Nymphadora Tonks

New York Times Magazine: How did you feel when you heard that Buckley died this year?

Gore Vidal: I thought hell is bound to be a livelier place, as he joins forever those whom he served in life, applauding their prejudices and fanning their hatred.

Well put. Coincidently I recently saw Jeff Garlin's documentary John Waters: This Filthy World which was hilarious. Waters is a unique guy.

and the singer ... rams Buddha down the throat of a giant silver dragon

There's a high you get from the classic 1970s "art-rock" of Yes, Genesis, or King Crimson-- and when it hits, there's nothing like it. I'm not talking about the way other music peaks, like a dance track where the beat kicks in and the crowd goes berzerk, or metal music that gets louder and louder until your skull caves, or gutbucket singers who can make your heart jump out of your chest. With art-rock, there's a lot of mumbo-jumbo and funny time signatures, and sometimes there's like 10 or 15 minutes of really boring shit (see: Yes, "Awaken"). But when the "good part" hits? Holy shit-- the band crescendos and the singer, smooth as silk but loud as God, rams Buddha down the throat of a giant silver dragon. If I sound like I'm growing a mullet, I've done my job.

Speaking of which, Stereolab has a new album dropping on August 18th, then a tour of the States this fall.

Oops

Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired the top civilian commander and the top general in the Air Force over "Atomic errors."

The inquiry involving the Air Force was an effort to determine how four high-tech electrical nose cone fuses for Minuteman nuclear warheads were sent to Taiwan in place of helicopter batteries. The mistake was discovered in March - a year and a half after the mistaken shipment.

Mr. Gates made clear that most troubling was that the inquiry showed how little the Air Force had done to improve the security of the nuclear weapons infrastructure even after it was disclosed last year that a B-52 bomber had flown across the United States without anyone’s realizing that it was carrying six armed nuclear cruise missiles.

Some had said that the bomber flight was consciously done as a warning to Iran. I didn't find that persuasive at the time and especially don't find it persuasive now that NATO-ally Turkey and Iran are coordinating attacks on Kurds in northern Iraq.

Dirt off your shoulder and shit off your shoes



(via Yglesias via Spencer Ackerman.)

"'If he had signed just one platinum act, all would have been forgiven. Instead he gave them Luna, Stereolab and the Afghan Whigs.' Things go from bad to worse, until 'Terry had lost his wife, which he pretended not to care about. Now he had lost his job. ... Six months later he was working at a gas station in New Jersey, changing oil and brake liners by day, snorting heroin by night.'"

Liz Phair quoting from Dean Wareham about "One particularly unforgettable story [involving] the rags-to-riches-to-rags-again tale of a high-flying A & R executive at Elektra named Terry Tolkin".

Herger the Joyous

Stick A Fork In It

I just heard the honey-voiced Wade Goodwyn say Obama won Texas.

To quote Heath Ledger's Joker: "Why so serious?"

said one commenter to a pro-Clinton commenter at Yglesias's blog.

Who's more radical?
(or poetry versus prose)

On paper Hillary Clinton or John Edwards may look better for progressive hopes - although no doubt Obama supporters would dispute this. I'll admit my enthusiasm for Obama wavered when I read that two of my favorite writers obliquely favored Edwards (Barabara Ehrenreich and Christopher Hitchens).

But then I read this brief for Obama by Lorrie Moore and my mind was blown like an audience member at a Tenacious D gig*.

Moore articulates my inchoate thoughts about the Democratic primary. Hillary Clinton made a category mistake when she said people shouldn't succumb to "false hopes." Cornel West has made a useful distinction about the term "hope." He said people are optimistic when they erroneously believe conditions are more favorable than they actually are. Pessimism is when one is erroneously negative. Hope is when one has a realistically negative outlook but also recognizes the possibilities for and works towards - against the odds - positive change. In West's formulation you can't have "false hope."

Obama and his supporters had hope which ended up transforming the political economy after the Iowa primary and altered the landscape, at least for the time being. (Was there an actual paradigm shift? We'll see.)

David Brooks wrote on that occasion "This is a huge moment. It’s one of those times when a movement that seemed ethereal and idealistic became a reality and took on political substance."

Maureen Dowd, who once called Obama "Obambi" opined: "The Obama revolution arrived not on little cat feet in the Iowa snow but like a balmy promise, an effortlessly leaping lion hungry for something different, propelled by a visceral desire among Americans to feel American again."

One can overstate the changes and significance - that would be being optimistic. Nevertheless the Obama campaign gave people more reason to hope.

-----------------
*Is that Amy Adams in the audience?

Do you come from the land down under?


Kendra Shaw had to make some tough choices in the new Battlestar Galactica movie. As circumstances forced her - for the most part - to become more and more like the cold "toasters" she was fighting, she began to hate herself more. This meant putting herself in risky situations without a second thought and using drugs to numb the pain and cope with the stress.

Lots of good things coming out of Australia lately. Like NPR's Jamie Tarabay or the John Butler Trio. Then there's Bret and Jermaine, who are from New Zealand of course.

The photo is of Iorek Byrnison, who appears in the Philip Pullman trilogy His Dark Materials. The first installment, The Golden Compass, is coming to the movie theaters soon. The website has an interesting feature which tells who your daemon is. Mine's a fox named Delilah.

BEHOLD THE POWER OF THE NERDFURY AND DESPAIR!

(via theGarance)

The question at hand was how to find good restaurants, and his answer was to take the city you want to go to and just google up some restaurant names that serve the dish you're after. Then go to chowhound or another foodie site, and rather than asking about restaurants, you put up an enthusiastic post talking about how you just had the best whatever you're looking for at one of these restaurants.

At that point, what drivingblind likes to call the nerdfury will begin. Posters will show up from nowhere to shower you with disdain, tell you how that place used to be good but has now totally sold out and - most important to your quest - will tell you where you would have gone if you were not some sort of mouth breathing water buffalo.

(via Kevin Drum, via Jim Henley, via Robert Donoghue)

A Devil's Haircut In My Mind



Great film. Have to say my favorite scene in No Country For Old Men is when Josh Brolin is trying to swim away from the furiously paddling pit bull. But there are many, many other great scenes. It is a violent, gory movie (which I'm not into - can't understand why so many people pay money to see all of those horror films Hollywood churns out) but it's a Coen brothers film. A wonderful, sad, scary, suspenseful, funny one with great actors. It's one of those movies where you don't know which way it's going to go.

Makes me feel lucky to live in Chicago which got screenings before the nationwide release.

Alfredo Stroessner, Colorful Dictator of Paraguay for 35 Years, Dies in Exile at 95

Thus was the obit heading in the New York Times I picked up this morning.

Lorrie Moore writes about Shakespeare.

That Bitch-Goddess Success

Random subject heading for some random thoughts. I love the Internet exclusive trailer and theatrical trailer for Jack Black's new movie Nacho Libre.

I love the new song by The Raconteurs

Find yourself a girl and settle down
Live a simple life in a quiet town

Steady as she goes (steady as she goes)
Steady as she goes (steady as she goes)

So steady as she goes

Your friends have shown a kink in the single life
You've had too much to think, now you need a wife

Akbar Ganji released from prison after serving a 6-year sentence.

Trial Began for Members of Aryan Prison Gang

The trial in the federal courthouse here is the first in a series growing out of a 2002 indictment of 40 members of the gang, which was formed in the mid-1960's by white inmates in the racially divided California prison system.
...
Prosecutors said the brotherhood had since adopted the tactics of organized crime families as it expanded to several other states and to a half-dozen federal penitentiaries, particularly the most secure "supermax" prisons at Florence, Colo., and Marion, Ill.

On trial now are four senior members of the brotherhood, including two of its early leaders, Mr. Mills, 57, known as "The Baron," and Tyler D. Bingham, 58, who goes by "T.D." or "The Hulk." Also on trial are Edgar W. Hevle, 54, known as "The Snail," and Christopher O. Gibson, 46.

The four are accused of ordering or participating in 15 murders or attempted murders over the past 25 years. They are being charged under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization laws, which have been used to prosecute Mafia families and other criminal groups. Federal prosecutors call the Aryan Brotherhood case, the result of four years of investigation by numerous agencies, the biggest federal death penalty case ever brought.

It takes a village

Events in Iraq called to mind these words which were written about another land with a much different history

We have been told that "it takes a village" and--never mind the implication for now--it probably does. A village or small town like Gorazde can mature for years in history's cask, ripening away for all its provincialism. The large majority of its citizens may be content or at any rate reconciled. But the awful and frightening fact about fascism is that it "takes" only a few gestures (a pig's head in a mosque; a rumor of the kidnap of a child; an armed provocation at a wedding) to unsettle or even undo the communal and humane work of generations.

Normally the fascists don't have the guts to try it, they need the reassurance of support from superiors or aid from an outside power and they need to know that "law," defined nationally or internationally, will be a joke at the expense of their victims. In Bosnia they were granted all three indulgences. But even at the edge of those medieval paintings of breakdown and panic and mania, when people still thought the heavens might aid them, there was often the oblique figure at the edge of the scene, who might hope to record and outlive the carnage and perhaps help rebuild the community. Call him the moral draftsman, at least for now, and be grateful for small mercies.