ginandtacos.com - shut up and drink the gin

GINANDTACOS 2007 COCKSUCKER OF THE YEAR: JOE LIEBERMAN

Perfection is a beautiful thing, and the northeastern US seems to be have had a run of it in 2007. They gave us the World Champion Red Sox, the 16-0 Patriots, and the most flawless 12 months of being a cocksucker ever turned in by a public figure. Congratulations, Joe Lieberman. You are the Tom Brady of being a duplicitous, self-important ass clown. It is rare, in the short history of this award, that a year's winner should be so clear-cut. But aside from a brief challenge from General Saint David Petraeus, it was Holy Joe all the way in 07.

Mr. Lieberman's intense hunger for Satan's cock was in no way confined to this calendar year, of course. His transition from mild irritant to full-blown asshole began with his primary defeat in 2006, an event that gave America the phenomenon known as Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman. Then, proving that God truy loathes America, the midterm elections made this condescending waste of flesh the deciding vote in an evenly-split Senate. Oh my, how Joe loved that. The Democratic leadership didn't simply have to put up with his continued presence - they had to suck up to him and bend to his every whim.

Lieberman's cloying, pedantic "bipartisanship" prattle goes a long way towards showing just how far to the right the axis of American political discourse has tilted. Like other "sensible" and "serious" "moderates" like David Brooks, Lieberman's message appears to be "I am a Democrat who just happens to agree with the far right on almost everything, and this proves that I am a better person because I'm so 'open minded' and unrestrained by ideology." Truly did Holy Joe use 2007 to put on a display of collaborationism that would make the Vichy regime - and perhaps even the eponymous Quisling himself - nauseous.

When he wasn't busy endorsing neocon Republican presidential candidates who are too far to the right for their own damn party, Joe was "busy" chairing the Senate Committee on Homeland Security. Since taking that post he has found it necessary to launch exactly zero investigations into the dozens of examples of ineptitude, omissions, and outright criminality of his pals in the White House. He's such a loyal bobblehead for the far right that Bill Kristol thinks he should be the GOP nominee for VP next year. Now that's an endorsement that every self-respecting "independent" and "Democrat" accepts with pride. When he wasn't busy bragging about how goddamn fabulous everything is going in Iraq he was rhetorically cheerleading for the next war of aggression in the Middle East. When he wasn't busy making sure the troops don't get a break between tours of duty in His war, he was attacking the leader of his own party for talking about withdrawl even in the abstract. He found time to host fund raisers for a vulnerable Republican Senator in the upcoming election, but no time to do any actual research about how His strategy is working in Iraq other than to call Petraeus' critics guilty of treason.

Joe Lieberman is what he is. He is the Senator from AIPAC, not Connecticut. He is a strident neoconservative, not an "independent." He is a Republican, not a Democrat. And he is a smug, ingratiating cocksucker, not a noble, above-the-fray Bipartisan. While the DNC is probably hoping that either Holy Joe falls off a tall ladder or that the Party's Senate lead increases enough to make him irrelevant, I see no problem in hoping for both.

COME WITH ME

So on the heels of the Led Zeppelin reunion show last week - a spectacle so mercenary and horrific that it doesn't merit comment - all I can think about is this:

I vividly recall seeing this live on SNL as it happened, praying fervently for a rogue asteroid the size of Mount Everest to strike the Earth.

THE MANY HORRORS OF LEFTIST THINKING

I happen to be one of a small and ever-shrinking number of Americans with something called "paid vacation." Granted, as an instructor at a public university I do not technically have paid vacation (it is never called that) but I do not have to work for three weeks in December. Or a week for Spring Break. Or three months of summer - although I usually get pressed into service for that one. This is the ultimate "benefit." It is why I and many other graduate students continue to endure the endless politicking, ass-kissing, back-stabbing, and generalized intellectual grab-ass that define academia. It is why I will not make a lot of money in my life, nor will I enjoy much freedom of movement (we go where the jobs are). And I decided, after several years in a grisly, relatively well-paid Real World job, that it is worth it.

I don't like working. If you do, I humbly submit that there is something wrong with you. Sure, there's the odd person here or there who enjoys their profession. At the very least you might enjoy your job more than the available alternatives. But do you really like working? If you didn't have to do it, would you? Frankly I'd find a lot more fulfilling ways to spend my time even if I had a fantasy fun job. I suppose this makes me "lazy" and responsible for our economy's inability to compete with the Chinese. I could not possibly care less. We were not put on this Earth to make widgets.

Sometime after, oh, 1980 the consensus in America apparently became that vacation is a vestigial anachronism of Second Wave post-war regulated capitalism (along with things like unions, pensions, and government regulation). It would shock most Americans to learn how different Things are in our neck of the woods when compared to other advanced industrial democracies. Take a serious gander at how we stack up against Europe. Whereas almost every nation in Western Europe mandates at least 20 paid vacation days per annum (that's an entire month of workdays) we here in the Land of Whose Lifestyle the World is So Envious mandate none. As a result, most of us receive exactly that. Even the Japanese, whose mythologized "kamikaze" work ethic was postulated as the explanation for why their industry kicked our ass so badly over the past 20 years, legally mandate 2 weeks.

"But! But!" says your inner Hannity, "Look at how much less productive their economies are! Look at how horrendously high their taxes are!" True. Very true. However, if that was your first reaction I have to wonder...who are you? Is your life really so joyless and your acquisitiveness so severe that you'd willingly trade the 30 paid days off they enjoy in France for the right to pay 30% in federal income tax rather than 45%? How miserable is your home life, and how limited or nonexistent are your interests (outside of shopping) that you would rather make a little more money than have time to enjoy it?

I'd like you to sound off in the comments for a very informal poll. What do you get in the way of paid vacation? And let's not forget holidays. Does your December holiday time consist of getting the 25th off and heading back to work the morning of the 26th? Of all the things that depress me about the direction in which we're headed, I think the worst is that the glories of Third Wave capitalism have instilled in our population the idea that having Memorial Day, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas off from work is good enough. I wonder how many people actually console themselves at the end of another 50-hour week by saying "This is all worth it when I see our GDP." More likely they're drowning their sorrows in the delusion that they'll "make it" in some sort of Horatio Alger ascension to Independent Wealth. Then every day will be a vacation! Good luck with that.

SOCIAL DECLARATIONS OF WAR

Just remember, we are not cebrating Christmas at the moment. I've been reading the works of brilliant 21st Century logician and philosophe John Gibson, who rightly points out that "the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought." Left-wing America has declared War on Christmas.

Much like other socio-cultural "wars" such as the Wars on Poverty, Drugs, Illiteracy, and Terror, the War on Christmas has been phenomenally successful. Why, this year I could hardly find any mention of the former holiday. I actually forgot that it exists, so total has been the liberal victory over the Pagan-turned-Christian celebration.

Rather than wish you a Merry Christmas or happy holidays, I suppose that given this blog's demographic it would be more logical to offer you congratulations for so successfully destroying a once-major holiday. Excellent work, Comrades! Now let's get back to work so that we may be equally victorious over the Family and Freedom! Next time this year I expect to be seeing busts of Trotsky in every town square.

DEPP MAKES MOVIE. HOT TOPIC REJOICES.

So who is the actor/actress everyone else seems to like but whom you loathe?

There is a gentleman in town whom I hate (shocking, I know) and I decided I hated him when, 20 seconds into our first conversation, he started lecturing me about the immense acting talents of Johnny Depp. I really missed the meeting at which America decided that he is not horrible. Given that he hasn't been in a good film in almost 15 years (Ed Wood, 1994) you'd think the public would have soured on him. Nope.

Is it just me or does he only appear in movies that double as Hot Topic marketing wet dreams? Honest to god, every damn movie involves mountains of pancake makeup, dark eyeliner, a ridiculous accent, and some sort of period or "dark" aesthetic. Here, take a look. From Hell. Sleepy Hollow. Chocolat. Finding Neverland. Corpse Bride. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And how can we forget that amazing Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy - doubtlessly the finest films ever made about a theme park ride. Remember when he received an Oscar nomination for that role? And Finding Neverland? Yeah, good times. Mall goths everywhere crossed their black-nail-polished fingers for him.

I understand why people like empty, insipid entertainment. I just can't handle it when we start putting bows on turds and talking about how great the films and actors are. If you want to waste your time watching Pirates of the Caribbean 3, fine. If you think I'm going to sit here and listen to you talk about how great it and its leading man are, I cannot strongly enough disabuse you of that notion.

So, really. Fuck that guy. Who's yours?

FRONT LOADING

Hi class! Today I'm going to talk about one of the concepts I like to emphasize when teaching about presidential elections. You will be tested on this material at the end of the post. OK, not really, but it's the kind of dinner party knowledge that will make you feel smart.

You may have noticed that the 2008 primary calendar is radically different than any previous election. The Iowa Caucus, traditionally held in late February, is now practically crammed into New Years Day's pants. That's right, it's January frickin' 3rd. The New Hampshire primary is just a few days later (Jan. 5). Super Tuesday (mid- to late-March, traditionally) is now...February 5. Twenty-two states will hold primaries on that date, meaning, in essence, that you'll know the nominees before February is a week old.

So, what the hell? The explanation is a phenomenon called Front Loading. States are in a race to make their primaries earlier and earlier every year. Why? Well, first of all there are economic benefits. Not a whole lot goes on in Iowa and New Hampshire. Sorry to burst your bubble. But the caucus/primary are easily the biggest economic event (and attention-getter) in their respective states. Thousands of reporters and campaign workers flood the states with money over several months. It's like hosting a Super Bowl, if the Super Bowl lasted 90 days. States also want their primaries to actually mean something. The early "kingmaker" primaries exert tremendous influence over the nominations, as the candidates who do well early gain money, attention, and momentum to sweep through subsequent primaries. Later primaries? Not so much. Some states (Michigan and Florida) are even willing to violate party rules (and endure candidate boycotts) to get in on the early action.

There are also a few new (party-approved) additions to the pre-Super Tuesday calendar: Nevada and South Carolina. Why? Well, the Democratic Party in particular has had a lot of trouble over the years with the tremendous influence of Iowa and NH. With what sort of voters do Democrats do well? Young people, city folk, and African-Americans. And...Iowa and NH are made up almost entirely of white, rural old people. So Howard Dean, god bless him, (no, really, he's the best thing to happen to the party in 50 years in his role as the chair) decided it might help to include a state whose population is almost entirely urban (Nevada) and one with a very large non-white population (SC). The goal is simple - find a way to stop the Democrats from nominating one uninspiring, unelectable candidate after another. Ever wonder why the Democratic voters always seem so overwhelmingly unenthusiastic about their nominees? Probably because a bunch of rural Iowans picked him.

That's great, you say, but who the hell cares? These calendar games all have a dramatic impact on the kind of person who will be able to succeed. The candidates need to do more in a shorter timeframe (4 weeks from Iowa to Super Tuesday) than ever before, which means they need more money than ever before. This game has always been slanted in favor of the most well-funded candidates (W showed up to the primaries in 2000 with $47 million - McCain was his closest competitor at $5 million) but now it's getting ridiculously so. Only a few of this massive field of candidates can afford the daunting task of campaigning simultaneously in the handful of ultra-crucial "early" states...and then a whopping 22 states on the same day. That's practically like a general election. The insignificant candidates (Richardson, Huckabee, Biden, etc) are trying to do one thing and one thing only right now: stay alive until Iowa/NH and hope for a miracle. If they can catch lightning in a bottle and do well in those, they will suddenly be seen as a "frontrunner" and money will pour in. If they don't do well, they're going to wither on the vine very quickly. As best I can tell, at the moment only Hillary, Rudy, Obama, and Romney (thanks to his personal fortune) can afford the kind of logistical outlay that this insanely front-loaded schedule requires.

So that's your nominee pool. The only way anyone else (Edwards, Huckabee) will seriously get in the race is to put all of their eggs in the Iowa basket and hope for a miracle. It worked for Bill Clinton. Mike Huckabee, I knew Bill Clinton. And you're no Bill Clinton.

ECONOMIC CRACK

It passed without much comment last week when Congress and Our Leader announced their subprime bailout scheme to plug the sinking ship that is our nation's housing market. Government stepping in to take on the burden of individuals' and the lending industry's poor judgment? Now that's a solid dose of fiscal conservatism if I've ever seen one! The stench of patronage on this bill is enough to make the eyes of the Keating Five water uncontrollably.

Let's disregard for one moment the fact that this effort to "help people stay in their homes" is mostly a handjob for the lending industry. It main impact, as best I can tell, is to pay in full the banking industry's most horrible loans and then shift the same onto the taxpayer-funded Federal Housing Administration. As far as helping actual homeowners, it bails out only the most reckless, underqualified borrowers - and not many of them at that. This is an outstanding lesson in positive reinforcement of negative behavior - the less money you make and the bigger the loan you signed without reading it first, the more likely Uncle Sam is to bail you out. The same holds true for the banks, of course. The more reckless and unscrupulous their lending practices, the better the odds that they can benefit from this fraud. By expanding the FHA's reach to mortgages as high as $700,000 the message is clear: screw the working class, we need to protect high-income suburbanites with shitty credit and zero understanding of how to live within their means. If you are struggling but can technically still afford your mortgage when the rates rise (i.e. the monthly payments are not larger than your paycheck) this legislation does absolutely nothing to help you.

Why does legislation like this pass? The sad truth is that this is inevitable because the Greatest Story Never Told wonder-economy of the Bush era is so heavily dependent on A) unsustainable levels of consumer spending and B) mountains of credit to make the unsustainable appear attainable. With record levels of household credit card debt (and enormous mortgages paying for ridiculously overpriced housing) there are no options left to keep John Q. Public going on weekly mall shopping binges. The only ways to keep consumers spending like mad for the holidays (and beyond) are to relieve their debt burden or have an economy that generates meaningful increases in real wages. I'll let you guess which one of those is more likely.

Like every other aspect of the Bush economy - the constant tax cuts, to name one - this bailout amounts to economic crack cocaine. It will provide a tiny bump, the effect will wear off almost immediately, and then we'll need to do another hit. The myth of a flourishing economy is not a high we can sustain. We can create the illusion only in brief spurts, with long, confidence-killing valleys of doubt and reality interspersed.

SIMPLE DECLARATIVE SENTENCES: A KEN BURNS FILM

I can't tell if this is a rant or a review, but let's talk for a moment about Ken Burns' latest production: The War.

On the plus side, and completely irrelevant to my point here, this is a legitimately decent series. It's enjoyable. It gets most of the history right (if not complete). It bears all the trademarks of Burns' inimitable yet often poorly-imitated style. It doesn't lapse into "Greatest Generation" fellatio. And, of course, it tells a riveting story. My guess is that its biggest sin is not being The Civil War. Burns' career offers us a very powerful example of why creative people should never start out with a masterpiece. The public has reacted poorly to nearly everything he's done since that series because, well, it's just not as good as the original Ken Burns Masterpiece. That's unfortunate, because some of it has been pretty good (Lewis & Clark, Mark Twain, Frank Lloyd Wright, Unforgivable Blackness). Of course let's not deny that some of it has been excruiciatingly bad as well. Baseball, I'm looking in your direction.**

Here's the real problem with The War: Burns is a good documentarian, which is to say that he lets his subjects tell the story. It's in their own words. So in that respect he is entirely at the mercy of his subjects to make the product vivid and compelling. Comparing The War to The Civil War is a great side-by-side exercise illustrating just how differently Americans express themselves a century apart. Modern (which is to say 20th Century) America simply isn't anywhere near as eloquent as mid-19th Century America. That's not really Ken Burns' fault, but it dramatically impacts the narrative quality.

Now, I know better than to criticize "The Greatest Generation" so let's clarify that it isn't really the fault of any individual depicted in the series. It's just the way our society has changed. The uneducated slaves in The Civil War manage to express themselves with more depth and eloquence than 99% of the subjects in The War. We live in a time and place in which compound sentences are de facto evidence of effeminate bookishness and, by extension, treasonous America-hating. The fact that the subjects in the more recent film are exponentially better-educated than their 19th Century counterparts can't overcome the fact that anti-intellectualism grew at an even faster rate during the interim.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's just a sample bias at work here (the only 19th Century letters to survive were the really good ones). But the cynical part of me looks at how much we've declined since World War II and finds the dumbing-down theory persuasive. When you're watching The War, bear in mind that it's not Ken Burns' problem that the Average Joe uses a 500-word vocabulary to express himself in simple, declarative, 7-word sentences. At this rate, the Ken Burns Jr. production of World War III is going to feature mostly grunting and pointing.

**The series would have been better received if it stuck with its original title: 15 Hours About the Yankees.

WHEN YOU RIDE ALONE, YOU RIDE WITH JESUS

Those who know me well know that I'm unsettlingly enthralled by old American war propaganda. I don't know what happened to my "Loose Lips Sink Ships" t-shirt, but I do know I miss it. Not only do I find it visually appealing and quaint but it quickly communicates an awful lot about how much we've changed as a nation.

While it's dangerous to read too much into mass cultural phenomena, feel free to browse around an excellent archive like Northwestern's online library of WWII posters and try to imagine a contemporary equivalent. I am certainly no less than the 10,000th person to mention this, but is it possible to overstate the extent to which the concept of "sacrifice" has been completely eliminated from the neocon war mentality? Honest to God, sit back and try to picture a commercial in which the government asks Hannity's listeners to drive less. Or eat less. Or work 16 hours per day. It's incomprehensible from two perspectives: we can conceive of neither a government that would do it nor a population that would accept it.

The idea that the white middle class will not be asked to make the slightest sacrifice is the foundation of selling neocon war to the public. They don't need to sacrifice life or limb (we have plenty of poor people, black people, and poor black people for that) and they certainly don't need to make any lifestyle changes. In fact, we encourage them to keep buying new Chevy Tahoes; consumer debt-fueled purchasing makes the piper play! So far from asking the public to make sacrifices, we take great pains to emphasize that they can keep living the most wasteful and inefficient lifestyle in recorded history. Eat crap, live 2 hours away from work without public transit, drive land barges, buy disposable everything....remember, you're an AMERICAN. Profligate consumption is your birthright.

After all, it's not like this war is costing us $275 million per day. So how has Our Leader managed to avoid even the slightest hint of asking his loyal drones to make sacrifices for this phenomenally expensive joyride? Why, the same way people like him "rationalize" their way out of everything: the Market will pay for it. See, we'll just spend far, far into the red today and in the future our economy will be such an unstoppable force that it will pay for the war many times over (as long as we don't chicken out and let those tax cuts expire! And let's make sure we stay on Congress about that AMT!) This lame cop-out is to political debate what "It was all just a dream!" is to fiction writing. It is the laziest, most baseless statement of magical faith short of "Jesus will save us." The past seven years have seen an explosion of this type of "logic." The stock market is going to save Social Security. Tax cuts will give everyone healthcare. Casinos will fund our schools. Outsourcing will create job growth. Name any dilemma and rest well assured that some Market Fantasy - erectile dysfunction aids for Libertarians, in essence - will fix it. I don't suppose it would make the slightest sense to expect a war to be treated any differently. Just sit back and amuse yourself with the image of how your favorite member of the I Love the War, As You Can Tell By the Number of Yellow Ribbons On My Explorer crowd would react if Our Leader told them they had to start rationing meat and carpooling.

Feel free to amuse me with your best guesses. I'm thinking it would look something like a hybrid of a John Birch Society meeting and that scene in Scanners where the dude's head explodes.

NPF LITE

I've spent the last several hours grading final exams. My brain is pudding.

While I was on the topic of very loud, very public bouts of hand-wringing, the reaction to the long-awaited "Mitchell Report" about steroids in baseball is slaying me. In the midst of hours of debate over important questions like "Is Roger Clemens still a Hall of Famer??" the whole world is conveniently missing more pressing points, namely the fact that that entire industry is getting a pass on a decade-plus of Federal drug law violations.

Mailing Schedule 1 drugs across state lines....hmm, lots of people in prison for that. Possession with intent to distribute (numerous stories of players giving other players illegal drugs)....hmm, I think there are a lot of people in prison for that too. I like baseball. But I'd really appreciate it if just one of these pricks could put the situation in the proper context and admit how f'n lucky they are to be discussing things as trivial as baseball records and honors instead of "So how much time is Clemens going to spend in Federal Pound-Me-in-the-Ass Prison?"

It reminds me vaguely of the old Catholic Church pedophilia scandal, when the organization apparently thought "Don't worry, we'll handle the investigation in-house" was good enough for Federal prosecutors. These multimillionaire athletes are so goddamn lucky to begin with, and here the entire sport has been given a blanket pass on the kinds of things poor people go to prison for every day. They can't even take the free pass gracefully - with an apology and humble pie. No, they have the balls to get indignant, continue issuing denials, and demand all the honors they believe they are due. You'd think that the privilege of being able to conduct their own toothless investigation of two decades of felony drug crimes would produce a collective "We really dodged a bullet" sigh of relief. You'd be wrong.

DIVERSIONARY BLOVIATING

Judging by the recent comments of Senator and fine upstanding American patriot Kit Bond I now declare that the debate about waterboarding and torture has gotten officially Ridiculous. There's nothing the Beltway and the media do better than conducting loud, asinine, and irrelevant Red Herring moral debates. "Oh, the morality! Is it right? Is it wrong? What if it can save millions of lives?" Let's leave morality off the table for a minute. Let's pretend that torture is entirely moral, endorsed by a committee of the Pope,** Walter Cronkite, and Miss America. OK? Once you've immersed yourself in the scenario, answer one very simple yet completely overlooked question for me:

Does torture work?

Better yet, has anyone bothered asking? It's classic American Media c.2007 horseshit - throw the mouthbreathers a shiny colored ball in the form of an overwrought moral dilemma (ooh, look at the debate! look at the screaming pundits! this sure is contentious!) while completely ignoring the fact that torture doesn't actually work. It's all hand-wringing, moral puffery, and feigned pensiveness. Is it asking too much to have one Pundit Debate begin with "Well, is this actually accomplishing anything beyond making us look like neanderthals?" Because it would be swell to think that something so horrible is at least, you know, working.

In typical Beltway Bobblehead fashion the debate proceeds from the assumption that the farthest-right position is a obviously correct (and all the "realistic" "liberals" like David Brooks agree, noting that only the Lunatic Fringe Left disagrees). I dare - beg, actually - anyone to cite a single documented instance of a life being saved thanks to torture. No, Our Leader's utterly non-sequitur, no-supporting-evidence-provided statements that waterboarding "disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks" do not constitute a documented instance. I guess we'll just take your word for it, George!

I further beg someone to support an argument that torture increases the value or amount of human intelligence obtained. The Army's own findings indicate that they obtained almost half again as much information by switching from "coercive" to "rapport-based" techniques. To quote Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn, may his coke-addled soul rest in peace) in Reservoir Dogs, "Listen, if you beat this prick long enough he'll tell he started the goddamn Chicago Fire. Now that don't neccessarily make it fucking so! Come on!"

Physical torture is an excellent way to get people to make some shit up so you will stop torturing them. It is not an excellent way of getting valid, actionable intelligence. It's only an effective technique in the minds of lard-assed suburban white guys glued to the couch while Jack Bauer fantasies of "ticking time bomb" scenarios do for them what Cialis can't.

**Fun morality fact: 74% of Catholics support the use of torture compared to only 45% of godless heathen atheists. Man, I wonder why so many people no longer see traditional religious values as relevant?

THIS IS THE NEW SOUND

No politics today, and yes I know what day it is.

To preface this post, my band has just wrapped up the recording of a new album. Bob Weston from Shellac is going to master it - not because we're cool, but because we're paying him. His website provided me with a wealth of information about the technical side of music production. While I'm not entirely certain that any of this will interest you in the slightest, if you have any sort of fondness for audio, engineering, or the music industry (broadly construed) you may find this as fascinating as I do.

Americans like their iPods. I assume most of the people who would be reading a website like this one are clutching an mp3 player of some sort these days. If so, you're familiar with an irritating inconvenience: when your player is on Random, there's a change in volume - often a dramatic one - when leaping back and forth among tracks from different albums. It's especially apparent when moving from modern music to pre-1990 recordings. Do you ever wonder why that is? I do. If you're unconvinced, try it with some CDs in your collection. Don't touch the volume knob, and switch between a 1980 recording and one from 2005. Pretty obvious, no?

I suggest you take a few minutes to read Weston's extended caveat on "loudness" and the mastering process. Like any presentation involving specialized knowledge, the visual aids are tremendously helpful in making the point to rabble like us. Essentially, he argues that the race to be the LOUDEST TRACK ON YOUR PLAYLIST has significant effects on sound quality. While you're at it, you can read more 'How the sausage is made' type stuff about music in What Happens to My Recording when it's Played on the Radio? by audio engineer Frank Foti (a little technical to say the least) or the much more accessible Guardian piece How CDs are Remastering the Art of Noise about the withering loudness of most major label music and the overuse of shitty electronic effects to compensate for the loss of fidelity.

I don't actually get a kick out of being a music snob (really. honestly.) but it's hard to avoid taking on that role when pointing out just how painfully god-awful most new music sounds. That is independent of the songwriting or musicianship. Those are matters of taste. But the actual sound that gets blared over the radio these days is enough to make blood squirt out of my ears. Leave aside how you feel about their music - try actually listening to an album from something like Fall Out Boy. It's one of the most painfully overprocessed, compressed, harsh, and unnatural sounding things you could imagine. Technology like that could make 1971 era Led Zeppelin sound like shit. Or you can flip over to the Top 40 or Country, where abominations like AutoTune (which makes your dance hits sound strangely like Stephen Hawking is doing the vocals) are all but ubiquitous.

Does it really help a track to stand out on your iPod in shuffle mode if it sounds that terrible? Talk about pyrrhic victories.

PS: Here's a sample of a raw (unmastered) mega-hit from our upcoming album. It's called "Right Now Your Low Self-Esteem is just Good Common Sense" and it's #2 on the pop charts in Belgium. Be warned that the sound is not going to appeal to you unless you like early Jesus Lizard, mid-career Trenchmouth, and getting punched in the head.

ON KNOWLEDGE

Observing the neoconservative reaction to the recent and much-discussed NIE report on Iran's nuclear program gave me plenty of fuel for a logical fallacy post about moving the goalposts. But rather than launch into that here I want to cover a much more basic question. Hopefully there are some scienticians reading who can help us all out.

Who can forget Our Leader's precious "World War III" speech about Iran's nuclear ambitions just a few short weeks ago? Well, in case you have managed to forget I will refresh you with my emphasis on the part I find so curious:

But this -- we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously. And we'll continue to work with all nations about the seriousness of this threat.

What exactly is the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon? A decent upperclassman-level college physics textbook?

Someone please leap in and correct me if I'm way off here, but my amateur understanding of the art of nuclear weaponry (and the assertions of a few academics with whom I've had this conversation) is that the knowledge of how to make one is relatively accessible - it's the materials that are hard to come by. Note that I am not arguing that it is simple to make a nuclear weapon, but only that the knowledge of how to do so is not entirely uncommon. We here in 'merica figured it out about 70 years ago. A lot of the world's other wealthy nations followed shortly thereafter. I suspect that the average public university has more than a few people who could draw you a road map.

Yes, there would be trial-and-error and a couple of duds involved in the learning curve. No, they might not make a very efficient, modern, or powerful nuclear weapon. But I am pretty goddamn confident that if you handed an Iranian physics department a bunch of enriched plutonium they would be able to construct a nuclear weapon in a relatively modest timeframe. Again, someone jump in if I'm way off.

It's amazing how the goalposts started moving before the NIE even came out (of course the President had no idea what was in it). Such a subtle shift. They don't need to have an "actual" nuclear weapons program per se....we can still bomb the shit out of them if they have the knowledge of how to build one. What the President is saying, in essence, is that we need to bomb them if they learn physics.

Please disregard the fact that Bush's Homeland Security folks posted the goddamn schematics for how to build them on the internet a short while ago. It's obviously not an easy undertaking, but I seriously question the suggestion that this knowledge is the biggest secret on the planet in the year 2007. Maybe in 1955 I'd buy that. Today I'd be willing to wager that the recipe for Coke is known by fewer people and guarded with more zeal.

THE BRAVE NEW WORLD

I spent the majority of this weekend in the studio (Russian Recording of Nashville, Indiana) once again. It was a tremendously rewarding and frustrating experience. Much was learned. The final product, if I may say so, is the balls. I'm ridiculously proud of it. I'll post some tracks, which you will all hate, soon.

That is my way of apologizing for the lack of research in today's entry.

Inspired by a conversation I had on Saturday evening with someone I had not previously met: why does anyone give a shit about George Orwell? Why do people think 1984 is a good book? And why in the flying hell do people bring it up as an analogy when they're discussing politics? I honestly cannot think of anything less persuasive.

1984 is, in my opinion, a three hundred page straw man. Sure, it probably seemed like a plausible nightmare scenario back in the days of Cold War indoctrination, but in the modern context I can't think of a less relevant social metaphor. I'm hardly the first or best person to compare the two, but Brave New World runs circles around 1984 in terms of relevance as a political metaphor. Where 1984 tries to scare the kiddies with images of book banning, Huxley talks about a world in which the books ban themselves because no one wants to read. Orwell gives us juvenile tales of an all-powerful government that hides information from us; Huxley talks about a world in which the truth is freely available but lost in an ocean of misinformation, spin, and irrelevant bullshit masquerading as news. Orwell told us that a totalitarian state would make social and political change impossible. Huxley drew up a world in which people were too busy being distracted by nonsense to want to change anything.

In short, as a skeptical person with an interest in politics, 1984 is supposed to appeal to me. Too bad it reads as if written by a 16 year-old. It's a ham-handed boogeyman tale that completely misses any point outside of the context of anti-Communist hysteria. When educated adults actually bring it up in conversation, I immediately knock about 40 points off their IQ. It's the sort of thing that allows really stupid people to convince themselves that we have a terrific system in place - our government doesn't look like 1984, so we must have a healthy, vibrant democracy! I'll take Brave New World and conversation with someone who understands that the people who want to control you will come with smiles and soothing voices, not an iron fist wielded by cartoonish jackbooted thugs.

2007 IN REVIEW: ALBUMS (PLUS SPECIAL BONUS)

So before I launch into the topic promised by the title, please watch this until the 45 second mark. You do not need to enjoy American football in the slightest in order to find it hilarious. I promise.

Anyway, this was a horrible year for music. In order to fill out a list of top albums of the year I needed to include a couple of things I've only had for about a week. Maybe nothing new sounds good because I am getting old, or maybe nothing new sounds good because it is bad. But regardless, don't interpret that as damnation via faint praise. Some of this shit is pretty amazing. And if you're looking for one Best of 2007 list without fuckin' Radiohead or Modest Mouse on it, you're home, brother.

ED VS. LOGICAL FALLACIES, PART 12: ONE-SIDEDNESS

Some logical fallacies are so stupid that I don't even like calling them "logical fallacies." It's an academic-sounding $5 phrase. If I call something an example of fallacious logic, you immediately think I am talking about something relatively high-brow. So I hesitate to call One-Sidedness a logical fallacy (although obviously it is) because it is essentially just grown men and women sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting "LA LA LA LA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

Not so dignified, this.

One-sidedness, aka ignoring counterevidence, is essentially that. You present an individual with evidence that disproves or seriously challenges their argument...and they simply decide that it doesn't exist. Really. People do this. What kind of people? Why, John Bolton for instance. America's favorite thundering-idiot-as-diplomat reacted thusly in the face of the previously-discussed National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuke program. Faced with a mountain of evidence disproving his paranoid fantasies, Yosemite fuckin' Sam just dismisses it all with a wave of his bloody hand:

Bolton: Well, I think it’s potentially wrong, but I would also say, many of the people who wrote this are former State Dept employees who during their career at the State Dept never gave much attention to the threat of the Iranian program. Now they are writing as (fingers quote) ‘members of the intelligence community’ the same opinions that they’ve had four and five years ago.

Blitzer: President Bush says he has confidence in this new NIE. He says they revamped the intelligence community after the blunders involving the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He says there’s a whole new community out there and he has total confidence in what the National Intelligence Director is doing.

Bolton: Well, I don’t …

Right. Got that? There's a credible mountain of evidence, but....it's wrong. John Bolton doubts it. Therefore it is wrong. Hey, would you all like to hear a secret about how to spot a moron? Present them with factual evidence undermining their argument and see if they say "No, that doesn't count. It's not credible."

I am also reminded of one of my favorite moments in the checkered legal history of creationism (oops, I mean "Intelligent Design"), Judge John Jones's written beatdown of creationist "scholar" Michael Behe in Kitzmiller v Dover. The Judge relayed this anecdote in the opinion for our amusement:

"...on cross-examination, Professor Behe was questioned concerning his 1996 claim that science would never find an evolutionary explanation for the immune system. He was presented with fifty-eight peer-reviewed publications, nine books, and several immunology textbook chapters about the evolution of the immune system; however, he simply insisted that this was still not sufficient evidence of evolution, and that it was not "good enough." (23:19 (Behe))." (Page 78)

You know who else argues like that? Holocaust deniers. La la la la, I can't hear you. It's rather incredible that anyone can maintain a semblance of credibility throughout the process of using this "logic." I guess it's comforting to remember that the people who aren't bothered by it are as dumb as or dumber than the people using it.

AT LEAST IT'S NOT CHARLIE DANIELS

On the Forbes list of the worst jobs on Earth, I think "George Bush Era Military Recruiter" would be one step behind Assistant Crack Whore for the top (or is it bottom?) spot. I feel bad for them. I do. Honestly. In peacetime the job must be pretty easy - just target poor areas loaded to the gunwales with young men lacking any respectable career opportunities and voila. Now, on the other hand....

How do you sell it under these circumstances? "The Army: Join today, be in Fallujah in 10 weeks (or your money back)!" There's no way to varnish reality, even when pitching enlistment to the bottom 10% of last year's high school seniors: sign up, and you're going to Iraq. Soon. Some people are probably really excited about that, either because they are idealists eager to make a difference or because they want to shoot a brown person in a consequence-free environment. But the numbers indicate that neither of these "selling points" are enough. Time to get creative.

If you've seen a film in theaters anytime in the last couple of years, then I don't need to tell you about the phenomenon of the Five Minute Army Promo Video Masquerading as a Trailer. You know, people decked out in neat-o looking toys (armor! guns! techno doo-dads!) jumping out of other neat-o looking toys (helicopters! tanks! bigger techno doo-dads!) to either shoot or help people (depending on the setting) to the strains of Godsmack. As time passes, the films look increasingly like video games and they have a mysterious tendency to never depict or mention Iraq. Let's go ahead and assume those are not accidents.

I usually don't pay much attention (other than to be a smart ass and yell something like "How's that war working out?" at the end) but when last I visited Ye Old Movies I was literally stunned by what I saw: a National Guard-sponsored music video by 3 Doors Down called "Citizen Soldier." Follow the link to watch it - empty stomach recommended. It's also on YouTube. I actually felt like leaving the theater. Or at least projectile vomiting.

Words don't usually fail me, but...words fail me. Where do I start? The horrendous, generic, "Let's compress it in Pro Tools a few more times" music? The historical inaccuracies? The lyrics, which read like they were written by the hit songwriting team of General Petraeus and Brit Hume? No, let's overlook all of that for a second and focus on the shameless deception involved. Focus on exciting Hollywood films about the Revolution or WWII! Focus on helping people after earthquakes! Do not focus on the fact that you are going directly to Iraq. There, to paraphrase mnftiu, you can help the fuck out of some people.

Does this shit actually work? Let me re-phrase that; do we want a military composed of individuals to whom this would be persuasive? Call me an idealist, but in a more perfect world I don't think people should make the very serious choice to enlist because some horseshit radio rock and people jumping out of helicopters seemed cool. As embarassing as it is that we have Army-sponsored video games and music videos essentially targeting children, I suppose we can take some comfort in the hard truth provided by the numbers - it's still not working. If it was, we wouldn't see the Army relaxing its criminal history and High School diploma requirements to meet its repeatedly-lowered "goals."

A TALE OF QUATERNARY IMPORT

Sometimes - and this is one of them - I have to ask trite, obvious, redundant, and rhetorical questions. What the fuck is wrong to this country? Actually, I retract the claim that this is rhetorical. Someone tell me. Please. What the fuck happened to us?

Buried in today's "headlines" about the "MySpace suicide," NFL player Sean Taylor's funeral, and "Why Bad Kissers Don't Get to Second Base" (thanks CNN!) is an afterthought about the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear capability. It has been released for public consumption today but was completed almost a year ago. It concludes that Iran abandoned its weapons program...in 2003.

Now, what are the odds that no one in the White House knew about the content of this report almost a year ago? Let's be generous and call it one in 600 billion. OK. So. While this is only recently available to the public it has been well known to people like, oh, let's say the President and the Secretary of State, for a year. That means, and stop me when I fall off the logic train, that the past 7 months of We Must Invade Iran saber-rattling and up-ramping has been done with full knowledge that not a shred of the "nuclear program" allegations were true.

I'm sorry, but since when is "President and entire administration knowingly lie to America and the world in an attempt to justify invading another country" not news? No Flashing Breaking News Alerts, no headlines, no "Gee America, looks like we have nearly red-handed evidence that your entire executive branch are lying, warmongering cocksuckers" commentary, and no pointed, incisive questions. The talk radio crowd don't even bother to make excuses for it. It's just not even relevant. No one notices, no one cares. It's the 5th most urgent news item of the day.

We often succumb to the temptation to idealize the past in this country, but the part of my psyche that doesn't resist urges very well thinks that this would not be the case in 1950. Or 1960. Or 1970. Hell, probably not even in 1980. But not in 2007. The President getting caught red-handed trying to bullshit the country into another pre-emptive "security" war is not news. I often think there has been some sort of fundamental and irrevocable change in this country, an intellectual point-of-no-return that we breezed past in the mid-80s. Stories like this do not discourage me from thinking that more regularly. We're officially a nation of vacuous, disinterested idiots. Willfully ignorant. Proud of it. As anti-intellectual as we are intellectually incurious. In short, we as a nation operate at about a 4th grade level - our interest in the "news" essentially encompasses sports, movies, Top 40 music, and medical oddities.

I don't know what the hell is wrong with me, or anyone else who chooses to teach for that matter. It's like we're signing up to be the Designated Mourners for 40 years of progressively more depressing batches of young people.

SACRIFICED TO ROCK

Today's entry has been sacrificed to the gods of rock. I spent the weekend in a studio recording the long-awaited 3rd TremFu album. All I can say is that it is awesome enough to inspire bowel movements simply by looking at the CD.

Combined with the fact that I have to grade 55 papers' worth of sophomore 5-pagers on Iraq (their arguments are VERY well developed and do not in any way devolve into unsupported ideological assertions masquerading as facts) I sort of want to die at the moment. So I apologize. As MacArthur told the Phillipines, I shall return. Tomorrow.