timmuky – Page 32

Rolling Stones – “Sweet Virginia”

By timmukyPosted on November 1, 2009Posted in music, rocknroll, videoTagged music, rocknroll, rolling stones, video7 Comments

I love Tiny Revolution as a political site. Here Bernard Chazelle switches to another passion of his, and serves up some musicological theorizing about a song my old caddymaster hailed as the greatest hangover song of all time.

In the process he makes some broad comments about the Stones, and the old Beatles-v.-Stones flame war which, surprisingly, doesn’t devolve into absurdity in the comments section. Some bright people posting. Here’s his bottom line on the Stones:

They’re no songcrafting geniuses, their melodies are often banal, their harmonies simplistic, their lyrics silly or offensive, and they’re passable instrumentalists. Naturally, the Stones are the greatest rock band ever.

What gives? The thing is, in rock ‘n’ roll none of these things matter all that much. No rock tunesmith holds a candle to Gershwin or Cole Porter, anyway. Craftsmanship is not the point.

What’s the point then? To convert high energy into art. Rock is about emotion, not style; feeling, not beauty; desire, not sensuousness. Rock is not about courtship, it’s about sex.

That no other sub-genre of western music shares rock’s “kinetic primality” (I just made up the phrase, no doubt the high point of this post) has a two-word explanation: the blues. Yes, you can always rely on white rock musicians to misappropriate the blues as a vehicle for affected maturity, self-importance, and pretentiousness — Muddy Waters Meets Nietzsche kind of thing. But the Stones, bless their souls, have always remained loyal to the spirit of the idiom, which is to channel misery into joy, not to channel misery into more misery. If rock is a rhythm, a riff, and an attitude, then no one beats the Rolling Stones.

As regards the specific song, Chazelle says, “‘Sweet Virginia’ is a 16-bar country blues. (An anti-drug song, I guess?) Like Dylan’s “Idiot Wind,” it begins on the subdominant of the key (a classical device going back to the fugal tradition of Baroque music) and on to the cadence II-I.” I can’t really see Keef thinking like that (and I don’t think that’s what Chazelle is saying. Only that there is some sort of intuitive/instinctive genius at play in the process of writing pop songs.)

And thinking about the song got me thinking about my old caddymaster, an early hero to the thirteen-year-old me. The power of the Google was impressive. I found him. Insurance company exec; donated well over $10 grand to Republican candidates in ’08. Another hero bites the dust. But he was right about “Sweet Virginia.”

Camera Obscura – “French Navy”

By timmukyPosted on October 28, 2009Posted in music, rocknroll, Uncategorized, videoTagged camera obscura, music, videoNo Comments

Nothing to add. Camera Obscura’s sweet and melancholy sound is perfect for a gray day, such as today, here in Kentucky.

Killing hundreds of innocent civilians, with robots, in a country we’re not at war with

By timmukyPosted on October 28, 2009Posted in aerial warfare, militarism, politics, warTagged politics, Predator, warNo Comments

I realize that in the “Chair Force” post below I might have lost some of the moral perspective Chris Floyd lends in this piece:

Again, the point here is that a truly serious and sophisticated analysis of the situation would have stopped at the very beginning: “We are killing hundreds of innocent civilians, with robots, in a country we’re not at war with — one of our allies, in fact. What in the name of all that’s holy – and all that’s human – is driving our nation to commit these monstrous crimes, and how can we stop it?” That would be the issue under discussion. A truly serious and sophisticated analysis would not accept the hideous assertions and assumptions of state terrorists at face value, would not concern itself with the “process” by which imperial factions fight it out for the honor of perpetrating these atrocities – and would certainly not offer as its conclusion the earnest hope that the authors of these war crimes will find some way of doing them better….

In fact, losing moral perspective is the one thing Floyd finds wanting in Mayer’s piece. But would she be staff writer for the New Yorker with all the access that implies if she screamed out the obvious? Probably not….

Yet here she is blatantly contradicting her own reportage, the indisputable facts that she herself has uncovered. But such are the inevitable, wrenching cognitive dissonances that arise when you accept the basic assumptions of the militarist system — which you must do, to some extent, to get a seat at the “serious” table in America’s media-political establishment. She is probably not even aware that she is doing it; she is simply following the standard template for “process stories,” which require stark contrasts between the protagonists, who are usually cast in good guy-bad guy mold. In this case, the protagonists are the two state apparatuses — the Pentagon and the CIA — who wield the power of faceless, remote-control death over innocent, undefended human beings. In this “process,” it is the unregulated CIA killers who are the bad guys, and so the Pentagon must be recast as a stickler for accountability all the way up the line, despite the mountain of evidence against this ludicrous interpretation — evidence which, we must emphasize again, Mayer herself has been instrumental in compiling.

Floyd’s written a very good piece here. Where’s the outrage on the Predator story? Right here. Read the whole piece.

Populism 101

By timmukyPosted on October 27, 2009Posted in economy, politics, populismTagged economy, politics, populismNo Comments

Matt Taibbi calls this viral video from last week “like the most awesome thing ever.” As much as I like Taibbi, I can’t really go along all the way with him on that one. I like that this mad batsman has done his homework (and he has a damned nice stroke). The guy apparently has a head for numbers and he sees quite clearly that the numbers for the economy don’t come close to adding up. But he sort of loses me when he says no one with a name “like” Barrack Hussein Obama is going to solve our problems. Still, I chucked at a lot of this, was frightened by even more of it.

This is more evidence of a new populism that I can go along with about 90% (which is about as far as I can go with any movement/party). Dylan Ratigan is probably the public face of it, and he will only grow in stature, or get fired. He too is majorly pissed off and quite articulate, and has a bully pulpit. There are real protests in the streets of Chicago, and not by the usual suspects either. It’s not left wing or right wing. It’s kind of outsider vs. insider. And I think its adherents are onto something.

Populism often involves a fair bit of misdirected rage and scapegoating–at Obama personally, at immigrants–but a lot of it is spot on, targeting the bipartisan effort to steer absolutely massive amounts of money to the big banks and the weird organism that Wall Street has become (Taibbi’s notorious “vampire squid” image* comes to mind). The bailouts and the health reform (all but certain to be complicated and low impact, even if passed), trivial pursuits in a time of great crisis, show both parties to be entrenched, dedicated opponents to the common good. Whether a viable alternative presents itself is an interesting question to be watched over the next couple of elections. Or it might be something even worse. That’s in the populist DNA as well.

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* “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money”

Before and after

By timmukyPosted on October 27, 2009Posted in fashionNo Comments

Nothing new, but I’ve had that Ralph Lauren Photoshop debacle on my mind lately. This year-old slide show is from the New York magazine Web site, and features “before” shots of bare-faced models, and “after” shots of them made up for the Milan Gucci show. The transformations are pretty dramatic, but there are other striking things about this: mainly, that these girls look awfully gaunt in their au naturel state (though, it must be said, they are still, er, lookers). But they look particularly unwell to my eyes, like they’d been partying all night. And maybe they had.

I am something of an agnostic on the heated body image debate fashion models tend to ignite. Yes, many of them are WAY too thin,and present bad role models (though I’ve never really believed in that concept). But to me, the extreme body modification implicit in their business is not all that different from what’s expected of athletes, especially in dimension-focused sports like basketball and especially football. Not to mention that the opposite of obsessive thinness is a true epidemic of obesity that is ruining the health of, and killing, people in far greater numbers than anything eating disorders cause.

The commodification of people’s bodies is at the root of this, which is sort of self-evident and not really helpful. OK. At bottom I blame capitalism. There, I said it. Next subject.

The Chair Force

By timmukyPosted on October 27, 2009Posted in warTagged Predator, warNo Comments

Fascinating article on the operators of Predator and Reaper drones, who sit in naugahyde chairs in Nevada, monitor the war zone, sometimes launch Hellfire missiles that kill people (many people) in Iraq or Afghanisgtan–then clock out, and get home in time for soccer practice.

“Combat is a very personal event,” [Col. Pete] Gersten [commander of the 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing] said. Getting questions at home at the end of each shift means “that compartment is being breached to a degree.” Even for those willing to share that aspect of their lives with their spouse, they feel limited by the secret nature of their job.

“It’s more frustrating than anything else. Your family doesn’t have a security clearance, so it makes for really boring dinner conversation,” said Lt. Col. David Kent, an F-15E pilot who was recently stationed at Creech and now teaches at the Air Force Academy. “You feel really good about something you did that day, but you can’t say anything. Your family can’t share the triumphs and trials with you.”

Jane Mayer’s New Yorker article on drone warfare states that there are about 10 collateral damage kills for every successful “take out” of intended targets. But to be fair her article discusses both the above-board military drone program discussed in this article, as well as the secret one run by the CIA, out of an unspecified location, and perhaps with hired contractors.

The Predator “pilots” emerge here as yet one more overworked and stressed out arm of the far-reaching ambitions of the U.S. military:

In 2006, a military study found Predator crews are at least as fatigued, if not more so, than pilots deployed downrange. Changes were made to the shifts, but a follow-up survey last year still showed “emotional exhaustion and burnout.”

The studies found many crew members are chronically fatigued, with about 40 percent reporting “a moderate to high likelihood of falling asleep in the [ground control station] while operating a weaponized, remotely piloted aircraft.”

Mathewson said conditions have improved, but sleep deprivation hasn’t stopped being an issue. Gersten said the fatigue is being “realized in vehicle accidents” on the drive home from base.

“It’s insane,” Kent said. “You can’t run an Air Force like this without burning your people out.”

I didn’t expect to feel any sympathy for these guys, but I sort of do. Given my basic problem with anyone being willing to kill on command, whether it be Raymond strangling his buddy with a white scarf in The Manchurian Candidate, Civil War soldiers standing toe to toe and bayonetting one another, or pulling a trigger, or pushing a button on a joystick, the warriors of the “chair force” do have a pretty sucky job in the great scheme of things.

Tom Englehardt is all over this subject, and has been for years. Here is a collection of articles on Tomdispatch.com.

Kinky boots/the worst canvas imaginable

By timmukyPosted on October 26, 2009Posted in fashionTagged fashion, skank bootsNo Comments

I love this video, not for its critique of the over the knee boot trend in fashion capitals Paris and New York. That I will leave to the crazy/brilliant/crazy Awl writer Mary HK Choi:

I can’t deal. It’s fall 2009 and what they’ve predicted has all come true. I’ve seen ’em. They’ve officially descended upon us like the vinyl-clad seat of a dominatrix who mistakenly thinks we want our faces suffocated. They’re everywhere. On the street. On public transportation. The sticky, deplorable, throbbing, bastard mass sprung from the loins of FASHION like so much Strangé perfume from Grace Jones’ womb: the over-the-knee-boot.

This is old news as far as EVERYBODY showing some version of this on their runways for fall but now we’re beginning to see them, not on the spindly femurs of stick people like Vogue Nippon’s Anna Dello Russo who’s so thin JAPANESE people want to give her a sandwich and then fly a plane sideways through the isosceles triangle of negative space between her thighs. I’m seeing this scourge on the worst canvas imaginable—regular folk. The Gucci, Louboutin, Choo, Chanel has trickled down to Charlotte Russe, Victoria’s Secret and Steve Madden and yo, this is BAD NEWS.

No, my interest is in the cackling, clearly extemporaneous voice over by legendary NY Times street cameraman Bill Cunningham. A New York Times personality who talks like a New Yorker. That is actually cool.

[Having a hard time getting an embedded video from the NYTimes site, so the link at the top of the post will have to do. At least I know it works.]

Let’s stop showering the world with Bomb Love

By timmukyPosted on October 24, 2009Posted in militarism, politics, warTagged iran, militarism, politics, warNo Comments

Jeff Huber is a retired Naval commander who provides a pretty refreshing insiderish perspective on our runaway military culture. This is a typical offering. He is also one of the few writers who have mentioned the one thing that makes our insane military state superfluous. Two things, actually: the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The oceans and our size provide us with ample security protection, just as they did in the day of Washington and Jefferson and Franklin. No one can invade and occupy us. Nobody would ever be crazy enough to pop a nuclear missile off in our direction, or in the direction of any of our friends (do we have any of those left?)

No one is interested in competing with us militarily, not even Russia or China. Let’s start coming home and fixing our own problems, and take the world off our shoulders. It will get along fine without us bombing it on a regular basis.

He also is nicely succinct in dismissing the Iran hysteria that afflicts both parties

Iran serves a vital role in the Pentagon’s long war strategy. It’s a neo-East Germany; a pseudo-client state of Russia, plopped in the middle of the Middle East. It gives us a reason to keep troops located in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though none of the 9/11 attackers came from Iraq or even Afghanistan and certainly not from Iran.

Iran is an excuse to keep the war machine rolling.

Iran’s defense budget is less than one percent of ours. It can’t project conventional land power much beyond its borders. Its navy is a coast guard and its air force is a junkyard. It doesn’t have a nuclear weapons program. Yet we’re up in arms about it. How senseless.

And he saves some choice words for a former ~~Vice~~Co-President:

Speaking of senseless, Dick Cheney is on the rampage again. He is the most dishonest, most misguided villain of the 21st century, but when he speaks, he gets more bandwidth than the World Series, the Super Bowl and Internet porn combined. He’s not even attractive to look at or listen to, and he has a proven track record of not knowing what he’s talking about. He’s a militaristic dipswitch.

Huber is often on antiwar.com, and has a blog at Pen and Sword. He is also one of the few writers to follow the grotesque acts of insubordination and/or treason by top military brass. See General Treachery.

Early Shakira, when she was even more awesome

By timmukyPosted on October 23, 2009Posted in celebrity, music, rocknroll, videoTagged rocknroll, videoNo Comments

Just watched the Shewolf video from the new, bodacious, blond Shakira. Two comments: 1. I could use a shower, and 2. it’s fascinating how much she’s changed. For the better or not, who knows? But I prefer this video and this song, from her days as a strange little would-be hippie girl with too much dark eyeliner. So much going on here, so many musical styles. And I love when she becomes a robotic wig mannequin.

“They are extrajudicial killings, and we do not support that”

By timmukyPosted on October 23, 2009Posted in politics, Uncategorized, warTagged politics, unspeakable evil, warNo Comments

“Problems with killer drones” is the tepid headline of a summary article at AtlanticWire, collecting responses to Jane Mayer’s typically thorough investigation into Obama’s “weapon of choice”–deadly rocket attacks launched by Predator drones. (The link is to an abstract. Unfortunately, the entire article is behind the New Yorker’s firewall.)

The liberal response, represented by Lisa Schrich at HuffingtonPost, points out that ten civilians die for every militant killed in a drone strike and that they “undermine both Pakistani and Afghan state sovereignty and legitimacy, stir political unrest, and challenge alliances.”

Which is fine, as far as it goes, but she might go even further: it’s murder without any sort of due process. When did America decide it could kill anyone on the planet, without a peep of opposition from its media outlets or political class?

Actually, you can put a date on it. September 11, 2001. Before that, as Mayer relates, our government criticized Israel’s targeted killings of Palestinian militants. Martin Indyk, then ambassador to Israel, actually said, in June of that year, “the United States government is very clearly on record against targeted assassinations…. They are extrajudicial killings, and we do not support that.”

But September 11 Changed All That. And blowing suspected militants, and anyone in the neighborhood, to smithereens from two miles up in the sky became an instrument of U.S. foreign policy. Think about that. Never mind that there are many more misses than hits, or that a “kill” with ten additional corpses is cause for high fives all around, or that the most celebrated kill of recent times, of Baitalluh Meshud, the leader of the Taliban in Pakistan, only came after fifteen failed strikes, killing up to 321 additional people. “We”–our government–have no right to do anything like that. Right? Right? Even if we “take out” the target with the precision that so often claimed but never demonstrated, there’s no due process, no evidence whatsoever that the target is guilty of the crimes, or dark thoughts (the same thing in recent times) we accuse him of. In a terrific essay last month, Tom Englehardt made the case that to the rest of the world, we have become the Martians of HG Wells’ fiction, who, with “intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic,” destroy human bodies and lives and communities without a second thought.

We go about our comfortable lives and rarely have cause to think about the women, children, and noncombatants who live in daily fear of being vaporized, torn apart, crushed or poisoned by the high-tech weaponry of a nation half a world away. This suits the politicians and the generals just fine, for whom it is almost literally a video game. Few American lives are at risk, the victims are invisible, both parties can appear to be taking a stand against terror, and the money to the military machine keeps flowing.

I think the last word should go to Harry Lime of The Third Man, who defends his death-dealing black marketeering (an operation that seems almost quaint today) while high in a Ferris Wheel overlooking Vienna with the words: “Victims? Don’t be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?”