Archive for October, 2008

I was perusing one of my favorite new blogs, The Big Picture on Boston.com when I ran across the aforeshown image of Enceladus, one of the moons orbiting Saturn. It suddenly hit me more viscerally than ever before that we are on a ball in the middle of a vacuum.

I have a lot of half-baked thoughts on this that I won’t digress into, but I thought I should share the beautiful image of Enceladus and the wonderful boston.com blog.

I can’t sleep. So this post will probably just make you crinkle your nose, particularly if you’re sober. No worries.

This is a chapter of a book, Sound Unbound, edited by DJ Spooky (who besides being a most interesting musician working with the broadest imaginable range of artists, majored in French lit and philo and is a long-time friend of Shepard Fairey). I recommend that you read the chapter; don’t be a-skeerd of it even though it looks dense. That just means you’ll get through more coolness in less time.

The essay’s like a series of TED talks on speed for people who are in to technology and art and architecture and geography and music and film and the all-consuming fastness of the speed of life in which all of these things articulate … it pulls together a plethora of things, people, and ideas I’m interested in at absolute warp speed.

But that’s the point. He’s sampling history and books and philosophers and programmer-speak and art exhibits. He’s filtering them, finding the patterns, trying to decipher a system that makes sense in his (and, since I know who’s reading this, it’s safe to say our) world. And the common denominator for him is the archive as the dominant form. The web as an archive, his music collection as archive, ftp having the potential to be the ultimate communication tool so far.

He tells a story of how a clock maker invented the modern system of latitute (as in longitude and latitude), and the moral of the story is that time is the archival system for the measurement (and thus understanding) of space, and that time is also the archival system for the measurement (and thus the understanding) of music (rhythm). Presence and absence of material. Well … I take it back. It may not have a moral. That’s okay, though. It gets me worked up, and that’s about all anyone can ask for from ideas.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I) Vermont has a lot to say about what America should be and isn’t on Real Time w/ Bill Maher. If he were from Kansas, I’d vote for him in a heart beat.

FiveThirtyEight.com has a breakdown of Kansas’ voting population’s tendencies. I wish I could say I was surprised. Sometimes I cry myself to sleep because I live in a stupidly Republican state. But in states like Kansas God and guns come before calm and sense.

I love that Starbucks:Walmart ratio is an indicator of the general socioeconomic makeup of a population and thus their voting tendencies.

This speech.

Tonight it is over.

“I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents’ dreams live on in my two precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.”

Celebrate that we have fulfilled the hope of the constitution. This is truly a great and historic election. We have done well, America. We have fulfilled what we have promised. A low 7+ score from slavery and a slight 50 years from Jim Crow we will soon elect a black man president of this nation. The first minority to be elected chief executive in any western country.

We have done well. We have proven the strength and hope of the American condition. We still have so much to give to the rest of the world and this election should give even the most cynical of us hope, faith and excitement to what we can do.

“If there is a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there is a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription drugs, and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandparent. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.

It is that fundamental belief — It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family.

E pluribus unum: ‘Out of many, one..’”

And that is indeed the very hope for us. On our money it says “out of many, one.” This is a social cause, a cause in which we say, I do care for you, and, more importantly, your care is my care.

and he finishes:

“I believe that we can give our middle class relief and provide working families with a road to opportunity.

I believe we can provide jobs to the jobless, homes to the homeless, and reclaim young people in cities across America from violence and despair.

I believe that we have a righteous wind at our backs and that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices, and meet the challenges that face us.

America! Tonight, if you feel the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion that I do, if you feel the same hopefulness that I do — if we do what we must do, then I have no doubt that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, from Washington to Maine, the people will rise up in November, and John Kerry will be sworn in as President, and John Edwards will be sworn in as Vice President, and this country will reclaim its promise, and out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come.

Thank you very much everybody. God bless you. Thank you.”

I watched Frontline’s 2-hour PBS documentary “The Choice” tonight (and you can, too). If someone’s an undecided voter, this docu won’t sway them, though it will inform them. If someone hasn’t been paying attention, then this will fill in most of the necessary bio/character info. (One detail not addressed: Barack is a poker player, and John is a craps player. Enough said.)

The Kerry/Bush side-by-side Frontline did was amazing; even a dork like me didn’t know the depth of the differences between the lives of those two men. I still refer to points it made in conversation. This election cycle’s docu was more forgettable, though solid. And, simply due to the timing of its production, it doesn’t examine anything post-conventions, which has clearly (Palin, the economy) been pivotal.

Huh. I was totally riveted to the screen tonight, even deferring a trip to the bathroom. A program like this is like porn for wonks. Yet this post is not a glowing endorsement of the show…

…maybe satire is the best way to examine this election. More power to the court jesters: Fey, Stewart, Colbert, hopefully Grier’s new show, and boy do I miss Chappelle.

Even for a schlub like me, this is fucking amazing.

The Footage

Due to the political debate and all things related to field dressing a moose, this came up in my gmail RSS feed today. Gentlemen, start yer field dressin’. Please take careful note of the instructions for this one.

Worst. Mental. Image. Ever.

Field Gutting Tool

With a killer ad.

Great stuff.

I feel like I felt on Super Tuesday.  Like Jake Taylor said in Major League the only thing left to do is win the whole fucking thing.

I have lots of thoughts, will share them tomorrow, but a knockout tonight.  A complete thrashing.