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.