Category: Quick Hits

It's an article of faith among Republicans that the Obama administration is and has been Up To No Good, and certainly mountains of evidence would be uncovered if only they could appoint a Special Prosecutor or two to root around for a year.

This, as I understand it, is the sole point of trying to make a big deal out of a complete non-scandal (Benghazi) and pretty sorry excuse for a Big Scandal (the IRS thing).

Just make enough noise to bring back Ken Starr and an ample staff who can eventually uncover evidence that Obama let someone use his parking pass, in blatant violation of the terms and conditions of the parking rules, twenty years ago.

That is why we live in a nation in which it's an extra-super-huge deal that some people who work for the IRS may have been aggressively thorough with blatantly political Tea Party organizations applying for tax exemptions as "Social Welfare" groups in order to avoid disclosing their donors, and not the slightest bit scandalous that American corporations worth trillions of dollars pay essentially nothing in income tax.

The disparity between what causes outrage and what should has grown so large that it's not even surprising anymore.

For those who are interested or commented on the previous post, this is a picture of the audio inputs inside the jukebox.
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If I can find some way to run a line in here, then the jukebox could act as an amplifier and I could simply run through the house speakers. It appears to be old speaker wire-style inputs.

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Click to embiggen.

Thanks again for the help.

I'm not sure if I've ever done this before, but in lieu of an actual post today I need to solicit advice.

If you have any experience as a DJ, sound guy/girl, or anything dealing with pro audio, your opinion may be valuable to me.
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Or feel free to chime in if you just happen to have any useful experience with PA systems and the like.

I've got the opportunity to host a trivia game at a local bar. It's exciting and I expect it to be a ton of fun.
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What I need is to figure out the simplest, cost-effective way to set up the audio.
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The sound system in the bar is…limited. There's an old jukebox, basically, with speaker wire outs to two unpowered PA speakers. There are speaker wire "ins" in the jukebox, for whatever that may be worth. The space itself is not particularly large – long, narrow, and with a 15' ceiling.

What I have is a laptop I'm going to use for the music (note: suggestions for free or reasonably priced DJ software welcome). I need to mix the music with a single microphone, and then…
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find a way to make the results audible. My trivia host friend uses and suggested a full DJ setup (including $1000 powered speakers, a multi-track console, etc) and I'm not willing to go that far for something that will be fun but isn't going to pay.

As you can no doubt tell, I have little experience with audio equipment. Talk to me like I'm stupid, please. I'm starting from scratch here, other than having the laptop (with the usual outputs: HDMI, USB, etc).

Tips? Recommendations? Snide comments?

This week has been and will be a bit spotty (rest assured that there will be an NPF, though) for a number of reasons. The academic year ends today, so there have been mountains of grading. And Monday I woke up feeling like lukewarm death. The baseball I apparently swallowed late Sunday evening is still lodged firmly in my throat. On Wednesday evening I devoted my energy to The Jimmy Howard Show Western Conf. Semi-finals Game 1. It involves some yelling at the TV – not attempting to reason with it, just the ordinary "YES!" and "FUCK!" variety – and in my febrile state it turned out to be a rather draining experience. Fortunately it had a happy ending thanks to, hands down, the best Kenyan-Swedish defenseman in hockey today.

Just a couple of quick hits:

1. The Washington Post's resident 1950s schoolmarm / right-wing scold / skeksis (Jennifer Rubin, not Charles Krauthammer, and how sad is it that it's necessary to clarify which skeksis) says that "the GOP has to get over Ronald Reagan." Briefly sidestepping the hilarious irony of one of Romney's biggest cheerleaders chiding the party for Reagan Idolatry, the problem is that she does not explain which Reagan the party needs to get over. Is it the imaginary one Republicans started worshiping in the 1990s or the actual one who was president for eight years?

2. Conservative media favorite Rep. Jason Chaffetz (you know, that one House Republican who's under 55 and does not have the appearance and mannerisms of a gargoyle) is officially off the Benghazi deep end. No, not because he repeats the word "Benghazi" like he has a unique form of Tourette's. We know he's off the rails because the hard-hitting journalists at Fox & Friends don't appear to be buying his shtick. The lesson to learn here is that when fawning right-wing media made by and for Authoritarian-Follower personality types has to choose between sucking up to their chosen political party and high-ranking military leaders, the medal-wearing men in uniforms win. Although, we can assume that there was no small measure of cognitive dissonance involved. Steve Doocy – torn!

Pennsylvania's Republican Governor Tom Corbett (who, incidentally, is about to get creamed in the next election) insisted that the food stamp program is riddled with fraud. So he instituted an "asset check" requiring state workers to weed out all the rich people pretending to be poor people on food stamps. They looked for the telltale signs of hidden wealth, such as:

It's the question Kathryn Hoffman hates to ask, especially of the elderly people who come into her office looking for help. Do you have a burial plot? How much is it worth?

It all makes sense, since elderly people who can afford to dispose of their own corpses can't be poor.

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Don't worry though, the asset check is working. Of the 1.8 million Pennsylvanians who applied for food stamps last year, "about 4,000" were rejected for having too many assets to qualify.

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That's less than one quarter of one percent, if you're scoring at home. Sounds almost as scary as the 10 cases of in-person voter fraud out of the 146,000,000 registered voters since 2000.

The first batch of Sounds of Real America prints are shipping out today. If you're not one of the lucky recipients, what are you waiting for? An engraved goddamn invitation?
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Those are going out tomorrow.

Sounds of Real America, Vol. 2

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Sounds of Real America, Vol. 3

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Don't underestimate the appeal of surreal, trenchant social commentary on your walls. If you buy these you will get laid and strange people will start appearing to do your laundry for you.
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You will regret nothing.

Fans of Gin and Tacos on Facebook are familiar with CAPSLOCK ED, a magical being who blog-only readers met briefly in Campaign of the Damned. He tends to post in series like "10 Things Grocery Stores Don't Want You to Know" (which was an actual "news" headline on CNN) and his latest bender is an ethnographic study of Americana called Sounds of Real America. It's a poignant study of the things one can only experience in the Real America, not in any fancy city or ivory tower university.
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It is the sound of the salt of the Earth living the simple life and experiencing things that only America can offer.

Reader / graphic designer Pauline Vassiliadis took it upon herself to surprise me with her visual interpretations of the SORA series. Being a fan of her talent and her appreciation for the absurd, my heart nearly exploded with joy when I saw the designs.
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I've decided to offer a small number of them to you, the readers. They combine my words with Pauline's aesthetic, capturing the essence of Real America in the process. Hang one of these babies on your wall to bring the magic of Muncie, IN or Macon, GA into your home.

Each print is 11"x14" on archival card stock, suitable for framing, wall mounting, or use as an improvised weapon. Only 20 of each design in the series will be available. They are $40 each or 3/$100, plus $3 for domestic shipping. "But that's so expensive! Why aren't they $5?" Because artists have bills too and I don't expect them to give their work away for nothing.
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And I promise you won't be disappointed – these look incredible in the flesh. Click the images below for a preview. (Just in case you're not clear, these are not actual cassette tapes. The cassette insert is merely a design motif.)

Sounds of Real America, Vol. 2

Single or full set?

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Sounds of Real America, Vol. 3

Single or full set?

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Sounds of Real America, Vol. 4

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Don't underestimate the appeal of surreal, trenchant social commentary on your walls. If you buy these you will get laid and strange people will start appearing to do your laundry for you.
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You will regret nothing.

This week I'm at the most wonderful place in the world – a mid-level academic conference! Your heart would burst to learn how much fun it is. Kidding aside, I am looking forward to spending a week around people who speak in sentences, occasionally read books, and do not patronize Golden Corral. Accordingly, content will be provided haphazardly this week. I do hope to bang out a few real posts between now and Sunday, but today you get salad. Delicious, leafy salad, loaded with croutons of knowledge.

1. Boy do I feel bad for anyone stuck living in Kansas, aka Brownbackistan. Sam Brownback is a crazy person, as evidenced by his residence with a creepy cult of ultraconservative Christians called "The Family" during his tenure in DC. Can you believe that the least insane name they could come up with was "The Family"? Me neither. Anyway, now-Governor Brownback is showing that the Romney/Ryan campaign strategy that worked so well in 2012 has staying power; rather than bothering to concoct a rationale for his actions and beliefs, he's simply lying his ass off. Kansas schools are badly underfunded and, in major cities, closing? No they're not! Just…tell everyone they're not. Because fuck it, that's why. This amusing Wichita Eagle editorial explores the differences between the Kansas described by Brownback in his role as a Republican Heavyweight (of last resort) and the actual Kansas inhabited by Kansans. The GOP is really embracing this Just Lying strategy. So much easier!

2. You've probably seen this NPR piece about the rise of disability – more accurately, the assignment of SSI disability benefits – in the U.S. over the past decade. Having worked in a field involving a lot of indigent people, I was aware that disability benefits can go to people who, by any vernacular definition of the term, are not disabled. It is staggering, though, to see the growth of SSI benefits in recent years as a sort of secret, de facto unemployment dole. It has become a place where we stash people who lack, or no longer have, marketable job skills and for whom the next step down on the socioeconomic ladder is homelessness or the illicit economy. I intend to say a lot more about this piece when time permits.

3. Look! Political science that isn't useless! Larry Bartels and colleagues have started to release some of the findings of their multi-year study of the attitudes and opinions of the super-wealthy. I had the good fortune of hearing Bartels talk about this project during the planning stages but not enough good fortune to get involved with it. It was clear from the beginning that this would end up being remarkably interesting. Indeed, some of the findings are exactly what you'd expect, but others paint The 0.1% in a more pragmatic, less Evil light than we often see. Here's a brief summary or, for masochists, the whole article from Perspectives on Politics2.