Saturday Canadian Music Blogging, Eh?

Here's some pretty Canuckistanian scenery - and they sing too! Notice the shit-eatin' grin on the drummer. It's a thankless job, dude, but someone's gotta do it. Heh.

Ladies of the Canyon ~ Give it Again

Thanks to QsheagaTV, Canada.

Thank You, Veterans

Thanks to YubaNet.

Grumbles From the Grave*

*No apology to Robert Heinlein. Heh. This is every bit as true now as it was then.

Thanks to NEBTV.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Blue Cross Arena Rochester N.Y.
12-20-2003
Tim Reynolds-guitar
Tery Anastasio-guitar
Bradly Blade-Drums
Tony Hall-Bass
Ray Paczovski-Keyboards
Arthur,s Musical Journey
http://arthurfromholland.blogspot.com/

Emmylou Harris & Dave Matthews ~ Oh Sister

Thanks to arthurfromholland, Netherlands.

Old folks are cool! I knew that...

LATimes

Hipster culture is having a senior moment

Heh. Gotta get that 'senior moment' crack in there, didn't ya, whippersnapper?

Suddenly, at least in parts of the blogosphere, it's hip to be old — a paradoxical twist for a youth-obsessed nation that injects, pulls and carves away any semblance of age. The "olds" (as sites like Gawker.com dub those old enough to remember rotary phones) are the subject of Facebook fan pages, YouTube shows, Twitter feeds and even fashion blogs.

Why is our youth-obsessed society suddenly so fascinated with the 65-plus set. For one thing, they are almost exotic creatures in our fractured modern lives, glimpsed only on major holidays.

To Mrs. G's family, whom we see mostly on Thanksgiving and Christmas, I'm known as Crazy Old Uncle Gordon. An honorific due my station in life and one I am very proud of!

Please enjoy the rest of the article.

Us Olde Phartes have something the whippersnappers who propel pop culture don't: a functional attention span. If we can just remember where we put it...

The end of the wicked old Mormons

Friday Morford on wicked evil old men.

This is the good news: many of the world's most powerful, hurtful, wretched old men will soon be dead.

Does that sound cruel? Unkind? I might be OK with that. In fact, I might very much be in the mood to not really mind at all if a whole slew of these nefarious creatures of sociospiritual corrosion were to, say, spontaneously combust, or be struck by lightning, or perhaps accidentally fall into a giant, roiling vat of Astroglide and turpentine and a million duplicitous prayers. Whoops! Sorry, Monsignor!

When Benedict dies, he will have the pleasure of standing before whatever furious God he believes in, to answer for how it was that he knew for undeniable fact that one -- if not dozens -- of his priests repeatedly molested, abused and/or raped young children for decades, and he did nothing to stop it. How much does God believe the pope's argument that Vatican PR trumps pedophilia? Joe Ratzinger, 82, will soon find out.

Over here, we find far too many timeworn members of the U.S. Supreme Court, a majority of whom firmly believe that giant corporations are very much complete, entitled humans, but gay people most certainly are not.

But perhaps none of these fine and soulless charlatans appears as noticeably miserable, as lost, as openly insulting to the human spirit as the wretched leaders of the Mormon Church in Utah. There, I said it.

Translation: To the old, powerful men of the various churches and archaic institutions, to those that hold us back and demean the spirit in a thousands different ways, the message is clear enough: You will be gone very soon, right along with much of the enormous black cloud of fear and joylessness you carry.

Hallelujah and A-men, brothers and sisters! Enjoy the rest of the column.

Quote of the Day

Click to embiggen

Thanks to YubaNet.

Gail Collins in an NYT op-ed:

There seems to be a strong sentiment in Congress that the only constitutional right suspected terrorists have is the right to bear arms.

I absolutely support the 2d Amendment as an individual right for law-abiding citizens to own firearms, but anyone espousing that suspected terrorists should be allowed to buy guns is so shit-for-brains they'd try to pull an armed robbery at a gun show.

The Confusing 2010 English Election In 11 Words

Verse-Case Scenario by Tony Peyser.

Lord Ashdown made this comment
Perhaps off the top of his head:
"The country has spoken -- but we
Don't know what they've said."

Bloody 'ell...

Power to the Throne!

Never thought I'd see the day where I'd support a monarchy, but after what an election "tie" did to this country, Britain might just want to restore Her Majesty's power before letting their courts decide the winner or allow them to build some sort of coalition.

...

Everyone got excited that this might be the year the Liberal Democrats (who are mildly liberal and very dysfunctional -- like our Democrats) did something at the polls. But as usual, it was all a tease and they've managed to barely increase their vote and not increase their seats.

Gordon Brown, who combines the charisma of Dukakis and the glower of Nixon into one unpopular package led a Labour Party that had exhausted itself after 16 years of governing to an abysmal performance of just over a quarter of the vote.

And the Tories, led by longtime aspirant David Cameron, who conservative papers laughably tried to turn into a "Hope" poster, gained votes, mostly because Labour lost them, but have come up well-short of what is needed for a majority.

So nobody really wins -- a hung Parliament.

...

At least Lizzie has some idea of how things should work (I'd say Charles would be good at the job too, but it's etched in stone somewhere that Charles will never be King). Couldn't do worse than Tony Blair.

As for Wayne Rooney as PM, my choice would be John Terry. He's already filled one requirement of being a British politician.

Quote of the Day

Our pal Montag:

...

So the next time you are in line at the gunshop and Osama bin Laden is in front of you with a full shopping cart, remind him to use the cash back card because he is not allowed to use the frequent flier miles.

Reverend Rentboy Redux and Uncut

El Rude-o on 'Reverend Rentboy' Reker. Links at site:

So here's how Dr. George Rekers, prominent anti-gay activist, professor of psych at the University of South Carolina, and founding member of the Family Research Council (motto: "George Rekers? We don't know any George Rekers"), apparently wants us to think it all went down:

Just set your drink down and go...

Update:

Don't pick up that drink just yet.

Anti-gay psychiatrist needed male callboy to help him ‘hoist his sack’

Oh my sides, they hurt...

George Will's wind energy claims are for the birds

Following up on Fixer's post, here's some figures on bird deaths from Media Matters in the wake of George Will's asinine 'statistics' about wind farms:

Number of bird deaths from wind farms relatively small compared to other causes. According to the most recent figures provided to Media Matters from the American Bird Conservancy, whom Will cited in his Newsweek column, the number of birds killed in the United States every year because of striking windmills is relatively small compared to other causes:

CAUSE - BIRD DEATHS

Building strikes - 100 million - 1 billion

Car strikes - 200 - 300 million

Communication towers - 4 - 50 million

Power lines - 75 million

Cats - 365 million (1 million per day)

Wind farms - 100,000 - 300,000

Gee, they left out Thanksgiving and Christmas. And chickens. And ducks, geese, pheasants, and other game birds.

By the way, the way birds get killed by power lines is they shit on them and get electrocuted up the arse. The last nanosecond of life must be a doozie!

I will add to those figures if I ever get my hands on that damn screeching Steller's jay that hangs around here. Since he can fly and I can't, fat chance.

Related:

Democratic Underground

Massive Windspill Reported In Southern California

I'm-- I'm so sorry if this is disjointed (WHOOOSH) or confusing (WHOOSH), but-- I find myself the middle of a disaster of unprecedented proportions (WHOOOSH) and -- oh the humanity -- I'm having a hard time understanding how we progressives (WHOOOSH) (WHOOOSH) could ever let this happen!?

You see, I live in Southern California... just north of the Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm... and this morning a lipstick lesbian biker gang lost control of their motorcycles and CRASHED into one of the turbines and now...

THERE IS (WHOOOSH) FUCKING WIND (WHOOOSH) EVERYWHERE!!!!

More. Heh.

"... Two Sore Losermen and a closet case ..."

Jill has an excellent takedown of the firm of Lieberman, McCain, and Graham:

...

That these guys are continuing to beat the waterboarding-and-torture drum, while Faisal Shahzad is singing like a canary even AFTER having his Miranda rights read, just shows that for them, the whole Bushian torture-and-military-tribunal thing isn't about our safety, it's about a bunch of impotent old men being able to feel that they can still get it up.

...

It's OK If You're A Republican ...

Part A Billionty Two:

Surprising absolutely nobody, repuglicans decline to charge fellow rethug who lied, cheated, stole, and abused his office, family, and constituents in order to satisfy his illicit and pathetic adulterous lust on the taxpayer dime.

...

A Dem would be in Gitmo by now ...

New VoteVets ad ...

On clean energy:



And just an aside, about 11,000 birds are killed every year by existing U.S. wind farms. Electric wires, cars, and domestic cats kill over a million.

Semper Fi-re one up, Rasta man

LATimes

For three decades, former Marine-turned-Rastafarian Joseph Diliberti has lived on his three acres of paradise deep in rural eastern San Diego County: building clay dwellings, playing his flute, reading Thoreau ("I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately") and radiating peace and harmony.

But six years ago when the local fire district sent him a bill for $27,552 for cutting down what firefighters characterized as fire-prone weeds on his property, he declined to pay, just as Thoreau refused to pay his delinquent poll taxes.

Go read.

Shorter: Fuckin' with an old hippie. Fire suppression is important in California, but this is bureaucratic government interference of the worst kind, from sending a private contractor onto someone's land to threatening him.

I guess sometimes, just sometimes, the teabaggers are right about government.

ICops

LATimes.

IPhone raid puts high-tech enforcement squad in spotlight

"It's the iPolice," said Steve Meister, a former Los Angeles County deputy district attorney. "This whole thing appears, rightly or wrongly, to be law enforcement doing the bidding of a private company."

Verrrrry interesting, Ja?

Headline of the Day

Christian leader caught with male escort says he needed help with his luggage

Bangin' some baggage off his chin's more like it.

Top Ten Ways That Jan Brewer Will Celebrate Cinco de Mayo*

*Cinco de Mayo: Sort of a Mexican St. Paddy's Day, except that while everybody's Irish on St. Paddy's Day, Anglos don't want to be Mexican on Cinco de Mayo. Another excuse to populate the roads with an excess of amateur drunk drivers.

Welcome Back To Pottersville

# 10) Ceremonially renaming Arizona "Aryan Zone" for May 5th.

# 9) Hispanics Only race across the Rio Colorado with the finish line in San Luis, Mexico.

# 8) Free passport and birth certificate inspections.

# 7) Signing an executive order renaming the holiday "The Fifth of May" for the ease of English-language residents.

# 6) Imploring Arizona residents to avoid Mexican restaurants so more Hispanics can take the day off.

Actually, that could be any restaurant.

# 5) Live law enforcement demonstrations of tasers and aluminum batons.

# 4) Will preside over a seminar teaching Latinos fun and creative ways to carry and display their passports and birth certificates.

# 3) Reminiscent of guessing the jelly beans in a jar, will hold a Cinco de Mayo-only lottery named, "How Many Mexicans Does it Take to Fill the Grand Canyon?"

Three more than it takes to fill a Ford Econoline?

# 2) Asking Arizona Diamondbacks principal owner Ken Kendrick to order players to wear home jerseys reading, "Nonracists."

# 1) Will introduce a bill in the Arizona legislature giving the Pilgrims of the Mayflower retroactive American citizenship when they invaded native American land to co-opt its resources.

¡Viva Los Suns!

Dave Zirin on one sports team's reaction to 'Show Me Your Papers':

This battle has also been joined in the world of sports. On one side is Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks. Owned by state Republican moneyman Ken Kendrick, the team has drawn protestors to parks around the country. On the other side, we now have the Phoenix Suns. On Tuesday the news came forth that tomorrow on Cinco de Mayo, the team would be wearing jerseys that say simply Los Suns. Team owner Robert Sarver said, after talking to the team, that this will be an act of sartorial solidarity against the bill. Their opponent, the San Antonio Spurs have made clear that they support the gesture.

I don't know a damn thing about basketball other than it seems to be a game played mostly by tall black guys, but here's hoping Los Suns kick those Texass's asses!