At this point...

... getting all pissy about something like this is like getting angry that not enough Japanese people speak Sanskrit. Apparently, there is no intrinsic morality to a situation like this, and therefore, nothing to violate. Why did I imagine there was?

Pick quote in reference to indie music: "Consumers feel like they are discovering something that they believe to be cool and gaining admittance to a more refined social clique."

Any me getting all whiny about it would just be my attempt to gain entry into an even more refined and exclusive social clique, right?

My 'Hood

Don't have much to add but this is worth reading.

My feeble brain is having a hard time having an opinion. It's obviously not pure gentrification. It's obviously going to raise rents without trying. And, since I don't have a girlfriend, I can't even grapple with whether "they" should just get used to public displays of affection or vice-versa.

I live a few blocks away and have for a couple of years. Even given what I have written on gentrifaction, I guess, due to the color of my skin, I am part of it. Suffice it to say I moved to Crown Heights because I can't afford $15 on pizza unless it lasts a few meals. Ok. I guess if I stopped buying records I could. But then why live in New York? There is gourmet pizza everywhere now. Anyways, increasing gentrification means that, like some other broke residents, I will have to stay in my apartment because it is already, and will be even more so, impossible to find the deal I have where I live. Why is that bad? All I can say is that I hope I have heat this Winter. Cheers.

Naughty and Nice

I updated my list of links. Gone are the links to Big City Music and Resident Advisor.

Big City Music is an online and physical music shop specializing in synthesizers. I wanted to buy one from them, a used one, a few months ago. There was no mention on the website as to whether that synthesizer had a manual or power cord. While it would have been fine had I not been able to get my hands on the former, the latter is fairly crucial. Anyways, multiple calls and emails to them warranted no help, so why bother taking the risk of giving them business?

Resident Advisor comes down because, while I have never quite agreed with their taste in music, even when I was into "micro", I always appreciated their larger thinkpieces on the state of the scene. In abscence of those, it's just a lot of information on records I generally don't care about.

I did, however add two excellent blogs, Infinite Thought and And You May Find Yourself, both of which should be familiar to the readers of the other blogs I link to, but are certainly worthy of a place regardless.

Deja Deja Deja Deja Vu Vu Vu Vu

Stop me if you've heard this one before. Now that this has happened a few times, I see a theme emerging. Is anyone else starting to get pissed that seemingly half the time this happens, it happens at some small fundraiser at some wealthy person's house. It's one thing to tell "us" to "buck up", still another to do it whilst everyone is sitting around eating gourmet food. It's all a bit "let them eat cake", huh? At least go to a fucking McDonalds or something. No? Fuck it then.

I just want to share this...

... not even funny really.

"The Entire America Political System Can Be Summed Up In A Spelling Error I Made Today While Quoting The Movie 'Heathers'"

"Corn Nuts!"
"Palin or BQ?"

Minor Thoughts

I used to write about music. And lengthy pieces about it. Before I started posting my typical three-paragrapgh rants on our lovely nation, rants that probably accomplish nothing, save getting linked to.

Why no more music coverage? A few reasons. First is that I am still working on that "big piece". I don't know when it will be done but it did double in size this past weekend from 3,000 to 6,000 words. I figure I am about halfway there. More notes became paragraphs, and some paragraphs found mates with others. I still have no writing for the following heading "Oh! Your album sounds like it was mastered to a broken VHS deck onto a VHS tape that was left in the sun in your car at the mall. You are SO FUCKING COOL" (or alternately I could write about the integration of the sound of the recoridng medium into the music as a dope-ass Brechtian distancing technique but that would just encourage them, wouldn't it, and towards the same end they are pursuing now: jack shit).

Some of the writing expands upon this critque, which, as an incomplete essay, is still, sadly, longer and more interesting than most of the writing I have been providing to you lately, dear reader(s). I do apologize.

Elsewhere someone has taken me up on my vague promise to write about Fever Ray. I will try I think. One of my turntables did come back from repair recently. I can now listen. Just wish I could go to another show of theirs to recapture some of the spirit.

Anyways, after my long essay, if it ever comes out, I will probably not write about music at all anymore unless something substantive changes in the way it is made, the way it is distributed, the way it is enjoyed, and the effect it has on Western society. Which means the Airport might become a little decrepit. Or I could just review my whole collection like everyone else. Oh yeah, Obama sucks blah blah blah.

EDIT: Forgot a few things.

Hilarious. I never liked them. I was a horrific indie snob at age 13 when the first album came out and even then, that band reekeed of the worst sort of opportunist professionalism to me. This is sort of funny in light of the conversations last year about Sonic Youth and the need for bands to just break up already (I think you should find the remnants via the links at this post). As is this.

"Forever ever?" aka "Ooooh! I Am for REE-uhl!"

The thing about "these days" is that it is hard to break out of my own cynicism as so much bad comes with the good.

This story is a great example of the kind of thing that drives my emotions to extremes on a daily basis.

I started reading, and was generally feeling positive about a judge who is willing to disallow coerced testimony from being introduced into a trial. Then I read on and become elated, straining to prevent my eye from tearing here at work:

"The court has not reached this conclusion lightly," Judge Kaplan said as he read his
order from the bench. "It is acutely aware of the perilous nature of the world in which we live. But the Constitution is the rock upon which our nation rests. We must
follow it not only when it is convenient, but when fear and danger beckon in a
different direction. To do less would diminish us and undermine the foundation upon which we stand."

Wow. I am not a nationalist, but even I get weepy thinking about the since-unlearned official history of our country, where morality, humanity, and courage appeared in the thoughts and actions of great people all at the same time. But then I kept reading:

[The Judge] added that Mr. Ghailani's status as an "'enemy combatant' probably would permit his detention as something akin to a prisoner of war until the hostilities between the United States and Al Qaeda and the Taliban end, even if he were found not guilty."

(bold is mine, yo)

I guess I could see where he is coming from. If this were WWII it would probably be prudent for the US to not send uniformed Japanese soldiers back out onto the battlefield, but, since the "War on Terror" is not a conflict with an easy resolution, or even any at all, depending on the results of the next 10 elections or so, I don't know if Al Qaeda and the Taliban will ever be off the list of bad guys regardless of how many of them are left (I bet there is still a guy in Germany who doesn't like Jews and yet the war is over). And so the indeterminate nature of a war will ensure the indeterminate imprisonment of everyone thought* to be involved.

*(admittedly the thought is less tenuously-held in this instance, but in every one?)