I've fallen ill, as is somewhat traditional after Ren Fayre. It's a long weekend, and I'm apparently not quite on the upswing of recovery. Things are starting to change, rearrange in my mind more. I'm working as well I can considering my compressed cranial state. And until I do and write something of more consequence, go look at Where is Raed. Salam Pax has managed a mega update that spans most of the war. From the horses mouth, people.

Oooh, oh! oh! And in case you just can't get enough of the twins, here's proof they've been supporting terrorism. Come on, you remeber this.

I'm back, but still not quite in action. I slept in very late -- worst travel day ever -- and then managed to go through all my old email and stumble down to Bilzburg for a peacewilliamsburg event. Mainly I went because on my walk back to my house from the airport I saw a flier and noticed that the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players would be there and I've wanted to see them for a while. It was a good evening. I especially liked Jennifer Miller's Allen Ginsburg light bulb eating act and Jeneane Garaffalo's "pushing 40" political satire. She's sharper now (to me) than she's ever been, especially now that she's not exclusively making fun of herself. It's a better performance tactic: let's the audience love you a little more.

The event as a whole was impressive. I still think my generation is going to eat the current crop of gen-xers alive when the chips are down, but these kids are allright.

Also, I've a full grop of tales from my trip to tell you: leaving new york is hard, suck my coolo chica, port wine relaxation, sunny friday breakdown, poop jokes at the trap, puke rock/samba participation, lamp array, the tall fashionista read my website, someone dosed my drink, rome is burning, we're getting old, the blazers always loose, young republicans, dirty and wounded in suburban Portland, and the long trip back.

All that and more over the coming weeks. I'll probably write them up as non-blog pages attached somehow to the previous Ren Fayre reportage.

In addition to that it's time to put the screws to it. There's a ton of work to be done, art to be channeled, friends and love to be made; yep, time get the old praxis machine humming yet again. We've been stalled out for too long here. Pump the gas twice, spark the ignition, let the clutch out easy...

There's a kind of romance buried within the stinking hung-over puke-crusted heart of punk rock. We dance in circles and fiddle while Rome is burning, and people are too paranoid and unsure of themselves to step out of the trance. It takes five seconds to decide. Lamp-Rey silliness threatens to capsize the whole affair, and I can't seem to spell worth crap. Keep it together. All will be told. It's been a good weekend so far and now the Blazers are on. It's opposite year, so maybe we have a chance.

Comments anyone?

I'm gone to Portland, Ren Fayre bound. I'm sure you'll get by quite allright without me.

So I struggle for relevance, trying to keep everything spinning the way it needs to spin. Axiom went off last night and I'm bouied by the whole thing. I love it. People share. People laugh. People hook up afterwards and have sex. It's a real thing, and it gives me strength and passion and a sense of well being.

Also, for anyone thinking about or running a website, a piece of advice. Letting your yankee doodle sweetheart know about some other girl you hooked up with -- even if it was way back when, before things were serious -- via the public internet is not likely to engender good feelings. Maybe I have a secret inner subconscious thirst for scorn. Dunno. But here's the real story of Sasha and Josh.

And now with Janes Addiction pumping new wine into my exquisite corpse, I feel like exploring a new trail. I feel very high on life, but maybe I'm just a day tripper. I want to be more than I am, and maybe that starts with leaving the house more, with not disclaiming so much, with full automatic guns blazing honesty. The road to utopia is charted with the ability to open it all up.

Other News

I know this is all over blogdom, but William Gibson is discontinuing his. His reasons are apt: it hurts his creative process. This gives me pause, for I can feel that all this content I push out might stand more of a chance if I were patient and considered and coelesced my energy. Food for thought.

Finally, a website and concept I know and love and don't link to often enough. If you're looking for soul, splash around in the storytelling pond of the fray.

It happened again. For the second time this week, US troops fired on a crowd of Iraqi protesters, this time killing "only" two. They were protesting the killing of 14 protesters on monday night, who were in turn protesting -- interestingly enough -- the quartering of US Solders at a local school, shades of the third amendment and the Boston massacre.

Again our troops make the claim that they were fired on, and the locals dispute that claim, though they were throwing rocks.

Maj. Michael Marti, an intelligence officer for the division's 2nd Brigade, said soldiers in a passing convoy fired on the crowd after rocks were thrown at them and a vehicle window was broken by what was believed to be automatic weapons fire.

I don't quite know what to say about this except we've got to stop. We've got to do something different than we've been doing because this is going to get cyclical real quick. Right now the mayor of Fallujah has asked troops to stay away from sensative areas. They are "considering" the proposal. If these two incidents are anything other than serious strategic screwups that are being dealt with swiftly and from the highest level, we are deep in the stinky stuff. That this war was the brainchild of the Likudnik wing of the Pentagon makes me even more nervous. The last thing we want is our own Gaza the size of California.

ABC's The Notepad, which features messages direct from each democratic campaign, continues to be of interest, though I doubt the content they summon forth there will still seem engaging after a few weeks. Leiberman's message is almost laughable. Dean's looses points for being a bit too cheeky on the most recent Kerry spat. For people to honestly try and disagree with the satement "we won't always have the strongest military point" is laughable. It's a fact. Our dominance cannot last forever, though it will likely continue for some time yet. From a political-elitist point of view you can make hay from this by citing the fact that American voters don't care about the future. I think that's debatable. The point is that we must be prepared for a day when we are matched or overmatched in military strength -- again, in the fullness of time this is inevitable and to seriously think otherwise is hubristic folly -- by building a world free from wars of impunity.

Actually the biggest surprise for me was Sharpton's entry. Not because it's all that revolutionary, but because it's actually well written. Then I realize it's attributed to the Rev. himself and not some campaign flunky and I understand why, but it strikes me how poor the written communiques for all the other candidates are and makes me think I wouldn't mind working as a speechwriter for someone. I don't know how you get that job though. Probably a lot of dues to pay. Oh well.

Long winding conversation with Sasha last night, in spite of me being not quite comfortable in my skin. The turnover has prompted the long-comiing love page update. Go forth and burrow in the sortid details of my pretty little life, you beautiful gossip monkeys you. I'm also writing a revealing little story to tell tonight at axiom about my 23rd b-day and Watkins.

Right now I positively feel like I'm living the dream: sitting in my backyard with the wireless internet connection running strong, exercising my right as an adult to have a gin and tonic after lunch. It's good to be alive.

I didn't see the program, but apparently last Friday on Nightline, anonymous Team Bush sources more or less admitted that the case for making war with Iraq was a sham, that many overstatements (some would call them lies) were made for emphasis, and that the real purpose for the war was to display American force to the Middle East, combatting a perceived post-9-11 weakness.

The Bush administration decided it must flex muscle to show it would fight terrorism, not just here at home and not just in Afghanistan against the Taliban, but in the Middle East, where it was thriving.

So this really was about "showing them who's boss." Not the Iraqi's per se, but them. Nice to see we've got our best and brightest at the helm in these troubled times.

Elsewhere, ABC's "the Note" is running a section with messages from the various Democratic campaigns. Dean's delights, showing both humor and savvy: his is the only with hyperlinks.

Music is a main weapon in the struggle against apathy and sloth and disinvestment. Poetry is another, but it's still pretty fringe. If poetry ever becomes mainstream again, maybe through hip-hop -- still currently a bit overdominated by ego and sex, like the early rock'n'roll scene -- that will be a good sign. In any event, the rhythm and imagination common to both of these forms of expression make them powerful media for putting new memes on the market, and when they're put to use in the service of Truth, good things tend to result.

Right now we've got a lot of musicians making alt.politix songs. Thank goodness for that, but they're not getting a lot of airplay thanks to the Patriotic Consensus which keeps the highly risk-averse music conglomorates in check, to say nothing of openly conservative elements like Clear Channel. However, artists are continuing to pump up the volume. The latest entry into the fray is former Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha with his well-tuned DJ Shadow collaboration, March of Death. I used to spend some early-teen years grooving to the leftist mind-control sounds of Rage (fuck you I won't do what you tell me...), and so for me this is a welcome addition to the field.

On a slightly less serious, but maybe more personally satisfying note, some dance DJ has lifted quotes from Howard Dean's speech at the California Democratic Caucus and made a remix. As you may have gathered from the little banner on your left, I'm endorsing Dean at this time out of the Gang of 9 Democratic hopefuls. I plan on putting together a page explaining this and adding my polemic to the mix, but that's hasn't happened yet. Feel free to ask me questions though.

Finally, for more music (anti-war and otherwise) you won't hear on stations that are controlled by Bush donors, check out the listings at protest-recorts.com. There's also a lot of stuff coming out of international outlets. It seems that paradoxically (or not so), we radical Americans must look overseas for our inspiration, internal media crackdowns and chilling effects creating a real -- and I must admit at times exciting -- samizdat atmosphere. What's samizdat, you ask?

On the wonk end of things, I've been reading excerpts from The Unconquerable World in Harper's Magazine. Dense and academic, but really really good and real in a way that nothing I've read in a long time has been. This, the bus ride down from Boston, everything is giving me shivers of possibility.