hahahah oh, liars.

woo

http://wonkette.com/413918/america-ruined-by-personal-essays

hahaha. oh dave eggers and ira glass. i love thee.

the weight

what is the weight? the weight is not the best song ever written, not by a mile. it probably isnt even the band's best song. what is? i dunno. everybody says 'like a rolling stone' is tops. having had the privelage of hearing dylan do it live i can probably agree. but yeah. the weight. where to start. where to end. i dunno im tired so ill maybe just end it with a video and this short statement of fact.

there is nothing better than going to a concert, and hearing whoever is playing cover 'the weight,' especially when you dont expect it. its never shite.

They say this version, from the last waltz (concert film, filmed by scorcese early in his career) is the best recording. i mean yeah its got the staple singers and is all sad and what not cause its got all thats associated with this being the band's last concert. but, the song is still so alive!

wendell

wendell berry. why im majoring in what im majoring in, and more importantly, why i want to do community and rural development for a career probably is 80% attributed to berry. i know ive said it before, but ill say it again. read his 'idea of a local economy' itll rock your world. and get you ready for pt 2 of 'steady state,' whenever i get around to writing it.

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

november blue

i love the avett brothers. yeah ok theyre on a major label now. but they put out like 8 of the most incredible albums ever when they were on ramseur, which as ive stated multiple times in the past and i will now state again, is the best record label of all time. you may be thinking to yourself that- hrmm, he seems to make this claim often, but replaces 'ramseur' with labels such as 'chess' 'creation' 'factory' 'stax' and who knows what all else. i confess, i do that from time to time. it cant be helped.

anyway. i love the way their narratives carry over from album to album.

for instance, the story of november blue

this one came first, its called 'november blue'

Then a few years later came 'Denouncing november blue'

The thing about an avett brothers show, is that there are a few things. 1) they are incredible. 2) they are too short.

today

painter yesterday, radiohead a few days ago. today ill go for something entirely different.

a few weeks ago somebody asked me to explain to the idea of a steady-state economy to them, i keep forgetting to do that. since he regularly reads here, hell probably in luck. and itll save us all a really longwinded 30 minute soliloquy, which is really ace. those are rarely ever any good. especially mine. tend to end in disgust with shaking of the head and waving of the arms.

you should also be aware that, since this is the economic system that I favor, were going to have some bias. ill make it a point to talk about criticisms, because there certainly are several.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

here goes nothing. im going to take this picture out as far as it goes-ill be making quite a few general statements about the world at large as it is today, and probably state some basic economic assumptions that may insult your intelligence. might put some pictures in. hey, thatll be nice of me.

------

before i go any further i want to mention that developed/westernized countries are of course those with high gdp's, low inflation/good money supply, generally around 5% or lower unemployment, and those with high human development indicators. basically your G20 nations.

------

the economic doctrine adhered to today by the vast majority of developed/westernized countries is usually referred to as mainstream economics, though you probably never hear that term. terms like 'socialism' and 'libertarianism' (right/left, republican, democrat) are at the core political descriptors used by politicians and certainly politicized economists (cough, paul krugman). most economists steer clear of partisan bickering and call it like it is. (myself not really being one of them, guilty...)

Let me define mainstream economics. essentially, its is a 50/50 split between your keynesian economics and the neoclassical style of economics. most countries practice a keynesian macroeconomic policy and neoclassical microeconomic policy.

macroeconomics deals with the economy on the whole, thats your big picture stuff, regulating the money supply (the fed setting interest rates), and most public sector/government polices. Basically it deals with questions of growth, ie. if growth is lacking, how do we create it, etc.

Microeconomics deals with the behavior of the individual in response to scarce resources, we kind of think about this within the supply/demand framework. Its essentially an individual's behavior to changes in the economy they are a part of.

basically.

Heres the key takeaway from all that-the vast majority of western/developed countries (particularly those ones that are stable), well they all utilize the same economic system. whether they be the so called socialized EU, the more command-like Asian countries, or us who, well... our system is incredibly convoluted and so diverse that nobody can agree on what hat it actually wears. <-this is basically a good thing. But the basic assumption of all these countries is that a 5% annual growth is what is sustainable and desirable.

----------

So lets put this in the context of 2008. Real steep recession, hasnt bottomed out yet, who knows when it will, or even if it will. you have to take action as a government to address the problem. hypothetically, if youre Japan you might cut interest rates, to promote consumer spending. if youre the usa you may invest in infrastructure, to temporarily replace private investment in capital. if youre the EU you may go about a program of job creation. Again this is hypothetical, in reality the response by countries was to utilize some degree of these three approaches, and more. No matter which approach taken the long run goal remained the same for each country. A return to a 5% level of growth in the economy. It may appear that countries are headed in opposite directions (socialism, liberalism, etc), but thats not really the case.

This may explain it better-Youre in columbia, trying to get to clemson.

--You can take I26-I385-I85. this has the highest speed, but longer mileage. so theres a tradeoff there. you may feel like youre getting there faster, but you really arent.

--You can take I26-Pelzer cutoff-I85, this has both high speed, but includes a short cut which saves distance, but forces a lower speed. Probably gets you to clemson faster than just taking interstates.

--You can go through Newberry-Greenwood-Anderson-Clemson, taking US76 and other back routes. This might take longer, but save a load on gas cause youre steady at 55mph the whole way.

Either way you go, youre still getting to clemson, and probably within a 30minute time frame. many of the routes even follow the same roads. the path you take is not really that different from another. anyway you go will have associated costs/benefits. but more importantly, you left from columbia and ended in clemson.

-----------

pretend now that that the routes weve discussed are the ways to achieve 5% growth. heres the thing though, you really havent asked yourself a pretty central question. Do i really need to have 5%growth/be in clemson.

-heres where im abandoning this analogy, of course we have to be in clemson, were students,etc etc.

but we dont need 5% growth. In fact, we dont really need growth at all.

theres actually a really strong case to be made that, well, we dont need growth. ok yeah, in a way thats malthusian, but let me explain.

i gotta take a break though. pt 2 tomorrow.

in the meantime, ill do you another solid and elevate the bowerbirds, though im sure i have already.

africa i love you

and im gonna let you finish but beyonce had one of the best videos of ALL TIME

oh hey kanye.

quick thing. book im reading for english, oranges are not the only fruit. pretty lousy, dont like it much, but i liked this line. if i can be bothered to find it. ok there it is:

''As it was she got upset and blamed me for her headache. This was very like Sir Joshua Reynolds, who complained that Turner always gave him a headache.''

i laughed. reynolds, the portrait artist for the elite; and turner, the crazy drunk loner whose paintings i cannot even describe, because they are that great. i wish i could. i should be able to at least come up with one word cause i stalked him in london between the tate and national gallery/my whole life. but i really cant, not one word. im beginning to think that all ive ever done in london is go to galleries and dubstep clubs. i dont think thats true. ive been to one dubstep club and only the main galleries. stands out i guess. anyway. i tend to just stare at them on the wall like a mo-ron. why? what else are you supposed to do? its canvas and oil on a wall. not like theres anything else i can do. i suppose you could fall into like that woman did last month to the picasso. or steal it. id feel right terrible about doing both.

text is pretty cool too. ''Sir Joshua Reynolds.'' all very pomp and circumstance, here comes the bride, you get the point. ''Turner.'' the man with three first names but none show up here. shame shame shame. no his name isnt shame shame shame turner, though when he went mad and locked himself in his flat he himself might have thought so. may have even said it out load, who knows. i digress. ''Turner.'' cuts it off right there. takes him out of the position of authority. sir joshua reynolds doesnt like him. well he must be right, hes a sir. well history proved you wrong biatch. cause aint nobody looking at reynolds anymore. well they do cause hes still like one of the best british painters ever, so they say. i dont say though.

weird though cause i just read that reynolds let turner into the royal academy, then reynolds died like 5 years later. so he never really saw any of turners wild paintings, and presumably those are the ones that would give him a headache...

...might be that what we have here is a case of fabricat'n! doesnt really change much. the book still sucks and turner is still awesome.

Rain, steam and speed 1844.

Snow Storm-Steam Boat off a Harbour's Mouth 1842

The fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1839

OH SHit theres the benjamin's angel of history again.....

and ill leave off the other big one, that being the one of the wrecked slave ship with all the people being eaten by sharks, cause quite frankly, it scares me too much. (but id put it up here sooner than id put on a reynolds. )

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/world/asia/22civilian.html?hpw

a change is gonna come.

been listening to e-town tonight on wncw. guests tonight were some of the guys from the whole 'playing for change' deal. so redeeming.

we can have long and heated debates over factors that we think may be able to bring about some semblance of unity around here. dont need to have that talk when it comes to music.

in the modern age.

this is hands down the most underrated album of the first half of the last decade. i always hate myself for not listening to it more. really cant think of a song with a better chorus.

in defense of lost causes.

damn we miss him.

flan in the face

brief interviews with hideous men, the film. was okay. back and forth on it the entire time. felt. so. empty. wouldnt have expected ben gibbard to be the only one giving an inspired performance. i got nothing. never did read df wallace's short story. havent yet anyway.

http://harpers.org/media/pdf/dfw/HarpersMagazine-1996-01-0007859.pdf

remains my favorite.

huzzah for the new four tet.

ghost hardware

5/8/2008 was a great day. 5/9/2008 was a great day. 8/1/2008 was a great day. good things come in threes. times to see radiohead during ones life should not, however be limited to such a round number. the great thing about that whole bit was each successive time i saw them, i got closer to the stage. from the back to the 14th row as it were. theres hope yet for me running on stage and sitting in. in my dreams they never mind when i do it anyway. hell where would we be without wishful thinking? speaking of, the fact that they are able to conscript 6 ondes martenots on stage at one time for this recording makes me hate them ever so slightly. i think that represents like 3% of all that were ever made. which i guess is significant. me want so bad.

maybe the most spectacular moment was leaving lollapalooza that night, supremely amped. and someone noticed that the shirt i was wearing was a knockoff that i made of the one jonny is wearing from this show. maybe those odds are more significant than those regarding the ondes martenot. id probably take the ondes over my dumb yellow shirt though

or maybe it was the second encore of that night 2+2=5 into idioteque. mindmelt.

before people started waving fake guns in the air.

thats all and this was nothing.

i just thought that because you know im like from columbia and hes like, also from columbia that i should, you know, represent or something. civic duty i guess.

these guys arent (from columbia). they also try to be like elbow.

who pretty much sound like the smiths.

who did a lot of drugs.

http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=259002

buying tomorrow (today).

ive always liked saddle creek's stuff. never caught these guys though. so hard to believe that omaha, nebraska is so full of good bands. they gotta do something out there i suppose.

all these things in all positions

always a good one to go back to.

someday i will say hello to dave sitek.

someday i'll want a job so that i can get a pedal board the size of west-texas.

how to be offensive in 140 characters (or less) ((as it was received by the editors of the op-ed page at the ny times))

I'm a self-confessed Twitter addict. Its successes are well reported, for instance it played a major part in opening a window into Iran last year. It may have very nearly caused the fall of one of the most vile regimes on the planet. But, lets be realistic, so many tweets (such a cringe-worthy word) serve nothing of that sort of purpose. Tweets are just the ways our new culture explains the phenomena of daily life. The things we see, that which interests us, our plans. In this regard, Twitter might be the pulse of culture.

My family's heritage in central Europe is mostly a mystery to those of us still alive. In large part, the paternal side of my family doesn't want to know what occurred before we got off the boat in New York City and made our way to the steel city of Cleveland. We simply do not talk about it. Until i went to the Czech Republic last summer, no one in my family had been back to Bohemia, much less to Tábor and Písek, what we know to be our ancestral homes since the turn of the last century. My great aunt did her fair share of genealogical research, but that was in the 1950s and she was only able to go as far back as about the 1880s. She was able to follow some leads that seemed to indicate that some family members (the 2nd cousin twice removed type, or however that goes, the not directly blood-related kind, but close enough for them to have common ancestry) were in the camps in World War II.

Some lived. Some died. Some disappeared.

She thinks she traced some to Terezin, the main Czech transit camp, before being sent to Mauthausen and Flossenburg and perhaps Dachau (which were labor camps for mostly political prisoners). However, given the Iron Curtain's effect on information, we don't really know anything more than that.

Imagine my dismay/shock/horror when I read on Twitter today:

''I would love for this stupid sickness to go away so I can enjoy Dachau tomorrow and Neuschwanstein on Wednesday!!!''

Neuschwanstein is a perfectly lovely place, I hear. It is great great for tourists, a fine day out by all accounts. I hear it was built after such a thing could have been useful as a defensive fortress by some mad Bavarian royal. I don't know much about it really.

Enjoy Dachau. No two words can horrify me more. What is there to enjoy? How will you enjoy it? How will you know when you have 'enjoyed' sufficiently? Does it entail posing for pictures inside the barracks? Walking where they walked? Saying 'oh how horrific'-maybe you''ll say so sincerely, or maybe you just feel that you ought to. Maybe you'll tear up, maybe. Maybe you'll collapse on the ground. Maybe you'll vomit after looking at the exhibits. Maybe you will imagine what it truly would have been like for you to work for 16 hours without food, everyday of the week, until your merciful God finally saw fit to take you to a better place. Maybe you'll walk into the gas chamber and think: 'This is just like from the movies, I hope my friend doesnt try to close the door and shut me in here, that would suck!' Maybe you'll escape to a corner of the camp to have a quick talk, not realizing that it is the exact spot where a stack of sixty-pound bodies once stood in the sun. Maybe you'll be distracted by the three children playing hide and seek. Maybe you'll picture yourself there and imagine a guard randomly shoot and kill the person standing next to you, for fun, you won't though. Maybe you'll notice how close the camp is built to town, the same town where the folk plead ignorance to the atrocities after the liberation of the camps, but could see over the fences from their 2nd floor windows. It is their grandchildren who are no doubt still living in that very same town. It is their grandparents who probably spat and dumped wastewater on the prisoners if they were walked through town. Maybe you'll notice how the ovens look strikingly similar to those which cook food. You may even smell burning flesh. Maybe it will make it an impact on you. A real impact. I'll still wonder what were the first words out of your mouth when you walked out through those open wrought-iron gates. I hope you enjoyed your visit to Dachau.

via chicago

i love wilco, and i love chicago. there isnt any difference between the two.

supercities that ive been to that i could envision myself living in-chicago and london. and london and i have perhaps too much of a love/hate thing going on with ldn for me to last there. nyc, im sorry, it would just make too much sense. chicago has the real people. and it has wilco.

jeff tweedy though. my dad and someone else told me that tweedy and i act the same, when we were watching the 'i am trying to break your heart' documentary. i still dont know how to take that label. he tends to be impossible to work with and loads up on prescription meds. eh 2007-2008 was then, now is now.

talked with burns last thurs. he noticed my wilco shirt that i had worn a week or two before, went to asking me if i was going to see them in atlanta this month, said no, i have a bit of a cash flow crisis at the moment and ive gotten to see them a few times already ((chicago 2008, outdoors, grant park, lying/laying? in the grass as the sun set behind the city),etc etc the poetics arent really important). he said his kid is peeved at him for not jumping on tickets before they sold out, so hes looking on stubhub. told him theyll be around again. ill see to it. hopefully around october.

The cash machine is blue and green
For a hundred in twenties and a small service fee
I could spend three dollars and sixty-three cents
On Diet Coca-Cola and unlit cigarettes

I wonder why we listen to poets
When nobody gives a fuck
How hot and sorrowful
This machine begs for luck

All my lies are always wishes
I know I would die if I could come back new

blogexchangenachtconmigueldewitt

right so i told wordtruncheon.blogspot.com to write on the radio dept. song 'why wont you talk about it?' should be interesting read it there,etc. he has told me to write on otis taylor, any song. not what i was hoping for, i gotta say. this is going to be painful.

what is otis taylor. otis taylor is at least two things. otis taylor is the arts and entertainment reporter for the state newspaper who i run into everytime i go out in columbia. every.time. hes an interesting guy, congenial. knows his stuff. smokes a lot of cigarettes. a lot. the other otis taylor, and the otis taylor im going to write about, though i suppose i could have gotten away with the other one, is an iconoclastic bluesman. might be tempted to call him avant-blues, based on his lyrics. really does what he wants, which is perhaps anti-blues.

the song '10 million slaves' showed up on micheal mann's 'public enemies'. which was at times great, generally pretty good. though they did skew the chronology a bit. great duality between dillinger and purvis.

gonna talk about 3 things here, if i dont fall asleep first. try to get at least one in. might try to relate them later on into a monstermetanarrative, might not and probably wont.

1)lyrically, taylor attempts to create a metanarrative for the slave trade, specifically for those recently arrived in america. and some other stuff.

2)instrumentally, taylor offers an interpretation of walter benjamin's viewing of klee's 'angelus novulus/ angel of history' painting. i posted more on that specific subject sometime back in 2008. http://howtoliveinaglasshouse.blogspot.com/2008/02/benjamin.html I thought i wrote more on it, i think i did on another post, but this is all i can find. at least thats the painting.

3) the appearance of the song in a scene in 'public enemies' is used to create an argument for that lovely and very very nasty postpartisianship, and a few other things.

gonna talk about instruments first. pretty simple one here. if i was a good man id break this song down into its four composite parts on protools or garageband. cant do that at this hour though, or at least i wont tonight. should be able to get something meaningful out of this easily enough though.

so the start of the song, you get a junior kimbrough-esque delta blues motif. very iconic. so you start out with this reckoning buried within the music. the delta paradox of extremely fertile soil but rampant poverty and destitution. so youre getting the 'kimbrough track' at about an 80% fade in your right ear, and about 20% to the left. this is effectively full to the right, because if you do go 100% to the right then attempt to add anything in at a high level in the left, youre ears hurt like shit and they often pop. so basically you gotta always have some sound coming out of both ears. even if its negligible, youre brain will still register it as coming full in from the right. theres a crash course in mixing. anyway. the next motif to come in is the banjo line. too many think that the banjo is a cracker instrument. its actually not. really developed by slaves based on their 'remembrance' of west african instruments like the kora. so after about 4 bars with the banjo in, you realise that the song is a round. guitar->banjo, around and around,etc etc.

pretty revealing stuff for us. youve got the modern on one hand, the embodiment of the angel- the twangy guitar line-the guitar born out the civil rights act and the supposed creation of equality, but struck with the reality that these aims remain totally unfulfilled, economic inequality increases, as services increase for the haves, the have nots still are unable to attain the most basic standard of living. the kimbrough line's history is intrinsically tied to that of the banjo. the banjo line-the past, the history-with its late entrance, from the left-the past, signifies the angel peering backwards yet propelled forwards in time, never able to address/redress/remediate the problems of the past.

in benjamin's own words because he said it best:
His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

its a shitty world people, and i'll shamelessly plug for healthcare reform.

now it would be great to end the song after one guitar-> banjo cycle, but that doesnt adhere to the paradigms of music, and since we adhere to the paradigms of music, unless we are say, saul williams, we can/have to take it as it is. the theme remains the same. and i am going to bed.

parts 1 and 3 might come tomorrow, or they might not.

this is not african history

but damn its fascinating

kinda cool

because every windy day needs hendrix, or the wind cries mary. or either

kinda sounds cold i guess

you are going to spend the next 35ish minutes on this page.

http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/6007-africa-100-the-indestructible-beat/

....and its in bad form from the first paragraph. this is not an ordinary case of 'hipster backlash,' for one because i am not (one). ok i mean hes attempting to limit it to afrobeat, but that really doesnt make sense in and of itself.

in typical pitchfork fashion, this article does not discuss the movements that developed around the music. simply man+message. so. completely. useless.

since thats the norm ill do the same.

i have to throw zola in here, because he is great. though i probably shouldnt start with him. from soweto outside/inside joburg. tupac rather than mosdef. the guy has seen it all.

thomas mapfumo=the jam. not even mugabe can keep him quiet.

saw amadou and miriam at lollapalooza in 2008. standout concert. fun crowd, these two share so much on stage. their french bassist is a dead ringer for jean reno as well, though thats not in the least bit pertinent nor within my purview. i just love that word. purview. yes they are both blind.

.

ali farka toure. probably my favorite overall. i remember being in the library in senior year, and opening up the new york times and reading about his death the day after it happened. all i could think of was: 'why didnt i know sooner?'. he had a state funeral, not certain but i think bono showed up. watch both of these videos.

ginger baker did this next video. cream's drummer, as you may know him, certainly one of the best overall. this video is actually pretty important. probably as important as camus at the football match. find that one on your own time. its probably not that important.

in the loop

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7139496/Alastair-Campbell--I-want-my-kids-to-think-Ive-been-a-good-dad.html

oh feck, formatting has gone to shit. just open the pictures by clicking on them alot, thats what i always do.

four things

marriedtothesea.com

marriedtothesea.com

dorothea lange- crossroads store, person county nc, 1939

munch -self portrait-the night wanderer

they killed john henry

nothing much.

superbowlame
the whold
ringo starr's son played drumsucked
commercialsubstandard

listening to:drive by truckers live at the 40 watt 2006-1-20
meh recording, good set but recorded too heavy on the low end. gives it an analog feel so thats fine. sounds like its been played through a valve tube or something. not complaining, just saying. a little early in the year to be on a dbt binge, tend to prefer them in the summer, but im going to see them next week for #4 so....

realised ive neglected a long post about the drive by truckers, posted some tracks now and again but thats about it. time to change.

pretty simple really, southern gothic with three guitars making 2 disc concept albums.

looks like im neglecting again. maybe not though, use dbt as a lens for my other stuff. thatll work.

im finding these guys really interesting, polyrhythmic folk. kinda neat.

Stetson Kennedy...writing his name in.

http://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t23c029.htm

and

http://fitsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/SubversiveAgentForm.pdf


this is one of the most interesting things ive come across of late and i really really want to do it.

lost today

finally watched the pres do question time from a few days back. can we get that constitutionally mandated. not only did it solidify in my mind that obama is truly more than rhetoric, it told me hes effective, progressive and knows his policy, but so much more. ive long been a proponent of the westminster style (at least in part). by including q and a, i think we could see party's fracture into factions, leading eventually to the prospect of minority-coalition government. something obama is pretending exists even today, for better or for worse.

this is the first time in who knows how long we have a president actually capable of bridging the gap, ie the health care bill (which any independent review will tell you is more 'right' then 'left'). how is it that a bill that includes some of what the republicans were proposing during the tea party summer/fall of 2009 is receiving no support from that caucus? answer, because politics plays politics. itd be great if it wasnt real life.

and why is it that the republicans, who are claiming to have all these 'great ideas' on reform did not try to get them through from 2000-2006 when they controlled both the executive and the legislative branches? good riddance.

its so snarky nowadays.

such a rush

what ive done in the last hour-

read 'the idea of a local economy' by wendell berry again. here is a link.

http://www.relocalize.net/node/4770

i do love him. suggest all do too.

saw that robbie keane went to the hoops, wont help them much anyway.

read and listened to the clips for-
http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=259227
http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=248036

real good stuff. got some ideas that i may be able to act on for my in-the-works but just now announced mos def/hyperdub records mash up. calling it dublyn. dubstep-brooklyn. album cover will be some avant joyce etching + more. itll sound like noise.

playlist

spoon-'transference'
josh ritter-'the historical conquests of josh ritter' (only 16 minutes of this.)



darkstar were on that thom yorke/gilles peterson split. as yorke said, ''all hail hyperdub," really one of the few beacons out there. maybe the best catalog of any label next to stax. there is literally nothing thats bad.

slow show

it being past 200, me being me, and me being me-
thought id do something different, not for once but rather for again. noticed a glaring lack of originality, and an overabundance of reactionary in my posts of late. something that needs amending.

decided id take an inventory of the things i do each day, in the order in which they come to me. no editing.

-check and see if the everybodyfields have gotten back together (usually upon waking up)
-waking up past noon on days that i have a choice
-staying up past 4am
-trying to figure out what is the cause of that behavior, the chicken or the egg, so to speak.
-probably something else.
-2 minutes of dedicated thinking on if this is something i should go about solving, only to reach the same exact conclusion each and every day, that------
-it works
-so long as im a student
-how long am i going to be a student?
-quite a while.
-because that works too.
-spontaneous dancing in my room, presumably to the chagrin of those who dwell around me.
-listen to at least 1 radiohead album, its like an apple.
-read something by an author previously unread.
-make something musical.
-look out the window, dedicated like. again, much to the chagrin to those who dwell around me.
-dream
-notice the odd crack in my ceiling, only to be surprised by its existence on every occasion. this can happen multiple times daily.
-have an internal debate on what is really south about the south, and what is really real about the south and what is really good about the south and why am i here in the south and why is that i actually want to stay here in the south and if i do? i do- but for how long?
-expand this debate to america
-expand this debate as wide as i can take it.
-some time later i will take these debates and refocus them in the context of the TVA. (as in, good or bad ,trust me this can mess you up)i could recommend 10 books and 15 songs and some great folk art on the topic. if i had gone to ap state and done appalachian studies or whatever they call it, something i may regret at times, this would have been my thesis. i may still write a book on it.
-think about how the republicans stand in the way of fixing this rock.
-think about how the democrats are squandering that opportunity.
-thinking about how other countries are fixing this rock.
-realizing that nobody is really trying or succeeding on fixing this rock.
-maybe that means the rock dont need fixing?
-bullshit.
-listen to wncw for hours.
-reading krugman and a few other blogs.
-checking lacan.com for a new zizek article.
-thinking back to throwing myself through eastern europe, putting myself into it all.
-going to the town that my family is from in bohemia, putting to rest once and for all the myth that yes, zelenka's were jewish before we got off the boat. yes in fact, we were most definitely. now, for better or worse, we are not.
-trying to figure out if i can just mulligan the last 100 years of non jewishness, or what exactly is the procedure for all that?
-remembering that im also half cobb/cunningham/byars/mosteller, who are as old as white people have ever been in cherokee county, sc and rutherford county, nc.
-realizing that america is the only place where those incongruences can ever really exist.
-remembering how great scotland is, in every way imaginable, country of sheer awesomeness.
-trying to recreate the panic/fear/excitement/strength/resourcefulness that i felt when being chased through the streets of prague by the russian mafia, and having lived to tell people the story.
-remembering the feeling after a month in eastern europe, only to emerge in bourgeois austria and feeling so utterly out of place.
-trying to explain to people that economists can be left wing.
-upon telling people that im in community and rural development as well as natural resource economics, hoping that they dont confuse me for a real estate developer or something equally as vile.
-then explaining, usually sooner than perhaps convention calls for it, that i do research in increasing the economic base in minority and low income areas, with particular attention to usage of natural resources with a conservation and sustainable ethic.
-only then i hope they know who i am.
-watch a movie
-go for a walk around the neighborhood or hang out with the cows.
-if i do all this same stuff every day, how does each and every one feel and sound and smell so different? thats whats good about it all.

there will be a part 2 im sure. ive just hit a wall.



anyway josh ritter. i love the guy. genius of a man. married to dawn landes which is fitting. that sounds negative, its not.

post-everything

ive started writing this post 4 times. i dunno what to say anymore. unifying, post-partisain, post-racial, transformational? everything obama is, this event is too. for all the wrong reasons. all the wrong damn reasons. you know if i was going down this avenue, lets just go further-lady gaga said it best, 'just dance.'