Re: I'm not at work today.

1

We have already reached Peak Funk.


Posted by: Rottin' in Denmark | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 1:54 AM
horizontal rule
2

This is why people's lack of urgency about finding alternative funk sources is so distressing.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 2:09 AM
horizontal rule
3

I blame the political gridlock in our nation's capital, caused by partisan politics.


Posted by: Gaijin Biker | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 3:02 AM
horizontal rule
4

Yes, I've linked that before, but it's on point, dammit.


Posted by: Gaijin Biker | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 3:03 AM
horizontal rule
5

Upon Gerald Ford's passing, Bérubé remembers our last president from the days of 30¢ per gallon funk:

Watching the memorials for Ford last week, I found myself strangely moved by their evocation of a time before rank partisanship and outrageous nut-flexin' overtook Washington, when Republicans and Democrats could work together as friends and white people welcomed Black Power accompanied by serious musicianship--before Democrats poisoned the well by forcing Republicans to drive people like Ford and Rockefeller from positions of power in the GOP, before the R&B charts got so nasty and confrontational and full of songs that are hard to sing.

Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 4:53 AM
horizontal rule
6

Over here we're enjoying a day off in celebration of Pentecost. If you want oddly abstract. It's pissing down, as is traditional.


Posted by: asilon | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:21 AM
horizontal rule
7

When I was in high school band, we marched in the Memorial Day parade down to the cemetery every year. Then when I was out of high school, I got to watch the parade every year (Memorial Day coinciding with visits home) as various little sisters marched by and local Republican congressmen handed out little flags.

That's enough patriotism for me for a while.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:22 AM
horizontal rule
8

I've ever known anybody who went on to die in combat.

Nor have I, despite having known a lot of soldiers. It's not surprising. World War II was the last war in which the US participated where there were a significant number of casualties as a proportion of our population, and even then it was not a big percentage (off the top of my head, I would guess a percentage or two).


Posted by: Idealist | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:44 AM
horizontal rule
9

Never had many rituals, but reading Ulysses every Bloomsday and Wilfred Owen every Memorial Day were two committments I tried to keep.

I have read Owen a little differently in the last year or two, maybe a little more critically or with an increased sorrow. Beyond amor patria and parades, remembering Achilles & Patroclus, it seems like his compassion for soldiers as individual persons is another source of war & death. His own, for instance.

It's so hard, and I can't seem to find the right words for this feeling, words that aren't hurtful.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:02 AM
horizontal rule
10

It was all much more abstract for me before a guy I knew in high school came back from Iraq with his face rearranged.


Posted by: Blume | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:03 AM
horizontal rule
11

Closest I come is Andy Olmsted, from Obsidian Wings. I didn't know him well, but we talked in comments and emailed a couple of times. Good guy to argue with.

(I linked to one of his Obsidian Wings posts when he started posting there, announcing him as a new blogcrush -- I can't remember what the post was, but something that struck me as unusually reasonable and decent for someone with basically right of center politics. Hilzoy pointed out my post in the ObWi comments, and I thought Andy was a little reserved in response. A while later, in another conversation, it developed that my pseud is not as obviously feminine as I believe it to me, and he'd had my gender wrong. In retrospect, his reaction (entirely polite, just a little stiff) to my post announcing a blogcrush, cracked me completely up. After he'd gotten my gender right, he was much friendlier.)

But a really good guy to argue with. I was terribly sad when I heard he was killed in Iraq -- I still get a little wrecked over the ObWi sidebar sometimes.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:07 AM
horizontal rule
12

(And I'm taking an internet break in a building lobby with free wireless before I go into work. The financial district is scary empty on Memorial Day. It's like McManus's War has already happened. The only other people in this usually crowded lobby are two middle-aged maintenance guys relaxing and trying to download something on an Eee.)


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:19 AM
horizontal rule
13

The financial district is scary empty on Memorial Day.

It's like this on the weekends, too. Not many people here except tourists. But rest assured that you are not the only person in the office in the Financial District today.


Posted by: Idealist | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:24 AM
horizontal rule
14

I usually do get a small dose of reality as I usually see my father (a WWII vet who 63 years ago today would have been doing something unpleasant as part of the Battle of Okinawa). I did a small write up here on his WWII experience and that of my father-in-law's family (they managed to get out of Vienna, but he had a brother who was eventually killed by sniper fire on Leyte).


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:29 AM
horizontal rule
15
If I thought the letter of this book would last, I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives Prussia, -- my ambition and those names will be content; for they will have achieved themselves fresher fields than Flanders. Owen, Preface

I remember discussing the italicized phrase with Andrew, thinking Owen meant more than the nation across the trenches. Bismarckism, war colleges & the professionalization of the military, the Prussian Education System which I think Dewey's Progressive Education was intended to counter. Prussia won in America.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:35 AM
horizontal rule
16

If you think connecting Owen & Dewey, education & war, is ridiculous, part of Owen's short private life was spent teaching in Berlitz Language Schools


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:52 AM
horizontal rule
17

apo, do you use Songbird to browse music blogs? I can't remember if it was here or elsewhere that I first learned of it but my meager fiddling with it has convinced me it's pretty nifty.


Posted by: Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 9:53 AM
horizontal rule
18

Never looked at it before. Hm.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 9:57 AM
horizontal rule
19

reading Ulysses every Bloomsday

Lacking your speed, I content myself with listening to a Gino Vannelli record every June 16th.

Excluding people like Olmstead, who I only knew of, the closest I come to combat fatalities are the several people my father knew who died in Vietnam.


Posted by: Populuxe | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 9:57 AM
horizontal rule
20

Never looked at it before.

I don't read your posts either!


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:13 AM
horizontal rule
21

Thanks, apo. This rainy Memorial Day was in need of funkification.

The only relatives I know who saw combat were my mother's father, who was on the torpedoed Covington, my uncle, who was a Green Beret in Vietnam, and one BIL, a naval airman whose combat history I know nothing about and don't care to (Panama, I suspect). My other grandfather was a naval officer and my father was in the Army Reserve, but there's no martial tradition in our family anymore.


Posted by: Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:19 AM
horizontal rule
22

I'm one of those Millennials you guys hate so much (check me out on MySpace and shit!), so my experience of war has been pretty abstract as well. Whenever I go back home to Seattle, though, I run into buddies that are shipping out or have just been shipped back. My favorite is the biggest fratboy I know, Mark, who now literally carries a rocket launcher around Iraqi cities, blowing up buildings. He often does this stoned, making me think one of these years Memorial Day is gonna get real relevant all of a sudden.


Posted by: Rottin' in Denmark | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 11:02 AM
horizontal rule
23

My pops was a Sea Bee in WWII (see flickr pool). All my uncles were in the war as well -- mostly Navy, except for Uncles John and Tommy who were Army, I think. All lived to tell the tale, even John who stormed beaches in Normandie, etc.
One of my college boyfriends was a naval officer who floated around doing something in Gulf War I.


Posted by: oudemia | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 11:23 AM
horizontal rule
24

back home to Seattle

I knew I liked you.

I admit, I don't give a shit about Memorial Day--probably the result of growing up with 60s hippy parents. Though I think it's also the way America celebrates it--somehow the poppy thing in Canadia and the UK seems more apropos than Big Big Sales!!! (That said, my plan for the day is to go shopping for a teacher class present, so.)


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 12:48 PM
horizontal rule
25

It is ok to just scoop the moldy sections out of things like whipped cream and cream cheese, right?


Posted by: Sybil Vane | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 1:50 PM
horizontal rule
26

25 is a valid definition of funky.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 1:52 PM
horizontal rule
27

I mean, mold doesn't really hurt you, right? And it doesn't indicate a ruinous infection of the whole product, right?


Posted by: Sybil Vane | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 1:54 PM
horizontal rule
28

mmm blue cheese is good.


Posted by: will | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 1:54 PM
horizontal rule
29

27: I know it's okay in the case of hard cheeses, but I'm skeptical it's okay in the cases of soft cheese, if only because when they mold, they usually seem to be accompanied by spoilage throughout.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 1:57 PM
horizontal rule
30

hmmm. whipped topping, though? it's so inorganic-y, it seems unlikely that things like spoilage spread quickly, right?


Posted by: Sybil Vane | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 1:59 PM
horizontal rule
31

Go for it, Sybil. If it doesn't look or smell otherwise spoiled underneath, it's fine.


Posted by: Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 2:01 PM
horizontal rule
32

Perfect. All I needed was one yay-sayer.


Posted by: Sybil Vane | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 2:04 PM
horizontal rule
33

Hey, these guys hate boomers the most, Danish millenial dude.

I just got back from a wholesome family weekend. The beloved grandnephew, age 3 1/2, caught 5 sunfish. The women of the family talked about remodeling, probably just to torture me. The Tex-Mex nephew in law and I went to the local bar which turned out to be a college sports bar full of angelic-looking slutty blondes. San Antonio won. I saw a total of two mosquitoes, but the Tex-Mex dude thought that was a swarm. Niece: "If we're going outside I'm putting on my jeans, because I don't want to get mosquito bites all the way up".

One niece, an accountant, daughter of the sociopath, has signed on with a brokerage which is cleaning up on the mess left by the housing bubble. Plagues don't bother undertakers, and it's an ill wind that blows nobody good.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 2:09 PM
horizontal rule
34

a layer of mould protects whatever it is -- jam, cheese -- from further deeper spoilage


Posted by: tierce de lollardie | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 2:22 PM
horizontal rule
35

My son found some stinky cheese in his refrigerator and gave it to me because I like that kind of thing. I liked it fine, but it turns out that havarti isn't supposed to be stinky.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 2:31 PM
horizontal rule
36

they ate the honey they found in king tut's tomb and no one came to any harm -- if it has enough sugar in it it can never go off

this is known as the iron law of the taint of pharaoh's curse


Posted by: tierce de lollardie | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 2:48 PM
horizontal rule
37

Maybe the mold will turn to penicillin and make you healthier.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 2:51 PM
horizontal rule
38

Heard two people refer to today as the Yankee holiday and saw one jeep flying a huge stars and bars. Didn't expect that, despite having lived sort of in the south for a few years. Is this common elsewhere?


Posted by: water moccasin | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 2:54 PM
horizontal rule
39

Although the overwhelming majority of my family was killed during WWII, and those that survived still bear the scars, war has always been pretty abstract for me, too. The current war, though, became far more concrete two springs ago. My Civil War class is pretty large -- usually capped at around 120 students or so -- and so it was only at the end of the quarter as I looked at final grades that I noted one of my student's names: xxxx S/heehan. This was at the height of C/indy S/heehan's struggles. But I still hadn't realized that the S/heehan family lived right down the road. Anyway, this student was her daughter, the sister of the S/heehan boy whose death in Iraq prompted C/indy's activism. For some reason, I found it terribly painful and even a bit embarrassing that I had been teaching this young woman about war. She always sat in the center of the third row and looked me right in the eye while I lectured. I can't imagine what she was thinking that whole time.


Posted by: Ari | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 2:57 PM
horizontal rule
40

38: Memorial Day is the offspring of Decoration Day, which was a holiday created to honor the Union's Civil War dead. I'll be posting about it later in the week, if you care. Or, if you want a better sense of the history, you can read this book.


Posted by: Ari | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 3:00 PM
horizontal rule
41

Ari, the mother of someone here taught Timothy McVeigh. Name-dropping is highly competitive here.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 3:20 PM
horizontal rule
42

I taught Jeff Stryker everything he knows.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 3:24 PM
horizontal rule
43

40: Huh. Interesting. Thank you. You write at EotAW, right?


Posted by: water moccasin | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 3:26 PM
horizontal rule
44

43: What's "EotAW"?


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 3:28 PM
horizontal rule
45

I taught Jeff Stryker everything he knows.

Including how to sing?


Posted by: water moccasin | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 3:28 PM
horizontal rule
46

Edge of the American West.


Posted by: water moccasin | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 3:29 PM
horizontal rule
47

Jeff Stryker.


Posted by: Ari | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 3:31 PM
horizontal rule
48

I thought you meant Ted Striker.


Posted by: asilon | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 3:43 PM
horizontal rule
49

46: I was joking, and I assume Apo was doing the same.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 4:45 PM
horizontal rule
50

I, on the other hand, was dead serious.


Posted by: Ari | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 4:53 PM
horizontal rule
51

Hey, these guys hate boomers the most

Probably just that millenials haven't had nearly enough time to fuck thing up on the same scale that boomer have done.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 4:56 PM
horizontal rule
52

I've got a couple mixes uploading to reciprocate Apo's largesse. Happy Memorial Day, Americans, if that's the appropriate sentiment.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 5:22 PM
horizontal rule
53

The Cowboy Junkies first (amateur) album had a song by John Lee Hooker called "Decoration Day". I dn't see a subtext in the lyrics, but maybe an expert could.

Decoration Day


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 5:29 PM
horizontal rule
54

I listened to WPFW -- the DC Pacifica-affiliated radio station -- this morning and was fascinated to hear some show called either Jazz and Justice, or It's your turn to speak (something like that).

Various people phoned in to make simple statements along the lines of: "I'm a Vietnam vet, and it turns my stomach to watch GWB walk across the White House lawn waving and smiling when he's sending our boys and girls to die needlessly in Iraq. That's all I have to say." And: "I think that Hillary Clinton was calling for a hit on Obama. That's all I have to say." And: "My brother served a tour in Iraq, then refused to go back a second time, and he's just died of unrelated causes, and they refused to let him be buried in a veterans' cemetery. I think that's disgusting. That's all."

The dj intoned after each call something along the lines of 'Thank you brother/sister, for sharing your pain. This is your time to exercise your right to free speech. Our soldiers have fought for that right; don't let them down. And remember, don't turn into monsters. Never stop caring.'

Cue some jazz.

Oh, wow. It went on and on.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 5:46 PM
horizontal rule
55

54: Wow, indeed.

Well, damn. Cue some more music: here and here is a happy, summery don't-mention-the-war mix:

Summerized

1. Stars - The Night Starts Here
2. British Sea Power - Waving Flags
3. Delorean - As Time Breaks Off
4. Tokyo Police Club - Cheer It On
5. Q and Not U - Wonderful People
6. The Breeders - Bang On
7. PotUSA - Lump
8. Art Brut - Formed a Band
9. Knife World - Sunbeam
10. The Go! Team - Bottlerocket
11. Plastic Little feat. Ghostface Killah - Crambodia
12. Gwen Stefani - Now That You Got It
13. Lily Allen - LDN
14. Jah Sun - Right to Live
15. DJ Rekha - Basement Bhangra Anthem
16. Shri - Mela
17. Grimy Styles - Smoking on the Deck
18. Grupo Fantasma - Mentiras
19. Pistolera - Mentirosos
20. Chiwoniso - Kurima
21. Miriam Makeba - Naants' Indod' Emnyama Verwoerd

And here and here is something a little bit harder-edged:

Can You Count, Suckers?

1. Barry de Vorzon - The Warriors Theme
2. One Be Lo - Headlines
3. Sadat X - Escape from New York
4. Ol' Dirty Bastard - Brooklyn Zoo
5. Gangstarr feat. M.O.P. - Half & Half
6. Ivan Ives feat. O.C. - Soul
7. Freddie Foxxx (a.k.a. Bumpy Knuckles) - Dreamcatcher
8. James Brown - It's a Man's Man's Man's World
9. Al Wilson - The Snake
10. Kush & Jah Bloodfiyah Angels - Thick Smoke
11. Domingo Siete - I Don't Know About That
12. Tricky - Hell is Round the Corner
13. Champion - No Heaven
14. Killa Kela - All Killa No Filla
15. Blue Oyster Cult - Veteran of the Psychic Wars
16. Duchess Says - Black Flag
17. The Muslims - Extinction
18. Tiger! Tiger! - So You Won't Deceive Me
19. Mission of Burma - Wounded World
20. Paul Diamond Blow - Freak Show
21. Droids Attack - Dope Smuggler
22. Black Sabbath - The Mob Rules
23. Towers of London - Fuck It Up

Thanks again to apo for another great funk mix; listening to it now and it's excellent.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 6:19 PM
horizontal rule
56

I listened to WPFW -- the DC Pacifica-affiliated radio station -- this morning and was fascinated to hear some show called either Jazz and Justice, or It's your turn to speak (something like that).

I sure do love you, DC.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 6:23 PM
horizontal rule
57

1. Barry de Vorzon - The Warriors Theme

Does anyone ever talk about Walter Hill in terms of auteur theory? If not, is it because of Brewster's Millions?


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 6:53 PM
horizontal rule
58

57: Trespass probably didn't help either.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:09 PM
horizontal rule
59

I really want to make rfts watch The Warriors now. No good will come of this, if my experience with making her watch Big Trouble in Little China is any guide.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:15 PM
horizontal rule
60

Oh, I just watched The Warriors a month or so ago. Love those baseball gangsters. Funny to think that the first wave of yuppification was already rolling in to Brooklyn while that was being made.


Posted by: mcmc | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:19 PM
horizontal rule
61

59: Go for it, The Warriors is a far superior film. If it helps any, it's actually a remake of The Anabasis, no foolin'.

The Baseball Furies were awesome. Absurd, but awesome.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:22 PM
horizontal rule
62

Warriors, come out to plaaaaay!


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:23 PM
horizontal rule
63

If it helps any, it's actually a remake of The Anabasis

I did know that!

It had BETTER be far superior to Big Trouble in Little China, or no fucking way.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:24 PM
horizontal rule
64

OT: People with DC knowledge, what do you think of this area?


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:24 PM
horizontal rule
65

Huh, that's amazingly a dead area in my knowledge. I know up closer to the Howard stop, and towards Logan Circle, but super no idea about that far east on P.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:35 PM
horizontal rule
66

Oh, rfts must watch The Warriors. The Anabasis I do not find suitable references to.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:35 PM
horizontal rule
67

The Anabasis I do not find suitable references to.

Meaning you don't think the film contains references to it?


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:40 PM
horizontal rule
68

It appears to be calling itself Truxton Circle now. Gentrification in progress, it seems. http://snapshotsofalife.wordpress.com/


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:40 PM
horizontal rule
69

Oh my God that Delta Rhythm Section track is like mainlining awesome horns.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:41 PM
horizontal rule
70

(But far from complete.) Looks like the bits of Shaw my friend Bob used to live in, a sort of mishmash combo of used car lots and abandoned houses and poor folks and places selling for exorbitant prices, with Metro stops not quite as in walking distance as one would ideally like.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:44 PM
horizontal rule
71

67: No, I've just never heard of the film so I googled around a bit and checked imdb and got nothing. I didn't bend over backwards about it, though.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:48 PM
horizontal rule
72

71: Ah. Anabasis.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:49 PM
horizontal rule
73

Further to 71: Oh wait, are you saying that The Warriors is, like, a remake of the anabasis? The latter not being a film in its own right? Oh. Sorry!


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:50 PM
horizontal rule
74

Right, right, gotcha now.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:50 PM
horizontal rule
75

"Remake" usually means remake of a previous film, you know. That's all I have to say.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:54 PM
horizontal rule
76

My bad, my bad. "Adaptation."


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:58 PM
horizontal rule
77

65,68, 70: Thanks. That confirms my impression that that area is (as an ad says) still "up and coming". I've noticed a significant drop in rent on craigslist as places approach North Capitol St. I've been through the general area on buses a few times, and it definitely has an in progress look.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 7:59 PM
horizontal rule
78

39: Here in Posh Deep Blue Suburb, the memory of Decoration Day is not dead, and "Memorial Day" still gets observed in grand style (parade, etc.). PDBS was a hotbed of abolitionism and Radical Republicanism back in the day, and the monument to the Union War dead occupies the most prominent spot in the town.


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:02 PM
horizontal rule
79

We still have the Memorial Day Parade here, and there are a number of G.A.R graves in the cemetery. Many of the first settlers were Union veterans, some of whom receved land grants, and the G.A.R was a factor in town into the Twentieth Century.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:04 PM
horizontal rule
80

76: You're charming. Have I mentioned that truthout's new format is annoying, and I'm sad that I cannot adjust the font size?


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:05 PM
horizontal rule
81

Reminds me I haven't read truthout in a while. Hmmm, the new format doesn't seem that bad...


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:16 PM
horizontal rule
82

I'll live. Hey, they reproduce spackerman's pieces sometimes, which is nice to see. Good night!


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:29 PM
horizontal rule
83

78-79: I'm fond of vestigal heritage stuff in small(ish) towns. Around here, we have parades celebrating farming. People drive ancient tractors, intermixed with local marching bands, through downtown. And its not quaint; it's just lingering love for the agricultural sector. Have an avocado! Or an almond! Or some berries!


Posted by: Ari | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:32 PM
horizontal rule
84

Hey, Slack, your mix doesn't suck.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:32 PM
horizontal rule
85

Oh my God that Delta Rhythm Section track is like mainlining awesome horns.

It's from this. And ahem.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:37 PM
horizontal rule
86

Does anyone ever talk about Walter Hill in terms of auteur theory?

I do. WH is more important than Milius, tho less than Schrader. The true successor to Peckinpaugh? Too many interesting movies to list, so here is his Wiki page


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:39 PM
horizontal rule
87

86 was me


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:39 PM
horizontal rule
88

84: I am guardedly pleased.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:40 PM
horizontal rule
89

Apo, ya bastard, I've been listening to stuff from those sites you linked all day. You might make a music freedownloader out of me yet.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:40 PM
horizontal rule
90

85: Thanks pusherman.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:41 PM
horizontal rule
91

88: I am guardedly drunk. And it's not even 8 pm!


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:46 PM
horizontal rule
92

mold doesn't really hurt you, right?

Didn't the kid in Into The Wild die from ingesting moldy seeds?

But this is probably too late for Sybil.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:49 PM
horizontal rule
93

Nah, wild potato seeds, which are toxic if one doesn't get enough calories to flush it out.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:50 PM
horizontal rule
94

91: Good work!


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:53 PM
horizontal rule
95

Nah, wild potato seeds, which are toxic if one doesn't get enough calories to flush it out.

No, that was apparently Krakauer's first hypothesis, which he revised in later editions of the book. McCandless hadn't picked the wrong seeds, but he'd let the right seeds get moldy, and the mold was of a kind that overwhelmed his system with alkaloids.

Not that Sybil should worry about this.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:59 PM
horizontal rule
96

94: I am guardedly pleased.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 8:59 PM
horizontal rule
97

95: Well that's what I get for buying the earlier edition on sale.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 9:02 PM
horizontal rule
98

But it turns out that reading Unfogged plugs all the gaps in your knowledge.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 9:05 PM
horizontal rule
99

96: Goddamn, it's like you're playing chess while the rest of us are playing checkers.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 9:05 PM
horizontal rule
100

99: I'm a mantis master, baby.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 9:14 PM
horizontal rule
101

86 - Schrader is obviously a fitfully brilliant writer, but based on my limited exposure, he's a hack as a director. Cat People and Hardcore were both shoddy compared to the great movies they remade adapted ripped off paid homage to.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 9:17 PM
horizontal rule
102

Actually this mix is fucking awesome, Slack.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 9:23 PM
horizontal rule
103

"Hack" is too strong, as Schrader's no Michael Bay, work with Bruckheimer notwithstanding.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 9:29 PM
horizontal rule
104

102: My guard is dropping. I hope my head is tasty.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 9:33 PM
horizontal rule
105

You and me both.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 9:33 PM
horizontal rule
106

||
My sister the newly graduated engineer has a pink shirt from her school's chapter of SWE that says 'cutie &pi'.
|>


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 9:39 PM
horizontal rule
107

101:Try Blue Collar, Light Sleeper, or Mishima

Light of Day, Touch & Affliction aren't terrible either

The Cat People remake was trash, but I am not that impressed with the original. Like Curse of Cat People or 7th Victim better.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 9:54 PM
horizontal rule
108

Talking about hacks, Sydney Pollack just died. I always associate Pollack in my mind with Lumet, very very unfavourably for Pollack.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 9:57 PM
horizontal rule
109

Affliction is brilliant.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:04 PM
horizontal rule
110

DS -- it looks like a possible breach of anonymity in the files you uploaded.


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:06 PM
horizontal rule
111

Just watched a Nightline that talked to three Iraq veterans, while pussyfooting around the connection between PTSD and the stone cold evil of that war. They were describing killing ten innocent people on a bus in one checkpoint incident...four kids. Yeah, that might traumatize you.

I'm sure the vets with PTSD understand the connection, but the reporters kind of aren't allowed to. Although they did give the facts, which is good.

I need to get a new home computer fast enough to download music...they don't allow that at work.


Posted by: PGD | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:06 PM
horizontal rule
112

110: Brother, I've been breaching anonymity for several years now. I'll be disappointed if somebody hasn't figured out who I am by now.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:12 PM
horizontal rule
113

Actually, probably there's a sense in which all wars are stone cold evil. That was Jesus' point.

I respect the vets, admire them in a sense, but I find celebrating the whole thing problematic and weirdly conflicted. One can pick up on certain unresolved tensions in the Memorial Day celebrations. Usually papered over by talking about the necessity of defending our liberty, etc.


Posted by: PGD | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:16 PM
horizontal rule
114

People, Giorgo Moroder is the auteur these various directors are hitching their wagons to.

Also, I'm making a mix. Oh, you'll wait for it.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:16 PM
horizontal rule
115

Although I will now have to remove the Miriam Makeba track from it because THANKS SLACK.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:17 PM
horizontal rule
116

I claim South African Advantage.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:18 PM
horizontal rule
117

probably there's a sense in which all wars are stone cold evil

Hmmm. What could that possibly be.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:24 PM
horizontal rule
118

You kids and your fancy music and your fancy internets and your fancy 1s and 0s. In my day, all we had were wax cylinders and 1s. Fucking 0s changed everything.


Posted by: Ari | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:24 PM
horizontal rule
119

My music / Memorial Day connection was walking my bike past the Memorial Day concert on the mall, and having the cops semi-harass me for having a bike in some kind of bizarre and inexplicable security zone while "I'M PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN / WHERE AT LEAST I KNOW I'M FREE" boomed out in the background.


Posted by: PGD | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:25 PM
horizontal rule
120

119: Congratulations!


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:28 PM
horizontal rule
121

I had to work today, and by the end of the day a co-worker was ready to kill me for continuously saying "My buddies didn't die face down in the muck so I'd [thing X]", with thing X being whatever activity I happened to be doing at that moment.

She also told me I seemed very bitter today. Whoops.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:32 PM
horizontal rule
122

Why *did* your buddies die face down in the muck, Stanley?


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:35 PM
horizontal rule
123

121: "My buddies didn't die face down in the muck so you could tell me how bitter I am! And for your information, the Supreme Court has roundly rejected 'prior restraint'!

I'm stayin'. I'm finishing my coffee."


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:36 PM
horizontal rule
124

" ... enjoyin' my coffee..."


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:37 PM
horizontal rule
125

DS understands me, B.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:37 PM
horizontal rule
126

Way to dodge the question, Stanley. I've got my eye on you.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:38 PM
horizontal rule
127

115: *horrified realization* But, what am I doing? Don't remove the Makeba track! The more Miriam, the better!


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:48 PM
horizontal rule
128

117:I guess I ain't got the nerve of Lieutenant Commander Charles Madison, causing I really wanted to post this over yonder at the shrine.

Charlie: I don't trust people who make bitter reflections about war, Mrs. Barham. It's always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a Hell it is. And it's always the widows who lead the Memorial Day parades ... we shall never end wars, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on ministers and generals or warmongering imperialists or all the other banal bogies. It's the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers; the rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. We wear our widows' weeds like nuns and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices. My brother died at Anzio - an everyday soldier's death, no special heroism involved. They buried what pieces they found of him. But my mother insists he died a brave death and pretends to be very proud.

Mrs. Barham: You're very hard on your mother. It seems a harmless enough pretense to me.

Charlie: No, Mrs. Barham. No, you see, now my other brother can't wait to reach enlistment age. That'll be in September. May be ministers and generals who blunder us into wars, but the least the rest of us can do is to resist honoring the institution. What has my mother got for pretending bravery was admirable? She's under constant sedation and terrified she may wake up one morning and find her last son has run off to be brave.

But they were all enjoying themselves too much.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:51 PM
horizontal rule
129

127: too late! I needed to trim some stuff. I don't think you'll mind, when you hear it.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 10:55 PM
horizontal rule
130
It's the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers; the rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. We wear our widows' weeds like nuns and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices. My brother died at Anzio - an everyday soldier's death, no special heroism involved. They buried what pieces they found of him. But my mother insists he died a brave death and pretends to be very proud.

A thing of terrible beauty.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 11:04 PM
horizontal rule
131

129: I'm trusting you, Ray Kurzweil.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 11:05 PM
horizontal rule
132

Hey, DS, that PotUSA track is labeled "Lump" but sounds like "Peaches" to me. (Great mix---thanks!)


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 11:13 PM
horizontal rule
133

It's "Peaches," that's my 'puter outsmarting me. Cheers.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 11:19 PM
horizontal rule
134

Nice, the DS mixes look great. Downloading.

I've been meaning to make a mix of all Dubstep and Grime, which I think I'll call London Calling. Unfortunately it's damn impossible to find the unmixed tracks, so this could be a while as I seek them all out.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 11:26 PM
horizontal rule
135

Po-Mo I have all those. Does that help?


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-26-08 11:35 PM
horizontal rule
136

Why *did* your buddies die face down in the muck, Stanley?

It's like you don't even read, B. Stanley said his buddies *didn't* die face-down in the muck.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 5:45 AM
horizontal rule
137

The English call it the click song, because they cannot say !ong!othwane.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 5:50 AM
horizontal rule
138

My mother went with her mother to clear my grandfther's grave, hearing which, I remarked, "oh yeah, I guess Grandad technically counts as a veteran." He was in the navy for a year and a half but was spared being shipped to the Pacific theater because of the bomb. I think it was his father who'd been an LDS chaplain in WWI.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 6:35 AM
horizontal rule
139

128, 130: Around here everyone knows who the veterans are, especially the combat veterans. The ones who came out of the war militaristic are the loudest, and the only organized ones. The others tend to be quieter. A certain number ended up with significant mental or physical problems. People tend to be solicitous of them as individuals, but without asking how and why they got that way.

That's what I see as the real mistake of small town people in looking at politics, never looking at the big picture but always thinking of people they know, and trying to understand the greater world in the terms of the small world they know, either by demonization (of terrorists and Communists) or by identification (with the godly George W. Bush).


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 7:24 AM
horizontal rule
140

Holy cow, if McConnell actually got knocked out this year, I might have to start believing in God (a god that takes his damn sweet time getting around to setting things straight, but still). Every time I see McConnell's smug, prissy, pursed-lip smirk, I just want to throw things at the screen.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 7:30 AM
horizontal rule
141

was spared being shipped to the Pacific theater because of the bomb the end of the war as a result of a number of developments.

The role of the bomb is an ongoing and politically-charged debate. (There is some discussion of it in the comments of the link I posted in 14.) Your construction is understandably common among those who were directly affected (take it from the son of a guy who was hanging around on Okinawa waiting to drive his amphibious tank onto some beach in Japan when they were dropped), but the reality was much more convoluted.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 7:33 AM
horizontal rule
142

140: i>prissy, pursed-lip smirk: homophobe.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 7:44 AM
horizontal rule
143

Screw that HTML.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 7:44 AM
horizontal rule
144

Codeaphobe.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 7:46 AM
horizontal rule
145

144: Generationalist


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 7:50 AM
horizontal rule
146

You people will just wait another day for my mix.

Why I didn't have an ID3 tag editor before now I'll never know.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 7:59 AM
horizontal rule
147

141: Many, many years ago now, we were standing in the office where the decision was made to drop the bomb. The tour group was about exactly half American tourists and half Japanese tourists. One of the older American men started in about what a good thing the bomb had been. A very uncomfortable moment.


Posted by: Di Kotimy | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 8:35 AM
horizontal rule
148

141.---Oh, I'm aware of all that, or, at least, some of that. The family version is the simplified one, though.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 8:35 AM
horizontal rule
149

I attended a memorial day parade yesterday between Mid-Sized Northeastern College Town and M-SNCT's Neighbor. A good time was had by all. The Veterans For Peace contingent was 50-people strong, and got a big ovation from the group just down the block from where I was sitting. I felt a little weird about sitting there with my hat on when the flags went by, but a whole bunch of other guys who presumably weren't atheist anarchists did not doff their hats either for the Marine color guard, so I figured I was pretty immune from criticism.

It's interesting to me that the rabid supporters of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have so little to say about the conventional fire-bombing of the civilian areas of Tokyo and, for that matter, Dresden. I wonder what they would make of Grave of the Fireflies (Miyazaki Hayao, 1988)? Maybe I should organize a screening down at the American Legion post and find out.


Posted by: minneapolitan | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 8:55 AM
horizontal rule
150

Or rather "Isao Takahata, 1988". Whatever, it's all Ghibli to me.


Posted by: minneapolitan | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 8:55 AM
horizontal rule
151

The comments book at Los Alamos is brilliant -- an ongoing, morally serious argument about the dropping of the bomb. Hundreds of comments left by visitors on either side, and it just keeps going.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 9:12 AM
horizontal rule
152

The fire-bombings didn't just happen: careful planning and development were behind them. I read somewhere, Spector's Eagle Against The Sun, I think, that Japanese cities were carefully modeled, recreated really, in Utah I think it was, to test the most effective combination of incendiary to high-explosive in the bomb loads, and how to cluster them.

LeMay's contributions were tactical. He'd spent his career developing and practicing the high-precision daylight bombing that was being attempted on Japan when he arrived, so he might have been tempted to stick with it. But he was open to the studies of firebombing's potential, and realized that Japanese night-fighter resistance would be insignificant, and that low-level bombing would be far more effective. The B-29 was designed and optimized for high-altitude, so that this change of focus and tactics was counterintuitive and required considerable gumption.

The results were astounding. 14.9 sq. miles of Tokyo, and everybody and thing in them, obliterated in one night, March 9, 1945. The most devastating and deadly attack ever inflicted, by any means.


Posted by: I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 9:13 AM
horizontal rule
153

Both Making of The Atomic Bomb and (especially) House of War have good stuff about the evolution of American attitudes to strategic bombing.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 9:20 AM
horizontal rule
154

Japanese cities were carefully modeled, recreated really, in Utah I think it was, to test the most effective combination of incendiary to high-explosive in the bomb loads, and how to cluster them

The Bat Bomb was cooler, though.


Posted by: KR | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 9:22 AM
horizontal rule
155

I was aware of the more notorious firebombings, but not of the controversy* surrounding the death toll at Dresden and the fact that today the commonly accepted death toll is on the order of 35- 40,000 until I read this post at WAAGNFNP on Firestorms.

As I discovered, it appears that it was more than just Vonnegut's eyewitness account that magnified Dresden in the popular imagination, Goebbels started the ball rolling, and the faux historian David Irving wrote a book which also promulgated the higher numbers.

*I do not mean to imply any lack of importance due to the grim calculus of body counts , I was just very surprised that there was any legitimate question about its magnitude at all.


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 9:48 AM
horizontal rule
156

155 was me.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 9:51 AM
horizontal rule
157

As a kid we would visit my uncle's grave on Memorial Day. He was pilot during the Korean "police action" and his plane crashed on takeoff, so not exactly in combat. My mom was twelve, and idolized her older brother. She never said anything to me about it during my service, but she has since told me she could barely sleep. My family has been lucky in that most of the men in the older generations have seen combat, some very intense. Of my generation I am the only one.


Posted by: Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 10:32 AM
horizontal rule
158

My family has been lucky in that most of the men in the older generations have seen combat

Why is that lucky?


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 10:33 AM
horizontal rule
159

I read TLL to mean lucky to only have one combat death out of that large number.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 10:42 AM
horizontal rule
160

Tweety, I mean lucky in that we are here to tell the tale. My mother's father was an ambulance driver in France in WWI and won the Croix de Guerre. Very Hemmingway, but holy shit. My father's father was at Okinawa. Both my mother's sister's husbands were pilots, one a B-17 and the other a dive bomber. My dad was stop lossed for the Cuban Missle Crisis. So, lucky.


Posted by: Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 10:46 AM
horizontal rule
161

Got it.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 10:58 AM
horizontal rule
162

155: The firebombing of Hamburg ("Operation Gomorah") probably resulted in about as many civilian deaths as Dresden. The areas of the city that were hardest hit (around the docks and the adjacent working class residential neighborhoods) were not as photogenic as Dresden, so the historical memory is dimmer.


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 11:19 AM
horizontal rule
163

I also had no casualties in my family in the wars of teh 20th century. But one guy who was my friend in 8th and 9th grade, and one guy in my graduating class in high school (though not a friend), have been killed in Iraq so far.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 05-27-08 7:51 PM
horizontal rule
164

"In short, these individuals may, at this late date, not be ready for the funk."


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-28-08 8:49 AM
horizontal rule
165

Hey apo you aren't a mac guy, right? I'm trying to find a good id3 editor so I can make my mixes pretty like yooooouuuuu but ain't havin' much luck.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-28-08 8:50 AM
horizontal rule
166

Here you go, ST.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 05-28-08 8:58 AM
horizontal rule
167

the historical memory is dimmer.

There is also when in the war it happened, and against how much resistance. Dresden's reputation is based partly on the impression of a Moloch-like allied war machine, unable to take stock of the radically changed realities and threats of the spring of '45, when compared with '43, when W. Europe was still occupied and the Germans were still deep in Russia, with the capacity to take the offensive at least locally.

Although not confined to this subject, and in fact mostly about the German mind, Sebald's On the Natural History of Destruction is an amazing book on this subject.


Posted by: I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-28-08 9:00 AM
horizontal rule
168

Thanks, Ben.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-28-08 9:01 AM
horizontal rule
169

Hey apo you aren't a mac guy, right?

I've been a Mac user since the mid-'80s. I use some generic shareware tag editor with a predictable name like ID3Editor or something, but couldn't say for sure 'til I get home from work. It's a little flaky, though, and sometimes drops the last letter off of the artist and title tags.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-28-08 9:28 AM
horizontal rule
170

Oh I'd love to know what it is. That would be delicious.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 05-28-08 9:29 AM
horizontal rule