. are doing a lot of good and it looks like we're not going to regret all that hoping and twittering we did for them. I really like the part where he signs laws that make sense and reflect my opinions about things, and says things that aren't thoroughly moronic.

I applied to linguistics programs at University of Hawaii, Northwestern University, University of Pennsylvania, and NYU. They all have great programs. I feel like my prospects are best at NYU and Hawaii, but have know real idea if or where I'll get in. In any case I am planning to move out of Seattle to some place like Philadelphia or Honolulu or Cardiff.

I've been doing studio work for about the past month on a solo metal album that will totally rock your socks so hard that they won't be socks anymore, but metal boots with spikes. Also you'll have gauntlets.

I got back on Wednesday night from a week in Italy, where I ate an extreme lot of pizza and pasta and gelato and cheese. It's amazing to me how much more flavorful cheese is there (damned pasteurization). Also, it's ridiculous how many paintings there are of the Madonna and Child and the Adoration of the Magi. But one thing that is truly universal is annoying teenagers on buses.

Coming soon: Notes on develarization of final nasals.

Bill's Bogus Journey to the Center of the Universe

2008-12-10T08:59:00.000-08:00

Bill O'Reilly has been off his shit lately about an Atheist holiday sign in the Washington State Capitol. In a recent jeremiad, he chooses to blame this on, besides Chris Gregoire, the city of Seattle. He takes pot shots at our housing of the homeless, our schools' willingness to teach children that Americans have done bad things before, and for some reason he also seems to blame us for the entire state's choice to allow death with dignity and free contraception.

But most bothersome to me, he took a jab at my current home neighborhood of Fremont while trying to insinuate that there is something wrong with our naked cyclists and statue of Lenin: he calls Fremont a suburb!

Fremont is a neighborhood of Seattle. It is completely within the boundaries of the city proper; indeed, it is smack in the middle of the city. There is nothing remotely suburban about Fremont's relationship to Seattle. Bothell is a Seattle suburb. Tukwila is a Seattle suburb. Shoreline and Burien and Mountlake Terrace and Kirkland, those are Seattle suburbs. Fremont is a neighborhood. MY neighborhood. Fuck off O'Reilly, or the naked cyclists will feed you to the Troll.

What's It Like?

2008-11-14T08:29:00.000-08:00

That America has elected a black president has all the pundits crying out in search of a suitable analogy. I've heard the event compared to France electing an Algerian president or Germany electing a Turkish chancellor (which, presumably, would also make it like the UK electing a Pakistani prime minister or Ireland electing a Polish Taoiseach). I don't really see these comparisons as valid, as these are immigrant populations. The analogous American event would be a Hispanic president.

A more fitting analogy would be if the UK or France elected a black president. But the fact is, there's no country quite like America, and I don't think anything is really going to be analogous. We did something that's incredible without it being necessarily like other things that may have happened, may happen later, or may never happen at all.

Incidentally, a lot of these comparisons have been made in the context of "America is more racially progressive than Europe because ______." It should be noted, however, that the UK has long since beaten us to electing a leader from an oppressed indigenous ethnic group.

Change!

2008-11-10T13:21:00.000-08:00

I had really hoped that Obama was going to start out his presidency with some sort of symbolic (but also substantial) bird flipping directing at the outgoing shitbag, if nothing else then as a sign of good faith to those of us who have been tearing our hair out praying for Change to be more than a slogan. Just a little something to say "This bullshit for the past eight years, this will not be the way I do things." It looks like he is going to be doing just that.

2008-11-06T16:06:00.000-08:00

The post yesterday probably was more cynical than it needed to be. Blame the hangover.

Results

2008-11-05T08:45:00.001-08:00

Ok, we got done what we needed to get done nationally and Washington did things right. I-1000 and Prop. 1 pass, I-985 and Dino Rossi get the heavy boot. That's awesome. Hopey hopey changey mcChange.

On the other hand, FOUR STATES passed aggressively anti-gay legislation. And one of those states was CALIFORNIA. Also Nebraska celebrated our election of a black president by ending affirmative action.

Still, on most issues it was a good night. California, Colorado, and South Dakota rejected shitty anti-choice legislation, and Michigan voted in favor of medical marijuana and stem cell research. I've got my victorious playlist going and I'm wearing all blue.

As a side note, I had this weird moment of cynical paranoia a few minutes ago where I thought that maybe they (I mean They) just let us win this one because being hopeful makes us easier to control. But then that's (probably) crazy.

2008-11-03T22:06:00.000-08:00

Just a couple more days and I can start thinking about non-politics things.

Obama Quote of the Century

2008-10-30T17:20:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I question how great Obama is. Then he says stuff like this:

"In some cases, Republicans have good ideas. And, you know, I've always been more than happy to steal good ideas from whatever the source."

Also Sarah Palin spoke to a group of solar energy workers and tried to sell them her "drill baby drill" shtick. Best Election Evar.

Gonna Be a Good Day

2008-10-30T08:39:00.001-07:00

Spam of the day: "Try the cosmic power of Viagra Professional!"

Also, my bass is finally in Seattle. Fuck yeah!