"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

Truth 2004

There's a fantastic post over on Daily Kos by RonK entitled 28 Words You Can't Say on Television. I suggest giving it a read. It cuts to the heart of the bullshit rhetoric which permiates every aspect of our environment -- and gives a few props to my man Howard Dean for his willingness to speak a few truths currently verboten in the national media.

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Matrix Reloaded

I was reading a little more about the Matrix Reloaded and having seen it on Friday, thought I might throw my opinion your way. No spoilers, I promise.

There were a lot of little things I liked about the movie. It was pretty good as comic book action goes, though some of the action sequences -- like some of the dialogue -- seemed to belabor the point a bit. I also liked all the sexuality and the idea that in the future black people are in a lot of leadership roles. I really like all the strong style choices, the different color schemes for different parts of the universe, the mix of high tech and low life. But the plot was a bit thin for 150 minutes of screen time, and without any of the great surprises of the first. The "intellectual" aspects of the film felt forced at times, even redundant, the whole ball of wax perhaps a bit too stridently zen at the expense of story.

Still, I think it's an interesting step in film-making, and it was entertaining. Also, if it makes a lot of money, it might open the door for other pop-culture artifacts about Big Ideas. That could be cool.

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Blogorama

Blogging gets more mainstream press all the time. Two articles today in the NYT on blogging. Thanks to my mom for sending them both my way.

One, "As Google Goes, So Goes The Nation," by Geoffrey Nunberg, is a rehash of the googlewashing debate, and a general continuation of the antagonistic journalism-blogging confrontation that's been going on for the past few months. Doc Searls has a nice rundown of the whole situation, so I'll spare you my $0.02 other than to say that it seems that there are a lot of entrenched powers within the realm of culture, media and journalism who feel very threatened by the blogging phenomena, sometimes rightly, but more often highly irrationally.

The second piece is a little more juicy, a "style and fashion" article on blogs by Warren St. John, focused around people revealing personal details and private opinions on the web and having parents/lovers/friends unexpectedly find them. While not quite as factually debatable as the Nunberg piece, this saucy little missive also substantially fails to get it.

While it's clear that the whole realtime autobio endeavour can put you in sticky situations -- outing views and experiences you may have otherwise kept to yourself for the sake of decorum -- this is hardly news. I just had a taste of that with Sasha and this page. Justin Hall took this to the extreme way back in '98 with his exploration of how posting nude images of himself online cost him a few jobs. It's something that requres a certain amount of fortitude and sensativity. Sometimes we make mistakes.

However, the generally cautionary tone of St. John's article ignores the fact the personal-publishing revolution is leading to a more fully disclosed, transparent and diverse society. Putting your shit online cuts both ways. As I've noted before, having a blog proves that you're in some ways "for real" in the virtual world. Further, while there will always be the question of what should be public vs. private, for many people it seems that blogging provides an outlet for suppressed ideas, feelings and emotions. That's important. The truth always feels better.

When I read about a 27-year old woman from Utah publishing a scathing indictment of her Mormon upbringing and then having to explain herself to her parents, I think, "that's fucking great! What a huge step forward for everyone involved, and all because of blogging." She could have gone her whole life without ever talking to her family about the problems she had with her childhood, taken that resentment all the way to her parents' funerals.

Here's something I'm convinced of: secrets and silence are the seeds of madness. All dischord, disconnect and dissonance in interpersonal relations have at their root something hidden away and secret inside someone's mind, something malignant and perhaps even shameful. If these dark spots are not brought out and shared, they will grow, poisoning anything that touches. Things that relate will become attached, memories colored with secret unspoken meanings, until finally the one doing the hiding is more or less unable to meaningfully interact with other humans because so many actions, words, thoughts, feelings and memories have the clandestine taint upon them. If it actually gets this bad most people can't handle it and they break down. I've seen it happen. Secrets and silence.

Anyway, I think publicly blogging can help avert that sort of thing, and more generally help people fully become and express themselves. People need to talk about shit, and posting online is a good exercise in this. There's a certain amount of egocentricity involved, but this doesn't need to exceed the bounds of a healthy self-esteem -- and really it's about sharing when you get down to it. This doesn't excuse people who insult others or blog with malicious intent, but that's a maturity problem (c.f. most high school website forums). Still, much better the bad apples publish their juvenile sniping on a blog than talk behind people's backs. Get it out in the open. Deal with it. Be accountable. Grow.

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Mall Wart/Cuture Wars

Thinking a lot about culture today after hanging out with Andrew last night and seeing The Matrix sequil. The more I'm exposed to mainstream culture, the more I realize how foreign and alien it is to me. So here are a few things on that note.

There's an interesting and unsettling article in todays NYT about the impact of mass retailers like Wal-Mart, Kmart and Costco on popular culture in this country. Since stores like Wal-Mart regularly account for 20% or more (much more) of a best-selling album, DVD, book or CDs sales, the buyers for these stores have an incredible amount of influence over what publishing houses choose to promote. Most of these buyers -- most likely as a result of the corporate culture and upper management within these companies -- are either conservative or christian, and often both. More of my thoughts on that here.

While thinking of culture wars, I did a little search for counterculture resources, and stumbled across this: ChristianCounterCulture.com, which is pretty fascinating and interesting.

Finally, back to the NY Times, the style section officially declares foam hats (they call them trucker hats, I've know them since my youth as "meshbacks") to be over. I think I called this about a month ago. On a similar note, I've been noticing more and more the silver and white earbuds that signify the owner is listening to an iPod. Apple was smart to make them so distinctive: I see them all over as of late. Wonder how long before some knockoff electronics maker like Coby starts making look-alike earbuds for $10. Something appealing to me about having those iPod-signifiers hooked up to a walkman.

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Cracking the Consensus

It seems that the War Consensus is starting to crack. More and more people are being forced to admit two things. One: that none of the Weapons of Mass Distruction that Bush, Powell and others assured us required invading Iraq immediately have been found. Two: that the amount of time, energy and money that went into planning for the destructive part of war dwarfed the time, energy and money sunk into planning for reconstruction by several orders of magnitude, and that this is producing highly undesirable results. People are facing up slowly to the hard reality that the president duped the American people, didn't plan for the end of conflict, and now we're in deep do-do as a result.

This particular realization crested over me last night as I watched Charlie Rose. He had as a guest Evan Thomas, author of a new biography on John Paul Jones (American Terroriest, war hero, and "founder of the nation's navy"), and an associate editor at the somewhat conservative Newsweek.

When the conversation inevitably turned to current events, he was essentially pro-war. "The score [between Republicans and Democrats] on foreign policy is something like 100 to nothing," he said. Wants to write a glowing bio of the neo-cons. Yet he then plainly admitted that the post-war situation was a mess, that the Administration, by virtue of leaving everything to the Pentagon, has no real plan. He said, "we had a plan for oil. There were special forces at the oilfields. Those contracts were lined up months in advance."

"But," he said, "we still don't have power in 80% of Baghdad."

And yet he supported the prez, making it sound like this colossal failure to be prepared for the rebuilding of Iraq is the fault of some mid-level army flunky, and not the Commander in Cheif. Food for thought. At times it sounded like the pro-war coalition might be cracking on the reconstruction issue and that most of the media might swing along with the "war liberals."

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Can someone please explain this?

Shit, this thing is making me paranoid:

Strange Profile Image

Can anyone explain it. I mean, really, explain this? Fascinating social networking data: click on a few successive favorites, one profile's favorite to another's to another's. What kind of stuff comes up? How long to two mirror one another?

Apparently, my friends Frank and Wes can't visit facethejury.com because their employer blocks the site. They were also blocking the picture (which I was linking directly to), so I'm mirroring it locally. So please, give it another look.

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On a lighter note

Craigslist strikes again. This is some genius shit. So is this and this. A whole list of it here. God bless the unemployed.

Also, it seems that one of the blogs I like to buzz through periodically, diannaparrington.com is actually her thesis project. I liked the site for the clear images and little zen entries, but I had no idea there was academic intent behind it. Fascinating.

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DU Issue

Oh, and in addition to raging civil unrest and chaos in the streets, there's also tons and tons of radioactive ammunition to clean up in Iraq. The DU issue is still a debatable one. Supporters make a point of saying that you need to sleep near a hunk of DU to be adversely affected by the background radiation, or that you need to eat/inhale contaminated dirt. The real risks are prolonged exposure, not immediate poisoning. So let's talk about uranium (which is a very soft meta) and sand storms. Winds whip up radioactive top soil, abrasive sand scours new tiny particles off relatively benign (non-edible) chunks of DU. Cloud of dust blows over city. Children inhale. Lukemia. Doh!

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Only The High Points

I simply must bring the comment by Frank in the post below up to the fore here. It almost made me spit coffee all over my damn computer. Talking of new US Iraq Czar L. Paul Bremmer:

Fer god's sake, put Koffi back on the speed dial. I don't think we're going to get any "I don't know who he was, but he sure cleaned up this town" from any Iraqis.

Hoo! If you're in the mood for another laugh, check out what happens when a Faux News anchor tries to dis my American Idol, Paul Krugman. Here's the whole rant from Neil Cavuto. An excerpt:

First off, Mr. Krugman, let me correct you: I'm a host and a commentator, just like you no doubt call yourself a journalist and a columnist. So my sharing my opinions is a bad thing, but you spouting off yours is not?

The tenor of the whole this is like that, shrill/macho "you call yourself a journalist?" This serves nicely to highlight Cavuto's jerkof status. Earth to Neil: Paul Krugman isn't a journalist. He's an economist who writes an opinion column for the Times. The precise point he was making is that Faux News dangerously blurs the lines between news and opinion by having so many anchor/commentators.

Emerging from Murdoch's sewer, try taking a back in sheer inspired brilliance with this piece by Kurt Vonnegut, which is all about great Americans like Twain and Lincoln. Here's a hot Lincoln quote:

"Trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory, that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood -- that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy, he plunged into war."

He was talking about James K. Polk (the Napoleon of the stump), but it seems awfully timely to me. Speaking of our current Chimp in Cheif, my buddie Robbie had this to say in an email today:

People seem not to have seen through or grown tired of GWB and his automaton-style telepromter reading skills. He reads to where the line break on the prompter is and pauses for the next line to come up, and somehow people have confused this with passion, commitment and an informed point of view.

Zang! In a final roundup, the increasingly irrellevant Democratic Leadership Council has been circulating a memo dissing my man Howard Dean on highly fatuous grounds. For those of you not qute at slavishly political as I, the DLC made a name for itself by powering Clinton's 1992 candidacy. Since then they've grown even more screw-balled; today they're convinced that Leiberman fever can sweep the nation. Too bad for the DLC that Clinton isn't with them on the Dean-bashing tip.

If this pisses you off, you can write the DLC or (even quicker) sign this letter. I did both.

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Breakfast in Iraq

If you want to make a big Iraqi omlette, you have to shoot a few eggs on sight so that the word gets around.

Seriously. In case you havn't heard, our new tactic to bring order to the tumultuous streets of Iraq is summary execution. Under a change in policy from the new overseer, L. Paul Bremmer, G.I.s are authorized to use deadly force on looters or people committing violent crimes. According to Bremmer, "They are going to start shooting a few looters so that the word gets around." Kind of speaks to the new bigman's attitude. Sounds almost Saddamesque.

The whole Iraqi debacle has been marked reapeatedly by comic-book flourishes -- evil-dooers, deadly poisons, underground laboratories, righteous crusade -- so I suppose no one should be surprised at this Judge Dredd turn of events. Still, this is a terrible idea. First of all, anyone shot by US Forces will become an insta-martyr for anti-American agitators, regardless of the circumstances. Secondly, few Army personnel understand the Iraqi language or culture; as such it's only a matter of time before some misunderstanding turns deadly.

Due to the lack of a local authority, I'm afraid heavy-handed measures like this will create more instability and violence than they supress. Moreover, one has to wonder, how are the decisions made? Is it just up to the individual solder or squad leader to decide, and if so, what kinds of solders will make the choice to fire in what kinds of situations? How will uses of deadly force be reviewed, if at all? How will this affect the relationship between the G.I.s and the people? Seems like a big can of worms to me. Unless we're prepared to go all the way with this iron-fist routine (and I sincerely hope we're not), we aught not to set off down that road.

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