So I went on my first cruise ever during Hurricane Season through the Bermuda Triangle... what could possibly go wrong? Let me count the ways...
1) Seasick from literally the first moment the ship left the dock in Baltimore. The first moment. It didn't go away until we docked in Bermuda. Well it kind of went away when I got drunk enough that the boat's spinning didn't bother me so much. But I guess that really doesn't count. On the bright side, I spent $50 on those seasick patches for nothing. And I've still got a headache 5 days after we got back. Woo hoo!
The Moonface tour is over. Sunset Rubdown is on an indefinite and probably permanent hiatus. Wolf Parade is on a permanent hiatus. My toe still hurts, but it's stabilized-- it's not getting worse, but it's not getting better. And I'm going on vacation starting tomorrow to LBI, Bermuda (!), and Rehoboth Beach over the next 3 weeks. So it's pretty much the perfect time to put this blog on hiatus for the rest of this summer. Check back after Labor Day and I should hopefully have some new material. Until then, follow me on Twitter and if there's anything interesting happening on the vacations or in the world of Spencer Krug, I'll post it there, including news of the blog's return. Thanks again for reading.
You're on the distant shore You're on the distant shore Oceans never listen to us anyway, Oceans never listen to us anyway. And if I fall into the drink, I will say your name before I sink.
He says your name out loud In miniature rooms where no one’s found It’s a desperate sound. You're on the distant shore He stamps his feet down You hear his knuckles on your door. He wants to send you drawings Drawings of men with faithful hands They will make such good boyfriends He wants to tell you stories Stories of boys who stomp their feet saying, “Shut – shut up I am dreaming of places Where lovers have wings.”
“I’ll meet you where the river forks; When everyone else is dead You’ll be safe on the water We will be much younger then we remember. You're on the distant shore I stamp my feet down down— Do you hear knuckles on your door? Do you understand what I’m pining for? But oceans never listen to us anyway. Oceans never listen to us anyway. And if I fall into the drink, I will say your name before I sink. But oceans never listen to us anyway.
I’m afraid of the water I’m afraid of the sky. I’m tired of waiting. Oceans never listen to us anyway, Oceans never listen to us anyway. And if I fall into the drink, I will say your name before I sink. Oceans never listen to us anyway. So… don’t make a sound. Don’t make a sound.
According to the English-Icelandic translator I found via Google, "Inni" means "Inside". So perhaps the new Sigur Ros concert DVD will focus on indoors concerts while the spectacular 2007 film Heima focused on outdoor shows from an Icelandic tour (Heima means "home"). I don't know and this trailer doesn't clear anything up but we haven't heard anything new from the band as a whole since Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust three years ago, and Heima was brilliant so yeah, I'm looking forward to it, whatever it is.
Comedy genius Stephen Colbert has spent much of this year working with lawyers, Viacom, and the FEC to create a "SuperPAC" -- one of those unregulated "independent" groups that can spend unlimited money on election races without divulging one thing about who actually is spending that money. This electoral "loophole" that is current law (along with the Citizens United ruling stating that corporations are citizens and can also throw unlimited, undisclosed funds into our politics) is probably the biggest reason why the GOP had such a dramatic reversal from getting wiped out in 2008 and winning in a landslide in 2010. All these constant "issue" ads shaping public opinion on everything from health care reform and the debt deal to abortion and other social issues are all funded by these PACs and SuperPACs (I won't get into the details of the difference) and Ia recent study showed that something like 90% of those ads were sponsored by groups pushing GOP policies. Shocking that the confused public unknowingly voted against their economic interests in 2010.
Anyway, Colbert's new SuperPAC is collecting cash and just put out its first ad in Iowa, to "try to influence" tomorrow's straw poll, but more realistically, to start to make a mockery of current election laws. Which are about as antithetical to promoting actual democracy as anything that has ever existed in our politics. Corporations are buying elections now, blatantly and openly. No one that doesn't follow politics like a hawk has any idea. Colbert is just trying to help. And he makes it funny. Win win.
For context for the below ad, Rick Perry is the governor of Texas who is flirting with a run for President and several SuperPACs are flirting with him... to give him gobs of rich guy and corporate money. Colbert wants in, of course, but in a unique way. Remember, his name is actually spelled Perry and he's not on the ballot tomorrow, so people have been encouraged to write him in. Keep it up, Stephen. Keep it up. We'll see how many votes your candidate gets.
Obama may have capitulated on the economy 100% to far-right tea party Republican ideas which have collapsed the stock market, our credit rating, our economy for the first 6 months of 2011, and soon to be our future, but at least he has the sense not to listen to their nonsense on social issues. Because as idiotic, immoral, and foolishly reckless the know-nothings in the GOP tea party base are on economics, science, and basic common sense, you throw a little god in there and they get far, far worse. Some hatred for women on top of it and wow, it's a bonanza of stupidity. And from a woman no less. Just like the poorly educated fools in the tea party base voting for policies to enrich the richest and keep themselves jobless and broke. You really can't make this stuff up. Colbert of course has a field day.
Not only has "trickle-down economics" been proven time and again over the last 30 to not work as an economic theory, but the implementation of these theories has actually made our economy much much worse, at least for the people in the middle and lower classes that the wealth is supposed to trickle-down to. Yet despite a thriving economy during the Clinton years that included increased taxes on the wealthy and a failing and ultimately collapsing economy during the Bush years that included a massive tax cut that almost entirely went to the wealthiest among us, the leading economic theory of both the debt "debate" and the rest of Washington politics as well as the driver of all new Republican statehouse policies is... yes, it's still here -- trickle-down economics. No new taxes on the wealthy -- in fact, the opposite, corporate tax breaks -- while slashing spending on programs for the poor and middle class, which is the opposite what Keynesian economics espouses. The funny thing is of course, politicians are no longer going with the laughed-at "trickle-down" economic theory, since it is a wholly failed ideology, but instead, Republicans and their Fox News/Limbaugh apologists are calling the super-wealthy "job creators" and saying that raising one penny of taxes on them -- even for something as simple as closing corporate loopholes or altering the depreciation schedules on private jets! -- is not going to happen on their watch; instead, we just need to keep pulling government money out of the economy even as the economy collapses. I mean, really.
Louis C.K.: "Here's how my brain works -- it's stupidity followed by self-hatred and then further analysis. It's not a very efficient system of thought."
Song: "Dance Music" Artist: The Mountain Goats Year: 2005 Album: The Sunset Tree
and i'm five years old or six maybe and indications that there's something wrong with our new house trip down the wire twice daily
i'm in the living room watching the watergate hearings while my stepfather yells at my mother launches a glass across the room straight at her head and i dash upstairs to take cover lean in close to my little record player on the floor so this is what the volume knob's for! i listen to dance music dance music
The tea party held us hostage. Our entire economy was held hostage by at most 20-25% of the far right in the GOP. And Obama caved like he always caves. Big time. Even bigger than any progressive's worst dreams or any Tea Party nutjob's biggest hopes for the end of democracy and the Obama administration. And as a result, we just lost all hope for government's help from getting us out of this nightmare recession we never really got out of and now are about to fall into again after more cutting - yes, more cutting -- of spending, in the face of horrendous job and growth reports for the past 4 months running. It would all be so shocking if it weren't all so real. And if it weren't an exact repeat of 1937, when FDR caved to Republican fake fears about deficits, cut spending, and plunged us back into the Great Depression that only World War II got us out of. It's just... wow. Talk about learning nothing from history. The worst part of all of this -- as miserable and defeated as we progressives feel, no one on the "other side" is happy either; the tea party GOP members all voted against it because, I don't know, it didn't dissolve the US government perhaps, and Wall Street, for whom the entire government seems to work these days, greeted the news with a collective "we're fucked", as the stock market plummeted the last two days and gave away all gains from a year of record corporate profits that hadn't resulted in jobs (shocking that consumer spending is down when all these corporations are sitting on mountains of cash instead of pumping it back into the economy by investing in equipment or employing more workers or, you know, paying more taxes -- none of which happened in the last 6 months). So who exactly won here? Anyone? Bueller? Voodoo economics?
