Spittin' Wicked Randomness, Vol. 11
The Life Stuff:
Fuck this ceiling fan! I've tried hooking it up a dozen times, returned one fan to get a replacement, tested the wires, tried every wire combination (black to black and blue to blue, black and blue to black, black and blue to blue), and I cannot get it to come on. It's frustrating the hell out of me, because I know that the previous fan was getting power (but had a short circuit, and needed to be jiggled and tilted to get it to work). Urrrrrgh!!!
I made some banana bread last night, which turned out well. This was the first time I've ever made anything with Crisco, and I don't think I mixed it well enough--there's a couple big Crisco flakes in the loaf. I tried to fake Bobbie out and brought her the crisco can and asked "do you want some vanilla frosting?" But I didn't let her actually taste it--I'm not that cruel!
The Music Stuff:
Alice Cooper's first two albums (on Frank Zappa's Straight label, before Alice signed to WB) Pretties For You and Easy Action. I've wanted to hear these for so long. The first one is pretty weird. I mean, they're both pretty weird, but the first one is even weird by Alice Cooper standards.
Some Florida punk nostalgia for me: Florida hardcore band Roach Motel's Roach and Roll 7". The mixtape that first got me into punk rock had two of these songs, including the terrible little racist song "Wetback." I thought that song was hilarious back then (I was 15), now it sounds embarassing at best, dangerous at worst. But "Shut Up" and "Now You're Gonna Die!" are both great slices of punk rock. Some time in the future I might dedicate a whole post to reconciling idiotic songs like "Nip Driver" or the Angry Samoan's "Homosexual" with my adult views. You can read my unsuccessful attempts at rationalization in the comments to that post.
I heard "C30 C60 C90 Go!" from Bubblegum Machine two years ago, and it immediately replaced "Wild in the Country" as my favorite Bow Wow Wow song. It's a song that celebrates taping songs off the radio instead of buying them! How very relevent! Bedazzled links to a YouTube video!
The Political Stuff:
Fresh Air has a piece on sweatshops in U.S. territory that is essential listening. This ties into the Abramoff/DeLay scandal, evil conservative ideas about capitalism, and immigration all in one segment.
Also listen to the May 7th edition of Live from the Left Coast, an interview with Antonia Juhasz, author of The Bush Agenda, who claims that the Iraq war is a smashing success to the small group of Bush's friends for whom it was launched in the first place. If you prefer to intake information through your eyehole, maybe try this AlterNet interview.
The L.A. Times (through Marc Cooper) has a great comeback for the anti-imigration jerkoffs who say "MY ancestors were LEGAL immigrants!"
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), for example, says his grandparents — Dutch immigrants who settled in Nebraska — didn't try to get ahead by breaking the law. Rather, they made it through "frugality … hard work, grit, honesty," he says. "They would be very upset about people who didn't do it the right way." Such comparisons between past and present miss a crucial point. There were so few restrictions on immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries that there was no such thing as "illegal immigration." The government excluded a mere 1% of the 25 million immigrants who landed at Ellis Island before World War I, mostly for health reasons. (Chinese were the exception, excluded on grounds of "racial unassimilability.")What's more, statutes of limitations of one to five years meant that even those here unlawfully did not live forever with the specter of deportation.
And most of the immigrants since WWI were legalized through some sort of "amnesty" program. So there.
And a reminder of what the Republicans are all about. On the new tax bill that Bush signed into law yesterday:
When first proposed, the Senate version included a revision of arcane accounting rules under which the oil companies were escaping taxes by being permitted to undervalue oil in storage. This change would have netted the federal government approximately $5.1 billion in taxes. When the House and the White House objected, the provision was removed.
Also present in the original Senate bill was an extension of expiring college tuition deductions designed to help middle class Americans handle the spiraling cost of higher education. According to Sen. Charles Schumer, who talked to bloggers on a conference call yesterday, the savings to middle America was approximately the same as the amount originally proposed to tax the oil companies. During reconciliation of the House and Senate bills, the tuition deductions were stripped.
So. We are presented with our metaphor: continuing tax breaks for Bush's oil cronies in the same amount that was denied the middle class to educate its children.
.
Fuck this ceiling fan! I've tried hooking it up a dozen times, returned one fan to get a replacement, tested the wires, tried every wire combination (black to black and blue to blue, black and blue to black, black and blue to blue), and I cannot get it to come on. It's frustrating the hell out of me, because I know that the previous fan was getting power (but had a short circuit, and needed to be jiggled and tilted to get it to work). Urrrrrgh!!!
I made some banana bread last night, which turned out well. This was the first time I've ever made anything with Crisco, and I don't think I mixed it well enough--there's a couple big Crisco flakes in the loaf. I tried to fake Bobbie out and brought her the crisco can and asked "do you want some vanilla frosting?" But I didn't let her actually taste it--I'm not that cruel!
The Music Stuff:
Alice Cooper's first two albums (on Frank Zappa's Straight label, before Alice signed to WB) Pretties For You and Easy Action. I've wanted to hear these for so long. The first one is pretty weird. I mean, they're both pretty weird, but the first one is even weird by Alice Cooper standards.
Some Florida punk nostalgia for me: Florida hardcore band Roach Motel's Roach and Roll 7". The mixtape that first got me into punk rock had two of these songs, including the terrible little racist song "Wetback." I thought that song was hilarious back then (I was 15), now it sounds embarassing at best, dangerous at worst. But "Shut Up" and "Now You're Gonna Die!" are both great slices of punk rock. Some time in the future I might dedicate a whole post to reconciling idiotic songs like "Nip Driver" or the Angry Samoan's "Homosexual" with my adult views. You can read my unsuccessful attempts at rationalization in the comments to that post.
I heard "C30 C60 C90 Go!" from Bubblegum Machine two years ago, and it immediately replaced "Wild in the Country" as my favorite Bow Wow Wow song. It's a song that celebrates taping songs off the radio instead of buying them! How very relevent! Bedazzled links to a YouTube video!
The Political Stuff:
Fresh Air has a piece on sweatshops in U.S. territory that is essential listening. This ties into the Abramoff/DeLay scandal, evil conservative ideas about capitalism, and immigration all in one segment.
Also listen to the May 7th edition of Live from the Left Coast, an interview with Antonia Juhasz, author of The Bush Agenda, who claims that the Iraq war is a smashing success to the small group of Bush's friends for whom it was launched in the first place. If you prefer to intake information through your eyehole, maybe try this AlterNet interview.
The L.A. Times (through Marc Cooper) has a great comeback for the anti-imigration jerkoffs who say "MY ancestors were LEGAL immigrants!"
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), for example, says his grandparents — Dutch immigrants who settled in Nebraska — didn't try to get ahead by breaking the law. Rather, they made it through "frugality … hard work, grit, honesty," he says. "They would be very upset about people who didn't do it the right way." Such comparisons between past and present miss a crucial point. There were so few restrictions on immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries that there was no such thing as "illegal immigration." The government excluded a mere 1% of the 25 million immigrants who landed at Ellis Island before World War I, mostly for health reasons. (Chinese were the exception, excluded on grounds of "racial unassimilability.")What's more, statutes of limitations of one to five years meant that even those here unlawfully did not live forever with the specter of deportation.
And most of the immigrants since WWI were legalized through some sort of "amnesty" program. So there.
And a reminder of what the Republicans are all about. On the new tax bill that Bush signed into law yesterday:
When first proposed, the Senate version included a revision of arcane accounting rules under which the oil companies were escaping taxes by being permitted to undervalue oil in storage. This change would have netted the federal government approximately $5.1 billion in taxes. When the House and the White House objected, the provision was removed.
Also present in the original Senate bill was an extension of expiring college tuition deductions designed to help middle class Americans handle the spiraling cost of higher education. According to Sen. Charles Schumer, who talked to bloggers on a conference call yesterday, the savings to middle America was approximately the same as the amount originally proposed to tax the oil companies. During reconciliation of the House and Senate bills, the tuition deductions were stripped.
So. We are presented with our metaphor: continuing tax breaks for Bush's oil cronies in the same amount that was denied the middle class to educate its children.
.
posted by Chris Oliver at 4:24 PM
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