Hadn't Heard This One In Over A Decade

I can't say I know anything about the Acoustinauts, but the song Inhale Einstein received a bit of airplay on college radio back in the late 80s. With all the heated rhetoric about fascism, and with unacceptable comparisons of the current president to Hitler, this song came to mind:





I like the central conceit of this song, the notion that we should inhale the Einstein particles floating around while exhaling the Hitler molecules that contaminate the atmosphere. I completely agree that we should embrace our potential for creativity, humor, altruism, and the pursuit of knowledge, and eschew our potential for authoritarianism, rage, hatred, and the pursuit of power.

The video is interesting... the cast looks like a bunch of genuine grad students, rather than a group of model/actress/waitstaff-looking-for-a-break. I could actually see these people sitting through a physics lecture.

A Little Light Summer Reading

I wanted something light and breezy to read, the sort of paperback one would bring to the beach. At Barnes and No Bull I picked up a copy of Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane by John Amato and David Neiwert. This important book describes the rage that has consumed right-wingers since the current president was elected. More importantly, it documents the origins of many of the talking points in the anti-government and white power militias that came to national attention in the 90's. After the Murragh Building bombing, many of these groups faded into the background, and they were not very active during the George W. Bush maladministration, but they came roaring back into existence when President Blackity Black Black was elected with a clear majority of the popular vote. Neiwert and Amato also detail the role of the Fox "News" cable station in stoking the perpetual right-wing outrage machine and the reverse Ouroboros (a snake pooping out it's own head) of Fox "news" reporters reporting on the outrageous rhetoric spewed on Fox opinion shows as if it were newsworthy.

The book is clearly and elegantly written, though the subject matter can be heavy. I'd breeze through a couple of chapters and force myself to stop so I didn't put my fist through a wall. One of the most important purposes served by the book is that it provides a catalogue of the parade of lone wolf right-wing loonies who have been driven to acts of violence, two bit losers like Richard Poplawski, James W. von Brunn, Scott Roeder, and a slew of others- all creeps whose names and deeds have been largely forgotten. My only beef with the book (said in a rueful combination of sarcasm and disgust) is that it should have been published in a three-ring binder, because the subject matter keeps accumulating.

All told, Over the Cliff is crucial reading material. It succinctly connects the current right-wing establishment with the fringe elements that have infiltrated it over the last two years.

Yonkers Idyll

I worked last evening in my neighborhood- I had to verify some information on some apartments a few blocks from my home, so I traveled on shanks' mare. The sun was going down over the ridge to the west, and a few jets were overhead, making their way from (most likely) LaGuardia Airport to foreign parts. I walked past the local middle school, where a couple of guys were playing catch on the baseball diamond, and a bunch of young men were slapping a hurley ball against the school wall... representing the ladies, a single camogie player was giving the lads a run for their money. As I approached my block, I ran into my co-workers ***REDACTED*** (who lives a block away) and ***REDACTED*** (who lives on the Bronx border, north of Van Cortlandt Park). We talked shop for a bit, then my co-worker ***REDACTED*** (who lives around the corner) pulled up and joined in the conversation. The project is drawing to a close, so we're probably going to hit one of the local gin mills after we turn our work in, and have a well-deserved beer together.

At one time, Yonkers was called "The City of Gracious Living", it has also been called "City of Hills, where nothing is on the level" and "The Y.O.". Me? I call it home.

My Previous Postation

The title of my last blog post was prosaic. I should have used the title The Roastation. I used to work (oddly enough, for a very button-down office of a very conservative company) with a florid, foul-mouthed, fiftyish woman who used to add the suffix -ation to just about any word (invariably preceded by the definite article), resulting in such neologisms as the cuteation (to describe a co-worker's infant daughter) or the the smokeation (to describe a cigarette break).

Anyway, this co-worker was in the throes of menopause, so she would constantly complain about the hot flashation, and she'd call into question the ambient temperature of the office, "I'm doing the roastation in here!" Well, I was doing the roastation on Saturday.

In a hilarious quirk of fate, this coworker was handling a Workers' Compensation case in which a female Emergency Medical Technician had allegedly hurt her back while lifting a patient. My coworker ordered a routine surveillance to ascertain if she were working- the investigators followed the claimant to a nudie bar, and determined that she was working as a dancer. To obtain evidence to defend against the claim, my coworker ordered a videotape, which the investigators obtained by entering the club with a pinhole camera in a duffel bag (I know the owner of the company well, and asked him subsequently if his employees fought over which of them would handle this case).

My coworker, while reviewing the tape in a conference room, yelled in a voice loud enough to be audible throughout the entire office, "OH MY GOD! SHE'S DOING THE TRAPEEZEATION!!!" Needless to say, the entire office staff filed into the conference room. To this day, many of us suspect that, after the hearing, during which the claimant dropped the case (all the defense attorney had to say was, "We have tape of your client working."), the tape was appropriated by one of the managers, a hard-up divorced man whose perceived resemblance to
Inspector Gadget earned him the nickname (appropriately enough, if suspicions were correct) "Go Go".

95, Feels Like 102

Whuff! I had to put in some time for the Commerce Department, so I headed out early to pound the pavement before things got too steamy.

Here, in the heat of midday, I am hunkered down in a dry, cool place (but not the place I store my rolled oats), checking up on news and correspondence after a couple of busy days. Funny how the wingnuts who made such a big deal about the snowy weather this past winter have been strangely reticent about the recent heat wave.

Anyway, here's hoping that you have a cool place in which to take refuge from the heat:





The best thing about that inspired bit of silliness is the adorable (though unflatteringly dressed) Jane Wiedlin. Seems like watching more Jane Wiedlin videos isn't a bad plan for the rest of this stiflingly hot afternoon.

Shameless Plug: My great and good friend Jim Keyes wrote a humorous tribute to the charming Ms. Wiedlin, so show him (and Jane) some L-U-V.

Note on the Shameless Plug: It's funny, listening to my friend's song, it's just as much a love song to the guitar as it is a "crush" song about Jane Wiedlin.

Baby Brother's Deploying

My baby brother, Gomez, is on his way to Afghanistan for a year-long deployment (after which he passes the baton to my other younger brother, Vincenzo). Another year away from his family, another year worrying about the well-being of the young soldiers he'll be commanding.

To me, the main tragedy of Afganistan is that the United States government did not do nearly enough to help the population after using them as proxies in the Cold War. We armed them, supported Islamic fanatics who went over there to wage war (Osama Bin Laden among them), we trained them how to fight a superpower, and then forgot about them until we were reminded of them in horrendous fashion on September 11, 2001. Even post 9/11, the U.S. government decided to engage proxies, and became embroiled in a war that had nothing to do with Sunni Islamic fundamentalist extremists. Twenty-one years after the Soviet withdrawal, the U.S. has soldiers fighting in this dirt-poor failed nation.

When will our leaders learn that they are not playing with Risk pieces, but with actual human lives, American as well as Afghan?

Crashing Motor Vehicles Into Television Walls...

...was not started by the Plasmatics. Sadly, No commenter cAnceR haT, made me aware of the "Media Burn" project, by San Francisco based art collective Ant Farm. The video lacks only a raucous metal soundtrack, but the Cathode Ray Destruction is top-notch: