I’ve become an xkcd devotee.  Funny, smart, and it will occasionally surprise you with it’s depth.  The last two panels of this one are throwaways, but the second one hits a chord.

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The Grateful Dead – Doin’ That Rag

The Band – Rag Mama Rag

Brock Butler – The Boston Rag [Steely Dan]

Note: don’t ask how I ended up at this page.

I realized all this about a decade ago.  But Bush, Jr. was such a bad president (or rather, headed such a bad administration), it was impossible for me not to tip farther into the Democrat camp.  And if the Republicans nominate Palin (unlikely) or some similar lunatic (fairly likely), I’ll punch Barry’s chad again–2000-2008 taught me that we have to at least have an adult in the office, no matter whatever else is at stake.  I’m back where I started now, though, throwing my support behind the most viable third-party candidate (one qualifier: they must be sane.  I’m looking at you, Ron Paul.)  Not that a Centrist bloc in congress or an Independent president would guarantee meaningful change, but there’s no chance of improvement if we just keep letting Rs and Ds shadowbox.

PS note to self, for a future post: do modern corporations represent an existential threat to American democracy?

Percy Hill – Chrissy Reed

If you like this track, exercise your grooveshark.com skills, and listen to the catchy Ammonium Maze and 313 off the same album, Color in Bloom.

PS: does anyone actually read my blog anymore?  Drop a comment or email me if so.  I may let the music posts wither and die if not, just continue to use it as my personal space to get a rant out of my system every once in awhile.

“Tonight, I toil in the clamour of a little cabaret where the chicha smoke forms jinn who embrance their puff-cheeked masters with massaging fingers.  I watch the smoker by the door: a nest slowly coils around his head, the faint echo of an ancestor’s mummy wraps, but each time the door opens to his right, all at once the smoke rushes out, away, up into the star-flecked, plum-coloured sky.  The door closes and he begins again, shrouding himself top to bottom with smoke; the door opens and invisible plunderers again unravel his work.”

That’s a hell of a descriptive paragraph.  Sadly, that level of authorship only bursts forth erratically, as the book is a bit amateurish.  Engrossing, yes, but I was disappointed as each of the characters revealed themselves to be nasty and brutish as the story progressed.  A good mystery works no matter when the reader figures it out–this one wasn’t very fun for the most part after I solidified my guess about 2/3 of the way through.  Still, it wasn’t bad, just not great.

After reading the recent Tim Geithner profiles in The Atlantic and The New Yorker, I finally get the reasoning behind the bailouts–not saving wall street would have cost the tax payers even more and deepened the recession.  I can’t believe, though, that we’re going to emerge from this crisis without an overhaul of wall street or, better yet, a rethinking of what sort of financial activity we want to allow period.

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