Cogitamus

Life in the USA - A Photo Album

DHS and Walmart: A Match Made in Heaven

In a perfect melding of the Keystone Kops Meet O'Brien, Janet Napolitano is coming to a Walmart near you.  Her video, urging "If You See Something, Say Something," is rolling out at W emporia all across the country:

The message will be continuously looped on TV monitors at the 588 Walmarts in the U.S.  One can only imagine the hilarity that will ensue when one gun-buying customer doesn't like the looks of another.  But then maybe Napolitano doesn't really know the People of Walmart that well, after all.

"Report suspicious activity to your local police or sheriff.  If you need help, ask a Walmart manager for assistance.”  Ah, yes, ask a manager for assistance!  Next time you get in a tug-of-war with another customer over the last Game Boy in the store, just report that sucker to management for "suspicious activity."

Requiem by Eliza Gilkyson

 

Requiem by Eliza Gilkyson.  Originally written after the Asian tsunami in 2004, it gained wider play after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  Since then, it's been taken up by choirs all around the country.  Beautiful, heart-stirring music for any time of year.

(H/T David in Tucson)

Espionage Act: How the Government Can Engage in Serious Aggression Against the People of the United States by Naomi Wolf

Ballgame just brought this column by Naomi Wolf to our attention in another thread, but I think it deserves its own post.  Excerpt (bolds mine):

. . . These two Senators, and the rest of the Congressional and White House leadership who are coming forward in support of this appalling development, are cynically counting on Americans' ignorance of their own history -- an ignorance that is stoked and manipulated by those who wish to strip rights and freedoms from the American people. They are manipulatively counting on Americans to have no knowledge or memory of the dark history of the Espionage Act -- a history that should alert us all at once to the fact that this Act has only ever been used -- was designed deliberately to be used -- specifically and viciously to silence people like you and me.

The Espionage Act was crafted in 1917 -- because President Woodrow Wilson wanted a war and, faced with the troublesome First Amendment, wished to criminalize speech critical of his war. In the run-up to World War One, there were many ordinary citizens -- educators, journalists, publishers, civil rights leaders, union activists -- who were speaking out against US involvement in the war. The Espionage Act was used to round these citizens by the thousands for the newly minted 'crime' of their exercising their First Amendment Rights. A movie producer who showed British cruelty in a film about the Revolutionary War (since the British were our allies in World War I) got a ten-year sentence under the Espionage act in 1917, and the film was seized; poet E.E. Cummings spent three and a half months in a military detention camp under the Espionage Act for the 'crime' of saying that he did not hate Germans. Esteemed Judge Learned Hand wrote that the wording of the Espionage Act was so vague that it would threaten the American tradition of freedom itself. Many were held in prison for weeks in brutal conditions without due process; some, in Connecticut -- Lieberman's home state -- were severely beaten while they were held in prison. The arrests and beatings were widely publicized and had a profound effect, terrorizing those who would otherwise speak out.

. . . I call on all American citizens to rise up and insist on repeal of the Espionage Act immediately. We have little time to waste. The Assange assault is theater of a particularly deadly kind, and America will not recover from the use of the Espionage Act as a cudgel to threaten journalists, editors and news outlets with. I call on major funders of Feinstein's and Lieberman's campaigns to put their donations in escrow accounts and notify the staffers of those Senators that the funds willonly be released if they drop their traitorous invocation of the Espionage Act. I call on all Americans to understand once for all: this is not about Julian Assange. This, my fellow citizens, is about you . . . .

Welcome to Your Police State - Grand Central NYC

Uh. Does anyone know why the TSA is performing random bag searches at the Grand Central Terminal subway hub?
posted by @metalia from Twitter for iPhone 23 hours 38 mins ago

Here's the URL.

UPDATE:  Well, this has been going since April.  But I guess since so few people give a shit, as you'll see from the chipper comments in the article, it barely caused a ripple.  Oh, well.  The horse left the barn long ago.

Oh, well . . .

Well, I've been saying it from the beginning.  But what the hell.

Next step for scanners trains, bus, metro, says Napolitano

By Jordy Yager - 11/23/10 02:09 PM ET

FIVE WORDS

FIVE WORDS:

Philip Zimbardo.

Stanford Prison Experiment.

Hallelujah - Random Act of Culture

(H/T to litbrit)

Richard Shindell: Arrowhead

An addition to the beautiful Veterans' Day tributes by MHB and Sir C (see below), one of my favorite singer-songwriters, Richard Shindell.  There are a couple of YouTube videos out there of him singing this, but the audio quality isn't very good, so I refer you to his website where you can click on Arrowhead to listen. It's a song about another hideous war in our history.

The Ballad of Steven Slater by Jonathan Mann (NSFW)

Vuvuzela Concerto in B-flat

Jambalaya

I haven't been back to New Orleans since Katrina. I haven't had the heart. Now with the British Petroleum Spill, Cheney's Chernobyl, showing its full force and exposing all the lies about the size and scope of the spill, I imagine that it will be a very long time. Aaron Neville is a long time friend and sometime employer. He can't go home. Aaron has asthma and the mold and rot that still is there would kill him. I won't go until he can. From what I've seen so far what rebuilding that has been done is along the lines of the Epcot Center "NEWORLEENSLAND" version of what was a vibrant and vital place.

Here's the way I do the famous dish Jambalaya.  There are as many versions as there are cooks.  The basics of this version are what you would be having at the legendary Tipitina's.  But first, more music.

Memorial Day - Triple Chocolate Ice Cream

Memorial Day is a quiet day for me.  Too many ghosts. 

So I think it's best to simply move on to things more delicious.  Since I live in Fort Stinking Desert, California where it is routinely seven degrees hotter than the southern reaches of hell, homemade ice cream is not a whim or luxury.  Even a ten minute drive when it's topping one hundred fifteen will destroy the best store bought ice cream.  Also, made at home, it's not injected with air to make it fluffy, there's no high fructose corn syrup, or anything you don't put in there yourself.

That's more better to my thinking.  Far more better.

But, I digress.

Nora ancora

For Mother's Day

For Amanda.


BTW, it might not be apparent, but their website makes it clear they were singing about American women, and not, you know, British expatriates.

Capturing The Zeitgeist

I think I can safely aver to not being the most musically plugged-in person there is — I have long since passed the point where your typical musical review will describe a group I've never heard of by pointing out how they're like a blend of two other musical groups I've never heard of (who, themselves, were musical descendants of … well, you get the picture). But thanks to the miracle of the intarwebs, I occasionally stumble on to something. A brief survey of a few folks I know who ARE plugged in to new music revealed that they hadn't heard of Royksopp, so I figure there's a chance you haven't either. They've actually been around a while, and released this foreshadowy video a few years ago:

The Times, They Are A-Changing, though not fast enough

As the country's first black president prepares to take office, an ignominious relic of the Old South, old thinking, and old ways has died.  William Devereux Zantzinger, 69, was buried yesterday in southern Maryland, with not too many grieving souls in attendance, if one can read between the lines of this story in today's Baltimore Sun.

In 1963, the wealthy, 24-year-old self-styled aristocrat got a bit peeved with a black waitress named Hattie Carroll when she didn't fetch his drink fast enough.  So he hit her with his cane.  She died a few hours later.  Zantzinger pranced and preened at his trial, where he was convicted of manslaughter, ordered to pay a $500 fine, and went off to serve six months in jail.  As it turned out, it wouldn't be his last brush with the law.

The case attracted national attention, and Bob Dylan immortalized it in this song:

Stand By Me

       

This is a quite amazing collaboration between street musicians from all over the world -- and I do mean all over the world -- singing, playing, performing on their own, while being joined by other musicians performing on their own, who are then all combined through the magic of technology.  Apparently this is an on-going project from a documentary called "Playing for Change: Peace Through Music."  It's quite beautiful. 

Here, I'll cut and paste the explanation posted on YouTube: 

R.I.P. Odetta

Photo credit: Earl Wilson/The New York Times

“You’re walking down life’s road, society’s foot is on your throat, every which way you turn you can’t get from under that foot. And you reach a fork in the road and you can either lie down and die, or insist upon your life.”

Civil rights pioneer, vocal inspiration.  Everyone from Dylan to Baez to Joplin to Springsteen has been influenced by her.  She had hoped to sing at Obama's inauguration.  She was 77.  

O'Bama!

         

No, it's not just the cute apostrophe that suddenly appeared in pub signs last March -- O'Bama -- for St. Patrick's Day, but it seems that Obama really does have Irish ancestry:  his great-great-great-grandfather.  The man came to the United States from a wee town called Moneygall in County Offaly.  And the Moneygallians have wasted no time in publicizing that fact and issuing an invitation to the Prez-Elect to quaff a pint there.

A sign has gone up in the town that you just have to see.  And the band in this video, Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys, have been performing their new song all over the place:  "O'Leary, O'Reilly, O'Hare, and O'Hara, there's no one as Irish as Barack Obama!"  Or, as they spell it in Gaelic, Bádhraic Ó Bamaigh.

Hockey Mama for Obama

Hilarious.  Even more so if you appreciate musicals.

            

Friday Frank: Easy Meat; Paris, 1980

Things I loved hearing on this gray October Friday:

- "Miss, can I please see your ID for that wine?"

- Hey Deb, Dave of Zencomix made a comic* for you.
Cheers, Michael Hussey

- "Mama, let me know when you post this week's Friday Frank...oh, and I found your keys."

Today's Friday Frank--a long one, with lots of signature changes and a gorgeous solo--is dedicated, then, to Dave, Son Two, and the lovely (if terribly myopic) checkout guy at Publix.

Bon Weekend, everyone.

XXX
D.

* I'll post the whole strip if and when Dave gives me permission.

The Great Halloween Lantern Parade, Baltimore

This is why I love Charm City.  Parade is happening this weekend, Saturday night, if you can make it:      

Friday Frank: The Mammy Anthem; Bolzano, Italy, 1982

The picture quality and sound aren't quite what you'd hope for, but Frank's extended guitar solo makes this one worth watching over and over. Honestly, I'd never seen it before today, when I happened to be musing on the events of this past couple of weeks, wondering what Frank would think about it all.

Strike that: I already know what he'd think because he told us as much a long time ago.  What would Frank do about it, though?

Make art seems as good an answer as any.

Bon Weekend, everyone.

Also at litbrit .

Friday Saturday Frank: Don't Eat the Yellow Snow*

This is Son Three's favorite Frank Zappa song.  As it's his ninth birthday today--and given that a certain arctic-animal-killing person has been dominating the news of late--I am posting this for the animated enjoyment of all.

Happy Birthday,  beautiful Baby Doll Boy--may your sweet soul and megawatt smile take you to extraordinary places.

With masses of kisses and a big Terrorist Fist Bump from Mama to you,

And a Bon Weekend to everyone!

*Don't watch if you're easily offended or given to PC-purity, ahem.