Rocket to Russia $1.99, Today Only

This is the brave new world. I gotta link to this although the chance that the select few that even visit this site don't already have complete collections of The Ramones ALREADY is quite slim. Perhaps it's my own inability to adjust to the world of digital plenty that lays the ground for difficult to manage infohaulic behavior (my own and others). Irrational info hoarding is really a symptom of an inability to adjust to the "drinking just a sip of water from a firehose".

It may be preferable to treat interesting info less as something to be collected and ordered and more like manna in the desert. In shucking off the slave mentality*, the outmoded ways and embracing freedom in the hard knocks school of the desert it may be better to just experience the stream of music, pics, words than to try to recreate western culture in microcosm in our own heads. AH, so pace the Atlantic article, I am perhaps coming around to the point of view that in order to survive this wave of info, this surfable tower of babel that a means of managing it all is to at least partially embrace its superficial aspects.

As Merlin Mann said "organizing your email is like alphabetizing your recycling."

Anyway, Hey Ho, Let's Go, here's your link to Rocket to Russia for $1.99 from Amazon.
Today only. Info on this promo here.

(*or trying to & failing for a whole generation, which does not bode well for 46 year old ME, but let's just take this stuff metaphorically and instead interpret this to necessitate the death of a self)

Writer's Rooms

It's always interesting to see the workplaces of creative people. This is reminiscent of Terrence Conran's small room comments on a tiny, self contained hotel room that one "operated like a car". Here's a link to a series in The Guardian called Writer's Rooms.

Will Self's Incredible Wall of Post-Its! And look at the floorboards under the chair. Awesome.

I want to see Cartoonist's Rooms and Painter's Rooms as well of course.

(Via Andrew Sullivan)

Fucking Supreme Court on a Rampage

Fuck the Supreme Court. Fuck those assholes. Fuck everyone screaming terrorism from the rooftops while restricting gun laws. Insane numbers of kids get killed by guns every year, look up the nauseating statistics, on The Children's Defense Fund site.

When 32 people were killed at Virginia Tech and five at Northern Illinois University, the public was outraged. Yet every four days we have the equivalent of a Virginia Tech tragedy that passes unnoticed. Our gun violence epidemic robs parents of their children, wastes our human potential, and drains resources from our health care system.

I know we are fucked up primates, and am often resigned to the suicidal stupidity of our race. But every once in awhile something fresh comes along to induce a fresh wave of puke.

The list of shame:
Antonin Scalia, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

Cassette From My Ex Website

There is something almost suffocatingly poignant about this site. I don't know if it's because of the weight of my own nostalgia for the suddenly faraway recent past (1987 was ... 20 years ago?) or the ghosts that linger in each of these accounts.

Cassette From My Ex is here.

Public Service Announcement

There's really no point in repeating a popular internet meme. Unless it helps to destroy the GOP before they can finish the job on my country. Say it, "MY COUNTRY".

Mission of Mission of Mission of.... BURMA

Lynda Barry and Harlan Ellison

I saw Lynda Barry speak at The Strand bookstore tonight in support of her new book, "What It Is". I can't summarize it at the moment, it was inspirational and hilarious.

Updates: here's a link to an mp3 of Lynda Barry on the same tour in Philly.
And now a good interview with her via The Comics Reporter & Journalista.


Following that was the new Harlan Ellison documentary, which was also inspiring and hilarious, though in a different key altogether. I will try to write something about seeing these 2 luminous beings in the same night, but for the moment this blog is just pointing to them.

Update: Harlan Ellison interview mp3 on Salon.

Who-oooo's Got The Crack?

Moldy Peaches:

I wanna be a hippie
But I forgot how to love
It’s hard to be a garbage man
When a sailor stole my glove
I wanna be reckless
But I’m feeling so uptight
Put your mama in a headlock baby
And do it right
Who’s got the crack
Who’s got the crack
Who’s got the crack
Who’s got the crack
Who’s got the crack

Politics

Political life is retarded.

The most idealistic candidate will fly back to watch me, personally, get unjustly executed if it would win him/her a polling point. But still, my default position has been to pray for a total Clinton Restoration. Not Hillary, no, Classic Clinton. If only Joe Quesada or Marv Wolfman with George Perez could handle the time travel continuum issues necessary for this.

I mean, they brought back Norman Osborn, Hal Jordan and Barry Allen. All I want is pizza, thongs, interns and a Fat Elvis president that was an undisciplined genius instead of the mortifying mediocrities that are dragging us into the toilet bowl of history.

I will gladly vote for Obama, if only for his elbows out "Annie Oakley" crack at Hillary. My hope is that his unflappable style and toughness will triumph.

I would support any Dem. But this Vanity Fair article made me really wish I could just vote for Bill again & get it over with.

He was never, ever, on time. In Joe Klein’s roman à clef about the Clintons, Primary Colors, the Betsey Wright character accuses the Bill Clinton character of always skating by on charm and talent and need. “You have never paid the bill,” she tells him. “Never. And no one ever calls you on it. Because you’re so completely fucking special. Everyone was always so proud of you. And me, too. Me the worst.”