happier post for a happy new year

fuck, i just lost the post. Blogger sucks. This never happened back in the storm woodbridge days. fucking -------- campaign. Anyway, the party was great - very cool people (texans, julie!), good music, lots of alcohol i did not drink, funny conversations with folks both sober and smashed. It was great to see ---, and i'm glad i made the trek out to Bed-Stuy and spent my new year's eve doing something fun. On the way out i bumped into ---- s. on the street and we had the first real conversation we have had in like five or six years. (I last saw ---- briefly during the RNC protests, and before that, at the WEF in 2002.) I think ---- is an amazing person and have for years, so i was and am really happy that i got to catch up with her. She's going to put me on the email list for her ---------, which should rock.



Apparently ------------ is in town. I haven't seen her in over three years, since the day before i left NY to go to Focus when we had lunch at the Mamouns in the village. That was a long time ago. It would be good to say hi, i think. Hmm....



It was also good to talk to ----- and ------ on the phone. And ------- too, earlier today, whose advice led to my current dearth of facial hair.



Anyway, happy new year everybody. Next year may we be in new haven, celebrating first contracts for 4,000 workers and Richard Levin's appointment as Bud Selig's replacement. (Apocryphal unsubstantiated props to Rev. Lee for that one.)

After the general awesomeness of 2003 - personal stuff, organizing, academics, (particularly the first half of the year) - 2004 has been a lot more ambiguous. I left New Haven, where i'd fought for four years to build a community i was proud to be a part of, and which i feel a lot worse about leaving than Yale, which is really just another four letter word, with all the complexities of semantics and meaning that implies. I spent four months, or three and a half, i guess, in my parents' apartment being miserable. I took a road trip across the country with Julie, which was a lot of fun, until we neared the home stretch (for me) and everything seemed like it was going to shit all over again. I wandered the streets of New York city, saw friends brutalized by the police state and my hometown under militarized occupation. I took a staff position with the union, coordinating a boycott against two non-union hotels in an exciting fight i care a lot about (but won't talk about much here for fear of MEG googling) and left feeling like i had failed. I wandered up through the boston suburbs in a misguided a deeply masculinist faux-homeric/tolkienite journey in search of myself or some bullshit like that. There have been other good moments too - chilling with friends in New Haven, with Vic in New York, going to Mexico in January and hanging out with K, the arrival of a new cousin(!), Watching the red sox win on TV and participating in the collective urban orgasm that followed (is my use of sexuallizing langauge here problematic?) watching the mets beat the tigers in extra innings at shea with lev and alyssa, the week i spent in arizona, getting to know joey and katharine in boston and meeting and working with local 26 members, the atlantic city strike march, the fact that my 11 year old cousin is now a better guitar player than i am (no joke, he rocks.) But i leave this year feeling, well, ambivalent. Ambivalent and lonely. But i'm also, as i frantically put together applications, (and trying to decide whether or not i can justify going to Vic's party) excited about grad school, whether that happens next year or the year after. And i guess i'm also excited about getting my own apartment in new york and building a new life here. I gotta confess, though - I'm also kind of scared, because i don't want to fuck up again and find myself in the same frustrated state of loneliness and self-loathing and inertia. I guess it's up to me.

spinning dj shadow: entroducing

Phoebe, my search hits are weirder than your search hits

recent search hits for this site:



fitzgeezus

new dentine commercial

"dentine fire" (like ten million times.)

high stregnth pepper spray

UPN and WB and Klan

Dentine-fire advertising

shamus mcnasty

"stephen osserman"

"rebecca livengood" + yale

"blurry abrams"

1984 Yale University Clerical Worker’s strike.

each year, the NIH alone gives Yale about $300,000,000

...so why only $35 mil with 120,000 dead on the south asian rim?

I'm a woman, you're a machine

i didn't think i would, but i'm liking the death from above 1979 album a lot. Also spending time with The Slits' Cut and Turn, the new double cd by The Ex. I'm thinking about not going to [deleted to protect the guilty] anymore - it's expensive, and they never have what i am looking for. But they do stock (and heven have a poster up of) The Wowz' Long Grain Rights, which is pretty awesome. I need to hunt down a copy of the MIA/Diplo album. And some other stuff. And i'm thinking about buying an electric guitar and starting to play again. It's been so long since i've been serious about making music and now seems like as good a time as any to try again. For once my brother and i are agreeing about music. Mastodon's Leviathan, a Moby-Dick inspired concept album, is kind of amazing. I think i still prefer Opeth's Still Life, but i have a thing for Swedish bands.



I learned about Questionable Content from Alyssa today. Now i've read every strip from the beginning, and i'm a little addicted.

With all this blood flowing from the television

Wal-Mart and marines commercials suceeding each other on channel 11 during Smallville.



"You will become one of the world's greatest [class] warriors."

Excuse me

while i retch

Baruch Kimmerling has a fantastic review essay in last week's Nation. You can and should read the whole thing here

Susan Sontag, 1933-2004

the WEF 2002 legal drama continues...

The subpoena, part of a civil suit in which New York City is a defendant, demands voluminous information, including all of the Independent Media Center's news reporting, emails, internal documents, and web pages relating to the World Economic Forum.

As the NYC IMC detailed in its response, the request violates reporter's privilege by seeking information that is available through other sources and that is not highly relevant to the claim.

"Why doesn't the City ask the New York Times for all of their articles and emails relating to the World Economic Forum?" Arun Gupta, an editor of the NYC IMC newspaper, The Indypendent, said.

The subpoena is the fourth time since August 2004 that US law enforcement has taken legal action against the Independent Media Center. Three of the four subpoenas have been issued in New York City.

there's reaqlly nothing like watching a friend standing right next to you get pepper-sprayed in the mouth after the NYPD charges into a crowd, beats people with batons and drags them into cop wagons while the president of your university parties inside with the former president of Mexico and a guy who vetoed the first minimum wage increase in his state in forever. ('67)

The quake tsunami stuff is horrible. And it'll provide Natural Hazards death-porn for generations.



And now for something completely mundane...



The past week has contained too much vegetation and not enough getting work done (i hesitate to use "productivity," but maybe i should just recpncile myself to the total taylorized regimentation of everyday life and then try to do something about it.)



I don't alyaws agree with Stuart Hall, but i've enjoyed reading the festschrift (mostly just the stuff he wrote, and the interviews.) Interviews where scholars are really articulate scare the carp oiut of me because i'm never going to be able to be that coherent and i develop a big inferiority complex about it and get really scared about orals when i haven't even finished applying yet.



There's snow all over the ground. I'm going to go out and enjoy it for a bit.

no one knows what it's like to be hated (except donald rumsfeld.)

5{ont-size:85%;">In Rumsfeld's defense, those dead, slain, and maimed iraqis sure play a mean pinball.



I'm in Vic's office. I don't have any cavities. kick ass.



I wandered through Labyrinth yesterday, trying to find some grad-school inspiration and instead just got overwhelmed and afraid. (Labyrinth can do that to you.) Lot of books by Yale folks being prominently displayed in various sections. Kind of surreal. Gordon Lafer's book on job training, The Cultural Front, Culture in The Age of Three Worlds, Patricia Pessar's book... Other stuff. I wound up not buuying anything. I have enough reading and writing to do right now. And i need to find a job and a room/apartment.



I miss my brother. I think he's in Ireland at the moment. I doubt they have death metal lead vocalist parrots in Ireland, but they might.



I'll write more later.

I've returned to my parents' apartment in New York to feverishly work out my applications, find a new job, and move out as soon as possible. I finished Immigrant Acts in the Oakland Airport saturday morning, and while i agree with others' observations regarding the imprecise and at times self-defeating diction and sentence structure of Lowe's prose, i think she makes some very strong points about empire and subject formation, and probably doesn't care if I don't like her writing because she is very clear about her complete dismissal of aestheticization anyway. This, i take issue with. While there's certainly a very serious and very obvious danger in reducing cultural production to the 'purely' aesthetic, reifiing it into a dissassociated and isolated objet d'art linked to nothing but the singular genius of its creator, does resisting aestheticization to the degree which Lowe does ultimately ignore the extent to which aesthetics become a site for the kinds of contestations she lauds? And is there a greater danger in the de-aestheticization of any and all works by people of color in order to better integrate them into one's theoretical framework? I wonder about this.



I also started reading the Stuart Hall reader which i didn't get to finish two years ago. Hopefully, when i finish, I'll be coherent enough to write that response to Katie I promised. But in the meantime, i have personal statements to write, and applications to work on.



San Francisco was generally good. The debrief was hard at times, but i am doing what i believe io need to be doing right now. Still, it was good to see the other folks from the first wave of coordinators again and to meet the newer recruits as well, and to hear how much ass those folks are kicking. My replacement is going to be great, i think. Seeing John Wilhelm not in the context of the Yale fight was very odd. Good to hear him talk about the fight though. It's a very exciting struggle, and one i want to help out in whatever way i can, but right now, i guess that doesn't include being a boycott coordinator.



Alek and Camille's cat is really cute.



Last night, I watched The Wizard on TV for the first time in maybe twelve or thirteen years. You remember it - kind of like Rain Main meets nintendo, with fred savage, christian slater, and beau bridges. Makes a lot less sense now than it did then, but still enjoyable.

San Francisco

Short entry, because this is costing me money. SF is good, Alek was good. Good.

I'd just like to begin my little hiatus with "woohoo!"



I haven't been arrested in over two years. Seriously, people. Call me.

stocking action was a wash. no one showed, the hotel was laughing at us. great way to end three months. I feel pretty shitty. I don't really have time to be blogging. Thomas's paper on the Jerome Davis affair is great. email him if he hasn't sent you a copy already.

You better WORK

I was here in the office until 10:40 last night doing database work. Fourteen hour days aren't particularly fun.

Today i need to go buy some coal - enough to stuff 100 plastic stockings. I still don't know if we shut down this morning's event or not. I also need to clean my apartment up and get myself in good shape to leave for san francisco tomorrow morning. And i need to run to the store and buy the expanded edition of ROTK, because i'm obsessive like that. And it'll give me something to do on the plane. Assuming i bring my computer, which i'm not sure i will.

Oh yeah, and i need to complete a draft of my personal statement and find a third reccommender. Oy vey. (Anyone want to write me a letter of recommendation for graduate school?)

Hopefully, i'll soon post a response to Katie's thoughtful comments on the Kerik post, though there will probably be a hiatus here until saturday or sunday while i deal with san francisco and moving and hopefully get some grad school stuff done too.

The Mets are signing Pedro Martinez!

Update: 40 lbs of coal purhased and hauleed back to the office by hand from Shaw's. I feel all manly. Well, ok, i'm kidding about everything except the coal part.

yep, conservatives in academia are really under siege.

Augusto Pinochet, folks.

Judge Guzman also said that a controversial interview General

Pinochet gave in November 2003 to a Spanish-language television network in the

United States was "one of the elements I took into consideration to make this

decision." In that broadcast, General Pinochet appeared both lucid and defiant,

arguing that "everything I did, I would do again, everything was thought

through."



"Who am I supposed to ask for forgiveness?" General

Pinochet also said in response to one of the television interviewer's questions.

"They are the ones who have to ask me for forgiveness, the

Marxists."

I'm not big on retributive justice, but, uh, jesus -- if anyone deserves it...



Question for readers - whose callous response to being confronted with his own US-backed atrocities do you find scarier:

a)Augusto Pinochet

b) Efrain Rios Montt

c)Henry Kissinger

When Torture Becomes an Instrument of The State

From 1973 through 1989, the report concluded, torture was a

policy of the state. It took many forms, both physical and psychological. When

my mother was detained in 1973, she was 32 years old. She was the director of

the school for social work at Catholic University, an institution the military

regarded as a nest of leftist subversives. She was a member of the Socialist

Party, a vocal advocate of Salvador Allende, and the wife of a university

professor who supported the same causes. We learned in the report that the owner

of the bakery on our street reported my mother to the authorities as a

"dangerous subversive."



Naval officers and civilians from the right-wing Homeland

and Liberty brigade surprised her at home one afternoon. They dragged her away

in front of her children, blindfolded her and carried her to an uncertain fate,

only to release her a few days later. The naval officer who let her go, however,

was kind enough to warn her that she and her family would be well advised to

leave the country, because if she were arrested again, she might not be released

so quickly, if at all. A week later, my parents, my grandparents, my brother and

I sat in the French Embassy waiting for asylum. The following week we were in

France, where we remained for 11 years before returning to Chile.



Unlike other Chileans, my mother was not subjected to an

electric cattle prod; she was neither beaten nor raped. For more than two

decades, my mother felt that she did not have the right to demand any kind of

justice because, in the end, her suffering hadn't been all that terrible. She

even thought that maybe she had deserved it when they arrested her, blindfolded

her, and forced her to listen as they tortured her students and

co-workers.



Torture is an act that stems not from savagery but

from extreme cultural and scientific sophistication. It makes the survivors feel

that they are among the privileged, traitors to the cause. It kills people's

spirits but keeps their bodies alive, transforming all those who escape it into

zombies in the service of another despicable torturer: fear. It is a gruesomely

effective tool, for it knows just how to manipulate imagination and paralyze

instincts for rebellion or resistance

.

holy crap

Problem of Leisure, meet living on the edge!



(as in the Aerosmith song? Or as in "living on the edge of a broken heart?")

"I'm In a State"

This picture gives me goosebumps.



This article makes me happy

Should i be offended that Josh Cherniss omits me from his list of Saybrugians who blog, but includes Eliana Johnson? Or should i just shut the fuck up?

Latke Withdrawal

Funny story:

I picked up the fall/winter 2004 Heeb issue today from the virgin megastore (ugh - all the asshole college kids who work there don't leave you alone - it's like if you're not buying something, you're a terrorist) on Newbury street. I called my mom to tell her this, since my great aunt Elaine's picture is in this issue. She tells me she's reading this book by an Iraqi Jewish woman from Calcutta. I say, "that sounds like Shikha's mother or something." Turns out it is Shikha's mother. Small world. The kicker is that Shikha's mother is now going to talk about her book with my mother's book group.



The Heeb issue is enjoyable - lengthy interview with the beastie boys, shorter interview with Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn, endnote by Najla Said about being her father's daughter and being a palestinian among New York jews. Check it out. The full page CAMERA ad makes me want to hurl, though. Guess it's sort of like the nation and Fox News.



Joanna Newsom is younger than me? That's odd and depressing, for some reason. But i guess everyone's younger than somebody. I mean, i guess i can still take solace in the fact that i am younger than Alek. (Happy 24th, by the way.) But Alek spent his year before college doing interesting things. I spent my secod year in kindergarden fighting over blocks and rehashing lots of shit i already knew, thus developing the fallacious idea that i was smarter than everybody else. And now i'm 23 and people younger than me are legitimately famous for making good music, but the more i think about it, the more that should be a good thing, so i'm going to shut up and stop whining, and grow up. I miss my guitar.



I've spent most of the weekend in the union office. union pizza with Joey (and Sammy!) and Jeff and Katherine last night was really fun, and this morning's holiday party/union meeting, complete with lots of cute babies and a former e-board member/irish bartender dressed up as Santa Claus, was also pretty enjoyable. I still have mixed feelings about leaving, but i'm also really excited about the grad school thing and i hope i can pull this off. (CV is done or close to done, draft of personal statement is getting there.) I'm actually enjoying sitting alone int he office late at night and feeling like i'm making progress onthis stuff.



Oh yes, and as for the title of this post.



So i know i really should care that much about Chanukah. I mean, on the scale of like, Passover and Yom Kippur and shit, it isn't a particularly important jewish holiday. But i'm a militantly secular jew, and maybe it's just goyim envy, or maybe it's just the general sense of feeling lonely and up in the air and shit, but what i really want right now is a menorah. A menorah and some latkes. That would rock sooo much.



alright, back to work.

Special Interest?

This article was a topic of conversation tonight, so i figured i'd blog it.

"It appears the unions want to take millions of dollars in dues

from their members and use them to rob average Americans of their right to pay

less for the basics in life," Ms. Gallagher said. "You need to ask one question:

Is it fair to ask American consumers to pay higher prices to subsidize a

relatively small pocket of individuals just because they are making the most

noise?"

Which "small pocket" would that be - Wal-Mart's 1.2 million "associates?" God forbid those dastardly unions should like, organize new workers or something. I mean, really. The labor movement clearly needs to listen to James Kirchick, stop organizing, and start helping the government kill trade unionists in other countries, like we did back in the good old days, when the threat of Nucular Annihilation forced the US to come up with slightly better justifications for invading and destroying sovereign nation states, back when we didn't need to invade outright, we could get right wing generals to stage coups and kill all the leftists all by themselves (i.e., with lots of guns we sold them and which they paid for with money we gave them for "infrastructure." (Notice how the "we" of the labor movement clumsily slips into "we" of the masters of war. I am the best writer ever.) Gotta love that AIFLD. Yes, if the labor movement would just get back to celebrating the neoconservative imperial project, i'm sure all Wal-Mart's troubles would evaporate.



PS: Hey James - what happens when your call for "Gay History" winds up clashing with your antihistorical panegyrics to cold war liberalism? (Except without the whole welfare state or civil rights movement part?)

Pa' una ciudad del norte/Yo me fui a trabajar

Bernard Kerik's undocumented (and now banished) nanny, while in some ways only the tip of the iceberg of the ex-commisioner's corrupt relationship to imperial structures of exclusion and enclosure, can provide a good starting off point for us to examine the contradictions of the nation security state and the loci at which the discourses of homeland are unraveled. This woman, whose name and nationality have not yet been revealed as of this writing, and who seems to have been spirited out of the country only a few days ago, may very well be an "excuse" for Kerik to resign without more troubling illegalities or indiscretions becoming public, as some have alleged, i think this revelation in itself, that even those charged with maintaining the racialized fences which demarcate citizenship and belonging in the post-modern nation-state participate fully in the economy which thrives on the illegalities and inequalities which these fences nurture. This is not "ironic" - and turning to sarcasm here obscures thr profoundly logical nature of this contradiction, for Kerik's economic relationship with an undocumented domestic worker, and his withdrawal from the nomination for the secretariat of homeland security say something worth serious attention about the inexorable but unspeakable relationship between the security state's complete reliance upon those it criminalizes.



perhaps more on this later.

Alan Light wrote his senior essay about the Beastie Boys?

Free Bird's Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Lose

New Yorkers react to the demolition of an 11-year old nest frequented by a mated pair of Red Tailed Hawks by 5th Ave Plutocrats.

..Not today, though. A hawk's nest is gone, and while in the

grand scheme it's a small thing, it still hurts. Something inspiring, humbling

and wild has been taken from the city - something that made all sorts of people

happy when they learned of it and speechless when they saw it.



The nest's destruction just seems such a shabby, cheap

thing.



...When I found out that the co-op building had removed the

nest, I started to cry.



...Like those who destroy a landmark in the middle of the

night, those responsible for destroying the nest at 927 Fifth Avenue have shown

their contempt for the city they call home.

oy gevalt

Elaine Chao stays in power. So does Gale Norton. Redneck Metal legend Dimebag Darrell gets gunned down in a club in Columbus Ohio. Yuppie fuck real estate assholes on Fifth avenue destroyed a red tailed hawk nest on their building.



But Rumsfeld is in some deep shit, and the Canadian Constitution doesn't ban gay marriage, and it's still chanukah...

So i Guess This Lends New Meaning to "The Takeover"

refrain:Shame on Yale

Diversity in the faculty and student body: There

remains only one black woman with tenure at Yale. The fraction of tenured

faculty of color hovers at 7.5 percent, and of women faculty, at 18.5

percent. To add insult to injury, when 300 graduate students submitted a

formal grievance protesting the state of diversity at Yale, the

administration claimed to have lost it, though the document was hand-delivered to the offices of several top administrators, including

President Levin.

Affordable child care: Last February, a Yale Daily News

editorial lauded the efforts of Local 34 and GESO to improve child care options

at Yale. However, the only individual who has benefited from this effort is Yale

Corporation member Linda Mason, whose child care firm, Bright Horizons, received

a contract to study Yale's child care needs. Shamefully, Yale parents and their

children still lack access to affordable child care.



Dependent health care: At a time when

Connecticut faces a budget crisis predicted to top $1 billion, the Yale

administration continues to force the children of its graduate teachers and

researchers onto state aid through its unaffordable dependent health care

plan.



Retirement with dignity: Last fall Yale made an agreement to

review retirement benefits for the 200 retirees not covered by Local 34 and

Local 35's latest contract. The average monthly pension for people who retired

from Yale before 1990 with 26 years of service remains a disgraceful $410. Yale

now refuses to negotiate.

Wait. Hold on. They lost the diversity greivance? Are you joking? That may be even more fucked up than Linda Mason and the pork-barrel politics of making sure workers don't have acces to child care. I really, really want to get arrested right now.

On Strike in NYC

NY Daily News's Albor Ruiz reports on the ongoing strike by JFK Airport Hotel workers against three airport hotels which have refused to recognize their union.

It's almost Christmas - not the best time to be on

strike.



Yet, despite the owner's pressures, tricks and

provocations, the working men and women - many of them immigrants - who have

been on the picket line for two months against three hotels near metropolitan

area airports, are not budging.



"We are going to be out here as long as it takes,"

said Narda Valle, a Bolivian native who, after 13 years at the Crowne Plaza

LaGuardia hotel, makes all of $8.25 an hour.



She was one of about 25 striking workers who,

bundled up in parkas, hats and gloves, braved a cold wind to picket outside the

Crowne Plaza last Thursday.



"We are not taking their abuse any more," Valle

said. "Until they sit at the bargaining table with us, we will remain

here."



"They," of course, is management. And in this case

it is the owner of the three hotels, a man by the name of Martin Field, who has

refused to recognize the union, even if the majority of his employees voted for

joining the Hotel-Motel Trades Council in August. That vote was certified by the

National Labor Relations Board.



Meanwhile, at the same time, he shamelessly nickels-and-dimes

the workers and filed for bankruptcy for the Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn hotels

he owns in Pennsylvania, Field hired the legal firm of Proskauer Rose - to the

tune of $700,000 - to do whatever it takes to keep the union out of a trio of

New York-area hotels.

If "Proskauer Rose" sounds familiar, that's because we've seen them before

Maybe When I Finish This Rhyme, I'll Get A Statue

Kanye West gets 10 Grammy Nominations. He can't win all of them, because in at least one case, he's in the running aganst himself, but looking at his opponents, he probably deserves most if not all of them. (I'm not sure i like "all fall down" and "slow jamz" more than jadakiss's militantly anti-bush "why?") The college dropout, though wildly uneven, was one of the year's best albums. It's too bad that the RIAA or whoever picks the categories forgot to acknowledge records like The Arcade Fire's Funeral, Brian Wilson's Smile, The Futureheads's eponymous Andy Gill-produced debut album, Madvillainy, The Fiery Furnaces' Blueberry Boat, the better cuts from Talib Kweli's The Beautiful Struggle, Sonic Youth's Sonic Nurse and the strong comeback albums from Morrissey and Mission of Burma, the recent Iron & Wine LP Our Endless Numbered Days, even Cee-Lo Green is the Soul Machine or Franz Ferdinand. But it's cool that a bob marley cover by Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer, two of the coolest dead guys ever, is nominated for "Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals." And while SmiLe misses out on Album of the year, it does get a nomination for "Best Pop Vocal Album," which is cool if bizarre, and "best engineered album." Also, if the ubiquitous glaswegian archduke enthusiasts get left out of the album of the year contest, they are nominated for "Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal" and "best alternative album," along with modest mouse, who are also nomonated for best rock song, up against fucking velvet revolver, which is totally surreal. Franz also get a music video nomination for take me out, but the video for Brock & co's "float on" was better and isn't nominated... If that weren't enough, Mos Def's "sex, love & money" is nominated for a fucking grammy for best urban/alternative performance up against the roots and Jill Scott! Jay-Z and the Beasties are each up for several awards as well, and Loretta Lynn's Jack White produced comeback album will probably win big in the country categories. I would talk shit about Jack White, but i am afraid that he would try to hit me. I'm betting Toots wins best Reggae album. Bill Clinton and Steve Martin are nominated for awards in the same category. Why the grammies are nominating audiobooks for awards against comedy albums, i have no idea. Chutes Too Narrow is oddly up for "Best Recording Package," (yes, but the music was good too, folks,) against Wilco, Ani, and the beasties. How is Kanye not nominated for producer of the year?



Why are the Black-Eyed Peas nominated for like eight awards? When are people going to realize that they suck? (I would like to thank Alek Felstiner for repeatedly alerting me to this fact.)

corrections and effluvia

David Brooks isn't bald. His hairline is merely receding. The Problem of Leisure sincerely regrets this oversight, which results from our deep-seated compulsion to change the channel whenever Brooks appears on television. We maintain our conviction that Brooks's right wing pseudosociology offers oversimplified and distorted shibboleths about american culture vilifying cities and depicting their inhabitants as youthful deluded hipsters or obnoxious aging yuppies. We wonder whether Mr. Brooks ever left the Yale campus during his visiting professorship in new haven. We (this is getting silly) much prefer La Jornada's David Brooks, as we have stated numerous times.



We kinda like Steve Greenhouse though.



And by "we," i mean "me."

happy chanukah!

When jews come together to celebrate Guerilla warfare.



I kid because i am sad that i'm missing the holiday entirely.

Be Warned, Ye Firm, Toned & Modelesque

Heeb's "Urban Kvetch" critiques the racial politics of a certain online Jewish dating service.

JDate

The Internet ad reads: “760,424 blue-eyed women at JDate.com

and counting,” and another tallies green-eyed men. Is JDate encouraging us to

JHate? Of course lots of Jews are light as can be. But with the stigma on the

dark-complexioned putting us at odds with our swarthy Semitic selves, JDate ads

offer a disturbing and all-too-familiar escape. Here you can find someone who's

Jewish, but not, you know, too Jewish, not Jewish like that. GUY

AUSTRIAN

Reason number 3,000,000,001 why david brooks can take his red states and his blue states and attempt to use the flimsy logic to cover up his bald head.

Well, the GRE is done, and it went fine. As i prepare to head back up to Boston for my final two weeks with the local, i'm realizing that a big challenge for me after i move back to NY is staying motivated to get my applications done, get a new job, and get out of my parents' apartment. I'm sad about leaving the union, but i'm also excited about being back in New York and about Grad School (maybe,) but i really, really don't need another four month bout of vegetated depression. The last one was debilitating enough for the next decade.



Alright. That's enough for tonight.

"liberal?"

Great news, stupid article.

december boys got it bad

For folks in New Haven, go see the wowz at york square tomorrow (friday) night. For folks in DC, go see them next friday at Stacatto Lounge, 2006 18th St. NW. I think that sums up just about everyone who reads this thing.

Post 400 - Who'da Thunk?

Well, I have a couple things i should talk about. The first is that i'm leaving my job. After December 17, i'm going to move back to New York and cease boycott coordination.



I have mixed feelings about this, but i also believe it's what i need to do for several reasons, preeminent among them my loneliness here in Boston, my general incompetence at boycott coordination, and a feeling that despite how exciting and extremely important this campaign is, i really need to be doing something else for a while. I did nothing (four months of it) in between leaving new haven and flying to san francisco for the training in september, and now that the lockout has ended, i would like to look at other kinds of organizing and other ways of thinking about social justice and cities. Boston is a great city. Being here at this local has been great. The folks at the local, particularly the leads and the business agents, and especially the workers who've volunteered their time to make this boycott succeed, are awesome, and i've learned a lot from them. I have very mixed feelings about leaving, and there are aspects of this job which have been inspiring, engaging, fun, and exhilarating, and i'm not just talking about Minnie Driver. But i haven't been able to push myself to really commit to this, and my all-encompassing fear of the telephone makes me, in general, a very mediocre boycotter. I feel deeply privileged to have been able to be on staff at Unite Here, which i believe is the best and most exciting union in the country, and would someday love to return to the union in another capacity - maybe as a worker organizer or as a researcher. Or possibly as a parrot who organizes workers and doubles as the lead singer of a (sexist and homophobic, if you read the interview) novelty death metal band.



I'm going home to New York tomorrow night to take the GRE saturday afternoon. I haven't studied at all or taken any practice tests. I'm understandably freaked. I've made some progress on the grad school stuff in the last few days though, and that's good. And i've also made some progress on the boycott stuff, which is also good, because i want to leave my replacement in a good place. (Flying out to SF on the 15th, back the 18th, moving back to NY either late on the 18th or on the 19th.)



This article is shocking not for the fact that the Sandinistas are making a comeback, but in how baldfaced it is in its description of the Bush Administration's ties to the corrupt right wing elite and determination to prevent a sandinista return to power. Brings one back to the glory days of mined harbors and forty thousand corpses.



Bush saying "we are very firm on the Jan 30th date" makes me giggle. I don't know, maybe it's his tone. Or maybe it's the sheer insanity, the overwhelming violence of this imperial project and the callousness with which the neoconservatives barely even maintain the sham anymore. And then i stop giggling, and i want to cry, break something, or storm something.

And Your Bird Can Sing

earthpigbornc (5:57:34 PM): have I told you about hatebeak?
hydrarchy (5:57:41 PM): no
earthpigbornc (5:57:48 PM): parrot-fronted death metal band
hydrarchy (5:58:18 PM): holy living fuck
earthpigbornc (5:58:23 PM): yeah
earthpigbornc (6:01:17 PM): oh shit
earthpigbornc (6:01:23 PM): I just discovered caninus
earthpigbornc (6:01:26 PM): guess what they are?
hydrarchy (6:01:31 PM): dog?
earthpigbornc (6:01:39 PM): two pitt-bulls
earthpigbornc (6:01:46 PM): the vocals sound sick
earthpigbornc (6:01:53 PM): just fucking snarling
earthpigbornc (6:02:01 PM): and dogs barking in rythm
earthpigbornc (6:04:43 PM): hah
earthpigbornc (6:04:50 PM): they did a split with hatebeak

edit: here's more on hatebeak for your amazement. (Also, earthpigbornc is my not-so-little brother, Lev.)

most metal NYT quotation about transnationalism and the postcolonial state ever

"People would shout, 'Genghis!' But it was nothing political."

cuts like a knife

I just slashed my thumb on an aluminum foil food container. What kind of idiot cuts himself on tin foil? This one. Clearly.



"He's such a fucking jerk" - Le Tigre

two more outrageous Bush NLRB decisions

fuck and fuck

All the words past the margin

Jay-Z and Nas are both great rappers, and they both excel at different things. Jay-Z has always been more proflific and more consistent. His microphone presence, his choice of producers, hius lyrical confidence, and his ability to market himself are superior to his rival from queensbridge. Nas's work has been at times wildly inconsistent. Sometimes he sounds barely present while rapping. His hustler pose was always far less convincing than Jay's. Butr besides a vastly superior lyrical vocabulary, what Nas has that Jay-Z has never really had for me is a poetic virtuosity - a smooth flow with impossibly powerful symbolic content, as evinced in the first verse of "The World is Yours," (which Nas samples on "Theif's Theme," and Which Jay-Z himself sampled way back on Reasonable Doubt.)

I sip the Dom P, watchin Gandhi til I'm charged

Then writin in my book of rhymes, all the words pass the

margin

To hold the mic I'm throbbin, mechanical movement

Understandable smooth shit that murderers move

wit

The thief's theme, play me at night, they won't act

right

The fiend of hip-hop has got me stuck like a crack

pipe

The mind activation, react like I'm facin time

like

'Pappy' Mason with pens I'm embracin

Wipe the sweat off my dome, spit the phlegm on the

streets

Suede Timb's on my feets, makes my cypher,

complete

Whether crusin in a Sikh's cab, or Montero Jeep

I can't call it, the beats make me fallin asleep

I keep fallin, but never fallin six feet deep

I'm out for presidents to represent me (Say

what?)

I actually like the second verse more in some ways, but the opening four lines of the song are among the most stunning verses i've ever heard and left me speechless the first time i heard the song.

Street's Disciple

I've made it through pretty much the entire first disc of Nas's new double album, and to my surprise, it's pretty good. I heard God's Son recouped some lost ground after the string of late-nineties dissapointments - (also heard stillmatic wasn't too bad either,) but i haven't bought a Nas record since Illmatic. (Which is hands down one of the best hip hop records of the last two decades.) The first disc of his sixth full legnth/first double cd-if-you-don't-count-the-illmatic-reissue. Nas does his whole prophet schtick, but his "self conscious racial pedagogy," to borrow a phrase Paul Gilroy used to describe KRS-ONE in Black Atlantic*, isn't nearly as problematically gendered here as on, say, "I Know I Can," and in foregrounding the politics, Nas still finds a space to make ironic critiques of the posture/positionality of the "conscious rapper," ending a song in which he declares UPN and WB black sitcom stars to be little more than postmeodern minstrels with a male voice asking him what he's done for the people lately as he runs to his limousine. The beats are also more succesful and less distracting than the aforementioned Beethoven sample. (And yes, i know what Nas was trying to do with the "Fur Elise" sample, but i found the song more annoying than revelatory.

"they say prescott bush funded hitler, now the world's in a twister - n----, what you expect?" - "Reason"

"You Know My Style" closes off the first disc, and doesn't really work for me, but "U.B.R. (Unauthorized Biography of Rakim)" is pretty amazing. And if Nas praises the figures of the late eighties golden age on UBR, on "Virgo," he gives one a verse - none other than Doug E. Fresh. Even post-bill o' reilly-ludacris is relatively on-point. Nas's premarital attempt to grapple with sexuality is graphic, but decidedly pro-jimmy hat, and ultimately sort of cute. ("remember the times i hung with the dimes/remember the times i fucked a few/rememberin the times/it was on my mind/but none of them could touch you.") And then it gets homophobic. Fuck. "Makings of the perfect bitch" explores the masculine imaginary and shouts out terry mcmillan. On "getting married," Nas proclaims "this ain't no huxtable kisses and love shit," and discusses bliss with Kelis, who, it turns out is "The perfect bitch.""Say hello to the man, goodbye to the giggolo... even martin luther king had a fling on the side." hmmm...

"Bridging The Gap," with it's father-son collaboration blues rap, is probably making african-american studies grad students around the country bounce with glee. It's pretty awesome. ("Muddy waters, howlin' wolf, you don't stop.")

i like theif's theme more now, than i did when i first heard it. Once you get over the fact that he's sampling en-a-gadda-da-vida and himself, it's a pretty good song.

Sure, it's a little pretentious, and like every nas album since '94, it ain't illmatic, but that's ok.

*(As i've written elsewhere, i think Gilroy's dismissal of KRS is premature and ignores some of the transnational nature of the ways in which Kris Parker, at least in his earlier work, envision collectivity and diaspora, and particularly his relationship to reggae and dancehall techniques.)

See No Future, Pay No Rent

Anya Kamenetz continues the Village Voice's "Generation Debt" series of reports with a look at the Bush Administration's war on financial aid.

But the hypocrisy doesn’t end there. It’s hard not to see this

callous cut in aid as part of a larger Bush administration attack on the young,

and by extension, on the principle of opportunity this country was founded on.

Bush and his Republican machine have mortgaged young Americans’ futures by

running up record deficits, even as he has sent hundreds of us to our deaths in

Iraq. Rock the Vote and other youth-vote organizations successfully excited

people’s passions before the election by raising questions about a possible

draft, enough that Bush was compelled to deny the plan publicly. But with the

fires still burning in Falluja, and the drums starting to beat for Iran and

North Korea, it’s hard to believe that promise won’t be broken, along with so

many others. In Bush’s America, the real opportunity for young people doesn’t

wear a cap and gown—it wears a helmet and boots.

In other news, it looks like Tom Ridge has resigned. Here's what i find interesting:

In an e-mail circulated to senior Homeland Security officials,

Ridge praised the department as "an extraordinary organization that each day

contributes to keeping America safe and free." He also said he was privileged to

work with the department's 180,000 employees "who go to work every day dedicated

to making our company better and more secure."

"Our company?" Well, they've certainly got the union-busting chops, no-bid contracts, and near-total lack of accountability, so what the hell.

i'm tired/so tired/i'm tired of having sex

I've been enjoying the fracas over at the blog whose name i shall not utter (partially because i hate Yale, and partially because i resent the fact that Daniel Munz called me a "detatched lunatic." I mean, really). While i have heard several friends within the transgendered community counterpose their sexual practices to "straight sex," i think this distinction assumes an entirely different context and connotiation when it's being made by a reactionary right wing homophobic straight white Yale man, and thus the objections raised by Chris, Michael, Alyssa, and Evan are all entirely germane and incisive, though see the comments for my panegyric ode to the sex toy.



Who knows, maybe i have a future as the Village Voice's first ridiculously celibate straight male sex columnist. I could call my column "Lack of Sex and the City." Hot.



Except that i wouldn't, because to do so would be to commodify sexual pleasure in a way which constructs the feminine as mute object of male gratification, and that kind of stinks. So no sex columns for me.

oh dear god no.

Where were you the day that hip hop died? Is it too early to mourn? Is it too late to ride?

Hasselhoff's career has taken a slight turn from acting — to
rapping. More startling is that his hip-hop name will be… Hassel the Hoff.

Hasselhoff (51) is the latest recruit of legendary rapper
Ice-T, who is the actor's neighbour in Los Angeles. The two have reportedly
racked up quite a close friendship

According to Sky News, Ice-T said of his new friend and
protégé: "The man is a legend, we are going to show a whole new side of him.
"He's gonna come out as Hassle the Hoff. The Hoff will surprise people with
his rap skills and humour."

thanks to Lev aka "diminutive biff" for the tip.

Maybe it's just my naivete talking, but this seems like a good thing.

Bosses in offices on automatic drip/They got the keys to the city/But we got a lotta shakin' in our hips

i've thus far neglected to note how fucking amazing the new pixies song, "Bam Thwok," is. This was probably a critical oversight on my part, because it's fantastic. Does the fact that Kim sings on the band's first new song in like twelve years mean that Charles Thompson has lost a bit of his ego? (Of course, the fact that the pixies are back together at all probably suggests that this may be at least somewhat the case.) Anyway, the song rocks and you need to go listen now.

"i know you like to linedance/everything's so democratic and cool/but baby, there's no guidance/when random rules"

Alright, so i was not hospitalized in 1984 for approaching perfection (though i did visit my mom in the hospital in 1984 when she gave birth to my little brother and accidentally broke the hospital bed or something. I was so punk rock when i was three...) Nevertheless, the first chorus of D.C. Berman's ode to loss, disorder and the pain of memory and forgetting, the introductory track to the Silver Jews' third and best album, seems to speak to my current aporia over work, school, and seemingly everything else. And maybe it's just the use of the word "aporia," but that last sentence was more pretentious than i meant it to be. I like "aporia" - the word, not the state. Partially because it reminds me that i used to know ancient greek before i forgot it all, which is exceedingly obnoxious, and for which i immediately apologize, and partially because it encapsulates a certain kind of terror and frustration i think it's otherwise very difficult to express with only a single word. And I really am "at a loss" right now. I mean, it's something i've gotten used to over the last seven or eight months, certainly, but it's there. ("Aporia" comes from greek. The verb "aporeusthai" means, more or less, "to be at a loss.")



I saw the Bridget Jones' Diary sequel with my cousins and their 8 and 11 year old children, barely preserving the now 12 or 13 year old tradition of the post-thanksgiving cousin movie, what with Nellie, Kyla, and Jenny all elsewhere, and Andrea's kids all down in DC with Ray's family, and Lev in fucking england for the year (although i did talk to my brother tonight on the phone for the first time in months. Whatever the failures of the telephone as a means of communication, it dwarfs Instant Messenger.) Thanksgiving last night was oddly small and subdued - only 11 people or som, a far cry from the usual 27 - and i somehow managed to be the youngest person in the room, until caleb and lena (the 11 and 8 yr old cousins) showed up with their parents for dessert. Until this year, being the youngest person anywhere was something i'd rarely experienced - getting held back in Kindergarten will do that to you. The movie itself was mediocre, racist, and preoccupied with unfunny fat jokes. I hear the first one was better, but I haven't seen it. At least i didn't have to sit through Alexander, which seems like it would be good material for a paper or article someday, but neither a particularly good movie, nor particularly fun to see with my cousins. But i bet it was still better than Troy, Julie. Caleb's becoming a pretty amazing guitarist.



Playing around on my dad's computer, i found old faux catullo-ginsbergian love and breakup poetry that i wrote in high school. The breakup poetry is hard for me to look at, not because i identify with it, but because i can sort of remember where i was when i wrote it, but i'm ashamed at how misogynist and vicious it is, and i don't really think like that anymore and haven't in half a decade. The love poetry, written while I was in the relationship with the person i later wrote the mean and self-destructive breakup poetry about, is much more benignly embarassing. Both because it's pretty pretentious, and well, other reasons i will not divulge on the Internets. But, oh yeah, my real point is that if I was sexually active in high school, then the pork-barrel politics of abstinence education bullshit is a really, really bad idea.



Anyway. So, yeah. Aporia. What will i tell my lead on monday? If i leave boston, where will i go and what will i do? Can i really apply to grad school with like a month till final application deadlines having not taken any tests yet? If i leave the job am i breaking a commitment and precluding myself from ever doing work with the union again? Do i really want to leave the job? If i don't, can i make this boycott work?



More later.

the shiny apple is bruised but sweet

I'm back in New York at my parents' place for the weekend. Glad to be out of greater boston for the first time since the Atlantic City solidarity picket. It's been nearly two months since i've seen my parents and longer than that since i've seen my cousins and my grandparents and my great aunt whom y'all (apologies to Helena Herring) need to vote for. Emotions remain conflicted. Certain aspects of boycott coordination are extremely fun. Like when you get to talk to one of the stars of one of your favorite films about exacting vengeance on duplicitous managers. But things are also rocky, and the future is up in the air. (Isn't it always, though.) I don't know how much blogging i'll be doing over the next few days - if i know what's good for me - and i've proved repeatedly over the last year or so that I do not - i'll be focusing on dealing with grad school apps and seeing family and, if possible, friends (so let me know if you're in the area, which you probably aren't.)



Standing in the back bay train station waiting to get on the train to NY just after noon i saw a high school classmate who i hadn't seen or communicated with in probably four and a half years. We exchanged pleasantries and then she walked as far down the platform as she could without bumping into Rhode Island. Watching "Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion" on TV tonight (after watching Prizoner of Azkaban on DVD (i'm a huge dork) and prior to watching Full Metal Jacket and Innerspace on HBO) was sort of a bizarre afterword. Also, another high school classmate, Lev Sviridov, just won the Rhodes, so congratulations to him, wherever he is. That' s pretty awesome.



I feel like i could totally just sit in a bathtub for the next few months.

last night's craziness

so we did our first post-lockout boycott leaflet last night. It was extremely cold out. Anyway, about a half hour after we started, Minnie Driver walks out of the hotel with her entourage of well-dressed young men. Upon seeing us leafletting (i think i may have tried to say "please check out of the hotel" before i got a good look at her and realized that it was Minnie Driver,) she says "oh, what's this," or something to that effect, and i triy to launch into the boycott rap despite the fact that I'm slightly starstruck, barely able to talk, and afraid of accidentally blurting out something like "I loved you in Grosse Pointe Blank" or "I had a crush on you when i was in high school." So, with help from Ariana, i'm able to explain the boycott, sort of, and Minnie Driver volunteers to complain to management and seems genuinely angry about the fact that she wasn't informed of the labor dispute. She also volunteers to write a letter to management and cc it to us. Then she invites us to her show at the Paradise. We all decide to go, and then everybody else changes their mind while i'm already at the club, but i decided to stay anyway, cause, well, fuck it. And i had fun. Uncomfortable fun, but fun nonetheless.

"My God," the enemy is among us! We are the enemy.

To the Editor: I was disturbed to read about the havoc those

union vandals are wrecking on Mother Yale. Thus, here is a proposal that will

solve all of the administration's problems at once:



Everybody loves a show trial! Why not just pick a few more

graduate students (arbitrarily, of course), and subject them to "disciplinary

hearings" and "academic probation." It worked for the grade strike -- it can

work again! This practice will meet every administrator's needs: qualified

students will stop applying to the graduate schools, our sense of justice will

be offended and with luck, the unions will cave in and we can pay workers far

less than they need to live and offer no benefits at all.



Hey, it worked for trigger-happy agribusiness in the Imperial

Valley in the 1930s, so why not try it today at one of the nation's leading

enlightened institutions. Best of all, my plan doesn't require any action that

could improve Yale in any way!

Matt Rockman '97

February 15, 1996

A search for "grade strike" as i procrastinate filling out applications and figuring out how, when, and where to take the GRE, not to mention agonizing about my future as a boycott coordinator, reveals anti-union vitriol that would make Boise Kimber blush (and he was on our side back then). The union as "poison," the union as the decaying corpse of academe or as the metastasizing cancer eating it from within - these are the images and tropes with which Yale administrators and Goldman Sachs-bound undergraduates represent the transient teachers whose fundamental indispensability to the casualized post-Bayh-Dole university was the awful revelation , for them, of the grade strike - not the vicious, career-sabotaging vituperations of publicly progressive professors. (That they lauded.) I will not launch into an exploration of whence this anxiety about the role of the graduate student in the postmodern university originates - others, whom i have cited repeatedly, have done so far better than i ever could. Suffice to say that as i'm trying to decide whether i want to become a graduate student (and i doubt i have the chops to wind up at Yale - the Amstud grad students i know there are all fucking brilliant Plus, i told brenda i would write a chapter of her dissertation for her, and i wrote my mediocre senior essay instead,) it's a strange feeling to think that i might become one of these figures of academic dread at some university somewhere all too soon. But then i realize that in some ways, being a site at which the confused articulate anxiety about the corporatization and casualization of academic labor and knowledge isn't really all that unfamiliar. I mean, some poeple have already expanded such a textual schema to include undergraduates they don't agree with.

Happy 30th Anniversary To My Parents!

And now, some more David Rees

In the 1920s, there were between 20,000 and 30,000 Klan members in suburban Long Island. Whatever the precedent, however, this is pretty shocking.

Awakened by a loud bang and the ring of their doorbell, an

interracial couple peered out the front window of their Long Island home at 3

a.m. yesterday and saw a cross burning on the front lawn.



They said they immediately called the Suffolk County

police, but by the time officers arrived, rain had doused the fire. The police

removed the cross, which was three feet tall and made from the slats of a picket

fence. By yesterday afternoon, the only remaining trace was a charred circle of

grass outside the building, a two-family house in the southwest corner of Lake

Grove.

Welcome to four more years.

workin on grad school applications. How the FUCK do i find out what my undergraduate GPA was? I feel like i had better things to do when i was still in school than agonize over my grade point average - like, um, learning. And studying. And writing. And organizing. Why do we categorize academic value through numeric constants, and why do we care about the fact that i blew off natural hazards because it was a ridiculous class as opposed to the fact that -- oh, never mind, i'm going to come off sounding like an asshole no matter how i phrase this particular rant.



It really sucks that iTunes doesn't have Sam Cooke's original of "A Change Is Gonna Come." I'm even more righteously indignant about this than i am about the fact that i am supposed to know my fucking GPA.



iTunes does have like 30,000 versions and covers of Curtis Mayfield & The Impressions' "People Get Ready," which was probably most famously covered by Bob Marley and The Wailers and was interpolated into his most famous version of "One Love," (that which appeared on Legend.) I didn't know that Dandy Livingstone (probably best known by Americans for writing and performing the song "Rudy, A Message To You," which The Specials later covered,) had done a version. And indeed, so did Burning Spear, who gets my vote for the most inventive reggae interpretation of this particular incredible curtis mayfield song. (Sorry Bob.)



The Rod Stewart/Jeff Beck Version, and this may be my longstanding aversion to Rod Stewart born of the fact that by the time i started listening to popular music, he was making a huge amount of very cheesy crap like "The Motown Song," strikes me as mechanical, formulaic, and cheesy. And Beck's riffage at times adds to this stiffness. But then, you can't really judge a song by its iTunes snippet. Which gets me back to GPAs.

The Lockout Ends

Saturday morning, in negotiations at Mayor Gavin Newsom's

office, the San Francisco Multi-Employer Group agreed to end the lockout.



UNITE HERE! Local 2 members will return to their jobs next

week. Local 2 and the hotels have agreed to a 60-day cooling-off period during

which the Union agrees not to strike and the hotels agree not to lock out.

Negotiations will continue in an attempt to settle the outstanding issues in the

contract: medical benefits, pension contributions, retiree benefits, right to

organize, wages, and contract term.



"The members of

Local 2 stood strong against the employers' lockout," said Mike Casey, President

of UNITE HERE! Local 2. "By returning to our jobs we can now negotiate a fair

contract on a level playing field."



"On behalf of

the members of Local 2, I would like to express our gratitude to the many people

who have helped us in this fight so far - both here in San Francisco, across

North America, and around the world."



The hotel

lockout, which affected more than 4,000 workers, is ending at the following

hotels. UNITE HERE! Local 2 continues to encourage guests to seek alternative

lodging in San Francisco

Note to the idiots who are making a ridiculous amount of noise downstairs and the bigger idiots who are screaming about it in the hallway: Shut the fuck up.

that's when it all gets blown away

well, here we go. All your ovaries are belong to them.

i went to the market to realize my soul

Tonight's blog entry is brought to you by Ahleuchatistas' the same and the other, Guided By Voices' Bee Thousand, The Go! Team's Thunder, Lightning, Strike, Pinback's Summer In Abadon, The Shins' "Young Pilgrims" and Saint Simon," and The Clash's London Calling. And also Animal Collective's Sung Tongs



Simply calling this massacre of striking workers in The Phillipines an outrage can't begin to do justice to the horror and injustice perpetrated by the "landlord, big comprador bourgeoisie and capitalist classes."



Mass Ave is full of Yale sweatshirts and my now almost habitual walk up through cambridge was surreally interrupted with familiar faces. It felt bizarre and sleazy.

Gracias a Santiago

The demonstrators at both protests likened the summit to a rich

man's club that does nothing for the poor, but the planned arrival of Bush

brought out the most anger.

Marchers held up posters saying: ``Bush, you

stink,'' and ``Terrorist Bush.'' Some chanted: ``Bush, listen: Chile is not for

sale!'' and ``Bush, fascist, thief, murderer!''

``We have seen what APEC

means to us: Turning our workers into cheap force for the businesses,'' said

labor union activist Saul Villegas.

Maria Ines, a housewife, said: ``My

protest is against Bush. No one gave permission to go into Iraq. He thinks he's

God!''

An interesting Steve Greenhouse piece about workers fighting back against forced unpaid overtime.



As an aside, i feel uncomfortable posting about the UOC given that they're kicking ass and I'm no longer involved in that organization and have a lot of love and respect for the folks who are. So i'll try in general to refrain from posting about Yale labor stuff so much for a bit not becayse i've lost interest (never have, never will,) but because it's a fight i shouldn't have a possessive relationship to at the moment. Am i making any sense whatsoever? Feel free to smack me if i need to be smacked.

Jamie Kirchick recently posted a rather moronic and semi-paranoid attack on the UOC/pro-levin panegyric in anticipation of a reaction to the fact that Slick Rick The Ruler is in the top ten highest paid university presidents he assumes UOCistas would be predisposed towards. Ironically, the first person to critique Kirchick's piece is the same person who called me a "detatched lunatic" last spring, which probably says something about just how reactionary Kirchick's apologia for plutocracy is. Well, either that, or I'm a detatched lunatic, which is also a distinct possibility given my current mental state.



Evan's critique of Kirchick's argument about Levin's salary is dead on. What Kirchick understands as "the elementary rules of economics" arguably have even less of a role in determining Levin's salary than they do the schema in which workers at Yale make per year working what Levin will take home in a month -- after he retires. (Thank you, Juan Gonzalez.) This isn't about invisible hands, save in the sense that pay inequity is something equally reified and artificial - it's about power, and it's about class, and it's about how the postwar/post Bayh-Dole academy as corporate agent of knowledge production/consolidation/privatization articulates value and "legitimacy." (See Gary Haller's comment to a worker wondering why a worker panel in the JE Dining Hall in Spring 2002 wasn't a master's tea in which Haller responded that masters' teas were aimed at showcasing valid career paths for Yale undergraduates.)



Since no current UOCistas have answered Kirchick's second thesis, which is pure provocatory vitriol and empty wish-fulfilment, (psychoanalysis, here i come -- move over Fred Jameson!) I'll not be the sole respondent to what strikes me as a rather pitiful cry for attention. Though i doubt Kirchick could tell a "neo-Marxist" from a flying squirrel, and his argument that the UOC constitutes solely rich, white suburbanites (news to me, and i was there pretty much from the beginning through last May) is, given Kirchick's own reactionary take on race and class as evinced in so many classic YDN columns (those poor trembling workers beset by their cruel union to turn against their kind master) highly suspect. Kirchick, whose entire weltanschaaung (thank you Ms. Livingston,) is based on his own privileging of whiteness and empire attempts to slander a diverse coalition of student organizers by erasing that which he cannot understand. The failure of that conservative shibboleth that is western reason leads him to turn to a thoroughly postmodern right wing identity politics, an empire of thought thoroughly divorced from the smoldering husk of the 'reality-based community'. In doing so, Jamie admits defeat, however silently. I feel kind of sorry for him.



I probably shouldn't have posted anything on this subject. I'd like to think I tried to take the high road.

PacifiCare and Chinese Hospital, the two other major health insurance providers used by locked out San Francisco hotel workers, have joined with Kaiser Permanente to commit to continue providing care to workers even after their health care coverage ceases december 1.

Mayor Gavin Newsom applauded PacifiCare's announcement, saying

"Today,PacifiCare made it clear that they value the people and community

theyserve above profit. I am proud of Pacific Care for joining with

ChineseHospital and Kaiser Permanente in extending health benefits to

thelocked-out workers. I once again call on the Hotels to end the lockoutso

these 4,000 workers can return to their jobs. I look forward to bothparties

moving past the current impasse to bring the negotiations andthe lockout to an

end."



Said Mike Casey, President of UNITE HERE Local 2: "We're

thrilled thatour members won't have to worry about whether they can visit the

doctorwhile these hotel companies continue their lockout. Kaiser,

ChineseHospital, and PacifiCare have shown real compassion and concern fortheir

patients' wellbeing."

Our children in Texas is apparently not learning enough hatred.

Go vote for my great aunt Elaine in Heeb's Battle of the Schwartzes. (Even if the entry lies about the fact that both my brother lev, a pre-teen metalhead if ever there was one, (maybe this "Dan" is a pseudonym?) went to and my cousin caleb (whose last name is technically not Schwartz, even if he is Elaine's grandson, goes to the center school, the magnet middle school of which Elaine is the principal.

Are You Fucking Kidding?

Matt Adams, the vice president of a bargaining unit for the 14

hotels, said,"The

union has said that (continuing health care coverage) is

an important issue. Now

that this issue is temporarily resolved, we would

hope it not be used as a delay

tactic and that we work hard and in good

faith get a contract.''

In non-executivese, what this means is, "now that our bid to bleed our workers to death has hit a snag with this whole health insurance thing, we hope they'll stil capitulate to our attempt to destroy their union anyway so we can stop disinitegrating san francisco's tourist industry in order to crush them." How can these people sleep at night?

Great, great news

Kaiser Permanente is extending health care coverage for 3,500 locked out hotel workers and their families. This will save lives.

The financial details of the agreement are not being released, but

Casey

said it is estimated that it would cost $4 million to cover health

benefits for

all 4,300 locked-out workers for two months.

The union is

still waiting to

hear back from Chinese Hospital and PacifiCare Health

Systems on whether the

remaining 805 workers covered by those providers also

will see their benefits

extended.



Casey said that the agreement with

Kaiser does not mean that the union

will not ask the San Francisco

Multi-Employer Group, representing the hotels in

the labor dispute, to

release $4 million from a $22 million trust fund to cover

these extended

benefits. He said the request for the funds has gone to

arbitration.



"I hope arbitration rules in our favor and Kaiser will

not be out of

this money," Casey said today.

there ain't no father to his style

just lost a big post about Ol' Dirty Bastard, Kelefa Sanneh, and the politics of hip hop obituaries. Rather than try to ressurect it, i'll simply praise Sanneh for the very pertinent warning that "wild anecdotes and bits of speculative biography are threatening to obscure the exhilarating music that won him so many fans" and for a lead two paragraphs which eloquently attempt to address why Mr. Baby Jesus' music was so exhilarating, howver much i disagree with the simplistic pop psychoanalysis towards the conclusion of the piece that ultimately cannot entirely escape some of the more problematic representations .



Pete L'Official's "Ode" in Salon foregrounds aesthetic and music over the pathology which dominates the Murdoch-owned tabloids and the AP. To the extent that the obituary as a form of memorializing, and the act of memorializing itself, is something we should engage in and consider valuable, L'Official, like Sanneh, has admirably attempted to give Dirty the obit he deserved.

instead of girls in thongs, spits mad dipthongs

fine, but can't he just be the MF Doom/Viktor Vaughn/King Geedorah/Whatever-the-fuck-his-name-was-when-he-was-in-KMD of the rap game?



And a somewhat charitable look at Jin's "learn chinese'"

so much for the specter of an anti-bush hollywood liberal elite. The RIAA seems pretty happy with the election results...

The Senate might vote on the Intellectual Property Protection

Act, a comprehensive bill that opponents charge could make many users of

peer-to-peer networks, digital-music players and other products criminally

liable for copyright infringement. The bill would also undo centuries of "fair

use" -- the principle that gives Americans the right to use small samples of the

works of others without having to ask permission or pay... The bill lumps

together several pending copyright bills including HR4077, the Piracy Deterrence

and Education Act, which would criminally punish a person who "infringes a

copyright by ... offering for distribution to the public by electronic means,

with reckless disregard of the risk of further infringement." Critics charge the

vague language could apply to a person who uses the popular Apple iTunes

music-sharing application.



The bill would also permit people to use technology to skip

objectionable content -- like a gory or sexually explicit scene -- in films, a

right that consumers already have. However, under the proposed law, skipping any

commercials or promotional announcements would be prohibited. The proposed law

also includes language from the Pirate Act (S2237), which would permit the

Justice Department to file civil lawsuits against alleged copyright infringers.



Also under the proposed law, people who bring a video camera

into a movie theater to make a copy of the film for distribution would be

imprisoned for three years, fined or both.



The Recording Industry Association of America vigorously

defended the bill, saying it would provide a "common sense set of tools that

will help law enforcement better deter and prosecute theft."



"This legislation enjoys overwhelming bipartisan support in

Congress. Many pieces of it already have unanimously passed one house of

Congress," RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy wrote in an e-mail. "The intellectual

property industries are one of our leading national exports, and it's

appropriate for the federal government to have a role in protecting those

sectors from rampant piracy."

Greg Tate weighs in on Eminem and "white freedom."

There's no denying that with his broken home, Eight Mile

origins, druggy mama, and babymama drama, Mr. Em does the sound of white male

angst as well as Iggy Pop, Woody Allen, and Bill Clinton combined, and that

given how you never see another white man within 10 feet of Mr. Em if he and

D-12 can help it, you figure he feels he has adopted himself into the Black

Guerrilla Family. You could also argue that anything that foments unity in

struggle between the youth of America across color lines and late-stage

capitalist hiphop is hardly an awful thing. Especially given that being poor and

white in this country is considered such a sin against god it'll make you vote

for his only begotten Bush, there's little reason to doubt Mr. Em when he shares

his passionate love affair with hiphop or tells how during PE and X-Clan's

heyday that love drove him to wear an African medallion and Flavor Flav clock

knowing brothers liked to snatch it from his neck. Such love of hiphop and to

such a degree that Mr. Em feels the need to share how genuinely hurt he is that

a nonentity like Benzino has made him persona non grata at The Source, a

magazine he grew up on. And to such a degree that those who found Mr. Em far

funnier and more irreverent when he used his ghetto pass to hang himself, call

his mama a cunt, and stab his babymama problem to death may well be

disappointed, all the bzangin Dre-like beats here notwithstanding, with how much

quality rhymetime he gives over to apologia to the community negro, to

assaulting safe and easy negro targets like MJ on "Just Lose It" and "Ass Like

That," to the 24-hour motorbootyfest known as KneeGrow Uddertainment Television.

And can't nobody be mad at him for trying to rally his flock against the

President's War on Iraq in "Mosh."



Yet and still, the fact that Mr. Em could get that

sentiment out on music television when Dead Prez, hiphop's most

been-trigger-ready presidential assassins, never-ever will is less a testament

to Mr. Em's white male freedom than it may first appear. More a testament,

indeed, to the fact that the powers that be are more skeered of the Black

Guerrilla Family's militant wing speaking to family about revolution through

this cable-televised hiphop medium than the angriest wigga alive. See, end of

the day, Howdy Doody just don't cut it when your tired poor sleeping masses need

to hear it from Malcolm X. Or god forbid from Fitty Lloyd Banks Jay-Z Lil Jon

Nelly Chingy Fabolous pass the smelling salts what kinda agitprop ra ra hiphop

planet you think this is we living on?

apologies for the last entry. I just really wanted to use the word 'psych.' It had been a while. Alright, back to nothing.

I, for one, welcome the acension of a secretary of state after whom an oil tanker has been named as a bold step in reversing the imperialist trajectory of american foreign policy in recent years and moving towards a more rational and democratic approach to international cooperation.



"PSYCH!!!"



I mean really," moving towards a more rational and democratic approach to international cooperation?" I mean, come on, I'm an anarchist!





And Condi Rice is an oil vampire



Songs I'm Excited About Today:

The Wowz: "Groups With Guitars Are On The Way Out" -- (live video downloadable from 'socialism' section of recommended if you like records )

The Go! Team: "Panther Dash" (off Thunder, Lightning, Strike)

The Replacements: "favorite thing"

The futureheads: "robot"

gang of four: "return the gift"

wu-tang: "7th chamber" ("what the fuck you mean is he fuckin' dead?")

Jadakiss ft. Common, Nas and Styles P: "why" (remix) (mostly for common's verse - "why's bush acting like he tryin' ta get osama? Why don't we impeach him and elect obama?" and for Nas referring to himself as 'comrade nas' and wondering "why do schools care about your son's braids more than they care for his grades?")

Stooges: "dirt"

Mission of Burma: "dirt"

Sonic Youth: "Sugar Kane" (from dirty. get it?)

and (fuck it)

"shimmy shimmy ya"