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"

baseball

Earth to Omar Minaya - a trade for Sammy Sosa would be incredibly stupid. Don't do it.

Sorry Robin, but as a New Yorker (and an ex-Pennsylvanian,) currently living in Boston, the ridiculous attempt at cultural theory which is all the red-state/blue-state idiocy aside (another neologism for which we can thank David Brooks - ugh), i can honestly say that New York is pretty cognitively distant from New England. NYC and Boston feel like they're 1000 miles away from each other.



And Josh, Matt Traldi's wry comments strike me as being uncomfortably close to a perverse and desperate sort of slumming. E.g., "i am of the people because i live in the same state as people who mandate the teaching of intelligent design in high schools," or somesuch. With all due respect to Mr. Traldi, this doesn't seem at all useful. Plus, even though i haven't livedin PA since i was eight and a half, i can assure you that there are plenty of reactionaries in New York (which I just argued, isn't New England, so maybe i'm being overly defensive here. But then even the categorization of "New England" seems a bit suspect to me. I mean, Greenwich and Bridgeport are disparate enough without trying to lump them in with Montpelier.

take off that jumpsuit. you look like grace slick

no comment.



I'm finding the resignation coverage depressing. These fascists will just be replaced by other fascists, afer all. And Rummy stays despite Abu Ghraib, with "infinite detention" Gonzales the next AG. Maybe they'll junk Elaine Chao and replace her with John C. Calhoun's dessicated skull.



I can't overemphasize how much i'm liking Thunder, Lightning, Strike. "Panther Dash" and "Ladyflash" together constitute 6 minutes and 54 seconds of pure bliss.



Pitchfork reports that the original (Entertainment/Solid Gold) lineup of Gang of Four have reunited. This will be the first time that Gill, King, Allen, and Burnham have been on stage together since 1981. My first reaction was "well, i hope i don't get sued for the blog title or anything." But i think this is pretty cool (assuming they are doing this for reasons other than cashing in on the recent dancepunk craze.) For more information on Gang of Four, i refer readers to guitarist Andy Gill's website.



The title of this blog entry originates as a line in Camper Van Beethoven's "Turquoise Jewelry." Make of that what you will. I'm going to read some Roth.

addendum to the last post:



If Dylan's a potential assassination plot, what would've happened if they'd decided to go with "Piss On Your Grave" instead?

Boots from The Coup would like to say

I'll shove these foodstamps down your throat

just to block your airway

and that's the fair way 'cuz everyday

you're on a moola mission

military killin' millions 'til you low on

ammunition

bodies beyond recognition

twisted complex positions

then their kids work in your factories

and die of malnutrition

see your net profit stats

hold some murderous facts

but if you listen to the news you mighta

heard it was blacks

you got us herded in shacks

I got the pertinent tax

how 'bout the one for when I bust my ass

and you relax

I'll hit your head wit an axe

play soccer wit' your brain

to make it official

slice your jugular vein

still writin' songs that my momma could sang

and if you feel some yellow drips on your skull

it ain't rain.



(Chorus)

Uhhhh!!

I wanna piss on your grave!

make me feel alright!

Yaa Yaa Yaa!!

(Repeat)

You that build all the guns

You that build the death planes

You that build the big bombs

You that hide behind walls

You that hide behind desks

I just want you to know

I can see through your masks

Worth a secret service investigation, apparently. In other news, Eddie Vedder has been declared an enemy combatant and has been relocated to Gitmo. Bob Taft has issued an arrest warrant for four counts of murder in the first degree against Red Sox outfielder Trot Nixon, and Joe Lieberman cried when they shot Medgar Evers.

You fasten the triggers

For the others to fire

Then you set back and watch

When the death count gets higher

You hide in your mansion

As young people's blood

Flows out of their bodies

And is buried in the mud

I limited my walking this weekend to somewhere around 10 or twelve miles, a far cry from the thirty-plus i've been pulling for the last few weekends in my peregrinations into the northwestern suburbs. I needed a break. Well, actually, what i really needed was to get the fuck out of boston and see friends or family, and i entertained thoughts of either making the trek back to NY or dropping into New Haven for a day, but ultimately did neither. Today i spent several hours working - prior to and at the union meeting, and then again after my lonely dinner at the ethiopian place on treemont, which was prety damn good, but i miss lalibela anyway. The Incredibles, which i saw by myself at the AMC Fenway this afternoon, definitely carried the strong stench of Ayn Randian attempts to ressurect rule by divine right and lambast the liberal consensus as vacuous communists intent on making all the geniuses as mediocre as the rest of us. While the film was on the whole enjoyable, aside from the tortuous moments of preachiness, I'm sure i will regret having read Atlas Shrugged, as i have since before i even completed it, six and a half years ago, for the rest of my life, and i really don't need Disney rehashing it for me and my loved ones in the form of easily digestible pixelized pulp fiction (complete with sam jackson.) That is not to say that i want my cartoons fascistically pure of right wing ideologies - the animated cartoon's ties to imperial circuits of knowledge go back a long, long way and there's a formal(ist) critique of animation to be made as well, though i am too tired and or dumb ot be the one to make it. Maybe i'm just being utopian. but when i am feeling depressed and lonely, sometimes i want a movie that will make me feel good, and when my escapism is tinged with other isms more immanent and more dire, that doesn't happen. But maybe that's just the point, that escapism is not an innocent pursuit or categorized end of cultural production.



Reading Roth's new novel, The Plot Against America, and wishing i'd had the foresight and the money to get the fuck out of here this weekend. Tomorrow dealing with the health inspection records, writing a letter to an elected official, and, I'm sure, the usual bout of self-loathing. Oh yes, and figuring out how the hell i'm applying to graduate school out of the blue in the next four to six weeks.

David Rees:

Ol' Dirty Bastard, aka Russell Jones, died suddenly in a recording studio earlier today. He would have been 36 on Monday. This is sad news, and my sympathies go out to his family and friends. Wu-Tang is for the children.

"This evening I received a phone call that is every mother's worst dream," wrote
ODB's mother, Cherry Jones, in a statement released tonight. "My son, Russell
Jones, passed away. To the public, he was known as Ol' Dirty Bastard. To me, he
was known as Rusty, the kindest and most generous soul on earth. I appreciate
all the support I received. Russell was more than a rapper-- he was a loving
father, brother, uncle and most of all, son."

ODB was a controversial figure, and he was often a lightning rod for various reactionary critiques of hip hop as pathology. He was the butt of Dennis Miller-style vapid and totalizing jokes for his drug addictions and the infamous incident in which he (somewhat justifiably) stormed the stage at the '98 grammies immediately prior to Shawn Colvin's (remember her? Me neither) acceptance speech to point out that Wu-Tang, not Puffy, should have won the Best Rap Artist grammy. Whether under the racist lens of a vapid SNL alumnus or the more nuanced but often problematic frame of cartoonist Aaron McGruder's pomo nationalist comic book aesthetic, ODB was often reduced to a caricature of minstrel as rapper, uncouth black figure unwittingly debasing himself for whites' entertainment. (Miller was entertained, McGruder disgusted.) But ODB was always, i think, conscious of the fact that he was shaping his stage identity by navigating (or failing to navigate) the geography of such constructed identities, and even if traction and control seemed ultimately out of reach, i think ODB deserves to be remembered and 'read' as an artist and cultural producer rather than simply as an object of derision or shame. He was a talented and unconventional rapper and his work with the Wu-Tang clan, particularly on Enter The Wu-Tang/36 Chambers, is classic. I come to bury the man who once referred to himself as "Big Baby Jesus," (which i always thought was kind of awesome,) not to praise him. But I think that maybe we should take this moment to think about what questions the figure of ODB and his legacy raise about the politics of hip hop, the "gangsta" and the performance of racial difference in the neoliberal terrain of the post-napster recording industry.

can anybody say Incubating Biotech?

This report takes a sober look at biotechnology’s accomplishments. An

evaluation

of biotech’s two decade record shows:

• A string of successful

biotech companies have abandoned the city to expand in

other locations.

•

Few jobs have appeared. Excluding CuraGen (which recently announced its

departure),

there are only about 400 biotech jobs in New Haven. Most of these

jobs

require higher degrees and remain out of reach for poorly educated city

residents.

• Negligible property taxes have come to the city. Biotech-owned

property and leased

real estate provide only 1.6% of the city tax base. Also,

several biotech companies

have a record of delinquency in filing taxes.

•

Yale is prospering from its relationships and contracts with regional biotech

startups.

As a policy, Yale expects and receives millions in sponsored

research, licensing

fees, company equity and royalty payments from its

biotech start-ups.

it occurs to me that last niht's msiguided foray into the contradictory terrain of commercial nostalgia shared more with a Cee-Lo song off ...Is The Soul Machine than any filmic version of scottish literary angst. I apologize for the oversight. Now, if you'll excuse me, i'm going to go enjoy all the snow on the ground - one great thing about being in Boston as opposed to New York.

thoughts to the tune of mid-1980's mounds/almond joy advertisement

sometimes you feel like a jackass. sometimes you delete a post (although the snow tonight really was pretty beautiful.) sometimes you are really glad you bought Thunder Lightning, Strike even if you did have to do it directly from the label in england and it took like two weeks to arrive. sometimes you feel guilty you still haven't written back to thomas cause you have been completley fucking swamped and exhausted and sick and you have a nagging suspicion your boss is going to be pissed at you for not staying in sandwich for another day but you didn't want to get sick again and they are sending you mixed messages anyway and you will get back to thomas as soon as you can. this sounds like a trainspotting monologue, so i'm reverting to a less ridiculous mode of speech. Actually, fuck that. It's 2 am. I'm going to sleep. Too bad Tallullah is nowhere near as good as Liberty Belle and The Black Diamond Express. But then, i mean, what is?

The UOC's financial aid platform picks up endorsements from not only the YDN editorial board, no easy feat ever, but also from none other than the usually decidedly anti-UOC and anti FHUE Jessamyn Blau. This leads me to conclude that the UOC is kicking ass. You go, UOC.

About to get a ride to Sandwich, Massachussets to hit the Jobs With Justice Solidarity School for the afternoon to plug the boycott with one of the chefs at a union hotel. Should be cool.

It's snowing out.

Rock.

Edit: Oh yes, and i agree with Alejandra.

hijinks!

The leaflet tonight was incredible - me and three organizers from the former UNITE who're now working on food service stuff up here. Good people. Anyway, a bit after we showed, after the doorman and the busser at the hotel had given up and left, about seven managers showed up in plainclothes - they'd gotten called at home - and stood out, with their fucking wives - and watched us leaflet the place for like an hour and a half. They started directing the all taxis into the garage so guests getting out wouldn't have to walk past the leaflets. They didn't even pretend to be unfazed. It was fantastic. Like if Levin had come out and screamed at the picket lines in the middle of the strike blizzard. Well, not quite that cool. But totally ridiculous and amazing. They made their clients into underground mole people and played the part of our nervous and completely surreal audience for an evening that managed to be bizarrely enjoyable.

Dear CNN,



what the fuck?

Instead of being lionized, Kinsey's proper place is with Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele or your average Hollywood horror flick mad scientist," said Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women of America's Culture & Family Institute.

Ok, let me get this straight. Sex equals the holocaust. Ok, sure, of course, that part i get, but why is the director of Concerned Women of America's Culture & Family institute an angry right wing nutjob male? I mean, how concerned can these women really be if they can't even run their own organization!

"A film could have been produced that would have shown that side of Kinsey but

also shown the hell that he released," Peters added. "That's part of Kinsey's

legacy -- AIDS, abortion, the high divorce rate, pornography -- and there's not

anything in the film to connect him with it."

Pornography dates back centuries before Kinsey's birth. Even the mass production of pornographic material predates Kinsey by decades (look at the "Tijuana Bible" comics of the 1920s-30s, for instance). I fail to see how Kinsey's cataloging of and interest in sexual behaviors bears any responsibility for AIDS, much less for abortion, which is a practice which again predated modernity. As for the divorce rate, laying aside for the moment the ridiculous lack of any causal evidence in any of the statements made by any of the right wing nutjobs CNN treats like reputable and unbiased cultural barometers, well, what about the seismic shifts in the postwar organization of work and construction of domesticity? The increase in the divorce rate means on some level, too, that women are refusing to stay in abusive or unhappy relationships in which they aren't treated fairly or satisfied, and that's a good thing. Please don't print this kind of crap anymore, CNN. As Jon Stewart once said, "it's hurtiing america."



Meanwhile, the anti-immigrant Right tries to spread Arizona's fraudulent, racist, and deeply frightening Prop 200 initiative elsewhere.



Meanwhile, the multilateral fracas over Unite To Win has begun. I'm not sure that forced mergers of smaller unions is the answer to the AFL-CIO's organizng woes, but i agree with the folks over at LaborBlog that opponents haven't put forth any kind of competing organizing plan yet.

Turns out that the asian DVD version of the first season of six feet under works just fine. The season is a bit more crude than I remember, particularly the pilot - Claire in particular comes off as ridiculously two dimensional. But it improves rapidly over the course the next two episodes, and "the foot" is a lot funnier than i remember, and right now i'm way too fucking exhausted to do anything else.

And the award for best "let's all move to Canada" joke goes to...



these guys



Now can we shut up and get the fuck back to organizing?

i was up at 5 this morning for a leaflet that didn't happen. Some exciting stuff at work today, lots of stressful crap. I wish humans could legally hibernate except i don't cause then we'd have to sleep through some of my favorite months of the year. I'm too incoherent right now to justify wasting kilobytes on ramblings i can barely piece together after days of fighting a pitched battle to force myself to get up and go to work instead of hiding from the world and though I'm excited about finally getting to sleep my drowsy anticipation is punctuated unlike this sentence by the dread which accompanies the knowledge that tomorrow i gotta get up and do it all over again.



still no idea whether or not i have a weekend.

Johnny got his gun. With apologies and respect to Dalton Trumbo.



Wonder who'll replace him. Estrada? Or maybe Bush will try to ressurect the career of another Iran-Contra war criminal. Or heck, what is David Duke doing these days? It'd be interesting to see Wolfowitz squirm his way out of that one. Barring that, Rios Montt must be getting kinda tired of that Senator-For-Life gig.

kind of gives the phrase "security mom" a whole new meaning, don't it?

a wry comment on the animalizing discourse of the security state's logicsa of civilization and barbarism

wildly innapropriate ydn headline contradicted by the actual story. but good money quotes from julie, helena, and marissa, which made me happy. also in the picture you can see that someone wrote "Support Unite Here 34/35 GESO" on the big board, which is obviously cool.



i woke up this morning from a dream in which noah crowley and i were being videotaped while walking through the fieldston girls' locker room. I have never been in that locker room, nor would i ever have allowed myself to be videotaped doing so. I haven't seen noah in almost two years, and that was for about five minutes outside of dublin house on 79th street that weird night when i saw like eighty kids from high school. the dream was weird because of its exteriority -- i was peering through the lens at myself (but it was the myself of now - with short hair and facial hair more substantial than what matt nick once described as "pubes on" my "face." Noah, who last time i saw him looked quite different from how he did in high school, was himself from four or five years ago. Like i said, the whole thing was bizarre.



I have a lot of work, i may have to give up my weekend, i'm totally stressed out, and i am not sure that i should be doing this job.

i've wracked my brain like crack cocaine

Today was, a first for my weekends in Boston, pretty enjoyable. Not just livable, and i have grown accustomed to y impossibly long meanderings through the suburbs, but it was really fucking great to see Austin, and i like his ex-girlfriend Kat, who gets added to the tally of people in this city i sort of know with whom i do not work (that makes four, though i'm still not entirely comfortable calling any of those folks up to hang out, however nice they may be.) It was a good day even with The Incredibles being totally sold out and shit. It was good to see an old friend, good to se someone i can talk about shit with and not feel like I'm being evaluated and/or surveiled. Tomorrow I'll get up, I'll walk again, and then I'll either try to piece together a plan for grad school stuff, or try to go see The Incredibles again, or just say "fuck it" and watch more Six Feet Under.

the internets just broke and i lost a post, but it's probably for the best. I'm heading out to put some mileage on my new shoes.

the episode where peter krause and lauren ambrose have the fight involving sleater-kinney in the airplane right before they play the song from and then nothing turned itself inside out totally kicks ass.



mostly because it has lily taylor and she is ten times cooler than the woman who played the rich girl in st elmo's fire who played the psychic on the last episode.



No offense to that woman, whose name, unlike every other cast memeber from st elmo's fire, i don't know.



Edit: Nan Martin. Right.

nobody lingers like your hands on my heart and

why does Ipod think Mirah's C'mon Miracle, (a great album, incidentally,) qualifies as folk? I swear if it were Ben Gibbard singing this stuff, they'd call it "alternative & punk" or whatever. That went nowhere



Campaign kickoff today went ok. We should have been more aggressive, but now that we know the shit they were giving us about private property under the awning was bullshit, we can be more mobile next time. I've learned my lesson from last summer's misadventures in blog rant appropriations and won't write anything further here that might attract unwanted googlers, so if you actually want details, you'll have to call or email.



was good to talk to abbey. I'm glad she called - i'd really been wanting to talk to her but had no way of getting a hold of her after she changed her #. good stuff.



trying to figure out grad school crap and deal with stress and fear and preserve some modicum of sanity. Maybe i should just shut up and watch some six feet under until i fall asleep.



also listening to:

Castanets: Cathedral

The Raincoats: The Kitchen Tapes

Bloc Party: s/t

GBV: Under The Bushes Under The Stars

Nick Drake: Pink Moon

The Decemberists: Castaways and Cutouts

SF Examiner: Newsom pulls cops from lockout picket lines

If hotel operators want police protection on the picket lines,

they are going to have to foot the bill themselves, Mayor Gavin Newsom declared

Wednesday.



Newsom ordered cops to pull around-the-clock protection from

the 14 hotels involved in a five-week-old contract dispute with 4,300 hotel

workers, who have been locked out of their jobs for three weeks after going on a

two-week strike.



"Why are we all paying for protection when it's [the

hotels'] choice to lock people out?" Newsom asked. "That makes no sense to

me."

well, at least the YDN editorial board are still total fucking morons.

Today was long and tough. It began, like yesterday, with me waking up and just not wanting to get out of bed, not wanting to have to face work i find incredibly difficult and feel like i'm failing at, not wanting to have to look at headlines like the ones in which Yale-bred fascists proclaim their "mandates" and boast of "political capital," (why am i not surprised that Bush is reading Robert Putnam?) crawling to the office and struggling with client calls, struggling with getting my shit together. Some things about today were good - getting some new information, making some mildly successful calls, getting tomorrow's action squared away, and the meeting with the jwj folks - who are incredible, was really good. Came home, watched an episode of 'six feet under' on dvd - the first episode of the second season, in which nate tries to deal with the avm stuff and accidentally takes david's ecstasy. Tired of waiting for the first season to show up, and i've seen this episode before anyway, so it doesn't make me get all out of order or anything. The vagaries of ordering stuff cheap and used, i guess. I can clearly deal.



But mostly i'm just feeling stressed out and continuously frustrated and very, very lonely.

i wanted to sing last night as well, perhaps with as much rage as hope, though for me the two often are inseparable, but i didn't have anyone to sing with or talk to so instead i just walked around Boston listening to my Ipod and trying to figure out how to organize against the bush regime and its new "mandate" bought with the spectre of bin laden, with cunning exploitation of a carefully engineered homophobic panic, and with a thoroughly postmodern willingness to entirely abandon the shibboleths of reason and truth in order to create a spectacular image in which preppy fratboy cheerleader senator's sons, born into five or more generations of silver spoons in hand, become populist cowboy heroes for informatized suburbia. The bush presidency is not 1984 and it isn't Bush-Orwell, because Orwell was thoroughly modernist and thought there was some fundamental truth that totalitarian and fascist regimes distorted but understood as omnipresent if reducible to the point of obsolescence. As Rove has pointed out, (thanks Thomas,) the Bush administration understands that the polity is a text, that it can write its own national imaginary on the flesh of however many dead or poor, queer or muslim or outcast or immigrant or black bodies it wants. In some bizarre appropriation of Neal Peart, the ones who hold high places have indeed built a new reality, closer to [their] heart[s]. So they win, unless we understand that the only way to beat these fuckers isn't obliging them and trying to beat them within the parameters which they thoroughly own and control, but instead of participating in their sham of an electoral process while sarcastically noting all the ways in which they violate their own strictures with impunity, tearing open the posibilities they attempt to foreclose and creating new trajectories for particpatiry, democratic, and creative organizing.

i didn't see this one coming

a bit of commercial levity

To that end, part of the deal involves the possibility of

Postal Service tunes being used in USPS ad campaigns and promotions. In turn,

Sub Pop is considering, under the auspices of their newly minted licensing deal,

using local postal outlets as distribution points for Give Up. Additionally,

Tamborello and Gibbard will be tapped to play a gig at an annual USPS

conference. No, we are totally not kidding. Stop laughing. If you're somehow

fortunate enough to legitimately attend this conference, or crafty enough to

impersonate one of the 800 senior executives who will be present, please do us a

favor and bootleg that sucker. Surreal events like this one don't happen every

day, and they must be documented for posterity.

If you think like thomas edison

can you invent a world for me?

Now all that's on the surface

are bloody arms and oil fields

can i turn this world all upside down

and shake you and your fossils out?

-s-k



How can i sit and drink my tea

with all this blood

flowing from the television?

-gang of four



i don't want no peace.

i need equal rights

and justice

-peter tosh

The Fuck Us Group/Outside The Trains Don’t Run On Time

A Focus group. That’s what George Walker Bush dismissively labeled the massive eruption of global protest against the invasion of Iraq on February 15, 2003, as a war were a product to be tested for consumers, and the people who would be forced to pay in blood and sweat for it only able to intervene as human lab rats whose comments were understood as symptom rather than as input. Of course, Bush has focus groups he does listen to – lobbyists for industry, Karl Rove and his campaign strategists, et alii. Arlene Dávila titles the final chapter of her study of “ethnic” marketing, Latinos Inc, in which she interrogates the structures of knowledge and power which govern what questions are asked and what answers are heard/possible in advertising focus groups “The Fuck Us Group,” and it is from her that I derive my title for this post, because I think it’s pretty clear that it’s the global us who, if you’ll forgive my masculinist syntax for a moment, are about to get fucked.



The thing is, Bush can only govern if we let him. Electoral politics have failed the left. We can only get what we are organized to take. What we need to do now is organize massive resistance to global capitalism and those who work to engineer a future in which being human is a privilege rather than a right. What we have lost at the ballot box, we need to reclaim in the streets.

"Don't mourn, organize! - E Goldman" - Text Message from Fran Schwartz, 9:44 AM 11/3/04



Well, actually, mom, it was Joe Hill, but good enough. I think my mother's sentiment is exactly where we need to go from here. Let's not let the fascists rest on their laurels.

It's an electoral clusterfuck!

wtf?

just fucking shoot me now, before they start lining us up for the firing squads.

this is not the kind of shit you want to be watching by yourself in a lonely apartment in a city where you know no one.



fuck.

Victory in Atlantic City

The Casinos have settled with Unite Here Local 54. While this is a five rather than three year contract, it's also the best contract workers in Atlantic city have ever won, by all reports.

• A 28.3% increase in the total economic package (wages,
  
  healthcare & pension contributions) over the life of the
  
  agreement;

  
  
  A 91% increase in employer healthcare contributions – plus more if
  
  needed in the 4th and 5th years of the contract – to continue fully employer
  
  paid family healthcare coverage with no paycheck deductions. Employers will also
  
  begin paying healthcare contributions on all hours, so Local 54 members will no
  
  longer have substantial out-of-pocket costs when taking vacations;
  
  Protection from subcontracting now and in the future. No Local 54 member can
  
  lose their job, hours, wages or seniority from any subcontracting, and Atlantic
  
  City’s future growth and expansion will be done with good, middle-class Union
  
  jobs;

  
  
  Protection of Local 54 members and their Union
  
  contract in the event a casino is sold to a new owner;
  
  Restoration of the
  
  ‘step’ system of wage increases that provide significant raises as employees’
  
  years of service grow, and additional employer money added on the top ‘step’ and
  
  in bonuses;
  
  A 51% increase in employer pension contributions over the life
  
  of the contract, resulting in one of the best retirement plans for hospitality
  
  industry workers in the country;
  
  Many other contract improvements, including
  
  protection for immigrant workers, improvements in leave of absence and
  
  promotional language, a voluntary 401K administered by the employer, and a
  
  stronger shop steward system.

Just spent the entire day making calls to nice elderly voters for a massachusetts state house race and another state senate race. I like calling people when i don't have to tell them to move their meeting/conference/wedding/whatever, and just having nice interactions with people i will never meet or soeak to again over the telephone. But it made me sad when people hung up on me, especially the woman who said "this isn't funny anymore," because i don't know what was initially funny and feel bad for not getting the joke. Electoral politics aren't my bag, so i just told myself that i was doing turnout for the union, and that made it somewhat bearable.

NYT: Lockout at Top Hotels Mars Tourism in San Francisco

Workers on the picket line at The Fairmont and The Mark

Hopkins last week said they were all too familiar with the high cost of living

in San Francisco, especially on a wage of $14 to $22 an hour. Reva James-Frye,

53, a city resident and telephone operator at the Fairmont for 15 years, earns

nearly $15 an hour, or about $33,000 a year. Roughly half of her paycheck goes

toward rent.

"I can barely make ends meet now," Ms. James-Frye said. "What is

the point of getting a little 20-cent raise if it's going to go back in their

pockets to cover health benefits."

Guillermina Tremillo, 27, a single mother

of a 2-year-old, works two jobs to make ends meet, both at the famed Top of the

Mark restaurant. Ms. Tremillo also shares a home with her entire family,

including her parents and five sisters, all of whom pool wages. But four of her

sisters work at San Francisco hotels and they too have been locked out.

"My

feelings are very hurt," Ms. Tremillo said. "I do two jobs so they save one

person with me. They make money with me. You give and give the most you can and

they just don't care."

Mr. Adams said, however, that management wanted the

employees to return to work. "A contract can be had in fairly quick order if we

can resolve the issue of term," he said.

The city has already lost business

because of the dispute. The American Anthropological Association, for example,

decided to move its November conference to Atlanta in support of the union, a

decision that has cost the city $3.2 million, according to the San Francisco

Convention and Visitors Bureau.

With hotel management and the unions so far

apart on several issues, the two sides are not expected to reach a contract

agreement soon.

The union late last week heard that workers would be

eligible for unemployment benefits, which the union said could allow workers to

withstand the lockout for up to six months.

Locked out workers from the

Sheraton Palace flew to Waikiki on Friday to set up picket lines and a one-day

action at two other Sheraton hotels there, "to deliver the message that we won't

be isolated to San Francisco," said Mr. Casey of Local 2. And San Francisco has

received a show of support from hotel unions negotiating in Los Angeles and

Washington, D.C., where strikes have been authorized but not initiated.

"The

point is to get everyone together," Ms. James-Frye said. "There's strength in

numbers."

here we go again

Empty factories to the east and all our waste

The shape of things that came shows on the broken workers

face

To the west you'll find our silicon promised lands

where

Machines replace our minds for systematic profit

plans



The course of human progress staggers like a

drunk

Its steps are quick and heavy and its mind is slow and

blunt

I look for optimism but I just dont know

Its seeds are planted in a poison place where nothing

grows



Its 1989 stand up and take a look around

Weathers bitter tension it seems is sinking down

Drunk with power and fighting one another

Every hour shows the winter getting harder



Theres a freezeup coming



One nation stands the tallest radiating blinding

light

Plastic and fluorescent energy robbing us of

sight

Set in our way content with our decay

We wave the flag of freedom as we conquer and

invade

Ever ask yrself wheres my place in this hell

But no ones there to tell you cuz they dont know that

themselves

The well rehearsed lines from our elated

politicians

No longer offer solace we can see the self

destruction



Just one political song to drop into the list

That is years and years long

This is meaningless. The 'pop' of which Michael Jackson was the king is dead. And indeed, i'm not entirely sure that it ever existed.

I just spent a half hour drudging through two interconnected malls in search of a pair of cheap sneakers. All they had in the mall(s) were like Florsheim, ridiculously expensive hiking boots, a few nikes, reeboks, etc which were all way too expensive for me, and ither sundry footwear of unbelievablly high prices. I found the shoes i was looking for (fuck me and my brand loyalty) in an Urban Outfitters a few blocks away from the aforementioned malls. I now have a pair of shoes which are not open at the sole, a rare occurrence for me indeed. My shoes came with a tag that described them as an "American Original." Right below that, it says "tag made in Indonesia." Tres Thomas Freidman.



Speaking of Capitalism and its discontents, one of the greatest hip hop groups of the last decade, commie gangsta funkheads The Coup, have signed to Epitaph. I'm glad that Party Music, one of the best albums of the 2000s so far, is getting reissued, because it's a record everyone needs to hear and to study feverishly, and i'm eagerly awaiting the new album which is going to drop sometime in early '05. I'm also hoping that The Coup are able to circumvent "Epitaph syndrome" - that is, decent bands signing to the label and then producing terrible music. (The slackers found a way around it, and there's no comparison between the slackers and The Coup, no offense to the slackers.)



I love Josh. He's a fantastic organizer and a great person, and even though I got a little snappy with him sometimes over the course of the two years we organized together (and he thinks i banned him from the quotation page, which is a total lie,) i have a huge amount of respect for him. That said, i have a lot of gripes with this column, and i'm going to go into them at length, so bear with me. (I need to stop reading the YDN. I only do it cause i got booted from the fhue news listserve when i lost my yale address and i crave up to date information about the unions at yale, which they YDN really doesn't talk about that much anyway, unless people make them.)



My objections to Josh's piece concern the final three paragraphs and the arguments he makes about a progressive electoral and post-electoral strategy. I don't disagree with Josh that electing Kerry is a beginning rather than an end. I have to make GOTV calls all day tomorrow, and i'm ok with this because Bush needs to go. It's Josh's polite braiding of those on the left who "see critiquing politicians as noble but electing them as petty or contaminating" which initially commands my ire.



Josh, this strikes me as an extremely and irresponsibly simplified account of the relationship between, say, the global justice movements and state power. I wish you, as someone who has participated in these movements, wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the other kinds of power, and other kinds of relationships to that power, that activists and communities have fought to build in these new global social movements symbolized by the EZLN New Year's Day uprising in 1994, the mass mobilizations against the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Economic Forum, and the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and the global eruptions of protest against the US Invasion of Iraq on February 15, 2003. The rhetorical project of establishing two extreme wrong paths in order to plot out a correct middle strikes me as not only Friedmanian, but also as problematic in that at least one of these paths is so simplified as to give an insatisfactory if not altogether dishonest account of its position, not to mention the fact that this reduces Hardt and Negri's "multitude" to a unitary and sole fringe, speaking in broken and indecipherable platitudes rather than the roar of mass demonstrations or the "unintelligible and frightening rhythmic cries" of anticolonial revolt.



I agree with the claims you make about the importance of a Kerry presidency when it comes to the right to organize, the environment, the minimum wage, etc. But there are many even on the most indecent fringes of the north american left, anarchists, communists, primitivists, maoists, greens, even the leninists whose thesis of inherent contradictions you find abhorrent in the first sentence of your final paragraph, who agree with you that a kerry victory is not a "dead end," but (for them) a grim necessity in the face of total fucking global annihilation. I'm not sure against whom you see yourself as arguing -- Nader? Or maybe i'm just being self-centered or solipsistic.



Among the claims you make here that i have the greatest problem with, i think, is this one: that "organizing out of powerlessness doesn't do much good unless it manages to seize power." There have been entire books written about the struggle of the new social movements to "change the world without taking power," as John Holloway puts it, (though i've not yet read his book,) a political sentiment common to everyone from the Zapatistas to many uocistas. Building and seizing power are separate acts with separate implications and consequences and should not be confused. Where Hardt and Negri are persuasive for me is where they argue that these new movements are fighting to constitute a new global network of social relationships, that the movements we are building locate in the seizure of power the victory of the powerful over the "powerless" (although this is a problematic term employed so generally) and thus envision the constitution of a counterpower capable of destructuring capitalism. Dejargonified, what i mean is that when we talk about taking power, they win. Kerry needs to win the elction tomorrow because of card check and because bush is backed by all the virulent racists and homophobic ideologues, the anti-immigrant republicans who aren't backing nader, the homeland security fascists, the defense contractors and the cheerleaders of empire. But if Kerry wins tomorrow, that doesn't necessarily mean that we do. Apologies for the rant, i've been incoherently mulling over this for a while. And i'm sorry if i'm going overboard or being a schmuck cause that isn't my intent.



Incidentally, Stolen Honor was on TV this morning, and boy, i never realized that the "Hanoi Hilton," the new left, and POW torture were all Jane Fonda's fault. My stars!