The Mississippifarian

They’re mightily bummed out down at the village square. Seems that work for town criers is vanishing, and hardly anyone wants to post notices in the square anymore.

Then again, since most of the peasants moved to the ‘burbs and got broadband, hardly anyone hangs out in the village square anymore.

/—|

Having lost two consecutive debates, Chris Hedges resorts to a book to flog his new meme, atheism = suburban mutation.

Interesting. I’ll let you know when I figure out where this farm kid moved to the big city (but never lived in the ‘burbs) fits into Hedges’ worldview. And, like most of you, I’m guessing I don’t fit in at all.

Hedges is a good guy, but on this one topic he’s really full of god, if you know what I mean.

/—|

There are no stupid questions. Only stupid journalists.

/—|

City Pages won eleven SPJ awards this year. Three of the awards went to writers now working for MinnPost and Minnesota Monitor.

/—|

They win awards, and then they go on vacation. Bush’s impact on our cultural will be with us for a long, long time.

/—|

David Brauer factchecks darlin’ Katie in the aftermath of the Mn Dept of Ed investigation. Meanwhile, Mistress Kersten is chortling over efforts to remove her from the newsroom. [Note to KK: don't worry about those who disparage you as "the poorest excuse for a journalist since" humankind learned how to fling poo. Serious lefty bloggers all know you're not a journalist by training or inclination, just a hack. And, as a hack, you do alright.]

Dearie, Avista isn’t on that über alles kick anymore. A little resume updating might be in order — remember, the Swiss are sticklers for putting rightwing pigs pegs into rightwing holes, and not into their newspapers.

[More factchecking from Andy Birkey, and still more from Bob Collins.]

/—|

Mike Fairbourne, a local tv weather chick, calls global warming science squishy. 

I think it has something to do with thinking that reading the weather daily actually giving you a clue, when all it proves is that you know how to read.

/—|

Locally, a Vietnamese-American pot-growing ring has been indicted. This is a big deal: do they get white people’s drug law justice, or n-word justice? The former means a grueling stint in rehab, the latter a cell at one of our comfy state prisons where anal rape isn’t anywhere near as common as in episodes of Oz (unless you’re a smaller guy…).

(Yes, we do seem to have a surplus of n-words nowadays.)

/—|

AK for O-Veep? Well, next to Kathleen Sebelius, she is the worst speaker of all the prominent Democratic women I know of. And surely our nation is just dying to hear more about “jugs o’ fun.”

I’m really happy for all my gay friends, but personal bottom line? This is going to cost me a fortune in wedding presents. 

Patt Morrison, on California’s recently-overturned same-sex marriage ban

Basic human rights are so inconvenient that way. I don’t go to weddings, straight or otherwise. If you love someone, why chain yourself to them legally? Marriage isn’t a commitment anymore, it’s a Penn & Teller act where the wife and hubby publicly proclaim they’ll never ever split up, move on or in any other way get a life as a minister spot welds the final link on their matrimonial chains.

Shacking up is soooo much simpler. Besides, kids love knowing their siblings have different last names, further proving how unalike they are. Oh yeah — we may have the same DNA but at least I’m a Smith and not a Johnson!!!

—’—

OK, now that I’ve seen this poster, I’m sold.

More on this graphic path to enlightment here. Frankly, I don’t see the Mao thing at all. This poster has Eva Peron written all over it  — how many parallels can you count, boys and girls?

And no, I don’t think Peronista comparisons are unflattering. Except maybe to the memory of Evita.

No, I don’t plan on changing the name of the blog to the Hillaryfarian, although I would grow some Obamalocks (if I had the hair). Barackafari does have a certain rhythm to it, however. Definitely better than being a Rodhamite.

—’—

Funny how no one ever thinks about making trucks more fuel efficient when the price of gas is low. 

Seriously, it’s very funny. Why exactly does Detroit refuse to pay attention to mileage? Has anyone ever done a check to see how many directors serve on boards of auto manufacturers and oil companies?

It doesn’t take much of an effort to improve on five miles to the gallon.

—’—

Will Elder, R.I.P.

I wasn’t allowed to read Mad magazine when I was a little kid, and yes, that made me enjoy it all the more. And yes, I did have a crush on Little Annie Fannie for a while in the late ’60s/early ’70s.

Nothing too serious. A couple of fan letters, one proposal of marriage, and lots and lots of Kleenex. In retrospect, I’m not sure what I saw in her. Blondes really aren’t my type.

—’—

Yesterday’s left over links:

Anna Pratt on the Postville INS raid (or why it takes a village of Jews to hire a packing plant full of undocumented workers) [more]

The wingbat dingoes wasted no telling lies about gay marriage in California, starting with baseless smears of the judges (I’ve come to the conclusion that only fags and sissy boys oppose gay marriage — real men could care less what you do with your private parts)

USS Maine explodes in Venezuelan highlands: Hearst chain dispatches war correspondents

Digby on change

Gawker v. Minnesota (a Franken cheapshot)

Hagee says Jews have dead souls

Pretend they’re fresh. It’s not like you’re keeping up either. And no, being Jewish has nothing to do with undocumented workers, but I’ll stir that pot in whatever way it takes to get people to notice what’s going on.

Kosher meat products aren’t competitively priced. Kosher means a premium price and their customers pay it. There is no shortage of highly qualified, healthy workers in Iowa. Workers who already know the meat business. Workers ready to be hired. The only thing Iowa is short of is workers stupid enough to work for peanuts with lousy health benefits and lines that run just as fast as the ones controlled by the Christian pigs at Iowa Beef Packers.

When it comes to exploiting workers, all religions are enablers, if not the actual employer of record.

Kosher only applies to the animals, not the workers.

Raining here. Cleaning the air, knocking the cockleballs and gnarly bits of pollen, mold and winter filth to the ground. Cool, clean air helping to revive me from lunchtime’s MSG overdose. A good damp but not so wet that the spot from the kicked bowl of wonton soup hasn’t all but dried. 

If you’re into chartreuse, I think the trees here peaked yesterday. Today they’re just the slightest bit darker, and no longer quite so suggestive of impressionist art. I like when nature conforms to art, but then one of my many talents is my ability to take off my glasses and turn any landscape into an impressionist tour de blur. (Hmm. That van Gogh above got damaged in the file conversion. For the exact shade of chartreuse I’m talking about, go here. When I say peak, I mean day glo.)

Chartreuse is an obscene color, imho, when found anywhere but in nature (or paintings of nature). When found on trees, chartreuse tells me that spring is here. Chartreuse clothing or drinks annoy me. They make me thing it’s spring when it’s not. Synthetic chartreuse fucks with your biorhythms.

The wet trees in the mini-park across the way and behind the strip mall aren’t chartreuse anymore. They’re one day closer to being green, but now they just look a sickly yellow-green, with leaves in need of sunshine and some encouragement. Tibetans moving into the neighborhood seem to have helped.

There’s nothing like that first end of the day double bong hit to put me in a Mark Trail frame of mind. For a moment there, I didn’t even feel like making fun of Republicans, teams from Boston, or city people in general. 

I had some more links but I’m canceling them on account of rain. And I’m uploading a rainy twilight music set. Sorry about the mystery song but hey kids — I’ve got a new and improved download system!

I realized all I needed to do was to throw the songs into a folder, zip it, upload and voila! your set ce soir. Just download, double-click and it should open. Feed into your .mp3 player and, for maximum listening pleasure, sequence the songs in this order. (Did I mention this is a 109MB file? Hey, what’s a little bandwidth between friends?)

Just one more thing. There’s a listening “bump” about three and a half minutes from the end to wake you up so you can go to bed after listening to an hour and a quarter of my idea of rain music. 

Typical. Before the set was uploaded the rain ended and the sun came out.

#@$!

I think I’ll pull the shades and watch the rest of Sweeney Todd. No sense ruining a perfectly good melancholy groove.

Update: Now we’ve got one of those odd skies where the pale sky reflects on the clouds, turning them deep blue, inverting the sky and making the clouds into the wild blue. 

No, I don’t have my glasses on. Why?

How much does the racist right hate McCain? Enough so that Ron Paul is considering supporting Obama. The jr. Senator from Illinois is winning in Guam today, btw.

Meanwhile, from Camp HRC, the notion that their double standard for Obama applies to Hillary Clinton as well is quickly shot down.

The executioner’s argument was, that you couldn’t cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it off from: that he had never had to do such a thing before, and he wasn’t going to begin at his time of life.

The King’s argument was, that anything that had a head could be beheaded, and that you weren’t to talk nonsense.

The Queen’s argument was, that if something wasn’t done about it in less than no time she’d have everybody executed, all round. (It was this last remark that had made the whole party look so grave and anxious.)

Alice could think of nothing else to say but `It belongs to the Duchess: you’d better ask her about it.’

`She’s in prison,’ the Queen said to the executioner: `fetch her here.’ And the executioner went off like an arrow.

The Cat’s head began fading away the moment he was gone, and, by the time he had disappeared; so the King and the executioner ran wildly up and down looking for it, while the rest of the party went back to the game. 

 

§§§§§

$108 billion + $70 billion + whatever else Bush wants. The budget? The budget’s for suckers.

§§§§§

No one is more scathing towards the church than a lapsed Catholic.

§§§§§

Doug Grow reminds us that Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer is still running against Al Franken, something most of the local major media seem to have trouble remembering.

§§§§§

Even Bush’s own church has had enough of his high-handed ways.

Please note that it’s quite the 180° for me to be reporting good news about a church. I think lots of things are going to change in the near future and, damnit, I’m going to be too old to enjoy a lot of them.

NEW YORK  - Miley Cyrus [aka Hannah Montana] is already way richer than her dad, Billy Ray, and she’s only 15.

People magazine reports that the Miley Cyrus franchise will be worth a projected $1 billion by the end of the year. She tops the magazine’s list of the richest teen celebrities. 

AP

One billion fucking dollars and she’s not even old enough to drive. What part of making sense would this fall under? Entertainers in this country either starve, or live in mansions. What smell test does that pass? I used to live with a woman who would have backed over me with an 18-wheeler just for the opportunity of standing in line to pat Miley’s daddy on the ass back in the day, but she would have never agreed that Billy Ray Cyrus was worth a billion dollars. Worth backing over me for a single pat on the ass, yes, but a billion dollars? No way.

We’re not living in a capitalist country anymore, just a feudalistic paradise where everyone’s a servant except the for handful that aren’t. Or do you believe that a 15-year-old girl should be worth more than 10,000 working class American couples combined?

±±±

Otoh, for a mere $125, you can hobnob with these swells, each and every one of whom is of the age of consent.

Or, if you read all the way to the bottom, you can sneak in for only $25-30. Being able to applaud the Republican caucus-rejected Kathy Tinglestad alone is worth that much. More details here.

±±±

Switched ISPs this morning, more later including details on how that fermented fish with baked eggplant I had last night came out (let’s just say I’m glad I had to leave the apartment shortly afterwards).

You might want to read what Wikipedia has to say before buying your tickets. via