The more the official line is examined, the more it falls apart. That “weaponized” nature of the anthrax used? Well, not so much:
Among the new details Monday was that, contrary to statements made over the years by other government officials, the mailed anthrax had not been coated with additives to “weaponize” it, or make it more deadly.
In other words, the public had been repeatedly lied to for years. But don’t worry, this was just the work of one crazy man.
Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf resigns ahead of impeachment proceedings. Excerpts from resignation speech here. A bit of analysis here. Let’s hope there’s such thing as a quiet retirement from politics in Pakistan.
Whatever I care about the Olympics, I care about Olympic swimming even less. Add on top of that my reflexive dismissing of anyone who’s been hyped by the media, and I’m pretty sure that I’d never have written about Michael Phelps, here. But it’s been on in the background tonight, and they just cut to the Baltimore Ravens (NFL team) stadium, where it looked like most of the people in attendance had stayed *after* a preseason game to watch a native son aim for a record eighth gold. And as he did it, thousands and thousands of Baltimoreans cheered.
And if that’s not enough, there’s always the flip side:
But despite his penchant for a little not-so-gentle ribbing, McCain doesn’t cope very well on the receiving end. During his 1992 Senate campaign, a little inter-spousal teasing got out of control when, in front of aides and three reporters, his wife Cindy playfully twirled his hair and noted that he was thinning a little on top. His reply? “At least I don’t plaster make-up on like a trollop, you cunt.”
(This weekend’s effort comes courtesy of Peej, the same fine talent that brought you the Cover Girl edition last month.)
So what do you do when you are a just barely teen living in a country where access to new music is limited by the availability of such music (even on the black market), the ability to get to the place where you can finally make the acquisitions, and having to deal with a lack of blank tapes so you can’t make copies what you have and do exchanges with your friends to expand your library–leaving you desperate for new sounds?
You get bored and start to look around your family’s basements to see what you can find… and come across a treasure trove of LPs from the ‘wild’ youth of your aunts and uncles. LPs from the mid 60s to the mid to late 70s. LPs that you find as fascinating as the albums by Pet Shop Boys or a-ha or that all female group everyone is raving about (which you keep telling them translates to an article of jewelery, by the way), because it’s not the time yet to scoff at the music from that era and besides, you never cared much for anyone else’s opinion, anyway.
My cousin and I must’ve found 40 or 50 plus LPs and a good smattering of 45s (not counting the classical ones; but we’ll leave those aside for now). I might be tempted to think that I became enchanted with the music because anything new [to me] would have sounded good, back then, but that’s not it. The music was really good; the lyrics were better. For me, and my even more desperate need to get my hands on ANYthing written in English (I almost cried when I came across my parents’ volumes of the 1963 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana in one of those basements), finding all these lines that read like poetry by themselves was like so much icing on the cake.
I still have the first mixed tape we made from those LPs, which was incidentally the first mixed tape I ever made. And I still think it’s one of the best. Every single song on tape was chosen lovingly and put in order with such careful thought–I guess we lived our own High Fidelity moments right there in that basement.
***
It’s hard to say why I like these four the best of all the songs we put on that tape. A couple of years later after making ‘the tape’, I read Carson McCuller’s ‘A Heart is Lonely Hunter’ and I felt such an affinity with the young girl in the book, Mick, who loves music but doesn’t know how to describe why she does out loud. Except that Carson McCuller’s does so beautifully, especially when she describes Mick’s hearing Beethoven’s Third for the first…if I remember correctly in one part she describes the opening as “…God strutting from side to side…”
Well, these weren’t exactly heralds from heaven above and certainly no Beethoven’s Third…but you know, I think, for me, they were just as powerful as that symphony was to Mick.
(It always amazes me that McCullers was only 23 when she wrote that book.)
Interestingly, I when I moved to States and started to collect the LPs myself and learn more about the various artists, I realized there was a sort of six degrees of separation going on with all the the songs we’d put on that first mix tape (although that’s ultimately true of most of the music of that time, especially British bands), including the four I liked so much. See the end of this epistle*, if you are so inclined to find out…
***
1- First up, is what I thought sounded like the best love song of all time (and I still do). It wasn’t until a few years ago that I found out that it truly was a love song, or rather a love letter from Keith Reid to his then girlfriend. If all you know of Procol Harum is A Whiter Shade of Pale, then listen up:
Quite Rightly So (Procol Harum; Shine On Brightly)
2- I think it was the surprise of the lyrics so late into the song, and the memorableness (is that a word?!) of them, despite the brevity, that really caught my ear. Of course, the anticipatory guitar runs aren’t half bad either.
3- This is the one I can’t find anywhere. I think there is a cover of it on Youtube, but this is one of the very VERY few songs which I simply don’t want to listen to as a cover. I can’t see how I could not fallen for this song: a mutinous, hormonal youngster experiencing all the usual angst of impending teenhood and EXTREME puppy love while being stifled and controlled emotionally outside of my home at every turn? Please. This one was made for me to listen to over and over, and try to sing to myself all the times I was SO misunderstood and SO miserable and it hurt TOO much to breathe and god did he just look MY way?!
(Turn it up a bit; it’s a bit low on volume)
The Gardenof Jane Delawney (Trees; The Garden of Jane Delawney)
4- Finally, this was right in line with what my dad calls my marxist-socialist-hippie inclinations, even at that age. (My dad said he thanks god every day I was born too late to be part of the Mojahedin–specifically the Peykar offshoot– movement in Iran when we lived there. Because he thinks their professed goals and ideals would’ve been exactly the type of thing to suck an idealistic teenage me in.)
Streets of London (Ralph McTell; Spiral Staircase)
* So here is the six degrees of separation, sort of:Â Ralph McTell’s song is in part inspired musically and lyrically by a song of Al Stewart’s…Al Stewart worked with Trevor Lucas on some of the more interesting guitar arrangements for his third album, Zero She Flies…Trevor Lucas was married to Sandy Denny of Fairport Convention and the two heavily influenced the work of Trees, including Bias Boshell’s songs for the band’s first album, The Garden of Jane Delawney….Brian Boshell later became a guest keyboardist for The Moody Blues, whose successful single, ‘Nights in White Satin’ was one of the main reasons Procol Harum were backed by their music label to release ‘A White Shade of Pale’ . . .
I know, I talked the road races up, but completely let you (okay, two of you) down on the heads up for the Olympic Time Trial events. Which is a shame, because the women’s time trials ended up in an impressive victory for the US’s Kristin Armstrong, and the men’s time trials ended up in a photo that is universally judged (in some communities, anyway) to be sheer hotness.
So, while I have to admit to not understanding how track racing works at all, I’m going to try and follow the track racing tomorrow, and encourage you to do the same. This is the schedule for tomorrow:
The complete schedule (from which I lifted the above – you didn’t think I’d do that much work on my own, did you?) is available at PodiumCafe.com. A fellow PodiumCafe contributor has an excellent preview of the day’s racing here. And if you’re looking for a more personal take on the subject, head over to Mike May’s GamJams.net, where US Olympic track racer Bobby Lea (most recently famous as the US cyclist who wore a mask getting off the plane in Beijing and made everyone else act a fool as a result) is writing up his experience.
This BBC story on the Flat Earth Society brought to mind the Virginia blogosphere – so many people who hold ridiclous beliefs with apparent sincerity. If they’re sincere, well, I can’t help but pity them. But if they’re just being intentionally obtuse . . . I sort of want to kick them out of the public conversation entirely.
The absolutely ridiculous rhetoric we’ve been seeing this week (from *all* corners) over the Russia-Georgia conflict has shocked even this cynic. Shocked me right back into the 80s. Apparently no one – especially those who were comfortably ensconced in the US – remembers what a batshit insane time it was, with two very small groups of men holding our continued existence in their hands. I really thought those lessons were mostly learned. Apparently not.
Here’s a cover of that time, from Sting. Do we really need to review this?
